Chapter 8: Good Person
It was about a year later when the whole royal family gathered together on the Arendelle docks. Elsa was doing a good job of mashing the fabric of her skirts with her nervous hands, even as toddler Christina danced around at her feet. Just then, Kristoff and Anna came down the gangplank.
"All our things have been loaded. They're gonna cast off soon. The captain wants to sail with the tide," Kristoff informed his sister-in-law.
Elsa gazed at him fretfully. "Do you have to go?" It had not been her decision to send her sister and brother-in-law on a diplomatic mission to Corona - the Prime Minister and members of her Cabinet had suggested it. And when Anna had readily agreed to the assignment - provided Kristoff went with her - Elsa knew she couldn't really stop her family. Besides, Rapunzel was a cousin, family herself, and would take good care of them.
"We'll be fine, Elsa," Kristoff soothed, unknowingly echoing his dead father-in-law.
Elsa felt tears pool at her eyes. "I've heard that before, only to be disappointed."
Kristoff chuckled. "We are going on a completely different route, to a completely different kingdom. Besides, bad luck never strikes the same family twice now, does it?"
Elsa blinked. "Where did you hear that?"
"Nowhere. I just believe it. If I didn't, you think any of us would be here?" He made a valid point. Anna would still be frozen solid. Elsa would be dead in cold blood. Her nephew too, although in such a drastically different timeline, neither he nor his sisters would have existed.
The pair regarded each other, Kristoff still with that easy smile. Elsa chastely pecked him on the cheek, then the lips, before wrapping him in a hug. "Sail safe," she implored. Then she turned to her sister and clutched her tightly. "I love you."
Anna nodded against her. "I know. I love you too. Look after my babies?"
"On my honor," Elsa vowed. She broke away and stood aside, allowing Ilya to step forward and say her farewells, corral the kids into doing so one by one. Kristoff and Anna then boarded the boat, after quite a few kisses were bestowed on their little ones.
"Be safe!" Elsa called out as she waved, resting her head on Ilya's shoulder as they and the children watched the boat sail off towards the sunset.
When the messenger from Corona came, more than a week later, bearing a note from Rapunzel relating how the Arendelle ship had never made it to port, Elsa fell to her knees with a wail. The noise caused Ilya to come running to the study, only to break down in sobs herself.
Like with the former King and Queen decades before, the royal portrait of Princess Anna and Prince Consort Kristoff was shrouded in black. There would be no avoiding the funeral - a journey into the misty graveyard - this time for Elsa, who clothed herself in mourning garb, along with her wife, nieces and nephew. The three children stood solemnly, Christina whimpering. The baby was still too little to understand; poor Elsabeth and Vladimir understood all too well, though they were far too young to have to.
Elsa and Ilya returned to the palace and morosely put the children to bed in the nursery. The Queen would have fled from the room the moment the bedclothes were turned down, but Elsabeth asked for a lullaby so sweetly that Auntie could not find it in her heart to refuse her.
And so, Elsa began to sing the song that her mom - the Queen Mother - had sung to her as a child, and sung to Anna after her. "Tender shepherd, tender shepherd, let me help you count your sheep. One in the meadow, two in the garden, three in the nursery fast asleep. Tender shepherd, tender shepherd, let me help you count your sheep. One, say your prayers and two, close your eyes and three, safe and happily fall asleep... Fall a-" She couldn't finish, finally fleeing from the room in tears. Poor Ilya was left to turn out the light, murmur sweet nothings to the babies who were now deeply distressed that Auntie Elsa was in such a state.
Elsa and Ilya prepared the bed they shared in silence. The night after their first wedding, they had made quiet, unwieldy love in Elsa's private chambers in the ice palace. After their second wedding, on a night very similar in tone to this one, the uncertainty of Vladimir's condition had left them with no thought about doing anything at all. Wife and wife simply resolved to hold each other in their bed and find some way (likely fruitless) of slipping into dreams. After a time, Ilya began to caress and press light kisses into Elsa's skin.
Elsa knew well what her wife's mouth could do to her, the heights it could bring her to. True bliss came when Ilya would use her hands and her mouth to make Elsa's body sing. But tonight, Ilya's gentle caresses had absolutely no effect. Finally, she gave up, and the couple lay side by side in silence.
"Am I a good person?" Elsa asked to the ceiling. The mattress shifted as Ilya rolled over, facing her with a concerned frown. The Queen Consort was quiet for a moment.
"You're hesitating..." Elsa's voice was tinged with fear.
"I know the answer. What I can't fathom is why you feel the need to ask that question at all," Ilya stared.
Elsa's features softened, but it was small comfort. "Oh, I don't know," she murmured bitterly. "Half of my family has been lost at sea, and I let them go! Wouldn't that make you feel like a bad person too? And what about the children?"
Ilya blinked. "What about them? Anna and Kristoff entrusted them to us. To you."
"They didn't exactly say that," Elsa nitpicked.
"I didn't think they had to! And Anna and Kristoff didn't think they had to either! We're family, all of us - if we break apart, we have nothing left!" Ilya chided. "Right now, we raise Elsabeth, Vladimir and Christina the way that Anna and Kristoff would have wanted. And that is what they would have wanted." Ilya sighed. "You are the most wonderful person I've ever known, my love. And also the strongest. If you were neither, do you think you'd be here right now? I think not."
Elsa huffed out a breath of her own. "Why do you always have to be right?"
"I'm not always right. Just practical."
"Then why did you ask the question?" Elsa queried, almost amused.
"Because I wasn't the one who needed to hear the answer. You were."
When Prime Minister Cameron called for a meeting in the palace Treaty Room, unexpectedly one Saturday morning about two months after Anna and Kristoff's deaths, Elsa didn't feel any concern. At least until the Prime Minister stipulated that the Queen bring her wife and her sister's children with them.
When the royal family arrived in the Treaty Room, they found the whole of Elsa's Cabinet waiting for them. The Prime Minister rose from his seat to address the room. "Your Majesties, the Cabinet and I have been talking, going over the wills for the Princess and Prince Consort, and... in the absence of express wishes as to the matter of guardianship... we feel it would be best for the little prince and princesses to be sent to the local orphanage."
Elsa's jaw dropped. "No," she heard Ilya whisper behind her. All three children promptly burst into tears and burrowed themselves into the fold of Aunt Elsa's dress, as if that might shield them.
"No," Elsa suddenly found her voice, and it was much stronger than her wife's.
The Prime Minister blinked. "I beg your pardon, Your Majesty?"
"Prime Minister, you will not be taking my sister's babies anywhere. I am the Queen of Arendelle, and this concerns my family. And I know the ways of my sister's heart. Her wishes were for her children to stay with me. And if you try and deny me that, I will freeze this entire land again to Kingdom Come!" Before she could restrain herself, a gust of wind flew through the room, and flurries of snow and frost blanketed the floors and the walls. The Prime Minister and some other Cabinet members attempted to advance, pleading with their Queen to see reason, but Elsa barked, "The next person who takes another step will be frozen where they stand!" Everyone froze - metaphorically speaking. "My sister's babies will stay with me until they are grown. Are we clear?" No answer. "I am the Queen, and I asked you if we're clear!"
There was much mumbling that followed, acquiescing to the Queen's demand. Elsa hugged her three charges close, resolute in her vow that they would never be taken out of her sight ever.