A/N: I cannot explain how I came up with this. I guess it happened because for some reason I watched Frozen and then White House Down one after the other. Heck, I don't even know where I'm going to go with this. All I know is that I came up with this idea, and now I'm going to work on it, build upon it, expand it until it all finally makes sense. I know how certain scenes are going to play out, how certain characters do certain stuff and that sort of thing. My only problem now is to connect all of those into one cohesive story. What can I say? My mind is full of stuff that needs to be taken out through writing. Not a bad deal if you ask me. And now, without further ado, I present to you Frozen Hearts, Burning Minds, Godfrey Raphael's addition to the Frozen fanon. As always, enjoy it, if you dare. – GR


When the continent entered into the 19th century, it was at war. The Hanseatic League, once one of the richest and most powerful nations in the continent, had been on a steady decline ever since it lost access to vital trade routes and merchant ports to the new great powers on the continent, Corona, Alba, and Avalor. The Hansa also lost many of its natural resources when it was forced to grant independence to the nation now known as Drusselstein. It resulted in the Hanseatic economy falling perilously close to bankruptcy, and for the first time since its inception, the Hansa had to suffer the indignity of having to import almost every resource that it needed from the now independent Drusselstein, as well as its old rivals Corona and Avalor. It was only through shrewd management and a large stock of gold and bullion in their treasury from the old days that the Hansa didn't go under, but as the years went on and new leaders took over the Hansa, the league's new leadership decided that there was only one way to haul their nation out of its doldrums.

And so the Hansa declared war on Drusselstein. Drusselstein's army was woefully unprepared to wage war, being composed of conscripts levied only on the eve of the declaration of war, but the same could be said for the Hanseatic Army, which had been left severely underfunded due the national state of near bankruptcy. But the Hansa held an advantage in the form of foreign officers, practically mercenaries, who were allowed to train the Hanseatic troops in exchange for gold and a larger percentage of the booty acquired in the coming war than was usually given to officers. The Hanseatics also struck first, allowing them to win a string of victories as they steamrolled through the Drusselsteiner Army, and the Hanseatics found themselves knocking on the door of Drusselstein's capital Teeneruusberg after only two months on the warpath.

Then Corona joined the war on Drusselstein's side. Corona had guaranteed the independence of Drusselstein after the latter's secession from the Hansa, meaning that the former now had to do anything and everything in its power to prevent any country (but especially the Hanseatic League) from conquering and annexing Drusselstein. And because Corona had joined the war, Corona's allies like Alba, Weselton, the Southern Isles, and even the tiny northern kingdom of Arendelle were dragged into the war as well. The Hanseatics, not wanting to be overwhelmed, called in their own allies in the form of the Polska-Vilno Commonwealth, the Osterlich-Ungarn Empire, and the Tsardom of Muscovia. Thus the war, now known as the War of the Double Alliance, engulfed the continent and plunged it into darkness, despair, and destruction.

The war had been declared in 1799. Now twenty-two years have passed, and the Hanseatic Army had finally been driven away from Teeneruusberg by a combined army from Drusselstein, Corona, Alba, and Weselton. However, the battles to drive the Hansa out of Drusselstein had exhausted the armies of both coalitions, meaning that said armies were no longer that interested in venturing further out of their country's borders. The exhaustion of their armies forced the leaders of the belligerent sides to negotiate a peace treaty. Corona, the Hansa, and the Osterlich-Ungarn Empire, whose armies had engaged in the lion's share of the battles for the majority of the war, and their leaders held negotiations in the Hanseatic city of Stettin in order to forge a peace treaty that would finally put an end to the warring on the continent. The peace that they negotiated was status quo ante bellum: no one would gain or lose any territory at the end of the conflict. Everything would go back to the way it was before. Everything would be as it was before the declaration of war in 1799. But because communications back in the day were much slower, the news of the brokered peace treaty took weeks to reach not only the nations involved in the war but also those men who were still fighting even when the war was already supposed to be over, and by the time the news did reach those on the frontlines, it came at a time when some of the armies had already rekindled their desire to fight.

The border between Drusselstein and the Hansa was a vast grassy plain bordered to the north by the sea and dense forests to the south. Twenty-two years ago, this plain was the site of the very first battle between the Hansa and Drusselstein. After sixteen hours of brutal fighting in a smoke-obscured battlefield where the line formations of the two armies eventually descended into bloody hand-to-hand fighting reminiscent of medieval times, ten thousand men from both sides lay dead or dying on the fields, and the shores of the sea had turned red with all the spilled blood.

Gottfried Neuer was a soldier for the Hanseatic Army, but he hadn't even been born yet when the Hansa and Drusselstein fought the Battle of the Plains of the Merchants. His father had fought in the battle, and he had survived to tell the tale to Gottfried, and now it was Gottfried's turn to fight for his country. Gottfried had already marched across the plains as part of an army twice, first when the Hansa had sent reinforcements to the besiegers of Teeneruusberg, and then when the Hanseatic Army had been forced to retreat back to their own territory by the Corona-led Grand Army of the Coalition. And then when word of the Treaty of Stettin putting an end to the War of the Double Alliance had finally filtered through to the troops guarding the Hanseatic border, Gottfried had then been ordered across the plain and into Drusselstein by himself to inform the Drusselsteiners of the end of the war.

Gottfried had been sent out to the border with a copy of the treaty, more specifically its most pertinent points about the end of the war, and an unloaded musket with a tattered and muddied white handkerchief tied to its ramrod. Gottfried Neuer had never once had to wave the white flag of surrender before, but now he had to do it, or else the Drusselsteiner soldiers would have shot him on sight. Not that he need to have worried, because on his way to the Drusselsteiner army camps, he came across a Drusselsteiner soldier who had been given the exact same orders that Gottfried had: inform the Hanseatic soldiers of the peace negotiated at Stettin. For both Gottfried and the Drusselsteiner, this was enough proof that the treaty was real and not some clever ploy by the other side to lure the armies into another battle.

That had been three days ago. As a soldier, Gottfried had learned how to march for miles and miles without stopping for food or rest. But that was in wartime, and now Gottfried knew that peace had returned to the continent. He had brought rations with him, of course, and he had accepted the portion of his rations that the Drusselsteiner messenger had offered him (and Gottfried had reciprocated the gesture as a sign of good faith), and Gottfried now found that his feet and legs were aching and protesting every single step that he made in his boots. Coming from a long line of shoemakers, Gottfried had managed to modify the standard boots that the army had given him upon his conscription so that they would fit him like a glove, and that they would fit his feet and his feet only, so he knew that the boots themselves had nothing to do with his feet and legs' complaints. And since the war was now officially over anyway, Gottfried decided to take a short break from all the walking and sat down on a large boulder at the edge of the plain.

His rock gave Gottfried a good view of the plain, of the battlefield where his own father had gone through a baptism of fire along with the rest of the Hanseatic soldiers who had fought here. He remembered the details of the aftermath of the battle that his father had told him when he was young as if he had heard them yesterday. The bodies of soldiers from both armies had lain together on the green fields, staining the grass red. Broken artillery pieces were scattered throughout the battlefield. But the moment in the story that had really stuck to Gottfried's mind was the image of the tattered, muddy, and bloody flag of the Hanseatic League lying alongside an equally battered and dirtied flag of Drusselstein. At such a young age, that image had already informed him that war and death did not discriminate between nations and peoples; dead was dead no matter your country of birth or even which country you fought for in the War of the Double Alliance.

"Ten thousand lives were lost that day, Gottfried," the jaded Joachim Neuer had told young Gottfried. "Ten thousand dreams and hopes and ambitions, all sacrificed on the altar of war because of the cockiness of our own leaders and their desire to save our nation from ruin." And it wasn't only the casualties, the victims of the Battle of the Plains of the Merchants who had had to give up their dreams and ambitions. Joachim Neuer had always dreamed of being a shoemaker like his father and his grandfather before him, and he had wanted to pass down the knowledge of his craft to his son Gottfried, but the war had forced both Neuers to the battlefields where there was simply no chance for the tradecraft to be passed down from father to son. And Gottfried himself wanted to be a good husband to his wife and a good father to his child, whom his wife was still carrying in her womb when Gottfried had been conscripted into the army. But something had changed within him in the three years that he had been fighting, and he now found himself wishing—no, more like wanting—for combat. Three years of constant marching and the occasional skirmish or even pitched battle had been enough to get Gottfried used to that kind of life, and he now found himself being afraid of what lay in store for him as he returned to civilian life—

A musket shot suddenly rang out of nowhere, and a small lump of grass and soil flew into the air to Gottfried's right. His reaction was immediate and instinctive. He jumped off of the rock where he had been sitting on and knelt down behind it. He lifted the musket in his hands up to his shoulder and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Gottfried then remembered that the musket had been deliberately unloaded so that there was no chance of Gottfried accidentally discharging the weapon into a Drusselsteiner body part while he was informing them of the Treaty of Stettin. He then saw the dirty and bloody handkerchief tied to the ramrod, and another idea formed in his mind.

"Wait!" Gottfried called out. He lifted his empty musket over his head with both arms and began waving around the white handkerchief. "The war is over! Peace has been negotiated!" he shouted.

Gottfried then stepped out of the cover of the large boulder and into plain sight. "The war is over," he repeated. "Peace has been negotiated."

Gottfried found himself standing in front of a large old stone farm house. The door had been bolted shut and the windows boarded up except for one near the roof. Three men, all wearing the black uniforms of the Drusselsteiner Army, lay dead in front of the house, blood seeping out of the large and ragged wounds in their chests and backs. Gottfried prayed to God that he would not join those hapless soldiers on the ground and in the afterlife.

A head popped out of the farm house's open window. "Neuer?" the man called out.

Gottfried had to blink twice to make sure that he wasn't seeing things. "Schwarz?" he shouted back.

"Hold on, man," Schwarz said. "I'll open the door. Get in here before the Drussis know you're here too!"

Gottfried ran for the door to the farm house, where he waited for Schwarz to open it. When the heavy wooden doors finally cracked open, Schwarz said to him, "Get in! Get in! Get in!"

Gottfried positively dashed into the farmhouse before collapsing into a pile of unswept hay as Schwarz closed the door. "Gott im Himmel, Neuer," he said. "I almost killed you back there. I thought you were one of those damned Drussis!"

"I'm wearing blue, not black, Schwarz," Gottfried replied. He then stood up from the pile of hay he had used to cushion his landing, punched Schwarz in the arm, and said, "It's damn good to see you again, Gefreiter, and alive at that. I thought you had been killed in Gimmelshtump."

"Soldat, I have survived the Siege of Teeneruusberg," Schwarz replied. "A poxy little village like Gimmelshtump isn't going to be the death of me."

Alois Schwarz, despite being ten years older, was one of the privileged few whom Gottfried Neuer could call his friend, and Schwarz was his closest friend of all. Osterlicher by birth and offered Hanseatic citizenship in an effort to retain his loyalty, Schwarz was one of the many foreign officers hired by the Hanseatic Army to train and lead its soldiers in the War of the Double Alliance. Alois Schwarz was capable and tenacious, qualities which were so often lacking in many of the other foreign officers in the Hanseatic Army, but despite those qualities, Schwarz had never been promoted higher than Gefreiter, or corporal. Schwarz had already confided that he had not accepted the promotions that had been offered to him because a higher rank might mean that he would no longer be able to fight on the front with the infantry, but Neuer suspected that Schwarz was merely covering up the fact that their superiors did not want Schwarz in their tightly-knit "inner circle".

"If you survived Gimmelshtump, Schwarz, then where have you been for the past ten months?" Gottfried finally managed to ask the Gefreiter.

"I was captured at the end of the battle, Soldat," Schwarz replied. "I only managed to escape three weeks ago, after I took advantage of the falling star to draw the guards' notice and flee the Drussis' prison."

"A falling star? What are you talking about, Schwarz?" Neuer asked. "Are you losing your mind?"

"No, no, I'm serious!" Schwarz said. "There really was a falling star! And I saw it fall near this very farmhouse! I tracked down the falling star for three weeks, even while the Drussis were tracking me down. I only crossed the border yesterday, and those three Drussis you saw in front of the farm followed me across. Good thing the owners of this place left behind lots of guns and ammunition. I got those Drussis good just before sunrise. They were like headless chickens once I shot the first of them! You should have been there to see it, Neuer. It was the first time I had managed to shoot three people so quickly! I had to run around the farmhouse picking up muskets and making those Drussis think that I had friends with me!"

"You killed those Drussis outside the farmhouse just this morning, Gefreiter?" Neuer asked disbelievingly. "Schwarz, the war is over! It has been since three days ago! The kings of the Hansa and Corona have already negotiated a peace treaty to put an end to this war. We're back to where we started. Nobody gains or loses territory. Everything will be as it was before the declaration of war."

A dumbfounded look soon crossed Schwarz's face. His mouth hung open in surprise and shock as he absorbed the news that the conflict that he had been fighting for the majority of his adult life had finally come to an end. "But… but what about my discovery?" he stammered. "The fallen star? The knowledge?"

"Seriously, Schwarz, what has happened to you in your time with the Drussis?" Neuer asked. "What are you talking about now? The knowledge from the fallen star? Have you become an occultist during your time in captivity?"

"No, Neuer, just—follow me!" Schwarz almost shouted. He then immediately headed for the farmhouse's back door, leaving Neuer no choice but to follow him. If the Gefreiter had indeed been driven crazy by his time as a captive of the Drussis, then Neuer had to keep an eye on him lest Schwarz try to attack him. He hadn't survived the War of the Double Alliance just to be killed by a madman who had once been a compatriot and a friend. Neuer took out the bayonet sheathed in his belt to protect himself in case Schwarz tried to attack him.

"It's just here, the knowledge, I know it," Schwarz mumbled as he dug through the hay bales stacked in the back of the farmhouse. "I hid it underneath here in case the Drussis got me, but they didn't, and now I can't find it! Where the hell is the knowledge hidden? Where—Aha! I have found it!" Schwarz exclaimed as he tossed aside entire bales with only his arms. Schwarz had always been a very strong man, stronger than even a pair of oxen. "Here it is, Neuer. The knowledge," he said to the other soldier as he shoved aside more bales to reveal a large black box the size of a furniture chest.

Neuer reached out to touch the box. It was made of a material that was smooth to the touch and sounded hollow when he knocked his fist against it. "This isn't a fallen star, Schwarz," was the first thing that came to his mind. That was how strange the object before him was to him.

"I know that it's not, Neuer, Schwarz nodded. "This box was inside the fallen star itself. And the knowledge that I keep talking about is inside this box."

"What is it, exactly?" Neuer asked. "The knowledge, I mean."

"It would have most certainly turned the tide of the war to the Hansa's favor," Schwarz replied. "But since, according to you, the war is now over, I see no immediate use for it. But if war shall come again to the Hansa, then it would prove to be very beneficial to the league. This will turn the Hanseatic League into the most powerful and most feared nation on this continent." Having said that, Schwarz took hold of the box's lid and heaved it open.

Gottfried Neuer didn't know what he was expecting to see inside the box of knowledge. A glowing ball or orb, perhaps, but certainly not the dozens of large scrolls of parchment and thick books that he actually saw inside the box. He took one of the scrolls and unfurled it. It showed a diagram for some kind of weapon for the common soldier, but that was all that he understood before everything became too technical and complicated for him to understand. "What in the world is this knowledge supposed to be, Schwarz?" he asked.

"I already told you, Neuer. This will turn the Hansa into the most powerful nation on the continent, and possibly even the world. Imagine, Neuer," Schwarz said, "an army whose soldiers can fire at least a dozen rounds at the enemy without ever needing to reload even once. Such an army would be unstoppable! And that army could be the Hanseatic Army, if only we can bring this knowledge to Konigsberg!"

Neuer rolled up the parchment that he had taken from the box and took another roll. This one appeared to show what looked to be a thin and slender artillery cannon protected by large metal plates on all sides. Yet even though he understood nothing to the thin writing scribbled all over the parchment and the diagram itself, Neuer slowly began to see just what exactly Schwarz had seen in these drawings that had convinced the Gefreiter that he was sitting on a treasure trove of knowledge. "This… This is going to revolutionize warfare as we know it," he muttered.

"Indeed, Soldat, indeed," Schwarz nodded. "And by the grace of God, this knowledge has been bestowed upon the Hanseatic League. All of this will help return our beloved nation to her old glory! In fact, it could even take her to newer and greater glories!"

"Yes, Schwarz, that is all well and good," Neuer said, "but how are we even supposed to take this box to Konigsberg? I know that you are a strong man, Gefreiter, but surely carrying this box on your back all the way to Konigsberg is going to break your back all the same?"

"We're in luck once again, Neuer," Schwarz said. "The owners of this farm left behind a few wagons for us to use to carry the knowledge to Konigsberg. I'm telling you, man, God really must want the Hansa to have this knowledge. Everything has fallen in place for us to carry the knowledge to our leaders. If only they knew how to use it, take advantage of it."

Neuer and Schwarz found the wagon that the Gefreiter had mentioned hidden in the stables beside the farmhouse, along with two horses which they hitched onto the wagon. Schwarz took out a few carrots and apples and used one to get the horses moving, and then once the wagon was on the move, Schwarz steered the horses onto the King's Highway, the road connecting the fifteen founding cities of the Hanseatic League with each other and to their nation's capital, Konigsberg. At the rate that the wagon was moving, they would arrive at Konigsberg by nightfall.

"Schwarz, would you mind if you dropped me off at my house along the way?" Neuer asked.

"Sure, Neuer," Schwarz replied. "Where do you happen to live, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Just in Saargarden," Neuer said. "It's right on the King's Road; you don't have to get off it at all. It's just a mile or so away from Konigsberg's limits."

"I know," Schwarz nodded. "We all marched past it on our way to Drusselstein, ja?"

They spent the rest of the journey talking about how Schwarz had managed to escape captivity in Drusselstein, along with what had happened in the Hanseatic Army in the past ten months. Finally, Gottfried found himself growing tired and sleepy, and he yawned, closed his eyes, and fell asleep almost immediately. By the time that Schwarz shook him awake, Neuer noticed that night had already fallen, and that they were already in Saargarden. Schwarz had even stopped the wagon right in front of Neuer's house.

"I think this is your stop, Soldat," Schwarz told him.

"Thank you for the ride, Gefreiter," Neuer said. He jumped out of the wagon and looked around his hometown before Schwarz handed him his empty musket back, the white handkerchief still tied to the ramrod. "I know that we're supposed to return our weapons to the barracks upon returning from the front," Schwarz said to him, "but you might as well keep it. With the knowledge that we have, those muskets could very well become obsolete, and your gun could become a museum piece."

"Good luck with the knowledge, Gefreiter," Gottfried said as they shook hands.

"And good luck to you too, Soldat," Schwarz repeated. He then urged the horses forward, and the wagon moved slowly onwards towards Konigsberg.

Gottfried Neuer turned around to face his house, a small two-story building made of stone and wood. It had been home to the Neuers since their ancestors had been awarded this land in Saargarden by the King of the Hansa for providing good quality shoes and boots to the army. Today, the Neuers' shoe shop had been closed for three years already, as Gottfried had been conscripted into the Hanseatic Army then in an attempt to reinforce the soldiers besieging Teeneruusberg during their ill-fated adventure into Drusselstein. Gottfried had always intended to reopen the shoe shop if he survived the war and returned to Saargarden with his arms and his legs, but Neuer had the feeling that included in the knowledge that Schwarz had found was some sort of machine that could produce more shoes than a single cobbler like him could. Maybe he could get a machine for his own shop, but then how much would a single machine cost? Perhaps if he could ask Schwarz about it…

Gottfried knocked on the door to his house. He heard someone rushing to the door and then unbolting the locks. Finally, the door opened, and Gottfried was finally face to face with his wife again. "Inge," he muttered.

"Götz," Ingrid Neuer muttered back as she covered her mouth in surprise, and then her emotions overcame her and she rushed forward to Gottfried and embraced him. "Oh, thank God you're alive, Götz!" she said through her tears.

"I know, Inge, I know," Gottfried whispered to her. "And I could say the same about you. How is our child?"

"We have a daughter, Götz," Ingrid said with a smile. She then untangled herself from Gottfried's arms and called out to someone in the house. A young girl, barely three years old, ran out of the house and towards Ingrid. "Her name is Selene," Ingrid told Gottfried. "She was born under the full moon, so I thought it was appropriate that I named her after the moon itself."

Gottfried squatted down so that he could look at the girl, his daughter, in the eye. She had his shiny black hair and Ingrid's golden brown eyes. The girl suddenly scurried behind Ingrid's skirt when Gottfried drew near her, but Ingrid was immediately there to calm her down. "He's your father, Selene," she told the girl. "Say hello to your Poppa!"

Selene peeked out from behind Inge's skirt to look at Gottfried. Finally, she ventured out of the protection of her mother's clothing and walked slowly towards Gottfried. "Poppa?" she asked.

"Yes," Gottfried nodded. "It's Poppa."

Selene hesitated a little, as if trying to digest what the man in front of her had just told her. And then she ran to Gottfried and hugged him with a shout of "Poppa!" Gottfried returned his daughter's hug. He didn't even bother with fighting back the tears that were welling in his eyes. Forget the Hanseatic League; this was why Gottfried Neuer had fought. His wife and his daughter, his family; the two most important people in his life. Nothing else except they mattered to him now.

He was home.


A/N: Since this is the first chapter in a new work, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a review or a comment telling me what you think and so I know how you think I should go with this. Oh, and if you do like it, do leave a follow or a favorite to keep yourself up to date. It only takes a few minutes of your time to do, and it lets me know that people do indeed read my works. Thanks! - GR