Omega [REDUX]
Chapter 45
She leaned forward out of her seat, elbows on her knees, hands clasped together as she contemplated their next move. Their extraction out of Matrix had gone as smoothly as it possibly could have. Assuming the UIF didn't figure out who it really was that attacked them, then their plan was going on smoothly. The kinesis signature was changed now; that gave them options.
Anna was fast asleep, having dozed off in the troop bay after the drone had picked them up. Elsa sat in the cockpit, watching the darkened skies drift by as their aircraft soared through the air, now only about fifteen minutes out from Cradle Alpha. Elsa wanted to give Anna the time to rest, so she didn't bother waking her lover up. She could plan this out herself.
There was, however, the nagging feeling in her gut that told her no matter what she planned for, something was bound to go astray. Not necessarily in a terribly bad way, but something that she would have to adapt to. She pushed it aside, knowing that it was part of her perpetual insecurities. There was no reason for anything to go in any way she expected it to go; preparation was one thing, worrying about it was another.
Elsa pulled up the display on the deployment drone and keyed in series of rendezvous commands for Anna to remotely interface with. It would help extract them out of sticky situations, but for it to be truly effective she'd need to coat it with her unique cloaking ice to conceal it from detection. She knew that the UIF could only track her cloaked vehicles by pinpointing the kinesis signature of its inhabitants; unless anything had changed since Operation Blue Rose, they were going to be fine. She'd get to work on it later that night. For now, the clouds parted as the drone descended, the silhouette of Cradle Alpha coming into view, a shadowy monolith against the moon that shone overhead.
The whirring of the thrusters shifted in tone as they popped retrograde burners to slow descent, beginning to enter a more comfortable cruising speed. The interface established a link with Cradle Alpha's systems, guiding the drone in for a smooth landing in its launch bay. "Wakey wakey, sleepyhead," Elsa intoned as she reentered the troop bay, reaching out to caress Anna's cheek, brushing away stray locks of red hair as her lover stirred and stretched. "We're almost home."
"Mmmmm." A hand reached out and pulled her down into a kiss, Elsa yelping in surprise as she almost tumbled over but cut off by lips pressed against her own. She giggled into the kiss, pushing herself up and pulling Anna with her, much to their dismay. "We're too tired for this."
"As much as I hate to admit it," Anna sighed as she retrieved her gear, "you're right. You'd think I'd be able to last a lot longer."
"Oh, but you do last longer," Elsa smiled, nudging Anna and giving her a knowing look, earning her an eye-roll. "That's where stamina counts the most."
"Go fuck yourself."
"That'd be selfish of me to deprive you of the opportunity—"
Anna jabbed at her, prompting more laughter as the drone rotated lazily and settled into the clamps of the launch bay, the hydraulic-powered machinery securing its various components as the engines powered down, weight transferring to the metal frames of the building. The ramp opened downwards and they walked out, grime on their cheeks and grins on their faces.
"Go ahead and sleep," Elsa called out as Anna headed up, not bothering to strip off her gear. "I have a few things to settle, but I'll be right up as soon as I finish." The grunt in response was enough to assure her, and she removed the plating from her bodice, with every intention to coat the entirety of the drone by the end of the night. She slid the plates onto the table in the bay, feeling her combat fatigues clinging to her sweaty body, shaking of the feeling of grime as she moved toward the craft.
End of the night? She brought up the post-flight diagnostics screen to check the time: 0427 hours. There was no point in sleeping now; she'd have work to do at daybreak, and from her past experience she'd take at least two and a half hours to coat the craft. Sighing in indignation she took one last look at the diagnostic scans to make sure everything was okay, and then went back to her drone. Now how exactly did I do this again?
She cleared her mind and took a breath, letting her shoulders relax as she raised her palms together, slowly drawing them apart in a straight line, a thin layer of ice forming in between. It was transparent and looked deceptively like any other piece of ice. Elsa exhaled over the layer, watching her breath condense upon the surface, then with a flourish of her fingers sent a magical charge through the ice, the blue energy coalescing in its center. She concentrated on the thrumming energy, willing it to dissipate and render the layer invisible.
The visible edges of the ice piece faded. She held her breath as she moved the layer over the table corner nearby. It disappeared behind the layer, the table forming a disembodied shape as Elsa looked through the ice to see the floor behind the table.
It was working. She'd made it invisible.
Satisfied with her work, Elsa disintegrated the test layer with a wave of her hand and stepped onto the maintenance gurney of the launch bay and moved to scale the side of the drone, energy already pulsing at her fingertips.
"Hello?"
"It's me again."
"Didn't think I'd hear from you so soon. I assume the operation was a success."
Elsa nodded as she replied. "Yeah, although we had a few hiccups here and there, mainly with their input shield and all."
"They had an input shield installed over it?"
"I assume you weren't cleared to have that intel when you sent in to us. And yes, we had to skydive right through it."
Charles chuckled over the line. "Only you two could pull off something that dicey under those circumstances. What do you need?"
"Thought we could review whatever data Anna siphoned out together. The UIF is still a big machine that I'm not absolutely familiar with yet. I need your help determining what could become a threat."
"Can do. I'll reach Cradle Alpha at 0950."
She cast a glance at the time. It was 0713 hours; they could both easily make 0950. "Copy that. I'll see you around." Elsa cut the line and dialed another one.
"This is Kristoff."
"And you know who this is."
"That I do. What's up?"
"We attacked a UIF data facility."
She could hear him spitting out his drink over the line. Highly unusual behaviour for a trained commando, she mused. "You fucking what?" he managed. "How— wait, don't tell me how. Why did you think this was a good idea again?"
"We altered the database's kinesis signature. It'll be extremely difficult to track us if they don't realise that the signature was falsified. If and when the mole gets onto us we're going to have to run, so this opens up quite a few options for us."
"Well that's not something you hear every day," Kristoff said. "That's pretty ballsy. Not the way I'd have approached this situation, but then again, who am I to judge?"
"You find anything useful for me?"
"Not that I can tell on my end. Nothing from troop deployments or rearrangements that raise any red flags. Special ops side seems pretty quiet; bunch of teams went on a package secure mission yesterday, before that it was a series of standard recon missions into Empyrean territory. I'll keep watching for anything relevant."
"Copy that. Thanks again."
"In any case, what time do I we meet? I assume you're calling because you want me to check on stuff, else you'd have told me directly by now."
"You read my mind." It'd be better to have all four of them there at the same time to look at the data. "0950 sound good?"
"Roger. I'll be there."
Elsa walked in on the other three after washing up. She'd woken Anna up just before so she'd be able to upload the data. Her lover had tried to allure her back to sleep with the promise of cuddles and possibly other… things, but she'd politely declined, with the promise of taking Anna up on that offer later on.
She watched Anna lean back in her seat, eyes closed, mentally linking herself to Cradle Alpha's dataframes. Charles and Kristoff stood by as Anna transmitted the data and began to project onto the main holographic display. Aside from UIF files she had extracted as cover, there were a series of Empyrean files that would serve to be equally, if not more, important. They'd already gotten one nasty surprise from the neutralizing signal, dubbed Ambrosia by Empyrean as the relevant files on the display suggested. It would not do to have any more unpleasant surprises.
"Anything in particular we should look for?" Charles was asking.
Anna tilted her head and pondered the question as the upload completed. "Right now? Just the new Empyrean files that I recovered. I'll just pull that up—"
She paused. The projection switched as it navigated to the set of files Anna was referring to. Nothing was changing. "What's the problem?" Elsa asked.
"It's another encryption wall," Anna replied, eyebrows furrowing as she sat there. "One that is different from the previous Empyrean files that we cracked." Another brief silence. "Well this is annoying;I can't seem to get past it."
"I'll pull up the previous files to see if we can find similarities," Charles said, pushing himself over to a separate console. "If the code is similar somehow, maybe we can find a weakness in the programming."
Anna opened her eyes and sat straight up again, gazing at the projection. "Maybe you'll have better luck. My standard decryption protocols don't seem to have an effect." Offhandedly she pushed a few stray red hairs back behind her ear, leaning forward and pressing her palms together.
Elsa paced the room, pondering this outcome and its effect on their movements from here on out. Their main goal had still been accomplished, just that they wouldn't have an advantage by looking at Empyrean intel. So everything was still going according to plan, but instead…
"Anything relevant from the UIF files?" she asked.
"We didn't check that," Kristoff said. "Didn't think it was necessary—"
"She's right," Anna said suddenly, quickly navigating away from the Empyrean files and scanning the UIF files she extracted. "If we don't get anything out of the Empyrean files, the UIF files could still be of use. Although, I effectively did a keyword search and pulled everything remotely related to Empyrean, troop movements, deployment designations—"
She paused, as did the display. Elsa could see why; Asset Omega was displayed prominently across the projection. "That's—"
"—me," Elsa finished for her. "That's the file on me."
Silence hung in the air for a split second. "Open it," Elsa went on.
"A – are you sure?" Anna asked. "I know how you feel about this—"
"We need to know what they know about me," Elsa said, "and in turn, know what to expect from them when they try to deal with the both of us. Most of what they know about Ascendants came from me; they'll be perfectly willing and able to use that knowledge against us." She closed her eyes and breathed. "We need to find out."
Anna didn't comply until Elsa locked with her gaze and gave her a soft nod. The file was decrypted, and the contents splayed across the display. It was the one file that, despite the less restricted access Hans had granted her to the UIF database, she had not had access to. Not that it had mattered at the time; she hadn't particularly keen on finding out. "Any of you seen this before?"
Kristoff shook his head. "Charles?"
"Didn't bother about it," he replied. "Especially not after I realized I'd been paralyzed after the mission, stuck in that state of trauma and depression."
Elsa didn't reply.
Anna scrolled through the contents as they watched. There were a series of routine documents interred within the file: medical records and checkup history after Elsa had been recovered, registration into UIF database and enrolment into the military academy, psychological assessments when Elsa had been fit enough to respond. Those were familiar enough; Elsa even remembered some of those in detail.
What she didn't recognize was a file named Asset Operation History. That didn't make sense; those kinds of reports were meant for assets having been deployed for at least 5 missions, to ensure they'd be properly considered as a formal asset instead of an experimental prototype. "I've been deployed once," she said out loud. "Why do they have an operation history of me?"
"They might count the various operations you took part in, with or without consent," Charles mused, "like the convention center attack, the attack on the academy, Blue Rose, the support cruiser…" His voice died away as they only counted four possible deployments. "You're right. It doesn't make sense."
Anna took that as a sign to open the file. "Operational history starts in 2119."
"That's… when we recovered her," Charles said, turning to Kristoff, only to get a nod in reply. "We took out the transport carrying her that year. You couldn't possibly have done anything—"
The list came up on the display, one block of black text after the other. "Subject underwent accelerated, altered reconditioning for…" Anna frowned as she read the next bit, "rapid deployment."
Elsa's eyes narrowed. "Deployment? I was never deployed, I underwent conditioning for two years before joining the academy."
"Subject then deployed onto populations to assess extent of capabilities… wait, WHAT?" Anna rose to her feet as she tried to get a better look at the document. "Targets selected were outlying citizens in cities of New Vancia, Vajailuj, Nordcester and—"
Anna seemed choked, her voice cutting off abruptly as the casualty reports for each of the incidents appeared, line after line of datafiles stacking up, amounting to a horrifying killcount. Elsa couldn't find the means to respond either. "What the hell am I looking at?" she barely managed as she turned to Kristoff and Charles, who appeared equally dumfounded. "What the fuck is this?"
"Are these the ghost Ascendant incidents?" Kristoff asked as he slowly turned to Charles as well. He pointed at Elsa. "Is she the fucking ghost Ascendant?"
"It…" Charles struggled to find the words. "It looks like it."
"What am I missing here?" Elsa demanded. "What Ghost Ascendant?"
"The Ghost was supposedly the one responsible for attacks on major UIF city centers," Charles said slowly. "It was so devastating because we thought we'd gotten all our bases covered. Empyrean wasn't supposed to be able to attack us there, and yet, somehow there were reports of attacks by an Ascendant. There was never a report on what his or her powers were because they supposedly escaped too quickly, but this seems to suggest-"
No. "That's not possible!" she cut in. "I was in rehab! I was stuck in pain and confusion and trying desperately to find out who I was! I didn't— I couldn't have—"
She turned back to the screen, at a loss for words, only to be confronted by a single casualty incidence displayed on the projection. Her eyes scanned the names of the fallen, and widened in response:
-front-
[Casualty report]
Brief: Faust family caught in Asset Omega test zone, city of New Vancia. Casualties are as follows:
-x-
Idun Faust, 41
Status: Deceased | Cause of death: Severe frostbite
-x-
Agdar Faust, 43
Status: Deceased | Cause of death: Shrapnel wounds, severe blood loss
-x-
Anna Faust, 16
Status: Alive | Identity: Sole daughter of the deceased | Resolution: Recommend for internment in military academy under state welfare schemes.
-end-
No. No no NO—
It was as if something had sucked the life out of her, leaving a gaping hole where her heart should have been. It couldn't be. This wasn't possible. She'd escaped Empyrean and spent her time trying to recover, to repent, to atone. She'd joined the academy to protect, never to kill indiscrimately. She couldn't have killed Anna's parents. She couldn't have been responsible for these atrocities. She—
She doubled over as a gauntleted fist slammed into her gut, knocking the wind out of her, spittle flying as she doubled over. Pain exploded through her body, and yet she was strangely conscious of what was happening. She deserved to be beaten. She deserved the agony. She deserved to die for what she'd done. And yet, she still couldn't understand. She didn't understand. She refused to understand.
But her reflexes kicked in and she raised her hands defensively, blocking the downward swing from Anna and shoving her backward through her pain, barely managing to recover her balance and force her eyes open before she found herself staring down a barrel of Anna's cannon arm. The icy ward materialized just as the plasma blast fired, the resulting shockwave knocking her off her feet and sending her skidding across the floor.
"YOU BITCH!" Anna screamed as she pounced on Elsa's form, who found herself blocking blow after blow being rained down upon her. "YOU LIED TO ME! MADE USE OF ME!"
"Wait!" Elsa tried to protest, "I—"
A punch slipped past Elsa's defense and connected sharply with her nose, sending her head snapping back into the floor and stars into her vision. "YOU'RE THE REASON WHY WE'RE LIKE THIS! WHY I'M LIKE THIS!"
Another punch connected with her head. Elsa could feel her arms failing in strength, gasping for breath. "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I—"
It wasn't physical pain that racked Elsa; her body was designed to take hits from things more powerful than the hand-to-hand blows of a fellow Ascendant. But every word, every cry, every scream uttered from Anna's mouth felt like Elsa was being ripped apart from the inside, piece by piece, ruthlessly and agonizingly so, until her arms gave way, finally numb like the rest of her; her head. Her heart. Her soul.
A body tackled Anna off her, giving her a brief respite, allowing the numbness to recede to let the pain flood back in, gnashing at every fibre of her being. She could hear a scuffle not too far away, sending alarm bells ringing in her head as she forced herself to her feet, catching Kristoff pinning Anna down and Charles drawing a taser from his wheelchair and taking aim. "Stand down Anna, or god forbid all three of us are going to have to take you down!"
"She killed my parents!" Anna broke Kristoff's chokehold, pushing him aside as she rose to her feet, pointing an accusing finger at her. "She hurt them, and she hurt me!" Tears were streaming down Anna's face as she screamed, but making no move to attack Elsa just yet. "She ruined my life!"
Elsa turned away, eyes shut, tears brimming behind her eyelids, breathing ragged and pained.
"I know what you're feeling," Charles said, "and I know what it's like to have everything taken from you. By the same person." He shot a sideways glance at Elsa. "But what you're feeling isn't being fair to her either. You know as well as we do that she's not the reason why we're here."
That seemed to stay Anna's hand, though it did little to assuage her anger, her stance still aggressively poised, her fists still clenched together. Elsa would never know the look on her face, because she couldn't find it in her to meet Anna's gaze. Instead she just stood there in shame, eyes closed, tears trailing down her own cheeks as she desperately tried to wrap her head around what was going on.
"She—" Anna began, suddenly finding herself unable to speak. Elsa could hear her sniffling, breath catching in her throat, trying not to break down into sobs. A flurry of footsteps, the sound of crying fading away. She'd run off.
Elsa found the strength to open her eyes, both relieved and agonized that Anna was gone. Charles was leaning back in his wheelchair, his face a mix of despair and relief. Kristoff managed to get up, clutching his sides. "I'll go after her," he managed as he broke into a sprint, his footfalls fading away too.
She turned back to the display, scanning through the casualty report again, then moving to the console to close it, bringing back the list of the fallen. The cities had been wiped out either by direct attack or harsh conditions brought about by severe blizzards. After-incident reports described her area-of-effect as devastating, with an almost 100% casualty rate.
All those memories, those flashbacks of dropping into a city, massacring everyone.
"This isn't your fault, Elsa," Charles began. "You need to—"
"It is my fault," Elsa said as she began to cry again, falling to her knees, burying her face in her hands as sobbed racked her chest, the pain seeming to eat away at her heart. "I killed her parents, Charles. I'm literally the reason she's here. Why she ended up in the academy. Why she's augmented now." She wiped away the tears from the back of her hand. "She's right. I did ruin her life."
"This isn't you," Charles said, gesticulating at the display. "The person that did this isn't you. That person wasn't conscious or aware of their actions, was forced into conditions that manifested her powers in this way. You aren't responsible for this."
"That's an excuse, and you know it."
She heard him wheel over to where she was kneeling, reaching out to place a hand on her shoulder. "It's only an excuse if you think it's one."
Elsa turned to him, his form barely visible through her tears. "Everything that's happened to you, to Kristoff, to Anna, has been because of me. I should have just died in Empyrean custody, or in the transport you recovered me from. Then none of this would have happened—"
"That's not being fair to yourself." The grip on her shoulder tightened. "You're just as much a victim of Empyrean's schemes as the rest of us are. You didn't deserve this either."
Part of her believed she did. "I can't delude myself into thinking I didn't do this," she protested. "I'd be no better than the people that covered this up!"
"You aren't culpable because you had no control over your actions—"
"Did I?" she fired back. "How would I know if I wanted to do this if I don't remember it at all?"
"Because I know what you're like today," Charles said firmly, gazing straight back at Elsa like the world depended on it. "Neither you or I can speak for what you might have been. But for all the pain you carry and all the burdens you put on yourself to set things right, you've at the very least atoned for whatever you've done."
"I can't atone for all of this. For any of this…"
Elsa looked at the blurry blue blob floating in the middle of the room, outright crying at this point. "These people lost their lives, Charles," she sobbed, "and I don't even remember them. How many lives have I taken? How many more have I ruined? How many lives am I going to destroy—?"
"Don't," he cut in. "Don't do this to yourself. It isn't fair."
"It wasn't fair for them to die."
"And it isn't fair for you to suffer for it either. You've never had control over what you did until only very recently, and yet you seek to atone for sins you could never have prevented."
"Don't you get it Charles?" She buried her face back into her hands, feeling what was left of her tormented soul crumple up and die. "There's no point in justifying my own actions to me. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't bring these people back. It won't bring Anna back either."
She surprised herself with that last sentence. She didn't think it could hurt any more than it already did.
Apparently, it could.
Anna was furious. Rage seemed to engulf every sinew, every part of her body, as she reached the parapet, away from the clusterfuck that awaited her. She shut off every connection she had to Cradle Alpha, collapsing onto the battlement walkway, having run until her lungs couldn't stand it anymore.
Why? Why why why why?!
Pain mashed with anger to form hate as she trod down the bricks that made up the walkway; it was all she could do to not morph out three weapons to blast it into smithereens. It was tempting, so, so tempting.
It was even more tempting to get back in there and finish what she'd started. Beat Elsa to a pulp. Make her suffer. Make her pay—
No. Just, no. I— argghhhhh!
Anna screamed into the valley beneath her, overlooking a small road and the sea beyond, her voice fading upon the currents of the wind. Her throat was sore, her arms and legs aching, her heart hurting beyond belief. How could she do this to me? I loved her!
I still love her.
And I don't want to anymore.
She clenched a fist as she leaned back against the battlement wall and looked up into the sky, reddening as the sun began to set, casting an array of red hues across its endless canvas. She wanted to blast her anger into the air in quick, successive bursts of deadly energy, and watch the plasma arc lazily across the evening sky, as if it would soothe her in the slightest. She still wanted to go back in there and pummel Elsa further, but she knew that was not feasible for a variety of reasons.
Most of all she wanted none of this to be true. She wished she could forget, but how could she forget the emboldened words on the casualty report that bore her parents' names? Or the rest of the names marked down as deceased, left forgotten by the rest of the world, all slain at the hands of Elsa? How could she possibly forget?
Why do I still love her? I should hate her. I have every fucking reason to hate her.
Teary-eyed she turned around, resting both arms on the parapet as she looked out to sea, the sun beginning its final descent toward the horizon, golden rays caressing her skin, its warmth a poor remedy for the gaping void in her heart. The pain wasn't from hate, it was from betrayal. From realizing that she'd been loving the very person that had killed her parents, set her down this path, turned her into whatever she was today.
She wanted desperately to forgive and forget. Forget was not an option.
But forgive?
Do I even have the strength left to forgive her?
"You will find that strength, eventually," came the response from behind her. She turned her head, recognizing the voice, not realizing she had voiced her thoughts out loud. "It's a lot easier when you love her."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," she said as Kristoff strolled over and sat down beside her, crossing his legs as he too admired the view. "Sorry about just now."
"I've seen worse."
"Not really."
He chuckled sadly. "You're probably right about that."
"What am I supposed to do now?" she asked, voice trembling, folding her legs to herself. "Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely furious. I want nothing more to wring her neck and inflict all the pain I have onto her. And yet I feel so paralyzed—"
"You shouldn't blame her," Kristoff said, leaning back against the wall. "Don't make the mistake Charles and I made."
Every sinew inside her seemed to scream at that response. Forgive Elsa? After literally everything she'd done to Anna and her family, the best course of action was to just drop everything? Let it go? Sure, Anna didn't want to outright kill Elsa, but that didn't mean letting her off the hook that easily. "You've got to be fucking kidding me," she managed to say instead of outright yelling at Kristoff. "Just like that?"
"Just like that."
She grunted her frustration out loud. "I don't have a single. Fucking. Reason. To not hate her right now. And if I remember your history with her correctly, you have every reason to hate her too."
She didn't quite understand why Kristoff chuckled at that statement. "You're quite right. But she has no reason to suffer like that either. It's difficult to see that, especially if you're angry."
"You're goddamn right I'm angry."
"You're feeling just about how Charles did after he realized he could never walk again."
"Another reason why we should hate her." Anna buried her face in her hands, somehow unable to force herself to use Elsa's name in speech anymore. "And how did he take it?"
"About the same as me; both of us were livid when we saw Elsa again," Kristoff sighed. "We didn't want to have the slightest thing to do with what we thought was an absolute monster." He chuckled, turning back to Anna. "Look where we are now. Didn't you forgive and accept her for who she was too?"
She laughed bitterly, clenching her fists as the pained smile contorted back into a face of agony. "It's different when you realise you were personally involved. It's hypocritical, seeing how I had no problem when it was other people getting massacred, and only lose my shit when it's my parents that died. And yet I still feel this way; I'm just enraged and depressed at the same time, and it really makes zero sense. It's—"
"—perfectly understandable," Kristoff finished. "It really is."
Anna raised an eyebrow. "Is it understandable that I really just want to hurt her with everything at my disposal?"
"I can't pass a judgement on that, because I don't have the same emotional investment as you do with her." He placed a hand on her shoulder, and somehow Anna was forced to avert her gaze. The pain in her heart seemed to tear and rip at her even more. "You loved her, just as she loved you. I can't pretend to understand how painful that must be."
"I hate that you're right." A few stray tears evaded her will to keep them from shedding, trickling down her cheeks, leaving burning trails of hurt as they did. "I really hate that you're right about that," she said more softly than before.
"All I can say is that both of you are equally victims," Kristoff went on. "I want to defend Elsa, but even she would argue that she was at the very least partially responsible. And I also don't want my head getting blown off."
Anna sighed, taking the jab in her stride. Not that everything could hurt any more than it already did. "I'm still not inclined to the 'drop-everything-and-sing-around-a-campfire' option."
"Even if this causes irreparable damage between you two, don't let it hurt you any more than it should. It'd do well to forgive her. And if you can't do that, promise me you'll try your best not to hate her."
"I don't know if I can do that," she replied, failing to hide the fact that her voice was cracking. "I really don't."
"You don't have to do it immediately," Kristoff conceded, straightening up and looking at her with a concerned look on his face. "I won't claim to have ever experienced what you're feeling right now, but I do understand how hard it is to forgive her. Took me basically forever to forgive her too."
"I can't imagine what that must have took," she shot off without thinking, a little too much sarcasm lacing her words.
That got another chuckle out of him, puzzling Anna further. "Strangely enough, it wasn't that much of a big deal. I just…"
His voice trailed off mid-sentence, and Anna could tell that there was much more that she didn't understand, and that it pained Kristoff to talk about. "It's okay," she said quickly, realizing her mistake all too late, "you don't have to—"
"I'm alright," he replied, sucking in a breath to calm himself, swallowing as he looked out over the bay. Guilt washed in with the rest of Anna's already pained psyche. "It just chokes me up sometimes, y'know, thinking about my teammates. The ones who died retrieving her."
"I'm sorry."
"Me too," Kristoff said, sighing. "After all, it was my mistake that got them killed. I ordered them to approach the transport carrying her without scanning the interior first. That's how Elsa attacked us. And yet, she'd been visiting their memorial plaques whenever their death anniversary rolled around, mourning their sacrifice. Mourning the lives she'd taken. She'd been carrying this… guilt. Pain. She suffered for their deaths too."
That stirred something in her. She didn't like it, but it was there. She remembered the time Elsa had been willing to open up, the night Elsa had cried in her arms, shouldering the burden of being a murderer, even if she hadn't know who it was she'd killed. Irrationally, Anna couldn't see that in the same light anymore.
"You should have seen the look on Charles' face when he found out who was going on Blue Rose to rescue you," Kristoff went on, a pained smile suddenly crossing his face. "He tried to shoot Elsa when she stepped into the room for the initial briefing. You could hardly blame him, too. It wasn't a few days after Blue Rose before he got over it." He turned back to face Anna, whose eyes were brimming again. "I know how I forgave Elsa, but I'll never figure out how Charles did it. I can respect him for living his life without his legs and for having courage to do so, but I have even more respect for how he was able to let go of what happened."
"Props to him," Anna managed, voice really cracking this time.
"Yeah."
A silence passed between them, only occasionally broken by the sound of the wind caressing the cliff face, and the cackling of seabirds overhead.
"If I know you well enough, then I'm pretty sure this doesn't do much to convince you," Kristoff said as he rose to his feet, "and you have every right to be angry for what's happened to you. I don't know if anything I've told you makes sense, to be honest. But if letting go isn't good for Elsa, it's at the very least good for you. You both deserve to be free from pain."
"Like I said, Kristoff, I—"
"You love her, Anna," he cut in. "And you still do."
"Don't presume to understand," she retorted, a bitter taste in her mouth because part of her knew he was right, "and don't presume to know what's best for me. You don't have a clue about what I'm feeling right now."
"You may be right." Kristoff shrugged, turning away and strolling off. "But if any one of us is most able to forgive her," he called out behind him, "it's you."
She watched him go, his words still ringing in her ears. The sun began to set.
If there was one thing Elsa was sure she was good at, it was thinking. Even if she lost all her augmentations, powers and abilities, she could count on herself to analyze a situation and devise a feasible way to manage it.
And somehow, thinking about everything that had just happened only served to overwhelm her more.
She rationalized it was too demanding for her to process this. That despite the gravity of the situation, it was a sideshow compared to what they were up against. She needed to consolidate her mental state and get back to the fight.
So after Charles and Kristoff bid her goodbyes, she trained. She did static exercises over and over again until her body hurt, then switched to combat focused exercises; punching, kicking, takedown motions and the like. She'd done the same when she'd gotten out of Empyrean, or at least, when she thought she'd gotten out of Empyrean. Every move was deliberate, every stroke meant to ease the pain, every strike meant to suppress her suffering.
It didn't work. The pain gnawed at her like a parasite. Her movements were off; she found herself chronically unable execute anything perfectly, finding herself underperforming for the first time in a very long time. The rational part of her marveled at the new range of emotions available to her, suddenly aware of new possibilities for failure, and new emotional biases she needed to guard against.
The emotional part of her believed she deserved a fate worse than death.
It was no use, she decided, trying to brute force her way into forgetting all of this. If the realization that her own memories were unreliable was too much for her to take, then it was a miracle she was still alive when she now knew with absolute certainty that Anna would hate her. Forever. What Elsa had done was unforgivable, even for Anna.
It's over.
She could forget the lofty dreams of spending the rest of her life with Anna. It was a welcome delusion while it lasted; now all she could dare hope for was that Anna could find it in her to be cordial, and that they'd pull through this – whatever this was – relatively unscathed. If previous events was any indicator however, that was severely unlikely.
She dissolved the icy clothing off her bodice and stepped into the shower, washing away the tears and grime and sweat. If only she could wash away the shame, she mused, as she stood under the frigid water, failing to derive even the darkest of amusement from her play on words. Nothing would give her joy anymore. Not after Anna.
Elsa stepped out less than refreshed, her muscles aching about as much as her heart was now, drying up wordlessly and stepping back into the bedroom. Depressed or not, her enhanced hearing picked up the sound of footsteps echoing softly off the walls. She wasn't surprised when they faded away; there was another bathroom in Cradle Alpha, and given what had happened, she couldn't fault Anna for not being inclined to use the one she'd just exited. Or being inclined to being near Elsa in any sense.
God fucking damn it.
She would cry later, in the middle of the night. She'd cry for feeling betrayed by life itself, for having her hopes raised and crashed down in the cruelest of fashions. She'd cry for being nothing more than a mistake, a failure, a murderer. She'd cry for hurting Anna, for letting her down, for never being there for her or for never being good enough.
For now she turned to her datapad with a new message on it.
"How are you doing? - Hans."
Not exactly the person she'd expected to send a message at that time, but it was a welcome respite. He'd been there since the start.
Since the start.
"I'm fine. You?" she fired off and waited for a response. It occurred to her that as far as her unreliable memories went back, Hans had always been there with her. For her. If anyone had answers to what was going on, it'd be him.
"Good," came the reply. "Was thinking of meeting with you to catch-up. It's been a while."
That's convenient, she mused. She responds in the affirmative, deciding to meet him at the UIF base in Ashton City. She knew the place; after all, it was where Edison had attacked the convention center. Fitting that she'd go there to get some answers.
Or at the very least, she could find some comfort in meeting Hans again. After all, he'd been there since the beginning.
not the best way this should have been handled, but i'm relatively content with how this had turned out. ever onward towards the concluding arcs; with luck, there's only one more gap i'll need to brainstorm about