A/N - Somewhat inspired by the BBC series Thirteen starring Jodie Comer that originally aired in 2016, it's stayed in my head all these years later, and each rewatch still breaks my heart. Can view on IPlayer. This is set after F1
Time is your enemy, it disappears very quickly and never gives you a second chance - Steve Douglas
After thirteen years, a living room becomes a grave, and a bedroom becomes a place of rest. It is where she will lay forever. The unmarked tombstone of a life she never got to live. Where one might mark milestones and memories by hanging photos on the wall, Elsa would mark her milestones with a carved tally mark in the wall. One for each year. It didn't need to be fixed, nobody else except her, and them, ever entered. Pride was not important. Appearances, neither.
"It's for the best, the world out there is not made for people like you" He will say.
"If there was any other way" She will add, but will not try.
And all she can do is nod, and sit in the corner of the room frozen in state. Unable to move. How quickly they turned, believing the word of a stranger above the person they raised to be honest. "I can learn, I will be safe." The little girl tells them. Her pleas amount to nothing. With each passing year the room grows smaller, the silence gets thicker.
The loneliness becomes painful, some days the ache in her chest is so excruciating, the grief becomes unavoidable. It could have been anyone else. It could have been anyone else.
It was one of those nights.
"I don't believe anyone is inherently good or evil." Anna said quietly, the scent of green tea lingered under her nostrils. Dawn was just breaking, the nightly frost now thawing, but it had seemed that between the two sisters, Elsa and Anna had barely scratched the surface of that nights deep thoughts. "It's got to be like a spectrum, right? I think most people are in some kind of middle ground. It can't be that someone is brought into this world to bring devastation, that isn't decided on day one."
Elsa sat across from her, thumbing over the carvings her nails had created in the hours spent dwelling. "But you've asked yourself the question, right?"
"If our parents were good or bad?" Elsa nodded. "They were good people who were dealt a bad deal. Why, what do you think?"
Elsa sighed heavily, she was certain the next thing she would say would send them into a cycle, she would have to make peace with decaying away in this chair, because truly they would never get a definitive answer. But the question still haunted her, it still lingered.
"I understand why I was kept there. I see it." She stammered, clambering into a territory only her heart held space for. She hadn't said it aloud, not until now. "Their naivety was damaging. Even if they truly believed that it was what they had to do, I can't accept that that was their best." Elsa glanced back to her younger sister, trying to gage her feelings towards this, but Anna was a blank page. Those blue eyes staring back at her waiting for a continuation. "They must have realised it couldn't be temporary, but their actions never showed that. After thirteen years that room was so much smaller than when I initially had to stay. They never expanded, they mostly avoided questions. I was just waiting. Waiting for thirteen years until I ended up believing it was best that I never leave."
She wasn't sure exactly what day it occurred. The day she became part of the furniture, slowly decomposing along with everything else in the room. A quiet acceptance that set forth the upcoming years. They no longer had to try to keep her there, she was managing that herself. There was no other way, she would not survive in the world out there, it was not made for people like her. She would forever be a face that sat at the back of peoples minds, over time they would forget her features, a mere blur with blonde hair. Her name, lingering on the tongues of town people who now knew best than to ask, because they too, had accepted this. This was for the best, and they were her protectors, they had built her life for her, and she would forever be in debt to that. Unable to repay their kindness for keeping her safe.
As she was reminded so often, they loved her.
They were sorry.
And in that she was reminded of their humanity. She pitied them as she imagined all the people asking where the eldest princess had vanished to, why the gates had closed. The constant yearning to fill that empty seat at the dining table. The longing to open the door that resided in the hallway that at times was just too painful to walk through.
Anna stayed quiet watching the tea swirl in her cup. It was difficult, for the most part she wholeheartedly believed she had a good upbringing. Equally, she had to hold space for the fact she never knew what happened on the other side of that door. Analysing all that happened back then, identifying their mistakes and saying what they should have done didn't change the fact that they were now sitting in the kitchen together nursing their tired souls and confusion.
"I have to believe that things were going to change when they came back. The gates had been shut for so long, we barely ventured beyond the grounds. They were going somewhere, and it was important. You are important." Anna sat forward in her chair, sincerity etched across her face.
"But we don't know that for certain, they didn't tell us."
"I choose to believe it, if not to soothe my head then at least to save my sanity. There are so many questions I wish I could ask them - why didn't they explain everything to me when I grew older? How long did they think they could manage it all alone? If the trip was to find some resolution, why so many years later? When did they decide enough was enough? - But ruminating on these questions don't ever lead to any answers, it just hurts." The younger sister sighed, thinking back to that little girl in pigtails that propped herself in front of Elsa's door often, she too, waiting. "I've spent all of thirteen years asking questions, taking things day by day, it saves me of that unhappiness."
"It was like they had gone on holiday. For a while it felt like we were all locked in, and then they left. I didn't want them to - I asked if they had to." That same unsettling pit in her stomach was returning. Those last words, You'll be fine, Elsa. They said with smiles, and she couldn't understand how. When the night rolled in, she played out a dozen scenarios where her parents crossed seas to find a place of their own away from her, they would return in two weeks with Anna, and leave without her. They would save themselves from this life, and be free of the curse by association.
Some days it came flooding back, the agonising unfairness of it all. She would imagine running, to feel something under her feet other than carpet and wood. Her heart swelled as she imagined having time to herself. To find the good in being alone, to enjoy it. She would lay on the grass, staring up at the sun shining through the trees, and she would be alone, without them monitoring or watching her every move. She would finally learn what freedom was. And in her freedom she would find out for herself if what they said was true.
"Things had already changed, even if they did make it back." She said sadly. All those years she spent waiting for the day she could return to regular life, it would be the same feeling as coming home. She would fit right back in, Arendelle would have waited for her. It was in fact, quite the opposite. In an instant, her worldview became crooked, everything looked out of place. Where she had convinced herself that she was still as much a part of the kingdom as those outside the gates, the details that were unveiled in her freedom reminded her cruelly just how far removed she had been. It didn't matter how much time she spent staring out of that window, willing herself to remember all the upcoming events, the names of people. Traditions changed, people died, new families arrived. It was thirteen years. Nothing was the same, her childhood friends had grown up, some looking unrecognisable. Even in sharing ages, they were at different stages of life. They were the embodiments of missed experiences.
The ideas she spent thirteen years were shattered, nothing was quite right. She felt alien in her own kingdom. It was then she realised that her attempt to keep up with the kingdom was in fact no better than the fiction Anna read outside her door. It was all stories. She hadn't outsmarted anyone, it wasn't a loophole, or hack. It felt foolish.