Wheww, nearly 200 views and first reviews! Lots and lots of thanks. Had to take a few minutes to answer. I had most this chapter written out, since it was originally planned to go before Chapter 3. This chapter is rather more court-like/intellectual/strategic than the rest so far and probably what comes next, which is bound to be more action-packed, complain in the comments if that's too much (also tell me if you want more of that). Additionally, I just realised I have SO MANY CHARACTERS, maybe due to four-way crossover with two additional appended universes. In advance sorry for lengthy A.N.
faisyah865 and Noon30ish: Thanks so much for your support! *Big automaton hugs*
Noon30ish: thanks thanks thanks ad lib for taking time to constructively review! I have no great plans for Elsa within this fic (sorry Ice Queen fans) but Anna does have an important supportive role to play, at the same level as Astrid, Eugene, and maybe to a lesser extent Ella Ashcroft, also from a different universe, amongst the already introduced characters. Also, I'm attempting to give most characters backstory and development, and can give narration POV to pretty much anyone (including a sea slug and a supercomputer, in original works). About the Big Four, while I sometimes find the delimitation rather arbitraty, they are somewhat symbolically apart from the rest of the cast (cannot explain without mild spoilers) and are intended to have a common dynamic that is rather different from the way Anna, Elsa and Hans interact with either of them. So yes, Anna is an organic part of the plot and a developed (starting from this chapter) POV character but not a protagonist at the same level as Hiccup, Jack, Rapuzel and Merida. (On a different note, I realised I'm enjoying RapunzelxFlynn more than I expected, so there might be less room for AnnaxHans… don't know yet). About jargon: hardly noticed, being scientifically oriented myself rather than economically. I feel like some eco/political content is necessary in this universe, but I'll try to keep that in mind. Hope that answered your comment. PS: I don't really have that much time to update, due to something called Cambridge physics exams, but I work all day and write half the night to tone down stress…
Chapter 4, where chocolate abundantly flows, Hans quotes Newton, Anna goes all Oscar Wilde at him and more chocolate flows abundantly.
Disclaimer: Things I don't own include the phrase "away with this pretence" as well as whatever Newton or Wilde might have said.
CW: Kissing, mentions of GMOs (in case that bothers anyone), [attempt at writing a realistic Anna, costume porn, purple prose.]
The pale pink pearl necklace looked delicious on her carnation, making her freckled cheeks and her copper-tainted locks stand out. The young woman selected her hat herself, a dark green cap to match the rest of her outfit, with a small lace veil falling over her turquoise eyes and crimson parrot feathers on the top. With an experienced gesture, the handmaid pinned the hat onto her mistress's braided bun with a brass pin as long as her hand. She took a step back, letting the young baroness contemplate her reflection in the ovale mirrors on the dressing room desk.
"Thank you Gerda. Your services are invaluable. You may dispose."
"I am honoured, milady Anna," was the servant's brief answer as she left the room.
As usual, her maid had done wonderful work with her hair and make-up. Smooth auburn curls fell onto her bare shoulders, beside the nacre tear-shape earrings, and into the heart-shaped neck of the deep forest green dress. The ballgown, embroidered with the colours of Arendelle and ornamented with bright ribbon bows, perfectly flaunted her petite shape. Oh, such extravagance to wear dark velvet in the tropics. Such effort, that meant, to stand out from the sea of ladies in flowing white cotton dresses, as such was the fashion in the colonies. Such effort to attract attention in a room crowded with the greatest refinement of all Eastern Extremesia.
The gown had cost her nothing, having belonged to her late mother, Baroness Iduna of Arendelle, whose years had been cut short with her husband's in a tragic zeppelin crash. The Arendelles were part of these nobleborn families that had known wealthier and mightier days. Plainly put, Anna of Arendelle's only way to save her family and its heritage from bankruptcy was to trade her title for some gold and marry some morbidly rich industrial heir seeking to add a particle to his name. And there happened to be one in particular in the list of guests for the ball.
As esteemed guests to the event's host, the Duke of Weselton, Elsa and Anna of Arendelle had their quarters in the colossal zeppelin that was to welcome the epicurean festivities. The two sisters' pensions were mainly subsidised by Weaseltown, as they called him behind his back, whose own revenues came in large proportion from the protection of the Company of the Southern Isles of Extremesia. After sliding a pair of silk gloves on, Anna only had to walk down the corridor and descend one of the symmetric mechanical iron stairs to reach the ballroom.
One hand on the ornate moving balcony, that featured flowing vegetal motifs around the visible machinery, the other casually clutching her green and golden fan, she examined the sumptuous assembly that swarmed in the colossal ballroom. She was aware of how many eyes were on her. She studied the faces and their expressions. She had spent time on the book of guests, and could distinguish many a face amongst them. And right behind the soft curtain of the chocolate – chocolate! – fountain was her prey. Hans Andersen, born in Canis Major, youngest heir of the overpopulated thirteen-brother-family that pulled the strings of the Company of the Southern Isles. About her age, celibate, and disproportionately rich.
Anna was also aware of one thing. Amongst all the ladies in the room, only one challenged the attention she was obtaining through her grace and sophistication. Her own elder sister, Lady Elsa, Baroness of Arendelle.
As a steward discretely announced her arrival, Lady Anna whipped out her fan and drifted through the crowd, the music, the dishes and the wines, giving appropriate acknowledgements and bows to those around her, based on rank and influence. By the time she had reached her initial destination, she was sure everyone in the room knew who she was, and what she meant.
"My sweetest sister, such a joy to see you here!" she exclaimed, seizing the older woman by her arm. "Miss Hofferson, I am delighted to finally meet you," she directed at her sister's interlocutor, who seemed hardly any more talkative than Elsa. "I have seen your ravishing image countless times on Berk Steel promotional posters and pamphlets, it is the greatest honour to meet one of the most impressive women of Southeastern Extremesia."
Miss Hofferson gave a quick, embarassed nod. Expertly reading Elsa's expressionless face, Anna saw her sibling had little notion of whom she had been talking to. Anna was energetic, extravagant and awkward, as she had always been, and she knew it very well. That was how people perceived her, and liked to perceive her. A hot-blooded aristocrat to be picked like a flower, who presented no real threat. But behind the flutters of her fan, Anna was not nearly as naïve as she was believed to be. Her embarassing episode with Mr. Kristoff Bjorgman, former 'icemaster' to her family who had almost eloped into the icy fjords with her and half of what was left of the Arendelle fortune, before Elsa had to intervene. With her natural instinct for social functions and her experience, Anna knew the ropes and pulleys of the world of lace and gold quite well. Well enough to exactly determine how she would catch her prey.
"Don't you think the music is very comical? Old Continent instruments, lutes and harps, little tunes and all, and underneath these devilish native rythms, beats in three with beats in two, all tricky and irregular. One must be fiendishly stupid to play such a piece, don't you think? And comically so."
The two siblings were pacing down the room, to the greatest pleasure of onlookers.
"Dear sister, you look beautiful," said a courteous and reserved Elsa, ignoring the lunacies of the younger woman.
"You look… beautifuller?" retorted an even more extravagant Anna.
The crowd was cheerily whispering all around them. Those neologisms were so crazily fashionable in the colonies these days.
And indeed, Lady Elsa gave a stunning image. Her ice blue empire waist gown emphasized her slender arms, and the constellite-studded shawl around her fine shoulders sparkled in the dim halogen light. A small tiara stood out in her platinum blonde, elaborate bun – another resounding success from Gerda – and the pale amethyst and emerald powdering on her eyelids gave her exquisite sky-toned eyes an extra touch of brilliance.
But Anna's eyes were once again scanning through the mass of dashing gowns and elegant suits, towards the chocolate fountain where Hans quietly spoke to Mr. Bunnymund, some Kangarian-sounding director at Plant Alpha.
She looked at Hans.
He looked at her.
He knew. She knew, and she knew he did. They were two playing the same game.
She looked away. Gracefully poured herself a cup of hot chocolate. Turned around, only to forcefully bump into her host and benefactor.
"Pardon my extreme clumsiness, my Lord! Accept my apologies, I am so, so sorry… Here, let me help."
Her embroidered pocket handkerchief did little else than spread the nasty chocolate stain onto his brand new dinner jacket. She did not drop her smile while carefully overreacting. Behind spectacles, kerchiefs and fans, the whispers called her clumsy, endearing, silly-headed, fragile, adorable. All true, while leaving out the perhaps essential: smart, determined and ambitious.
Flying to the rescue of her sister, Elsa of Arendelle politely asked the old Duke for a dance. Ah, exactly what Anna needed. Naturally, the patron could not refuse the gloved hand of such an exquisite lady. In the corner of her vision, Mr. Bunnymund had walked away from Mr. Andersen to taste some of the chocolate eggs. [WHOOAA EASTER EGG!]
Now was the time to play.
Anna thoughtfully chose a fresh strawberry – shipped straight from Southern Hexagonia, no less – and dipped it into the fountain's chocolate veil. In the created insterstice, she could see Hans's white and blue costume, his elegant auburn hair and tamed sideburns. And clearly she could see he saw her.
He smiled.
She smiled back.
Ignoring the breathtaking cuteness of his crooked grin. Oh, courting always went so slowly!
Anna was maybe cunning, but she was young and impatient. Mentally cursing herself for her haste, she deliberately broke the ice.
"Do you, sir, not agree that the DunBrochs swept one tour de force coup when they obtained employment exclusivity from Corona & Sons?"
One hand was on his sleeve, the other holding her fan before he mouth. Her turquoise eyes pretended to wander around the room.
"Also, is it not hilariously ironic that Corona & Sons' almighty Jerome Corona has a single daughter as his only heir?"
She was surprised when he joined her in a soft giggle. His laugh was sweet, grave, velvety and heart-melting. She had to bite her lip from behind her fan to focus.
"Interesting indeed, I never thought of it," was his response.
"Both the DunBrochs and Coronas are absent tonight. Do you believe that is any ever so slightly extremely rude sign of hostility, after the offensively violent show?"
"Have no fear, milady. My brothers and I have have enough funds and power to buy the DunBrochs ten times over and send them back to the Old Continent in ships hanging off our zeppelins."
"I would not dare doubt your word, sir."
"I would never dare believe you would, most beautiful lady."
In concert they turned to each other. Her aqua eyes met his green gaze. His gloved hand reached out to hers. Gracefully they glided across the dance floor, arousing some gossip in their wake. A waltz, even though revisited with these eccentric native rythms, spun the dance floor into an orbit of couples precessing in the same way. They were gears on their axles. Electrons around their nuclei. Planets around their stars. As their bodies danced, mechanically and elegantly to the steps they had been brought up with, their words were a dance, and their minds were a dance. A dance of seduction, of illusion, of ambition, a well-oiled machinery of their time where each knew the part the choreography they had to execute intimately and almost naturally, as well as a piston knew how to shift and a lever knew how to lift.
As the gossiping chorus amplified, Baroness Anna of Arendelle pretexted lightheadedness due to a stupidly thick dress and tight corset to leave the dancefloor. Hans Andersen guided her up a set of fake marble stairs – marble would have been a tad too much in a zeppelin – and towards the enormous clock that almost reached the ceiling. The gigantic machine, Hans assured, was entirely the Duke's notion, he and his brothers had uttered some protest about the heavy metallic shape standind pointlessly in their ballroom. They gossiped about the bourgeosie, about their pets and eccentricities, laughing softly and often behind fan and gloved hands.
"The Corona parents were so spoiling of their only daughter they had the best genetic engineers to create a brand new flower, named Rapunzel after her. They transformed it with some bespoke virus, and now it glows yellow in the dark."
Anna genuinely thought Hans' point was entertaining.
"Mmh, Y.F.P." she muttered.
"What?"
"Nothing. Some protein name. My sister is by far the more well-versed in botany. I just sneak up to borrow her journals sometimes. You know, women of our rank have nothing to do all day, and Elsa doesn't really speak to me or anyone, so… we end up reading a lot. "
"I was just surprised a delicious lady such as you knew about this field of sorcery. Those pretentious charlatans carefreely play around with what is natural without grasping its essence or beauty."
It was a popular opinion amongst the bourgeoisie, save for the Coronas, such that it came to no surprise that their main competitors the Andersens would support such a belief. Anna, of course, as an aristocrat and a perceived misfit, was expected to have different and extraneous arguments.
"Can I say something crazy?"
"What?"
His dreamy emerald eyes shone with genuine curiosity behind the pale mask of courtesy.
"It is somewhat awkward to think that, for a leader of a Company that makes, owns and sells myriads of steamboats, zeppelins and ironhorses. Do you truly believe that what is made by Nature is infinitely superior and should not be meddled with? If it were the case bears would forge their own armours and mice would speak and play chess. They would have lavish balls hundreds of feet above the ground in a massive metal and helium edifice and eat mouthwatering cocoa that's been processed through a very careful cycle of temperature and humidity. But they don't, therefore the artificial must supersede the natural in all aspects possible and imaginable."
"Finely said, milady, but most of what we achieve is by climbing onto giants' shoulders. Birds knew how to fly and volcanoes made glass even before the first wheel was designed. What we have done, we have by merely copying them."
"A common belief, sir, but careful reflection, or alternatively, sitting with a book outside one's sister's door, may well show otherwise. Let us talk about mist, for example. We had those wonderful paintings of picturesque fogs and urban smogs back in the gallery at Arendelle. Elsa and I grew up with them, or rather I did since my sister would rather be reading in her room. All those paintings date from this century, before that, never a hint of low clouds painted over nordic lakes or hazy mornings over the port of Dovehaven. Just high clouds, fluffy and patchy in a pure blue painted sky. Before now, it can be deduced no-one saw mists, at least not the way we perceive them now. And why do we view them as such, now rather than before?"
"Because of a graphic fashion? Because painters invented fogs out of boredom?"
"Maybe, some think so. Even though I happen to disagree. My opinion is, because of the rise of the era of steam. Sun-powered constellite, constellite-powered steam that powers our engines, our cars, our ironhorses, out ships by sea and sky, impressionistic mist drifting in the air from trom their pipes and chimneys… Because, in the end, of what we invented. To answer your initial point, we may infer that Man created mist, in machines and in paintings, and Nature merely copied Man."
Indeed, the Baroness of Arendelle lived up to her reputation of educated pseudo-crazy extravagance, even in her ideas and opinions. Hans had to admit she played her role perfectly. Throughout the deeper-than-expected conversation, they had reached the top of the stairway, that curved around to the back of the giant clock. From behind the mechanism was fully exposed, so that the couple stood staring at a vertiginous darkness beneath and atop them, swarming with complex imbrications of golden cogs of all sizes, torsional springs, levers and pulleys, chains and weights. At the same time riculously large and mysteriously delicate, dauntingly repulsive and eerily beautiful, timelessly stable and powerfully in motion. In concert they silently watched in awe, as if awaiting for the twelve bells of midnight to ring in a few minutes.
It was Hans's turn to break the ice.
"Can I say something crazy? Look at everything here. The perfectly imbricated machinery, the exactly crafted weights and the chains of the precise right roughness, the springs that were tuned especially to keep the beat of our time, the needles and the cogs on their perfect cycles. And through the stained glass floral pattern, see the ballroom. See the pairs spinning with the same uniformity and measure, each identical to the previous, similarly clad, in every way alike to the golden gears. Such a perfect machine, all of this. A perfect game of illusions between the families and the companies. Artificially flawless, mercilessly powerful, that would crunch anything trying to stop it. A beautiful clockwork where both of us are but the screws and bolts. And you play your part in a fashion entirely admirable. You are the outcast the clock needs to tick. The falling weight the needles need to rise. You and I, youngest heirs ouf our families, are the youngsters the crowd loves to despise, the useless that the social engine could not live without."
As midnight approached, the immense weight that powered the entire clock, on its solid iron chain, was kicked up by a constellite-powered boost. As it rose towards them, Hans unexpectedly grabbed Anna by the waist, sweeping her off her feet. He caught the chain with a strong gloved hand as it passed, heaving both of them atop the ascending weight. Rocketing upwards so fast that fresh wind caressed their faces, Anna and Hans stared at each other without a word, smiling.
When they reached the top, the needles assembled atop the clock, and the twelve bells of midnight resonated throughout the room. The baroness and her suitor stood upon a thick disc, carrying sophisticated human-sized clockwork beings that successfully emerged out of the clock with their drums and trumpets, for the greatest delight of the awestruck audience. Suddenly Anna pulled Hans's hand, taking both of them aside the rotating platform. From the opening where the automatons performed poured in the bright golden light from the ballroom.
She was distraught: could she truly discern an illusion of charm in these symmetric sideburns and that green gaze? Did she fall to the trap of her own game, beguiled and bewitched, losing all control and restraint? Had she burnt her wings flying too close to the sun? Was she falling from a world of gold and lace through an open door? Anna whispered:
"Can I- " Oh and, 'away with this pretence!'
As Hans started to nod in approval, she stood on tiptoes to drop a faint kiss onto his lips. He contemplated the sparkling turquoise of her bemused eyes.
"Yes, you can."
And he bowed down to peck her delicious pink mouth. Kissed her again. And again. Burning lips against burning lips. Gloved fingers intertwined. Eyelids shut in pure bliss. They were far away from the light, far way from the crowded ballroom, from the social conventions and the heavy engines. Far away from Extremesia and Centralesia, from this world where they lived as outcasts, into one where they were kings. A world for only both of them, hidden behind an open door, ephemeral yet eternal, impervious to the deafening bells of midnight.
Fun fact: Hans is WRONG, before you get mad at me for artistic license synthetic biology. The common method to transform plants is mediated via agrobacteria, not viruses. This is the third story in a row I write with elements of genetic engineering. Not at all to do with my own dabbles in synbio… Bears making armours: hi, Iorek. Mice playing chess: sup, Reepicheep. Also note that Anna's argument, even though starting out similarly, diverges from O. Wilde's: whereas he proposes that artistic creation is at the root of perception (as Hans insightfully guesses) and therefore Nature copies human art, Anna being Anna disagrees and suggests that science/technology shapes the way we view the world, meaning that Nature is inspired from human inventions.
Author's mistake of the day: I just saw Hans had a family name according to some person's tweet which is referenced on the Disney wiki, and a pretty good one too (Westergård). The main reason I didn't expect that is that in canon Kristoff asks Anna what his last name is and she responds "Of the Southern Isles"… I won't change his name for this fic though, since it's come up a fair amount of times before now.
Announcement: New cover art is an attempt to represent Merida's exposition outfit as described in previous chapter. Drawn by me a while ago. Feel free to suggest alternative covers, if you happen to have better appropriate drawings, especially now that all protagonists are introduced! And as usual F&F, R&Review (please review!), thanks, love, and so on.