#but then anna's elsa bullshit alarm starts going off and she charges in yelling 'WHAT ARE YOU DOINNNGGGG'

[theseerasures]

counterpunches replied to your post “spoiliors for you know what[[MOR] y’know when i was like “what if...”

helen no

rowanwould replied to your post “spoiliors for you know what[[MOR] y’know when i was like “what if...”

helen maybe?

wow!! guess i have no choice you guys really twisted my arm

i’m drawing, i’m just drawing

i’m remembering something, that’s all

It’s fairly easy to slip away. Anna has a list that drops to the floor of all the things she wants to do with Elsa while they’re together for the weekend, but she’s the queen now, so when the inevitable not-life-threatening-yet-incredibly-urgent crisis materializes (something about cheese?) Elsa just has to reassure her into the room for visiting dignitaries, and then she has at least a few hours to herself.

(Not that she wants to keep what she plans to do a secret, exactly, it’s just...something she wants to try out herself first.)

Her old bedroom looks untouched. Were it not for the conspicuous lack of dust, Elsa would have guessed that no one had set foot in there at all since she’d left it the day of her coronation. There’s her old bureau, the fireplace Father always took pains to light whenever he came to visit, the large glass window she’d spent more than half her life gazing out, ravenous and terrified of the outside world--

But that’s not the way to start this whole thing. The spirits had warned her that reviving memories is a tricky thing--stray feelings could get caught in the crosshairs, she could end up summoning something unexpected, or just irrelevant. There isn’t any reason to get all emotional right now, before she even started, there isn’t any reason to...

Feel.

Right now, Elsa hastily amends to herself as a vivid specter of Anna’s concerned, outraged frown appears in her thoughts. There’s no reason to get all caught up in feeling right now.

Elsa rubs her neck, feeling the telltale sign of a tension headache already blooming there. Right. The goal is just to see what kind of memory the water in this place might be keeping, since she knows it so well, and so much of her magic already marks its walls. She needs to leave herself open to the possibilities here: it could be just her. It could be Gerda dusting. It could be nothing at all--she’s never tried to draw up a memory that might have her in it before.

Deep breath. She’s home and she’s safe, and it’s been more than three years since this room had been the stone on her back.

Elsa finds a place to crouch down, then closes her eyes and begins.

The strain immediately makes itself known. This isn’t a waterlogged shipwreck; the castle is strong bedrock that extends down deep into the earth, and water has to travel obliquely. Still, the traces are there: melted ice leaving stains quickly painted over, cold scars on the ceiling, the corners. She gathers them up, lets them become. Concentrate. Listen.

--know that you have a choice--

“What?” Her eyes fly open. There's a figure coalescing around her old bed--slender, hair in a delicate bun, clad in a dress with a design that Elsa knowsknowsknows

But there isn’t enough water. The figure still looks blurred out, and the room seems spent. When Elsa tries to reach farther, deeper, the water from elsewhere--the garden outside, her own ice spires--tries to answer back, but she brushes them away; she doesn’t want this scene contaminated, doesn’t want it to change, she wants--

Tears drip down her face, and then she gasps as they, too, float up to solidify the form, her own contribution to the memory.

And then her mother is there.

“...know you feel trapped,” Iduna is saying, and as Elsa unconsciously moves closer to the bed she sees that there’s a miniature version of herself on the bed, twelve years old, curled up and facing away.

“I imagine that you feel horribly alone, like maybe...you don’t even belong here, in your own home, with your own family,” Elsa mouths the words in time to her mother’s voice; she remembers this, remembers it now. “But this is your home, Elsa, and--I know you think you have to do this, that you have to shut yourself off all the time, but I want you to know that you have a choice. You do. Your powers don’t have to be a prison, you can use them to help people. And if you don’t want your home--our family--to remain like this, you have the power to change that too. You get a say in how your life should proceed. I want you to know that I believe in you, Elsa, even if you--”

A stop. A sigh. “I want you to try,” her mother continues, “try just letting yourself be, Elsa, instead of hiding. Try thinking that maybe you can do good, maybe more good than anyone else could, because of what fate afforded you, and because you are good, Elsa, and I--”

“Love you,” Elsa whispers, after her mother’s voice in the memory cuts off and fades, “More than anything else in the world.”

In the memory her mother’s hand is reaching down, a hair’s breadth away from touching the braid of her past self. Elsa doesn’t bother sparing a glance down at what her own face looked like back then, stiff and terrified on the bed; she already knows.

Her face in the present is still wet; nil-three for keeping it together with memories of her parents now.

“I thought Papa sent you up here that night because he was tired of dealing with me,” she says. Her voice is steadier than she imagined, steadier and duller. “He usually...handled me, and when you came in I thought...maybe he needed a break. You usually didn’t come in here alone, and I...”

She sucks in a deep, slow breath. “I guess I just always thought that you were afraid of me.”

“Or that you were still mad about what I did to Anna. I didn’t blame you,” she quickly adds, “I couldn’t, not when I--anyway. Papa was always the one who came in to check on how I was doing, on my progress, and I thought that he was...so fearless, for still wanting to stay so close to me. But you...”

There isn’t much of her mother that she can remember in The Intervening Years beyond shadows and parts. A figure in a doorway, a hand on her shoulder, quickly shrugged off before she could do any damage. But that was all life to her in those days; even her father eventually became nothing more than the mantra and pinpricks of expectation. Everything had to be abstracted down to what she let herself see within the four walls of her room, to what she let herself feel within the vice of her heart.

She lets out a tired chuckle. “I guess I had both of you wrong, didn’t I?”

The sound of soft laughter filters through the door. Elsa tenses, but it just fades as whoever it had been walks past. Probably one of the new staff; the castle is so alive now, and it changes all the time.

Elsa reaches out and clasps her ungloved hands to her mother’s. “I am trying, Mother,” she says, and lets the memory crumble away.