I hope this chapter of emotional trauma is enjoyable.

I was going to add more to it, but I couldn't really...find what I wante dot do with it, and there wasn't a big enough of a time gap to move back to Kristoff, so...yeah.

I hope you all enjoy this, and I thank you all for the wonderful comments and favorites and follows and-you're all just wonderful. :3

Everything that is not copyrighted by Disney is property of me, and is not to be used or distributed in any way, shape, or form.

Frozen-Disney

Story: Mine

"Rosa, ya gotta hide!" Elsa, somewhere between three and four, shoved her elder friend under the bed. Rosa rolled under farther, bringing her silky dark hair with her. Elsa turned around as the door opened. There stood her father, a curious look on his face.

"Who are you talking to, Elsa?" He asked, stepping in.

"Nobody, Papa." Elsa smiled, doing her best not to giggle. The king stepped into the room and looked around. Toys were scattered on the ground in the corner by the fireplace. The covers on Elsa's bed were slightly ruffled, and a jacket that he didn't remember him or his wife ever purchasing for their young daughter was draped over her dressing screen. He inquired about the said jacket, walking over and picking it up. It had patches on the shoulders and one elbow.

"Mine, Papa." Elsa toddled over and took it from him. He raised an eyebrow.

"I don't ever remember buying you something so patched up." He said.

"Ya didn't Papa. Mrs. Nork did." Elsa smiled.

"She did, did she? Why?" The king was slightly suspicious. His daughter had more than once snuck a village child into her room for an unauthorized play-date.

"She said I could use it when I play pretend." Elsa smiled again, taking the jacket and putting it around her arms. It was too long for her, and the sleeves were too thin for her chubby arms, but it fit just enough to convince her father, who patted her head and said he was going back to his study. Soon as he'd left, Elsa burst into laughter. Rosa rolled her thin form out from under the bed and grinned, her two front teeth missing. She stood up, more than a head taller than Elsa, and brushed herself off, spitting out hair that gotten into her mouth and brushing her bangs from her eyes, which were a radiant blue brighter than even Elsa's. Her long hair swished around her rear as she moved to help Elsa out of her jacket and put it on.

"That was great!" Rosa said, grinning. Elsa nodded, giggling. "Papa's not that smart."

"I'll believe it." Rosa snorted, flopping down on the ground in the middle of the scattered toys she and Elsa had been playing with before they'd heard the heavy steps of her father approaching on the wood floor. She took up a small baby carriage and a little wooden baby doll wrapped in a pink blanket and put the baby in the carriage. Elsa sat down in front of her, legs crossed under her dress.

"When's the new baby comin?" Rosa asked. Elsa made a mother doll in a light green dress walk behind the carriage as Rosa pushed it, looking at the wooden bundle inside.

"I don't know. Papa says real soon." Elsa shrugged. "Says he thinks it's a girl."

"He sure?" Rosa stopped pushing the carriage, looking at Elsa while rubbing a smudge on her face. Elsa shrugged, maneuvering the stiff arms of her doll to pick up the baby and set it down on a discarded dress that acted as a makeshift bed. She carefully took some of the loose fabric in her chubby fingers and folded it over the baby.

"I guess so. Says Mama is "carrying high" or something. That's what mama said, too. Low is boy, high is girl." Elsa shrugged again.

"Oh..." Rosa was quiet a moment. Elsa didn't seem to notice as she carried on with the mother doll, having her wander and order the staff dolls, which were operated mutely by Rosa.

"Elsa?" Rosa finally asked, quiet. Barely above a whisper.

"Yeah?" Elsa stopped with the mother doll and looked up at her friend. The spindly girl twiddled her long thumbs, her spider-like fingers resting in long curves.

"Are you gonna forget about me when the baby comes?" She looked at her with her eyes, her head staying angled low. Her bangs fell in front of her nose.

Elsa smiled brightly. "No! Course not! You're my best friend." Elsa got on her knees and leaned over and hugged Rosa. Rosa smiled and hugged her back awkwardly, her long arms making the task difficult around such a small human being. When Elsa broke away Rosa extended her pinky finger.

"I want you to pinky promise me." Rosa said seriously. Elsa stared at the pinky, thinking a minute-but no more than a minute. She took her own smaller pinky and joined with with Rosa's. They shook their hand up and down and nodded.

"I'll never forget about you." Elsa said.

"And I'll never forget about you." Rosa said.

They smiled, and then broke the pinky-swear hold and continued with their game, both confident that their pinky-swear, most sacred of all child-hood promises, would stand the test of time...

If only time wasn't so cruel...

Elsa woke with a start, breathing heavily. Her eyes stung and prickled as if thousands of tiny pins were in them. Her entire body ached-but most of all, her head, which was throbbing. Still laying down, breathing heavily, she reached a hand up and touched it, wincing and whimpering in pain as her skin barely grazed the large goose egg resting between her eyes. She lightly felt around the sizable lump, then rubbed her eyes, which didn't help any and actually made them hurt worse, and then her hands reached her cheeks, one of which was bandaged and felt swollen. She was just forcing herself to sit up when Hans came in from the doorway-which had an actual door on it, for once.

"Oh good, you're awake." Hans nodded a bit, setting down two cups of cool tea. Elsa could smell the honey in them from where she was. She took a minute to observe her surroundings, figuring out quickly that it was the small second story that sat on half the roof. She was on a bed in what seemed to be the main room, the inside no different from the main house far as colors went. A rectangular table was diagonally placed from her by the door where the tea sat. To her right there was a hall that led down to seemingly another bedroom area. She could see the door to one other room in the hall.

"How's your head?" Hans asked gently, coming over and bending slightly by the low rising bed. He'd shaved his lumberjack beard down to a clean face, but for his sideburns. Or muttonchops. Elsa wasn't exactly sure what one might call them. Either way, he looked almost exactly like when she'd first met him, and smelled of musky aftershave.

"Hurts. A lot." Elsa sighed and sat up a bit more, wincing. Hans moved his hand to the lower part of her injured cheek and gently had her turn her face, examining the bandage and the bump on her forehead.

"I think you'll be fine." He said, his hand slowly moving from her face. He retrieved a cup of the tea and offered it to her. Elsa took it mutely. She detected cinnamon, and a couple other spices she couldn't identify mixed with the honey. She shook the cup lightly, watching the tea swirl in its bowl, and then sipped it, pleasantly surprised by the sweet-tang, and even a hint of spice. Hans sipped his own while sitting in a chair at the table.

"If you press your hands to your eyes, I bet they'll not sting as much." He suggested quietly. Elsa stopped sipping at looked at him, wondering how he knew about her eyes. Then she thought of her cheek and forehead. He must know about those too-hell, he must have patched her up, and brought her up to the second story-why had he done that? It would have been simpler if he just took her to her room. Or the couch in the main room. Why up the ladder? Surely it must have been difficult.

She let these questions lie a moment as she set her mug of tea between her thighs, holding it in place on the blanket. She then pressed her hands to her closed eyes. Relief swam over. Granted, they still tingled. But after a few minutes of holding her hands over her eyes, using some of her ice powers to keep them cool and all, she felt much better. At this point, she looked to him.

"What happened?" She asked.

"You...don't remember anything?" He cocked his head to the side. It showed worry, but it was well hidden behind the almost irritating casualness. His confidence was coming back, she could tell.

"No, I-" She stopped. She grew paler, her freckles standing out. "I transformed, didn't I?"

Hans nodded solemnly. "Last night."

"I-I completely forgot!" Elsa's breathing became irregular. No ice storm would be coming, but frost did appear when she breathed. "I'm an idiot! Just an idiot-oh, I knew this wouldn't work. Something would happen. This-this-"

Suddenly Hans was beside her, sitting on the edge of the bed. He put his hands on her shoulders, like hot oven mitts on her cool skin. He took hold of her good cheek gently and angled her panicked face towards him.

"Elsa, calm down." He said, his voice light but deep, reflecting calm that Elsa absorbed. Her breathing regulated, but her breaths remained frosty.

"What happened!" She said, whispering for an unknown reason. Her voice cracked at the end, and she hated it.

Hans sighed, moving his hand from her cheek, sliding down her neck and to her shoulder, where it rested heavily, as if to weigh her down in case she got a wild hair and tried to jump while he spoke;

"You turned into this strange ape...thing last night. Blue paws, white fur. You reached the ceiling. But, I didn't know it was you. I just heard these footsteps and saw this terrifying...thing and panicked. So I ran out, and it chased me-well, you chased me, but not really you...um. Either way, I'm thinking it's kind of like you were trapped in it. You chased me and I got outside and...well, I ended up squirting you in the eyes with lemons and it...I guess stunted you, so I got a dagger I keep for emergencies and...well I ran out and I-I held up the sword...you were kinda flailing but...not really and...I had a perfect shot at your head..."

He raised his arms up, as if he was holding the dagger. Looking down at the floor. His breathing had started to become irregular as well; delayed and slowed.

"It...it would have gone right through your eye-one shot, and you'd be...deader than a doorknob. One shot. And...and I was aiming it down..." he started moving his hands down, slowly, a haunted look on his face. "I was aiming it down...and...I stopped. I mean-I didn't stop. I couldn't. I guess it was-was adrenaline rush or-or something else...I don't know. But, I guess it came to me that it was still you. This wasn't...some scary nightmare. It was real, and you were a beast, and I was going to kill you...but I couldn't." He looked at her, his hands angled where the dagger would be pointed straight out from him; he'd redirected it, like he'd redirected his gaze to her, looking sad. Asking for forgiveness once again. "I...I angled it up...before I could cut your eye but...not...fast enough to avoid cutting you all together..."

Elsa felt her cheek and breathed deeply.

"I..turned the hilt and...took the blood side of the sword and I-I hit you. Knocked you out cold. I g-guess your...curse or-or whatever it is thought you were asleep again because...pretty soon after you were...sort of...glowing and turned back into you-Elsa. The gash was...really big and bloody and you had that bump forming on your face...um..."

He sighed again, rubbing the back of his neck, eyes ridden with worry. Elsa had never seen him like this and, honestly, it kind of scared her. She'd seen him nervous, sure. Embarrassed? Most definitely. Scared out of a cool physique so quickly but having to retell events of a night in which he nearly killed her? No. He'd never been this panicked. His voice had never faltered or changed pitches from deep to soft and down to whispers. It wasn't the fact that he'd nearly killed her for a second time, no. She'd honestly expected it for awhile-though under more sinister circumstances than self defense. What she hadn't expected was that he'd break after it. She'd expect a calm, cool, collected sociopath, should the event occur. Instead, there was a nervous, blubbering man with a look of such genuine guilt that Elsa herself felt guilty for causing it. It wasn't the Hans she knew. It wasn't an equilibrium robot, but a human being. A real, genuine man who'd been hiding-or more hidden away- a fake physique.

"I...took you up here-there's too much ice to get you to your room...or any of the rooms besides the kitchen. I fixed the ladder-you broke it when coming after me-and brought you up here...got you fixed and...yeah." Hans hung his head, breathing deeply. "That's...that's basically what happened. I made the tea for your nerves when you got up-and your head..."

Elsa felt herself nodding. She couldn't say she understood his turmoil-no one could ever really "understand" the problems of another person, not completely, but she got more than a good idea of found herself oddly enough leaning over and hugging him. His shoulders stiffened and he twisted awkwardly to look at her as she parted. She smiled a bit.

"If I'd been in the same situation," she said quietly, "I would have frozen me solid."