So I started this I think 2 years ago when Frozen actually came out, and wrote a hell of a lot. (Actually posted a little on .) But I hated it and started over. Here I am, trying to give us the strong, powerful, regal Elsa we all deserve. Give me a little feedback please? I have a few chapters written and edited, so if you guys like it I'll keep posting every week.
A loud knock on the study door interrupts Elsa in the course of reviewing the trade document in her hands. She feels a jolt in her chest at the sound, a familiar spike of fear that appears whenever she's been alone for too long and is presented with the immediate threat of social exchange. She hasn't quite gotten used to someone wanting to be in her presence.
Sighing, she looks up, placing the piece of parchment back on the desk.
"Come in," she says, resting her chin on her fingers.
The door bursts open and squeals on its hinges, but Elsa can only flinch before Anna is occupying her full attention.
"Elsa," sings Anna, too excited to stay in one spot so she twirls and bounces as she speaks. "The sun is up, it's a beautiful day, and the royal carriage hasn't been used for years."
Elsa freezes (not literally). The sun has clearly risen above the fjord through her window. Her candles were stubs at this stage, giving off a dim glow that was even weaker in the sunlight. She hadn't noticed. What time was it when she started working?
"Let's go into the town," Anna continued, shaking Elsa from her reverie, "do some exploring!"
The corners of Elsa's lips twitch. She endures roughly five of these interruptions a day—and that's only because Anna is holding herself back. For the whole two weeks that she has been back at the castle, Anna has hardly left her side. Something about "don't want you to be such a lonely grump anymore", but Elsa knows Anna missed her too.
She blows out her candles.
"Can it wait until I've finished here?" she asks, knowing already that even though she's asking the question, she won't move until she's finished for the day. "These trade agreements won't sign themselves, and you said yourself you wanted, how did you put it, 'all of these—'"
"'—greasy, big-nosed, noble arses out of our home', yes I know." Anna rolls her eyes and plops herself down on the chair in front of the desk, resting her head on her hand. She blows her fringe out of her face. "I just don't know why they have to stay here for so long."
Elsa watches her sister fiddle with an inkpot for a moment, a pout creasing her face. "You know why, Anna. We lost ninety percent of our livestock and crops thanks to my—my foolish mistake. We need to feed the kingdom and care for those who fell ill as a result. We're lucky to be able to afford to set up any trade agreements at all, what with my new reputation and the rumours that are surely flying about at present."
Anna sits up straight. "Elsa, no one believes you did it on purpose. You wouldn't hurt a fly. You even saved the kingdom!"
"I only saved it from myself. Far from heroic."
"Elsa—"
Anna's hand reaches across for Elsa's, but Elsa avoids the contact, shuffling her documents instead. Anna's fingers curl in and she
withdraws her hand slowly.
"Please, Anna. Just one more trade agreement and then I'm all yours." She doesn't wait for an answer before turning her attention back to the document she has picked up. The door doesn't make much noise this time as Anna exits the study.
A familiar, sickeningly heavy feeling churns Elsa's stomach. Intimate as she is with guilt, it never gets easier, and her sister seems to trigger a stronger brand of it to rise within her.
Elsa shakes her head. The sooner she finishes her work, the sooner she can go to apologise to Anna. The advantage to finishing her work today was that it was the last thing to settle before a final reading for the other five heads of state and herself and then they would be gone. And she would be able to catch a break from the headaches that have been plaguing her all week.
In return for supplying them with food and medicines, Arendelle will supply her five closest allies with ice. Elsa's ice has proven difficult to thaw, and this invaluable quality helps the warmer kingdoms, like Corona, preserve their food during the hot summer and mild winter. On top of that, she is signing an alliance with three of the five. Arendelle's mountain-and-snow landscape has resulted in excellent training for the military, and so her kingdom is a great asset to those bigger countries.
Elsa is lucky her kingdom has anything to offer, not wanting to spend her entire time as Queen ruling over a starved and impoverished land, watching her people suffer and die before her very eyes. How much more disappointed would her parents be in her if she couldn't handle this either?
When everything looks to be in order, Elsa signs the document. She sighs and sits back in her chair, closing her eyes and letting the evening sun warm the surface of her skin through the window. Just a few seconds, she tells herself, all she needs are a few seconds to relax. Her head is pounding too much now. She just hasn't had a minute yet—
"Your Majesty?"
A voice calls to her as someone raps their knuckles sharply on the door.
Elsa's eyes open slowly and she frowns at the door for a moment before moving to open it herself. Kai stands there with a deep frown, the type of frown he always has when Anna has caused some sort of mishap. Elsa pulls her mouth into a polite smile.
"I'll find her, Kai," she says. "It's not too serious, I hope?"
"Only a few loose pigs in the courtyard, Ma'am, nothing hugely out of control. Although Helga might have a bad hip now from tripping over one."
Elsa nods. "Give her my sympathies and have the court physician see that it's nothing serious. They have been rounded up again I take it?"
He bows.
She steps forward and closes the door of the study behind her before pausing. "How is the process of hiring new staff progressing?"
"The number castle guards has increased to almost twice of that which it was before. We have eight newly hired housemaids, and ten more working in the kitchens. And then another seven members of other staff, Ma'am."
"Good. Thank you, Kai. I will expect an update soon."
He bows again, this time lower, and takes his leave. Elsa makes her way to Anna's chambers. She knows exactly where the young princess will be, and knows that she will quite possibly be sulking. She doesn't bother knocking on the door, and when she opens it to see the room empty but the far windows thrown open her suspicions are confirmed. She walks out onto the balcony and looks up behind her to see Anna sitting slumped on the roof. How Anna has the physical prowess to haul herself up there Elsa will never know.
With a flick of her wrist she fashions a small staircase for herself. She knows Anna has felt the air cool around her, but she hasn't turned.
"I didn't think you knew about this place" Anna asks as Elsa reaches the top of the stairs, neatly smoothing her skirts underneath herself as she sits beside her sister.
"I used to follow you sometimes," Elsa replies. "I would hear you get angry with our parents, or Kai, or whoever else was chastising you on that particular day. It concerned me, that you were upset because I knew it was probably my fault, directly or indirectly. So on those days that I felt particularly weak or selfish, or I simply missed you too much to keep myself away, I would creep silently down the hall to watch you through that window." She points at the window facing them on the east side of the castle. "I would only watch you for a few moments, but it felt… it almost felt as if I were beside you, comforting you. As if I were actually your big sister, doing what a big sister is supposed to do."
Anna is silent. Elsa is sure she feels it too, this tiny connecting point spanning the foot between them, like a thin line of electricity, making the moment seem like glass, as if a breath too heavy would shatter it, extinguishing the spark.
The feeling prickles across her skin. She isn't sure if she likes it or not—everything feels just a little too big, just a little too close.
"I used to imagine you were there with me, making jokes about them to make me feel better. You'd always have the right thing to say to me to make me smile."
Anna looks at her now, and Elsa can see how fragile her expression is, how vulnerable she is, how young she is. So much pain in her eyes.
Too much for someone this young. Elsa, not for the first time, wishes her powers are able to do something good, like take Anna's pain away.
She feels her whole chest aching, her ribcage constricting a little, pushing all the air up to her throat. She averts her gaze, choosing instead to study the long fall down to the castle courtyard. And just like that, their glass moment smashes under the weight of her guilt.
Anna's presence beside her is like a dagger in her side. She's never been the best at managing the guilt, heavier now than ever because of how much closer she is to Anna. When she was isolated in her room she could at least pretend there was no one else, just her and the four walls of her bedroom. She could distance herself from the constant reminder of what she'd done, lose herself in a state of lifelessness and despair with no energy to face her guilt.
She can feel pinpricks of ice spreading millimetres away from where she's sitting. The crackling noise the ice is making fills her head until it's all she can hear. She clenches every muscle in her body, trying to keep the ice inside.
"So what happened with the pigs?" she asks, changing the subject.
"The pigs?" Anna laughs. "I was looking for Kristoff in the stable—he spends an unhealthy amount of time down there I'm actually kind of worried—but he wasn't there. So of course I was bored and frustrated and tripped over my feet on the way out, unlocking the pig pen next door and setting them loose. Then I came here."
"It caused quite a bit of uproar. Kai came to get me."
Anna shrugs. "Yeah well, it's not like I don't always cause trouble."
Elsa frowns at her. "Anna. That's not true. You're a delight."
Anna looks over at her, grinning. "Thanks Elsa."
"Did you finish your work?" she asks quietly, her eyes thoughtful on the fjord.
"Yes, thank you," she answers, just as quietly. "There will be a meeting tomorrow in the early morning, and then they will catch the tide at noon." She hesitates a moment before adding "Leaving my afternoon free." She looks over at Anna hesitantly.
Anna's watching her with careful eyes and a smile, her mood visibly lifting. "You know, the carriage hasn't been used in about a bajillion years."
"Mmm," Elsa agrees with the hint of a smile. "It would be a shame to let it rot in the stable."
Anna leaps up, balancing herself on the roof tiles. She lets out a bark of laughter when she sees the icy staircase leading down to her balcony. Elsa follows her down and makes to vanish the ice when Anna's hand stops her. She can't help it—she tenses.
Anna doesn't hold tightly enough for it to be a soft, loving gesture, but she doesn't let go either.
"Leave it," says Anna. "I like it."
Elsa nods slowly, her skin itching where Anna is touching her. She can feel the ice prickling under her skin, so close to Anna's. She lets go and Elsa snatches her arm back to hold it against her chest, letting out a breath she didn't know she was holding.
Anna has already turned and is speeding through her bedroom and out into the hall, calling for a servant to ready the carriage. Elsa follows at a much slower pace. She can't let Anna touch her so easily. She has to be more careful, she can't be taken by surprise.
But hasn't she found the key to controlling herself?
No, it's too dangerous, Anna could get hurt—
This is the kind of thinking that had gotten them into this mess in the first place! She's more careful now, they're both more careful—
But—
"Your Majesty?"
Elsa's head snaps up.
She's in the corridor outside Anna's room. And the whole length of it is coated in a thin sheet of ice. The paintings are all frosted over and
icicles hang from the bottoms of their frames. Stalactites cross points with each other above her head.
A small, weak sound escapes her. She looks in front of her to see a young woman, no older than herself, staring at her with wide eyes. She is dressed in a castle maid's outfit, but Elsa has never seen her before (not that she's seen many people over the years).
Great. Now she was frightening the new personnel.
"I'm sorry," says Elsa, voice wobbly. She closes her eyes and thinks of Anna, steering as clear as she can from the cloud of anxious thoughts from before. Spreading her fingers and bringing her hands together, Elsa clears the ice from the corridor. She dusts her hands together and the rest of the blue magic vanishes.
She starts to walk away from the maid, nodding at the little curtsey she receives as she leaves. Elsa takes the rest of the walk through the castle to calm down, to ease the rising tide of ice and snow that has built up. She can't imagine spending the rest of her life having to do this to be okay, to just be normal. It frightens her, that she will be stuck with shorter breath and horrible intrusive thoughts and an inability to be close to her loved ones. What if every time she has a stressful day as queen she has to lock herself up and just breathe for hours to get the temperature to warm up around her, to get the sharp icicles that crop up from her footsteps to recede? She won't ever function like a normal human being, how will she ever function as a sister? And a queen? Thousands of people depend on—
"Elsa!"
What is it with the interruptions today? She has too many thoughts in her head, she wants them all to leak out of her ears so she can spend all of her time concentrating on the red-haired princess running up to her now, plaits flapping in the wind.
"Elsa the carriage is ready!" Anna squeals, jumping up and down with her hands in fists under her chin and her shoulders drawn up to her ears. "We're gonna be able to take a ride around town. Eeep!"
"Okay," Elsa chuckles, drawing her hands together behind her back. "Let's go, moppet. Or we'll miss all the good food in the market for lunch."
A strange look passes over Anna's face for a moment, but it's gone so quickly Elsa can't tell if it was really there or not. She jumps into the carriage and Elsa climbs in after her, declining the hand held out to her by the footman. The door closes and suddenly she realises she's in a tiny confined space with her sister and that the danger of her hurting Anna is extremely high. She tries to concentrate on her sister's excited babbling about something to do with that mountain man and not turning the coach into a giant ice cube.