Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

^[1]She’s on a balcony looking out.

This railing used to be too high. Before she had to wedge herself in between its bars, half in and half out, to get a proper view of the grounds below. But Elsa’s grown since her seventh birthday (Papa said that it’s because he was stretching her by hand while she was asleep, but Mama laughed in a way that meant it’s probably not true really), and now she can peek over and see practically the whole kingdom, from sea to forest. It’s a beautiful day out, bright and warm. The breeze ruffles her hair a little, like it’s saying hi.

It’s still kind of a wobbly view, though, since she has to stand on tippy toes, so after a few seconds she sinks back down, fixes her attention back to the mug in her hand. It’s full of tea; the grown-ups were drinking it during lunch. Papa said she’s not old enough to try it yet, but Mama slipped her some while he wasn’t looking. Elsa drank some of it right away, and it tasted so gross that she must have made a face, because Mama made a face back like she wanted to laugh but couldn’t ‘cause of the other adults in the room.^[2] She still has the mug in her hands because she wanted to have Anna try it, just to see what kind of face she would make, but then she saw the open door to the balcony and got distracted.

The mug burns her skin a little, now. She could probably cool it off fast, but she’s not sure how that will change the gross. Plus, she likes looking at the little curls of steam rising up and mingling with the air.

Elsa?^[3]

She’s closing her eyes, picturing herself floating up into the endless sky with the steam, when she hears it: a woman’s voice calling her name. Probably the nanny, wanting to scold about Elsa getting too close to the edge. Or Mama’s done early with the grown-up meeting and can come see Anna drink the tea with her.

Elsa?

There it is again. She turns—

And suddenly, she’s sitting at the fjord. The world feels like it’s going to slip through her fingers and fall apart, but the only thing in her hands is still, absurdly, the tea hot as coals. The sun shines overhead, but it is bitterly cold. From behind she hears a metallic scrape, the sound of a sword being pulled free from its scabbard.

Elsa?

She gasps as a blade bites into her shoulder; then she’s holding the sword with her own hands, wedging it deeper into her chest.

“For Arendelle,” she hisses, Grandfather’s voice pouring out of her mouth.^[4]

She’s on a balcony looking out.^[5]

It’s still early enough that Arendelle feels a little sleepy. If she leans over the railing and looks really close, she can make out the light layer of frost coating the lawn. The weather’s been steadily cooling for a few weeks now, and first snow is just on the horizon.

Elsa wonders what Anna’s doing, right this instant.

A hand touches her shoulder. “Back to work,” Papa tells her.

“I thought I heard a voice,” Elsa says as she follows her father back to his study.

Before, Papa might have asked who the voice sounded like. Before, he might have even made a joke—something about hearing magical voices being passed down the royal bloodline, probably. Now Elsa watches as an indecipherable expression crosses his face, and he turns away from her to look at the pages of his book. “The pride of kingly sway,” he prompts.

The expression is fear, Elsa realizes. She looks down, too. “The pride of kingly sway from out my heart,” she recites, “With mine own tears I wash away my balm. With mine own tongue deny my sacred state. With mine own breath release all duty—duchy—”

“Duteous.”

“Duteous,” she obligingly repeats. “Duteous oaths. With mine own breath release all duteous oaths.”

“Good,” Papa says. “And the meaning?”

“He’s giving up the crown to Bolingbroke.”

“Correct. And?”

“And he doesn’t want to. No,” she corrects, thinking back, “He doesn’t think he can.”

There’s no trace of fear on Papa’s face now, just the ghost of a smile. “Why not?”

Elsa blows out a slow, careful breath, working through the play’s internal logic. “If he has to use his kingly powers to give the power up, then the power just comes back to him, doesn’t it?”

The smile widens by a fraction. “Very good, Elsa.”

“But then…why isn’t he happy? Doesn’t that mean he wins, because he’s king no matter what?”

“An interesting question,” Papa replies. “Let’s try to work it out together: Richard believes that being king is his divine right. Being king is always his job. Even now, when Bolingbroke has seized all his power and he’s giving up his crown—”

“He’s always going to worry over the kingdom,” Elsa realizes. “But that’s so sad.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Papa says. “Richard’s fate teaches us an important lesson about our task as monarchs, Elsa. When you take the throne, you will become Arendelle. You will no longer act as individual but as nation. It is important that you recognize this for the privilege and burden that it is, and never take it for granted, because it is irrevocable. You will be bound forever to your people. Only by embracing—and asserting—your right to rule can you act in a manner worthy of the kingdom.”^[6]

Elsa nods, and tries not to let her eyes widen. Conceal it. Papa does this sometimes—tells her really important things that feel almost too big to handle.^[7] It’s scary, but she likes it all the same; it’s how she knows he still trusts her. To be queen one day, and to be everything else. 

His expressions softens. “My father taught me that, when I was around your age.”

“Grandfather did?” He nods. “What else did he teach you? What was he like?”

“I suppose I don’t talk about him very much, do I?” He leans forward a little, and she does the same—like they’re two partners about to share a secret. It warms her from the inside out. “He was a good father. An even better king. Wise and strong-willed—he taught me a lot about when to take a stand, when to offer friendship. Sometimes I…hm.” He suddenly looks a little shy. “I guess sometimes I still wonder what he’d think of me, as king. What he’d think of the job I’m doing.”

“He’d be proud,” Elsa says immediately.^[8]

Papa smiles again. “I hope so.”

Elsa smiles back. She feels perfect. “So how do you do it?”^[9]

“Hmm?” Papa looks away, distracted. When Elsa follows his glance out the window she notices the sky’s gone all gray. Maybe first snow is going to happen earlier than she thought.

“When you’re crowned,” Elsa clarifies, “How do you know if you gave up being yourself really? How do you make sure that you’re really doing good for the kingdom, and you’re not just being selfish and making excuses?”

Papa starts to answer, but before he can another voice drifts into the room, distant but deep like thunder: …too entitled…think they can defy the will of a king…^[10]

Elsa almost runs to Papa before she remembers that she shouldn’t. The room’s getting darker now, like the mist outside is creeping in. “Who was that?”

There’s no reply except, after a long silence, a shaky sigh.

“Papa?”

Something cold falls onto her left glove. When she looks up Papa’s face is wet with tears, and he’s looking at her like he only just now figured out who she is. “Elsa,” he says hoarsely, “My wise, wonderful girl. You’ve cut through the heart now, haven’t you?”

“What? Papa, I don’t—”

“There’s so much,” Papa says. The mist is thicker now, hiding his face and making his voice weird; he sounds younger all of a sudden, older than Elsa but not by much. “So much I want to tell you, so much I’m sorry for. I love you, Elsa, more than life itself, and that’s why you—you have to go. Elsa—”

But the mist drowns him out completely.

She’s on a balcony looking out.

“Abroad,” Elsa repeats blankly.

“It’s an interesting idea,” Mother answers.

They’re both seated in stuffed chairs. Mother likes to do this sometimes—does her own embroidering in the open air, asks Elsa to join her. Elsa’s not sure why; the gloves make any kind of needlework impossible, so all she can do during these sessions is sit and endure and bite her bottom lip bloody. Maybe it’s practice.

“Your father tells me it’s something of a tradition. Normally we’d have an exchange, but—” The temperature dips abruptly. Mother clears her throat, and then continues, a little louder. “That’s easily renegotiated. It’s a good way to foster diplomatic ties and learn something about the outside world. And…well. You know how Anna is.”

Elsa says nothing, because she doesn’t. Not anymore.

“She’s been begging to travel for years,” Mother says, after a slight pause. “It’ll be good for her, to get out there a little.”

Get out of the castle, where Elsa’s been keeping them all trapped for a decade. “Yes,” she says out loud. It’s the perfect solution for everyone involved. It’s safer for Anna to be farther away from her, and if she can make friends in the neighboring kingdoms she won’t be so lonely. Her sister can leave her behind, forget all about her…

Elsa smothers that grief in its crib. It’s the perfect solution for everyone involved. If Anna moves on without her, so much the better.

“It’s a good intermediate step,” her mother is saying, “Acclimating her to new people, for when we reopen the gates.”^[11]

The fabric of her gloves go stiff with frost. “What?”

Mother looks at her intently, like the answer is obvious. “When you’re ready for it, of course.”

A mangled laugh tears its way out of her mouth. When. As if when hadn’t long wilted to if. As if the probability of if isn’t dwindling year by year.^[12] “I don’t—”

“You’ll be ready,” her mother says, smiling at her in reassurance.

Elsa wishes she would stop. “It’s getting worse,” she says. Hates the tremor in her voice. “I don’t know how to—I keep hurting people.”

“Is it that you keep hurting people, or that people keep hurting?” Her mother has turned back to her embroidery. “Because Elsa, darling, you’ve been given a tremendous power, but even you can’t claim responsibility for all of the second.”

“But I do hurt people,” Elsa argues, “You and Father and—and Anna—”

“You didn’t inflict this hurt,” Mother interrupts sharply. “I don’t want you to think of yourself as anything except its locus.^[13] We love you—that’s why we bear it with you.”

She’s too tired to argue anymore. “I wish you didn’t have to.”

“I know,” Mother replies. “But we chose this, Elsa. You can’t take that choice from us. All you can do is trust that we can live with it.”

Elsa stares down at her hands, focuses on her breathing; in and out, in and out, until the frost dissipates. When she looks up again, Mother is still smiling. She smiles back. “I wish we really had this conversation.”^[14]

“Me too,” Mother agrees. Then her smile fades. “But, Elsa—you really shouldn’t stay.”

Elsa looks out again. There are clouds gathering in the distant horizon, and for an instant she can pierce through their veil and see what’s coming: a ship, a sea, a storm.

Anna never got to visit Corona.

“Did you already tell Father the truth?” she asks. “Is that why you planned to send Anna away? Or was that planned first, and then you told Father, and you both decided to go in the moment?”

Mother opens her mouth, but no answers pass through her lips.

The clouds are moving rapidly toward the grounds. “What was it like to set sail? What were you hoping to find? An answer? A cure?”

“Elsa—”

“Were you scared?” Elsa thinks forward to a short note, scribbled at the corner of an indecipherable scroll. The way the s in Elsa jerked as it curled, like Mother’s hands shook when she wrote it. A life reduced to little marks. “Were you excited? Did it feel like going home?”

“Elsa,” Mother says, only Elsa can’t make out her face anymore. The clouds have descended from overhead into a thick, gray mist. “You can’t stay, Elsa, or you’ll be trapped.”

“Is that how you felt?” Elsa demands. “Did we trap you? Father and Anna and the kingdom and I—is that what we were doing? You just told me to trust that people can live with the hurt, but you couldn’t live with it in the end, could you? And now you’re gone, and we have to live without you.”

“Elsa,” There’s nothing of her mother now except a sigh on the wind. “Elsa.”

“You left me,”^[15] Elsa cries. Then she, too, is gone; swallowed by the mist.

She’s on a balcony looking out.

“Wow, would you look at that!” Olaf exclaims. He’s perched on the railing next to her, feet kicking idly over the edge. “The sky’s awake.”

He’s right. The auroras seem particularly determined to show off tonight, unfurling in gossamer strands so bright she could mistake the evening for day. After a while the violent energy of the display makes her uneasy; like something’s tearing open the canvas of the sky. “Come on, little guy,” she says, taking hold of his hand.

Olaf pouts, but follows her back into the room agreeably enough. Once past the threshold, though, Elsa stops at the sight on the floor: a basket of paper slips, an hourglass, and a bell. “I remember this,” she says, “Family game night. We played charades.”^[16]

“Kristoff and I kicked butt,” Olaf agrees.

“He’s not here.” A cold, dizzying thing uncoils in her stomach. “Where is he, Olaf? Where’s Anna?”

“They’re just taking their time.” He makes his way over to the paintings on the wall, humming. “Hello, epic mustache.”

Runeard’s portrait is larger than she remembers. “There weren’t any Northern Lights the night we left. Where am I? This isn’t home.”

Olaf turns back to look at her, a wide and guileless smile on his face. “No?” He’s not humming anymore, but the sound is still echoing off the walls.

“I think I’m dying,” Elsa says, wrapping her arms around herself, digging her fingers deep into her skin. The cold is spreading upward into her chest. “Or is this—am I already dead? What did I—”

But the word do dies on her tongue as the truth spills into her, fills up her lungs. The answer—the cold—and then she’d jumped—

Mother had been wrong. She’s already trapped.^[17]

Elsa sinks bonelessly onto the couch and drops her face in her hands. “Oh,” she breathes out.

Something soft bumps against her head. When she looks up, Olaf’s handing her a purple cushion. “Yeah,” he says, “I guess I was kinda right about the forest being a place of transformation, huh? It just went in a really weird direction.”

“Guess so,” Elsa agrees, hugging the cushion to her chest. “What do we do now?”

“Well, it’s the castle,” Olaf replies, “We could hang out anywhere. Rustle up some more people to talk with. I bet there’s tons of chocolate in the kitchen. Or…”

“Or?”

Olaf’s gaze turns serious. “Or you could go.”

Elsa groans, dropping her head on top of the cushion. “Not you too.”

“Sorry. You know, your parents and I would have to agree to disagree on a lot of things? But I think they’re probably right on this one.”

“I didn’t know what they were talking about either,” Elsa replies, nettled. “How am I supposed to go anywhere? From what I remember, I wasn’t really in a position to budge.”

He cocks his head at her. “Yeah, but you have magic. You can do anything, Elsa.”

“No, I can’t,” Elsa says in exasperation, “I don’t know how. I make snow and ice, Olaf.”

“Well, you didn’t know you could make me, either,” Olaf points out, looking almost obstinate now.^[18] “You’re not gonna know unless you try.”

“Try what? Should I call up Marshmallow and have him try to throw me back to life? How is any of this supposed to work? It was confusing enough already, and now everyone keeps changing their minds about what I’m supposed to do. First they warn me to stay where I am, and now that I really can’t go anywhere, you’re all telling me to go again.”

Twenty-four years and all she had were orders and directions and warnings. But not too far or you’ll be drowned. Conceal, don’t feel. She doesn’t know why she expected death to feel any less fettered. You can’t stay, Elsa, or you’ll be trapped here. You have to go, Elsa—

“I don’t want to,” Elsa whispers, “Doesn’t anyone care about what I want^[19]?”

Hot shame prickles immediately at her eyes; what a childish, petulant thing to say.

“But what do you want?” Olaf asks, “Because Elsa, you say you don’t want to go, but you keep looking out there, too.”

But Elsa isn’t listening. All of a sudden her mind stumbles over Olaf’s presence and registers it for the first time: if she’s here and Mother and Father are here and Olaf is here, then Olaf—then Olaf—

“No,” she chokes out.

He smiles again, impossibly. “So much for pushing me away to keep me safe, right?”

“I’m sorry,” she gasps, “I’m so sorry, Olaf. I didn’t—I didn’t think—” What had she thought? What had she expected? I keep hurting people. A million mistakes and she’s never learned a single thing. She should have gone alone. She shouldn’t have gone at all.

Moments later a warm hug envelops her. “Hey, it’s okay, Elsa,” Olaf tells her, “I’m not mad. Well, I was for a while, actually, and that was a new and interesting experience—but I’m not mad anymore.”

“Why not?” she half sobs, half demands. “Olaf, I killed you.”

“That’s a super dramatic way of putting it when you didn’t really,” Olaf replies, all matter-of-fact. Then his tone softens. “And c’mon, Elsa. You know why not. I don’t need to explain how love works to you.”

She lets out a watery chuckle into Olaf’s shoulder. “No. I guess you don’t.”

Elsa?^[20]

Her head snaps toward the balcony without meaning to.

“I think that’s your ride,” Olaf says, giving her another gentle pat.

“What?” Elsa blinks. “Olaf, can you hear—”

“Come on,” he says, leading her toward the hallway door. “Having Marshmallow shot-put you out of here was a totally cool idea, but this way seems safer.”

A gray mist is descending again, and when Elsa reaches out for the door handle, Olaf’s hand dissipates in hers. “Oh,” he says, “Huh.”

“Olaf?”

“Don’t worry about me! This is probably some kind of—cosmic fairness thing. I’ll be with you again in no time,” he promises, “Whatever happens. But you’re gonna have to do the next part on your own.”

“I love you,” she tells him, as if the force of her words can keep him close.

He beams at her, even as the mist completely obscures the rest of his features. “I love you too. And y’know what? I just remembered something weird. I think I might be like, this pile of flurries right now, but I never melted away. Your permafrost stuck. Not all of the magic in me faded. Isn’t that amazing, Elsa? Isn’t it amazing what you can do?”^[21]

She’s on a balcony looking out.

Beneath her, the kingdom; before her, the forest, the lands and seas she’s yet to travel. The sky stretches for miles, the summer breeze is at peace, but her heart hammers in dread, in anticipation—

Elsa?

She turns—

And she is sitting at the fjord, the wreckage of a world already in ruins at her feet. There is nothing left in her hands and nothing left in her. The sun shines overhead, but it is bitterly cold. From behind she hears a metallic scrape, the sound of a sword pulled free from its scabbard.

Elsa?^[22]

Her chest feels like it’s about to cave in. It’s all that’s left of Anna in this place—one solitary echo. There is no one around. No one is coming to help.

Elsa closes her eyes. She can picture the blade, already falling in its deadly arc.

You’re gonna have to do the next part on your own.

I love you, Elsa thinks, again.^[23]

Then, like a dream, she turns again and brings up her own hand. “No,” she says, voice loud enough to ring.

The world splinters into a million shattered pieces.

“It’s always going to come down to doors for us, isn’t it?” a voice muses^[24].

Elsa blinks. She’s sitting with her knees drawn up in a blank, white room. A massive stone door stands less than five feet away. When she turns to the right, she gasps; her sister is cross-legged next to her. “Anna!”

“Hey,” Anna says, giving her a little wave.

She gapes for a second before leaping into action, grabbing Anna by the shoulders and patting her down, checking for injuries. “What are you—what did you do, Anna?”

“What, you mean besides jumping in between you and a sword?” Her sister says, wiggling away, “I thought you’d remember, since you just copied me and all.”

“Of course I remember,” Elsa says automatically, letting her arms fall limply back to her side. “But—oh. But why are you—you’re still here?”

“That’s a great question,” her sister replies, “What does here look like to you right now?”

“I don’t know,” Elsa says, getting up and looking around now. The doors in front of her are sturdy and featureless, but behind where Anna is sitting—

There’s another door. This one is more familiar, she realizes as she studies the patterns etched on the handles, the crocuses painted on the wooden panels. “This looks like the front gate to the castle.”

“The castle!” Anna says. “Wow, really?”

“That’s where I was,” Elsa says slowly, remembering, “I saw Father and Mother and Olaf, but—Anna, why weren’t you with them, if you can be here too? Why are we…wherever we are right now?”

“Y’know, I have no clue?” Anna says conversationally, “But this is kinda your party,^[25] so I’m willing to roll with it.”

“My—” She huffs out a breath in frustration, before sitting down again and glaring. Anna doesn’t seem perturbed by this at all, just nudges Elsa a little with her shoulder before turning to contemplate the blank door in front of them.

“What was it like for you?” Elsa asks, after a few minutes of silence.

“You mean when I…? Oh. Different? I think it was a lot faster. I was out for a second, and then—zip! Defrosting back to reality.”^[26]

Elsa nods, digesting this. It’s a question she’s never dared to ask Anna in all three years, but here and now, no-where and no-when, it seems oddly appropriate. “Did it hurt?”

It takes Anna longer to answer this one, and even when she finally opens her mouth it’s to sigh first, hands straying up to find—the white streak is still there, Elsa realizes with a start. “I dunno. Not really? It was kind of scary, because it was all pins and needles for a while, and then it got scarier when I couldn’t really feel the tips of my fingers anymore, like they just flew off somewhere. And when I got stuck and you were crying and I couldn’t do anything—that was when it was scariest. But I don’t think it really hurt, it just…”

“That doesn’t sound fast,” Elsa says, frowning.

There’s a tell-tale sign of strain around Anna’s eyes. “Well, it didn’t feel like that to me, obviously. What about you?”

Elsa shrugs. She remembers a harsh, deep ache clenched around her lungs, but between Gale’s tornado and Bruni’s fire and the shipwreck and the Nokk trying to drown her it’s been a suffocating day in general. (The Earth Giants would have probably tried to bury her alive had they been given the chance. For consistency’s sake, if for nothing else.)^[27] “Fast. But…maybe in a different way? Mostly I remember feeling the cold.”

“You?” Anna asks, her mouth twitching. “So I guess it finally…found a way to bother you, huh?”

“Evidently.” She tries to shoot her sister a flat look, but feels her lips quirk up at the ridiculous way Anna’s waggling her eyebrows.

Anna grins back at her before her face changes abruptly into something urgent. “Elsa.”

“I know,” Elsa says dully, feeling her brief joy puncture. “I have to go. You don’t have to tell me too.”

“Well,” her sister says, chewing on her lip and looking thoughtful, “Staying here-here just seems kind of boring. But…if you want to head back to the castle, I won’t stop you.”

“What? But Father and Mother said—”

Anna makes a harrumphing noise. “Of course they said. You know what they’re like. We promised we wouldn’t let them decide our futures for us anymore, remember? There are two doors here, Elsa. You can pick whichever one you want.”

What do you want? Olaf had asked. Elsa shakes her head, dislodges it. “And you? Could you come with me, if I went back?”

“’Course I could.”

Elsa’s mind churns over this before she remembers: “The dam hasn’t been broken yet.”

The expression on Anna’s face is indecipherable. “That’s true. It’s still standing.”

“So. So I should—”

“At Ahtohallan,” her sister interrupts, “When you knew you were about to freeze, you sent me a message. You didn’t say what happened to you—you didn’t even try to say goodbye. You just wanted me to know what happened in the past. Why?”

With mine own breath release all duteous oaths. The door in front of her seems to grow and shrink in time with her heart.^[28] “Someone needed to know. To do the right thing. For Arendelle. And…for all of us. The Northuldra and the spirits. You’re…you could do it.”

“And I will,” Anna says, impossibly gentle. “Your message got through, Elsa. You trusted me then. Trust me now. The dam’s going to break. You don’t have to go back to make it happen. What do you want?”

“I don’t…” Elsa turns to look again at the castle gates. Her whole family is here. Everyone she’s had to mourn. Even Anna. Would it be so terrible to be outlived, for once?

She looks at her sister again to find Anna looking back, solemn. “You can go, Elsa,” she says, “I’ll move on. That is going to hurt—a lot—but I can. I will.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Elsa admits. But then, that’s Anna: courageous and selfless in a way Elsa’s never going to match.

She’s going to make a magnificent queen.

As soon as the thought comes to life in Elsa’s mind it seems like she’s never believed in anything else quite as much. She tries to picture it: Anna with a crown, forging connections with people, with nations. Anna surveying her kingdom, content. Anna with Kristoff and their children. Anna growing old, with laugh lines around her eyes and mouth, what Father and Mother never got.

What Elsa’s never going to get, if she stays.

She finds the white streak in Anna’s hair again. Tries to picture it: Remaining unchanged herself while Anna becomes wiser and braver all the time. Not being able to witness any of that growing. Not being able to grow in tandem. Becoming younger than Anna by standing still.

Being outgrown.

“I don’t want to stay here as who I am,” she says at last. “I want to see you grow old. I want to grow with you. I want…I want time to become more than who I am now.”^[29]

Anna beams at her, eyes glimmering with pride. “The door’s straight that way.”

Elsa steps forward, but before she touches the door she hesitates, and turns back around. This Anna here—it’s all in her head. Anna had said as much: your party. Still…

She doesn’t want her sister to be alone.^[30]

“Will part of me stay?” she asks. “Will I stay like you? With you?”

Anna laughs; a bright, warm sound. “Oh, Elsa,” she replies, “You always do.”

The door turns into mist in her hand.^[31]

Chapter Text

¹Title taken from the outtake song "I Seek the Truth." There were several runner-ups for title song in the lead-up to this work's publication--most prominently "Things I Never Said" from First Date, or "Escapism" from Steven Universe. In the end I nixed the former because the fic isn't JUST about Elsa's relationship with her parents, even though that forms a sizable chunk of the story, and the latter because I wanted to use it for a different project. The full lyric from "I Seek the Truth" is, of course, "YOU'RE with me guiding what I do," but I cut the first word short to foreground Elsa's trajectory in the fic. She's starting to move out of looking to the people around her for every choice she makes, but there's some part of her that still can't quite let them go. So you have, essentially, the balance between the original lyric, and the new meaning: with ME guiding what I do. She's becoming the principal agent of her own life.^{[return to text]}

²It felt important for me to establish this idyllic, domestic comedy vibe, and just as important to suggest that the roles of "the silly one" and "the responsible one" were being split pretty evenly between Agnarr and Iduna. I really do picture the two of them as like, the limit case for people who became parents before they were ready for it. Even before the Accident they probably came across as the type of parents who are effortlessly cool and awesome all the time even as (and maybe because) they waxed and waned between being funny and chill and being uber serious. Elsa in particular would idealize this time period as, like, this prelapsarian moment that she Ruined, back when no one was sad, even though rationally speaking she knows very well that's not the case.^{[return to text]}

³So the Call. Originally I was going to have it show up in every section, but in the end it just felt clunky to slip it into sections that were already dialogue heavy. The idea is that this...pocket death dimension is really just a catalogue of Elsa's life, with a wish fulfillment gloss that fades the longer she stays put, because that's how growing up works--part of how you become a real adult is when you stop looking at the past with nostalgia-colored glasses. The Call is of course a mirror to the Voice: something that calls Elsa to the truth, something that she thinks is external but actually comes from within.^{[return to text]}

⁴It struck me a few weeks after watching Frozen II in theaters that if Anna hadn't stopped Hans Elsa would have been murdered in the exact same way her grandfather murdered the Northuldra leader, so obviously I had to work that in, because I really can't think of anything else that would make Elsa despair as deeply as when she saw that memory. Here you have someone who's already letting history overdetermine her life, and then you confirm that she was RIGHT to do so, in the worst way possible, by telling her that NOTHING she's done has ever been unique. Even letting herself be killed was just part of the cosmic pantomime, the latest iteration of "sacrifice the monster for the greater good." All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again. She'll always be perpetrator or victim, and no more; both of those roles are LITERALLY locked in her blood.^{[return to text]}

⁵...okay yeah, I guess I should talk about the balcony. This is obviously a pickup from the "Elsa stares wistfully out" scene from the beginning of the movie. What Elsa does on the balcony reflects how she thinks of the outside world. If you look just at the sequel it's a pretty straightforward conflict between duty and desire--she's looking out because she wants freedom, but is on the balcony because she's still tied to the castle and to Arendelle--but the balcony motif was already present in the first movie. In "For the First Time in Forever," the balcony is a place of dread; she's watching all the people come in, and she's afraid of all of them. In the reprise it's taken on some connotations of freedom, but ONLY in isolation. I don't think these earlier takes were completely erased from Elsa's mind after the Thaw; the world IS scary, and it WOULD probably be safer if she were alone. But there's joy and freedom in it, too, and she's realizing that looking for those might be worth the risk. In the fic the balcony has a similar function, as a kind of liminal space, and what Elsa does on the balcony (going from having to be called back by Agnarr here, to not budging with Iduna, to pulling Olaf inside) reflects each of her outlooks on the world from the movies.^{[return to text]}

⁶Originally I'd planned for Agnarr and Elsa to discuss Henry IV here, it being the play that spawned "uneasy is the head that wears a crown," but I thought I'd get more pretentious writer cred with a more obscure play--nah, it was really because "with my own breath release all duteous oaths" was just TOO good of a line to pass over. I mean, her name LITERALLY means oath! She LITERALLY releases her responsibility and being to her sister! My knowledge of Richard II is pretty much limited to hazy memories of watching the Ben Whishaw adaptation, but I was taken with the idea that he's trapped within his own presumptions about kingship--that it's something granted by divine power, and is therefore irrevocable, for good or for ill. Nothing can separate him from the state. What Agnarr's trying to impress upon Elsa here is that they ARE Arendelle, and unlike Richard they need to actually take responsibility for that. And on the personal level this is obviously very empowering and something that Elsa needs to hear, that she can't just opt out of her own life, and even if she just lets herself be buffeted by the winds of chance that's still a CHOICE, but on the larger political scale that Agnarr actually MEANS...well, we'll get to that in a second.^{[return to text]}

⁷So how old is Elsa supposed to be here anyway? Of all the sections, this is probably the wooliest one with respect to her age. The copout answer is that Elsa is never NOT 24 in this story, because it (like Ahtohallan) is about the past converging to the present. The real answer, given that she still calls him "Papa" and has to remind herself not to run to him, is that I pictured her around 11. A little too young to be parsing out the nuances of Richard II, but not SO young that you can't just hand-wave it as her being a royal prodigy. DEFINITELY too young to really take in Agnarr's intense kingship spiel.^{[return to text]}

⁸There's a lot of minute but very important things in this aside. I really do think that Agnarr had nothing but respect for his father; he didn't know about the dam sabotage, Runeard gets a portrait in the library, and Elsa initially seemed happy to see a memory of him in Ahtohallan. Plus, Agnarr was only 14 when Runeard died--a prime age to idealize the FUCK out of a lost parent, even if you weren't on the best terms when they were alive. I also just like the idea of this genocidal maniac seeming, to his son and subjects, to be an upstanding person and good father, because that's the way it often is with life. Elsa immediately telling Agnarr that Runeard would be proud of him can be read on several levels. There's definitely a level of side-eye at this grown man seeking validation from an eleven year old child, and for readers, there's an added streak of irony, because WE know what kind of people Runeard and Agnarr were, and Elsa in the present also knows. At the same time, Elsa (both past and present) is only saying this because that's what SHE desperately wants to hear from Agnarr, and she'll take this kind of closeness no matter what form it takes. That's why the "like two partners about to share a secret" line is there, because the primary way Elsa conceptualizes being close to her father is through the secret they keep together--the secret that is her. Intimacy is inextricable from exclusion here, and love inextricable from isolation.^{[return to text]}

⁹This question, for those of you who are keeping track, is when we slip out of the "real" past and into the dream. In real life Gerda came in at this point with their breakfast trays, and the day moved on.^{[return to text]}

¹⁰This is where Agnarr's lesson falls apart, because...well, there's a reason "I am the Senate" is a bad guy line. It's all fine and good to say "I am the state, so everything good for the state is good for me," but there's a VERY easy slippage from that to "I am the state, so everything good for me is good for the state," at which point you become a tyrant. Runeard committed genocide for the sake of his ego, but justified it by saying that it was for the sake of Arendelle. Elsa asking this question demonstrates her cognizance of this slippage and builds toward her abdication by the end of the movie, but she's clearly not all the way there yet, because the correct solution to "wow, absolute power tends to corrupt" is "no one should have absolute power," not "I should pass absolute power to my sister, I bet she'd be more careful with it."^{[return to text]}

¹¹I knew pretty early on that this conversation would escape into wish fulfillment land at this point. I think this is how most of their conversations go on the balcony: Iduna always approaches Elsa, with the double pretense of embroidery and some new update about their tiny world, and Elsa always says very little, and Iduna never knows what to say in return, and so says nothing. Agnarr loomed large in Elsa's childhood, but Iduna was a blank slate--that's why finding out about her specifically was so exciting. So if the Agnarr dream culminated in her questioning his lessons and beliefs, the Iduna dream had to be about Iduna reaching out to her, despite the barriers she put up. See, Elsa knows Iduna's capable of that now--she just never did it while she was alive. It's a little bit of escapism for them both.^{[return to text]}

¹²It occurred to me while I was writing this that there was NO Plan B for Elsa. Either she would serendipitously wake up one day with perfect control of her powers, or...she didn't, and life would go on exactly as it was. It's completely baffling; I'm sure that ELSA just kind of thought her parents would live forever (or at least until she was Ready), because that's how kids think of their parents, but Agnarr and Iduna really have no excuse. I'd buy they planned on more time than they ended up having, not that they planned on being immortal. Then again, maybe that's what made Iduna finally reveal her heritage--it finally dawned on her that this wasn't tenable, even beyond mental health concerns.^{[return to text]}

¹³I spent an age fiddling with the exact wording here and I'm still not happy with it. The message was supposed to be that they weren't hurting because of Elsa but hurting with her, but I didn't want to designate Elsa as, like, Hurt Person Prime either. Threading the line between "Elsa get over yourself, you're not THAT special" and "you are special tho, I'm your mom obviously I think that" proved pretty much impossible.^{[return to text]}

¹⁴This was one of the first lines I ever wrote for this fic, because I knew it needed to happen. Elsa and the readers are pretty much on the same page up until this point; they know something bizarre is going on, and it's being filtered through the past, but they don't know what or why. Before this line I'd dropped some clues about what might be going on, and they'd been getting a little more overt (Elsa being able to thaw out her gloves right before this, for example), but this line is the first step towards the Reveal. This is all in her head, and she's starting to realize.^{[return to text]}

¹⁵A callback to Elsa singing "you didn't leave me alone" in "I Seek the Truth." Fun Home has proven to be a REALLY good blueprint for me when thinking about Elsa and Iduna's relationship. Elsa's fear that she's been trapping her whole family was already mentioned earlier in the section, but here it's more about repressed identities, and whether marrying an Arendellian, having two Arendellian children, and having to deal with Elsa specifically locked Iduna into never revealing her heritage, and whether she died because it all became too much. All of that is obviously horrible and scary to think about for Elsa, who already has insane baggage about hurting family, but what's even more horrible for her to think about is if that ISN'T true. Because if Iduna died because she couldn't deal with Elsa, then at least she SAW Elsa, and Elsa was never really alone. That's what this entire section boils down to, really. But Elsa doesn't get any answers from Iduna in the end. She's the only one here.^{[return to text]}

¹⁶This section was easily the most difficult one for me to write, and I ended up going through at least four completely different drafts (at one point Elsa taught Olaf to read using The Tempest, but that was too on-the-nose, even for me) before arriving at something halfway acceptable. The difficulty was in making this section not feel like a retread of what's come before and what's to come (which I'd already written, because I wrote this fic backwards): Elsa couldn't take forever to cotton onto the fact that this is a dream, but she also couldn't figure it out too fast. She had to realize what she needs to do, but not all the way, because that's what Anna's section is for, and so on, and so on. In the end it was less complicated that I was making it out to be: since all of the emotional weight of this conversation happens post-reveal, there was no point in dawdling. I needed to cut right to the chase.^{[return to text]}

¹⁷The funny thing about this section is that I had a lot of lines that I knew HAD to go in here, and this is one of them. It was coming with all the interstitial stuff that was the hard part; in my earlier drafts, this line came AFTER Olaf tells Elsa to leave and fed directly into "Doesn't anyone care about what I want," but that just made the second half of the section feel crowded and the first half insubstantial. What fixed it was not only moving it up, but also reading it more flatly as a bland resignation to her fate. This ended up laying out the emotional arc of the first half. Rather than Elsa immediately diving into guilt and self-recrimination for doing a Bad Thing and landing herself in dream limbo, it became Elsa erecting arbitrary rules about what she can and can't do (though be fair, people's demands of her are absurd--it's always either "unfreeze an entire kingdom" or "will yourself back to life"), which still stems from her belief that she deserves Bad Things because she's Bad, but in a more roundabout way. Her blase attitude toward her own death also made her shock and grief that Olaf died with her a lot more affecting.^{[return to text]}

¹⁸Something that also tripped me up in early versions was that in them Olaf was little more than a sounding board for Elsa to air out her problems, which again, made the section feel inorganic and redundant and was unfair to the little guy to boot. This was my first time writing Olaf on any substantial level, so it was difficult for me remember that he's...y'know, definitely his own person now, but once I did it felt natural to me that he'd be pushing back instead of nodding along to whatever Elsa says. He says he's not mad anymore, but Elsa DID push him away and then die with nary a farewell, and then dragged him along, so I think he has the right to throw some shade, even if that shade is really just slightly annoyed encouragement. Also, I just enjoy occasionally reminding everyone, in and out of universe, that Elsa can create life.^{[return to text]}

¹⁹Well, Elsa, have you ever thought about doing some of the god damn work yourself? This was another one of my very first lines. There's a real cognitive dissonance here: most of the directions she complains about in the paragraph above don't come from anyone except herself. Everything postmortem is obviously in HER head, and even "conceal don't feel" is just HER version of Agnarr's original directive. Elsa is forever and always creating rules and limitations for herself, about what she can and can't do, and what she can and can't want. And what she can want is nothing, because wanting is for children, and wishing that people cared about your wants is childish and shameful.^{[return to text]}

²⁰So why add the Call here, when I already talked about how I didn't want it to intrude into sections that already have plenty going on? Well, I tell you! It's because I didn't know how to end this scene when the mist couldn't just interrupt them. In the end I don't mind that I used the Call, because it neatly sets up the next section; plus, I liked that Olaf could hear it too because of his connection with the sisters.^{[return to text]}

²¹I think this was the last paragraph I wrote before posting. The original plan had just been to end on Olaf telling her that she's gonna have to do the next part alone, but it felt...oddly bleak. I wanted to call back to Anna and Olaf's goodbye in the cave, not mirror it exactly, so I went with this last injection of hope--and ended up really liking it! It's a good reminder that for all the horrible things she could do with her powers, she's mostly used them to make beautiful things, and it's a good reminder that something remains, even after she DOES make a mistake. Even after death.^{[return to text]}

²²Where the Call diverges from the Voice, I think, is that the Voice directed Elsa toward truth and death, while the Call directed Elsa toward truth, and life. And if that's true, what voice can it have if not Anna's? She was the one who showed Elsa--though neither of them recognized it at the time--that there was more to them than their blood, than the old roles of perpetrator or victim. She was the one who taught Elsa how to protect--first herself, then everyone around her.^{[return to text]}

²³This line was added later; originally, I just had Elsa remember Olaf's words before putting on her big girl britches and defend herself. But then I thought about Anna in the cave, clinging to Olaf with all her might, telling him that she loves him, and I added an "I love you" in the Olaf section, and then I was like "You know what? Screw it." Because it worked. The "I love you" did keep Olaf close to Elsa, just like it kept Olaf close to Anna in the movie, because that's what love DOES. Olaf said that they had to do this alone, but they're not alone here, or anywhere. They never have to be alone again.^{[return to text]}

²⁴I briefly toyed with switching the last sections around, so that Elsa would get to talk to Anna before Sword Sacrifice Reloaded, but ultimately ended up going with this order, mostly because I don't think that after Olaf Elsa deserved ANOTHER person being very patient with her while she worked out what she needed to do. Since Anna wasn't currently dead, she worked better as a coda anyway. In some ways this is Elsa's big reward: not Anna herself (though I'm sure part of Elsa still thinks of Anna that way--as a gift she hasn't earned), but the Truth. By this point Elsa's cleared everything that could hold her back. Now, it's just her and an empty room, and Anna, laying the choice out to her in the plainest way possible and without bias. This has to be about what SHE wants, not the inertia of other people wanting for her.^{[return to text]}

²⁵I don't think it'd come as a surprise to anyone to reveal that the biggest influence for this fic is the "King's Cross" chapter in Deathly Hallows, but it doesn't really get blatant until this section. The Fullmetal Alchemist stuff I threw in more for flavor, because I couldn't resist. They're both about siblings and have door motifs! Who else besides Anna and Elsa could exploit the same resurrection loophole as Ed and Al?^{[return to text]}

²⁶I honestly don't think Anna remembers a lot of being dead, because she came back a lot faster and because her consciousness was still so fixed on the present even as she died. I think her limbo looked very different compared to Elsa's, though. She went back to the castle, too, but it was full of people, and she never stopped moving. You might also notice that she kind of fudges her answer to Elsa, here in the truthiest layer of truth--is that because Elsa knows her sister so well that she can't fathom an Anna who wouldn't try to spare Elsa the pain of knowing, or because Elsa still doesn't really want to know? Probably both.^{[return to text]}

²⁷This line popped into my head one day when I was doing dishes and I couldn't not use it. I do think that every six months or so, when Elsa remembers to have a sense of humor, that it tends toward the very dark. Partly because it makes her less afraid of the dark things, mostly because she still has no idea how humor works.^{[return to text]}

²⁸I hate this line and I don't know why I kept it. Even if it meant something at one point, it was never elaborated on, so it's just like...this gaudy sticker I insisted tacking onto an otherwise elegant metaphor about passing on the burden of kingship. It really demonstrates the kind of person Elsa is that on the verge of death she thought about Anna and the Forest and Arendelle and keeping her promises, and that even after death she's STILL thinking about those things. Her desires have only ever been filtered through duty.^{[return to text]}

²⁹I hadn't listened to "Monster" yet when I wrote this fic, so it's Percy de Rolo I have to thank for inspiring this resolution. It WAS very gratifying when I finally listened to "Monster," though, because it felt like the thesis statement for Elsa's character up to that point, which I took up and continued through this fic. Elsa's decision at the end of "Monster" was "I can't in good conscience die without fixing the problems I caused, so I'll be better and do that, and then I'm done." But then she did fix the problems, and she kept living, and every day brought new challenges to face, and new ways to improve, until she realized that she didn't WANT to be done. Even if death falls into her lap, she's going to keep going for the person she might be tomorrow, with the people around her doing the same thing. There'll always be work to be done and things to make right. Anna and Elsa will pity the dead for the rest of their days.^{[return to text]}

³⁰So "King's Cross" famously ended with "Of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" Here's the thing, though: that's never been Elsa's problem. Her powers taught her a VERY long time ago how closely knit what happens in her head and what happens in reality are. So this last exchange isn't about Elsa seeking reassurance that this encounter is true, but about Elsa's capacity for love, and how that love makes Anna real, even if Anna is only in her head. No one wants to be alone.^{[return to text]}

³¹The thing about mist is that it hides you, and hides people from you, and it's intangible, so there's nothing to hold onto or fight. But the thing about mist is that it's intangible; as long as you're brave enough, you can pass through anytime.^{[return to text]}