A/N: So I am in love with the idea of a modern Hans pursuing a modern Elsa, but still tied to their shared past in some way. I also was stuck on an airplane for a long time and was bored. I would be honored to know your thoughts! The title of the story comes from the waltz from Disney's Sleeping Beauty, which I don't own. Not my circus, not my monkeys...(same goes for Frozen)!

I know you

I walked with you once upon a dream

I know you

The gleam in your eyes is so familiar, a gleam

Yet I know it's true

That visions are seldom all they seem

But if I know you, I know what you'll do

You'll love me at once

The way you did once upon a dream

The first time he heard her name, he fell off the treadmill with a thud.

She's real…

Hans Westergaard had grown-up haunted by what he felt were scattered memories of a previous life, fleeting images and feelings that would surface periodically – much like déjà vu, but far more vivid. Just past his awareness lurked this sense that he was reliving a life in need of redemption, occasionally pieces of this puzzle were discovered and a wave of dread would crash over him for a heartbeat before he could release his next breath, then dissipate into the wind. Some of these moments, these threads of fate that would cross, were filled with happiness and joy; on his sixteenth birthday he was given a five year old colt, a handsome brown dun Norwegian fjord horse to keep at his family's home in Westchester County whom he greeted immediately as Sitron. He affectionately stroked his nose as he whispered into his ear, "It's been a long time, old friend." He had a love of fencing and swordplay, chess and military strategy, and Scandinavian history. And he despised giant snowmen.

Other threads and hints came in his sleep.

Her, for one.

She would frequent his dreams, even as a small child he saw her, with giggles and snowball fights, sledding and skating. She had the fairest hair he had ever seen, bright blue eyes, always soft cool hands, and quiet calm melodic voice in her manner with a smile that could make him return one of his own. As he grew, she grew with him, joining him in his sleep as he aged. In his youth, she would be at his side as his brothers tormented him and he faced the torture they inflicted, offering him her reassuring presence that he would be okay. She would be with him as childhood adventures unraveled into adolescent desires, as hormones raced beyond his control, she would patiently guide him to discover himself and find relief in her. He wasn't always aware of her as he slept nor could he always remember the images, but as dreams slowly blurred with reality, while just on the cusp of consciousness he could hear her singing to him. As he transitioned to adulthood he was occasionally visited by her and strange dreams in which the world was frozen solid and he was left to save it from destruction. Or he would pursue her, now an ethereally beautiful young woman who was regal and distant and cold and was terribly frightened and she controlled his fate. She would run from him, from everyone…across a frozen harbor with wooden ships scattered atop or in the ice, or into an endless dark forest during a snow storm to a castle made of ice where men would hunt her and he would have to stop them. Other times she stood regally in chains in a prison begging for him to "tell them to let me go," and "I'm a danger," to protect himself and those he was charged with.

Occasionally, there was another young woman, one with strawberry blonde hair in pigtails, who chased him frustratingly - she seemed to prevent him from finding and saving and having her...one dream the strawberry blonde froze solid next to a fire when he spoke cruelly to her. The most horrific of these ended in terror, her blood on his hands…he would bolt upright as he returned from sleep in a cold sweat with his stomach retching from the visions he was left with.

There would be no returning to sleep on such nights.

He found himself romantically drawn to petite, blonde women with bright blue eyes, the colder and harder to get close to the harder he would pursue – but once he finally won the young girl's affection, his interest would wane. Women were not his priority. His drive and passion to earn the pride and admiration of his parents and to be respected as a leader by others wouldn't be deterred by the occasional act of emotionally unsatisfying passion. Besides, it was on those nights she would return to his dreams with an icy storm swirling and transforming her into the most desirable winter creature he could never have, demonstrating to him how passion and desire and arousal could transform into a magic of the flesh leaving him to worship her and awake with an empty ache in his heart.

He never knew her name.

Although, she knew his.

That is until he heard it escape the lips of someone reporting the latest celebrity news and gossip.

He sat where he had fallen at the base of the machine with the platform track still moving and others glancing back at him in surprise as they continued with their workout, his heart racing fast enough to make him lightheaded and his breath caught. He was lost momentarily, only aware of the images flashing across the screen as he stared at the TV mounted to the ceiling with his jaw agape as he saw her, shoulders squared and proud and real.

She's real…

Her thick platinum hair was pulled back elegantly upon her head in a braided bun and she wore large framed sunglasses over (he was sure) intense blue eyes, dressed in a beautiful conservative black dress with black heels and surrounded by paparazzi as she made her way to an awaiting car. His mind flickered between the images on the screen and a vision of her in a long sleeved gown fashioned from dark blue and purple velvet.

The ticker at the bottom of the screen told him she was in New York City, gossip and controversy surrounding her due to a self-induced isolation which followed the death of her parents just three days earlier. They had disappeared aboard a private jet which was presumed to have crashed into the sea, without a trace. At eighteen years of age, Elsa (Elsa...he whispered it just to taste it on his tongue), the Crown Princess of Norway, would be coronated Queen of Norway following her twenty-first birthday.

So there he was. Having just finished his first year of law at Yale, and having intended to follow in the footsteps of many other men of his name and enter a life of politics and law...

But now, on the eve of his twenty first birthday, as he sat as an undignified heap on the floor in a New Haven, Connecticut gym, with his purpose and place in the world coming to him as an epiphany. He rose from the floor and shook himself loose to hop back onto the treadmill - some of his best thinking was as his heart raced.