Chapter sixteen

Clarity

There was always something to do for the lawn, wasn't there? Mowing season was over, which meant raking season was just beginning.

Elsa slowly progressed across the backyard, accumulating a katamari of leaves with the good rake. Ahead of her, Anna attacked her leaves with a rusty metal rake, the kind you could step on and hit yourself in the face with. She tended to leave scraps of leaves in her wake, but in purely empirical terms, she was helping.

Elsa made it to the leaf pile and coaxed her ball of leaves onto it, then headed out for another. Anna's condition for helping her or was that she'd get to be the one to stomp the leaves down when the time came to bag them, and also that the bagging wouldn't take place until the raking was done. Back when they'd helped Dad with this job, he would always pick Anna up and lower her into the bag to compress it, which never failed to get a laugh out of her. Elsa had promptly notified Anna that she was not even remotely suited to do this for her, which she seemed to have expected.

Elsa felt overdressed for the job at hand. The weekend had seen a twenty-degree drop in temperature – that was Ohio for you – but combined with the physical work they were putting in, long jeans and a red flannel shirt were a bit too much. Autumn colors looked better on Anna anyway, not that she'd say so out loud. Not for the first time, she reminded herself that if this were California, she'd still be wearing shorts. Of course, if she were in Cali, she wouldn't have a lawn to rake. Or Anna.

She hadn't asked Anna to help her, but she was glad that she was. Tomorrow, her leave was over, and she'd be back to work, which could only translate into less time to spend with her. She'd at least promised Anna that they would spend every lunch break together. For her part, Anna had assured her that she'd leave her be during work hours – unless Elsa specifically asked for some form of interruption/rescue. With a couple of marathon meetings coming up, Elsa had a sneaking suspicion that she'd take her up on the offer once or twice. The worst part of working remote was the lack of any human interaction, and that seemed to have been solved for the foreseeable future.

The entire fucking future, you mean. Or did you already forget that ultimatum she gave you last night?

Instantly her shoulders stiffened, reacting to the dour note that might as well be part of her theme music by now.

She hadn't forgotten, actually. Her efforts to distract herself from the memory with physical labor had worked about as well as they usually did – in other words, they hadn't. Every time her thoughts strayed back to the threat, her blood curdled anew. Which was good, her rational brain told her – she needed every possible reason to not flake out and run. Didn't help with her blood pressure, though.

It's fine, it's fine, everything is going to be okay. I want to stay, she wants me to stay, and Wes has made it clear that working remote is absolutely no issue, including regarding the promotion. Everyone's interests are aligned.

Except for you-know-what. That thing that sent you away the first time.

Elsa clenched her fist, but this time only allowed her middle fingernail to dig into her palm. Her own personal fuck you to that little voice in her head that was always convinced she was about to ruin everything. Because so far, she'd been doing pretty fucking great.

She couldn't fully halt her thoughts about her sister, of course. At least every other night, a thought would flit into her head that deeply ashamed her. But once she'd spent the requisite amount of time punishing herself for it, that thought would then blow right out of her head, and she'd carry on with her life. Perhaps more importantly, she'd not acted once on her worst impulses. Any time she'd touched her sister, it was because Anna wanted it. And while she couldn't erase all concerns from her mind about how much Anna was comfortable with, the fact that she kept pushing towards more contact rather than less told her that she was still erring on the side of caution. Forcing herself to look at things empirically, she was doing well so far.

She delivered her last rakeful of leaves to the pile, and waited patiently for Anna to do the same. Anna could tell what was coming and doubled her speed. The sight of her sister furiously speed raking was downright comical. Elsa laughed, another thing that seemed to be coming easier and easier to her. In spite of Anna's ultimatum still lingering in her mind, her spirits had never been higher.

Come to think of it, was it really in spite of it?

Yes, the threatened consequences were dire, but only if she took what she knew to be the absolute wrong course of action. She always knew that staying with Anna would keep both of them the happiest, but there was a part of her that always suspected that she'd chicken out and run away of things got tough. Well, now Anna had slammed the door on the worst case scenario, leaving Elsa with no choice but to do the right thing. In a way, that was liberating.

She's saved me from myself. All it took was a little tough love.

Anna reached the pile, deposited her leaves, and threw down her rake in triumph. "Phew," she said, walking over to Elsa. "That's the last of them. Now for the fun part." She raised an eyebrow. "What's that grin for?"

"Oh, uh, nothing," said Elsa, only just realizing she was smiling at all. "Just thinking about the future."

"Yeah?" Anna said. She looked at the leaf pile. "I see what you mean," she said jokingly.

Elsa giggled. "Let's go, you goofball," she said. "Before the wind blows it away."

"Copy that," Anna said.

They turned to the leaf pile, tensing up like springs. Then, in unison, they broke into a dash. They sprinted the short distance to the pile and leapt, Anna tilting forward into a belly flop while Elsa threw her legs out in front of her, coming down on her back.

Crunch

The two sank into the leaves, just like falling onto a pillow. Elsa relished the sight of leaves gradually flitting down before her eyes, engulfing her vision just as had happened all those years ago. This cocktail of sight and feeling was just the combo needed to activate her nostalgia, and tears crept into her eyes.

Anna popped her head up, and began shoveling armfuls of leaves onto her. This wasn't something Elsa was about to take lying down, so she scrambled to her feet and returned fire, the both of them laughing gaily.

This was how things were supposed to be between them, Elsa thought. No closer, no further, exactly how they were in this very moment. It had been a decade since she'd felt this close to her sister, and it had been a long and painful road back here, but now things finally seemed to be going right. Leaves fluttered down around them like confetti, as if to celebrate this most meager of accomplishments.

Hurrah for small victories. When I eventually fuck this up, I hope I can remember this moment fondly.

They dined that night on mac and cheese with pulled pork on top, a fitting banquet for their victory over the lawn. Once that was done, Anna suggested a Wallace and Gromit marathon – an immaculate choice, truly. Adjourning to the living room, they watched every episode together as the sun went down, just like old times.

Well, not quite like old times. For one thing, they were on the love seat, not the sofa. And they were sitting closer together. Very close.

Elsa found it quite difficult to focus on the TV, as a far greater portion of her brain was locked onto the near continuous strip of her body, from shin to shoulder, that was in constant contact with Anna's, to say nothing of the arm around her waist. Separated by pajamas, of course, but not especially thick pajamas. Ignore it, just pay attention to the show – that was quite possibly the least useful instruction she had ever given herself, yet she kept going back to it for lack of anything better.

Anna had always been big on physical contact when they were younger. She'd snuggle up to Mom or Dad or her when they were watching something together – less with Mom and Dad as she got older, as teens were wont to do. As Elsa's feelings had emerged, she'd had to push Anna away herself, feeling guilty twice over for how she felt and how disappointed she'd make Anna. For Anna to be this comfortable with being in close contact, it couldn't just be her falling back into old habits. She had to be directly making a statement with it.

Not for the first time that night, Elsa mustered up some token resistance. "You know, Anna," she began, "you don't have to get this close just for my-"

"Shhh," Anna said gently, pressing a finger to her smiling lips. "You're drowning out the show." She squeezed her tighter, just to get the real message across even clearer.

Fuck, she's good at this.

Her other options cut off, Elsa refocused her efforts on paying attention to what they were watching, still in vain. With how much stimulation Anna's touch was providing, just continuing to breathe was hogging a lot of her available computation capacity. Notably, Anna seemed to be having no such trouble, as even though she'd seen every single episode of Wallace and Gromit before, she was fully engrossed with their antics right now. When the trousers did something funny, she laughed. When Gromit was left out in the rain, she was close to tears. When the penguin was stealing the jewel, she was on the edge of her metaphorical seat. Yet again, Elsa envied just how deeply Anna could get into whatever she was watching, how pure and genuine her emotional response could be.

Thinking about it, that was something of an achievement in recent history, wasn't it?

Less than two weeks ago, Anna had been downright catatonic, spending most of her days in bed – understandable, given the circumstances, but clearly not new for her, given the entrenchments that Elsa had dismantled. Now, though, she'd been up and out for most of the past few days. Time would tell if this was just a fleeting burst of energy, but most of the wind in her sails appeared to be back. Either Sid the Magnificent really had worked his magic, or she had kicked her depression all by herself.

Now, now. Can I at least give myself the tiniest iota of credit?

Anna would be upset if she wasn't here, so being here was making Anna happy. She'd put effort into doing things that Anna would enjoy, so it was more than just her mere presence. And with the self-control she'd been displaying, it was fair to say-

Just listen to yourself, you dork. You're making this way more complicated than it has to be. Just look at Anna, and how little effort all this is taking her, comparatively.

With some effort, Elsa managed to get out of her own head and just regard Anna. She wasn't stressing about how closely she was holding her, she wasn't having fierce internal debates about her sister's conflicting desires, and she probably wasn't moving the goalposts for her own happiness to the top of mount Everest. She was just…enjoying herself. Was it really so difficult to just be happy?

Evidently some of the swirling storm inside her head had made it to the surface, as Anna looked a little concerned with Elsa's expression. Elsa gave her a reassuring smile, along with a playful hair ruffle as a nonverbal "thanks for your concern." That put the smile back on her face.

She's happy that I'm here, and she's happier if I'm happy. Can't get simpler than that. Stop thinking about it, enjoy the damn moment.

So she resolved to do just that. Finally easing the tension in her body, she nestled back into the sofa. This also meant nestling deeper into Anna's embrace, but the little squeeze Anna gave her provided a strong counterargument to the disapproving voice tut tutting her.

Be happy. Make Anna happy. Don't fuck it up. Someday, she'd get it.

She'd done it. It had taken Anna more than two decades, but she finally understood her sister.

Elsa must've thought she'd settled things when she dropped that bombshell back on their doorstep all those years ago. As time stretched on, however, Anna had been left with a series of vitally important, unanswered questions. How long had she been like this? How deep did it go? And why did Elsa never return, even as she seemed not to achieve her stated goals? Now, after two long weeks of fact finding, she felt she'd finally sleuthed out some real answers, and it was liberating.

Elsa didn't just feel attraction to her. It wasn't some passing moment of infatuation, and it wasn't the simple discovery that she was her type – otherwise she'd have stayed with Mariella with no guilt. No, the truth was far more impactful, and perhaps even worth the gravitas Elsa always assigned it when speaking of it.

Elsa was truly in love with her.

It seemed ludicrous to say, that love was what had kept them apart, but getting into Elsa's headspace, her every action followed some form of twisted logic. Sending herself to the other side of the damn continent was an effort to break her non-sisterly bond, and maybe have a chance at normality. After she'd found Mariella, it seemed she gave up on that, and then it became a self-imposed exile, equal parts punishment and insurance – a brand of self-flagellation Elsa was unfortunately well practiced in. If she couldn't be the kind of sister she wanted to be, best not to stick around making her feel uncomfortable – or so she'd convinced herself, anyway. Now that she'd returned and seen how badly she missed the mark, Elsa had all but pledged herself to her, putting the kibosh to whatever life she'd developed back in California. Every action, through Elsa's eyes, must've been for the benefit of her.

And this was the part Anna was supposed to find repulsive, she knew. But instead, she couldn't help but find it incredibly self-affirming.

In the deepest depths of her depression, she'd convinced herself that absolutely nobody cared about her. Who would care about a college dropout who couldn't hold down a job and spent all day in her room, anyway? Her exes didn't want anything to do with her, her friends might as well have been as far away as Elsa, and even her parents' attention could be wanted away as just wanting to get her out of the house. Yet Elsa had seen her fall from grace, and still she cared deeply about her. Every aspect of her life (except her weight) had taken a nosedive ever since Elsa left her on that doorstep, and still she retained her devotion.

She still could lose interest in you. Particularly if she ever finds out the circumstances of that car crash.

Anna shuddered. Elsa noticed immediately, and she had to pass it off as a yawn, grinning reassuringly to get her to turn back to the TV.

Yes, she still hadn't told Elsa. And now that she'd gotten what she needed to off of her own chest, the guilt was beginning to pile up for her. Someday soon, she'd have to confess, and face the reckoning. Not to say that Elsa would get angry at her – that wasn't how she operated, and Anna knew it perfectly well – but if anything could make Elsa truly disappointed in her, it'd be that.

And…if it doesn't? If she forgives you in a week, or even a few days, what then?

If that happened…well, that was the last barrier she could picture between the two of them. She'd never been good at planning ahead, but once that road was clear, perhaps she could finally give Elsa what she'd been wanting all this time?

It was a heavy choice to make – just the thought of such a consequential decision being so near in her future was petrifying – but she could at least give it a shot. She'd steadily inched closer and closer to Elsa in these past couple weeks, and not yet been repulsed. There might be a genuine future where they were together – like, together. She couldn't say for certain until she'd tried, and she kind of wanted to.

That's really damn risky, and you know it. You know that if you go down this path, it's not just cuddles and kisses that Elsa wants. She'll probably want to get physical too. Are you really ok with that?

She couldn't say for certain, so she pictured it in her head. She imagined Elsa taking her in her arms and kissing her passionately, her hands freely traversing up and down her body, and whatever might come next.

And with shock, she realized that it didn't bother her at all.