The Opportunist

All right, maybe it wasn’t the best way to start off a conversation. And certainly not this particular conversation. Though if he were to be honest with himself — and as Hans would have been the first to admit, maybe he hadn’t been doing a lot of that lately — there really wasn’t a good way to tell her what he had to say. Besides, from his point of view, “Hans, you’ve got to kiss me right now” in the middle of a crowded room hadn’t exactly been the ideal cue either.

A kiss to try to break a spell; if he’d only known what she had in mind he could have gone ahead with it then and there, and had a dozen witnesses to vouch for his efforts to save her. If the curse ran its course despite all he could do, then it would have been the evil magic to blame. He could say in all honesty that he’d had nothing to do with it. He could have been quite authentically heartbroken — but there was no denying it would have been extremely... well, convenient.

It was that convenience that caught in his throat, now the two of them were left alone together, along with the shining look of trust and belief in her eyes as she gazed up at him, awaiting his embrace. The true-love’s kiss that was supposed —she claimed— to melt the ice magic that held her in its grip, and save her life.

It would have no effect, not from him. His conscience when he thought of her told him that. But conscience told him other things besides, and somehow —even if it were to mean nothing— he could not do it. There had been a time when he would have kissed her with delight and without a moment’s hesitation, and that above all made the thing impossible now.

Maybe this wasn’t the best way to start off the conversation they needed to have — but then it wasn’t going to matter, was it? From the look of her, it wasn’t going to make any difference for much longer at all... and so Hans turned abruptly away to the window and left her. Abandoned her wide, expectant look, still awaiting his love and its healing balm, and did not watch to see that gaze of hers dissolve into confusion and distress.

Beyond the panes, the world was white with snow. Anna’s voice was very small behind him.

“Hans? You have to kiss me. Quickly. Please...”

“It wouldn’t do any good, you know.” He kept his tone deliberately light in the face of that wavering appeal. “You said it yourself. It would take a true-love’s kiss to melt the magic of the ice your sister put in your heart, and I’m not your true love, believe me.”

He turned back at last, closing the curtains behind him to shut out the winter: the unnatural cold that had come upon the kingdom of Arendelle in high summer, just as it had fallen upon Anna herself. She had been pale as a statue when she stumbled into the room, and even her very hair was streaked with white.

“Oh, Anna”—it burst out of him with an honesty he had not intended—“why did you have to come back?”

He’d never had that many illusions about himself. As a youngest son, it was a luxury he hadn’t been able to afford. But if she’d only had the decency to freeze quietly to death out in the snow the way they’d all believed, the way they’d practically forced him to assume, then he could have mourned her with a genuine grief alongside the realisation that her demise had gifted him with all he’d ever wanted. He’d liked her. A lot. But not enough to give up on what had turned out to be the chance of a lifetime.

“You said... you loved me.” It was not a look of betrayal in her eyes, not yet. It was the incomprehension of the child who had put its hand into the fire and been burned, or gone to pat the nice doggie and been bitten: the blind disbelief shared by total innocents and the terminally naïve.

He brushed it off with all the dismissal it deserved. “So maybe I was drunk.”

Anna blinked. “On fondue?”

Trust Anna to take that as a literal remark.

“On you.” Which meant she’d stung him into another admission he hadn’t meant to make. “Listen to me. It was fun. It was more than fun. I think maybe I was starting to fall for you from the moment we ran into each other, before I had any idea who you were. But do you really think I’d ask any girl to marry me on the day we first met, even the most adorable madcap red-head in the world, if she didn’t come with a kingdom attached? It wasn’t you I wanted, not that badly. It was Arendelle: a place to belong.”

Her mouth had opened into a little O of dawning hurt, and he hated the look of it on her with a spasm of irrational guilt.

“I’m thirteenth in line to the throne of the Southern Isles. Do you know what that means? It means I’m nobody. I’ll never have an acre of land to call my own that I don’t beg, steal, or borrow. My parents can’t wait for their last fledgling to leave the nest; my elder brothers can’t wait to get me out from underfoot. Even if the kingdom were split into an island apiece, there wouldn’t be one for me. You think you know what it’s like to be the youngest, you think you know what it’s like to be unwanted, but you have no idea.”

Firelight danced golden across the room’s warm furnishings, and flickered upon the upholstery of the couch on which he’d placed her with such tender care, an eternity ago; but Anna was staring at him as frozen as if the curse had already stilled her heart. There was the betrayal now that he’d expected to see, but there was also — intolerably — pity.

He caught at any words he could find that would wipe it away. “Did you think I was some kind of official representative, Princess Anna? Do you suppose the King and Queen of the Southern Isles would have sent out their thirteenth son in response to a royal invitation? I came here on my own account to see what I could get...”

Anna took in a breath at last as if even that tiny effort was almost too hard to bear. “And you got me.”

“Exactly. How could I be your true love when we’d only just set eyes on each other?”

“That’s what... Kristoff said,” Anna whispered, and Hans frowned, conscious of a quite unreasonable stab of irritation.

The smile he showed her in response was a bright flicker, without humour. “Whatever your Kristoff may say, younger sons where I come from all end up as either pirates or adventurers — it’s practically an honourable tradition. And by the time I was twelve I’d worked out that I didn’t have the sea-legs to be a pirate.”

“So you’re... an adventurer.” And that little shade of yearning in her voice was just plain stupid.

“You don’t have the faintest notion what that means, do you?” Another tight mirthless smile. “There’s nothing romantic about it, and no deeds of swordplay or daring. An adventurer is a man without a penny who sets out to marry his way into a fortune — any fortune he can get his hands on. Especially one like yours.”

It wasn’t as good as a kingdom. But Anna’s share had been enough to dwarf anything his brothers might expect from the barren, rocky islands at home.

“Of course I asked you to marry me as soon as there was any chance you’d say yes. And maybe I said I loved you... maybe I even thought I did. Like I said, I was more than a little drunk on you that night. You want me to admit it? All right, you turned my head. I’d found my fortune, but I’d found more than that. A door had opened, and it was as if—” The words caught in his throat.

He’d never been more than the afterthought in a long string of siblings; at Anna’s side, in this place, he could be someone who mattered. It had seemed, at the time, to be the pinnacle of his ambitions.

“Then...” Anna was still struggling. “Then... why?”

“You made a mistake. You and your sister — you made the same mistake. You ran out on your responsibilities... and you left them to me.” First Queen Elsa had fled the palace, trying and failing to hide the nature of her curse, and then Anna had insisted on going after her, and refused equally adamantly to let Hans ride at her side. She’d left him behind; left him in charge.

When Anna had laid Arendelle into his hands with absolute trust, he’d taken up the reins and the responsibility with an exhilarating ease that almost frightened him. It was as if he’d been born to this. And he’d learned that in Anna’s absence... people would look to him.

“I went all the way up North Mountain after you, you know that?” He flung the words at her now in accusation or defence, he didn’t know which. “We found your sister’s ice palace, and I was so sure you were in there, locked away...”

He’d very nearly died. He could still feel the sickening gulf of the abyss beneath his boots; the clutching hands that had pulled him to safety. Elsa had done that. Elsa’s defences; Elsa’s ice-creature. And yet, with the image of Anna’s desperate face before his eyes, he’d been fool enough to protect the Queen, when he could have avenged the Princess, ended the winter, and been the hero of the day... just by allowing events to take their course.

He’d been out of his mind. He had to have been. There couldn’t be any other explanation. He could have let them kill Elsa for the monster she had become... and for Anna’s sake he had not. For Anna’s sake? He hadn’t been thinking straight at all.

“But you weren’t there, and when I would have gone out again to find you, into the snow, they told me I couldn’t risk it. Told me that if you were lost, then I was all the ruler Arendelle had now... and I saw it for the first time: just what an opportunity I’d been given.”

When he laughed, it was as much at his expense as at hers. He’d come here looking to find his fortune, but all of a sudden it was at his fingertips to have so much more... yet it had taken a gaggle of anxious provincials to show him the possibility.

He made the point, quick and brutal. “Ten minutes ago, in this very room, I was just beginning to dream of a long and prosperous reign... as soon as you could safely be declared dead.”

“I— see.”

And he thought that at last she did see.

“You’d tossed your throne away, you and Elsa between you. You’d thrown it straight into my keeping, and all I had to do was swallow my conscience and do nothing, nothing at all.”

“And then I... came back,” Anna whispered with an effort. “What a choice...”

Her eyes, enormous in her pale face, blazed in a sudden ghost of their old spirit. “Poor Hans, does it hurt very much? The conscience?”

“Not a bit,” Hans said calmly, and in that moment he meant every word of it.

“So you’re just going to... let me die?”

“Oh, Anna.” He came back to the couch and knelt swiftly at her side, forcing her head up to face him. “Do you think any kiss from me could serve to save your life — now?”

“Even if it could... you wouldn’t.”

“Which is precisely why it wouldn’t work.” Even Anna could not be that naïve. He looked down at her in exasperation; saw the teardrops that stood like beads of frost on her lashes but did not fall.

Something twisted inside his breast, uncomfortable and unfamiliar, and on impulse he leant down and kissed her after all, not without tenderness. Nothing would happen. He was quite sure it would not... and besides, it was just to prove a point.

He wished he’d kissed her earlier while he’d had the chance; there might have been some enjoyment left in it for both of them. As it was, thawing ice-maidens had never been his style.

“You see?” he said quietly, letting her fall. “For what it’s worth... I’m sorry it came out this way. I don’t suppose you believe me; no, I thought not”—if her mouth under his had been numb and cold, her eyes still held daggers—“but we could have gone well together, you and I. If that sister of yours hadn’t—”

“Given you an... opportunity?” Well, she always did have the knack of finishing his sentences.

But it was a thought that held a bitter taste, and he shut it down, along with all the rest of the memories he couldn’t afford. This had to end, and the sooner the better.

Hans stood up, dusting off his uniform, and moved to douse the light. A jug of water put a ruthless end to the fire, and the cold outside seemed to rush closer on the instant. Anna cried out, and for the first time the sound held true fear. She was facing the reality of it now, as he’d faced it in those endless moments dangling from the bridge.

“Don’t worry.” He looked at her. “They say it’s a very easy way to go. Just like falling asleep. You won’t feel a thing, I promise. I’d stay here and hold your hand until the end if I thought it would help, but—”

“Get out!”

Well, he could hardly blame her. And Queen Elsa had done him one favour at least; if he’d had to raise a sword to Anna’s throat himself to take the throne, he wasn’t sure even now he could have gone through with it. But she’d doomed her own sister as surely as if Anna had never made it back from the snow.

One hand on the doorknob, he turned back to survey the room. She was a pale shape in the gloom, like a fading dream. But it had been only a dream, and the future to come was growing more solid by the minute in his grasp. “You needn’t worry about Arendelle. I’ll take good care of it for you. The best.”

The golden age of Hans the First. He’d see to it. On her behalf.

“Don’t... don’t leave me alone.” Panic now; but she’d told him to get out, and he had every intention of complying. He slipped the key from the lock, weighing the rough iron in his fingers, and opened the door.

“Wait—” Anna had clawed her way up on the couch in a final desperation. Her hair and hands had both taken on the pallor of ice. “What— what are you going to do?”

He laughed suddenly, with a bitter edge, as the irony hit him. “Why, I’m going to tell them the absolute truth. How you came to me dying of your sister’s curse, and nothing I could do would save you. And we’ll mourn you, of course. And then I shall take great comfort in avenging your wrongs — on your sister’s head.”

“Elsa... no!”

Some things went without saying. Hans simply raised an eyebrow.

“You can’t... you’re no match for Elsa.”

“No,” he admitted, one last honesty between them. He let the sting of it carry him across the threshold. “But then for all her sorcery, once she learns what her powers have done to you... do you think she’ll even want to put up a fight?”

The door shut behind him with a soft, definite click that did not quite cover the desolation in Anna’s gasp.

Once out in the corridor, he glanced swiftly up and down before locking the door and pocketing the key. Anna did not have very much longer, but there was no point in risking the eleventh-hour arrival of this Kristoff or some other True Love she had omitted to mention.

He’d made a mistake. He’d known it from the moment he’d closed the door. He should have stayed with her — if only, he told himself, in order to be sure. But he’d dreamt of her and danced with her and scaled the roofs and slid across the parquet with her in their stocking feet, both of them laughing like children... and somehow he did not want to watch the last light go out in a girl he’d held in his arms.

He’d had nothing to do with it, he told himself, nothing at all. It was Queen Elsa who had brought them all to this point in spite of everything he or Anna could do. At most, just now, you might say he’d given matters a little... push. He set himself to build up a conscious wave of anger against Elsa, as if its warmth could drive out the memory of her sister’s lips rigid and corpse-cold beneath his own.

All the same, he wished things had not ended this way. Hans took a grip on himself, firmly. This was not the moment; save it for later.

Regret was a part of life, and he had a tearful scene to stage. If he had to live with might-have-beens, then he might as well get some future use out of them.

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