"Queen?" Mulan uttered the word as though it were foreign to her.

"Yes," Elsa acknowledged with a matter-of-factly tone, shrinking modestly as though the title seemed to befit her poorly. "Does that seem… odd to you?"

"I mean no disrespect, of course!" the other girl assured, her palms open and placating. "It's just not something that I'm used to hearing from my country."

Elsa quirked an elegant brow, "You do not have female royalty from China?"

"We have princesses, daughters of the emperor," Mulan cast her gaze upwards in thought as she tried to recall the teachings imparted to her (no 'notes' in her sleeve to help her this time), her lips pursed in a gesture Elsa thought endearing. "But a woman as a ruler? One that holds power?" she shook her head, not quite holding back a rueful smile, "My people could barely acknowledge a woman as a soldier."

Elsa would have liked to respect the customs of Mulan's country, though she found it difficult to think of anyone not giving Mulan the due gratitude she deserved, woman or no. "No offense to your people, but I see no reason for them to discard the fact that you are a hero," she emphasized the word strongly, drawing surprise and an embarrassed smile from the soldier. "I think it matters little what your gender is so long as you fulfill your role dutifully."

Though Elsa said that, Mulan was quick to notice the queen's downcast gaze, the blonde woman in rueful thought. "Your Highness?" she tried gently, trying to meet Elsa's gaze.

"Ah," Elsa was quick to recover, though the tired, pained look hadn't quite receded. "My apologies. All this talk of fulfilling duties, but I'm not quite the right person to be preaching that sort of thing," She'd wanted to avoid Mulan's eyes, though the troubled look in the soldier's invited a silent willingness to listen and understand. Force of habit urged her to keep it to herself, but Elsa'd already learned her lesson, and Mulan seemed nothing but a sympathetic ear, so she continued with a touch of self-consciousness to her tone: "I have very nearly shirked that responsibility out of a selfish whim. I almost brought my own kingdom to ruin. Perhaps I'm a poor example of a ruler in that regard. An incompetent queen is nothing compared to a triumphant heroine, after all." The queen winced, Mulan's awe and impression of a woman in power no doubt dashed by Elsa's example. Maybe she'd said too much, her self-loathing and bitterness bubbling at the surface now and shamefully exposing more of Elsa than she'd been willing to show to a woman that had proven her dedication to her duty that the queen could never rival.

"You're not alone."

Mulan blurted out without thinking, Elsa showing as much surprise as the soldier was at the abrupt declaration. It was more a desperate attempt to shake the queen of her sad reverie than anything; Mulan decided that the look of doubt that pierced through the faded cracks of Elsa's pure alabaster face was something the warrior in her was determined to defeat. It was, after all, the same look that showed in her own reflection, once upon a time. However, without quite thinking about what to say before simply ejecting the first few words out of her head (and with Elsa staring at her wide-eyed and expectant), Mulan had little choice but to roll with the punches, as it were. Not quite like battling Shan Yu with nothing but a paper fan and her wits to save her, but just as urgent, she thought.

"What I mean is…" Mulan tried to clarify, gathering her thoughts, "you aren't the only one that chose to run away from their duty selfishly. I decided to be a soldier in my father's place, without his permission, I might add. I knew that I didn't want to just dedicate myself to becoming a bride, but more than that…" Her lips thinned, the image of her father struggling with his crippled leg coming to mind. "I didn't want my father to die."

Elsa stared with rapt attention, stopping herself short of comparing herself again to the other woman for what was no doubt a noble deed even in selfish intent as opposed to her simple flight of fancy.

"It wasn't easy, passing as a man, much less trying to be a soldier," Mulan briefly recounted the grueling first days of her training, the awkward attempts to emulate her opposite gender, the pain-staking regiments that still left phantom aches around her limbs, the battle at the Tung Shao Pass, and the incident at the Imperial Palace. Her role might have been pivotal, but she regaled it as little more than what she deemed the right thing to do. "It wasn't my intention to be considered a hero; I didn't plan on anything of the sort at all. I just did what I thought was right."

"It's no less worthy of praise," Elsa interjected weakly, though amazed that Mulan would only so modestly and barely acknowledge the staggering feats the heroine had accomplished. "You still followed your rightful duty to the end, didn't you?"

"Yes and no," the soldier answered, "It wasn't so much my duty as a soldier or even as a woman anymore," Mulan's lips curled into a comforting, assured smile that caught Elsa off-guard. "It was a duty to myself, something that I knew in my heart to be the right thing to do."

"In your heart?" Elsa echoed, testing the words in her head and wondering if it could apply to her at all, though not at all likely, in her mind. "How were you so sure of that path? Of being able to follow that duty to the end?"

"I wasn't. Not at first," her memories brought her back to the time of her botched match-making, to the moment she sat listlessly at the bench whilst her father comforted her, to the day she'd almost been thrown out of boot camp for her inability as a soldier, the doubts and the uncertainties she'd struggled with in those moments, and then the defining moment of reaching the top of the pillar, an arrow triumphantly held in her hand. She made a fist as if to remember the moment, the elating sensation of the arrow shaft tight in her grasp, her voice now determined and welling with a bit of pride. "I had to prove it to myself that I could do it —that I had the strength to follow my own path. And I think that if it is the duty to yourself that would have you be queen, then I believe you'll find that strength in you as well."

Elsa awed once more at Mulan's self-assurance, a woman that had also once filled with uncertainty herself that was now transformed to be more the person Elsa could ever hope to become: someone who had found and accepted the woman they wanted to be. More questions filled her mind, doubts surfacing in the back of her thoughts again as she struggled against her desperation for the answers she hoped to find. "How? How can I do the same?"

"I apologize if this is bold of me to say," Mulan started respectfully, "but you must first believe in yourself, your Highness." The path of the duty she swore to was not an easy one, filled with discouragement from herself and from the world that wanted harshly to remind her of her place as a woman, but she knew she could not take that necessary step if she'd allowed herself to give up the moment everyone else had given up on her.

"What if I can't…?"

In Mulan's mind, the answer came in the memory of a friend: Mushu. "It helps to have a friend to be there to help believe in you." She smiled fondly at the memory of her odd, but supportive, companion. "I'm sure that you have one already."

Anna.

"A friend… Yes, of course." Elsa felt the fool, suddenly, like a pre-teen being lectured by her tutor, the obvious answer having to be pointed out. Who was it that continued to believe in her still? Who held the hope that she would one day overcome herself? If not Elsa, then always the one that had saved Elsa from herself. It was a start, wasn't it? To allow herself to feel reassured and to deserve to be happy… If Anna thought her worthy, why couldn't she?

"And —again, I'm sorry if this is bold of me to say, your Highness, but," Mulan cleared her throat and earnestly offered her hand. "if you wouldn't object, I'd like the honor of being your friend as well. That's… kind of what I was trying to say, I think."

Something inside of Elsa fluttered, a well of hope springing unbidden in her that she couldn't quite control. It seemed almost a foreign thing to her, having another friend, as though part of her had become resigned to just the company of Anna, Olaf, and maybe Kristoff; Elsa saw little prospects in any friendship outside of her little circle. A wide smile unwittingly crept onto her lips, her heart light and giddy, a happiness she thought long lost and would never be found again. "B-Believe me," she gushed, "I'd think it a greater thing indeed to be friends with the esteemed savior of China."

"Just 'Mulan' is fine, your Highness," she insisted, wearing a bashful grin, her hand still outstretched. A hero and a soldier she might have been officially, but she was nothing more than Mulan. That was enough for her.

For a moment, Elsa thought it might have been too good to be true, but she held out her own hand and slowly clasped it over Mulan's, the warmth and the texture of calloused skin giving her pause to acknowledge that, yes, she'd found a friend. Elsa smiled the wider. Lofty titles of queen and soldier seemed a trivial thing now. "Only if you would do me the honor of calling me 'Elsa', Mulan."

Mulan squeezed the hand in hers lightly (a little surprised to find it immaculately smooth and soft to the touch) and nodded, finding that her smile was mirroring Elsa's just then at the sound of her name being uttered from the other woman's lips.

"The honor is mine, Elsa."

I like this pairing because it plays with the dynamic of two characters who both have faced serious doubts over their capacity to fulfill their expected duties. Both characters acted on a selfish whim of a sort, Elsa running away from her role as queen, Mulan running away to take her father's place as a soldier, but only the latter succeeded in finding the path that fit her. Elsa would look up to Mulan a great deal, seeing in her the strength to overcome her fears and doubts against not just the adversity of the enemy of her country, but against the trappings of her expected duty as a woman of China in her time. Whereas Mulan would be astonished to discover that a woman would be given power and authority over a kingdom, not beholden to a man in the least, and she would want Elsa to have the strength and conviction to fulfill that duty as a ruler and as a woman.

Also, recall that Mulan likely associates snow with death, given what happened at Tung Shao pass, and Elsa might still have those same lingering feelings herself. Perhaps they can resdiscover the beauty of snow together?