Frost spews from Elsa's fingers as she trips over the parapet and falls backwards. Flailing her arms, the thought of plummeting twelve storeys doesn't even occur to her, so vivid is Anna's eyes burning into her skull, and the sheer hatred she felt when her sister lashed out at her.

"Anna, no!" Elsa shrieks, watching Anna leap from the roof a second before snow explodes beneath her. The bed of sleet catches Elsa's fall, right before Anna slams into it and leaps at her without pause. Backing away from the feral red eyes bearing down on her, Elsa's mind burns with panic; she conjures an ice wall, only for shards of ice to spray at her face when Anna rips through it like plywood. The pain in Elsa's face erupts with fiery intensity when Anna punches her again.

Blood drips upon the snow, showing up as vivid crimson against the pure white blanket. Elsa shrieks when Anna's insurmountable weight jams down against her body. Her screams are cut off as Anna's hands close around her throat. Her sister's hands, just days earlier so gentle and loving, now wrench around Elsa's neck like they are wringing out a wet towel. Elsa chokes, icy fingers feebly clawing away at Anna's face. The sight of Anna's red eyes burning as bright as the sun sends ice rippling through Elsa's arms. The instinct for survival kicks in, and an enormous ice blade extends from her hand, its tip pressing against Anna's ribcage. One thrust would end the pain ripping through her body like fire.

"You took her from me," Anna's voice growls in her ear, low and deep like thunder.

The light in Elsa's eyes begin to fade as strength ebbs from her body. Staring into Anna's eyes, she realizes that Han's is in Anna's head. Elsa struggles to speak, but nothing comes from her tangled throat apart from a creaking noise as her neck threatens to snap. Wriggling beneath Anna's insurmountable grasp, Elsa's ice blade scrapes at Anna's skin. The blade quivers as the thought of ending her sister's life flashes across her mind, but still, she refuses to. Not after everything they've been through.

Somewhere amidst the thrashing, Elsa passes out in her bed of snow, sun burning into her eyes.

The burning in her throat persists when Elsa wakes up. Dressed in hospital clothes, she leaps to the nearest mirror, the ugly purple finger marks lining her neck confirming that what happened was no nightmare. Worse to come is the thought of what happened to Anna. Clutching the washbasin, the fear that Oaken might have killed Anna to save her slams into Elsa's chest like a bolt of lighting. Elsa upsets a tray of syringes and stumbles over her feet as she clambers out of the room. Her fists turn to ice when she sees Oaken and Kristoff talking to an injured rebel, just one amongst a few dozen lying in hospital beds.

"What did you do to Anna?" Elsa snarls, the pain of talking sending prickles of electricity through her neck.

Oaken turns, and replies without a hitch, "I shot her."

Elsa's face falters, before she grits her teeth, an ice spear appearing in her hand.

"Woah, woah, slow down there, feistypants," Kristoff says, putting a hand on Elsa's shoulder, "we put a shell of tar into her at close range, she was going to break your neck anyway."

"Tar?"

"The same thing Oaken used to knock you out," Kristoff adds, holding out a cigarette, "Anna's fine now. She's recovering in the hospital."

The ice fades from Elsa's arms, and she sighs, "Well, can I see her?"

"Are you sure? I mean, she just tried to strangle you."

Elsa's heart skips a beat when the surreal image of Anna's eyes burning into her skull slams into her head for a moment. She hesitates, asking, "Um, I mean, is she conscious?"

"Barely," Kristoff says, "we suspect Hans found a way to tap into her head, but at the moment she's powerless and on an IV line. The nurses will sedate her if anything goes wrong."

"I've...I've seen it happen before," Elsa says, trying not to remember the wounds from Merida's attack, "please, take me to her."

Kristoff leads Elsa to an isolation room. Staring through the window, Elsa's chest tightens when she sees Anna lying on a bed with bandages wrapped around her head and chest. Already, she smells the tar from outside, visible as smoke trails wafting from an ashtray. Entering the room would render her powerless, but even more pressing is the sight of her stricken sister feebly stirring in her half-sleep. With her fingers poised on the steel knob, Elsa sighs, before stepping into the room. At once, the cold fades from her hands, and the snowflakes adorning her hair sublimate into the warm air.

"Anna?" Elsa asks with a trembling voice, keeping her back to the door. Anna opens an eye beneath her tousled red hair and peeks at the blonde figure standing by the door.

"Elsa?"

Oh thank god, she remembers me, Elsa thinks.

Elsa moves towards her sister, but notices Anna's fist clenching beneath the blanket. The motion causes her to resume her place by the door.

"Do you remember what happened?"

Anna smiles at the ceiling light, pondering for a second before answering, "I remember, I remembered the first time I saw you. It was...the first day of fall, but you were already there, like the only snowflake which refused to melt."

Elsa's lips part in amazement at her sister's words. There must've been hundreds of people in that crowd, but Anna noticed her. Like magnets in a haystack, they were bound to find one another. Elsa's gaze softens; she steps closer to Anna, enjoying the way her red hair gleamed beneath the hospital lights.

"I saw you too," Elsa remembers.

"You were the most beautiful girl I ever saw," Anna whispers, "like a rare patch of blue sky peeking through the smog."

Elsa kneels by the bed, and grasps her sister's bruised fingers.

"Do you remember anything when we came back?" Elsa asks, "After we landed on the roof?"

Anna shakes her head, and a tear tumbles down her cheek onto the pillow.

"I don't, I don't," Anna gasps, her voice trembling with terror, like she's trying to wake up from a nightmare stuck playing on repeat in her head.

"Shh, it's ok," Elsa hushes Anna, leaning closer and wiping the tears from her face, "you don't have to tell me-"

"Hold me," Anna pleads, and Elsa complies, wanting for nothing more than to comfort the sobbing wreck her sister is right now.

Brushing Anna's hair, Elsa listens as her sister sobs the words I wish, over and over again between her sputtered breathing.

"You wish?" Elsa asks, "What do you wish for?"

Anna sucks in a deep breath, before snarling at Elsa, "I wish I tore out your fucking throat!"

Pain rips through the side of Elsa's face. She flings herself from Anna as a series of maniacal laughs ring through the room. Her heart pounding, Elsa wipes the blood from her eyes, gasping in horror at the piece of her own ear clamped between Anna's teeth, held wide in a bloodied grin. Doctors and nurses burst through the door, injecting Anna with drugs. She doesn't even protest as the wave of sedatives slam into her veins and put her away, but Elsa begins protesting at once.

"No, no! Don't hurt her! Please!" Elsa shrieks.

Without her powers, and the rapid stream of blood leaking from her ear, Elsa loses her train of thought. The sight of Anna between the figures of nurses blurs into a white cloud, until she feels the searing pressure of cotton gauze against her face. Strong hands haul her away from the room, and before she's able to protest, Elsa finds herself sitting outside on a bench, with Krisfstoff jamming the dressing into her ear.

"I don't-" Elsa gasps, eyes wide open, "I don't know why she'd do that, I mean - she was fine just a moment ago."

"It's that bastard Hans and his powers, he has ways to do things like this," Kristoff says, before pausing, "Anna probably shouldn't have came back."

"I did it for her," Elsa laments, shaking her head, "there's nothing for me here, but she still has people who need her."

"Anna has a talent for inspiring people," Kristoff says, casting a glance at the doctors watching over Anna's sleeping body, "she had a knack for making people see the light in the darkest of times."

"T-that's...that's true," Elsa says, before realizing that the guy beside her had known Anna her entire life, while she only knew her for a year, "she's really something, isn't she?"

"I wish Anna got to know you sooner," Kristoff says, "since she was a kid it looked as if she was searching for something, like she knew there was more to life than just working ourselves into the grave."

The door slams as Oaken appears from Anna's isolation room, "well, that didn't go too well did it? You led a fucking monster into our midst!"

"Look, I had no idea," Elsa says, burying her head into her heads, "it's not like I planned-"

Oaken tips the side of Elsa's head to his view, exposing the ugly wound on her ear.

"Well, what the hell do we do with her now?" Oaken bellows.

Elsa shakes her head. Standing to the window, she presses a hand on the glass, and watches Anna through the snowflake spreading from her fingertips. She blinks once, the teardrop plummeting from her eyelid freezing and clattering on the floor. With her chest threatening to implode from hurt, Elsa wrenches herself from the hospital room and flees from the one girl who's the source of so much pain.

Despite her desperate need to rid herself of the ice rippling through her ribcage, Elsa knows she'd be coming back.

With her arms folded, Elsa watches as a dozen snow golems put the finishing touches on her new house. Built from pine beams and poured concrete, the two-storey house strikes a modest sight amongst the row of terraced apartments she had constructed for the liberated Grimfold peasants. In the back of her mind, she questions the existence of this house; the Scandinavian kitchen interior, the fluffy couches, the single bedroom she made for Anna and herself. Since none of this would mean anything to her if Anna is destined to live the rest of her life with her mind enslaved to Hans's will.

The breeze around her feet picks up, and she knows someone's coming. Without turning around, Elsa waits for him to come closer. A stone sinks weighs down her heart as she anticipates Kristoff's first words.

"We found a solution," his voice wafts to her ears.

Turning around, Elsa looks the man in his eyes, trying to detect the faintest glimmer of joy that could mean Anna's alright, but she finds none.

"A solution to what?" Elsa asks.

"Anna," Kristoff replies, showing the woman to a jeep, ostensibly captured from Arendelle's military. Elsa's heart leaps at his suggestion, but the many disappointments she's faced over the years leads her to keep silent as the vehicle rumbles down the road. Despite the warm spring breeze blowing through the open windows, the jeep's interior turns uncomfortably cold by the time they reach the hospital, and Elsa's teeth begin to tremble. As she steps out, a question forms on her lips.

"What did you do to Anna?"

"It's hard to describe," Kristoff answers, holding the door open for Elsa, "perhaps it's better if you see it for yourself."

Snowflakes flutter from Elsa's hair as she enters a large hall full of beds filled with the wounded and infirm. To her astonishment, she spots Anna amongst them, lying in one of the identical white beds. Oaken stands tall amongst the doctors milling about Anna, poking her with pens and needles. He notices Elsa's imminent chill as she approaches him.

"I hope you don't mind, we've moved her away from the intensive care ward," Oaken says, "There're a lot more sick people who need it."

"No, I don't-" Elsa starts, before the sight of her sister ties her throat into a knot. A military-issue helmet had been placed over Anna's gleaming red hair, with wires sprouting from beneath it like vines. Anna's eyes are half-shut against the glaring lights, and her body shifts about beneath the sheets, her muscles taut as if some unseen pain gripped her bones.

"We figured that metal stops Hans's powers," Oaken explains, rapping his fingers on Anna's helmet, "that was how Theresa managed to avoid detection for so long."

Elsa raises an eyebrow, "Theresa?"

"The girl you killed in the refinery."

Shutting her eyes and shaking away the memory, Elsa asks, "But what of this? She can't expect to live with a helmet strapped to her head for the rest of her life, can she?"

"Well, this is a temporary solution," Oaken answers, "be grateful we've stopped her from killing you, for now."

Before she's able to reply, Oaken motions for the doctors to go, leaving Elsa alone with her sister. Standing a foot away from bed, the throbbing in her right ear intensifies, and already she can feel the aching in her neck returning. They left Anna unshackled on the bed, so it should be safe to approach her, shouldn't it?

"Elsa?" Anna's voice drifts through the stench of antiseptic. The sight of Anna's turquoise eyes robs her of any further hesitation, and she pulls a chair next to her sister.

"Anna?" Elsa asks, grasping her sister's hands, "Are you...there?"

"They told me I hurt you," Anna whispers, before her eyes drift to the torn remnant of Elsa's right ear, "oh god, I'm so sorry-"

"No, you couldn't have stopped it-"

"I nearly killed you, didn't I?" Anna mutters, as tears spring to her eyes, "I'm a menace and a risk and I shouldn't have ever come home. This is all my damn fault-"

"No, no it's ok," Elsa says, wiping Anna's tears, "there was nothing you could've done."

"Y-you didn't stop me?" Anna asks, swallowing hard.

"I couldn't," Elsa whispers, kissing Anna's fingers, "not in a million years, or a million lifetimes, could I ever bring myself to hurt you."

"It's useless, it's over, Hans knows where I am now," Anna whines, emitting a noticeable tremble as her fingers clench at Elsa's hands, "it won't be long before someone snatches me away in the dead of the night."

Elsa's heart freezes solid. At once, she questions her sister, "Wait, what? Snatch you away?"

"T-they threatened that they'd find me if I tried to escape, no matter where I went," Anna says, "I was so happy after you rescued me that I forgot about it."

The ice in Elsa's chest spreads to her ribcage, filling the space between them with a noticeable chill.

"Oh god, no," Elsa gasps, clutching her sister's hands like she'll lose her at any moment. Thoughts swirl in her head, bringing with it flecks of frost descending from the ceiling. The thought of Anna being snatched away and tortured again drives daggers into Elsa's heart. It couldn't happen, it musn't happen.

"We should go back," Anna starts, before allowing her voice to trail off into nothingness. Clutching her sister's hand, Elsa stares into the ambivalence swimming around Anna's eyes. In the back of her mind, she remembers Hansel and Gretel and the ranch. She had built one just like it on the outskirts of Grimfold, hoping for a life brimming with purpose, where they could be together and right the wrongs Hans had inflicted on them. All that would be swept away now, by a life cowering in fear behind a metal helmet.

The frost fades from Elsa's chest, filling the void with a crackling noise.

"No," Elsa seethes, as warmth returns to her hands, "I've had enough of running, enough of pretending things are alright. Things are never going to be alright as long as he's around. You know that."

A shudder breaks out on Anna's lips. She adjusts the helmet on her head.

"What're you going to do?" Anna asks.

"I'm going to-" Elsa starts, unsure of exactly what she's going to do. The sight of her own gritted teeth in the washbasin mirrors tells her the answer.

"I'm going to kill Hans."

A/N: Sorry for the late update. Life has been busy.