Chapter Four

Knead the dough, roll the dough, cut the dough, bake the dough, repeat until dead.

Anna shook off those thoughts. If she oversimplified her dream job, then she would start dreading it rather than enjoy it. Besides, being a baker was much more than forming dough into shapes, you also had to make icing and stuff.

And there were also little things about it that made the profession such a dream for her. Like the excitement on a child's face when she put freshly baked cookies in the display case, or the smell when she took out a new loaf of bread from the oven, or the ride to the homeless shelter whenever they dropped off leftover bread.

The little things.

Anna even enjoyed opening up a new bag of flour and seeing the puffs scatter in the air, the wisps helping her to slip into one of her characters. It was a habit she picked up working in the kitchen at Arendelle U.

This time, she pretended she was a showgirl in the 1950s getting ready to go on stage in some big performance hall.

Anna lugged the flour over to a stainless-steel table with shelves, hooks, and a microwave. Which was, of course, never used to bake anything except for mug cakes. She stood in front of a flour-littered mirror and patted her cheeks down with a face towel. "My if you don't look stunning, Anna Dawson, the whiteness really brings out your freckles juuuuust right!"

It was currently 2 PM, a time she liked to call the "sweet spot". It was right after the lunch rush, but before the evening where for some reason everyone wanted cookies and doughnuts and stuff. In this sweet spot, Anna spent her time getting ahead of orders, thinking about the rest of the day or week, and amusing herself when she got a bit too restless. Sort of like right now.

"Ooh I bet the boys'll go blind just looking 'atcha. But then of course no boy could ever catch your fancy, now can they? Mmhmm, but then that'll just be our little secret."

She put a finger to her lips and shushed and tapped the mirror with a coy grin on her face. Sometimes she got a bit too into character.

"And it's such a shame too that you have to go out there and break hearts, but you gotta save up for a ring for the missus, now don't you? Of course…of course you'd need to find a missus first, but I'm sure you'll meet someone. You just gotta."

And sometimes she got a bit too out of character. When she got into her own little world like this, her problems in the real world would occasionally slip in and disrupt the continuity.

"Hey now, don't you worry your pretty little head about that riff-raff. All you have to worry about is putting on a show for the boys in blue- wait shoot I never mentioned they were in the navy. Wait do navy people wear blue? That's why they call it navy blue, right?"

Anna sighed in defeat and frowned into the mirror, "Shoot, alright I lost it."

"Aww man, and it was getting interesting too."

Anna leaned away from the mirror and saw Rapunzel leaning on the doorway with a smile on her face, all clean and flourless.

"Well why don't you come back tomorrow 'Zel? I'll be sure to come up with more material by then.", Anna rebutted with a grin of her own. "Whatcha doing back here anyway? Shouldn't you be dazzling the customers or something?"

Rapunzel laughed, "Not for the time being. Honestly, I might be more useful back here. I've got a new frozen pizza recipe I've been dying to make."

Anna snickered, Rapunzel may know how to take command of a room in seconds, but when it came to baking she was hopeless. In stark contrast, Anna could make magic with just a whisk and a mixing bowl, but couldn't convince a fly that he could, well, fly.

They complimented each other's strengths, and made up for each other's weaknesses. In theory that should have made them a formidable team in the baking business, but in reality it made them barely above average.

"Come oooon, join me up front," Rapunzel whined. "You've got nothing better to do here anyway!"

"Of course I do!", Anna replied. "I've got food to bake and stuff, and I don't know if you know this but that's pretty much how we make our money."

"Yeah I need to talk to you about that, actually. And I wanted to tell you up front, but since you're being a jerk, I guess I'll just tell you here." Rapunzel mumbled that last sentence under her breath. "I think you're baking too much food…and stuff, the shelter called an hour ago and said that they're running low on places to put our bread. Plus, a bunch of homeless people actually peeked into our shop earlier today and it freaked me out for a second."

Anna didn't have an answer for that, although she knew Rapunzel was right.

"What's gotten into you?"

Elsa had. Or rather she had. Or still is. Or something like that.

Point being that it had been a week since she had seen Elsa again, and a week since her conversation with her mother, and ever since then she decided that she wouldn't directly confront Elsa about anything.

She would just wait till the stars aligned, and the timing was right, and fate would bring them together again. Hopefully this time it would be on better terms. But, that left Anna with one goal left on her long-term agenda: making her bakery the best bakery of all bakeries that ever…bakeried.

And to her, that meant burying herself in her work, sometimes literally, so that they could always have a surplus of anything anyone ever wanted ever.

Anna didn't say any of that though, all she said was, "I guess I just didn't know how much I was baking."

Unfortunately, Rapunzel could see right through her, even more so when sober. "This is about Elsa, isn't it?"

"What?! No, of course not!", Anna exclaimed a bit too quickly. "I don't know why you'd think that. I told you, I just got too carried away back here."

But Rapunzel was having none of it, her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed and she spoke with full skepticism. "Is that right? So there's nothing that happened with you and Ms. Andersen in the past?"

"Of course not.", Anna lied.

"You two weren't even on the same lacrosse team?"

"I…okay yes we were, but nothing ever happened", Anna lied again.

"So, if she ever came back here, you wouldn't freeze up on me again? Because I'm pretty sure I have a megaphone back here just in case."

"Of course not." This was, of course, also a lie.

"Then good!", Rapunzel replied like she had just won this pseudo-argument. "Because I actually got off the phone with Ms. Andersen a bit ago. She's gonna be here in half an hour."

Wait…

"What?!"

"Wait, what?!"

"I said that you and Elsa will be on our varsity team. Now I wouldn't usually do this since you're freshmen, but two of our players are injured. You two were the ones that I felt could be the best substitutes."

Anna was stunned, flabbergasted, tongue-tied, and other synonyms for being speechless. When the head coach for the varsity lacrosse team, a no-nonsense woman who just went by her first name Edna, called her and Elsa into her office, Anna was expecting the worst. Maybe they were getting cut from the JV team, or worse, maybe only one of them was getting cut. But they instead got the exact opposite. Now they had an amazing opportunity on their hands to prove themselves.

Despite how unprofessional it was, Anna went over to the woman and gave her a hug. It felt a bit awkward since Edna was actually a head shorter than her. "Oh thank you Edna! I promise that you won't regret this, and me and Elsa will prove that we belong on varsity, just you wait."

"Yes dear I'm sure you'll try. But enough with the hugging and get to practice, your teammates are waiting for you."

"Right, I'll see you out there ma'am", Anna let her coach go and stepped away. "Oh and thank you again!" She added before she and Elsa walked out the door and out of sight.

When they got far enough, Anna looked at the equally as speechless blonde and smiled. Elsa smiled back, and the confused redhead felt that strange feeling in her stomach again, that same feeling from when she first saw her. That first day, in English.

There was something about her that Anna just couldn't understand. Anna loved spending time with her, but she had this feeling that the sensation in her gut whenever Elsa so much as looked at her was something different. Something…more?

Anna wanted to talk to her best friend about this feeling, to see if she felt it too, but so far she hadn't found the right opportunity. She had a suspicion about what it was, she remembered her mother once talking about having "butterflies in your stomach" on rare occasions. Maybe this was one of them.

Soon they made it to their new teammates, who were out in the middle of the field stretching in a large circle. Anna looked over to Elsa, and there was a smile on her face but uncertainty in her eyes. It was clear that she was nervous about the promotion, and it was clear that Anna needed to cheer her up.

She playfully bumped Elsa's shoulder with her own and smiled when Elsa looked over to her, "Hey, you've got nothing to worry about. When they see you out there, working your butt off, then they'll have to go ahead and call you like...the 'Queen of Lacrosse' or something not as lame. You'll do great!"

Elsa giggled, which meant Anna succeeded, "So then what'll that make you? There can't be two queens of lacrosse."

Anna shrugged, "I guess I'll just be a princess. I've always wanted to be a princess anyway, there are less responsibilities and all you have to do is be pretty."

"Well, I think you've got that part covered already."

There was that feeling again.

That compliment was so unlike her, so out of character, and yet it sounded so…right. Coming from Elsa, it just felt right. She didn't know what to do aside from laughing and saying thanks. But despite how confused she was over this situation with Elsa, at least she could feel accomplished in cheering her best friend up.

They walked in silence until they got nearer to the middle of the field, and in that silence, Anna decided to declare to herself that she would get to the bottom of this feeling sooner rather than later. Maybe that meant next week, maybe that meant tomorrow, all she knew was she was tired of not understanding this. She wanted to solve this mystery, and she wanted to solve it soon.

"Oh my gosh Anna, slow down. I said half an hour not half a minute."

"You drop this big package of suck on me now, and then expect me to not clean up like a madman?!"

"Madwoman."

"Whatever! Just…gah, there's so much flour! Why is there so much flour!"

Anna frantically wiped down her workstation, not moving over to another square inch of space until the one she was wiping down was spotless. After this, she'd have to scrub her hands clean, wash her face until there wasn't a centimeter of powder on her, and get a new apron. Maybe she'd even redo her hair.

After finding some time to breathe in between all her rampant thoughts, Anna spoke again. A tiny bit calmer this time. "Sorry Rapunzel, I kinda…I mean I need to clean okay, why don't you just go back to the front and wipe down the counter or something."

Rapunzel stayed motionless, eyeing her curiously. "Yeah it's spotless, but that doesn't matter right now. I thought you said you weren't going to freak out over seeing Elsa again."

"I'm not freaking out!", Anna countered. "But I have to make this place super clean, you know? She's our boss- no scratch that, she's like our boss' boss. Wouldn't you want to be just a little bit presentable?"

"There's being presentable and then there's…this." Rapunzel gestured to how Anna had gotten yet another towel to wipe down a cooking counter that wasn't that big or dirty to begin with. "You really need to just slow down and realize that…Anna look at me!"

Anna stopped, when Rapunzel only raised her voice when she was serious, she knew better than to not listen. She put down the rag and tore her gaze away from the counter that she could see two of her reflections in. If that was even possible.

Rapunzel took a deep breath and walked over to Anna, she put both hands on the redhead's shoulders and looked her square in the eye. "You, my friend, are an awful liar. Something did happen between you and Elsa, something big. But I promise you I will stop butting in on whatever happened if you can just take a breath and calm down; because this you, the one I'm looking at right now, I don't like this you. This you is reckless, this you doesn't listen, and frankly this you isn't really fun to be around. So please just take a breath, if not for me then for you."

Glaring grammar errors aside, Anna knew that Rapunzel was right. She also knew that her own plan had worked, even if it wasn't in a way that she wanted. Fate was bringing her and Elsa together again, and no matter how the conversation turned out, she was determined to finally settle things with Elsa after four years of avoiding her.

She took one deep breath, letting her shoulders rise and fall and feeling the unease wash away if only for the moment. "Sorry, I just… I'm sorry," she said to Rapunzel. "What does she want anyway, did she say?"

Rapunzel shrugged, "She didn't say much, just that she wanted to talk to the both of us about our bakery. It could be good, it could be bad, it could even be both."

"Well I guess that's all we have to work with." Anna picked up the rag that she was using before and held it up to her friend, "But I still feel like cleaning this place up a bit, you mind helping me out?"

One day after the announcement of their call-up to varsity, Anna finally got the answer to her biggest problem.

During lunch, as Elsa was giving her pointers on the essay she had written the night before, a pair of boys had come up to their table with smug grins on their faces. Anna didn't know that many people here yet, but she knew enough to know that these boys weren't freshmen like they were. They were older, taller, and had this air about them that said they were likely one year away from owning this whole school.

The boy nearest to Anna, a preppy type with well-kept chestnut colored hair and clothes more expensive than they probably should have been, initiated a conversation with them first.

"Well well, how are you two fine ladies doing today?", he said with a fraught sense of arrogance.

Elsa was completely caught off guard by this sudden intrusion and had zipped her mouth shut, Anna however was unfazed by the boy's bravado and smiled. "Hi, we're doing just fine thank you. I'm Anna, and this right here is my friend Elsa. What can we do for you guys?"

Admittedly, she probably shouldn't have said their names.

"Oh this isn't about what you can do for us, it's about what we can do for you", the boy replied as if he was some estranged door-to-door salesman.

Anna didn't understand what he meant by that, and so she said so. "I'm not sure what you mean. I don't think Elsa and I really need anything from you guys, but it's nice of you to offer…whatever it is you're offering."

The boy chuckled, "Now settle down now, girlie. I think you actually do need what we're 'offering.' See me and my boys have been seeing you around school and we decided to finally say hi in person. You know, like gentlemen. And as gentlemen…we were wondering if the two of you, would like to go out with the two of us."

"No, that's okay", Anna replied without a second thought.

The toothy grin on the boy's face disappeared, now there was just a disappointed frown. "I'm sorry what was that?"

"We're not interested, but thank you for the invite." This was true, at least for Anna it was. And it wasn't that she wasn't attracted to these two boys, although they weren't exactly making the best case for themselves, she just didn't have interest in boys at all.

When she was a little girl, her mother would always tell her that someday she would find a nice boy, fall in love, get married, and settle down, and Anna was for some reason excited about that. But as she got older and gave every boy a chance to give her that feeling of "falling in love", it didn't happen. When Anna told her about this mystery, her mother just said that she was still a bit too young to understand what falling in love meant. But Anna felt like it was more than that, like she was looking for it in the wrong place.

Try as she might, she just couldn't see the appeal, they were just like girls except with flatter chests, shorter hair, and more obnoxious attitudes. At first Anna felt disappointed, even ashamed, for not liking boys enough, but by the end of middle school she had learned to just accept it. She didn't like boys, it wasn't anything she could change and she decided it wasn't worth changing.

So when this new boy came into the picture, Anna knew exactly what to say.

Unfortunately, he didn't take that news very well. "I don't think you understand the opportunity that you're throwing away here. Do you know who I am? I could make you at this school, I could help you become the most popular girls to ever walk these halls, I could give you a reputation you never thought you'd ever have."

Still, Anna remained unfazed by this sudden outburst and rebutted. "Well of course I don't know who you are, you haven't told us our name even though we told you ours, which is kind of rude by the way. And I don't think we need you to 'make us' at this school, we're on the varsity lacrosse team so I think we'll be fine."

"Ha!", the boy said sharply. "You think being on the lacrosse team will make you popular? You're dreaming."

"I never said that, we don't wanna be popular anyway. I'm sorry that you feel so insecure, but we don't." Anna didn't need to add that last bitter sentence, but this boy was really ticking her off and she just wanted to get rid of him.

"Hey, Hans Westerguard is never insecure." His friend/goon interrupted.

Hans put a hand up to stop the other boy from talking, but he didn't go away. He just looked at Anna with gritted teeth and clenched fists until he closed his eyes and took a breath that sounded more like a hiss. He looked away from Anna and fixed his predatory eyes on Elsa, who looked like she wanted to be anywhere else but here. "Fine then, what about you? I like the quiet types anyway, they're usually the freakiest."

"Wh-what?", Elsa stammered out.

"Yeah, you heard me." Somehow he had finally found his smile again and put on a grin with the worst intention. "You want to go out or what?"

"She's not interested.", Anna said on her behalf.

"Shut up, I'm talking to your friend. Now what do you say? Ditch this zero and go out with a hero, am I right?"

Something inside of Anna had snapped, that same gut feeling she got when she looked at Elsa reemerged when this creep set his sights on her. But there was something else right along with it, it felt like a flame in the pit of her stomach that burned brighter and hotter the more he looked at Elsa. Before she knew it, the whole cafeteria's eyes were on her as she rose to her feet and let out a loud "Hey!"

And before she could ask herself if it was a good idea, Anna reeled back her hand and slapped Hans right in the face as soon as he looked back at her.

She heard a collective "Ooh!" from the whole room as the creep tumbled and fell to the ground. There must have been a lot more force in that slap than she thought. The adrenaline fell as quickly as it rose, and Anna felt a bit of fear over what would happen when he got back up.

But he just glared at Anna, shook his head, and walked away. As they walked with their tails between their legs, she heard the other boy mutter "I told you they were dykes." She had no idea what that meant, but it didn't sound nice.

When the cafeteria door closed, it was like a switch had been flipped. Everyone turned away from the pair and continued their previous conversations like that insane scene hadn't happened at all.

Elsa, who had stood up as well at some point, looked utterly shocked. Anna calmed down her rapidly beating heart and said with a breathy voice, "Are you okay?" Like a knight saving a princess from a giant dragon.

Elsa nodded, "Yeah, yeah I think I will be. I just…wow. Anna, what in the world was that?!"

Anna shrugged, "I don't know, I just felt like it was the right thing to do. Now come on, you were saying something about my verb usage before?"

It wasn't the most ideal way for this lunch period to go down, but damn if it wasn't eventful. After finally settling herself down, they sat back down and picked up where they left off.

Except Anna couldn't actually do that.

Her heart was beating so fast because she didn't want Elsa to say yes.

Butterflies, that was what the feeling was. Butterflies fluttering inside her stomach that made her float and feel elated, and they only emerged every time she looked at Elsa. Her mother told her this would happen, and she also told her that someday she would fall in love, but she never expected it to happen like this.

Anna was in love, unfortunately she was in love with her best friend.

The doorbell, perched and dangling on top of the door, rattled and rang thirty minutes later on the dot like Rapunzel said. Anna looked over to her friend, both of them now clean and presentable, and nodded. "Well I guess it's time.", she said.

Rapunzel nodded in agreement and they walked back to the front of the store.

Thirty minutes of cleaning and apron changing should have been enough time to mentally and emotionally prepare herself to find out if and how she could talk to Elsa again. But if four years couldn't prepare her, how could she expect thirty minutes to?

She decided to trust in fate once more to give her the right words to say. Regardless of what happened, today would be the day fate decided everything.

But when they got to the front, Elsa was nowhere to be found. In her stead was a different woman, one of Asian descent wearing a modest, red dress with her hair in a bun held up by a gorgeous jeweled pin. She seemed to be looking at their bakery with disdain, grimacing at an invisible speck of dust on the counter.

Anna had no idea what to make of this sudden change of plans, but Rapunzel was adept at improvisation. "H-hello, welcome to the Warm Hearts Bakery. Can I…help you?"

"Yes, I am here on behalf of Ms. Andersen. You received a call from her earlier", the woman said while still looking at the counter.

"Yep-I mean yeah she called me, but I was under the impression that she would be meeting us today."

"Ms. Andersen had something come up, she asked me to come in her stead," the woman finally gave them an inkling of recognition as she pointed her piercing black eyes towards them both. "I suppose it's better like this anyway, after all I am the one that signs your checks."

"Oh so you're like our supervisor then?"

The woman glared at Rapunzel, "I'm not like your supervisor, I am your supervisor."

"Right, I'm sorry I didn't mean to…I mean I was just trying to-"

"What my partner's trying to say…," Anna started, surprised that she found her voice, "…is that we're glad you're here, but what do you- or rather what does Ms. Andersen need from us?"

The woman shifted her glare towards Anna. It looked so natural as if she practiced it in the mirror every morning. "Ms. Andersen wanted to issue a report, or rather a warning, for your little…bakery here. You are aware that you must report your quarterly earnings correct?"

Anna didn't like how she said the word "bakery" like she didn't even think Warm Hearts had any business being called that. Maybe it wasn't a conventional kind of bakery, but it still had...charm? "We are aware of that, yes," she replied, not letting this woman faze her.

"And you know that this quarter ends in a month, yes?"

"Of course." Anna actually didn't, and she probably should have, but she didn't want her finding that out.

"Because this bakery has recently opened, you are looked at with the most scrutiny in regards to earnings. Every business has its own projected earnings to reach, and if you don't reach yours then we will have no reason to fund an underperforming business."

Anna felt insulted, it was clear this woman didn't have any faith in their bakery. If she didn't trust them, then Anna would just have to make her. "You don't have to worry about the Warm Hearts Bakery, we know we have what it takes to make this the best bakery you or anyone has ever seen."

The glare faded away, replaced with a grin she hadn't seen on anyone in a long time. One that said she found Anna's confidence amusing, but idiotic. It made her blood boil. And then the woman said something that made it go from searing hot to prickling cold. "You must earn $10,000 by the end of the month to reach your quota."

Rapunzel and Anna stood speechless, unable to process such a number; and even though they didn't say it, they were both thinking the same thing: how in the hell were they going to make that much in a month?

No, no they had to keep the hope alive. They just had to. Even with this monstrous task ahead of them, they had to have hope in this little bakery that could.

The woman left them both to stew in their own uncertainty, she gave a small nod and said "Good day." before walking out the door. It took a good minute after she had left for their situation to truly sink in, Rapunzel actually had to grip the display counter next to her before her legs gave out.

"Oh my gosh Anna…", she said breathlessly. "That…we can make that much right? In one month? We can do this, can't we? Please Anna, tell me that we can do this."

Anna didn't answer, her mind was a torrent of emotions: confusion, frustration, and…anger. So, so much anger.

This was her dream, no scratch that, it was their dream, hers and Rapunzel's. And nothing would keep them from that. She would fight to keep it alive no matter what the costs, but even Anna knew when she was getting a bum deal. This right here was the bummest of deals anyone could ever get.

Anna wanted to fight for their dream, and she was going to fight, but she was going to make sure that it was a fair fight. And to do that she couldn't hide behind fate. She had to go to the source of her frustrations, grab her by the collar, and ask her point-blank the three words she uttered breathlessly:

"What the hell."

A/N: Okay so I'm no business major, I get all my information on this story from Google (my search history is super weird now). Maybe it's easy to earn $10,000 for a bakery, maybe it's not. All I know is that $10,000 is a lot of money, and I could really use that money right now. So if anyone has like an extra $10,000 lying around, hit me up okay?