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Arendelle and its peeps aren't mine.

Chapter 10

Elsa drew her cloak more tightly around her shoulders—not because she felt the November chill but simply out of habit. As a child, and before her isolation, she'd observed this tendency in others and adopted their mannerisms in order to fit in. Or, at least, hide what she was. Now it had become an unconscious gesture, a nervous tick, something she did without thinking.

She never did fit in. Not then and not now.

Kristoff no longer accompanied her on her daily calls to the people of Arendelle. It wasn't a good idea, he'd remarked apologetically, since his exposure to the pathogen was pretty much a sure thing, at this point, and he'd only be a danger to the healthy few. Elsa was disappointed, but she knew he was right. It was just that, for a little while, she'd sort of fit in with him. He was as much of a loner as she, after all ... And then it had been them against the world—or rather, against this cursed epidemic.

Anyway. Unlike the rest of her acquaintance, Kristoff didn't have any practical expectations or ulterior motives in spending time with her. True, an audience with the queen was considered no small accomplishment amongst the various merchants and statesmen and representatives of the people. They respected her, adored her, loved her even—but as a just and charitable sovereign, not as a person. Not as a young woman simply in need of a friend.

She had wasted no time in sharing Kristoff's theory with her council of state and staff of royal physicians. She'd sequestered herself for hours with these men—as well as a small fleet of civil engineers—in order to determine how best to purge the city's water supply of its contagion. They had all nodded appreciatively, for they understood at once that the queen and her ice master were correct. In the meantime, all able-bodied physicians were summoned to the palace, where they were told to instruct the queen's guard on the necessity of boiling corrupted water in order to purify it. Then, with the help of these soldiers, they were dispatched on an information campaign that would hopefully buy the people of Arendelle some time.

It was the water. It had always been the water.

Which explained why Kristoff never got sick. He'd been absent for the start of the outbreak, when sailors from far away places had disembarked in the port district and mingled with the local populace. Somehow the contaminant had entered the city's water system, and while an aberrant few had managed to escape infection, the rest had contracted it through one of their most fundamental needs as human beings: thirst. They drank it because they had to. They bathed in it, cooked with it, and washed their linens in wooden tubs filled with it. This combined with the intense proximity of individuals within Arendelle, and the disease became pervasive and inescapable.

This burning fever that spread like a massive conflagration through her city …

And yet Kristoff had twice avoided the contagion—first by summering in the mountains, where the water was pristine and the press of human existence simply a nonissue; and second through his general distaste for the city supply. He'd been told to dispose of his ice harvest, and instead of complying he had allowed it to thaw and used it for himself. As far as he was concerned, it simply tasted better, reminded him of home at a time when he felt decidedly not-at-home.

It wasn't until he'd drunk from the local woman's cup that his own wellness was called into question. So he waited. And Elsa waited. And after three days had passed, he began to show signs of the fever.

"You're warm," she noted from her seat in his loft.

"Well," he said wryly, "relative to you, I suppose that's probably the case."

Elsa smiled without humor. He'd attempted to make light of the situation, and she tried to play along, but she was concerned. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands braced on his knees and his head hanging in a way that suggested he felt queasy.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, though she dreaded the answer.

He brought his head up and sighed. Then he kneaded the heels of his hands into his eyes as though by doing so he could make them see better.

"Not so good," he admitted. What was the point of lying? He didn't have anything to prove—certainly not to Elsa, who'd nearly frozen his heart once …

It was the thing they didn't talk about. None of them. Not even Anna, though she'd tried once, not long after the incident with Hans, when she and her sister had invited Kristoff to the palace for dinner. He'd been uncomfortable, Elsa had been uncomfortable, and Anna had tried to lift both their moods by addressing the whole sorry issue head on.

It hadn't gone too badly, actually, until she'd come to the part about Elsa turning her new pal into a "Kris-toffsicle." Then things had gone south pretty quickly. Kristoff had actually choked on his soup (something he seemed to do quite frequently, given his display at Freya's house). The queen had frozen their entire table setting, and Anna had nearly burst into tears for having, once again, ruined a good thing by putting her foot in her mouth.

She'd nearly burst into tears, but she hadn't. Anna was made of stronger stuff than that.

Now, facing each other in the apartment above the stables, it appeared that Kristoff's thoughts had taken a similar turn.

"What about Anna?" he asked. He'd asked pretty much the same question every day since coming down from the mountains, and Elsa had given him pretty much the same answer.

"She's all right, under the circumstances," she said, but her tone was compassionate.

She could see that he was distracted with worry—and while part of that distraction was likely an effect of the fever taking hold of him, Elsa knew it was more than that. Because Kristoff's agitation had been steeping just beneath the surface long before he'd taken that fateful drink of water.

"I'm sorry, Kristoff," she added, her voice barely above a whisper. She looked at her cold, cold hands.

"Don't be," he said gently. "It's not your fault."

She studied him for a moment—scrutinized his features—and then frowned. He studied her back, watched her watching him, and didn't bother to tell her to quit it. Trying to glower down the queen was like trying to outstare a cat.

Not that he was glowering, of course. For one thing, she was the queen. And for another, you'd have to be angry to glower, and Kristoff simply wasn't angry.

Still, he was the first to look away.

"Can you eat anything?"

He shook his head. Discouraged, Elsa stood to fetch him a cup of water from the ice melt he'd stored aside. He took it gratefully, but she noticed that he didn't really drink much.

"Are you worried?" she asked, then bit her lip regretfully. Had she said that out loud?

But he just brought a hand to the back of his neck and grimaced.

"Yeah."

She hesitated. "We'll figure something out."

"I know you will."

And he meant it. He had complete trust in her—she could see it in his weirdly dilated eyes. It made her nervous.