fandomtownies | Outside Needful Things, Friday

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Outside Needful Things, Friday

Leland Gaunt's hold on Fandom might be weakening, as more and more people were delivered from his thrall, but you couldn't tell just by looking. The fog was more sinister. The boarded-up doors and windows of the storefront were more foreboding. And the sign out front remained, as creepy as ever:

YOU SAY HELLO
AND I SAY GOODBYE GOODBYE GOODBYE
I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU SAY HELLO
I SAY GOODBYE

Needful Things was closed. The streets around it, however, were open for bouts of madness, the murder of loved ones, and other normal, everyday activities.

(This post is for Fighters to show up and get fierce, and Recovery to try (and fail) to get to Gaunt, and Recovery to fight the Fighters, and anyone who wants to drop in so they can fail at talking sense into any of the other teams, or just get in on the smackdown, or what have you. No OCD, just go crazy. Have fun!)

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"My magic is ice. Maybe for me, that is the bad kind!"

It was definitely offensive, at any rate.

"I've been charged at and I've had people I thought were my friends throw fire at my wolves unprovoked already, Anna. I'm running a little low on trust right now."

Anyway, the wolves weren't too keen on being melted again, however you looked at it.

"He wasn't going to use it on you!" Anna was willing herself not to call Elsa an idiot. "He was going to use it in case you got mad and froze one of your own friends! To try and thaw them out again! Because people are crazy right now!"

"Did you just call me crazy?!"

These two were absolutely sisters. Could anybody tell?

"I did not say YOU were crazy!" Anna shouted. "But you just sic'd ice wolves on your boyfriend so I don't think you have much room to talk!!!"

Give it ten minutes and they'd be hugging it out.

Edited 2015-03-27 22:57 (UTC)

"I didn't tell them to go after Barry! He came here with a gun and they reacted to it!"

Which made it a perfectly reasonable response, Anna!

"Are you saying you can't call back your own ice wolves?" Anna asked, giving Elsa a very, very skeptical look. "Because why even have ice wolves if you can't control them, is the thing."

"Of course I can control my own ice wolves," Elsa replied, throwing an arm into the air in frustration. "Maybe I just don't want to, right now!"

Because she was crazy.

It really said a lot that neither of them seemed to be worried about Barry, right now, but he was backflipping with the rest of them.

"Right," she said. "You're okay with Barry being devoured by icy doom. That sounds like something you'd say."

She sighed. "Look. Elsa. I'm not -- here to attack you. I don't have any weapons, do I? I just want to talk."

Edited 2015-03-27 23:09 (UTC)

"Barry is doing just fine right now," Elsa mumbled as he cartwheeled by, wolves nipping hot at his heels. "They're playing."

Yes. Playing. With teeth!

"If you want to talk," Elsa sighed, "then talk. Go ahead, tell me that I've become somebody's puppet and the control I want has always been hiding inside of me and none of this is worth it. I've heard it all already, Anna."

Anna frowned, like something tasted bad. "Oh, I wasn't going to say any of that," she said, and it was entirely truthful. Particularly the bits about puppeting and control, because she hadn't even realized what Elsa had purchased, or why.

But ... of course it had to do with her gaining control, recently. Of course.

"All I was going to say?" she continued. "Is that some people on radio, they were saying that if you buy something from this shop, here, that it might make you really sick. Like, some kind of weird poison sick. I don't want you to be sick."

Maybe this store wasn't evil, and the people on radio had it all wrong. Elsa was free to convince her of that.

Elsa's gaze dropped and she frowned at that.

"And... you're taking the word of a bunch of drunk squirrels over me."

Well. That came out curiously flat, there. Because of course that was what Anna was here about, wasn't it? Something she heard on drunk rodent radio.

Anna was trying her hardest not to roll her eyes.

"No," she said. "Because I haven't even heard your side. What's going on here? You tell me, and I'll help. Okay?"

See how patient she was being? It was really, really hard being the mature one. Ugh.

Welcome to Elsa's life, Anna!

"I..." Elsa's face fell, and she looked a little bit like all of the air had rushed out of her at once. "I'm not afraid, Anna. Look at me. For the first time since we were little, I'm not afraid of myself. And now people are falling over themselves to tell me that there's something the matter with that, that I should give up the one thing that has ever successfully let me keep control. And I..."

She balled her hands into fists and stared down at the ground.

"I can't pull on those gloves and hide again, Anna. Look at me. Look at me. I'm whole."

And about to keel over from sheer exhaustion, but that was completely beside the point.

"There's nothing the matter with that," Anna said, firmly. "I'm glad you're not afraid. I don't want you to hide. Not from me, and not from anyone."

All of that was true, and needed to be said. So did this.

"So ... you're not sick?" she said. "Because if you're not sick, then the rest of it doesn't matter. Keep it. Keep whatever he gave you. I'll tell everyone to leave you alone. But I'm ... I'm scared, that's all."

"They won't listen," Elsa murmured. "They won't listen, they just keep coming and rushing at me and destroying my wolves and telling me that I've done something terribly wrong and I'm a danger... And I don't... I'm just... I'm tired, that's all. They'll take it away if they can, if I rest for a moment, and they'll knock down the door and they'll take him away and I... I can't let that happen."

"You're not a danger," Anna said, gently. "You're tired, and you're trying to save him, and you're scared right now."

Anna could identify with some of that, especially being scared. She was going to take a step closer and put a hand on her sister's shoulder.

"Are you sick?" she asked, in a very soft undertone. "Because it's okay, if you are. We can go to the clinic, and make sure. I just want you to be okay, Elsa."

She wanted that more than anything.

Some part of her deep down still didn't know what to do with that, when Anna touched her. Had no idea how to cope with a hand on her shoulder from the one person she had spent her entire life terrified of hurting again.

Elsa flinched. And then she looked away.

"I will be okay. Once this is over, I'll be fine."

She was sick. She was sick and she was so, so tired, and she hadn't had a proper meal in days and she'd just left her dog at Anna's door so that she could come here and attack people with ice wolves. She'd spent half a week creating life with her bare hands, and she was sick.

"I'm hungry," she whispered. "And I'm tired. I'm more tired than I've ever been. And I don't want to go to the clinic. I have to stay."

"We don't have to go to the clinic," Anna said, quickly. "No clinic, then. But we at least need to get you some food. Can I guard the door? Can your wolves stay without you? Put more wolves up. Have a pack. Is it still a pack, if they're ice wolves? Or is it like an ice-pack of ice-wolves helping to ice-protect that guy?"

She was going to very very carefully see if she could put her hand back, again.

"Elsa," she said. "I'm scared, too. You're scared about what people might do to him, and I'm ... scared for you."

Elsa was shivering. Which was funny, really, because she couldn't feel the cold. But she was weak and scared and Anna kept talking at her, kept being understanding about everything, and she had no idea what to do. It was making her head hurt and her heart ache.

"... I don't... I don't know how to not... have you be scared too."

Because all of the control in the world was worth nothing if she was frightening her sister.

"Come away from here," Anna said, firmly. "That's how you make me not scared. You give up whatever this is, and someone checks to see if you're poisoned or not. Not the clinic. Maybe a mage. Anyone. And if you aren't, we come right back here and make sure no one touches this guy. Deal?"

She held out a hand, hoping to get a handshake. It sounded fair, to her, on the face of it. Maybe her sister would agree.

Only, Elsa wasn't looking at the face of it. She was looking at it twisted to the side and turned upside-down and with a grand total of maybe seven hours of sleep since Monday, and she was half-starved and ill, and when she jumped at the handshake this time, that was when the other creature, the gryphon that had been carefully silent this entire time, watching, sprang to his feet and placed himself firmly between the two girls.

Elsa blinked heavily, needing a moment to mentally adjust to what was happening here. To the way the creature's paw lifted, talons extended, ready to rake claws down across Anna's face.

"No!"

Everything froze. Elsa threw an arm out toward the creature, and it cracked and splintered, shrieking in shock. Snow hung heavy in the air around them, not falling, not blowing. The wolves stopped terrorizing Barry and turned to face the girls, ears slicked backwards.

She'd taken this bracelet so that she could have control, so that she wouldn't hurt her sister.

And she'd managed, just barely, to keep Anna from getting hurt again regardless.

She threw her hands to the ground and the gryphon shattered into shards of ice, the wolves into flurries of snow.

Was this control?

She looked at the bracelet around her wrist.

It was supposed to give her control!

Anna was going to take several deep breaths and be very, very glad that she hadn't, erm, soiled her dress. That gryphon had been close, and while she trusted Elsa, utterly, that gryphon had seriously been unhappy with her.

Breathing! Breathing was good!

"I-i-it's okay," Anna said, quickly. "Elsa. You're okay. I'm s-sorry I spooked you."

Still breathing. Red letter day for Anna.

"Okay!" she said, and her voice was chirping again. "No handshakes! I'm gonna file that one. Handshakes: bad idea. They make you jumpy! That one's on me."

"No! No, Anna, no, that isn't you, it's..." She looked at the bracelet around her wrist again, and her eyes narrowed. "It's this. I took this so that I could be sure I wouldn't hurt you."

And then she'd sort of kind of almost killed her. That had backfired spectacularly, then.

"I can't... I'll put on the gloves again, I don't care. I just need you safe."

She tore the bracelet off, then, and threw it to the ground, then threw her hand downward at it, creating one last shard of ice, that expanded from the inside of it, ripping it wide open. Her eyes went wide as a wave of smoke rose up from it and coalesced into something else entirely, into a tidal wave on a stormy sea, coming to crash down on top of them--

-- mist.

And then she exhaled heavily. Possibly in relief. Possibly because that was all she could manage before her legs buckled underneath her and she collapsed to the ground.

If Anna had been a split-second faster, she might have caught Elsa before she hit the ground. Instead, she was wrapping herself around the huddled sister-lump and squeezing for all she was worth.

"You would never hurt me," Anna insisted. "You didn't let that thing hurt me. You would never let anything hurt me."

Elsa would face anything for her. Even the shackles of those stupid gloves.

"Don't get sick for me," she said. "I don't need you -- poisoning yourself because you think it'll keep me safe. I don't. I just need you. Okay? You hear me?"

So what if she was crying? She was allowed.

Well, if Anna was crying, at least she was in excellent company. Because Elsa was exhausted, Elsa was wrung dry, but she was giving it a spirited attempt herself as she clung right back to Anna.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Anna. I only wanted... I just couldn't stand the thought of..."

She didn't know what to say. So she just held on as tightly as she possibly could manage, and she cried some more.

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notaweenie.livejournal.com - 2015-03-28 03:14 (UTC) - Expand

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