frozenfractals | you've got to hold on when you get love and let go when you give it

Showing off might be a little bit childish. Striking a balance between modesty and pretending to have actual confidence has been something of a fight for Elsa for years, though, so she doesn't really care. She's been feeling more and more sure of her abilities these last few months, and that means the world. Even if she still has her doubts, she's mostly certain she knows what she's doing, which is a far cry form how she felt less than a year ago. It makes her whole life easier.

If there are two people in the world she would credit with helping her find her footing, they're Anna and Jessica. They've both seen firsthand what Elsa can do, of course. But she's been itching to show Jessica more for ages now, so when a chance arises for them to both get away for an afternoon, she takes it.

It's easier to go out at night sometimes, even if she pays for it when she gets to work on those mornings. With both of them working, though, it's the time when they're both most free. It's easier, too, to let loose on the city streets and roofs late in the evening, when it's darker and only a few people will see her and she knows it's for a good cause. She doesn't want to be always hiding in shadows, though. The sun is bright today. That's just how she wants it.

There's a cove a little way up the coast, outside of town, isolated and shielded from view by the cliffs. The beach there isn't much, but it's space enough for her to work, so she tells Jessica to meet her there. She brings a picnic lunch and a blanket to sit on (if only because it occurs to her that Jessica might get cold, even if she won't), but she keeps both off to the side, leaving as much clear space as she can. Frowning to herself, she studies the area. The ground is a bit rough with shells, kelp, and rock, but she can level it off with a layer of ice for the foundation. After that, it should be fine.

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"I won't," Elsa says, firm, though she's smiling through it. "Queen's orders." Her position may not mean anything here, except sometimes to her, but it's easy to poke fun at herself. Serious as she is about the subject, she doesn't want to get too heavy when the point of coming here was to have a nice, quiet time together, a peaceful, fun day for Jessica.

She's not sure if this counts as fun exactly and it's hard to qualify it as peaceful when there's a strange flip-flopping feeling in her stomach, but it's nice, at least. That much is incontestable. She's aware of the way Jessica's touching her hair, but it's a pleasant sort of awareness, like it's somehow unsettling and comforting all at the same time. It isn't as if she's thought much about lying around together like this, but she suspects she will now, the kind of memory she finds soothing when she needs help coming down from the panic. Even if those don't happen nearly as much anymore.

"As my queen commands, then," Jessica said, trying for serious and failing miserably, face crinkling around her attempt to keep her lips out of a smile. She did a better job on the delivery, though, she thought it was the precise right level of playful, even as some aspects of the phrasing might have touched on the fringes of ideas she was dancing around.

Or lying in one place staring at, which did make the dancing harder.

"Really, ordering less work, that's unconventional royalty. Out of the box thinking. You're clearly very good at it."

"I am," laughs Elsa. "See? I was born for the job." She grins, brow raising briefly at her little joke. At least for the moment, she believes Jessica means it, which is reassuring. Maybe there will be times Elsa has to convince her, but then, that's true of both of them. They all have fears and concerns, irrational or otherwise, they have to be talked down from sometimes. They'll just have to do that for each other.

She moves the arm she's half laying on so her hand is near Jessica's, stretching out a finger to graze her palm. "Besides, if you worked all the time, I couldn't make you castles. Where's the fun in that?"

The finger on her palm was relaxing, but also somehow not, as if there was an undercurrent to the placid calm, a frisson radiating out from it. It made her not want to move; it made her want to move, she just wasn't sure which direction.

She grinned, at the joke, and the sentiment both. The possibility of future castles. "You'd have to make them on top of buildings. Crime scenes. It'd be very confusing for the police."

Elsa nods, tracing circles against Jessica's wrist, expression bright with amusement. "I can freeze the evidence into the walls," she says. "Then it can't go anywhere. Of course, they'd have to defrost it before they could do anything with it."

The nights she spends running around the city are some of her favorites. It's the one thing she can do outside of the apartment where she's always sure of herself. So she has some moments where she's not certain what she's doing, but that all encompassing fear of getting it wrong ebbs. It may not be so bad anymore, but it wakes up in unfamiliar or claustrophobic circumstances a lot of the time. Up on those roofs or dashing through the street, she doesn't know what's coming but she's not afraid of it. Not with Jessica there like a beacon in the fog.

"Cops standing around with hairdryers," Jessica said, smiling at the idea, among other things to smile about, just then. "Slamming a big block of ice down on the exhibit table in the courtroom."

She'd thought, once or twice, about whether she should just join the cops, replace her SHIELD cachet with a badge. Be official, again. But aside from not knowing that the power structures in the city were worth trusting-

(Not that SHIELD had been a sterling beacon of ethics, to be fair)

-they probably looked less favorably on encouraging vigilantism, and Jessica didn't intend to stop any of that. Especially in this particular case.

Giggling, Elsa ducks her head a little, bangs falling in her eyes. She huffs out a breath, trying to blow it away. Movement doesn't seem like much of an option right now, not when she's so comfortable where she is. It feels like budging too much might disturb this strange, restless peace.

"It might make things a bit messy," she says. "All the evidence melting onto their documents. I guess I'd better avoid that."

She smiled wider, and tried to ignore the itch in her fingers to brush Elsa's hair into place for her. Except, no, that'd be fine, that was an ordinary thing to do. Was it? Wasn't it? She was having a hard time with working out where it was.

Sometimes not actually having the experience of growing up as a girl really makes it awkward.

Well, no. Circumstances aside, I think that's mostly dumb ol' me.

"She guesses," she said. "So, no working all the time, or all the legal documents get wet. Clear chain of events. Totally inevitable."

"Exactly." Elsa nods once, firm. "You wouldn't want to make all that extra work for the layers and police, so... Coincidentally that frees up more time for you to hang out with me." Not that they don't spend time together, of course. She's teasing, mostly. With the mask, without it, it's all still Jessica. That's what matters. But it's more fun if Jessica isn't working herself into exhaustion, worrying about everyone else without stopping to think about herself. "It's amazing how that works out."

"Her hidden agenda revealed!" Jessica crowed, although not too loudly. There wasn't exactly anyone around to be disturbed if she was, sure, but she didn't want to put so much energy into it she broke the moment, the stillness, if it proved to be that fragile.

But then, it was a very well-constructed ice castle, and her webs were strong, so what was she worried about? But then, it wasn't the tangible elements that she found delicate.

"A ploy all along. I'm onto you now, queenie."

Elsa lets out a little yelp, quiet and playful, ducking her head to hide her face. "Oh, no, you've figured out my evil scheme," she says. When she lifts her head again, though, she's shifted closer, which is completely unnecessary, since Jessica's made a very nice hammock. It's not like there isn't room. It's just the natural outcome of lowering her head and her body sort of compensating for that motion, is all.

She could draw further back again, but that seems silly, so she stays put, gazing fondly at Jessica. "My extremely circuitous evil scheme to keep you from overworking yourself." Working too hard has always been her thing. It's strange, in a nice sort of way, to want to keep someone else from it. It forces her to look at her own efforts and be mindful of her time. Not that she especially needs to. Anna is perfectly capable of dragging her away from her work when need be.

you've got to hold on when you get love and let go when you give it

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