The wind was strong. Though it did not enter the sanctity of the trees, Elsa could hear it blowing the topmost layer of foliage violently. It was obvious, too, that the rain would soon come. Captain Anna had reasoned that the rain would not pour for too long and so told Elsa that they would need to collect firewood now and keep it dry until the rain did stop. It was surprisingly hard work and the trees, besides keeping out the wind, did a marvelous job of trapping in the hot, suffocating air.
Elsa bent to pick up another piece of branch to add to the growing pile in her arms and felt an uncomfortable trickle of sweat make its way down the back of her neck. The captain was ahead of her a few paces and Elsa straightened up in time to witness a spectacular fall caused by the snagging of her worn boot on a stump partially hidden by fallen leaves. Holding in a giggle, Elsa stepped forward and reached out a hand to help her rise. There was a barely discernable patch of pink dusted across the captain's cheeks but when Elsa had pulled Anna level with her own face and she saw that glint in the captain's eye, it was Elsa's turn to flush and look elsewhere. Once balance was established once more, Elsa distanced herself from Captain Anna on the pretense of having seen another suitable branch to collect.
The evening carried on in such a fashion. Soon rainwater was dripping from the canopy above and collecting in deep puddles on the mossy floor. It had now gotten so gloomy that Elsa feared their escape from the the forest would be hindered by blindness and worried that they might be trapped in the dark all night. The Captain had extracted her sword once more and was now swinging it through the branches and vines before them on the path in her mounting desperation to escape the trees.
Miraculously, they did find their way back to the beach, laden with half-soggy firewood, even though the sun had been completely hidden behind the horizon. Off in the distance bobbed a looming dark mass that could only be the Revenge. The rain had died down but the wind continued its threat, churning the waves violently.
Captain Anna marched across the beach, Elsa trudging along behind her. After much muttered deliberation, the Captain chose a spot just near a patch of rocks that proved far enough off the ground to be a shelter from the remaining sprinkle of rain but also angled enough to act as guard from the chilling wind. Elsa collapsed, exhausted, on the damp sand in the little alcove, the wood in her arms cascading down at the Captain's feet.
Captain Anna immediately set to arranging the wood in preparation for a fire. Elsa watched her nimble fingers at work and thought immediately of her own helplessness. The Captain noticed her trouble and set her to work at once.
"Sailor, dig out a dry stone from under here, will you?" Captain Anna said, indicating a nook where the base of the large rock that sheltered them met the sand of the beach. Elsa crawled on her hands and knees to the spot and groped blindly around the crevice. Her hands fumbled with rough sand and slimy seaweed that made her shudder involuntarily. She nearly abandoned the task when she felt a large beetle or two crawl over her fingers but in the same moment came upon such a stone as the Captain asked for. A swift tug loosened the grass and dirt around it and it was free. When she turned back with her treasure, she found that Captain Anna had already fashioned a fire pit out of a circle of stones and had placed their collected branches in a pyramid inside it.
"What did you need this for if you've got all of those?" Elsa said, crawling back to settle near the newly-erected fire pit.
"Doubt me not," said the Captain teasingly. She plucked the stone from Elsa's hand and held it over the wood. "What you see here is flint."
With her other hand she unsheathed her sword and swung it over to her the hand holding the flint.
"Observe," she said and struck the blade to the flint several times, causing sparks to shower the wood below. Almost instantly, the brush beneath the pyramid caught fire and within minutes flames were lapping even the very peak of the wood.
Now that a fire was lit there was nothing else to do but sit and wait for dawn to come. Elsa did not have any incredible aptitude for telling the time of day from the position the sun held in the sky and now that night had come she was still not any the wiser. Looking out at the surf she found she could still barely make out the Revenge but knew that soon all would be swallowed by the piercing dark.
The only interesting thing in sight was the fire and the Captain on the other side of it. In fact, the latter was intolerably interesting. When Elsa looked back across the fire she found Captain Anna's gaze boring into her. The fire flickered over her pale skin and her freckles and that unplaited red hair, making Elsa uncomfortable and causing her to fidget and glance away.
That intense feeling of captivity returned - the circle of firelight in which Elsa now sat was a cage and she was prey for the voracious lust she knew had always been boiling below the surface but had never truly felt until this moment.
"Captain Anna," she began, shifting to sit on her rear instead of her knees. She took up a handful of sand from beneath herself and sifted it absentmindedly as she thought of the right words. "Thank you. I have not yet conveyed this, but I do believe that my kidnapping was the most important event in my life."
The Captain smiled. It was not that usual smirk, no - her lips pulled up at the corners gently, as though on strings orchestrated by a kindly old puppeteer. It was a rare expression for the pirate captain who was not prone to niceties. This was absolutely genuine. Of course, Captain Anna acted always as herself but somehow this one smile revealed more to Elsa than any other behavior could. Just as the outburst earlier in the day had revealed a more humanistic side of the ruthless pirate captain, so too did this smile.
"Truly, I am thankful."
Then that smile grew and blossomed into a laugh - not the guttural, confident, adventurous laugh, but one of love and sincerity. Elsa could not contain herself - she scooted further around the fire to be that much closer to the one person who seemed to always elude her. But as suddenly as it came, the mirth was gone.
"I took you from your father." At this, the captain removed her hat and tossed it to the side. It landed with a thump in the sand.
"No," said Elsa hurriedly. "I did that when I left him. I probably killed him by leaving. You merely redirected my path."
Anna studied her, face drawn. "Don't you miss him so?"
"I do," Elsa said, taking up the fallen hat and fiddling with it as she spoke. "But I also enjoy my life on the Revenge. Besides, when I left he told me to have an adventure. 'Let it go,' he said. He will always with me." At this she pulled from beneath her shirt the ox charm that was suspended from her neck on its string and held it out to the Captain. Anna reached out tenderly to allow Elsa to drop it in her hand. She studied it carefully for a moment before returning it to its owner.
"He must love you very much," the Captain sighed, a sort of melancholy coloring her words. Elsa was surprised to notice a wetness in Anna's eyes.
"Captain Anna. Are you all right?"
"Perfectly capable, why do you ask?" she spoke a little too loudly. Her usual cheeriness sounded forced. She may have realized this, as she changed the subject. "Is it chilly or am I imagining things?"
She turned away and wiped nonchalantly at her eyes, pretending to shiver as she pulled her vest a little tighter around herself. This sudden vulnerability distilled an odd bravery in Elsa.
"Captain, whatever happened to your family? How did you end up on the Revenge?" She hoped the Captain wouldn't find her question intrusive but suddenly she cared not what anyone else thought. She was alone with Captain Anna and she was going to do and say what she pleased.
Before answering, the Captain took up a nearby stick and stoked the fire - it flared at the touch. She took a breath before she began.
"On a mild summer's day about six years ago, my parents and I set sail on a ship for Spain. I can't even remember the reason for the journey, I only knew that it was very important. I did not think much of my father's affairs, I was too caught up in thoughts of society and marriage to care. We hit a severe storm not a month out at sea and the ship was ravaged - it splintered and broke apart. I was tossed overboard. I watched, clutching to a piece of floating scrub board, as the remaining pieces of the ship were swallowed whole by the raging sea. It was very clean - nothing was left save for myself and a few pieces of driftwood."
She took a deep, shuddering breath before continuing. "I was orphaned at the age of fifteen. I drifted on that scrub board for two days, wondering if I should give up and let myself die. Finally, I was fished out by a pirate ship. Yes, the Revenge. I was terrified - these men will surely rape and kill me, I thought."
It was Elsa's turn to inhale sharply. Anna, who had been staring down the fire glanced over at this reaction but once more looked away when their eyes met.
"But they did not. The crew was compassionate. The captain was kind. He fed and clothed me. He allowed me free passage in exchange for work. I befriended another orphan a few years older than myself. That was Kristoff, as I'm sure you guessed. In three years I had been trained to be the First Mate. Another year and my savior would be dead and I would myself be in his place. I owe him and the Revenge my life. I lost my family but I gained another."
Silence followed this story and Elsa watched the Captain poke at the fire with her stick for a few more seconds.
"Anna, I'm so sorry. What an awful tragedy."
The smirk returned in full bloom. "No need to apologize, Sailor. This was the way for me. My Mother always said I was too excitable and energetic - piracy is a good outlet for such an excess."
"Do you ever worry about your parents frowning upon this choice?"
"Not at all. It wasn't a choice, of course, it was destiny. Do you believe in destiny, Elsa?"
It was not lost on Elsa the significance of the Captain's use of her first name, but she ignored the jolt it caused in her stomach and favored a reaction that would not give her internal distress away.
"I've never thought about it." It had also not occurred to her how very close the two women had become. She realized suddenly that their hands in the sand were inches away from each other and that she was stroking the hat that still sat in her lap. She held it up and perched it on her own head, cocking her chin and doing her best impression of the redhead next to her.
"Full sail! Git yer asses in motion, you bilge rats."
Anna laughed in that sincere way again - a high-pitched giggle. "I don't sound like that, do I? You're right, perhaps my parents would be mortified!"
Elsa laughed with the Captain and returned the hat to its owner's head. Her unplaited hair fell in waves that curved around her tan shoulders. Once the hat has been secured, Elsa let her hand drop and the laughter of each subsided as eye contact was established once more.
The wind had settled and the fire was warm, but Elsa still found herself shivering as she fell into the green eyes, impossible to break from. Shadows fell gradually over Anna's face as she slowly neared Elsa's frozen form, barricading the light from touching anything in between them.
Elsa realized she was holding her breath as their lips brushed each other. She exhaled as she sank deeper into the kiss, arms coming up to wrap themselves dutifully around the Captain's narrow shoulders as though she had done such a thing all of her life. She could feel a hand creeping into her tangled hair as the kiss intensified. She hadn't realized that this moment was the one she had been waiting for since first locking eyes on the Captain. This moment was everything - it was right, it was more satisfactory than anything else. If leaving her father had been wrong, this moment surely must make up for it.
Minutes or perhaps hours of each other later, the two women found themselves laying breathless on their backs on the dark beach. Waves lapped at the shore and the clouds had finally receded, leaving the sky clear and starry. Their hands entangled, Elsa and Anna gazed upward at the vast Heavens just like that night on the quarterdeck. It was the same, but everything had changed.
Eventually, Anna turned her head to face Elsa.
"I really do believe it was destiny that I found you, just as it was destiny that the Revenge found me."
Elsa had never discovered anything that could distract her from gazing at those wondrous pinpricks until now.
"I cannot argue with destiny, can I?" Elsa muttered, pulling her focus from above to lean over and close the distance between their lips once more. Captain Anna giggled into her mouth and Elsa decided that this was worth more than the combination of a century's worth of starry nights.
A/N: Yo! I finally did the thing. Sorry it took so long... but at least it's a good, fluffy chapter, right?! That could be good news or you could think it bad news that I made you wait months for a good, fluffy chapter. Oh well. Enjoy it, because angst is about to start. #sorrynotsorry