Disclaimer: Frozen and all recognizable characters are owned by Disney. (Though I'm pretty sure you all knew that, already. ^_^ )
Summary: Rather than talking to paintings, after Elsa shut her out, Anna took to playing with her invisible friend, Mara. Only, as she grew up, Mara didn't go away.
For a long moment, Anna remained motionless in front of the door.
Despite her demand, she honestly hadn't expected Elsa to... do it. To unlock the door for her, to let her in. For the first time in forever, to stop hiding.
Even now, part of her suspected it was a trick of some kind.
Well, she decided, there was one way to find out. She reached out and, slowly, turned the handle. The interior latch let go, and the door swung inward. She let out a breathless little laugh, commenting, "Huh, it opened." She shook her head. "That's a first."
Knowing Elsa could change her mind and slam the door shut on her again any moment, Anna pushed it open... and was hit in the face with a blast of freezing cold air.
It was enough to break past her mood, the cold so completely out of place that, for the first time since she'd been told about her parents' deaths, she felt something other than misery or anger: a mixture of curiosity and sheer bafflement. Was Elsa stockpiling blocks of ice in there, or something? Perhaps she'd finally found a use for the position of Royal Ice Master and Deliverer, a title that had officially existed since not long after the founding of Arendelle, but had rarely ever been filled. The last such person had held it... what, a century ago?
One hundred and twenty years, five months, and sixteen days, to be exact.
It had become obvious to her years ago that, whatever part of her brain it was that remembered such useless trivia and dull laws, that was probably where Mara lived.
Don't sell yourself short. Also, open door, remember?
Anna shook her head. What was the matter with her? Elsa's door was actually open for once, and she was just standing there? She'd wanted this to happen for years. Pushing the door open, she strode boldly inside.
And stopped dead in her tracks, barely registering the door closing again behind her as she stared at her surroundings in wide-eyed amazement.
Elsa's chambers had been transformed into a winter wonderland.
Ice patches were here and there on the floor and walls, with beautiful filigree patterns of frost covering the rest of the walls and windows. An occasional snowflake drifted down from... She looked up in confusion. From nowhere, it seemed, though there were icicles hanging down from the ceiling sporadically. Anna had no idea what her sister's living quarters looked like underneath the ice and snow - she hadn't missed the snow piles on the floor, looking like they'd been swept as far out of the way as they could get - but this was... amazing.
In the midst of the beauty stood Elsa herself, looking like it was taking everything she had not to dash past Anna and sprint out the door.
Having not gotten a good, solid look at her sister in ages, Anna's breath caught. Elsa... had grown up. She looked so much like Mama, especially with her hair bound up in a bun the way she had it, that Anna's heart hurt. The dress she was wearing - black, with dark blue highlights - suggested that she'd at least intended on going to the funeral, which did make Anna feel a bit better. As for why that hadn't happened... She looked around the room again, before returning her wondering gaze to her sister. She had her own suspicions, but needed to actually hear it. "Elsa? What... What is all this?"
Elsa fidgeted uncomfortably. "I..." She hugged herself, looking miserable.
Drawn by her sister's obvious distress, Anna took a step closer. Elsa took a corresponding step backward, briefly freeing up one hand to hold it up in a pleading manner. "Stay- stay over there... please." There was more than a touch of panic in her expression, which made listening to her very difficult. A biting cold wind sprang up from nowhere, making Anna shiver.
Elsa noticed. "Anna..."
"I'm not leaving." She wasn't even going to let Elsa entertain the notion. "Where did all this come from?" she demanded, sweeping her arm out to indicate their wintery surroundings. It may not have been summer, but it still hadn't snowed in over a month. Elsa couldn't have collected the snow from anywhere, and even if she had, it would have melted by now.
There was a long silence, filled only by the increasingly cold wind. Then, finally, barely audible over that, came, "...from me."
Despite having begun to suspect something like that, it still caught Anna by surprise. "But... how?" She moved closer, if only so she could better hear the answer over the rising wind.
Elsa backed up again, drawing closer to a frost- and ice-covered wall. "I... I have... powers." She obviously didn't want to be having this conversation.
Anna felt a little bad about pushing the matter, but she had, and there was no going back now. "You mean like... magic?"
"...yes..."
I told you, Anna: the world is full of magic, if you know where to look for it.
"Well, I didn't know to look here," she muttered, the sound swallowed up by the wind. Elsa didn't seem to notice. She shook her head, advancing further. Elsa kept backing away until she hit the wall. "How long has this been going on?" A pause. "And why didn't anyone ever tell me?" Because if this was the reason Elsa shut herself away, then obviously, at least some people had known: her parents, Kai, Gerda, at least some of the servants and guards... All the people who lived in the palace and could be considered at least somewhat important.
Except for her.
She hadn't stopped moving, and Elsa was getting more agitated with every step. "Stay away from me!" she finally begged. "I don't want to hurt you again!"
That did make Anna stop mid-step, if only from sheer confusion. "Hurt me 'again'?" she echoed, frowning. "You've never hurt me before." Except by years of neglect, but that was a discussion for later.
There were icy trails forming on Elsa's cheeks; she was crying, Anna realized. It was getting harder and harder not to ignore Elsa's wishes and gather her up into the hug to end all hugs. "Y-yes, I have," her sister sobbed out. "You don't remember... You knew about my powers, when we were children. I was born with them. You always wanted me to 'do the magic'. You loved it so..." She took a steadying breath. "You woke me up one night, wanting to play. The sky was awake, so you were, too. It was too late to go outside, so we went down to the ballroom. We played in the snow, slid across the ice, and made a snowman. We always made a snowman." The words were tumbling from her, now, ten years of wanting to explain to her sister why she had to shut her out all coming out at once.
Anna was listening, barely aware of a dull throb growing in her head. "That's right... Olaf," she said. "I remember... I loved Olaf!"
Elsa smiled. It was brief, but undeniably there, and the wind lessened. "I know. You were always so adorable playing with him. Then..." She shivered, hugging herself tighter. "Then you started jumping from snow piles I conjured up for you, onto new ones. But they kept getting higher, and you started going faster... I told you to slow down, but you didn't hear me, and then I slipped... I'd never slipped on my ice, before. It was too late to stop you, or make you a landing pile, but I had to try something..." She swallowed hard. "...and I hit you in the head with an ice blast."
Anna stared, dumbfounded. How could she not remember this? "My hair...?"
Elsa nodded shakily. "I saw it turn white, right from where I'd hit you. You were laying so still and cold... I started screaming for Mama and Papa. I didn't mean to... I swear, I'm so sorry..."
"It's not your fault." The statement was as instinctive as it was certain. "It was just an accident." The ache in her head was becoming distracting. She rubbed at the spot where it seemed to be centered, near her white streak, as she remembered something else. "I dreamed I got kissed by a troll." Even though everyone had told her she'd been born with it. Had lied to her. Everyone but Mara... and Elsa, who'd chosen instead not to talk to her at all. Or had been to afraid to, anyway.
"That's... actually not far from the truth," Elsa admitted. "Papa found an old map in a book, and we took you to the trolls. You... You were barely breathing, by then. The troll chief saved you, but had to take all magic, all memory of magic, from your mind to do it. He showed me... what could happen if I didn't gain control of my powers." She didn't elaborate, but shuddered violently, giving Anna a fair idea of what she meant. "Papa closed the gates, reduced the staff, so there would be fewer people around that I could hurt..."
"...and separated us," Anna finished in a whisper.
Elsa shouldn't have been able to hear it, but nodded like she had. Not that it would have been hard to guess what she'd say. "I couldn't - I couldn't! - risk hurting you again."
Anna was stricken by a horror of her own. "And every time I came to your door... I kept asking..."
"You didn't know," Elsa insisted. Even then, after everything, trying to ease her sister's pain. "You couldn't have known; we made sure of that." She sniffled. "You don't know... how much it meant to me, that you kept coming back, no matter how many times I sent you away, that you never gave up... on me."
Because she'd given up on herself, Anna realized, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with Elsa's magic. What would have happened if she hadn't forced Elsa to let her in? The pain in her head flared-
/"Do the magic, do the magic!"
"Are you ready?"/
-but she ignored it as best she could. She could worry about that later; Elsa needed her now. "Of course I didn't. How could I? You're my sister."
Elsa was shaking her head. "I was supposed to get control of my powers, but it only got worse, and worse... I can't make it stop, anymore!"
How was she supposed to fix this? She felt a sudden, brief empathy for Mama and Papa, who'd had to deal with that helpless feeling for years.
And obviously failed to do so.
"How can I help?" she asked reflexively.
"You can't!" Elsa insisted, the wind intensifying so sharply it nearly knocked Anna down. "No one can! Do you think Mama and Papa didn't try?! They..." She slammed one fist into the wall, ice spreading out from the point of impact. Despite everything, Anna felt a brief moment of wonder. "You don't... You don't understand, do you? It's my fault."
"What are you-?"
"I could have saved them!" Elsa screamed, snow mixing in with the howling wind. "If I'd been there... If I'd had control..." The wind abruptly stopped, snowflakes hanging suspended in mid-air. Anna, who had been leaning into it to maintain her balance, nearly fell over. "...I could have saved them," Elsa whispered, voice hollow. "It's all my fault."
Saltwater isn't all that easy to freeze.
"Mara's right," Anna insisted. At Elsa blank look, she realized her mistake, and repeated, "Saltwater's not all that easy to freeze."
That elicited a bitter laugh from her sister. "I could have done it. It wouldn't even have been hard. But I was too afraid to go with them. Too busy thinking of myself."
"More like everyone but yourself, from what you've been telling me," Anna objected.
Elsa didn't argue with the correction, but didn't seem to care, either. "What kind of mon-"
"Don't!" Anna's already fragile self-control snapped, and she lunged forward the remaining few feet separating them, yanking a startled Elsa into a hug before she could stop her. "Don't you dare finish that sentence!"
Elsa froze in place for a long moment, then began trying to squirm out of her sister's embrace. "L-let go... You have to-"
"No!" Anna tightened her grip. "Not again!" She didn't even care that the blizzard had started up again. If the indoor weather signified her sister's mental state, this had to be better than the still void that had preceded it. "None of this is your fault! I will not stand here and let you keep blaming yourself for ANY of it! What happened when we were kids was an accident, and as much my fault as yours, if not more so!"
"But-"
"And you couldn't have known what would happen to Mama and Papa!" she continued, completely ignoring her sister's attempted interruption. "Do you think the crew didn't know what they were doing? If they were caught off-guard by this, what makes you think you would have had time to react? You might have died, too, and then... Then I'd..." She wouldn't have been alone, exactly, as Mara would still have been there... But having to bury Elsa as well as her parents, all at the same time...
That would have been just too much for her to handle.
And forget about her having to become Queen after that...
"Please..."
"They were wrong, Elsa," she declared. "They never should have split us up." She was abruptly certain of it, though she couldn't have explained why.
"They... They wanted me to spend some time with you," Elsa confided, not fighting Anna's embrace anymore, but not returning it, either. "I couldn't risk it, though... I didn't have any control..."
"But you did at one point, right?" Anna pressed. "Before the accident, did you ever have any trouble?"
"Well... No, but..."
"Don't you understand? They never should have taken me away from you; that's when everything began going wrong."
She'd had Mara. Elsa... had been all alone, swallowed up by her fear.
Slowly convincing herself that she was a monster.
Anna felt ashamed of herself for her earlier self-centered thoughts, for not trying harder to get through to Elsa.
For not being there.
"Well, I'm here now," she declared, as much to herself as to Elsa. "And I'm not leaving you alone again."
"How can you...?"
"I love you, Elsa!" By this point, she needed to shout to be heard over the wind. "You are my sister, and I love you, and I'm sorry I didn't try harder over the years to make sure you knew that! Because it's always been true!"
Three things happened at the same time:
1) The ice storm just... stopped, as if it had never been there at all.
2) Elsa let out a loud sob and threw her arms around her sister, hugging her as tightly as she could manage.
and 3) Elsa's maneuver sent them crashing painfully to their knees, but neither noticed as they landed on the suddenly, inexplicably dry rug.
Anna simply held Elsa as she cried, comforting her as best she could while relishing the feeling of hugging her sister for the first time in about ten years. (Mara, thankfully, did not chime in with the exact length of time.) She didn't even bother trying to keep track of how long they sat like that as Elsa cried herself out. It must have been a while, though, as she was feeling sore from holding the slightly awkward position, and her back needed to be straightened in the worst way by the time Elsa's sobs began tapering off. She shifted slightly, rewarded by a loud series of pops... and froze as she opened her eyes, taking a good look around at her sister's bedroom.
Her sister's now ice-free bedroom. "What the...?" There weren't even puddles from melted snow on the floor.
Elsa, sniffling, looked up to see what had caught her sister's attention... and froze in surprise. "I... What...?"
Having no real idea what had happened, Anna simply shrugged and smiled warmly at her. "I told you they never should have split us up," she said simply.
Elsa, speechless, slowly smiled in return.