A week later. Anna was sitting on a swing in the garden, trying not to think about the fact that exactly a week ago was when she should have gotten married. But everything had changed now. There was no need to dwell on it. She would be fine.

"No I won't," she barely whispered, then shook her head. She would be. She had Elsa, Olaf, Sve – no, she didn't have Sven. He was long gone, gone with Kristoff. The liar and the murderer…

No. She couldn't think of Kristoff like that. Somehow, whenever she closed her eyes and thought of him, she remembered him as a kind man, a loving man, a laughing man, a man who made snow angels and laughed at Anna's chocolate moustache. A man who loved her. And yet, he had deceived her.

Anna felt, and had for the past week, as if it was all a dream. Perhaps it hadn't hit her properly yet, perhaps that was the only way her overworked brain could cope. Either way, she had to pinch herself occasionally to remind herself that this was real life, that she was awake. She would bounce out of bed in the morning, thinking Elsa's back, a wedding to plan… oh.

Anna got off the swing with a grunt. Thinking wasn't going to help. He was gone, and that was that. He was going to stay gone, and that was that. No point feeling sad about it.

But she still was.

She was interrupted from her thoughts by the sound of a familiar humming. It was Olaf, but not looking like his happy, carefree self – instead he was singing a slow, sad dirge as he walked through the garden, jumping over the lines on the path.

One day all will be gone,

And fate will await,

But I'll be your snowman

For you, even in your state.

It will be okay,

I will always stay,

Your little baby snowman,

Your creation, your fate.

Don't worry, you're safe,

My life, for you I'll take.

"What song was that?" asked Anna.

"Oh, just a little something I made up about Elsa and the way she is turning cold and how I'll always be here for you," said Olaf, in his Olaf way. "And isn't it lucky that I ran into you! I was just looking for you, to tell you... Ohhh…" And here, Olaf was distracted by staring at a little flower, his entire body bent towards it.

Anna knelt down next to him and looked at it. It was just a little daisy, nothing special, growing in the cracks of the stone path. Its little yellow petals reached up towards the sky, and Olaf sighed with wonder at it. "What? It's just a weed," said Anna.

"Nothing is just a weed," said the snowman, his little cloud bobbing above his head as he spoke. "Everything is special."

"What makes this one special, then?"

"The gardener must have seen something special in it too." And Olaf wiggled his legs, smiling up at Anna.

"I don't see what he could have seen in it," said Anna, slightly bitterly. "It's just a plain old daisy to me."

"Ahh, but look closely!"

Anna looked, and frowned. "I still don't see anything!"

"You don't see because you're only looking at the daisy. You need to look around it."

"Nope, I see nothing."

Olaf grinned up at Anna. "Don't you see? It's the only daisy in the whole of the garden. All of the others were wiped out by the frost or pulled up by the gardener. But there's only one daisy, and it's beautiful, isn't it?"

Now that Anna was looking at it, she had to admit that it was beautiful. Its little petals were bright yellow, and it gave of an aura of resilience, as if it was saying, "Look at me, I'm the only one of my kind! I survived when the others didn't!"

"People are a bit like that too," said Olaf thoughtfully. "There's only one Anna. There's only one Elsa. There's only one Olaf. There's only one Kristoff."

"I know. There's only one of me, which means I get to make all of the mistakes."

"Aha, but you won't make them again, will you?"

"I should hope not!" snorted Anna. "That's the last time I get engaged to a… a murderer and a liar. Two times is enough for me."

"And if we never make our mistakes again, then eventually we will run out of mistakes to make, won't we?"

Anna was bowled over by this logic. "That... that's actually quite true."

Olaf nodded happily. However, his smile slowly faded from his face, and after a few moments of silence, he said, "Anna, you don't really think that Kristoff did it, do you?"

"Why wouldn't he? I've made the mistake before," said Anna dejectedly. "Besides, Elsa wouldn't lie to me. I would bet my life on it."

"It just seems a little hard to believe," said Olaf thoughtfully. "I mean, Kristoff really loved you."

"He obviously loved power more. Just another Hans."

"Hmmm." The snowman was silent then, before swiftly picking the flower.

"Olaf, what did you do that for?!"

Olaf held the little daisy up. "This is you." He plucked a petal off. "That was when your sister left you." Another petal was pulled off. "That was when your parents died." Thirteen little petals viciously plucked off. "All those years outside your sister's door." Another petal, gone. "When Hans betrayed you." The last little petal hung for a moment, before it, too, slowly floated to the ground. "When Kristoff left." The little daisy bud on its green stalk limped in the warm summer air.

"And that's supposed to make me feel better." To her annoyance, Anna felt tears spring to her eyes. She was always so close to crying nowadays. "Thanks a lot, Olaf. So I'm a dejected, empty flower bud now."

Olaf smiled gently at Anna, who was still kneeling on the stone path, and waved his twig fingers. To Anna's surprise, the little petals sprung into the air and hovered around the little daisy. "Those first five years of your life, the happy ones, where you and Elsa were the bestest friends that you could ever find." And at another little twirl of his fingers, five petals magically reattached themselves to the flower bud. "These past three years, when you and Elsa have become friends again." Three petals attached themselves. "These three years, when you've known Kristoff." Three more attached themselves. "When you met Hans – don't look like that, it was a happy moment!" Another petal. "When you met Kristoff – he can have two petals, because he's so nice." Another petal. "When Kristoff proposed." One more petal. "Your birthday party, the one where you and Kristoff first kissed, and where you gave Kristoff his sleigh."

Just one more little petal hovered, in mid-air, by the bud. Anna realised she had been holding her breath, and let it out with one slow exhale. "Oh Olaf, I didn't know you could do that!"

"And," said Olaf, with a flourish of his twig fingers, "The last petal. When you sacrificed yourself for Elsa." The petal floated over to the bud, and attached itself. With an Olaf smile, the snowman held the daisy out to Anna.

Anna took it with trembling fingers. She set it in her hair, and managed a little smile. "That's amazing, Olaf."

"The bad things that happen to us take things away from us," said Olaf, "But the things that make us happy add to us. In the end, we're a completely different person – and that's okay. Because underneath, you still have the same bud. You're still the same Anna that you always were."

The tears were threatening to spill out now, and Anna smiled as she blinked them away. "Thank you, Olaf."

"You're welcome," said the little snowman happily, before his smile faded. He said, quite slowly and a little sadly, "Anna, I won't see you for a while. I'm going away."

"You're what?" cried Anna. "Just for a little while, right?"

"No, Anna, I have to leave."

"Why? Why, not you too… you can't just leave! Why are you going?"

The snowman hesitated for a moment, before saying, quite slowly, "I can't stay with Elsa anymore. Besides, I thought that it would be fun to go up the mountains, see the sites!"

"Why can't you stay with Elsa anymore? You can't just leave, she needs us!" cried Anna, not understanding how the dear snowman, who had always loved Elsa with all his heart, could possibly leave.

"I just can't. I don't want to stay with her anymore," said Olaf slowly. Then he got up, ignoring Anna's pleading eyes as he turned and walked down the garden path towards the back gate without looking back. As he went, skipping and dancing, he sang,

Goodbye, goodbye, good friend goodbye,

Cause now it's time to go,

But hey, I say, well that's okay,

I'll see you very soon, I know!

And Anna watched him go through the gate into the forest beyond, angrily wiping the tears away and wondering how on earth everyone could possibly be leaving her. It just wasn't fair.

/

The next day, Anna was sitting in the living room with Elsa, reading a book whilst casually eavesdropping on Elsa and Charles' conversation. She still wasn't completely sure that Charles hadn't had something to do with Elsa's disappearance, and listening to him talking politely to her sister was hard to listen to without feeling the anger build in her body, tempting her to lash out with one big stroke…

She sighed. She wanted to lash out more and more these days.

"How can I get more money in the treasury?" Elsa was saying, and Anna tried hard not to yawn. Economics were so boring.

"There really is only one way to do that at this point, and that would be raising the taxes," Charles said. "Keep in mind that in some cases, this can cause inflation."

"Well, I don't really care," Elsa snapped.

Anna's head jerked up at the sound of her sister's tone. "Do we need money?" she asked worriedly, forgetting for a moment that she was trying to maintain a disguise of reading.

"Yes, and please don't interrupt Anna," Elsa sighed.

"I am not sure that we are in a great need of more money," Charles said, extremely carefully. "We could get along fine with some added cautions. It's just the cost of all the search parties that have set us back, but nothing so crucial that we can't fix it with a bit of budgeting…"

"No!" cried Elsa, so suddenly that Anna jerked her head up again. "We can't. You see… far up in the mountains, there is a village that helped me when I was lost. I wish to repay them. They are very poor, and I want to give them something in return for their help."

"You never mentioned them before," said Anna, interested.

"Well, I'm telling you now, and please don't interrupt." The Queen turned back to Charles. "Raise the taxes, do whatever it takes. I want one hundred thousand gold coins sent up there at the beginning of the month."

"One – one hundred thousand! Your majesty –"

"That's an order, Charles."

Charles took a little gulp, and fixed his reading glasses. "Very well, your majesty. If that is indeed the case, we will have to…"

And that was where Anna lost him, as he continued to drone on about some sort of financial drabble. Not very interesting. Besides, Anna didn't think it really mattered. All that mattered was that Kristoff, Olaf, everyone was gone, except Elsa, and even Elsa was snapping at her, and telling her not to interrupt in a way that she had never used to do.

Her world was falling about her ears, and she couldn't do anything.

On account of all the stress and anxiety that Anna was facing, the next day she suffered a small breakdown. She didn't like to think of it afterwards (Elsa had been the only person who was able to calm her sobbing self down), but the doctor prescribed rest and no strenuous activities.

So for the next month, Anna was confined to her bed, as she tried to come to terms with her new life. It got worse when the doctor said she could get up, but she had stopped wanting to leave the sheets by that time. It took several more weeks before she was comfortable to creep about the castle in her nightgown, clinging onto her sister. It took her the entire winter before she was over it, and time had begun to heal her pain over the loss of Kristoff and Olaf.

It was because of this that she did not know what Elsa was doing to the people, and why the city had become downcast again.

/

let's excuse that little 'bear in the big blue house' reference lol

Also thank you so much for all the feedback on this lil story! I really appreciate each and every one of you xx