Anna stared down at the two bodies on the floor. Her eyes darted between the prone form of the man she had killed, his blood still pooling out around him, and the collapsed form of her older sister, slumped against a wall and concussed. She had to act quickly, but she didn't know what to do.

She ran to Elsa's side and tried shaking her awake. She heard her head thump against the floor and realized she was likely making matters worse. Trying to think of an alternative, she went to the sink and started splashing water onto her wife's face.

"Anna, what the hell are you doing?" Elsa asked, blinking away the fog from her mind.

"Elsa, you have to stay awake."

"If I'm concussed then let me sleep," she grumbled, trying to dispel the myth.

"Okay, you can sleep after we do something about the dead body a few feet from you!" Anna insisted, splashing more water on Elsa.

The increasingly wet blonde glared at her from under flattened bangs. Then her gaze turned to the body of her old friend – the body of the man who had attacked her. What were they going to do? "Caroline!" she blurted out, realizing the far more immediate threat.

"Oh fuck," Anna mouthed, staring at the door as if she expected the woman to barge in at any moment. "She must have heard him scream too. What could she be doing? We have to get out of here!"

Elsa rubbed at her head, finding blood matting her hair and a bump already beginning to swell up under it. "Let's grab what we can and go. She may have already called the cops. We have to be gone before they get here."

Anna hesitated, still watching the door. "You don't think she'd really do that, do you? She doesn't know what happened!"

"I didn't think Hans would do..." Elsa choked back a gag, "that. We can't trust her either. We have to get going. We just killed her husband, it's not like she's going to be forgiving."

Anna nodded; she did have a point. "I'm going to miss everything here."

"I will too, but there's no time. Throw a few changes of clothes in a bag and we're leaving. We always knew this was a possibility," she sighed, pulling herself to her feet with a pained groan.

"What clothes do you want me to grab?" Anna asked.

The weight of the question hit Elsa hard enough that she almost fell back to the floor. Hans wasn't the only dead man in the room. He had taken Thomas with him. Any investigation into his death would drag them into it, and would take them right back to the fate that they had barely avoided with the draft. She had known this wouldn't last forever, she had known that someday she would have to take off the mask for good, but she wasn't ready, he was so much of who she was now. Her tears joined the blood at her feet. "Grab me some dresses," she answered, her voice hoarse as she tried to hold back the sobs.

Anna nodded and dashed to their closet, tossing as many things as she could into the empty suitcase that waited there. By the time she came out of the closet with the bag in her arms, Elsa had managed to pry herself from the bathroom. They took a deep breath together as they approached the bedroom door, confident that everything would fall apart the second they stepped outside.

When they opened the door, they saw the slowly ascending form of Caroline, her shoulders visible at the top of the stairs. As far as they could tell, there weren't any police officers following her. She was the only obstacle between them and freedom.

"Anna?" she called hesitantly. "Is everything all right?"

She hadn't leapt to any of the conclusions that they had been certain she would have. Was it possible that she hadn't heard the screams? That she hadn't heard Anna shouting for Hans not to hurt her sister? What could they even say to her? There was no way that she would believe that Hans slipped and fell, was there?

"Hans slipped in the bathroom!" Anna blurted out. Elsa stared at her, agape. There was no way that would work.

"Oh my God, is he okay?" She dashed past them, not bothering to ask any more questions, such as what her husband was doing in the upstairs bathroom with Thomas in the first place. As soon as she was behind them, the sisters ran, darting for the car, throwing the bag in, and gunning the engine.

They were on the road before she would have even had a chance to check his breathing. In the rear-view mirror, they watched their home and the life they had built fall away behind them. A tear fell from Elsa's eye, as she tried to focus on the road, blocking out all thoughts and all of Anna's attempts at conversation.

She drove until they were well past the state lines and she could barely keep her eyes open. At Anna's insistence, she pulled into a hotel. They both gazed at the entrance, neither one of them leaving the car.

"What if we're wanted now?" Elsa asked. "They might know what we look like, they would certainly know to look for our IDs."

A smile began to form on Anna's face. "They'll be looking for Thomas's and Anna's IDs, not for our IDs, at least not for yours."

Elsa stared at her. She was right. If they were looking for them, then they were looking for a married couple, a man and a woman; this could work. "Did you grab it?" She asked, excitement, fear, and anxiety all fighting for control over her voice.

"Yes," Anna confirmed, nodding eagerly. She pulled the bag from the back seat into her lap, digging through it. She threw a dress to Elsa as she looked. By the time she found the card at the bottom of the bag, her sister was gazing back at her, as resplendent as she had ever been.

After handing the ID over, Anna searched further in the bag, and let out a string of expletives before looking up at her sister.

"What's wrong?" Elsa asked, watching the younger girl in astonishment.

"When we first moved out, I decided that I should get a fake ID too, just in case we were ever found out, especially with how convinced you were that it would happen, and apparently I kind of forgot about it, because it's expired." She laughed mirthlessly as she showed Elsa the card.

"Harold Reed?" Elsa read. "You were going to be a guy?!"

"It worked for you." She scratched awkwardly at her head.

"Yeah, but I mean, look at you, how could you ever be seen as a guy?" She gestured vaguely toward the redheaded bombshell.

"Elsa, have you looked in a mirror? Ever? Loose clothes, glasses, and the right attitude do a lot for me. I don't look half bad in that picture if I do say so myself." She allowed a small but confident smile to creep back into her features.

"Okay, fine, I suppose you have a point. I just can't imagine you as a guy. It feels wrong."

"It might be the only way. They're not looking for Elsa, but they are looking for Anna Henriksen, I can't exactly go around showing my ID, and I can't live forever like that. Besides, if we're both women we go back to the same issue we started with – not being able to be together. This is the best option and you know it, it's why you did it in the first place."

"Can you get your ID renewed?" Elsa asked, reluctantly giving in to Anna's plan. She glanced at her own ID. She had bothered to renew it just before they moved, as a precaution, and it was still valid for a few more years.

"Maybe, but not until we're settled somewhere." She looked through the bag again. "Crap. I didn't grab any guy clothes for either of us. We're going to have to get those soon. I guess you should go check into the hotel by yourself and then I'll join you after."

Elsa walked into the hotel and waited at the desk for someone to see her. She had to convince herself repeatedly that the reason they were taking so long was not in fact because they were waiting for the police to arrive and arrest her, and that if they were trying that, then ignoring her until she wanted to leave was clearly not the plan they would go with.

When the clerk finally returned, she was able to quickly book a room, with no particular difficulties. As she returned to the car with their room key, she breathed a sigh of relief. She desperately needed to sleep, it was well past three in the afternoon and she hadn't slept for some thirty-odd hours.

She found Anna as pale as a ghost when she opened the door. She had left the car running so they could take advantage of the heater, and Anna had been listening to the radio. "They're looking for us," she breathed, the words scarcely able to leave her throat. "They just said on the radio that a married couple by the name of Thomas and Anna Henriksen were wanted for questioning in regards to the death of a Hans Sutton," she repeated, verbatim, in a flat monotone.

"Let's get inside, they're not looking for me," Elsa insisted, trying to keep herself from collapsing into a useless ball of tears. "We just have to hide you away, then after a quick nap I can get you a change of clothes."

Anna nodded, and feebly allowed Elsa to lead her to their room, glancing over her shoulder the entire way.

Neither of them woke up until midnight. Anna stirred first and immediately noticed how dark it was and started to panic. Elsa hadn't bought the clothes; they didn't have any more options. She shook her sister awake, with better luck than her last attempt.

"What?" Elsa grumbled, blinking blearily at her.

"We overslept, you didn't get the clothes, what are we going to do?"

Elsa placed a hand over her sister's mouth. "Anna, it's okay, I will buy you some clothes before we check out in the morning. Go back to sleep, I want to put as many miles between us and Colorado as I can before our next stop."

Anna mumbled a response against Elsa's hand. The hand stayed where it was as Elsa's breathing changed back to the steady rhythm of sleep. Anna grumbled and attempted to join her, her mind still racing. She supposed at least they wouldn't be looking for her with a girl, even if it was a girl that looked suspiciously like her husband and had the same haircut.

The next time they awoke it was shortly after four in the morning. Much too early to go shopping, but it meant they'd each had around twelve hours of sleep and weren't likely to manage much more. So it was time to start planning.

"Where are we going to go?" Elsa asked. They'd both been staring at the ceiling for a good ten minutes without saying a word, but had known the other was awake.

"We definitely can't stay around Colorado, and we can't go back to Massachusetts, they'll be looking there too. Going back to North Carolina or Maryland probably isn't safe either, they'll be looking into any place we've lived, checking with everyone we've ever known. We can't leave the country without passports," Anna explained, weighing all of their options. "How's Texas sound?"

Elsa raised herself up on one elbow and glanced at her sister. "Why Texas?"

Anna shrugged, still watching the ceiling. "I don't know, it's something different. Plus I'd get to wear a cowboy hat." She beamed, a weightless joy managing to appear in her voice for a second before reality dragged her back down. "There's a lot of empty space, if we had to just abandon civilization and hide out in a cabin then it'd be a good place to do it."

"It's desert though, wouldn't it be better to hide someplace where we could actually get food and water?"

"Easier to hide bodies?" she offered with a crooked grin.

Her sister gaped at her. "You're kidding, right?"

"Elsa, I would do anything to make sure we can be together," she stated by way of an answer.

After a long moment taking in all of the implications of that simple phrase, Elsa simply replied "Texas it is, then."

The sisters spent the next several hours going over maps, planning their route, and trying to think of anything they might be missing. Then, it was time for Elsa to act. As soon as the stores would be open, she left the room, and drove to the nearest shopping center. Taking their car was dangerous, but it was worth it for the extra speed.

Two hours later, she returned with a bag of clothes for Anna – Harold – a long blonde wig for herself, bandages, some scissors and a screwdriver. She parked in the back of the hotel and busied herself swapping out their license plate for the one on the car next to it, before she returned to her sister with the change of clothes.

After a quick haircut, some binding, and changing into a work shirt, some jeans, and Elsa's glasses, Anna really did manage to look like a guy. Elsa stared at her in shock for a moment. "Wow, you... Wow," she sighed, scarcely able to believe it was the same person she'd known her entire life.

"Think it works?" Anna asked, her voice still sounding very much like itself.

Elsa stifled a laugh. "If you don't open your mouth, it certainly does."

Sticking her tongue out at her sister, Anna spat back "Well some of us didn't have so much time to practice!"

"No time like the present," Elsa replied, fixing her wig in the mirror. "It's time to check out. Let's grab everything and get out of here."

Once they were safely on the road again, Anna began doing vocal exercises in the passenger seat. Nothing made her sound the slightest bit masculine. "How do you make this sound so easy?!" she cried after half an hour of effort, tears of frustration running down her cheeks.

"I started practicing before half the boys in my class's voices had dropped. It's not a thing you can just jump into like this. It took years of work to get to any point like this. Though after a few days I was at least passing as a twelve year old, but that's not really gonna work for you."

"Elsa, please, I'll take any advice at all, this is important," Anna begged. Elsa still couldn't bring herself to think of her as Harold.

"You have to stop using your head voice. You need to lower it, physically, speak from your chest."

"Like this?" Anna asked, her voice sounding exactly the same.

"No, dear," Elsa sighed. "You should be able to feel the vibrations in your chest as you talk, you can work on lowering it more once you have that down, but you have to work on controlling where it comes from."

"Is this any better?" It wasn't.

"There's more to it too," Elsa began, considering everything she had learned in her years of pretending to be a different gender. "Your inflection is so girly, it always has been, more than mine ever was. You always sound so excited. You need to be more monotone, more serious. Don't let your pitch bounce all over the place. Even if your voice is still high, it'll make a big difference. Maybe you can manage that more easily than you can manage your chest voice."

Anna cleared her throat and closed her eyes, concentrating on what she was about to say. "Am I doing it now? I think I almost am – No, I'm messing up again." She had managed seven words without her pitch or inflection wavering in the slightest, though she was still decidedly using her head voice, but by the eighth word she had faltered. "Why is this so difficult?"

"It's just going to take practice, it didn't start working for me overnight either."

Anna grumbled, glancing behind them to see if there were any police on their tail.

"We're not being followed," Elsa sighed. "If they know where we are, I think we'll find out pretty quickly, you don't need to be looking back constantly."

"Why're you so calm?" Anna asked, turning her gaze back to her sister.

"I'm not. At all. I'm terrified. Exactly what I've been convinced would happen for the past twelve years is finally happening, but you're the one that managed to come up with everything the first time. I know it's selfish but I need you to stay calm. I need you to figure everything out."

"Elsa?" Anna reached a hand toward the blonde's shoulder to attempt to comfort her.

"I'm barely holding it together. We're quite possibly doomed. At least one of us is going to be in prison before long, and I just want to make sure it's not you, but I can't think well enough to come up with any way out, so I'm just going to do my best to concentrate on driving."

"Our plan will work," Anna stated with far greater confidence than she possessed. "We'll start a new life, all over again, and we'll get to live happily ever after. I don't care if I have to take over as the breadwinner or if I have to be a guy. I have everything I've ever wanted."

"And what's that?" Elsa scoffed, still focusing on the road, barely listening to her sister's words.

"You."

Elsa turned to look at the younger girl. "Anna –"

"Elsa, I don't care what happens. I don't have a single regret. I got to be with you. We had twelve years of a life together. I want as many more as I can manage, but don't you dare think that I would change this for the world."

Turning her gaze back to the road, Elsa admitted "I wouldn't either. I love you, Anna."

"I love you too, Elsa."

After another day driving, they arrived in Houston, Texas. Elsa had tried to insist that a small town would be better, that the city carried too many risks, but Anna had won her over by pointing out that it would have more jobs, and thus a better chance of them not starving to death. They sold their car as soon as they entered the town, and used the money to rent a cheap apartment.

The car's buyer clearly didn't watch the news, didn't pay attention, or simply didn't care, as they made no complaints when the papers were signed over from Thomas Henriksen. It was the final goodbye to her old life, and it hurt Elsa far more than she had expected. She was still moping as they looked around their empty studio.

"Looking forward to being my housewife?" Anna asked cheerfully, looking up from where she lay on the floor.

"Not terribly, I've never had to do any of this stuff. Maybe I should still be the one to work. You can be a house husband," Elsa reasoned, sitting down on the floor by her partner. She was unsure if she should call Anna her wife, her husband, her girlfriend, or her boyfriend. Did their old marriage even still count?

"No, Elsa," Anna insisted, rising to a sitting position, her face inches from the older woman's. "It's my turn to take care of you."

After almost two weeks of job hunting, Harold finally came home to his wife with good news. "Elsa," he announced, his voice still too high, but at least coming from his chest, and coming off in something in the general area of masculine. "I did it! They just hired me at the car lot a few blocks away."

Elsa looked up from the stew she was stirring. "That's wonderful!" She ran over to her partner, hugging him tightly. "I'm so proud of you."

He pulled her into a deep kiss, their eyes fluttering closed as their lips met. They were both finally starting to relax, everything was good in their world, their lives were their own again.

They made it two more weeks. Two more weeks of bliss, of love, of building a new life, before it all came crashing down.

On the fateful evening, Anna had just changed out of her bandages and was sitting across from Elsa over a lovingly cooked, though still not particularly delicious, dinner. She was getting better, but four weeks of experience in the kitchen was not enough to make her food up to their previous standards. Anna had truly thrown herself into the pursuit, while Elsa was still barely past dipping her toes in the water. Still, the sausages were tasty enough, if a bit burnt, though the mashed potatoes were far too lumpy.

"It's delicious," Anna announced gleefully. She would eat anything Elsa made her, she was just thrilled to have her making her dinner.

"It really isn't," Elsa sighed. "Thank you for saying it anyway. I am definitely improving. When I first started, I'm not sure you could even call it food."

"I loved it no matter how it turned out, because you made it," Anna insisted. "Besides, I needed it after walking everywhere trying to find a job. Any calories would do." She giggled. "You've come a long way, I'm sure you'll be a better cook than me in no time."

"I find that unlikely. I still miss your pot roast so much. I almost dream of it," Elsa insisted, gazing affectionately at the love of her life.

"Pot roast is easy, I'll teach you how to make it okay? Maybe you could fix it for us tomorrow."

"I would really like that. Although it feels kinda wrong to steal your dish, I suppose if I didn't cook anything you made, there wouldn't be much we could eat, I just don't want to try to replace you," Elsa sighed.

"Don't think of it like that. You're not competing with me. We're a team, Elsa." A reassuring smile appeared on Anna's face. "You aren't stealing anything, you're just making a delicious home-cooked meal for your husband, and I will be more than happy to eat it."

Elsa nodded. "You're right. It's just going to take some getting used to."

Anna took another bite of sausage. "You really are getting better, this is actually pretty good."

Before Elsa could respond, a knock sounded at the door. Both women stirred from their seats. "I'll get it, you go get changed," Elsa said, walking slowly toward the door.

Anna nodded and ran to the bathroom. Her bandages were still on the counter. She closed the door behind her while Elsa answered the knocking.

The front door opened to reveal a man in a neat suit, with two uniformed police officers behind him. "Are you Elsa Arendelle?" He asked, studying her from behind a placid expression.

Elsa took a moment to steady her breathing. They had practiced for this. There was no reason the police would be looking for her. "Yes, I am. Is this about my sister? Has there been any word?"

He chuckled coldly to himself, as his expression faltered. "I suppose you could say that." He barged past her, walking into the house.

"Officer –" she began.

"Detective," he corrected her. "Anna Arendelle?" He called to the closed door. "You can come out of there."

A thud and some muttered curses sounded from behind the door, before a terrified looking Anna crept out. "Anna? You mean her sister? My name is Harold," She insisted in a faltering chest voice, her voice creeping higher with each word.

He rolled his eyes at the two women. "You're both under arrest for the murder of Hans Sutton, and a whole list of other charges that your lawyers are going to have to inform you of, as it gets a bit complicated for my pay grade. Boys, cuff 'em."

Resigned to her fate, Elsa did nothing as the officers handcuffed them. She heard Anna continue to insist that this was a mistake, that they had the wrong people, and every other lie that she could think of. None of it would change a thing. They must have overlooked something. They'd lost.