Chapter Thirteen

You didn't come here for the truth, you came here so I could tell you that you're right.

Elsa winced as Anna's words continued to aggravate and annoy her like a pestering fly. Just like Anna, and her stupid face and hair and voice. She tried desperately to drown out Anna's voice and wipe away Anna's look, but a half-empty bottle of whiskey and the tail-end of one of her almost nightly meetings with her assistant could do nothing against the sickening hold Anna had on her.

You didn't come here for the truth, you came here so I could tell you that you're right.

The alcohol dulled her senses, making her less hostile, but they also lowered her futile resolve to drive Anna out of her head and stop thinking about her. Now, unfortunately, Anna was all she could think about, and obviously none of the thoughts were nice. Who did Anna think she was anyway, telling her off like that? She was her boss dammit- the boss of her boss at that- and her words tonight were blatant insubordination. Anna was completely out of line calling her stupid, and petty, and proud, like a pot calling the kettle black.

You didn't come here for the truth, you came here so I could tell you that you're right.

She hated Anna, she hated her smug attitude and the way she spoke, she hated her stupid, mediocre cookies, she hated her stupid face, and her stupid, emerald green eyes, and her stupid, soft lips and-

A pitiful jolt of pleasure shot from between her legs as she let out a frustrated groan, like an ocean wave failing to reach the shore, in one short second it was there and in another it vanished, failing to give her the one thing she hadn't had for a long time. Hannah emerged from under the blanket pooled around Elsa's lower body and wiped her mouth, looking at Elsa with a puzzled expression.

"Wow, that…took a while.", Hannah remarked as she scooted up to the other side of the bed.

"Shut up.", she replied in an attempt at a non-aggressive tone. Elsa pulled up her panties and sat out of the bed, walking over to her nightstand to make the half-empty whiskey bottle even emptier. She never drank, literally never, this was a present from one of her colleagues after her promotion, and she hadn't touched it since then. It wasn't because of any sort of stance against alcohol or drugs or anything, she just never saw the point. Now she did…

"You know I'd like to chalk this up to the exhaustion, but even at your worst it doesn't take you this long to…yeah. Something happened tonight, something that this right here…", Hannah gestured towards the bed and Elsa, "…won't fix. You want to talk about it?"

Elsa set down the bottle and leaned on the nightstand. "Hannah, what was my first rule when we started this?"

"Don't do anything to advance this relationship to any level other than physical.", Hannah recited. "And I get that, it's just that…well you're drinking, I've literally never seen you drink before. It's been what, like, a year since we started, I at least want to know something about you."

"You know a lot about me."

"I meant more than the superficial stuff you tell at your interviews and all that. I'm more than just your assistant, Elsa, at least I want to be."

"What, you want to be my girlfriend or something?", Elsa sneered, trying to keep from reminding herself of how stupid she was for starting this…thing with her assistant.

"Well…no, that'd be stretching it. But what about a friend? Or at the very least someone you can talk to about stuff that isn't your therapist. Outside of classes and stuff, I spend most of my time with you anyway; if you can't open up to me then who can you open up to? Don't you ever get tired of doing this stuff alone?"

Elsa turned around and took another sip from the bottle, the initial burning sensation had gone down with each sip, now it was nothing more than a dull ache. "And what makes you think I want to open up? And for that matter, what makes you think I don't like being alone?" She didn't turn back around.

"Because nobody likes being alone.", Hannah reasoned. "I mean maybe you do, but even so doesn't that get…I don't know, lonely? For once don't you wish that you could have someone you could rely on?"

She did have someone, and that's why she preferred the loneliness.

"Maybe I could be that person, I mean if you let me."

Elsa blinked, hoping that the drunken haze that came from downing ridiculous amounts of alcohol would finally hit her, would lower her inhibitions, and would be her excuse if she did something stupid tonight like actually letting Hannah in. But that hadn't happened yet, and it probably wasn't going to happen, which made her more pissed off than before. She had no fallback if she made any stupid decisions, any more stupid decisions.

"Elsa? Nothing?"

Her hands gripped into the nightstand hard, fingernails digging into the wood, as she cursed herself for being like this. Maybe Hannah was right, maybe she didn't have to do this alone. Maybe if she just said one thing, gave one word of appreciation to her assistant who was actually putting effort into showing sympathy for Elsa, maybe that would be a good start and she would finally start crawling out of this hole she had dug herself into. Maybe she'd finally stop denying that nothing was wrong.

And maybe if Anna hadn't invaded her life again, she wouldn't be here in the first place. Maybe if Anna wasn't such a sickeningly driving force in her life, she wouldn't have such a hard time letting anyone in. Maybe if she had never met Anna, life would be a lot better. Maybe if she hadn't walked away tonight…

"Right, okay…I'm sorry I tried. I'll just sleep on the couch like usual.", Hannah said defeated.

The deflated brunette walked towards the slightly ajar door and opened it, she turned around and took a breath like she was going to say something else, but decided against it.

Elsa looked towards the closed door, thinking that it still wasn't too late if she just opened it, and back down at the nearly empty bottle in her hand. One would lead to rehabilitation, the other would allow her to pretend for at least one more night that nothing was wrong.

She took a deep breath and made her decision, tipping the bottle over on her lips, drinking the last bits of liquor before dropping the bottle onto the carpet floor and laying back down on her bed.

It took her an hour to go to sleep.

"You didn't come here for the truth, you came here so I could tell you that you're right."

"You said that?!"

Anna groaned, and if she could sink even further into her kitchen chair then she definitely would have, "Yeah…yeah I said that." Almost as soon as she and Rapunzel got back home, Anna broke out the milk and cookies and called her mother up to tell her about the events of the day. She actually wanted to go to bed and try not to cry again, but she knew her mom would call her to ask how today went anyway.

"Anna, honey, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that you could have handled this a lot better."

"I know I could have, Mom, but it's just…I don't know, I couldn't stand Elsa acting so high and mighty, and my emotions got the better of me, and so I said what I said. Anyway all that matters is that it's over, Elsa's finally out of my head and I can move on."

"Are you sure about that?"

Anna hesitated, "Y…yeah, I'm sure."

"You hesitated. Let me rephrase my question: Do you want her to be out of your head? Do you want to move on?"

"Okay first of all, that's two questions. And second of all, are we still on that silly 'theory' you had the last time we called? I'm telling you, Mom, I don't have any more feelings for Elsa, and if I did they certainly wouldn't be positive ones." Anna looked at the half-eaten cookie in her hand, the same kind of cookie she sold hundreds of earlier, and debated whether she should just put it back in the jar. She lost her appetite halfway through this conversation.

"That didn't sound like a very convincing answer, dear. Here, I'll ask you another one."

She dropped the cookie back into the jar and placed her head in her free hand with a groan, completely exasperated. "Please don't."

"Do you think you won your argument with Elsa?"

A few seconds of silence followed her mom's statements, a few seconds too many, and she decided that this was a conversation she wasn't keen on having this late at night. "Mom can we just…please talk about this some other time? Maybe talk about something else?"

Her mom most likely sensed the distress in Anna's voice, and knew that it'd be best not to pry any further, because all she said was, "Alright, what do you want to talk about?"

She didn't actually have anything else to talk about, all she really wanted was more distractions and less thinking on her decisions. The less time she spent wondering if she'd said the right things, the better. Anna said the first thing she could think of, a subject that neither of them had brought up in a while: "Do you still think about Dad?"

She heard her mom sigh on the other end, "Every day. And I know that sounds crazy, after all it's been two years since the accident, but…"

When Anna heard her mom trail off, she knew that it was only a matter of time before she would go back to the depressive, gloomy state she saw her in those first few months after her dad died. Anna felt guilty for even bringing it up again, but she knew the drill, she knew she had to talk to fill the silence, "Mom that doesn't sound crazy at all, everyone deals with grief differently. Sometimes it takes a little longer to get it all out of your system, that's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Oh it's not grief, it's just…I guess you would say it's loneliness. Not having him to come home to, having to cook dinner for one, going to bed alone. Makes an old woman like me feel a bit lonely; and at the end of the day, nobody wants to be lonely."

"Mom, you know you can come visit anytime you want.", Anna reassured her. "And you're not old, you can probably still get any man you want."

She could tell, or at least hoped, that that put a smile on her mom's face. "Oh I know I can- visit you, I mean- but not until you're ready. I'm sure I can stomach a few more TV dinners before then."

Anna knew her mom was joking; she was a great cook and the person Anna got her base knowledge and passion for cooking from. The first comment, however, had caught her off guard. "What do you mean you're waiting until I'm ready?"

"I mean that you're still figuring things out there. You've got your bakery that you need to keep running and steady, among other things…"

Other things? Oh, right. Anna grumbled, "Mom I said I didn't want to talk about that right now."

"I know what you said, and we're not going to, don't worry. Just know that I'm here for you, Rapunzel is too, and anyone else you want to let in. This is a tough situation that you're in, but you don't have to deal with it alone."

Anna smiled, "Thanks, Mom. Speaking of "Zel I should probably go check on her, see how she thinks today went. I'll talk to you again soon."

"You better.", her mom chuckled. "I love you, sweetie."

"I love you too." Anna hung up and took a second to herself before doing anything else. The dark, quiet kitchen illuminated by the moonlight gave her ample time and the perfect place for this.

Today was absolutely insane, in both a good and horrible way. Good in that they put in a lot of work, got their name out there, put smiles on people's faces; horrible because…well yeah. The fallout from tonight was something she was dreading, if there even was any. Who knows if she was ever going to see Elsa again?

But that was enough thought on the matter that she would allow herself, it was time to focus on the good. She scooted out of her chair, put the milk back in the fridge, and walked over to Rapunzel's room. The door was half-open and the lights were still on, Anna walked inside and saw her friend hunched over her desk, her long blonde hair was tied back into a ponytail, and her only companions were an inhuman amount of papers and a calculator. A familiar sight, to say the least.

"Kinda feel like we've been ending our nights like this a lot recently.", Anna remarked as she sunk into Rapunzel's frameless bed.

"You mean you talking for hours with your mom and me doing boring paperwork? Yeah I'm not a big fan of this becoming a trend.", Rapunzel replied without looking up from her desk. "Sounds like you had a good talk though, how is she?"

Anna sat cross-legged and habitually picked at the royal purple bedsheets, "She's doing good, I may have made her a little sad mentioning dad like that, but I'm sure she'll be fine. She might be visiting us sometime soon, don't know if you got that."

"I did get that, and good…I hope she does visit.", Rapunzel paused for a second to type some numbers into the calculator and scribble down something on the paper currently in front of her before sliding it away and grabbing a different one. "How are you doing?"

Anna stopped and mulled over how to word this. She did tell her mom, and her own self, that she didn't want to talk anymore about tonight, but Rapunzel was less motherly and more persistent, she would get the answer out one way or another. Plus what else would she talk about? If she asked Rapunzel how she thought today went, she knew she would get one or two statements before Rapunzel brought the conversation back towards the argument.

"I…honestly 'Zel I really don't know." She ran one of her hands through her hair before continuing, "I mean you heard what I told my Mom right? You know what Elsa and I were arguing about?"

"I got the gist of it, eavesdropping and doing math at the same time's a little difficult. Plus, you know, I kinda had a front-row seat.", Rapunzel replied.

"Well I honestly don't know how I feel about it thinking back. Like I don't know if I really won the argument, I mean she walked away and didn't say anything else, so I have to assume I did; but I don't feel like I won. And I don't know what, if anything, was solved through that. It's just…it's all really confusing." She didn't want to voice her worry about wanting Elsa to not walk away. "What do you think?"

"I'm not sure either, I didn't even know you and Elsa were a thing until tonight.", Rapunzel stated bluntly.

Anna winced, "Right…I never told you about us. I'm sorry."

Her friend simply shrugged, "It's fine, I know you didn't do it on purpose. There's a reason you don't like to talk about it, and you're going to tell me when you're ready."

Anna couldn't help herself, she got off the bed and walked to the back of Rapunzel's chair, giving her an only-slightly-awkward hug from behind. Which was really just her putting her arms around Rapunzel's shoulders. Honestly where was she going to find anyone as understanding as her best friend? "Thanks for being so cool about this whole thing, if you have time right now I can tell you all about it."

Rapunzel showed her appreciation for the gesture by leaning her head on one of Anna's arms, "Right now as in tonight? Probably not. Even tomorrow most likely wouldn't work either. But…soon okay?"

Anna smiled, "Okay."

"Hey while you're still here, you can actually help me out with something."

"Really? You know I'm allergic to math and numbers, right?"

Rapunzel let out a short laugh as she shuffled some papers around the desk, "Nah it's nothing like that. I've been doing all the number work, don't worry, but there was one that was kinda bugging me. You don't have to do any math, just help me make sense of something." She stopped her shuffling and held up a paper with rows and columns, the names of cookies they baked were on the left side and several numbers followed each type.

Anna looked at the paper like it was written in a different language, "Yes…those…look like numbers."

"These are the kinds of cookies we brought to the festival today, along with the quantity and how much we were selling them for. To figure out how much we made off cookies alone, I just took the number of what we had left, subtracted that from what we started with, and then multiplying that with the price of each cookie."

"Uh huh…?", Anna replied, not sure where this was going.

"And then I did that with all the other baked goods we sold, so once I added all those up I would have a projected amount of how much we earned."

"Makes sense.", Anna replied, even though it didn't.

"Only problem is our actual earnings for today turned out to be more than the projected earnings. A couple hundred dollars more." Rapunzel stated with a sense of urgency, one that Anna couldn't comprehend.

At least, however, they were getting into an array of words she did generally understand. "How is that a bad thing? We made more money than we thought we would, I'd say that's a good thing, a very good thing."

"It's not a bad thing per se, I guess it's just my need to keep things organized and stuff, you know? I always make sure to give exact change for every transaction to avoid things like this. Now…I'm not blaming you or anything, but did you make sure to get exact change from any transactions you made when I stepped out?"

Anna shrugged and started talking before her brain could catch up with her mouth, "I think so? I mean when you left the only person that I served was…" And then it caught up. There was only one person that Anna actually served. A person who absentmindedly paid for a cookie with a couple hundred dollars she just casually happened to keep in her wallet. "Oh…"

"What do you mean…" Rapunzel looked up, and the combination of seeing Anna's shocked face and her own mind trying to comprehend what could possibly be running through Anna's brought her to the same realization. "She paid you $200 for a cookie?!"

"I forgot to give her change! Besides I didn't even know she gave me that much, we were just kinda staring at each other trying to figure out what to say, and then we got to digging up our past. The whole thing was just so awkward that…ugh!" Anna dropped her head down shamefully on the top of the computer chair. "Why can't today just end?"

Rapunzel laughed and patted her head, "Okay well that matter's dealt with, and now that I know the truth I'm a little unsure about telling you this next part."

Anna groaned, "Just say it." It'd be like ripping off a band aid; a painful, persistent, blonde-haired band aid.

"So you know how we have to earn $10,000 before the end of this month- which by the way ends tonight?"

Anna nodded, an awkward gesture considering her face was still buried on top of the chair, and it rocked the chair in the process.

"Well in total, we've got around $9,900."

A chill ran down Anna's spine and she sat back up, "What?!" The implications of that statement immediately ran through her head, making her feel worse than she already was. They were at least $100 short of hitting their goal, that means they didn't hit their projected earnings, that means they would have to shut down Warm Hearts Bakery, that means their dream was dead before it could even be fully realized.

It hit Anna hard, like a punch in the gut with brass knuckles. She then began to think of ways to plead to their supervisor tomorrow, to give them a grace period. She also thought of ways to make that extra $100 before the night was over, maybe ask one of her relatives, go sell something, go do something…unseemly. She was desperate, she didn't want this dream to die.

Strangely, however, Rapunzel didn't seem to be fazed. Her expression remained unchanged and eager to share the rest. "Okay before you freak out…" Too late. "That was before I added a certain $200 from a certain someone that you probably know. With it, that puts our earnings just above $10,000."

Because Anna was still reeling from the initial blow, she almost missed what Rapunzel was saying; but once she got her bearings again, she realized what the implications of her inability to make change meant.

The irony of all ironies.

Rapunzel smiled, "Looks like the person who put this heinous ultimatum on us is the same person making sure we live to see another day."

A/N: Well it took a while, but finally, finally, we have reached the end…of the festival…and of what's technically the first part of this story. Yup we're probably not even close to being done, at least with what I've got planned. Yeah, I actually plan this crap out!

Anyway with school out for the "summer" (I put this in quotations cause it's only May), I should have more time to write and updates should be more frequent. Emphasis on should.