"Side by Side"

There is ice in your heart, the old troll had said, and she could feel it, deep and solid within her chest, spears of frost shooting through her veins, but it's expanding outwards, brittle ice spreading over her skin, clawing up into her throat, filming over her eyes, and she knows she's almost gone.

She can see Kristoff, a few paces away, close enough to see the terror on his face, his breath freezing in the air before him as he runs, slips, slides, and there's another stab of ice deep under her breastbone as she remembers the last time she'd seen him, just before the heavy gates closed, and her mind had turned immediately to what she thought she needed, to Hans, to Hans, and she wants to cry in frustration and fear and she went to the wrong one, the wrong one, and she was going to die before the right one could reach her, she was…

Her breath is frozen tight in her throat, and her vision goes blue-white, and she's cold, so cold, but it's fading, everything's fading, the roar of the storm and Kristoff's terrified call of her name and everything is white, cold, silent…

Anna wakes with a sharp, choked intake of breath, clutching one hand to her throat, cheeks damp and shoulders trembling violently. Her free hand roughly moves over her face, her hair, her side, orienting, feeling warmth beneath the stroke of her palm, her shaking fingers. Thawed. Warm. Human.

She takes stock of the sensations around her. A half-fluffed pillow beneath her head. A tangle of sweaty sheets around her legs, a frenzied pile of blankets on the floor from where she'd thrashed and struggled in her sleep. She's still breathing hard.

Just a dream, Anna tries to tell herself, still running her hands over her skin, desperate to feel the warmth, to remind herself. Just a dream.

But it wasn't, not quite, and she was beginning to learn that dying really took a lot out of a person.

It had been easier when it was summer (the second time, when Elsa's storm had subsided and faded once more into a full, easy warmth and long, sunny days), and even as the nights had carried a thread of coolness to them, it was easy to forget the ice clawing into her lungs, blinding her eyes, freezing blood and bone.

Autumn had proved far more trying. There was a bright sheen of frost as the leaves turned, the nights cold and ever shorter, and Anna piled blankets on her bed by the armful, snuggled in and tried to forget, tried to forget…

But then the nightmares had started.

They were hazy at first, undefined, but she'd wake in the mornings with gooseflesh raised along her arms, tension threaded through her, taut as a bowstring.

By the time winter had settled in, they started to come nearly every night. Dark. Vivid. Cold.

Sometimes Anna wakes with tears frozen stiff and tight against her cheeks.

Sometimes she screams.

Now, she slips from her bed, teeth chattering in the frigid night air, retrieves her thickest, warmest bathrobe and ties the sash around her waist with unsteady hands.

The polished hardwood floor is cold beneath her bare feet as she slips from the room and makes her way down the hall, wrapping her arms tightly around herself.

Anna doesn't knock when she reaches the room three doors down from hers. Knows she doesn't have to.

Kristoff is waiting for her, shirtless in bed, and he looks every inch as tired and worn as she feels.

"Again?" he asks, voice quiet in the stillness.

She nods, and she can't help it, she starts crying, and it's not fair to him at all because she knows exactly why he's awake, too.

Anna distantly hears the bed shifting with Kristoff's weight, and then he's there, arms looped warm and tight around her as he lifts her up into his arms, lips ghosting over her temple as he carries her to the bed and tucks her in beneath the blankets. His eyes never leave her as he gingerly climbs over her and snuggles in beside her, burying his face in her unbound hair.

"Which one?" he asks, and it's a shorthand they've developed.

They've done this so many times before.

She doesn't want to say, knows it's the worst one for him, the most painful. "You were too late," she says, voice barely a whisper, and she feels the pained pull of breath into his lungs, feels the arms around her waist tighten.

"Me too," Kristoff says, holding her tight to him, nuzzling in against her hair, and Anna can feel a light tremor through his shoulders, knows he's crying.

He always does when he has that one.

She turns in his embrace, as much as she can when he clings to her like this, frightened and exhausted, because she needs to cling to him, too, and she wraps her arms tight around him, digs her fingers into the bare skin over his shoulderblades, turns her face in against his chest.

"Kristoff," Anna says, and her voice is weak, it's too much like that moment on the fjord, when his name was all she could pull past her frozen vocal chords.

He doesn't say her name. She's not sure if he can, not right then.

They settle into their familiar routine for nights like these, the tight embrace, all comforting, smoothing hands and a deep exchange of warmth. Kristoff rubs his hands warmly over her back, tucking her head underneath his chin, rocking her gently. Anna nuzzles in close against him, and she's small enough that it's easy to hide within his large protective hold.

"It'll get better," he murmurs, reaching down to press a soft kiss to her forehead. It's rare for them for talk in times like this, and the words are trite, but it helps to hear them, just a little, helps to feel his chest rising and falling with his steady, even breaths, helps to feel his skin against hers, helps to know that she's warm and safe and loved, that she made it back to the right one after all.

And it helps, just a little, in some awful way, to know that he wakes in the night just as she does.

Anna is still tired, and knows Kristoff is as well, and she twines her legs with his, presses her face more tightly to his bare chest and snuggles in beneath the blankets. He wears little when he sleeps, and many's the time she's felt a slow burn deep within her belly, her skin tingling pleasantly as it brushed against his in a thousand places, but there's nothing sexual to it in times like these, when they're exhausted from fear and memory, and they cling together, supporting, loving, comforting, hold tight and help the other stand fast.

It's what they do best, after all.

Anna's breath is evening, and the tremor in her hands has stilled. Kristoff's arms are tight around her, one hand rubbing her back in comforting circles, and she turns her head, presses a warm kiss to his collarbone, breathes in the familiar salt-sweat-pine scent of his skin, and he's warm and alive and here and hers, and it's enough, just enough to push the nightmares aside, just for now.

"Thank you for coming back," Anna says, and Kristoff pulls her closer even as he cups her cheek and kisses her, warm, soft, lingering.

He pulls back just far enough to rest his forehead against hers, running his thumb over her cheekbone.

"You too," Kristoff says, and his voice is rough with the choked burn of unshed tears.

Anna nods against him, her own breath tight in her throat again, and curls in against him, turns in against his chest, feels and hears the steady thump of his heartbeat against her ear.

And she sleeps.

Lives.