Tried to keep this part of the story a little cannon. Sorry it's been a little while! :D Hope you guys like this chapter!
Disclaimer: Frozen and Disney are not mine.
All Hans hears is a faint scream being carried by the howling winds. One that is certainly reminiscent of Elsa. He turns; ready to dash to her rescue – as any Prince is trained to - but his eyes fill with shock as he finds the ground shaking beneath him. An icy hand tears its way through the wall where he had moments before sent Kristoff; boards crash and shatter with flaking shards of ice scratching the Prince with splinters of magic snow and wood all in a surprise attack.
His heart beats quickly as his fire escalates, unbeknownst to him. The Duke seizes the opportunity, signaling his henchman to attack. The bearded man pounces on the flustered Prince, unsheathing his sword in mid-blow.
Hans's eyes flash quickly before him as he summons his inner self to a controlled level. He pushes the man's chest, bearing strength against strength. The two grunt in a struggle as the henchman lays his weight further into the young boy.
The Prince can feel his power failing him, but he holds on fast, keeping his wavering grip on the henchman's coat. His eyes shield themselves from the final blow as he tries to duck his head further into his chest. And yet something deep within him, honed from years of heretical rejection, refuses to believe he will be beat here. A fire deep within himself begins to burn and flare the boy's spirits.
"Get," his voice strains as he heats up his hands, setting the man's coat ablaze, "off me!"
The henchman jumps back, hastily patting out the flaming attire. The flames continue to engulf the long hallway as the Prince's resolve blares its message. He would not die. He would not lose. He would save Arendelle. His family would have to accept him then.
A grin cracks its way to Hans's freckled skin as it illuminates amidst the burning fire. His hands flex as he prepares himself for battle, he could not lose. Not now.
The chaos ensuing outside is nothing of a lesser pace than that inside. Anna nudges her head further into Kristoff's breast as the pair falls closer onto castle scaffolding. The first impact jolts the nerves of the large blond, from the toes all the way up into the elbows. He positions Anna, carefully into his body to lessen her impending fall, she was as easy to move as a bag of ice.
The snowman laughs wildly in free-fall until his body separates into three distinct pieces after colliding into one of the castle's many obstacles, emitting a change of emotion from the ball of snow as he tries to recollect his body.
Kristoff and Anna continue to slip down the roof of the castle, bracing themselves for another long tumble. The large ice carrier's feet press deeply into a heavy stance as he tries to stomp into the snowy tops of the Queen's home. The ice beneath his feet prepare him for slipping as they begin to slow but continue towards the impending edge of the castle.
Anna coughs without even looking out into the cold, white world swirling around her. She had only one glimpse of her resting place of warmth before the ice giant destroyed what little time she could have hoped to have for survival. It was far too cold out here for her.
Another icy tear freezes itself to her cheek as her soft chin rests on Kristoff's itchy jacket. All she can do is listen for her last few breaths. Listen, and hear the scary beating of the snow monster, the screams of the townspeople... the burning of the castle. Her once fragile world was crashing down around her.
"Just a little longer, Anna!" Kristoff shouts along the wind, as he attempts to grab onto a chimney spout. He pushes his legs out in front of him, to brace himself from the sliding ice. They hit the brick and a line of pain pierces through him, but he shakes it off. He looks worriedly around the white tundra for the little ball of snow, "Olaf!"
"I'm okay!" Is all that can be heard from the now invisible snowman.
Kristoff breathes deeply with relief as he positions his back on the chimney and takes Anna into all of his warmth. Her small body fits like a small puzzle piece into his large body, curling into him and holding on steadily for warmth and survival.
All he can do now is wait with her. His eyebrows crease in pain, as his mouth frowns in disbelief. He had finally met this woman, one full of light and life... and now he couldn't save her. He takes his woolen gloved hand and wipes the wetness off of the Princess's face, pulling her closer into his body.
Slowly he removes his hat, cringing as the icy wind takes easy swipes at his ears, biting them with coldness. He places it on the girl's white hair and tucks it heavily over her ears protecting them from the merciless winter. The blond takes off his coat next, teeth chattering as the ice relinquishes no mercy on his body. His shaky hands wrap the heavy coat around the fragile body as he pulls her impossibly close into his body. The way they sit connects their bodies as one, as both freeze amongst the winds.
Kristoff's head can scarcely turn from Anna to brace for the next blow from the ice giant. It wasn't intended for the pair – they were mere ants on top of the castle's large hanging roof, the icy creature swings out of fear, out of strength, into any object sitting in its way. The lower pillars of the castle crack and fall into the courtyard, as the duo begin to slip into the main fray beneath them. Kristoff thinks fast and practically rides the falling rubble into safety as the pair bounces from castle tree to bush to ground.
The militants cry out as they retreat from the deteriorating castle crashing in front of them. Elsa's knees grow week as she angrily covers her ears. She falls onto the ground beneath her, giving up, letting go. You did all of this. Anna is dead because of you. Her eyes grow heavy with sadness as the strong Queen gives up. She gives in as her face distorts into tears at not being able to save her falling kingdom.
Elsa's anger and sadness fills the air around her, escalating the snow to new heights unseen by the fearful country. Several militants fall to their feet, no longer able to stand amidst the wind. The Queen was reaching new emotional levels that she couldn't control. She shakes her head wildly as the sun seems to disappear and the world seems to go black.
Only cold ice can be felt on the skin of those trying to withstand the storm. The ice creature screams, howling loudly into the wind, scaring those in town, waking the smallest child from a nap, startling what animals remained tied up in stables. The creature gathered this new power, this lack of sun. It thrived on the power and stood tall amid the tiny people at its feet.
The only thing it had to destroy, laid deep within the Queen. Elsa had destroyed all the happiness that had ever entered her life through her fear of her own destruction. She had eliminated any memories of her and Anna. Because Anna was as good as dead to her. She killed any hope of romance with this new Prince, because he hadn't returned. He had left her, like anyone would have. She shakily wrestled her hands as she vocally began to wish death upon herself. To end all of this pain and madness.
Anna screams softly, as she squints up to the large ice creature. Soft lanterns swayed violently in the courtyard, illuminating the terrifying giant. Ice juts up from the ground and pokes the very existence of the duo laying in its reach. Kristoff tries to cover Anna's mouth, but she moves away.
"I-I," Anna's body drops closer to the ground, "E-Elsa, needs-s me..."
"A-Anna," Kristoff's teeth could break off with the strength of their chatter, "d-don't!"
The Princess's remaining strength slowly gathers as she pulls her body to a stand. The ice creature heaves in a power hungry lurch, ready to take out the last thing in its way... the last bit of doubt in its existence. Elsa.
Anna moves slowly and can only watch the heavy snow filled feet smash into the ground, moving closer to her frozen sister. Elsa just sits there, attached to the ground, ready to give up. Anna's ribs ache with pain as she watches the tips of her fingers freeze to ice, what would she give to have a voice loud enough to gather her sister's attention right now.
Her eyes burn as she pushes her tightening muscles through the heavy winds to her sister. So many things were frozen in Arendelle... if only Anna could unfreeze her sister with what little time she had left all of this could stop. You only get one sister, Anna, don't let her go, the words of her father echoed loudly in her head. She pulls Kristoff's jacket closer to her chest.
The princess's heart pangs as she feels it being tapped full with ice. The snow creature screeches with delight as he picks up his arm to swipe at Elsa. Anna's feet pick up faster with her last few heavy breaths trying to beat this final blow. Five more left. Four more left. Three more left.
Everything seems to happen unbearably slow and quick at the same time.
"Elsa! L-Look ou-!" Anna's body goes cold and freezes as she steps over her sister's. Her body looks ready to wrap around the Queen's, arms and all. All Elsa can do is stare up into those eyes. Those frozen eyes of her sister, of her now gone sister.
The Queen shakes her head in disbelief. Her nose starts to sting with sadness as tears fill the brink of her eye. Her chest grows wide with anger, and snow fills the very outline of her own hands. Some grief is too great to even be real.
The ice creature's hand lays only inches away from her sister's lifeless body, but Elsa wastes no time. Her body shakes with power, some power she had never had before.
"Don't you dare touch her!" She yells with more loudness than she had ever mustered within herself ever before. Snow blasts from her hands and pierces through the very ice of the creature that had been given life by her... cutting every fear she had of her power down into a puffy light powder.
The snow creature recoils with pain as it accesses the damage done to its body, ice slides off of its shoulders and shatters into pieces as they hit the ground. Elsa stands strongly, no longer weighed by those emotions of heavy burden. Her timing doesn't stop as a barrage of harmonic attacks slice the ice that stood as the last obstacle before her people, as the obstacle that had killed her sister.
She would conquer her fear and destroy it to a puddle if it were the last thing she did.
Her anger mounts but at least its in time to her sorrow as she blasts the creature harder than she had the past few times. Ice slides in alarming numbers, threatening to hit the fallen soldiers. The Queen creates ice shields over their heads, as the ice melts to water, and pats down into pools in front of them. The men look in shock at one another as the Queen's range grows.
Elsa's eyes flash to Anna for one slight moment and threaten to break everything she had built right now in her avenging moment. Her sister's detached eyes slice through Elsa's heart as she takes one last blow at the staggering creature, its body slowly melting into streams around the court.
Her attention is gathered for a brief moment to a fire deep within the castle but she focuses first on the shattering of the ice giant forgetting the smoke entirely. The ice had no power over her anymore. The people Elsa loved were gone... but nonetheless they had taught her enough, they had taught her she had the power to control herself.
"Anna..." her breath is faint as she slowly gathers the swirling snow at her finger tips. The snow falls lightly, and soon not at all as it gathers through the Queen's nose and back into her palms. She had control.
Her body turns quickly to her sister, her dress bellowing slowly in the calming wind. She reaches for Anna's cold neck and feels the ice prison she had captured her sister in. Her head aches as she shakes it in despair, she crevices her head into Anna's wrapping arms as her tears fill her eyes. There was so much she could do, and Anna would have been so proud of her to see her control her powers like this.
"Anna," the Queen's voice cracks, "I'm so sorry..."
No snow flurries around the emotional Queen, she had the strength to prevent it now... to feel it and conceal it. She runs her hands down the icy back of her sister, as if trying to convince her brain its real and not some figment of her imagination. Anna was gone.
It must really have been a miracle, something only ever heard of in fairytales. The Princess, in feeling the Queen... in watching her sister protect her and fight for their land as she had... had lifted the curse on her frozen heart. It was an act of true love, not one tainted with wavering feelings, or magic... but a love unbound-less, a love between sisters. A love that would never break.
At first it sounded only like the splash of Elsa's tears landing on that of Anna's frozen body, but soon it came to be known it was the Princess's body melting back into normalcy. Slowly her skin gained its complexion once more, her hair its fiery pattern, and her clothes their vibrant colors. Elsa continued to hold her thawing sister close, unaware her love was the stronger than any could possibly be.
"E-Elsa!" Anna's voice was jubilant once more, if not a little fragile still, after the adventure of the past few days, "I'm, I'm alive!"
The Queen's eyes light up, and her heart panics in a brief moment, "Anna!" Her smile widens and its the first large toothy smile the Princess had ever seen emitted from her older sister.
"True love conquers..."
Elsa giggles slightly in a wave of feelings, "Big sister's love conquers."
It was Anna's turn to pull her sister in closer. For so many years she had been told to wait outside the door Elsa had locked her out of. And now she was allowed in, and she would never let that door close again. Their hug could last for minutes even years, but it could never last too long in the wake of a goofy ball of snow.
"What happened to Marshmallow's cousin?" The two elated sisters giggle as the snowman waddles over in confusion, knocking puffs of slush out of his head. His body had been regathered in the storm, but his arms were misplaced and he was still a little dazed. He stops dead in his tracks his mouth dropping lowly, "Anna! Your hair, it's normal again!"
Anna feels her soft hair through her hands and turns to face the snowman, "I decided to go natural, you know?"
Olaf nods in the way the snowman typically does and then takes a swing of random words, "Let's go kiss Kristoff and save you!"
Anna blushes wildly as the snowball announces her secret crush to the world. Elsa gives Anna a joking look, and the Princess gets ready to explain, "Well, Olaf I'm already saved, and he's, um, he's just... I, mean I met him..."
"Hey, can I have my hat back?" The tall blond stands mere feet away from the babbling Princess causing her to stop in her tracks, blood rushes to her face again as she realizes shes decorated head to toe in his clothing, "How are you, Queen Elsa?"
Anna drops her finger slowly from her explanation stance, "Wait... you two know each other?"
"Yea," Kristoff cocks his head, "We went through all this trouble to come and save you," he presses her nose like it were a button and the Princess pushes it away with her tongue out at the mocking man. He was no prince.
"I didn't ask for saving," the red head turns away from the crowd and folds her arm, the adventure of the day was over. She was alive. Elsa was slowly taking back the winter... everything in her mind was solved.
Kristoff rolls his eyes, he fakes a cough, "Don't mind me, I'll just freeze to death..." He playfully mocks her as she punches him lightly in the shoulder. Elsa just looks on, watching the two in amazement. It was a match made in... some place at least. Kristoff nods to the Queen, "So where is Prince Fireballs?"
The Queen's eyes want to roll at the silly pet name, but soon Elsa's eyes start searching around in frantic panic, Hans hadn't returned. All that remained in the courtyard was dripping snow, recovering men, the three of them and a snowman playing with its nose. There was no Prince in sight. She stops briefly for a moment, something tickling the inside of her nostril, how odd; was something burning?
Her eyes scan the castle and slowly capture a glimpse of a collecting smoke smattering the air in the upper wing. She shakes her head, "Hans..."
Before any of the others can even put two and two together the Queen dashes off into the castle without a moment's hesitation. She hears them calling her name, but doesn't even stop. How naïve was she to assume he'd be okay on his own? After all he had done for her! Her feet quickly tap up the winding staircase.
The castle was wet with melting ice, and quickly increasing in temperature as she regained her control. But that couldn't mean good things for a man who thrived in a hotter climate. Her heart races as she ducks down the hallway, her feet slipping now and again on the puddles forming on the waxed wood of the castle floor.
"Hans!" She yells, the smoke around her gets thicker, and the heat greeting her gets hotter, all she can do is mumble to herself, "Please be okay..."
She slams quickly onto her own brakes as she enters the long bed chamber hallway, flames engulf the entirety of this sector of the castle. The fire is spread on the mantels, the windows, the doors. Elsa coughs, as wind breaks through an opening where a guest room used to be, now only splinters remain. Her eyes graze over a man lying in a corner, unconscious from some scuffle earlier. It seems as if the bottom of his uniform is burnt, she recognizes him from that night in the ice castle.
Through the thick haze she can make out the suited man she seeks. She tries to continue further towards him, but something about fire and ice doesn't mix well with her. Her lungs fill with the heavy burning smoke as she is reduced to lower ground where the heat isn't nearly as terrible.
"You're a freak sorcerer! I will tell your kingdom, I will tell all the kingdoms!" The Duke spits his threats hastily at the young Prince who in turn starts to worry more and light his way higher in flame.
"How dare you speak to me like that!" Hans's fire rages higher, to an uncontrollable level. His emotions run high. What would his family say... what would his brothers do, if they heard of him showing his curse off to the world?
"Your type deserves to be killed... eradicated from the world. What little good it does to the people! No one wants you and your destruction!" The Dukes eyes light with fear as the fire reaches closer and closer to the nips of his clothes.
Hans has heard those words before, those words that had scarred him deep beneath the surface. That he was destructive, useless... that no one wanted him. The Prince's heart aches as his mind twists with childhood trauma spitting out an unstable man right before the Duke.
Hans shakes slightly as his mind plays tricks on him, memories of being locked outside of the castle for coming home too late. Memories of not even getting a scrap to eat at the table because he might burn the house down. Being rejected from Anna because he wasn't her true love... losing the Queen because he lied to her about his powers.
The Prince pulls his deadly hands up to his bright hair and pulls at the strands as he tries to come up with a plan. His feet move quicker, the only way to end these memories, these painful pictures of the past was to delete the man spewing the words that recalled them from the Prince's archives.
He pulls the fancy jacket of the Duke closely into his grip. He would burn the memories. Ignore them all and live on his own, if only someone loved you, Hans.
"Hans! Don't be the monster!" Elsa's voice strains over the crackling fire. She can feel the unstable boards beneath her as she senses the Prince's wavering stability, "You can control your powers – it's not a curse. Follow your heart, Hans!"
The Queen moves against her mind's control, but she had frozen the Prince in midstep, he was waiting for her to continue. This past day had been explosive for her. How much had she conquered, and how much rebuilding laid ahead of her? She wavers slightly as she walks around the flames, placing her fear deep within a small place inside her, her hands move carefully with deep precision... but they touch the Prince's waist slowly, and they retain that speed as they wrap around him.
"Please, Hans," The Queen's voice wants to crack, "Please, stop. Think about your heart, you don't want to do this..."
The Prince shakes his head as he looks dead into the pupil of the Duke, scrunching his nose as he tries to place his feelings and his grip, "Elsa... how do you expect me to follow my heart... when it's been shattered into so many pieces?"
Elsa pulls away a brief moment, her eyes flashing in the burning fire. Her voice remains monotone and gentle as she holds the Prince tightly as if they were both riding Sitron as peacefully as they had in the past, "Pick one piece up, and rebuild."
Comments and reviews are greatly appreciated! Before I get into your comments I found this funny lyric on Tumblr to the "I've Got A Dream" song from Tangled, but Hans's version!
"I've got a dream.
I've got a dream.
And it's ruling Arendelle as reigning king.
And through all this sibling drama
I'm so glad I married Anna
Now all that's left to do is kill the queen."
Hahah, I thought it was funny... though Hans is nice in MY story. ;) It got me thinking though, should Rapunzel and Flynn make an appearance in my story like they did in the movie? Let me know!
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Myths And Madness - Yaaay! So happy I surprised you! That's a huge compliment to a writer you know? I'm glad you like the Krisanna, I try to put a little in there to keep it cannon... this chapter had a bit, but next chapter will be A LOT of Helsa, it's finally coming! Oh, and I can't believe you like my Olaf lines... they are so hard for me to write, I literally sit here for 10 minutes trying to think of something Olaf would say in that situation, but I'm so happy you think that pays off! :D Thanks for reading and reviewing so often!
LillyStoppable - Yaaaay! You're back! Hahah, I was looking for your reviews a while back. ;) Glad you're back, they're always very insightful and happy! There will be more to the powers too, obviously in these chapters the main goal is to "get the summer back" so all explanations are kind of short but when Hans and Elsa are alone both of them will need to talk a little more to understand the other. ;D HOW DID YOU GUESS THAT? But yes, you were right, the love was enchanted by the trolls - and there will be more of them, don't worry... they'll get what they have coming to them, lol. So happy you think my story is so special - your reviews are so special to me! I feel bad when I don't update for a while because I know you guys want to know what'll happen next! :D
JFK - How do I even answer this? Um, yes... 35th president, please, hit me up! Thanks for reviewing Megan... really appreciate it *sarcasm* ;)
Xavier College - *see above and double the sarcasm, Lauren* ;)
Hi - It was no problem! I want everyone to read my story and be happy (and hopefully review, lol) ;) So it was no trouble to do, and it was just as easy to take it out. Of course they will have to kiss! But I can't spoil how! I don't even know how yet, but the story has a long way to go, of romance... and picking up Hans and Elsa's "broken pieces"... so Hans will have to deal with his brothers and so on, and Elsa will have to regain trust with the kingdom. Thank you for reviewing, I really appreciate your feedback!