Title: Shards of ice
Fandom: Frozen in the OUAT-verse
Characters/pairings: Hans, Elsa; Helsa/Iceburns
Rating: T
Warnings: spoilers for Once Upon a Time season 4 ep. 3 "Rocky road"
Summary: "I didn't try to kill her. I left her to die." Now the same thing happened to him, he was left, forgotten, turned into an ice statue. / oneshot
Disclaimer: Frozen & OUAT are not mine, although the writing certainly is.
A/N: although I like that we saw Hans on the show (and Tyler Jacob Moore is a precious human being), I think that a lot of potential got wasted; now he's literally frozen and knowing OUAT's writers he'll stay like this forever because it's not like a redeemable villain is a thing that often happens on this show or whatever... That's why here's my 'what if' short story. Obviously, nothing like this will happen on the show but I can dream.
I'm putting this in the Frozen section since it's more about Frozen than OUAT anyway…
Sorry for all mistakes, this story is unbeta'd.
Comments are always appreciated!
Published also on ao3 and my tumblr, so check it out if you want!
"You don't belong in this world. You don't belong anywhere. Which is why I'm going to put you somewhere where it's like you don't even exist."
The moment has come and he opens the urn. Hans smiles triumphantly seeing fear in Elsa's eyes. He feels his brothers watching him; this time he will make them proud, and they will bow down to him – to the king.
But the urn is not empty, there is something oozing from it, and they all watch, amazed, sensing magic so strong they can almost feel its presence crushing their little bodies. In a blink of an eye, the liquefied magic looks like it's going to capture Elsa – then it moves away, changing its form, and suddenly there's a person standing by Elsa's side, a woman so beautiful and with such cruel eyes she makes his heart stop for a second.
This is not a part of his plan. The urn was supposed to contain Elsa inside, not release something. Hans hesitates, uncertain what to do.
"Who are you?" he asks boldly.
The woman smiles. "From what I've just heard, I think you'd call me a monster."
Her charming voice is not threatening, but there's something in her cold eyes that tells Hans he has made a big mistake unleashing this powerful creature. She gestures effortlessly, and a blow of ice–cold magical dust hits his body, freezing him from head to toe.
It feels like dying. Panic rising in his chest, he wants to scream – but he will not, his brothers are still around. They must not see him...
But all thoughts are lost when the magic seizes his face, burying his consciousness deep under a thick layer of ice, freezing his body and soul. Hans wants to close his eyes and sleep forever, but he can't feel anything. Everything ends, there is nothing left but a black pit of ice so cold it makes not only breathing but also thinking impossible.
"I didn't try to kill her. I left her to die."
Now the same thing happened to him, he was left, forgotten, turned into an ice statue. The only difference is that he doesn't have a sibling that would care enough to undo the curse.
It's his last thought, and then he slips away into the void.
It seems impossible, yet Hans doesn't die, instead he continues clinging to life as his heart is beating slower and slower. On some level he fears it will stop one day, but he doesn't know how many days (months? years?) have passed, since he has been made into the ice statue by that mysterious woman. His thoughts are scattered inside his mind, past gets mixed with the present, and sometimes he thinks he's that scared little kid who fell down the well after his brothers promised him there's a mermaid living there. He barely remembers it now, it's so hard to concentrate, but he knows this feeling of... being left alone in the darkness (dying, perhaps?). It all happened before, or maybe it's happening now. He's still a little boy wanting to meet a mermaid.
He also knows that he's a grown man, a prince who failed – twice; the youngest in his family, and the unluckiest one. Sometimes he wonders – tries to wonder, it's getting harder and harder to concentrate as his thoughts are freezing like his body; he wonders... will someone come to save him?
"Only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart."
But a part of him knows he will be left here forever, abandoned to die alone. Thinking about death feels oddly warm.
So warm he can almost feel it, it's like a gentle hand touching his face...
"Hans!"
It takes him a longer while to realise there is a hand – a pair of hands, on his face, warm, gentle hands melting the layers and layers of ice, and someone is saying something... Someone is saying his name. He has almost forgotten his name. He fell down the well, there is a mermaid...
"Hans!"
...a mermaid with big blue eyes, and hair white as snow. And she's a queen.
Hans can see again, see something more than his shattered memories and hazy thoughts, and the first thing he sees is magic fighting with magic. It's Elsa (yes, it's her, it's really her, not a phantom from the past), her hands on his face glow. Her magic, although not as powerful as the other woman's, fights with whatever curse holds him in this ice prison. The ice is melting, slowly, the comfortable numbness is gone but instead of relief he now feels the pain of being alive. His clothes and skin are still covered by a thin layer of frost. He can barely feel his nose and lips, and his eyelids are heavy, so.. heavy...
A solid smack in the face brings him back to reality.
"Do not close your eyes, do you hear me? You need to stay conscious!"
Hans blinks, confused, staring right into Elsa's eyes. He must be dreaming, it's not possible that she...
The second he closes his eyes, she smacks him again, and this time he feels blood rushing to his head, the ice melting and he's coming back from dead which is probably the most painful experience in his sorrowful life.
"I need you to answer me!", he hears Elsa shouting (gods, why is she shouting, her voice is piercing right through his head), he can barely recognize her words.
"How did you get that scroll? How did you know about the urn?"
Hans finally looks at her, noticing how different she is since the last time he saw her. Her signature dress is gone, she's wearing a strange set of clothes, a long white coat, a sweater and a pair of blue trousers. This outfit looks like it was suitable for a different person, maybe a man. Or a peasant. Certainly not the queen of Arendelle. He wants to mock her, this is not how a queen should look like!, but he's so tired he cannot stand any longer. His falls to his knees, exhausted. Elsa holds him by his shoulders; when he lifts his head he sees fear in her eyes.
"Hans, you must... You must stay with me! Can you hear me?"
Her hands are warm, she's so close he can feel her warmth, but she's the Ice Queen so maybe she's not warm but he's simply colder.. If only he could close his eyes for a minute or two, and enjoy this warm feeling. He wants to ask her why did she come to him, why did she save him...
"Hans!", Elsa shakes him until his eyes are open wide again.
He opens his mouth, but the words won't come. His throat feels raw, damaged, as if he didn't speak for at least hundred years. Perhaps it's true. Maybe he was dead – frozen – for many years, maybe this isn't Elsa – but her daughter, granddaughter? And he is nothing more than a relic from the past.
But when he looks into her eyes again, he instantly knows it's her, Elsa the queen of Arendelle. She is so close he can see tiny freckles on her face.
Hans takes a deep breath, his lungs hurt, his whole body hurts like seven hells. In a hoarse, quiet voice he says, "Elsa", before closing his eyes are letting the darkness take him again.
When Hans comes back to the world of living, at first he thinks he's dreaming, that he never saw Elsa, and it was all just a trick of his slowly dying mind. There's a fire burning close to him, so hot it feels surreal. His body aches, every single fibre of his being hurts –this time, however, the pain is a good sign, reminding him that he is not, in fact, dead. Not yet.
He doesn't see Elsa, but he knows she must be close. She took off his coat that now serves as a blanket he's lying on; he has a fluffy blue scarf around his neck, and when he sits up a bit, he notices that although he's still wearing his blouse and breeches, he's also covered in a sweater and a coat. Her sweater and her coat. Elsa sits by the fire, but not too close, apparently comfortable in a lower temperature. With most of her clothes serving as improvised covers, Elsa now wears only a light top and trousers, which doesn't seem to bother her in this cold. She's going through a big bag she must have brought here with her; noticing his movement, she looks up. She seems relieved to see him awake, or he just imagined that.
Hans sits up properly. He touches the scarf on his neck; it's odd but, like the rest of the clothes, it smells nice, like a woman's perfume.
"Take it easy, you're still in a pretty bad shape," Elsa says. Perhaps she realised she's not supposed to demand answers for impossible questions from a person that just turned back into a living creature after spending some time as an ice statue.
When she touches his forehead to check his temperature, her hand doesn't feel so wonderfully warm anymore. Hans is a little bit disappointed it feels... normal. He clears his throat, yet when he speaks his voice still sounds strange to him.
"Why did you..." he can't finish and coughs; Elsa bites her lips, and has a somewhat worried expression on her face.
He wants to speak again, but she interrupts him. "Rest now. I'll make you some food, and we need to get going as soon as you feel better."
She goes back to her bag, taking out things she needs for preparing soup or whatever she has in mind, and Hans observes her graceful figure, already knowing the answer to his unspoken question.
She is a kind and gentle queen, she wouldn't let anyone die – she wouldn't let him die even though he did try to kill her. That's the difference between them; he would leave her to die, hell – he wanted her dead! Elsa, however...
"They finally have a ruler. No like you."
Who is a monster now, huh?
"Thank you," he whispers, looking away, not at the one person who showed him kindness after all what he did. Elsa stops, glances at him quietly, and returns to preparing food.
Hans doesn't say another word, but he knows that a single "thank you" is not enough. It never will be. It's time to make amends.
She fed him, twice, it was a tasteless soup but it succeeded in making him warm inside. Hans puts the cup on the ground and licks his lips. Although he feels better now, he's still physically weak. There's also this odd feeling in his chest, like a cold thorn in his heart. He's pretty sure his body temperature is colder than normally, although he's not covered in frost anymore.
Elsa gives him enough privacy and doesn't stare at him openly, but he knows she's watching him like a hawk, especially when he puts his hand on his chest trying to understand what is happening to him.
After the meal (she doesn't eat much, he notices, just something that looks like chocolate candy), Hans takes off the fluffy scarf, folds it neatly and says, "You can take it. And... your clothes. I'm warm enough now."
His throat hurts when he speaks in this odd, hoarse voice that belongs to some stranger, not him.
Elsa glares at him, frowning. "Keep it. You know well that I don't mind cold. I admit, I should have taken a blanket or something, but I was in a rush..."
She looks perplexed. He's not that naive to wonder if she really does care about him; he knows she needs him for something – probably fighting the evil he unleashed, the woman who turned him into ice.
"I didn't know you'd be in such a bad shape..." Elsa continues. "Well, we all underestimated the true power of the Ice Queen..."
When she comes closer, Hans sees determination on her face.
Of course she's doing this for Anna; it's always about the younger sister. Elsa loves her so much she has come to bring back to life the person despised by all, only because he may know something that may help her save Anna.
Then there's this stinging feeling in his chest again. Elsa's reaction doesn't escape his attention; she pretends she didn't notice, that she doesn't know there's something wrong with him, but she's not a good liar.
"What is happening to me?" Hans asks.
"What do you mean..." she begins, trying to sound indifferent.
"Tell me," he insists. His voice sounds even more hoarse.
"It's– it's nothing, I just..."
"Please. Tell me," Hans repeats in a weak voice, and cringes when something stings him inside his chest.
Elsa's eyes widen. "There's a part of the curse left in you," she says, panic rising in her voice. "There's... there's a shard of ice in your heart. I thought my magic can... that I can defeat her magic but I'm not powerful enough, I'm..." She takes a deep breath and continues, her eyes watching him warily. "It, the shard, it grows, I can feel it. Eventually it'll freeze your heart, and..."
She doesn't have to finish the sentence, Hans already knows he's going to die – again – consumed by the dark power within him. He wants to curse his fate but what difference would that make..? Instead, he accepts his doom. Perhaps Elsa sees his resignation, as she grabs him by his shoulders.
"There's still hope. I might be able to slow it down just so..."
"To postpone my demise?", he asks, almost bursting into laughter. He may be quite dramatic sometimes.
Elsa wants to reply, but then the thing inside him moves, stabbing him right in his heart, and he can't help but let out a sharp cry clutching at his chest.
"Hans!"
In a moment without pain, he realises he likes the way she says his name. He would tell her but the shard of ice stabs him in his heart yet again, and he feels the breath of the freezing death on his skin.
He's like a puppet in her arms. A dying puppet, she corrects herself, noticing his lips turning blue. She must do something, or else she'll lose him.
Elsa grabs the sweater and coat that are covering him, and tosses them away. She pulls at his shirt and runs her hands along his chest to feel his heart beating. She can feel the shard of magic left by the Ice Queen when she presses her hand to his skin and concentrates enough. Thanks to her efforts it begins to melt as his body is getting slightly warmer. She fights, using all her magic, to get rid of that thing, and for a moment it seems that she's winning – but then the shard explodes, making his body jolt, and Hans falls lifelessly to the ground.
Elsa allows herself to panic only for two seconds; she has to act quick, she will not let him die, not again, not after bringing him back. Without a second thought, she straddles him and presses both her hands to his chest.
She will not let him die.
Some unknown magic wakes up inside her, she also feels whatever's left of the Ice Queen's power struggling to kick her away, to crush her efforts, but she's not giving up. Closing her eyes, she becomes one with that part of her mind she once despised and feared because it marked her as different. Whatever unknown power is flowing through her veins – she now urges it to obey her, to heal not destroy, to help her save this life.
And, surprisingly to Elsa – forever scared of her magical potential, it works. Although not as well as she hoped.
She makes Hans sit up but she can see he's so weak she's about to lose him forever despite all her efforts. He has this half–conscious look on his face. His eyes, though open, don't see her anymore.
She grabs his face in both hands and kisses him, concentrating all her power on transferring her magic to him. It's like kissing a dead man, an ice statue, so cold he is. She holds him closer, pressing her body to his, and suddenly her skin is burning, the heat radiates from her warming him up. After she stops kissing him, she presses his head to her chest like a mother – or a lover, feeling her magic sparkling around her. It may be a miracle that she doesn't freeze everything around her, because she is on a verge of panic; but she also knows she must continue fighting. She feels like she is a living flame, ice and fire together, reaching so deep inside the core of the magic inside her that for a split second she worries her own power may destroy them both.
When he moves, she feels a strangely blissful sort of relief washing over her.
Hans breaths in sharply, his eyes are wide open; he probably saw Death coming to take him, but he survived. His hands tremble as they reach for her; she doesn't let go, and he clings to her, shaking and breathing raggedly. Elsa closes her eyes, tired. She hears his heart beating loudly.
She did not let him die.