Hello there. Long time no see (nervous giggle) ye, it's been a year hey?

ANYway, I thought of this and it wouldn't leave me alone.

Hope you enjoy the fluff cuz it's gonna get rough soon! :D

I don't own Frozen.

"Am I over thinking this? I'm probably thinking about this too much. Should I be thinking about this so much?"

Kristoff paced the length of Sven's stall, muttering just loud enough for his reindeer to hear, but not loud enough for the stable boys to hear him outside. Sven followed his friend's movement with his eyes, lazily munching on some fresh hay.

"Did I say it too quickly?" he said, raking his hands through his mop of blond hair, "It felt like the right time though. Did I just get carried away?"

He reached the end of the stall and pivoted, boots sounding a harsh march on the cobbled stones.

"What if I scared her away?"

Sven brayed.

"You're not helping." Kristoff glared at him when he passed, pivoted and walked to the other end with long strides. "I know she hasn't spoken to me for four days now, but Elsa's sick. She's probably just taking care of her. Not actively avoiding me, right?"

Something that could've been a shrug rippled through Sven when Kristoff faced him again.

"You're not helping." He sighed, a deep, long sigh that he pulled up all the way from his feet.

Weariness settled onto his shoulders. The weight of it pulled him down to the ground. What if she was avoiding him? What would he do then? Confront her about it? What if that made it worse? What if he had just ruined the only real relationship – the only real love he had ever had? Feet like led, he took a few steps backwards until his back touched the wood of the wall and slid down.

He should never have told her that he loved her.

He brought his knees to his chest and rested his head on them, defeated. The past four days had been some of the worst he had ever experienced. After Anna's surprise birthday and the trip to the North Mountain to drop Elsa's newest creations off, he hadn't really seen Anna besides a passing glance or pigtails disappearing around a corner. He had tried visiting Elsa, knowing that Anna would be there and to make sure that Elsa was okay, but a guard had kept him from entering the room.

Apparently, the princess had decreed that only she could look after the Queen, which meant that only she could enter her room. It was supposedly to curb any further spread of the cold that Elsa had picked up. It was a good thing too because her cold had turned into a raging fever overnight. But…Kristoff couldn't shake the feeling that Anna was avoiding him… A guard was a bit excessive, wasn't it? Then again, he knew next to nothing about what it meant to be a royal. Maybe the Queen of England had people guarding her room when she became sick, too?

A warm breath whipped Kristoff's hair, filling his nostrils with Sven's scent. It was a comforting gesture, familiar. Kristoff looked up into Sven's gentle eyes. A low hum came from the reindeer's throat, it climbed an octave at the end like a question.

"I have been trying to talk to her for days now, buddy…"

A snort followed by another bray replied.

"Honestly," Kristoff said, "I kindof want to go to the trolls."

Sven pulled a face.

"No," he insisted, "I'm not avoiding the situation." The mountain man got up and stomped away. "And even if I was, it's only fair since Anna has been doing the same."

The reindeer sat down with a huff and an irritable double bray.

"She has too."

The two stared at each other, eyes locked, jaws set. Sven was the first to soften his face and Kristoff didn't like it one bit. He could deal with a stubborn reindeer, but a sympathetic one made him face things he didn't want to face. So, he didn't. He turned away from Sven, splaying his fingers on the table he had requested be put in the stall.

The table displayed his meagre belongings. His duffle bag held some spare winter gear – he had decided to carry extra after Anna had snuck into his sled that one time he had gone harvesting. Next to that sat a heavy-duty canvas bag that Anna had embroidered a misshapen reindeer and carrot on with her own hand. She had been so proud of her work when she had given it to him, although it kindof looked like a kid's drawing. With very a clear and very strict voice, she had instructed him to use this bag for keeping Sven's carrots fresh on his harvesting journeys. He had grumbled when she had insisted that he keep it, but secretly, he had loved it. Almost as much as his sled.

Kristoff sighed. So much of his life had a piece of Anna on it or connected to it. Even his climbing gear held the beginnings of their story from almost a year ago. He really, really didn't want to mess this up.

His eyes travelled to Sven's harness that hung on the wall briefly, before he turned to face his reindeer.

"I'm being stupid, aren't I?" he asked Sven, already knowing the answer.

Sven tipped his head back and pulled his lips into a playful lopsided grin that drew a chuckle out of Kristoff.

"Okay…I'll try talking to her again."

Okay, cup of Chamomile tea?

Check.

Lightly toasted bread?

Check.

New and improved cough medicine?

Check, and it works way better than Oaken's stuff…

Anna grimaced, recalling how that first mixture had basically been Akvavit with some spruce tree needles for extra flavouring. The castle physician, Pendersen had been able to give her something that worked a little better than Oaken's remedy, thank goodness. Heck, she'd even bet that the trolls could give her something better than the physician had, let alone what Oaken had. Maybe she could ask Kr – nope. She was not going down that road.

The carpet swallowed the sound of Anna's footsteps as she walked, balancing the tray with the tea, toast and medicine in her hands. She looked at the decorative leaves curling around the tea cup. She looked at the way the medicine sloshed inside it's dark brown glass bottle, imagined what it would taste like. She tried keeping the spoon from clinking against the tea cup's saucer, did everything she could to stop form thinking about the only person her mind had strayed towards whenever it had a chance to be idle. When she turned the final corner to her sister's room, she pulled up short with a jerk.

"Kristoff?" the name slipped from her mouth involuntarily.

The blond man turned to her and only then did she notice the green uniform he wore. He swiftly placed his hat back on his head and saluted. The guards must've changed shifts while she had gone to the kitchen. Anna took a deep breath, feeling her heart hammer in her throat and continued down the hall. The chamomile tea had splashed on some of the toast, she noted with an angry purse of her lips.

The guard opened the door as she neared. Anna swallowed the lump in her throat and whispered a thank you before she went into the dimly lit room. Along with her fever, Elsa had been experiencing blinding headaches that the light only seemed to make worse. Anna had made the elective decision to keep the curtains closed and had lit a few candles that provided the only light that they could see by.

Her sister lay in the exact same position that Anna that had left her in. Eyes closed with the sheets tucked under her chin, her cheeks were aglow and a cloth lay on her sweaty forehead. She hated seeing her sister like this…

As softly as she could, Anna made her way over to the bed and placed the tray on the bedside table. In the silence perpetuating the room, every clink of the cup on the saucer and that stupid spoon rang out like a bell. The spoon had rudely decided to slide across to clash into the plate that held the toast.

Anna flinched and cast a glance at her sister whose eyes had opened. "I didn't mean to wake you…" she said sheepishly.

"I wasn't asleep," came the hoarse reply.

"You should try and sleep more."

"I can't get comfortable enough."

"Do you need me to fluff your pillow?" Anna suggested having abandoned the tray and reached for the pillow.

"No," a small smile ghosted her pale lips, "I'm fine."

Anna hummed, reaching for the cloth on her sister's forehead. It wasn't as hot as she expected it to be. "Hey," she said with a growing smile, "I think your fever is going down. How're you feeling?"

"Better…" Elsa swallowed with some difficulty, "my throat is still sore though."

"That's great! Not your throat being sore, but about feeling better. You know what I mean…" Anna cleared her throat, "Wanna try eating?"

Elsa nodded and started to sit up. Anna really hated seeing her sister like this. The simple act of trying to sit up had caused the young woman to pant like she had been running. A series of coughs burst from Elsa' mouth, and all Anna could do was clutch the damp cloth in her hands as she watched her sister try and stop the onslaught.

"Do you want your cough medicine before or after you eat?" Anna asked when Elsa got her coughing under control.

"After…" Elsa rubbed at her throat. "it makes everything taste funny."

"Okay." Anna reached for the tray and placed it on her sister's lap gently before she went over to the basin in the corner of the room, cloth clutched in her hand.

She submerged the cloth in the cool water and just stood there a while. The water felt nice. Cool where the room was warm. She reached for the soap and lathered it up, taking care to wash her hands too. Taking a jug, she rinsed the cloth and rung the water out. She replaced the soapy water with clean cool water, for when Elsa would need it again. Anna dried her hands on the small towel and pulled a sigh up all the way from her toes. When she turned around again, she realised that Elsa had been watching her.

"What?" she asked, tucking some hair behind her ear.

"You look pale," Elsa said. "You're not getting sick, too, are you?"

"I don't think so." A bit of a lie, her throat had been threatening the start of something since yesterday. Anna made her way over to the chair she always sat in and lowered herself down into it slowly.

"Have you been sleeping alright?"

"Course." That was an outright lie. She had been struggling to fall asleep, her mind kept replaying the scene where Kristoff had told her that he loved her. She kept analysing her feelings and overanalysing them until they withered into doubt. Did she even love him?

"What's wrong then?" Elsa asked, interrupting her thoughts.

"Nothing," she said and gave her sister what she hoped was a believable smile.

Elsa sipped her tea in response. She hadn't taken her eyes off of her sister and it had started to make Anna squirm, but she couldn't show it. Or break the eye contact that the two of them held. If Anna looked away first, Elsa would win. She would instantly know that something was indeed, wrong and that she had been lying. The smile on Anna's mouth was just starting to hurt when her sister finally looked away.

Anna let out a soft breath in relief that she only ended up sucking back in when Elsa asked why her toast was soggy.

It was like an avalanche came tumbling out of her mouth. "I spilled some tea on it when I got a fright earlier, okay?!" Anna jumped up from her seat and started pacing the length of Elsa's bed, too restless to sit anymore. "I thought I saw Kristoff standing by the door just, but it just turned out to be a blond guard that could very well have been Kristoff's twin, because he looked so much like him, you know. The same bulky mountain build and everything! And I really don't want to see Kristoff right now, because I'm having an existential crisis." Anna turned towards her wide-eyed sister who sat frozen on her bed, "Happy now?"

Elsa could only blink in the aftermath of her sister's outburst.

"I'm sorry," Anna sighed.

"It…it's okay. Do you want to talk about it?"

"Might as well," Anna said as she plopped herself back into her chair and looked at her sister. "No use going back after that word vomit."

"Okay…" Elsa said, an amused smile blooming on her face. "let's start with the fact that there's a guard outside of my room?"

Anna grimaced, "I kinda, sorta, might've told everyone that only I was allowed to come into your room – but it was to stop the cold from spreading throughout the castle! It's not like I put a guard there for any other reason. Like none at all, I –"

"Anna…" Elsa interrupted gently, "You could easily spread this to others when you leave as much as they could get it from me directly. We don't need a guard to –"

"No, but you see," Anna said with pointed finger in the air, "I'm extra, extra careful when I leave here. I don't touch anything when I go to the kitchen, besides the tray and when I take it back I insist on washing it myself. I also wash my hands regularly while I'm here to make sure I don't get it either. And I keep a window open for ventilation too." She levelled her pointed finger at the breathing curtain to the side.

Elsa's gaze followed her finger to the breeze that made the curtains billow, how she wished to just feel the sun against her skin again. Four days bedrest had taken much more out of her than he ever thought possible. A shiver rippled up Elsa's back.

"Do you want me to close the window?" Anna asked, already up and making her way to the window.

"No, I'm fine. It –"

"I'm gonna close it anyway. Just in case."

Elsa closed her mouth, swallowed her sentence as she waited for her sister to do what she felt she needed to do. Anna had been so helpful these past few days. She had stepped into her role as princess in Elsa's absence and taking care of her as well. Elsa had been so used to doing things for herself for 13 years, and she had to admit that it felt nice to have Anna dote on her as she did.

Warmth that had nothing to do with her fever spread through her chest as Anna came back to her chair.

"I love you," Elsa said as Anna took a seat and the most curious thing happened. Instead of a smile and an excitable "I love you too", Anna seemed to deflate.

"What's wrong, Anna?" Elsa wanted so badly to reach out to her sister, to hold her, but she was still sick. She would have to be content with just listening. "You can tell me, you know that right?"

"I know." Anna looked up and twitched her lip.

"Is this about Kristoff?"

Anna practically folded herself into two. She schlumped forward and groaned into her hands. "Tell me something," she said and sat up suddenly with a look so intense that Elsa swallowed in response. "How do you know that you love me?"

Elsa didn't even have time to pull her face into the confusion she felt before Anna rambled on again.

"I mean it might not be the same – well, no. It's definitely not the same. I feel differently for Kristoff than I do for you and you're my sister so the familial love thing is a thing and I can tell you I love you no problem, but when I just think about whether or not I love him I get –" Anna cut herself off and looked to the side " –I get…I think…I think of the last time I had told someone I loved him and how perfectly great that had turned out in the end."

The oldest sister moved the tray off of her lap onto the empty space beside her as she waited to see if the youngest would say anything else. She didn't. Anna sat, arms folded tightly over her stomach, looking so lost it made Elsa's heart ache.

"Well," Elsa began softly, "One thing is for sure." She waited until Anna looked at her before she continued, "Kristoff isn't he-who-shall-never-be-named."

"What if he is?" Anna countered a crease forming between her brows, "What if something happens tomorrow, next week or next month that shows me who he really is? What if, in a year's time, everything falls apart and I get hurt again…?"

"I know how you feel." Elsa's shoulders rolled forward, her eyes fixed on her hands in her lap. "Maybe not specifically, but I know what it feels like to worry about things going wrong. Every day I worried about my powers hurting you. Even if I didn't see you, I would still worry about the day that I'd finally end up hurting you. It drove me mad sometimes."

Elsa looked up with a smile, "But I had never thought about positive possibilities. The truth was so much better than all the worst-case scenarios I could have made up in my mind."

"But…" Anna bit her lip, "but…things still got out of hand. On your coronation day I mean, and after…things weren't very good then either."

"No, they weren't." Elsa admitted, her gaze flickered to her hands again, "I did end up hurting you like I had feared I would…but Anna, people hurt each other unintentionally all the time. I…I've had to make peace with what happened – I'm not saying it's easy." she said when Anna opened her mouth to speak, "there are days when the guilt of what I had done makes me feel so heavy that I don't want to get out of bed in the morning."

Anna pulled her lips sympathetically and scooted her chair closer to her sister's bed.

"My point is," Elsa continued, "that people will hurt each other, what's more important is how people deal with it afterwards. I can't go through my life fearing things all the time," she breathed and locked eyes with her sister. "and neither should you."

"Mhmm…" she said feeling so tired all of a sudden.

"You don't have to tell him that you love him back you know."

"What do you mean? Course I do!"

"Why?"

"W-why?" Anna stuttered, "why not?"

"You're avoiding my question," Elsa smirked, "but I'll answer yours first. There isn't a deadline."

Anna blinked a few times, trying to process what her sister meant, "What?"

"It perfectly normal for you to hesitate telling him that you love him. It's wise even, to try and figure out how you really feel about him before you tell him. You've had to learn a hard lesson, and the fact that you're worried about this shows that you've grown."

"So…growing as a person means second guessing everything you do?" At Elsa's shrug, Anna slid down onto her tailbone, "That sounds fantastic. Why did I want to be a grown-up so badly when I was young again?"

Elsa giggled which turned into a miniature coughing fit that reminded both of them that she wasn't completely well just yet. She swallowed with some difficulty, reached for her cool tea, and took a few sips to soothe her throat. The fit had brought a developing headache to her temples, she noted with some discomfort.

"Could I have my medicine, please?"

"Yes, of course!" Anna jumped up and uncapped the bottle. She turned to her sister with a spoon held ready to pour the medicine, "Don't you want to finish eating first?"

Elsa glanced at the toast and crinkled her nose. "No, I'm not really that hungry anymore."

"Okay…but tonight you'll have to eat some soup, alright?"

The eldest pulled her lips into a thin line, but nodded nonetheless. Anna poured the medicine and made her way over to her sister, making sure that the brown goop didn't spill as she held it out. Elsa closed her mouth around it and pulled a face as she swallowed. A shudder shook her shoulders when she licked her lips to get rid of the taste.

"Ugh…" Another shudder ran through her.

Anna giggled, capped the bottle and took her seat again. She sighed feeling a bit lighter than she had earlier in the day, but she still needed a question to be answered.

"How long do you think I can wait until I speak with him about it?"

Elsa considered her answer for a while and said, "As long as you need to honestly, but maybe tell him that you'd like to speak to him sometime soon? But only if he brings it up. It could be that he's not really worried about this as much as you are."

"Oh, to be a man who never suffered for overthinking things," Anna lamented with the back of her hand against her forehead.

The sister's giggles where interrupted by a knock on the door.

"Your Highness?" The guard called through the door, "I apologise for the disturbance ma'am, but the Ice Master is asking to see you."

Anna's head snapped to her sister in alarm, her heart fought to escape up her throat.

"What do I do?" Anna stage whispered, fighting the panic that bubbled in her chest.

"Invite him in?" A whisper responded. "Because we have decided that others could visit me in my sickbed, too."

"No, we didn't!" she hissed, "You're just taking advantage of my perilous situation!"

"Maybe." Elsa's lips lengthened into a wicked smirk.

"Ma'am?" the guard called through the door.

"Coming!" Anna called, shot her sister a nasty look and shot up from her seat only to end up walking to the door so reluctantly that snow could've melted faster.

"Remember," Elsa said when Anna finally stood by the door, "you don't have to speak to him about it now."

Anna bit her lip and nodded. Her hand hovered over the doorknob. I don't have to speak to him about it now. She screwed her courage to the sticking place, felt heat rush through her body and opened the door.

"Hey, Kristoff. Hi. What's up?"

There ya have it :D Stay tuned for the next installment.

k, bye :3