.

"The most dangerous people in the world
are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts,
but those who do the acts for them."

― Suzy Kassem

༺ ❆ ༻

"P...P-P-Pardon?"

"Is this not the case?"

"No, Captain! Not the case at all! It's just weather gabble, really! Nothing of value―"

"It must be if you're putting your profession and your life on the line," barked the sunburned foreigner barring her way. Compared to this morning, he was unhelmeted and clean, but his gravelly voice, which was fixed in the baritone of a general saddled for war when there were no soldiers, lent him an unapologetically permanent meanness.

"You misunderstand this scenario entirely! I'm...well, ehm...ahhh..."

The piglet was becoming mumbly and stupid as she sounded out vowels instead of words. He gripped the pommel handle of his scabbard to abate his anger and asked as patiently as his temperament would permit: "May I see Her Majesty as scheduled, please?"

She grinned. "Yes, I-I'll...let Her Majesty know that you're here." Her chunky hands pushed the study's door so that the other two-hundred pounds of her could toddle in.

He dried the gleaming seeds of sweat in his mustache on his sleeve before snorting.

"I never did what you advised me to," Captain Hitler could hear the queen bristling. The wooden barrier between his ear and her cry made her sound like she was talking underwater.

"You did not embrace it, but you allowed it to trickle into your letters discursively," a man gently said. "Before either of you spoke of union, you pined after what the marriage would grant you as much as I."

Running his eyes all over the oak door in alarm, the captain pressed his shoulder against it and bent his head down to the airy gap.

"All politics and kingdoms aside, I wanted him for you, so I don't judge you; I judge myself. I thought he'd make an eligible husband who'd treat you with kindness and acceptance because of what he told you after your first betrothal failed. You must have thought it then, too."

"Baldor, I don't even know what you're on about."

"The letter that he wrote on September 12th in 1848. Do you still have it?"

A drawer yawned. Papers rustled.

"Idolization is objectification, and it's a lot lonelier to be the object of someone's affection over a real, whole person meeting them on their level. I never wanted Rapunzel to feel like I defined her by her hair, her powers, or her tiara for that very reason; she doesn't need magic or tiaras to make her special. It takes the 'human' part away, or more importantly, the 'Rapunzel' part.

Although I hate to say it, I think you had to experience a so-called 'love' like Aloysius's to get a sample of that cheap brand. The next time someone comes along who isn't interested in you because of your powers, your crown, or their definition of 'perfection,' you'll know that he's the better option because he won't be treating you like you're made out of magic. To that guy, you'll have cells, organs, and blood running through your veins as well. You'll just be 'Elsa.'"

"...I...had many thoughts, during that time, but I didn't want―"

"Your Majesty!" The train of drivel jackknifed and turtled once the maid had finally crashed it. "I know this is not my place, but Captain Hitler is here to see you."

There was a choked up pause, and then a stomping thud-thud-thud-thud. The captain hopped back from the entrance as the door swung open. A blonde man stood staring at him. He bowed to the executive out of respect, who did not nod in requital, before stepping aside to let him through.

"...Arendellian pissant." Captain Hitler looked over his shoulder to snarl at the man's back. 'They all suffer from coldness and arrogance. I'd rather accept death than marry into their kind as a people...'

"Captain?" the maid cheeped like a sparrow.

After hocking up a loogie and spitting it onto the rug, he released the hilt of his scabbard to step inside the treaty room civilly. At the stomach of the vestibule waited the notorious sorceress of Arendelle, Queen Elsa. Sunlight bled in through her silk drapes, illuminating the dust that orbited her in schools of white. Her gown sparkled rather beautifully from where she stood.

He noticed the leg announcing its presence from the gash in her skirt, and dared to think without any abashment himself, 'That Rider would've had a field day flirting with her.'

Her bold gown, vampire makeup, and Gothic hairstyle were against Coronan customs, but they were perfect for Rider's heart. Among more noble men of the civilized world, maidens and princesses alike were not allowed to show one shin in public, yet here this pythoness was, flashing her own rules. The dress was obviously tailored to parade her lack of subjection to patriarchy. Such glimmering beauty was so hypnotic that the awe it crippled him with offended him.

"I bid you welcome, Captain Hitler," she said kindly.

He shivered at the vibration of her wise voice echoing all around him. "I am...honored to be granted audience, Your Majesty." He bowed.

On her face curled a smile of modest character. "I apologize for my appearance..." She pressed on her fingertips. "But I wanted to thank you for making sure my commissioners got home safely. I don't know what would've happened to them had you not been there when the rebels rioted."

Such a groveling little bird. The twinkling swan even looked down at her hands as to appear humble and angelic. Her mansuetude didn't fool him, though. There was no doubt in his head that it was in her monstrous nature to seduce politicians in an effort to maintain popularity.

"As my future queen, any man of Her Majesty's is a man of mine." He closed in on her with lingering steps, searching the blue wells of her eyes.

The eyelashes that wreathed them began beating faster than dragonfly wings. "That's ― too kind of you, Captain," thanked the pythoness, all the while upholding her cautious smile as she challenged his piercing stare with the scimitar in her own. "But if it isn't too much trouble, I wanted to ask you for your help myself."

Visibly closed off and befuddled, she seemed unwilling to drop her mask. Had she shed the pretty thing and exposed her fangs, it would've given him a reason to prosecute her for being the witch she was.

The captain stopped a foot away. "I am willing to service Her Majesty in every way that I can."

"I'm happy to hear that." She picked up his rotulus and handed it to him with a frown. "Because I was having trouble with your delivery."

He disappointedly took it from her.

She crossed her arms afterwards and brushed her elbow with her hand. "It doesn't seem to like me very much."

"I doubt such would be the matter here." The captain pressed the capsule's top, and out flew the rotulus from the bottom.

"Oof!" The conjurer squatted down and juggled it between both palms before finally trapping it. Elsa shoved a curl behind her ear and unbended her knees to hold the object to her eye level. "Thank you," she huffed. "I've been fumbling with it since this morning."

"It is my pleasure," he lied while she studied it from the sidelines. The captain saw that her eyelids were satisfyingly droopy.

She could not, even then, feel the heat from his gaze burning her cheek like a flame against a candle because his formal exterior kept his feelings cooled and obscured.

He lifted a finger to the curl bulging from her braid and turned the edge of his nail against it, feeling the silkiness of the cuticle. Frost pearled the angel blonde strand. 'Such beautiful evil...' His other hand reached for his scabbard to slowly unsheathe the flashing dagger little by little. The captain's trembling fingers hung in suspension when she rotated and walked away with her eyes still on the rotulus.

"Is there any information that you can disclose to me about the Brotherhood, Captain?" Her hand followed the path of the table's edge as she walked around the desk, taking her diamante cloak with her.

His lungs collapsed. "...Only―...as m―much as I'm sure you've been...told, Your Majesty."

She placed the rotulus in her drawer, noticeably refusing to read it in front of him. "I'm afraid I haven't been told nearly enough."

This put him on the spot. "To our...knowledge, Your Majesty, Corona's famine has given birth to two surviving rebel groups."

She sat down and braided her fingers together, squinting.

"One is the People's Liberation Party, which supports the union. The other is the patriotic organization for 'saving the country's independence,' which is the Brotherhood. To distinguish themselves from the former, the latter has branded their fellowship with symbols of Corona's sun, making their followers easy for my men to find. Every member appeared for the protest that prevented the king and your commissioners from boarding their ships this morning, so they were all arrested."

"...I see," she said. Something about that intelligent face, however, put him off. It was the face of a woman who was hiding her true thoughts, and no good came from a woman who hid herself. "Can you give me an estimation of how many members were involved?"

"I am inclined to say a hundred."

The count blanched the sorceress's cheeks of their rosiness. "A hundred?"

"I'm afraid so. That is why King Eugene and our forces were overwhelmed in the beginning. When I left with your commissioners, your men were trying to repair the damage that was done to the land and our people's composure. The king had suffered a critical fall himself. It takes a week or so to fully recover from one of those goblins after consciousness has been restored. Boarding a ship and engaging in festive activities will be hard for him until he has healed."

Her bobbing mouth had a hard time closing. She swallowed the brimstone on her taste buds and nodded blindly. Poor wench; she would suffer an irrecoverable loss of money and guests because of such a last minute cancellation. "And, what about..."

He read the name that was on her face. "...We don't see her. Only he does, because she stays locked in her room."

The wings of her eyebrows snapped into a scowl. He could even make out a lattice of bunny lines on the crown of her nose. "And why is that?"

"That is something you will have to ask His Majesty the King." How he hated calling a thief his king.

She fell back against her chair, annoyed and dejected. "Then what of his veto? Surely he wrote a letter to the Storting about the line items he wanted to change."

"I was not asked to deliver it. Political paranoia and distrust of the seas without a decent number of Arendellan fleets to follow us, perhaps."

She was having trouble battening down her sangfroid now. "Please tell me how long the Brotherhood has been active in Corona, Captain Hitler."

"Since the union was proposed, Your Majesty."

"But I'm just hearing about it now?"

"I can not speak on behalf of my superiors."

Elsa grew angrier than she had the energy to be. "Have they indulged in violent activities since the union?"

"I believe not."

Sighing, she perched her elbow on the table to hold her head with her pointer and her thumb, before wearily looking up at him from the awning created by her palm. "Then I have just one more question for you, Captain, and then we can move on."

"I will answer as honestly as I can."

She docked her hands on the desk and frowned at him with saltwater shining in her eyes. "How has my cousin been throughout the famine in the eyes of his captain? I'd like to hear the answer from someone who has no reason to make light of it."

"Her Majesty hasn't kept in contact with the king?"

"Not for a year." She looked down at her knuckles wistfully. "I told my council that he hasn't spoken to me in over five months because I didn't want them to think any worse of his character than they already did. This new rumor about his disdain for me hasn't helped."

"I do not turn my ear toward hall chatter, but I will say that King Eugene has kept his household in as decent of health as our misfortunes have room for. His body has not degenerated; he puts it to use with the crops and by chasing shy maidens, though his trust in the monarchy, as well as his allies, has thinned greatly."

Her eyelids clamped shut. "...I'm, sorry,"―she tittered, shaking her head. The blue chemical fire ringing her orbs scared him a bit when she unlidded her eyes. "You said hechases maidens?"

"Staying in the company of beautiful women is...a coping mechanism for the king. There are even some who claim to carry the next line for the throne."

Her jaw tightened. She didn't look like she was with him in the room anymore. The thief's one last confidante on the continent was trying to decide whether or not she believed him, and she couldn't seem to isolate herself from the fact that she possibly could. "...You've given me more information about the king than I expected to receive, Captain..."

"I knew him before he became a prince, Your Majesty," he finally leaked. "No man in Corona knows King 'Eugene' better than I. I am open to answering any questions you have about him."

She was rubbing her hands incessantly. "Thank you, Captain Hitler. Your candidness speaks volumes, but perhaps another time would be better for both of us. Right now, I'd like to visit your men."

He had broken her faith. "They would be honored."

The captain was asked to wait on her in the courtyard. From there, he was convoyed to a coach by her infantrymen. In it he climbed, and fifteen minutes after him, she came. Her eyes were swollen from having to grind over the words on the rotulus in private, and what depressing words they were; he remembered every curvilinear letter without failure. The queen joined him by sitting on the opposite side of the carriage like a refined madam in a painting, determined to convey this silly image of invincibility.

'Just break down already.'

They wagoned through the fish markets with little talk of life in Arendelle, prompting him to stare at her as their bodies swayed to the bumpy motion in silence. The window preoccupied her somber thoughts, but from time to time, she would look at him and crack a smile under the drops of sweat that mustached her face. To stab her now would be impracticable, for she'd kill him with ease. When her coach horses pulled up to the infirmary, her rickety legs made it unimaginable for her to dismount with dignity, so her foot guard offered his assistance. The doors were quickly opened for their company by the building's sentries.

Flocks of old women in skauts ambulated about the institution like sheep. Once they saw the queen standing in the vestibule, all clamoring ceased, and their dresses opened like umbrellas as they dropped into curtsies. The queen acknowledged each commoner with the courtesy of a niece greeting aunts at a family reunion before paying her respects to the Brotherhood's piñatas. His phalanx of unsmiling comrades were by no means as injured as they were drained; hers, however, wore burn marks and cuts that needed the disinfectants Corona couldn't supply. Only one man had it particularly bad, but he became a volunteer for something breathtaking.

The queen, despite being weak herself, sat by his bedside. She placed a hand on his stomach and asked for his permission to perform an operation. The patient told her it would be an honor. Captain Hitler then saw a blue light glow under her palm. The vein in the man's throat went as taut as a violin string as he tilted his head back into the pillow and curled his toes.

After twenty minutes, she removed the palm from his belly, and the glowing blue handprint evaporated. The man shed the gauze from his body, awed at whatever it was he saw, and then kissed her hands and sang praises as she shyly begged him not to. The ring of nurses laughed and beamed about this open display of witchcraft.

The captain stalked the conjurer all the way to another man's bedside to see what this was all about. "What was it that you did to him?"

She twisted her head around, looking him up and down with a grimace, before slowly redirecting a soft smile to a sleeping man whose brow she sponged. "I used a cryotherapeutic spell to close his lesion, Captain."

He was floored. "Your conjury?"

"My gift," she corrected brusquely.

He refrained from forcing her to explain the meaning of "cryotherapeutic" in order to pick up the fragments of his own reserve. His interpretation of the queen's malison, which was consistent with half of Corona's, had been synonymous with doomsday. It was conjury that could kill, wipe out, and eclipse the earth as well as the sun, not heal. Anything pure and sacred should not be able to kill, so never had he considered the compossibility of that same magic having the power to mimic the Golden Flower in such a way. It must have been a trick, he settled; by sundown, the man's lesion would probably return after her spell of illusion had worn off.

"Once you're all well nourished, I'll have you returned to Corona on Vör; she's a good ship who's served me well over the years," he overheard her telling his infantry.

They showed gratitude―perhaps even infatuation―but the captain knew they were pretending. There was no way in Heaven that his men could be fooled by such sickly-sweet gimmicks from a witch. Gothel had played those same cards on the cavalry in his youth.

"Were you not ready to die for your country's independence, Captain?" a man said behind his shoulder.

He didn't have cause to look back; the way the man's plummy voice smiled revealed his identity.

"He won't be happy," his interlocutor chuckled, contradicting the content in their conversation.

The captain glanced at the sun ray tattooed on one of the man's clavicles before looking at the profile of Elsa's smiling face. "He'll come to terms with it after today, for I'm a dead man regardless."

Chapter Notes:

Eugene hits Arendelle's shore in Chapter 13. I had no idea that Corona was officially intertwined with Frozen's canon universe until 6/10/24. I suppose UotC can no longer be called a crossover.

UotC Trivia:

1) The tall Gerda had gained weight in this AU.

2) There was a reason why Captain Hitler wasn't fired sooner by Eugene.

3) About Elsa's new spell in this chapter: Frozen's picture books and novels depicted her using her magic to create frosted cookies and chocolate ice cream for Anna, so evidently, it doesn't affect the bloodstream at this point if it's edible in her adult years. The cake in Frozen Fever was also made by her magic.