(uploaded — 8.27.15) :: [(disclaimer: i've never taken ap bio but im sure that it's a wonderful class where teachers are able to keep their students in control. just sayin'.) chapter is dedicated to fruipit! you're awesome. :D anyway it seems the wait time in between chapters just gets longer and longer & the chapter length itself gets longer and longer too and omg this chapter was so freakin hard to write it fought me every step of the way. but heck by this point i'll be happy if anyone even remembers what this story is about. i'm not going try & give an excuse for how horribly late this is. however, i will reiterate that i do not plan on abandoning this story.]

:.

I don't own Frozen. You can also find this on AO3.

Artifice

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(iv)

i walk a lonely road

the only one that i have ever known

don't know where it goes

but it's only me and i walk alone

chapter four :: trust

-—

part the first :: real me

From the horror stories Elsa has heard over the past few weeks about airplanes mysteriously malfunctioning in midair, she could safely say that she'd been starting to have second thoughts about agreeing to accompany Agdar to the IGC. But in the end, it turns out that she has nothing to fear.

In fact, the sole thing she's found out about plane rides is that they're very boring. She's been sitting in the same seat for about two hours now, and she's absolutely dying to stand up and maybe flip some cartwheels. Though the last time she'd tried to cartwheel, she'd almost broke her neck, and then Anna had forbade her from ever trying to do such a stunt ever again.

Sighing wearily, Elsa wiggles in her seat, trying to find a comfortable position. There isn't even any air turbulence of any kind to shake things up — their trip to the International Genetics Conference has had a noticeable lack of anything weather-related in general. The only silver lining is that Creator had claimed two seats in business class as well. From what Elsa had seen in the main coach class of the airplane, business class is one step up from that.

When she hasn't been squirming around anxiously, she's been looking out the small airplane window, watching clouds that look like the cotton candy Anna had brought back from a school festival one time. Except, these clouds are snowy white instead of vibrant blue and they're more wispy-like. Elsa likes how they look, detached and free-floating through the air, forming a layer of fluff underneath the metallic wings of the plane. As far as she can tell, the trip to the IGC takes about three hours, flying from La Guardia in New York to Beijing, China. Apparently, it used to take a lot longer, but with recent breakthroughs in aerospace technology, the trip length had been slashed by more than seventy-five percent.

Or so the Creator is trying to tell her. Elsa hadn't pegged him for an airplane enthusiast, or whatever it was called, but she definitely isn't as interested. Mostly, she just tunes him out and continues looking at the unobtainable clouds outside, floating in the air without a care in the world. If she didn't know any better, she'd have thought that he is trying to break up the awkward silence that had settled down between them ever since...well, ever since that day in the lab, really.

Dreams of malformed bodies floating in vats that are glowing seemingly without any light source are a common occurrence nowadays.

"You alright there, Elsa?"

Elsa blinks in surprise at the soft voice coming from besides her, a break in the monotony that had been him talking about structural loads upon vehicle components. She turns around to take in the view of the Creator, worried eyes peering at her from underneath the shine of his reading glasses.

"You seemed like you were zoning out a bit, there."

She nods, uncertain. "Um...yes. I'm sorry. I was...lost in my thoughts. What were you saying?"

He chuckles a little. "Never mind that, it seems that I was partially the cause of your inattention, for the lack of a better word. I must remember that not everyone is quite as enthusiastic about aerospace technology as I am...despite the fact that I work with the life sciences." He gives another laugh, warm and hearty, and Elsa tentatively smiles as well. But it is close-lipped and it bares no teeth — it's strained — and the Creator's chuckles soon taper off into an awkward silence only broken by the snuffles and sounds and riffs of paper coming from the other passengers in their cabin.

"Cr — father," she hastily amends, and internally berates herself for nearly tripping up again, "I'd, um...I'd like to...know now...a-about the..."

Her voice trails off, leaving her question hanging in midair in the space between them. The Creator immediately averts his gaze. Elsa's question seemingly begins to crystallize into something cold, the temperature dropping closer and closer to absolute zero the longer it's left unanswered. It twists on itself until it's like there's a web of glittering, frozen ice separating the two of them in their seats, one that the Creator is unwilling to puncture but Elsa is so desperate to shatter.

Needless to say, it effectively kills the mood that the Creator had been trying to create between them.

"You promised." Her voice is small and slightly resigned when it's clear that he's hesitating, and no answer is forthcoming. "You...promised."

"I know, Elsa," he sighs, running a hand through his hair. "I know I did, and I promise, I'll answer it here. Here and now." He shakes his head, resigned, as if accepting to face a hard truth. "In fact, if you would like me to, I will tell you all of it. The whole story behind your...birth. You...you deserve that much."

Elsa doesn't answer him. But she doesn't need to. The spark of interest curls in her eyes, and it's a burning flame that fixates onto the Creator, unblinking and patient.

"You were created for Anna," he admits, his shoulders slumping as he stares at the unfolded gray tray in front of him. It carries a single, half-filled cup of Sprite and an unused paper napkin. "Only for Anna. After her sis...biological sister Elsa died, she turned into someone else. She was like a shadow of who she used to be, kind of like a ghost, almost. She rarely ever smiled or laughed anymore, which were both things that she used to do all the time. Sometimes, in the few scant weeks after Elsa died from leukemia, I would see her rushing toward me when I came home from work, her face lit up with delirious happiness.

"You see, I always entered from the front door, and Elsa always used to come in through there too when she came home from school. Anna would be there to greet her. So she'd come running to me with unadulterated happiness and joy in her gestures. And that was...that was because she thought I was Elsa." He takes a shaking breath. "Her expression...it would practically crumple into literal despair when she registered the fact that I wasn't Elsa. She'd race upstairs, and Idun and I would hear her crying and screaming sometimes, asking why Elsa was gone. Why her sister wasn't there, why she wasn't coming back, why her sister had broken her promise to her. I never quite understood the last bit, but clearly, it still affected Anna and fed into her grief.

"There was nothing that Idun and I could do about it. It was just like she was locked up in her own world of sadness, and no one but herself could pull her out of it. I hated seeing her like that. I wanted my little Anna back. The Anna who would always find a way to steal chocolate from the pantry, no matter how high we put it up or how well we hid it. The Anna who was always up for playing in the snow, playing dress-up in the living room, making pillow forts in the dead of the night and falling asleep halfway through. The Anna who always had a smile on her face and a laugh ringing in the air around her, the Anna who was alive. The Anna who would skate around the halls in nothing but her socks and pajamas, laughing wildly as she skidded down the halls or slid down banisters — granted, I always feared that she would break her neck doing such activities, but it was such an intrinsic part of Anna that if she stopped doing so, like she did after Elsa's death, it would transform her into a different person. And...without those wonderful qualities, the fun-loving and feisty and plenty hyperactive daughter I'd come to love...she was simply not Anna. And that was something I could not stand to bear.

"It was a hard decision. Cloning had been successfully achieved before, but only in animals. By the time I decided I would clone Elsa — you — only one experiment had ever been attempted on primates, chimpanzees, and it...did not turn out all well. But I was determined — I would make Anna happy, and since all her grief seemed to be stemming from Elsa's death, I would succeed in cloning my elder daughter..."

He shakes his head. "So...I did everything in my power to make that happen." Agdar looks at her, and if Elsa didn't know any better, she'd have said that he looks almost apologetic. "And it goes without saying, but you are testament to that."

But not without a caveat, Elsa wants to say. I am testament to that, but so were the unlucky nineteen Elsas before me. I just happened to be lucky number twenty. She wants to say it so badly, because that's what she wanted to know. Knowing why she was created, knowing why all those other clones were created is all fine and dandy, but it begs the other question, the one she's more concerned about. How the Creator could ever think it was acceptable to make nineteen other errors of herself, of Elsa, and keep them locked up in whatever suspended animation they were in because they weren't...right. Because they weren't perfect?

Agdar's still looking at her, his blue gaze searching through her own. Elsa wonders for a brief moment if he's staring into her soul (if she even had a soul) before he speaks up again.

"Elsa, sweetie, look...I'm not saying this to make you upset."

Elsa's eyes narrow.

"Do you trust me?"

No.

She doesn't reply.

"I simply couldn't bring myself to tell you about the...others," he tentatively says, his gaze still pointed. "I didn't want you thinking of yourself as someth...someone who was easily disposable." Like you are now, he doesn't say. "I didn't know how you would react. Part of me didn't want to know." His voice is quiet, and though the plane cabin hums with quiet thrums of activity from other passengers, Elsa can't help but feel that the two of them were alone in a silent and plain room. There is something so muted yet clinical about the way the Creator is discussing this, because he still hasn't broached the topic about the nineteen other Elsas before her and only touches upon them by referring to them as "others," which Elsa supposes is synonymous with "mistakes."

"Truth be told," he murmurs after a short pause, "I wasn't even a hundred percent sure you would...understand."

Elsa's lips tighten. She turns away and stares at the clouds.

"...That came out wrong," says the Creator quickly. "I'm sorry, I just meant to say —"

"No, it didn't." Elsa's almost surprised to hear the words coming out of her mouth. It feels like she's hearing them from another dimension, foggy and distant, but she's still speaking them. "It was honest."

"That doesn't mean it was...right," Agdar responds. Elsa has to fight to keep a frown from breaking out across her face. She can't help but feel he's just saying what she wants so desperately to hear. She can tell he's trying to catch her gaze again, but she refuses to let him. She begins to create shapes in the clouds outside with her mind, and imagines a duckling before piping up once more.

"Well, you would've been sugarcoating it if you said it any other way," she retorts. "And besides, what's 'right' and 'wrong', anyway? Why is anything you just said wrong? Is it the fact that you made a Freudian slip, or that it just wasn't 'right'? And," she observes him out of the corner of her eye, "I think it's better that way. Aren't rightness and wrongness just nothing more than...than some human constructions?" Like I am?

He doesn't respond.

"I was thinking about that last night," Elsa continues. She laces her fingers together, interlocking them tightly. Her voice has dropped down, so far that she can barely hear what she's saying herself. The rustle of cloth next to her signals that Agdar has bent over in his seat, his body leaning closer to her own. "Because I think that 'rightness' can be very subjective. I couldn't sleep, so I was reading one of those big books you had in the study to pass the time. It was a history book of the second world war. It talked about Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and the Holocaust.

"It sounds very horrible, what he did. Exterminating all those poor people like that, merely because of a single trait they possessed that he thought inferior and degrading. But Hitler, he was doing the right thing in his mind. ...Because doesn't anyone do anything because they think it's the right thing to do? You may even think that an action is, say, morally wrong and tell yourself as such, but you would never honestly carry it out if some part of you didn't think it 'right'. It's something that you tell yourself to do, on the basis that you want to get to something, you want to do something...whether it be for selfish reasons, or selfless ones."

She raises her head now, still refusing to look at Agdar in the eye. "So I couldn't help but wonder...with me. Just like the concept of right and wrong, I am a human construction." A small and bitter smile graces her lips. "Sometimes, I wonder whether I breathe because of your selfishness or selflessness."

The Creator is pale. "I told you, I couldn't stand seeing Anna so upset."

I, I, I. I this and I that.

But Elsa nods.

"So selflessness," she says, toneless. "But still, you can't say that anything you've done in regards to me and the other nineteen clones can be brushed under the carpet."

Especially after I woke. After how you treated me, however unconsciously. How the entire world treats me, or will treat me once they find out what I am. You think that Elsa numbers one through nineteen were freaks, but I'm just as much of a freak as them.

Her fingers tighten on the armrest, nails digging into dark leather. They leave half-moon imprints when she peels them away.

The Creator, she notices, has given up trying to regain her attention. He is now staring at the seat in front of him, his ears aglow with a bright red.

Elsa closes her eyes.

"Elsa," the Creator says quietly.

She burrows a little bit into her jacket and peeks over the edge of the puffy blue material. Behind the barrier of fabric, she bites her lower lip. "...Yes?"

"...I love you, okay?"

His voice is soft. Oh, god, it's so very soft, but regardless, Elsa feels like she's been hit with a thousand tons of concrete. "I'm sorry for all the grief I've caused you, intentional or not. But I love you. Truly."

She doesn't respond, and she can almost see him deflating when she retreats further into her jacket.

Truth be told, she doesn't know what to think of this confession. Elsa has heard him say that once before, that night when she'd heard him and Idun arguing over...well, her. But she still doesn't know which Elsa he loves: his daughter, or herself.

No, a nasty voice whispers in her head. They're the same person. You're a biological copy of someone else, and they were too. The only difference is that you look more like the girl you are supposed to be imitating than the others, and you're not floating inside a vat of green liquid and completely unaware to what's happening around you.

I'm my own person! she argues back.

Look at yourself. There were nineteen other incarnations before you. You can't possibly think that "you're your own person."

That doesn't matter!

Doesn't it?

Elsa recoils as if she's been burned. Furtively, she tugs up the tops of her collar, shielding her face from both the Creator and the light outside.

She has never been more eager for anything else when the plane touches down on the runway.

:.

The airport terminal is a fucking nightmare. Elsa can't help but jump at every sudden noise, and there are quite a lot of those here. The mechanical voices speaking over the intercom in various different languages are informing passengers that flight so and so is about to leave, gather your luggage and tickets and please proceed to the loading gate. The general chatter of other patrons at the airport rise and fall in sound as well. Screaming babies; whining children with rumbling bellies; harried adults; the clicks of heels and boots upon the floor; suitcase wheels grating against tile. Despite their frosty conversation on the plane, Elsa sticks close to the Creator, never straying too far away from him as they gather their luggage and leave the terminal. Once they step out past the sliding glass doors, an audible huff of relief escapes her. The Creator, oblivious to her newfound ease, then ushers her onto an air-shuttle that will take them to the building where the IGC is being hosted and clambers on after her.

Dragging the pad of her thumb absently across the clear glass, Elsa peers outside. There's a sparse forest bordering both sides of their line, backed by some kind of pinkish stone brick wall. They're on a stretch of road, the air-shuttle having locked magnetically into place on some long silver strip that had been laid down upon the ground. As they speed onward, the wall slopes lower and lower and the trees begin to disappear until there are no more trunks blocking what lays beyond. And then, for the first time, Elsa can see the city skyline of Beijing, China — and what a sight it is.

Reportedly, Beijing had many problems with air pollution in the past, but Elsa sees no such problem now. The Beijing she is staring at in awe is a glittering metropolis saturated with color, with tall towers and ivory spires stabbing into the clear blue sky. There is a visible glow coming from it, something Elsa can even see from here. The electronic hum of thousands of billboards and signs, currents and power that drives an average citizen's life all thrum through the air. As they draw closer, the shimmer makes itself clear as an enormous, vernacular dome that appears to encase the entire metropolis.

"...Oh my gosh..."

The words slip out of her mouth before she can stop them. She's been thrown in awe of this technological marvel, the sheer beauty of the architecture in front of her, that her jaw slackens. She can hear the Creator's low chuckle and fabric swish as he edges closer to her as well, peering out the window.

"It's for climate control," he says. "Among other things. Just wait until you see what's inside."

Their small air shuttle zips through the lane, arriving at a series of checkpoints that they pass through with little to no problem. The driver steers the shuttle into a small tunnel, lit by a line of small yet powerful white lights, until they burst out into the bustling streets of Beijing.

Colors. That's the first thing that hits her. She had thought that Beijing seemed like a polychromatic paradise from the outside, yet the inside blows even that away. Every building seems to have been built in some strange, shiny material that reflects the light dancing down from the artificial sun before throwing off prismatic rainbow shades. They look a soft powder blue from one angle, yet an angry bright crimson from another. The people on the streets are dressed in everything from sharp black business suits with nary a crease in their cuffs, to gaudy feather-coated costumes, to average day wear.

Though the exterior climate had been muddy and somewhat unpleasantly sticky, Beijing itself is balmy and warm. Elsa supposes that this is the climate control at work, but is quickly distracted by the other sights that the city has to offer. She hadn't seen too much of a ways in technological innovations back at the Arendelle estate — sure, Anna owned quite a few holoscreens and there had been the gigantic multipurpose television in the family room, but not much else. In Beijing, she can see flickers of blue light whisking around everywhere. Larger-than-life seals and signs are beamed into the air, flickering subtly, advertising words in a language that Elsa can't read, but the images tell all anyway. Noodle shops, flower boutiques, supermarkets, business buildings — all were in company.

Elsa would be content with getting lost in Beijing for the entire day, just taking time to absorb all the sights, but all too soon the shuttle comes to a smooth halt in front of a conference hall. It seems to be one of the older buildings, built of regular stone marble instead of whatever chromatic material newer structures were made of. Elsa squints at the characters etched into sharp relief in the stone, and wonders why Chinese looks so damn complicated.

The Creator thanks the shuttle driver, who helps to unload all their luggage, two small suitcases filled with the bare necessities. Everything the Creator needs for the conference has already been saved onto the cloud or is inside a carry-on bag he keeps with his person at all times. (And, Elsa amends, lugging a suitcase and walking with him into the hall.)

The interior of the hall is wide and spacious. An attendant hurries over to take their luggage — the Creator appears to exchange a few words with him, quiet and quick. The man nods a few times. He passes off the bags and suitcases to another waiting attendant, and fumbles with a large list and a PDA.

"Mr. Agdar Arendelle?" he asks in thickly accented English. "And, erm...Subject Twen — ?"

Elsa thinks that the sudden pang in her heart that strikes when she hears the beginning of those words must be what it feels like to get shot. It isn't the attendant's fault — she can see him reading off his list — but she still takes a step back from the man.

Something disposable to be used, whispers the voice inside her mind.

"Elsa Arendelle," the Creator quickly interjects. Elsa doesn't miss the way his head turns toward her, though it's a barely perceptible movement. He shoots a panicked glance at her from the corner of his eye.

She ducks her head down, refusing to meet his pleading gaze. At the uncomfortable clearing of the attendant's throat, the Creator finally turns back, though his movements are stiffer than they were before.

"...Elsa Arendelle," repeats the attendant, his eyes briefly flickering from the Creator to Elsa to the list in his hand. He fixes his eyes back onto the Creator, however, after a few more tense moments. "Sir, it's an honor to have you attending the conference."

"The pleasure is all mine."

The attendant withdraws a plastic card, giving it a brief scan with the PDA. "Your number and registration, sir," he tells the Creator. "You are sixth in line to present."

"Thank you." Tucking the card into his breast pocket, and giving a brief nod of acknowledgment to the attendant, Agdar turns to Elsa. Both of them walk to the doors that open into the auditorium, their footsteps muffled by the rich carpet lining the ground.

"...Are you ready?" he asks, soft and reserved. He sounds apologetic, his eyes glossing over with a sheen of guilt. His hand unconsciously tugs at the tie around his neck, ever-conscious of his outward appearance.

No.

"Yes," she says quietly, and allows him to lead her into the auditorium.

:.

"Anna, can I talk with you?"

When she had been younger, the sound of her mother's voice speaking those words had always smashed a giant load of anxiety into her chest as soon as she registered them. They would send a brief yet intense bolt of fear that had dropped her heart down from where it was beating erratically in the confines of her ribcage straight to her feet. Perhaps it would be because Mama had found the empty jar of cookies in the pantry where yesterday it had been full, or maybe she saw Anna stuffing that abominable mathematics grade she'd received in the garbage can. Nevertheless, those words had always preceded a "talking-to", as her mother liked to put it. Anna always slapped on her most winsome smile during these "talking-to"s — though perhaps they'd be marred by crumbs dotting the corners of her lips — in the face of this situation.

But now, all she feels is resignation. She has a pretty good guess (at least a very accurate one, she thinks) as to where this is going.

There are lines at the corners of her mother's eyes now, little crow's feet that had been brought upon by stress and age. She leans against the polished granite counter that separates the living room from the dining area and pulls a stool up, patting it. "Sit with me?"

Anna complies. The stone is cold against her bare skin, sending an involuntary shiver down her spine. She can hear her mother let out a heavy sigh next to her, her blank eyes seemingly staring into nothing.

"If this is about Elsa," Anna says stubbornly, cutting to the point that Idun seems content to dance around, "I...really don't want to hear it."

A small snort tears through her mother's composure. "Anna, don't tell me that your father has brainwashed you into thinking that thing is your sister."

Anna can feel her teeth grinding against each other. "First of all, Elsa's not a 'thing,'" she says. "If you just took two seconds out of your day to try and talk to her, you wouldn't even think of saying so. Me and Elsa've been talking lots over the past week or whatever. We've had totally normal and casual conversations, just like sisters should. And second of all, Dad didn't brainwash me into thinking anything. I can make my own decisions, you know."

"Anna, you're just a child." Her mother's voice has turned flinty, eyes cold and hard as they fixate onto Anna's slumped form. The strawberry blonde refuses to meet her eyes. "What do you know about making the right decisions?"

"What, so just because you're an adult, means that you always make the right choices?" Anna snaps back. "And I'm seventeen, Mom, but you still act like I'm three! ...I'm not a kid anymore, okay?"

Green eyes narrow. "I don't understand," she says. "One moment, you are treating that —"

Anna buries her face into her hands. "Mom, please."

Her mother seems to be resisting rolling her eyes. "— alright, fine, Elsa, like your worst enemy. And then the next, you're trying to...defend her."

"Family is family," says Anna into her shirt.

"Family? She's a clone."

"So? Elsa's...well, clone Elsa's composed of the same genetic material, right? That means she has your genes and Dad's genes and my genes. Which means she's family! Or...something. I mean, uh, is she composed of my genes? I think I meant that she shares my genes. I mean, I'm not her mom, which means that I didn't give her any genes or stuff, 'cause I didn't give birth to her —" Anna gestures wildly in alarm. "Oh my god, that came out wrong. Very wrong. Okay, look, I swear I listen to my teacher in AP Bio! We just haven't done heredity yet, please don't ground me, and ninth grade was different —"

"You don't find that in any way disturbing?" her mother asks, ignoring the rest of her daughter's blather. "That your father harvested —"

"'Harvested'? Seriously? Can't you use a better word?"

"— took Elsa's blood for samples before she died just so that he could make a carbon copy of her, without even consulting the rest of her family before he did so? Do you have any idea what kind of human ethics this breaks?"

"Your ethics," Anna responds wearily, lifting her head.

"They're universal ethics."

"Yeah, well, at one point in time it was like also a 'universal ethic' to persecute gay people or something. Look at where we are now."

Her mother eyes her. "Ethics doesn't...Anna, I thought that you told me that liked both boys and girls."

Anna casts her eyes to the ceiling for a brief moment. "And I don't get how my sexuality has to do with anything at all. But yeah, I'm bi, and I'm not being persecuted, right?"

"Sweetie —"

"Mom!"

"— Anna, that's different."

"How?" Anna demands. She doesn't give Idun a chance to respond and just steamrolls forward. "Seriously. How is it any different? From Elsa being looked at funny because she's a clone, to people looking at me funny because I like girls, but I'm also a girl? Okay, like, if you didn't know Elsa was a clone, you'd totally think that she was human. I mean, she walks like a human; she talks like a human; by all respects, she is a human. And you wouldn't look at her any differently for that, because she's what you're used to. She's, um, human. And I know I sound like a broken record," (her mother raises a knowing eyebrow at this), "but...once you found out that she was a clone, you perceived her like one according to your views. But Elsa's always been a clone, I mean clone Elsa's always been a clone, and before you knew that she was a clone —"

"...Anna, I don't —"

"No, no, please, Mom! Please, just hear me out, will you?" For once in your life, please just listen to me...

Idun settles back down with a sigh.

"What I'm trying to say is that Elsa hasn't changed in the slightest, because she'd always been that way. But the way you looked at her has. Like, 'Before Clone Elsa' and 'After Clone Elsa.' They're like two time periods! B.C.E. and A.C.E. So during the B.C.E. era you'd just treat her like any normal member of society, but during the A.C.E. era you hate her, because she's a clone. So basically, your reason for hating her —"

"I do not hate Elsa —"

"— seriously? No, you totally hate her. If your looks could kill, Elsa would be dead precisely nine thousand and sixty-seven times over. And I didn't make that up, I can statistically prove it! You're just in denial." Anna rolls her eyes. "But your reason for hating her is like, 'because clone Elsa.' Like literally, that's it. There's no rhyme or reason to it. It's 'because clone Elsa.' That's basically answering the question, 'Why is the sky blue?' with 'Because the sky is blue.' You don't like her because of that one trait. You have no other reason to not like her!"

"Anna, you're missing one crucial fact in your 'deconstruction.' I always knew that...she...was a clone," says Idun flatly. "You are proposing a hypothetical situation —"

"It was a hypothetical situation that would have totally applied to you!" Anna argues. "And it literally is you! Except for the fact that the B.C.E. era doesn't exist! Well, actually, it does. It was before Dad brought Elsa home and the only memories you had of Elsa were...Elsa. Though I don't know if that really counts as 'Before Clone Elsa,' 'cause you had literally no idea that clone Elsa existed..."

"Anna —" Idun tries again, but Anna forges onward.

"Look, where I'm going with this...ugh, you drove me off topic, I drove me off topic, and you let me stay off topic so now I'm off topic and I have no idea what my original point was so I'm just going to go off the universal ethics thing you were going on earlier. My point is that I have no problem with it. That means it doesn't conflict with my...ethics, whatever they are, on the subject. So that means they aren't universal! Because I'm part of the universe, you can't deny that. And again, I have no problem with it. That means that not everyone in the universe has an ethical issue with it. And Dad started this whole thing, that means he can't have a problem with it either!"

"Anna —"

"I mean, okay, fine. I had a problem with Elsa the first few weeks, I'm not denying that! But it wasn't because of the whole human ethics thing...like, Dad...creating...Elsa in the first place. I just needed time to acclimate to Elsa being there." She sucks in a shaking breath. "And...I...I'm happy to have her back."

There's a heavy pause. Anna's voice trembles. "I'm so happy to be able to see Elsa again. I really...really...am."

"...Elsa isn't back," Idun coldly states.

Anna only turns away from her stiff-backed mother, biting her lip. She takes a while to respond.

"Okay," she says quietly. "Fine. Maybe she's not. Not exactly, anyway. But...that doesn't mean I have to stop hoping."

:.

For all the pomp entering Beijing had blasted Elsa with, the conference itself starts off with anything but a bang.

Elsa decides within the first three seconds of seeing him that she dislikes the short, white-haired old man who prances up to the podium to dole out opening remarks. There's something in his beady black eyes, darting maniacally around the entire hall, that sets her on edge. They're suspicious, devious orbs of buffed obsidian stone, and she can't help but shudder when they land upon her face before jumping to their next victim.

He's speaking in a language that she cannot understand. Elsa thinks for a moment — German, the Creator had said, Duke Adolf Weselton was a German-born and raised man. His voice grates on the edge of her ears and she shifts uncomfortably in her seat.

"Welcome to the biannual International Genetics Conference!" read words on a large holoscreen hanging in the dead center of the hall behind Weselton. The glowing blue letters appear in several different languages besides Weselton's native one, skipping across the screen almost as quickly as Weselton is speaking. (Which is to say, pretty darn fast.) English, French, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Korean all make an appearance among others. "As the Chairman of the program, I would like to formally welcome you all to this privileged event. The International Genetics Conference has celebrated the most cutting edge discoveries and innovations in our scientific field for decades, and this year marks our special hundredth anniversary."

More mindless blather follows. Elsa tears her gaze away from the letters flashing on the holoscreen and instead turns her attention toward the other attendees, fisting her hands into the uniform that the Creator had supplied for the formal event. She claps dully along with the polite applause when Weselton ends his spiel, and busies herself with picking at a loose strand of fabric on her dress as the first presenter trots up to the podium, gracefully launching into a complete dissection of her research.

She has unwound the strand from precisely nineteen stitches when she feels the Creator's hand squeezing her shoulder. Glancing upward, she carefully meets his gaze, which is both concerned and collected at the same time.

"We will be up in two minutes," he whispers, his voice almost inaudible. "Are you alright?"

She gives him a tight smile of assurance in return, choosing not to voice her response. The Creator looks hesitant, almost unconvinced, but it's not as if he can do anything about it. When Elsa turns back to plucking at the blue thread, he lets out a quiet sigh through his nose before relinquishing his grip. But Elsa can still feel his eyes on her, like they're trying to peel back her cool façade and uncover what she is truly feeling.

Though it is just a waste of energy, in the end. She had nothing to hide and her smile had told all that needed to be told. Elsa, for the better or the worse, doesn't feel...anything about going up on the stage, now that it's a mere minute away. Other people grow more and more nervous at such a prospect; Elsa feels like she's growing more and more emotionless. Almost like everything is just draining out of her, leaving her an empty shell. It had seemed as if all her frustration and worries had vanished as soon as she'd started fiddling with her dress, like the fear is the silky fabric and she's dismantling it with every pluck of her fingers.

Once the monotonous din of hundreds of clapping hands die down at the end of Mulan Fa's presentation, Weselton struts up to the podium. Elsa finds that she has to resist the urge to roll her eyes like Anna was prone to doing whenever she was frustrated by something.

"Please welcome our next guest," the holoscreen translates while Weselton babbles away in German, "Dr. Agdar Arendelle of Corona Incorporated!"

"Well, that's us," the Creator murmurs unnecessarily. They both rise to their feet, and in that instant, Elsa can almost feel the calculating eyes of two hundred and sixty-four of the world's most respected scientists snapping to them. Steadfastly ignoring the murmuring that almost instantly springs up, she turns to the Creator to offer him a quick, flat smile. He looks for a split second like he's about to offer her his hand, but then thinks better of it, instead beginning to make his way up to the stage.

Being the product of the Creator's research, Elsa really isn't sure of what she's supposed to be doing other than just...stand there when the Creator grips the microphone. Even when he begins speaking, she can sense that the audience's attention is cleanly torn between him and herself. Elsa feels the shreds of uncertainty beginning to merge together in the pit of her stomach again, but she forces it down, employing a technique that Anna mentioned she sometimes used when nervous about being in front of a lot of people.

"See, what I do is kinda like, visualize my nervousness or whatever as this glowing pink yoga ball. I don't know why it's a yoga ball or pink, but it is. And then I imagine squeezing the ball of nervousness smaller and smaller and smaller until it's like this tiny thing that totally doesn't matter. And of course, it keeps on trying to rise back up again into its original size, like...um, like that really dense foam or whatever, or maybe bread dough, but you just gotta keep on squishing down on it. And then you squeeze it down to the point where it goes pop!, and then it goes BOOM, and then it's just this tiny speck of glowy-pink-yoga-ball–dough that doesn't try to rise up anymore."

"...Anna, I don't think that the law of —"

"And mind you that this takes place in a world where whatever law you were talking about doesn't apply. Mostly because I probably don't know anything about that law, but whatever. Don't give me that look. The important part is that it works! Seriously!"

"..."

"What?"

"..."

"Okay, fine. I've been told that I'm crazy to visualize nervousness as a glowing pink yoga ball, but no joke — it works! Elsaaaa..."

"You are a very strange person."

"Hey. Don't dismiss it 'til you've tried it. We're related, you know...so maybe you've got some of my strangeness too."

Elsa had since found that it did seem to work, as it does so effectively now. She has to fight back a smile as she visualizes Anna's smug "I-told-you-so" face.

Yes, Anna. I suppose that it looks like I do share some of your strangeness.

Shaking herself out of her thoughts, Elsa looks back up to the Creator, calmly letting the pointed stares being directed her way roll off an emotional shield. He's still in the middle of his monologue, gesturing toward the slideshow behind him at times but mostly just relying on his oratory skills. As he slowly paces up and down the length of the stage, talking all the while, Elsa continues to stand as still and silent as a statue besides the holoscreen until the Creator turns around and locks eyes with her.

"I would like to take the last couple of minutes I have left to discuss something more personal about my research, as well as to make something very clear. Elsa...if you would please come up?"

...A glowing pink yoga ball. Just think of it as a glowing pink yoga ball. Elsa takes a couple of shaky steps forward, wobbling slightly in her heels. Whispers have begun to break out through the audience again, the murmured undertone varying from shock to incredulity to anger. The Creator wraps her in a one-armed hug, brief but warm, and Elsa tries to let the tension vibrating in her muscles out.

Moving his hand to her shoulder, the Creator begins to speak again. His voice rings loud and clear through the deathly silent auditorium. Not one person in the audience is whispering or doing anything else now, their attention singularly fixed upon the two figures standing on stage.

"While the specifics of the human cloning project are not well-known to the general populace, I'm sure that all of you have noticed that the general idea behind it has been a subject of much discussion in both academic and public circles for the past few years. I have always expected this to be the case, even when I first picked it up. After all, human cloning has been a topic of contention for decades, and is most often brought up in conjunction to ethics and morals.

"Although my team and I have clearly achieved much over the past fifteen years, as with any project (especially one of this caliber), we have encountered many problems. There have been both technical pitfalls as well as many people — professional or not — approach me about this project with those ethical and moral concerns. And I'm not just talking about fellow geneticists, or even the broader term 'scientists', but ordinary people. Ordinary people as close to me as my own family."

Elsa exhales harshly as a wave of ice-cold fear suddenly douses her from head to toe, running down her body in waves of chilling panic, forcing a shiver through her bones.

"After all, human cloning is obviously a controversial topic — especially now, after it has been proven possible. There will be divides in people's beliefs. There are those who believe that human cloning is a 'violation of God' and statements of a similar ilk; there are others who believe that it is simply the next step we as humans must take to further our knowledge in all of science; and there are still others who think that human cloning can be used for...other, less ethical means. Of course, some will argue that the entire concept is an ethical violation in and on itself. But when I say 'less ethical', I am talking about things such as using human cloning as a means to 'mass produce' clones for personal gain."

Even as the muted whispers break feverishly out in the audience again, Elsa's jaw tightens. Where is he going with this...?

The Creator's voice is still calm and steady, still booming out clearly over the tense murmuring of the other scientists below.

"Without getting into the dirtier details, the reason why I bring up conducting human cloning for personal gain is because by doing such a thing, you imply that the beings you just breathed life into, you just allowed to live, are nothing more than glorified puppet dolls. You imply that they are beneath you. You imply that they are less than human."

Nineteen other clones of Elsa Arendelle flash through her mind's eye, all of them floating cold and lifeless in impersonal vats of liquid.

Why is he bringing me into this? Why is he bringing them into this?

She wants to vomit.

"The crux of it all is that I have been told — Elsa, my daughter, has been told" — he squeezes Elsa's shoulder gently, oblivious to Elsa's ashen expression and clammy hands — "that she is not human. And I would like to make it clear: that is simply untrue. Elsa here not only looks like a human, acts like a human, but she can feel like a human as well. That, I believe, is one of the defining traits of what makes a human...well, human. She has displayed very human emotions since the moment she began existing and has free thought; free will.

"Human clones should be treated with the respect and dignity you would show a fellow human who was born from a mother and a father. Should this research be carried on, should more human clones be made...I ask you to keep this question in your mind: why would you ever consider a human clone anything less than human?"

The Creator nods to the program coordinator, who is indicating that his time has run out.

"And in every respect, I consider Elsa here as my relative, as my biological daughter. She is Elsa Arendelle."

Then:

"That is all. Thank you."

The auditorium thunders with the din of hundreds of clapping hands, a cacophony of flesh cracking against flesh that only serves to intensify Elsa's growing headache. In the midst of it all, the Creator smiles down at her, and it only barely flickers when he notices that she is not smiling back.

"In all respects, I consider her as my relative, my biological daughter. She is Elsa Arendelle."

He still doesn't get it, she miserably thinks even as she turns away from the Creator, conjuring up a wan smile for the cameras. ...Neither does Anna, for that matter. That conversation we had before coming here? That was testament to it. We've been talking a lot lately, but I can still hear it in her voice...

...And also certainly not Idun. Forget about her; she can't even get past the idea that I don't want to be called a "thing". Definitely won't understand that I really don't want to be known as Elsa Arendelle...

Elsa inhales sharply.

That's it, she realizes. Th-That's what I want. It's not just a matter of wanting to be human. I...I don't want to be her replacement. I don't want to be her. I mean...those nineteen other clones...they're her, and they're human, too. What would they have been like if they woke up?

Yes. No. God, no one gets it. Don't they say that every human being is unique? I want to be an individual. I want to be me.

She gazes out at the people before her, still clapping, with hungry black holes for eyes and synthetic smiles plastered across their features.

...Is that really too much to ask for from humans?

-—

part the second :: said and unsaid

January 15, 2092

So I've kind of noticed that Mom's been acting really weird this past week. Like she came up to me AGAIN last night with some long-winded monologue spiel lecture thing about Elsa and how she's not REALLY Elsa. I mean, seriously, you'd think that Mom would show some more tact after I said no the first coupla times, but noooope, she didn't. Go figure. I love Mom and all, but I THINK that I'd get the point she'd been trying to force into my head for the past two weeks when it's being said to me nearly every day now. Not that I want to get the point, but you get my point, right?

Because like, she can't force into my mind what I don't want to listen to. Me and Elsa've been talking a lot, I guess like catching up for years' worth of not-talking, and I mean, I like her. She's nice. She's not Elsa, but I think she's scribble trying. And I guess I've realized that I've been really really unfair in the way I've treated Elsa before. Like really unfair. Seriously, that's a given. I don't think she deserves all this crap about "not being human." Of course she's human; any dimwit can see that. Not that I'm calling mom a dimwit or anything but you know. And like seriously, when I was shutting her out it wasn't because I thought she WAS sub-human or anything stupid like that. I mean she looks like a human and everything. The reason I acted the way I did to her wasn't even cuz of that, didn't I mention that? It was because I thought...ummm, I guess I thought she would be too scribblescribblescribble

well OK not that, but too similar to my, ya know biological sister Elsa or something like that. Which is kinda weird, because don't I WANT that?

Ughhh god. Even I don't get me sometimes. Like I said before...I don't know anymore.

— Anna

:.

Elsa decides that the after-party, or whatever it's supposed to be called, to the IGC is infinitely worse than the actual event itself. After all, she'd been in the audience for the majority of the conference, and had kept her head bowed and arms crossed so as to attract less attention. Even on stage, she had been untouchable, protected by an invisible barrier of courtesy and respect for her personal space, however artificial it may have been.

Or maybe it had been out of respect for the Creator's personal space and his presentation. That seems much more likely.

But here?

The Creator has disappeared off to somewhere that isn't here at one point, stopped by a fellow geneticist or the other, and Elsa had been left to wander the area to eat the little hors d'oeuvres, pretend to sip champagne, and...mingle.

She has to mingle.

The only reason why she doesn't drag a hand down her face is because it would definitely ruin her makeup. And there is no way she is ruining her makeup in front of this many people. From the stories Anna had told her about some of the girls at her school, that would be the equivalent of social suicide.

...But still. Elsa shakes her head. She's expected to mingle with everyone present. Strike up nice conversations like the one the Creator is in now. And if there's one thing that Elsa knows she doesn't do, it's mingling and initiating conversations.

She really doesn't like initiating much of anything, come to think.

Stifling a sigh, she has to force herself to stop from turning around again. There's a man with red hair a shade darker than Anna's talking to Weselton — she watches them for a few seconds but soon loses interest. She's still trying to make sense of all the bright lights and entertainers and waiters and the men in suits and women in dresses getting increasingly drunk on champagne as the night slogs resolutely onward. She had tried a sip of the bubbly drink before spitting it back out again. She didn't even know how anyone can drink an entire flute full of the stuff. It's just...foul.

Wrinkling her nose at the thought, Elsa makes her way to a more sparsely populated area of the ballroom. Against her better judgment, she regards the expanse of the ballroom again. Glittering crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling, refracting light across thousands of clear facets. It throws the room into an almost ethereal golden shimmer, and backed by the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that have been placed alongside the walls at set intervals, the entire atmosphere has been transformed into one of feigned regality.

"Um...hello?"

Considering how absorbed she'd been in her surroundings, Elsa's grateful for the fact that she doesn't jump a foot into the air at the sound of the voice. Instead, she whips around as fast as she can. But in the process, she'd forgotten that four-inch tall heels are things she should be very careful with while moving (curse Anna for talking her into them). She probably would've toppled over and made a mess of her head if someone had not caught her at the last second, pulling her up gently and righting her as she regains her sense of balance.

"Uh, thank you, Mister...?"

Looking up, she sees the young, auburn-haired man who had been talking to the director of the IGC a few minutes previously. He's wielding a small, demure smile and a proffered hand clothed in a rich white and gold glove.

"You must be Elsa, right?" he asks kindly, bright green eyes fixed onto her own.

"Um...yes," she says slowly, brushing down her dress. "That would be...me."

For the lack of a better phrase, he looks positively delighted. "Oh, wow." Repeating, "Wow! I don't mean to sound off-putting in any way, but I've simply been dying to meet you ever since Agdar introduced his research up there." His smile is blindingly bright, white teeth and sincerity flashing in the expression. "Er — well, that was a bad choice of words. Sorry. It's not to say you're just a piece of research, I mean. Of course you're not. Just like Agdar said," he hurriedly adds, dropping his formal veneer for a moment to sheepishly rub the back of his neck.

Elsa's eyebrows quirk upward. "Um...thank you." It comes out more of a question than a statement.

What was the Creator complaining about earlier? ...Yes, that's right. Something about everything that sounds nice is all about "politics."

"Just," he explains quickly, "I, for one, think that you are just as much of a human as the rest of us, and deserve to be treated as such."

"Thank you," says Elsa again, though it's once again phrased in more of a question than an answer.

The man chuckles. His laugh is warm and smooth. "Ah, but — where are my manners? I haven't even introduced myself yet. My name is Hans. Hans Westerguard."

Elsa bites her lip and drops her gaze down, a little unsure of what she is supposed to do. But shaking hands is a nicety, so she hesitantly stretches a trembling hand forward to grasp his gloved one.

"...Hello, Hans Westerguard," she replies. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Hans's hand curls tightly around Elsa's own fingers, giving it a brief yet firm shake. "And you as well, Elsa," he says while offering her another amicable smile.

They settle down into a silence after that. To Elsa's surprise, it isn't tense or awkward, it just...is. Hans neatly folds his hands behind his back and surveys her with those calm green eyes, a faint tilt upward to his lips, as if he's expecting her to say something. Elsa shuffles her feet and tries to keep the strained exhaustion from entering her expression.

"...So," she asks a tad uncomfortably in the monotonic lull of conversation, the murmured undertone of hundreds of other scientists conversing with each other instead filling in the gap. "Why are you here?"

God. What a way to sound callous. The words sound awkward even before they even come out of her mouth. Normally, Elsa is the one who is forced to partake in a conversation that another had instigated. She'd never been confronted with the other way around.

"Hmm?" He shrugs loosely, slouching slightly before stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Oh, I'm here with my older brother. Felix Westerguard? We're with Tadashi Hamada and, uh, we're representing Fransokyo Laboratories. Um, my brother, he's...," and Hans cranes his neck, turning around in his spot before pointing at a tall black-haired man in a dark gray suit, in fact talking animatedly to a person who seems to Elsa as uncannily similar to the Creator at the moment.

Hans confirms this not a moment later. "...Yeah, he's actually talking with Agdar right now." He begins to head toward the pair, clearly expecting Elsa to follow him. After a few moments of hesitation, she does so, but still with not a small amount of uncertainty.

"...absolutely amazing, what you've managed to accomplish," she hears the black-haired man gushing. He's gesturing energetically even as she speaks, almost knocking a tray full of champagne flutes over (the waiter holding it shoots him a long-suffering look). "My god, man, you are the Watson and Crick of the twenty-first century. Nope, wait — going on twenty-second. We've only got, umm, eight or so years 'til then anyway, don't we?"

For his part, Agdar looks the most flustered Elsa has ever seen him. He seems a little unsure how to respond to the man's — Felix's — sheer enthusiasm. Elsa's personally of the opinion that the black-haired scientist is entirely too cheery about the whole thing, but then again, she's biased.

"Felix!" Hans calls as soon as he and Elsa have reached them, a hidden laugh in his tone.

"Hmm? Oh — Hans? Is that you?"

"Yes, Felix." Hans smiles at Elsa. "And I brought a friend. C'mon, stop harassing the doctor!"

"Oh, piffle. You know that you're just as fascinated with Dr. Arendelle's research as I am." Felix broadly grins. He turns around presumably to face Hans, but his gaze falls instead on Elsa.

His eyes, framed by a pair of what are possibly the dorkiest square-shaped glasses she has ever seen, widen.

And widen.

And widen.

And widen some more.

"..." Elsa mentally begins preparing herself for what she's sure to be a scientifically-charged Armageddon of massive proportions.

"Felix..." Hans begins to say warningly.

"Elsa!" The Creator coughs and rushes forward to meet her, almost tripping over his feet in the process. "There you are. I'm sorry, I lost you in the crowd — I got a little held up by my conversation with Felix here —"

"It's alright, Father," Elsa drily says. "As you can see, I have made it through the masses mostly unscathed."

"Mostly?" he humors.

"Entirely."

"My god," comes Felix's excited voice. Elsa has to resist the urge to flinch at his next words: "Are you the clone Agdar made? 'Cause you look so exact, pardon my word choice, although I guess that was kind of the point — oh, what am I even saying; of course you're the clone."

She can hear Agdar jump in at this, more rattled than ever, but whatever he's gibbering on about is drowned out in the din of the white noise suddenly ringing in her ears. Elsa can't help but be a little bit taken aback by the bluntness of Felix's remark, the way he just refers to her as a "clone" in the most natural sense of the word, just as quickly as Anna would refer to her now as "Elsa." She tries hard not to show it, but the damage has been done. What Felix had said badly unnerves her; sparks that godforsaken, deep-rooted insecurity she'd managed to think of as a glowing pink yoga ball before smothering it into nonexistence. But now it just pops right back up, forcing a shiver to run through her entire body along with it. Feeling a sweat break out across her palms and a heavy leaden weight dropping into the pit of her stomach, Elsa almost instinctively takes a step back, her eyes averted away from Felix's searching ones.

"Elsa?" Hans has reached out a hand again, apparently wanting to steady her.

Oh. I've been swaying...I should probably stop that.

"...I'm sorry, did I say something wrong?" Felix asks with a tinge of worry now present in his words. "Because if I have, you can tell me...my foot likes to live in my mouth sometimes, see..."

Elsa frowns at the expression. I don't get it. Is this one of those idioms Anna was talking about? Because his foot is not in his mouth right now, much less living in it.

Oblivious to Elsa's racing thoughts, Felix steps forward; in response, Elsa rocks backward. After stumbling to keep herself from tripping over her unreasonably tall high heels, she has to physically stop her feet from taking another stride away. Although that would've been useless, she notes when she casts a hurried glance over her shoulder; she would've been stepping into the wall.

"Hey," Felix says, his face expressing genuine worry. "Look, I'm sorry, I —"

"I'm human," Elsa whispers, clutching her hands close to her chest. "I'm not anyone...anything else. I-I'm me."

I'm not Elsa Arendelle. I'm Elsa Arendelle.

But Felix's frown only grows deeper. "Of course you're human," he says, puzzled. "And of course you're you." He hesitates. "Um...when did I ever say you weren't?"

:.

The sharp glow of the computer screen pierces through the thick darkness, synthetic white and blue light bathing a pair of flying fingers and a concentrating face into something almost ghost-like.

There is a dark-toned web form with a heading of "DARPA: SSP" emblazoned upon the top being filled out on the screen, letters blinking into existence in small white bars as the figure taps madly away at the keyboard. Filling in requisite information, a certain name and date of birth (pausing over this one) and gender and a boatload of other information.

The clicking of fingers pushing at black letters on the computer keyboard soon cease, as the figure flicks upward with its finger, sending the screen flashing back upward to the top. Shaded eyes dart down the glowing screen, absorbing in the information it had just typed into the screen with a calculating intensity one could only describe as clinical and cold in its nature.

NAME: Elsa Arendelle

AGE: 21 (complications explained in Other Notes)

HEIGHT: 5'6"

WEIGHT: 127 lbs.

DATE OF BIRTH: June 29, 2068

The statements zip past, ephemeral streaks of color set against a never-ending virtual highway, hundreds of black lines of damning questions — each with relatively comprehensive answers — disappearing as quickly as they had appeared as the figure scrolls past them. Apparently finding all of the answers to its liking, the small white pointer cursor quickly moves to hover over the "submit" button before the figure clicks down on the mouse.

The rights waiver form at the end, in its own little window, had already been checked off and forgotten about.

"...ACCORDINGLY, I SEEK TO ACQUIRE OR RETAIN A PASS TO PARTICIPATE IN DARPA'S SSP EXPERIMENTAL TRIAL AND HEREBY WAIVE ALL RIGHTS, PRIVILEGES, EXEMPTIONS, AND/OR IMMUNITIES THAT WOULD OTHERWISE ACCURE ME TO ANY LAW OR EXECUTIVE ORDER BY REASON OF SUCH HUMAN EXPERIMENTAL STATUS."

OTHER NOTES (please fill if SUBJECT has any medical complications that include but are not limited to: allergies, mental disorders, physical disabilities, and/or chronic illnesses):

- Technically "born" December 21, 2091

- Clone

:.

"Sooo, how was China?"

Anna means it as an innocuous question, but from the way Elsa literally falls out of her chair, it's as if she'd asked the platinum blonde if she would like to help blow up every living baby on the planet.

"I-It — ow!" — Elsa lets out a groan of pain as she bangs her head on the underside of her Ikea-imported desk — "it was, um...shiny. Beijing was very shiny." Finally managing to pick herself up from the floor, she settles back down into the black swivel chair. "A-And I thought you said that you would knock before you entered my — the room."

"Technically speaking, I'm not in your room," Anna points out. She jabs a finger at her feet, which are planted half a nanometer behind the invisible line constituting as the room's boundary. Then she raps on the door once and skips in, ignoring Elsa's splutters before launching herself on the blue bed. "So, spill. China was shiny?"

Elsa's eyes almost bug out of her head. "A-Anna," she says in a strangled voice, "I just made that —"

"Aw, chill out a little; you can always make up a bed. And I'm seriously dying to know why China's shiny. I mean, I'd have thought it'd be duller, 'cause of that smog problem they had in the past."

There's still a frown lingering around her expression, but Elsa's gaze shifts to Anna. "The — well, there was a big dome around Beijing. Um, F-Father said that it was used as some kind of smog control device, so there wasn't really any kind of major pollution. A lot of the buildings had some kind of reflective material around them or something. Hence, um, the shiny. Maybe it's to protect the area from UV rays." She shrugs and turns back to whatever she'd been doing at her desk before Anna had come barging in. The redhead cranes her neck, trying to sneak a peek over her sister's shoulder and catches sight of a scientific journal. Huh. Go figure.

"It sounds nice."

"It was." The platinum blonde turns a page, her thumb thoughtlessly caressing the edge of the glossy paper.

Unable to bear the suddenly oppressive silence, Anna blurts out, "You know, Dad's never taken me on any trips before. Neither has Mom. I've never been on a vacation."

The thumb stops moving. "Sorry?"

"I've never even left this town before," Anna says. She rises to her feet and crosses over to the window, staring outside at the bare trees and pale greenery. "Forget about the rest of the state or the country. New York is nice, but it gets kind of boring. I mean, there's a really nice park nearby — Avalon — but stay in one place long enough, you'll start to feel kind of confined and everything. Especially in the more suburban areas. I've never even been to the city. Only ever saw it on holovision." She rests her elbows on the windowsill, propping her chin up in the palm of her hands. "Dad says that New York City's one of the technological capitals of the world. Beijing is another, you know. Sometimes I dream about what it'd be like. To be in the middle of all that activity...it must be such an amazing rush."

For a moment, silence still reigns. But then she hears the floorboards creak behind her, and Anna doesn't have to turn around to know that Elsa's stood up.

"Close your eyes," Elsa says, her breath brushing the top of Anna's ear.

"H-Huh?" Anna feels an involuntary shiver run through her body at the sensation. Something warm blooms deep in her belly.

"Close your eyes," Elsa repeats. A cool hand latches onto Anna's wrist, pulling her down onto the edge of the bed. Elsa watches her with unfathomable blue eyes, her expression calm and serene, as she sits down next to the redhead.

"Why?" Anna whispers. She's lost in Elsa's stare, happily drowning in pools of cobalt, and she'd be content to stay there for the rest of eternity.

"Trust me," Elsa murmurs back.

Anna closes her eyes.

"The buildings in Beijing," Elsa starts quietly, "were so tall that I thought that they'd never end. From further away, they don't look so big, but when you get close to some of them...you have to crane your neck up and up and up, so hard just to try and catch a glimpse of the top. They just shoot up into the air, like these huge rocket ships leaving a trail of colors behind.

"...In fact, the first thing that struck me when we saw the city were the colors. It was like some painter decided that he wanted to use the city as a canvas, and then splashed every color he could think of onto it. There was silver and blue and white and yellow and red and every shade in between. You'd think that some of the colors would clash with each other, but they didn't. It was just like they melted into each other, all of them just a small part of something so much bigger, and that bigger something was so...grand that everything just seemed like they fit into the right place.

"The colors didn't just stay put, either. They were constantly changing. A purple could change into red with just a degree's shift of the light; a blue might turn into a green if you tilt your head to the left. The entire city was this...this chromatic explosion of light, and that was just from a distance.

"Closer to the city itself, you began to see the holoscreens. They were like these monstrous behemoths floating in midair. Some would be stretched in the space between two buildings; others would be on the sides of buildings. They would be showing movie trailers and advertisements and...well, anything you can think of, really. It was all so new and clean and bright that it somehow seems artificial in the process. But despite that, they were still nice to look at..."

Elsa's voice becomes quieter by the second, drifting further and further away. Anna drops her cheek down onto the blonde's shoulder, mind filled with images of polychrome skyscrapers and clear blue skies. Feeling as though leaden weights have attached themselves to her eyelids, she lets them slip shut.

Somewhere in her hazy mind, she can feel something soft and gentle combing through her hair, the lull of Elsa's voice fading into a comforting murmur in the background. Elsa's own hair is spilling over her shoulders, her shirt silky smooth. When Anna breathes in, she catches the faint scent of store-brand shampoo and fabric softener, and for some reason it smells so Elsa that Anna can't help but press up to her even closer.

"You smell nice," she drawls, cutting into the platinum blonde's monologue about chandeliers.

"Anna?"

"Sleepy."

And then she promptly falls asleep on Elsa's shoulder.

:.

"Anna?" Elsa peers down, puzzled, at the redhead next to her. At some point, Anna's head had collapsed onto her shoulder, but Elsa had simply continued her description of Beijing. Her hands had automatically reached to play with Anna's hair, though, fingers lightly running through the silky strawberry blonde tresses.

"Sleepy," Anna mumbles before snuggling in closer to Elsa's neck.

Elsa's eyebrows rise a couple of inches and remain there for a few seconds. But sensing that Anna's quickly falling asleep, she carefully eases her head onto her lap. Anna slurs something incomprehensible into her thigh but stays asleep.

Sighing, Elsa leans back on her hands for a scarce moment, careful not to disturb the sleeping redhead, before resuming her original position. She looks out the window, noting the cloud cover beginning to skulk in overhead.

Then she looks back down at Anna.

The words slide out unbidden.

"You are adorable," Elsa whispers absently into the twilight. Blinking in surprise at what she'd just said, her hands slow their stroking of Anna's hair before they stop completely. And then she's just staring at Anna's face — features relaxed and pink lips slightly open, curved into the slightest of smiles. Light snores escape into the air. Elsa can't stop a fond smile from breaking across her own face, her hands resuming their caresses.

Yes. You're adorable, but how can I get you...to understand?

Something indescribable but so very warm suffuses through her entire body, sinking down to her very core. Elsa's arms tighten, almost unconsciously, around the redhead's shoulders, hugging Anna closer to herself. Anna's head lolls around slightly, but manages to keep itself firmly planted in Elsa's lap. Giving a small shake of her head, Elsa leans down and tentatively presses her lips to the flaming red tresses. To her surprise, the scent of honeysuckle invades her senses, the sweet, fruity aroma implanting itself firmly in her memory.

"...I know you can't hear me, but you smell nice, too."

Outside, the clouds continue to creep across the sky.

-—

part the third :: no doubt about it

January 16, 2092

So ever since Elsa and I had that heart to heart yesterday she's been kind of avoiding me. Like, I actually thought it was really nice and everything, what she did. but hell if she's showing that she even remembers what happened yesterday. Like, apparently I fell asleep on her and then woke up on her lap. Talk about embarrassing. But yeah, it was still pretty nice, what she did. She described it really well, too.

But I still don't get why she's avoiding me.

I mean, maybe this is her way of showing it and it's just really funny scribblescribblescribble or maybe I should just give her more credit.

— Anna

:.

Generally speaking, Anna falls asleep in her AP Biology class within the first two minutes she sits down at her allotted seat. Of course, this is terrible news when it comes to her grades, but she'd figured a long time ago, did she really care about the difference between C3 and C4 plants and how they wrangled with carbon dioxide or something to produce this ty pe of carbon over that type of carbon? No, not really.

"Like, how could plants even be so picky like that?" she'd asked her lab partner, Ariel, when they first began learning about the carbon whatsits. "Plants shouldn't be picky about things. They're plants."

"Well, I guess it's because...they're plants," was all Ariel had to offer. She didn't even have the decency to look sheepish.

"Exactly."

And then when she had asked her AP Bio teacher, Mrs. Tremaine, that exact question ("Do plants really have to be so picky about like using just one carbon atom and like...stuff?"), the gray-haired woman had only given her a deadpan look before going off on a long spiel about...well, something that had to do with plant biology that Anna had been zoning out of by the second word.

Needless to say, AP Bio is a class that is very, very dreadfully boring to slog through for eighty-four minutes every single day, and she has it first and second period, and Anna is really starting to regret taking the AP-level class instead of regular Honors Bio. (Though god forbid that the daughter of one of the most eminent geneticists of the decade dropped down into anything less than the highest-level biology class Burgess High had to offer.)

So on a perfectly normal and respectable January the seventeenth, in the year two thousand and ninety-two, seven-oh-one a.m., Anna Arendelle drags herself through the wide open door of Room 206 and collapses onto her assigned chair, chin immediately dropping into the cradle her arms have created on the top of her desk. The tablet screen beneath her flickers to life, and Anna jabs her thumb in the fingerprint scanner for attendance before letting her head slide back down again, nestling itself into a more comfortable position as she prepares to sleep the class away.

The sound of a backpack hitting the smooth tile floor near the seat next to her breaks through her dreamy daze. Anna murmurs nonsensically and opens one lazy eye to survey Ariel plop down ungracefully onto the other, formerly vacant chair that had been pulled against their lab table.

"Sleeping again?" the redhead chuckles, nudging Anna on her shoulder.

"The morning," and Anna's voice is muffled, "is evil."

Ariel chuckles a little. "Just saying, you probably want to stay up in class for once. Tremaine said that we're having an in-class discussion today that constitutes for fifteen percent of our final grade."

"Huh," murmurs Anna. "Like, fifteen percent of our overall final grade, or just part of our, like, usual...things. Like dissections are worth twenty percent and stuff, and also paper labs I wrote answers on with pencils. With, uh, stuff. Thirty-five percent. Lots more stuff. And impertinent wind chimes with salsa beans are another thing..."

Five belated seconds later, Anna comes to the astonishing revelation that when she's talking about her biology class while sleep-deprived, the strangest things tend to come tumbling out of her mouth.

Oh my god, Anna, what in the world is an impertinent wind chime?! ...And salsa beans? Really?!

"...Well, I don't understand how fetal pig dissections and...'impertinent wind chimes' can even logically connect with one another, but this discussion is worth fifteen percent of our overall final grade," Ariel says. Her voice is as dry as the Sahara Desert during the peak of summer. She takes out her sea foam green spiral notebook and flips idly through notes and doodles until she reaches a blank page. "So...yeah."

Anna flops her head back down into the cradle of her arms and moans. "...Ugh."

Yep. That's what biology is in a nutshell. Ugh.

"Hey," laughs Ariel, knocking her gently on the arm. "You knew what you signed up for when you transferred into this class."

"Mrghhh," Anna groans into her shirtsleeve, clearly unenthusiastic.

"What's your average?"

Anna groans. "Pitiful. Eighty-one and dropping faster than the planes that hit the World Trade Center on September eleventh." She pauses. "Okay, that probably wasn't the best metaphor. How about this: dropping faster than Shrek Twelve's 'Freshness' rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Oooh, wait, I have a good one: dropping faster than the percentage of Republicans that aren't comprised of old white men!"

Ariel looks torn between laughing and cringing.

"Or I'll just stop making metaphors," Anna mumbles.

Ariel laughs weakly. "Well, um, if it's...that bad...exactly why are you even taking this class?"

"Dad's idea. Totally not mine. He has it in his head I'm going to become some great scientist person like he is."

"And are you?"

Anna makes an attempt to kick a smirking Ariel, but is so disoriented she misses by at least a mile. She takes all of two seconds to appreciate the new levels of patheticness she's descended down to, considering Ariel's left leg is pretty much six inches away from her foot, before she exclaims, "You already know the answer to that!"

"Well, I'm giving myself and you both the benefit of the doubt."

"Gah!" With a herculean effort, Anna manages to lift her head from her arms and prop them up on her hands instead, staring with glassy eyes at the front of the room. "No, I'm not gonna grow up to become a scientist..."

Ariel laughs and gives the grumbling strawberry blonde an affectionate pat on the back. "That's the spirit!"

No sooner have the words left her mouth when the sound of the bell rips through the air, which had been filled with casual conversation and the lazy murmurs of all the other students who have filtered into the classroom by this point. Anna counts off four long seconds before the blare cuts itself short. Mrs. Tremaine sweeps out of the back lab room right on cue, her gray hair swept tightly up in a heart-shaped bun as it always is, every day, without fail. Anna sometimes wonders how in the world Tremaine keeps that monstrosity tight and prim on the top of her head, not a hair out of place. Maybe she uses some kind of weird gel.

...Or something. No, actually, it has to be gel. Mixed with enough hairspray to sedate a two-ton fully grown bull elephant. And why am I even thinking about that ungodly hairdo in the first place? Anna shakes her head, reminding herself she doesn't particularly care and snaps back to staring blankly at the front of the room.

She had fully intended on catching up on her sleep during at least the first period — Ariel was unfortunately correct when she said that Anna had to stay up for the fetal pig dissection — but when Tremaine begins speaking, her head shoots right back up.

Well, that's definitely a first.

"There is something I would like to discuss before we begin the dissection," she says in a dry voice that never fails to grate on Anna's nerves. "An impromptu debate of sorts, if you will. The International Genetics Conference took place in Beijing this weekend. Normally, I would not have brought this up, but a certain presentation caught my attention — more specifically, what was said during it. There has been much news coverage over the presentation these past couple of days. Now, I'm sure you've at least heard of the recent breakthrough with human cloning, in fact achieved at this very branch of Corona Inc. by Dr. Agdar Arendelle?"

Anna can't stop the hot flush from rising to her cheeks as Mrs. Tremaine's hawkish eyes snap straight to her. She can also sense Ariel shifting uncomfortably in her seat, obviously trying not to glance at Anna, too.

A general murmur of affirmation rolls through the class, with more than a few people shooting hooded looks at her. She only clenches her jaw and stares back resolutely until they turn away, whispering among themselves.

"At the end of his presentation, Dr. Arendelle made a few very interesting comments about the nature of human clones, and whether or not they should be considered human. I would like to take the first period today to —"

"What kind of stupid question is that?!"

Anna's hands have clenched so tightly that the skin stretched across her knuckles are stark white. Her jaws locked together, she's aware that she's trembling with pent-up fury, but it's only when every person in the classroom turns to stare at her that she realizes she's the one who had made the outburst.

"I-I mean — of course they should be considered human. That isn't even a question!"

"Many scientific analysts would argue that it is," Tremaine says stiffly.

Anna's eyes instantly narrow. Well, I know which side you're on.

"Human clones?" Anna's head snaps to her left, where she sees Aurora wrinkle her nose. "That's, like, really disgusting. It's a violation of —"

"If she says it's a 'violation of God', I am going to punch that surgically-adjusted nose so hard that she'll be crapping bits of it out of her ass for the next six decades," Anna snarls under her breath.

"— God."

"Alright, that's it —"

Ariel shoots her a wide-eyed, partially-terrified look and grabs her arms. "Jesus, Anna, calm down."

"It's just science!" Anna protests, tearing away from Ariel's grasp before shooting to her feet. "How in the world is human cloning a violation of G — nature? We've been cloning vegetables and fruits and animals for the past three decades and I haven't heard anyone give a crap about them!"

"Anna," Tremaine warns. "Keep it civil."

Aurora turns toward the fuming redhead, a sneer plastered firmly across her face. "Yeah, but they're things," she says. "They're not humans. And for that matter, how can anyone even consider human clones...well, human?"

"How can you not consider them human?" Anna demands, and only Ariel's vice grip on her arm keeps her from marching over to Aurora to make good on her promise.

"Clones are grown in labs and whatever, right?" Aurora shoots back, dispassionate as ever. "Look, if you're gonna clone a human, you shouldn't expect them to live among society. And if you're gonna clone a human in the name of science" — leering at Anna — "then do it strictly for science and for the benefit of real human beings. Grow them for their organs or something. Like organ farms?"

Everything — everyone seems to freeze.

"...Oh my god, that's so sick." Ariel's revolted hiss shatters the silence.

If Anna's jaw had the ability to dislocate itself and drop down onto the floor, it would have done so. Glaring at Aurora with death in her eyes: "What the fuck did you just say?"

But at Aurora's exclamation, a chorus of muttering had once again started. Some students are looking at her in unadulterated disgust, while others just look shocked at the idea of human clones being used as "organ farms". At the head of the room, Tremaine's apparently trying to reestablish order, but as the voices begin to grow into a fever pitch, she apparently gives up. Anna scowls at the woman. Serves you right for even starting this.

"Um...I agree with you about the...not-really-human part," a black-haired girl timidly says while watching an incensed Anna out of the corner of her eye, evidently terrified, "but I think that saying that you'll...that you'll harvest them for their organs is going a bit far. A-And I don't think I want clone organs in me, thanks."

"Yeah, but doing that could save thousands of peoples' lives, the ones who are on the organ donation lists," Aurora argues back.

"Are you insane?!" Anna growls. "You think that human clones are so below you that you're gonna make them just to harvest them for their organs?!"

You'd "use" them as experiments?!

"You know, little miss righteousness, there've been discussions about just that for about as long as the idea of human cloning's even existed." Aurora rolls her eyes. "Considering your dad's the one that made this even possible, shouldn't you know that?"

Anna fumes.

"Know what? Y'all are just nuts," another boy drawls from somewhere behind Anna. "They're just fuckin' clones. Who cares? Get over yourselves."

Promptly ignoring him, Anna smacks her fist down onto the desk and shoots to her feet, still glaring at Aurora. "Well, then tell me. What the hell makes something human?" she demands. "What makes us human and — and human clones not?"

"One: They were made in labs. That should've been the first hint." Aurora ticks down one finger. "Two: they're an exact carbon copy of another human being. They aren't even their own individuals, and every normal human's supposed to be unique. Different fingerprints and whatnot, you know?"

Anna feels something heavy drop down into the pits of her stomach. "Th-That's insane."

"Is it really?"

"Of course it is —"

"That's enough." Tremaine's sharp voice slices through their argument like a white-hot knife through butter. "Anna, Aurora, both of you brought up some good points, but that's all we have time for now." She gestures toward the foil-covered tray on the front lab desk, already snapping a pair of latex gloves into place. "Moving on to the fetal pig dissection..."

Anna glares at her. You were the one who brought up this fucking conversation in the first place. Still, she angrily rams herself back down onto her chair, arms crossed and eyebrows drawn together into a fierce scowl.

But underneath her furious demeanor, a flicker of unease remains.

Have I been approaching Elsa the wrong way about the whole human thing? Tapping the end of her pencil on the desk, Anna stares at Tremaine explaining the procedures of dissecting the fetal pig without really seeing or hearing anything. I don't know what to say...and I don't completely understand why Elsa's so...I dunno, Elsa...when it comes to be referred to as human or a thing. I mean, obviously, no one wants to be referred to as a thing...so is that it? That feeling? Elsa definitely has that feeling. The one that dictates what you want and what you don't want? She knows she doesn't want to be called a thing, or a monkey or anything like that for that matter. So does that mean she's...human...?

Anna sinks down lower in her chair, rolling her head back to stare up at the muted light fixtures in the ceiling. The pencil weaves through the spaces in between her fingers like a wooden snake.

No, no; that's not the right question to be asking now...I can't think about just Elsa. Think about the bigger picture. What is it?

...What makes someone human, anyway?

:.

Papa intercepts her in the hallway as soon as she comes home in all her fuming glory.

"You should take your sister to the mall."

In the process of hoisting her backpack off her shoulders, Anna glowers at the floor as if it's done her a personal affront before she drops the bag unceremoniously.

"Anna?" He takes a tentative step closer, bending down. "Are you alright?"

Jaw still locked, she looks up at his expression, noticing the faint shadows that have set up shop underneath his eyes. A couple strands of short, dirty blond hair have escaped from Papa's otherwise perfect coif, scattering wispy threads of light across his wrinkled forehead.

"Anna?"

"I'm fine," she says, forcibly injecting a modicum of lightness into her tone. She offers up a strained smile for extra effect. "Just had a rough day at school."

Papa looks as though he wants to inquire after what exactly made the day "rough", but then he apparently thinks better of it and sights through his nose. A small smile graces his features. "Alright, then. What say you about that mall trip?"

"To take Elsa along?" Anna asks. She tries not to let the doubt creep into the question. "I mean, sure. But she doesn't really do social. And Ella's coming along, too. Ooh! Speaking of which, I said I'd pick her up in" — throwing a glance at the clock — "fifteen minutes from now."

"Plenty of time to ask your sister if she wants to go shopping with you and your friend," Papa smoothly interjects.

Anna gives him a puzzled look. "Well, it's not that I'm opposed to Elsa coming along — in fact, I'll ask her now — but what brought this on?"

"...I think it'll be good for her," he admits. He's begun to pace; just a few steps in either direction, but it still betrays a considerable amount of agitation. "Elsa has been holed up in the house for the better part of a month. After all, the IGC trip was only an extended weekend, and somehow, I don't think that she considered the experience very...relaxing."

Yeah; no kidding. Anna thinks darkly back to first period. Damn Aurora. Damn Tremaine. A glower must have begun to spread across her features, because Papa wrings his hands together in an uncharacteristic display of anxiety. "Anna?"

"Okay, okay. I'll ask her, I told you. So...card? Please?" She turns up the wattage level of her smile.

Papa lets out a soft snort of laughter, but digs around his pocket for the authorization card for his vehicle.

"Oooh, gimme!"

"Don't crash it," he says fondly, enveloping Anna in a brief hug before offering his hand.

"Aw, c'mon. Don't be so retro. All cars have anti-collision tech, Dad; I'll be fine." Anna plucks the card from his fingers before squirming out of his embrace and trotting backwards. "'Kay. I'll be right back. Love you."

Running up the stairs two at a time, Anna knocks rapidly on Elsa's closed door.

"Hey. It's me."

"Come in."

When Anna flings the door open, Elsa is curled up on her mattress, pillow set against the headboard and baby blue comforter clutched in her arms.

Anna takes a moment to assess the scene. All the other times she had come into the room, Elsa had been perched in front of the desk, reading something or the other. And even though Elsa had invited her in, the view of the platinum blonde right now is so foreign that Anna almost feels like an intruder, stumbling upon a private moment. The sensation is further amplified by the tilt of Elsa's head, angled toward the open window. She's gazing outside in an almost listless manner.

"Hey, I was...um, wondering if you wanted to come to the mall with me and my friend..."

Elsa nods, but she doesn't get up.

"Um...you okay?"

Elsa doesn't respond immediately. The only indication she gives for a while is that she's heard Anna at all is the slight clenching of her fists, gripping the comforter ever tighter.

Anna stands at the doorway uncertainly for a couple of seconds before edging a step back. "Look, if this is a bad time or anything, you aren't under any obligation to come..."

"No. It's alright. Stay." Elsa finally tears her gaze away from the window, but it's not to look at Anna. Her eyes are dutifully trained down into her lap. "What's on your mind?"

But Anna only frowns at her. "You've been avoiding me." It's a statement, a fact.

Elsa doesn't say anything.

"Have I done something wrong?" Anna can't stop the tinge of panic from entering her voice. "Oh, god, have I done something wrong?"

"You have done nothing," Elsa says to her hands. But then she sighs and slowly lifts her head, meeting Anna's gaze. "Nothing wrong, is what I mean to say. I'm fine. Truly. I was...I was just thinking."

"About?" Anna ventures forward and sits down on Elsa's black desk chair.

"I just had a rough day," Elsa says. Anna's a little taken aback by the echo of the words she'd told Papa, but she scoots up to the edge of the bed and offers the blonde a wan smile.

Ella can wait for a bit.

"You too?"

Elsa frowns at her.

"I had a rough day too," Anna explains. "And that's to say 'majorly sucky'." Hesitating, she rests her hands on Elsa's mattress. "I forgot to ask...how was the IGC trip with Dad, anyway?"

"Fine." Elsa's reply is too short, too abrupt.

Anna wrings her hands uncomfortably. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Silence reigns.

"I-I mean, I was just wondering, 'cause..." She hesitates. "W-Well, for whatever stupid reason, my AP Bio teacher thought it'd be a good idea to bring up part of Dad's segment at the IGC in class today. And then a bunch of people started shittalking about yuh...about clones not being, um, human."

It almost looks like Elsa's stopped breathing, she's so still. Anna mentally slaps herself. Oh, crap. Me and my big mouth.

"A-And I'm really sorry about bringing that up," Anna fumbles. "I — I can be really tactless sometimes, and I'm sure you've noticed —"

"What about you?"

"Huh?" She blinks. "What about me?"

Elsa's eyes are unreadable. "What about you?" she asks again.

What did you say? is the hidden question.

And Anna has already caught on, but still, she hesitates. "Elsa, I'd never talk about you like that."

Elsa only continues watching her, blue eyes like fragile chips of glass.

"I don't think about you in that way," Anna says sincerely. "Not like that." And only later in the day — long after their conversation has ended — does she stop and ponder over her word choice. But for now, she simply rises from the chair and moves to sit on the edge of Elsa's bed. She leans over and grips Elsa's hands into her own. The blonde's hand is cool, a sharp contrast to the heat radiating off of her own palms.

"So like what? What can you possibly think of it?" Elsa's still looking at her, still holding both her gaze and her hands. Challenging her.

...Okay, part of me can't believe we're even having this conversation. Didn't I make myself clear on how I felt about her, that night when Mom and Dad had that big blow-out argument? "Well, like...you matter to me."

"That's...that's not an answer."

"Sure it is."

"No, it's not. I was asking about —"

"I know what you were asking about. You're asking about you being a clone of my sister, but I'm talking about that. I'm talking about you. And that's what you should be asking about, too." Anna leans forward. "Look, Elsa, you asked me yesterday to trust you, and I did. But do you trust me?"

Elsa's eyes narrow.

"Do you trust me?"

Elsa doesn't move. Knowing what to think but not knowing what to say are two entirely different monsters.

And finally, Elsa asks, "Do you care about it?"

"'It' again?" Anna's voice turns exasperated. "I just told you this isn't about the clone thing. Elsa, you tell me —"

"I tell you?" Elsa demands harshly, her voice rising for the first time since...well, ever. She rips her hands away and instead clenches them at her side. "And it 'isn't about the clone thing'? Are you trying to tell me a very bad joke?"

"What?" Anna's taken aback. "No! Why would I —"

"No, Anna. Stop it. Just stop. You don't get to do this."

"Don't get to do what? Ask you a question? Ask you if you trust me?" She frowns deeply. "That's kinda hypocritical, considering you asked me the same thing yester —"

Elsa looks cowed for a brief moment, but then she locks her jaw and glares at the strawberry blonde. "You don't get to ask me if I trust you when half the time I know that somewhere deep down you still wish you were talking to your sister, who I'm a clone of, instead of me. You don't get to ask me if I trust you when I know you don't —" She shakes her head. "N-Never mind; that's not the point. We're walking around in circles and you still haven't answered my question."

Anna purses her lips. "Look. I didn't get it before, but I do get it now."

Elsa stares at her with an odd look on her face.

Anna crosses her arms. "Your body is a genetically-engineered clone. And I know you didn't ask for it. No one asked for it, but you can't change it. You can't change your genetic makeup. What you don't get is that your genetic makeup doesn't define who you are. You may be a clone of Elsa Arendelle, but you're still the Elsa Arendelle I know and love. And I care about Elsa Arendelle. Therefore, I care about you."

The platinum blonde in question only continues staring at her. There's a newfound tension crackling between them, and Anna doesn't like it at all. Not one bit.

It could've been two seconds, two minutes; two hours, two days; two years, even two centuries before Elsa moves again. But she does, and when it happens, it's to interlace their fingers together — hands still interlocking, touching, feeling.

"Okay," she says quietly. "I trust you."

"Great!" Anna leaps to her feet, smiling a little too brightly down at the platinum blonde. The actions are obviously forced, but there's real happiness in her beam, and also...relief? "Really. That's great, Elsa." She hesitates, her smile waxing a little bit, but it's more genuine now. "So...mall? I mean, are you ready to go to the mall for the first time ever?"

"...Sure."

Having already spun around, Anna doesn't notice it. But when Elsa had agreed, she'd closed her eyes. Her slumped body posture screams of resignation, but could also be mistaken for plain fatigue.

"Look, I didn't get it before, but I do get it now."

After all, in the scant few weeks she has been alive, Elsa has learned how to act the part of an excellent liar.

No, Anna. I don't think that you do.

:.

Okay. I didn't think it at first, but this has got to be the worst idea ever.

Anna wonders how she could prove that she has broken the current record for partaking in the World's Most Awkward Mall Trip (Like Ever) to the Guinness World Records' panel. Because she's pretty sure that she's achieved it, between Ella shooting Elsa uncomfortable looks every five seconds and Elsa fidgeting and jumping at every noise like a quirky, paranoid mouse that'd been both caffeinated and doped up on crack in the shotgun seat.

Stifling her sigh, Anna continues driving, trying to ignore the increasingly awkward silence in the car. Even the car's surround-sound stereo, turned up to an obnoxiously loud volume and playing an upbeat decades-old song, fails to cut through the thick tension.

As if reading her mind, Ella asks on cue, "How old is this song?"

Anna doesn't take her eyes off the road. "Really old. I think it was released at the start of the century or something."

"Well, it's a lot better than the stuff playing these days. I mean, like, today's music is all just two notes' worth of beeps and some warbling screeches."

"It's, um," Anna sneaks a look at the display, "'Mr. Brightside' by The Killers." She smirks. "Hah. Weird name. How could that not have alerted Homeland Security?"

"Well, I know where The Slayers ripped their name off from, then," Ella comments, flopping back into her seat. "Uh...anyway. Are we there yet?"

"You are such a second grader," Anna snipes back, smirking. "But yeah, we are. Makin' the left turn now."

She pulls into the parking lot, managing to secure a spot close enough to the mall entrance that they only have to brave the freezing weather for a few seconds before they run inside.

"I hate the cold," Ella moans, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. "It's just so...so cold."

"That's kind of why they call it cold," Anna smirks. "C'mon, let's go. Running around the place'll warm you right up, guaranteed."

On the other hand, when Anna looks, Elsa isn't even shivering and she's dressed in only a thin T-shirt and shorts. She'd once told the redhead vaguely that "the cold doesn't bother me" or something, but in subzero temperatures, she doesn't see how any person could be out in that weather without even getting goosebumps. Maybe that'd been part of the reason why Ella was shooting her those looks.

Even after they start heading into shops, Elsa, for the most part, wanders behind them like a lost puppy. Even when Anna turns and asks her opinion on some article of clothing or the other, the blonde only nods and mumbles that it would look good on her. She's pulled on a thin black coat at Anna's insistent wheedling, given that it's in the dead of January and it's like negative-twenty degrees outside oh my god how have you not frozen into a Popsicle when you're wearing just that white T-shirt and running shorts. Regardless, Elsa has stuck her hands deep into the jacket's pockets, the zipper drawn right up to her chin.

After a couple hours or so of browsing through the stores, Anna's wallet is considerably lighter and there's a grumbling in her belly that she can't ignore any longer. Ella looks just as worn down, although she has a kind of dopey smile on her face now, one that Anna's sure she's mirroring herself.

"Anyone who says shopping isn't a sport is a liar," she sighs happily, trying to get a better grip on her latest purchases. "Well, I'm wiped. You wanna go and hit the food courts?"

Ella looks about as hungry as Anna and nods feverishly. "Yes, please."

"Elsa?" Anna turns to the platinum blonde, who's barely even visible under the massive mountain of bags she's got her arms wrapped around. Elsa had practically jumped at the chance to carry them, for whatever reason, and Anna had only been too happy to oblige. Running up and down the length of the mall is tiring enough without fifteen bags swinging off of either arm. She's beginning to admire Elsa's constitution, laden under all those purchases without voicing a single peep of a complaint.

"Um, sure," comes the muffled response. "I, um, actually also kind of have to go to the restroom, if that's okay with you."

"Yeah, no problem," Anna smiles. "Bathroom's right there. Here, gimme some of those bags."

She sorts through the items quickly, tossing Ella's purchases toward her and taking her own items into her arms. Despite Anna's pestering, Elsa hadn't bought anything for herself.

Yet, the redhead thinks grimly. I'll get her to buy something today if it's the last thing I do. You can't go shopping without buying anything.

"You want anything to eat?" Anna asks.

Elsa shrugs, already on her way to the restroom. "Okay. Anything is fine."

"Got it." Turning to Ella, she cheerfully hefts an Abercrombie & Fitch bag over her shoulder. "C'mon, let's go chow down. Panda Express?"

"I'll get the food," Ella offers as they begin walking. "You want your usual?"

"If you're talking sesame chicken and fried rice, then you know me very well."

She hesitates. "And for, um, Elsa?"

"Uhh, just get my sister the same as me, I guess." Anna shrugs. "I mean, she said 'anything is fine', so be it on her own head if she doesn't like it."

Ella cracks a grin. To Anna, it seems a bit strained, but she brushes it off as her mind playing tricks on her.

She finds a table near the edges of the main eating area. Claiming two 