Chapter 34

Elsa settled into her first-class seat, ignoring the flight attendant's offer of champagne, and gave up trying to find the best position to sit/lay back. After getting as comfortable as she was going to be, she closed her eyes, and her mind drifted back to her heated conversation with Rapunzel. Even now, she still didn't know if she said the right words.

"I hate you! I hate you I hate I hate you. I hate you so freaking much! You just- uuugh you suck! You're an awful person and I hate you!" Rapunzel said as she paced around her living room. Elsa looked on, terrified that she might start trashing the place or throw things at her.

"Why is it that every time my best friend cries about something, it's always been because of you, huh? Would it kill you to give her a break? To let her be happy just once?!" She shook her head and let out a pitiful laugh, "You know…for a while there, I thought I wouldn't have to see that anymore. After that blow up at the festival, and then you showing up to our apartment, I thought that the nightmare was over and Anna could finally start healing. But that didn't happen now, did it? Did it?!"

When she stopped her pacing to ask that biting question, Elsa looked down at the floor, unable to meet Rapunzel's seething glare.

"She looked at me once you left, and I could see that after all this time, she still didn't want to let you go. I wanted to tell her that going after you was a bad idea, but I knew she'd find a way anyway. She always did…" Rapunzel trailed off, looking like she wanted to say more about that, but she shook her head and just pressed onward.

"Something happened two weeks ago, and Anna won't tell me what. She keeps pretending that everything was fine, but she hasn't been eating or sleeping- I wake up in the middle of the night and, surprise, I hear her crying! Today, I asked her one more time if everything was fine, and she finally caved, but she didn't say what was wrong. I know, though, that it has something to do with you. It's always about- gah, at least have the decency to look at me when I'm talking to you!"

The sudden demand frightened Elsa and she immediately did as she was told. She wanted to reply but couldn't find the words to as she stared into the taller blonde's murderous eyes. Besides, it wasn't like Rapunzel was going to let her.

After a shaky breath, she continued, "I don't think I'll ever understand why, but she still cares about you. A lot." Elsa winced. "She keeps saying something about fate bringing you back together, but I know that even if fate didn't want you two together, she'd find a way. Every time you hurt her, she keeps coming back to you."

"I never asked Anna to-"

"What did I say about-" Rapunzel closed her eyes and composed herself, the murderous intent was still there when she reopened them. "I don't care about what you think, or how you feel, all I care about is never seeing my best friend hurt again. And yeah, maybe I shouldn't be saying all this to my boss, but I just have this feeling that you know I'm right, so you aren't gonna do anything about it. So now I wanna know exactly what happened between you two, why you hurt her this time, and then...then...just tell me what happened."

They had yet to move from their respective positions. Elsa was still backed into her front door, Rapunzel stood just a few feet away with her arms crossed, waiting for a response.

Elsa wanted to defend herself, to try one more time and say that she never asked Anna to keep pursuing her, but in the haze of these two weeks, she could at least admit to herself that she played a big part in their repeated run-ins with each other. And unfortunately, she didn't have the handy excuse anymore of not wanting to see Anna again because of what she'd done in the past; they'd already moved past that and forgiven each other for it.

What she did to Anna to this time...she knew it was wrong. The guilt from hurting her, again, was the biggest reason Elsa couldn't see her yet, or at least call her back. But there was something else too, some other big reason she couldn't pinpoint, or was too scared to. Maybe she should tell Rapunzel all this, but first she needed to tell her what happened between them now.

Surprising herself by even opening her mouth, Elsa spoke timidly, "She called me...two weeks ago, asking if it was okay to have my number. And I said yes, and she sounded so- so excited to be able to talk to me again." Thinking back to that fleeting moment of joy made her want to break right then and there. "And I was kind of repressing it then, but I was excited to hear her voice again too." Despite the growing need to break eye contact, she kept looking at Rapunzel, "I...I've repressed a lot of things…"

She clutched her elbow with her right hand, "Two days later, I called her this time. Before that, I'd been struggling with...with my own feelings towards her, and I wanted to get them straight. Maybe it wasn't, no it definitely wasn't fair, but I wanted to see where her head was at first. I didn't want to say anything rash if she wasn't in the same place as I was." That was such a weak answer, and she decided to leave out the part about her feelings becoming much clearer the more she talked. It would have probably made things worse.

"And then...Anna told me...that she still had feelings for me." Each word became harder and harder to say; the guilt was pushing Elsa down, and she knew saying this next part would crush her. "She told me she still cares about me, and I-I hung up on her."

"You hung up on her." Rapunzel repeated.

Elsa silently nodded.

"Anna told you she still has feelings for you...and you hung up on her."

"I did."

"You're scum. You know that right?"

Again, Elsa didn't bite back or defend herself. She didn't say anything about needing time to process what Anna said to her or say that it was a lot to take in at once. "I was scared." was all she could pathetically muster up.

"You were scared?!" Rapunzel threw back at her. "Anna has the guts to keep coming back to you, even though you've pushed her away and literally been the biggest freaking inconvenience to her, and then tells you that after all that she still likes you...and you hang up on her because you're scared?" She pointed an accusatory finger at her. "Did you ever once try to see it from Anna's perspective? No, you probably didn't because all you can think about is yourself, and how you feel, and what people can do for you. No one else matters in your own little world but you, right?"

"That's not-" Again Elsa restrained herself, but this time Rapunzel caught on.

"That's not...what? What do you want to say, Elsa? What do you really wanna say?" The vindictive blonde slowly advanced towards her, eyes burning a hole into her head. "You've been holding back this entire conversation, I can tell. There are so many things you want to say right now, so why not go ahead and say them? Trust me, there's nothing you can tell me that won't make me hate you more than I already do."

They were face to face now, and Elsa could feel the hatred radiating off her. The debate going on now in her guilt-ridden mind wasn't whether she would disclose everything that she wanted to say, but how much she would actually say. There was no way Rapunzel would let her off the hook this easily without speaking her mind.

"What do you want to say, Elsa? How do you possibly want to defend yourself?" She repeated, further proving that point.

Elsa took a tentative breath, "That's...not true, okay? You make it sound like I never cared about Anna, but I would never have dated her for four years, never would have fallen for her so bad, if I didn't. You don't think it was hard for me when we...when I broke up with her? I couldn't eat or sleep either, I poured myself into my work and didn't want to think about anything else because that was easier than coping with the pain. I am not this monster that you are making me out to be."

"Well you haven't given me any reason to think otherwise." Rapunzel shook her head, "Anna's never had a bad word to say about you, but she never convinced me that you were a good person either."

"And I never expected her to." Elsa argued. "I know I hurt her, so I never expected her to have any good words to say about me. But we put all of that behind us, we forgave each other and I admitted to myself that she didn't do anything wrong. We were each other's worlds back in high school, yes, but we were also just dumb high schoolers that couldn't see the big picture. Or at least...at least I couldn't."

"I don't see the point you're trying to make here."

"I'm getting there, okay?" Elsa held back any more harsh words. No matter how she felt, she knew Rapunzel had the right to be angrier. "What I'm trying to say is that this whole thing isn't so black and white. It's this whole gray spectrum of pain and misunderstandings. And I could stand here for hours trying to convince you that I'm not as bad a person as you think I am, but I know you would never believe me."

"I wouldn't believe you because you literally just hurt Anna again!"

"I didn't mean to!" Elsa said like a kindergartener getting in trouble for pushing a kid off the swings. "Like I said, I got scared when she… When I asked her what she wanted from me, I...I didn't know what to expect, but it wasn't that."

"Then why couldn't you just be honest with her?" Rapunzel reasoned, as if it was that easy. "Why couldn't you just respond in any way instead of hanging up on her?"

"Because I didn't know what to say! It was a lot to take in and I-I...I needed time to think." Her breathing picked up a little, and her heart was racing too. She wanted to give more reasonings about why she needed time to think, but as she thought back to that night and what she would say to her had she not hung up…the picture had become crystal clear. "Oh, I'm so stupid." She said breathlessly, more to herself than to Rapunzel. "I didn't need time to think, I just couldn't say what I wanted to."

"And what did you want to say?"

"...that I'm in love with her."

Time stopped. The world ceased to move. Even the air froze in its unseen movements, as Elsa said the one thing she had been denying for so long. Hannah was right, she was in denial, and she was in love.

She was in love with Anna Dawson, well...maybe it was better to say that she was in love with her again. That revelation should have filled her with joy, this should have been a massive Eureka moment, but knowing what she did to the redhead made her feel guilty instead, more than she already did. Her heart fluttered as her stomach twisted.

And the intensified glare on Rapunzel's face didn't help much either. "You...what?!"

"I'm in love with Anna." Elsa repeated, making it even more real.

Rapunzel walked away from her in a huff, pacing further into her apartment. Her anger was reaching its boiling point. "Are you freaking serious?! Do you- you can hear yourself, right? The girl that you've been hurting since day one, my best friend, you're saying that you're in love with her?!"

"Look I don't know how to explain it either!" Not without angering her any more, at least. "But it makes sense. It's the reason that I've never really stayed away ever since you guys opened up your bakery, and why I haven't been able to get her out of my head since 'day one'. I love her, or I still do...and if I knew that then, if I wasn't so damn stubborn and didn't repress all the good things I remembered about her- about us- then I never would have hung up on her."

"But you did!" Rapunzel made her way back to her. "You hung up on her because you were too scared to...no, I-I still can't understand this. Is this some weird mind trick thing you're trying to do? Trying to manipulate me into thinking you're not a piece of crap?"

Elsa shook her head, "No! This isn't like that! I do actually love her." Gosh, that still felt surreal to say.

"If you love someone, you don't constantly treat them the way that you treat Anna! If you actually love her, then why haven't you talked to her, or called her back?"

"Because…"

"Because what?!"

"Because what if I'm too late?!" Elsa confessed, finally pinpointing the other big reason. "What if she doesn't even want to see me again? And even if she does, what if I confess these feelings to her, and she doesn't feel the same way anymore? I don't know...I don't know if I could handle that."

There was no pity on Rapunzel's face at her confession, and of course she didn't expect any. There was only stone-cold hatred, unwavering no matter what Elsa said to try and ease her conscience, to nudge just the tiniest bit over on to her good side. Her eyes were piercing, her stance was relaxed yet predatory, and she inched even closer towards Elsa until she was right by her ear. And in a low, convicting voice, Rapunzel replied:

"Then you know exactly how Anna's felt for four years."

Perspective. That word that Dr. Sonya told her all those weeks ago. Elsa never really made an effort to get it, and now it was coming at her like a runaway train. In a flash, she no longer felt like herself, she saw through Anna's eyes for the first time.

She saw Anna crying on her bed after telling her long-time girlfriend that they wouldn't be going to the same college, not realizing it would hurt her that bad. She saw Anna barely scraping by at Arendelle U, not entirely falling into a downward spiral due to having Rapunzel and her sheer determination to become a successful baker. She saw Anna stopping the elevator at ArenCorp to try and pull herself together after apologizing and being pushed away by her now ex-girlfriend. She saw, no...she felt Anna's emptiness from "winning" their argument at the festival. She saw Anna's barely contained joy from having their first phone conversation in years. She saw Anna picking at her food, attempting to get the sleep that would never come, succumbing to tears from confessing her feelings and getting rejected in the worst way possible.

"Oh shit…" Elsa said, horrified. "I-I'm a monster, I didn't know how much pain I really…"

"Yeah, well now you do." Rapunzel added coldly as she backed up. "Now get out of my way, I can't stand to be around you anymore."

Elsa put a hand on the door and put her free hand up to block her retreat. "Rapunzel, wait!"

She stopped, physically holding in another venom-filled outburst by clenching her fists and closing her eyes. After opening them, she growled, "What now?"

"Please just...please don't tell Anna anything I told you."

"...are you serious?"

Elsa nodded, her eyes pleading with the taller blonde to listen to reason. "I am. I-I want to make things right with her, I wanna apologize. Again."

Rapunzel's eyes widened, "You-you're joking, right?"

"No, I'm not joking. I understand what I did wrong now, I understand how she's feeling, and I need to fix this. Just like she tried to, just like I wouldn't let her. I need to tell her everything I said tonight...and more. So please Rapunzel, please don't tell her what we talked about."

Rapunzel scoffed, and pushed Elsa away from the door with surprising ease. The former lacrosse star stood her ground against defenders twice her size in high school, but the unexpectedness of it made her fold way too easily. Before Rapunzel left, she glared at her and took one last shot, "You don't get to make these choices, not anymore."

The door slammed in her face.

A few taps on her elbow woke Elsa up from her deep slumber. She didn't get a lot of sleep last night, she didn't get any sleep last night.

A muffled voice above her said something about them almost landing, she couldn't hear them clearly amidst the turbulence and the sleep deprivation. After they left, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve, both surprised and unsurprised to see the fabric stained when she pulled it away and looked out her window.

Amidst the miles and miles of desert, she saw a massive city with towering skyscrapers, intricately crafted highways, and a population double the size of Arendelle's roaming the streets, giving her anxiety just looking at them packed together. The bustling oasis seemed untouched by the blistering heat and sandy borders, and to the west was a sign made with giant, sand-scraped letters that spelled out one word:

AGRABAH

A/N: Writing dialogue between two blonde people is exhausting. I gotta turn Rapunzel into a short brunette soon. Anyway, these next few chapters are gonna be fun.