A/N: My original stuff's going a bit slower than expected, but I promised you guys a chapter near the beginning of February so here it is. I'll do monthly updates until I finish up what I wanted to, and then switch to biweekly updates after that.

Hope you guys enjoy!

The bedsheets were slick beneath Anna's sweating palms. She swallowed nervously, screaming at herself not to look down. One loose grip and that'd be it. Hans would be cleaning her remains off the castle flagstones.

Which, she realized grimly, still wasn't the worst possible fate in the world for her now.

Her feet scrambled for purchase on the wall as she lowered herself at an agonizingly glacial pace. Someone was going to see her. Someone was going to stop her. Someone was—

She reached the bottom, the ground cold and damp beneath the thin soles of her slippers. Anna wanted boots, had asked her silent maids for them every day since she'd arrived, but apparently they'd been deemed unnecessary and therefore hadn't been provided.

Her new life in a nutshell.

The makeshift rope trailed from the third floor window of her bedroom, hanging in stark contrast against the castle's dark stone, a sad, limp arrow pointing straight towards her. It wouldn't be long before someone noticed her escape. Anna forced herself to keep moving.

The kitchen and servants wings were to her left. Anna pressed herself behind the row of bushes that lined the castle's inner walls and scurried past, pausing whenever she caught a glimpse of movement, a snatch of conversation. She needed to get to the stables. She'd studied them from her room, had studied the whole castle, counting each horse that had trotted in and out, coming and going as they pleased between her prison and the rest of the world. Anna just needed to make it there, steal a horse, gallop to the edge of the forest visible from her window, lose herself in the maze beneath its branches, and then…

Well, for now she'd make herself focus on step one.

The stables were a collection of five seperate buildings. Anna crouched hidden by the entrance of the nearest one. Two stablehands chatted inside. She waited for them leave, the early March mud sinking into her slippers and soaked her socks. She shifted on the balls of her feet, wincing at the sound of the resulting squelches. At last the stablehands moved onto another building and she seized her chance.

There were twenty horses between this roof, ten stalls on each side. Anna decided on a grey gelding next to the outside doors. If the stablehands returned, there'd only be a few short feet between her and freedom. A short beam of wood held the doors shut, liftable, even for her. Anna didn't bother trying to find the gelding's saddle, barely allowed herself the time to grab its bridle from a peg at the front of the stall and slip it over its head. Running her hand down its nose to reassure it—to reassure herself, Anna led it slowly out of its stall. The stable was still blessedly empty as she wound the gelding's reins around one hand and began to push up on the beam. The final barrier.

"Here, let me help you with that." A pair of gloved hands joined Anna's own.

Her blood turned to ice. She jumped and spun, feet stumbling back until she was pressed against the gelding's side.

Hans easily lifted the beam and used it to poke open the doors. He flipped it vertically, resting one end on the ground and his chin on the other. He smirked at her.

"What are you waiting for?" he asked, nodding sideways at the open doors. "It's what you wanted, isn't it?"

Anna stared at the budding field lying just beyond the castle's outer walls. The snows had melted two days ago, leaving an expanse of mottled browns and greens. It stretched out for over a mile, ending at the dark line of the forest that'd been her goal. Still was her goal.

It hurt to look at. Her chest felt too small for her breaths, her heart sliced and weak.

Hans had been watching her entire escape attempt, had let her burn her energy on total uselessness. Running now would do nothing. It'd just twist the forest into yet another one of his playgrounds, corrupting the little hope she had left.

She suck in a furious breath and shoved the gelding's reins at Hans' chest. The only admission of surrender she'd ever give.

He looked down at them in confusion. "I wasn't the one to put them on."

Anna kept her fist extended. Her whole arm began to tremble with a combination of the physical effort of keeping it lifted and her simmering rage, and then she whirled back around towards the gelding's stall, accidentally yanking the horse with her. It whinnied in pain.

Anna flinched.

She coaxed the horse towards her, whispering breathy apologizes too soft for Hans to hear as she stroked its muzzle. Her silence was the only weapon she had left. The only anything she had left. It annoyed Hans, which was enough to kept her going as she waited for Elsa to come and rescue her and defeat Hans once and for all.

Anna removed the gelding's bridle as slowly as possible, hoping Hans would run out of patience and leave before she sidled out of its stall.

He hadn't.

"Giving up so easily?" he asked. There was an infuriating twinge of disappointment in his voice. "And after all that fine knot-work with the bedsheets… Tell you what. Start running now and I'll give you an hour's head start. That should more than enough time for you to reach that forest of yours, which is where you were headed, wasn't it?"

Anna breathed in and out, letting Hans' words wash over her. Or at least she tried to. They snagged at her like a bramble thicket that refused to die, no matter how much it got cut back year after year.

"No? Well, alls the pity. Maybe another day." He nodded at the doors and they swung shut themselves with a thud that echoed dully in Anna's chest. He dropped the beam back into place and then held out his arm to her. "Shall we?"

Anna stared at it blankly. Her brain could only hold so much anger, and she'd run out of the amount allotted towards his patronizing attempts at seeming a cordial host instead of the moralless kidnapper he was.

Clasping her hands in front of her, Anna turned silently and began the humiliating trudge up back to her room. Hans followed beside her, a sickening, unshakable presence that scratched at the insides of her skin. She fantasized about punching him, clawing at him with nails and teeth and anything else she could sink into his flawlessly smooth skin.

And then he'd just laugh at her. He'd probably even enjoy it.

So she didn't.

"Seas are starting to clear up," Hans said as they re-entered the castle proper.

Anna looked down. Her slippers were completely caked in mud and the hem of her dress didn't look much better. She wanted to make detours over each and every rug, perhaps kick up and leave prints on some of the tapestries, but even that would be a hollow act of defiance. Hans wasn't the one who scrubbed and cleaned, who'd be forced to endure the extra work.

"Had a ship come in from Arendelle yesterday," he continued. Anna stiffened, and he smiled. "Reserves are still low from that siege of yours." As always, he avoided blame. "They've asked for grains and wheat from the Southern Kingdoms, which is to say, from me."

Anna forced herself to keep her head straight, to keep one foot following the other.

"The question is: do I agree to their request?" His voice was light, like he was pondering over which color roses to plant in a garden instead of the fate of an entire kingdom. "We have more than enough stockpiled, and it'd be such an awful waste if people died when there was enough to go around. However…" Anna's stomach dropped at the way he drawled the word. "They are responsible for the deaths of more than a hundred of my men. They cost us time and resources and there does come a point where a good king can't afford to be merciful to everyone. Examples, on occasion, have to be made." His eyes flickered over to Anna. "What do you think?"

Her jaw tightened.

It was just a trick. Just another one of his plans to get her to cave and finally speak. He didn't care what she'd say, wouldn't listen to her despite asking for her advice. He'd probably wait for her to beg and then go ahead and starve her people anyway. It was all a lie. Every word that dripped from his mouth was a lie.

Hans baited her all the way to her room. Anna focused on keeping her breathing steady throughout, not gracing him with a single response, verbal or otherwise. It was only after he stepped back and the door clicked shut behind her that Anna took a shuddering gasp and sank to the floor.

The sheets had been untied and returned to her four poster bed, tucked in with a tight, mechanical precision. Her window was closed again. Pushing herself up, Anna tried its latch. It swung open effortlessly beneath her fingertips. The fact that Hans hadn't bothered to lock it, told her just how much he viewed her as a possible threat: not at all.

Anna slammed the window shut and flopped down onto the silken bed of her prison. She crossed her arms and waited. She had no books. No yarn. No nothing. Of course, Hans had claimed it wasn't a prison, that she was free to go anywhere in the castle or even Weideland itself provided he was at her side to "escort" her.

Fat chance of that.

Anna began counting the stitches in her bed's canopy. Around stitch number three hundred and forty two, she felt herself nodding off. The shadows lengthened as she fell in and out of sleep, the colors leeching from her elegantly furnished room but otherwise sparse room. They'd muddled into a sort of slate grey when a maid arrived with dinner.

"Crust of bread and salted jerky again, huh?" Anna joked weakly from the bed. "My favorite."

The maid glanced at her, eyes white and face drawn into a thin line, before putting it on her desk and leaving just as silently as she'd entered. Anna stared at the closed door, stared at the sharply divided portions of food. Next to it rested a single cup of water.

The message there was as plain as it'd been for the past week, as it'd been since Hans had first invited her to have dinner with him—play nice with her captor and she'd get rewarded. With food of all things. Like she was nothing more than a rabid, untamed dog.

And by taming her, he'd tame her kingdom.

Anna swallowed, her heart thudding with a dull ache as she thought of Arendelle, of Elsa and Kristoff and wherever the hell they could be in the world at that moment. She had to stay strong for them. Above all else, she had to believe that they were still free and working on finding some way to defeat Hans.

If they weren't…

Anna pushed away her doubts, forced herself over to her desk, and tore into the crust of bread.

Her resolution to stay in her room for the entire length of her captivity held one more week. Anna was steadily going crazy; whenever she looked at the filigreed wall clock, she was a single step away from crying, from screaming… At any rate, she was definitely doing more damage to herself than to Hans. She'd thought herself prepared by virtue of growing up sequestered and alone in Arendelle's palace. A small part of her had even welcomed the challenge, the chance to show Hans just who he was up against.

Turned out there was a difference between being trapped somewhere with enough toys and games to follow her to the afterlife and being trapped somewhere with literally nothing.

Go figure.

Anna waited her clock neared three in the morning before slipping out into the dark, empty hallway. Hans had offered her a tour of the castle when she'd first arrived. She had, obviously, declined it with a steely glare, which meant she was relying on four-year-old memories to find the castle's library. Memories from when the Kingdom of Weideland hadn't been anything more than a stepping stone in the bridge leading her towards the source of the summer blizzard. The bridge that had led her straight to the source without her even realizing, being the stupid idiot that she'd been.

Still was.

Anna continuously glanced over her shoulder for signs of Hans as she made her way through the empty castle. If he'd been watching her last escape attempt, surely he'd be watching now. Somehow. From somewhere. She was going against his orders, again, but since he hadn't dragged her down to the Weideland dungeons and/or killed her by now, Anna didn't see too much risk in it.

Worst case scenario, Hans stopped her from going to the library. Anna went back to her room just as bored as she'd been for the last two weeks.

More likely scenario, Hans showed up and followed her to the library, trying to push her into talking the entire time, and then followed her back. Anna would be okay with that. She'd have a stack of books at the end, which was all she cared about at the moment.

Eventually Anna found the large, double doors and pushed them open. Shafts of light fell across the library's wooden floor, the full moon visible through a pair of fifteen foot windows on her left. It was better than the hallway she'd just come from in terms of being able to see instead of feel her way across, but not enough to make out any of the book titles.

Anna was forced to grab a couple at random from each shelf and carry them to the windows for better light. She put back the boring ones and kept the novels and foreign histories, repeating the process several times until she had a stack as high as she could carry, and then scurried away to the relative safety her room. Using her foot, she pushed down and forward on her door latch and then kicked it shut behind her. She clutched her book tower close to her chest, heart racing.

Hans knew. He had to.

Anna braced herself, waiting for the inevitable knock. She waited for Hans to burst in, seize all the books, and cart them straight back to the library.

The clock ticked on, the only punctuation in the night's stillness.

Because Hans never entered her room. He never knocked. Never did anything to try and force her to come out.

Even when he had followed her back from the stables, he'd stopped a good two feet from her door. He'd let her take the final steps by herself, locking herself back into her cage. Anna didn't know whether to find her small sliver of sanctuary comforting or insulting. Most days it was a mixture of both. After all, it wasn't that Hans couldn't enter her room, he was just choosing not to at the moment, and she didn't let herself forget that those rules could change at any minute.

Anna shivered at the thought.

She switched her attention to her new collection of books. Grabbing the first one off the top, Anna shoved the others under her bed, unsure what the maids would do if they found them lying about in the open. She lit the small lamp on her bedside table and then leaned back, cracking open the first page of a battered old history on Walonian buccaneers

The books lasted her a grand total of eight days. Anna forced herself to return to the beginning of the stack and start over and reread them all again. That carried her through another five. On the third pass, her eyes began glazing over entire lines, then entire pages.

She needed fresh material.

Anna didn't bother bringing the old books back with her when she made her second venture to the library. If Hans got annoyed by her eventual stockpile, he was free to order one of the ever silent maids to take them.

The full moon had been swallowed up into the rest of the dark night sky since Anna's last visit, making it even harder to pick out the titles. She squatted next to a shelf, squinting as she ran her fingers over the covers, hoping to feel out the edges of the letters. Weirdly enough, the technique worked. Was slow as hell though…

"You're going to ruin your eyes like that."

Anna stiffened.

She'd been expecting the voice. Dreading it. A small part of her was glad he'd finally shown himself—if he was going to be spying on her either way, Anna'd preferred knowing where he was standing when he did it.

Anna turned around and clutched the book she'd been trying to decipher to her chest like a shield. Hans rolled his eyes, the movement barely visible in the darkness but exaggerated by the excruciatingly familiar head tilt that accompanied it.

"Don't be so worried. I'm not mad at you."

Anna almost snapped that she wasn't worried in the slightest, that she didn't give a reindeer's ass about anything he thought, but managed to bite her lips closed. Keeping her mouth in a firm line, she went back to the bookshelf. Now that she was aware of his presence, it prickled at the back of her neck. Anna debated the pros and cons of scooping out the entire shelf closest to her and booking it. Sure, there'd be duds in the stack, but there'd have to be good ones too.

Probably.

Maybe.

Anna continued her half blind search. She flinched when a sudden light flared into existence on her right, burning her eyes for a second before she blinked them into adjustment. She glanced over, expecting to see Hans hovering at her side with a freshly lit candle, and froze.

The flame he held hovered directly over his own, ungloved palm. She stared at it, then at him. He smiled back without a hint of teeth, mirroring her silence.

Anna breathed in and out. Just another one of his show-off tricks meant to unnerve her. She moved over to the next shelf.

He followed.

The light did, admittedly, make it easier to see. It frustrated her that it did, and for a good minute she crossed her eyes, letting the titles blur back into oblivion. Anna didn't want his help. She wanted to push him away, to punch him, to—

Anna swallowed with a painful shudder.

What were the words Elsa had always lived by—congeal don't feel? Reseal? Something like that anyway. She needed to be ice. She needed to layer herself with barrier after barrier until she became more statue than human. Which shouldn't have been too hard. After all, Anna'd been both ice and a statue before; she just had to figure out how to do it again. Preferably a bit more metaphorically this time.

Somewhere along the fourth shelf, an idea popped into her head.

If Hans really insisted on trailing her every step, Anna would make it as painfully boring as she could. Her pace slowed. She crouched down, waiting for Hans to follow before standing back up, only to change her mind and crouch back down again. She wandered back and forth between new shelves and ones she'd already visited half a dozen times, not so much searching for new content anymore letting her feet trace a dance over the library floor.

Every so often, Anna made sure to pass the grandfather clock in the east corner of the room so she could get a quick glance at its face. The hour hand slowly crawled down its right side. Anna stifled a yawn, wondering if she'd be able to make it until dawn—

"Just so you know, the only one you're wearing out is you," Hans suddenly said beside her. "I don't need to sleep anymore."

Anna froze, one hand covering her mouth, the other gripped halfway around the spine of a book. Her eyes were wide. She shut them as heat flushed behind her cheeks, tears threatening to leak past.

She wasn't going to cry.

She wasn't going to cry.

She wasn't—

Anna pretended to finish her yawn and took the book from the shelf like nothing had changed. She looked at its title: Adventures in Bookkeeping for the Modern Farmstead. Great. She glanced over at Hans. He was gently smiling, as he had been the whole night, a mask that made his face entirely unreadable.

Shoving the accounting book right back where she'd found it, Anna moved on. She didn't rush herself in her embarrassment, but didn't draw out her task anymore either. It took her ten minutes to gather up a new book stack to last her another two weeks, perhaps a full month if she forced herself to read very, very slowly… or alternated her reading with counting fabric stitches again.

Hans stopped her at the library doors.

Anna's heart jumped. She curled her free arm protectively around her wobbling tower of books in case he tried to grab at them.

Flame still alive and dancing in his left hand, he flourished a sudden book out from behind his back with his right. "You should read this one too," he told her. "One of my favorites growing up." He reached forward to place it on the top of her stack.

Anna snapped.

She smacked the book out of his hand, relishing the sting of her knuckles colliding against his own.

The book hit the floor with a thud. Hans looked down at it, blinking in apparent shock. Then he tilted his head back and laughed, the sound full and rich.

Anna's cheeks burned, furious at herself for losing control, furious at him for destroying everything she held dear in the first place.

"I take it that's a 'no thanks.'" He bent down and retrieved the book, his bare fingers long and pale against its dark green cover. "Maybe next time then."

Hans pushed open the library doors for Anna and thankfully remained there, holding them, as she strode out into the hall. The sky outside the castle windows was beginning to purple. Lack of sleep tugged down at her eyes. Halfway up one of the staircases, Anna lost control of her book tower. She bit back a stream of curses as they went scattering down the steps. She waited for a couple, silent seconds, then hiked back the skirts of her dress and went to work collecting them before Hans popped up to offer anymore of his oh-so-gracious help.

Next time, he'd said.

Anna didn't want there to be a next time. She hadn't even wanted there to have been a this time.

She finished reassembling her tower and carefully made her way forward again, eyes continuously glancing between books and carpeted step.

Books were good, but she could only carry so many at a time. They only lasted so long. She needed to start diversifying. And if Hans really wanted to play at being the gracious host, then she'd just have to use that graciousness and cram her room full of whatever it'd bring her until she never, never, ever had to come out and see his stupid face again.