So...my hands slipped, and I kinda-sorta wrote the meeting of Pitch and Anna. This is a sidealong story, and can be ignored if necessary.

Mainly, I'm hitting major writers' block with the actual story. With any luck, this might shake something loose.

So excuse the quick work, it's definitely not my best, but with any luck this means the next chapter will be plot.

So, let's just see how this goes.

There were times when Anna can't help but wonder...just whose boyfriend Kristoff is really, her's or Elsa's?

Nine times out of ten, when she'd come home from a hard day at medical school, if Kristoff was there, he'd be in Elsa's workshop, watching with wide eyes as her sister created delicate works of art out of ice, like magic, his St. Bernard, Sven, watching with wide eyes.

Once in a while, Kristoff would be lounging on their couch, his head pillowed on Sven's flank as he plucked out a tune on his mandolin. She'd walk by him and wiggle his big toe through his slippers, giving him warning to get the instrument out of the way as she dropped her winter coat, and dropped herself over the back of the couch to land on his lap.

He'd laugh and wrap his arms around her, and those were the nights she liked best. Some of those nights, Elsa would even come out of her workshop to chill on her favorite chair and watch a movie with them. So she'd wind up with her head on her boyfriend's chest, and her feet precariously perched on the armrest of her big sister's chair.

But she would just feel so warm and loved.

The day before she started to work at the clinic, it was one of the days she came back and Kristoff was in her sister's workshop. He wasn't doing anything wrong. Kristoff never did anything wrong.

She came home bursting with the good news, that she had gotten a great internship at the pediatrician and that she was starting right away.

But he wouldn't move. Now, it's not like this was new, not to her. As he had said on many of an occasion, "Ice is [his] life!".

Elsa couldn't hear her, not with her music blasting in her ears. Anna couldn't even approach. Unlike her sister's perpetually cold hands, the redhead's hands were like small furnaces. She could barely handle frozen chocolate without it starting to melt all across her fingers. As such, she had learned the hard way that her presence was not welcome in the deep sanctum of Elsa's frozen workshop. One wrong step from the notoriously clumsy girl, and all of the beautiful crystalline structures would be destroyed.

Kristoff, on the other hand, could remain statue-still when the situation called for it, and Sven would too, if the alternative was being separated from his beloved master. All he needed was a carrot, and he'd lie down at Kristoff's feet like a gigantic throw-rug.

Elsa was forming a queen of ice that day, working on the embroidered design on her dress, leaving her face a frozen block of ice atop a slender neck. She must still be deliberated on what she wanted the face, the expression, the head in general to look like.

Sven was the only one who had seemed to see her that night, as she quietly closed the door behind her, fighting the urge to slam it, but that would risk destroying her sister's masterpieces.

She leaned against the door, sliding down the frame until she was sitting on the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees.

Days like this were the days she was especially aware of the gap between them. Days like these were the days that she'd wonder just what happened at Elsa's private school. Why was just the older one sent? Right after it happened, their parents had said that it just had to do with age. However, once Anna turned thirteen, the same age Elsa was sent away, it became clear to her that the situations were completely different.

She crumpled the letter in her fingers as she leaned her head back against the door, willing for no one to come out to find her. And all the same, wishing that the would, if only to know that they saw her.

A couple of hours later, when Elsa and Kristoff emerged from the workshop, Anna was putting dinner on the table, smiling like a loon as she served her sister and boyfriend, and they sat down to dinner.

She told them about her accomplishment, and they responded with the appropriate levels of excitement and surprise and pleasure. Too much, it looks like they didn't think she could do it. Too little, and it looks like they don't care.

Elsa toed the line perfectly, like always, something surely taught to her at her fancy private school. Kristoff, like always, blundered right through the line. She pretended not to notice, and she pecked him gently on the cheek when he took her dishes up for washing.

She had heard quite a bit about Dr. Pitchinier. He's the best, that much is clear to anyone who knows about him. Favorite? Not so much, not among his colleagues, his patients, and certainly not his residents.

He holds everyone to his nearly impossible standards, and the only reason that they were only "nearly" is that somehow he managed to fulfill them every single time.

The story was that he had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a superhuman ability to get everything done. People said that he has gigantic dark bags under his eyes, despite always being full of energy. He's never caught sleeping on the job.

And he knows everything that happens in his clinic.

EVERYTHING.

A kid comes in with a sneeze that's more than a sniffle, he knows and is promptly whisking the kid away to the back for treatment.

People at the medical school nicknamed him the Bogeyman.

To be honest, Anna was a bit scared.

Her ex-boyfriend, Hans, had lasted only a month under his tutelage.

Her cousin, Rapunzel, only one week.

The guy had a huge range of failures in residents, no one lasting more than a year. The record was nine months.

Within a few minutes of entering the clinic, she saw him. Tall and pale, towering over everyone there. She saw him leading a mother and child to the lobby, a lolly in his long spidery fingers that he pressed into the child's small hand.

The little kid smiled

at the looming figure, unwrapping the plastic and sticking it firmly in his mouth. He clings to his mother's hand, but more out of habit than out of fear.

Anna found herself smiling as the mother and child checked out of the clinic. Maybe this wouldn't be so difficult after all.

"You're late." A deep English accent draws her attention, and the doctor is looming over her now. He turns on his heel and moves to the back rooms, his heels clicking on the polished floor. Biting her lip, Anna scurries after him.

That first night, when she returns home, she trudges past her boyfriend, lounging on her couch, and barely inclines her head at her sister, busy moving to heat something up for her at dinner. She goes straight upstairs, to her room on the third floor, and closes the door behind her. In a daze, she removes her Tigger-patterned scrubs, and pulls on her pajamas.

And she falls face-first onto her bed and is out like a light.

Everyone had warned her that residency would be hard, but she didn't think they were appropriately detailing the sheer level of work she had to do under Dr. Pitchinier. She could not recall ever being caught up in such a whirlwind of activity in her life, and she still could barely keep up with the doctor in charge.

She noticed how the other pediatricians gave her pitying looks as she scurried past, but she ignored them the best she could. Every day that she went in, her goal remained the same: to succeed where no one else had. She wasn't going anywhere.

It was hard work, but she watched the children and how Doctor Pitchinier glided through each room, quick and efficient. But even that wasn't enough. Not until she saw that one boy.

He had come in at the end of the day, alone, when even her high-wattage smile was beginning to become a little strained around the edges. He had come alone, shocking white hair atop a beanpole figure. She couldn't figure out his age looking at him, but his tired smile put her's to shame in brilliance.

"Heya, Koz," he greeted the doctor with a chummy elbow in the gut. Quickly, she glanced at the doctor to see how he'd react.

She blinked rapidly at seeing a soft smile crease the doctor's face as he ruffled the young boy's hair, "C'mon Jackie-boy, let's take a look at you."

She dialed frantically. C'mon, Elsa, pick up! Kristoff! Someone?

She stared with wide eyes at her car, tire completely fat. She had noticed the pressure was a little low, but she hadn't thought it was so bad! She had thought she could've fixed it tomorrow.

Apparently she was far off on that one. And now the car repair shop was closed, and she was standing outside in the fading light, wishing frantically for either her sister or her boyfriend to pick up.

She let out a whimper as it went to voice mail once again, eyes darting frantically at the setting sun.

Anna let out a loud pathetic yelp as a hand clasped her shoulder. She whirled around, her foot already coming up in attempt to strike the intruder, but he was already backing off, just out her range, and looking down at her skeptically.

"Doctor Pitchinier," she breathed out in relief, even as she noticed that he looked even gloomier in the dim light.

"Car trouble?" he inclined one of his thin eyebrows at her bright orange Porsche.

She flinched, "A bit."

He walked past her, and her shoulders slouched as she watched him go, before her eyes returned back to her phone and she desperately continued to punch numbers in with enough force to nearly jam her fingers.

"Aren't you coming?"

This time she dropped her phone, her desperate attempts to keep a grip on it failing as it tumbled out of her hands.

"Excuse me?" she asked as she grabbed her phone off the ground, looking up through the bangs that came loose from her braid as she shoved it out of her face.

"Anna," his voice made her name sound like a princess's as he gestured to a long black vehicle, "Would you like a ride?"

As she registered his words, a wide grin stretched across her face, "Wait, you mean me?"

He sighed, reaching into his pocket for his keys, "No, I mean the other ginger-headed girl named Anna in this parking lot."

She bit her lip in embarrassment, nodding her head as she locked the doors of her car and scurried to the doctor's car. With a smooth movement, he unlocked the door, and opened it for her to enter.

When Doctor Pitchinier dropped her off, with a stern-mouthed promise to return to take her to her car the next morning, despite her insistence that she didn't need one, she didn't bother going to Elsa's workshop, even thought the lights were on in the house and Kristoff's car was in the driveway.

She only stopped in the kitchen to throw left overs in the microwave for a quick nuking, before retreating upstairs with slipper-padded feet. She curled up on her bed, popping a ravioli into her mouth as she thought about the day.

Yes, she thought, she was definitely going to enjoy working there. Where she felt perfectly at home and at ease, even with the difficult workload and stress.

And maybe, maybe when she became a full-fledged pediatrician, maybe she could work there too.