A/N: Just wanna pop in real quick to thank everyone who's followed, reviewed and read this fic so far! You guys really make my day! On another quick note, this is the last part of Chapter 7 and in my next post we will resume at Chapter 8!
Shout out to my beta flubbergutter for the awesome work she does editing this fic!
Okay, you guys, that's it for now. Take care and enjoy! :)
SEVEN
Part 6
"But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?"
Mark Twain
Every single eye in the courtroom was turned towards Elsa. Every single gaze was steady and unblinking. A sort of tunnel vision had taken over the audience, pinpointing the queen as their singular focus. To Elsa, however, they were currently nothing more than the blurry backdrop of an impressionist painting. She, too had in the last few minutes been overcome with a similar tunnel-sighted affliction, except that she was being held in a trance by someone else entirely.
It was Prince Jon's gruff voice that finally snapped her back to reality.
"Queen Elsa," he said, his booming voice startling her.
Elsa blinked and looked up at him, disoriented.
"Please answer Prince Josef's question."
Elsa frowned as she turned back to Prince Josef. "I'm sorry—what was the question?"
Prince Josef closed his eyes for a split second—a poor attempt at withholding impatience—and reiterated, "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"
Her eyes impulsively flickered in Hans' direction. Quickly turning her gaze to the floor, she swallowed before answering, "I do."
"Very well, Your Majesty," said Prince Josef, "if you could please tell us, in your own words, what happened on the day of your coronation."
Elsa looked up at him. "Where should I start?"
"Anywhere that you feel is most relevant, Your Majesty. Perhaps the first time you met Prince Hans?"
Elsa nodded meagerly, pressing her lips together. She searched her memories for a second, hands clasped tightly on her lap.
"I met Prince Hans … the night of the Coronation Ball …"
And then her words trailed off.
She could see him so clearly approaching her, bowing to her; the shining auburn hair, the dimpled smiled, his perfect form and all his cordiality as he requested a dance. The shiver that crossed her that night seemed to travel through time and cross her again now as she sat in the witness stand.
She looked up at the courtroom full of people, all silent as if bounded by a spell, more attentive now than they had been all day. They leaned forward in their seats, awaiting with visible anticipation the full account of how her life was almost taken by the man who stood across her. How was she supposed to look at them and admit that in a moment of human weakness she had thought Prince Hans galant and handsome, and had regretted for most of the evening not having accepted his offer to dance? How was she supposed to own up in front of everyone that she had later envied her sister for once again attaining all that she could never have?
Certainly she didn't have to confess to all of that, but how could she swear to tell the whole truth and yet leave out details that she deemed pivotal?
"Queen Elsa?"
Elsa's eyes snapped back to Prince Josef, who watched her bemusedly.
"You met Prince Hans the night of the Coronation Ball … and then?"
Her brow furrowed. "I'm sorry … that's not true."
"It isn't?"
"No—I actually met Prince Hans many years ago here in the Southern Isles when we were children. My family was here for Prince Hugo's wedding and …" She looked at Hans as the memory of the boy crying behind the rose bushes resurfaced in her mind. He didn't turn away. In fact, he seemed determined not to falter in his gaze. But somehow, by the slightest twitch of his jaw, she knew he was thinking of it too and trying his hardest not to show the slightest hint of caring. "I'm sorry … it was such a long time ago, I have very little recollection of it."
Prince Josef stared at her for a long second. "Well, that's quite all right. Why don't we fast forward a bit? Go ahead and tell us about the attack on North Mountain and the events that followed."
An alarm seemed to sound off inside of her. Beneath her skin, nerves awakened—all on their guard. She felt as though her very bones were vibrating and wondered whether anyone could tell. Her breathing came in shallow spurts now, her foot bobbing madly under her chair.
"I … well, the guards came and …"
"The Duke of Wesselton's guards?"
"Yes," said Elsa, trying to control her breathing. "They aimed their crossbows at me and—"
A sudden heat rose to her head and she squeezed her eyes shut—a habit carried on from her childhood, from lonely days locked up in her room wishing she could disappear.
"I never intended to hurt them …" she spurted out, the space between her eyebrows crinkling. "I was cornered … no matter how I begged they wouldn't let up and I …"
"We all know you acted in self-defense, Your Majesty. There's no need to concern yourself with that," Prince Josef reassured her. Still, he threw a furtive, amused glance in Jon's direction.
Elsa remembered the heat, the surge of power that had taken over her, the obstinate desire to show the Duke's guards how it felt to be deemed insignificant, to hurt them and bring them to the very brink of fear the way they had done with her … how could she ignore the glaring fact that she herself had once attempted murder?
"What happened after?" asked Prince Josef.
Elsa searched her scrambled memory. All she found was Prince Hans standing behind her shouting, "Queen Elsa—don't be the monster they fear you are!"
She was visibly shivering in her seat now. She clasped her hands tightly on her lap and clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from clattering. She reminded herself that she needed to focus on calming her nerves before she went and turned the courtroom into an igloo. However, the need to attain calm quickly, taking into consideration the suffocating pressure she was currently under, only heightened her anxiety.
But it was more than nerves and anxiety causing her to react this way. A big part of it came from the self-restraint she was employing, not just to keep her powers under control but to keep herself from climbing down the witness stand, cutting across to where Hans stood, seizing him by the shoulders and shaking him as hard as she possibly could. His lack of reaction more than stumped her—it aggravated her. She had an endless amount of questions to which only he held all the answers. It drove her to the edge of her sanity just to think that there was no force on the planet that could ever bring him to give them to her—that he stood across from her at that moment complacent, knowing he had her in the palm of his hand.
"Queen Elsa?" Prince Josef prompted.
Elsa's brow knitted with embarrassment. "I'm sorry."
"Not to worry," said Prince Josef, but not before letting out a deep breath. "Shall we talk about the events on the frozen fjord instead?"
She looked down at her hands, the palms covered in frost.
"Mr. Bjorgman during his testimony said he saw Prince Hans approach you, that there was an exchange of words. What did he say to you, Your Majesty?"
Elsa's mouth had gone completely dry. Her head throbbed right along with the pounding of her heart. Was she even breathing anymore? Beneath the soles of her shoes a sheet of ice covered the perimeter of the floor inside the witness stand.
"He said …" she began, her voice frail, barely audible past the first row of people.
In her peripheral vision, Elsa saw a woman in the front row of the audience wrap her shawl tighter around her.
"Your sister is dead … because of you."
Her legs had given way under her and she had collapsed but hardly known it. In that moment the world itself had lost its realness. She existed only in the blinding, asphyxiating pain that seemed to consume her from the inside out. Vaguely, she remembered her hand flat against the thick white ice and the teardrop that had splattered across its back.
The sound of his sword unsheathing cut through the frozen silence and she waited.
She had waited.
God knows she could have stood, could have formed any array of weapons to fight back. She had already proven herself a worthy opponent once before. But when she heard the sound of metal scraping metal she knew perfectly well what it had meant. As the whole world pressed down on her she finally surrendered, waited simply for the relief only he could bring.
She had closed her blurry eyes and waited.
It was through blurry eyes that she watched the amassed crowd in the courtroom which had come today to hear the fragile queen's truth, come to hear how she had been wronged. They had not come to hear that she had coveted, urged to kill and finally waited to die. They wanted a golden hero, a martyr to turn into a goddess, not a ragged, flawed young woman laden with mortal weakness.
They also hoped for a villain to bury, someone into whom they could channel their own righteous anger—someone who had never wronged any of them personally but into whom they could substitute the face of those who had once wronged them. They didn't want a man who had been so beaten by life that he had been left no choice but to hide and shield himself with darkness for the rest of his life. They didn't want someone to feel sorry for. They didn't want someone to sympathize with.
If she allowed what they wanted to happen—if she allowed the belief that she was light without dark and Hans was dark without light endure—then she would not have upheld her promise to tell the truth. She would be doing the world a disfavor, keeping it cloaked in a lie instilled in their minds as children through fairytales and stories of good versus evil. She'd heard those same stories as a child and though she'd never admitted it to Gerta—who so faithfully came to her bedside every night to read to her—she had always sympathized with the villains. While the story progressed and the hero struggled against their respective antagonists, Elsa had wondered: What had made them that way? What circumstances in their lives had caused them to make such cruel, corrupted choices?
But not only had she sympathized with the villains, she had identified with them. Surely a person who caused so much pain and destruction with their powers, accidentally or not, would be seen as the villain of their story. No one who posed a threat to the safety of others could ever be the hero.
It had taken her so many years just to understand that she wasn't the bad guy, and at the same time accept that perfection was unattainable. That she was a whole of two parts, one light and one dark.
Those fairytales had lied and all she knew at that moment was that she didn't want to be part of those lies anymore.
"Your Majesty?" said Prince Josef. He inclined his head so as to get a better look at her face.
"I'm sorry," said Elsa, for what she felt was the hundredth time that day. This time, however, she didn't mean it as an apology.
"Do you perhaps need a moment?" asked Prince Josef.
"No."
"Shall we proceed then?"
There was a small, silent pause before Elsa said, "No."
Prince Josef raised his head in confusion. "I beg your pardon?"
"I'm not going to continue with my testimony," said Elsa.
Prince Josef frowned looking up at Prince Jon. He treaded carefully as he spoke again. "I don't think that's an option."
"Well, I'm making it one."
The crowd that had been so deathly quiet mere seconds ago suddenly came to life, a general buzzing filling the room from wall to wall.
"We could continue tomorrow if you'd like," said Prince Jon.
"No, there's no point."
"Your Majesty—" Prince Josef began.
"There's no point," said Elsa firmly, raising her eyes to meet him with a fixing stare. She squeezed her hands into fists, the shivering subsiding, the ice beneath her seat receding. "What sense does it make for me to sit here and reiterate for the thousandth time the events of that day? For what purpose? We all know what happened. It seems to me like all we've been doing all day is going over the how, the where, the when and the who, but no one has stopped for a moment to ask why."
"Queen Elsa, do compose yourself. I understand it's been a highly stressful day for you. If you like we can have a short recess so you can have a drink of water and—" Prince Jon started.
"I don't need a drink of water or a recess," Elsa said curtly. "I will not give my testimony. I will not repeat once more that Prince Hans came into my kingdom, deceived us, left my sister for dead and then attempted to murder me."
Elsa stood up and for the first time found that Hans' expression had changed. His brow was slightly furrowed, intrigued but too proud to show it. He had not been expecting this.
Elsa found strength in this. It felt good for once to be the one holding all the answers.
"I will say this," she began, placing her hand on the barrier beside her, digging her fingers into it for reassurance. "I don't know why it is that Prince Hans acted the way he did—whether it was for greed, or an impulsive act of madness, or whether there were ulterior motives that propelled him to act in the way he did—I suspect we'll never know. This court has danced around that topic all day. We know what happened—move for move, gesture for gesture. So detailed have the testimonies been today that any of us here present could reenact the events of that day with utmost precision. And yet here we are at the end of the day and we still don't really understand. It just doesn't add up. And the answer to that is simple: because we don't know why. Nor will we, it seems, seeing as we have had a parade of witnesses come through this court and not one of them has been able to give us any insight. I won't be any different. I won't be able to tell you what was going through Prince Hans' mind as he raised his sword to strike me. I may never know why, only hours after he chose to save me from the Duke's guards, he tried to finish what they started. I will not be able to help anyone make up their mind about whether he deserves to be put to death or not."
She surveyed the room, which had gone silent once more. She looked at Hans, who gazed at her with disbelieving curiosity.
"But I can do one thing," she continued, her tone gentler now, her fingers relaxing.
"Queen Elsa—" Prince Jon muttered, trying to call her attention discreetly to him, perhaps to fix her with a stare, one last attempt to stop what he knew was coming.
Hans had said so himself—she had the power to create and destroy in the palm of her hands. Perhaps it was time she put it to use.
"After much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that we simply do not know enough. I certainly do not know enough. I understand the gravity of Prince Hans' actions—no one here can understand them better than my sister and I. And while she and I do believe that his transgressions must be dealt with, we do not like to find ourselves in the foul business of taking someone's life. After all, what sort of hypocrites would we be if we showed up here at this court, indignant and outraged at Prince Hans' attempts to end our lives, and then in turn take his own? It is simply not what we do, not what we believe in. The Southern Isles maybe have its own laws to abide by, but we who come from Arendelle believe in second chances, in redemption, in rehabilitation …"
"Queen Elsa!" Prince Jon barked, urgent. She ignored him: his booming voice seemed like the annoying buzzing of a fly now.
"And so, by the power vested in me as the Queen of Arendelle, I, as well as on behalf of my sister Princess Anna and the entire kingdom of Arendelle …" her eyelids flickered as she swallowed through a painfully dry throat, her heartbeat flickering against the palm of her hand "… hereby grant Prince Hans our official pardon."
The gentle buzzing from before evolved in one split second into chaos, the courtroom exploding with gasps, protests, and even a few rounds of applause.
"Queen Elsa!"
"I also hereby make an official appeal to the courts of the Southern Isles, that they may practice leniency with his sentencing and spare him the death penalty."
Elsa and Hans stood staring at each other, both in bewilderment but of different kinds. Prince Hans was subtly stunned, as only he seemed to know how to be. His every emotion was so controlled that even shock seemed diluted in him. As for Elsa—her bewilderment came from the heart-stopping realization of what she had just done.
She and Hans now stood as if separate from the discord that had erupted around them, entrapped by an invisible bubble—a subset of a larger crowd which could never understand the coarse ties that bound the two of them. Both of them were strangers in the best sense of the word and yet each was a complete and striking mirror image of the other.
With her courage finally draining and well aware that no one was listening to her any longer, she added in a brittle voice, "That will be all."
Finally, she tore her gaze from Hans' and began to clamber down from the witness stand.
"Elsa!" she heard her sister's voice call out her name. "Elsa, wait!"
But Elsa didn't want to wait. She wanted to be alone. The pace of her steps increased as she made her way into the antechamber.
Anna was quickly at her side.
"Elsa," Anna cried, as she took her sister's arm and turned her to face her. "You were so great! So brave! Are you all—"
"Queen Elsa!"
Prince Jon had followed her and was now slamming the door behind him.
"Have you lost your mind?" he bellowed.
"Actually, my mind has never been clearer," Elsa replied, with far more composure than she had anticipated.
"You have no authority to do this!"
"To grant a man forgiveness?" asked Elsa.
Prince Jon's lips curled and uncurled as he tried to find a rebuttal, fists balled at his sides. Elsa found it peculiar how now, when he was at his most threatening, she wasn't even remotely scared of him. She watched him with a feeling akin to pity—she had, in a matter of minutes, reduced him to a powerless giant. He had been such a symbol of authority and fear since her arrival—how strange it was to stand before him and not feel small.
"You've made a big mistake, Queen Elsa," said Prince Jon. "You can say goodbye to learning about the origin of your powers! Our deal is off!"
"I never made a deal with you," said Elsa, almost amused. "But in any case, you don't need to worry about me. I've gone this long without knowing. I can go longer still."
Fire seemed to erupt inside Prince Jon as his face flushed a violent red. "I ought to have you arrested! This is treason!"
Elsa perused him with distaste. "Is this what Prince Hans had to grow up with? Threats? Accusations? It's no wonder he's turned out the way he has."
That was when the man turned from no more than a big brute to the deceitful snake he truly was. Jon's voice was as low as she had ever heard it and he hissed in that same way Hans had the first night she met him in the dungeons, causing a chill to pass over her chest.
"You think you've had the last word, Queen Elsa, but I can assure you that have not." His tone was quiet, menacing. "Believe me, this is not the end. You'll soon find that you've made a big mistake."
He turned and stormed out of the room, leaving Elsa cold. As he opened the door she caught sight of Gregor standing just outside, seemingly stunned. But before Elsa could read anymore into his expression, Prince Jon slammed the door shut with such force that her hair and skirt were blown back.
She suddenly remembered Anna standing just behind her when the younger princess called Prince Jon a word which under any other circumstances would have made Elsa reprimand her. This time, not only was she too agitated to care about her use of the slur, she wholeheartedly agreed with it.
"The nerve!" Anna said heatedly. "We are so stopping all trade with the Southern Isles when we get back! We can do that, right, Elsa? Elsa? Are you all right?"
Elsa placed a shaking hand on a nearby table to steady herself. "I'm fine."
Clutching her other hand to her chest, feeling the palpitation against her palm, she hoped against all hope that she had done the right thing.
