Disclaimer: Frozen, Tangled, The Little Mermaid (c) Disney.
Brave (c) Pixar
I do, however, own the OCs Mikkel, Vegar, King Marcus, Frida, Kasia and Harmonia.
Thank you to everyone who has read/favorite/alert/reviewed my story so far!
Warnings: Foul Language, OOC-ness, Background OCs, Cameo/Name Drops
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This chapter is dedicated to JoMiSm for making me nearly flip my shit (in a good way) last chapter and for providing the mini song at the end of this chapter. WAY TO GO JoMiSm THIS CHAPTER IS FOR YOUUUUUUUUUUU
DON'T HATE ME YOU GUYSSSS, but the chapters start to get shorter from 11 and out. I had to split 10 since I thought it was too long (plus, cliffhangers) but in doing so, I ended up splitting chapter 11 to even things out... then 12... then I had to add a chapter 13 just because. So, the good news is, Burned has 13 chapters now! The bad news is THE END IS NIGH.
Chapter Eleven
Cleaning up what little remained of the festival and the town began in vigor the following morning. Eugene took it upon himself to oversee the work while Rapunzel borrowed one of Elsa's messenger birds to deliver a message of aid to her parents in Corona.
What little remained of their guests spent time packing, the rest had already set sail throughout the night. For those remaining guests who had been unfortunate enough to have been caught in the blaze couldn't leave until their burns were well enough for travel or their dead were identified and prepared in their caskets.
Among the few still lingering was Queen Ariel and her daughter. Their ship would set sail at nightfall, when the seas were calmer and the light of the sun no longer scorching. They, like Eugene and Rapunzel, often spent their time in the infirmary, sharing words of sympathy to loved ones lost and soothing the injured with Ariel's singing.
She always did have the most beautiful voice.
Elsewhere, Elsa found herself standing in front of Anna's door, feeling uncertain and nervous. (She wondered for a moment if this was how Anna felt all those times she came to her door during their separated childhood.)
Hesitantly, she knocked. "Anna? Please come out."
On the other side, her sister made no move to turn the knob.
She sat in front of the door, legs drawn up to her chest, her hair a wild mess from the fitful sleep she had barely managed to get. She smeared the black and gray make up from the festival across her arm in melancholic boredom, her nightgown obstructing the rest of the make up on her stomach.
Elsa rested her forehead against the door, memories of their childhood overwhelming her thoughts.
"Anna… do you want to build a snowman?"
Anna felt a sardonic smile grace her lips.
"So you can watch it melt?" She answered.
Elsa closed her eyes in momentary anguish. She steeled herself. "If you don't want to come out then please, let me in."
She waited and waited.
And hoped. Prayed even, but Anna's resulting silence made the ache in her chest all the more prominent. She pulled away from the door, casting one last look of longing before turning away. She barely took a step when a soft click caught her attention.
The door opened just a crack.
An invitation.
Elsa slipped into the room quickly, locking the door behind her. She joined her sister in the corner of the room, who curled into Elsa's cold welcoming arms the moment she was within arm's reach.
They sat together in silence, allowing their thoughts to fall back on happier memories.
"I'm sorry…" Anna said after a long stretch of silence. "I shouldn't have… you were… I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Elsa ran fingers through her sister's red hair, missing when it was just strawberry blonde all around. No streaks of platinum. No sunset red. Just pure strawberry blonde. Pure Anna. "Your dance was beautiful. I never realized fire could be that way."
Anna eyed the scorch makes marring her floors. She'd made them last night, when her tears had stopped falling and the fire within begged for release once more. She was grateful her room had never been overflowing with furniture, otherwise the castle too would have gone up in a blaze.
She pulled away from her sister's lap then went about the room, gathering fresh clothes for the day.
"You don't have to go out there if you aren't ready Anna. You can still mourn."
"I have to. I have to at least try to fix what I've done." Anna heaved a heavy sigh. "I can't hide in my room all day when there's work to be done."
Elsa rose to her feet, subtly eying the scorch marks on the floor, the walls and the ceiling. She followed Anna out of the room, but stopped her from leaving.
"I'll be at breakfast." She told her.
Anna gave her a tentative smile. "I'll be there."
And she was, not twenty minutes later.
The room felt tense when all eyes had fallen on Anna. She approached the long table with apprehension in her stride, her golden eyes were amass with guilt and discomfort.
She took her usual place on Elsa's right then flashed a somewhat strained smile to the remaining guests. Ariel, Melody and Rapunzel returned the expression with genuine, yet slightly melancholy smiles of their own. Eugene's face remained stoic and hard, but his eyes were not as cold or angry as they had been the day before. Too Anna, they looked tired. Sad. Disappointed even.
Kristoff, who didn't normally stay the night at the palace or eat meals with them, tried to give Anna a reassuring smile.
It didn't work.
His unexpected appearance only reminded the red head of the words he had imparted on her before the festival.
Her fire isn't light. It's a curse.
Olaf and Pascal's little entertainment did little to lighten the morose mood. The tenseness everyone felt didn't quite ease fully until their food was brought and they began to eat, grateful for the very safe distraction.
The monarchs were all content to eat in silence, to save Princess Anna anymore despair, but she surprised them all when she asked her sister how the recovery effort was doing and how much damage had truly been done to Arendelle.
"Oh, um," Elsa stammered, caught off guard. She turned to Eugene, having not yet been briefed on the subject.
The male blinked.
"Uh, it's fine." He said with a frown. "They only just started cleaning out the debris, but once the funds pour in we'll be able to rebuild some of the houses as soon as possible."
"Is there anything I can do to help?" She gave Eugene hopeful gold eyes.
He shook his head. "Actually Anna, that's not a good idea. The best thing to do right now is to stay in the castle."
Anna felt her hope die away at the explanation, but Elsa laid down her fork in surprise.
"Why?" She asked.
It was Kristoff who ended up answering. "The people are a little, you know, upset about the, uh, accident."
"That's putting it mildly." Eugene quipped.
Elsa frowned.
"How bad is it?" Anna asked hesitantly.
Eugene and Kristoff shared a glance. "Bad." They said in unison.
"We'll figure something out, don't you worry." Rapunzel smiled in reassurance.
Anna felt inclined to disagree, but ate her breakfast in silence.
Eugene had been right. To say the people of Arendelle were upset was putting it mildly. They were downright furious. If the natives of Arendelle were furious, Anna could only imagine how the foreigners must have felt. Traveling from far off places only to arrive to a kingdom that nearly killed them in the process, who wouldn't be angry at that?
Word of Anna's powers spread across the kingdoms like wildfire, just as it had done a year ago when Elsa froze Arendelle.
Elsa spent most of her days apologizing to the monarchs that had attended. She sent letters of remorse for loved ones lost and injured. She cut taxes to appease her angry citizens, spent hours upon hours pleading with the alliances that her sister's display of power was not a threat or a promise of war. It was just simply a tragic accident.
She even received—to her great astonishment and annoyance—letters from royal families across the world asking for Princess Anna's hand in marriage. Those letters she vehemently destroyed and sent a quick reply in the form of a big, fat, NO.
As if she would ever let a man marry her sister for the sake of her powers!
Anna, in all the while, spent most of her time in the castle bouncing between one company to the next. She played with Olaf for a few minutes at a time. The heat she seemed to perpetually spew since her accident in the festival made the petite snowman drip, much to Anna's chagrin.
Kristoff came to see the princess from time to time, but Anna found she was uncomfortable in the blond's presence. Their last conversation kept echoing in her mind every time she saw him, and although she knew he felt guilty for admitting he viewed her magic as a curse, Anna couldn't help but resent him, if only just a little. The little flickering flame she felt within her body burned terribly in his presence.
It wasn't just with Kristoff either. She felt it in her sister's presence as well.
It was beneath them, she knew it was, but Anna couldn't help but feel her sister and Kristoff were constantly muttering "I told you so" behind her back, even when she knew they weren't saying it at all. She got it enough from the look on Eugene's face; received it the angry, disgruntled and terrified expressions from the towns' people.
She hated it.
She spent the first three days since the festival in the garden. She had watched the grass brown with every step she took; had watched her mother's beautiful flowers blacken and wither in face of her heat. She had tried, time and time again, to keep the warmth in control, to not set any more flowers or bushes on fire, yet it was all in vain. In a fit of frustration, she had set the garden on fire on her third day inside, much to Elsa's chagrin and Olaf's great sadness.
He had loved the garden.
On the fourth day following the Great Fire, Anna returned to the courtyard. She sat in the center, listening to the ice walls her sister had only just erected crack and melt from the scorching heat. She spent that day in solitary silence.
On the fifth day, funds from Corona and Copenhagen arrived. Just as promised, Eugene oversaw the rebuilding effort despite Elsa's insistence that he didn't have to.
"You have other things to worry about. Let me and Rapunzel take care of this." He had said and so she let them be.
It was also on the fifth day, when Elsa and Anna were preparing to head for lunch that Vegar came running down the hall, a letter poised in his hands.
"Your majesties!" He called breathlessly. "I ha-have urgent news!" He handed Queen Elsa the envelope before doubling over for air.
Elsa eyed the thick letter with Arendelle's name written in shimmering green ink, a sense of foreboding pooling in her stomach. She flipped over the envelope—blood immediately drained from her face.
The crest of the Southern Isles glared back at her in dry red wax.
Anna frowned, hate bubbling beneath the surface.
"What do they want now?"
Elsa carefully broke the imprinted crest, slowly pulled out the folded sheets of paper and read. A few seconds later, she hastily refolded the offending letter, thanked Vegar for his dutiful delivery then hurried down the hall, Anna scrambling behind.
"Whoa, Elsa! What did the letter say?"
"Not now Anna."
Anna grabbed her sister by the arm and yanked her to a stop. "Elsa! Stop! What did the letter say?" She pressed.
"The Southern Isles are threatening to wage war against us." Elsa replied, blue eyes hard.
Anna felt the scowl form on her freckled features. "Because we didn't let them attend the festival?"
"Because the representative they sent is dead, Anna!"
Anna felt her heart quicken in horror.
"Wh-what?"
Elsa handed her sister the letter for the young woman to read, but the moment Anna's fingers touched the page, they blackened as though burned. The Queen yanked the letter out of her sister's grasp, her beautiful face distorted in an angry glower.
"Control yourself Anna! There's no time for this!" She snapped, despite the frost that crept along the edge of the envelope. "Did you forget? Mikkel read to us the names of the people that arrived at the docks. One of them was a representative of the Southern Isles. He was one of Marcus's younger brothers."
Anna's golden eyes widened in dismay.
"Mikkel said something about him being injured in the fire, but I was so worried about you at the time that I must have forgotten it. His injuries must have proved too much." Elsa said, taking notice of the frost. She wiped it away in annoyance. "Gerda told me that some of the…survivors…chose to brace the voyage home. Andren must have been one of them." She turned on her heel suddenly, ice forming along the rug. "I need to speak with Mikkel immediately."
She glanced over her shoulder.
"Anna, I need you to be there. This concerns all of us."
Without a seconds thought, Anna followed the Queen toward the council room.
Silence permeated throughout the room. King Marcus's letter lay at the center of the table, the dried red wax imprinted with the Kingdom's seal seemed to mock everyone in the room.
Anna played nervously with her braid, fiddling and twirling the tail end around her index finger.
Elsa stood in front of the table, eying each and every one of her council members with intense scrutiny.
Rapunzel glared at the letter as though it were at fault for everything while Eugene ran a hand through his chocolate brown locks. The rest of the council members gawked at the letter, their expressions identical.
"What are we going to do?" Elsa asked, her tone serious. "War is not an option. The people of Arendelle are still in mourning. If we go to war, it will only serve to make them hate us more. I need an alternative."
"Her majesty could always marry the princess to—"
"No!" Elsa interjected, the temperature in the room dropping. "I refuse to marry Anna off as a peace treaty! Think of something else."
"We could always go to war." One of the older gentlemen suggested.
Elsa sent a frosty glare his way. He ducked his head shamefully underneath her intense scrutiny.
Anna worried her bottom lip.
"Maybe… maybe I should go to the Southern Isles and ask for their forgiveness personally." Elsa suddenly whirled on her. "It's my fault his brother is dead. It's only right."
"That won't bring Andren back, Anna." Eugene commented.
"At least it shows that we're sorry." She rebuked.
"Anna, if we didn't accept King Marcus's apology, what makes you think he'll accept yours?" Elsa questioned softly. Her expression suddenly hardened. "No, what King Marcus wants is your death. He believes that Arendelle is a threat." Light blue eyes stared at the letter accusingly. "He called us witches, Anna."
Rapunzel and Eugene couldn't suppress the wince that escaped them; the council members all murmuring in offense.
"Aren't we?" Anna asked, golden eyes melancholic.
Elsa didn't say a word.
Ya'll ladies be witches.
Elsa and Anna would like to grace us with a non-cannon song. (because JoMiSm is awesome.)
Please don't freak out again
Please don't burst into flames
You don't have to worry about secrets anymorrrre
cuz for the first time in forever
I finally understand
For the first time in forever
We can fix this hand in hand
We can go out there together
and tell them not TO FEEEEEEEAR
cuz for the first time in forever
I will be right hereeeeeee
Elsa! Please go back ooooout-
side the roooom
and face the messes that I've caused
(but) I know, you want to stay, but leave me be, my fire's so hot you can barely breathe!
Just stay away and you'll be safe from meeeeee
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FEED MEH PLZ -weeps-