Elsa turned over in bed, enjoying the warmth of the morning sun on her. As she began to wake, her mind noticed things amiss. Why does the bed feel so much softer this morning? And the sheets… the sheets feel as smooth as ice? She was still in her maroon evening robe, which made no sense to her as she normally removed it before sleep.
Then she noticed the smell, or rather, the absence of it. Her mattress, like many wealthy Scandinavian homes, was stuffed with wool, and always had the softest hint of lanolin wafting from it. Her bed smelled like… nothing. She opened her eyes, sat up…
… and shrieked.
Her room - the royal chambers - was gone. Her four-poster bed, the tall, vaulted ceilings… all gone. In its place, she woke to a gigantic bed in a mostly white room. A heavy white duvet lay on top of her, white dressers and bureaus lined one wall, and pale blue and white painted walls replaced the ornate patterns of her room. A white cylindrical object sat on the end of one of the dressers, some kind of rope running from its base into the wall.
Panic surged in her stomach as her throat tightened, her eyes watering as fright began to squeeze her chest. What happened to her? Where was she? As the initial shock subsided, a dull cacophony began to filter into her senses. She turned her head to see a small square window - much smaller than the usual diamond-shaped lattice windows in the palace - and what sounded like herds of animals braying outside.
She lay back down and squeezed her eyes closed. It's just a dream, it's just a dream, she chanted to herself, pulling the duvet over her head to shut out the light and noise. Her voice followed her thoughts as she repeated her mantra to herself, louder and louder, but nothing changed.
And then she heard a muffled voice next to her. "Elsaaaaaa… shut up! I'm trying to sleep!"
Joy shoved panic aside bodily as Elsa pulled the covers down from her head, finding the buried body-sized lump next to her. "Anna! Anna, wake up! Something's happened!" She tugged at the covers gently next to her, unearthing a bright auburn mane of hair.
"Oh my god, Elsa… come on, it's Sunday morning, please! It's the one day of the week we don't have to get up," Anna grumbled before pulling a pillow over her head.
"Anna, please! This is imp-" she urged before stopping. "Wait, why are you in my bed, Anna? Shouldn't you be in your bed?"
Anna rolled over, tossing the pillow aside with a confused look on her face. "What do you mean 'my bed', Elsa? This is our bed - it always has been. Also…" she scrubbed her face with her palms, rubbing away the sleepiness, "Why are you saying my name like that?"
"Saying your name like what, Anna?"
"Like that. Like Ah-na, instead of Anna. That's so weird. Did you have, like, a really weird nightmare or something?"
Elsa shook her head. "What- what are you talking about? That's your name!"
Anna sat up, her hair a massive explosion of copper, as the bedsheet fell off her naked breasts. "What's going on with you, Elsa? Last night you were so exhausted from having to work late and today you're acting like… I don't know, really weird."
The blonde shot out of the bed as though electrically shocked, practically slamming into the dresser as she wrung her hands. "Anna! You- you're naked! In my bed! What- why? What is happening?"
"You tell me, Elsa," Anna scowled, before her face relaxed into a soft smile. "Besides, you know I always sleep naked. Anyway, what's up? You can tell me anything. You know that, right? You're my-"
"-Sister, I know. I know, Anna. It's… I don't even know how to explain… why are you looking at me like that?"
Anna's mouth hung open. "Sister? What are you talking about, Elsa? I'm your WIFE. How… how do you… what is wrong with you this morning?" She held up her left hand for emphasis, a gold wedding band on the third finger. No answer was forthcoming from the blonde, however, because she fainted on the spot.
Elsa woke again to find herself back in the same bed, with a cold compress on her head. Her stomach lurched once more; whatever dream she was having wasn't over. She slowly sat up and found a note on the nightstand, left with a fountain pen the likes of which she'd never seen before. The handwriting, however, was unmistakably her sister's.
Ran out to the store to get you some medicine. Back soon. Love you, A
She slowly stood and examined her surroundings, the shock having worn off. Despite the odd furnishings, it was still clearly a bedroom. A large black mirror hung on one wall, while a regular mirror was affixed to another. A small box glowed on one of the nightstands, somehow showing the time. She scratched her head, staring for a long moment at the little box, but eventually moved past it to the dresser.
With a gasp, she picked up a rectangular painting off the surface before realizing it wasn't a painting at all. It was some kind of daguerreotype, but in color and clearer than any she'd ever seen brought to the Royal Court. The contents of the image were even more startling; her in a gorgeous white dress with blue diamond patterns on the frills and exposed shoulders, and Anna in a rich green dress with a gold undershirt, standing under a green arch covered in lilies…
… exchanging rings in front of a priest. She was holding a wedding image - her wedding image - and nearly dropped it in shock. Across the top of the image, engraved carefully in the metal frame, was a small inscription.
Anna and Elsa June 21, 2016
Elsa gasped. Surely this must be some kind of cruel joke, she thought, disbelieving that she was somehow 174 years in the future, with her sister who was pretending to be her wife. And yet the strange devices around the room and Anna's reaction shattered that comfortable explanation easily and quickly.
Carefully placing the glass and metal image back down on the dresser, she shed her maroon evening robe and rummaged through the drawers to find a hooded garment of some kind and trousers made of some bizarre, slippery fabric. After pulling them on, she marveled at their comfort; they appeared skin-tight, but somehow expanded and contracted with her movements.
Elsa tiptoed to the bedroom door and nudged it open with one hand. Her breath caught in her throat as she looked around the main room. The date on the portrait was no lie; she was clearly in the future somehow. Familiar objects like chairs and couches were intermingled with some of the most foreign objects she'd ever seen in her life. At a small desk near a window, a silver hinged rectangular box with what looked like letters all over one part was glowing. There were no candles of any kind; instead, glowing balls of glass hung from the walls and ceiling. In another part of the room, some kind of kitchen area, massive silver metal boxes lined the walls, making dull humming noises. Near the couch, another giant black mirror hung on the wall.
Elsa sat down on the couch gingerly, unsure what was even safe to be near. At least she recognized the couch and coffee table; she looked at the papers scattered across it and picked one up. The writing on it was astonishing calligraphy, so finely detailed, better than the penmanship of even the Royal Secretary.
Her hand flew to her mouth as she examined one of the letters. The correspondence- oddly crinkly in her fingers - was addressed to Elsa and Anna Beck, on a street named Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts. America? she said to herself. How in the world did I end up thousands of landmiil away from home?
She mentally thanked her royal tutors for teaching her fluency in English (along with many other languages), else she'd be in even more trouble at the moment. Who was she supposed to be? Who was her sister in this crazy, mixed up place far in the future? Another thought struck her like a blow from behind. Anna had been speaking English when she awoke, not Danish. Her sister, though more lax in her studies than Elsa, was still fluent enough in the required languages of the court.
Elsa finished making a circuit of the small dwelling's main area and found herself in the last room she hadn't explored, the bathroom. She breathed a sigh of relief; this was one room that her adventure hadn't completely obscured; the chamber pot, sink, and bathtub were all obvious, even if they were connected to the wall in unusual ways. She stifled a giggle; who in their right mind would affix a chamber pot to the wall instead of having it be something easily wheeled in and out?
An unfamiliar sound came from the main room, like pieces of metal impacting each other. Elsa tiptoed out of the bathroom to investigate; her hands tingled as she readied her powers. Thank goodness that hasn't changed, she thought to herself. The noise abated as Anna opened the door to the dwelling, carrying some kind of paper bags.
"Anna?"
Anna rolled her eyes as she brushed dust off her green flannel shirt and jeans. "Hey, Elsa. I guess you're still on this whole pronounce-my-name-weird thing? Are you still feeling… uh, faint?"
Elsa shook her head as she tamped down on her magic. "No, I'm… I'm feeling better. Thank you for taking care of me." She shuffled into the room and sat down at the end of the couch, watching the redhead carefully as she unpacked strange boxes and jars from the paper sacks. "So… what did you get at the… the store?"
"Oh, I figured you must have been really sick from something this morning, so I got some oatmeal, milk, a small jar of Pepto, and your favorite, Ghirardelli!" Items practically flew out of the bags as Anna tossed them on the countertop.
"My favorite…" Elsa murmured before looking carefully at the box in Anna's hands. The name was unfamiliar to her (clearly Sardinian), but the contents were anything but. "Chocolate! Oh Anna, thank you!" Her shoulders let go of the tension she'd been holding. No matter what this bizarre future was, it still had chocolate in some form.
"So…" Anna said, plopping gracelessly down on the couch next to her, "Be honest with me. Are you really feeling better? You were pretty out of it this morning."
Elsa carefully looked over this woman who claimed she was her wife, yet was also her sister. This was unquestionably Anna, but not exactly the same person. The woman in front of her was decidedly older; tiny wrinkles near the corners of her mouth and eyes hinted that she was easily Elsa's age, if not older. Her sister's hands were soft and smooth, the hands of someone who'd grown up in the luxurious life of a royal family member. This Anna's hands were rougher, calloused in places, with short, bluntly cut nails. Her sister wore beautiful, complementary outfits befitting a royal princess. This Anna wore fluffy hooded garments and trousers made of some kind of rough blue cloth. Close up, she could spot a few grey hairs interwoven in Anna's auburn mane.
"I… um… I'm still not feeling like myself. To be honest, I'm not myself at all, Anna," she said, pronouncing the name as she'd once heard the American ambassador once say it before both sisters sternly corrected him. Her mouth soured at the flat, nasal intonation. "Can… can I ask you some questions, and promise me you'll be honest with me no matter how unusual the questions are?"
Anna smiled and laid her head down in Elsa's lap, clearly startling the woman momentarily. "Sure, anything you want, baby," she grinned with a broad smile.
Elsa swallowed, her throat bobbing as the words fought their way out of her throat. "What… what's the date, today?"
Anna arched an eyebrow at her before answering. "April 22."
"And the year?"
"Elsa…"
"Please, Anna. Please indulge me?"
A short sigh. "2022."
Elsa's breath caught in her throat. One hundred and eighty years. "And… we're in Boston, Massachusetts?"
"Yeah, like we have been since college! Elsa, what's go-"
Elsa held her hand up close to Anna's cheek, still in her line of sight. "Please… just let me finish. You said college… where are we from? Originally, before college?"
"All right, I'm going to play along, though if you have amnesia or something, I swear I'm taking you to urgent care. Yes, we met my freshman year of college. I'm originally from Eagle Valley, Indiana, and you're from Minneapolis, though your family's originally from Norway." Anna sat up, twisting and contorting herself into a cross-legged seat on the couch as her gaze bore down on Elsa. "Do you… do you really have amnesia or something, Elsa? Did you hit your head?"
Elsa considered the question, pursing her lips gently. Amnesia would be a lot easier to explain than… whatever had happened to her with the red aurora in the skies over the palace. "I… I don't know? I'm not sure I would remember if I had hit my head if I had amnesia afterwards, Anna," she smiled faintly.
"Uh… yeah, I guess that was a silly question," Anna answered, running a hand down her face. "So you really don't remember… what, any of this? Any of us?" Her cheek twitched and her lip trembled as she considered what her wife was saying.
"I- I'm sorry, Anna. This is all so new to me. I'm trying to figure out what's happened to me, I swear. I just… don't know." Her voice broke as she sunk her face into her hands, hot tears beginning to flow. "I'm so sorry, Anna. I… I don't know what's happened."
Anna stood up from the couch and gently lifted Elsa with her, tears of her own gathering. "It's okay, Elsa. Let's… let's get you to MGH. Someone in urgent care can probably help us. I'll get an Uber."
"An… Uber?" She was puzzled at the German expression.
"A car? Wow, you really don't remember anything." Anna pulled out her iPhone, grinned like an idiot for the facial recognition, and opened up the Uber app as Elsa stood wide-eyed in shock, seeing this black piece of glass light up so magically. A few minutes later, Anna put on her shoes, reminded Elsa to do the same (who marveled at the softness and comfort of her modern sneakers), and walked out the front door of their apartment building.
And Elsa promptly came to a stop, frozen in shock at the sight of the road with so many carriages driving on it at unimaginable speeds. She stared at the multitude of colors, each blazing by at what was easily twice the speed of Arendelle's fastest horsemen. In front of their apartment building was a grey carriage… with no horses at all. Swallowing the words that would have indicated something far more than memory loss, she laced her fingers together with Anna's, caught her breath, and walked towards the carriage.
"I'm afraid I can't find anything obviously wrong," the nurse practitioner said after she finished examining Elsa, who was getting dressed in the examination room. "We've ruled out substantial blunt trauma, and I don't see any signs of stroke or other neurological illnesses. You said she's not been using any kind of drugs or substantial alcohol?"
Anna shook her head, looking around the bleak waiting room of Massachusetts General Hospital's Urgent Care walk-in clinic. "Not to my knowledge. We have the occasional wine cooler here and there, but our days of going out and getting blitzed have been over for a while. Are you sure there's nothing else wrong?"
The nurse looked at the diagnostic data on her iPad. "There's one minor detail, but I don't see how it could be related. How old did you say she was?"
"She's three years older than me, so she's 34."
"She doesn't appear to be much more than in her early 20s, Mrs. Beck. As I said, that wouldn't in any way explain the retrograde amnesia, but it is unusual."
Anna thought carefully. Elsa had always been beautiful, a sort of timeless beauty that would be equally elegant at 20 or 60 years old. From the time she'd met her, those first few days on Boston University's harsh urban campus, she just knew Elsa would be the kind of person who would be gorgeous no matter what age she was. She opened up her phone and scrolled through her recent photos, pulling up a photo of the two of them having lunch at Samurai Express, their favorite local Japanese food place. They were both making ridiculous faces for the photo, with Elsa holding up a little piece of the plastic grass on the sushi tray like a mustache in front of Anna's face.
She pinched the screen and zoomed in on her wife, but didn't see anything grossly out of the ordinary. The woman in the photos seemed like the same woman she'd brought to the clinic.
The door to the examination room quietly clicked open and Elsa shuffled out, eyes still wide at the incredible array of medical devices and technology around her. For someone who had never seen light switches just a day ago, the world was a bewildering place. Elsa trembled slightly as she found Anna, clinging to her arm.
"So that said, Mrs. Beck, the challenge with unexplained retrograde amnesia is that because we don't have a cause, we don't have a remedy either. Many patients do recover their memories over time; taking them to familiar places and exposing them to strong memories may help speed the process along a little," the nurse smiled. "Otherwise, your wife is a healthy young woman, but I do feel it's important to mention that there's a chance she may not recover her memories, so be prepared for that possibility. Let's plan to have Elsa come back in a couple of days for a checkup, all right?"
Anna nodded, shook the nurse practitioner's hand, and ushered her wife out of the clinic. "Well, that was a $50 co-pay we won't get back. I guess at least there's nothing horrendously wrong, since our insurance isn't exactly Gold tier," she sighed before noticing the blank look in Elsa's expression. "I'll explain later. Let's… well, let's go home for now, and I guess we'll figure things out from there?"
"We've been married… six years?" Elsa asked tentatively, holding the picture frame in her hands as Anna changed into a t-shirt and sweatpants after another Uber ride back home. The horseless carriage coachman on the way back was a talkative one, but she could barely understand him. She tensed up immediately when she felt Anna's arms around her, hot breath tickling her right ear.
"Yep. Happiest day of my life, marrying you," Anna smiled, kissing Elsa's earlobe and sending the woman into rigid shock for a moment. "Granted, it did take you almost half a decade to ask me, but you were worth the wait."
Elsa cleared her throat. "How… how long have we been together?"
Anna sighed, hugging Elsa tight. "Almost 13 years. We met when I was 18 and a freshman at BU - Boston University."
"We waited quite a while to get married, then. Not to be crass or improper, but we were quite old when we married, weren't we?"
"Elsa, what are you talking about? Both our parents gave us shit for getting married so damn young. Don't you rem…" Anna stopped herself as her face flushed. "I- I'm sorry. It's… I'm sorry. I know you don't remember." She took a deep breath and sat down on the bed. "My mother was livid that I was getting married at 23 to someone who wasn't even out of law school then."
Elsa imperceptibly shook her head. A woman marrying at 23 was practically an irredeemable spinster in her time; she herself had faced intense scrutiny from the Royal Court for not choosing a husband and king to rule at her side. At 23, she was already past what was considered her prime and had she not been Queen, she would have had no chance to settle down and start a family. No man wanted to marry a woman that old, not when the life expectancy was around 45 years old.
"I see. I, uh… I'm a lawyer?"
"You are, and a damn good one too. You're probably only a few years away from making partner. That's… that's part of the reason why I said what I did about money earlier at the clinic," Anna offered with a tight smile. "We've been saving up like crazy so you can buy your partnership when the time comes."
Elsa tried not to look more bewildered, nodding as though she understood. "And… what do you do for work, Anna?"
Anna's smile grew. "Gosh, this is so weird. It's almost like a first date again. In fact…" she stood up, grabbing her phone and scrolling through nearby restaurants. "Let's do that, Elsa!"
"Do what?"
"Let's go on a dinner date, so we can get to know each other again! How about… the nurse said someplace familiar. How about Samurai Express, tomorrow night after work?" Anna practically salivated at the idea; Samurai Express was their go-to when they wanted a fix of something Asian but not at Boylston Street's usually crazy prices, and it wasn't too long a subway ride to get there.
Elsa gripped the dresser's surface once more, feeling the slightest chill in her fingertips. The mantra she chanted for almost a decade and a half came back to her, unbidden. Conceal, don't feel. Don't let it show… yet. "I… that sounds nice, Anna. I'd like that. But…"
Anna put her phone down to look at her wife, forgetting for a moment that she'd lost her memories. "But what, Elsa? You love going there with me. Well, mostly."
"Oh, it wasn't… umm, it wasn't the restaurant that put me off, Anna. It's… work. I don't remember the first thing about being a lawyer. What am I going to do?" she cried plaintively, looking into the mirror at her reflection and seeing Anna over her shoulder.
"Don't worry about it," Anna smiled. "We have our receipt from the doctor's office today, so we'll just call you in sick tomorrow, and maybe Tuesday too. That way it'll give you time to rest, and hopefully start to remember things."
Elsa breathed a sigh of relief, her shoulders releasing the tension she'd been storing in them. "That… that sounds wonderful, Anna." She yawned and looked at the bed, practically hearing it calling her name. "I know it's probably early for you yet, but do you mind if I try to get some rest? This has been… quite a day."
"Of course, go ahead." Anna began to gather up a blanket and a pillow in her arms.
"What are you doing?"
"I uh, I figured with you not being able to remember anything, maybe I should sleep on the couch?" Anna turned to look at Elsa, reading her face for a reaction of some kind to guide her decision.
Elsa walked over to her and put her hand on Anna's bicep. "Don't be silly. This is your… our bed, and while the couch was quite comfortable earlier, it's not a substitute for the bed. It's fine, I'll be fine." She smiled to herself; she and her Anna had many sleepovers in the last couple of years, making up for lost time when they were growing up.
Anna's lower lip trembled. "That's… thank you. That means a lot. I haven't had to sleep alone in a really long time, except for the occasional business trip." Given her wife's amnesia, she decided to keep her clothes on as she crawled under the covers and waited for Elsa to join her.
Moments later, with the lights off, Elsa wrapped an arm around Anna's middle, only to hear her murmur, half-asleep, "Hey… usually I'm the big spoon."
Author's NotesOne of the most fun things - and challenging things about a story like this is the time changes. Elsa is from canon 1842, so a lot of things we take for granted didn't exist or were different. Italy, for example, was not a unified nation, something that will come up time and again. Germany and Bavaria were separate. Norwegian as a language wasn't in use at that time.
There will be a much bigger author's note about a funny part of history in chapter 4. Stay tuned.
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