It was almost half an hour later that Anna heard the pained chugging of Kristoff's pickup.

Of course, she couldn't see it because the tears had all but frozen to her eyes, making them and the flesh around them tender as she tried to rub the remains away.

She'd actually managed to do a fair bit of searching beforehand, though—enough to establish that Elsa wasn't loitering around the campus, at any rate. She'd come to the park in the hopes that the blonde would be hear, but it only took a few moments for that to be dashed.

"Anna!" Kristoff called as he approached her. She turned her gaze to the sound of his voice and gave a watery smile.

"Hey, Kristoff," she said softly, rubbing at her noise. "Sorry I called you so late. Thanks for Uh, meeting me..." He gave a small nod and an encouraging smile. Anna tried to return it but completely and utterly failed; her lip quivered for a few seconds as her hands clenched and unclenched.

Kristoff wasn't surprised when she jumped up and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, burying her face in his chest. Neither said a word for a few moments as Anna shook against him.

"I'm s-sorry," she sniffled, not moving away. "I don't even d-deserve to cry." Kristoff's hand came up to rub her back, letting the slow circles soothe his friend. "S-she could be dead an-and it would be all m-my fault!" She looked up at this, eyes boring into Kristoff's, pleading. "Kris, what if she g-got abducted and r-raped!"

Kristoff moved his hands to either side of Anna's face and held her there, making sure she was looking into his eyes. "Anna, I promise you that Elsa will be fine. She probably got lost and is curled up in a doorway or something. We will find her, okay?"

Anna gave a shaky nod and took a deep breath. "We will find her," she told herself. Looking at Kristoff again, she managed to make the small smile that refused to appear earlier. "We will find her."

The duo spent the next hour calling Elsa's name, trekking through the frosted streets of Corona in search for any sight of the blonde girl. Every minute that passed both lifted Anna's mood and sent it plummeting down because if Elsa wasn'tthere, she had to be somewhere else and Kristoff said they would find her... but if she was there, she would be found.

It didn't help that at almost 3am, there was hardly a soul to be found—actually, if it hadn't been but for the barking of a dog, Anna would have missed them entirely.

"Excuse me!" she called out. The young man, walking a dalmatian, looked over at her, confused.

"Can I help you at all?" he inquired, perfectly British.

"Hi, yeah, I'm looking for my uh..." Anna paused for a moment, unsure. It was weird to be looking for a friend at this hour, but she couldn't very well say Elsa was a dog when she so obviously looked human. "Friend," she decided on. "She has uh, special needs and ran away earlier tonight. You wouldn't happen to have seen her, would you?"

The man shook his head. "I'm so sorry, I haven't seen any people around. What does your friend look like?"

"She's got really blonde hair in a plait and ice-blue eyes and she was wearing a-" Oh God. "Um, never mind!" Anna cut herself off and jumped away from the man, leaving him standing dazed under a streetlight.

"Kristoff!" she cried out, no idea where the burly blond had gone. "Kristoff!" She ran down a side-street between the German butcher and the creep computer place that always had sketchy 'deals'. Pulling her phone from her pocket, she cursed the fact that she never set up a 'favourites' list to speed-dial from and wasted precious seconds finding Kristoff's name in her contacts (it didn't help that he was labelled 'ReindeerKing', either) (courtesy of drunken nights after... during... finals).

"Kris!" she barked down the line when she heard it connect, "meet me at the park now!"

Without waiting for any acknowledgement from him, she hung up and picked up her pace. Her lungs absolutely burned with the effort and she made a mental note to start exercising because it wasn't even uphill, dammit!

The harshness in her lungs as Anna tried to breathe was very effective in distancing her from the reason she was panicking in the first place.

Okay, so, Elsa was outside, in the snow, after not having eaten anything all day, in nothing but a short pair of pants and an inside-out shirt.

If Anna had the breath, she would have wailed. Instead, she wiped furiously at her face again, the wind stinging at the water that had leaked from her eyes. Again.

This shitty day was never ever going to get better. And the sun wasn't even up! At this point, all Anna wanted to do was... well, cry.

So she did.

Kristoff was already waiting for her by the time she got there, panting, ready to break down, and utterly exhausted. Whatever minor spurt of adrenaline had surged through her was long gone, leaving her a quaking, shivering, mess. She all but threw herself onto Kristoff, letting the man hold her as she sobbed loudly into his chest.

"I just want her back!" Anna cried (well, hiccoughed grossly) into his chest. "S-she's all 'lone out here in p-practically her u-underwear! I-I'm a t-terrible person, Kris..."

"No, you're not, Anna," he said softly. She let out a humourless chuckle and wiped her nose on his lapels.

"No, I am." Sniffling, she took a breath to get a hold of herself. "R-Rapunzel told me that I wouldn't be able to look after a dog and she was right. I- ... I made Elsa run away because I was so horrible to her. And now I'll never be able to apologise..."

She looked so hopeless—so absolutely despondent—that Kristoff couldn't hold her gaze.

"Anna, I-" he began, sighing. "I know where Elsa is. I promised she would be fine and she is I just-"

By this stage, Anna had backed away from him, murder in her eyes. "What?" she asked him, voice clipped. "You know where she is?" Kristoff nodded. "Then why isn't she with you? You didn't leave her to come find me, did you? I don't understand."

"I found her building a snowman... when I took Sven for a walk. About 8 o'clock. She's at my apartment..."

Oh God, there was the look he didn't want to see. The shocked, mouth-gaping expression of utter betrayal. Anna couldn't even speak, Kristoff's words a constant loop bouncing around her head.

"You- what?"

"I found her an-"

Anna held a hand up, effectively stalling him (though to be perfectly honest, he was rather glad of the distraction).

"You found her hours ago and let me suffer i the middle of the night trying to find her?! What sort of friend does that?! Do you have any idea how I felt walking into my room to find it empty? To remember that she has no idea how to defend herself or dress herself or do anything remotely self-sufficient?! How dare you?! Take me there, now."

"I did it to help you! To help her!" he retorted. "You said just this morning that you'd wish she ran away, and guess what, she did! You deserved to feel bad about it because what if I hadn't found her? All of this, this entire mess, would be your fault, Anna."

The silence that rang through the park was more deafening than the yelling that had just occurred, and Anna found herself looking away from Kristoff after a few moments, dropping her face to the ground.

"... You're right," she said softly. "Elsa deserves someone who can actually take care of her. Who will actually be good to her." Lifting her head, she sent Kristoff a watery smile. "Sorry again for calling you out here, Kris. I'll uh... I'll see you in class..."

"Come off it, Feisty Pants," Kristoff said, surprising Anna. Her original plan of walking back to her apartment and not showing up to class vanished when she felt Kristoff place a light punch to her left shoulder-blade. "I'm sorry I kept that a secret, I just... wanted to see how you'd react. Elsa misses you and I know she wants to go home."

"But- I'm a terrible person," Anna argued softly. "Why would she want to come back...?" At this, Kristoff smiled.

"Didn't you hear?" he asked. "She loves you."

A/N: Meh I actually really hate this chapter. Mostly the beginning. So, if you're disappointed, just know that I share your pain.

Two other things: the first is that I've started another tumblr entitled The Elsanna Positivity Project. This is mostly to unify the Elsanna fandom and to provide support for anyone being targeted by CU or /anyone. I'm usually around to respond to messages and leave some words of encouragement if you're feeling down about something. I just want everyone to get along =3 and I have such wonderful fans that it makes me sad to know that other people get hate for their stories (and I love a good portion of the ones being hated on and I don't understand it at all). So, yes, there's that.

Um, also, I (probably) won't be updating this (or anything at all) for the next month or so. I am taking it off from writing to get ready to go back to uni but also because I'm working on my NaNo project from this latest November. I'm hoping to rewrite it to completion so I can publish it. Yes, it will be another Elsanna fanfiction, so you guys can see the fruits of my labour whenever it decides to bloom (or some metaphor shit). If you have any questions, PMs or tumblr are always a way to go :)

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed! Seriously, you guys are practically writing this story because, at first, Elsa /was going to be at the park building a snowman. But, everyone seemed to expect that. I needed to be mean to Anna because she deserved it, and expect cute fluff next time! :) (and I'm aware of the fact that most of these chapters have typos and issues but I'm too lazy to go through and change them at the moment. FFN is extremely un-streamlined when it comes to that and it's just frustrating.