The following is preview for the Sequel to If The Cold Can't Stop Her

If The Sky Won't Wake Her

By: SheAlwaysDies

A tingle at her fingertips was the first sensation she felt. It wasn't warmth but it was a break from the cold. As her blood thawed she felt it stretch out her veins. It meant her heart was pumping. She couldn't feel it in her chest but she could hear it at her temples. It coupled with the crackling sound of ice retreating. The thaw hadn't been instantaneous. Elsa knew that was cause for concern. Something frozen with an instant needed to be thawed just as quick. Her mind wasn't firing well enough to take a toll of what damage it would cost to her systems. Her eyes could not yet open. They were still sealed shut. The warmth she did feel was coming off of the body pressed against her. It was coming back faster than hers. The elasticity of her husband's skin was returning. Elsa could hear his organs start to fire up. His stomach was already complaining.

"Wha-" Tarik's voice came out as a cracked whisper, his vocal cords couldn't vibrate fully with snow still stuffed in his throat. He started choking on the water as it melted and the cough spat out at Elsa, who's reflexes were not ready to react. She took her first full breath as her eyes opened. The man Elsa had spent what felt like an eternity with was looking down at her. What she had always thought of as kind eyes were dark. As if Tarik had just awakened from torment. The first muscle he was able to command to move was the corner of his lip as he snarled at her. Elsa was still too far behind in her thaw to push herself away from him.

"You." Tarik choked out as he craned his neck. Starting from the base of his skull, the bones of his spine started to all crack. Perhaps Elsa's ears weren't working just right yet because he did not sound like himself. He sounded like her father. Or maybe Elsa was not fully awake and was deep inside her own reoccurring reverie. There was a chance she was still in her own head and that this was a new twist on the torment that repeated itself within the cold. In her terrors she had never felt a thaw. This distorted hope would be a clever new form of torture.

Her nightmares had been on an infinite loop of bittersweet sensations. Her mind would turn dark and foul, she felt nothing yet somehow the dolour was acute. It was a new form of feeling, one that did not belong in human dimensions. It was as if her soul could physically be reached and then be torn at. Elsa did not have a voice or tears, still she would be locked into the action of a sob. It felt like it lasted forever, but it was capable of being replaced. The affliction could be good. Better even. The only way to survive the excruciating pressure of pain was for Elsa to remind herself of the reprieve.

Anna. Her mind was very capable of recreating the sense of her sister. When Elsa's cries were finally eroded by the fabricated presence of Anna, Elsa ceased to care that she was frozen away forever. Her soul was fed and healed and made ready to for the eventual onslaught of torment that followed. It made Elsa stronger, not that the nightmares could kill her. Her endurance was not being tested. There was no end or even objective to the toying her mind was doing to her soul. Or so Elsa thought. As she regained feeling in her nerves, the anguish she spent on her new brand of solitude rose up. The flare was hot. It caused her to curl her muscles inwards, to stumble forward into Tarik's chest. Her skin was so alert now, so aware of the fibers of the King's finest suit. He was struggling with his own balance and used her as a crutch.

"How?" his voice said. Elsa's eyes caught Tarik's again, the relief was so evident but so was the rage. She did not feel like she was real enough to react to his questioning. Her neck wanted to much to look around, and take in the palace, it wanted to look for her. But she was still so useless. Elsa could feel her pulse point there, the veins keeping her brain fed were rushing, trying to rescue the tips and ends of her body.

Tarik was also being made strong by the warmth that was saving them. Just as Elsa started to feel that she might be able to get away from this damnation of a man, he brought his hands up and coiled them around her jugular. The cold that would normally come to her aid had no response. Her body fell limp in the heat and she let whatever muscles were holding her up go lax. Tarik's fingers felt like a noose and she hung her body, letting it fall into what wasn't even that much pressure emanating from her husband.

It didn't matter that Tarik's strength was nothing compared to what he had when he had been frozen in his prime. It was enough to kill her. Elsa recuperated the strength to fight her husband but did not have the will. She relaxed into the feeling of having her lungs plugged up while empty. It was the first real physical thing she had felt. Pain. Her old friend, pain. What a comfortable way to die, Elsa thought as her throat started begging her to gulp.

It felt so satisfying to feel pain in one local spot. Instead of having it surge inside of every inch of her. The blonde adored physical pain. She had missed it, every single moment of her freeze she had missed feeling real pain. The torment in her soul had not been anything like this. This was the perfect way to succumb.

Elsa was losing everything she had just started to regain as the oxygen in her blood stream was extinguished. Her body started struggling but her mind did not join the battle. Her senses dimmed and she was gifted with darkness, finally. Sound was the first of her senses to have returned; it was the last to remain.

The sound of broken bones coupled with the release of pressure around her neck. Her body took a gasping breath on its own accord and it mixed with a guttural scream as something impaled Elsa in the chest, slicing open the skin between her breasts.

It stung hot and wedged deep inside her. Elsa could feel her heart crash into a metal blade as her organs swiftly tried to make up for both the loss of oxygen and loss of blood. The weapon that assaulted her had pierced right through her husband and was pouring his cold blood inside her wound. The metal pinned the couple together just as effectively as ice. As Tarik's weight fell onto Elsa it pushed the steel in deeper.

He spat red out of Elsa. This pain wasn't likely to kill her as fast as Tarik's finger could have, so Elsa asked her arms to separate her from her husband. Her palms landed at his shoulders but the man loomed over her. He was dead weight now and she was still weakness personified. Her knees locked, as she tried to keep herself steady.

Elsa could not thank her efforts as she gained footing. Someone had grabbed hold of the hairs on Tarik's head and pulled at them hard. His spine inverted, his chin fell back and pointed up towards the ceiling before he started to fall in the opposite direction of the blonde.

A sharp relief coursed agony from Elsa's new wound as the blade of a halberd axe was forced out of her body. A splatter of blood followed in a triumphal arch as Elsa felt the satisfaction of no longer being in contact with the King of Arendelle. The mixture of the royal couple's blood dotted at the woman assumed responsible for the thaw. Elsa almost did not recognize her. The crown of her head was antique, the gold of it was dull, even the emerald looked jaded. It's colours faded behind the auburn of her hair but popped where blanched locks flowed.

The blood on the woman's face started at her chin and trailed up, emphasizing the divide between red and white. Elsa's mind was in overdrive. She felt like she had to tell her lungs to pump, her heart to beat, and her eyes to blink. Elsa was asking her power to seal her wound so she could gain some clarity and take in the person before her. But there was nothing inside her to call upon, she fell to her knees.

Elsa wanted to reach out but her hands clenched at her chest instead. Her ice cold blood was starting to pour warm, as if she was done. She was thawed. The only ice that remained was on her gown, even that was starting to flurrying up and away from her skin.

Heavy boots paced in front of her, Elsa wanted to look up, she was afraid to look up. Her knees were deep into a pool of blood, most of it belonging to the man thrashing face down and coughing an inch away from Elsa. A boot pressed down on Tarik's back. Elsa watched the axe be removed from the bones where it had been wedged. The squelching sound opened up a tap, even more red rushed towards the blonde.

"Anna?" Elsa tried her voice. It came out shakily. Her mind did not want to reconcile the image of the woman in the crown with her sister. Elsa could barely put together a fluid thought. The woman standing over her tossed the halberd onto the ground next to Tarik's fading body. The clang caused Elsa to flinch. The hiccup like movement was a good sign that Elsa had regained enough control of her body.

She was fully naked now, but she barely registered her state of undress. Elsa felt hot. The blonde only ever felt this way when she was next to flames. Around her the air was cold, what she could see of the castle with her downcast eyes was covered with a layer of frost. The cool air could not penetrate her. She could not feel the ice in or out of her body.

The boot in front of her lifted off of Tarik's back and turned to her direction. One pace forward and the crowned Queen was before Elsa.

"Anna?"

Knees bent. Eyes locked. What Elsa saw was not the woman that kept her from crumbling in her frozen dream state. Not fully. There was a pattern of red freckles that Elsa had mapped out like constellations in the night sky. They were touch stones that had guided Elsa into embraces and the exchange of spit. When the blonde would close her eyes the speckles behind her eyes lids could rearrange themselves into the formation that belonged to her baby sister.

Elsa could fill in the blanks at the divide where the pale flesh seemed to have been bleached. The freckles on the right side had faded away. All tones and complexions were void there. Even the pigment in the eye was gone. The iris was a delicate pink colour wrapped around the darkest of black. The severance of red overpowered the whiteout but just barely. Elsa wanted to examine the side that reflected her sister but it was impossible to look away at the corner of blushed lips that had glossed into pearl.

There was no smile on the double toned mouth. No warmth. The sister's never shared warmth. They passed cold between each other. Elsa could feel that the heat coming off of her was colliding with a chill that radiated from the woman before her. Neither temperature was strong enough to cancel the other out. They did not mix to create a comfortable tepid reunion. It was like a barrier. Elsa felt too weak to even attempt to cross it, the Crown Queen showed no intention of reaching past the wall. She showed Elsa nothing.

"Hm," the noise escaped her sister's breath. The small hum did not hold any lightness but was undoubtedly Anna's. "Put her in the dungeons. Don't worry about the shackles. There's no cold in her. No fight either."

Elsa was not given the extra moment she needed to beg her body to react. The blonde felt lightheaded. The thud of retreating combat boots emphasized the banging in her head.

"Anna!" Elsa was sure she called out as strongly as humanly possible, her voice rang but did not vibrate loud enough. It did not phase the woman that could be Elsa's sister.

Elsa's naked body collapsed to the ground. It fell on its side and found its rightful place next to King of Arendelle, who had died without Elsa having noticed his last breath. His once soft eyes were wide open but gone. He was cold and Elsa envied that as her body suddenly got pulled at.

"I'm sorry Elsa," a familiar voice spoke out. Being moved disturbed the laceration at Elsa's centre. She felt it ooze. The blonde was lifted as if she was weightless. Elsa of Arendelle had not been held by many people in her twenty one years of life. Now she was being cradled in arms she recognized and held close to a face she did not. All she saw a dirty blonde beard, with a speckling of grey.

Elsa had heard the word dungeon but she did not register it until she was laid down on a stone slab. The voice she knew offered to go get supplies to treat her wound. The click of a lock told Elsa that there was a door shut between her and that woman who had banished her into the castle's basements.

Elsa could hear the ocean breaking against the stone that made up this prison. The moonlight was bleeding in, illuminating the hole she was in. Elsa had a fever. She was too hot now. Her systems were overwhelmed by how poorly each one was performing. Her body could do nothing but tremble.

When Elsa closed her eyes she saw a pink one next to a green one, and the arrangement of reddish freckles that slowly faded away. Elsa realized she had not spent a single moment frozen in a nightmare. That dream was a paradise. Whether it had been yesterday or another thirteen years ago that she froze away her heart, it had been a safe retreat Elsa had expelled herself to.

The thaw had not woken Elsa up, but put her to sleep. This would be her real nightmare.

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Hello. It is me again. I wanted to write this because I am starting my template for this sequel. I have a lot of ideas for this story and need to get them down or risk losing them. I want it fleshed out for when I start posting again. If you have any input, ideas, thoughts, comments, whatever, please review or pm me. I would love to include what you want from this sequel in my planning. Follow me so you know when the first chapter comes out.

This preview is so that you can get a feel for where I am considering taking this. It will likely be darker and have more political intrigue (as ITCCSH did not get to that as much as I wanted it to)

Thank you in advance! I promise to be responsive to all suggestions. Mostly, thanks for being a part of this and for continuing to follow along. Let me know!