I would like to begin the next part of this story with a few reminders and, perhaps, explanations. So far into my tale, it's understandable that not everyone can remember what I've mentioned so early in it.
Specifically: This is not a story about tragedy.
I know you may not believe me, considering the fact that right now, I've just been shot in the chest (technically the bullet went into my heart, but you know, who's paying attention at this point.) I need you to trust, though, that I would not lie to you. My story is not one about tragedy.
What is it about, then, Elsa?
Oh, I don't know… It's a lot. There's a lot going on here. I've had a bit of a life, as I'm sure you can see. I was never very good at figuring out how to react, and I've screwed up a lot. If it weren't for the good grace of other people, I'm fairly certain I would have ended up old and alone with ten cats and a sewing hobby, just trying to find some way to numb the pain. Or, in my case, I might have completely lost it and froze the entire world.
Where am I right now, you ask? I'm getting to that. I've got a bit more story to tell.
Now, this next part is going to seem a bit weird, and my take on it, looking back on it now, is that it was nothing more than the senseless ramblings of my unconscious, dying mind. I am, in no way, asserting anything about purgatories or life after death. I know nothing about that. All I know is the following hallucinations, for lack of a better word.
The next thing I remember after blacking out is waking up in a familiar-looking living room. There was a worn, tan couch against a wall, opposite the unnecessarily large television. There was a bookcase with romance novels on the lower shelves and mystery novels on the higher ones – just like they always organized it. A few toys and dolls were scattered across the floor, but without any children present, the room seemed empty.
I exhaled slowly, turning around and trying to take everything in. There – that was the waterfall painting that was always just a couple degrees off, and right next to it, the line of family pictures, dating from before we were even born. It was exactly like it was back then, except for the front door, which was mysteriously missing and replaced with wall.
This was the house that Anna and I had grown up in.
Weird, right?
Yeah. I thought so, too.
"Elsa?"
I tensed in my spot, trying to figure if I'd heard right. I slowly turned around, taking in the sight of my mother, exactly as I remembered her, standing not even five feet away from me. My breath hitched in my throat and I shook my head slowly. "Mama?"
She smiled widely and rushed forward, wrapping her arms around me. I felt numb, strangely so, but I was able to feel the warmth of her hug.
I swallowed hard and pushed back. "I'm hallucinating, aren't I?" I asked in understanding. "Y-you're not really here. I mean… I'm not really here. This is just… This is just my mind trying to make sense of things, isn't it?"
A brief look of confusion crossed her face, that familiar crease forming between her eyebrows. "It might be," she answered after a minute. "Or it could be something divine."
"I don't believe in the divine," I pointed out with a roll of my eyes. "You're a manifestation of my mind, so you already know that." I sighed and sat down on the couch, gently running my bare fingers down the arm of it. "I was shot. I didn't even realize it at first."
"If I am a manifestation of your mind, then I already know that," Mama parroted.
I glanced down my shirt with a frown. The bullet hole was still there, gaping and unnatural against my skin, but I didn't feel any pain. Rather, a sort of discomfort around that area. I gently fingered around it, and then shook my head.
"Right. So, I'll just have to leave this hallucination. Then, I can wake up in my hospital bed and see Anna again and everything will be fine."
"There's no door," Mama said helpfully.
I shot her a look. "Yes, I realize that. Maybe I'll just break down the walls or something. Or… Oh," I smacked myself in the forehead. "I have ice powers! Surely, those should be good for something. Like, getting me out of strange memories my mind creates."
I lifted my hands and tried to channel the magic within me. When they didn't immediately come to my beck and call, my frown returned. I examined my hands before again pointing them towards the wall where the front door should be and trying to summon icicles. Just like before, it didn't work.
With a noise of utter frustration, I turned back to my mother, who was perching delicately on the edge of the couch. "Why aren't they working!?" I demanded.
"I don't know. I'm just a manifestation of your unconscious mind, aren't I?" she asked with a soft smile.
"I hate this," I muttered in defeat, running my hands over my braid – which was, thankfully, still there. "I'm not understanding, and I don't like it when I don't understand things…"
Mama quickly stood up and walked over to me. "I know, I know," she cooed as she took my face in her hands and rubbed my cheeks. "I know, my baby. You never did. It's alright, it's all very confusing, and I don't have the answers you want."
I bit my lip, feeling tears spring to my eyes. Even though I knew that she was just a hallucination, she looked and sounded and felt so real… I hadn't felt her touch since I was eight years old – I had completely shut down when they isolated me. I wouldn't let anyone get close. Especially not anyone I cared about.
"My precious girl… Your father and I are so proud of you, do you know that? You've grown up so well, and in spite of everything we put you through – in spite of all of our mistakes, you still love so strongly."
As I listened to her soft words, my eyes closed and I leaned in to her touch. I had to pull away afterwards lest I give in, walking away and wrapping my arms around my stomach.
"The things you're saying… They're things I want to hear. That's why you're saying them." I pointed to my head briefly before returning my hands to my sides. "You're up there. This is all up there. You're just telling me the things that I wish I was able to hear you say while you were still alive. That's the only thing that makes sense."
Her shoulders drooped and she cocked her head to the side. "If you say so. You were always a lot smarter than anyone gave you credit for."
"You… You mentioned Papa. Is he here, too?"
"He will be. You're not ready yet."
"Yeah, that's not cryptic at all," I remarked, raising an unimpressed eyebrow at her.
She began to laugh, shaking her head a little. Anna looked so much like her – their hair color was perhaps the only difference between them. "You're just like him. He always had that dry, sarcastic sense of humor, too."
I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could, the television crackled. I jumped, staring at it with wide eyes as the screen turned to static. I sent a panicked look at my mother before stepping further away from the tv, even as the speakers began spilling vague voices.
"She's at 86.4 degrees, with temperature dropping steadily. We need to get her into surgery, stat… Doctor, she's past hypothermic. We might lose her… Put a heating pad on the surgery table… Our first priority is getting the bullet out…"
And then, they stopped and the television turned off again.
"What the fuck was that!?" I exclaimed.
My mother offered a small shrug. "If your theory about this being all in your head is true, then perhaps that was things you're hearing that your brain is putting into this hallucination."
"Yes, thank you for pointing out the obvious," I muttered.
"Well, you asked."
"Since you seem to think you know everything, then perhaps you can help me figure out a way to get out of here? I really do have to get back to Anna, you see. We'd just started being a bit comfortable around each other again, and if I haven't died yet, then I'd like to see if I actually can control my curse around her."
"You can."
I stopped and looked at her in surprise. "What do you mean? Of course, I can't. I'm going to try, though, and that's what's important. I kind of have to be alive to do it."
"You already can," Mama repeated with a small smile. She approached me again and placed her hands on my arms. "Didn't you ever wonder why you didn't have any outbursts in front of her until she caught you by surprise?"
"More than once."
She raised one hand to brush back my bangs. "Your father and I could never get within five feet of you without your magic acting up. You were so afraid of us…"
"I wasn't afraid of you, I was afraid of hurting you," I corrected.
"Yes, well… The point still stands. You were terrified around us, but you began to pull inside yourself when you had to attend public school again. You became your room. You distanced yourself so that no one could come into your room."
"This isn't explaining why I didn't freeze Anna, even when she lived with me for two months."
"I'm getting to that," she rolled her eyes, a playful smile on her face. "You had already learned how to pull inside yourself by the time she came back into your life, so your fear became a part of you. When she was close, you had internalized the fear so much that the overwhelming sense of love you felt for her overpowered it. The love was so strong that, even if you did form ice out of fear, the love thawed it."
My eyes were wide with shock and confusion. "What… H-how do you know that, though?"
She hesitated, glancing down the hallway that led to the three bedrooms in the house – one that she and Papa shared, one that Anna and I shared, and the guest bedroom, which became my new prison after I almost killed Anna. There was a bright light at the beginning of the hallway, so I couldn't see into it, despite knowing what was down there.
I stopped breathing when Papa walked in from the hallway.
He, too, looked just like I remembered him. "Hello, Elsa," he said warmly as he approached me and immediately enveloped me in a hug.
"Papa…" I whimpered against him, shaking my head. I didn't understand.
"It's alright, my precious," he reassured me as he pulled back to get a better look at me. "You don't have to hide away anymore."
I bit my lip, casting my gaze aside. "None of this makes sense…" I sighed.
The television crackled again, and the speakers once again sparked to life.
"Come on, Elsa, you know you're stronger than this. What's a little bullet gonna do to you? You're stronger than this. You're practically invincible, right? Just come back to us."
Just as quickly as it had started, it ended. I frowned, trying to process the voice which sounded vaguely like Abbie. It was then that I became aware of a burning discomfort along my back and I twitched, trying to get it off.
"The heating pad…" I murmured under my breath. It didn't hurt, not really – nothing seemed to specifically hurt in this place – but it was certainly uncomfortable, and the discomfort was growing stronger.
I squirmed and ran to the wall where the door should be. "Anna…" I groaned as I banged my fists against it. "Make it stop…"
My father laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. "It's alright," he said again. "Just try to calm down. She'll take care of you."
"Just like she always did…" I turned around and pressed my back to the wall, letting the cool feeling of it soothe me a bit. "I want some answers, from both of you."
"I'm so sorry, Elsa," Papa shook his head, cupping one of my cheeks. "I'm so sorry we didn't see it earlier. We were just trying to do what was right, but we suppressed you instead, and it wasn't right. We should have realized what the answer was. The moment we locked you away was the moment the fear won."
"But you're so strong that it wasn't victorious for long," Mama added as she came up behind him.
I hesitated before stepping away from them, once again hugging myself as I walked further into the living room. Something still wasn't quite adding up. "That's a nice theory, of course," I told them, "but it doesn't explain why I went so long without almost hurting her again. I mean, I certainly did feel fear during that time. She helped me during a lot of melt downs, but I never once had an outburst of ice, even when I was scared."
"Because you love her."
Frustrated, I ran a hand over my braid again, tugging the end of it roughly. I didn't know how to word the issue that I found. My parents shared a look, and then Papa took a step closer to me.
"It's alright, Elsa. You're alright. Keep breathing, like we always did together. You remember that? You remember our breathing exercise?"
"I'm not having a melt down," I sighed. "Papa, this is all in my head. I'm not even technically breathing right now. I'm just trying to figure out… What seems wrong about what you're saying. It's almost, like… I don't believe it."
"What don't you believe about it?" Mama asked as she also stepped forward.
I paused, turning my gaze to the ceiling. "I mean… The implications that fear and love are polar opposites. That they're mutually exclusive. It doesn't make sense. They're interwoven. I can love Anna and still be afraid of hurting her. If what you're saying about love being the 'answer' – a totally cheesy idea, by the way – is true, well… 'Love' is not a clean thing. It's complicated, and messy, and fear plays a big part in it. You guys are wrong again. There is no 'answer'."
Papa and Mama shared another look. "You might be right," Mama said softly.
"We searched so long for an answer about you," Papa murmured. "We just wanted to help you. We went about it wrong, but we had good intentions."
"Yes, well, you know what they say the road to hell is paved with."
I was vaguely aware of the fact that the uncomfortable pressure on my back – the heating pad – had been removed, and I silently thanked Anna, for I knew that she had to be the reason why they took it away. I could only imagine how difficult it must have been for her to try to convince a bunch of quacks with doctoral degrees to take the heating pad away from the person who appeared to be freezing to death.
Those quacks are the reason why you're still alive, a small voice muttered in my ear, and I had to give it some credit.
"…There's no answer to my powers, but maybe there's an answer to what the fuck is going on in this hallucination." I pointed to the television and glared at my parents. "A few minutes ago, we heard doctors rushing me into surgery. Not much longer, and I hear Abbie talking to me? I'm pretty sure she's not in the surgery room."
"Time is moving differently here," Mama offered up meekly. "Your brain is moving slowly. Days might have passed, we don't know."
I clenched my jaw, feeling a certain fire within me at that. "Okay…" I breathed. "It's been nice chatting, imaginary Mama and Papa in my brain's hallucination, but I have to get back to real Anna in the real world. Besides, I have a performance as my dream role in about a month, and like Abbie said, I'll be damned if I let a little bullet stop me."
Again, I turned back to the wall, positioning my hands on it and trying to push. Just as I expected, it didn't do anything. I frowned and tried again to summon my ice powers, but it seemed as if they didn't exist in my mind's unconscious rambling, or whatever this was. I wondered, briefly, if that's why they never worked in my dream.
"Elsa…" Mama said softly. She laid a hand on my shoulder and tried to gently pull me away from the wall. "It's not up to you, my precious girl. Your life is on the line. Even if you want to return, your body may not wake up. I know you want to fix things, but there isn't anything that any of us could do right now."
I sighed and covered my face with my hands. "So… what? We just wait?" I asked irritably.
"That seems to be all we can do," Papa confirmed sympathetically.
After a minute, I removed my hands from my face. I sat on the edge of the couch and regarded my deceased parents warily. "Now, I know that you both are part of my hallucination, and you don't know anything more than I know, but I can't help it. I have to ask… Did you actually love me?" The panicked, confused glance they shared caused me to backtrack. "I mean… I think you did, but… I don't see why. I wasn't ever the ideal child, in any way."
"Oh, Elsa…" Mama sighed. She bit her lip in the same way Anna and I always did, and then rushed forward and enveloped me in a hug. "Of course, we love you. Don't you ever think those awful things again, my snowflake."
Papa joined in the hug, gently holding the both of us. "You were a wonderful daughter, Elsa."
I pulled back enough to look at them in shock. "But even with my… My ice powers that I couldn't control? And my autism?" I asked.
"They are part of you, and we love you, just like Anna does," Mama insisted. She smiled and kissed my forehead, and I felt like a child again. "You're our daughter, and we wouldn't have asked for you any other way."
I lifted my face and hastily blinked back tears. (How was I even able to cry in this hallucination, anyway? That made very little sense, but hey, nothing here made sense.) "Why didn't you guys get me diagnosed earlier? Why wait until I was nine?"
At this, Mama and Papa hesitated, exchanging a quick glance. I could see him cock his head questioningly, and then she nodded and gestured for him to answer. I knew that it was all in my head, but god, they were just like I remembered them… Always checking in with each other, always doing things together. If they ever had issues (and they did, at times, like any couple), they sorted it out diplomatically.
Papa sighed and settled onto the couch next to me. He took one of my hands in both of his and held it close to his body. "The truth is, we were… Well, a bit scared," he admitted. "You were our first child, and you were, indeed, very special. You developed very differently than Anna did, much slower, but we didn't know that at the time. We suspected that something wasn't right, but we didn't want to hear the truth, I think, which was a mistake, because we could have helped you more if we'd known. We were just trying to deal with your ice powers on their own."
"…But it was so obvious that something was wrong with me," I told them with a frown. "My… My dissociation. The fact that I didn't say any actual words until I was three. My rocking."
Immediately, Mama shook her head. "Nothing was wrong with you, precious girl. Perish the thought," she joked with a grin. "We were honestly mostly worried about how others would treat you if you did have some sort of specialty in that regards. And then Anna came and we got busier…"
"Anna wasn't planned?"
They shared another look, hesitant again. "Anna wasn't planned," Mama repeated slowly.
Wow, my mind was getting real creative here, wasn't it? Because… Because this was all in my head… Right?
My heart had begun pounding in my ears and I furrowed my brow. "But… You were planning on having another kid, weren't you?"
"We, uh… We had always said we wanted a small family," Papa tried to explain. "Two kids seemed ideal, but we were… We were happy with just you."
I didn't buy it. Not for a minute. I snatched my hand back from him and stood up abruptly. I began pacing across the living room, tugging on my braid again in distress. "So… So you weren't going to have another kid because I was so fucked up?" I managed to ask through the thickness in my throat.
"Elsa, no, it wasn't like that," Mama tried to interject, but I was too upset.
"Anna wouldn't have even existed because I was so different," I stated (for it was, to me, a statement at this point) as I clenched and unclenched one of my hands over and over. "Because I was so… Awful. What was it, then? You were going to get sterilized or something, and they said you were pregnant? A nice little 'surprise'? Were you worried she'd be fucked up, too?"
Mama bit her lip again, and Papa looked like he was going to say something, but neither of them did, only watching me as my pacing grew more agitated.
"You know, Anna is the most pure and good person in the whole fucking universe! I can't believe this… I can't believe I almost screwed up her life again, and quite literally this time…"
"Elsa," Papa said quickly. "Elsa, you need to calm down. You need to try to control it. Conceal it, don't feel it, don't let it show. Like we practiced."
The discomfort in my chest was growing more obnoxious, and as my anger mounted, the lights from the windows grew brighter. I could hear my own heart beating – it just about encompassed my whole body. It was slow and tired and it just wanted to rest – why couldn't it rest?
The brightness from the windows swarmed the room, and all I could see was white.
"…She's in V-Tach!...Fire up the defibrillator…Clear…Damn it…Clear…"
"Else, this is just another cog in the machine. I've seen you survive a twenty-one credit semester – I know you can survive this, too. You just have to look for the exit."
When I came to, I was once again in the living room of the house I had grown up in. I sat up from my position, laying on the couch, and narrowed my eyes at the speakers for the television. That was Graham's voice. I thought he hated me… Huh.
He had every reason to, you know, after I dumped my cats at his apartment and left without another word. I had been actively avoiding him almost as much as I had been avoiding Anna, and I couldn't help but feel guilty, since I knew he was at a difficult time in his life. One of the only people he'd ever depended upon would no longer recognize him all the time. The absolute last thing he needed was for me to go ballistics like I did and ignore him.
I sighed and stood up. "I'm trying, Graham…" I muttered under my breath as I looked around the house again. There was still no door where there should be one, and my parents had disappeared. I chewed on my lip in contemplation as I tried to follow his advice and find the exit.
Graham always had the best advice to give. He was a mess of a person (perhaps more than myself, at times) and he didn't like talking about emotional stuff, but he could usually figure out what to say in a given situation to help whoever it was he was talking to. That was a feat that I had always kind of envied. He was a pretty sarcastic guy, which is why we got along so well, but unlike me, he blossomed in social events and scenarios.
I would have taken that bullet for him, too, or even Abbie. Maybe even Christy, I don't know – I was a self-sacrificial piece of crap, so anyone I know is kind of fair game. I was so terrified of getting hurt, but I knew that if it came down to one bullet going into either one of them or me, I'd choose to protect them, time and time again.
I had told Dr. Morrison that love was putting others' needs before your own, and I don't think I'd ever said a truer thing.
My eyes swept the room again, trying to find any sort of difference from last time. They landed on the hallway, which seemed clearer now than it had been before, as if I was able to enter it now and not before.
Aha!
Ten points to Elsa!
I didn't hesitate before heading into the hallway. It was just like I remembered, with picture frames along the wall and the four doors (three bedrooms and a bath) lining it. I entered the room that I had been put in after The Incident and frowned to myself as I realized how empty it was. None of my stuff was there…
Back in the hallway now, my heart skipped a beat as I realized why. The door to Anna's room? It wasn't just her room. It was the room we shared. Pre-Incident. I recognized the cute little nametags she'd made and put on it – the nametags that had been taken down when we were separated. She had tried plastering mine onto my new door, but I'd been too distraught to allow it to stay.
No. I couldn't go in there. I couldn't face that. Clenching my jaw, I turned away. If it was the exit… No. If it wasn't the exit, then I'd just be tormented. I couldn't risk that…
Once again, the tv's speakers crackled, and although I wasn't in the living room, I could hear it, loud and clear.
"Elsa… Elsa, please… Please come back to me… They say they don't know if you're ever going to wake up – your heart has stopped twice now… I don't know what I'd do if you died, Elsa, I… I just got you back, you can't die on me! I won't allow it! I just… I just really need you to come back to me… You're my big sister, and I love you so much, and I can't lose you again… Please don't leave me…"
"Never," I growled upon hearing Anna's desperate voice, and within seconds, I had opened the door, and everything had gone white again.
The first thing I was aware of was a steady beeping, somewhere to my right. The lights above me were very bright as they pierced my eyelids, and at first, I panicked, fearing that I had made the wrong decision and ended up actually dying. It was only when I noticed a hand clutching mine that I was reassured.
I slowly opened my eyes, looking around the plain hospital room with mild curiosity. I wasn't back in the living room. That was good. There was also a searing pain in my chest. That sucked, but was also good, because it meant that I was, indeed, conscious and no longer in a hallucination.
There was a soft rumbling sound off to my left and I glanced over to where Anna was uncomfortably half-laying in a blue armchair. I smiled a little in spite of myself. She was usually never this quiet when she snored. Sometimes, she'd been known to snore loud enough to wake herself up. It was amusing, to say the least.
I could feel my heart pumping languidly in my chest and I let my gaze travel down to our intertwined fingers. Mine involuntarily twitched, and I silently prayed it wouldn't wake her up since she certainly looked like she needed the sleep, but of course, no such luck.
The tiny movement caused her to stir. She groaned and used her free hand to rub at her eyes tiredly. She stretched and I had to wince at the sounds of her back cracking. How uncomfortable was that chair?
Then, she froze as she realized I was staring at her, my head still back against the pillows and a small smile on my face.
"…Elsa? You're awake?" she whispered, a grin instantly overtaking her features as she snapped to attention.
"Hey, Sunshine," I greeted her.
A/N: Please leave a review below! :)
