Aftermath

The next couple of days were among the most stressful that Elsa could recall experiencing, including when they wound up in New York and the evening before Julian's sentencing. That was because Julian spent most of the time sleeping except when she got up to eat or use the bathroom. Also, even though they had a wide selection for her to choose from Julian only ever took a bowl of broth, and even then she barely downed half of it before she asked to be excused to lie back down.

There came a point where Elsa got scared that Julian wasn't getting better, that her 'execution' had caused her far too much harm and that she was going to slowly wither away and die. Then, on the morning of the third day, Julian accepted a plate of bacon and eggs, and when she started eating Elsa was so joyously relieved that she nearly broke into tears right there. Elsa was also happy when after breakfast Julian asked if she could go flying with her, barely registering Julian saying that she wanted to talk to her about something or that Anna practically volunteered herself to chaperone them.

So it was that that they found themselves leisurely flying through the skies of Arrendale with Julian riding behind Elsa on Aurora and Anna shadowing them on Thunderhead. Elsa was having Julian ride behind her this time because Julian did seem to be much stronger than she was a couple of nights ago and it would be less awkward than reaching around her for Aurora's reigns. However, this led Elsa to feeling awkward for an entirely different reason. Julian's arms that were wrapped around Elsa did indeed feel stronger than the limp noodles that they had been a couple of nights ago. Not quite as strong as they had looked back when Julian was a male, but the strength definitely matched the muscle tone that she had now, and Elsa knew that Julian's true strength lied far beyond her physical prowess. However, while Julian's arms did feel good around her Elsa found that itself confusing as less than a week ago Julian had been like a brother to her.

Also Julian's proximity to her made Elsa self-conscious about the way she smelled to her. Of course Elsa had taken a bath this morning, and she had used a fresh sponge, some of the soap that they saved for occasions like visits with foreign dignitaries, she even added more perfume to the bathwater than she usually did. However, that just made her think back on her time in New York, how she had been introduced to such things as scented soaps, shampoo, deodorant, even showers. Elsa hadn't thought much about it before besides some mild irritation at Fox's amusement that Elsa and Anna didn't know about such things, but now in this moment she wished that she had taken some of the offered bath stuff with her (though they wouldn't have survived the firebenders' attack that destroyed Kristoff's sled if she had anyway.)

"Elsa?" she heard Julian cry out over the wind of their flight, which caused Elsa to automatically reply with a startled, "Yes?" Immediately Elsa started furiously blushing, both from the embarrassment of realizing that Julian must have been calling out to her for a while before she noticed as well as from the fear that her earlier thoughts might have been obvious to Julian even though it was highly unlikely that she could have seen her face.

"I was saying earlier that I was wanting to talk to you about something," Julian reminded Elsa, causing Elsa to relax a bit. Elsa then signaled for Aurora to slow down to a gentle glide before she urged Julian, "Well, what is it?"

"It's just... well... the last couple of days whenever I felt strong enough I've been experimenting, seeing how much of my strength had recovered. Mostly just trying to create a small portal to check in on how Wistermere was after I... well, left."

Elsa glanced back in confusion to see Julian looking rather remorseful, then she said in the softest tone currently possible, "I thought that you needed flowing water to make those."

"For the most part yes, it is easier for me to cast my portals on water with a natural current or else hijack a portal someone else created for my own means," Julian confirmed, "However, my experience during the trial as well as a couple other places led me to try other methods of circulation, such as the cooling surface of a hot liquid sinking to the bottom of a container, causing the warmer liquid to rise to the surface, even seeing if stirring it would make it easier for me to make it easier for me to use."

Elsa recalled Julian's actions during the previous days' meals how she would stir her broth for long periods of time or blow on it extensively between spoonfuls, and things clicked. "Wait, is that why you've only been eating broth for the last two days?"

"Not exactly," Julian told her, "I did use my broth in some of my experiments, but the main reason why is because I didn't quite feel like I could handle solid food yet. After my experiments my exhaustion caused my nausea to become worse, and then I was unable to eat any more until the next meal."

"Now most of my experiments ended in failure," Julian explained, "I wasn't sure if my chosen medium or the way I was interacting with it had anything to do it, but I'm sure that I wasn't yet strong enough to get favorable results. However, last night at dinner I was finally able to make a connection with home, and that's when I saw just how mistaken I was in my ways of thinking, how I had messed up in being so single minded that I failed to listen to you back when it would have made a difference, and the price my kingdom had to pay as a result."

"Julian, if you don't spit it out right now I'm going to have Thunderhead eat you!" Anna yelled at them. Elsa couldn't help it: the threat was so ridiculous, largely because Thunderhead only ate fish, that Elsa burst out laughing. Elsa heard a sound behind her and she turned to see Julian suppressing a smile for a moment before she returned to her previously somber demeanor. Even Anna sighed and rolled her eyes before Julian said, "You're right, of course, to the point. I discovered the reason why I was not able to find my way back home all those years ago, and like many things that have gone wrong in my life it was almost entirely my fault."

"What do you mean?" Elsa asked her.

"I'm talking about my execution," Julian clarified, "I should have chosen a different method to hide my departure, I should have done more to make sure that the stargate was destroyed beyond any possible repair, I should have just left when you guys and my parents told me to, before it became troublesome. If I had, then Wistermere would have been around when I was looking for it."

"Your stargate thing?" Elsa asked her, turned around as much as she could without reversing her saddled position, "Something happened with it?"

Julian nodded morosely as she said, "As I explained to you when I got back here, under normal operation the stargate enables nearly-instantaneous travel across galaxies. However, under certain extraordinary and dangerous circumstances, which safeguards built into a fully functional unit prevent, travel across time is possible. I recreated those circumstances to send myself back here. However, there were no stargates in this area and the ones in this time were either sealed and buried or simply not working."

"Sealed and buried?" Anna asked curiously.

"Yeah, the aliens who relocated a couple of gates here weren't the most magnanimous of folks, viewing the human race as either lowly slaves or as meat puppets they could ride around in as they lorded their superiority over us. They would have used you sisters and even myself to become truly unstoppable tyrants that would have dominated vast regions of space for eons to come, destroying who we are in the process," Julian explained with a gravitas that made Elsa shiver as she imagined her people looking on her in fear as she was made to look down on them, not in control of her own body.

"Fortunately, before such abilities came into their clutches, the human race rose up against their alien overlords, banishing them from the planet and sealing the stargate to make it harder for them to return. It was only after a couple thousand years had passed, when the warning tales against removing the cover stone had been lost to the sands of time did a military-backed research team unearth the gate and activate it once more, alerting the aliens that the way to Earth was open once again," Julian continued, "Fortunately my gate wasn't a true one, so there's little to no chance of them being drawn back by it. I just had it dial the unearthed gate and slipped through the walls of the wormhole before I overshot you guys. Of course I'm sure that SG-1 got on edge when their gate was briefly activated from a local address that shouldn't exist and nobody came through. I should go there to apologize to them later."

"Julian!" Anna called to her in warning, at which point Julian looked sheepish and apologized, "I started rambling again, sorry. Anyway I had thought that designing my gate to self-destruct would be enough to deter any attempt to use my gate again. Unfortunately I didn't count on my people's ingenuity as enough of the gate survived for them to tinker with, though without a power source capable of putting out huge amounts of energy at once it was about as useful as a basic Lego set."

"However, a few days after I left fate decided to twist the knife by having a meteorite fall in the heart of Wistermere," Julian continued, "Fortunately nobody was hurt when it impacted, but this meteor was composed of elements, including various metals, that were not found anywhere else on Earth. More importantly at the core of the meteorite was a crystal which was capable of serving as a self-sustaining energy source that could power all of New York City and New Jersey combined for all of perpetuity. Unfortunately someone whose ambition and ego surpassed their skills got the bright idea to connect the crystal up to the haphazardly patched-together gate. The result was an explosive release of energy that opened a quantum rift that swallowed Wistermere whole, leaving no trace that it was ever there. The temporal shockwave, or 'time boom' as some would call it, that followed wound up rewriting history in a similar manner, not even leaving Wistermere as a myth in someone else's story."

"So your people are just... gone?" Elsa asked in shock, her heart breaking for Julian. Elsa could scarcely imagine losing not only her parents but also her home and her people, everyone and everything she ever knew and cared about, simply gone... because of her. She wasn't sure that she could bear it.

"If only it was that simple," Julian told her, voice heavy with regret, "There were certainly casualties that day, the idiot who hooked up my gate to an unknown crystal as well as several nearby people who were caught in the initial blast haven't been seen since. However, the quantum rift didn't destroy Wistermere: it relocated it into the distant past."

"How far back...?" Elsa asked, dumbfounded.

"I'm not too sure as historical records weren't too accurate for the era they wound up in, and the quantum flux caused by the event makes it nearly impossible for me to pinpoint when they first appeared, but I would estimate that they were displaced by approximately 20 or 30 millennia, maybe more," Julian guessed.

"30,000 years!?" Anna exclaimed, and Elsa couldn't blame her for her shocked disbelief. When the two of them went forward a mere 300 years together with Kristoff and Sven they found New York to be a huge culture shock. But to go back around 30,000 years or more? That's less like another era and more like finding oneself in a different world entirely. A person alone who finds themselves in such a situation would likely struggle to survive without the conveniences that they had been accustomed to. An entire nation of people thrown back 30 millennia, together with the tools to maintain the standards they lived with that nobody ocean surrounding them else would have in the time they find themselves...

"This is bad, isn't it?" Elsa asked Julian, who nodded as she said, "It could have been so much worse, however. They didn't share the secrets of their advanced technology with any of the other residents of the era, which was a small blessing as it avoided the worst case scenario of our world being destroyed by the equivalent of a nuclear war. They could not resist using their technological superiority, that was boosted by the crystal and the gate's scraps I left behind, to expand their power and influence, however, their proud kingdom growing into a formidable, nigh-unstoppable empire. As they were concerned about any enemies that they may make, in addition to changing their names so that they might not be connected to the future they came from but also the name of their kingdom, taking the name from the ocean surrounding them. And so their home came to be known far and wide as..."

"...Atlantis," Anna interrupted, and when Elsa looked Anna appeared as though she had just seen a ghost, and both Elsa and Julian were struck dumb as Anna continued, "Wistermere became the lost empire of Atlantis."

"Th-that's right!" Julian acknowledged, astonished, "How did you know!?"

"In part it was was what you guys were talking about, like how the people of Wistermere used their superior technology to establish a powerful empire in the past," Anna explained, "The biggest clue, however, was the first one I saw when we arrived in Wistermere: the writing we saw in various areas there was virtually identical to that which I saw in a book where Plato talked about Atlantis, which was also similar to the ancient writing engraved in some relics that we have of our Viking ancestors. At the time I thought it was just some random coincidence, like how a number of countries use the same script for their writings even though their languages were different. After what you just described, however, everything makes sense."

"I can't believe that I missed something so obvious!" Julian derided herself, "I grew up with that language, yet when we studied Plato's works in the Institute I completely overlooked it!"

Elsa comfortingly patted Julian's arms, which were still wrapped around her, as she reassured Julian, "You were still recovering from a traumatic event while trying to adapt to living in a strange and exotic land, nobody could expect you to pick up on such a detail. I wish I could say that I have the same excuse for missing such a thing, however. I'm supposed to be Arrendale's queen, I trained for it all my life, yet my younger sister is proving to be more learned than me. What does that say about my competence to do this job?"

"Both of you stop it!" Anna yelled at them, "Julian, Elsa is right: adopting to a new culture is hard enough without also having to deal with the things that you went through, so don't think that you should have made that connection under the circumstances. And Elsa, you are an amazing queen. You couldn't have been expected to recognize the writing of Julian's people as I don't think that mythology is a core part of the education you were expected to learn: just because I turned to such sources to abate my boredom in our time apart don't take that as a personal failing, ok?" When Elsa didn't respond right away Anna said louder, "Ok!?" to which Elsa laughed sheepishly and said, "Ok."

For a moment there was an awkward silence between them until Anna chose to break it by asking, "So Plato said that the people of Atlantis had stuff like electricity, advanced medicine, even the power of flight, but how much of that was true?"

"Pretty much all of it," Julian confirmed, "though I don't know how much of it was actual knowledge and how much was the power of the crystal itself. You see, the energies of the crystal is capable of healing many wounds almost instantly, and the residents who carry around a shard of the crystal have had their life expectancies extended many times by an exceptional amount, to the point where they were living for a few millennia."

Elsa was dumbfounded by this information, and it showed in her voice as she asked, "You serious?"

Julian nodded as she continued, "Unfortunately, in spite of the advantages and authority they had over the rest of the world then, for some that wasn't enough. King Kashekim Nedakh, the husband of my mother's great-granddaughter, let his hubris cloud his judgement and he sought to harness the power of the crystal itself as a weapon of war. It backfired, and as a result the explosion created a monstrous tsunami that claimed many lives and nearly destroyed Atlantis entirely."

"You said that it 'nearly' destroyed Atlantis?" Anna asked, and Elsa found herself just as curious about the answer. While she didn't read as much about the subject and Anna apparently had, Elsa was aware that some cataclysm had purportedly sunk Atlantis beneath the waves, never to be seen again. Of course the fact that there was no trace of this civilization to be found caused many to believe that it never existed, deeming it just as much a myth as the Nordic gods of lore (which Elsa now knew were real after having met Thor personally.)

"The reason why the destruction and loss of life wasn't total is because of the crystal," Julian explained, "Not sure how or why, but the crystal is alive somehow, and it has sentience. More importantly is that in times of crisis it will bond with a human host, one of royal blood, to protect itself. It will choose no other. On the day in question it chose my great niece, King Kashekim"s wife to join with, upon which it created an energy field that shielded the heart of Atlantis, including the King, his daughter Princess Kidagakosh (Kida for short), and what people that managed to make it inside the field before it sealed itself, then it sheared off the area and pulled it down to a natural air pocket deep beneath the sea where they would be safe while the waves destroyed everything and everyone else. So it was that a fraction of the culture and people of Atlantis was saved, but it required the sacrifice of its matriarch, which is another stain on my soul: yet another member of my family, as well as thousands of innocent people, dead because of me."

"What do you mean?" Elsa asked Julian wishing that her hands weren't occupied with Aurora's reigns so that she could pick up Julian's chin to make her look at her, "You didn't make that weapon, you didn't set it off."

"No, but I made it possible," Julian argued, still distraught, "If it wasn't for my gate they wouldn't have been there in the first place. If I had just left when you told me to, or at least picked a less elaborate method of execution to disguise my departure, then they would not have had the length of rope to hang themselves with. My people would have been better off if I never came back home."

Elsa heard Anna scoff and she looked to see her sister shaking her head in disappointment as she said, "You should probably avoid absorbing that much lightning, Julian, as it seems to have really cooked your brain and I don't know how much of it you've got left."

"Anna!?" Elsa exclaimed. Anna had always been passionate and high spirited, but Elsa had never known her to be mean or vindictive.

"I'm serious, Elsa!" Anna called back, "Don't you remember what he, that is to say she, explained to us after first arriving here?" Anna then focused on Julian and asked her, "Do you remember the reason why you couldn't simply save our parents from the storm and instead had to bring them forward to our time? Or the reason you had to jump through so many hoops to save Robin Hood and get him back to Regina?"

"It was to avoid potentially catastrophic course corrections caused by changing an established event in history up to that point," Julian responded.

"And didn't you tell us towards the beginning of this airborne discussion that the reason why you couldn't find your way home until Mr. Gold gave you that gauntlet was because of them blasting themselves into the past?" Anna asked with an almost smug grin, "wouldn't that be an 'established event' that would resist change?"

The look on Julian's face told Elsa that she hadn't considered that possibility. "So it wouldn't have mattered if I went back or not?" Julian said almost to herself.

"I'd say that if it wasn't your gate then it would have been something else," Anna told Julian, "in which case they would have likely blown themselves to smithereens rather than another age, and while the result would have been the same for you I feel like the best case scenario was the one that played out here."

"Yes, I suppose that you're right," Julian conceded, "Your sister is right about how sharp you are."

"Don't try to butter me up now!" Anna warned Julian, "You might have been trained by heroes, but I was trained by the Evil Queen and the Wicked Witch of the West, and I'm still mad at you about Elsa so watch it!"

Elsa found it sweet how Anna was sticking up for her, so she didn't point out that the training Anna went through was less than a day while Julian had trained for years, nor how Julian had used her powers in combat many times while Anna only had her power during the latest confrontation in Storybrook. To shift the tone to a less aggro one Elsa asked Julian, "So what happened to your people that survived the tsunami?"

This prompted another eye roll from Anna, who apparently was aware of just what Elsa was up to, but Julian just gave a small smile as she replied, "Well they wound up staying in the cavern the crystal brought them to for a few thousand years, not exactly thriving but they did survive. It wasn't until a couple hundred or so years from now, when New York wasn't yet the huge metropolis it was when you guys were there, that cartographer and linguist Milo James Thatch would follow his grandfather's lead and challenge the stuck-up academia by joining a group of explorers on a mission to prove the existence of Atlantis. In the course of the mission Milo met Princess Kida, who had matured into a stunning young woman, and in spite of the warnings of her wary father the two of them hit it off while exploring the secrets of Atlantis that had been forgotten even by those who lived there."

"Unfortunately, much to Milo's dismay, they learned that the king's caution was warranted as Milo's crew of explorers revealed themselves as mercenaries who were seeking to profit from the expedition by stealing the Atlantians' crystal and selling it on the black market," Julian continued, "In spite of Milo's pleas to the contrary, his insistence that the Atlantians would die without the crystal, the crew forced their way into the chamber where it was hidden, mortally wounding the king and provoking the crystal to bond with Kida like it had with her mother millennia before (which ironically made it easier for the mercenaries to steal.) The irony came full circle, however, as the members of the crew that had actually bonded with Milo felt that they had went too far in their efforts to claim it and ended up defecting to Milo's side, staying behind with him as the others took the crystal away. Later, after the king's death, they encouraged Milo to chase after their former comrades, joining forces with the able-bodied Atlantians to fight the mercenaries to take the princess and the crystal back. Following an intense conflict, which indirectly awakened a dormant volcano, they reclaimed Kida and the crystal and returned them to Atlantis before the resulting eruption could finish what the tsunami started. Finally, in what was likely a last act of kindness and human compassion, Kida's mother released her from the crystal's bond where she could mourn the loss of both her parents. In the end Milo chose to remain in Atlantis as the fiancee of the newly crowned Queen Kida while his friends returned home with their reward for their part in saving Atlantis, keeping both Milo's survival and the existence of Atlantis a closely guarded secret."

"So they parted ways, never to see each other again?" Elsa asked her.

Julian nodded as she answered, "not until some unearthed relics of Atlantian technology started stirring things on the surface and threatened the secret, but that's another story."

It sounded like there was more to this story, but from the way Julian's arms were trembling slightly and her eyes were sagging Elsa concluded that this recounting had took a lot out of her so she didn't press her. As the silence continued one question pressed on Elsa's mind, yet she didn't give it a voice as she was afraid of the answer. Eventually Elsa steeled herself and asked, "So, what now?"

"I don't know," Julian admitted, "I had dedicated so much of my life to finding my home, atoning for what happened with my brother. Now that I have I don't know where to go from here."

"You could stay here," Elsa offered hopefully, "Arrendale could be your new home."

"That could be nice," Julian mused, her sigh coming out as a vibrating hum that Elsa felt her chest resonating with, "It's been so long since I felt like I could call any place home that I almost forgot what that was like."

"But?" Elsa asked, hoping that she just imagined the hesitation in Julian's voice.

"But there's still the matter of what happened to me to deal with," Julian told her, "I've come to terms with why this happened to me, accepted that this is my new reality. However, it doesn't feel like my body, more like my mind was swapped with someone else's (and that's happened to me more times than I care to count before I learned how to shield myself against it.) All these new urges, new sensations, new emotions: they're all rather strange to me and has me feeling rather confused."

"I think I get what you mean," Elsa told Julian, thinking about how she had these new emotions towards someone who in her heart and mind was once like an older brother to her, and how knowing that deep down she was the same in fact made it rather confusing for Elsa.

"I need to become acquainted with who I am now, and I don't feel like I can around people who already know me and have preconceived impressions of me.," Julian told Elsa, looking rather sad as she said it, "I'm sorry, but I will need to go by myself somewhere for a while. Until I do I don't think that I can confidentially make any long-term plans."

This made Elsa feel rather sad too, as she had been hoping that Julian would choose to stay this time. However, by the same token she couldn't fault Julian for her choice. "When will you be going?" Elsa asked Julian melancholily.

"I think in a couple of days," Julian responded in just as despondent manner, "I want to make sure that I'm strong enough to actually get somewhere. I'd hate for my strength to give out halfway through and leave me drifting aimlessly through the eternal sea, especially without a boat I could navigate through it."

"I could get you a boat to replace the one you took Rothbart out with," Elsa offered.

"Thanks, but I do need the exercise," Julian politely turned her down, "Perhaps I'll take you up on your offer when I return, however."

"You're coming back!?" Elsa asked, perking up at the hinted promise.

"Of course!" Julian said as she tightened her grip around Elsa's waist slightly, and when Elsa felt the touch of Julian's cheek upon her bare back Elsa felt herself blushing as the butterflies in her stomach exploded throughout her entire body and made her tingle all over as Julian continued, "You sisters are much too prone to getting into trouble if I'm away for too long."

"Well, we wouldn't want that," Elsa said with a small smile feeling like this flight had grown a few degrees warmer.

"Besides," Julian said with a small chuckle, the vibrations of which send another thrill through Elsa, "I do have a promise to keep with you two."

This statement caught Elsa off guard, as she didn't remember any promise from Julian, let alone one she made to both her and Anna. Anna beat Elsa to the punch when she asked, "What promise?"

"Don't you guys have a wedding engagement you've been waiting to attend in Berk?" Julian responded as she pulled away a bit to look Elsa in the eyes.

Elsa and Anna exchanged surprised looks that quickly changed into excitement as Elsa turned back to Julian and asked, "Hiccup and Astrid? You mean that they are really...!?"

"Yes," Julian said with a smile that made Elsa feel much warmer, "In most of the worldlines that I observed, the ones that didn't result in one or both of their lives being cut short by any of the threats they came across, they have ended up together. Actually for Vikings they seem exceptionally skilled at dodging death."

"Hiccup is no coward!" Anna said defensively.

"Of course not," Julian assured her, "Any man who would face off with a Bewilderbeast with nothing more than a shield, even one as amazing as Cap's, in order to protect one that he loves could never be considered a coward. I'm just saying that just being a Viking is hazardous enough, and throwing dragons into the mix makes it a wonder how any of them makes it past 30. That just shows how exceptional they are."

"They really are, aren't they?" Elsa mused, recalling the time she spent in that rough-and-tumble yet mostly friendly village. Aurora let out a low and unthreatening roar, much like a cat's purr, as if she too was fondly remembering the place where she and Elsa forged their bond.

"Well if you guys still want to go I've confirmed before I came to help you in Storybrook that it's still on," Julian informed them, "and once I've found out when it is I can come back to take you there."

"You better!" Anna said harshly, though she couldn't stop from smiling when she said it.

"I guess that I have something to look forward to then," Elsa said with her own smile which came freely. She had no doubt that when Julian left it would be hard, and the time that Elsa would spend wondering when or if she was going to be able to return would be harder. Until then, however, Elsa could use the time she had to become accustomed to who Julian was now, plus she had her promise to be her escort to her friends' wedding. So for now she held onto the hope that the worst part was behind her and that the future would indeed be much brighter.

A few months later...

High up on the North Mountain the snows were coming early and with a vengeance. Up in this generally inhospitable region the flawless snow-covered ground gives the place a deceptive beauty that one cannot help but be drawn in by. In this stark landscape the only landscapes of note were the grove of trees with their delicately dangling drops of ice down the slope, the jagged peak of the mountain towering above, and the gleaming spires in the distance of the ice palace erected by Queen Elsa's power some time ago and which still remains intact silhouetted against the blizzard.

It bears repeating that no living, breathing thing has disturbed this area in some time, with the wind and snow making the ground a smooth and majestic field of white. Then, without preamble, A gigantic ball of fire appears and intrudes upon this idealic scene. It doesn't move from where it showed up, is unaffected by winds swirling around, and doesn't even touch the ground though the heat from it is evaporating the snow beneath into a semi-spherical depression.

Just as quickly as it appeared the huge fireball unraveled and took on the shape of firey bird like the phoenix of legend, and with a piercing cry it vanished into the blizzard. In the place where this apparition once was a pair of smaller figures are helping each other to their feet in the middle of the depression. One, whose dark outfit and black hair contrasted with her fair skin, pushed her hair out of her eyes as she called out, "What happened!? Where are we!?" The other, whose sleeveless blue outfit showcased her dark complexion, held out her hands and a flame appeared hovering above them, illuminating her face and the night around them as she replied, "I don't know, but it seems that we're not in Republic City anymore."

pas la fin