don't let winter come, don't let our hearts freeze

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jessica drew

don't let winter come, don't let our hearts freeze

It's not as if they talk constantly through the day. Elsa has a job, a girlfriend, heroing on the side. Anna has a tendency to get distracted by the new and wonderful things she still somehow manages to discover in Darrow, years after they first arrived. Elsa loves her for that, among the hundreds of other reasons to love her sister. To her, the world is always fresh and beautiful and exciting. For Elsa, it's wonderful and frightening in equal measure, still a place to be negotiated with caution, no matter how much better things might get.

So not hearing from Anna for a few hours isn't cause for too much concern. She might have forgotten to check her phone, distracted by something or someone new. The battery might have died. There's no knowing what it is now, though Elsa can't help it if it still unnerves her when her texts go unanswered for so long. That heavy, sick feeling in her stomach only grows as the time passes. She leaves work and there's still no answer, and it's not as if this has never happened, but it still frightens her. There is more in her world now than her sister, but Anna is, will always be, the most important part of her life. No matter how much time they have together, she still sometimes feels as if she's catching up, trying to make up for all the time they lost. All that time... it's the one thing that still makes this power sometimes feel like a curse, remembering what the fear took from them.

Anna's supposed to meet her at the flower shop, though, and though she's sometimes late, she always arrives eventually. They'll walk home and Anna will regale her with breathless, mixed up stories of what she's been up to all day. Whatever's kept her must have been exciting.

So Elsa waits outside the shop, not wanting to miss catching sight of her sister. The first glimpse of that red hair and that bright smile always helps to soothe the uncertainty.

But the minutes tick by and Anna never arrives. 30 minutes, 40. Elsa picks up her phone and this time she calls instead of texting. Even with her sister, she's not fond of phone calls, but sometimes it's easier anyway. But it rings and then it clicks, and before Elsa can get out a hurried greeting, a placid voice is speaking. The number you are trying to call...

And the pit in her stomach turns to ice.

The rush home passes in a blur of fear and frenzied thought. She's heard of this, of course, but it doesn't mean — it can't mean —

Her sister is gone.

The apartment is dark and still, with nothing to suggest Anna has been back at all since the morning. Elsa hurries back outside onto the street, looking up and down. There has to be some sign of her. It has to be a mistake. "Anna!" she shouts, walking to the end of the block and stopping herself short. She doesn't want to wander too far from home. Just in case.

The rain has softened from drops to snow, but Elsa ignores the wind howling around her as the snow comes down ever harder. There's more and more of it with every passing minute, until she can hardly see up the street, and she knows she has to stop, she has to stop it, but she can't. She can't even think about it, clutching her phone in case it rings, running to the other end of the block.

"Anna!"

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"Can you believe the weather in this city? This is - I swear, I don't have dandruff, this is snow."

She was at the university library, working the job she had inexplicably not been fired from despite all the missed shifts, although she was on her last warning.

Well, was. About to be past it, as she lifted her head to stare at the student who'd just come by where she was stacking shelves, at the dusting of, yes, snow. She turned, pulled several books from a shelf to peer through at the window beyond it. It was snowing, it looked like, starting to snow. She couldn't remember what the forecast was, exactly, but she knew it hadn't been snow, and forecasts could be wrong, but.

She was running by the time she was at the exit, the door gate beeping its alarm that she still had the books in hand. She tossed them over the counter, ignoring the yells, and was up the side of the building and swinging before anyone had made their way out behind her.

Her concern deepened with the snow as she swung towards High Gate Terrace. She didn't even know that Elsa would be there, but there was more and more snow, which would have helped conceal that she was swinging about in civilian clothing if she'd had any heed for that fact. She dropped down to street level when she reached the building, turning about, squinting in the lowering visibility until she saw a frantic, distressed silhouette and ran towards it, the ground not covered enough to hinder, yet.

"Elsa!" she called, relieved to see her but worried, so worried, because this was something bad, this had to be bad.

Hearing Jessica, seeing her, it should be a relief. Under other circumstances, it would be. Right now, though, turning at the sound of her name, Elsa can't make herself feel it. She can't seem to make herself feel anything but a numbing fear that makes it hard to focus.

She can't stop the storm. It's already too strong for her, and she doesn't know how to tell Jessica that. She was supposed to be better at this, but she's not. Anna's the strong one.

All she can do is stop in her tracks and shake her head, arms wrapped tight around herself. "I — I didn't mean to," she says, and she wants to say she's sorry, but it catches in her throat. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't make a difference if she's sorry or if she meant to or even that it's snowing. "Anna's..." She digs her nails into her arm. As much as she doesn't want to give up on the possibility her sister might yet come home, it seems hopeless to even think that.

The way she said it, the single name and then the nothing that followed it, a sentence trailing off into a pit, into a chasm. Something had happened to Anna.

"Don't worry about it," Jessica said, about the storm, without looking at it. She really didn't care, except as it stood as a testament to what Elsa was feeling. She didn't want guilt over the weather laying itself over what she was already going through. She wasn't so full of herself that she thought her saying it would stop it, but she could say it nonetheless.

"It's not important," she said, laying her hands lightly over Elsa's, where they were tight on her arms. "I just care about- what happened to Anna?"

Was it gone or was it hurt or was it taken? It was horrible to hope for the either of the latter, but those were the ones that could be fixed. But the void at the end of the sentence promised a worse end, a much harder pit to climb out of.

Elsa shrinks back, though she can't quite make herself pull away. She wants to, she wants to say Don't, I might hurt you, but she can't. The soft warmth of Jessica's hands on her skin feels like the only safe thing she has left.

"I —" She swallows hard, a sob dragging out of her throat in spite of her best attempts to hold it back, and she's dizzy with it. "She's gone. She's gone. I saw her this morning, I — I've been trying to reach her all day —" She should have stayed home. It's stupid, she knows that, she has to work, and she couldn't have known, but she should have stayed home. Anna couldn't disappear if she was looking right at her. Or maybe they'd have gone together. She shouldn't have left Anna alone.

The snow whips around them, half-sleet, stinging against her cheeks where even her tears are turning to ice.

She didn't pull away, some small relief. There was nothing Jessica could do to fix this, and it made her heart ache, the thought of it, what it must be like. For Elsa to hold herself apart from her sister and then for them to find their way back to closeness only to now be wrenched apart again. She couldn't fix it, all she could do, all she knew how to do was be here. Be with her, because she wasn't alone.

"Oh, Elsa," she said, lifting one hand to cup her cheek, brushing futilely at an icy tear with her thumb, heedless of the storm whipping her hair about her face, stubbornly ignoring the goosebumps on her bare arms and her blouse plastering to her skin in chill patches. She hadn't grabbed a coat in her hurry, and she would be damned if she let it matter. She only cared about the storm in how it reflected what Elsa was going through. "Oh, sweetheart, I'm so sorry."

Even saying it, even knowing it's true, Elsa finds herself fighting the idea, telling herself there must be something she's overlooked at the same time she tells herself to give up. The pain of it is so much, her chest so tight with it she can barely breathe. She has to, though. She has to pull it in as much as she can. The storm already feels out of her control, and she can't let it get any worse. If anyone gets hurt because of her, she'll never forgive herself.

"What do I do?" she asks, voice breaking, though the question is rhetorical at best. She doesn't know the answer. She doesn't expect Jessica to. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to... how to do anything without her." It's always been true. All those years without Anna, all that self-isolation, she was barely living. She can't go back to that, but it feels like those walls are already closing in on her again. All she can do is lean into Jessica's touch, wanting to fall into her arms, unable to make herself move any more than that.

She didn't know the answer, didn't know that there was one. All she knew was that there was no fixing it, and all she could do was offer whatever small, inadequate comfort her presence could, be some partial, shivering buffer against the storm.

She leaned closer, resting her forehead on Elsa's. "You don't have to do anything," she said. "Don't worry about the weather, or what you'll do, because all you have to do is feel how you feel."

She didn't know much, but it seemed to her the only way to survive a certain kind of sadness was through it. That if you didn't let it through you, if you tried to hold it back, it would crush you. She didn't know if that was right. She hoped it was some measure of right.

Somehow it's a startling thought, the idea that she doesn't have to do anything. There's a part of Elsa that resists still, because feeling this would be too much. It already hurts too much, and she's struggling to keep it all out. Just feeling it, she thinks she might drown. And still, though she knows better now, she can't help remembering the words she repeated over and over from childhood. Conceal it, don't feel it.

But there's nothing and no one she's protecting it now, trying in vain to hold herself together, and Jessica's closeness overwhelms all her attempts anyway. She's so close, so warm, and if she's scared, it doesn't show. Before she knows it, Elsa's pulled her hands out from under Jessica's, clinging to her instead, sobbing against her shoulder. "I can't stop it," she says. Jess said not to worry about it, but she can't help it. She doesn't know how not to worry about something like that.

"You can't stop it right now," Jessica murmured, a gentle correction, wrapping her arms around Elsa, rubbing her back with one hand and stroking her hair with the other. If she had any concern about the weather, it was what Elsa, having lost control of it, might convince herself that she'd never had control, take it as evidence that withdrawing had been right all along. But if she could do one thing, it was to make sure that she knew she was not alone and did not have to be.

"I don't care about it," she said, "all I care about is you. People will be a little cold. They can deal. It doesn't matter. You're what matters."

Elsa's not sure that's true. Anna was the one who changed everything in Arendelle. She was the one who saved them. Maybe without her, there's no anchor, nothing to keep Elsa's powers harnessed. Holding it all in didn't help at home, she knows that, and she has to keep repeating it in her head now. All it did was keep her locked away, stifled in a big, empty room, away from her sister.

She can't bring herself to say it isn't fair. It seems petulant and childish. It's true, though, it isn't fair. Thirteen years, she waited thirteen years, and they didn't get even half that together again.

"But —" She sniffles, shaking her head. "But you're cold, too. And I — it isn't just cold, Jess. I could hurt someone." Just the thought of it is enough to make her chest tight with fear. She nearly killed Anna. She can't do that again. She can't panic now.

"Then I will web myself a blanket if I have to," Jessica said, firmly, confident on at least that point, that she would stay with her, that she would be with her in this. "And if we need to go somewhere- my apartment, or out of the city if you feel you have to, I will come with you. I have spider-sense, I have powers of my own, you won't hurt me."

She didn't know if that was right. Hurting someone inadvertently would do such damage to Elsa, but should she even be entertaining the idea it was possible, or assert confidently that she didn't think it was? Instead of noting that she would run with her, should she tell her not to do it at all?

"But I think you can stay here," she said, "I think you can stay here, and I will be with you, and everyone will be a little cold and that's all."

There are so many contradictory thoughts flying through her head that Elsa can't seem to latch on to any of them. She can barely catch her own breath, never mind her thoughts. Everything's spinning out of control, herself with it, and all she can do is cling to Jessica, afraid to do so much as move. So maybe that's fine, staying here. Nothing else seems possible.

But it's easier to fret about the damage she can do than to think about what comes next with Anna gone, if only because worry and fear are such familiar companions.

"She was here this morning," she says, though the words come out stilted. It's hard to speak clearly when she keeps clenching her jaw to try and keep from crying so much. "I don't understand."

"I know," Jessica said, because it was incomprehensible, that this could happen. Loss was always incomprehensible, and sudden, unexpected loss even more so, and even then, this seemed to be a level beyond. For a person to be simply gone. She didn't know how this place worked, if a hand directed it or if there was an element of chance, if whatever tethered them here simply decayed, but it defied her either way.

"I know, Ells. I'm so sorry. If she'd had any say in it she'd still be here, with you."

Elsa's not sure how to feel about that. Elsa's not sure how to feel in general, or how to make sense of the mad whirl of emotions rushing through her, none but grief settling long enough for clarity. That doesn't feel like something that exists now anyway. How could anything make sense of this?

But it's true, she knows that. Anna wouldn't leave her, not if she could help it.

It isn't snowing in Arendelle, at least.

"I shut her out," she says, managing to lift her head a little, to look at Jessica. It's fruitless, though. There's a part of her that feels like, if she could make her understand, then it would be okay somehow, but it won't be. Things don't work like that. "For years. I thought — and now I — I can't just open the door. She's not gonna be there. I wasted — I ruined everything."

"You didn't," Jessica said, cupping Elsa's cheek. "She knows you love her. Wherever she is- she knows."

It wasn't enough, of course, it wasn't the same as being together, being able to make up for that lost time. There was nothing she could say that would make that door open, as much as she wanted to, to find whoever or whatever controlled these things and make them undo it.

But there was no fixing this, no cure. It healed on its own, at its own pace, and maybe not even all the way. Perhaps probably not. Always that missing piece.

There's no making this better, no making it okay. There's only the thought, vague but insistent, that maybe it's better she should be here and Anna safe in Arendelle. In Darrow, there are people who can stop her if it's needed. In Darrow, she rules nothing with her fears and the emotions she can't control, this bitter ache that rules her instead. Maybe it's all better this way, even if it doesn't feel better. Even if it feels like nothing and everything fighting in her chest.

"But it was my fault," she murmurs, but Jessica's hand is warm, even now, against her cheek, and she's close, and Elsa is so tired, worn thin by everything shaking through her and the tears she can't stop.

"Shhh," Jessica said, in a way that she hoped was soothing, stroking Elsa's cheek and leaning up to kiss her on the forehead, before resting her own against it. "It wasn't, and this isn't, and she understands."

Saying it wouldn't make any of this better, but she had to say it, nonetheless. All she had was being here. It seemed inadequate, it probably was, but all she could do was hope there was some small measure of comfort in it.

"I'm gonna take you home, okay? I'll take you home and make you some tea."

Small, and inconsequential, but at least it was something.

Deep down, Elsa knows it was all just accidents. She knows Anna forgave her long ago. She never meant to hurt her sister or her kingdom. She doesn't mean to hurt Darrow now. None of that does anything to relieve the guilt of it now, so bitter she can almost taste it like bile on her tongue, heavy enough her chest feels like it could cave in under the weight.

Even so, she manages a nod. She can't stop crying and the idea of moving seems, suddenly, entirely foreign, and she's not sure the apartment is home if Anna isn't there, but standing here isn't helping either. Jessica is here and that's all she has. Besides, a cup of tea has never solved anything, but it's never really hurt either.

"Okay," she says, shaking and numb, but willing to be led. Anything has to be better than this.

"Okay," Jessica repeated, which was both fairly inane and as inapt a summary of what was happening as there could be. Loss like this, hurt like this, was about as far from okay as you could get. She tucked her arm around Elsa's waist and turned them in the direction of High Gate.

She wondered for a moment if Bramford might be better, with less loaded memories, but there was Miles's presence to think about, if he was there. She didn't know what was best. There didn't seem to be any good answers, probably because there were none.

Elsa leans into her hold, still nervous, afraid of what she might inadvertently do. She doesn't have much in the way of options, though, half-blind and, she's distantly aware, somewhat delirious. It's too much too fast; it should never have happened at all, they should never again have been parted. In the wake of that — well, she can expect herself to be able to handle it, but some guilty part of her knows no one else ever would.

There's comfort in not having to, in being led. In grieving without having to consider how to tie up loose ends and take care of everyone else. It's just poor comfort at best.

Cradling close against Jessica, she fumbles between feelings, wanting to try and get her tears under control, trying to convince herself not to keep so tight a grip on her emotions. It was trouble before. It's instinct to want to fight them, but she knows that can end badly. But then, how else is she to stop this storm? Once inside the elevator, she can feel her panic rising, her body tensing. If she can't see the snow coming down, she can't gauge how bad it is, how badly she's screwed everything up this time.

She could feel Elsa tensing up beside her, but couldn't immediately identify a cause. Maybe there didn't need to be one. Maybe there would be one, just nothing she could see. Maybe nothing she could influence, but she hoped not. But even if she could, she wasn't sure how.

She squeezed Elsa's side, reaching around with the other hand to stroke her cheek. "I forget, is it milk first, or tea first?" she said, which was at best a small distraction, but it was what came to mind.

Elsa blinks hard, focus coming back to her gaze, if only briefly, as it settles on Jessica. "Milk," she says. It's an easy question. She knows the answer by instinct, and she's grateful for it. It saves her having to think, even if she then questions the choice. Other people might prefer it the other way around. It isn't her place to make that decision for everyone, to be the ultimate arbiter of the proper way to make tea.

"It mixes better."

"Milk first," Jessica confirmed, a little heartened by the way Elsa's eyes shifted back, even if only a little. That was about all that was possible, under the circumstances, after all. "Water, milk, then the tea. All right away?"

How does it work? Confronted with the question, Elsa finds it hard to recall. With the electric kettle she and Anna bought, tea is so much more informal here than it was at home. Or, anyway, the process is. It was hard to be overly formal about tea, no matter how much she liked the ceremony of it, when she was having it alone.

"No," she says, shaking her head, uncertain. The question itself doesn't feel important; the act of forcing the words out of her mouth does. "Make the tea first. Then pour it into the milk. Tea first?"

"Make the tea, but then the tea goes into the milk," Jessica said, nodding, now concerned that she was having trouble thinking of more questions about tea, or generally inconsequential questions at all. Which just layered with her concern about whether that was helpful at all.

But the elevator had arrived at Elsa's floor, in any case. She squeezed her arm again as the doors opened.

Elsa shuffles forward, glancing briefly at Jessica. There's such weight in her heart now; it's grown so heavy and tight, and still there's room for one more pang of guilt. It isn't fair that she makes people take care of her. She shouldn't have to be Jessica's burden.

She doesn't have the strength, physical or emotional, to tell her that, though, not when she needs her.

It takes her a few blank moments even to remember that she needs keys to get into the apartment, and a few more to fumble through her bag for them, to figure out how to fit them into the lock and step inside.

"Okay, sit," Jessica said, with another squeeze and a kiss on the cheek, reluctant still to step away. She lingered a moment later and when she did, it was slowly, with a stroke of Elsa's hair as she did it.

"I will take care of everything."

What she could, at least. Whatever she could do, she would do.

It's simple and incredibly hard at the same time. Taking a seat on the couch seems like the absolute most Elsa can bring herself to do, but that doesn't mean she's okay with it. Jess shouldn't have to do this for her. She should be able to take care of herself, even now.

But she can't. She can barely move. She can barely breathe, and the idea of Jessica being even as far away as the kettle is terrifying. Saying so is impossible, though. All she does is nod, pulling her legs up onto the cushion to hug against herself.

She was, normally, very good at prattling on, and was sort of aggrieved at herself for have apparently lost the knack at precisely the wrong time.

But more aggrieved at the city, at whatever force did these things. That was the real issue.

"Okay, kettle on," she said, switching it on. Then paused, flicked it off again, put some water in it, then put it back and flicked it on. "What did you use, in Arendelle? No electricity, right?"

Oh, sure, ask about Arendelle, that's not a big ol' reminder about her sister. I wish I were better at this.

I wish I didn't need to be. If this sort of thing could not happen that would be better.

Elsa doesn't feel cold, though she knows she must be. If Jessica touched her now, would she be able to handle it? Outside, the wind grows louder and she keeps thinking stop, stop, stop, but it doesn't.

What she feels instead, what settles in under her skin, is a kind of sickening electricity, like her skin is buzzing, like she wants to claw it right off of herself. She almost doesn't hear what she's asked, and when she does process it, she just shakes her head. "No," she says. She'd laugh any other day. "Just fire."

Oh, good job, mention a heating thing.

She looked at the kettle a moment later, to check it was starting up, then took the tea out of the cabinet and set it beside it, then cups. Then said what she was thinking, which was, "Well, at least this way I can just set it going, and not have to stoke it, or... fire things," and crossed back to sit beside her.

She was cold, colder than usual; usually she liked it since it was how Elsa was, it was the fact of her. She didn't dislike this because of the temperature, but because of what it said about what she was going through. She'd provide whatever warmth she could, for whatever good she could do.

For a few moments, Elsa just sits there, wanting to move closer, unable to do so. She's not sure she actually can. She's not sure she should. Explaining it is hard to do when her mouth doesn't want to work, her throat too tight for words.

"I have to stop it," she says quietly, her jaw tight. It's that or start crying again. "I have to — I'm scared. That I might hurt you or... or someone. But the more scared I am, the likelier I am to do something bad." That's how this works. She knows better now. It reacts to her, to how she feels, and when that's frightened or hurt or out of control, she loses control of this, too. She wants to curl up against Jessica, to hide her face in her hair and not have to see the world, but what if she panics? What if it hits too hard and she can't stop it? She can't lose her too. She couldn't live with that.

It was, she saw, an awful kind of cycle. Becoming scared and upset lead to a loss of control of her powers, which made her even more scared and upset... it was a spiral. It hurt to see. To see her so sad and upset, and to see that lead to her being afraid of herself again.

"Well," she said, reaching out to cup Elsa's cheek. "First of all, you're not going to hurt me. I know that for a fact. I have- I literally have a superpower that tells me when I'm in danger. I have a spider-sense. That would be a good line of romantic bs but it is the actual truth."

Elsa looks at her, trying so hard not to cry that she ends up barely breathing. It's true, she knows it's true. She has to remind herself of that, but she's seen it in action, knows how good Jessica is at sensing trouble. There's still the fear she'll somehow be too fast or too unpredictable, but it's held up so far.

Her throat hurts. Everything hurts. "Okay," she says, almost whispers, and nods. "Right. You do. I — I just, I couldn't bear it..."

"You won't have to. I am not the slightest bit worried," Jessica said, leaning in until their foreheads were touching. "We'll work on it together, and no one will get hurt. Maybe a little cold, but not forever. I think- if you try to hold it in, I don't think it'll work. You're going to feel what you're going to feel, and you're going to be magic because you are magic. So instead of trying to make the magic go away when you're sad and hurting, we'll let you do magic. We'll work out how to do it."

Maybe they could extend that we. There had to be people in the city that knew more than she did. Actual magic people.

Elsa nods a little, but not much, not wanting to pull away or break contact. Everything is so much. It's painful and terrifying and overwhelming, and she doesn't know what to do with any of it except huddle close to her girlfriend and squeeze her eyes shut tight. All those years of trying to conceal, not feel, they didn't work. It only made things worse. She has to remember that.

"I tried," she says, and it's hard to get the words out, but she has to say them. To hear the reminder out loud. Her jaw feels so tight, though. "When I was younger. Not to feel. It doesn't work."

"It does not, so we're not gonna do that," she said, tipping her head up slightly to kiss Elsa on the forehead before returning to where she'd been, stroking her hair. "You're gonna feel what you're gonna feel, and that's- that is okay. Oh, sweetheart."

It doesn't work. It doesn't. Elsa thinks it over and over, tries hard to keep that in her head, echoing with that soft endearment. Anything to push out the voice saying instead that she's failed, that she's going to hurt people anyway, that she wasted all the time she should have had with her sister. Even she can't completely believe the part, though, about losing the only person who believes in her. Jessica is here, after all, her arms around her, believing. She's not alone.

There's frost on the walls, crawling over their belongings, and nothing she can do to stop that or the tears. She wants to say I'm glad you're here, but it's the wrong word. She can't really be glad about anything.

She was going to need thermals for a while. She thought this not as a problem or a sacrifice or a complaint but simply logistical fact; it was going to cold around Elsa, and she wasn't going to be anywhere else but firmly by her side, didn't want to be anywhere else than that. She would dress warm and they would weather this for however long it took.

She didn't even want to move for the kettle; it would turn off automatically. "I'm going to ignore that unless you really want tea," she said. "I'm just gonna stay here holding you sort of forever."

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don't let winter come, don't let our hearts freeze

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