"GO! GO NOW!" A spear pierced through the slave's skull, replacing his eye. Peter started to run. By the grace of the gods he wasn't getting hit. Weapons of all sorts, be it swords, spears, or shrapnel were pummeling him, but they bounced off him like he was rubber, like he was invincible. Was he? Thought the dying as they lay freezing on the bloody, blistering ground, watching him run by unscathed by the chaos abounding.

But then Peter was on the ground. He didn't feel hurt. He was watching himself run by and he extended his arm out as far as he could to touch himself, his foot, his ankle, anything, but nothing. He was a ghost. His leg passed through his hand like fog.

His eyes slowly fluttered open and he saw blurry colors and shapes. He felt something damp and cool against his burning forehead. His lungs weren't on fire anymore, he could breathe without pain. What a marvelous sensation breath is to the dead.

"Eeda?" The faulty word was processed through his muddled mind and he tried to focus where the sound came from. It was a big white blurry fuzz, but it slowly came into focus and he saw her face getting closer. Her lips brushed his sweaty cheek, and her warm breath tickled his tattered ear, "Can you hear me?"

A deep, low groan came from his throat as a response. He meant to say yes.

"Is he awake?" A man's voice sounded from way across the room to him. Words finally sounded like words again.

"Yeah, I think he just woke."

"Do you want me to go fetch the doctor? I just passed him not too long ago."

"I already know what he'll say." She said resolutely. She didn't want to speak to whomever she was speaking to anymore, Peter was sure of that much.

"Should I tell Anna that you're not coming to dinner?"

Elsa sighed heavily, and the man knew his answer. Actually he knew it before he even asked.

"I'm sure she'd be glad to know he's awake. Can she come in later?"

"Of course." Elsa's voice was sodden with seas of guilt. She was choosing Peter over her own sister.

The man left her alone and went to Anna's room, where dinner was being served. She understood perfectly and didn't feel hurt at all.

"It's good that she was there when he woke up. She can stay there for as long as she wants and I wouldn't dream of stopping her Kristoff." Anna said cheerfully, despite the slight discomfort of little Robert's suckling. She couldn't get him to ease up, he was always so hungry.

"Just tell me, you didn't plan this like you planned them together all those years ago did you?"

"No! I wouldn't plan for Peter to faint and fall into a week long coma!"

"A week?" Peter asked as irritated as he could, only sounding extremely tired and disinterested. Elsa could see the panic in his eyes and understood his emotion that he didn't have the strength to convey.

"That first day was the worst for you. We couldn't lower your fever no matter what, but each day you've gotten progressively better, and the doctor even said there was a strong chance that you could revive today or tomorrow." She explained stroking his pale cheek. She had a permanent dent on his bed from where she sat all day, when she could get away from being the queen.

Anna was always anxious to help by either reading or writing reports, or attend meetings, or hear the people's complaints, so her sister could stay by Peter's side, but both Elsa and Kristoff denied her the pleasure since she had just given birth. Like that ever stopped her. Elsa was grateful for such a wonderful little sister.

The Great Thaw festival still took place, and Elsa attended it, she would just sneak away to take a peek at Peter, feel his pulse, rest her head on his chest to feel him breathe, kiss his dry, cracked lips. Little things.

"I didn't think I was that tired." He closed his eyes again, and felt her cool hand slip into his.

"At first I thought I had hurt you-" His eyes snapped open.

"Stop. Don't." He squeezed her hand as hard as he could to punish her. The anguish in her eyes subduing to his feeble grasp.

"Okay." She smiled at him. "I can't wait to here what happened to you." Her smile all but vanished and her voice dripped with concern.

"Trust me. You can wait."

"I don't want to. This is as good as any other time."

"What if you get swept away in the middle of my story?" He asked, no, he begged. He never wanted her to leave him so much. If that's what kept his tale inside then he wished he could never see her again. How do you tell someone you love you betrayed them?

"I'll sweep them away. Anna and Kristoff can handle it I'm sure."

"I still can't tell you." He looked away from her. Her lips parted in a silent gasp and her brow rocketed up with pain. "I won't tell you." He continued. His words seared her soul. His bruises became more prominent. His scars seemed to glow underneath his blanket.

'Don't strike his face, it could prove useful.'

A single drop of misery fell from his eye and it was the straw that broke her spirit. Elsa bent down and kissed his cheek and then whispered into his ear, "I'm glad you're back. I've missed you."

Water falls of misery poured from his eyes and he began to quake from his sobbing. Elsa lifted up, confused at his outburst, she started to think selfishly, 'Does he not love me? Is that why his letters stopped?' He covered his thoroughly soaked face with his thin, bony hands.

"That's okay. You don't have to tell me." She said tenderly to soothe his fractured heart. Then she readjusted herself to lay down next to him completely. She wanted so desperately to know what happened to this man, this man she didn't know very well, but after two long years she felt she'd known him her whole life with only three letters from him, telling her how much he loved her, ever since she first walked into his bakery. She ached inside, her bones felt like they were being pinched, ready to crack any moment.

"Damn it Elsa! I can't do this anymore! I don't want to!" He threw away his hands and roared and then he looked over at her stunned expression and his face showed the true look of despair. "Just let me die. Please, I'm begging you, kill me. I am in so much pain. Kill me. I can't see what hurts, everything does, my brain, my body, it's not the scars, it's not the scars, it's not the scars." On he sobbed once more, and Elsa quickly enveloped his battered frame in her arms and he cried shamelessly into her neck. His tears scolded her freezing skin. She was afraid. She was so afraid. She knew why.

"That's what I thought when my parents died. Anna gave me strength. Let me make you strong again. I don't care if it is selfish but damn it, I'm not going to let you want to kill yourself."

"I want to tell you why, I just can't." His tear stained voice quivered in the air.

"Then don't try."

"You wouldn't understand." He faintly whimpered, his sobbing wearing him down rapidly.

"Peter, I have power over ice and snow. I am a sorceress. There is nothing I can't understand."

"You won't forgive me." He was slipping. Black framed the edges of his vision. He was slipping.

Elsa didn't have a clue what to do, what to say, so she let him fall victim to his nightmares in her frigid arms. She was terrified.

"Elsa?" Anna called out excitedly from outside the door. "Can I come in?"

Seconds passed like days. Nothing. The ice grew more thick as Elsa's pupils constricted. Did she really just admit that she wanted to kill herself years ago to a stranger? A perfect, half dead, stranger?

"Are you even in there?" Anna asked a little bashful, but then her eyes lit up again when she finally got a response.

"Yes."

Anna opened the door with a beaming grin. Her skin erupted in goosebumps from the viscous chill that burst out and her breath caught in her throat from the shock. She eyed her sister holding a once again sleeping Peter on the bed, her sister's hard were hard as they look a thousand meters ahead. Anna rushed over to her and shook her shoulder, but nothing happened. She saw Peter's skin turn red from the sudden intense cold and so she gently pushed him away, Elsa did nothing. Anna grabbed hold of both of Elsa's shoulders and shook her again, and nothing.

"Come on Elsa! Snap out of it! What's wrong?!" Anna got on top of Elsa's lap and once again shook her violently as if to loosen the ice formed around Elsa's mind. Slowly, Elsa's blue eyes brightened back to awareness and they began to shine as fresh tears coated them with their gloss and her face scrunched up in pain and she began to bawl despite herself, despite Peter uncomfortably slumped over beside her, forgotten.

"What's wrong?" Anna pleaded, her nose burning from the pinpricks of her coming tears, fulling sitting on her sister.

"Anna." Elsa rose up, making Anna scooch back, and Elsa fiercely wound her freezing arms around her warm sister, and Anna quickly reciprocated, trying to send out her warmth as much as she could and the ice in the room stopped growing and began to recede. "I'm sorry Anna." She whispered.

"It's okay. I just wish I could've been here sooner. Maybe I could've kept you calm. What happened?" Anna lifted away, no matter how much Elsa squeezed tighter to keep her there pressed against her.

'That's not what I'm sorry for, you stupid, precious girl.' Elsa thought as Anna's curious eyes bored into her terrified ones.

"Peter's not well."

"We know that already. What happened?" Anna knew her big sister well enough now to know she was holding something back.

Elsa bit her lip, mulling over what to say. "He's- He doesn't w- I don't know. I just don't know. He said he wants to tell me what happened to him but he can't. He thinks it's so terrible that I'll hate him." She looked over to him, Anna's deep compassionate face was too much for her. Anna looked over at him too and her heart broke all over again.

"Do you want me to stay with you tonight? I can have a cot brought in and Robert and I can sleep in here, so you can stay by Peter. Maybe it'll help?" Anna asked looking back at her sister.

"I don't want to risk this happening again with him in here." Elsa answered in a flat voice as she saw little Robert freeze into ice in her mind.

"I could sleeping in the room across the hall then, how about that? Robert would be completely safe, and I'll be right outside if you need me." Elsa finally felt a tiny surge of courage course through her and she could look at her sister again.

"I want you with me." She said wistfully, her eyes twinkling. "I'll sleep in my room tonight. He needs space."

"I think he needs you." Anna pursued, but Elsa knew better than her.

"Trust me Anna, he doesn't want me right now." Elsa fell forward and rested her head against Anna's chest. Anna just looked over at Peter again and wondered what he could have said that made Elsa think he didn't want her. He was in her arms when she came in... Anna then lifted her sister's face up and rubbed her cheeks with her thumbs, smearing her tears all around. She didn't say anything though. Words weren't cooperating at the moment for anyone, but Elsa understood anyway.

Anna got off of Elsa and the bed and walked over to the other side and moved Peter to the center when Elsa got off too, and then she properly tucked Peter in. She gazed at him softly as the tired moon danced on his pale face, but then her view was cut off as Elsa's platinum blonde hair shone bright in the moon light as she kissed the sleeping man sweetly, as if he'd kiss her back, she was hoping for it. He didn't of course.