Author's Note: I am living in one of those rare moments when I am feeling really passionate about certain characters and I have the time to write. Hence, this chapter. Please review.

It was odd, Elsa thought, how her tears did not turn to ice or snow.

Three days ago, her mute handmaid Helga had brought in a very brief letter. The letter informed her that her parents had died at sea. It froze into a thin slate of ice in her hands. Then she dropped it and it broke, just like her heart, into tiny pieces.

Yet, somehow her tears were normal salty liquid. So it was safe to cry.

She changed her gloves for a new pair, for the fifth time that day.The box where she kept her gloves was dark green, given to her by her mother. There were words engraved on it in gold. The words were "First, do no harm."

They would be returning from the funeral now, the ladies and gentlemen grave and silent, the servants hugging Anna as if she was their own little girl. They would put her to bed with some soothing herbal tea and sit by her until she fell asleep. She would be all right. Anna was strong.

While she was here with nobody but Helga to stand by as she grieved. And Helga was not a very emotional sort. It was not fair but whoever said that it had to be?

You can't expect anyone to help you through, she thought. You must conquer your pain by yourself using what mother and father have taught you. Not right this second. There is time. Three years stretched out before her, quiet and lonely but comforting too. Maybe in three years time, she would not feel so lost anymore. Maybe by the time she was twenty one, she would figure everything out and emerge, like some ancient thinker, with all of the answers.

Knock, knock.

She gasped, turned around.

"Elsa? I know you're in there. People are asking where you've been."

Anna's voice, soft and exhausted.

"They say have courage and I'm trying to…I'm here for you. Just let me in."

Always before Anna had knocked with some request, something she wanted. Now, for the first time, she was offering something. I'm here for you. Grief had made little Anna grow up.

If Elsa opened the door, if they could just look at each other, would everything would be all right somehow?

"We only have each other now," Anna was saying. "It's just you and me. What are we going to do?"

But how could she believe in anything so optimistic when cruel reality had passed by so recently? Her parents were dead. And if Elsa knew anything about Arendelle's oceans, they had not died by drowning. There had probably been driftwood of some sort to hold onto in the ocean but in the middle of winter, how long could you keep afloat? They had most likely frozen to death. They had died from the thing that was the deepest part of her.

And if she let herself get close to Anna, if she so much as froze Anna's little finger, she knew she would go jump into that ocean where both her power and her pain could dissolve in the greater cold and finally be harmless.

She reached for a piece of parchment and a pencil.

"Do you want to build a snowman?" Anna's voice broke as she spoke.

Elsa finished writing and hurriedly pushed the parchment under the door.

The note said, "I love you. Go away. Don't knock on my door again."

From the silence on the other side of the door, she knew that Anna had read the note. She heard the sound of parchment being crumpled into a ball.

She buried her face in her arms and let herself cry because she was too weak not to and because tears were safe.