CHAPTER FIFTEEN

All's Well

The next time Anna blinked, she was no longer in the back of the sled. She was in Arendelle castle, or whatever it was called. There was no sign of the Bjorgman twins or, more importantly—

"Elsa!" she called down the hall. Only her echoes answered, no matter how many times she yelled. Where did she go? How could she have even gone anywhere in the first place? Elsa couldn't open tears, that was Anna's thing. So then why wasn't her sister there? Elsa couldn't have left her behind. She wouldn't leave her behind.

Right?

"I'm afraid of you."

The voice echoed from somewhere, Anna couldn't see where. She wiped a trail of blood from her nostril. This couldn't be happening.

"Elsa, where are you?" her voice cracked, and tears started welling up in her eyes, even at the mere thought of the slightest chance that Elsa had left her. She felt like a lost child. What a silly feeling for a grown woman to have.

Come on, Anna, she encouraged herself. Elsa's got to be nearby. Somewhere in this...dark, creepy, eerie hallway. She called again, only to have a sudden realization: she could open tears. Wherever Elsa had gotten off to, Anna could just...

It had been a while since she'd created tears. She had grown used to them just appearing all of these years, she feared that she might have forgotten how.

She closed her eyes and pictured Elsa. That's how it had worked before, at least - thoughts of Paris had taken her to where she'd wanted to go.

With a wave of a single hand, a tear opened in front of her with ease. She walked through, and the world collapsed in on itself, re-forming into another reality: a small deer path in the middle of a forest.

Anna followed the beautiful flowers trailing up and down the path. She was almost completely mesmerized by their sweet smell; it was tempting to stop and admire them up close.

When the thought crossed her mind, she noticed something strange about the flowers. It was similar to when a tear flickered in and out of reality, but the flowers were all still there. It looked as though reality were a puzzle that had been put together with the pieces out of order. Then the flowers would flicker and go back to normal.

Anna looked around to see that the rest of the forest was doing that as well. Trees looked contorted and were missing squares of color, beams of sunlight looked cut in half, and the whistling of birds sounded warped and unnatural, but it all would flash back and forth every few seconds and go back to normal.

Tears never looked like this after walking through. Places would look distorted for an instant, sure, but then everything would be fine almost immediately after. That the forest looked defective was...concerning. Disturbing.

She continued about her way, looking for hidden meaning in the flashing images if she could catch them, but even just looking at the distorting reality started to give Anna a headache. She rubbed her eyes, and when she looked up ahead she saw something bright red laying on the side of the path. She ran to it urgently - even if she didn't quite know what it was, she figured it might have something to do with where Elsa had gone.

Once she got closer, she saw that it was a bright red cloak, and like everything else in the forest, it looked crooked and discolored. Anna focused on the broken pieces of the cloak and saw what were unmistakably shredded pieces of the same material that were stained with large bloody paw prints.

Startled by the blood, Anna staggered back from the cloak.

She looked around again and was no longer in a spring forest in the day time, but at night and instead right in the middle of a crumbling civilization built on tiers of land going up and down rugged mountain slopes. The buildings were made of stone and were falling apart, but Anna recognized the structures from her picture books. It looked similar to 13th century Incan Empire, maybe even earlier than that.

She looked down at her hands. Was something wrong with the tear she opened? Had she somehow done it wrong?

"Where am I?" she asked aloud. Her voice seemed strange in the ruin, as though it didn't quite inhabit the same space as her surroundings.

A soft voice responded. "A place that never existed."

Anna turned around, hoping that it was Elsa. Instead, she saw a young maiden, perhaps a few years younger than herself. She was wearing a stunning blue dress, and a crown sat atop long, golden hair that curled far below her shoulders. Her eyes were a pretty indigo, and her lips were rosy. She was beautiful in a way that was different from Elsa's glacial majesty.

"Or at least it was never meant to exist." The young woman approached her slowly, with her hands resting together in front of her.

"I don't understand," Anna said. "Where's Elsa? Who are you?"

"The twins have taken Elsa," the woman said, a slight smile curving her lips. "And I am Princess Aurora."

"Princess?"

"But I am unimportant, at least in this matter. You and your sister, on the other hand, have quite a bit resting on your shoulders."

"I still don't understand," Anna said, frustrated. While Aurora had certainly answered her questions, it still felt as though she were in the dark.

"The twins," Aurora continued, "have taken Elsa through realities." She stepped close to Anna and pulled her fingers through her hair, letting the strands of white drift through her hand. "Through time, through worlds, to the day you earned this mark."

She stepped back and turned away from Anna. "They're going to kill the Snow Queen."

"Then why do they want Elsa?"

Aurora looked at her, one eyebrow raised. "To kill the Snow Queen - to kill every Snow Queen, to erase her from history itself, they need a...junction. Some point in time in which every single Snow Queen, every single Elsa, exists."

"But why?" Anna asked. Sure, the Snow Queen had been insane, and terrifying, and had hurt her a lot. But...this was Elsa! "Why do they want her to die?"

"You haven't noticed?"

"Noticed what?"

Aurora gestured to the ruins. "This. All of this is wrong. Like I said, this place was never meant to exist. And neither were you - or at least, not like this."

"I'm extremely confused right now."

"There's supposed to be a man, a city, and a lighthouse," she explained. "Haven't you seen it? Two universes collide, and the shards are all jumbled together. You weren't supposed to be in Columbia, the Snow Queen was never meant to be anything other than a Prophet."

"So?" Anna asked. "What does it matter if—"

"What matters," Aurora continued, "is that these two universes were never meant to coexist. And like magnets, they're attracting other worlds, other realities, other possibilities. Some of them are fragmenting, like this one, existing outside of possibility. But even these fragments are only temporary. More and more universes are...colliding, getting absorbed into each other. Eventually, this universe will cease to exist."

Aurora gestured to herself. "I'm not meant to be here," she said. "Much like this place. And for those of us who didn't combine, who didn't merge with the other universe, didn't fit...well, we'll crumble away until there's nothing left but one world, one version of events. No choice."

Memories, thoughts, sensations rushed into Anna's brain with the force of a freight train.
An underwater city, a baptism, a child with glowing yellow eyes and a long needle.

Eleanor. Sally. Anna.

Elizabeth.

"A man chooses," she said.

"A slave obeys," said Aurora.

"But I am neither," she said, and opened a tear.

They returned to the ballroom. As always, it was dark and the only light came from the blue moon peeking through the windows, shining down on a snow covered dance floor. Only now, no giggling of a little pigtailed girl could be heard. The texture of the ice and snow was no longer fluffy and beautiful. Now the cold was sharp and painful, and Elsa could practically feel it cutting off her circulation just from being there a few moments.

She looked ahead where the young Anna would be. She hadn't arrived yet. But once she did, it wouldn't be long before Elsa would accidentally strike her again, and this time (that time, those times) Anna would not wake up. This was the only way to keep from becoming the Snow Queen, and the only way Anna could live on.

"Are you certain that this will work?" Kristoff asked.

Krista shrugged. "Not entirely. It ought to be her. But, well, we all have to make compromises."

There was a flash of light, and reality changed.

Anna. Except this wasn't the Anna Elsa expected to arrive, young and innocent. This was the Anna she'd had to leave behind.

This was the Anna she'd failed.

Anna's expression was difficult to figure out with the little light granted from the moon, but the whites of her eyes shone intensely, sending a shiver down Elsa's spine. The alien thoughts were pounding in her head—daughter sister lover bring us the girl and wipe away the debt—

"I understand, Elsa."

Elsa opened her mouth to speak. "You—"

"You never think I do," Anna continued, walking to her sister. "You always try to keep me safe. And sometimes you fail. Sometimes you become a monster."

Krista turned to Kristoff, visibly surprised. "That...that works," she said.

Kristoff made a humming sound.

Elsa ignored their byplay, focused entirely on Anna. She really did understand. Elsa tilted her head backwards, closed her eyes. She felt Anna's hands around her neck.

Let it be quick, she thought. Please, let it be quick.

And then Anna clasped her sister to her in a hug, and her breath tickled Elsa's ear as she whispered.

"I forgive you."

Reality crumbled around them. Elsa was barely cognizant of Krista being ripped away, torn into nothingness, Kristoff helplessly reaching towards his twin—

—and the world put itself back together.

They stood in a castle courtyard, Anna and Elsa holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes. The memories ripped through Elsa's head - not painful, exactly, too familiar for discomfort. Snowmen, and a dangerously ambitious prince, and - most importantly - a happily ever after.