Eagle Valley, Indiana, 1990 Elsa is 42 and 10, Anna is 7
Blue lightning sparks filled the nighttime air, a stark contrast to the pink floral wallpaper in the bedroom. Pink and green crocus flowers sewn into the heavy woolen rug muffled the sound of Elsa's body falling out of space and time.
Elsa knelt on the floor of the room, gathering her senses. The last time she'd jumped through time and space, she'd been lucky enough to land in a supply closet. This time, she wasn't nearly as lucky, appearing in what looked like a very, very pink bedroom. A little girl's room.
Crap, she thought. This is going to be really hard to explain if anyone sees me like this. Elsa's eyes adjusted to the darkness, and the combination of scents and textures immediately told here where she was, letting her relax just a tiny bit.
Anna's room - when they were little kids.
She looked around and saw the wooden toy chest that held her sister's prized possessions, and the little stuffed blue doll with yellow yarn hair made to look like her. Their parent had each given them a doll that looked like the other. Anna's rocking horse sat in the corner of the room. Books covered the small walnut bookshelf in the corner of the room. A cheerful little sunflower-themed clock radio on the nightstand showing 1:42 AM.
Nostalgia surged in Elsa's heart. This was Anna's room before everything bad happened to her, before the drinking, the partying, the drugs… the accident. Tears welled unbidden to her eyes, remembering their younger days.
"Hello? Who's there?" called out a tiny, muffled voice from underneath a gigantic fluffy pink comforter. A shock of red hair and teal eyes peeked over the top of the blankets.
Elsa turned to look at Anna, buried under the covers. "Hi," she whispered.
"Who are you?", the tiny face asked, more curious than afraid.
Elsa paused. What should she tell Anna? While Anna would have no memory of her, if she was caught by Iduna and Agnar, they would clearly remember her from the hospital. She'd have quite a bit of explaining to do; perhaps the truth, outlandish as it was, would better serve her in the long run. Elsa looked at her sister carefully. Anna looked almost exactly as she remembered her; only a few minor details seemed slightly different. Elsa took a breath and walked over to the bed, sitting down on the edge.
"My name is… Miss Elsa."
Anna's eyes brightened. "That's my sister's name. I love my sister. I want to be just like her someday," the little girl smiled. "You have hair just like Elsa's, it's the same pretty color. I wish I had hair like that instead of stupid red hair."
"I love your hair, Anna. It's beautiful." Elsa ran her fingers gently through little Anna's hair, suppressing more nostalgic tears.
"Hey, wait a minute, Miss Elsa. How do you know my name?"
Elsa smiled and noticed a twinkle in her sister's eyes. That was different, she thought to herself. Anna's eyes had always been a lovely teal color, but they had always been a little… flat. Anna herself had been a good person, a good woman with a heart of gold, but she had also been a little… slow at times. Perhaps I've already altered Anna's life, she thought to herself.
Elsa snapped back to the moment, realizing Anna was still waiting for her to answer. "I'll tell you, but only if you can keep a secret," she smiled, stage whispering as the little girl vigorously nodded her assent. "I'm actually your sister, too, from the future."
"Whoa, really?", the little girl exclaimed, eyes wide with wonder.
"You don't seem surprised by that, Anna."
"Well, you do have the same hair color as my sister. Wait, if my sister comes in here, will you be meeting yourself?"
Elsa giggled and nodded. "Yes. In fact, she's already met me. We met when you were born."
Anna scrunched up her brow. "So there are two of you?"
"Sort of. Remember, I'm from the future."
"What am I like in the future?"
Elsa felt as though she froze solid. Just the thought of the future, the future without Anna in it that she'd already lived, was like a stab wound to her heart. Seeing little Anna here, alive and vibrant, tore at that wound all the harder. She found it almost impossible to breathe, much less speak.
"You…" Both words and the truth failed Elsa. She couldn't bear to tell Anna the fate she was desperately trying to avoid. "You're still my favorite person, my favorite sister, and you grow up to be the most important person I know."
Anna smiled broadly. "That sounds so nice! I'll bet you're my favorite too. Can I ask you another question?"
Elsa nodded, her eyes wet with tears from the moment. To hear her sister at all, in any capacity, twenty years after her untimely death, was a blessing. Even if Project Q never accomplished anything else, having just a few more moments with Anna made the lifetime of work worthwhile.
"Why are you… nakee?" the little redhead asked, pointing at her.
Both girls giggled, Elsa blushing a touch as well. "Well, where I'm from, in order to come here, I'm not allowed to bring anything with me at all, not even clothing."
"Not even undies?"
"Not even!" she playfully exclaimed to Anna. Elsa looked around, remembering the house she'd grown up in. Memories came flooding back, and she was certain she could navigate it with her eyes closed. "But maybe I can sneak out into the hall very quietly, I think Mommy keeps some robes in one of the closets, doesn't she?"
Anna nodded. "She sure does in the hall."
"I'll be right back," Elsa winked.
After a near disaster tripping over some of Anna's toys littering the hallway outside her room, Elsa managed to snag one of Iduna's robes and make it back into Anna's bedroom undetected. She sighed a breath of relief with her back to the door and found Anna staring intently at her.
"So will you play with me, Miss Elsa?"
Elsa smiled and sat on the floor. "As long as we're quiet, I don't want to wake your… our parents. What do you want to play?"
"How about Uno?" Anna squealed, already rummaging through her toy chest to find the deck of cards in its tattered cardboard box. "I love to play it, but my sister doesn't like playing with me." She doesn't wait for a response, immediately shuffling the cards.
"So… why do you suppose your sister doesn't play with you?", Elsa asked, frowning.
Anna looks up in surprise. No one had ever asked her opinion on the matter, and she scrunched up her face thinking about it. "She's the older sister so Mommy and Daddy give her lots more to do. She has to be really good at school, and she doesn't have time to play. Mommy and Daddy say school is the most important thing for her."
Tears welled in Elsa's eyes at Anna's forlorn expression. "Oh Anna… I know she loves you, because I love you, and I always have."
"Draw two!" Anna exclaims dramatically.
Laughter bubbles up from Elsa's chest at the discontinuity of Anna's glee and her own emotional turmoil. She takes two cards from the draw pile carefully. "Do you like having your own room, Anna?"
Anna blinks and stares at Elsa as thought she'd just been asked if she thought about whether horses could fly. "Sometimes! But sometimes it's lonely, so I sneak down to Elsa's room and climb into bed with her. She doesn't always like it, but sometimes she's sad and she'll sneak into my room, too. Skip!" The redheaded girl gleefully tosses another two cards on the pile.
That's odd, mused Elsa. She remembered a distinctly different childhood. Their parents had separated the two because they didn't get along at all as little kids; Anna had broken several of Elsa's favorite toys in a burst of childish rage, and after a while, Elsa had been given her own room. Anna'd spent many a night knocking on the door, asking and pleading to be let in, but Elsa had kept the door locked for years because of Anna's temper.
"I keep telling Mommy and Daddy we should just have one room together. Then we'd be able to share our toys all the time," the little girl sighed wistfully.
"That's a nice idea. I'm sure your sister would like that. She may not always know it, but you're her favorite person in the whole wide world," she smiled kindly.
Anna beamed with joy at the thought before pouting furiously as Elsa laid down a Wild Draw Four. "If I were your favorite, you wouldn't have played that, Miss Elsa!"
Both sisters laughed, straining to keep their voices down. After a couple of rounds of Uno, Anna yawned sleepily and Elsa tucked her back into her bed. "Will you be here later, Miss Elsa?"
Elsa shook her head gently, her eyes glistening with moisture. "I'm pretty sure I'll have to go, Anna, but you'll see me again. After all, I'm really your sister, so you'll see a version of me every day. Remember who I grow up to be when you sometimes get mad at me, okay? Someone who loves you very, very much." Elsa breathed, barely about to get the words out without breaking down.
A small hand cups her cheek and brushes the tear away with a soft, warm thumb. "It's okay, Miss Elsa. I didn't mean to make you cry. You're my favorite person in the whole wide world too!" Petite arms drape around Elsa's neck in an impossibly strong grip as the sisters' cheeks collide.
"I'm going to sneak down the hall to visit…um, myself… okay, Anna? I love you. I love you so much." She kissed Anna on the forehead and within moments, the little redhead was snoring loudly.
If only there were a way to save these moments, Elsa thought, trying her best to burn them into her mind. Even if the experiment overall wasn't a success, if her goal of changing the past for the better couldn't be achieved, at least she'd earned a few more moments with her sister, and she treated each one as precious as the rarest jewels.
"Psst. Elsa! Elsa, wake up!"
The little blonde girl rolled over and groaned into her pillow. "It's not time for school yet, Mommy," she mumbled into the cloth.
"I know, Elsa. I'm not your Mommy."
Little blue eyes shot wide open as she flipped over, fearing some kind of monster or evil creatures and instead seeing someone… familiar. Confusion flooded the features of her young face. "Who are you? You look like someone… I think I know?"
Elsa smiled at younger self. "We've met before, Elsa. Do you remember when your sister was born?"
The little blonde scrunched up her face deep in thought, staring off at the ceiling for almost a minute before she made the connection. "You're the doctor who talked to me!"
The elder version nodded and grinned. "I am."
"What, umm, what are you doing in my bedroom? Shouldn't you be at the hospital? Oh no, is someone sick? Is Anna sick?" Worry fractured little Elsa's smile.
Elsa put a hand gently on the girl's shoulder. "No, everything is fine. I was visiting Anna to see how she was, and I thought I would stop in to say hello quietly." She contemplated the anxious bundle of nerves that was her younger self before speaking again. Had she always been this anxious? "Anna is fine, she's just lonely. She misses playing with her best friend in the whole wide world."
Sapphire eyes turned down in shame. "I know, I'm just… I have to do well in school, Mommy and Daddy say so. So I spend all my time doing school stuff, and by the time I do all my homework, it's almost bedtime."
Elsa ruffles the blonde hair on her young counterpart. "I know. School is important, of course. It's how I got to be a doctor. But family is important too, Elsa. The time-" she chokes back a tear, "- the time you have together isn't forever, even if it seems like it is now. Maybe… maybe you can set aside a time every day when you play with Anna, even if it's only a few minutes?"
Little Elsa nods. "I- I can do that. I miss playing with Anna, too. Even if all she ever wants to do is play stupid Uno," she smirks with an impish grin.
Elsa laughs, looking carefully at her younger self with sadness. So much pain waited for her in the years to come, pain that the little girl would be powerless to stop. The incongruity between what her parents would tell her constantly - that she was so smart, she could do anything she set her mind to - and reality prodded her heart like burrs in a saddle. I could do anything I set my mind to except save my sister from herself, she thought bitterly.
Familiar tingling begins in Elsa's fingers and toes. "Elsa, I have to go soon. It was nice seeing you, and I hope you and Anna can play a lot together. Remember that she loves you more than anything, so be kind to her when she gets mad at you." She gives her young self a kiss on the forehead, hastily tucks her back in, and flees her old room.
Where in her old house can she go that won't make too much commotion? She sneaks downstairs quietly; her parents' bedroom is on the first floor, and the wooden floors creak, but the basement door isn't too far from the stairs. Quietly closing it behind her, she takes a few steps down the stairs, blue lightning beginning to arc over her skin. Just above her head, she hears her parents' bed creak, but before she can think of anything else, she feels the falling sensation of being pulled through time and breathes a final sigh of relief.
Iduna's robe flutters down across several of the stairs, and the family cat sits on it once the ruckus ends.
Author's Notes
We're now diving deeper into the timeline and Elsa thinks she's seeing changes in it already. Is she? Or does she just not remember the past very clearly?
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