I'm Afraid of What I'm Risking if I Follow You

Part 5

I'm Afraid of What I'm Risking if I Follow You

Chapter 5

Ever since they saw their first memory on Hans's, they were on this constant chase to see what else they could dig up: Hans, for something so old he couldn't remember it, and Elsa, to see what his time in Arendelle had been like from his point of view. Of course, Elsa's powers showed her what she wanted—so she finally completed watching his first interaction with Anna, the genuine excitement in his eyes.

The quiet smile he didn't have to show, when she turned her back.

Hans had actually liked Anna. Didn't love her, but he liked her.

And who didn't? She was charismatic, good with the people, very personable and naturally sweet. As heir, Elsa had been the one to receive a few more letters from potential suitors (none she answered, of course), but she knew if they ever met her sister—she'd charm them in an instant. She was so much like Father that way, such a natural character that made her so perfect as the face of the kingdom.

No wonder Hans wanted her. He knew she was a leader years before she even took the position.

But it'd been a whole week of little snippets from this one interaction. Hans was probably getting sick of it, much as Elsa needed to grasp a better judge of his character. She wished she had the power to just—see it all in one go.

No, she wasn't ready for Ahtohallan. And neither was Hans.

Of course, it was hard to keep track of it all, when Bruni hopped right into a memory every time one emerged to cool down on these warm summer nights. Elsa started taking notes on what she'd seen, private ones whenever Hans fell asleep as a way of keeping herself grounded—a personal diary of sorts. She hadn't had one in years, but when she spent so much time alone as a kid, it was her way of communicating with something, putting it out into some sort of void. No one knew about it—not Ryder, not Honeymaren, not even Yelena.

Whenever she wrote, though, she always considered how she was going to break this news to Anna; eventually, she would have to.

She read and reread the interaction, looking for something to show something nefarious... but so far, nothing. Everything she'd seen so far went against what he'd tried to do to Arendelle, to usurp the throne. How did he get from point A to point B?

And Anna had been a lot more calm about the whole situation, the whole time. Maybe it was Kristoff who grounded her, kept her from seething, but maybe that was just Anna. She brushed most terrible situations aside and tried to move on with their life and stay generally cheery, while Elsa... had let the whole thing fester and boil. She never tried to move on from how he'd hurt her sister.

Usually Elsa passed out from sheer exhaustion staying up and watching Hans, that she normally missed the tossing and turning, the supposed nightmares Yelena told her he'd been plagued with since his arrival. Or maybe it was the voice again—it kept Elsa up so much she accidentally woke the spirits, and who knew what it was doing to Hans.

But she again couldn't even remember how she'd passed out, how her blankets even ended up around her shoulders when she finally woke. When she sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Hans was just finishing up changing the dressing on his wound, Bruni comfortably on his shoulder. It certainly wasn't the first time Elsa had seen him without a tunic, but it was the first time she noticed the freckles on his shoulders. He had definitely bulked up in the three years since Elsa last saw him, from this clean cut prince to this rogue on the run, his shoulders broader, his abdomen defined.