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“Do you wanna build a snowman?”
Elsa can hear the little thump as her sister hits the floor, on the other side of the door. She’s heard that question every winter, whenever she can see the world outside her window become the same as that within her room, the kingdom covered in ice and snow. Because Anna doesn’t know, cannot know, that they once made snowmen in the ballroom in the height of summer, or skated around the dining hall in springtime.
She waits until there’s snow on the ground, and then she asks.
Because there’s no one else their age in the whole castle, no one else at all in the royal apartments, not ever. No one but Anna, Elsa, and their parents.
Now, it’s just Anna and Elsa.
Their mama and papa, the only people they had in the whole universe, put off their trip through the calm summer months because Elsa’s powers were growing dangerous. By the time the air turned cooler, the weather worse, and Elsa’s powers were back to their normal, only slightly horrible levels, the storms were gathering true force in the South Sea. They knew that; they went anyway.
And Elsa’s angry about that, thrown in with the mad chaos of grief and dispair and aching, sinking, suffocating loneliness, and she crumples, her face buried in her knees, her arms clutching herself close because mama’s not here to do that now, and papa can’t stroke her hair. No one can calm her, keep her down, no one at all.
“Yes,” she whispers, and she hears the little thud as Anna’s head hits the back of the door in surprise.
After all, they’re each all the other has in the world anymore. Elsa wants to be strong, to protect her fragile little sister, to keep her safe from the horror in her own hands. But even she isn’t strong enough for this. No one is strong enough for this.
Their parents are dead, and they are alone. Utterly, entirely, completely alone.
And Elsa can’t let Anna be as isolated as Elsa has to be. She just can’t.
So she’ll come out for a few days, she thinks, try to be there, keep her gloves on and as many clothes as possible and make sure Anna’s okay. Then she’ll claim the grief is too much, fall ill or just silent, and retreat back into the safety and privacy of her room, where she can't hurt anyone.
She just has to make sure that Anna’s alright. She’d die if anything happened to her sister, to the only family she has left. The only thing she loves in this whole terrible world.
“Wh-what?” Anna’s voice trembles (oh, God, Anna don’t cry, please don’t cry) and Elsa takes a deep breath and releases it slowly in a long puff of steam. A flurry starts in the far corner of the room. More ice spreads from her feet.
“We can make a snowman, okay?” she says, “Just… meet me out in the courtyard? I need to…”
“Okay,” Anna says, determinedly, the hope in her voice breaking Elsa’s heart (it’s not permanent, Anna, it’s only for a few days. It can’t always be this way. You’ll thank me one day, for keeping you safe).
Her footsteps retreat quickly, heading for the staircase. Elsa stands up, her legs shaky but thankfully holding, and heads for the wardrobe. She doesn’t really need the warmth of the thick furs, the woollen skirts, the heavy stockings and boots and gloves and all the rest, but the more clothes she wears the harder it’ll be for the power to escape.
She won’t leave Anna alone with this: she can’t. She’s too weak for that and loves her little sunshine sister too much, but she won’t hurt her either. If she lost Anna, she might as well bury herself in a snowdrift and never come out again.
Elsa gives a little bitter laugh at that, looking around the icy nightmare that is her bedroom, her sanctuary, her home: she already has.
When she arrives outside, Anna has already started on the snowman. She looks up, startled, at Elsa’s murmured, “Hey.”
“H-hey,” Anna stammers, and Elsa’s heart breaks even more: she didn’t expect her to come out. But why would she? They’ve barely spoken in ten years.
She could have asked their papa to let her out once in a while, to play in the wintertime. They could have spent time together like this, in the deep snow, when her powers wouldn’t be obvious and she could be bundled against her own strength. She didn’t have to leave Anna this alone, not Anna who needs people and laughter and smiles like a flower needs sunshine.
Elsa is ice, cold and hard: she’s fine on her own.
No one ever thought how her sunny little sister might feel, confined to the same fate through no fault of her own.
They should have sent Anna away, far away. They could have sent her off to Corona, maybe: their aunt and uncle are the rulers there, and they lost their own baby daughter years ago. They would have happily taken in Anna if papa had only asked; they’d been so lovely to both sisters, when they’d visited as children. But papa had believed that Elsa would get better, and by the time it was apparent that she’d only get worse… well, by then it was too late.
“You made a good start,” Elsa smiles, taking a small step closer, just a little, as if Anna is a deer in the forest who might be spooked by any large, quick movements.
“Thanks,” Anna smiles (oh, God, Anna don’t smile like that, you’ll only make this harder when it ends), and Elsa wonders who could possibly have thought that it was a good idea to lock her away too. The world needs that smile, which can beam so bright even when it’s so dark, and so cold, and so lonely in the wintry air. “You wanna help?”
“Sure,” Elsa leans down and starts to gather a snowball. She finds it easy to roll it around in the deep snow, gathering whole shifts with every movement, (no magic, Anna, I promise, not today, I won’t ruin this with magic and hurt you again). She could wave a hand and have an army of snowmen, but she doesn’t.
They build in silence, gloved hands touching occasionally but nothing more, until finally they have a smallish, lopsided snowman.
“Is this one Olaf too?” Anna asks, tentatively.
“I don’t know,” Elsa looks at it, critically, but she can see more of a feminine fall to the snow and snowgirl seems more accurate. It’s certainly not an Olaf. “It looks kind of... girly. Does it look like it likes warm hugs?”
“No one likes warm hugs in this house,” Anna says, softly, sadly, almost to herself. She's so used to talking to herself, just like Elsa (please don’t be sad, please, I can’t make it better, Anna, I can’t even try, please don’t cry).
“Do you… has no one hugged you, since…?”
“Not since they left,” Anna says. “They… we’re princesses. They don’t think it’s appropriate. They think we’re the same.”
Elsa can feel the rage filling her slowly, icy and cold as everything else about her but harder, steelier and sharper, ready to murder someone. No one comes near her because she doesn’t want them to, because they can’t, because they were told expressly not to. But Anna… Anna needs people. Anna deserves a platoon of loving, kindly, warm friends and family lining up to comfort her, to stroke her long red hair and hold her close and make everything alright again.
Instead she gets servants who are stiff and formal, in mourning themselves and unwilling to comfort a grieving princess; who are insulted by the aloofness of her older sister and, in her absence, take it out on Anna.
Instead, she gets a frozen courtyard, a lopsided snowgirl, and a sister who hasn’t spoken to her in a decade.
And that makes Elsa angry.
She takes a deep breath, “Just, give me a moment, okay?” Anna nods, dumbly, and starts trying to stop their snowgirl from falling over while Elsa walks away and around a corner.
She needs to get it together: she can’t be feeling this now. Not now, when Anna needs a sister more than anything in the world, and Elsa can't be selfish, can't feel everything and cause an incident when Anna needs her calm. She rips off her furry gloves, and the ubiquitous woollen ones beneath, until her hands are bare to the cold air. She barely feels it: she never feels the cold, because she is the cold. And usually, she can just about cope with that.
But not today. Today, Anna needs warmth, and Elsa cannot tell her that she’s looking in the wrong place, that she’s living the wrong life, that her world will be cold and lonely so long as she allows Elsa to be in it. Because Anna doesn't have a choice: this is the sister she has, the life she lives, the world she was born into. Nothing can change that; wishing won't make it so.
Elsa concentrates, hard, as hard as she ever has, and tries to pour all her anger and sadness and longing and pain into a single long, frozen blast out of her palms, pure cold and ice shooting from her hands and her fingertips and straight at the little space that, in summer, will hold hay for the horses, but is empty in winter. The ice starts to spike and stab at the sides, rise up, pure and hard and deadly, but Elsa keeps going.
Anyone who sees this will know it’s not natural, that something awful happened here. Let them see, let them wonder, Elsa is doing what she has to do.
She can’t hug Anna, warmly or otherwise, while she feels like this. She’ll hurt her, she’ll cause a blizzard, she’ll make it worse. So Elsa releases her anger here, as hard and fast as she can, until she is drained, sobbing silently, shaking, tears rolling down her cheeks and freezing to hard little pellets as they fall to the floor at her booted feet.
She’s emptied, and when she tries to release another blast it comes out weak, a flurry rather than a storm. She’s spent up, for a little while. It’s safe to go back.
“I’m sorry,” she says, tentatively. Anna looks surprised again, and Elsa wants to die (you shouldn’t have to be shocked when I’m by your side, Anna, I’m your sister, it’s where I belong, I’m sorry I keep failing you). “I just…”
“It’s okay,” Anna nods, biting the inside of her lip, and Elsa knows that look, it’s the look she wears herself much of the time: Anna is trying not to cry. “I… sometimes I have to go off for a moment, too, just to be alone. It gets a bit much, doesn’t it? All the feelings, the... the grief?.”
“Yeah,” Elsa smiles, gently, reassuringly as she can. “It does.” Then, Anna steps aside, and Elsa can see what was behind her back. “What is that?”
“It’s a snow-sister,” Anna says, as if she’s embarrassed, her hands fiddling behind her back. “You were right: the snowman’s not an Olaf. It looked like a girl, like you said, so I made another one.”
The branches that are their arms are touching. They’re snowgirls, snow-sisters, standing side by side. Elsa hopes she’s strong enough to hold it in for a few more minutes, before she has to cry again and the storm rebuilds inside.
“That’s… that’s lovely, Anna,” she says, softly. “You did a great job.”
“Thank you,” Anna beams at the unexpected compliment.
“Do you," she takes a deep breath, trying to be brave, as brave as her trembling little sister, "Do you want a hug? I know we don’t usually do that, but you were right, it’s just us now. So maybe, just this once?”
“You’d want to?” Anna frowns. “Why?”
“No one else has hugged you,” Elsa shrugs, “And that’s wrong, because you’re being so brave.”
“Okay,” Anna nods, “O-Okay.” She steps closer, and Elsa holds out her arms, and suddenly she has an armful of sister hugging her as close as possible, face buried in her shoulder and arms tight around her ribs. Elsa gently wraps her own arms around Anna’s shoulders, and holds her for a long moment, while the other girl’s shoulders shake, silently, sobbing against her, and Elsa feels the dread and the grief and the anger, all the pain of the world, clench inside her (Anna if you cry I won’t hold on, I can’t, I’m so sorry, you have to stop, I can’t do this…).
She finally has to push Anna away, “Okay, that's it," she says, trying to be gentle, knowing she isn't. "Anna, go inside, where it's warm.” She tries so hard to not be sharp, to sound kind. She doesn’t manage it, and Anna’s blotched face creases in confusion and hurt.
“Why?”
“I… just go! Go now!”
“No, you can’t do that, you always do that, no!” Anna screams, but Elsa is about to explode, about to pour ten years of anguish into the sky itself, and Anna cannot see that, she just can’t. "You can't ruin this, not now, please Elsa!"
“Anna, you know things can’t be like this. I can’t explain, you'll understand one day, just- just get inside, now!”
“You always do this,” Anna sobs, “You always shut me out!”
For a moment, an awful moment, Elsa thinks Anna will reach for her, her hand on Elsa’s shoulder, and she’ll be hurt again. Elsa can already feel her skin growing colder, the wind picking up around them, the snow falling faster and harder (please, Anna, don't touch me, don't come near me, don't let me hurt you, please)
Anna's hand rises, as if to take her sister's hand in hers. But then, then it drops, back to her side, hopeless and final as a slammed door, and she whirls around in a flurry of black and green fabric and runs, raw and sobbing, to the door. It closes hard right as Elsa howls, and a blizzard descends, ice falling in heavy hailstones down onto the castle roof and the courtyard floor, the sky frozen and bleeding as Elsa’s power pulses out in harsh waves, freezing everything in its path.
They're calling it the storm of the century, apparently, when Elsa creeps out days later to get food from the kitchen and a new book from the library. The worst storm in living memory.
Anna doesn’t even look at her, when Elsa passes her open bedroom door and glances inside. They didn’t speak before, but at least they had tentative little smiles, courtesy if nothing more.
Now Elsa has frozen even Anna’s warmth, her sunny affection, and that’s the worst thing she’s ever done. Worse even than begging her parents to stay longer, last summer, and causing them to leave late and die in a storm.
Anna doesn’t come to her door again: Elsa doesn’t come out.