"It's a hole!"

"No."

"Um... a teapot!"

"No again."

"Oh, oh! A teapot with wings!"

Hans's hand froze mid-scratch with Anna's cloak clasp still on the wall. He turned his head toward her and raised his eyebrow. "I just said it's not a teapot..."

"Er, right. Sorry!" Anna blinked a few times and then squinted at his drawing on the cell wall. "Hmm... go on, keep going."

The prince rolled his eyes before resuming his artwork, ignoring Anna as she leaned around his other shoulder to watch. She chuckled inwardly at the eye roll. Hans could huff and puff all he liked; the game helped pass the time, he couldn't argue that. She kept her head facing his progress while she glanced at him from the corner of her eye, seeing just a hint of amusement on his face.

Besides, he seemed to be enjoying it.

"Is it some kind of bird with... Hans! Did you give a bird nipples?!" she guessed again, her brow furrowing as she thought he was having a laugh.

Hans actually snorted and stopped drawing once again, looking away from her. Anna noticed his shoulders shaking.

"Err, it's not? Sorry, I'm really bad at thi—" She cut herself short when Hans snorted again, this time letting out a peculiar sound through his teeth. "Are you—hey, are you laughing?!"

As if the question granted him permission, Hans leaned back against the cell wall and broke out into a fit of chuckles. He shook his head at her when she made to speak again. She watched him fold his arms and lean forward. He took a breath to keep a straight face and then he looked at her; the glow in those green eyes shocked her.

"Did I give a bird what? What's the matter with you?!" he asked, feigning indignation. Then he moved away from the wall to gesture at his work. "That's an elephant, Anna! An elephant!"

Anna tilted her head to give a second look, recognition slowly dawning on her freckly face. "Okay, I can see it now."

"Here," he said, taking her hand and settling her silver cloak clasp into it. "I think we're done."

Anna stared at her hand for a moment, then watched Hans walk to his cot. "Don't be a sore loser!"

"You lost that one," he said as he sat down. "Three guesses, you said. Anyway, look."

Her eyes followed his pointing finger to the score chart on another section of the wall. Sure enough, they'd been tied eight-to-eight. But with Anna's loss just now, Hans was the winner.

"Shall we see who gets to ten first?" she offered hopefully. She reattached the clasp to her cloak so she could wear it without having to hold it over herself now. Daylight was fading from the windows with the coming evening. With nighttime would come the cold. Anna highly doubted King Olaf would provide cozy quilts for her and Hans to keep warm. As it was, there were two thin blankets folded neatly at the end of each cot.

Hans shook his head. "It's a child's game."

That didn't stop you from playing seventeen rounds, she thought. She gave him a wry look.

"Don't be a sore loser," he said with a smile.

Anna refused to dignify his quip with a response. Instead she went over to her own cot. There she took a seat in the middle and reached for one of the folded blankets at the end. She was pleased for all of two seconds to find that they were thin but made of wool. Then she screeched and scrambled off of the cot when a gnarly spider skittered out from the blanket folds.

"What is it?" Hans asked, jumping to his feet. "Oh..."

"Don't say 'oh'!" she hissed, watching the spider's lightning-speed crawl to the wall. "That thing's the size of my hand!"

"That's an exaggeration."

"No, it isn't!"

"You have small hands."

Anna closed her mouth. She was just about to argue automatically. Instead she scowled over at him and suddenly grew self-conscious about her hands. Did he mean just small or abnormally small?!

"Do you want to switch?" Hans asked, oblivious to the effect of his commentary.

"Switch...?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow. She looked from her feminine fingers over to Hans's own hands. She frowned, remembering his touch on her face.

"Though I can't promise there aren't spiders over here too," he responded.

"It's fine," she said. She had probably said it too quickly, but she didn't care. She set her jitters aside and plopped down on the cot once more, bravely grabbing hold of the wool blanket and shaking it out away from her to rid it of any possible remaining spiders. Nothing else crawled out. Satisfied, she draped it over her legs and sat back against the wall. She checked that the spider had crawled far enough away first, of course.

Hans shrugged and returned to his cot. Anna watched him lie down on his back with his head resting on his arms. Once again she found herself comparing this Hans to the villain in the library and the dashing price at the docks. He had the same copper-color hair, the same sideburns and the same nose. He looked like Hans; he sounded like Hans. But what did that even mean? She didn't actually know him, after all.

"Anna, you're staring," Hans remarked without looking away from the ceiling.

"Am not!" she snapped. She blushed, quickly looking toward the lone window.

"My mistake."

She could hear Hans smiling.

"What do you think Princess Kirsten is planning?" she asked, desperate to talk about anything else.

Footsteps approached from outside. Hans glanced to the door. In a low voice, he answered, "I think the less we talk about it, the better."

Keys rattled from outside as someone unlocked their cell. A guard with two trays appeared, another just behind him. The second guard stayed in the doorway, watching Hans like a hawk.

"Stay put until we're out. No funny business," the one with the trays barked.

"We wouldn't dream of funny business," Hans said.

The guard with the trays hesitated, looking at Hans as though trying to decide whether or not he had just been made fun of. Then with a shake of his head, he set the wooden trays down on the floor and stood back up.

"Right. We'll collect these in an hour, so eat up," he barked again. Then he and the other guard took their leave.

As soon as they were gone, Anna sprang down to the trays on the floor. Her heart sank at once as she lifted a piece of bread. It was hard as stone.

"It's no chocolate fondue, but you should eat," Hans said.

She bit back a scathing reply, annoyed with him for having brought up the chocolate fondue. At least he hadn't mentioned sandwiches.

Anna looked down at the tray again and regarded the glass of what appeared to be milk. Skeptical, she lifted the glass to her face and sniffed.

"Well at least it's not sour," she said before she took a cautious sip. Indeed, it wasn't all that bad. She lifted the bread next and carefully nibbled at the crust. It was stale, but edible. "Better than cucumber salad." She dipped the end of the bread into the milk and ate some more.

"Huh?" Hans said as he joined her on the floor. He pulled the other tray towards him and tried out the milk for himself. Anna thought she caught him grimace, but decided against pointing it out.

"Cucumber salad with really sour dressing. You've never had it?"

"I have. I just don't get what's so bad about it."

"Oh, it was fine until I had to eat it and only it for a week. I had accidentally set the lesson room on fire and my parents thought feeding me my least favorite food for a while would persuade me not to leave burning candles unattended." She laughed nervously as she recalled the accident. Then she blanched and stuck her tongue out as sweet and sour cucumbers haunted her taste buds. "The funniest thing was that someone kept sneaking me other foods late at night. They'd wait till the whole castle was asleep, and then they'd knock. I'd answer the door only to find no one. But I would find a tray on the floor every night that week. They left me only the good stuff."

"The good stuff?"

"Yeah! Potato dumplings, cream puffs, veal, waffles, meatballs, fish, cheese cakes..." As she listed them off, she found herself salivating. She cleared her throat and took another sip of milk. "I always thought it was Kai. But now that I think about it, it must've been Elsa." Anna grinned over the probability. She'd have to remember to ask Elsa when she got home.

If I ever get home.

"She sounds infinitely nicer than my brothers," Hans said. He too dipped his bread into the milk to make it easier to chew. He didn't seem to notice when Anna's eyes rested on him this time.

"Did three of them really pretend you didn't exist for two whole years?" she asked.

"Yes... but it wasn't entirely their fault."

"Wait, what?" It wasn't that she couldn't believe Hans was devious enough to provoke others into ignoring him. But she also couldn't believe he would pass up the chance to paint a favorable, victimized image of himself.

"When I was ten or so, our parents held a party on All Hallows' Eve for the youngest of us. The nobles were invited to send their children. It was meant as a means for us to get to know our peers outside of the most formal settings."

Anna felt her eyes sparkling. It was a shame her parents had never done anything like that for her and Elsa. Well, there was all the concern over Elsa's powers, of course. Naturally, they would not have thought to invite too many people to the castle or, well, anyone. Ever.

She sighed, making Hans pause. "Wow. Go on, please." Hans was just about to continue when she grabbed his arm. "Did all of you dress up?!"

"...you mean costumes?"

Anna nodded vehemently. Hans nodded as an answer, looking startled as Anna grinned.

"Sorry, you can continue now."

"You sure?" he asked, braced for another interruption. Anna drank the last of her milk, wiped away her liquid mustache and set the glass down. Then she nodded, resting her hands in her lap and waiting to hear more. "Okay then... I'm the youngest, as you know. Before me are Samuel and Daniel, twins a year older than me. They're rather close to the tenth of us, Emil. He's three years older than me."

Anna bobbed her head along, trying to imagine Hans's brothers. Were they all redheads, like him?

As if he'd read her mind, Hans said, "Sam and Dan take after my father. They're tall and broader than myself, both dark eyed and dark haired. Emil's more wiry. Also dark haired.

"We got along all right when we were all very young. But at this age, boys start playing pranks on one another... this time, the prank went a bit far." He paused to finish the last of his bread. Anna felt flushed as she watched him eat.

What's wrong with me?!

"It was mainly the twins. But Emil was the one who brought up the cove."

"The cove?" Anna blinked.

"Right. Oh, sorry. Of course, our kingdom spans across several islands. There are many coves. I'm referring to the haunted cove."

Anna stared at him. "Ha-haun-haunted?!"

"So the stories say. It gives people the creeps, so no one really goes there. Unfortunately for me, Sam must have seen it on my face. He and Daniel suddenly would not leave me alone about it." He paused, seeing the vexation on her face. "That's just the way boys are. It would have been fine if I'd admitted Emil's story had scared me. But I would have lost face."

"Sure, sure," Anna said, waving off his explanation as though it were the silliest thing she'd ever heard. "So then what? What was the prank?"

"There's this rock at the center of the cove... a mini-island, if you will. They dared me to spend an hour there alone that night to prove I wasn't scared. So they took me out in a boat and left me there. They were supposed to come get me after the hour. Only they didn't."

Anna groaned. "That's awful!"

"So they left me there all night."

"Ugh!" She lay back on the floor, trying to refrain from saying anything untoward. Hans could be lying, after all. She was surprised to hear Hans laugh. The sound made her lean up on her elbows.

"It wasn't that bad. I mean, I was terrified... for a good part of the night, I kept seeing and hearing things. A woman—ghost—calling out to me. That was just the fear, no doubt. But what was worse than being scared was the cold. It probably wasn't that bad, but at the time, I thought I would freeze!"

Anna shook her head at his brothers' cruelty. Even if they hadn't meant to harm Hans, it had obviously damaged him. "Couldn't you swim back?"

"I was too scared," Hans explained. "My brothers said there were monsters in the water that would eat me."

"Horrible! So how did you get home?"

Hans hesitated, almost looking through Anna at the memory. "Felix, one of the older brothers, overheard the twins gloating with each other. So he sent a servant to fetch me."

Anna expected him to say more, but he sat still and quietly with one arm draped over his knees bent up against him. She stared at him, thinking over the story. Sometimes she had wished for more siblings when she was growing up, but now she considered that she may have been lucky.

"I don't get it," she said. "They did something so mean-spirited, but they were the ones who ignored you?"

"Well," Hans answered, coming back to life. He stood up off the floor and walked back to his cot. "They got into an awful lot of trouble with my parents. Mother, especially. They blamed me."

Anna stood up as well, going back to her own cot. "It's only natural you would tell your parents what they'd done. You could have drowned, been kidnapped, robbed or gotten sick!" She sat, crossing her arms at the thought of siblings being so thoughtless toward one another.

"Oh, I never told. That was Felix."

She would have missed it if she hadn't looked across at him. It happened so quickly, she thought at first she imagined it. She only looked up because she'd heard it in his voice. Sure enough, it had crossed his face too: a look of warm affection as Hans talked about his older brother. Even as the warmth faded, the smile was still there.

She had to ask.

"You and this other brother, you're close?"

"Not particularly." His smile vanished.

"But..."

"But he was the one who taught me—pretty early on—that as the youngest of thirteen princes, things wouldn't just be handed to me. I'd constantly have to prove myself." His voice cut between bitterness and appreciation.

Anna sat still, absorbing the story he had just shared with her. She wanted to ask why Hans had never told the twins that it hadn't been him who'd told their parents about the prank. She wanted to know what Hans meant by Felix being the one to teach him that the youngest prince had to prove himself. More questions ignited one after another. But she kept them at bay.

There was yet another side to Hans. She had seen glimpses of it back in the forest; frightened, confused eyes. He was letting himself be... vulnerable.

Part of her felt how difficult it must have been for him. That still doesn't excuse his behavior, the other half hissed. Then it all hit her at once again:

Hans ran into her with his horse. He didn't mind that she wasn't the queen. They fell all over each other in the boat. She made a complete idiot of herself. He waved to her at the coronation. They danced afterward. They talked and sang. He laughed with her. He wanted to marry her. He wanted her. He was her first love. He took care of Arendelle when she left to search for Elsa. He was supposed to melt the ice in her heart with an act of true love.

Instead, he broke her heart, left her to die and tried to murder her sister.

Anna held back a sigh. She leaned back and immediately turned over to face the wall so that she could not look at him anymore.

A/N: I got a new laptop recently and have been writing the last couple of chapters in Word Online... World Online is REALLY COOL (especially the being free part). That being said, sometimes it gets a little confusing with the formatting when I go to upload a new chapter. Good grief.

Okay, first off - the Hans POV poll is closed. It was 50/50, so I'm going with my gut and not adding Hans POV chapters right now. I don't feel it would fit in right now. There may be a moment for it later on or I may do a separate companion piece. But for now, no Hans POV.

Happy Halloween, guys! =) Would you be able to spend an entire night alone at a "haunted" place?