Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore

[captain_rogers]

There was a second - just a second there in the midst of shaking his head in an attempt to lose some of the sand that had been whipped up into his face by the harsh wind of a Kansas summer - where Steve stood entirely unaware of the shift of the world around him. In expecting the change in temperature, the shelter from the wind and the dust, he had not immediately thought that he walked through the door not of the run down diner just west of Ellis but into another world entirely.

Busy with the task of clearing his eyes of that sudden burst of sand and grit, the door slipped from his hand to close heavily behind him.

He did not think immediately of its consequences, not as he allowed the pleasant drag of a long ride to settle into the shrug of his shoulders and the feel of his back and arms as he shifted the helmet he carried under one arm. The long weeks on the road had not so much bred an easiness in him as it allowed him room to breathe, to think, to be able to look at the world as had been built around his sleeping body as being anything other than a discomfort or intrusion. It had not, unfortunately, kept him from understanding, as he gave one last rub of a hand over his eyes to open them and blink at the surroundings he found himself in, that he was not in the diner he'd spotted just off the road.

There were, for one, no green vinyl booths that had looked shabby even through a dusty window. No checkered flooring. No beleaguered heavy-set woman with a red-painted scowl or scuffed from the road customers. All this was obvious for the fact that he stood on the polished wooden floor of a grand lobby that put everything but Stark Towers to shame.

Comments

[silverandcold]

Elsa's a little hesitant until she notices the thick gloves, assuring her that they won't touch skin to skin. It's hard to tell how naturally cold her touch is, but she doesn't want to hurt him. Finally, she extends her own hand and shakes it.

"I'm Elsa, from Arendelle," she says. "It's nice to meet you."

Then she looks back at the ice. They're knee-high and thick at the base, but delicate otherwise and melting already. "Yes, just ordinary ice. Except for my making it."

[captain_rogers]

Only the drop of her eyes down to his hand, lingering there for a moment long enough to tell him her hesitation might have had something to do with touch (whether personal or general, he wasn't sure) reminded Steve that he wore gloves at all. He rarely did as a civilian, but had found that he had grown too used to the feel of leather stretching across his knuckles when he sat astride his bike to have given up the habit of them.

The 'from Arendelle' reminded him a moment of Thor's way of speaking. A thought that as ludicrous enough on its own, what with the Asgardian being several times over the slip of a woman's size, all gold and beard and great muscles where Elsa looked as if a stiff wind might blow her over. The last thought he kept firmly to himself, as even as terrible as he was at speaking to woman, he knew better than to assume that a woman was any less dangerous or capable than himself.

His hand swallowed hers easily, though he kept his grip careful to keep from accidentally injuring her. He eyed the ice when she did before nodding, suppressing the urge to step away from the ice as he had already made her uncomfortable once and he hardly wanted to make the same mistake twice. "It's Steve, from Brooklyn, then. I guess," he told her, lips curling again.

[silverandcold]

"It's...nice to meet you." She bites her lips and withdraws her hand. "I'm sorry. I don't know how cold I am. To others."

The cold's never really affected her, but Elsa has seen the way that people recoil from the cold, how they shiver. She doesn't want to hurt them in any way.

"I don't have a lot of control."

[captain_rogers]

Didn't really matter to him that he had met the woman just a few moments before. That he had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there from that dusty Kansas highway. The shyness and nervousness of her that rounded her shoulders and made her look more small than she already was was more than enough to make him want to erase some of it. He let her hand slip from his without a fight, but shook his head and assured her, "You don't really need to worry about that with me, ma'am." The earnest tone of his voice was not unmarked by a stab at humor as he added, "I'm more resilient than I look."

He wasn't about to lie to her and tell her he'd ever been fond of ice or the cold, it wouldn't have seemed right to unless there seemed to be no other option. Never mind that he had spent too many winters shivering in the thin-walled apartment he'd had with his mother when he'd been young, feeling his lungs rattle about in his thin chest as he had struggled to breathe. The ice had been unpleasant long before he'd been trapped in it for seventy years, but she didn't look like she needed to know that just then.

"There's no one who could help you with that?" he asked, curious. "To learn to control it, I mean."

[silverandcold]

"There are people who've helped me learn control but..." Elsa raises a bare hand, letting a tiny flurry cycle up by her hand and then dissipate, shaking her head. "There's no one I've ever known with powers like this. Not in Arendelle. Not here."

It seems that, even across more than one universe, Elsa is meant to be alone and different forever.

"It gets stronger every year..."

[captain_rogers]

Steve understood loneliness, the feeling of being entirely in the world with no way to be seen to bridge the gap between himself and those he saw around him. He had seen it enough in the mirror to know it when he saw it in Elsa's eyes then. He was torn between that knowledge, the desire to alleviate a degree of that, and the fact that he did not know how he could help her.

He knew nothing of her ability, had known no one who had struggled with anything quite like it (he didn't think Dr. Banner's transformation could be compared to what she could do, they were so different).

"I'm sure there's someone out there that can help," he told her, finally. "Maybe you just haven't found them yet."

[silverandcold]

"Maybe," Elsa says, but she doesn't sound certain. Wouldn't they have found someone by now if she had?

"You must have so many questions," she finally says, resorting to all her training. Royal comportment and behavior.

[captain_rogers]

While he had the feeling she was capable of more than a few (now melting) spears of ice that had made a temporary, protective fence around her, Steve was not entirely sure it was something he should pry into. If he had had any experience he might have shared with her, any common ground in ability he might have been able to translate to be of the help she seemed to be in such need of, it would have been a different matter. It was, however, not the case, and as dazzling as even that small flurry she'd summoned had been, the last thing he wanted to do was make things worse for her.

"There's been stranger things," he offered, one corner of his mouth lifting in what he hoped was encouragement before he was sidetracked by her statement. "I do," he agreed, "This place- do you have any idea how I got here?"

[silverandcold]

"They say it's like a crossroads, between worlds and dimensions," Elsa explains, not quite understanding it herself. "Some doors open back to your home. Or to other places."

Not that she's tried to look for Arendelle. Surely, if she stays far away the storm will fade on its own and they'll all be safe from her. She has rooms to hide in here, places where she won't cause any harm. "They don't exactly appear in obvious places. I ran out onto the fjord and then here I was."

[captain_rogers]

"So," he thought back to the Tesseract and how it had allowed the movement across dimensions, or across deep space to parts of the universe man might otherwise never see. "They're portals?" His travel had been missing anything of the Cube's glowing blue energy, or the screeching at the edges of his hearing capabilities, and while that was comforting in its way, the experience was all the more alien for that lack of reference.

He considered her use of the term 'fjord' and was reminded instantly of the arctic, of Greenland, but the strangeness of her accent being nothing like he had heard in the radio broadcast reports of the Danish Resistance during the war. "Arendelle," he began, curious, "What country is that in?"

[silverandcold]

"Country?" Elsa asks, caught off guard a moment. "It's a kingdom of its own. Our neighbors include Norway, but its a sovereign nation."

It's her nation, more to the point. Even if she's all but given up her crown, it doesn't change the fact that Elsa had been raised to become its queen from birth.

"Where is Brooklyn?"

[captain_rogers]

Where he had thought briefly that she might have belonged to a different world, the explanation easy enough for her abilities from what he had already seen of aliens and Asgardians. If magic and illusions were possible, why wouldn't some sort of frost ability? Her words put that theory to rest, unless other worlds also had places called Norway, which he supposed was possible but unlikely. "I'm sorry," he was sure to tell her, "I didn't mean to offend."

He remembered vaguely the reports of mutated individuals in his world world who had a wide range of abilities. Certainly he had come across one or two people back in the war who had been capable of things beyond human capability and who had not been part of Schmidt's experiments. Perhaps that explained the ice?

"It's a city in New York, in America." Steve would've admitted freely that he often forgot not everyone might know where Brooklyn was, it was so deeply embedded within him. The sun set in the West, egg creams were always delicious, and Brooklyn was Brooklyn.

[silverandcold]

"New York," Elsa says longingly. "I've heard it's wonderful there. But I've never traveled."

She's barely seen much of her own small kingdom, or even the entirety of the castle. All her life has been spent in the same few rooms, kept away where other people would be safe from her. It's hard to imagine getting to see the rest of the world now, especially when she's ever more uncontrollable.

"It's just. We're a proud country. I know it's not big, but it's still my--our. Our Kingdom."

[captain_rogers]

New York didn't feel as if it belonged to him as it had before. It had suffered too much just weeks before he last remembered, and had changed too much in his absence for it to be exactly as he had last known it. And still he had to smile at her compliment, the love for his city still beating warm in his chest.

"I get that," he told her. "It's home, right? There's nothing like home, in the end."

[silverandcold]

Home. The word conjures up her childhood, sneaking into the ballroom at night with Anna and sitting by the fire with her parents. Storybooks and snowmen. None of what she imagines is recent, not in the cold and empty rooms or the barren hallways, nor in her ice palace or coronation. No wonder it had been so easy to leave all of that far behind. None of it had been home to her.

"I'm supposed to rule it but...I'm so dangerous. How could I?"

[captain_rogers]

"If you don't mind me saying so, ma'am," he told her, the tone of his voice gone gentle but firm as he attempted to make his point known without having her startle away from him again. Tremulous women who were unsure of themselves were rarer in his life than spitfires and powerhouses who owned every inch of the world they strode through, leaving him at a continued loss when it came to Elsa as she pulled so tightly into herself that he thought she might shatter if he breathed too heavily in her direction. "I've met all kinds of people, and I don't think there's anything that can keep you from doing what you think is right if you put your mind to it."

He gave her a gentle smile, struggling through his own clumsiness with women to feel sure of much he offered her beyond that it was heartfelt.

[silverandcold]

"Even be a good queen?" she feels like a stray deer in Steve's presence. Every instinct is to run, to avoid talking more about it, but he holds her gaze without any force and it fascinates her at the same time. He doesn't even know her, Elsa thinks, but he speaks confidently about the good she can do.

"It doesn't seem worth it if I can't do them well."

[captain_rogers]

"If you believe in what you're doing and you love your people, I don't see why you couldn't be a great queen." While he would have been the first to admit that he knew almost nothing about monarchy or queens, as withdrawn as the woman was and as easily startled as she appeared to be, he couldn't see how her ability should keep her from being the best for what her people needed. "You obviously love your kingdom, ma'am. Maybe you need to be more cautious than most, considering what you can do, but you shouldn't let that keep you from being who you want to be."

[silverandcold]

Elsa smiles a little, not just because of Steve's kindness. The words remind her of Anna, of her unfaltering confidence.

"You should meet my little sister sometime. She never stops believing in the good."