I don't own Frozen.
Anna didn't cry.
She didn't hyperventilate either, which was the more surprising reaction. Well, lack of reaction. Something more intrinsic than shock (fight or flight, she would later consider) spurred her, and, without really comprehending, she found herself kicking out the vent cover in Hans's room.
Her intent was simple and direct: get Jane and get out.
She wasn't thinking, she was just doing. Because that's how she operated, wasn't it? Anna prepped, but the majority of her job was done when she set foot in the building, when she faced a mark. Jane's job, on the other hand, was 90% planning and 10% doing. The heists Jane performed could take minutes, while Anna ran cons for weeks. Moving, acting, (not thinking, never thinking) was all that currently mattered, so she slid out of the hole in the wall like a rodent, puffy-haired and bleary-eyed. Her mouth twitched at Aladdin, unconscious on the opposite side of the hotel room.
She placed a hurried call to reception, her sentences clipped, her tone removed, an innocuous and petty complaint, an "I demand to speak to the manager!", and an assurance that someone's supervisor would be up within the next ten minutes to handle the situation. Whatever the situation was. She'd said something about the shower head… or was it the sink?
Anna couldn't remember, couldn't think… dare not think.
If she let herself think, let herself dwell, then the emotional toxins would steep in her blood stream like an arsenic-laced tea bag and paralyze her.
She scooped up the binder Hans had flipped through from the desk and hightailed it, barefoot and agitated, toward the service elevator.
She didn't even realize she was dialing Jane's number until she heard a grunt from the line.
"Where are you?" Anna asked.
"AAAAAA!"
"Jane, where are you? Tell me now, I'm getting on the elevator."
"A-A-A-A-A, I've got a surprise for you!" Jane squealed.
Jane's cheerful tone completed what up until then had been a faulty circuit, a blitzkrieg in Anna's haphazard recollections of the exchange in Hans's hotel room:
Aladdin had said: "I asked her how she was going to get the credit cards, and she just threw a vodka shot back."
Fuck it, Jane's drunk.
"Jane, sweeth— Jane, where are you?" Anna asked, trying and failing to remain in the moment, to keep out of her head.
"I'm waiting for you. Ssspecial night, 'member?" Jane hummed more than spoke, or rather slurred more than hummed.
Anna found herself missing that stilted enunciation, that awkward, almost formal vernacular Jane pinned on her syllables from their earlier meetings when they hadn't known each other quite so well, when Anna hadn't felt as she did, and when Anna hadn't known—
"Ye-yes," Anna wavered, shutting her eyes in the clinical waiting area of the service elevator. It smelled of ammonia and lemon, and Anna felt like her pupils were burning from splashback of liquid bleach.
"But where are you waiting? I'm coming for you," Anna shuddered to think there was a second sexual meaning in the phrase.
Anna suddenly had to pee or vomit or bleed, to expel something within her, because she just needed to get this… whatever this was… out of her body, to eject it and chuck it down an elevator shaft and listen to it fall and crunch and die.
"I'm in our room, you're going to be so proud of me, A," Jane said again, and her voice was higher than usual, a discomfiting frequency.
"Good. I'll be there in just a sec," Anna said, hitting the number to the topmost floor and praying for light speed in the service car.
Anna was in the suite before she knew it: space and time seemed to operate under more flexible constraints during emotional crises. Jane was standing in the middle of the open floor expectantly, a large green bottle in her hand, and there was a chocolate fountain erupting Vesuvius-like on the counter, with skewers and fruits and salted pretzels and fluffy marshmallows plated indulgently below it. There were blood red rose petals on the floor in a trail to the bedroom and shadows flickering on the walls from scented candles.
Anna choked down a scream.
"A!" Jane yelled, and with consummate ease did the blonde pop the cork of the champagne (real champagne, no sparkling grape juice in the vicinity), and proceeded to teeter dangerously in her heels, slurping her thumb as the foam overflowed. "Come have a drink, I got it just for you!" Jane insisted, then snapped her fingers overhead.
The honeymoon suite plunged into darkness save for some recessed lighting and blinking neon stripes and those damn flickering candles. Anna vaguely recalled that yes, this honeymoon suite was in Vegas, and yes, the neon lights were a staple, but now, all of the colors seemed too violent and disorienting and it made her stomach clench. Her breathing came is short gasps, and even outside of the ventilation system the walls felt heavy as Atlas's sky.
The air about them was charged with urgency, but Jane just swayed drunkenly in the middle of the room, looking back at Anna with all the love in the world. Her sexy black dress was drenched in champagne and her body floppy, looser and more weighted than Anna had ever seen it.
"Oh, the music!" Jane said, and snapped again.
Suddenly the suite was loud, echoing, thumping, and Jane was on her because Anna had succumbed to the paralysis. She didn't think she would see Jane any differently, but she did, and her need for movement was suddenly stymied, along with the majority of Anna's hopes and dreams because her sister was yanking her toward the middle of their hotel room to dance.
Anna couldn't speak, could only breath… and barely that.
"Come on!" Jane shouted, and the blonde wrapped her hands around Anna's neck.
And Anna couldn't figure why Jane was swaying around her, touching her hips, and smiling, beaming, as if they had suddenly traded places and Anna was the melancholy moon and Jane the luminous sun. And when Jane kissed her, it didn't taste like airy mint and robust longing, but a sugar-sick burn of neat whiskey.
Am I having a panic attack? Shell-shock? What… what is happening?
"Did you know…" and Jane hiccupped, which forced Anna to shake her head and attempt a reentry to Earth. "That Al was friends with Hans's brothers? For years!" And then Anna was turned around, her back to Jane's front, and Anna was letting the blonde manhandle her, and clutch her, and, fucking hell… roll her hips into her from behind.
"Do you know how bad I want inside of you?" Jane asked throatily, tongue dragging against the column of skin on Anna's neck. "How much I want to stick my fingers…" and with this her fingers fled south over her body toward the hem of Anna's dress, raking lecherously over her abdomen. "Right. In. Your. Vault."
The bass hit in time with Anna's pulse, and she shuddered when Jane breathed against her neck. From arousal or revulsion… probably a bit of both.
"That's how Al knew about me!" Jane chirped, light as a bird and drunk as a skunk, topic switching at random. "But we don't have to talk about that right now. Besides, I can't remember—everything—but you'll be so proud of me, A!" Jane crowed, and shoved Anna off of her. The blonde bumbled toward the counter showcasing the gurgling chocolate fountain. Anna saw a large duffel bag, and then Jane's phone blinking in a bare hand. "I recorded the whole thing!" Jane yelled over the music. "And not just that, I won!"
Jane ripped a rubber band from a wad of cash and then tossed it in the air. Green paper fluttered listlessly about the suite like oversized confetti.
"Counting cards is essentially an exclusion percentage algorithm that—aren't you… aren't you happy, A?" Jane asked, and silenced the music, now seemingly aware that Anna hadn't really spoken to her since she stepped in the room. Another arcing hand, and the lights were up, too. Anna touched a hand to her own cheek, and was confused by the wetness there.
"You're… c-c-crying?" Jane asked, and returned to her.
Anna backed away, and wondered how the hell anyone could perform complex algebraic functions while intoxicated. Anna proceeded to mentally lambaste herself, because she's a fucking genius because she's Jane.
"We need to leave, now," Anna intonated.
Unfeeling. Automaton. Back to A, who had probably been the real Ice Queen all along.
"What's— what's the matter?" Jane asked, slumping against the bar.
"Hans is coming for us," she explained, and ducked into the bedroom to locate better footwear. She emerged with two pairs of sneakers for herself and Jane, and Jane had to sit down to put hers on and tie the laces together properly.
"Get up," Anna demanded. She stuffed her clutch, Jane's phone, and the binder she'd swiped from Hans into the bag of Jane's winnings and slung it over her shoulder.
"But A—"
"I said get up!"
Jane scrambled to a mostly vertical position, leaning heavily on countertop. Molten chocolate splashed and singed her pale arm hair, and pretzels splintered and strawberries mushed as a plate clattered to the ground.
Anna forced herself to wrap an arm around Jane's waist and guide her to the hall.
"Shouldn't we change into—"
"No time," Anna mumbled.
"But tonight was going to—"
"Tonight's not going to happen, Jane!" Anna snapped.
Probably ever, if Jane has anything to say about it.
Wait… just Jane? Does that mean I—
"Stop interrupting me!" Jane screeched, indignant.
"You're drunk," Anna said, and it was salt on an open wound.
Jane's face turned ashy and grey; her body deflated like a beach ball punctured by glass hidden in the sand.
"I—I—I—"
"Don't, not now—"
"I'm sorry."
The elevator dinged, but Anna let it go, waiting instead for the other car to arrive.
"Why are we—"
"Hush," Anna instructed.
There was a ruckus in the service stairwell, and the elevator Anna had passed over descended but a few flights to floor twenty-four, paused, and then started up again.
Luckily, the car she had waited specifically for was a good twelve floors above the elevator that had stopped at Hans's level.
But then again, Hans could be on the very elevator I'm waiting for. It's already 10:45.
At this point, with Jane drunk on her shoulder, Hans armed and in pursuit, and Anna in the midst of some pseudo-panic attack, she couldn't do more than pray for an unoccupied elevator car with gunk covering the security camera.
The elevator dinged and the doors opened.
It was empty.
"In you get," Anna said, and pushed Jane inside. She quickly hit the emergency button and climbed toward the loosened panel, the security camera from earlier still blurry and shadowed thanks to that can of mini-Pantene and a traveler's tube of Crest Extra Whitening toothpaste.
"Up," Anna instructed, and it was the first time she'd seen Jane struggle with a climb.
"Wait, what am I doing? Jane," Anna said, and she mashed the button to send them to the third floor. "— can you stall the other elevator and disable the stops for this one?"
Jane's eyes were doughnut-glazed and opaque. She blinked, once, twice, and brought her hands up in front of her with all the dexterity of a toddler. Her fingers sparked, and before she could do anything else, the elevator dinged and the doors opened to floor thirty-one.
"Sorry, it's occupied," Anna said, beating the 'close door' button as a couple stalked toward the car. They gawked at the pair of bare legs and black hemline dangling from the ceiling.
"What the hell are you doing?" a man said, and Anna grabbed Jane's ankle and shoved it toward the sliding doors.
When Jane's skin hit the roof of the doors they jerked shut with a zap, shooting Anna toward the other side of the car and sizzling the redhead's palm.
"Shit," she wheezed.
"A!" Jane whimpered. "I—"
The elevator slowed and Anna scrambled upwards, shoving Jane's legs through the panel and losing her own sneaker (shoved on her foot improperly from her earlier panic in the suite) during the climb. She yanked her stocking-clad foot through the ceiling panel just as two muscled, dark-complexioned men with earpieces entered the car. They took a power tool to the wiring beneath the control panel, overriding the system.
Anna witnessed all of this because she was spread-eagle sprawled atop Jane, a hand clamped over the blonde's mouth and Anna's face pressed gingerly against the crease of the removable panel. She had to hold back her own gasp when she felt the car they had been riding down suddenly jerk to a halt and shoot upwards with such speed she could feel the pressurized inertia crushing Jane below her. And she could feel Jane shifting below her, and even in the chaos, there was something so right about being close to Jane.
Anna tried to brace herself with her arms, but gravity proved too mighty a foe.
Her eyes widened and Jane started crying (from drink or pressure or fear?), her silent shakes eerie and unwelcome to Anna's ear. Anna tried to inch out of their precarious sprawl, but her knee came down heavily on Jane's hip when the car lurched to a halt. Jane whimpered and Anna shushed her, and it took every ounce of willpower Anna had not to kiss the tear tracks dripping along the side of Jane's skull.
There were two identical dings, and Anna finally noticed they'd come to a halt where the sister elevator (other elevator, the elevator right next to ours) was stopped. The men exited the cars. The doors, however, remained open.
"You've gotten the body taken care of?"
Hans.
"There was a hysterical night manager yelling into the room phone, so we sort of skipped off of that floor."
"What?!" Hans hissed. "You realize now police will lock this place down within the hour, if that gets called in."
"I didn't see nothing," another unfamiliar, deep voice answered.
At least three.
"We were supposed to help you with the problem in the pent house suite? We've got two guys in the stairwell at top and they say no movement for the past five minutes."
Another new voice. Dammit, four. Plus stairwell dudes. Plus possible police for attempted murder of a Saudi Arabian Prince.
Perfect, Anna groaned inwardly. The doors dinged, and began to close, but someone must have stuck an arm between the doors to offset the sensors, forcing them back open again.
"What's that?" Hans asked, and Anna felt the car below her bounce with the added weight of a body.
She quickly dipped her head into Jane's ear and whispered, "We're moving to the roof of the other elevator."
She moved snail-slow, and tried to shift her weight gradually, or at least in time with the arrival of another body within the elevator car, so that her shift would be disguised upon his entering. Jane rolled to the top of the parallel car. Her movements were bumbling and clunky and shit— loud.
"A shoe?" an unrecognized male voice.
"What the— fuck. Move in!" Hans shouted. "Tell your men in the stairwell to check the room, now! Fuck-she's blocked the security camera, she knows something's up. Tell them to move in upstairs, now."
"Yessir."
"But the shoe—"
Anna was again forced to action by the relentless pounding of a fist on the roof of the paneled elevator ceiling she had just abandoned. She plunked down into the car opposite her and mashed the three button again, ramming her hands over the 'close' button as the doors shut to the chagrin and outrage of several large, muscley men.
"Jane?" Anna turned, and there was a queasy alabaster face staring down at her. "Jane, get down here."
Jane obeyed with a gauche, uncharacteristic physicality She plopped from the ceiling onto her ankle and yelped, falling against the sidewall of the elevator and clutching the black money bag like a stuffed animal. Anna crouched down carefully and grabbed Jane's wrist. She stuck Jane's hand against the control panel.
"A, I'm so sorry, I wanted to help at th-the game, so I—"
"You did brilliantly at the game," Anna said, though she didn't really know, but Jane managed a submissive half-smile. "But I need you to keep us safe, now. Don't let this elevator stop. We have to get down to the third floor before they do."
And she felt the tingles beneath her palm as Jane's hand shot energy directives into the moving car. They didn't stop, and they were dropping, plummeting almost, and Anna's hand felt like the icy-turned-hot cream people use for muscles aches. Her heart felt icy and hot and disturbingly still, but the rest of her body moved fluidly. The doors dinged to floor three and Anna gathered the staggering blonde up into her arms, ducking and swerving into a stairwell and then traipsing down the muffled corridor to the doors of the second floor casino. Lost in the crowd, dressed semi-appropriately (aside from having but three shoes for four feet), they would be more difficult to locate. Anna spotted the crowds boarding the escalator and barreled through sequins and feathers and polyester and got a wolf-whistle for her troubles, Jane tripping at her side. There were gruff voices everywhere, and men in black everywhere, but who was a blackjack dealer and who was a hired hand?
They made it (astonishingly, unbelievably) to the street entrance of Elysium, where all this began (Five hours? Only four hours ago?). And as suddenly as they were out there were shouts from behind, deep, hollow echoes of "Wait! Stop!" and "Follow those girls!" dancing over the air. And then a resounding shot, a baritone holler of "No!", and Anna looked back to see Hans standing over a man in a black t-shirt, kicking a gun from his prostrate form.
"What did I say? What did I say?!" he shouted to the man on the ground.
Sirens sounded in the distance.
And Anna, during that brief reprieve of pursuit, walked straight up to the vested car valet of the restaurant and punched the man in the face.
"Jane, give me cover!"
Jane sparked immediately, streetlights bursting and restaurant lights shuddering and a massive bolt, white-hot and gleaming, shot diagonal from her ribcage, striking floor thirty-something of the neighboring casino resort. Everyone ducked as sparky precipitation fell from exploding neon signs, glass and fire of apocalyptic proportions.
Anna somehow pried the keys to the waiting Jaguar from the trembling valet and shouldered the distracted driver to the glass-strewn curb.
"Jane!" Anna barked.
Jane flickered, her body flickered, and Anna could cultivate no other emotion other than fear, than terror, either from Jane or for Jane because the blonde was so tense she seemed petrified, glowing as the air around her rippled with dauntless energy.
"Jane!" Anna cried again, and desperation clawed against her throat like regurgitated bile.
When the blonde's eyes popped open they seemed ghost-white, but within the span of a blink, the irises were back to the robin's egg Anna had fallen for. Jane clenched her fists and staggered toward the passenger's side door. Once inside, Anna sped away, and neon bulbs burst streetside as the city darkened in their wake.
"You've got to get a handle on it!" Anna screeched.
"I know, I'm trying!"
The gauges and radio stations were jumping, headlights flicking on and off so fast the Jag seemed like a speeding strobe on the strip. Anna ignored the stop lights, not that they were working properly anyway. She rounded a corner and a lit sign for nickel slots fell mere feet in front of them, metal and painted wooden frame overtaken by a sparking conflagration. Anna threw the car into reverse and doubled back over the block to find the interstate.
"Jane, calm down—"
"A, they shot you, they were going to fucking shoot you—"
"They didn't shoot me. We're safe, we have to get out of the city tonight. I've got to tell you—"
And then a car cut them off, drivers speeding about recklessly due to the malfunctioning streetlights and epileptic Vegas strip.
"Shit!" Anna yelled. When she checked her rear-view, everything behind her was dark.
She'll lead them right to us at this rate.
Anna parked the car in a metered space on a side street and shut it off. She turned to Jane in the shadows beside her.
"Jane, look at me," Anna commanded, and took Jane's sweaty, pasty face in her hands. "Breathe with me." Because Anna needed to pause momentarily, too, to breathe, to calm, to assess. She'd done the moving and that had gotten her out of immediate danger, but now, dammit, she needed to think, and she couldn't do that with Jane hysterical at her side.
The two puffed shaky breaths out together and Jane clutched Anna's forearms. They were safe (for now, only for now) but they needed to move.
"Jane, I'm going to get us another car."
"Don't leave me! Please!"
"Never. I am never going to leave you," Anna vowed, and she meant every word. "I'm going to hotwire an older car. This thing's probably got a LoJack transceiver on it. Just keep breathing."
"Let me come with you, I can start it!"
"I want you to power down, okay?" Anna suggested, and she's talking to her like Jane's a nervous fawn, eyes wet and round and ever on the verge of teary fear.
"All these lights…" Anna hesitated. "Don't try to power anything, and focus on breathing. I can still jump a car, you know."
Anna quirked her lips, hopefully into a reassuring smile, but she didn't manage it fully.
"Don't leave me," Jane repeated. "My head hurts, I can't—"
"Walk with me then," and that was a horrific idea, because Jane's ankle was purple and swollen (from the elevator fall—escape snafu) and the woman could barely hobble, let alone outrun someone should the circumstance call for a foot chase.
But it didn't take long for Anna to bust out a window to a '93 Honda with a tire iron from the Jaguar's trunk. No alarm on the older model, so she yanked out the bottom console beneath the steering column and proceeded to strip wires and connect copper cores: the red rubs against the green and you press the gas.
And it revved, subdued amidst the cacophony of Sin City.
"Okay, get—"
"A, wait, I'm going to—"
Jane wrapped her hands around her abdomen, a five-foot pale burrito, and then doubled over at the gutter. Anna heard a sorry splash and sniffed the steamy, acrid scent of vomit. Anna, resolved, held her breath and darted curbside. She patted Jane's back because the woman's hair was still up despite their impromptu flight from Caesar's Palace. Anna murmured sounds, not words, just comforting syllables while the blonde heaved the poison from her system.
Anna was nauseated. And afraid. And on the precipice of unhealthy introspection.
She forced Jane into the passenger seat as the wave of hurling subsided, and rolled down the window for the night air of the desert to slap Jane in the face while she drove.
They had been on the interstate without a tail for fifteen minutes, according to Anna's count. No sparking lights followed, but the reflection of Vegas still shimmered at the hazy edge of her rear-view mirror. Anna exhaled a small percentage of her worries, but finally felt composed enough to speak.
"How are you?"
Jane shifted, and placed her hand over her eyes.
"Peachy."
"We'll stop in an hour and get you a bottle of water and some crackers or something. I just want to put some substantial distance between us and the city."
"That's wise," Jane replied, and then lay her head near the open window. Anna could see the fissures in her moon-lit face, cracking, and there was regret seeping through the faulted lines, such that the ensuing aftershocks might be more than Anna felt capable of handling. Jane just looked so fragile, and Anna decided, at least for the night anyway, not to break her further.
Anna took an exit and they found themselves on the loopy highway system of the Arizona mountains within the hour. Anna completed her tasks mechanically: gas station, bottled water, aspirin, road map, shitty motel, abandon car two for car three, move Jane, keep driving.
And driving.
And driving.
They made it to Phoenix by dawn; slower than the interstate, but less a chance of being tracked. Anna pulled over at a rest stop to review hourly rated motels in the city proper. Best hide yourself in a city, lose yourself in the crowd. She had taken that advice to heart, because Hans in his due diligence would leave no stone unturned.
Her rational mind knew he hadn't caught up with him, knew he couldn't have tailed her this far. She had been trained to elude and distract and disappear into thin air.
But what happens next time when I don't have a head-start?
They made it inside the dingy room with faded pink wallpaper and cigarette burns in the cushion of the spare chair. Anna wet towels and placed them at Jane's forehead, the girl still groaning her displeasure, her pain, voicing her concerns about a head that weighed as much as a Boeing, and swooped like one as well. Jane threw up once more, and Anna stepped up as nurse. She was confronted with how silent their night had been, how brief their conversations, comparatively, in the long hours of their escape. She wondered fleetingly if it was her fault, or if fault was even the right word for this communicative shut down.
Anna forced Jane to sip on another bottle of water, swallow two aspirin, and brush her teeth. She then found herself at a loss for more to do.
For the first time in hours, she was motionless.
It was unnerving and scary, and she had never been more aware of her position on the bed with Jane. She felt removed and out-of-body, more A than ever before. Yet Anna still helped Jane take her hair down, and ran reassuring, gentle fingers along a blonde scalp. Anna's fingers were numb and she felt so distant, but she continued the up-and-down motion because it was doing and not thinking and it was diversion from her thoughts.
"A, I'm so sorry," Jane whispered again, holding the towel to her head as she curled in on herself like a tormented millipede at a school yard. "I don't deserve it, but will you… will you hold me? Please?"
Anna couldn't refuse her (even knowing), so she crawled over and rocked Jane while the blonde sobbed, and if there was one blessing in this night it's that Jane doesn't know. And for right now, Anna won't tell her.
Instead she rocked Jane from behind like a sister should when a sibling stumbles in from a dreaded night out to face a blistering hangover. She shushed Jane and caressed her face, rubbed soothing pressures into her temples and made promises that Jane would never hear, because she didn't dare speak them out loud. She made promises to herself, too, and it wasn't until Jane had been asleep for half an hour that Anna sprang from the bed and locked herself in the bathroom. She turned on the vent so Jane wouldn't hear the sound of her gagging. In a moldy hotel bathroom in north Phoenix, Anna came to the realization that nothing could assuage the guilt of nights spent, rings bought, and kisses swapped with and for her sister.
Okay, this chapter was H-E-double hockey sticks to get through. I randomly struggled with tenses halfway through and then went back and tried to fix it and blaaaaaah, editing was NO FUN. And yeah, it's pretty sad, but I can give you this: the story will be fifty chapters. Did some structuring stuff, and that's where we stand. I'd really appreciate some critique on this one, because I was playing with a pretty significant tonal shift.
Additionally, we broke a review record for the last chapter! So thanks so much for all of your feedback, it's very encouraging that SI has gotten so much love. And thanks to everyone who's offered critique as well. I really do take it into consideration and appreciate the time you take to review the work.