Author's intro: This fic was inspired by Anysia's fic 'Serendipity' (found in her Frozen Shards collection), especially since I blabbed on Tumblr that I wanted to continue it and she gave me the OK. I know she's in the process of creating a large AU but I asked her anyway if I could continue with my own, and she gave her blessing. I wrote a skeleton for eleven or so chapters, to ensure that any similarities between out stories will be coincidental, though Anna and Kristoff's introduction might be the same-ish. I hope you to enjoy this and when Anysia writes hers, you enjoy hers too.
subway map for reference (with spaces removed): mta . info / maps / images / subway _ 2400 x 2863 . jpg
1. A Bar at the Folies-Bergère – Édouard Manet, 1882
Anna did not remember much of her childhood. She had glimpses of small city parks where playing on the slides and the swings felt as if she were playing in cages. She used to beg her sister to go to the bigger park in the wintertime. There, the small hills created enough of a slope to slide their toboggan. Her sister was old enough to be trusted to walk through the city on her own without adult accompaniment, and so Anna was deeply dependent on her.
What childhood memories remain were hazy. The feelings associated with them were vivid, though, especially the happy recollections of time spent with her sister. But as clear as the feelings were, the memories themselves came clouded, no matter how hard she tried to remember. She remembered only a few very well.
She recalled that on good days, she and her sister would visit the cute restaurant around the corner of their street and order tea and sandwiches. There, the waitresses wore frilled uniforms, so the girls would come dressed to suit in pretty skirts, their hair in neat braids with bows. Anna would drown her tea with milk and kill it with sugar but her sister would drink it without any additions. At the end of their meal, they would split a chocolate scone and the chef, who frequently saw them, might treat them to a free slice of cake if they were lucky.
She also recollected, strangely enough, a blond boy who was always at a street market. He must have been about her sister's age because they chatted easily about school things while Anna, fresh in elementary school, did not follow the conversations about the complexities of adjectives in English class amongst other things. She did not remember his name, but she remembered that he was always behind a stall on Sundays during the summer. The people he was with were always embarrassing him, pinching his cheeks and fussing about his clothing.
The street market was always packed with tourists and idle New Yorkers who were willing to spend a few coins. Mom-and-pop bakeries selling chocolate chip cheesecake muffins were Anna's favourite. The stall next to the blond boy's would sell just fruits, followed by vegetables, then the seemingly bare dairy stall. It was there where Anna and her sister would, when their sweet tooth got the better of them, purchase condensed milk.
Home was where they made snow cones, though Anna did not really remember them owning a snow cone machine... They would drizzle the newly bought condensed milk onto the mound of ice after pouring the red noxious syrup, something that street vendor once taught them. Others would have found it sickeningly sweet, but the girls thought it delightful. At some point the snow cone machine must have exploded because soon the entire kitchen was covered in ice. Anna had no logical explanation for this (for snow cone machines historically do not explode), so she assumed her memory is playing tricks on her, the way memories blur into one another to form a completely different story. She did remember the shocked look her parents had when they came home.
The harder Anna tried to remember about the time after that, the less she seemed to grasp at the truth. Everything came in sparks: Thanksgiving at the parade, ice skating at Rockefeller Center, snowmen at the park, and all her childhood joys that she shared with her sister faded away into a frosted blur.
Not too long after, her parents separated, splitting the two girls apart: Anna went with her mother to the other side of Central Park and her sister stayed with her father at their old home. Anna always tried calling, begging her sister to hang out, to go for a walk and maybe have tea again at the restaurant (swearing that she was now old enough to walk without supervision,) but the answer was always the same: no. No, she's too busy. No, the weather is too poor. No, Anna, no. Weekend visits to her old home were spent more with her father and less with her sister who was always off to piano lessons or was locked in her room with too much homework. Eventually, her sister had gone to study abroad leaving weekends to just father-daughter bonding. The sibling relationship changed dramatically. While her sister was abroad, Anna would wait all night on her Instant Messenger, until she fell asleep at the desk and her mother had to peel Anna away to tuck her into bed. Her sister rarely logged in, and if she did, her conversations were brief and one-worded. Eventually, Anna stopped trying.
Without anyone to accompany her, Anna never visited the street markets again. She never drank tea at the restaurant. She never went sledding when it snowed. Even as she grew older, attended school, made new friends and went on field trips, Anna never did the things she used to do as a child.
It was strange – living in New York City, with over a million people, and feeling so alone all the time. She had friends, but with her busy schedule, her part-time jobs and volunteer work to feed her mother's over-ambitious plans for Anna, the friends got closer to each other and not with her. While she hung out with them, whenever she did sneak out a few hours, there were inside jokes, plans for summer vacations in Rhode Island… and she was left behind. There were people she considered 'best friends' but it was difficult to maintain that comforting feeling when their best friend was someone else.
Anna and her mother were rather well off, being able to have a maid, a view of Central Park from their apartment and a driver to take Anna wherever she wanted to go, so she never fully understood why her mother was so persistent about her studying. She assumed that her mother was simply being a good parent, refusing to spoil her they way some of her classmates were spoiled and so she never questioned.
Anna eventually got used to life like this. Her sister became a distant memory – a figure in her past, like notes in an old history book.
She attended the university close to home, ensuring she would be close to her mother and thus never had the chance to really socialise with classmates if she had lived in a dorm. She studied art history and grabbed an internship at a contemporary gallery in Chelsea, though she desperately wanted to work at the nearby 19th Century European Art gallery just a few refurbished warehouses down the street. She graduated to assistant and there she remained to this day, taking care of the gallery as if she were the director, as the director was a slightly incompetent man, but getting less pay than he.
Tuesday to Saturday, she would sit at the front desk, answering emails or visitor's questions and acting as a liaison between artists and collectors. The director on the other hand, took care of the pretty tasks – travelling and attending art fairs. Anna in her youth had visited other countries (though she was too young to remember specific details again) but ever since the separation, she hadn't left New York City. She loved the city. Anything she wanted, she had some access to: good Japanese food where the fish melts at your tongue, plays and concerts that always made a stop in the big city on their world tours, movies that only played in independent cinemas and of course art from all over the world housed in beautiful museums. New York City was the right place to treat a girl. Sometimes, however, on clear nights, she would look up at the sky from her bedroom window and gaze at a few lucky stars that managed to break through the light pollution and she would wonder how that same sky would look in a much more rural place...
A new exhibition had opened on a hot summer day. On the night of the opening ceremony, Anna had swum in wine and conversation. She was never a great drinker and her skin would flush to the same colour as her hair. When the opportunity arose, she grabbed it so firmly in that need to socialise that she drank too much and thus was too tipsy to make intelligent conversation. She had briefly spoken with a handsome redhead who smelled of expensive cologne and had a smile that seemed to always mirror hers when she looked at him. In short, he was beautiful. The conversation had been short. Just some compliments he gave and she blushed and gave them back before she was pulled aside to explain a piece to an elderly art lover.
As she sighed at the memory of his fantastic face, the director marched to the front desk with the New York Times firmly in his hands.
"Look at this! Weselton Gallery's Munch Influence! We're in the Times!" His large nose brushed the newspaper as he held up the Arts Section in excitement.
Anna looked across the desk at the tiny man. While sitting down, she was oddly at the same height as the director, though she was not very tall. "Is it a good review?"
"Who cares? Publicity is publicity. If the art is bad, people will still come to see what the fuss is about."
Anna took the paper and quickly skimmed. "Well at least they recognised the Edvard Munch inspiration..." A screaming mass of colours covered their usually white walls in this exhibition. The pieces were truly incredible, but the dark tones and the negativity were bringing her down and she felt like she wanted to cry. It seems too dark and too morbid to be considered pretty, yet it was strangely alluring. A visitor might find some inspiration in the darkness of the colours ("So desperate. So... dead, but alive!" said one visitor in the guestbook), but coming to the gallery nearly every day was already taking a toll on Anna, and the art had barely been up for a week.
The review was vague in its opinion.
The director was ecstatic nevertheless. "I knew it was a brilliant idea to bring that unknown to the spotlight. Ahh!" He was basking in the art. "Bring me another nameless and I'll throw some fancy words and I'll exploit their talents! Oh! Never mind that. You didn't hear anything." He danced his way back into his office, leaving the Times with Anna. "This calls for a celebration!"
Anna was accustomed to the director's strange behaviours. He was not a very generous gentleman, thinking of art as only objects of monetary value and not of beauty, but he was her boss. The review somewhat withered into a recommendation to see the exhibition, which she guessed was a good sign. Admittedly, there were some reviews in the Times she could not exactly interpret. As she folded the paper together, the business section slipped out.
Rike's Daughter Now CEO of Arendelle Co.
Anna carefully picked it up and unfolded it. Posted right on the front page was a heavily cloaked white haired woman. The picture resembled a queen's portrait: regal, tall and elegant, completely unlike the girl with her high-heeled shoes off and a half-eaten unplated apple close to her keyboard, holding the newspaper. The woman's clothes were so dark, her pale head seemed to float above it, almost ghostlike and painterly. Her hair was braided around her head like a halo. Anna's sister, Elsa Rike, smiled softly through ink and paper.
Anna quickly snapped out of her reverie and dove into her purse. She was used to letters, both small and bulky, from Arendelle Co. which spoke endlessly about legal issues, will stipulations and other important matters after her father died the year before. Some of them had gotten so overwhelming, that she would hold the letter in her purse, untouched for days.
Her parents' deaths had come so suddenly, Anna could still feel the sting in her heart whenever she thought of them. While Elsa had been abroad, her mother and father were beginning to reconnect, something Anna was fully supporting, especially in hopes to bring back Elsa, but when a car accident had claimed their lives, Anna felt her world break apart. The funeral was stretched in a sea of black, especially as all of her father's friends, co-workers and employees surrounded the graves. Anna had glimpsed a sign of white hair, but when she turned again, it was as if she had been letting her imagination run.
It had been a while since she received an Arendelle Co. letter, so when at yesterday afternoon, Anna found another letter in her mail, she almost checked to see the stamp date to ensure she did not somehow forget it in the box for several months. She had again forgotten about it until this morning.
Perhaps this one is less about legal matters...? The letter was in a standard envelope, though the quality of the paper was definitely better than usual. Her name was handwritten at the front, something she did not notice until that moment, but the return address at the side was generic: Arendelle's logo, the crocus, with serif font.
She carefully peeled the seal open.
INVITATION TO
ELSA RIKE'S INAUGURATION AS CEO OF ARENDELLE CO.
You are cordially invited to...
The rest of the invitation gave minor details of place and time with a Please dress formally stuck at the bottom.
Any normal person would feel some anger in her that a relative who had disappeared and ignored her for over ten years had suddenly thrown her an invitation to a party. Far less for a sibling. That normal person might scoff, throw the invitation away and carry on with life.
Instead, Anna felt a deep joy within her stomach. Her sister was back in the city and Anna is now invited to a party! She was nearly bouncing on her seat. It was if her headache has dissipated into glee in the empty gallery. Anna had been to parties when she was younger and she even held modest one at her apartment for her sweet sixteen, but this was the first adult party – less 'pin the tail on the donkey' and more chatting about the latest book in Romanesque Architecture (she thinks that's what party attendants talk about...) and cheese trays. Already she imagined the white wine she'd be sipping and hopefully with not be drinking as if it were the fountain of youth and the classy but simple earrings she'd be wearing.
If her mother were still alive, she would call. She wanted to tell somebody. The director? No, he wouldn't care. Her palms were already sweating. She could call her old friends from college... except some of them moved to the suburbs to start new families, so would they share the excitement to the same degree? Oh, maybe she can call Kai, the driver. Yes, Kai would be pleased, especially since he had been around since Elsa was born. Brilliant, she'll call Kai and then treat him to dinner then -
The front door opened silently.
In walked, the beautiful redheaded man from opening night. Anna sat up straight. She quickly tossed her apple into the bin and shoved the invitation back into her bag. He gave a small wave and wandered from piece to piece. She could almost smell his cologne from where she sat. She wondered how awful she looked, considering she just thrashed about her chair in suppressed happiness in a pencil skirt.
He pointed to one of the giant mass of colours on the wall. "This is a fantastic piece." Anna giggled a response. Secretly she thought that all the pieces did not differentiate from one another and instead all acted as a whole, making the entire space one work of art… but she would not tell him that. The piece in front of him was a swirl of black, red and yellow, emerging from the wall, like a strange disease as if it was desperate to break free.
"It is definitely my favourite in this place," he continued, still pointing at the work. "How do purchases work?"
"You're considering buying one of them?"
"Well, it would be the first work of art I ever bought. But if this guy gets famous enough, wouldn't the value of the piece soar?"
"I guess so... although I never imagined anyone would want to hang this stuff in his living room." If she was choking in it just coming into work, she couldn't picture herself entering her home and having the silently screaming artwork there in the foyer.
He laughed good-naturedly. "You're right. All my siblings have started collections and I feel a little behind. I shouldn't rush into buying anything."
"How many siblings do you have?"
"Twelve brothers. All older than me."
"Wow – really? People still give birth to that many kids?" She flinched at her own comment. "I mean, not that it's weird or anything. I'm sure your parents were great parents... Ignore me." She turned away and began typing into her computer.
He laughed again and approached her. Her eyes flittered up to him nervously then back to the screen in front of her. His cologne filled her nostrils so intensely that she was swimming in it. She noticed how impressive his sideburns were but they were neat and oddly fashionable in this city, and it complemented his business suit and tie. His nose was long and for some reason, she kept envisioning him powdering it to prevent a shine.
"Hans, by the way." He held out his hand.
"Oh umm... Anna." She took it.
"Is this place yours?"
She laughed nervously. "No. I'm just an assistant."
"I see. I remember you at the opening ceremony."
"Yep, that was me! Did you know the artist personally?" Usually guests who lingered at the opening were either friends, fans of the artist or supporters of the gallery.
He glimpsed at the artist's statements on her desk, usually set aside for visitors. "No, but I've been considering going into art collecting. I've been very interested in Romantic European paintings, though I know that's a huge cliché, but I've been told that I should keep my eye on contemporary works."
An interest in Romanticism?
"But," he continued. "I'm a little ignorant of a current stuff. I've been attending the auctions at Sotheby's but they're so hectic, it's hard to keep up."
"I can help you out," she blurted. "It's easy to explain."
He smiled wider. "That would be great."
Anna returned the smile. The silence that came between them felt a little awkward, but it was sweet as she drank in his beauty.
He coughed. "I've got to head back to work though. I'm here on my lunch break. How about we discuss this over coffee later today?"
Wuh?
"Coffee? You and me?"
"Sure, you seem like you're a good conversationalist."
"Well no, I..." She chewed her lip. "Yes! Coffee. I'd like coffee."
"Coffee it is. I'll come back, then. Six PM?" She nodded. The walking perfection waved goodbye and left as silently as he came in.
Anna sat wordlessly at her desk, her fingers spread out on her keyboard. She felt her whole face warming.
What just happened?
Elsa was back in the city. Anna had been invited to her sister's inauguration ceremony (a real party!). Anna had a date.
This was the best day of her life.
"Who was that?" The director's nose poked out of his office his neck moving back and forth like a bird's as he scanned the room. "A critic? What did he want?"
"Oh, he was just looking."