a/n: hi hi hi lovelies how are you?

some notices: i'm now dreamsalittlebigger on tumblr so go find me there 'cause why not. also, i got a rare breather in between my schoolwork, but i'm booked solid between now and May 10th. i'm not saying i won't for sure update before then, i'm just warning you that it could be quite a ways out before the next chapter.

thank you so much for all your alerts/favs/reviews! seriously, it's what keeps me writing guys, especially when i'm super stressed and am going through moments of self-doubt. again, i'm sorry i can't respond to all of them, but i read them and they completely make my life, so thank you for taking the time to do that! :)

now, on with the show.

They leave the ships, broken and splintered, in the middle of the ocean, and as the wind picks up their own sails she stands at the side railing and watches them get smaller, smaller, smaller, until they're nothing more than pinpricks on the horizon, and she says, hating herself for saying it, "Should we really just—leave them?" Then: "I mean, I'm completely fine with leaving them, but I just—" she breaks off. It seems a horrible death—to be stranded in the middle of the ocean, slowly running out of food, and water, and everything, and then what if they had to eat each other—

Anna shivers straight.

"It's their albatross to bear," Felix shrugs. He had materialized quite suddenly by her elbow, idly scratching the side of his nose. There's a faraway look in his sharp green eyes as he watches the other two ships dip past the horizon. He says, "Besides, Niels."

Anna makes a face. "He's creepy. Ew. Can he—can he really raise the dead?"

"What, is that what he did?" Felix snorts. "It's all a magic trick, princess. I wouldn't believe it."

She bites her lip. It hadn't looked like a magic trick.

"Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

He grins wolfishly. "Magic trick."

Slow, even footsteps behind them, and there's the captain, her amber eyes serious, the red of her headband standing stark against the dark of her hair and plain clothes. "Princess," she begins, "Zheng has finished attending your sister's wounds. Perhaps you would like to go and check on her?"

Felix claps his hands. "Good! I'll show her to the cabin—"

"No," Captain Mira deadpans, and as she speaks the sharp-nosed pirate wearing the pink sock, eyes half-lidded in boredom, comes to a stop next to Felix. "I need to speak with you about your conduct."

The pirate slaps Felix on the shoulder with a severe grin that looks entirely too pleased. "Good luck, mate."

Felix collapses dramatically against the ship's railing.

The pirate continues with a jerk of his head, "I'll show you the way."

Anna doesn't know if she trusts this man, whose forehead was beginning to bruise beautifully from her bucket assault, but she also knows that in the scheme of things she doesn't have much of a choice, and so far no one had tried to burn her or creep her out or kill her so, yay, plus—

"Come on, princess."

Felix watches them move to the quarterdeck, his mildness fading as he straightens, crossing his arms. The day is entirely too bright, too sunny, for the conversation he's about to have; for the dark shadows gathered over the horizon. He rubs his temples.

He's got a headache.

Mira says, surveying the deck—a mess of debris, a small pile of loot in the center, the hurrying of the crew to check for leaks and problems—"The haul certainly does not justify the wasted time. A barrel of fresh water, two crates of rum, another of small ammunition—even the gold we scrounged from their hired help was not enough to cover our effort."

"You wouldn't count rescuing damsels as our good deed for the day?" he replies, scuffing his shoe against the deck. "And a princess and a queen, at that."

"And get embroiled in a conflict between nations that will most likely threaten my crew?" Mira's amber eyes are as hard as glass when she looks at him again. "No doubt that's why you didn't inform me of your actions. Because you assumed I would say no."

He pauses. "Aye, captain."

"Under normal circumstances, you would no doubt be tried for mutiny. I could have you shot."

"Aye, captain."

She turns fully towards him, then, and though she comes to his chin there is a fierce presence about her, a stoic turn of her lip, that makes him want to take a step back. "If you ever think so lowly of me again as to believe that I would have denied such a venture, knowing your history, then I will have you shot and quartered."

He smiles. "Aye, captain."

She hits him in the stomach, hard enough that he doubles over, making a small grunting noise of protest. "Wipe that sentimental look off your face, Master Felix."

"Yes, captain," he coughs, straightening.

"Now. Tell me what you know."

"I'm Syd, by the by," the pirate drawls, stopping abruptly and offering a graceful little bow. He pulls off his sock as he does, revealing a wild mess of brown hair that only seems to accentuate his bruise in a way that makes Anna cringe. He straightens, replacing his striped hat, and she points to her own forehead and says, "Sorry that I, you know, attacked you. I guess I don't know my own strength," she finishes, brushing invisible dust from her arms, ghosting over her burn.

Syd cocks an eyebrow at her incredulously. "Yeah. You're really, horrendously strong."

She shrugs. "What can I say? I work out."

"And I sing. Only difference is, I ain't lying when I say it. This way."

He leads her across the deck, towards a set of doors painted a lacquered black, trimmed red and shining in the sunlight. Syd opens one lazily with the press of his elbow against the gold handle. "Captain's quarters; she's order them to be put to yours and the majesty's use until such time as we make port."

"Oh," Anna starts, "she doesn't have to, I mean, it's not like we can't—"

"Unless you'd rather sleep in a hammock between two men who stink to high heaven, I suggest you not look a gift-horse in the mouth, princess."

Her mouth shuts with a clack. She nods.

The captain's cabin is a curving rectangle across the back of the ship. Bright, leaded windows let in a spill of sunlight, revealing a rather austere room, plain, simple. Anna notices several maps, folded neatly atop a large desk; a magnifying glass, a quill; an empty cup. There's a black jacket draped over one of the chairs. Her eyes drift to the single bed and she pales and doesn't want to step further into the cool room than she has too, because there's her sister, lying there and staring at the ceiling and she's awake, but there's something wrong with her eyes, and her expression—

Her hands are bandaged, finger-tips to wrists.

Anna asks, "E-Elsa?"

Elsa's eyes find hers, across the room. The man leaning over her bedside—tall, with long, black hair tied at the nape of his neck and slanted eyes—turns around. He gives a short bow.

"Princess, Zheng, Zheng, princess," Syd says, sniffing.

"Hello," Anna says, because she has nothing else to say, because her feet are already carrying her to the bedside. He sister attempts a small smile but it turns into a grimace and she shuts her eyes. Anna stands rather uselessly at the foot of her bed and doesn't know what to do, can't stop looking at the bandages, can't—

"Her hands were burned quite badly," Zheng says softly. "I mixed a salve that should ease the sting. Now it's imperative that we stave off any infection."

"Infection? She's fine. She'll be fine."

The man pauses, then meets her eyes. "With time. What she needs now is rest."

"Come on, princess, you heard him—time to go meet the rest of the crew and find out what the hell is going on," Syd cuts in, sounding bored, and before she can protest he's grabbing her wrist to tug her back to the deck and before she can stop herself or think about being a princess—which, at this point, screw it, just—she hisses in pain. Zheng shoots a look at her immediately. Syd lets go, frowning.

"You're hurt?"

She peels back her dress to look at the pink, chapped handprint on her wrist. "It's nothing—"

"Stupid girl," Syd growls, which she thinks is his way of saying sorry, and Zheng says, "I'll examine it, and bring her out to the deck when I'm finished."

Syd nods and shrugs and mumbles and leaves the cool of the cabin. Anna turns back to the bed, to her sister, and says, without looking at the other man, "It's really ok."

He ignores her, moving to gather supplies. She stands awkwardly by, looking at Elsa and biting her lip, and then she hears—

"Are you hurt?"

It's faint. A whisper of an echo of a breeze or something poetic like that—she starts, moving closer to her sister, unsure if she was making things up or not, because Elsa's eyes are still closed—"No," she lies, smiling easily. "No, it's nothing, really. You just rest, ok? We'll be back in Arendelle soon."

Elsa nods, jerky, erratic. Anna turns her back quickly, because her eyes are burning, and she's afraid her sister'll see. Zheng is standing at the mahogany desk, holding a small jar and a wrap of linen bandages. He says, calmly, "Come here, and I'll show you how to bind your sister's wounds."

She pulls the sleeve of her dress up, smiling in gratitude. "Thanks, yeah, that'll be really helpful."

She won't cry. She won't.

The sun is setting, the rays dancing across the water, turning everything shades of violet and orange, when she finally follows Zheng back onto the deck, arm bandaged tightly. There's the crew, all lounging on crates, against the railings, hanging from the ropes; Captain Mira is standing in the center, poking her finger with clinical precision into a bag whose innards catch the light of the sun with a sharp gleam. Felix, crouched next to her, stands with a clap of his hands.

"Introductions!"

Syd, poking his foot between two crates, slaps the back of his head.

"Ow—"

"Men," Mira calls, ignoring the scene and drawing the bag in her hand closed. "This is our most honored guest, Princess Anna of Arendelle."

Anna finds herself suddenly, uncomfortably, the object of everyone's gaze, and she gives a curtsey that fails half-way through and turns into a bow and that was awkward, so awkward, and ok—she gives a little wave. "Uh, hi."

Mira lets the bag drop to the deck with a disinterested wave; it clings. She puts a hand on the hilt of her wickedly thin sword and begins, "You've already met myself; Masters Felix and Syd; and now, Master Zheng. Master Myers?"

A man lounging on the railing to her left, clever eyes and a cocky grin, gives a little half-salute. "That'd be me. Quartermaster of the Queen's Revenge. Don't often we get a beautiful lady on board."

She laughs almost-wildly. "That's—that's not—"

"You'll have to excuse him," a soft voice says, and it takes her a moment to find him—the man seated cross-legged beneath Myers, broad-shouldered, a sincere face, and bluer than the sky eyes—"he flirts with everything that moves."

"I only mean it when I flirt with certain people," Myers says, dropping his elbow onto the other man's head.

"I'm Briggs," the man says, flushing a bright red and looking at his feet. "Boatswain, your highness."

"O'Callaghan," says a man leaning against the mast, with the hint of an accent and a hawk-nose. "Carpenter. Them's the Stabbington Brothers," he jerks his chin to the two men—twins, Anna thinks, looking at their red hair and big noses—"but they don't speak much. We calls 'em SB the First and SB the Second."

"Ah, c'est une belle femme!"

There's a man with shaggy brown hair suddenly at her elbow, kissing her knuckles and woah, bud, easy there, back away—Zheng takes him by the collar and forcibly moves him three feet to the left.

"And that there's Remy," O'Callaghan continues, "but we don't much pay him any mind. He means well."

"No he doesn't," Myers calls.

"C'est faux!"

"Quiet," Captain Mira orders, and they obey. Anna thinks she should say something smart or like, you know, princess-like—

"Um, thank you, everyone," she begins, rocking back on her heels, feeling the pulse of the crystal at her neck, "for saving us. I didn't expect it, you being , you know, pirates—I mean, not that it's bad, you being pirates, but it's—it's fine, I just—anyway, thanks."

And ok, if someone had told her three years ago that open gates would mean she would be thanking pirates she'd be like: no sir, nu-uh, sorry, nice to meet you and all—

Captain Mira nods. Beat, then, "Let's divvy up the spoils, men."

The crew cheers.

It's dark. Felix lets his head fall back against the foremast and runs a hand down his face, wishing he hadn't offered to take first watch, because the rum's almost gone. His foot falls into the bottle. It chinks, an empty, forlorn sound. He can hear the voices of the crew drifting up from the galley, already gambling away their small earnings, but the deck is quiet, and dark, painted white in the glowing moonlight. He says, "Rum's almost gone."

Mira replies, "You've had too much already."

He lolls his head, looking up at her through the crooked bent of his lashes. He pouts. She doesn't notice. She's too busy staring contemplatively at the sea, elbows on the railing; he follows her gaze across the inky expanse. He says, a little drunkenly, "My punishment for existing is those stupid god damn brothers of mine."

The more he thinks about what they've been doing, the angrier he gets—but it's mostly directed at himself, for not staying in the Southern Isles. For running away. Coward. If you had stayed, Albert would still be alive.

He shuts his eyes.

"We all have black sheep in our family."

"Yes, but five's a little excessive, don't you think?" He pauses. "Captain?"

"Yes?"

"Are sins ever forgiven?"

He thinks of a small boy with curling hair and a bright smile.

Mira tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, straightening her shoulders and reaching down for the rum. She finishes it off in one long drain, and throws the bottle over her shoulder, into the ocean; after a beat, two, he hears the splash. She says, "I wouldn't know. I've never tried."

"Huh." He leans his head back and looks at the stars laid out like a patchwork above him. "Wonder what it'd be like to try."

"I brought you some water."

She feels the rollicking of the ship and fixes her eyes on the little candle next to the bed. It's burning brightly, the flame ghosting in and out with the gentle sway of the sea, sending the figure curled sideways on the bed into sharp relief, light, dark, light—

She sets the cup down. She says, "Please, Elsa, please drink it—it's fresh! I mean, it's pretty fresh—ok, mostly fresh. Felix said they catch the rainwater when it storms—" she cuts off abruptly, eyes boring a hole into her sister's back. There's a drape of dark, velvet-black fabric, a shock of white hair. That's all she can see, and it takes everything out of her, enough that she collapses gracelessly into the little wooden chair that was slowly becoming her bed and continues to do what she's been doing, which is talk. She isn't good at a lot of things, but talking—talking she's good at. Great. The best. Bestest, bester, besting—

"Felix isn't so bad, I guess, like whatever," she sniffs, crossing her arms and settling her chin to her chest. "That's all I'll say. I like Mira, but I still feel bad that we're taking her room, you know? I mean, not that I want to stay with the smelly sailor men, and that Remy guy keeps looking at me funny—but, I mean, she's the captain, so isn't it necessary to, like, I don't know—uphold a bit of decorum, show a public face, that sort of—"

Her eyes find her sister's hands. A tip of a bandage.

"—anyway, this room's nice." Pause. She licks her lips. "Felix says we've already crossed into Arendellian waters. He says," she adopts a deeper tone, "we should be back home in three days, at most, and he expects ten gallons of assorted alcohol for his troubles." She scratches her nose. "I don't know if he was kidding about that last part or not."

The sheets move—she bites her lip in expectation, but still, nothing. She continues, rather half-heartedly, scrubbing her face, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes and then blinking around the impersonal cabin.

"He says that his brothers won't follow right away, but everyone's been saying a lot of wrong stuff about the Southern Isles, so—he says they'll come eventually. That," she digs her nails into her palms and bites her lip. She couldn't do this. This wasn't her area of expertise, no sir, no way, she was the heir-spare, remember? She couldn't do—politics, and this was one big politics—

Earlier, Felix had said, Your sister was playing a game. She took a gamble, and she lost.

And she had replied, Game? There's no—

And Felix had blinked and looked at her and tapped the side of her nose and said, Oh, to be young again.

"He says they'll try to get you to sign a treaty, and now that Hans has—" her eyes ghost over her sister's hands, "—now that stuff has gone down, they'll threaten all of Arendelle if you don't agree to it. So you'll have to agree to it. But we can't agree to it! Those jerks! Why do they want Arendelle so bad, huh? It's not like we have anything! Our main export is ice, for crying out—"

She kicks her feet suddenly against the ground.

Kristoff.

"—loud," she finishes lamely. There's a beat, two. At last she bursts, "Elsa, please talk to me, something, anything, drink, just—I can't do this by myself!"

The figure on the bed doesn't move.

"Elsa," she leans forward, practically raking her nails down her legs, "please don't shut me out again. Not now. We can't afford to right now, you need to talk to me—"

Silence.

Nothing.

Anna shoots to her feet, anger boiling its way up her throat, and her chair falls over onto a map of the New world. "Fine!" she shouts, clenching her hands at her side. "Fine, be alone! Do whatever you want then, have fun dealing with these jerks!"

She storms out of the room.

And slams the door.

For a moment she pauses, listening to the echo, bracing her hands against the jamb. Then her eyes get wide, wider, because she'd just slammed the door on her sister, she'd never done that before, not once, it was always her getting the door slamming thing, and her she was, slamming the door on her sister—

She whirls, reaching for the handle, but her fingers jerk to the side. For a moment she stands, staring at the wood.

Then she turns away.

Elsa listens to the echo, and wishes she could feel anything, but someone had burnt a hole through her chest, carved out her heart and left nothing but a melting rot of insides, so the only thing she felt for sure was that she was dying from the inside out.

She lifts her hands in front of her face. Even that movement, even keeping her fingers still, causes her hands to ache. She sets them back gingerly on the bed.

I'm the queen.

The deck smells wonderfully clean. She comes out into the bracing night air and listens to the shouts coming from the galley and thinks she wouldn't mind getting a little tiny bit tipsy and playing poker with the boys; but she'd already played a round with dinner, and turns out she sucks at poker and holding her alcohol, so no thanks.

Instead she meanders towards the front of the ship, idly picking at the bandage around her wrist. It's a strange feeling, being on board without having to worry about, you know, dying or anything. She looks out at the water. It's a first, definitely, but she didn't really like ships, or water, or the ocean, and she couldn't wait to get back to dry land. She touches the crystal beneath her collar.

Why hadn't he come?

"Is that an Arendelle princess on the deck, or are you just happy to see me, captain?"

She can practically hear the eyebrow waggle, and rolls her eyes. She frowns, continuing forward, "That doesn't even make since!"

"Damn! Just a princess."

She finds Felix lounging haphazardly against the mast, and Captain Mira perched atop the ship's railing, legs crossed. She says, "Rude," but she doesn't really mean it. She hates Felix solely because it was so difficult to hate him. His glittering eyes find her own, looking too-bright and too-wide in the moonlight, and he laughs. "You look like you could use a drink. 'Cept the captain took the last of it. Oops."

Mira says, simply, "No."

Felix laughs. Anna would laugh too, if she felt like laughing. Instead she takes her left hand in her right and collapses gracelessly onto the deck, and once she's on the deck she thinks it would be so nice to just lie down, so she does that, sprawling out to the right of Felix and peering up at the connect-the-pattern of the stars above her.

"I hate to inform you," Felix begins at a drawl, "but a pretty crier you do not make."

"Who said I was crying?"

She peers across her nose at him, watching him point to his eyeball and stick out his tongue.

She says, "I had a twig in my eye."

"A twig."

"Yes."

"How fares the queen?" Mira breaks in, before any sort of argument can escalate.

Anna shrugs, but the shrug turns into a crazy-sort of laugh halfway through that escapes her throat in a chapped, raw way and she hiccups. "Who'm I kidding? She's hurt, I don't know how to help, your brothers are crazy, and I wish I could push the Southern Isles off the edge of the earth." Beat. "No offense."

Felix shrugs, nonplussed.

The silence that falls isn't uncomfortable, just heavy, and Anna can't stand it, after that little cabin, so she says, rather suddenly, "I've been meaning to ask you," and she looks pointedly at Felix before turning her attention back to the stars, "how you found us. 'Cause, like, that was super convenient. One heck of a coincidence. A nice little surprise. Ok, I guess what I'm trying to say is how did you do that, because it's creepy, and if you're secretly working for your brothers—" here she sits up fast, so much so that the world spins disconcertingly, "—I'll do something really horrible."

"Like assault me with a bucket?" Felix replies dryly, shutting his eyes. "You really pissed off Syd, you know."

"Tell her," Mira orders. Felix cocks one eye open and says, "I got a note."

"A note?" Anna asks incredulously.

"Yes," Felix replies, drawing out the word. He shuffles languidly, lazily, horribly off-balanced, in his pockets and finds a folded piece of paper. He waves it in front of her face, but his aim is off, or his depth perception, or something, because all he succeeds in doing is hitting her nose. She sniffs, batting his hand away. He twists the thing between his fingers and continues, "A note. It came by fire message. My brother must've gotten hold of my other brother's roman candle. They're handy. Candles. Not brothers," he repeats at a dark mutter. Then, smiling brightly, "We aren't all bad!"

"Let me see," Anna orders, holding out her hand.

"No," he replies petulantly, tucking it back into his shirt and folding his arms behind his head and closing his eyes.

"Felix!"

"Prince Felix!"

At this, Mira lightly jumps to the deck and slaps him across the back of the head. "You are First Mate Felix, and nothing more. What did the note say?"

"Captain," he sniffs, almost crying.

"The note, Master Felix."

He says, "That the king was moving against Arendelle. That the Southern Isles could not afford a war." Anna watches his face turn dark around the corners, and it's a terrifying sight. "Contrary to what you must think of us," he says, turning his eyes onto her and cocking a self-deprecating grin, "we care about our people."

Anna doesn't know how to respond to that. She wants to say we care about our people, too, but right now all she cares about is helping Elsa, finding Kristoff, and forgetting the Southern Isles ever existed. Ever. Ever, ever, ever, ever—

Mira says, after a beat, "We'll have Zheng examine your sister's wounds again tomorrow. More of his salve will help to ease the sting of the burn."

It's all she can to do nod, so she does, and once she starts she can't stop—automatic. Nod, nod, nod. She feels her eyes burning. Felix is regarding her through the sideways gleam of his eyes, picking something out of his teeth with his pinky, and he says, suddenly, "What make you of this, eh? I 'eard tales of a place, last we made port in Tortuga—a place you get to by sailing off the edge of the earth."

Anna stops nodding, because the thought is beyond slightly ridiculous, because she had taken away two things from all her lessons, and one was that the world was round, and the other was that cinnamon didn't taste good all on its own—

Mira snorts, turning her back, looking out to sea. "Falling off the edge of the earth, you mean."

Felix shakes his head emphatically, but the movement is erratic, and jerky. "And flying, I mean." He pauses. "I need more rum." Anna watches him swallow a hiccup, and then he continues, "They call it Neverland, because you never land." Then, excitedly, "Get it?"

"What does this have to do with anything?" Mira deadpans, and Anna thinks she must be used to this, and must be so, so tired of it, because, like, Anna had known Felix for all of twelve hours and she was tired of it—

"It's just a nice thought, isn't it? All this talk of brothers and sisters. It's a nice thought." He half-smiles, looking down at his hands. "There's a time, however brief, when we're unconditionally happy. And that's when we're kids." He scrubs his face. "I'm not drunk enough for this philosophical bullshit." Then: "Sometimes I miss it."

Anna draws her knees to her chest and sets her chin on them. She thinks of the sky being awake, and snowmen.

She closes her eyes.

Anna enters the room softly, quietly. The candle has long since sputtered out, but a slip of pale moonlight was cutting its way through the far window.

She takes up residence in her chair. She whispers, "I'm sorry."

There's a beat, two. Then she hears, faint, quiet enough that she thinks it must be her imagination—

"Me, too."

Anna is a little-bit-really-tipsy and Remy is saying, "—too bad you won't visit me in my country, wine is the only way to suit one of your delicate sensibilities—" and Myers has his arm draped across Briggs' shoulders and Syd is sitting next to Felix in the corner and both are trying to work out the chords of a song they apparently knew as kids except Syd knows a version about a lovely Irish lass and Felix insists she's from the Southern Isles and Zheng looks like he wants to throttle everyone but not as much as O'Callaghan and SBs the First and Second are sharpening their knives and—

She burps.

For a moment she's incredibly mortified, but it's a lazy thought that takes a while to get to the forefront of her mind, and by that point the men, crammed in the little galley, are already cheering. Myers slaps her on the back.

"More rum for the princess!" someone shouts. She tries to say no but ends up nodding and her chipped cup is refilled.

"We'll turn you into a pirate yet," Felix drawls. She shakes her head. For some reason she's really caught up in the way Myers' arm is draped across Briggs' shoulders. She hiccups. The world spins dizzyingly. Syd plays a few chords. Myers asks, "Where'd you learn to do that, eh?"

Syd raps his knuckles on the wooden body of the guitar. He says, "An old blind man in Tortuga offered me lessons for three shillings. I gave him three rocks and took the lessons and started running."

"Liar!"

"Shut up, ya sockhead—"

"What," he yells, playing a fast song with a Spanish flair, "you'd rather I tell you it was the Queen of bloody England who taught me?"

"I'll tell you how he learned!" Felix declares, standing suddenly, with the hint of a sway. His hands move very deliberately. "His father was the best guitar player in the west, and one day he was killed by a man with six-fingers, and so now Syd plays the guitar looking for the man with six-fingers to extract his revenge—"

"Sit down," Syd orders, slapping Felix across the back of the head.

Anna giggles. The crew roars with laughter. She's distracted by the way Myers' arm is draped across Briggs' shoulder. O'Callaghan shouts suddenly, "You know as to what I want to hear? I want to hear how our princess got caught up in that hellhole."

"Yeah, princess, tell us your story!"

"It's good, oui?"

"No, oh, it's not—" Anna hiccups, shaking her head. She sets her mug down before her. "It's not."

But the pirates are already quiet, every last one of them, and she thinks about how she felt, seeing that grim, horrible face step down towards her, outlined by the bars of her cell, and she thinks about Kristoff, and I love yous, and she finds herself saying, without a whole lot more protest, "Prince Hans of the Southern Isles."

And that's it.

"You can't leave it at that!"

"Boo!"

"Princess," Myers slides in, an easy smile hovering around his lips, "you'll forgive us our rudeness, but we have to live vicariously through royalty, you understand."

"I'm going on," Anna says, annoyed. The galley falls quiet again. The candles sway with the movement of the ship, and she feels almost-happy, except for her sister isn't here. Her sister wouldn't want her to get drunk anyway, so whatever—

"No, listen, shh," she says, even though the room is quiet. She stares at her fingers, curled around her cup. She thinks of warm brown eyes and chapped lips. She says, "It was my sister's conoration," hiccup, "and I met Prince Jerkface of the Jerkier Jerks," she pauses, finding Felix's eyes, "and he said he wanted to marry me, and I wanted to marry him, but then some stuff went down with my sister and turns out he didn't love me after all."

She's feeling much more sober. She could hear a pin drop.

"Anyway, it doesn't matter. I met someone else. He's an ice harvester, and he smells." She laughs, surprised that her eyes are beginning to burn. "But apparently thwarting attempts to take over certain kingdoms really didn't sit right with the Southern Isles, so here I am." She pauses, then waves her hand quickly. "That's not important, though. I want to know something."

She bites her lip.

"How do you know if you're in love?"

There's a full thirty seconds of silence, and it keeps going, enough that she feels the need to explain herself.

"I mean, because I'm pretty sure I'm in love with someone, but having someone say they want to marry you and then try to kill you sort of puts a damper on things." She laughs, but it isn't a good laugh.

Briggs says softly, looking up shyly from his hands, "Why try to define it?"

Anna looks sharply at him, pursing her lips.

"I mean," he continues, suddenly aware that the eyes of everyone were on him, "the more you try to define it, the more you get caught up in trying to dissect it. Sometimes you just have to let it be."

Myers grins at him.

"L'amour, it's a difficult to think to define, c'est vrai," Remy adds, looking up with a lazy grin, "but this ice harvester—he treats you right, oui?"

"You enjoying being with him?" Zheng asks stoically.

"Talking with him?" Syd intones, sounding bored.

"Not wanting to eviscerate him?"

All eyes turn to the Stabbington Brother without an eyepatch, and the big man shrugs.

"What? It's a legitimate question—"

"Look, princess," Felix butts in, leaning sloppily across the gap between them, pushing O'Callaghan to one side, just so he can flick her forehead. "Stop overthinking things. And as for Hans? Well," his grin is dark,"I'm sure he'll get his just desserts."

Anna sniffs. "You know, for pirates, you guys really aren't that bad."

"I'll drink to that!" Myers shouts.

Anna does.

"Lower the flag," Mira orders, standing near the wheel. Anna, at her elbow, thinks it's really unfair how all she has to do is, like, say lower the flag without even raising her voice and bam, there was the crew already half-way to finished—like, why didn't people listen to her like that? Ok, granted, she had never really actually tried to order anyone around except Kristoff (now, right now) and that had gone just—just great—

"We'll reach port by mid-afternoon," Mira says. Anna watches the black flag float slowly towards the deck, the skull and crossbones barely visible. Mira asks, "How do you wish to proceed?"

It's them, alone on the top-deck by the wheel—she didn't know the parts of the boat yet, exactly, even though Syd and Myers had taken it upon themselves to try and teach her (because having two men shouting in her face foremast, mizzenmast, quarterdeck, port, starboard didn't exactly lend itself to, like, learning or anything)—watching the men see to their duties. She spies a hint of blonde near the front of the ship. Felix's sharp gaze, cutting across the water. And Anna has to ask, because it'd been luck that gotten them this far and almost back to (relative) safety and her mountain man and her room and her bed, but—"Captain Mira?"

"Aye?"

She looks at the woman, barely taller than herself, erect and proud in the morning sunlight. Anna had wanted to ask her where she was from, because he skin was a milky, dark brown, but for once she'd kept her mouth shut, and that had been really, really hard—"Why are you doing this?"

Mira's headband, the most ornate piece on her—a fabric of silk, a deep, blood-red—floats back in the breeze. "Helping you?"

Anna swallows. She wants to rub her eyes. "Yes."

Mira says, "Because it matters to someone."

Anna's eyes dart across the flurry of the deck to Felix, perched at the prow like a gargoyle, eyes gleaming, and she has the sudden, intense desire to ask do you love him, but knows it wouldn't be right, but is also incredibly jealous because there seemed a kind of—something that didn't have to be spoken aloud, but was just there, like the rocks beneath the waves, even if Mira did hit Felix a lot.

In fact, Anna thinks, cocking her head to one side, the whole crew hit Felix a lot—

"Oh."

"So," Mira repeats, adjusting the ship's wheel ever-so-slightly, "how do you wish to proceed?"

"I'm dead," she tests out, flexing her fingers, "so I can't just waltz through the front gates of the palace. Also, I mean, I don't think they should see Elsa like—" she gestures vaguely with her hands. Politics.

The gulls scream overhead, and the ship cuts a white-foamed swatch forward, forward, forward—in the distance, she's just beginning to be able to make out the jagged peaks of the fjord, and something leaps within her chest, because home. Because Kai, who would know what to do.

Because Kristoff.

"Well, then," Mira muses, "we'll need a cover."

"This is the best you could come up with?" Anna hisses, readjusting her grip on her sister's elbow. The two were pretty much suffocating and dying beneath one cloak; Elsa looked very, very pale, and they both kept stumbling because turns out after being on sea for the better part of two weeks coming back to dry land was like trying to read a book with your eyes shut—"A traveling circus?"

"Keep staggering around like that, it adds to the mystery," Felix mutters under his breath, then he shouts loudly, to the gathered sailors at port, "The conjoined twins, come all the way from Corona to read your fortune!"

"Twins don't read fortunes, you ninny," Syd hisses. The rest of the crew had remained on the ship, as Felix seemed to think that, for some reason, four was an auspicious number. Zheng said it wasn't. Felix had told him to shut up.

"And come see the horribly annoying mute, deaf, and blind guitar player!" Felix continues. Syd smacks him across the back of the head.

Anna feels Elsa stumble once more, and she whispers, "Almost there," which isn't necessarily true, because they really had to get all the way through town, but—

"Excuse me, masters," a voice she doesn't recognize cuts through Felix's advertisement. She lets her eyes dart up from the shadows of her cloak and finds a large man, skin weather-beaten, coming towards them from up the dock, and this must be Olin, the one Elsa had spoken briefly of as they'd been going over the plan with her. Felix says, "Let me handle this."

Syd says, "I don't feel comfortable with you handling this."

"For my best friend," Felix replies, "you're horribly mean to me."

"Shut up," Anna snaps.

"You have the proper papers to tie your boat up at the dock?" the voice booms.

"Oh," Felix continues, adopting a tittering falsetto and dropping into a low bow that makes his earrings jingle, "oh, sir, we are but humble traveling entertainers, looking to make a quick stop and quicker cash before heading farther north, clear to Ice-Green-Land."

Syd rolls his eyes. Anna slaps her forehead with her hand, trying not to jostle Elsa's bandages.

"Well, unless ye have the proper papers—"

"But sir!" Felix continues, affronted. "This is the finest fortune teller in all of the Southern Isles!"

Anna straightens, straining on her tip-toes, enough that she's sure Master Olin catches the hint of white next to her beneath the cloak, the pursed lips of her sister—and he must, for he straightens suddenly, eyebrows drawn, and says, "Let me get you the paperwork, good sirs."

Felix grins. "Thank you."

It takes Albert several minutes to register the noise coming from the rooms outside the library. He looks up, frowning at the white door, and gingerly shuts the old book in his hand. He blinks, trying to remember where he is, and when, and why—

What was that?

He gets to his feet, shoulder aching from being pressed so long against the cold stone of the hearth, and gingerly cradles the book in the crook of his elbow. He takes several steps, but slowly, because sitting in one place for too long made his stomach sting. When he reaches the door, and opens it, he hears—

"Up here, hurry!"

And then, tripping his way out into the hall of portraits of past kings and queens—all of whom looked so incredibly poised and peaceful, not at all—power hungry, like those he knew—he cuts a sharp, graceless corner and finds himself face to face with a gathering cresting the top of the stairs at the far end of the hall.

There is Kai, and Albert would be cowed back to the library, because he knows the man does not care for him, thinks him a traitor, which he supposes is only fair, except there's—

"Princess Anna?"

And, supported between the princess and a tall man that barely registers—

"Elsa!"

He drops his book, racing forward. Her hands are hanging, limp and bandaged, over the shoulders of her sister and the man, and her eyes flicker up towards him and then away, looking almost defeated, but not quite—he wheels to a stop in front of her.

"Oh great," Anna sighs, "you're still here."

"Here, I can—let—here," Albert says, and, without even asking, without even bothering to think about propriety, he swings an arm beneath Elsa's legs and settles her against his chest. She weighs nothing, and she's incredibly hot. She whispers, hoarsely, "I can walk."

"Just let me play the hero, just this once," he replies, walking towards the door to her room and shouldering it open. Elsa's hands are curled in her lap, bandaged tightly from fingertips to wrist. His heart is in his mouth. "What—Elsa, what—"

She almost-smiles. "I got Anna back."

"Your hands, Elsa—"

"There's someone," Elsa says, and she won't look at him, even when he gingerly sets her down on the bed, "in the hall for you."

"What? Elsa, ok, let's just—what—tell me what—"

"I want to be left alone," Elsa whispers, eyes closed. Albert looks once at the open door behind him, but no one had made a move towards it. His hands are fisted in the covers on her bed, and he thinks this looks rather strange. He thinks this looks rather odd. He stands, and he opens his mouth to say something more, but can't.

Elsa opens her eyes, and they glitter like iron. "My curse is gone. I want to be left alone." Then something soft fades in around her mouth and she whispers on the exhale, "Albert."

"I'll bring you some water," he rasps, because it's all he can think to say. He takes a step back and trips over some of the debris on the floor. He makes it to the hall, mind reeling, because her powers were gone, and how, and her hands—

He turns. Princess Anna hadn't moved, and neither had the blonde man next to her, and behind them was a guy wearing a pink-striped hat—the princess' mouth is pursed unhappily and she says, "I sent Kai and the servants to get some food and water. So."

"What happened?" Albert tries to keep his voice down, but it cracks. "How did—and who're they?"

Without another word the blonde man strides forward, and before Albert can blink, or protest, he's being engulfed in a tight hug, and the man is saying, "I thought you were dead." Albert tries to push him away.

"Excuse—just who—stop," he finishes, shoving the guy back, and that's when he sees the eyes. A sharp, glittering green. A green he recognizes. His mouth drops open slowly.

"Surprise, I'm alive!" Felix says.

Albert punches him.

The man's nose cracks and he drops backwards like a felled treed; the man in the pink hat snorts with laughter. Albert's mouth is open and he's gaping, looking from his closed fist to the man holding his nose on the ground, to the bright sun of the window, and finally coming to rest on Princess Anna, who says—

"You're gonna need to sit down for this."