Autumn arrived meekly, seemingly afraid to notify summer that it had overstayed its welcome. With the calendar nearly ready to see September out there were only furtive reminders that the season had changed, the occasional cool night or overcast morning offering a glimpse of normality amidst the irrational heat. Even Elsa's sleep was fed up with the weather, dropping her occasionally into a white-capped mountainscape as she rested. Snow driven by a fierce wind lashed against her, each pinprick crystal fueling the burning exhilaration of the storm as she was swept along, hurled aloft on frigid whirlwinds. An icy peak cut through the blizzard, rising sheer above the clouds to a frozen stillness, stars overlooking the roiling tumult below as Elsa…found herself waking up, left arm tingling from being pinned beneath her.
Dull thumps shuddered in from outside, the sound of speakers pushed loud enough to warp music from an art into a blunt instrument. Glowing red symbols announced the time as 11:28 PM, nearly to the Saturday after her last run-in with her neighborhood nemesis. How kind of them, Elsa mused darkly, Any longer and they'd be ruining my birthday. Not that she had anything planned, none of her few friends had followed her to this university, and she hadn't opened up any since arriving. Through clubs and classes she'd made a couple of friends, but none close enough to know there was anything special about tomorrow. Over the week a sense of melancholy had built into a proper gloom; she missed having a day where people might make a fuss about her. It was nice feeling like it was ok for once, and back home Meri had always found a new way to surprise her, some fun little plan that fit Elsa better than a crowded party could have.
Truth be told, Elsa would have welcomed a nice surprise tomorrow if one decided to show up, but the one that had awakened her was not the nice sort.
This was just too much. Sure, she might not have anything to wake for in the morning, that was hardly the point. They had no right! They hadn't even asked her, and this was so soon after she'd asked them to be more considerate. Not that she'd have been happy with it even they had asked, but without a single warning this was inexcusable. What would they expect her to do, just lie there listening to the dull thuds until she built up a headache to match? This needed to stop one way or another. She could be generous in ending it, but it would have to end. One last chance might be more than they deserved, but she would offer it anyway. One more unwanted conversation.
Elsa angrily pulled a blouse on over her pajama tops and grabbed her still more-or-less clean jeans from the day before. Her hair was a disaster, but she was flatly uninterested in appearing to be either calm or conciliatory right now. She was far too tired of this to care.
Sleep still had its claws sunk into her head as she found her way into the unfriendly dark, the only light in her house cast in a streetlight glow. It was only once she yanked the front door open to glare at the outside world that her nerves made themselves known – a jittery pressure squeezing her chest and skull. The grip was gentle for now, but it threatened to grow worse while clattering down the few steps to the sidewalk. Restless air fed an uneasy sensation by stirring leaf and limb to life, and despite only having a few dozen feet to travel Elsa felt immediately out of her depth. There was too much energy to it, and too little space to breath. The tension poured in, sending tremors through hands clenching around whatever shred of control they could hold on to.
Even that small fragment of stability was shaken upon seeing who she'd have to deal with. Of course it would be her on the front porch, sitting on a distressingly filthy couch that seemed to have begun as some indeterminate tan beneath the patchwork grime. Another girl was sitting beside her, sideways with one leg down and the other tucked beneath a startlingly short shirt, fitting long pulls from a smoldering cigarette into the gaps in the conversation. The one Elsa recognized had a sleeveless black top that ended before it quite reached her pants, which were jeans saved from being too warm for the weather by the sheer quantity of tears down each leg. Elsa's eyes lingered longer than she cared to admit between the cloth, on the bare skin those gaps revealed. Whatever this girl's flaws, she kept herself in distressingly fine shape.
Elsa wrenched her eyes upwards when she realized the target of her staring was looking back her way. Brief panic swept in, the thought that this particular annoyance of a neighbor might have caught her moment of distraction upending what little control she'd held on to. Elsa now felt woefully underdressed to demand anything, her angry haste having robbed her of the chance to be at least presentable when facing down what was likely to be a fight very soon. She didn't even know what to say, which seemed to be just fine with her adversary who took the chance to speak up instead.
"Oooh, now this is a party." She stood and crossed her arms, continuing, "I was wondering if you'd show up. What's your command this time, Ice Queen? Did we manage to bother you again?" There was an odd twist in her voice, some obscure fragment of meaning set adrift in her tone. Her gaze was penetrating, rummaging over Elsa as though she was expecting to find something. It almost seemed like she was expecting this, and Elsa had no idea how to respond to that feeling.
"Could I maybe talk to Olaf?" Elsa felt small standing below her, caught in the grasp of the figure standing backlit over her. Something was going on here that she didn't understand. A friendly face would go a long way to lending her some strength, but it wasn't meant to be.
"No. This is my party, if you have a problem with it then you have a problem with me. Whatever you have to say you can say right now. What's your problem with me?" Again, she was acting like she was the one being attacked here, even though Elsa had only come to ask for silence. How could she be so self-centered to think she was the victim here?
Indignation lent Elsa the courage that she hadn't been able to find before. "If you are going to insist on being irrationally angry whenever I see you then I suppose yes, I do have a problem with you. I was very clear before, you simply cannot be so noisy in the middle of the night!" Elsa was unsurprised to note that her foe didn't appear swayed by this. She didn't know much about this girl, but the stubborn streak was as clear as the white down her braid.
"Are you serious? It's Friday. If we can't party on a Friday then when can we? I doubt you're even doing anything tomorrow! So why are you trying so hard to ruin our fun? I don't even get why it is that we need to ask you for permission in the first place, why do you get to decide what we do? It's not fair!" She was, Elsa realized, a little drunk, and more than a little wound up about something.
The flippant way that she'd guessed Elsa had nothing tomorrow stung, even if there was no way she could have known that the day meant anything to Elsa. Because of it Elsa's response was fiercer than she intended, her nervousness showing through as she snapped, "You insist on acting like this is my fault. You are the one who keeps bothering me, I don't have to simply accept that you can interrupt me whenever you want! If I want to sleep then I should be able to, it doesn't matter that I'm not doing anything tomorrow!"
"Aha! I knew it! You just admitted that you don't have a reason! And it's not even that late!" At least the smugness in her face made it easy not to get distracted by anything else, but her triumph at Elsa accidentally confirming that her Saturday was empty only further served to get under her skin.
"It's midnight! But that isn't even the point, you're ignoring half-" The interruption brought a sense of deja-vu, the redhead getting into a groove and running right over Elsa just like last time.
"I don't get it, why would you even want to be asleep yet? There's so much of the night left! So much….so much left to do! If you weren't such a killjoy I might even have invited you, but no, you're just here to try and ruin my fun again. Why?"
What did she want from Elsa? "I've already told you why, you are refusing to listen! Could you be any more frustrating? Can you stop thinking of yourself for one second and consider that maybe this isn't all about you?"
The other girl, still sitting on the couch, was looking back and forth, clearly wanting neither to get involved or to draw attention to herself by leaving. She almost jumped when the now angry host waved back at her, bristling, "Everyone here is having fun, you're the one asking all of us to stop just for you!"
Elsa was done. She wasn't comfortable being here in the first place, and she was certainly not going to stand here just to listen to accusations that she was being selfish. Maybe without the history the two of them had managed to acquire over the last few weeks Elsa might have been willing to back down, but she'd put up with enough by now. "Look, I came here to try to be polite. You can listen to me like you should, or I can make you stop. It'll be easier for all of us if you just turn down the music."
"You can make me? I'd like to see that! No, I'm not going to back down just because you can't leave your bed without getting pissy." She seemed as done with the conversation as Elsa, finishing haughtily, "Now, we're going to go enjoy ourselves." With that she turned, grabbed her wide-eyed friend's hand, and marched into the crowd within.
The last thing Elsa heard was the third girl speaking just loudly enough to hear, starting, "Anna, she seems pretty mad. We might need to…" Elsa never heard what they might need, the rest of the sentence drowned out by the wave of noise pouring out through the open door. When it closed Elsa was left standing in the dark, the shakes taking over now that she was alone. Her neighbor had made her decision, and had been enough of a jerk in the process that Elsa knew what to do next. It wouldn't have to be her that got them to stop.
When she got to her room she booted up her computer, found the non-emergency number for the police, and after a short time spent composing herself dialed the number in the dark. The woman who answered was very receptive to the noise complaint, telling Elsa that an officer would come as soon as one was available. Once that was done there was nothing to do but go back downstairs to lurk in the living room as just one more shadow, albeit one thoroughly wrapped up in blankets. She was mad now, too mad to either rest or to risk missing watching this. Elsa wanted to see her neighbor – Anna, come to think of it she'd finally overheard a name for the girl – have to face the consequences of being such a miserable person over the last few weeks.
Fuming anger kept her going for a while, still fed by music that was no quieter now than before, but the satisfaction she'd hoped for failed to materialize. Trepidation found her instead, cutting through the lonely dark to settle on her like a cold fog. This was starting to feel too similar to last year, having to ask other people to take care of her problems, and thoughts of Hans were the last thing she needed right now. She knew that she had been right; his advances at the school library had been totally inappropriate for work, and his insistence in the face of her denying him…she'd been lucky that Tamora, the woman in charge of staffing for most of the school's libraries, fired him so quickly after the complaint. But even then it hadn't been satisfying, knowing that he was gone. She'd trade revenge for forgetting in a heartbeat, for no long associating the formerly welcoming shelves of books with the lurking unease he'd left behind.
A greasy lump of negative emotion was building in her stomach, and the only thing Elsa had found that helped was finding something to distract her. The nervous motion of the night helped, a breeze adding its touch in leaf-cast shadows dancing through the windows and splaying over the floor. At points the patterns swayed nearly in time to the beat flowing in, the time and measure easy enough to make out through too many walls.
The difficulty of ignoring the music served a better purpose now. At the least her recent spats with her neighbor didn't hold the same looming threat as these memories, and so her irritation with this Anna could for now be a shield. The attempt worked immediately, as Elsa realized with a start that the voice in the current song was familiar. The words were muddled with the distance, but the tumble that came through sounded very much like the girl she'd just called the cops on. Which would mean the drum work was Olaf's. Well, she had no quarrel with him, and she'd not actually heard any of his songs properly. If she was going to be up anyway she might as well wait outside and listen in.
Years of music lessons leapt out of Elsa's memory as she stepped back out her front door, leaning against the short railing and closing her eyes to focus. Most of it was useless, classical strings and vocal practice in the face of a raucous punk edge, but it at least left a framework for her. The last time she'd come close enough to listen other worries had preoccupied her, but now she was free to pay attention to the music. With some good will towards at least one of the participants she was even open to acknowledging that parts of it might be tolerable.
Anna has not been wrong. It wasn't a complex beat, but it was played with poise, Olaf's embellishments managing to shade in complexity without ever faltering in driving the song forward. Elsa didn't know enough about the instrument to pick out anything particularly special that he might be doing, but everything she could follow was well done. Annoyingly, she knew more about the vocal work, and she had to begrudgingly admit that there was genuine talent there too. Her grumpiness would have much preferred if the singing was the weak point, since finding respect for the redhead didn't sit well with her current mood. It would have been a lie, though. Even if Elsa didn't like the style, hurtling between a lower, throaty timbre and a shrieking fury in the highest notes, the transition between the two was written in pure tones, fracturing around the edges under the energy coursing within. Her range was extraordinary; Elsa had always been proud of her own abilities, but without keeping in practice she couldn't possibly hope to match.
Ok, damnit, Elsa could be fair if she had to. The girl was good. Annoyingly so. Things were so much easier in her head when she could paint the brat with a single broad stroke, but this put a frustrating asterisk up. 'Total pain in the ass* (*but damn, she can sing!)' Worse, it loosened the lid enough that a second caveat snuck out: she was cute, definitely, inarguably attractive. Elsa had successfully ignored it after the first two encounters, but even she had to admit it after this third. The black top had clung tight in all the right ways to be a different sort of bother, and the sunny scatter of freckles had caught Elsa's eye even in the dark of the night. Not that it mattered buried under a personality like that, but still, this was a thought that Elsa wasn't going to be able to shove it back in the box. She was a frustrating, stubborn, self-centered, inattentive, contrary, inconsiderate, utter pain of a neighbor with whom everything had gone perfectly, spectacularly wrong. Just her sort of luck.
Most irritating of all, hearing Olaf in the song had forced her to acknowledge that Anna truly was not the only person at the party, and not all of them had earned the surprise of the police knocking at the door unannounced. Olaf was the only person she might actually know there, but even ignoring him the rest probably deserved a second chance, even if the one she'd just fought with was already past her third. It had been bad luck running into Anna first, anyone else would probably have been more likely to listen. They probably still would be.
I must be completely crazy. All she had to do was wait a while longer and someone else would take care of all this for her, and yet here she was, staring down her front steps for the second time tonight and considering bringing herself to a conversation that couldn't possibly end well. Maybe it was just exhaustion clouding her thoughts. Maybe it was actually the right thing to do. Whatever the reason was, she went. A relieved breath escaped when she found no one waiting for her on the porch this time, but she pulled it back in when it came time to knock. This time she really could just turn around and go home. No one knew she was here.
She knocked, and waited. No one came. Only after a few seconds had passed did she realize it was possible no one had heard her. They really were not making this easy for her, with all these chances to chicken out, but she was unexpectedly determined to see this through. She rapped on the door again, hard enough to hurt but apparently not sufficient to be noticed as again the door stayed closed. This clearly wasn't working. It would have to be plan B, then.
Ok, calm down. You can do this, you just need to stay collected. Don't react to anyone, don't show that you've noticed anyone looking even if you are still wearing your pajamas. All you have to do is get in, get someone's attention, and explain that you have called the cops because of the noise and because that girl, Anna, told you off the first time. Breathe. Alright. Time to go. She cracked the door open and took stock of the scene. Olaf wasn't anywhere in sight; neither was the girl she was hoping to avoid. The press of people held a bewildering variety of fashion, trending towards the sort that looked like trouble followed in their wake. The sheer number of piercings gave Elsa pause; the six she had noticed on her neighbor seemed downright conservative against some of the folk here. Most held a bottle or cup, and a number of those people looked a hair young to have them. Elsa was stuck, unsure who to approach but unable to simply stand at the door for much longer without drawing attention, until she realized that one of the partygoers was familiar. Between the height, blond hair, and broad shoulders Elsa was fairly certain he was the man that had pulled Anna back the first time they fought. That presumably meant that he lived here, which made him into the new end goal.
Elsa set her shoulders, settled her expression, and began making her way through the crowd as imperiously as anyone in pajamas possibly could, stoically ignoring everyone and hoping that they would return the favor. Frankly she wasn't even the least formal person here, seeing some of the outfits that she passed, but right now that wasn't important. All that mattered was delivering her message before escaping to somewhere she could breathe. And to do that she needed to get the attention of the man in front of her.
Elsa reached up to tap on one wide shoulder, certain that nothing she might say would be heard until he noticed her. His expression as he turned was relaxed, an easy smile replaced by puzzlement, clearly uncertain as to who she was. The confusion carried through in his voice as he asked, shouting over the music, "Uh, hello. Have we met yet?"
"Yes, but I don't believe that we've been properly introduced. I'm Elsa Arendal, I saw you a few weeks ago outside your band practice?"
Recognition lit up his expression like a struck match, humor close on its tail. Something about her being here seemed to make sense to him, part of a joke that only he was in on. "Hey, I do remember you! You're here for Anna's birthday party? I mean, I had been wondering. Though," he frowned and cocked his head, some recollection bringing confusion to his face when he continued, "I thought that you weren't supposed to be here tonight? And now that I look you don't seem to be dressed like you're planning to hang around. Is something wrong?"
Elsa felt a bit lost. The young man's reaction didn't make sense given her understanding of the situation. "I'm sorry, I'm confused. What talk are you referring to? If you mean tonight I'm not certain how she could have said it went well."
"No, I meant…" A couple of emotions worked through his face, ending with resignation as he finished flatly, "She didn't talk to you about the party, did she. Oh, that little…no wonder she was so amped up, she was hoping for a fight. You weren't told, then?"
"That you were planning to wake me up around midnight? No, I was not." This was not was Elsa had expected, but it at least vindicated her decision to come back. It might also explain why Anna hadn't seemed surprised when Elsa met her outside, if she had in fact intended to lure Elsa into an argument. Though why would anyone plan something like that? There was no point to it as far as she could see, unless Anna was simply intending to be annoying for its own sake. That didn't seem like enough of a reason.
A big hand went up to massage the back of an equally large head as he took in the situation, eventually apologizing, "Look, I'm really sorry about this. You were supposed to be told, but because it's Anna's party, and because I was hoping it would help cool things down a bit, I asked her to give the neighbors a heads up about it. I need to go find her, this isn't fair to you. Or anyone, if she didn't tell anybody." He started to turn away, but Elsa caught his free hand to hold him in place.
"A second, if you will. I may have reacted a little too quickly after running into Anna outside earlier." Bushy eyebrows rose, but he said nothing as she sheepishly admitted, "You should probably know I filed a noise complaint with the police, and they are planning to send someone over. I wouldn't have, only I lost my temper a bit when talking with her."
This news took a bit longer for him to process, holding him place as it sunk in. Eventually he sighed deeply, muttering to himself too quietly to be heard before speaking up sardonically, "Well, you're hardly the first to lose their temper around her. It's basically her superpower." His tone suggested he was speaking from personal experience. "For now I need to handle this, we'll need to clean up a bit before they show up. Also, Anna's going to lose it when she hears and I think you might want to not be here when that happens. And…" He paused, weighing his words before finishing, "Thanks for telling us. I don't know what Anna said to you, but I've got a pretty good guess, and I know you didn't have to warn us. Anna's just going to have to deal." He was already turning at the last words, the crowd parting for him as he went.
Elsa felt miserable. He didn't seem mad at her at all, which left her feeling like a jerk that she hadn't tried to find a second person to talk to before calling the cops on them. There wasn't even anything she could do. She would have to leave the explanations to the man now talking closely to a fellow behind the speakers. Furthermore, her energy had run out: all she was looking forward to now was crawling back into bed. Having nothing to look forward to tomorrow was still an improvement over the rollercoaster tonight had turned into. At least it meant she could sleep all this off.
The music volume plummeted shortly after she reached the second floor, low enough that she could ignore the trickle that eked through the glass of her windows. Yawns caught up with her as her socks came off, for once being tossed on the floor rather than put away in the hamper. Elsa wasn't in the mood to care about that right now. Heavy eyelids were a pleasant surprise once under her covers. She had been worried that sleep would be slow to arrive after an eventful awakening, but instead it was wasting no time in carrying her away. Thoughts began to diffuse into dream as soon as her head hit the pillow.
*THUNK*
Something struck the window from outside, Elsa's heart rate spiking as quickly as she bolted upright. Looking at the clock she found that no more than fifteen minutes could have passed, still hours before the darkness outside would be lifted. Another noise followed, a softer strike than a rock but still solid enough to show a fair bit of force behind the throw. The third indicated that whoever it was probably wasn't going away for a while, and Elsa had a sinking suspicion that her fight with Anna had just developed a part four. Creeping reluctantly out of bed Elsa pulled aside the curtain just enough to peek through, jumping as a pinecone struck the glass right in front of her. It was difficult to see, but there did seem to be a figure in the tree already reaching up for more ammunition.
Elsa did not want to find out how persistent this little curse would be if she tried to ignore it, resigning herself to open the window a crack and hiss, "What could you possibly want this time?"
Another pinecone answered first, well-aimed enough that so that it bounced off the screen covering the gap. The expected voiced followed behind. "I can't believe you called the cops! We listen to a little music and you call the cops? Why are you trying so hard to ruin everything for me?" Hurt seeped into every word, and Elsa couldn't understand it.
"I don't want to have to ruin anything! I just want to be left alone, and you don't seem to know how to do that. Even right now! It's the middle of the night and I only want to sleep."
Branches creaked under agitated motion as the figure outside repositioned. "Well, fine then, shut the windows, lock the doors! What are you so afraid of?"
How was she supposed to answer that? It was too late to think, let alone argue. Just staying upright was difficult, exhaustion threatening to take her legs out from under her any moment now. Desperate for any end to this, she pleaded, "Just...go away, Anna. If you really want to talk we can do so later, but for now, please, go away. For once just let me sleep." A yawn escaped to prove her need for sleep, and surprisingly it was the only sound from either of them. Elsa had expected a response given Anna's previous insistence on winning the arguments she found herself in, but this time none came. The last thing that Elsa heard was a soft "hmph" and the rattle of needles in a sudden descent. She listened to her go quietly, too worn out to think clearly about anything yet still wanting to be certain that this would be the last interruption. The creak of old boards and a secondary thud told Elsa that she was probably over the fence, which was enough. Sleep welcomed her with open arms when she returned to bed, leaving her thoughts for the morning.