CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Lion And The Thorn

Elsa awoke to more screeching. It took her a moment to realize that this wasn't the sound of Songbird - rather, it was the airship being ripped apart by its giant claws. The top of the ship had been pried open, allowing rain to pour inside, and before she could act - before she could think - Songbird reached for her with one of it's humanlike hands and tossed her across the zeppelin.

She was too confused to scream as her body flew through the air. The landing was hard and she skidded across the expanse of ground, nearly toppling over the edge of what appeared to be a drawbridge. The clouds were too thick to see the ocean under Columbia, and the rain made it seem as though she would have simply fallen into an abyss if Songbird had thrown her just a little bit harder.

Attempting to pick herself up was made a useless effort when the beast came back to finish the job. Its glowing red eyes stared the woman down, challenging her to take Anna away from it again. Elsa was about to attempt retaliation by blasting ice in its face, until Anna ran into view. The young woman threw herself in front of her. Gasping at the close call, Elsa instinctively retreated her hand to the pit of her arm to prevent it from making another mistake. The ground beneath her frosted over.

"Stop it! Please! Don't hurt her!" Anna pleaded to the monster, only to be gently shoved aside.

The bird reeled back its claws, and-

"I'm sorry!"

It stopped just before stabbing Elsa through. It paused, and slowly cocked it's head to the side to look at Anna, who had come running back in front of Elsa. "I'm sorry..." She repeated. The beast reared its head back, it's eyes still red with fury. Elsa silently swore that if it moved to attack Anna-

"I never should have left."

Elsa stared at her. What was she doing? She didn't believe - couldn't believe - that Anna was actually apologizing for leaving. She knew her sister had wanted out.

"...Take… Take me back…"

No!

Avoiding Elsa's horrified stare, Anna touched the hand of the monster, whose eyes turned green. She hugged its giant index finger (Elsa noted, somewhere in her mind, that the creature's finger was bigger than Anna's entire body), and spoke softly. "Take me home… please..." Songbird nodded and obediently picked her up.

"Anna, no!" Elsa leapt up, grabbing for her sister's hand.

The younger girl reached back to her sister, helplessly, knowing that she wasn't going to be able to prevent the Songbird from taking her away. The last thing Elsa saw of Anna, before the beast disappeared with her, was her sad smile.

She screamed Anna's name as the bird disappeared into the storm clouds. In a fit of rage, knowing that her sister had sacrificed her own freedom in exchange for Elsa's safety, her magic ran unchecked; the ground around Elsa's feet started to freeze over. Part of her damned Anna for being so selfless. That was not a sacrifice Anna should have made.

Not for her. She did not deserve it. She was the big sister, she should've been the one Songbird took away.

Naturally that wasn't the case. Elsa's failings would always harm those she loved, leaving herself undamaged. Songbird had wanted her dead, not Anna. If she'd let Songbird kill her, Anna might have gotten away.

Her mind flashed to the poster Anna had pointed out. The only way Elsa could be the hero, was as the martyr.

But Anna was gone. Elsa was alive. She'd have to hope that there was still a chance.

Her hands glowed bright blue, and she threw herself off the end of the drawbridge, forming her own bridge of snow in the direction Songbird flew. With each step Elsa took, the snow turned to solid ice, her desperation forming sharp edges that shattered in the wind, slicing her face and hands.

Penance, she thought, and made no move to shield herself from the wind.

She had no idea how far the beast was going to take her now that Monument Island was a smoking wreck, but she would run for months to find Anna before she'd allow herself to collapse from exhaustion. The Songbird could come after her if it wanted to. It could kill her if it wanted to. But Elsa was never going to let it take Anna.

Not again.

The clouds grew thicker and thicker the more Elsa ran. Soon enough she'd lost all sight of where she was going, and the wind grew stronger, threatening to blow her down to the depths - she had no idea what was below her, if there were still buildings or if she'd left Columbia entirely - but she pressed on making her ice bridge.

Snow began to fall. Having dropped temperatures and caused many a flurry herself, Elsa didn't question it. She was infuriated, and so any winter storm she caused would reflect that.

She ceased making the bridge when she finally made it to a building, one already covered with several feet of snow. Looking up, she saw a giant looming ice statue of the Snow Queen's emotionless face protruding from the side of the building. It was her palace, more or less, which explained why it was floating far away from the rest of the city.

There was a cry from up the stairs to the entrance of the palace.

"Get your hands off me!"

It was Anna. Never stopping to observe her surroundings, Elsa continued to run toward the sound of her voice. She opened the doors, hoping to see her sister. While she did see her, it wasn't… her.

It was a statue, posing as the room's centerpiece, and it was of Anna, surrounded by dozens of lit candles, and brandishing a sword. Heavenly light shining through the top of the statue illuminated the words "Our Princess Anna Godspeed Thy Judgement".

Elsa had never thought of Anna wielding a sword, standing in such a dictatorial way. It frightened her, seeing her like that, even if she knew that it wasn't really Anna. Not her Anna - simply the Snow Queen's image of Anna, a reflection of the cruel successor she'd wanted to create.

And when Elsa thought it couldn't get anymore unnerving, she heard Anna's voice over the speakers in the room.

"Some men dream of money. Some men dream of love. My sister dreamt an eternal storm. We were given Eden, and we turned it into Sodom. Why do we deserve salvation? The Lord gave Noah a fish in the form of a flood. But He was not so easy on me…"

The way Anna spoke sounded… exactly like the Snow Queen. Or at least the speaker was a woman who sounded very similar to Anna. It couldn't have been her Anna saying that. Not while she had no reason to recite such things, let alone the time needed to record and play the messages.

There was a scream from the hall behind the statue, and it shook Elsa from her thoughts. What was the Snow Queen doing to her?

Following the sounds of Anna's cries, she burst through another set of doors, which took her to an area that just looked like a neglected mental asylum. If Elsa had bothered to look, she would have noticed the random, masked patients wandering aimlessly through the halls, not once interacting with each other, or even noticing the distressed woman passing through.

Elsa approached a heavily reinforced door marked as "Restricted". If she had any guess to Anna's whereabouts, she figured her sister would be behind that door. There was an intercom button she would have normally used, but her patience was already thin. Anna could not wait for Elsa to ask permission from the warden to see her sister. So she took a step back and froze the entire door and attached fence.

"Take me back to my tower!"

"It's too late for that now, child." The new voice belonged to a weaselly-sounding man. "Your sister gave you a lovely home. And you chose to destroy it."

"She's not my sister!"

The words hurt Elsa, even if she knew that they weren't for her. She gritted her teeth, concentrating on her magic, making the room colder, making the door and fence so brittle that both eventually shattered and collapsed to the floor. She stumbled over them and continued to run through the asylum, all the while hearing Anna, but no matter how fast Elsa ran, no matter which disarranged room she looked into, her sister did not sound any closer.

Elsa heard the man's voice again. "I'm Dr. Weselton, Anna. I'll be taking care of you."

"Get away from me..." Anna sounded weak.

"Defiance? Even after all this time? Elsa just left you here. You need to give up on her, love."

"She. Will. Come."

There was her Anna. Never once losing hope in her. Elsa was coming for her. She would always come for her. And it gave her strength knowing that Anna could know that, even after so short a time together.

Elsa rounded a corner, and stopped short when she saw Kristoff and Krista, yet again. They were behind… or inside of a tear. But what could a tear be doing here?

She shook her head. "What?"

"Why do you ask 'what'-" Kristoff began.

"When the better question is 'when'?" Krista finished.

"Lives. Lived. Will live."

"Dies. Died. Will die."

The light of the hall flickered, and the duo disappeared before Elsa's eyes. She was no longer phased by them. There was probably nothing that could even surprise her anymore.

She looked ahead, and there before her eyes, stood Anna, silhouetted from the light outside the balcony she was standing on. She'd know that shape anywhere. She didn't look harmed at all, and was actually standing on her own. Elsa could've cried, and ran right up to where she stood. She would have pulled her into a big embrace, not even caring about her magic. That was, until Anna spoke in a very worn, tired voice.

"It took all that I had left in me just to bring you here, Elsa..."

"Anna? What happened? I heard you screaming! Are you alright?"

"Take my hand…"

She reached up without thinking, but the hand that reached back did not belong to Anna. It was a blue-tinted, cold hand with patches of snowflakes branded into her skin, and attached to the hand was a weary, tired-eyed Anna with stark-white hair, wearing impressive icy armor from the neck down.

Elsa felt like she was looking her worst nightmare right in the face. And in a way she was. When Anna pulled Elsa up onto the balcony with her, she looked sickly, half frozen, but at the same time there was a look about her that told Elsa how spent she was, and how numb she was to her current condition.

Anna had given up.

And behind her, beyond the ledge on which they stood, was Arendelle. In the sky above were airships from Columbia raining down...hailstones - Elsa's magic touched them briefly, and recoiled from the greasy wrongness of them - that blanketed the kingdom in creeping ice, ice that slithered and crawled up buildings.

Up people.

A little boy with a green cap ran away from a spreading patch of ice, only to step in another one he hadn't noticed - he tugged his leg, trying to get free, but the ice had encased his foot, and wouldn't let go - he pulled as hard as he could, but the ice was relentless, crawling up his leg and chest and finally encasing his face, covering his skin in an eternal scream -

How could this be happening? What had happened to Anna to make her this way? She'd never had ice in her heart… She would never have allowed this to happen.

Anna gestured to the frozen kingdom behind her, never taking her frost-blue eyes off Elsa. "The Snow Queen's magic, her...creations...everything lasts past death. I was...I am her undying legacy."

She snorted, and turned away from Elsa. "I waited for you… forever, it seemed. I waited as long as I could… until it was time to give in. I realized that you were never going to save me." She sighed. "It wasn't the torture that broke me. It wasn't the Snow Queen's indoctrination. It was time. Time rots everything. Even hope."

Did she somehow miss her chance? How long was she even gone for? It couldn't have been any more than a few hours since her sister had been taken away. Anna could not have given up on her. She'd heard her. She knew Elsa wouldn't leave her.

Tears welled up in Elsa's eyes as she continued to stare in disbelief at her sister, who was very much dying before her. Certainly Anna had claimed immortality - but Elsa was unsure if the broken woman before her could truly be termed living.

Anna may as well have been hitting her in the face, realizing that she did this to her. Would do this to her even when she never meant to.

Her heart clenched as she almost heard Kristoff and Krista's echo. Hurts. Hurt. Will hurt.

"I was coming…" she whimpered, her shoulders began to shake. It was her fault she was like this. It had always been her fault.

"Songbird." Anna continued. "It always stops you."

"No… I would find a way…" She would have fought Songbird. The creature might have been incredibly powerful, but then again - so was she. She'd created the ice bridge, she'd made it to the Snow Queen's palace. Songbird never returned to kill her.

Anna shook her head. "It's too late for me. I brought you here for your sake. Yours and hers." So this Anna was just from a different tear. A tear from the future where Elsa had never made it to her sister. Anna had brought her here to save them both? "Here." She handed Elsa a piece of paper.

On it was some writing that she couldn't make out. "What is this?" Elsa asked.

"Advice."

"Advice on what?"

"How not to become me."

With a wave of her warms and a flash of light, Elsa was no longer looking at a dying Anna.

She looked around where she was. She was inside the Snow Queen's palace. "I'm back… Before she… There's still time."