to SharKohen: Interesting theory :) Good observation, too. We'll see.

Poltergeist III

Prejudice

The incident of the the "haunting" at the Queen's room was every servant's heated discussion for consecutive days.

The fact that Queen Elsa was acting as though nothing happened had immensely impressed them. Most of the staff, however, remained impartial, or were convinced that the queen can easily communicate with "their resident poltergeist" because of her "demonic powers".

Alva had reported these views to her, but Elsa did not attempt to assert her dominance over the staff; they have the freedom to think whatever they wished, as long as they were not hurting anyone else with it.

"I maybe a queen, but I can only take control of people's actions, not their hearts or their minds," she would say to Alva. "Never attempt to win anyone's affections by force when they can be won by trust and patience."

The poltergeist, it seemed, began following her around.

But by the end of a week, Elsa had grown accustomed to his invisible— albeit annoying and exhaustibly tiresome— presence.

At first, the violent spirit continued his attempt to instil fear and supremacy by completely violating her room whenever she would leave its confines. She would always return to find it in a state of chaos, but she nonetheless brushed it off and silently restored everything to the way they were before.

When this tactic proved to be ineffective, he began to torture her with "little things".

Whenever she was writing on her desk, her writing quill will suddenly fly from her hand several times; she would silently retrieve it and continue her work until he wrenches it out of her hand again.

Whenever she was eating, her goblet would suddenly spill its whole contents on her lap; she would gracefully ask for a refill from the nearest terrified servant without so much as fussing.

Whenever she would take a moment for herself and simply idle in the small pool in her bathroom, she would suddenly find her towel or articles of clothing gone from where she'd left them; she would leave the comforting embrace of the water to boldly cross the threshold as bare as she is with her head held high to retrieve the said items from wherever the poltergeist decided to hang them.

Whenever she would lie in her bed every night, the windows were opening and closing, and the bathroom door was being slammed deafeningly on its frame as loud as it can go; she would merely place the pillow over her head and wait for fatigue to let her sleep.

One of them has to break, and Elsa decided that it's not going to be her.

She was, after all, a queen. She was the last person expected to lose her mind.

After a week, she was continuing her work at the Southern Isles with considerable ease. Trade relations with Arendelle were secured, and Elsa was beginning to study rationalising funds for repairs in the kingdom.

The staff even began to be more open and more honest to her in terms of the noisy ghost haunting the castle.

From the stories she gathered from the servants who were willing to talk about the poltergeist, it seems that his particular favourite area of haunting is the West Wing of the castle, where the highest tower was usually located. And according to them, recently, his "new favourite" area of torment was Elsa's room.

"Has he harmed anyone before?" Elsa asked Alva one evening as they were walking back to her room with the guards quietly trailing behind them.

Alva cleared her throat. "Several occasions. The most recent one is Janik, our stableboy," she said quietly. "It mostly happens when someone tries to clean up the West Wing corridors. No one has been up at the highest tower for years."

"Not even the king or his brothers?"

"Especially them, Your Grace. They never even mention his name ever since he…"

"I understand. So it seems that our disruptive resident ghost is… lonely…"

Alva chuckled softly. "If he only he were a bit friendlier, it might have been the other way around."

Elsa smiled softly, remembering her week. "So it seemed. I wonder, though, has anyone ever seen him? I mean, did he ever haunt anyone where he actually show his face?"

Alva paused, a habit Elsa had come to know as her way of forming an answer that was not the whole truth, but was not particularly a lie either.

"He did." And Alva said no more than that.

They spent the rest of the walk to her room in silence.

Elsa aimed to fix internal relationships within the castle as well.

She got the idea after unintentionally walking in on a shouting match between a laundress and a gardener while she was aimlessly wandering near the servants' quarters while on a break. The event shocked her, as no sort of conflict ever arose in her staff in Arendelle. She was even more disturbed when Alva told her that it was a regular occurrence.

Elsa then decided that if she intends to fix Southern Isles, she will have to fix it inside out.

Alva became one of the few people in the castle (except maybe her own guards from Arendelle) whom Elsa could really trust. She instructed the girl to note down any conflicts within the staff and report to her.

Alva's report of the head chef being unjustly tyrannic prompted her visit to the kitchen one afternoon.

She caught the head chef shouting belligerently at his flustered and panicking subordinates. When they caught sight of her, everyone in the room fell silent and obliged her a bow, grudgingly so. To most of them, they were seeing Elsa for the second time since her arrival at the castle. They were not exposed to her presence compared to the other servants roaming around the castle, and Elsa can understand why they still see her as an outsider.

"Sir, what is your name?" Elsa addressed to the head chef as the others went about their work in the background.

"Jonas," the man replied gruffly, arms crossed over his chest.

"Well, Jonas, what seems to be the problem here?" Elsa asked amiably, taking a step forward to let him know that she wasn't the least intimidated by him. It was obvious who held the higher authority in that room, and this attitude problem was not going to faze her.

"Nothing. I got everything under control," Jonas muttered, grimacing.

"If that's the case then, I don't see why you should shout at your men," Elsa said, "If you need something to be done, talked to them in the way you want to be talked to."

Jonas' face began to redden in irritation. "They have nothing to say to me. I'm the one who's giving orders around here, not them."

"That doesn't give you an excuse to talk them down. You work together as one unit for the castle, and to maintain that unity, you need to respect each other."

"I demand respect from them because I lead them," Jonas growled, "You of all people should know that without respect from your men, you can never impose order."

"Ah. Then, it seems we have a problem, Jonas," Elsa said, "Because what you're doing right now is a solid definition of irony. So would you like me demand your respect right here and now?"

Everyone had stopped working and were deadly silent, watching as Jonas' face turn as red as it can be. In the tense silence, Elsa anxiously wondered if he would suddenly strangle her or hit her. He looked like he was about to.

But in the end, Jonas merely muttered. "My apologies."

While Elsa considered this a small step to victory, she can't help but feel afraid for her life as she took a final glance at the kitchen on her way out.

Jonas' murderous glare looked as though he was planning to throw her in his next stew.

She scent of burning clothes flooded her nostrils.

Elsa knew she had reached her limits when she returned later that day to her room to find her gloves— the gloves her father gave her — burning in the fireplace along with her pillows.

How he managed to ignite the fire she did not know.

She couldn't care.

Ice particles began to manifest in the room as she desperately released a powerful gust of icy air into the roaring flames to save what she could. All that remained on the fireplace were black and charred lumpy fabrics coated with a thin layer of ice.

Elsa let out a frustrated shout as snow and ice began to invade her room.

It was her father's gift. Her source of comfort and security for countless years when she had to meticulously hide her magic when she was a child. Those small and homely pieces clothing were personally made by her parents for her. Her father had chosen the finest silk to grace his daughter's fingers. Her mother had embroidered those precious little Arendelle insignias with her own hands. Those gloves were their gifts; one of the few physical remnants that proved that they had existed in Elsa's life.

"Are you here?" She shouted angrily, rage surging in her veins like burning fire, "Come out. Come out, show your face, have a good laugh, and go already!"

It was not in Elsa's nature to be angry, so this was entirely new for her. The raging rush of melancholic nostalgia and vindictive anger gave her the impulse to cry and roar at the same time. The room was already plunged in something akin to the first signs of winter with all the snow on the floor and the ice coating the surfaces of the furniture. She couldn't feel the cold, of course. All she felt were the flames of rage.

Yet as quickly as her anger came, it easily began to dissipate. She began to remember why she hated getting mad as much as possible.

It was a consuming, suffocating sensation flooding her lungs.

Keep it together. Control it. Don't feel it. Don't feel it.

What mantra she used to control her powers was the same one she used in controlling her emotions. Her father thought her that. And while she silently protested on how limited her self-expression was when she was little, she soon came to realise that her emotions dictate her powers. And as feelings are difficult to master or to control, her father had always commended her on her willpower.

Emotional control had gotten her this far in life, and she saw no reason to stop now.

So what are a couple of old children's gloves?

Only that it was from Mother and Father…

She took a deep, jarring, but otherwise measured breath and gingerly sat down on the edge of the bed, wrestling with the urge to simply explode.

"Look," Elsa began, struggling to level her voice and to stop her hands from anxiously wringing each other, "I don't know if you're here, but if you are… You know, that was very immature of you. I tried— Heaven knows I tried— to be patient with you. What is it that you want from me? I'm not doing anything to you."

The ice and the snow were beginning to disappear with a lazy wave of her hand.

Still no response from her ghostly opponent. No windows opening or closing, no doors slamming.

Elsa sighed tiredly, despondently. "It's best if you don't bother me for a while. If you have the faintest shred of humanity left in you, you'd allow me this little favour," she tried to sound angry, but all that came out were words of a defeated soul.

She didn't know whether she'll be relieved or disappointed at the palpable silence around her.

She was working late at night four days later in her room.

Her eyes were getting irritated at the constant use, but Elsa was persistent that she should finish reading through mountains of reports. The financial problems had already been giving her a splitting headache, as the Southern Isles had really depleted their resources in funding the king's massive battle fleet.

But at least he's not bothering me.

Four days had passed, and not a single "incident" seemed to have transpired.

She was beginning to wonder if she had unintentionally done something that warded him off permanently. She highly doubted it, though, as she considered the thought that he might have withdrawn to "his" West Wing. She supposed she should be thankful, as the poltergeist had troubled her enough as it is, physically and mentally.

Someone knocked on her door several minutes later, and Elsa gladly withdrew from her writing desk.

"Your Grace, some servants had spotted from below that the light from your window was still on," one of the chefs said, holding a tray with a tea set on it, "They wanted you to have this. Something to help you for your late night endeavours."

Giving the young man a tired but grateful smile, she asked him to set it up in her table before wishing him goodnight as he left.

With a fatigued sigh, Elsa let herself collapse on a chair, taking a moment to breathe before raising the cup to her lips.

She barely had a sip when the cup and its saucer flew from of her hands, making her jump and yelp.

After a moment of shock, her surprise had morphed into a familiar bubbling irritation. So he's back…

Ignoring the smashed tea cup, she turned to the tea set and made use of the spare cup, beginning to overturn it. She barely had a good grasp of it too before it was suddenly floating in midair and was thrown to the wall with a crash!

Elsa snapped and stood up, fatigue forgotten and all.

"What is the matter with you? I'm tired, or Heaven's sake! I don't think I can tolerate you for tonight," Elsa said angrily, leaning against the nearest wall for support. She had been working for hours and now she had to deal with these little tortures. Perfect.

"The question is, what is the matter with you? I was trying to save your neck, you egg."

Elsa froze.

As tired as she was, she was sure that she didn't hallucinate that voice.

"Funny," she said, adrenaline pumping madly as she casted her eyes all over the room, looking for no one in particular, "I don't think you knew what saving meant, considering that you've been doing nothing of the sort to me these past few days—"

"Idiot. Your head chef— Jonas, if your memory's as dull as it is— had poisoned your stupid tea. If that's not called saving, then I don't know what it was."

Elsa didn't know what information to absorb first; the fact that an attempted assassination had been made, or the fact that he was actually talking to her.

Talking. Not screaming or shouting. No vile accusations. No objects flying around.

It distinctively sounded like the voice she had heard a week before, but it somehow sounded entirely different without its ferocity. He sounded languid, calm, and frighteningly human.

She shook her head and closed her eyes, still feeling her hear beat uncontrollably somewhere in her chest. "I'm hallucinating. I'm hearing things. I'm just tired. Yes, yes I'm just tired. I'm imagining things…" she muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"You have a very vivid imagination then. Be careful, though. Most people would interpret such wild creativity as madness."

Definitely not a figment of my imagination, Elsa thought, looking up, still finding the room empty.

"Well, your move," said the voice.

"…What?"

"Look, you can't just let him run around the castle doing what he likes. The next thing you know, he'll come into your room with a butcher's knife."

While that thought terrified her, she can't help but say skeptically, "Sounds familiar, doesn't it?". The hype of his sudden interaction was dying as the familiar anger began to resurface. She wasn't afraid, probably because there was a noticeable lack of angry shouting in the way he talked.

"For the record, I never tried to kill you," answered the voice, sounding closer this time. "And this is the last time I'm going to interfere with your affairs. Consider this as a payment for those gloves of yours."

"… What do you mean, the last time?" Elsa asked.

He did not answer her again.

She tried several times, attempting to make him talk, make him move things around, make him do something.

For several minutes, she questioned herself if she had imagined the whole "conversation" or not. She was almost certain that— if he wasn't lying— the assassination was real. She could distinctly remember Jonas' face a few days before.

But then how did he know that it was poisoned?

Did he happen to be there at the kitchens when Jonas poisoned her tea?

Was he lying? Was he merely trying to announce his presence to her with some new form of drama?

But she did not touch her tea again. She didn't have to. The encounter was all it took for her to find her wakefulness.

She exits the room with two of her confused guards in tow, and headed straight for the castle's catacombs.

You can't just interact with me, run off, and expect to completely disappear off the face of the earth just like that, Elsa thought. We still have some scores to settle with each other, but before we get to that point, I need to know who you are.

It was an odd, out-of-body experience to be among the dead.

Her two guards were hesitant to descend with her, but she volunteered to go in alone to spare them from the horror. So with only a lamp in her hand, she began her descent to the land of the dead.

Everything was submerged in a sepulchral silence and darkness that was darker than night itself. She felt cold, but this cold had nothing to do with her powers. Knowing that she was walking among the dead would send chill to anyone's spines. The only sounds that could be heard were her own footsteps, or occasional distant drops of water. Every now and then, she had a feeling that someone was watching her, and it took an immense willpower not to turn around and run back to her room.

Marble sculptures were scattered about. Busts filled the niches. The tombs were lined up neatly by the walls by generations, some with inscriptions in bronze plaques.

Elsa figured out that what bothered her the most were the tomb effigies.

Each tomb had gisants; visual representations of the bodies they held within them. Men and women graciously carved in marble and were placed as though they were merely sleeping on top of stone beds. Each face, each body, every article of clothing— all realistically and uniquely made.

So realistic that Elsa vaguely wondered if they would suddenly wake up from their slumber at the faintest of noise.

The previous king and his brothers were never retrieved from sea. It unnerved Elsa when she realised that their remains were still somewhere near Arendelle's seas, rotting in their watery graves.

So instead, the people of the Southern Isles made them a cenotaph; an empty tomb that was more of a monument than a resting place. It was obvious that this one was fairly recent. The gleaming bronze plaque listed the names of the twelve Westergaard brothers and some deep Latin quotations.

But what attracted Elsa's attention the most was the tomb right across the cenotaph. She was drawn to it, like a moth to a candlelight; only that she felt colder the closer she got.

Like all other tombs she had passed, this one also featured a tomb effigy.

The marble sculpture depicted a young man lying peacefully with his hands neatly folded across his chest. If the sculptor's work was accurate, then it appeared to Elsa that this man doesn't seem to be beyond his twenties; he still had this boyish wonder about him despite his mature composition. He had neat sideburns, a slightly pointed nose, and the sculptor even gave great attention to detail by giving him freckles across the nose.

And on the plaque, these words were inscribed:

Hans Erik Stepan Westergaard

Prince and Admiral

Son of the Proud Sixteenth Generation of the Royal Family

Home is the Sailor, Home from the Sea.

"It's rude to stare, you know."

Elsa whipped around, nearly dropping the lamp in her hand.

She might as well have.

Opposite of her, leaning against the cenotaph, was a young man with his arms crossed.

His incredibly pale skin contrasted horribly with his strikingly vivid auburn hair and sideburns. His green eyes seem to glow. His head held high, he had a calm and confident smile on his face, as if he was amused by the dumbstruck horrified look Elsa was giving him.

He grinned; a sight that appealed as gruesome and spine-chilling for Elsa. "Hi."

A/N: I can't give detailed descriptions and definitions of "cenotaph" and gisants enough, so just search for them on google images. It's fun, I swear. Took me five whole minutes to remember what they're called, though.