NOTE: Well… let me put it this way: you guys should probably buckle up for this chapter, because it's going to be a bumpy ride!
~ Chapter Twenty-Eight ~
"This… is Mulan?" Elsa asked, a little caught off guard. Perhaps more than a little; she was shrinking back to her own side of the beach blanket, eyes flicking between Anna and the stranger who had wandered into their midst.
What's more, the stranger had dressed a little warm for the beach. Puma sneakers and baggy jeans held up by a belt, plus a white hoodie over a black t-shirt with gold printing of a dollar sign in the middle. She was definitely panting from the effort of being under all that weight with the sun beating down upon her.
"What are you doing here?" Anna asked, eyebrows narrowing. "I… thought you were gone this morning."
"You never…" Mulan held up a finger, falling to support herself against her knees as she regained some breath. Both of the other women waited for her to do so. "Texted me back."
"What?"
"You never replied. So I… I was gonna just go, but then…" Her hand made a gesture as if to convey something, but nothing clear.
"Wait, wait… okay, hang on. Let me look." She pulled out her phone and checked; no notification. She unlocked it and went to her messages…
And there they were. She had so many missed texts from Mulan! Just glancing through them, she could tell they were all asking if she was okay and apologising; she didn't have the wherewithal to read any of it at the moment.
"Oh…" Looking up, she frowned and said, "My phone died last night; I had to put it back on the charger this morning when I found it. God, I… wow, I am so sorry."
Shaking her head, Mulan ran a hand over her hair; it was pulled into a small ponytail, but a few strands came loose while she was jogging over the dunes. "No, you… it's… can I have some water, maybe?"
Startled out of her semi-comatose state, Elsa provided her water bottle. Chugging half of it took a few seconds, but then Mulan seemed to recover just enough to speak normally.
"Easy," Anna said softly. "Um… so I know I kinda took off last ni-"
"I should never have called you that," she cut her off urgently. "I was trying to… you know, be the man, whatever that means, I don't know, it… so far it's worked pretty well? Chicks dig me being strong, assertive. But I shouldn't have just assumed, and thrown that in there while we were in the middle of…" Her head bowed again, eyes screwed shut. "God, I'm such a piece of shit!"
Silence swept over them. Not true silence; there was still the sound of laughter further down the beach, the waves, seagulls overhead. Nevertheless, it felt oddly quiet after Mulan had just made such a heartfelt apology.
"In the middle of what?"
Both of them turned to Elsa. When the blonde merely blinked at them, Anna asked, "Are you serious? You're asking this?"
"I'm… sorry, that wasn't supposed to be rude. Should I go? I-"
"No way," Mulan told her with an awkward little smile. "I mean, you're ELSA; as far as I'm concerned, you can go wherever the fuck you want!"
While Elsa was tilting her head at that one, Anna sighed and turned back to Mulan. "Look, it's… I got what you were doing later, after I ran off. That it wasn't really…" She cleared her throat. "In the moment, though, I panicked. It didn't feel right anymore, I couldn't help it. Just that word made me feel like… like I was beneath y-"
"I know!" Mulan burst out, gripping the sides of her head anxiously. "Why did I dothat?! Why am I more worried about 'swagger' than your feelings? Like, I thought that was what chicks wanted from me, so I just… went with it, but the one time I'm really into one, it just… backfires, horribly!"
"Really into one?" Anna breathed, eyes wide.
"Wait, wait," Elsa put in. "I'm confused. What word was said? What did she do?"
Anna turned toward her, still casting another worried look at Mulan before she explained. "It wasn't that bad. I just overreacted to her dirty talk."
"I asked her if she wanted to be my little bitch," Mulan clarified. Apparently, she wouldn't have any of Anna's sugarcoating what she had done. "It was stupid, and I shouldn't have done it. Even if I was trying to be-"
"You called her what?"
The atmospheric shift was palpable. Anna had seen this before, twice now; the ice queen that the media thought she was coming to the surface when she needed to call upon that persona. Mulan bowed her head even further.
"I… I don't think I should say it again. It's already bad enough I said it the first time."
Clearing her throat, Anna tried to cut her off; bypass the incoming storm. "Okay, listen, it wasn't as-"
"Say it again," Elsa insisted. "What did you call Anna?"
"M-my little bitch?" Mulan tried, with an awkward little smile. If they weren't in the middle of what was rapidly turning into an argument, Anna would have found it both amusing and adorable.
"Really? And is she? Is that how you see her?"
"Of course not! I already-"
"Then why would you say that? What possible use did you think it would be to utilise a phrase so… so loaded with problems that I don't even know where to start? How could it have been the basis on which to form a lasting and loving relationship?"
Anna's eyes were wide as she looked between the two of them. Somehow, even though Elsa was kneeling on a beach blanket in a tiny blue bikini, her presence commanded respect. She herself felt like cowering, even though they had been hanging out together for a week and been mostly equals the entire time.
How much worse must Mulan have felt? It was clear from her expression that she had definitely been feeling horrible before, but Elsa's words cut through her surface regret and found a whole new wellspring of it underneath.
"I… I didn't… didn't think-"
"NO, you didn't. Not enough."
Leaning over, Anna whispered, "Elsa…"
"It's okay," Mulan said, taking a deep breath and holding up her hands. "It's okay, I fucked up, and I know I did. Promise. I'll just… I won't ever talk to her again."
"Too late." Elsa's face and voice were only growing colder, sharper. More austere and forbidding. Anna didn't really understand why any of this was such a big deal to her… until she continued. "Mistake or no mistake, you made her feel unsafe in the one moment when she should have felt most loved; you going away is not going to undo that. You'd better pray that this doesn't have any long-lasting repercussions."
"Or what?" Anna asked. At first, Elsa didn't seem to hear her. She grasped her forearm and shook her, whispering, "Elsa!"
"I'll leave," Mulan told both of them, turning to go and tripping over the sand, unused to running on it in sneakers. Gritting her teeth as she spat out the sand she had eaten, she pushed herself upright again and continued walking.
"WAIT!" Anna sprang to her feet, having similar trouble. But before she could take two steps, she heard a startled, meek question.
"Wh-where are you going?"
Turning back, she glared twin daggers at her friend. "You went too far. She already felt like shit, you didn't have to rub it in."
"But I… she hurt you." Elsa looked away from that gaze, staring down at her hand as she made an open-palmed gesture. "Isn't that what I was supposed to do? Protect my friend?"
"Not by ruining someone else's self-esteem completely. She's… you really fucked her up, and over one little thing I was probably gonna get over. Punishment didn't fit the crime. Besides, why don't you think I could take care of myself?"
Elsa's voice finally regained a fraction of its usual strength. Nothing near the murderous storm it had been when she gave Mulan the dressing-down, but less fragile than when Anna first started letting her know where the line lay. "Because… you ran. She called you that horrible thing, and you felt it necessary to run away. I… isn't that when I step in?"
Anna had to admit that, from Elsa's perspective, that was when she ought to step in — even if she went completely overboard. Sighing, she held up a hand and said, "Just stay here. We'll talk about this when I get back."
"Back from where?"
"Back from trying to convince Mulan she isn't a monster for… for messing up with one word! GOD!"
Anna took off down the beach. She distantly could hear Elsa calling her name, but didn't turn back; there would be time to worry about her later. Mulan would be gone and that would be far too late to fix.
"Mulan, please!" she panted when she saw the girl approaching the taxi. It had taken her all the way past the sand and onto the nearest street to catch up; that was obviously where Mulan had spotted her and thought she would try to make things right.
Only to run into Hurricane Elsa, she thought glumly.
"No, it's fine," Mulan said as she held the door open. "I'm gone."
"But Elsa wasn't right about all that!" Anna panted, now feeling some of the fatigue that Mulan had felt running to their blanket. "You didn't… 'ruin' me forever or anything, you just messed up… one time! That's not-"
"No, Anna." When Mulan turned back, there were tear tracks running down her cheeks, even if her expression was as bold as ever. "No, she's absolutely right. I have to work harder on myself. Train harder, be better, be… more authentic, and not just who I think I'm supposed to be, or who women supposedly want. It's…" She shook her head, eyes closing. "No. I don't know what it is yet, but I'll find it somewhere along the line."
Anna's hands alighted upon her forearm. She could hear her own voice growing tight. "Don't go like this. Don't… I don't even know what's happening!"
The other hand came to rest on top of one of Anna's, and she whispered, "Maybe someday, I'll be good enough for you. When I've figured out who the hell I am. If we're both still single by then… I've got your number, Red-in-the-Green. Take care of yourself."
Then, to her surprise, Mulan leaned in and left a light kiss on her lips before jerking back and closing the car door. Fast and hard, and without room for her to protest or stop her. It was startling, enough so that Anna was still blinking in shock when the vehicle pulled away.
"NO! Shit, no, I didn't get a- MULAN! WAIT!" It was too late; the driver was being paid to listen to his passenger, not to the desperate redhead waving her arms back and forth, staggering down the sidewalk.
~ o ~
By the time she got back to the blanket, she could see Elsa was sitting perfectly still with her arms around her knees. Nothing else was disturbed whatsoever, which was remarkable, given that it had taken a good five minutes of sobbing before Anna could scrape herself up off the sidewalk and wend her way back to their little beach-camp.
"Okay," Anna groaned as she sank down on the blanket. "Whew! That really… yeah, that happened."
"You've been crying." It was a statement, delivered in a numb tone.
"Well… a little," she had to admit. "Nothing major. I, um… I'm still pretty pissed off at how hard you came d-"
"No, no, I'm… you have a good point. I don't know what I'm doing." She looked down at the sunglasses, folded up and clenched in one of her hands. "I thought I understood how everything worked, and…"
And what? Elsa never finished that thought. Finally, Anna scooted a little closer and whispered, "And you didn't? Welcome to the real world."
"No. No, this is more important than the world." The same flat, disbelieving tone. "I let you down. I was trying so hard to never do that, and I… there I go again."
"That's the problem," Anna told her reasonably. "You were trying too hard. You don't have to do that, okay?"
Without warning, Elsa stood, picking up her bag. She looked over her shoulder at Anna and said, "You should stay here. Enjoy the beach for a little while. I'll… yeah, I'll leave you alone."
"Don't! Wait, please don't do that!"
Elsa had already taken a couple of steps, but she stopped. She was listening, even if unconvinced.
"So I'm mad at you. And I'm really upset that things ended with Mulan the way they did, but… don't run off like this! What's that gong to solve?"
"I can't wreck everything if I'm not around to wreck it," she told her reasonably. Still numb, still clenching and unclenching her fists as the only visible display that anything was going on inside of her other than silence and emptiness. "I was so sure what I was doing was right… and then it was wrong, it was ALL wrong, and Mulan was upset, and you were angry, and I thought I d-did a good job but I did a bad job, like I always do, nothing's good enough, no note is high enough, or strong enough, none of my chords work, my hands aren't large enough for the keys, legs aren't long enough for the moves, mind's not fast enough, creative enough, I c-can't…" She began to hyperventillate, even though her tone still sounded only the slightest bit more anxious than before.
"Elsa, that isn't it at all," she whispered, beside herself at everything that had just came tumbling out of her friend. And Elsa seemed to realise it at the same time, her hand coming up to cover her mouth as she stared back over her shoulder, eyes wide and fearful.
"No. I… well, those were… examples, but… you're not…" Her words faltered, their feeble attempts to explain away her anxiety vanishing like smoke. "What I did was wrong. I interfered, you and Mulan should have discussed things, I was not important to that conversation. I apologise."
"Els-"
"I have to go."
Turning, she began to walk swiftly over the dunes. A more organised retreat than Mulan's, perhaps, but a retreat all the same… with the same amount of personal humiliation.
~ To Be Continued ~
