9-13-15
Loving a Friend.
By James Carmody.
Disclaimer: I own none of these tales: Frozen, Once Upon a Time, Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel the Series. Frozen is the property (I believe) of Disney, Once Upon a Time is the property of Kitsis and Horowitz, and Buffy/Angel is the property of Joss Whedon. I will not accept a single red cent for this tale- this is just for fun, my own and that of others.
Characters: Elsa, Tara Maclay, and a few others.
Pairing(s): Anna/Kristoff (romantic- at this time they're married), Elsa/Kristoff (in-laws/friendship), Tara Maclay/most of the Scoobies (friendship- mostly), Tara/Willow (past intimate relationship.), Elsa/Tara (friendship, but also squabbles) Also: Elsa/Regina friendship Tara Maclay/Elsa.
Setting: Around Season 5 of Once Upon A Time, in Storybrooke, Maine, and for some odd reason, Tara's back... just go with it, don't try to reason it out- weird stuff like that happens in Buffy, anyways.
Story Notes: This: [text] refers to mental communication: prayer, temptation, or telepathy.
Elsa here has the same orientation direction as she does in my story "Crosses".
Warning: story deals with a mature topic, so I don't recommend anyone under the "T" rating of age on Fanfiction Rating systems reads this, but the actual judge is to be the child's parents. The mature topic it deals with is female homosexuality, but like any other of my tales that touch on that misbehavior (the actions), it is NOT an advocation thereof, and never will be. This tale is about how a friend confronts another friend when one of them is doing something wrong/about to do something wrong.
Also, like in "Crosses" it is a modern Royal AU, and Elsa is a Christian woman.
What prompted me to this pairing was a misunderstanding of mine in regard to another author's story's chapter summary in AO3.
Summary: Please read, review/comment, and enjoy. Main Pairing: Elsa/Tara Maclay (friendship). Further Summary Inside. Mind Author's Notes.
Chapter 1.): Encounters: A Card-Game at Granny's.
Author's Notes Beginning Chapter 1.): Please, tell me what you think. This is, almost exclusively, friendship love between the characters... most traditional relationships in the series's occur in this tale- but the odd one is the main feature. The gist of this is how opposition is, in fact, an act of love when someone wants to do something wrong.
Takes place after Tara arrives in Storybrooke with Faith- running from some HSTs. Part of my "Adventures in Storybrooke" series. Roughly about seven months into the year that Season 5 takes place in OUAT.
As Elsa walked into the diner, Tara looked at the clock. For the past few quarters of an hour; her boss, "Granny" as the older woman is known, had been sort of bugging the young blonde to take her break. This work-ethic had indeed endeared her to her employer, and Tara really really needed the money to make ends meet. Besides, the younger woman rather liked waitressing as a job, so this was essentially a blessing. The only flaw her employer had noticed on her personality was the fact that Tara was a very shy woman- and thereby prone to stuttering.
Upon seeing her friend walk in, Tara put away her apron and informed her boss "I'm going on break." Business was rather slow right now, and Granny knew well that Elsa had come in to visit a friend.
Tara had found waitressing to be fun, and besides, the job was a rather low-stress one for her; in addition to that, she found that she got access to a lot of gossip this way. Most of it was incredibly dumb, but a good part of it was fun. One of her discoveries was the fact that her newest friend, Elsa of Arrendelle, was prone to PTSD episodes that had meteorological properties. As someone familiar with magic herself, Tara was rather eager to help her out; and had referred her to checking in with a Doctor Archie Hopper she had met shortly after entering into the town. Tara had seen an advertisement for him around town, or heard offhand someone talking about him helping them, and Tara being Tara had immediately thought of Elsa and her PTSD symptoms.
It turned out that Elsa in her first visit to Storybrooke was far too busy to check in, but she knew well of him, and wanted to correct her emotional troubles... she just didn't have the time, and she seemed a little obsessed with finding her kid sister. Tara could understand, she had a elder brother and really wanted a quality friendship with him, but the continual bullying she had suffered at her family's hands precluded that possibility from ever happening.
Now that her country was straightened out, from the invasion, and her sister was happily married to Kristoff,,, Elsa had decided to return for a little visit to Storybrooke.
"You ready?" Elsa asked, leaning slightly on her right hip, and holding up a deck of playing cards in her left hand. They had scheduled this a few weeks before, and now really wanted to indulge in this encounter. She was wearing one of her favorite blue gowns- the one that looked like it had some properties of ice or snow itself... her hair, however, was tied up in a braided bun, and Elsa had a playful smile on her face.
"Just a minute, let me get my coat." Tara responded, not quite trusting the breeze out there on this particular late morning. You could make the case that Tara, being a girl from the southern United States for much of her adult life was less comfortable with the cold that Elsa,,, to whom this town seemed downright tropical- due to being from a nearly arctic village. These two had become fast friends. Little did they know; this day would turn out quite different and stress their friendship almost to a breaking point before it returned to normal for them.
Upon leaving the front door to Granny's, the two women sat down in the cafe area outside to play cards and basically play with eachother a little bit in a number of ways. "How's your roommate, Faith?" Elsa asked, unknowing that Tara had, in fact, effectively become Faith's owner (This being anything but OK- especially legally) by seizing the brunette's heart and, after pulling it out of her chest, setting it down next to her- to show her who's in charge of whom.
Tara shrugged a bit, then said "She's doing fine, that I know of. I don't keep tabs on her 24/7. I can't, really." and put down her card. The two of them were playing a simple card-game that Tara had taught Elsa called "war".
Elsa grinned at the thought of Faith; she had found the brunette to be simply gorgeous, and in a different reality... one where Elsa didn't care about her religious beliefs, she might well be trying to date Faith! But in fact, the young blonde queen was thankful for her Christian beliefs; they protected her from abusing her neighbors., and for that she was eternally grateful. Elsa didn't want to betray her religious treaty with the Lord found in the Testaments of Scripture- a treaty God had installed in humanity for many millennium.
She didn't know a thing about her playmate's orientation, but all along she suspected that something was different about herself; something was wrong with her in the head- or so she thought. Ever since she was a little girl, only old enough to reason things out, she had had no interest in sexuality... then when she was a teenager; Elsa had found herself prone to fantasizing about girls! This, as you might imagine, terrified the young Catholic teen, so she threw herself only more-so into her schoolwork. Elsa had always been the scholar in the Arrendelle Royal Family, but now she was determined to at least drown her frightful ideas of kissing other girls completely in her mind; so that only her studies remained!
Elsa remembered begging God for any help He might render in regards to this utterly terrifying trait in her personality- the only thing that He seemed to answer in the form of was that her desire seemed to grow. Her first help came from her pastor, the Bishop of Arrendelle, who informed her that these desires cannot be acted upon, but aren't sins. "A sin is always an action, even a word or thought is an action- albeit the action is consenting to the idea." he had told her.
When she wrote this out on paper, Elsa underlined the word "Consenting" for emphasis, and to this day she kept it in her pocket as a reminder of her consent overruling her desires; something that gave her hope and strength.
Elsa's PTSD was due, in fact, to her accidentally hurting Anna when they were both very young. This incident scared the young girl, now woman, and to this very day her ability to cope was directly tied to her kid sister. She was also overjoyed these days with the fact that she now had a brother by marriage- Kristoff was exactly the right guy for the job too- especially his caring for his new wife, Anna! This was the first marriage for either of them, and they were determined to make it work. Romance had been a scary matter for Elsa, particularly that ugly business with a certain Hans, thirteenth in line for the throne of the Southern Isles; and a true psychopathic jerk if there ever was one!
Hans had started out charming enough, but attempted murder ruins the relationship very fast, as he probably has discovered; thanks to his family scolding him for trying to murder her and her kid sister!
As for Tara, the only real reason why she had enslaved Faith was due to the fact that the two of them were stuck here and she didn't trust her, besides, Tara needed safety from Faith; who was known as a notorious psychopath... despite being incredibly beautiful- physically speaking... besides that ridiculous reason, Tara didn't know why she did what she did to her at all!
And if Tara's reason was ridiculous, her response to that inclination was even more of a non-sequitur: she had sat on Faith's stomach, plunged her hand into Faith's chest, tore the brunette's heart out, set it down next to her (now) slave's left shoulder, and spent the rest of the night "playing" with her new 'pet'... honestly: Tara was frankly disgusted with her actions, but she really felt trapped in this situation. "Playing" was a stretch, she was tormenting Faith in just about every way imaginable, including physical intimacy!
By accident, Tara's aura detection kicked in, and she, without being able to stop herself, read Elsa- it was at that moment that she realized that she loved her., not as a lover, but as close to a sister as she ever could! Tara pretty much swore, then and there, that if she could choose one woman as a sister, it'd be Elsa! This was friendship love, she realized, mixed with a degree of Agape or sacrificial love, and Tara found it to be the height of her delights yet!
Little did she realize, but Elsa deeply reciprocated Tara's friendship love of her; she would by the time the day was out, though! Regina Mills car took that exact same moment to decide to malfunction completely and die on the road, right in front of Granny's Diner! Tara Maclay saw a beautiful brunette woman get out of the driver's side door, walk over to the passenger-side of the vehicle, and proceed to kick the tire on the passenger-side front., swearing an expletive as she did so! Regina's life had, for lack of a better phrase, stressing her out: she was supposed to pick up Henry at school for some family time, and now she didn't know where to turn! Thinking quickly, she walked up to the payphone near the diner, put in some loose change, and dialed the Charmings, hoping to reach David.
Mr. David Nolan was increasingly concerned that his older child, Emma Swan, had permanently turned to darkness. He well knew that little Neal would want to spend some quality time with Emma, but with his daughter as the new Dark One; that's probably not the best design to implement, another problem was that Emma and Regina shared a son. Simply put: Regina had adopted Emma's son, Henry, when the boy was an infant- now that Emma had gone dark, this was even scarier for Regina. Something in the formally evil queen's heart was amazingly maternal, and didn't want him to have to suffer the loss of a friend he had in Emma.
Regina put the phone to her ear, and speaking into the receiver, she said "Hi... car malfunction... I'm going to need you to pick up Henry at school... yes, I well understand that you're concerned about your daughter... Listen, Charming if you want to save Emma, you can't do it all in one fell swoop, you've got to move a bit at a time..." Tara caught sight of Regina and by now had this wistful look on her face., both women playing cards drowned out the conversation after that point, as they knew it was none of their business... but something in Tara's look told Elsa that Tara was beginning to crush on Regina!
"She's not like that." Elsa said, trying to buy Tara off of her desire for Regina Mills, and Elsa tapped the table to try to bring her friend back to the game they were playing.
Author's Notes End Chapter 1.): Sounds like a good place to stop here, the next chapter will likely be titled "Confrontations of Love" dealing with the disagreement between Elsa and Tara about physical intimacy and relationships.
Please tell me what you think of this.