Forced Hand

"Wait, what?" Anna sat forward as she gripped the arm of the sofa firmly, her eyes wide as saucers.

After a moment of speechlessness, to everyone's surprise, they all heard low, quiet laughter from the chair to the side, where Johan was sitting. All eyes swiveled to him. He sat there with his arms crossed and a satisfied smile, his head slowly nodding in agreement. "Yes," he said, as though a long-standing mystery had finally been revealed to him. "You are right, Adanvdo Ogitsi." He chuckled on. "You are right."

"Are you kidding?!" Anna looked at Kristoff. "Is he kidding?"

Elsa sat on her chair and began to peel the wrapping off the sphere. "Everything is dying, Anna. It's like the Eternal Winter, only it's worsening more slowly, and it's not under my control. Despite everyone's insistence to the contrary, it's not something I can stop. And if what that moth told me in the fog is true, it's going to go on for a thousand years." She had the ball halfway uncovered. "I can't stop it, but I can protect everyone from it." The paper fell to the floor and she held up the encased statuette of the little girl, her foot kicked up behind her in childish delight. "I can keep everyone safe until it's over." Her face settled into a beatific smile.

"A thousand years ..." said Anna with her hand to her chin. "Can that possibly be true?"

"Everything that moth said has been true so far," Elsa replied. "Do I dare doubt?"

They all stared at the sphere silently. Elsa placed it on the coffee table in front of the couch.

"You'll freeze us all like when you froze yourself in Falster?" Anna asked.

"Yes," Elsa answered.

"I don't know if you remember, but that didn't exactly end too well. You came out of that ball looking like a dead fish. We had to carry you into the castle. It took you weeks to recover."

Elsa shrugged. "It's preferrable to freezing, starving, or killing each other, don't you think? And hopefully I can do a little better, now."

Ambrelle was sitting next to Yasmina. She was once again wearing her 'wisdom woman' necklace. Elsa hadn't seen it since Ambrelle left, and she hadn't had it on when Enceladus brought her back. Johan had brought it with him and returned it to her. "How will you know when it's safe?" she asked.

"Lotus will wake me."

Mwebe's hands were pressed palm to palm with his chin resting on his extended index fingers. "How will you do this?" he asked.

"Heinrick and I visited Doloma right before you and I first met," said Elsa. "We went to try to stop a battle. Just to be heard, I had to freeze everyone in place."

"You can't see the whole world," Mwebe replied thoughtfully.

"No, but I can reach it through my ice. I don't know if it will take a day, or a month, or a year, but it can travel everywhere. Anywhere."

Mwebe was incredulous. "How can you be that powerful?"

"Because of all the people who added their power to mine when I had to fight the - what do your people call it? The 'Devil Bird?'"

"'The powers of many threshed o'er ages past,'" Heinrick quoted in realization.

"What about people in ships? And across the Great Sea?" Ambrelle asked.

Elsa grinned. "Will you help me reach them, Ambrelle?"

Her eyes grew wide. "How ... how could I?"

"You have already been empowering us when you take us on the water with you. You and I know what happens when that link is broken. I believe that you can help my ice travel across the water."

Ambrelle looked down thoughtfully.

"What about the birds?" Yasmina asked.

"Will you help me reach them?" Elsa replied.

Johan was grinning, too. "I will help you where the ground is too hot for your ice."

Anna huffed. "And where on earth is that, Johan? Wherever it is, buy me a ticket!"

He returned an austere stare. "There are fires burning out of control in Delavia, Princess. Sometimes, depending on the winds, I would catch a whiff. Were it not for the low clouds I would probably have seen the smoke. But I have spoken to the people who were fleeing them." He looked at each of the ones in the room. "And I suspect there are fires burning on this continent also."

"Oh," Anna mumbled.

Elsa nodded appreciatively.

"What about the trolls?" Kristoff asked quietly. "Your ice doesn't go underground, does it?"

Mwebe brightened. "I will help." He pointed upward with a gleaming grin. "I will push them up!"

Anna looked from face to face. She gave a nervous chuckle. "This is totally bizarre. You all sound like a bunch of crazies!" she said. "I mean, yeeesh, Elsa! How can you possibly believe you can even do this?!"

Elsa held her palms out in front of her, and they began to sparkle with tiny flakes of snow. In an instant, from nothing, the whole receiving room was filled with them. The flakes sparkled and dangled in place all around them. Everyone looked around in wonderment. "My power has changed, Anna, ever since those people prepared me for my battle with Ken. I don't know if I can explain, but it used to be something that flowed around me; apart from me. It would flow at my command, and sometimes, like you remember from my coronation, not under my control. It's different, now. Now, it's there all the time, carrying me like a constant flowing current; I only have to pay attention to it. That's why I can feel all the ice everywhere now, and communicate with my creations. Sometimes my power seems to have a mind of its own, doing what I want without even my bidding. Maybe it's responding to my thoughts, or maybe? - sometimes I think maybe it's even directing them." She passed her hands through the dazzling galaxy of pinpoints of light, a peaceful smile on her face. "If it wasn't true before," she said, "ever since the other magic users gave me their power, it's true now: the ice doesn't belong to me." She ran her hand down her platinum blond braid, her head slightly bowed in contemplation. "I belong to the ice." She smiled in satisfaction. "I don't have power over air, or water, or fire, or earth - I have power over ice. It's never made any sense to me before, but I see it now: the ice can destroy, and I've spent my life fearing that it would, but it can also protect." She looked up. "This is why I'm here, Anna. This is what my gift is for."

They were all staring at her. "I think that's the first time I've ever heard you call it a gift," Anna said. She sighed with pursed lips. "You really believe this, don't you?"

Elsa responded with a level gaze. "I do," she said with quiet confidence. "You've trusted me before. Can you trust me now?"

"Can we ... can we at least try this out somewhere, just to make sure you're not all crazy?"

Elsa nodded as the sparkling snowflakes dwindled into nothingness. "That's a fair request."

"Wait a minute; wait a minute," said Kristoff. "You can't just freeze the people. After all that time, there will be nothing left to us when we come out. You'll need to freeze animals, too, and the houses, or at least the food stores - something to kick-start civilization with."

Elsa felt a tension across her stomach. "I had thought of the animals, but I wasn't imagining doing all that. I hope I am able."

Heinrick was looking at a spot on the floor, frowning. "You can't exactly ask everyone's permission to do this to them."

"I don't see how I possibly could, no."

"That's going to cause problems. Look at it from their point of view," Heinrick continued. He looked up, meeting her eyes. "They're in a grey, cold world that's shriveling and dying. They already fear you are the cause. Then a wave of ice races over everything. Maybe they see it coming and have time to run, but it catches them, just the same. Maybe they only have time to cry out in fear before they are frozen. Then the ice releases them, seemingly just a moment later. The sky is blue and 'all's made new,' but the terror of what they've experienced at your hand is still with them. It will seem like you are the one who has put an end to the dreadful conditions they saw seemingly just a moment ago. It will seem like your Eternal Winter that you have chosen to roll back - for the second time. Everything they've seen, all their fear, will be laid at your feet, again. They might have been willing to forgive you once. But now you will look like a capricious, all-powerful monster, and who knows when your caprice could turn on the world yet again? If they didn't fear you before, they will be terrified of you when it's over."

Elsa tucked her hands along her sides and looked uneasily at her lap. "But if the alternative is to let everyone die, Heinrick ... when I could do something about it ... and they are already holding me at fault..." She shook her head. "I hope that you are wrong, but I've all but given up thinking better of people."

"No." Princess Yasmina spoke firmly in her high lilting accent. Her straight, free-flowing, jet black hair brushed about her shoulders as she shook her head. "There is better way, Queen Elsa." Everyone looked at her intently. "You send message first. You send ice with words, like the statue of white bird in Falster."

"Oh!" Elsa's face brightened. "Yes, you mean like the words on the base of the statue!"

"Yes!" Her dark eyes sparkled as she smiled. "We help you, like you say, with the water and the fire, but not freeze the world. Only send message."

Mwebe was incredulous. "Do you know how many languages there are in the world, Princess?"

"I'm afraid I only know the languages of the continent," Elsa said with an apologetic shrug.

Yasmina smiled. "I know languages of east. And Mwebe know languages of south, yes?" She looked at Ambrelle and Johan. "And you know languages of west, yes?"

Johan had a knowing grin. "Yes, Princess."

"From the four corners of the earth." Heinrick marveled.

"That's still not all of them," said Mwebe.

"No offence, but they're the ones that count," Heinrick replied. "They're the ones who are inclined to beat a path to Arendelle's door."

"And it will be a good test, don't you think, Anna?" Elsa said.

Anna had been staring from person to person, trying to keep up. "Yeah. Wow. Uh-huh. I think - um - I think that would cover it."

"And as I think of it," Heinrick added, "if you can successfully send this message, then you will know that you can do the next step when the time comes. And your network of ice will already be in place. The next step will be quick."

Elsa felt giddy. She sat up straight, her cerulean eyes sparkling, and clasped her hands together. "Well. Should the envoy from Francia be the first to know?"

"Heh-heh-heh-heh -" Anna chuckled nervously. "Why don't we all sleep on it for a night or two?"

"I'm not going to freeze them, Anna, I'm just going to send them a welcome. It will be a chance for Ambrelle and I to see if crossing the water with ice will work."

The group said their good-nights and broke up for the evening, leaving Elsa alone in her receiving room. She stood leaning on the backside of the sofa, looking out through the dark balcony doors at the town lights beyond. Lotus was perched on the railing just outside. His white body glowed under the illumination of the inside lights. She smiled fondly at the sight of him.

Her smile abruptly faded as she realized he was closed off from her. Lotus! What's wrong?! She took quick steps towards the balcony doors and reached for the latch.

How can you ask this of me, Mother? From the silence, the sudden flood of communication came with a thunderstorm of emotions. Panic. Desperation. Broken heartedness. Abandonment. Betrayal. A thousand years without you?

It stopped Elsa in her tracks. It hadn't even occurred to her to ask Lotus what he thought of her plan. All at once she remembered the depth of emotion Lotus had shown when he told her of his one purpose for carrying on when trapped by the black star. 'Sometimes I would see you, and that would lift my spirits. I purposed to keep flying as long as there was still a chance of seeing you again. And also so that if you were pulled in, and I could reach you, you would not perish alone.' She remembered also his self-reproach when she was nearly struck by an arrow on the way to Falster. She covered her mouth with her hands. What have I done? She flung the doors open, rushed to the railing, and gathered Lotus into her arms. "Oh, Lotus - I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry! We'll think of something, Little One." She squeezed him against her chest. "Please forgive me." Lotus' emotions were in turmoil. How like myself you are, sometimes. Tears traced the edges of her cheeks. She looked out at the city once more. Is this something I can ask of you, Great One?

Enceladus' response was immediate. Yes, Mother.

Why so?

There was a pause. Elsa perceived that he was deciding how to put it in terms she would understand.

Dragons are timeless, Mother. And you have fashioned me a dragon.

Timeless... She would have to think on that. For now, she was fascinated by the irony - he was one successful assassination effort away from flurrying into nothingness. But now was not the time to think on that. Thank you, Great One.

The next morning after breakfast, the eight of them made their way to the garden behind the castle, in front of the bench which faced the bay. Ambrelle took Elsa's hand. "Are you ready, Your Majesty?"

Elsa returned a purposeful smile and the two stepped out of their shoes onto the frigid ground. A few steps more and they were standing on the water.

Anna shuddered and pressed herself against Kristoff. "Hwooh! Makes me cold just looking at them!" she said.

As they were about to begin, a blue-grey nose came into Elsa's peripheral vision, just to Ambrelle's left. "Bubble!" Ambrelle exclaimed with delight. She placed her free hand against the far side of his neck and pulled him against her cheek. "Are you here to help us?" He tossed his head and shook his mane, spraying both of them with icy water. Ambrelle giggled fondly as Elsa used her free hand to wipe the water off her face. "Okay," she said to Elsa, "let's begin."

Elsa held out her hand and her signature snowflake glowed on the surface of the water beneath their feet. When the glow went out, it bobbed around like a raft. "No; that's not working," she said as she dispersed it. "Ambrelle, I need you to do it." Ambrelle held out her hand, and a corkscrew of water drove through the waves into the distance. She looked at Elsa helplessly.

The blue-grey nose prodded their joined hands. Ambrelle and Elsa looked at Bubble, and then at each other. "Okay," said Elsa. "Together." They held up their joined hands. Again Elsa's signature snowflake glowed beneath them, but this time it maintained a flexible shape, like white seaweed floating just below the surface of the water. Elsa smiled. The snowflake stretched larger, and then from one of its points a white tendril shot off into the distance, following the contour of the water's surface. Elsa watched it go with wonderment. As the seconds ticked by, it thickened, until it was floating like an iceberg - a tenth of it bobbing above the surface, and the rest underneath. She covered her mouth with her free hand as she chuckled. "Well look at that," she said. She could feel it, just like her ice - slowly traveling down the coast. She knew where the ships had been two days ago, but she didn't know where they were now. She focused, and the tendril split apart into multiple strands which themselves split smaller and smaller, like the veins of a leaf. Then the ice touched a ship. Beside her, Ambrelle gasped softly. The ghostly strands of ice multiplied around it, taking in its shape, its length, its depth. Elsa could feel it, just as if she was feeling a toy in her hands. Not this one. It wasn't big enough. The ice searched on. They touched other trading ships and fishing vessels, but none large enough to be the ones they were looking for. Then she found it. The ice crawled up the hulls of the pair of ships, ultimately finding the cannon bays. Definitely the right ones. The ice melted away, except for a single strand which made its way to the center of the bow of each ship and rose up into a pillar.

Welcome, distinguished emissaries of Francia.

You are in safe waters now. You may stow your cannon.

We look forward to your visit.

The Snow Queen

Elsa grinned with satisfaction as the thick white rope broke up like sand washed from the shore. She looked at Ambrelle, who was staring out to sea in slack jawed amazement.

Ambrelle looked from the sea to her free hand. She turned it over, looking at both its palm and then its back, and then flexed it twice. "That was ..." she said just above a whisper. She met Elsa's eyes. "I could feel them, Your Majesty! Like I was holding them in my hands!" Bubble nuzzled her face and she reached up to touch his cheek.

"It was a new experience for me, too," Elsa grinned.

"Did it work?" Anna called through cupped hands from the shore.

"Yes!"

"The esteemed Viscount de Chapiegne," Kai announced with a royal flourish and bow. The man who entered was wearing tight white pants, tall black boots, a highly decorated tan shirt with copious white ruffle at the neck, a sailor blue overcoat with thick gilded edging and sleeves, and a black tri-corner hat. He peered at Elsa with a bored sneer, his eyes half shut, and handed off his rapier to a member of the guard as though the present company wasn't worthy of his retaining it. Then he walked lazily to the base of the dais where he struck a pose as though standing for a portrait. A group of ten similarly dressed men of various ages filed in behind him, some wearing blue overcoats and others wearing muted red. A bespectacled older man in red withdrew a parchment and pen. The Viscount doffed his hat and gave a half bow. "Your Majesty," he said. His high tenor voice seemed perfectly suited for his nasally sing-song accent. The man with the parchment wrote down his words.

Elsa looked back from her throne on the dais, returning her own practiced disinterested gaze. She wore her signature ice dress and her crown of ice on her head. Anna sat on a less decorated throne on her right, and Heinrick stood off to her left. "Viscount," she said with a nod, "gentlemen, welcome to Arendelle. I trust your voyage was uneventful?"

"Uneventful, yes, Your Majesty, upon another cold grey sea under another cold grey sky like all the others."

Elsa pressed her lips into a line and shook her head sympathetically. "It's terrible, isn't it?"

"That it is, Your Majesty, that it is. One can't help but see the similarity to a certain week in July several years ago."

Getting right to the point, aren't we? she thought. "Oh?" She sat up as though the thought had never occurred to her. "Was there a meteor strike then, too?"

Anna snorted and quickly slapped her hand over her mouth. She cleared her throat. "Excuse me."

His eyes narrowed. "I can't say. But the 'meteor strike' you speak of," he said the words as though he didn't really believe them, "was reported to have happened in October, and here it is the middle of May. It seems rather long enough for things to have returned to normal."

"Nothing about a meteor strike is normal, Viscount, certainly not one of that size. Surely your Royal Astronomical Society has said as much."

"Indeed. There was also nothing normal about that week in July, or about having a pillar of ice appear on our bow. In fact, there are many reports from Arendelle that are far from normal. Some of them are incredible; that is to say, they lack credibility. But perhaps one of the more credible reports, particularly in light of current events, is that of the heroic self-sacrifice of one who was willing to stand against madness."

Elsa sat back with a raised eyebrow.

"You mean me?" said Anna.

"No Princess; I speak of the youngest son of the Westergaard royal family, who allowed his reputation to be destroyed for the greater good of the international community."

"Wait, what?!" barked Anna as the room chilled. "He tried to kill us to steal the Arendelle throne!"

He turned his disinterested gaze back to Elsa. "Her Majesty needs to know that there are others who are also willing to stand against madness, and their resolve and unity only grows over time."

Elsa's icy stare was enough to pin a lesser man to the wall. "I'm glad you brought that up," she said. "At the moment I have a country to lead through a disaster that has affected Arendelle more than most other countries on the continent. Our resources are dwindling, and we are facing increased unwillingness to sell us the essentials we need. This, after I toured the continent providing emergency housing. If this is not madness, I don't know what is."

He huffed with a condescending sneer. "If the ice queen wants water, why does not the ice queen make water?"

"If she could, we'd be selling it!" Anna blurted out. "Her ice and snow doesn't melt, it just flurries away!"

"Anna!" Elsa hissed, but it was too late. A smile twisted the corner of the Viscount's mouth.

"Your Majesty, I'm sure you will find the international community more willing to assist when this winter is over."

Elsa's shoulders drooped. "This isn't something I caused, Viscount, and it isn't something I can stop. If I could, don't you think I would? Do you think I would destroy my own country like this?"

"I am not the judge of another person's motives. I simply represent the interests of Francia and her allies"

"We are one of Francia's allies," she reminded him.

"Miseur," he said briskly to someone over his shoulder. He held out his hand and another of the red-clad men placed a scroll in it. With deliberate pomp the Viscount rolled the scroll open and read. "Be it known this day that Francia and her allies break all ties with the country of Arendelle and her Snow Queen, and with any who would continue to support her. These ties include but are not limited to all matters of military support, all trade, and all matters of the church." He rolled it up and returned his withering gaze to Elsa. "Signed and dated by the King of Francia, May eleventh, in this, the year of our Lord, etcetera." He handed the scroll to Kai who had approached to accept it. Kai walked it to Heinrick.

Elsa felt like she had been punched in the stomach. She maintained her professional regal exterior, but her head was hurting from the tension in her clenched jaw. "Thank you, gentlemen; that will do for now. Kai will show you to your accomodations in the castle." With Kai in the lead, the men all filed from the room.

Elsa felt queasy. She dropped her face into her hands. This was worse than she had expected. A unilateral severing of all ties to the nations around them - even Corona, which would now have to decide to whom its strongest loyalties lay. She knew what they would decide. They would have to. They couldn't afford isolation during this ongoing crisis either.

"Those - those jerks!" Anna spat, flustered. "How can they do this to us?! Elsa, why are you even letting them stay in the castle?"

"Because I - we - need time to think, Anna." Elsa felt Heinrick's warm hand on her shoulder.

"Yes, Anna," he said. "There's still time for the next part of that conversation to be rewritten."

"The question is," said Elsa morosely, "with what?"

Kai poked his head back into the throne room. He cleared his throat. "Excuse me, Your Majesty, I'm sorry to interrupt. The delegation has refused their accommodations and are returning to their ships."

Elsa looked up at Heinrick. "So much for that," she said in a thin, wavering voice.

His lips were pursed and his face grim. "Perhaps we should move up our timeline."

Elsa nodded in a bit of a daze. She reached up and put her hand on top of his. "Okay," she said, "but not in the capital. Judging by the size of what was in the water, what comes next is going to need some space."

Heinrick nodded. "Where, then?"

She smiled weakly. "Where else? The ice palace."

A/N: Does Elsa's ice melt of flurry away? In the original Frozen, Olaf was melting, but in Frozen Two he was flurrying away. The second makes more sense to me, which is why I've stuck to that in this story.