A.N. If you have any writing advice, don't hesitate to give it to me. Once again: I don't own Frozen.

"Tell me, is it true that your worthless sister has brought you here, into yourself?"

That was a question Anna didn't really know how to answer. Mostly because it involved the word 'worthless' being used after 'your' and in front of 'sister'. That just wasn't how Anna rolled, no matter how distant Elsa became. Hearing it from herself just sounded wrong. Like divided-by-zero wrong. But no matter how weird it seemed, she had to talk to herself. Perhaps this her would know the answer.

Also, to not rebut herself-in-mourning-clothes would be to back down from a confrontation over what Anna truly believed in, and that wasn't how Anna rolled either. Except that if Anna was Anna, then the other Anna would also be Anna, and... oh, this was confusing. If Anna didn't find something to call the Anna who didn't like Elsa, she was going to tie her brain in knots. So she asked the other Anna:

"Before I answer your question, is there anything you call yourself? I mean, other than Anna, because I'm Anna. Well, we're both Anna. Still, it's really confusing to call you me when you aren't me. Or, well you are, but... see what I mean?"

The dark Anna appeared to consider it. She said: "You have a point."

Anna took that as approval for the idea, and asked: "Well, you're wearing my mourning gown, so how about we call you Mourning Anna?"

The newly-dubbed Mourning Anna nodded and answered: "Yes, that seems appropriate."

With that done, Anna plowed on: "So, I'm the original Anna, so I thought that should be what we call me."

The Guide then tapped Anna on the shoulder and told her: "Ah, actually, you are not."

Anna turned around and gave the Guide an odd look. "I'm not?" she asked.

The Guide told her: "The original Anna is here, somewhere. But you are not her. You have changed, Anna. You are a different person than you once were."

The Guide gestured to Mourning Anna, and told the other Anna: "You were her, once."

Anna was mildly horrified by that statement. She didn't want to be like Mourning Anna. She didn't want to hate her sister. She didn't want to despair. She asked the Guide: "Was I?"

It was Mourning Anna who answered her.

"Yes, Anna, you were. I truly came into being the day your parents died. The day you reached out to your sister and she failed to respond. That day, you buried your parents alone. And that day, sitting outside the doors to Elsa's room, you felt true despair, Anna. That day, you were me."

Anna was disturbed by that. She had seen the level of hopelessness on Mourning Anna's face, and she did not want it to have ever been on hers. It was wrong somehow, as against the natural order of the universe as a four-sided triangle. Except, Anna had never seen a four-sided triangle, and if she was honest with herself (which she was), she had indeed worn that expression of utter hopelessness.

The Guide and Mourning Anna were right. She had despaired, that day. And that made Anna being completely without hope entirely possible, while a four-sided triangle was still as unimaginable as ever.

Anna really needed to work on her metaphors (or was that a simile?).

Anyways, she needed a new nickname. And, more than that, she needed to focus on getting herself a new nickname. She needed to tear her brain away from its morbid fascination with her mental state when she had attended her parents' burial with no one to catch and support her as she slipped and fell into despair.

She mused out loud: "Okay. So, I'm not the original Anna, so I can't be called that. My nickname should be something that, y'know, actually relates to the part of Anna I am... but wait, I am Anna, not just a part, so that'll be a bit tricky. And we're all Anna, so just being called Anna wouldn't work. Well, Mourning Anna is named after her clothes, so maybe... no, Nightgown Anna just sounds stupid... hey, Mourning Anna is still in mourning, right? So maybe I could base the name on mental state... ugh, that sounds more complicated than the first thing. Wait a minute- I'm here because I'm looking for the cause of Elsa's fear, right? I'm on a quest! So, guys- or girls- how does Questing Anna sound?"

She flashed a smile around her, looking for the approval of the other two there. Both the Guide and Mourning Anna nodded their assent, and the now-christened Questing Anna was happy with her new nickname.

Until, of course, Mourning Anna had to go ruin the nice distraction that Questing Anna had set up for herself. She said:

"So it's true. You did come here because of Elsa. Such a worthless waste of your effort. She still won't answer."

Before Questing Anna could protest in any way, Mourning Anna stepped aside from her position by the door and pointed at it.

"Look there," she said.

Questing Anna looked. Now that she got a closer look at it, she saw something that she hadn't seen before.

The door was covered in a thin sheet of ice. It was transparent and not easy to casually notice, but it was there. The ice covered the whole door, the hinges, and the space between the door and the wall. Until the ice was melted/broken, there would be no way to get the door open.

When she was sure that Questing Anna had taken it all in, Mourning Anna said:

"The door's completely iced over because Elsa doesn't want to be near you. As she has given you the 'cold shoulder', so to speak, so has the door that to you represents the way into Elsa's heart. That ice can't be broken, Questing Anna. Elsa has turned you away. She doesn't love you, nor anyone. Her heart is frozen."

Those words hit Questing Anna right where it hurt. She had often wondered if Elsa did have a frozen heart, after all Anna had tried to get into Elsa's heart, and all the times she'd still been rebuffed. She had reassured herself that Elsa was merely misguided. But she had wondered.

The song stuck in her head took on an ominous tone.

But the first verse, once it was in the forefront of her mind, pushed her thoughts in a new direction. The song was a folk tune about harvesting ice, and it spoke of cutting through the ice, and getting through to the frozen heart. It gave Questing Anna hope. Yeah, it was probably a weird thing to get hope from, but then again, Anna was weird. She was also hopeful. That was just who she was. Hopeless Anna was not Anna.

Anna may have been hopeless once, but not today. If she lost hope, then she lost everything. So she wouldn't lose hope, and if she did, she'd regain it as soon as possible.

And now she had an answer for Mourning Anna:

"I didn't come here for Elsa to answer. I came to discover why she doesn't. The Guide told me that the answer lies within me. There is an answer, and I want to know it. Perhaps it's that Elsa just doesn't like me. Perhaps it is that she has grown into a huge jerk. If that's the reason, then I'll accept it. But not knowing would be worse. There's always a chance that I can cut through the ice to Elsa's heart, and as long as I look for it, I might find it. If I don't look, it'll always be the same as if Elsa turned into a jerk. But I believe in my sister. I believe that she is a good person, and has a reason for what happened, and I

will find it out."

Mourning Anna lifted an eyebrow in a gesture of skepticism that Questing Anna desperately wished she herself could get right. She told Questing Anna:

"You're setting yourself up to fail, Questing Anna. I should know, I'm the you who did that once. It didn't work then and it won't work now."

Questing Anna responded to her dark duplicate: "You can't know until you try."

Mourning Anna sighed and said: "But you can use the past to predict the most likely future. And based on your past with Elsa, her having decided that she had become a grown-up girl and too adult to play with her little sister is far more likely than it being something that you can change. Seriously, Questing Anna, you've been trying for eighteen years now. It is likely that if there was a way for you to befriend her, you would have done it by now."

As much as Questing Anna hated to admit it, Mourning Anna had a point. She'd tried and tried again over the years with no success. This method might be stranger than the others, but still it was but one try of many. What did make her think that this one would succeed?

This was the sort of question that was meant to have no answer, but Anna wasn't the sort to play by those sorts of rules. She had an answer.

Nothing.

She had absolutely no reason to believe that this adventure would get her any more than the strangest dream she had experienced (including the one where she learned to fly by dancing to folk music).

But Questing Anna would do it anyways, because she loved her sister and believed that Elsa was worth any chance of reconnection. Any chance at all. She told Mourning Anna:

"I stand by my previous statement. I'm staying on this."

She turned to the Guide and said: "Come on, Guide. Let's go on."

The Guide shook her head and said: "No, Questing Anna. It is not that simple. Now that your journey has truly begun, you need to know where you are going. We cannot just wander aimlessly any more. Mourning Anna should have an idea of where we are going."

Oh, now that was just great. Questing Anna asked the Guide:

"Seriously?"

The Guide nodded.

Questing Anna said: "That seems a bit contrived to me."

The Guide explained: "Your journey here is a journey of knowledge. You began the journey not knowing anything, so you had to trust in blind chance for your first breakthrough. Now that you have begun, you cannot trust in simple luck to guide you through. You must build on your existing knowledge. You need to know where to go next."

Questing Anna considered what the Guide had said. She still didn't think too much of it, but if that really was what needed to happen, then it would probably be best to play along. She asked Mourning Anna:

"So, will you..."

She never got the chance to finish. Mourning Anna cut her off with a short:

"No."

Questing Anna asked:

"Why not?"

It was was Questing Anna had expected to happen, but still, she would like an explanation. Mourning Anna provided one for her:

"I will not allow you to go on such a fool's errand. Look, Questing Anna, I care about you. If you go on this journey, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. I don't want to see you hurting again."

Questing Anna did not respond to that very illuminating explanation of Mourning Anna's motives. Her mind was already made up. She was going to continue her journey. But where to go next...

"Try the picture room."

Questing Anna perked up at that. She didn't know quite where the idea came from, but it was a start. To the picture room she'd go, then. She told the Guide:

"I know where we're going next. It's the picture room."

The picture room- the place where she'd spent much of her childhood, looking at the paintings and thinking about the outside world that they represented.

The Guide raised a skeptical eyebrow (Oh, how Questing Anna wished she could pull that off!), and asked:

"So, where did that notion come from?

Questing Anna shrugged.

"I dunno," she said, "but it's a start, and it's the only way I'm going to get anywhere from here. I'm going. Are you?"

The Guide nodded. "I will always, go with you, Questing Anna. That is why I am the Guide."

Mourning Anna then surprised Questing Anna by saying:

"I'm going too."

When Questing Anna gave her a surprised look, Mourning Anna explained:

"I want to protect you, and I can't do that if you're in the picture room and I'm over here."

Truth be told, Questing Anna would rather not be traveling with her inner bitterness and despair, but she didn't think she could prevent Mourning Anna from coming, so she nodded at Mourning Anna, and then set out with her two companions for her next destination.

They reached the picture room with no further incident, and Questing Anna opened the door. She wondered what she would find inside. Would it be her inner stir-craziness? Her inner child? Her inner friendly nature?

What she did find was the picture room, exactly like she remembered it, except for one detail. A blast of nostalgia for all the time she'd spent in this very room as a child assaulted her, and then she noticed the one new detail.

An Anna, her hair done up in a complicated braid/bun-like style and wearing a green gown and necklace, was sitting on the chair under one of the pictures. Once she caught sight of Questing Anna and party, she quickly got up and hurried over. She greeted Questing Anna with:

"Hi, Other Me! Do you like the new look? It's for tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it; so much is gonna change!"

In case you couldn't figure it out already, the new Anna is wearing Anna's coronation gown, and her hairstyle is Anna's coronation style.