Elsa and Anna gaped at the sight of their father taking the stand. He glared back at them with the same disapproving gaze they'd last seen on his face all those years ago.

"Mr. Arendelle, what is your relationship to the accused?" Weselton asked, a smirk every bit as wicked on his own face as he stared up at the imposing figure who had haunted many of Elsa's worst dreams.

"As loathe as I am to admit it," he growled, "they're my daughters."

"And you're here testifying against them?"

"I disowned them a long time ago, after I found out what they were doing together."

"Could you elaborate on that?"

"You're really going to make me say it, aren't you? The two of them were –" He spat, a globule of saliva landing on the edge of the jury box, "fornicating. When I saw what further disgusting deeds they'd been up to, I had to report them. When I saw them on the news – they broke their mother's heart. If being filthy incestuous queers wasn't enough, they'd gone and murdered someone for it too."

Anna's jaw dropped. Elsa only shook her head, unable to be surprised by anything that their father would do. "He wouldn't," Anna mouthed. Elsa held her hand under the table and continued to watch as their lives were unraveled before their eyes.

"Did you witness any of the crimes they're accused of?"

"I did." His voice quavered as tears fell from his eyes. "We heard them in the next room. Iduna insisted that I had to be wrong, and I believed her. There was no way our girls would do that, we raised them better! But when they tried to run off in the middle of the night, like some common thieves, we had to stop them. I wouldn't let Elsa corrupt her sister any further. Then they admitted to it! Anna claimed to 'love' her sister. I wanted to kill that disgusting freak. Look at what she's done to her poor little sister!" His gaze returned to Elsa. "Look what you did to her! Do you regret it? Can you really stand by the hell you've put her through, just to satisfy your perversions?"

"Objection!" Marshall called, as Anna pulled Elsa to her, stroking her hair as she sobbed.

"Keep your witness in line or they'll be dismissed," the judge demanded. "Mr. Arendelle, you're not to address the accused."

"Yes, your honor," the prosecutor replied. "No further questions."

"May I have a moment to confer with my clients?" the defense attorney asked.

"Of course, you have five minutes."

Anna clutched Elsa to her tighter as she asked "Was that as bad for us as it sounded?"

"When your own father is not only willing to testify against you, but called the cops on you in the first place, it's a pretty tough case to argue against a jury. I'm not saying that it's impossible for me to get you off, but it might not be a bad idea to see about a plea bargain."

Wiping at her eyes, Elsa turned to face Mr. Marshall. "What would that mean for us?"

"You'd have to admit guilt, maybe not to all of the crimes, we might be able to at least convince them to drop or lower the murder charge, and you'd serve a reduced sentence. I'm not going to lie and say that it will be pleasant, but if they manage to convict you on all of your charges, you could both go away for life. Most juries won't want to do that to two women, but –"

"But you think they'll find us despicable enough that they'll convict us anyway?"

"Yes."

"Is there anyway I can just plea to everything? I'm the one that caused all of this," Anna insisted.

Elsa turned back to her sister and met her eyes. "Anna, I won't let you do that."

"You've already tried that. They seem pretty determined to get both of you. Would you like to see about a plea bargain? They might be more willing to be lenient before this actually goes to trial."

The two women continued to stare at each other. After a moment, Elsa nodded. "Yes. It sounds like it's the best option we have."

Sighing, Anna followed her sister's lead. "All right, if you're sure, honey. I trust you."

Mr Marshall left from the table and spoke quietly to the opposing counsel. Their hushed voices slowly rose, but neither Elsa nor Anna could make out a word as they attempted to listen in on the conversation that would decide their fates. After two minutes of intense discussion, he returned to his seat at the table and blew out a long sigh.

"What happened?" Anna asked.

"If you'll plead guilty to everything else, they'll drop the murder charge. They'd apparently already arranged this, so it sounds like they were expecting the deal. As many states as you two broke laws in, it's been a humdinger for them to prosecute."

Looking up at their attorney through tear rimmed eyes, Elsa asked, her voice shaky,"What would we serve?"

"They're trying to penalize you for each individual count of incest. They're offering twenty years, I think I can probably get them down to twelve or fifteen. You'd still have a good deal of life ahead of you when you get out. I can't advise you either way, I don't know what I'd do in your situation, the choice is yours, but you both have to agree. It's all or nothing."

Anna squeezed Elsa's hand. "Shouldn't you bring it down before you ask us that?"

"If I know that you'll say yes to that number, I'll have a lot more power in the negotiation. If I bring them down to fifteen and then you're not willing to agree to it, that'll likely be it."

"If you can bring it down to fifteen, I'll do it. It's better than us going away for life." Elsa decided, as her nails bit into Anna's hand. "But try for twelve."

"If Elsa is willing, then so am I."

"All right, I'll see what I can do."

"Mr. Marshall," the judge called, "Are you going to question the witness or can I let them go?"

"Just five more minutes, your honor, I need to confer with opposing counsel."

Weselton and Marshall resumed their discussions. After another minute, it was clear that they'd reached an agreement, and the defense attorney strode back to his table. "I got them to agree to fourteen years. With good behavior you could be out even earlier. I assume you're still willing to take it?"

Both girls nodded, neither able to bring themselves to utter a word in response.

Elsa and Anna were escorted through the French doors of the Colorado Women's Prison in Canon City. Either side of the hall, against the doors to their cells, sat just over a dozen women, who all turned from their needlework to watch the new arrivals.

"Ms. Arendelle," the matron who had been guiding them began, only for both girls to turn to her, "That is to say Anna, this will be your house right there, room 7, on the right. Elsa Arendelle, your house is number 16, right next to you on the left. I'll get your uniforms to you in just a minute. By the way, I don't think I said before, I'm Ms. Bellevue, the head matron here."

Half the eyes in the room followed either of them as they proceeded to their cells without a word. Their brief time in the county jail had prepared them for this much at least.

By the time lunch had rolled around, they had changed into their prison gowns and were surprised to find that they were not separated from each other. They helped themselves to the buffet-style selection and sat across from each other, waiting for a matron to stop them. None came.

Anna smiled as she bit into a bland piece of bread. "Can this be real?"

"I'm afraid so." Elsa sighed. "This is where we'll be for the next fourteen years. Trapped here."

Anna quirked her head and gave Elsa a quizzical look. "Elsa, what are you talking about? This is wonderful! It's all I've ever wanted."

"You wanted to be in prison?"

"I wanted a life with you without some dark cloud hanging over our head. We don't have to lie anymore, we can just be ourselves. We can finally be together."

Elsa's jaw dropped, crumbs falling to her plate. "Anna, that –" she paused. She couldn't think of any reasonable argument against her sister's premise. "We're in prison."

"We always knew that would happen someday. Now we don't have to worry about it. Finish eating so we can go for a walk!"

"They're not going to just let us go outside! I don't know what else I can say on the subject, this is a prison." She tried to keep her voice down, but she was growing frantic, unable to comprehend what was going through her wife's head.

Anna pointed at the door, as an inmate walked through it. "Did you not listen to the rules on the way here? We can walk in the rec yard after meals. So if we eat quickly, we should be able to have most of an hour together, three times a day."

Elsa let out a breath, and looked down at her plate, considering how long it would take her to finish all of it. "And that's enough for you?"

"It'll never be enough for me, but it's something, and I'll take whatever I can get."

Watching as the door swung shut behind another woman, Elsa nodded. "Eat up, maybe we can even find some privacy."

They shoved the flavorless food down their throats as quickly as they could, not even bothering to taste it. Within five minutes, they were walking through the door, glancing around to make sure the matron wasn't going to stop them.

Anna took in a deep breath, savoring the fresh air. "Not so bad, is it?" There were four other women wandering around the small empty field. Two were sitting in the grass, talking about something that the sisters couldn't hear and the other two were just walking around the field, occasionally crossing each other's paths. Leading the way a few feet over, just around the corner of the building, Anna sat down and tugged on Elsa's hand to invite her to join. "Come sit with me."

Elsa did as she was bid, watching the strangely happy countenance of her little sister. Before she could find words to express the whirlwind of emotions she was feeling, Anna's lips were upon hers, as her arms wrapped around her, pulling her fully into Anna's lap.

When the kiss broke, Anna held her head to her shoulder. "I know you're not handling this as well as I am. That life meant a lot to you, I'm sorry we had to lose it, but just try to enjoy what we have now."

Elsa kissed the neck before her and closed her eyes. "All right. I love you, Anna. It is nice to not have to worry about when everything is going to fall away anymore. It already did, I suppose. It can't exactly get much worse."

"Exactly." Anna beamed, stroking Elsa's short hair as she held her. "And we have everything we need right here." She felt the breaths against her flesh begin to slow and looked down to see that her beloved had fallen asleep. "Sweet dreams, Elsa. I'll wake you when we have to go back inside." She planted a kiss on the top of her head and leaned against the wall, watching the clouds lazily drift through the sky.

After waking Elsa, the two returned to their houses, only to find that they were expected to join the other women in sewing. For Anna, this came naturally, and she was soon following the rest of the residents in performing her womanly duties. Elsa stared at the needle and thread, trying to wrap her head around something that she should in every right already know. All those years pretending to be a seamstress and she had never bothered to actually learn the trade. She turned to the women around her, trying to follow their lead, but couldn't manage to unravel their motions. To her eye, it looked like they were simply waving their hands over the fabric and having it magically come together. She wasn't even sure how to thread the needle in the first place.

Once she had been staring at the needle, unmoving, for at least five minutes, one of her neighbors noticed her. "Do you need some help?" the woman asked.

Elsa looked up at her. The woman's brown hair framed her face as she gave Elsa a gentle smile. "Yes," she admitted.

The brunette slid her chair closer to Elsa and looked at her hands. "Well first off, stop holding the needle like it's a scalpel, loosen up a bit." She examined the thread. "And try sucking on the thread a bit."

Elsa stared at her. "What?"

The woman laughed. "Just do it. It'll help hold it together so it doesn't keep fraying when you try to put it through the needle. Just look at what you've already done to it, might have to ask Ms. Bellevue to just cut it off for you, but maybe you can manage to hold it together. Put it in your mouth."

Watching the woman with a skeptical gaze, Elsa did as she was instructed. Once she pulled the thread back out of her mouth, it was almost back in a single cord. "Now what?"

"Now you grip it just below the end and carefully slide it through the eye of the needle. That's good, perfect." She grabbed the end of the thread that Elsa had pushed through. "Don't want to let you accidentally pull it out. Now keep pushing it through." She guided the thread until there was enough slack to tie it off. "Do you know how to tie a knot?"

Instead of answering, Elsa tied the thread around the eye of the needle, securing it in place.

"Not bad. You'll be able to do it on your own next time. Any idea what you'll want to sew?"

"What do you mean? Isn't there something we're supposed to be sewing."

"No, we can sew whatever we want. We're allowed to decorate our cells, make dolls, we can even make stuff for them to sell to visitors in the canteen. They just want us to learn how to be proper women. They have instructors to teach us how to sew and play piano and other proper womanly pursuits, and we're free to pursue them in our free time."

"Oh. So I don't have to be sewing?"

"You're going to have to stay at your house for count anyway, so you may as well learn to sew while you're here, right?"

Elsa nodded, and allowed the woman to continue instructing her. "Can I make a present for my sister?"

"Sure." The woman beamed. "What would you like to make her?"

"What's something that I'd be able to make today?"

The woman laughed. "You're just learning how to sew. Why don't you learn the basics and then you can make her something nice?"

"Will you help?"

"Of course. I'm Eleanor, by the way. Eleanor Creedy."

"You probably heard when Ms. Bellevue was showing us to our cells earlier, but my name's Elsa Arendelle."

"It's your house," Eleanor stated.

"My house?"

"It's not a cell, it's a house. Just like we're residents, not inmates. They don't want to make it sound too hard and offend our delicate feminine sensibilities. You know how that is."

Elsa did not, in fact, know how that was. "Yeah. Right."

"So what're you in here for?"

Elsa glanced over to where her sister sat, sewing away, and considered what she could get away with claiming. "Fraud."

"Ah, that's boring. I killed my husband, you really should've done something more exciting if you were going to be locked up anyway."

"I'll keep that in mind if I ever decide to come back here."

Laughing, Eleanor replied, "I like you. You're gonna fit in nicely around here. So, how about we work on making your sister – what was her name again?"

"Anna," Elsa replied, beaming as her eyes fell on her sister again.

"How about we make Anna a nice shawl? It can get really cold outside in the evenings, it'd be nice to have something to keep her warm, and it's a pretty easy thing to sew."

"All right. How do I go about doing that?"

Eleanor and Elsa wiled away the remaining hour until count time as they worked on the present for the younger Arendelle sister. Elsa had to repeatedly go back and correct her mistakes, often losing most of her progress as she undid stitches to fix the errant thread, but she was slowly learning the craft, and was at the very least growing better at catching her mistakes before they would cost too much of her time.

Ms. Bellevue called count time and instructed everyone to return to their cells. She then slowly walked through the room, counting off all twenty-two of the residents of the Women's Prison. All of the women were silent as she went about her duties. Once the count was complete, another woman wearing the same uniform came in, and was informed of the number, then Ms. Bellevue left, and the evening matron took over the shift.

As the days went by, the sisters grew accustomed to their new life. Every morning at 7:00 AM, the morning matron, almost always Ms. Bellevue, would arrive and make sure that their houses were clean. Then at 8:00 they would head down to breakfast. After quickly eating, Elsa and Anna would spend their time in the yard, just out of sight, in each other's arms. Then they would go back inside and be assigned their chores for the day. Anna loved when she was assigned kitchen duty, but hated working in the laundry room. Elsa was still hopeless in the kitchen, so while neither was ideal, she was at least less capable of messing things up when she was washing or ironing clothes. After they finished their work, they would have lunch, before running off again for more time to kiss and embrace each other. Then they would sew, socialize, listen to music on the Victrola, and have various classes depending on the day. At 2:50 they would return to their cells for count, and the evening matron would take over.

Dinner was at 6:00. Once the girls came back inside, they would head to their houses and be locked in. They were free to sew, pray, and read in their rooms. At 9:00, the lights were turned out, and they were expected to go to sleep. At 11:00, they were counted in their beds, and the night matron would take over. At 7, the day began again, with scarcely a break in the repetition.

With three weeks of practice, Elsa was finally proud enough of her finished product to be ready to give the shawl to Anna. She knocked on the door to her house while everyone was tidying up before breakfast. Anna turned to her as she made her bed. "Morning, Elsa. How'd you sleep?"

"Not too badly, but I wanted to give you this." She held out the shawl to Anna, whose eyes lit up at the sight of it.

"Did you make this?! Elsa, you just started learning to sew, how did you – I love it!" She took it from her and wrapped it around herself, twirling so that her girlfriend could admire it on her properly. "Thank you."

"It was my pleasure. I love you, Anna." She leaned against the door as she talked. Ms. Bellevue would be back any minute and she didn't want to have to justify being in Anna's house, not when the matron would know why they were in there.

"I love you too, Elsa!" Throwing her arms around Elsa, she pulled her into a kiss. In front of their cells. For all of the residents to see.

Behind her, Elsa heard the sounds of someone dropping something, along with a sharp intake of breath. Someone else seemed to be clearing their throat as if to speak, but before they had the chance, the sound of the door at the end of the hall opening caused everyone to scatter back to their cells, no one wanting Ms. Bellevue to catch the confrontation that was no doubt about to occur.

By the time she'd stepped through the door, everyone was back in their houses. "Ladies, time for breakfast." The 18 women not already in the kitchen or dining room followed after her, and were greeted by the smell of French toast, eggs, bacon, and sausage. They helped themselves to their food and all found seats, everyone else sitting conspicuously far from Elsa and Anna.

"What's everyone's deal?" Anna asked, finally noticing the wide berth everyone was giving them.

Elsa leaned back in her chair as she groaned and turned her gaze to the ceiling. "How do you not know?"

"What?"

"You did that in front of everyone!" Chair legs squeaked on the floor as several inmates turned to better see the drama unfolding before them. Elsa glanced around and tried to control her voice. "Anna, they all saw."

"So what? We're in prison, why would they care?"

"We're both women. And even more so, they know we're sisters. How do you think that looks to them?"

"So what? You want me to just pretend even here?" Anna spat. "The whole world already knows, what's the point of hiding it?"

Elsa rolled her eyes but forced her voice to remain calm. "Dammit, Anna. I know that you think our love can just conquer everything, but we're stuck here for the next fourteen years. Some of these women have killed people before, and probably for less than the various sins we've committed against nature."

Anna snorted. "We weren't even charged for that."

"That's not the point. Anna, we had to keep this a secret."

"Well I wasn't willing to. You're my wife, I don't care what anyone else thinks of it. Now hurry up and eat so we can go have our time together." She turned her attention to her food, spooning the watery scrambled eggs into her mouth.

Elsa grabbed her hand. "No. We're not going outside, the matron's here, we don't want to be alone with the other residents right now."

Staring into her eyes, Anna stopped trying to eat. "You don't want to go outside with me?" Her voice cracked as her eyes began to water. "Elsa, we're fine, nothing's going to happen, please just come cuddle with me. You can get a little more sleep."

"Anna, please. I do want to, but we can't right now, not when it's so fresh in everyone's minds." She gripped Anna's arm tighter, pleading for her to acquiesce.

Anna ripped her hand away. "Well then I'm going outside without you." She stormed away from the table, headed towards the door.

"You have to finish your food or else you'll get in trouble," Elsa called after her, still rooted to the spot.

Anna stomped around the yard, kicking up snow as she went. She wrapped the shawl around her for warmth as she began to head for their usual spot. When she was halfway there, she heard the sound of snow crunching behind her. "Elsa!" she shouted, beaming, as she turned around to face her. It wasn't her sister. Eleanor, Elsa's friend, stood before her. "Oh, sorry, I thought you were Elsa."

"I don't think she's coming," Eleanor replied, her voice cold.

Anna watched as a few more women filed out and formed behind the other inmate. "Is she okay?"

"She's fine. You, I'm not so sure about." She took a step towards Anna, their eyes locked together, as she towered over the shorter woman.

Gulping, Anna looked around as the three women closed in on her, pushing her ever so slowly toward the fence. "You wouldn't be the first person I've killed," she offered, the threat ringing hollow in even her own ears, her voice and body both shaking too hard to be taken seriously.

"Just try," Eleanor responded, as she closed the gap between them and brought a fist into Anna's solar plexus.

Just as Anna had managed to recover enough to swing her fist at her attacker, a whistle sounded in the air, the shrill cry ringing throughout the still yard. Anna's fist met Eleanor's jaw as Ms. Bellevue stood before them, the whistle clutched to her lips and a pair of handcuffs dangling from her other hand.

"They attacked me!" Anna insisted as the cuffs clamped around her wrists and the other women laughed.

"I'll take you to the infirmary after I throw the trouble maker in a dark cell, Ms. Creedy. Don't go running off anywhere," Ms. Bellevue announced as she escorted Anna away from the yard. While she was angry about being the only one who seemed to be being punished, Anna wasn't so blinded by rage as to not realize that the head matron may have just saved her life. Her attackers stared after her, unmoving.