Tale of Two Sisters: Part II

As Elsa walked down one of the roads in what she assumed was the town called "Storybrooke", she was almost run down by another loud metal machine, this one being ridden like a horse by a bearded man.

Ice started to encompass the surface of her skin as her fear mounted.

Now Elsa, just stay calm. She tried to take deep breaths, drawing on the training that her lover had imparted on her when her despair threatened to consume her control. Kaya isn't here to save you; you have to help yourself.

Having regained some semblance of calm, Elsa happened to notice a pristine white gown in the display window of one of the shops.

The sight of it brought her back to when she had still been in Arendelle...

"You have to tell me! No, don't tell me!" The sole Princess of Arendelle rambled excitedly to herself as she followed her older sister up a flight of stairs. "Um...A horse and carriage! No a horse couldn't get up stairs..." Stumped for off-the-top-of-her-head ideas, she started spouting off more far-fetched ideas. "It's a snow palace! An indoor ice rink! The whole wedding will be on ice!" She gasped breathlessly, wistfully picturing such a thing.

"It's an..." She skipped through the door her sister now held open for her to find..."Attic."

Elsa grinned at her baby sister's blatant disappointment in the "surprise".

"It is indeed."

Elsa stepped forward into the room and over to a wardrobe that stood in the middle of the room.

"So we're here because...?" Anna couldn't see what was so exciting about an attic.

Elsa opened the wardrobe and stepped aside, saying only, "Take a look."

Anna beheld the years-old, but still enchantingly beautiful wedding gown with awe.

"Is that..."

"Our mother's, yes." Elsa tried to keep the pride from her voice.

"You found it!"

The eldest beckoned her sister with one shoulder, with a "Go on." and a giggle to encourage her to come closer to inspect her surprise.

Anna stepped forward, but inches from touching the dress, she pulled back, saying with a sigh,

"I don't wanna rip it!"

"Then you'll have to put it on carefully." Elsa's face remained faux-serious, but she inwardly laughed at the thought of how she and Kaya had stumbled across the gown, caught in one of their heated moments and in a rush to find someplace secluded and to themselves.

She was brought back to the present by Anna questioning that Elsa really wanted her to wear it.

Per her nature, she quickly and unabashedly answered her own question.

"Of course you want me to wear it. Why else would we be here?" She laughed nervously.

In the end, Elsa was the one who took the initiative and took the dress from its hanger, holding it up in front of Anna for the other to grasp.

"Hm...It's missing something." Elsa said in a mock-serious tone.

Anna looked up questioningly, only to find that her sister had conjured a delicate snowflake charm on a thin chain, seemingly out of nowhere.

Elsa held it up for a moment for her sister to see, and then proceeded to fasten the charm around the other's neck.

"There." Both sisters laughed. "Something new to go with something borrowed."

"It's gorgeous!" Anna cried emphatically. "I mean enchanting." She finally got to the point when she said, "I mean I love you!" as she threw her arms around her sister.

Elsa laughed. She'd known Anna would love it, and Kaya had agreed. "You're very welcome! Now shall we see it with the dress?"

As Anna disappeared behind the curtain that Elsa and Kaya had hung in the room previously she jabbered on about how beautiful and soft the dress was.

"You know I'm going to spill something on it."

Elsa shrugged, making a 'don't-I-know-it' face that she knew her sister couldn't see.

"Maybe only clear beverages at the wedding?"

Speaking of.

"So...about the wedding." Elsa started. "Please tell me I don't have to walk down the aisle with Sven?"

"Of course not, you'll walk down it with Kaya, silly!" Anna giggled, poking her head through the curtains specifically to catch a glimpse of her sister's predictable blush that spread across her cheeks at the mention of her lover. "I mean not officially, I mean not yet!"

"And anyways, Sven's not the best man, but he is invited."

"Now would be when you tell me you're joking."

"He's going to be properly attired..." There was a rustling of cloth as Anna finished putting on the dress. "For a reindeer."

"I'm sure he will be," Elsa sighed. "I'm actually a little bit more concerned about the groom..." Disapproval laced the last few words of Elsa's statement.

As usual, Anna was quick to defend Kristoff's sometimes unrefined mannerisms, but never once took offense that Elsa was a bit put off by her fiance's rough-around-the-edges persona.

"Elsa, he knows what to wear," She giggled. "It's not like he grew up in a barn."

As soon as the words left her mouth, she seemed to reconsider.

"Okay, fine, yes, he lived in one for a while, but he grew up with trolls!"

Elsa gave her a look.

"Just wait until you see him. He even cut his hair! He's going to look wonderful."

Beaming as she ended the line of conversation, Anna ducked back behind the curtain and pulled on the straps of the dress, not hearing Elsa's wary comment of "That would be a most-welcome surprise." as she busied herself with looking through one of the room's old desks.

An old tome caught her eye, and she pulled it from the desk, opened it, and began to read.

She was so engrossed in the written words that she completely missed Anna stepping out from the makeshift dressing room in her mother's wedding gown.

Snowflakes that began to appear and circle in the air alerted Anna to Elsa's shifting mood.

"Elsa, what's wrong? What is that?"

Elsa sniffed as she looked up.

"A diary?" Anna guessed.

"Mother's." Elsa replied as she closed the book with a shaky sigh.

"What's in there?"

"Our parents-" Elsa said slowly. "Their death...It's all my fault!"

She ran out of the room with Anna's voice calling out to her echoing behind her.

"They're doing well."

Arendelle's female captain hummed her response to Thomas' observation and gave a small smile. Kaya stood with Loren and Thomas, overlooking the training yard. The new recruits were indeed doing better than had been anticipated, but they all knew the ardent, still-impetuous youths had a long ways to go.

Feeling her lover and queen's heat signature growing closer, Kaya turned to face the palace's front doors.

"Captain?" Thomas inquired. "What is it?"

Kaya didn't respond, instead deflecting the question by saying,

"Take over for me, will you?"

It wasn't a request.

Both Thomas and Loren had probably deduced that the queen was somehow involved in the usually stoic woman's rapid shift of attention. Only Queen Elsa was able to pull Kaya's notoriously infallible focus away from whatever it was that she happened to be doing at the time.

Summoning her magic to lift her into the air to cover the distance to the doors faster, Kaya made it to the castle's entrance just in time for a distraught Elsa to burst through the doors and run right into Kaya's chest. The queen would have knocked them both to the ground at the speed she'd been running if Kaya hadn't been prepared for the collision.

"Elsa? What is it?"

Elsa didn't answer, but instead tore away, which was a big surprise; usually she came straight to Kaya (or if that failed, Anna) when something upset her.

Still, a long-standing habit such as handling her tumultuous emotions on her own, alone, was a hard one to break. Maybe she just needed some time to herself. Kaya could gently inquire about it later.

That said, Kaya prepared herself to catch the other Arendellian royal that came flying through the doors, this one tripping over her own two feet in her haste to chase after her sister.

Grasping the younger girl's elbows, Kaya sighed. "Gods, Anna, be careful!"

"Sorry!" Anna looked up at Kaya, as if only seeing her for the first time, then looked around to the people she had apparently almost run down in her rush. "Sorry!" Meeting Kaya's gaze again, she repeated again with a nervous chuckle "Sorry..."

Feeling the urge, as she frequently did when around the young Princess of Arendelle, to slap her hand to her forehead, Kaya forced it aside and focused on the matter at hand.

"I just saw Elsa run out the gates towards the forest...What in the world are you wearing?" Kaya asked, for the first time noting the odd choice of clothing of the princess. Even on the eve of her wedding, it was bad luck to go running around in your wedding gown.

"Long story!" Kaya would've felt insulted at the dismissive tone, had it been used by anyone other than the person with the shortest attention span she'd ever met. "You said Elsa went in the direction of the forest? Thanks Lex, see ya!"

With a cheeky wave, the bubbly redhead went running after Elsa, drawing strange looks from the various castle-dwellers along the way.

The klutz is going to get herself killed by tripping over the edge of a cliff one of these days! Kaya knew Orinda too well to think that the demoness was actually concerned, but it was still a valid point.

She hated the idea of eavesdropping on the sisters...But if it gave insight to something that was bothering Elsa, she would make an exception.

It was with that thought that she once again summoned her magic to follow the redhead at a distance, if only to make sure she stayed safe until she found Elsa.

"I'm not avoiding you," Emma sighed as her boyfriend-not-boyfriend, the former "Captain" Hook trailed along behind her. "I'm just dealing with...stuff." She went on to add, "We have a crisis right now."

Hook tilted his face back in an entire-head eye-roll of exasperation.

"There is always a crisis." He sighed. "Maybe you should consider living your life during them, otherwise you might miss it."

The sudden, and, if Hook was being completely honest with himself, somewhat comical cry of "We're under attack!" from Leroy only served to confirm what Hook had just finished saying.

He rolled his eyes as he and Emma turned to see Walter and Leroy sprinting up the street towards them, seemingly in a panic.

"We're under attack!"

As if we hadn't heard them the first bloody time. Hook thought irately.

"Okay, Leroy, what is it?" Emma asked quickly.

"We were just driving home when something blasted me with magic!" He breathed. "The whole van's iced over. We woke up in a meat locker...who's got that kind of magic?"

Emma looked past him and said, "Maybe the person who made that?"

The group turned to see what she was referring to, and saw the icy trail that led somewhere further into town.

Kaya perched silently on a branch high above Elsa's head, solemnly watching the snowflakes gracefully but somberly dance around the Snow Queen's head, signaling their master's anguish.

She wished fixing the problem could be as easy as appearing before Elsa, taking the queen in her arms, talk about the problem and making love to her until she felt better. Unfortunately, Kaya's instincts told her she wasn't the one that would be able to do Elsa's emotional state the most good right now...and Kaya had learned to always trust her instincts.

Luckily, the best potential remedy for Elsa's current melancholy state was approaching the clearing at that very moment.

"Elsa?" Anna gasped as she ran up to her dismal older sister, smiling in relief that she'd found her. "Elsa!"

The queen held up a hand as she told Anna she wanted to be alone.

Still slightly out of breath, Anna replied offhandedly, "You have a sister, you're never gonna be alone...Other than when I'm not around, but even then I'll be there in spirit." The knowledge that she was rambling again seemed to dawn on her, which just made her talk more. "But that doesn't matter because I'm here now and you're not alone," she took a breath, "And, you know what I mean? It's a good thing!"

Kaya rolled her eyes at the redhead's nonstop talk. It wasn't a wonder why the young princess would be either very charming or very annoying to whomever she came in contact with...All the chattering was certainly not an action that Kaya made a habit of doing herself, but she sensed the seemingly nonsensical jabber might be just the thing to lift Elsa's mood...Or at the very least, give both Anna and Kaya a clue as to why she was so upset.

Anna stooped to sit on the ground beside the log that Elsa sat upon. She didn't waste time in getting to heart of the matter.

"What was in the diary?" Seeing Elsa's reluctant expression, Anna pressed, "You can tell me anything."

The two shared a long look as Elsa swallowed her unease.

"...Turns out our parents didn't go off on some diplomatic mission, like everyone thought." She held eye contact with Anna. "That was just a cover."

Anna voiced Kaya's thoughts. "For what?"

Elsa raised her eyebrows and opened the book as she handed it to Anna.

"Read it."

" 'I wish I didn't have to hide the truth from our children,' " Anna began reading the printed words aloud. " 'But the truth would be too painful. What we've seen from Elsa is terrifying, and it has to be stopped.' "

Kaya barely restrained a short surge of anger at the thought that Elsa's idiot (in her opinion) parents would once again make Elsa feel like anything less than she was. Even from the grave, they ripped at their eldest daughter's self-esteem.

Elsa spoke. "They were scared of me, that's why they left..." Kaya could hear what sounded like Elsa trying to speak through a throat that was tightening up with emotion. "Because they thought I was a monster."

The fire-wielder couldn't help how her heart softened and went out to her lover for unknowingly experiencing what she had so long ago. Of course Kaya had never had any illusions that her father had ever thought she was anything but a monster, but no one should ever have to go through or experience such a rejection.

"No," Anna said vehemently. "I won't believe it. I refuse to believe it."

"It's all right there."

"Is it? Because it doesn't say where they were going or what they were doing." Anna seemed to want to cling to hope until the end. "It could be a misunderstanding!"

Elsa now sounded close to tears.

"Anna, because of me they left. Because of me, they can't walk you down the aisle tomorrow." She swallowed. "I'm so sorry."

"You don't have to be, it's not your fault! You are not a monster. I don't think so, this whole kingdom doesn't think so, and for sure our parents didn't think so." Taking Elsa's hands, Anna squeezed them as she reassured her. "And I will prove it. This diary is only part of the story."

"How do you know that?"

"Because!" She paused. "...Instinct?"

Elsa gave her a look.

"Okay, right, that's not enough. But there are more answers out there about what happened to them- I know it."

If Kaya hadn't been trained for years to expect the unexpected, she would've fell out of the tree at the princess' out-of-the-blue gasp.

"But I know who can help us find them!"

"Who?"

"My future in-laws."

Following the ice trail, Emma and Hook traced it to an old factory just in time to see the door closing behind someone.

Emma, drawing her gun, lead the way through the door with Hook on her heels. They looked in the direction of the ice trail when suddenly the wind began to howl out of nowhere, and a giant monster that appeared to be made out of snow stood before them in the span of a few seconds.

Hook took one look at the being as Emma stood with an expression of surprise, confusion and skepticism on her face and shrugged.

"Alright," He said resignedly. "That's a new one."

"Elsa, why are we going back to Arendelle first?" Anna asked. "I thought we were going to see the trolls!"

Elsa rolled her eyes and kept walking. "I can't just leave without telling Kaya where I'm going; she'd worry."

"Oh come on, Elsa, like she couldn't find you from leagues away!"

Elsa smiled. It was true, but being purposely irresponsible wasn't in her nature. Plus, she was starting to seriously need to see Kaya just so she could forget, even for just a moment, about this whole mess. For some reason, even her entire army never made her feel as safe as one tender look from her lover. Like nothing in the world could hurt her while Kaya was near.

It was one of the reasons she'd fallen in love with the stubborn, austere woman in the first place, after all.