As her majesty wishes, they say. As her majesty commands, they say. Nothing ever seemed to make sense anymore to the redhead. Months had passed, things had changed. What had once been her small kingdom of rising prosper became a land of deceit and fallout.
The regency that had been put in place by her father had led an insurgence against her, unbeknowenst to everyone except for her, and obviously them. There she stood at the edge of her balcony, at the edges of a foreign land in places she'd never know the name of. She stared out, wondering what the Queen of Arendelle was thinking.
The events played out in her head like an odd memory of odd color; perhaps lacking in color, in fact. As she looked out, she could still hear what they had said. "She was born to rule." What they said next had hurt her beyond repair. "You were the spare."
But somehow; somewhere, there was a submissiveness within her to yield to what was best. And, somehow, she knew that yielding the power of rule to her elder sister was just that. If it had come down to a real conflict, then she no doubt would have emerged undisputedly victorious. Her battle prowess with her nameless blade was known to be particularly harrowing.
Kingdoms from all around revered her as a beast among men. It had given her pride; assurance. But they had certainly not done her in proper. She had done some snooping around in their stuffy meetings to discover that, in fact, it was a ploy. There were plots and various things to do away with her via dragon fire, assassination, magic—any manner of things. But those closest to her gave her the low-down. Kai and Gerda had never done her wrong. They may not have told her all that they knew about Elsa's past, but that she had done well enough to unearth on her own.
In the months they had had together, Elsa had told her of lost love and a journey of self-reigning; a search for freedom. She couldn't help but feel it was a freedom she had put a stopper on in some way, but the blonde had always assured her that it was naught in any such way.
"You're my life, Anna," she had said. "You're the ray of Sun in Arendelle," she had said, as if the sun itself was merely some grossly incandescent wannabe. It made her brow scrunch in annoyance, the flattery it did. But some other part of her warmed at it. Such is the way of having a loving sister—even so, a much unknown one. No amount of explanation can make up for a lack of experience in any case. Anna knew that well enough.
Her days as Queen spent consulting the same paintings on the wall as she had done as a girl were hollow and moot. Well enough she had known that talking to problems was no way to deal with them. But that would imply that Elsa was a problem, and that she wasn't sure was even close to what she'd call the truth. The truth, after all, was a bitter thing. Like the fact that Elsa had been banished in the first place.
"Agdar and Idun didn't believe I could control it; didn't believe I could rule." That was what she'd said. Apparently her own parents didn't faith have in their crowned princess, and that was something that the younger had always had. It did, nevertheless, wane quite a lot when faced with the shifting times. The sands did move and sway in ways that little made sense to her. It got so bad at times that issues of royal advisory and trade seemed better company, and that didn't bode well with her at all.
But nothing bade worse than seeing Elsa's face when she left. It had looked so pained.
"Don't go." she said. It came out almost distraught. But only Anna could know. If Elsa had known what the regency had against her, it could have meant fire and brimstone upon the kingdom. Except that would be especially ironic. It would be more accurate to say hail and storm eternal, for the revelation would surely incite untold rage from the new Queen—the lost Queen.
"It all began at the outskirts of a far-off land," she said, putting down her coffee. Anna had been so interested to hear what exactly there was to know about where she'd been all that time. The absence that had been kickstarted by her foolish attempted marriage; vying for her sister's approval. The very event that had brought about the virulent lashing of ice and magic from an untold time. With her parents gone, it fell to the elder to make known to the younger that her memories of such things were done away with.
"Then why did they banish you?" Anna asked. It didn't make sense to apparently favor one, especially if it meant purging the memories of one. But the then-king had been very firm in his preference of Anna. He saw a pure, unadulterated spirit in her that was more Arendellian; more warrior-like. He admired that more than a sort of eerie magic that he couldn't lay claim to. It had frightened him, as much he would hate to admit it. It was the same for many in his immediate company.
The possibility of Elsa's magic undoing itself and releasing chaos presented itself as an ever-present threat to not just the royal family—Anna—but to however many others, as well, should it grow. Elsa was now the only one to remember what Pabbie had said that fateful day, that her magic would grow to become something she'd never imagined.
She had seen it develop in her time away from Arendelle; she had seen it flourish into untold power and beauty. But there was always the risk of it becoming too much, there was always the risk of her losing control. And she knew that Pabbie was right. No amount of letting it go or concealing the truth could hide the fact that it was dangerous.
She was too introverted, far too folded in on herself to even pretend that it couldn't harm her precious sister. The blonde had at one time wondered why she even still thought about her, but realized that the thought made no sense whatsoever.
Anna had always been her impetus, her fuel with which to go into the day without fear. But it seemed to be double-edged in more ways than one. Where Agdar had taught her Conceal, don't feel, she had come up with something else entirely. It wasn't so much a mantra as it was a statement of the facts that be.
Standing at her balcony, just outside her bedchambers, she had called into the night.
"Where there is strength, there is hope. Where there is hope, there is the possibility of failure." But that alone didn't fully voice what she thought; far from it. Anna was her strength and her hope. But, like with anything else, there was the possibility that it could be engulfed in a frozen inferno. She could see it playing out before her eyes, something which caused her to screw them shut in an instant.
She had gone to bed that night to the same familiar restless sleep, the sheets moving about and telling a tale to the servant who came in to make her bed. They had all observed her change in demeanor; how it seemed for her to drag on without any real cause. For, not even she knew what to expect.
Anna alone had been one to know what the royals remaining had against her, and it was enough for her to concede the ability to rule without so much as an argument. She could still hear their accusatory air, their oppressive presentation. It was nothing she could refute; nothing she could deny, and certainly nothing that anyone would accept.
But things had changed. Those royals had militarized Arendelle into a war state while the Queen sat by in fears that utilization of her powers would be too great a danger, regardless of whatever endeavor should call into question. Where once before there had been a bustling market with open gates and a friendly auburn-haired queen with a battle record to be proud of, there was famine and distraught people with a pale siren of a monarch with a corrupt panel of rulers.
Anna shook her head at the thought. Agdar had trusted them. He had given them the benefit of the doubt in all cases—hell, that's what good rulers did: trusting those who seemed to deserve it. Only.. Anna had never known them in the same way, and didn't rightfully believe that she ever could. Every day the sun would rise and set, giving ebb and flow to her many doubts of the shady figures that would pass in and out of proceedings as if they were nothing more than idle gossip.
It had sickened her to think that at no level did it stop for these people. For them, nothing was too juicy to be kept from the conniving ranks of the bass-ackwards bureaucrats. Her own department of investigation had never yielded shred nor hair of their existence, much to the dismay of her knowing, for sure, that they were there. They had always been there.
It harkened back to a tale Idun had told her and Elsa together—a tale of a general who expected to return home to the welcome he deserved, but was instead manipulated into a public spectacle to show how the tides of war made a man selfish. It seemed like a self-juxtaposition, because the underlying message was that those in the shadows will vie for all the power in the world, even when they must take it from those who don't actually have it. After all, men are only what other men make of themselves, except for the fortunate few who manage to never give a damn.
But even after all that, Elsa had been the studious one, Anna the more adventurous one. They grew up decisively different, though always thinking of the other. The memories of that day still haunted the elder—that day when she struck her little sister in the head with a bolt of ice unintentionally. It had devastated her, it had devastated everything about her. But at least her holdfast to the world was still alive and breathing. And she had lived to become Queen, had lived to see the world. But, as Elsa was fast discovering, neither of them had truly seen it for what it was.
Anna had been given an easy ticket by comparison, though she would never tell her that. These days, she wasn't sure if she'd ever get the chance to tell her again. They all melded together, so much unlike the days she'd spent away from her country adventuring and using her powers to discover things she never knew; even meeting a few others like her. But Anna had seen the military life first-hand. She could command, and could fight like no other man or woman alive.
Indeed, the one possession that she wouldn't dare part with, even with the leverage put upon her by the corrupt royals, was that nameless blade. As she stood outside looking up to the stars, she laid her hand upon it and stroked along it to make sure it was still there. It was without a doubt her primary source of pride, and perhaps in a way her rightful birthright. She had imagined that, had her parents cared enough, they probably would've given her such a boon.
But, alas, such a thing had never come to pass. And Elsa had had to live with ice powers all along. It made her feel selfish to think that she had experienced much the same anguish; what with having to rule in the first place.
"She just left," Anna said to Joan. "She either couldn't stand me that much, or she didn't want to rule." But, thinking about it, Elsa didn't really seem that unpersonable. She couldn't help but think that day after Elsa left of her own volition, What was with the ice? But that wasn't it at all. Their parents had banished her posthumously. Three years had passed since that time of her sending, but she couldn't bring herself to leave Anna. She couldn't dare even imagine what in the world would happen should she ever. But that day, seeing Anna so caught in the throes of young love and totally unaware of the dangers of strangers, it made her snap.
Sadness still rang true in her eyes, however. Anna could tell that sky blue surrounded by storm clouds in any weather or whereabouts. For as little as Elsa had seen her, or at least from what she knew, and as little as Anna had seen her, she still knew that Elsa's eyes were never meant to be so devoid of color as they had been on that day; like the light had faded. Was it to mean, perhaps, that Anna would leave her? Was that what Elsa thought?
Looking back at that night, she really couldn't tell. Her final words to the blonde before their prolonged parting had done little to dissuade from such a conclusion. "What are you so afraid of!?" She really, truly, had wanted to know. It was like all the years behind her had been pent-up into a flour mold and were being baked to the absolute maximum point of tolerance, exploding into a massive mess. It didn't make sense to her. But for the next years, it almost did when Elsa replied with, "I said ENOUGH!"
Seeing her hardened expression, that queenly visage lose all strength and collapse in upon itself was not something the soon-to-be queen had expected in the least. And then she vanished. Much as Anna had chased her down, it led her to nothing more than dust and echoes, filtering in and out through that cold night in her memory.
None of that mattered anymore. Elsa stood once again at her balcony as she had done so many nights before. Little did she know that her younger sister was doing much the same outside of the miserable country—hoping to be reunited with her once again.
Elsa called out into the night, her breath lingering in the cold air, though it had never bothered her.
"Anna.. my hope.. come back to me." It was all she could think to say. It was all she could say. Such tribulation had whittled her to new lows. It tested her to the very limits, those which only seeing her hope once again could soothe.
Releasing her grip on her blade, Anna did much the same, looking to the crescent moon dominating the skyline. A single tear rolled down her cheek. She would see her sister again.