Omega [REDUX]
Chapter 35
This is all my fault.
The noise and the lights of the hangar and the darkness outside seemed to blur together through the windows of the dropship as it rotated to land, the engines' humming dulled by the thick hull plates that she had cloaked. Nothing was particularly coherent to her anymore; one moment she was still strapped into her seat in the troop hold, the next she found herself running alongside the team of paramedics, keeping pace with the medical gurney being wheeled down the hallway.
"Ma'am," one of the paramedics placed a hand on her shoulder. "You can't go in here."
Elsa blinked, shook her head to clear it, and looked back up. "Sorry… what did you say again?"
"I said, you're not allowed in here."
She glanced above her. She was at the quarantine section. It didn't matter; she couldn't leave Anna like this. She had to go with her. "I—"
Another figure stepped up from behind her. "Let her in. Orders came direct from HQ. You'll need to keep her here as well, for when our patient wakes up."
She turned. It was Hans. He held forth his identification and the corresponding orders on a datapad, but what really seemed to convince the medic was the way Hans stared him down. "Yes sir," he quickly replied, and turned back to Elsa to say, "but I'll need you to wait aside while we tend to her with preliminary checkups."
"Of course," Elsa barely managed. The grief was getting to her again.
This is all my fault.
"Elsa!"
A voice form behind her. Merida's. She almost couldn't muster the strength to turn around and face them. She didn't know how to tell them. But she forced herself around, to look them in the face and—
"Sorry," Hans said, extending out his hand to block their passage. Merida, Rapunzel and Belle reluctantly took a step back.
"What happened?" Rapunzel asked. "Is Anna okay? Are you okay?"
The answer to both those questions is no. "Not… exactly," she stuttered, averting her head. "Anna's been… compromised."
Her hand went to her mouth, and a choked sob came out. Merida clutched her by the shoulders as Belle asked, "How bad is it?"
Elsa turned her head, glancing at the gurney that had now disappeared into another doorway, which the trio could not see. "Let's just say she's going to need help."
Hans led her by the shoulder into the quarantine zone, the sliding doors severing the space between her and the trio outside. "A lot of help," she muttered, as the doors slid shut.
"You okay?" Hans asked as the doors turned airtight, hissing as they did, and a separate regulator kicked in. "You look pretty banged up."
"Yeah, no shit," Elsa said rather curtly. She was unwittingly venting her anger on Hans, and she was regretting it. "If you'd seen what happened—"
"I did," Hans said calmly, looking down and placing his hands on his hips. "The soldiers' recorded footage transmitted to us once the dropship had entered friendly airspace. I've seen what she is." He sighed as he looked down the hallway to where Anna had been wheeled to. "I'm sorry."
Elsa sniffled. She tried to force back a sob. Then the full extent of her grief and guilt and despair slammed into her and she broke down crying, the sounds of her anguish echoing down the hallway. Hans pulled her into an embrace, trying to comfort her however he could, but it didn't help one bit.
This is all my fault.
Hours passed before the paramedics informed them that Anna's condition was stable, but they just didn't know when she would wake up. Through her tears Elsa adamantly insisted to stay on and wait, and Hans helpfully turned down the doctor's protests. After another bout of crying Elsa finally managed to control her emotions to an extent where she could function again.
"What do you want to do now?" Hans had asked.
"Wait."
Hans told her that it was probably best to prepare for when Anna woke up. Despite the numerous teams dedicated to studying Empyrean technology Elsa was still the closest thing that the UIF had to an expert on Ascendants. He'd handed her a datapad containing everything research teams had picked up about Elsa herself when she'd been delivered into UIF hands.
Not that Elsa hadn't gone through the files before.
But she forced herself to look through every painful detail if it would help Anna; how she was basically clueless when she woke up, how distanced she was from the outside world, and how long it took for her to transition into an emotionally and physically stable state. It was agonizing to look at everything that reminded her of who she used to be and where she had come from, almost as tormenting as the fact that she was the cause as to why Anna had to suffer through this.
The next few hours involved her sitting in a corner of the quarantine zone's operations command scanning through the data, quietly sniffling as she did. Hans, seeing how obsessed Elsa had become, requested to move her into a recently emptied and now redundant control room, converting it into a temporary study, with access to all of the relevant UIF database information. Elsa had wanted to thank him profusely for that, but on hindsight she wasn't sure if she did; she was too deep in her own grief to tell.
She reverted to her old habits, trying to compartmentalize, trying to figure out definite ways to help Anna to distract her from the reality at hand. She surrounded herself with projections of datafiles and documentations, the entire room turning a full shade of blue. She concluded that Anna would adapt faster than she had done because she was comparatively familiar with her environment. Aside from the augmentation nothing else about Anna would have changed. She was essentially the same person, except faster and stronger, and could turn herself into a living, adapting weapon.
The ultimate embodiment of Empyrean's Ascendants.
Elsa collapsed into a chair and started sobbing again, a sorry sight to behold in her icy sequined dress. If only she hadn't met Anna when she was introduced into the academy to acclimatize. If only she'd kept to herself, rejected Anna's advances, and stopped herself from falling in love. If only she hadn't given into her own feelings for Anna, and left herself in her own misery and solitude. All of this wouldn't have happened to Anna if it wasn't for her.
Everything that had happened was because of her.
The room was full of more dents than she could count by the time she realized her hands were getting sore. Elsa buried her face in her lap, devastated, the cycle of despair and blame crushing her soul relentlessly, her emotions dragging her heart out and beating it to a pulp over and over again.
She thought she was done with her past, but her past wasn't done with her. And then she just had to drag Anna into this mess—
Someone knocked on the door of the room, and she snapped out of it, for whatever good the brief respite did her. "Come in." She didn't realise she was that tired until she took stock of the effort she had to muster to say those words.
She watched wearily as Hans pushed open the door and strolled into the room. He was wearing a different suit than when she had last seen him. He stopped and stared at her.
"You don't look very good," he deadpanned.
Elsa managed a grimace. "I didn't notice."
"The place appears to be worse off compared to when I was last here," he remarked as he looked around the room, noting the various imprints adorning the metal walls. He glanced back at Elsa. "I assume the same can be said about your hands."
She didn't respond, but sniffled involuntarily.
"Do you have any idea what time it is?"
"No."
Hans reached over to one of her displays and brought up a separate window with a flourish of his fingers. "Then you won't have any idea what day it is either."
Elsa peered at the display with sore eyes. Wednesday, 1730 hours, it read.
She'd deployed yesterday at 1900 hours, and had gone through intense combat, and turned into an emotional wreck all before reaching the base again.. Even with enhanced physiology, the effort was bound to take its toll.
She was way too tired to do the exact math but she got Hans' point. "Fine. I'll just… slump over on this table or something." She didn't want to leave. Not when she didn't know when Anna was going to wake up.
"You sure you don't want to go somewhere more comfortable?" Hans asked. "There are still bunk beds in the base, you know."
Elsa sighed. "Given everything that's happened, I doubt a bed would make me feel comfortable anyways. Besides, I need to be here when Anna wakes up."
"I had a feeling you'd say something like that." From behind him Hans withdrew a small, but thick beige-coloured sack and placed it on the table, next to Elsa's array of projections. "Which is why I bought this."
She reached over and pulled out the contents of the sack. It was a sleeping bag.
"Thanks," she managed, unrolling it and laying it on the floor. "Beats the table, that's for sure."
"I know you're worried about Anna," Hans went on as Elsa got off her chair and crawled into the bag, leaving the projections on, "but try not to kill yourself while you're at it."
Elsa let her dress change form, letting the icy cape dissolve away. "I won't."
"Well, if I know you well enough you'll be scrounging over every single meticulous detail to ensure you fully understand the rehabilitation process. And you'll probably do that three times over."
"You don't understand," she said from where she lay. "I'm the reason why she's in this mess."
"Even if I didn't beg to differ, the only way you can effectively help her is to ensure your own well-being."
"But—"
He held up a hand, signaling for her to listen. "I know how much you love her. And I understand that you're far more physically capable than the likes of everyone else here. But to help Anna, you need to take care of yourself as well. You're the only person here who understands her, and her current state, better than anyone else."
She nodded, the emotional maelstrom within her quieting somewhat. "I don't know if I can do this." She tried snuggling under the sleeping bag a little bit. "I don't know if we can do this."
"You'll get through this." He affirmed as he moved to exit the room. "You both will."
He killed the room's lights, closing the door with a click in the same motion. Elsa lay back upon the floor, looked up at the ceiling, and thought about Anna as she closed her eyes.
"I hope so."
The next few days passed in a blur, her heart throbbing with agony with each passing moment. She barely ate or drank, only doing so when she was extremely fatigued. Most of her time she spent looking for as much information as she could. Anything that might help Anna, she flagged and marked for future use.
The room she temporarily inhabited was permanently illuminated by the glow of holograms, drawing data from the UIF records and the team attending to Anna. Periodically, her eyes would dart to a biological scan of Anna's body, on the lookout for any abnormalities, signs that something was about to go wrong.
She couldn't bring herself to leave to go anywhere. She would later look back and consider her behavior as borderline obsessed, but she was far too worried to leave her work. Not that she didn't trust the quarantine operators to do their job; she was just too worried. But now and again she would leave her enclave of displays and data and wander through the quarantine zone, past the research teams running tests on their only subject, past the administrators and their watchful eyes.
She'd find herself outside the containment chamber Anna resided in, the space between her and her lover cut off by a tier-5 quarantine door, and the veil of unconsciousness that continued to shroud Anna.
Her ice powers were of no comfort; she'd tried to meditate, but the ice only showed her Anna's face over and over again in varying expressions of agony, panic and despair. She couldn't deny how worried she was. She could never tell when the wetness on her face were phantom tears, or real ones rolling down her cheeks. The pain in her heart only seemed to alleviate slightly when her feet took her outside Anna's room, gazing through the reinforced glass at the serene form within. To some extent, Anna looked peaceful.
But if Elsa knew the augmentation process as well as she thought she did, it was just the calm before the storm.
At some point during her periodic vigils outside Anna's room, gazing at the prone form that lay within and the team that scurried around her, she heard the doors of the quarantine zone slide open, and close again with a hiss. The soft creaking of wheels greeted her ears.
"Good evening," Charles said as he wheeled himself over to her. He glanced up at her as she turned to him and gave him a crisp salute. "I… don't think that will be necessary."
"You're clearly here on official business," Elsa noted, "given the uniform."
"True, but given my division technically declares you a severe threat to UIF and its citizens…" He shrugged, leaning back against the seat of the wheelchair. "Didn't feel like it was appropriate for you to give that salute."
"You're still brass."
He nodded slowly. "I regret that we met under the circumstances that we did." He glanced down at his legs. "In another life, you'd have been a good friend."
She didn't respond. She didn't know how to. Instead she just stared through the window.
"You two a thing or something?"
A small smile twisted her lips ever so slightly. It wasn't a proper smile, still marred by anguish, but her cheeks welcomed the sensation. She couldn't remember the last time she had smiled since Anna had been taken. "Something like that."
"Explains why Hans told with such surety that you'd only be here, and nowhere else." He brought out a datapad. "I have information regarding your deployment arrangements—"
He cut himself off and looked up. "Looks like they're looking for you."
Confused, she turned around. An operator was jogging down the hallway. "Ma'am? Are you Elsa?"
"Yes."
"The same Elsa that General Hans asked to keep around?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Well, looks like you're up." The operator gestured to the room. "Our patient is waking up. We're going in to make sure everything's okay, and after that you can talk to her."
Her head never snapped around so quickly; through the reinforced glass her keen observation skills confirmed the operators' words. Anna was indeed stirring.
It was as if a great burden had been lifted from her chest. Anna's awake. She's… she's okay. The smile on her lips grew wider as she pressed her hands to the glass, trying to see better as the operators moved in, shutting the door behind them.
Maybe she would be redeemed for her actions to some degree after all.
Something was in her ear.
That was the first thing she noticed. It didn't seem like a physical symptom like an itch, and for now her mind was far too groggy to tell what it was. But it was there.
Are those… voices?
A wave of revitalizing energy seemed to wash over her gently, slowly, caressing her back to life. Everything was blurry and unclear, but for now she felt peaceful and at rest. It was a nice feeling, especially considering how exhausted she felt.
And then the noises began to yell in her ear.
Her eyes flew open, the white lights above her blinding her as she grit her teeth and slammed her hands over her ears. Her breaths came sharp and fast as the torrent of sound assailed her ears, but she couldn't block it out, no matter how hard she pressed her hands down.
"Patient is waking up—" one voice screamed.
"Something's not right—" said another.
"Alpha Romeo 2-7 this is Air Traffic Control, need you to alter flight path—"
"Heart rate is increasing drastically—"
"Notify quarantine control—"
Anna let out a scream of anguish as she curled up into the ball, almost missing the blankets that draped over her standard-issue clothing that covered her bodice. Her vision cleared; she took in her surroundings in a desperate attempt to locate the source of the sound. All she saw was a room resembling a hospital ward, but seemingly more reinforced, and two medical personnel approaching her.
And then a targeting reticule popped up.
What the fuck?!
"Ma'am?" Her head whipped up; despite the noise swirling around her she somehow still heard the doctor speak. "Are you alright?"
Through her eyes a datafeed materialized next to the doctor, scrolling through lines of information. The doctor's full name, age, bio signs and UIF records. Alarmed, Anna tried to turn away, only for the same to happen to the other doctor standing beside her bed.
More details seemed to materialize: the model numbers and details of each and every medical apparatus that lay within the room, x-ray scans of the mechanisms that powered the containment systems of her wards. And through it all the screaming of the voices outside never ceased.
What is going on with me? She wanted to cry, but she was so confused, nothing made sense to her, why was everything like this? Why was her vision augmented?
What happened to me—
Images flashed before her eyes; images of her dancing with Elsa, images of her being abducted, images of Elsa fading from her line of sight—
Oh god. She glanced down at her hands. Am I… Where am I? With Empyrean? I've been captured, I've got to get out, I—
Her hands turned to metal.
"Fuck! Holy fuck, what the hell—?"
"Ma'am?" The doctor asked. "Are you okay?"
"What is wrong with me?!" she yelled, dropping her hands to her sides and staring at the doctors. "What have you done with me?"
"Subject has heightened signs of aggression—"
"Biosigns spiking—"
"Put her down! Now!"
Through the corner of her eye she watched the doctor reach behind her lab coat. Almost instantaneously an x-ray scan popped up, revealing a small device that her augmented vision identified as a tranquilizer syringe.
Before she knew it Anna's arm had lashed out, metal plates along her limb morphing it into an immobilizer; a forceful blast of air slammed into the doctor, knocking her into the reinforced glass window. The body fell limp to the floor.
"Holy shit—!"
"Restrain her! Do it now—"
Anna glanced down at her right hand in shock, fearfully eyeing the mechanism her arm had morphed into. "Oh my god," she muttered, "I didn't mean… I didn't mean to—"
"Take her down now!"
The other doctor had drawn his own syringe, but Anna was too quick for him; before she realized what she was doing her other arm shot out and grabbed him by the neck, her grip tightening with every passing second. His eyes widened as he choked, his syringe clattering to the floor as Anna grappled with the never-ceasing voices in her head.
"Get security down here!"
"What the hell is going on?"
"What the hell is all this?" she demanded from her hostage, in spite of her confusion and pain. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!"
The first sign Elsa noticed was how Anna curled into a ball all of a sudden. It was innocuous at first, but then she noticed how much strength Anna was using to cover her ears. Something wasn't right.
She believed the now approaching doctors would have to alleviate whatever discomfort Anna was facing.
And then Anna had blasted one into the reinforced glass she was standing at.
"My god," Charles had said as Elsa scrambled to the main quarantine door trying to find a way in. "She's gone completely mental."
Frantically Elsa scanned the door for its entry panel, and tried to access it. No luck. Whatever she pressed gave her an "unauthorized request" error, and refused to budge the door. "Dammit." She slammed her fist upon the metal frame in frustration. In a testament to its strength, the impact did not leave a dent, and her hand began to hurt.
"Let me in!" she yelled to the other doctor, who promptly ignored her and pulled out his own tranquilizer syringe.
He's fucking dead.
Exactly as she expected, Anna's other hand lashed out and seized the doctor by the neck. He dropped his syringe, partly out of pain, partly out of shock. She watched Anna's fingers tighten, prompting her to slam her fists against the door repeatedly. If she couldn't get in fast enough, someone was bound to get hurt.
"Someone get this thing open!" she yelled down the doorway. "I need to get in there!"
"Quarantine protocols were just activated, ma'am," came the response. "We need higher authority to authorize release. There's nothing that we can do."
"Fuck!" Elsa's right hand morphed into an icy mace, which she promptly lashed out against the glass. The bulb cracked and chipped as it rebounded, staggering her back. "Get Hans down here to authorize door release," she said to Charles as she readied another swing. "If I don't get there fast enough only God knows what's going to happen next."
The doctor on the ground had recovered, and had backed into a corner, screaming her lungs out, begging for someone to extricate her. The other one grappled helplessly at Anna's hand, who had also begun yelling.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?"
Her words rang in Elsa's ears as she hit the door's glass panel again and again, her arm beginning to ache from the effort, her heart pounding the whole time. She scanned the transparent surface for any sign of damage. Nada; she was hardly making a dent. With every passing second her heart rate quickened.
"Come on!" She took a step back, reforming her right hand and aiming at the glass. Elsa let out three focused blasts, each one frosting over the entire door. Through the whine of her magical attacks she thought she heard a small crack.
"Hans is on his way," Charles said abruptly. "We should—"
With a flurry of her hands Elsa dissolved away the ice and stepped forward, squinting, scanning the transparent panel again. A tiny refraction of light caught her eye. She had indeed cracked the glass. She let her body dissolve into mist, seeping through the tiny opening she had made for herself. Through her mist form's omnipresent consciousness she saw Anna tilt her head ever so slightly.
A weapon barrel spouted from behind her and took aim.
Elsa reformed just in time to conjure an icy ward; the blast that connected with her shattered the protective ward and threw her backwards into the wall. Pain resonated threw her as she crashed, and she barely managed to refocus her vision, take aim, and fire off an ice lance, freezing Anna's shoulder-mounted weapon.
"Anna!" The name left her mouth just as Anna raised her arm to fire at Elsa.
And then she stopped.
There was a lull; no sound, no movement. Everything and everyone seemed to freeze, save the struggling doctor caught by his neck. Even the doctor cowering in the corner appeared to shut up, but Elsa could hear her soft whimpers as she tried to back away further.
Anna just stared at her, incomprehensible, unreadable, and for a moment Elsa feared the worst.
That Anna no longer remembered her.
"…Elsa?"
"Anna."
"You're… here…?"
Holy shit. She… remembers me. Elsa resisted to urge to sigh in relief; she wasn't out of danger yet. "Anna—"
"What's going on? I thought—"
Anna's own words were cut off as she let out a bloodcurdling scream, doubling over in her bed. She didn't release her grip on the doctor, but her weaponized arm de-morphed and went to her ear again. Elsa desperately wanted to rush over to pull her into an embrace, to tell her that it was all okay, that she was safe and that the danger was over and that she'd help her get through whatever she was going through—
"MAKE. IT. STOP," Anna cried, her features scrunched into a scream and hot tears streaming down her cheeks. Her skin faded to metal grey, and more weapons sprouted from her bodice and began to take aim. "PLEASE."
"Anna," Elsa said, her own voice shaky and arms outstretched, "I need you to let him go. Anna you have to let go of him."
Anna began to weep openly, but there was something hysterical about it. "HELP ME," she begged. "I CAN'T TAKE IT."
"Anna, let him go."
With another outburst Anna released her grip, only to press her hand down over her ear again. With urgency written over her face Elsa gesticulated at the two personnel in the room, hurrying them out. Silently they scurried away, but as the door shut behind them Elsa swore she heard them break down into crying.
"MAKE THEM STOP!" A cry from Anna drew her attention back to her. "I CAN'T TAKE IT—"
"Who's them?" Elsa crouched-walked her way over to Anna's bed, where she realized she hadn't moved an inch. "Who's doing this to you?'
Anna's voice dropped to a weak whisper as her now metal fingers tightened around her head, digging into her scalp. "The… voices…"
What the fuck? "What are they saying?" I didn't prepare for this. Elsa began to palpitate again. What the fuck is going on? "Who's saying what to you?"
"They're… everywhere…"
Elsa was getting desperate now. If she couldn't figure out what was going on, then she couldn't help Anna, and then… she didn't want to go down that line of thought. "What are they saying?"
"Quarantine… condition… red…"
Her eyes narrowed; that was certainly not what she was expecting. To her knowledge, no one who had ever gone insane had reported hearing anything about quarantine or condition statuses—
Everything clicked into place.
"Anna, I'm gonna—"
"Elsa?" a voice that came from above her asked. "What's going on in there?"
Anna gasped for breath all of a sudden. That confirmed it for her. "Hans I need you to shut off all nearby non-essential communications."
"What?"
"Anna can hear it. All of it." She turned back to her lover, who looked back with agony and fear in her now blue eyes. "It's driving her crazy."
"You're telling me—"
"Please, Hans," she repeated.
There was a pause. "All right," came the reply. "I'll isolate the nearby sector from non-essential communications until further arrangements can be made. I can't maintain that silence for too long—"
"It's all right," Elsa replied. "It's all I need."
I hope.
The voice cut off with a click.
Elsa took another step towards the shivering, whimpering Anna that lay upon the bed. She wasn't sure how ugly it was going to get from here, so as a precaution she extended a hand, allowing a thin layer of frost upon the windows, sealing them off from the gaze of the outside world.
"Elsa…?" Anna barely managed as Elsa sat down on the edge of the bed. "I can… still… hear voices…"
"Shhh…" She leaned forward, placing a finger upon Anna's quivering lips. Metal fingers grasped at her wrist. To her surprise, she felt no revulsion or fear, despite the numerous weapon barrels still pointed at her. Anna could lose control any minute and strike her down or shoot at her, but she wasn't afraid of that. Everything was, strangely, as it should have been.
"Look at me," Elsa went on, gazing into Anna's blue irises as she raised her hand to caress her soft cheek. "Focus on me. Only me."
Anna desperately tried to keep her eyes open. "I can't keep them out…"
Elsa went out on a wing and gently pulled Anna's metal hand to her chest. "Can you hear me?" She moved Anna's palm over her heart, and pressed it gently against her. "Focus on me. Just me. Nothing else." To her own surprise, she found herself smiling gently.
Anna stifled a cry of pain, but Elsa persisted, refusing to let go of Anna's hand. She caressed Anna's cheek with her other hand, whispering words of encouragement as they sat there, gazing at each other. The silence they shared was punctuated only by Anna's whispers, and even then those began to fade. The weapons sprouting from her body retracted one by one, until only her metal skin was visible. Anna's breathing became more regular, even though her eyes still brimmed with tears.
"I can hear… your heartbeat…"
Elsa smiled. Secretly though, she was more than just content, she was relieved it hadn't gotten worse than it already did. She found it hard not to blame herself even more as she looked down at Anna, but she forced herself to hold her emotions back for Anna's sake. Self-blame would come later, when she was alone. Anna deserved none of that. "Feeling better?"
"Oh Elsa," Anna barely managed, her eyes pleading and full of fear, "what's happened to me?"
"Can you still hear those voices?" Elsa pressed. She needed to know her lover was okay. "Are you sure you're feeling better?"
Anna nodded. "They're gone now, after I could focus on your heartbeat. I…" She swallowed uncomfortably, her voice still shaky. "What are they—?"
"Do you remember anything over the past few days?"
"I…" She put a hand to her head and leaned back against the pillow, closing her eyes tightly. "I remember Ursula exploding, and then being abducted, and…" She shook her head. "The last thing I remember was screaming as you faded from my sight."
She looked down at her hands again, grey and gleaming under the bright hospital lights. "Where am I? What's happened to me? Why am I like this?"
How the hell am I supposed to break it to her? Elsa shifted uncomfortably on the bed.
"I'm not going to like it, am I?" Anna said.
Elsa sucked in a breath. "You've been augmented."
"Augmented? How?"
"They've modified you to become one of…" Elsa let a snowflake materialize in her palm for emphasis, "…us." Fuck. I'm messing this up so bad. "You're an Ascendant now."
The look of confusion on Anna's face told Elsa that her lover had not quite grasped the reality of her current state yet. "Ascendant? I—"
Her features scrunched up as she doubled over in pain, her hands flying to her ears once again. Rather rashly, Elsa pulled Anna to her as she began to cry again, wrapping her arms around Anna's neck, and nestling Anna's face in the crook of her own neck. She could feel hot tears on her collarbone and neck.
"Shhhh…." she cooed amidst Anna's crying. "I'm here. No matter what happens. I'll help you get through this."
"I…"
"Just… block them out, and focus on me." She pressed a kiss to Anna's cheek. "Nothing else matters. Just you, and me." She tightened her embrace as Anna's sobbing intensified, as both reality and her augmented reality devastated her lover. Internally she cursed herself again, as she had done for the past few days.
Slowly, the room became quiet again. Anna's cries muffled themselves into sniffles, and her muscles relaxed. She leaned into the embrace, leaning against her lover.
"Elsa?"
"Yes Anna?"
"Am I a monster now?"
Elsa dislodged their embrace, tilting Anna's head to look at her with a single finger on her chin, and regarded her very seriously.
And then she pulled Anna into a kiss.
She tasted exactly as she should have; warm, tender, the embodiment of summer upon those lips, and a languid tongue to lavish her own. Her hand ruffled through familiar red hair, massaging the scalp beneath as her familiar voice moaned to the touch. For a moment, there was no telling where she ended and Anna began.
When they finally came up for air Elsa pressed her forehead against Anna's. "You're the most beautiful person I have known, and will ever know." She pulled Anna into another embrace. "You could never be a monster."
They lay back against the oversized pillow, a comfortable silence draping its veil upon the two of them. Anna leaned against her chest, and after a few more sniffles, evened out her breathing perfectly. She had fallen asleep.
Elsa reached over to kill the room's light, shrouding it in darkness, and regarded it with a single thought.
The monster isn't you, Anna.
It's me.
A/N: After an eon of writer's block I finished it; never thought I would, was afraid I would abandon this story as I did the others. Now this is the hard part: I don't quite know where to go on from here...