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

Part 5

"Morning, Sleeping Beauty," he teased, leaning back onto his palms. He hadn't put on his tunic again just yet. Maybe he didn't like the confinement, on top of the bandaging? Elsa tried to keep her gaze on his.

"It's late, isn't it," Elsa sighed. Sleep late, wake late—that seemed to be her new schedule. Hans had probably been up for a few hours now.

"Almost midday," he pointed out. "Are you finally ready to see something other than obsessing over my first meeting with your sister?"

Elsa sighed again. Of course Hans was getting bored with that. "I apologize that this is going so slow—I can conjure memories from myself, but they won't move or speak. Yours do, but they require... far more concentration."

"At this rate, we won't get to what you're looking for for another three years."

Damn. He was right. "Trust me, I wish I could just... get it all out in the open, at once."

The Yelena voice inside her head kept nagging, "You can. You know where to take him."

Instead, she shot out a memory of her own for Hans, one of her in her room with Sir Jörgenbjörgen. Making him as a child helped her hone in her powers and suppress them, since she was so focused on stitching him perfectly. "Something as easy as that, you know?"

"I do." Hans nodded, and Bruni scurried off his shoulder to promptly melt down Elsa's new creation. "What was that ugly little puffin in your hands?"

Elsa chuckled, watching him melt under Bruni's heated skin. "Sir Jörgenbjörgen!" she explained. "I used to talk to him all the time like he was my best friend." When she'd been cut off from talking to Anna, after she struck her head.

"I had something like that, too," Hans replied. "This old, worn out stuffed puppy that looked like it went to Hell and back. When my brothers ignored me, and before I got Sitron, I used to talk to him like he could... talk back, I guess?"

"Someone to make sense of all these feelings." Elsa understood that perfectly. How did they have this in common? This feeling of isolation around people you were supposed to be close to? "What was his name?"

"Just John," said Hans, shrugging. "I guess I wasn't really that creative as a kid."

Elsa pushed the blankets from her lap. "I think I know what to look at today."

She could see his green eyes actually brighten up, more than she'd ever seen. "Really?"

"Positive." Elsa smiled softly, starting to stand. As she did, her stomach rumbled. "Maybe after I've had a bite to eat, first?"

—

"A few of my brothers haven't talked to me in over a year." Hans was probably around seven or eight in the memory, and held his well-loved puppy to his chest like he could squeeze the life out of it. "I don't know what I did wrong."

It's all the memory would show Elsa, when it finally manifested. She took in everything, from the fear and confusion in his young eyes, to his buckled stance, knowing she only had a few moments before Bruni destroyed it. Anna had mentioned something about a few of his brothers ignoring him for two years, but Elsa always assumed it was an exaggeration, or straight up lie. But the past didn't lie, and neither did these memories she could conjure.

Isolation from his family, ignored by his brothers, thirteenth in line for the throne... no wonder he was excited at the prospect to actually mean something to an entire kingdom. The way he held onto this plush reminded so much of how Elsa hugged Sir Jörgenbjörgen when she was feeling down.