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“A true love’s kiss.”
Hans’s heart sinks as the realization hits. Anna thinks they are in love. Anna made the journey here believing that he could thaw her heart.
Anna is going to die.
“H-Hans...?” Anna stutters. Her hair is streaked white, her skin gathering frost. She has never resembled her sister more.
Hans reaches out, brushing aside Anna’s hair. He cares about her. He really does. That has to be enough, right?
Hans leans in as Anna tilts her head, eyes shutting close in anticipation. His lips find hers and it’s like kissing a corpse—cold, hard, chapped.
When he pulls back, Anna remains exactly as she had been before, if not worse. Her eyes flutter open, and she examines her braid eagerly. Hans averts his eyes. He can’t bear to look at her.
Another person he’s failed.
“Huh,” comes Anna’s contemplative voice. “Maybe we weren’t passionate enough. Maybe we should french kiss? I’ve never tried it before, but I’m sure you have!”
“Oh, Anna...” Hans doesn’t know what expression he’s making right now, only that he can’t bring himself to control it. “Anna, we’ve known each other for less than a day.”
Anna frowns. “But—but we’re in love. We were about to get married.”
“No, listen, your sister was right. You were naive to accept the proposal of a man you’d just met. It wasn’t love, Anna, people can’t fall in love in a day. And I—I had ulterior motives.”
Anna’s eyes widen. “No.”
Hans winces. “It was an easy entry into a position of power, Anna, what did you expect? I thought—since your sister seemed so unwilling—I could eventually get her to rescind her claim to the throne and put you on it, and then I’d be the king by marriage. It was abhorrent of me to do so, I know, but it’s not something I’m ashamed of, and I’d do it again. Goodness knows you shouldn’t have fallen for it.”
The hurt in Anna’s eyes is almost enough to tempt him into passing that off as a joke. He didn’t want to tell her like this. Perhaps in a few years, after she had grown to trust him sufficiently, after she had matured herself and grown out of her naive ways. Not now. Not like this.
He wanted to protect her innocence a little longer.
But she's dying now. What innocence is left to protect?
“So then, you never...”
“I liked you.” Hans takes her hand, kneeling on the ground. Perhaps that will make him easier to forgive. “I still like you. And I might have been playing up how much you and I were similar but I did enjoy your company. You’re extremely charming. And I—” Anna’s hand in his shudders, and Hans sits on the couch to pull her into his arms. “I could have—would have—grown to love you. In time.”
Anna’s head is buried in his chest and he can feel her tears seeping through his shirt. They are unbearably cold.
“I hate you,” she whispers, clutching at his shirt.
“I’m sorry,” is the only thing Hans can offer her.
* * *
At some point, they begin cuddling. Hans heaps any and all blankets he can find onto them, and is holding Anna by the waist, her back to his chest. She’s cold, and only continues to get colder. Hans only hopes that in her final moments, he’s able to provide her the slightest amount of warmth. That when she looks at him from heaven her eyes hold more than just disgust.
“A-and then M-marshmallow—b-because he was s-s-so white and f-fluffy—yelled, don’t come back!”
“Sounds like you had quite the adventure,” Hans says, pulling Anna closer. He remembers that behemoth of a snowman the ex-queen had conjured. He’d barely managed to bring himself alive out of that situation.
Only Anna would look at something as monstrous as that and find the compassion to name it Marshmallow.
Anna sighs. “I-it was the m-m-most f-fun I’ve had m-my whole life. Oh! D-did I t-t-tell you about the t-trolls?”
You did, Hans is about to answer when the door creaks. In an instant, Hans is standing, sword in his hand.
He doesn’t expect another sentient snowman.
And he especially doesn’t expect the sentient snowman to pick open the door lock with its carrot nose.
“Are you Hans?” the thing asks. “That’s great! That should mean Anna is—”
“Olaf?” Anna calls out weakly from under the covers.
“Anna?!” The snowman waddles up to her, bumping into Hans.
“That’s Olaf?” Hans can’t believe his eyes. “You told me he was cute!”
“D-don’t b-be mean,” Anna reprimands.
“Anna, what happened?” Olaf holds out his twig arms to stroke Anna’s forehead. “Isn't that Hans? What happened to your kiss?”
Anna meets Hans’s eyes. Hans blinks, then looks away. It’s fine. She can tell the snowman whatever she wants to. Hans will have brought it upon himself.
“It—it didn’t w-work. It wasn’t true love,” Anna says after a pause, which Hans feels is indicative of exactly how much of an angel she is. What a kind interpretation of everything he’d done.
Olaf seems confused. “Huh. But we ran all the way here?”
“Olaf, y-you’re...” Anna reaches out to the snowman. “You’re melting. M-maybe you shouldn’t s-stay here.”
“No!” Olaf sits down next to her. “I’m not leaving here until we find some other act of true love to save you!” He ponders for a second. “...Do you happen to have any ideas?”
Anna’s voice is small when she answers, “I don’t even know what love is.”
This isn’t a conversation meant for Hans’s ears. He slips out of the room and shuts the door behind him, Olaf and Anna’s conversation fading behind the walls.
What is he supposed to tell the people? That the princess is dead? That she was killed by her own sister?
He never meant for things to get this bad. He never meant to be the reason the sisters tore each other apart—the reason Anna pulled off Elsa’s glove, the reason for...
For everything, really.
Why does he turn everything worse than it had been before his presence?
“Sir!” comes a call from the far end of the hall. A guard, one that he doesn’t know the name of, runs up to him. “Sir!”
Hans barely manages to catch the man in his arms before he collapses to the ground. “Whoa, hey! What happened?”
“The queen—” the guard pants. “She’s—she’s escaped!”
“What?”
This is not good. Not good at all. He meant to sit down and figure out how to stop this eternal winter with her. If she escapes, or worse, if she dies—
“Her shackles were frozen and disfigured and the wall had been burst open,” the guard continues. “Sir, what do we do?”
Was she scared? Had it been a wrong decision to put her in the jail cell first? He should have talked to her as soon as he’d had her, but Anna had arrived right when he’d been about to leave for questioning, and—
Anna.
The room is unnaturally quiet.
Hans slams open the door to a room devoid of any human presence. The windows are open, shaking to the will of the wind.
Stupid girl. Stupid, reckless, beautiful girl.
Who knows what goes through her brain at any given time?
Hans looks back at the guard. “The princess and the queen are missing. Form a search party, and bring them both back.”
* * *
Wind. So much wind. Not to mention the snow, which is making his clothes damp, or the occasional piece of ice that threatens to fly into his eye.
Spotting Elsa’s silhouette doesn’t provide as much relief as he’d thought it would. He still can’t spot Anna in this snowstorm.
“Elsa!” Hans shouts, as loud as he could. “Elsa!”
Elsa turns around, and Hans sees the way her eyes trembled. Her hair is flying wildly (and he has no doubt that his is doing the same).
“Elsa! You can’t run from this!”
Elsa backs away, her hands held out in front of her. “...Just, take care of my sister.”
“Your sister?” Hans demands. “She returned from the mountain weak and cold! She said you froze her heart!”
“What? No!”
“I tried to save her, but—” Hans frowns. “I couldn’t. I can’t. Her skin was ice, her hair turned white, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. And now she’s missing.”
Elsa’s face sinks. With realization? Fear? Something else entirely? It doesn’t matter. Hans has to get her to stop this snowstorm.
“Your sister is dying! Because of you!”
Elsa’s legs give out and she drops to the ground. The swirling storm stops abruptly, snow settling down on every surface it can find.
Hans approaches Elsa carefully.
“My sister...” she whispers.
“There’s still time.” Hans crouches down next to her. “She’s not dead yet. I hope. I don’t know how much time she has left, but if we could find her, and you could maybe undo your magic—”
“I can’t,” Elsa says, her voice breaking. “I’ve been trying—this whole time, I’ve been trying but I just can’t. I don’t know how. I can’t unfreeze a frozen heart. I can’t even unfreeze a frozen stick!”
“Hey,” Hans places his hand on her back. “We’ll figure out a way. There’s still time—”
“Would it end if I was dead?”
“I don’t know,” Hans says quickly. “Don’t—you can’t—there’ll be a different solution.”
Elsa turns towards him suddenly, grabbing his hands. “Kill me. Please. I don’t—if I, if I killed Anna, if I’m the reason she’s dead—then I don’t deserve to live. Please. Please, just end this.”
“No! Are you insane?!” Hans tries yanking his hands back. “What if things get worse? What if the winter never lets up?” With Elsa alive there’s still a chance. They can keep trying and trying until the winter lets up. But if Elsa dies, and the storm still doesn’t recede, then they’re doomed.
“What if it does?” Elsa insists. “Please, you have to—” her eyes fell on the sword at his hip.
Hans’s heart stutters.
He tries to get away, tries to struggle, tries to put as much distance between her and the weapon as possible, but in the end he’s just a man, and she’s a natural disaster.
Hans lands several feet away, now without a sword at his side, and he can’t look—can’t bring himself to look—
“Anna!” Elsa shrieks.
Hans opens his eyes.
Anna stands, frozen, in front of her sister. She’s slowly being covered in ice, her hair freezing behind her before it even has a chance to settle. Her hand is raised to the sky and in it she grasps Hans’s sword. And her face—tear-streaked—has put on a brave smile.
When princess Anna leaves the world, she grants it one last kindness.
Her sister is alive.
Elsa stares helplessly at her sister for several seconds.
Hans scrambles to stand up, slipping on the ice, when he feels a presence near him.
“No...”
He turns to look at the man who had just arrived. Hatless, clothes thoroughly soaked, staring at the princess as if his entire world had shattered...
...Kristoff.
If only Anna had known to kiss him first.
Kristoff turns towards Hans. “Is she...?”
“I’m sorry,” Hans says, just as Elsa flings her arms out to grab hold of her frozen sister.
Kristoff’s eyes grow teary, and in another moment he’s crying in tandem with Elsa, albeit further from Anna.
Hans lets Kristoff hold onto him, lightly patting his back as he watches on with dry eyes.
A heartless bastard, his fifth brother had once called him. He had been right.
* * *
Then a miracle occurs.
* * *
A sister’s love.
It’s been several days but Hans still hasn’t stopped thinking about it. A sister’s love. Of course.
It all seems so obvious now.
Anna pulls him aside after the eternal winter thaws. Hans is a little wary, knowing that Anna can pack a decent punch if she really wants to. But Anna just asks him what he wants to do now.
Hans volunteers to help.
Which is the reason he’s currently carrying a box half his body weight to the nearest stable. At some point, he stopped asking what was in all these boxes. At least they aren’t making him clean the stables.
Hans drops the box onto the floor and hopes there’s nothing fragile in it. He simply doesn’t have the energy to put it down gently anymore.
“These should be the last one!” Kristoff says as he brings in two of the same boxes without breaking a sweat and deposits them neatly on the ground.
“You...are...exorbitantly...strong,” Hans says in between heavy breaths. He’s wearing a plain shirt that would make his parents disown him if they ever caught him in it, and he’s glad for the lack of layers. He isn’t sure he would survive the heat otherwise.
Kristoff grins, flexing his arms good-naturedly. Hans has to do his best not to stare. “Kind of have to be if I want to keep doing my job. Why? You want to get strong, too?”
“Currently I want to drop dead,” Hans says. “If you’re so strong, carry me back.”
Hans expects a friendly rebuke. He doesn’t expect Kristoff to put a sum total of zero amount of thought into his actions.
He yelps in an entirely undignified manner as Kristoff swipes him up in a princess carry. The bastard doesn’t even have the tact to pretend to struggle.
Hans opens his mouth to command Kristoff to put him down and teach him a lesson in distinguishing a joking tone from a literal one, but he catches Kristoff’s eyes.
Kristoff grins in a way that suggests he knows exactly what he is doing, and his brown eyes are impossibly warm.
Hans huffs and lets himself be carried all the way to the palace.
He’s always been weak to pretty eyes.
* * *
He keeps bumping into Anna.
It’s mundane, really. He spots her at a shop, and she grabs him by the arm and teaches him to tell good apples apart from the bad ones. He finds her at the dock all alone with a hefty bag in he hand and offers to carry it for her. He sees her sitting by the window in the palace reading a book he’s read before and he tells her this off-handedly, but she keeps asking questions and he keeps responding until several hours have passed.
He turns a corner and catches her and Kristoff holding hands and walking down the busy marketplace. But instead of sending him away after a few polite words like he expects them to, they pull him in between the two of them, one at each side, and continue walking.
Hans doesn’t understand. Do they think they need a chaperone?
He meets Kristoff one day trying to bargain for carrots for his reindeer. Hans buys it for him (he has money to spare on a few groceries) and walks him back to his house. On their way there, they meet Anna, and Hans tries to slide out of the conversation to give them some privacy while Kristoff extends an invitation to Anna. But then Kristoff throws an arm around his shoulder and drags him back in.
And Hans grows a little less sure about his chaperone hypothesis. It feels like more than that.
It feels as though they genuinely enjoy his companionship.
* * *
They’re the perfect couple, Hans realizes one day. Kristoff and Anna. He has never seen two people more...comfortable with each other. It doesn’t seem to matter that Kristoff isn’t royalty and will never achieve the sort of refinement that comes with a childhood filled with royal tutors correcting your every move. It doesn’t seem to matter that Anna is an unrealistically idealistic girl who lacks any social knowledge and yet is loved through sheer force of will.
Around each other, they just...are.
Kristoff places a hand around Anna’s waist and Anna leans into him. It doesn’t matter if everybody is looking, or if nobody is. It isn’t a performance, it isn’t a political manoeuvre. It is simply two people enjoying each other’s presence.
Hans sometimes wonders what that feels like.
It leads him nowhere, of course, his fantasizing. The kingdom is rapidly pulling itself together, and Hans is running out of excuses to stay. Soon he will have to go back to being the thirteenth brother. But for the time being, Anna and Kristoff invite him out for a picnic to the snowy mountains, and Hans lets himself pretend, for a moment, that he belongs.
* * *
“I’m stepping down as queen,” Elsa drops on him on a Monday morning before he’s had the chance to get any caffeine in his system.
Hans stares at her for a full ten seconds before processing what she’s said.
“Wait, why?”
“This isn’t where I belong,” she states simply. “There is an entire world out there—a world that keeps calling out to me, begging to be explored. It’s my calling.”
“Is this about your nightly hallucinations?” Hans asks. “Because nightly hallucinations are generally a bad source to entrust the trajectory of your life to.”
Elsa laughs. “Don’t worry. The nightly hallucinations are only about seventy percent of the reason. Besides, wasn’t it your goal to have me dethroned and rule by my sister’s side?”
That takes Hans aback. “That was...before.” Before Anna became unobtainable. Before she found someone who could give her the true love she deserved. Before Hans learned the extent of the amount of love the sisters held for each other. Before the sisters nearly died for each other. Before, before, before.
“Before this great mess, huh” Elsa says, and it’s somehow the perfect summary of what Hans is thinking and yet completely inadequate.
“Have you discussed this with her yet?” Hans asks.
“I will, this evening.” Elsa picks up a fallen flower and replicates it in ice, acting perfectly mundane as if she hasn’t revealed what should be a massive state secret to an outsider. “I wanted to let you know first because I know you’ll get your gears working and produce like six new treaties by the time I tell Anna.”
“Sorry, why would I produce treaties for Arendelle?”
“Why?” Elsa seems confused. “Because it’s your kingdom now?”
Hans wonders if she’s finally snapped and gone insane, before he realizes what she’s implying. “Oh, no. No, no, no. There’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not courting your sister.”
“She’s courting you, I’m aware,” Elsa says dryly.
Hans feels his face redden. “That’s not it, either. There’s nothing between me and her. Kristoff is the one who should have received this conversation.”
“He will, too,” Elsa says, “But I think his contributions to the throne will be different than treaty-making.”
It is way too early to be having this conversation. Hans gives her an acknowledging nod and turns tail.
* * *
Elsa is right. By the time evening arrives, Hans has thought of several treaties. (It’s not six. That’s too absurd a number of treaties to think up in ten hours. It’s five, which is a significantly smaller, more reasonable number.)
Anna doesn’t seem surprised, but is bothered. Kristoff is surprised, but doesn’t seem bothered.
Hans smacks down several pages' worth of writings and dozes off in his chair as the sisters are discussing the logistics of inheritance. If they need help, they know they can ask him. He’s sorted out some pretty intense battles between his brothers in his prime.
He doesn’t think they’ll need any assistance, though.
He only hears disjointed fragments of the conversation.
“...tell him...doesn’t even know...”
“...eventually...we’re...”
“...sleeping...neck pain...”
He vaguely remembers being shifted from his chair.
He wakes up in the middle of the night, once. Anna is draped over him, mouth open and slightly drooling in her sleep. Hans smiles at the sight, before realizing he, himself, is lying on top of Kristoff.
Kristoff who, apparently, isn’t asleep yet. Kristoff who, apparently, reads Anna’s books in the dead of the night to candlelight. Kristoff who, apparently, wears glasses.
Kristoff seems to notice him looking and slides a hair into Hans’s hair. “Go back to sleep.”
Hans doesn’t have the strength to battle it. He goes back to sleep.
* * *
He wakes up to Anna bringing him scones for breakfast. She takes a bite out of one to “test it’s quality” and tries to feed it to Hans. Hans is barely awake, so he lets her get away with one, maybe two scones. Then he wakes up enough to throw a pillow at her, and she throws a pillow back, that smacks a sleeping Kristoff in the face.
After that it’s chaos.
Hans has never had more fun.
* * *
They play charades, and Anna and Kristoff get into a friendly fight over who gets to keep Hans in their team. In the end, Hans ends up playing with Elsa. They win.
* * *
Anna drops into his lap while he’s reading on the sofa. Hans startles, but doesn’t push her off. She eventually snakes her arms around his waist and falls asleep.
Hans watches her sleeping face and tries not to think of how much it’ll hurt when he has to leave.
* * *
Anna’s coronation dress is gorgeous. It’s a rich, dark green. Full-sleeved. So reminiscent of the dress she’d worn at her Elsa’s coronation, and yet, so different.
She looks different now. She stands with her head tall, shoulders drawn, and chin up. Her hairdo is exactly the one her sister wore on her coronation, which Hans later realizes is the one their mother always wore. Elsa comes back from her self-discovery world tour and does Anna’s hair herself.
The vows are taken. The crown is set upon her hair. Her sister claps the loudest.
Hans has to slip out of the room. It’s too much a reminder of his scheming the first time he’d stood in that room.
(He realizes he’d still do it. Given the choice between leading Anna on and never meeting her at all, he’s choose the first without hesitation, every time.)
Kristoff finds him standing alone in the hallway, desperately trying to wipe away at his eyes.
“I’m so proud of her,” Hans says when Kristoff asks him what’s wrong. He wishes that were the only thing eliciting his tears, but the truth is that he doesn’t want to leave. Doesn’t want to leave Anna, or Kristoff, or Arendelle. Doesn’t want to go back to being the thirteenth brother. Doesn’t want to let go of all the impossible hopes—delusions—he has.
In the end, he’s still as selfish as he used to be.
* * *
“When are you getting married?” Hans asks.
Anna is no longer in her coronation dress (of course she isn’t, it’s been weeks) but Hans can’t get the picture of it out of his head. How regal she’d looked. How dignified.
“Ifh guh gfhufh?” Anna answers.
“Swallow the ten marshmallows in your mouth first,” Hans tells her.
Oh, queen of Arendelle. What a delight she was.
Anna chews on the marshmallows as quickly as she can, before saying. “I don’t know! Pick a date!”
“Why would I pick the date?” Hans asks, raising an eyebrow. Now that so many of the major administrative issues obstructing the kingdom have been taken care of, there isn’t much Hans can say to justify hanging around. He’s a planner, right? He’ll plan Kristoff and Anna’s wedding as his last gift to this land, and then, finally, leave.
“Because you—” Anna stops herself, peering curiously at him. “Huh. Elsa was right. You really do have a different understanding of our relationship than I do.”
Hans frowns. “What?” Is this her way of letting him know he’d overstayed his welcome? That they aren’t as close as he’d expected them to be?
He’d be lying if he didn’t admit it stung.
“We—no, hm...” Anna leans back. “I should probably wait to discuss this until Kristoff gets home.”
“Kristoff? Why?” Did he misread that dynamic, too?
For how long has everyone been...putting up with Hans?
“Oh, your expression—” Anna winces. “Wow. Okay. This is really not something I can talk to you about without Kristoff. I thought you already knew—Hans, where are you going?”
“I’m tired.” The lie falls from his lips easily. “I’ll be in my room. Let me know when you’re willing to talk.”
* * *
Kristoff arrives at four in the evening. By 4:03, Hans has been dragged into the living room. He passes Elsa on the way there, and she shoots him a shit-eating grin.
Hans has no idea what to expect, but he’s already begun packing. He can leave first thing in the morning if that’s what they want him to do.
“It has come to my attention,” Anna starts, pulling Kristoff into the sofa with him while Hans sits opposite to them, “that Hans...doesn’t know.”
Fortunately, Kristoff seems to be as confused as Hans is, because he asks, “What doesn’t he know?”
“He...” Anna trails off, glancing at Hans, before leaning in and whispering something into Kristoff’s ear.
“You can’t be serious. Of course he knows—” Kristoff looks at Hans. “Of course you know, right?”
“Hans,” Anna says, “what are we to you?”
If he’s leaving soon, anyway, the answer may not be too heavy for them. “Friends.”
Kristoff groans, head in his hands. “Why is he like this?”
“Don’t say that, Kristoff, he’ll get the wrong impression.”
Hans tries not to flinch. How bad is the situation? How extraordinarily has he managed to mess this up for himself?
“So, Hans,” Anna starts. “We—Kristoff and I, that is—um, we may have, kind of, been...”
Hans braces himself.
“...courting you?”
Hans blinks. Stares at them. Rubs his eyes and stares at them some more.
“Sorry, I think my ears were malfunctioning, could you repeat that?”
“I’m going to have to propose to him before he understands, aren’t I,” Kristoff mutters. Hans is certain he’s caught Elsa’s auditory hallucinations by being around her too much.
“We’ve been courting you,” Anna says again, and this time it can’t be his brain playing tricks on him. His ears simply aren’t that incompetent. Which means that at some point, reality itself must have corrupted.
“Since when?” Hans asks.
“Technically since Elsa’s coronation?” Anna offers. “But, er, mostly after the whole, you know, freezing thing.”
“After everything I did?”
Anna raises an eyebrow. “You mean trying to keep me warm, finding Elsa, and stopping the snowstorm?”
“I—” Hans frowns. “I betrayed your trust! I exploited your naivety! If I’d loved you back then, none of it would have had to happen—”
“Hans, not to quote your own words back at you, but we’d known each other for less than a day.” Anna smiles ruefully. “We were practically strangers. Of course we weren’t in love.”
“Now’s a different story, though,” Kristoff pipes up. “She even knows your shoe size.”
“What...?”
“Okay, this is getting a little ridiculous.” Kristoff stands up, not taking his eyes off of Hans. “My queen, permission to kiss him senseless?”
Anna stands up, too, grinning. “Only if I can join in.”
Hans watches them both approach, and is only granted one second’s worth of pondering before he is, by every definition of the word, kissed senseless.
* * *
“Y’know, I wasn’t kidding about the wedding date. You can pick it.”
“...Are you ever going to let me live that down?”
“Never!”
“Both of you, go to sleep.”
“Yessir!”
“Yes, Kristoff.”
* * *
There’s only one sibling invited to the wedding, and she’s the maid of honour. Well, two, if you include Olaf. And maybe three if you include Sven.
As for Hans, he doubts any of his siblings care enough to show up. And for the first time in his life, it doesn’t matter. So he doesn’t send them invites.
It’s a beautiful day in spring, and Hans has kissed his two favourite people in front of an entire kingdom.
And for once, he belongs.