A Beautiful Stranger, Tall and Fair || Anna and Elsa
Anna didn't want to stand any closer. Couldn't, really.
She didn't know Elsa at all. She hadn't even seen her up close since she was three years old. She'd heard her voice, faintly, on many unfortunate occasions, the frequency of which grew less and less as time went by. Her advisors and her tutors and her attendants had told her that time would heal her wounds, but that was a lie. Rejection stung the exact same way every single time. If anything, it had gotten worse.
To see her at all was nearly unbearable. The second Anna had laid eyes on Elsa, it was as though all those years of pain and rejection and trying again and again and again despite absolutely no signs of progress had physically hit her, all at the same time. Anna had been left slightly breathless from the sensation, and she'd felt a bit like bursting into tears, in front of everyone.
Anna didn't know Elsa at all. She had these memories...so clear, so detailed, so intensely real...that said she and Elsa had once been friends. But even if those memories weren't just the uncommonly vivid product of an uncommonly lonely mind, even if they had at one point in early childhood been friends, the only thing Anna knew about Elsa was that she did not want to be friends with Anna anymore.
Anna kept her eyes trained steadfastly on the floor, and she subtly inched away from Elsa even after she'd been officially placed. It took every ounce of courage she had just to murmur a quiet, "Hello, Elsa." Just in case. Just on the off chance that maybe, this time--
No. No, no, no.
Maybe everything else was changing today, but not this. The only thing Anna could think of that would hurt worse than rejection was to hope for anything more.