This story was written for Elsanna Shenanigans September 2018 Contest with the prompt being lessons (word limit: 500-2500 words). Please check out elsanna-shenanigans on tumblr for more information on the monthly prompt contests or join us on discord at discordDOTgg/TU9NpnH (you know what to do with that DOT).

Betelgeuse

"Elsa, Elsa, Elsaelsaelsa–"

"I'm awake, Anna," she croaked sleepily, trying to focus her eyes on her sister. She swatted her half-heartedly. "Get off."

The weight shifted off her with a delay and she considered asking if something was wrong, but then Anna started to bounce on the side of her bed.

"What do you want?" she asked instead, her tone just a bit rude, but that was to be expected when she was woken up in the apparent middle of night. She finally took in her sister's excited expression and groaned. "Go to sleep."

"I can't," she squeaked out, but it wasn't the usual frightened squeak she would use when she couldn't sleep because of a nightmare. No, this was an entirely delighted squeak. "I think the power's out."

Elsa's brows furrowed. "So?"

"So– come on, just look!"

"Anna–"

"Please, Elsa, just for a second."

She rolled her eyes, but she still let her sister's tiny hand pull her by the wrist as she jumped off the bed, Elsa following closely behind. Anna led her to the windowsill, where their parents recently installed a cushioned seat for them to play on on rainy days. She jumped up clumsily and climbed to sit on the pillows and plushies strewn out haphazardly there. Elsa took a place next to her and looked out.

"See?"

"It's dark," she said flatly. Like Anna said, it seemed the power was out in the entire neighborhood, and she could see almost precisely nothing, aside for a few patches of moonlight.

Still, she could almost feel her sister buzz with excitement next to her, so she focused harder. Some shadowy figure ran swiftly through their dark backyard and she knew father was gonna complain about the racoons again in the morning, but that couldn't have been what Anna wanted her to see.

"Up." Anna's voice was barely over a whisper, but Elsa heard it, and followed her sister's pointing hand until she looked straight up in the sky.

Her breath hitched. On a cloudless night like this, they would sometimes count the stars and give them names when their parents thought they were long asleep.

But now, with all the lights from the city gone, there were not a few stars to count. Not tens of them. Not hundreds.

Elsa could swear she could see every star in the universe right from their bedroom window now.

"Wow, right?" Anna whispered. Elsa wanted to look at her and see her expression, but her eyes were glued to the sky. "I knew you would like it."

She nodded absentmindedly, not even caring if Anna saw it.

The next time they had a chance to look at the night sky away from the city lights was two years later. They were spending their summer vacation at their grandparents' in Norway, and they managed to sneak out of the house in the night.

"Wait up, Anna," Elsa breathed out in huffs between each step she took as they climbed a steep slope a little over a mile away from the river that ran through their grandparents' backyard. "Do we really have to go that far?"

If they woke up right now and noticed the girls were gone, Elsa was sure they would kill her, or at the very least lock them both up in the room for the remainder of their stay. But tonight their grandparents celebrated something, and they both drank enough to keep them asleep through the night, and there was no way in heaven or hell that she could talk Anna out of this.

"I just wanna get out of the woods," Anna said back, with her recent trademark hiss of a missing milk tooth. "Those stupid trees are covering everything."

Elsa hung her head in defeat and wiped the sweat from her forehead, silently following the path of her sister's footprints.

She was nearing the peak when she heard the mesmerized gasp.

Anna was standing in the middle of a clearing, staring straight up. "They look so different," she whispered, half in astonishment, half in confusion.

Elsa followed her gaze. "That's because we're in a different place," she muttered back at her. There was nobody in the woods to hear them, but somehow it seemed unfit to talk louder than just above a whisper. "We're looking from another side, so to say."

Anna's forehead wrinkled in thought. "But the stars are still in their places, right?" she asked, and, without waiting for an answer, continued, "they are so far from us that it doesn't matter to them where we are."

Elsa's eyes snapped back to her at the odd choice of words. "But it matters to us where we are," she said slowly, not entirely sure if this was the point she wanted to make, but sure enough, Anna nodded in understanding. Elsa pointed to one particular star. "See? That's the same Polar Star as always, but from a different angle."

There was a quiet mutter of approval. "Oh!" Anna shouted, jumping excitedly and startling Elsa almost out of her skin. "I can see the Orion's Belt." She pointed to the three stars. "I asked grandpa about some of the constellations." She blushed so deeply that Elsa could see it in the dark. "The Orion is the only one I can find on my own."

Elsa made a mental note to get her an astronomy book.

"Do you know any?"

Elsa grabbed her hand and moved it across the sky. "This is the Ursa Major," she said, drawing out the shape with Anna's pointing finger. "And Ursa Minor, here. And this is Cassiopeia, Sagittarius–"

"That looks like a teapot!"

"–and that's the full Orion." She drew out the shape of a man with a bow, connecting the stars. "And that's his dog, Sirius."

She pointed to the brightest star she could find, hoping it really was Sirius.

"His dog?" Anna asked in a disbelieving voice.

"Orion was a hunter, and he had a dog." Elsa shrugged. "That's what miss Becker told us."

Their grandparents weren't happy with her that night.

"Elsa!"

Elsa didn't even get into the house fully before her sister's body crashed into hers and almost toppled her over. "Oh my god I missed you so, so much!" Anna's voice was barely audible, muffled by Elsa's shirt, but she adamantly refused to let go and step back.

"It's okay." She patted her back awkwardly. "I'm home for the whole Summer."

Her shirt began to dampen where Anna's eyes were pressed into her chest.

"Anna, we have to move out of the way."

She finally released Elsa from the bear hug just enough to let her step to the side and look at her face. Melting at the puffed, red eyes, Elsa ruffled her (much longer than she remembered it) hair. "I missed you too."

Later, upstairs, they were playing with the book Elsa got for Anna's twelfth birthday.

"It's wonderful," Anna said, skimming through the words. Detailed photographs and drawings of every known constellation graced almost every page. "Thank you so much."

She pressed into Elsa's side as they sat on the windowsill, the heavy book in her lap. Elsa let her head fall to rest on top of Anna's. She was home.

"Can you not go back?"

The Summer was ending, and a defiant, fifteen year old Anna stood in the doorway watching her pack. Elsa let out a tired sigh. "I have to go to school, Anna, you know that."

"Can't you switch schools?" she barked out the question. "Somewhere closer? Can't you go to my school?"

Elsa shook her head. "Mom and dad won't let me," she said it, quiet enough for them not to hear, but loud and sad enough for Anna's expression to soften. Before her sister could say anything, she stood up and walked over to her. "I planned something for tonight," she whispered into her ear. Her lips tingled as they grazed Anna's ear, and she felt goosebumps form on the exposed skin of Anna's forearms.

Hours later, she lied flat on her back with Anna next to her, pointing up at the sky.

"... and Orion," Anna continued her whispered lecture, tracing out Orion's shape in the sky. "That bright star here is Rigel, the brightest in this constellation, and this one here–" she pointed to Orion's right shoulder. "Is Betelgeuse."

"That's B–" Elsa bit her tongue before Bellatrix had the chance to roll off it. She faked a cough. "Beautiful."

Anna fell silent, and it took Elsa a good while to realize her sister was no longer staring at the sky. "You know what's beautiful?" she asked when Elsa's gaze met hers. Elsa's throat suddenly felt dry, and all of her extremities numb. Anna's eyes flashed. "The light we see is millions of years old. Those stars could be long gone, but they are still alive to us as we see them now." Her voice was hushed, and she leant closer to Elsa. "We are so lucky to be in this moment and see this sky as it is." Her hand caught Elsa's between their hips. "There were so many possibilities for life to happen, but it happened like this for us," she was whispering now, "and we are here, on this speck of dust in the Universe, in this fractured moment of Time, together."

Elsa didn't stop her when she felt warm lips on her own, but she could swear all of the universe slowed down for a few seconds.

"Will we live together after you're done with school?"

This wasn't what she expected to hear while her hands were under her sister's shirt, but she guessed the question had to come at some point.

"We will," she answered, her hands still roaming Anna's burning skin. The night was chillier than it usually was towards the end of August, but the sky was clear. They ventured further than ever to escape the city lights and prying eyes. If their parents found out they were gone, Elsa couldn't care less. "We will go to college together," she breathed out against Anna's neck. "I'll wait a year for you, I'll work in the meantime and save some money, enough to rent an apartment." Her teeth grazed Anna's collarbone and she hummed contentedly at the shudder that followed. "We'll spend as much time together as you'll want."

"All of it," Anna breathed out, nails digging into Elsa's shoulders while she continued to kiss lower, her fingertips leaving a shivering trail across Anna's abdomen.

Elsa hissed when she moved her knee and found a small, sharp stone under the blanket. "And we'll have a king size bed," she muttered. She looked up at Anna as she laughed, but then her sister's hand caught one of hers and guided it lower, under the waistband of her shorts.

They were silent, for a moment, focused on the physicality more than anything, the singing crickets around them interrupted only by Anna's gasps and mewls as she writhed around Elsa's fingers deep inside her. Elsa flushed deep crimson when she felt a trembling hand move down her own stomach, then down the front of her own pants and into what she perceived had to feel like molten iron between her legs.

Anna came first, moaning into her mouth before she had to break apart, gasping for air, eyes open wide and for a moment Elsa could see all the stars in her dilated pupils before a supernova exploded inside her brain and she could only do so much not to collapse on top of her sister and keep quiet.

Anna was looking somewhere beyond her as they came down from their high.

"I'm getting a tattoo," she gasped suddenly. "As soon as I can."

All of her resolve used up, Elsa couldn't stop herself from laughing, even when Anna's brows furrowed and she gave her an irritated stare. "Sorry," she said after a moment, lying down next to Anna and looking up at the sky. "Which constellation?"

Anna blushed.

"Orion."

Elsa sat on the hill, alone.

Not even a full year passed. Three hundred and forty seven days, to be exact. Even less since she last saw her.

She clutched the astronomy book to her chest, looking up at the sky. Mouth moving soundlessly, she named all the constellations she could remember. Ursa Major, Ursa Minor. Cassiopeia. Sagittarius. Gemini. Serpens. Cancer. Andromeda. Caelum. Virgo. Corona Borealis. Pegasus. Perseus. Lyra.

Orion.

She scratched absentmindedly at her healing tattoo.

"Why Orion?"

"Betelgeuse."

She knew what that meant. Anna told her before, and she felt dumb for even asking. Of course it was Betelgeuse. Anna was always in love with it, always able to find it even if she was woken up in the middle of the night. Not Sirius. Not even Rigel.

Betelgeuse.

"You know," she whispered once, trailing a finger on Elsa's cheek. "If Betelgeuse went supernova right now, we would only know in 600 years."

"And if it already blew up 600 years ago?"

"Then we'd see a light so bright you couldn't even imagine it before anything else happened."

A dry sob escaped Elsa's throat. She stared at the stars of Orion, as if her gaze could burn them out of the sky. Sacrifice them. Harvest their light and mould it into an astral image of her sister, then press it close together until it became corporeal.

She wished she could hear her once more.

"Just look at it."

She guided Elsa's head to look up at the sky and Elsa wanted to roll her eyes, tell her she's been looking at the stars for hours now and that she'd much rather look at her, but Anna held her head firm in her lap and moved out of her field of vision. What remained was the sky–the clearest she had ever seen it, a myriad of stars sprinkled across it just like the freckles on Anna's face.

"This was made for you."

Anna's voice was so quiet she barely even heard it.

"Just look at it."

She looked at it now, but she could only feel the sorrow.

Her mother called her, around half a year ago. Said there was a crash. Said she died on the spot.

She hugged her knees close to her chest.

"We exist," she gasped out. "Right here, right now. The two of us. We chanced upon each other." Her lips were on Elsa's for a few seconds, warm and fleeting. "In the infinite Universe we managed to find each other."

She looked up at the stars again and wondered if she can see them still. In another time, maybe. Another space. Another universe, parallel to this one, where Elsa never had to leave, where they were always together, where Anna never died on her way to see her as she ran away from home.

They remained the same, the light carrying on endlessly.

But she could swear Betelgeuse shone brighter.