Anna aimlessly walked in circles, desperate to maintain a grip on her sanity as she did countless laps around her bleak cell. She had given up on trying to figure out how long it had been since she was thrown in the hole. This was a given since her cell had no clock, leaving her with few methods for being able to tell time other than trying to keep track of when her meals were served, along with one hour a day when she was let out of her cell. During this period, she would wait in line behind the other unfortunate girls who shared her situation, watching their naked bottoms move slowly as they each dumped the contents of their buckets into a toilet one by one. Afterwards, she was placed in handcuffs and shackles and allowed to go outside (weather permitting) in a small caged area, where she would do her usual activity of pacing under the watchful (not to mention needlessly excessive) eyes of two armed guards.

She rubbed her forehead, which felt like it was on the brink of exploding at any given moment. Her sleep had become extremely sporadic, as every time she was able to doze off, she was almost immediately jolted awake by a sudden nightmare. As crass as it would sound to others, the truth of the matter was she didn't spend much of her mental energy thinking about why she got sentenced to prison in the first place, but the impact of solitary confinement was the mind's ability to have your thoughts talk back to you, and she found herself being assaulted by her guilt more and more frequently.

She smacked her fist against the wall yet again (ow!), infuriated that she had been foolish enough to keep a weapon on her person, but that was small potatoes compared to the fury she felt towards Elsa. How dare she send her to a horrible place like this! Of course, it was far less emotionally taxing for Anna to be mad at her sister than to blame herself, as doing so required her mind to dwell on unpleasantness such as the fatal bullet wounds that she was responsible for.

She was jolted back to her senses by a loud knocking on her cell door.

"Chow time, baby. You know the drill."

"Baby?" Anna immediately recognized the guard's voice as Kristoff's as she placed her hands through the slot. "You know, sir, I'm pretty sure Elsa doesn't want you flirting with the captives in her little playground."

"I won't tell if you won't." Anna felt the cuffs giving her wrists tiny and not very warm hugs. "Besides, I thought our little chats were important to you."

"Don't flatter yourself, sir." She kept her bound palms outstretched in place as she waited for Kristoff to hand over her lunch (or was it dinner?). "It's not like I've had anyone else to talk to for however many...weeks I've been here for?"

Kristoff laughed.

"Weeks? You really are as overdramatic as your sister says you are. You've only been here for three days."

"Now I know you're effing with me." Though the truth was math had never been Anna's strongest subject in school. "So are you gonna feed me, or am I to starve to death in here?"

"Are you that hungry for nutraloaf?" He gave her a tray which she carefully pulled through the slot, which consisted, alas, of the one of the least savory of prison delicacies, along with a plastic bottle of water (but it usually took at least three of them to properly wash it down).

"They really outdid themselves this time. I could almost mistake this for a fruitcake." She placed her entrée on the floor and placed her hands back through the slot for Kristoff to uncuff them. "Now can you do a girl a favor and tell me when I'm going to be let back into standard population?"

"Well, a little birdie might have told me you're being released tomorrow. But you didn't hear that from me."

"Uh-huh. And did this 'jailbirdie' by any chance think she had a God-given gift to predict the future?" She was trying to keep the conversation going at this point, although Anna found it unlikely Kristoff spent much time talking with Giselle.

"More likely your sister told me in confidence. Sorry. I'm not always good at keeping secrets. Just ask my pet reindeer."

"Your pet what?"

Kristoff let out what Anna swore must've been a forced cough.

"Oh, would you look at the time?"

"No, I can't, since shockingly no one has bothered to provide me with a watch." No wonder she had gone out of her way to try to steal one once.

"Well, ummmm, it's time I went back to my other shift." He hastily removed her handcuffs, liberating her arms so she could freely munch on her "delicious" meal. "I'll be back to let you out into the pen for your little walk later."

"Do you really have to go?" But he had already left.

Anna hated herself for it, but she had grown somewhat attached to Kristoff on some sort of delicate, unexplainable level. Not in a romantic way by any stretch of the term (the last person she had fallen in love with was currently pushing up daisies), but of all of the guards in Frozen Heart, he was the one who was a jerk to her the least often.

Or maybe she was only growing fond of him because she was starting to go stir crazy.

She gnawed at the nutraloaf (blech), bewildered by how much she was missing Rapunzel's endless gabbing as she struggled not to allow herself to sink even deeper into depression. She would be out of here tomorrow. That was a good thing, right? She would have a flushing toilet again. That was another positive!

"Happy thoughts, think happy thoughts," she muttered as she chewed. "Don't think of dead bodies spread out on cheap motel beds, don't think of police sirens, don't think of going to Hell for all eternity when you die because of what you did..."

She stopped talking to herself as it wasn't helping matters.

She shoved her tray aside (more than half of the loaf remained untouched), stretching down on her mat and covering herself with the blanket as best as she could. Perhaps sleep would spontaneously greet her and offer her some form of escape until it was time for her to be let outdoors in a couple of hours.

Before she could even shut her eyes, there was a knock on the door.

"The hell? Am I losing track of time that badly?"

She crawled over, feeling too lazy to get on her feet and slipped her hands robotically through the slot.

"Stand back, inmate!" It wasn't Kristoff's voice, but a demanding female one.

Confused, Anna backed away, wondering if she was somehow in trouble again when the door unlocked itself and slowly slid open.

But it wasn't an officer who walked into the door, but a prisoner, fully clothed in stripes but notably without a ball and chain as she took a sloppy bite out of an apple, her fiery red hair looking as though it had been rampaged by multiple tornadoes. The door shut behind her, leaving Anna all alone with the unexpected visitor.

It was Merida.