Work Text:
It takes months to navigate and unravel the mess of Elsa’s abdication.
'It sets a bad precedent' members of the Royal Court argued. 'Arendelle is just now finding some kind of stability - to have the monarch abdicate after less than five years on the throne gives life to the notion that we are an unsecured nation that others cannot look to for trade, support or aid.'
But other nations didn’t have a magical spirit of nature as their sovereign, and so documents were officially drafted, and preparations are immediately put in place for Anna’s ascension.
But talk around the castle, and then the village soon begins. Hushed whispers and tongues that tut around the markets and docks.
This is what happens when little girls rule; they are flighty and immature. Too driven by their emotions, whims, and desires…
She took a solemn oath to God Almighty to lead our people, does that mean nothing?
In the Portrait Room, there is a bust of Margrete I, The Lady King, proudly on display. Arendelle’s only ruling Queen until Elsa. Margrete had been such a force of power and strong leadership that during those tumultuous months, Anna glumly wonders if she would have been disappointed to see such a lack of leadership in the women who followed in her footsteps.
I’ll do better, Anna swears, I’ll be better.
Privately, when the doors are closed, and she’s alone with her thoughts, she feels overwhelmed and woefully underprepared with the task left at her feet. As heir-presumptive, Elsa had been groomed for this almost her whole life, had years of private tutoring preparing her for her future role as Queen. In contrast, their parents raised Anna to be a polite princess. Well-read and accomplished in several languages, archery, drawing, dancing, equestrian, embroidery and pianoforte. It was enough that she should acquire a working knowledge of the history and constitutional practice of her country, and that her character should develop a quiet strength that could be drawn on as the need arises. The idea that it would be Anna who would reign and not her older sister had never crossed anyone’s mind.
She thinks of Margrete, her Pappa’s stoic face looking down at her in his royal portrait, of Elsa’s nervous, tightly strung body; her deep calming breath needed each day before she forced herself into duty.
I’ll do better, Anna swears, I’ll be better.
+
For obvious reasons, Elsa doesn’t linger after their return from the Enchanted Forest. Just long enough to see Arendelle’s citizens settled back into their homes, and to sign all the needed documents for her abdication to become finalized.
Anna tries to swallow down the panic building like bile in the back of her throat as she watches Elsa flutter about her room, shoving essentials into her small pack. Everything about this feels wrong. Anna just got her sister back, and now she’s leaving for good. Had Elsa’s life been so unfulfilling here that she would leave everyone she loves to live an isolated, remote life in a forest? Isn’t that what the whole trouble three years ago had resolved? That Elsa could be who she was without having to give up her life in Arendelle and the ones she loved.
The Enchanted Forest doesn’t need her. It thrived before their grandfather’s duplicity, shouldn’t it be the same now that they’ve fixed it?
Has Elsa not felt supported enough?
Have the people not embraced her enough?
Does the castle still feel like a prison to her?
Maybe Anna should have done more to make Elsa feel more… she doesn’t even know. Maybe she wouldn’t want to leave then.
“Are you sure you don’t want this cloak? What if the one you packed isn’t warm enough? Or more clothes? That slinky new dress is nice, but the white won’t stay clean for long in a forest.”
“I’ll be fine, Anna.”
“Then what about some books? I couldn’t live without something to read.”
“I’ll be fine, Anna.”
“Okay, but you at least need mor—”
Elsa rests her hands gently on Anna’s shoulders, hands sliding down the length of her arms to gather Anna’s hands in hers. “Anna, please stop worrying. I will be fine; the tribe won’t let me suffer in the wilderness, and if I want for anything, I can always come back to get it.” Elsa squeezes Anna’s hands and smiles softly. “This is what I want.”
Well, what about what I want? Anna thinks to herself.
+
In the wake of Elsa’s departure, Anna feels overcome with the desperate need to keep the others close. Olaf laughs at her fussing and goes about his business as usual. But she cannot help the way she sometimes clutches at Kristoff’s arm when he leaves, like this time he and Sven won’t come down from the mountain, that the wild will reclaim him as it has already claimed everyone else she’s ever loved.
She cannot lose Kristoff, too; she just can’t.
If he notices anything, he doesn’t say it, just holds her, touches her, kisses her with the quiet intensity he always has.
“Whatever Kristoff wants, please see that he gets it.” She says to Kai, to Gerda, to all her advisors and palace staff, her eyes sadly gazing to where Elsa’s icy filigrees and additions to the castle have long since melted away.
She knows this isn’t the life Kristoff had envisioned for himself; the pomp and circumstance of castle life so chaffing to the freedom he’d known before. And of course, he doesn’t say anything, takes everything in stride as he always has. But then again, Anna had thought Elsa was happy too, and look where that had led.
If Anna’s honest with herself, she’s ashamed. Ashamed of the way she treated Kristoff on their journey in the forest and how careless she’s been with his heart, blindly chasing after Elsa regardless of the consequences. His love is not a convenient toy to pick-up and put down as she pleases, and she can’t bear the thought that he is resigned to settle trailing after her, starved for the crumbs of affection and love she happens to throws his way.
Anna has spent her whole life chasing that with her parents and her sister; she refuses to subject Kristoff to it a moment longer. Elsa may be her family, but Kristoff is her future.
My love is not fragile he had told her, and she feels that down to her bones. Just as Mamma was to Pappa, Kristoff is her grounding weight, the one she wants to share her life with. She knows when the crown lays heavy on her head, he will be there to lighten her burden with his solid, ever loyal presence. His arms wrapped tight around her to make her feel safe, loved, calmed.
“You know I love you, right?” She asks one night, disturbing the pleasant quietness that had settled upon them.
Kristoff looks up from his book with a fond smile. He’s been devouring her old school books since he’d anxiously muttered that he knew absolutely nothing of the things he’d need to know to be married to a Queen. She’d insisted he was perfect just as he was, but he’d just given her a hard stare and now takes private lessons with Kai almost every afternoon.
She knows he hates it, but he does it all the same.
“Of course, I do,” he says with a small laugh.
“No, I’m serious,” she scoots closer on the settee, so her knees are pushed against his thigh. “I love you, Kristoff, and when we marry,” she pauses, the thought of marrying him, still leaving her breathless, “you will be my equal, my partner in everything. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know about stupid battles or stupid politicians, or salad forks or any of the rest.”
She cups his face softly, fingers curling into the soft tufty hairs around his ears. “You are so much more important than any of that, and I just want to make sure you know that.”
He smiles, his hand coming up to engulf hers. “Anna,” he begins, but all these feelings are pooling out of her now, and she can’t stop the flow.
“And I’m sorry if I ever made you second-guess or doubt that, because all I want is for you to be happy here with me, and if ever you aren’t, I want you to tell me, okay? Please, Kristoff, I need you to tell me.” She can feel her free hand twisting into the fabric of his tunic, and she tells herself to relax, but she can’t seem to release her hand that clenches tighter and tighter, and she can see by the look pulling at Kristoff’s features that she’s worrying him and, oh, God why can’t she let go of his shirt?
“Anna,” he says again more firmly this time, “have you thought I’ve been unhappy this whole time?”
“No, but I never knew what was going on with Elsa, and now she’s left, and I don’t—” she stops with a sigh, dropping her head into the crook of his shoulder and her hand falling from his cheek. “I don’t know; I guess I’ve just been stuck in my head these last few weeks.”
“Hey,” Kristoff gently pulls her face up to meet his eyes, hands cupped around her cheeks as she’d just held him, his hands are so large his fingers curl to the nape of her neck. “Your sister and I are very different people. I wouldn’t be here, and you wouldn’t have that ring on your finger if this wasn’t what I wanted.” He nods to Anna’s engagement ring, which she’s been fiddling with, she realizes.
“I know,” she mumbles, blinking back the sting of unshed tears, “but that was before I became Queen of Arendelle, and now our lives are going to be so different from what you thought when you asked me.”
“Do you still want to marry me?” Kristoff asks, thumbs tracing along her cheeks.
“Yes,” her answer is immediate and emphatic.
“That’s great news because I still want to marry you.” That crooked grin that drives her crazy tugging at his lips, “So it sounds like there’s no need for you worry, feistypants.”
A bubble of laughter escapes her throat, and she gives a wet sniff, turning to press a kiss into the palm of his hand.
“I’m a simple man. I want simple things.” Kristoff states with a small shrug. “As long as you want me, then I’m good.”
“I want you,” Anna breathes like a whisper, noting how the honeyed ring of his eyes seems to darken as he takes in her words and his cheeks flush.
“I want you, too.”
And they seal it with a kiss.
+
Anna’s bed chamber is dark, the soft flicker of the fire casting shadows on the walls from the hearth in the corner, as she stares dreamily up at her engagement ring, turning her hand so the stone catches the light.
It glows in this light like an ember, fills her belly with warmth like a physical manifestation of the way Kristoff makes her feel: safe, supported, and loved in a way she’s always longed for.
It’s a feeling so at odds with the feelings of her lonely, sad childhood that she can almost feel those emotions seeping out of the walls and crawling towards her; her ring the only thing that can keep them at bay from swallowing her whole.
Anna casts her eyes around the room, this place where she spent so many solitary years feeling overlooked, unwanted, and unloved. It’s the bedroom of a small, lonesome girl, not a Queen in the zenith of her love, and suddenly she can’t stand it; the frilly pink curtains and bed hangings dragging her back to the girl she used to be.
Tomorrow, she thinks, I’ll order a new suite of rooms to be made up.
Anna looks back at her hand, the glow of her ring, and she bites her lip at the thought of what it means. She’ll need new rooms when she’s married; a proper grown-up place where a man and his wife can be just that. The thought of her and Kristoff together in their marital bed sets a flight of butterflies loose in her stomach, only to settle like a hot stone sinking lower and lower, past her hips and down.
It’ll be a space where there’s no room for loneliness, abandonment, or sadness. It’ll be her sanctuary from the harshness of the world, the way Kristoff already is.
Only warmth, and the euphoric, profound feeling of love and devotion.
She can’t wait to be married.
+
The next few months are a flurry of activity, and when this long thought of moment comes, it feels like the first time Anna’s been able to catch her breath all day.
The new rooms are a soft shade of green. The lush, verdant forest and looming North Mountain visible in the full windows. It would be a beautiful view if she did not have a more magnificent one in front of her now.
The light of the fire casts a glow to Kristoff’s skin, turning his cheeks, neck and the tantalizing expanse of his chest visible from the low open collar of his white linen shirt a golden hue, his hair a shining halo. He is Baldr sat upon her bed. No, she thinks with a giddy smile, their bed now, and he is hers.
Slowly, he trails his fingers across her bare shoulder, the dip of her clavicle, the small sleeve of her chemise, and down her arm, a trail of heat left in the wake of his touch.
“It seems unreal that I get to do this,” he mumbles, cheeks flushed in a combination of shy nervousness, and heady ardour.
“Trust me,” Anna says softly, leaning in, so their lips brush gently, “this is real.”
She pulls herself closer as their kiss deepens, her small hands sliding up taut shoulder and neck, tangling into his gleaming hair. She gasps quietly into his mouth when he pulls her flush to him, up into the seat of his lap, and his mouth opens hot and wet against hers. Anna’s eyes widen as a pleased grin tugs at her lips, and she thinks Kristoff would laugh if he weren’t already so far gone. Anna arches up against him now, her hands sliding back down over the hunch of his shoulders as they share a breath between them, and their lips meet with more force. They’ve never kissed like this before, like the knowledge that there doesn’t have to end makes them press harder and faster to one another as they peel away those last layers for the first time to join themselves in that final mysterious way.
There’s a tremor in his hands as he rolls her stockings down and pulls her chemise up over her head, gently skimming his fingers along the ridges of her spine. And she can’t reciprocate fast enough, practically tearing at his shirt, both laughing in embarrassment when it gets caught around his wrists. But that embarrassment quickly fades away as Anna traces her hands along his chest. This broad, sturdy chest that has protected her, sheltered her, cradled her, now makes her mouth water at the sight of more of that golden skin, and the shadows that cast a sharp relief along his torso.
To think this is what has been waiting for her all this time.
“Wow,” she breathes, smiling at the way he awkwardly scratches at the back of his neck the longer she stares at him. She presses a kiss to the skin over his heart, feels his body tensing under her lips, then wraps her arms around his neck to pull him down over her.
It’s a clumsy, stilted affair at first, but that doesn’t matter because Anna has never felt so loved or beautiful in her entire life. This is the kind of love she’s wanted. The kind of love where she can close her eyes and feel the warmth behind her eyelids, feel so connected to a person that when they leave, a piece of you goes with them. And in this moment, in this perfect final moment, she feels like she is whole.
When it’s over, Kristoff collapses beside her, body heaving. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he pants, his hand pressed against his chest as he tries to catch his breath. “Too fast, too good.” He rubs at his face, always an indicator of his self-consciousness or unease. “ I promise it’ll be just about you next time.”
Anna laughs at the earnestness in his voice. Her skin pleasantly flushed as the chill of the room hits her. “I don’t care,” she says, reaching out to brush some damp blonde strands from his face. “That doesn’t matter; it was perfect. I am now a thoroughly married woman, and nothing is better than that.”
Kristoff turns to look at her, his grin dopey, but eyes widened in a look of awe. “I love you.”
She turns her body towards him, head pillowed in the bend of her arms, “I love you, too.”
His eyes are dancing now, hooded, as he swiftly throws his body over her, thick arms caging her in. Anna laughs in delight, but as he begins to kiss his way down her body, the laughter becomes a rasp in her throat, her body melting back into the bed and feet tangled in the sheets.
These are the memories that will christen their marital bedroom: their laughter, their moans, their joy seeping into the walls so deeply that years from now she’s sure she’ll still hear it.
This is where she’ll bear children, grow old, and hopefully wise.
This is where her life truly begins.