Aftermath

Scene 28

Scene 28: Anna, now

She doesn't want to forgive her.

--

"Maybe you should talk to her."

Her brow creases at the suggestion, and her answer is immediate.

"No."

He sighs, and the sound grates on her nerves more than usual—probably because he's been more insistent on this particular topic than others, and it's the one thing she doesn't want to think, much less talk about—so she snaps.

"I said no, Kristoff, okay? So just … drop it."

In fact, she thinks with a growing frown, he's practically been harping at her on this subject; considering the fact that she knows full well about what's going on, she doesn't need him, of all people, reminding her.

Because of course she's heard the rumours—hadn't everyone, by then?—the rumours that the youngest "princeling" has gone back home to the Southern Isles after the death of his father, and that he's likely staying there.

But she knows that's not the only reason he went back.

One look at the recent press photos taken of Elsa, all haggard and sallow-looking as if she hasn't slept for months, is all the evidence she needs to understand that.

Seeing Elsa in that way doesn't stir her sympathy—not the way it might have, once—but it also doesn't give her the schadenfreude that she desperately wants to feel, and that unsettles her, since it might mean that hanging around with Kristoff, and touching him, and kissing him, and letting him inside has made her soft, somehow.

(And she can't afford to be soft—not yet, she thinks, her lips set in a determined, stubborn scowl.)

"No—I'm not going to just 'drop it,' Anna, not until you listen."

She seizes up at his assertive tone, as she's not used to hearing it—not unless he's really angry about something—and since this whole issue is hers and has nothing to do with him, she can't understand why he's getting so worked up over it all of a sudden. But before she can point this out to him, and tell him how ridiculous he's being about it, he starts again. This time, he's even more forceful than before, and he doesn't give her an inch.

"You don't get it, do you? How lucky you are to have any family at all?" he asks her, incredulous, his lips turned down, a deep, profound sadness stirring at the corners of them with which she's all too familiar. "I know she hurt you—hurt you badly—and you'll never be able to forget that."

He pauses, and then his fists clench, and she feels hot, bitter tears stinging at her eyes, even though she can't summon the right words to respond—no, not yet, always not yet.

"But she—she's all that you have, Anna. She's it. And you need to appreciate that."

A part of her responds to his words with immediate, automatic, guilt—the part that knows his story, how he was abandoned by his parents as a child and then grew up in some shitty orphanage or other and had to rely on himself all these years, never trusting anyone else, never letting anyone else in.

But the other part stirs with an old fire, an old spite that refuses to leave her: the part that has always resented being the spare, the one that was sent away, the one who wasn't told anything about the world and was fucked over by it, the one who was never let in.

And then she looks at him, and that fire is spitting in her gaze as she regards him, because … doesn't he see? Doesn't he know?

Elsa's not the only one she has anymore.

She can't bring herself to say that, though, whether from pride or from sorrow, she's unsure—and so she walks away, and she wonders when he'll finally understand.

(And when she'll have the courage to tell him.)