Elsa waited, staring through the hole in the ice into the blackness of the water, wishing for some inexplicable miracle to somehow deliver Lars safely back to her. Deep down, she knew that wouldn't happen. It was the kind of thing that would only happen at the end of an old storybook, and Elsa was all too aware that her life wasn't a fairy tale.

In that moment, nothing else mattered. Not the dragon. Not Arendelle. Even the thought that she had successfully rescued her sister eluded her. All she could think about was the loss, and how, in a cruel twist of fate, it had been completely meaningless. Lars hadn't gone down in a great heroic sacrifice. The battle was already over. They had won. It was merely a tragic accident.

Suddenly, Elsa came to the horrific realization that it was all her fault. She'd had plenty of time to use the full strength of her powers directly against the dragon. It was her own hesitation that had doomed Lars. If only she hadn't resisted using her powers until the last second, things would be different. Now, she faced the thought of living the rest of her life knowing the cost of her mistake.

Facing a lifetime of guilt, Elsa couldn't bring herself to accept that Lars was gone. She couldn't simply give up. She knew she had to do something. She was the only person who could do something. She had to try to save Lars. Elsa knew her inability to swim meant that if she jumped into the water to try and save Lars she would only end up drowning herself as well. She did have another idea. She knew it was a crazy idea, but somehow she was sure she could do it. She just had to trust in her powers, and hope she wasn't too late.

Elsa stood up. She backed away from the hole in the ice to the edge of the ice floe. Determined, she took a deep breath and sprinted forward towards the hole, and as she approached it she jumped as high as she could into the air. As she came back down directly over the hole, she pointed her feet down and spread her arms out and up over her head. As her feet broke the surface of the water, it instantly froze and shattered around her. As gravity pulled her downward like a wedge, Elsa froze the water around her into a hollow tapered cylinder, like a giant icicle expanding down through the water with her inside.

Elsa's powers plunged her downward faster than Lars was sinking, and she searched carefully for any sign of him. Finally she spotted him in the darkness. His motionless form seemed to be suspended in the water as she approached. Elsa reached down into the water and grabbed his limp hand, pulling his body to her a mere split-second before the wall of ice would have separated them. A flat floor of ice formed beneath them, stopping their descent, and Elsa collapsed to her knees.

"No, Lars! Please!" Elsa begged, desperately cradling his cold, lifeless body. Her hands caressed his face. "Please, no! Please wake up! Please be all right! I need you to be all right!"

Elsa had been so preoccupied with rescuing her sister and defending Arendelle and battling the dragon that she hadn't had a chance to process her feelings for Lars, but now, faced with the prospect of losing him forever, she knew how she felt. If this was to be their last moment together, she knew she had to tell him. She didn't know if Lars would be able to hear her. She wasn't even sure he was still alive. She felt compelled to say the words out loud, just the same. She pulled his body to her and held him tight.

"I... I love you," she whispered.

Elsa waited with bated breath for a response. When no response came, Elsa's heart broke. Overcome with despair, she completely broke down into tears. In the frozen cavern deep below the surface of the harbor, the only sound was that of Elsa's sobs echoing off the icy walls. The rest of the world seemed hopelessly out of reach, and Elsa felt more alone than she ever had before.

All of a sudden, Lars coughed, and Elsa looked up anxiously with renewed hope. Every second that passed seemed like an eternity. Lars coughed again, expelling some seawater, and gasped. As his breathing resumed, Lars opened his eyes and was pleasantly surprised to see Elsa's relieved face looking back at him.

"I'm alive?" Lars asked in disbelief.

"Yeah," Elsa replied with a smile.

"You saved me?" Lars asked.

"I did!" Elsa said.

Elsa took his hands to help as Lars slowly sat up without breaking eye contact with her. Time seemed to stand still for a moment as they stared into each other's eyes. They slowly began to lean in toward each other, but the mood was suddenly broken by the sound of a loud crack. Startled, they nervously looked around as more crackling sounds came from all around them. They noticed that the walls of ice were beginning to fracture around them. Elsa was perplexed for a moment but then realized what was happening.

"Love will thaw..." Elsa muttered to herself in a barely-audible whisper.

"Wait, what?" Lars asked.

Before either of them could say anything else, water began to pour down the walls as the cracks widened. The edges of the icy floor abruptly broke away from the walls and the pressure of the water underneath thrust it upward with Lars and Elsa on top of it. As they were launched toward the surface, Lars clung tightly to Elsa as she stretched out her hands and used her powers to keep the crumbling walls from collapsing down on top of them.

Lars and Elsa shot to the surface and were carried back toward shore by the resulting wave aboard their tiny piece of ice. The rest of the ice in the harbor had broken up and was quickly melting, and the other signs of winter were quickly evaporating with the summer temperature restored by Elsa's improved spirits. By the time their small frozen raft reached the shore, nearly all of the other ice had melted. The ice floe crashed into the shore, knocking Elsa and Lars off their feet and sending them tumbling forward into the sand. They came to rest with Lars on his back and Elsa face down on top of him. They looked at each other and smiled nervously, lost in each other's eyes, until another voice broke through the silence.

"Elsa!" Anna called out.