Chapter 11 – The Sun and the Moon

Short chapter here, since it was part of a loooong conversation that went on forever, so I split it up for ease of reading. To make up for it, I'll update again tomorrow.

"I thought you weren't letting Elsa out of your sight ever again?" Kristoff asked, his voice teasing, when Anna came to see him while he was harnessing Sven to the sled.

"She had a meeting. Kai's sitting in."

"Should she be working again, so soon?"

Anna shrugged. "It's means things can start getting back to normal. That's a good thing."

"So," Kristoff slung an arm over Sven's back. "What are you going to do?"

"I need some help, actually." Anna handed him a folded piece of paper. "Can you do something for me? And for her?"

"Anything." Kristoff tucked the paper into his sled.

"And, can you go see your family? I know they're love experts, and Elsa doesn't really have a love problem but she's got a problem and maybe they would know something about how to help her?" She was rambling, because she was nervous, but Kristoff smiled and nodded.

"Yeah, no problem. Sven and I will stop off there tonight. Anything else?"

"Not at the moment. I think I've got everything in place to help Elsa, now."

"And who's helping you?" Kristoff asked.

"What?" Anna looked surprised that he would ask. "I'm fine. It's Elsa who needs-"

"Someone needs to take care of you too," Kristoff said, taking his arm off Sven and stepping closer to her. He touched a hand lightly under her chin, tilting her head up so she would keep her eyes on him. "You try so hard to hold up the world, but it's too much for one person. You need a safety net, too."

"I've got it all under control and-"

Kristoff effectively shut her up by pressing his lips to hers. She leaned forward into him, eyes sliding closed. He drew back with a smile. "Anna, take care of yourself."

"I will."

"Where will you be tonight? I'll check on you when I get home."

"I think I'll be with Elsa in her room," Anna said thoughtfully. "We're going to talk a bit more, and she prefers it when I'm the one watching her. Makes her less self-conscious."

"She's lucky to have you." Kristoff kissed her once more, fleetingly, and took a seat in the sled. "I'll see you tonight. By the way," he added, as Sven started trotting away, "I finished the gravestone."

"Thank you!" she shouted after him, feeling a weird pang of both love and sadness in her heart. She supposed there was no harm in going to Bae's grave and checking up on the calf.

She missed him. She missed how he used to press his face into her stomach and wag his tail when she fed him.

Kristoff had placed the stone at the base of the tree; it was a brown rock with one side flattened into a plane and Bae's name chipped out of the flat surface.

Anna sat down next to the grave, one hand on the brown rock. "Hi, Bae. How are you?"

There was, obviously, no answer, but Anna smiled to herself because it felt good to just talk.

"I'm sorry that I wasn't with you, at the end. I know you would have liked it if I was. But I was also kinda dealing with a lot. I still am. And I love you. I . . . I hope you're happy now. And safe."

She patted the rock absently, and ran her hand down the smooth front of the stone, fingers dipping into the letters of his name.

"I gotta go, Bae. I've got to check on Elsa. I'll bring you some flowers, when I come again."

She stood up, taking a moment to just stand there and smile, rather sadly, before she went inside again to seek Elsa out.

Elsa was still busy, so Anna went to her study to see if there was anything she could take care of. She had been trying hard to lighten Elsa's work load until they could finally get on the same page and figure out what they were going to do about Elsa's mental state. Anna was wavering between terrified for her sister's health and absolutely furious that Elsa would even think about things such as suicide, and sometimes she wasn't even sure which emotion she was feeling.

And since their last talk, Elsa had seemed fractionally calmer, but Anna wasn't foolish enough to assume that they were making any head way. Elsa could act normal for months at a time, and so far Anna's search through her father's notes on Elsa had not yielded much in the way of treatment.

She finished the work she had, then went back to the dusty book shelf and pulled out the book that looked most used. It had a loose sheet of paper in it, with what looked like a map, from Arendelle to somewhere; she didn't pay a huge amount of attention to it.

There were other sheets of paper tucked away, and she pulled those out. The first one she unfolded looked like a schematic for something.

"What on earth?" she said aloud, wondering what she had found. It looked like plans for manacles, but she couldn't fathom what they would be doing in the book. They must have been put there by accident.

"Hang on," Anna studied the plans a bit closer. There was a little note in the corner, in her father's handwriting.

Must go over her wrists to keep her safe. Can see the fjord from the window.

You were going to lock her up, Anna thought, and at least this time she knew who the anger was directed towards. You had no idea how to help her, did you? You were so busy concentrating on plugging holes that you never thought to see what was making them.

Anna was waiting in Elsa's room, with the plans on her lap, sitting by the window because Elsa liked looking out the window and she was much less likely to shy away from Anna in this particular spot.

"Hi."

"Hey, Elsa." Anna unfolded the plans, and held them up. "Did you know about these?"

Elsa's eyes flicked to the plans, once, then she focused on the window. She swallowed. "Yes."

"I think I understand you a bit better now." Anna refolded the paper. "If anything went wrong, that was the life you were going to lead, wasn't it?"

"It was a last ditch effort," Elsa said slowly. "If I couldn't get everything under control."

"And did he really think hanging that over your head would help?"

"It didn't matter."

"It did! It does!" Anna stood up, and Elsa immediately wrapped her arms around herself, unconsciously blocking Anna off. "It's not your fault. Don't you see, this is why you felt that there was no way out. This is why you were so afraid of failing, because failing meant you would be locked away forever."

It wasn't even about failing, it was about freedom. Elsa's life had no way out, except for death. And that was something, at least, that she could control.

"Elsa, you don't have to be scared of that anymore." Anna said, softly, because Elsa looked like she was ready to bolt again. "You're in charge now. You can decide where your life goes."

"I don't even know what I want from life anymore."

"How about being needed? How about being loved? Is that enough?"

"But you don't need me." Elsa didn't say it, but that had helped. She hadn't felt obligated to be alive.

Anna edged a bit closer. "That's where you're very wrong. Of course I need you. I'll always need you. We're family, and we complete each other." Almost close enough to touch now, but not reaching out. "I'm like the sun, and you're like the moon."

"The moon doesn't shine, it's not necessary-"

"The moon needs the sun. You can't see the moon without the sun. So, you need me. And you give me purpose, and hope. I need you too. It's us, Elsa, it's us against the world. You're not alone. The moon is never alone. The sun is always there, shining on it."

Anna reached out, took one of Elsa's cold hands in her own. She laced their fingers together. "I need you. Can I be the reason you wake up every morning?"

Elsa pulled away. "Anna . . . I just need some time to wrap my head around everything and decide what I want."

"But you want to live, right?" This, more than anything, haunted Anna's thoughts at all times. A paralysing fear that if she let Elsa out of her sight, she would never come back again.

Elsa looked at the paper still clutched in Anna's hand; she looked just as haunted as her sister. "I . . . think so . . ." It felt like the right thing to say, but Elsa was still feeling so hollow inside that even her ice wasn't making her feel complete.

"I'm finding reasons," Anna said, trying to sound reassuring but until there was no longer the threat of losing Elsa hanging over head she wasn't going to be her usual chipper self. "Trust me."

"I do." Elsa said, and she sounded sincere, her voice was raw with conviction. She lifted one hand, vaguely, gesturing towards Anna's shoulder, and Anna stayed stock still because she wanted this contact to come from Elsa alone, without any help.

Elsa let her hand rest, very, very lightly, on Anna's shoulder, biting her lower lip and keeping her eyes glued to her fingers because she didn't want to know what Anna was thinking. Her heart was racing because she was actually trying and succeeding. She was reaching out to Anna, and it might have been the bare minimum of a gesture but it was something.

"Thank you," Elsa said, sounding a bit stiffer than she had earlier. "For trying."

Anna raised one hand to rest it over Elsa's. "Wait 'til you see what I've planned. You're gonna love it."

"I hope so." Elsa smiled, and it felt strange. She hadn't done it in so long. She nodded slightly, eyes flickering around the room. "I've still got work to do. So . . ."

"We'll talk again later." Anna smiled brightly. "This evening, actually."

"Okay."

"I've just got some stuff that I need to do, so Kai's going to follow you around all day-" Anna chose to ignore it when Elsa winced, "- And make sure you keep safe. How is the arm, by the way?"

At the mention of her wounds, Elsa drew the affected arm against her stomach, and edged away from Anna. "It's okay."

"Are you sure?" Anna noticed the room getting a bit colder. "It's not hurting or anything?" And she should have really kept her mouth shut, and not pushed, but she couldn't help herself. She took a step forward, closing the distance Elsa had opened between them. "You know you've got to keep it clean and make sure that-"

"I'm late, for . . . something." Elsa seemed frustrated at her inability to come up with a plausible excuse. "I'll see you this evening." She was backing away, both arms now tucked around herself.

Anna was left standing alone.