A/N: Not for the squeamish.
The gloved fist collides with her face like a bomb exploding, slamming her to the ground. The stars barely pass her eyes before a huge pair of hands pick her up and hurl her against a tree. With blood leaking from her forehead and staining her vision a hideous shade of red, she swings her hands blindly and catches an assassin's sword between her fingers. The blade slices into her hands as she rips it from his, and the handle makes thunk thunk thunk noises as she bats away assailants.
Slick with blood, the sword flies from her hand and clatters against the ground. Anna wipes her eyes and recoils from the net descending upon her. She claws away at the ground in an attempt to escape the chain-links digging into her skin, but the clink of metal pegs hammering into the ground seals her fate.
"She's trapped! Kill her!" voices cry out in unison. Anna flinches at a spear's point rapidly closing on her throat, and stops it an inch before it's able to make contact. The tip snaps from its shaft between her shaking fingers, but every feeble movement she makes tangles the net more and more around her limbs.
"Fuck!" Anna shrieks, exerting every ounce of energy left within her towards her legs. The stakes rip from the ground, and she tumbles over and over upon the grass as spears and swords stab at her body rolling down a slope. With her hands tangled up around her waist by the metallic net, she loses her balance and buckles on the ground in an attempt to stand. The sight of assailants descending on her spurs her onto her feet, and she tries to pick out the nearest one through the fog of blood seeping into her eyes.
Anna spits blood onto the ground and staggers forward, cursing and grunting every agony-ridden step of the way. Her chest throbs with pain as she lunges towards an assailant, slamming into him and sending both of them rolling around on the grass. Her attempts to stand are met with a sword blow to the metallic net, inadvertently protecting her from its edge but sending her crumbling to the ground again.
"Elsa!" Anna screams, more a plea to see her sister one last time rather than a cry for help.
Her heart lurches as she feels multiple spear tips entering her chest, and she rolls over to protect her organs. The sudden blast of frost-laced wind fails to stop the spears stabbing into her back, but she smiles at the icy ground numbing the pain in her ear.
"No!" Elsa screams into the wind as she plummets towards her sister lying battered and bleeding in a chain net. With a mighty flap of its wings, the Queen's Pegasus unleashes a shower of ice feathers upon the Princess's assailants. Elsa's feathers pelt into the assassins like hail assaulting a wheatfield; slicing apart throats and stabbing through eye sockets. The dozen cloaked men collapse in a circle of hacked-up bodies around Anna, their severed hands still clutching weapons.
The Pegasus lands on the ice and Elsa flings herself from the horse over her sister's shaking body, coughing and sputtering blood from her lips.
"Oh god no, Anna! Elsa screams, grasping wildly at Anna's blood-soaked clothes.
"Did...did you get...that...that...son of a bitch?" Anna sputters, her fingers leaving trails of red in Elsa's blonde hair.
"No, no, no!" Elsa stutters. Her panic-induced powers freeze over Anna's blouse, and they flake away in chunks of ice between her trembling hands. She flings the ice away from her body, hoping her sister's wounds are not too grievious for her to freeze without consequence; but the touch of leather to her hands elicits a gasp from her tear-stained lips.
"I wear a leather corset when I ride," Anna whispers, "my instructor says whalebone is good for the posture."
Elsa slips her fingers beneath her sister's corset, running ice-cold touches along the smooth, unmarked skin lining her stomach.
"Oh thank god!" Elsa shrieks, clutching her sister's trembling body to hers, "I thought...I thought I lost you."
Anna traces the notches on her corset where the spear tips had failed to penetrate. Her lips curl into a smile; despite her brush with death, the aching in her ribs burns through her body like fire, rendering her brain unable to comprehend what to do next.
"Um, Elsa, I think I hurt my hand and ear," Anna mutters.
"Oh Jesus!" Elsa exclaims, grabbing hold of her sister's hands. She visualises ice bandages lining the ugly gash across Anna's palm, but in her jittery emotional state she freezes her sister's entire right hand and the side of her face.
The neighing of Elsa's Pegasus draws the Queen's attention to the clinking armor of Royal guards approaching on horseback.
"Your Majesty!" the Captain exclaims, dismounting his horse and rushing to Elsa's side, "are you-"
"No, no! I'm fine! Anna's fine!" Elsa shouts, grabbing and shaking him by the shoulders until frost crackles across his armor, "One of them got away! Search the river and the cliffs, right this instant!"
With a quick bow, the Captain whirls around on his heels and directs his men to the cliffs. Before he mounts, Elsa yanks him by the hand, the force of her grip turning his gloves to ice.
"I want that cocksucker alive!" the Queen scowls.
"...and I said to the cook again, there's no such thing as a chocolate macaron!" Anna chirps as the Palace physician removes the bandages from her injured hand. Despite the cheery tone in Anna's voice, Elsa grimaces when the gash lining her palm comes into view: beet red and angry, she grits her teeth as she thinks of how much of a failure she is at protecting her sister.
"Elsa, don't you agree with me? Chocolate belongs in tarts, éclairs, muffins, and croissants, but never macarons."
The Queen lifts her gaze from Anna's injured hand and into her eyes, glistening and bloodshot as the doctor applies alcohol into her injuries. Beneath the dull orange glow gleaming through the infirmary windows, Anna's freckle-lined cheeks radiate a carefree cheer despite everything they've gone through hours ago.
"Yes, my dear sister," Elsa chokes, turning from Anna and pretending not to see her wince at sting of alcohol to her wounds, "vanilla or lemon, but never chocolate."
"Good!" Anna says, bunching up her other fist and snarling through teeth gritting in pain, "Maybe he'll stop making them if you tell him nicely."
"Of course I will," Elsa whispers, extending a handkerchief and dabbing at the perspiration dripping from her sister's forehead, "only if you-"
Elsa snaps her head to the creak of the door opening; she flies to her feet as the Captain of the Royal Guard enters and bows.
"Your Majesty," the Captain starts, "we arrested the-"
"You found him?" Elsa snaps, her pale-white fists shaking.
"Yes, it wasn't easy though. He fled on a boat and we had to chase him through the Fjord."
"Well, where is he?"
"We locked him in the Palace dungeon instead of the Capital Jail," he says, "figured you might want to have a...word with him."
"Good!" Elsa sneers. She turns and gives her sister a peck on the cheek before striding from the infirmary with dark, misshapen icicles sprouting from her every step.
The walk to the Palace dungeon takes less than a minute with Elsa's furious pace, and the Captain struggles to keep up with her as he slips around on the ice she's leaving behind. By the time they reach the lower levels, he's panting foggy breaths, a stark contrast to the cool demeanour Elsa possesses. Despite the calmness in her face, her heart weighs heavy as she comes face to face with the only, solitary cell in the Palace dungeon. The black granite used to line the lower levels resonates a foreboding evil around her, although she can't decide if it's the dungeon's grim surroundings, or if she herself is turning into someone, or something else.
"We made some preparations," the captain says, inserting a key into the lock, "in case you might need some information from him."
"What preparations?" Elsa asks, before he swings open the door. Immediately, she notices a row of grotesque implements of torture on the table: flails, whips, pincers, even a red hot iron poker resting in a bowl of coals. In the corner of the room, rats scurry into their hiding holes, avoiding the ice forming on the floor, and the impending doom falling upon the cell. Elsa whips her head to her would-be killer, hooded and chained to a stone bench anchored into the granite wall. Her heart sinks as she notices the broken pair of gauntlets hanging from the wall and realises she was here once like him, imprisoned, without any hope of living. As the door slams shut behind them, Elsa feels the mossy walls closing in on her, and her soul darkens in anticipation of the choice laid out before her.
The captain rips the hood from the prisoner's head, revealing an assortment of fresh bruises and scars adding to his already roughened face. He lets out a whimper and tries to shield his eyes from the light.
"I apologise for the state of your prisoner, your Majesty," the captain says, "he...um...resisted arrest."
Elsa's heart throbs violently in her chest as she stares at the man lowering his head and groaning in agony. Her mind begins to race as she glares at his broken body before her. Here was the spoils of everything wrong in her life – the inter-kingdom squabbles, the politics, the war. Here was her chance to get even, to vent her fury and find out who was threatening her life and Anna's. But at what cost? She grits her teeth and tries to think of Anna in the infirmary, all bubbly and cheery. But the ice within her overwhelms her thoughts.
"What is your name?" Elsa whispers.
"I ain't telling you nothin'!" he hisses, spitting flecks of saliva from between his teeth and flailing his head wildly.
Elsa hears a loud crack echo through the room as the captain slaps him hard. She flinches away from him and averts her gaze.
"When you address the Queen," he snarls, grabbing him by the chin and spitting in his face, "you address her as your Majesty!"
The sight of blood leaking from his lips causes Elsa's conscience to prickle her. She shouldn't be doing this. But how long more could she put up with everything, really?
"Why did you try to kill us?" Elsa asks.
"Piss off," he spits, lifting his head and glaring at Elsa with bloodshot eyes, "your Majesty!"
A crunch resonates through the room as the captain strikes him again, this time with a closed fist. The impact splits the skin on his cheek, bringing with it dark red blood oozing from his wound. Elsa's own blood begins to boil beneath her skin at his defiance – in her anger she lifts a trembling finger and points at a random torture implement sitting on the table. The Captain picks up a leather flail studded with tiny spikes and stands next to Elsa. The man's eyes have already swollen over from his earlier injuries; he's unable to see clearly, but he shifts away on the bench, fearful of what's going to happen next.
"I'm going to ask you again," Elsa whispers, "why did you try to kill my sister?"
The tension knotting inside Elsa's mind tightens until the man shakes his head, and then it frays. She clenches her fists and nods at the Captain.
Crack. The flail slices across his face, sending a trickle of blood flying through the air and staining Elsa's dress. He slumps in his chains and groans in pain, before the Captain strikes him again. A large man with muscles like an ox, he yanks his prisoner upright and cracks him across the skull again. With each strike producing a spray of crimson from his face, the bench soaks with blood by the time the Captain stops and bends over to catch his breath. A hideous bubbling sound reverberates from the man's lips, and the right side of his face is no longer recognizable as a human's.
"He's not going to stop," Elsa mutters, "I could have him do this all day and night until the skin is stripped from your flesh and the hounds gnaw the sinew clean from your bones and you'd still be alive to hear me ask you – why did you try to kill us?"
In between the raspy, blood-soaked noises croaking from his mouth, Elsa hears the man snarl, "Fuck you."
The Captain looks into the Queen's eyes and notices the first signs of hesitation in her face. Elsa looks at the floor as thoughts of Anna start to fill her mind, but right now – her sister's safety and protection is reason enough to continue. Trepidation courses through her skin; she nods at the Captain and signals for him to change hands. With a grunt, the Captain switches to his left hand and whips him hard in the face. A few strikes later, the flail catches onto the man's lip and rips part of it from his face. Another poorly aimed strike hooks onto his teeth, sending a few of them clattering across the dungeon floor.
"I'm going to give you a choice, at least tell me who sent you," Elsa says, raising her voice over his howls of agony, "if not, I might be inclined to ask him to switch to something worse."
"You can kill me if you want," he snarls through his broken jaw, "I'm not telling you anything!"
Elsa sighs and motions for the Captain to pick another tool. He tosses the blood-soaked flail on the table and pulls the red-hot poker from its bowl, sending embers glittering through the stale dungeon air. The Captain holds the glowing metal an inch from his face, and the prisoner's shackles clink as he desperately tries to inch himself away from the blazing heat.
"You see this?" the captain grunts, grabbing a fistful of the prisoner's hair and yanking him upright, "I'm going to stick it into your fucking knees. It's going to melt through your bones and you'll never walk again. Don't make me do this! Just tell the Queen what she wants to know and-"
"Fuck off!" the man spits, his saliva hissing against the heated metal.
The glare of red iron flashes across Elsa's eyes as he rams it into his knee. The hiss of metal searing into flesh is quickly drowned out by a scream shaking the castle's very foundations.
"Tell me who sent you!" Elsa yells over his screaming and stepping away from his broken body convulsing in the chains, "tell me why they want us dead!"
"Fuck! You fucking fuck!" the man screams, dragging out his words into one long raspy howl, "Just fucking kill me already!"
Elsa covers her nose from the smell of charred flesh as the Captain rips the iron from the smouldering hole he's made in the man's knee. He rears his hand and jams it into his other knee - renewing his prisoner's screams with ever-increasing pitch and intensity.
"Enough!" Elsa shouts, sprouting icicles through the room and pushing the Captain aside. He breathes a sigh of relief and tosses the iron back in its trough, but his eyes widen as the Queen whips off her gloves, revealing a pair of hands glowing with frost.
"This is the end road for you unless you tell me what I need to know," Elsa scowls, her fists radiating sheer cold before his face. Through his swollen eye sockets, the man stares at dull frost crackling between her fingers and mumbles something incoherent.
"You're going to die here, I'll throw your rotting corpse into the ditch or feed you to the dogs and no one would know you even existed."
The man slouches in his chains and dips his head low. Blood leaks from his mouth and dribbles on the burnt stumps holding his legs together. The Captain looks around the cell at the icicles surrounding them growing longer and longer; amidst the crackling he hears him whisper,
"Just do it."
A dull roar reverberates through the room as Elsa blasts him with a blazing stream of ice magic, slamming him against the wall and sending him convulsing beneath the power of her frost. The Captain covers his ears from the noise: loud and ominous like the roar of an impending avalanche.
"Oh god stop!" he screams over the noise, digging his nails into the bench, "God for the love of fuck, stop! You're killing me!"
Elsa visualises a multitude of ice-spikes digging into his heart, she tightens her icy grasp around his lungs and yells, "Tell me who sent you here!"
Ice rips through the man's organs and sprouts from whats left of his knees. Icicles dig into his arms and emerge from his hands in a sickening crunch of twisted ice, metal and frozen blood. Thorny ice crystals creep up his spine and pierce his skin from within, rendering his tattered clothes akin to a porcupine's spiny back.
"Jesus fucking Christ you fucking monster!" he screams, barely a whisper above the howling of wind in the cell, "You sick motherfucker!"
Elsa groans and ceases her assault on the man. The fierce glow which had invaded every corner of the room fades into a sullen darkness, leaving the man slouched over on the bench, his shattered body held up by bits of melting ice turning his skin a grotesque shade of blue. His breathing turning shallow, the man sputters a few foggy breaths, still clinging onto whatever life there is left within him. She flashes a glance at his wrecked body: the dismembered face, burnt out knees and skin shattered by ice; the sight causes her to turn away in disgust and start for the door.
"Get rid of him," Elsa whispers to the Captain, "I'm sorry to put you through this-"
As the Captain draws his sword, the cell door's creaking sends them whirling around, and Elsa gasps at the reddish crop of hair appearing behind the door.
"Elsa?" a voice seeps through the crack in the doorway. Green eyes widen at the frost lining the cell, and the Princess staggers back when she sees the grotesque remains of Elsa's tortured prisoner on the bench. "Jesus Christ, is that the guy?" Anna gasps.
"No, Anna! No! You aren't supposed to be here!" Elsa shrieks, attempting to shove her sister from the room.
Suddenly, the prisoner bolts upright at the mention of Anna's name. With the crunch of snapping frost, he snaps across the bench and screams, "Oh no, not her, not her! I'll tell you everything, please not Anna!"
Elsa whirls around and raises an eyebrow, "What did you say?"
"Dragonnades! They hired me as a marksman to distract you from the princess! I know not who paid them...just please! Spare me from Princess Anna!"
Elsa snaps her head back at Anna's scowling face standing in the doorway with clenched fists. The Captain stares at the royal sisters and whispers beneath his breath, "Well, that did him in."
Elsa turns back to her prisoner, intending to inquire more, but a gleaming ice-statue stares back at her; his face contorted in its final moments of agony, and his foggy last breaths still wafting from his lips. Tendrils of fog cascade from his frozen shoulders, saturating the room with the sickening stench of blood and death. Her heart falters at the sight of yet another life she's been forced to end, in front of her sister - nonetheless.
Anna brushes past her sister and lurches forward on the tips of her toes. A roar erupts between them, hollow and soaked with anguish like a dying lion. "Fuck him!" Anna screams as she kicks the frozen, dead man in the head, shattering his body into glittering spray of ice, "Fuck all of them!"
The fog beneath her feet swirls as Anna flees the cell, but she barely makes it ten paces into the hallway before she crumbles to her knees in a sobbing, wet heap.
"Anna! No!" Elsa shrieks, kneeling and clutching her sister's shaking body, "I didn't...I didn't mean for you to see that."
The still-fresh memory of her prisoner's screams flash through Elsa's mind like a bolt of lightning; she expects her sister to push her away in disgust after what she's seen, but instead, Anna clings onto Elsa with a ferocious grip and whimpers into her shoulder like a baby during a thunderstorm. Tears seep from her eyes and trickle down Elsa's ice-dress; by the time her sister's sobs begin to wane, the gown's former splendour is stained with ugly streaks of blood and grime.
"I'm so sick of this," Anna chokes with trembling lips, "the fighting, the killing, everything!"
"Anna, please…" Elsa whispers into her sister's hair, "I'll fix this, I promise-"
"How?" Anna gasps, pulling herself away from Elsa's arms and staring into her sister's glistening eyes, "Everything's so fucked up!"
"I don't know," Elsa whispers, averting her gaze from Anna's and staring at her hands, "somehow, anyhow, I'll have to figure a way out, for us."
"We can fix this-" Anna whispers back, slipping her fingers into her sister's, "hand in hand?"
"I will be right here," Elsa nods, and already she can feel the shattered remnants of her conscience piecing themselves back together.