Author's Note: Anastasia belongs to Fox, Don Bluth, and the Romanov family.

The spicy aroma of gumbo wafted through the house, as Elsa set the table for four people with two expensive bottles of wine along with a bowl of fruit at the center. She found herself feeling excited for her first dinner party in years. Back when she and Tiana had first gotten together they had people over often, she even actually had a number of friends, but then she made partner, and the slight amount of focus that hadn't been devoted to work turned toward it. It was nice to have a change of pace, and Anya had once been very important to her; it would be good to see her again.

She plugged her phone into the speaker system and turned on some music. By the end of the first song, the doorbell rang. "Would you get that?" Tiana called from the kitchen.

"Sure thing," Elsa replied, already heading to the door. When she opened it, she stared in shock at what she saw. Standing before her was Anastasia in a nicely fitted grey suit, smiling at her, with Belle on her arm. There's no way. Belle, the worst attorney she'd ever seen, was standing there in a short blue dress, looking thrilled to see her.

"Hi, Ms. Agnarrsen," she shouted.

"Oh, you two know each other?" Anya asked, looking between the two. "I suppose I shouldn't be shocked, she is from our old firm."

"It's still my firm," Elsa growled; she still held a slight grudge against the redhead for abandoning Gaston, Phillip, and de Ville.

"Maybe you'll wise up one of these days," Anya shot back, her grin only growing larger.

Elsa gave her a hug and invited the two girls in. "So, you and Belle," she sighed. "How did that happen?"

Before Anastasia could answer, Tiana came running in and greeted her with a large hug. "Anya," she squealed, "It's been ages. How've you been?"

"I've been well. It's good to see you. How about you?" She answered, beaming back, as Tiana released her.

"New restaurant in Tuscon, on another episode of a show airing on Tuesday, I really can't complain. It's great to see you," she took Elsa's hand in her own, squeezing it reassuringly. "So who's this?"

Belle extended a hand, grinning foolishly, her glasses slightly askew. "Hi, I'm Belle, huge fan, it's great to meet you."

"Any friend of Anya's is a friend of mine," Tiana answered, taking the younger girl's hand with her free one.

"What smells so amazing?" Belle asked.

"Shrimp gumbo. It should still be another hour. Why don't we all take a seat in the living room, I'll crack open a bottle of wine." Tiana grinned.

"That sounds wonderful," Belle swooned. Right, this was why we'd stopped having dinner parties. Fangirls.

Elsa showed the guests to the living room while Tiana grabbed the wine and glasses. Anya and Belle settled in in a recliner and a large leather chair, while Elsa waited for Tiana on the couch. "So how've you been, Anya?" She asked. It had been at least a year since they'd last talked, not long after Anya had left the firm.

"I've been really good. Dimitri and I have managed to hit the ground running with this law firm, we already have so many clients. I was worried, since I couldn't take any of my old clients from our firm, but I needed to do this, and it's been amazing," Anastasia explained, her eyes lighting up with the enthusiasm and joy that her work provided her. "I have this new case I'm working on-"

Tiana entered the room, handed everyone a glass of wine, and sat down next to Elsa, resting her hand on the blonde's thigh. "I have to go deal with the food some more in about half an hour," she explained, taking a long drink from her glass. "I hope I wasn't interrupting anything."

"It was just work talk," Anya insisted, brushing off Tiana's concern.

"So how did you two meet?" Tiana asked.

Anya looked over at Belle, her eyes inviting the younger girl to tell their story.

"It was when I'd first started at Gaston, Phillip, and de Ville," Belle began.

"Oh, you work with Elsa?" Tiana asked, receiving a nod from her partner.

"Yeah, Ms. Agnarrsen is the best lawyer I've ever seen. I second-chaired for her on an insurance case about eight months ago. She handled everything. But a few months before then, when I'd first started, I was having lunch with some of the other associates, at the deli near there."

"Gothel's," Anastasia interjected.

"Yeah, that one," she confirmed. "We were all getting lunch and I saw this gorgeous redhead over here walk in. A few of the associates I was with greeted her and invited her to eat with us. She ended up sitting right next to me." Her cheeks grew red as she recalled their encounter.

"After lunch we stayed there and talked for almost two hours," Anya continued.

"Taking an extended lunch on company time to pick up a girl," Elsa grumbled. Belle didn't seem to notice, but Anya glared at her.

"As I was saying," Anastasia continued, her eyes not leaving Elsa's. "We talked for a few hours, eventually she insisted that she needed to get to work, and I gave her my phone number. Well, a business card, with my phone number on it." She grinned proudly at the fact that she had business cards with her name in the title of her law firm. "She called me up that night."

Belle's cheeks flushed again. "It was the next night! She just seemed really cool, and I don't meet many women."

"Oh, so it's just because you didn't have too many to choose from?" Anya asked, teasing the young brunette.

"No!" She screamed, her eyes opened wide in panic. "You were super hot, and a partner in your own firm, and perfect, I just mean it was nice actually getting that attention, no one ever reads me as gay so it doesn't tend to happen much."

"Relax," Anya laughed, reaching a hand over to caress Belle's arm. "Elsa here was the same way."

"I was not," Elsa insisted defensively. "I'd had plenty of girlfriends."

"You'd had two, and literally everyone thought you were straight." Anya drained the rest of her wine glass.

"Oh, did they?" Elsa asked, glaring back at her friend. "The way I recall it, you weren't too butch yourself back then, I kinda recall us both awkwardly attempting to flirt and feel each other out, convinced that the other girl had to be straight. I mean really, you even had long nails."

"You two were together?" Belle asked, staring between the two feuding women.

"She hadn't told you?" Elsa smirked. "We were together for four years and I don't even get a mention? Wow."

Anastasia sputtered, her eyes darting between her girlfriend and her ex. "I thought I'd said."

Belle shook her head. "You said you used to work together, you said you knew each other in law school, you never said you dated, let alone for four years." Belle was staring at the redhead, cogs turning in her mind as she tried to wrap her mind around this situation and around any reason Anya may have had to hide it.

"It wasn't a secret or anything," Anya insisted. "I really thought you knew."

"Bringing your girl over to your ex's without even mentioning it, probably not the best move," Elsa insisted, her own wine glass now empty as well.

In an effort to nip the fight in the bud, Tiana gestured to Belle. "Want to help me grab some more wine for everyone? Or maybe something harder."

"Scotch would be great," Elsa suggested.

"I wouldn't say no to some vodka," Anya added, glancing hesitantly at Belle, who was looking at her with suspicion.

Belle and Tiana left to go find alcohol to throw on the slowly burning fire. Anya and Elsa stared at each other, hostility in the air. "Really?" Elsa finally asked, once the other two were out of earshot. "Belle?"

"Something wrong with that?" Anya growled back, her eyes never leaving the icy blue orbs across the room.

"She's-" Elsa hesitated trying to decide what complaint precisely was acceptable to say about her friend's new partner. "She's the worst lawyer I've ever seen!" Elsa finally announced, glad that she had not taken so long that the subject of their discussion had returned.

Anya stared at her. "Even if that was true," she replied, "And I'm not saying that it was, because I've never seen her in court, why would it matter?"

Elsa stared at Anastasia, confusion clear on her face.

"Elsa, there's more to life than being a good lawyer, there's more to life than work. She makes me happy, she's smart, she's fun, and she cares about me."

Elsa swallowed a lump that had managed to form in her throat. This was almost the exact same fight that caused their breakup. She fought back the anger and the flurry of other emotions. "She does?" She asked, choking the words out.

"She does what?" Anya spat, glaring back at the blonde, the painful memory reminding her of precisely what she hated most about her friend.

"She makes you happy?" Elsa asked, attempting to ignore her resentment for the girl who did nothing but cost her firm money.

"She does," Anya confirmed, as she calmed down slightly, her anger still coiled in her stomach.

"I'm glad," Elsa announced, as the other two women returned with a large collection of drinks. Elsa was handed a glass of at least two fingers of scotch as well as a refill of wine, while Anastasia was handed a glass half full of vodka and her own wine. Tiana and Belle stood with their own wine glasses.

"What are you glad about?" Belle asked, grinning, still thrilled beyond belief that she was spending time with her partner and two of the people she respected most in the entire world.

"That you make me happy," Anya explained, kissing the girl, and taking a swig of her vodka. "Good stuff. Russian?"

"Lithuanian, actually," Tiana answered.

"I take it back then," she joked, as the mood lightened.

"You were really telling her that I make you happy?" Belle asked.

Anya eyed Elsa before confirming, "Yeah, she'd asked, and you do. You're wonderful, Belle. I love you."

Belle blinked. "You-" She paused, staring blankly at the older woman, before blurting out "I love you too!"

The two kissed, as Elsa and Tiana stared on. "That the first time?" Tiana asked, once the two finally separated.

"Yes," Anya confirmed, looking happily at Belle, who nodded in agreement.

"I'm so happy for you, That's wonderful," Tiana grinned.

Elsa and Anya locked eyes. "I'm happy for you too," Elsa smiled.

"On that note," Tiana laughed, "I have to go tend to dinner."

"Can I help?" Belle asked, turning away from the woman whose arms she was in.

Tiana stared blankly at her, unsure of how to respond. She didn't trust anyone in her kitchen, but she didn't want to disappoint her friend's new partner. "All right," she allowed, hesitantly.

"Really? Yes!" She shouted, breaking from her girlfriend with a quick kiss and following the other woman to the kitchen.

"Can she cook?" Elsa asked worriedly.

"I mean she's not Tiana, but she's all right," Anya explained.

"You know Tiana will kill her if she messes up her gumbo?"

Anya nodded.

Both women took another swig of their drinks. "I really am happy for you," Elsa insisted.

"You just don't like her, even though she practically worships you," Anya responded, the ire entering her voice again.

"What are you talking about?"

"She's talked about you," Anya explained. "A lot. You're her hero. After she saw you in trial all she's wanted was to be like you, and all you ever do is give her the cold shoulder. I've heard her stories, she doesn't seem to realize how rude you're being, but I know you. I know you've never played well with others, but she's done nothing to you."

Elsa slumped in her seat. "When I was working that case, she almost lost the trial on the first day when she messed up on direct. Her research was great, her notes were incredibly useful, but when it came down to it she messed up. I managed to salvage it, barely, we didn't get the settlement we should have, because she fucked up an incredibly important question, and I couldn't just ask it again myself without making us look incompetent. She's amazing at research, she'd be a great paralegal, but she's a terrible lawyer."

"And you could help her be a better one, but that doesn't help you climb the corporate tree, which is all you've ever cared about."

"That's not true," Elsa insisted, almost knocking over the wine on the table before her as she waved her arm.

"It is true," Anya almost yelled. "It's all you've ever cared about."

"I cared about you, I still do, I care about Tiana, I care about my sister-"

"You care about Anna?" the redhead laughed derisively, "When's the last time you even talked to her?"

"Yesterday."

Anastasia started. "Yesterday?"

"Yesterday. She just started dating this woman she was telling me about."

"I thought she was married."

"It's not working out. I'm helping her find a good divorce attorney in town. I do care about my sister. I care about plenty of things, and yes, work is one of them-"

"Always been the top one-"

"You're one to talk!" Elsa spat.

"I was so sick of the bullshit at our firm that I left to start my own firm, so I could actually have enough control of my life that there would be more than just new clients and more trials. I wanted to be able to actually have a life, to have love, to do more than just devote all of my time to kissing ass and making other people money," Anya growled, the old wound reigniting.

"So you abandoned the firm we'd spent years working at, where we'd started together and spent half our relationship competing. You abandoned me, so you could what, help tenants with their landlord disputes and have time to play with some trollop?"

"I didn't abandon you-," Anya began.

"The hell you didn't!" Elsa yelled, "Both of our names were supposed to be up there, but you decided to give up, and take the easy way out."

"Elsa-" Anastasia watched the blonde, confusion joining her rage.

"You were my best friend, and you left." Elsa's voice broke, she was holding back tears.

"That wasn't what I wanted anymore. I asked you to come with me, your name could've been on the building with mine, just not the building you wanted." She stood and walked slowly towards her old friend.

"Well I wanted more than that! Gaston, Phillip, and de Ville is probably the most respected firm in New York, and I wasn't going to just give up on that to go be a nobody."

"So you think I'm a nobody," Anya stopped in her path, still a few feet from Elsa.

"That's not what I meant-"

"Yes it is, you think that all that matters is being the best. I am so much happier working at my own place, not having to deal with what all the partners wanted, just taking the cases we want and Dimitri and I making decisions together. You could have been part of that, I wanted you to be part of that, but you would rather kill yourself bending over backwards to appease those assholes so you can become one of them. I think you've made it, you're just like them."

"Dinner's ready!" Tiana called from the other room. The two continued to glare daggers at each other. Without a word, they chugged the remnants of their drinks and went to join the others.

They found Tiana and Belle already sitting across from each other at the table, both with an empty seat next to them. The table was laid out with more glasses of wine – from the second bottle, a large bowl of gumbo, hushpuppies, green beans, and a sweet potato casserole. Elsa and Anastasia sat next to their partners, avoiding each other's eyes, as they helped themselves to the food.

"How was Belle in the kitchen?" Elsa asked, trying to phrase it as politely as possible.

"She was a huge help, actually," Tiana smiled. "She managed to save the hushpuppies while I was taking care of the casserole."

Belle's face lit up at the compliment. "They would've been fine. I'm just glad I didn't get in the way."

"Nonsense," Tiana insisted. "You were a big help."

"So what did you two get up to while we were gone?" Belle asked, looking cheerily toward her partner.

Elsa and Anya stared solemnly at their food, both of them ensuring that their mouths were too full of gumbo to answer immediately. "Oh, nothing," Anya answered after she swallowed. "We just discussed the good old days."

"Back when you two were dating?" Belle asked, jealousy creeping into her cheerful tone.

"Back when we were working together," Elsa answered coolly.

"Oh," Belle relaxed a bit and helped herself to some of the hushpuppies. "Did you two work any interesting cases together?"

"A few," the ginger answered. She met the blonde's eyes for the first time since they'd started dinner. "Well I found the fishing law case pretty interesting, personally, but Elsa will insist it was boring."

"It wasn't even a fishing law case. The guy was fishing in an aquarium."

"We managed to get him off, using outdated fishing laws," Anya pointed out, skewering some green beans on a fork.

"Laws which they immediately changed to avoid any other unscrupulous bitches getting off some rich asshole who wanted to eat exotic animals," Elsa retorted, ladling some more gumbo into her bowl.

"See, that's a very interesting case."

"It really wasn't. We had to dig through hundreds of cases worth of precedent, books of outdated law, and then we only spent a day in court before the charges were dismissed. The fun stuff is the arguments, not the research."

"I love research," Belle chimed in, prompting an aborted rude look from Elsa. Behave.

"See, she gets it," Anya grinned.

"Remember the precedent I found for you a few months ago, Ms. Agnarrsen? And the medical evidence?" Belle asked. I really should tell her she can call me Elsa. "When you had to establish that it wasn't malpractice by establishing how the extra surgeries were provably medically necessary."

"I think calling them medically necessary was a bit of a stretch, but it did end up saving the plaintiff's life, even if they didn't exactly like the results." Give her this one. "You did a good job finding the case law that helped establish that as a defense, as well as suggesting it in the first place." She saw Anya smile at her. "I had been planning on only arguing the contract law, the patient had signed allowing any further surgeries that the surgeon felt were necessary, and to pay for them. It just ended up sounding a lot more hollow when the doctor clearly hadn't kept to the spirit of the deal, so being able to make the case that he saved his patient's life was definitely a lot easier. Thank you." She gritted her teeth.

Belle's face lit up. "Thank you, Ms. Agnarrsen. That means a lot. I'm just glad I was able to help." She really is good at research.

"Hey, you managed to find a doctor that would give us that second opinion too, you really did a great job there." Unlike the case we worked together. "Her expert testimony really made the case."

Her grin grew even larger, as she dropped some gumbo on her dress. She dabbed at it with a napkin. "It's fine," she said to Tiana as the older woman started to stand up from her chair.

"How about the case with our ex-senator," Elsa reminded Anastasia, happy to be recalling the good times together.

"Oh yeah, I remember, our second year working for the firm. Back when we were still hiding our relationship so we didn't have to fill out HR's ridiculous paperwork. Wow the arguments we had to make for that guy."

"What, you mean when we had to claim that his interns had asked him to send them those pictures?" Elsa asked, grinning.

"Oh, is that the worst thing we did? Didn't you make one of those interns break down crying on the witness stand and insist that they were in love with the senator?"

"That was you, I just wrote the questions."

"Oh, that's right, I forgot," Anya smiled sadly at the memory. "We were terrible people."

"We're lawyers, that's what we do. We defend whoever needs us."

"No, we defended whoever could afford us. Between that and the workload, I was miserable there, I like being able to pick my clients. I don't know how you do it."

"Oh come on, Anya," Belle chided her. "Ms. Agnarrsen is right, everyone deserves a defense."

"The wealthy just deserve a better one?"

"Oh, so you're doing pro bono work now? Is that how you keep the lights on at your new firm?" Elsa asked, glaring at the other girl.

"Not pro bono work, no," Anastasia grumbled, "But I'm just taking a piece of what they win. At least I actually help people."

"So who're you helping now?" Elsa growled.

"Well if you must know," Anya announced, setting down an empty wine glass, "I'm helping a woman whose son killed himself after she sent him to a fucking conversion therapist. That helping people enough for you?"

All three of the other women stared at Anastasia. She looked from eye to eye, trying to figure out what was going on. "You're-" Elsa began, stunned. "You're the opposing counsel. I knew I should've finished reading those papers this weekend. You're representing Mrs. Hawkins." Her throat went dry.

Anya stared at her, as her eyes grew wide. She swallowed. "I knew it was your firm, but, they're actually having you on this case? Was it that asshole, Gaston? How the hell can you represent that monster?!"

Elsa slammed her fist on the table. "I have to. Okay? Yes, it was Gaston, and I can't blame him, the case looks a lot more reasonable with me representing Mr. Thompson. I'm sure that's why Ms. Hawkins went to you too."

"Oh, you have to?!" Anastasia yelled, standing up from the table and glaring daggers at her old friend.

"Yes."

"Or what? What would have happened if you refused it?"

"If I refused it, they likely would have let me go, while if I win it then I make equity," Elsa informed her ex, expending all of her energy to keep her voice calm.

"Oh, so you get a murderer off but get a promotion and a raise, so everything is fine," Anya laughed. "Why didn't you say so?"

"Anya-"

"No, fuck off, Elsa. You haven't changed at all. You're a power hungry monster." She took Belle by the hand. "We're leaving." Belle waved goodbye as she was dragged to the door. "I'll see you in court!"

Elsa and Tiana stared after their guests as they slammed the door behind them. "I guess we're not having beignets," Tiana joked, trying to relax Elsa, who was staring at the door like she was hoping to make it catch fire.

"Wednesday is going to be fun," Elsa laughed sardonically. "First time ever going against Anya in court, of course it's on this case."

"You'll do fine," Tiana insisted, placing a hand on her partner's shoulder.

"I know I will, that's what I'm afraid of."