A bar
With a flash of golden lightning, Elsa appeared in Pabbie's bar, seemingly unharmed. The bar was crowded this time, patrons milling around or seated at tables. A few folks cheered as the hour's Keno winners popped up on one of the TVs in the corner. Pabbie was at the bar, pouring drinks for customers as they stepped up. As Elsa approached the bar, he turned and smiled at her.
"Welcome back, Elsa. Drink?"
Discombobulated, she nodded and picked up the lager he'd poured for her, taking a long draft. "Pabbie… what happened? Am I… am I dead?"
Pabbie arched an eyebrow. "Are you?" He poured two shots and passed them down the bar to the patrons at the end.
"I… I don't know. The last thing I remember was feeling the impact of my car hitting the middle of the truck and then… nothing. I just appeared here." She looked down at her body, finding no injuries of any kind.
Pabbie gave her a long look. "Remember where I said this bar is, Elsa?"
"In-between."
He nodded, picking up dirty glasses and putting them in one of the rubber containers under the sink for washing later. "That's what you are and where you are now, Elsa. You're in between. You're out of time - literally." Pabbie looked up as the bell on the door rang. "Ah, hello gents. Your usual table is waiting."
Elsa watched the two men sit down at a table near the door, one wearing what looked to be a long grey… dress, it looked like, while the other wore a very fetching suit. Pabbie followed her line of sight. "Those two gents… if you were dead, you'd be having a chat with them instead of me. No, Elsa, you're still in between. In fact, you're a bit of an oddity at this bar."
The bell rang again as another patron came in. Elsa stood up, recognizing him. "Kristoff!" She ran over and was about to hug him when she realized he was much, much younger than when she last same him.
"Um, hi. Do- do I know you?" the young blond man said as he held his hands up, confused.
"I… I'm not sure. I thought I knew you but… you're different," she said, confused. She turned back to Pabbie. "What… what's going on here?"
Pabbie shook his head. "Why don't you ask him, Elsa?"
Elsa turned back to Kristoff. "What… how did you find me here, Kristoff? And why do you look like this?"
"Look, lady… I'm sorry, but I don't know who you are or how you know my name. Hell, I don't even know where I am," he said, turning around to take in the bar. "Nice place, though. Better than the place I was at earlier. Hey, bartender! Can I get a beer?" A full glass stein slide down the bar to him. After a long sip, he turned back to Elsa. "So, who exactly do you think I am?"
"You're Kristoff Calavicci. You're a colonel in the Air Force, one of my closest friends, and head of the project I'm working on," she explained, the words hurrying from her. "Last I saw you, we were saying goodbye because I wasn't sure I'd make it back."
Kristoff shook his head. "I'm not in the military," he started, before a sullen look crossed his face. "At least, not yet. My dad told me if I didn't get my shit together and stop drinking, he'd force me to enlist."
"But… that doesn't make any sense. How- how old are you, Kristoff?"
"Twenty-two. Just turned 22 a few weeks ago, actually."
Elsa's eyes widened. This was Kristoff from a different time period. She struggled to piece together the puzzle in her mind. Was this bar somehow a quantum junction of some kind? Could she have accidentally proved the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory instead of her two decades of research on closed timelike curves?
Pabbie shook his head again as though he were listening in on her inner monologue. "That's not what's happening here, Elsa." He turned to look at Kristoff. "What's the last thing you remember, son?"
Kristoff took a sip of his beer. "Uh, I was heading back home after a night at the bar. I was driving just past Hopewell and the last thing I remember was a little car just slamming into the side of my truck. I felt the impact, felt a whole bunch of pain, a flash of heat, and then I found myself outside the bar door here."
"No…," Elsa breathed. "It- it can't be. You? You were the one who killed Anna? How- how could you?" Rage swelled up inside her heart. "How could you, Kristoff? You knew! You must have known! How could you have killed my sister almost twenty years ago, worked by my side, and never told me?" She beat her fists on his chest as she screamed.
"Hey! Lady, back- back off! I don't know who Anna is! I didn't kill anyone!" he exclaimed, bringing his hands in front of his face to protect himself from her blows. "Stop- stop it! I didn't kill anyone!"
"HOW COULD YOU?" she shrieked, before Pabbie stepped out from behind the bar and firmly pulled her off Kristoff.
"Elsa. Elsa!" he urged as she collapsed in a chair. "He didn't kill Anna this time because… you killed him. He's here now because he died."
"What? Are you saying I'm dead?" Kristoff shouted, spilling his beer. "How- what- what the fuck is happening here?" he shouted, red-faced.
Pabbie took Kristoff by the arm and led him to the table with the two men. "Gents… I believe this young man is who you're here to speak with?" Both men nodded and gestured for Kristoff to sit down as Pabbie walked back to Elsa, who had her head in her arms, crying.
"How could he, Pabbie? He knew, all that time we worked together." Her anger evaporated, leaving her only with anguish. She recalled their last conversation, and Kristoff's evident discomfort. "He… that's what had him upset, just before I left, isn't it? He knew where I was leaping to, and he knew I'd discover the truth."
"Perhaps he knew what you had to do to save your sister?" Pabbie asked, taking the seat next to her at the table and resting his hand on her forearm.
Elsa let her head fall into her hands again. "He… he knew I might have to sacrifice him to save Anna?"
Pabbie moved his hand to her shoulder. "I can't say for sure, Elsa. But you made a difficult choice - THE difficult choice - and you did it with joy in your heart instead of guilt. You saved Anna - and yourself, I might add, the younger you. Anna did not die in that car crash."
"But I did," she mumbled, staring at her hands.
Pabbie grabbed a bowl of pretzels from the bar and put it in the middle of the table. "Well Elsa, that's the thing. You're not quite dead. But you're not quite alive, either. You're in between. You're out of time."
"You keep saying that, Pabbie. What does that mean?" she asked plaintively, looking at his round, wizened face for answers.
Pabbie put the beer on the table. "You tell me, Elsa. You're the scientist. What has happened here? You saved Anna. Based on what you know, based on your experiments and science, what happens next?"
Elsa picked up a Keno pad and pencil to start drawing. "Anna's death was the catalyst for my researching this time travel." She drew a straight line on the paper with a few small marks on it. "Then I went back in time and prevented her death, but killed Kristoff instead… that means no Project Q. That means I've… created a paradox," she groaned.
The bartender chuckled. "In a way, yes. But you managed a spectacular feat, Elsa. The moment that your special particles vanished, which would have blinked you out of existence, you also managed to have your physical body die in a horrific car accident. You timed it perfectly. So what's left of you, your essence if you will, is neither here nor there. You're sort of dead, but you're also something of a remnant from a time that no longer exists, thus not quite a paradox. You've managed to trick the universe itself, no small feat. You're quite unique, I must say," he laughed, clapping her on the shoulder.
She took a sip of her beer, her mind spinning. "So now what? Am I effectively dead? What happens to me?"
"That's also a very interesting question. Unlike your friend Kristoff, you have something of a choice to make. You can't go back to where you came from, because it no longer exists. Your paradox somewhat resolved itself by eliminating your existence, if not your life, though you being a time remnant means that Elsa and Anna do remember you. You could go with those two gentlemen, if you wanted to go to the afterlife. They'd help you decide where you belonged. Or…" he mused, looking at the door to the bar.
"Or what?"
Pabbie whistled for one of the men to come over to the table. The one in the suit sauntered over, his manner as impeccable as his sartorial sense. "What do you think, Lou?" Pabbie asked. "She's in between."
"Mmm, so she is. How delightful," the man Pabbie called Lou said, in what sounded like a posh British accent to Elsa's ears. He looked her over with a lascivious grin, making Elsa uncomfortable. "Well, I suppose there's no harm in letting her bounce around if you wanted to, eh Dad? I know you've got that list." He turned to Elsa and stared at her intently. "Tell me, Elsa Beckett, what is it you truly desire?"
Elsa beamed, not hesitating for even a moment to answer the question. "Nothing any more. I saved my sister. I saved her from dying and I put her life on the right track. That's all I wanted. That's all I ever wanted."
Lou stared for a moment longer at Elsa, then turned to Pabbie with a smile. "Well, there you have it. I've nothing to offer her, and I'm sure my brother doesn't either, Dad. Now if you'll excuse me…" He stood up and went back to his table, rejoining what was apparently his brother and Kristoff.
"Dad?" Elsa looked at Pabbie quizzically.
"Just a nickname. So here's what else you could do, if you were interested. You're a free agent, a literal free spirit, Elsa. You're out of time in the most literal sense. The rules of time don't apply to you any more. Did you enjoy going back in time and fixing it, putting right what once went wrong?"
"To save Anna, yes," she nodded, taking a sip of her beer and watching Pabbie warily. Everything about this situation urged her to be cautious - the unusual bar patrons, the time paradox, and the fact that Pabbie was clearly more than just a bartender.
"What if you did that for others? Travel through time and put right other wrongs? Would that be of interest to you?"
Elsa paused. Fixing Anna's life had given her purpose, given her life meaning. She'd dedicated twenty years just to build the technology to go back in time for the purpose of apologizing to Anna, but had managed instead to avert Anna's tragic life entirely. She'd atoned for her guilt, for her perceived role in Anna's original life, and she absolved herself of that burden by saving her sister.
What if… what if she could do that for others? She felt like a race horse that still had a few races left in her, not ready to be put out to pasture. Seeing Anna happy, seeing Anna in love - even if it was with a younger version of her - was worth all the effort and then some. What if she could help fix other people's lives for the better?
Elsa closed her eyes. What would Anna - the Anna she helped to create - do? In her mind, Anna's voice echoed enthusiastically the idea of helping others, of being a force for good. She could almost see Anna's teal eyes sparkling with excitement for her. A chance to do good, to be a force for good in the world.
She nodded, partially to Pabbie and partially to the Anna in her mind. "Al- all right. I'm interested, at least for a little while. What do I have to do?"
Pabbie smiled, taking her empty beer glass. "You've done the hard part, Elsa. You freed yourself from your guilt. That was the warning I gave you last time you were here. Guilt was what caused your leaps through time. When you sacrificed yourself, it wasn't out of guilt, and in that moment you became free."
He turned to look over the bar. "Your spirit is free, so to continue your journey, just walk out the door, and you'll figure out what to do next. When you need a break, just think about this place and come back here, all right? I've got a cot you can rest on in the break room, and there's plenty of beer and snacks." He chuckled jovially. "And you don't have to watch your health any more, so you can snack on whatever you like."
"Will… will I ever see Anna again?" she asked, hesitantly.
Pabbie chuckled. "Remember what I said. The rules don't apply to you any more. You can look in on Anna - and yourself - whenever you like. You won't be able to talk to her any more, but you can see how she's doing at any time."
Elsa stood up from the table, feeling refreshed. All the sorrows and pain she'd suffered felt like they'd drifted away like a snow flurry in a stiff winter breeze once she made her decision. She nodded to Pabbie and walked out the door of the bar, then looked down. Blue lightning started arcing over her body, and she laughed at the sensation as time pulled her away once more.
"Thank you, Anna," she whispered as she vanished.
Author's Notes
With that, Elsa is now free to be a time traveler in true Quantum Leap style, with no physical body any more and a spirit that can jump from place to place throughout time, unencumbered.
And this chapter contains a nod to another franchise I love. Yes, Pabbie is effectively God, which makes the two gentlemen two of his angels. If you're a fan of Lucifer, the two gentlemen are Amenadiel and Lucifer - Lou - judging Kristoff's soul and deciding where he will go.
This concludes the story. Elsa's now free to move through time and set right the things that went wrong. The still alive sisters are happily married and discovered the truth of what happened.
Special thanks go out to Fishycoffee for being an early beta reader of the story; I started this fic just after Storm of Spirits and it actually languished on the shelf for about 4 months. I was stuck on chapter 3 for the longest time and couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with the story. Once I decided that instead of Elsa just going back and witnessing Anna's life, she would attempt to change it, the story changed radically and suddenly it began flowing again. I jumped back into it with both feet and ended up using it as my work for NaNoWriMo 2020.
I hope you enjoyed it, found it interesting, found it worth reading. Thank you for being part of the story, for your thoughts and reactions, and if you'd like to talk more about it, join the Discord server below.
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