Elsa had been kind of relieved that Tony was her first stop of the day. Tony "Task" Masterson wasn't an easy going instructor, but he was a professional. It was here she practiced using her own powers, so the bracers were going to be turned off anyway. She set up in the center of the holographic arena, and prepared to assault the holographic Chitauri, bandits, or whatever else that Taskmaster had concocted this week.
When Tony called a halt to that training and told her they were to spend the next hour with hand to hand, that's when Elsa felt the fear return. It would have been easy to turn the bracers again, but she'd been ordered to turn them off, and leave them off, right?
"I know it's normally Natasha who does your hand to hand training, but she's busy with your sister today in the flight simulator. "Besides," he smirked, "Not everyone fights the same way. It'll be good to fight a new opponent. Let's see if you live up to dossier." He nodded to some gloves and helmet sitting on a table.
Elsa started. She was... OK at hand to hand, maybe. Anna had taken to it with enthusiasm. Not Elsa. Still, orders were orders, and she went to get the equipment. He set his feet, and met her eyes. And a moment later he threw a punch, which Elsa dodged easily. A few maneuvers later, when she bit upon a feint, a blindingly obvious feint, and went down to the mat, Taskmaster did not say anything about it. When he looked her directly in the eye, and said they'd try again, she knew that he knew something wasn't right.
The second time she bit on the same feint, something they both knew she was better than, he sent her tumbling again. When she rose slowly back to her feet, then he did say something. His tone was even. "I really shouldn't be upset, you know, I get paid no matter what happens here, and I've trained some pretty hopeless cases. You should have seen some of the scum the Maggia brought in. But you?" His face broke out in a scowl."You're better than that, and you and I both have seen that. You act like this in a combat situation... and even that Maggia scum is going to end you."
He broke of his rant, not because Elsa was trembling (she was), but he because he'd gotten an answer to the question he hadn't actually asked. Snow was beginning to form in the training room. "So. Fury ordered you to turn off the bracers, didn't he?"
Elsa looked down at the floor. But if she was looking for sympathy, she certainly didn't find any from her taskmaster. "I figured there wasn't any chance you'd turn them off for your own self improvement." Elsa heard him snort. "Look at me!" he demanded.
Elsa looked up, her breath quickening as she felt her magic spiraling further and further out of control.
"Where's the confidence that had been building in you?" Taskmaster said, his voice still even. "Gone with the magic feather, I guess. I think I know what your problem is. After all this time, you still don't trust yourself. You still think you're some unnatural monstrosity that needs to be locked away, behind closed doors. Or with your powers controlled. You can't just bring yourself to trust that you won't someday destroy the world. Who do you think you are, the Hulk?"
It may have been intended as a joke, but it didn't come off as one. There was too much truth behind the words. Just because the damage she caused wasn't physical in nature didn't make them any less catastrophic. Elsa closed her eyes tightly, picturing the frozen destruction of Arendelle.
"Hit close to home, huh? Hmm. Poor choice of words. No. Really. Look at me." When Elsa failed to open her eyes, Taskmaster's tone changed. "I said open them!" he snapped.
In shock, Elsa did so, immediately registering the condition of the training room, the projectors covered in frost, ice coating the floor, spreading out around her feet. "I.. I can't control it!" she said, the desperation setting in.
The words that Taskmaster replied with were not suitable for reprinting in polite company. "You'd better. Because if these things break because of your magic, it'll be you explaining it to Fury, not me. Maybe I'll get him on the phone right now. Or maybe you'll remember just how you controlled them to bring your homeland out of the deep freeze. Now you have permission to close your eyes and focus on that!"
It was the tone of those words that snapped Elsa out of the panic that had set in.
"Now, deep breaths," Taskmaster had dropped the drill sergeant voice, and gone back to his perfectly even teacher's voice. This was probably for the best. The commanding tone worked well enough for the shock value, but Elsa had never really gotten used to taking orders from anyone. Tactical advice, yes, but not orders. Elsa took those deep breaths, focusing on the darkness itself. She could almost feel her heartbeat slowing along, and the sense of panic went down with it.
"Better," Taskmaster said after about a minute. "Now. You've controlled it before. How'd you do it then?"
How had she done it then? How had brought Arendelle finally out of the glacier? She didn't actually know. It had thawed just after the battle of New York, but that's all she knew. Her memory of rescuing Anna was much more clear. She had just seen that video Skye had shown her, about the kids she had saved. That triggered another memory, Phil Coulson telling her that the opposite of the fear, the fear she had, wasn't courage but hope.
And, in that instant, she knew she could control it. It'd be cliché to call it love, though that was part of it. It was that feeling from helping people, from saving people. From hope. Hope for her own future, and the hope she inspired in others. There was a warmth to that. She could internalize her cold magic, and disperse it with that warmth.
"Huh," Taskmaster said, "That actually worked."
Elsa's eyes flew open. The frost was gone, the floor as dry as when she'd walked in. She stared in amazement. To see proof of that control was thrilling. She closed her eyes again, "I can do it. Not just once. I can." she whispered.
"Yeah. You can," Taskmaster said, smirking. "Right now. But you're not turning those bracers back on. C'mon." He adopted his stance again. "I remember where we were, even if you don't. Let's see if you can maintain that control, and still do what you need to do."
At first, it was harder, much harder. Elsa was trying to hold onto those hopeful, happy memories, and at the same time, still trying to remember everything she'd learned from Taskmaster and Natasha, and that was just too much.
After the fifth or sixth time Taskmaster had thrown her to the ground, he stepped back. Elsa climbed back to her feet, now really sore, but still somewhat proud her magic hadn't leaked again.
"Wipe that smile off your face, Elsa," Taskmaster told her. "It's no good controlling your magic if you can't actually perform in the field."
Elsa grimaced. He was right.
"I suspect you're over thinking this," Taskmaster continued. "Focus on defending yourself. Don't worry about your magic. It's when you get worried about it that it flares up around you. So, the simple advice? Act like your bracer was still on."
The advice may have sounded simple, but it was more complex than that. Elsa found it next to impossible to follow. Trying not to think about it was still thinking about it, and even when she tried to focus her mind completely on her martial arts instructions, her mind kept going back to trying to recapture the emotion she needed to reign in her magic. Before she knew it, she was lying on her back, again.
"Going to give up?" Taskmaster asked.
"No. Anna would never forgive me," Elsa said. "I'll get this." She pushed herself to her feet for what seemed like the umpteenth time. "Let's go again."
"Knew you weren't a quitter," Taskmaster said, a hint of a genuine smile on his face. "Focus on my hands..."
Anna almost flew out of the elevator, and almost right into a rather distracted looking Steven Rodgers. They'd patched things up since their first meeting in New York, kind of. Elsa had looked up to him, but Anna... well, if Anna had to admit to herself, she was envious. She wanted to help people badly, and while Elsa had been born with magic that was both a kiss and a curse, she could not see a downside to Steve's abilities. With that said, from what she'd learned from the Howling Commandos exhibit, she could see more than a few parallels between herself and Steve.
Those parallels pushed her to train even harder. "Good morning, Captain," Anna said.
Steve looked up, clearly actually noticing Anna for the first time. Anna could tell immediately that Steve was in a bad mood. Not only had she gotten better at reading people (and the fact that most people were not nearly as good at disguising their actual emotions as Hans was), but being in a bad mood seemed almost foreign for the Captain. He faced his enemies with the same, almost dispassionate, focus. If he'd ever gotten angry, really angry, she couldn't remember it.
"Oh, good morning, Anna. I'm doing fine," Steve had put on the worst fake smile. Anna's only response was to raise an eyebrow and give him a hard look. "OK, I'm upset," he admitted. "But it's mission related, and I can't talk about with you." He stepped into the elevator. "Director's office." he told it.
"Well, fine," Anna said, to no one in particular, determined not to let the Captain spoil her good mood. She continued down the maze of corridors, ending in a large room, containing two large training simulators, both elevated from the ground by four legs. Natasha Romanov was waiting for her, holding a depressingly large book.
Natasha gave her a friendly grin, glanced at the manual in her hand, and unceremoniously dropped it to he floor. "I think people learn better by doing."
"I agree," Anna said, subconsciously rubbing the bruises Natasha had given her during the last training session.
"Excellent. You can take that home with you to read up on it, but for the moment, get in simulator B. I think your first crash will be spectacular. I was watching when you learned to drive."
Anna excitedly walked to the simulator device marked B when what Natasha said impacted her brain. "Wait... what?" Anna said, suddenly surprised.
Natasha simply laughed. "Go ahead. Get in the pilot's seat. I will be right behind you." She started up the first simulation, a simple exercise to take off, and then land, the Quinnjet from the Triskellion's hangar. Natasha instructed Anna on how to turn on the engines, how to check to make sure the systems were ready, and how to lift off. Anna had to repeat each step aloud, then actually do it.
As it turns out, taking off was fairly straight forward. As for landing... well, Natasha was right.
Her first crash was pretty spectacular.
Then they would study exactly where she went wrong.
(Hey folks. I've been rereading my series over the last few days... and there's some pretty bad mistakes, and I find different ones each time I reread it. Can I ask a favor if you've made it this far in the series? Pick a random chapter, and reread it to spot any errors. With any luck, I will be doing a massive editing attack on the entire Cryomancy series over the next few days. I'd love to have a bit of help, and a second Beta reader wouldn't hurt. :)
-TZ )
