Elsa

When Elsa got sick, she refused to believe it. She never got sick, and she was busy, and the lightheadedness and the aching pressure in her sinuses would have to wait. This approach worked well enough until she fainted.

She came to with the vague impression that she was a child again, being carried in her father's arms—except her father had never had such a distinct, musky odor. He had smelled like ink, like paper and wax and pipe smoke. He had not smelled like masculine sweat and reindeer. Her eyes opened as she snapped into full awareness of her position. She liked her sister's…friend? suitor? whatever-he-was, but she'd only known him for a few months. Not long enough for this, certainly.

"What on earth are you doing? Put me down."

Kristoff started and nearly obeyed involuntarily. He kept holding her, but he paused, looking around with an uncertain, awkward flush. Anna's face popped up over his arm.

"He'll put you down when we get you to your bed. You're sick."

"I am not," Elsa protested. She wondered if she could squirm free without sacrificing her dignity—how much dignity did she have left, after apparently being carried around the castle like a baby? Not enough to risk losing any more, she decided. "I'm perfectly fine, Anna, don't worry. I just have a headache and I got a little dizzy. I must have stood up too quickly."

"I think you have a fever," Anna said. "I mean, you're usually cooler than I am, but you feel just as warm now, so for you that must be too hot. I sent for the doctor, and we're going to put you to bed."

"Anna, I have work to do—"

"You can't work if you're going to faint all over the place." Anna's head dropped out of sight—she must have been standing on tiptoe, Elsa realized—but her voice could still be heard, moving ahead of them down the hall. "I'll deal with your appointments—Kai can tell me which ones are urgent and which ones we have to put off until you can handle them personally. And if the doctor agrees then we will let you have your writing desk if you promise to stay in bed. But I'm going to take it away again after dark because I know you stay up too late reading treaties and things, and you're going to sleep tonight if I have to stand over you with a cudgel."

"Ah, yes," Elsa muttered. "That does sound restful."

She had said it too quietly for Anna to hear, but Kristoff chuckled, the sound reverberating through his chest. Elsa blinked, then a slow smile spread across her face as he grinned down at her. She wasn't used to making other people laugh. She liked the feeling.

"Kristoff!" Anna called. "Come on!"

"I'm sure I can at least walk," Elsa suggested.

He shrugged, jostling her a little in his arms. "Sorry," he said, smiling ruefully at her. "If I put you down she's going to be mad."

Elsa sighed, visions of being aggressively nursed and coddled to within an inch of her life filling her mind. "I'm the queen," she said helplessly as he started up the stairs. "I am the queen."

"Yeah," he said sympathetically. "But…she's Anna."

Kristoff

When Kristoff got sick, he forgot to tell anyone. He wasn't used to having anyone to tell. He noticed the extra ache in his body, the congestion in his nose, the mind-numbing stuffiness in his head, and he groaned to himself and carried on. Work had to be done, after all. He did take an extra minute to fumble through his supplies for an oiled pouch and its collection of little paper packets. The mixture of dried herbs tasted bitter, but they helped clear his head. He took a few more breaks during the day, and didn't handle the more dangerous tools, because being sick meant being extra careful, but he still worked steadily through the day.

In the evening he let Sven find the way home, grateful for his friend's surefootedness and trusting that the reindeer wouldn't forget to allow for the width of the sled behind him. The half-doze that Kristoff slipped into, his head nodding against his chest, was just enough rest that he was able to sit up during dinner with Anna and the queen (Elsa, he reminded himself, she had given him permission to call her Elsa. Whatever that meant. Did it mean they were friends? Kristoff didn't know how to have friends who weren't rocks, or reindeer). It was not, however, enough rest to keep Kristoff upright through dessert, especially when the two sisters became momentarily caught up in a conversation of their own, about some complex matter he didn't understand involving puffs…no, ruffs? No, it was…

"Kristoff?"

His head bobbed back up and he blinked hard into Anna's concerned gaze. "Sorry," he muttered, flushing. "I'm sorry."

"Are you okay?" she asked, touching his wrist.

He smiled at her reassuringly, he hoped. The symptoms that the herbs had held at bay were returning in force. He could hear the congestion giving his voice a comical lisp. That was sure to make a good impression on the—on Anna's sister.

"I'll be fine," he said.

Elsa leaned forward, eyeing him with a look that was penetratingly blue, like the frozen mountain lakes. "Your nose is red," she observed. "And so are your eyes. Are you sure you feel well?"

"I didn't say that," Kristoff shrugged awkwardly, giving her a half smile. "I feel awful, but I'll be fine in a day or two."

"You're sick!" Anna exclaimed. She got out of her chair to stand by him, pressing a small, cool hand to his forehead.

"Yeah, but it's just a sniffle. It's nothing. I just have to be a little extra careful on the ice, and—"

It turned out that both Anna and her sister (and the princess and the queen) were appalled at the very idea that he would work while he was sick. Apparently this was certain to result in his immediate death, although whether it would be from excessive sneezing or a sudden desire to cut his own leg off with an ice saw, he wasn't sure. But he was sure that when Anna clung to his arm and begged him to promise that he wouldn't go back up the mountain until he was completely well, he was helpless to refuse her. And he was sure that when Anna suggested impulsively that he should stay in the castle, and turned her big blue eyes (blue like the endless freedom of the sky) on her sister, that Elsa was just as helpless.

So Kristoff found himself in an enormous room, in an enormous bed, wearing a rather less than enormous borrowed nightshirt and swaddled up to his eyebrows in blankets. Anna herself had put the three hot bricks by his feet (which began to sweat unpleasantly almost at once). And while the unfamiliar softness of the bed was tugging him into sleep, he stirred with alarm when Anna dragged a chair to the bedside and announced that she would sit up and read to him.

"You don't need to…I'm not dying," he muttered. "You should go to bed, I just need to sleep and I'll be fine. I'm not an invalid, Anna."

She bit her lip stubbornly. "I won't be able to sleep. I'll just lie awake and worry about you. I'll just stay until you're asleep, okay?"

He didn't have the strength to argue with her, and he found he didn't mind too much, not when her slim hand crept into his as he drifted off.

Anna's hand was not in his when he woke, but the chair by the bed was occupied. Kristoff, blearily blinking away the grit of sleep and reminding himself just in time not to blow his nose on the sheets, found the queen of Arendelle looking at him. He froze, then hastily pulled the disarranged blankets up to his chin. Elsa had been reading, apparently, but the book had dropped down to rest against her knee when he stirred.

"Ah….good morning," he mumbled.

"Anna made me promise," she said. "It was the only way she would go to bed. I'm not sure what she was afraid would happen, but she seemed to think it was important that someone stay with you."

"Ah." Kristoff shifted uncomfortably, then Elsa closed her book with a snap and stood up.

"I'll go and tell her that you're awake," she said. She paused, and then patted his shoulder lightly, her hand almost hovering instead of touching. "I hope you're feeling better."

"Yeah, fine, thanks."

"Good. Try not to die in the next five minutes, please." Elsa paused again, head tilted thoughtfully. "Well…she's not her best in the mornings. Better make it three quarters of an hour."

"I'll do my best," he promised.

Anna

When Anna got sick, she hated it.

She hated feeling tired. She hated being told to stay in bed. She hated throwing up. She hated the way that everything seemed to smell weird, and taste weird, and the fact that she felt weird. She hated that it was always too hot, except for the times when it was too cold. She hated resting. People crept around her on tiptoe, and spoke in whispers, and she hated that too. Most of all she hated the way that Elsa and Kristoff both hovered around her bed, afraid to be too close, afraid too touch her (and she wondered if this was a small part of what Elsa had felt for so long, and that was another thing she hated). They were both pale and frowning, and they kept exchanging anxious glances over Anna's head, and as much as she wanted them nearby all the time they were also driving her crazy. At least Elsa did eventually have to go away and run a country. Kristoff had handed off all of his ice master duties, apparently so that he could glue himself to her bedside and stare at her, which was why he was the one to solicitously rearrange Anna's bedding one too many times. Really when she chucked her hairbrush at his head she'd intended to miss, but her aim was bad—it smacked him above the ear.

Anna covered her mouth with her hands. "Oh no, oh, Kristoff, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to-I'm sorry." He just blinked at her, looking a little dazed and rubbing one hand against the side of his head, and Anna suddenly burst into tears. Instantly he was gathering her up into his lap and trying to sooth her, which only made her feel somehow both more guilty and more annoyed. She sat up, resisting his attempt to cuddle her, and pulled his head down so that she could kiss his wounded temple, sniffling against his hair as she fought down sobs. Kristoff settled for rubbing her back and submitted to her kissing and her crying for a few minutes.

When she had calmed down a little, he picked her up, managing to scoop up a tangle of sheets as well, and carried the whole bundle out of the room and down the hall. Anna slumped morosely in his arms, rubbing at her wet face with the much-abused sleeve of her nightdress. His goal turned out to be the study at the far end of the hall, where Elsa was sitting at her desk, spectacles slipping down her nose as she leaned over a long document.

"What is it? Is something wrong?" Elsa was out of her chair and peering at Anna, tugging at the wad of sheet twisted around her as if it might be hiding a wound, before Kristoff could explain. Anna began to cry again. She hated the crying. "What happened?" Elsa demanded.

Anna felt Kristoff sigh. "She threw a brush at me," he said. "I thought…maybe she needed some time out of her room."

"The doctor said she had to be careful—"

"He didn't say I wasn't allowed out of my room," Anna muttered sulkily. "You're the one who told everyone not to let me out of my room."

The sobbing started, and Anna hid her face against Kristoff's shirt, but she could imagine the look the two of them were exchanging. It was really not fair, the way they would talk about her without actually saying anything out loud. It was cheating.

Kristoff set her down on the sofa, her head landing on Elsa's leg, and Anna rolled to one side (as much as she could) and cried into her sister's skirt. Her husband sat at the other end of the sofa with her feet on his lap, his big, warm hands massaging her feet and ankles. Elsa stroked her hair.

"I'm sorry," Anna mumbled. "I'm so s-sorry, I just…I feel so bad."

"I know," Elsa said sympathetically.

"I hate this."

Kristoff's fingers stroked apologetically over her calf, and Anna sighed, sniffing.

"It will be worth it," her sister promised. "I'm sure that you'll think it was worth it in the end."

Later, when Anna was leaning wearily back against her pillows (and not throwing anything at Gerda, despite the fact that the old retainer was fussily rearranging the bedclothes for the millionth time), she watched Kristoff coaching Elsa on how to hold her new niece, guiding her to support the tiny head and tuck the little swaddled bundle against her chest. Her sister stared down at the baby, wide-eyed and entranced, looking almost afraid to breath, and Kristoff kept glancing from the baby to Anna, a truly idiotic, beautiful grin on his face, and Anna looked at them all and thought yes, yes it was worth it, and she hated the tears welling up in her eyes because they blurred out the sight of her family.