Update: Please see some amazing fanart for this chapter by lisuli79 at this link: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Frozen-The-north-wind-final-part-440459508 and leave her comments as lovely as the ones you guys always leave for me!
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"I love you, Elsa."
Her gaze was dull—muddy, even.
I think he said something like that.
He was standing there, on the scaffold, and his face was already as white as death.
I don't know that man, do I?
Her expression was impassive as her hands swayed slightly, and the newly-bolted shackles around them jangled noisily.
Maybe I did, once.
"Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, you are hereby sentenced to death by hanging for your numerous crimes against . . ."
The words faded away until she only saw lips struggling to form words in the bitter cold, a harsh gale sweeping across the pavilion.
Was he a good man?
Her eyes shifted back to the condemned prisoner, but they held no judgment of him—no anger, nor fear, nor hatred.
"Do you have any last words?"
Something flickered in her eyes, for a moment; soon, it was gone again.
I don't know.
It was hard to see him from so far away, and hard to hear what was going on above the jeers of the crowd below.
But when he spoke—when he spoke, she heard him.
"Good people of Arendelle," he began, "I am sorry I deceived you, and that I betrayed your trust. Before I die, however, I would like to make this one, last confession."
He paused for a moment; curious to hear what he would say, the crowd quieted as well.
"It was not Queen Elsa who killed the Princess Anna with her powers, but I; knowing of a way to save her, I chose to let the Princess die, and told the Queen it was her doing in order to imprison her and take the throne for myself."
His eyes shone brilliantly in that moment—two bright, effervescent emeralds against a grey sky.
"Do not allow these men to take the life of your queen, good people of Arendelle, when the fault is mine!" he urged them, gesturing to the executioners. "Free your rightful ruler and live in pea—"
She watched as the executioner roughly shoved a black hood over his head, muffling his last words to the protests of the crowd, which now crowed with confusion at the proceedings.
Some colour slowly returned to her eyes, and she felt her hands tense in the armoured gloves secured around them.
This man said he loved me once, didn't he?
The guards pushed the crowd back from climbing the scaffolding, and the Duke of Weselton frantically signalled to the executioner to get it over and done with before things were out of their control.
He simply stood there all the while—not thrashing, nor kicking, nor even moving a single muscle in complaint—and the rope slid easily around his neck.
She thought she heard the Duke hiss "Do it now!" to the executioner; but she didn't know for sure, since her eyes had never left the black mask with the noose tied around its base.
They hid his face from me.
The crowd cried with impotent rage, unable to beat back the guards—or, perhaps, they were too afflicted by the sudden cold which struck the square to do so.
He was standing above the trap door; she wondered if she was imagining it, or if she could see shallow breaths through the black emptiness of the hood.
He won't say it, now.
She heard it, then—a sudden, wrenching noise accompanying the pull of a lever and a door crashing open—and, following that, a thick rope pulling taut.
His legs twitched, and the crowd shrieked, but she couldn't hear them at all.
I can't see him.
Finally, they stopped moving.
Her hands moved up until they reached the window, and there, her fingers curled around its slim bars.
Her ghostly eyes peered out at the faceless man, and her grip suddenly tightened.
He can't say it, now.
Her cheeks felt wet; then, she felt nothing.
He can't ever say it again.
The gloves turned into ice around her small hands, and their shaking caused the metal to crack and fall away to the floor. Trickles of snow fell from her eyes, covering her chest in a light film.
Her lip trembled.
They hid his face from me.
The bars froze and dissolved in her hands, then the chains around her wrists and feet, and finally all the meagre furnishings within the cell.
What did he look like, when the rope snapped his neck?
A guard was coming for her—or maybe two, or ten—but her eyes were fixed on the scaffold, on his limp body, on the executioner dragging it off before the crowds could overwhelm the platform.
What was he going to say before they put the hood over him?
She was full of so many questions; she was full of anger, of fear, of hatred, of—
"What in the hell do you think you're doing, inma—"
The guard's howling cut off just as soon as it had started, silenced by an impenetrable wall of ice behind her.
She hadn't turned around.
Was he going to say that he—
Blissful silence, and then . . . a memory.
"I love you, Elsa."
The ice shattered, and she staggered forward against the open window.
I know that man.
She gripped the wall, and it froze at her touch. Her tears hit the ground as spitting drops of sleet.
I loved that man.
The wall burst open, and a bitter storm descended upon the square, the rivers, the ocean, coating it all in a layer of impenetrable ice.
The wind came suddenly then, carrying her back to the mountains, but she couldn't see anything anymore; the world was endless, and it was as white as death.
Her eyes were clearer than daylight.
I loved him.
YOU ARE READING
The North Wind
Fanfiction[Frozen; Alternate Ending; Hans x Elsa.] "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 da...
