"Elsa?" Kristoff asked, his face shrouded with worry at the sight of her.

She was soaked wet standing alone in the courtyard of the castle. He'd just been heading back to his wife when his heart had suddenly decided to stop doing its job. He had thought she was a specter manifested from thin air.

She looked terrible, her clothes and hair disheveled; there was a grim expression on her face.

"Where's Anna?" Her voice rasped.

Something had happened.

~.~.~.~

"I… I don't understand. How is it possible?" The light of the fireplace illuminated Anna's distraught features. Her hands were fisted tightly over her skirt as she let the news sink in.

"I don't know," Elsa mumbled, dejected. She was seated abnormally close to the fire with her back to the window, doing everything she could to avoid looking at the dark and stormy night. "It seems that with every day that passes another new magical thing comes to light that we had not the smallest idea about."

"I thought that was your favorite part?" Anna chuckled halfheartedly.

"It is… was. But…" Elsa shuddered when a gust of wind rattled the windows. "It's getting old real fast."

They sat in silence for a while, the raindrops pattering outside the walls a constant lull. Eventually, Anna stood from her chair and walked towards her sister, making Elsa scoot to the side so they could sit together.

Elsa sighed and let herself rest against Anna's strong presence, tucking her head against the crock of her sister's neck.

"What are we going to do?" The redhead whispered. She brushed away a wayward tear from her own cheek and with her other hand held to Elsa's hand tightly.

The eldest couldn't answer- she didn't know. She was so uncertain about so many things.

"Are you staying the night?" Anna asked, mustering what little enthusiasm she could.

Elsa looked at the fire, the iridescent light bright and overbearing in its heat with how close she was. She thought of her parents' transparent blue skin and wondered if this is what it felt like to be cold, if the heart-clenching feeling in her chest and the yearning for warmth was an approximation of why people shied away from low temperatures.

Elsa closed her eyes and hid her face in her sister's neck.

"Yeah, I'm staying."

Anna let go of her hand and brought up her arms to hold her.

~.~.~.~

When the rain stopped, Elsa woke up from her restless slumber. It seemed eerily quiet now without the constant pitter-patter on the glass of her windows. She stayed awake, looking at the tall ceiling and thinking of what awaited in the Dark Sea.

She sat up and covered her face with her hands, muffling the sob that crept from inside her. She didn't want to think about it, but it was unavoidable when what few dreams she'd had were filled with terrible tall waves and ships that sailed without a course to follow.

At one point one of her more recurring dreams had come to her and everything had been fine... for a while.

In her dream, her noble parents would walk down the stairs of the palace, and she'd run to them and hold them tightly, just as she knew Anna had done. In her dream, the King and Queen held her in their safe embrace and she didn't shy away from it not did they shudder at the coldness of her touch. Not this time though; this time, when she ran to them and collided against their chests her mother and father turned into blue wispy mists and dissolved under her touch, and she'd been alone again. Alone in a big empty castle with walls void of windows or doors, her chest aching and filled with regrets.

Elsa was still tired and she wanted to go to sleep so badly to escape her thoughts, but her dreams would bring her no peace either- but Anna always did. She cleared her face and sniffed. With an angry frown, she hopped out of bed and walked out of her room. Just as she was about to open Anna's bedroom door, Elsa stopped.

Her parents… she could hardly think of resting when they… when they had never found peace themselves.

She pressed her forehead against the wood for a moment, then stepped away, and walked down the long halls of her home. Before she knew it, she'd reached her fathers' old study. As she pushed the door open, it creaked loudly in the silence of the night. She winced and entered quickly, closing the heavy wooden door behind her. She rested her back against it and took a moment to look around.

Anna and her hardly came into this room. It wasn't like their mother's scarf, which after the shipwreck that had taken their parents' lives had brought them comfort when they wore it. The study felt wrong and lonely without the tall frame of their father walking about, pacing on and on; thinking about all the things he had to do, problems he had to solve; reading like his days were counted and he wouldn't have enough time to read all that he wanted to.

In the end, she supposed he hadn't.

Elsa sighed and headed to one of the many bookshelves. Her father had always insisted that she could take as many books from his study as she liked, but she'd never had the heart when she'd been younger. She'd known how much the King treasured his library and she'd been afraid that she'd accidentally get the pages wet with her volatile ice.

Her father had loved collecting everything and anything that told of old myths and legends. He used to say their lineage was descended from people who'd had magic flowing through their veins, and it was no surprise that Elsa had gotten a bit of magic of her own. She smiled. She tried to imagine the face of her father had he discovered there was magic on the other side of the equation as well. It probably would have made him giddy.

She looked up at the bookshelf, at all of the books depicting beasts and heroes and legends from the land and far beyond. Somewhere here… there had to be answers.

"Okay," Elsa said to herself, lighting up a few lanterns and the fireplace for good measure. She was going to be here a long time.

She pulled out all the books on ghosts, whatever vaguely mentioned life after death, lingering echoes, everything that even resembled spirits, and she sat down and poured herself into the task.

There were the ghosts of children- äppäräs- sometimes they had not been buried properly, or had been murdered by their mothers for being illegitimate. There were Ihtiriekko, Ostyak vylep, and patshak. There were the draugr- revenants and undead men that haunted their burial sites. There were Raukka and meriraukka.

And there were so many stories told of those whose lives had been taken by the seas and oceans; tales of bodies that had never been recovered and lost, anchoring their spirits forevermore to endless currents of water.

There were a thousand knots of worry in the pit of her stomach that would not settle. She reread the last passage of the book she held through tired eyes and wavering concentration.

And the woman wailed at him. "I can't leave this place!" she'd been trapped for so long to the forest of her murder. "Release me, husband! Let me have peace!"

"How can I ever bear to let you go, my love? When I just found you again to live?" He asked her, heartbroken.

"I do not live, dearest. I have not lived for many a year." Her voice had turned frigidly cold.

The husband fell to his knees and cried out in despair at the skirts of his late lover. "I release you, then! Your child is well and has grown into a brave maiden! Go away, for your husband is well and happy! You've done right by us, so let me do right by you. I release you, beloved- have peace now."

Elsa's eyes lingered on the next page and the image on it. The man on his knees, crying in despair, the wife looking down on him in haunting shades of black and grey and white. She traced the tips of her fingers along the side of the weeping man while she thought.

There were so many different forms and ways for the dead to linger it was dizzying. Figuring out which were true and which were myths was an odyssey in and of itself. But there was a common thread amongst most stories.

Those who could not cross the veil that divided life and death were tied to the land by unfinished business. Quests that never came to a close, unsaid words and regrets that weighed like heavy burdens. The land tied them because they couldn't let go of it, a last ditch effort to finish what was started, to right a wrong untended.

The night ticked away as Elsa drowned herself in the pages, texts, and tomes on the floor of her father's study, but her mind frequently returned to the two wispy figures in the middle of the Dark Sea, eternal in their waiting, blue of skin and vacant gazes tied to the past. Her heart ached.

~.~.~.~

When morning came a light drizzle of rain was falling over Arendelle. It was quiet and chilly, but nothing like the dreary weather last night had brought.

Anna's eyes fluttered open in the gray morning light that came through the window. She had never been a morning person- but Kristoff was, and since becoming queen, she'd become more accustomed to waking earlier despite how hard it was for her. Her love was already dressing himself, at the feeling of a gaze on his back he turned and smiled sweetly at her. She smiled back at him.

With moments like this, every early morning was a perfect morning.

With a sigh Anna sat up, there was work to be done.

~.~.~.~

The Queen walked down the hall with a light frown on her brow, her sister had not been in her rooms, or the kitchens, or the dining hall, or the drawing-room, or the library. She was out of ideas, but she doubted that Elsa would've left without at least saying goodbye. So, where was she?

Anna was worried, she was always worried about Elsa; in a way, it was like her second job. After last night's news, she had no doubt that her sister wasn't in a good headspace. Anna herself wasn't either, but Elsa tended to internalize her problems and somehow make them all her own fault.

Some quiet breakfast- and maybe a board game after she'd finished checking some papers in her office- would be just the thing to soften up the edges of yesterday's grim discovery.

She kept wondering and lamented again for her parents. Trapped, forever, like birds in a little cage. Her heart ached and she lifted her hand to her chest and rubbed at it. Last night she'd fallen asleep in the arms of her husband, muffling her cries on his broad shoulders while he spoke sweetly to her.

"It's like finding out they died all over again."

"It's okay, it's okay." Kristoff murmured, brushing her hair.

"It's not!" She wailed, still hiding in his embrace.

"I know, I'm sorry, I know it's not, but I'm here baby."

She didn't know what to say, so she cried instead. She might be her sister's strength, but she too needed someone to be strong for her at times.

As she was passing in front of her late father's office, she heard the rustling of papers being shuffled and stopped. Curiously, she turned to the door and opened it, peering into the room.

"Elsa?" She asked, puzzled by the state of the room and her sister's presence. They didn't really come into this room all that often, it was sad and melancholy. "What… are you doing?" she wondered as she gazed at the piles of books spread all around her sister on the floor.

"Oh, Anna!" The blonde looked up, a little surprised, beneath her eyes there were dark shadows and she seemed tired. "Is it that late already?" she turned to the window as if she hadn't noticed the sky had turned light hours ago.

"Late alrea- Elsa, how long have you been in here?" Her eyes were wide as she asked.

"I couldn't sleep last night and I…" she looked down at the open book in her hands "I was restless." She admitted, "I couldn't stop thinking about our parents."

Anna's eyes saddened at this, she had also had trouble sleeping.

"But… but I think I may have an answer." Her sister looked up, and there was something shining in her eyes, a glimpse of hope, something beyond the shadow that had fallen over them.

"What do you mean?" Anna asked cautiously, looking once again at the chaos that had razed their father's office "What is all this?"

"Ghost stories." Elsa stood on wobbly legs after having sat in the same position for so long "Specters, phantoms, spirits that lingered. Legends and myths."

"These are stories, Elsa." Anna said with regret in her voice, she didn't want to bring her sister's spirit down.

"Are they though?" Her icy eyes looked directly into the other woman's "We know that papa had books on the rock trolls, he had books about magic and those… they weren't far off from the truth. They were real."

Anna hesitated, looking down at the tomes at her feet.

"Yes, but-"

"Anna I… I know how this sounds, but I also know there are truths in these books." She said passionately "They have truths and !- I have to believe they can help…" She clutched the book she held into her chest. "I have to believe I can help." Elsa looked intently at her sister "I have to, I don't… there has to be hope, I… I have to hope that that is not their end. That they won't be trapped forever in that terrible place that they died in. That they won't be stuck alone for the rest of their lives." She stopped abruptly with a soft intake of breath.

The sisters crossed their eyes, the air between them was heavy.

Anna looked at her sister and at the books again, she bit lightly at her bottom lip as she thought. It sounded crazy. It was crazy. But crazy had pretty much defined her life for the past few years, and it had never stopped it from being real.

"Okay… okay." Anna looked up, her eyes decided. "What have you found?"

Elsa smiled and let out a relieved sigh.

Abril: Aaamm, the fuk? I've had this chapter finished for god knows how long and I just… never published it? I think this has been done for more than a year, what the actual fuk?

Past me, seriously, what the hell were you doing?

Also, I bullshited my way through the names of the specters, if anyone wants to hit me in the head and correct me, please be welcome to it :D