All or Nothing
Chapter Ten
…..
Hey guys, as a wee break from the usual author's note, here's a fun game for anyone who feels like having their heart mercilessly pulped! Just listen to this song from Wicked sung by Elsa's actual voice actress and imagine she's singing it in the context of this fic!
watch?v=Ly_9rmOE-L8
There you go. Heart broken. Glad I could help.
…..
Despite feeling a touch feverish (not lovesick, she sternly told herself while somehow acknowledging it as a lie) Elsa slept well in the castle. Her slumber was untouched by dreams, comforted by the overcasted coolness and the soothing feel of resting in a place that had offered her sanctuary in a time of great distress.
She woke before Merida did, and found that her companion had lost half of her covers during the night and was frowning in her sleep. Averting her eyes from tracing the curve of Merida's hip as she lay on her side, Elsa tucked the blanket around her carefully. Careful as she was though, her hand still brushed the bare skin of Merida's wrist and she shivered, recalling how close she'd gotten that night. She dressed quickly, banishing the intrusive thoughts from her mind with all the effort she could spare, and left the hall.
To her dismay, the walls she had repaired already seemed to be melting. A spreading lake of frigid water was trickling down the staircase until she froze it into frost particles and used it to patch the walls again. Confused and saddened, she left the palace to sit in the semi-solid snow, looking at Arendelle's capital in the distance.
A crackling sound and a light humming from behind her drew her attention to a crop of trees, where a familiar stunted shape covered by its own little cloud was shuffling.
"Olaf!" she cried.
"Hi Elsa," the snowman called and waved as though he hadn't been missing for months.
She scrambled to her feet and ran over to him, inspecting him for flaws as he smiled his guileless, buck-toothed grin. His face never changed even as he backed away from her.
"What are you doing? Stay still!" she commanded. "We've been worried about you!"
"Aw, that's sweet. I'm okay though," he said, but he still backed away. "I've just been up here, hanging out. How are you?"
"Olaf, come over here now! I have to make sure you're not melting," Elsa said through her teeth.
"I'm not melting. I'm pretty solid, actually," he said, waving his stick arms up and down as if it would help.
"Then why haven't you been home?" she said as she threw her arms up in desperation. "And where are Marshmallow and the little snows? If you know something, you have to tell me!"
"They're all fine too," Olaf grinned blithely, but his grin was starting to falter. "They're on the side of the mountain, there's a cold front there. It's like a beach for us, we've been going there a lot. Like a holiday, kind of."
"You shouldn't need a cold front. It's not even summer yet!"
"I know. But it's too warm for us here," he said.
"How can it be too warm?"
"It just is."
He backed away again, and now Elsa could see that his grin wasn't faltering at all. It was melting. His carrot nose was drifting slowly down towards his drooping mouth and his stick arms sank further into his torso. Horrified, Elsa ran to him as he scrambled back.
"Don't! I need to fix you!" she shouted as he nearly tumbled down a hillock.
"No! Please! I'll just go to the cold front, I'll be fine," he called back, even as his feet crumbled and he dragged himself along by his arms.
Finally, with an air of grim acceptance, Elsa stopped ten feet from where he was crawling away and shot out a flurry of solidly packed snow to reform his feet and anchor his features. She set him on his feet, supported by a tree stump.
"Why won't you let me near you?" she asked him.
"I can't tell you," Olaf looked at his feet, like a child.
"You have to tell me."
"You'll be sad."
"I'm already sad. Tell me what you know. How can I fix it if I don't know?"
Olaf fidgeted, waved his arms in a helpless motion and whimpered.
"It's… I don't know," he whimpered at last. "You're different. You're warm now. You're too warm for us."
"What?" She'd been expecting something like this since he backed away from her the first time. It still hurt to hear it.
"It'd be fine if you were always warm, but you were always cold before. And now sometimes you get warm, and then you get really cold. It comes in waves. And we don't know what to do."
"I haven't been doing anything different," she told him, though he could probably tell she was lying to herself and to him. "What has changed?"
As if on cue, Merida blustered out of the castle, yawning and stretching. Elsa's eyes caught and traced the lithe movement, and Olaf's features sank again as he tried desperately to hold them up.
"What? It's Merida? She's causing the melt?" Elsa cried desperately, hoping against hope that somehow it was someone else's fault.
"No, it's not her, she's totally normal," Olaf answered shakily. "But you got warm again. When she came out."
Elsa's heart sank.
"I'm sorry," she told him brokenly, as though it could somehow fix him.
"And now you're cold again. That would be fine, or you could be warm when you want, but we never know what's going to happen," he said. "Honestly….we're scared."
Her fluctuating moods were causing the melt.
Because of course they were.
The ice castle run off that nearly caused a plague. The snowstorm after she'd been kidnapped. The quagmire when Merida rescued her. The mountain ice melting as she and Merida grew closer, but not close enough for Elsa's liking. And a rush of unfulfilled, guilty lust that was threatening the lives of a hundred sentient ice creatures.
Would anything ever not be her fault?
"Please don't be scared," she begged Olaf, backing away from him. "I'll try to fix this. I'm so sorry. I didn't know."
"You don't need to be sorry," Olaf smiled kindly, though it pierced her as keenly as a frown would have. "You made us. We wouldn't be alive at all if it wasn't for you. I've had a good life. I'd like to live a bit more but if I didn't…I did pretty good."
"Don't talk like that," she shook her head. "I will fix this. Somehow. No more talk of melting, okay?"
"Okay," he nodded.
Afraid of melting he may have been, but above all he was a kind little soul. He went to her side, even as she backed away, and held her hand as she let a few stray tears fall.
…..
No doubt Merida would have loved to meet Olaf, but after that encounter Elsa couldn't bring herself to risk it. She painted on a bright demeanour and engaged her brain in practicing Merida's Dellian grammar with her on the trip home. They were met by the royal guard at the outpost and escorted to the castle. Merida was dragged away by Anna within minutes of arriving in the hall, and Elsa waved them both away with forced casualness.
In the confines of her office, she debated with herself. There was no way she could do this alone, but her advisors…. who could be trusted? Holm was stuffy and traditional. Heino was prone to hyperbole. Lassen was spiteful, for all his intellect. Bech was nice, but a gossip.
Makkenon though… he was often the voice of reason at meetings. He was slightly paternalistic, not much of a sense of humour but he was kind. Moreover, he was tight-lipped. He was the best candidate. Decision made, she sent for him.
He arrived within the hour, pleasantly surprised that she had asked for him. He was a stout man, long faced and bearded, in his sixties, with kind grey eyes. When he saw how pale she was, how grim, he leaned in and smiled to reassure her.
"Something is troubling you, your highness," he began, pouring tea from the pot she'd ordered into her cup. "I will help you in any way I can."
"I don't know if you can help. I don't know if anyone can," she told him. Tears pricked her eyelids, but she blinked them back, refused to let them fall.
"Well, tell me of your problem. Then we shall see what can be done."
How to tell him? How to even put it into words?
"It's a very….personal problem," she began shakily.
"It will not leave this office if you so wish."
Best to just say it. Get it over with.
"I believe I am in love," she blurted out, and swallowed.
Makkenon exhaled sharply. Clearly he hadn't been expecting that.
"That is troubling. We did discuss this after your coronation, if you recall…."
"Yes, I remember," she halted his speech with her hand.
After her second crowning, she and her advisors had unanimously decided that Elsa would never marry and bear children, and her powers would die with her. She symbolically married the nation of Arendelle in a chaste ceremony a year after her coronation. Anna would bear the heirs to the throne, and if she happened to be barren they had a distant cousin who could be crowned. Anna was in good health though, so this was an outside possibility. At the time she couldn't have imagined falling for anyone, and was somewhat relieved by the prospect of a life of chastity.
"If you were to become pregnant, it could be disastrous," Makkenon continued. "Out of wedlock, and possibly with your powers which I must remind you are very unstable in an infant. We couldn't risk it."
"Well, fortunately there's no chance of that. My potential paramour lacks the equipment, as far as I know," she told him dryly.
He stroked his beard with befuddlement, before his eyes widened with clarity.
"Oh," he swallowed. "It is a woman, then?"
"Yes. A woman."
"Well," his face went red and he looked down at the desk. "Such things aren't unheard of…."
"It's not just any woman..."
"It's that red-haired homeless girl, isn't it?" he suddenly snapped. "Of course it is. That's why she's still here. I'll be honest, your highness, we had our suspicions, we did consider that she was trying to seduce you but we credited you with enough intelligence not to…"
"She's not homeless," Elsa snapped back, so sharply that Makkenon shrank back a little. "Her home is here. She earned it, twice over! And she did not seduce me, she's done absolutely nothing wrong. She has no idea how I feel."
They stared each other down as they gathered their composure.
"All right," he mumbled at last. "That's good. If she doesn't know… and you're not…"
Elsa laughed bitterly, hiding her eyes.
"I don't even know if she's that way inclined," she said. "And even if she was, I don't know if she'd want anything to do with me."
"I must strongly advise that it should stay this way," he said sternly. "You couldn't have picked a more unsuitable person. You may think that she has a home here, but truthfully in the eyes of your city she is a refugee with nothing, from a nation known to be hostile. To go from that to the person closest to the queen, it casts suspicions on your character."
"Well, I can hardly marry her, can I? I wasn't planning on telling anyone."
"Affairs can be conducted with discretion, but the consequences of someone finding out would be disastrous. More so than if a king had a mistress," he continued. "Many kings have had mistresses without raising the ire of their people. But the queen must be chaste. I know it's unfair, but that's how it is. Best cast it from your mind."
"I can't. It's affecting my powers."
"What?" Now he paled, and looked to the mountain from the window.
"My moods have been up and down a lot lately, and the ice has responded in kind," she said as she sank back in her chair, suddenly exhausted. "The ice on the mountain isn't solid, it's melting and flooding Reinemont. And the ice creatures are melting too. Olaf says I've been too warm."
Makkenon stroked his beard, deep in thought. Elsa watched his expressions change without feeling much of anything.
"You say you're in love," he said at last.
"Yes."
"How do you know?"
She threw up her hands.
"How does anyone know? Do you want details? I love looking at her, I think about her all the time, I want to touch her and I can barely stop myself from doing it…."
He stopped her there, cheeks burning again.
"Have you considered that it's not love at all? Maybe it's just a rather fervent lust. That can be dealt with."
Feeling a little sick, she motioned for him to continue.
"There are girls for this kind of thing… girls who can be trusted to be discreet. If you were to…dispel your lust with one of these girls, your moods would even out…"
"You're talking about a prostitute," Elsa growled. "Speak plainly."
"I know of a brothel, of an excellent standard. It caters for many people of higher standing, and it can be trusted to be prudent. There are girls there that cater to your …needs. I can arrange for one to come here."
Unthinkable. Her stomach twisted.
But what other choice did she have?
She swallowed, hard, and nodded.
…..
Two nights later, she received a notice from Makkenon that the girl would arrive that night, after midnight, during the changing of the guard, escorted to the chamber that connected to Elsa's through a sally port. The port had been used by king's mistresses before, and only the advisors knew of it.
Elsa was so nervous she couldn't eat. Her hands shook as she wrote up documents. She couldn't even bear to look at Merida. She felt like she was betraying her. She went to her chambers early, begging illness. Everyone agreed that she didn't look well and let her go. She sent for wine, and it was brought promptly.
The hours ticked by. She changed her clothes twice as she sweat right through them. She pinned her hair up, and shook it out, and pinned it up again. She paced the room feverishly. How was one supposed to prepare for a visit from a prostitute?
As midnight approached, she sequestered herself in the bathroom, feeling like she would be sick at any moment. She jumped when the door of the sally port clicked open and she heard the soft shuffle of someone's feet on the carpet.
"Hello?" a melodious voice called softly from inside the bedchamber.
Elsa stilled, and the footsteps pattered around the room. The girl inside made small humming noises to herself. Elsa dared a peek through the open doorway and saw her, standing before her long mirror inspecting her face.
With a sinking heart, Elsa regarded this girl at the mirror. It was glaringly obvious that Makkenon had picked her out himself. He'd chosen the girl who most resembled Merida.
Her hair was red, a pale almost pinkish tone of blonde that wasn't even close to Merida's bright locks, and it had been rag-curled. The spirals were too perfectly formed, too evenly spaced. What she could see of the girl's body under a clinging sheath dress was small-breasted, her hips and behind jutted out generously. She was about the same height as Merida, and her pixie-like face was similar in shape, but it seemed pinched in the middle somehow, giving this girl a sly look.
Unconsciously, Elsa had been slowly making her way out the door, and now the girl turned, saw her companion and gasped.
"Your highness! Beg your pardon…." she demurred, eyes wide and nervous. "I was told to meet someone here…."
"Yes. You were," Elsa mumbled. Her mouth felt dry.
"Oh…" the girl gasped again, and stopped to regard Elsa's stance, the wine bottle on the table, the bed that hadn't been slept in. "I… was to meet you? Truly?"
"Yes. Is that a problem?" Elsa asked, hoping it was.
"A problem?" the girl giggled. "It would be an honour. I had no idea your highness was interested in such things."
"Nobody knows. I should like it to stay that way."
"Say no more," the girl grinned. "My lips are sealed beyond this room. Milord chose me for my discretion, amongst other things."
She punctuated this with a saucy waggle of her hips, and for the first time Elsa felt a giddy jump and a rush of warmth. With Flossie, she had only been permitted to look. With Martine, she had touched once and never again. Merida tortured her with what she could not have. But this girl…
This was a girl that would never reject her. She couldn't.
"What is your name?" Elsa asked.
"Meena," the girl answered perkily.
In one smooth move, she reached for the clips of her thin dress and snapped them loose, and as she shimmied the dress fell to her ankles. Elsa gasped as though she'd been struck. Unclothed, Meena's breasts seemed to swell, her nipples pink and pointed. Her belly was slightly rounded and smooth, her legs beautifully shaped. Elsa's eyes were drawn to the sparse hair between her legs, the plump vaginal lips just about visible and glistening in the dim candlelight.
In this light, caught at the right angle, Meena did look something like Merida.
As the thought occurred to her, Elsa felt a shock of heat hit her at the base of her pelvic floor; the muscles contracted and she felt a rush of answering wetness. Meena smiled invitingly, pleased to have had such an effect. She crossed the room and stood before Elsa, arms held out in welcome.
"I hope my body is to your liking. I am very pleased to serve one as lovely as you."
Hesitant, Elsa reached for her breasts. Smiling blissfully, Meena pressed them into her grasp.