Chapter Forty

Disclaimer: I neither own the rights to Disney, Frozen, the Disney universe nor any of its associated media, derivatives or products. I do not profit from this work.

Elsa looked up abruptly, startled from her sobbing by the noise of shattering crashes from the floor below her, like massive sheets of glass smashing against the ground. For several seconds she screwed up her eyes and covered her ears as the sound reverberated through the floors and walls, until eventually it came to a halt. She stood and looked around in bewilderment. "What in the world…?"

Though she could find no indication of the source of the sound, her eyes caught sight of the hymnal. The ice which had covered it was almost finished thawing away. She watched in fascination as the ice rolled off from itself in tiny rivulets of water, until the last icy traces melted and vanished.

Stunned, the queen crawled over and picked up the hymnal. The pages were as warm and dry as if they'd been lying in the summer sun.

"Put that down!" a sharp voice spat, and she looked up. Her reflection was back, face contorted into a snarl at the sight of the book. "How dare you touch that with your filthy hands! Put it down, I say!"

But she did not, for something had begun to happen to its pages. Elsa watched as the rose's scarlet life spread across the paper, forming images—images she knew, images she loved. She and Anna, embracing on the boat after the fjord had thawed. She being held as a small child by Mama and Papa, creating snowflakes in her hands as she giggled. She and Kristoff, discussing his impending proposal to her sister at her desk. She and Hans, laughing over cups of hot cider…

"You have no right to look at that! Don't you know what you are?!"

"Yes," Elsa said softly, looking down at the book. "This is who I am. This is my true reflection."

"Lies! Your own delusions! Trying to pretend you aren't despicable, aren't a hypocrite and a liar–"

"No," she said sharply, looking up at her false reflection. The world had gone yellow again, the blood and carnage returned, but she no longer feared them. "That isn't true. I am human. I am broken. I have done things that I regret—yes, I regret them!" She swept her hand, indicating her crimes. "But I regret them because I know who I am, who I was really meant to be."

"You were meant to be alone," her reflection hissed.

"Sometimes I will have to be lonely, that is true." She looked down to the book in her hands. "Everyone is lonely from time to time," she said firmly. "But that does not mean I am alone." She closed her eyes, letting the images of her true nature warm her heart. "I have made mistakes, mistakes I will have to live with. They are a part of my story, but they are not a part of me." She opened her eyes again, looked her false self straight in the face and said clearly, "I am not defined by the ice of my curse, but by the warmth of my heart."

For an instant, the reflection looked at her in pure shock, before the ice fractured from the sides, the cracks breaking inward from all directions–

The mirrors shattered and fell to the ground with a loud crash! Elsa flinched and covered her face to avoid the flying shards. When she looked up again, the way to the door was unblocked. She laughed in triumph and ran forwards, through the hallway, up the stairs–

She burst into the cupola and called out, "Hans! Hans, it's me! I'm alright!"

The prince started and scrambled to his feet, whirling around. "Elsa!" His face was pure relief as he rushed towards her. "You're alive?!"

"Hans, I think I've figured it out, I know how to destroy the Mirror–"

"Hold your tongue!"

Something caught her about the legs, and she tripped forward, crashing to the ground. She tried to scream, but an icy gag had appeared around her mouth at the same moment the chains had. Elsa lay there, struggling, as the Snow Queen walked forward.

"You foolish girl, you ran right past me! You might think to look about you next time you go running through the halls of my palace," she hissed to the queen.

"You told me she was dead," Hans snarled, struggling against his own chains. "You told me you'd killed her!"

"Don't play the victim with me, young prince; remember that your own actions were not so different," the sorceress said testily, before turning back to the woman at her feet. "I don't know how you managed to get out of that room, Queen Elsa, but no matter: you're just in time for your grand re-entrance."

The wind whipped the snowflakes like needles as the bishop tried to shield his face from the snow. He could see the Southern King on the opposite end of the bridge between the mainland and the castle—blazing like a furnace, but not burning. An ironic connection between the man and a certain historic bush sparked in Willum's mind, but it was dashed away by the icy gusts a moment later.

"Your Majesty, please!" Willum called. "You have to stop this!"

Though his words were blown away almost instantly, Agnar seemed to hear them. Still, his approach did not cease. "Get out of my way, old man!"

"I can't do that." The distance between them was closing. "Son, listen to me! You don't know what you're dealing with!"

He laughed harshly. "Neither do you!"

If only that were true. "Do you have any idea what you're about to do?!"

"I mean to take reign of Arendelle—by force if necessary!"

"And do you think that will satisfy you? Will the deaths of hundreds of people, the young and the old, women and children—will that sate your need for power?!" Willum shook his head. "It will never be enough for you! A king who rules by fear is no king at all."

The words seemed to echo in the king's mind. A king who rules by fear…is it not better to be loved, than to be feared? His father had never agreed with that. It was a weak philosophy, that idea of love. No one would ever respect him unless they feared him, that was what he'd always been told.

Are you your father, Agnar?

That voice, again—so soft, yet persistent, reminding him somehow of his mother's, absent all these long years. For a moment, just the tiniest of seconds, the Southern king seemed ready to cease his advance. The flames began to flicker and die, and his brow furrowed. His steps hesitated. The bishop watched him hopefully, desperately wishing that this confrontation could have a peaceful end. The king looked across the bridge and wondered, too, if perhaps surrender wasn't the saner option.

Surrender? How very like you, Agnar, a different voice hissed in his head. Always so weak, cowardly, spineless. Just as your father always said.

The battle raged internally, more fiercely than even the flames he had conjured. I…I'm not my father.

Love is weak, and for the weak! What are you waiting for? You have no excuse now, with your birthright has restored! Will you sit back and let them take you like a common criminal, prove your father right? Or will you be better than he ever was, do what he could never do! If you're not weak, pathetic, pitiful, worthless—then prove it! Prove yourself a king!

Something passed behind those jade eyes, and the king's expression grew furious and harsh once more. "You know nothing about power, old man, and you never will. Now step aside."

Willum's eyes went hard, as well. "You will not reach that castle save for over my dead body."

Agnar lifted his hands, and the flames suddenly raged like hellfire itself, burning out of control, licking the midnight sky. In the scarlet blazing, his smirking grin seemed that of the demons of the inferno.

"I think that can be arranged."

"Let. Her. Go."

It was some credit to the prince that he spoke these words with a convicted, almost threatening tone, despite the fact that he was very clearly in no position to be making demands. As if to emphasize his point, he raised his right hand somewhat menacingly, letting it light ablaze.

The Snow Queen, however, was likewise in no mood to appreciate such foolhardy courage. "Don't you threaten me, boy," she snarled, and with a motion of her hand, the chains about his wrists yanked his hand down again, forcing him to stumble forward in an effort to keep his balance. "Now, if you know what's good for you–"

"Hans! Elsa!" A sudden voice drew all their attentions, as Anna and Kristoff came running up the steps. Quick as lightning, the Snow Queen conjured up a wall of ice to block the doorway. "Let us through!" Anna cried, pounding against the glassy material.

"I'm sorry, but this is a private negotiation," the sorceress said almost lightly, turning back to the prince. "I've had just about enough of your obstinacy, Prince Hans, and frankly you've spent the last of my patience. I think it's time we sped this matter along."

"I won't give you the shard, so you may as well kill me now," he snapped.

"I don't need to kill you," she said dismissively. "No, I have something much more valuable on hand now." She glanced to Elsa, smirked. Hans felt his blood run cold.

"You wouldn't."

"Oh, no, young prince, I wouldn't," agreed the Snow Queen, still smiling that icy smile. "I don't need to."

He sucked in a breath. Elsa was still struggling to escape her bonds, but otherwise the room had gone pregnantly silent again. On the other side of the ice, Anna was looking between them, confused. "Hans?" she called. "What's she talking about?"

"Do you care about them, princeling?" the Snow Queen cooed. "Do you perhaps even love them?" His face had tensed, gaze flicking between her and his friends. "What would you pay, to keep them safe—to keep them safe from you?"

There was a sound from the mirror, and Hans, foolishly, looked at his reflection. The mirror filled with flames. The Arendellian palace was burning, people screaming as they fled the gates. "Stop," he choked out, but he couldn't prevent the mirror from showing him the truth. He saw himself, laughing, that awful manic gleam in his eyes as with his own hands he set the town ablaze, the citizens cowering in front of him, pleading for mercy. "I don't want to hurt anyone!"

"You don't have a choice," the Snow Queen said flatly. "The Mirror calls to its own, and you will listen to it eventually."

"No," he said helplessly, but it sounded hollow even to him.

"If you don't hand over that shard to me, right now," the Snow Queen continued, sneering, "Then you and I both know what will happen. Dawn is on its way, princeling, and I don't intend to release the girl before then. If I fail, I'm taking you and all your little friends with me." She kicked Elsa with her icy shoe, and the queen let out a muffled cry of pain.

His hand found the hilt of his sword. "Don't you touch her!"

"The queen might be your first victim, but I doubt she'll be your last. So what will it be, boy? Will you be the Mirror's servant, or shall I?"

"No! Hans, please!" a voice echoed from inside the mirror, and his eyes snapped to the glass to see a reflected Elsa backing away from his double, terrified. Even as he watched, flames bloomed across the mirror, and an agonized female scream seeming to shatter through the glass. The prince let out a raw, anguished noise: "NO!"

But it was too late. He saw no figures in the glass, only the flickering scarlet flames, silhouetted here and there by black ash as it floated gently to the ground. A shaking gasp escaped his mouth as the real flames curled around his fingertips, sparks smoldering in the air. It wasn't real. It wasn't real, not yet. But soon- soon-

"But you can prevent that, Hans," the Snow Queen stated, breaking his thoughts. "You can be the hero, their great deliverer."

"What do you–"

"Give me what I want," she vowed, "and I will make you king of Arendelle."

Silence fell over the cupola again. Even Elsa stopped her attempts at freedom to stare at him.

"Even as we speak, your brother is besieging the palace." There were collective gasps from the others. "I lent him use of the Mirror's powers, for the time being. But if you give me that little piece of glass, my prince, I will raise for you an army of ice soldiers to assault him and save the town. And when I set the world in endless winter, I will spare your Arendelle—all for their worship of their rightful goddess. Just do as I ask, and I will give you everything you ever wanted: power, wealth, the love and adoration of your people…even her."

The scene in the mirror changed again. He saw a shadowy silhouette figure with a crown sitting on the throne. In an identical throne beside him was another figure, this one familiarly female, her face tilted adoringly up at him, long braid spilling down her shoulders. All around, people were applauding, cheering. He was admired. Loved. As Hans looked at the image, he felt himself repulsed by the hunger, the desire that was creeping up within him—and it wasn't coming from the fragment of glass in his hand.

"You know Arendelle would never accept you otherwise. With me, you can finally be the king you were born to be! But if you don't—" The flames and the horrid black ash reappeared, "—Then recall the agony of thinking you had lost her...and compound that with the knowledge that this time, it will be your doing, Master of the Mirror."

Her last words were mocking. His heart was pounding in his ears. Longing and terror clashed within him.

"...If I do this…" he said, trying to think through the fog that was enveloping his mind, "If I give you the shard…the rest of the world will suffer."

"Them? What do they matter? Who are they, these strangers you've never met, compared to the people who will love you for being their savior?"

He stared at the mirror as it wavered between the two options: violence and monstrosity, or a life of contentment and esteem. A world, for those he cared for? Destruction at his hands, or Armageddon at hers?

"It's your choice, Prince Hans," the Snow Queen whispered behind him. "You can be their hero, or you can be their monster. Decide."

Behind him, Anna and Kristoff were shouting, beating on the glass; Elsa was straining to speak now through the gag; and yet, he heard none of it. He looked at the mirror, cringed as he saw the beast within finally finish its work, reducing the world to carnage and selfishness…and, in the center of it all, he saw the woman he had come to love, the woman he could not bear to harm again, not even for the price of the whole world. Slowly, he stretched out his hand in defeat, holding the shard in his hands. The Snow Queen smirked. She almost had him. The shard was glowing, flaming with a brilliant light, just inches from the hole in the glass–

"No!"

Both started and turned. Elsa had pushed herself up into a kneeling position and worked free of the icy gag. "Hans, listen to me," she said fiercely. "That isn't you."

"What are you waiting for?" the Snow Queen snarled. "Do it!"

"The Prince Hans I know isn't like that," Elsa continued firmly, her expression steady, sincere. "He's good, and he's kind. He loves music and sailing. He saved the life of a little girl in place of his own. And he would never let what he's done before define who he is now."

"Stop this foolishness! Listen to me!"

But the Snow Queen's words went unheard. Hans's mouth had fallen open, stunned. "The mistakes you've made might be a part of your past," said Elsa firmly, "but they don't make you who you are. Not if you don't let them. Hans–" She looked him straight in his green eyes. "–You are not the monster you fear you are."

Hans stared at her for one long moment, and the fear in his mind seemed to evaporate, like frost in the first ray of morning sunlight. He pulled his hand away, taking the shard with it. "What do you think you're doing?!" the Snow Queen shrieked.

"You can't make me do anything," the prince said clearly, calmly. "Neither can that Mirror. Neither can any curse. That's my decision." He looked back at Elsa. "I made a terrible, horrible mistake once," he said, almost more to her than to the Snow Queen. "But I'm not about to make it again."

"This is absurd!" The sorceress was in a rage, and it seemed that her wrath was edged with panic. "I'll kill you! I'll kill her!"

"So be it. I'm not afraid of death; neither is she. But if you kill me," he said, voice growing stronger with every word, "You'll take yourself down with me. Dawn is coming, witch, and when it's here, you'll fade away."

"Then I'll leave you here alive!" she shrieked. "And the Mirror will enslave you!"

"No. It won't."

"Why not?"

"Because when you're gone–" He held up the shard, "–When it's just me, and the Mirror, and everyone around me, I will throw away this little piece of glass. I'll put it somewhere no one can ever find it. And then all of us, together, will find a way to destroy the Devil's Mirror once and for all!"

And that was when the icicles slammed him into the wall, and the shard went tumbling out of his hands.

"Hans!" Elsa's scream rang through the room, Anna's echoing it. Hans's head lolled from where it had struck the wall, his vision dizzy. There was a pulsing pain in his right shoulder. Through blurry eyes he watched the shard skate across the floor, a point of red against the blue, and come to a stop at the Snow Queen's feet.

"So clever. Almost clever enough."

He peered upwards, trying to refocus his vision. The ice witch's face had gone quite calm, and if Hans could have seen himself he would have known why. Elsa, Anna and Kristoff watched in horror as the reddish tint leeched out of his auburn hair and the flames around his fingers died to nothing, even as the blood from his pierced shoulder dripped to the icy floor.

"Magic has rules, princeling," the Snow Queen quoted coolly, picking up the shard. "It was one thing when you were keeping the shard for your own benefit, whatever benefit that may have been, but as soon as your intention to destroy the Mirror itself was explicit, you rejected its power in fact as well as in law. The Mirror does not brook trickery or treason from its servants."

The pain splintering through his shoulder and fighting against the tide of adrenaline was beginning to throb, but the prince ignored it, terror curdling in his stomach. Something terrible was about to happen, and a curious, if horrified, part of him was waiting to see what.

"I will confess, you people came close to ruining everything," the Snow Queen said idly, turning back to the Mirror. "But no matter. I have what I wanted." And without another moment's hesitation, she approached the mirror and set the final shard into its place.