Chapter 3

Elsa

What happened…

Queen Elsa of Arendell climbed groggily to her feet, holding a hand up to her pounding head as she tried to make sense of her surroundings. Something had happened before the blackout. Hans...something with Hans. But he was gone now. She looked down. An arm, still clutching an ornate sword hilt which formerly held a master-crafted blade that was now shattered into a thousand pieces, lay by her feet, encased in a thin layer of frost. But something was off about it. Elsa leaned in slowly, getting a closer look, then gave a startled yelp and kicked it away when she realized that some of the icicles stuck to the limb seemed to be growing out of the musculature itself.

What have I done?

Queen Elsa of Arendelle took a wistful look at the scene of desolation around her and sighed. How did it come to this? The ice took everything, roads, trees, stones, walls, houses, ships, people. It locked them inside its frozen gates, gripped them tightly in its dagger claws, swallowed them between its clenched teeth, leaving her the queen of this kingdom of isolation. But all of that paled in comparison to what she saw next.

"Anna? Anna!" Elsa cried, running frantically to the icy-blue statue. "No, Anna, not again!" By the time she reached her sister, now frozen forever, her legs gave out, and she collapsed against her, holding on to her shoulders in an embrace that would never be returned. "I'm sorry, Anna," she sobbed. "I never meant to hurt you, Anna. I'm sorry. I was trying to protect you. Please, believe me, I...I was...I just...oh, it's all my fault!" The guilt surged into her heart, like the crashing wave that had brought down their parents' vessel. Like the time a stray frost bolt had hit Anna's head, prompting that fateful visit to the Troll Kingdom. Like the first time she had to close the door when Anna came knocking to play for fear of it happening again. She could tell Anna was hurting. She could tell Anna longed for the closeness they used to have. And every time she told herself, just one more day, until I learn to control my powers.

And now that chance would never come again.

"Yes I wanna build a snowman..."

At first Elsa wondered who was singing, before realizing that the voice was, in fact, hers. "I'm sorry that it took so long…I didn't know I needed you…I really do…and now you're gone…" Every single closed door and dejected goodbye from childhood replayed in her mind. "Please, just ask me once more, just one more time…I promise I'll open the door…" Her voice was quivering now, and she prayed while trying to control her sobbing enough. Gentle Mother, Strength of Women, Help our daughters through this fray. Please, if you can hear me above...

"Elsa?"

Anna's statue remained frozen.

"Elsa, are you there?"

"Olaf?"

"Hey, it…" the little snowman stopped when he saw what had happened. He opened his mouth, as if to say something, but nothing came out. What seemed like a silent eternity passed between them. "Hey, Elsa…"

"I'm fine, Olaf," Elsa replied, sniffing as she wiped at her eyes. She looked upon Anna's face, the rictus of heartbreak forever etched upon it, and caressed it with a gentle palm, applying force only to scrape off a frozen tear that had congealed on Anna's cheek.

"Uh, are you sure-"

"Yes, Olaf, I'm fine." Don't let them in, don't let them see. Conceal, don't feel. "Come on, let's go back to the castle."

"But, ah, shouldn't we-"

"You can stay if you want. I'm going back." It came out more harshly than she intended, but at this point she didn't care any more. Couldn't care any more. Not in the sense of apathy, but because she allowed herself to... If I look back, I am lost, Elsa thought, forcing the tears back in. Oh, Anna...maybe it was better this way. At least now I can't hurt you any more.

But she did look back to say goodbye one last time.

"Yes, I wanna build a snowman…"

The next few days were a blur. Elsa barely remembered what she was doing. It was like watching a stage play when you were distracted by other things, and you were tuning out what the actors were doing and saying because you were chatting up your friends. What she did remember, however, was the lead-up to everything. She had panicked, running out to the frozen fjord as the snowstorm intensified. Hans had followed her at some point. She remembered the pit in her stomach as he caught up and informed her of what happened to Anna. Or rather, what he said happened. Elsa sighed. She didn't know what left a fouler taste in her mouth, that he had said this in an attempt to break her, or that it had almost worked. What she did know was that when the snow stopped, she met her sister's gaze, and in an instant everything made sense. The prince's eagerness to marry. The way he stopped talking as soon as he could see the same thing. And then...the storm truly raged on.

Most of her subjects had joined Anna's fate, with the exception of a lucky few who were able to take cover - or rather, just happened to be behind it at that precise moment. Those few were too concerned with fleeing to entertain any thoughts that perhaps killing her would end it all. Which was fortunate, Elsa supposed. Or not, as now she had to bear the guilt by herself.

"Hey, Elsa...I found a bunch of lingonberries by the icebank."

"Thank you, Olaf," Elsa replied, smiling hollowly as she accepted the food. The little snowman bowed, then began walking off. Elsa never knew where he would go, only that he would somehow always be there whenever she needed something that he could provide. A sudden thought struck her. "Olaf, wait," Elsa called out. "Can I ask you something?"

The little snowman stopped mid-stride.

"Ask away, my queen," he replied, executing a smart about-face and snapping off a salute.

"How...how did you become alive?"

"Hmm?" A quizzical expression came upon him. "Iono," he replied, shrugging. "One moment, nothing. And the next, I just was. It really was the most peculiar thing. I was standing there on a mountain side. And then I started wandering around. And then later, I ran into your, uh…"

"It's okay, Olaf, you can say it. You ran into my sister." Elsa closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. "Thank you, Olaf. Go do...whatever it is that you do."

It had taken a few shots of the good stuff from her father's private vodka cabinet, but finally Elsa got up the courage to return to the spot where it all began. She nearly got a heart attack when the statue of Anna was no longer there, but then Olaf had shown up and silently led her back to the castle. Specifically, to Anna's old bedchamber, where she now rested forever.

"It didn't feel right to leave her out there," the little snowman explained sheepishly. Elsa didn't say anything. She left the room brushing snow from her sleeves, noting that she will be more careful the next time she felt inclined to hug a snowman. And in hindsight, she was thankful. Hadn't this whole mess started because she used her powers without understanding how to control it? She would not make that mistake again. No, she would not touch Anna, not until she understood fully how her powers worked.

Which was why she was now standing in the castle courtyard, the frozen body of...of someone in front of her. Based on the clothing, it was not one of her subjects, but perhaps the manservant to one of the guests to her coronation. No, she would be careful now.

Conceal, don't feel. Keep it in. Hold it back. Close the door. Now open it, just a crack...enough to feel her power flurrying through the air into the ground, for her soul to spiral in frozen fractals all around, for her thoughts to crystallize like an icy blast...

*CRACK*

Elsa gasped. Given all that life had dumped upon her, she hadn't expected it to work. But it was working! The icy shell surrounding her test subject cracked and splintered. First an arm moved, then a leg, then everything as he burst out like a gargoyle from the her bedtime stories. Something nagged at her, though. Was his skin so pale before, and so taut? And she would have sworn his eyes were brown, not blue, and especially not such a piercing blue; if ice could burn, Elsa was certain it would be that color. It felt like the air was chillier as well, but Elsa shrugged it off. The cold never bothered her anyway.

Then the man screamed an otherworldly scream that almost burst Elsa's eardrums. Defensive reflex took over, and she encased the man in ice again. But this time, it hadn't taken hold, and soon he was threatening to break out of his cage, shriveled and frostbitten muscles straining to free themselves from their icy prison. "No," Elsa whispered. "No, no, no!" She hurled another ice blast at him, but he had shrugged it off, reaching out with his hands to throttle her, as if to inflict a last measure of vengeance one the one who had left him in this state.

Much to Elsa's surprise, it was Olaf who had come to the rescue. She didn't know how the little snowman did it, but he had grabbed a candlestick from the table, lit it up, and placed himself between her and the...the otherworldly thing. Upon seeing the fire, it shrank back, snarling in rage. That had given her inspiration, and her next ice blast pushed it into the fireplace that she kept lit more for sentimental reasons than anything. That had fixed everything. Well, almost everything.

"Thank you, Olaf," Elsa said, calling upon her magic to reconstruct the little snowman after what he went through. "You...you could have melted."

"Some people are worth melting for," he replied, smiling.

Elsa smiled back, for more than anything, the exercise proved the concept.

The next day, there were more remains of her frozen subjects gathered in her courtyard.

And the next day, there were even more.

Elsa did not notice it getting consistently colder, for the cold never bothered her anyway. She did not notice the snowstorms growing wilder and more frequent, for she was home in the wind and snow. She did not notice Olaf getting bigger, as more and more extraneous snow accumulated on his body due to the exacerbating weather. To her, the little snowman would always be her and Anna's little snowman, even as he grew large enough to fetch the books from the top shelf of the family library.

They were not always able to stop her failures from escaping. But that was fine. As far as Elsa knew, there was no one in Arendelle but her and Olaf. It soon became routine. Every morning, she woke and ate breakfast. Afterwards, she reviewed her notes from the day before, then consulted her books, breaking only for meals and to apply her calibrations. An adjustment to the magic circle here. An added word of power there. Convert polar to radians, square both sides, divide by zero...one day, the cold equations would set them free.

Let the storm rage on, for the cold never bothered her anyway.

A/N: Google for "Do You Wanna Build A Snowman Reprise" for the song that she sings. It's a fanwork that someone else did, not my own creation.