The Secret Affair Behind Elsa's Birthday Present
In the dark, Anna was lying face down on the cold floor, her hand clawed out into the black pool of shadows, her breath pulsing across the ancient dust and her strained whimpers filling the otherwise silent room. Her toes were digging against the unrepentant floor, while her cheek was smashed down, a grimy smear of gray spackling her freckled face and one of her bright blues eyes pressed closed. It had been this way for awhile, with sweat basting her skin and exhaustion soaking her muscles, yet as she continued to groan and writhe on the floor, she finally felt the fruits of her labors as she made one final arch, like a cat stretching to its full length, until she was finally satisfied and went limp on the floor.
Still peering into the darkness under the cabinet, she tried to catch her breath, though smiled happily as she curled her sore arm around her head. "Yeah, that should be good," she muttered, her fingers dancing across her hair as she took a moment to admire her handiwork.
"What are you doing?" said a voice from behind her and she suddenly shrieked, tightening once more like a startled animal, then rolled onto her back and stared at the single figure of Yasha, who was standing in the doorway of the room and staring down at her with a peculiar expression on his face. Seeing that it was him and not the one person she was trying to hide this from, she suddenly let out a gasp of relief and laid her head back, placing her hands across her heaving chest.
"Don't sneak up on me like that!" she panted, "Are you trying to give me a heart attack or something?"
He watched her with little reaction. "No, I am trying to figure out why the princess is lying on the floor of a pantry with a smudge of dust across her face," he replied, shifting his weigh as his hand was tied tightly into the rim of his pants. In reaction, she grunted as she sat up and put her back against the cabinet, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. She glared at the muddy grim, then started chopping at her dress to try and clean up.
"Oh, you know, just hanging out. Is there something weird about just hanging out?" she replied, trying to then lean back and casually disperse his suspicious glare. It was blatantly obvious she was trying to hide something, though after taking a good look over him and seeing his odd stance, her brow twisted. "What's with you anyway? Why are you holding your pants like that?"
Despite her obvious evasion, he was preoccupied and sighed, looking down to his appearance. His white shirt was still damp with sweat and his dark pants were barely on him, held up only by his attentive hand. "I am on my way to change, as these have torn along the waist. Yet one of the staff asked me to check some strange sounds coming from the pantry, and here we are," he explained, then lifted his eyes back to address the original concern, "So again, what is it you are doing, Anna?
"Hmm?" she hummed in response, patting her hands together as she bit the back of her lips. His continued gaze made her resolve waver, for she was actually happy to share this with someone, despite the risks involved. Her willpower cracked under her desire to confide in him. "Okay, fine. I'll tell you, but don't you breathe a word of this to Elsa," she relented, craning to the side to make sure no one was around, then leaning towards him with her hand cupped around her lips.
"I'm hiding her birthday present."
He nodded slowly, taking a moment digest her answer, then glanced around the dusty room. "In a pantry?"
"Well, yeah," she quipped, leaning back again and admiring her choice. The various foodstuffs and random clutter made it a perfect place to hide something, making his skepticism fuel her confidence. "On my birthday, she laid out this little red string that I had to follow around to find my presents. So I'm going to write little notes all over the place and make her follow the clues until she finds the box I just stuck under here. Pretty good idea, right?" She was animated in her reasons, and her smile brightened the room.
"I see," he said, now genuinely curious, "And what is in the box?"
Anna scoffed. "Oh, I don't think so. You think I can trust you with a secret like that? You tell Elsa everything!" she replied, crossing her arms over her chest. He considered that quietly, with a very big secret raging right inside of his chest, a secret that not even she knew of. It drew a small smirk across his lips.
"Not everything," he remarked.
While considering his tone, she began to drum her feet across the floor. Truthfully, she wanted to let him in on the secret. She was confident he wouldn't let it out and that she would still get to spend Elsa's birthday watching her hunt all over the castle, reading all of the little notes until she finally came across the pantry and had to scrape and crawl to retrieve the box just as she had done. She was also sure that her present was ten times better than anything he had gotten her, so she wanted to see the look on his face she let him see what was in the box.
"Fine, but if you tell her, I'm going to hurt you," she warned.
With him smirking in the doorway, she suddenly rolled back onto her stomach and relived her effort to hide the box, once more stretching out and waving her arm under the cabinet. "It's totally perfect for her. There's no way anyone will top my present. Not even you," she remarked with a grin, setting him up for the envy he was about to feel. He sighed and once more adjusted his loose pants, watching this princess grunt and groan as she pawed under the large cabinet, while really just wanting to go about his business.
It was only when she began to kick her legs out like a swimmer and whimpered wildly that he noticed her plight, drawing an inquisitive look across his face. "Is something the matter?" he asked.
"Oh no…" she gasped, suddenly going limp again and staring into the darkness.
"Now what is wrong?"
Slowly, she wiggled up and gave him a desperate look, her face once more smudged and her eyes wide with fear.
"I can't reach it."
Nearby, Kristoff was walking through the castle, his mind wandering and his pace slow. He had been trying to find Anna, though as he turned a corner and cast his eyes down the corridor, it was a different royal sister that he found, though he felt his pulse quicken in much the same way. "Queen Elsa? What are you doing around here?" he asked as he watched her staring at the wall, something he didn't expect as one of her pastimes. When she heard him, she looked to him with a strange expression, one that he misinterpreted as offense at being called so informally. He felt a wave of panic rise up. "Not that there's anything wrong with it. It's your castle and everything. I guess you can do whatever you want without anyone asking about it. Especially me," he suddenly ranted as he came to a stop in front of her, rubbing the back of his neck nervously and watching as each word made her expression twist even more.
"Nevermind," he sighed.
For her part, she was just curious why he always seemed so nervous around her, and tried to make him relax by smiling. "It's all right, Kristoff," she said warmly, amused by his well-meaning anxiety, then slowly turned her attention back the wall she had been staring at, even when it appeared just as mundane up close as it had been from afar, "I was passing through here and thought I could hear Anna's voice, as well as Yasha. Maybe it's just my imagination?"
He watched her cock her head at the wall, then looked to it as well, being quiet for a moment. Just as she said, he could hear muffled voices that sounded like the two in question, which then led him to look at the wall itself and scrutinize its construction. "The walls must be thinner here. I wonder what's on the other side," he remarked, running his large hand down the plane of wood and plaster.
"I think it's the kitchen," she said, peeking around the wall for its secrets, then suddenly leaning forward and placing her ear against it, despite the odd glance he gave her way. At the moment, she was more interested in hearing the voices than embracing etiquette. "I can't make out everything, but it's pretty strange place for them to be talking."
"I guess even the queen eavesdrops every once and awhile, huh?" he replied with a slight smile, finding the way she was perched against the way made her appear more human than queen. It helped him relax.
A slight blush came over her face and she straightened, glaring in embarrassment. "I'm not eavesdropping. I'm just curious, is all," she remarked indignantly, though her anger was shallow and she didn't want to intimidate him. "And didn't you just say a queen can do whatever she wants in her castle?"
He sighed, though far lighter than before.
"Right. Sorry."
Seeing that he didn't retreat so far made her smile a bit, though the sudden sounds from the other side of the wall made her turn her attention again, leaning back in to eavesdrop once more. "See? There they go again," she whispered, biting her bottom lip and she tried to make out what was being said.
"Ugh, can you move a little? My leg is starting to cramp," Anna groaned in the dusty pantry, squirming along the ground as she continued to grope through the dark. Despite his protests, Yasha had somehow become her accomplice as he knelt next to her, trying to lean the heavy cabinet back enough that she could retrieve Elsa's present. It was heavier than he expected and filled with delicate dishes, so the effort was making him grunt as well, if only to keep it from toppling over onto the princess at his side.
"How is that?" he groaned, sweating once more from the exertion.
She whimpered as she stretched, finding the box retreating further into the darkness each time her fingers grazed it. It was frustrating, though she was glad to now have someone helping her. "Yeah, that feels a lot better," she moaned, though finding that with him kneeling next to her in the confined space did present a new challenge. No matter which was she moved, she could feel him rubbing against all sorts of places.
It made it hard to concentrate.
"Man, don't you ever take bath? You smell like an ox," she complained with a crumpled nose, though imagined she was starting to get a bit ripe as well.
Her complaint made him snort and struggle to keep the cabinet stable. "If I had known you wanted to be so close, I would have made sure to clean up beforehand, Princess," he said sharply, feeling annoyed by her ingratitude and threatening her accordingly, "If you prefer, I can go back to what I was doing and…"
"No no! Don't stop. I'm almost there. Just push it in a little more. But be careful!" she cried quickly, once more trying to stifle the moans creeping out from her throat while trying to find the magic position that would let her get at the box, "It's bigger than I remember. It's really hard to move with just the tips of my fingers."
"This is why I am always exhausted after these little encounters of ours," he muttered.
His complaints made her blow the hair back from her face. "Pffft, don't blame me because you can't keep it up. I would think a big, bad baron like you would have a little more endurance," she said, then suddenly felt his knee run up against her inner thigh, making her let out a high-pitched squeal.
"Hey! Where are you touching!?"
Her sudden spasm made him grunt heavily and grapple with the cabinet, finding her movements were only making it harder. "This is not as easy as it looks and your squirming around does not help matters!" he griped back.
"You're the one rubbing up against me like that! How do you expect me to…" she began wildly, then suddenly let out yet another squeal as her entire suddenly stiffened and her eyes stared desperately into the dark.
Suddenly, the whole room went quiet.
On the other side of the wall, Elsa had recoiled from the wood, her fingers pressed over her lips and her eyes staring down at the floor. The hallway was just as quiet as the pantry and her breathing was roaring through her ears. A hue of red had touched her cheeks and her other hand clawed into her dress, a posture that made Kristoff stare at her completely in surprise.
"What? What is it?" he asked, looking to the wall for a moment and then back to her for some kind of answer. She shook her head, still staring at the floor as the sounds ground through her mind and heart.
"I just…don't even know what I'm listening to," she whispered.
He couldn't imagine anything that would make her respond so and frowned, then pressed his ear against the wall as well to see if he could make out what could disturb the queen in such a manner.
Back in the pantry, Yasha had abandoned the cabinet and was kneeling before Anna, watching her panting heavily and stare aimlessly at a brown sack of flour in front of her. He couldn't imagine it was nearly that interesting, though judging by how wildly she had moaned and then suddenly went flat, he imagined it had nothing to do with the sack.
"What?" he asked through his panting.
"It fell," she whimpered.
"It fell?" he repeated, "What do you mean it fell?"
"It fell, as in down some creepy black hole in the back of this wall! Urgh, can you give me a little room here?" she suddenly cried, trying to maneuver with him so close and finally scooting up to sit back against the cabinet. The entire plan had become a disaster and she panicked when she thought of Elsa's perfect present dropping into the darkness and out of sight. After finding a more dignified position, she groaned as she rubbed her lower back, then also became aware of her own sweat as she brought her shoulder up near her nose. "Ow, my back is killing me. And now I smell like an ox too."
He didn't seem to appreciate the insinuation, though he was just glad to no longer have to fight the cabinet. "So it fell. Why not simply get another one?" he suggested as he wiped his brow with his sleeve.
"Another one? Do you know what I had to do to get my hands on that one?! It took weeks of sweet talking all sorts of traders to get it! I even had to promise some creepy guy with really bad body odor I'd sneak him a pair of Elsa's unmentionables," she admitted, placing her hands against her cheeks as she imagined all of her hard work dropping down that dark hole with the box.
His brow collapsed after a moment of reflection on that. "Would you care to repeat that?" he said, almost certain she would never barter a pair of her sister's underwear to some shady merchant to get her a birthday present.
That 'almost' hung heavily over him.
"Look, don't distract me. The point is I can't get another one! We have to find it!" she cried, then arched back to try and get another look under the cabinet. "Ugh, why's there that hole in the back of this wall anyway?" While he was glaring at her, she suddenly had an idea pop into her head and she turned back to him, her smile giving away her hope. "Hey! Maybe we can get Sid to fly down there and…"
"I think you will find she is not going to be cooperative in this," he interrupted.
"You're probably right. That little fireball would never be so nice," she groaned, trying to figure out a different way to get at the box. A slight glance over to him betrayed just how close he was to leaving her to her fate, so she was quick to make sure that he wouldn't get a chance to go sneaking off back into the castle. "Oh, don't think you're going to weasel your way out of this either. You're just as much a part of this as I am now. You're stuck with me until we're done, got it?"
Her mood made him sigh and he resigned himself to the fact that this not only affected her, but Elsa as well. If her present was grand as she stated, then she would certainly be sad if Anna was unable to find the box. Even if it meant continuing this struggle, it would be worth it to make sure Elsa smiled when she received her sister's gift. "All right, calm yourself. There is no reason to panic," he said, pushing his hair back from his face and smirking at how soft he was when it came to her, "It will just take a little bit more 'poking around,' as the people of your kingdom say." Her face brightened and he couldn't help but be infected by it, though the way he was still clutching his pants and the potent smell of sweat in the air reminded him of the need to take a short break.
"But I really must change first," he added.
Anna wasn't interested in his intermission. By now, she was on her feet and dancing past him, clapping him on the shoulder as she completely ignored his request. "No time! Now pull up your pants and let's go find out how deep this hole goes!" she cheered, then hurried to chase after the box.
Sighing and keeping ahold of his pants, he followed after her.
Kristoff pulled back from the wall, his face twisted and his body tense. "Pull up your pants and what? Find out where what goes? What are they talking about?" he groaned, gesturing like he were asking Anna herself as he tried to put all of the pieces he had just heard together. The conversation had faded in and out, both from the direction of their voices and also the peripheral noise of the castle around them. The parts he had heard were shocking, and some made his blood boil, but others made no sense at all, though the entire affair seemed scandalous and worth his anger. He truly had no idea what they were doing on the other side of that wall, but there were really very few things that two people did to make noises like that.
Seeing as both Anna and Yasha were engaged to marry someone else, the wall between the four of them became a trap of infidelity, strung carelessly with suspicion and muffled misunderstanding.
While he was trying to unravel the mystery, he suddenly felt a wave of cold air wash over him and looked over to find something terrifying. At hearing many of the same things, Elsa was fuming. A visible swirl of fog and cold circled her and she was glaring at the wall, her hands clawed out as if to strangle the subject of her anger. Sparkles of ice sparked between her fingers, as if she might cast an entire winter's worth of doubt upon the kingdom once more.
Kristoff winced at her posture. "Uhm, Queen Elsa? Are you all right?" he asked.
"I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to turn him into an iceberg and throw in him into the fjord and send him drifting to the middle of the ocean," she chanted. It was as if she were slipping away into her own world, one that where she could lay upon Yasha the full sum of her emotions without any regard for his excuses.
Suddenly, despite their betrothal, she felt like reliving their violent past.
"Uhm, you're not going to freeze everything again, are you?" he inquired nervously, taking a slight step back.
"Yes!" she cried, then focused long enough to see his fearful expression and heave a few times to calm herself, "I mean, no. I mean…"
After taking a moment to gather her composure and restrain her magic, she finally let out a powerful sigh and tried to relax, spreading her hands out into the cold air as she tried to get control. "Okay. Let's think about this reasonably. There's no way they were doing what we think they were doing, right? I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation why they were in that room, completely alone and making noises like that."
"Right?"
He nodded with a forced smile. "Yeah, of course. I mean, who would ever think that they would do, you know, that," he agreed resolutely, waving his hands around as he shrugged casually, "It's not like they ever seem like they're, you know, a little too close sometimes and always sneaking off to the garden together and are way too touchy-feely. I'm sure it's nothing."
"Right?"
The two of them paused, looking at each as the weight of their rationale hung in the air. Despite their efforts to dispel the notion, they had effectively argued for their fears and that it was easier believing that their fiancées were caught up in a steamy affair, one that they had somehow kept hidden through impossible odds. While neither of them wanted to believe it, it was the quickest path for their racing hearts, and it stoked their desires to find out exactly what was going on between Anna and Yasha.
"Come on. I think they were heading towards the stairs," Elsa said sharply, storming off in the direction go of the fading voices.
"Right behind you," he agreed, following closely behind.
"I cannot even begin to explain how uncomfortable I am right now."
Yasha's words hung heavily in the air as he stood in the open air, his posture stiff and his head rolled back to cast his eyes into the air. He was still holding the lip of his pants, but his other hand was clapped to the top of his head, for there was really no better place to put it. On her knees before him, Anna was attentively focused, her hands working carefully around his pants and her head bobbing back and forth. Her eyes were focused on his waist and her breathing was steady. Her other hand was visible tugging at the lip of his pants and a flush of red had worked its way over her cheeks as she pursed her expression for the task at hand.
In spite of the shocking nature of their positions, she had been surprisingly professional about what she was doing with her hands. "Oh, quit being such a prude. This tear keeps getting bigger and it's slowing you down. You're lucky I had a couple pins in my dress so I can keep your pants from coming completely off," she replied past two large metal pins between her teeth.
"Trust me. Seeing your bare butt hanging out all over the place is not what I need to add to my already wonderful day," she added heavily.
He sighed once more. "I knew I should have changed first. This is not something a princess should be doing, even one as strange as yourself," he grumbled, then suddenly yelped as he felt a sharp pain shoot through his leg. Glaring down, he found her glaring back in response, a guilty pin pinched between her fingers.
"You did that on purpose!" he barked.
"Oh no, that was totally an accident and not because you called me strange or anything," she replied, shrugging off his accusation and going back to work, hoping he would be a bit more careful with his comments considering the precarious position he was in.
Her quiet revenge thinned out his patience. He was beginning to regret being roped in to this affair of hers. "If you please, just do what you must so we can fetch this box of yours. Contrary to your belief, I am not your own personal baron," he remarked gruffly, once more pushing his tousled hair back from his face as he tried to regain a more dignified posture, "And I do not think the princess should be seen like this."
Anna smirked, nearly finished with her repair. "Oh relax. It's not like anyone's looking or anything."
Across the courtyard and on another walkway, Kristoff and Elsa were staring, their mouths hung open and their eyes wide. They could see Yasha from behind, with Anna kneeling before him. The guilty party was far out of earshot and certainly not aware of their presence, but the sight had broken their chase and frozen them in place, both unable to even think straight at the scene before them.
"That can't be what it looks like," he choked.
Once more, a wave of cold air sent shivers down his spine and he looked to his side, where he found Elsa churning a glowing ball of frozen magic between her hands, in spite of the fact that her eyes were on fire.
"One iceberg, coming up," she snarled.
"Whoa whoa whoa!" he suddenly cried, jumping in her way and holding his hands out, as if he could somehow stop the full force of the Snow Queen, "What are you going to do?"
Heaving, she looked to him, holding back her wrath only out of consideration for his safety. "I'm going to make a bridge, walk over there and turn him into a solid block of ice," she seethed, then tried to stare through him to the scandalous scene that surely remained, "And then into the fjord!"
The idea of Yasha being encased in ice and tossed into the fjord definitely appealed to him, but he showed his obvious concern for both Anna's safety, and the safety of pretty much everyone else nearby. "Okay, that's a good plan. But you're a little, I don't know, scary right now? How can you be sure you're not going to freeze half of the castle?" he asked.
"I won't!" she cried, looking back and seeing his concern. It was difficult controlling her emotions, and by extension her powers, but his remarkably lucid thinking was infectious and she tried to restrain the overwhelming anger that had flowered inside. "I mean, I don't think I will! And just because I'm a little upset because I'm watching my sister and my fiancée doing that in the middle of the day…not that them doing that at any part of the day would okay! And standing right outside! Not that them doing it anywhere would be better!" She was still seething, her face red, but she suddenly felt lost in her anger as her expression collapsed and she looked around for answers lying on the ground.
"But…but…what was I saying?"
"Angry ice bridge and not freezing half of the castle," he suggested.
"Right! So stand aside and…" she began again, still churning her magic until she looked past him and found there was no longer anyone to be punished. The walkway was empty. "Wait, where did they go?" she asked desperately.
After also seeing they had left, he suddenly frowned and groused loudly, then hurried off towards another part of the castle, something that made her forget the ball of magic in her hands and panic. "Wait, where are you going?" she cried.
"To go find out what those two are up to!" he yelled back.
Elsa's magic dispersed in her hands and she went running after him, eager to find out the same thing.
"Hey, wait for me!" she called.
In the lower parts of the castle, where the walls became stone and a cool draft cut through the air, Anna was standing before Yasha, her arms crossed and her face sober. She stared up at him with none of the loftiness they had shared before, as what she had just suggested was possibly one of the austere things she had ever brought up in all the time they had known each other. Just the image of it made her freckled cheeks burn, and she was having a hard time enduring the look of utter disbelief on him.
"You cannot be serious," he cawed.
"It'll only be a second and it's not like I don't have on a slip or anything. I just need you to make sure no one comes by and sees me," she replied, still fighting down the heat in her cheeks.
"Absolutely not. I refuse. This is beyond any reasonable request!" he ranted, pacing slightly in front of her and running his hands back through his hair. He had always accepted that they had a special relationship, and many times he had indulged some of her more unorthodox requests for the sake of it, but what she was suggesting went past even his tolerance for her quirks.
He wondered if he had finally found the limits to his favoring of her.
"Look, I can see it at the back of this furnace," she said, pointing a large, metal construct built right into the foundation of the castle. There was a small door near the floor, where wood would be thrown to the endless fire, yet the entire kiln was cold and quiet, a fortunate circumstance considering the precious treasure that had fallen inside. "Someone has to get in there and grab it. I'd make you do it, but there's no way you'd fit. And I'm not going to ruin this dress trying, so just turn around and stand guard," she continued, shooing him back towards the door and planting her hands at his back, making sure he was facing the right way.
"You are a guard, after all," she reminded him.
Yasha snorted, facing out the door to preserve her modesty, though he was completely against her plan. "What madness," he groaned, settling into place as he heard her begin to rustle behind him, something that began to bother him more than he expected, "And I am the baron of the Guard, if you remember, not the princess's personal plaything."
She smirked as she fought to loosen the top of her dress. "Yeah, and your job is still guarding that princess, so button it up and guard already," she called, finding that getting out of a dress alone was actually easier than getting into one, though her eyes were constantly looking to him, to make sure he wasn't tempted to peek. "And if you even think about looking back here, I'll so hurt you. Got that?"
"You are literally shortening my life, Anna," he complained.
As she continued to work her way out of the dress, she smirked at his reaction. Once more the gravity of their relationship hit her, especially as she felt the cool air across her bare skin. "Remind me who it was that tore apart one of my favorite dresses when we were running around through those caves and why I should care about his complaints now?" she remarked as her head disappeared into her bodice and the entire dress slipped up over her head. Now, in that cold room in the dark recesses of the castle, she was standing in nothing but a very thin slip, her bare legs twisted into each other and her arm crossed over her barely covered chest. The air made a shiver run through her, yet was nothing compared to the feeling she as she stared at his back, this man who wasn't her fiancée. Not even during the incident she mentioned was she so bare before him, though with the countless affairs since then, she felt strangely at ease, not because he was fated to marry her sister, but because his presence made her feel safe.
That was a strange thing, considering he had once been the greatest villain in their lives.
As if he could feel her eyes on him, he stiffly followed her orders, staring out into the dark corridors beyond the room. In spite of his station, he felt a strange heat at the back of his neck knowing that she was nearly naked behind him. "Do what you must then," he sighed, just wanting to get the entire affair over with, "But be careful. Do not do anything unwise or get hurt in there. We are fortunate enough that this furnace is not being used."
Still twisted together and crouching next to the small door, she brushed off his concerns. "You're such a worrywart," she replied, placing her hands around the rim of the small door and trying to figure out how she was going to get in there and grab Elsa's present.
Though the halls of the castle, Elsa and Kristoff were walking quickly, peeking into any room they came across and ignoring anything and anyone that didn't have to do with their intended. It seemed far-fetched that they would simply come across them, but they were bitterly willing to accept the far-fetched, if only because that was what they expected as they chased after the affair.
"Where did they go? What's even down here? What possible reason would they have for being here together?" Elsa ranted as she walked, her brow furrowed. She was talking more to herself than him, but the answers were just as lacking. The idea of her sister and her beloved engaged in some secret affair drove her mad, even as her anger fought with her doubt. With everything they had been through, all of them, she couldn't believe something so trite. Anna wasn't so unfaithful, and if the last few months hadn't proved Yasha's total commitment to her, she didn't know what would. Yet the fears remained and she felt unsure, even if she had no idea where these doubts were rooted.
"Elsa," Kristoff suddenly said, and she turned to find him stopped in the hall. He had the most bizarre expression on his face. "What if…you know, it's true?" The suggestion made her wince, even if she had been asking herself that same question since the start. The fact it lingered so powerfully argued the possibility of it being true.
"No, that's impossible," she replied after a moment. "Yes, I admit Yasha and Anna are close, but for them to be anything more than friends is…is…"
"Something I've worried about from the beginning," he whispered, wilting before her in a mixture of fear, anger and doubt.
Elsa was shocked by that, though she also felt like she could understand. Sometimes it was difficult separating love from love, when someone could matter so much to another that it seemed like romance. Even as her head completely understood the relationship between Anna and Yasha, she found it hard for her heart to let it go. She had no idea why. "No, I can't believe it. I won't believe it. I trust them both. There's something else going on here. We're misunderstanding things," she said, trying to be the better person and rein in this matter before it got out of hand.
Her confidence didn't seem to help and he sighed, trying to see it as she did. "I hope you're right. I really do."
Back in the room, Yasha continued to stand watch while Anna squirmed inside of the furnace, by now only visible as a pair of legs, still squeezed together as she tried to navigate the belly of the metal beast. "Ugh, I'm going to need a long bath after this. This furnace is like, well a furnace. No surprise there," she ranted, finding the inside wasn't nearly as dark or dirty as she expected, even if she could still feel the chalky soot caked on her arms. As the furnace was charged with heated an entire section of the castle, it was large and she imagined she could easily crawl completely inside, but as she only needed the box and didn't want to emerge looking like a finely-dusted cake, she decided to continue waving her arms around the dark until she found it.
After a furious search, her hand struck something hard and square. "I think…ah hah! Got it!" she cheered, her happy legs kicking out into the cold air, "You naughty little box."
"Brilliant. Can we put an end to this madness now?" he replied in exhaustion.
"Gladly," she groaned, then started squirming again, hoping to quickly slip out and find safety in her dress before he could sneak a peek. Another barrage of grunts and whimpers echoed from the furnace as she twirled and shimmied, but even after several moments of pushing back, she hadn't been able to escape the jaws of the beast. The rim of the door was biting into her and she felt an overwhelming sense of urgency, which escaped her lips in a sheepish chuckle.
"Uhm, so funny thing, really. I'm kind of…stuck."
He stopped moving completely. "You simply cannot be serious," he sighed.
"No, pretty serious here," she grunted again, trying again to slide out but having no better luck, "I have the box and all but…you know, I can't get back out." Had she been outside, she would have seen his head fall forward into his hands as he groaned, though she felt like she was far worse off in her current position.
"So Yasha, buddy ol' pal," she called sweetly from the furnace, "I think you're going to have to pull me out."
"I absolutely refuse."
His quick denial made her fluster and flail in the furnace. "Look, you think I'm happy about this?! I'm in my underwear, stuck in some sooty furnace and asking the moody guy who kidnapped me to grab my very naked legs and pull me out. This is not what I expected when I woke up this morning!" she wailed, wishing more than anything he could see how much she was glaring at the back of the furnace as a proxy to him. She hoped he picked up on her mood. "But I'm not going to spend the rest of my life in here, so close your eyes, turn around, and get me out of here!"
The situation had turned into something out of the theatre that Elsa liked to watch, though he had never signed on to stand on the stage. While he had no issue with helping his friend, the thought of grabbing her when she was so bare made his anxiety shoot through the roof. He honestly had no idea how she somehow pulled him into such situations. "The death of me. You will be the death of me," he ranted to the empty corridor, then sighed as he swung the door shut and pressed his eyes closed, then turned to try and find her without compromising her chastity.
"Whatever is in this box had better be worth all of this trouble," he grumbled.
After hearing from one of the servants, Elsa and Kristoff were headed straight to the furnace room, eager to find out exactly what had been going on. Neither of them had any patience left, though they were both trying to stay calm about the impending encounter. As the sounds from the pantry and the scene from the walkway were still burning within their minds, it was harder than it sounded.
"So we agree then. Once we find them, we'll listen to whatever they have to say before making any rash decisions. We'll be perfectly calm," he offered as they approached the closed door, more to convince himself than her.
She nodded as her hand reached out and grasped the handle, turning to give him one last regal glance. "Absolutely. We're all adults here. There could be a million reasons why they're sneaking around the castle together like they are. In the end, we'll all laugh about this. There's nothing to worry about," she agreed, letting out a calm breath. The both of them had found a measure of composure, until sounds began to creep through the door, taking them right back to the beginning. Anna was moaning. Yasha was grunting. It stalled them until Anna's voice suddenly cried out and there were rustling sounds beyond the wood.
Utterly speechless, Elsa threw the door open.
Yasha had just succeeded in getting Anna from the furnace, where she crashed down on the hard floor with a grunt, her bare legs sticking out on either side of him. Her spasm had made him lurch forward into her, his head and shoulder ramming the furnace in an uncomfortable thrust, while he was trying to support his weight with his other hand stabbed onto the ground by her head. They were both panting wildly and they were both sweaty. The struggle had even loosened her repair of his pants and they hung carelessly around his hips, which were in the most intimate place possible to her.
All in all, the scene they walked in was everything they had been hoping not to find, and both Anna and Yasha both looked to them in utter surprise as they stood at the door.
"Elsa! Kristoff!" Anna cried, struggling wildly to claim a more dignified position, but as Yasha was pinning her down with his awkward pose and she was trying to hide the box behind her back, she could only stay where she was and try and make the best of the situation, grinning sheepishly at them both.
"Uhm, hi there. What'cha doing down here?" she asked, kicking at Yasha to try and get him to move. He tried to oblige her, but the effort made them simply grunt and groan even more, writhing against each other as if they were still caught up in their affair, something that made Elsa's fury grow coldly in her eyes.
"What…do you think…you two are doing!?" she howled as a cold flash of magic washed through the room.
With her sister heaving, her fiancée staring speechlessly and her partner in crime unable to get to his feet fast enough, Anna's face paled as she suddenly realized exactly how they appeared, with his body pressed into hers and the air still echoing their noise. Her face burning brightly at that realization and why her sister seemed livid, she reached her hand out, as if she could somehow stop her powerful tantrum with a simple gesture.
"No no no! This isn't what it looks like! There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this! Let me explain!" she cried.
Elsa lorded over them, burning with anger and barely able to contain her magic. "I'm all ears," she snarled, deceptively cool for the fire that was raging in her eyes.
After finally getting out of their scandalous positions and taking several minutes to explain the day's events, both of them were still under the fierce glare of Elsa, with Anna sitting against the furnace with her dress draped over her and Yasha once more holding his torn pants up as he stood to the side. Elsa and Kristoff had both been more patient than they expected, and they both still felt the residual emotions hanging in the air. Neither of them spoke much, but rather just glared hotly into the furnace room, as if they were unable to truly express their feelings.
"And that's how we got here," Anna finished, looking up to them with a guilty glance and trying to imagine how awful she looked, still covered with soot and sweat, nakedly trying to explain through the misunderstanding of a secret affair.
Exhaling sharply, Elsa took her eyes from her sister and laid them on her fiancée, who had a decidedly more straightforward expression on his face. "That is the story," he agreed, knowing that she was still angry, but that when the day was done, he and Anna were as innocent as they proclaimed.
Seeing the resolve he had, she found it easier to accept their story and believe the entire affair had been in her head. In truth, that made her heart feel infinitely better, even if she was still holding to her anger. "Fine. If that's the whole story, then you won't mind showing me the box," she said, turning her attention back to Anna as she crossed her arms over her chest. Since the whole thing revolved around it, she would use that to finally put the affair to rest.
She was also very curious what she had picked for her.
Anna frowned. "But it's your birthday present," she argued, her hand still tightly wound around the box behind her back.
"Anna," Elsa seethed, sealing her warning in her tone.
It was completely unfair for her to use the situation to find out what her present was, but with all things considered, she had little room to fight her. If giving it to her a little early would dig her out of this mess, it was worth losing her surprise. "Ugh, fine," she sighed, slumping her hand into her chin as she held the box out for her, not even wanting to see her reaction anymore, "You're totally ruining my grand plan. I had notes and everything." Elsa took the box with a strange giddiness in her stomach. While it wasn't her birthday yet, she was happy to get Anna's present, even if she had to blackmail her for it. The box itself was old and dusty, though she imagined its trip into the furnace was to blame for that. She even gave Yasha an excited glance, finding that he was leaning in to discover the secret as well, and what he had been working this hard to retrieve.
It took more to open the box than expected, but she finally pried the lid loose. When she did, a musky, foul smell burped from inside. As soon as it hit her nose, she hacked, crinkling her face and glaring in confusion at the contents of the box. Kristoff had been surprised by her reaction and leaned in as well, curious what could possibly make her act that way.
"What is it?" he asked, then caught a whiff of the smell and gagged also, wilting to the side to escape the odor.
"It's disgusting," Elsa groaned, covering her nose and tilting the box away.
Anna took offense to her bizarre reaction and bristled. "Hey! How can you say that about…" she cried as she jumped to her feet and looked into the box, finding it filled with shriveled, putrid lumps of pungent flesh.
"Beets?"
"Rotten beets are your perfect gift?" Yasha cawed, glaring harshly for the way she had led him on a day of madness for such a poor joke.
The three of them were appalled at the gift, but Anna suddenly snatched the box from Elsa, her brow crushed and her eyes searching the foul contents. In time, she realized that the box was actually larger than she remembered, and that it was much darker as well. There were none of the markings that had made her get it in the first place, and she realized it was the kind of box that food was put in for storage, which quickly led her to the truth. "It's the wrong box. It's the wrong box," she said in two different melodies, then suddenly smiled widely as she realized her secret was still safe. "It's the wrong box!"
Yasha bristled wildly, finding he had been dragged along the entire time for a completely different box.
"And where is the real box?" he seethed.
They stared at her, waiting for her answer, but she could already imagine what had happened. In the darkness under the cabinet, the box of beets had been sitting quietly after falling carelessly from storage. In that darkness, she couldn't tell the difference between it and the box that contained Elsa's present, so the box she accidentally knocked down the duct was a worthless box of rotting beets, meaning the gift was still happily waiting under the cabinet in the pantry, where it had been all along. While that would be of little relief to Yasha's anger, a mischievous smile worked its way over her face as she shuffled her dress over her bare body, finding that even though she felt bad about the entire affair, she could still get her way in the end when Elsa's birthday finally came around.
"To answer that, you'll have to follow the clues on these little notes…"