literature

The North Wind, a frozen fanfic | Part IV

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"Elsa."

She smiled faintly at the familiar voice, its dulcet, warm tone comforting her.

"Anna . . . Anna, is that you?" she murmured back, and absently she worried that her question had not been heard, since she could hardly make out the sound of her own speech.

A soft giggle was her reply. "Yes, Elsa, it's me."

She could just make out the faint outline of her sister's strawberry-blonde covered head, her signature braid laid across her right shoulder. The sun rose behind that fair girl's face and illuminated her figure amongst the other familiar sights in her older sister's bedchambers, unchanged from years past.

Her smile widened at the sight, and she gripped Anna's hand tightly.

"Oh, Anna; I've had such terrible dreams . . ."

"Elsa . . ."


Her brow furrowed as Anna's voice suddenly changed, and a concerned look cast itself over her normally cheerful features.

"Elsa."

She shifted uncomfortably on the bed below at the second repetition of her name, and the picture of Anna by her side became blurry and uneven.

"Elsa."

Finally, her eyes opened fully, convinced that she would find her sister there; but as the figure by her side came into clearer focus, her expression dropped.

"You're awake."

It was, without a doubt, Hans's face that hovered over hers, and Hans's face that had shown such a curiously worried look—though, she noticed suddenly, the setting in which she found herself was much changed from before.

Her brows rose in bewilderment, and she instinctively tried to rise from the bed in alarm.

"Don't move," he warned her, though he needn't have; she moaned in pain from the attempt and fell back just as quickly as she had risen.

Even so, her hands automatically moved to her neck, which was wrapped in what felt like a fresh layer of gauze. She touched the material—softly, she had thought—but apparently, not softly enough.

"Don't touch it," he gently pressed her hand, placing it back at her side. "It might start bleeding again if you do."

Her head swam at the thought that he should be so concerned for her well-being—and, what's more, that he should be looking after her in what appeared to be her parents' former bedroom.

She hazily tried to remember how she had gotten there, pressing a hand to her throbbing temple. To her surprise, she found the hand bare; her head turned to her side, where she found the other equally stripped.

Anxious at this discovery, she pressed it to her chest, and stared at him with blue eyes that struggled to focus.

"How . . . you . . . why are you . . ."

She trailed off for a moment as a memory suddenly struck her, the weight of it making her heart drop to her stomach.

"You—you killed that guard, didn't you?"

His expression darkened at the question. "I did," he replied bluntly.

When she stared back at him in dull surprise, he frowned. "He would have killed you if I hadn't stepped in."

She shook her head slightly, though it felt like trying to shift a ton of lead. "No," she said quietly, "he would've let them do it."

He glanced out the window, but his expression was unchanged from before. "Well, whichever way he would've done it is of no concern to me," he said firmly. "All that matters is that he doesn't pose a threat anymore."

She raised a quizzical eyebrow, her lips cracking as she spoke.

"Pose a threat to whom? To you? Or to me?"

He reddened at the question, but only for a moment. Within seconds his look had grown hard again, and he stood from his seat next to her bed.

"What difference does it make?" he deflected in annoyance, and closed the curtains that had once allowed some daylight to enter the room. "You're my prisoner; he had no right to decide your fate."

She turned away from him at that comment, unable to acknowledge it as the truth—not to his face, at least.

I can't give him that kind of satisfaction.

"Anyway, I have to be off now," he said tersely, his tone suddenly business-like. "You're not to move from this bedroom until I return."

He glanced down at a pot on the dresser by the bed, and her eyes followed his gaze to it. When she realized what it contained, however, her look became immediately obstinate.

"I'm not hungry," she choked out, grimacing.

He clucked at her. "There's no point in continuing your hunger strike, your highness," he drawled as he neared the door. He gestured to the grandfather clock on the other side of the room, and a grey smile briefly touched his lips. "You've been drifting in and out of consciousness for three days, now; I've managed to feed you at least four times during that period, so I expect you to continue eating while I'm gone."

Her pale cheeks heated at this revelation, and grew even hotter as he glanced at her ghostly form beneath the bedsheets.

"You've gotten too thin, Elsa; it's not a good look on you."

She nearly growled with displeasure as he finally left the room; had she not been so weak, she was sure she would have hurled the stupid pot right at the door and taken infinite delight out of hearing it shatter into a thousand pieces.

Instead, she simply stared at it, aggravated by the mere memory of his parting words.

Gotten thin, have I?

She laid back down on the bed, and was annoyed to find how comfortable it was in comparison to her previous accommodations—not to mention how immediately it relaxed her frazzled, fatigued mind.

As if I'd let him feed me.

She didn't want to believe his story, since—like so many other things she had learned about Hans since the start of her imprisonment—it made him sound like a better person than she knew him to be.

Feeding her? Changing her bandages? Cleaning her wounds?

The list seemed endless, and when she added those "kind deeds" on to the other privileges he had allowed her over the past few weeks—bathing, daily meals, clean clothes—it made her feel uncertain about her unkind opinion of him.

Why is he doing this?

It always came back to that single question, though she felt no closer to answering it then than she had been in the days before the incident with the guard had occurred.

Of course, a number of possible theories had crossed her mind—the prevailing one being that he wanted to find a way to control and harness her powers to further his own ill will—but somehow, they all fell flat in the face of the one that seemed the most bitterly realistic.

He just wants to keep me here to torment me—to show me how powerless I am, and how easy it was for him to take everything away from me.

That reasoning, however, was tied up with its own, complex set of emotions that she dared not delve into too deeply. Whenever she had in the past, she always returned to the conclusion that she only had herself to blame for all of this. Whatever Hans piled on top of it, she supposed it was his right to do so—and it was her lot, awful as it seemed, to accept things as they were.

After all, she thought bitterly, Anna did name him ruler in my stead.

As this harsh sense of defeat settled over her once more, she felt herself sink further and further into the plush comforts of the mattress.

She knew that soon, none of it would matter anymore—her cursed powers, this endless winter, Hans's cruel taunts—because sleep was the one plane of existence that granted her any form of peace, and she was stealing away into it as quickly as she could.

Nevertheless, as her eyelids fluttered shut and her lips parted, her breathing slowing, a single, persistent thought began to take hold in her.

Did he . . . did he call me Elsa?
Disney's Frozen | Alternate Ending | Romance, Tragedy | Hans x Elsa (Iceburns) | Rated T

“If they knew you were still alive, they would never stop hunting you,” he told her bluntly. “As long as you’re here, you’re safe from them.” Elsa’s stare turned hard and bitter at these words; and yet, his dark, hollow timbre was as clear as daylight to her. “You’re not fit to be a queen, Elsa; nor would you be able to survive in that wilderness on your own. Consider this cell a form of . . . penitence for your crimes.”
© 2014 - 2024 calenheniel
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Natuk's avatar
What I adore most about The North Wind is how in character you still keep Elsa and Hans. Especially Hans. And I completely agree with Fainalotea, I don't think Hans is at all "evil" in the traditional sense either. I think he is a creature of his own circumstance, being the last of thirteen, thirteen, children would no doubt will strain even the most mild mannered person. It's no wonder he craved the attention, the praise and that his desire to prove to his family that he could amount to something over powered his sense of reason and his morality.

I do apologise in advance if I don't comment on every chapter. I don't want to keep repeating myself (even though it's true). But keep up the amazing work! You're doing awesome!