Chapter 11.

"¿Hello?" Anna said while picking up the phone at the living room.

"Anna?" Came a worried and masculine voice. Hans. "Are you alright?"

"Y-yeah, yes. I-I'm alright."

Just a little too much shocked after having a… strange experience.

"Dr. Jones called me. He said you hadn't arrived, and it's already half past eight. Did you forget about it?" He chuckled a little so that he didn't sound as if he was scolding her.

"N-no, actually I…"

Anna frowned she didn't know what to say. She didn't like to lie, but she knew she shouldn't tell anyone about Elsa's powers, not yet at least. She was afraid of the reaction these magic would cause on other people, so even if she kind of trusted Hans, the truth was that she didn't know what would he do if she told him the truth about them not going to see the doctor that morning, so she quickly tried to make up a story.

"I… got lost."

Yes, that should do it.

"Oh… Do you want me to send someone to escort you to the hospital?"

Or not.

"Ehm… maybe another day? Elsa is quite stressed about going out of the house." Well, at least that wasn't a lie.

"Is she alright?"

"Yeah, still a little bit scared, but she is fine."

Or at least I think so, she is locked in her bedroom and the last time I saw her she was almost having a panic attack and shooting ice from her fingers.

"Fine, then I think the best thing we can do is reschedule her analysis to another day." Anna internally sighed in relief. "Tomorrow is okay?"

Wait, tomorrow? What if she hasn't open the door by tomorrow? I don't want to fail going to the hospital again.

"I don't know because today she acted very strange when we went outside. I don't think she is prepared to leave this house yet."

"I see…" He sounded pensive. "What do you suggest?"

"I'll call you when I think she is better. Then we'll go to the hospital."

"I don't know, Anna. This is really urgent, and if you don't take her to the doctor, I'm afraid they'll have to take her to the refuge for missing people."

"But she is not missing." Anna was afraid of the sole possibility of someone taking her Elsa… er… Elsa away from her. "She is my supposedly-dead cousin. I have to take care of her."

"How do you know she's your cousin?"

"It's a long story actually, but believe me: She is."

"Okay, I believe you. But still, they could intern her or something."

"Then help me. Please, I don't want to lose her. She is very important for me.

Hans sighed.

"Okay, I'll try. I'll make some excuse, but we have to put a deadline, she'll have to go to the hospital soon."

"Okay, how about two weeks?"

Yes, that should be enough time to convince her to get out.

"I'm sorry, but I think that isn't possible. One week will be the limit."

One week?! But… fuck. OK, I think it's the best I'm goingget, and she'll have to come out eventually, right? One week is enough time for that… I hope.

"… Okay. A week will be, then." She agreed.

"Fine, I'll see you soon, then."

"Yeah, see you soon."

Anna hanged up the telephone and collapsed on the couch, feeling totally exhausted. The events of the past hours had been very… disturbing, to say the least. She wasn't mad at Elsa, she knew it was partially her fault for pushing her too much, but then again, it wouldn't have happened if the blonde had just tell her… or maybe it would have happened anyways, who could ever believe it when someone tells you they have magical ice powers?

However, Anna knew these powers explained a lot; the ice that was covering her prison, the sudden drops of temperature, the ice in the girl's bedroom, the accident the previous day during bath, Elsa's fear of uncovering her hands, and finally, her imprisonment.

Anna didn't think, not even for a second, that locking Elsa up for 16 years was justified just because she had dangerous and terrifying ice powers, but at least now she knew her relatives had had a reason, a… How is it said? motive for the crime. It wasn't enough reason for doing something so terrible to their only daughter, but at least they hadn't do it just because.

She was scared, just as she supposed her relatives had been when they found out about the girl's powers. She knew Elsa would never hurt her on purpose, but today's incident had proved her powers could get out of control when she was scared

Anna sighed, this was very complicated and stressing. She wanted to talk to Elsa, to see what they could do to solve this problem, but she figured out it was better to give her some time to calm down a little before trying anything, so she just kept sitting there, trying to make out her thoughts and define her posture towards Elsa's magic.


"Elsa!" Anna shouted while knocking at the door. "Elsa please, open the door!"

Anna had been in front of that door the last 30 minutes, knocking until her knuckles became red, pleading Elsa to come out or let her in, but no use, that girl didn't have any intentions of doing none of those.

"Elsa, what happened in the morning was... Well, I'm not going to lie, it was strange and at the moment I freaked out, but it doesn't change anything, I promise. Please, let me in."

Again no answer, and no signs of that damn door opening anytime soon. Anna sighed and banged her head against the white wood, not knowing what to do. How do you make a terrified ice caster get out of her shelter?

"Hummh... I suppose you're hungry, you didn't have breakfast, after all. I'll prepare something for you, maybe something with chocolate? Perhaps hot chocolate, or chip chocolate pancakes, or brownies, or... Maybe all of them? How does it sound?"

Elsa of course didn't answer, but Anna's stomach certainly did, reminding her she hadn't had breakfast either. Reluctantly, she decided it was better to go eat something and return later.

"Fine... I'll go to the kitchen now. I'd love it if you joined me, so... I'll wait for you there, OK?"


Many hours had passed, and Anna sat in a couch at the library. She had a book in her hands but she wasn't reading it, she was too concerned about Elsa's self-imprisonment to pay attention to anything else. There were three things that really were worrying her. First, Elsa hasn't come out in all day, not even to eat (although Anna has been insisting her every few hours), and Anna knew her health state wasn't the best and probably wouldn't support prolonged fasting. Second, she wasn't sure that isolation was a good thing for Elsa, and she was afraid that it would throw away all the progress they had made the last few days. And third, the state in which Elsa was when she last saw her was very concerning, the look in her eyes was as if she couldn't even recognize Anna, and the redhead was afraid that Elsa could hurt herself while being like that.

The problem is, she didn't know what to do. She was afraid of scaring her even more, or push her too much like in the morning, but she couldn't give her too much space either, because she wasn't OK and she could do something to herself. She decided to wait another day. Maybe tomorrow she'd have more luck with her.


Elsa was in her bed, just sitting there, replaying the events of the morning in her head again, and again, and again. She knew it was all her fault. If only she was normal. If only she didn't have an immense fear of going outside. If only she didn't have a reason to have an utter fear of going outside. If only she wasn't a curse. If only she was normal… then nothing of this would have happened, she wouldn't have resisted to get into the car, Anna wouldn't have grabbed her hand, removing her glove in the process, she wouldn't have been invaded by utter panic, she wouldn't have run, she wouldn't have fell, Anna wouldn't have touched her, Elsa wouldn't have turned around, terrified at the sole possibility of hurting her, so immersed in her fear that she didn't even recognized the familiar face, her powers wouldn't have been released and Anna wouldn't hate her.

Anna.

Why Anna, of all people on the earth, had to be the one knowing about her powers? Why did she had to learn about them in the worst way possible? Why her life has been hell since the very beginning? Why she couldn't be happy for once? Easy, because she was a curse, a terrible monster with dangerous magic. She didn't deserve anything but pain, suffering, death. She didn't deserve Anna, just as she had never deserved her mother. She knew it. She had knew it since the day Anna had rescued her, but she had tried to lie to herself, to tell herself this time it would be different, that she'd never let her know about her powers, but those were lies and she knew it.

In that moment she heard a knock in her door. It should be Anna, probably she was there to take her back to the awful dark room where she had been during the past 16 years. She wasn't going to open the door. She wasn't going to return to that place. She'd preferred to die.

She remembered when her mother first knew about her powers, she was 3 years old.

Her parents had known she wasn't normal the time they saw her. That strange hair color, too pale skin and unnatural blue eyes, were all signs that had let them know something was wrong. Then, they had discovered she was more sensitive to hot than normal people and couldn't stay under the rays of the Sun too much because she'd get very bad sun-burnings. However, they had thought it was something similar to albinism, so they hadn't thought too much about it.

When she was two, she had discovered her powers, but she didn't know how to use them, so she couldn't cast ice consciously, and when she did, it was always one or two snowflakes.

Then, when she was three, at least she had learned to cast ice at her will, and what had she done? She had shown it to her mother, of course. She had thought she would like it, she had thought she would be glad, but she was wrong. Her mother was totally horrified and told her to never use them again and, most importantly, to hide them from her father.


"Elsa, please, open the door. You can't stay in there forever." She heard Anna's voice.

Elsa laughed internally. Yes, she could stay in there forever. She'd accepted it when she was five. It had been the first time her father had beaten her, before that, he'd always been good to her. True, sometimes he had yell at her, but only when he was angry, and he had treat her coldly, but that was his normal way to treat people. However, that day, it all changed.

She had done something, she didn't remember what exactly, maybe it was the time when she had broken the expensive jar that her great-grandfather had brought when he went to China, or maybe it was something else, what she remembered clearly is her father becoming as furious as she had never seen before. He had yell awful things at her and he had said she wasn't going to play at the garden for two weeks, but the worst part had been when he had hit her. No one had ever hit her before, so she didn't know that kind of pain, sure she had fell and crash toward things a few times, but that was nothing compared to her own father inflicting pain to her. The emotions were too strong that her powers had gotten out of control and, without knowing, she had made it snow inside the house.

It hadn't been a snow storm, just a few snowflakes falling over her, but it was all it took for her father to know she was a monster. She remembered him grabbing her arm and practically dragging her to her room, slamming the door behind her and locking it. He had told her that it was too dangerous for her, and mainly the other people, to let her be free as if she was a normal human being and that she would have to stay there at least until he found the cure to her curse.

Elsa had cried, begged him to let her out and promised she wouldn't use her magic ever again, but he didn't listened. That same day, he had fired the butler and the house keeper, to make sure no one would know about the monster her daughter was. Later that day, when her mother had returned from her monthly cloth shopping, he had told her about everything and she, of course, had denied knowing about her powers before. Her parents, then, had decided to keep her on her room until they could find someone who could help them to remove the magic, but they didn't want negative blurb about them keeping their daughter as a prisoner, so they just had reported her as missing to the police and, after a few months, they had even made her funeral, saying she was most likely dead.

Elsa had suffered a lot the first days, knocking desperately on the door until her little hands became sore, pleading to go outside every time her parents passed next to her room, but it had seemed as if they had frozen hearts. However, her mother had felt sorry for her and had bought a television and installed it in her room, also she had bought her books and teached her how to read, and she had spent a few hours per week playing with her.

After a year she had get used to it and had started to think that maybe a whole life spent just inside her room wasn't too bad if her mother was there for her. However, it hadn't been for long. After a couple of years things had started to change for bad.


"Elsa, what happened in the morning was... Well, I'm not going to lie, it was strange and at the moment I freaked out, but it doesn't change anything, I promise. Please, let me in." She heard Anna shouting outside the door. It didn't matter what she said, she wasn't going to open. She knew that her magic was dangerous and that people usually got too scared at the sight of it that they would more likely try to kill her. Anna wasn't like everybody, she knew she wouldn't kill her, and she doubt she would put her inside the prison again, but she had thought the same about her parents, and they had been wrong.

She was six when her father had finally find someone who said he could help her with the course. What was his name? Weasel-town? Well, that funny old man, who was very charismatic at first sight, was going to be her worst nightmare. He and his men had made some experiments to her, some of them painful (in one occasion they had broken her arm to see if she could still cast ice with a broken bone), and finally, after a year, they had told her father that there was no cure and that the safest option to everyone was to lock her somewhere safer and keep her inside forever.

Weasel-town had helped to construct her prison. He had been very glad when her father had told him about the secret passage that led to a camber designed to contain food stocks in case there was a war or a famine (It had been built by a very… forehanded ancestor), but he said that it needed some adjustments, so he had made some magic symbols that, supposedly, would help her conceal her magic, and had put warning words in the walls, in case that one day someone found the passage. It had took him a year to finish it all, but finally the prison was ready to hold its monster.

What Weasel-town hadn't expected, though, was her mother standing up for her, saying that it was inhuman to send a child to that horrible place, and that she wasn't going to allow it. To her surprise, her father had agreed with her and had said that, while her room was still enough to keep everyone safe, he didn't see the need to send her down there. She supposed that, after all he still cared for her.

After discharging a very grumpy Weasel-town, the life in Arendelle mansion had return to normality. Elsa had been the best daughter in all the history and had been cautious of not casting even a single snowflake. Her mother had continued playing with her and, after some convincing, her father had even read a story for her a couple of times. She had started to think that everything would be alright.

However, around that time, her mother had gotten pregnant. It was good news for her parents but not for her, they both were afraid of her hurting the baby when he was born and, even if her mother had said that they could keep them apart and that nothing would happen, none of them believed it. Besides, Elsa really had wanted to have a little brother, someone with who she could play when her parents couldn't, and had insisted that she wouldn't hurt him if they just let her play with him sometimes. It had confirmed her parent's suspicions that they weren't going to be able to keep the siblings apart for too long. It had made the prison possibility more real.

One day her mother had talked to her about the possibility of send her to the secret room when her baby brother was born, and Elsa had plead her not to do it, promising not to even wish to see him ever, but she hadn't believed her, and had said that it was for the best. Elsa, obviously, had gotten mad and scared and her powers had gotten out of control. They were more powerful than what she remembered from the last time she had used them, and couldn't stop the magic in time. It all had ended with rays of magic ice flying in all directions, one of them striking her mother's prominent belly.

Elsa had known that something was wrong when she saw her mother falling to the ground, holding her stomach and trembling uncontrollably. She immediately had yelled asking for help, and when her father had arrived and saw the scene, the first thing he had done was hitting her so hard that her vision even blurred. Then he had dragged her to his studio and lock her up there, promising to kill her if she even dared to move. The next hours had been agony, wondering if her mother and brother were still alive and fearing her fate if they didn't. She had contemplated the family portrait, absorbing every detail, thinking that it was going to be the last colorful thing she was going to see before being killed or putted inside the prison.

When her father had returned, during the night of that very day, he had opened the door and beat her as he had never done before, even after she had told him that everything that had happened was an accident. She had ended up with multiple bruises and cuts all over her little body. When he seemed satisfied with his work, he had told her that her brother was dead, but that her mother had been able to resist her attack and was in the hospital, however, she wasn't going to be able to have more children. He had said she was a monster and that she didn't deserve to live, but that he was so merciful that he wasn't going to kill her.

Then he had gave her a pair of gloves, saying that Weasel-town had told him that they would help her control her powers. Once she had putted them in her hands, he had opened the door to the secret passage and dragged her in. Every step had been torture to her sore body but she hadn't complained, not even once, knowing it was going to be worst if she putted any amount of resistance.

Finally, after what for her had seemed an interminable set of stairs and a very scary passage, they had arrived to the room. He had practically thrown her inside, not sparing her a second glance before shutting the iron door. At first she had been too pained to even look around, but once she did, after a few minutes of being down there, she had been invaded by utter panic. The place was so dark she couldn't even see her palms if she putted them inside of her, and it was so lonely and there were strange sounds, probably made by the water running on the pipes, but in the state of mind in which she was, they had seemed like laments of pained souls and chains dragging.

She had run to the door and knock and yelled, saying she didn't want to be there, pleading for someone to help her, but no one heard her, no one had come in her aid. However, she had kept knocking all night, and the next day and many days, until she had gotten too exhausted to even think.

Elsa didn't want to live that again, and she was sure she wasn't strong enough to support even a night inside her prison, so she wasn't going to open the door. Never. That way, she wouldn't hurt Anna and Anna wouldn't put her in the prison. It was the best for both.