chapter word count: 247

noir heart: thirty-one

A few minutes perusing the various snapshots in time sat framed upon the mantelpiece have already yielded an interesting detail, and perfectly timed too – he's anxious to deflect her attention away from him.

"Tell me something." he says with a small amount of curiosity.

"That would depend on what that 'something' is. Are we being listened to?" she asks wryly behind him – and her voice is a lot closer than the kitchen. He turns to find her on the other side of the worn leather couch, regarding him intently with her hands by her sides while two steaming mugs sit happily upon the kitchen table.

"Wiretapping or surveillance requires a warrant and a suspect, and given that you're a…" he pauses to sarcastically grunt, "…witness…besides, would it matter?"

"I suppose not." she smiles, and laces her hands together in front of her. "What would you like to know, Jack?"

"I see lots of pictures of you, and some of you with your sister, but none that have your late husband in them. Why is that?" he asks, turning his head back to the photographs.

"Anna strongly disapproved of my marriage to Kozmotis, even going so far as to consider him invisible." Elsa explained with an eerie air of calm.

"Ah. The ol' sibling thing, huh?"

"Precisely – a particular bone of contention was the pre-nuptial agreement." Elsa continued.

Jack's head whipped over his shoulder to fix her with a surprised look. "Wait, what?"

jpbake: True enough. I just like to understand other people, to try and work out why they think the way they do (Helsa still bewilders me, but hey). Slight problem with that is it's making me more and more disillusioned with the world, but hey ho. Thanks for the review - and she does, doesn't she? This kind of Elsa is good fun to write.
oniiiiiiiiinokoooooo: You'd get bored within a day of where I live, that's what would happen. Haha, that's exactly what I'm trying to pull off, the constant intellectual back-and-forth. Foreplay indeed.
doomguard24: Hey! Haven't seen you since...CttT I think? Thanks very much for the review!
heartonfire: I don't feel obligated - well I do, but that's to the story. It's not stressful to upload, I'm just chucking NH updates up when it feels right. As Oni said - this is kind of the foreplay, the NH equivalent of the first conversation of the daters-to-be. Sort of.
silentreader: Not so silent! Haha. Thanks very much for the review, and I'm glad you like it.
e-teens: :D You stay awesome too.
stefalove: Neither had I up - but apparently to some people, image is everything. Incidentally, 18 year old Princess Elsa looks identical to the 21 year old Queen Elsa, so that argument is out of the window.

I'm getting better. I'm not forcing myself to write, but the next chapter of OGaV is slowly taking shape paragraph by paragraph. Just waiting to get the joy of writing back - it's so weird, it's like I'm having to re-learn how to write fics. As a heads up, though, my laptop battery is refusing to charge (something to do with the little connector) so I wanted to chuck this update up before the soldering fully comes loose and I have to get it fixed.