As agreed with my roommate, I'm uploading a new chapter since she got caught up in the story. So, enjoy, dears!


"I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!" Anna shouted angrily. She paced around the room with her hands wringing one of Elsa's pillows like a wet washrag. Her eyes were filled with a kind of fire that the blonde had never seen before. It was frightening…yet, oddly arousing at the same time.

"Anna, that's the fifth time you've said that," Elsa tried to joke. She had never been on this side of the conversation before. Usually she was the one being an emotional mess. This was definitely new for her.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!"

"Sixth time," Elsa corrected.

Anna plopped down next to her girlfriend and bit into the pillow savagely for a good ten minutes before finally dropping the abused sleeping utensil on the floor. She whirled and stared at Elsa with teary eyes. "W-Why couldn't you tell me about this sooner?"

Elsa's eyes widened at the question. Sure, she had expected Anna to ask, but she had never thought of a good enough answer. After mulling it over for five minutes, she simply shrugged her shoulders.

"I guess some things are best forgotten. Ceili and I have been moving forward in our lives. We both try not to dwell too much on it. The past is in the past."

"But it's obviously still bothering you!" Anna exclaimed.

Elsa sighed and nodded sullenly. "It is, but I have been doing better. Ceili has helped me with this so much; along with Olaf, Marshmallow, and, I can't believe I'm saying this, even Kristoff." She pulled the red head into a hug. "But you have definitely helped me as much as my sister has."

Anna calmed down significantly at hearing this. She slowly snaked her arms around Elsa's waist and held her for what felt like an hour. When the two girls finally separated, she wiped the tears from her eyes and gave the blonde her full attention.

"Alright," she sighed. "I-I think I'm good now. Please, continue with the story. I promise I won't interrupt you anymore."

A soft chuckle sounded in Elsa's throat. "I didn't even get to start the story."

"Then start it!" Anna pouted in embarrassment.

"Alright," Elsa picked up the photograph and held it delicately in her fingers. The smell of disinfectant suddenly filled her head as she was transported to that very hospital in her memory. She could even feel the scratchy blankets pressed against her face as she slept on her, newly conscious, sister's lap.

"For starters," she began, "I don't remember a lot. Ceili sheltered me from most of what happened by taking the blunt of the abuse herself. The beatings, verbal abuse, broken bones, and the cuts and bruises, she took almost every single one that was meant for me as a child. There are a few instances where I remember being beaten, but those memories are very few to how many they should be. Does that make sense?"

Anna thought for a minute and nodded her head.

"Good," Elsa bit her lip and continued. "Keep in mind, what I remember is a little swayed due to Ceili's influence in my life. She will remember things being a lot worse than I do because she tried her best to make sure I wasn't exposed to evil things that were going on in the family.

"My father…was a high ranked military officer. He viewed that everything was meant to follow a specific order, and if they went outside that order they would be punished. I remember hearing him yelling at my mother over something as insignificant as his boots not being polished to just the right amount of shine when she was still alive."

"You mean your mom's dead?" Anna gasped.

Elsa cocked an eyebrow at the edgy girl sitting next to her.

"Sorry," Anna apologized.

"It's alright," Elsa dismissed kindly. "Yes, my mother is dead. She was killed the same night Ceili almost died." She pulled another photo out of her drawer and handed it to Anna. "There she is."

Anna gasped in awe at the woman in the photo. She was absolutely gorgeous! Her platinum blonde hair cascaded down her slender neck and strong shoulders in waterfalls of rippling white and light gold, her sapphire blue eyes sparkled with a million stars, and the soft smile that danced across her rosy lips was almost enough to cause the girl to melt into a puddle. The woman was holding a very bouncy, chubby, white haired and red eyed baby girl clad in a pink dress and booties in her slender, delicate arms.

"Oh, my god, Elsa, she's so beautiful," Anna handed the photo back. "She looks just like you. And her hair! Wow!"

Elsa smiled at the compliment and dragged her finger along her mother's heart shaped face. "We both do. Ceili and I, I mean. The only difference is that her eyes and hair color come from our father; though it's hard to tell the difference between platinum blonde and white from time to time.

"That's actually why Ceili wears her hair down. I enjoyed how much she looked like mother when she left it down after her death she left it out of the braid Mother usually put in our hair. She thought it would be good for me."

Anna glanced back at the photo. "Yeah, that soothing expression is definitely Ceili's. The same goes for the wavy hair. N-Not saying that you don't have a really comforting look about you; it's just that Ceili has it perfected so well. I'm sure you could get it with some practice…I'm just going to be quiet now."

"Please do," Elsa teased. "I might not be able to finish if you keep interrupting me."

The red head pretended to zip her lips shut and threw away the metaphorical key.

Elsa stared at the picture in her hands with a heart full of sorrow as she continued. "Anyway, my father had a temper. Ceili always told me how he would strike our mother randomly for something so small that no one would have even noticed. Then when she would cry and beg for him to stop, he would kick her away from Mother and tell her not to question his authority.

"If there is anything that shows that Ceili is more like our father than I am other than the fact that they have the same hair and eye color, it would have to be their blind, almost suicidal bravery in the face of danger."

Elsa felt her voice crack and cleared her throat. "My father was a hero amongst his unit for driving into enemy fire by himself with absolutely no ammunition to get his men back to base. My sister, even as a little girl, would try to protect my mother from his onslaught when she was shaking on the floor in fear.

"My mother hated fighting, so I'm not quite sure why she married my father, or why she stayed with him for that matter. Maybe she did it because she was afraid he would go looking for her. Maybe she thought he could change. It doesn't really matter why I suppose. He killed her in the end.

"Anyway," Elsa continued, "I was born when Ceili was seven, or about to turn seven. From what my sister told me, our father got even more violent after that. Apparently he would beat our mother twice a day instead of his occasional slap every three to four days because she had given him another daughter instead of a son.

"When Ceili would try to stop him, he would beat her to the ground while our mother was unconscious." A soft sob bubbled out of Elsa's throat as she placed her hand over her eyes. "I know some of the things he would do to her because I witnessed it when I was older, but I don't know what he would do to her when I was an infant or before. I don't dare ask her what he did, because what I saw was….i-it was…"

Anna wrapped her arms around the blonde's heaving shoulders and held her tightly. "Shhh," she soothed. "It's okay, Elsa. You don't have to say it. If it's too painful, you don't have to tell me. You've already told me so much more than I could ever ask for."

Elsa shook her head and sat up straight. "No, I'm going to tell you everything, Anna. I need to tell someone. Are you still okay with listening?"

"Of course," Anna replied.

The blonde took a shaky breath and held her stuffed snow leopard in her lap. "The first time I remember seeing my father being violent, I was four years old. Ceili had stitched his socks wrong or something along those lines, and he back handed her so hard she slammed into the wall. I ran over to her and knelt by her side asking if she was alright. A small river of blood," she trailed her finger down the side of her face from her eyebrow, "flowed down her cheek from a cut just above her eye. I remember getting kicked in the stomach so hard I blacked out for a minute.

"My mother had heard the noise and rushed into the kitchen to see what was going on. I had never seen her get so mad before in my life. She started screaming at my father, calling him words that I never even knew existed. She had even gone so far as to pull one of the knives out of the knife block and hold it at him.

"That didn't scare him though. Oh, no," Elsa laughed bitterly. "That didn't scare him one bit. He just," she flicked her wrist, "pop! He punched her so hard in the stomach she vomited right in front of me.

"Once she was on the ground, my father tried to go back to beating me for "getting in the way," but he stopped when he heard Ceili growling at him from the floor. "Don't you fucking touch my mother or my sister, you bastard!" she had said. That unleashed a new fury from him that I wouldn't see for years after that."

Anna swallowed hard against the sandpaper feeling in her throat. "W-What did he do?"

Elsa's eyes dulled. "He grabbed the knife out of my mother's hand and used it on Ceili. He picked her up by the neck, threw her onto the table, he ripped her shirt off, and started cutting and stabbing her repeatedly. My mother had grabbed me and held me close so I wouldn't see it, but I had already seen more than enough to have the memory ingrained into my mind to this very day.

"She probably would have gone to help her if Ceili hadn't been yelling at her to keep back and make sure I was safe. I remember how she kept edging my father on, calling him a coward for beating women. It didn't matter that she was covered in blood. She egged him on so he would keep his focus on her instead of Mother and I."

It was silent for a while. Elsa sat with her eyes closed and her breathing slowed. Anna was positive that the older girl had fallen asleep, until she opened her eyes and continued speaking.

"Things didn't get better after that. My father would go out of his way to make Ceili's life a living Hell. He would beat my mother to get her riled up, and then use any and every form of punishment or torture he knew to drive her to the ground. Once he was done with her, he would try to find me. He would maybe leave a bruise or two before Ceili would attack him to get him away from me."

Anna felt her stomach and its contents slosh around like a ship in a hurricane. How could something so horrible happen to such wonderful people? How had Elsa and Ceili managed to keep their sanity through all those years and still be so open and kind to people? Granted, now she understood how Elsa had gotten the nickname Ice Queen at school, but that didn't matter.

"That whole routine turned into a never ending cycle for years until my ninth birthday," Elsa explained.

A strangled bark of laughter escaped Anna's mouth and she clapped her hand over her lips. "S-Sorry, I-I didn't mean to laugh. It's just that the coincidence is a little funny. Nine years ago was your ninth birthday and…you…I'll be quiet."

Elsa blinked and held Anna's hand. "No, it's alright. I see what you mean. It is a little funny how the numbers fall this year."

Her expression changed from a soft smile to a sorrowful stare as she squeezed Anna's hand tighter. "My father had come home drunk that night and forced our mother into their bedroom. Ceil was trying to distract me with some birthday songs and games so I wouldn't hear them…well…I'm sure you can guess."

A bright red blush suddenly exploded across Anna's face. "Y-yeah, I-I can i-imagine."

Elsa coughed uncomfortably. "W-Well, as I was saying, we were about to eat a small cake Ceili had managed to get from the woman at the bakery after working there for a week when my father's voice called my name. At least, I think it was my name. He had said it with such a drunken slur that it was difficult to understand anything he was saying, but there is a difference between a C and an E.

"I watched as Ceili froze and her eyes shifted between anger, fear, and murderous intent. It scared me, but I knew I was safe with her. I knew that those eyes weren't meant for me, but for him.

"When I asked Ceili what father wanted, she simply smiled at me with that same, soft expression our mother had in her picture and patted my hair. She said, "I'm not sure what that old dog wants, but I'll go check. You just stay here and enjoy your cake, alright, Snow Cub?" I had nodded happily as I started eating.

"Shortly after the door closed, the whole house was quiet. I had experienced this kind of quiet before. It was the same kind of silence that happened before something horrible happened.

"I remember slowly opening the door to see if anyone was around and I couldn't see anyone. I slipped through the hall under the cover of the dark shadows cast along the wall to my mother's room, only to see that her door was cracked open slightly. When I squeezed through the crack in the door and turned on the light….I screamed…."

Tears were streaming down Elsa's face as her whole body shook violently. "My mother…was completely naked…with only a bloodstained sheet covering the top half of her body. Her throat had been slit…and she was staring at me…with dull, lifeless eyes…."

It took a few minutes before Elsa had finally calmed down enough to speak. She held her hand to her forehead as if she had a headache. "Things get a little sketchy after that. I remember calling the police saying that my mother had a hole in her throat that my father made and where I lived. Once they hung up, I ran through the house trying to find Ceili. I was afraid. I had just seen my mother's corpse and was scared that the next dead body I would see was going to be my sister's….

"I almost think that would have been better to see than what I found…" She droned. "I found my father and Ceili in the shed in the back yard. I stood and watched in horror through the crack in the door as my father backed my sister into a corner. Her eyes were filled…with so much hatred and blood lust…I could barely even recognize her. She looked like a wild beast with her teeth bared.

"I heard my father ask where I was, and Ceili just smirked at him with a feral look in her eye and told him to fuck off. He then explained what he did to my mother, how he had slit her throat as he came inside of her, and how he was going to do the same thing to me right in front of her. How he would leave his perfect little angel, the one child he had that was more like him than she would admit, for last; just so she could wallow in her own failure of not being able to save her mother or her precious little sister….

"…..I don't even remember seeing Ceili move, but I do remember seeing her get the first three hits in before my father snapped out of his drunken shock and punched her in the stomach. He took advantage of her incapacitated state by kicking and punching her until she was covered in blood and sweat. When he asked her if she was going to be a good little girl and tell him where I was, she spit a stream of bloody saliva into his eye.

"I saw something snap inside of him at that moment. His red eyes almost turned black as his face was cloaked in shadow. He…he slammed Ceili's twitching body face first onto the work table in the middle of the shed….A-And before she could even process what was happening, he….he…" Elsa suddenly grabbed the wastebasket next to her bed and emptied her stomach.

Anna clasped her hand to her mouth as she felt the bitter taste of acid crept up her throat and tickle the back of her tongue. That sick, twisted bastard raped and killed his own wife, and then he raped his oldest daughter. He had even planned on taking it so far as to violate and murder Elsa. What kind of father would do such a thing to his own daughters?

The red head suddenly remembered what Elsa had said in the living room. Have you ever been hurt by someone who supposedly loved you? Who you thought was supposed to be around for you and protect you?

"Fathers are supposed to love and protect their daughters," Anna choked out a sob. "Oh, Elsa, I'm so sorry!" She threw her arms around the blonde's shoulders and held her tight.

Elsa cried into her wastebasket for a short while before putting the can down with shaking hands and continuing. "I have never heard Ceili scream like she had that night when that bastard was…" she punched the mattress. Her expression changed drastically from a shaking, scared child to a woman filled with pent up rage.

"And then she saw me! She fucking saw me! She looked me right in the eye and those god damned, beautiful, bright red eyes of hers were filled with fear; not for her own life, but for mine! She was more worried about me than she was herself! Why? Why? Why couldn't she just worry about herself for once in her fucking life?"

Anna held Elsa tighter and tighter as the blonde went through her tantrum. "It's because she loves you, Elsa!"

"I love her too, but I couldn't even protect her when she needed saving!" Elsa screamed and the floodgates finally broke. She crumpled against Anna's side and cried.

"All I could do was just stand there as she was raped by our own father! She was the one who had to save herself! She was the one who got him off of her and fought with him like a wild animal when he spotted me! And shewas the one who got shot it the chest when that bastard pulled a gun on me because she grabbed the muzzle right before he pulled the trigger!

"I don't care if the asshole is in a military prison right now! He should be dead! How can I love anyone else when I can't even protect my own sister?"

Anna had no idea what to do. She hadn't expected all this information. She never really knew how much Elsa was hurting. How much she blamed herself for her sister's current situation. She never knew.

And now that she did, she didn't think she could take it. This was all just too much! How could she possibly comfort a girl who was this broken inside? Had she told Olaf and Marshmallow about this? If so, how could they still be so willing to be around her?

Anna felt something inside her mind slap her so hard across the face she could have sworn it was real. What was she thinking? Just because Elsa had a rough past doesn't mean that she was any different than the Elsa she knew and loved. It just meant that her girlfriend trusted her with this information. She trusted her to see her in her most vulnerable moment. If this wasn't true love, then she had no idea what was.

Elsa felt Anna's lips kiss her hair and looked up at the red head with teary eyes. "Anna?"

Anna smiled softly at the confused blonde sitting next to her. "I love you, Elsa. Even after hearing all of this. I still love you. I'm…I'm just so happy that you trust me enough to let me in and tell me about your past. I understand it's not easy to talk about, so know that if you ever need to talk about it you can talk to me. God knows I've talked your ear off plenty of times already."

Elsa coughed and smiled as she wiped the tears from her eyes. "Okay, I'll remember that."

"Good," Anna smiled back. She was about to kiss the blonde next to her but stopped short. "You might want to go brush your teeth."

A faint blush colored Elsa's neck. "R-Right," she grabbed her trashcan and exited the room; returning five minutes later with minty breath and a clean wastebasket. She stole a kiss from Anna's unsuspecting lips and dragged the red head down onto the mattress with her so they were lying side by side.

"Feel any better?" Anna asked shyly.

Elsa smiled down at her. "Unbelievably better, thanks to you." She kissed the strawberry blonde's forehead. "I'm sorry if I gave you a little too much information. It's just that…my past is a very touchy subject, and once I started I just couldn't stop."

"Elsa, it's fine." Anna snuggled closer to her girlfriend. "I'm just glad that you were able to open up to me. I don't care about your past. You're you, and you are perfect. Nothing that happened before is ever going to happen again. I'm pretty sure Ceili will make sure of that, and if she doesn't I will."

The platinum blonde chuckled slightly and kissed Anna fully on the lips. "I love you."

Anna returned the kiss eagerly. "I love you too."

The two girls spent the rest of the night eating delivery pizza and cuddling in Elsa's queen sized bed as they watched movies on Netflix. By the third movie, both teens were sleeping peacefully in each other's arms. Everything about the past was forgotten, and only the thought of their future plagued their dreams.