Disclaimer: I still don't own Frozen - working on it
Elsa had always been a fragile child.
Elsa was born a month earlier before she was due, small, pink and wailing as the snow ravaged the streets. She was whisked away by doctors before her parents could ever hold her, their hands stiff as they held onto each other. They all wondered why she was so cold. She lay in her sheltered bassinet, all untouched porcelain and delicate blonde wisps that curled into the brightest blue eyes. Her parents stood beyond the glass, rigid but together, bonded together by their one precious thing.
Their little Elsa.
As Elsa grew, she witnessed the growing resentment between her parents. At first, she was hidden away. It was her nanny's comforting hands that covered her ears, always warm, always soft. Her nanny was the one that drew her close, that shielded her from seeing and hearing the viciousness that boiled inside her mother - the emptiness that grew inside her father. But it was inevitable. The older she grew, the harder it was to quench her thirst for knowing. She sat, quiet. Always quiet. Elsa sat and watched as her parents argued over breakfast, across a too-big table in a too-big home for just three people to be living in.
But it was never just them, was it? There were always the ghosts of the maids flitting in and out of rooms. They were always silent, ever obedient. There were the solid guards, stiff as they rotated from one place to another, eyes trained on everything but Elsa. There was Kai, and there was Gerda, her driver and her nanny - a warm constant. Her only warm constant. She didn't know if it only made her feel lonelier, finding comfort in their presence, and never anything else.
She never understood why her papa would not return for days and weeks. She never could find out whose perfume lingered on the collar of his jacket when he tucked her in at times, worn and looking old for his age. She could never find out why her mother always reeked of something foul whenever she tried to tuck her in, either. She never understood why she never grew to find comfort in her mother's fleeting forms of affection. In her brief kisses. In her short hugs. She felt like a rope, tugged in one direction then another. Continuously worn and caught in a war - a war she wasn't sure would ever be resolved. A war she wasn't sure anyone would ever win.
But they loved her. They told her so. Even as her mother's screams echoed through her home. Even as her father's yells trembled down her spine. Even as she hid away in her wardrobe, hands over her ears. Even as Elsa had enough, climbing out and pressing her face close to the gaps in the banisters. Elsa watched them with bright blue eyes, watched them with her growing indifference as her fingers grasped at the wood. She drank the sight in earnestly as they spoke in hushed, harsh tones, gesturing wildly towards the direction of her room.
Afraid, she heard. They were afraid.
Her heart leapt into her throat, then, the tears springing into her eyes. Afraid? The word echoed in her mind as she sat by the stairs, unnoticed and unheard. Why was she crying? Her heart clenched as her fingers tightened around the banister.
Elsa, as her frost crept around the steps of the staircase, wondered why they were afraid.
Elsa, as her ice splintered between the gaps of her fingers, wondered if they were afraid of her.