Outside The Portalocity Office, Monday Morning

[glacial_queen]

When Karla had fallen asleep last night, she and Elsa had been clinging together right outside the train station, waiting for the train that would take them away from this terrible place forever. Karla had just murdered someone to keep her sister safe, the first person to ever die by her hands, though those same hands had lit plenty of fires in the years before.

Waking up, Karla discovered she was still curled up around Elsa, cuddling the girl protectively. The train station had gone back to being Portalocity, Karla's hands were plenty bloody on their own, and as for that murder victim...

*Mother Night, Warren! Tell me you're okay!*

She wasn't entirely certain how his healing factor worked, but being tied up in a rug and tossed to the bottom of the ocean couldn't have been good for anyone.

Once she'd gotten the affirmative from Warren (the grumpy affirmative, but he was alive and that was what mattered), Karla focused on rousing the sleeping girl next to her. She'd never met Elsa before this insane weekend, but from the way their histories had meshed, there was a lot Karla wanted to talk to her about.

"Hey there," she said softly, shaking Elsa's shoulder. "Wake up sleepyhead. There are better places to nap then in the middle of town."

Some of those places probably had coffee, too.

[For the two mentioned and modded please!]

Comments

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

The sky was not yet awake, Karla. Elsa didn't have to be awake at least for another hour. Maybe. Probably? She made a mumbly little sound of protest, stubbornly keeping her eyes shut for as long as she was able.

Her brain wasn't quite awake yet, either.

"No Anna, town doesn't go there, put it back where you found it." Back? Town? Wait... Anna? No, that wasn't...

Elsa woke up with a start and a gasp, promptly scrambling backwards and falling off the bench. Elsa did not wake up gracefully, apparently.

[glacial_queen]

"I'd like to hear more about this Anna," Karla said, bending down to offer Elsa a hand up. "If she can move towns like that willy-nilly. Welcome back to consciousness, Elsa. And as normal a Monday as Fandom gets."

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

Elsa needed at least another moment more to sit on the ground, completely bewildered as she stared at Karla's hand. They'd fallen asleep outside? Curled up around one another, no less. And Karla seemed to be alive and well, which was good.

Right. Good.

"Anna... can't really move towns," she offered, holding up her hands a little in a silent, polite gesture to say she was declining the offer of help. Her tailbone would have thanked her to accept, yes, but her nerves most certainly wouldn't. "She's my younger sister. When we were little, she used to wake me up with the sunrise, asking to play."

She pulled herself to her feet and winced. Oh, her bottom wasn't happy with her right then at all.

[glacial_queen]

Karla shifted over a little bit, giving Elsa enough room to sit without Karla being entirely in her personal space. They may have gone to sleep sisters, but they'd woken up as strangers.

"You have a sister then?" she asked with a little bit of envy. "I don't. I'm an only child."

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

"We're not very close," Elsa replied, eyeing the seat for a moment before tenderly setting herself down on the edge of it. Ow. "We were when we were smaller, but things change, I guess."

Yes, that was one way of putting it.

"Our parents kept us apart for a while. It just... sort of stuck." Which was to say, Elsa had never stopped being terrified. "You would have made a good older sister, though, if this weekend was any indication."

[glacial_queen]

"Kept you apart?" Because yes, of course the Black Widow was going to pick up on that part. "Let me guess. It has something to do with all the snowflakes in your psychic scent."

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

Elsa didn't have time to think before she reacted, her eyes turning toward Karla in surprise and her mouth falling open a little. She groped around for words, but only managed a soft exhale before actually managing anything coherent.

"... In my what?"

Yes. Yes, focus on that, instead of the snowflakes. She wasn't exactly keeping her powers a secret around here these days, not entirely, but a near-stranger knowing about the very nature of them with no prior indication was a bit of a shock all the same.

[glacial_queen]

"I'm a witch," Karla said gently. "And I have no idea what you've been raised to believe, but I'm not evil, I don't ride broomsticks, and I've never made so much as a gingerbread house, never mind built a house out of candy."

She'd leave her Uncle Saetan out of the discussion for now, though.

"Psychic scents are an individual marker. It's exactly what it sounds like, a scent that encapsulates who you are. Yours smells like snow. It was only snowflakes before, but now that it's shot through with anxiety, it smells harder, like ice pellets in a blizzard."

Go ahead, ask how she knew what those smelled like. She'd explain she ruled over a Territory named Glacia.

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

Elsa was quiet while Karla explained, looking even a little puzzled as she spoke. Broomsticks? Gingerbread?

"I wouldn't have thought for a second that you were evil," she noted quietly, her gaze turned downward. "You certainly didn't seem that way over the weekend, though I suppose nobody was really quite themselves that entire time..."

Please don't be evil, Karla.

"What... what do you make of it? Of the snow?"

[glacial_queen]

"What should I make of it?" Karla asked eyebrow raised. "Are you asking me to guess why it's there? Or what I think about it?"

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

Elsa's shoulders hitched up a little bit, eyes looking downward again.

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "Either of those things, perhaps. You don't seem worried, and I suppose you'd have no reason to be afraid. But you're the first person to just... notice."

[glacial_queen]

"Darling, when you've seen the things I have, it takes a lot of work to become afraid of someone," Karla said wryly. "It's not powers that do it, it's the kind of person who has them. And I can tell you now, you're not a person to fear."

Look, once you were besties with the living myth, other people really had to bring their A game to be impressive.

"I'm probably the first member of the Blood that's ever spent a significant amount of time around you, little Sister. As to what I think it is, I'm guessing some kind of cold powers? Affinity for ice and snow?" She tipped Elsa a wink. "I'm the Queen of Glacia, sweetheart. I know ice, cold, and snow."

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

You know, it was really fortunate for Elsa that Karla kept mentioning things for her to glom onto that didn't involve actually directly acknowledging that she had powers. At least, not right away.

"So... you are a Queen?" Elsa chewed her lip a little, and then almost timidly offers, "I will be, someday."

There was a long pause before she added, "And I certainly wouldn't call it an affinity."

She had no love whatsoever for her powers. She had difficulty imagining why she should.

[glacial_queen]

"I am," Karla said, noticing the deflection. After all, she'd been trained by Ender in it. "Being a Queen works differently in my world than yours, but I rule a Territory now, too."

She tilted her head and asked, "Arendelle?" She'd been wondering where that had come from. "And your parents...?"

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

"Arendelle is my home," Elsa offered, "the kingdom I'll be ruling. And my parents... they died... at sea, a little over half a year ago, now. It was a storm, though. Nothing nefarious."

Only heartbreaking. Only damning.

[glacial_queen]

"Then Uncle Hobart was solely my contribution," Karla said quietly, her hand almost unconsciously reaching out for Elsa's. "Sorry about that. I was nine. You?"

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

Without so much as thinking, Elsa's own hand pulled away from Karla's. Barry's gloves might have made her hands safe, but old habits died hard.

"That much was accurate enough," she murmured. "Yesterday really was my sixteenth birthday."

[glacial_queen]

"Happy birthday," Karla said, noting this was the second time that Elsa had declined to be touched. "I'm sorry you spent it in a bordello."

Welcome to Fandom.

"Was this your first weird weekend, Elsa?"

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

"The first harmless one that didn't involve being a mother to a teenage son," Elsa offered. "Or suddenly being adept at crochet for no apparent reason. I do know better than to be too terribly concerned about anything that happened, at least."

She really could have gone without the bordello part, though.

[glacial_queen]

Karla could have gone without it being her fiancé who had put them there.

And, judging it had been long enough for Elsa to put her guard down, she asked, "Have we talked in circles enough for us to start going back to your powers now?"

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

Oh, Karla, you sneaky woman.

Elsa blinked up at that, another moment of panic twisting jagged peaks of ice through her psychic scent, ones that could very well have been real, were she not wearing the gloves that Barry had made for her.

"Back to-- We haven't really-- I mean..."

Stammer a little more, Elsa. Go on.

[glacial_queen]

"Would you feel better if I gave you a demonstration of some of what I can do?" Karla asked. "Just so you know I'm not going to run in terror from your ice?"

Because, yeah, definitely ice now.

"That's why you wear those gloves, isn't it? To keep yourself from accidentally using your power."

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

Karla was very good at this. Whatever 'this' was. Elsa immediately stopped stammering, pulling her hands to her breast and curling in on herself a little.

"They work," she said, a little defensively. "They're the first thing in a long time to actually work."

[glacial_queen]

Karla was a Black Widow-Healer-Queen. Damn right she was good at this.

"No, darling," she chided gently. "They're a crutch. But that won't always help you. Eventually something will happen and you won't know how to deal with it because you've become dependent upon your gloves."

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

Her gloves, her mantra, her isolation...

"I won't let it happen," Elsa replied, softly. "It doesn't have to happen if I don't get close enough to people to let it."

[glacial_queen]

"And what if someone attacks you?" Karla asked, looking at Elsa like she was a student who hadn't prepared adequately for a lesson. "You're going to be a Queen, darling. Unless your world is some kind of magic utopia, there are people in it who will see you as a stumbling block to power and wealth. What then? Are you going to die because you couldn't defend yourself? Or run the risk of hurting an innocent bystander because you couldn't control yourself? What if you get sick? Feverish? What if you hallucinate something? What if you go mad? Can you guarantee that none of these things will happen? Can you? Are you willing to bet the safety of you sister, your staff, your subjects on that?"

[iceolatedqueen.livejournal.com]

Elsa shrank away from Karla at that as though she'd been burned.

"I'm trying. I don't want to hurt anybody again! And people here, they've tried to help, I'm accepting help from people who offer, now! But it's too big for me, it's too much! I can't ever be sure it's enough!"

This was a mistake. Waking up today had been a mistake.