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“You know,” he says as he swirls the watered down drink in his hand, the ice melted long ago — “not all of it was a lie. My intentions were dishonest, but I didn’t—”
“Oh, come on!”
She hiked her skirts and climbed up to sit on the balcony’s edge. Current company wasn't worth the effort of trying to appear graceful.
“No, I mean it. I didn’t lie, not entirely anyways.”
She deigns to look him directly in the face, now that he’s sat himself in front of her. The moonlight was of no help to her tonight.
“So if I asked you the same things right now, you would answer them truthfully?”
“To the best of my ability, yes.”
“Hah.” She might as well jump now. “Even that sounds like a lie.”
“Ask me anything, Anna. I mean it.”
That’s the problem with traipsing through memories. So often you try to grasp things you've lost, whose importance you've forgotten, only to find yourself lost entirely. Going down the same road twice is something a foolish princess does, and not a capable queen.
“Is lemon cake really your favourite dessert?”
He chuckles. “What kind of man would lie about sweets?”
“The same kind of man who tries to kill his would-be wife and her sister.”
“Anna.”
He has the gall to look wounded.
“No, it’s fine, I’m completely over it.”
Anna wasn’t even sure ‘getting over it’ meant. Could she travel by ship, despite the fact all she could think of aboard one was her parents, and their last moments? Sure, the ship sails, it docks, and she gets to where she needs to be. But it doesn’t make the journey easy.
Maybe Elsa had the right idea, just running away into the woods. There’s no dancing phantoms on a terrace there.
“I just can’t believe you have such terrible taste.”
She made a childish face, showing her tongue.
“Only when it comes to dessert.”
She looks at him sideways, half in disbelief. “Are you seriously flirting with me after I talked about you trying to kill me and my sister?” And she glances back to the ballroom, where swooshing skirts and capes were still spinning in a dull waltz.
No one seemed too close to them, nor was looking in their direction. Harald was engrossed in his wine glass, still chatting with one of Corona’s lords. “And when my husband is right there?”
Hans bristles, and her ire grows. “Oh please, that oaf wouldn’t care if we eloped right now.”
She contemplates pushing him right down the balcony now. The Verrola castle is a lot taller than the one in Arendelle, but there is a lot of roofs and stoops and ridges all the way down. Hans seemed to have more lives than a cat. And the animal’s penchant for mischief.
“And... is that not what we’ve been doing the entire evening?” He adds, just when she was getting less angry by picturing him as a cat.
“Excuse me?”
“No, even longer than that. Maybe since that time I saw you in Corona?”
“You mean the time I punched you straight in the face?”
“Again, ouch. What do they feed you in Arendelle?”
She stepped down from the fence, landing on her heels with a click. This was insanity. No, she was insane, for talking to the enemy in the first place. When did everything get so skewed?
“We’re not friends.”
She means to say it matter-of-factly, but the sentence is so ludicrous it sounds more like a question.
“I would hope not, no.” His tone is a lot more dry, and Anna wonders if she offended him.
“We’re not lovers either.”
Clearly, she has to explicitly state it. Just what was Hans’s understanding of their relationship? Even calling it a relationship of any kind was generous.
He gets off the ledge, now standing in front of her. Too close, too close.
“No, we’re not,” he sighs.
Curse this balcony, and the soft light from the ballroom, and the criminal lack of wisteria which would’ve covered his perfume. All balconies should have wisteria, growing all over them in crawling vines, she decided. It should make them unusable.
He steps closer, and she steps back; the world's saddest dance.
“So are we enemies?” He asks, his voice now barely above a whisper. Still? Again? Now? No matter how he would've ended it, the question seemed entirely wrong. It'd been so clear cut once.
If that sheen in his eyes is part of the act, Anna will have to suggest he gives up treason for theatre.
“N-no, not anymore...” She brings herself to say it, and she means it too. She knows it only now, surprised by the sound of her own voice.
“So?”
For the second time in her life, alone with this particular man in a secluded space, Anna asks herself: How did I get here? What decision, which foolish choice was it that led me right to this, with Hans Westergaard’s punchable, yet kissable face looking down at me?
“We’re nothing,” she says resolutely, summoning what little sharpness she had left in her.
Even when she tries, she can’t sound like Elsa.
Anna returns to the ballroom, thankful she doesn’t hear Hans’s footsteps behind her.