A/N: This is by far the latest update ever, but it's finally here! I told you I wasn't going to give up on this one; we're way too far in to turn back now. Thank you all for your patience, and enjoy this chapter!

Chapter XXI: Frostbite

After Elsa had calmed from her breakdown, her anguish sought refuge within her fatigue. I carried her up to the sparse and cramped living space that had been prepared on the second floor of the warehouse and gently lowered her onto the mattress provided. She shifted out of my arms the moment she touched down, turning away from me and curling up into a tight and reclusive ball, simultaneously shunning and retreating from the rest of the world.

I sighed. I couldn't really blame her reacting like this. Considering the fact that we were literally surrounded by harsh and unforgiving reminders of her most grievous mistakes, Elsa no doubt felt the eyes of celestial judgement looking down upon her and finding her unworthy, the weight of all her sins tipping the scales of justice out of her favor. It was a terrible and familiar feeling that I was acquainted with personally; such is the burden of a soldier who has done the things that I have done. I stood and gave Elsa's shoulder a light, comforting squeeze, afraid that doing anything more would only upset her further. Taking in the sight of her once more as she lay on the bed, more closely resembling a scared little girl than anything else in the world, I decided to give her some space.

I left the room and stood at the top of the stairwell I had previously climbed on my way up. From the elevated vantage, I could see the entirety of the main warehouse floor, and it became clear that there were far more sculptures than I had originally thought. They also appeared to be organized, sorted meticulously, though by what rhymes or reasons, I didn't entirely know. Chronology was the most likely candidate, but I, of course, had no way of verifying it.

I came down to the ground floor and began to peruse the near countless aisles with objective curiosity. I didn't realize that I was looking for something in particular until it became apparent that it was missing; I couldn't find Sven anywhere. A couple others were missing as well—quite a handful actually. In fact, I was almost certain that most of them were there earlier...

I must be in a different section, I reasoned simply. Before I could ponder on it any further, I remembered that our car, our flamboyant fire hydrant of a vehicle, was still parked over by the busted gate. All our efforts at hiding from our pursuers would have been for naught if someone happened to notice that conspicuous convertible. I cursed myself for making such a rookie mistake and went to tell Elsa where I would be lest she should succumb to panic from my unannounced absence.

Elsa was sitting up when I entered the room. Her arms were wrapped around her shins and her chin was pressed into her knees. Faded blue eyes stared blankly into oblivion and the depths of her inner darkness, and her body was still. She didn't react at all when I came in.

"Elsa?" I called gently. I received no response. Unable any longer to stand seeing her in such a depressed state, I came around to kneel before her, hoping to be able to meet her downcast eyes, though they continued their vacant stare. "It's all in the past, Elsa," I placated, but she was still deaf to my words.

I exhaled a suppressed sigh. My frustration was building, and all of my attempts to placate my charge were failing. Within that moment of helplessness, however, I thought back to what Elsa had said to me before we had entered this place, this morbid treasure trove of painful mistakes and memories that all shone like frostbitten sapphires.

"It's not what's in there that scares me. It's what you'll think of it—what you'll think of me after you see this."

I closed my eyes and let pure and unfiltered sincerity flow into my words. "This doesn't change anything, Elsa—between us, at least. You're still the same caring, kind, and unbelievably strong woman that I've always known. I still love you, Elsa, and I always will. You don't have to live in fear of that anymore."

Her eyes flicked to mine though she didn't otherwise move or say anything. Even so, her gaze had regained the steel that it once had, and even that was enough. I smiled sheepishly.

After an eternity, her brow furrowed in disconcertion, and she finally spoke, nonplussed. "You're okay with loving a murderer?" Elsa reiterated skeptically.

"These were accidents," I countered, scratching the back of my head awkwardly. My own cloud of guilt, an ominous, cumulonimbus monstrosity of condensated darkness, came down to earth and began to rain upon me, drenching me in a depressing downpour of self-deprecating melancholy. "If anything, I'm the murderer. I've been in the field, and I've been in combat; my hands are far from clean. I don't have much of any right to judge you."

Elsa's gaze softened with sympathy. "You were a soldier. You did what needed to be done."

"I did what I was told to do," I snapped bitterly, shaking my head with shame. "I was merely a pawn of my superiors—a well-trained and lethal one, but a pawn nonetheless. I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of, Elsa, and I don't think I was fighting for the right side for most of them." I dropped down from a kneeling position to sit fully on the ground and rested an arm on my knee. "So you see," I began, and chuckled suddenly, cynically. "Even with your past accidents, you're still an angel in my eyes."

Elsa blushed scarlet despite herself, much like I thought she would, and I clasped her hands within mine. "So now I'll ask you. Are you okay with loving a murderer?"

Elsa closed her eyes and exhaled deeply before slowly opening them again. "There's no need for labels, Kris. To me, you're still the same man you always were—the same man that I fell in love with. I'll take you as you are, regardless of the past. The only thing that matters now is the present." A small smile slowly spread across her face, bunching up her pale, freckled, tear-stained cheeks in an endearing and adorable fashion, and I attempted to match it with a grin of my own. I still couldn't come close.

I nodded marginally. "I suppose you're right, though a little foresight couldn't hurt, which is why I should probably bring our obnoxious little firetruck in from the front gate." Elsa chuckled at that. Seizing an opportunity, I kissed her hand, which was still held in my own.

She laughed in surprise at the incredibly outdated gesture and let out an uncharacteristic snort before clamping a hand over her mouth and her reddening face.

I burst out laughing."That's a new one!"

Elsa shoved me away playfully, blushing furiously. "Shut up! Go get the car already, you oaf!"

"If you insist," I replied with mock injury. I then swooped in to place a quick peck on her cheek before sauntering out of the room.

My smile refused to leave my face as I descended the metal stairs, and the warm and buoyant feeling continued to uplift me even as I ventured back toward the gate.

The trip itself went without incident, and after I had returned the vehicle and parked it in a neighboring warehouse, I strode out of the hangar, only to witness a sight that sent me diving back toward the cover of the shadows.

There was a man, walking oddly, crookedly and stiffly as if most of his bones were either fused together or non-functional. He was silent and stared upward blankly as he hobbled along. He hadn't noticed me yet, and I had a feeling that he wouldn't anytime soon. Setting aside his undoubtedly odd disposition, I was for some reason more preoccupied with wondering why there were people here; Elsa had given the impression that there wasn't any staff located in the compound, so why was this guy hobbling along here? Was he another refugee?

As the light caught and glinted off of him, I suddenly had my answer; that luster was identical to what I had seen on the frozen statues. His movements were stiff because he was frozen solid.

I burst from the hangar like a hurtling maglev train, my boots gnashing against gravel, splashing through it and sending it up in showers of rock behind me as I dashed across the stretch of concrete between me and the entrance of warehouse 7101 like a plane hurtling down a runway. I thanked the stars that that animated statue couldn't hear or sense much of anything around itself; it had nearly toppled over a couple times while I made my passage.

As I skidded to a stop inside our warehouse, it became immediately apparent that more of the frosted victims were missing. My feet picked up again, carrying me to Elsa with panicked urgency. My blood pulsed through my veins like the explosive force from a combustion engine, and all the while, I continuously cursed myself for not acting on my previous suspicions.

How could I have been so blind? So complacent? I griped internally as I began my ascent of the staircase, my grip on the railing a stranglehold and my teeth clenched with self-directed fury and shame. Over the stretch of time between our departure from Arendelle and our arrival at the complex, I had lost sight of my responsibilities. My constantly vigilant manner had fizzled out in the presence of the most convivial distraction in this entire freezing world. I had been a damned lovestruck fool, had forgotten that I was supposed to protect her, and now my inexcusable lack of foresight may have cost the life of the only person who truly mattered anymore.

"Elsa!"

I barreled through the door into the room, scaring the blonde woman half to death and causing her to leap from the bed and stand with her arms wrapped around her middle. "What?! What's wrong? Did they find us? How-"

Her questions were cut off by my sudden my mind at the current moment, it all felt to be nothing short of a miracle. I vowed then and there to never lose sight of what mattered. Her heart had to keep beating, her lungs needed to keep breathing, and her mind needed to stay clear. Elsa must survive, for, without her, I knew—finally realized in this latest link of my chain of epiphanies, that I had nothing else. No one else.

My inner drama was being communicated entirely through the embrace that I had enveloped her in, but even then, there was only so much that could be communicated with an overly-tight bear hug that pinned the unfortunate victim's arms to their sides.

"Kris? What's wrong?" Elsa choked out. I let go immediately and she stumbled slightly from the sudden shifting, resting a hand on my chest for a moment to prevent from falling. A soft finger traced across my cheek and moved to the next one. It felt cold on my skin. Wet.

"You are going to survive," I said aloud, caught up as I was in my adamance. I opened my eyes and locked them with hers. "We have a situation."

Her gaze became downcast. "So they've finally caught up with us..."

"Not quite. It's...your storm."

She frowned, not comprehending. "What do you mean?"

An ungodly scream emanated from behind me, and I whipped around to find a frozen woman rushing up the stairs. Her eyes were not trained on me, but on something behind me.

Hell no.

As the dead woman passed the top of the stairs, she found a heel slammed into her chest and toppled backwards, tumbling down the stairs, her icy flesh chipping on the metal, before ultimately exploding against the concrete ground in a spectacular shower of cerulean and crimson shards of frozen gore.

"What the hell?!" Elsa cried, overwhelmed and on the verge of complete panic.

I turned, still catching my breath from my sudden exertion, to find her staring in horror at the doorway. "I don't entirely know how, but those statues are all coming back! We need to get out of here!"

She rushed toward the door and peaked out before I had a chance to pull her back. I followed her gaze and began to realize the futility of the situation.

The shelves were empty, and the frozen undead were approaching us as a horde. "This was the last thing I expected to happen when I woke up this morning," Elsa grumbled.

"Tell me about it. So much for this place being safe."

Elsa clicked her tongue, "remind me to nag at you for that after we get out of here."

A surge in the volume of the screeching seized our attention. The group of walkers had reached the stairs and currently were shoving each other as they all simultaneously attempted to ascend the now-seemingly-rickety metal construct that connected our temporary shelter to the ground. I slammed the door closed and locked it, not really having much of any faith that it would actually be able to hold up against the cumulative force of a raging horde of frost zombies, but figuring it was better than nothing; a half second can often make all the difference in a life-or-death scenario, especially if it's close-combat one.

I turned around to locate Elsa and found her blasting bone-chilling vapor at the far wall. At least one of us had already formed some kind of plan. Crystals began to coat everything as her torrent of sleet sucked all of the heat out of the air, and frost crunched under my shoes as I pursued the opportunity to gather our supplies, a task that was mercifully simple since I had previously insisted that we pack as light as reasonably possible and keep what little luggage we did have in one singular place. At least I had remembered to think that far ahead.

A new groaning sound pierced the air as the metal walls shifted and reacted to the sudden change in temperature. It was shortly followed by an explosive thud from the opposite end of the room, a sound of impending doom that emanated from the locked door as the first members of the undead reached and began to thrash against it. Dents were forming across the surface and the frame of the door at an alarming rate. It wasn't going to hold out for much longer. I looked back at Elsa, who continued her constant stream of ice. It was taking a visual toll on her, sagging her shoulders and bringing back that concealed yet evident mask of tiredness, one which was always given away by her eyes. She wasn't going to hold out for much longer.

The wall in front of her looked relatively frozen from my point of view, but was it brittle enough for us to break through? I honestly had no idea, but the door creaked just then, groaned like a ferocious, dying beast, reminding me of the urgency of our situation. There wasn't time to plan anything further—it was do or die, improvise or perish. I ducked my head and barreled toward Elsa.

She yelped as I wrapped and tucked her into my arms, but I continued to rush headlong toward the wall, hoping to God—if he even still exists—that this was going to work.

To put it as simply as possible, it hurt like hell. It was like a linebacker tackling a brick wall at full speed, like trying to dash into platform nine-and-three-quarters at King's Cross only to realize that I was, in fact, not a wizard, and that I, as a foolish and recently injured Muggle, would not be going to Hogwarts.

On the brighter side, the subsequent glass-like shatter of chilled metal was a welcoming sound. After that, however, the situation darkened even further. I felt the unpleasantly familiar feeling of being airborne, and belatedly realized my mistake; I had just tackled us through a wall and into the open air, three whole stories above the ground. Like a sadist scrubbing rock salt into an open and festering wound, my brain reminded me that the ground was of pebbly gravel and unforgiving concrete, and I somehow managed to cringe even harder.

— —

The next thing I remembered, everything was dark. I was on the ground, and something was tugging at me, or at least seemed to feel that way; you'd think that after having reawakened from unconsciousness so many times in the past that I'd be able to get over the disorientation rather quickly, but I had not, and resolved that I probably never would. I groggily opened a protesting eye to find a blurry shape standing over me. As my vision continued to sharpen marginally, I recognized the figure to be Elsa, whom I now realize—in retrospect as I write this—was attempting to drag me across the ground. There was a splash of blood on her cheek, standing out on her pale skin like red paint on a white canvas. I could only hope that it wasn't her own. Tears were streaming down her face, blurring the blood where the two fluids intersected, running in tracks down her pale and dirty flesh, which was dusted with grit and frost and twisted with agony and pain. Everything else was still blurry, and all of the sounds that I could even hear were muffled; it was frosted glass over my eyes and packed snow over my ears. I tried to call out, but my mouth and jaw still weren't responding. Whether it was due to my current state or—god forbid—the absence of the concerned piece of anatomy, I couldn't say.

No pun intended.

Elsa looked up sharply at a sound that I couldn't hear, and a sight that I couldn't see drew her face into a repudiating grimace as she waved her arm outward forcefully. The ground rumbled behind me with daunting force, and Elsa pulled her attention away from the interruption, returning back to the task of pulling me after her. I knew I was heavy, and my soggy, half-conscious mind marveled at her endurance.

We were soon cast into shadow, and Elsa let go of me for a moment before stepping out of my field of view. I didn't want her to go.

"...Elsa?"

She was back in a flash, skidding over to me at the sound of my voice. "Kris!"

Her hands cupped my face with concern and felt like an embrace with fresh snowfall against my skin. It was a blessing in disguise, as I later realized; her caress was an icepack, and as the soothing feel numbed my face, I suddenly realized that I had been experiencing a crippling amount of pain. I must have landed on my face. How lovely.

"What happened?" I asked, my head still foggy along with practically everything else.

Elsa glared at me fiercely through her tears, the strands and the locks of her unruly platinum-blonde hair. "You tackled me out of a goddamn window, you idiot! I thought you were dead!"

I frowned, puzzled and completely missing the point. "Well, I'm not. If you thought I was dead, though, why were you dragging me after you?"

She gave me a withering and pointed stare that was quickly eclipsed by the returning chill of her icy rage. "If you actually thought for even one second that I would even consider doing that, then you don't know me at all!" She sighed deeply and closed her eyes, her protective anger fading away with her exhalation. Her hands, still as hiemal as her element, grasped mine tightly. "I don't even know how you're still alive," she whispered, and her eyes flicked up to mine. "You landed on your head."

I smirked, "I got a thick skull, remember?"

She didn't laugh.

I frowned. "Elsa, what is it?"

She shook her head. "Now isn't the time. We're not out of the woods yet, and I don't know where you parked."

"It's in the warehouse across from the one we were hiding in."

Elsa bowed her head. "Shit."

I sighed. "Let me guess," I began, following Elsa's lithe form with my gaze as she stood and began to urgently dig around in one of our backpacks. "The frosties are still hanging around there, aren't they?" I ventured. Elsa stopped and turned to give me an odd look. "Frosties?"

I shrugged about as much as I could manage. "Hey, I'm still only half here; cut me some slack."

Elsa shrugged and went on with her search. "Well, to answer your question, yes, they're mostly still there. A few of them followed me, but most didn't leave the immediate area." She found what she was looking for and pulled it out of the bag, revealing it to be a first aid kit. She placed it before her and began to work, extracting a suture and some sort of salve, along with a couple of other things. "If they are acting under the will of the storm, though, they may be acting under a collective consciousness of sorts, in which case they are all probably coming this way," she pursed her lips and looked at me, "and you are in no condition to move."

I attempted a sigh, but it turned into a painful cough. "It sure seems that way," I remarked gruffly.

Elsa began her work on my injuries, performing a whole other kind of magic with surprising efficiency.

"Were you a nurse in another life?"

"I spent nearly a decade and a half with a library, the internet, and near constant solitude. I had a lot of time." She paused, "and Anna was always finding new ways to end up hurting herself." Her ministrations faltered as guilt crept through her nerves. "She still is."

I unfortunately had no more words for her this time, and as she adorned a new mask and once again bottled her pain within herself, I couldn't shake the ominous sense of foreboding that was beginning to take over me. I physically shuddered at her regression back towards repression.

"Hold still, please."

"Sorry."

— —

"How long are you going to freaking keep us in here?! Let me out of here right now or I'll clock you so hard that you'll never know what time it is!"

Kristoff sighed, dropped the journal onto his lap, and rested the back of his head against the wall his cot was pushed up against. "Just give it a rest, will ya? You're an idiot if you really think they'll just let you out because you told them to."

The series of creaks that followed informed him that Anna had flopped down onto her own thin excuse of a mattress. "I don't speak to traitors," she grumbled with folded arms.

Kristoff shook his head, unseen. "I'm not a traitor. I'm just playing this smart."

"By betraying us."

"I think that prof guy made his point about cooperation pretty clear, Anna. I know you're still reeling from what happened to Olaf, but-"

She scoffed in abject shock. "And you're not?!"

"He isn't the first friend who I've seen die, Anna, and this most definitely isn't the first time I was helpless to do anything about it either. You know that. The fact of the matter is that if we're going to get out of this damned hellhole, we're gonna have to play the professor's stupid game."

"But if we do that, they'll win!" Anna rebutted incredulously.

"That's not really our problem if it gets us out of here."

The frigidity of his selfish words surprised Anna. "How can you say that?" She questioned half-rhetorically, her voice reduced to a shocked whisper.

"Because it's true," was Kristoff's concise reply.

Anna sighed in exasperation as the furious and ferocious heat of the molten volcano of anger that festered, raged and burned within her lead the thin layer of her dismay to boil away as vapor, exposing the rancor beneath it. She leapt to her feet and yelled through the wall as if it weren't even there. "You might think so, but that's just because you've been hiding away like a goddamn hermit on top of a desolate mountain for the past five years! You don't have any damn idea how things work out here! You don't even really know who we're dealing with, do you?"

Kristof ground his teeth, and his hands clenched the book in his hands, but he said nothing.

"This is Callaghan's compound! This is as close to a burning hell as you can ever get in this frozen wasteland! They have the most resources and already hold enough power over this entire goddamn region to oppress and squash every single goddamn settlement out here, and you're okay with just letting them get whatever the hell they want?!"

She dropped to her knees as the eruption passed, the magma, now lava, running down the sides of the mountain as tears, trailing through the ever-present dirt on her face, slowly cooling and drying. Her mouth and mind were filled with toxic venom and the bitterness of ash. "You are nothing compared to the man you used to be. There's not a damn way in hell Elsa could ever fall for someone like you."

Kristoff growled, his once long fuse was now burned short, and he snapped. "You shut your damn mouth!"

The loud and hollow clang of metal rang out as a baton clanged against the bars of kristoff's cell, jarring the both of them. "Silence, prisoners!" Maskface's distorted voice bellowed.

They were silent, and after a moment or so, the guard left. They remained that way for some time, brooding and dejected, cynical and miserable.

Ultimately, their will to speak returned. "She's still alive, you know," Kristoff said quietly, his voice clear in the surrounding silence.

"I wasn't the one who ever thought she was dead."

Kristoff ignored her comment, absorbed by the memories he was beginning to relive through his mind's eye. "I saw her. The took me down to show her."

Anna stiffened in fear, at first from his actual words, but then from the depressed tone of his voice.

"They've done something to here, Anna—something terrible. She's hardly even herself anymore..." He trailed off in his misery, knees drawn up to his chest, before closing his eyes and composing himself with a deep breath. "I'm not stupid, and contrary to popular belief, I do know something about what goes on out here. I agree that these people here deserve the worst that this universe can give them, but we need to get out of here. We need to get her out of here, and if that means giving these bastards exactly what they want, then so be it. We have our own priorities. Nothing is more important than protecting the ones that you love."

Anna smiled darkly, the roiling anger that she felt towards their captors mixing and catalyzing with the pride of knowing her sister's lover still retained at least a part of the better man that he used to be. "Then it seems I have misunderstood you, Kristoff. I'm glad your heart's still in the right place, right where it used to be."

Kristoff chuckled mirthlessly, "I wouldn't go that far; after having it broken so viciously before, there was no way it could've been mended back up the same way. You have no need to worry about my resolve, though. I'll see this through to the end, that much I swear—by doves or by blood, I swear it."

Anna yawned. "Good. We're probably going to need to refine that previous plan of yours, though. You're not…alone...anymore..."

She was silent as she drifted off without warning, and soon began to snore lightly. Kristoff chuckled, and sensing an opportunity for some rare peace and quiet, returned to the journal and the memoirs of the past that lay within it.

— —

"If it's any consolation, they're already dead. If that guy from before told us anything, it's that they're all being animated by the ice magic alone; people don't really do too well without their heads, after all."

Elsa hesitated, the conflict clearly evident in her gaze as she continued her work. She was in the process of stitching up a long, deep gash on my arm, which I had likely inflicted on myself when I bashed through the metal wall. I had been gritting my teeth throughout the entire process; the pre-measured anesthesia syringes that came with these kits were slow-acting and not all that strong to begin with. Having had a lifetime to acquaint myself with a variety and abundance of pain was the only thing preventing me from crying out at every plunge of the needle and every pull of the thread.

Elsa sighed, "Even so..." she tugged on the thread, pulling it taut, and I grunted at the discomfort. "Sorry."

"You have done this before, right doc?"

"I don't have a Ph.D., Kristoff," She corrected dryly, too focused on her work to realize that she was taking things a bit too literally. The needle pricked my skin again and she continued. "To answer your question, though, yes, I have done this before. Some years ago, Anna had taken it upon herself to ride her bike inside the house—heaven knows why—and naturally ended up crashing into a suit of armor in the most spectacularly frightening fashion. She had acquired a few bruises and cut her leg open on the edge of the metal."

I shook my head and chuckled a little. "That definitely sounds like Anna. I think I remember that suit, actually. I always wondered why it was there."

"It's always been there. If you recall, my family is actually descended from the line of royalty that used to preside over this whole region. My surname is no coincidence."

I was rendered with surprise by this. She had never spoken about this before. "I actually don't think you ever explained this before."

Elsa cocked her head, sparing me a glance before returning her gaze to the stitching with a shrug. "I'm fairly sure that I did."

"When I had asked you about why the townspeople back in Arendal were acting like a mob of fangirls, you said that you would explain it to me once we got situated in the hotel. Once we did that though, well...you know the rest as well as I do."

Elsa sighed deeply. "I'm so sorry that I put you through that. It was selfish of me, and only succeeded in furthering our misery."

"It's already been resolved; you don't need to beat yourself up about it. You also weren't entirely to blame. We both were. That's enough about that, though—what's this about you being royalty?"

Elsa shook her head, somewhat amused, somewhat embarrassed. Her cheeks were reddening. "I'm not royalty, only a descendant of one who was."

"Is that not the same thing? It was royal blood that defined a royal, wasn't it?"

She shrugged in concession, "Generally, yes, though things get a little complicated once you through a bastard or two into the mix."

"Ah."

"That's not even to mention how the authority of the ruling waned with the rise of republican governments, but that's a whole other deal. My family is descended from the illegitimate child of Queen Elsa—the first Elsa, if you will—the one regarded by local myths and legends as the 'Snow Queen'."

I was rather taken aback. "That's…quite a curious coincidence," I commented. I looked down at my arm and was surprised to find that she was now tending to my other less urgent injuries and that my main wound was already stitched up. I had been so absorbed in her explanation that I hadn't even noticed the pain that accompanied her efforts, or even its absence.

"It wasn't. From what my parents had told me, my powers were apparently manifesting even while my mother was pregnant with me. Upon realizing what was happening, they seemed to think the name would be fitting, and I suppose it was," She looked out toward the single, small window present in the room we were in, which was the office placed within the new warehouse, and beheld the frozen tempest that now danced outside, "Though I most certainly have outdone her." She sighed. "Even after the family's power waned and began to be controlled by the national government, the townspeople still held my family in rather high regard. Most of the manor staff lived there, and they see us as the founders of the town. After my parents passed, they became all the more willing to please us. She turned back to her work before pausing, and frowned in puzzlement.

"Something wrong?" I asked as she lifted my other arm and began to search for something on my skin.

"Your bruises...they're gone."

"What do you mean?"

She brushed through my hair, but not sensually, likely searching for the wound my fall had inflicted upon my abused cranium. She was becoming progressively more flustered as the search went on.

"How can this have healed up already?" She undid my jacket with deft fingers and pulled it off of me before then tugging off half of my shirt to look at where Syd had impaled me almost a month ago. Nothing remained of the wound but a faded scar, a slight discoloration of skin tissue that was hardly noticeable.

We were so deep in the game that this hardly even surprised me. "Well, it's beginning to look as if you're not the only one of us who's magical."

Elsa frowned, "But why is it only manifesting now?"

I sat up and began to put the rest of my clothes back on. "I don't know, but I'd rather take it as a blessing than question it, for now at least. We can try figuring it out when we aren't in a fight or a race for our lives. Let's get out of here; the frosties will likely be here soon, and I've had enough of warehouses these past two days to last me a very long time."

Elsa smirked as she followed me up a staircase. "Well said."

— —

A/N: So yeah, canon is canon (basically). Imagine that.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Praise? Declarations of vengeance? Feel free to drop them in the reviews, and I'll try to get the next chapter to you all more quickly than this one!