I don't own Frozen.
Present Day
New York City
School trip today. Anna filed in at the tale end of the group exiting the bus, readjusting the gray skirt at her hips. She hitched her backpack higher on her shoulders.
God, these uniforms are awful.
She skipped up the stone steps to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, traffic singing discordantly on Fifth Avenue. Her pigtails swung as she whipped her head side to side, skirting behind a short brunette as they bypassed the gift shop near the entrance.
"Now girls," Sister Carlotta began. "The exhibition we'll be visiting today comes from the Vatican itself, on loan to the museum through the department of—"
"Sister!" Anna jumped excitedly.
"Yes?"
"Where's the bathroom?"
"Back in the lobby, but don't be long. The tour guide is meeting us here in five minutes. If you miss anything, you'll need to get notes from one of your classmates."
She thought the Sister was being gentle with her because she had just transferred. Anna was grateful.
"Yes Sister Carlotta, I'll be quick!"
Anna turned back toward the front entrance of the museum, checking over her shoulder to see if Sister Carlotta was watching her movements. The nun could barely see the chalkboard in front of her as she lectured, let alone the spritely young woman dodging gallery patrons with charming blunder.
She almost felt bad lying to a nun.
Almost.
Back in the front lobby, Anna proceeded to buy out the entire row of Whatchamacallit candy bars in one of the vending machines. Though it pained her to do so, she waited until no one was watching, and dumped them into a trashcan, migrating back toward the gallery proper. Her head periscoped about, and Anna darted down a hallway on her immediate left, having swiped a keycard from the creepy old security guard leering at the Catholic girls' class as they entered the building. Even with a nun right there, Anna caught his gaze sinking just below the waists of her classmates as they filed in.
Pathetic.
When this whole thing was done, and they searched out whose card was used, she hoped they blamed him. Hope they fired him.
Pervert.
She jimmied the lock to the second broom closet and stripped, exchanging the pleated, calf-length skirt and itchy vest for a grey, high-waisted pencil skirt and white button-up blouse. She popped the top two buttons open at her cleavage and tore her fingers through her braided pigtails, raking and smoothing her auburn hair into a polished bun. She pulled a few bits of hair around her face to conceal her features, added a pair of square-framed glasses, black pumps, and an I.D. badge she'd forged after some early reconnaissance of the gallery five weeks ago.
The whole process had taken forty-eight seconds.
Dammit.
She was getting slower.
She shoved the uniform into a yellow mop bucket and went back to the service entrance, hitching a right and finding the elevator leading down to the restoration room.
"Hey!"
Anna's lips twitched in excitement.
Show time.
"Hello there," Anna said, smiling brightly.
A rumpled man with more hair on his lip than his head was coming her way.
"Who are you?"
"Elizabeth Woodhouse, Mr. Daniels. The intern from London's National?" Her seamless slip into some amalgamated Oxbridge accent was as natural as breathing. "I'm quite pleased to meet you, since you missed the meeting earlier."
"Meeting? What meeting?"
"Didn't your assistant tell you?" Anna asked. "That my boss and I were coming by to oversee the Caravaggio transfer?"
"We had the meeting Tuesday. You weren't there."
"Of course not! We only flew in yesterday. You must give a lady proper time to recover from jetlag."
Mr. Daniels did not seem to know how to take this comment.
"Now, you must hurry, Mr. Daniels. Dr. Penny is waiting for you in your office."
"Dr. Penny?! Dr. Nikolaus Penny?!"
"Yes," Anna said softly, feigning confusion. "Mr. Daniels, you did receive our itinerary, did you not?"
"Well, yes! Of course I did! The shipment we received—"
"And you did notify the director of Dr. Penny's arrival?"
Mr. Daniels's face shattered.
"Mr. Daniels!" Anna shrieked. "You mean to tell me the Director of the National Gallery of London is simply sitting in your office with no one to receive him?"
"I—I—I—"
"Please, Mr. Daniels, that is quite enough. You Americans…" Anna waved a hand to her brow, pressing fingers into her temple as if she were deeply upset. "I don't know why you're still standing here talking to me! Please take Dr. Penny down to the collections preparatory room as soon as possible! We're going to be delayed for hours at this rate."
Mr. Daniels stormed off into the labyrinthine hallways in a huff, the assistant director so obviously out of his element it made Anna grin. Out of sight, she swept the security keycard into the elevator that went underground, down to the cool, dark restoration rooms, where hidden treasures just waited to be acquired.
The elevator slowed and the doors parted. Anna removed some loose foundation powder and latex gloves from her bag. Ducking around a corner, she waited impatiently.
10: 37. Right on time.
A short woman with cropped hair approached the door to the restoration room and entered a four-digit pass code.
The numbers beeped, and she placed her thumb over the infrared scanner.
Anna replayed the sounds in her head: E, G, C, high G. Removing some loose face powder from her backpack, Anna applied the miniscule granules to the thumb pad with a makeup brush, letting the powder absorb the natural oils of the woman's finger. She got a decent impression from the attempt.
She then mashed 3-5-1-#, and used a latex gloved thumb to press into the thumb pad. The powder and latex registered the previous woman's fingerprint, and the door popped open with nary an alarm or flashing light. Phase two, complete.
"Germany, England, Denmark, Italy, Russia, ah—" Anna sighed, grin overtaking her face. "France. I vous avez manqué."
The current items on loan from several galleries in France were mostly locked away in moisture-resistant, temperature controlled storage lockers.
But not Joan. She was up for preemptory restorations before beginning her three week tour, on loan from the Centre Historique des Archives Nationales in Paris.
Poor Joan. You were meant to be free!
The motion sensor alarms along the floor were armed. Anna could see the blinking red light at the entrance to the restoration lab, knowing the laser beams lay invisible somewhere in front of her.
She checked her watch again: 10:42. The curator meetings dismissed at 10:50, occasionally earlier. Security came back to the monitors after their rounds at 10:48, but she had planned for that.
Work to be done.
Anna removed a container of travel size aerosol hairspray. The sticky curtain of pressurized hair glue revealed horizontal green laser beams about two inches off the ground. They led all the way up to the table with Joan.
In and out of her bag of tricks once more, and Anna retrieved a large roll of aluminum foil. Setting to work with the practiced hand of an origami master, Anna fashioned two long, standing panels out of aluminum foil, inverted capital Ts of silver that ran out about three feet in length. She placed them gently on the ground beside one another. She pushed them forward into the beams of the security lasers, and then, spread the standing foil pieces apart.
Like parting the Red Sea.
The green security beams buzzed casually, but as if nothing had changed. They were being reflected back along themselves, so neither movement nor heat could trigger the alarms. They did not betray her sure step, heels clacking on linoleum as she extracted gloves and a collapsible tubing mechanism.
"Hi Joan. Long time, no see."
She meticulously curled the aging vellum, taking extreme care not to crease or fold any section. The integrity would be compromised, and all for naught.
Anna quickly placed the ancient work into the tube and sealed it, stepping back through the beams, and dragging the foil barriers along with her. The place looked untouched, except for the massive blank workspace that once housed a five-hundred year old painting.
Anna turned her head at the sound of chairs scraping floorboards.
10:47.
Shit. They're early.
She exited the room just as the curator emerged. Back on the elevator and she had moments, mere seconds before the painting was discovered missing. It dinged her arrival back to the first floor, and she stepped out into the secure hallway. Feigning nonchalance, she stuck her small chest out as she bypassed men with coffee, women with clip boards. They all smiled and snuck an occasional glance at her I.D. badge.
People are too damn trusting.
Rounding the corner back to her broom closet, she saw two security guards ambling back into the front room where all of the security monitors were housed.
"Jimmy, what took you so long?"
"Sorry Fred, all the Whatchamacallits were gone, and it took me longer than usual to pick something out."
"You and your chocolate."
The middle-aged men disappeared, just as Anna reemerged from the broom closet, now a Catholic school girl again.
She rushed up to Sister Carlotta five minutes later as the students filed out onto the front steps. Her pigtails were coming loose, and her cheeks were flushed.
"Oh Sister, there you are!" Anna said.
"Caroline! You missed the entire tour!"
"It was only fifteen minutes. We needed much more time in that gallery, it's massive! I couldn't find the group…" she trailed off, tilting her chin down. "I didn't mean to mess up my first week here, Sister, honest I didn't!" Anna started to bite her fingernail. "No, I'm not supposed to do that anymore," she said, pulling her hand down.
Two days prior, Sister Carlotta had chastised her for nail-biting.
Anna did not bite her nails.
Caroline did.
"I… I got a brochure, so I can take notes," Anna said weakly.
The nun was looking softer than butter.
"And, I'm trying to talk to the other girls, I am. It's just sort of hard, transferring in your senior year—"
"The Lord will never give us more than we can handle," Sister Carlotta said. "I'm sure He'll see fit to place the right girls in your path to help you along in the year."
Sister Carlotta squeezed her arm, and Anna forced her eyes to water.
She knew then she had her.
"Yes, Sister. I'm sure He will."
"Back on the bus with you. I can tell you the details you need to know about the exhibit for the quiz on Friday."
"Thank you, Sister. I— I stopped by the gift shop, when I couldn't find the class. I got this poster of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. 'The Creation of Adam', I think. I could show you, once we get back to school?" she motioned to the tube at her back.
"That will do, Caroline. Now on the bus."
Anna rolled her eyes, unable to hide the smirk spreading across her face.
As the bus turned at a stop light on Fifth Avenue, Anna could hear the faint sound of sirens approaching the Met.
And when the bus rolled back into the parking drop at St. Agatha's, Sister Carlotta despaired to find that they were one girl short.
In a nondescript warehouse along the Hudson, Anna removed the illuminated text from its casing and began her own restoration procedures. Satisfied with the preservation and framing materials many hours later, Anna collapsed on her bed in the middle of her makeshift flat. Eyes from stolen portraits watched over her silently.
Even thieves need guardian angels.
A/N: Okay, so, there's that. And there might be more. It's all quite convoluted in my head currently, and I'm rubbish at updating. But I can try. Review if you feel so inclined, let me know what you think of the concept.