So, it's been a while since I published something, but this one's been a long time in the making. This is the first story I've ever written with a full outline in place before starting it, and it's also the first story I've ever had beta'd before publishing it, so crossing my fingers here that it doesn't suck.
Thank you to my wonderful beta, Jane, without whom this story would've been far, far, far worse. I quite like having a beta.
I've got two more stories in the works, so be on the lookout for those in the next few weeks.
As always, please give me your thoughts once you've finished reading. I crave your feedback.
Disclaimer: the characters within are properties of the Disney corporation. Please don't sue me.
Enjoy.
The most important thing to remember is that love comes from the strangest of circumstances.
Elsa Arendelle's earliest memories of love are of her parents. The two of them were, for the all the time she knew them, as madly in love as the day they had met. That, she thinks, is what love should look like. Love is kind, and a little bit snarky. Love is soft smiles and teasing remarks.
When her sister is born, Elsa finds a new type of love. Anna is reckless from the start, and Elsa constantly has to protect her. And so she amends her definition of love: love is protective and caring. Love is singing to someone when they're sad, or fixing them when they're hurt.
High school introduces Elsa to the worst kind of love. Elsa learns that love can be jealous and angry. Love can be screaming at someone with tears running down your face, or trying to hurt someone because they hurt you and you wanted them to feel what you felt.
And then, a week after her graduation, Elsa learns the final, terrible, unspeakable kind of love, from the burning wreck that used to be her parent's car. Love is pain, and loss, and furious, frustrated helplessness. It's the beep of an EKG, or the slow lowering of two caskets into the ground.
After all her experiences, Elsa thinks she knows what love looked like. She thinks she knows where it comes from.
The most important thing to remember- the thing Elsa doesn't know, can't know- is that love comes from the strangest of circumstances.
And for Elsa, it starts with death.
Elsa Arendelle learns of the news of her uncle's passing via text message, on a Monday morning in May. It's a beautiful morning- not that she cares, because finals have just ended, her junior year of college has just ended, and she's planning on enjoying the week off she has before she starts her full-time summer job.
But then she gets a text at six in the morning from her cousin Rapunzel, and all of a sudden she's not enjoying her week. She's mindlessly packing her things into her dad's white '94 BMW convertible- her convertible, she corrects herself; it's been three years- and trying to keep it together. There will be time for grieving later, she tells herself. Right now, her sister needs her.
Later turns out to be a few hours later, pulled over on the side of the interstate, with her head rested against the steering wheel of her dad's white '94 BMW convertible. There are tears running down her face, and she hates crying, hates it with a burning passion, because crying means helplessness, and Elsa Arendelle is never helpless. Not anymore.
And yet, there are tears running down her face.
Uncle Thomas is dead.
Her favorite uncle, her only uncle. The man who had promised to walk her down the aisle in her father's absence. The only man who could make a crowd of people laugh and smile at his own sister's funeral.
It isn't even like it's unexpected- they had known he was sick since before The Accident- but it's so sudden, so powerful. One day she's on the phone with him, promising to make the trip out to California to visit soon. The next day, he's gone.
And so tears run down her face.
And Elsa is helpless.
It's hours later, as she nears her tiny-ass middle-of-nowhere North Carolina hometown, that Elsa remembers why she's going home in the first place.
Elsa hasn't seen Anna since she left for architecture school, three years ago. She misses her sister terribly, and she sends money home whenever she can, but she left for a reason, and sure, most of it was because she couldn't bear to stay in that town after The Accident, but at least part of the reason was the reverence with which her sister looked at her in the weeks before her departure. The sort of reverence that comes with you're the only thing I have left and I'm never letting you go and have your eyes always sparkled like that?
And sure, maybe she had looked at Anna the same way.
But then again, that's why she left.
Elsa attends school in New York. Her parents had insisted that she go there before The Accident, but she could've changed her mind afterwards. Perhaps it was to honor their memory, or maybe she just needed a change of scenery. Elsa never goes hungry, thanks to the sizeable endowment her parents had left her, but architecture school is expensive, and even with the scholarship money she's got, she works full-time all summer to be able to justify the expense to herself.
It's times like now that Elsa wishes she had gone somewhere closer to home. Sure, it's the first time she's been back since she left, but after ten hours of driving, alone in the car save her own thoughts, she's considering dropping out of school just so she never has to make the trip again.
Not really, of course. But the thought remains.
By sheer coincidence, Elsa arrives at Anna's high school- her own former high school- just as classes are letting out. It takes ten minutes of waiting before she realizes that Anna's already graduated, hasn't had classes in weeks, and so she turns around and goes home.
Home.
The house she grew up in.
She rings the doorbell, feeling every bit like the stranger she's let herself become.
Anna opens the door, all smiles and hugs, that same radiance she had three years ago. It feels, for a very brief moment, like Elsa hasn't left at all; it's the same house, same school, same town, same Anna.
But then her sister sees the look on her face, and reality comes crashing back.
Anna cries, cries the tears their uncle deserves. Elsa doesn't tell Anna that she cried too. She's not sure why, but she doesn't want Anna to know. Elsa's always been the Strong One.
Anna has always been a bit of a crier. Elsa likes that about her sister. Anna's never felt the need to hide her emotions. She feels everything, and she feels it all so strongly, but she does so because she allows herself to, and that, Elsa thinks, takes far more strength than closing yourself off does.
Elsa lets Anna cry herself out, orders Chinese delivery for the two of them, and lets her sister lean against her while they watch Mean Girls. It's painfully reminiscent of the previous summer they spent together, but to Anna that's what matters. After all that's changed, Elsa is still her sister, still taking care of her.
They fall asleep like that, curled up on the couch together. They're both so tired, so worn out, so glad to see the other. In the morning, they pack up their dad's white '94 BMW convertible, tossing Anna's things in the trunk next to Elsa's, and they set off for California.
The funeral is on Saturday. By Elsa's best estimate, it'll take them, at most, until Friday to drive across the country.
It'll be a long trip.
For the first hundred miles, they drive in silence. Anna falls asleep against the window, and Elsa determinedly ignores the adorable way she turns her hair into a pillow while she's sleeping.
But then Anna wakes up, and Elsa can't help but giggle at the way Anna stretches like a cat.
"Good morning, sleepy," she says with a smile.
"Mmmm, where are we?" Anna responds, blinking repeatedly.
"Somewhere in Tennessee. We just got out of the mountains, I think. Would you like to stop for breakfast?"
"You read my mind," Anna responds, suddenly wide awake.
They stop off at the next exit, pulling into some tiny little diner that's probably been there since the Great Depression. The two of them order a massive stack of pancakes to share, and Anna eats twice as much as Elsa, and slathers them in syrup. The town's barely more than the one street with a gas station and the café, and they sit in their booth and make up stories about the people passing by.
"I bet that guy's a Russian spy," Anna points to a man sitting at the bar with a denim jacket that reads 'born in the USA' across the back. "He's way too obvious. Nobody actually dresses like that. He's trying to blend in."
But then a second man sits down beside him, wearing a leather jacket with a massive waving American flag across the back, and Elsa has to bury her face in her pancakes to keep from laughing out loud.
By the time they leave, they've crafted an intricate backstory for the whole town. The waitress is secretly an alien, the mayor is a robot, the farmers are all vampires. They put the top down on their father's white '94 BMW convertible, crank up the hilariously stereotypical country music on the radio, and belt the words to songs they've never heard before.
It's the most fun Elsa's had in years.
Every time she spots some roadside attraction, or a billboard advertising something at the next exit, Anna demands that they stop. It adds hours onto their travel time, but Elsa can't help it. She sees the look in her sister's eyes- the mischief, the adventure- and it's infectious.
They spend five minutes at a cornfield before Anna gets bored. They spend an hour at a chocolate factory, sampling the delicacies and watching it get made. (They buy a pound of the stuff for the road. It's gone before their next stop.) They spend fifteen minutes at a hunting lodge, playing imaginary Call of Duty with the guns mounted on the wall, before they get kicked out.
Elsa loves the feeling. She's always felt so comfortable with her sister. Anna has the supernatural ability to make friends with everybody, and for Elsa, that's quite a talent. She's lived in the biggest city in the country for three years, and with the exception of two failed relationships, she's not met anyone she considers a friend. Colleagues, sure, or acquaintances, maybe. But Anna's closer than anyone's gotten in three years, and it took her twelve hours.
There's a moment, out on the road, with the top of their dad's white '94 BMW convertible down, belting the lyrics to country songs they've never heard before, that Elsa wonders why she ever left in the first place. But the sun is going down, and Anna is demanding they pull over, and so they do. Elsa stops at the next rest stop, and Anna changes the station until she finds something she likes, and then she's out of the car, out into the empty field beside the rest stop, laughing and dancing and singing, and Elsa can't help but join her. It's been hours since they stopped, and she needs to stretch her legs anyway.
And when the music changes, and the radio starts humming.
"Stars shining right above you, night breezes seem to whisper 'I love you'…"
Anna pulls Elsa close, and rests her head on her older sister's shoulder, and they sway slowly to the music. Elsa closes her eyes, and there's a pang in her chest, and suddenly she remembers why she left.
She can't quite put her thumb on the feeling until later that evening. They've stopped for the night, at a tiny motel just outside Oklahoma City. They're both exhausted, for entirely different reasons than the previous night, and Elsa gets them a room without really caring what kind- they'll only be staying the one night anyway. But the room's only got one bed, and this is an entirely different arrangement than passing out on the couch together, so when Anna curls up against Elsa's side, it's not her sister's snoring that keeps her up all night. It's the feeling of warmth from Anna's arm draped over her stomach, the tiny breeze on her neck from where her sister is breathing.
She passes out, eventually, and in her dreams, she's alone in a massive bustling city. She stands still, at the center of it all, completely, utterly lost, until suddenly a redheaded girl takes her hand, and the rest of the world just ceases.
They make it to San Francisco around dinnertime on Friday night. Rapunzel's there to greet them, a dozen different emotions on her face at once. Their cousin introduces them to the gorgeous man on her arm, tells them "this is Eugene",and there are no further questions. As far as Anna's concerned, he's part of the family now.
The four of them go out drinking that night. Anna's not old enough to drink, technically, but that never stopped Rapunzel, and Eugene knows a few people from back in the day, and they don't have any problems. So they get a booth at Rapunzel's favorite bar, and with the help of some liquid courage, they all swap stories.
Elsa and Anna graphically depict their adventures on the road. It takes them an hour to get through all of it, and Anna embellishes a few parts- their ejection from the hunting lodge turns into getting chased out of town by armed rednecks, for one- but it keeps Rapunzel smiling, and that's what counts. After they've gotten a few drinks in them, Rapunzel and Eugene tell the story of how they met, which Elsa barely remembers the following morning- something about a horse, and she thinks there's a frying pan involved somewhere.
Late into the night, Elsa tells the tales of her two failed relationships. Tales she had never told anyone.
The first, a handsome and charming man with brown hair. He had lasted a week. He had been furious with Elsa, had demanded to know why she dumped him, and in a fit of grief, she had told him the honest truth: that she didn't like him that way, that she didn't like boys that way, and that she was very sorry. That was two years ago.
The more recent one, a girl with brilliant ginger hair and sparkling blue eyes. She had just moved from a tiny town, and had been excited about the big city. She and Elsa had dated for a few months, before she broke up with the blonde, insisting that she was just a replacement for someone else that occupied Elsa's heart. That was just a few months ago.
Rapunzel and Eugene barely listen, intoxicated as they are, but Anna hangs on every word.
Anna and Elsa stay with their cousin that night, crashing on her spare bed. Elsa wakes with a splitting headache, but it's gone by the time they reach the church. Anna, for her part, doesn't seem the least bit hungover.
It's a lovely ceremony, and Elsa's glad she was able to make it out to be there. Rapunzel gives a stirring eulogy, and there's not a dry eye in the house.
The whole thing goes by in a blur. Before she knows it, it's over, and there's a new patch of dirt beneath a fresh marble headstone. Elsa feels hollow.
Anna seems to sense her sister's grief, and takes her sister's hand, dragging them around the graves. They read the names of the dead, the birthdays and marriages. Anna turns it into a game; who can find someone with the same birthday as them first. It's a bit morbid, to be sure, but it works; Elsa begins to feel better.
But they come across two adjacent graves, capped with faded marble, each stone bearing the word 'Arendelle' on it, and all of the air is sucked out of Elsa's lungs.
Anna just takes her hand with a smile and bends down on one knee to say hello.
They remain there for hours, sitting side by side, talking to their parents. After a while, Elsa has nothing more to say, and so she rests her head on her sister's shoulder, listening as she tells their parents about everything they had missed. Anna tells them about her three years living alone, with nobody but Kristoff to take care of her, wonderful though he is. She tells them about how much she had missed Elsa, how glad she was to see her again. She tells of adventures, of belting the lyrics to country songs they'd never heard before, and of slow dancing to Ella Fitzgerald in an empty field in Arkansas.
Elsa realizes, in that moment, that there aren't different kinds of love. That it's possible to feel them all at once, and all about the same person. That love, true love, real love, is, by necessity, a combination of all the different kinds she once thought she knew.
But then Anna's telling their parents that she's thinking of dying her hair purple, and reality comes crashing back.
They end up leaving that night. Elsa has work starting the following Tuesday, and she needs to be back in New York by then. But for some reason, she doesn't drive east. She drives south, down the coast, because going back to New York means leaving Anna, and for all her fears, all her anxiety and insecurity, she's absolutely certain that she never wants to leave her sister's side again.
Anna doesn't say anything, just turns down the volume on the radio and looks at Elsa with concern. Elsa grips the wheel with white knuckles, strung out on nerves and caffeine, determined not to stop but never wanting to go back. Finally, she pulls over to an empty stretch of beach, just as the sun sets. Anna rests her hand on Elsa's shoulder until Elsa feels calmer, slowly reversing the panic that had filled her stomach.
They climb out of Elsa's convertible, laying out on the hood and watching the sun go down. Anna looks so ethereal, glowing gold in the last light of day, and Elsa barely catches the sunset, fixed as she is to the image beside her. So she stretches her arms out above her, closes her eyes, and softly begins to sing.
"Stars shining right above you, night breezes seem to whisper 'I love you', birds singing in the sycamore tree, dream a little dream of me…"
The next morning, Elsa wakes to find Anna curled up against her, arm draped across her chest, breathing upon Elsa's neck. Though she breathes as softly as she can, Elsa's heart beats erratically as she wages a war within herself, desperately forcing herself not to kiss Anna.
They drive most of the day in silence. Elsa's more distant than she has been, and Anna picks up on it fairly easily, but she doesn't ask why. Something's changed, and all of a sudden, even with the top down, there's just not enough room in this car.
They switch places, for the first time since they left home, and Anna drives while Elsa relaxes, because Anna insisted. Elsa doesn't do much relaxing, and now she doesn't have the road to distract her, so her mind races, and arguably, it's worse. But Anna doesn't seem to be taking them home; she veers south shortly after they pass into Utah. Elsa wants to ask, but god knows she's taken them on enough detours, so she stays silent.
Their destination becomes clear soon after when they pull into the parking lot for the Grand Canyon.
Elsa speaks for the first time since the sunrise. "What are we doing here?"
Anna just smiles, that same damn reverent smile, but this time it seems different. "You needed some space. I got you all the space you could ever wish for."
Elsa is speechless. She climbs out of her convertible, walking cautiously towards the rim of the cliff. It feels so empty, but at the same time, so not. Anna takes her hand, leading her to the edge, and they sit side-by-side, staring off into space.
There's so much out there to stare at, but Anna can't seem to stop staring at Elsa. Elsa feels the blush creeping up her neck.
Despite herself, Elsa asks. "What?"
Anna blushes back, caught. It's barely loud enough for Elsa to hear, but it might as well be the only sound in the world, for all that it means to Elsa.
"I love you."
And the world doesn't end, and the cliff doesn't collapse, and the sun doesn't explode. The Earth keeps turning beneath them.
Elsa looks away.
She thought she was prepared to confront her own feelings.
She has absolutely no idea how to deal with Anna's.
There's a long stretch of time where they can't look each other in the eyes, can't hear each other speak, can't acknowledge each other at all. For two days, they listen to music in silence. Elsa wants to say something, but every time she tries, something stops her. Guilt, anxiety, something. She's late for her job, but somehow that doesn't seem important anymore.
Anna drives most of the way back. Elsa's not even sure they're going home anymore. The air changes, and they're not in the mountains anymore, but there's not enough landmarks to tell the difference in states.
Until, that is, they arrive in Chicago. They check into a hotel just north of downtown.
It's not until they've been uncomfortably silent for far too long that someone finally breaks the tension.
"Why are we here? We're supposed to be going home." Elsa's tone is a bit harsher than she intended. She regrets it immediately.
"I'm only trying to help. All I've been doing is trying to help!" Anna's voice rises, more than she intends to. This isn't how she wanted this to go at all.
Elsa takes the bait anyway. "You have done enough! We are leaving right now!" she demands.
Anna breaks. "You left me for three years! I needed you then, more than ever, and you left!"
They stare at each other silently, Elsa's heart pounding in her chest.
Elsa feels the urge to storm out, but Anna beats her to it, slamming the door for good measure.
Elsa tries to have a drink at the hotel bar, but she doesn't have the stomach for it. She goes back up to her room and turns the TV up loud enough to drown out her thoughts. Sure, she could go out and experience the city, but without Anna, it doesn't feel like an adventure. It just reminds her of the city she should be back in, the sister who should be hundreds of miles away by now.
It's after dark when Anna finally comes back, drunk as hell, with some guy on her arm.
"Heyyyy, Elsa, this- this is- wait, what's your name again?" she looks up at him, jabbing a finger into his cheek. The guy, for his part, stares at her chest. "Never mind. We're getting married!"
Elsa takes a moment to allow herself the luxury of being utterly confused, before kicking the guy out. She calls room service, gets some food and water in her sister. There'll be time for more arguing in the morning; for now, she's got a drunk Anna to take care of.
Elsa gets up first, predictably, but leaves the blinds closed out of courtesy. She makes a few phone calls that she has to make, but by noon, she's done waiting for Anna. She's a bundle of nerves and insecurity, and she needs to talk to her sister. So she tears open the blinds, smiling inwardly as she hears the moans of pain behind her.
"Oh, god, I have the worst headache…" Anna groans. "What time is it?"
"Here? A little past noon." Elsa sits down across from Anna, her arms crossed in front of her. "What happened last night? Where did you find that guy? Why did you storm out? Why did you start a fight?" once she starts, she can't stop; the questions just flood out of her. She's pulled the strings, and the bundle of nerves is coming undone.
Anna just stares at Elsa's feet. "Why didn't you respond?"
Elsa's silent. Anna continues, looking up slowly. "When I told you I loved you. I meant it. Why didn't you respond? You could've said anything, god, you could've said you hated me and stomped off, but you didn't say anything at all."
And Elsa just deflates. For the first time since they started the trip, Elsa realizes just how full of nerves and anxiety and insecurity that Anna has been this entire time. Elsa had thought she was being the strong one, but this whole time, Anna had been keeping her together.
Elsa moves to sit beside Anna, holding her sister close. "Okay," she breathes, clinging tighter. "I know I've been… gone. I'm so sorry I left you, Anna. But things have been complicated, and I'm trying to figure it out just as much as you are."
Anna pulls away a bit. "That made no sense."
Elsa cringes. "I don't hate you, Anna. I could never hate you. But… I don't have a response to… what you said to me."
Anna shrugs, smiling. "You suck at apologizing, you know that?"
Elsa feels a little bit offended and a whole lot guilty, but Anna's still smiling, and now they're hugging.
They're only an hour outside of their little hometown. An hour away, and Anna will go back home, and Elsa will have to leave for New York again, and then she'll be alone.
She's not sure why she's dreading being alone again. She thought that was what she wanted. But the more she thinks about it, the more scared she gets.
"Pull over," she says suddenly.
Anna immediately complies, darting across three lanes to turn into a rest stop. "Pulling over!" she shouts, as if to warn the other drivers who can't hear her.
Elsa leaps out of the car and runs into the field, dropping to her knees and breathing heavily. She wraps her arms around her chest, eyes shut tight, desperately willing herself not to cry.
Elsa Arendelle does not cry. Elsa Arendelle hates crying, hates it with a burning passion, because crying means helplessness, and Elsa Arendelle is never helpless. Not anymore.
But then she feels a hand on her back, and Anna's sitting next to her, softly singing the words.
"Stars shining right above you, night breezes seem to whisper 'I love you,' birds singing in the sycamore tree, dream a little dream of me…"
And Elsa can't help but say it. It's as though the words explode out of her. It's not the right time, it'll never be the right time, and it might very well ruin everything, but in that moment, Elsa just lets it out.
"I love you."
And Anna stops singing, because she's smiling too wide to say anything, and her eyes sparkle and glisten, and Elsa kisses Anna, or maybe Anna kisses her first, but she doesn't even care anymore, because the moment is just perfect, and the rest of the world just ceases.
They arrive at home and start unpacking their things from the trunk of Elsa's convertible. Neither can stop smiling. They keep looking over at each other and blushing.
Halfway through grabbing her stuff, Anna brings up the last elephant in the room.
"Elsa, aren't you going back to New York? You've taken all your stuff out of your car."
Elsa just smiles. "I sort of called my boss while we were in Chicago. I told him something came up, and I might not make it back to New York for a while. Called it a 'family emergency'. Technically it's true."
Anna laughs, feeling lighter than she has in three years. "So, what, you're staying?"
"All summer."
And they just cannot stop smiling, they're back inside and they're smiling, they're making dinner and they're smiling, they're falling to sleep in each other's arms, and they're smiling.
Four Years Later
It's the first time since they've been back to the cemetery since Uncle Thomas died.
(They flew out to attend Rapunzel and Eugene's wedding, but they never went into the graveyard.)
They're visiting their cousin, as they had promised to do, not to mention her adorable little boy. Family is very important to the Arendelles.
(They're wearing their rings. They're symbolic, of course; no church on Earth would ever marry them. They mean the same thing anyways.)
"Hi mom. Hi, dad." Elsa kneels in front of their graves. Anna sits beside her, holding her sister's hand. "I have so much to tell you guys about!"
"First of all, love comes from the strangest of circumstances…"
End