Anna felt sick. Below, Winston paraded back and forth across the stage, singing his own praises, while those in front of him gave their full attention. Anna's eyes passed over the crowd and found only a few teary eyes among them; far too many faces were in states of mirth. She heard the muffled sound of laughter, both from them and the people in her booth. She wanted to shrivel up and just not exist until she could confront that man and demand answers.

The man was a monster, all of his words tailored to emphasise his contributions to the people in his care, the money he was spending, the accolades no doubt hanging in his office. Anna looked away once the presentation displayed images of individuals he claimed to have helped in the past. These snippets of Oak's one sided conversations were all that reached Anna through her state of complete shock. Before she had simply been on edge when thinking of him. Now, she hated him, as well as the multitude of people cackling along with him, seemingly ignorant of what it was they were here for. What are they?!

It felt like an era passed before the show ended and Winston finished his spectacle. Anna promptly rushed from the stage, her bodyguards on either side of her once they'd caught up. She barreled through men and women congregating in the corridors. Security guards advanced on her multiple times but she only paused to wave her badge in their faces before running under their arms, leaving Sideburns to explain her actions. Finally, she caught up to the man she longed to meet, he himself having just ended a conversation with a fellow giant of a man. Anna bent over in front of him, clutching her thighs as she wheezed. Winston regarded her with a bemused expression before she finally looked up at him, dangling her badge from her fingers as she introduced herself. "He- hello. My... my name is Anna. Anna Arendelle."

"Hello Anna. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. You certainly seem to be in a rush. How may I help you?" Despite his larger than life persona on stage, Winston was extremely polite and welcoming, both with his language and his posture.

Anna straightened her back, cheeks still red from the exertion. "I need to talk to you." She took in another deep breath. "I have - " Here her nerves faltered. Please let that be the right tense! " - have an older sister, but she was - she was taken. Gone. My father said you'd tell me where she was. Please, help me."

Oak gave her a long searching look and Anna felt herself shiver under the scrutiny. She adjusted the strap of her dress as she looked anywhere but at him. It amazed her how she was given a wide berth by the public milling around them, a few people waiting at a respectful distance, but the two were otherwise left to themselves. She almost missed the man's response.

"Indeed I can Anna. If you and your men can follow me to my office, it's a five minute drive and I can get you everything you need from there."

"Is that really alright with you? Like, right now?"

"There's no fuss, I have people who can answer questions roaming around, unless you have a problem? Young girl like yourself, you must be quite busy, yes?" He winked. "I don't work much on Sunday mornings, if you'd like to come in then?"

"No, you deserve your free time. Now is good. Great actually."

Oak had a personal vehicle that took him to the building, while Anna followed in her own. The henchmen her father had appointed escorted her inside and left her with Oak, returning to their car to await her return. As he took her to the waiting area, empty now given the time and day of the week, Oak sparked a conversation with her, not about her sister but herself. Anna found herself at ease with the man and impressed with his warm nature and joviality; the same joviality she had hated only a short time ago ("You see Anna, sometimes you must act unlike yourself to make your point known and apologize to yourself afterwards.").

The waiting area was a very simple room. Well-lit but plain. Chairs placed against the walls with an unassuming table in the center, a pile of books piled in a corner. Anna had been asked to sit for the five minutes it would take Oak to get the necessary documents. Once he left, Anna held her head in her hands and forced herself to breath slowly. Five minutes. Just five minutes and she would have her answers. Five minutes and she would know where her sister was. Who her sister was. She frowned as the few words Oak had spared for her sister sprang to the forefront of her mind.

"Do you know her, sir?"

"I might."

"You might? What's her name? How old is she?"

"All in good time."

She wrinkled her nose. If he does know who she is, why wouldn't he just tell me? I mean, he does, right? That's why I'm here and that's how he can get me her files - looking her up on a database or something? So why not? It's not like he has to tell me everything in one go! Unless he doesn't know and he's just looking for our surname? Then why give me that false hope? Why say "might"?

She was roused from her reverie by the sound of two other individuals entering the room. She looked up as they sat down across from her. They were a woman and a little girl. The woman seemed to be middle age, in a simple red dress and curly shoulder length hair that had begun to grey. The girl was young, very young, six or thereabouts by Anna's estimate, her bright blue eyes matching her blue dress and jacket and her blonde hair tied back in a braid, head framed by a black headband. Something flickered in her mind, but Anna smiled at the duo before sinking back into her thoughts.

Anna was getting impatient, grasping one hand in the other and biting her lip as she began to tap one foot on the floor. Where is he?! She checked the time: five minutes had come and gone long ago. She whipped her head back with a loud huff and decided to concentrate on her fellows to calm herself. They seemed to have started a disagreement. Anna strained her ears.

"Bored." This was the little girl.

"I know flower, I know. Can you be patient for me dear?"

"I'm bored." Her voice was so hollow and her words were muffled by the air she exhaled alongside them.

"Flower, rest if you want, but this is very important. Do you understand?"

"No. I want to go home." The girl's eyes met Anna's. They were just so vacant, as if the girl wasn't even aware of her surroundings. Anna recognised the signs.

She took another look at the girl and realised just how similar she was to the figure she'd seen in her dreams and the thought unnerved her. She thought of what little she knew of her missing sister. She noted the argument between the girl and her guardian and wondered whether her sister had sounded like that or looked at her in that way. After what she'd learned, she was all too aware that that was a possibility.

She wasn't ready.

Sick to the gut, she rose to her feet and walked over to the lady who looked up with a weary smile. Anna trembled for a moment before speaking. "Mr. Oak told me that if I needed to, I could come and... collect something on Sunday. I take it you're here to see him as well?" The lady nodded. "Could you... When you see him, could you tell him I'm taking him up on his offer please? I just can't right now. I'm sorry."

The lady nodded for a second time, but before she could ask why tears were forming in the strange redhead's eyes, she'd taken a look at her and her daughter before running away, down the hall and into the night.

Anna had never been particularly proud of herself and had beat herself up over her many mistakes in the past, but this was the first time she felt disgusted by her own actions. She had run from a little girl, just because she hadn't been ready to face reality. Not only that, she had also failed to learn more about her sister. All that effort, all that mental preparation, utterly wasted because she was a complete, utter failure. She could barely hold her spoon that night at the dinner table; her hand shook too much.

Her father sat beside her eating frenetically, obviously having had a busy day's work. Anna was surprised, yet relieved that he hadn't immediately pounced on her, but it was only a matter of time. "So, did you learn anything about your sister today?"

Anna put her spoon down, not that she'd had much opportunity to use it anyway. "No."

"That's a shame." He mopped at his mouth with a napkin. "You don't know the specifics, but you know the basics don't you?"

"Yes." Anna clenched her fist under the table, while the hand on the table clutched the tablecloth. "Is that it? Is that the only reason you got rid of her? We could have helped her!"

"She was a disgrace and quite frankly, an embarrassment to this family."

Her father had said this so calmly, so nonchalantly, that Anna began to see red. Her hand seized a fistful of cloth. "She's your daughter!"

"No one wants a daughter like that!" He finally snapped. "She was older than you by two, three years, yet you were better with words than she was for crying out loud! In fact, she was probably the dumbest person on that screen!" Anna gasped.

"She was on that screen?! That hall was filled with fat cats and wannabe fat cats laughing at her and you're okay with that?! What the hell is wrong with you?!"

Her father had calmed himself down after his own outburst and immediately walked to the coffee machine. He poured himself a cup and tested the temperature. Too hot. He placed the mug on the kitchen workspace and looked through the utensils at her.

"Can you imagine what people would say if they saw something like that in this house? She's just an accident."

Thing. He had referred to her sister as a thing.

Anna stood up as well. "Then what about me?" She demanded. "I talk to myself all the time! I'm clumsy, I'm forgetful, not smart or athletic, you pay people all the time to remind me I've got a few screws loose," she knocked the side of her head to make her point, "so why didn't you squirrel me away in some hole somewhere and have another go? Third time's the charm, right?"

Agdar chuckled before sipping at his drink again, humming contentedly before taking in a mouthful. He swallowed before smiling at her. "What does a magician never do?"

Four years ago, on Anna's birthday, her mother had finally acquiesced to her pleas and taken her to see a magic show, though Anna always believed the true magic was seeing Agdar being forced into a woolly overcoat (he hated them with a passion as they obscured "his chiseled physique") and being bundled out of the front door and into a car. Despite the heavy snowfall, the theater had been packed and for once, Anna had been glad her parents were letting her sit apart from the crowds, away from the loud sounds of people jostling each other and fighting to find their seats, though she also missed the loud sounds of children laughing and telling jokes or funny stories.

Those thoughts left her mind when the show started though. She and her father had had so much fun mocking the presenter for not contributing any tricks of his own and Anna laughed when her parents tried to blind each other when the men and women began cavorting on stage, though they stopped and joined her in giving her full attention to the stage when the "big tricks" began. The escapology, the mind tricks, the card tricks; everything was all so amazing!

There was one trick in particular that Anna couldn't possibly devise an explanation for. A lady was made to lie inside a box before the magician took a giant blade and cut her in two! Anna immediately gasped and hugged her father, who wasted no time in telling her of all the times he'd seen the trick go horribly wrong. Anna forced her eyes shut until the sound of cheering opened them for her and she saw the woman perfectly whole. She frowned at her father. "How did they do that?"

"Do you really think they're going to tell you?"

"No, but I wish they'd do it again. I want another look. Properly this time."

"Well, that's something they never do."

"What's that?"

"They never do the same trick twice." Anna echoed. Her father nodded and drank a second mouthful. She wasn't close to either parent. She knew it, they knew it. That just meant she treasured the few memories where they hadn't been at each other's throats; moments when they really had been a family. The thought that her father would take one those occasions and corrupt it, use it solely to spite her, was painful. She couldn't say anything.

"And you could be fixed." Agdar's voice jolted her and she looked up. "Treated. Besides, what stopped you from getting this information for yourself?" She immediately bit her lip.

"There was... another family there. A woman and a little girl. He said I could come back on Sunday." She couldn't tell him the truth, but she couldn't bring herself to lie either. This was a compromise she could live with.

"That won't happen."

"Wh - what do you mean?" She turned her head and saw a familiar glint in his eye.

"I doubt he'd have time for someone who ran off at the sight of a blondie and her mother."

"What makes you say I ran off? And -" There was a long pause as the gears whirred inside her head. "- I didn't tell you she was blonde."

Agdar's smirk widened. "Blonde is a very common hair colour in these parts. And to answer your first question: we both know how soft you are."

Anna braced herself against the table and spoke slowly. "So what? Everything you do is to harden me? Turn me into you? And what if I don't want to become you? You'll throw me away and pretend I don't exist? Or are you just... just going to get inside my head and destroy it? She couldn't stop the tears now. "Because you're really, really close dad. I can practically feel it. One day I'll just snap and end up like a Bjorgman!" She turned and ran.

Anna didn't remember the few seconds it took to reach and barricade herself in her room, though she had the vaguest recollection of shoving her mother against a wall on her way to do so. She would apologize later. For now, she wanted nothing more than to just sink into her bed. She'd let herself down and more importantly she'd let her sister down. She wondered if she really had seen her that day and the idea that men and women had laughed at her, caught up in their own fantasies of wealth and status, made her blood boil. She thought of the small family that had cost her her nerve and how, even if she could meet her sister in person, she didn't think she deserved to.

But what did she deserve? To be mocked and beaten so thoroughly by her own father? A man so determined to maintain his reputation that he'd destroy his family to do so?

Maybe. But not yet. I don't know how I could help, but I'm not gonna lie down and let people run over me until I can find my sister.

But how could she do it? Her parents refused to talk. If she spoke to the staff, she'd be putting them at risk - she still didn't know whether Peter was safe. Oak was the only lead she had, but what if her father was right? What if Oak was toying with her? She was just a girl. No talents, no authority, no power. She couldn't even get the law involved without being surrounded by men and women in her father's pocket. She had nothing.

It was then that a memory came to her. A liver spot riddled old man tucking twelve notes into his pocket, suddenly willing to share information he hadn't wanted to when she had used just her words. She remembered how easy it had been to reach Oak in the first place, ducking under guards and leaving her thugs to sort the mess out and smiled. I've learnt a bit of business.

Her mind flashed back to the presentation that had given her her first answer, confronting the revelation and hardening her resolve.

You really want me to be your "perfect girl" dad?

"My name is Winston Oak! And I welcome you to celebrate yet another anniversary..."

Fine.

"...of the Oak Family's Mental Health Clinic!"