fandomhigh | Library, Saturday

Entry tags:

library

Library, Saturday

Once again, the library seemed to be behaving itself for Elsa when she came in for her shift, though she couldn't help but notice that all of the books for her to return today had the came caption on them; The Movie Novelization.

There was a Space Battles novel adaptation of the movies, and one for Death In A Fence, and another one featuring a leather-clad biker skeleton with his head on fire on the cover. Elsa was starting to get suspicious when she put away a few of the yellow For Dummies books that were claiming to be novelizations. She was only a little twitchy when a cookbook claimed to be the same. But she was determined to get throu-

"I know the Barry Plodder novels came before the movies!"

Look, Elsa had a low tolerance for absolute nonsense. She was drawing the line, here.

[Open!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Eh. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke," Barry said with a good natured shrug before putting the pizza on the main library desk. "I didn't think you'd mind but I brought lunch. So what are the books doing today?"

"They've all decided that they're movie novelizations today," Elsa reported, leaning forward to give the pizza box an approving look, before leaning a little more across the desk, soliciting a quick kiss. "All of them. The actual novelizations, the how-to section, the periodicals, everything. And pizza today? You're going to spoil me."

She still didn't have much experience with pizza, but she knew enough to know that she enjoyed it.

"This place is fucking nuts," Barry responded with a shake of his head. "It's bad enough that the fucking etiquette books bug the crap out of me. How can they even do this? And how can a How-To book be a movie novelization? Is there really a movie on how to build a fucking bookcase?"

"If there is, I can't imagine it sold that many seats," Elsa replied, shaking her head as well. "I'm pretty sure that this is just the book equivalent of... playing dress-up, or something, maybe. There were a few children's picture books claiming to be movie novelizations, as well. Pat The Bunny probably doesn't make for a terribly engaging two-hour film, though."

And at the same time, she was almost curious enough that she'd watch it. Movies still held a certain sort of novelty for her, after all.

"Just as long as Pat the Bunny wasn't directed by Michael Bay," Barry grumped. "He could probably make it two hours long with a bunny using a machine gun to save the world. I still don't understand how these books can move around on their own and everything. Drives me nut."

"I suppose saying that it's a quirk of the island and it's probably something magical in nature isn't going to help you relax, is it?" Elsa gave Barry a wry smile. "The island has thrown stranger than a few moving books at us as it is."

Barry let out a long groan. "Yeah. It's thrown weirder shit at us. Like fucking flying eels. Doesn't mean I don't just accept it being quirky and fucking weird," he admitted grudgingly. "Still can't find a fucking reason for eels to develop or use zero gravity units."

"Well, the answer to that one is simple," Elsa reasoned, reaching to open the pizza box. "It wasn't the eels who did it. They don't even have hands."

How would an eel put any of that together? That was just silly, Barry.

"Don't get me started with that," Barry warned. "Or all of lunch will be me swearing my head off about fucking eels. I'd rather has something else to think about."

You were so lucky you were dating a future queen, Barry. It meant that Elsa was far too polite to start laughing at you. Instead, she was going to just allow herself a smile. A highly amused smile.

"Well, then let's talk about something else," she decided. "What kind of pizza is this?"

If it had eel, she wasn't going to be able to keep from cracking up, though.

"Veggie pizza with organic crust," Barry answered knowing exactly what that amused smile meant. "You don't want to know what the special was at the pizza place. Hey... did you know Anna came to the warehouse the other day? She was pretty pissed off when she found out you and I were dating."

You know, Elsa would much rather still be talking about pizza. Her smile faded just a tiny bit, before she replied.

"I didn't know she went looking for you," she admitted. "But I do have some idea of how upset she was. I... I don't think she's coming to accept the alternate timeline factor very well. She's taking a lot of things... very personally."

"I think I set her straight a little bit," Barry said with a little smile. "She seems to be pretty protective of you even though you're from another universe and timeline. She threatened to punch me out if I ever hurt you. Pretty sure she'd do it too"

"And now I'm actually almost curious if she could. Fortunately, I don't see that being an issue any time soon." Elsa gave a little smile as she rolled up her sleeves slightly. She'd worn her bracelets today, so at least she didn't have to worry about trying to eat pizza around a pair of gloves. "Is it bad that I'm happy she's here, and terrified at the same time? At least with my own Anna back home, I can face her on my own terms. Here it feels more and more as though I have to face her on Fandom's."

"Honestly? I thnk it will be good for you," Barry said with a little hesitation. "I know it's scary for you but I think having her here will help you back home. She's trying not to crowd you here and it's hard for her too. In the end I think both of you will gain a little more understanding and develop ways on how to deal with each other without shutting the other one out or causing the other one to run away."

"You... are far more optimistic than I am," Elsa noted, and chewed on her lip for a moment. "She stood outside my door on that day when we couldn't lie, you know. For a moment I was afraid she was going to try to break it down. And she's so... angry, and hurt, and I can understand why to an extent, but she keeps accusing me of sending her here to get her away from me, or to keep her away from her," she made a face, "fiance out of... I don't know, Barry. Spite? I'm finally starting to make progress in fits and starts with my own Anna, but I'm not certain I know what I'm doing at all with this one. I'm afraid I'm just making everything worse."

"Anytime you break out of what you know you're going to take the chance of falling on your face," Barry said sympathetically. "But as long as you keep taking a step outside of your room and trying to do the right thing, you can't make anything worse than it already is. Anna is going through a transition coming here and eventually she'll find a way to accept you and what's happened. I just wish she wasn't so fucking stubborn about this Hans guy."

"It'll be hard to accept what's happened," Elsa noted. "Beyond the fact that she got hurt somehow, she still doesn't know what went on. I don't plan on telling her, either."

She squared her jaw a little at that. She was going to be pretty adamant on that one for quite some time.

"And as for Hans... I... really don't know him at all," she added, "but they've only known one another for a day. I don't trust him. Anna's so desperate for human contact, of course she'd say yes. And... And she's second in line for Arendelle's throne. If that doesn't have something to do with such a fast proposal, I'll eat my gloves."

"Can I ask you a question? Why can't you fucking tell her what happened?" Barry asked. "She'd probably understand better if you told her about it. It was an accident. She'd understand, don't you think?"

"She didn't forget on her own," Elsa noted, frowning. "The troll that saved her life specifically took that memory away from her, for her own safety. And all of her other memories about my having powers, too. If I thought it was safe to tell her about it, believe me Barry, I would have. Her, and the servants back home. Maybe even the entire kingdom. Wouldn't that be nice, not having to live half of my life in hiding from the people I'm going to be ruling someday?"

She was scowling down at the pizza, now. Poor thing. It hadn't even done anything to upset her, either.

"It's not that I'm afraid she won't understand, Barry. It's that I'm afraid that knowing might undo whatever it is they did that saved her, back then. She's still got the white in her hair from where I hit her. How can I be sure that doesn't mean there's still a little bit of magic in there that could do horrible things to her if I... I set it off somehow?"

... There was a lot of childhood trauma happening here. For the record.

Barry let out a heavy sigh. Figures she would ask the one question Barry couldn't fucking answer.

Fucking magic.

"I have no fucking clue," Barry said frowning. Mostly because he hated saying he didn't know the answer. "Maybe the trolls would know? Shit. I don't know. I'd never thought I'd have to ask a fucking troll anything."

"They might know," Elsa agreed, sighing and looking downward. "It was their magic that saved her. I haven't seen them in so long... I would have to find the book my father kept, I wouldn't know how to find them otherwise."

That wasn't an 'I'm not willing to look,' it should be noted.

"Next time you go home I could take a look around," Barry offered helpfully. "You don't have to do this alone, you know."

"Home," Elsa echoed, smiling faintly. "Honestly, I was half starting to wonder if maybe I could just run away to Antarctica, instead."

No Anna, no trolls, nobody to accidentally freeze...

"But I suppose asking the trolls probably would be the more reasonable option. Are you sure you want to talk to them?"

"Well. Fuck. I guess?" Barry said with a little sigh. "I don't know. It's all magic but asking questions about what could happen I could probably handle. I won't understand the logic probably and it'll bug the shit out of me but fuck it. Got to start someplace, right?"

"It does sound better than running around in circles," Elsa agreed. "I haven't really thought about going back to speak to them since I was little. I remember being terrified, at the time. Not of the trolls themselves, but..."

She frowned a little.

"The one who saved Anna's life showed me visions of... not what would happen to her, but what might happen to me. It's hard not to think about that, when I hide from everyone else. Maybe not all of my solitude is for Anna's sake."

Really, who thought that showing an eight year old a vision of herself being ripped apart by an angry mob would encourage her to be less afraid? Honestly?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Library, Saturday

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!

Re: Talk to Elsa!