"Fear will be her enemy…"
It was well past midnight, and Elsa was still staring at the glass on her bedside table.
Her room was cold, like it always was, and lit by the moon that shone through her open window. Frost spread freely out from underneath her curled-up body, covering every surface with white feathers. Threads of snow crystals wove through the thin blue silk covers of her bed like silver embroidery.
It reminded her of the room she had created not a day ago, the bedroom in her crystalline castle. She had to have some place to rest, even while alone. Couldn't just pace in the foyer forever. So she had annexed a corridor all for herself (not that the entire palace wasn't all for her, which it was). Only after she'd finished building it had she realized that it mirrored the bedroom in which she had hidden for thirteen years.
Except, of course, that it had a lot more ice.
But now it was all over — she didn't have to be alone in her ice castle anymore; she could live without fear in her childhood home. She could make this room as cold and icy as she wanted. Without fear of judgment. At peace…
She was pretty sure she understood her powers now, and she could control them Fear was what made them get out of control. So long as she could reassure herself that she could control them, and she knew she could, there wasn't any danger of her powers spiraling out and away.
She could control herself. She knew she could.
Right?
She exhaled and watched her breath freeze in the subzero air, then rolled over onto her back and pushed herself up. She felt exhausted, but for some reason she couldn't convince herself to sleep. Anna was infamous for being able to fall asleep the second her head hit the pillow, a talent that Elsa would have gladly traded her ice powers for in an instant. Especially at times like these — when she knew that in the morning she would have to wake up on time and step outside the doors again, and be the queen they'd always wanted her to be.
However, once your world has been turned right after thirteen years of thinking that it might explode at any minute, it's hard to not think that something bad will happen.
Sighing again, she glanced back at the glass on her bedside table. She was thirsty. But the water was little more than a solid chunk of ice — undrinkable, obviously — and the glass had long since shattered, leaving the shards all over the place. She could just call a servant to get a new glass with fresh water, but the servants weren't half as forgiving as her sister. They still whispered of sorcery, betrayal, a rebellion. They still feared her. The ever-optimistic Anna had tried to assure her that they'd learn to trust her and find that she was really quite a nice young lady, but Elsa wasn't so convinced — as long as he stuck around, fear would stay.
So she swung her bare feet off the side of the bed and took a deep breath, preparing to make the journey to the kitchens. Fresh swirls of frost whirled out from underneath her as she stood and took a robe to wear over her long white nightgown. She touched the door handle and then automatically drew back as ice began to form, taunting her, mocking her. The gloves, resting on her bedside table next to the shattered glass, seemed to call her name.
No. She had conquered her fear. She could do this without the stupid gloves. And if she messed up, no one would care. There wasn't anything left to hide now that the secret was out…
Fingers tense, she grabbed the handle and squeezed it. She smirked wryly as nothing happened. No ice. That was good. Filled with a bit of newfound confidence, she exhaled, flipped a stray lock of hair out of her eyes, threw open the door and stepped into the hallway.
Out of habit, she glanced down at the carpet as she went. She wasn't leaving a frozen trail behind her — that was even better.
Queen Elsa's steps became a bit longer and braver as she strode down the dim, silent hallways.
The palace drinking water supply came mostly from mountain streams and was purified by boiling. After that it was able to be stored in huge casks similar to those used to hold wine until the supply was used up, which never took long. The casks were kept in the kitchens in a special room.
It took Elsa a while to remember where exactly the kitchen and the water casks were (she hadn't really paid attention to these kind of things as an eight-year-old and the only memory she really had of them was freezing the casks over once when she was four) but eventually, after a lot of wandering and a small setting off of the jumpy palace sentries, she found them. The kitchens were dark, lit only by the light of the full moon shining through an open skylight.
Calmly yet careful not to make too much noise, she took a cup (a wood one this time — didn't want to shatter another expensive glass cup) from a cabinet and filled it from a water cask. The water was lukewarm and so she dipped one finger in, stirred it around while releasing a very small amount of cold energy, then took it out and had a sip. There. Cold water. It gave her a strange shiver down her spine as she sipped it.
She suddenly realized that, not for the first time in her life, she actually felt cold…
And that it had nothing to do with the temperature…
She was still facing the row of water casks, her back to the door and the dim light that shone in, but she could clearly see the shadow fall across the light and hear his soft, barely audible footsteps as he stopped.
"Your highness," said the voice. That voice. The voice she hadn't heard aloud for years…and yet the voice that had plagued her every night for thirteen years…
"What do you want?" she asked coolly, trying to rein in the anger.
"What are you doing out of your room, Princess?"
His tone was light, sarcastic, almost amused. And still terrifying. And — no. She had conquered her fear. She couldn't think of anything now that he could want…
Right?
"Haven't you heard?" Slowly, she turned around and met his wolflike eyes, forcing a mock-sweet smile to her lips. "I'm the queen now, Pitch."
His expression was unreadable, and he raised a thin eyebrow*. "Oh really? I like your hair by the way. Suits you."
Somehow, she managed to keep her expression equally cool as she inclined her chin and casually touched her braid. A compliment was a compliment — even from the Nightmare King, though it would be ignored. "You knew this day was coming, didn't you?"
Pitch Black chuckled and turned away, hands held behind his back like always. "Oh, of course. I just didn't think you'd be able to handle it…"
She followed him out of the water room, not even noticing as frost crept out from under her bare feet. "Why not?"
He stopped cold. (Pun intended.) Then, he turned around and glared at her. "What do you mean, why not?"
Elsa couldn't help but smile a very cold smile. "I do think you need to catch up with the times," she replied. "They know."
Something flickered across the Boogeyman's face just then, something dark and almost unidentifiable. His eyes narrowed and he stepped forward, fists clenched at his sides. "What?"
"They know," she repeated, not flinching. "I put Arendelle into eternal winter, Anna came to tell me the news, I went back and unfroze them. Simple as that. They trust me now, so if you will be so kind as to leave…"
She took a frostless step forward to meet him, reached up, and placed her free hand on his shoulder.
"We don't need you here anymore, Pitch Black."
The dark thing came back and caught fire, she saw in the split second before he slapped her hand away and knocked the cup out of her other hand. On the spur of the moment she slid back and thrust out her arm, taking the spilt water and creating a spike of ice that, in the space of a split second, was an inch away from the Boogeyman's nose.
Pitch let out a very manly gasp of surprise and stepped back rapidly, holding his hands up in surrender. "A — all right," he stammered, unable to meet the furious Snow Queen's eyes. "I see! You think you're all high and mighty now that you can 'control' your powers — tell me I'm wrong, Elsa — "
"Just shut up," she snapped, "I never said I was high and mighty. I said I don't want you here."
"Of course not!" Oh, look at the Nightmare King. Using huge dramatic hand gestures like always. "Nobody wants Fear. Least of all someone like you, in charge of a whole kingdom and yet so — so fragile, so unstable, capable of being set off in a heartb — "
He was never to finish whatever tirade he had at hand, as a long spike of ice shot up between his feet and missed his manhood by a centimeter. Promptly, he released a very villainous yelp and scrambled back again as Elsa advanced. He pressed his back to the wall, obviously eager to get away from the woman. The moon glowed down on him and her, blinding his eyes and giving Elsa a very threatening silhouette.
"I said," she forced through gritted teeth, "shut up."
Pitch's eyes were wide and his breathing labored — which was what Elsa saw rather than his foot, inching towards her shadow. "A — ah — I understand," he muttered, his gaze darting and obviously trying to avoid hers. "I am so sorry, your highness — I didn't understand your control before, and I was stupid for intruding on something I should never have even meddled in. So I'll tell you what — "
His eyes met hers. Eclipses with ice.
"I'll leave right away, if you please."
The Nightmare King lunged forward and vanished into the Snow Queen's shadow.
Panic leapt in Elsa's throat and she spun around, hands open and ready. The shadows all around her grew and paced the room like they were creatures of their own — shadow-creatures shaped like twisted, skeletal horses. With glinting eyes and manes like tattered black ribbons…and hooves that were too loud on the stone floor as they advanced on her to be just tricks of the light…
"These are your Nightmares, Your Highness," came his voice again from over her shoulder. She spun around and let free a blast of ice, but there was nothing there except the wall. Meanwhile, the black horses kept advancing on her, cornering her…
"Oh yes, Your Highness," Pitch crooned, everywhere and nowhere at once. "This is your fear — I made them each night, every time you closed your eyes and dreamt of the day you would break free, the day they'd learn to hate you. And you've broken free…"
"But they don't hate me," Elsa had wanted it to come out strong and defiant, but it rasped out as more of an uncertain whisper. "They — trust me — Anna loves me and I have been accepted as the queen — "
"Anna loves you?" the disembodied voice chuckled and several of the horses echoed it with ear-piercing whinnies. "Oh please."
"She gave her life for me!"
"And you presumably brought her back to life? Just like in all happily ever afters? Listen to me, Elsa: she's a fool. She would follow you to the end of the earth just because you are her sister. But she's one fool. I can look out over Arendelle and I can taste even the smallest fear from the smallest child and I can know — I know that your foolish sister Anna is of the few who don't still fear you."
With every word the Nightmare King spoke, the burning rage inside Elsa just grew hotter. She clenched her fists and bent over, trying to prove to herself and to the Boogeyman that she was better than what he said she was — she could control herself. He was just trying to make her angry, make her afraid —
"Who don't still fear the day when you lose control again, murder them all, consume yourself with your own power or…even worse…find yourself alone in a cold, dead kingdom."
Elsa couldn't help it — she screamed. She screamed and threw out her hands, unleashing her full wrath on Pitch, on the Nightmares, on herself. Ice raced out from her feet and in a second had covered every surface of the room. Dozens of glass containers shattered at once as the temperature dropped sixty degrees in the blink of an eye, sending shards flying everywhere.** Even the glazed window of the skylight iced over and broke, sending the full power of the moonlight in to light the room.
The light caused a shadow behind a table to dim significantly, and it spat out a very alarmed-looking Nightmare King. Elsa instantly narrowed her gaze on him and stalked forward, hands outstretched as she took the ice and made it into spears, forcing the Nightmare King further into the light.
"I…don't…care!" she yelled through gritted teeth, her rage once again awakening the primal storm inside. "You don't know me, you don't know Anna — you don't own me, Pitch Black, and there is nothing you can say to me that will make me fear myself ever again!"
Burning ice eyes met terrified eclipse ones for a second before the Snow Queen's shadow passed over him again and the Nightmare King was able to flee.
The palace sentries had heard the Queen's screams and found her in the kitchens. Anna was awoken at once and, with a speed that almost defied natural human capabilities, was up and chasing after the equally alarmed sentry squads.
"Elsa?" she nearly screamed as she pushed past the guards and stumbled into the kitchens — or what used to be the kitchens.
The place was nearly unrecognizable. Frost and ice covered literally every surface, thicker in some places and with sword-sharp icicles jutting out in ways that wouldn't normally have been possible by the basic laws of physics. Shards of glass, broken by what must have been a massive rapid drop in temperature, waited atop the ice for someone to step on them and cut open their foot. In the water room, the wooden casks had exploded and the water inside them, fully frozen, had either shattered or simply waited as huge cylinders of ice.
Most amazing, though, were Elsa and the horses.
She was curled up on the ground and surrounded by about thirty of them — they were huge, almost life-size and very lifelike in their features but a bit too deformed and twisted to be real horses. What's more, they seemed to be made of nothing but shimmering black sand, and encased in a layer of Elsa's pale blue ice. Some of them, when they had been frozen, were in the process of stepping forward and so balanced on three or even two of their hooves, which if they were on the ground fused into the ice layer as well.
Anna saw the horses, and at the sight of them fear struck her heart, but what made her panic the most was Elsa, lying limply in the center of the frozen chaos. She was dressed in nothing but her white nightgown and a robe.
"Elsa!" Anna cried, pushing off the soldiers who tried to hold her back and weaving through the frozen horses to get to her sister.
Elsa seemed to be alive as Anna rolled her over on to her back, judging by the groaning noises she made, and as Anna tried to lift her into a sitting position her eyes fluttered open drowsily.
"…Black…" escaped her lips unbidden.
"Elsa — " Anna didn't know if it was the time to be grinning like mad, but she was so happy that her sister wasn't dead that she had to smile a little bit. "Elsa, it's me, Anna!"
Elsa blinked, then focused on Anna, confused. "Anna?" she croaked.
"Yeah, it's me — what happened here?"
Something flickered across her face as Elsa looked around, taking in the horses and the frozen kitchen. "I…" she hesitated, as if trying to remember. "I fought a Nightmare King…"
Nightmare. Of course. The black horses, Nightmares. Made sense.
"Did…did you win?" asked Anna, almost afraid of what her sister might say.
Elsa frowned. Her eyes were fixed on the moon.
Slowly, the Snow Queen nodded.
A/N: Well, that was better than I thought it would be. I think. I'm kind of messed up with my present/past tense because of 5 Quarts on FictionPress, and I'm not sure how I did with characterization — mind you, I've only seen Frozen once and I can never get Pitch right.
*Yes. In this story, Pitch has eyebrows. My theory is that he has them here but not in RotG because Elsa froze them off.
**It is possible to break glass with sudden change in temperature. Of course, if there is water in the glass, it will break because water expands as it freezes. But even if there isn't water in the glass, a rapid drop in temperature, even one concentrated in a small spot, will crack it — I learned this just yesterday with three ice cubes and a wedding present of my parents', actually. -.-
The title and summary are from the song "Dear X (You Don't Own Me)" by Disciple.
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