You Will Be Good Enough

Birds chirped in the few trees that could be found this high up. They chirped in the mountain crevices. They chirped constantly. Loudly. It was an alarm clock Elsa decided she could get behind, as she began to wake up. She shifted and her eyes opened. She frowned, for a moment confused as to where she was, and then it all came flooding back and she caught her breath, sitting bolt upright. She felt a cloak fall off of her and quickly looked at it. Hans's? She looked around for him and spotted him sitting in the entrance of the cave. She blinked. How had they…? Had he carried her all this way? Her lips slowly parted in disbelief before she shut them again, looking at the cloak. She took it in her hands, examining it.

"You should probably form your ice gown now," Hans remarked suddenly. "Before things get any more awkward."

She looked towards him. Had he not spoken just now, she would have thought he was still sleeping. "How long have you been awake?" she asked.

"I never slept," he answered, shifting finally and turning to her, opening his eyes. "I had hoped to drift off. Seems that isn't happening, though."

She looked at the cloak she held then rose, forming her ice gown and going to him, handing it over. "Maybe if you get a little warmer you'll sleep better."

"It's too late for that now. We can't waste more time," he answered.

"You could have gone deeper into the cave where it was warm, you know," she remarked.

"In a mountain full of predators? I don't think so. Someone had to take watch," he answered. "And you were in no condition to take over for me."

"Have you really not slept at all?" she demanded, eyes narrowing.

"I've gone longer without sleep than one night, Elsa," Hans answered with a sigh.

"Well not this time. You're no use to me exhausted, Hans, or to yourself or to your brothers. You need to sleep. We can wait a little longer. You go into a fight like this, your next rest will be permanent," she said.

"No one would shed a tear for me," Hans answered quietly, putting on his cloak.

"That isn't true," Elsa answered.

"Yes. It is," Hans answered.

"We aren't moving until you get some sleep," Elsa said, sitting across from him. He looked at her exhaustedly. Had he not been so tired, he would have protested further. Finally, though, he sighed and nodded. He stood and moved back farther into the cave. Finding a warm spot, he lay down and closed his eyes. She waited until she was sure he was asleep then rose, going to the hot spring. She might as well bathe while she could. She undressed and slipped into the warm waters. She smiled, leaning back to enjoy the warmth. She loved the cold, but the warm was wonderful.

Frozen

She felt someone shake her shoulder lightly. She started awake with a gasp and looked quickly up. Hans was there! Had she been asleep?! "How long was I sleeping?" she demanded, moving to rise. He kept a firm hand on her shoulder, holding her down.

"Rethink how much of you you're okay with me seeing before you get out of the water," Hans deadpanned. She blinked in confusion then recalled her state of undress, blushing deeply. "I don't know how long you've been out. I just woke up like two minutes ago," he continued, rubbing his eyes. Good thing nothing had been searching for them or they would have been dead in the water. He looked up. "Looks to be about midday, though. The horses came back while we were sleeping."

Elsa looked over. Sure enough, there stood Sitron and the Ice Mare, grazing away contentedly like nothing had ever happened. "Thank goodness," she breathed.

"I'll get us something to eat while you get dressed," Hans said, releasing her shoulder and rising, going to the saddlebags. She watched him warily then quickly got out and formed her gown. She approached him as he was dividing up bread and some dried meat. He looked up at her and offered her half of it. She took it, nodding gratefully, and began to eat. "Now if you don't mind, you're not the only one who needs a bath," he said.

He took his food and went towards the hot springs, kicking a stone. She looked after him curiously, watching him removing his clothing. He really was quite good looking. She could see how Anna had been so smitten. When he reached the pants he paused and glanced over at her. She blinked then realized she'd been staring. And not minding. Flushing a bright red, she whipped her head away from him, grimacing. Had she really been admiring him? She groaned out loud, burying her face in her hands when she heard him chuckle. She almost expected to hear him taunt her, but he held his tongue in check. For that she was grateful. Not that she didn't have a retort. Goodness knew he had to have seen more than he let on when he woke her up in the water. He'd probably paced around first, watching her. He looked so she had, she justified. Oh that was a horrible justification. Elsa sighed and rose, going to ready the horses for the next stretch. She looked in the direction they were heading. "We're almost there, Anna," she said softly to her absent sister. Soon enough they would save their siblings and their kingdoms.

Frozen

The cell door was thrown open and Moren was thrust inside. "Moren!" Anna screamed, immediately leaping to his side along with his brothers. Kristoff gazed fearfully at the troll, eyes wide. This was nothing like the trolls he knew, and yet it was. This was just… This was something so entirely different and the same…

"Wh-what have you done?" Kristoff heard himself whisper.

"The king would not be put in his place," the wicked sprite answered. "And then he was. When I threatened him with the heads of the two youngest brothers in my custody." Iscawin and Kelin-Sel paled. The sprite glared at the unconscious and obviously suffering king. Burn marks were plain to see to all, and his clothes… they were in tatters and scorched. It didn't take a lot to guess at least the gist of what had happened to him. "I will see him on his knees and my slave before this is done."

"You freak of nature!" Anna screamed, leaping up and lunging for the hobgoblin, fingers stretched out like talons. Franz leapt, catching her and pulling her back. "Let me go! How could you? Why are you doing this?!" she screamed at the creature. "Why?!"

"Because I want to," the hobgoblin replied with a chilling smirk. With that he left. Anna, shaking, collapsed to her knees with a sob, Franz falling with her and holding her close. A fit of despair, he realized. If only she knew how close he was to having one too. For now, though, he had to be the reassurance. It seemed no one else would be.

"It's okay. There's a way out. There always is," Franz said.

"No there isn't," she brokenly replied. "I can't lie to myself anymore. There's no way out."

"Yes there is. And if we can't find it ourselves, then our siblings will," he promised. She sobbed and nodded.

Frozen

Elsa waited by the springs while Hans scouted ahead. Soon she heard him returning and looked over. He looked slightly pale and she stiffened. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"We're close to the lair. Too close!" Hans said.

"That's good. It means we're close to saving them!" Elsa exclaimed, rising.

"No! No, no, we can't go out there now. No way. He has them hunting us, Elsa! Scouring the mountains and forests. The only reason they're not in that cave now is because of that cave-in. That and they don't know where it comes out. Thank god they don't know this area even exists, or we would be dead right now, do you understand me? Dead! They're everywhere. They're swarming these hills! Your ice may or may not be more powerful than 100 men, but 100 sprites? 1000? They're Fair Folk, your majesty. They have magic like you've never seen. We try to reach it now, we're dead."

"Then what are we supposed to do?!" Elsa demanded. "We can't sit here!"

"Yes we can. This time. Wait here. Wait it out. With luck they'll report we're dead or decide we're not in this area yet. When things calm down, we move," Hans replied.

"That could take weeks!" Elsa protested. "Our siblings, our kingdoms, don't have that time!"

"I'll think of something okay?!" Hans demanded. "Just-just bear with me here. We can't go for it now."

"So what? You're saying we're stuck here another night?" Elsa asked.

"At least the place is nice," Hans answered lamely, shrugging hopelessly.

"I'm sorry, is that supposed to make any of this better?" Elsa demanded.

"Nothing's going to make this better," Hans answered with a sigh, sitting on the ground and massaging his forehead. "Gods, this was a fool's errand from the start! A suicide mission! I knew it was from the beginning and I still did it. Angrily he threw a stick to the side. "Always good never good enough," he disgustedly said, more to himself than to her.

"What?" Elsa asked.

Hans sighed, resting his head on his knees. He looked back up towards the sky. "Nothing. It's just… just something my brothers—Jürgen in particular—always used to say… Still say… And they're right… Always good, never good enough… I've never been good enough…"

"Why do they say that?" Elsa questioned, a little taken aback by the coldness of the words. Hans was quiet. Suddenly he rose angrily, viciously kicking a rock to the side and storming away from her. "Hans? Hans!" she called. He never looked back, and she was left to gape in shock after him. What was he hiding? She closed her mouth and shifted uneasily, looking down. She couldn't push him, she realized. Pushing him only seemed to shut him down more. If he spoke to it, he would speak to it on his own terms. She sighed. She hated to accept that realization, but that was the truth of it. She looked at Sitron, who was looking sadly and worriedly after his master. She went to him and gently petted his neck. "What is he hiding, boy?" she murmured to the stallion. Sitron nickered softly, nibbling at her hair lightly. She looked after Hans once more, frowning concernedly.

Frozen

When he didn't come back by sunset, she went after him. She wasn't going to wait any longer. For all she knew he'd been captured. She had to be sure he was okay. Why she was concerned she didn't bother questioning. She just knew she had to find him. Find out what had happened to him. She needed him for this mission as much as he needed her. It wouldn't help either of them if one was caught.

She found him up on a ledge looking down over the mountains. Not so far away was the castle of the hobgoblin, situated darkly against the setting sun. Far below they could pick out moving figures. Hundreds of sprites and trolls scouring for them. From here they looked like dots. She looked down at the scene in a kind of dark and bitter fascination as the wind lightly blew her hair. He didn't turn to her, though surely he sensed her presence. She went to him and knelt across from the prince, watching the sight.

After a long moment he suddenly questioned, "Do you believe we'll save them?" She looked over at him, a little taken aback. His voice… He sounded so vulnerable… Vulnerability was never a word she could ever have put to him before this moment, and now…

She looked back towards the castle. "You're afraid," she noted quietly.

"I haven't exactly had a great track record when it comes to saving people," he said bitterly.

She nodded. "Maybe, but when was the last time you needed to?" she asked. Excluding recent events, that was.

He was quiet. "I was twenty, going on twenty-one," he finally answered. "It was… It was shortly after I decided I would be the one father sent to Arendelle as our representative at your coronation. That I would… that I would be the one to win the heart of the mysterious queen…" She started and looked quickly over at him. He glanced at her and sighed, looking away. "To marry you meant I would never ever have to go home again. It meant a throne of my own. It meant… It meant I was worth something… It meant I would be something. To father. To my brothers. To… to my mother…"

"But you were something to your mother," Elsa murmured, recalling that Moren had stated as much. That Hans had been her favorite.

"No… not anymore I wasn't… Not at that point…" Hans murmured.

"What do you mean?" Elsa questioned.

Hans closed his eyes tightly and bowed his head. "I killed my mother, you know…" he said.

"Moren said…" she began.

"That I'd never hurt her? Hah! As if. Oh I hurt her alright. I hurt her worse than anyone else ever had before. I hurt… I killed…" he began. He trailed off and drew in a shaky breath, closing his eyes tightly. He looked up and she was left stunned again. Tears shone in his eyes, though they refused to fall. She hadn't believe he could cry… "What was it you said to me at the ball again?"

She looked away. "I don't remember," she muttered. A lie. She remembered all too well.

"I do," Hans answered. "She dreamt of the future and she died because she couldn't bear the thought of bringing a monster like me into this world."

"Hans, I…" she began.

"Were right," he cut off. "You were right…" He closed his eyes, looking down. "She saw the tyrant father became. She saw every son she bore him grow in maliciousness and cruelty and become just like him. She couldn't stop it. She couldn't save them… So she hated them… She didn't want to, but she hated them. Hated and loved them like she hated and loved my father… She couldn't save them… And then I was born, and she swore to herself that she would not let me become my father. My brothers. Any of them… And she dared believe that she had succeeded. She dared believe… In me… Her faith… It wasn't misplaced. I was so much more than them, more than father, more than… than this… I was so much more… I was her rescuer, her savior. And then I wasn't…"

"What do you mean?" Elsa asked in a whisper, unable to look at him for the shame she felt at her words to him during the ball. Only a few days, a week maybe, and it still seemed like long ago…

Hans shook his head. "To get away meant to be sent to Arendelle. Given the freedom to try to escape. To be sent to Arendelle meant getting my father to give me a second glance. Getting a second glance meant building up his faith in me. Building up his faith in me… It meant becoming his lap dog, doing his dirty work, becoming everything mother fought so hard to keep me from being… And somehow it wasn't enough… Power… I wanted that power… And I got it. Oh how I got it." He looked at his hands a moment in silence. "There is blood on my hands. So much blood…" He closed his fists and looked viciously up. "And when I realized all I had done, I went to her…" He shouldn't have.

"Mother?" Hans said, pushing open the door to the library.

The queen looked up from her book and smiled softly at him. Lovingly. A smile kept only for him. A smile she'd long stopped being able to give his brothers. "What's wrong, my love?" she asked softly.

Hans felt his heart dropping and his stomach twisting. Tears burned his eyes and he swallowed, bowing his head. He approached her and knelt before her, taking her hands in his and kissing them. "Forgive me," he pled, voice breaking.

Her smile slowly fell to uncertainty. "Forgive you? Hans, what's wrong? What have you done? What is there to forgive?" she questioned, gently drawing a hand through his hair. In her voice he could hear her fear… He could hear she knew what he was about to say… He could hear her heart sinking, drowning, shattering.

He looked up at her, teeth gently clenched. He sobbed, resting her head on her knees and shaking his head. "I've become my brothers," he choked out when finally he could breathe again. She went as white as a sheet and as cold as ice, her grip on his hands tightening like a vice. Shock… A shock from which there would be no recovery this time.

Frozen

"The way she looked at me… the way her hand tightened on mine, the way she stopped breathing, the way… the way her heart began to pound… She never recovered... I tried to get her to speak to me, begged her to, but she couldn't… She couldn't, and I left in shame and as I shut the door I heard her break down into tears, sobbing so, so… She sounded like a mother mourning her dead children… I'd heard what that sounded like… She echoed it exactly… She never stopped crying again… Not that she had long to mourn. She died less than a month later… So much for being her rescuer."

"Hans…" Elsa began.

"Father went to find her. He came back in tears, carrying her body… And I never felt more despised than I did in that moment… Despised because they all knew who and what it was that had killed the queen… I think I may have hated myself more than all of my brothers and my father combined… She died because her last son, her last chance, the baby boy she thought she could rescue, the child she thought could be saved, became the monster she prayed every night he wouldn't become…"

Elsa listened silently, watching him. Her eyes were soft, apologetic, pained. He was weeping, she saw. Silently. She wondered if he himself knew… He was weeping… Gently she reached out, her fingers brushing his cheek. He hardly seemed to notice, only shut his eyes tighter. Almost as if he couldn't bear the thought of being touched in such a way. "Monsters aren't supposed to be able to cry…" she murmured softly.

His eyes slowly opened, his head slowly lifted to look at her, teeth gently and painfully clenched. She looked into his eyes earnestly, sympathetically, kindly… That look was a look he couldn't bear, and quickly he turned from her, bowing his head again. "This one does," he answered.

"It isn't a monster sitting across from me," she gently replied. "Not anymore."

"Not in this moment at least," he answered, voice getting a little stronger as he began forcing himself to shut down and off again. She didn't want him to. She knew that when he did, whoever this person she spoke to now was, he would be gone. "Always good, never good enough... You wanted to know where it came from. I can't even remember, it's been said to me for so long... But I can tell you when it hurt the most and when I realized it was how they would always see me no matter how much I wished otherwise."

She was silent. She almost wished he wouldn't. Hadn't she torn open enough old wounds of his as it was? She should have let it go. She should have begged him not to say... But part of her wanted to know... "Tell me," she whispered.

Hans bitterly laughed, then was silent. "I couldn't save… I couldn't save my niece and nephew..." he finally said. "I had one job. That job was to keep my brother's children and wife alive, and I failed. I failed so miserably that…" He trailed off. She was looking at him in stunned shock, lips parted. He shook his head. "I couldn't protect them. I tried! I swear to god I tried so hard, but I couldn't save them. How could I? I was only... Just so much was happening and there were so many attacking, and my sister-in-law couldn't fight because she was in labor with their baby…"

"Stop," Elsa commanded. She couldn't do this. She couldn't put him through this. She wasn't sure she even wanted to know anymore. "Stop. You don't have to go on. Don't go on," she pled, noting the hints of desperation, perhaps even hysteria, threatening to rise in his voice.

Hans shook his head, closing his eyes tightly and gasping for air, willing himself to get a grip. "When he married her he was happy. He became normal. I could actually speak to him. Any of us could, and he wasn't so… He wasn't dark, shut off. He was… he was normal…" Mael, Elsa realized with a chill. He had been married. He had had children! "When they died, that was it… No more Lars. No more normality. That brief time was over and then… then he was back to the way he had been before and nothing reached him anymore. Nothing could have hoped to ever again." Elsa was silent, head bowed and eyes tightly shut.

"I tried. I swear to you I tried as hard as I could!" Hans defended frantically, sobbing.

"Damn you, Hans! Damn you to hell! You should have died in their place! It should be you rotting on the ground, not them!" Duach shrieked back, pointing in grief at their dead sister-in-law and her children spread around her… the unborn baby torn from her body… Lars cradled them in his arms wailing, rocking them in agony and begging for death to come and take him as well.

"I did all I could! Lars, I wanted so badly to save them. I did my best! Everything! Please, please, I did all I could!" Hans pled to his mourning brother. Lars didn't hear. He would never hear him again…

"You did your best? Your best?!" Jürgen shouted. "Of course you did your best! You always do, don't you, huh?! Don't you?! Always good never good enough, Hans! You are always good and never good enough!"

"Get out of our sight," Caleb suddenly and hollowly and darkly said.

"Caleb…" Hans began.

"Get out!" Caleb bellowed, pointing. "Get out! Get out! Get out!" Terrified for his life, his brothers suddenly all turning on him at once, weeping and with swords drawn to cut him down, Hans turned and fled for his life as they gave pursuit. If not for his father, ironically enough - the king had despised the woman Mael had chosen to marry - he knew he would have died that day. Instead he became his father's hero. Medal, ceremony... If only the hatred in the air could have killed him. His brothers' hatred.

Frozen

Elsa was silent, eyes screwed tightly shut as he told her of what had happened. "You can't look at me," Hans suddenly remarked in a murmur, breaking her out of her grief. Why was she feeling such grief? She shivered as the significance and weight of his words struck her. For how long, she wondered, had his brothers not been able to look at him after? Months? Years? Had they ever really looked again? She wouldn't be his brothers.

She sniffed and raised her head, meeting his green eyes. "Yes I can," she replied. He shook his head and looked away. Perhaps he was the one who couldn't look. At her, at himself, at anyone…

Softly she placed a hand on his shoulder. He glanced at the hand curiously then jumped as suddenly her arms were around him. His body stiffened, unsure how to respond to this action and hardly understanding what it was. What was she doing? Was she… Was she hugging him? He blinked, trying to process it before deciding his mental energy was spent. No more processing. Just do. After a moment he held her back, burying his face in her hair and letting his tears fall. "You will be good enough," she whispered to him. "This time you will be good enough." He sobbed. He couldn't hold it back anymore. He never wanted to have to again, though he knew that was only wishful thinking. Never before had he heard such words, Elsa realized. Well, he was hearing them now.

"Forgive me," she barely heard him whisper. To her? To his dead sister-in-law and nieces and nephews? To his dead mother, or to his absent brothers? Maybe he spoke only to himself. She didn't know. She didn't need to. It didn't matter now anyway. All that mattered was this. She wouldn't say she forgave him, and she couldn't speak for any of the others or him, but she would stay here with the prince until all of this pain ended... Maybe, in a strange abstract way, she felt some of her own slipping away as well...