Elsa, are you awake?

Yes.

It's quiet.

Good.

Too much noise. Too many people. The sound of axes against the door in the night, as if they thought there was a way to break through the shield Elsa had placed around them without her hearing. She could focus and see past it to the men with picks, feel their outlines as gaps in her snowflakes, and long spikes would form on the outside of the door and they would back away. Once there was a shadow there that looked like Kristoff, and she left him alone.

Elsa please.

The doors had been shut again.

You can't go on like this.

The castle was quiet again.

You need to let us help you both.

They had tried to take Anna away.

That wasn't the help either of them wanted.

She could look out the window and see fiery torches in the night, dotting the side of the mountain. Were they there for her? Tribute or riot? She couldn't tell, and so long as Anna was here and safe with her she didn't care.

Mother and father visited during the day and talked, and she always made sure that her hand was wrapped tightly around Anna's. Father's words were the betrayal of a locked oak door, closed and barred windows. The bars were new. Mother's words were only sadness and resignation.

We just want to help, but we don't know how.

She didn't need any help. Blinded by fear he had never understood that. Just because it was fear out of love didn't make it any better. He tried to touch her arm and she made it burn him, just a little.

We need to go away for a few weeks Elsa. We'll…we'll think. Promise me you'll think too?

She promised.

We'll see you soon.

Neither of them watched the boat leave.

Gone, the king's orders lost some of their potency, like a house decaying without regular maintenance. They snuck out of the rooms, children again, and went down to the kitchens to steal food and drink and talk with Kristoff about the stables and Sven. Anna would ask about how the horses were coming in, and Kristoff would smile and talk back and all three of them would ignore the pointed sword of Damocles hanging above their heads. Whatever happened when the king and queen returned would happen. For now they had each other, and for now that was enough.

Kristoff would touch Elsa's arm and smile to show he was unafraid, and Elsa would love him more for it. In all the castle he was the only one now.

Once he came to them wincing and with a bandage wrapped around his arm.

They don't like me talking to you like this.

She asked who.

Kristoff flicked a small little thing at her. Specked with blood where he had ripped it from the neck of the man. There's more of them now, he said. They think I should be more respectful. He fed Sven a carrot. It's getting…a little weird, outside of the castle.

You're our best friend, Anna replied.

Goddesses don't make friends with ice-boys.

She found the one who did it and he knelt, eyes wide like dinner-plates. She was angry, furious, and she came out of the castle hall at him with ice underfoot and snowflakes swirling in the air around her like the goddess he thought her to be. She was beautiful and terrible.

She had considered merely telling him to leave Kristoff alone, but when she found him, a guard she barely knew attacking one of her friends she changed her mind. Instead she commanded him. He agreed instantly without thought, a man almost double her weight and a foot higher almost cowering in the cold air that caressed him like a knife at his throat. She asked him how many others there were and he said:

More every week.

She swept away from him, catching a flash of red and green from the corner of her eye, and she turned her head to see Anna sticking her head from a doorway, giddy. When she had vanished from the guard's sight they hugged giddily like two peasant girls who'd won the summer fair.

Others who had caught glimpses of her striding through the castle talked. The oldest hands would say the guard had deserved it, most of them laughed. A few were silent, just thinking. A couple wondered where they could get their hands on a small piece of iron, and a knife to etch it.

More and more she dreaded her parent's return at the same time as she desperately wished they were back, and it tore her apart. She missed her mother's soft voice and her father's hugs. She hated her father's commands and her mother's acceptance. When they were at home there was pressure and suspicion as she wondered how this whole mess would play out in the end, when they were gone there was a hole in Arendelle a princess couldn't fill.

I wish they'd never come back.

I wish they were back right now.

The two opposing thoughts sat in her heart, and fought, and festered.

Your highness,

Nothing moved.

I have some very bad news.

Even the air was unmoving.

Your parent's ship…

Anna hugged her fiercely, the only thing in the room that wasn't frozen totally solid, from the dresses to the curtains right down to every mote of dust that lay in the room.

Never made it…

You still have me, Anna would whisper over and over into her catatonic sister's ear, as they both sat on a frozen bed as hard as rock. Neither noticed the cold around them. Kristoff tried to approach in full leathers and gasped before even reaching the doorknob.

We are so sorry to say…

We still have each other.

Lost.

I'll never leave you Elsa.

At.

Never.

Sea.

I promise.

She remembered words spoken during the funeral. Some from others, some from herself, ones that had been given to her by heralds and worried relatives because she couldn't think of any of her own. Like trying to catch mist and put it on a page, she hadn't been able to find any that would work to turn her parents from a warm enveloping fog into the cold paper-locked phrases that would describe them. So she took the ones she had been offered, and said them, and pretended that it was good. Pretended that they were even here, under the massive carved and polished rocks they had erected.

It wasn't enough.

She wanted more.

She didn't know what she wanted.

Well you have your wish now, one half of her heart told her at the same time the other one said they are really never coming home, and she split apart. She squeezed Anna's hand in her own as the rest of the gathered nobles and merchants around her just looked on solemnly. Her soul was bleeding out onto the ground. Why didn't anyone else notice? How could they just pretend?

No, it wasn't enough. Not just a grey and colourless rock and some words penned by an uncle she barely knew.

She asked to be left alone and no-one refused. The procession walked back down to their carriages that would take them back to the castle and only a few glanced back at the twin sisters, two black-clad ghosts standing atop the hill.

Be careful, Elsa said, and raised her hands and went to work, and poured out her soul on the ground. She didn't think or try to shape it, she just opened herself up and let her heart control her hands.

The few who had glanced back caught the morning light as the ice rose up, and gasped.

By the time she was done everyone was watching, but she didn't care. She looked at what she had made for her parents. Their real memorial. Ice so pure it was almost transparent surrounded her mother's headstone, rainbow light glinting from interior facets, all smooth curves and flowing shapes that twisted beautifully.

Her father's, glacial slabs that went on endless into themselves, deep blue like her eyes. Majestic and grand. Solid and strong as iron when it stood alone, but thinner, almost delicate sheets where they approached her mother.

Snowflakes danced around both, and they would forever. This was better.

It's beautiful, Anna said as they held hands and looked, and she reached up and kissed her sister on the cheek.

They turned away from the crystal ice to go home, and caught the assembled multitude below, staring up at them. Awe and suspicion and a dozen other emotions all mixed together. A few had fallen to their knees. Elsa looked down at them and the thought came into her head, the same way the thought command him had when she had been lambasting Kristoff's attacker:

Your subjects, it said, and both sides of her heart agreed.

Three years, Elsa thought to herself.

"Kai?"

"Yes, your highness?"

"Open the gates."

Short one this week pals. Started university and real life is going to make this take if not a backseat then certainly not a priority. Gut feeling tells me this is an 'end of part one'-style thing. I think we're at about the halfway mark.

As usual thoughts and reviews and crits are always welcome.

As usual, chapter notes, thoughts and a couple of future spoilers on the tumblr, as well as some thoughts on Queens. cobraygordon dot tumblr dot com.