Echoes of Falling Snow Chapter 48: Questions Unanswered, a frozen fanfic

"Elsa, please say something."

Anna's quietly pleading voice tore at her sister, who sat curled up in the narrow space between the fireplace and the wall. Only the stack of firewood piled up in the corner kept her from retreating even further. And even though the flames burned brightly within the fireplace, a fractal pattern of newly formed ice still glistened wetly on the floor beneath the princess.

"It doesn't have to be much. Just... just let me know that you can hear me, okay?"

A fortnight had passed since Anna's birthday. Elsa didn't know what exactly her parents had told Anna, but at first, the younger girl had been willing to accept her sister's silence. For a few days, she'd limited her visits to just quick stops in the evenings. She seemed to still be convinced that whatever was wrong was only a temporary ailment. So, not wishing to unduly disturb her sister's rest, she would simply say that she hoped Elsa felt better soon. And that she was always thinking about her. And that she loved her.

Listening to that had been painful enough. Soon, however, Anna had begun to return to her old routine of sitting in the hallway and recounting the highlights of her day. She apparently seemed to think that this familiar pattern would help comfort her sister. Even then, though, she had still been willing to do all the talking, content to just know that Elsa was listening.

Eventually, however, the unspoken pretext of Elsa's illness had seemingly begun to lose some of its credibility. An anxious discomfort had begun to creep into Anna's words and voice. Her laughter became nervous, as if she was afraid it might somehow cause offense. She would sometimes stop in mid-sentence, and then find herself unsure of how to continue again.

It had all come to a head tonight.

Part of Elsa wanted to shout at her sister to go away and leave her alone. It would be for her own good, after all. But Anna was no longer the same little girl she'd been the last time those words had slipped out by accident. Elsa was convinced that if Anna were to hear her voice again now, regardless of what words might be spoken, she would only redouble her efforts to reach out and reestablish the connection they had briefly reforged this last year.

Besides, even though Elsa wanted to protect Anna by withdrawing as far as she could from her, she simply did not possess the strength to actually push her away. No matter how much it hurt to hear the pain in Anna's voice, she still knew deep down in her soul that not hearing it at all would be an even greater torment. The thought of that suffering was so horrific that she simply could not call it down upon herself. She was well aware that, as a result, she was putting Anna in a brutally unfair and even cruel situation. And she hated herself all the more for it.

"Elsa, please," Anna begged. "I don't know what's going on, but there has to be something I can do to help. I can at least listen. Or I can keep talking, if that's what you want. Or I could... I mean, maybe I...

"Oh, Elsa, I just don't know what you want me to do. Just tell me, and I'll do it."

The pause that followed seemed somehow ominous to Elsa's ears. At last, Anna spoke again, and if her voice had been quiet before, now it was barely above a whisper.

"I'll even go away, if you want me to."

Elsa could not have held in the sobs that slammed into her then if her life... if her sister's life... had depended on it. It felt like she had been punched in the ribs from inside her chest. The air was driven out of her lungs in one explosive convulsion, and she nearly choked as she struggled to draw breath back in again. The effort left her gasping and shaking as the tears covered her face.

The circle of ice beneath her, which had almost completely melted in the heat of the fire, blossomed again thicker and heavier than before. It climbed up the wall beside her, up the pile of logs behind her, and up and over the raised hearth of the fireplace. When it met the flames, steam joined the rising tendrils of smoke with a snakelike hiss.

For a moment, fire and ice seemed to be evenly matched. Then, as another miserable sob shook Elsa's body, the blaze began to give way. The crackling of the fire was slowly replaced by the snapping of ice. Coarse white crystals, advancing slowly but inexorably, smothered the glowing embers. The light dimmed and the warmth faded. Soon, the last tongue of flame sputtered, flickered, and died.

When the freezing circle finally stopped growing, the only sound left in the room was the weeping of a wretched young princess.

"Elsa?" A subtle change had come into Anna's voice. There was a tinge of hope, a faint trace of excitement. She must have heard... something, and it had apparently been enough to make her think that maybe she was finally getting through. In the pause that followed, it was almost as if Elsa could hear her sister straining to listen.

"Elsa, are you...?" Then a gasp came from the direction of the door. "Oh, Elsa! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you... I'm so sorry. I should go." From the hallway came the sounds of Anna quickly scrambling to her feet.

Elsa listened for the retreating footfalls.

They did not come.

"Or are you crying because I said I'd go away?" Anna's tone clearly conveyed both her hurt and her confusion. "Oh, Elsa. I just don't know!" Then there were no more words. There was just the dull thud of something hitting the door followed by a quiet, half-smothered whimper.

I don't know either, Anna, Elsa thought despairingly. I don't think I know anything anymore.

• • •

Elsa huddled in the dark, trying to remain as small and silent and invisible as she could possibly be. It was quiet now, though she couldn't make up her mind whether or not that was an improvement. But at least here, alone, she couldn't hurt anyone. And here, there was no one to make her feel guilty about who she was and what she had done. No one, that is, except herself.

"Hello, Elsa."

She didn't bother to look up at the sound of her own voice. Instead, she simply indulged in the small comfort of saying the words she had not been able to say to her sister. "Go away, Fare."

"That would be difficult," her dark double replied, "considering I only exist inside of you. Where else can I go?"

"I don't care," Elsa replied in a leaden tone, devoid of anything resembling interest. "Wherever you've been since the last time I had to deal with you."

"Oh, I've been right here the entire time," Fare stated matter-of-factly. "I've been watching, you know. All your work with the ice, your struggles with the snow, and then your unexpected breakthrough. You really were quite amazing, Elsa. I was so proud of you.

"And then you stopped again."

"That was months ago," Elsa pointed out. She didn't know why she continued to engage in conversation with this annoying figment. After all, it only encouraged her.

"True," Fare agreed, "but you promised yourself then that it would only be temporary, until you were feeling better. And you really had made such wonderful progress, so it seemed like you had earned a little respite.

"But now, here we are, hiding in the dark again."

At last, Elsa lifted her head and looked around. Dark didn't do justice to this absolute blackness. In fact, the only two things that she could see at all were herself and her black-haired double, who stood a few paces away and watched her with detached interest.

She wasn't that surprised to find that Fare appeared to be standing (and, in point of fact, leaning) upon absolutely nothing. It was an ability she had demonstrated during their previous encounter. It was also a skill that Elsa was fairly confident she herself did not possess.

She looked down then to find that, indeed, she was not floating so casually upon the ether. Instead, she was sitting on a single oversized snow crystal. It was very simple, lacking any embellishment, and not very much larger than it needed to be to support her. It also seemed to be the source of the soft white glow by which she was able to see. Somehow though, the light fully illuminated her, even though it only came from beneath her. It seemed to pass right through her body without casting any shadows.

Then she reminded herself that the rules of common sense and logic had no foothold here.

Elsa turned back to look desolately at Fare. She simply was not capable of playing these games tonight. All she wanted was quiet solitude. Couldn't she even get a moment's peace inside her own mind?

There was little point in asking to be left alone, even less in trying to turn away. She had as little control here as she had in the waking world. All she could do in either situation was cower in a corner. So let Fare do whatever she wanted. Perhaps the capricious girl would eventually get bored of carrying on a one-side conversation.

Elsa silently lowered her head, closing her eyelids and trying to pretend that the blackness behind them was the true unreality of her dream.

She stiffened and involuntarily gasped when she suddenly felt a body pressing against her side, an arm across her back, a hand upon her shoulder. A torrent of conflicting emotions crashed down upon her. She had once again become so scared of physical contact that, even within this dream, it was nearly impossible to fight the instinct to pull away. At the same time, the comfort of simply being held was undeniable, all the more so because she was forced to deprive herself of it in real life.

At this moment, however, she found the prospect of being comforted by Fare distinctly disturbing.

"Poor girl." Fare spoke gently, kindly, consolingly... and yet Elsa felt a shiver run down her spine. Still keeping her eyes tightly shut, she turned her head to the side, away from the source of that eerily familiar voice. It was almost more than she could bear when she felt a hand begin to stroke her hair.

"You're still scared," Fare continued sympathetically. "That's not surprising. You know how easy it is to be frightened of things you don't understand. If you don't understand, then you don't know what to expect. And when the unexpected happens, and you aren't prepared for it, it can be quite a shock. Terrifying even. It's one of the oldest fears, haunting humanity down untold centuries. It's the reason you jump when something suddenly appears out of the darkness."

Something like you, Elsa thought, but this time she held her tongue.

"Still, you understand your powers now so much better than you did before. Just look at everything you were able to accomplish, and all on your own! You have the gifts of an artist, Elsa. Do you remember that path of snowflakes the last time you were here – the ones you found to be so beautiful? You do realize that you created each and every one of those, don't you? This is a worldentirely of your own creation. Nothing exists here that doesn't come from your own mind."

"I didn't make you," Elsa shot back. There was a sharpness in her tone that hadn't been there mere moments before. The hand that had been brushing her hair twitched, then stopped.

"Why would you say that?" Fare replied, in that careful tone of nonchalance that people always seem to think will convince others that they really don't care about something. Instead, of course, it just makes it all too clear exactly how much that something must really matter.

"You want me to continue using my magic, don't you?"

The other girl remained silent.

"That's why you're here, isn't it? It's why you didn't show up for all these past months. Even though I wasn't practicing, I really did mean to continue eventually. I take it that was enough for you?"

Elsa felt Fare's hand leave her hair completely now. She turned her head to face her mysterious twin.

"You think that by comforting me when I'm feeling so miserable, I'll somehow start to see you as my friend, and then I'll listen to your advice again."

"I am your friend, Elsa."

The princess didn't even bother to shake her head. "And what advice would you give? You want me to continue trying to use abilities that... that I can barely even contain?"

"I only want..."

"You act like you understand me. You pretend that you are me, or at least a part of me. But you don't know me at all."

"Of course I do. I..."

"The only reason," Elsa said, her voice growing louder as she cut right across whatever Fare had been about to say, "that I ever listened to you was because of Anna. I wanted to master my powers so that I could leave my room and be there for her. I wanted to be her big sister again, to be her friend again, the way it used to be. The way it's supposed to be."

"And I want to help you do that," Fare interjected quickly. "You know, you always blame your magic for keeping you and your sister apart. And yet when you were both younger, before you became so fearful of what you could do, wasn't that when you were closest? Then all this past year, while you were learning your powers, the two of you were growing closer yet again. It seems to me that you've only been truly cut off from Anna when you also cut yourself off from your abilities."

Elsa was already shaking her head, and yet she failed to keep the creeping uncertainty from showing on her face. That couldn't be right, could it? Fare was just twisting things around, trying to confuse her. Unfortunately, it was working, because she seemed to have a point.

"No," she said at last. "Just because things happen at the same time, it doesn't mean that one causes the other. It was still my magic that hurt Anna."

"It was an accident," Fare tried to reassure her.

"When I lost my balance on the ice, that was an accident," Elsa replied. "But when my powers slipped out of my control and hit Anna... I shouldn't have let that happen. That was my fault, and my sister could have died because of it." Her voice broke at the thought of the grim fate that had so narrowly been avoided.

"If I let myself get close to her again now, when I can barely rein in my powers at all... How can I be there for Anna when I can't even be near her, or anybody else, without freezing them? How can I not blame my magic? It's gotten stronger. Too strong! I can't control it any more!"

Fare did something then that caught Elsa completely by surprise. She laughed.

"Well, naturally it got stronger! What did you expect? You were training with it nearly every day for months. When you keep working the same muscle over and over again, of course it becomes stronger. I mean, isn't that the point of exercise?"

Elsa stared wide-eyed at that smirking face. It took her a very long time before she was able to put her fear into words. "You mean... this was all my fault?"

Fare shrugged. "Not entirely. You expect your body to keep getting bigger and stronger as you get older. That's why they call it, 'growing up.' So why should your magic be any different? Isn't that what the old troll told you? 'Your power will only grow.'"

"But the more I use it..."

"...the faster it grows, yes."

Elsa felt the impact of these words like a smothering pressure descending upon her. By trying to master her powers, had she actually been responsible for pushing them beyond her own ability to control? In her attempt to find a way to reunite with her sister, had she only succeeded in pushing herself further away than ever before?

A massive weight of panic and guilt threatened to crush her once again. Her stomach felt as if a ball of molten lead had suddenly fallen into it from a considerable height, and now it roiled and thrashed about inside her. It wasn't fair. No matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried to do the right thing, somehow she only ever made things worse. Wasn't that how everything had started? She'd only been trying to save Anna from a dangerous fall. But no matter what her intentions, they always found a way to warp and distort until they inevitably betrayed her – or worse, those she loved.

She struggled to keep her thoughts clear, despite the dull buzz that now fought to take their place. There had to be some way out of this self-inflicted disaster, if only she could find it. "Then... then doesn't that mean if I stop using the magic, it will grow weaker again? That's what happens if you stop exercising a muscle, right?"

"Analogies can be so messy," Fare sighed. She paused to think before she finally answered. "Do you remember how it felt that night when you couldn't stop the flow of your power?"

Elsa nodded, even though the memory of that experience only made her fear grow all the sharper. "It felt like... like it was looking for a way to escape."

"Exactly. In some ways, magic has a will all its own. Controlling it is almost like taming a wild animal, after a fashion. But even if you suddenly stop training it, that doesn't mean it forgets what it has learned." The coldly dispassionate fashion in which Fare gave her answer only made it all the more terrible when Elsa finally drew the inescapable conclusion.

"And now it knows the way out."

That leaden mass suddenly grew bigger and far heavier. Once again, she was finding it nearly impossible to breathe. But this was just a dream, wasn't it? You don't actually breathe in dreams, so how could she be finding it hard to do? Yet even as her mind was asking the question, her lungs still ached from the lack of oxygen. She gulped for air that seemed to have suddenly disappeared.

Even in the midst of her distress, however, part of her mind still struggled to make sense of everything. It was the part of the brain that normally disengages during dreams, which allows the disconnected randomness to somehow seem perfectly reasonable to the dreamer. Of course, these visits with Fare were not ordinary dreams.

That part of her consciousness – the methodical, analytical portion that she had put to such good use while working out the mechanics of her magic – clamored for her attention. There was something that she was missing, something important that she still needed to piece together. It was critical. It was vital. It was...

It was literally staring her right in the face.

"How do you know so much about my powers?" she finally managed to ask in between gasps.

"Well, of course I know about them," Fare replied with a frown. "They're not exactly the sort of thing you can keep hidden from yourself."

"How do you know so much about how my powers work?" Elsa clarified. Her voice, though still laced with fear, came out just the tiniest bit stronger. "How do you know that they have a will of their own?"

"You yourself said that you felt it that night, didn't you?" Fare countered.

"How do you know what makes them stronger?"

"Well, it just makes sense, doesn't it? Why wouldn't practice make them stronger?"

The princess shook her head again. "No, you weren't just guessing or drawing conclusions. You knew."

"Then I guess you must have known too but just didn't want to admit it to yourself."

Without even realizing it, Elsa had somehow gotten her breathing back under control. "You only show up when I'm struggling with my magic. Your dreams never feel like any other dreams I ever have. They just try to pretend that they are. There are the surreal surroundings and all manner of strange things that seem to defy both common sense and physics. But there are limits, because... because you can't do what you need to if nothing actually makes sense. We could never carry on a conversation like this in a real dream, could we?"

Her doppelganger simply looked at her. Elsa had apparently found one question for which no answer would be forthcoming. She suspected that she had another.

"What are you?" Elsa asked quietly. There was still fear in her voice and upon her face, but it was directed as much outward as inward now. Then again, in this place, outward was still inside her own head. And so was this suddenly sinister phantasm.

Fare removed her arm from around Elsa's shoulders and stood, stepping once again into and onto the black void that surrounded them.

"So that's it then?" she asked. "You've made up your mind? No more practice. No more magic. No more of those beautiful crystalline creations that you'd become so proud of, you even bragged about them to your mother in the middle of your breakdown."

Elsa stared back, not saying a word.

"You're simply going to throw all of that away, even though you still have no idea what you're capable of. You don't realize the miraculous things you could do if you would only let yourself try. You have so much untapped potential, Elsa – far more than you can even imagine. I could help you. I've done it before. I was the one who guided you to your ice, remember?"

"And if I told you that the only help I want is in locking this curse away forever, would you still be so eager to assist, Fare?"

"Curse?" Fare glared at her. One corner of her mouth was again higher than the other, but now in a scowl rather than a smirk. "You're going to abandon this incredible gift you've been given, and for what? For a dream that one day, you might be able to play with your little sister again? That's the entire scope of your life's ambition? You're destined to become queen someday, Elsa! You need to be able to see farther than that, to look beyond such mundane concerns. You need to embrace greatness!"

"You're right," Elsa said, and for a moment, Fare's smirk returned. "Destiny will one day place me upon the throne. I still don't see how I can take on that responsibility given my... condition. However, I have little choice in the matter.

"What I can choose, however, is the kind of queen that I will be. And though I'm not at all sure that I can be a good one, I will not be the sort who puts her own personal glory above the welfare of her people. Today, that means thinking of my sister and my family first. I refuse to put them at risk again, and nothing you say will convince me otherwise."

The two girls looked at one another. Disappointment and no small amount of disgust was visible upon both faces. After a long and tense silence, Fare spoke again.

"There will come a time," she intoned coolly, "when you'll realize that I'm right. There will come a day when you'll finally embrace everything you were always meant to be. Then, you will only wonder why you fought it for so long.

"Until then, enjoy trying to pretend that you're something other than what you really are. I hope you're able to find comfort in your cozy little fantasy of normality. And even if you're unable to move forward... well, at least you'll have the memories."

Elsa opened her mouth to reply, but Fare was gone. She craned around both to her left and right, searching, but there was no sign of her raven-haired twin. It seemed like she was alone in the darkness once again.