The fire in the sitting room fireplace seemed too cheerful. Outside was cold, probably below zero. Again. Anna sighed as she stretched out on the couch, and wondered for the bazillionth time why she even bothered knocking on Elsa's door anymore. She rolled onto her stomach, propping an elbow and her head up on the sofa's armrest.
"I mean, it's not like she ever comes out anymore, Joan," she complained, addressing her words to a large painting of a fierce-looking woman wearing old-fashioned armor, a large cross emblazoned across her chest. "I thought it'd be different once we'd gotten past the whole 'Elsa turning all snow queen and then me saving her from Hans and then Elsa figuring out how to unfreeze everything' thing. When she said 'we are never closing those gates again,' I thought she meant like metaphorical gates. Also the real ones. But mostly the metaphorical ones. I got that. Didn't you get that, Joan?" Anna scrunched up her face into a half-scowl. "No, you're a painting." She rolled onto her back again with a frustrated groan, letting her arm hang off the couch. "See, that's what's nice about talking to real people. They answer you. Well…usually they do," she added as an afterthought.
Now that Anna knew what it was like to dance half the night away, fight off bloodthirsty wolves, climb a mountain covered in snow, almost be married by trolls, and recover from being entirely made of ice, her old life of roaming through empty halls and talking to paintings didn't seem nearly as interesting. She was back to her lonely existence, and she felt cheated. It was infuriating. It was like nothing had changed! Elsa, the acting queen of Arendelle, spent most of her days shut in her room, only emerging when she absolutely had to. Kristoff was taking his new duties very seriously, despite continuing to insist that 'Arendelle Ice Master and Deliverer' wasn't a real thing, so he was gone quite a bit more than Anna would have liked.
Caught up in the unfairness of it all, Anna marched back to Elsa's door, intent on confronting her sister.
Elsa paced in front of her window, arms tucked across her stomach protectively. She was trying. Really, she was. But thirteen years of habits were hard to break.
She stopped, dropping her arms to her sides and drawing herself up straighter. She was the queen. There was no room to be the scared little girl any more, nowhere to run away to if the fear set in again. It was time to actually play the role she'd been practicing for all her life. It was time to be brave.
Sighing, she crossed to her door, opening it.
"Oh!" Anna stood just outside the door, fist raised as if to knock. Her face was hard to read- but maybe that was because she didn't really know her sister any more.
"Anna." Elsa's voice was low and quiet, turning the end of the word up so that it was almost a question. Almost.
The redhead stiffened slightly, her lips pressed together. "We need to talk, Elsa," she said finally.
"You're right. We do need to talk." She kept her voice soft, trying to convey years of suppressed emotion in seven words.
Anna looked surprised. "We do? I mean, we do."
It took a lot of effort for Elsa not to smile at that. She gestured down the hall with one pale hand. "Shall we discuss this over tea?"
"No!" The reply was immediate, and both girls were surprised at the ferocity of the exclamation. Anna looked down at her hands twisting over her stomach, then, as if making a final decision, dropped her hands and met Elsa's gaze with her own. "No. I need to talk to you now."
Elsa hesitated, then opened the door wider, wordlessly inviting Anna in. She watched her younger sister nervously. Anna's eyes were wide, taking in the scars along the walls from years of uncontrollable outbursts of ice. She stepped slowly, making her way to the little couch nestled into an alcove, and sat down before making eye contact with Elsa again.
"I- I've never been in your room before. It's different. Not like your…" she trailed off, and Elsa understood her reluctance to discuss the ice palace. Anna looked down again.
The blonde hesitated again before perching on the window seat a few feet away from the couch. "Anna, what did you want to talk to me about?"
The younger girl bit her lip. "I, um, I wanted to…" Her chin lifted defiantly. "Elsa, why are you still shutting me out? I thought we were done with that, I thought…maybe that you trusted me now. And that you understood that I'm okay. Besides, now you know how to unfreeze things, so it's not like you could do the eternal winter thing again. And what about being queen? I mean, I'm not judging or anything, but it seems like being in your room all the time isn't exactly conducive to diplomacy." She took a deep breath. "That was kind of a tangent. My biggest burningest question is just…why, Elsa?"
The hurt in Anna's teal eyes was too painful to ignore. Elsa stood, taking a shaky breath. "Anna, you have to understand that this," she gestured to the room around her, "was the only world I knew for thirteen years. It's…difficult to just pretend it never happened. I'm sorry, I never meant for you to feel abandoned. I'm just…having a little trouble adjusting."
"A little trouble adjusting? Come on, Elsa. You didn't have any trouble adjusting to the North Mountain, why is this any different?" She stood up so fast it almost looked like she'd jumped. "I'm your sister, Elsa. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"Of course it does!"
"Well, it doesn't feel like it!" Anna shot back. "You said we were leaving the gates open. Open!"
"They are-" Elsa started, but Anna cut her off.
"Nothing's changed since we got back, Elsa. Did you get that? Nothing's changed."
"That's not fair!" Elsa was angry now. "Do you have any idea how hard this is for me? I'm trying, Anna."
"Two super uncomfortable meals together isn't trying. Try harder."
They glared at each other. Anna's hands were on her hips in a defiant pose, while Elsa's arms were thrown behind her body, palms facing the wall behind her. The window was completely frosted over, making the room darker than it had been. Icicles glittered threateningly from the ceiling and the wall behind Elsa, the little amount of light in the room reflecting off the sharp points.
"I think you should leave." Elsa's voice was cold, containing none of the desperate pleading it had when she'd said those exact words in the ice palace. This was not lost on either of them.
Anna turned angrily, throwing a "fine, I'll just go talk to the paintings again" over her shoulder.
When the sound of her sister's footsteps had faded down the hall, Elsa allowed herself to crumple onto the window seat. She rested her head in her hands and wondered what she was doing.