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Elsa woke up with her head throbbing and her arm tightly bandaged. Looking down at her hands, she was shocked to see that they were encased in metal shackles, her fingers wrapped around a bar within the iron mitt. These restraints were connected to a heavy chain which was secured to the floor in the center of the room, so that she could walk within a roughly eight foot diameter. She sat up on the wooden cot and tiny lights danced on her vision. Without warning, Elsa began to cry, her shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs.
The fear of what might happen to her, mixed with the regret for her actions was added to the years and years of heartache that she had kept mostly contained. Frost broke out on the shackles, spreading down the chain and onto the floor, spreading to the walls and moving to the ceiling. Soon, the entire cell was thick with ice as she continued to cry. Noises outside the door made her pause. She could hear voices, and there was one voice that, especially when muffled through a door, was very familiar.
"No! Let me see Elsa! I need to see her!" Anna argued.
"You weren't even supposed to know she was here. She might hurt you again, and you'll be worse off than you are now! She's dangerous, Anna," a man's voice said. Elsa recognized it to be Hans. She realized that he was right. As much as she longed to be with her younger sister, who knew what could happen?
"Elsa's not dangerous," Anna protested.
"That's what you said the last time," Hans retorted.
"Hans the ice in my heart is going away. If she did hurt me, we could just kiss again."
"No, Anna, we're leaving. It's getting late and you're still recovering. You need your rest."
With that, the voices grew quiet and distant and Elsa was left truly alone once again. So a true love's kiss? That's what breaks the heart. It makes sense. The troll did the heart is less easily changed than the head.
After delivering Anna back to her room, Hans went to the library where a blazing fire was going, and wearily sat in an armchair near the fire. Keeping up with Anna was difficult, and keeping up his act was even harder. He was exhausted. The thought of a true love's kiss plagued him. He certainly did not feel that strongly about Anna, he simply wanted the throne. Doesn't it have to be a two-way thing? How, then, had Anna's frozen heart thawed?
The flap in the cell door opened and a man's voice came through it, "Queen Elsa, I have food for you so I must unlock your cuffs. You have to swear you will not freeze me though."
"I solemnly swear."
The door creaked open and in stepped a guard, holding a tin plate of food. He looked young, and was obviously nervous to be in the presence of the ice witch. He set the plate on the cot and went to unlock Elsa's hands. His fingers were shaking and he kept glancing up at her.
"You do know I don't try to hurt anyone. I'm not going to blast you or something," Elsa said, looking into the guards face.
The boy relaxed a little, "I will be back in fifteen minutes. Don't try to do anything because you are currently surrounded by guards who are waiting to kill you if you give them a reason to."
"Don't worry, I have no interest in causing trouble," Elsa said in a serious voice, though inwardly she was laughing. I can imagine the rumors are flying.
The boy left and Elsa stretched her stiff fingers. She started on the plate of food, suddenly starving. The guard came back just as she was finishing the crust of bread and relocked the cuffs. Elsa, having noticed that her shoulder had not pained her as much as she'd expected it to, asked, "My shoulder seems to be healing a bit- how long was I out?"
"Prince Hans brought you back at night, and you were out all day yesterday. The doctor patched you up when Hans brought you back," the young man answered. Not interested in further conversation with the prisoner, he abruptly made for the door and soon it was locked, leaving Elsa alone again.
Elsa lay back on the cot, confused. She had given up her freedom- but why? It made running away in the first place so pointless. She realized with a sigh that she had never expected things to go the way they had. If she had been left in peace, she would not have minded being alone on the North Mountain- it was what she'd longed for, in fact. But when Anna had found her, all she could see was the little girl that she'd nearly killed. Elsa's worst fears had almost come true, and while she'd done her best to control her raging emotions when telling Hans of the ordeal, she felt immense guilt in the fact that she couldn't control her powers. Then, the soldiers came and Elsa had killed two of them without even thinking. That's what scared her the most. She hadn't even thought about what she was doing as she pushed the man off of the balcony or impaled the other with an icicle. They might have been the Anna in someone else's life. In that moment, though, she had become the monster everyone feared she was.