All or Nothing

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Note: I'm heading into endgame on this fic at last, and I would like to mention that I have an archive with all of my most recent fanwork on it as well as original work and if you feel like reading anything else I've written I suggest you try there and see if there's anything you're interested in. Thanks for reading All or Nothing thus far!

…..

Anna was going on five months pregnant by the time another letter reached Elsa from Agrabah. It confirmed one of her most fervent fears. There were three hairs attached, as always, but she couldn't bear to put them in the book.

Somehow, Merida had known she wouldn't use the book, because she was much more descriptive in her letter than she usually was.

Mirrikh, Sultana Jasmine's grandson, had ridden out ahead of his own forces to meet with her at the palace. Merida said nothing of his looks, only that he seemed like a serious young man. He listened carefully as she explained her situation, and when she was finished he told her of the prophecy that he had been burdened with when he was a child. He was convinced that the two of them were meant to form an alliance, and both had something the other wanted.

Mirrikh had never been to that part of the world before, and he needed to complete his journey. He had amassed an army by defeating and then befriending the captain of every pirate ship in the south seas, as well as endearing himself to the foothill tribes enough for them to send their sons off to journey with him. Between his forces and Merida's loyal men back in Dunbroch, they would have more than enough to retake the country.

She was quick to explain that he had no desire to rule Dunbroch, and that he would sign himself over as the queen's consort once the crown was on her head. He would father her children to ensure her legacy as well as his own, but he would leave often to continue his journey, following the sun to where it set in the evening.

I agreed, Elsa. What else could I do?

As crushed as she was, Elsa supposed she couldn't blame her. If Arendelle had been overtaken in such a way and Anna driven out of her home the way Merida's brothers had been, Elsa thought she might have done the same.

It didn't hurt any less to admit it, though.

…..

When Anna was in her eighth month, Elsa received word that Merida was offshore, on one of Mirrikh's ships. Elsa went to meet her; it would not be anything like as romantic a union as she wanted, as she was accompanied by armed guard and the ship was populated by men.

Still, her heart did a giddy little jump when she saw her again.

She was as lovely as when she'd left Elsa, still pale as the moon despite being so close to the sun for so long, and the smile on her face when she saw Elsa was genuinely thrilled.

"You still have all your arms and legs, I see," Elsa quipped. "I'm relieved."

"I might have half a stomach left though," Merida joked back. "They fed me some awfully strange things in Agrabah."

Indeed, if she had changed at all she looked a little thinner. Or perhaps it was just the clothes she was wearing; Agrabah's clothing, even draped in many layers, were thin as paper.

They talked for a while, and they were given space to do so. Elsa described Anna's wedding and whispered about her illegitimate pregnancy (to hearty laughter from Merida) and they were just about getting to the part where Mirrikh made his first appearance when the man himself knocked and entered.

Elsa couldn't help it; she stared.

She had expected a large hulking warrior, something like the MacGuffin man had been, or at least a man who had his fair share of battle scars on his face. Instead she saw a long-faced man with hair that reached his waist, a tidy beard and black eyes that glimmered with intelligence. His skin was dark and unlined by age or scars. She could not figure out how old he was, he could have been anywhere from his twenties to a well-preserved fifty.

This is the man she's trusting her fate to.

"I will speak with this queen, yes?" he asked Merida.

"Yes, I suppose," she shrugged, and rose to her feet. "I'll be back in a little bit."

He sat at the table across from her, as she tried to keep the ice rising in her blood under control.

"I should give my thanks to you," he began. His voice lacked the heavy accent of Agrabah, it was instead tinged with something smoother, earthier. "For saving her, and for keeping her from harm. She has said much of you to me."

"I think anyone in the same position would have done what I did," Elsa responded.

"Maybe," he agreed. "Maybe not. If you had known then that you would lose your heart to her, would you have done it?"

Elsa froze. A thin sheet of ice crackled along the bench she was sitting on. Surely Merida wouldn't have told him...?

He smiled wryly at the look on her face.

"She has not said anything," he assured her. "She did not need to. I knew her heart belonged to someone else from the moment I first spoke with her. It is in the prophecy. I could never possess her heart for myself. And I knew the moment I saw you that you love her as much as she loves you."

She loves me.

Tears stung at the corner of Elsa's eyes. Of all the ways to find out how Merida truly felt about her, learning that she loved her from the man she was going to marry was possibly the cruelest.

"And you don't seem to mind giving up your armies for the sake of a woman that will never love you?" she asked, a touch of bitterness tinging the words.

"I have had a long time to make my peace with it," he shrugged. "It is prophecized. My true love is the sun, I must follow in its path, always."

With that, he was gone. If nothing else, he left Elsa with the promise that someday, Merida might be hers and only hers once again.

…..

Anna gave birth to the crown princes in the early hours of an autumn morning. Magnus, the older, was born five minutes before his brother Lennart, making him the official heir to the throne. They were large healthy boys that filled the palace with their bellowing cries from their first moments out of the womb.

Anna took to motherhood surprisingly well. It aged her, in a good way. She was diligent about their feeding and their cleanliness, about the backgrounds and habits of their nursemaids. She even went to their nursery to soothe them when they woke, despite how tired it made her and despite the fact that the palace had hired night nurses for this task.

Kristoff was a happy father, though he seemed nervous around the babies. He seemed to believe he would break them somehow if he held them for too long, though he was always eager to sing to them or coo at them if someone else was holding them.

Elsa, however, was relatively hands off. With small children in the palace she was now ever more aware of how dangerous her powers could be, and babies were unpredictable. She held them little, and left them to the care of her more capable sister and the palace staff. There was little need for her to be very involved in their lives, at least until they were older anyway.

News reached her that the initial force had descended on Dunbroch, after two solid months of laying down plans. Warrick's remaining forces hadn't stood a chance; combined with the home troops that knew the land and Mirrikh's bands of talented pirates, the Angolsi brigade fell like sheaved wheat.

Warrick holed up in the castle, sending out missives begging help from Angols. This was a complication; Angols decided to get involved, for some reason, and sent troops marching into Dunbroch. These were seasoned soldiers, and Angols had always been one of the greater forces to be reckoned with in the world.

However, Dunbroch was unreachable unless you went by sea, and for all the talent the Angolsi troops had on land they were mostly useless in the water. Mirrikh's pirates, with their superior firepower weapons from the far east, destroyed their fleets before they could set foot on Dunbroch. Any soldiers that managed to make it to land were quickly dispatched by the men lying in wait in the forests by the shores.

Warrick was captured, and Merida performed the execution herself. She purposefully wore a white gown to take his head off with her father's broadsword, and managed to do it in one clean stroke. His blood spattered over the white gown, and this was how she took the throne, drenched in the blood of her greatest enemy.

She is Queen Merida of Dunbroch now. We are equals.

Her brothers, halfway towards being men by now, were retrieved from their island hideout and reunited with their sister, to much weeping from everyone involved. With her family returned, she wasted no time in drawing up the contract that stated Mirrikh had no claim on the throne, and they were promptly married. In the letter she sent Elsa, she did not state whether she had worn the bloodied gown when she married Mirrikh, but she liked to think that she had. It served as a handy warning to anyone thinking about crossing her.

Warrick's surviving men were packed off back to Angols, thankful to escape with their lives. It was discovered that he had gotten a young serving girl, a native of Angols, pregnant with a bastard child and when she was called to the throne she begged for her child's life to be spared. Merida gifted her a homestead and enough money to raise her child well, recognizing her as being as much a victim of Warrick as Merida had been.

Rumours flooded the nations, reaching even Arendelle's remote ears. Angols' king was angry, it was said, for Dunbroch's liberation had cast a shadow over the Angols empire. The previous king, the man who had been on the throne when Merida was forcibly married to Warrick, had been known as a patient, prudent man. His son was anything but; he had already absorbed two small nations into his empire in the first year of his reign, and was making noises to the effect that he intended Dunbroch to be next.

This made Elsa nervous. Defeating Warrick was one thing; defeating a nation renowned for its warlike tendencies was quite another. It helped to remind herself that a wisp had brought Merida to Mirrikh, and a dream had brought Mirrikh to Merida. They were together by some sort of external force, something more powerful than a mere nation. If anyone stood a chance of standing against Angols, it was them.

…..

"Mama..." Anna repeated. "You can do it...Mama!"

"Six months is too early, I told you," Elsa said from behind her stack of paperwork.

"And I told you, he's smart enough to get it," Anna huffed.

She had brought Lennart into Elsa's office to 'spend some quality auntie time' but so far was just trying to get a baby who wasn't even capable of sitting up straight to form words. Elsa wasn't one to think Anna or Kristoff played favourites with their children, but if they did it was clear that Anna was Lennart's champion. He had a little tuft of white-blonde hair clinging to his otherwise bald head, and Kristoff's eyes. Magnus resembled Anna more, and because he seemed to be a hardier child Kristoff tended to pick him up more than his more delicate brother.

A sharp cry sounded from the window, along with a tapping noise, and Lennart giggled and clapped at the sight of the bird perched on the windowledge.

Lua.

Elsa expected bad news as she opened the window and let the falcon in. Angols had taken them prisoner, or they had lost an important naval battle. When she unfurled the note, she was relieved, though unhappy in another, more private way.

"What does it say?" Anna asked, jostling the baby.

"Merida's pregnant," Elsa responded, letting the note fall onto her desk.