omfg this took ages im so sorry. I knew what I wanted to do with it but the words never worked. So, here is is. At least one more chapter – there was going to be four, but idk now.
part two | a delicate texture of grace
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Anna.
That's the girl's name. Teal and Red.
Elsa thinks that if she could be surprised, she would be, but currently her mind's too full of other things to think on it. Teal and Red has a name, and one that she gives gladly as she approaches. The officer seems surprised, passing off a small card into Elsa's hand as she's picked to her feet by freckled arms.
"I'm Anna," she says, this time to the blonde staring ahead. "A friend. I'll look after Elsa."
And Elsa's sobs have stopped and though the tears still run down her face in steady streams, there's no other evidence of her sign of Anna seems more than enough for the officer, and she and her Sjel take their due, leaving the two Sjelløs to themselves.
The pain takes as long to disappear as it did to arrive, though by then Elsa's sitting on her couch, a mug of warm tea pressed into her hand and a soft body against her.
Elsa doesn't talk for hours—she has nothing to say. Not to this stranger who doesn't feel so strange. There is no need to fill the silence. She doesn't care for the girl who has pushed herself into her life—not in the way she once did. It may have been an obsession, but she can't remember now. She's not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, and so she ignores it. It doesn't matter.
It doesn't even matter that there's someone next to her. She doesn't bother lying; it would be no better or worse than if she were left alone, as usual. The familiar numbness that haunted her for her life has returned, and with it, serenity. She can take a breath and push aside any pain.
They sit in silence for hours and say nothing because there's nothing to say—until the girl, Anna, turns and says something that Elsa doesn't take any notice of anyway.
Does anything really matter now?
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"I've seen you before."
Those four words are the first Elsa says, days later, and she can see by the look on Anna's face that it was unexpected. Doesn't know what to say to that and doesn't even try.
"At the train station," Anna nods.
It's almost a week since the news came. Her birthday and Christmas went uncelebrated. The funeral is in two days, but Elsa hasn't done anything for it. She doesn't know how many people will be there, and she doesn't care, either.
Anna cares. Anna cries, more than enough for the both of them, and Elsa wonders how she can be a Sjelløs when she feels so much. When she feels so intensely.
Elsa almost thinks she's jealous before she pushes that thought away. She can't be jealous. She doesn't have the capacity for that.
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She continues her studies, though there's a change that she can't quite explain.
For the first time, she realises just how cold her ice is.
She didn't go to the funeral. Instead, she grieved at home, wrapped in layers upon layers to keep the snow and ice at bay. Even Anna didn't interrupt, though the other girl seems to have become a permanent fixture in Elsa's life. She isn't sure when the other girl moved in, but seeing as she didn't notice, she sees no reason to kick her out. She... enjoys Anna's company, in the same abstract way that she enjoys the sun on her face in winter, or the colours of the leaves in fall. The same way she enjoys a pleasant tune or neat handwriting.
Anna doesn't say anything, either. In fact, it only truly becomes obvious when Elsa goes to class one day, after the end of exams, and feels... lost. Alone or upset, or definitely like there was something missing. It alleviated as soon as she got home, and without a word, Anna had her in a slight, gentle, barely-there hug.
She doesn't know if she likes the contact, though she does feel what seems to be disappointment when she disentangles her limbs from Anna's.
"Who are you?" she asks. Anna is silent for a moment before she gives a strange little half-shrug.
"Whoever you need me to be," she says, but that isn't good enough and Elsa shakes her head.
"No," she says, with as much force as her monotone voice can handle, "who are you?"
And Anna looks away and Elsa knows she's getting an answer. But then Anna looks back at her and she's shaking her head.
"Can I- later?" she asks, and Elsa nods once. Anna gives a relieved sort of smile and before Elsa has time to process it, to really think about what Anna's doing, the red-head leans up and places a soft kiss on the corner of her mouth. "Thank you," she murmurs, before she's bounding away and out of the room, leaving Elsa alone and dumbstruck.
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Anna never tells her, and Elsa never asks. It seemed important then, but now, after the fact, she can't quite remember the reasons it mattered. Anna wears her heart and her emotions on her sleeves, and yet this is one thing she seems quite keen on avoiding. But, the longer it goes on for, the more uncomfortable Elsa becomes. Not in the awkward way; rather, she knows very little about her housemate. Friend. She's almost desperate to learn a little more.
It would be so easy to allow the status quo to remain. To let Anna maintain her silence, just as Elsa has throughout her whole life.
Perhaps that's why she's so keen on that not happening. So for the first time, really, Elsa takes control.
Anna's in the kitchen, making some kind of pasta dish, when Elsa corners her. Elsa's taller, not by a lot, but by enough, and she looks down at Anna with piercing eyes.
"Anna..." she begins, and Anna probably knows what she wants. Elsa doesn't ever approach her without reason, and is even less inclined to speak unless absolutely necessary. Given no other option, Anna doesn't seem so scared. She doesn't seem so... intent on avoiding it.
She cups Elsa's cheeks gently, staring into her eyes as though searching out truths. Elsa doesn't know what she finds, because moments later she averts her gaze.
"Your name is Elsa Arendelle," she says. "My name is Anna Bjorgman. And you're my Sjel."
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She thinks that the idea should take more time getting used to; that this girl is supposed to be the closest being in her life. It's been too many years for Elsa to feel complete comfort, and not enough time. And yet, she's never once felt such an affinity for another person.
Of course, Anna could be lying, but... Elsa doesn't think so. She's never felt closer to another person. Some days she smiles, for no other reason than she can, and that terrifies her.
Anna terrifies her because Elsa's never been terrified before. Anna brings out things that she's never felt, never thought she had the capacity to feel. Her whole life she believed she was Sjelløs; she was so... apathetic to everything because she did not have a soul to fuel her emotions. Now... she was an entire soul, being apart from and yet never separate to, her human.
To Anna.
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That doesn't mean she knows and understands how to cope with that information, though.
She doesn't talk to Anna for three days. Can't talk to her. There's no tangible reason for it, but it doesn't matter. Anna seems to understand, and she backs off.
Elsa can't stop thinking about it, a single question swirling about her head.
How?
Elsa... doesn't feel like a Sjel. Never mind the fact that she can touch other people. She can't touch Sjels. Everything is backwards and nothing about this makes any sense. Her head is abuzz, and the only time it calms down is when Anna slips their hands together.
It's the only time it feels right. The only time Elsa fits in with the world.
She fits... with Anna.
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Routine is easy. Living is easy. It's not as hard to adjust to the idea that they're supposed to be together as Elsa once thought it would be. The memories of her childhood; the shunting of her classmates, and the friendless adolescence, begins to hurt, and she finds herself getting... emotional... about things.
It's harsh and unexpected; a lifetime of living in complete ambivalence has Elsa unprepared for the onslaught of sadness when she remembers her parents. She's unprepared for the burst of joy at eating a chocolate tart at a bakery, the flavours perfectly balanced.
The warmth in her chest when she's greeted at home by a smile and a soft word.
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Anna contributes to the house. Somehow, even though neither have jobs, she helps pay bills. Elsa's inheritance is spent less and less, the funds dwindling slower and slower until it barely changes at all. They hardly touch it, and Anna just shrugs when she asks.
"You're not the only one who had well-off parents," she says, and it's the most Anna's ever spoken about her past.
But its more than that. She's more than a- a nanny. True, she cooks dinner for Elsa when the blonde is too exhausted from school to do anything but sleep. Tidies the house and takes care of things.
She also comforts Elsa when the emotions build up and become too much to handle. They go to parks and hold hands and do the grocery shopping together, and Elsa finds that there's a simple peace in domesticity.
Every night, Anna kisses Elsa on the cheek just before they retire to bed. She sleeps on the couch and wakes Elsa up by singing of a morning, and Elsa knows this is what she's been missing. Not the quirks, or even the person, necessarily, but the company. One who was her, the same was she was them.
All her life she's been looking for Anna. She just didn't know who or what, exactly, she was at the time.
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Four months after Christmas, and Elsa is finally able to grieve. Grieve their death, and the death of who she was. Grieve her childhood and its pains...
But she can smile at the future and smile at Anna, even through the tears, and she thinks that she understands what 'love' is now, because there is no other word so potent as to describe how she feels about the woman next to her.