Elsa couldn't remember what her father had been like before the accident.
(An accident, that was all it had been, and all she had to do was make sure it didn't happen again.)
She had vague memories of love and bedtime kisses and his fine, rollicking laugh, but otherwise she had lost the rest to the unrelenting ravages of time.
He still loved her now. Of course he did. But that love was shadowed by something else, caught behind a curtain of what almost seemed like fear.
Her own father couldn't be afraid of her, could he? Not the man who had cradled her in his arms as a baby and soothed her cries?
Yet now as Elsa looked into his eyes, dark with an emotion she had seen too many times in her own face, she knew it to be so, and this only caused that same fear to tighten its grip around her heart.
~~~
She was a young woman of almost sixteen, and for more than half her life she had barely set foot outside the grounds of the castle. Elsa, though, accepted this forced isolation willingly, perhaps even welcomed it. She had no desire to go beyond. She did not want to know what she might do.
This morning she sat by her window, poring over a history text, paying no attention to the lively ball game the servants' children were playing outside. Upon hearing the key in the door, she turned, carefully picking a microscopic speck of dust off her jacket.
"Hello, Papa."
"Hello, Elsa." King Agnarr had a handful of weighty books under one arm, and these he deposited on the table. "Here are the books you asked for, skatten min."
Elsa gave him a smile of thanks, getting up to place the books on her shelf. Her father was still standing, looking as if he were posing for an official portrait. The princess found herself struck by the formality in the room. They were father and daughter, not king and subject--when had they allowed themselves to become so distant from one another?
"How have you been?" Agnarr shifted his weight slightly.
"Fine, thank you." The answer hung curt and empty in the air, and Elsa wanted to say more.
"And the powers?"
She let out a little sigh, clenching and unclenching her hands at her side. What could she say? The powers were the same as they had always been--strong, dangerous, uncontrollable. Oh, she sometimes managed to repress them for a few minutes, but these days the tiniest of trials could coat the floor in ice.
Agnarr had conducted his research, scrutinizing manuscript after manuscript, chasing after even the slimmest of leads on power like hers. He constantly assured her that soon they would find another case, soon they would gain greater understanding, soon she would learn to control and suppress these powers to live a normal life. Perhaps, he told her, they would even be able to break the curse--for more and more now he referred to it as a curse.
Yet increasingly Elsa knew that they would never be able to break the curse. She had lived with her power for sixteen years. He had not. And she knew it was a part of her that would never go away no matter how hard they tried.
She realised that over the years her father had begun to treat her not as a person to be loved but a problem to be fixed, and for some reason this shattered her heart into sharp pieces.
The powers. "The same as usual."
Maybe today she seemed shakier than usual, because his solemn green eyes softened. "I know it is hard on you, darling. But perhaps...perhaps in a few years time, Elsa, we will find the solution! We will be able to reopen the castle!"
She wanted to speak, shoot down his false hopes, tell him that he had let this futile search become a consuming obsession. But she hated to take away that only light in the darkness from him, and she also knew that he had his reasons for needing answers soon. In a few short years, she would be eligible to become queen, should anything happen. And already marriage proposals had begun to pour in. She could only imagine his anxiety, the pressure this put on his already overburdened shoulders.
So instead she smiled again, weakly. "Perhaps we will, Papa."
~~~
And now he was leaving, for two weeks. Two whole weeks. As much as she resented his insistence that the curse could be broken, as much as she wanted to prove herself independent enough to manage on her own for two weeks, she had to admit that she needed him, needed them here. They were a crutch for her to lean on, and the only two people in the world who knew her secret. What if something happened to them? How could she let them go?
Bravely, as became an heir to the throne, she swallowed her fears. Still, her worry showed in her face as she curtsied, formally. "Do you have to go?" Despite herself, she still hung on to the slim, impossible hope that maybe, maybe they would stay, just for her.
"You'll be fine, Elsa," he said, and though she knew he merely meant to reassure and comfort, she could not help reading the words as a brushing off. She would not be fine. She would never be fine.
From the window, she watched him help her mother onto the ship, and then board himself, auburn hair ruffled by the sea wind.
And then they left and never came back, and she was not fine, not at all.
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