"Anna is dead."
This time it was a-
"Queen Elsa! Queen Elsa, wake up!"
"Huh… Wha…?" Elsa opened her eyes, disoriented enough that it took her a moment to realize she was lying in bed. The room was pitch black save for a lamp glowing dimly in the corner.
"You were starting to toss and turn in your sleep, Your Majesty. I woke you up like you asked."
Her bodyguard was hovering over Elsa again – the one whose name had all but faded from her subconsciousness by now. It was a remarkably similar setup to last night, except… Well, now that she thought about it, Elsa didn't remember her bodyguard ever returning after the Admiral took him into town. She'd ended up going to bed unguarded.
"Where have you been?" Elsa asked groggily.
"Um," answered the boy.
(It was lucky for Fritz that Elsa was too drowsy to push the issue, because he had a bad feeling that if she ever found out he'd awoken in a shabby bar with no recollection of the last few hours and covered in his own vomit, Fritz would be so fired it wasn't even funny.)
"Thank you for waking me." Elsa rolled over under her covers, facing away from her guard.
Of course, the elephant in the room here was that her bodyguard had most likely woken Elsa at the first sign of trouble more so because she was liable to start shooting ice, making it an action motivated more by self-preservation than pure philanthropy.
(Another reason unbeknownst to Elsa was that Fritz was worried she'd start screaming in her sleep again, and right now any loud noise gave him a killer headache.)
Elsa closed her eyes and tried to lie still, but it got her nowhere. "I'm not sure I can get back to sleep," she admitted, more to herself than to her guard.
For a second, it looked like the bodyguard would remain quiet. But then he got out, voice shaking, "If you want, we could, err, we could talk."
Elsa flipped back over to give him a quizzical stare.
"I just mean that, uh, well, you don't want me telling anyone, so you really have no one else to talk to," the boy stammered out. "About your nightmares, I mean."
Elsa took her time before replying. Truth be told, she really didn't want to talk about this right now, especially not with some kid she barely knew. But ignoring him felt too much like "conceal, don't feel," and that left a bad taste in her mouth. "I'm just… afraid."
The boy almost chuckled at this. It was the closest Elsa had ever seen him come to releasing any of his pent-up tension. "How can you be scared of anything? You're the most powerful thing around for miles."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
Elsa stifled a yawn. Her eyelids were growing heavy…
Fritz spent several minutes deciding on the perfect reply.
Taking a deep breath, he finally said, "That's incredible. You could probably rule Arendelle with an iron fist if you wanted. All you'd have to do is bust out your powers and make an army of your snow monster things and bam – The world is your oyster! But you don't. In fact, you don't want to hurt anyone with your power, and you're so worried about it that you let it give you nightmares. How many people do you think would act that way in your shoes? You must really care about the people of this kingdom, and, well, I know a lot of people hate you for trapping us in eternal winter, but… I think you make a great queen. No," he corrected himself, "you're more than that…"
Here went nothing. "You're kind and smart and beautiful and… and, well, I've never been able to say this before, but ever since I met you, I've always-"
And then Fritz noticed the steady rising and falling of Elsa's chest. She'd been asleep for the past several minutes by the looks of it. Hadn't taken in a word he'd just said.
Sisyphus with the boulder. That's who Fritz was.
"Elsa! Freeze the chocolate! It tastes even better that way!"
"C'mon, let's ride our bike inside! We won't get in trouble if Anders doesn't catch us!"
"You can do it, too? Wow, that's amazing! Just wait 'til I tell Elsa!"
"We're gonna build the biggest snow-fort ever!"
Anna once again awoke to a flood of restored childhood memories. She yawned, stretched, rolled out of bed, and checked the clock. It was well past three-thirty. That meant that if she wrestled her hair back into shape and threw on some clothes she hadn't just slept in, Anna could look presentable enough not to set off Gerda's radar and still make it to the dining hall a few minutes before they stopped serving lunch.
Life was good. Anna had slept into the afternoon, her sister wasn't locked in her room forever, she had a boyfriend who wasn't secretly plotting to kill her (as far as Anna knew), and the kingdom wasn't even trapped in eternal winter. Everything was perfect.
Well, actually, there was still that whole business with the wight coming to kill Elsa, but Anna was fairly certain whenever that guy reared his ugly head, Elsa would just whoop him with her ice powers and throw his butt in jail. Anna hoped she'd be allowed to punch him first. She'd been aching for another chance to do that.
After her breakfast – which was really more like late lunch – Anna set off through the castle in search of her sister. She eventually found Elsa in the study, knelt over the writing desk and scribbling away with an ink pin.
"Never fear, Elsa, your favorite sister is awake!" Anna announced her dramatic entry. "I'm here to save you from whatever boring nonsense you've gotten yourself into so we can go do something fun."
"Sorry, Anna." Elsa's eyes stayed fixed on her work. "I need to get this done." Anna realized with horror that Elsa was working on the same brick of paperwork from last summer, and the pile had barely gotten any smaller.
"I just remembered I'm allergic to boringness." Anna turned to make her dramatic exit. "Okay then, I'm gonna go do fun stuff all by myself, but before I go, I'd like to remind you that you're the queen and you can do whatever you want, meaning you're wasting hours of your life on boring legal stuff by choice."
"I know," Elsa said with a patient smile.
Behind her back, Anna met eyes with Elsa's bodyguard, then pointed to her own temple and spun her index finger around in the universal sign for "this person's craaaaaazy!"
The bodyguard shifted anxiously. It was the same boy from before – the who looked younger than Anna with the head a little on the misshapen side. Currently, he was standing with his back and his standard issue guard hat-and-spear all completely rigid and straight. The boy had clearly been infatuated with Anna since the moment he'd first walked into the gallery, the poor, love-struck fool. He always seemed to be blushing and stumbling over his words in her presence, and even now the boy was staring intently at Elsa, probably too shy to look Anna's way. Of course, Anna had let him down hard, and she couldn't deny she'd gotten a perverse thrill out of it.
When it became clear Elsa was steadfast about doing the lame-o paperwork, Anna reluctantly slinked out of the study and wandered aimlessly down the hall, arms folded. "Great. What am I supposed to do with myself now?"
"Excuse me, Princess Anna?" As if in answer to her thoughts, one of the guards suddenly approached her. It wasn't one Anna recognized, though. Must've been part of the upsurge in staff Anders kept going on about. "The Official Ice Master was spotted heading this way on his reindeer. If you get in a carriage now, you could reach him before he nears the gates."
"Finally!" Anna sighed in relief. She'd been growing increasingly impatient waiting for Kristoff's return. Visiting family was one thing, but what possible appeal could Kristoff find in spending days on end hanging out with a bunch of stinky rock trolls when he had a beautiful princess to attend to?
Well, at any rate, Anna was glad Kristoff was back. For a minute there, she'd been worried today was gonna be boring.
The massive group of rebels was gathered at the roof of the watchtower, torches waiting to be lit. From up here, they had a bird's eye view of the castle exterior. Normally, this was meant to help guards be on the alert for any danger to the crown, but currently the tower's purpose was being perverted into quite the opposite.
Getting past the gates hadn't been hard, even for an unwieldy team of thugs clearly up to no good. In fact, the guards on patrol had cheerfully led Adrian's men up the tower stairs. Well, except the ones who hadn't been recently hired by the Admiral, but they were outnumbered five-to-one, and most of them were pretty aged, anyways. Hardly even a hindrance to the rebels' schemes.
"What are we doing wasting time up here?" grunted one of the dimmer ones. "The sorceress is in the castle, ain't she? Why don't we just barge in and burn her already?"
"Variables," said Adrian, who was occupied with watching a carriage leave the castle through a pair of binoculars.
"You and your variables," smirked another rebel. "You'd think this was a math test and not a revolution."
"Ha! Nice one!" He and a friend exchanged high fives.
"Thanks. Y'know, I may be malicious, mean, and scary, but I have a dream that one day I'll be an algebra professor at-"
"Quiet." Adrian lowered the eyepiece. "The queen just entered the courtyard. Storm the castle and follow the Admiral's lead. He knows the way best. And make as much fire as you can before you reach her."
A cheer rang out through the mob. Innumerable bodies began pouring down the staircase, igniting torches as they went. Soon the tower was emptied, leaving only the tied-up hostages – staff too loyal to the queen – and Adrian, who hadn't moved.
The Admiral lingered at the head of the stairs to glare at him. "You coming?"
Adrian shook his head. "I have something else that needs to be taken care of. Go without me."
The Admiral snorted. "Don't tell me you're getting cold feet now? You're the one who started this whole thing in the first place!"
"I know what I'm doing," said Adrian, his voice level.
"And what if I think you're trying to weasel your way out of this because you think we'll fail?"
"If you succeed, you can take all the credit, Admiral. Tell the men I was a coward and you killed me for backing down."
"And if we fail?"
Adrian closed his eyes. "The Snow Queen won't kill you. She fancies herself above such brutality. If she captures and interrogates you, tell her this…"
The Admiral liked what he was supposed to tell her. As soon as he heard the words, he erupted with laughter.
"Looks like you've got balls after all," he said, slapping Adrian on the back. "Nice to know we have some insurance now." And with that, he descended the staircase to join up with the rest of the mob.
Adrian stayed behind a while longer. He fingered the scabbard on his belt, which housed the violet sword. He could have joined the rebels in storming the castle. Could have caught her off guard with the enchanted blade and slain her like the monster she was.
But that wasn't what Adrian wanted.
Elsa told herself she was concentrating on sifting through the swamp of legal documents before her, but truth be told she was letting her mind wander – which was a real shock because the paperwork was usually so gripping. This wouldn't have been so much of a problem if Elsa's mind hadn't happened to be wandering towards wights and fire and all the other things she didn't want to think about.
The image of Anders flashed through her head. Coward! he taunted. Can't even take a warm bath. Almost froze your sister again because of an itty bitty match.
Elsa dropped her pen into the inkwell and brought her hands to her forehead.
That's why you can only make ice and not water! chimed in imaginary-Anna. Every time you let yourself get warm, you flip out and kill me again.
Elsa abruptly rose to her feet. "I'm going outside."
"Are you sure?" asked her bodyguard, wincing at her sudden movement (Fritz had been staring at Elsa in a similar fashion to how Elsa had been studying every detail of her paperwork). "It's scorching hot out there-"
"I know."
The guard-whose-name-escaped-Elsa hadn't been wrong. As soon as she stepped into the courtyard, Elsa could feel the sun beating down on her exposed skin. It wasn't as painful as the hot chocolate or the bathwater, but the heat still caused an annoying prickle on the back of her neck.
You can do this.
Elsa took a deep breath and seated herself on a nearby bench. The sun had heated the stone to the point that it burned her rear, which was nearly enough to make Elsa cry out in pain. But she'd anticipated the heat this time and managed to remain still, though she could feel her ice begging to be released.
You can do this. You can do this.
Elsa's every impulse was telling her to shoot some ice, drop the air temperature, something to cool down, but instead, Elsa urged her magic to do the opposite. She diminished the radius of cold around herself, making the air as warm as she could, though she had the foresight to ensure her ice-dress remained cold (This would go down in history as one of the biggest letdowns in Fritz's entire life).
"Your Majesty, maybe you should go back inside," said her bodyguard, who judging by his facial expression seemed to think Elsa was having some sort of seizure. "You, uh, strike me as the type who burns easy." His eyes flitted towards Elsa's pale skin.
"In a minute." Elsa extended her palm and summoned an ice crystal within it. Then, just as before, she gradually morphed it into snow. Elsa concentrated on the snow in her hand for a while, but it stubbornly refused to become water. "Gah! I give up!" She hurled the slush to the ground, where the sun-baked brick did a much better job melting it than she ever could. "Alright, alright, I'm going back in." Elsa returned her hands to her forehead. "This sunlight's giving me a horrible headache-"
Sploosh.
Out of nowhere, a snowball hit Elsa's face.
"Sorry! I think that was my kidney!" called out a familiar voice.
Elsa blinked in surprise and turned around to find a group of children, none older than ten, across the courtyard from her. There was nothing surprising about that – the youngsters had taken to playing here ever since the permanent opening of the castle gates. What was surprising was the fact that this band of kids was crowded around an overturned Olaf, whose middle segment was spilled out over the pavement.
Every last child was staring at Elsa, wide-eyed and quivering with fear.
"Did you just… throw a snowball at your queen?" Elsa advanced on the group. The poor children looked like they would've run for their lives if they weren't so petrified.
One of the braver kids – a spiky-haired blond boy of around six – quickly said, "What no it was an accident I was aiming for that skinny guy next to you please don't kill us!"
"Well, I hope you weren't trying to start a snowball fight." A wide, thin smile crossed Elsa's face. "Because the queen always wins snowball fights." Elsa raised her arms and crafted a snowball the size of a small boulder. This was enough to un-petrify a handful of children and send them heading for the hills. Elsa dropped the snowboulder, giggling. Her laughter seemed to ease the remaining kids up. "What are you doing with my snowman?"
"They're giving me a lobotomy," said Olaf happily.
"We're playing doctor," said the blond boy's companion, a tiny brunette girl who looked like she'd rather be doing anything than performing surgery on a snowman.
"Well, let's try to keep Olaf in one piece, shall we?" With a wave of her hand, Elsa sent out a gust of cold wind that returned all the scattered Olaf-insides to their proper shape. It even blew Olaf's personal flurry back into place – One of the children had been poking it with a stick (Olaf's stolen arm), and the snow cloud had apparently gotten annoyed and wandered off from its owner.
"Phew! Thanks a ton, Elsa." Olaf sighed in relied. "That feels way better."
Just then, Elsa felt a tug at her cape. The culprit was another boy, this one around four.
"Hello there," smiled Elsa.
"I heawd you fweeze evewything you touch," said the child. He didn't sound scared, just curious.
"That's not true. See?" Elsa knelt down to gently brush her hand against the child's cheek (Fritz regarded the boy with something resembling envy). "I used to freeze everything I touched, but I don't anymore."
"Oh." The child furrowed his brow. "But then when you used to fweeze evewything you touched, was it hawd to use the bathwoom?"
"Hey, look over there!" Elsa suddenly said. "I think Olaf wants to play with you." When the child's back was turned, she hastily moved to another region of the courtyard.
Elsa spent the next several minutes fending off the horde of curious children ("No, I'm not making the courtyard a skating rink again. Maybe some other time…"), but she didn't mind. In fact, she was just beginning to forget what she'd been so upset about when a dark voice from behind her said, "Having fun, your majesty?"
Elsa jerked in surprise and spun around to face her accuser. "Anders," she said curtly. "What are you doing here?"
"Somehow, despite my best efforts, I continue to find myself accompanying your snowman on his misadventures," said Anders. "And I do believe I could ask the same question of you. I'd have thought it was too warm out for your liking."
Elsa jolted at this. Now that she thought about it, it was still warm out.
"Of course, it didn't seem to bother you as much once you started playing with those youngsters, now did it?" said Anders absently. "Queen Elsa, have I ever told you about one of my older friends? Passed away some time ago. He used to walk with a pronounced limp... only his leg was fine. Psychosomatic injury."
Elsa sighed and shut her eyes. The prickling on her neck was back. "Anders, in the future, if I want your advice, I will ask for it."
"I'll wait with bated brea-" But Anders's next smart remark was cut short. "Is that smoke?"
Elsa was going to turn to see what Anders was staring at, but she never got the chance. The next instant, the gates were thrown open and the courtyard was filled with countless men, all of them large, musclebound, and angry.
But Elsa didn't see them. All she saw was the fire.
"We've come with a message, Snow Queen!" The man at the head of the mob raised his torch high. Elsa ought to have recognized him as the Admiral, but right now her mind felt like a pit of quicksand. "Arendelle will not bow to a sorceress!"
The mob waited a moment to let the words sink in, which at least gave Anders time to herd screaming children and a confused snowman out the back exit.
"Elsa!" Her bodyguard immediately placed himself between her and the mob. Didn't even hesitate, though his spear trembled in his hands. But all it earned the boy was a quick jab to the face. He crumpled like he was made of paper.
"Your Majesty, far be it from me to tell the queen what to do," said Anders as the last child fled the courtyard, "but now may be an appropriate time to use your powers."
Elsa didn't hear him. She didn't even quite register that there was an angry mob in front of her. The only sight in Elsa's eyes was a tremendous wall of fire, and when it charged at her she turned and ran.