The day that they closed the gates, it was warm and bright and fresh sunlight poured into the courtyard. The king and queen of Arendelle, flanked on either side by Kai and Gerda, waved to their people as the soldiers labored to push the tall, heavy gates shut and the queen wore a slim, faux smile that she had mastered many years before when she'd married the prince of Arendelle.

The moment the last hint of sunlight slipped away through the closed gates, the smile fell from her face and her fingers slid off her husband's arm. Kai and Gerda quietly bowed to both of them and walked inside the palace, quietly murmuring to one another.

Idun followed them, her face stiff and unmoving as she tried to keep her eyes from flicking up to her eldest daughter's room.

The king of Arendelle placed strong fingers on her shoulder. A few days ago, this small gesture would have given her strength. Now she fought the urge to shrug it off.

"It's for the best," Adgar said, drawing his own smile to his face.

But as the years passed and fear grew like spreading frost over her daughter's face, the queen of Arendelle would know this to be a lie.

Snowy day after snowy day, little five-year-old Anna would race in a flurry of excitement over to her sister's room to ask the inevitable question; only to be rejected and slink over to her parents' room.

The queen was usually poring over old historical texts when her youngest sighed her way pointedly into the room, and she always slid them away to gently stroke a hand through Anna's hair.

"What's wrong?" Idun always asked.

"Elsa won't play with me today," Anna would always reply gloomily. Sometimes she turned to look at the right wall, where on the other side was Elsa's room, and the sunlight caught the frosty strand of white in her hair.

It was an accident!

She's ice cold—

The queen would trace a soothing finger down that river of white and think of something reassuring to say. "Elsa's just going through a phase," she finally said. "Sometimes people change as they get older."

(And she listened to her husband's voice on the other side of the wall, and she thought she caught snatches of conceal and don't feel and her lips pressed together in a disapproving manner.)

"Oh," Anna said, nodding like she understood. "So she'll come out of the phase soon, won't she?"

"I'm sure she will."

"Right." Anna slid down from the bed, somehow invigorated once more. "Well, in the meantime I think we should have a tea party. With lots of chocolate. Oh, and make sure to invite Elsa and Papa and all my dolls over."

Idun also slipped down from her bed. "That sounds like a grand idea," she said, and planted a kiss right on the white streak.

Elsa's door knob was cold to the touch, and the queen had a nasty feeling that on the other side of the door, it was completely frozen.

She knocked twice on the door. "May I come in?" she called in her best queenly voice, and when Elsa didn't answer she instinctively twisted the knob.

And opened it to be greeted with a blast of chill air and for her best dress to be soaked in a pile of snow.

Elsa sat on her bed, hair glittering with small shards of frost, amidst the winter wonderland that she'd created. Ice dripped in frosty globules down the walls, and thick snow lined the lacquered floors. When the princess grabbed the bedpost for support as she stood up, a flow of ice crystals seeped from her glove to coat the wood.

The queen inspected the state of her dress. "Shame," she sighed. "I suppose I'll have to wash it again." And she stepped toward Elsa with open arms.

Her daughter's hands instantly jerked in front of her. "Don't," she said, and that simple word was so tight and high-strung that the queen decided it wasn't best to push her further. Instead she walked with calm footsteps, shutting the door behind her, to stand beside Elsa.

"Take the gloves off, please," she said.

"Mama."

Idun took her daughter's fingers in hers and carefully slipped the gloves off. The moment she folded the gloves up and laid them on the mattress Elsa twitched her hands away, twisting them up in her skirt and keeping them away from her mother.

"I wouldn't mention this to your father," the queen of Arendelle spoke, reclining onto the bed. "But I must confess that I think he's going the wrong way about this."

"Mama?" Elsa repeated wearily. (Her daughter's voice was so tired, more tired then any eight-year-old's should have to be, and Idun was reminded once more about how broken everything was and how she couldn't pick up the pieces, not this time.)

Idun gently tucked a lock of hair behind Elsa's ear, something Elsa had not allowed her to do for a great many months. "Do you remember what the old troll told you about this?"

"There's great danger in it," Elsa said immediately, staring accusingly down at her innocent-looking hands.

"But also beauty," Idun argued.

Elsa looked up at her mother with tired blue eyes. "Where?"

"All around you," the queen insisted, because yes, it was awfully freezing in this room and the icicles had prodded her with their sharp ends as she'd paced over to her daughter, but the sunlight also sent rainbows splintering through the frost and the snow glittered promises of a better tomorrow as the sun began to set outside.

Elsa saw what her mother wanted in her eyes, and as her mother stroked another hand through her hair she extended her palm.

A simple yet intricate white snowflake birthed in the center of her hand, and as Elsa lowered her palm the snowflake quietly spun around the room and then floated away through the open window.

"Beautiful," the queen declared.

Elsa's smile was rusty and uncertain, but it had not yet gone, and Idun thanked every deity for this little miracle every day.

I'm scared! It's getting stronger!

Getting upset only makes it worse. Adgar opened his arms to his daughter and approached her. Calm down—

No!

It was Elsa's thirteenth birthday, and Anna had spent hours drawing and writing endless birthday wishes and checking and double-checking them for spelling and drawing mistakes. "Do they look all right?" she asked her mother anxiously, holding a sheaf of them up to her eyes.

"They look lovely," Idun said automatically, brushing her lips once more on her youngest's little head. Anna giggled in delight and, snatching all of her papers up from the mat in front of the fireplace, skipped out of the throneroom in her usual chaotic fashion to go slip her cards under Elsa's door.

"—and the Duke of Weselton would like to schedule an appointment with you regarding trade sometime this month—" Kai continued from his spot in front of the two thrones, reading from his own sheaf of parchment.

"Tell him, as always, perhaps sometime in the future," Adgar said indifferently, wiping an imaginary piece of lint from his robes.

"Yes, your Majesty." Kai bowed low to the floor.

"Thank you, Kai. You are dismissed." Idun said firmly.

"Yes, your Highness. Thank you, your Highness." And Kai began to stride out of the room only to stop hesitantly at the door, his fingers just barely brushing the knobs. "Your Majesty?"

The king glanced up from his fingernails in surprise. "Yes, Kai?"

"I am aware that Princess Elsa turns thirteen today."

"Oh. Oh, yes," the king said, a smile rushing to his face. "Eight more years until she comes of age."

Kai hesitated once more before stumbling forward with his speech. "I was wondering if you would like the cooks and I to prepare a birthday meal?"

Idun sat up a bit straighter and opened her mouth, but Adgar's fingers softly brushed hers in a nonverbal quiet. "I don't think that will be necessary, Kai, but thank you very much anyway," he said lightly.

A flash of disappointment flickered on Kai's face and Idun knew that, deep down, she wasn't the only one to miss Elsa's absence about the palace. "Yes, your Majesty," Kai said finally, and bowed his way out the door.

The door shut behind him and the queen turned to the king. "Would it really bother you so? Just one birthday?"

"Elsa is getting a bit old for birthday parties," Adgar finally said, slipping down from his spot on the throne.

"Just one small birthday supper, Adgar. That's all I ask of you." And she thought of her two beautiful children nudging and whispering to each other at the dinner table every night and the king surveying them with fond eyes over his soup. "We haven't all had a meal together in such a long time."

The king sighed and steepled his fingers together. "Elsa is in no state to—"

"You think you're protecting her," the queen said, joining him on the carpet before the thrones as a flush of fire heated her stomach. "You're making it worse—"

The king of Arendelle held up his hand. "Enough," he spoke quietly. "We are not going to talk about this, not right now."

"She's frightened, Adgar—"

"I said enough!" That one word was as sharp and biting as the tip of an icicle, and Idun knew enough of her husband to back away and assume her queenly expression once more.

"Of course, your Majesty," she said coldly, and she turned away to face the doors. She could not look at him anymore. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to give our daughter my best birthday wishes."

She left her husband alone in the quickly darkening throneroom.

(And their family broke a little more.)

….Please. I don't want to hurt you.

Elsa was seventeen now, and threads of icy fear spread in her eyes a bit more every day. Idun placed a hand on her husband's shoulder to steady herself as Elsa looked up at them both with pleading blue eyes.

"Do you have to go?"

The king of Arendelle smiled, and a soft sort of melancholy that only Idun could see settled in his expression.

"You'll be fine, Elsa."

As the ship sailed away from harbor, trailing small threads of foam behind it that reminded Idun of her daughter's frost, Adgar draped himself over the side in a very unkingly fashion and stared at the fading image of Arendelle.

"We should retire," Idun said quietly, joining her husband out on the deck. "The sun will set soon."

The king of Arendelle inspected his fingers. He said nothing.

"They'll be all right," the queen offered. "They have Kai and Gerda."

Arendelle reflected itself in the king's weary green eyes. "Do you think we've done the right thing?" he asked.

The queen cast him a look of puzzlement. "Well, we've not been to Corona in a great many years…and it means so much to the king and queen that we're coming, so I suppose we've—"

"About the…ice," the king clarified.

Idun's fingers twisted in her dress, just like Elsa's did whenever she was worried.

"You really should get some sleep," she said in a clipped tone. "You look exhausted." (She was exhausted. Keeping her family together exhausted her a bit more every day.)

And, leaving her husband out on the deck, she descended to the sleeping quarters.

Storm! The rake-thin boy dangling out of the crow's nest shouted urgently.

Captain, there's a storm coming!

Storm!

Storm!

Her fingers were interlocked tightly in Adgar's in a way they had not been in a long time. They sat on their bed, tightly holding one another, as loud creaks and rumbles reverberated throughout the ship, and Idun knew that there was nothing to do but wait for everything to break.

"I promised her she would be fine," the king of Arendelle said into her hair. Water bubbled and sloshed up and down the corridors outside.

"You did."

"Do you think she will be?"

A colossal black wave slammed into the ship, and the ship jerked so suddenly that the two were thrown at the wall, their bags and belongings all shifting across the floor with them.

"She'll be a good queen," Idun finally said. "Better than I ever was."

"Yes. I always thought so." (And Idun remembered her oldest curled up in her lap as she held little baby Anna for the first time and made snowflakes in the air for her to grasp at and remembered Adgar's hands on her shoulders, squeezing, and remembered a family that was still intact.)

Water and froth hissed underneath the door. Idun thought she could feel the ship sinking, breaking.

A sharp crack of splintering wood raced through the ship and the king and queen of Arendelle heard water eagerly whispering below them.

"They'll fix it," she heard herself whisper. "I know they will."

The ship began to surrender to the storm. She hoped her daughter never would.

Adgar's fingers clutched her shoulder. "Perhaps," he said, "it's for the best."

And the ship broke.

….But this we're certain of,

You can fix this fixer-upper up with a little bit of love!

Eh, I'm not really sure about this one. I kind of like it though. I feel a bit bad for Elsa and Anna's parents sometimes...even if they did an absolutely horrible job of trying to help Elsa with her ice powers...

Anyway, tell me what you think of it and thanks for reading!