Full of Grace

A/N: Please note that all spelling errors in Anna's speech are intentional. If you see any elsewhere, feel free to let me know!
Part of the credit for this story should go to counterpunch, who talked some of this out with me. (I'm keeping the blame, though.)

Disclaimer: Frozen and all related characters and settings are the property of Disney. This story and author are in no way affiliated with Disney, and no money is being made from this fan piece.

Anna has lost her taste for snow angels.

She remembers that once upon a time, she had loved them. The winter had seemed so beautiful to her, with the infinite possibilities of the cool white blanket that transformed the world. She'd run out into the snow as soon as dawn broke and would have stayed out there forever if her parents hadn't eventually coaxed her back in with hot chocolate.

But now she is old, and the snow creeps into her coat and boots as the cold creeps into her bones. She aches with the oncoming of each storm. The ice makes her slip on her tentative, limping feet, and when she falls, she sometimes can't get back up. After the last time she had fallen, the nice young woman who looks after her had said that it was perhaps best if she didn't go out into the snow unattended anymore.

She doesn't mind. The snow reminds her of ancient sadness, as clear and shining in her mind as the ice crystals that form in the corners of her window. There is much that she remembers, but for the most part it is all cloudy and unformed, as grey in her mind as the thinning, coarse braids of her hair are to her eye. She recalls a husband whose voice and name have been lost to time, the same way he had been lost to her; children whose faces she can't quite call to mind these days; a princess's coronet now set gently to one side. She doesn't wear it anymore.

But she remembers farther back than that, bright as though it had been yesterday. Brighter than her real yesterday could ever have been—she doesn't even remember what she had for breakfast this morning.

Years and years of loneliness and sorrow. Her father, too busy; her mother, too sad. They had loved her. Old and grey, Anna knows that now. They had loved her as best they could, but they were wrapped up in that shadow in the halls, that blank space overhanging their life where a source of warmth and love should have been. She remembers very little of her life after their death, but she knows there was more pain, more loneliness, and that she too had been wrapped up in the shades of the past.

Elsa, she chants in her mind. Elsa, Elsa, Elsa. Sometimes the name escapes her, so when it does come back, she keeps reminding herself of it. The face is always foggy now, but she remembers her sister.

She remembers her sister in a way she remembers no one else. How old must her sister be now? Surely she is gone; Time eventually turns all to dust, even proud and cold sister-queens. It is strange, painful, that she was not invited to her own sister's funeral. Could her sister's coldness have continued beyond the grave? What could she have done to hurt Elsa so deeply? They had only been children. What could a five-year-old have done to deserve such treatment?

But then again…

Her rising hurt and anger subsides almost as quickly. She has had trouble remembering things of late…most of her memory seems to have faded along with her youth. Perhaps when her nice young caretaker returns, she will ask about Elsa's funeral. She might have been there.

She rises to find a pen with which to write herself a note. It doesn't take her long to find one; her pretty little desk is scattered about with pens in both the quill and mechanical style. Anna writes herself many notes these days. Paper is more difficult to find, and it takes her several minutes of hunting before she finds a torn scrap.

It simply reads Kristoff. She can't remember when she would have written this or what it means. It stirs a brief memory in her, one that fades before it comes to conscious thought.

Turning it over, she pauses and frowns. Why had she wanted paper?

She looks from the pen to the paper and back. There had been something…something she wanted to ask…or say…

But it's gone. Frustrated, she draws a question mark on the other side of the scrap of paper, underlining it heavily three times before putting it to the side next to the pen.

(When she turns away from it, the edge of her sleeve catches the bit of paper and whisks it off the surface, down the side of the desk. She does not find it again.)

She paces slowly and restlessly around the room a number of times. On one of the turns around the room, she notices that there is a book sitting beside her bed, and she carefully picks it up. It is a small book, one that looks handwritten, and it's called The Story of Olaf.

Olaf…?

Something stirs, but again it fades away into the grey before she can fully recall it. Sitting down on her bed, taking care but still groaning a little at the ache in her knees and back as she changes position, she opens it to the first page.

The words should make sense. Individually, she knows each of them, but the sentences are too long and she finds that by the time she reaches the end of a sentence, she's begun to forget the beginning. Biting her lip to prevent tears (but they come anyway), Anna flings the book aside.

Her arm is not as strong as it had been once (hadn't she once hit someone?), and the book only flies a few feet before it flutters to the floor, falling open to a drawing of a smiling snowman. The picture is so at odds with Anna's tears that the ridiculousness of it all shocks her into a teary giggle. She sniffles and then rises. She shouldn't throw her books around. She loves books. They'd been her companions when no one else was there, once.

Elsa had loved books, too, when they were little.

She remembers Elsa reading to her when she had been too young to read to herself. Her big sister, sitting beside her in front of the fire, telling all sorts of silly, fanciful stories about dragons and unicorns, princesses and queens.

The tears begin to brim again. In spite of all the years without her, she misses her older sister. After all this time, still she misses her. It hurts to be alone, with the grey clouds over so much of her past and the loneliness at the centre of what she does remember. The words are beginning to escape her, too, and what comes out is often scrambled. Her kind caretaker pretends she doesn't notice, but Anna knows she does.

She hates losing herself bit by bit this way, but she knows that sooner or later she will forget it…and that's the most frightening of all. What has she already forgotten? How much more will she lose before all is said and done? There is so little already. She holds onto what's left as tightly as she can, but memory is a slippery beast and she can feel it squirming and sliding through her fingers, dribbling out from the spaces between her aching joints.

She wonders if eventually she will forget her own name. She wonders if that will mean that Princess Anna of Arendelle will cease to exist. If there is no one left to remember her, even herself…who will she be then?

But she doesn't want to think about this, and soon enough it obligingly slips away.

There's a book on the floor. Well, that shouldn't be there.

Carefully, she shuffles over to it. Bending is hard, so with a shaking hand she slides her cane under the book and pushes it up the dresser until she can reach it.

There! Satisfied, she places it on the table at her bedside. Maybe she will read it later.

As someone knocks politely at the door, Anna smiles and calls for them to please, come in. She's an elderly woman now and doesn't get much company.

Her caretaker enters, a pretty girl wearing a high-collared dress. She's little more than a child, and Anna often scolds her for spending all her time with an old woman when she should be out there enjoying her youth, but in spite of all that Anna appreciates her; getting old is difficult, but having a nice girl like this to help her makes things like buttons and braids easier. Her long blonde hair reminds Anna of her sister, but the girl she remembers had had a childish pigtail that had never been so long and lush. She wonders for a moment if her sister might have looked like this when she was a young woman, but then the idea fades away almost as quickly. Someone so cold as to shut her sister out all their lives would never have had eyes so warm and gentle.

"Hello," says Anna, searching her mind for the name that goes with this face.

The blonde woman approaches, gently tucking a bit of loose grey hair behind Anna's ear. Her hands are cold, but it doesn't bother Anna at all—the feeling is rather pleasant. They keep her room in the castle very warm. "Hello, Anna," she says kindly. "Would you like to go for a walk through the castle grounds today? The snow is very light, and I've checked for ice patches."

"No thank you, dear," she replies. "I have some very imp…int…imptorant notes to write, you see."

Anna has always hated to say no without explaining herself.

"Of course, I understand. Well, I'll come back with your lunch in an hour or so, if that's all right, and maybe we can talk for a while if you feel up to it," her young helper says.

Anna smiles. "Thank you," she says. "That's…" She struggles for the word for a moment. "…kind?"

There was something she'd wanted to ask…but she can't call it to mind now and her notes are too far away. She will ask later, at lunchtime, perhaps.

As the blonde nods and turns to leave, Anna adds, "I'm so sorry, my dear…what was your name?"

The younger woman looks back at her and smiles. It's a bit wobbly at the edges, and her eyes are shining a little too brightly as she says, "My name's Elsa."

"Elsa." Anna turns the name over on her tongue and smiles sadly back. She's beginning to feel a bit foggy again, and her notes will have to wait. She is so very tired. "That's a love…loveloly name. My sister…her name, too. I told you? She shut me out when we were tilittle…never knew why."

Elsa manages to wait until she escapes the room to sink against the wall and cry. Silently, so as not to disturb Anna.

She has nothing but Anna and the past now; she had abdicated in favour of her granddaughter when Anna had grown too old to take care of herself, in order to devote all her time to her sister. She'd never realized how much it would hurt.

Anna doesn't remember. Anna will never remember.

All the years between…it's as though they never happened. The only things that Anna seems to remember with any clarity are the years she was closed out, and trying to remind her of the time after, all the years they had had together, just confuses her.

If she had known this was going to happen, she would have kept herself locked in that room and never would have come out. Learning to control the magic was supposed to be a good thing; letting it go was supposed to make everything better.

Ice doesn't die, it only melts. Human bodies don't melt but if they're full of ice, they don't grow, or age, or die.

So she lives on, alone and isolated, only not by choice this time. Held hostage by a past that no one else shares anymore, now that Kristoff is dead and Anna remembers nothing, relegated to back rooms and dusty corners with nothing but her sorrow, her magic, her memories…her sister.

And all she can do is watch as Anna falls to pieces, mourning each one as it goes.