She finds you frozen, shivering in the ice and snow. There's blood on your hands, blood staining your blouse and your skirts and everything is a blur — how you got here, even who you are, it's all a mystery to you like you're looking through a dense fog or roaring blizzard. There's an echo in the back of your mind, heels on a metal deck, a voice like a songbird crooning through a radio and the cock of a revolver.
It's your blood, you know it's your blood but you don't know who hurt you (there's a name, a name just out of reach but you recoil).
She takes you into a palace made of ice. It towers over head and there's a glittering gleaming chandelier. In the reflections you see a woman staring back at you. Hard blue eyes, hard face, blood caking your hair, running make-up. A sharp pain rings deep inside your temple and blissful darkness rushes up to swallow you.
Hours or maybe days later, you wake. The blood is gone but you still feel it, sticky and warm on her skin and on your hands. Your name still eludes you but there are glimpses, memories like the fragments of a broken mirror and you know with a sudden clarity that the world you left is lost to you, though it was never yours to begin with. Eyes like ice under the moon and full of concern peer down at you. Her face is beautiful, her hair silver gold and something stirs within you that you've never been willing to identify before(yearning hunger understanding). But then the darkness drags you down once more and you're lost in an endless nightmare of dripping water and metal hallways filled with gunshots and screaming men.
You should be freezing, in this palace of ice. Cold bone cold, shivering in the dark and yet you're warm, wrapped in furs and blankets and as you drift in the fog you hear singing. It calls to you, haunting and melodic and this time when you escape the darkness you mean to stay. Those eyes are there again, that sweet voice calling you back to the light.
"Welcome back," she says, fingers featherlight on your cheeks. And you don't know her name and you don't even know your own but a peace settles over you. There's power in that word, welcome. You feel welcome, at ease, that peace flooding your limbs and making them heavy. The darkness that reaches for you this time is the comforting sort, the tiredness of sleep and the need of rest, but you shake it off.
"Who are you?" Your voice is strained, sounding like gravel on rocks and you realize how parched your throat is, your body shaking from the effort of trying to sit up.
"I'm Elsa." Gently, she pushes you down and you're powerless to resist. Somehow, she produces a chip of ice and her touch makes your lips buzz, but you suck on it gratefully, cold and moisture a relief.
Your mind struggles, trying to remember your name and there it is floating up like debris. Anna you recall but that was the name Booker gave you, your mother's name and the one you were born with and it doesn't resonate and it means nothing beyond an aching regret for the parents you'd never known. Memories in the detritus, still fragmented, confusion and anger and regret. You hated Booker and you'd loved him, just as you'd hated and loved the man who'd raised you, Comstock who'd locked you away in that tower and hid you from the world (one and the same but different, a twist of fate a different path Booker and Comstock Anna and ...). He'd called you Elizabeth and that's closer, that's better but something about it rings wrongly.
You're certain that neither of them deserve the power of choosing your name.
"I'm…"
You had so desperately wanted to escape that you'd read every book you could, going as far as to literally paint a picture to give yourself a way to get there. Paris.Paris! You'd longed to go to Paris, to France, and a name floats up from the shattered depths of your mind. Maybe you'd read it in a book, one of thousands that you'd devoured in search of that escape.
"…Belle," you say, and the word is strange on your tongue and yet and yet, names and words are power and for the first time you no longer feel powerless. A name that is chosen, that you've given yourself.
"Belle," Elsa repeats, her lips spreading into a smile and the way she says it makes the world feel right.