A/N: This fic is the slow burning wick of a tall candle. It will eventually showcase Helsa. It is not a story about Egon, but the first chapter is from his POV. If Hans' brothers are cruel enough to ignore a little boy completely, I wondered how quickly punishments become a one-upping contest of who can devise and execute the worst of the worst.

the original summary

"Hans faces the punishment promised to Queen Elsa when he returns to the Southern Isles, which begin with his eldest brother and escalate all the way down to his next eldest brother, each one taking on a new and more torturous level. A year later, a Southern Isles veteran and his wife seek political asylum, having brought what was left of the Prince to back Arendelle, at their own risk. Queen Elsa, on top of the issues associated with running her kingdom, is begrudgingly tasked with giving the man who once tried to kill her sanctuary from those she sent him to. Twelve punishments he survived, but is the cruelest still yet to come?"

Of there being fates worse than death, Egon was certain. Some time ago, he had been ordered to keep a certain prisoner alive, which involved little more than delivering meager and spoiled food, dumping a piss bucket out a barred window at the end of a hall above, and when the situation called for it, roughly patching the man up. No one would recognize him, Egon was certain, were they to see him. His hair fell in straggling mats below his shoulders and was so dirty Egon wasn't sure what color it was. The man had once been well groomed, he decided, though he could not explain what gave him that impression. They never spoke and Egon had never been told who he was, just that he would be paid two gold pieces for every week the man lived. As a veteran in his forties, with a wife and a shack to keep afloat, Egon didn't question it, much.

A summer morning had just begun when he checked on the prisoner. A small set of fresh and bleeding scratches scored a small section of the prisoner's left flank. Egon stood by the piss bucket for a full minute, pity and dread growing in him as he looked at the man with his back turned to him. Spurred into movement by a sound in the prison, Egon took the bucket and its slops and left to go to the end of the hall above and dump it out the window, where it fed into the sea. Upon his return, the prisoner had assumed a tired and defeated position on the bed. As was usual, Egon rapped his wedding ring against a bar on the door to alert the prisoner of his presence and his intent to check on the fresh wounds.

He sat down on the bed and pulled out a handkerchief to dab at the scratches. Egon's charge flinched somewhat at the first touch but made no movements or sound. This was by no means the worst he had seen the man endure. Somehow, he always endured. Putting the handkerchief between his hand and the naked flesh of the man's unwashed shoulder, Egon tried to coax him into rolling onto his back. He met resistance at first, but succeeded in rolling him back and jumped back at the sight of his face. His faced was bruised under the beard, one green eye was swollen completely shut. He still had his teeth, but there was a slight crook to his nose that had not been there perhaps the day before. Egon muttered an oath under his breath, then set down again, knowing that his handkerchief would do nothing for the bruises and the swelling.

"Whatever you been doing to provoke them, maybe you should think about stopping it," Egon said, aggravation at the ill-treatment mixing with a severe dislike for the situation. That sentence was the longest he had ever spoken to his charge. To his surprise, the man grinned, revealing still-white teeth, though his mouth reeked. "My crime is long past… they do this for fun."

Egon's stomach turned, and he cursed aloud, "Sadistic bastards, then."

"They are my brothers," the prisoner said, his un-swollen eye closing and the grin dispersing. Egon was shocked and somewhat confused. His own brother might have given him hell when they were youths, but never would he have done… this. "Who are they?" Egon asked, the question he had been plagued with from the beginning of his work, "Who are you?"

The prisoner didn't answer. For several moments, Egon set on the bed and wondered if the man would, but came to the conclusion that he had slipped off into an uneasy sleep. Egon stood, knowing he would be back later with a "meal" for his charge and hoping for answers then. He had just shut the door and began to bolt the lock back in place with the keys when he heard an answer to one of his questions:

"Hans."

It was several days before they spoke again, and in that time, Egon had time to put a few things together. His wife, the loveable but overbearing harlot he pulled from the gutter, was a quick woman, and—he loathed to admit—had helped him in piecing together the puzzle. The man was sitting with his head against the stone wall of his prison, using, Egon guessed, its coolness to soothe the spot on his face most aching. He dumped the bucket, unable to abide the smell, though his nose was little good after his career as a soldier, and returned to find the man in the same position.

"So, your name is Hans?" Egon began. It took the man a moment to turn around, and Egon was actually relieved to see the swelling had gone down but was replaced with bruising. He nodded, as though he were unable to talk past a parched throat. "And your brothers have enough pull to lock you down here… the way they have… to order done to you what's been done. Those are truths, aye?"

The man only answered with a slight nod, surely knowing what Egon was going to say next.

"So, I figure your brothers be the Princes, and you, Prince Hans," reasoned the veteran, who leaned against the inner wall of the door, "But that'd be impossible, since you were hanged to death six months ago in front of the royal court."

Guards and maids and servants had all gossiped about how horrible the youngest prince's death was, made to stand before his brothers and swing for trying to seize the throne of Arendelle from Queen Elsa, and failing. The prince had said to have been wearing a black hood over his head, though, when he faced the noose. At the time of his death, and was no longer a prince, having been disowned by his brothers and stripped of land and wealth before the execution. Little of that passed through Egon's mind at that second, his eyes on Hans, but it had the night before, as he pieced it together with his wife. The ex-prince looked at Egon, an emotion playing on his face that was a cross between bemusement and fear. "My brothers would never have simply let me hang… they haven't."

Egon looked at his hands, thinking briefly of the meaning of those words. "No…" Eyes coming up, he backtracked gruffly, "Name's Egon."

"I liked it better when we didn't talk, Egon," Hans said, turning away and facing the wall again. The veteran made a face, then stood up and went out the door, shutting it. He muttered, "Suit yourself," as he went down the stone hall.

Egon came back every day, but he and Hans talked no more, and the veteran did little more than was required to keep the prisoner alive. When the man would return to his little hovel, he would tell his wife about the day as she sat on his knee, then she would tell him about hers, and when there was little else to say, he would voice the nagging feelings he had for the ex-prince. "They're cruel to him," he would say, and his wife would touch at his beard, "I've seen nothing good happen to that boy, and it only gets worse."

"So… set him free, Egon," his wife would say, though the first time, he had been floored by such a statement. He'd explained every obstacle, yet would imagine a way around them while he talked, and his wife would pat his chest, get up, and go back to whatever she was doing until they slipped off to bed. She would always say it gently, and he would laugh as if it were a joke, to set Hans free. Egon would always finish off his thoughts with, "Besides, if I did, they'd know it was me, and I'd get a necklace at the gallows and you'd be on your own."

The day came, however, when Egon had seen enough. The prince had suffered, and suffered, but the last punishment of the twelfth prince was more than Egon could bear to see one brother do to the other.

Egon's normal walk down the hall was so quiet, half the time he thought that Hans might be gone, dead, something. On the day Egon had enough, Hans was whimpering. It wasn't something Egon had heard the prince do before, and he was alerted before the clotted blood on the stones became visible. The veteran rushed through opening the door, eyes on Hans' blanketed figure. Though Egon was loud enough for three floors above and below to have heard him, Hans didn't stop whimpering, didn't turn, and jumped when Egon gripped his frame with a strong hand. The blanket—more of a sheep's skin with little give—fell to the floor, and horrified, Egon paused, the bloody body before him a testament to the cruelty those with power could treat even family. "Oh, son… what have they done to you?" he asked, pulling the prince into an awkward hold. Feverishly, Hans continued to make pained noises and shiver.

Egon decided then that Hans' punishments were enough. He would get Hans out of the prison and away from his brothers, or he would hang for trying.

During the middle of the day, Egon went home and talked to his wife. The only thing he hadn't thought of a way around was what to do after freeing the prisoner. His wife was confused as to what had happened to spur Egon into action. The words were hard to get out, his adrenaline running out and his stomach going cold. "They cut him," Egon forced out. His wife didn't understand at first, so he repeated, adding in a gesture to the offended area. She put a hand to her mouth, eyes wide in horror. For a minute, they were quiet and still, until she broke the silence, "We take him to Arendelle. Maybe the Queen would show him mercy or kill him—either one's better than staying here. She might let us stay there, too, safe from the King's men." Making a face, Egon was going to dismiss the idea at first, but let it settle. "We'll try that," he told her, always surprised at how quick his wife, an ex-trollop, was.

Night fell, and Egon had his wife pack up their meager belongings and sell the house—it was a hovel, but they took a low offer from an even more impoverished family of three just to be rid of it—using the money to buy a horse and cart. She sat a street away from the prison, and Egon returned as if he were put out that his charge, Hans, was such a hassle. The guards didn't bat an eye.

In the cell, Hans had managed an uneasy sleep. "Wake up," he said quickly, urgently, "Wake up. I'm getting you out of here." The prince opened his eyes, but Egon could tell he was still in too much pain to comprehend. There would be no way he could walk out on his own. Egon had carried in an extra cloak, hidden as if it were his gut, and wrapped the prince in it before carefully putting Hans over his shoulder. Egon was not terribly burdened; Hans had dropped weight since his life in the palace, and had little muscle mass left, more or less just skin and bones. The old veteran had planned his escape to avoid guards and keep to the shadows, his old skills from soldiering days put to good use.

It took him a good hour to escape the jail, having to use a labyrinth of doors and passages, having to wait at times until the guards moved far enough away that nothing would alert them. When he was at last to the street, and to his wife, they made for the docks, where a friend and old veteran could get the three onto a ship bound for Arendelle. It would not leave until the morning, but they had time, Egon thought.

Below deck, in a storeroom, his wife tended to Hans with tears in her eyes. She bound his fingers and toes in makeshift gauze, then used a rag to wash away the blood and filth from his body, dismay growing with every pass she made across the skin. Egon watched her do all this, then helped her dress him in clothes too loose for him, but probably the first that Hans had been able to wear to Egon's knowledge in six months. When that was done, they took up a watch on him in the chair beside the storeroom's boarded bed, each getting sleep for a few hours before switching up. When dawn broke and the ship weighed anchor, Egon went above and thanked the captain, talking with him for some time about his son, below deck, sick with something that he hoped could be cured in Arendelle. It was a four-day journey from the Southern Isles to Queen Elsa's domain, which Egon could only hope would pass quickly and without incident. Naturally, that sort of hope was only good to fools.