Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?

[Elsa]

Finally, a more full smile graced Elsa's lips as she allowed herself to take in Anna's words. That was the optimistic sister she had always loved when they were younger, and she was glad that the years of her isolation hadn't dampened Anna's nature any. She wouldn't have known what to do if the redhead had suddenly become more introverted or less peppy.

"That would be nice. The two of us getting away from here for a while, enjoying the sun and the fresh air..."

Now Elsa felt she was beginning to sound rather wistful. In truth, though, the crown princess would have loved to do just that. She had missed being able to spend time with her sister, and if she and Anna could get off of campus for at least a day and find somewhere where she could just begin to be herself again then maybe, just maybe, they could truly begin to mend their bond. Even if she didn't say it out loud, she would have loved that more than anything. Perhaps Anna could even see it in her face. Elsa wasn't even trying to hide her feelings on the matter anymore, which was an improvement over how stoic she usually presented herself.

...But drawing herself away from that subject for a moment, Elsa would admit to herself that she did have a question for Anna.

"Anna? If you don't mind my asking, what... How did you keep yourself occupied this whole time? When I was always in my room, I mean."

[Anna]

"It would," Anna nodded her agreement. She couldn't think of a nicer idea than that right now; just her and Elsa, enjoying the world beyond the school and getting to know each other again. They'd always had such fun together when they were younger; and though they certainly weren't children anymore, Anna optimistically believed that was something that could still hold true. She knew Elsa had a decent sense of fun and humour; all she had to do was work out how to pry it back out of her again after so long.

"You mean aside from talking to the paintings on the walls for company?" Anna didn't seem at all ashamed to admit that this was something she had done. Whether Elsa had been listening or not, she had mentioned it from the other side of her door ages ago, so it wouldn't be strictly new to her sister anyway. "When I was younger, I just played around on my own." It had never been the same without Elsa, of course, but it had at least passed the time. Then she'd grown out of that, and had been when she'd taken to such daring things as riding her bike through the castle, though that hadn't lasted very long; a few too many trips down the stairways on it had trashed the bike anyway.

"Then I got older, and I started looking through the library for any skills I could teach myself. I learnt bits and pieces of all sorts of things, but nothing I really stuck at," she confessed. Reading for its own sake hadn't really appealed to Anna; while she liked curling up with a good story as much as anyone else, when it came to the pursuit of knowledge she prefered to learn thing she could try out herself, rather than obscure and mostly irrelevant facts. She'd taught herself a bit of horse-riding, a bit of self-defense, and other things; but like she had admitted to Elsa, nothing she'd really stuck at for vast lengths of time. Still, it had kept her occupied once she'd eventually resigned herself to her sister not coming out.

[Elsa]

Hearing Anna's answer to her question made Elsa's heart ache. The redhead really had been lonely and bored the whole time Elsa had resigned herself to nearly permanent isolation. Oh, she wished it could have been different. If the accident so many years ago just hadn't happened... No. No, there was no use wishing that away. What happened had happened, there was no changing it, and they both had to realize this. Besides, they were together now. They could move on from what had happened... Slowly but surely.

"I'm sorry, Anna. I had no idea how boring it was for you by yourself," Elsa managed to say. She really hadn't; Elsa had only known that her sister would continually come to her bedroom door and ask if she would come out. Anything more than that had dropped by the wayside and been forgotten. It shouldn't have mattered, though. Even if it was going to be painfully awkward for the elder of the two sisters, Elsa did intend to make up for the years of leaving her sister out in the dark. Sure she couldn't tell her her secret, for fear of what would happen if that occurred, but she could at least make up for lost time.

"Why didn't you try to go out of the castle, though? Surely mother and father had no reason to keep you in the castle all that time..."

That was the one thing that had bothered Elsa. She had been the one resigned into isolation, but Anna? She didn't have a power to try and learn to control. Her sister could have gone outside whenever she wanted and it wouldn't have made a lick of difference. What had stopped her?

[Anna]

"I'm not sure. I went out with our parents sometimes, but I think they were worried I'd end up inviting half the town in if I got outside on my own, and... well, I just might have," Anna confessed with a shrug. It had got so lonely that at some points, Anna would have taken almost anyone she could have got her hands on for company; and whatever reason their parents had had for shutting the gates in the first place, looking back on it, the younger princess suspected that her trying to invite anyone and everyone in wouldn't have gone over well at all. "I never really asked beyond that. It seemed important to them that the gates stayed closed, so I figured they had their reasons." She had asked why they weren't allowed out, of course, but had never really recieved much more than the vague answer that Elsa needed the privacy to give her space to prepare for becoming queen one day.

"Anyway, I knew it would never have been the same without you," Anna added. She didn't want to keep on on the same point, but the prospect of doing any of the things they had used to do together just hadn't held the same appeal for Anna without her sister by her side. "I kept hoping that one day, you'd want to go outside, and then we could rediscover the world together; and I guess that's what we're doing right now, isn't it?"