"You have twelve older brothers?"
"Unfortunately," he replied easily in spite of her disbelief, and snorted a little. "I'm surprised I even remember all of their names, to be perfectly honest—not that it matters," he added grimly, "since I'll likely never see any of them ever again."
She would have laughed at the quip he made, had it not been the preface to such a bitter ending; more to the point, she was still incredulous at the idea of having more than one sibling, let alone twelve.
Her brows rose, somehow fascinated despite his morbid tone. "It doesn't sound as though you like having so many," she observed quietly.
"That's because I don't," he snapped in return; after a moment, however, his tone became apologetic. "Sorry—it's a sore subject."
She couldn't help but feel even more intrigued by the matter, now that his irritation with it had been revealed.
"Did something happen to—to make you feel this way?"
He sounded annoyed. "A lot of things happened, Elsa," he said tiredly. "It would be impossible to point out just one or two as 'defining moments,' per say."
"Like what, though?" she pressed further, encouraged by the droning sound of the guards' snoring outside their cells. "Surely, it couldn't have been all bad."
He scoffed at the assertion.
"Oh, really? Well, just thinking of some recent examples, there was the incident a few months ago when Harald—my oldest brother—tried to throw me over the side of his ship because I pointed out that his navigational skills were 'lacking,' to say the least, and after that . . ."
Without knowing it, she had set Hans off on a two-hour plus rant charting a lifetime of misdeeds his brothers had committed against him. Most of them seemed par for the course in such a large brood of boys—fist fights, near-fatal duels, ignoring each other, et cetera—but others sounded, at least to her, like cruel acts that she would never even think to wish upon her own mortal enemies.
Of course, she felt that she wasn't exactly a good judge of what was normal and what wasn't, when it came to siblings and family; considering her nearly non-existent relationship with her late sister, all of Hans's talk of his brothers had the unintended effect of sending her spiralling back into a deep, black hole of dejection.
"Elsa?"
He seemed to have realized, when she hadn't bothered to audibly respond to his stories in over thirty minutes, that she had stopped listening altogether some time ago.
"Elsa? You there?"
A pall of misery had cast itself over her features in the meantime, and she barely heard him even then, while he was trying his best to raise his voice without awakening the guards.
"Elsa."
Startled, she finally looked up—only to remember that her name had been spoken from below.
"Sorry," she said, though the word sounded more obligatory than remorseful. "I just . . ."
She stopped, unsure as to whether or not she wanted to continue.
"You just . . . what?"
You know, Elsa, it's okay to say what's on your mind, from time to time.
She recalled him saying that to her in a recent conversation, though those words already seemed to be from another lifetime.
Besides—he didn't exactly react well the last time I told him what was "on my mind."
She frowned at the memory of him storming out of the room that day when she had pressed him about Anna's death; a part of her wondered, though, if he would be more willing to discuss such things now that both of them were cast down into the same, low lot.
"I guess your stories made me think about certain . . . things," she admitted finally, though she was still unable to fully put into words the wild, angry thoughts that filled her guilty conscience. "Things I would rather not like to think about."
He paused, and seemed to consider this answer for a while before he spoke again.
"I understand," he said. "I'm sorry if anything—or, I guess, everything I said—brought up bad memories."
Her eyes widened a little in surprise at this.
He's been apologizing to me a lot recently, hasn't he?
She shrugged. "It can't be helped," she said, defeated.
His reply came quicker than she anticipated, and in a gentler tone.
"But then . . . I'm sure you have some good memories, too. Of—" he paused, "—of Anna."
She pressed her gloved hand painfully against her thigh, and rested her forehead against her knees with wincing eyes; as she searched her mind for these memories, however, her posture relaxed a little, and her expression eased.
"I do," she said after a time, "but mostly, they're from when we—when we were children." Her eyes darkened. "But my cur—I spoiled any chance we had of really getting to know each other," she said in just above a whisper. "And I'll never forgive myself for that. Never."
Silence hung in the air.
"But when you were kids, what—I mean," he clarified, "did you at least play together, ever?"
Normally, she would have been agitated at being pushed on a subject which was still too tender to even be addressed in her own mind. However, Hans's strange insistence on it—especially given how reluctant he had previously been to even say Anna's name in conversation—piqued her own interest again.
"Sometimes," she spoke austerely, trying to preserve her morose countenance about the topic, "but always without our parents knowing." She grimaced a little, adding: "They would never have allowed it, otherwise."
"Because of your powers?" he asked curiously, though she could detect a note of caution in his tone. He was worried that he might offend her with the question, no doubt.
She nodded to the darkness. "Yes. They were afraid—afraid that I would hurt her without meaning to, since I couldn't control it then."
Or now, she reminded herself sourly, looking down at her gloved hands.
"Is that how . . ." he trailed off, and her brows knitted.
"How what?"
He was hesitant. "How she got that . . . white streak in her hair?"
She swallowed at the pointed observation.
I suppose it was the most obvious explanation, once he found out about my powers.
"Yes," she answered at length, her words thickly laced with regret. "It is."
Her heavy, sorrowful tone seemed to suck the very air out of the cell, not to mention the life out of their conversation; after a few minutes passed in absolute silence (save for the unrelenting snoring of the guards), however, she began to feel guilty for using Hans as a dumping ground for her troubles.
"You are right, though," she cut through the fog of tension that had settled over them with a slight concession of optimism. "It wasn't all bad."
She heard him sigh in relief at the remark. "Nor for me, either," he confessed in a lighter tone. "But you know what they say—it's easier to remember the bad times than the good."
"Yes, I suppose that's true," she said gently. "Still, I shouldn't be so—so . . ."
"Grim?" he supplied, making her laugh a little despite herself.
"I guess I can be," she admitted reluctantly, hiding a smile.
He seemed to hold back a chuckle, just barely. "You guess?"
She rolled her eyes. "Fine, I am grim," she granted. "Better?"
He finally let out that chuckle, though quietly.
"Better," he agreed.
For the first time, she wished she could see his grin—that infuriating, charming grin—and she wondered how it had come to this.
You're too sweet, dear Elsa.
She shuddered.
Author's Note: Thanks again for all the reviews, everyone, and apologies for the short length of this installment. The next one has some rather . . . important developments in Hans and Elsa's relationship, so I couldn't bring myself to combine it with this one. (Sorry!)
I actually wanted to take a little time here, at the end of the chapter, to explain what might have come across as slightly OOC behavior from Elsa at the start of the last chapter (namely, her not fighting against the Duke's men when they dragged her off back to prison).
Although I can't write too much on this point lest I give away any spoilers, generally, I should say that my thinking when it came to that scene was that, in a way, Elsa has learned to control her powers at this point . . . but only in the sense that she redirects all of her stress and fear back onto herself rather than others, since she is filled with such self-hatred and guilt about Anna and the eternal winter she set off that she believes she deserves whatever punishment comes her way (even if it came as something of a surprise).
I really just want to get across in this story how devastated Elsa is by what she has done, and how the people around her prey on that guilt to control her. (A depressing angle, I know, but I've just read too many other stories where people help her learn to control her powers through purely love and affection, and, well . . . I figured that's not the only way to do it!)
Cheers until next time!