There are so many voices, so many words.
Strings of letters that should mean something, but whenever she tries to piece them together they all fall apart.
So she does what she always does. She follows orders from higher up and delegates tasks to those below her. The words don't have to mean anything. She takes them one at a time, one word at a time, one command at a time. (One body at a time.) Doesn't let herself think, because thinking is one distraction that she cannot handle right now. Because they call her the Ice Queen, so that's what she is, she is a cold and unemotional woman with a heart made of ice, and that is who she needs to be.
But while ice can always survive the longest in a winter of hope and despair, with no warmth in sight, ice can shatter easily.
And if she stops, for just one second, if she stops and thinks and remembers, she will shatter and nothing, no one, will be able to put her back together.
Shatter like that glass. So many pieces and she's on her knees, picking them up, trying to put them back together, but when she grabs them they slice into her palms and it should hurt, it should hurt, but nothing could hurt more than the steely resolve that has gripped her heart, so she holds the shards of broken glass and can't help but think that if she was glass, this would be her.
Eventually she's kneeling in a pile of broken glass, and there is probably someone in the next room but it feels like there is no one for miles and miles of Arctic tundra, and the ice is melting, streaming down her face, and she can't comprehend any of this. because the pristine white tiles are speckled with blood from her hands, but all she sees is a playing card, a costumed hero from the 40s, speckled in blood, not her blood, but his blood, the one person who maybe, just maybe, would've been able to put her back together.