We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"Frozen Again: 'Faith, Hope, and Love"

Act I

Chapter 13

"Adrift"

The befreckled orange haired girl closes her eyes hard as she tries to soak in every last ray of sunlight of the waning sunset playing copper tones on her head over this northwest section of her home country of Norway.

She had never traveled this far north before. Heck! She had never traveled much further than Arendelle, save for that fateful journey to bring Elsa home and save their kingdom—their home—from the Eternal Winter of 1849.

And then there was the honeymoon.

Oh! Those glorious five days of wedded bliss, with just herself and Kristoff and Sven (Mostly Kristoff—Sven always wandered off at opportune moments.) that had taken Anna back along the route she and her new husband had first traveled and met and fell in love with one another upon that adventure two years ago—when she had nearly died to save her beloved sister.

And she would do every bit of it over again in a split second, without a single, solitary otherwise thought.

Ookay, maybe minus the mistakenly falling for that smooth-talker, good looking Mr. Westergaard.

Anna wrinkles her cute little nose at the sour thought of that rotter ne'er do well roiling about in her head.

What a jerk! Why did I think I liked him?! Why am I even wasting a thought on him now?! He's not a sweetie pie at all, like my big, cuddly bear, Kristoff.

Anna, despite being on her best, most serious behavior, still couldn't hold back a delirious drool for her rugged, muscle-bound fella, as she peeks one shut eye open over the back of his head where he sat in the sled's driver front seat.

Sigh…Isn't even the back of his head so manly…? And butter-fully gorgeous...? Sigh…

Princess Anna obviously didn't agree with the trolls here about him being an 'un-manly blonde'.

"Has it been ten minutes yet, Anna?" Elsa's high-pitched, anxious voice belied her impatience to return to her own new adventure that Anna was only made half-aware of the whole story along this day-long trip so far.

Elsa had carefully explained, in much detail, all the ins and outs of the secret mission's goings on — from Eugene's thievery of Arendelle's holy treasures to herself and Rapunzel's disguises as males to board Captain Rustung's Valborg craft, to locating the pirate ship and covertly boarding it — only to be unsanctimoniously thrown off into the ocean where some under the sea magic she couldn't explain saved her life. Every little detail of Rapunzel, Pascal, Olaf, and her own incredible, exciting and dangerous foray on the high seas she told them about as explicitly as she could recall.

Although Kristoff, who was all the while keenly listening from his quiet station as designated sled driver to Elsa's far flung, stimulating tale and a glued to the pulse pounding tale Anna's intrigued peppering of questions, had a sneaking suspicion at each of the queen's stories' exciting twist and turns that a vital piece of the puzzle was being left out.

And that causes him some concern, for as he had personally found out these past two years, living very close quarters to them and visiting every second of day practically, no pair of sisters could be more honest, open or closer with one another than Anna and Elsa of Arendelle.

I wonder what she's holding back now. And why? I wonder if Anna noticed…

"Whoa!"

Guess not.

Kristoff exchanges a glance with quizzical Sven who obeys his driver's 'whoa' command and pauses his trotting ride when a closed eyed Anna out of nowhere, suddenly leaps up to maul a startled Kristoff from the backseat she and Elsa were sharing a lounge back to soak up the last of the sun's warmth for tonight after the thrilling storytime was over.

"Ummm…Nah, it hasn't been ten minutes yet, has it, Kristoff?" Anna had even less sense of time than she had decorum, as even the sinking sunset disagrees with her wacky inner clock.

"It's actually been twenty minutes." Kristoff struggles through Anna's pawing arms around his be-crystaled troll necklace neck as he gives a glance to the watchpiece attached to it that some Swiss Archduke royal had given to he and Anna as a wedding present.

"Anna, I thought I felt the sun no longer on my face." A smirking reprimanding Elsa opens her voluminous eyes, their daily 'sunning' as Anna so dubbed the nutritional Vitamin D rich warmth, for both sisters' body and soul regiments, was long over.

"Oh, yeah. Oops! Sorry, Elsie, but we both needed a proper recharge." As boisterous baby sister Anna snaps open both her smiling eyes up at Kristoff's bemused turned face, she lands a smack lipped kiss on his cheek, causing him to blush deeper than the cranberry to crimson streaks tracing the dusky sky.

She honestly had no idea what her silly name game was doing to her elder sister's heart.

For the last person to call her that affectionate, albeit 'cowlike' diminutive could be in grave danger on that pirate ship, even as she and Anna were speaking frivolously right now.

And that frightening though upset her more greatly than she dared to imagine it would.

"Kristoff, how long until we arrive at the ship's dock?" Her tone all business, Elsa could look Kristoff in the eye now that she was wearing one of Anna's more modest dresses befitting a regal queen, though 'reindeer king' Kristoff had quite a lot to live down in his own disrobed early morning embarrassment.

Without even turning to face her, with pants securely pulled on, the big, burly blonde bashfully blushes before blowing breath between his lips in a low whistle.

"I'd say, at least another full day's travel to get to the far north port of Trondheim. It's almost 200 kilometers north of here. But the Kristiansund port that's not quite so…busy, is only a five hour trip for Sven—maybe even four hours or less if we take off some of the excess weight from the sled." Kristoff calmly states, his ice cutting vocation making it his business to know where the pertinent ports for travel and shipping goods and services along the Norwegian coastline.

"Great! Here you go, Sven." Headstrong Anna jumps up at her husband's words of wisdom, beginning to randomly chuck over the side of the sled some 'excess weight' in the form of wedding presents, clothes, and a great deal of—save for the last remnants of kransekake cake. of course—the remainder of their already dwindled food supplies without a second thought.

"What?! Anna, wait! Our clothes! Oh, not the food supplies, too!" Conservative Kristoff, in total frustration laments his gung-ho wife's thoughtlessness of essential future needs.

"It's all gotta go! Gotta make the sled lighter for Sven." She scoffs in Kristoff's face as he is only able to salvage one bag full of change of clothes.

Thank goodness this one's got the clean underwear!

And a day or two of immediate supply of food for now the three of them.

"Don't worry, I kept all of Sven's carrots. We've gotta keep him fully fueled so he can keep going, fast! Step on it, Sven!" Anna calls forward, as the obedient reindeer knew who was boss on this royal ice deliverer's sled by now, Day Five.

"Does this weigh much?" Anna pauses her tossing away anything unnecessary in her inexperienced eyes, chucking valuable ice and mountain climbing tools stored in the back hatch of the official 'Ice Harvester's' sled overboard with abandon, much to Kristoff's head-holding chagrin, to ask Elsa's opinion on his lute guitar.

Elsa was amused at her little sister's feisty personality that would jump recklessly headfirst into any dangerous situation if someone she loved asked her to.

And she loved no person more in this world than her sister—her hero, her forever friend.

Kristoff gives a relieved sigh as Queenly Elsa bestows her shaken head to halt his poor musical instrument's flagrant death sentence disposal out the sled door by the cavalierly heedless girl he now claimed as his headstrong—and at times, foolhardy—wife, who was always impetuously spontaneous in her love for others.

And that's why he loved her all the more.

"Okay, we're pretty emptied out back here, Sven. So move out, big fella. Port Kristiansund, ho!" Crawling over the front seat, and leaning over it like a madwoman with eyes wild, Anna sings out merrily, thoroughly enjoying the taste of adventure again—a bit too much in Kristoff's lovestricken eyes, as holding on for dear life, he gently reaches back to secure Elsa in her backseat with the ingenious new 'strap belt' he invented for Anna's reckless driving, to hold down any poor passengers or precious cargo when his girl was at the helm.

He then physically lifts his enthusiastic new partner who was squirming rebelliously, back over the sled divider she had clambered over, to strap her in the backseat as well at the sled's over 80 kilometers per hour high speed that most other 'delicate' females would cringe in fear at.

Elsa gives Kristoff a wan smile as he turns back to attend to Sven, for both knew that Anna was not one of those females.

For giggling Anna was the type of vibrant girl to embrace every moment—and sparkle in every second of its topsy-turvy path, to make everyone else's world around her shine a little brighter for the journey beside her pure energy as Sven picks up speed.

Elsa shares a grateful smile with her, glad she had finally come to the realization that she couldn't do this on her own. She needed her little sister/best friend more than the very air she breathed.

"Oh!" Losing all that breath, Elsa suddenly clutches at her chest. Her heart, her fingertips frost over at the extreme painful fear gripping her entire body. And it wasn't at all due to Sven's high speed trek.

"Elsa?! Are you all right?" Anna abandons her merry sled tossing overboard madness to, for once, sit down fully in the backseat beside her nearly convulsing sibling, after unstrapping herself. (Poor Kristoff bargained for a disobedient firebrand of a wife, it seemed.)

Anna wraps a protective arm around the paler girl, so struck with cold reverberating from inside her heart that there were puffs of icy smoke emanating from the ice queen's parted mouth, even on this warmest of summer nights.

"Elsa?! What's wrong?! It's okay—I'm here! I'm here! Feel the sun! Feel the sunshine!" Anna hugs her close, rocking Elsa back and forth with her own warmth until Elsa begins to calm down and her temperature begins to normalize.

"I don't know, Anna…but I'm scared. I don't know why. I'm so scared." She answers truthfully on Anna's compassion chest with icy tears forming in her eyes, as the older sibling gains strength and stability from her little sister's innate warmth against whatever cold fear just knocked on her heart's door. Anna hugs her all the tighter.

Glancing back at his rear view at the tender scene of sisterly love, Kristoff silently pulls Sven's reins in that certain way the intelligent reindeer understood to mean to race forward even faster than his already speeding 80 kmph towards their shoreline destination of Kristiansund and whatever chaos awaited them there…

"Helloooo? Helllooooo?! Hellllllloooooo?! Is anybody out there?" The voice emanating from within the metal aluminum canister bobbing up and down upon the sea's foaming waves was at first unsure and quiet, but it was growing even louder with every bellowed greeting hale from his frosty lips.

"Is anybody out there?! Oh no, no, no! I'm all alone! Boo hoo! 'Nobody loves me…' This is the end…'Nobody loves me at all…'" A crooning Olaf begins to feel claustrophobic in more ways than one as his gainingly full escape pod from his snow flurry was beginning to be less and less buoyant. The need for air was fortunately not an issue, so it was just the weight problem that Cousin Rapunzel did account for by someone having to be there to open the small pod's top hatch and scoop out the excess snow piling up about now.

"Ohh, somebody loves you, little one!" A sweet, melodic voice in her most maternal tone sings out the reply that Olaf had been dejectedly beginning to believe would never come to his frosty ears again. But the rocking waves beneath her small lifeboat that Hans had managed to lower earlier had caused an exhausted up all the anxious night before Rapunzel to be lulled into a sleep on the peaceful waves.

"I'm right here, Olaf. Shhhh! I'll pull you in." Rapunzel utilizes the fabric rope lead she and Olaf had been industriously braiding together for strength and had secured one end to his metal mini craft, while the other end had been tied around Rapunzel's waist as if it were the long braid of hair she had once upon a time ago, again.

She carefully tugs the handmade cord until Olaf's watertight floating device is close enough for her to lift out of the water and into the small lifeboat that Hans had placed her in, with assurances that the two members of the Pearl Lady would neither miss nor seek out the miniscule craft in the darkness.

Besides, he stated he had plans to 'incapacitate' the vessel so they wouldn't be able to give chase, even if it dawned on them to try.

Rapunzel had totally trusted the man with her life and with saving Eugene's life as well because she sensed that Elsa cared deeply for him still, the romanticist in Rapunzel believed. And caring on one side was worth giving a second chance on the other.

Besides, he has pretty eyes…And a good chest…and a really, really tight backside…

Sorry, Eugene!…really…But I am a girl and I couldn't help but notice while I was bandaging him up. I have to say Elsa's got excellent taste in men. I guess that runs in our family.

A dizzy Rapunzel tries to keep her thoughts light and fluffy, like her Eugene does, generally when he was distressed.

Oh, Eugene! Please be safe! I hope I did the right thing sending Hans to help you. But it's always better to have a friend when you're in trouble, right?

Her unsure uncertainty was trying to prove her earlier decision and the tall redheaded man's input on her and Olaf's ship departure timing—not to mention his knowledge of the small lifeboat she told him she knew how to row. After all she'd seen Eugene do it so many times at Corona's annual Magic Lantern festival. How hard could it be to row a little boat?

After opening up Olaf's escape pod's secret door—for she was the one who designed it—and his proud ice slurry cloud pops out, Rapunzel shoves her chilled hands in the overlay of snow packed tightly and unburies the little snowman. She lifts him up and up, piece by piece and puts him back together until Olaf was fully reassembled to stand in the lifeboat beside her.

"Okay, Olaf. There's the pirate ship we came from," Rapunzel begins to explain, pointing first to the wobbly masted and canvas shredded Pearl Lady, where they could just make out the two figures scurrying back and forth. Her wishful eyes hoped the rhythmically stumbling redhead was Hans pretending to have developed a limp and Eugene the tall, tall dark one, who seemed to be lifting a third body to toss overboard.

But deep inside, she knew it wasn't them.

No matter how hard I wish it to be…

"Job! It sickens me to look at him. Rid me ship of ze dead body weight of zat damnable double-crossing fool, who took insufferable advantage of Houtebeen's goodly nature one time too many! Me poor, poor Pearl! Did zat bad, naughty klootzak hurt you, me lady?" From the short distance she had managed to row from the disabled pirate ship, Rapunzel could just about make out the ruthless captain's harsh raspy words as they cut through the still, moonless dark of night, while he shouts multilingual curses too foul and course for a princess' shocked ears, even after five years living beside a not always so smooth-tongued Flynn Rider and the oft-visited roughhousing gang at the Snuggly Duckling, full of rugged men's language.

"Curses be upon ye dead rotting corpse, for ze betrayal, ye mangy cur! Davy Jones locker be too good for ye, insolent silk-wrapped swine! Throw him overboard and have done with ze scoundrel!" Houtebeen fiercely yells as he continues to stroke his beleaguered Pearl's handicapped mast and carved up sails.

For her part, Rapunzel, with wide eyes wild with dread, rows as rapidly as she could back towards the adrift vessel at breakneck speed.

"Aye, aye, Cap'n."

Continuing to row blindly towards the ship, Rapunzel watches the dark first mate lift the lifeless man's body over the deck's edge in preparation to toss the traitorous miscreant overboard as per his rapacious Captain's vicious orders.

In those few moments, Rapunzel could've sworn the large Caribbean native named Job directed his big, soulful eyes across the dark waters squarely to connect with hers below in the solitary flicker of the moonlight between the thick cloud cover. There was an inscrutable look of some small degree of—was that compassion?—on his normally foreboding big brute of a man swarthy features.

Rapunzel watches a surprisingly quick thinking Olaf, send his ice flurry cloud to frost coat the small boat's front bow and keel so as to let the wooden craft slice more fluidly through the choppy waters as they near the Pearl Lady's aft side. Job was just about to intentionally drop the young man's still non-moving form not too many nautical yards from where Rapunzel and Olaf were quickly rowing with all synchronized speed.

SPLASH!

"What of this one?" Job's low baritone could be heard bellowing above, where he prods an unconscious Eugene's gut with the toe of his black leather boot.

"Houtebeen not be done wiz zis bilgeous blackguard yet. Prepare to disembark ze Pearl Lady, Job. Me knows another route to our final destination wizout her, poor lass." Sensitive ears attempt to listen in to the quieter conversation taking place on the ship's main deck, directly above her small craft, as Rapunzel and her snowman partner silently try not to be noticed when they pull the lifeboat alongside the floating facedown body, just tossed from above.

With a tearful, entreated prayer, the brown-haired girl reaches over the boat's edge to flip over the faceless man who was floating on the dark waters surface…

"Oh!" She breathes a tiny sigh of relief when familiar fingers and blurry strained eyes, even in the pitch darkness, sensed and felt it was not her beloved Eugene's body lying there, lifelessly within her shaky grip, as she and Olaf, with Pascal's help, pull him in with the aid of the lasso rope they had disattached from her waist ro go round him.

But her newfound relief was mixed with some anxiety. She hoped her own fanciful scheme worked concerning this other brave man—for all their sakes.

Please, God, let it have worked!

Rapunzel literally goes down on her knees and prays, as she'd never prayed before, in the dark of night in this small dinghy craft. Her eyes tightly clamp shut as preparations on the other side of the Pearl Lady were noisily underway.

She and Olaf and Pascal, who had secured the knot around his underarms, with the braided rope, use all of their collective strength to pull in the fortunately slender, lean body of the man onto the bobbing craft.

Rapunzel holds her baited breath for all those terrifying seconds before she could let it out as she places a happy hand over her exuberant lips, so as not to yell out with joy.

"It worked! Oh, Elsa! It worked…! You're gonna be fine!" She whispers gleefully to her invisibly, non present cousin, as Olaf and Pascal exchange 'high threes' and hugs. Rapunzel unwraps Hans Westergaard's tightly tied black bandages to reveal the thick cast iron boiler door hatch that was still strapped firmly to his thin, muscular chest. His athletic build was so lean no one would be the wiser that the man was wearing a 'bullet safe' frontal vest.

The small amount of blood that had been spilt was from the impact of the pirate's revolver discharge on the iron's sharp edges striking Hans' upper chest. But the bullet was so far at a distance, that the velocity traversed was enough to only break the first few epidermal layers of his already beaten and battered torso upon impact.

But it rendered him unconscious from the shock—yet still alive... Rapunzel rubs his bare chest tenderly for circulation and warmth.

"We have to get him back to Elsa. I heard the pirates say they need still need Eugene, so we'll just have to catch up with them later, somehow, I hope."

Right on cue, Pascal produces the quick map that Eugene had drawn up for her.

"Good! We know where they're going. I just have to trust Eugene will be fine on his own."

You've taught me so much about being strong and independent, Eugene. I have to try hard to be tough and brave...like you always are...

"Now, I have to focus on our new mission!" She gathers up the oar with a determined look on her face as she peeks around the Pearl Lady's stern to see Job loading the ship's larger 'away' crew boat with supplies and an unconscious Eugene as well.

"The pirates are abandoning their ship and are headed to the shore, so we can't go that way…" Doing everything she can not to scream out his name and race to help him, Rapunzel pulls herself together and away from her own tormented thoughts.

Olaf was luckily able to hang onto her every sparse word without guile or impatience, as he copies her example of petting and dabbing at Hans' unconscious bloody body with his cool numbing touch.

"Olaf, which way did Elsa go? Hans thinks you know." She asks hopefully, biting her lip that that man's instinct about Elsa was right—that Olaf would know which way his queen and friend and creator vanished to.

"Ummm…" Squinting his eyes, Olaf glances around in each compass direction and towards the shore before answering. He puts a licked finger up to the wind and closes his eyes before speaking.

"That way." His eyes sparkle snowflakes as his hands branch out wide towards the southeastern Norwegian sea and a port beyond the horizon as a cool breeze blows that way.

"All right! Then that's the direction we go." Rapunzel smiles at Pascal, trusting the snowman, as Olaf scurries to take the other oar, and skips right over Hans' poor beat-up injured chest that Rapunzel had laid her head scarf over for some small protection against the cool night air and to dissuade the bleeding.

The eternally happy snowman then promptly begins to row and hum a happy tune.

"To sea we go! To sea we go!"

As with a heavy heart, Princess Rapunzel watches with teary eyes the two small boats - one containing herself, Pascal, Olaf, and now Prince Hans, the other holding her Eugene under the thumb of those wicked pirates - within the cover of darkness pull away from one another in entirely different directions towards the unknown future of the murky Northern seas she prayed they'd meet up again beyond its clouded horizon…