I wrote this because the idea of politician!Anna meeting Queen!Elsa was one that I was playing around with and couldn't get out of my head, and because I wanted to think about something more fluffy as a change from And I Saw The Beast. This is more of an experiment than a real thing so don't expect anything even approaching regular updates unless I need a break from AISTB or I finish it. Until then though here's 10,000 words about a young idealistic congresswoman meeting a young and inexperienced foreign queen. Enjoy. ~Cobray
America was beautiful from the air.
She had always thought so.
When Anna had been a child and the family business had taken them out of state she had always demanded a window-seat. Other children would sleep or cry or twiddle their thumbs across a black plastic gadget, but little Anna spent her time aloft staring out of the window over whatever they had passed over, and been enraptured no matter what. Whether it had been endless rolling fields of golden grain, or manufacturing houses that covered hundreds of meters, or a city that sparkled with a million lights, she had looked out of the small glass portal open-mouthed at her country, and wished she could be down there exploring every inch of those wonders. When they would touch down to smiling men in limousines Anna would need to be corralled, else she would slip away from her mother's grasp and try to run off and find the fascinating and magical places she had seen from the air.
Then she had grown up, and although the intense desire to explore had faded slightly her sense of beauty of the whole thing never had. Like most of her class at eighteen she had taken a year out to 'find herself', but instead of following her friends and classmates to the beaches of Florida to work on her tan or to the endless amusements and baubles of Vegas, or even to the more exotic but well-regulated trips abroad to some well-policed less fortunate country to build a school (and her CV), she had went a different path. She had loaded a backpack and a winter coat and a pair of solid shoes, and taken a Greyhound bus to the first place she had seen.
She hadn't managed to get around to every state, but she had come damn close.
When she had returned home it had been ten pounds thinner, a couple of shades darker, and with eyes that shined. She got back to her fighting weight fast enough, and the skin went back to her normal pallor just as quick – Summerfords never did tan well or for long – but the light in her green-blue eyes never faded. She had talked endlessly, and not about the boys she had met or the landmarks she'd stood at. She had talked about understaffed food-kitchens and free clinics. About schools so desperate they'd take on substitute teachers with CVs as clean and empty as tablecloths. About looking out of parties in penthouses her name had gotten her into, and looking down at the streets to see the graffiti and broken windows mere blocks away.
Her parents had waited a week before suggesting the internship for the local city council.
The rest had seemed foreordained.
"Congresswoman?"
"Hmmm?" Anna said, tearing her eyes away from the sparkling vista below only with great difficulty to see her chief of staff looking at her politely. "Yes Kai?"
"We'll be coming in for a landing soon. Do you need a copy of your statement?"
"Urgh." Landing meant being on the ground, and being on the ground meant not being able to see. It meant her vision was limited to what was around her, not the view of an eagle on high.
It also meant phones that worked, which meant phone-calls. It meant people around her, which meant mingling without accomplishing anything. It meant journalists, which meant- Wait a second. "My statement?"
"The media are already waiting for-"
She sighed in exasperation and threw her head back against the chair's upholstery. At least this particular flight had no other passengers to see her make a most un-statesmanlike expression. "Oh for the love of…who cares about me? Isn't old man Stone meant to be drawing them away?"
"The senior congressman – mark that word Anna Summerford, it means more important than – has already arrived and given his speech."
"How was it?"
"Much like the man himself it was full of the gravitas of his office," Kai said with practised diplomacy. "A solemn and serious occasion."
"So he droned on for half an hour and everyone was bored to tears." The old joke was that Richard Stone should have come from the granite state, because he resembled a slab of the rock, had about as many emotions as one, and he talked like he had a mouthful of it too.
"I couldn't possibly say," Kai replied, deadpan.
"Did he drop any babies? Did any puke on him?"
"I don't believe he was offered the chance. Mothers have never really been eager to hand them over to him."
Anna giggled. She could picture the scene. Annoyed and bored reporters standing in the rain as her fellow congressman stood under an umbrella held by someone else and talked. And talked. Richard Stone the senior congressman from Texas could talk about nothing forever. She guessed she couldn't blame them for wanting something from her. "Any questions about…?"
"One," Kai replied, knowing the sore subject he was broaching.
"What did he say?"
"He said something about the confidence of the new generation and the achievement of excellence at a young age. Various synonyms for youth."
She let out a sigh, and felt just a little bad for laughing at her old colleague. At twenty-five and sixty, the man was old enough for two of her, and no matter how much she smiled it seemed he was still having a little trouble adjusting to his junior colleague being two generations separated from him. The man still had trouble with the internet. He still raised most of his money from phone-banks and cold-calling, whereas Anna had made most of hers from online drives and her website. Still, she wished he'd refer to her age just a little less.
Her father had been so proud. The baby of the house! he'd crowed, referring to the title normally given to the youngest member of congress. Anna had hated it the second she had heard it, and knew she'd have to fight to throw it off before it became a chain around her neck. Oh god dad, please don't ever call me that in front of a camera, she had begged. He'd been thinking about the achievement, but she'd been thinking about how her new colleagues – every one of them older than her – would be looking at the small waifish girl suddenly in their midst, instead of the older man they had been expecting. In the year since she'd taken office so far she'd been right to be worried.
As the wheels of the tiny private plane touched down to the earth with a bump of rubber on tarmac, Anna fingered the thin sheaf of paper in her hand, words she had already memorised on the way over. It read like any other piece of paper to be devoured by the media; nice words meaning little. Anna hated the media. It felt like shouting at one of those novelty dogs with their heads on a pivot that made them endlessly nod. It didn't get anything done.
Ignore it. Get past it. Focus on the ball. That's the goal today.
Take it one day at a time.
She took a breath and turned to her chief of staff, her family's oldest friend. Kai had shepherded her father through two terms as governor before his retirement, her mother as a city councillor (and much more effective than him, dear) for three terms, and now with their withdrawal from politics she had inherited him. Not that she had any complaints about that whatsoever. He'd been instrumental in the campaign, a friendly and well-known face to those older donors worried about giving money to someone who had more freckles than wrinkles, and ran a tight ship on the rest of her congressional staff where Anna's leadership could be a little…scattershot sometimes. If Elsa was the captain at the helm Kai was the first mate.
Anna glanced through the porthole and saw a small gaggle of press in the distance, by the doors that led into the terminal. Not many, maybe a dozen. Probably the rest were already at the mansion and trying desperately to bribe, blag or sleaze their way in, but her father had always told her that a single journalist caused trouble enough for a hundred mere mortals. "How do I look?" she asked, trying to smooth down her jacket.
Maybe you should have copied Stone, and tried cowboy boots and a Stetson. But only male Texan politicians could get away with that.
Anna watched Kai give her a critical glance up and down, then reached forward the adjusted her collar. She cursed. She never had been able to get the damn things to fold right. "You look perfect, congresswoman." He looked her over, and Anna imagined herself as he was seeing her. She had wanted to come in something more comfortable, but Kai had convinced her on her first major foreign…expedition…she would want something just a little more traditional than a pantsuit.
Virginia isn't foreign, she had argued.
It's full of Virginians, Kai had said, a man who always knew which way pointed back to his beloved state, and didn't trust any of those weirdoes outside her borders.
She had bowed to his wisdom in the end. Nothing ostentatious or genre-defining for the day. A light blue shirt that didn't exactly match her complexion or hair but was all she had packed, and a black skirt that went to below her knees. A small bluebonnet for her lapel alongside the flag pin. Business-like but not too stuffy, charming without being over-casual. Traditional, she thought with a sigh. At least at the ball she could break out one of the dresses. She didn't care for them as much as she did a regular jacket and pair of jeans, but they were more individual than this. She felt like an office-worker.
Technically you are. At least the office has your name engraved on the brass plaque. Leif had a good grace to leave me that at least. Not that he'd left her anything else. Normally the outgoing congressman would give a few words of encouragement or help to the person replacing them. Since the results had come in through Leif had seemingly packed up in a night and vanished.
Good riddance.
She stood before the cabin door and took a deep breath, and stepped out into the fresh Virginia air.
"Congratulations Ms Summerford."
"Thank you sir."
"A well-fought campaign."
"You had us 'till the end sir."
"I know you'll serve this great state with as much pride as I have these last eighteen years."
"It'll be an honour to follow in your footsteps congressman, and a challenge to best them," she said, reaching for every ounce of sophistication she could find through her nervousness.
"Yes, it will," Congressman Leif Westergard said. Ex-congressman now, no matter whether Anna won the general election, and Anna was damn aware that she was the one who had put the man out of a job he'd held for more than a decade and a half. Both of them smiled for the cameras, but neither's smile reached their eyes. Anna's because she was full to, oh about the top of her neck, of bone-chilling terror at facing the huge barrel of a man at such close quarters, and his full of…full of… Nope, nothing. The man gave away nothing. He could have really meant it or he could have been plotting her death for all his eyes gave away.
Still Anna's fighting spirit spat out at his little insult. You asshole, I gave you that compliment for free, she thought as she smiled, and shook clammy hands with the man, and paused to let the cameras capture the moment of her triumph. The dainty southern belle who ran a forlorn hope against the ancient grizzly bear and came out the other end with her honour intact and the bear's head on a stick. Let's ignore that in politics the bears you hunted went home alive and well to hunt another day, now with a giant chip on their shoulder. At least the man's sons weren't around to glare, this time. He had a lot of them, and rumour had it he already had seats on various school-sboards and county seats picked out for them like a king giving out dukedoms. Or at least he had, until a tiny slip of a girl had come along and tossed him on his significant ass. He'd run not a dirty campaign – a little hard to dig up dirt on someone who hadn't been in politics long enough to even build a closet, let along fill it with skeletons – but he'd done his level best. A couple of newspapers had owed him favours, and she'd tried to ignore the headlines as best she could, but they still hurt.
"Will you be advising Ms Summerford going forward against the democratic candidate, congressman?"
Leif gave the wide-mouthed-eyes-closed smile he was famous for. Together with the off-white suit and the ten-gallon hat it made him look jovial, like a cross between the Colonel and the guy from Dallas. But Anna had grown up around Texas politicians and she knew he kept his eyes closed because due to some trick of the man's face – and immense girth let's be honest – the shadows around them when they were open made his pupils look dark as coal mines, and it wouldn't do to capture that on film. Leif Westergard was an outstanding actor. And a giant snake. "It'd be a privilege to help usher in a new generation," he replied. "Anytime Ms Summerford needs help she just needs' pick up the phone and ask."
Not on your life! she thought with an inner laugh. She'd bet all the money in her pockets he was already planning a glorious return. Damned if she'd give him any ammo along the way.
Get that poisonous old woodlouse out of the roof beams before he brings the whole house down on you, her father had said at the campaign headquarters, with relish as the results had finally come in after ten agonising hours of counting and re-counting, and re-counting again. It had been a slim race and the 'poisonous old snake' had used every recount he legally had access to. It had blown up in his face finally when the third recount had shifted even more votes her way, and he had finally given up.
Lawrence! his mother had said in shock, and swatted at him with a newspaper.
I'm right though.
That doesn't mean you have to be rude! Sarah Summerford had turned towards her daughter. Ignore these foolish old men, she had said, bringing her into a huge hug that buried Anna against her. We're so proud of you. Did we mention that?
A million times, mom.
The baby of the house!
DAD!
"Congresswoman Summerford, A pleasure as always."
She smiled as she stopped at the cameras, ignoring the damp in the Richmond air. She was in no rush. You need to learn to deal with these people, Kai and her father had both said multiple times. Even after a year she was still learning. "Call me Anna, please."
"Have any comments for us then Anna?" the old man said, pushing his glasses further up his nose, where they stayed for a half-second before beginning to slip off again. An ancient lined and greying face in ancient faded jeans and an ancient moth-bitten leather coat that looked like it could have come back from Vietnam, Patrick 'Pabbie' Anderson had been a fixture in southern politics since her father's time. He didn't shout or hustle or demand like the newer generation of reporters did. He just smiled and nodded and asked nice reassuring softball questions, and it wasn't until you were checking the papers a month later that you realised you'd given him just enough for him to start digging, and once he started he didn't stop. There was an old saying that the mill of justice ground exceedingly slow but exceedingly fine. Pabbie worked the same way. He'd reported on her campaign, and although he'd had some words to say about her age she'd forgive him for it.
"About what?" she asked, mentally preparing herself.
"About your colleague's words this morning?" the genial old man asked, hands still in his pockets.
It's two am. Stone came in late last night, so he's had the whole day to open his big mouth. Oh lord. "I'm sorry," she said as winningly as she could, "I've just got here as you can see, and they don't allow phones in the air. What's my senior colleague said?" It better not be about…
Pabbie reached into his coat and brought out a small notebook. He flipped it over. "'Naturally I look forward to spending time with my fellow member of congress. Ms Summerford is a fine-looking addition to the ball tonight and I expect that her presence will do nothing but dazzle-" Pabbie quoted on for a second, but the gist of it was clear.
It wasn't her age, oh no, but it was almost as bad. Unbelievable. From a man whose wives just keep getting younger. But she knew Pabbie was staring at her like a hawk with eyes that, while not unsympathetic, still had a job to do. She kept smiling, although it was becoming increasingly hard not to let it slip from her face. "I look forward to seeing my colleague at the ball," she replied tightly, and swept past the old man.
"Any thoughts about the guest list!" one of the other reporters shouted, seeing his chance before Anna reached the terminal doors.
"No," Anna said curtly, being on the ground for only minutes but already feeling sick of it.
"Any thoughts about the new queen?"
What? "What?"
"The Arendelle queen. Youngest ever, the same age as you! Think you'll have anything to talk about?"
Oh, she remembered now. Some queen over from Europe the press seemed enamoured with. She'd barely paid attention. It felt like she had spent the first year of her term barely getting any work done. First the transition, moving into DC and getting a new staff together as she told the shell-shocked old ones politely but firmly to leave. Then introductions, committees, meetings, more introductions. A month just looking over her shoulder, half expecting a giant white-suited phantom to plant a knife in her back. Half a year before she'd felt settled in and secure enough in her positions to start asking questions and speaking up. A year before the first tenuous offers from other legislators to invite her for coffee and opinions. Now two years into her term, and finally, finally, she was on a committee she actually wanted to be on, and had the chance to make something. She didn't have any time for whatever was happening in the old world.
"I can't wait to meet her," she said, perhaps just a little too distracted as the glass doors slid shut on her, leaving the reporters behind on the runway. Anna sighed with not a little exasperation as she shook off the condensation on her jacket. She already had a hit-list for the ball. People she needed to speak to, favours to ask. The queen of some little country across the sea wasn't on it.
I have more important things to think about.
"God, do I really have to meet with all these other people?" she asked as she scanned her eyes down the page.
"Consider them an obstacle course between you and the goal," Kai tried to soothe her.
But Anna remained un-soothed. She examined the dress in the mirror. She had planned ahead and had a bunch delivered to the hotel room ahead of time, and good job too. She didn't much like the image of herself coming into a hotel with a suitcase full of dresses.
The jokes about her age she could handle, at least until she had a few more years on her (a few more than you've told them about, a nasty little corner of her mind whispered to her) and she wasn't the youngest member of congress anymore. She'd take the sticks and stones about inexperience and naiveté, the latter of which, well, how was a little optimism a bad thing? The former simply wasn't true. She'd grew up in and around state politics, which was complex at the best of times and a god-damn catwalk of razorblades at the worst. She'd gotten lucky. No, strike that, she'd gotten extremely lucky. Godlike luck. That luck had come with a cost though. She'd leap-frogged over more than one level of 'traditional' experience you were 'meant' to travel through on the way to DC, and all of them now hated her, and making off-the-record remarks about your opponents and superiors was a time-honoured tradition.
She knew she'd been in more than a few papers, and not just the big ones. She was a young and attractive face in a job still throttled with old men. When she had been younger she had loved nothing more in summer than shucking off her shoes and jumping in the pool to cool off. Now she didn't even own swimsuits anymore. Old comfortable sweatpants didn't see the light of day outside her bedroom. Shorts and crop-tops and oh, basically anything without 90% skin coverage, was gone. About all she had left for casual wear she could be seen in without drawing disapproving glances were the old Texas standbys: The checked shirt and jeans it seemed like every single one of them had trotted out at one point during the campaign. Probably the incidence between wearing those and having to stand next to a horse or cow was pretty much one-for-one. Anna loved clothes, but she was damned if she'd let herself be seen as some hustling rube out of the backwater.
Dresses and pantsuits from here on out kid, her father had said, not unkindly.
Balls like this were her only chance to wear something she loved, and she'd risk being treated as a delicate summer flower for a single night if it gave her the chance to wear something that wasn't synthetic.
"An obstacle course that'll try to fill me up with so much free food I can't move," she griped, holding up another. White cotton wraparound with a scarf? Nope, it looked too much like a prom dress. She wasn't going to give the impression she had just come from her highschol.
"Your father always did say the main point of these parties was to eat well, and any business you manage otherwise is a bonus."
"My father had time, I don't." Purple polyester that might have been curtains in a previous life. Nope, didn't match her hair, too shiny, cheap-looking. She tossed it back onto the bed.
"You have four years left on your term Anna."
"Three, really." She had watched enough election campaigns from the outside. You spent your last year not so much governing as just asking people for money and then running for office all over again. Red silk that almost matched her hair, floor length but backless. God no, that would just be asking for trouble and unkind comparisons.
"You're only twenty-seven Anna, you have plenty of time to leave your mark."
It was a testament to how many times the lie had been told that neither of them even reacted to it anymore. Anna no longer got the feeling of settling dread in her stomach, and Kai's eyes no longer narrowed in faint disapproval.
"Kai, I want to leave a mark so deep the next guy can't just come and fill it back up." Crumbling schools and hungry kids, and every time she had visited the state government there had been new leather seats and computers. Falling wages and too many prisons opening while factories closed. "I need to start now," she said. "I can't just assume I'll get re-elected." Especially with some of what she wanted to do that hadn't been in her campaign. She had wanted to talk about them, but Kai had screamed at her to beg off, and even though it felt like a tiny portion of her soul had been ripped out as she did so, she had listened.
"True. Look what you did to Westergard," Kai said, voice bone-dry. There was some kind of run-in there that Anna didn't know about, she thought. Kai had been the first person to volunteer for her campaign, practically the second she had begun asking, and Anna suspected her opponent being Leif Westergard had something to do with it. Not that she would ever ask. Her father might know.
She held up another. Something she had almost forgotten she had sent for. A floor length dark green number with a corset at the waist that went off-the-shoulder. A thin strip of silk ran around the top, decorated with a row of flowers. "What are these?" Anna asked, running a finger across it as she held it up. It did look good, and she was running out of options. God, this was so much easier for men. Maybe she'd just turn up in a tux, really get her name in some papers. The flower-patterned silk strip had a small extra piece of cloth that looked like it hadn't detached properly coming off whatever factory line the dress had come from. She tore it delicately, and put it in her breast pocket.
"They're crocuses, I believe," Kai said at a glance, the encyclopaedia. God, what should she do without him? Her father had tried to get him to resign more than once and actually live a life outside of the Summerfords before he keeled over, but the man wouldn't have it. He was like one of those ancient old butlers on that English show her mother liked.
She frowned. "Isn't that an Alabama thing?"
"That's camellias."
"They're not bluebonnets."
"I won't tell if you don't."
She collapsed onto the bed clutching the soft velvet. "What the hell have I gotten myself into?"
She had been as surprised as anyone that she had gotten the invitation. The rest of the guest-list she had looked over and yep, there everyone was, the usual suspects. The old fossils from Ways and Means, Agriculture and House Administration. A couple of the younger rising stars spinning their wheels on Rules or Small Business before a seat opened up with one of the big boys (that Anna might have been considered a rising star was something she never really considered). Then her, way at the bottom, so to speak, on Education. Not even the big one either, one of the small ones. Not even the leader of it.
United States House Education Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labour, and Pensions had no huge budget associated with it, so it had no huge lobbying aimed at them. Corporations didn't offer them long trips to discuss business, or learning junkets in exotic locations. She didn't have lawyers trampling down her door asking for just a little favour, or a small wording change in a bill, in exchange for promises of funding. Leif Westergard had been on Ways and Means and grew fat from it, but there had been zero way anyone was going to let a twenty-seven year old on her first term anywhere near the big levers.
Yet here she was. The first big ball of the summer held by one of the biggest lobbyists in the country, filled with the biggest donors and businessmen of the south. More importantly filled with fellow congressmen with much more power than she had, most likely getting liquored up and therefore be much more amenable to…influence. Also, she hoped, amenable to crazy suggestions from small first-time congresswomen.
The hell with it. If someone was playing with her she'd play right back. Her stomach was all butterflies and her hands felt like pins and needles but if this was her big shot she would take it.
The dress went on without a trouble, and she gave it an experimental swish-and-twirl in the mirror. She looked good, she wouldn't lie. She'd always been fairly svelte, and had avoided the 'campaign dozen' from stale pizza and cheap sandwiches. A few more freckles than she would have liked and she would never need to have a dress let out in the chest, but otherwise she liked the package she had. She patted down her hair to make sure it was staying in place, her usual braids piled up onto her head to keep them out of her face, and turned to Kai.
"Let's dazzle them."
"I screwed up real bad," she whispered frantically.
The mansion had been a huge rectangle of granite that sat hidden behind two acres of fields and trees that were practically a forest. She had twiddled her thumbs as the limo had climbed the long and winding gravel path trying to keep her breath under control. Ugly, had been her first thought when the path had straightened out and the massive edifice had come into view. The place looked like it had been built to fend off an attack by the British, or zombies, not to be lived in, and no amount of bunting or soft lighting changed those hard shadows.
She had got out of the rented limo and smiled adoringly for the cameras, only for the entire group to be led straight through the mansion and out again. She hadn't realised when the invitation had said 'mansion', the party was being held in the gardens behind the mansion. Now she was wearing a long dress on a lawn that a couple of hundred people were walking through, and she knew – she knew – that no matter how hard she tried there would be at least one picture tomorrow of her hiking her skirts up out of mud.
At least I can stick to the path, she thought as she looked longingly out over the rest of the garden. It was like all of the beauty the house lacked had instead been thrown out into them. The rest of the small hill the mansion rested on was all tall and sprightly pines, but those stopped dead at the gates, and inside it was like another world. Just looking out from the small balcony before descending the stairs to enter the gardens proper, Anna looked out over a gorgeous emerald lawn studded with more colours than she thought possible. Impossibly shapes trees that seemed to twist around themselves thrust from immaculately shaped hedges to form a canopy of reds and golds over the garden. People mingled around a small wavering river that split the garden in two, with one side being filled with gorgeously rugged stone walling and hedges and a riot of roses and gardenias, and the other being a more ordered, almost eastern arrangement of rock pools, small cultured trees and tall reeds and grasses. The colours changed so that the two worlds blended together seamlessly, with bridges criss-crossing them every dozen meters or so. In the distance Anna could spot the river widening to a large, almost lake-sized pool, with a wooden gazebo dotted with vines and lights straddling the middle.
"Admiring the handiwork?"
She turned at the voice. Then she looked down to find a short old man looking up at her. "It's gorgeous, mister…" Damnit, she should have known this. Of course! "Weselton." She got it right first time. Kai had actually practised it with her. The man was old and eccentric but he owned enough land that if a map was drawn up that moustache would be on a good portion of it. He liked to brag that he didn't know jack about the IT, plastics, aerospace or food industry, but they sure as hell paid him rent.
For a second he reminded her of Kai, but that vanished more or less instantly. Where she could have taken a ruler to Kai's back, the man in front of her seemed perpetually hunched over. She watched with fascination as he twirled his bone-white moustache before holding out his hand. She held out her own and instead of shaking he actually bowed low and kissed it, and was that a toupee? Oh god it was! Luckily he rose back up before it could fall off his head. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance congresswoman." He did something with his eyebrows, and it took her a second to realise he was trying to make it look like his eyes were twinkling. Her dad had done the same once. Maybe it was an old man thing.
"It's an amazing place you have here," she said, and meant it. "And filled with some amazing people." Wow Anna, really? God she hoped nobody heard that.
The man leaned closer to her and Anna swore she could already smell the tang of alcohol there. Had the man been getting a head start on his stores before they were gone? Congress were known fools for free food and drink, maybe he was pre-empting them. "Indeed! Quite the little guest-list I've arranged. Quite the catches, some of them. Have you heard who's coming?" He rattled off a list of names, actors and TV personalities and authors she had barely had time to pay attention to since she had taken office. Anna's social life had been zero'd out the second she had taken the oath, and her knowledge of recent pop culture was flat-lining and the doctors said it wasn't looking good. Books these days were briefing memos and folders on legislature, and TV was C-SPAN and congress's internal circuit-TV.
"-and the queen of course. Westergard was quite jealous."
Wait, Westergard? Queen? "Excuse me?" she said, her polite nodding and smiling suddenly derailed.
"Oh, I'm certain he offered her an invitation to his own little dig this weekend, but his star is quite out of favour at the moment, no thanks to yourself!" he laughed, and Anna cringed. God, she wished people would stop reminding her of it. Made her want to check her tote bag for scorpions. But Leif was holding his own party huh? She wondered who was there besides his sons, if Weselton had claimed everyone, including apparently the queen. That at least was something she knew. Mainly because the awful tabloids she appeared in sometimes tended to include the royal as well. "I'm sure she'll be along shortly," Weselton said, rubbing his hands together. "Her aide is already skulking around here somewhere."
She smiled politely as she felt the crush of other bodies at her back. "I hope we can talk more later!" she said, as the pressure bore her down into the gardens.
He gave a flowery bow. Unreal. "Depend upon it, madam."
But she was past him, and once the man was out of her sight she put him out of her mind. She had bigger fish to fry tonight, and she couldn't afford to be distracted by pleasantries. She had a list in her head and she wanted to hit up all of them at least once, with the big guns later in the night when the spirits had been flowing for a few hours. Her father had told her the week before;
Parties like this might not be where you get promises of work done
"Excuse me."
She pushed her way past another gathering, trying to get to a clean area, and more importantly away from the throng of reporters she hadn't realised would be allowed into the place. If it had just been Pabbie it wouldn't have been so bad, but apparently Weselton had given passes to people based on circulation and page hits, and the result had been a bunch of pushy assholes who'd so far asked her more about what she was wearing than about what they were there for.
"Of course they're bluebonnets, excuse me," she said, gently pushing her way past a young man with a tablet and his shirt hanging out of his trousers.
Finally she found a sea of tranquillity in the throng, next to one of the small rock ponds on what she'd come to think of as the 'western' side of the gardens. A small stone wall on the edge of the gardens, with a small gargoyle trickling water into a half-circle pool filled with fish. She caught her breath and dangled a finger in it and watched as the koi – what else – swarmed around her finger looking for food.
"You look like I feel."
Oh god what now, I just wanted five minutes to myself. She just looked around and plastered her smile back on her face at whatever reporter was…
Nope. If this man was ever a reporter it for one of those war-torn zones overseas that changed hands twice a day. Brown eyes looked down at her from what seemed to be an incredible height, under dirty-blonde hair that looked halfway between styled and trying desperately to break out of that style and turn into some kind of tangled mess. Maybe he wasn't a grizzled veteran journalist but he was definitely security with a build like that, in a plain black suit that it looked like he could have burst out of if he really tried. Even leaning against the stone wall and with his left hand dropping down to the small plate of canapés balanced on the wall, he looked impressive.
"How bad is that exactly?" she asked, after she had gathered her thoughts. Yep, definitely security of some kind. Even when he was talking the man's eyes kept scanning the rest of the party, and he kept his right hand free. Anna knew a lot of people like that, from her father's job, to when she had started in congress. A lot of people she knew treated them as background objects, or worse as convenient servants. She never would though. Maybe her job meant one day a crazy nut would start tossing bombs at her, but they'd be the ones who'd have to jump in front of them.
The huge blonde shrugged. "Not so bad. Might have seen better."
"I can be better than this."
"I can believe that," the man said. Anna watched in fascination as he actually blushed, and looked away. For real? "Sorry."
She smiled. "No, I'm flattered, thanks. Anna Summerford." She reached out a hand – her left – and he shook it.
"Krisoff Bjorgman."
"I don't think we've met before, are you with congressional staff? Bjorgman's a fairly unique name for-
He adjusted his collar. "No, actually, you wouldn't have. I mean I'm not with the US staff. It's Norwe- I'm Norwegian. I'm with them. The queen. Well not with her but I'm on her detail. I mean I'm…oh jeez."
The blush deepened. It was kind of adorable. "The Arendelle delegation?" She had to admit she was curious. She remembered what Pabbie had said that afternoon on the tarmac at the airport; Youngest ever, the same age as you! Think you'll have anything to talk about? "How are you enjoying the US?"
"Oh I think it's great," Kristoff said. "Everything's so much…more," he said. She got what he meant though.
"It can be a little overwhelming," she admitted. She was still getting used to it herself. When she was younger her family name and her dad's job had gotten her through a lot of doors, and now her new one was doing so on a whole other level. The ability to ask for things and just…get them…was a little overpowering. Places she'd never gotten a chance to see or that would have tossed out another girl smiled and let her in. People listened to her opinions – admittedly some because they had to. She'd been in congress for two years and already felt that yes, this was the place she could do the most good for her state.
She told all of this to Kristoff, who just watched in amazement. "Wow, they weren't kidding about you."
"What, who wasn't kidding?" she asked.
The blush returned as he answered. "Well, just some newspapers you know?"
Oh god. "Which ones?" He named a couple and now she was the one blushing. "Listen you shouldn't believe everything you-"
"No no, I get that," he said. "It's just you tend to turn up in the same newspapers as my boss and we have to read them all."
Oh, of course. She desperately tried to steer the conversation away from herself. "What's she like, the queen?"
"Oh wow, big question. Not sure how to answer. Not sure if I should."
"Sorry."
"Don't worry about it. It's just-" He opened his mouth to speak again, but Anna heard a crackling, and the man was speaking Norwegian into his lapel. "Sorry, duty calls."
"No problem. Thanks for letting me get some air." And she did feel better. Just a few minutes outside the push-and-shove and she felt a little reinvigorated. That and the canapés she had stolen from him probably helped. "See you around."
"You too congresswoman."
The only warning she got was the lights, and her eyes were starting to hurt.
It seemed like the trick was always the same. She would smile and he – he was invariable a he – would smile and they would grasp hands, and the flash from the camera or the phone would go off, and that would be it. Done. They would talk for a few polite seconds and then the man would make an excuse or look over her shoulder and see an old friend he just had to talk to, and she would be left alone.
Not that she could entirely blame them. They were big money and she was a tiny fish. Other congressmen and senators were much more polite, and she did have friends in the gardens. They laughed and commiserated and they would tell her the first term was the hardest and to not give up. Wasn't entirely comforting, but at least she had made a good start. Afternoon had turned to evening, and she had basically done what she had set out to do; get her presence out into a wider circle. People knew her name now, some might even remember it. She'd had enough pictures taken and the dress and makeup had definitely had an impact. More than one reporter – a couple already slurring their words – had asked why she hadn't come with a date, but she had smiled and deflected them away. It was a question her father might have asked her and she had no desire to dive into it at a party she was barely tolerating. The hem of her dress was looking more than a little muddy and her hairdo had come loose, but otherwise she was still standing.
At least the reporters were mainly leaving her alone now, all going off to see the new curiosity, the new queen. More giant blonde men had made their presences felt as the afternoon had turned into evening, and now the mansion was buzzing as she sat somewhere inside, talking. A bunch of the old money-men had followed inside, going after favours or press or whatever, and not a few congressmen had gone with her. Anna had elected to stay outside in the gardens a little longer now they weren't quite so crushed with people.
The gardens were even more beautiful at night, if that were possible. Candles and lanterns coated each side respectively, giving the western half an ethereal white shine and the eastern half a gorgeous golden hue. As the night went on more and more Anna felt herself slipping out of the business-like mind she had entered with, and just spent time wandering the grounds, mind faintly buzzing and a genuine smile on her face. She wasn't the only one either. Weselton was holding court at various points as she passed, talking about this stone wall or that expensive koi he had imported. The man seemed much calmer when he was all fogged up on his own wine, although he seemed to have forgotten that his 'prize' had arrived. Maybe the old man assumed that she would come to him?
Not likely.
Finally as she walked had suddenly Anna found nothing in front of her but water, and looked out over the small lake at the end of the garden. She was almost alone, this far away from the house not being the most well-travelled by the plate-carrying staff, and when she looked out over the set-piece it took her breath away. Not bad old man. The white wooden gazebo seemed to hang in the air at the centre, only two small bridges connecting it to either end of the garden, the other supports being painted to almost blend in with the water. The hill the entire mansion was built on dipped sharply away, so that it seemed that past the Gazebo there was only forest. The view down from the structured and cultured gardens down to the free and un-tamed wilds must be amazing.
That I have to see.
She took a step forward and almost slipped on the wet grass. Sighing, not really thinking, she reached down under her dress and took her heels off. A few errant strands from her increasingly loose 'do kept tickling her nose and felt like it was going to slide off her head infuriated her, so she reached inside and un-wove it, letting her hair shake out behind her. She could always say someone knocked it later, and she did like wearing it simple sometimes. The grass was warm against her bare feet, and she stepped onto the small wooden bridge, leaving footprints. It creaked a little under her but she ignored it, eyes looking all around her. It was a beautiful old thing. Vines covered the outside, blooming into small blue flowers that dotted the surface like stars and hiding the inside.
She walked through the vine-covered open archway and found herself inside the gazebo. Fireflies danced around the entire structure, darting in and out and wheeling in the sky. It was like a fairy-tale. Light streamed in from the furthest side of the wooden frame, a white stone statue looking out over the forest beneath. She stepped forward to stand next to it when a shadow detached from the side of the entryway behind her and grasped her lightly be the shoulder.
"Anna?" a deep accented voice said in puzzlement.
She blinked as she was gently turned around, and the shadow resolved itself into a person: "Kristoff?"
The man spoke a short word into his lapel. "Hello, again. You're a long way from the party."
"I could say the same thing about you." Anna turned back and squinted. If she looked closely she could still see the flat black suits of security down at the manor, mixed in with the more ostentatious and more expensive clothing of the actual guests. She could see camera flashes inside. "I needed some air from…well…from all that."
Kristoff followed her gaze. "I can understand that."
Wait a second. "Speaking of which if you're out here, you're a long way from your boss aren't you?"
"Umm. Not really?"
"Kristoff? Is someone there?"
Anna turned to look at the same time as the statue did, and she met the Queen of Arendelle.
"Hello."
"Hi."
Kristoff looked from one to the other and sighed. "Ma'am this is Congresswoman Anna Summerford of the United States. Anna, this is her majesty Queen Elsa, of Arendelle."
Anna cleared her throat but still the sounds that came out of her mouth felt squeaky, smaller. "It's a pleasure, really."
She was gorgeous, Anna knew that. She'd seen her picture in the paper over the last couple of years, sometimes right next to her own. What Anna hadn't know was that she was radiant. Her hair was blonde like Kristoff's but it was almost platinum, so white that it practically glowed in the lights being reflected from the surface of the lake, bound up in a single long braid that ran past her neck and down her front. Her dress went almost down to the ground, going from a light blue at the bottom to almost white as it reached her hands and neck, blending into her light skin so that it looked like it was a part of her. Geometric patterns like snowflakes whorled around her legs and skirt, throwing off smaller sequins like snowflakes, all of it coming together into a six-pointed star near her collar. On her head rested the only sign she wasn't just another guest; a five-pointed tiara in white gold, with a small blue gem resting in the centre. Even her gloves her gorgeous, made of thin blue silk the same colour as the centre of her dress, and decorated with…wait.
"Crocuses?"
Elsa was staring at the top of her dres. "I've been telling people they're bluebonnets," she said quickly. "You…you know them?" Oh hell Anna don't get tongue-tied in front of royalty. Don't do it don't do it don't do it!
"They're my country's national flower," Elsa said. "It's very pretty." She stepped forward, and before Anna could register it Elsa was brushing a hand across the thin silk strip that topped her dress.
Did she mean the flowers, or the dress?
For half a second both of them stayed like that, then the queen's hand jumped back as if contact with Anna had shocked her. The skin that had been creamy white suddenly blushed, and Anna simply had to look away, in second-hand embarrassment. She found herself staring out over the wild forest outside of the garden. "It's beautiful isn't it?" she said, feeling the silence weighing her down like an anchor. Endless rows of pine and oak and a dozen other trees laid before them before vanishing into the darkness. About what Anna wished she could do right now in fact. Thank god no-one was here to see her make an ass of herself.
"It is," the queen said, turning back to look out at the vista. Her voice was almost…melancholy. "It reminds me of home."
Anna trawled her memory for what she knew about Arendelle. A small country just north of Norway, right? What did Norway have? Snow. Nope, that was dumb. Well, trees most probably. Oh the hell with it, fall back on pleasantries. "I'm glad we could show you something that did. Remind you of home. That is." Zero for zero. Incredible. Taking her oath from the President hadn't gone this badly. "Have you been having a good night?" she asked.
The queen of Arendelle gave her a radiant smile and said: "Hardly."
Anna watched as Elsa frozen. Her breath actually seeming to stop, and Anna knew that wasn't what she had meant to say. For a second the tables were turned, and suddenly Anna was the one looking calmly at the other woman, the same age as her-
Liar.
-who was suddenly looking very panicked indeed. The hell with it. "You want to know a secret your majesty?"
"What?" Elsa asked, almost breathing the word rather than speaking.
"Me neither," Anna said softly, and smiled back.
Elsa burst out laughing, so much so that Kristoff actually took a step forward in alarm before sinking back into the shadows.
Elsa wiped her eyes. "Thank you. I needed that."
Anna was too curious for her own good. "What are you doing here anyway?" she asked the beautiful young woman. "Wouldn't have thought European royalty would find much to do at a party made primarily to liquor up old men and get re-election money and laws out of them."
"Well, I'm not an old man but I am here for currency, of a sort. Goodwill."
"PR," they both said at the same time, and they both laughed again.
Somehow it seemed…easy now. Like their momentary awkwardness had just been a barrier that needed to be broken through. "I know that story. I need a whole bunch of it. Goodwill is like actual money in congress."
"You're the youngest, correct?" Elsa asked.
"Well, not the youngest ever," Anna said as Elsa smiled at her. My, was it hot in here somehow. Please don't let me blush. "William Claiborne will probably hold that award until the end of the world. Youngest currently." She remembered what she had read. "You too."
A shadow flicked across Elsa's face for just a second. "Yes. It's a big bur- it's a big responsibility."
Anna could see there was something there. She spent all her time surrounded by people who made promises and promised the world, and Elsa clearly didn't. She ignored it though. Not her problem. She felt bad though. She was high-level and incredibly young for it, but Queen Elsa was a head-of-state. An absolute head of state, if she remembered right. An awesome position. God, what could I do if I was Queen-Empress of America? "I'd be glad that something like this could help with that, if only for a few days," she said.
Elsa smiled at her. A real smile, not the politicians smile she had grown so used to seeing, that showed as many teeth as possible and stopped before it ever reached the eyes. When Queen Elsa smiled her cheeks turned up and her eyes narrowed just a felt like a breath of fresh air after two years of old men.
Anna realised that she was standing practically shoulder to shoulder with the queen, both of them with their hands on the balcony as they stared out over the forest. Suddenly an idea occurred to her.
You see a shot, you take it, her father had told her. Maybe it's a good choice and maybe it's a bad one, but sometimes saying 'I got it wrong' is better than sitting on your hands and missing out and saying 'I couldn't decide'.
"If goodwill and PR is what we're both after, I don't see why we can't arrange something."
Elsa looked at her. This closely Anna could see deeply into the other woman's eyes. They were incredibly blue. She felt like she could have lost herself in them. "How?" Elsa whispered, staring directly into Anna's eyes. She smelled like flowers. Like she imagined the crocuses on Elsa's gloves and her dress smelled like. It was overpowering.
"Virginia's nice, don't get me wrong, but it isn't Texas. We'd love to show you around. Give you a real idea about what the south can be like. It isn't desert like in the movies, it has so much beauty." And on she went, about hiking and sports, and the food and theatre. History and culture and art. She took a deep breath. "I'm sure Arendelle is beautiful in the summer. I'd love to visit." She really would. If she got to spend more time around Elsa. Because she wanted to know her better, she realised. She wanted to spend more time around this beautiful, powerful creature who she had practically bumped into by accident. Something in the blonde was magnetic, and Anna felt a pull she hadn't felt in quite some time.
She wanted a friend.
Elsa smiled at her. "It'd be a pleasure," she said, and Anna felt herself smiling back. Elsa's eyes flicked back towards the mansion as something white – not a camera – flashed in the air. "Wow."
Fireworks burst in the air over the gardens. One half white and blue over the western side, the other half gold and red over the east. It looked like the entire party had moved out into the gardens to watch, and the noise of the fireworks that burst above them seemed almost drowned out by the clapping from the ground.
"Duke, you throw a hell of a party," Anna whispered to herself, gripping the balcony of the gazebo as the air was filled with a riot of colours and patterns. She could barely hear herself think.
"Look," Elsa whispered, pointing up as a giant blue-white firework burst in a snowflake pattern above them, and put her own hands there too.
Anna could feel the heat coming from Elsa's glove. She didn't dare move her hand, in case Elsa noticed and moved hers, but the queen showed no signs of that. Anna watched Elsa's face, the smile there as she stared up at the fireworks display, the light that glinted from her electric blue eyes and amazing dress. She felt entranced.
Compared to those few minutes the rest of the night was…
Unremarkable.
"Did it go well?"
"Hmmm?"
Kai watched as the girl – and he would always think of her as a girl no matter how high she rose – stared out of the cabin porthole with a look of beatific daze on her face, her face held in her hands and a faint smile of contentment on her face. If he didn't know any better, he would swear…"I asked whether the weekend went well, congresswoman."
"Oh! Yes! Yes, very well indeed." Anna nodded for a second, then just went back to staring out of the window. She was staring down at the ground as they left, wondering if she squinted hard enough whether she could catch sight of the mansion from the air. Back to DC for a couple of days to vote on some bills she liked and keep up on her committee membership, then home to Texas again to see her parents, and get back to work on the things she really cared about.
She fingered the small strip of green from the dress. It was a coincidence really. She had put it in her pocket after removing it from the dress, and simply had pocketed it rather than make a mess for the hotel staff. Just a coincidence, something for her fingers to occupy themselves with on the flight. Nothing more.
Just a coincidence.
"Did you have a good time?"
"Yes ma'am," Kristoff replied, watching his boss. A table separated the two of them, filled with reports and files and documents, but he could tell that Elsa wasn't looking at any of them. Free from even the shadow of the press taking a picture, she sat practically cross-legged on the seat in old sweatpants and a woollen sweater he remembered her mother had bought her one year. A pencil tapped at her lip as she looked down at them without seeing them. "The canapés were excellent," he said, and glanced down at the document on top of all the rabble. It was a map of the United States of America. Kristoff knew what she was thinking about, because he had heard from Marshall how the only meeting that had really mattered that weekend had gone. Kristoff had only had a glance of him, as Elsa had left the mansion and went into the gardens, but from the frown that had been on the wizened old man's and how Elsa had acted for the rest of the night, it hadn't gone well.
Well, apparently not the only meeting that had mattered, if what had occured after the meeting with Weselton had actually been real and not some strange fever dream from all the heat. "Congresswoman Summerford and I talked. She was very pleasant to me." Even if she stole my canapés.
At that Elsa glanced up, her focus changing from a cone of fog to a laser-tight beam. Kristoff knew some people had trouble dealing with Elsa's gaze, but years together had toughened him up to it. "Anna? Yes, she was nice. She…she had some good ideas."
"Should I tell the pilot to make a hard turn and head for Texas?" Kristoff risked.
Elsa's eyes narrowed and she batted at his forehead with her pen. "Quiet, you."
"Yes ma'am."
"But it's certainly something to think about," Elsa said, half a whisper. She laid her head back on the plush armrest and closed her eyes, and saw a pale woman dressed in gorgeous greens, wearing her own country's flower, with flowing red hair like fire and eyes out of a deep ocean. "Something to…think about," she muttered, as she dropped to sleep after an exhausting weekend that had went nowhere.
Well, almost nowhere.
She dreamed of emeralds.