All or Nothing
Chapter Seventeen
Apologies to anyone who thinks I'm neglecting this fic; please worry not, this fic will be finished by me come hell or high water. I have the ending in mind clearly and it's a bit of a ways off just yet. This just happens to be a very busy time in my life and I'm working on freeing up the time to write more often.
…..
They should have talked about it. That would be the sensible thing to do.
But Elsa was clumsy with words outside of her royal duties, and although Merida was more straightforward (blunt, one might say) she was reluctant to bring it up at all. She was back in Elsa's room and in Elsa's embrace the very next night as though nothing had happened.
Elsa kept the incident in the back of her mind and made sure her hands weren't wandering as freely as they had been. It was difficult, things got heated as they always did and Elsa would break away before it got out of hand. Merida was visibly annoyed but said nothing.
She took to touching herself into a frenzy in the morning in the hopes of dampening down her lust in the evenings. Satisfying as the climaxes were, it didn't work nearly as well as she hoped. It got to the point where she looked forward to and dreaded their liaisons in equal measure.
Finally, almost two weeks to the night later, when Elsa's fingers ghosted along Merida's ribcage she moved, attempting to manouvor her breast into Elsa's grasp again. Elsa quailed and shied away, and Merida sat up with an irritated huff.
"You should just go for it," she muttered.
Elsa saw through her bravado easily enough. She feigned carelessness but her face was white again and her hands trembled slightly. They needed to talk about it, even clumsily.
"I won't," she answered with a sigh. "If you're not happy..."
"I'm happy," Merida insisted. "I just...remembered something. It's not a problem, I just have to get over it..."
"I will not touch you in a way that brings you distress," Elsa ground out. "I would rather keep my hands to myself forever than do such a thing."
"That's a bit drastic," Merida said with a grimace.
"What do you take me for, a man?"
She blurted it out without thinking, and at Merida's suddenly baffled expression nervous giggles bubbled to the surface. Merida laughed with her, and the tension drained out of the room gradually.
"I'm just happy to have you here," Elsa sighed. "I'm happy to remain somewhat chaste until you can trust me not to take liberties."
Merida's smiled and looked away. Elsa's heart thumped painfully; no words were said, they hung in the air unspoken.
I may never trust you.
…..
Merida stayed away the next night, but not because of anything that had passed between them. She suddenly came down with a low-grade fever and cough and was advised to stay in bed. It was curious, Elsa thought, Merida was just about the healthiest person she knew.
Three days passed, then four, and the fever abated but the cough stubbornly remained. She appeared at meals only to pick at her food and stifle her coughing with her napkin. Elsa passed her water and Merida waved away her concern.
"It's just a cough," she hissed irritably when Elsa frowned at her.
"It's not going away. I'm going to send up some honeyed wine to you tonight," Elsa retorted.
She sent honeyed wine for three nights, but it didn't seem to do any good. She was coughing just as much on the fourth day, maybe even more. Anna was talking about the wedding trousseau she'd finally gotten around to ordering, and out of politeness Merida was making a valiant effort to cough quietly into her napkin.
"I'm stuck between gold and silver," Anna enthused. "I think gold looks better with my complexion and I was thinking green for the church and the reception and gold looks really good with green, but you know Mother wore silver so it's like tradition...and Kristoff looks good with silver, right Kristoff?"
"Yes, dear," Kristoff agreed quickly, as was his custom when anything regarding the wedding came up.
"So I could probably do silver and gold, but that's kind of osten...ostintay...ostena...kinda show-offy, and we're meant to set a good example for the people, but then I thought maybe we're supposed to go all out because the people like a good... show..."
She trailed off as Merida's coughing could not be ignored any longer. She was still burying her mouth in her napkin, but her eyes were streaming and her face was blotchy and red. She was hunched forward, trying and failing to suck in breath through the coughing.
"Here, drink something," Anna insisted, pushing over a cup of water.
Merida pulled the napkin away from her mouth to drink but another coughing fit seized her before she could even pick it up. Dark droplets of blood spattered across the surface of the table and just before she dropped the napkin Elsa caught a glimpse of its crumpled depths. It was black with blood.
"Kristoff," Elsa warned him to readiness just in time as Merida pitched forward; he caught her just before she hit the ground in a dead faint.
"Anna, send for the doctor," Elsa ordered. "Kristoff, pick her up."
On the surface, Elsa was the very picture of calm as she lead Kristoff to Merida's bedchamber. She avoided looking directly at her to maintain this calm. But every painful fit of blood-spattered coughing followed by a struggle to gulp in air tugged at her very soul. She waved Kristoff away after he'd deposited Merida on the bed and did what she could to ease her breathing. She turned her on her side, unlaced her bodice, rubbed her back and tried to clear her airways.
When the doctor arrived, he took one look at her and pulled a glass apparatus and a bottle of laudanum from his bag. He shooed Elsa out of the room as he doused the glass with the laudanum and pressed it over Merida's face.
Elsa lingered outside the bedchamber, settled in for a long wait.
….
The doctor emerged after about two hours. By now Anna had joined Elsa in hovering outside Merida's chamber.
"She's got pertussis," the doctor told them gravely.
"Per-wha?" Anna sputtered
"Whooping cough?" Elsa asked incredulously. "How is that even possible?"
"I can only assume the vaccine didn't take," the doctor answered. "A foreigner's immune system may not react to things the way we do in Arendelle."
Oh...
"The vaccine," Elsa muttered, feeling the blood drain from her face. "She was never vaccinated."
All refugees over the age of five were vaccinated against whooping cough, amongst other things, without exception. But that was in the refugee district, and those entering Arendelle were inspected upon entry. Merida had not gone through the same process.
The doctor sighed deeply.
"Then she's at risk for smallpox too, and scarletina. I won't be able to administer those until she's recovered," he said grimly. "The pertussis will take three to five weeks to clear under isolation, and she can be given doses of laudanum to reduce the swelling and relieve the pain. I've pre-measured the doses, no more than two in one day. After that I'm afraid we just have to wait and let her chase out the infection herself."
"I understand," Elsa said numbly. "Thank you, doctor."
How could I let this happen?
She had assumed the doctor gave her the vaccines while she was recovering, and had not asked. She hadn't even thought of it. Pertussis was so rare they almost never heard of it. And who could tell how Merida's body would react to this foreign disease?
…..
A young maid came in tears to Elsa's office, bringing with her a sorry tale. Her youngest sister, a babe in arms, had been taken away by the cough in the last month.
"I waited until she was buried," she sobbed. "But my family needs the money, and I thought it safe to return. I boiled my clothes, highness, I thought the sickness was gone with her. I didn't mean for milady to get sick!"
"It's not your fault," Elsa assured her. "I am truly sorry for your loss."
She increased all of the maid's wages by ten percent that day; perhaps if that maid had been able to afford one more day off Merida would not have gotten sick in the first place.
Even from her office, she could hear Merida coughing. She had re-broken a rib due to her furious coughing fits and the nurse that stopped by to dose her up with laudanum bound her torso with boiled linen, making her even more miserable in recovery. Only two nurses were permitted to treat her, dressed in boiled white linen and with their mouths covered. The doctor had insisted on isolating her from the rest of the castle.
But by the fifth night, Elsa couldn't stand it any longer. She waited at the sally port until she heard the nurse depart and snuck into the room to be with her.
Seeing her after so long was joyful, but it hurt all the same to see her in so much pain. Her eyes were almost swollen shut, red and shiny, and her cheeks were flooded scarlet from broken blood vessels. Her mouth was raw-looking, and she had lost a frightening amount of weight.
Elsa softly slid onto the bed beside her, feeling the heat radiating off of her like a furnace. She was damp with sweat. She opened her mouth to speak but wheezed out another coughing fit instead.
"Don't try to speak," Elsa whispered to her.
Merida closed her eyes with relief. With difficulty she pulled herself forward to lean her cheek against Elsa's thigh.
"I've missed you," Elsa whispered again.
Merida's chest strained with the effort of pulling air into her inflamed lungs. The laudanum was keeping the worst of the inflammation under control, but it could only do so much. Elsa pondered this for a moment.
I could ease her pain. I should...
...but it would involve putting her hands on her chest.
I shouldn't. We never talked about this properly...
But how could she sit there with the means to make her recovery easier and not use it? What kind of person would do that?
Merida did start violently when Elsa reached for the closure of her nightgown, but Elsa wanted to think it was more to do with how sore she was than anything else.
"Ssh," she whispered in what she hoped was a soothing manner. "I want to help you feel better."
Merida stilled. Elsa pulled the neckline of her nightgown down as far as she dared, to just above the line of her breastbone. Filtering a light chill into the palms of her hands, she laid them on Merida's chest and pumped the chill through her skin. In an instant, Merida's breathing eased and her colour improved.
Elsa drew the bedcovers over them both and suffused the room with an icy atmosphere. She settled in for the night, resolving to spend every night with her until she was better. If Merida wasn't sleeping with ease, why should Elsa?
Merida mumbled something, her voice strained from ill-use. Elsa leaned in closer to hear, but it was Gaelic.
"Ní theastaoínn mé bás anseo. Tá mé ag dul abhaile."
She couldn't make sense of it, but she recognized that last word.
Abhaile.
Home.
