Author's Note: Bless you all. You're lovely. I hope you like this scene, too - it's Kristanna, but I'm quite fond of it. I guess I prefer a darker take on this pairing than the norm, though I'm curious to know how you guys feel about it.
Scene 12: Anna, now
She's drunk, and he's not.
She stares down at her left ring finger, thinking that there should be something there, even though there hasn't been anything on it in ages—not for a few months, at least.
The music is blaring in the background, a multitude of too-bright colours dancing across her skin (which somehow glows sallow and pale under the lights), but she's trying to remember something: the joy she used to feel whenever she looked at that hand.
Now it's just a dull feeling of hate that courses through her at the sight—she can't muster the energy to be violently angry, like before—and she wishes, absently, that she could tear off that finger and throw it into the fjord like she did the ring.
She's tried to block that night on the boat from her memory, but it comes back to her at all the worst times, like right now, when Kristoff is asking her something—probably "are you okay?", since that seems to be his favourite phrase, when it comes to her—and she spins to meet his gaze, though the sudden movement makes bile rise in her throat.
"Anna—let me get you some water, all right?"
She still can't really hear him right, her vision blurred and hazy from the drinks she's been knocking back too quickly, but she can see him just fine, and she can see, clearly, that look on his face—those chocolate-coloured eyes soft with concern, his lips pressed together, his dark blonde bangs falling over the light sheen of sweat covering his forehead from the heat inside the bar—and she automatically feels a rush of resentment sweep through her, though it's tinged with a familiar sensation that settles at the bottom of her stomach like a pulse.
She frowns, deeply, and he touches her shoulder—whether to steady her or out of worry, she doesn't know—and then she grabs his face and kisses him, deeply.
He returns the kiss, at first; then, he pulls back in surprise, and holds her shoulders still, stopping her from trying to dive towards him again.
"Anna, you're—you're drunk," he tells her even as he's blushing, hard, and his pupils are dilated just as wide as hers. "You're not thinking straight."
Whatever small pool of want that had briefly overtaken her dissipates, and she scowls as she stands from her chair and slaps away his hands, fuming.
"Don't fuck with me," she hisses, and stalks off, fully intending to walk home, even if it means getting soaked in the rain that's currently pouring down in buckets, the wind whipping at her face.
Of course, he follows her out—she probably should have expected as much from him—and his footsteps are heavy against the pavement, ringing in her ears.
"You can't just leave like that," he scolds her, but she doesn't stop walking, even though the rain is biting at her skin. "You won't make it back by yourself."
She grinds on her heel as she turns around. "Watch me," she seethes petulantly, and ignores the stab of guilt that strikes her when she finally sees his furrowed brows, his frown, his crossed arms.
"At least let me give you a lift back," he reasons with her, reaching out to her—but she recoils from him, hugging herself, trying to gather her bearings against the rain falling sideways, hitting her skin like so many little knives.
"I don't get it, Kristoff," she begins, and there's an edge to his name that she doesn't intend to have, but that comes out anyway, "I don't get why you're doing this when I just left you in front of all those people, and I treat you like dirt, and I—"
"Anna, I—"
He cuts her off, and his face is red—but it's a different kind of red than it was back in the bar, and now he's looking down at the ground, unable to meet her furious stare—and after a while of standing like that, she starts to wonder why he didn't continue.
Looking at him, though, she has an inkling of what he was going to say; and fear, cold and brittle, drips along her skin when she realises that she's not ready to hear something like that, because it's too much, too soon, and she can't bear to imagine the disappointment on his face when she tells him I can't.
But then, his shoulders slump in a defeated way—and that's unlike him, she thinks uneasily, guiltily—and he gestures to the parking lot.
"Come on—I'll drive you home," he murmurs, and she vaguely recalls that he said the same thing to her the first time they met, months ago, when she was in a fit of despair and he just happened to find her there, on the street corner, miles from home.
He walks off, knowing, somehow, that she'll follow him.
She does.