Once Upon a Time Season 4 Part 2 - Frost Bites
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CHAPTER 2
The Enchanted Forest, Many Years Ago
"Please, please don't leave me…"
The king of Arendelle lay stunned in the snow, watching helplessly as Baba Yaga regained her strength and approached his two daughters. Fighting through the panic, he grasped at the sword on his hip, trying desperately with frozen fingers to undo the clasp. He fumbled for a moment, releasing the catch and drawing the weapon as Baba Yaga passed by him. She merely laughed as she saw him and raised a hand, freezing him in place with dark magic. Now all he could do was watch.
"Elsa, please come back," Anna whimpered, burying her face in her older sister's hair.
"Ha!" Baba Yaga spat, a tooth falling from her mouth and a stream of blood running over her lips and falling into the snow. "You see where 'true love' gets you. Now your father can watch as I kill both of his daughters." Anna looked around in a panic for some sort of help; her father was standing and awake, though she'd seen he was magically frozen in place. Tiana appeared to be alive, though she was unconscious. Finally her eyes fell on her mother… and the pool of blood that was forming around her head.
"Stop, please!" Anna shouted, trying hard to keep her voice from quivering. "Haven't you done enough?" Anna raised her arms and motioned to the landscaped around them; a harsh winter that Baba Yaga had created to keep the royal family from escaping… so far, it appeared her plan had been successful.
"Not nearly enough, child," Baba Yaga said with a wicked grin. "Besides, you know what they say: revenge is a dish best served cold!" With that she raised her hands to the sky and summoned her magic. It swirled around in her palms for a moment before she gently blew on it. Tiny black tendrils oozed towards Anna and Elsa, wrapping around them tightly, encasing them, and ultimately… leaping off of them.
"Stop." All eyes turned in shock to Elsa as she piped up, a solitary, weak voice barely audible above the howling of the wind. Baba Yaga watched in horror as Elsa raised herself off of Anna's lap and stood up, facing the witch head on.
"That's impossible. I killed you. My black magic never fails!" The witch spat the words at Elsa as she raised her hands again, summoning more of the magic she'd used to kill the girl the first time. She shot the powerful blast at her with little effect.
Though frozen, the king could see these events transpiring and a small glimmer of hope began to rise inside of him as he remembered what his magical advisor had said: True love is the strongest magic of all.
Elsa cracked a smile as she summoned magic of her own. Her left hand began to glow a bright color, vibrant like the sun, while her right hand was encased in a dark shroud. She cupped her hands together and the two mixed, shooting straight at Baba Yaga in a fierce magical attack. The witch was thrown backwards, rolling through the snow and staggering to her feet next to the Dark One's Vault.
"No! You can't defeat me! I will rule you all! I am the Dark Witch. I will kill you for what you've done." Baba Yaga's body shook in rage, the magic coursing through her veins and turning her skin a sickening black color and her eyes a ghoulish red. Magic seemed to vibrate in the air around her, leaping off in tendrils and floating back in towards her.
Suddenly Elsa felt herself vibrating in the same way, though her skin was not tinged in the same way. She began to glow from the inside, so blindingly bright that her sister had to shield her eyes. The two magicians stared each other down as their magic built, until finally Baba Yaga could not take the intensity of the darkness inside her. She screamed and the magic exploded off her body in all directions, mowing down the forest for miles and extinguishing all life… except for that of the Queen of the Snows.
Elsa's light magic had reached its breaking point as well and had been released in a magical attack even stronger than Baba Yaga's. As the dark slammed into the light the light overcame it, extinguishing it and leaving Baba Yaga panting for breath lying in the snow while Elsa only grew in strength.
"You will leave this land and never return," Elsa said, standing over the witch. Her skin still glowed so brightly that Baba Yaga could not look at her without her eyes being burned from her head. "Go. Now." With these words Elsa turned and rushed back to her family. With a flick of her wrist she unfroze her father, and with another she awakened Tiana. Together, the royal family reunited around the form of the queen… who was dying.
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Storybrooke, Present Day
"Snow, stay back!" Charming pushed his wife gruffly out of the way and raised his sword at the Snow Queen standing before them.
"I don't think that will be necessary…" Rumplestiltskin said. He waved his hand and with a single motion David's sword dissolved into the air. The Snow Queen breathed a sigh of relief. "It appears our friend here has gotten control over her powers… at least for the moment."
"Come in, dear. You must be freezing," Snow said, not recognizing the irony in her words. She invited the young woman into the apartment and wrapped a blanket around her, sitting her down on the couch. Ruby brought over a cup of tea for her, which she drank down quickly.
"Care to tell us just what the hell's been going on out there?" Emma asked. She loved her mother, but her caring attitude drove her up the walls sometimes.
"I'm sorry. I'm truly, truly sorry for what's happened. I never meant for any of this… well, you see… I'm not really very good at this…" The Queen trailed off, looking down at her feet and twitching her hands nervously.
"Why don't you just start with your name?" Snow suggested, offering her a hand to hold.
"Elsa. My name is Elsa. I'm the princess of Arendelle… or at least I was. It appears that time has brought me to a new land."
"Yes. A land called Storybrooke," Snow explained.
"Storybrooke. I like it." Elsa seemed to perk up a bit at this.
"Now, could you tell us how you ended up trapped in that… thing?" Snow motioned to the golden container that Elsa had been trapped in.
"I… I… I don't fully remember. Things are hazy for me, still."
"What do you remember then?" Emma said, getting frustrated. It seemed to her that random cases of amnesia seemed to be an increasingly troubling issue in their town.
"I remember the night in the snow… the night that I fought Baba Yaga. The night that… that my mother died," Elsa said, memories springing into her head more and more quickly. "I defeated her, but there was a price."
"Isn't there always…" Emma muttered under her breath. She took a seat next to the young woman on the couch, which seemed to put everyone else slightly more at ease.
"I imprisoned myself, didn't I?" Elsa asked, the memory suddenly dawning on her.
"Yes. You put yourself into the Matrix, which passed to the next Dark One, and eventually to me," Rumplestiltskin explained.
"But that's not possible. I was only supposed to be sealed away for twenty years. Just long enough for Baba Yaga to die without her magic. How… how long was I in there?" Elsa asked, her voice shaking.
"About four hundred years," Rumple said. She stared at him wide eyed, not speaking for a long time. Finally Emma broke the silence.
"I think it's best if you tell us everything that happened… your side of the story," Emma said, taking her other hand.
"Yes. That seems as though it would be best," Elsa agreed, thinking about the best place to start. "A very long time ago, my kingdom, Arendelle, was at war with Baba Yaga. She had defeated all the other lands in the Enchanted Forest and we were the last chance to save our world. Our armies were falling to her, but my father had a secret weapon… or at least he thought he did."
"A weapon capable of defeating the Dark One?" Charming asked.
"Yes. The only thing capable of breaking the curse: True Love." Rumplestiltskin shifted uncomfortably in his seat at this, remembering the night so long ago that Belle had first kissed him; the night he almost chose love over power; the night he regretted. Luckily, Elsa began talking again before he could get to feeling too bad for himself. "She found us at the Dark One's Vault and attacked us. She was going to kill my sister when… when…"
"You saved her?" Snow asked, trying to help her fill in the blanks.
"Yes. I sacrificed myself for her. At least, I tried to."
"An act of true love…" Rumple said, thinking about how her powers fused with Baba Yaga's. "You used the greatest light magic to fend off the greatest dark magic, and somehow the two fused. You and Baba Yaga became magically connected."
"Yes, that's right. I… I defeated her, but she escaped… escaped to this world. A land without magic. And she took my sister with her." Suddenly the whole picture came back to her. The fight with Baba Yaga, losing her sister and the maid, her mother's death. She broke down into tears, sobbing into Mary Margaret's shoulder.
"You thought she would die of old age without her magic to preserve her, so you imprisoned yourself in the Matrix until she died," Rumple began explaining, ideas clicking into place. "But since you were magically bonded, her magic persisted slightly into this world and kept her living… that's why you had to stay in there for so long. But how?" He kneeled down in front of Elsa, trying to look into her eyes. "How did she get here? And why did she take your sister with her?"
"And where are they all now?" Charming asked.
"My guess? New Orleans." Hook said, remembering what the Snow Queen had mentioned before when they'd met her initially.
"Which means…"
"Which means we just sent Belle and Regina into a fight against the most powerful witch of all time," Emma said, pulling out her phone and praying that they weren't already dead.
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New Orleans, Present Day
Doctor Stevens' office was stuffy, small, and stuffed with what Regina Mills guessed to be every paper that had ever come across his desk. Because of this, the two women visiting him that day were forced to stand in the corner and pray silently that no stacks of papers decided to topple over and crush them before their meeting with the doctor. They're worked their way into the hospital pretending to be reporters, but they knew that cover wouldn't hold up for very long.
"They're in here, Doctor Stevens," Belle her a female voice outside the office say. A moment later the doorknob twisted and the good doctor entered, his faithful assistant, Samantha, stepping into the room as well.
"What can I help you two ladies with?" The doctor asked. He was polite enough, though both Regina and Belle could tell from looking at him that he had a million other things he'd rather be doing.
"We're just wondering if anything… strange has happened in your hospital in the last few days?" Regina asked. Belle took out a notepad and paper.
"Can't think of anything off the top of my head, no," Stevens said, eager to get the two women to leave.
"Well are you sure? It might have been something little, something you wouldn't even have thought was strange at first," Belle said. She didn't come all the way across the country to take "no" for an answer.
"Nope. Sorry to tell you ladies, things have been pretty slow around here."
"Well Doctor Stevens, there was that one thing with the -" Stevens flashed Samantha a look that told her to shut up if she wanted to keep her job. She tightened her lips and cocked an eyebrow at him.
"Yes, something did happen?" Regina asked rising from her seat. She was wearing heels that gave her a bit of a height advantage on Stevens, which she appreciated. She towered over him and moved closer.
"Alright, there was one thing the other day with an old woman. A coma patient who's been in the hospital since before anyone can even remember woke up."
"And what happened to her?" Belle asked, scrawling things down on her paper as they spoke.
"She… checked out."
"Escaped is more like it!" Samantha burst out. Before Stevens could stop her she launched into the full story. "She threw a security guard through a wall and disappeared a few hours later. No one's seen her since."
"Samantha, go do your rounds. Now." Stevens pointed to the door and Samantha left, her head hanging low.
"Nothing of interest happened recently, huh doctor?" Regina said, rolling her eyes.
"I make it a point not to discuss my patients with nosy reporters… besides which, you never told me what newspaper you were from."
"The Storybrooke Mirror," Belle said, saying the first thing that came to mind.
"Never heard of it," Stevens said, getting suspicious.
"Yes well, it's quite small and -" Regina thanked her lucky star that her phone decided to ring at that moment. She whipped it out of her pocket and grabbed Belle with her other arm, ushering the young woman out of the room and following behind her. "We must be going. This is my editor." Without another word Regina slammed the door shut, leaving Doctor Stevens alone and thoroughly confused.
"Regina?" The mayor-turned-investigator answered the phone to find it was none other than Emma Swan.
"Yes, Miss Swan? Any new news to report?"
"Yeah, actually. Major news. You're not alone down there. Baba Yaga's in this world and if our theory is right she's awake and gunning to get to Storybrooke."
"Baba Yaga? I thought that was just a story. You're telling me there's an all powerful which in New Orleans?"
"Yeah. I wouldn't worry too much just yet though. We have a new… friend, and she's telling us that Baba Yaga should be out of commission. This girl's memories are hazy, but she seems to remember locking her into an eternal slumber when she came to this world." Suddenly Regina's mind flashed back to their conversation with Doctor Stevens. A coma patient who'd been there since before anyone could remember had woken up. Maybe they weren't as safe as they thought.
"I wouldn't celebrate just yet, Miss Swan. Something tells me we're about to be in a whole hell of a lot more danger than we've ever been in before."
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Author's Notes:
-Did you like it?
-Reviews are welcome!
-Elsa: Bad guy or misunderstood.
-Are you looking forward to more Tiana/Anna stuff in the next few chapters?
-How will Baba Yaga being woken up in the present affect our characters?
-What do you think happened that stranded Baba Yaga, Anna, and Tiana in our world?
-Will you actually keep reading this story?