Daughter Mine (A Frozen One-Shot)

Frozen Fandom Month: Duos Week: Parent/Child

Lightly, the queen put her hand on the knob. The door in front of her was painted white, with symmetrical rosemaling in blue and purple paint, and from behind it she could hear soft whimpering.

Locked.

She fumbled in her jacket pocket for the key, and hastily stuck it in the door, entering the room with silent tread. What she saw seemed to cut her heart straight through, though she kept her face serene.

Elsa--her daughter--was curled up at the corner of her bed, surrounded by sheets of slick ice, head in her arms. The eight-year-old didn't seem to notice her mother enter the room. She continued crying, softly, hopelessly. It was painful to watch.

In a flash Queen Idunna was on her knees at her daughter's side, hesitantly placing a hand on Elsa's shoulder, hoping she wouldn't draw away. Elsa flinched a little at the contact, but didn't protest. Instead she abruptly stopped crying, still not looking up.

"Elsa, what happened?" Idunna tried to keep her voice steady. Seeing her little girl like this every day--so terrified, so distant--tore her apart. Elsa's attacks had become more and more frequent, each leaving her in tears, and sharp and raw like the fragments of ice that lined the windowsills. Yet increasingly Elsa had begun to push her parents away, speaking only when necessary, shrinking from physical contact.

All this was pushing the young queen dangerously close to falling apart herself, but she had to keep it together, had to stay strong for her hurting child.

Elsa made no response, only lifted a tearstained face to her mother. For a moment Idunna feared she would distance herself again, force the queen out of the room. Indeed, Elsa seemed briefly to consider this, pressing her lips together hard as if to keep them from trembling. But then her face crumpled, and she collapsed into her mother, burying her face into the queen's chest, breaking out into fresh sobs.

Queen Idunna started slightly. Then she wrapped her arms tightly around her child, trying to keep tears from her own eyes. "Shhh," she soothed, running a hand over a smooth blonde head. "Shhh. It's okay. It's okay."

Even if it wasn't okay, it was something Elsa--both of them--needed to believe right now.

She held her daughter like that for several minutes, ice slowly puddling beneath their feet.

Finally Elsa found the strength to speak. "I...it was geometry, Mama. I didn't understand, and then Mr. Jakobsen got angry, and then the ice came..." Her voice shook, and she burrowed deeper into her mother's arms, mumbling the words against deep purple fabric. "And he was scared, and Papa came in, and he got angry, too--" Elsa stopped and squeezed her eyes tight shut, willing the bad experience away. "I...I don't like it when Papa's angry. He's angry a lot now."

"Oh, darling. Oh, daughter mine." Idunna sighed. The situation put a lot of stress on her husband, and though he tried not to let it show, Elsa was a perceptive child.

"He's not angry at you, my darling. He just wants the best for you. We both do," the queen reassured her child, cupping her cheek red with crying. "We're proud of you, princess. We love you very much."

"I love you, too," Elsa said in a muffled, trembly voice, and Idunna felt deeply how unjust it was for a child to carry such a burden.

But she merely continued to hold Elsa close, ignoring the icy water seeping into her gown, and trying to hide how frightened she was--afraid for her daughter, afraid of what lay ahead.