Anna spent only ten minutes in the castle dungeons before she was transported back to her bedroom, but that was enough to remind her of her true place. Of Hans' true nature.
As she laid on her bed, sinking into its soft pillows, she touched her wrists, remembering the cold bite of iron around them.
Silk or iron, she was still a prisoner here.
She had to remember that.
When her usual dinner of cold vegetables, bread, and water came, Anna ate it silently. She went to bed, woke up, waited for breakfast, and ate again. Then she pulled a chair next to her window and began to read.
She didn't go out. She refused to go out.
She was a prisoner and this was her cell, and it was time both she and Hans faced that reality.
As she fingered through her miniature book collection the next week, Anna noticed some of the titles missing. She took a slow breath. Fine. If that was the way Hans wanted to play…
She carried on like she didn't notice.
The next day two more books were gone—a condensed history of the New World and mystery novel involving deaths at a monastery that she'd just been about to start. Her knitting disappeared the morning after that, followed by her sketchpad a week later, then her half-finished embroidery of Arendelle as seen from the fjord. Anger bubbled up through her, then she breathed out and let it dissipate. While the embroidery been her one "picture" of home, she'd been stitching from memory. It still lived there in her head and that was something Hans couldn't take from her.
By the end of the month, her room was as bare as it had been the first week she'd arrived.
It only strengthened her resolve to stay cooped up. Anna stuck by the window, staring out and counting trees. She stuck to her bed, staring up at its canopy and counting crimson stitches.
She slept a lot. Hans had told her once that he didn't need sleep. He didn't need much of anything. Which was silly because everyone needed something…
He needed to break her, a nasty voice whispered. That's what all of this was—a waiting game. Hans needed her to come groveling to him. It was the only way he had to beat Elsa. He expected her to be the weak link in her sister's unshatterable chain.
Anna had to prove him wrong.
With no calendar, writing, or other sharp implements, she bit tiny notches in her blankets to keep track of the days. The servants changed them every two weeks. And so Anna kept count—two weeks and one day… four weeks and two days…
She made up stories in her mind. Sometimes she let her left hand be the hero and fight against her villainous right hand. Sometimes her left hand won. Sometimes it lost.
And then, in what Anna could best calculate as early January, her waiting finally paid off.
Someone knocked at her door.
Anna sat up in bed. None of the servants ever knocked. They just swept silently in and then swept silently back out. She stayed in bed, examining her blankets—six notches. Nearly halfway through her now biweekly cycle. Nothing special. Outside, the darkening winter sky marked the time as early afternoon.
"Anna?" Hans' voice called out softly from the other side of her door.
She didn't respond.
"You have a visitor," Hans continued. "In the front hall." There was another pause. "And you don't have to worry. I won't be there."
Anna waited for him to continue, to offer more of an explanation than that, but nothing came. She waited a good five minutes before realizing he'd probably left.
It was a trap.
It was always a trap with Hans. He was trying to break her vow of solitude just like he'd broken her vow of silence.
But… visitor?
Who would he have dragged here as a visitor—?
Anna's stomach dropped.
Elsa.
What if Hans had finally found Elsa and had her chained up in the front hall? Kristoff could be there too, all beaten and bloody and—
Anna threw off her blankets, muscles wincing at the sudden movement. Her bare feet yelped at the cold of the hardwood floor. She kicked on a pair of slippers, threw on a loose dress over her wrinkled sleepwear, and allowed herself two yanked brushes through her bird's nest hair before flinging herself out into the hall.
She raced through the castle, feet remembering the way to the front hall even as her mind preoccupied itself with gruesome imaginings. What if she was too late and they were already dead? What if they weren't because Hans was waiting to kill them in front of a live audience? What if—?
Anna froze at the top of the stairs of the front hall.
Down below, in the center of the hall, a young woman in a purple dress waited with her hands clutched nervously in front of her. She was flanked by two Weideland soldiers. A thin circlet rested on top of her short brown hair.
"Rapunzel?" Anna said in disbelief.
The woman looked up. Her eyes widened. "Anna?"
Anna took faltering steps down the stairs. Rapunzel approached slowly as well. They met at the foot of the staircase.
"Is it really you?" Rapunzel asked, slowly lifting a hand.
"I— I was going to ask you the same thing."
"You…" Rapunzel's hand ghosted the side of Anna's face before dropping back down. "Your hair looks awful."
Anna snorted in laughter, rubbing her palm against her forehead. "I know. I didn't think—" Her eyes brimmed with tears. "This isn't a trick, isn't it?"
Rapunzel shook her head, and then suddenly grabbed Anna into a fierce hug. Anna grabbed back, letting her cousin bury her face into the side of her neck, burying her own face against Rapunzel's shoulders, feeling the warmth of another living person as her fingers pressed tighter and tighter against her cousin's back. She couldn't remember the last person she'd touched. Had it been Elsa? Or was it Kristoff? There'd been so much panic the day Arendelle fell; all her memories had merged into one terrible blob.
Rapunzel pulled back. "They're listening," she muttered with a nasty, tear-filled glare at the soldiers. "They're probably going to report straight back to him."
Anna didn't need to ask who 'him' was.
"Let them," Anna said.
Rapunzel stared at her in confusion. "But—?"
"If he wants to hear detailed reports about how we talked about the latest hair styles and painting and god knows what else for the next two hours, then let him."
Rapunzel frowned. "Anna, we can't only talk about those things."
"Why not?"
"Why not?!" Rapunzel echoed. "Anna, no one's seen or heard from you in nearly a year. We all thought you were dead. Even your—" She stopped herself, face going white.
Anna studied her cousin's face, completing her cut-off sentence.
Your sister.
Rapunzel knew where Elsa was.
"Follow me," Anna said, taking Rapunzel's hand. "I know a place we can talk."
Anna led her cousin through the castle and up to her bedroom. She wrinkled her nose as she realized the state of the mess she'd made. If Anna had known the truth about her visitor, she would've taken the time to clean up a bit first—opened the window, folded her bed, picked up yesterday's laundry from the floor…
"What is this?" Rapunzel asked.
"My bedroom," Anna said. "We're safe here."
"Safe?"
"Hans doesn't…" Anna paused, suddenly realizing how stupid she was about to sound. "He doesn't come in here."
"Right."
Rapunzel didn't look very impressed. Not that there was anything to be impressed with. Without her books and craft supplies, the room was lushly furnished but barren.
"So," Anna said coughing. "Umm…what's been new with you?" She winced at how forced the question came out.
"Oh, you know," Rapunzel said, moving to the window. She traced a finger over the metalwork. "Kingdom got hit with a plague, then a drought, then got taken over. We hid the magic stone, thinking he'd come for it. Months later we find out it's been swapped with a regular stone and months after that we find out it never was magic to begin with."
"You found out? How did you—?" Anna halted as Rapunzel looked back with a knowing gaze. Elsa. Anna coughed again. "Never mind."
"And you? What's been new with you?" Rapunzel asked, echoing her own awkward question straight back at her.
"Umm…" I've been embroiled in psychological warfare with a immortal madman for the last two months. "Not much."
Rapunzel winced as she looked around Anna's bedroom again. "I can see that."
"You said… people thought I was dead?"
"Well," Rapunzel said cautiously. "Yes. I mean, there wasn't any word from you. Or really any word from anyone except, you know, Hans. He told everyone you were still alive but… That's why I decided to come when I got his invitation."
"Invitation?"
"Yeah, he sent a letter just after Christmas. Eugene didn't want me to go, but I just had to know whether or not you were still…" She trailed off, awkwardly.
"Living?"
Rapunzel nodded.
"And has Hans been…?"
Rapunzel's face twisted in confusion. "Has Hans been what?
"Has he conquered any other kingdoms since Arendelle?"
"You don't know?"
Anna shook her head. Her lungs constricted at the thought of Hans cutting a swath across the rest of the continent while she sat in her room ignorant and helpless.
"Arendelle was the last one," Rapunzel said. "All of us keep wondering, waiting, where he's going to go next, but he hasn't yet. I think that's part of his game."
Anna nodded, air rushing back into her body with a tingling mixture of confusion and relief. "He likes to play them," she said blankly.
Arendelle had been his last kingdom? What did that mean? Did it mean anything? Was it because he hated Elsa? Did he really hate Elsa that much?
"You should try and get him to let you visit Corona," Rapunzel said.
Anna jerked out of her thoughts.
"What?"
Rapunzel shrugged. She stepped over to Anna's discarded dress from the previous day, picked it up, and began to fold it. "If he let me visit you here, it shouldn't be impossible for you to visit me there."
"That's never going to happen," Anna said, crossing her arms. "Not unless he escorts me."
Rapunzel frowned, folded dress draped over her hands. "Then have him escort you."
"No!" Anna snapped. She flinched, shocking herself at her unintentional volume. Softer she added, "That's what he wants me to do! I'd be playing straight into his hands."
"If you want to go somewhere that he doesn't, I don't see how that's playing into his—"
"I said, 'no,' Rapunzel. End of story. And— and give me that!" Anna grabbed her dress from Rapunzel's hands and stomped over to the hamper.
"Fine, fine…" Rapunzel sighed. "But just remember, I'm the one that has experience being locked up with an evil guardian! And when you get a shot at freedom, you take it. Escorted or not."
Anna laughed bitterly. She tossed her dress into the hamper and turned back towards her cousin. "Yeah, but you didn't know your mother was evil when you were still locked up with her. And when you did finally figure that out, what happened? Let's see, you immediately got your future husband stabbed, your hair cut, and your mother pushed out of the tower to her death, of course, not that I wouldn't mind that death part right about now—"
Rapunzel stared at her, close-lipped and wide-eyed. Her hands clutched each other, knuckles turning white.
Anna winced. "I— I didn't mean it like that."
Rapunzel shook her head. "It's alright. I shouldn't have assumed that…" She took a breath. "But you need to find a way to get to Corona, okay?"
"Of course, and you know I'd love to, but—"
"You need to," Rapunzel corrected firmly.
Anna paused. "I need to?"
Rapunzel nodded.
"You mean…?"
Elsa.
It had to be. Elsa was in Corona.
There was a knock at the door. Both princesses jumped. One Anna's dinner maids entered, but she wasn't carrying a plate. The woman cleared her throat, hands fidgeting and eyes staring at some place on the wall to Anna's left.
"Dinner will be in the east dining hall whenever the two of you are ready," the woman said.
Anna blinked.
The woman kept talking about… something; Anna was too shocked to process the words. There was something wrong about it, beyond the simple fact that her silent servants were no longer silent. Anna realized she'd been imagining voices for them all this time; the maid's real voice was too high and breathy for the voice Anna had already paired with her face.
"—and his majesty regrets to inform you that he's be preoccupied with other matters this evening and won't be able to attend."
"What?" Anna said.
The maid repeated the words but it didn't make anymore sense than it had the first time. A full dinner for the first time in a year? Rapunzel as her dining companion? Hans as… not her dining companion? Was this somehow his version of surrendering? Had she actually won the sit-in-her-room-and-do-nothing war?
"Is there something wrong?" Rapunzel asked, eyes wide with concern.
"Oh, umm… no," Anna said quickly. "It's nothing."
It had to be.
