So.
2016 is here and I hope you're happy to see it. If not, I hope you're taking good care of yourself and that the new year will eventually bring about good things for you.
This chapter was supposed to be twice as long, but when I saw the first half of the chapter and the intro of the second half of the chapter together, it just didn't feel right. Maybe you'll see what I mean when I post what is now going to be the next chapter (which will be up in the next couple of days). In the meantime, I hope you enjoy what I have posted so far. Thank you as always for taking the time to read Spun. It really does mean so much to me.
ssg.x.
CHAPTER 31
SAFE IN A CASKET OF YOUR SELFISHNESS
"I'm trying to keep you safe."
"Then you've learned nothing from your parents' mistakes," Hans said plainly. "You've locked me up the same way your parents locked you up. They weren't trying to keep you safe, Elsa – they were trying to keep the world safe from you. And now you're doing the same thing - except you're not trying to keep the world safe from me, despite how many times you've no doubt tried to convince yourself otherwise. You're trying to keep yourself safe from me."
Elsa shook her head. "You have no idea what you're talking about. You're here, aren't you? I brought you here. I wanted you near me."
Hans snorted dismissively. "You didn't bring me here. I brought me here. I wanted to be near you."
Elsa's eyes narrowed at him suspiciously. "What do you mean 'I brought me here'? I brought you here because you were so badly injured that…" She paused, suddenly feeling so incredibly stupid.
His hands…
She reached out to touch him, but he took several steps back and turned away. Not before she saw the tears balancing in the corners of his eyes, though. He shook his head and the tears fell away as twinkling infant snowflakes.
"Is that why you didn't try to escape from those shackles? Were you waiting for me to…?"
"You said you wouldn't forget about me – you couldn't forget about me," he muttered, with his back still turned to her. "Days turned into weeks, and –"
"Hans, are you insane? Some of the damage those casings did to your hands could be permanent! You must have been in so much pain!"
He shrugged his shoulders. "After a while, I barely noticed it."
Elsa closed the distance between them, drawing her arms around his waist and resting her cheek against his back. His body stiffened.
"You're lying," she said softly.
"I'm too tired to climb out of my box today," came his reply.
Elsa ignored that. Instead, she squeezed him tighter. "Moments ago you accused me of not loving you, but you didn't destroy those casings because you knew that seeing you hurt would hurt me. You knew I'd want to get you as far away from that prison as possible. You knew I'd bring you here." She placed her hands over his bandaged ones. "Your plan wouldn't have worked if I didn't love you, Hans."
Hans loosened himself from her hold on him. "My plan didn't work. I didn't want to be 'as far away from that prison as possible'. I wanted to be closer to you. And you've made it perfectly clear that this," he said, gesturing at the space between them, "—is as close as I get."
"If memory serves me correctly, we were much closer than this only less than an hour ago," Elsa said, arching her eyebrow and trying her very best to look kittenish. Hans was clearly not in the mood for her attempts at flirting. She frowned, starting to feel a little queasy.
"Maybe I wasn't trying to punish you," he said quietly, more to himself than to her. "Maybe I was trying to punish myself."
"For what?" Elsa asked weakly.
Hans didn't speak for the longest time, and the silence gave Elsa too much time to look at him, take in every detail of him, and to decide that she couldn't let him go. She could never let him go.
What am I saying? What does that mean?
"I thought you'd forgiven me for not seeing you sooner. I thought everything was okay."
"For a little while I thought everything was going to be okay, too." When his eyes settled on hers again, she felt like a hand was closing around her throat. "You wanted me dead," he whispered. The stone mask he wore slipped just the tiniest bit. More tears waited behind it.
Elsa shook her head, "I didn't. That's not at all what I said."
"I tricked my parents into allowing me to come here, convinced them to delay my execution. I travelled for days, walked miles across frozen waters, praying to the moon, the stars…praying to anything skyward that you'd agree to see me when I arrived because your life mattered to me. It mattered to me more than my own. It still does – "
"Then stay," Elsa pleaded. "Please stay. I can't…"
She wanted to tell him that, in that moment, she was convinced that if he left for good, she'd stop breathing. She started to feel weak, as though the very life he claimed to have cherished so was slowly bleeding away through the tips of her fingers. She reached out for him again, wanting him to take her hands, to stop the bleeding – but he couldn't even if he wanted to, she thought, looking at his bandages as another wave of guilt sent her stomach roiling.
Hans pulled his shoulders back, standing taller and straighter than he had in a long time. "Forgive me, then."
Elsa's brows knitted together. Her mouth suddenly went dry. He was challenging her. He knew she wasn't ready to forgive him, but he was going to force her hand anyway.
"I…I don't know if – "
"You continue to maintain that outside forces are what's keeping us apart, but you're lying to yourself, and now you're lying to me, too." Hans said steadily, despite the very subtle shaking of his bottom lip. "It isn't like I don't deserve it. Like you've reminded me so many times in the past – I'm almost incapable of telling the truth. But I don't want you to become me, and if you keep up with this charade, you'll lose everything just as I have. I love you too much to let that happen, Your Grace."
Elsa's hand went to her heart, pressed against it to be sure it was still beating. "Hans, I don't underst— "
"You're the force that's keeping us apart. You're the most powerful person I've ever known. Your strength is positively breathtaking, and I look at you sometimes and wonder how you could possibly want to waste even an ounce of that strength on keeping me here. I'm not worth this struggle, Elsa."
She wanted to tell him he was wrong, but before she could speak the words, he continued.
"The thing is, I know I'm not worth the struggle. You know it, too, but you're determined to remain blind to it because it's easier than admitting that you're ashamed of your feelings for me. That is what is keeping us apart, and that is what keeps me locked up in this room."
"I'm not ashamed of my feelings for you! God, how can you even say that to me?" Elsa asked hoarsely.
Hans shrugged his shoulders. "Then forgive me."
Despite the air of nonchalance he was working so hard to put forward, Elsa could practically taste the waves of fear rolling off his body. He doesn't want to be right, she thought. She took that as a sign that there was still hope.
There's still a chance I can convince him to stay.
Three words. If she could say them aloud, she could prove him wrong. More than that – she could save them both from a future apart. Saying "I love you" came easily, though she hadn't realized it at the time. Her tongue, mind and heart were perfectly aligned that day. But how can I for—
"I love you," she said feebly, knowing those weren't the three words he was waiting for.
"Tell me you forgive me," he said again. "It's only the first step, but it's the only first step. If you can't forgive me, there's no future here."
Elsa wrapped her arms around herself. She was shivering. The white feather beneath her breast pressed against her heart like a cold blade – a kind of cold she couldn't ever remember feeling before. She stood before him now as simply Elsa – not the ruler of a country, not the sister of the woman he'd betrayed and left for dead. She couldn't hide behind her responsibilities as queen, her court's expectations, or Anna's heartbreak. This was between his heart and hers.
Just say the words so you can buy yourself some time. You'll come to mean them some day. He needs something to hold onto. Give him something to hold onto.
Elsa brought her arms gently down to her sides. She looked into his eyes, trying to tap into that strength Hans had referred to earlier. She wondered if she looked as scared as she felt.
"I forgive you, Hans."
Her whole body trembled as she spoke, knowing how much was at stake. Hans cocked his head to one side, eyes narrowing.
"Liar," he replied hoarsely, looking crestfallen.
"I…I'm not lying," she whispered earnestly. "I do. I forgive you."
Hans nodded, and she thought for one delusional second that he believed the lie this time. He closed his eyes and waved one of his hands limply in her direction. When he opened his eyes again, he stared past her. She turned, a flurry of snow temporarily blinding her. When it settled, her heart leapt to her throat and blood-red panic swelled and glowed across already ice-coated walls.
"What about him?" Hans asked.
Elsa gaped at the life-sized ice sculpture of Hans in his military great coat, sword held high over his head, a twisted grin on his face. Her back had been to him that day on the fjord. She remembered thinking it was a blessing that she hadn't seen his face seconds before he attempted to slaughter her. Elsa had wondered once or twice since then if she'd have still been able to fall in love with Hans had she been facing him that day, had seen the look in his eyes.
No, she thought sorrowfully. Never. I could never have fallen in love with that.
It was the hardest thing she ever had to admit to herself.
"Go ahead," Hans urged.
Elsa swayed where she stood, arms across her abdomen. She was sure she was only seconds away from throwing up, yet she found she couldn't look away from the ice sculpture.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked, her voice crackling in her throat.
"I'm trying to get you to see some sense. If you can still look me in the eye right now and tell me you forgive me, I'll stay for as long as you want me to."
Elsa shook her head. "You know I can't."
When she turned her attention back to Hans, her Hans, he was smiling sadly. She felt the freeze tightening painfully around her bones like barbed wire. She threw an arm out to the side, and the sculpture crumbled into a harmless pile of ice shavings.
"You also know I love you. You also know I'm queen of this country, and that I can do anything I want to do."
"All evidence points to the contrary," Hans cut in quietly. Elsa continued without pause despite the painful sting of truth to his words.
"And you also know that you're a prisoner of Arendelle," she said. "And that I can keep you here as long as I choose to."
The muscles in Hans' jaw visibly tightened. The mask he'd been wearing struck the floor between their feet with a thud and a crack. She'd finally managed to catch him off guard.
"You're not going anywhere, Prince Hans. I'm not letting you go, with or without my forgiveness. My heart may be yours, but my will is still my own."
Before Elsa could open the doors to leave, Hans called out, "You know, of course, that I'll be doing everything within my power to escape, no matter what or who gets in my way."
"Try it," Elsa replied coldly before slamming the doors behind her.
As she walked away, a flurry whirling around her foggy head and the aching ribs that vibrated with the excruciating thrumming of her heart, she whispered through clenched teeth, "Why can't you see that I'm doing this for your own good?"
She ignored the voice in her head that whispered back, "His good or yours?"
