"Are you okay?" asked Anna after a while.
Elsa stopped shivering and looked up to her, her eyes still red from crying, her face covered with tears.
"Anna, I just told you I almost killed someone."
Anna realized how wrong she turned that sentence. She immediatly kneeled to be at Elsa's level. She wanted to put a soft hand on Elsa's shoulder, but she needed her own space for now.
"No, I meant… Are you injured? I noticed that you're bleeding… There's blood on your arm."
Elsa continued to shiver and even retracted herself even more. She was now looking like a ball of nerves, slightly rocking back and forth, her legs crossed against her torso, her arms clenched. Anna knew too well that body language.
"Elsa… It's fine. Everything's solved. They're gone. And…"
Anna pointed at her own body, her hands, her head. "And I'm fine too."
It took a long while until Elsa accepted to look up again. Her arms opened a bit, and she relaxed her legs.
She was still shaking when she finally found the courage to show what she's been hiding until now, both to her own gaze and to her sister's. Her left hand, and left forearm, was covered in bright red blood.
"It's…" murmured Elsa.
She gulped, and then she stared at Anna.
"It's not mine."
Several days had passed since the event. An event only a few even dared to talk about. No need to be a genius to know that the Queen was in a anxious state as it had been snowing every day since then. Which, at the end of Fall, was not that surprising, but no weather forecast had predicted that. It was not a heavy snow storm, though, and Arendelle people were quite happy to not face an eternal winter again. It was just a constant light snow, as if it was a constant idea, a constant thought one keeps having in their mind. A constant reminder.
Anna looked up at the sky for the third time in the day with the same expression. Kristoff noticed it.
"Have you tried talking to her today?"
Anna closed her eyes and sighed. "Her door is closed. I'm well aware of what it means. Not that I give up, it's just… I know that she wants time for herself, and I respect that."
Kristoff played nervously with Sven's saddle. "I see."
There was a silence, only broke by the sound of their steps into the fresh snow, squeaking in pace.
"It's been days since we came back to Arendelle though." said Kristoff.
"And I've told her that I'm absolutely fine, that neutralizing them made me heal magically, that everything genuinely is alright and so on, but…"
"She won't listen to you."
"She does, actually" corrected Anna. "It's not that she doesn't trust me. It's just that she doesn't trust herself anymore. That's why I'm giving her some space. She wants some time to think."
Kristoff stopped walking to turn to her. They had reached the group of ice harvesters anyway.
"So, she passed the step of panic and worry for you?"
"Yes", Anna nodded. "But now… If you want to see it in terms of 'steps', she's at the step of guilt."
Kristoff froze after waving at his colleagues at what she said. "Guilt?"
Anna turned to him, the tears in her eyes clearly visible despite the snow falling between the two.
"Kristoff… She…"
Anna closed her eyes.
"The past years, she learned from her magic, to the point of totally mastering it, and she changed a lot, but now… Gods, Kristoff, she harmed someone until blood. She thinks she's a monster. Again."
"Hey."
Anna jumped on her seat. She hadn't heard that voice this close in days. Last time she heard it, it was muffled behind a wood door. She turned her head and, to her biggest surprise, Elsa was standing near the entrance and walking to her.
Anna blinked. She turned her head to the window again, seeing it was still snowing, then to Elsa again. She was confused.
"Elsa? But… The snow…"
Elsa chuckled.
"It's actual snow."
Anna rised an eyebrow, and looked through the window again. 'Actual snow'? Then it hit her. It was indeed snowing in a natural way. The whole sky was light grey, and one could see that it did not originate from a cloud or something above the castle itself. She couldn't believe that she actually had been staring at 'another' snow.
"Oh" said Anna.
She then blushed. "Sorry, I… I can't tell the difference. I mean… I can now, but I couldn't… I'm not really good at… Observ–"
"It's alright" smiled Elsa, and she sit next to her.
Anna startled a bit. She did not expect that. In all sincerity, she was very happy to have Elsa next to her again, smiling again, present again, warm again right now. But she did not wake up that morning with the idea in mind that she was going to see Elsa that day. So she was a bit disoriented. In consequence, she just stared at her sister, and there was an awkward silence. Elsa got worried.
"Is something wrong?"
Anna blinked and shook her head. "NO! uhm, no. No. No there's nothing wr- everything's perfect."
She wanted to phrase it in a positive way. Elsa smiled and relaxed on the couch. Anna really had no words. How come she spent days wishing to talk to Elsa again and to have this exact moment, and now that it happened, she was sitting here still like an idiot? Because it was all so sudden, she thought.
"Sorry, Elsa… I'm… I have to ask you. I…"
Oh how she didn't want to say what she was about to say. But she did anyway.
"What makes you suddenly this happy today? Why did you get down today?" asked Anna.
"Idon'tmeanthatinabadwayi'mjustsoconcernedIjustwannaknow" she added immediatly with big movements of the hands before Elsa even had the slightest reaction.
However Elsa just smiled even wider. She was almost beaming.
"I heard the children."
There was a silence. Anna stared at her in complete confusion.
"Children? Whose- where- wait what?"
Elsa chuckled again, and in that moment all worry and surprise and sadness and everything else lifted her soul. Elsa was genuinely happy again, and that felt so warm and amazing that she couldn't help to smile in return, even without knowing the heck was Elsa talking about.
"This morning I opened my bedroom window for the first time in a while to have some fresh air, and I heard the children playing outside."
Anna remembered that indeed, the week end had just started. So for once, the children weren't attending school and were currently playing in the courtyard.
"I heard them playing with snow, Anna. It just acted like a… Like something unlocked in me. I was so blind this whole time. Snow is good. Snow even is funny. It's…" She stared at her sister. "I know it sounds stupid when I say it out loud."
"No, no! It's not stupid at all, Elsa, not at all!" hurried to say Anna, who probably had been staring at her in a weird way during her explanation.
The youngest sister smiled. "It's even adorable. It's nice to see that you found the way by yourself. I'm so happy… I'm actually even proud of you."
They exchanged a tender smile. Elsa put a hand on her chest.
"It lights my heart to know that they are having fun. It makes me confident about how amazing snow can be."
Anna was now crying softly. Elsa stood up and walked to the window. She could see the courtyard underneath. A dozen of children were having a snowball fight, laughing out loud and running around Olaf.
"And what's even better… Is that it's my snow that they're playing with."
Author's Note: this is a prompt I received on Tumblr and I was quite sad writing it but I'm happy I was able to put a happy twist at the end while it being natural! :D Thank you so much for reading and for following me for those who do.