Anna waited in the dark, eyes fixed on wooden slats of the top bunk until she heard the sound of snoring. Outside, it was raining. A spring shower. Gentle pitter-patter on the windowsill.

There was no way she could be one hundred percent sure that the other three girls were asleep, but Anna decided to risk it. Silently, she pulled the horsehair blanket from her and slipped barefoot onto the stone floor. God, it was cold!

She crept quietly to the door, clumsily reaching for the handle. Her heart stopped when Elin's sleepy voice rose like a cloud: "Ann… is that you?"

Anna winced. "Yeah," she whispered.

"Where—" her words were punctuated by a yawn, "—are you going?"

"To the bathroom," she lied.

"O-oh." The word captured in a yawn. The slump of her dark silhouetted as she rolled back over, followed by the sound of snuffly sleep-breathing.

Anna let out the breath she didn't realise she was holding.

The kitchen and dining room were empty. Treading through them carefully, Anna could hear her heartbeat in her ears.

Upstairs, the corridors in the castle were dark, dimly lit by the phosphoresce of the gas lamps. Anna's footsteps echoed. Just when she'd almost made it to Elsa's room, she froze.

Whispers.

Wrenching open the closest door, Anna dove inside, just in time before the voices came round the corner. She caught a few words: "—I promise, this won't change a thing between us—"

As the voices faded, she let the door creep back open a little, and caught sight of a familiar person, his arm cinched round the waist of one of the page boys.

"The Hair," Anna murmured, watching Prince Jareth and his midnight companion vanish into the dark. That was a twist, Anna considered, though she paused when she thought about who it was she was going to see.

Anna was about to squeeze back out into the corridor when she caught a glimmer of something behind her.

What was it?

The room she found herself in was completely bare, apart from a couple of old chairs with broken legs. And behind them at the back, a door. It was an old oak door. Curiously, she approached it. The doorknob, which her hand lighted upon, was carved into the shape of some kind of creature.

She saw it again: a glimmer in the corner of her eye. There was something moving in the woodwork. Something alive.

Something that felt familiar.

Without thinking, Anna found her hand turning the doorknob. It rattled, and didn't open. Anna tried again, but the door was firmly locked.

Anna removed her hand, shaking her head to clear away the muggy thoughts. What did it matter anyway?

Another door, embossed with a snowflake, opened.

"Did anyone see you?" Elsa asked, ushering her inside and closing the door behind her. She wore a long nightgown constructed of glittering crystals of ice.

"No," said Anna, before she asked, "Did you wait long?"

"No," said Elsa.

As they stood, hovering by the door, looking at each other, Anna felt her cheeks fill with colour.

"S-sorry," she said, bowing her head.

"For what?" Elsa asked softly.

"You're all I've thought about since the ball. I was so distracted during the clean up I dropped a tray of glasses. And now I'm here, and you're here, and… I can't think of a single thing to say." A breathy, nervous laugh. She glanced up at Elsa, expecting her to look at her weirdly. Instead, Elsa was smiling. The corners of her mouth curled into deep dimples.

"What?" Anna asked, immediately suspicious.

"You're adorable," said Elsa.

"Elsa!" she exclaimed, fingers curled up tight, flushing brighter.

"What?" Elsa said, fingers cupped over her mouth to cover her laughter.

"You can't just say things like that. 'You're adorable.' It's embarrassing," she complained.

Something Elsa said at the ball blossomed back into her mind: You're cute when you're embarrassed.

It felt so mean to be teased this way, by Elsa of all people.

…Though, if she was honest, it wasn't that she disliked it.

Elsa drifted to her boudoir, and poured for herself a drink of something gold and butterscotch coloured. A sparkle of her fingers, and she added several ice cubes. She poured Anna one too.

"Ice?" Elsa asked, arching an eyebrow.

This Elsa was such a show-off!

They sat together on the end of Elsa's silk queen-sized bed, beneath the canopy, and talked. Anna clutched the cool tumbler between her flushed fingertips. They spoke about the ball, gossipped about the princes, and Anna raved about the leftovers and how Lucille had totally pigged out.

Yet a respectful space was left between them. And Anna begun to wonder what Elsa's teasing amounted to. Had that kiss between them really meant anything? Poking an ice cube floating in the butterscotch liquid, she wondered why it was she felt relief and disappointment both.

Until Elsa's voice dropped into an almost husky murmur. She said: "You look beautiful with your hair down."

"Y-you look beautifuler," Anna stammered. No amendment to this was needed: Elsa knew what she meant.

"Can I kiss you?"

"You don't have to a-ask!" Anna said, exhaling a breathy, embarrassed laugh.

So Elsa kissed her, and it felt like marshmallows, sinking into gooey delicious hot chocolate.

And to think: all those months wasted on kissing Kristoff, and she'd never realised kissing could feel like this.

They pulled back for breath, and Anna exhaled a shaky, shuddery laugh. "Was that as good for you as it was for me?"

Elsa's eyes sparkled like diamonds. "I need a second tasting. Kiss me again, so I can make sure."

They kissed, and kissed again until she felt light-headed. The warmth of Elsa's mouth and skin and fingers clutched round the ice of her dress: why did it all feel so good?

They must have stayed up til three in the morning: talking; kissing; delighting in one another's company. Finding how their hands fit together (re-finding, for Anna,) confiding secrets.

For all the differences in Elsa's behaviour, when she talked about her past, she sounded like Anna's sister again. Not-Elsa lived in a mansion, not a castle. But in that mansion there were servants called Kai and Gerda. Her bedroom was still on the third floor and the step by the landing that was always creaky, was still creaky. Anna couldn't help but think: what was it in Elsa's memories that had been tampered with, to create such a drastic change in her person?

Mostly though, Anna didn't think at all that night.

When she at last succumbed to sleep, it was nestled by Elsa's side, surrounded by her arms and cocooned by the warmth of her love.

She woke just before dawn.

The light that crept in through the windows was thin and pale. The rain had stopped in the night. Anna felt utterly at peace in Elsa's arms, but she forced herself up. If I'm not back in the dorms by morning, it's going to look more than suspicious.

Still, as she straightened her hair in the mirror, she couldn't help but focus, in the reflection, on Elsa's sleeping face.

God, she's beautiful. I never noticed how beautiful she was before.

A thought came to her. Something someone else once said: A true love's kiss, perhaps?

Shuffling up on her knees over silk sheets, Anna knelt by Elsa's side. Moved a tendril of hair from her eyes.

Their lips met.

Nothing changed.

Anna hadn't seriously expected it to work, but she didn't expect the disappointment that now crashed onto her in waves, either. Fingers bit into her palms. Tears crowded her eyes. A lump like a small ball rose up into her throat.

"I will help you, Elsa," she vowed, in a voice small and tight with emotion. "I don't know how yet, but I will. I will."

To be continued.