All or Nothing

Chapter Four

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I'm going to put a few heavy trigger warnings on this chapter, it will get graphic as relates to Merida's situation prior to escaping to Arendelle. If you think it might be a bit much, skip this chapter.

Also, if you like the fic it would make me very happy if you would leave a small review. Reviews keep me writing when I feel unmotivated.

…..

The advisors, as opposed to doing what was in their job description, refrained from advising Elsa so much as pushing her into making decisions they thought were prudent, and it didn't help that they all had different opinions. The plague, though considerably less serious now that they had a remedy and a cause but not a source, was blamed on everything from keeping Merida in the castle with her foreign spores to the refugee populace practicing their religious rituals near the river to malevolent troll magic.

It was none of those things, as Elsa found out.

Three days after Anna had fully recovered and was out gallivanting again, a doctor came to her with a jar full of the larva Merida claimed was the cause of the plague.

The man seemed nervous as he placed the jar on her table.

"You're certain that little thing is the cause, then?" she asked him.

"Without a doubt, your highness," he answered.

"How can you be sure?"

"I've been working in the Reinemont region for a number of years. I was working there when I received word of your troubles," he began. "This ailment is quite common there."

Reinemont was a swamp, not quite part of Arendelle or its neighbouring districts and disowned by all of them. The residents spoke a patois of many different languages blended together and they lived in poverty, eking out a living with very little contact with the surrounding countries. It made sense if the disease was common there for Arendelle not to have heard of it.

"So it is a swamp disease. But why did we get it here? We don't have any swamps in our borders," she asked.

"Well," the doctor began, shuffling and averting his gaze. Elsa grew suspicious. She wasn't going to like this, she could tell.

"Reinemont has been flooding a lot lately. More than usual. The banks have been bursting into the river. And once they drain away, they leave a lot of standing water. It's a perfect breeding ground for these creatures, and they'll have already been washed into the river with the floodwater."

The air around them took on a chill as the dots were connected in Elsa's mind. A week before she got sick, Anna had gone to the river looking for water lilies to paint and frogspawn to collect on one of her recapture-my-lost-childhood jaunts.

"Why now? Why is this happening now? Surely if the banks were going to burst they'd have done it before?" she asked.

"There's a lot of extra water flowing into the swamp these days," the doctor said quietly. "It's coming from the North Mountain."

Oh.

Oh God!

The remaining evidence of her coronation outburst was still there, now trickling down the side of the mountain in the heatwave. She'd conjured up so much ice during that time, covered the mountain in frozen water, and then just left it there when she came back down.

Her negligence had nearly killed her sister, and could have taken a good slice of the population with it. It was sheer luck that someone familiar with the disease happened to be nearby.

If her advisors heard about this, there would be uproar. She could have hugged the doctor for bringing it straight to her. Instead, she thanked him, promised to have the surplus water removed and gave him a large cart of supplies to bring back to Reinemont.

Once he was gone, she allowed herself the indulgence of crawling under her desk and sobbing for an hour, before she tidied herself up again to go about fixing the mess she'd caused.

…..

She'd been putting it off for long enough. And with the next task in her agenda sure to get the advisors' backs up, now that the plague crisis had been dealt with, she needed all the security she could get.

She still had the three hairs Merida had given her, wrapped in the cloth and sitting in a drawer in her room. The memory book was locked in the South cloisters, which only she and Anna had the keys to.

It glowed faintly from its pulpit as she entered the room and locked the door behind her. The trolls had shown her how to use it, but she hadn't used it since that first time. The vision it showed her had been innocuous, a day in the life of a troll, but she'd experienced it as if she'd been there right beside the troll in question. This would be far more difficult.

Bracing herself, she dropped one of the hairs into the book. The hair wound itself into the blank page and reshaped itself as a series of words, and all around Elsa the world began to melt away and reform into another place, another time.

The room that she was standing in still bore scorch marks climbing up the walls, and a smoky scent in the air. There was sparse furniture, a bed with a thin blanket on it, a small table with two low stools and a tapestry frame by the window. That was where Merida was sitting, weaving a tapestry with dead-eyed focus.

She looked awful, worn out and beaten down. Her cheeks were hollow and her eyes were blackened with exhaustion. Her mouth was set in a grim line as she worked, hunched awkwardly over the frame. Elsa knew she couldn't see or hear her, that this was a construct of the book, but the urge to go to her side to offer some comfort, even a little, was overwhelming.

There was a light tapping echo from below that gradually got louder, until Elsa realised they were approaching footsteps and that they were in a tower garret. Merida heard the footsteps at the same time as Elsa did; her whole body tensed up and for a moment she looked ready to kill, but then her face sank into an expression of careful neutrality. Elsa recognized that expression, it was one she was well-practiced in herself.

There was a click of a key turning the lock and the door swung open. The man who entered the room with a basket he set down on the table was richly dressed in purple and crimson with silver embroidery, objectively handsome with a trim beard and moustache. He was an older man, though youthful in his stance and pleasant in his face. But there was something indefinably off about him, a sense that his easy smile and warm body language were a cover for a man looking to root out the weaknesses in an enemy. Elsa could feel the hatred rolling off of Merida, though her expression remained dispassionate. This, then, was Duke Warrick.

"Sit with me, my lady," he said in Angolsi. "We have much to discuss."

She got up from where she was with difficulty, holding herself stiff as though she was in pain. Elsa remembered the lash marks, the account of her broken ribs. She could detect a little satisfaction in Warrick's eyes as she struggled to the table to sit with him, and she hated him as much as Merida did in that moment.

"You must be hungry," he said to her when she was seated on the opposite side of the table from him. He poured some wine into a goblet and set some bread and cheese before her. "How long has it been? Three days? Four maybe?"

Merida didn't speak, or touch the food. She picked up the goblet and sipped delicately. Elsa had to admire her restraint; she defied this man every way she could.

"We've not been able to find your brothers. Your people have been even less forthcoming than you have been," he said.

"It's a very large country," she told him. "They could be anywhere."

"If they were my brothers, I would be concerned for their safety. But you are not?"

She shrugged. "They're strong boys. They can take care of themselves."

He chuckled, but there was no humour in it, and his eyes glittered angrily.

"I am running out of patience, my lady. Your people are as stoic as you are, and I fear that if I mistreat you any further I will finish you off. And neither of us want that."

"You don't want that. I think you should kill me now, and be done with it."

A gauntlet had been thrown down. Elsa wanted to applaud her, and almost did. To show such insubordination in the face of an enemy was something most princesses could only aspire to.

"I think not," Warrick said grimly. "What honour is to be had in killing a young girl?"

"You have no honour," she told him, showing anger for the first time. "If you had honour, you would have challenged my father for the crown in fair combat as we have done for centuries. You knew him to be the better man so you defeated him with trickery. And even now you keep me locked up and weakened so you can vent your fury on me. You're a coward. I'd rather be dead than be your queen."

Warrick's fists clenched on the table, and Elsa feared he would launch himself across the table and throttle her. Merida had no such fears; she started tearing small chunks from the bread and eating them.

"I will offer you this one last chance to comply. If you do not agree to my terms, there will be no going back."

He rose, to stand behind her and wind his fingers through her hair. He crushed the curls in his fist, perhaps imagining it was her throat.

"You will marry me, and sit beside me as my queen to quell your people's tempers. You will bear me sons, at least three I should think. As soon as my heirs have grown and you can give me no more, you will be permitted to live out your days in peace, away from me if that is your wish."

Now he let go of her hair and pressed his thumbs into her shoulder blades, whereupon she barely supressed a shout of pain.

"If you refuse me, I will have you bound in the stable to be used for the pleasure of any man who wishes it. I will go first, as is my right as your king. Then my soldiers. They miss the wives they left behind in Angols. And I promise you that any child you conceive of these unions will be left to die in the gutter and their bones picked at by the dogs."

Elsa knew that looking through someone's memories would be unpleasant. She hadn't known it would make her feel this sick inside. Warrick released the princess's shoulders, and she slumped forward with a gasp of relief.

For an awful moment, and despite knowing where Merida would end up, Elsa thought she would refuse. Until Warrick added to his threat.

"And if you still insist on this stubbornness, I will repeat these circumstances with one girl from the villages every week until I have an heir."

Merida composed herself. Despite the horror of the threat, her face remained impressively devoid of emotion.

"I will do what I must to safeguard my people. I'll marry you."

Warrick smiled, the smile of a man who has stolen something and gotten away with it.

"I am glad you've finally seen sense. I will make the arrangements. And as a special treat, for being so co-operative, I've brought you a visitor. I'll send her up."

He was gone then, the threat lingered in the air like a bad smell. Elsa felt a raw pain in the pit of her stomach. Merida clutched the table and shook, with her eyes screwed shut until the tremors passed.

The door opened again, and a tiny grey-haired woman shuffled in. Merida recognized her, and started to shake all over again.

"Oh no, no, you need to leave!" she shouted at the woman. It was Gaelic, but Elsa could understand it through the magic of the book.

"Whist, child, I'm stuck here as much as you are," the old woman said, sitting across from her.

"You can't help me. They kill anyone that tries to help me. Don't throw your life away."

"I'm dead tomorrow anyway, princess," the woman said. "I'm a heathen, they say. Me gallows are built and they'll burn my bones after."

"They can't do that," Merida said, looking close to tears. "You've not done anything."

"Not to worry. I've lived a long life, the land can take my bones now and I'll happily allow it. But that is not your fate, my dear. You're not meant for him. You're not his and you never will be."

"I agreed to marry him. I had to."

"Marry him you might, but he'll not have you. I've seen your fate," the woman said, leaning closer to her. Her voice took on a deeper tone, the voice of generations. This was a magic woman. Power hummed all around her.

"You will be given a way out, and you must take it. Your people will survive in the wilderness and you will leave these shores. You will make a powerful ally and return a hundred times stronger, and your legacy will live on long after you have met your end."

The witch put her hands on Merida's shoulders and smiled kindly.

"The wisps chose you as one of their own, they will light your way. You are strong. You will endure."

The guards were coming up the stairs to drag the witch away. Merida clutched her arms, perhaps wondering if she could, somehow, protect her. But the witch pulled away, pressed a hurried kiss to the princess' forehead, and was whisked away to await her death.

"Cha d'dhùin doras nach d'fhosgail doras," was the last thing the witch said as the vision crumbled around Elsa and she was back in the cloisters, alone. The words lingered in her head for hours after.

No door ever closed but another opened.

…..

The knock on her office door was hesitant. Elsa bid her enter, and Merida complied, looking somewhat worried.

"Have a seat, please," Elsa gestured to the chair in front of her desk.

"Is something wrong, your highness?" Merida asked her.

"Not at all. Why would you think that?" Elsa responded. Truthfully, she was starting to tire of everyone but Anna tiptoeing around her. Even if she had been short-tempered lately…

"The maid you sent for me was upset about something. I didn't know what she was saying but it didn't sound good."

Elsa sighed, and rubbed her temples.

"I may have been a little more stern with the staff than usual, but that's nothing to do with you. I have something I need to discuss with you."

She took out the documents she'd drafted with the advisors, over several hours. In the native dialect of Arendelle, they'd insisted, so Merida couldn't understand it.

"You have done Arendelle a great service, and the crown in particular. I have no doubt that my sister would have died had you not correctly identified the plague for what it was," she began, sounding more formal than she really wanted. "This document marks your place as a citizen of Arendelle, by way of a term of service. It's a military honour, but for the purposes of this document it's been rewritten."

Merida looked baffled. Elsa continued, in simpler terms.

"You'll have a permanent place in the royal household, as well as an allowance to spend on whatever you wish within reason. A seal is being made for you, you can use it at the markets to charge your bills to the royal coffers. And you are free to travel within the kingdom unescorted, but if you wish to leave the country you must inform us first. I just need your signature."

Merida picked up the document and scanned it for a while, frowning. Elsa was somewhat disappointed; she'd hoped it would make her happy.

"Are you sure about this? I didn't do that much," Merida said finally.

"You did more than enough. This plague could have been disastrous, but we caught it in time," Elsa responded. Anyone else would have been clamouring for recognition. Not Merida.

"Can't imagine your advisors were too happy about this."

Of course, there it was. Nobody understood the particular pain of having to recognize a good work through the lens of diplomacy better than a fellow princess who had been trained in such things from birth.

"They weren't," Elsa admitted, sighing. "But I convinced them. Eventually."

Hesitantly, she brought up the subject she'd been trying not to think about, but she felt it had to be said.

"I've confirmed your story. You are who you say you are, I know that for certain."

Merida looked up sharply. It wasn't quite fear in her eyes, but something like it…

"I am sorry," Elsa continued. "For what he did to you. And your family. You have a home here, for as long as you need it."

Merida swallowed, and averted her gaze.

"Thank you, your highness."