#batbau

           She wasn’t trying to stare at his chest, but her eyes refused to stay on his face. She blamed the water dripping from his hair and down his skin. She followed a drip from his cheek, to his neck, to his chest, to his waistband. She knew that the intimidating height and expression she was trying to maintain, holding her body high and her face fierce, was negated by her inability to maintain eye contact with him.

           “What did you do?” she asked, her voice far meeker than she willed it to be. She didn’t know why she had come to see him, he was undoubtedly stronger than her, and from his expression, he wasn’t pleased. She had expected as much, but she had come anyway. She had questions that she couldn’t answer. She wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to answer them either, but if anyone could it was him.

           He laughed, his tone harsh, “What did I do? Nothing. I haven’t done a damn thing since I got here.” He shook his head and walked towards her, “I walked through a door, had my life threatened and got chained up like a dog. That’s what I did.”

           He was only a few feet away from her when she stepped back, nearly stumbling over her own feet, her back hitting the door she had just shut.

           “What did you do?” he asked, frowning and stepping back after watching her fall over.

           She sucked in a steadying breath, realizing that he was backing off, reading her fear and responding to it respectfully. He was a mystery to her. He was visibly angry, and even though they both knew he could easily toss her out of the way to escape, he respected her space and allowed her to keep him trapped in the room. He could have left her on the cold floor two weeks earlier. He had known the way out, and she had no doubt that he could have located his reindeer and sled without her help. He clearly wanted to be free, but he seemed unwilling to hurt her to get it. The thought made her bold.

           “I told my sister not to kill a trespasser and allowed him into my home, fed him from my table and kept him warm and safe.”

           She wouldn’t back down from him, her hands shaking, because while her mind was certain he wouldn’t hurt her, her body didn’t seem to have come to the same consensus. He was glaring at her, and she tried to make her expression similar enough to stand against him.

           “If you’re really suffering as much as you say, toss me aside and leave this place,” her eyes went to his chest again, to the muscle of his arms that had been plenty strong enough to carry her before, “We both know that even if I fought you I would lose. If you moved quick enough Elsa wouldn’t see you. You could be halfway to wherever it is you call home by the time she realizes what has happened.”

           He looked to the door and to her face. For a moment, she thought he might take the opportunity, determination mixed with the anger on his face, but he simple stared at her.

           “I’m a man of my word. I pledged that I would stay here and so I will until I’m told otherwise by the one I swore it to.”

           His words came through gritted teeth and seemed to exhaust him to even speak, but they were said nevertheless and they shocked her. Of course, he seemed like a good man to her but, as she was constantly reminded by her sister, her judgement wasn’t always spot on. However, he had yet to give her a reason to doubt him and knowing that she truly had next to nothing left to lose she was willing to risk taking him upon his word.

           She sighed and, with still shaking hands, made measured steps towards him. If Elsa found out she had come to visit him again, she imagined she would either take back her copy of the key to his room, or that she would simply lock her away as well. With those options on the horizon, he seemed a lot less terrifying than what was possibly waiting for her outside.

           “I’m sorry.”

           He looked at her as if confused for a moment, but then looked away, walking away from her and across the room to the armoire where his clothes, which weren’t really his clothes at all, were kept.

           She watched as he opened the doors and removed a white long sleeve shirt from within. He pulled it on and Anna wondered if he had only just realized that being partially unclothed in front of her was improper.

           He didn’t seem like the type of man to care about such things, and while she may have once, propriety was too low on her list of priorities to mark any true merit. Her sister would still carry different opinions on the matter, but she wouldn’t even want Anna there, so what she thought about the situation was of little concern to Anna.

           “It’s not your fault. Or at least I don’t think it is. Unless you lured me here, but I think it had more to do with the wolves.”

           She wanted to ask about what exactly he meant by wolves luring him to her home, but she had more pressing questions on her mind. Seeing that he was acting a bit less combative she thought it best to introduce the more important issues first, and if his demeanor maintained some warmth afterwards, she would move into her more trivial questions.

           “When I asked you what you did I didn’t mean to sound so harsh,” she said honestly, happy to look him in the eye again without the edge of antagonism in either of their stances. “I just meant… well it sounds crazy.”

           He smirked, and she knew that he was probably thinking of some clever comment involving her sister, but he didn’t say it if he had.

           “Try me.”

           She couldn’t help but to smile at his words. She supposed that given his circumstances he couldn’t imagine anything stranger than what he was already experiencing. She felt as though she may prove him sadly mistaken as she walked until she stood a foot or less from him.

           “My leg,” she said, pulling up her skirt and sticking it out, “what did you do to it before?”

           She hadn’t bothered to wear stockings, and her bare leg was again less than flesh in appearance. From the top of her slipper to the highest section of her thigh unhidden by fabric, her leg was the soft blue-white translucence of ice.

           He looked at it and took a deep breath in, looking from it to her face and sighing, “Evidently not what I thought if it looks like that again.”

           She quirked a brow at him, undeterred by the shock on his face. He had seen it before, and she didn’t even need his comments to be certain. The ice had come back within the span of two weeks. It crept up her body as it always did, but it moved much quicker in the places he had touched and somehow reverted to skin. As soon as the previously ice space returned to its frozen quality once again, it had started to creep along at its normal slow pace again, her hair going white at 7:00pm each night as it always did as more of her skin was consumed in frost. Of course she knew that it would continue at the rate until it consumed her completely and left her dead, and that was why the return of flesh, presumably relating to him, interested her more than all else.

           “So you did make it change then? Like from ice to skin?” she asked, “How did you do it?”

           He closed his eyes, “I don’t know.”

           “What do you mean you don’t know?”

           He sighed, and opened his eyes again, “I mean I don’t know. After you fell I touched your leg to make sure it wasn’t broken and it just sort of happened. I thought I was finally losing it, so I brought you upstairs and your sister found me and almost killed me, except I told her you fell and she had me bring you to your room and then locked me back in mine under the threat of me becoming an ice sculpture.”

           Anna shivered at the mention of human ice sculptures, but recovered quickly. She dropped her skirt so that her legs were covered again, and wandered across the room to where the table and chair sat. She settled herself in his chair and fought her skirts up her thighs again, slipping off her slippers on both feet revealing that the entire leg up to the thigh on one side was ice, and just the foot on the other.

           She breathed in deep and let it out slow, conscious of how wary his eyes were, as if he wasn’t seeing her, but rather like he was staring his own death in the face. Of course, given the way he had been treated by her sister she couldn’t blame him, particularly with what she was about to ask, not that it was anything that he had to guess. It was obvious what she wanted.  

           “Would you mind trying?”

           She couldn’t say anything else. She knew that it was silly to even try. After all he would have had to do something more than to touch her to negate the effects of her curse, even if it was just for a short while. Maybe it was something he said or something about the basement floor, and yet she had tried everything else, so if he were willing, she wanted him to touch her legs, even if just for a fleeting moment.

           He paused, staring at her. His eyes asking if she were serious, and hers responding that she was more serious than he could ever imagine.

           He didn’t speak, but instead approached her slowly. When he was close to her side, he kneeled on one knee and allowed a cautious hand to reach out and touch her foot’s icy surface.

           His fingers were warm against it, not unlike when her own fingers touched her icy flesh, but it was only a fraction of a moment before there was something else there as well. Warmth bloomed from his touch, shaking away the cold that had so long been in her bones. The ice slowly melted away from the point where he touched her, replacing it with pale, but warm, flesh.

                                                            ***

           He was frightened by the change. Whereas before he had allowed himself to think of the change as a hallucination due to stress as he ran his hand over her leg to check for broken bones, now he could not deny it was real.

           He also couldn’t deny the intimacy of it. While he was only touching her foot, there was a warmth that ran from her skin to his, up his arms and into his chest. It made his whole body feel like it was being pulled at like a leaf caught in the current of a stream. Whatever was passing between them was a force that caused him to feel warmth, peace, and euphoria the likes of which he hadn’t ever experienced.

           He remembered feeling similarly when she had touched his chest when he had first woken up. He pulled his hand away from her skin, and nearly fell over in the process. She was blushing, but looked as in awe as he felt. None of it made any sense.

           “How are you doing that?” she asked, breathless.

           He shook his head, confused and in shock. “I told you before I don’t know. It just happens.”

           She didn’t say anything, but closed her eyes and let out an exasperated sigh. He thought that maybe she was thinking about what was going on because of course that was the only thing on his mind.

           He wasn’t sure what brought him to touch her other leg, the one still solid ice, but he felt the same hum of warmth and comfort cocooning him as he did so. Ice was replaced by flesh as he let his hand move from her knee down to her ankle slowly.

           She opened her eyes to watch him, first looking frightened at his sudden touch, but her face slowly changing to something more blissful. A soft sound escaped her lips as her skin returned completely to a soft, pale, and cool but not cold flesh.

           The sound made him pull back, and she looked almost as embarrassed as he felt.

           “Sorry, I─”

           “Don’t,” she said, her face and chest going red with a blush.

           There was an expectant pause between them, the tension and questions almost tangible to him. He was the one to break it, and with great caution.

           “So you, uh─ you feel it too?”

           She looked at him as he spoke, but paused and stared at the floor when she responded, “I─I think so. Is it warm, and um, I don’t know…”

           “Soothing?” he offered, trying to look anywhere but where he had touched her.

           “Yeah,” she said, still not looking at him.

           “So, did your sister?” he asked, not sure how to phrase the question that had been begging to be asked since the moment he realized that he hadn’t been imagining the ice. Despite her violence towards him, she didn’t seem to express the same towards her sister.

           “Oh, no,” she said, her voice shaking.

           “No! It’s not like that,” she added a bit more firmly, finally looking back up to him again, “It’s a long story.”

           “I have an eternity,” he replied.

           As soon as the words passed his lips, she jumped a little bit, her face changing, her embarrassment changing to sadness.

           “No, you don’t.”

           He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, she tossed her skirt back down and stood from the chair, heading for the door.

           “I’ll tell you, just not today.”

           She shook her head and turned the knob, but paused before exiting to look at him. She gave him a sad smile that made his chest ache.

           “Thank you, for this,” she said looking down at her legs, “I have to lock the door again, but I promise I’ll be back again… if that’s what you want.”

           He gave her an affirmative nod, but he wished that he could stop her from leaving. He had so many questions for her, and he didn’t want to be alone again, but as soon as she registered the motion of his head, she was out the door and he heard the lock click.