White Hunter - Here is your prompt! (Part one of it anyway, I'm so sorry it has come so late - to all my readers I'm sorry for the lack of updates in general. I've got writers block really bad.)
(For the sake of this fic, I'm hopping off the Bring Elsa Home bandwaggon temporarily, in this fic Anna takes no issue with Elsa leaving)
Their vacant stares carried little to no faith. No encouragement, nor reward. In this occupied space, she was not standing with others, she was alone. For the first time, Anna was beginning to question her ability to fulfil this role. The admin has been gruelling, the organisation had been painstaking, but she had made it through. She struggled, but she survived.
This was different, though. As princess, Anna's role was very much hands on, she met with the people of Arendelle frequently. Each and every time she was welcomed with a dozen smiling faces, they showed just as much love as she did to them. Now? It felt so one-sided. The weight of the crown on her head only exasperated the thoughts that were lingering in her mind.
When did her home become her workplace? Was it the absence of Elsa?
The strict regime, the routine and every second allocated to some kind of task. Instead of sliding down spiral staircases she was a hamster on the wheel, exerting all the energy she had for hours on end, making no progress whatsoever. It was wearing her thin, she wanted nothing more than to do good by the people that trusted her, but she was new to this. And there wasn't any practise runs.
She had to admit it to herself, there was a small envy directed to Elsa. How well she adapted to her environment, how at the drop of the hat she left all that she knew and journeyed to a whole new lifestyle, with new people. Elsa was regal by nature, not just by blood. She was - and continued to be - a steadfast figure of authority. Despite all her challenges, she led Arendelle. She survived people not liking her, the cautious glances that she couldn't always escape from. But Anna, the empty eyes looking back at her waiting for her to do something (especially when she wasn't sure what) rocked her. A people pleaser, she thrived on making people feel good. Bringing joy to others lives, hearing their stories. This office job restricted her from doing that. A lot of the times, she didn't know who she was talking to, not personally. She knew of them, their role, and her relationship with them.
The caretaker of all living things, the separation from the community was difficult. There was always something that needed to be done, as well as going over things she had yet to learn. It was lonely. She was no longer the girl she once knew. If Elsa were here, she would say that they have both matured. That there is nobody she trusted more with Arendelle than her little sister. It felt right, but oh so wrong.
In her own insecurity it was difficult to not take the attentive stares as nothing more than curiosity. Admittedly, the last time a queen had been coronated, there was an eternal winter, in summer. Being a seemingly open book was not enough, people read ahead of the pages, flicking through searching for any more secrets to unveil. Somehow, for some, her new role meant that she had "changed". The view from higher up began to magnify the few that weren't on the same page as her, her close-knit community was just a fraction of the Arendelle she knew. She thought she had explored it all, but being Queen meant - apparently - that people could say, and think anything to her. The crown unfortunately never granted her distance between her heart and her head, whilst Elsa could switch off and take the hits, Anna couldn't. Her big heart just made for easier target practise.
Stuck behind a desk, sitting with anxiety. She span many theories as to what Arendelle now thought of her, as well as churning an in depth examination of her own abilities. Elsa had always joked how Anna never kept anything tidy, how forgetful she could be. But now it was a problem, a liability from performing the best she could.
You are no match for Elsa. He had said. She would never let herself believe it. She had, as she said herself, climbed the north mountain, survived a frozen heart and saved her sister from him. She had made it out of that cave, she had knocked down a dam singlehandedly whilst men wielding weapons leapt away in terror, she did not move. But Arendelle did not need a hero.
"Anna?" Kristoff arrived in the doorway as warmly as the candle in his hand. The glow they gave off was the only light in the room. "Can't you see?". Anna blinked, there was a dozen papers she still had yet to sign. It was light out when she was began, and now seemingly, the day had been and gone. The sound of heavy rain hitting the window pane was the second thing that came to her, the third was her thirst. What she would to stand out in the rain for just a few minutes.
"Shit" Cursing to herself, Anna put her head in her hands. Everyone was going to be on her now for being behind. She was ruining the carefully curated schedule that had been laid out for her, all she had to do was show up and she couldn't even do that.
"Are you okay?"
"I needed to sign all these papers, they were meant to be done -" She haphazardly reached for her clock, a small pile of papers - the origin of which, completely unknown to Anna, they had materialised out of no where - fell to the floor. " - ages ago. I was meant to be done ages ago." Defeatedly, she flopped to the floor and started gathering the papers.
"That's not what I was asking." Kristoff reiterated, joining her.
"Do you want me to say that I don't want to be doing this? That I don't think I can?" She said sharply, dumping the papers on the desk into a lopsided pile.
"If that's how you're feeling, yes."
"Great, there's your answer then."
Even in Elsa's absence, the room still felt icy as ever. It was crawling over their skin, biting at their nerves. "Anna, maybe you need a break?"
"I'm already behind, I can't afford that."
Silence again, Kristoff was slowly being backed into a corner. "I could get Elsa." He said quietly. "She could take over for a bit - just until you're caught up."
"That's not an option, she's happy. Leave her be." The mention of her sister had softened her quickly, her venom diluted in sadness. Solemnly, Anna gathered up the few papers she managed to sign and put them to the side. "You know, time used to go pretty quickly. It had to, I was always in search of something to take my mind of the fact that something was wrong in our family - something was wrong with Elsa. I had hobbies lined up to preoccupy myself from asking why. It saved me going in circles." She let out a small laugh, her face slowly dimming as she looked back at Kristoff's sympathetic smile. "Nowadays, I think it's the evening but it's only the afternoon. It's like time is going backwards, telling me that maybe I'm not where I'm meant to be." The room fell quiet, the rain was slowly coming to a standstill. She wouldn't get to stand in the rain. "Except for today, it's much later than I thought, Gerda and Kai will be wondering where I am."
A warped sense of time wasn't new to Anna, she was nearly always late to everything, Elsa had joked that she would start telling Anna an event was due to start an hour earlier, to save the last minute rush and stress it caused her big sister. It wasn't meant to ever be this big of an issue.
"Elsa's not here to distract me like I used to distract her."
The silence was only ever broken by the fluttering of papers against wind. She had tunnel vision on everything she had done, an analysis of it, what she was doing and what was yet to come. She had made it fun for Elsa.
The grief was substantial and oh so painful. Elsa was happy, and she was happy that she was happy. If this was how things were meant to work out, why did it feel so difficult? Why was she still riding the waves whilst Elsa was settled. She was too far away to understand the aftershock she had left behind.
"Why don't you think you can do it?" Kristoff asked quietly, he watched as the glaze on Anna's eyes faded, she had been thinking about Elsa. She always was nowadays.
"I don't have the best track record-" Anna started, and there was Kristoff, armed with compliments ready to pull the trigger so the coming words had no time to linger. "Please." she gazed at him, his mouth agape and eyes sad. "I just need you to listen."