I post this as a peace offering for there most likely being no AISTB tomorrow, unless I find a burst of energy between now and Sunday 7pm.

I am very tired, have mercy.


"I had no idea you liked the opera your majesty," Eva said.

Elsa stared up at her Press Secretary, and the slight smile on her face, and tried her best to stay calm and keep her poker face up. She had never played poker but she was sure she had a pretty good one. You needed to be, for a job like this one. "It's a favour," she said. "And I don't really have anything against the opera."

"I only ask because if you like we have several other invitations that I can forward to-"

"Oh no that won't be necessary thank you," Elsa said quickly, far too quickly, and cursed herself. "King Harald was a friend of my father is all, I just think it'd be…nice to keep up old friendships, and maybe form some new ones."

Eva's smile didn't waver an inch. She knows. "I hear the new American President is a fan. Maybe the two of you can bond."

"Maybe. Thank you Eva."

The tall dark woman bowed. "Your majesty." Elsa watched her as she swayed out of the room, and let out a sigh.

She hated the opera. Couldn't stand it. Her father liked it and had used to insist on dragging her mother and herself to see whatever new performance was being held, and while Elsa was pretty sure that Idunn had eventually learned to love it she never had found that inner strength. Sitting in a high-up box while overdressed singers droned on in dead languages wasn't something she particularly enjoyed. Elsa liked parties. She had liked the friends she had made at Oslo U. She had liked staying up 'till morning in her student housing and talking about their classes and lectures and watching movies until they fell asleep on the floor. She had liked the small house parties filled with people who all knew each other who she could talk to for hours and hours about everything under the sun.

She didn't like huge thousand-guest balls or grand parties filled with people who all wanted something from her, and where the most friendly contact she would meet all night would be the waiters handing her drinks. Ever since the Weselton manor disaster it was the only thing she could see in her future forever. Eva had shown her the call logs and they were swamped, utterly. They had actually taken on extra staff just to deal with the truly mind-boggling amount of attention they were getting. Leaders halfway across the world who had sent peremptory phone-calls on her coronation and gave her ambassadors invitations as an afterthought were talking about Arendelle in print, calling hoping to convey their deepest congratulations and maybe to talk about closer relations. Economic papers were talking about the new powerhouse of Scandinavia. She could do anything she wanted. She should be ecstatic.

Elsa slid down in her chair until her face was resting on her hands in an extremely un-queen-like position. Somehow even though she was poised for the greatest triumph in the last ten generations of Arendelle royalty, on the brink of bringing her country to stand among the best of the world, she was more miserable than ever.

She needed to do something to take her mind from this mess. She stood and pushed her chair back, and left before she could think of a reason not to go. If she started dwelling too much she'd stay in that chair all day. She keyed her intercom for one of her private secretaries.

"What do I have for the rest of today?"

The answer came back. Very little. Gerda was dealing with Weselton – weeks now, the man was just either the most oblivious or the most persistent man she had ever known – and Eva and her deputies were helping to corral as much as she could. She decided. Paperwork could wait an hour. She needed to escape her official office, much less cosy than her private study, and go somewhere. Even if that somewhere was just a minute's walk down the hall.

Your majesty, greeted everyone she passed in the halls, and she smiled and replied and did her best to be the polite queen, the dignified and regal young queen who everyone thought was going to take them to the stratosphere.

From the outside there was no telling, but from the inside the private residence of the Arendelle royal family was separated on all sides by walls, like a house built right into the massive structure. Which it was, really. A corridor that ran along the ground floor connected the two, and was the only way in, and was guarded at all times. Behind the door they stood at, business ended, and Elsa was really in her home. She had grown up there, like a baby bird who instead of being born had just stayed inside her egg, itself inside a larger egg. When she had been younger she had desperately wanted to leave it forever, to sneak outside her home and outside the castle and meet people who didn't work for her family. The older she had gotten the more the feeling had lessened though (going to school in Arendelle city had definitely helped.

Right now though she desperately wanted to disappear back inside it. Collect the broken pieces of eggshell and re-assemble it back around her. Let the castle and the city and the country beat on it all they wanted, she would be safe and warm there.

"Your majesty."

"Hi Kristoff." She considered stopping and talking, but she knew he wouldn't. They were Elsa and Kristoff only when they were alone. Whenever anyone else was present they were Kristoff and Her Majesty. "Is my mother in the residence?" She got the nod, and walked past him, pushing through the double-doors into her home.

It was like stepping into a portal. In the castle everything was ornate scrollwork, marble and ancient wood where it had stood for centuries, or off-white walls and wooden offices where the staff worked. It was a place you worked in, not one you lived in. In comparison to that the private residence really was a home. If Elsa turned around and looked back at the doorframe she would see her tiny handprints there, ones she had made when she was five. She closed her eyes and smelled the lovely old wood her father kept – had kept, mother did it now – polished to a mirror shine. Pictures on the walls that her father had collected when he was younger, mixed in with pictures Elsa had drawn of houses and towers when she was a baby that he refused to take down. A kitchen with a fridge filled with multi-coloured fridge magnets that had been a birthday present and she had spent endless time writing funny words with, where her father had made her tuna-fish sandwiches before her first day of school. Before he was diagnosed. Before he spent most of his waking hours bed-ridden. Before-

I won't cry.

"Elsa?"

She turned to see who had addressed her, and found a woman in a dark blue dress staring at her, her brown hair in a harsh bob and light blue eyes. Her face was lined with creases from age and worry but it was still beautiful for all that. The Queen always had been beautiful.

"Mother."


"Did they come?"

"Anna please, this is becoming more than a little worrying."

"ALICE!"

"Ma'am?"

"Don't call me ma'am. Did the tickets come?"

"Kai is holding them ma'am."

"Kai!"

"Anna, please."

The only reason she didn't reach up and attempt to wrest them from his grasp was because the desk was too long, and her arms were tired from writing memos in committee all day. If she stared at any more minutes today it felt like her eyes would drop from her skull. "Give." She wanted the tickets. Not because she liked opera at all. She got bored. She got really bored. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate the fact that some people really, really loved it, she just didn't personally see the appeal.

What she had seen, just a few days ago, had been the updated itinerary for Capitol Events, which kept a fairly up-to-date record of upcoming presentations, theatre and…well…events…that mattered to Congress. More specifically, one event:

KENNEDY CENTRE 31/10/2012 POTUS/ARENDELLE DELEGATION/PRESENTATION

That had been enough to start the wheels turning. Well, not really turning. Whirling like dervishes.

Kai reached into his waistcoat and brought out the tickets, but not without shooting Anna a look of deep, deep suspicion. "Anna I know you generally dislike any recreational activity that doesn't either involve dirt or that puts you in a vaguely politically-compromising position. Because of this I feel compelled to ask you something."

"That's a little harsh Kai."

"Hmm, true though…"

"Indeed, thank you Alice."

Anna held the tickets in her hand like they were gold dust. She sighed as her chief of staff stared down at her. "What's your question?" she asked.

"Alice, give us the room please."

"Certainly sir. Shall I bring coffee and tea?"

"No, thank you."

Kai and Anna watched as Alice left the office and gently closed the doors behind her.

"Isn't she delightful?"

"Kai what's-"

"Anna, how long have we known each other?" Kai asked, cutting her off.

She raised an eyebrow. What now? "As long as I can remember." Kai had been a fixture in her life growing up, a tall rotund figure usually standing near her father. They had never been close, but they'd developed an easy relationship you did with someone you met practically every single day of your life. Her father trusted him utterly, and she did too. Without him it was unlikely she'd have ever raised enough money to win the election. She couldn't really imagine a Summerford campaign without Kai being attached to it. "Why?"

"Anna, are you alright?" he asked, and Anna was surprised not at the words – he usually asked her a similar question at least one a week – but at the tone. He really sounded like he was asking.

"Of course Kai."

"I ask because for the last few weeks you've been….Hmmm. How do I put this delicately?"

"Be like normal and don't."

"You've been distracted. Scatterbrained."

"I have not!" she said, and regretted it even as she did so.

Kai pulled up one of the office chairs and sat. "Other people don't notice Anna, I will reassure you of this. There's been no change in your work. Your work in the committee has been excellent and punctual as always. Your meetings with the public visitors has left them spellbound. Your campaigns for the schools back home have been marvellous."

"Thanks."

"But I notice. Your staff notices. Alice asked me only last Monday if you had been going through – I swear to the lord – a bad breakup. Naturally I assured her this was impossible as you were practically celibate-"

"Oh, geez, thanks."

"-and your landlord informs me you aren't eating well, if at all."

Anna looked up at her chief. "Kai please tell me my landlady isn't spying on me."

"Tiana looks after her girls Anna. She called me because she was worried about you. The boyfriend question also came up with her, incidentally."

"I'm not- I'm fine! I eat!" God she sounded so dumb saying that. Take a deep breath Anna. "You know how busy I am."

And she was. Like a filthy old hobo-oracle, Pabby's words had come true. Congressmen who before would just nod as they passed would smile as she walked the halls of the capitol. Men in suits that cost more than her yearly salary passed business cards into her hands and said words like if there's anything we can do to help. Lobbyists had wondered if they could grab a lunch with her to talk about…things of mutual interest. Exchanges. She had been asked if she was happy on her committee. She was getting so much more help than before and while she had to turn down some favours because of…strings attached, the ones she had felt were ethically alright to take had made her job so much easier. It really felt like the door to the mythical Inner Washington, where deals were made and the real work got done, had finally opened for her just a crack. She was thrilled. She was also dead tired.

"I've seen this before, with your father."

She felt jittery, nervous of where this little conversation was going. "Kai I'm not really in the mood for story-time right now."

"You remind me of him you know. His first term as school governor."

"What? How?"

"He was the same way you were. Overworked and refused to slow down. He was nervous, worried he'd only get a single term. You know he only won by a recount?"

She did, it was an old story in the family that daddy liked to trot out when he had guests over. Anna had won with sixty-nine percent, an unfathomable, gigantic number. Her father had tousled her hair like she was five again and told her how well she was going to do, so much better than her old man. No pressure, dad. "Yes."

"He did the same thing. Worked all hours of the day, on important things. It almost burned him out. I swear if not for your mother he'd have had five heart attacks before he was fifty."

"I don't see what this has to do with-"

"I'm not your father Anna, but I do care about you a great deal. You need to take a break."

"I take breaks."

"When? Your three-day weekend was long ago and if I recall you spent it talking with a certain Mister Patrick Anderson in various clubs. Where have you been since then, and not as part of work? Just because you wanted to go?"

She already had her answer lined up. "Hah! Shows what you know. I went to Tiana's restaurant a few weeks…ago." Oh, wow. Wow. That sounded so much worse out loud than it had in her head.

"A visit to a bar or a party out of state isn't a break. You need to go home Anna, if only for a few days."

Anna swept a hand across her desk. She had an inch-thick report about school building conditions. She had another about bullying and drop-out statistics. She had a committee report about funding mismanagement and another about state versus federal regulations. "I need to be here to deal with these things Kai."

"These problems have all existed long before you sat in this office Anna," Kai said, in the voice of someone who had seen similar people behind similar desks pointing at similar paperwork all his life.

"And I want them to not exist anymore when I leave," she shot back.

"The good people who elected you will understand if you spare a week to go home and not self-destruct." Kai leaned forward. "Anna, if this is about Leif…"

It was, kind of. It had been a bad campaign. It had been a very bad campaign. She had won in the end of course, but the man's hooks had left scars in her that still felt raw years later. When she had first announced her candidacy she had some crazy illusion that because she was so young and because she was just so nice that they would have a good clean campaign. Just the issues ma'am.

Oh Anna.

If you had opened a Washington dictionary you would be forgiven for wondering why the name Leif Westergard wasn't right there under 'old politics'. Also right there under 'snake'. The man had been a congressman for well over two decades the first time Anna had even thought about throwing her hat into the ring. He was statesmanlike and palatial, and he ran Texas like a benevolent king. He wasn't old money, but he used the job title to pry the things he wanted from the hands of others. He took money from anyone offering it and piled up favours like a dragon hoarded gold. He knew the oil men and the mining men and the far-right and the centre and played himself as their only friend in the whole world against the statist democrats that would raise their taxes and the milquetoast republicans who would compromise away their guns and bibles. The papers loved him for his charm, loved his huge family of sons for their good looks and headlines (at least one of them was usually running for something with his daddy's help, at least one of them was in good-natured trouble once a week), and enough people across all the political spectrum tolerated the man just enough to give him reliable fifty-two percent of the vote. His grip on Texas politics had seemed utterly unassailable. Her father had always hated him, and when Anna had first run for school-board and seen the state that endless cutbacks, unrealistic targets and politicising had left them in she had hated him too.

Are you sure about this darling? daddy had asked her gently when she had first told him she intended to run, the only time he had ever shown her anything other than full-throated support. She knew why. Men with twice her experience, more well-liked and ten times more charismatic and savvy than her had crossed Leif to try and wrest him from his throne, and every single one of them had left the ring like a whipped dog. Democratic opponents in the general election were branded as pro-gay, anti-gun tax-raising weaklings and that was bad enough, but Leif always kept the worst for anyone who dared to challenge him in the primary. Skeletons were dug up and dragged out and hung on signs all over the state. Family members were examined to the tenth degree for any hint of scandal. School records and childhood problems and idle speculation were brought out and twisted into pretzels until they said whatever the old man wanted them to say.

Cross me and die, was the message Leif Westergard presented to his own party, and for over twenty years it had worked, until Anna had come along.

Do we really think this girl has the experience? The wisdom? The courage to lead our great state? She says she wants to fix our schools when she's barely out of one herself.

How much does the girl think this is all going to cost? Who is it who's going to have to pay for all these new computers so kids can surf Myspace in school? Who's going to pay for these illegals to sit and learn next to our children?

Does she really think Texas is small enough that it can be fixed with a little spit and glue? Maybe all that time on her father's knee – and there's a man no stranger to the left, I'll remind you – has convinced her we need her opinions more than we need common sense.

And over and over like a metronome, day in and day out. The only part of the whole mess Anna had taken pleasure in near the end was the increasing desperation as the campaign went on and Leif had seen his fifty-two percent drop to fifty-one, then to an even fifty. The day the polls had them neck and neck she had smiled at what must be going through his head, at the same time she had gritted her teeth at the true storm about to be unleashed.

It had been more subtle than a tornado, but no less damaging. The south wasn't what it had been even ten years ago. You couldn't just say those words out loud anymore. You might gain the far-right, the very old and the very stupid, but you'd lose more from people who either embraced change or simply didn't care enough to fight it.

THE [RIGHT] [MAN] FOR THE JOB, Leif's posters began to say, and pictures of her started getting younger showing her in school rather than as she was. There wouldn't be any pictures of the men she had dated over the years, instead it was mailed envelopes containing her next to the few female friends she had in college and giant words with question-marks that barely meant anything, like 'VALUES?'. Those same friends phoned her up, some of them for the first time in years, sounding very worried about the visits they had gotten from reporters at extremely dodgy-sounding papers asking about their relationship. Questions were asked about why she never really dated. Organisations with names like the Family Care Foundation and the Christian Good Governance Council bought billboards. People from universities she had never heard of went on air and talked about her disastrous ideas for school budgets and how much she was trying to destroy Texas education. False quotes about amnesty and minority control. Collusion with democrats to sabotage Honest Old Leif's campaign. A letter bomb.

Nothing stuck, but they did it all anyway.

As the campaign had gone on she had lost ten pounds. She had felt tired all the time. More than once she'd collapsed at the end of the day and cried into the cheap hotel beds of whatever district they were staying in. She withdrew from everything except the campaign, lived and breathed it, woke up every morning until voting day thinking just get through one more day and you can collapse. One more.

But somehow the more she was assaulted on all sides the more she wanted the job. Like after all that mess she would be damned if she didn't wrest it from his cold lizard hands. She went around school districts and met with young people whose textbooks were a decade old, young mothers who'd had every form of assistance removed from them, immigrants tossed out onto the street by uncaring landlords. She listened to their complaints and worries and fears and she drank it all in to reinforce herself as Leif tried to knock her down.

When the results had come in it was those people who won it for her. Leif carried the old white vote and the money. Anna swept him everywhere else. When the time had come for the photo-shoot and the handshake she had looked into the old snake's eyes and smiled. I traded my life for this job and it was worth it for this moment.

"Anna, there were some…horrible things…said in the campaign," Kai said gently. "But that's past you now. You're in congress and he's an old man put out to pasture. You're not in a three-month campaign where every little thing is urgent, you have years before re-election. You can afford to rest sometimes!" Kai said, nearly the most passionate Anna had ever seen the man. "Your father sees the same thing. He asks when you're coming home."

Anna took a deep breath and resisted the urge to say when I'm not so busy. Because he was right. She'd always be busy. It was just…how she was. She saw a mountain of problems and she wanted to fix them now. She didn't want to take it slow and steady and chip away at them over the rest of her term, or a second term, or a decade. She wanted to take a sledgehammer and smash them all down at once. "I hate it when you're right," she whispered.

Kai smiled. "Should I tell Alice to re-arrange your schedule?"

"No, I have too much right now. But-" she said, raising her hand before Kai could complain. "If you can find me a week somewhere, I promise I'll go back home." She smiled just at the thought. Daddy would ask endless questions about the job and mother would endlessly tell him not to bother her so much. She could see the horses again. Maybe visit her old school.

A visit…oh!

"If it's after the opera," she said. She wasn't missing that. She had traded in several big favours to take another congressman's place in that audience and she wanted to go. No, she needed to go. She needed to meet her again, to feel that sense of peace she'd felt at the Weselton ball and had only got a tiny bit of when they had talked over the phone weeks ago.

And she wanted to make it a good visit too, not just another PR exercise, like they had both laughed at in the garden that night. She knew how those things went; there would be cameras and lights and they would watch the opera, but really they weren't even there for that. They'd be there to get another picture taken, of the both of them together, Officially Good Friends Now, Honest, and maybe from there a few mega-rich corp-owning individuals would manage to get their foot in the door to taking a crack at that mountain Elsa had, filled with all that wealth. Just more of what Anna did herself, but on the highest level instead of school-boards and committees.

Surely she could find some way to make it more meaningful than some soulless photo pitch? It was her first visit to the U.S. on government business right? There would be a visit to the White House for photo-shoots and discussions, probably before and after the opera. No way Anna rated highly enough to get into that meeting, but maybe she could do something of her own beforehand. Nothing ostentatious, nothing that would make either of them look silly or desperate. Something small, something significant that El- that the queen would like, rather than just one more overpriced re-production of the Declaration of Independence or a statue of Lincoln the President liked to give to visiting heads of state. She could do better than that.

But what did Elsa like?


"The opera! That's wonderful dear. I had no idea you liked it. Your father will be thrilled."

She shifted nervously in the chair, her chair. Well, her chair as long as she had been alive. Before her it had probably been her mother's chair, and her mother before that. Most likely generations of young Arendelle women had sat there, slightly embarrassed, as their mothers gushed at them. It was ancient and creaky and the stitching was coming undone on the armrests where Elsa picked at it when she was nervous. Now it felt like it was disassembling under her fingers. She'd hit wood before the hour was out. "Not…exactly?"

"Oh?" Queen-Mother Idunn looked at her only child, and her voice was the voice of a thousand mothers trying to weasel the truth out of a stubborn child.

Her Majesty Queen Elsa of Arendelle squirmed in her seat like a five year-old caught forgetting to do her homework. "It's more of an…opportunity." Yes, that sounded appropriate. "With the trouble and demands from Mr Weselton and his company I think it would be best to diversify national contacts in-"

"Elsa, love. You don't need to explain yourself to me," Idunn said, not fooled for a single moment. "If you think it's best for the country that you go then of course you must go."

The Queen Mother watched Elsa fidget on the seat and couldn't help but think; too young. She didn't even need to look hard to see past the dress and the tiara and the makeup to see there was still a girl trapped inside the woman.

Sometimes Idunn thought that the line of Arendelle was cursed to burn at both ends. Her husband had been the same. Agdar had been a late child and it was less surprising when his father had died of a heart attack, and his mother soon after (of a stroke, officially, but they both knew she had hurried to meet him). They had already been married and with Elsa on the way when Agdar had the crown lowered onto his head for the first time, and comments had been made about his relative youth, especially for one of the last absolute monarchies in the world. But he had been ready, bursting with ideas for Arendelle that would pave the way for modernisation beyond Grandfather's wildest dreams. He had opened disused land to development, invited geologists and scientists into the country to make use of the practically-free power that shone down on the country and gushed from underground vents. He'd taken the unprecedented step of opening the lower-mountain to mining companies. It had all paid off, in the end. For its small size Arendelle had one of the cleanest cities in all Europe, as well as a thriving scientific community. Now the final step that had seen nationalists screaming for his head looked to be the biggest victory of all. Then all of that had faded away as the fatigue had set in, and stayed past being a seasonal flue, and past the first round of pills and treatment, and finally past the final unclear diagnosis. Now he was forced to pass the torch and simply watch.

How cruel Elsa should find herself in the same position as her father but even earlier. As if fate had watched him thrive and said to his daughter; here then, once more, but worse.

Now Elsa looked like she was going to shine even brighter than her father. Idunn just worried she would crumble first from the pressure. Or rot in this old castle with nobody but staff and employees around her, and a sick father and his caretaker. If there was one ray of light lately it was these foreign visits. Elsa had come back from that awful man's party happier than she had ever seen her before. Elsa's happiness wasn't in leaping about the castle smiling and singing. She was more like her father in that. Elsa's happiness was a slight smile staring out of the window, or leaning back and relaxing in her chairs.

"Yes. Yes I think it would be. Best, that is."

This was new though. Her little Elsa was a lot of things but 'distracted' had never been one of them. "Are you feeling alright darling?"

Elsa blinked. "Yes mother, just a little tired." Tired-er.

"Is Gerda letting you get enough sleep?" Idunn asked, and knew the answer was probably 'barely'.

"Of course. It's just a complicated time."

"It sounds like a visit aboard would do you some good," she said. Now where had she seen this behaviour before? It was very famili- ah. Of course. "Elsa?"

"Mother?"

"Have you…met someone?"

The response was immediate, and Idunn resisted the urge to smile. Even if it was in happiness. Elsa would have suspected she was being laughed at, and by her own mother would have made it infinitely worse.

Elsa blushed and her fingers seemed to speed up in their attempts to unravel the leather chair she sat on. "What! It…not really? I met a friend, or at least I might have made a friend?" Elsa said. Idunn had the chair re-upholstered once a month or so, but always left a little strand free for Elsa to tease at. She wondered if her daughter realised she had tugged apart the chair maybe five times over.

This explained the happiness. "That's wonderful Elsa," she said, and meant it. The crown had stripped away Elsa's friends like a sander removing useless wood from a beam. Elsa had tried to keep up with them, sometimes furiously so with invitations and arrangements and trips, but after the coronation there simply hadn't been time in the end, and she had let them drift away. The companions she had sweat blood to make at university had been turned into Christmas cards once a year. "What are they like?"

Elsa told her, and Idunn watched as her daughter's eyes lit up in a way that was far, far too rare these days of mining permits and signing ceremonies. "Is this the reason for the sudden interest in the opera?" she risked a tease. "See the old singers, then sneak out and hit the town?"

"I doubt she'll be there, she's not really…I mean she's a congresswoman and junior, I think that matters? It will be just their President and a few others," Elsa said, but her voice betrayed her and Idunn heard otherwise. She wanted it. She wondered if this Anna knew the effect she had had on the young queen. She had better. Idunn wouldn't accept people who treated her little baby lightly.

"In my experience if someone wants something enough, they can make it happen." Agdar had always said that, before this wretched affliction had bound him to these rooms, forced to stay forever close to medical equipment and a bed. "Have you told your father?"

"Is he awake?" Elsa asked, her hands pausing in their eternal task.

Idunn smiled. "For his precious girl making a new friend he wouldn't stay asleep if all the devils of hell were keeping his eyes shut."


Anna leaned over her favourite employee's desk. "I need help."

"Certainly ma'am."

"Alice please, just call me Anna!"

Alice looked as if Anna had just suggested they both streak naked through the capitol. "I don't think I could really do that ma'am, not with you being my employee and all."

Once day she was just going to straight-up ask if Alice was putting it on or whether she really was some kind of deep cover sleeper agent for Her Majesty. Her last day of office probably, God knows what kind of mess the office would be in without her. "Whatever. I need help. How do I find out what a visiting dignitary likes?"

Alice's eyes lit up. "Her Majesty Queen Elsa?"

Strike two, the British loved monarchy. Anna would reveal the spy before the year was out. No, focus. "I need- I want to give her a gift when she visits officially, but I have no clue what to give her."

As if on cue Kai stuck his head around the corner of Anna's private room into the outer office. "Generally the President presents gifts to visiting dignitaries-"

"And he'll give her one of those little marble statues and a copy of the Bill of Rights!" Anna shout back. "That's about as personal as a sweater from an old grandmother. I mean I want to give her something that will mean something to her." She turned back to Anna. "How do we do this?"

Alice brushed a stray lock of blonde hair from her eyes – Alice always had amazing hair, somehow – and sat back in her chair, which creaked. For a long ten seconds Anna feared that the woman had wandered off into her own little world again, but: "Generally information like that is kept by the Gift Unit."

"Anna…" Kai's voice warned from beyond the two wooden doors. "I forbid you to-"

"No way am I asking the White House about this." A junior congresswoman asking for the personal information of a foreign head of state? No. She'd already called in a couple of her biggest favours and made a couple of promises to her new…suitors…to get into the reception party at all. She hadn't managed a spot next to her or anything, but she'd be nearby with a couple of other senators who had interests in the entire situation, just a few seats away from the box the President and Her Majesty would be occupying. That was close enough.

"Then I suppose we have to look outside the system," Alice said.

"How do you mean?" Anna asked, but Alice had already turned away from her boss to one of the nameless young interns who populated the office of every lawmaker in the city. She listened as Alice asked a question, and her stomach wrenched. "Really?" she asked.

"Of course ma'am, the newspapers have always been a good source of information on this sort of gossip.

"Not newspapers Alice, tabloids." Somewhere out in the city Pabby was shouting "worthless rags" into the air without knowing why.

"Certainly ma'am. But this is your best chance. Records are usually kept, and all of them have online archives."

On a hunch Anna twisted around, and yep, there he was. Kai stood at the doors that linked the office, an unsympathetic smile on his face. "Don't say a word," she warned him.

"I'll inform your father your visit may be delayed, as you are currently up to your arms in muck."

"Our arms," Anna said. No way at all was she going to suffer searching through endless tabloids alone, no way. "Alice, you know where I live right?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Oh now Anna this is truly cruel of you."

She ignored him. "Alice, have you ever had a – and I don't believe I'm saying this at my age – a sleepover?"


"Father?"

It used to be that just hearing that word from her lips would light up Agdar's face. It was so clear in Elsa's memories. She would walk in and ask for him and he would turn and smile down at her, and whatever problem she was having would feel halved just from knowing that he was there and he cared so much for her.

Now the best he could manage was a tired smile from eyes that were so heavy with fatigue they looked almost sunken and black. "My darling."

She perched on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb his body under the covers, or the tubes that scattered around him oddly. The the room could have been a normal bedroom wooden end-tables and all. She remembered that from her childhood too. In winter she would wake an hour early and crawl into her parent's bed, to nestle between them in warmth for a couple of quick hours before they had to wake. She knew he kept it the same way year after year for her and her mother, tried to make it look like he was just having a quick afternoon nap rather than the truth. But it had never fooled her for even a single second. If nothing else, the IV bags up by the headboard that her mother replaced more and more regularly would have broken the illusion. "How are you?"

It must have been a good day, as Agdar managed to lever himself to a sitting position with his elbows with only a little help from his wife. "I'm fine Elsa, just fine. What's this I hear about the opera? Make an old man happy and say you've seen the light."

She couldn't resist a smile, even here, in a room that had once contained so much joy for her and now only brought a sadness that made her feel immense guilt. God, she loved him so much. "Unfortunately not."

"She isn't going to the opera for the opera, dear," Idunn teased her husband. "She's more intent on the people she's going to the opera with."

"If the American President thinks he's going to date my daughter then…"

"Father, please." Surely all fathers didn't make awful jokes like this? "It's just a friend, that's all."

Agdar just smiled. "I'm delighted Elsa. Who are they?"

"Her name's Anna," Elsa said, and went on to talk about it all, from the Weselton party to the opera trip. For a few minutes she forgot about the room and the tubes and the bags under her father's eyes that kept him confined to the inner castle, close to medical equipment and a trained nurse, and she was sixteen again and talking about her first semester in university. From the outside, to Agdar and Idunn, they watched as some of the tiredness that had shrouded their little girl – and regardless of her age or the crown on her head she would always be their little girl – since the coronation seemed to just float away from her.

"She sounds wonderfully kind," Agdar said, as Elsa finished with a smile on her face. Especially compared to the bunch of those vultures I've met before. "I'd love to meet her."

"Well it's unlikely," Elsa said with a shrug, as if it barely mattered to her. She didn't fool either of them for a second though.

"You should try," Idunn said, as kindly but as firmly as she could manage without sounding overly motherly. If left to her own devices eventually Elsa would convince herself that it was no big deal. She could just be so stubborn that way. She would think herself through a labyrinth of self-justification and come out the other end believing it was actually better that they not meet, for whatever reason she would talk herself into, and that would be the end of it. She had seen the same happen with the few friends Elsa had made at university. She didn't want it to happen again. "You should do something nice for her."

"Oh, I don't really know if it would be appropriate to-"

"Nonsense," Agdar said. "There's nothing wrong with giving gifts to people when you're in their country. How do you think I seduced your mother?"

Elsa blushed scarlet. "Father!"

"You should find something she likes and at least mail it to her." Idunn put her hand on Elsa's shoulder. "It's always a pleasure to meet new people."

That at least Elsa wasn't going to deny.


"Anna what on earth are you doin- oh, hello Alice."

"Good evening Mrs Maldon."

"Girl what did I say the last time we met? Call me Tiana."

"Don't bother, she won't listen," Anna said, tripping and wheezing her way up the stairs to the brownstone she called home. Tiana watched in disbelief at the load she carried in her arms; what had to be two or three dozen newspapers. Not just any regular newspapers either, the shiny plasticky material that would have screamed tabloid if the giant bold letterings and celebrity close-ups on the front hadn't done it already. "Excuse me. Ooooh god, that's better," she said in relief as she crossed the threshold and dropped her papery weight inside the front door.

Tiana looked at the pile of tabloids like a dog that had just done its business in her porch. "What on earth are you doing Anna?" she said, in a tone that made it damn clear she had better have a good explanation. It reminded Anna of her mother.

"Research."

"Don't you have people who do this for you? Doesn't Alice do this for you?"

"Well today we both are," Anna said, heaving the pile back into her arms and making for the stairs up to her room. The weird quiet one followed after her like a faithful dog.

Tiana couldn't help it, she was curious. There was something…happier…about Anna, that hadn't been there this morning. Usually the pale thing went to work at the crack of dawn barely awake and came home at sunset, barely awake. In Tiana's experience that meant a job and a boyfriend, but the man who forwarded her tenants – Kai – had nixed the latter pretty fast. And what was with that stack of trash paper?

When Tiana entered Anna's room a few minutes later the pair had already gotten started. Anna had changed out of her suit and into some scraggly old sweatpants and a sweater, sprawled out on the floor at the foot of the bed. Alice was in – swear to the Lord – a blue dress that could have come from the middle ages, her legs folded demurely under her like she was at a garden party. Both of them sat on the floor. "Alright, what are you two girls up to?"

"Looking for information," Anna said, as she picked up the first tabloid from the waist-high pile, and flicked it open to the contents page.

"In that junk?"

"Her Majesty is visiting the opera, and Ms Summerford intends to present her with a gift!" Alice intoned happily. "But she doesn't know what would be best. I suggested a small porcelain figure, such as a cowboy or horse that they have in Texas, that she can put on a desk or mantelpiece to see and admire, but…"

"No," Anna said, instantly, in a voice which made clear she'd been through this subject before.

"No," Tiana agreed quickly. Wait. "'Her Majesty'?"

"Queen Elsa, of Arendelle."

Tiana looked at Anna. To Anna's credit, she only blushed a little bit. "When I said make some friends you really took it to heart, huh sugar?"

"Maybe."

You adorable little creature. Tiana wished she could have been from Texas, if it got her a rep like Anna. Well, maybe not.

"Is she upset?" Alice asked in polite confusion as Tiana left.

"I don't think so. Maybe if we…" She trailed off as the woman came back in a second later, her customary yellow dress replaced with jeans and a shirt. Admittedly the shirt was still yellow. "Tiana?"

"Six eyes are better than four."

"Oh thank you. Thankyouthankyouthankyou."

"Don't thank me 'till you know what chores you'll be doing all next month." Tiana picked up a tabloids, and the three girls started reading.


Elsa liked to watch the sun go down.

From the northernmost corridor of the castle she could look out across the river and the town, all the way up to the mountain itself. As the ball of fire dipped underneath the snow for the day the light bloomed, reflected from the white surface, and for a moment it looked like frozen Arendelle was at the heart of the sun itself.

Something Anna would like.

The thought ran through her mind in a circle, like an athlete so fast it kept lapping the others and reminding them of his existence. She would be thinking about the contracts to be arbitrated by her staff and the budget for the year to be confirmed, and the preparations to be made for the upcoming trip, and the thought would run by them all and she would find her attention dragged away to it. She'd be thinking about what she'd be presenting to the American President as a gift and somehow it would slip from her mind and she'd wonder whether Anna liked that of thing. In truth she had no clue, and it had been driving her crazier all day. Heads of state were expected to trade innocuous or meaningless gifts that represented something about their country. Elsa had heard the stories about the little statues and the Bill of Rights already and wondered if she should do the same, but somehow she doubted a small statue of a mountain and a copy of the announcement proclaiming her great-to-the-n th ancestor the ruler of all the land, anointed of God and defender of the faith, would go over well in a constitutional republic.

She'd had friends, in the past. What had they liked? Surely there was something all of them had enjoyed in common that would serve? But that just brought her back around to the same problem; she didn't want it to be a present, she wanted it to be Anna's present.

Elsa caught herself rubbing her hands together, and pulled them apart. This was ridiculous. This was…this was downright silly. She was a queen, she had responsibilities to a nation and she had problems that were utterly colossal. She needed to worry about how she could corral the US President into jerking the reins of the mining industry that was breathing down her neck and making increasingly loud demands. She needed to find a way to get wealth out of her mountain without trading away her sovereignty to do it. She needed to calm down her own countrymen who were only seeing the riches and not the dangers. She did not need to worry about a gift for a woman she barely knew and probably wouldn't even meet next month.

But here she was anyway, pacing up and down the corridor like a love-struck teenager as the sun finally sunk under the mountain, the street-lights in the city below alighting one by one to make pinpricks of white in the darkness.

She couldn't go on like this. "Kristoff."

"Elsa?" he asked, and she knew they were alone in the corridor. Good.

"I need your help with something."

"Is this about Anna?"

Elsa's head whirled fast enough to make her neck spin. "How did you?"

The blonde lump shrugged. "Come on Elsa, I've known you long enough. What's the problem?"

She explained, and the more she did the more she felt that blush, which seemed to have started with her father's joke and never really went away all day, creep up even further onto her cheeks.

Kristoff was who she needed. He was practical, reliable. He got things done. Granted every member of her detail was the same, but unlike Marshall or the other guards around her there was a gentler side to him as well, that he only brought out with those he trusted. She'd always known he had it, even before he had joined the Security Service, when he was just another grunt fresh out of Arendelle Reserves and in the Protective Services, and she was a crown princess trying to get through her education intact and driving her new security detail crazy. Kristoff had been assigned to her because he looked like he actually belonged in a university – and a member of every sports club on campus at that – and they'd grown closer than was probably appropriate for a bodyguard and his principle. Not that close, regardless of what certain gossipy rags liked to print, but he had been a rock when she needed one.

He nodded as she explained through the blush. "So let me get this straight. You're going to the opera as a diplomatic visit."

"Yes."

"

"You talked with Anna a while back, why didn't you ask her then?"

"Well, that was just more of a quick social call," Elsa said, and there went her fingers entwining themselves again. "We…I mentioned maybe arranging a visit…at some point?"

Kristoff stared at his queen. "Elsa do you even know if she's going to be there?"

"She'll be there."

"Will she?"

"…Maybe?"

"Elsa," Kristoff sighed. It was like being back at the university again. "You really are bad at this."

"At what?"

"People. Meeting them." Keeping them, he didn't say. That part wasn't her fault, after all. It was a lonely job.

"Says the man who buys gourmet dog-food." She would have smiled but she felt too nervous. "I really need your help Kristoff."

Kristoff resisted the urge to make a joke, only because he could see how worried Elsa was about the whole thing. It was something he really hadn't seen since they had been at university, a student and her undercover friend/partner. In fact the last time he had seen her this way was when she had studied too long and accidentally caused a friend to miss a job interview. She had spent a week feeling guilty, then pored until midnight over websites and messages to try and find something to make it up to her. In the end the wronged girl had brushed it off as an honest mistake, but Elsa worried. She worried and fretted and she only asked for help as a last resort. Maybe it wasn't entirely healthy but it was how she was, and he hated to see her wrapped inside her own head, especially these days. "I'll see what I can do," he said.

Instantly Elsa seemed to deflate a few inches, as if the stress had been physically keeping her up. "Thank you so much."

"A pleasure, your majesty."

She bopped him playfully on the arm. "Stop it," she said, and smiled. If the man said he was going to see what he could do, that meant he was going to get it done. She felt so much better. Thank God for Kristoff.


Thank God for Tiana and Alice.

"I don't know how much longer I can do this kiddo."

"Stay with me. Alice, help me keep Tiana awake."

"I can't ma'am. I may perish."

"We've made some progress."

"Anna I sincerely doubt your budget stretches to bespoke Versace." Tiana threw down a glossy magazine, opened to a picture of the queen taken at a dinner somewhere in Europe. "Honestly girl I don't think you're going to find out what she wants like this."

Anna sighed. It was hours later and she was beginning to agree with her landlord-slash-friend. The tabloids were…well…tabloids. Pages and pages on how glamourous she was, more pages about her hair and dress, pages wondering what about whether she was seeing any young princes. But Queen Elsa didn't speak to anyone. So there was nothing about her private life. A little bit about her abdicated father the King but no information why, a little bit about where she had studied in childhood but nothing from her friends back then. She was just an infuriating closed book, she let nothing in. In all the pictures there was an expression of polite…well…disinterest, was all Anna could describe it as. She should know, in government she had seen it used enough. It was the expression you used when you couldn't tell someone they were boring and walk off but had to stand there until they got the hint. In all the pictures it was there; she looked fabulous and bored out of her skull.

Which was strange because that hadn't been the Elsa she had met or talked with, not at the garden party and not over the phone last week. The woman she had met had been just so nice, and warm and talkative, maybe even a little nervous. She had a great smile and her eyes had lit up when she had talked about her country. She had been enchanting. Nothing like the distant and emotionless ice queen these papers were painting her as.

"She likes snowflakes."

Anna looked up from the tabloid in her lap in despair and not a little fatigue. "Hmm?" Alice's head was already back down on the pages and Anna might have thought she was imagining things if she didn't know the strange young woman better. "What was that Alice?"

"The queen likes snowflakes."

Anna and Tiana shared a glance, the black woman raising a single confused eyebrow. Anna shuffled closer on the floor 'till she was next to the woman. "Say what? How? Why?"

Alice brought up the scissor-cut pieces of magazine she had been collecting, the ones Anna had thought she was making a collage from or something. "Look, she likes snowflakes because she's always wearing one," she said gently, as if talking to a pair of stubborn children.

"I don't…"

Alice stretched and brought more pieces up. "Look ma'am." She pointed. "A ring." Pointed. "Small necklace." Pointed. "Dress cufflinks."

"She's right," Anna and Tiana both said at the same time, bringing up tabloids of their own. It only took them a second, and then another fifteen minutes to confirm it. Whenever Elsa was photographed outside of her own country she wore a small snowflake, somewhere on her body. It wasn't even jewellery all the time either. Sometimes it was sown into the fabric of the dress she was wearing. Anna remembered now, she had been wearing one embroidered into her gorgeous dress the night they had met.

This is it. She could do this. Something small that mattered to her, to show her that someone really did care, and not just trying to curry favour for a shot at that huge treasure mountain. She didn't realise she had said it out loud 'till Tiana replied.

"Well, that's easy enough. Trading these trashy rags out for Tiffany catalogues is something I can get behind." Tiana clapped her hands. "Better yet I know some brothers who run a precious gems and jewellery store on the east side, you can ask them."

"Me? Not us? I thought we were doing a thing"

Tiana brushed off her jeans from the dusty carpet and stood. "Little girl you're on your own now, I just felt sorry for the blonde here." She threw a thumb in Alice's direction, who was happily flicking through the horoscopes. "Besides, look at the time."

Anna did so. Oh, god, they'd been at this a while. She had done it again, become so totally engrossed in something that she'd forgotten other people maybe weren't quite so invested. She felt a rush of shame come to her cheeks and stood. "Sorry! I'm sorry, of course. Thanks for your help."

Tiana gave Anna a confused look, then a smile. "Don't worry yourself, happy to help one of my tenants in trouble. Especially one who's going to have quite a workload in exchange."

Anna smiled. Worth it. She opened her mouth to say thanks again but all that came out of her mouth was a huge yawn.

Alice stood. "Anything else I can help you with ma'am?"

The girl was just utterly unreal. "No thanks Alice, thanks so much for all of today." There would be something nice on Alice's desk some next week, she promised herself. Maybe a pillow.

Anna waved Alice down the street and went back in, Tiana already having vanished to her own set of rooms on the top floor with her husband, and she was left alone in her room. She collapsed onto her bed and stared up at the ceiling, feeling good. Feeling great. It had been such a good week. She'd made real actual progress at her job, and the way she had dreamed she would, and she'd managed to swing tickets to the Presidential bash, and she'd figured out something she could do for Elsa that wouldn't come off as cheap tacky trash. A great week.

Now she just needed to find the exact right thing, and somehow figure out a way to get both of them in the same room next month to give it to her. But she could think about that tomorrow.

It was almost three in the morning when Anna finally closed the browser app and put her phone on charge.