All or Nothing Chapter 23
All or Nothing
Chapter Twenty Three
Please excuse yet another delay on this story, I had to take a trip and I'm back now. Services will resume.
Note: This fic is far from over. Please do not let the events of this chapter and the ones after put you off the story.
…..
For all that Anna's relationship with Elsa was frosty (now slowly thawing, thank goodness), she and Merida were still on good terms. They spent long winter evenings in Anna's parlour together, drinking hot cider in front of the fire and laughing so much and so loudly Elsa could hear them from her office.
It irritated her, just a little. She couldn't begrudge Merida a friend in a foreign nation (though there was that little sting that Elsa wasn't enough for her, somehow) but it still felt like Anna was being childish about the whole affair.
She wondered if Anna had told Kristoff anything.
“Of course not,” Anna hissed when asked. “It's not gossip, for God's sake...”
“Maybe you should tell him,” Elsa replied coolly. “He is going to be a member of the royal household soon. He should know that his future sister-in-law is an abomination.”
Anna rolled her eyes.
“For the last time, you know that's not what I think,” she said snippily. “You might as well go have torrid love affairs with all the chambermaids for all I care, whatever, no big deal. It's that you had to have this affair.”
“You can't control who you fall in love with,” Elsa retorted. “You know that better than anyone.”
“Oh, I do,” Anna laughed, tapping on a stack of papers on Elsa's desk. “If I'd known it was this complicated to marry him....but the heart wants what it wants.”
“Yes, it does.”
“I don't blame you for falling in love, or her...”
Does she love me? Has she said so to you?”
“...but this is going to end badly. I can feel it.”
Said like that, it was like a prophecy. She just had no way of knowing just how soon it might come true.
….
The cold spell lifted, and although there was still powdery snow on the ground the markets re-opened and the traders went right back to selling their wares. Merida was out of the castle gates as soon as she got the all-clear; she had been happy enough to stay in the castle during the heavy snows, but she was a creature of the outdoors above all else.
Elsa wasn't expecting her back until near nightfall. She jumped when Merida clattered into her office before midday.
“I saw a wisp,” she gasped, wild-eyed. Her cloak was half-off, still clinging to one shoulder.
“What?” Elsa said quizzically. She handed her a cup of water, Merida looked out of breath.
“I saw a wisp,” she repeated after gulping down the water. “At the spice merchant's stall. It was waiting for me. I saw it in the snow before, but I couldn't get to it.”
Elsa knew what a wisp was; she'd seen flickers of them in Merida's memories, and heard Merida speak of them more than once. Still, she played ignorant. Something about the wisps, little creatures that already knew your future and appeared just to beckon you in some vague direction, frightened her.
“What would a wisp be doing here?” she said with a warm chuckle, as if indulging some small child's stories.
“It's here to lead me back,” Merida answered, her breath evening out. She sounded certain, dead-set. “That's why I've been here so long. It was waiting for the right time to lead me back.”
Elsa felt the slow trickle of ice run up her spine, through her blood, out through her fingertips to crackle on the wood of the desk in front of her, with every word Merida spoke. She had been there for almost three years. They had been together for only a few months.
She had always known it would end, some day, and it would break her heart. She didn't expect it to be so soon.
Merida was still talking, about the wisp, about how the spice merchant was leaving soon for the coast and had offered to take her with his caravan, maps and winter clothes and weapons and sending Lua from new outposts....
“Stop,” Elsa said, holding up a shaking hand. “Just...stop.”
Merida trailed off, looking confused. As if she didn't know....
“It's midwinter,” she said. “The ports are frozen over. The mountains are snowed in. And aside from the travel conditions, you don't know these spice merchants and if you think I'm going to let you wander off with complete strangers...”
“I do know them,” Merida said with a frown. “Cosimo and Giancamo Belloza. From Losanta.”
How long has she known them?
“Be that as it may,” Elsa continued, a note of ice creeping into her voice. “Jumping across countries on the whim of some creature you haven't seen in years isn't just dangerous, it's downright insane. The spice merchants will be going East, towards Dionhae. That's as far from Dunbroch as you can get.”
Merida shrugged, infuriatingly casual.
“The witch said I would leave Dunbroch, make a powerful ally and return stronger. The wisp lead me out of Dunbroch, it's trying to lead me now. If that's Dionhae, so be it.”
There was no clear thought, no plan, not even a vague idea of what was going to happen, but Merida was willing to drop everything and follow this...demon...off to wherever. It was infuriating.
And there was that little stab of hurt that Elsa had always imagined herself to be that prophecized powerful ally, despite Arendelle's lack of a formidable army and a shaky economy built around good relationships with all their neighbours. Merida had never seen her that way, she knew now.
“You don't speak Dionhese,” she retorted, trying and failing to keep the building anger out of her voice. “Or even standard Rohiman, for that matter...”
“The Bellozas do,” Merida countered. “I can pick it up on the way. I did fine with Dellian, didn't I?”
“The spice road is notoriously dangerous, especially for women,” Elsa continued. “Slave traders from the South pass through all the time, not to mention bandits...”
“So do mercenaries,” Merida shrugged. “All the caravans have decent guard. And I can protect myself if it comes to that.”
It sounded like Merida had given it a lot of thought, and that just made Elsa more fearful.
“Look, I know why you're worried,” Merida said, softening a little as she reached for Elsa's hand. “But we both knew I was going to have to leave some time. It doesn't mean we won't ever see each other again...once I've got my husband's head on a pike, who knows....”
She was still talking, but Elsa couldn't hear her over the pounding of her heart. She knew what this meant. Merida would leave and find someone else and never come back, might never even think of Elsa again unless a fall of snow triggered a memory in her. Or she'd win back her kingdom and return, but the ocean between Dunbroch and Arendelle would take days to cross, and with each day spent away from her she would grow more distant. Even now, a single day away from her filled Elsa with agonizing longing.
“You can't,” she blurted out.
Merida pulled her hand away sharply, frowning.
“My brothers have been stuck on an island for three years,” she said, quietly but firmly. “My people have been in hiding for three years. I've been waiting for the wisp to lead me back, I would never have stayed so long if I hadn't. I have to go.”
The ice bubbled in Elsa's blood, rushing to her fingertips.
“No. I forbid it,” she growled.
Now Merida stood, pushed back her chair, cheeks flushed pink with anger and, to Elsa's eyes, lovelier than ever.
“You're not my queen,” she told her as she marched to the door. “You can't stop me!”
“Yes, I can!”
The cold flew from her fingers with a burst, coating the entire door in a layer of thick glassy ice just as Merida's hand was about to touch the door handle. Merida drew back her hand with a shocked little gasp, and for a fleeting moment Elsa worried that a stray shard had caught her, as it had Anna so long ago.
But in the next moment, Merida had taken the fire poker from the corner and broken through the ice, and with one last furious glance back at Elsa she was gone.
As Elsa left her office, the captain of the guard was watching Merida's form retreat down the hallway. He stood to attention when Elsa cleared her throat.
“Your highness?”
“At ease,” she said, suddenly drained of all energy. “I need to issue an edict.”
“Of course, your highness.”
“Princess Merida of Dunbroch is hereby confined to quarters, for her own safety.”
The captain shot a concerned glance at his nearby troops, concern that was echoed back.
“I will spread the word, your highness. Specifics.”
“Place a guard at her door and her window, she is permitted to visit the library and the west tower to feed her falcon, but beyond that she must be accompanied at all times. And she cannot leave the castle until further notice.”
It was an easy area to fortify. Elsa wasn't naive enough to think Merida wouldn't attempt to break through any windows she could access, or scale a wall, or shimmy down a pipe. All she needed to do was keep her confined for a few days, until she came to her senses.
Or just until the spice caravans left without her.
…..
The next few days were hard.
Elsa had expected (hoped) that Merida would come to her begging her to lift the house arrest. She could reason with her after the heat of the argument had died down and realize that she was being foolish to throw her life away on the whim of some mysterious spirit. They would make love and the whole ordeal would be put to rest.
She should have known better.
Ceilts were a race of people beholden to the spirits, they trusted them implicitly while having no idea what motive their spirits were working towards. Not to mention the idea of Merida begging for anything was about as unlikely as the Dellian council approving a marriage between them.
She had reacted to confinement with a fury that was frightening. The guards had had to chase her across the courtyard more than once after she'd slipped out a window or across a gutter, and it took six full-grown men to get her back inside. When Elsa froze the shutters on her window two feet thick, she spent hours chipping away at them with the butter knife she'd saved from her breakfast tray. Almost the entire garrison was stationed around possible exit routes.
When Elsa tried to talk to her, she refused to speak Dellian, only Gaelic. Elsa was quite sure she was being called all sorts of horrible names and cursed to hell and back, but she insisted after every time that it was for Merida's own good. This was usually met with an angry snort and Merida slamming the door in her face.
Anna was angry too, not quite as furious as Merida (as if anyone could be) but angry enough.
“This is a new low,” she growled when she first heard. “Everyone is going to know what's going on. Everyone! And you might as well have thrown her in the dungeon, you know she hates being cooped up inside! Don't you care?”
“It's just for a little while,” Elsa told her wearily. “What else can I do?”
“Anything but this!” Anna retorted. “Seriously, what's your end goal here? You're going to make her hate you, and that'll just make her want to leave even more! You can't lock her up forever!”
A little slice of madness, at the deepest corner of Elsa's mind, whispered to her.
Yes, I can.
If she couldn't keep her in the castle, she'd find another way. Her palace on the mountain. It was remote, almost inaccessible. She could make it stronger, higher, so that no man or woman could get in.
Or out.
