Another nightmare?
"AAH! AH! AAAaaaaaAAAAAAaaah!" Hans had not been resting well lately. He was currently writhing in the sheets as if on fire. Elsa bolted awake in a panic.
Oh, this again.
"Hans!" She called, "Hans, it's me, Elsa! Wake up! It's only a dream!"
He didn't hear her, he kept screaming in fear, or agony, or something else. She sighed, taking a breath. Climbing on top of him, the young queen trapped his head. Using extremely careful control, she kissed him, sending her coolness into him, chilling the young man into a state of slight shock. He stopped wiggling for a moment as his unconscious mind was trying to process what had just happened.
Elsa waited a moment as her husband ceased squirming. Then she spoke again.
"Hans... please... come back to me... everything's okay..."
She waited nervously as his eyelids fluttered. For some reason she kept this irrational fear that one day he wouldn't awaken, and she would be stuck with a madman for a husband that could not escape the horrifying dreamscape he had become trapped in.
Then his eyes opened. She breathed a sigh of relief. Underneath her, his muscles unclenched, and the unnatural warmth of his struggles ebbed away.
Mist frosted on his mouth.
"Elsa?"
...she smacked his arm.
"Ow, what?!"
"You know what!" She said a bit too emotionally, hitting him again.
"Oh... yeah," He said sheepishly. His skin was red for exertion, sweat covered him, drenching parts of his shirt and leggings.
Elsa patted his arm, trying her best to reassure him, while reassuring herself that he was okay. They took a second of silence as his breathing returned to normal. No servants came running- far too experienced to be so easily worried.
"It happened again," She whispered. The worry in her voice was easily apparent. Hans shut his mouth in a grim frown.
"I see," he said. The king held his queen's gaze for a moment, then rolled onto his side, facing away from her, "Goodnight, my queen."
Elsa frowned. He said my queen. How dare he?! She was his love, his everlasting, his own pure white queen!
Okay, yeah, their marriage was based more on mutually beneficial circumstances, but the fact that he had stopped adoring her, and craving her attention even for a moment was a sign of serious problems.
"My king," She asked, "What troubles you?"
"Nothing but a lack of sleep, my dear," He answered. He was lying, she could just tell.
"Hmph!" She harrumped, "I see. And that is why he have awoken screaming these last few weeks."
Hans sat silently. Fine. He wanted to play it that way? Let him. Elsa smirked, rolling on her side, away from her husband. Seconds later, he bolted upright, gasping in shock.
"ELSA!"
Oh... he was using her name! How informal.
"Hmmm...?" She questioned as innocently as possible. Hans jumped up in the bed, trying to warm himself from the mysterious appearing ice. His wife waited patiently for him to be warm enough to have a civil conversation.
A low growl, one that used to haunt her nightmares, issued from his mouth behind her. Before marrying him, that sound had been the knell of death. Now it was just a marker, signaling that he was getting frustrated. Frustration led to outpouring.
Elsa let out a smirk. Let him come at her.
"If it was your business," He sneered, "I would inform you of it!"
Her face let a small frown, but apart from that, she lay quietly in the bed. His frustration grew. Elsa smirked again. Let him get upset. It was only a matter of time until he sought the comfort of his beloved, unattainable ice queen.
"Do you hear me, Elsa?" he demanded.
"Hm-hmm!" She exclaimed. He got back in the bed. Within seconds he hopped back out.
"REALLY?!"
She pretended to snooze. He got back in, muttering threats under his breath. She broke her own act by laughing. Let him threaten her. She had nothing to fear from her mate.
It took only seconds for his paranoia to take over. Hans lay on his back, muttering and squirming, afraid that something might happen to him. Something ice-wise that was completely not the fault of the lovely young woman beside him.
"FINE!" He yelled getting up. The king started pacing, "I just don't want you to worry, but... I've been having nightmares."
The queen rolled on her back, eyes swinging like pendulums as he walked back and forth. The nightmares part she had figured out. What the magical girl did not understand was why.
"Hans, please," She begged, "It's me... let me in."
He paused, turning to his wife. He felt the desire to pour out his heart to her, seeking comfort. But in this one area alone, he could never do that.
"I... shouldn't."
Hurt flashed through her eyes, "You don't trust me?"
"You don't trust me," The king answered, "Just go back to sleep."
He returned to the bed, trying to find some rest.
They lay, back to back, facing away from each other for several moments. Elsa tried to ignore the stinging feeling in her chest. Hans always gave her whatever she desired. To deny her his honesty was starting to scare her. Her husband was doing worse, suffering by himself when his wife was within reaching distance.
Finally, anger took her over, and she said one of the lowest things a woman can say to a man, "You don't love me."
It hung in the air for a moment before he violently rolled over.
"Are you kidding me?!" He screamed, "I love you, I've always loved you. I loved you before I met you. I loved you when I loved no one- nothing, you hear me, nothing! I have always loved you! And I will love you when no one- yourself included, by the way, will love you!"
His outpouring of emotion led to his desire to seek her comfort, just as she had predicted. But this time, when he put his hand on her shoulder to roll her over, Hans saw her fighting not to cry.
His will broke.
The young king cuddled up to her, "I just... don't want you to get hurt."
"Are your nightmares..." She sniffed, "about me?"
"No..." He said reassuringly, "Well... not exactly..."
"Then what, exactly?" Elsa shook off his attempts to hold her, but, as always, Hans kept at it.
"It's about... my past."
She lay still. Ah, yes, his dark past. The one filled with duplicity, violence, bloodshed and gore. No wonder he didn't want her to know about it.
"Hans," She whispered, "We're married."
"I know," He answered just as quietly, kissing her shoulder.
"Tell me, please," Her eyes darting back in forth, searching the dark part of the room opposite the direction of his face, as if his past was to emerge from the deep shadows.
"Are you sure?"
His hand gripped her shoulder, in response, she allowed him to hold her more closely. That was about as much of an answer as he was going to get.
He wrapped his arms around her, and was pleasantly surprised when she started kissing his hand ever couple of seconds.
"Please," Pause, kiss, "Please...?"
"It's about," He received another kiss, "Your parents."
The weight lifted from his shoulders, but he could feel tension across her entire body.
"Oh?" Elsa managed to get out.
"About the night they died, when... I killed them," Her hands clutched into his, digging in anguish.
"...I see..."
Hans sighed, "That's all. I mean, I keep trying to change things in my dream. I keep trying not to be their murderer, but no matter what I do, the same things keep happening."
Elsa lay there, letting the thousands of painful memories come flooding back; their death, her isolation, their killer's admiration for her... marrying that murderer.
He rolled away from her, burning with guilt. Now Elsa got up.
"I loved my parents, Hans... they were my only friends during my childhood," She glared, "Look at me."
He turned around to watch her talk, smooth hand-motions floating through the air to illustrate her point.
"But you've made a terrible mistake here. You put their deaths over the untold countless you have betrayed, hunted, and murdered," She took a breath remembering the day on the fjord, and the time he had almost shot her, "You think that Captain Blacksail's men had no loved ones? Or the men on my parent's ship? NO! You didn't just wrong me, you wronged an entire nation."
She puffed for breath, anger swallowing her up. The queen chose her next words very carefully.
"I am sorry the thought of your actions forces you to suffer, but... that's justice. I know that you will forever be under the weight of my parent's death, and your brother's."
"I'm sorry," He said quietly, sitting up. She let him have a small smile.
"I know. And this you must never forget. I married you. I knew your past and I still did it," She walked up to him, and ran her fingers through his hair, "...put your arms around me."
He obeyed, letting them rest on the slope of her hips.
"This... this is why I married you. Because you make us safe. I know that even if Chernabog himself walked through that door, you would fight and die to protect me, and Sophia, and Arrendelle. I'm... furious about what you did, and whenever I think about it... it upsets me so much, I just want to claw your eyes out. But times like these, when we're in our bedroom... I let the past be in the past; I have my sister, a new friend, my servants... I have a home, a kingdom, and a king. I am extremely blessed. So, I can live with that. Can you?"
Hans held Elsa close, "I can't escape the nightmares."
"Then dream," She said, ruffling his hair, "Dream of me."
He smiled, laying back down, expecting another nightmare. Perhaps he had nightmares when he slept, but when he awoke, he lived the dream.
