"Fancy a hit of tar?" Oaken snarls, shifting a tin of the black substance towards Anna. Neon lights buzz in her ear, and its dimness does nothing to alleviate the stench of booze and squalor in the bar. Her eyes drift to the tar perched beneath his fingertip, and at once the prospect of escape screams at her with a voice louder than her consciousness. No, Anna thinks, shaking her head, I musn't. Still, the general mood of being back in Grimfold arouses a need for some sort of chemical inebriation.
"I think I'll just have a smoke," Anna says, allowing Oaken to lift a cigarette to her lips and light it. After weeks of state-enforced cold-turkey from smoking, the rush of tobacco smoke into her lungs feels like a shower from the insides; clouds of nicotine washing every trace of Arendelle's sterility and nagging stuffiness from her brain.
"Ah, yes," Anna groans, slumping back into her rickety chair and allowing the pleasure to wash over her spine, "that is some good shit."
The girl looks around the bar, and notices its few patrons fading into mere shadows lingering in the sparse lighting. In the back of her mind, Anna wonders if Oaken had lined the cigarettes with tar to make her more pliable, but she guesses not.
"I hope you didn't come all the way back here just for a smoke, miss Anna," Oaken scowls, drumming his fingers on the table, lined with traces of booze and human vomit, "people have been killed just for showing up in here on the wrong day."
"That...that doesn't scare me in the slightest!" Anna answers, exhaling a cloud of smoke to cover the fear seeping through her eyes, "I can come and go any damn time I please!"
"Cut the bullcrap," Oaken snarls, "tell me you came back with some useful information."
Something, perhaps the nicotine rushing through her bloodstream, gives Anna a surge of courage beneath the hulking frame of a man seated before her. She ignores the shotgun laying on the table with barrel aimed at her, and dares to suggest.
"I would very much like to know if Kristoff is still alive, first, before telling you anything."
"Bullshit!" Oaken yells, slamming his fist on the table and sending the glasses tinkling, "You don't make deals here! Only we do!"
"With other people, yes, but with me," Anna shoots back, flinging Elsa's photograph at him, "you can take your goddamned photo back and I'll just walk right out of here through all your men if I have to."
"Fine, fine! This won't serve us both any good," Oaken says, taking a swig of beer, "your friend Kristoff is alive and well."
Anna's ears prickle at the information and she sits upright in her chair, "Really? Where is he?" she quips, before Oaken crosses his arms and slumps back in the chair.
"I am hoping you did indeed find out what we sent you there for," Oaken says, "otherwise, that would put us both in a very uncomfortable situation, no?"
"Alright, alright," Anna starts, "her name is Elsa, and she's a Captain in the Arendelle military."
"Anything else?"
"She lives alone in a suburb on the edge of the capital. The state appears to be guarding her closely, there're fences around her house and cameras everywhere."
The grimace on Oaken's face deepens, but he motions for Anna to go on. A tinge of apprehension crawls through Anna's skin as she recalls the blissful moment when Elsa's face stood inches away from her. She could've sworn that time stood still at that very moment, despite the pain Elsa had inflicted on her.
"There's something you're hiding from us, yes?" Oaken growls.
"Well, first," Anna says, "I-I want to know exactly what you're planning to do with this information, or, or I'm not saying another word!"
"It's none of your goddamned business!" Oaken growls, "Besides, why do you fucking care what we know?"
"Because she's another human being, that's why," Anna retorts, "and it's obvious people like you don't care about other people's lives! Everything is just a game of buy and sell to you isn't it?"
"And why would a peasant girl from Grimfold even care about a random soldier?" Oaken yells, "Wait, you mean you had been talking to this Captain Elsa?"
"Um, no?" Anna says, "I mean, yes. I mean, does it matter?"
"Of course it matters to us now!" Oaken snarls, "This woman could be instrumental to the resistance! To the overthrow of President Hans and the state itself!"
"What? How could-" Anna starts, trying to fit the pieces together in her brain. Her limited education fails to grasp the grand scheme behind politics and war; whatever little information she gleans is quickly squashed by a fervent concern for Elsa.
"What are you planning to do with her? You're not going to hurt her, are you?" Anna asks, failing to hide the strain in her voice.
"A lot of concern for a random Arendellian soldier, I see," Oaken snarls.
"Is it that much to have somebody mean something to me?" Anna retorts, leaping from her seat and gripping the table, "I wouldn't even be helping you if I didn't care for Kristoff-"
The girl flinches at the touch of a hand to her shoulder and whirls around to a pair of familiar eyes looking down on her. It takes her a moment to recognise his face, so far departed from what she used to know. Sporting a leather jacket instead of faded factory overalls, Kristoff's bearded face bore every semblance of a hunted man. In the few months since he had disappeared, he appeared to have aged five years. The gauntness in his face added a menacing aura to the already work-hardened man, but when she touches his hands, she somehow knew that it was still undeniably Kristoff she's touching.
On the outside, at least.
"Y-you're alive," Anna stutters, her chest tightening as a multitude of words struggle to escape her lips, "b-but why? A-and you're with the resistance? W-why'd you leave? Did you get arrested?"
"Look, Anna, you probably think it's incredibly selfish of me to up and leave just like that," Kristoff says, straightening the chair Anna had toppled over, "but I really need to explain myself."
The man sits beside Anna and lights a cigarette in the same manner he used to do during breaks: that same flick of the wrist with the matches, before tossing the charred stub once he had a light going.
"It's not your fault for rejecting me, but all my life, I had pinned my hopes on a future with you. It was the only thing which kept me gong, hoping that one day, we'd be together," Kristoff says, keeping his eyes on the floor the whole time, "and when you turned me down, I just, I just couldn't take it anymore. My existence became immaterial. There wasn't any point in continuing work day after day with nothing to live for."
"So you joined the resistance-"
"Yes," Kristoff says, daring to look Anna in the eyes, "if I couldn't make my life better, at least I could strive to free Grimfold from the state."
"T-that's actually-" Anna says, struggling to find the words to describe her emotions, "that's actually pretty cool, but I mean, aren't you afraid of - you know - dying?"
This time, Kristoff doesn't move a muscle as he tells Anna, "I was dead inside already, when I saw those bombs go off around you."
"Great," Oaken interrupts, "now that we're all reunited, perhaps the lady can continue her story?"
"I've already told you everything I know!" Anna snaps.
"Please, Anna," Kristoff says, "co-operate with us; it's for Grimfold's best. We know Captain Elsa is a special person, someone like you."
"You know she's special?" Anna gasps, "but how?"
"A list got leaked from an insider we have in the army," Oaken answers, "the resistance is larger than you think."
Anna looks at the floor and bites on her lip. Whatever relief she received from the tobacco is now long gone; she contemplates asking for another smoke, but the thought of facing the withdrawal later forces her to reconsider.
"Please tell us more about Elsa, Anna," Kristoff says, putting a hand on the girl's knee, "you'll be doing us a huge favor."
"Ice," Anna whispers, looking at the floor, "she has ice powers."
The men lean closer to her, hanging on her every word.
"She caught me spying on her last week, and created these snow wolves out of thin air to attack me," Anna explains, exposing the scars on her ankle, "but they vanished when she saw them hurting me. Elsa's incredibly powerful, but it appears she has problems controlling her abilities, especially when she gets upset."
Oaken frowns at Anna's revelation; he takes a swig of beer, as if the alcohol helps him with decision making. Swatting at a fly, he scratches at the table with blistered knuckles. The coarse sound grates against Anna's eardrums like sandpaper.
Kristoff turns to Oaken and asks, "you think we have a shot?"
"It's a long one," Oaken answers, "but think about it, at best we have a frost-wielding super soldier who's hellbent on killing Hans, at worst we have an unstable ice bitch who freezes us all to death."
"You're planning on using her?" Anna gasps, blood draining from her face, "Jesus! That's not, um, no, definitely not a good idea at all."
"It's not up to you!" Oaken yells, his voice rattling the beer mugs on the table.
The girl leaps from her seat and points a finger at Oaken, screaming, "It's not up to me? I'll kill you if you lay a fucking finger on her!"
"Why the fuck do you care anyway?" Oaken yells, "You think that bitch hasn't killed people from Grimfold?"
"She didn't have a choice!" Anna yells, "Hans is forcing her to kill innocent people!"
Beneath the bar's dim lights, Oaken's blackened teeth bare themselves in a smile, "How do you know so much? Been in bed with the enemy, haven't you?"
"What?" Anna shrieks, lunging at Oaken.
"Look, this isn't going to solve anything," Kristoff interrupts, jumping between them.
"Of course not!" Anna cries, shaking her fist at Oaken, "if this nutcase insists on kidnapping people to -"
"Woah, no one said anything about kidnapping," Oaken sneers, "unless you insist on it-"
"Why in the blue hell would I-"
"He's right, Anna," Kristoff says, edging the girl away from Oaken, "we don't want to hurt anyone for the greater cause, but think about it!"
The sudden change of tone in Kristoff's voice forces the girl to stop struggling and listen.
"If you had a chance to end Grimfold's suffering in a day," Kristoff says, shaking Anna by the shoulders, "would you not fight for that chance? Isn't it something worth dying for?"
Anna looks into Kristoff's hazel eyes, the same ones that glittered with determination at every challenge he faced in the factory. She searches them for some semblance of hesitation, but finds only tenacity.
"You're really serious about this?" Anna asks, "I mean, you really think she can make a difference?"
"Why do you think the government kidnaps special people all the time?" Oaken says, lighting a cigar, "They're the only ones who have the power to disrupt Hans's control over the state."
"Which means," Anna pauses, as the revelation swirls around in her head, "oh god, that means-"
"It means they are coming for you too," Kristoff says, "maybe not today, or tomorrow, but one day. Unless we do something about it."
"Grimfold has been in the shitter for way too goddamned long," Oaken scowls, thumping his fist on the table, "now is the chance for you to change the course of history, or you'll just be swallowed by Hans like everyone else."
"And what?" Anna snarls back, "What if I don't? What if I don't want to have any fucking part in this?"
"Then-" Oaken replies, taking a drag on his cigar, "to hell with you. We'll take matters into our own hands."
Despite the glare of the afternoon sun, shadows still persist in the alleyway leading from the Old Quarter. Her nerves frayed from the meeting with Oaken and Kristoff, the girl flinches when a rat scurries across her path, upsetting a beer bottle and sending it tinkling down the sewage infested alley. Clenching and unclenching her fists, Anna's skin prickles from the cold as she jogs the few steps onto the main road, just dying to get away from that shithole. Her head aches from the revelation she's just heard, and despite the gallon of ale or the dozen cigarettes she's just consumed, none of it brings her any closer to the decision she has to make.
"I'll probably see what mom has to say about this," Anna mutters, her breath forming clouds of fog beneath the noon sun. She turns to walk the muddy path up to prison, but stops dead in her tracks when a child appears from behind a wall and brushes past her, sprinting towards the town square. Anna barely has time to react before another three street urchins scamper past her - followed by a half dozen adolescents she recognizes from the factory.
A girl Anna's age, who lost part of her left foot in an accident a year ago, stumbles in the gravel and bumps into Anna.
"Hey, what's going on?" Anna asks, the girl barely taking a look at her before continuing to hobble down the street.
"Execution!" she cries, shooting a glance back at Anna, "We haven't seen a public one in years!"
"What? An execution?" Anna shrieks, starting down the road, "Who are they executing?"
"Kai and Gerda!" she shouts back, "They caught them!"
"No! That's impossible!" Anna screams. Her mother forgotten, Anna joins the swelling crowd surging towards the town square.
An uneasy silence hangs over the square by the time Anna reaches it. Hemmed in by people still entering, Anna finds herself stuck in between throngs of factory workers and farmers as people crane their heads to get a view of the platform. The air is thick with the stuffy warmth of hundreds of peasants and workers, but a chill runs down Anna's spine when she spots the pair of nooses being strung up on the stage.
"This can't- this can't be happening," Anna mutters, her voice swallowed by incessant murmuring spreading through the crowd.
Adrenaline buzzes beneath her skin as she spots a truck rumbling down the main road. Anna searches her mind for the last time they had conducted a public execution like this, but only fragments of the event remain in her memory. It was in the thick of winter and the state wanted to make an example of some people selling on the black market. She remembered closing her eyes and pressing her face into her mother's chest when the rifles went off - the horrendous cracking noise persisting in her dreams for days to come, but apart from that, there was nothing.
Even from the distance, Anna could hear the tires squeak as the truck pulls up behind the platform. She squints at the soldiers shoving a pair of bound and hooded figures onto the stage, one shorter than the other. A shudder runs through her chest as the soldiers yank off their hoods, eliciting a chorus of gasps from the audience.
"Oh god, they really roughed them up," the crowd whispers. Beneath the sun, the bruises on Kai's face appear black in colour; while the blood leaking from Gerda's head has dulled into an angry maroon scar extending to her neck. Kai steps before the noose with the same poise Anna had seen him carry her whole life, while Gerda had to be dragged to the platform. With her eyes shut against the sun's glare, the pudgy woman falters for a second, before she's shoved into her place.
"She's barely even conscious," the crowd murmurs.
A wry man whom Anna recognises as the bureaucrat who married couples in Grimfold, steps onto the stage. A soldier hands him a loudhailer and he begins to read, methodically, without pause.
"The convicted, Kai and Gerda Erikssen, stand before Grimfold guilty of their crimes! Once hardworking comrades, they have brought shame upon themselves through their treasonous acts! Their treachery has led to the deaths of our comrades, and for their crimes against state, humanity, and all that is good and right, they will be hung from their necks until dead! Let this be a warning to the rest of Grimfold of the fate that awaits those who dare conspire with the enemy!"
The crowd replies him with a deafening silence that raises the hairs on Anna's neck. She holds her breath as the soldiers tie nooses around their necks. Throughout Anna's short life, she's seen children beaten for stealing bread, pregnant women shot while climbing the barbed wire fence to freedom, and elderly men starve to death in the thick of winter, but somehow - this is different. The state is going to murder two people she knew.
From the stifling silence in the moments until the trapdoor's sickening crack echoed through the square, it felt like Grimfold knew them both, too. Barely a second after Kai's body goes still, a shriek pierces through the still air.
"No!" the voice screams, high and urgent, like the cry of mother whose child is in danger, "You can't, you can't!"
The soldiers drag Kai and Gerda's bodies from the platform. Anna spots the source of the voice, a woman attempting to clamber onto the platform. She succeeds momentarily, only to have a soldier bash his rifle into her head. He boots her limp body from the platform, and a scuffle ensues in the crowd.
Voices around Anna, once fearful murmurs, now develop into full-blown jeering.
"Let her go! Fucking Animals!"
Anna darts her eyes between the faces around her, all soaked with rage from injustice. She pulls a jacket over the Arendellian crest on her uniform and starts looking for the quickest route out, given the powder keg of a crowd she's standing right in the middle of. The scuffle in front erupts into a full blown fist-fight, accompanied by a chorus of swearing and taunting from the surrounding people. Soldiers and policemen from the stage leap into the front, rifles and truncheons in hand, beating away at everyone around them.
"Kick their ass! Burn those motherfuckers!"
Anna stumbles over her feet in an attempt to edge past the crowd, but every step she takes sends her another three steps towards the center as the crowd begins to push and shove. Their voices erupt into a deafening roar, baying for blood. The sunlight dims in Anna's eyes as she passes in between rows of raised fists and middle fingers, each wielder screaming for death to be inflicted upon the oppressors. Amidst the yelling, a crackle of gunfire echoes in Anna's ears like thunder. Despite her distance from the front, fear strikes her heart cold; she redoubles her efforts to make it past the crowd, but their fury bubbles over from the shooting, shoving and pushing to get closer.
"Holy fuck, they're shooting at us!"
The first objects begin to fly; boots, bricks, tools. Gunshots, earlier sparse and meant as a warning, now develop into a steady sequence of automatic fire as soldiers spray the crowd with bullets. They empty their magazines within seconds, and the crowd swallows them whole, beating and stabbing them with whatever they can get their hands on. In the corner of her eye, Anna spots a row of trucks screeching to a halt behind the platform beneath a hail of projectiles.
"Oh shit, oh shit," Anna gasps, "it's the riot squad! They aren't fucking around anymore!"
Half the voices around her scream at each other to run, while the other half continue their jeering. At the sight of armed men disembarking the trucks in gas masks and riot shields, Anna whirls around and begins shoving people left and right, forcing a path to the edge of the square. The livid faces blur into one another, but amidst the scrum and flying objects she spots people filling glass bottles with what smelled like kerosene.
"No, no, no! They're going to kill us all!" Anna shrieks, too late to stop them from lighting their makeshift gas bombs and lobbing it at the police. Balls of fire erupt alongside plumes of cloud streaking through the air. Panic rips through the crowd as gunfire and tear gas canisters sail past the rioters. The jeering and taunting turns into screaming. Entangled in the chaos, Anna gets shoved to the ground. She recovers and continues running from the wall of shields marching towards her. The riot squads beat and arrest the stragglers with methodical precision, but it does nothing to deter the crowd from ripping up stones from the square and hurling them at the police.
Tear gas soaks into Anna's lungs and her mouth fills with the taste of fire. Tears stream from her eyes as she dissolves into a coughing mess. Throwing caution to the wind, Anna shoves blindly at the crowd, sending men twice her size tumbling from her flailing fists.
"Shit, shit," Anna screeches as the crowd thins out. Amidst her foggy, tear-soaked vision, she makes out more and more curious onlookers joining the battle against the police. The smoke and fires paint the sky in a hideous scrawl of grey and orange. Wiping the acrid mix of tears and mucus from her face, Anna whirls around in time to see a fire truck blasting away the rioters with water cannons while riot police continue their relentless assault on the crowd. A group of men tear apart a section of iron fencing surrounding President Hans's statue, opting to use it as a battering ram against the police's shield wall.
Concussion grenades go off around Anna, sending her crumbling to her knees. She screams and screams as her hands comes away from the ground in patches of red, but no sound reaches her ears, save for a ghastly ringing noise. The stench of blood seeping between cracks in the pavement renews a surge of panic within her, and she spots the narrow street that leads to the train station.
"I have to get out of here," Anna growls, pushing herself onto her feet, "I have to make it back to you-"
Anna's stumbling develops into a sprint as she dashes up the slope, only to be stopped dead by a tank bulldozing its way towards her. The clanking war machine screeches to a halt as it spots Anna barely ten yards away from it, before revving its engine and charging at her. Spanning the narrow width of the street, the metal behemoth crushes pavement bricks and stray bicycles in its path into rubble beneath its tracks.
She's built hundreds of them throughout her life, but the unmistakable click of the tank's main gun freezes her blood cold.