a/n: i started school again, and i am literally already done with it ughhhh
ANYWHO
i know some of you were confused about Hans, and i hope this clears things up! or maybe not! but hopefully!
also, congrats to all those playing the i-understood-that-reference game—Hercules, LOTR, Princess Bride, Wicked. can you find them all?! (congrats if you have, you smarties)
SO IN CONCLUSION here is an extra long chapter for you lovelies, and i'm sorry it is so long, but because it is so long, you should all be really cool and drop a review, please and thank you! :)
The little white daisy sits in a vase on her nightstand. She can see it if she presses her nose against the glass of her French doors, like she's doing now. It looks so very fragile. Like she could snap it between her thumb and forefinger. She asks, "Do you ever think about what would happen if there were no more flowers?" Her breath fogs up the glass.
"No."
"I mean, seriously, can you imagine it? Like, none."
"Like, no. Are you going to eat your roll?"
"Yes," she hisses protectively, twisting around and snatching the last one from the basket. She shoves a good chunk in her mouth, just to claim it, and says, through full lips, "I could eat bread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner," though it sounds more like, "'couldeatreadbrunchlinner."
Kristoff nods. "Hearty diet. What about chocolate?"
"Ok," Anna amends, swallowing. "Chocolate, too. Bread and chocolate." She settles back against the glass. Her booted foot is leaning sideways and almost touching his; there's the remains of the basket nestled between them, half-laid out on the stone floor of the balcony. Above the railing, and the wall, she can make out the twinkling of starlight, stark compared to the firelight leaking from her room. She's content, and relaxed, except she keeps thinking of her sister and feeling bad, and wishing her sister wasn't so difficult all the time—"What about you?" she asks, to keep her mind off issues of difficult-ness.
"What about me what?"
"You know," Anna grins. "What's your favorite food?"
"Carrots." Kristoff nods sagely.
"Isn't that Sven's favorite food?"
After a beat: "I don't see why that's relevant to anything—"
She snorts. Whispers, "Unhealthy relationship," through the side of her mouth. Kristoff shakes his head ruefully; his laugh is small.
"He's just," he pauses, glancing sideways at her, then back at the sky, "just—always been there for me."
Anna blinks at him, tracing his profile in the flickering half-light. His mouth is turned at the corners. She shivers, and then is angry at herself for shivering, because it was a nice, end-of-summer-lukewarm out here, like a bath, but she's freezing. She has gooseflesh running up and down her arms, under her stockings, across her back. She takes another bite of the roll to hide it. Chew. Chew. Chew faster, I need to ask him—she swallows. "What about the trolls?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. They have, too. Sure," he trails off, rubbing his neck uncomfortably. He pokes around in the basket, finding a loose piece of chocolate, and begins to roll it between his thumb and forefinger.
She wants to ask. Instead she reaches into the basket, because if there was one piece of chocolate, there were more pieces of chocolate—their hands brush. He grins guiltily and pulls away. She wonders if he's blushing. She bumps her shoulder into his with a smile. "You gonna eat that?" she asks, of the piece in his hand.
He throws it carelessly into his mouth. "Want it?"
"Kristopher."
Keep your head down, keep your head down, keep—
"Miss? Can I help you find something?"
"No, I'm perfectly fine, thank you—"
They know, they know, they know—
Elsa tugs her hood again, slung low over her eyes, fingers gripping the folds of her dark purple cloak, frost curling up the seams. She keeps her gaze focused on her feet—sensible, flat black shoes, the plainest she could find. One in front of the other. One in front of the other. Step, step. Don't step on the cracks, she thinks rather hysterically. The world is loud and awake around her, men calling to women, women calling to men, children bubbling past on their way home. There are lights in the windows—she can see their reflections upon the ground, but is too afraid to look up, too afraid someone will recognize her—
She lets her feet carry her, and then she spies, beneath her cowl, the heavy, worn wood of the dock, and realizes she's walking parallel to it, across the upper stone wall that corrals the city. She stops. Turns about face. Begins walking back the way she came.
The castle. How far back was the castle? She'd just march through the open gates and up into her room and—
A young boy whistles past, foot stamping on the edge of her cloak. She's forced to a standstill and thrown off-balance; he doesn't stop and neither does she, cartwheeling backwards over the lip of the wall and plummeting down towards the dock below—
She lands in a snowdrift with a muted thud. Her heart is pounding, her hood laid low across her shoulders. She hears, "Are you ok?" Footsteps. Then, tentatively, disbelievingly, "Queen Elsa?"
She shuts her eyes. Of course. Inhales once, long and low through her nose. Exhales with the same ferocity. When she blinks Prince Albert is standing there, just outside the circle of snow, wearing a dark cloak, almost black; the hood is down. His clothing is much more respectable than it had been, she notes distantly, so she can keep her head. Tunic and trousers. All in order.
"Yes, hello," she replies, as if it was perfectly normal for her to have fallen into a pile of snow at eight o'clock in the evening, when she should have been reading trade reports and listening to her advisors.
"Hi—hello. How are—I mean—here, let me—" he reaches down, extending a hand, hair falling across his forehead in unruly curls. She ignores the help, and with a twist of her wrist feels the snow push her up out of its grasp. She'd almost been comfortable. Prince Albert draws back, and then she watches him slowly realize what she's realizing, which is—
"I thought I told you to keep to your ship," she says coolly.
He blinks at her with those eyes and seems to come to some sort of decision. He straightens his shoulders. He says, "And I thought you were the queen."
She feels her lips thinning. There's not so much direct disrespect in his voice as a steel she hasn't yet heard from him. She's confused. "Excuse me?" she asks, letting the frost creep up her legs and settle around her throat.
He shrugs callously, looking down the broken crook of his nose to examine the tips of his boots. "You heard me. I thought you were the queen. This isn't exactly queen behavior."
She clenches her hands beneath the folds of her cloak, feeling ice slithering past her knuckles.
"Maybe I should inform the guards? I'm sure the people would love to hear that their queen has been sneaking—"
She punches him.
Then she looks in awe between her closed fist, little icy pricks fading back into her pale skin, and Prince Albert's face. He wheels back towards her, rubbing his chin. There are little welts there, from the frost, but that's not the most disturbing thing—
He's grinning.
"What are you smiling about?" And she hisses, actually hisses, because first he comes and then he loses the letter and then he sneaks off his ship, and really, it was all too much, too—
"It's just the first time I've seen you really something," he laughs. "You know, really real—angry—" His grin lights up those eyes, making them spark like chips of jade. "You've got a good swing!"
She glares at him in disbelief. Above them the city is awake. To their right, the harbor is asleep. She can hear the muffled shouts of a card game gone sour from the ship behind her, buried deep below deck.
Did he just—
Did he just make her snap on purpose?
"Are you trying to distract me from the fact that you've specifically ignored my request?"
"No! No, I just—I'm—look, do you feel better?" he asks finally.
She straightens, lips still thin, and realizes with a start that some twisted, tangled part deep in her chest had loosened the slightest bit.
Just the slightest.
She asks frigidly, "What are you doing away from your ship?"
"Off to the taverns." He holds up his hands, stepping away as she clenches her fist once more. "Really! I—I knew what you said, but it gets awful cramped on that—well, on the ship there, and I just—I—" She's glaring at him, still, and when he notices that he fades off, blinking, as if his words just left him. "I'm sorry."
She feels her anger fading, as it had earlier that day. Bright and sharp and hot and gone. They'd been in the same position, too. She repeats her words of earlier. "I just don't think I can trust you." Isn't quite sure why she says it. Someone races by above them, and she quickly tugs her hood back over her white braid.
"I'm not asking you to trust me," Prince Albert replies. "Just, right now, I'm—just asking you to come to out with me." As his words register he narrows his eyes and says, too quickly, words blurring together, "Notonadate."
She blinks at him. Wants to say, I would never, but keeps her mouth shut. He barrels forward.
"Look, I know you're doing that thing I told you about, just—well, not being royal for a bit, right? And that's—just come to a tavern, and you'll see your people, isn't that—isn't that what you wanted?" He pauses for breath. "Maybe?"
Can't she just—
For one night, just—
Let it go?
Hadn't she, once?
She snaps, "Fine."
"I mean, it's not going to hurt anyone, you don't need—huh?"
"I said fine."
"You…agreed with—me?"
"This will be the first," she says icily, stepping near enough to him that she can count the freckles dotting his nose, "and only time, Prince Albert." A frosted wind whistles by.
"Just Albert," he says, half-smiling nervously and looking to the side. "Just—just Albert. For now, I mean, not for—not forever."
"Because," Elsa says slowly, fixing her eyes on a point over his shoulder, "because for the rest of the night we aren't…royal."
"Exactly! I mean. Yes. Of course."
Elsa glances over at him. Then she extends her hand cautiously. "Just Elsa, then."
"Well, just Elsa," Albert grins, taking it. "What are we waiting for?"
Niels is reading from a book, but Hans doesn't know the language. It sounds rough, jagged and raw, as if there are teeth and claws ripping their way up his brother's throat. The crow is sitting placidly on his shoulder.
The chalk begins to spark with a sickly yellow light, inching its way across the markings like a glowworm. When it reaches the inner circle where he stands, there is a sharp, stabbing pain down his heel. He tries to lift one foot and finds he cannot. Despite years of practiced calm, his perfect demeanor cracks a little around the edges.
"Brother?" Hans asks, and his voice wavers. He can't turn to see the king sitting and sipping tea. Can just feel him at his back. Outside the sky is black.
"Patience."
The fire goes out.
He slides his nail between his two front teeth, trying to get a stray piece of steak, and then he realizes abruptly where he is, and remembers that even if it's Anna sitting next to him it's Anna sitting next to him. He can practically hear Sven screaming at him about table manners. He hastily wipes the offending nail on the knee of his pants, glancing sideways, but she hadn't even noticed—
She was too busy staring up at the sky.
He watches her for a moment. Can't help it. The swooped curve of her nose. The thin press of her lips. He looks back at his nail and grimaces. Before he can indulge in his self-pity, however, Anna is jumping to her feet, nearly disrupting the empty basket, the linen, the crumbs, dusting off her thick skirt—don't think he hadn't notice her shivering, because he had—and turning back towards him. She holds out her hands impatiently. Says, even more so, "Alright, alright, enough food, let's go, get up, get up, get up!"
Kristoff blinks at her, startled.
"Kristopher!" she admonishes after a beat, two, in which he just continues to stare, because, really, how did she have this much energy, was it really possible for anyone to have this much energy—"The sky's waking up," she explains at a low, excited whisper, "so we have to get to my secret spot, like, yesterday—come on!"
"Ok! Ok, feisty pants, geez," and the nickname rolls off his tongue. He humors her, reaching for her outstretched hands, but even leaning back and digging the heels of her boots into the stone floor of the balcony doesn't give her enough leverage to lift him. She just tips backwards herself. He laughs, because she looks ridiculous, and then stands. He rights her easily. She weighs about as much as a sack of carrots.
(And eats like a reindeer, how did that even make sense—)
She brushes the sleeve of his blue tunic and grins. "Thanks." She's really, really close. He licks his lips. She coughs. "Ready?"
"What? Oh, uh, yeah. Sure. As I'll ever be." Kristoff takes a step back, trying to figure out where exactly this place could be, wondering at Anna's sanity.
But, then, he was always doing that. So.
"'Kay," she says, turning her back to him and walking purposefully towards the balcony railing. "So, like, don't be daunted, but I'm not gonna lie, it's kinda a climb. Nothing too big, nothing I don't think you can't handle—or can handle? Nothing I don't—never mind. Actually," she pauses, and he's staring at her, because she had just swung one leg over the side and was sitting on it comfortably and how is—normal, what is—"should I go behind you? That way I can catch you if you fall—"
"I don't think so," he says quickly, shaking his head. "How about you climb, and I'll follow?" He doesn't say: so that I can trust-catch you when you inevitably slip, but, hey, the thought is there.
Anna stares at him. Then she shrugs. "Suit yourself. Don't complain when you die."
He rolls his eyes fondly and starts after her.
The tavern is crowded. As soon as she's stepped inside she wants to leave. The place smells of people, too many people—sweat and alcohol and whatever food was drifting towards them from the back kitchens. A wall of noise. Ice bubbles out around her sensible black slippers.
"Que—Elsa," Albert whispers in her ear, through the heavy fabric of her cloak. "It's ok. Just people."
"Need I remind you," she says through clenched teeth, "that just people wanted to kill me?"
That shuts him up. She does, however, after several deep breaths, manage to thaw the telltale heart around her feet. After an uncomfortable pause he coughs into his fist and says, "This way."
She follows him into the room, daring to lift her head slightly, eyes glinting from the shadows.
It's a large room, lit warmly by the roaring fire in the hearth, and several candles, whose waxy stems were sagging and falling in great waterfalls to the floor. There were tables, and small stools, and a large bar along the back wall, with great barrels of ale and beer situated behind it. The people were talking in groups of two, groups of three, groups of four—all at once, and loudly, and everywhere. As they slip around a man with—she blinks in shock—a hook for a hand she hears him exclaim, "Never thought I'd miss the Snuggly Duckling, but—"
"Here we go," Albert says, motioning to a cramped corner. There's a tall, three-legged table, and two ragged stools to match. She settles gratefully in the farthest one, feeling the comfortable press of the walls at her back. From her vantage, she can watch the entire tavern.
She slips further into her cloak.
"I'll be right—right back, hold a moment—" and he's gone, slipping again past the man with the hook-hand and another with a large, protruding nose. She watches the dark bob of his hood, all the way to the bar. Then she lets her eyes wander.
They were smiling. The people. Did that mean—did that mean they were happy? She briefly entertains the notion of pulling off her hood, but she knows what would result from that—bows. Shocked gasps. Unwanted attention.
Just let it go, come on, one night, let it go—
Albert—how easily the prince slid from him, she was almost jealous—returns, holding two mugs whose like she had never seen. They were silver, or a tarnished sort of metal similar in vein, and chipped around the rim. White-yellow foam spilled over their top and down their sides. She asks, tentatively, as he sets them on the table and hoists himself up onto the stool next to her, "Are they—clean?"
He eyes his own suspiciously. "Truthfully? Probably not. But neither is the beer." He takes a great swig, face scrunching comically. She bites her lip to keep from smiling. He smacks his own together and manages, "Really great stuff, that."
She reaches for her own stein, and, before she can rethink her life choices, takes a tentative sip. Immediately she blanches, and then, almost as fast, she wonders what Anna would say if she could see her now—nothing, probably. Her sister would laugh. The liquid runs like vinegar down her throat and she coughs. "I take it—they don't have—wine?"
"In a tavern?" Albert snorts.
She sniffs primly. A silence descends upon the little table that is noticeable even in the great swell of noise around them. Finally she asks, "Now what?"
"Well, I suppose—I—I actually don't know."
She side-eyes him warily. After a beat, in which her eyes return to the festive scene before her, she asks, "In your…professional opinion, do these people look happy?"
"What's not to be happy about? Arendelle's a prosperous kingdom. They've got friends, and beer. Horrible beer, but the lengths men would go to—one time, I remember, Felix snuck into the kitchens to get our brew and—and then—" Albert clams up. His mouth shuts with a clack. He takes a tight-lipped sip from his mug.
"What happened to him?" Elsa wipes her finger around the rim of her own, idly circling, over and over. "Felix."
"What—makes you think something happened?" Albert asks.
"You mentioned he was gone. When you had dinner with us."
He tugs on a loose strand of hair.
"When he was twenty, he went out on a ship. And he didn't come back."
"Oh." She feels as if she has been punched in the gut.
"Most of us agree it was pirates who did it," he grins rather deprecatingly, finishing off his beer. She looks at his shoulders—they're no longer stooped. He's leaning confidently against the wall, pressing his stool to rest on two of its three legs, surveying the room with bright, mica-jade-sapphire eyes. "He took a ship through the Spanish Main, the stupid bastard. I don't know what he expected."
Elsa says, "I'm sorry," because it is the proper thing to say, even if she isn't. Even if she's horribly, secretly pleased that there was one less brother to worry about. And then—
"Don't be." Albert laughs. "Felix hated it."
"What?"
"Being royal. Couldn't stand it. Hated the palace, and the people. Told you he started this tradition—blending in, he called it."
Elsa watches the man with the hook-hand call for another round of drinks. She says, "My parents died on a ship."
"They don't seem very safe, do they?" Albert muses. "Bring the bad weather and the worse tidings."
"Bring the unwanted princes," she says, to get the taste of parents off her tongue.
"I'm hurt," he says, but he's grinning. He's comfortable, and his movements are fluid. He's no longer reaching for his forearm, and his secret notes there. He's let the guise of royalty drop completely. But then, she thinks ruefully, maybe he's just beginning to feel the pleasanter effects of that beer—
"You, sir!" Albert calls suddenly. "You're calling for drinks?"
Elsa sinks further into her cloak as several eyes turn their way.
"Yeah," the man with the hook-hand says, eyes narrowed. "What's it to ya?"
"I want in on the round," Albert grins back, unabashed. "My treat."
Hans is melting from the inside out.
His breath is scraping past his raw throat, hot coals tumbling back and forth into his lungs. He cannot catch it, this breath, cannot seem to get enough oxygen—he needs more, to feed the ache in his belly, the heat in his heart—his bones crack and snap and pop, and his skin is scorching brown. There's an awful, horrible stench. Burning flesh.
Hans screams.
"Your last name is what?"
"Bjorgman."
"Bjorgman. Are you sure?"
"Pretty sure."
"Like, one-hundred-percent?"
"Uh, yeah."
"Huh." Anna considers this, putting her hands in front of her, feeling the rough of the roof shingles scratching against her legs. Kristoff is propped up against one of the chimneys rising from the palace itself; they're seated on her secret place, a small lip just wide enough to perch on, high above the rest of the world, close to the sky and its beautiful, undulating colors—bluegreenpurple—then green again. One swing too far backwards, and she could fall. "Anna Bjorgman. Whatdya think?"
"It's—" his voice cracks. He shakes his head, rubbing the back of his neck. "It's alright, I suppose."
"Yeah. It'd be much better if you had a strong name like—like Odinson. Kristoff Odinson, how's that?"
"No."
"I think it's an improvement."
"No."
"Fine, ok, whatever. Whatever you say." She peers above her at the stars. Now or never, she thinks grimly. "Hey, Kristoff?"
"Yeah—can you watch yourself on that ledge, back there, you're going to fall—"
"I'm not. Kristoff."
"Yes?"
"What happened to your parents?" Her voice is soft. "Your real ones. Not that the trolls aren't your real ones, but unless you're hiding something from me I don't think—I mean—I don't think you're a troll," she finishes lamely, looking up quickly at the man across from her and then back at her clasped hands.
She can hear Arendelle, buoyant, and full of life. Above her the sky is singing.
Oh, you blew it. You blew it, blew it, blew it, how could you just—and then ask that, I mean—oh my go—
"I don't like talking about it."
"Kristoff, I'm sorry, I'm really—just me, being too curious, I mean, we all know I'm a little bit curious and I thought, hey, why not ask about his parents—I mean, not parents, I'm not bringing it up—"
"No, that's—it's fine, really—"
"I mean, who likes talking about parents, right? I need to stop saying it—"
"Anna!"
She looks up.
"I want you to know."
"Oh. Oh. Really?"
"Well, I mean." He takes a deep breath. "Just because you don't like talking about something doesn't mean you should ignore it," he manages on the exhale.
Anna thinks suddenly of Elsa's ice and years of closed doors. She chips at the wood beneath her with the flat of her nail. "Yeah."
Kristoff scratches the side of his nose. She thinks he's going for nonchalant, but his mouth is pressed too thin. "My dad—he'd gone out to harvest—he'd gone out the day before, and this huge storm was rolling in off the mountains. Great, black clouds. The whole—whole nine yards. So my mom says," he fades off here, eyes going fuzzy and strange, fixed on a point over her shoulder. He continues, softly, like he's talking to himself, "Stay here."
Anna licks her lips.
"That's the last thing she ever said to me. Stay here. Then she went out to the barn and put tack on our last reindeer and. Off she went." He rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably. "She was gone for awhile. Long enough that the snow started drifting down, and then the wind made it worse. Then I saw her, coming through the edges of the forest, on her reindeer. My dad was behind."
There's a full thirty seconds pause, in which Anna thinks she will never ask anything ever again, and did she even have a right to ask this, and what was she doing, asking this, like, who did this, who asked this—where were her social skills—
"They couldn't get through the storm in time," he sighs at last, shaking his head. "Close. But not close enough." He sniffs loudly, scuffing the palm of his hand on the roof next to him. "I tried to open the door, but I couldn't. The drift was too high." Pause. Breath. Blink. "Sven was in the barn. Lost his parents, too."
Anna doesn't say anything, then, because she'll ruin it if she opens her mouth. Because if she opens her mouth she'll say, but you still went back to harvesting or ask did you find the bodies or were the trolls better or worse parents and none of those things were askable questions, so, no. Instead she clambers forward, hand over foot on the little ledge, and settles herself ungracefully on his lap, so that he has to spit her hair out of his mouth. His arms go around her automatically and she grins, almost smugly, if not for the wicked haunt of the story still hanging over them.
He's warm.
"What are you—"
"Shh," she slaps a hand over his mouth. "The sky's awake."
And they both look up.
Albert is trying to arm wrestle a man name Vladimir who looks like he could crush a man's skull between his thighs, not that she's paying attention to that sort of thing. Next to him, the hook-handed thug—by name of Hook Hand—and the big-nosed thug—by name of Big Nose—are cheering their friend on. Albert isn't her friend, she thinks determinedly, watching the prince bite his lip in frustration, face turning a brilliant shade of crimson, so—
"Go, Albert!" she shouts, lifting her mug—two? Or three? Definitely the third, that—rather shakily and sending a grin from under the shade of her cloak. He starts, surprised at her outburst, and Vladimir takes the opportunity to slam the prince's hand into the table, hard enough that she swears she hears bones breaking. As it is, all the mugs spill to the floor.
"Maybe next time, kid," Hook Hand says with a slap to his back. "'ey, buddy, another round, huh!"
Albert, grimacing and rubbing his hand, slides through the growing crowd towards where she is perched on the stool like a bird. The world is floating around her in a pleasant buzz, everything mumbling together in a host of happy shouts and faces. She likes this place. Loves it. It's a good place. Almost as good as the North Mountain.
"My plan worked," she tells him as he nears.
"Huh?"
"My plan to get you to lose."
"I think I stood a very definite chance of victory, too," Albert sniffs, sitting back on his stool and waving at Ulf and Tor, more visitors from distant shores. He's a completely different person, she thinks, and this time she is jealous. Completely different. He's not a prince, and he's smiling, and everyone likes him. So easy. Forget royalty.
Huh.
I'm jealous, she thinks to herself slowly, and then cocks a delighted half-grin. She reaches for the mug in front of her and downs the rest. It burns pleasantly down her throat. Albert blinks. "Uh, how—how many is that, then?"
She shrugs, but it feels like her shoulders aren't attached to her body.
"Maybe," she says, concentrating on the words, "maybe like. Two."
"Liar."
"Maybe like four."
"More like five—you took that last refill Hook Hand offered—"
"The bar tender likes you," she says, jerking her chin towards him, a competent looking man with an easy smile and charming eyes.
"Who, Bragi? It's 'cause I talk to him—woah, no more," Albert finishes, pulling his own drink out of her reach.
She almost giggles. But doesn't.
"Does he like Arendelle?"
"Sure, I suppose. Why don't you talk to—"
"No."
"You know," Albert points out, running a hand through his curls. His eyes are nice, she thinks. Something calming about them. "You know, talking to people—"
"No."
He sighs, like he knew that was going to be the answer, and she watches blearily as he opens his mouth to say something more, but a general uproar cuts him off. There are chairs being pressed back, scraping across wood, and more logs being thrown on the fire. Bragi, the bar tender, is shouting, and it takes her a moment to pick out the words over the noise of the crowd, "—going to be music, gather 'round, gather 'round!"
She hears the tuning of instruments—a violin. Two violins. A viola. A flute. There's something unrestrained about the sound, vibrant and clear and beautiful, something she's never heard before, not in the confines of the ballroom. She blinks.
"Elsa?"
"Hm?" She starts back towards Albert.
"I said, do you want to dance?"
"I—"
Oh, no.
"I—"
No. No, no—
"I think I'm going to be sick," she gulps, and then, throwing one hand over her mouth, bolts from the tavern.
"And then I broke my arm."
"Are—are you serious?"
"As the plague."
"That's gotta be the most—are you sure you're a princess?" He laughs, and she can feel it humming, vibrating through the bones of her chest. She sends an elbow behind her.
"Kristopher."
His laughter fades off. She's got his arms wrapped around her; she's nestled in the crook of his legs, and she feels—comfortable, looking at the stars twinkling above her. And then he's silent.
"Hey, what? What's wrong?" She tries to twist around, but his elbows are locked and keeping her in place. If she squirms too much they might fall off the roof. "Does it—I mean, I don't know why it would, because that'd be stupid, but—does it bother you that I am?"
"What, clumsy?"
Elbow, side, grunt. "A princess, ice-head."
He sighs, breath ghosting past her ear. "No. Why would that bother me?"
"Liar."
He doesn't deny it.
"You know," she continues, plucking at a loose thread on his tunic, "since you're the Royal Ice Harvester, you're basically royalty, too."
He snorts at that. "It's not a thing."
"It totally is, we've gone over this." And then, out of the blue, she shivers. One of those violent, horribly awkward shivers, and it basically looks like she's going to have a heart attack or something—"Woah. Weird."
"Hey," he asks, voice going soft, "are you cold?"
"Well, I'm just going to be honest here, and don't take this the wrong way, but you're kind of a fireplace. So, no. 'M fine, geez," she laughs it off, trying to pull away. "Just somebody walking over my grave or something—"
"What?"
"What? What, yourself, you mean you've never heard—"
"No!"
"It's a saying, Kristopher, a saying—hey, don't push me that way, do you want me to fall off? It's a plot to get my money, isn't it."
"Obviously," he replies dryly. He's let her go, and she's scooting back along the edge, turning around. He's fiddling for something in his sash. "No, I just remembered, I got you something—"
"Wait, what? Kristoff, I didn't get you anything—"
"Not required," and he flushes, and she wonders if he's thinking about the sled or something, but really, that had been a gift from Elsa, so he shouldn't feel bad about it at all, or the princess thing, or—or, well, anything, so—"Here."
She looks up, startled. "Huh?"
He's holding an orange crystal between his thumb and forefinger. It's pulsing like a heartbeat, glowing like an ember. She blinks rapidly, oncetwicethrice—
"Kristoff, it's gorgeous."
And then she thinks: wait, what if it's a marriage proposal, no wait, no I'm not—
"It's, ah, a fire crystal," he says self-consciously, rubbing the back of his neck. "From the trolls."
She lets out a breath she didn't even know she was holding. "A fire crystal?"
"Yeah," Kristoff grins. "It's—they do these trials, and it's really complicated, I don't know how to explain it, but then they get these crystals, and it's like—here, hold out your hands."
She does. He drops it into the cup of her waiting palms, and there's a sudden, comforting warmth shooting up her arms. For the first time in almost two weeks, she feels like she's wearing too many clothes. "Woah."
His grin widens. "Pretty cool, huh?"
"Pretty amazing, is more like it!" She hugs it to her chest, and then—"No one's ever done anything like this for me," she smiles almost in disbelief, looking at the ember-glow between her curved fingers. "I mean, not that I haven't gotten things—I mean, I've gotten too many things, but they've been like—here's a new gown to wear, or, like, here's a new etiquette book—and I don't know about you, but I don't need manners, I've got them in spades, completely—" she pauses for breath, looking through her eyelashes at his incredibly pleased, unsure grin. "Thank you!"
"Anna." Kristoff reaches forward, then thinks better of it, and scoots back, but he doesn't stop talking. There's some sort of internal battle being waged, she thinks, his movements jerky and wild, his hand flying to his collar. He continues, "Anna, I love—"
She feels her eyes widening. Her heart beats faster, and all she can think is no, not yet, not now, more time, more—
"—the way you can talk for like, five minutes without taking a breath, geez," he finishes with an awkward sort of laugh, looking to the side. She blinks, feeling the heat of the crystal against her chest, warming her heart.
That was—
A silence, thick and heavy.
So she says—
"Hey, so like, did you have to complete a trial to get this, or what?"
Kristoff smiles smugly, but she thinks there is disappointment around his eyes, and she doesn't know why.
And she does.
"I know people," he says.
Side by side, they gaze up at the sky above.
Elsa straightens, fingers on the ragged wood of the tavern, and winces.
"I mean, if you didn't want to dance with me, you could've just said so," she hears, and then that self-deprecating laugh, and then, "Sorry. Bad joke. Are—are you alright?"
She takes a few steps to the left, further from the gutter, and leans heavily against the wall behind her. One hand is fisted in the folds of her cloak, the other settled gingerly over her mouth. Her hood is down; she feels exposed, but the square around the tavern is empty. "I've been better," she replies dryly.
Albert comes to a slow, easy stop, and leans on the wall next to her. From inside the tavern she can hear the beginning melody of the first song.
"Do you really hate dancing that much?"
And she says, because she was just sick in a gutter, because she did not want to begin thinking about queens and royalty and propriety—"Shut up."
"You're as cold as ice, just Elsa."
She gives him a glare that could stop a small army, but his grin doesn't fall from his face—he only holds up his hands in a gesture of peace.
"Let me guess," she bites. "Bad joke?"
"How'd you know?"
And they lapse back into silence.
She's rubbing the crook of her arm, looking at the streets. The pointed roof of the tavern sends her face into shadow, and the buildings beyond are beginning to douse their lights, one by one. She wonders how late it is. She should get back. She needed to—
She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes.
"No," Albert says firmly. "No, you can't have guilt until the morning after. That's how this works."
"This wasn't about getting drunk," she snaps, shaking her hands before her, crossing her arms tightly. Snow is beginning to fall, soft and slow. "This was about—getting to know my people better—"
"Elsa," Albert says cautiously, and when she glances at him he's tugging at his sleeve, looking like he's approaching a wild animal, "You are. Watching them, talking to them—"
"I haven't talked to—"
"It's not too late to talk to people," he amends quickly. Then he coughs uneasily into his hand and turns forward, so he's facing the street. "Look, the way I see it, this was—I mean, don't you—it's just—"
"You were fine in there," she says, too harshly, and she knows it. Her lapse in judgment was not his fault, despite the fact the he planted the idea. She could not blame anyone but herself.
"I—that's different," he laughs hollowly. "That's—those are people."
"And I'm not?"
"You're Elsa," he says, like that should make sense.
She snorts. It's a very Anna sound. It takes her aback.
"And tonight, it was just—it wasn't just about—I mean, it was about you—letting go. For a bit. A while. A short while."
She starts to the side, as if touched. "What did you say?"
"Letting go—it was about that, I think. I think that was—yeah. Yes, I mean."
And for the first time she wonders if she has misjudged him. Elsa rubs her hands together and focuses for a brief, painful moment, and the snow stops.
No. She had not.
She lets out a long, low sigh, and leans once more against the wall. The sign for the tavern hung to the right, and above—rough hewn from a piece of driftwood, maybe, and painted over recently with bright, fresh colors. The Prancing Pony. The horse on it looked entirely unbelievable.
"There are so many of them," Albert says, apropos of nothing. It takes her a beat to realize he's not looking at the sign but up, past the lip of the roof above and to the sky full of white pinpricks.
"I love starlight," she says.
"I always thought it was a—cold light."
"No," she shakes her head, tracing their outlines, their paths above, imagining dancing among their cool, blue beauty, remembering them watching her happily as she raised her palace on the North Mountain. "No, they're beautiful."
"Felix used to say it was the light of wishes."
"Hm," she hums.
"Would you dance up there, then?"
"What?"
"Would you dance up there?" he asks, smiling. "I can see you. You'd fit."
"Are you calling me a flaming ball of gas?"
"No," he shakes his head, and before she can really register what he's doing his hand is near her face, hovering by her cheek, holding a loose strand of her hair. She sucks in a breath. Goes stock-still. "Beautiful." Pause. "Distant."
"You're drunk," she whispers.
His grin is sharp. "Maybe. Probably." He lets go, and she thinks he is going to take a hasty step back, but instead he takes a quick step forward, so close she can make out the flecks of dark green, of cerulean, in his eyes, and were they anything like those other eyes, in reality—
"What are you doing?" she demands sharply.
With a swift tug he pulls her hood back over her head just as a couple strolls past, arm in arm, the woman proclaiming, loudly, "Just one dance, darling—" before they head inside.
"Close one," Albert whispers, grin slipping as he tumbles backwards.
Elsa's stomach is rolling again.
Letting go, huh?
There's another song beginning; a fast jig.
She tentatively reaches, her fingers cresting the fabric of her cloak and looking pale in the moonlight. She licks her lips. Pauses. Breathes. And—
"Dance with me?"
Hans wakes up in pieces.
He's lying on the ground, his neck twisted at an awkward angle, his legs curled behind him. There are voices, above, and he takes a moment to place them, to place himself—
"—did it take?"
"—won't know until he wakes—"
"—by the screaming, I imagine—"
His insides feel like the insides of one of the cook's tarts, mashed to a pulp; his head feels worse. There's a roaring behind his eyelids. His breath is coming in short, rapid gasps, and he can't seem to stop them.
He opens his eyes.
Niels is kneeling over him, regarding him shrewdly, clinically. The crow is on his shoulder. Hans wants to open his mouth, but can't seem to get his jaw to work. His brother picks up his limp arm, leans closer to examine his pupils. The crow remains, talons firmly planted in the cloth of his tunic, and as it nears Hans can finally make out what's wrong with its eyes—
Milky, opaque, white.
Dead.
"How do you feel?" Niels asks.
"Like hell," Hans replies. It takes a moment for his voice to work, and when it does, he almost doesn't recognize it.
"Good." Niels callously helps him to his feet. Hans sways. The king is standing by the window, surveying the dark night outside.
"What did you do to me?" Hans croaks.
"Made you stronger," the king replies.
Hans is about to retort, but there is something inching along his veins, hot and horrible like molten lead. He feels as if he is burning, burning, burning—
With slow, deliberate precision, he looks down at his right hand, and pulls off his glove, one finger at a time. The white fabric flutters to the floor, amid the smudged chalk markings.
—and the burn creeps to the tips of his fingers, engulfs his hand, and as he watches his skin glows, his skin cracks—
His skin bursts into flames.
They skip between his outstretched fingers, slip across his knuckles, dance and pulsate mesmerizingly in the half-light of Niels' room.
"Hans," the king begins, turning to look at him over his shoulder, "what melts ice?"
Hans' grin is peeling off his face like yellowed wallpaper. "Why, your highness," and the title is on purpose, the slight jab, the small slip, and the flame doesn't burn him as he watches it licking the air from his open palm—
"Fire, of course."
Somewhere, a princess and an ice harvester sit on the roof of a palace, gazing at the sky.
Somewhere, a queen dances, as free as the stars and twice as far away.
And somewhere, cutting a swath through the gleaming black water, a ship pulls silently into harbor.