Lapses
Anxiety, Elsa thought bitterly, had a nasty habit of creeping up on you when you weren't looking, especially if you had something to be afraid of.
Everything had been going fine, more than fine in fact, and then Anna had told her sister that she was pregnant. Wonderful news surely...
In surprise Elsa had turned sharply to look at her sister and knocked her elbow against a glass perched on the table. She had meant to catch it, that was all, and that was what scared her, because instead she froze it. It stayed suspended, gripped in a stalagmite of ice and Anna had laughed. Laughed like it wasn't a problem.
"You sure showed that glass." Elsa's serious expression stopped the laughter but not the smile. "Don't be so serious. You will have lapses." Her smile was reassuring and then she beamed again. "Did I mention you are going to be an Aunt? We're not really supposed to be telling anybody yet but I'm really not very good at keeping secrets..."
That had been the opening.
Times after that when she was sat with Anna talking about the future, helping her pick out a crib with Kristoff or shopping for baby clothes, a tiny voice would pipe up from the very back of her mind, "good thing you aren't afraid any more. Any loss of control right now would ruin this." Her stomach would clench and her shoulders tense. Anna had called it just a 'lapse' but for Elsa it was a sudden sharp reminder that it could happen again. She pushed the voice back, brushed it off, but it was there and it was waiting. It niggled away at her confidence, slowly corrupting and eroding. It whispered to her, 'what if next time it was Anna? Or the baby?' She knew she couldn't be anxious, she couldn't be afraid, because fear made it worse. Fear was her trigger and she was afraid of it.
Now Elsa stood outside the room that held her sister and hesitated in the doorway.
"Elsa get in here!" Anna shone like the lights in the sky, lying in the bed with Kristoff at her side and a baby in her arms. "Come and see your nephew."
"I can't be any closer Anna. Don't ask me to."
The red-head's smile dimmed. "Don't do that. Not today. Don't shut me out." She nodded down at the sleeping infant. "Don't shut him out."
Elsa felt ice on her fingertips and shivered.
"What if I have another 'lapse'?" she barely whispered, the effort of opening up costing her.
Anna smiled again. "Love will stop you." She was so confident, so trusting. "You love me; I guarantee you'll love him. He is far less annoying. Here."
Slowly, fearlessly, Anna handed her son to Kristoff and gestured him to Elsa. As he stepped closer the wall began to freeze, fractals creeping up to cover the ceiling, and he paused halfway. Elsa felt rejection beginning to grip her heart until the reindeer man she hadn't been sure of as a husband for her sister opened his mouth.
"You feeling like you want to crush me with a snow monster this time if I come closer?" He quirked his eyebrows at her, "because I'd quite like to try being a Dad a bit longer." His brashness, honesty and total lack of fear melted the anxiety in her heart and drew a smile. Before she could change her mind he had closed the distance and placed the tiny baby in her arms.
"Meet your nephew," he announced, "not as lively as a rock troll but..." he looked back at Anna, "we like him."
Elsa gazed at the infant and he gazed right back. She didn't notice the ice melting around her, but Anna did.
"See."
Her voice held all the smugness of a younger sister that Elsa had missed.
"He is beautiful," the Queen smiled.
"Despite the odds," Anna added cheekily, looking at Kristoff.
"Hey!"
In the back of her mind Elsa heard the voice whisper, whisper about having a lapse, about hurting the baby, but her hands remained warmed by the small body, her heart full, and she realised Anna was right again. She did love him.
