BlackIris: Kristoff was probably watching a movie like The Hunger Games or maybe something like The Help. Both are very good movies.
Guest (Banana): Don't worry! This is a happy story! So I don't really know what you were on about.
Guest Reviews: Yep, missed ya! That sentence about your English made no sense sorry. Its kind of contradictory. Only 7%? Wow! That's better than what it is here! It's 15% here. Most scariest SpongeBob episode? No brainer; Graveyard Shift. Never seen that episode you were talking about. I looked it up and I got Frozen Face Off, was that the episode you were on about? If so, what was so creepy? It didn't sound creepy. Maybe there was a moment in it that you need to watch. Question; Actually no, in previous stories it would be the other way around. I just write what I want to write per chapter and use that. I do try and make a specific length but then after it doesn't matter. Ah New Zealand honey! Best in the world! We have the best honey here, Manuka honey, omg its so good especially on toast.
ziebee: Actually your review helped me add a few things in this chapter. So your question does get answered. Not sure what you meant about the family though. If you mean same from the ones already mentioned then yes.
TPATFan16: Yep, that is her romantic interest, although a lot may not be mentioned about it. Actually Hiccup has a girl and that's Astrid (all the way!), so no Merricup ever in any of my stories. Plus Hiccup will not be featuring in this story anyway. Also I do not like the ship Merricup (my opinion) which is why it won't ever be featured.
keeganmegson: What particular bit where you referring to? Maybe...wait and see! (Spoiler: yes, I hope that it's good with you)
Chapter 25: The Winters' Family
The day after they landed in Arendelle, Elsa, Jack, Anna and Kristoff were about to leave for their family's reunion. They were currently staying Elsa's family home; the Arendelle Mansion which was built when Elsa's ancestor Olaf Arendelle founded the city. It hadn't been as big as it was now, it had been added to over the years. The house had been empty since Elsa's parents moved to Burgess years ago. When Jack had first entered the house, he nearly fainted. Jack, who came from a quite a poor family, Elsa's family fortune amazed him in every way possible. Jack's father had left them only a few years after Pippa had been born. Jack's father had been a drunk, abusive to the whole family (both verbal and non-verbal) and popped pills from time to time. So Jack didn't view his leaving a tragedy rather more than a blessing in disguise. Jack had stepped up to his father which may have been the cause of Jack's father leaving. However that left his mother to be a single mum working two very hard jobs so she could keep her children. Over time, this got easier. Jack grew older and so he could work jobs and then Pippa did the same.
So it didn't come as a shock to Elsa that Jack was amazed at the house that Elsa used to live in. The house itself was massive. It had hundreds of different rooms including a private gym, huge restaurant like kitchens and ginormous bedrooms and there were even secret passages from one room to another. Outside was a massive garden complete with pools, tennis courts and a golfing range. Over the years, the Arendelle family had added to the original house that Olaf Arendelle had built. Due to Elsa's family being the founding family of Arendelle, they were treated like royalty in the beginning. Now they were just one of those very rich and powerful families that lived in the area. However that didn't stop the Arendelle brand being stamped everywhere; the Arendelle Library, Arendelle Medical Centre, Arendelle Supermarket, The University of Arendelle etc.
Elsa called for the others to hurry up otherwise they were going to be late. They all came bustling down the stairs wearing their best clothes. Elsa straightened up Jack a bit and fixed his tie before she gave him the sign off. Jack kept asking why this was such a big deal to which Elsa which snap at him to be quiet and do what he was told. Kristoff looked pretty good. Anna had done a decent job on him and he just shrugged whenever Jack would turn around and give him a look. They left to go to their Uncle Klaus's house which was on the other side of Arendelle. Elsa had often wondered why he didn't move into the Arendelle Mansion but since it wasn't legally his, he couldn't. Agdar had passed the house to Elsa, as she was the eldest, when he died so Uncle Klaus had no claim to it. Although Elsa knew that her Aunt Greta, Uncle Klaus's wife, would kill for that house.
They arrived at their Uncle Klaus's house about a quarter past seven which meant they were only a tad late as the party started at seven. Their cousin Astrid, Uncle Klaus's oldest child, answered the door. She was younger than Elsa but older than Anna by about a year. She grinned at them when they entered. The first words out of her mouth were about how long it had been since they last saw each other. For Elsa, she had seen Astrid when she had first ran away about two and a half years ago but for Anna, she hadn't seen her since Astrid graduated from school which was seven years ago.
"La oss se om vi kan finne papa (Let's see if we can find Dad)," Astrid said speaking in Norwegian.
"På veien (Lead the way)," Elsa replied in Norwegian.
They moved through the crowd of people until they found Elsa's Uncle Klaus speaking to is brother, Elsa's Uncle Bartholomeus (or Uncle Barty as some people liked to call him). Uncle Klaus looked pleased when Elsa, Anna and Astrid approached them.
"Uncle!" Elsa said giving him and her other Uncle a kiss on the cheek.
"Min kjære Elsa, hvor har du vært? (My dear Elsa, how have you been?)," Uncle Klaus said.
"Jeg har blitt godt, takk Onkel (I've been well, thank you Uncle)," Elsa replied.
"Og som har du tatt med deg? (And who have you brought with you?)," Klaus said as his eyes landed on Jack and Kristoff who were pretty much confused with what was going on. Elsa had to laugh a bit. She had completely forgotten that Jack and Kristoff do not speak a word of Norwegian. They must have been so confused by the conversation that Elsa had been having with her Uncle.
"Oh this is my husband Jack and Anna's husband Kristoff," Elsa said pointing at the person she was referring to when she said their name. "They don't speak a word of Norwegian, so maybe we should speak English for their benefit?"
"Ah," Uncle Klaus laughed. He had initially been confused why Elsa had suddenly switched from Norwegian to English and now he had a look of realisation appearing on his face. "I understand." Uncle Klaus could speak English very fluently but with a very strong accent. He wasn't the only one. Basically all of Elsa's family could speak a variety of languages which included English. "Yes, Greta was saying something about these Americans who have married my nieces." Klaus gave a short laugh. "So," he spoke to both Jack and Kristoff, "who are the gentlemen who have stolen my nieces' hearts?"
"I'm Jack and that's Kristoff," Jack said.
"Ah," Klaus said. "Yes, we've heard a lot about the two of you. Kristoff," when Kristoff's name was spoken, he jumped. "You must be very excited, about to become a father and all."
"Oh yes," Kristoff stammered. "Very excited to be finally starting a family."
"Any names yet?" Uncle Bart asked.
"Well a few," Kristoff said. "Nothing definite."
"Now Kristoff," Uncle Bart said. "That's not very English sounding name, isn't it?"
"My grandparents came from Oslo," Kristoff explained. "So it actually isn't."
"Ah so you are Norwegian?" Uncle Klaus looked excited.
"Maybe," Kristoff shrugged.
"That is very exciting," Uncle Bart said.
Klaus bent his head down low and spoke directly to Elsa. "Could I have a word with you in private?"
"Sure," Elsa looked a little confused but followed him into his own study.
Jack watched as Elsa left him to go off with her Uncle to go have a private conversation with him. Anna and her cousin and Uncle were ambushed by more of Anna's relatives which left Jack and Kristoff alone surrounded by a lot people they didn't know who spoke a completely different language. They just stood there, standing like idiots. Jack scanned the room looking for someone they knew but they didn't know anyone. Jack's eyes landed on the food table. He could hear his stomach starting to grumble.
"Do you want to go get some food?" Jack asked gesturing towards the food table.
Kristoff nodded and they headed off towards the buffet table. They had plates in their hands but they were reluctant to go for any food. They didn't recognise any of the foods and the signs that told them what they were weren't in English. A girl came over and started picking at the food. She had long blonde hair that looked quite similar to Elsa's which almost made Jack to a double take as he thought it had been Elsa getting something to eat until he remembered she was with her Uncle. She spotted them and started to speak to them.
"Kan ikke bestemme deg for hva du skal spise?" she asked them.
Jack and Kristoff just stared at her. They didn't quite know what to say to that as they had absolutely no idea what to say. They didn't understand her for one and they wouldn't know what to say to her even if they did.
"Err," Kristoff said.
"What?" Jack asked.
"Oh sorry," the girl switched instantly over to English. "I did think that I didn't recognise you which meant you weren't a relative. So I gather by all this that you guys are the Americans who are married to my cousins Elsa and Anna?"
"Yes," Jack said. "That would be us."
"Awesome," she said. "I'm Helga; you've already my father, Bart." She gestured to man who was now speaking to Anna.
"Ah," Kristoff and Jack said.
"What I said to you earlier was 'can't decide what to eat?'" Helga said eating something that they looked like fish.
"Well in fact we don't know what all this stuff is," Kristoff said. "So deciding wasn't really a problem."
"Ah," Helga said. "Well that's Lutefisk," she pointed at what looked like some fish. "You may not like that." She browsed up the rows of food. "Oh," she said. "That's Svinekoteletter which is just pork chops and potatoes, you may like that or you could try Fårikål which is actually our National dish. It's just a mutton stew."
"Thanks," Jack and Kristoff said helping themselves to the meals that Helga was recommending.
"No problem," she said. "I remember going to foreign places and not having a clue what the dish was."
Jack and Kristoff ate the food which Helga recommended. They both thought that it was quite delicious. Eventually Anna came up to them accompanied by two women. One was quite young and had long raven coloured hair which Jack thought looked exactly like the hair that Astrid had sported. That made him think that could mean that this woman was her mother which, if he was remembering correctly, made that woman Elsa's Aunt Greta. The other woman was an elderly woman who was leaning on Anna for support. This woman could only be their grandmother, Ingrid.
"Hello," Ingrid said. "I see you've met another one of my granddaughters."
She spoke in English which meant that Anna must have told them that they couldn't understand the slightest Norwegian.
"So you must be Kristoff," Ingrid said extending her hand over to him and shaking it. "And you must be Jack. Anna's been telling me all about the two of you." She smiled at the pair of them.
As Jack shook Ingrid's hand, the woman who he thought was Greta clicked her tongue a bit.
"What?" Ingrid said to her.
"Nothing," Greta said.
"Greta," Ingrid said in a warning voice. "Stop being mean to Mr. Frost. He hasn't done anything to warrant your hatred of him."
"'Hasn't done anything to warrant…'," she repeated. "Ingrid you do you know what he did to your granddaughter?"
"Yes," Ingrid said, "and Elsa has forgiven him so I feel like she has the final say in the matter."
Greta looked lost for words. Jack knew that Greta had been particularly flabbergasted by the whole thing that had happened between Jack and Elsa. Astrid, Elsa's sneaky gossip loving cousin, had wormed the news out of Elsa before she returned to Burgess. It hadn't taken the news long to travel far. Everyone on Elsa's side of the family had been outraged at the news and when they had found out that Elsa had ended up married to Jack, they had been very confused at this as they believed that Elsa hated Jack and they themselves hung onto their hatred of him. Elsa's grandmother Ingrid had come to her rescue. She had defended Elsa and Jack with a pretty good defence which most people accepted. Her Aunt Greta, hadn't.
"Aunt Greta," Anna suddenly piped up. "How does this affect you, really?"
"Well, it doesn't-" Greta said but Anna cut her off.
"So there you go," Anna said. "As I suspected. It doesn't affect you at all. Marrying Jack was the best thing that Elsa did. They love each other and have done for yes. Yes, Jack screwed up but he made a mistake. We're all human aren't we? Aren't we all allowed at least one mistake? I mean you're no saint. So why should you judge someone else for a decision that only affects them?"
Jack looked intrigued at what Greta did. She simply stormed off in a bit of a huff and didn't say anything.
"She used to spread rumours while she was at school," Helga explained. "It was really funny when Grandma told us the story."
"What happened?" Kristoff asked.
"The rumours caused several people to be expelled, a few break ups and a firing of a teacher," Anna explained.
"Yeah," Jack said laughing. "She isn't really a saint."
"So what are everyone up to?" Ingrid asked changing the subject.
Elsa followed her Uncle Klaus back up through the house until the came to his private study. To get to the study, they had to go through Klaus's bedroom and through a secret door in the wall of the bedroom. Uncle Klaus's study was a generous size of a room. It had a large mahogany desk which had what looked like a hundred stacks of paper on it. It looked like her Uncle Klaus brought work home with him just like how her father used to. Behind the desk was a large leather armchair which Klaus sat down on. He looked relieved to be off his feet. Elsa stood in front of him and leaned against the desk.
"So Uncle," Elsa said. "What can I do for you?"
"Well," Uncle Klaus entwined his hands together looked as if he aged forty years. Elsa wondered if he was about to tell her some grim news. Elsa prepared herself for the news. Uncle Klaus took a deep breath in. "I have some rather grave news," that came to no surprise to Elsa as she had predicted it. Uncle Klaus waited for Elsa to respond but she didn't say anything so Uncle Klaus just carried on. "I have found out some things that I think may rather shock you."
"With a sister like Anna, nothing really shocks me anymore," Elsa said smiling.
"I fear that this news isn't being told that your sister has once again broken your mother's favourite vase," Uncle Klaus said, "or that she has once again got into trouble at school."
Elsa's heart sank. There was a tone in her Uncle's voice that didn't tell her that what she was about to hear. There was something in his tone that made her think that the news he was about to tell her was very grim indeed.
"What is it Uncle?" she asked. She took a seat in one of the spare chairs in the room. She leaned in close to her Uncle.
"I fear we have some trouble brewing," Uncle Klaus said. "You see, my dear niece, something has changed in the way I used to think about a particular event that changed your family's life forever."
"Are you referring to my parents' death?" Elsa asked.
"Indeed I am," Uncle Klaus said. "Recently, some documents have come into my possession that has altered my thinking. As you may recall, when your parents' ship went down with them on board, everyone put it down to the storms and thus be ruled as an accident. The documents showed that this may not be the case."
"May not be the case?" Elsa repeated sounding a little dumbstruck. "You mean it wasn't accidental?"
"I'm afraid not," Uncle Klaus said.
Elsa's thoughts went wild that left only two alternates in her mind. The first one that it was deliberate, suicidal. But that simply ridiculous. As soon as the thought entered Elsa's brain, she thought it sounded stupid. There was no way that either one of her parents would have willingly taken their own life. They had so much to live for and both were extremely happy with their lives. It wouldn't have been deliberate on their part. Still, someone else on the boat could have been leaning towards that but even so, the sinking of their employer's vessel was highly unlikely their choice in how to die. They would have simply thrown themselves off it or maybe taken pills, shot themselves or hung themselves. Elsa out ruled a suicidal motive as quickly as it came into her head. However that left only one alternative left and that alternative chilled her to her bones. Elsa swallowed hard.
"You think murder?" Elsa said in a voice that was barely audible. After Elsa had eliminated both suicide and accident as possible causes for her parents' death, it only left one and that was murder. Elsa had never considered it before as it seemed so unlikely. The story she had been told was that her parents' boat (The Arendelle's Gambit) had hit rough seas and radioed for aid. However it was too late as the seas claimed not only their lives but everyone's lives on board. This story was supported by the investigation that had been carried out by the Norwegian police and the fact that storms had been reported in the area by ships warning other ships to be weary in the area. The weather report, which had been generated during the investigation, had also shown storms in the area. Based on all this, Elsa and her family had always believed that Agdar and Idun Winters had died at sea when their ship hit a particularly nasty patch of seas which caused their ship to sink.
Now her Uncle was telling her that this may not be the case. Elsa just stared at her Uncle. This seemed unreal. Surely he was pulling her leg on this one. He just had to be. How could her parents' death be an accident unless…A nasty thought had just entered her brain and that was one that sent shivers down her spine.
"Judging by your expression," Uncle Klaus said. "You have just came to the same conclusion that I have in my head."
"You believe that the boat was sabotaged?" Elsa asked.
"Indeed I do," Uncle Klaus said. "You see Elsa, I had recently asked the local police if they wouldn't mind reopening the case."
"I bet they didn't object much," Elsa muttered. Her Uncle could be a very powerful man when he wanted to be and didn't like the answer no to be given to him. Elsa thought that her Uncle would have flashed maybe his position, his family or maybe a connection to get the police to open a case that had been closed as an accident.
"They have located the Arendelle's Gambit and with permission from our family, they rose the boat from the depth of the waters that it used to be."
"Surely that wasn't necessary," Elsa said. She didn't quite like the idea that her parents' rest was interrupted by police divers.
"Well to test my theory it was," Uncle Klaus heaved a deep sigh. It looked as if he wasn't too thrilled about raising the boat from the depths as much as Elsa did. "There had been some initial backlash from the family but once they found out why I was doing it, they ended up agreeing with me."
"So was it sabotaged?" Elsa asked.
"The police did conclude it was," Uncle Klaus said.
Elsa felt a blow to her. Her parents' death had been no accident. Someone deliberately sabotaged the boat to sink it in order to make it appear as if it was an accident. Elsa felt rage coming through her.
"How did you figure this out?" Elsa asked. "You believed it was an accident just like the rest of us."
"Well that was because the deaths were concluded as an accident," Uncle Klaus explained. "But in fact I wasn't the one to figure this all out. I had help on this matter."
"Who helped you?"
"A young woman by the name of Sonja Alf had come across the files when she was asked to retrieve them. She had only recently looked through them and put two and two together. As the documents had been highly classified on our computer systems, she knew that they were going to contain something that was probably highly incriminating. She brought them to me and told me her theories. At first I wasn't too keen on them but then they grew on me. I went to the police and they proceeded with their investigation. Soon Sonja was proven correct. Your parents did not die as result as a force of nature but instead, by the hand of human."
"But who would do this? And why?"
"A man recently fired from Arendelle Industries had devolved a deep hatred of your father. He was involved in some highly controversial experiments on both humans and other animals. When this came to light, he was fired instantly and all the funding he received was suddenly cut off. My guess is that he murdered your father to cover this all up but unfortunately it was all out there and then he contacted Sonja Alf to help him retrieve the documents that may incriminate him of the crime of murder."
"Who is this guy?"
"Doctor Pitch Black."
A/N: I hope that everyone enjoyed this update. Sorry if the Norwegian is incorrect, I used a translator online. I hope that it's all right. Anyway, please review =)