So.
Two updates in a week! What?!
Originally this chapter was the second half of the last chapter, so if it's a little disjointed, that would be why. Let's hope that isn't the case. If it is - eep! - I'm sorry.
Thanks again for all the reviews, PMs and your all-around awesomeness. It's so very much appreciated.
Lots of love,
ssg.x.
CHAPTER 22
ALWAYS, EVER, ONLY
Kristoff looked out one of the tiny windows from inside the dank cellar he and Anna had been escorted to (or dragged to, in Anna's case). There were about half a dozen guards keeping watch over the small house they'd been stashed in. Two guards stood by the cellar door, and another two paced in front of the two windows. The latter were there for Anna's benefit – Kristoff was far too large to even think about trying to crawl through one of the windows, but Anna was just the right size and as slippery as an eel. He wouldn't put it past her to make an attempt to escape, and neither had Elsa, which is why they were locked up in this cellar in the first place.
Anna was sitting in the corner of the cellar on a large vat of fermenting cider. Both her hands were occupied with holding up a hank of yarn to feed to Gerda's knitting project – a blanket for her brother's new grandson. Kristoff was silently grateful that Gerda had thought to bring along something for the two of them to occupy their hands with. They chatted quietly with each other, and he even heard Anna laugh a couple of times.
"Maybe I'll be making a blanket like this for your little one soon," Gerda said quietly to her. Kristoff turned his head quickly to look at them, blushing furiously. Anna did the same.
"So I still don't see any snow," Kristoff said, desperately wanting to change the subject. "Just soldiers' feet. That's a good thing, isn't it?"
"I guess," Anna said softly. "Do you think they're still talking? I feel like we've been down here forever."
"We've barely been down here a couple of hours. At least it's cozy. And we've got everything we need down here. Cider…preserves…um…"
"Yarn," Gerda called out, holding up her knitting needles.
"Yarn," Kristoff said.
"A reindeer," Anna said flatly, gesturing towards Sven sleeping soundly on the ground between them, surrounded by several empty preserve jars like a drunk passed out on a tavern floor. "What happens when he has to…you know?"
"Poop?" Gerda offered, giggling.
Kristoff looked at Anna, jerking a thumb towards the older woman. "Did she get into the cider?"
"Poop!" the older woman cackled.
"What else is there to do?" Anna asked grumpily. "Lead a sing-along? I'm not in the mood for singing. Singing just reminds me of him. Then I think about what he did, and what he almost did, and then I want to figure out a way to get out of here so I can march over to that palace, throw the doors open and run one of Gerda's knitting needles right through his…unf!" Anna growled, violently stabbing at the air in front of her.
Kristoff leaned against the wall and watched her with amusement. He loved when she got her back up this way, even if it made it a little harder to keep her from acting impulsively – like, say, barreling through half a dozen armed soldiers while brandishing a knitting needle.
"I know you don't want to talk about him, but do you think maybe there's a teensy, tiny little mystery we should be trying to solve?" Kristoff asked.
Anna sighed. "I don't know how or why he suddenly has those powers. I can only guess based on that brand new white streak he's sporting that someone's frozen his heart. Maybe he attacked Elsa and that's how she hurt her head. Then in retaliation she froze his heart. Or at least the big, empty, black hole where one should have been," Anna snapped.
"But that didn't happen to you, did it? I mean when your heart was frozen you just got weaker and weaker…" Kristoff didn't like remembering it. He'd never been so scared or so sad in his life, and that included when he almost slipped off the side of that cliff after watching his beloved, freshly-lacquered sled explode into flames on the rocks below.
Anna held her hands out to Gerda who unwound another couple of feet of yarn to work with. "No, it didn't. Well, sort of. I remember the floors, the walls and all the windows freezing, and all these icicles just growing out of everywhere like tree branches. All the ice was following me while I ran through the halls to get to you, trying to trap me. It was like the ice knew I was trying to find you."
"We found each other," Kristoff said in a rare moment of speaking his heart in front of someone other than Anna. Anna smiled shyly. Gerda burst into another fit of giggles.
"Maybe it wasn't Elsa, then. Maybe he…I don't know. Maybe he went to see a witch or a sorcerer, or took a book of spells out of the library. Or maybe -"
"No, no." Anna shook her head. "I'm pretty sure it has something to do with Elsa. Why else would he want to see her? If he wanted to exact some sort of revenge on Elsa, the best way for him to do it would be to attack us. Us ordinaries can't protect ourselves. Hans is a sadist and he doesn't have to hide who he really is anymore. Everyone knows who he is. There's nothing keeping him from turning Arendelle into Pompeii. Except, you know, colder." Anna shuddered. "Ugh. His thought process is starting to make sense to me. If this was a horror novel, right now would be the time you'd need to start waving crosses around and sprinkling me with holy water."
"What do you suppose he wants to talk to Elsa about?" Kristoff asked. "I mean if he's just here to talk like you said."
Anna shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. What I want to know is how he managed to have such amazing control over his powers. He walked across the fjord without freezing the entire thing through. When Elsa crossed the fjord she froze all of Arendelle." Her eyes widened, "Hey! Do you think we could ask Grand Pabbie about this?"
Kristoff crossed his arms. "Right. Over Hans' dead body."
"Don't you mean your dead body?" Anna smirked.
"No. Over Hans' dead body. Grand Pabbie would insist on examining Hans himself, and there's no way I'd lead the guy you just referred to as a sadist right to him. You're not the only one with family to protect, you know."
Anna frowned, looking disappointed. "You're right. Geez, I hate him. And I hate whoever's letting him run around free after everything he did to us."
Kristoff turned back to stare out the window and Anna went back to watching Gerda knit surprisingly well for a woman buzzed on cider. For a while the only sounds that could be heard in the cellar were the clicking of the knitting needles and Sven's snoring.
"Okay, don't kill me, but is there even the slightest chance that Elsa…"
"If you say what I think you're going to say," Anna said coolly, "then I can't guarantee I won't try to strangle you with this yarn."
"So you have thought about it," Kristoff replied.
Anna sighed. "Yes, I entertained the idea for a whole half a second. Hans is gorgeous and charismatic, but less so since trying to chop my sister's head off. That bump on her head would have had to completely wipe out her memory. Or that influenza epidemic in the Southern Isles actually just turned out to be an outbreak of stupid."
"So he didn't give any hints during your little romantic reunion as to what he wanted to see her about?"
"No," Anna said carefully, confused by his less than subtle tone of sarcasm. "Well, I mean he did ask how she was, which I kind of thought was a little weird. But maybe he was just making conversation."
"Making conversation?" Kristoff wouldn't look at her. "Were you leading him to Elsa or were you out for a midnight stroll?"
Anna grinned.
"Kristoff?"
"Hm," he grunted.
Anna stood and walked towards him, stepping over one of Sven's antlers and almost taking Gerda's knitting project with her.
"You wouldn't happen to be jealous, would you?" she teased.
"Pfft. No." Kristoff snorted. "Jealous of what?"
"Well, something's bothering you." Anna said, slinking around him to get a better look at his face. Kristoff's eyes flit in her direction then quickly went back to looking out the window. "Come on, Kristoff. Those boots out there can't possibly be that interesting. Is this about Hans?"
Kristoff didn't answer. Anna laughed.
"Oh, my God! This is about Hans!"
"You talk about him all the time!" Kristoff finally exploded.
"You were the one who brought him up! Remember the whole we-have-a-mystery-to-solve thing? And I do not talk about him all the time," Anna replied indignantly. "And the few times I have talked about him, I've also mentioned what a crazy freak he is."
"And how handsome he is, and how charming he is, and that other word you used…charismatic. You talk about how charismatic he is," Kristoff muttered, still staring out the window.
"Yes, he's all those things. But - hello? - Crazy freak?" she reiterated.
"I'm the complete opposite of that guy. I'm not handsome, I'm not charming, and I'm not that other thing. Charismatic. I'm not charismatic," Kristoff said gloomily.
"Technically charismatic and charming mean the same thi—"
"Great. Thanks."
"Oh, come on, Kristoff!" Anna noticed the yarn hanging from the hank was starting to get tangled up in one of Sven's antlers, but without any free hands, she was sort of at the mercy of both the sleeping reindeer's movements and gravity. "You know I think you're all of those things, save the crazy freak part. You're very handsome –"
"My nose is too big –"
"And charming –"
"..and I spat on you –"
"And you're the only person in the universe I'd want to share a blanket knit by a drunk lady-in-waiting with," Anna said, holding her yarn-wrapped hands up. Kristoff smiled.
"You," Anna said, standing on the tips of her toes and brushing her nose against his. "Just you. Always you. Ever you."
"Only you," Kristoff murmured, leaning over to kiss her. "...you crazy freak."
oooOOOOooo
"You have nothing to be ashamed of, Hans."
Elsa was still cradling a despondent Hans against her chest. His whole body was trembling, like every bad memory of every bad thing that had ever happened to him or because of him was running through his head all at once. "Your parents' sins aren't yours," she said gently. "They turned your brothers against you to protect themselves. That doesn't excuse your brothers from their behaviour, and it doesn't excuse you from yours, but –"
What is wrong with you? This isn't the time to bring up that day on the fjord.
I really am terrible at this, she thought miserably.
He still hadn't spoken a word, and she wondered if she should keep talking or shut up already and just keep holding on to him.
"Whose wife…?" she asked awkwardly, trying to get away from the subject of Hans' previous crimes.
"Nikolaj, my oldest brother. He was named after my grandfather. The one who saved me. The one who loved me."
I love you, she wanted to tell him.
"Grandfather...he threatened my father. He was ready to disown him, to expose him. Sometimes I wish he had – I wonder if I was worth it. My life cost two others theirs. It very nearly cost you yours, too."
Elsa had been stroking his hair, but she stopped to wave away the ice still linking his wrists together. "That's a horrible way of looking at it, Hans," she said.
"It's true, isn't it?" he bit back, rubbing his wrists.
"No, it isn't," Elsa insisted, frustrated. Not with Hans himself, but with the mess his family had made of him. "Your grandfather saved your life because he loved you. He loved you long before he met you. He knew your life was a life worth saving before you even began living it."
Hans said nothing – simply strengthened his hold on her, spreading his fingers wide so he could touch as much of her as possible in a single embrace.
"Do you know how Cilia…?"
"That I don't know. She may have died in childbirth, she may have been sick, or maybe my parents did away with her as they'd done with Hansa…I just know that my mother died not long after I was born, and that Nikolaj lived life as a widower for some time before he remarried at my parents' insistence. Grandfather told me Nikolaj was never the same after Cilia passed. He never forgave himself for not being with her when she died. He'd been away for over a year serving in the SOK, and sometimes I wonder how different things might have turned out had he been around. Maybe my father wouldn't have been able to get anywhere near Cilia, or maybe it would have all been covered up and Nikolaj would have ended up raising me as his own son without ever being the wiser," Hans said wistfully. "My brother loves his children. Maybe I could have grown up being loved that way, too."
"Your name…" Elsa started.
"Cilia gave me my name. Alma told me that she and Enoch were the ones to give me my name to remind me where I came from, and that I was only a member of the family because she and my father allowed me to be. But Grandfather told me that it was my mother who gave me the name – after Hansa of course, but for entirely different reasons. Cilia wanted to honour Hansa's memory when no one else would," he explained, sounding so very tired.
This wasn't at all how Elsa wanted to spend her last visit with him.
It would be their last visit, wouldn't it?
Now was not the time to be thinking about that. There was a good chance she'd start to cry, and she refused to cry while Hans looked like he was on the brink of doing the same again.
"None of your brothers know about Cilia?"
"No," Hans replied, his voice quivering lightly. "The only person who knows is Alma, and even she doesn't know the whole story. She has no idea that Cilia was raped. My dear father yanked out the ol' 'she seduced me because she just couldn't help herself' card from his bag of tricks. I've kept that significant detail to myself to give me a little leverage over my father." Hans glanced up at Elsa. She stared back at him silently.
"You're thinking how repugnant it is of me to use my mother's rape as a means of keeping my father in line, aren't you?" he said, shrugging out of her arms and taking back his own.
Elsa shook her head. "No," she answered honestly. "That would be looking at things too simply. You've done what you've needed to do to survive. How could I fault you for that?"
Hans' face split into a smile. "I guess you can't. You know, maybe you could also see fit to forgive me for –"
Elsa cut him off, recognizing his need for a change of subject. "Yeah, no. That isn't going to happen. You were surviving perfectly fine without a crown on your head or a throne under your a—"
"Goodness, what is it with Arendelle women and that word?" Hans asked, grinning.
"Funny how we only ever seem to use it around you," Elsa replied, touching his chin affectionately.
Hans grabbed her hands and pulled her to her feet.
"Listen, I feel like we could be making better use of our time together. And I really need to take a bit of a break from talking about the Westergård Family Freak Show. So please, let's not think for a little while."
Elsa bit her lip, not sure it was a good idea when she still had so many more questions. Not to mention they still hadn't sorted out what was going to happen once their little meeting was over. "Well...Maybe just for a little while. We still have a lot to discuss."
She knew she should have at least left him long enough to let Kai or the guards know she had things under control, but she didn't want to lose any time with Hans. She was being so selfish. Loving him was making her selfish. What kind of a ruler puts her own happiness before that of her people? She'd already let them down once when she ran away to the North Mountain.
No, she definitely couldn't do this aga –
A ball of snow struck the side of her head. Her eyes narrowed and she turned to look at Hans who was holding his hand out palm-up, already summoning his powers to conjure a second snowball. He smiled smugly.
"Oh, please," she muttered, rolling her eyes. "Very well, then. Get ready to get knocked on your a—"
Another snowball hit her in the head. She glared at him.
"Less stall, more ball," Hans ordered.
Elsa smiled mischievously. "Fine. Let's do this."
