"Elsa, you need to eat your breakfast, not just move it around your plate."

"Yes mother," Elsa sighed, looking down at her plate and feeling nauseous. Normally she liked scrambled eggs and toast, but…well…

It means you're a real woman now Elsa, her mother had told her only last night, brushing her hair softly as Anna had held her midriff and cried.

She felt her insides churn and cramp and thought if this is what being a real woman is I'd like to go back to being a kid again if that isn't too much trouble. She looked enviously across at Anna sitting next to her, shovelling toast and bacon into her mouth.

"Maybe some fresh air would do you good?" the king asked as Elsa's eggs took another lap around her plate. He looked up from his own meal to see his wife and eldest daughter both glaring daggers at him. "Apologies."

"May I be excused?" Elsa asked.

"Not until you finish your breakfast dear. You know you need to keep your strength up."

Elsa felt her hands grow cold and quickly put them under the table where her parents couldn't see. Ever since she had turned sixteen it felt like conversations like this had been the norm. A small part of her had always knew that it would be; her education was a gigantic upside-down pyramid that had started small and had blossomed further and further out and now threatened to topple right onto her. When eventually the shaky structure was complete the words placed there would read Queen of Arendelle, but Elsa had no idea when that horizontal line signifying the end of learning and the start of doing would be drawn. Attempts at hurrying the process by excelling at anything her tutors threw at her had just resulted in more being thrown.

If you dig the best ditches it just means they give you a bigger shovel, Kristoff had said with the maddening calm of someone who wasn't having knowledge shoved into their brains at a rate of knots.

And now this. The food in front of her could have been worms for how appetising it felt to Elsa right now. For all the stories she'd read and had read to her about growing up somehow this had slipped by all of them? Was there some grand conspiracy nobody had told her about? And you'll grow up to marry a handsome prince, and become a beautiful queen loved by all, and your kingdom will last for a thousand years. Also starting at sixteen at regular monthly intervals it will feel like Sven has shoved his antlers into your guts.

"Elsa, please," the king said softly, and Elsa looked back up at the table and gasped. Starting at her own plate and radiating out a layer of frost coated the table, like half of a giant snowflake that was trying to encroach on her. Anna had simply lifted up her plate and put it back down again and continued eating like nothing was wrong, but both her parents had shifted their chairs back, away from the table. Away from her.

She bit her lip to stop herself from shouting. It made her so angry. Years and years and years since there had been a single…accident and still her parents treated her like a storm waiting to happen. Ever since the incident with the roof and the ice-knife she felt like she was being suffocated, tied down. She could feel the power swirling inside her begging to be let out, but every chance passed by.

I promised.

Hours she had once spent carving beautiful vistas onto the walls with intricate ice patterns had been painted over and replaced by the next morning. Rooms that she and Anna had played in her closed and cordoned off like the rest of the castle. Flurries made in summer to cool down in the blazing heat were met with disapproving glances. It might have been better if she thought they were doing it out of malice or some way of punishing her, but Elsa was too smart for that. She knew they were doing it because they loved her and were worried about her, and that made it a thousand times worse. Because she knew they were so, so wrong, and when her father grabbed her hands and told her to stop this immediately it made her so furious. They were wrong and she had no way to make them see that. On days where that kind of thing happened she would go to the north corridor and stare out at the mountain for hours, and the sight would calm her.

Only Anna and Kristoff let her be who she knew she really was.

She felt a tap at her leg and looked sideways to see Anna inching her plate over. Elsa checked that neither of her parents were watching and then quickly spooned over as much scrambled egg as she dared. Anna immediately took it back and dug in, leaving Elsa with a tiny mouthful that she gulped down as fast as she could. "Now may I be excused?" A quick nod from her mother, and Elsa pushed herself back from the table, hearing the now-frozen tablecloth crack as she did so.

She left the room, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.

I hate them so much.

"You shouldn't-"

Thunk

"-let it get-"

Thunk

"-to you."

Elsa sat at the table the servants had set out in the inner garden and watched Anna. "Easy for you to say, you're not the one who feels like she's been head-butted by a reindeer," she said, one hand idly fiddling with the blue scarf she was wearing over the blue cotton dress she'd picked out for the day. The sun beat down on them both with waves of heat but Elsa's flurry kept them both cool, making the air around them sparkle like diamonds suspended in air.

How can they look at this and not love it, Anna had said the first time Elsa had tried it, sweeping a hand through the air and sending motes of snow and ice whirling around her like a beautiful storm. Elsa had agreed, but she still only did it when the servants weren't around to report back to her father.

In comparison to Elsa's traditional dress, Anna was dressed more like a servant-boy, or like Kristoff than a princess, a brown leather jacket over a simple shirt and trousers (trousers! On a girl!). Anna didn't like dresses much, and only wore them when basically forced. Dresses hemmed her in, made her move more slowly and act more carefully. She couldn't do this in a dress, for a start.

Thunk.

Another arrow flew straight and true into the target painted onto the tree on the other side of the garden. A good sixty yards. When their parents had finally relented and Anna had held a bow for the first time she'd been lucky to hit a much bigger tree from ten feet away. Their mother had called it a passing phase and that she would be bored in a month's time, but Elsa knew her sister better. Ten feet had turned into ten yards, then twenty yards, then thirty, and the target had turned from a giant oak just inside the castle walls to a smaller elm, then to a target dummy, then finally to the head of the target dummy.

Anna had said by the next year she'd be able to hit either eye in the dummy's head whenever she wanted, and though her father had laughed he hadn't disagreed. Even at her age, Anna was better than any apprentice in the castle, and fast becoming as good as some of the actual soldiers.

"Can't your powers do anything about it?" Anna asked, notching another arrow.

"Freezing myself solid for a few days isn't a solution Anna," Elsa snapped back. Sometimes her little sister had more faith in her gift than she did. On cue her insides churned again. "This isn't fair, why don't boys have this kind of problem?" she muttered.

Anna drew back as Elsa watched her little sister, the book she was supposed to be reading forgotten. Her chest rose up as she held the breath in, a sparkle in her eyes that had nothing to do with the snowflakes that dotted the air. For a half-second she stood, legs apart, still as a statue, and then-

Thunk

Anna had barely moved but suddenly there the arrow was; dead centre in the middle of the tree, clustered along with all the others. Anna licked her lips as she picked another from the ground. Since she had first picked up the bow her parents had given her years ago – after the mess with the roof and the knife had finally cleared away – and started actually hitting things with it she had loved archery. It was so much more…satisfying…than the rest of the lessons she was taking in the castle. Courtesy and elegance and proper bearing and all of the little things which seemed to be the entirety of how to be a princess. The way she stood and danced and held a fan, or how to talk or who to talk with, and about what. The clothes she had to wear that made her feel scratchy and exposed. It was all just so difficult and confusing. She liked the feel of a bow's smooth wood or a horse's warm flank under her. She liked riding and archery and walking through the castle under a nice breeze. She liked talking with the servants and sneaking off to help Kristoff tend to the flocks of animals the castle kept and to feed Sven carrots. She liked wearing warm wool and leathers and being able to sneak around and clamber the trees in a way a dress wouldn't let her. She liked the feeling of the air whispering past her face as she let an arrow loose and she liked the sound they made when they sunk into the wood and straw she aimed them at, a sound that made her feel warm in a way she couldn't describe. Sometimes she caught herself looking at the swords strapped to the waists of the castle guards and was still envious.

The more she learned about how to be a princess the less sure she was that she wanted to be one.

She glanced over at the table to see Elsa watching her, cool blue eyes staring at her, and felt better and worse at the same time. Her big sister sat there and just seemed to be a princess so…effortlessly. With just a blue dress and scarf on she radiated elegance in a way Anna knew she couldn't hope to match. Elsa was older and always would be but sometimes looking at her Anna felt the three-year gulf between the two and wondered if she would ever become a woman the same way Elsa had. Ever since she had been old enough to know what the word heir meant she had felt mismatched against her in a way that might have caused problems if they hadn't been so close. Some days Anna felt like she was all jagged edges, and just being near Elsa smoothed them out and made her whole again and she wouldn't trade that away for anything, not even for a crown.

"Anna, are you alright?" Elsa asked, and Anna could see the concern in her eyes. Even as Elsa grimaced and shifted her hips in pain she still cared about Anna more.

Anna dropped her bow and turned to hide the blush she knew was creeping up on her. "Let's go see Kristoff."

"I have a lesson in-" Elsa began to say, but Anna had already grabbed her hand and hoisted her from the summer chair.

"Oh come on. You can feed Sven a carrot!"

Elsa smiled. "Alright fine, you've convinced me." She let herself be dragged along and Anna laughed, the snowflakes dancing and fading in the air as they left the garden.

They could be children a little longer.

Kristoff wasn't alone. He rarely was these days. When her father had said that one day Kristoff was going to be big enough to wield a sword he hadn't been wrong. The scrawny under-fed boy that had been brought into the castle on some nebulous favour to someone had grown up on years of good castle food and hard labour into someone who at sixteen was a match for any of the soldiers in Ardenelle. Where once he and Anna could have cheerfully butted heads, she would now have needed to stand on a bucket to do the same. He was still the same Kristoff as ever; bluff, honest, more than a little blockheaded, but somehow to Anna's confusion (Kristoff's too) those seemed to have changed from traits that got him in trouble once too often into qualities that had the younger servants of the staff always finding excuses to talk with him.

Friendship with the princesses that nobody outside of the three could really explain didn't seem to hurt either.

"Kristoff!" Anna waved as Kristoff and the girls he was talking with looked around. From their clothes two of the milkmaids that made endless circuits between the kitchens and the stables. The uniforms made them kind of interchangeable but Anna was good with faces, and recognised the brown-haired girl, a couple of years older than she was. "Hi Eva." From the way her uniform barely fit her the other girl was new, and definitely younger than her, and looked absolutely terrified that she was suddenly in the presence of the royal princesses.

Hair so brown it was almost black framed a pair of dark amber eyes that shut as the girl curtsied, not an easy thing to do gracefully when your arms were weighed down with steel pails. "M'lady." The eyes opened back up and stared into hers as wisps of hair fluttered across her face. "I hope you're well this morning."

"Doing okay," Anna replied cheerfully.

The eyes went down again as Elsa approached the three. "Your majesty."

"Eva." For all her education and years with them Elsa never really knew how to act around servants who weren't all old men and woman. She felt bad making people her age bow and curtsey to her. Eva wasn't one of the inner castle servants, she was just one of the nameless girls and boys who did all the grunt-work of making sure Arendelle didn't fall apart around them. Elsa passed them every day with little more than a nod and a curtsy and she always felt vaguely uneasy about it.

"Elsa's having a little trouble down there, just trying to distract her is all."

"Anna!" Elsa said, aghast. Anna shot her a raspberry.

Kristoff looked from the one sister to the other, uncomprehending, but Anna saw the little smile pass by Eva's face, almost too fast to notice. "It is a curse. Some herbs may help. Please excuse me." Without another word the milkmaids left before either of them could respond. Did she just… Anna watched as the pair sashayed away. Britt walked almost bent double under the weight of the containers, but Eva carried them both effortless, hips swaying back and forth with the movement of the milk pails.

"What? Elsa has a stomach-ache?" Kristoff asked, and Anna burst out laughing as Elsa's face went beet red. "What?"

"So what did she want? More favours?" Anna managed to make the word sound so much worse than it was.

Kristoff blushed. Anna was always taunting him, but what was he supposed to do? The stuff they asked him to do was always reasonable. Carry this here, leave that there. It was stuff he did anyways, so why not help out when they asked him? "I guess. Just to help carry from stuff between the stables is all."

Kristoff, as has been previously noted, is a bonehead.

"You'll get in trouble one day."

"We'll get you in trouble one day, is what you mean?"

"Yeah," Kristoff admitted glumly. "Again." He'd shovelled dung for a month straight after the roof incident.

"You should thank us y'know, it must be pretty boring spending all your time with the animals."

"Animals," Kristoff started, "don't ask me to do dangerous things that get me trouble. Trouble might actually be the main reason I try to stay near them and away from the two of you."

"Well we think you're being silly, right Elsa?"

"Hmm?" Elsa looked up from feeding another carrot into Sven. Bigger than any of them now, the reindeer just stood there behind them as he was fed carrots and pet and scratched. Sven got a lot of leeway from being the sister's adopted pet, and he enjoyed every second of it. Anna sighed at her oblivious sister.

The three of them stood on the courtyard laid out at the front of the castle, just after the main doors. Anna liked to imagine if she stared hard enough one day the doors would just magically vanish and the town would be right there for her to run off to. Not that she would if they did. She was old enough to know why they were shut, and why so much of her childhood was being spent in the same building. She wouldn't abandon Elsa like that. When Elsa left the castle so would she, and not before.

"You should get a dog," Kristoff suggested. Then you could stop bothering me and making Sven get fat on carrots.

"A dog?"

"Yes! A great huge dog. Like the hunting ones the nobles own." Anna could see it now. All teeth and claws and muscle. A good dog for a queen. "One that could protect you from anything."

"I have you for that," Elsa said with a smile, and stroked Anna's arm. Another jolt ran through her and she winced.

"Still got your stomachage? Oww!" Kristoff rubbed his arm where Anna had punched him. "What?"

"Shut up Kristoff, this is girl stuff."

"Oh, well, if it's that time then the milkmaid is right, there's stuff you can do to lessen the cramps." He looked between the two sisters, who were both staring at him open-mouthed. "What? I've lived with trolls. I've lived with the servants. I've been surrounded by women most of my life." They both continued to stare at him. "Come on, I'm a little slow but I'm not an idiot. OWWW!"

"Sorry, habit," Anna said, and then dropped deep into thought. "Stay right here!"

"Stay here, where are you-" but Elsa stopped speaking as Anna ran out of earshot. "…going?"

"Off again," Kristoff said. "Bet you a carrot she's gone to get you some help." She didn't need to reply. They both knew it. "Are you alright?"

Elsa knew he wasn't asking about her pain. Elsa sighed as Kristoff the friend and occasional punching-bag became Kristoff the confidant. "I almost got into a fight this morning."

"With your par- with their majesties?"

"I wish I could make them understand." She didn't know how many times she had said the exact same thing. She felt like she just couldn't get through to them, and sadness was ever so slowly making its way into anger. She wanted to grab her parents and just let loose. Make the entire castle into a giant beautiful snowflake. Make a storm whirl around them in perfect circles. Every time she tried to show them how beautiful it was – how beautiful she was – they threw new chains and limits over her. Only Anna, with a piece of Elsa nestled close within her heart, truly understood. But Anna was so young and barely understood the trouble Elsa had with their parents. Kristoff was her confessor.

"Elsa…" Years had finally beaten out the habit of Kristoff calling her 'your majesty' when they were alone. "Have you tried just…listening to them?"

"Of course I have," she said, exasperated. "I've listened to them for years now! They just…I just…" It's who I am. It's a part of me. When they're afraid and scared of it they're afraid and scared of me. When they call it a curse they're calling me a curse.

Since he had come down to the castle on a favour from Pabbie to the king (that alone something he had never thought possible) he'd learned more about the princesses of Arendelle than anyone else except their royal majesties and maybe Kai and Gerda. He'd never met people so were so unlike one another and yet got along so well together. Anna loved the outdoors, she liked people, and she liked things that moved and lived and breathed. She had a mean trickster's streak that age hadn't broken down yet that teetered between being charming and reckless, and a small part of her that wasn't often seen held a fierce and bloody temper reserved only for bullies, people who talked badly about her sister, and people who really, really, really got in her way. When you asked her sit down and do something she would ask why, and if the answer didn't make sense she'd argue until it either did or she didn't have to do it anymore.

Elsa was the opposite. If Anna was a sun that shone whether you wanted it to or not, Elsa was the moon that only appeared when she was good and ready. Her amazing (pretty, enchanting, beautiful) powers kept her away from others, and turned herself into her best friend (well, apart from Anna). Kristoff had a best friend who couldn't talk back to him, so he understood totally. If asked Elsa would have called Kristoff a friend too, but Kristoff was, as had been duly noted by many in the castle, a bonehead. The same power that drove others away lifted herself up in her own eyes. Elsa knew that she could soar higher than anyone, if only the people around her would let her.

"They're afraid for you, not of you," Kristoff said as he saw Elsa sinking deeper and deeper into herself.

Elsa wished she could believe that, she really did. She felt something warm and furry on her cheek, Sven licking at her. But today it didn't bring her any joy.

One day I'll show them. She looked at the giant gates and like Anna she saw past them, to the city beyond.

I'll show them all.

"Hello? Eva?"

The milkmaid looked up and brushed the sweat and hair from her eyes as Anna walked into the kitchen. She ignored the black look from the head chef she had once stolen an ice-knife from, and walked straight over to the brown-haired older girl.

Eva stood and curtsied. "Your majesty?"

Anna glanced over at the rest of the room. Even with minimal staff the kitchens were always loud and messy. "I need your help." She realised she was shifting her feet around on the floor and stopped. "Please." It's for Elsa.

Eva stared into Anna's eyes for a moment, and then just nodded. She turned back to the waif and said a few words, then gestured at the princess to follow.

Anna had explored – and stole from – the kitchens extensively, and the small room Eva led her towards was one of her favourite. It wasn't much, basically a few rows of shelves, a chest-high wooden table and a small chair which Eva put outside the room before closing the door. The smell inside was heavenly. Small bags and jars of herbs and spices mingled in the air around them like Elsa's snow swept through the gardens, and if Anna closed her eyes and inhaled she could imagine herself in places she had never heard of. Passing ships and merchants had sold the kingdom the leaves and dust that wouldn't grow in the cold climates, and the spices room was where those treasures were kept to stop them accidentally dusting the rest of the food. Nutmeg and cinnamon and things even rarer that didn't get taken down from the shelves except for very special occasions. Vanilla and something called 'saffron' that wasn't just a colour but something that could have been brought down from heaven itself.

"Watch me."

Anna did so as Eva went through the shelves. If this room was a kind of heaven then Eva waltzed through it like an angel. Anna had expected her to go the higher shelves that even she was smart enough to know not to 'borrow' from, but instead Eva stuck to the lower wooden decks, and Anna watched as she slow-danced across the shelves, picked up things she had seen dotted around the castle grounds. Dandelion and horsetail, yams and yarrow stalks. Eva turned back with a handful of them all and showed Anna.

"Watch me."

Anna did so, fascinated as the girl barely older than her worked magic. A jar of warm water appeared from somewhere by magic and Anna looked on as the herbs were placed in a small stone bowl, and Eva gestured over at her.

"Come, your majesty."

"Me? I don't know how to-"

"You should learn. For your sister and yourself," Eva said with a soft smile.

Out of her element and the aroma of the room making her feel more than a little light-headed, she stood in front of the table and felt a breath on the back of her neck as Eva stood behind her and a pair of warm hands were placed over her own.

"Like this."

Anna let herself be led by the older girl as Eva showed her how to make an infusion from the common herbs, but only half of her was paying attention to the instructions the milk-maid was giving to her. The other half of Anna could do nothing but focus on the sensations of the other girl behind her. All her life had been spent among a small number of people, and of all of them only three of them had ever really gotten close to her, and of her three family only Elsa gave more than a passing hug or a touch on the hand. Ever since she had been carried down from the mountain Anna knew she was warmer compared to other people and that other people – but not Elsa, never Elsa – felt colder to her, but Eva touched her skin and there was no chill there, only a similar warmth to her own. As Eva whispered instructions and moved their hands together Anna felt the breath whispering over her neck, the smooth touch of the fingers that guided her own, every contour of her chest against her back as they lightly pressed together. Anna felt like she could have fallen backwards and melted into her. She felt hot, like the sun was beating down on her from behind. She felt her eyes close as Eva's hands moved hers into the warm water and carefully crushed the herbs and squeezed them together.

"…like that. Do you see?"

The words jerked her out of her reverie and she almost shoved Eva out of the way. They tried to say "yes, thank you," but they came out of her voice as more squeaks than words. She held the small jar of herbs to her chest like a cross to ward off evil, as a hand grabbed for the door. Eventually her shaking hands managed to find it, and she swung the door open. "Thanksforallyourhelpgoodbye!" she blurted out as she left, and the last thing she saw before she practically bolted for the kitchen was Eva smiling back at her sweetly, those soft hands tracing idle shapes onto the wooden table behind her.

"Anna, are you alright? You've barely eaten."

Elsa watched as the same scene played itself out again at dinner, with her own starring role replaced with her little sister. When Anna had presented her with that little nasty-looking liquid at first Elsa had thought some practical joke was being played, but Anna had sworn with a blush on her face that it wasn't one, and that was that. Whatever magic Anna had learned when she had ran off was almost as good as her own though, and Elsa's meal was already half-finished.

"Yes mother," Anna replied, clearly lying. She dropped her fork. "I'm sorry, I don't feel so good. Can I go?" She stood as their mother nodded and left the table walking so fast it was almost a jog. Elsa didn't bother asking, she just stood and went after her.

"Anna, what's wrong?" she asked when she caught up to her in the corridor outside their rooms.

Anna wouldn't meet her eyes. "Nothing, something I ate."

Liar. In her mind she went back through the events of the day. It didn't take long. "Anna, where did you learn how to make that stuff you gave me? Wait, no, never mind. Did you drink any yourself?"

"…Yes," Anna said.

Elsa brought Anna in for a hug, and Anna didn't stop her. "Anna listen, you'll catch up with me soon okay? Don't...don't go looking for that kind of trouble on your own."

Anna just nodded, wrapped up in her big sister. She felt safe and warm there, like she was encased in a perfect shell to keep her from harm. "Thanks sis," she whispered, and hugged back in response.

Finally Elsa let go. "Go and get some sleep, I'll tell mother and father not to expect you back tonight."

Anna wiped a tear from her eye and waved as Elsa walked back to the dining room. She turned back to go to her own room. She hadn't been lying, exactly. She really had tasted just a little of the thing that Eva had given her, on some strange flight of imagination in case the woman was a spy sent to poison them both. But that wasn't the only reason her stomach felt like butterflies were running through it.

Anna fell to sleep that night with the usual thoughts and dreams to take her to sleep; knights and dragons and brave soldiers and battles with evil sorceresses to win the hand of a handsome prince. A couple – not all of them, just a few – had a slightly different ending tonight though.

Maybe rescuing a beautiful princess wouldn't be so bad either.

A small Frozen/Happy Potter crossover ficlet up on my tumblr this week in lieu of chapter notes, of which there really aren't any. Check it out if that's a crossover you like or you follow the #exolvo tag.