All or Nothing
Chapter Twenty-Six
…..
Note: After thinking it over for a while, I decided to create an archive for my work, both original and fanwork. Back when I first started writing fanfiction everyone had archives, shrines, mailing lists and webrings and being an old fashioned girl I quite missed that. It's still under construction at the moment but I will add a link for anyone that's interested in reading anything else I've done or will do in the future.
Link:
…..
After years of delays, paperwork, meetings and arguments with every major and minor noble that had a son old enough for marriage, the arrangements for Anna's wedding to Kristoff were finally completed. Both members of the happy couple were over the moon, even though Kristoff had to sign a long list of documents that rendered him incapable of taking the throne and basically turned him into a glorified consort. He signed them with relish.
Elsa, on the face of it, was happy for her sister but privately, sourly she thought the consul were getting worried about Elsa's health and just wanted to get Anna working on producing the heir to the throne as fast as possible. Hopefully a boy this time and not another troublesome girl.
In any case, Elsa's health was fine. She talked less and ate less and slept less but she got her queenly duties done and she looked perfectly fine, respectable and graceful as always. The great yawning chasm inside her couldn't be seen from the outside. She had even regained some of her control over the weather, the snows did not fall so severely as they had at her most miserable. They fell in a steady aimless drift, much like how Elsa got through each day.
Attending Anna's dress fittings was the most painful; every time Anna giggled and twirled in her dress or sighed over the romance of it all, it was a little stabbing reminder that Elsa would never have this happiness for herself.
Says who? She said she would return. She promised.
That fruitless hope that refused to leave her was the worst of it.
…..
At the beginning of spring, just a week before Anna's marriage, Lua returned to Arendelle with another letter and three more strands of long red hair. The surge of longing that rose up in Elsa was both excruciating and wonderful.
The letter itself was presented in Merida's usual blunt matter-of-fact way. She had been taken to meet with the sultana, hosted in the most expensive place she had ever seen in her life and showered with gifts not just from the sultana herself but a slew of wealthy men and women who had journeyed to the palace specifically to see the only woman ever to enter, not to mention finish, the desert race. These gifts included several slaves, but the idea of owning a person freaked Merida out so much the sultana offered to take them for her and give them gentle work in the palace.
Apparently, the people of Agrabah regarded her as 'lucky' for her pale skin and red hair, something that was as alien to the dusky populace as snow was. Children, slaves and commoners often reached out to touch her when she went out in public (though she was always accompanied by the sultana's royal guard, it didn't stop anyone) and stall vendors demanded that she bless their wares by accepting their gifts. It was all a bit overwhelming, so she didn't leave the palace much.
Elsa chuckled to herself, remembering how awkward Merida had been at the start of her long stay in Arendelle and how the castle staff had warmed to her. It seemed she had that gift everywhere she went though she didn't realize it.
But, there was something left unsaid in the letter. Elsa recognized a rambling distraction when she heard it, even in writing. With her heart already thumping hard, she went to the book and dropped one of the hairs in.
…..
Sultana Jasmine's face was as beautiful and unlined as a woman in her early thirties. It was not a youthful face but an elegant one, with sparkling eyes that spoke of wisdom and grace acquired over near a century of royal life and a mouth that lilted upwards with good humour. Her hair, though no longer black, was long and lustrous and trailed over her shoulders and back like a fine wool cloak.
Her beauty was so striking it was easy to miss how she was so enormously fat that she could no longer walk much, and the splendor of the many layers of gauzy cloth she draped herself in made her body a work of art in its own right. She was intimidating in a way that another similarly large woman could not have been.
She spoke Angolsi at least as well as Merida did, and this was the language they used to speak with each other. When Elsa manifested in the room through the book, they clearly had already been speaking for some time, judging by the empty gilt cups on the low table they were sitting at.
For a moment, Elsa was distracted from the conversation by how Merida looked. With her absence felt so keenly, it already brought a pang of longing to Elsa's heart but also a ferocious surge of lust. She was wearing one of the gauzy, whisper-thin gowns that all the well-off maidens in Agrabah tended to wear, wrapped tightly around her bosom and baring her milk-pale midriff. Her curls had been bound away with several strands of little pearls.
"Our blood is weak," the sultana said, just as Elsa shook herself and tuned back in. "I blame the harems, and the men for being so foolish about them. I thought I would not suffer so when I married a man of low birth, but hah!"
She laughed loudly, her entire body shaking and clinking with the jewels in her clothes.
"Didn't you say you loved your husband?" Merida asked, a little boldly for someone who was only a recent addition to the court. Luckily, Sultana Jasmine seemed to find this amusing.
"I did. That was my weakness," she sighed. "He was handsome and he spoke well, but he was weak. Agrabah is plagued by weakness."
Just then, another woman walked into the chamber and sprawled across one of the cushions by the low table. She was stunning, similar in face to the sultana but her hair was a straight and glossy black sheet and her figure, bared as it was in the Agrabah fashion, was trim and supple.
"I want to hear more of your men," she said, her familiarity leaving no doubt that she was most likely a grand-daughter to the sultana.
"You are entirely too bold," the sultana scolded but with an amused grin.
"What's left that I didn't say?" Merida shrugged, sipping from the gilt cup and barely suppressing a grimace. "There's a lot of them and they are strong."
"But are they handsome?" the woman asked.
"I suppose," Merida said.
"A woman should want for more," the sultana cautioned the woman.
"Strong and handsome, what else is there? I will be happy with a man who does not smell of goats!" the woman retorted.
"Goats, no. Sheep, maybe," Merida quipped, to shrieking laughter from the woman and the sultana.
"Why did you call for me, Jida?" the woman asked the sultana when they had stopped laughing. "I am quite busy today..."
"That is a lie but I will forgive," Sultana Jasmine said brusquely. "We have spoken much. I think it will be good for Agrabah to have dealings with Dunbroch, and I wish to see it done before I leave this world. Agrabah is rich in jewels, spice and trade but it is poor in blood. The blood of Dunbroch is strong, but it has need of an army and resources to feed an army."
She poured a frothing liquid into the gilded cups and drank deeply before continuing.
"I do not propose to link our nations by blood carelessly. If Dunbroch can give me the best of its blood, then I can give Dunbroch the best of Agrabah's blood. Nadiya is the daughter of my best beloved son, she is clever and healthy and will have many healthy babies."
The woman grinned at this compliment, smoothing her hair down with an air of pride.
"The men of Dunbroch would fight wars over her," Merida agreed.
"There should be no need, I trust that you shall find the best of Dunbroch's sons for Nadiya," the sultana said. "As for you...I could not hand you over to just anyone."
Here it was. The thing Merida didn't want to write in the letter. A proposal.
"My best beloved son had a child with a woman from the Kogurin tribe. He is everything a prince should be, he is brave and wise and strong..."
"He is also handsome," Nadiya added with a rakish grin.
"Quite handsome," the sultana agreed. "He will never be in line for Agrabah's throne, not while my other sons have living sons of their own. None of my daughters or their daughters wish to take my title when I am gone, so the best of my blood I am putting in your hands."
No Elsa felt like screaming, even though she knew this was a moment that had long past. Don't do it. Don't put your life in the hands of another man.
Merida hesitated, looked down at the table. Elsa could see she was desperately conflicted, and she was sure the sultana could see it too.
"Mirrikh is very serious," Nadiya said after a moment of silence. "His mother's people rely on dreams and visions to see their future, and he has always said he would follow a dream he had when he was just a boy."
This peaked Merida's interest. Knowing how superstitious the people of Dunbroch were, it was possibly the only way she would have even been interested in anything about this man.
"Ah yes, that same dream I had to hear about over and over when he was brought to me," Sultana Jasmine sighed. "The fox that cheated the sun. He has been all over the seven seas looking for it."
"And in that time, he has raised a formidable army," Nadiya said. "He made friends and allies with just about every pirate in the ocean. There are hundreds of men who would walk into hell behind him."
"Mirrikh would have no interest in your throne," the sultana said, laying a comforting hand on Merida's arm. "He would father your children and bring you the heads of your enemies but he will always want to wander as he pleases. It is his destiny to chase the setting sun."
"Let me think about it," Merida said. "If Nadiya is happy to wed a man of Dunbroch, she'll find no shortage of men who want to be with her...but I've not even met this man..."
"Well, you will soon," Nadiya told her. "I've written to him to tell him all about you. He thinks you are the key to his dream. All I had to say was that your hair was as red as a fox and you completed the burning race and he set sail."
A look of absolute panic crossed Merida's face, but with that the vision was over and Elsa was back in the silence of Arendelle at night.
…..
She won't agree to it. She can't.
Even as she repeated the mantra to herself, Elsa knew it wasn't true. Royalty married other royalty for worse reasons than a possible prophetic dream. Merida's winning a desert race (and therefore 'tricking the sun' by racing at night) would have been a huge coincidence if a wisp hadn't lead directly to that path. Even the horse she used in the race had been the wisps' doing. There were two strands of destiny at work, trying to bring Merida and this Mirrikh person together.
Where does that leave me?
In Arendelle.
Alone.
…..
Anna and Kristoff were married in a beautiful ceremony attended by no less than twenty-thousand citizens, visitors and noble guests. Kristoff managed to shrug off his usual rough-around-the-edges charm to maintain a solemn dignity, though his eyes were suspiciously watery as he said his vows. Anna, naturally, cried about thirty different times about thirty different things throughout the day.
Elsa smiled and greeted and presided as well as could be expected. She was genuinely happy for her sister and for Kristoff, and it was easy as long as she kept that feeling at the surface. She could crumble that night in the safety of her bedroom, and she fully intended to.
Two weeks after the wedding, it was announced by the royal doctor that Anna was expecting.
"That was fast," Elsa deadpanned when she visited the royal couple's quarters.
"Yeah, uh..." Anna laughed, blushing furiously. "It's not like they wanted us to wait when we did get married or anything, so we thought..."
"Nobody will be able to tell," Elsa sighed. "What was the actual gap?"
"About a month," Anna said quietly, sinking under her bedcovers.
"We'll just say it arrived early."
"Okay."
"You know, I think you're the first in our family that's ever had an actual bastard."
"Hey," Anna growled, sitting up. "I haven't even had it yet! Don't call it a bastard!"
Elsa went away laughing to herself. To think Kristoff and Anna couldn't hold off on each other long enough to avoid compromising the throne with a technically out-of-wedlock child!
And then she remembered that at that moment, the person she loved most was debating compromising her own throne with marriage to an out-of-wedlock man, and the laughter died in her throat.
…..
Note: Readers may be quite annoyed at this turn of events, but I would like to ask that you stick with it for a bit. I do not break up homosexual relationships to turn one half of the couple straight, this will be a more complex issue than that.
