A/N: I, uh... I really have no excuse as to why this has taken so long. After midterms, I started spring break, and am visiting family 2500 miles away from home. I kinda lost my motivation for this chapter, mostly because this one is... largely uneventful. Next chapter will be more eventful. It should also be up on Saturday. Sunday at the latest since Saturday is my birthday, so it's a pretty busy day.
Anyway, I'm gonna try this thing that a lot of authors do where I actually reply to y'all that review with an account? So, keep an eye out for that, I guess :)
"Welcome to Tourrence."
I glanced out the window of Anna's car, frowning a little as I took in the bland landscape. Tourrence appeared to be made up solely of farms and ranch houses. I suppressed a yawn, having just recently woken up. As I had expected (yet still tried to escape), I had fallen asleep within the first thirty minutes of the drive.
The stupid fucking injuries that my body had sustained meant that it was now much more fond of sleep than it had been before.
The doctors had explained that it had something to do with the healing properties of sleep, and the fact that my body was simply unable to go as strongly as it had before. Those made some sense, yeah, but it didn't make me any happier about the fact. If anything, I hated it more because it implied that I was weak. And I did not like being called weak. (I still don't, but we're not talking about my current state!)
"There's a lot of tan and dull green," I noted as I watched the fields pass.
"I like to think of it as 'perspectively pretty'."
"That's not a word," I chuckled.
Anna rolled her eyes and reached over to lightly hit my shoulder. "Whatever you say, Miss Dictionary dot com. It's home."
I hummed softly and let my forehead touch the cool window. I was trying not to freak out at the prospect of meeting Anna's family, because as we drew closer, it became more and more evident. I wasn't really good at meeting people in general – meeting the people that would have adopted me if only they could find me? That… That was awkward.
No. It was more than awkward. It was, like, awkward to the bajillionth degree.
Yes, I know that's not a word! Maybe Anna rubs off on me, too, who knows? It feels like it should be a word, so there. Lots of things that don't feel like they should be words are, such as propinquity and slumgullion and mugwump, so… So… If I want to make a word, and it feels right, I should be able to.
Fuck, Anna has rubbed off on me, hasn't she? Here I am, doing what I had just scolded her for doing. What has the world come to?
"'I wouldn't call this place a happy end, but I been 'round the block and just came back again. A small town like ours ain't much, but sometimes home is where your ass ends up,'" I sang with a grin.
Anna shot me a confused look. "What musical is that?"
"Waitress. It's a fantastic musical, very underrated. I wanna play Jenna someday, too."
"Do you just have a long list of roles that you want to play at some point?" Anna teased.
"Pretty much, yeah."
It got quiet again as we pulled up in front of a house. It wasn't huge, but it was bigger than the other ranches I had seen while she was driving. In fact, this was the first two-story building I had seen in Tourrence so far.
"Home sweet home," Anna said with a nervous giggle. She killed the engine and got out, not wasting time before going to the back and starting to extricate our luggage.
I found myself frozen, gripped by a sudden and inexplicable fear. I had one hand on the seatbelt release, and I tried to press it, but I couldn't command my hand to move.
Just do it. Just get out. Come on, you idiot, this is just Anna's family. There's nothing to be afraid of. Coward. No wonder they didn't adopt you.
…Shit. Turned out, I did end up having a few awful feelings about that. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself to move, but it wasn't working. Eventually, Anna seemed to notice my paralyzed state, and she opened my door.
"Elsa? Is everything alright?"
I breathed out sharply and shook my head. "Fine, it's fine," I mumbled, my hand finally pressing the seatbelt release. I stepped outside, unable to stop myself from wrapping my arms around my stomach once I was out.
Anna bit her lip, suddenly hesitant. "You, uh… You don't have to do this, Elsa. Really, it's okay… I can just… drive you back, or whatever…"
Guilt washed over me, and I stepped closer to her, taking one hand from my side and resting it on her shoulder. "I know, Anna. I want to do this. I promise, I do. It's just not easy… I might need you to be patient with me?"
"That was never one of my virtues," she said jokingly, and I managed a smile. "I suppose I can try for you, though. I don't have much better to do, you know."
"Gee, thanks," I chuckled, pulling her in for a brief hug.
Not wanting to waste any more time (and with the consideration of the skies growing darker and threatening rain), Anna and I grabbed the bags and began hauling them towards the house. She carried more than I did, but I carried what I could. Or, what she allowed me to carry.
She didn't even get to finish her rhythmic knock on the front door when it swung open. A largish woman with dark hair pulled into a bun stood on the other side. "Is that my Anna?" she gasped, rushing forward and hugging Anna.
Giggling, Anna hugged her back before pulling away. "I'm happy to see you, too, Mom. This is – "
She didn't even get to finish gesturing to me before the woman cut her off. "This must be Elsa, then!" she gushed, not wasting a second before pulling me into a bone-crushing embrace.
I tensed immediately, my breath leaving my body and pure agony blossoming from my chest. My eyes flicked towards Anna in panic, silently begging for her to help me. I couldn't bring in a single breath – it hurt too much, and I was far too shocked, anyway.
"Mom!" Anna cried, running forward to try to pull the strong woman off of me. "Stop, stop, she's still hurt!"
The woman pulled back, her face a bit red. "Sorry about that, dear. I got excited. How was it you got hurt again?"
I couldn't bring myself to answer, hugging my stomach tightly. Anna placed a hand on my shoulder and turned to face her adopted mother. "Like I said, she got mugged a week ago. Her ribs are just bruised," she explained.
My gaze flickered over to Anna. I scrutinized her, trying to figure out why she had lied. Why would she lie about the extent of my injuries? Unless… Unless she was trying to protect my privacy? Regardless, I felt a rush of warmth, and smiled gratefully at her. "I-it's okay," I quietly stammered out to the larger woman. "I'm mostly healed by now."
The woman beamed, the guilt mostly leaving her face. "Well, come on in, then, before it starts to rain!" she insisted, ushering the both of us inside.
"Are you alright, really?" Anna murmured to me.
Each breath was exponentially more painful than before, but it was getting better once the pressure had left. "I'm fine, promise."
The house was actually much bigger than I had been expecting. The first floor alone had a living room, kitchen, office, bathroom, and two bedrooms. Anna pointed out that one belonged to her adopted older brother, who I'd meet later, and the other had been converted into an at-home gym of sorts.
Upstairs had four bedrooms – one for their parents, one for Anna, one for her other brother, and a guest room, in which I would be staying – as well as a bathroom. Anna placed our bags in our respective rooms before escorting me back downstairs.
Her parents were in the kitchen, her adopted mother talking to her adopted father as he mixed together a dip of some sort.
"Hello," he greeted me warmly. He was a… big man. Like. Maybe bigger than Kristoff, I don't know. I practically shrunk against Anna's side, but if he noticed, he didn't say anything about it. "I've heard a lot about you, Elsa. It's good to meet you." He wiped his hands on a towel, and then extended a giant paw towards me. "Robert."
I stared at the thing in fear and took a small step back. "E-Elsa," I stammered out, even though he had just demonstrated knowing my name already.
Luckily, he didn't seem to take offense to my fear and instead returned his attention to the dip.
Anna gave a small tug on my hand. "Come on, I want to introduce you to my brothers," she murmured, and I allowed her to pull me along. "My family can be a bit insensitive at times maybe, but they mean well. They're unapologetic, but really sweet. If they ever make you uncomfortable or anything, feel free to say something. I-I mean, I know you don't like speaking up about that sort of thing, but they'll really accommodate or whatever! Like I said, they mean well, and – "
"Anna," I interrupted gently. We were stopped at the end of the hallway downstairs, about to knock on her older brother's door. "It's alright," I told her with a smile.
She gave me a tight, yet relieved, grin before knocking on the door. "Kevin? I'm coming in with a friend, okay?" She didn't wait for an answer before opening it slowly.
There was a young man, looking to be around my age, sitting at a desk. He was drawing something on a paper, and when Anna beckoned for me to follow her in, it was cautiously.
"Hey, Kev. I brought a friend. Do you want to meet her?" she asked sweetly.
He glanced at her, brown eyes peeking out from behind a mop of dark hair. He chewed on a pen cap as he looked at me, and then back at Anna. After a minute, he nodded once before returning to his paper.
I took a slow step forward at Anna's insistence. "Hello, Kevin," I said, as carefully as I could. "My name is Elsa. What are you drawing?"
He cast me a hesitant glance before pulling back from his desk so I could see the paper… and the intricately drawn snowflake on it.
I smiled in spite of myself. "That looks really nice, Kevin. Do you like snowflakes?"
He nodded shyly. "Forty-six," he said, his speech slow and slurred.
"Forty-six?"
One of his hands gestured towards me. "Forty-six," he repeated. I glanced down at my shirt with a confused frown, and then realized what he meant.
The shirt that I was wearing. It was one that Anna had picked up for me at a thrift store just the other day. It was mostly white, but it had a vertical stripe of blue near the top that had snowflakes on it. It had been a bit of a joke from Anna, but I actually liked it – something that only made her more pleased that she had gotten it for me.
It dawned on me that he had counted the number of snowflakes on my shirt at an almost impossible speed. "You counted that that fast?"
He nodded again, staring back down at his paper.
"That's amazing," I told him with a small laugh. "I'll never forget how many now. Forty-six snowflakes. Thank you, Kevin. I was wondering how many there were, you know." I noticed Anna beaming at me, and I sent her a weird look. "What?"
She merely shook her head, the smile not leaving her face.
"Thank you… Elsa…" Kevin said, not meeting my gaze but smiling all the same.
When he returned to his drawing, Anna took my hand again and pulled me out of the room after saying goodbye to her brother. "He needs a bit of help, mentally," she explained after we had left his room. "We still love him just the same, though."
"Is that why you're so overbearing to me sometimes?"
She averted her gaze, a light blush present on her cheeks as we headed up the stairs to meet her other brother. "It might have something to do with it," she admitted. "Among other things. One of them, namely, being the fact that you like to, I don't know, jump in front of guns."
The joke was dark, yeah, but the look on Anna's face was teasing. I chuckled and bumped her shoulder with mine. "Hush, you. That was only once," I teased back.
"Once is enough."
She didn't even knock before entering her younger brother's room. He was sitting on his bed, reading a book, and he didn't even get to look up before Anna tackled him, messing up his hair. "Got you, weirdo!" she cried as he protested and fought against her.
Anna was relentless, keeping her hold on him strong.
Eventually, he managed to wrestle her away from him. "Not cool, sis!" he shouted, though there was a smirk on his face. "I was reading, you know."
Anna just laughed as he put his book away safely on its shelf. "Ash, I'd like you to meet my sister, Elsa," she introduced me while throwing out an arm in my direction in a grand gesture.
He adjusted his glasses on his nose before peering over at me, standing alone in the doorway. "Hello," he greeted me civilly. "You're Anna's sister?"
"Uh… Yeah," I managed as I took a couple steps forward.
"I'm so sorry."
"Hey!" Anna yelped, punching him in the shoulder. She caught me grinning and pointed an accusatory finger at me. "You shut up."
"I wasn't saying anything," I protested as I held my hands up in surrender.
"You were thinking it!"
Anna had practically done a complete one-eighty since coming into her younger brother's room. She was acting like her normal, energetic, lovable self again. It only made it clearer how much she tended to restrain herself around me. The thought almost physically hurt me to think.
I mean, I understood perfectly well why she wasn't jumping all over me currently, but that still didn't mean I liked it.
Having seen both of her relationships with her brothers at this point, it made a lot of sense. She got to be herself around this one – Ash? – and she learned restraint around Kevin. And then she demonstrated both with me.
Suddenly, Anna seemed far older and far more mature than I had taken her to be before.
"You know what, Ashton?" Anna said, rubbing her chin in faux contemplation. "I think I like Elsa more than you."
"Was that a question?" I asked, placing my hand to my chest in an offended gesture. "I feel betrayed."
"Oh, whatever, theater major."
Ashton rolled his eyes, clearly used to Anna's teasing. "Maybe that will buy me some peace and quiet every now and then," he said in a droll tone.
Anna scoffed and crossed her arms over her chest. "You haven't seen me for five months, dude!"
"The most peaceful five months of my life."
If someone were to talk to me that way, so insistently, I probably would have shut off long before now, but Anna seemed to recognize that he didn't mean what he was saying. She got off his bed and went over to his bookshelf, taking books out and examining them before haphazardly putting them back in the wrong places.
"Hey, hey, I have a system!" Ashton cried, scrambling off of his bed. He shoved Anna aside and quickly began fixing her mess. "Everything has a place, Anna, and everything should be in its place. Not everyone can live in an absolute pigsty, like you."
"Aww, you love me, though," Anna giggled as she wrapped her arms around him in a bear hug.
He tensed briefly before relaxing into it. "Do I? I suppose I do."
Anna pulled away from him and came back to my side. "Come on, Elsa. Let's go check on dinner. I'm so starved, I could eat a horse!"
"I don't think that would taste very good," I commented as I let her turn me back towards the door.
"Actually, I was hoping I could talk to you alone, Elsa?"
I stopped, frowning a little in confusion as I glanced back towards Ashton. Anna sent me a questioning glance, and I nodded. "O-okay."
"I'll be in the kitchen when you're done," Anna said before smiling reassuringly and slipping past me.
I was left alone with Ashton. I never liked being alone with people I didn't know, and I had to constantly remind myself that this was someone that Anna knew and trusted. He wasn't going to hurt me. At least, he shouldn't try to hurt me, since Anna trusted him. Then again, Anna was never the most rational when it came to that sort of thing… But if he was going to hurt her, he would have done it by now.
Focusing on my breathing helped soothe my sudden anxiety, and I leaned against Ashton's doorway. "What did you need?" I asked as normally as I could.
He hesitated, glancing down at my hands, which were folded in front of me, and then back up to my face. "You're… like me, aren't you?"
For a moment, I was confused by what he meant, and then it dawned on me that he was idly twisting a black ring around his right middle finger, not dissimilar to mine. It was something that I would do, too, when I was thinking about my asexuality or anxious in general.
I remembered Anna telling me she had an ace brother, all of those months ago at Morning Rush. It was the first shift we had closing together alone. I had completely forgotten about it when she invited me to stay the week in Tourrence.
My left hand's fingers immediately went to my own ring, toying with it lightly.
"…Yeah," I managed to say past the lump in my throat.
It was hard to tell, because he was actively trying to hide it, but he looked almost scared. A protective (big sibling?) instinct kicked in, and I softened, walking in and sitting down on the edge of his bed. I patted it, and after a minute, he sat down, too, a respectable distance away from me.
"I'm ace, too," I said, if only to reassure him further. "What did you want to ask me?"
He sighed and stared down at his hands. "…How did you know?"
"Well, I first thought I might be ace or something when I had to practically make out with the 'hottest', nicest guy in school and didn't feel anything. We were in a musical together – Into the Woods. I played the baker's wife and he played the prince, and if you've ever watched it, there's a scene where they meet in the woods and he had to pretty much seduce me. Every other girl in the grade was obsessed with this guy. I thought, you know, I'd surely have to like him, too, especially if I was going to kiss him. It didn't happen, of course. I didn't feel attracted to him at all. I didn't know what ace was back then, but I knew that something was different. A bit more experimentation, and some web-searching, and I figured it was as good a title as anything. It put me at ease a bit just to have something to call myself."
He still wasn't looking at me, but there was a tiny smile on his face. It dissipated after a moment, and he looked somewhat glum again. To distract himself, I thought, he grabbed a cloth from the shelf beside his bed and began cleaning his glasses.
"…Did you think you were broken?"
The question came out of nowhere, but I wasn't necessarily surprised by it. I realized, years later, how scared he had sounded when he uttered it. It was only in retrospect that I thought about how much anyone else in his family would overreact if he had asked them that. Especially Anna.
After all, Anna had pretty much lost her shit when I mentioned thinking I was a monster on occasion. I've been known, at times, to call myself broken, as well, but it was this very discovery of my asexuality that led to the spiraling chain of events in which I realized that I wasn't broken. Since then, that thought only crossed my mind at my truly low points – like when I almost hit my sister with an icicle.
"Do you think you're broken?" I countered.
Ashton grimaced as he placed his glasses back on his nose. "Sometimes," he admitted quietly.
"Sometimes," I agreed. "Sometimes, I did, too."
"You don't anymore?"
"No."
"…How did you stop?"
"I realized that people are more than fuck machines."
He glanced towards me in surprise. "…Come again?" he asked in bewilderment.
"That's one of the common aphobic things, right? That we're biologically hardwired to have sex and reproduce, and so, aces aren't even human?" I pointed out, and then laughed bitterly. "Maybe animals are just fuck machines, I don't know, but humans are so much more. Someone can live a happy, fulfilling life without ever feeling sexual attraction. Some ace people even enjoy sex, and they choose to partake in it – they just don't feel the attraction. Sex is overglorified in today's society. It's not at all necessary to function, and if you can function, you are certainly not broken."
"I don't mind it with other people – I just become repulsed when it comes to me participating. I thought that surely, it meant something was wrong with me…"
"Ashton Blackwood, if you can live, then you're not broken. No one's broken – just a little bent sometimes." I actually worked up the courage to reach over and pat his knee, earning myself a grateful glance.
He ran a hand through his blond hair nervously. "Fuck, you're good…" he muttered.
I giggled and shook my head. "Anna could give me a run for my money, trust me. The only difference is she gets far more emotional than I do."
"I can see the resemblance," he joked, and then smiled genuinely. "Thank you, though, Elsa."
I stood and gave a mock salute. "Anytime," I told him, and then walked out of the room and down the stairs with more confidence than I had had thus far in this unfamiliar home.
My phone read 2:28 am.
I groaned and rolled over in the small twin bed that was in the guest room – or, my room for this next week. A bad dream had woken me up about an hour ago, and try as I might, I was too scared to even think about closing my eyes again.
It wasn't the fire dream. No. I hadn't had that one since getting shot. This one was perhaps even worse.
George Streiss was in it. That foster father who had abused me? The one who would treat me like shit, and be so very manipulating and terrifying all the while? The one with dark, brooding eyes that still haunted me? That one.
That wasn't exactly new – I had had several nightmares with him over the years. No, the new part – the one that made my blood run cold and forced me into a helpless, small little ball on my bed – was the fact that Anna was there, too, and he was running his disgusting hands up her arms, and she wasn't even aware of it. Only when he held a knife to her throat did she start begging and screaming for me to save her.
I tried. I did try. It was almost like I was tied up or something, I don't know. I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I couldn't even breathe. I could only watch helplessly as that awful man tortured her.
There was ice covering my walls when I woke up, but I had since been able to thaw it (a neat little trick I had been working on). It still amazed me every time it worked.
I jerked, suddenly feeling the inexplicable urge to check on Anna. For some sense of security, though, I braided my hair before leaving my room. My feet practically ghosted the floor as I tiptoed out of my room and across the hall towards hers. I hesitated briefly before knocking, able to appreciate the sad irony of the situation.
The door wasn't closed, so my knocking caused it to open slightly with a creaking noise. I stared at Anna, beginning to shift in her bed, and quickly lost my nerve. I debated running for a moment before deciding it was a good idea.
"Elsa?" Anna mumbled drowsily as she saw me turn to leave.
I paused, fiddling with the ends of my braid.
"Elsa, what do you need?"
I turned to face her again, trying and failing to keep my face blank. "I-I just wanted to… I mean… N-nothing… Don't worry about it, Anna. Go back to sleep."
She frowned as she rubbed at one of her eyes. "No, something's wrong," she said, and then yawned widely. "C'mere." She gestured for me to come closer, but I hesitated again, staring out the doorway. "Come here, Elsa," she said again, this time enunciating.
I let out a small, choked noise and gave in. I crawled onto her bed next to her but kept a few feet away, shame washing over me. I was twenty-one years old – almost twenty-two. I shouldn't need to run away to my younger sister's bed every time I had a bad dream.
"What's wrong?" she asked again, her tone tender. "Did you have a nightmare?"
Not wanting to show my fear, I shook my head fervently. Unfortunately, the tears that had begun carving paths down my cheeks told a different story. It went without saying that this was the first time I had slept anywhere besides my apartment or the hospital in several years.
Anna reached a hand out and gently cupped my chin, lifting my face to meet hers. "Do you want to stay here tonight? My bed's plenty big enough, you know. I don't mind at all."
I swallowed hard, staring at a far-off spot on the wall. I couldn't meet her soft, concerned gaze. I couldn't bring myself to meet it. Instead, I focused on the wall and gave a tiny nod.
Not needing further encouragement, Anna hooked an arm around my shoulders and drew me closer. I allowed it as she laid back and pulled me tight against her. I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding when my head rested on her chest and I could hear her heart beating away in her chest, strong and steady.
The tears continued to fall, soaking the front of her nightgown. I didn't bother to stop them. I trembled with emotion and fear, and Anna didn't try to get me to talk about it – she just held me close to her and murmured soft words into my hair.
"Thank you…" I managed after a while, my tears finally beginning to abate.
Although I wasn't looking at her, I could hear her smile in her voice. "Anything for you, stinker," she teased.
I laughed quietly at that, and it wasn't long before I drifted off into a peaceful sleep again, feeling safe and warm.
A/N: Please leave a review below!
