All or Nothing
Chapter Nineteen
The once-a-month update is probably frustrating to anyone following this story, and believe me it's frustrating to write this once a month too. I'm going to try and be faster for the following weeks.
Note: Explicit content.
…..
By the time Merida had fully recovered enough to be outside again, the first snows were beginning to fall. She seemed anxious to get out of the palace, but Elsa couldn't blame her. Captivity, even for her own good, suited her about as well as any wild animal.
She had only been off bed rest for two days when Merida insisted they take a trip up the North mountain to Elsa's ice palace, but for whatever reason refused to tell Elsa why. When Elsa suggested bringing Anna and Kristoff, Merida shook her head vehemenedly.
"Just us," she insisted.
Elsa's heart did a giddy little skip at the idea that she wanted them to be alone. The more pragmatic side of her told her she just didn't want to be slowed down by anyone else, but it was nice to think of, all the same.
Merida wouldn't even hear of the journey being delayed by a single day. The morning they were due to leave, she was pacing in front of the door, itching to get gone. Someone had given her a pocketwatch while she recovered, and she checked it constantly while waiting for Elsa, scrunching her face in irritation.
When they finally got going, Merida half-leapt up the mountain, at all times twenty steps or more ahead of Elsa.
"Don't strain yourself! You've only just recovered," Elsa called to her.
"I'm fine!" Merida called back, kicking up a cloud of snow in her path. "Come on, or we won't be there before nightfall!"
It was a bit ridiculous to be worried at barely past noon, but Elsa humoured her. Indeed, by the time they were at the door of the ice palace, the sun was just starting to set. Merida was frowning at her pocketwatch by the time Elsa caught up with her.
"What does the big hand mean again?"she grumbled.
"It counts the minutes," Elsa answered, winded and clutching her side.
Merida rolled her eyes and grumbled something in Gaelic before throwing open the door and marching inside as though she owned the place. Laughing under her breath, Elsa followed.
She stopped to look around at the walls and the furnishings; she'd half-expected them to have melted at least a little. But the palace was just as she'd left it, solid and sparkling as ever. It was a testemant to how stable she was feeling these days.
Just as she'd expected, Merida had made her way to the highest reachable point on the palace and was sitting on the windowledge, legs dangling in the breeze. The mist-covered peaks of Dunbroch's mountains were just about visible in the distance, but Merida was looking to the east, and checking her pocketwatch.
"This is the highest point, isn't it?" she asked Elsa as she sat on the safe side of the windowledge.
"Can't get any higher than this without losing air or getting blown away by the wind," Elsa replied. "Do you want to tell me why you dragged us up here?"
"Fine, it's almost time anyway."
She put away the watch and scooted a little closer to Elsa.
"When I was a child," she began. "We had a visitor in the castle from some far away place. His ship ran aground near the coast and we took him in for a while. He was one of those...with all the books...and maps..."
"An explorer?" Elsa offered.
"Right, an explorer. He looked different to us, we'd never seen anyone like him before. He learned Gaelic in a few weeks! He told us his name, but we could never pronounce it, we used to call him fear foghlamtha...the learned man."
With a start, Elsa realized this was likely the man she had seen when she had found Merida's hair in the dining room. The man from Dionhae or Myohen.
"He let me look through all his old books, and there was this one story..."
Feeling a little sick, Elsa smiled and nodded as Merida told her the story of Lua, of how she'd run out to see her, fallen out of the tree afterwards and broken her leg, dragged herself home to find her father was sending out a search party. This was something Merida had wanted to share with Elsa, and Elsa had ruined it by snooping.
But there was no sense in telling her that. It would only upset her.
"So that's why you named your hawk Lua?" she asked, as though she didn't know.
"Not just that reason," Merida shrugged. "Anyway, tonight's the night she comes back around here. I kept watch for her every year since I was ten years old."
"Why didn't you tell me this on the way here?"
"I wanted it to be a surprise."
It was a touching gesture, even spoiled as it was by Elsa's interference. Overwhelmed, Elsa pressed against her from behind, enveloping her, burying her face in her hair. Merida held her hands and pressed back.
They stayed like that for Lord only knows how long, until Merida pulled out of the embrace.
"There she is!"
Lua, the spectre, had been magnificent as a shadow in someone's recollections, but to see her in person was truly incredible. Elsa's jaw dropped.
From below, she could have been mistaken for a comet or a shooting star, but close as they were, Elsa could clearly see a woman's shape in the flames. Her hair streamed out behind her, her wings lazily drifting, setting the clouds ablaze as she passed them. Little tendrils of fire broke away from her form, floated on the wind and vanished, leaving silvery trails of smoke.
Merida shouted and waved, prompting Elsa to furtively take hold of her skirt in case she knocked herself clean off of the ledge. The figure in the flames spun on her axis, drifted a little closer. In the brightness of her form, the shadow of her face betrayed her little smile, an acknowledgement that she had seen them.
Once upon a time, as a lonely little girl stuck in a single room away from everyone, she had wondered why she had been singled out, burdened with magic. But she realized now that magic was everywhere, and in the whole wide world her powers really meant very little. It should have been a depressing thought, but on the contrary, Elsa found it strangely uplifting.
Lua dissappeared into the clouds a few moments later. Merida climbed down from her perch with a happy sigh.
"That was really something, wasn't it...ah!"
She was cut off mid sentence when Elsa pulled her into her arms, held her close, buried her face in her shoulder.
"Thank you," Elsa sobbed.
…..
Elsa set up the beds as she had before while Merida cooked dinner. They exchanged more tales from their respective childhoods, free to be louder away from the palace.
"...I swear he had most of his army, and every dog in Dunbroch, ready to go combing the forest, and I just stumbled out while he was talking to the troops, dragging my banged-up leg behind me...and I went 'Hi, Dad,' and that was that. Search party off."
"How angry was he?" Elsa asked.
"Oh, furious. Not because I was sneaking out or anything, he had to feed all the men he dragged out before he sent them home. He had me peeling potatoes for a month. It was worth it."
Tired but happy, Elsa settled into bed. But Merida looked at her bed, and Elsa could tell by the expression on her face she was wrestling with some decision. Then she did something Elsa hadn't expected, that left her gobsmacked and unable to move.
In one fluid motion, she pulled her nightgown over her head and tossed it casually to one side. She stood there, bare-skinned from head to toe, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight, while Elsa's synapses crackled and misfired.
Even the practicing with Meena had not prepared her for this. It was the kind of woman's shape she had dreamed of since her feverish, hormone-riddled adolesence; full-breasted, sweeping curves, an expanse of creamy soft skin. Elsa's mouth was dry, her tongue clumsily trying to find words.
Merida shivered, wrapped her arms around her breasts.
"It's bloody freezing," she laughed. "Can I come in or not?"
"Yes," Elsa croaked, lifting her blanket.
They had been close before, but this was an even greater leap forward. Merida kissed her, and Elsa found herself responding naturally, as she had before. She kept her hands rooted firmly to her side, until Merida took up one hand and placed it on her breast.
"Do what you want to do," she whispered in Elsa's ear, before pressing a kiss to the thumping vein at her throat.
Elsa flipped them over. It was dark, she couldn't see much at all, but instinctively she sought out the places she wanted to find, first with her hands, then with her mouth. One set of fingers stroked the velvety skin around Merida's nipple while her lips found the other and gently sucked. A wanton heat was building at the core of her.
Her mouth trailed lower, ghosted carefully over the ribcage she knew was still bruised, skimmed over the slight pouch of the stomach, and though she didn't really intend to go lower, she found once she started she couldn't stop. She ended up burying her face in the molten core of her.
Merida didn't protest, just opened her legs for better access.
It was intoxicating. Elsa's mind shut off completely and she was a creature lost to her senses. Her tongue dove in deep between the folds as her fingers worked that odd little button, her lips alternately sucked and kissed at the spreading wetness. When the climax came, she felt it ripple through her own body and, mysteriously, followed it with an answering release. She hadn't even needed to be touched.
Emerging from under the blanket, she saw that Merida was gasping for air as though she'd been drowning. Both of them were damp, and seeing no reason to cling to modesty now, Elsa shucked off her own nightgown and tossed it away.
"That was something," Merida said breathlessly, a moment later.
"Yes," Elsa agreed. She didn't feel quite capable of proper words just yet.
"You want me to...do that to you?"
Even the thought of it made Elsa squirm pleasantly, but she shook her head.
"Not right now," she murmured. "Just..."
She trailed off, and in lieu of words she laid her head on Merida's chest. Merida stroked her head as she fell asleep, and she would have been happy to never wake again.
…..
Merida did indeed repay the favour a few nights later. Elsa wondered if that brush with death suddenly made her throw all caution to the wind, and even if that was the case she couldn't help but be grateful.
Elsa was considerably more shy when it came to her body, but she was easily distracted, and Merida's fingers were nimble. There was enviable talent there, in that she could induce a powerful climax with just two fingers followed immediately by several little tremors. Elsa felt quite clumsy by comparison, spent a lot of their nights with her face pressed against Merida's folds trying to match the pleasure she'd been given. Merida didn't complain, so she was probably doing well.
Waiting for night to fall was torture, and they were somewhat drunk on each other, so naturally they became reckless. Elsa found herself signing important documents of state hunched over on her desk with her skirt around her waist and her bloomers around her ankles being thoroughly wrung out by Merida's skilled hands. Merida tagged along on granary inspections, fully expecting to duck behind a sack of barley so that Elsa could sample the goods.
And really, most people did knock before entering her office.
Afterwards, scarlet with the thought of it, Elsa would ponder exactly what Anna had seen when she walked in on them.
It was rather tame, actually. They hadn't gotten far. Merida was on the desk, yes, but she was (mostly) clothed. Except for a bit of rumpling in the bodice where Elsa's hands had been digging around, you might have thought she'd missed a button or something. And yes, her hands were halfway up the slit in Elsa's skirt, but she could have been fixing it, like a good friend would.
As for the fact that Elsa's tongue was making itself very much at home in Merida's mouth...well, you couldn't have told that just from seeing it from the doorway. Not really.
And you couldn't blame them for not hearing Anna let herself in. She could be quiet when she wanted to be. Who knows how long she'd been standing there, watching them go at it.
"Oh my God..."
Once those words fell out of Anna's mouth, they sprang away from each other, blushing furiously (guiltily) and Elsa tried to find the words to deny whatever it was Anna thought they were doing, but Anna had fled, slamming the door behind her.
Elsa dropped into her chair, groaning.
"Is this bad?" Merida asked gently, fixing her bodice.
"Quite," Elsa grumbled. "I didn't really want her to find out like that."
"Should I...talk to her?"
"No, no. I'm her big sister, I'll do it."
Merida gave her a chaste kiss, and departed. Elsa prepared to go to Anna, to explain everything...
...but really, those documents she needed to approve were very important and couldn't be ignored much longer.
And by complete coincidence, by the time she'd finished it was past midnight.
