Hello. I have a nice shiny new chapter here for you. Enjoy.
-Whovian123
Disclaimer: I do not own Frozen.
The breath falls out of my chest. I panic. My hands fall away from in front of me. I pull them back in my chest, and then wrap them around my torso; cradling my stomach. I hold my child, son or daughter, secured that I am alive and that my child will have their chance.
I wrestle with the urge to cry. All of me hurts; every cut and every burn. My mind is drained, so horribly out of control in a spiral of confusion. I didn't want to kill. I did not mean to kill him.
I hate myself for killing Hans, and I hate myself for feeling relieved.
I cry. I cry harder than I have in years. It does not help; it does not sort out my feelings, or make anything hurt less. I feel snow land on my shoulders and back, I feel it fall to my burns and coat my cuts. It buries me, gives me the protection from the world that I need. My storm is preserving me from the realities of murder.
There are footsteps all around me. I think I hear voices, but they are distant and beyond recognition. They try to reach me, they grasp at me. I swat at them, I fend them off as I would bugs. When they fail to leave I curl in to myself, hugging my knees and forcing my face away from the world. I wait for the ground to swallow me whole, or at the very least, for the voices and footsteps to go away.
They do not go away. I start shouting at them, yelling and pleading with them to leave me alone. They ignore me. They keep touching me, stroking my back and my hair, trying to touch my face and tell me I am safe, all of the hands are shaking. One of them grazes my shoulder and my mind is overwhelmed with pain. Something deep in my muscle and mixed in with my bone feels like it is ripping and burning all at once.
My eyes are shut and I squeeze them tighter still when the pain begins again. It as if my body forgot how to hurt, and them remembered all at once and is now determined to make up for the pain I missed. Everything I feel feels fuzzy, the barrier of my skin is so battered, bruised, burned, and sliced that it starts to feel as if it is breaking apart. It feels as if I am floating away.
Every muscle in my body feels like it is on fire and then everything falls away, like I am falling asleep. Maybe I am falling asleep, I feel so tired. Everything is swimming; my senses are dancing around turning on and off. I try to hold on to something, in my panic I feel fingers wrap around one of my flailing hands. I hold tight to the fingers, needing to feel something that is not blazing pain.
The world slips away.
Then I feel a rocking motion. With the rocking motion comes a soothing voice and a warm feeling in my chest. The panic flares up, but then falls away again.
"Elsa, everything is going to be ok." Someone tells me. "Kristoff is finding a doctor, he'll be back soon. We are going to take care of you; I promise I will take care of you." The voice reveals itself to be male as I focus on the words that break through the haze of my mind.
Then another voice starts talking, a female one that sounds a lot like Anna. "It's over, Elsa, you killed him. It's all over. You don't have to worry anymore, he can't hurt you. He's gone." I try to open my eyes; I want to look at the world, to look at Anna's face, anyone's face. I want to see something.
Everything is too bright and the light drills in to my head and leaves me with a sharp pain and a dull ache. I give up on my eyes. They are not important. There are much more important things that I need to deal with, such as the pain everywhere.
"It hurts." My voice is strained, weak, and pitiful. "Everything hurts." The thrill of fighting has worn off and all of me is drained. I want to sleep. I wish the pain would stop long enough for me to sleep.
"Honey, stay with us, please?" My mother's voice hovers in front of me. "You lost a lot of blood, you need to stay awake. Sweetie? Please tell me you can hear me." I try to tell my mother that I can hear her. I want to alleviate the worry in her voice, but all I can manage is a gurgle and a moan.
"I promise the pain will go away." She continues. "You have to keep fighting."
"Here, she's in here." I hear Kristoff shouting, then I hear a door being thrown open and I assume that he has found a doctor of sorts. I can't imagine why there would still be medical staff in the castle, maybe they were called in to action after the fire, to make sure that everyone was safe and that there were no life threatening burns. I wince and I realise that the guests are going to be furious about the fire come morning, though it expected they shall also have quite a lot to say about Hanses murder.
"Has she been able to communicate?" A new voice asks.
"She complained about the pain, but that's it." My mother says.
"She's pregnant; please make sure the baby is ok." Anna begs.
All of the voices after that drift together. I am aware only of the pulsing pain everywhere and the arms holding me. The rocking has stopped and I wish my mouth would work long enough for me to beg that it be started again.
Then there are new hands on me, hands that do not shake. This fingers move with precision, assessing my many wounds and flaring minimal pain. I think there is more talking, maybe even shouting, but it is as if I am hearing it through water and a wall. Nothing is clear, and then it stops.
The rocking is back, but not a deliberate kind, the type that is accompanied by walking. All of me is sore, but I can manage it. There is pressure on my wounds, bandages wrapped around them, keeping the blood I need, where it ought to be. I curl in to the slab of soft warmth and heat that I am pressed against. As I move the hands around me tighten, pulling me in closer, as if in a hug.
I do not open my eyes for fear of pain and brightness. I keep as tight a hold as my protesting, tired, muscles will let me keep of this warmth, this warmth that does not scare me. It does not threaten to melt me, it keeps me safe. It is cool warmth.
Everything is dull and fleeting, but I can focus on the rocking, the soft gentle motion that I associate with the rhythmic waves of the ocean, or the feeling before life, the world inside a womb.
Then the rocking stops. I feel different textures coming to wrap around me and the heat goes away. I moan at the loss, missing, already, the comfort it brings.
"Elsa." Anna whispers at me, her voice soothing and kind. "You are so stupid; you have to stop fighting everything alone. Please. I don't want you to die because you are too proud to ask for help."
I cannot bring my throat to work, there is gravel in it set too deep to come loose anytime soon, but I dissect all of Anna's words. For the first time, in all my life, I wonder if maybe people do want to help. Maybe I am not alone, maybe I have never been.
The pain sends all pleasant thoughts from my head and my back seizes up and twists all the muscles throughout my body in to painful knots. I discover that the gravel can fall away as I let out a scream, and then descend in to pathetic full body sobs that do nothing to quell the pain.
"Honey," I voice that I know to be my mother's talks near me, "Honey, can you hear me? I mumble nonsense and thrash the slowest anyone has ever thrashed, my muscles protesting against every movement with a deep-seated ache. "Please, I know it hurts, but try to listen? OK?" I cannot let her know that I am trying my utmost to focus on her voice, and that she is the only thing keeping me from screaming at the onslaught of my senses, my voice will not allow it.
"I know that you are strong enough to handle this. What are burns to ice? You will heal; this family would not be here unless healing was our strong suit." Her voice is weary. I wonder if she has let anyone look at her arm. How long was I drifting and flitting about through conscious? She needs a doctor far more urgently than I possibly could have. I need to tell her to look after herself, but my mouth is full of a thousand unsaid words.
"Please, honey, I know that you are going to be ok, but, could you just let me know that you know it too, mothers spend all hours worrying for no reason at all…" She trails away, and I know that I have to do something, I owe it to her. I squeeze my eyes as shut as their lids allow and I hold my jaw tight and stiff. My shoulder screams against the calculated use I am subjecting it to, but I need to lift my arm and a shoulder is required for such things.
My fingers curl around the one hand my mother has left, I can feel the bones sticking out against her weathered skin. I pull our entwined hands toward my stomach and I curl around them, no longer strong enough to resist the urge to roll in to myself. Maybe it is my mother's reassurance that allows me to return to the state of a babe.
I try not to picture his face, so full of focus and rage, yet so listless and dead. I do not want him to lurk in the corners of my dreams, turning them to nightmares. I do not want to relive the events of my wedding night every time I drift away. I want to be strong enough to survive the memory of a dead man, for I am living and he is not. I am safe here, but I cannot quite convince the shadowed corners of my mind that safe is a reality I can now entertain.
What if he is not dead, what if he cannot be killed and he is waiting for the perfect moment to strike down my unsuspecting family. Where are the guards, his guards, what happened to them? Did they die too? Or are they locking in that room, trying to break down walls and doors to get at me. Will I be slaughtered as I sleep, left to bleed out with my murdered family that I worked so hard to get.
My panic rises and I become even more of a mess. My fingers nearly slip out of my mother's grip, but she holds tighter and keeps my grounded. I allow her to become my lifeline. I do not know where I would be without her, but I am very sure it would not be fun.
There is snow in the air, I am sure of it. I can feel the bitter cold building in me. I know that control is slipping out of my grasp. Frost will be sprinting across all surfaces it can manage, ingraining itself in to the cracks of the wood, and skating across the glass of the windows as fast as a lightning strike.
Another voice starts talking, or maybe it is the same one and it never stopped. All I know is that everything has started to make a great deal less sense than it did a moment ago. My senses come apart at the seams again, and my mind turns off with the lingering sensation of my fingers tight around my mother's seeing me off to unconsciousness.
What did you think? Let me know with a review.
The next chapter will be delayed by five days, so expect it on the 20th.
-Whovian123
(Review replies will be edited in on the 17th (I am on vacation and the keyboard on my phone is no place to edit and type. I have already accidentally deleted an embarrassing amount of stuff.))
