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There's a hole in her chest where her heart should be, and instead of creating love, all that it does is destroy.
It devours her kingdom, freezes her people, leaves her sister a silent blue statue whose gaze never loses its hope. Elsa cannot bear to take the statue from the throne room; it is only right, she thinks, to live under Anna's eyes.
When the girl comes from the village, she does not know how much time has passed.
Centuries, says the girl, and Elsa wonders if she froze time as well.
They call her the Snow Queen now. Arendelle thawed, and a new King took the throne. It hurts to know that she failed her people; she hopes they are well now.
The girl's name is Belle. Elsa watches as she walks around the Ice Palace with awe on her face, and tries to remember awe. She sees her amazement and delight with the books the trolls have bought here over the years, and tries to remember amazement and delight.
Belle insists on speaking about the books she reads; somehow, Elsa finds herself answering. Slowly, Belle teases out of her the story of her life.
"And you created this?" she indicates the vaulting ceiling above them. "That's amazing. It's beautiful."
Elsa used to want to tear down the Ice Palace for what it meant, all her failures, but had never been able to bring herself to do so. In Belle's words, she glimpses why.
Belle makes her talk again. Makes her laugh. They play in the snow , and build her first snowman since her sister died. She cries afterwards, but it is catharsis.
When Belle kisses her for the first time, it is as the sun is rising. Elsa has never felt the cold, but she had forgotten how to feel warm.
"Elsa?"
The voice makes her heart stammer in her chest. Slowly, weighted down with disbelief, Elsa turns to see Anna standing before her again, flesh and blood, warm and real and alive, and she almost falls but Belle catches her, and then Anna is there to hold her again. She still smells of home.
"Anna..." she breathes, hardly daring to say the name for fear that it will end it, that it will be a dream.
But Anna does not disappear, and neither does Belle.
Later, much later, she wonders whether it was Belle who managed the final destruction, of the walls around her. And whether destruction can be to the good in the end.