A/N: Trigger warning - References to Rape, Self-harm, Suicide
Stirring awake from the metallic taste of blood in her mouth, the first thing Elsa registers is the searing pain pulsating through her ribs, along with the firm grasp of gloved hands around her neck.
"Look, she's waking up," a voice creeps into her ear. Elsa looks up long enough to feel her body falling to the concrete floor. Expecting to find Hans's eyes, Elsa flinches when she spots two soldiers with spiteful stares, standing before rows of iron bars.
Concrete floor, iron bars, the word prison barely registers in her head before one of the soldiers jams a boot into her chest, sending her tumbling further into the cell. Try as she might, no ice comes to her hands; nor even the slightest tinge of cold. A needle mark on her arm confirms what they had done.
"Stop," Elsa snarls. She looks at her hand, expecting again to see ice, but finding only cold sweat trickling down her wrists. The guards turn to leave, but Elsa's calls out to them.
"No, wait, this is a mistake!" Elsa cries, rising to her feet, "you have to let me out, I need to get to-"
"You're not going anywhere!" a guard yells. Every bit of air in Elsa's lungs is drained when he punches her in the gut. She curls up on the ground, clutching her stomach and groaning. Inching away from the door, the grimace on her face fades when she notices them still standing there. Her skin begins to crawl as she listens to their conversation.
"Fine looking girl, isn't she?"
"Aye, mighty fine, I wonder what she did to piss Hans off."
"Doesn't matter, better she's here than dead in some ditch. I always liked blondes."
"You're a bastard, I bet you'll have a go at any pussy that ends up here."
The taller of the two soldiers stares at Elsa's body, sprawled across the ground, her eyes flashing a mixture of rage and fear like a cornered animal. His eyes rove up and down Elsa's slender curves, wrapped snugly in her uniform. He had never seen someone as ravishing as her; the other female soldiers who ended up here sported buzzcut hairdos and biceps the size of tree trunks.
"I'm not letting this one slip past me," he grins, licking his lips, "they might execute her tomorrow anyway."
Elsa pushes herself away from his boots clomping towards her. She utters a sharp cry of pain when he grabs her hair and yanks her head backwards.
"Nice hair, blondie," he snarls, the stench of alcohol making her eyes water, "I wonder if your cunt is golden too."
The other soldier erupts into bellows of laughter, and Elsa struggles to free herself from his grasp, only to receive a full-handed slap across her face.
"No answer?" he snarls, pinning Elsa to the ground with his enormous hands, "I guess I'll be finding out then."
The soldier's breath comes quick and heavy against her face as he leans his weight onto her. Pushing against his body with all her strength, Elsa's heart begins to falter when she realizes what's about to happen. She looks over his shoulder at the other soldier, standing by the door with his arms folded.
"Whacha lookin' at blondie? Want him to join in too? I can get a whole platoon in here if that's what you want."
Elsa squirms beneath his weight. A wave of nausea slams into her when she feels a hard lump in his pants brushing against her thigh.
"Quiet, much? I hope your cunt is as tight as your mouth," he smirks, reaching down between Elsa's legs, "maybe I'll get to try both today."
The other soldier rushes over to pin Elsa's wrists to the ground as his comrade fumbles with her pants. The sight of his blackened teeth fills Elsa's mind with liquid horror, her throat tightens into knots when she tries to scream. Tears trickle from her eyes when she feels her pants being yanked down.
"Kill me, just kill me," Elsa whimpers, her voice barely audible over the sound of their jeering. Her hands turn blue as she struggles to get away from the stench of man-sweat and the deafening jowls of laughter. Arching her back, Elsa gives one more lurch in an attempt to throw his insurmountable weight off her, before gasping when she feels nothing holding her down.
Elsa flinches when her cell door clangs shut. Jerking upright, she watches an even taller guard hurling the two soldiers to the ground outside. He rips the bunch of keys from their hands, muttering, "I'll kill you sick fucks if you come near this cell again." The two soldiers stare at him, before scampering down the corridor with their heads bowed.
Sensing her chance, Elsa leaps to the iron door, pleading for his help, "Please, please, there's been a mistake, you need to let me out at once!"
The seven-foot tall mammoth of a prison guard casts a look of disdain towards Elsa before stomping off down the corridor, keys jangling in his bear-like hands. Slumping back into her cell's corner, the grief in Elsa's chest bubbles over in a sob as the realisation that Anna is most likely dead dawns upon her. Shuddering when the lights go off, she curls up in a tight ball, listening for any signs that the two guards were returning to have another go at her, but there's nothing but the feeble sounds of her own sobbing.
Elsa wakes to the harsh noise of a buzzer resounding through the hallway, and sparse lines of sunlight filtering through a slit in the ceiling. Widening her eyes at the sight of her jail door unlocking by itself, Elsa staggers into the corridor, expecting to find a company of soldiers waiting to take her to the firing squad. Instead, there's just a bunch of other prisoners in khaki convict overalls, stretching and wiping their eyes as they head to the mess hall.
"Medium security?" Elsa wonders, looking at the cameras lining the ceiling. Without anyone to tell her what to do, Elsa wanders in the general direction of the crowd. A few of them give curious glances at the rank on her uniform, but most are more interested in the trays of pancakes laid out for breakfast.
Approaching the meal counter, Elsa freezes in place when the guard dishing out breakfast calls her by rank and name.
"Captain Elsa?" he mutters, stopping her from taking the food, "I was told you're on a vegetarian diet."
Elsa looks up at the guard, who can't be more than eighteen years old. She turns to see an inmate drizzling streams of syrup on his pancake stack.
"Aren't pancakes vegetarian?" Elsa asks, raising an eyebrow.
"You have a special meal," he says, holding out a sealed plastic container to her. Inspecting the identical contents of pancakes and syrup, Elsa frowns when she realises what it means.
"Also, I strongly suggest finishing your meal," he adds, flashing a look at Elsa that's threatening and pleading all at once, "or there will be...problems."
Accustomed to being guarded and watched her entire life, Elsa takes to prison life quickly. It puzzles her to no end as to why the State was bothering to keep her in a medium security prison; so grave were her offences she'd have expected to be taken outside and shot on her first night. Still, the constant worry over Anna's fate and the nagging lack of ice which had grown to be a part of herself begin to toil on her mind. By the end of her third day in prison, Elsa's eyes grow dark from lack of sleep, and the drugged-up food makes her queasy. The sudden buzzer which indicated meal times had a knack of making her flinch and shudder in fear.
Having been allowed to keep her rank and uniform, the jailors put Elsa to work quickly. She's placed in charge of prison laborers, a mix of petty thieves and political criminals, constructing brick walls and resurfacing a weed-infested square. The prisoners are unfamiliar with the young, beautiful woman giving them orders, but Elsa's firm yet gentle voice, and her relentless efficiency wins them over. Still, the hours of toil fail to take the edge off Elsa's mind; she finds herself slipping deeper into depression. Having had the only light in her life snuffed out, Elsa's feels like her mind is disintegrating at the edges, threatening to shatter and send her into a suicidal fit.
Despite Elsa's lifeless demeanour. the prisoners prefer slaving away under a woman's soft gaze instead of the guards' yelling and truncheon blows. Work output triples for the same number of man hours, and the prison warden takes note of her success. He takes care to station the soldier who tried to rape her as far away from Elsa as possible, but sometimes, he'd stare at Elsa from the second balcony as she ate, licking his lips at her whenever she noticed him. The thought of succumbing to another attack frays her already-fragile mind to no end.
Occasionally, he'd visit her cell at night, taunting her through the bars about when he'd finally get the keys to her cell. The vulgar, explicit slurs about what he'd do to her body sent Elsa curling into a ball and covering her ears each time she came. Her nightmares intensify to the point where she'd wake up covered in cold sweat, with his dreadful laughter still echoing through her ears like a jet engine.
Elsa grows weary of looking over her shoulder at every turn. He doesn't have the keys to her cell, but really, it could happen anywhere: in the locked storeroom where she'd cut at her wrist with a sharpened metal spoon, trying to forget her worries, in the showers where no amount of cold water could wash away her fears, or in some dark isolated corridor where no one would be around to hear her scream.
It happens one day, when she least expects it, in the safest of places - the cell where they'd lock her in for the night. Sleep eludes her as usual, but she opens her eyes when the ominous thud of boots echo down the hallway. Breathing heavily, he stops outside her cell, and Elsa's blood turns to ice when she hears jingling keys.
"Hey blondie," he sneers, holding up a key as it glistens in the moonlight, "look what your savior left dangling outside his locker."
Elsa backs away into a corner as he unlocks her cell door slowly. He bares his blackened teeth at her, and even from this distance, she could tell that he was drinking. Looking around her cell, panic overwhelms her when she realizes her situation, and the hell that's about to befall her. The solder smirks at Elsa's blue eyes glinting in the darkness, filled with a crazed fear like a tiny rodent about to devoured by a larger predator.
"I hope you're naked beneath the sheets," he snarls, shutting the door behind him.
"No, please," Elsa pleads, holding a pillow in front of her, "you can't do this to me, it's not right! I didn't do anything to you!"
The pillow rips when he yanks it from her, spraying feathers in his face. Seeing this momentary distraction, Elsa leaps from her bed and attempts to dash past him, only to be picked up like a rag doll and hurled back onto the mattress.
"Don't act like you don't want it," he sneers, slamming her on the bed, "all blondes ravish having their cunts fucked like the whores they are."
Kneeling on Elsa's thighs, he catches her flailing arms and pins them above her head. With tears in her eyes, Elsa looks away from his rabid stare as he jams a hand up her blouse. The sickening touch of his fingers on her bare skin sends bile creeping into her mouth. She frees her hand from his vice-like grip and shoves him hard. In the ensuing tussle, he rips her blouse. Elsa's furious determination sends him into a blinding rage; he backhands her across the face until she spits blood against the wall.
Impatient with her constant struggling, the soldier picks Elsa up and slams her onto the ground. Elsa cries out at the stinging pain enveloping her face.
"Don't worry about your face, no one's going to recognise you after I'm done."
"Get off me!" Elsa screams. Her cries are ended swiftly when he grabs her by the hair and smashes her face into the concrete. The blunt force robs Elsa of her breath for a few seconds, by the time she recovers from the bashing, her pants have been yanked to her knees, and she can feel his stinking, alcoholic breath coming hard and fast against her neck. Elsa's heart is crushed to the size of a pea when she hears him fumbling with his pants. Struggling to free herself from the insurmountable weight pinning her down, Elsa's nails rake against the concrete as his arousal grates along her thigh.
A glint flashes across her eyes. Beneath her mattress, lies that sharpened spoon she had smuggled from the canteen, with which she had contemplated ending her life. Snatching the blade, Elsa rams it into his leg. He howls in agony and releases his grip from her neck. Elsa screams and makes a dash for the corridor, only to collide head-first with her cell door.
"You fucking cunt!" he hollers, grabbing Elsa's throat and pinning her against the door. Blood spurts from his thigh like a broken faucet.
Gripping the spoon with her shaking, snow-white knuckles, Elsa slashes at his hand. His attempts to grapple her to the wall are met with a knee to his groin. She lashes out with the blade as he buckles over in pain, the glinting piece of metal inadvertently hacking into his face. Screaming, Elsa slashes wildly in the darkness, and by the time he slumps over, bits of his skin and flesh scatter the floor around her feet.
"Help! Help!" Elsa screams, pounding on the cell door as it rattles in its place. Turning to the soldier's motionless body, still spurting blood from its carotid artery, Elsa feels along his belt until she finds the keys. The threat of being discovered sends a flurry of thoughts into Elsa's brain, still buzzing with adrenaline. They'd really kill her this time.
Slick with blood, the keys clatter to the ground when she fumbles with them. It takes her several tries for her to get the door open, and by that time, the lights come on in her cell and corridor. The cameras spot a dead prison guard and Elsa fleeing down the hallway, and at once, sirens start blaring.
"Elsa, what the fuck happened? Get back in your goddamned cell!" the speakers screech with static.
Blinded by the light, Elsa stumbles down the hallway on her bloodstained feet. Her screams raise a ruckus amongst the other convicts still locked in their cells, and before long, the entire cell block begins to erupt in a chorus of shouting and jeering. The enormous barred gate at the end of the corridor rumbles as it begins to close, but Elsa manages to slip past the steel bars into a stairwell seconds before it slams shut. At once, she's tackled to the wall by an officer. Without even thinking, Elsa snatches the taser from his holster and stabs it in his thigh.
The guard collapses to the floor in a twitching mess. Elsa peers down the stairwell's edge, shuddering at the dozens of officers in tactical gear racing up the steps towards her. The walls begin closing on her brain. Racing up the steps, sweat drips from Elsa's face as her lungs begin to give way. She jerks away from the railing when a tear gas canister streaks past her head, filling the stairwell with acrid smoke. The memory of chemical attack drills barely drifts into her mind. Shutting her eyes, Elsa holds her breath and dashes through the tear gas, ignoring the blistering pain erupting on her skin. By the time she reaches the roof, her lungs are ready to burst. Tears and mucus leak from her eyes and nose, but the sudden rush of fresh air does nothing to rid her lungs of that fiery pain.
Freezing cold wind cuts into Elsa's cheek as she dashes across the roof. The edge looms into view, and it doesn't occur to her until then that there really isn't anyway out. Her feet leave red splotches on the concrete tiles as she steps on the edge, and at once, the noise of men shouting and dogs barking fill her mind with a certainty that what she's about to do is nothing short of right. Without Anna, there's nothing else for her here but a lifetime of pain and loneliness. The blade was merely a distraction to what she should've done a long time ago.
"Elsa!" the warden yells behind her, "Don't do it!"
Turning around, Elsa sees a horde of officers with guns drawn and dogs straining on their leashes. In the midst of them, the prison warden who had been kind to her all this while.
"We can talk about this!" he yells, "Step away from the edge!"
"H-he tried to do it again, so I-I killed him," Elsa stutters, holding out her bloodstained hands to the moonlight, "h-he's dead now. I-I'm sorry!"
"Whatever you did, we can talk about it! J-just don't do anything stupid!"
Elsa looks behind her at the ten-floor drop onto the parking lot. If she aimed right, she could even land with her forehead right onto a concrete barrier, which would break her neck instantly. Looking up at the dark, cloudless sky, Elsa smiles at the full moon, past its peak in the sky. It's been what? Seven hours since she last ate? The adrenaline still buzzing through her head makes counting anything difficult.
"Goodbye," Elsa mutters, directed towards Anna, although she was in all possibility dead now, and all that remained of her was the bitter-sweet memory of her smile.
Stepping over the edge, a snowflake drifts past Elsa's eyes, before it's torn apart by the wind.