Warning: Hey, just wanted to let everyone know before they start reading that this chapter will contain a small description of a panic attack, and some implications of murder and/or violence, so in case you don't want to read that. Hope y'all like it!

-AJ

Chapter 2


One who conquers fear cannot be conquered by anyone. - Matshona Dhliwayo


Have you ever had one of those moments that you've imagined in your head a million times? As if it's one of your brain's favorite ideas to play with; some kind of scenario that you can idealize enough that it becomes a sort of comfort. You come up with all sorts of different factors that would play into each specific second, and each reaction is perfectly timed, and the words all go together the way they're supposed to because everything is perfect as long as it's in your head. I used to sometimes imagine what it would be like if I saw the twins again. If they would be together, if they had changed, if Elsa had cut her hair or Kristoff had grown a beard, what they would say to me, what I would say to them.

I can honestly say, of all the million times I imagined the reunion, it never once occurred to me that I would find Kristoff sitting on my couch, covered with Pringle crumbs, giving me his stupid, shit-eating grin, as if it hadn't been three years since we've seen each other. As if he came over to visit every afternoon, as if this hadn't been the first time in a very, very long time that I was 100% positive that he wasn't dead.

I trembled from head to foot, my jaw muscles snapping my mouth closed with an audible click, my body and brain trying to find someway to reconnect themselves after the shock. My eyesight was kind of fuzzy, and I couldn't really feel the backs of my knees, quickly overcome with the sensation that there was no way I could possibly stand up anymore. Kristoff, luckily, seemed to realize this, and caught me the very moment my knees started to buckle, having jumped up from the couch faster than I could blink.

"Anna?" He lowered me slowly into the wicker chair in the corner, his voice brimming with concern. "Anna, hey, look at me."

I tried to focus on his face, his voice, but something was wrong with my head, I couldn't bring myself to hear him, my vision too busy swimming with blonde hair and tears.

"Kristoff."My voice wavered in a slightly embarrassing way, but I couldn't bring myself to care. "Am- am I awake right now?"

"100% fiestypants."

I immediately burst into tears and launched myself forward, clinging to Kristoff's large blue hoodie, burying my face in his chest. I wanted to talk to him, to ask him a million questions, to demand to know where Elsa was, but I could barely breathe through the sobbing that wracked my frame, shaking my whole body with every exhale. Kristoff hesitantly wrapped his arms around me, tentative at first, but quickly gaining strength until I was nearly smothered. I didn't care though, if anything it just made me cry that much harder. For the first time in my life, I couldn't get a read on my own feelings; there were too many things swirling through my head, my thoughts scattered and far too distant for me to focus on them. Kristoff's hoodie smelled like he used to in high school; like a barn, bad, but still good in a comforting kind of way. The recognition was not nearly enough to calm me down completely; I still clung to Kristoff's hoodie like a maniac, absolutely refusing to release my grip in fear he might vanish like smoke if I did. However, it did help to ground me slightly from my panic.

"Y-You're here?"

"Unfortunately." He sighed heavily, as if he was doing some horribly dreaded chore. Then he winked at me.

And just like that I was crying again, but grinning like a freaking wackjob. No wonder everyone thought I was crazy.

"I missed you so much." I choked through the sobs, not knowing what else to say, but knowing I wanted Kristoff to hear that.

His arms tightened around me slightly. "I missed you too, Hart." His voice sounded a little strained, like he was struggling against emotion himself, and I sighed with a relief so strong that it was nearly painful. For years I hadn't realized that some small, and incredibly insecure part of myself had been under the impression that wherever Kristoff and Elsa were, they were living their lives, perfectly content without my company, while three years later I still haven't just gotten the fuck over it; that after all this time, I was still unable to move on. To know that he had missed me, to hear it so plainly in his voice, lifted the weight of the sky off my shoulders. I smiled so hard that I felt it all the way in the back of my jaw, it was an uncontrollable thing, my brain giving me no option but to keep it in place.

"Did you really?"

"Duh, pea brain." He rolled his eyes. "Especially Elsa, god she hasn't stopped moping about it since the moment we left the gym-"

"Left the gym?" I cut him off quietly. And just as quickly as I had fallen into a sobbing mess, a switch flicked in the back of my mind, the chaos calming and centering on a incessant, building heat growing in the center of my skull, red flames racing through every synapse, coursing all the way to my fingertips. No more tears fell, crying suddenly felt like the last thing I wanted to do. Kristoff could hear it, the slightly dangerous tone lying quietly beneath a layer of acidic innocence, I could tell in the way his arms stiffened. "As I recall, you flew."

Kristoff swallowed hard, and averted his gaze. "Uh, yea, listen-"

"You flew. Out of the roof of the gym. After Elsa punched a hole in the roof. With a massive ice boulder. That she created."

"Anna, you don't understan-"

"What the FUCK happened, Kristoff?!" And I was somehow abruptly enraged, brimming with a fury so painfully heated that red seeped into the edges of my vision, tinting everything the color of blood. I had the insane impulse to shove Kristoff, to push him right out my door and lock it behind him, unable to understand how I could've been happy to see him only moments ago. I flung myself away from him, standing to face with with acid burning the back of my tongue, words that I had never wanted to say before now trembling on my lips, eager to throw themselves on him and inflict the most damage possible. "Where the fuck have you BEEN?! How are you here?!"

"Anna, please listen to me-"

"YOU LEFT ME!" I shrieked at him, my voice shaking and cracking in uncontrollable rage; I wanted to break something, I wanted to rip something apart, my hands trembled with the desire of it. "You left me in that place ALONE, Kris! And do you know what happened to me?"

I cut him a sharp smile, my words dripping with venom. "Everyone thought I was crazy. Or a murderer. Or both. The town wondered, how could little Anna Hart have gotten out of that situation unscathed? How could she have been the only one left? Why does she only spew this insane story that can't possibly be true? What really happened in the gym that day? What did Anna do?"

Kristoff winced, his eyes widening at my level of anger. "I didn't-"

"Or pity." I sneered, the disgust in my voice evident. "It's not her fault. The poor girl is damaged now."Kristoff flinched at the word, the mocking tone I used for the school board, the case lawyers, the police that couldn't agree on anything except that they didn't know why I wasn't dead. "We can't ever expect her to fully recover, her delusion is incredibly imprinted, she genuinely believes it."

"Anna-"

"I was a pariah!" My fists trembled dangerously at my sides, violent urges niggling the back end of every thought I had. "People were scared of me! I lost you and Elsa, but that wasn't enough, I had to be driven out of town! Away from the only family I have left! You left me with no one! You ruined my LIFE!""

"Anna, stop!" Kristoff abruptly changed his approach, grabbing me an the shoulders and tugging me against his chest.

"Get off me!" I screamed at him, shoving roughly against his chest, wishing with all my heart that I was stronger than him. "Get off me! I HATE you!"

My breathing started to accelerate in a concerning way, quickly ripping itself out of my throat, not providing any of the relief it should. I curled in on myself as much as I physically could, grabbing the sides of my skull and counting, always counting, because it's the only thing that works when this happens. Kristoff stroked the back of my head whispering to me about breathing, and I was trying, I was trying to calm down, but I couldn't, every muscle in my body shook and tensed, the air in my lungs couldn't stay there long enough for me to feel like I was breathing.

"I'm sorry." He whispered, still stroking my hair and counting with me. "I'm so, so sorry, Anna."

And I just cried. For longer than I should've, much much longer than should've been necessary. I cried until my eyes ached and the skin of my face was red and splotchy, sensitive from me constantly wiping away tears. Each breath shook on the way in and out, pulling and tugging against my unyielding rib cage, my lungs begging to go back to their erratic staccato, but I would not allow them. Finally, after what felt like hours, I raised my head to meet Kristoff's gaze, his brown eyes softening and crinkling in the corners.

"I don't hate you." I tried to tell him, but my voice was hoarse and cracked, and it sounded like a broken whisper. "I'm sorry."

"No, Anna, no." He shook his head vehemently. "You have more than enough reason to be angry with us, we let you down in the worst way possible." I saw his jaw clench with an anger that I couldn't understand. "But we're going to make it right. We are, I swear to you. We are going to make you safe again."

His words were earnest, pleading with me to believe him, to trust that he would protect me from whatever danger he was talking about, but I needed to understand, I had grown so weary of questions over the years. People always wanted to know something, constantly digging and kneading, trying desperately to understand everything around them. I had millions of questions, a never ending torrent of ignorance that nearly drove me insane because no one knew, no one understood, and no one had the answers. That's the problem with being a little crazy, you're questions become void of any importance, any credibility, the normal people unable to be bothered with the inquisition of things that exist outside their bubble of reality, any threat to what they know to be proven fact an act of the highest offense. So when I asked people to explain it to me, to tell me what had happened, to reassure me that I wasn't crazy, that they knew what was going on and that I would be fine, they did nothing but confirm what I already knew. That no one could explain what happened, because it shouldn't have; none of it should be possible. And now one of the only people in the entire world that could answer me sat directly in front of me, and I could only bring myself to ask him one thing.

"Where's Elsa?"

"Ugh, you two are annoying about each other." Kristoff wrinkled his nose. "I've been here like five minutes and it's already all about her."

"Shut up, you dummy."I shoved against his shoulder and stood up, glancing at my stove clock. "You've been here for three hours. And it's perfectly normal for me to want to know why she didn't come to this grand reunion."

Kristoff's playful grin slowly faded, leaving his face slightly worried. "Um, to explain that to you, I kind of have to explain a lot of things to you, and we don't exactly have the time right now."

"What do you mean we don't have the time?" A spark of fear quickly caught in my chest. "You- You're not leaving are you?"

"No!" He waved his hands in front of him, quickly backtracking at my expression. "I mean we don't have a lot of time. As in, you're coming with me, you should pack some clothes. Also, do you work the next three days?"

"I have work the day after tomorrow, but no mor- wait going where? What are you talking about? I can't just leave."

"You don't really have much of a choice, princess. You're going to have to call in to work until at least Tuesday."

"What the hell for?"

"That's when Elsa gets back."

The was a nearly giddy feeling in my chest at the mention of Elsa coming back from wherever she was, at the thought of maybe getting to see Elsa again, but I tried not to let it distract me from Kristoff and his confusing and slightly irritating instructions. "That's fantastic, but I don't see why that means I have to call in until then. And you still haven't told me why I have to leave-"

"Because people are watching you, Anna." Kristoff finally snapped, glaring up at me from where he was going through my drawers and pulling out random clothing. "Our people. And until it's handled, you have to disappear."

"You're not explaining anything! I don't-"

"Anna, we don't have time for this!" He shouted, and something finally clicked in my brain. Kristoff was scared. I could see it in the tension of his shoulders, the way his hands shook slightly, his darting eyes, keeping watch of every entrance to my apartment. Without the distraction of me acting like a raving lunatic, he couldn't hide it as well as he was before. I immediately felt ice coat the inside of my stomach, dread swimming through my veins, because in all the time I've known Kristoff, I never saw him scared. Worried, yes, when the gunman was in the gym, but never like this. Never the kind of scared that made a person twitchy. I laid a hand on his shoulder, and felt his muscles jump in response.

"Kris?" He finally calmed his searching and turned to meet my eyes. "Who is watching me?"

He shifted his gaze away. "You really don't need to worry about it, it's nothing that Elsa can't handle-"

"Then why are you so scared?"

He clenched his jaw. "Because I wouldn't be able to handle them." He turned back toward me. "And they know where you live."

I suddenly felt like there wasn't enough air in the room to breathe properly, my pulse accelerating far too quickly. "Who is they?"

Kristoff sighed loudly, obviously giving up on trying to keep me in the dark. "The Kolai."

The word sent a small shiver up my back, made my palms sweat. It somehow sounded familiar, in the same way a scary story from your childhood still mildly freaks you out when you happen to recall it.

"It's a small, independent group, one that Elsa can easily deal with, you have absolutely nothing to worry about, just a few days-"

"What does that mean?"

Kristoff gave me a confused look. "What?"

"What does that mean? Kolai."

Kristoff sighed. "It's a word from the Old Language, it's what we all call them."

I raised my eyebrows, and rolled my hand in a "Go on" motion.

Kristoff shook his head and looked away. "It means The Kill."

"Oh." I swallowed, and quickly started helping Kristoff pack. "Good to know."

/

The ride to HQ (as Kristoff referred to it) was not nearly as awkward as it should have been. Kristoff and I fell easily back into our old roles from high school, made up mostly of relentless teasing and occasional physical violence (mostly on my part), and my heart sung with the happiness I was feeling, my world finally having fallen back into swing, feeling like no time at all had passed, the grey, transient life I had been living for three years almost completely overshadowed by my utter contentment. I had nearly forgotten what it felt like to not be a little sad all the time.

But then, that had always been the way with me and Kristoff. We just clicked, from the very first day we met, going together with an ease that was almost laughable it was so effortless. Kristoff just got me, in a way that hardly anyone else ever had. It was always Elsa and I that were a little off, not ever quite on the same page, always a little tilted one way or the other because neither of us could ever say what we needed to, and especially not to one another. Not to say that Elsa and I didn't go well together, it was just a more interesting mix, a little more spice than sugar. There was a near constant, underlying tension that I felt whenever in Elsa's presence that was simultaneously exhilarating and nerve wracking. I never know which way she will move, I never know exactly what she's going to say, but at the same time I do, because I know Elsa, in a way that's incredibly difficult to articulate.

"So, when we get there," Kristoff started, snapping me out of my thoughts. "We're going to sit down, and you ask me whatever you need to ask me. We'll get everything settled, you'll finally know everything, I won't hold back, promise."

I grinned and stared out the window of his nice ass car (that I was quite jealous of). "Where is there, exactly?"

"Manhattan."

I rolled my eyes. "Of course."

It was no secret to anyone that the twins were loaded. I don't mean just wealthy, it's the buy-an-island kind of rich. As far as I knew, the twins' parents had died when they were much younger, and had left an insanely large amount of money, as well as a few different houses and properties dotted all across the world. Kristoff and Elsa used to occasionally travel to one of their vacation houses for weeks at a time, coming back with random souvenirs as presents for me. I still have all of them in a box at the back of my closet.

But that train of thought led to a question that I never thought I would ask. "Kris, what happened to your parents?"

Kristoff flinched slightly, and I immediately felt like an absolute piece of shit. "I-I'm sorry, I've just always wondered, and I didn't want to bring it up and upset you or Elsa, but I never knew what happened; you guys just told me they were gone, and I used to worry about it, because I didn't know if it was something bad or not, and-"

"Anna, it's alright, calm down." Kristoff gave a small, sad chuckle. "I was going to have to tell you anyway, for all of this to make any sort of sense." He sighed heavily and kept his eyes trained stubbornly on the road. "When Elsa and I were twelve they were killed by The Kolai."

I stared at him in stunned shock for a second, unable to fully understand. "B-But I-"

"It was a different group." He assured me quickly, worrying that I would start to panic again. "The Kolai is incredibly unorganized, there are tiny clans all over the place, like the one that's watching you, that rarely ever actually do any damage. There are also single individuals that learn about The Kolai's mission, and try to take it on themselves, we call them Muttals. That's what the gunaman was, in the gym. A random guy that had somehow stumbled across us on accident, and fucked everything up in the process." Kristoff gripped the steering while so tightly his knuckles turned white.

"What does Muttal mean?"

Kristoff's demeanor immediately changed, him flashing a quick grin. "Idiot."

I laughed.

"But the only thing you really have to worry about is The Rayalti." Kristoff spat the name, as if it left a bad taste in his mouth, his face screwing up with disgust and anger. "They're the big boys, the ones you should be scared of. Especially us."

"Why especially you?"

Kristoff clenched his jaw. "They're the ones that killed our parents." He shot me a quick glance and sighed at my obvious confusion. "The Kolai are spirit hunters. They have been for thousands of years. Literally since the time man could comprehend a thing like a spirit, The Kolai has been working to obliterate them. Their reasoning is that spirits are too dangerous, too volatile to live peacefully among humans, and if I'm being honest, in some cases they're right. But generally, spirits are a peaceful race, they want nothing more than to live unnoticed, as a human would. The Rayalti are the kings, the unofficial leaders of The Kolai, and they're the ones you have to watch out for. If they see you, you're already dead."

"I don't understand, why do they want you and Elsa then, you guys aren't-" And then the thousand piece puzzle in my mind shifted so that I could finally, finally see the full picture, and my god I am stupid. I stared at Kristoff with wide eyes, but he adamantly refused to look at me, keeping his eyes intensely trained on the road. I could see his tension, completely uncertain how I would take the news, how I was going to react to him.

"You and Elsa aren't human. Are you?"

The humming silence that thickened throughout the car like smoke was all the answer I needed.

It was startling how easy the news was to accept, as if I had somehow always known in the back of my mind. It was just Elsa and Kristoff, the way they were around other people, the kind of feeling they gave off, the distinct impression that either one of them could kill you, and happily would, if you were to piss them off enough. They've always just been something more. And I always knew that, I always knew that there was something inherently different about the both of them, and honestly the main emotion I was feeling was relief; to finally understand, for things to actually make some sort of sense for the first time in three years. Of course there was a good portion of me that was completely overwhelmed with shock, but it was calmed slightly at the realization that they had never hurt me, neither of them, had ever intentionally done anything to hurt anyone unprovoked, at least that I had seen. And it made perfect sense to me that if they hadn't hurt me yet, they weren't going to. I was also generally prone to believing in things like werewolves and ghosts; I had been that way since I was a child, never once considering that those magical beasts that everyone always told stories about could all be fake. I was convinced that at least some of them had to be true, otherwise, why would the legends have lasted this long? Given this new information, it now seemed blatantly obvious that Elsa and Kristoff were something else, and enigma I had yet to encounter, because of course they were. I had never met another human being like either of them, and that's why; because they're not human beings.

"No." Kristoff's voice cracked and he quickly cleared his throat. "No, we're not."

"So..." I furrowed my brow in thought. "Spirits?"

Kristoff sighed in heavy relief that I didn't immediately fling myself from his moving car. "Uh, yea. Well, spirits are an ancient race, a lot older than humans. There are four different categorizations, for the four elements, and you don't know which you fit into until you're seven, usually. I was kind of a, um, late bloomer." If I looked closely I swore Kristoff was blushing. "But, yea, anyway, spirits breed with other spirits, have little spirit kids, like me and Elsa were."

I grinned.

"We had never been close with a human until you, Anna." And he actually turned to look at me directly. "Neither of us had ever had any interest. But Elsa, she, well she saw you and the rest was history."

There was a very slight nervousness to Kristoff's tone, a catch in his voice when he mentioned Elsa seeing me. It was brief and barely noticeable, but it gave me the distinct impression that he was hiding something. I wanted to ask, but I was also appreciating his candor so much at the moment, and didn't want to cause him to close off, so I left it alone temporarily.

"So, what are the four categories?"

"Well, spirits are elemental, each of us belonging to one of them, either Earth, Water, Fire, or Air." Kristoff puffed his chest out slightly. "I'm a Vimana." At the word something shifted in the atmosphere of the car, like a gentle summer breeze blowing through the vents, happy and light; it made me feel giddy and giggly, almost like laughing gas. "An air spirit."

I snorted and Kristoff quickly glared at me.

"What?" He snapped.

"Oh, come on." I laughed. "That's funny. You? An air spirit?" I scoffed. "You should totally be earth."

"What!?" Kristoff yelped as if I had pinched him. "Why?"

"Look at you!" I gestured to his shoulders that were easily three times broader than mine. "You're a freaking ox. I would expect an air spirit to be a little dancer or something. Someone willowy and graceful, you know? Like Elsa."

It was Kristoff's turn to snort then. "Elsa is not an air spirit." He rolled his eyes like that should be the most obvious thing in the world. "You're element has nothing to do with your physical appearance."

"Well, then where does it come from?"

"Your Kor." He stated, his humor immediately drying up. "It's like our souls. It's the part of ourselves that makes us spirits, what's most important to us, above all else. It's what defines your element."

"What's yours?"

"Freedom." He answered immediately, with not a single trace of question or doubt, as if it were an absolute truth. "Freedom and adventure, discovery, that kind of thing."

"Okay." I nodded slowly. "Well, what's Elsa's."

Kristoff hesitated. "Um, I know we are having kind of a candid discussion here, but that's like, a majorly personal issue. You'd need to ask Elsa yourself."

I pouted a little, the curiosity awoken in me nearly insatiable. "Will you at least tell me her element?"

He paused for a second. "Elsa is a Nir. A water spirit."

"Water." I repeated. "Elsa the water spirit." I grinned; it sounded exactly right, the perfect amount of extraordinary for Elsa.

"Hey, we're almost here." Kristoff woke me from my musing and gestured to an insanely expensive looking apartment complex. Surgically white, with jutting balconies and massive glass walls along the front that reflected the sun harshly against my gaze. "We're in the penthouse." Kristoff pointed to the top.

"Of course you are." I grinned and shifted to grab my bag from the back seat, when something occurred to me. "Hey, Kris?"

"Yea?"

"Earlier, when you were talking about the Rayalti and your parents, you said that you especially had to watch out for them. Why?"

Kristoff sighed. "I was kind of hoping you'd forget about that." He reached out the car window and punched a code into the keypad to unlock the massive gate guarding the building. It swung open without a single creak and we drove through. Kristoff waited until we were parked and the car was off before he spoke again, and when he did, his voice was heavy, laden with troubles that I had yet to discover.

"It's because of Elsa."

The way he spoke sent a shiver down my spine. It was with a kind of helplessness that I hadn't ever heard from him before, and it made me uneasy. "What about her?"

There was a long pause, long enough to make me think that maybe he wasn't going to answer me.

"She's not supposed to exist."

He hopped out of the car without another word, hoisting my bag over his shoulder and slamming the door behind him. I quickly fumbled with my seat belt, trying to unhook it and catch up with him. I stumbled out of the car and jogged to reach him, my breathing now slightly labored due to my struggle. "What are you talking about?"

"Wait until we're inside." He whispered and nodded his head toward an elderly couple that were sitting on a nearby bench.

Walking into the lobby took my breathe away. Like, literally, I genuinely gasped.

"Now, this is swanky." I whistled lowly and stared around at the lavishly decorated room. There was a massive fireplace that was surrounded by plush, expensive looking sofas and armchairs. One of those big ass Persian rugs covered the most of the floor, leaving white marble tiles peeking out from under the corners. Renaissance-esque paintings were dotted up and down every corridor I could see, each one in a massive, ornate frame. I looked down at my scuffed converse and ripped skinny jeans, which contrasted starkly against the pristine floor. I was wearing my favorite green sweater, that was at least two sizes too big for me, and my hair was in it's custom braids, my head capped by my black beanie that I literally never took off unless I was going to sleep. Everything about my appearance screamed that I did not belong in this building with these people, in this part of New York.

But then Kristoff grinned at me and hooked an arm around my shoulders. "They have one of those legit laundry shoot things. Where you just toss your clothes down the hole."

"No way!" My eyes glowed with all the potential I could see, quickly forgetting how uncomfortable I was. "We have to test it out before I leave."

Kristoff laughed. "Deal."

When the elevator dinged to the top floor, I expected to step out into the hallway, but was instead greeted by an incredibly messy living room, littered with pizza boxes and soda cans. There were dirty clothes tossed over the back of the pristine white couch and the feather soft carpet had what looked like peanut butter smeared into it at several spots. There was a red rubber ball wedged into one of the crooks in the chandelier, and a song that sounded very similar to Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl playing softly from a high quality stereo in the corner.

"Wow."

"Shit." Kristoff quickly darted in front of me and sheepishly started stacking the pizza boxes and throwing various clothes into a pile in the center of the room. "The whole top floor is ours so the elevator just comes out in the living room, and I, uh- You know, when Elsa's gone, it's harder to keep the place clean and everything so..."

I laughed loudly. "You're such a boy, Kris."

After cleaning up a bit we ordered Chinese take out and sat on the floor of the living room, laughing about anything and everything, finally taking a small break to catch up on everything that had been going on for the last three years.

"And then Olaf-" I burst into giggles again, unable to even finish my story I was laughing so hard. "Olaf sprinted the entire two blocks back to our complex, busts through my door like there's a murderer after him and screams at me 'Oh my God, Anna!'" I quickly adopt a youthful boy impression that is nothing at all what Olaf sounds like, but it's what I hear when he talks to me; Kristoff fell on his side, laughing and wiping at his eyes. "'I just saw the most glorious fucking cat that has ever lived at that florists place down the street and we have to steal it.'"

"You stole a florist's cat?"He wheezed.

"She wasn't feeding it, the old thing just liked to hang around her shop for some reason. But Olaf made me put on all black clothes and sneak down the back alley to catch the stupid thing, and when I got there all it did was hiss and claw the shit out of my arm. I put it in the bag I brought with me and ran back home. I was so distracted that I forgot to text Olaf and tell him that he could stop keeping the florist busy, and he ended up staying there and talking to her for two and a half hours."

Kristoff and I busted into another long series of cackles, nearly drowning out the stereo that was still steady blasting Katy Perry.

"He named it Marshmallow. It's fat as hell now, and still completely horrible to everyone but him."

Kristoff's laughing slowly died out and he looked at me with a contemplative expression, seeming almost worried.

"What?"

"You're not-" He cleared his throat. "You're not like, dating that guy, right?"

"What?" I snorted and started laughing hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. "Oh my god, Kris."

"It's a legitimate question." He huffed.

"No, it's really not." I laughed and rolled my eyes. "For one, I'm like Queen of the Gays. I could lift a dead army with all of this gay might coursing through my veins. You have yet to meet a person gayer than I am."

"I got it." Kristoff laughed.

"Also, I don't really date. It's one of the side benefits of being a lunatic."

His smile quickly dropped. "Anna-"

"Don't sweat it, Kris." I waved away what I knew would be his thousandth apology. "Really, it's alright. I'm not mad about it; it's how things had to be. And now I have you guys back." I beamed at him. "Anyway, why do you care if I'm dating Olaf or not? You don't even know him."

"No, that's not what I-" Kristoff seemed to be thinking very hard about the words he wanted to say; stopping long enough that I started to wonder if he was going to finish at all, or just leave the explanation hanging. When he finally did speak, each word was with careful consideration. "I feel like, if you were to be in a relationship with some random person, that it may be like, a problem."

"What are you-"

"Don't ask me." He cut me off smoothly. "I'm telling you everything I can, but this is not one of those things."

There was a warning in his voice, telling me not to push him on this, that there was no way I could get him to give. It must be important, judging from the way he'd planned out his words before speaking. I was curious, but not enough to keep asking and risk pissing him off. "Fine." I huffed.

He steadily moved us along to another subject, and I quickly forgot my irritation. He told me the revised version of his and Elsa's childhood, the parts that he had previously kept secret now filling in blank spaces. He told me how they were born in Russia ("I knew that's what you two were speaking in the gym!"/ "We speak Russian when there are Americans nearby suspected to be part of The Kolai, it's to hide ourselves better. Me and Elsa made it a rule a few years ago.") and then moved to the US directly after the death of their parents to be looked after by a trusted family friend who knew the situation. ("Kai? You're butler? He's a spirit?"/ "One of my father's oldest friends. He's our godfather, and definitely not our butler; trust me, when other people weren't around it wasn't us that did the ordering. We just made it appear that way to avoid any connection being found between us and Kai, and somehow linked back to my parents through him.") He told me how they had been traveling for the last two years, and recently moved to New York. When I asked him why, he got a little fidgety, which I thought was strange because it seemed like a relatively simple question, but he blew it off with a simple "Elsa just wanted to."

It was then that my brain finally decided to snap me awake from the extended distraction I had been under. "Elsa!"

Kristoff jumped at my sudden outburst. "Holy shit, fiestypants, are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

"What were you talking about earlier? In the car, when you said Elsa shouldn't exist?"

He swallowed thickly, his big brown eyes shifting away. "Kind of a tough subject, Anna."

"I'm sorry, I just-"

"No, it's fine." He rubbed a weary hand down his face. "You need to know this, it'll help push everything into place."

He stared out the massive window to our left, his gaze skimming over the tops of building after building. "When we were born they thought we were normal. It was unusual for a spirit to have twins, but not unheard of, and no one thought anything about it for a long time. Our sixth birthday, that's when things started to go wrong." He turned his gaze to me. "Elsa and I were playing at the lake behind out house early in the morning, having a snowball fight. We ended up getting into an actual argument with one another after I pegged her in the face with one. She got upset, said I was cheating, I said I could throw them wherever I liked as long as they hit her. It ended up getting way out of hand and I flung a snowball as hard at I could, right at her face." He paused for a moment, his eyes lost in the memory. "It never hit her. It stopped, about a foot away, and floated there, in mid air. And Elsa was just staring at it, for a good solid minute it hung in the air and she just gawked at it. Then she tried to look at me, to say something I think, and out of no where the snowball zoomed backwards and hit my right in the eye. She'd run over to me, to try and help me up; she was crying, saying she didn't mean it, that it was an accident, that she was sorry and I couldn't tell Mama and Papa."

Kristoff's brow furrowed in deeper concentration. "If I think back, there were a couple times before that, where she had made small, insignificant things happen, seemingly out of her control, but she'd never done anything like that; it had never been that intense before. Spirit children are not supposed to show any hint of their powers before they're seven, and even then, they shouldn't have been able to manipulate things the way Elsa could. She was way, way beyond where she should've been, and as soon as my parents found out, they tried to hide her."

"Why?"

Kristoff flinched a little and his eyes refocused; it was clear he had been lost in his memories, almost forgetting I was even there. "Elsa was a Turoki. It means traitor."

"I don't understand."

"One of the reasons that spirits don't have twins very often is because, very, very rarely, sometimes one of the twins will kind of, take some of the other's Kor." Kristoff sighed. "Elsa was more powerful than me before we were out of the womb, but it didn't have anything to do with us personally. It was because, by then, I was a little less than a full spirit, and she was a little more."

He stared at me with doleful eyes, his expression incredibly resigned and tired looking. "My powers didn't show up until I was almost ten years old, and even today, they're weaker than most normal air spirits. I can only do hyperspeed, and current manipulation."

"What are those?"

"Hyperspeed is me being able to bend the air around me so that I can move way, way faster than a human. Elsa says it makes me look blurry, like a shadow of my body is bouncing around wherever I'm standing."

A vivid memory of seeing Kristoff run up from behind me while I laid on the gym floor, his outline unfocused, looking like another figure was standing next to him. That was one curiosity taken care of.

"Current manipulation is me moving the air with my thoughts." He extended his hand towards me, palm out, and then flicked his fingers lightly. It immediately felt like a leafblower was hitting me directly in the face from a few inches away.

"Okay, okay I get it!" I shoved my hands in front of my face, my braids flinging wildly behind me. "You can turn it off now!"

Kristoff chuckled a little and flicked his fingers again, the air calming and returning to it's stagnant presence. I stared at him in amazement.

"That is, singlehandedly, the coolest thing I've ever seen." I grinned at him, and a smile split across his face.

"You haven't seen anything yet. The things Elsa can do make mine look like a children's party magician. Even the stuff you saw in the gym, that wasn't even her warm up act."

"Speaking of Elsa, back to the main subject." I pulled my braids back into their original positions, trying to smooth them out a little. "Why did they hide her?"

Kristoff snorted. "Anna, think about The Kolai, they hate regular spirits. Turoki are a literal demon to them. If anyone had so much as whispered about one being born they would've ripped the entire continent apart looking for her. It's why the other spirits call them traitors, they draw an insane amount of attention from a group that wants to kill all of us. If anything, the other spirits hate Turoki even more than The Kolai." Kristoff sighed, his eyes glazing over a bit. "Elsa learned to control what she could do over the years. It was still strange to us why she had such an affinity for ice, she's way better with it that she is with regular water. Snow too, pretty much anything cold, Elsa can control it, she can even create it herself, which is nearly unheard of. By the time we were twelve we had both mastered our powers, Elsa going so far as to practice daily at the lake, still terrified she was going to slip up. It was a few months after our birthday when they came." Kristoff's jaw clenched and his words thickened and hardened around the edges, like they were much harder to say than normal. "Our parent's heard them. I remember the way my mom looked at me, like it was the last time she'd ever get the chance." He paused for a moment, drawing a deep breath. "We had a safe room, buried under the basement floor, hidden entrance and all. Our parents always told us it was just a precaution, but thinking back on it, I don't think they expected anything other than what happened. They locked us down there, told us to watch the clock, and when it struck twelve the autolock would disengage, and that no matter what we saw when we came out we had to leave. We had to get our things and go, as far and fast as we could, and that Uncle Kai would find us soon."

Kristoff stopped and stared out the window, a deep, deep sadness hunching his shoulders and drooping his head lower and lower; I heard him trying to steady his breathing, trying to stop it from hitching on the way out. His eyes were filled with a kind of numbness I had never seen before, a sort of frozen terror that is so painful, and so horrific, that you can't even register it, and instead your brain decides to feel nothing.

"We waited, like we were told." His voice sounded hollow and weak, no inflection in a single syllable. "When the door unlocked and we walked outside... When we saw what had happened, Elsa lost it." He touched his chest in a painful kind of way, like remembering an old wound. "She screamed, and ice shot out everywhere, it covered everything, even parts of her. The snow that had been falling froze in the air, still as death. I remember the cold; it was unnatural. An aggressive kind, I could feel it on my skin, in my chest every time I tried to breathe, it was like it was alive." Kristoff shivered, even the memory of the cold raising goosebumps along his arms. "I was crying, I couldn't get her to come with me. I was screaming at her that we had to go, we had to leave right now, like they told us to, and she just laid on the ground and didn't move. Sometimes I thought she had stopped breathing. I went and packed all of our things myself, loaded up two duffel bags and literally drug Elsa out of the house."

Kristoff sighed and rubbed the back of his neck; his eyes looked tired. "We were in the woods for almost a week. I don't think Elsa spoke to me the whole time. Some part of her had changed; she was like a puppet, only moving when someone yanked her strings along." He finally cracked a weak smile. "When Kai found us things got better. We had a home again; he brought us to America, about as far away as we could get. We were home schooled for a few years, but after a while Kai couldn't deal with us being in the house constantly, and that's when we started at Warren."

"Kris, I-" I tried and failed to clear my throat. "I'm sorry for making you go through all of this, we don't have to talk about it anymore. If I had known I wouldn't have asked about-"

"It's alright, Anna." He gave me a small smile. "I'm glad that you know about my parents. I'm sick of having to lie about them. And you deserve to know all this. It's our fault you're in this mess in the first place."

"That is one thing I don't understand." I bit my lip in confusion. "Why is The Kolai after me? I'm not a spirit."

Kristoff sighed. "The only thing with can think of is that they've somehow linked you to us. You've never been around any other spirits, Elsa would be able to tell." I wanted to ask him how Elsa could possibly know that, but he barreled along, giving me no opportunity to question him. "If they were to have gotten to you before Elsa and I did they probably would have interrogated you, asked you questions that wouldn't have made any sense to you, but would've helped them find us. And then they would have killed you. Made it look like an accident somehow, maybe pushed you off the fire escape or something, but they wouldn't have let you live."

A cold feeling raced down my spine. "I knew people were watching me, they had been for weeks, every time I left home. Right before you were at my apartment one of them was following me down the street."

"What?!" Kristoff yelped, his voice jumping a few octaves. "One of them was following you home? And you didn't think that would be important to tell me?"

"I didn't know it was related."

Kristoff stared at me like a had grown a second head. "You're deranged."

"So, I've been told."

He rolled his eyes. "Look, this day has been way too long. Why don't we go to sleep and talk about all this more in the morning?"

Part of me wanted to argue, unwilling to leave Kristoff's side, still afraid that when I closed my eyes he would disappear, and this would all prove to be some horribly vivid dream. That would kill me. Another part of me was more exhausted than I had ever been in my life, the level of stress I had dealt with today draining me in an incredibly unpleasant way. I fought against my drooping eyelids.

Kristoff seemed to sense this, and placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. "I will still be here when you wake up, it will all still have happened, you'll still be here. I promise."

I didn't say anything for a moment, my stubbornness holding out for a little longer, and then reluctantly nodded.

He smiled. "You can have Elsa's room, since she's gone for now."

Even though nothing about his suggestion was remotely embarrassing, I blushed all the way to the tips of my ears at the thought of sleeping in Elsa's bed. Kristoff saw, and sent a sly grin my way. "What's the matter, Anna?"

"Nothing." My voice was incredibly unsteady. "That will be fine."

Kristoff laughed and helped me get settled, showing me the room and adjoining bathroom, and where I could put my things.

The minute I stepped into Elsa's room I stopped listening to him, and I think he could tell, because he kept his parting words brief. "I hardly ever wake up before noon, so... don't wake me up before noon, or I'll beat your ass." He grinned widely at me. "Welcome to Wolf Witness Protection, hope you enjoy your stay." And with a soft click of the door I was alone.

Alone in Elsa's room.

The walls were pale blue, white lace curtains hanging over every window and draped across the top of her massive canopy bed, combined with plush white carpet, made the room seem like a forest right after snowfall, when everything is quiet and kind of sleepy, before messy footprints stomp their way through the accumulation on the ground and ruin the picture. Her walls had small, hand drawn still life pictures of anything and everything, pinned all over in a happy sort of disarray. I stared at the drawings for longer than I'd like to admit, just breathing it in, absorbing the Elsa-ness of this room, and reveling in the warmth it brought to my chest. Even being near Elsa's stuff was enough to turn me into a complete sap within minutes. I sat on the edge of her bed and tried to talk some sense into myself, but it was at that moment that a photo on her beside table caught my eye.

It was an old picture, but I remember exactly when it was taken.

"Els!" I skipped over to where she sat on the park bench, facing the lake with a far off look in her eye, watching the ducks swim lazily past, their babies trailing along behind them in a neat line. Her head snapped up to look at me, and a grin quickly hitched itself across her face.

"Anna." She inclined her head in that regal, composed way she always acknowledged people, except when she looked back up I saw her smirking at me, the way that she didn't smirk at anyone else. It made my stomach roll with nerves. "What brings a pretty girl like you to a place like this, all by herself?"

I blushed and rolled my eyes at the same time. I watched her grin widen at how easy it was for her to fluster me. She was in one of her moods; one of those rare times when she blatantly accepted any kind of flirtation I threw her way; I knew I had to take advantage of it. "I could ask you the same thing." I giggled and sat beside her, way closer than necessary, but Elsa didn't seem to mind. In, fact, she immediately threw her arm around my shoulders, in an incredibly brazen act of affection, at least for her.

She shrugged her indifference. "I like it here. I like to look at pretty things." She turned her grin on me, and I couldn't help but look away, unable to hold her gaze and be perfectly sure that I wouldn't do something incredibly stupid.

"Hey, will you do something for me?" Her voice was much more serious, and when I turned back to face her, her expression had hardened slightly.

"Of course." I would've probably chopped off my own arm if she's asked me to.

"Take a picture with me?"

I laughed, and Elsa huffed, trying to pull her arm away from my shoulders, getting it stuck in the hood of my favorite Deathly Hallows sweatshirt, which only made me laugh harder. She crossed her arms across her chest in irritation. "I was being serious."

"I'm sorry." I tugged on the sleeve of her t shirt, (a bad habit of mine) wondering how she wasn't freezing in the biting autumn air. I leaned over to rest my head against her shoulder, and sighed in contentment. "I just thought it was going to be, like, a big deal or something."

"It is." She whined slightly, and if I ever told her how cute I thought it was she'd skin me alive. "I want to remember how we are today. Because we're going to change, me, you, and Kris, we're all going to grow up and move on and everything will be different, and I want to at least make sure that I can remember how it is now." She turned her eyes to mine, hers seeming somehow bigger than normal. There was a small pause, where we just stared at each other for a second, me trying desperately to decipher what she could possibly be thinking about, but to no avail. Finally I just nodded, and Elsa grinned widely, pulling her phone from her jean pocket. She turned on the front facing camera and whispered, "Say cheese." in my ear right before she kissed me on the cheek and snapped the photo.

That was the frozen image it produced. A younger, less tired looking version of myself, grinning widely, face redder than a fire truck, and Elsa, lips firmly planted on my cheek, but still somehow looking like she was smiling, her arm hooked affectionately around my neck. The memory of that day is permanently seared into my brain, the feeling of Elsa's lips on my cheek in a ridiculously innocent way, still somehow brought on an impressive blush any time I thought about it. I had been shocked; Elsa had never, ever been that bold before, and she didn't mention it afterwards, acting like nothing had ever happened, but I couldn't forget or ignore it. I just stared at the picture for a long time, a strange feeling that nearly overwhelmed me, hitting me square in the chest when I thought about Elsa looking at it, thinking about that day, using it, like she said she would, to remember how we were then. The thought of her missing me made tears prick at the corners of my eyes, but I had had enough crying for today. Instead I smiled and rolled myself onto her bed, burrowing into the softest sheets I had ever felt in my life, and whispering "I missed you too." into the millions of pillows covering her bed, creating a kind of nest around me

I barely had time to think about how they smelled like her before I was out like a light.


Author's Note: Hey everyone! It's three in the morning here and I just got this done. I don't really love this chapter; it's a ton of exposition, which I'm not good at writing, so it was a bit of a pain, but I hope that all of the explanations make sense, there was a lot of information to try and get out, and I worry that it's not very good quality. If y'all have any tips you could provide on getting better at it, that would be great. :) I was hopeful that we would get to see Elsa in this chapter, but after planning it out, I feel like this would have droned on for far too long, and ended up super boring, as we still have some tweaking and adjusting before Elsa can make an appearance. Also, I apologize again for any spelling or grammatical errors y'all find, I will try to come back and fix them after I have a bit more of the story done. Anyway, I hope this doesn't put you all to sleep!

As always, I live for reviews and advice, everything is very much appreciated, y'all have to tell me the things I can do better at! Let me know what you guys think!

Thank for reading! :)

-AJ