A/N - I can't find the exact review (Maybe i imagined it) but I'm certain someone asked me to do a one-shot looking into that living room scene where Hans reveals to Anna that he is in fact the villain.
I've been super slow with updates lately, sorry! Believe me I'm trying, my writing is going nowhere but my brain is going to overdrive trying to think of how to continue each of my fics. Sadly suffering from a very long case of writers block.
Oh Anna, if only there was someone out there who loved you.
She was already wounded. Yet here he stood, so proudly and so menacingly smirking with a gun to her head, and he was about to pull the trigger. And that's what made it worse, how simple it could have been. A bucket of water was killing the spirit inside her, and extinguishing her life force. There wasn't a blade or bullet, no he would not spare her the suffering. The venom that lingered on the tip of his tongue was a guttural punch that kept her down. She had - mere hours before - climbed the North Mountain with no experience. The love she had been given was being savaged from her in a cruel twist of events. Her heart was on the floor, gasping for revival. Her parents, Elsa, and now Hans. She needed someone to love her. It was the worst kind of suffering.
A million questions were circling her brain like a vultures waiting to hunt their deceased prey. She was, at this moment in time, the roadkill that was about to be torn apart, a quiet haunting and no comprehension.
His twelve brothers.
Was it that he had so much practise in getting his way that she was being led to certain doom? How many others had suffered at his hands?
"You said you did." She stuttered, backtracking over the days previous events. Maybe he would stop. Maybe he would realise this wasn't who he was meant to be. Love, well was simple. It could be found in three words encompassed in one breath. She loved Elsa through everything. She still loved her now. Love was the lifeboat that had saved her through the torrential storm on the castle's darkest day. It would survive now. She was waiting for that lifeline, and somehow, even though he was standing before her, it hadn't yet reached her.
Or was it that even still with his many opportunities for social interactions, that he was failing? His twelve brothers were nowhere to be found, he had come to Arendelle alone, what was the reason for that? Was this a sloppy attempt of configuring some kind of status that everyone but she had been able to see? How excited he was to bring his brothers into the palace, perhaps as an I told you so moment. Had Elsa seen it? Perhaps so. You can't marry a man you just met. How much of this was her fault? Was she really that dumb to let a desperate man thirsting for power get the better of her?
And then he shut the curtains, his performance reaching its interval. It was just them, no audience. "As thirteenth to the throne..." Unlucky thirteen. Thirteen years she and Elsa had been locked away in the castle. Maybe it had been staring at her in the face all along. Elsa had told her outright, she was warned. "You were willing to marry me just like that." She felt sick. Elsa had told her, even Kristoff had. Everyone around her had seen it, and yet she didn't.
The room was growing significantly colder, the curse taking so much of herself away. Life was greedy, and it was relentless. The next best thing to steal from her after her sister was her spirit. If she didn't have her optimism, she had nothing. If she didn't have her bravery, she had nothing. Here she was, actively fighting for both. They were slipping from her grasp, and he was watching it happen with pride. He seemed so calm, every movement premeditated, every thought was calculated. She hadn't seen it coming.
He casually strolled around the living room as he recited his intent to kill her sister. "But then she doomed herself..." No... things weren't over for Elsa. She was not doomed. Anna wouldn't let her be...
Like a rock in her throat, the sentence had trouble going down. She felt nauseous when it finally dropped.
Was Elsa dead? Was this some kind of confession?
He was indeed a very sick individual, now Anna was seeing his desperation come to light. How he was clawing his way to some kind of power. He was drunk on the illusion that anyone would want him there. His brothers, maybe they sensed this too. Maybe they had caused this. Outcast by your own family? Having three of them pretend he was invisible for two years. Anna wanted to not be able to imagine it. But she did.. she knew it all too well. Elsa had done the same, for thirteen years - and not as a joke. But this...this absurd, harmful reaction... no, she couldn't imagine reaching that point.
He had dreamed of finding his own place, and Anna only dreamt of finally joining Elsa's.
He had said everything she wanted to hear.
None of the questions she was asking herself were leading her anywhere. She had to face what was right in front of her. Raising her chin, she looked into his eyes, and saw before her a very very sick man. You can't make sense of crazy.
".. and you were dumb enough to go after her." She had spent her whole life chasing Elsa, and never for one second did she regret it. He embodied everything that Anna feared out there, when her dreams of a free future turned into nightmares, it was stuff like this that kept her up at night. She told herself it was irrational, it was simply her mind trying to subdue her back to reality, to gently ease her back into the Castle rather than letting her fall hard. It was rare though, and so it stuck out. Still, she followed her hearts majority, her excitement to see what was beyond the gates never dulled. She didn't forget though, the fear that lingered in the back of her mind that her dreams may simply be too good to be true.
"All that's left now is to kill Elsa, and bring back summer."
She wasn't dead.
Hope lives.
"You're no match for Elsa." She warned. He knelt down to the ground and they were glaring at each other, sizing each other up. She hated his warm breath touching the tip of her nose. She had seen it, the surrounding water of Arendelle freeze at the slightest contact with the Queen. How quickly she made it up the mountain, how tall and beautiful the castle she built herself was. The entirety of Arendelle had drastically changed upon Elsa's arrival. This was even before Marshmallow became a new line of defence. One man, against all that? Against Elsa? He stood no chance.
"No, you're no match for Elsa." Perhaps not. That was irrelevant. Anna didn't fear Elsa, she had no reason to. She would never bring harm on her. "I, on the other hand, will be the hero that saves Arendelle from destruction." He says proudly as he's already tearing down the infrastructure of history. Ripping the monarchy apart piece by piece, he is smiling, and digging his finger nails into her chin.
"You won't get away with this." She is warning him again, she is certain now, this castle will not house him. Elsa will not stand for it. The people of Arendelle wont stand for it either, even if he did make it he wouldn't last long. Even if she didn't live to see it. She had to believe it.
"I already have." He shrugs his shoulder and smirks, leaving her behind.
There is nothing more dangerous than a humiliated man. His never ending list of names now growing beyond the castle, casting every person in his way as an object to be moved out of the away. He had so much to prove, and nobody was listening. Not until Anna. Not until now. His incautious scheming, and everything had fallen into place for him. Inserting himself as a stand in for Anna whilst she ventured the mountain. He began the first act of creating a character that all of Arendelle would see, the man who handed out blankets and openly expressed concern for the princess. It was only ever for himself. If he were caught, the witness count would be damning. But he did not seem afraid. A frozen summer. A "dangerous" queen. No murderer would ever be so lucky. He was enjoying it, basking in every second of this rare opportunity as he let the perfect ending fall into place.
The door locks, and she - once again - is stuck on the other side. It is all too reminiscent of the days she sat by Elsa, pleading for her to answer. "Please, somebody help." She whimpers. Nobody could hear her. Elsa never heard her.
The cold strikes her, bringing her further to the ground. Her grave has been dug and she is being lowered into it. How fitting it would be for her to lose her life here. Freezing to death, rigor mortis, one way or another she would be found just as she lived. Thirteen years would turn into eternity in just one final breath. This was her nightmare. If Elsa were to live, she wouldn't have to wonder what the other side of the door looked like. She wasn't meant to see her this way. There was still so much to tell her, so much she wanted to know. She still hadn't had that hug she had been longing for all these years.
She imagined Elsa valiantly breaking down the locked door, she would carry her through the castle to the sun, where Elsa would reveal she had brought back summer and that all was okay. True love, they shared that. Elsa loved her. Maybe now she would be the one to open the door. Maybe now she would answer Anna's calls.
Her fear was keeping her alive. The trembling exuted just enough heat to keep her going. She had to keep going. This couldn't be it.