I always swore to myself that I would never do a gender bend fic. Then my friends and I messed around with autotuning and reducing the pitch of "Let It Go," and it was beautiful, and I ended up drawing the whole crew bent, and then...It just happened. Dang it. I fail at keeping promises.
And since I fail at keeping promises, there are no promises for releases. I update when I update. And when I update is usually contingent on when Wake Forest and my jobs give me a freaking break.
Yes, some things have been reordered and some things have been added for the sake of filling in gaps that bothered me. Some of the gaps have been filled in based on information I got off the demo tracks. Storytelling, you know? Nothing is meant to be entirely verbatim. Because being a different gender does actually change certain things, like societal expectations, which ends up having a strong effect on behaviour. Also, psychology changes. Just a little, but enough to make a noticeable difference. My goal is not to have the characters in their same personalities with different names and anatomy. My goal is to retain the essence of the characters while presenting them in the gender roles their society would have created. Thus, there will be OOC moments. Though, that really depends on how you see OOC.
I do not own Frozen.
Prologue: Prophecy
On year's longest night, when planets align
And when midnight hour is close at hand
A child shall be born with powers malign
Of such great might as could cover the land
And when he comes to his twenty-first year
Under his rule, the kingdom shall splinter
All men and women shall shiver in fear
The land shall be cursed in unending winter
But even when frost has reached its most dire
The might of the heart shall always ring true
For that which cannot be melted with fire
Can be banished with the power of two
For even when ice and snow fall from above
A curse can still break from act of true love
He wiped his hand over his wife's forehead and brushed back the wet hairs. She squeezed his other hand hard and slowly rose from the silk pillows and screamed long and loud.
"You're doing well, Your Majesty," the woman at the foot of the bead said calmly. "It will be over soon."
"It can't!" the king said desperately. "It's still the solstice!"
"Solstice or no," the woman said, "It's coming."
"You have to stop it! Just one more hour..."
"I can't stop this baby coming any more that you can stop time, Your Majesty," the midwife replied. "If the baby doesn't come, it dies."
The king closed his eyes and squeezed his wife's has as another contraction racked her body and the midwife encouraged her to push. The baby could not be born for another hour, not until midnight had passed. His child would not be the child of the trolls' prophecy.
"Here's the head. Push, Your Majesty!"
"Stop calling me that!" the queen screamed.
He took a deep and shaky breath. When it had become clear that the child was to be delivered near the solstice, he had met with his advisers. Some had suggested sending the child far away and claiming the baby had not survived the birth. Others had suggested sending the baby to another country and adopting another infant in secret. In the end, it was his wife's brother who had spoken sensibly.
"Even if the child is born on the solstice, that does not mean it is the child of prophecy," he had said. "The kingdom will fear it, though, so it would be wise to lie about the time of delivery. But the likelihood of this child being the one is too small to worry about. And if it is, we teach the child to control the powers."
But as the king held his wife's hand in the birthing chamber, all his fears and apprehensions returned. His brother-in-law was just beyond the door, probably praying as fervently as the king was. Praying for the impossible: that the child would not be born for another hour yet.
"Here, it comes! Just one more..."
For two-hundred years past kings and queens had feared every birth in the winter. For two-hundred years a child had not been born on the longest night of the year.
The queen yelled one final time and released her tight grip on the king's hand.
"It's boy, Your Majesty! A perfectly healthy boy."
The king opened his eyes. A son. He had a son. He was a father.
The queen, who had collapsed on the pillows, pushed herself up. "Does there seem to be anything unusual? Anything...cold?"
The midwife laughed and turned away from the bed. "No, Your Majesty." She walked toward a basin while an ashen-faced servant girl of no more than fourteen cleared bloodied sheets and towels from the bed. The baby let out a shrill cry and the midwife continued, "He's perfectly nor–My God!"
"What?" the king said as he jumped to his feet. "What happened?"
The midwife turned to him. "The water froze!"
The queen pressed a hand to her mouth and the boy's wails filled the room as frost began to creep along the top of the wainscoting on the mahogany and silk walls.
So it had come to pass. The first part of the prophecy had been fulfilled.
The queen reached out her arms. "Give him to me," she pleaded. "Give him here."
The midwife scurried to the bed and handed the queen the baby, still covered in red and white. The queen pulled a velvet blanket from the bedside table and wrapped her son tightly, cooing and singing softly as she did. After a few moments, the boy stopped crying and opened his blue eyes to gaze up at his mother.
"Look, dear," she said. "He has your eyes."
The king smiled. They would not know that for another six months. "We'll have to pay the staff more to keep them quiet."
The queen nodded.
"I'll start looking for trustworthy tutors. The people can't know. If they do, they'll panic."
"I want to call him Erik," the queen said. "I want to call him after my father."
The king smiled. His father-in-law was a good man, a duke long since loyal to the crown. "A fine namesake," he said.
The queen looked up at him with tears in her eyes. "Is it going to be alright?"
Instead of directly answering, the king said, "We'll be alright." They would be, in the end. He would ensure that much. "And will our little Erik."
A nice, short chapter to start us off.
How many hours does it take to write a sonnet, complete with a volta? I'm not sure, but I kept returning to it over a period of three hours until I was satisfied.
And I almost didn't write this, because this thought crept into my head about the end...I'm ashamed to admit to what it was, but... "Really? The boy would need the girl to save him? Seriously?" And then I was all, "SCREW GENDER CONSTRUCTS!" And I was determined to do this. Because why can't there be a knight in distress and a damsel in shining petticoat?
Leave a review if it suits your fancy. Don't if it doesn't. I'm not big on demanding them.