Author's Note: Based off of a prompt where Elsa and Kristoff are sitting together, conversing, while Anna watches from afar.
Imagine Me and You
"I have decided," Elsa declared, seating herself with a long, weary groan, "that the queen is a fool and should never be listened to under any circumstances. Every idea of hers is complete idiocy."
Kristoff grinned around a mouthful of steaming hot coffee. Across the fire Elsa was unlacing her boots with the slow, stiff movements of someone who ached in a thousand places. Judging by her grimace and lipbite that was probably accurate. "I don't think that's fair," he said, watching as she made a soft noise through her nose as she tugged off one boot and deposited it beside her, or dropped it instantly, rather, her face twisted with sudden, sharp pain. Her pale skin made the blood that appeared seem much darker than it normally was.
He hissed in sympathy, placed his cup down and got up to sit beside her. "Here, let me see." She gave him a quizzical look but bared her palm. Her hands, small and thin, had several swollen blisters across the fingers and upper palm, undoubtedly the result of her refusal to wear gloves when using the pick and saw, combined with a noble lady's general inexperience with manual labor. He glanced up at her and was unsurprised to see a meek expression peeking out at him from beneath the bangs that she had been too tired to sweep back.
Elsa sighed, her back bowing as she released the last of the day's energy, her shoulders drooping. "I know," she said, looking down at her hands, "I should have worn gloves. As you told me to. I just…hate them."
"Yeah, you were pretty foolish," he agreed, digging through the bag at his feet and coming up with a roll of cloth. He unwound it quickly as she flexed her fingers and winced. "That isn't to say I didn't enjoy company." Odd, since he usually preferred the quiet, or at least a quiet broken by him and Sven 'talking', but the queen's desire to see and experience the world she'd never known was far too enjoyable to miss out on by being a recluse. And he still had his quiet for the most part; Anna was still off with Olaf, taking with her the vast majority of words spoken within their little group.
It had meant that he and Elsa had spent several hours alone on the frozen lake as he showed her how to wield the tools of an ice harvester. Their work had been slow, as had their conversations beyond patient instructions on his part and furrowed brows and silent determination on hers, but that hadn't meant that it wasn't companionable. If anything, sometimes it felt like words got in the way of their talking through the silence, speaking with sidelong glances and brief, shy smiles.
She flinched when he laid the end of the cloth on her palm and he tendered a hasty apology. She held up her other hand and he paused, watching as she summoned a crust of ice that covered the cloth, her wrist hanging limply as she relaxed. It was a beautiful thing to watch her use her magic for everyday things, secure in the knowledge that she was safe to do so.
"Does that help?" he asked.
She nodded and he continued wrapping the cloth around her hand. It didn't crackle or break like frozen cloth would, the ice crystals bending instead of shattering. They had somehow woven themselves into the cloth, turning it into a hybrid of magic and material that felt cold enough to cool the pads of his fingers but not enough to make his hands ache. He stroked the cloth with his fingertips, enjoying the feel of the flexible ice against his skin.
She nudged him with her toe and he jerked his head up, looking directly into her expectant eyes. A small smile made her gaze seem softer. "Oh, sorry, I…" He chuckled nervously as he looked down, looping the cloth around before tucking the end. For some reason he could only handle so much direct eye contact. Whenever he lingered too long his imagination would taunt him with the sight of…something in her deliriously blue eyes.
The eyes that were still watching him as she wordlessly raised her other hand.
He risked another look at her and was unsurprised to find she was looking away. She wasn't one for eye contact either, but even a loner like him could read the longing in her face.
It was too much to hope that the two were connected.
"Hey Anna!" Olaf said with his usual cheer as he trotted up to her, sitting on a small stump, pointed towards the flickering light of the fire off in the distance. He had several twigs tucked under one arm, including his other arm. "I found some more wood for the fire. It was just where you said!" He didn't mention the fact that there were plenty of twigs much closer than the ones he'd had to hunt for; she probably sent him in that direction because…because only special trees burned? Of course. That made sense. And some trees were made into houses. Humans were smart to pick the right ones for their needs.
He stopped when Anna winced and looked at the ground, he gasping at the sight of the teartracks. He dropped his load of twigs and hurried over to her, plopping beside her and searching her face, distraught when she turned away. "Oh no, are you okay?" He hadn't been gone that long, and she'd seemed fine before. Why was she crying? "What happened?" His single attached hand clutched his head as his mind whirled around faster than the flurry above his head. "Oh, I know, I'll get Elsa, she'll-"
"Olaf," she mumbled as he bounced to his feet, "please don't get her."
She sniffed and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, still staring at the ground. What was so important about the ground? Would it help her feel better? But wouldn't Elsa be better at that?
He sat down beside her and leaned into her side, perplexed and unhappy when she drew her cloak tighter around herself. This wasn't right. Something bad had happened to Anna, and it made him feel like there were angry butterflies caught in his snow. It wasn't a pleasant sensation, even though butterflies were happy, carefree, beautiful things. Just like Anna. Or how she usually was.
"Are…are you sure you don't want me to get her?" he asked, tilting his head, trying to find her eyes. They were red rimmed, like she had a cold. He tried pulling the cloak down around her shoulders with his one arm and this time she didn't pull away, just kept her eyes trained on the ground. "It wouldn't bother her at all, she hates seeing you unhappy. Me too. You're Anna, and that means smiles and candy and sleigh rides and other fun, happy things…" He trailed off when she didn't respond and his stick hand fell to his side in stunned defeat.
"Olaf," she began, wrapping her arms around herself. For some reason her heavy winter clothing didn't cut down the chill. "When you look at them, what do you see?"
He stared at the pair, who were engrossed in conversation, the firelight casting deep shadows in the late evening, tinging their faces red to match the sky. They were talking, though he was too far away to hear what they were saying, but the way Elsa tilted her head was the same way she did when she looked at Anna, and Kristoff was gesturing with one ungloved hand at his gloved hand, which cupped a small ice creation. Gone was Elsa's customary stiffness; she'd left it behind once they'd left the castle.
"They look happy." A simple declaration for a simple emotion that she wished she, too, could feel.
Anna's smile didn't last long. She had always hated putting on a brave front. It always felt too much like lying. "Yeah, they do. That's…that's why I'm going to stay away."
"But…" He was looking first at Anna's face, so unrecognizable with her lips turned in the wrong direction, and then towards the fireside, where Elsa and Kristoff were speaking more quietly now, their words still inaudible but the gaiety evident from even here. "I don't understand," he said, "how can you be sad if Elsa's happy? That's….that's not how love works."
Love. She'd learned a lot about what true love was since the day when the ice melted away. When she was younger she had imagined love to be something powerful, world-ending, something that sent a hero to the ends of the earth for a heroine, something that brought grown men to their knees. She had imagined grand declarations of passionate desire, letters exchanged between two illicit lovers, written with trembling hands and punctuated with tears, or moonlit walks down a forested path. That last one had actually happened to her, but it hadn't turned out like she'd hoped.
Her silly imaginings had been dashed within the span of a sentence as cold reality descended upon her when Hans smiled at her pain.
Now she knew what true love was. It was bearing the burden of loneliness for the sake of another's happiness. Elsa had done that for years.
Now it was Anna's turn.
There was something cruel about it all. She had wished for Elsa's love, attention, affection, for years. Over time that had waned, shrinking into a small, sharp point, coalescing into a single question whose answer she had yearned to know.
Why did you leave me?
She had thought it was because Elsa, for whatever reason, despised her secretly, because she couldn't conceive of love at arm's length, or love through the thick barrier of a close door. She had always thought that love was something to be shouted out loud and let out into the light, that to hide away was, by its very nature, antisocial and therefore hatred.
Now she knew how someone could reject another and yet still love them dearly. And with that knowledge came another truth, painful to behold: Elsa would be happy with Kristoff, and he with her, but Anna was in the way.
She had already given her life for her sister. What was one thing more?
"He loves her," she said. It shouldn't have hurt. She was only speaking the truth. After all, who wouldn't love Elsa? She was perfect in every way; beautiful, poised, elegant, intelligent. How could Anna even hope to compare?
"Is…is that bad?" Olaf asked, his tone suggesting it wasn't.
She looked up in time to see the flash of Elsa's smile winging through the swiftly approaching darkness.
She came to her decision and stood, wiping the last of her tears away. "No," she said, and took a deep breath, willing her lingering concerns to follow it out of her body. She sighed and patted Olaf's head when he wrapped himself around her leg, his large eyes filled with concern and confusion. "No, that's…that's not bad at all." She smiled, the image of Elsa's face when she laughed helping her with the heavy burden.
"If she's happy then I'm happy too."
It didn't matter if it was a lie. She would learn to live it in time.