Once upon a time

Love will thaw
(A Season Four Fanfiction)

Written by Faenya

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Characters of Once upon a time by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz,

Frozen by Disney,

The Snowqueen (2002) script by Simon Moore,

The Snowqueen by Hans Christian Anderson

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

I am so sorry that I didn't update anything for half a year. I had some kind of creative down. It took a while to write this. A very very long while. But I will finish this. And just so you know, I only went down this road of plot accidently and not because of the recent developments in the series. It has been planned since the beginning, and I was sure about writing it when episode 4x07 -4x09 came along. Still fits quiet nicely though, don't you think?

Last time on "Love will thaw":

While Storybrooke dealed with a new arrival named Elsa from Arendelle and her troubled past,
a new threat with incredible powers appeared, seeking the Dark One dagger.

Fighting the Snow Queen that turned the town into a winter wonderland, Killian got abducted and Emma followed him and his captor to a far off realm. Eventually she is able to rescue him and thwart the Snow Queen's evil plan to conquere all realms with the help of her magical mirror.

Meanwhile in Storybrooke it is revealed, that Elsa's appearence in the Land without magic was not only no coincidence,
but a well planned scheme by Rumplestilskin, who send her back in time to change the future.

It turns out that in Elsa's timeline, the Snow Queen, also known as the White Witch in her realm (Narnia)
in pursuit for her revenge on Emma attacked Storybrooke, taking numerous lives, which caused Emma to sacrifice herself,
destroy Storybrooke and save her and Killian's newborn daughter's life by sending her away.

Little did they know her daughter would grow up to one day be the queen of Arendelle.

-Chapter Thirteen-

She had known this would happen eventually. The storybook was never wrong. It had warned her this would come to pass, before the letters, phrases, pictures of the stories had disappeared, before the pages turned blank. But it wasn't supposed to be like this. Things had changed. No. Scratch that. No passive voice. She had changed things. Period. By travelling to the past - while accidentally - by showing all of them the book, by telling them what was going to happen she had screwed up the time line.

It had been a miracle their story had not changed sooner.
By even appearing in this town, in this realm, she had messed up the future, if it could even be messed up more than it already was.

Has been.

Will be,

Whatever.

As Elsa walked through town and thought about how deranged all this was. She shivered. She actually trembled. A sensation she would never get used to, and quiet frankly didn't even want to. She looked down main street, took in the smashed windows, cut down lampposts, damaged cars. It was the work of Storybrooke's newest addition to its ever growing list of villains passing through.

The blow took all of them by surprise, the burst directed at Elsa. She heard them screaming, Snow and David. Even with her powers she was relatively helpless and tried to dodge at the very last second. When she braced for impact, she waited for it in vain almost believing that she had evaded the attack. But as she looked up, she saw Killian collapse just a few feet away. The stupid pirate had taken the hit instead of her.

Another havoc, causing magician. Nothing new in this town, obviously, as Elsa had been told. She had imagined vile creatures like the Snow Queen and her blizzards, or the Wicked Witch and her winged beasts. It happened before, people had been injured, infrastructure destroyed - the usual - and in the end they had mended all wounds, repaired all damages. So no need to lose hope, right? Villains came and went. It had always been like that.

Except this time the villain was nobody else than Emma.

This was a nightmare.

How could it even come to this?

###

It all started only a few days after they had found out about Elsa's heritage. Emma sat at her desk at the station reminiscing about all that had happened. Breaking the news to everyone about the current situation had turned out to be a piece of work. Sure, Snow and David had been informed directly the same day, when Killian and Emma had picked up Elsa at the Charming's loft. But while the finer details had still been a bit of a blur, it only left Henry, Regina (yeah, Emma didn't like her comments on the topic one bit) and basically everyone else in town to tell. The first of the list had not been very difficult though. Even less so, because he already new what was going on.

It was late and they decided to call it a day and returned with a sleepy Ice Queen in tow to Emma's and Henry's apartment.

And yes somehow it was already also Killian's flat.

And Elsa was their daughter and lived there too, so that made it her apartment, too. Didn't it?.

Emma's head was spinning at that thought. She definitely needed a good night's sleep. Several actually. Maybe a week. Instead, she would have to face a lunch with her parents and (urgh) Regina the next day to explain all this madness. Strangely through her time travelling daughter and the trouble they probably soon had to encounter, Emma's pregnancy became a topic of discussion for the sake of the whole town. Emma could wave any kind of privacy goodbye for the next few months. So much was sure. How could she explain all of this - to anyone, if she didn't completely understand it herself?

In a daze they had made it back to the apartment. When they opened the door to the loft, Emma noticed that it had not been locked, but only shut from the inside. Suddenly she was wide awake, sure to have locked the door in the morning - as always. She pushed it open and turned the lights on, ready to pull her gun from the holster any time. One never knew in a town like Storybrooke, right? What awaited them, at the kitchen counter was nothing less than her thirteen year old son, in his pjs in front of the fridge.

"Henry? What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be staying over at Regina's?"
"Nope. I guessed, after the mess today, we'd have some things to discuss." After 'the mess today', all Emma wanted to do was fall in bed sleeping and never wake up. But she owed her son to keep him in the loop.

What was Regina's phrase again about the sleeping curse?
"Kid, did you wait here all day on your own?"

"I'm thirteen, not three mom."

Of course, Henry already knew who Elsa was. That she was his sister. They had all been in on it. So Emma's superpower had not been off track after all. However, it had worried her immensely. And Henry's reaction to the fact that Elsa was already on the way didn't upset him as much as Emma would have imagined. At least he didn't show it, but that didn't prove anything. It was fast. Probably too soon. It was life changing. For all of them. However, for the time being, Henry seemed to cope with the fact that he was going to be a big brother soon, just fine.

As Emma feared, the conversation with Regina didn't go down without a lot of sass and even more teasing. Sitting at the usual table at Granny's with a steaming cup of cocoa in front of her, Emma took the comments with all the resolve she could manage.

"You're joking, right?" Regina's face was calm. Not surprised, not angry. Just, unbelieving. Emma watched her make direct eye contact with each and everyone at the table, but received only shrugs, nods and a deep grin with highly raised eyebrows from the pirate. "How did that happen?"

Emma was about to rebuff her with a kinky remark but Regina shook her head the moment the question left her lips. "Wait, no. When? When did it happen?" she rephrased. So Killian and Emma told her the short version of it.

Her royal highness rolled her eyes in a not very royal way and mumbled. "Just a few nights in Narnia." In fact it had only been one, but Emma didn't want to correct her at that point. She didn't get the chance to to so anyway, as Regina let out a muffled snort and commented, "He shoots he scores." smirking and was attacked by outburst of

"REGINA!" "Regina!" "Really?" "MOM!" (So even Henry had understood the innuendo)

So far everything went swimmingly, but that was soon to change. Besides the mood swings that took control of Emma's magic here and there, they planned to enjoy the villain free time, for how long they'd be graced with it.

It was time to get back to work. With all the fuss about the second curse, Zelena, the time portal, Elsa, the Snowqueen, and well... Elsa (past present and future), there had not been much time for paperwork. And damn, did that pile up. At least David had tried to keep up with it while Emma had been in Narnia - that was the beauty of having two sheriffs or at least a deputy or whatever. Still, there was a crap load of reports to fill out and put into order. Lunchtime felt like ages away as she tried to focus on the report at hand.

At first there was this silence. The computer stopped making noises, she couldn't hear her fingers on the paper anymore. Deafness. Then darkness, creeping in from the edges of her field of vision. Suddenly as if the light's had gone out for a second, it all went black. Then a tone, a low roar, or more like a pressure on her ears that made her squeeze her eyes shut in pain. When she opened them again her vision was blurry, her hands cramped to fists and trembling. She heard a noise behind her, but couldn't react to it. "Swan?" Killian. What was he doing here? "Swan?" Then she heard his voice more clearly which caused her to finally snap out of it. "Sorry." she mumbled and shook her head.

"You all right?" he asked obviously concerned. She was still sitting at the station, a pile of papers to her right, the outdated computer buzzing. Everything seemed normal again. Except for the time shown in the right lower corner of her desktop. She had lost a solid hour. So that's why he was there. To pick her up for lunch. Emma tried to pull herself together and answered, "No idea. I guess my magic is acting up a bit." Killian only nodded. It was no news that her pregnancy hormones were messing with her magic. Only two days ago, she had caused a blackout in her building because she had a serious case of morning sickness. Only the thought, that she didn't want Killian to see her puke in the toilet had blown out the fuses. So neither her nor Killian, really bothered with the incident.

A few hours later it happened again on her way to the car. The second time had been way less subtle and all around different. It started again with the deafness and the darkness creeping into her field of vision but then there was no droning, no roaring. Instead, it was a voice whispering with a soothing, enticing hue. Emma couldn't make out the words and after it was over she chalked it up as her magic running wild again. But the same kept occurring again directly the next morning.

Eventually, Emma was able to make out words and phrases, started to listen to them and suddenly found herself in front of the clocktower.

In the afternoon, she found her consciousness again, when she had already entered the library. Belle had looked slightly disturbed, but didn't say anything, when Emma greeted and left again with a mumbled excuse. This was not just her magic acting up. These blackouts... she lost track for minutes, hours sometimes.

It wasn't until she woke, in the middle of the night, standing in the tunnels under the library in her pyjamas, that she actually felt, like she was going crazy.

###

Henry noticed the changes first. Emma was acting strange, she was on the edge all the time, her face mostly wearing a worried look. It at only been two days, three at most, so Elsa didn't think to much about it until she met Emma sleepwalking to the apartment door leaving. She followed her down to the library, lost her when Emma entered the lift and went down into the mines.

Elsa took out her talking device and pushed that button the others had shown her, to call Henry. The boy answered with a very sleepy voice but when Elsa told him what she had witnessed he sounded wide awake. "Come back to the apartment. I think we have to tell everyone."

"You think..." she didn't dare finish her sentence. "Yeah, we have to show them the book. All of it."

They met up the next day in the dinner. Snow and Regina had been quick to read through the chapter. Killian frowned when he was through with it. David had come last, he had left Emma at the station, so he was also last to finish the pages of Emma's story in the book.
"So you think this is what's happening now?" David asked sceptically and Henry nodded confidently, as did Elsa. "What are we going to do about it?" It was Snow, who asked the inevitable question. "It doesn't say specifically how the problem is solved in the end." Killian mused.
Henry grinned at that, "Only that you're the one to do it."

Killian didn't reply to that and went on, "Why didn't the pages disappear yet? Like they did when Emma and I went through the time portal?"
It was a question Elsa had asked herself already. She had expected them to vanish instantly. "I suppose I haven't changed anything yet."
"Then why don't we just go along with it?" Everyone turned towards Regina at that.

"I beg your pardon?" Elsa said unbelievingly.

Clearly Snow liked that idea just as much as Elsa did, "So you suggest we let Emma be corrupted by one of the darkest creatures you have ever faced and see what happens?"
"It will work out in the end. See! It's in the book." Regina pointed to the picture painted in dark colours. "What else can we do without messing everything up entirely. It can only get worse. Let's just wait hope for the best."

Henry slowly nodded in agreement. David looked worried but shrugged. "That coming from you, Regina? A hope speech?" Snow raised an eyebrow. She seemed to like the plan even less than Elsa did, but didn't argue. "Are you serious?" Elsa looked them all in the eyes. What she saw was concern, but certainty. How could they all be so calm?

It was all of them against her and she found herself in the same situation as they had been when they cast the protection spell over town. She was the new one, in the minds of most of them still a child. It got even worse when it was revealed to be Emma's and Killians daughter. This was fighting a lost cause, they would never listen to her. "Whatever." Elsa rose from her seat and went outside.

When she smashed the dinner door close, she half expected the bell to ring again, as it did. Of course Killian would not let her run off like that.

"Everything is going to be fine." he said and sat down at the table where she had slumped down. He followed her gaze to the diner window with his.
"You sure about that?" She couldn't keep the touch of disbelief out of her voice even if she tried. "'Cause I'm not."

"I don't intent to sound all paternal here, but " he smiled sadly "we have been through trouble like this." Killian paused, "Well, not exactly like this, but similar. Just trust them." He scooped a little closer and took Elsa's hand. "What are you doing?" she snapped when he started to take of the cuff at her wrist.

"Her majesty filled me in, that you didn't need these restrains any longer."

Elsa looked down at the leather bracelet on her arm. She had grown accustomed to it. Not having to fear her powers. True, in her practice sessions she controlled her magic quite well now. However, Elsa didn't know if her new found control would stand an outburst of emotions.

"Everything happens for a reason." He mused like a mantra. "The good things and the bad things. And in the end, everything is going to be fine." And with that the bracelet came off and the town actually kept its January chill without suffering a sudden blizzard.

"I only learned it, when I met Emma. That even in the darkest hour, I have to believe that everything will turn out for the better."

Elsa shook her head in disbelieve. "How?"

His answer was simple. And it sounded stupid. "Hope."

"Hope?"
"Hope!"

Elsa shook her head slightly amused. "Mary-Margret gets to all of you, doesn't she?"

"Aye, she does." he chuckled and went silent for a moment. When he spoke again she could have sworn, he actually enjoyed sounding 'all paternal'.

"Good things happen to those who are good right?" Elsa nodded absent mindedly. "Wrong." Killian answered his own question.
"Good people can suffer terrible fates. Look at Snowwhite. You have read the stories."

"She had to fight unbelievable odds, took every blow that was thrown at her." Elsa began to recap. Killian took a breath and recounted on his fingers "She lost her mother, her father. Was wronged by the only person that she had left then, her stepmother." If she was really wronged was debatable, Elsa thought, but didn't disrupt the pirate in his monologue. "She found the love of her life only to be separated from him, again and again and when they finally thought they had won, everything went to hell." He paused,

"She lost her daughter, found her again, lost her anew. She gave birth to a son only to have history repeat itself."

She knew the story well. "Your point being?"
"Bad things happen to everyone." he said, tapping his forefinger on the table, "The difference is how you deal with it."
"I don't understand." Killian smiled and intended to answer, but was interrupted by the ring of his talking device. "It's Belle." The librarian was talking at the other end of the line and Elsa could practically see Killian's smile fall from his face.

"Emma's down in the mines." They were on their feet within the faction of a second. Killian went inside to gather up the others. The royal rescue team, as Henry had put it so gallantly once, would go to work once again. This time, they'd be late on purpose.

Elsa's eyes went to to leather bracelet on the table. She felt the ice crystals pulse just slightly under the skin of her palms already. "Control it." she thought, inhaled deeply and held her breath. It worked. She was in control.

Her eyes went back and forth from her hands to the dinner entrance unsure about what to do, but Elsa had made up her mind seconds before Snow, David, Killian and Regina walked through the door.

###

It felt good.

There was no doubt about it.

Emma had never felt more powerful in all her life.

She had lost her childhood to the Evil Queen's curse.

Nearly lost her son to that demon Pan.

Lost Neal and almost her baby brother to the Wicked Witch.

And just a few month ago a freaking Snow Queen from Narnia

took the man she loved away, turned him against her and threatened to kill him.

Emma looked down at her hands, brimming with magic bolting through her skin. A sensation like electricity. With this power Emma would never lose anyone. This way, none of this will ever happen. Now, she could change everything. "With this power, no one will dare challenge me. And if they try to hurt my family anyway, I will make them pay." she growled the last part to herself in an inhuman voice.

To hell with being a saviour.

Emma took a step towards the glowing staff. It whispered to her, promised her unmeasurable power. It was all just inches away.

###

They had noticed her leaving nearly immediately. She had to be quick, she knew that. Her plan was reckless, she knew that too. In fact it wasn't even a real plan, but Elsa was sick of sitting around and doing nothing. She was supposed to change things. The pages, and stories remaining firmly printed in the book were a stalk reminder of her failure. Maybe this was the first step.

When she arrived at the library she was out of breath, and wished that Regina had taught her a thing or two about this poofing magic as Henry had called it. Instead, she had run, the others probably only minutes behind her. Belle met her at the door, slipped out and closed it behind her back. "We better wait for the others." The librarian sensed that something was off. Obviously it was new for Elsa to act on her own in a crisis.

She didn't have time for discussion though.

"Elsa, what are you doing?" Instead of minutes, make that seconds, Elsa thought as she saw Regina appear out of a cloud of purple smoke. So much for this teleportation business. "I came to stop her." she explained her fairly obvious intentions. "Don't interfere." the queen warned.

"I will not wait and see this happen all over again."

"We should leave now." Regina shouted.

"Don't you see?" Elsa pleaded, "I can change everything."

"No I don't. What if it backfires? What then?" the queen yelled, showing quiet impressively the difficulty controlling her temper. "Must run in the family. You're not thinking about the consequences."
"The consequence, your majesty, is this town going to hell. So excuse me that I want to save some lives." With that, Elsa shot a warning gust of ice at Regina and attempted to walk past her. "Oh no you won't." She only dodged the queen's magic by inches.

"Stop right there." Regina threatened. Elsa didn't even have to turn to know the queen held a fireball in her hand. So she wanted it that way, Elsa thought. She summoned her magic in her hands and let go of it the second she hauled around and threw it at Regina.

They didn't know which of them hit him. He had appeared out of nowhere. Arrived with the others who held their breath in shock.

"Killian!" Elsa shouted and ran towards him, falling to her knees at his side, heard him whisper in laboured voice,
" Everything's going to be fine. It will come out all right." He reached for her face, to caress her cheek. Then he lost consciousness. He was still breathing, but his hand felt suddenly cold.

And if that wasn't enough... "What did you do?" It sounded painfully familiar.

###

It was happening all over again. She was losing him, like all before him. Emma took in the scene before her. Killian on the ground, unmoving.

How often did she have to endure this?
Her grip around the staff grew stronger. It was brimming with magic, pulsing in her hand, whispering of a different path. "What did you do?" she snared, her powers aching to be set free. "Emma, he..."

"What. Did. You. DO?" The lanterns along the street exploded and came down. Windows cracked and shattered. It was freeing to let go of restraining herself.

"Emma you have to fight this." Look who's talking. Regina who had been as dark as they come, who had murdered and tortured wanted to lecture her? Not likely.
She eyed her intently. "What if I don't want to fight it?"

"Emma." The all surrounded her, stepping closer. "Mom this isn't you."

"Silence." Emma growled. "Emma, honey listen to yourself." Snow argued, "The Emma I know, would have said 'Shut up'"

They were only trying to confuse her. "That is nonsense."

"Crap." Henry shouted, "You would have said 'That's crap!'" he agreed.

Don't listen to them.

She had never felt this powerful. Emma knew she could defeat the Snowqueen with this. I can keep bad things from happening. I know I can.

Still, Killian lay there, injured. There were always new evils coming at them.

Or better even. She could change all the evil that happened. She couldn't stop the curse then, couldn't keep Henry, Neal, safe him, or Graham. But now...

"I can make all this go away." Emma whispered.

Either they had not heard her correctly, or didn't believe her words. They were staring at her in confusion. "Make it all go away?" Regina asked almost carefully.
"The curse. Storybrooke. Everyone who ever left me, hurt me. I can undo it. All of it." she had to grin at the thought, a sort of euphoria taking a grip on her heart.

"You can't. It's impossible." They were thinking of Zelena's time portal, which was infact beyond her. Too dificult, but this was different. This was a restart. Raw, forceful.
"With this. I can. And I will."

"Mom!" Herny shouted, and for a second she doubted her newly formed plan. He would not be in the picture, in this new reality as was Killian. However, that way, she didn't risk losing them. She wouldn't even know the ever exsisted, because in her life they never would.

"Can't let you do that Emma." Regina shouted threatening. Ah, the other mother. Sure Regina wouldn't let her get away with it.
But Emma only dared her, dared them, "Try, and stop me." And that Elsa did. Emma saw her take a step forward and concentrated on the things she had learned. As she closed her eyes and visibly tried to distinguish a way to stop Emma without hurting her, or anyone else. Still, Emma wasn't going to let her figure it out. She vanished just in time to see Elsa open her eyes, wide in shock of Emma's disappearance.

###

Dr. Whale was certain Killian would make a full recovery, but the pirate was still out. They all sighed relieved at that news, but the main problem remained.

"Where's she?" David asked concerned. Everyone was looking to Regina for answers. Snow also turned towards her, "Do you think she can do it? Reverse everything?"

The queen inhaled slowly, a concerned frown on her face. She alternated between nodding her head and shaking it, or something in the middle.
"With her raw powers and Maleficents twisted darkness" she finally answered, " You've seen what Zelena could pull off. I guess everything's possible."

Elsa felt desperation rise up inside of her. Felt that she was in over her head. How were they supposed to do it? How could they save Emma from this darkness?
And more importantly from herself. It was evident, that her actions where mostly motivated by her own deepest fears.

The answer was plain and simple. She was not supposed to do it at all. It shouldn't be her task, her duty. In the book it was Killian who guided her back into the light.
But that was out of the question, as he lay knocked out cold, taken down by either a blow that had been mend for her or that was executed by her.

She didn't know what was worse. May the timeline go to hell. She had messed everything up. Again.

While Regina, Snow and David argued about how to proceed Henry sat down next to her. "You know it's up to us now."
"What? Why?" Elsa exclaimed and couldn't keep herself from sounding terrified.

"We know where she is." He was right. By now they knew the book from the first to the very last page. They had memorised the story to the last detail, and while it didn't give away the exact words of the pirate's conversation with the Saviour Princess, it did tell the location. And with Emma's present plan on changing the past all together, it seemed quite clear where she was heading. "We should tell them." Elsa argued.

"You know what happened according to the book." Henry didn't exactly disagree, at least not with words, but after these few weeks, she knew by the tone of his voice, that was not all of it. So she went along, "Yeah, Killian went after her and found her, and then" He continued her sentence for her, "Then she went back to normal."

Perfekt, now that was helpful. "And how are we going to do that?"

"By doing what he'd do." God, if the boy didn't get to the point in a matter of seconds...
"We remind her of her happy ending." he finished.

It sounded so simple, yet after all the had heard about Emma's life, about how she grew up, what losses she had to take, she couldn't blame her for wanting to change it.
Elsa's hand went to her neck, toying with the necklace she was wearing. It had become a habit of her, playing with Emma's ring, whenever she was deep in thought.

She rolled it between her fingers, twisting it on the silver chain. Every time she did this, she found some small detail on the jewellery she had not noticed before. First it was the colour of the stones. It changed depending on the light that fell on it and it had nearly the exact colour of her own eyes. Once she saw a small scratch on the pearl, but never found it again. A minor thing, not even sure if there had been a scratch in the first place of if she'd only imagined it. But this time, she felt stupid for never seeing it before. There was an engraving on the inside. It was tiny. Before, she had thought it was just another scratch, or a break in the silver - for as she recalled the ring was antique - because she could barely read it as it blurred into one line.

But with her mind drifting back to her conversation with Killian just a few hours, sitting with in front of the dinner, philosophising about hope,
she could decipher what was engraved in the silver.

HOPE HAPPINESS HOME

She hadn't understood it then. Now, it seemed perfectly clear.

Sorry I'm leaving you on a cliffhanger, but otherwise this chapter would have taken another half a year to finish.

The continuation will come soon, I promise.