Sparks and Endings

Eleven months ago.

Anna waited for dusk to come.

The last of the guests had gone, and Anna had chosen to linger outside a while longer after she'd walked Hans to his car. Perched on the front porch steps hugging her lanky bare knees to her chest and leaning backward as she gazed up at the sky, Anna counted down the seconds as twilight extinguished into night. The distant blinking white light of an airplane flew overhead in silence as the last shred of daylight vanished, racing past the glittering stars that seemed to flicker in and out of existence in the darkness. She loved nights like these best, when the light of the new moon was buried behind its shadow, conceding its brilliance to the stars, so bright that she could get lost in them.

The porch lights turned on, and she could feel a cool gust of air on her back as the front door creaked open and light footsteps approached from behind. Anna stiffened, sitting up straighter without bothering to turn around, and her mouth pressed firmly into a tight line.

"Beautiful night, isn't it?" Elsa remarked as she came up beside Anna, bracing herself against the rounded pillar as if seeking respite from a very long day. Without waiting for a response, she pointed up to the blinking light above and wondered aloud what star that might be.

"That's probably a 747."

"Odd name for a star," she mused, her eyes hazy from the alcohol.

"Maybe," Anna replied, "but not so odd for a passenger airplane."

Anna didn't bother to explain that most stars had numerical classifications. It was an unnecessary clarification since it was bound to lead to more inane conversation. Instead, she waited for Elsa to lose interest as the plane disappeared in the distance, expecting her to retreat back inside the house, and she was so certain she would as silence settled between them. Her eyelids looked heavy with sleep, and her arms were so weary and weak that she barely clung on to that piller. But the minutes lapsed, dragging on, and Elsa still conveyed no inclination to leave.

"You and your brother are so much alike," she noted, eclipsing the silence.

"I think the alcohol has affected your vision," was Anna's flat reply as she nudged a pebble with the toe of her shoe on the concrete walkway.

"I don't mean that," Elsa insisted, seemingly unaware of Anna's indifference. "You obsess over the stars the way he used to. Kristoff was always going on about them too when we were kids. He even named one after me for my seventeenth birthday." There was the slightest slur in her speech, and Anna wondered just how much alcohol Elsa had to drink that night.

"I remember. He was always such a sappy romantic."

Elsa cocked her head against the pillar and stared up at the sky, searching for the obscure star that bore her name. But she wouldn't find it that night, or any other night for that matter. It was as if the star had been completely blotted from existence.

"It was such a sweet gesture," Elsa uttered somberly, "A very Kristoff thing for him to do."

"Yeah." It was a perfunctory response, but she wondered what Elsa was implying. "I bet Maren was pretty jealous."

Anna hadn't quite intended the snark that came spilling out of her with her last remark, and she could fathom even less why she'd said it in the first place, but one glance in Elsa's direction and Anna knew that she had not heard her utterance, or at the very least had not given it any regard.

"I hated it so much."

There was a firmness to Elsa's mouth that Anna had not expected. And unreadable eyes that had fixed themselves upon the brightest of stars. Elsa looked like she had more to say, but, whatever that might have been, it died before an utterance was made.

Rubbing the back of her neck, Anna turned away. A twinge of hesitation pulled at her insides, and as much as she did not want to continue their conversation, as much as she had wanted Elsa to leave her alone, she was compelled to pry.

"Why did you hate it? Isn't that normally the sort of thing that girls like?"

It certainly had seemed to be the case with the girls she went to school with. Girls who preoccupied their time with fingernail polish and hair products, and honed their makeup application skills with youtube video tutorials. All that just to look like pretty little statues on the sidelines as they sought admiration and validation, desperate for anyone to take notice. And Elsa was easily the prettiest of all the statues.

"Maybe I'm not normal then," Elsa confessed, and Anna bit back the caustic retort that lingered on the tip of her tongue. "A normal girl might not feel so burdened. But I was. It was, it was like I was being set up with all these ideas he had in his head, you know? Expectations I could never live up to, on a pedestal that was so ridiculously high."

"Oh."

"I do miss the stars, though."

There was a nostalgic timbre to her voice, and Anna wondered what she meant by that. Something about her words struck her with a loneliness she did not anticipate.

Anna said nothing more. She couldn't say anything more. Her sister-in-law had just drunkenly poured out a bit of her heart, and Anna could not bring herself to judge her for it. More than that, she got the impression that Elsa was mostly speaking to herself, and Anna had been something akin to an unintended witness of her admission. Choosing to sit in silence as crickets swelled the night with their endless chirps, her eyes remained fixed on the stars above although she hardly took notice of them anymore. Elsa had surprised her in a way that Anna had not expected, so much so that she had not noticed when Elsa finally disappeared back into the house and turned the lights off behind her.

But she never was like those girls, Anna hated to admit to herself. Elsa wasn't so frivolous or vain to be lumped together with the girls Anna remembered from high school, or the girls on campus who made spectacles of themselves at the weekly parties thrown by Hans' fraternity. Elsa had never sought the spotlight or the veneration imposed by shallow peers, but somehow it always found her anyway.

She misses the stars, Anna mused, leaning her back flat against the wooden floor of the front porch and closing her eyes. For some reason she remembered the unfinished Dobsonian telescope collecting dust in her parents' garage. It was a project Anna had started years ago in response to her mother's second diagnosis of cancer, and she abandoned it shortly after when the illness took away her only reason to finish it. Her mother would never get to see the galaxies Anna had promised her, and the telescope parts she had collected and labored over were buried in forgotten corners of the garage.

"I see right through you," the night whispered, stirring her awake, and something like shame swelled inside her with her sharp intake of breath.

Anna couldn't remember falling asleep on the porch, or the fleeting memory that crept into her dream during her brief nap, but she caught a piece of it as she woke before it dissipated into fog. Disembodied words that meant little without context, but pressed into her chest like a vice. She was left with a residual uneasiness, one that persisted even when she stumbled over Elsa's sleeping form on the floor after she went back inside the house.

"Jesus, what are you doing there?" Anna hissed above a whisper as she turned on the living room light. Elsa lay curled on the persian rug, her head pressed against the foot of the leather recliner, and Kristoff was sprawled out on the sofa with a half empty beer bottle wedged upright between his legs and blue icing smudged on his chin.

"So bright," he groaned, sliding a hand over his face, barely awake at all.

"I can't believe these are my adult role models," Anna grumbled softly, picking up the empty beer bottles and dumping them in the recycling bin. She quickly cleared away the dirty plates into the dishwasher and covered the half eaten birthday cake before tucking it into the fridge. It took longer to sort through the crumbled wrapping paper and empty gift bags, and it gave her pause when she came across the cheap lip gloss she had gifted Elsa before finally casting it onto the pile of opened gifts on the kitchen counter.

"Go to bed," Anna urged as she popped her head into the living room once more after she was done. "You guys are gonna feel like crap in the morning if you spend the night here."

If they heard her, Kristoff and Elsa certainly didn't show it, and Anna shrugged before she turned off the lights and headed to her room, but she hadn't reached her room before she reluctantly turned around and marched back into the living room.

"Alright, up," Anna commanded as she coaxed Elsa off the floor. Taking her hand, Anna leaned under Elsa like a crutch, and pulled her up to her feet.

"Hold onto me and watch your step," Anna cautioned, clutching tighter as she guided Elsa through the hallway and to her bedroom. She could smell liquor on her breath, and it was surprisingly cinnamony and sweet.

"Bed?" Elsa mumbled, clasping her fingers over Anna's shirt as she sought her balance. Once they made it to the master bedroom, Anna eased Elsa into her bed and helped her out of jeans, but moments later Elsa was bent over the toilet in tears, heaving and gagging as she expelled the toxics from her body. Anna waited, standing under the door frame, ready with a glass of tap water as she observed the woman before her with curious interest. Elsa, who was usually so meticulously kempt and so perfectly composed, was a crumbled and disheveled mess. There was nothing pristine about her appearance, and somehow she seemed the better for it.

Elsa managed to gulp down half the glass of water, triggering a second wave of nausea and vomiting, and Anna had to coax a leery Elsa into finishing the second half by holding the glass to her lips, even as Elsa continued to push it away. She was weaker than before, following her second round, and Anna half carried her back to bed, her legs trembling beneath her as she bore both their combined weight across the floor. Elsa closed her eyes before her head hit her pillow, and Anna pulled off her sweater and unbuttoned her vomit-spattered blouse, gingerly tugging it off, leaving only a modest camisole beneath.

What do the stars mean to you? She wondered, remembering that funny feeling at the pit of her stomach several New Year's ago. There had been streamers and confetti, and bottomless flutes of chapaigne. And the same aching from back then throttled in her chest, drawing her closer to unfettered truths. What do you see in those stars?

In that moment, Anna wanted to reach inside her and touch that part of her that Kristoff had forgotten. She wanted to give her a piece of those stars, and smother the loneliness that dwelled inside her eyes, harnessed within the darks of her irises.

"I see you," Anna breathed softly, pressing a consoling hand to Elsa's forehead as tears spilled freely from her weathered eyes and down her cheeks. Elsa had always been a sorry drunk, bad at holding her liquor and quick to cry, sometimes for no reason at all, but Anna couldn't imagine not crying after an ordeal like hers. Elsa was sure to be dealing with a massive hangover in the morning.

For all her glitter and shine, Elsa was so painfully flawed, so terribly human, and so very small. Still, there was something about her that drew Anna in, compelling her to scrutinize all her perfect imperfections.

"You see me?" Elsa raised a hand as if attempting to reach for Anna, but in her exhaustion she let it fall limp beside her, exhaling deeply and giving in to her body's demand for rest.

"I see you," Anna assured her. For the first time, she truly did.

And as she watched her sleep from bedroom door, not quite ready to let the moment end, Anna dared to wonder aloud to herself, "Do you see me too?"

~X~

"You're leaving," Anna remarked as she struggled for breath, surprised by the resignation in her own voice. The moment Anna saw Elsa open the door to her hotel room as she prepared to leave, all the resolve Anna had been nursing on the bike ride over had evaporated into thin air. Twenty minutes of pedding an uphill battle had deflated what little intrepidation had spurred her forward.

Elsa's leaving had never been a matter of conjecture, and it was evident from the carryon bag strapped over Elsa's shoulder and the oversized suitcase parked at her feet that the moment had arrived. It wasn't a simple relocation to another hotel either, or a move across town. Wherever Elsa was headed to, she had a plane ticket to get her there.

"Why?" But Anna was not so naive. She understood Elsa's situation better than most. Elsa's ended marriage hadn't just severed her relationship with Kristoff, it had rippled across their lives unraveling ties that had not been all her own.

"I have to," Elsa replied unapologetically. There was a kindness in her voice that Anna wished was not there. Then, maybe she could protest and whine like the little child that lived inside of her. She was still just nineteen after all. "With everything that's happened, I just can't stay. And I think you know that."

"If only…" Anna began to say, only to trail off in silence as she reconsidered her words. If only what? She mused. If only my brother hadn't seen us? If only I hadn't kissed you that time and you hadn't kissed me back? If only we had never become family, and our lives had never touched? And just maybe we would all be free.

"Don't tear yourself apart over What ifs," Elsa cautioned ruefully. "It doesn't do you any good, and you just end up feeling even more miserable inside."

Elsa looked away, timidly squeezing on her own arm, and unable to move. Anna had unintentionally fixed herself in the frame of the doorway, blocking Elsa's only way out, but Elsa could have easily pushed past her. She could have but she didn't. It was as if time had stood still and any movement on their part would start the clock up again. They both understood this somehow, and they refused to part from the awkward stillness that had formed around them.

Time, however, could not truly stand still, and the loud horn from Elsa's waiting taxi cab broke the illusion.

"I should go now. My ride is waiting."

No sooner had Elsa reached for her suitcase handle that Anna reached for her. Taking a shaky step forward into the room, Anna outstretched her arms and pulled Elsa into the heat of her embrace. The hotel room door closed behind her, and they held on, wordlessly, hearts throbbing in the darkness.

The taxi honked two more times and Elsa's phone rang unanswered before they heard the grind and whine of the car engine as it turned back on, quietly listening as the tires began to pull away.

It was only after they could no longer hear the hum of the taxi as it drove off that Anna leaned up and kissed the corner of Elsa's mouth. That was all Elsa needed. She dropped her purse and her carryon bag on the floor, and pulled Anna toward her as she walked them back to the bed.

"What about your flight?" Anna gasped between kisses as both their fevered hands worked to undress the other.

"There's always another one tomorrow."

And that was enough for Anna.

She wasn't afraid of tomorrow. It was going to come whether she wanted it or not, but she had this moment, and it was completely theirs. It was not stolen nor burdened by deception, and there was no shame in the soft moans that filled the room as hands and bodies touched and pleaded for tenderness and release. Tomorrow could not take away the spark that linked them, or the words that finally found their voice, whispered like a sweet hum on warm lips and prying tongues; their bodies sought them out, trembling and twisting, wringing out ardent passions with words that promised so much more.

Anna couldn't be sure who uttered them first, but after morning came and Elsa had gone, she knew they were real. The pain from parting did not diminish the warmth of those words, even with her tears, the words filled her and etched themselves into her flesh. That sad and lonely girl who'd supplanted the stars had inscribed herself like a curse. And those words were her bindings.

"Me too," Anna uttered softly when she left shortly after. She wondered if love would always end in a whimper, painful and silent, as the warm breeze dried away the last of her tears.

...The End.

Author's Note: There will be an epilogue, I'm just not sure when I will be able to get around to it. Even though I'm just an epilogue away from the official end, I've love to know your thoughts. I confess that I wasn't particularly pleased with the pacing at the beginning of this chapter, so I'm curious to know how you felt about it. Thanks!