Chapter 2 - Snowflake

"What do you mean you don't know?" Kristoff asked, still sat with the young girl on his couch. "I mean…you have to have a name, right?"

The girl shook her head. "I guess, but…I can't remember mine."

"Kristoff, give her some space," Elsa stated, watching the scene unfold. "This girl clearly has amnesia or something."

"Since when are you my boss?" Kristoff asked, giving Elsa a stern look. "This is my inn, remember?"

"You used my stuff to help this girl," Elsa reminded him, pointing to herself. "You used my medicine, so she's my responsibility too."

Kristoff sighed. "Fine, fine, you're right. I'll go get her a hot drink. You stay here with her." He then got up and headed to the kitchen of the inn.

Elsa sat down next to the girl, feeling her forehead. Her skin felt like ice, colder than anything the storms would bring. Just where had this girl come from? "You really can't remember your name, can you?" she asked.

The girl shook her head. "No, I can't. But if you want to call me something…call me Snowflake."

"That's not exactly a common name," Elsa remarked.

"I don't think I'm from around here," Snowflake said. "In fact, I don't really know where I came from. The only thing I remember is this…this place. It was dark, and cold. And the next thing I remember is stumbling through the snow to get here."

"Looks like you've got some blanks to fill," Elsa said. "What's up with…all this?" she then asked, gesturing to the girl's blue skin and white-streaked hair.

"I'm…not sure of that either," Snowflake answered, brushing one of her white streaks. "All I know is that I'm getting colder…and I think it's gonna get worse."

Elsa put her hand on Snowflake's shoulder, giving her a reassuring smile. "Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that. Once we've got you a good night's rest, I'll take you to whatever doctor is in this town, have them take a look at you."

"You'd do that?" Snowflake asked. "But why?"

"Let's just say there's something in my gut telling me to," Elsa replied simply. "Something that tells me that there's a lot more to you than you're letting on."

Snowflake smiled a little. "You're really kind," she said, in a small, thankful voice.

"No, I'm actually a selfish bitch a lot of the time," Elsa stated, sighing. "But for whatever reason, I feel like you need my help." She yawned a bit, then called out. "Kristoff, is that drink ready for our guest?"

"Just about," Kristoff replied, before walking into the room with a hot mug of cocoa in his hand. Warm drinks, especially hot cocoa, were a rare commodity in the wastes. He then knelt down and handed Snowflake the drink.

Snowflake gently held the mug in her hands, her freezing arms shaking as tried to drink up the beverage.

Elsa held the girl's arm as she drank. "Easy, easy, don't spill it now."

Once she finished the beverage, Snowflake smiled, letting out a soft sigh of contentment. If Elsa didn't know better, she'd swear that was the first time the girl had felt warmth in a very long while. "Feel better?" Elsa inquired.

Snowflake nodded. "It's so warm…w-what was that stuff?"

"Hot cocoa," Kristoff told her. "The only true way to warm up the body in these parts...at least, according to my mama."

"I feel all tingly," the girl stated. "Is there any more?"

Kristoff shook his head. "Sorry, kiddo, but that stuff's hard to come by out here, and I only have a couple packets of it left."

"Oh…." Snowflake looked down. "Well, thank you anyway."

Elsa stretched her arms, tiredness creeping over her. "Well, I can't stay up any longer. Kristoff, can you show our friend a room?"

"She'd have to pay for it separately," Kristoff replied.

"Are you fucking serious?!" Elsa snapped. "I mean, look at her!"

Kristoff shrugged. "I gotta keep this place afloat somehow. Now, having said that, she could always share your room, and I can just look the other way."

"Wait, what?" Elsa's eyebrows raised. "I like her and all, but I need to have some privacy in this joint."

"Look, the only way this is gonna work is if you and her are bunkmates. And if you are, I'm willing to give you double the time you can stay here."

Elsa sighed and rolled her eyes. "Fine, whatever. She can stay with me."

"Good," Kristoff said with a reassuring smile. "Now, unless there are any more problems with the sleeping arrangements, I'll bid you goodnight."

Elsa shook her head, and Kristoff took his leave.

Elsa then walked down to her room, gesturing for Snowflake to follow her. "My room is this way."

Snowflake followed behind her, rubbing her arms. "Thank you, Miss."

"Don't call me that," Elsa stated, not liking titles of any sort. "My name is Elsa."

"Sorry," the girl said quickly, trying her best to cover up her mistake.

Elsa rolled her eyes. "It's fine…but I did warn you I can be a bitch sometimes." She then opened up the door, leading Snowflake into the dirty room she had to call home for the next few nights. "Here we go: home sweet home."

Snowflake walked into the room, taking a moment to look around. She swallowed. "It's…kinda crappy."

"Well, you aren't exactly looking at some pre-Freeze resort here, Princess," Elsa remarked. She then headed over to her backpack, pulling out a large sleeping bag for her new roommate. "Here, take it. You need it more than I do."

Snowflake took the sleeping bag in her hand, before looking at the bed next to Elsa and seeing that her companion wouldn't have anything covering her. "But…won't you get cold?"

Elsa shrugged. "I've been out there in below-zero temperatures for most of my life. This kind of cold doesn't bother me."

Snowflake dropped the sleeping bag. "No," she replied assertively. "You need to be warm more than I do. I'll just sleep on the floor."

"In your condition?" Elsa asked. "Sorry, but if we're doing this, you're getting some comfort. I mean, don't you want to recover from…whatever the hell is wrong with you?"

Snowflake nodded. She didn't want Elsa sacrificing her own well-being just so that she would be comfortable, but she also wanted to be able to overcome this horrible affliction. "I…I guess so."

"Then, in that case, you need rest, and lots of it," Elsa said before lying down on her own bunk. "There may be a million different medicines in the world, but the one common way to fight being sick is getting rest."

Snowflake sighed and nodded in agreement. She laid out the sleeping bag on the floor beside Elsa's bed, then crawled into it. "Thank you again, by the way."

"What for?"

"For letting me stay with you," Snowflake told her. "I was out in the snow for two days…nobody helped me except for you."

"Don't get used to it," Elsa said flatly. "Around these parts, it's survival of the fittest. Kill or be killed. I'm just trying to give you a head start."

"I think I can manage myself, really," Snowflake stated. "I mean, I managed to get here, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but neither of us knows where you were coming from," Elsa said.

Snowflake laid her head down, closing her eyes. "Goodnight, then…Elsa."

"Goodnight," Elsa replied. She laid there and stared at the ceiling for a moment, lost in thought. She knew next to nothing about this girl; why was she helping her? She still couldn't answer that in full. After mulling it over for another few seconds, she closed her eyes, allowing herself to be carried off in the arms of Morpheus.

xXx

The next morning, Elsa took Snowflake to the local clinic to hopefully get a better understanding of her rather unusual condition. The clinic was a little ways down the road from Kristoff's inn, and thankfully, the blizzard had cleared up.

Running the clinic was a rather elderly woman in her late fifties, who spoke with a very clipped English accent. She had a rather cold demeanour, and the precise tone of a surgeon. Her name was Dr. Eleanor Tremaine.

As Elsa watched the doctor examine Snowflake with cold, emotionless eyes, she couldn't help feeling a little unnerved by the decor of the clinic. It was very clean-almost too clean. There were no stains on the floors, no blood splatters, nothing that Elsa had come to expect from a place like this.

"Hmmm," Tremaine purred, scribbling notes on a clipboard with a pencil. "So you can't remember anything beyond the past three days. Clearly retrograde amnesia, possibly due to some sort of head trauma. Do you recall hitting your head on something recently? Or have you had any strange or unusual headaches?"

Snowflake shook her head in response. "No, I haven't had any headaches. And I don't remember hitting any part of my body on anything."

"I see." She scribbled down a few more notes. "And you have no idea where this…infection you have originated?"

Another shake of the head. "Not really. I think I remember a dark, cold place, but I don't remember where it is, or what might've happened to me there."

Tremaine nodded. "Thank you, my dear. I'll see what I can do for you." The woman then turned around and headed towards Elsa, holding the clipboard at her side.

"Well?" Elsa inquired.

"She's lucky to be alive, Miss Walker," Tremaine stated, speaking in a low voice so that Snowflake wouldn't overhear. "Where did you say you found her?"

"She stumbled into Kristoff Bjorgman's inn last night," Elsa reminded the doctor. "She was coughing up this weird blue gunk, but we injected her with a Stimpak and then everything seemed to be alright."

"You're lucky she's this early on," the doctor explained. "She isn't the first I've seen with this infection. People like her have been sprouting up over the past few months, with blue skin and hair turning white like that. But…she seems to be in a much more stable condition than the others."

"Others? You mean... she's not the only one?"

"No," Tremaine said ruefully. "But the one thing that separates her from the others I've seen…is that she's still alive."

"What?"

"Yes, most of the people who've come here with skin like that usually die a few hours later... but your friend clearly has lasted longer than that."

"What would you suggest?" Elsa inquired.

The doctor gestured to a number of small packets lying on a nearby countertop, each containing a thick, gooey orange substance. "Inject her with one of these every so often," she said. "It should prevent her condition from worsening, but I only have a limited supply.. and the ingredients are hard to come by."

"How long can this keep her going?" Elsa asked, holding one of the packets in her hand.

"That is an excellent question," Tremaine replied, "and one for which I'm afraid I don't have a solid answer. As I said, this girl is the first patient I've seen with these symptoms who appears to be in a stable condition."

Elsa sighed, putting the packets in her rucksack. "Thanks, Doc. I appreciate it."

"By the way…I found a scar on your friend's right forearm," Tremaine then stated. "I'm not sure what could have caused it, since it's mostly healed, but I thought you should know."

Elsa glanced over at Snowflake, seeing the scar that had hitherto been concealed under the bandages the girl had worn. It was faded, mostly matching the pink of the skin that hadn't turned a shade of blue. Elsa couldn't really tell the shape of the scar, but it seemed to be either from a knife or a surgical incision. It was very odd.

"I see," Elsa stated. "Thank you for telling me, Doctor."

The doctor nodded. "I'll do some research into the girl's condition. I may learn something that will be helpful."

"Thank you," Elsa replied, before walking over to Snowflake and taking her hand. "You ready to go now?"

She nodded quickly. "Yes, please. I don't like it here."

Elsa raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Why not?"

Snowflake was silent for a second, then said, "I...I don't know. There's just something about this place that...scares me."

"Oh, alright," Elsa agreed, still very unsure of why Snowflake was reacting in this way. She then got the girl off the table she was lying on and, after saying goodbye to Dr. Tremaine, walked with Snowflake out into the street.

Now that the storms had passed and the sun had come out, Elsa and Snowflake got a good view of the perpetual winter wonderland that the world had become. Everywhere they looked, they saw buildings covered in snow and nothing else.

Snowflake's expression changed from mild fear to wide-eyed wonder. "Wow...this looks so beautiful."

Elsa rolled her eyes at the girl's childlike reaction. "Yeah, to an eight-year-old, maybe. How old even are you?"

"I'm…not sure of that either," Snowflake admitted. "But I'm pretty sure I'm not an eight-year-old." She giggled. "So, what are we doing now?"

"I'm gonna grab a few more supplies from my Snowcat," Elsa said. "If we're bunking up together for the next week, might as well get comfy."

"Snowcat?" the girl inquired.

"My car," Elsa explained, before walking down the street. "It's how I get around. It's a looot quicker than walking."

"Ohhh, okay," Snowflake responded, very intrigued. "Is it fast?"

"Well... it used to be," Elsa stated, keeping a steady pace. "See, it used to be one of the fastest Cats around. I even used it in a few races, if you can believe that. But the engine has been kinda dying these past few years, so I guess I could use a replacement."

"But where would you get one?" Snowflake asked.

"Don't know, don't care," the blonde replied. "But I'll know it when I see it." As they arrived at the bottom of the street, Elsa's eyes widened. "Oh, fuck me…."

Elsa's Snowcat was still sitting there, right where she had left it the previous night. However, as the two could plainly see, it was covered from top to bottom in a heavy drift of snow. Elsa groaned. "Why? Why did it have to be snow?"

She brushed the snow off of storage compartment of the Snowcat, opening it and pulling out a large steel shovel. She knew this was an utter chore, but she had little choice. She then started to scrape away the snow from the Cat's tracks, piling it all over to one side. It was an effort, but Elsa had done it many times before. "Stupid fucking Big Freeze," she muttered. "Couldn't have been a giant flood or a nuclear winter. No, it just had to be a bunch of fucking ice and snow!"

Suddenly, Elsa felt a hunk of snow smack into the back of her head, and a sliver of snow dropped down the back of her jacket. "H-hey!" she exclaimed, slightly shivering.

Snowflake sniggered behind her. "I forgot to say 'duck.'"

Elsa rolled her eyes. "I'm not here to play games with you. I've got other things to worry about."

Snowflake sighed. "I just thought maybe it'd make you smile, you know? You seem so grumpy all the time."

"Duh, because we're living in a new ice age," Elsa pointed out, continuing to shovel snow out from under the Snowcat's treads. "If you spent twenty-one years of your life staring at nothing but a bunch of white all around you every day, you'd be grumpy too."

Snowflake seemed to deflate a little bit. "Oh..."

Elsa looked down, sighing. "Look, I can get why you did it," she said, putting her shovel to one side. "There was a time when I would have been happy to have a snowball fight with someone. But those days are long gone."

Snowflake walked up to Elsa, leaning on the side of the Cat. "Would you like to talk about it?"

Elsa shook her head. "No. It's…it's personal."

The girl nodded. "I understand." She then coughed a little bit, and a few small flecks of the strange blue goop landed on her hand.

Elsa's eyes widened. "Oh, shit. Are you alright?"

"I…." Snowflake took a deep breath. "I think so, yeah. I don't know what this goop is. It just seems to keep coming out of me."

"Just…keep it outside alright?" Elsa requested. "The last thing I need is my car smelling of blue vomit."

"I'll try," Snowflake replied. "But I'm not making promises." She then put her head into Elsa's storage compartment, taking a look what was inside. "Wow! You've collected a lot of stuff!"

Elsa looked over her shoulder. "Hey! Out of there!" she ordered. "That's my car!"

"I'm just having a look!" Snowflake replied. She then took her head out, pulling out a long, gun-like object. "What's this thing?"

"Hey, careful with that!" Elsa quickly grabbed the tool from Snowflake's hands. "It's my arc caster. I use it to jumpstart the engine when it breaks, but it's very dangerous. You pull the trigger and anything within ten meters gets a thousand volts through their system."

"Whoa," Snowflake remarked. "I guess that person would get a real charge out of that, huh?" She giggled at her little joke.

Elsa sighed, putting the arc caster away. "Just don't mess with it, okay? In fact, don't mess with anything if you don't know what it is."

Snowflake nodded. "I think I remember seeing something like that once," she commented.

Elsa raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "Really? Where?"

"I…I'm not sure," she admitted. "My memory is still very hazy, remember?"

"I know," Elsa said. "I just thought I'd ask." She then smiled a bit, nudging Snowflake's arm. "Hey, don't look so glum. Just because you've got a snarky bitch for a companion doesn't mean we shouldn't be getting along."

Snowflake looked at Elsa, feeling somewhat relieved. "Is there a second shovel in this trunk of yours? I'd like to help you out in any way I can."

Elsa reached into the compartment, taking out a spare shovel for her. "Here, take it and start digging on the other side."

Snowflake saluted Elsa. "Aye, aye, captain!"

xXx

Back in the room at the Reindeer Inn, Elsa was resting on her bed, cleaning a small revolver she kept in her pocket. Snowflake, meanwhile, was sitting on the floor and munching on a snack that Kristoff had given her.

"Mmmmm," she said, enjoying her sweet treat. "This stuff is delicious…what did you say it was called again?"

"Chocolate," Elsa replied. "They say it was really popular before the Big Freeze."

"I really like it!" Snowflake exclaimed. "It's so sweet and tasty." She then took a big bite from it. "And it just melts in my mouth!"

Elsa smiled. "Just be glad the cold kept it preserved." She then looked at her gun again, before polishing it some more. "So…do you remember anything else about yourself?"

"Just one thing," Snowflake replied, melted chocolate on her lips. "I think I might know what my last name was…or at least another name that I went by. I think it was…Rime. Yeah, Rime."

"Rime?" Elsa raised an eyebrow. "That makes even less sense than Snowflake."

"Hey, I don't understand all this either," Snowflake remarked. "I'm just wondering where I came from. Maybe I was the leader of some settlement and got myself captured…or I was an orphan raised in the wilds."

"You could be anyone, Snowflake," Elsa stated. "But…will you be happy if you ever find out? I mean, who's to say you weren't someone fucked up before all this?"

"Maybe, but that's not the point. The point is that I want to have some answers for all of…this." She gestured to her blue skin and white hair.

"I can understand that," Elsa remarked.

"So," Snowflake asked after a brief pause, "what's the plan from here?"

"Wait, wait, wait," Elsa said, holding up her hand. "What's this we stuff?"

"I thought we were in this together," Snowflake assumed. "I mean, we are staying together, aren't we?"

"No, I'm only helping you get adjusted to life out here for as long as I'm in this shithole," Elsa pointed out. "Once those eight days are up, I'm out of here."

"But what about my condition?" Snowflake asked, rather concerned. "I mean, what if gets worse? What if I die?"

"Not if you keep taking that stuff the doctor gave you," Elsa reminded her. "And she could probably have more of it by the time you run out."

Snowflake shook her head. "No, I don't want temporary solutions to this. I want to be cured, and I want to find out who I am. And I want you to help me."

"No way," Elsa refused. "I don't partner up with anyone. I'm just trying to look out for number one."

"Hold on," Snowflake stopped Elsa. "Why don't we work for each other? I can help you with whatever work or tasks you do, and you can help me find out who I am and a cure for my sickness. I don't know if I could do much, but I'm willing to work as hard as I can."

Elsa frowned. She opened her mouth to speak, her lips and tongue forming the first sound of the word "No". But something stopped her. She closed her mouth, taking a moment to look deep into Snowflake's eyes: those soft turquoise eyes, with locks of ginger-and-white streaked hair hanging just above them.

Elsa looked down, feeling a sense of pity for the girl. She didn't normally concern herself with other people's problems-she had enough problems of her own. But Snowflake had literally nothing: no home, no family, no past, and no name. If Elsa didn't help her, she wouldn't last more than a few days on her own. And beyond that, she felt as if Snowflake were a sort of kindred spirit-another girl lost amid the frozen landscape, just trying to stay alive.

"Fine," Elsa finally agreed. "We're partners, for now."

Snowflake smiled, throwing her arms around Elsa and hugging her tightly. "Thank you thank you thank you thank you!" she exclaimed jubilantly.

Elsa wriggled out of the hug. "No hugs. I'm not really into physical affection."

"Oh," Snowflake realised, backing off. "I'm sorry. But thank you. I promise to be a good partner."

"Yeah, yeah," Elsa replied. "Just don't make me regret this."

"Oh, I won't," Snowflake told her in full confidence. "I promise, you won't regret a second of this."

xXx

Author's note: Elsa and um... Snowflake are friends! They gonna do a lot together, I'm sure :3 Okay, a few things to note. I used Lady Tremaine as the doctor because she was the closest disney character to Dr Chakwas from Mass Effect. As for what's actually up with Snowflake... I'm not gonna tell ye :3 Next chapter will be up either on saturday night or sunday.

See ya then!

Also thanks to my lovely girlfriend Nona for making the cover again :3