A Prisoner's Conflict
SUNLIGHT SHONE WEAKLY on the walls and streets of Arendelle, low in the sky during the winter months, providing very little warmth against the chill of winter. Those few people who still had errands outside of their homes were heavily armored with fur and wool against the cold.
One man had no errands outside of the palace that was now his home, but he too stood outside, staring into the sunlight, taking from it what warmth and light he could. If anyone were there to see, they would have been dazzled by the brilliant reflection of the sunlight off of the golden insignia of a bird on his fine fire-red coat, or the wet luster in his eyes, the luster of unshed tears.
They may have been confused as to why such a man would stand outside, wearing so much less than the cold demanded, yet unshaken by the cold. At least, they might have been, until they recognized his coppery hair and remembered the inferno that he had conjured last week, fire against the ice that Queen Elsa had conjured upon his heart.
Hans Westergaard of the Southern Isles stared through the clear blue sky into the no-longer blinding sunlight; he felt the chilled, dry air pass into his nose and down his throat to find warmth and wetness in his lungs, before he forced it back out again and saw the steam erupt from his nose and mouth as it would from a dragon's.
After all, he was as deadly now as any dragon.
The garden was a barren patch of brown dirt now, surrounded by the dark skeletons of oak trees that had given up their leaves months ago, and would not grow new leaves for another few months. Yet for all the harshness of the landscape, he felt more at peace here and now than he had ever felt before.
Within a minute, though, the peace was broken by another warm body in this garden, slowly walking toward him. He did not bother to turn and greet her; he already knew who she was.
"Anna," he whispered, just loud enough for her to hear him.
The young woman stopped, staring at the back of the young man's head, and it was several painful seconds before she whispered back to him, something that sounded like either "Johannes" or "Your Highness."
It was so much simpler half a year ago, when she only knew him as Hans. First, they had been young lovers, and quickly betrothed after that. And just as abruptly as he had proposed to her and she had accepted, he had locked her away and left her to die of a frozen heart.
How could she still want to approach him after that?
"Only my friends call me Johannes," Hans replied. It was only a few days ago that the troll chieftain had told him of his true name, Johannes Westergaard, and since then only those closest to him had used it. "Are you one of my friends?"
"That is your decision, isn't it?" Anna whispered. "For my part, I consider you a friend."
Hans turned to face her at last. Why would she of all people still want a man who had treated her so cruelly as a friend? Or a woman, for that matter?
"I should have known that you would still think of the man who broke your heart as your friend," Hans growled. "After all, you think the same of the woman who froze it."
"Yes, you broke my heart." She walked up to him, took his hand, and laid it against the middle of her chest. "And then you melted the pieces back together. I want to do the same for you."
"Enough!" Hans erupted, withdrawing his hand and leaving the desolate garden. From the shadow of one of the trees, a familiar blond-haired, bearded man in thick furs emerged and started following him.
"Gustav," Anna sneered. "What are you doing here?"
"Keeping Johannes in my sight," Gustav replied as they walked down the hall. "Making sure that he doesn't get into more trouble than he's already in."
Anna remembered how Gustav had attacked Elsa last week, and it amazed her that Elsa didn't hold a grudge for that. Gustav, and the rest of Hans' men, had also been granted room and board in Elsa's palace.
Of course, Hans had chosen the most desolate chamber in the palace as his home: The cell in which Elsa had imprisoned him after his second ill-fated attempt on her life. Every last one of his followers had joined him there, too; Anna had not even been properly introduced to any of the others besides Gustav Derringer.
"Still not going anywhere without him, are you?" Anna asked with a smirk as they entered the great hall. "Sooner or later he's going to get you killed."
"I could say the same to you, Your Highness, intending no insult," Gustav replied. "Your complaints that he has shut you out seem odd to me, given how badly he can hurt you now."
"Don't even try to convince her of that, Gustav," Hans interrupted, turning around to face him. "By all rights she shouldn't care about me after I wooed her under false pretenses, tricked her into ceding Arendelle to me, took her sister prisoner, left her locked in that room to die of a frozen heart, and nearly killed her sister; she only seems to be mad at me for shutting her out."
"The one thing you promised me you would never do, Johannes!" Anna erupted. "Of course I am mad at you for that!"
Hans sighed. "You sound like Lars."
Anna hesitated for a few seconds, remembering how Prince Lars of the Southern Isles had broken into Elsa's palace in his haste to find Hans, how he had begged for Elsa's help, how he had passed up so many opportunities to stab the queen in the back, how he had thrown away his sword as he hurried to Hans' defense.
Lars had done for Hans what Anna would have done for Elsa. And now Hans was doing the same thing to Anna that Elsa had done...
"You sound like Elsa!" Anna retaliated. "Why do you shut yourself in that... that dungeon!?"
"That dungeon is the only place in Arendelle where I feel safe!"
"Safe? Safe from what? What are you so afraid of?"
"You!" Hans' red coat flared bright orange for half of a second as he pointed his finger at Anna, and his hand glowed with a brilliant yellow flame. For the first time since their encounter began, Anna felt more afraid than angry. Yet she refused to tear her gaze away from his, and she could see in his eyes that he truly was afraid too. As the flame died down in his fingers, Hans held his gaze steady with an obvious effort. "I... am afraid... of you."
QUEEN ELSA of Arendelle watched from the far end of the great hall as her sister and the two men argued. What was she going to do about Johannes? What could she do to make him feel safe outside of her dungeon?
"Anna still carries a torch for Hans," a low voice to Elsa's left whispered. She turned and saw her Ice Master, Kristoff, speaking to her. "She wants to think he's really changed," he scoffed. "People don't really change."
"Johannes," Elsa replied carefully, "is doing everything he can to convince her of the same thing. Perhaps you should too, the next time you and Anna talk."
"Still, I saw how overjoyed he was to learn that his magic hadn't killed Anna. I almost thought it was too harsh of you to shut him up. Almost."
Elsa smiled at the memory as he watched Johannes and Gustav heading toward the hall leading to the dungeon. "As overjoyed as I was six months ago, to learn that mine hadn't either," she said. "Anna is right; he does sound like me."
"So what are you going to do with him?"
"I'm going to make him mine, of course. He is the one I want; he was right about that at least."
"As a pri-!" Kristoff burst out before Elsa turned to look daggers at him. "As a prince consort?" he whispered in disbelief.
"We'll continue this discussion later, Kristoff," Elsa commanded, looking towards Anna as she approached the throne.
Anna turned to her left and turned around to stand at Elsa's right side. "You have powerful ice magic, you have the throne of Arendelle, and I wouldn't have it any other way... yet Hans doesn't seem afraid of you at all!" Anna cried. "All of your magic, your power as queen... and he's still more afraid of me!"
"Just as I was, once: Afraid that I would hurt you, and thus afraid of you," Elsa responded. "He knows that he cannot hurt me, so he has no fear for me, and so he has no fear of me."
"Can't you... make him afraid, or something?" Anna pleaded.
"I cannot," Elsa admitted. "He has already stood up to my deadliest magic, and survived it. Nothing I can do will make him fear for his life, only for the lives of his men. And I absolutely refuse to put any of his men in danger; you saw how angry he became the last time I did. I have no wish to make a worse enemy of him than he already is."
"Why not?" insisted Kristoff.
"Kristoff," Elsa said, turning her head to her left, "I forbid you to repeat a word of what you hear now. Either swear your silence or leave."
"My lips are sealed, Your Majesty," Kristoff said with a bow. Elsa turned to address Anna again.
"All my life I was certain that I would never be able to live as others live. After my magic struck your head, Anna, I knew that I was equally capable of hurting anyone else I cared for. That's why I shut our parents out too, rest their souls.
"Then last summer I learned that even my deadliest magic could be melted by true love, such as ours for each other. Since then I have allowed myself to consider possibilities that I had never dared to consider before: Surely you were not the only person who could act with such love, I thought. Perhaps I might even find a prince consort, or at least a father for my child... if I could rest assured that he, too, would survive such deadly magic."
"I see where this is going," Anna interrupted. "That... boy... threw himself at you to protect his friend from your ice, took it into his own heart, and survived. And he's the only man who ever did. You're planning to marry Ha... Johannes."
Elsa smiled sadly. "You are fairly close to the mark. It would send the wrong message to my people if I were to marry a man who had attempted to kill me twice, and on whom I had pronounced a death sentence for it. I am fortunate enough that so few of my people think less of me for not having killed him already."
"You read that letter of his too, didn't you? That second so-called attempt on your life was just a glorified attempt at suicide."
"You and I know that; nobody else does. In any case, his one earnest attempt on my life was bad enough to make marriage unwise. Nonetheless, nothing would please me more than to... invite Johannes to my bedchamber some evening, and... get his firstborn."