"You're coming back with me," Elsa hisses, sending specks of frost onto Anna's fringe, "right this instant!"
"Hmm? I like where this is going!" Anna slurs, before slumping into the crook of her arm.
"Stop fooling around!" she scowls. Elsa looks over her shoulder, before pressing an icy-cold hand onto Anna's cheek. The cold fails to stir her sister, and she recoils in horror when a tinge of frost skirts its way across her skin. Anna scratches away the frost on her cheek, and gazes at it with widened eyes. "Ice eh?" she slurs, rubbing the ice between her fingertips and watching it dissolve, "You're perfect!"
She tries to stand, but fails and lurches into Elsa's arms.
"Christ, would you take a look at yourself?"
"Stern and bossy much? I'm in luck today!"
With her eyes darting between the other patrons and her sister's half-opened eyes, Elsa yanks on her gloves before draping her sister's arm over her shoulder. Some of the patrons have begun rubbing their shoulders from the chill air, and she notices more than one pair of eyes staring in her direction. Despite the ice pressed up against her cheek from earlier, Anna's body remains warm against her own, and uncooperative.
"You and I are going to have a long talk about this when we get home!" Elsa scowls.
"I'd like that very much. It's been forever since-"
"I'm serious!" Elsa scowls against her hair.
"Ooh, that tickles!" Anna coos, clumsily rubbing away at the frost building up in her ears, "tonight keeps getting better and better eh? Why don't you make it purr-fect for me wouldcha, honey?"
In her frustration, Elsa forgets how strong of a grip her sister possesses, and Anna yanks her shoulders to face herself. She leans in, but her alcohol-laced breath forces Elsa to turn away, and Anna jams her lips up against her chin.
A squeal punctuates the chorus of singing peasants as Anna slips from her sister's gloves. Elsa gasps as she hauls her sister back up into her arms; the layer of frost lining her gloves has melted away into a glittering sheen of moisture, and she feels a blush spreading across her now-warm face.
"Y-you k-kissed me," Elsa sputters, rubbing the spot on her chin, "no one's ever-"
Anna points at her unmade up lips and giggles, "Of course I did, love. There's more where that came from! But how about one from you instead?"
Elsa's furrowed brows and the grimace on her lips melt away in one long sigh, "Alright now, stop fooling around. Let's get you out of here."
The bartender winks at her as she half-drags and half-carries her sister out from amongst the chortling townsfolk, and Elsa forces a weak smile at him, just to keep the guise up. In the center of the bar shelf, next to her own coronation portrait, she catches a glimpse of the clock striking midnight.
"Wait!" Anna slurs, right before the Tavern door shuts behind her, "I forgot to-"
"We'll come to that later," Elsa scowls, jamming her up against the windowsill, "for now, would you care to explain to me exactly why you're in the middle of-"
"Oh gosh, save it!" Anna slurs, pushing Elsa's chin away and rummaging through her hair, "God, you're just like my sister!"
"I'm just like your – wait, what?"
"But that's exactly why I'm so generous tonight," she giggles, reaching into her folds of her dress and producing a bag of coins, "and you're so willing to pretend-"
"What? I don't get it," Elsa says, and a bead of sweat runs down her forehead, "wait, that doesn't even matter. How are we supposed to get you home at this hour?"
"Who says I'm going home?" she slurs, and points at the back alley.
Elsa leaves her sister propped up against the window and stomps towards the sound of sloshing in the shadows. A pair of dark eyes lift from the watering trough to meet hers; she pulls away the blue cloth draped over the horse's saddle, revealing the crocus motif of the Arendelle Palace.
"A Palace horse!" Elsa shrieks at Anna, before looking over her shoulder and dropping her voice to a whisper, "You rode here on a Palace horse?"
Anna lurches forward and presses a finger on Elsa's lips, "Of course I did! You didn't expect me to ride here on a Palace cow did you?"
"Anna! Of all the pranks you've gotten up to; this one by far takes the cake!"
"Who's Anna?" she slurs, "I don't know any Anna! Do you know an Anna?"
Elsa leads the Palace horse over to her sister, and brushes away the matted red hair covering her reddened cheeks.
"As a matter of fact, I do. And she's my sister."
"Then you're a good sister. Don't you ever forget that!"
Thankfully, Palace horses were bred for discipline; it takes an eternity of huffing and shoving, red faces and frosty hands, but Elsa eventually pulls Anna up on the Horse after a dozen attempts. The flustered dragging has left Anna sitting facing her sister. Despite her reservations, she decides it's better to leave her like this, rather than risk her falling off. With a tug of the reins, the horse thunders off across the town square and down the hill.
"You're outrageous, you know that? And I thought Hans was the worst you could've came up with!"
Anna mutters something into her ear, but it's impossible to hear her over the noise of thudding hooves.
"I just wish Mother and Father were around to say something about this!"
A pair of warm hands clutch at Elsa's dress. She knows it isn't for balance; despite the horse's heaving and the chill of the twilight breeze fluttering through their hair – Elsa feels Anna's lips shuddering against her shoulder.
"My parents are dead!" Anna cries out, and she presses her face into Elsa's chest, "And my sister… Do you have any idea what it's like to be alone all the time and chasing after someone who melts away into the shadows?"
A chill slices through Elsa's heart at her sister's words, and snowflakes peel from her hair fanning out in the breeze.
"Y-you, you did this because of her?"
For a reply, all she hears is the whimper of muffled sniveling, but the firm grip of Anna's arms clinging around her waist provides an answer. Elsa looks over her shoulder at the moonlit trail of ice glimmering beneath the horse's hooves, and tries not to remember the last time she held Anna like this.
This is all your fault, Elsa thinks, you caused this to happen.
Elsa shakes her head and tries to swallow the lump forming in her throat.
What were you doing the past few nights when she snuck out of the Palace? Meetings? Drafting letters? Mulling over taxation formulae? You were so busy being a Queen you forgot how to be a Sister!
With her heels digging into the horse's flank, she picks up the pace as Palace steeples loom into view. A tear escapes Elsa's eyelids; she tries to tell herself it's the wind brushing against her eyes. But with snow billowing around her, they freeze solid before she can decide what they really are.
She's glad the servants have long retired to their quarters for the night; it would be difficult explaining the sight of the Queen and Princess dressed in Peasant clothes, stumbling through the halls with cheap Ale on their breaths. The stairs to Anna's room present an insurmountable challenge for Elsa, and after much hauling and pulling, she resorts to conjuring an ice sled and dragging Anna up a snow slope. These would be easier overlooked by the staff in the morning.
With her lungs heaving from the exertion, Elsa's knees buckle right before she reaches Anna's bed, and she drops her snoring sister onto the sheets.
"I hope you're pretty content with –" she starts, but the sight of Anna's disheveled hair splayed across her freckles causes her fists to unclench, and the temperature in the room rises by a bit. With a sigh, she unlaces Anna's riding boots and places them on the shoe rack – the only two articles of footwear neatly lined up amidst a clutter of heels and slippers.
"Why does she even have a shoe rack if she doesn't bother putting her shoes on it?" Elsa mutters to herself. She contemplates stacking her sister's shoes onto the rack, but she looks over at the sight of the explosion Anna calls her room, and realizes it would take three servants days to clean up this mess. Knowing Anna, the room would be unraveled faster than anyone could tidy it anyway.
With moonlight filtering through the half-drawn curtains bathing the room's mess in a pale glow, Elsa steps before the mirror and cringes at the wrinkles in her dress left by Anna's fingers when she clutched at them on the ride home. Her breath catches in her throat as she runs her fingers over the creases, and she imagines they're still warm from her touch.
She struggles to remember the last time she stepped into her sister's room, and shudders when she realizes that this is her first time. It had always been Anna knocking on her door, Anna crawling into her bed when they were little, Anna leaving paper bags of Chocolate Éclairs and Danish pastries outside her room while she studied for tests.
Since when did you listen? Since when did you care?
Noticing the perceptible drop in the room's temperature, Elsa rushes to Anna's side and pulls the blankets over her sister as she trembles in her sleep. She decides to leave before the chill gets to her, but just as she passes by the door and gazes upon her sister one last time, a shadow in the corner of the room catches her attention. Her fingers feel around in the dark until they bunch up around thick fabric. With a tug of her wrist, a large plume of velvet falls from the wall and pools around her feet. With the glow from the window facing away from this section of the wall, she lights a lamp and runs the flickering flame along the bottom edge, noticing paints and palettes lined up nearly against an easel.
"I never knew you were into painting," she mutters. But how much do you even know about your sister anyway?
She lifts the lantern to her shoulders and recoils in shock when she comes face to face with…herself.
A larger than life portrait of the Queen graces the wall; Elsa's lips part as she passes the light across immense oil painting. There isn't a hint of royalty to be found anywhere on the canvas, Anna had painted her in one of her casual summer dresses, and her hair had been left undone, cascading over her shoulders in a stunning waterfall of gold. Her Crown is noticeably absent, and so are the usual trinkets adorning her body, save for a necklace Anna made for her sixteenth birthday. Every detail had been painstakingly touched in by Anna's hands: the crease of her lips as she smiles at something afar, the tilt of her posture as she leans on a fountain, and the curves of her figure replicated with breathtaking accuracy.
She takes a step back and sucks in a gasp as the lamp's light falls upon the painting in its entirety. Her feet shuffle back another step before she stubs her heel onto a chair – which had been placed facing the canvas.
Is this what Anna meant when she said she started talking to the pictures on the wall?
Elsa stares at the wall with widened eyes, taking in the painting, in all its glory – and the implications racing through her head. There're pictures of her in the throne room, in people's houses and merchant's offices all around the Kingdom – yes. But this one's different; this was painted with glowing adoration etched into its every brushstroke.
Without warning, the room plunges back into a moonlit darkness, and Elsa gasps when she sees the frozen-over lamp in her hands. She chucks the lamp onto the dresser and flees the room, hoping she makes it out before the sound of her sobbing wakes Anna up.
