A/N: Here's a short Elsa & Anna one shot. Enjoy.
Summary: Anna walks out on Elsa for the first time.
Why do you crave to be free from me? Did we never love each other?
"Hey, look at me," Anna whispered. She didn't know how to approach someone that was deliberately inching away from her. She felt like she was tiptoeing around a wounded animal, her fragile resolve to engage dwindling with each passing minute.
But what could she possibly lose this time around?
Elsa had sat in front of her, hunched on the floor with her face buried in between her knees. She couldn't look at Anna. She downright refused to make any sort of eye contact, and Anna felt like the most ridiculous thing to have ever existed, to warrant such behavior from someone who was supposed to be her sister.
Am I that loathsome that you can't even spare me a glance?
"Please leave me alone." Anna nearly chuckled. How…. predictable. As much as she hated it, she wasn't surprised by her sister's calloused reply. But they weren't in the same scenario this time. Usually, whenever Elsa dodged her, there was always an exit nearby. There was always a damn door slammed in her face even when all she wanted to do was to say hello.
This time… there was no exit door. No room to hide in. They were both trapped in the library with a door that Anna had broken by accident. She didn't mean to twist the stupid handle so hard – it wasn't like she was trying to deliberately corner her sister. She was trying to leave when Elsa had told her to. She wasn't expecting her sudden arrival, and she most certainly wasn't expecting to see her tumbling into the library, gasping for air like she was being chased by a wolf.
But she couldn't get a word out of Elsa, so she sat with her on the floor with a distance that would be deemed appropriate for strangers, not for two people who shared the same parents and the same home.
Anna let out a quiet sigh. She watched as Elsa fidgeted and hugged her knees closer to her, her hair disheveled, strands of blonde sticking out at random angles. Anna wondered what had caused Elsa to leave her council and retreat to the library, forlorn. Why is she so upset? What happened? Is she hurt?
"If you don't want to talk to me," Anna said, willing the ache inside her chest to subside, "that's…fine. But are you okay?"
There was a pause, and then came a muffled reply: "I'm fine."
"I'm gonna try and open that door again. I'm sure Kai and the others are looking for you… it won't be long until they get here," Anna said as she lifted herself from the ground, pausing momentarily to reach out her hand just to drop it back down uselessly, unable to penetrate the invisible wall that stood in between the two of them, "I won't bother you anymore. I'm sorry."
Elsa dug her fingers deeper into her gloves. The impact of those last few words – words that came out of her sister's mouth out of obedience to her request - gutted her core. It wasn't enough that she had embarrassed herself in front of an entire council meeting filled with men who didn't think she was competent as queen. It wasn't enough that she had to do it all alone while struggling to keep the ice from seeping out.
As always, she had managed to fail the one person that she was doing this all for. Elsa wondered if the ground would swallow her whole for being so pathetic. But being swallowed into the deep abyss didn't seem fitting for the likes of her. She deserved worse.
Chancing a glimpse, Elsa lifted her head warily when she was sure that Anna was no longer near her. The sight of her sister made her stomach drop. How long has it been since she last saw her? Really see her? From across the room and with Anna's back facing her, Elsa watched as she fumbled with the handle, her hands twisting and turning it, shoulders shaking from the effort. Her gaze softened when Anna wiped her face – or was it her eyes? – with the back of her arm, the small gesture seizing her heart in a way that she couldn't describe.
When did she stop wearing her hair in pigtails? When… did she grow so tall?
"Elsa, I can't fix it," Anna said, her tone cautious like a child confessing an act of misdemeanor to a parent. She gently pressed her forehead against the cold wood, squeezing her eyes shut, her hand still working against the stubborn handle. Frustration that she had desperately tried to suppress began to bloom in her chest and she swallowed down the lump that was forming in her throat.
Anna felt ridiculous for trying to open a door that she wanted to remain close for once, and foolish for hoping that an unexpected predicament would enable a conversation. Shaking her head as if such thoughts would spill onto the floor and disappear forever, Anna bit her lip hard, almost drawing blood. When Elsa didn't reply, Anna dared to turn around, no longer able to stop the tears that she had been restraining from flowing.
Elsa jumped at the sudden movement, eyes widening when Anna began to close the distance between them again, her foot moving towards where she was sat. She was caught staring, and as much as she wanted to hide her face again, she couldn't. Not with Anna standing directly in front of her, not when teal eyes glimmered with tears that she put there.
"I can't open the door… and I don't want to." The queen had ordered her to leave, but she wasn't going to budge this time. All her life, Anna had obeyed the rules - Mama and Papa's rules that gave little to no explanation as to why they were made, and ones that Elsa had reinforced without so much as a warning. There was no room for questions, for reasoning, for clarity.
It was one stupid rule that took everything from her all at once, and she was so tired of it.
Anna's hands dropped to her sides, and she balled them up into tightly clenched fists as if such action could keep her pent-up emotions at bay for longer. As if it could help evaporate her longing to grab her sister from the floor and hug her so tightly and never let go.
A cloud of heavy silence blanketed them both as blue eyes met teal. If felt like an eternity, like time stood still, the chasm between two sisters now turned strangers growing rapidly with each passing second. They were inches apart, but it seemed as though they were miles away from each other, the distance so vast and ridiculously lonely.
Anna was stubborn in her own right, but Elsa's resolve wasn't going to weaken. No, not now. Slowly and excruciatingly, Elsa forced herself to stand up to even herself with Anna's height. Well, I'm still taller than her. But there are more freckles on her face than I remember… and she's growing to look a lot more like Mama.
Forcing the sharp hoarfrost down her throat, Elsa maintained her stoic expression. Conceal. "Fine then, I'll open it myself," she said, her voice cracking, betraying her façade, but still continuing on, "I have things to attend to and being here–" With you. Oh, how I miss you. "-is wasting my time."
It might've been better if Elsa had slapped her instead of uttering those words. A lone tear fell on the ground as Anna turned her head away from her, missing the twitch of her eyebrow and the slight tremble of her lip.
"Elsa, why won't you talk to me?"
Don't feel. "I don't have time for–"
"Do you hate me that much?"
Nothing in the world could have prepared her for that question. All the years of training – of forcing – herself to stay away from Anna resulted in this. All she had ever wanted was to protect her, at all costs, even if that meant shattering her heart into infinitesimal pieces. It was never her desire to inflict pain on someone else especially Anna, but that was the only thing that she had succeeded in doing.
And again, silence was the only thing that she could offer.
Looking away meant Anna's question had gravity in it, so Elsa steeled herself and kept her eyes steady on her, watching as she hugged herself, a searing pain penetrating her chest from her effort to hold back her sob. Elsa bit the inside of her cheek when Anna broke eye contact. She watched as Anna crumbled in front of her, the hoarfrost forming in her throat once again and with vengeance.
It was getting harder to breathe. She could feel her gloves tightening around her hands. She could feel an implosion within her – burning, cracking, breaking.
Anna rammed her palms into her eyes to keep the tears from leaking, her teeth gritted, adamant to keep her pained cries from filling the room. She knew darkness and dread. But to be rejected over and over again - from her sister and her only living family member - was a different kind of hell that she wasn't sure she could continue to live with.
Do something for once, just this once, you monster. "I–" a step forward, her hand shaking, reaching out, daring to touch Anna's hand, "I… I'm…" Her gloved fingers were so close to Anna's skin. When was the last time they touched? Held hands? Hugged? You have no idea how much I–
"Your Majesty! Your Highness? Is everything alright?"
The door flung open, revealing Gerda and a worried Kai. Elsa let out a small squeak at the sudden noise, dropping her hand in an instant when Anna snapped her head towards the door, her sobs halted by the pair's entrance.
Gerda could barely contain her gasp. It was a rare sight to behold, the queen and the princess in one room. Two estranged sisters who were once inseparable with a bond that knew no bounds, now distant and broken like a shipwreck lost at sea.
Elsa ripped her gaze away from Anna's pleading stare. "All is well, Gerda-" pathetic, spineless, idiot "-I have to go now," she muttered, well aware of her peripheral view. She heard a quiet sniffle, and she held her breath as Anna started to move, the sides of their arms touching briefly when Anna shouldered past her without saying another word. Kai immediately followed after her, calling out her name, but Anna continued her brisk walk back to who knows where.
Gerda watched helplessly as the queen stretched out a shaky hand in front of her to keep her from coming closer, while the other clamped her mouth shut to stifle her whimper. Elsa looked so small underneath her velvet cape that shrouded her form. Though the heaviness of her regalia and the secrets she kept weighed on her, Gerda could somehow still see through the cracks. Beneath the crown and the title was a child. A child with a broken heart that would take lifetimes to mend.
Someday, Elsa would thank Gerda for questions and sorrow left unspoken, for always lifting her arms just to lower them again, for never yielding to her desire to wrap her in her arms. For ignoring the drop of temperature and the sleet of snow growing out of the walls. Someday, Elsa would learn to still the storm inside her completely.
And maybe – just maybe– she'd learn to forgive herself for becoming someone that she truly hated.
Someday. Somehow.