All or Nothing

Chapter Twenty Five

Having fallen down a few fandom holes lately on top of my usual hectic schedule, this fic has been a bit sidelined, but come hell or high water it will be finished, hopefully by the end of this year. I'm planning a set of shorts about Disney Princesses in general which will feature Merida/Elsa but will be considerably more lighthearted, if you're interested in that sort of content. If not, the All or Nothing universe could always prompt some one-shots.

Note; this is my obligatory suggestion to check out my novel on Kindle: it's called The Hothouse Princesses, by S.A. Hemstock. If you like my work in fandom, you may like my original work.

…..

After the pain faded, though never really departed, what was left was a cold numbness.

The castle staff had noticed how subdued Elsa was and they worried, but she completed all of her queen's duties promptly and well, so there was no real reason to complain. They attributed her sadness to the departure of a good friend, nothing more. They assumed she would get over it, in time.

Anna was falling over herself to make Elsa feel better, to no avail.

"Look, I knew it was going to end," she explained when Elsa snapped at her to leave her alone. "But I didn't want you to get hurt, you know that."

"I'd rather be hurt than to have lived my entire life without knowing her," Elsa told her, and shut the door in her face.

Life went back to normal so quickly it was almost hurtful in its own way. Merida's room was cleared out, her few left-behind possessions stored away and all traces of her seemed to vanish in a matter of days. It was like the only real impression she had left was her mark upon Elsa's heart.

All the same, the maids and other staff missed her presence. She had livened up their dour queen and brought some excitement in her wake, and things seemed dull without her. Anna was sulky and bored without her close girl-friend, but she had hopes that Merida would be back in time for her wedding to Kristoff.

A month after she left, Elsa sent for Meena, the prostitute who had once been thought of as a decent substitute for Merida. It took weeks to track her down, and when she arrived she could not have looked more different. Her pale red hair was still curled in that artificial way and her gaze was still as lusty and playful as ever, but her clothes were made of the richest material and she wore actual jewels that no prostitute should have been able to afford.

"You look well," Elsa said, pouring her a glass of wine for old time's sake.

"As do you," Meena replied with a cheeky wink. "I've quite risen in station since we last met. My husband is a baronet. We live in the country, it's rather boring but very pretty."

"Husband? Congratulations."

"That's not to say I don't have some fun when I choose to. Claude doesn't know, but I don't think it would shock him. Which is why I'm here, I assume."

"You would assume wrong," Elsa told her. "I just wanted to talk to you."

"You brought me all the way back here just to talk?" Meena said, raising an eyebrow. "I think not. I do know that your little friend became quite a bit more when I left..."

"Where did you here that?" Elsa said, suddenly nervous. They had managed to avoid gossip, so far...

"Oh, I wouldn't worry," Meena demurred. "It's just brothel talk. They make these assumptions about all women who have close woman friends. I knew it was probably true, but I didn't say anything."

"Oh," Elsa sighed, leaning back in her chair.

"So something did happen, then," Meena continued with a grin. "Was it good? She struck me as quite an innocent..."

"That's for me to know," Elsa told her sharply.

"Fine," Meena shrugged. "It matters not to me. I have you to thank for my wonderful husband, you know. Our marriage was arranged after my business with you came to an end, to keep me quiet I should think. Not that I would have said anything. So what do you want from me?"

"I don't know," Elsa said hopelessly, and drunk heavily from her cup. "I thought that maybe if I drank enough wine you would look like her and I wouldn't feel so alone. I don't think that's going to work though."

"No substitute for the real thing," Meena said, but now her face softened and she relaxed. "I do think that's often the way with true love. If it's just lust anything will do, but when it's love..."

"She's gone to get her kingdom back," Elsa said, more into her cup than to Meena. "She said she would come back, but what if she doesn't?"

"Then you love her from afar," Meena offered. "It will feel like you want to die, but you won't. You will carry on. The human being is a strong creature."

To carry on with a broken heart. It sounded like the worst thing in the world, but what choice did she really have?

…..

It was approaching three months since Merida's departure when a familiar cry from the tower she used to occupy caught Elsa's attention, close to midnight.

Lua.

Sure enough, once she thundered her way up the tower, the hawk was sitting on the ledge, keening impatiently at her. A strip of paper was secured to her leg, but she wouldn't let Elsa retrieve it until Elsa had gotten some meat from the kitchen to feed her. Unfurling the strip, the letters briefly told of what had been happening on Merida's journey, but carefully stuck to the paper with a wax seal were three hairs.

The book told the full story as though Elsa was there as it happened.

Merida had caught up with the convoy and joined the Belloza brothers, who were happy to have her. The two of them were terrible hunters and had been looking at living on old stale bread and dried fruit. Along the way they stopped in a small village made up of several good-sized farms, to pick up extra trading goods and refresh their horses.

Merida had been wandering near the outskirts when she came across a sorrel horse that broke its reins and galloped off towards the forest, a small farmer's boy chasing after it. She retrieved the animal for him after tracking it for almost an entire day, and though it pulled and snorted and tried to run off again she used her extensive skill with horses to convince it to obey her.

The farmers who owned the horse invited her to supper as thanks, and it transpired that the horse had been giving them trouble for a long time. It had been a foal born to their draughthorse mare after a war party passed through and a rogue destrier broke its bonds and mated with the mare. The resulting offspring was an animal a little too small to pull a plough and too flighty to haul goods. It had energy and stamina to spare but was easily bored and temperamental. Worse still, it was another mare, and it had a habit of jumping fences and running wild. They lived in fear that it would become pregnant with another difficult horse.

Merida immediately offered to swap the good-natured rouncey she had been given from Arendelle in exchange for the wild mare. She guessed correctly that the mare was an animal that needed excitement and to be worked hard at long distances, things it could never get on a farm. The rouncey was old and deserved a gentle home. The farmers thought their prayers had been answered.

She named the horse Macheen, in honour of Dunbroch's goddess of horses and war, and broke her in carefully over the course of three days before they left the village. Once properly broken, the mare was as steady and obedient as any horse bred for battle. She kept pace with the caravan and hunted with Merida in the evenings as camps were set up. Twice she outran bandits looking to steal from the supply lines and on one occasion kicked a wolf in the jaw. She was as fierce and fearless as Merida herself.

Elsa guessed, but had not seen, that a wisp had lead Merida to this horse. It was too good to be mere chance; Macheen's coat was even close in colour to Merida's hair. When the caravan pulled close to the Rohima outskirts, she found that she was right.

Merida broke away from the caravan for some reason she didn't disclose, and came across a notice about a race across the desert that was an annual event in this region. It was open to anyone who thought their animal could make the journey.

When Merida told the Bellozas, they were horrified. They were very fond of Merida, and warned her that not only was the desert perilous with its scorching heat, poisonous creatures, shifting sands and predators, but the race was routinely battled out between men because no woman was foolhardy enough to throw her lot in with the kind of men it attracted.

"So I'll disguise myself as a boy," Merida shrugged. "They won't even know I'm there."

The Bellozas begging and pleading (and, at least once, crying) wouldn't dissuade her, so they had no choice but to help her enter the race. The elder brother registered her as his teenage nephew, and although the scarred and weather-beaten men also entering scoffed at a fresh-faced youth and a barely-adult horse running the race, they didn't pick up anything different about her.

She started the race in nearly last place, but she had a secret advantage to the other racers. In their bravado the men subjected their animals to the intense sun that always killed a huge number of them. Merida would not risk Macheen succumbing to the heat, so they took shelter wherever they could during the day and only raced at night well into the dawn of the next morning. Merida's night vision was fine-tuned, and Macheen trusted her rider.

They finished the race in third place, just behind two veterans of the race and to the immense shock of the crowds that had gathered to see the end. Once safely with the Bellozas and their guard, she was able to reveal that she was female to the race's officiators, to an incredulous silence from the spectators.

She did not win money or even glory, but something even more valuable; she had caught the eye of someone important.

Two days after the race's end, an envoy called to the camp as they were preparing to leave, looking for Merida. An official from the sultanate of Agrabah had been watching the race and sent word back to his ruler, the sultana, of what had happened. She wanted to meet with Merida in person, and invited her to Agrabah for an audience. That was where the memory ended, and the scenery that the book provided dissolved.

What remained in the letter said that Merida parted ways with the Bellozas to be escorted to Agrabah by the sultana's own personal guard, and that she was nervous about meeting this woman. Elsa wrote a few lines back, telling her that to her knowledge the sultana was a good woman with a kind heart. She added that she missed her, and asked her to stay safe.

It was a lot to take in; in a short space of time, Merida had managed to perhaps gain the favour of another formidable ruler.

You will make a powerful ally and return a hundred times stronger.

Was this where the prophecy had been leading her all this time?

Elsa struggled to remember the little she knew about Agrabah and its sultana.

She must be nearly a hundred by now. No, a little less. She's been ruling for eighty years.

The sultan of Agrabah had died young, Elsa's grandfather had sent condolences when her own father was just a child. They had a number of sons but none of them had taken the throne, Sultana Jasmine had done it herself. There had been succession wars and she had won them all.

There were whispers that dark magic was involved, that Sultana Jasmine had made an alliance with a demon to gain control over her husband's title. There was a rumour that her husband had come from humble beginnings but that his alliance with the demon had bought him the princesses' hand.

Elsa was afraid. What sort of woman was this sultana? Could she be trusted?

But then, she supposed the wisps knew what they were doing. They had lead Merida to Elsa, lead her out of Arendelle, lead her into the race and now lead her into this woman's care. Maybe they would eventually lead her back to Elsa again.