AN: This week's prompt was comfort.

Rated: K? - it's fine for everyone.

Pairing: Kristanna, although Elsa features a lot.

Summary: Elsa is overwhelmed. Olaf and Anna try to help. Kristoff saves the day (because, you know, he's good at stuff like that).

Disclaimer - Disney owns Frozen :)

Anna stomped down the palace steps and across the sunny courtyard. It was early, only just past breakfast time, and already she was cross. Kristoff was there, packing up his sled for a short trip up the mountain.

"Hey." He glanced up at her as she flounced past and flumped down onto the back of the sled with a huff. "Um, hey?" He tried again. "Anna?" He sighed, dropped the ropes he was holding and walked round to stand in front of her, arms crossed. Waiting.

"She's been shut up in that study for weeks!"

He smiled slightly. "Don't you think that's a bit of an exaggeration?"

"No!" Anna replied vehemently. "I feel like I haven't seen her for days!"

"You saw her last night at dinner."

"That doesn't count," she pouted. "When was the last time we did something, a fun something, together?"

"Anna." He leant down to clasp his hands around her upper arms. "Your sister is the Queen. She has a whole kingdom to take care of. It's not all parties and balls and you know that. So why don't you tell me what the real problem is, huh?" His voice was soft. His eyes sought hers but she remained stubbornly staring out over his shoulder. She bit her lip.

"She locked the door." Her voice was so quiet, and all of a sudden her eyes filled with tears. Kristoff sat down on the sled next to her and pulled her into his arms, so that her head rested on his chest.

"Oh, Anna." He kissed her hair. Even a year after the two sisters had reconciled, old fears still never really went away. Elsa was usually adamant about leaving her doors open, to the point of ridiculousness at times. Kristoff winced at the memory of walking up to Anna's room with Kai one morning, and the two of them coming across the Queen changing out of her nightgown, her bedroom door wide open. "Listen, you know she's not shutting you out. At least not in that way. She's probably just busy, or feeling ill, like a headache or something, and doesn't want to be disturbed. She needs a little privacy every now and then, right? She could be, I don't know, planning a mad surprise party? Or entertaining one of those suitors that keep trying to get her attention?"

Anna snorted. "You mean one of those lame-ass noblemen who keep sending her pretty trinkets? I doubt it. Do you know she has to be nice to them and everything? Because I so would not. I'd tell them to stick their love letters up their– "

Kristoff cut her off with a loud laugh. After a moment or two he said, "The thing is, you know that even if she locks the door she's going to open it again, and come down and eat dinner with us, and tell you off for eating too fast, and tell me off for using the wrong fork, and she's going to do it all and smile. Because that's what she's done every night for the last year, right? I love you, she loves you, Olaf loves you, and Sven… Well, I think Sven wants to marry you because you feed him more carrots than I do these days and he's getting fat."

Anna giggled. Kristoff always knew how to make her feel better. She kissed his cheek, and helped him pack the rest of the things into the sled, and waved him off with a grin, before heading to the kitchens to find some more of those pastries they'd had for breakfast, because those were delicious.

Up in the castle, behind the locked doors of her study, Elsa wanted to scream. How had everything avalanched so spectacularly on top of her? "Stupid Mayor," she grumbled, poking around on her desk for the right bit of paper in amongst hundreds of others. "This is NOT a good time to resign! Blah! Where is that letter?!"

She felt like crying. She felt like flinging her crown out of the window and giving up on the whole thing. How could there be so much to do? And why did everyone suddenly need everything doing all at once?

"Elsa?" Olaf called through the doors. "Are you in there?"

Elsa gave up trying to find the letter from some Duke or other, and flopped her head down onto the desk.

"Yeah, I'm sorry Olaf, I'm in here, I'm just… really, really busy today, and– "

"Hi!"

"Olaf!" Elsa jumped. The snowman was stood right next to her, reattaching his nose.

"The door was locked," he said simply.

Elsa resisted the urge to shout at him. Wow, she thought, I must really be close to losing it if I'm thinking of yelling at a snowman who has no concept of personal space or privacy or those missives I need to answer or the funds to repair the harbour wall or the stupid Mayor resigning or the billion and one trade agreements that need reviewing or the–

"Elsa?"

"Oh, sorry, Olaf." She rubbed a hand across her face. "I am just so busy right now, do you think you could just– "

"Help? Sure I can!" He proceeded to poke around in the piles of letters and documents she had stacked beside her. His flurry started falling and melting all over the books. He was leaving damp patches on her carefully finished and sealed letters, smudging the ink.

"Olaf! Please, just stop. I don't need help. I'm sorry. I just… need to be left alone to sort all this. I'm so sorry. Please, just, can you go?"

It was utterly amazing just how much expression could fit onto a snowman's face, especially when that expression stabbed at her like guilt-laden knives. Olaf half-nodded, and Elsa felt horrible, and then he turned and left, his little feet leaving damp prints across the wooden floor, head, arms and nose drooping. Elsa resumed her previous position. Head on the desk, frown on her face and tears in her eyes.

Anna had kept herself occupied all morning, and it was after lunch when she headed upstairs to Elsa's study. She knocked on the door, and called out "Elsa?" before trying the door handle. Surprisingly, it opened.

"Hey, I just thought I'd drop in for a while, maybe have a chat, see how you are, that kind of thing? You know, in case you wanted to talk or anything, or you needed some company or…"

She trailed off as Elsa set her pen down, and back ram-rod straight, turned to face her. She looked terrible. She looked, Anna thought, like she was going to have a 'fit of mania' as the physician would say. Her face was grey, with purplish streaks under red-rimmed eyes. Her hair was downright scary.

"Anna?" Elsa blinked slowly, internally repeating don't shout don't shout don't shout, "I thought I told you I was busy."

Anna shuffled further into the room. Somehow, in three little steps, she had managed to knock over a pile of folders stacked on a side table. "Well, yeah. It's just you've been in here all day, and I thought, well maybe I could, can I help?"

And then she was by the desk, dirty fingerprints smudging down a carefully drawn up table of expenses - and why couldn't the Mayor have organised the Town Hall roof repair before he resigned?

"Anna please don't touch that!"

Anna pulled her hand away quickly, as though it had been stung. Elsa let out a long sigh and tried to smile. It came out like a painful grimace.

"I just… need to get this done today. These letters need sending off before tomorrow and the harbour master needs… oh I don't even know." She was back to shuffling through papers, lifting books and scraping her notes together.

"Here," Anna said, leaning over, "let me hel– " Clink. Anna's elbow connected with the ink pot. A dark blue pool spread across the desk and completely obliterated the table of expenses.

Elsa closed her eyes. She counted to five. Then ten. She kept her voice carefully controlled, eyes still shut. "I love you very much. But please go away. Now."

When Kristoff returned to the palace that evening it was to find Anna and Olaf sat on the steps outside the main door, both looking incredibly glum.

"Ok, do I even want to ask?"

"We tried to help." Anna spoke to her shoes.

"And Elsa got mad." Olaf sounded like he was about to cry.

"And I spilt ink everywhere."

"And I dripped water everywhere."

"And she's got all these letters to write."

"And things to sign."

"And money to allocate."

"And her hair's a mess."

"And she didn't come to dinner."

Kristoff nodded. He took one of Olaf's little stick arms in one hand, and Anna's warm fingers in the other. "Ok, come on."

When they opened the study door a little while later they found Elsa asleep at her desk, head resting on a heavy book of accounts. Her fingers were stained blue from ink, and Olaf was right. Her hair looked dreadful.

They worked quickly, stifling giggles as they rearranged furniture and piled stacks of books strategically. They sent a bemused Gerda to fetch all the pillows from the bedrooms, and an equally bemused Kai down to the kitchens for what Anna called "essential supplies". Elsa slept on, snoring gently, even when they picked her up and moved her ever so gently.

When Elsa woke it was to the smell of hot chocolate. She found herself lying on a pile of pillows, under some sort of… tent? In her study?

"Hey there, sleepyhead!" Olaf's carrot nose almost poked her in the head as he reached over to pat her shoulder. Anna and Kristoff were there too, both grinning widely and holding mugs.

"Um…?"

"Blanket fort!" Kristoff sounded exceptionally pleased with himself.

"Here, have some hot chocolate!" Anna thrust a mug into her hand.

"But… I'm busy… I have all that– "

"Nope!" Anna cut her off, still grinning manically. "We are putting you under fort-arrest. You have to stay here and drink hot chocolate, and eat sweets, and tell silly stories, and laugh, and stop being such a dragon-lady, and the outside world can just disappear for now. You've done enough for today.."

"But, Anna, I have to– "

"Nope! Here, have some chocolate." She stuffed a large piece of it into Elsa's gaping mouth.

"Is this your doing?" Elsa demanded of Kristoff, trying, and failing, to sound dignified through the mouthful of chocolate.

"What can I say?" He shrugged. "Raised by trolls here."

"And you are not allowed out until your hair is less… scary." Olaf concluded.

Elsa giggled, her fingertips against her lips politely. And then she opened her mouth and laughed. And laughed, and laughed until her sides hurt and her face ached.

"Oh, gosh. I am so sorry. It's just… I'm just so sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Anna smiled, "Here, have some of these sweets. They're made with sugar and eggs, and I think that's it, just sugar and eggs and maybe flour? But they're sooo good. They're called marshmallows! So, who's going first in the silly-story contest?"

When Kai bobbed his head around the door a few hours later he found the princess, the ice master, the snowman and the queen lying on pillows in a blanket fort, all talking and laughing at once, and all looking like they were completely and utterly happy. And they were.