"Begging your pardon your highness. We…we're just desperate."

It felt like a nail pounding into her head, day after day after day. The fact that the people saying it were right only made it worse. She wanted to deal with the problems she faced. She wanted to turn her full and undivided attention to the increasing discord facing her from the populace of her own country. She wanted to bring her full authority, charm and diplomatic power to bear on the noises coming from overseas, as more and more countries became aware of the strange and dangerous new monarch living in the cold north, a beautiful demon that could call down the ice and snow. Two of her ambassadors, to France and Spain, had returned shaken and baffled, and she had pre-emptively sent for her man in Constantinople to come home immediately.

She had been crushed from above and below, forced to keep both arms on the vice closing in around her. If she used both hands on the same side she could force it back, but then the other side would be free to crush her and she couldn't even see it. Arendelle was her country and they were her people. In the end she had turned her attention to them, but now she could feel the rest of the world at her back, and she didn't know if they were coming at her with handshakes or daggers.

Thank God for Hans.

"What's your worry sir?" she asked the man that was on one knee before her. The snow was still melting from his cloak and he was barely standing. He must have ridden a long way.

Petitioning was an old custom in every monarchy she knew of. At the heart of it was this: Anyone could, with sufficient warning and reason and a little humility, ask the king or queen to deal with their grievances directly. Some kings did it more rarely than others but her father had kept the tradition religiously and Elsa had swore she would do the same. Had looked forward to it in fact. Her father had done it from the smaller meeting room, where he could have more opinions and broader discussions, but Elsa had decided she was going to do it from the throne. She wanted them to see her sat there.

He looked up, an old man, face lined with a lifetime of toil. Elsa resisted the urge to cringe or feel guilty for her live versus theirs. She still felt it, looking down from a comfortable throne onto someone who had walked in in tattered cotton robes that were probably their only good ones, but she wasn't going to let herself thinks he was responsible for it. If she did her best for them that was enough. "It's the crops your highness. We…there's been a shortage."

She sighed. Every year, without fail. Arendelle was wealthy enough but nature bowed to nobody. Villages farthest inland had it the worst, without ships to trade with or routes that remained clear all year round they relied on nobody but themselves for sustenance, and the whims of the harvest. She turned to the headsman, his hat already in his hands and his face burning red, although she wasn't sure if it was shame from having to ask for charity or just a general blush. "How much?" she asked, doing the numbers in her head. She had always been good with them. Figures didn't change because they felt like it, or act irrationally out of some mis-placed belief. A pound of wheat didn't a few ounces because someone talked it into doing so. He quoted her a number.

"Have Kai arrange it," she said to the guard beside her, and watched the man almost bend double as he let out a sigh.

"How many more villages are in trouble like yours?" she asked the nervous village head.

"Th…three others nearby your majesty. We work the same fields, and what with the snow being unusually heavy this year we…not that we'd ever blame you your highness!" The colour drained from his face as he realised what he was saying. He tugged at his woollen gloves, and she noticed he was wearing an unusually thick coat that he hadn't taken off when he had knelt. When she noticed things like that, just the little things, she felt the old ghost of fear come crawling up from deep in her spine: Everyone knows.

She ignored it, and smiled. "If I could banish the snow forever I would do it in a heartbeat," she said gently to the trembling man. "Maybe one day it will be within my power. In the meantime Arendelle will be glad to protect its citizens. My head servant will see you return with everything your people need."

The man's tension faded away like snow in summer, and he even managed a smile of his own. "Oh, thank you your highness. Thank you so much." He bowed even further, threatening to topple.

That's how I'll get through this, she thought to herself as the man walked from the throne-room. One at a time.

"That's all the petitioners for today your highness," Kai said, the rotund man closing the thin scroll with finality. On cue the guards came to attention as Elsa stood – no doubt of her position there at least – and turned like clockwork as she left the room, Kai in tow.

And now that the most important part of her duties were discarded, she was free to worry about the rest.

"Has there been any sign of…"

"The same, your highness," Kai said. "Further out now, she was last seen in a village a few miles more north of the last. The headsman visited only a few days back, asking about guards to protect against a bear seen in the area."

Elsa had to fight hard to keep something from climbing into her voice as she responded. It wasn't fear. It wasn't even really worry, god knew Anna could take care of herself, Elsa knew that first-hand.

"How do they know it's her?"

"The petition has since been withdrawn." Kai said the words as if this was nothing out of the ordinary. As if the disappearance of princesses to hunt down wild animals was simply another aspect of royalty. Elsa was pretty sure he was simply extremely good at being down-key, or else their mother had hobbies she had never told her daughters about.

She was struck, walking in the corridors back to her private study, how quickly things change, and take new forms, and those forms become normal. One week since her little sister had vanished into the countryside without a sound. There had been a missing cloak from the servant's quarters, and a missing horse and riding leathers from the stables, but apart from the absence of things Anna had disappeared. Elsa had sent guards the same night after prints in the snow and mud, and had successfully resisted the urge to send all of them.

"Are you alright, your highness?" Kai asked. Asking that had become another regular occurrence. As had her response.

"I'm fine Kai, just a little tired," she lied, and watched as he didn't believe it for a second but acknowledged it anyway.

"As you say." With a bow the doors closed behind him as he left, and Elsa was left alone in her private study. Alone.

Alone.

Only one week and already she couldn't stand it. She felt fragile, she felt broken. She felt like a piece of herself was missing and from wherever it was it tugged at her. The magic under her palms and in her soul twitched restlessly like a dog sensing its owner was worried but wasn't sure why. Elsa looked up at the portrait of her father and mother that hunt above the fireplace in the small room, the only one in the entire castle not covered in a mourning shroud, and wished they were here to help her. To just be with her. She felt Anna's absence like a ragged wound. The first day she had thought it a prank. Two days without her and it had felt less like a prank and more like a punishment for not…for not being decisive enough. On the third day Kristoff had ignored protocol to rush through the castle and inform Elsa directly about the stories he had heard in the local bar about a red-haired beauty seen leaving the town at a breakneck pace, even as Leif and his guards held him back from her. Four days for her guards to confirm it, and to set off deeper into Arendelle after her, and every second Elsa fearing the worst. One week and it was unbearable.

Two weeks since you tasted her lips on yours. Two weeks since you felt her tongue probing at your flesh.

Quickly she picked up the thin sheaf of paper and tried to bury herself in reports about crops and trade before the blush could crawl from her face down into her body, like it did whenever she thought about that night. It wormed its way into her thoughts whenever she wasn't occupied, like a vengeful ghost. She told herself she was doing everything possible to search for Anna. Sometimes she even convinced herself.

Liar. You know what she wants. They aren't finding her because she doesn't want to be found by them. She wants to be found by you.

She wants her answer.

On bad nights it would be too much and the blush couldn't be kept at bay, and it would crawl inch by inch down deeper into her, and she would have to drop whatever she was doing as it consumed her. It was just a pale reflection of the heat she had felt radiating away from Anna when they had been so close together that night, but it was still overwhelming. She would sit alone – definitely alone – in the plush leather chair, her hands on the armrests in a death-grip and her teeth gritted as her insides churned and pulsed, and after it went she would sigh and take huge gulps of air and wish for something she knew she shouldn't but the desire for which increasingly consumed her.

She wanted Anna. She wanted Anna with her again. She wanted her laughing and joking and smiling as they worked. She wanted Anna by her sword, sword ready to protect her against the things creeping up on her back that had Hans looking worried about whenever he talked. She wanted to be close to her at night talking about the day and reassuring each other everything would be fine.

In her darkest nightmares she imagined herself a year and a half from now, standing before the citizenry of Arendelle as the bishop put a crown on her head, and she was standing there alone.

More than want, she needed Anna back.

She needed to feel that again. She needed Anna's breath inside her like fire. She needed Anna to touch her and melt away the stress inside her body that built up and up and simply standing and waiting for it to pass barely helped. She needed Anna's touch before she died.

With a shudder it finally passed and she breathed deeply through clenched teeth, a thin keening wail as the knots in her legs loosened and her hands released their claw-like grips on the chair armrests.

She couldn't go on like this.

She strode from the room like a woman ready to conquer something, and turned on the guard standing outside the door. "You," she said, in a voice that to the man suddenly presented with a furious-looking future-monarch was terrifying and brought thoughts of axes and blocks."

"Your highness!"

"Take me to the stables, I wish to ride."

The castle was dark at night, petitions being the last service of the day, to give a good day's preparation to the petitioner and a good night's sleep afterwards. Even now it still wasn't back up to the capacity it had been during her father's time, simply because Elsa didn't feel they needed five maids each or a half-dozen cleaners per wing of the giant stone edifice. For once this was a blessing in disguise, as they walked the mainly empty halls down to the doors that led to the castle stables, the man striding forward without daring to look back.

She couldn't go on like this.

"Els-" Kristoff's eyes glanced at the guard behind her. "-your highness." He bowed.

Elsa turned. "Leave us."

For a second the man looked like he was going to argue, but one look at her eyes convinced him otherwise. "Your highness."

Kristoff waited until the door to the castle swung shut before speaking. "Wow." Only then did he look back at Elsa. "What's wrong?" he asked. He could always tell. God, she did love the big oaf sometimes.

"I need to find Anna."

He smiled, as if he had been waiting for her to solve some kind of puzzle, and he had all the time in the world. Which was almost correct. "Finally," he said, and vanished around the stables. Elsa waited patiently, and was rewarded a minute later when Kristoff returned with two saddled horses. She looked at them warily.

"Don't worry, they're gentle."

Elsa doubted anything that weighed so much and could conceivably kick her spine out through her back could really be gentle, but just this once she could put it aside. Just this once she could put anything aside.

"And here," Kristoff said, holding out a bundle. He caught her confusion. "Clothes. Unless you want to head out wearing that."

'That' was the thin gown, shirt and underclothes she had worn at the petitioning. Suitable for a castle warmed by fires and candles, not for anything real. She took it from him without a word, and went into the empty stall to change.

"How do you know where she is?" she asked, pulling her shirt over her head and throwing it down onto the hay. Even if Gerda would tut and complain, it wasn't important. Starving villagers were important. Finding her sister was important.

"I keep my ears open," Kristoff said from around the corner.

She paused, looking at the woollen hat and leathers. They looked…familiar. "Kristoff…"

She heard him sigh. "Alright, the trolls. You know Pabby has always been…well…he's always kept on friendly terms with the royal family. Where he can."

And Elsa hadn't, the unsaid line came through loud and clear. And it really was her fault she hadn't kept up relations with the old trolls. She had discussed it, once or twice, but she knew why in the end she put off visiting them, or really talking about them at all.

They tried to take her from me.

"Did they say where she was now."

"Yes." Kristoff named a village Elsa didn't even recognise. "Inland, quite a ways." From him that could be the other side of the world.

"Tell me you packed food," Elsa said, pulling on the thick boots. They felt incredibly comfortable. She stood, and walked back around. "Well."

Kristoff smiled. "Nothing is on backwards, you'll do fine. Assuming you don't fall and bash your brains out."

"Queens are taught to ride from a young age," Elsa replied, as haughtily as she could manage in borrowed gear.

"I'm a riding instructor. You didn't."

Checkmate. "Well too late for regrets now," she said, and approached the large horse. It looked at her out of one eye. She was about to climb on when… "Kristoff?"

"Hmm?"

She looked her old stable-boy, ice-master, confidant and friend in the eye. "Thank you."

He looked away. "Oh come on," he said, bringing his own un-gloved hand to his mouth and whistling. A second later his own mount clopped out of the shadows. "Good boy Sven," Krsitoff said, scratching the happy reindeer's snout. He climbed onto his unique pet. People had laughed at the image once. Then the boy had grown up into a man the size of a barn and the reindeer had grown antlers bigger than his master, and rumour had it Kristoff kept them sharp. Now they didn't laugh so much.

"I really mean it," Elsa repeated. "Thanks. For everything."

If there was a blush there Kristoff turned away before she could see it. "Let's just leave before anyone realises I'm kidnapping the crown princess. We have miles to go."

Promises to keep, Elsa thought.

And miles to go before we sleep.

There wouldn't be any sleep. Call Kristoff whatever you want, and although in some ways he was a little dim he was never stupid, or unkind, or unfriendly to those who offered friendship. King Agdar had always allowed Kristoff to take surplus ice he cut for the castle and sell it to the town, and so everyone knew that nice young man who sold them cheap ice in summer, and were more than happy to say that yes they spotted that woman, galloping away from the town last week like the devil was on her back.

Turns out when you know exactly where you need to go to, it doesn't take long to get there, especially when your mounts are a royal horse built to pummel their way through steel and keep going, and a reindeer that had grown up in woods so thick that a simple dirt path was more like an open field. They came upon the village in the dead of midnight, only six hours after leaving.

Not close enough to be able to return on a whim. Not so far that she becomes unreachable.

Elsa felt her heart skip a beat. She knew it. Anna wanted to be found by her.

"Elsa…" Kristoff pointed, and Elsa followed his gaze, half-expecting another huge wooden cross to be erected in the centre of the village. If you could call it a village. From where they stood Elsa could see clear across the village and to the woods on the other side. Twenty houses at the most. This late at night the fields would be covered in snow, and she wondered whether this was one of the places the desperate petitioner had been speaking of. Just people trying to live their lives.

In the centre of the village was something, but it wasn't a cross. It was a wooden statue, crudely carved, the bark still pale, sap not a day old frozen to the surface. It looked like it had been hacked apart with a wood-axe rather than any kind of chisel or lathe, but she could still make the details. The cylindrical body. The tiara. The braid.

"My god…" Kristoff whispered, as shocked as Elsa had never seen him, because it was obvious who the statue was of. Of course it was. "It's you."

As if on cue a dull glow appeared in a window, and Elsa watched warily as the candle-lantern bobbed through the small wooden house. The door opened a second later to reveal a shrivelled old woman in a brown shawl, hair white as Elsa's, bent over from age and arthritis. The eyes were still clear though, and now they were looking at her in wonder. For a second Elsa cursed herself for not putting her hat up, or even hiding her hair, but too late for that too.

And no need.

"She told us you'd come."

Elsa was down from her horse and kneeling by the old crone before Kristoff could shout so much as a word. "Where is she?" she asked desperately, not needing to ask who.

"Elsa, not here," Kristoff said, not blinded by excitement. "May we?" he asked, gesturing at the house. There was a nod, and Elsa had the grace to look sheepish as the three entered the old woman's home.

"She came like you, in the night," the woman whispered as the three of them sat around an old wooden table, grooves polished into spots where she and her family had fed and rested their arms and bowls for decades. This far away from the castle you made things last. "There was a bear in the forest. It had been foraging for food."

She didn't need to elaborate any further. Elsa still remembered an old bear. "Anna killed it?"

"She only asked for shelter and food in exchange and we were happy to give it to her. She told us stories about you. About your magic, that it was real." She leaned forward and Elsa wondered. "My mother told me the old stories before she passed. Can you…show an old woman?"

But she didn't dare. She felt it crackling inside her but wild, in a way it hadn't since she had been young. "I need her with me," Elsa said, and realised as she said it that it wasn't a lie. She needed Anna.

The crone nodded, as if she suspected. "She said you would come, one way or the other. That when you were together you could make it right, fix our fields."

Oh god Anna what did you promise, Elsa thought, at the same time as a burst of pride and love flew through her that Anna believed in her so much she could say that, even as Elsa quivered and her power sparked like a guttering candle. "Where did she say she'd wait?"

It was pitch black now, the light of the moon blocked out by the forest that towered around them.

In the end she hadn't needed directions. The old woman had pointed and when Elsa had reached the first tree she had known she'd have no trouble tonight. It was bent and broken, bark scraped off where something huge had crashed into it. She had looked deeper into the forest and seen more trees. Some of them were touched the same, others still standing but covered in a frozen sheen of red that had frozen against them, somehow not washed away by the snowmelt or the rain.

It's a sign.

She had only glanced back once at Kristoff, standing next to the old woman at the doorway of the old house. He had insisted but not too much in the end. He might have thought she was crazy, but he had seen her eyes and known he wasn't going to be able to argue her out of it.

Am I doing the right thing? she wondered as she walked the path laid out for her by Anna and the bear she had hunted, deeper and deeper into the woods. The air around her seemed frozen, snowflakes hanging still, like the world was holding its breath. Elsa walked on, for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, before she found it.

It wasn't a clearing formed naturally. Even without everything else she would have been able to tell. Trees were either uprooted or simply sliced clean, the trunks laying facing outwards. The earth underneath was flat, no frozen flowers or weeds, scraped away.

She knelt on one knee in the centre, dressed in the stolen brown hunting leathers with a white cloak draped over her shoulders. Her blade – the blade Elsa had made for her – was held in both hands, point-down to the ground, like she a fairy-tale squire waiting to be knighted by the king for slaying the evil dragon. She looked up as Elsa approached.

"I knew you'd come," Anna breathed. She was pristine. The leather was a little bloodied but the cloak was still pure white, and Anna's face was the same freckled wonder it had always been, not a drop of blood there.

Elsa opened her mouth to speak. To ask what the hell she had been thinking. But then Anna smiled and it lit Elsa up from the inside out and she knew that yes, she was doing the right thing, as she rushed forward to embrace her sister. "I was so worried" she whispered when they were inches apart and Anna climbed to her feet. Even from a distance Elsa imagined she could feel the soft warmth emanating from her. Just a week apart but it felt like decades. She craved that warmth. Wanted it.

"You had to come to me, remember?" Anna asked, jabbing her ice-blade into the ground and standing there hands by her sides. The cold made her blush seem all the redder.

Elsa stepped forward until they were so close they were almost touching, like they had been that day in Anna's birthing room. "You wanted to know if I would." If I felt the same way.

"It will be hard," Anna whispered, as if having second thoughts at the last instant.

"I don't care," Elsa said, feeling Anna's breath against her face, seeing her inches away again. It had been torture. "I love you."

And this time Elsa was the one leaning forward into the kiss and Anna was the one standing waiting. "I love you," Anna managed to whisper as Elsa's lips brushed hers, and then they were kissing, hot and deep. "Elsa…" the redhead breathed in ecstasy as their lips let met and the hesitation flew out from both of them as Anna's hands came up to caress the back of Elsa's head and neck and push them ever-so closer together, as Elsa's hands shifted across Anna's back to do the same.

It was bliss, it was perfect. Every sensation she remembered and more as this time she returned it as enthusiastically as Anna gave. This time when Anna's tongue darted out it met Elsa's and this time the redhead really did moan, a sound that came from deep in her throat and seemed to travel all the way up and across it and down into Elsa, just the sound of it igniting her from the inside. She almost buckled but Anna's hand moved quick as a snake to hold her up, and she withdrew to let Elsa breathe out, a long shivering gasp for air that only made Anna want her more.

"I…I don't…" Elsa whispered as her strength seemed to fail her. No! Not now! She wanted to stand there in that clearing forever.

Anna just smiled and leaned over until her face was almost looking down into Elsa's, and the queen-apparent had to hang on for dear life just to avoid falling into the snow beneath them. "Are you alright Elsa?" she asked mischievously, watching as her breath fogged over her older sister.

"I don't…know," Elsa said, and gritted her teeth as Anna's hand move down to the small of her back, every shift of her fingers leaving pins and needles crawling across her body that seemed to migrate to her belly. Except this time the fire wouldn't die, and just looking at Anna, breathing in the hot air around her, feeling strong hands supporting her, seemed to stoke it, and her face turned red as a thin sound escaped her pressed lips that sounded like a cat mewling for its mother. "Oh. God."

Anna watched, entranced and hypnotised. "Elsa, have you never…" She watched as her older sister squirmed and shifted beneath her like a snake, hands shifted rapidly across Anna's back as if searching for something. No, she realised. You haven't. Now she blushed as she watched Elsa heave underneath her from nothing more than Anna's touch and breath, and then the blush turned into a smile, and the smile into another kiss.

Elsa's world exploded around her as Anna's mouth melted into her, and she was beyond replying. The fire in her belly spread out to every corner of her and wherever it touched she felt like crying out in ways she never had before. She was exhausted and filled and somehow hungry for more. How could anything that felt like this be wrong? An old image fluttered through her mind; Anna and the milkmaid Eva embracing in the dark of the wine cellar, hands wrapped around each other as they drank each other, and she almost succumbed right there.

"Not here," Anna whispered, and drew back. Her own fire was there, waiting under her skin, but it could wait. It had been so long since Eva, she could wait a little longer to make it perfect.

A part of Elsa wondered not more? But another part, the self-control she had worked so hard on, rose back up to contain it. "Come…come home Anna. I need you," Elsa whispered through panted breaths. She gathered herself up as best she could on legs that felt as if they had run a marathon. "Back to Arendelle."

"As what?" Anna asked.

"As mine," Elsa said, and this time when they kissed it didn't threaten to consume her, and when she drew back she managed it without collapsing. "My knight."

"Your majesty."

The old woman, who for years had sat at the table alone with no other reminder of those who had preceded her than the rough grooves in her ancient table, walked outside the next morning and smiled when she saw the cobblestones on the ground and the dying leaves on the trees, free of ice.

The men touched their forelocks respectfully as they passed by the house of the village head.

"Edgar, don't you have crops to gather?" she asked, and the young man who for the last month had despaired of recovering anything of this year's harvest from under soaking and suffocating snow, and had resigned himself and his family to hard cornmeal and berries through the winter, looked at her like she was crazy.

"Go look," she said. He went, to humour her.

Then he came back.

"To work boys," the old village head said with a cackle, and walked back to her home. She was old, very old, and every winter she wondered if she would see spring. At least she had lived to see this.

That afternoon, the village was empty, the men all working on bringing in the harvest before the snow could return,

By nightfall, the statue in the centre of the small village was decorated with flowers.

Looking back seconds after I post this: I think next week will be a double-update of the next chapter and this one, re-written. I promised myself I would stick to this update schedule to stop myself stalling out, forgetting about the fic, and abandoning it, and this busy week it's resulted in the above that feels like it's just a bones of a chapter without the meat. Apologies.

~Cobray