Chapter Twelve

"Hey hurry your butt up slowpoke, we have to leave pretty soon if we want to be on time for the tour.", Elsa said to Anna's voicemail. She ended the call with a sigh, and listlessly read through the itinerary for the hundredth time to distract herself from her nerves.

The couple were going to take one final tour of North Mountain University, one which doubled as their official meetings with the deans of their respective colleges. Time had flown by once Elsa made her big decision, and now they were both halfway through their senior year. The Dean of Business was impressed by her transcripts and references and sounded genuinely excited to meet her. Elsa was excited as well, mostly because this was finally, actually happening.

Anna would be right there with her at NMU as well, they would be inseparable and unstoppable. That was always the case in these past four years: Anna would be the one to push her to do something and it would always turn out well since she was by her side through the whole thing.

This was still the case now, because if Elsa was being honest with herself she was beyond nervous about embarking on this new journey, even if it was something she knew she wanted. That's why she needed Anna by her side, that's why she always needed Anna by her side. She patted the chest pocket on her long-sleeved flannel, ensuring that it was still there, and felt her heart immediately start to race again once she felt it.

There was no questioning that these past four years had been the happiest she'd ever been, she'd heard horror stories of high school and how it was this beast that would be nearly impossible to tackle on your own. Thanks to Anna, not only did she not have to do this on her own, but she had an amazing experience all throughout. Elsa was confident that they would be together no matter what in college, but there was something she had to do to make sure of it; an insurance policy, right in her pocket. It wasn't the real deal, just a promise that they belonged to each other and that Elsa would get her the real deal one day.

She was nervous, and for good reason; even though she knew that Anna would definitely say yes, just the sheer act of the proposal was making her heart race. She had it planned out too: they would drive over to NMU, go do the tour, have their meetings, and then Elsa would take her to a great spot at the university with an amazing view of the campus and city- a place she had scouted out on her last trip there. Then, as the sun set, she would say something sappy and emotional and pull out the ring.

It was going to be perfect, provided everything went according to plan. But with Anna still not there, perfection was in jeopardy.

Elsa thought of calling her up one more time to see if everything was okay, but Anna beat her to it. Her phone began to vibrate, and Anna's name flashed on the screen.

"Hey Elsa, I'm so sorry but I can't make it to the tour today.", Anna said before Elsa could even get a word in.

Immediately, Elsa began to suspect the worse; maybe she had gotten into a car accident, maybe there was a family emergency. "What happened? Is everything alright?", she replied.

"Everything's…everything's fine. Just go on the tour yourself and I'll explain things when you get back, alright?"

The slight hesitation in Anna's voice made Elsa worry even more; they told each other even the most miniscule of problems, and the fact that it seemed like Anna was holding out on something didn't bode well. "Uh no, that doesn't sound alright- I mean you don't sound alright. I can just reschedule my appointment if something's up."

"Elsa it's okay, I'm okay. I just…something came up that I need to take care of, you don't need to change plans because of me."

"I really don't mind changing-"

"Elsa! You're gonna be late, just go without me.", Anna interrupted, sounding frustrated.

Now Elsa knew for sure that there was something wrong, but she also knew that continuing to dig even further would get her nowhere. All she could do was continue on with the day, sans Anna, and sort everything out when she got back. With a heavy sigh, she conceded to her girlfriend's demand, "Alright, I'll…see you when I get back."

So, Elsa drove to the university, alone, and checked in with the tour guide, alone, and went on the too-familiar tour, alone. Her mind was obviously elsewhere, distractingly thinking back to Anna and how she was doing and what exactly came up. The tour guide uttered his speech to the slackjawed families aweing at the grandeur of the university, exclaiming the historical facts and reputation of each college which Elsa had already heard before. Even when they reached the College of Business, despite the fate awaiting her behind the doors of the main entrance, Elsa just could not pay attention. She drifted back and forth between trying to stay focused on the tour and ditching the tour altogether to be with Anna.

Nothing would put her mind at ease, but the interview at least gave her a bit of a reprieve. Immediately after the tour ended she raced back towards the College of Business, getting there ten minutes earlier than she had planned. The receptionist greeted her with a warm smile; because they had only communicated by the phone before then, Elsa recognized her voice but not her face. Regardless they hit it off like old friends, making Elsa feel genuinely welcome. Which in turn made her feel guilty that she wasn't paying full attention of her future staring right at her; this was where she was determined to be, and this was the career she wanted to go into, why wasn't she acting like it?

After a quick visit to the restroom where she splashed water on her face to "wake herself up", she redirected her focus to the impending interview. What seemed like hours keeping her mind steady and away from thoughts about Anna was ten minutes at best, according to the clock behind the receptionist's desk. At the end of those ten minutes, the dean walked out of his office and greeted Elsa with a smile that she deemed to be "businesslike", one not meant for friends or close acquaintances, but to those you want to make a good impression on or want something from.

The interview itself wasn't an interview at all, it was basically a chat between Elsa and the dean over how high school went for her, what it takes to be a good businessperson, why he thinks she'll be a good fit for the college, and why she thinks she'll be a good fit for the college. The dean confessed halfway through the "interview" that he only called her up for this conversation because he liked to talk personally with students he felt would be of great success, which both flattered Elsa and left her speechless.

They did get to some general academic stuff near the end, talking about her course schedule for the next four years, the expectations from her, and what scholarships she was eligible for. One major takeaway she got from this was that if she could secure an internship her freshman year, she would be given a huge scholarship.

Once the interview was over, Elsa felt more determined than ever that this was the school of her dreams, and the right next step for her future, and she couldn't wait to tell Anna all about it.

Anna…

She drove like a madman back to Anna's house- surprised that she hadn't gotten pulled over for speeding or driving erratically- and didn't hesitate for even a second as she knocked on the front door.

The door opened after a few seconds, it wasn't Anna that greeted her, but her parents. Almost as if they were just waiting at the door this whole time. They greeted Elsa with infectious un-businesslike smiles on their faces, Anna's mother even hugged her, which happened pretty much every time Elsa came over.

"Elsa!", Anna's dad exclaimed, "How was the interview?"

"It went well, really well.", Elsa replied. "Where's Anna?" She was anxious the entire car ride over, and it only doubled when Anna hadn't welcomed her at the door. It was best to get this over with now rather than to continue on with her doubts and worries.

The parents were taken aback at the sudden change in subject, and the worry on her face was now reflected on theirs. "She's upstairs, she's been there this whole time.", Anna's father answered.

"Thanks, I, uh…need to talk to her." Elsa didn't say anymore, she quickly thanked the couple and bounded up the stairs. Her heart raced with every step, thinking of every worst-case scenario she could conceive, but she kept moving anyway. A closed door greeted her, but she opened it without even knocking.

And suddenly there Anna was, sitting cross-legged on her bed with her laptop on her lap. Her hair was disheveled, and she was still in her pajamas, and it took her a couple seconds to even realize that Elsa was in the room with her. "Hey…", Anna said with a pitifully small smile.

"Hey? Hey?!", Elsa replied in disbelief. "You ditch me and worry me to all hell, lie to me and say everything's fine and that something 'came up', and all you can say is hey?"

Anna closed her laptop and slowly brushed a few strands of hair out of her face, "I'm sorry…I shouldn't have worried you like that."

"Of course you shouldn't have! I spent the entire morning and afternoon thinking the worst happened to you, I couldn't focus at all, I couldn't…", Elsa moved closer towards Anna, finally noticing the dark, heavyset bags under her eyes. They hadn't seen each other in a few days, both of them were so busy with school and college duties that the only contact each of them had with each other was through the phone. Apparently, Anna didn't spend a lot of time in those few days sleeping. Elsa sat on the bed right beside Anna and brushed a thumb over her pale cheek.

"Anna…what's wrong?" She asked, putting aside her own need for answers to make sure the redhead was okay.

Anna let out a weak breath nuzzled onto the hand resting on her cheek, the smile faded and she meekly placed Elsa's hand back on the bed. She looked down at the ground and mumbled something that Elsa couldn't make out.

"What was that?", Elsa asked.

Anna slowly looked up at her with eyes that were full of sadness and guilt. She spoke once more with a stronger yet still meek voice, but this time Elsa heard every word. "I said…I'm not going with you."

Elsa was confused, she put her hand over Anna's. "You're not going with me? What do you mean?"

Anna didn't pull away at the touch, but refused to look Elsa in the eye any longer. As if she was so fraught with guilt that just looking at Elsa made her feel ill to her stomach. "It's like I said before, something came up and…I'm not going with you to NMU anymore."

Elsa felt like the world gave out underneath her; of all the worst-case scenarios she had devised, this was one that she'd hoped for the least. Even now, she was sure that this was all just a bad dream. "What are you talking about? What came up?", Elsa forced herself to ask.

"Just, I…", Anna hesitated, "I got a call from the dean at the Culinary School at Arendelle U, she made me an amazing offer to go there, and…I took it."

"You…you took it.", Elsa meant that to be more of a question, but it came out as a statement instead, as if those words shouldn't be allowed to go together.

"I got the papers finalized this morning, that's why I couldn't make it to the tour today." Anna looked helpless and sheepish, it was clear that she had been mulling over just how to say these words and hoping that Elsa would understand.

But Elsa couldn't understand, or wouldn't. "You took the offer.", Elsa repeated with more bitterness than before.

"I know what I'm doing sounds incredibly selfish, but it's been my dream to be a baker pretty much my entire life. This doesn't change anything between us, North Mountain's only a couple hours away and-"

"This changes everything, Anna! Everything!", Elsa pulled her hand off Anna's and sat up from the bed. She paced around the room, struggling to comprehend everything that was happening. "How could you…how did…we had a plan! We were supposed to be together, we were supposed to go to college together, we were supposed to follow our dreams together."

"And we still are.", Anna replied, her voice audibly betraying the certainty she was trying to convey. "Like I said we're only a couple hours away, and I can go up there on the weekends too and stuff. Plus we can talk to each other on the phone every night and-"

"I don't know what kind of backwards definition you have of the word 'together', but it certainly doesn't mean 'two hours apart and only on weekends.' I just…why didn't you talk to me about this first, Anna? I thought we were supposed to be a team. Me and you, like it's always been."

"We are a team, and I wanted to talk to you about this, it's just…just…"

"Justwhat?!" Elsa stopped her pacing, but didn't cease the gradual raising of her voice. Her head was spinning, her entire world had just burned to the ground. And the one who had lit the match was the one sitting on the bed with a pained, tired, guilt-stricken face.

"Just…please understand, Elsa. I know this sucks, but I had to do what was best for my future. Being a baker is all I've ever wanted, it's my dream. Just like being a CEO is your dream."

There it was, the final dagger in Elsa's back. The veil had been lifted, and she was seeing things differently than she had before. Things she held to be true turned out to be bitter lies; the one Elsa held dearest, the one she loved more than anything in life, had just blatantly told her that she didn't feel the same.

And Elsa snapped.

"Being a CEO was never my dream! If it was, don't you think I would have remembered it after all this time instead of conveniently reminding myself of it less than a year ago? The only dream I've held on to, the only dream I've wanted to come true, is to be with you! And I was really hoping that you wanted the same thing, but it turns out I was wrong."

Anna looked terrified, offended and angry all at the same time. She too sat up from the bed and finally had enough courage to look Elsa in the eye without looking away, despite the burning tears. "What are you talking about? Of course I want to be with you."

"Then why do this? Why do…all of this? Why change the plan this late? Things were fine before, but suddenly a few words from the dean are enough to make you change your mind? What exactly did she tell you?"

So many questions, and Elsa wasn't sure she wanted the answers. In fact, judging from the way that she looked so unsure, it seemed as if Anna didn't want to answer them anyway. Nonetheless, Elsa asked one more time, "What did she tell you?"

Each passing second of silence was another twist of the dagger in Elsa. She thought that they were stronger than this, she thought that they would stop keeping secrets from each other. Anna was holding back, but Elsa had no idea why. After a few more agonizing seconds, Anna finally did speak, but not the words she wanted to hear. "Just…I need you trust me, I had to do this. It's not that I don't trust you, and it's not that I don't love you- because I love you more than anything else in this world- it's just that I had to do what's right for me."

Anna's words betrayed everything that Elsa heard from her before, she was too far gone to listen to anymore of this. "Right, because that's what you do when you love someone. You make selfish decisions without worrying about what the person you claim to love will think about them."

"Now that's…", Anna choked up as the tears started to fall. "…that's not fair, Elsa."

Elsa, by contrast, was emotionless and unwavering. "Are you ever gonna tell me the truth?"

"O-of course I will…", Anna said weakly.

"When?"

No response. Anna stayed silent aside from her labored breaths and sniffles, she looked at Elsa begging for her to understand. But how could she understand if Anna wouldn't tell her what needed to be understood?

"That's what I thought.", Elsa stated coldly.

She turned away and walked back towards the door, and she may or may not have heard Anna say "Elsa, wait…" before the door closed again. She didn't care.

"So why did you do it, Anna?", Elsa asked for the umpteenth time. "What did she tell you that you couldn't tell me back then?"

Anna stood there as Elsa recounted the events of that horrible day- as if she needed a reminder- trying to gain the courage to say the words she couldn't say then. Four years should have been enough time to heal, it should have, but when Elsa asked that question again she wasn't so sure.

She opened her mouth to speak, hoping that some divine intervention would come her way and speak on behalf of her, but that wouldn't be the case. All she said was "I…"

Elsa looked at her with wide eyes, "You still can't tell me?"

Still no response.

"Even after all this time, after four years you still don't have the guts to tell me the whole truth?"

Still no response, but Anna knew for certain, at least, that she actually did want to tell Elsa the truth. She just couldn't, with the perfect moment right here to finally speak her mind…she was getting cold feet again. Why was she like this? Why did Elsa intimidate her so much? Why couldn't she just let everything out in the open and be done with it?

Elsa sighed, "I guess I should have known better than to expect for you to have changed at all."

And then another question popped up in Anna's head: Why was she biting her tongue for someone that clearly didn't care for her at all anymore?

"You want to know the truth?", Anna said sharply as she walked towards Elsa with fury in her eyes, pretending that thought didn't tear her apart even more. "I was going to decline her offer, I knew that North Mountain would have given me a worse deal, but I was going to take it anyway because you're wrong. I did love you, and I did want to be with you."

"But then the dean asked me something important, something I hadn't asked myself the whole time we were together: When was the last time that I ever thought for myself? She said that I needed to start making adult decisions about my future. I wasn't going to be some bright-eyed high schooler anymore, I needed to think about the bigger picture."

It was getting harder to speak through the tears, "So yeah I made a selfish decision, and yeah I hurt you, but I know for a fact that we could have made things work even if we were two hours apart, that's how much I believed in us. But you didn't, you called me selfish even though you were the one that broke things off when this happened."

Anna couldn't stop herself even if she wanted to, and she definitely didn't want to. This was therapeutic, cathartic even. Once she said those first few words, the floodgates had burst and she let loose everything she wanted to say back then.

"I loved you Elsa, I love you so freaking much that hearing you say all those things back then…it broke me. And yet, I-I still don't…I didn't want to blame you for anything, but you've forced my hand. This wasn't all my fault, and let's not forget that I at least tried to contact you and fix things. Maybe if you had picked up your damn phone once that whole first year we were apart, none of this would have happened."

There was a loud bang as Elsa's palm hit the plastic table, the only barrier standing between them, and she took charge of the conversation once more. "Get off your fucking high horse. You told me, point blank, that you only had one dream that you had been chasing your whole life, and it wasn't me. It wasn't us. And this right here…", Elsa gestured towards Anna and the spoils of her decision, "…this right here is just concrete proof that you didn't. I wasn't the one making big life decisions by myself without consulting the one I loved the most. I'm not the one who spat in the face of the one relationship that made me happier than I ever was before."

"Spat in…what?!" Anna had never been this angry before, and it honestly scared her a little. But if Elsa wanted to be like this, then so would she. "You did make a decision like that when you broke up with me. Elsa we were together for four years, we went through so much crap and came out clean on the other side, and you thought a two-hour distance away from each other was gonna change that?"

"It wasn't the distance, it was the implication.", Elsa fired back. "We were supposed to go through college together, not apart. I thought we made a promise that we would never be separated no matter what, I thought our-"

"Okay just shut up! Shut up!", Anna interrupted. She couldn't take this anymore; she thought the years of lost contact, and the weeks of sidestepping the situation were bad, but this right here was worse than both. This was going nowhere, and Anna had had enough. She was tired of feeling like the bad guy, tired of holding onto the guilt, and tired of…tired of Elsa. This Elsa, anyway.

They stayed there for a second, staring daggers into each other and panting like they had just gone to round twelve of a stupidly physical boxing match. To her credit Elsa didn't speak, but the intimidating look on her face made it clear that she wouldn't be silent for long. Anna tried her best to exhibit that same look.

"For all your bravado, all your brutish ways to make me feel guilty, all your…pointless attempts at being petty, you really don't have any high ground at all. You keep painting yourself to be this innocent victim, and pitting me as the one who should take the blame for everything, but you're either too stupid or too proud to admit that it took two to tear this relationship apart. You didn't come here for the truth, you came here so I could tell you that you're right."

Elsa had no other way of answering but to continue leering at Anna with a cold-blooded gaze and a sneer on her lips. Anna was unfazed, however, because she could see right through the façade. Elsa had never been challenged this way before, and not for this long, she wasn't used to not having the high ground. So, the fact that Anna had matched her blow for blow meant she had nothing else to give.

And once Elsa looked away and walked towards the festival entrance without uttering a single word, Anna knew that she had won.

Unfortunately, she was now left with more questions than answers, more to resolve instead of less. Why did she want to win? Why wasn't she happy that she "won"? How come she still felt guilty even though she knew that the blame wasn't entirely on her? The most important question however was this: Why did she want Elsa to come back?

"Wow…that was intense."

Anna jumped at the intruding voice, only just now realizing that she was still at the festival. She turned around to see Rapunzel sitting on a plastic table closest to the tent opening with a dumbfounded look on her face, clearly not used to seeing this side of her friend before. Anna sighed, "How much of that did you hear?"

"I heard enough.", Rapunzel sat up and walked over to Anna with her arms outstretched. Anna took the hug without any hesitation. "And I know I've said this a bunch of times already, but…are you gonna be alright?"

Anna lied, "I will be."

Elsa didn't want to think, didn't want to speak, didn't want to do anything but get back to her apartment.

There was no one around, not anymore, which meant there was thankfully no one around to unleash her blinding rage out on to. The blinding rage that she vehemently denied was engulfing her entire being.

Anna was wrong, absolutely wrong, dead wrong. There was no way that…no, no she told herself she would stop thinking about that damn redhead. Not anymore, never again. As far as she was concerned, she was just another business she would be vaguely accountable for. And even if said business closed up shop, she was determined to bring her reputation back up again. In fact, now she was hoping that it did close.

No, no that would mean that she was thinking about the bakery, it would mean that she was thinking about Anna.

She needed a distraction, a way to cleanse her mind from the events of today. Luckily that distraction was in the car waiting for her.

"There you are, we've been here for like half an hour.", Hannah said as she held the door open for her. "I thought you said you were only going to need a couple minutes."

"Yeah I did.", Elsa replied without explaining herself. "I need you. Tonight."

The car rolled forward and away from the festival grounds, Elsa stared blankly out the window at the streetlights as Hannah talked about the festival and she pretended to listen. The city looked so quiet and peaceful at night, Elsa was jealous.

"Not that I'm complaining about coming over tonight, but I figured you'd be exhausted from today. Are you sure you want me to?", Hannah asked.

Elsa lied, "Yeah, I do."

A/N: Well there you have it, the big reveal about why Elsa's such a bitch. If it was disappointing, then I'm sorry; if it wasn't disappointing, then I'm still sorry.