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Conceal, don’t feel. Don’t let it show.
Elsa paces, because stillness is impossible. Cries, because movement is unbearable, because every moment that she remains awake, aware, she remembers.
Don’t feel.
Don’t feel!
Her heart aches deep in her chest.
She’s freezing, frozen way down inside, so much so that she doesn’t know if she can ever thaw out.
Has she ever thawed out?
Or has she been frozen, from the very first moment?
Icy snowflakes whip past, stinging her cheeks in a hurricane of painpainpain –
The wallpaper in her bedroom will be ruined by this, soaked through. The dye will run, the paper folding in on itself under the awful weight of snow and ice.
Don’t feel, don’t feel, don’tfeeldon’tfeeldon’tFEEL…
Elsa gasps, knotting her hands into her hair and pulling until her eyes water. She gasps, and she can’t breathe, she’s suffocating under the weight of being utterly and entirely alone.
“Mother,” she sobs, the word a soundless puff of air. “Father.”
They’re gone. They left, and they didn’t come back, and she is so alone.
They were the only ones who knew. The only ones she trusted. And now they’re gone, and she’s alone. She’s a monster, a cold creature of ice and snow that, deep down, feels relief and doesn’t know why.
Elsa screams, biting down on her knuckles to muffle the sound, and in the freezing chill of the room the blood trickling down her hand is searingly hot.
A storm rages outside, and a storm rages inside, and a storm rages inside. Snow and ice whip past the windows, scar the walls and ceiling, coalesce around her very heart, until she’s stiff and silent.
Elsa crumples, back to the door, and sobs in dry, heaving gasps. Tears trickle down her cheeks, freezing as they fall, and her lap is full of icy jewels.
“Elsa?”
There’s a voice beyond the door, hesitant and small, and full of warmth.
“Please, I know you’re in there.”
No. No, no, no.
Anna is –
Anna is summer, and friendship, and sisters, and Elsa is none of those things.
“People are asking where you’ve been.” Anna’s voice is trembling. Elsa huddles down, shrinking in on herself, her fingers digging into her upper arms so fiercely that she can feel her nails pierce skin.
They shouldn’t ask. They shouldn’t ask.
“What are we gonna do?” Anna whispers, and Elsa breaks.
She folds in on herself completely, tucking herself away into someplace small, and cold, and lonely.
When she opens her eyes again, hours later, the hallway is silent and still.
She’s alone.