Chapter Text
Anna & Elsa - It's a Bright Flame You Carry
By day, she was the prim and proper Anna, trying to keep all that energy and passion bottled up inside. She was not meant to be running around like a street urchin, mingling with the "common folk". She was educated well in a private school and her behavior was scrutinized even by the servants in her family estate-- her estate, sadly, for she had inherited it just the year before when her parents died at sea, and it was being managed by a governess until she came of age. She and everyone else demanded the absolute best from Anna, and a day didn't go by that she didn't feel the pressure of those expectations.
By night, though, she was able to shine, in more ways than one. She would sneak out through her window dressed in the costume she'd made herself from fireproof materials secretly purchased in the city, and just like that she shed the mild persona of Anna and became Summer Thaw, a superheroine who fought crime with the power of fire. The thrill of running through the streets helping people cancelled out the humdrum of the day, made her feel alive. She was a prisoner of routine as Anna, but Summer Thaw had no walls, no limitations; just a city that needed her protection.
She didn't know how exactly she had come to have such powers; her parents had never addressed it and she'd gone most of her life thinking that the occassional sudden flare-up had just been some sort of coincidence. Sometimes things had just caught on fire-- could she have known she caused it if nobody told her?
Through experimentation and practice, she had taught herself to control it, to create a spark from her fingertip that could light candles, to conjure a flame that could burn piles of leaves. Such a power was, needless to say, very difficult to contain, but it was very effective against crime. There aren't many more effective deterrents than the threat of being lit on fire, and hand-to-hand combat was a breeze when every part of your body could become too hot to touch.
Sleep was taken in carefully regulated shifts, and the two identities were kept far apart. The difference was well and truly day and night. With so much careful planning involved, it's easy to see how Anna was able to keep her secret so well. She had become Summer Thaw not long after the death of her parents, partly that she might help keep other people from suffering the same way she had. In all that time, no one had ever guessed it was she they celebrated in magazines and speculated about on television. It made her feel proud.
Things changed when she got her own nemesis. At first she felt excited-- after all, it meant she was a real superhero now, like a kind of initiation-- but it soon became apparent that this was much more difficult to deal with than the criminals and low-level supervillains she had been dealing with.
Her name (or at least, her pseudonym) was Queen Winter. She was a high-level supervillain who had the power to form and control ice, and freaking giant ice monsters, too. Her costume was pale blue and so glittery that Anna was sure it must be real ice, at least partially. But meeting your nemesis is no time to get dazzled. Especially not since Queen Winter happened to be in the middle of a bank heist at the time, and Anna almost wasn't able to deal with the scale of it all.
For one thing, there was an ice monster attacking the vault. The alarms were silenced (by ice, as she would learn a few minutes later), and the nightwatchmen frozen solid. These unlucky persons became Summer Thaw's first concern, because she wasn't sure if they could survive long stuck in ice like that. She used her heat to warm them up, and by the time she was finished, the ice monster had almost gotten into the vault.
Then she got into the bank, and almost immediately found herself fighting this new and powerful villain. It seemed like a sure thing, fire against ice, but Queen Winter wouldn't be melted just like that. The graceful woman lifted her pale hands and in an instant, ice was coming on with the force of a blizzard, and Anna could barely defend herself even with a wall of flame quickly raised as a shield. The assault of ice and snow came so hard and so fast that the flame was extinguished, and for all her efforts to fight back, Summer Thaw just wound up drenched, which dampened her fire power. By the time the fight was over, it became clear that she had failed to vanquish her enemy, who also got away with an awful lot of cash.
Needless to say, this was a considerable blow to Anna's ego. She spent the whole of the next day preoccupied, staring into her breakfast until she was almost late getting ready for school, frowning at her textbooks once she was at school as if she didn't understand the words on the page, being considerably less chatty with her peers between classes. Her mind was consumed with thoughts of Queen Winter. Who was that woman? Where had she come from? And why did she seem so familiar?
That was probably the worst part-- feeling this sense of having seen the white-haired woman somewhere before. It wasn't that she'd heard of her before, which was odd considering how well she'd been keeping abreast of any supervillain-related news. Queen Winter had just shown up out of nowhere, and in an instant they recognized each other as mortal enemies.
Anna waited impatiently until nightfall, antsy the whole time, dissatisfied until at long last the sun set, dinner ended, and the day and its routine drew to its close. Almost before she'd shut the door, she was throwing off her dress and rushing for her superhero costume.
She wouldn't be disappointed by the night's prospects. Some time around midnight, Queen Winter showed up to steal a priceless diamond from a private collection, real quintessential supervillain stuff (Queen Winter didn't get points for imagination but she certainly had the class and talent to make up for it, not to mention that she really set her sights high-- how often do you think bad guys really get away with actual bank heists?).
Anna caught her on her way out, and the confrontation was more spectacular than the first. Now prepared for the onslaught of ice, Summer Thaw could devise a new strategy to deal with it. She crossed her arms and spread her fire outward across them, creating a far more effective shield until she could find an opening. The trouble was, it seemed like Queen Winter never tired, the assault pressing on and on without mercy. Frustrated, Summer Thaw threw her arms outward suddenly, sending her shield viciously through the ice toward Queen Winter.
This caught the other woman by surprise, since it had looked like the superhero would keep on guarding herself, and all at once the onslaught stopped as Queen Winter staggered backward, gripping her arm, steam rising from her body. She snarled and shook, and Anna rushed to catch her while she was weak.
Queen Winter righted herself, and for a moment the two of them were standing there, gazing into each other's eyes. Heavens above, she was beautiful, and behind that mask she must have been stunning. Her eyes were such a pale blue, her lashes long and white, her lips so full that Anna almost wanted to kiss them. Well, maybe not almost. Maybe she just really wanted nothing more than to kiss this strange woman. Which was maybe more than a little weird considering that they had just been fighting and she had no idea who in the world this woman could be, which became, more than anything, Anna's foremost concern.
"Who are you?" She asked cautiously. "Where did you even come from?" "I told you last night; I am Queen Winter," the woman answered defiantly. There was definitely something unsure in those eyes, though; they were searching, but for what? They looked at Summer Thaw's mask as if they could see through it to Anna, down into her very soul.
"That's not what I mean," Anna said, forcing herself to be firm. "I want to know who you really are."
"That is who I really am," the other woman replied. "The world wouldn't have me as I was, so I've reinvented myself." She paused. "Who are you? You can control fire. I've never seen that before."
"It's not fair to ask me who I am if you're not gonna tell me who you are," Anna said with something of a huff. "I feel like I've met you before, though. Have we met?"
Queen Winter frowned. "Met? I.... I don't know."
Anna reached out to her. "Hey, let's stop this fighting, okay? We could be on the same team. Just give me the diamond; I'll put it back and we can talk about this, because I really want to get to know you."
Queen Winter turned away suddenly, hugging herself again. "N, no, I don't think I can do that. I'm sorry."
Anna tried to ask why not, but Queen Winter broke into a run, throwing walls of ice behind her to block her path. She wasn't able to burn them all away in time to catch the mystery woman, and sighed when it became clear that she'd lost her. Nothing was ever so easy.
--
Summer Thaw had several more encounters with Queen Winter and the tension only continued to mount. Their battles became more intense, and so did the feelings they had toward one another. Anna became very single-minded about catching her, thinking about her all through the days, becoming disappointed if she didn't show her face at night, burning both figuratively and literally with unnamable passion if she did.
It didn't take much for all that tension to break. The lull in a battle, both women breathing hard, their hands by their sides. They had both gotten so much more adept at keeping the other at bay with their powers. Anna approached Queen Winter again. She pushed her up against a wall, she didn't know what in the world she was going to do next but she was just so angry and she needed to do that, just to show her how angry she was, and then from there she was looking into wide, pale eyes and it was only an instant before she acted on her impulses (as always) and kissed her fiercely on the mouth.
Queen Winter eagerly returned the kiss. Her mouth was amazingly cold, as if there wasn't any heat in her body at all. But the touch of her tongue against Anna's own sent sparks electric down her spine, tingles through her entire body. It was incredible. Then there were the hands, powerful, elegant, small hands exploring her body, and Anna realized that she was doing the same, and it was amazing.
"Qu- Queen Win--" Anna started, but the other woman hushed her suddenly.
"Elsa," she breathed, "My name is Elsa."
"Elsa," Anna repeated with relish. "Oh Elsa, Elsa...."
She captured her mouth once more, losing herself in the whirlwind of emotions and passions that overtook her. That was the night she vanquished her nemesis, and was herself vanquished. Not that they were quite finished with the game-- it was far too exciting to stop yet. ☆