Forgiveness

Summary: Arendelle and its neighboring countries are swept in the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars seven years after Elsa's coronation. Amidst the daily deaths Anna encounters while serving as a nurse, she comes across a man from her past who will remind her of old wounds, create fresh pains and test the limits of her compassion. A post-Frozen, canon-based story set during the Russian campaign of 1812.

Chapter One: Anna's Regret

Warsaw, Poland

September 24, 1812

Anna walked steadily down the dimly lit well-worn passageways, past the makeshift beds full of moaning soldiers and nurses changing bandages. The air was filled with the horrible stench of disinfectant, blood and vomit. She had gotten used to the smells just as she had learned to ignore the sound of screams.

"No don't cut! Don't cut, please!" someone yelled from one of the surgical rooms she passed.

"Hold him steady nurse! Hold him still!" the authoritative voice of the doctor said in a tone that indicated he was more irritated than concerned of his unruly patient. The unseen patient continued to beg to be let go in halting French before he screamed hysterically then suddenly fell silent.

Anna's breath hitched a split-second but she kept on walking. Amputation was a way of life here. She knew it was best to just let the doctors work their own way as fast as they could. Delicate handling of patients was a luxury doctors can no longer afford since there would half a dozen patients that needed surgery before the day was over.

The last batch of injured had come in thirty hours ago. Most of the fresh arrivals had already been patched, sewn or amputated. For the unlucky ones, they had been shipped to the morgue, their names recorded in the ledgers for the dead and their possessions tagged for storage to be sent to their relatives when the regular supply wagons arrived. It was all routinely efficient, devoid of emotion. Anna found the calmness of it almost comforting after a harrowing two weeks she spent tending to the droves of wounded that arrived from the latest battle.

Anna could still see the images when she closed her eyes: men with missing limbs, scarred faces, or torn torsos, bleeding, screaming and puking their guts out by turns. They cried in dozens of tongues, most she could not even understand, but all spoke the language of pain.

She wanted to sob with each death she witnessed, each scream of agony or each whimper of resignation she heard, but she couldn't. There was always another patient to attend to, another chance to save a soul from hurt and death. Then another and another. There were so many injured patients that she lost count. And still they kept coming.

For days, the number of patients coming in swelled that the beds in the hospital could no longer accommodate them. Floors, tables and even the barn and the outside lawn became makeshift cots. Blankets, bandages and morphine became scarce that it was almost a blessing when someone died for it meant one more bed to offer a new patient and one less bandage to waste.

When the number of new patients finally trickled down, the dead began arriving. Cartloads upon cartloads of corpses for identification came in numbers far greater than the living patients. Anna passed one cart one time after an exhausting shift and had to turn away. It wasn't the smell or sight of the bodies that struck her, but the utter silence. Far worse than hearing a man in pain, she realized, was knowing these men would never even weep in agony, for death took them before any medical help came their way in the battlefield. Anna completely lost the ability to cry that day even as she contemplated how things had turned out so differently from her expectations.

One French lieutenant told her on the first day the massive numbers of injured arrived that they won the Battle of Borodino. The Grand Army had pushed back the Russian forces and they now had a clear path to Moscow. "It was a great victory," he said.

Victory? Anna mused bitterly. Was this what a victory looked like? Thousands were dead and hundreds more lay dying in this hospital and in the dozens of medical centers spread across Poland. How many more would die on the march to Moscow?

Arendelle was forced into an alliance with Napoleonic France three years ago as did most of the Scandinavian states. Over 800 Arendellian men were conscripted into the French army, including Anna's husband Kristoff. Elsa also agreed to send at least fifty medical workers to the hospitals set up in the Duchy of Warsaw as part of the alliance treaty. Anna, who had some basic training as a nurse, volunteered to go as well to set an example and encourage the morale of their people. Not that an increase in morale was needed when the Arendellian delegation first joined the Grand Army in Prussia back in April. Everyone said Russia would surrender to Napoleon with barely an effort. The Grand Army had more than half a million troops, the biggest fighting force probably assembled in all of history. Almost all of Europe was united under the famous French Emperor that had a formidable reputation of swiftly beating his enemies.

Anna left Arendelle full of dreams of glorious adventure and pictured herself coming home with her war hero Kristoff by early autumn to be reunited with their four-year-old twins. She had even told a worried Elsa to have the birthday bugle horn polished for she might be back by her birthday in the middle of summer. She never thought things could go wrong.

By June, Anna felt the first taste of what war really meant. Casualties began arriving at the hospital from minor skirmishes with the Russian military forces called Cossacks. However, most of the patients were brought in due to dysentery and influenza. Anna kept a record of every single Arendellian that joined the campaign in a journal she brought along with the intention of recording down the heroic deeds of her men to preserve as a book for the glory of Arendelle. To her shock, more than 250 of them died from illness even before they could fire a shot, a hundred more were sent back with injuries too severe to allow them to continue to fight and almost seventy were declared missing. Her book became a tally of the dead, the injured and the disappeared.

Kristoff, thankfully, had been not among them. She received a letter from him on the first of July and he described horrors that she never imagined:

My Dearest Anna,

I begin this with assurances that I am safe and in relatively good health, fatigue withstanding. I wish I could say the samefor the rest of the army and our countrymen. I know you are eagerly awaiting news of their heroic deeds to add to your book but I can offer nothing but bad news.

We have been marching for months now but we are still weeks away from Moscow and the fatigue is already getting to us. The journey is slow. Hard rains would come pelting on us, making the roads muddy and unstable. We trudge through the mud which makes the carts bearing our provisions difficult to move. And when the rains clear, the Russian sun beats hard on our backs so our packs feel even heavier. Elsa's ice storms is often a wishful prayer of the men for we never knew we could miss the cold so much.

Our hopes often pick up when we approach a town or village. We always imagined we would be welcomed warmly by the people like the ones in Warsaw. But nothing like that ever happened. Every field, every village, every town was the same. It was all abandoned and burned to the ground by the Russians themselves. There was nothing left for us. No food, no shelter. We live on our rations and march on in the sweltering heat or the damp rain.

There have been a few encounters with the Cossacks. They usually attack the flanks and they do so with the viciousness of wild animals. However, they were not the worst enemy we have encountered so far. Sickness was our enemy. Sickness of both the body and the spirit. I watched almost a tenth of our forces fall ill and never recover. Fighting within the ranks is common. Our relations with men from the Northern Isles, Southern Isles, Corona and even Weselton are cordial enough due to our similar tongues and culture. However, it is not unusual for spats to occur among the men from different regions. Slurs against a particular race often end up in fistfights or duels that resolved nothing and contributed to reducing our fighting force.

However, the most devastating are the desertions. Huge companies of men would just disappear at night, taking with them precious weapons and supplies. The French officers would pursue them and execute them if captured. It breaks my heart to tell you but a group of Arendellians had been among them last week.

Twenty-four men, among them Svalbarg and Tomlinson, my own ice harvesting companions, took our regiment's provisions and ran into the night during a Cossack attack. They never got far. A group of French and Polish soldiers captured them and brought them back to camp the following day. Our men begged me to intercede for them. They said they were just so tired of all this. They just wanted to come home to their families. They couldn't understand why we were even here. The Russians never harmed us or our people, why are we fighting them? Why are we invading them?

I could offer them no answers. I understood Elsa's decision to take part in this. It was either ally with Napoleon or be occupied. She did what she could to keep us free. But from my heart, I knew these men were right. This isn't our war!

I wanted to help them, but I couldn't. As the highest ranking Arendellian in our regiment, it was my duty to turn them over to the higher authorities. And I did. They were shot to death that very afternoon. You will no doubt read about them in the official reports. They will be marked as deserters, traitors. But I wrote down their names at the end of this letter for you to put in your book. Write it down that they were just men, honorable men, who realized that they didn't have a taste for killing others just because someone is telling them to.

I don't know when I can send another letter after this. We may be too far away for the messengers to reach and provisions will have to take priority over letters. Just remember that I think about you constantly and I will try my best to get back to you and our children. I'm enclosing another letter for our little ones with this that you can forward to Elsa. She can read it to Agdar and Idunn.

If I don't come back, know that I will always love you and our children.

Yours forever,

Kristoff

That was the last letter from Kristoff. From then on, Anna relied only on the regular tallies of the dead, wounded and missing released by the administrative army office and prayed each time she looked that Kristoff's name wouldn't be among them. His name never did, but the names of Arendellians populated them. She wrote letters to the families of those that passed on to provide her own personal condolences. She did it religiously after each shift until that fateful September day when the hospital was overrun with the wounded and dead from the Battle of Borodino that she was left no time at all to even sleep, much less write. Even when things slowed down at the hospital, she stopped writing. She simply could not find any more words of comfort to write.

She preferred to spend time after each shift with the convalescing men. She sponge bathed them, changed their bandages, told them stories or wrote letters to their families while they dictated to her.

Today was different though. Anna had just completed a twenty-six hour shift. Normally, the maximum required hours at the hospital were only sixteen during non-critical days. It was the first time she had exceeded this many hours and it was all because of a green-eyed young man.

His name was Lundt, at least that was what she could gather from his nametag. He hailed from one of the Confederated States of the Rhine. His native tongue was unintelligible to her and he spoke just rudimentary French in a thick accent that it was hard to discern the words. Since Anna's French was also less than perfect, they had difficulty understanding each other. They made do with gestures most of the time. He came into the hospital with a missing leg, the beneficiary of a quick amputation in the field. He was sent to the hospital after he developed an infection possibly from the same amputation or some other disease he picked up on the way. The doctor had given him all the standard medicines and pronounced that his recovery depended on God. He either pulled through or he didn't. Anna was optimistic he would survive. He was so young, only twenty-three years old and quite cheerful when he wasn't delirious with fever. He hummed along when she sang while she sponged him. He called her "Angel Anna."

Eight hours ago his fever took a turn for the worst and Anna never left his side. Whenever she asked him if he wanted a doctor to check on him his reply was always the same: "Just you."

It sent her chills each time he said those two words but she ignored them. At four 'o clock this morning, his breathing became horribly labored. Anna shouted for a doctor but Lundt caught her arm and murmured almost calmly, his green eyes intent on hers: "Apology, apology... for trouble. Thank you... for every moment after."

His eyes remained on Anna's even after his hand fell limp. It didn't take the doctor long to declare Lundt dead. Anna took the news stoically. She kissed his forehead, closed his eyes and reported his time of death in the official ledger. She calmly left the room, ignoring the smells and the sounds, even as her mind reeled with memories.

It was only when she came out of the hospital doors that she felt the tumble of emotions envelop her like the chill of the early morning air. She fell into her knees and openly sobbed like she hadn't done in days. She didn't know how long she cried, or even who she was crying for. Lundt wasn't the first soldier she had seen die. The others she had seen had had worst deaths. His was blessedly peaceful by comparison.

But only Lundt had his eyes. Hans' eyes, came her unbidden thoughts. It could have been him who died today.

She hadn't thought about Hans for a long time. The man that had broken her heart seven years ago had been among the things she consigned to the far recesses of her memory. The last time she had thought of him, she had been angry and cared not if he was dead. In fact she had wished it. She wished she could take it back now.

May 8, 1808

Arendelle Castle

"They're letting him go?! Are they insane!" Anna exclaimed indignantly at her sister as she snatched the piece of paper Elsa had just read aloud from.

The letter was a report in Prince Lars of the Southern Isles' neat handwriting. Anna read the main paragraph twice, her blood boiling with each word.

Due to the urgent need for trained officers for the ongoing war, the court of the Southern Isles has commuted the sentence of prisoner Prince Hans to ten years of servitude in the military, where he shall be reinstated his previous rank of Captain and will serve the Continental Army in defense of his country and its allies.

"Ten years and he gets a pardon? And they even gave him back his rank!" Anna cried. "This is their punishment? Letting a murderer like him out of the cage? Giving him a rank so he can be a hero in some battle?"

"Anna, calm down," Elsa said gently. "He didn't exactly murder anyone."

"Well he almost did!"

You're forgetting the next part," Elsa went on. "He's being sent to the frontlines where the fighting is worst and he has a bigger chance of ending up dead."

"Or he has a bigger chance of getting away while receiving all the glory in this stupid war so he can make a comeback and take advantage of the next kingdom that opens their doors to him. Elsa, come on, you can't actually believe he wouldn't use this opportunity?"

"Lars reassures us this is a just punishment. Hans can be more useful fighting than locked up. They do need men, Anna."

"One man isn't going to make a difference," Anna insisted. "Lars is your brother-in-law, Elsa. Can't you explain the situation to him?"

Elsa heaved a sigh but her words remained calm. "I don't need to explain anything Anna, I agree with him. Lars is my brother-in-law, which makes Hans my brother-in-law as well, and yours by extension. In the eyes of the world, the Southern Isles is part of our family now and we need to support them publicly in this."

"Elsa you married into the Northern Isles, not the Southern Isles," Anna said pointedly.

"You don't have to remind me," Elsa bristled bitterly. Anna quickly realized she said the wrong thing and was immediately sorry.

Six months earlier, Elsa married Prince Knudsvig of the Northern Isles as part of a treaty that saved Arendelle from potential famine and protected it from the rising conflict in Europe. French leader Napoleon Bonaparte's ongoing war brought British blockades on the usual sea trading routes that Arendelle depended on eighteen months after Elsa was crowned. Difficult as the situation was, Elsa still managed to keep things afloat for more than a year by trading with other neighboring states. However, when the British attacked Copenhagen by the autumn of 1807 and effectively brought most of those same neighboring states into the war, neutral Arendelle suddenly found itself without a trading partner that can provide much needed fuel and food. With winter fast approaching and the British still blocking the Arendellian ships, Elsa surrendered to the pressure of her advisors and signed a treaty with the remaining neutral state that still had the capability to support Arendelle.

Prince Knudsvig was as far away from the ideal husband that Anna had always imagined her sister would marry. The younger second son of the king of the Northern Isles was six years Elsa's junior and had a snively, stick-thin figure that Anna liked to think can be blown away by the slightest frosty wind Elsa can create. Extremely superstitious, cowardly and without a backbone, Knudsvig was most likely bullied by his father into the marriage. He was a nervous wreck during the wedding and more so on the wedding night when he was brought in drunk to Elsa's bedchamber. The following morning, Anna found Elsa in tears and unwilling to speak of what occurred that night but with evidence that the marriage had been consummated. A purple bruise that formed on Elsa's cheek told Anna, Knudsvig had hurt her sister. Anna was about to punch the still snoozing groom when Knudsvig's older sister, Princess Amelia intervened. She calmly took Elsa aside to comfort her, while Amelia's husband Prince Lars of the Southern Isles hauled the half-conscious groom to make him presentable for the wedding breakfast.

Anna never knew what happened that night for Elsa refused talk about it. However, it was the last time Elsa and her husband shared a bed. Knudsvig spent most of his time in a country house away from Arendelle castle where he was reported to be engaged in high stakes gambling, drinking and consorting with women of ill-repute. Elsa turned a blind eye to the reports and merely signed the payments for the expensive stipend for her husband each month. It was a situation Anna was not happy with, but Elsa told her it was for the best. Elsa was able to rule without the interference of a husband and managed to retain Arendelle's independence due to the Northern Isles strong military back up.

"I'm sorry Elsa, I didn't mean to belittle what you've sacrifice for us, for me," Anna said sincerely as she hugged her sister. "It should have been me who married Knudsvig. I should be the one dealing with all this trouble."

"It's alright Anna," Elsa said as she hugged her back. "I'm glad you got pregnant when you did. Your twins are the future of Arendelle and they are the light of my life now."

Elsa was referring to Anna's children with Kristoff. Born just last month, twin babies Idunn and Agdar were conceived out of wedlock at the crucial time when Elsa was being pressured by her council to marry Anna off to gain the Northern Isles' support. As Anna was no longer eligible for a royal marriage due to her condition, Elsa offered herself instead. Anna then married Kristoff in a hasty private ceremony to prevent a scandal.

"I love your babies like they are my own Anna," Elsa continued. "And I need to ensure a free Arendelle for them. This is precisely why we need to support the Southern Isles' court decision on Hans."

Anna let go of her sister's embrace and frowned. "I don't understand. What does that have to do with Hans?"

Elsa held Anna's hands tightly to emphasize the seriousness of the matter. "Anna, our situation grows more precarious daily. We need to start having more cordial relations with the Southern Isles. They have a naval force bigger than the Northern Isles and they are already allied with France. If and when Napoleon decides that Arendelle should stop being a neutral party in this war, he could send the Southern Isles to invade us. Anna, my marriage to Knudsvig is not enough anymore to keep us safe."

"And you think Hans' family will?" Anna asked.

"Right now, our tie to them through Knudsvig's sister is the only thing keeping them from invading. I'm hearing reports that the Northern Isles is being pressured to ally with Britain in this war. If it does..."

"No!" Anna gasped. "We are not joining them too! The British tried to starve us out!"

"No, we are not, Anna," Elsa replied steadily. "If we do that, the Southern Isles will most certainly invade the Northern Isles and Arendelle will be caught in the middle."

"So we remain neutral then?" Anna asked.

Elsa shook her head. "We can't. We'll be fair game to both countries if we do. When the time comes for us to pick a side, we ally with the French and the Southern Isles."

"But your marriage to Knudsvig…?"

"Can be dissolved," Elsa replied matter-of-factly without meeting her eyes.

Anna couldn't find anything to say but her puzzled expression was enough to prompt Elsa to answer.

"Anna, this is something that can only be discussed between us. Promise me, nothing I say here comes out until the right time."

Anna nodded solemnly.

Elsa paced the floor for a moment then spoke without meeting Anna's eyes. "My marriage to Knudsvig was never consummated. Legally, that's a ground for annulment."

Anna's mouth fell open with surprise. "But the sheets... on your wedding night?"

"Amelia helped me to fake it," Elsa admitted. "She and Lars planned it, with my consent. They have given me an opportunity to get out of the alliance with the Northern Isles if it turns to Britain. Until then, we need to keep our good relationship with the Southern Isles, which means I cannot protest their court's decision on a member of their family."

Anna buried her face into her hands and let out a muffled yell. This was so frustrating! Everything was just getting harder and harder wherever they turned with this pointless war. When she had let out much of her pent up emotion she turned back to her sister. "I guess there is some good to this. At least you'll get rid of Knudsvig, the worthless idiot!"

Elsa bit her lip uncomfortably and heaved a sigh. "Not necessarily. I'm only letting him go if the Northern Isles allies with Britain. If they decide to ally with France, I'm staying married to Knudsvig. There's no point in alienating an ally with a scandalous annulment if I don't need to Anna."

"Ugh! I hate politics!" Anna cried out. "Okay fine! We can still look forward to a silver lining. Maybe Hans will die in this stupid war. Yeah, that's not a far possibility, right? I hope he does die and before that I hope he suffers a great deal in a cold wasteland that's suitable to his frozen heart."

Author's Note: I drew inspiration for this story from real events during the Napoleonic era which more or less occurs near the timeline of Frozen. This story will take place mostly during the Russian campaign when Napoleon organized the Grand Army of more than 600,000 soldiers, composed of citizens from multiple nations that included France, Prussia, Austria, Denmark-Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Naples, the Confederated States of the Rhine and the Duchy of Warsaw among other nearby states.

The Battle of Borodino occurred on September 7, 1812. It was the single bloodiest battle of the Russian campaign that claimed around 70,000 lives in a day. However, this was only the beginning of a more devastating tragedy when the Grand Army suffered greatly during the Russian Winter. In the end only around 110,000 (some sources say only 45,000) men were able to return home alive from the original numbers that marched into Russia.

I pictured that Arendelle, the Southern Isles and other small states in this region would also be swallowed up in this war and I wanted to write this story from someone who would be caught in the middle of it. I imagined Anna, as an unconventional princess, would have a big heart and enough courage to serve her people as a nurse in an age when the practice of nursing was not even considered a profession but an errand of mercy. I tried to describe an accurate picture of what Anna could have experienced in a hospital during this era. This was a time when there were barely any anesthetics available and antibiotics were non-existent. Amputation was a common way to treat those who have suffered injuries and a third of the amputated soldiers died due to infection. On top of injuries, diseases were also prevalent causes of death as hygiene was poor in the army camps.

This is probably the darkest, most painful Frozen story I've come up. I wanted to explore a historical setting and tap into the complex traits of our favorite characters as they go through the gruesome realities of life in the early 1800s.