"No, Suri, we're not going back!"

Krista's throat was a little raw from scolding the reindeer every twenty steps they took.

She hadn't gone back to the village to check on Jon, or even the General. All she wanted to do was go back home, curl up in a ball, and stay that way. So up the mountain they went, leaving behind the frozen kingdom and all the memories it carried.

Suri had been throwing a tantrum all the way, and once she'd suddenly stopped and flopped down on her butt, and refused to keep walking. "Fine. Stay there, see if I care," she'd told the reindeer. Of course she cared, but Krista's resolve to not go back would not be so easily broken. After that Suri had just made annoying, loud protest noises to try and get Krista's attention.

Eventually she just lagged behind, reluctantly following the blonde. But by the time they'd reached the top of the cliff, the reindeer had had enough. She nudged Krista with her antlers and stepped in front of her, blocking the path.

"Ow, hey, you're not getting anything with that attitude."

The reindeer brayed loudly and bared her square teeth, as if snarling. Krista folded her arms in front of her chest, "You know I don't understand you when you get like that!"

When the reindeer did not move, Krista rolled her eyes and stepped ahead, but Suri was having none of that. She used her antlers to lift Krista off the ground, and she'd be lying if she said it didn't hurt, "Ah! Stop it! Put me down!"

Suri dropped her, none too gently, to the snow. She landed on her butt, the reindeer still blocked the path. Krista glared up at her friend, "We can't go back!" she quickly made a snowball and threw it at Suri's fine brown coat.

The reindeer shook her head angrily and flared her nostrils, but she did not budge.

"Don't you understand?" she threw another snowball, but that one had no effect either. "He's— he's with his true love." She sounded both miserable and sour, as if saying it out loud it could make it less true.

Oh, please, of course he isn't, Suri's face read. The reindeer whined softly, she leaned down to carefully place her head on Krista's lap, she managed to not poke her eye out with the antlers.

"I know, I know you've got a point, but still—" just then the wind picked up. Krista turned her head to look at the fjord, and she did not like what she saw. A violent winter storm swirled over the castle, and even from up there she could see sharp ice clawing its way up the castle, encasing it.

"Andy," she didn't even realize she'd said it out loud and she was already dashing down the mountain, almost tripping over her own feet. Suri quickly caught up to her, and as swiftly as she could the mountain girl grabbed Suri's harness jumped on her back.

• • •

How did Andy deal with terrible situations?

He joked about them.

Like, what a joke that the girl he'd so fiercely loved for a few hours had turned out to be a backstabbing slug. The joke being he hadn't exactly fell in love with her, but the idea of her. The idea that he would not be alone anymore, that he would be loved, that... she'd been an open door.

He'd been so reckless, such an oblivious fool... maybe that was the biggest joke of all. How... Helena had said it; he had been desperate for love.

I wish I saw things clearly, he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling which was being overtaken by ice slowly— or maybe that was his vision clouding over with ice, he could not tell. He didn't care.

Already the back of his hands was looking different— not the awful black of frostbite, but a fine layer of blue—ish frost, shaped like snowflakes. Was he stupid for thinking they actually looked quite beautiful?

Death was such a final thing, and now that Andy was staring it in the face, he was filled with too much regret to even count. The Prince figured he could spend his last moments lamenting over his life, or he could focus on other things.

But thinking about other things just made him sad and angry. Elliott had been right. Krista had been right. It had not been... true love. In fact, it hadn't been love at all.

Stop thinking about it.

Stop thinking altogether.

•••

He drifted in and out of consciousness, and every time the room was a little darker, his whole world a little colder. The ceiling got thicker and thicker with ice.

Andy thought he heard footsteps once or twice outside, maybe even a yelp of surprise once, but he was too weak to call out— to do anything at all, really. Her betrayal was still too fresh and all he could manage was indifference, because if he thought about it for too long he didn't think he could handle the full—on hurt that would follow.

Andy frowned at the ceiling, "... We never got to build that snowman." He chuckled without humor, and sighed, "Guess now we never will." He closed his eyes, "And I didn't replace Krista's sled... or give Suri the apple I— or thank Kai, for all the years, everything he—" the Prince shivered and decided to stop talking.

What stupid things to think on his last minutes on Earth.

•••

The soft patter of footsteps woke him. It felt like hours, but it had probably been a few minutes. Andy's eyes snapped open.

His head lolled to the side and he blinked confusedly at the oak door. Who—?

The door handle jiggled, but she had locked it of course. Then it jiggled more violently.

Someone with a very foul mouth cursed from the other side.

Andy dared not hope, because— because the last time he'd hoped, he'd been left in a dark room to die.

"And— one, and—two, and— one, two, three, four!" the sharp sound of the door handle's mechanism breaking made Andy jump a little— well, not jump, more like flop an inch off the ground like a dying fish. Now the handle was loose, and a small figure pushed their way in, slamming the door behind them.

"Who was the bloody idiot who thought it okay to lock the gods damn—" General Winter stopped in his tracks when he saw the Prince sprawled on the ground, "M'boy!"

"G—General," Andy almost sobbed with relief. If he was going to die, he was glad to have a friendly face there, and not perish completely alone. It was outstanding how the little snowman had kept his promise of meeting them at the castle.

The General hesitated when he saw that on the fireplace there was no fire. He rushed there and threw in some logs without a second thought. Again his snowy head glanced around until those sharp eyes landed on the matches. He grabbed one, lit it up, and threw it in.

Blue and green sparks jumped up and threatened to burn him, but the General jumped away, "Why is the stupid fire—?"

"The crystal!" Andy gasped, wiggling like a worm towards the preciously warm fire. "She... she threw it in..." his arms gave away right in front of the fireplace, but just being near the heat was enough to send a fresh flow of energy through him. "Get away from the fire."

"Heat is stupid," the General declared, eyeing the still colorful sparks warily. Those were probably the crystal's fault, but it was too late to pull it out now. "But I find myself kind of loving it." He reached a tentative hand close to the flames, but when his fingertips started to drip, he jerked it away, "Ah, I think it's in my best interest to not touch it."

He went over and helped Andy even closer to the fire, surprisingly strong for such a small guy.

"So what happened to Helena? What happened to your kiss?"

The dark cloud over him that had been lifted for just a couple of seconds came crashing back down. Andy pursed his lips, staring at the fire. "I was wrong about her... she wasn't— we weren't...— it wasn't true love."

The General huffed and glared at the fire as well, "Ah... I'm sorry, m'boy. Still, I managed to defeat the Ice Hag, but her companion is still on the loose, I'm afraid that..." his hooked nose started to drip.

"You can't stay here, General," Andy gently pushed him back, "You'll melt."

"I am not leaving until we find some other act of true love to save you!" the snowman crossed his arms stubbornly, and sat down at a safe distance from the fire. After a short pause, he asked "Do you have any ideas?"

"I don't even know what love is," Andy bit out, the words harsher than he meant. Or maybe not. He didn't care.

"Love is putting someone else's needs before yours," the General replied almost immediately. He placed a hand on Andy's shoulder, Andy didn't feel the coldness of it. "Love is also letting go... for instance, you know how Krista brought you all this way, despite being very fond of you, and delivered you to another woman's arms and then left you forever?"

Love is sacrifice. Love is letting go.

"Krista... Krista loves me?" the last word came out too thick with emotion. After the last hour Andy couldn't believe that someone... someone would...

If only there was someone out there who loved you.

"Oh? Then you really don't know anything about love. Krista fell hard for you," The General moved over to stand beside him, his snowy pants almost touching the brick of the fireplace, and the side of his face started to drip.

"General... you're melting," Andy gestured at his own cheek with his blue—ish hands.

"M'boy," his ice shards for eyes glittered in the firelight, "Some people are worth melting for."

But then the whole half of his face facing the fire started to slide to the left. The General screamed bloody murder and jumped back, like a cat hissing at water.

"Fire is stupid!"

Andy almost laughed, but suddenly there was a soft knock against the door.

"Is someone out there?" he asked.

The snowman tilted his head, using one hand to place his melting face back in place, "There shouldn't be... the castle was very empty," he drew his sword that Andy had completely forgotten about. It was chipped in some parts, probably from fighting so many Meltlings.

Andy swallowed nervously. There was something wrong. An ominous feeling lingered in the air, dark and ugly and threatening.

"Maybe they'll go away—"

The door was blown open so violently it almost got unhinged; that was going to leave a huge dent on the wall. And then the tall figure shuffled in, and Andy wanted to vomit or cry or just fling himself to the fire and burn to a crisp.

Oh, Elliott, why...

It was an Ice Helena just like the Duchess, but this one was inspired by her. His stomach twisted into a thousand unpleasant knots at the striking resemblance. Why did his brother have such a good attention to detail?

However, she had some changes that Andy approved of, and probably would have laughed at in another life— she had devil's horns (well earned) and manly sideburns on her face, along with long sharp fingernails that were a polar opposite of the real one's perfect manicured hands.

"The other leader," the General hissed, putting himself between Andy and the snow/ice lady. She wasn't completely ice like the Duchess, she had more snow to her, but still... this one was a thousand times more terrifying and Andy would have liked nothing more than for his freezing heart to hurry up and end his misery once and for all and spare him of dealing with the unwanted visitor.

"You destroyed my army at the village," the Ice Princess said in a scathing voice. "Prepare to die."

•••

Had his legs not been stiff and half frozen under him, the Prince would have tackled the Ice Princess to the ground and beat her to a pulp— or whatever happened to dead Meltlings.

Alas, he couldn't really move, all he could do was watch, helpless, as the General uttered a battle cry and charged. Andy's words of encouragement were drowned out by the sound of ice crashing against ice.

General Winter hacked away at the Princess' icy body, but it wasn't having a lot of effect, since the 'blade' wasn't all that sharp anymore. She was double his size, but way slower. She had her hands outstretched, trying to grab the little snowman, but he was too quick for her.

The General did what he did best. He taunted and yelled out insults, which infuriated the ice demon further.

"Cut her where she's made of snow!" Andy urged.

"What?"

"You can't cut through solid ice, but the parts where she's got snow can be cut!"

The Ice Princess did not appreciate that and briefly turned her attention on him. Just having that face look at him made his whole body recoil. The General used her millisecond of distraction to his advantage and sliced away a nice chunk of her hip.

Enraged, the Ice Princess chased the General all over the study— the General jumped on tables, knocked down books, sent a set of chess pieces to the floor and still he fought with the Meltling. It was like watching one of the horror stories his old Nan used to tell him when he was little, only that this was real and something could happen to the General.

Their quarrel soon reached him over at the fireplace. The General must've forgot he was sitting there, because as he reeled backwards, he tripped over Andy's legs.

"General!" he screamed as the snowman's head hit the flat surface near the fire.

Immediately after the snowman was down the Ice Princess took the chance to kick the sword out of the General's hand and into the fire. It melted too fast to be saved, the ice sword that had protected Andy from so many things and intimidated so many others became a sad puddle. The Meltling monster threw herself on top of the small snowman and pinned him down.

She was trying to push the General's head into the fire.

"No! No, no, NO!" Andy tried to push her away, but try as he might she did not budge. He punched at the solid ice that was her shoulder, but all his punches did was break the skin of his knuckles. He was a mosquito and she was a moose or something, all he accomplished was annoy the Ice Princess.

His brother's creations were wrestling viciously, and the Ice Helena had the ugliest sneer on her ice face. The flames licked at the top of the General's snow hat, drip drip dirp.

"M'boy," the General said, using his strong hands to keep the wicked Meltling from completely pushing his head into the fire. Beads of water ran down his face, the heat of being so close melting him slowly. "You remember what I said about love?"

Love is putting someone else's needs before yours.

"General, don't—"

The General smiled, he had that same look on his face he'd got when he'd dreamed about summer in that frozen willow forest so long ago: sad, but a little hopeful too.

And he did something Andy did not expect.

The snowman reached behind him with a sudden surge of energy, his sparkly white hand plunging directly into the flames. The force of bringing his elbow back was enough to hit the Ice Princess square in the jaw and send her flying backwards.

The Prince stared, eyes wide, as the general sat up and pulled his half—melted hand out of the fire, the string of the fire crystal hanging from the uneven stump that had once been his arm, melted practically all the way to the elbow. By some miracle, the crystal was perfectly fine and so was the string.

Andy took it from him, and not a second later the Ice Princess had flung herself back at the General, screeching and murderous, to finish the job. The top of the General's face was droopy and melting fast, but his smile was still in place.

The Prince's face contorted into one of such determination and rage it had probably never graced his face before that moment. He put all the pain, the hurt, his never-ending loneliness and his general anger into tackling the Ice Princess to the side, just like he'd wanted to, and straddled her down. Andy couldn't tell who was more surprised; him or her.

He didn't give her the chance to contemplate it for long.

"There are people out there that love me!" he screamed at her, at himself, at her counterpart roaming the kingdom out there for his brother's blood. Because it needed to be said, because it was the truth, and he was not going to let some Princess with a crazy agenda make him believe otherwise. He forced the fire crystal over her head.

The reaction was immediate. Her ice body shuddered violently, and he rolled away like a ninja—he raised his head to watch the show. She tried to rip the crystal off, but the second her icy hands got near it they melted right off, as if it were the fire's sun and not some tiny stone that burned less than an ember. The ice on her chest melted where the crystal rested and then that water bubbled until it boiled.

Andy watched with grim fascination as her agonized shrieks became lower and lower until her voice gave out, and Ice Helena became no more than a puddle of black, bubbling water. The Prince crawled over and put the fire crystal back around his neck, which sent a wave relief from him. The flames seemed to have recharged the troll's gift a little, because he started to feel less worse. He wiggled his fingers, not as stiff anymore. There was still hope.

And suddenly he remembered.

The General.

•••

Andy gasped at the state the stupid freaking Ice Princess had left his friend in.

Half his face had melted, so one eye was missing and half his nose, but his mouth seemed intact. His whole hat was gone, but Andy figured that was better than his whole head. And of course, half his arm was also gone from willingly putting his hand in the fire to retrieve the fire crystal.

General Winter sat up, using his good arm to feel around the missing half of his face. "Ah, bugger," the snowman looked angry, "That witch killed off half my mustache, didn't she?"

"But you killed all of her," Andy said helpfully. He wasn't about to take credit for that monster's death. If it hadn't been for the General's quick thinking and sacrifice, Andy would have probably stayed there, punching and punching uselessly until his hands were bloodied messes. And after finishing the snowman, the Ice Princess would have gone for him.

"Hm. I suppose so," the General stared at the stump where his hand used to be, "How will I swordfight now?"

"You don't need to. You've killed all Meltlings," Andy reminded him, he gestured at the puddle of evil that stained the carpet, "Your work is done."

"My work will not be done until that brother of yours realizes a few things," the snowman grumbled, climbing to his feet. He pointed at the window, "Be a good soldier and bring me some snow. It should be simple to fix this. I understand you're good at building snowmen?"

Andy got shakily to his feet. His legs still didn't move properly and his bones cracked, but a short trip to the window and back shouldn't be that big a strain. After that, they'd have to think about a way to thaw his frozen heart.

He made it to the window panel without too much difficulty and started to gather some snow, until a blur of black rushing down the mountain caught his eye.

"General, would you be so kind to bring me the scope on the— oh, yes, this one. Thanks," the snowman pushed the little cylinder to the Prince's cold fingers. Andy raised it to his eye to get a better look of—

"It's Krista and Suri!" Andy all but screamed. The tool was quickly snatched away from his hands as the General got a look for himself. "They're coming back this way!"

"Huh. Maybe she didn't love you enough to let you go..." he glanced at Andy with a knowing look, "Or perhaps she loved you enough to not let you go?" the General lowered the telescope from his eye and smiled at Andy with his half melted face, "Anyway, it seems to me you got your act of true love right there. Riding across the fjords like a brave, selfless reindeer goddess! Let's go to her!"

She's coming back. She's coming back for ME!

He was suddenly so senselessly happy and swelling with so much fondness, he almost missed the sound of the walls of the room cracking.

"What now?"

Andy was no expert on architecture or anything, but judging from the massive amount of ice piercing the beams on the ceiling, he was fairly sure the room was about to collapse on itself.

They managed to rush out of the room just before a massive crack of wood indicated that, yes; the ceiling had collapsed under the ice pressure.

Out on the hallway, the scene quickly became a nightmare. They tried to run one way, but their path was quickly blocked by ice spikes taller than he was. It was like the floor and walls and ceiling were an angry ice porcupine ready to impale them.

Or Elliott's here, a tiny part of Andy's mind thought. Really, how else could something like that be happening?

And even after everything that had happened, despite all that had been said and done on both parties, Andy could not help but want to see his brother at least one last time.

+++ welp here's the second half of the reprise of "Life's too short"

++ the end is getting close and im 0% ready, if i pull this off it'll be the first story i finish ever uwu

+ also! i've been thinking about maybe doing a sequel for this story or something like that? it could be one-shots, or what happens after, or maybe some helena backstory/future. idk yet, thoughts on this are welcome

thank u for reading!:)