She was probably wearing holes in the rug from all the pacing she was doing, but Anna couldn't help it; it helped her think, and thinking was what she desperately needed to do right now.

It was what she had desperately needed to do then, but since the past was long gone she couldn't do much more than curse her younger self for being a fool, always jumping in without a plan. Mother had once described her as like a little kitten who came charging up to a mirror and ran away as soon as it realized attacking its reflection was a useless endeavor. She'd meant it as their little joke, but Anna couldn't help but think how accurate the description was: a small, pathetic little thing putting on a recklessly brave front trying to take on something impossible to defeat before fleeing in abject failure.

She couldn't cure Elsa, only Elsa could, and would she really want to do it with the monstrosity Anna had made? And with the means that came with it?

She was an idiot. A complete and utter fool.

To top it all off, if her reading was correct, and the description of hysteria as "surprisingly infectious" was accurate, then Elsa wasn't the only one who had an...issue.

She looked at the bed as she made one of her passes past it. The Granville device sat there, locked up and looking like the most innocent suitcase ever made, the book lying open beside it. She winced and returned to pacing.

Elsa had been mad this morning about her lost doorknob, or as mad as she would ever allow herself to be, her lips thin as she sat down for a breakfast that Anna couldn't swallow a bite of. Neither of them had spoken much, which was to be expected, though Elsa had asked her if she'd seen anyone fiddling around with her door, to which Anna had responded that no, she had not seen anyone fiddling around with her door. That had, thankfully, been the extent of their conversation, and Elsa had returned to examining her food with distaste while Anna had sweated through enough time to be polite before begging to leave.

Elsa had eyed her strangely before she left but Anna was out the door and heading towards her room before she could think too much about it.

Anna wrung her hands, taking another guilty look at the suitcase, which looked exactly the same as how she'd left it.

She couldn't go back to the library. Now she understood why the librarian had been so cross; the princess of Arendelle, asking for lewd reading material.

Medicinal, she thought. There was a difference. Sort of.

She couldn't go back to Mr. Orsted for help. Her faith in his ability to repair the machine had been reflected in his eyes as his belief in her ability to use it correctly and to make things better.

Better. She shuddered. And that involved...

A sudden image entered her head: Elsa, sliding her dress off before lounging on a bed, the sheets cushioning her naked body, crooking a finger towards her sister with a slight smirk. "Aren't you going to 'treat' me, Anna?"

Whoa, okay, so…Jesus.

The book wasn't kidding about symptoms getting worse over time.

To be fair, she'd had thou-no. No she hadn't. She most definitely had not.

Instead, for the first time she thought about how this must be from Elsa's position. Anna could recall every single bright, happy memory of her childhood, every moment when she tripped or fell and Elsa was there to catch her, tickle her under the arms and run around the palace, the pair of them as close as two strings twined around one another. And then, for some reason, their knot had unraveled, and Elsa had gone away, so far from Anna's grasp that she was always just out of reach.

The change had been so sudden that it had left Anna breathless, too stunned to even cry, because what had happened surely wasn't real. She remembered the early days in crisp detail; each memory a leaf that was bursting with color, richness and life before it fluttered to the ground, littering it with what remained of her relationship with her sister.

The rest of her youth was entirely unlike those days. It was filled with loving parents whose smiles stuttered when she brought the discussion back to specific topics over and over again, with lessons that took up only part of her days and left the rest of it to daydream, and with a sister who fairly haunted the palace; her presence leaving echoes in the halls but never there long enough for Anna to hold.

Anna had grown up wrapped in confusion. What if Elsa had grown up wracked in pain?

How long had she been suffering? Since their childhood? Probably not, considering the age given of the average sufferer, but certainly for years. What would it be like, to suffer from something so crippling, day in and day out, without hope for a cure? What did it feel like, to know things were getting worse and she had no power to control or stop it from dragging her down and weighing upon her soul?

Anna had recovered from every sickness she'd ever had within the span of days. She could barely imagine years of constant wear, and she found herself once more standing in front of that impenetrable door that was the mental line between what she could understand and whatever it was that Elsa was feeling, wishing she could banish the entire thing from her mind and step through.

Anna sat down on the bed, sighing.

This was a lot bigger than she had first thought.

It was no longer just another silly attempt of hers to catch Elsa's eye. It wasn't just a new idea that had failed from the start. Now it was a responsibility, albeit one that was so strange in nature that it was difficult for her to even think about.

Okay, new plan. And this time, an actual plan.

First, she would reread the section on symptoms. There was a chance that she was wrong about her, too, suffering from the same illness, because compared to Elsa's melancholy Anna had always been brighter, her step lighter and laughter louder. It hardly seemed fair that she should be afflicted and then cured first when it was her sister who so dearly needed help.

Second, if she did have it, then…well, that'd actually be for the better, now that she thought of it. Because she could act as a sort of test for the hammer. If her symptoms abated following…treatment, then whatever childish qualms she had about its use would not be enough to keep Elsa from using it.

Third, she would clean the device. Definitely clean it.

Fifth, Elsa would accept it and use it and she'd be cured and her happiness would be restored and she could come running into Anna's arms and they would be as close as they had been once before.

She was still working on point four, but she was sure it'd come to her. The point was, this was a plan. An incomplete one, but a plan. And an incomplete plan was always better than nothing.

As is the case with other diseases of the mind, hysteria has a higher prevalence within families, particularly amongst other unmarried young women. Though marriage may help the sufferer, or at least prevent relapses in the future, first and foremost one should be concerned with treating the symptoms that arise. Their tendency to progress from a dreariness that saps the patient's will and happiness to rampant mischievousness and reckless thinking means that they move from harming only the afflicted to also negatively affecting those around them.

Damnit.

Sort of.

She'd always told herself that she'd be willing to put her heart on the line for Elsa.

Was putting her loins on the line any worse?

She could definitely do this.

Any hour now.

Just a little test. Just one, in between her and happiness.

Potential happiness.

Actual happiness. Maybe.

She couldn't do it.

Lunch was fish. She liked fish. She wasn't eating it.

She was, however, making an excellent show of doing so. The salmon was sliced into numerous pieces that made their way around the plate over the course of the silent meal. It probably tasted wonderful. The bitterness in her mouth wasn't letting her have any of it.

Elsa had sat down to lunch with a handful of papers and, mother of all surprises, had proceeded to ignore her sister after her initial terse greeting. She kept flipping through her papers as she ate. If possible she seemed to be eating even less than Anna had.

Anna used her distraction to watch her sister. She was always watching her sister, either blatantly or out of the corner of her eye, and Elsa usually put up with it by completely disregarding her sister unless she was required to recognize her. Today was no different from the last.

Nor would it be, because she was too much of a selfish coward to try something that could actually help.

Sure, she could study her parents' schedules and talk Elsa's tutor into opening up a gap, heart fluttering with the hope that Elsa would join the three of them on a picnic. Her heart had been crushed, as usual, but she'd done it.

She had once had little leaflets printed with "Anna's Christmas Wish: Decorating the tree with her sister" on them and distributed to every servant in the castle so that they might drop them at the right time. It hadn't paid off, and Elsa had become entirely engrossed in her studies for the next month as a result, but there were probably some copies hanging around somewhere as evidence.

And yet here she stood, at the brink of something that might actually be the problem, and she was choking on the finish.

Pathetic. Useless.

She propped her chin up in her hand and maneuvered a piece of fish around. It slid across the plate, leaving oil in its wake. She wondered which of them was better off.

Probably the salmon.

"And what did you do today?" Elsa asked, eyes flicking between her papers and Anna's face.

Anna stared at her.

Elsa stared back, lowering her papers slightly, and repeated the question.

"Nothing," Anna responded. Her shoulders slumped against the seat at the guilty admission. She had done nothing.

"You sound upset about it." Elsa's papers were set down.

Anna shrugged. It was true, she was upset about it. So what?

She frowned. Wait, that was…

"Shouldn't I be?" she asked, confused. Doing nothing was being useless, which was something that Anna was very good at, especially of late.

She couldn't help Elsa with her daily workload; Elsa and "Uncle" Louis, the regent, either worked together in the safety of Father's office or separately, which meant she wasn't needed. She couldn't help her with planning her coronation, since Elsa had taken that task upon herself so as to ensure that she got exactly what she wanted, which was apparently perfection – and a specific bishop, for some reason – so of course Anna would be of no use there.

She couldn't help her with anything at all. Just the second sister, of no other use than to look pretty for the people that weren't here and wouldn't be here once the coronation was over.

Elsa drew her papers up and sat them in a neat pile to the side of her plate. She tapped her fingers over them, the gloves muting the sound. They were her everyday gloves: small, white, probably made of satin or similar material, ending just at the edge of her wrist. They were much shorter than the ones she wore on special occasions, those rare moments when she was required to be in the presence of several people all at once. Sometimes when she moved her hands Anna could catch a glimpse of pale skin in between where her sleeve ended and her gloves began. It was sort of like catching her sister naked.

Naked. She flinched at the thought.

"There's nothing wrong with not doing anything," Elsa said, misinterpreting her expression. "Sometimes…sometimes doing nothing can feel like, well, nothing." For a moment she frowned. Anna could understand why: Elsa gave words away with great reluctance while Anna spat them out like they made her mouth hurt, heedless of their direction or content. Her sister prided herself on her articulate speech, so to see her stumbling over a simple explanation was almost amusing, if it weren't so incredibly odd for Elsa to be caring about Anna's feelings. Caring enough to actually comfort her.

"And at the same time it's the best thing you can do. Sometimes," Elsa amended quickly. "Sometimes." Her fingers stilled and smoothed over her papers.

Anna wasn't sure what to make of that. "How can doing nothing ever be a good thing?"

"When the alternative is causing harm," Elsa said, as wise and as cryptic as some ascetic up on a mountaintop.

"No." Anna shook her head. That didn't sit right with her at all. "You can always choose the right thing, and that's always something, not just…waiting. Waiting's just…pointless."

"Perhaps," Elsa said. She didn't sound convinced.

That was the end of their conversation. Elsa left minutes later, leaving Anna to stew alone to her thoughts.

It was never a good place to be. Anna wasn't much of a thinker.

Anna yanked open her door and shut it behind her, glaring at the device on her bed. It hadn't moved.

But Anna had.

Enough of this. Enough of her nervousness. Elsa needed her help, Anna could provide it: it was as simple as that. Over-thinking just led to never-doing, and she couldn't have that.

She stalked up to the bed and dropped herself down onto it, lifting the lid of the suitcase. The repaired hammer was right there, attached to the machine.

She pulled it out from behind the strings and looked down at it. It fit her hand just fine. It'd fit Elsa's gloved ones just fine, too.

She took a deep breath and turned the second dial. The doorknob tip began to vibrate, the speed increasing as she turned the dial further to the right. She pressed the tip against the inside of her palm. It tickled a little.

She turned the speed up and tested it against her palm again. This time it made her palm buzz, the section of skin beneath the tip warming up from the constant rubbing. Another adjustment to the speed had her wincing. She twisted the dial until the feeling was less painful and then got up, leaving the hammer running. She grabbed a pencil from her desk and noted down the position of the dial as its upper limit. No doubt other parts of her were more sensitive than her palm was, but at least this way she wouldn't hurt herself inadvertently by twisting it too far the first time.

Hopefully the first and last time.

Anna switched that dial off and started working on the first one, marked "Electrical Stimulation". This one she was more hesitant with, the wire burn that covered several of her palm lines pulsing as if to remind her of her past errors. At first she felt nothing, but as she turned the dial further to the right she began to feel a funny prickling. It didn't feel bad, just different, almost like a painless frostbite. It made her fingers twitch more and more as she increased the strength, but it was clearly not as powerful as the second dial. That was probably a smart idea on the maker's part.

She turned the dial off and looked down at the hammer. She exhaled slowly, eyes moving over the thin line that indicated the healed crack.

"Well, now or never," she told the hammer.

It didn't respond.

That was probably for the best.

Anna checked to make sure her door was closed for the fourth time and then lay back in bed, head nestled in the pillows. Her heartbeat was already starting to climb, her fingers flexing as she tried to calm herself. She'd set the suitcase beside her for easy access. The metal plate gleamed in the lights of the room. She'd closed the windows, something she hadn't done for years.

Some of the descriptions seemed to indicate it was most useful to have a mirror propped up in front of the patient, but she hadn't had the guts for that. She hadn't even taken off her stockings, just her bloomers and shoes. Taking off more would have been too nerve-wracking, and she was a little scared as is.

Maybe more than a little.

This is for Elsa, she reminded herself. And for me. But mainly for Elsa.

She twisted the second dial and the hammer began to hum in her hand, just enough to feel it, but not enough to irritate her. Just a taste of it.

She thought about the diagrams and screwed her eyes shut. They were a little terrifying, both in their complexity and what they illustrated and she could always work by feel, anyways.

Her skirts crinkled, drawn up in her other hand as she directed the hammer down, past her shivering stomach, over the bunched up fabric covering her hipbones, down between her tense thighs, her skin tingling already with anticipation.

Her pulse rushed in her ears as she finally set the tip of the hammer against her body.

"O-oh!"

She jerked her hand back.

That had felt…good, actually. It was a short spasm of pleasure that was gone as soon as she moved the tip away. She stared at it, feeling a little breathless now.

This definitely wasn't like any kind of medicine she'd had before.

Now curious, she brought the hammer back to the same location, just to the left of her inner thigh. She drew the tip against it and shivered as it connected. The feeling was back, sending warm tendrils flowing up her body when she gathered up enough courage to move the hammer around. It buzzed over her flesh in a way that made her knees shake, her legs flexing involuntarily, impelled to movement by the gentle vibration as it sank into her.

Suddenly that diagram of a woman with her legs locked into stirrups made more sense.

She twisted her head, looking at the dials. The first one was still set to the leftmost point.

With a quick, careless gesture, she turned it to the right, and almost jumped as the sensation changed.

Now it really felt like her legs were struggling against something as she dragged the doorknob tip over her lower lips. Anna bit her tongue as a sound rose up in her throat, trying to keep quiet because she couldn't ever be found like this, trying to keep the hammer on her even though its touch was incredible in a way that was difficult to bear. She slowly explored herself, cataloging every quirk and change in her mind as the device hummed at her side. This was supposed to be a test, she remembered. She was supposed to see if this made things better, somehow. Her intention was to discover if the "paroxysm" that would surely come about would change anything for the better.

Her entirely pure thoughts were interrupted when she touched upon a spot that was directly between her legs.

Anna yelped. That was intense and sudden and startling and entirely different from what she had been feeling before and she was going to do it again right now.

Her hips snapped up when she touched the spot before drawing her hand back again and she wasn't quick enough to stop the moan that escaped her throat.

The book hadn't said anything about making sounds; was she even doing this right?

Her hand, as if of its own accord, returned the hammer to its work and she sagged into the pillows, her head tilting back as that bizarre, shocking and insistent pleasure shot through her. She circled the spot, the vibration making the touch almost painful in a delightful way, like catching glimpses of the sun but not daring to stare directly at it.

Gradually she became aware of another feeling, of a curious wanting, a part of her begging to be touched deep within. It was accompanied by moisture – she'd read about that, but hadn't really believed it until now – that made the track of the hammer slip and slide as it wobbled around in her now unsteady grip, her palm and fingers slowly turning numb from the constant vibration.

She gasped as the tip nudged that sensitive spot too hard and a part of her clenched around empty air in a carnal need to be filled.

There was nothing in her book about that.

Feeling far braver than she ever had, Anna moved the tip down and, hesitating just a moment, dipped it inside herself.

"Ohhhhhhhhhh." Her eyes fell closed, mouth falling open like her legs did, widening to make room for the vibrator as she pressed it deeper inside. Every push and thrust of the device left her gasping around a heat in her belly, alien and unknown and wondrous and she was dying for more of it.

Her other hand pawed at the air, feeling around for the plate. First dial; she cranked it higher and tensed in blissful response. Second dial; she nudged it just slightly and the result had her hips lifting off of the mattress and into the air, trying to force the tip deeper where she needed it.

"Some women react poorly to interruptions during treatment."

"God I can see why!" she said to her empty room, lifting her head to watch in a sort of frantic stupor as her hips shoved back and forth against the hammer, now entirely out of her control and still performing beautifully, bless them.

She hadn't a clock to keep time so it felt like her session lasted hours as time stretched and dilated and narrowed down into a single point that she kept moving between her legs, faster and faster as the pleasure surged into a towering peak that boiled under her skin, ready to burst at any moment.

"A paroxysm is often described by patients as feeling like-"

"Oh God!" Her cry spiraled up into a high whine as she ran out of air, unable to breath in because her entire body was seizing, the muscles tensing into broad bands that the ecstasy raced down like fire, like insanity, stealing away her sight as stars exploded in her vision, her spine arcing and hips thrusting forward as hard as they could, desperate to soak in every last drop of that dizzying flight that radiated from the hammer and into her fragile body.

Anna pulled the vibrator out and dropped it on her stomach, chest heaving as she swallowed down huge gulps of air, her skin trembling, her muscles singing, her very bones feeling weighed down with a delicious lethargy. She didn't bother to turn the device off. She could barely lift her hand as is.

If that…if that hadn't been a paroxysm…

Then as soon as she got her strength back she'd try again, damnit, because Anna was nothing if not persistent.

Unlike usual physical exertion, this activity had robbed her energy entirely in one fell swoop, but she couldn't find it within herself to mind. The fatigue that made her arms and legs into blocks of lead was welcome in a warm and fuzzy way, swaddling her in thick blankets so that she couldn't move and was quite content with this fact, too.

Afterglow, she thought drowsily. That was a beautiful word for a beautiful feeling. It suited the sensation exactly; like she was lounging on a tropical beach, the white sand warm against her naked skin and every grain the source of a gentle tickle against her.

She shivered, giggling a little as the wonderful feeling of tickling continued.

She was so glad she'd taken the plunge. This machine was amazing. She'd recommend it to anyone. Who cared if they even had hysteria? The exhausted yet satisfied calm that settled over her body and made her sink into the sheets without a care in the world was beyond worth it.

This was exactly what she had needed. It was exactly what Elsa needed. It was utterly perfect.

Anna smiled broadly, sated and lazy, as she lifted her hand to look over the marvelous device.

She blinked.

It looked a little different now. It took her a couple of seconds to realize why: it was broken. The hammer had split in two along its crack, one side leaning open so far she could see inside to the motor and rod. The rod that was still vibrating.

Her eyes widened.

The bare rod.

She jerked her head down.

The internal tickling hadn't let up.

Anna slowly tilted her head back, staring at the canopy above.

Oh…oh shit.