For Rachel, whose prompt this time was "scars, apples, sunshine."

"Oh."

Kristoff jerks his head up; next to him, Anna mutters in her sleep and turns over. "Elsa! I mean. Hi."

Elsa smiles in response, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. "Hi. What are you two doing here?"

"Huh? Oh." He glances around at the great hall before replying. "Anna wanted to catch a star shower, but, uh…she fell asleep."

"Of course she did."

"Yeah, well…" Kristoff grins, but feels it fade as he looks at Elsa again.

They all have good days and bad days; he knows that Anna has nightmares, and sometimes he wakes up clinging to a pillow for dear life because in his dream Anna'd turned cold and heavy in his arms before falling away.

Kristoff doesn't know if Elsa dreams, but sometimes he catches her staring at her hands for too long. Sometimes he sees her looking at random things in the castle like she doesn't recognize them at all, and sometimes—like right now—she just looks like…

Like she can just fade into the walls. A ghost.

"Right," Elsa says, breaking into his thoughts, "I'll leave you two to. Um."

Kristoff watches as she turns around. It's usually Anna who cheers Elsa up, but Anna's sleeping.

"Wait, hey."

He's sweating already; how does Anna do this?

"Sit with us? We can watch the sunrise."

Cool. He'll be cool.

Elsa hesitates, but sits down, and Kristoff instantly regrets everything—he doesn't dislike Elsa, okay, it's just that she's the queen and before they've always had Anna as a buffer and any moment now he's going to bring up the ice thing, it's not his fault, ice is his life—

"So…your ice magic."

Elsa raises an eyebrow.

He hates himself, definitely, but now the words are out of his mouth. "How does it work? I mean. Where does all the ice come from? Does it come from—from the air? How does that ice dress work? I mean, not that I want—does it affect you? Your ice? Would it hurt if—"

"My magic doesn't hurt me," Elsa interrupts, the ghost of a smirk on her face.

"Right," Kristoff says, hurriedly. He's just—he's going to stop, they're going to sit in silence.

"So if—if you accidentally froze your hand—"

"My hand would be fine."

Kristoff stares; something about Elsa's expression and the sure way she says it makes him think that she might have…he doesn't know.

"No," Elsa continues, staring out the window, "the only visible damage my magic has done has always been on…"

She trails off, and then swallows, hard. "I don't have a single scar on me."

Kristoff thinks of Anna and her single streak of white hair, of how she used to play with it when she was nervous—does she miss it? It'd been a part of her for so long.

Thinking about Anna with white hair makes his stomach clench, though, so he plows on ahead. "You never got injured at all? Even as a kid? You must have—fallen off of things or horses or trees—"

Elsa shakes her head. "Even before I—left, I didn't go outside much, and after…my room was—safe. It was safe. There might have been some bruises, but I don't—" she makes a self-deprecating sound, "I don't think I've ever even climbed a tree."

He frowns as Elsa slowly curls in on herself, like she can't get warm; that doesn't make any sense, the cold doesn't bother Elsa, she just said so, but…

Kristoff wonders, sometimes.

He looks at Anna, snoring nearby. It's weird; he remembers how easily she'd decided to just climb the entire North Mountain to see Elsa, and how easily she'd just—thrown herself off, with only a catch!

He glances back at Elsa, whose arms are still tightly wrapped around her torso like she's afraid of falling—

"Let's go fix that."

Wait, what?

Elsa stares at him as he throws caution to the wind and—what is wrong with him, this is all Anna's fault—grabs her hand, pulling her toward the doors of the castle. "Come on. Come on!"

For a second, she pulls back, something incomprehensible flashing across her eyes—then she laughs, softly, and follows.

"Okay, here's the deal," Kristoff says, once they're in the courtyard. "You're going to pick out your favorite apple from the trees, and then you're going to climb the tree and get it."

Elsa looks at him, somehow even smaller now that they're outside. "They're all—it's still summer. These apples won't be ripe for months."

For some reason, the way she says that makes Kristoff's chest hurt, but he pushes it aside. "So? I didn't say pick the best apple. I said pick your favorite."

She's still staring at him like he's pushed her world off its axis. "I—"

Kristoff thinks of Anna, and what she'd do. "C'mon," he prods, again, "Pick your favorite apple."

He watches as Elsa finally tears her gaze away from him and toward the trees, watches as the stiff line in her shoulders relaxes, watches as she breathes, and just lets herself be.

He watches as she lifts a hand, and—okay, he knows magic, he's lived with trolls, but this is ice—sends a large snowflake to the top of one of the trees.

"That one," Elsa says, and her eyes are alive.

"I look ridiculous."

Kristoff grins. He's never seen Elsa like this—there's nothing royal about her when she's hoisting herself carefully up an apple tree, she just looks…young. It reminds him of how sometimes sunshine hits an ice block in just the right way and causes a burst of color.

(It reminds him of Anna, too, but well—what doesn't these days?)

Aloud, he says, "I wouldn't put my foot there unless you want a broken neck. Go for the one on your left."

She huffs, and grabs the one he points to instead. "Please tell me that I'm getting close."

Kristoff looks at the snowflake floating ten feet above where she is. "You could have picked an apple that was closer to the ground," he replies, before noticing abruptly that the branch that Elsa's standing on is—

"Don't put your foot there!"

SLAM.

("This is going to scar, Your Majesty," the Court Physicians says as he looks at Elsa's arm at breakfast, but Elsa waves him away, mouth twisting upward as she meets Kristoff's gaze.

Kristoff smiles back.)