Tuesday – Later

I sat on the park bench, my eyes fixed on the ground. I didn't know how long it had been since I'd sat down, but whatever had shattered inside me still hadn't fixed itself.

After Anna had left so dramatically I'd stood in the kitchen for another indeterminable amount of time, hardly realising what I'd said. When the actual truth had come crashing down on me, I ran.

I left our apartment and had wandered the streets, until coming here, to this park bench, where I had sat, and was still sitting. There was no one else around, so I could have taken off my gloves and covered the place in snow and ice. But I didn't. I'd become too used to concealing during my thirteen years of isolation to realise that a snowstorm might help.

How could I have said that? I'd managed to imply that she had a useless job and was dependent on me, and I'd insulted Kristoff because he owned Arendelle Café.

Why did I say that?

That was the question that kept me on the bench as though I was frozen in place. Anna's words had hurt. She'd basically said that she thought that I was suicidal, that I was working far too much, that I wasn't aware of when I needed to stop, that I blamed myself for everything and she'd mentioned the...incident with my powers. Both of them.

The fact that most of it was true hadn't stopped me from hurting. And because I was hurting, I had wanted to hurt her.

I knew that Anna was ashamed of her small income, and the fact that her boisterous nature tended to put off potential employers, and I'd spent lots of nights convincing her that it didn't matter, even though I had to work harder because of it.

But I had wanted to hurt her, and I'd known exactly where to strike.

And the thought that I had wanted to hurt Anna, the very thing which I had locked myself up for thirteen years to prevent, made me feel even worse. All that effort I had put into not hurting Anna, and I had failed.

Again.

I was walking home when I heard the familiar sound of Elsa's mind. All minds feel different. Anna's was bright and warm and bubbly and optimistic, while Elsa's was scared and shy, but so full of love for her sister and Olaf. And that ever present, mysterious fear.

All that I noticed about it at that moment, though, was the pain that she was feeling. It was so intense, so raw and full of grief and guilt, that it stopped me dead. Without thinking I turned towards it. Even the fact that I had to climb over a fence to get into the park didn't matter. It barely even registered. The words that I had said to Jon came back to me:

It's part of who I am – that I can help people, that I can fix what goes wrong in their minds! She's hurt and she's scared and you can't ask me not to do anything about it!

I slowed down as I approached her. My hand automatically went for my phone, but I had no idea what to 'say'. She wasn't crying, I noticed. All of that pain and she wasn't crying. I swallowed nervously. Might as well start from the beginning.

"Hey." She jumped and turned around, brushing tears away. Okay, maybe I was wrong about the not crying.

"Taelor?" She sounded surprised; she hadn't expected anyone to find her. I felt cold anger grip my heart. How many times had she done this? How many times had she walked away and cried to herself silently, trying to comfort herself when she just felt so broken inside? And why did she feel like she didn't deserve comforting?

I paused. Picking up on some emotions is fine, but very private ones is less cool and I was getting dangerously close to the line.

"You looked upset," I told her, sitting down next to her on the bench. She turned away.

"It's nothing to worry about," she said quietly. I tried to calm my growing fury. How many times had she said this to someone and they had believed her? Never again, I vowed.

"Not telling me would worry me more." I cursed the fact that my phone had an emotionless voice and couldn't convey warmth and comfort. I gently touched her mind and sent a wave of warmth and the fact that I cared. The tension in her shoulders slowly vanished.

"I argued with Anna," she admitted shakily. "She was worried about me, and I disagreed, and it just escalated from there." I didn't think that this was a problem, but clearly she was very upset over it.

"I'm sure she knows that you didn't mean it," I told her.

"But..what I said..." The tears were falling again.

"What you said isn't unforgivable."

"How do you know that?" she asked, some of that signature iciness in her voice again. I smiled.

"I've said some pretty bad stuff to Jon over the years when I was annoyed with him. He always forgave me for it. He's said some pretty mean stuff to me as well, but I let that past. Why shouldn't Anna?"

"You make it sound so easy," she said, regret and pain in her voice, and even more so in her mind.

"It is. We're brothers." That just set her off crying again. Mentally swearing, I gently touched her shoulder. It seemed to have no affect. I sighed. This time the tears didn't look like they were going to stop any time soon. I did the mental equivalent of taking a deep breath and gathered her up in my arms, patting her back and letting her cry into my shoulder.

At first it just seemed to make her more scared, and I could feel something in the back of her mind telling her that she shouldn't be touching me, that she was dangerous and didn't deserve to be comforted. I ruthlessly squashed it, and the tears came in bucket loads. What seemed to worry her the most was that she had wanted to hurt Anna. I frowned. Wasn't that why arguments happened? You were in a bad mood, and they did something, or said something (or on one particular occasion just sat there) which set you off and that was it.

I didn't know how long we sat there for, but eventually her tears stopped and she seemed to notice where she was. She immediately moved away from me. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to–" I raised a hand, stopping her apologies.

"It doesn't matter. I'm just glad that I was able to help." I paused, wondering if I should say something to counter what I'd found in her mind. I decided that it couldn't hurt. "I remember an argument I had with Jon. What scared me the most was the way that I just wanted to hurt him so badly." She turned to look at me, something fragile in her eyes.

"He was worrying needlessly over my lack of a job and I'd just had it. I made some rude remarks about the way he never worked for anything and he responded with how I just wasn't trying, and I snapped. I wanted to make him hurt for saying that, for thinking that. I wanted to take him down a peg. I was in a bad mood anyway and he was just needlessly worrying. When I realised what I'd said, that was what scared me the most – the way that I'd wanted to hurt him."

"I felt so terrible when I realised what I'd done," she said, not looking at me. "We were separated for a long time when we were younger and we've only just started acting like sisters again. It was my fault, and I felt so guilty for hurting her and I promised that I would never hurt her again, but now.." She looked ready to cry again, so I stepped in.

"You needn't feel guilty, Elsa. Did you mean to hurt her when you were separated?" She shook her head, but something in her mind screamed about protecting her sister. "Then it was unintentional, and you needn't make up for it." She shook her head again, and I could feel an old hurt well up inside her, a hurt that she had learned to hide so well that it had escaped even me.

"I felt terrible when I hurt her," she whispered, and I got the feeling that she wasn't talking about their argument any more, but some older incident. I felt an absurd desire to stand up and protect her from whatever was hurting her, but I knew that I could do nothing to help her. This incident was in her past and the past was forever barred from tampering, however noble.

I stood and was about to suggest that we leave and I walk her home, when I felt her fear spike. She shot up, looking at me, her hands over her mouth. "No, no, no, no..."

"Elsa! What's wrong?" I demanded, but she did nothing but back away, still repeating that one word.

I looked down at myself frantically and spotted it. My shoulder where Elsa had been crying was covered in snow. I looked at Elsa again. That had upset her? Sure, it was the middle of spring, but still...

I paused as memories unfolded in her mind, memories that I knew I shouldn't look at, memories of ice and snow and "Do you want to build a snowman?", and finally her fear was explained. In that one, blinding instant, I understood.

Elsa could somehow make snow and ice.

She wasn't afraid of me. She was afraid of hurting me. I moved towards her, ready to reassure her of the ridiculousness of that notion, when I realised something else as well.

Elsa was like me.