A/N: I got the idea for this while re-reading parts of The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger which is an amazing book everyone should read. The idea of chrono-displacement is totally hers.
The first time it happens, Elsa is seven. She is in her bed, covers drawn up to her chin, sulking because her parents had given her favorite stuffed teddy bear to Anna for the night. Her head suddenly starts to swim and her vision blurs. The next thing she knows, she's rolling across linoleum tiles and crashing naked into a wooden stool. Pain blossoms in her right knee, her head hurts and she wants to throw up. Elsa looks around frantically, eyes squinting in the darkness. She wails loudly for her parents.
"Elsa?" A voice she doesn't recognize calls in concern. She hears the sound of hurried steps in the distance and after a few moments the lights flicker on to illuminate the room. At first she thinks it's the kitchen of her house but it feels weird and things aren't quite the same. A tall woman with blue eyes and platinum blonde hair pulled loosely in a messy braid appears before her. She crouches under the counter in front of Elsa.
"Who're you?" Elsa whispers at the stranger, wrapping her arms around herself protectively. The woman doesn't say anything at first, but then produces a t-shirt and holds it out to Elsa, who stares at it suspiciously. She struggles between the desire to cover herself and her mistrust of the stranger until embarrassment finally wins. Snatching the shirt nervously, she quickly slips it over her head.
"I know this is hard to believe, but I'm you," the woman says.
"But I'm me. And you're old," Elsa shoots back and the woman narrows her eyes. The woman is wearing a long, black sleeping gown that falls to her knees. Elsa doesn't have clothes like that.
"We don't have a lot of time," Older Elsa says to her with a touch of impatience in her voice. "I just need you to trust me for now. I'm you and occasionally this is going to start happening to you. You're going to need to be brave," there's a long pause before she appends, "and careful."
Elsa nods slowly because even though her parents have repeatedly told her not to talk to strangers, she feels an instinctive trust of this blonde lady. "Where am I?" Elsa asks, fear tinging her voice.
Older Elsa smiles and then tries as best she can to explain time-traveling to a seven-year-old. It's not a huge success.
"I know, you don't really get it," Older Elsa says finally with a sad smile. "But you'll understand soon. I just need you to remember this date though."
The woman tells her the date and Elsa repeats it over and over to herself as instructed, eyes drooping until she finally falls asleep under the counter.
She wakes up again in her bed, lying naked on top of her pajamas. It's morning. Anna bursts into the door five seconds later, leaping onto the bed excitedly. "Elsa, let's play," the younger girl sings at her but then stops and wrinkles her face in confusion. "Why're you naked?"
Elsa wants to believe that it was all a dream, but she runs her fingers over her knee and winces at the bruise. The date the older woman told her runs through her mind and Elsa starts to sing it occasionally like a lullaby until it's imprinted permanently.
A week later it happens again. That's when Elsa starts to understand. She's at the playground down the street with Anna. Teddy bear incident forgiven, they're back to being best friends. Elsa indulges Anna in pushing her higher and higher on the swing set.
"Higher," Anna squeals in delight. "Elsa, I wanna go higher!"
Elsa readies herself for a tremendous push when her ears start to buzz. She falls to her knees dizzily. Instead of gravel under her, water runs around her knees and her hands touch soft mud. She's cold and naked, and Elsa looks around fearfully. She vaguely recognizes this as the creek in the woods behind their house, but she doesn't know how she got there.
"Elsa?" a voice calls out to her, and Elsa looks up to find a woman watching her with a mixture of concern and surprise. There's an easel for painting set up and a small stool. The woman is wearing a long white smock that's splattered in paint and her red hair is tied up in a messy bun.
The woman rushes to her, bringing a big, tan jacket that she wraps around Elsa and leads her out of the creek.
"Who're you?" Elsa asks, sitting cross-legged on the grass at what she deems to be a safe distance away. "Why do you know my name?"
"Oh," the woman says, voice tinged with surprise. She giggles nervously. "I guess this must be the first time for you. I'm um, Anastasia."
"Like the princess?"
"Kinda, yeah, like the princess. But less Russian," Anastasia says with a grin. "We're going to be friends."
"But you're old," Elsa says, remembering what had happened last week.
"Hey, not that old," Anastasia protests. "Just call me Stacy. Anyway, this is the future."
"Did I," Elsa pauses and searches her brain for what Older Elsa had told her. "Time travel?"
"Yeah," Stacy says. "You're going to start doing this a lot."
Suddenly, Elsa remembers what she had been doing prior to waking up in the creek. "Anna," she cries out and the woman gives her a startled look. "I left Anna at the playground."
"Oh," says the woman slowly. She looks strangely sad and scooches closer to pat Elsa gently on the head. "It's going to be okay. I know this probably doesn't mean anything, but you shouldn't feel bad about it. Though maybe if I say all this it's going to blow up the whole space-time continuum or something. Or maybe I did say this and you didn't care or—"
She trails off at the look of confusion in the younger girl's eyes and grins sheepishly. "Just ignore me," she says softly. "Anyway, we're going to be pretty good buddies from what I hear."
"We are?" Elsa asks and Stacy opens her mouth to say more but the buzzing starts again and Elsa wakes up, cold and alone in the park. She feels nauseous but ignores it and starts to look for Anna. But her sister is nowhere to be found. Elsa finds her clothes in a pile, pulls them on in a hurry and rushes around to look for her.
She doesn't find her. When she goes home, she finds the house is in a panic. Her mother hugs her in a mixture of panic and relief and then in the same breath begins to yell at her. Anna's at the hospital. She fell off the swing and broke her arm.
"Where did you go?" her parents demand angrily later. Elsa doesn't know how to explain about the time traveling or about Stacy and Older Elsa. She tries but is just scolded and told to not tell lies. "We trusted you," they say accusingly and Elsa shuts herself in the bedroom and cries with her back pressed against the door.
She feels worse when Anna is home. Her sister doesn't seem fazed by the broken arm at all and gives Elsa a toothy grin and holds up her cast. "Daddy was going to sign it but I said you had to be the first one," Anna says holding up a marker. Elsa flees into her room.
She wakes up in the living room with a start. The lights are on and she sees Stacy again, looking startled, sandwich hanging from her mouth. "Elsa?" she mumbles, then swallows. "Holy shit."
Elsa's eyes widen at the naughty word, and Stacy grins apologetically. "I mean, holy schnitzel."
"What's a schnitzel?"
"A breaded pork cutlet."
And that's how Elsa grows up. She avoids her parents, who try but can't understand why their oldest daughter becomes so confined to solitude. She avoids Anna, despite the persistence of her sister. She can't forget about the day at the playground. Even after the unblemished cast is finally removed, even when Anna camps a week outside her door in stubborn determination, Elsa is resolute. She won't let Anna get hurt again.
She falls through time more often, mostly at night, though once it happened during a field trip at school. Stacy is always in the future. Sometimes Older Elsa is there too, but Elsa doesn't like her nearly as much. Once in a while, she catches Older Elsa in her timeline but they just give each other unreadable looks and don't talk. Stacy shows her how to make hot cocoa just right, how to paint, how to ride a bike. Stacy listens to Elsa talk about her problems at school. Sometimes it's confusing because Stacy doesn't remember doing some of the things Elsa brings up, but overall, her presence helps Elsa stay rooted.
"I hurt my sister," Elsa confesses to her one day as the two lie on their backs and stare up at the sky. Elsa is twelve. "One of the first times I time traveled, I left her on a set of swings and she fell and broke her arm."
"Oh, honey, that's not your fault," Stacy says, and she sweeps up the younger girl in a tight hug. "You shouldn't blame yourself. I'm sure your sister doesn't either."
"Mom said I was supposed to look after her," Elsa says quietly. Stacy is still for a moment, then sighs softly and holds Elsa even tighter, fingers rubbing in soothing circles at the other girl's back. Five years of pent-up guilt and self-loathing erupt in a stream of sobs. They lie there for a long time, not saying anything. "I avoided her after because I didn't want her to get hurt, but sometimes I wish we didn't have to be apart."
"Why don't you talk to her?" Stacy says after a long pause. She sounds hesitant, as though she's proposing something illegal. "I mean, instead of talking to me, you should talk to her."
"I want to," Elsa says, rolling over to sit up. "But she also doesn't try to talk to me anymore. I mean, I don't blame her."
"Oh, honey that's probably because," Stacy starts, and then trails off, a pensive look on her face. She pulls at one of her braids, various emotions flitting across her face as she thinks. "Because she's — "
Elsa doesn't hear how the sentence ends though because the buzzing in her head starts. The next thing she knows she's in her room. She checks the date on the calendar by her bed and confirms it's the right day. It's 8:11 PM.
She thinks about what she said to Stacy and then climbs out of bed and tiptoes across the hallway to Anna's room. Elsa's hand hovers next to the door, ready to knock when she hears Anna's voice talking. She pauses, then, in curiosity presses her ear lightly to the door.
"Elsa's just a big meanie," the younger girl is saying huffily. "Like, I don't know what I ever did to her, but she never talks to me. But it's okay, I have you, Lizzie."
Elsa returns to her room quietly. She doesn't try to talk to Anna again, hurt and guilt swirling inside of her. They grow up strangers living in the same house, despite their parents' efforts to bring them together. It's not that Elsa doesn't want to care but she's never able to shake off that feeling of fear. Anna is happy without her, Elsa tells herself. That's all that matters.
Years pass. Elsa continues to time travel, but to her disappointment, she hasn't seen Stacy since she was sixteen. She cringes sometimes at the memory of how she had asked the older woman to kiss her only to be gently turned down. Elsa sometimes guiltily wonders if that's why she never sees Stacy again, even though she knows that it shouldn't matter. It's not like Stacy has any control over her powers.
When she's twenty-four, she gets a call to come home from her sister. Their parents have retired to Florida, but Anna is still living in the old house. Elsa is surprised by the voicemail. She hasn't spoken to Anna in years. She isn't even sure how Anna got her phone number. Curiosity wins and she buys a bus ticket back home.
Anna greets her at the door, throwing her arms around the taller girl. "Elsa," she says softly and Elsa is thrown off by the warmth and affection. She stiffens in the embrace, torn between confusion at the situation and the comfort the hug brings.
"Hey," Elsa says and looks at her sister. She's taller than Elsa remembers, but still a few inches shy of the older girl. Anna's red hair still hangs in twin braids over her shoulders and her blue-green eyes are bright and cheerful. "It's good to see you."
There's a playful gleam in Anna's eyes. "Have you figured it out yet?"
"Figured out what, Anna?" Elsa says, slightly irritated. Her sister looks entirely too amused and Elsa is far too exhausted from the trip. She hates traveling, always terrified about what will happen if she loses herself. She wants to understand why Anna called her here so desperately.
"You were here a few days ago," Anna explains excitedly. "Then it all clicked for me."
"I haven't been here in years," Elsa protests, but then the gears start turning in her head and she gasps in understanding.
"I think you were like, forty-five," Anna says, tapping a finger against her chin thoughtfully. "I was so startled and you didn't realize at first and just talked to me so casually. I made you explain everything."
"So, you know?" Elsa asks softly, but that doesn't explain why Anna is brimming with excitement.
"Holy schnitzel?" Anna's voice is hesitant as she says the words awkwardly. Elsa's eyes fly open. She stares at Anna, and then for the first time in years, really looks at her. Red hair, teal eyes...
"Stacy?" Elsa whispers, and Anna wrinkles her nose at the name.
"You told me to tell you that but I still don't understand," Anna complains. "Also, why Stacy?"
"I met you when I was six. You told me your name was Anastasia...then said to call you Stacy."
"I'm totally changing that when it happens," Anna complains, but her words are lost as Elsa flings her arms around Anna, tears flooding her eyes.
"You can't," Elsa whispers fiercely, half laughing, half crying. "What if the time-space continuum explodes?"
The two stand there for ages, just holding each other. Elsa buries her head in Anna's hair, and the familiar scent of Stacy's shampoo makes her heart swell with nostalgia and love. Then Elsa remembers something. She pulls back, face red, and gives Anna a horrified look.
"I tried to kiss you," Elsa says slowly. Anna looks at her in surprise. There's a long pause, then the younger girl begins to laugh hysterically. Elsa is crimson. "Don't laugh! I had no idea."
But then Anna stops laughing. She reaches over and slings an arm around her waist and pulls Elsa close. "I tried to kiss you too," Anna says softly, then without waiting for a response presses her lips to Elsa's.
Elsa gasps in surprise, but then her heart is filled with the memories of the years she spent with Stacy — no, Anna — and how she spent most of her adolescence in love with the older woman. She finds herself kissing back fiercely, hands clutching at Anna, pulling her closer. For the first time in ages since she stopped seeing Stacy, Elsa feels grounded once more – this is home.
"Wait," Elsa says as she pulls back slightly. "What do you mean you tried to kiss me too?"
"You'll see," is all Anna offers with a grin.
Two nights later, Elsa finds herself waking up to a small finger poking her cheek. She opens her eyes to find herself in what appeared to be Anna's bedroom. The little girl is sitting on her chest, grinning. "Hey Lizzie," she says. Elsa tries not to panic but her heart is racing in her chest.
"Lizzie?" she questions.
Anna gives her a confused look. "You said it was short for Elizabeth – hey why're you crying?"
"Because we're together," is all Elsa says, wrapping Anna in a fierce hug.