TW: TALKS OF ABUSE AND INJURIES FROM ABUSE/TORTURE
"Rise and shine." A voice singsongs as the person begin to open her curtains. Iduna doesn't move hoping they'll leave her alone. Her foggy head can't even tell who is speaking to her. Though she is ashamed to admit it, she's still a bit drunk from her little binge the night before. At the time she swore that she needed it. After her parents' little announcement that they were forcing her into marriage and that very, very vivid dream of Asarja, the princess just wanted to escape into a world of complete emptiness. Just a silent, black void that she knew downing tons of alcohol would help her reach.
But now she is really, really regretting her decision.
"Iduna, I know you're awake."
"I'm still a little drunk." She responds, her soft words still slightly slurred. The person, a female, sighs.
"Well, we need to fix that. You have be in the Throne Room in an hour and a half." Iduna whines, kicking her legs.
"Why? Can't you tell 'em I'm ill or something?" A breathy chuckle. Iduna furrows her eyebrows. "Wait…wait who-who is this? Who are you?" she asks. It's silent for a few moment as whoever else in in the bedroom continues to move around, looking through drawers, combing through jewellery.
The comfortable silence and the warmth of the sun begin to lull Iduna back to sleep, the last remaining traces of alcohol in her blood helping to knock her back out. "Oh no, you don't." The woman says. The pillow is thrown off her face and Iduna gasps as she feels herself being pulled into an upright position. With the natural light still too bright for her to handle, the red head has to resort to squinting.
She can just make out platinum blonde hair and ice blue eyes.
"Oh thank god, it's you." Iduna sighs with relief, "I thought it might have been Mother."
"You think I would have let her come to sort you out after I discovered the endless number of empty bottles in the kitchen?" Ingrid laughs, squeezing Iduna's hand. Iduna frowns. Like a young child needed to be held by their mother, she crawls to her sister and snuggles into her side, wrapping her arms around Ingrid's middle.
Iduna smiles lazily as she feels a kiss on her hairline. She loves Ingrid's motherly affection. The affection the three of them wished Sonja would give them still. Once Iduna turned ten, Ingrid was the one to bandage the cuts and bruises and kiss them to make them feel better. She helped them to dress and read to them at night. She did all of that.
Ingrid. Not Sonja.
"Something is troubling you." Iduna glances up to Ingrid, whose eyes look dull with sadness. "You wouldn't get this intoxicated unless something awful happened. The last time you did this…well, you know-"
"Oh I remember." Iduna mumbles bitterly, recalling the week after returning from the Estelle Palace. With nothing but the gown she had worn – the last of Seita-Astrid's beautiful scent clinging to the fibres – the locket she still wears around her neck, clutching it, downing gulp after gulp to try and numb the heartache of watching her baby be taken away from her. Yes, she remembers.
However, she isn't sure if should say what is troubling her this time around. Not that she necessarily wants to keep that beautiful moment to herself, but that it sounds slightly insane. Dreaming about her former fiancé, kissing him, then awaking and still feeling his lips on hers. Like it hadn't been a dream at all.
Musing this, Iduna says, "You will think I'm insane." Ingrid tucks some of her hair behind her ear and squeezes her.
"I love insane." Iduna can't help but smirk at her sister. She glances around her bedroom, trying to get her lagging brain to form a coherent sentence. What she's about to tell her sister doesn't make that much sense already. Retelling it in a tipsy state will make it seem like a drunken tale. Taking a deep breath she begins.
"When I ran away last night, I was going to Asarja's grave. I didn't make it. I fainted at the edge of a clearing." Ingrid tenses, but stays quiet. "I had this…this dream. I was sitting on the very top of a hill, looking over a fjord. The sun was setting and – and Asarja was there." Iduna pauses for a moment, a wave of sadness hitting her. She squeezes Ingrid's hand tightly. "It was amazing. To see him again. To…feel him. It was like he was truly there. With me. And for however long I was there everything felt like it was okay again, until it wasn't." She exhales a long breath.
"I let him go, Ingrid. I let Asarja go. It was the only way that we could both move on and be at peace."
"Oh, Una." Ingrid says sadly. Iduna smiles, though it comes out more as a grimace.
"It was what I had to do. But he knows I will always love him. Even if I marry Agnarr or not. Asarja will always be in my heart…in my very soul. But that isn't the insane part. Asarja and I kissed. And then I woke up and…and could feel my lips tingle; like…like he had just been there, and it was all real. But it wasn't real because I was still on the edge of the clearing." She looks at her sister. Ingrid shrugs before saying,
"You know, I read in a book once that sometimes, when people who have lost their true love dream about their other half, they can still sometimes feel them once they've awoken. If they've hugged or- or kissed like you and Asarja did."
"You think Asarja and I had true love?" Ingrid nods, a faint smile on her lips.
"Probably would have been the greatest love story ever told had our father not been a bastard."
Oh yes. Iduna thinks with pride, we would have been the most glorious couple to have ever walked this realm.
Regina grips onto Leopold's arm as they walk down the cobblestone path, a sweet warm breeze filling her nose. "You seem a little nervous, sweetheart." Leopold says. The brunette clenches a fist at her side, trying to resist the urge to vomit. Nervous is an understatement. This is her first proper presentation as Leopold's consort – well, soon to be consort – in front of Arendelle's royal family no less.
Arendelle, according to her father, is said to be the most prosperous kingdom in the realm. King Harold, his queen, Sonja, and their children are highly revered throughout the lands. Regina never thought this would be her life. She had been minor princess, living happily and freely in the countryside, far removed from this life. Suddenly she is catapulted into a position she doesn't want, now going to face a royal family who, though apparently are inviting, intimidate her to no end.
A fluttering catches her eye. She glances up to see a flag tied to a post flying in the breeze. Purple and green split background, with a big yellow crocus in the middle. She glances to her fiancé. "Is that Arendelle's symbol?" He hums in response.
"Yes. The Arendelle crocus. Their national flower."
The Arendelle crocus.
The same flower carved into Seita-Astrid's necklace.
Iduna leans on Agnarr's forearm, feeling like death. After washing her in an ice-cold bath, Ingrid shoved half a bowl of porridge and fruit down her throat and made her chug back a glass of water to help absorb the rest of the alcohol. Now she doesn't feel drunk, but just extremely hungover. Luckily after the King of the Southern Kingdom and his new fiancé arrive, all the presentations are done, and she can go back to her room and sleep until it's the next day. "Are you okay?" Agnarr whispers, causing Iduna no shake her head.
"I made a big, big mistake last night." She mumbles. The conversation is cut short when the Head Guard bangs his staff on the hardwood floors, each bang pounding against Iduna's skull.
"Your Majesties, your Highnesses. May I present King Leopold of the Southern Kingdom and his fiancé the future Queen Consort Regina, Princess of Corrine."
Helga isn't sure if her action of recoil is of awe, shock, or disgust.
For starters, it hadn't been long since King Leopold's wife, Eva, had passed away. Five, possibly six months ago? Most people usually wait a bit longer to remarry, and if Leopold and Eva's romance was anything to go by, Helga would have placed a bet that Leopold would have waited years to remarry; perhaps not even remarry at all.
Secondly, his new fiancé, Regina, looks so young. Leopold is only six years younger than her own father, putting him at forty. Regina looks around Iduna's age. She had heard of and seen with her own eyes much older men marrying women young enough to be their daughter, or even their granddaughter. The notion disgusted her to no end. As she looked over the young girl, who would soon be above her in rank, she couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for her.
The blonde could just tell that Regina would rather be somewhere else.
She doesn't blame her. She doesn't want to be here either.
But another thing Helga noticed was Regina's beauty. She was one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. Her olive skin was supple, tinged with gold. Her eyes reminded her of milk chocolate and her hair was luscious, wavy, and brunette, falling nicely around her like a curtain. The blood-red lipstick she wears on her full, plump lips matches the colour of her dress. She even wears hairpins containing red rubies that pin some of her hair back.
She's beautiful.
"Your Majesty." Leopold says, removing Helga from her trance for just a moment.
Regina curtseys to the royal family, her eyes never leaving the ground. She can feel a stare piercing her face, intently studying her every detail. Luckily, she can play the part of a confident young princess, completely unaware of the judgement no doubt silently passing between the family members. With grace and ease, just like she had been taught over and over again, she returns to her full height, her arm once again slipping through Leopold's.
"Leopold. How wonderful to see you." The Queen says in greeting. Regina glances up at her fiancé. Though her face shows adoration, inside she wants nothing more than to rip that smile off his face.
"Your Majesty. I know the last time we crossed paths the occasion wasn't one of celebration." Leopold says sadly, and Regina has to fight the scowl that wants to show on her lips. Eva's funeral no doubt. She thinks bitterly. Because that's all Leopold can talk about. Eva. His dead wife. "But now I believe congratulations are in order."
Regina smiles as she looks to Princess Iduna and Agnarr, the next Duke of Uxtan. She curtseys timidly. "Congratulations, your Highness, your Grace." She coos demurely, her voice soft and melodious. The princess opens her mouth to speak but King Harold says,
"Their engagement isn't the only one in need of celebration. May I enquire when the wedding will be?"
"July this coming following year, Your Majesty." Regina answers, her mouth turning slightly dry. Less than 11 months of freedom left.
"We look forward to it," Sonja smiles. "We can hopefully talk more at the ball tomorrow." The brunette sees Iduna stiffen in her peripheral view. She looks in her direction, feigning just an innocent glance, but the curiosity is rising in her.
Because when the princess gives her a gentle smile,
It looks very familiar.
"And you haven't told him what we talked about yesterday?"
"Ingrid. I fell asleep at three that afternoon and woke up at four this morning. How could I have talked to him?" Iduna snaps.
"How could you be in such a foul mood? You slept for thirteen hours." Ingrid comments, flicking some of her hair behind her shoulder. Iduna grumbles a string of curses under her breath. It was the hours after she awoke that put in this stupor. Her encounter with Asarja, that little moment with Agnarr, how she'll have to tell Agnarr about Seita-Astrid eventually, Seita-Astrid herself. They all just occupied her every thought process.
She had assumed that after she let Asarja 'move to the next life', things would seem clearer, that she might actually be able to start living again; her every move and breath wouldn't be swallowed up by grief. But instead her path just seems even more hazy than it had been before.
"Princess Ingrid."
The two sisters turn to see Ewa walking towards them. Iduna smiles at their old nurse.
"Hello Ewa." Ingrid says softly.
"Princess Ingrid. Your Mother has asked that you meet her in her study at once." Ewa says, ignoring Ingrid's greeting. Iduna can feel a slight drop in temperature. She grabs the blonde's hand, giving in a reassuring squeeze.
"Did Mother say she must come to her alone?" The older woman gives a curt nod. Iduna sighs sharply. "Very well." She turns to her sister. Though Ingrid's face is neutral, her pale hand visibly shakes in hers. Iduna stands in front of Ingrid, clutching her other hand. "Inge. Look at me."
Ingrid's eyes slide to meet her hazel ones. They shimmer in the late morning sun. "I will wait for you in the library. In your favourite little corner. We can talk then."
"Promise?" Ingrid rasps out. Iduna gives her the biggest smile she can muster.
"I promise."
Ingrid follows Ewa to her mother's study. She stuffs her hands into her armpits, trying to get them to stop shaking. It was rare that Ingrid ever visit either of her parents' studies. And it was rare that any time she did, that the outcome was good.
Too quickly for her liking, the pair stop outside the door, her mother's monogram carved into the wood. Ingrid nods towards the black-haired woman beside her. "Th-Thank you, Ewa. That will be a-all." She stammers. Ewa lingers a moment, looking at her old charge worriedly. Ingrid takes a deep breath and brings a hand up to knock on the door. She looks to Ewa, giving a shaky grimace. "I'll be fine, Ewa. Take your leave."
She watches as the at the older woman scurries off. She slowly twists back to the door. A muffled, "Come in, Ingrid." Comes quietly through the door.
She takes a deep breath and enters.
Without warning, hands wrap around each of Ingrid's wrists. Their skinny fingers, pointy with bone, dig into her flesh and Ingrid hisses in pain. She unscrews her eyes and meets those of her Mother. She opens her mouth to question what is happening, but a pain shooting up her legs makes a whimper come out instead. She collapses to the floor, falling hard on her knees. Someone else in the room clears their throat.
Ingrid glances to her left. Out of the darkest corner of her mother's study, her father appears, and it takes all of her willpower to simply glance disinterestedly to the grey metal urn he has tucked under his arm. Her eyes slide up to meet his. Those pale blue eyes that him and Helga share, but his are soulless, dark and cold. Hers always shimmer with happiness or mischief or love.
The same but so, so different.
"I find it very hurtful that you would keep something as special as this hidden from me, Inge." Her father says, feigning hurt. Ingrid's body physically recoils at the utterance of her nickname on his tongue. It somehow feels slimy. Despite her throat feeling like it will close up on her, she responds coolly,
"An urn? Why would you be so hurt that I kept an urn from you?" Her father slowly stalks towards her, a predatory glare set on her.
"But it isn't just an urn, is it?"
"Oh but it is, Father. I'm sorry to disappoint you even more than I already ha-"
Her words are knocked out of her as his fist connects with her jaw. She swallows the pain, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much it hurt.
"You are a lying. Little. Bitch." Her father mutters, shaking his head disapprovingly. "After all I've done for you-"
"All you've done. For me?" Ingrid scoffs, ignoring the taste of iron on her tongue. "What exactly have you done for me, except hide me away, make me out to be some monster."
"I'm pretty sure you did that to yourself." Ingrid shakes her head.
"No. You played a big role in it you sadistic bastard. Locking me in a prison cell for weeks, torturing me for hours. You think that is something to gloat about? Abusing your own child? And look where that got you. Nowhere." She spits. Harold laughs, the sound spiked with menace. A shiver rakes itself down Ingrid's spine.
"What happened to that meek, pathetic, daughter of mine, huh? You barely open your mouth, even to your sisters, who have to put up with you and this…burden." He says, gesturing to her. He walks towards the desk with a small shrug. "Guess it's not entirely surprising why Iduna ratted you out then."
Ingrid snaps her head up, eyes fixed on her father's back. "What?" she grits through her bared teeth. An innocent look spreads across Harold's face.
"Well, you didn't think I just found this, do you? Someone would have to had told me where it was."
"You expect me to believe that Iduna told you about a trashy little urn?"
He whirls on his heels, the urn clanking to the floor. Within seconds, the air is completely knocked from her lungs as the tip of his boot collides with her ribs. The crack makes one of the guard's flinch slightly. He grips her chin between his calloused fingers. Her ribs scream in pain, but Ingrid chokes it down. She wouldn't be a coward. Not now.
"You're about to be wiped from existence, yet you still choose to be insolent?" Quivering from effort and pain, Ingrid slowly gets to her knees, holding his gaze. She gets close enough that his breath feels hot against her cheeks.
"I'm choosing to not be a coward," She growls, "I'm choosing to let you know that what you're about to do will grant you an early place at Satan's table."
Sonja sits on her throne, watching over the guests in attendance with silent observation. Her hazel eyes fall on her husband. She watches as he moves from person to person, joking and laughing. If he saw a certain lady, his eyes wander her, examine her like some sort of prize. She sighs deeply. This wasn't the life she had envisioned when she first stepped into Arendelle at sixteen.
When her dying mother had arranged for her to marry Harold – a prince at the time – and they both fell deeply in love with each other, she expected that love and the loyalty that came with it to stay until death separated them. She saw a future within a castle full of light and warmth. A castle where the maids and footmen and nurses were family, where uptight court tradition was forgotten when it was just the family in residence.
That was what flashed through her young, naive mind.
And now fast forward. She has three daughters, all so beautiful and kind, but underneath that pretence, there is an ever-growing hatred brewing. Towards her and her husband. Their parents.
Her eyes land on Iduna, who smiles widely at Agnarr as they twirl amongst the jewels and music.
She had failed her.
That curdling scream, the sobs of denial. They echo in her ears whenever she just glances in Iduna's direction. She could have stopped him. The night before Asarja's murder when her husband showed a rare moment of humility. She could have persuaded that dark, twisted mind of his that what he was about to do, what he had done already, had destroyed his daughter.
But she stayed silent.
Then she catches Helga talking with Princess Regina in the corner of the Ballroom. She sees that smile she secretly wished she could see more often.
She had failed her too.
Helga wanted nothing to do with the throne, even from early on. She hides her smile behind her fan as she recalls what little Helga would always say when jokingly corrected her.
"No, Mama! This is Ingrid, the heir and Iduna is the spare!"
If Ingrid was the daughter who loved to read and learn how to rule, Helga was the daughter who picked up a book when specifically told and would hide in the forest to escape etiquette lessons.
Sonja had the opportunity to avoid change that too. When Helga burst into her bedroom, sobbing so hard she could barely get what Harold had done passed her lips. She had stormed straight to his study, not caring if defying her husband was improper. She was ready to fight for Helga, to tell Harold that he had gone too far. And there she stood, ready to tear into the wicked man who sat behind the desk.
But she stayed silent, leaving before she could even knock on the door.
The music fades into nothing as her mind wanders down the archaic stone steps, worn from centuries of use and down a dimly lit hall. To that one singular cell. Where Ingrid lays atop a thin and poorly made 'bed' of hay. Unconscious. Bleeding. Her Inge.
The one she failed the most.
In the early months of discovering Ingrid's powers, Sonja was terrified of her. She couldn't even go near her, scared that she might…freeze her or slash her with shards of ice. It was stupid to even think that. She hadn't even considered if Ingrid was possibly scared of herself. She didn't even dare consider the thought that her and Harold caused her to be fearful of herself. Because then that wall she built up, made from bricks of indifference and coldness, would come crashing down.
But when her daughters thought she couldn't hear, their giggles and laughs resonated through the castle. Ingrid would turn the very room she sits in into a winter wonderland. Ice for skating, snow for crafting snowmen and snowball fights. And every night she heard those sweet laughs, one by one, a brick came lose and fell.
Until this very moment, where the wall is officially gone, as the burden of her failure is crushing her chest.
The music returns.
Sonja lifts her fan to hide the tears that slowly trickles down her cheek.
The ball seems like miles away. The music, the chatter. She has to hold her breath just to hear it. She can imagine her sisters in the ballroom, dancing, eating, completely unaware that she's down here in this rotting hung of rock. Good. She doesn't want them to see this. She doesn't want them to be as heartbroken as they will be.
Her father had been 'oh so generous' and left her with some paper and a pencil to write letters to them. 'Final Letters' he had called them. The only problem was that Harold had broken her hand, stamping on it numerous times, shouting that she was cursed by the Devil himself. So as she lay crying on the cold floor, clutching her swollen and throbbing hand, her Mother wrote the letters for her. But she made sure to double check that the woman had written everything as she had said them.
But that was hours ago. The one tiny window etched out of the stone gives her a glimpse of the clear night, the stars twinkling above her. No more sun, the day is gone, finished.
And so is her time amongst the living.
Her throat begins to ache as the one eye that isn't swollen shut begins to burn and fill with silent tears. She wants to be strong, to swallow the fear and hold it in. She supposes she could blame the tears on the pain. From her – most likely – broken rib, the punch to her jaw that throbs whenever she talks, the long gash down her arm that her father had traced a vein wondering where the 'devil's magic' had come from.
And then the blow from the hide of the guard's sword that completely knocked her out.
But Ingrid is an honest woman. She's terrified. Rumpelstiltskin didn't specify what would happen to her if she were put in the urn. She doesn't know if she'd be roasted alive in an urn of flames if she'll confront all her past demons. She has no idea, but she wants to know, just so she could prepare herself. Try to make herself as comfortable as she could in her new life.
Ingrid's breath hitches. Footsteps echo against the stone, and the torches cast shadows that dance along the wall. With a groan of pain, she sits up, her head violently spinning. Her blurry vision can make the outline of two soldiers approaching her little cell.
One holds the urn.
"Just get th-this over w-with." She breathes, the overwhelming pain making her want to be sick. One of the soldiers shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot.
"Do you…do you have any last words?" He asks, and Ingrid laughs. He sounds upset; dare she even say pitiful. The blonde exhales brokenly.
"Just tell my sisters I love them. And tell Iduna that she shouldn't feel guilty. Please." She begs, her voice cracking.
"As you wish."
He opens the top.
For a second everything stills.
Without warning, violent winds thrashes around them. The dim light extinguishes without even a crackle. The guards are thrown to the ground. But the cell doesn't turn into a sucking black void. Dazzling blue light, blinding and flashing pulsates in a ball in the middle of the cell. The guards throw their arms over their eyes, but Ingrid allows her eyes to slip closed. Her limbs are liquified and pulled and twisted into silver gloop.
She's not even a person anymore.
She's sucked further and further into the urn. Ingrid puts up no fight. She lets the magic pull her in. Swirling and swirling, the silence grows deafening. The nothingness, all black and empty swallows her up. But it doesn't spit her back out. Here she remains.
Princess Ingrid of Arendelle is no more.
