Fractures

Part II

Author's Note: I wanted to mention at the top here that if you enjoyed my story, you should also check out yumi michiyo's Substitution on Archive Of Our Own. It's just as dark, probably even more angsty, and has been a constant source of inspiration for me on this fic. Read it here: archiveofourown.org/works/1288891

Acknowledgements: Thanks again to jii-ro on Tumblr and another anon friend for beta reading this insanity. You've been an unbelievably big help to me. And check out some awesome fanart for this fic here: http://calenheniel.tumblr.com/frozen

And now, without further ado: the final part of Fractures.

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Part II

She doesn't seem him again for a few days, after that—nearly a week—but, just like Anna said, it doesn't mean that she's not thinking about him.

Actually, she's been thinking about him far too much, whether it be in meetings, or at appointments with foreign officials, or while visiting with the public; and she's been thinking, in particular, of how good his lips felt against hers—how warm they had felt, how hungrily they had responded to her—at all the wrong times.

Seeing him again, she knows, will only confirm her fear that it had all actually happened—that it hadn't just been the fever dreams of a depraved mind—and so she can't bring herself to go back there, to that cell, to step into the pool of light by the window, to see his face.

Still, she couldn't help but continue to inquire after his health from the guards who watch over him, and when they tell her he often takes to attempting conversations with them, or talks to the stone walls of his cell out of boredom, she tells them to give him something useful to do, since, as Gerda always says, idle hands make for idle minds, Your Majesty.

And so he's set up, at first, with doing a few menial tasks inside of his cell during the daylight hours—scrubbing pans, peeling produce, making the silverware really shine—but she knows that won't hold him over for long, and that soon, he'll be asking so when's my trial, Your Majesty? again, and she'll have to find him something else to do to distract him from that question, since she hasn't even begun to find a proper answer for it.

And I don't know if I will anytime soon, either.

In the meantime, she's managed to retain the façade of normalcy (with the help of a few well-placed scarves to cover the marks on her neck from his hand), few people suspecting her true state of mind, and even fewer inquiring about the traitor held in the prison. They are satisfied, it seems, that their queen is as composed and calm as ever when she needs to be, and they do not ask her for anything else—and, well, as for the traitor, some have already forgotten about him entirely, ensconced as they are in new, petty political battles to win her favour at court.

Anna, by contrast, knows that something is playing on her mind, and guesses (correctly) that it has to do with him; but even she has stopped grilling her sister constantly about the matter, if only because her belly is growing bigger by the day and most of her time is now occupied with thoughts of what she and Kristoff should name the baby, what colour to paint its future room, the merits of plush bears versus dolls, and other such difficult questions.

Life goes on, I guess.

That's what Kai always says, anyway, and she's starting to think that maybe, just maybe it can be true for her, too—that maybe she can just get on with her life and not have to think about the way his hair felt, tangled in her fingers, or how his hand gripped her neck in that coarse way, or how he flinched as she cooled that same hand whenever it got too tight, or how his tongue darted along hers, or how he grinned at her when they finally pulled apart, and she was breathing, hard.