Author's Note: What? Helsa? Really?

Hans is a very interesting character, and yet I haven't done a damn thing with him. Not really. This is me stumbling through some of his thought processes in an AU where Onion Elsa (but I'm just calling her Elsa here instead of another name as I generally do, and I think you'll guess why) and Hans…well. I wouldn't call them a couple, but…

The title was given to me, so a quick thank you to the one responsible for it.

Content Warning: This is a bad relationship. Nothing particularly bad happens onscreen, but it's still a bad relationship.

Untamed

She was ignoring him again. By now he was used to it.

For the past hour she had stood at the balcony, watching the stars. The night air was quiet, empty of hurry, bustle or sound but for the slightest whisper of wind as it brushed its cold fingers across his face on its curving path around the mountain.

The real sound came from below, from the depths of the palace that clung like an engorged leech to the side of the peak. For days now the cavernous dungeons had rung with the sound of growls in the dark, heavy footfalls, and the occasional silence interspersed with wet tearing.

She seemed to enjoy stargazing. He could invent, in his mind, several reasons for this; perhaps she thought that despite her solitude, she and her sister still watched the same Moon; perhaps she thought to steal it right from the sky and dash it to pieces. He could appreciate madness on that scale. At least if she were mad she would still be human.

Unfortunately, she had proven herself a good deal more than that, and at such an inopportune time, too.

"Looking for omens?" he asked, and she flinched - a moment of truth - before breaking out of her trance and jerking her head towards him, as though she'd forgotten he was there. She, too, had learned to be outwardly docile over the years, but only well enough to fool her naive family; his practiced eyes had seen that wide-eyed, innocent seeming expression looking back at him from the mirror far too often to be caught up by it now.

She knew he'd been there, an unwilling witness to her untamed form. The ice, spun into long, sturdy lines that covered his arms and legs was at her beck and call and so, of course, was he.

"No, not tonight," the errant queen responded as she turned back to the brilliant view. The last time he had seen the stars so bright, stretching from one horizon to the other, he had heard the creak of the deck's floorboards and the crash of the waves against the hull, basking in the smell of the sea as it sunk into his skin. The air had tasted like freedom.

Now it tasted like blood, that thick musk of metal that assaulted his nose daily. She was wise to place herself well out of reach of the smell, and cruel to have kept him back in a dark corner, helpless to do more than just glare at her back and her scandalous excuse for a dress, watching her like some beast waiting to pounce.

She probably found the idea poetic. He would taunt her for that, too, but he didn't want his tongue frozen. It was the only weapon he had left, and yet it had worked its wonders on her. It was the only reason he was still alive. That, and her underlying guilt.

He would have to work on that more. He had been hesitant in the beginning, startled by the disaster, hesitant and weak, and had paid the price for it.

Him, and others.

Hans tried again. "I don't suppose you'll find many omens written in the stars, anyway." The prophecy hadn't been, existing instead as just a funny little whisper, a callback to an older, more superstitious time, when monsters and man lived side by side and man invented magic to comfort himself in the night.

Its sudden revelation as unmistakable truth had been a most unpleasant surprise.

"Though their study is to be commended," he added.

"I've always been fond of Arided," Elsa said, completely disregarding what he'd said. He allowed this slight, as it meant that she was talking, which was what he needed her to do. Whether it was to lower her guard or to reveal information in a moment of thoughtless candor it didn't matter. His hands, forced to his sides, itched to hold a weapon, but he could wait. He would have to.

She did not wear her crown. Did she think she hadn't earned it? The bodies were evidence to the contrary. But then the previously innocent tended to be sentimental about such things.

The flutter of her eyelashes was the only sign of movement. "It's such a bright star."

"And yet weaker than Pollux." He tilted his head, thinking, pressing his eyebrows together for her benefit. She could see him, if she so desired, but he could see little more than her silhouette from his position, a dark outline against a background blazing with stars, the tops of her bare shoulders gleaming in the moonlight. The only other light came from her eyes. He wasn't sure if it was ordinary reflections or if her thrice-blasted magic was leaking out of her from every direction. "I forget; which constellation is that...oh." He smiled. "Gemini, I remember now, silly me. Who could forget such close brothers?"

Her eyes flashed with hot anger briefly before cooling. She had not allowed herself to lose control since his and her sister's wedding, though with every barb he worked under her skin he saw more of her tumultuous nature, flaring into sudden and wild existence for the briefest of moments before fleeing back to safety, cowering behind well-enforced mental walls and false, foreign bravado.

"There are others here who might enjoy your tongue more than me," she responded as she returned her gaze to the horizon.

A shudder ran up his spine. He couldn't tell if was unpleasant or not. The thought was disconcerting.

"Perhaps, but you like my honeyed words," he said, keeping his voice just on this side of teasing. She did not answer him: she hated to be reminded of her weakness. She seemed to think that years of imprisonment within her gloves, her room, and her mind could be overcome by sheer force of will. He supposed it was understandable. She had lied to everyone else, why shouldn't she lie to herself as well? And yet for all her determination, he could see through the crowing about her powers as she worked her magic to brew a storm that would strike Arendelle down with one mighty blow, the capricious delight in holding him hostage and away from his new wife, the screaming silence that befell them when he guided the conversation over the edge and into the abyss that was her precious little sister; he could see through to her heart, a heart that was shriveled with fear and jealousy and longing.

Had things been different he might have seen this earlier, exploited it sooner.

As it stood, he had foolishly believed the tales of the frigidity of the queen incumbent and chosen the easier match. He had not bothered to waste time wooing her, content to hold back, sharpening his fangs behind a mask made out of a joyful and innocent young girl.

He still wasn't sure what Elsa saw in Anna. The girl was sweet in a thoughtless, painful way, believing that if she was easily made happy then it shouldn't be difficult to give that emotion away. Anna loved unashamedly and without a care, showering him with affection and praise to the point of smothering him in her efforts to make him just as exuberant as she. Such qualities were wonderful to have in one's dogs, but not in one's royal wife.

Perhaps that was part of her madness; Elsa saw herself as a prisoner in a cage and Anna, being on the outside, was automatically to be desired. He'd have to lower his estimation of her if it were truly that simple an obsession, but he couldn't quite bring himself to settle on that for the reason why she refused to hear an ill word about her sister to the point of threatening violence. There had been too many instances where she had lingered with guilt and doubt swirling in her unseeing eyes for him to mark it down as "lonely need".

No, she turned her gaze on someone else for those purposes.

Their unspoken truce was split in two by a piercing scream. It shot up from below and straight through him, dripping with desperation and terror. The seconds oozed by as the cry rang on and on, spiraling and cracking into a long high note tinged with panic that finally cut off so suddenly he could be sure what had just happened, right down to the anatomy.

This time his shudder was definitely not pleasant.

She swallowed and drew her arms around herself. She didn't feel the cold. But try as she might she could not free herself entirely from that thin string that tethered her to her humanity.

The fact that she did nothing, then, was something to be admired, but only from afar.

He did not have that option.

"They will keep demanding more...have you any left?" he asked, watching as she shifted farther away from him, his words darting out and hitting their mark. "I brought a full battalion. But they've grown hungrier; I must tell you how impressive that is. Still, at the rate they're going it might be only a week left. Will that be enou-"

"Of course it will," she snapped. She paused, her shoulders rising with her breath. The wind had died the moment one of his caged men did, so he could just barely hear the gentle tinkling of her dress as the ice crystals knocked against each other. It sounded like a windchime, heard far away. It was the one instance of her power that he was sure was truly hers; everything else, from the castle upon the mountain to her constructs had been tainted with a belligerence that seemed too childish for her years. Or perhaps it suited her exactly, and he was giving her too much credit. But he didn't wish to underestimate her. Not a third time.

"It will have to be." Her words were so soft he wanted to press them against his face and breathe in the worry that gnawed at her, taking it within himself; to comfort her or to understand her fractured soul better, he could not be sure.

Their situation was an odd reversal. Once, she had been locked in step as she led her boisterous and excitable sister down the aisle while Hans beamed mere feet from the altar, fighting back giddiness while his men waited in the wings for his signal. A day of joy ruined by an attack on a defenseless young queen, but the good Prince Hans would be there to console his new wife and plan a better future.

It had begun as he had planned, but it had not ended that way. His carefully concealed secret laid bare before her blazing eyes while her own hidden talents had been on full display, quivering with power and smeared with blood. If Hans had cared for Anna, he might have felt a twinge of regret, seeing the shock and horror on her face as she took in the carnage, but his attention had been caught by the presentation of an unexpected variable into his previously pristine and foolproof plans, one that had torn them all to shreds and sent them flying off into oblivion as he scrambled for replacements both tactical and physical. His sweet words had done the trick when he'd asked a blushing princess for her hand; his hardened, determined speech was what the men needed to gird them for the battle they expected to find when they caught up to the queen, who had vanished as soon as her powers came to light.

The "fight" could not have been called that. Hans' belief in the power of conventional forces against magical ones had failed him so soundly it made him lie awake at night, listening hard. The sounds that bubbled up from below, like a noxious stew, were unnerving, but the silence was worse. It marked one more day closer to the end, and he was running out of time to figure out what made her tick.

Besides the mention of her sister, but he meant "tick" in the figurative sense, not the literal one.

She made a sharp gesture and his legs began to move, the ice joints mysteriously soundless when they flexed. He was brought beside her. It was a strangely equal position, given their individual freedom, but he understood that Elsa found freedom to be something as alien and incomprehensible as Sanskrit and wide, glistening oceans made of hot sand. Her first taste of it had culminated in her crafting herself another cage; larger and more ornate that her previous one, but a cage nonetheless, from which she planned to witness Arendelle's destruction. Her storm, contained in the pulsing snowflake that hovered over the mountain peak, was nearing its fruition; soon her bastard child would be released and her pent up fury would be allowed to screech down the mountain and sink its cold fangs into every living thing that it touched. Her indiscriminate destruction was to be expected: as far as he knew, there was only one in the capital she sought to keep safe, and Anna had been unwillingly convinced to head for the country while her husband sorted things out.

He was more irritated than ashamed that he had failed to do so.

Yet.

"What do you see?" she asked, waving her hand at the stars.

She wouldn't care how he responded, if he did so without touching on certain subjects. She never cared, as he'd discovered, because she preferred her mockeries of conversations to the silence that tormented her. He existed to fill the spaces within her that cried out; she did not care how he did it.

Again, he could almost find himself intrigued by this. Her ill attendance to others' needs was brought on by a combination of general ignorance surrounding social interaction and a foolish adherence to the idea that to present oneself as superior that meant one had to be unapproachable and untouchable. His own disregard for others had been something he had honed over the years, like sharpening a blade that had been dull from birth but needed constant care to remain sharp and useful. It was a talent he prided himself in, not a symptom.

And yet here they were.

Now this, he might actually call poetic, because poetry was best when it was unearthly, unknowable beauty mixed with a tragedy so acute he could taste it with every scant scent of copper wafting through the air.

He broke through his thoughts. "I see you."

She gritted her teeth; he heard them creak. "And just what do you see there?"

He turned his head. She was not looking at him, staring stubbornly out at the view. Her thin eyebrows were downturned, matching her lush lips, a wrinkle or two lining her usually pert nose. Her hair, hacked to pieces in the assassination attempt, had recovered somewhat, and she had made it into a look that was entirely her own; part savage, part grace, completely out of place on a queen's head but well suited to her own.

Because Elsa was not really a queen, nor a woman. Whether she was more than the former or less than the latter he couldn't be sure. He suspected that whatever option he chose she would believe the other.

He smiled. He had learned to make it seem genuine. "A pretty little monster."

"A monster, me?" She laughed. It probably comforted her on some level. She certainly wasn't actually amused. Her laughter rang hollow and worn, equipment that had been packed up and put into storage years ago and was now forced to perform again, but the wood was old and rotten and the rope was wearing thin. "I think you have me confused with yourself."

"Of the two of us," he reminded her, "only one is a murderer."

"And yet of the two of us," she countered, "only one of us intended to do harm."

"Make that two of us," he said ever so sweetly, nodding his head at the snowflake, pulsing like a second moon as it counted down the time until its use. The other destructive magic prowled below, kept quiet with feedings as necessary. The cage ceiling that marked the boundary between Elsa's domain and those of her pets was made of ice; he wondered if Elsa's fear would thicken it as she waited or if it would fail in a single moment, prompting immediate action for fear of falling to the very beings she had created. All it would take would be the right push, verbal or otherwise, and this whole mess would come crashing down upon them. Hans had no intention of dying for the sake of a country he had only just now known to be his own, so he would have to ruminate on this idea for some time.

Hopefully not a week or more. Closer to five days, if his mental calculations were correct. But she needn't know that.

She drew a hand over her eyes, making an exasperated noise in the back of her throat. "Must you insist upon saying things that would make me want to freeze your mouth shut?"

Of course. Others might have wished for Hans to tempt them with promises of peace, adoration, and love springing into being like a flower arising from the snow, but he had listened, and he had watched, and he had understood.

Elsa did not want to hear that she was loved; her reaction would be catastrophic. To be loved and to be rejected was to exist in two mental states at once that were at war with one another, something her fragile being could not endure, weakened as it had been by the daily grind of knives against her skin as they sought to make her more perfect, more divine, the end result being a mask worn down by time that just barely covered her trembling and tired heart.

What Elsa wanted to hear was that she was hated. And Hans excelled at telling people those things that they wanted to hear.

"That might make things difficult for us," he said. "Perhaps you should retire. You're exhausted."

"Yes," she admitted. "And you will be once I'm done with you."

Hans outwardly winced and smiled inwardly.

With a snap of her fingers he was marching jerkily to her tempo as she led him towards the centermost room, protected on all sides by ice walls so thick they kept out the noise of the writhing masses below, so thick that they kept out the very world so that Elsa might have an inner sanctum.

One that she enjoyed violating. Again, oddly poetic, but he could not fault her for this one.

Perhaps she believed she was doing Anna a favor in light of his betrayal. Perhaps this was to prove that she was still part woman, not quite god, a being of the flesh. Perhaps it was merely the desperate, aching embrace of someone as they reached out for whomever they could, not wanting to be alone in the dark to their thoughts.

As she walked with him over to the bed, the doors swung shut of their own accord. The lock twitched to the side and ice grew over it.

The ice surrounding his arms and legs smoothed out and flowed down his body, taking with them the simple garments he had been given to wear, leaving him bare.

Elsa's dress shivered and then shattered into a thousand shards that crinkled as she nudged a bare toe through them.

They stood there, bathed in darkness, two naked predators glistening with promise.

"God, I hate you," he breathed, his gaze trailing over her curves and her softness and her selfish, shared need all at once.

She smiled. It was all teeth. "Show me."

And in that moment, Hans loved her.