Thanks for everything. Plots are progressively coming together…
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Chapter 15, where Anna does not build a snowman, Merida shoots for someone else's hands and mess ensues, as usual.
Rating is slightly debatable for this chapter, I am experimenting with rather elusive and implicit sexual content, be warned. No explicit mention of body parts.
CW: mentions of sexual content, mentioned nudity, slavery, racism, violence
edit: (20/06/2015) just updated this chapter... removed at least two plot holes and fixed a few details. I am also considering changing the title.
The fields were covered in white, just like the snowy landscapes of her childhood. White that cluttered every branch, clustered on every leaf, traced the parallel line of every furrow all the way to the horizon, white glowing in a dim golden haze in the bright sunlight. Indoors, meanwhile, under the swarming heat, the white-painted colonial mansion's hundred and one fans spun in perfect synchronisation from the richly sculpted wooden ceilings, vaguely shining in constellite blue. The elegant pavilion and the immense cotton plantation that surrounded it was supposedly one of the more modest holiday residences of the Andersen family.
But Anna's back was turned away from the window. She sat cross-legged on the white sheets of the four-poster bed ornate with cast iron ivy spirals, a thin blanket wrapped around her freckled shoulders. Her hair, she knew from experience, was an absolute disaster. It diverged out in all directions from her head, red strands and silver extension alike, twisted and knotted in improbable angles. Her eyes warily scanned the white room, the gigantic closed cupboard carved out of a single pine tree of Northern Cornucopia, beyond the wall and the assorted suitcases on the chequered floor, half-unpacked, lace hats and unmatched stockings lying around like stranded jellyfish. At the corner of her vision, she was vaguely aware of the almost empty bin.
Her legs were aching, her thighs sore. The inside of her was still vivid with physical memories of the night. What had she expected? Of course it had been awkward. Considering their total inexperience as well as the fact she was constantly awkward, that was hardly a surprise. Yes, they had stifled many a giggle beneath the thin sheets. Of course he had hurt her. Of course she had hurt him. Of course she still loved him. Now what?
Anna was too lethargic to move. Instead, she opened her ears and listened. The surprise guests must still be asleep; she could hear nothing from their room and no sign of the barefoot girl throughout the empty halls. That was expected, since they must be still under the jetlag's effects, exhausted from the incidents and that Miss Corona was recovering from a large but superficial hand injury Kai had immediately bandaged upon their arrival. The diligent step of Hans's boots was nowhere to be heard either. He had left early in the morning, probably to the closest town to run some errands. She perceived the swift sweeps of the broom from a servant from Elephantine, as well as the rumbling oven in the kitchens and the regular snaps of cotton cut off outside the window. As to her sister, there was no way to guess what she was up to.
While Anna had been too young to properly know them, Elsa had been profoundly affected by the passing of their parents, Agdar and Idunn of Arendelle, in a zeppelin accident on a visit to what would become Plant Alpha. Additionally to the grief of their loss, Elsa had inherited the responsibility as head of the Arendelle family, along with a handful of debts and a cackle of suitors. The young heiress had retracted into loneliness amongst her books, even shutting out her own sister and only dealing with formal matters by mail.
In an effort to put her isolation to an end, Anna had come up with the idea that they could do with some travelling. Such that she somewhat sceptically accepted the Duke of Weselton's patronage offer and convinced Elsa to fly across the Atlantic with her, Gerda and Kai, aboard the Duke's personal zeppelin. Her plan had proved quite successful, too, as both sisters were distracted by the curiosities of the New World escaping the pages of their favourite books to come to life before their eyes. However, Elsa had fallen back into mutism upon Hans and Anna's engagement. She had simply stated that she could not marry someone she had just met, and refused to comment any further. Anna had gratefully accepted her betrothed's offer to move away from the Exposition for a few days. While the official motive was to imply the Andersens' success in taking over the Arendelles' patronage from the Duke of Weselton, Anna was glad that gave Elsa some space away from the eclectic agitation of the Exposition.
For once, nothing was in her way… or so it seemed, until a zeppelin almost crashed over her steamcar and two survivors had been found by Kai and Gerda. Survivors that were the heiress and a tradesman of the all-powerful Corona & Sons, rising competitor of Hans's family empire. Survivors that also appeared to have eloped from the other side of the ocean, hastily engaged. How generous, how thoughtless it was for Anna to have rescued them. Of course, it was nothing but courtesy from a lady of her birth. However, she hardly knew how to deal with an introverted sibling and a couple on their honeymoon under her roof while Hans was away from her.
Anna missed him already. She missed the burning touch of his lips against her freckled skin, the roughness of his sideburns beneath her exploring fingers, the caresses of his hands that were at once forceful and fragile. She missed the whispers he poured into her ear, endlessly, until they lost all their sense, the wordless gasps liberated in the midst of night, the powerful regularity of his heavy breath as they lay exhausted amongst the sheets, hand in hand. She missed the quiet buzz of the insects in the calm obscurity outside, echoing the uneven pounding of her little heart.
She missed him, and that was wrong. Not wrong because such lustful thoughts should not stain the pristine mind of an innocent young lady such as herself. Not even wrong because her thoughts were sinful at all, she was too well-read to believe such common nonsense. It was wrong because it was all too easy, too primitive and primordial. She was afraid she had given up a life of sophistication and costumes to jettison her youth and vitality in a pleasure that was hardly worth anything. She felt the lure of dependence, the bestial machinery of life itself that made her a pendulum rotating around the fulcrum that Hans was, in repeated oscillations of her helpless body against his. She feared to be too close from the fire and the ice, to be consumed like an icicle in a brazier, to be choked like a beating heart suddenly frozen.
And there she sat, alone, a simple blanket against her skin. She was a woman, only a woman, and that had grown onto her. If she believed the omnipotent mechanisms of her society, her life should revolve around a man, in a household behind closed doors. But as it happened, she had a thing for open doors.
A woman of her situation was allowed to pick up some kind of hobby. She could open doors before her by taking up an axe and become a weaponry model, like a certain Miss Hofferson. She could open windows of paper by flipping through the pages of books, away from the hustling world that prized her azure eyes and icy heart, like her own sister Elsa. But none of these was Anna. She was a being of social interaction, one that graced ballrooms with her radiant awkwardness and drawing rooms with her eccentric repartee, one that the high society of Extremesia loved to despise for her naivety and to affectionately mock for her clumsiness. She was an outcast from the engine, and as such, she only seemed to cluster other outcasts around in her erratic wake.
A woman may as well open doors to a bunch of outcasts. In the elegant terms of her refined society, that was called holding a salon. The general idea was to gather an eclectic crowd of supposedly unique minds and abilities around a room with profusion of tea, chocolate and other substances as well as books, automatons and spirited conversations on a backdrop of string quartet and ticking golden pocket watches. That was a hobby Anna could picture herself having, she reflected with a smile. There were already two other random misfits in the guest room, after all. Hans could easily cater for more of her protégés, given the wealth and status of his family, as a display of his own intellectual prestige. Elsa could do with more educated minds like her own around her, to quietly discuss recent technologies and novel concepts rather than weather and ballroom gossip. And Anna could become a witty patron, an independent and influential thinker.
Once upon another time, in an equally white land, whenever she got bored, Little Snow Princess Anna would knock at her sister's door to beg her to come outside and build some cute and socially awkward snowman. In the colonial mansion amidst the cotton fields, she hoped she would be able to persuade Elsa to join her and her cute and socially awkward group of outcasts. With a smile floating upon her lips, she lengthily stretched, slipped on an emerald green silk dressing gown and walked to the neighbouring room, stopping before the white door painted with pale blue patterns.
Tock. Tock. Tock-tock. Tock.
Meanwhile, barely half an hour away by road, a man rode through the narrow streets of Bartolomé on a heavy steam-powered chariot full of large brown bags. A pale hood over his graceful traits, linen sand-coloured shirt and breeches and a leather belt carrying diverse utilities as his simple garb, he could easily have been mistaken for a mere cotton merchant. He usually went out incognito to hear news from the town without attracting attention, as the master of pretence and disguise that he was. Over years of practice, he had become an expert in the subtle arts of illusion and masquerade. Absent-mindedly, he tossed a copper coin to a peddler woman around a corner, which she avidly picked up with the hand that was not cradling a crying infant. She hardly looked at him at all, such that neither she nor the other inhabitants of the lively town noticed that he was Hans Andersen, absurdly wealthy member of the family that ruled the Company of the Southern Isles of Extremesia.
Bartolomé was a peculiar place. It was at the southernmost point of the frontier between the Cornucopian colonies and the Spaniard lands of Northeastern Extremesia. Encased in a range of low mountains by the eastern coastline, it was a small but busy trading post between north and south. Furs, silks, slaves and grain were sold in exchange for constellite, gold, cotton and spices. The sloped streets, narrow passages and paved plazas were full of colonists in pastel linen hats as well as natives in bright patchwork capes, priests in long robes sporting the emblem of the Man in the Moon and slaves exposing bare black shoulders to the hot air. Several dozens of colourful hot air balloons of diverse sizes floated alongside zeppelins bearing various crests, docked onto the high steel and wood constructions that served as aerial piers. A cemetery of aircraft pieces surrounded the small city, large dirigible carcasses laying between deflated balloon envelopes, glider wings, glass debris and scraps of metal from minuscule to colossal, exposing their incomplete or rusted intricacy to the sandy and dusty winds. Despite Bartolomé's modest size, there was hardly a thing that could not be found there. Between a row of large ceramic pots full of spices of all tints and scents, a busy open air theatre running an auction sale and the softly buffeting heavy carpets hanging down from a merchant's stand, Hans climbed down his vehicle before a small telephone cabin.
The telephone was the new raging fashion of Eastern Extremesia. Faster and more reliable than the typical radiomessage, the landline communication means had made its way to many well-off colonist households, Hans's pavilion on the cotton plant one of the very first. If the service was efficient, it was also expensive, and the young man preferred to use it only in this case of emergency. Swiftly, he inserted a handful of coins in the dedicated slot, paying little attention the little cogs and gears set in motion to swallow them. He dialled his residence's number using the torsional-spring-equipped circular brass quadrant, elegantly curved black figure after elegantly curved black figure. As the strident ringtone was heard on the other side of the line, he picked up the emitter in one hand and the receiver in the other.
"Hello?" said a male voice after a few seconds. "Mr. Andersen?"
"Kai? Could you give over to Lady Anna?"
"Immediately, sir."
He heard the steward's hasty footsteps throughout corridors and stairs of the vast mansion as he ran to find her.
"Hans? Hello?" spoke Anna's voice metallically through the phone.
"Anna, I have some important news from town. You may want to get Elsa to hear and your guests to hear, too."
"They're with me in the cabinet."
"The Weselton Exposition has been attacked by Corona & Sons. Many attendees have escaped by sea or by air; the casualties are unknown at this point. The Duke of Weselton is safe aboard my brothers' zeppelin flying due East at full speed towards our Isles. It appears, from my sources, that the DunBroch mercenaries were used to lead the assault, and that it was conducted by Jerome. Corona in retaliation for the kidnapping of his daughter by our own mercenaries the Stabbingtons. It also seems that Mr. Corona believes his daughter Miss Rapunzel did not survive the zeppelin crash."
"I'm here, I'm alive!" shouted Rapunzel at the telephone.
"There is no way your father knows that," answered Hans, "and it appears that it is too late to contact him. He has refused any communication with our emissaries and the Duke's; there is no way he will believe us no matter what we say. Luxographs just as well as recordings could have been made at any point. As to flying you to your family's zeppelin, the air space is far too risky for all of us right now."
"Well," Elsa commented, "the safest option is probably for Rapunzel to stay here until the situation calms down and her father accepts to talk to – what was that?"
Hans turned around towards the origin of the small detonation. Amongst the crowd gathered for the auction sales, a stout man brandished a placard announcing the plentiful sum of a hundred silver crowns for half a dozen slaves standing on stage, hands in iron cuffs. The said placard had been neatly pierced through the first zero by the constellite bullet of a pistol.
A new explosion was heard as the second zero underwent the same tragic fate. The crowd of bidders gasped, kerchiefs and fans wavering in agitation.
A third bullet hit the chain between a slave's cuffs, setting his hands free while leaving the rest of his dark naked body untouched. Immediately the man's ebony-coloured flew before his manhood, concealed only by his silvery beard. The audience followed the auctioneer's shocked gaze to stare upon the shooter. The silhouette uncovered her hood, letting an untamed mane of orange curls emerge. Pistol still in hand, she stepped forward.
"I am Merida, first born descendant of Clan DunBroch. Release them, or I'll shoot!"
She stomped her way up to the stage through the packed plaza, lifted a curved golden lever to charge her pistol, a deadly beautiful combination of metallic parts sliding against each other, and took aim straight at the auctioneer's balding head. Pure panic invaded his dark eyes.
"Seize her!" he shrieked.
Brutally pushing through the crowd, the militia that guarded the auction dashed towards her. And the audience broke loose. Some of them recognised the heiress of the perpetrators of the Exposition raid. Some saw a rich, spoiled girl disrupting their business on a whim, directing their animosity towards her. Some simply took advantage of the chaos to steal or to escape. The riot took over the plaza before the theatre, in a tempest of shouts, screams and entangled human limbs.
"Hans? Is everything all right?" he heard Anna's concerned words.
"It looks like there is a riot right before me, someone tried to free the slaves from an auction. I'll hang up."
"Free the slaves?" For some reason, Anna sounded almost excited. "No. Stay in the cabin, stay safe. I want to know that you are safe. I love you."
"Anna, I love you too."
The DunBrochs were a relatively new clan in the Eastern Extremesian trade scene, such that Hans was hardly surprised that Merida was unaware of the status of slavery in the area. The Cornucopian colonies themselves forbid the usage of slaves, if not their trade. Thus, slavers often crossed the northern border to sell their finest specimens to the employers of Southeastern Extremesia. The slaves, usually prisoners of war bought off some tribe of Equatorial Elephantine, were freed upon purchase in Bartolomé, if sometimes only on the paper. Hans himself and countless other employers hired them for decent food portions and a symbolic salary as workers in fields, factories and mines. He had no particular pleasure in attending and bidding in the auctions, though he admitted it was the most efficient way to man a cotton plantation. Stepping into her shoes, he could understand Merida's anger and indignation.
"By Odin's beard," cursed a figure hooded in dark red in the crowd. If the redhead heiress was understandably offended, there was no reason she should behave as a child and wreak havoc everywhere she went. Astrid started to regret that she and Hiccup had agreed upon having her come along. According to their plan, their balloon was docked over the aerial port of Bartolomé while they wondered through the streets to replenish their water and food supplies before attempting to find Hiccup. To avoid the crowd and reach Merida, Astrid pounced onto a row of closed spice and pigment pots, cape flying in the air, shattering the pottery beneath her weight and releasing clouds of chilli, saffron, pepper, indigo or powdered tea leaves along with splashes of sunflower oil and blood-coloured wine.
As she expertly landed on the stage's wooden floor, some policemen confusedly likened her to a pamphlet of Berk Steel that happened to be pinned on a nearby wall. As they sprung towards her, she sank her axe blade into the wooden planks and used it to swing herself in mid-air around the handle, immediately neutralising her enemies with powerful wedge boot kicks. Oh, wearing riding pants rather than a skirt felt good, at times. It was imperative that she tried not to kill or injure anyone. Pushing a piston against the hilt of her weapon, she deposited a thick resin coating on both axe blades, as she often did in training against Hiccup or some other sparring partner. Using the axe to hit, parry or pull an enemy towards herself and deliver a punch, she efficiently made her way through the crowd, unstrapping her shield from her back as soon as she had enough space to.
Soon, she spotted her orange-haired friend, fiercely pushing her way through the maddened crowd with elbows and knees, her glaive thrown away to pin a soldier onto a column of the theatre through his bloodied arm. Her bow, strapped to the back of her black jackets with asymmetric buttonholes connected with silver chains, as well as her full quiver, against the solid fabric of her knee-length breeches chequered in dark green and red, hardly were of any help at the nearly inexistent distance to her opponents. Astrid decided Merida could well do with a non-injuring melee weapon. Trying to catch the redhead's gaze, conserving her shield on her left arm, she threw her axe through the air, hoping that the other young warrior would catch it. But trying to communicate with the headstrong archer mid-battle was a pointless effort. Merida ducked to avoid the flying object that got stuck on a nearby column supporting the theatre's wooden roof. Immediately seizing the opportunity, while Astrid was mentally face palming, she grabbed onto the battleaxe's handle to lunge herself into the air above the crowd, knocking out some policemen with knee kicks on the way. However, with both feet on the vertical surface on either side of the blade, its resin coating shattered, she struggled to free the axe from the wood. Pulling the trigger of the rifle part of the weapon, she used its recoil to propel herself over the stormy human sea, landing right into the Shield Maiden's arms.
She felt the other warrior's strong arms, covered in silver-skull-studded straps for diverse blades and munitions, wrapped around her, the legendary shield brushing against her stockings, platinum blonde rebellious strands from her messy fishtail braid caressing her freckled face, the warmth of her small, firm cleavage pouring onto her side through the sweaty leather corset. Astrid gave her a painful shove, a murderous light in her blue eyes.
"Why do you have to always break everything?"
The blonde fighter dropped her to the ground and pulled her along as the theatre's weight collapsed under the shattered column. As Merida swung around the axe to brush away heavy chains, freed cogs and other falling debris, Astrid lifted her shield over both their heads. They managed to barge their way off the stage, only to narrowly avoid a crashing carriage, releasing a puff of tiny feathers and agitated chicken. Tossing the animals away with their boots, the women looked for somewhere safe to hide until the riot got back under control. Amongst neighing horses, infuriated steamcars and drivers, tapestries flying in the wind and humans desperately pushing their way out of the entangled mess only stood a small telephone cabin that a small crowd was already trying to break into.
"Hans!" yelled Anna as she heard glass shatter at the other end of the line.
A large figure garbed in dark linen broke through the cabin's door, seizing Hans by the neck and lifting him off his feet. By reflex, he punched him with the microphone and steadily landed on his feet as the man released him in pain. Using the phone's curly cable as a whip, he lashed at the intruder, making him fall onto the human mass behind. Hans temporarily kept back the crazy crowd whipping and kicking symmetrically with both parts of the telephone, before barricading the door with his walking stick.
"Anna, call my aircraft to come for me, I just -"
He was interrupted by the constellite tip of an arrow lethally gleaming against his temple. The archer had easily slipped in under his cane, threateningly ordering him out with a tilt of her head, unkempt red curls bouncing off her shoulders. He saw another slender figure make its way in, acrobatically jumping over the makeshift door barricade.
"HANS!" Anna shrieked in panic.
"Wait a second."
He was dead, so dead. He looked at the archer, then at the other warrior who seemed to be holding a battleaxe. And then he saw the gingerhead's expression in her eyes. Oh, she would never shoot him, she was too proudly brave to terminate an unarmed human on the phone. None of these two was capable of such a cowardly kill. Especially not when one cared so much about the other. He entangled the telephone's cable around the axe-wielder's neck, threatening to choke her, before she had time to react. As her partner hesitated to shoot, he drew out the pommel of the thin sword sheathed inside his walking stick and slashed her arrow into two. Somewhat disconcerted, he felt the canon of the blonde woman's weapon, held as a rifle, against the thin fabric over his stomach.
"Excuse me, ladies, but it appears I am talking to my fiancée."
"Ladies?" echoed Anna, sounding more curious than jealous.
"Merida DunBroch, the archer of Plant Alpha, and Astrid Hofferson, the symbol of Berk Steel," snapped the Shield Maiden through the phone.
"Miss Hofferson!" exclaimed the Baroness of Arendelle excitedly.
A puzzled expression lifted Astrid's blonde eyebrow. She shared an intrigued gaze with Merida, while some unintelligible words chirped down the phone line on the explosive background of the riot outside.
"My ladies," Hans courteously spoke after an instant, "it appears that my fiancée and her sister the Ladies Anna and Elsa of Arendelle is willing to welcome you under our protection. I am Hans Andersen of the Company of the Southern Isles of Extremesia, and my personal zeppelin is coming for us from the aircraft cemetery."
Astrid let out a yelp of pure surprise and leaned her shield onto Merida's shoulder.
On the other side of the phone, Elsa gave an appreciative look at her sibling, reassured that her betrothed was still alive and well. Flynn shared a look with Rapunzel, her valid hand resting on his shoulder. A joyous light illuminated Anna's turquoise glare. She had it, her salon of extraordinary outcasts.
Fun fact: Astrid curses by Odin's beard, while Hiccup swears on Odin's eye. The Norse god of war and knowledge lost his eye as a result of his curiosity, therefore symbolising 'knowledge' part of his role, while the beard is the more Viking-like attribute that I liken to the 'war' aspect of his function. Also, neither Astrid nor Merida in their respective films injure or even try to injure anyone. They both attack animals, bears for Merida and dragons for Astrid, even though it can be noticed they never hurt or kill any of them. Merida practices on targets rather than hunting for sport and swordfights to disarm rather than to kill. (Correct me if I am wrong…) This is why I thought they would both have a reluctance to kill humans, which Hans uses to his advantage in this chapter. Speaking of the devil, I personally find it pointless that Hans refrains from kissing Anna once she's at his mercy, before revealing his full plans to her. The explaining bit serves the audience rather than the characters, so it is partly justified. But the averted kiss just looks like a way for Disney to preserve Anna's 'kissing virginity' for Kristoff. You have the right to disagree; it is my personal view of that passage. It is intentionally subverted in this story.
Announcement: I have no plans for explicit lemons in this story, I don't think they would do much to serve either the plot or the characters. However, if there is any mildly sexual scene, I will indicate a change in rating at the start of the chapter. Right, R&R, F&F, constructively comment, stay awesome xxx