The silence was too loud for Elsa. She couldn't concentrate well enough on her dreams to fall asleep. Olaf wasn't snoring like he usually did when he slept on his back and the water lapping at the hold above her head was the opposite of soothing. Most nights, she could calm the buzzing thoughts about her apprehensions of being on the Revenge and the guilt of leaving her father behind at home by imagining a certain redhead falling asleep in her arms instead of Olaf. The boy's presence was warm and comforting enough that she didn't complain, but the company wasn't the kind she craved and only made the loneliness more acute.

It wasn't long before she became too restless to continue her introspection and, intending to seek distraction, carefully removed herself from the shared cot. She crept, barefoot, up the stairs to the hold and emerged into the vast and deserted gun hold. The Revenge was different from the vessel she first set out upon in many regards, but this was the most significant. Where the merchant ship had piles of crates and barrels, the numbers and shapes of which were beyond belief, this one had rows upon rows of canons, among other miscellaneous weapons hanging from the walls between each port. The contrast made Elsa shiver, but she told herself it was the chilly ocean draft that was drifting in the canon holes through which Elsa could just make out the dark water. After a moment of chilled stillness, she began making her way softly through the hold.

Her own daring caught her off guard; she had not, during all of her weeks on the Revenge, thought to explore it. Suddenly here she was, creeping around the practically unfamiliar ship in the middle of the night. She took no lantern or torch with her because she was not completely at liberty - she did not want to draw any sort of attention to herself. Attention was the last thing she wanted. She was lonely but she did not want company. Or so Elsa made herself believe - this was a bloated falsehood if ever there was one. She wanted, desperately, the company of one. Shaking off the feeling, Elsa continued across the gun deck and lowered herself down the ladder to the galley without a second thought.

Though she could not see well, her lack of shoe helped her get in touch with her surroundings and attached her to the ship - in the moment she felt closer to the Revenge than she did with any living person. Elsa could feel the captain's love for the ship as she stepped across the damp planks and saw it seeping from the creaking walls and swaying fixtures above her head. She had half expected to find a sailor in a drunken slumber at one of the tables in the commons area before the door to the galley, but it, too, was deserted.

She wondered idly what the penalty was for sneaking food from the galley in the wee hours of the morning, but in her melancholic state found she cared not. The door opened with a strangled groan which customarily would have sent Elsa into a flurry of concern of waking her shipmates, but she pushed through the pending anxiety and entered. She was surprised to find the tiny room clean - well, cleaner than she had ever seen it. Granted, she only entered long enough to seize a plate of gruel and move on and did not under ordinary circumstances stop to enjoy the view. Now that she was there, gazing around at all the mouldy gruel ingredients, she found she had no desire to sneak food after all. At least not tonight, when she had no appetite.

The commons area, on her way back through, seemed danker and darker than it had a moment before, so Elsa, once more shivering, fled the lower decks for the more liberating upper.

The sea breeze hit her full force as she ascended from below. It was still August, but Elsa could feel autumn in the wind chill. As soon as she was clear of the stairs, she looked up, expecting to see those pinpricks she loved so much but all she could see was darkness. The sky, too, was mirroring her gloom. She had left her vest below and her bare feet forced more cold upon her, but she ignored it and picked her way carefully around the mast to the bow. Lost in thought, she almost tripped over coils of rope that had been discarded near the bowsprit, a spot probably out of the way of normal passersby. Elsa, of course, would be the soul to stumble upon such spots on an exploration of the ship in the middle of the night. She had been unconsciously intending to meander all the way to the edge of the bow and gaze down at the water, even though the Revenge was anchored and there wouldn't be much of a view. Soon, however, the coils of rope became too thick for Elsa to navigate and she threw her head up once more in the hopes of seeing stars. Her view was, as ever, obscured by dark clouds.

With no other option left to her, Elsa backtracked past the fore and main masts and froze in her tracks when her gaze came upon a door that loomed unexpectedly out of the darkness. Besides the quarterdeck, there was only one place left on the ship she hadn't explored tonight. One place, in fact, that she had never entered at all.

She walked carefully yet unsteadily toward the cabin, feeling as though it had been pulling her there all along and she was finally giving into its force. Her brisk gait turned to soft, padding steps as she neared the door. She could see the glimmer of candlelight from the crack beneath it and her breath caught in her throat as though she had come down with a great shock. Captain Anna was still awake. Elsa cautiously approached, ears perking when she caught the sound of boots pacing their way to and fro in the cabin, a few feet behind the door. Without thinking twice, Elsa lifted a pale hand and slid the tips of her slender fingers down the wooden door in front of her. The captain was so close, yet so far, as she had been since Elsa was taken onto the Revenge. Her hand on the door suddenly clenched itself into a fist and she raised it higher, as if to knock. After a few seconds of holding her breath, she shied away from the door and turned, pressing her back into the wall at the door's side. Her lack of rest was obviously making her delirious if she thought Captain Anna would want to see Elsa at all, nevermind at this hour. Only deranged people belonging to an asylum would be up and roaming a pirate ship, unarmed, in the middle of the night.

Although she berated herself for even thinking of interrupting the captain, she couldn't bring herself to part from the door and the light beyond it. Slowly, she sank to the floor, shirt riding up against the wall as she went. She settled on the deck and listened.

After a time, the pacing stopped and another sound picked up. A whoosh, and then a thunk as if the captain were throwing something. Four of these, then footsteps as she retrieved the objects, and then the cycle would be repeated. The longing Elsa had felt back in her cot was intensified now that she was near, now that she could hear and practically sense the Captain. Another quarter of an hour passed before the footsteps and the throwing stopped. Then to Elsa's dismay, the candle was extinguished. She scrambled to her hands and knees, staring at the now-darkened crack at the bottom of the door. Of course, the captain was likely to retire eventually, but now as Captain Anna lost herself to unconsciousness, Elsa was left alone again. Or so she thought.

"What are you doing?"

Elsa spun around and sat up onto her knees. Her unplaited blonde hair fell haphazardly into her face but through the tresses she saw that it was the first mate who had come upon her in such a compromising position.

"Seriously, were you raised in a barn?" Kristoff continued, grasping the sleeve of her shirt to roughly pull the merchant's daughter to her feet.

"No." Her reply was indignant despite her hearty embarrassment. "But you probably were." Kristoff brought out cheek she had no idea she possessed. He thankfully chose to ignore the snub and pulled her away from the cabin door by her shirt sleeve. She followed reluctantly, but mostly because she didn't want him to destroy her shirt; it was the only one in her possession. He led her well away from the door but remained up on the deck. They were nearing the giant coils of rope at the bow when he halted and released his hold on her. She looked up into his face and saw his eyes burning into her.

"So?" he said. Elsa immediately turned away, hands coming up to hold onto the rail at the edge of the ship.

"So what?" She decided immediately to tiptoe around his questions.

"What were you doing outside Captain Anna's door? Waiting for her to retire so you could assassinate her?"

Elsa could not control her jaw from hanging agape in shock at his accusation. "What? No. Why would I do such a thing?"

"I don't know. You're still a stranger to us. You could be up to anything and we wouldn't know. That boy could be infiltrating our secrets for you so you can steal command of the Revenge."

In her anger, her hands tightened involuntarily on the rail. "Olaf is an innocent boy who thinks it's fun to be a pirate."

"You spend an awful lot of time together."

"We were kidnapped together. We've experienced similar traumas, we have something in common. We take comfort in that."

Despite the logic and raw honesty of her answers, Kristoff waved this explanation away and started immediately on a different tack. "Do you think working the captain up into a frenzy will work in your scheme? What do you want from her?"

"Nothing! Just…" She stopped herself, very nearly saying 'friendship'. Another word stuck instead - a word from the first mate. "Frenzy?"

It was Kristoff's turn to be silenced. Elsa fought the urge to turn and face him, to use burning eyes as a weapon to get information, as he had done to her mere minutes before. It took him many moments to collect his thoughts before he responded, coming up beside Elsa at the rail as he did. It seemed as though he was struggling on how much to reveal to Elsa, still mistrusting her. He continued in with the questions.

"What the hell have you done to her? It's scaring me," his voice was low and serious, but now that he was done accusing her of malicious deeds, he chuckled a little right after. "I've never seen her so happy. Buoyant, even."

Elsa continued to stare at her hands as they held onto the rail for dear life. The knuckles were completely white.

"If you do anything to harm her…" Kristoff trailed off and took a deep, shuddering breath.

"What could I do? I'm just a merchant's daughter." She meant it to be reassuring but it merely sounded bitter. Why would a pirate captain want anything to do with a merchant's daughter, is what she was really saying.

"I know her extremely well. Better than you could imagine. She talks about you differently. She behaves differently around you. When usually she'd hand out punishments or leave a sailor to die, she is lenient with you. She risked her own life to save yours."

"What are you getting at?" Elsa released her hands from their death grip on the rail and finally turned to face Kristoff, but she did not make eye contact, instead training her eyes on his large, boorish hands.

"She just… she's like my little sister, okay? I love her more than anything. I would do anything for her happiness. If that includes you, so be it. But it you somehow ruin this… or her… there will be consequences. Very severe consequences." He meant it. She could hear the ferocity of the loyalty in his voice, could see it in the hands that could easily break her neck. She could probably see it in his eyes as well, if she had the courage to look up at them again.

"The life of a pirate is dangerous, unpredictable, and unfair. We didn't choose it. You didn't choose it. And yet here we both are. Captaining a pirate ship is more difficult and takes more concentration than you can imagine. Anna needs every spare moment she has in order to assure the smooth sailing of this ship. The consequences of any sort of distraction could very well be dire."

He leaned in toward Elsa and she was forced to look up into his face.

"If you become a distraction, I WILL slit your throat."

There was a pause then Elsa gently extracted herself from the towering figure above her. "You have pretty convincingly threatened me three times now. I understand. You dislike me."

"A better word would be: 'mistrust'."

"It sounds like a pirate issue." More cheek. Where does it all come from?

"Maybe it is."

Elsa had been wandering away from the intensity of the first mate, but the sudden softness of his voice made her look back. Kristoff was leaning against the rail she had only now abandoned and was stroking the scruff on his chin as though lost in thought.

"Well," said Elsa, breaking up the odd semblance. "I suppose now would be an excellent time for me to retire back to my cot. Before you threaten me a fourth time."

He made no movement or sound to acknowledge he had heard her goodnight, but she could feel his eyes burning into her back as she walked away from the bow. She felt raindrops and took one more look upward, noting with pleasure a small handful of stars between two soon-to-be colliding thunderheads. She neared the stairs to the hold and a quick glance across the deck told her that the candle inside of the captain's cabin had been re-lit. Elsa wore an irrational smile all the way down to the hull and despite her unnerving conversation with Kristoff, she fell easily into a dreamless sleep.

A/N: Thanks for being patient with me, everyone. It's been a summer, let me tell you! And I promise more Elsanna (and action) is coming soon, so stay tuned kids.