As he is sitting on the bunk with his head bowed, slumped right down into himself, Elsa can see the rope-burn on the side of his neck, still an angry purple against that near-translucent white skin, almost as fair as her own.

"I think you know that that was unworthy of you, Prince Hans,"

He doesn't respond, though she sees his lip curl at the evocation of the dignity of his birth. So much the better.

The reminder of his capacity for brutality is almost welcome- it never helped to let that skin draw her attention- the reminder that Hans was in fact barely older than she was, known everywhere as someone's kid brother (and so really shouldn't have been proposing to anyone without at least telling King Magnus first- she could only have imagined he was trying to tie Anna's reputation to his own before Magnus and herself could compare notes about him), or of the reports that he'd been a sickly child, and still burst out in red wheals on contact with hay. "I don't believe you were in that much distress. Any more than you'd done it out of unbearable remorse."

At long last he raises his head and smirked at her. Good. She's probably- probably- getting the real Hans Westergard, or- she is starting to suspect- the nearest thing that exists to a real Hans Westergard. Over the last year she's met so many.

The valiant gentleman who'd not realised that he'd taken the wrong approach and had only meant to save the country might have washed for a while, particularly when he excused his fierce manner as a desperation to avenge/save his dead/dying bride (part of the problem being the way the story tended to slip.) It might have been convincing if said bride had not, against everyone's expectations, been very much alive and, not incidentally, furious at his having deserted her.

(Actually it was Olaf, of all people, who had helped Elsa stitch together what had taken place- Olaf was not good at keeping up with events but he was certainly sensitive to Anna's moods. Strangely, Elsa could let go the sound of a sword unsheathing behind her head, but the picture of Anna- already dying- broken-hearted and bewildered, full of self-recrimination- for that, there were no excuses.)

Then she'd seen again the innocent, rather silly young man who had so endeared Anna in the first place, who had cracked open to reveal something monstrous- raging and threatening, insinuating obscene things about the queen's nature, about her sister, her father, her parentage, and notions about the provenance of her magic that the Duke of Westleton had never thought of.

(Westleton, meanwhile, had pleasingly proved both as pathetic and as stupid as he looked; he'd not liked Hans from the start for being too benevolent, but what had really stung him was having been cheated into condescending to pity and console the man over the loss of Anna.

"He was acting all alone! I had no thought, did not imagine for one moment that he had designs on your Majesty's crown! The man's a scoundrel! He's vicious, pernicious and meretri- pernicious, malicious, capricious and- vicious, terretric- he's a swine!")

That had been the first week.

A month later he'd been sent back again, preceded by a missive from King Magnus declaring that his brother had not committed his crimes in the Southern Isles but if Queen Elsa wished him to stand trial her neighbour would not hide him from justice.

Unfortunately Hans in the intermediary had found a new persona, who would go for days refusing food, had screaming nightmares and burst into tears of terror and anguish at unpredictable moments.

Autumn had been drawing in by then, the weather uncertain, bringing everyone indoors and rapidly closing the season for sailing. The castle should have been big enough for a single prisoner not to be shredding the nerves of everyone present, but a prince of a neighbouring kingdom- even if said kingdom seemed to have lost all interest in him- was not the sort of prisoner one could lock away and forget about.

Elsa herself didn't care for what she named to other people as 'German doctors', men who called themselves 'nerve specialists' and that she thought of, secretly, as 'crazy doctors'- not since Anna had been absent one day when Elsa had found herself all iced up, when Kai had panicked and called a doctor, who had summoned three specialists who had shone lights in her eyes, taken samples of her fingernails and asked her a lot of impertinent questions about everything from her cycle to the patterns of her ice and how she'd felt about Papa to where the name Olaf came from (she really had no idea.)

So she wondered if there was a stab of vindictive pleasure in inflicting Hans on each one in turn- though if so it had backfired, they were fascinated by him, and he'd seemed to enjoy the attention. Or at least he had until he had been sent back to his brothers on their advice.

"You realise," she says now, "it rather gives strength to what your brothers have been claiming?"

He sighs, a flicker in that unpleasant grin.

"I know. Poor… what was that word? unbalanced Hans. Some sort of sad monster, to be locked away."

"Oh, come now. Nobody used the word 'poor'."

That gets a brief flicker of amusement, which fits with how he'd been when he arrived yesterday- gently mocking, familiar, facetious, flirtatious even, entering the main courtyard like a strolling player ("I'm back! Any mail?"), and side-tracking Elsa's conversation like an old friend, complimenting every sign of returning health, congratulating her on Anna's engagement. It had distracted from the fact that he'd kept his greatcoat on, which even in the cells seemed rather hot for early summer; presumably that was where he'd been hiding the stolen ship's rope that he'd used to string himself up from the beams.

The greatcoat looked shabby, and the uniform under it- the same one in which he'd been pulled out of the harbour and arrested a year ago- is a dead loss- now grey, all the embellishments frayed, noticeably too big for him now.

Round, green, young eyes turn up at Elsa, dilated in the poor light, surprisingly blank, the expression oddly- unpleasantly- familiar- reminding her of cold iron shackles and desperate protestations to stop asking of her what she couldn't give.

Really, it should put her off these interviews altogether. Madness would seem to be catching (but who had caught it from who?)

"Is that why you did it?" she asks, as gently as she can.

"What? For fear of going back?" His hand covers the welt again; does his voice have a faint shiver of forced casualness in it, or is that deliberate? "I can't say I fancy it. Shut up for good, great-nephews uncertain whether I was real or something their parents made up to scare them…" A really visible shudder this time. Interesting.

"The invisible Hans?"

"Please. Don't." He turns and gazes abstractly at the window. "I thought doctors weren't supposed to talk about that kind of thing."

"They didn't. Anna talked about it. It was true, then, what you told Anna?"

He gives her his loveable-rogue smile.

"I lie a lot less than you think I do, you know. You've got to be strategic. One can't go round saying the grass is pink. People aren't completely stupid."

"Why d'you really do it, Hans?"

He waved a cavalier hand.

"You weren't going to. Neither you nor Magnus dared to put your name to it. It never looks good, does it, to hang a prince? I suppose I've got that left."

"You couldn't stand any more… anticipation?"

"Well done for not saying 'suspense'. I think I was just… bored of waiting, to tell you the truth."

"You hanged yourself out of boredom? "

"Well, it was something to do. And I'm not overly inclined to make Arandelle look good, under the circumstances. Letting people say you drove me to it…"

"A pyrrhic victory, Hans."

"True."

"You didn't really want to die, did you? Hung up in a cell like some common wretch, never mentioned in polite company again. That's not your style. You wanted me down here, all concerned and guilty and fussing over you."

"Now you're just making it all about yourself." Then suddenly he's sitting forward on the bunk, almost pressing against her, looking almost straight up at her, and Elsa strains her ears to make sure the guards are close outside- she doesn't really want to iceburn him again, not after last time when he'd carried on squeezing and they had to call Kristoff to unstick his fingers from her face- a bottle of vodka and a guard outside to hold back a screaming Anna- it hadn't been pleasant having to brush fragments of his skin off hers. "It could be that way, you know- perhaps I'm not noticing it, but… you know, you're a very beautiful woman, Elsa."

"You can stop that right away."

"I don't even mean it like that. You know how different you seem, these days? There's moments you glow, you know that? No, not literally, I mean in your expression, in your eyes, in your voice… I just can't imagine what it's like with you and your sister. I know you made yourself a living snowman the shape of a child, when someone made of snow was the only thing you could hold. There's something that comes off you the way that the cold used to do-"

He reaches out for her, and she almost doesn't skip back in time.

"Hans, this is the trouble with being a confirmed liar."

"Yes." He sighs. "Yes it is. Too late." He looks up again at the beams. "To hell with it…"

"Stop it. I didn't come down to fuss over you."

"Of course not-"

"I came down to sentence you."

"…oh."

Didn't see that coming, did you?

"I assume you know of the mines in Selkis Island?"

"Of course, your Majesty… I mean, Arendelle's a beautiful country, but I wasn't trying to steal it for its lovely glacier valleys."

Elsa declined to disagree, though she was faintly incredulous that Hans had such a concept as something being beneath stealing.

The mines had been lucrative. They might soon be again… if it were possible to work on them before the end of the summer.

"A bear," she explained. "Or it seems to be a single bear. Nobody knows where it makes its den, they can walk for leagues, swim too. It seems to be a single bear because it's so big, almost twice the usual size and completely unafraid of men. In fact it seems to have a taste for men. It came nightly until half the mining towns had to be abandoned. There's even stories that it wears armour, although that seems unlikely. But it is like something from a saga. Only this isn't a saga. Arandelle is a modern nation through those mines, as I'm sure you know well." She didn't wait for whatever answer that solicited, but when she looked, she need not have worried. Hans looked spellbound.

"Yesterday a mine foreman came to me- his men want to work, but they are not warriors. He cannot ask them to work under this horror. It came to me, it was like a monster, it needed Beowulf, or Sigurd… and then an image came back to me." She turned on him a smile that she had already had practiced.

She hadn't known what to expect.

She certainly hadn't expected to see a man suddenly so tremblingly, dazedly happy.

"You mean…"

"Yes."

"I… my sword…"

She went to the door.

"Bring it in, Aksel."

A guard came in, bearing…

"But… but it… you didn't."

Aksel approached the bunk, and offered Prince Hans the handle of the sword. He drew it with a hand that only trembled slightly; and if Elsa shuddered at the sound of it being unsheathed again, she barely noticed to see his gaze run up the re-forged blade.

And then his expression sag a little.

"This hasn't been done very well, you know."

"Sorry. It was the best we could do."

"He accepted, then?" Kristoff said, as she sat down to dinner. She must have looked sufficiently pleased that the subject spoke for itself.

"His freedom for the head of the great bear, yes. Without the bear attached. He leaves tomorrow, the boat will put him down and… we'll see."

Anna sniffed, and gave her attention over completely to dropping bread-pills in her soup. A princess really ought to have known better, but she didn't, and why should she?

Kristoff put his spoon down and gave Elsa one of his resigned-to-mad-royals looks.

"He's going to get killed, isn't he?"

"Very probably."

"He's going to get horribly killed. There won't be anything left to bury."

Anna made a sound like: "Hmph!", which everyone tactfully ignored.

"Of course he is. He's not going to die old in a sanatorium; he's going to make a completely mad last stand against a ravening monster. It's absolutely impossible… completely impossible… and yet…"

Elsa couldn't stop the smile from creeping up on her. Glowing, indeed.

Kristoff shook his head.

"Madness," he said. "It's catching!"