"Wakey wakey!" Olaf greeted cheerfully as he skipped into Anna's quarters, dragging a wooden trunk behind him. Nudging the door shut with his foot, he shoved the trunk further into the room, sending it skidding with ear piercing shrieks across the stone floor.
"Come on, Anna. It's time to get up." He unceremoniously yanked the thick quilt from the bed, eliciting a grumble of protest from the half-awake redhead. Moving around the furniture, Olaf threw apart the heavy curtains, sending the princess to dive headfirst into the covers in a failed attempt at avoiding the harsh morning sunlight.
"Up, up, up." Olaf was back by the bedside, tugging on the redhead's arms and pulling her into a sitting position.
Anna rubbed her eyes blearily, resting her forehead against an arm propped against a raised knee. Her unruly auburn locks had frizzled and doubled in size as she slept, several strands sticking out at awkward angles and defying gravity.
"What time is it…" She mumbled incoherently, her brain still half asleep. "Brr… its cold… why is it so cold…" She added, rubbing her hands against her arms in an effort to generate some warmth.
"It's training time." Olaf declared, kicking open the lid of the trunk and tossing a woollen jacket and gloves onto the covers.
"Why do we even need winter wear… it's the middle of summer." Anna nudged the sea green jacket with her foot.
"Uh, because Elsa has decided we're having a snow drill today?" Olaf replied, giving the princess a look as if it was perfectly obvious why.
"What are you talking about?" Anna sighed exasperation. "And why are you here, anyway."
"Elsa sent me." Again, with that isn't-it-obvious tone.
Anna nodded, giving up on trying to make any sense of what the boy was going on about. His train of thought seemed to jump sporadically or perhaps she was still too groggy to keep up. Regardless, she was clearly incapable of doing anything else now other than follow instructions.
Twenty minutes later and with a lot of help from the dark haired boy, Anna was following Olaf down the stairs, dressed warmly in fur lined jacket, woollen pants, gloves and boots beneath chainmail crimped around her waist by a thick leather belt. Her hair had even been tamed into their trademark twin braids, a feat that would have been miraculous by herself.
It wasn't until they had met with Kristoff at the foot of the stairs and the muscular blond had thrown opened the Keep's doors that Anna realised exactly what was off since she woke up this morning.
It was snowing.
Thick sheets of sleet rained down from a dark sinister cloud hanging directly above the barracks. Every inch of the cobblestone courtyard was blanketed by uneven layer of snow. Men dressed in warm winter clothing beneath their mail milled about the courtyard, completely unperturbed to the fact that it was snowing unnaturally.
Snow. In the middle of summer.
What the heck is going on?
Anna whirled around to face the hulking blond, mouth gaping open and gesturing wildly at the scene. To Kristoff's credit, he somehow managed to comprehend through the redhead's vague gestures as to what she was struggling to put into words.
"Once in a while, we've snow days. You didn't think with Elsa as our trump card, we wouldn't play to our strengths, did you?" He answered easily, hopping off the steps and landing knee deep into snow as he waved for them to follow.
"It's the key to our battle strategies. All hush-hush of course." Kristoff winked at the princess, smirking at the grimace on her face.
Anna had never been much for keeping secrets. She babbled far too much for anyone to trust her with sensitive information. She was essentially a ticking time bomb, the need to cover up eating away at her until she eventually sprouts everything in an unstoppable ramble. Unfortunately for her, Kristoff seemed to have figured that out.
Deciding that the princess had panicked enough, Kristoff continued. "Well, as secretive as an twin cannon sitting exposed on deck anyway." He scoffed lightly.
His remark earned him a ball of snow to the head.
"Hey!" The blond gingerly rubbed the back of his skull before pulling off his beanie and shaking out the frost. "I'm guessing you picked that up from Elsa. You two are ridiculously alike. Can't believe I didn't noticed before." Kristoff muttered to himself as he ruffled his blond locks, brushing out stray ice particles from his hair.
Behind him, Anna froze midstride. She had heard every word and they boomed in her head, triggering a barrage of memories that sleep had graciously dampened down. The snowball that she held in one hand dropped to the ground soundlessly; the mischievous glint in her eyes fading away.
A young Elsa, cheeks chubby with baby fat chasing after her as she charged down the castle halls dragging a broadsword stolen from one of the suits of armour. Elsa braiding her hair as they sat together on her bed. Elsa teaching her how to read. Elsa covering the ballroom with snow so she could build snowmen on Christmas morning. And Elsa trying to summon a pile of snow to break her fall when she stupidly slid down the staircase railings in the foyer. Elsa miscalculating the trajectory when Anna decided to do an impromptu backflip in mid-air. The look of absolute horror on Elsa's face when the blast of her powers struck Anna in the head.
Then ten years of wondering where her best friend had gone. Ten years of being unable to glance at Elsa's old bedroom door. Ten years of growing up alone, of having the blonde come to mind whenever something happened only to realise that Elsa wasn't around anymore to listen to how her day went. Ten long years of thinking she was the reason why Elsa left without a word.
And all this time, Elsa had been here.
"Where is she?" Anna demanded, unable to keep the fury out of her voice.
After the blonde had literally ran away last night, Anna had stopped by Elsa's office quarters, bearing a small plate of chocolates that she had saved as a peace offering. The blonde's door was shut and no amount of knocking, no matter how insistent could cajoled her to open it. Anna knew the blonde had taken refuge in her office. The flickering of candle light from beneath the door, interrupted by long shadows that flit from side to side, indicated that someone was pacing in the room. That and how the same shadow stopped moving when Anna slid the platter of chocolates through the gap between the wood and the floor was evident enough.
Eventually, Anna had trudged off to her room downstairs. Her last thought before she gave in to the lull of sleep had been how ironic that the blonde was just on the floor above yet the distance between them seemed even greater than the ten years they had spent apart.
"Who?" Kristoff turned back at her scalding tone.
"Elsa. How many other females are there amongst the ranks besides her." Anna crossed her arms impatiently.
"Whoa, feisty pants. Date went wrong last night?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. Now where the hell is she?"
Kristoff raised an eyebrow quizzically, undaunted by the hostility in the slender redhead's tone and posture.
"Wherever she disappears to on any given day I suppose. She's probably busy with grand marshal stuff." He shrugged nonchalantly, oblivious to the redhead's annoyance. "Whatever you need to see her about has to wait, I'm afraid. We gotta get you up to speed with snow drills. We've still got a war to prepare for."
Anna seethed quietly; her fury however was short-lived as a reindeer bounded across the courtyard towards them.
The beast skidded to a stop, pink tongue lolling from between parted lips as it eyed the princess curiously. Deciding then that she bored no threat, the creature lumbered forwards and nuzzled the redhead with its snout, eliciting a giggle from the princess.
"Who's this?" Anna asked, running her fingers through the coarse fur on the reindeer's head.
"That's Sven." Kristoff pulled out a carrot from the folds of his jacket, waving it tantalisingly at the drooling reindeer.
"Sven? Wait, wasn't your squire named Sven too?" Anna made a face of disgust when Kristoff took a bite of the half-eaten carrot that the reindeer had spat out.
"Yeah." The blond responded distractedly.
"So, there are two Svens?" Anna probed.
"Oh, hi Sven!" Olaf greeted, bouncing down the stairs from the Keep, a long sword in its scabbard tucked securely under his arm. Anna hadn't even noticed that the dark haired boy had not followed them out.
"Sven's Kristoff's squire!" Olaf explained as he deftly fastened the scabbard to Anna's belt.
"A reindeer as a squire?" Anna eyes flicked between the beast to the hulking blond, watching in confusion as the man held a conversation with the oddly expressive animal.
"Is he talking to Sven?" Anna whispered to the boy, raising a hand to muffle her words.
"Yeah…he's crazy." Olaf whispered back not so discreetly as they watched Kristoff doing a voice over for the reindeer while they seemingly conversed.
"I can see that…" Anna eyed the pair warily, unconsciously shifting away to put some distance between them.
Finally noticing that they had an audience, Kristoff, straightened up awkwardly, a sheepish grin on his face.
"Come on. We better get started…" He muttered, waving for Anna and Olaf to follow him.
xxx
"Your Majesty. You asked to see me?" Elsa greeted stiffly, torso bended into a low bow of respect as she stood just inside the threshold of the King's antechambers.
"Elsa. Come in and shut the door behind you." The older man continued scrawling his signature on parchments with a feathered quill, hardly glancing up.
The blonde did as instructed before striding further into the room and standing at attention before the desk, her eyes fixated directly in front. More rustling of parchment then a whiff of heated wax as the King embossed a folded parchment with his seal. Finally looking up from his task, he gestured for his grand marshal to take a seat.
"I see you've covered the barracks in snow this fine morning." He stated wryly. His features were stoic but a small crinkle around his eyes betrayed his amusement at the situation.
"I figured the men could use some more training in such…harsh conditions." Elsa responded impassively. "Besides, it was an opportunity to get the Princess up to speed on our military tactics." She added as an afterthought.
It wasn't a complete flub. Though, in all honesty, the snowstorm began last night; literally minutes after Anna had finally given up on trying to coax her from her quarters with chocolates.
The King nodded in understanding, deciding to not call out the blonde on her weak lie at the moment. "I trust you're satisfied that Anna is more than capable of taking care of herself now?"
Elsa narrowed her eyes at the monarch who looked almost like he was about to burst into laughter. "Yes. I can't say I appreciate your neglecting to mention that the Princess is skilled in swordplay though." She sighed audibly. "Is there anything else about her that I need to know?"
The King smiled benignly. "No. Is there anything you want to tell me?"
It was a loaded question. The implication behind the words clear and Elsa knew better than to lie.
Her shoulders slumping in defeat, Elsa muttered. "She knows."
"What is it that she knows?" There it was again. The subtle way the words were spoken yet it was a clear command that she had better be forthcoming with the truth or there would be hell to pay. Such was the power of words particularly from a sovereign.
"The suppression spell on her memories broke. I don't know how but my…power seemed to have caused it to unravel. She knows everything. She remembers everything." Elsa sighed in resignation. In twenty four hours, she had had to deal with emotions that she had fought hard to repress for the past ten years.
"That, may not be a bad outcome." The King sighed then, a rare show of his frustration.
Under Elsa's concerned gaze, he carefully removed a small wooden box, embossed with intricate designs of the Arendelle crest on its lid from the bookshelf behind him. Pulling out an unmarked brass key from his pocket, he proceeded to unlock the box, withdrawing a scroll of parchment from its depths and pushing it across the desk to Elsa.
"That was clutched in your hands when Gerda found you. Its contents may give you more questions than answers. But perhaps with your keen mind, it may make far more sense than it did for me."
Elsa carefully unrolled the scroll; small bits of the parchment flaking in places, brittle from age. Her eyes skimmed across the runes scratched into the surface, literally burned into the material. The symbols were foreign. Nothing like anything she had laid eyes upon. Yet as her eyes flicked from one strange character to the next, they seemed to glow an ethereal blue.
The symbols made no sense whatsoever. But its message was clear.
xxx
As it turned out, snow drill basically meant running through snow while weighted down with armour. By the third morning, they had moved on from trudging knee deep in snow to sliding on packed ice, all while waving sharp, pointy things at each other. For all the grace and finesse that Anna possessed while on solid ground, she fared remarkably well on ice.
Needless to say, there had been no sign of the elusive grand marshal, saved for the gradual ceasing of the freak snow storm.
Anna had given up on trying to catch hold of the blonde. She had attempted to ambush Elsa by waiting outside her door minutes before meal times, thinking the blonde would need to eat at some point. A fat load of good that did, Elsa never did step out from her quarters, at least not while Anna was keeping a close eye on her locked door. She had even panicked on day two of Elsa's 'Avoid Anna Campaign', concerned that the blonde might have passed out from the lack of food; only to have Olaf flippantly mention that the blonde probably lives off ice cubes. As innocent as the boy looked, Anna could barely take his words seriously and decided against sharing her worries about the blonde in future.
It was exactly a week after Anna first arrived at the barracks when Elsa made a surprise appearance in the Dining Hall in the midst of dinner. An affair that everyone in the barracks had grown to appreciate for it meant getting out of the cold and warming up with a hot meal.
Cutlery clattered on the tables and benches scraped back against the stone floor as soldiers hastily rose to their feet, right fist clenched over their hearts in salute.
Elsa, in her officer's uniform strode down the length of the room, facial features arranged into an impassive mask. Taking her place at the front of the room, she clicked her heels in precision and returned the salute, her eyes immediately seeking out Anna's and nodding imperceptibly in the redhead head's direction.
"At ease, gentlemen." Her voice boomed through the deathly silent room, crisp and authoritative as the attention of each soldier was fixated on her.
At this precise moment, Anna wondered if the blonde was a completely different person with whom she had had dinner with just a few nights ago. Gone was the awkwardness and in its place, an unshakable confidence that appeared to resonate with her power. Her presence itself, seemingly struck a mixture of fear and awe within everyone in her company, the princess herself included. And Anna found herself drawn in, so enraptured by the blonde that she almost failed to notice that Elsa had started speaking again.
"Tomorrow at daybreak, we set sail." Elsa began, the low timbre of her voice ringing through the room. "Sharpen your swords, polish your armour and be prepared to raise our banner up high. But tonight," She paused, her voice lowered for dramatic effect. "Tonight we drink!"
The cheers were deafening. Men slammed their fists against the wood, adding on to the din. Barrels of ale were rolled into the Dining Hall from the kitchen beyond, the amber liquid sloshing onto the ground as goblets of the alcohol were passed around.
Through the merriments, Anna couldn't help but noticed the shaky sigh of relief that escaped the blonde's lips or the way gloved hands were clenched into tight fists by her sides.
The grand marshal was quaking with fear. As if she could sense Anna watching her, Elsa turned her head in the princess's direction and their eyes met for the briefest of moments.
And Anna immediately understood. The fear that she had seen earlier in Elsa's eyes had been for her men.
Elsa was afraid for the lives of the men who will be following her into battle.
A/N: Did someone say update?