Chapter 3: Use My Body

Elsa found her brother-in-law in the stables early the next morning, serving Sven his breakfast. The Queen leaned against the stalls for a moment and just watched him work. Kristoff worked himself hard, and he had never had an easy life, growing up in the mountains as he did.

When Kristoff saw her, he smiled. "Good morning, Your Majesty. Sleep well?"

"Better, yes, thank you." Elsa nodded. "I, um... I was hoping you and Anna would accompany me on a visit today?"

"Of course," Kristoff agreed. "Where to? The villages?"

"The North Mountain. Well, just below it. I was hoping we could visit your family."

Kristoff quirked an eyebrow as he filled a bucket with Sven's carrots, surprised. "Really? They'll be so thrilled!" he grinned. "Like Christmas has come early! I gotta tell Anna!" And hugging her, he raced away back towards the castle. Elsa watched him go, biting her lip. She only hoped that he and Anna would understand the real reason for their visit when they got there.

The royal family took Kristoff's sled up the mountain. Olaf had insisted that he tag along, despite Elsa's reluctance. But when they magical snowman had looked like he was going to literally melt into a puddle in tears, the Queen didn't have the heart to say No.

Kristoff's troll family was overjoyed to see him, and Bulda predictably doted on Anna. The family interactions were a little overbearing, but Anna had learned to take it all in stride. Elsa accepted Grand Pabbie's hand in greeting. "Your Majesty."

"Grand Pabbie. Remember what we discussed?"

Kristoff and Anna heard this even over all the clamor. "Discussed what?"

Elsa straightened her shoulders and prepared to tell the truth. "I visited Grand Pabbie last night. He believes that Anna is infertile due to my freezing her heart."

Kristoff and Anna's mouths simultaneously fell open.

"I'm sorry I kept this from you," Elsa apologized. "But I have been so worried. And I have found an encouraging solution." Smiling, she took Anna's hands in hers. "I wish to carry yours and Kristoff's child. Use me as a surrogate vessel. That is, if you'll have me."

Anna gasped, her eyes filling with tears. Behind them, Kristoff looked from one sister to the other, deeply moved. "I..." Anna bit her lip. "Elsa, are you sure?"

"Yes. I want this. These are my wishes, and I will accept my fate whatever it may be. Grand Pabbie can place the baby inside me."

"Magic?" Kristoff stared.

"Magic," Elsa confirmed.

Kristoff gulped, and looked to his surrogate father. Finally, he nodded. "All right. If you're sure, Elsa."

"I am," Elsa smiled.

Grand Pabbie bowed his head. Waved his arms. The air on the mountain seemed to heat several degrees, and Anna and Kristoff staggered as energy seemed to be pulled from them. The energy enveloped Elsa, lifting her into the air slightly, until moments later...

The Queen swooned and floated safely back to Earth. A shocked Kristoff quickly caught her, Anna placing a concerned hand on her sister's forehead.

Grand Pabbie looked to Kristoff. "Check on her continuously. But... the magic should not fail."

And with worried glances, but also hope, the royal family departed back down the mountain.

Elsa was put to bed upon arriving home. She continued to dictate orders from her chambers, and occasionally found the energy to move about the castle when she was of the mind to. On some mornings, as her belly grew rounder, staff would find the Queen wandering the halls of the castle, caressing her baby bump where her unborn niece lay cocooned within. The nesting state of their ruler left many of Arendelle's subjects buzzing with gossip, entranced by the mystery of it all: their beautiful Queen was with child. But by whom? No one had ever seen Queen Elsa with any male suitor at palace balls or other holiday functions. The Queen almost always attended these alone, and if she was there with someone, the man on her arm was usually Kai, her Chief of Staff, and everyone knew how he swung in matters of sexual relations. In some extreme cases, when Anna, the Princess, was away on business, the Queen would platonically attend a ball on the arm of her brother-in-law. But for the Queen herself, as far as her people knew, there was no paramour or mistress of any kind or either sex. No romantic candidate immediately came to mind. Though Arendelle's people knew full well how Elsa had come to be expecting (or at least, they thought they knew), the identity of the father - whoever he was, and even his very existence - left them baffled. Was the Queen having a passionate affair? Nobody had an answer. And then there were the whispered mumblings of the Queen that some servants had overheard - how Elsa would contemplate her swelling stomach and whisper, in a mixture of happiness and awe, "I'm going to be an aunt!" Not mother - aunt.These quiet whispers had never been confirmed, though. Regardless of the exact circumstances, Elsa's progressing condition demanded that she rarely leave the castle, or see her subjects; this reality made the rumors swirl all the harder, harder than snow flurries.

One morning several months later, Kai summoned Anna and Kristoff to the Queen's chambers; the Queen wished to speak with her family. Only a trusted inner circle within Elsa's staff knew definitively that she had fallen pregnant. But as to how or by whom, like the rest of the kingdom, even these staff were kept in the dark. It mattered not that rumors of the Queen's condition had spread to the general populace - leakers happened all the time, especially now that the castle had opened the gates and become a freer channel of communication than during Elsa's parents' reign. But how her condition came to be... that was to be a secret kept between the royal family, for the time being at least.

"Now, Your Highnesses, when you enter, I must ask you not to cry. It might distress her," Kai warned. The couple looked at each other in concern. Elsa's midwife ushered them in, Olaf following them. Sven tried to enter, but when he failed to fit through the door, the reindeer had to content himself with poking his snout through the entryway.

"Her Majesty has been feeling a little weak this morning," the midwife told Anna and Kristoff. The pair slowly approached the bed, in which Elsa was propped up with pillows. The roundness of her belly could be seen under the bedclothes.

"Hello, Anna, how are you? And here's Kristoff - hiya, handsome." Elsa's smile was strained as she kissed Kristoff's cheek. Then, she took her sister's hand, and placed it over her own swollen belly. "There is death," she murmured, the look in her eyes suddenly far, far away. "And there is new life."

They all left the room sobbing. Anna was particularly distressed to see her husband openly weeping. In the years she had known him, Anna had seen her husband become emotional a grand total of once, and those had been happy tears, on their wedding day.

"Our baby is killing her!" Kristoff moaned. "We never should have agreed to this."

Even as she too sobbed, Anna placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. "This is what she wanted. She's trying to give this to us. But... I can't choose between my baby and my sister, Kristoff, I just can't!"

"Then let's hope we won't have to," Kristoff told her grimly. He vowed that they would have both their child and their sister... or neither of them.

The Queen's face was contorted in discomfort. Tears streaked down her face, and she wailed out in agony, "ANNA! Help me!"

Kristoff appeared, speaking soothing words that were indistinguishable against the sudden, piercing cries of an infant...

Kristoff sat up sharply in bed, panting. Sweat glistened across his body, pooled down into his eyes, and he felt the strangeness of this sensation acutely. For someone who had grown up in the frozen wilderness, Kristoff was particularly unaccustomed to warmth. Anna's embrace and her love, her gentle smile, had given him a warmth he had never known he needed, a warmth he now craved. But this... cold sweat (that wasn't very cold at all), this... powerlessness... It shook him.

Swinging his legs off the mattress, Kristoff tried to grapple with the nightmare about his pregnant sister-in-law. He didn't have the heart to wake Anna; she would surely panic if he told her. So he elected to don his bathrobe and plod down to one of the living quarters in the Princess's private residence.

Unbeknownst to him, his wife sensed him leave. Anna stirred, rolled over against the pillows, just in time to catch a glimpse of her husband slipping out the door in his bathrobe. She sat up, frowning with concern, and followed.

She found Kristoff in their sitting room, a blazing fire going, despite the lateness of the hour. Kristoff was staring into the embers, his face masked and unreadable, almost brooding. A solemn, serious, stoic countenance that Anna knew belied inner turmoil. He sometimes got that way while ice harvesting, especially on expeditions that held a significant degree of danger. Kristoff was a man who knew how to live dangerously and come through alright in the end, but that didn't mean he was impervious to stress.

"Kristoff?"

No response for a moment. Anna knew he would come to her, but only if she prodded. He had tried before to keep secrets from her, for her protection, and they both learned quickly that it didn't work, no matter how well-intentioned. She sighed. "Kristoff, how can we be married if we can't be honest with each other?"

That got him. He grunted, "It was only a dream."

The dismissal, that suffer-in-silence attitude, did little to deter Anna's probing. "Bad?" she prodded gently.

"Like the ones I used to have about my birth family, just after they abandoned me."

"And?" Getting Kristoff to open up about his own pain was akin to pulling teeth, but Anna was nothing if not persistent.

Kristoff coughed slightly, a sign of discomfort. "And it was about Elsa."

"Elsa?" Anna blinked. Not about me?, she thought.

Another brief silence, and then. "The Queen... she dies in childbirth."

Anna gasped, a hand going to her own stomach, as if she herself was pregnant and feeling the changes in her body that her sister was surely feeling in her stead. "And the baby?" Our baby.

Yet another pause. Kristoff shook his head. "I don't know." Their tiny unborn heir's future was uncertain.

Though shaken now herself, Anna tried to banish these dark thoughts. "It was only a dream," she echoed firmly. "It couldn't possibly become real."

Kristoff barked out a laugh, sounding almost bitter. Or maybe he was just trying to brush aside any lingering naivete. "I used to think magic wasn't real, until I met your sister. You really think this is any more impossible?"

"Elsa's strong," Anna countered flatly. "She'll deliver our baby, and we'll all be a family together, just like we wanted." She crossed to him, placed her hand in his. "Come back to bed," she entreated gently.

And finding comfort in her touch, Kristoff followed her.