*gasp* me? Updating? Is this witchcraft?

Anyways I know it's been like a month since last chapter, but I had good reasons to take forever. Between exams, my entry for the elsanna shenanigans contest and just this chapter being a beast I think I may be forgiven. I swear guys I rewrote this like five times because I was never satisfied. I think it's alright now but yeah it took me ages.

WARNING: Conversion therapy (I don't think it really counts as conversion therapy, but the resemblance may be disturbing for some people). Bad parenting. Therapy malpractice. Underage drinking. Violent thoughts. Some parts of this chapter might be a bit heavy, but the overall product is not as intimidating as I'm making it sound, I swear. I don't think it's worse than what we've seen so far.

"For all its history… it's tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. And when it can't control them, it cuts them out. …I have traveled in the south lands. There are churches there, believe me, that cut their children too, as the people of Bolvangar did — not in the same way, but just as horribly. They cut their sexual organs, yes, both boys and girls; they cut them with knives so that they shan't feel. That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling." — Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife.

Elsa was quite an anxious kid when she was little, and she was even more so when she grew taller and smarter. During her first year in Svalbard, she begged her parents to let her stay at home rather than send her to Longyearbyen Skole, and while their youngest went to primary school, they allowed their eldest to start attending the following year.

In the meantime, they discussed with her the possibility of therapy, and they found her a psychologist shortly after. Dr. Weselton worked at the clinic under the administration of the Longyearbyen Community Council. He was a small man in his sixties, with tiny black eyes and a treacherous smile. He specialized in children and mental health, and when he shook Elsa's tiny hand, she felt like her spine was being frosted over from tip to tip. Before her first session with him, her Mama and Papa sat her down to have a word with her.

"Elsa, sweetie," Mama began. "We want you to know that this isn't a punishment. We aren't sending you to a mental institution to cure you of anything, yes?"

Elsa nodded slowly, assuming Mama talked about her crush on her sister.

"I know that, Mama" Elsa said.

"You can discuss anything you want with Dr. Weselton" Papa continued. "Anything that has you worried, or that you don't want to tell us about, you can simply converse with him"

Mama pressed her lips into a tight line.

"Actually," she said. "There was something we were meaning to ask you" she clasped her hands tightly together. "Elsa, do you think you could avoid telling Dr. Weselton about…"

She trailed off, not quite finishing her sentence, and Elsa cocked her head curiously.

"But… I thought I was going because…"

"You're going because your Mother and I thought you needed it," Papa said. "And you agreed. But you're not going for any specific reason, Elsa. You are to discuss whatever you need to discuss"

"Except…" Mama continued.

"Except for that one…" his brow furrowed. "Thing"

Elsa's eye twitched.

"Why?" She asked. Papa sighed and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Because if such a thing becomes public knowledge, we might have some problems with the Community Council, okay?"

Elsa suddenly understood and nodded vigorously. She was only nine, but her mind made the connection rather quickly: this was a serious, wrong thing she needed to be careful with. She could be a good girl for Mama and Papa. Besides, she was too ashamed to even mention it. It was better to pretend it didn't exist.

(After all, sisters do not naturally develop incestuous affections towards each other. The most plausible explanation for such a phenomenon may be trauma and past abuse, from which Agnarr and Iduna still believed themselves clean of).

Mama and Papa gave her a pair of gloves, in case she got anxious, and then left her with Dr. Weselton. He smiled warmly, offered her a seat by his desk, and conversed with her. Elsa mostly talked about her studies, and how nice it was to study alone at home. She enjoyed solitude (didn't she?) and felt no need to make friends. Dr. Weselton thought this was of utmost interest, and he wrote it down.

"You have no desire to go to school with children of your age, Elsa?" He asked. Elsa shook her head.

"No," she replied. "I like being home"

Dr. Weselton may have seemed nice, but he was actually a leech. A viper with narrow fangs. He enjoyed chipping at the minds of children with ice picks. He cut out parts of them until they were an empty shell of skin. Lobotomies may have fallen out of practice during the past century, but Dr. Weselton had a near-orgasmic fascination with them, as anyone who spent too much looking at the bookcase behind his desk could see. Elsa spent an alarming portion of her childhood staring at the spines of books and memorizing the titles, because it was easier to do so than to look Dr. Weselton in the eye when she talked about her grandfather or wanting to hold a girls' hand.

Elsa had begged and begged, but once the next year rolled in, she had to face the greatest fear of every ten-year-old girl: primary school.

She was not good at making friends. She had the feeling no one around her truly liked her, and she honestly didn't like most of her classmates, either. They were loud and rude and they talked too much. Reading in the library was much more rewarding than playing tag. She'd simply listen to music and choose a science book. Her parents were scientists (arctic biologists, to be precise), and so Elsa supposed she'd be the one to inherit their passion for exact sciences. Anna, on the other hand… Anna cared about people.

Some girls were nice. Some girls would do their homework with her and talk to her and play with her in the playground. Elsa didn't quite feel like she was part of their friend group, but she liked to be with them, so whenever they called her, she would join them at the swings or in the library.

But when she stood before the bathroom mirror at school and saw her body next to those of other girls', it was different. More... uncomfortable. They laughed and played with toy makeup and brushed their teeth during the break. They might say Elsa looked identical to them, but Elsa didn't think so. There was a big difference between them but she couldn't quite put a finger on it, no matter how hard she tried, but Elsa felt like a thing in human skin. A sort of impostor.

Once she started going to school with the other mortals, this feeling would grow. She met pretty girls in primary school, and she liked sharing her food with them and helping them with their homework. Dr. Weselton would frown whenever she mentioned the names of any of them.

"You say you have no interest in boys, Elsa?" He would ask.

Elsa shrugged anxiously. Should she? She was ten.

"I don't know," she would confess, and immediately feel embarrassed. Yes, of course she should.

Dr. Weselton would write something down.

"Why don't you tell me about your grandfather again?" He'd ask.

Elsa would shake her head,

"I don't want to talk about him right now"

"Were you scared of him?" He'd press, ignoring her complaints.

Elsa would exhale. He often asked questions of the sort. The topic made her uncomfortable because he was scratching at a fragile scab, but deep down she knew it was a necessary conversation. Regardless, she had nowhere to run, and she was forced to tell him once again how small and defenseless her grandfather made her feel.

If Elsa thought the fights with Grandfather would end simply because they were so far away, she was proven wrong by the pass of time. During nearly a year, Papa's phone would ring at the most inappropriate and inopportune of times and he'd excuse himself to yell in Norwegian inside his bedroom. At this point, Mama would send Elsa and her sister outside, to play in the front yard. Elsa sat on a bench and read a book, while Anna played with a pair of fallen reindeer antlers. She held them to either side of her head and ran around making reindeer noises, and Elsa found her so cute and endearing, that she had to ask her to be quiet before she made her heart break even further.

But then a snowball hit her face, and she barely even managed to save her dear book. She glared at Anna, but her laugh was so adorable, she couldn't even pretend to be mad at her. Elsa laughed, too, and conjured a snowball of her own to retaliate. They played for hours, even after Papa's call had ended, and eventually fell on their backs and made snow angels.

"I love this day!" Anna squealed. Elsa smiled and looked at her. It wasn't a special day, but it was special to Anna.

"Me too," she breathed. The sky was a pale blue and the snow was soft. Anna's laugh was bright and giddy and invigorating. It made Elsa's heart beat strangely fast.

Her smile disappeared. She sat up and told Anna it was getting late, that they should have dinner soon and she should go back inside to get changed.

"Okay!" Anna replied. "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," Elsa reassured her softly. "Go inside. I'll join you in a moment"

Anna offered her one last unsure glance before trotting back inside. The front door swung open and swallowed her, and a tense feeling in Elsa's chest snapped. She drew her little knees to her chest and hugged them.

It… it wasn't normal, was it? To feel her heart break?

No. It was not. And the feeling wasn't leaving as she thought it would.

As for Anna… Elsa was trying to reduce her interactions with her. Or control them. Regulate them. She didn't want them to get out of control, where they could break into laughter and get distracted. She wanted to keep a firm hold on herself at all times.

Mama and Papa never left them both alone in the house. If someone had to go run an errand and be back quick, they'd take one or both of the girls, but never neither. Elsa wasn't allowed to babysit Anna.

She was, however, permitted to do so when Kristoff was over. Anna often invited her to join their games, arguing that everything was better when she was around, but Elsa politely declined every time. Or at least she tried to be polite, because it was getting harder every time.

"Elsa!" Anna would laugh every time they accidentally met in the kitchen or the living room. And she would say: "Kristoff and I are going to watch some movies. Do you want to join us?" Or ask: "Could you help us with this recipe? I want to surprise Mama and Papa when they get home" and mumble: "I'm sorry. I-I just wanted to…"

"No," Elsa would always reply. She would swallow thickly and add: "Stop asking me"

And she would retreat to her room and listen to music with her earbuds, so she wouldn't have to hear Anna's pathetic little sniffling or her childish apologies. She'd hold back pathetic sniffling of her own, too. She really hated making Anna sad, but she was… running out of patience. And it wasn't appropriate. Her response had been measured, hadn't it?

One day, she made Anna cry. Truly cry. Her heart twisted and fluttered and stretched as if two hands were ripping it apart. She wasn't sure what it was that she'd said, but she nearly broke into tears of her own. She wanted to hold her baby sister in her arms and tell her she loved her and never meant to hurt her. But at the sight of Anna's tears, she was paralized and unable to do anything but to retreat back into her room.

Something in her soul told her this went against the laws of nature. It violated them even more than her incestuous feelings did. To abandon her little sister like this. Let her suffer. Weren't big sisters meant to protect and comfort their little sisters, after all? Except that... No, not this time. She felt things she shouldn't feel. This was protection, and if it took pain to protect Anna, then so be it. This was the shape love took. This is what love meant.

That same day, during an outburst of courage and defiance, she walked out of the house once it was dark, during the early afternoon, and surrounded it until she reached Anna's window. The lights were off, and Anna was probably not even in the room, which was just perfect. Elsa knew there was something sick and perverse about peeking through her little sister's window, but she had to do this before it was too late. So she brushed her fingers over the glass and drew a heart with a trail of frost. The thin layer of ice twisted harmoniously, like blooming leaves and petals. She sighed shakily as she observed the final product. It was a simple silhouette. There was nothing special about it. She just hoped Anna would see it and understand that her big sister did not hate her.

Then something moved inside. Elsa's heart jumped and she pressed her palm more firmly against the window. The thick ice covered the entirety of the glass, concealing the silhouette.

She ran off with her heart in her throat, ignoring the sound of the window opening and Anna shouting after her.

Anna had taken a liking to drawing on the frost that covered any surface her fingers could reach: the walls of the house, the car windows, the house windows… it really was mostly the house windows. She always drew happy smiles, puppies, reindeer, suns with smiley faces, and encouraging messages. Chances were that if you walked past Longyearbyen Skole and saw messages on the windows that read 'I believe in you!' And 'you look beautiful today!', they were written by Anna herself. Elsa had seen her do this a million times, and it always made her heart feel both light and heavy at the same time. A sudden rush of warm blood.

Anna… truly was precious.

Her precious little princess.

She'd taken a liking to writing on Elsa's window as well.

Elsa's window was usually covered in frost both on the outside and the inside, which made anything Anna wrote pretty much invisible, but that didn't stop her, and Elsa found herself scraping off the ice with her nails just to see the hearts and smiles on her window. Sometimes they were messages asking if she'd eaten any chocolate that day. Sometimes they were a simple 'Hi!' followed by a smiling sun. Elsa couldn't help but chuckle at these tiny gestures. Her heart fluttered, and a swarm of butterflies took over her stomach.

Oh, Anna…

Anna…

Sometimes Elsa would preserve the messages for months on end, using her magic to protect them. Freeze them in time. She delighted in seeing tiny smiles all over her window every day. She'd laugh unceremoniously and bring a hand to her chest, thinking about Anna and Anna's fingers on the glass and Anna's beautiful smile under the sun. Her heart raced. It was a dangerous feeling.

Most times she erased everything Anna dared to draw for her. She let the ice cover every inch of the glass until there was no trace of love or tenderness left.

Anna would come back the next day and the cycle would repeat.

Mama and Papa sat them down one day. They said they weren't mad, but they looked mad. They were desperate.

"We will have to lay a series of rules that we will all have to follow" Mama announced. Any semblance of normalcy left in their family dynamic vanished with these words.

"You are not to be alone together" Papa explained. "Not in a room, not in the house, not in someone else's house and not in school. Or anywhere else, for that matter"

Elsa nodded submissively. Anna opened her mouth to protest, but Mama interrupted her.

"Anna, you'll have to leave your sister alone," she said.

"But I didn't do anything!"

"Yes, Anna, you did" Papa countered. "Stop pestering your sister"

Anna looked up at Elsa, seeking for support, perhaps. Looking for someone to stand by her, but Elsa didn't say anything. She didn't even tell her she'd never been a bother to her. That her presence delighter her, and that she only agreed to this for the wellbeing of both of them.

"And then comes the obvious. No bed sharing. No sleepovers. No… inappropropriate behaviors"

"And no telling anyone"

"This is so not fair!" Anna whined.

"Elsa? Did you hear what your mother said?" Papa's voice made her flinch.

"Yes," Elsa said.

"What did I say, Elsa?" Mama pushed. Elsa cringed internally. She really didn't want to say it out loud.

"...N-No inappropropriate behaviors," she clarified. She walked on a tightrope under her parent's gaze. To them, she was a danger, to Anna and to their family. A timebomb.

"Good girl," Papa said. "You will reduce contact with each other for the time being. If you need anything, you are to seek us. Understood?"

Elsa nodded again, while Anna continued to whine. It was frustrating to see her get this angry. Didn't she understand this was for the best? Couldn't she see she was only making it harder for everyone?

But below the frustration, Elsa was dying of embarrassment and humiliation. To bring everything to the forefront felt like being stripped naked and exposed to the whole town.

In therapy, Elsa mostly talked about school, Grandfather, or making her sister cry, and every time Dr. Weselton would let her speak her mind long enough for her to forget, but he always, inevitably, circled back to the topic of sexuality, which made her increasingly uncomfortable. He asked her about masturbation. When she told him she didn't know what that was, he kept talking as if she did, as if she were lying. Then, he explained to her what it was, how to do it, and how she was supposed to do it: with a boy in her mind. She was ten years old and the only boy she knew was Anna's friend, Kristoff. All of her memories of Kristoff were shared with memories of Anna: Anna and Kristoff singing and playing the ukulele together in the living room, Anna and Kristoff having snowball fights and building snow forts in the front yard, Anna and Kristoff feeding carrots to the reindeer that walked freely down the streets. They loved to feed the wild reindeer, even if they shouldn't. Elsa had seen Mama scold them and tell them they weren't domestic reindeer, unlike the ones Yelena owned, and that they shouldn't give them food. Elsa had always known about that but she'd never had the heart to tell them. The reindeer made Anna smile.

There was little in Kristoff that picked Elsa's interest, apart from being pretty much a reindeer whisperer. The animals would do as he said and follow him around even if he wasn't baiting them with carrots. He would probably get along with Ryder. But this hardly aroused any of the feelings Dr. Weselton expected of her, and when she locked herself in her room to try and force a reaction out of her prepubescent body, her confused little brain would inevitably wander back to her sister (don't think about a pink elephant), and whatever pleasure she thought she was experimenting would shut down under a curtain of shame and fear. She would confess to Dr. Weselton half-truths about thinking about girls when she found herself back before his desk. She confessed as you confess to a priest. He never said he was disappointed, but Elsa had the feeling he was.

"How old are you, Elsa?" He asked.

"I'm ten years old," she told him. "Why?"

He wrote the number down.

"Don't worry about it"

After a long, nervous pause, Elsa asked:

"Does this mean I will have a crush on my sister?"

Dr. Weselton looked up. His expression was stern.

"You have a sister?"

Elsa swallowed.

"I do. She's only seven years old"

"Well," he said, as he wrote in his notebook. "We'll hope it doesn't come to that, shall we?"

When Elsa arrived home that day, Papa asked her if she'd told Dr. Weselton anything 'risky', as he described it.

"What do you mean?" Elsa asked, not quite sure she understood.

"Did you... ?" Papa huffed. "I don't know. Did you tell him about your sister? About these... these things you feel sometimes?"

Elsa felt her blood freeze.

"I… No!" She exclaimed. "I didn't, Papa!"

"I know. I know" he released another tired huff and rubbed his face. "I trust you didn't. Good girl"

The question itself confused Elsa, but she didn't wonder why her father would randomly ask such a thing as much as she let her mind be consumed by the guilt of lying to him.

He knew better. She shouldn't lie to him. She had broken his trust. He had no reason to trust her at all.

And Anna. Her sister. Elsa still hadn't fixed this problem, and she still has a crush on her sister.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that"

It was so bad, Dr. Weselton didn't even want to imagine the possibility.

Oh, how she wished she could further ask Dr. Weselton about it, so he could fix her! So he could fix her… her...

Her illness. He was a head doctor, and Elsa's problem was in her head, so the only logical conclusion was that this was a head-illness.

Elsa's anxiety haunted her for the entire night, and she asked not to go to school the next day.

Elsa was a smart girl. She was quiet and polite at school, and she had an eternal attention span and an unbreakable concentration. She could memorize concepts, dates and patterns with ease. She would work hard in her studies and be rewarded with acclamation and recognition in the commentary her teachers left on her exams. Her academic success was her greatest source of pride. This was the one area of her life in which she was good enough, and her parents would express their delight and cheer for her and shower her in praise. Anna would politely smile from afar and physically hold herself back from giving her sister one of those bear hugs she'd learned from the Bjorgmans, but it wouldn't be a rare occurrence for Elsa to find a chocolate or two on her desk with a note reading 'Congratulations for your test! I always knew you were super smart' in Anna's handwriting. These sweet, adorable little gestures filled her heart with a tenderness she rarely experienced with anyone else. On the worst days, Anna's unconditional love would make her feel guilty and unfair. But on her best days, they would make her feel… safe. Cared for. In a way that Mama and Papa simply couldn't reproduce despite the praise and encouragement.

Primary school flew past her like a car driving by. Her teacher noticed her reading texts far too advanced for her age, and she wound up skipping a grade. She'd been so young and so incredibly proud of herself, that she barely remembered to think about her old classmates. She forgot their names in weeks, which didn't make her the most popular girl in school. Her new classes proved quite a challenge, and her academic performance wavered for a short period, but she quickly rose to the top once more.

Her new classmates weren't very happy to have a younger girl be smarter than them, but when Elsa should have looked at the people around her and learned to be humble, she was further consumed by pride in her own success. It brightened her day to have her family cheer for her.

Besides, studying made her genuinely happy. She enjoyed math in particular, which was the least popular class in school. And she liked her homework, because it kept her mind occupied. Exact sciences were her passion. Everything worked in a particular way. 2 + 2 always equals 4. There was little room for confusion, nuance or open questions. They were nothing like Dr. Weselton's sessions, where Elsa never knew if her answers were right or wrong.

"Mama? Papa?" Elsa asked one night. "Can I… Can I talk to Anna? Please? There's something I need to tell her"

Mama and Papa were sitting at the table. Whatever they were discussing was cut off by their daughter's interruption.

"What is it, Elsa?" Papa asked. "What do you need to tell Anna?"

Elsa swallowed and licked her lips. She didn't want this to come off the wrong way.

"I just want her to know I don't hate her," she said.

She expected Mama and Papa to tell her they'd be the ones to let Anna know, but Elsa was met by a terrifying silence.

"Does she think I hate her?" She insisted.

Mama took a deep breath.

"Why don't you go back to bed, sweetie?" She quietly suggested. It wasn't a real suggestion.

Elsa frowned. That didn't sound right, but she was only eleven years old and she was little more than a dog, so she followed her mother's command and went back to her room. Her back was hunched and her feet felt weak, but when she walked past Anna's door, she noticed the light was on, and she was playing some video game on the tablet.

"Oh! Hi, Elsa!"

Elsa's eyes remained glued to her own door. She kept her spine straight and her head high, and refused to acknowledge Anna's voice.

Dr. Weselton asked Elsa if she'd been sexually abused.

"I…" she was left without words. "No"

Dr. Weselton raised an eyebrow."

"No?" He pressed. "Are you certain of that?"

"I… don't remember?"

"How do you feel about your father, Elsa?"

"My father?"

"Yes, your father indeed. Would you say you have a fear of men?"

Elsa opened her mouth to say she wasn't more scared of men than the average eleven-year-old girl. She feared them even less than normal, she assumed, because she lived in such a small and safe place, and because she had her powers to protect her. But then she was reminded of big hands tangled in her hair and of having her small body being pushed and tossed around like a ragdoll, and the hairs on the nape of her neck bristled.

Dr. Weselton smirked. He glanced at the clock.

"Speak up, Elsa" he urged her. "We don't have all day here"

"Mama… h-how long do crushes last?"

Mama's fingers were white and tense around the edges of the comforter. She pulled it up to Elsa's neck, alarmingly hard against her skin.

She blinked and took a step back.

"Why?" She asked. Her tone was tense and her eyes had a forceful glint of mischief in them. She chuckled harshly. "Do you like someone at school?"

Elsa blushed, partially because it was appropriate to do so, but mostly because of how embarrassed she felt.

"I… guess" she mumbled.

"Do you want to tell me about him?" Mama sat on the bed next to her. She was trying very hard to smile. Elsa shook her head.

"I read normal crushes last four months," Elsa continued, and she couldn't hide the worry from her voice. Mama regarded her for one long moment. Then she sighed.

"It's not a boy in school, is it?" She asked. And Elsa had no choice but to shake her head.

She swallowed and stayed very, very still. Mama's weight in the bed shifted.

"S-still? You still...?" Mama's voice wavered. Her motherly strength was failing her. She inhaled sharply. "I-I understand it's difficult. You and your sister live together, and you see her every day"

There were so many things Elsa wanted to say. She wanted to apologize for not doing enough, and she wanted to ask her Mama if she still loved her. She wanted to reassure her that she wasn't in love with her, her own mother, so she shouldn't be scared of her. Her heart pounded painfully and her ears filled with blood, but her tongue felt heavy and useless and she couldn't utter a word.

"Did... Did you tell Dr. Weselton?" Mama inquired.

Elsa shook her head.

Mama nodded weakly.

"Good" she murmured, a hint of shame crossing her eyes. "Your father and I... we don't know what led you to..." she made a vague gesture with her hands, and Elsa felt incredibly guilty. "I don't think we can ever understand. We hoped that talking to a professional about... about what took us far too long to notice back in Oslo could help you clear away your confusion" she made a pause. "Do you think Dr. Weselton is helping you with that?"

Elsa nodded, slowly processing the information. What Mama said made sense. She didn't think her sexuality was her only source of pain, despite what Dr. Weselton might think, but paths could converge and diverge and overlap and if one process resulted in unexpected reactions, the initial trigger was worth tracking down.

Mama tucked a loose strand of hair behind Elsa's ear.

"I know I don't say this enough, but I'm proud of you"

Elsa shook her head, frowning.

"But…"

"You're being so brave and you're trying so hard," she continued. "I know some of the things you feel must be scary to you. That's why I want you to talk to us when you need us" she lowered her head and tried to find her daughter's eyes, but Elsa couldn't bring herself to return her gaze. She shamefully kept her head down. "All will be alright, my love. It will take time, but it will be alright"

She kissed her head before rising to her feet and going for the doorknob.

"Wait!" Elsa blurted out. Mama turned around. "Can I… Can I talk to Anna? Please?"

Something shifted in Mama's eyes. A sudden reminder. Her shoulders grew tense, and so did her hand on the doorknob.

"That wouldn't be appropriate, Elsa," she stated with a hard tone of voice. "Not yet"

Elsa's shoulders deflated.

"Oh," she murmured. Of course. Not yet. She wasn't ready.

Mama wasn't done.

She took a deep, hard breath.

"I trust you won't hurt your sister" she stated, but her eyes were unsure. "Will you, Elsa?"

Wait, what?

Elsa's heart shattered. Her stomach dropped and her eye twitched.

Did Mama fear she...?

She firmly shook her head.

"No!" She exclaimed. "No! I…"

"It's okay, Elsa," Mama interrupted. "It's okay. I believe you"

(Good girl).

Elsa's muscles stiffened.

Mama faced the door. Her white knuckles were tight around the doorknob.

"Goodnight, Elsa," she said, without looking at her daughter one last time. Her voice was dripping with shame.

She walked out of the room and left her daughter trapped inside, alone with herself.

Elsa skipped another year. Now she was in lower secondary school despite being two years younger than her classmates, and a big portion of the primary school children of Longyearbyen resented her. They thought she thought she was smarter than them, but that wasn't quite the case. Elsa's pride came from being smart, not from being smarter. To compare herself to other people, she should be able to break her tunnel vision and look around. She barely took notice of her unpopularity. Her lack of humility, her annoying behavior as the teacher's pet, and her refusal to let other students copy her homework built up into a giant snowball of frustration among her classmates, which exploded one day when she was eleven and five kids older than her backed her into a corner in the empty playground.

"Look! I found Einstein!" An older boy pushed her from behind and nearly made her fall face-first on the snow.

"Leave me alone!" Elsa protested, taking a step away only to be met by another boy before her. Thick snow gathered around her feet, not caring whether it was seen or not.

"What if you give us your homework? Then we'll leave you alone," a girl demanded. "If you don't, we'll have to take it from you"

"No!" She repeated. "You should study by yourselves!"

She would realize later that her comment had been rather unfortunate, but at that moment her mind was plagued by fear and hopelessness. Her thoughts blended together into a high-pitched whirring shriek. A girl grabbed her arms from behind and a boy dug his hands into her hair to pull— hard. Her headband was snatched from her head. She yelled and kicked and someone else painfully jerked her backpack away from her shoulders.

"Stop! Please"

The older kids snickered, spitting insults and mockery such as "not so smart now, huh?" and "should have thought about it before crossing us". The girl behind her tightened her grip and yelled something in her ear Elsa didn't understand.

A violent bark pierced her ears, and all the kids froze in place.

"Hey!" A man bellowed. His voice was harsh and quick, much like a dog's. "All of you! Piss off!"

The girl behind Elsa threw her into the snow, and another boy tossed her backpack at her head. A painful ring inside her skull muffled the splashing sounds of heavy boots on wet snow and kids scrambling away from someone bigger than them. Elsa lamely pulled her backpack to her chest and hid her face in the black fabric. Her chest convulsed painfully. She let out a shaky breath.

"Arendelle!" The man barked again. Elsa flinched and curled into herself.

"You can't shout like that to a child!" A female voice snapped. "Elsa Arendelle, right? Sweetie, can— can you hear us?"

Elsa cringed. The term of endearment didn't feel right in a stranger's voice, and it made her anxiety spike up. She lifted herself up and found two older teenagers leaning against the wall, observing her from afar.

She recognized them, but she didn't know their names. They were both in upper secondary school, and although she couldn't remember their exact year, they couldn't be older than sixteen. The boy was tall and thin, and his long black hair fell over his shoulders freely, like a cascade. His posture reminded vaguely of a proud stag. The girl was quite shorter and chubbier than him. She was the kind of older teenage girl that made younger girls feel safe and called everyone she knew 'sweetie'. Now that Elsa thought about it, she'd heard the word fall from her lips in the hallways on more than one occasion. They were both holding cigarettes and each other's hands.

The boy raised his cigarette to show her, and Elsa worried he was offering her some, but then he said:

"Not a word of this to anyone, Arendelle"

Elsa's body was rigid, but she forced her shaky limbs to raise her to a more dignified position. She patted off the wet snow from her backpack, but her hands only covered it in frost. She hoped that, with how cold it was, the two older teens wouldn't pay it much attention.

"It's 'of Arendelle'" Elsa corrected the boy.

"Well, that's ridiculous"

"But it's my name!"

"Sweetie, your name is even worse" the girl giggled, poking her friend (boyfriend?) on the chest.

The boy leaned in to kiss her, perhaps to shut her up before she could further embarrass him, and Elsa took this chance to run away as fast as she could.

The following year, when Elsa was twelve and Anna was ten, their parents left on their first true research expedition. A group of researchers from the University Center was conducting a study on the marine ecosystem north of the Greenland Sea (yes, farther north). They would be gone for a month if everything went as planned, and so Agnarr and Iduna had to come up with an expensive, uncomfortable arrangement to let their daughters stay with Yelena and her family during the late spring, down in Finnmark. It was complicated, and it was scary, because they'd never traveled alone before. Although to be fair, the parents were far more scared than their children. Anna was as excited as a puppy greeting its human mommy when she came back from school. After a long day of anxiety and anticipation, on the night before the flight, Elsa went to sleep with a smile on her face as she heard Anna laugh and jump on her bed until well past midnight.

Anna insisted on watching a movie with her family before the trip, and once it was over, Mama and Papa took the chance to sit them down and explain the whole ordeal to them: how the flight would proceed, what they needed to do with their luggage, how to behave and where to go. And to not trust strangers, Under-Any-Circumstance. Papa was a very big fan of this phrase.

"Anna, listen up," he said as he drove them to the airport. "Do not trust any stranger, Under—"

"Under-Any-Circumstance" Anna and Papa said in unison. Anna giggled and Elsa couldn't hold back a smile. "I know, Papa!"

"Alright, alright!" Papa laughed. Mama playfully glared at him, for showing weakness, presumably. "And Elsa…"

Papa had had a serious talk with Elsa the previous night over a mug of coffee and a guksi of hot chocolate, in which he stressed the responsibility she had to protect her sister during this trip. After sharing his fatherly anxieties with his twelve-year-old daughter and shooting her a few empty words of encouragement, he sighed and said:

"I know things have been hard for you here" he ruffled her hair in a way that must be supposed to be affectionate, but to Elsa, it felt threatening. "But you'll have to take care of your sister tomorrow on the plane. You'll be alone with her. Do you think you can do this?"

The question had broken her heart and frozen her drink. Elsa was pretty good at feeling scared. She was scared of strange men taking her and her sister away, scared of the plane falling, scared of getting scared and freezing the plane's engine and then falling… but it hadn't crossed her mind until then that the greatest danger to Anna would be to be trapped alone with her sick sister.

Papa's words weren't innocent. They told Elsa how she was to behave during their absence. He made it clear that she couldn't do anything with Anna that she didn't already do at home. Anything more would be crossing an unforgivable line.

She… really was a danger to Anna, wasn't she?

So in the backseat of the car, she repeated the same answer she'd given her father that day.

"I can keep her safe"

She gave a sharp nod to mark her words, and if she noticed Anna grinning from ear to ear from the corner of her eye, well, she wouldn't let Anna know.

Mama and Papa were with them the whole time, and they got in contact with a flight attendant who would look after them until they arrived at the Romsa Airport and found Yelena (Romsa's Norwegian name was Tromsø). Mama peppered her daughters with kisses and Papa gave them both a firm hug before they had to cross the final door. Elsa offered her parents one last look, and her heart was racing with anxiety but the pride, trust, and faith in their expressions cleared her head like a wind that blew away the clouds.

She'd be fine.

If she could only be good enough, she'd be fine.

She'd be fine, and they believed in her.

Elsa was proud of herself for offering one last, shy wave of her hand.

Once Mama and Papa were out of sight, Anna jumped and howled in joy, like a puppy. In the middle of the airport. Elsa's anxiety shot up as she tried to get Anna to quiet down and stop making everyone look at them weird.

"Oops! Sorry" Anna laughed, not looking even a bit sorry. "Oh, Elsa, I'm so excited! Are you excited?"

Anna handed her sister the only bag she had on her, and Elsa passed it through the x-ray scanner. She'd insisted on only bringing one bag each, which they would carry themselves. Watching their belongings disappear behind a curtain and then wait for them to return on the baggage carousel made Elsa feel like she'd have a heart attack (what if they lost them? What if they didn't return? What if someone else took them? What if she saw someone else take them and had to confront them?).

"I... sure am" Elsa muttered, not excited at all.

"Oh, come on! It's gonna be so much fun!" Anna insisted, speaking a bit too loud for comfort. Elsa cringed at the volume. "It hasn't been just you and me in forever. Now we have one full hour and a half to catch up!"

Elsa wasn't so excited about sitting next to her little sister for an hour and a half (oh, she'd grown so much! She wore her hair in twin braids now, and they looked adorable. Did she have more freckles than before?), but then she remembered the way her parents looked at her, and her back straightened, her grip on her luggage tightened and her throat cleared. She had a duty to fulfill, and it was that of a big sister.

"It's just a trip, Anna," she said. Anna's expression deflated, and guilt seized Elsa's heart, but her face remained impassive.

Anna was silent for the hour that remained until it was time to embark. She didn't have a phone, and while she'd usually ask her parents to borrow theirs so she could play a game, she didn't ask anything from Elsa. Instead, she read a fantasy book with big golden letters on the cover. Elsa used her time replying to the cascade of texts she received from her parents. They would part north the next day, but first, they wanted to know their children were safe.

So. They were on the plane. And Anna was sitting next to her. She'd asked Elsa to let her sit by the window with the cutest puppy eyes in the world.

"Sure" she'd replied. "You can watch us fall, if you want"

Anna's smile dropped, and Elsa felt like the worst sister in the world. She was actually thinking about what a relief it would be to not have to see the plane take off and watch the safety of the ground drift farther and farther away from them. Her poor heart couldn't handle the nausea it gave her. Anna didn't seem to have that problem and… well… her statement came out wrong. But she couldn't apologize now, so she had to sit next to her quiet, quiet little sister as they left their dear Svalbard behind. The flight attendant came to check on them but quickly left. Both sisters read their respective books, and Elsa was proud to see Anna's book was longer than hers. Her little sister was no idiot. She was a bright, intelligent young girl.

She didn't miss the glances Anna gave her. Or the long stares. Or all that lovestruck sighing. Anna… wasn't subtle. They just hadn't spent enough time together before for it to be that obvious.

The way Anna looked at her made her stomach tingle with butterflies and twist in disgust at the same time. She squirmed uncomfortably in her seat.

There was a stretch in which the plane was assaulted by violent winds, and the metal carcass shook and convulsed under such abuse. It was falling. It definitely felt like it was falling. As if it quickly descended steps on a stair. It would lose altitude with each jerk, and while in retrospective the turbulence was nothing too uncommon and the flight attendants were never worried in the first place, back in that moment, Elsa shoved her fists into her pockets and tried her best to control her breathing and not freeze the whole plane.

"E-Elsa?" Anna whispered. Her hands sought her older sister's, but Elsa flinched away. "Elsa, I-I'm scared"

Elsa inhaled sharply. The frost building up inside her closed hands bit painfully at her skin.

"Leave me alone, Anna," she said through gritted teeth. "Go read your book"

She didn't look at Anna's face. She didn't have to.

Anna's touch retreated.

"C-an I…" the plane shook again and Anna let out a tiny yelp. "Can I hold your hand, Elsa? Please?"

Elsa screwed her eyes shut. She was dying to say yes. The fear and brokenness in Anna's voice made her big sister instincts go wild. She wanted to hold her in her arms and never let her go.

She was the big sister, yes, and she promised her parents she'd keep her safe.

"No," she said sharply. "Don't ask me again"

Perhaps she could hold her hand if they were normal sisters. But they were not. And in their context, every act of affection was an expression of perversion. An opportunity for the big bad sister to fondle the little one.

Once both the plane and her heart were stable enough for her to use her hands, she put on her earbuds so she didn't have to listen to Anna sniffling.

The Romsa Airport was bigger than the Svalbard Airport, and the size and the people overwhelmed Anna, who once again asked to hold Elsa's hand in fear of getting lost, but Elsa rejected her a second time. Anna wouldn't get lost if she stayed within sight and did what her big sister said.

Anna's excitement quickly died out, and her taciturn mood was concerning, but she wasn't asking to hold Elsa's hand anymore, and she didn't try to strike conversation or laugh or be loud, so Elsa shouldn't complain. She silently walked behind her big sister, followed her indications, and did her best not to get in the way. She was exactly what Elsa demanded her to be.

She didn't have to ask herself why it made her feel like her heart had been ripped out of her chest.

Anna did smile, however, when she saw Yelena and their cousins waiting for them. She raced across the airport and threw herself into their arms, leaving Elsa behind. Ryder, Honeymaren and Yelena embraced her and the sight made Elsa's feet stop for a second.

When was the last time their own family had hugged Anna like that?

Well, it was no mystery why Anna had run away from Elsa in order to join the Natturas.

The twins, Ryder and Honeymaren, were both around a year older than Elsa, and it showed. They weren't much taller, but something about the way they carried themselves made it obvious they were older and wiser. When Honeymaren hugged her, Elsa remembered the cigarette girl who called everyone 'sweetie' at school. Older teenage girls had magical powers over younger girls. They were like goddesses to them. The coolest people on the planet. Even if they were older by only one year. And her cousin provided a sense of safety and comfort Elsa didn't know she needed. Even if Honeymaren didn't know, even if she didn't understand, for a moment Elsa could feel like she did, and the warmth let her bones slacken and her muscles relax.

"Is everything okay?" Honeymaren asked, always so perceptive. Elsa pulled away before it became weird. The last thing she needed was to crush on her cousin as well (unrelated by blood, but… oh, well, when did she start caring about blood?).

"I'm fine" she replied, surprising herself by being honest.

Yelena's hand on her shoulder made her turn around.

"It's good to see you again, Elsa," she said proudly.

Yelena and her family didn't live in Romsa, which was in the fylke of Troms. No, they lived in the Finnmarking village of Kárášjohka (Karasjok in Norwegian). The drive was seven hours on a good day and they had to cross the Finnish border twice, which wasn't a difficult endeavor (although one could see the irony in open borders when they cut someone else's nation in half).

Sitting in a car with Anna for seven hours was much easier when she had their cousins to keep her entertained and Elsa could simply listen to Bach and Vivaldi while watching the trees pass by.

The trees. She hadn't seen trees in years. There was so much green around them, anywhere they looked to. The trees and the mountains and the cities they passed by were so different from her world of ice and snow. The sheer vastness of it all made her feel small, as if they were traveling through the belly of a god. They could drive and drive and drive forever and the world kept going.

The trees around were conifers. Elsa wondered if you could climb conifers.

The next day, in a desperate attempt to feel like a kid again, she found out the worst way possible: falling on her butt from a branch two meters above the ground.

Alright, falling on her butt wasn't the correct terminology. Her butt was fine. It was her right arm that she was worried about. It skidded across the earth and it now had a series of painful, bloody scratches that throbbed and made Elsa feel a bit sick to her stomach. She quickly conjured snow to rub against her skin, in order to clean the wound.

Was it her fault Honeymaren was so good at climbing trees it made Elsa jealous? Was it her fault Yelena's house was surrounded by the most sublime trees in Norway? Was it her fault Elsa wanted to feel childish and innocent?

Well, Yelena had gone out grocery shopping, and Anna was playing some shooting video game with Ryder and Honeymaren in the house. It had then been the perfect moment to go be stupid while no one was watching, and it was now the best moment to go inside and get patched up without embarrassing herself (to anyone but herself, at least, because there she went! The prodigy kid of Svalbard, falling off trees!).

Alas, her plan failed spectacularly when she reached for the doorknob and the door magically opened before her.

"Oh! Elsa" Anna exclaimed, somewhat nervously. "Um, hi. Do you need anything?"

"I need to go inside, if you'll excuse me," Elsa requested. Anna was, after all, standing in the doorway.

"O-Of course" she moved to the side, but then her gaze fixed on Elsa's right arm. Elsa had to physically hold herself back from rolling her eyes, knowing damn well what was coming next. "What happened to your arm?"

"It's nothing"

"It's not nothing"

Anna seized her wrist before she could protest, and winced at the sight of blood.

"It's just a couple of scratches" Elsa reassured her. "I was going to patch myself up right now"

"No way," Anna said. "You can't patch yourself up. That's a rule"

Elsa blinked.

"Excuse me?"

"Now, come with me" Anna locked her arm with Elsa's left one. "You know, it's alright for svalbardians to be bad at climbing trees. I bet I'd be bad if I tried, too"

Elsa cringed. Oh, had Anna seen her? That was… beyond embarrassing. It was humiliating.

"It was a bad idea"

"You wouldn't have known if you hadn't tried it, so it's okay. It was a learning experience!" Anna offered her a warm smile, and Elsa squirmed away from her, releasing her trapped arm.

Anna's expression faltered.

"Right" she murmured, maybe to Elsa or maybe to herself. "Um, Yelena showed me where the first aid kit was. I think she didn't trust me not to get hurt as soon as I was left unsupervised. I don't think I'd trust me, either"

Anna picked disinfectant, cotton, bandaids, and a roll of bandages, which Elsa tried to take from her hands, but Anna held them away.

"Anna, this isn't funny"

"I know," Anna said. "Now, you. Chair" she pointed at a kitchen chair. "Go sit there and I'll take care of you"

"Anna, no"

"Yes!"

Elsa rolled her eyes. She was running out of patience. And the sound of monster laser guns and Honeymaren hurling insults at sewer aliens coming from the next room wasn't helping.

"Anna. Give me that" Elsa commanded. Anna stared at her like Elsa was the Prussian State and she was a XIX century anarchist.

"No" Anna repeated. "Oh, Elsa, you took care of me all day yesterday. I want to take care of you in return. As a thank-you"

Anna's words were simple and they probably shouldn't have hit Elsa as they did, but something in her chest snapped, and her eyes misted over.

The same four words replayed in her head over and over as Anna cleaned her scratches.

'I don't deserve you. I don't deserve you. I don't deserve you'

Anna didn't use the bandages, in the end. Once she'd cleaned all the blood, they could both see the scratches were far smaller than they had initially thought, and she went with band-aids instead. Her fingers were incredibly soft as she pressed them to Elsa's skin. Her throat went dry. Her heartbeats picked up. And with another blow to the heart, she realized they were the flower-patterned band-aids Elsa would give Anna when she was little.

Anna shrugged.

"Guess Yelena never stopped buying them" she shot her sister a smile.

Elsa's breath hitched. She stared at Anna, suddenly unable to look away after avoiding her for so long. Anna didn't seem to notice. She was too focused on fixing Elsa's arm.

With her free hand, Elsa rubbed her eyes before any tears could fall. She closed her fists not to let the ice out.

"There" Anna grinned, once all broken skin was covered. "How do you feel?"

Elsa glanced down at her arm. It still hurt, but her mind was somewhere else.

"Thank you," she replied. Anna's smile widened.

"Oh, Elsa, you don't have to thank me for anything"

Her heart cracked.

Only once Anna was out of sight did she dare to put her feelings into words.

'Oh, Anna. I love you so much'

They slept in the same room at night.

Yelena's house wasn't big. Ryder and Honeymaren already shared a room, and they had to move in with their grandmother for a month in order to leave their room to the sisters. And after a quick tour through his video games, books and action figures, Ryder bid them goodnight and closed the door.

Anna was now locked inside a room, defenseless, alone, with her big sister.

Elsa barely looked at her as Anna explained she'd write down a calendar so they could switch between the bed and the mattress on the floor every night. She said it wouldn't be fair for one of them to sleep on the floor for a full month.

"You take the bed, Anna" Elsa cut her off mid-sentence. Anna's crystalline voice was like a drill inside her ears. The way her heart pounded hurt her chest.

"Really?"

"Yes. Really. Now go to sleep" Elsa chided.

"Oh! Thank you, Elsa!" Anna laughed. She jumped onto the bed and burrowed into the covers. "Can we watch a movie?"

"No"

"Can I stay up reading my book?"

"Just go to sleep, Anna"

Elsa turned off the light so she wouldn't have to see Anna's expression. Once in bed, she thought she heard sniffling, and she convinced herself Anna had caught a cold outside, but she didn't offer her tissues despite having some in her bag.

Anna's breath calmed down after an hour or two, but Elsa's heart didn't. It swelled and collapsed heavily into itself, taking ragged breaths of blood and vomiting it back into her body. A harsh, unforgiving motion her body forced her to repeat against her will.

Her nails raked softly over the bandaids. The texture was soothing. Her eyes filled with tears once again and before she could get a grip on herself, she crawled from under the covers and kneeled by Anna's bed. Perhaps she wouldn't chicken out if she tip-toed that line between life and sleep, where the possibility of Anna hearing her (or not) was infinitely undefined. Toss a coin into the air, and both possibilities exist during the time it falls. Once it hits the ground, one is canceled and the other becomes true, but Elsa was more comfortable with the idea of an eternally spinning coin. The grey sky between night and dawn. The ambiguous words that could mean one thing or another depending on what she wanted to hear.

She liked numbers because her parents liked numbers.

But Anna was asleep, so all possibilities were closed but one. Elsa sighed. It seemed like she wouldn't get to apologize that night. It was both a relief and a rush of shame.

It seemed the only gift she could offer Anna was pain.

Her heart slowed. Her eyes misted over.

She was a bad, bad big sister.

Anna had either moved around in bed or fallen asleep like that— Elsa wouldn't know Anna's sleeping habits—, with her arms twisted into uncomfortable angles and strands of hair sticking out. One was even caught in her drooling, snoring mouth. Eating your own hair in your sleep mustn't be comfortable, and after a moment of hesitation— she shouldn't be touching her, especially when she was asleep—, Elsa gently pulled the hair out of her mouth. It was wet and gross, and Elsa made a face.

Anna smacked her lips together and left her jaw hung open. Elsa was certain that would result in snoring, so she very softly pushed it up with two fingers and closed her mouth.

She held her breath. There.

Even in the dark, she could see the freckles adorning Anna's skin. Her soft eyelashes. Her cute little nose and her disheveled red hair. Her expression was always soft and happy, nothing like Elsa's. Anna made people feel safe, and welcome, and loved.

Warmth spread across her chest. Oh, her precious little princess. She'd always been that little ray of sunlight in Elsa's life.

The memory of her touch still sent electric signals from her arm to her brain. Her innocent medical care alone made her short-circuit.

She brushed the back of her knuckles over Anna's round cheek, and the horror suddenly came crashing down on her.

She jerked back and her bare feet touched ice. She held her hands together over her pounding heart and stared at Anna, still as a rabbit under the wolf's gaze.

Anna did not move.

What Elsa was doing was beyond inappropriate. It broke all of the rules at once.

So much for the prodigy child of Svalbard.

After a minute, Elsa inhaled and exhaled and then returned to her bed. Sleep was troubled for her that night.

Elsa barely spoke to her sister until their stay in Finnmark was over. She avoided her like the plague by going on walks around Kárášjohka whenever she knew Anna would be at the house. This was a place where she could speak her mother's tongue with virtually anyone she came across, and the trees followed like quiet giants watching over her. She enjoyed rediscovering this place so different from Svalbard, so green and new. The last time she visited, her age had been in single digits.

The longest conversation they had was about Anna's lost mittens at the airport. She'd forgotten them at Yelena's house and Yelena wasn't wasting twenty-one hours of her life getting them back. Ryder reassured her that they'd still be there when they came back while Elsa hurried her because they were running late and no one but her seemed aware of it.

They hugged their second family, and as soon as they were alone, Anna was once again rendered silent. She didn't utter a word during the whole flight, and Elsa's stomach churned with guilt. She turned up the volume until Monteverdi's music caused a ringing in her ears.

Mama and Papa had returned home a day before. They didn't want their daughters to arrive and find themselves alone in Svalbard. They all hugged and then went home and ate a big dinner. Once Anna had gone to sleep, Elsa was allowed to stay up with her parents for an hour or so, drinking coffee and hot chocolate and discussing their respective trips. Mama and Papa had seen whales, polar bears, and ice that was thousands of years old, but they seemed more interested in arctic zooplankton and sediments preserved in the ice sheet.

"The best part of the trip was certainly the food" Papa mumbled, and Mama laughed so hard she snorted her drink out of her nose. The three of them laughed, even if it was undignified.

But they'd told all the best parts over dinner, already, when Anna was there to listen. Now, they simply filled her in about the scientific facts they knew their youngest daughter would get bored with, in order to kill time and avoid the more uncomfortable topic.

"Elsa, sweetheart," Mama finally reached her arm across the table to grasp Elsa's hand. "How did you feel during the trip?"

"It was scary," Elsa said to Dr. Weselton.

"Scary?" He asked. "Scary how?"

"I just…" Elsa didn't know where to begin. "I… I feel like a bad sister"

"Why do you think you're a bad sister?"

"I... think I'm dangerous to Anna"

Dr. Weselton nodded, very slowly.

"Did you fear you weren't responsible enough to take care of her?

"I… guess"

"But you still got her home safe and sound" Dr. Weselton argued. "You succeeded"

Elsa looked at her hands. She still needed her gloves.

"I guess I did," she admitted.

Dr. Weselton cleared his throat.

"Elsa," he said. "I believe that anything that could possibly make you dangerous is not inherent of you"

Elsa frowned. She fidgeted with the finger of her glove.

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is that you're unquestionably a very dedicated young woman," he said. "And your family's wellbeing is your priority. Your compass is well calibrated. With enough work, you'll be able to overcome whatever is troubling you"

Elsa wasn't a woman yet, not even a young one, but she did her best to act like one: jewelry, makeup, dresses, and a perfect appearance of composure, one that looked like a smile and didn't let on the impression there was anything behind it. For all they knew, her soul was empty. Knees pressed together, head high and neck stretched. Occupying as little space as possible when sitting on a couch. She had the privilege of choosing her wardrobe without caring for the weather, and she would take advantage of it. Dr. Weselton liked her like that.

Discipline over the body meant discipline over the mind.

(Sharing a room with Anna for over a month had been torture).

Elsa didn't meet his eye. She couldn't. Her throat felt dry.

"Is…?" She began. "Is this about my…?" She cleared her throat. Her blood pounded in her ears. "I believe I'm attracted to women"

"I figured," Dr. Weselton admitted. "Do you fear you'll harm your sister?"

Elsa took a deep breath. She opened her mouth to reply, but Dr. Weselton cut her off.

"Would you say you feel attraction towards your sister, Elsa?" He pressed, his tone stern. Elsa's heart jumped and pounded like a convulsing rabbit.

"I…" her voice came out like a string of sound. Through her panicked haze, she remembered what her parents had instructed her. "N-No" Deep breaths. That's right. She tightly gripped her fingers with the other hand. "I'm not attracted to her, p-per se" she lied. "But I… I worry"

"You worry you may grow attracted to her?"

"I know I don't have any real basis for such a … prediction," she said. "But I don't want to take any risks. I don't want to be a danger to her"

Dr. Weselton hummed, stroking his chin. Elsa was desperate to hear that she wasn't and could never be a danger, that her little sister was safe with her, that she was a good girl and she was doing a good job, but her therapist's somber expression made her shoulders deflate and her heart quiver.

"It is a rather delicate predicament" Dr. Weselton finally said. Elsa's heart sank. So, he didn't think she was harmless. He glanced at the clock. "You may want to ask yourself why being attracted to your sister specifically is of such concern to you"

Her stomach dropped. Elsa nodded quietly.

"I will" she murmured.

"In fact, since you're such a dedicated student, I shall send you homework" Dr. Weselton continued. "I'm asking you to examine why you see yourself as such a danger. What is it about you that you deem monstrous?"

"...Monstrous?"

"Monstrous, indeed. Only a monster could be attracted to her own sister" he shuddered. "Let's be thankful we're not at that stage yet, but this is something that shall be monitored"

Tears pricked at her eyes.

"I'll see you next week, Elsa," Dr. Weselton said, standing up to open the door. Elsa got up with rigid movements and slowly made her way next to her therapist. "And Elsa," he said. "You might want to keep your distance with your sister, lest you become unable to control your urges. We wouldn't want to take any risks, now, would we?"

This last statement filled Elsa's heart with dread. She'd read a lot about psychology and psychoanalysis at the library— she already knew siblings had to be separated in cases of incest. But Dr. Weselton's words followed her for weeks on end. She avoided Anna as much as she could and let her mind be occupied by different matters, such as school. She should perhaps make new friends. Get herself an excuse to be out of the house. Study more at the library. By the time she'd gathered up her courage, nearly three weeks had passed, but the people she was looking for were still outside of the school, smoking in the playground.

After school, Elsa surrounded the building and made it to the empty playground, where two older teenagers were smoking.

The one that looked like a stag glared at her. His eyes were cold and dark and piercing, and they made Elsa feel small, but then the girl by his side slapped his arm, and her nonchalance gave Elsa the confidence to walk up to them.

"We're not giving you any of this," the boy said, holding his cigarette between two fingers. "You must be like, eight years old"

"I'm twelve!"

"See, sweetie? She's twelve!" The girl exclaimed. "And God only knows the kinds of things I put in my body when I was twelve"

Elsa shifted her weight from one leg to another, nervously looking around.

"May I stay here for the time being?" She requested. The boy raised an eyebrow at her choice of words, but shrugged.

"You can occupy space, if you want" he permitted. Elsa nodded politely.

"Thank you"

She stood by the wall they were leaning against, without touching it. She simply held her hands together and stared ahead. The hills were covered in snow, and light sleet rained down, flickering in the glow of the streetlights like a sprinkle of golden fire. The greying sky was cold and dark, and the sight was beautiful.

"Elsa of Arendelle, right, sweetie?" The girl asked, suddenly. "My name is Gale"

Elsa nodded.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Gale"

"And my boyfriend's last name is Nøkk"

Elsa looked up. She had to crank up her neck into an uncomfortable angle to see Nøkk's face.

"Like the water spirit?"

"Yeah! Isn't that pretentious?" Gale laughed. She scrunched up her nose. "He has no right to make fun of your name, sweetie"

Nøkk grunted, much like an animal.

"...You're embarrassing me," he said lamely.

"Sweetie, your bad boy act doesn't need help"

They quickly went back to talking between themselves, pretty much forgetting Elsa was standing right there, but that was fine. It was more than fine. They didn't reject her, and the company was a nice change.

Elsa felt something strange, something she hadn't experienced in a long time. She was comfortable.

Anna was a big fan of family movie nights.

The usual conversation over dinner pertained to which movie they'd watch after, as a family. Elsa reluctantly joined in, because everyone's eyes would be on the TV and this was the greatest act of affection she dared to offer her sister. She'd tried refusing, but every time she said no, Anna's shoulders would drop, she'd look down and say something along the lines of:

"No, no! It's okay. Really. I won't keep you here. I understand if you have something else to do. O-or if you just don't want to"

It broke her heart every time. She couldn't do it. Anna had her wrapped around her finger even if she didn't know it, and any self-control faltered at the glimpse of her smile.

"Okay," she'd finally said, as softly as she could. "Come on. Pick something"

Anna's radiant grin could light up the winter night. She was so happy to have her sister show her the minimal ounce of care and kindness. Elsa's heart was warm and alive and pained and it could only be cooled down by Mama and Papa's disapproving glare.

The movie would go on, and Anna would usually choose to sit on the ground, at Mama and Papa's feet. She said she feared falling asleep if she sat on the couch. It was oddly adorable, and Elsa had a hard time staring at the screen.

Because here is the thing: her eyes would occasionally drift over to Anna, and every time, without exception, she'd find Anna staring back at her.

Because, of course, Anna was in love with her.

Elsa knew this. Of course, she knew this. They'd spent a concerning portion of their childhood pretty much making out behind their parent's backs. And it was obvious in how Anna always sought to spend time with her, always sought to make her happy, always sought to forgive her. And in how she stared at her when she thought Elsa wasn't looking.

Her eyes were wide, her mouth ajar. She gulped and her throat bobbed up and down. A light blush spread across her cheeks.

All the fear, the therapy and the judgment told Elsa the appropriate reaction to being ogled by your sister was meant to be disgust.

It was perverse of her to enjoy it. To feel something warm in her stomach. To blush. To like it. She liked to be stared at by her little sister. And every time she glanced at her, a spark of electricity would burst between them. A connection. A blood-colored string. She desperately wanted to hold her hand.

'I did this to you,' she thought. 'I want to keep you innocent. I love you too much to taint you with such a crime against nature. You could never have a normal, happy life with me in it. I'd be selfishly ripping you away from the beautiful future that awaits you. Anna, I don't want to come between you and your happiness'

Mama and Papa noticed. They always noticed. The spark became uncomfortable, and all the revulsion came rushing in as Elsa realized what she was doing. She ripped her eyes away from Anna (abandoning her once again), but she could still see, through the corner of her eye, how Papa squeezed the back of her neck. Anna's body became stiff. A sudden flare of anger made Elsa clench her fists.

She didn't like it when Papa touched Anna like that. But love was synonymous with guidance and correction, and if this meant Anna had to be hurt, well, Elsa had to take her parent's side. She couldn't choose to distrust them.

She ruined it. Of course she ruined it. She always ruined movie nights. Why couldn't she just… be normal for five minutes? But no! She just had to ogle her big sister again and make everyone uncomfortable. Again. They didn't have to say anything. She could see Elsa's disgust every time she glanced at her. Was she staring that much? Anna was certain she wasn't, but she had obviously been wrong. She couldn't keep her eyes off her no matter how much she tried. Elsa was simply so… beautiful. So graceful and elegant and quiet and... she was secretly truly sweet. She captured Anna's heart and… and…

And now she couldn't wash off the ghost of Papa's fingers from her neck. She scrubbed the spot under the rain of the shower but the pressure remained there, choking her from behind. From the inside.

She shivered under the attack of the icy water. The drops hit her skin hard like hail. Like nails.

Anna loved her family. Her parents were kind and sweet and funny, even if between school and friends, Anna didn't spend much time with them. And her sister was the smartest, beautifullest person in the world. She always moved and spoke with such elegance and grace and if Anna didn't know better, she'd think she was in presence of the Queen of Norway. If Queen Sonja didn't exist, of course. Or if she were sixty years younger. Elsa was everything Anna wished she could be, and she knew that every slip, every crack on the wall and failure to behave appropriately was a step deeper into Elsa's contempt and disapproval. Anna was sinking and she couldn't see the shore anymore.

The expression of horror in Elsa's eyes was branded into her brain and it kept her awake through the night.

Papa kept his hand on her body throughout the whole movie. He moved it to her shoulder and squeezed hard enough to grind her bones against each other, and really hurt and for a second she worried they would snap, before chastising herself for exaggerating. She didn't enjoy the film. 'Ratatouille' went now into her shelf of movies she could no longer watch without feeling fingers on her neck.

She spent the whole night anxious and waiting for Papa to burst into her room to have a talk with her, but he didn't. Even after they'd all gone to sleep, when time was distorted in her exhausted mind, she still couldn't close an eye, permanently expecting the door to be kicked open.

It took her like two days to resume her usual sleeping habits after that all-nighter of anxiety. Kristoff made fun of her when she asked one of the wealthier girls at her school for makeup help to hide the bags under her eyes.

"You do know that brush is more expensive than your car, right?" He said later. Anna shrugged.

"Well, I'm not getting Hans' attention looking like a racoon" she argued.

"Seriously? You don't feel even a little bit bad? This is decadent"

He said something else, but Anna wasn't paying much attention. She observed Hans through the small mirror in her hand. They were in the library and he was reading some big classical book with a hard cover. His auburn hair was slicked back and his kind green eyes hid behind a pair of glasses. He looked up at one point, which made Anna drop the mirror and blush red like a tomato. Kristoff laughed at her. When she actually turned around to face Hans, he was smiling at her. He waved and she waved back.

Yep, she decided. She'd ask him out on a date.

She was eleven and he was fifteen, but age was just a number. They'd hit off almost immediately, and after going to the movies, they drank hot chocolate at a café and then danced in the streets, with no music and with people staring at them but Anna couldn't care less, because when Hans looked at her, he didn't see that weird obsession with her sister that she couldn't seem to shake off, but the bright, funny, sweet young girl Anna liked to think she was. She tried to climb onto the polar bear statue near the center of town, in front of Jason Roberts Productions. She wanted to feel like a bride marrying bear-prince, or like a polar explorer with a map and a compass. Hans laughed with her and helped her climb off when they were chased away. He held her hand the whole way through.

Mama and Papa liked Hans a lot, even if they clearly saw him more as Anna's friend than as her boyfriend. He had dinner with her family on multiple occasions, and while Papa tried to keep his overprotective dad act, he quickly dropped it after seeing how good Hans was. He had a charm and sweetness to him that made Anna firmly believe she could fall in love with him if she gave it some time. Soon, he and Papa were joking and talking about TV shows and science stuff. It seemed like Hans had quite an interest in marine biology, and that meant Anna's parents would get really, really annoying, because they finally had someone (other than poor Elsa) to talk to about the vulnerability of arctic zooplankton to climate change, or something along those lines. Whatever they were talking about now. Anna wasn't paying as much attention to the conversation as she was to Hans' features: his youthful smile, his perfect hair, his wide eyes… He was certainly attractive (sideburns or not), and Anna barely even stole glances at her sister during the whole meal. Which was new. She usually couldn't keep her eyes off her. When she did look at her, Elsa never returned the glance. Her hands rested on her lap and her back didn't touch the chair's backrest. With an austere expression, she remained completely silent until Hans was gone, at which point she said:

"I'll wash the dishes tonight"

Anna sank deeper into her chair and kept her eyes glued to her empty plate. She had the feeling she should do the dishes, considering she was the reason they had five to wash instead of four (although Kristoff would usually be the one to wash when he was over. He'd playfully argue with Mama over it until she eventually gave in).

Elsa moved hastily and callously, pretty much ripping the plate and cutlery from Anna's hands and tossing them into the sink. Cold metal clashed with cold metal in a way that made Anna's teeth rattle. Mama and Papa didn't seem to notice, but if Anna had somehow angered her sister, she needed to fix things up. So, while their parents weren't looking, she went to stand in the doorway.

"Uh, Elsa!" She called. "... Is everything alright?"

Elsa turned on the tap and a hard stream of water crashed against the sink, drowning out her words.

"Everything's fine" Elsa spat. Anna winced.

"I'm sorry. I just saw you there and… with Hans and…"

"I care little for who you date, Anna"

At no point Elsa turned around to see her. Anna's heart cracked a little.

"Right," Anna said. She coughed shallowly. "Do you…uh... do you need…"

"No" Elsa cut her off. Anna had no justification to stand in her presence.

She repressed a sigh, turned around and walked back into her room. Her eyes stung and her chest felt heavy, but Hans had sent her a text— something complimenting Mama's excellent cooking and a few dog gifs— and she allowed herself to laugh.

She… well, she doubted she could ever get Elsa back in her life, anyway. Even if she could miraculously stop being a freak, the damage was already done. She shouldn't expect Hans to bring her sister back. He'd provide a way out. He'd bring her happiness, and… and maybe Anna just had to learn how to be a normal, happy person without her sister. Create a life outside the orange house, with friends and boyfriends, where she could forget about the whole ordeal.

She went to sleep with a phone in her hands, tears in her eyes, and a tight smile on her lips.

Anna spent a lot of time with Hans. Like, a lot. They'd go out almost every day, and when it was too cold to be literally out, they'd find refuge in cafés, in the stairs of the sports center and in the library. Sometimes, they'd make out, and he would touch her small chest without asking, but that was okay. Anna figured it would be even more awkward if he asked. They mostly looked for places where they wouldn't stumble upon Kristoff, because he'd insist on tagging along, strategically sitting between the two and throwing all of the inside jokes he shared with Anna into a single conversation, the ones that Hans wouldn't get. It stopped being funny after the seventh time and since then the library had been their refuge, as Kristoff hadn't touched a book in his life. They'd sneak in food and hot chocolate and play board games for hours, laughing their asses off until the librarian harshly hushed them.

"Sorry!" Anna would giggle every time, only to throw another fit of laughter ten minutes later.

Hans would laugh, too. Their minds were in perfect synchronization. They always knew what food to bring along on their dates (they had dates!). They always knew the best place to take the other. They even finished each other's sentences. If Anna only were in love with him, she'd think they were made for each other.

One day she walked into the library and her heart stopped. Hans hadn't arrived yet, but at the end of the hall, she saw her sister sitting at the table, studying with two older teenagers. A boy and a girl. The girl was rather talkative, and neither Elsa nor the boy spoke but they responded with smiles and other physical gestures.

Anna didn't know Elsa had… well… friends, but it shouldn't surprise her. Who wouldn't want to be close to her?

She tried to smile to herself and brush off that pang of jealousy.

Anna found Hans while waiting outside the library. He smiled at her but then he frowned, confused as to why Anna would rather freeze to death outside instead of waiting in the warmth of the building.

"Uh, Anna," he said. "Is everything alright?"

Anna smiled and took his hand.

"Everything is perfect!" She replied. "It's a bit crowded in there. How about we go get some coffee?"

The look in Hans' eyes was that of concern, but after a moment, he offered her a firm, stable smile and nodded. Anna laughed as she dragged him around the city, ready to find a happier place.

"Dear Diary:

It's me again. Anna. Of course, I'm the only one who writes here, so you already know it's me. I know it's been, like, a million years since I wrote you (on you?), but Mama just made me clean my room and I found you under my bed, along with half of my childhood toys and more late assignments than I can count (though I don't remember intentionally throwing them out).

I should probably tell you the good news! This has been the busiest year of my life. Tomorrow is my birthday, can you believe it? It's been a whole year since I've had you! And I've barely written (on) you at all. I'm sorry. You must feel very lonely.

I traveled alone with Elsa for the first time a few months back! We stayed with Yelena during spring (that's in Kárášjohka, Finnmark, by the way), and it was so much fun, because we spent all day with Honeymaren and Ryder. I think they've been teaching Elsa how to climb trees. I really missed them, and I miss them now. I also saw the Sámi Parliament every day. I wonder what it must be like to work with them. It's also a beautiful building. I cried when I visited the Sámi Museum. There was so much I didn't know and I felt bad about that.

Elsa and I...

My sister...

Papa and I spoke about visiting the shooting range. He wants to teach me how to use guns so I can leave town without him someday. Of course, I can't own guns until I'm sixteen, but I still want to learn! He invited Elsa too but she said she didn't want anything to do with weapons. She has her powers anyway and she wouldn't need them. Mama doesn't like the idea at all. I can still go to the shooting range if Papa is with me (knowing Mama she wouldn't come with me).

I have a boyfriend now! His name is Hans Westergaard and he's perfect. We have a lot in common. We even like the same food! Kristoff doesn't like him, but Kristoff doesn't like anyone. I think Elsa doesn't like him, either, and I can't say Elsa doesn't like anyone because last week I found out she had friends. They're older students because she's very smart. I've been trying to fall in love with Hans and I think it's working. He's really nice and funny and I think I can do it.

School has been hard. I'm scared Mama and Papa will be mad at me. I know I'm not as smart as Elsa.

I think that's all for now! See you later!

Love,

Anna.

Anna wasn't going very well at school. Both she and her sister had exams on the same days, and while they didn't get numerical grades in primary school, her teacher's commentary wasn't very flattering. They didn't hold a candle to Elsa's straight 6's. Anna waited a week before showing her exams to her parents, because she didn't want them to see them next to Elsa's perfect score. She talked about it with Kristoff (because she didn't want Hans to see her failure, either), and he came up with a plan to cheat and exchange her exam for another student's to trick her parents, but Anna refused. That would be dishonest and… just wrong. She simply stayed with Kristoff all day. They walked five of his dogs around the city for hours until the leashes got all tangled up and they had to go back. He offered her a can of beer he'd stolen from his uncle (which she rejected) and then they played videogames until it was time to leave. When Mama came to pick her up, she hugged Kristoff for a long, long time.

Mama and Papa were, to put it mildly, disappointed but not surprised. Papa stared at her exams for what felt like hours, and then dropped them loudly on the table. The heavy paper painfully smacked the wooden surface.

"Alright," he said. "Anna, you're old enough to decide whether you're proud of your performance or not," he stated, gesturing at the papers. Anna's heart sank. "Your mother and I try to give you the best opportunities we can offer. We try to support you and guide you, yet no matter what we do, your academic development remains a straight line. At this point, whether you want to make good use of the tools at your disposal or not is your decision"

Anna nodded quietly. The conversation was over and her parents left. She had always been told that she took after her father, while Elsa was the living image of her mother. But whoever said that was wrong: Elsa had inherited her eyes and her stance from someone else.

She remembered how, the week before, they'd thrown a big dinner to celebrate Elsa's exams. They watched movies (but not until Anna excused herself for the night) and made some ice cream with Elsa's powers. Anna later found a small ice cream bowl with extra chocolate waiting outside her door, with a heart carved on the surface of the dessert with a spoon. She assumed that must have been her mother. She'd heard music and quiet laughter coming all the way from the living room. She'd wanted to join them, but a heavy pressure had seized her heart and she found herself unable to move, trying to remember if Elsa had said anything when Anna told her she was proud of her. She had the feeling she would remember if she did.

But… Papa was technically right. She was lazy at school, and often chose to chat with Kristoff or text Hans instead of listening to her teachers. Not to mention the half-hearted effort she put into her homework.

She'd simply have to work harder to earn her parent's pride.

Elsa might or might not have a crush on Nøkk.

He dropped her off at home one night and after a weirdly long hug, her big sister strode in through the door wearing a wide grin and giggling like an awkward schoolgirl (which, to be fair, she was). It was obvious to everyone but Agnarr that Elsa wasn't acting normally. She hugged her parents upon seeing them and took over the kitchen that night to make everyone's favorite snacks for kveldsmat (including Anna's). She was oddly sweet and talkative and she kept playing with what looked like a handmade stuffed puffin.

"Nøkk is teaching me how to sew," she explained with a shy smile. "He made this for me"

Anna stared at the toy and frowned. She was no toy-making expert, but there were tiny clouds of cotton puffing out from between the stitches, and his button eyes were mismatched. His cape looked a lot like someone had cut a glove in half and tied the fingers around its neck. She didn't want to think ill of Nøkk, because she didn't really know him, but she was certain Elsa would be a better student than he was a teacher.

"Do you like him?" Mama asked, although it wasn't clear whether she meant the toy or the boy. Elsa only grinned and played with the three strings that made up the puffin's hair (puffins didn't even have hair!)

"I do," Elsa replied. Her eyes were full of motherly love and tenderness towards her little friend. "Hope you like your new home, Sir Jorgenbjorgen"

Anna's heart skipped a beat, and she stared at the guksi in her hands. She nervously tucked her hair behind her ear. It was easier to forget this side of Elsa when she was being all… formal and elegant and aloof. In reality, she was also sweet and cute and funny and… she'd make a boy really happy someday.

Anna sipped her chocolate and swallowed it without tasting it. She hoped Nøkk didn't already have a girlfriend, because her sister would be a perfect one.

Papa took Anna to the shooting range after a very long discussion with her mother. Minors could be there with signed adult permission and under supervision, so as long as he was there, they'd be fine. She'd been happy to discover her history teacher was a regular at the range, too. She rarely had anyone to talk with about her interests, save for Hans, and she didn't want him to see her shooting guns. So they had some sort of conversation between gunshots and repeated interventions by Papa.

"I just don't get it," Anna said, aiming at the target. "Why would the cities disappear during the middle ages? Did everyone just move to the country?"

"The cities didn't disappear," Mattias corrected. He had stopped shooting, and now he simply looked at Anna with mild concern and tried to escape the situation. "That is a myth. You know this is my day off, right?"

"I know, I know. But…"

"Anna, leave your teacher alone," Papa said. "You shouldn't speak while shooting"

Anna snapped her mouth shut and returned her attention to the target. He was right in that she should focus more, because her aim was terrible and it wasn't getting any better with all the distraction. But regardless, she was having a lot of fun, and she could tell Papa was having fun too, even if he wouldn't admit it. He shook his head and chuckled alongside her when they checked her target and saw she hadn't hit it even once. He ruffled her hair a lot. Anna had always done her best not to be jealous but she now revelled in this connection her father only shared with her. Not with Elsa. Not even with Mama. The shooting range would become their thing. And if she became good with guns, it would be her source of pride. She might not be smart, or strong, or even capable of having a healthy brain. But if she found the one thing she was good at, it could maybe help redeem her failures.

Dear Diary

Hello again! Hope you weren't bored while I wasn't around. I brought you some stickers! Courtesy of Hans Westergaard.

I still can't believe I have a boyfriend! A whole boyfriend! Mama and Papa accept him, but I don't think Elsa likes him. I hope she changes her mind. Elsa might get a boyfriend of her own, too. His name is Nøkk and I've never met him, but I bet he's gorgeous. Because Elsa is gorgeous and she wouldn't settle for anything less. I still wonder why Hans picked me. I can see us already, both of us married and with children and living somewhere else, maybe in Finnmark. When asked Hans if he'd ever visited Finnmark, he joked about it and said he had no interest in seeing a bunch of reindeer, so I won't tell him that's where I want to live when I'm older. I'm sure we can find a compromise. He said he'd like to have children someday, and I do, too! Well, we really only want one child. Siblings are too much trouble. We'll have a big house with dogs and a view to the east, so we can see the sunrise from there.

I probably won't see Elsa very often, but that wouldn't be a big change. She'll be married to Nøkk, have a lot of gorgeous children and live here, probably. Away from me. But that's okay. Maybe she's right, and we could use the distance. I'm always happiest when I'm with Hans or Kristoff away from home, anyway. When I come back, I suddenly remember everything that's wrong, and I just want to be with people who like me and want to be with me.

I think this is all for today. I just wanted to show you the new stickers. I'll write to you again later!

Goodbye!

Love,

Anna.

In August, some older kids from secondary school threw a party to celebrate the end of the school year, and a good number of primary school students tagged along. Of course, Anna was happy to assist. She considered asking Elsa if she knew about it, or if she wanted to join her, but when she knocked on the door she was told to go away. That was alright. She'd be going with Hans, anyway. Kristoff thought the company of humans was despicable, but Anna would make sure to tell him everything that happened next time she saw him.

The party was a blur of color, music and emotion assaulting her head, and a hot liquid forcing itself down her throat. She held its source in her numb hands, but she couldn't stop it regardless of what she did. She was twelve and she'd never tasted alcohol before, but Hans took good care of her. He brought her home when her legs couldn't keep her up and he helped her undress when her body became too hot. But his hands quickly became rough and callous, and she tried to hold them and interlock her fingers with his. He wouldn't have her. His hand seized her wrist instead.

"What's going on in here?" A familiar voice intervened.

Hans stumbled over his words— "she's alright. I was..."— but Elsa cut him off, reluctantly thanked him, and asked him to leave.

Her gentle fingers began to button up Anna's shirt and she giggled, trying to hold those soft, pale hands. She was asked a question.

Anna hiccupped.

"What?" She asked.

"Anna, how drunk are you?" Her sister repeated.

"Um…"

The question vanished from her mind. She buried her face in Elsa's shoulder and closed her eyes, feeling safer and more cared for than she'd had in years. Her arms wrapped around a slim waist. She felt tense muscles against her skin, but that only meant Elsa was strong and ready to protect her.

She had the feeling there was a very dangerous creature sleeping inside the house, that could wake up at any moment and hurt them.

She must have drifted off at some point. Sleep claimed her like a river, dragging her down the shallow current and rocking her in her arms. Her head felt light and dizzy, like she was far away from this planet. Elsa's soft hands untangled her twin braids and raked through her hair. Her nails scratching her scalp.

The headache and dizziness returned slowly with her consciousness. As the presence by her side grew in consistency, so did the heavy drag of her thoughts against a rough surface, like a bare hand scrambling her brains. The grey matter inside her skull sloshed and crashed like heavy waves against the rocks. She tried to open her eyes but her eyelids felt numb. The cool hand on her hair, however, pulled the throbbing pain away with every caress. Elsa hushed her and her dizziness with a gentle sound, and brushed her thumb over her cheekbone, just barely grazing her skin. It took her brain a moment to process she was saying something.

"Davvebiegga mearas lea…" she whispered. "Doppe johka mas leat muittožat..."

Her shy, raspy voice carried the notes like the whistle of the wind. Anna could barely hear her, and her song didn't pierce her ears but rather softly embraced her, like a hesitant hug.

"Oađe njálgát biiggážan…" Anna heard Elsa's trembling breath. "Das go dan jogas gávnnat buot…"

She pressed a soft, lingering kiss to her forehead, and through her exhaustion and nausea, Anna prayed she never left. She hadn't heard her mother's old lullaby in years. Elsa pulled back only to place her lips on Anna's hair, lightly squeezing her shoulder before her hand trailed up to hover over her face. She couldn't feel her touch but she could feel the cold radiating from her skin. She pressed a short series of kisses to her hairline. Her hand finally settled on her cheek, barely just touching her.

Anna's eyes filled with tears. She couldn't remember ever feeling this... Adored. Worshipped. Her sister must really, really love her.

She prayed this dream would never end.

But then Elsa's touch left her, and Anna finally opened up her eyes.

The surprise caught up with her five minutes too late. Her sister. Her sister was there. Touching her and kissing her.

Their eyes met and Elsa visibly blanched.

"Elsa…"

"Elsa!"

Elsa flinched. She looked up, past the couch Anna lied on.

"I…"

"What were you doing?"

"I wasn't…"

"Get away from her. Now"

The shouting and the sound of quick, frantic padding hammered into her skull from both outside and inside. Elsa was gone. Anna didn't see in which direction she'd left. She held her head between her hands, curled into a ball and moaned lamely, like a moribund animal.

A rough hand shook her shoulder and squeezed. Hard.

"Come on, Anna," Papa urged her. "Think you can walk to your room?"

Anna moaned again, but Papa pulled her to her feet despite her protests and helped her to bed. His silhouette on the doorframe filled her with dread.

"We'll talk about this tomorrow," he stated. "Goodnight, Anna"

He closed the door a bit too loudly.

Anna would spend many years trying to figure out whether the encounter with her sister had been real or a product of her drunk, desperate, broken imagination.

Dr. Weselton became bolder. He did what, according to himself, no other psychologist did, which was to ask questions. He wanted to explore the deepest parts of her subconscious and figure out alongside her the true reason behind her fears and anxieties, her sexuality, and the ever-looming monster under her bed. He forced her to answer questions she wasn't comfortable with and formulated disturbing theories out of his discoveries. He suggested that the need to nestle in a woman's arms and suckle on breasts came from the trauma of feeling helpless and unprotected by her mother (was that true?), and that it all linked back to her paralyzing terror of her own grandfather. The parallels he drew between her sexuality and the members of her own family were unsettling.

(Only a monster could be attracted to her own sister).

Elsa found herself back in his office only two weeks after their last encounter. Their meetings were meant to be monthly, but she'd been so disturbed by a recent event that she begged her parents to let her see her therapist early. They'd been heavily concerned.

"I…" Elsa began. Dr. Weselton leaned forward in his chair, staring into her twisted heart through his circular glasses. She remembered little Anna, weak and confused, and at her mercy on the couch. A perverse satisfaction accompanied the memory, because she was so small and beautiful, so fragile in her arms. She was entirely hers, her little princess.

She'd seen a boy trying to violate her, and then she violated her herself.

Mama and Papa were right. They had always been right.

"What is it?" Dr. Weselton pressed. "Come on, Elsa of Arendelle. Tell me now"

"I…" She tried to speak, but every time she opened her mouth her words got stuck in her throat. Her animal brain warned her against this decision. The same primal instinct that kept you from biting your fingers off.

Anna. Anna. Anna, who patched up the scratches in her arm. Anna, who left Grandfather's domain unscathed and unscarred. Was Anna what Elsa wished to be? Or was she her refuge, her sunlight, the last beacon of innocence she desperately clung to?

The invisible barrier rendered her still and silent for the rest of the session.

She met with Nøkk outside the school the next day. He wasn't smoking this time, just observing the landscape. He grinned at her when he saw her approach, but his smile dropped as soon as he noticed her expression.

He was so tall, he had to kneel to hug her. Elsa dug her nails into his coat and buried her face in his long black hair, the same one that made her heart flutter youthfully just a few months earlier. But it all seemed stupid when looked back at it now. Nøkk was a childish, ephemeral spark between two stones purposely knocked together. A laboratory experiment where all variants were manually managed and monitored. Anna was an uncontrollable solar flare.

He held her until she started crying. And then, he held her a little bit more. He didn't ask what it was and Elsa never told him. And she felt safer in his company but she didn't feel any braver, and she'd need bravery once her friend left and she was face to face with the world again.

Elsa was the only one to go with her mother to the festival that year. She hadn't asked why she'd doubled the frequency of her therapy sessions but Elsa could still feel the concern in her eyes. Even when she wasn't looking. Even when they were all asleep. She knew she'd broken her mother's heart, because she thought she was doing better until this recent, sudden nosedive. They listened to the music (rock. They were playing mostly rock that year) and had a genuinely good time, but between each number, when the music stopped and a sliver of silence slipped in, the anxiety that smothered Elsa's heart became suffocating.

Smother. She wished she could break free of her body and smother herself. Break her own neck like a rabbit's neck. Hold herself down until she stopped moving.

Mama squeezed her hand, the next song began and Elsa's head was free of thoughts once again.

Elsa began to listen to music whenever she had to be in the same room as Anna. This was usually while setting the table or washing the dishes with each meal. She never saw her beyond these instances and every single... fucking time her heart tried to jump out of her chest. She was aware of Anna saying things to her from time to time, but she'd just turn up the volume until she left. And every single time, seeing Anna's dejected expression broke her heart. The impulse to hug her and apologize was just as strong as the impulse to invoke a ring of ice spikes around her and tell Anna to get out of her life.

She couldn't do either, so she took the only path she was allowed to, and remained silent.

And her heart crumbled in her chest every damn single time. It hurt so much that sometimes she couldn't breathe. Her throat constricted and her ribs locked together, and when she finally exhaled it came out as a sob.

So… with time, she simply made it stop. She made it stop hurting. Each time she saw Anna, a clawed hand would try to squeeze the soft flesh of her heart. She just had to gently push it away. Push the idea of Anna away. Push the pain in her eyes away. The hand clawed at the ice but it couldn't break it. It only left scars and scratches.

Breaking Anna's heart became less and less painful every day.

Elsa told Sir Jorgenbjorgen the things she was dying to tell everyone else but couldn't. She'd decided to speak in Russian, because she was studying Russian and she had no one else to practice with, and Sir Jorgenbjorgen was a good listener. He'd be good practice. It came with the added plus of no one understanding if they overheard. With a Norwegian to Russian dictionary by her side, she spoke to her tiny friend.

"I know I have to," she said to him, gently playing with one of the buttons that made up his eye. "Do you think this is the right thing to do, Sir Jorgenbjorgen? It really hurts her"

Sir Jorgenbjorgen said nothing. He never did, but that was alright.

Elsa sighed. She flopped onto the bed and held this polite gentleman above her head.

"I…" she licked her lips. "I'm in love with my sister"

Sir Jorgenbjorgen was a good person to practice difficult words with.

He went missing one day of summer. Elsa froze half her room and turned the house upside down looking for him, but no matter where she searched, he was gone. She didn't cry, but the ice gave her away.

"Elsa?" Anna asked shyly. "Is everything okay?"

Elsa gritted her teeth and turned her back to her.

"Go away, Anna"

The next time she saw Dr. Weselton, she didn't tell him the truth. She just talked about her grandfather. Anna and Papa had hung a photo of him on the wall, which they used as target practice (with darts, not bullets! They used darts). While Elsa wasn't completely opposed to the idea, seeing his face every day was rather disturbing. She avoided looking at it when she could.

"Ah!" Dr. Weselton exclaimed. "I believe this is a most interesting puzzle piece"

"You do?" Elsa asked, less skeptically than she should have.

"Yes, indeed" Dr. Weselton nodded. "Your grandfather has instilled a deep fear of a dominant male figure in your life. You attempt to escape the prospect of a nuclear family with a husband by projecting your attraction into less powerful females, which you seek to dominate and protect"

Elsa frowned. She'd been following Dr. Weselton's logic for some time now, and while it made sense if you accepted his pattern, she had so many problems with his last statement she didn't even know where to begin. Yet, an explanation was an explanation, and if Dr. Weselton's theory was right— that Elsa had an instinctual need to control and manhandle small, fragile, helpless girls as Grandfather had manhandled her—, then it was a place to start.

After all, Anna had looked so small and so helpless when she was passed out on the couch.

Had Elsa been this vulnerable as a child? Was her need to protect (manhandle. Fondle. Control) Anna simply her need to right the wrongs she could never correct when she was little?

If so, it was even worse than seeking comfort in women because she felt abandoned by her mother (which she did not).

He asked her many questions, and he ignored her when he didn't like the answers. He asked if she ever fought with girls at school. If she ever twisted a girls' arm behind her back, and she remembered seeing her Grandfather twisting Mama's arm, and under Dr. Weselton's cold ermine eyes, she pictured herself in Grandfather's place, holding Anna down. Hurting her. Dominating her.

(Monster. Monster. Monster).

She'd never known why Grandfather was touching Mama in the first place. She never dared to ask.

Was this true? Did she want to hurt Anna?

She felt nauseous. She spilled her meal in the bathroom sink that night. The picture of Anna in pain and helpless in her hold assaulted her mind. Elsa couldn't look her in the eye when she showed up to ask her if she was okay.

Anna opened the front door ready to set the table for dinner only to find the tablecloth and the dishes already there, and parents sitting on the couch. Waiting for her.

"Anna" Mama said. "Sit down, please"

Anna took a sharp breath. She glanced over at the table, which still lacked the water, cutlery and glasses, but Elsa was already taking care of that. She looked quite uncomfortable as she brought the glass jug over to the table.

"Don't look at her, Anna," Papa warned, and his words froze Anna's spine. She blanched. "Sit. Now"

Her body felt rigid as she forced it onto the couch.

Her father held a book in his hands. Anna's stomach sank.

"It's…" she stammered. "It's not what it seems"

"Is it not, Anna?" Papa asked. "Is it not?"

A furious blush spread across her face. There was nothing in her diary that her parents didn't already know, but the humiliation of them reading her every thought was paralyzing.

Then, to her horror, Papa snapped the journal open.

"Wait!"

"You shouldn't read her journal"

Anna blinked. She turned to Elsa, who stood by the table and held onto the glass jug as if her life depended on her. The water inside was completely frozen.

Anna's jaw hung ajar. Their parents turned to their eldest daughter as well, equally surprised if not more.

"Elsa," Papa said. "This isn't for you to intervene in"

Elsa's shoulders visibly tensed up. Her brow furrowed.

"It's not right," she insisted. "Please. Leave Anna alone"

The ice in the jug cracked painfully. Anna winced at the sound.

Their parents exchanged a look. Then, Mama gently took the journal from Papa's hands and handed it back to Anna.

"We'll have a talk with you after dinner"

Anna hugged the journal to her chest. She hated the idea of burning an old birthday present, but it seemed like she had little choice.

She tried to thank Elsa after dinner. Anna washed the dishes while Elsa brought them back from the table.

"Elsa!" She called her. "I just… I just wanted to thank you. For defending me today. I…"

"Okay," Elsa said curtly. She strode out of the kitchen without giving Anna a second look.

Still, Anna smiled, both hands over her heart. She knew that, below all that coldness and aloofness, her big sister still cared about her on some level.

That night, Anna went into her parent's room for, maybe, the last time in many years. She'd only visit it occasionally much later, as she tried to make sense of the pain they branded into her heart, like a scar that never fully heals and reopens with every step down the ladder of her memory.

Her parents sat at one end of the bed, together, as an indivisible unit, and Anna sat at its foot, holding her journal to her chest. She fiddled with her braids during the whole exchange, keeping her head down and bearing the humiliation of her Problem being acknowledged. At least they weren't talking about it in front of Elsa (at least they weren't reading her diary in front of her). Still, Papa explained the seriousness of the situation and the imperativeness of putting an end to it, and Anna insisted she wasn't, like, spying on her sister in the shower, and that she was dating a boy anyways, thank you very much. They had nothing to worry about.

"It's not only about your actions, Anna" Mama interrupted, gently holding a hand. Her tone was soft but her words were hard. She extended a hand and Anna reluctantly handed her the journal. She was vaguely conscious of Elsa's voice insisting they shouldn't read it, but she had nothing (nowhere) left to hide, anyway.

Mama began reading out loud:

"Oh, I know I shouldn't feel like this, but can you blame me? She's so perfect. If you knew her, you'd understand. I had a dream in which she sang to me and kissed my hair, and I haven't stopped thinking about it in months. I think it might have been real and I was just too drunk and tired to remember. It was like when we were little. I know what we were doing was bad. I know. But I think back to it, and I don't think I've ever been happier. Am I a bad person for wanting to love her? I want to be in her life, and know her better, and I want her to sing to me again."

Anna blushed deeply and hid her face behind her hands. She never wanted her parents to read these words. The shame and embarrassment settled in her stomach and never really left. And they intended to let Elsa hear these... things?

"I…"

"Anna" Papa interrupted her. "For once, don't speak. Listen"

Anna shut her mouth.

"Anna, my sunlight" Mama began, reaching out for her daughter's hand. "We only want what's best for you and your sister, and we're all trying so hard" she squeezed her hand. "We need you to try as well, yes?"

"But I am!" Anna protested. "I swear I'm trying. I'm even dating Hans!"

"I know, I know" Mama raised a hand to stop her. "But that is not enough, Anna" she stroked her cheek. "This can't be easy for you, Anna. But for how long has this been going? How many years? Will you spend the rest of your life… pining for your own sister?"

"What kind of normal—!?"

"Agnarr" Mama placed her free hand on his arm. Papa clenched his fists in a way that made Anna's body tense up. Her mother turned back to her. "Your father is right about something, Anna. This is not normal or healthy. We're trying to be as understanding as possible, but… Anna, it almost sounds like you revel in these feelings!"

"I do not!"

"Well, then act like it!"

"Agnarr!"

Anna's mouth was shut again. She stared at her parents and they stared back at her like she was a sample of arctic zooplankton they were studying.

"No. Let me speak" Papa insisted. Mama went silent and then nodded. Papa's eyes were like black coals burning into his daughter. He took a deep breath to calm himself down. "You can't make informed choices or perform actions without your feelings conditioning your thought process. Do you follow me so far?" He stared so hard that Anna nodded. "I know you think that by not acting on your feelings, you're solving the problem. You're not. Your actions are not divorced from your thoughts"

Anna blinked. That was… a far more rational argument than she expected. But, well, she should have known better, right? They were scientists after all. Smart people. Still, what they expected from her sounded… impossible.

"But… I can't just shut down my feelings," Anna argued. "I… that's not something I can do"

Mama inhaled sharply.

"You'll have to try, Anna" she said, her voice tense and on the edge of her patience. "This can't continue. It's time you begin taking things seriously"

"I am taking things seriously!"

"No, you're not!" Papa snarled. "You might not need therapy, but that does not mean you're exempt from carrying your part of the weight.

"Is Elsa…?"

"Elsa is going to therapy for her own reasons" Mama interrupted her. "Anna, this conversation is over. Now, you'll have to listen to us"

Anna opened her mouth to protest, but no matter what she said, nothing would be a good enough argument. The more she thought about it, the less she could convince even herself.

(She'd once had some fight in her. What happened to it?)

Anna exhaled hopelessly. The conversation was over.

"I… I think I understand what you say now"

"Good," Papa said. "Then you understand why this needs to be corrected" he placed a heavy hand on top of her head. "Listen to me, Anna: you can't go through life thinking these things about your own sister. I don't know how to tell you anymore. Like your mother said, it's not normal and it's not healthy. This isn't what a healthy family looks like"

Anna looked down at her hands. The shame made her eyes water.

She was a sick little thing. No wonder Elsa hated her so much. It must be disgusting to have your little sister lusting after you.

Was she destroying her family? Or did she only ruin moments, when she made herself seen? Mama and Papa loved Elsa. They always seemed so happy and satisfied with how she had turned out.

Oh, who was she kidding? Yes, yes, she wasn't Elsa and she would never be on her level, yes, but… something else was nagging at her brain, and it latched onto her thoughts as soon as she processed Papa's words.

(When did Anna stop fighting? When did they break her? Was it when she realized that it made her sister love her less? When she realized she was completely and utterly alone?)

"I don't think Elsa and I are ever going to be a family again," she said in a broken tone.

For once, Mama and Papa had nothing to say. They sealed Anna's prediction with their silence.

Elsa's nearly three-year-long friendship with Nøkk and Gale was coming to an end, because they'd be graduating soon, and they'd go to university, and they'd probably go back to the continent and forget about Elsa and… and…

And they invited her for a goodbye gathering. Just the three of them. They played ping-pong at Gale's house, talked about quantum mechanics and comforted Gale when she curled up into a ball in the bathroom, vomiting horribly and shaking from head to toe. Elsa handed her some snow to swallow. She wasn't even thinking as she conjured it, but they didn't ask any questions and probably didn't even see her do her magic. They just sat down outside to feed the reindeer that walked by when no one was watching. The reindeer reminded Elsa of Finnmark and Kárášjohka, and she suddenly missed her grandmother and cousins, and the trees, and a time when she was careless and free. A tiny herd strode across the town as if they weren't scared of humans. They truly didn't look scared at all. Elsa wondered if they were, deep inside, and simply decided to walk anyway.

She still had several more weeks to spend with her friends before graduation rolled around, and she decided to make the most out of the time they had left. They played ping-pong all night long.

"I… I think I'm in love with my sister" Elsa shyly confessed. "And… I'm scared b-because I think it's getting worse"

It was done. She'd said it. Spat it out in one go, similarly to swallowing a big pill.

Dr. Weselton's eyes widened. His jaw dropped. The truth was out into the world and it was her fault. They didn't discuss anything during that session, and she was pulled out of therapy that same day.

"I knew it," had been Dr. Weselton's only words, mumbled to himself.

Mama and Papa were not happy.

"I just thought he needed to know the truth!" Elsa tried to justify herself. "So he'd know how to help me!"

"Elsa, we made a deal!" Mama countered, even though Elsa couldn't remember what their part of the deal was. "You're a smart girl. You should have figured it out by now, but Dr. Weselton is lax with patient confidentiality. Do you understand what that means?"

Elsa's heart dropped. She… she didn't…

"...What?" She gasped. A disturbing thought crossed her mind: did Dr. Weselton share everything they discussed with her parents? Of course, how else would they've known she broke the rules?

"Think, Elsa, think," Papa said. "You read so much. Have you read about the causes of… this? Of incest?"

Elsa flinched. The word felt like an icicle to the heart.

"I…"

"Your mother and I treat you well," Papa continued. "But psychologists are obligated by law to report abuse of children. If your doctor suspects the wrong thing…"

What? Oh, no, no…

(It was known that the Norwegian Child Welfare System was quick to snatch children from their families).

"I never said anything bad about you!" Elsa cried. "I swear I didn't!"

"We'll have a meeting with him tomorrow, Elsa," Mama said. "We'll clear away everyone's doubts. But I think we need to reconsider letting you return to his office"

"But…" Elsa was growing desperate. "I only told him because I thought he could help me if he knew the whole story"

"And I understand that, my love," Mama said, and the term of endearment helped calm Elsa's anxious heart. "Like I said, we'll consider it. We can… try to find someone else" she exchanged a concerned look with her husband, unsure of how to proceed.

Papa inhaled deeply and crossed his arms over his chest.

"I don't know if we can trust her not to tell anyone she comes across," Papa said to his wife. Elsa opened her mouth to speak, to insist they could trust her, but her words would be useless because she'd just proven they couldn't. Papa turned to her. "Your sister..."

"I won't speak to her," Elsa promised. "I swear"

"Listen, Elsa" Papa warned her, his tone increasingly more threatening. "Your sister is still confused. We don't know what is going on in her head or what is causing her to feel this way, and we doubt she does either, but as her older sister, you have a responsibility. Is that clear?"

The temperature dropped. Elsa wanted to point out that they should know everything, since they enjoyed reading Anna's private writings so much. And it was... so unfair that she was responsible for Anna's feelings, but she had to accept Papa's words as true. She was guilty of Anna's affliction. She was the one who started it and she was the one responsible for ending it and restoring the family balance. Anna didn't want therapy and she didn't need it. She needed her big sister to stop being a sick freak and just be a sister, be a good, normal sister that didn't make her think she was in love with her.

(All her fault. Anna was clean. Elsa was wicked. It was all her fault).

She wanted to cry, protest, scream and freeze the entire house, but the light frost around her on the floor was already worthy of punishment, so she nodded and locked herself in her room.

Psychological assistance was now out of her reach, her friends were leaving, Sir Jorgenbjorgen was lost, her parents were furious and the person she loved the most in the world thought she hated her.

When Nøkk and Gale graduated that same August, Elsa's phone buzzed with messages, but she did not reply. They must be leaving, maybe to Romsa or Oslo. Perhaps Bergen. She doubted she'd ever see them again.

Anna was happy about the beginning of summer break. She ran all around the house and filled it with light and her light was so bright, it made Elsa blink and recoil from it, like a nocturnal animal. She locked herself in her room, put on Bach's Suite No. 2 in B Minor and decided to ignore every knock on her door. When she left, it was far past dinnertime. She found a plate with chocolate cookies and a soda can next to her door. The cookies were arranged to look like a smiley face.

Elsa did not feel the impulse to smile. Rather, she covered her mouth and held back the tears that pooled in her eyes.

She didn't deserve her sister. Couldn't Anna see it? She should go find herself a better sibling. Someone who could love her like a sane, normal human being.

She left the cookies untouched. In part, because she wasn't worthy of the attention and care. But she also hoped Anna would note her disregard for her love and leave. Give up on Elsa and go seek her own happiness, even if it hurt her. Even if it killed her. Elsa couldn't and shouldn't be part of her life, but that didn't mean Anna didn't deserve to find love and joy somewhere out there.

They did not find her a new therapist, after all. Mama and Papa never told her what they'd discussed with Dr. Weselton. They'd probably negotiated his silence and asked for discretion. In Elsa's head, the words 'lax with patient confidentiality' played over and over again, like a broken record. She clearly couldn't keep her mouth shut and be cautious, so now she had to face the consequences. Her anxiety skyrocketed and she only began to relax weeks later, when her family visited Finnmark during Christmas and she was far away from Dr. Weselton's office. Only then she was free of the questions of whether he'd told anyone about her secret or not.

She spent a lot of time with Honeymaren down in Finnmark, especially when it granted her an opportunity to be away from Anna. They'd go on long walks through the forest so Elsa could see the trees, or stay at home and sew. Kárášjohka was even smaller than Longyearbyen, somehow, but Elsa learned a lot about clothing from Honeymaren herself, and she had no greater ambitions. After weeks of constant stress, trying to make mittens out of reindeer skin was surprisingly calming. It was the simple dance of a needle and it required her undivided attention. She'd have to put her work down if she wanted to make small talk with Honeymaren, let alone think about her family.

"Something is troubling you" Honeymaren mentioned at one point. "Is it something you'd like to talk about?"

Elsa didn't even reply. She was struggling with a particularly difficult stitch, and she barely even heard Honeymaren's question. Yes, the prospect of messing up her work worried her, but it did not scare her, and that was an improvement.

It was stupid and improper, but Elsa gave Anna the mittens on Christmas. She realized a bit too late that they were a pitiful gift— Anna deserved something much more grandiose— but at the moment it felt like a bold gesture to her. She'd spent a week working on them, and they were the most difficult thing she'd sewn up to that point. They were very simple mittens, decorated with traditional patterns in red and blue, but she'd been proud of them at that point, and the act of giving anything to Anna (especially something that had been so important to Elsa during the course of their vacations) felt like far too much rather than too little. But she hated the idea of not giving her anything at all.

Doubt hit her as Anna unwrapped the gift (signed under their parent's name due to Elsa's request). They were nothing but stupid, poorly-made mittens and Anna would— should— hate them. She deserved princess dresses and tiaras, not dumb gloves.

Yet Anna loved them. She squealed and jumped up and down and hugged her parents.

"Thank you!" She laughed, and Elsa was mortified, because she was looking at her over Papa's shoulder. Had Anna seen her work on them? Never mind. She wouldn't gift anything to her ever again. She'd just… collaborate with money and tell her parents what she wanted to buy. She couldn't bear to see that adoring look in Anna's eyes.

Elsa wasn't a fool. She knew Anna was in love with her.

She also knew this to be her fault.

Because she'd always been the one in control. Back when they were little, she knew she should have put a stop to their childish games, and yet she'd allowed them to continue. She was the eldest sister. The one in charge. The one meant to protect rather than abuse and confuse.

She'd fucked up Anna's brain beyond repair.

She'd ruined everything. Elsa was the reason why they couldn't be sisters. She was the reason Anna was crying during her birthday, the day supposed to be utterly perfect. A whole day to celebrate Anna's existence.

This was supposed to be a happy day.

Yet for once, Elsa turned off the music and listened to Anna quietly weep through their shared wall. She slid down and sat with her back against it without making a sound. Anna's hiccups and heavy breathing shook the whole house. Sometimes, she seemed to choke on her own tears, and these instants of silence shot a spike of panic through Elsa.

She'd held herself together the entire day. Her friends and family showered her in gifts, with one obvious exception. She'd been laughing and smiling like the sun above their heads. But once bedtime came and all distractions were removed, the pain caught up with her and latched its claws around her heart.

Why? Couldn't her big sister treat her decently on her birthday? Did she have to treat her like the scum of the Earth even on her special day?

Yes, she did. She hated it, hated herself, and still, she did. She hated everything but Anna. And because of that she ignored her, interrupted her and shut her up every time she tried to speak to her.

"So… Elsa," she'd said. "It's… my birthday. I'm fourteen now"

Elsa gave her a curious look.

"Happy birthday," she said, before returning her gaze to her book.

Anna stood there, clearly not taking the hint. What Elsa wanted more than anything in the world was to pick her up and spin her around, and hug her so, so tight, and tell her how the day she was born had been one of the happiest days of her life. But she couldn't do that and, worse, she couldn't stop wanting to do that. So she remained completely still as if to hold back her body from acting upon her feelings.

"Um…" Anna knocked her knuckles together. "I was wondering, since it's my birthday and all, you know, if you'd like to… to do something with me"

Elsa swallowed.

"I don't think I can"

"I know you're busy. I mean, you're so smart, and… you're probably studying right now. And beautiful. You're also beautiful. Wait, did I say that out loud?"

"I can't be with you, Anna" Elsa interrupted her. "I don't want you to get the wrong idea"

She squeezed her eyes shut. She didn't hear Anna breathe.

"What?"

Her voice was suddenly weak, and it was too much. Elsa slowly opened her eyes. Anna was blushing furiously and had an expression of horror plastered on her face.

"If you think… I'm not…" she stammered, but the battle was already lost.

"Stop" Elsa begged. "Stop. Please. Just… go away"

She didn't watch her leave. Elsa was met by stillness and silence until Anna stomped away.

Whenever Anna acted this way, panic grasped Elsa's heart and didn't let go. Anna had a beautiful soul, but there was something very, very wrong with her, and as the big sister, Elsa needed to discourage her deviant impulses.

Silly Elsa. All she did was to make Anna cry during her birthday.

She truly must be the worst big sister in the world.

Later that day (the sun never set), during a lapse of judgment, Elsa sneaked out of her room and walked up to Anna's window. The curtains were drawn, and she must be sleeping. She looked around to make sure no one was watching, and after a moment of hesitation, she brushed the pads of her fingers over the glass and let the frost grow in curls and spirals. She drew a heart with her ice. A delicate silhouette.

Panic slammed into her, and her second thoughts caught up with her. Anna would certainly get the wrong idea if she saw such a thing. No matter the context, this was not how sisters acted. This was not proper. This was not normal.

Their parents were right. Elsa was the reason behind Anna's confusion. Eliminate Elsa's paraphilia and eliminate Anna's. Everything in Anna's brain was a result of Elsa pushing her, corrupting her, breaking her. If she acted like this...

The ice covered the entire window and buried the heart beneath it.

The last PolarJazz festival Elsa and her mother attended to together took place in February of 2017. Iduna would be dead by the time the next festival rolled around. Elsa had turned seventeen last December and Anna was still fourteen. She and Papa decided to stay home and watch horror movies while the women of the family put on their elegant clothes and drove to the Culture House (on a snowmobile, because they'd sold the car years before). Mama asked Elsa to clear away the snow before them but Elsa didn't think she had such control, so they traveled on unsteady ground.

Once in the concert hall, they sat quietly among the rows of seats. Mama wore a traditional tartan fabric scarf around her neck, fastened with a silver brooch over her heart. Its color was the color of blood.

"Do you know who's playing today?" She asked quietly.

"I do not," Elsa replied. "I assume neither of us looked at the program"

"I wanted a surprise," Mama grinned. Elsa looked forward, at the stage, but she felt her mother observing her with a curious expression. "Oh, my darling" she whispered. "You've grown so much"

Elsa blushed and looked down. Mama grabbed her hand.

"I know things haven't been easy for you in... a long time," she said. If Elsa thought too much about it, she'd come to the conclusion her life had never been easy at all. "And I'm proud of you. I'm so, so proud of you, Elsa. You've been so much braver than any girl your age should have to be. I'm so proud, my baby"

Elsa slowly turned to her mother. It was dark but she could still see her eyes, so full of love and undeserved trust. Her throat constricted, and a voice in her head called her a liar as she spoke:

"I'm not in love with Anna anymore"

Claiming not to be something she was wasn't nearly as scary as she thought it would be. Her heart didn't stop and her stomach didn't sink. She said a sentence as if it was true and she needed nothing more than her vocal cords to do so. She didn't need her heart anymore.

It was liberating.

Mama's lips twitched. She offered her daughter a hesitant smile.

"You were in love?" She asked.

Elsa took a deep breath and shook her head.

"I don't think so," she lied. "I think I spent a long time confused. But I'm not anymore"

Lying wasn't that hard when you didn't know (think, believe) you were lying. She loved her sister, but she couldn't tell if her disgust towards her and her perversion came from a mirror shard inside herself, or from Anna, and she told herself it came from Anna. She did not know if she'd liked Nøkk or if she'd liked his long, soft, silky hair. She wasn't searching for the splinters of her shattered brain after what Dr. Weselton did to her.

(hold the door closed and keep the pounding monster in)

Elsa squeezed her mother's hand and smiled.

"I'm okay," she said, and for once, the words sounded like they were sincere. "I feel okay"

(i've been healed)

Mama blinked rapidly. She smiled showing her white teeth.

"Come here," she said, lifting the armrest between their seats and pulling her eldest daughter in for a hug. Elsa nestled in her mother's arms, closed her eyes and sighed contentedly. "I love you, my little snow"

Elsa smiled, too. She didn't even notice the guilt or the fear clawing at her stomach.

(You need to be guilty of something to fear guilt).

Elsa was not in love with Anna.

And so she allowed her mother to hold her, and she allowed herself to feel safe in her arms.

"I love you, too," she whispered into her shoulder.

Elsa graduated from upper secondary school at age seventeen, in august of 2017. She'd been the youngest one of her class at the time, the smartest one, and the most lonely one. She didn't remember the names of her two classmates, and the names of her teachers faded from memory quite fast as well. Anna, who had turned fifteen only one month earlier, cheered for her and threw her a literal party, with a graduation cake (as Anna called it) and even a piñata. Elsa didn't want to ask where she'd gotten it from. Okay, technically it had been their parents, but Anna came up with all the ideas. Gestures that would once have ignited the sun inside of her were now quietly appreciated. Her heart was dormant, like solid magma beneath a layer of rock. Still and quiet. She smiled at her sister and thanked her, and for once, the family had a nice moment. They watched a film together without any noticeable distractions, and then they had kveldsmat. It was comfortable.

She and her parents decided it would be best for her to take a gap year. Or two. She was incredibly young and she had a lot of time, even if she already knew what career she wanted to pursue. The University Center in Svalbard didn't offer architecture degrees. Now that she'd finished school, she'd have to travel south to continue her studies, and she didn't feel quite ready to climb down from their little refuge in the arctic just yet.

That didn't mean she'd let her brain grow out of practice, but when Elsa sat down later that week to read one of her old school books— perhaps out of nostalgia—, the words floated around the page like a mass of sounds. At first, she struggled to process a single letter, but once she did and she managed to produce sound, she found that she couldn't grasp the concepts. They were simple mathematical equations— simple for her, at least. She'd passed that class ages ago.

But now… all that knowledge had been erased from her memory. She couldn't remember what half these concepts meant, much less how to use them or solve them.

Seventeen years of education vanished in one week.

They celebrated both Elsa's eighteenth birthday and Christmas in Finnmark with Yelena and their cousins. On the drive from Romsa to Kárášjohka, Elsa saw the trees pass by but she no longer felt the desire to climb them. They laughed and celebrated like a family, all seven of them together. This was the last time the family was seen complete. Agnarr and Iduna would be dead by the end of the next month, and their daughters would never have a Christmas Eve dinner or celebrate a birthday with them again. On the winter solstice, Papa let Elsa have some wine, because it was now legal for her to drink. Anna insisted on taking as many photos as possible. After dinner on Christmas Eve, they exchanged gifts and Elsa felt confident enough to give Anna a generous amount of money in an envelope. She didn't know what Anna liked, anyway, so she'd let her choose her own gift. It felt like the kind of present parents and older teenage girls would give a kid. The other presents exchanged weren't nearly as... modest. Yelena gave Iduna a bucket of fresh reindeer blood, for example, so she wouldn't have to cook with pig blood bought from a store. They ate pinnekjøtt and drank gløgg with no alcohol until their bellies were full.

At night, Elsa was the last one to go to sleep (one bathroom and not nearly enough rooms for everyone made the organization of family life difficult). As she walked back to the room she shared with her parents and sister, she heard Yelena talking in the kitchen. She was speaking alone, and Elsa assumed she must be on the phone. She was about to leave and grant her some privacy until she actually heard the unnerving exchange.

"I know exactly what you want from me and my family," Yelena snarled. "I can't legally kick you out of town, but I can wreck your car, and mark my words, Arendelle: I will not tolerate you threatening my grandchildren"

Elsa held her breath. She internally cursed when she noticed the ice spreading around her feet, but she didn't dare try to stomp on it or kick it.

The phone slammed back into place. Yelena coughed angrily in the kitchen. Before Elsa could sneak back into her room, the old woman stomped out and met her in the hallway.

"You were listening," Yelena accused.

"I'm sorry," Elsa said. "I didn't mean to"

"No, no. It's a good thing" Yelena said. "Now your parents have no excuse to guard your feelings or whichever their argument is this time. You can confront them about it in the morning. Your grandfather is the last thing I want to think about right now"

Elsa made it snow in the bedroom that night, waking everyone up and having to make up with a nightmare about spiders to explain the situation. But she did ask her parents about it over breakfast with Yelena, while Anna and the twins were still sleeping. Papa pinched the bridge of his nose and Mama sighed hopelessly, but under Yelena's judgmental glare, they proceeded to explain Elsa the truth:

"Your grandfather has been…" Mama turned to Papa. "Oh, how do I explain it? He's been…"

"Stalking my family, perhaps?" Yelena deadpanned. Mama closed her eyes.

"Yes. Yes, he's been… doing that" she admitted. "He's contacted Yelena with each of our visits. She…"

"I blackmailed him to stay away from us," Yelena shamelessly confessed. "That man has committed so many legal infractions, he's pretty much begging for it"

Elsa blinked.

"But blackmail isn't legal, is it?" She asked.

"That's beside the point," Yelena said. "You don't need to know the details, but I'm doing what I must to keep my family safe. That includes you and your sister"

"We were talking about it yesterday, actually" Papa finally intervened. "It might be wise to avoid leaving Svalbard for a few months, until things settle down"

Elsa knew 'until things settle down' meant 'until I solve everything myself', and she had a pretty good idea of what 'solving things' constituted to but she didn't want to think about a legal battle between her father and grandfather.

There was something else bugging her. She frowned.

"But… I thought you'd go on a research trip next month. How…?"

"You're an adult now, Elsa," Papa pointed out.

Oh.

"Oh" Elsa dumbly said. She definitely did not feel like an adult.

"Your father and I have been discussing this for some time already," Mama continued. She reached over the table to hold her daughter's hand. "We believe you and your sister will survive without us at home for a month or two"

Elsa's muscles went still.

"Are you sure?" She asked. "I'm…"

"Elsa" Papa cut her off. "We trust you completely. We'll discuss it with Anna and carry out all legal procedures at home"

"Elsa, my love" Mama continued. "You've been doing so well these past years. You've become a strong, intelligent young woman, and there is no person in Svalbard we trust more than you. Your grandfather will try to contact you if he finds out, yes, that is true, but as long as you're careful, Elsa, my baby, you and your sister will be safe"

Elsa swallowed nervously. If she chickened out, it proved all of her pain and effort had been for nothing, and every time she claimed to have made any progress would be a lie. She had nothing to fear about being alone with Anna for a few months. She was a good girl. She was not a danger.

They'd discuss the legal arrangements at home, it seemed.

The winter night reached her arms around the day like an embrace, a circular hug. She blocked every light from reaching the Earth. One evening, Anna returned home after a fight with Hans. She was jumpy and squirmed away from Papa's hugs, and while she said she was alright 32 times (Elsa was counting), no one really bought it. She locked herself in the room and Papa asked Elsa to take out the trash, and hopefully clear away some of the snow while she was at it. The whole affair took around five minutes, and by the time she was done, their front yard was even worse than before. The snow reached her mid-calf now. She sighed and walked back towards the house. Someone (probably Elsa) would have to shovel it the next day.

She stopped by Anna's window. The lights were out but she could still distinguish her silhouette. She was trembling. Her eyes were wide and she covered her mouth with a hand.

Delicate frost covered the glass. It would be very easy to reach out a hand and doodle something on it.

Elsa shook her head and walked back inside the house.

Elsa saw Anna staring at her through the bathroom mirror as she applied some makeup. She was used to it, at this point, and she didn't want to even look at her sister. It was enough to think about their last attempt at a movie night. Elsa, again, did not return the look and she did not acknowledge her sister's attention. She simply walked past her in the hallway and told her to hurry up.

Mama and Papa left one day in early January. Over Svalbard, the sky was black as a blotch of ink, or dried blood, and the snow fell hesitantly and without wind. Their parents had a quick breakfast before hurrying their youngest daughter and threatening to leave without her if she wasn't quicker. Elsa had been ready for at least ten minutes.

They drove to the University Center in one snowmobile each, with one daughter each. From there, they would be transported alongside their colleagues to the port. Elsa would much rather say goodbye in the pier, to see them get on board safely and wave at them from the coast. Watching them leave in a van wouldn't calm her nerves at all. This was the first time she and her sister were in Svalbard to say goodbye, after all. Usually, they would already be safe and sound in Finnmark by this point, and their parents would leave alone, but Elsa knew her place even if she didn't like it, and she'd help them carry their bags inside and she'd try to smother that quivering spark of worry in her chest.

She could take care of Anna for a month or two. But she was only eighteen years old and deep down, she dreaded being alone.

Their parents would travel with at least fifteen other students, researchers and professors, and they would all die deep down in the belly of the sea. Some of them didn't have their families with them to say goodbye. They assumed they'd be back in a matter of months.

This was the last farewell.

The two parents embraced their two daughters as tight as they could, as if they knew what would happen. They gave one daughter one long, trustful look and then they looked at their other daughter in a different way, but Elsa didn't believe it was any less loving.

Their parents loved them.

Their parents loved them, right?

Two big vans picked them up and snatched their parents from them, alongside the other researchers. They took fifteen people from Svalbard that day.

"We love you!"

"And be nice to your sister!"

Mama and Papa laughed as they said their goodbyes.

"We love you, too!" Anna shouted back.

"We'll be back before you know it!"

Anna's smile was wide but her hands were clenched into fists. She knocked her knuckles together and looked back and forth between her parents with something that didn't quite look like excitement in her eyes. She was scared, Elsa realized. Her little princess was scared.

Elsa didn't speak until the main gates were closed— locking out the snowstorm that raged outside— and their parents were gone.

"We'll miss you," she murmured. The night grew even darker as winter swallowed it. "We love you, too"

There is a point in which whether you're being observed or not was irrelevant. You would behave regardless. You behave when they're not watching. You behave even when the threat of punishment doesn't really exist anymore. Your range of action is still limited even after they are gone. The prison is in your head now and you don't even realize. Power is resistance to resistance. You don't need power when there is no resistance.

For the first time in their lives, the shackles were off and the two sisters were free and alone.

You guys have no idea how happy I am to be finally done with this chapter. It was a monster to write. Too much guys too much. But anyways! We'll be moving onto Chapter 10 next, and I've been waiting to write that chapter for a long time! I think you've been waiting for it for a while ;) Also a few notes: in norwegian secondary school, 6 is the highest note. I couldn't find a non-awkward way to put that in the text :/ Also, I have no beef with exact sciences students! I just happen to be a social sciences student, and I hate atoms and mitochondrias. I apologize if I offended any exact sciences student in this chapter.

Ok down with the reviews!

Guest 1 said: I just don't like parents who force the elder siblings to raise the younger ones. Any parents who force the elder siblings to raise the younger ones, don't deserve to keep full custodies of them which is true or false? I can't stand parents who forcefully named their elder/eldest children legal guardians. I just don't like parents who forcefully named their elder/eldest children legal guardians.

Response: Oh wow, it's almost as if you predicted what would happen in this chapter! Anyways, yeah, I don't like parents that do that either. Hopefully this chapter has cleared away some of your doubts!

Guest 2 said: Fuck canon versions of Disney's Frozen 1. Fuck canon versions of Disney's Frozen 2.

Response: yeah okay

AU Over Canon said (among other things that are too confusing for me to reply to): I wish they kept Elsa as another canon natural-born child prodigy. I wish they kept Anna as another canon voiceless deaf-mute.

Response: well, we could say Elsa is a gifted kid in this AU, I guess?

RockLovert said: Definitivamente agregaste uno más a mí lista, pero me fascina cómo estás usando a los antagonistas en esta historia, y por más que haya odiado a Weselton en este capítulo todavía tengo muy presente el odio por Hans y Runard, hiciste a los tres personajes detestables jajajaja

Me intriga mucho saber cómo habrá sido esta terapia de la que habla Elsa, pero ya siento que me desespero con la sola idea de que ella esté considerando volver por el bien de Anna, me desespera sinceramente.
Nada más que decir por ahora, espero con ansias el próximo capítulo!

Response: JAJAJAJAJA VOY A ALIMENTAR A TU ODIO jAJAJS ok pero posta, acá tenés uwu tu dosis de angst mensual, con terapia y todo. No sabés como aprecio tus comentarios 3 3 estamos a un punto en el cual vos sos le unique(? del que estoy segura que no sos un bot ni nada. te juro que algunos de los comentarios que recibo acá me dan un poquito de miedo O.O jAJs pero siiii acá, antagonistas para él, antagonistas para vos, antagonistas para todos!

Anonymous said: Sadly, there are a lot of Dr. Weselton's running around in this planet.

Response: sadly :( hey no joke, if anyone's therapist acts like this, they could go to jail, so keep an eye out for therapy malpractice, everyone because what Dr. Weselton is doing in this fic is illegal.