A/N: Hey ya'll. So this is a spin-off of my first Elsanna fic, Somewhere in Time, which involved a bunch of different universes. As promised (from much fan persuasion) I am expanding a few of the stories in there, and this is one of them! The first two chapters are already written and can originally be found in the aforementioned fic, but eventually I will continue it (for God knows how long). So... here we go!

It was an unpleasant and strange circumstance in which Elsa found herself staring down the barrel of a red-tipped pistol.

The journey across the vast ocean to the New World had been one of business. Her father, a penniless merchant, had become horribly ill the week before he was to depart. He needed to stock up on wares that he would then return with to Europe and sell at raised prices. Elsa, used to his long disappearances, took advantage of his occupation as one of seafaring adventures. As a little girl, she would listen with unflinching awe at his stories of weathering devilish storms and swashbuckling with pirates. Whether or not they were true didn't matter, only that in her eyes her father was a hero. With her only remaining parent now taken suddenly ill, and having no other siblings to shoulder the burden, it was up to the twenty-five year old to go on the journey herself. If she and her father were to stay out of trouble and poverty, it was the course that had to be taken.

It was with a heavy heart that Elsa bid her father farewell as he sat stoically upright against the headboard of the bed, pale and weak from illness.

"Mind yourself," he intoned, kissing her cheek as she leaned over him, tears sparkling in her eyes. "And… Elsa? Have an adventure." Her gaze met his and he smiled meekly. "Let it go." He pressed a small wooden object into her hand; it was a little charm, an ox. She ducked her head and allowed him to hang the creature about her neck. She fingered it affectionately and left a kiss on his clammy forehead in gratitude.

Before she knew it, she was at the dock, staring up at the large merchant ship that bobbing slowly in the dazzling sun of the harbor - a sight she had gazed upon many a time. This time, however, she was to embark upon it herself. She did not mind that she was leaving - no, only the fact that brought her hesitation was that her father would not be accompanying her and may very well lay dying.

"Let it go," he had said. With a last, withered look at the town stretched out behind her, she boarded the ship, slipping the purser coins and signing her name as her father had instructed. With mounting anxiety, she took up a place at the deck's edge, resting her slender hands on the hard wooden railing. Shouts of the crew sounded around her as they prepared to depart. Coiled rope was retrieved and pulled taut, orders were called out from every angle. Elsa looked down into the murky water below, wondering how the wind would feel when the ship was at full sail.

A force from behind nearly propelled Elsa overboard - her navel was pinned painfully to the sideboard and she heard a squeal from behind her at impact. It took her a few seconds of staring unseeingly at the water she had almost been pitched into before it occurred to her to turn around and face the offending body.

It was a boy, no older than ten. He had bright eyes, a goofy smile, and had just dropped the line he held. Elsa kneeled down in front of him as he gazed at her, rubbing his dark-haired head with a small, dirty hand.

"You have a bony butt," he said, but he was still had that goofy smile plastered on his face.

Elsa giggled, hand coming up to cover her mouth. "Are you all right?"

He grinned even wider, showing his whole set of yellowed teeth. "Yup!" He bent to pick up the rope he had dropped and held it up before Elsa. "I'm helping."

"You are doing a wonderful job," Elsa replied.

"I'm Olaf," he said, disregarding her compliment. "Who are you?"

Before she could answer, however, his eyes grew wide and he exclaimed, "You're a girl!"

Elsa stifled another giggle behind both hands, watching the boy's face transform from careless glee to childish confusion. He raised a stiff finger to point, squinting at her.

"It's bad luck."

Elsa's eyebrows rose, but a smile still toyed at her lips. More shouts from the crew.

"They need me," he continued, puffing out his chest importantly. Elsa saw the crew had steered the ship successfully out of the harbor and were setting its course for the open ocean. Elsa felt a pang of excitement when her eyes met the broad horizon, and she didn't notice right away that the boy had taken his rope and scuttled away.

The merchant's daughter spent the day roaming the ship, exploring every nook and cranny that she dared. Once or twice a crew member shot her an unpleasant look, after which she would immediately retreat to the safety of the deck to discover a different enterprise. She took care not to talk to anyone. Not a particularly social creature by nature, she preferred to observe and interact from a distance. Olaf was the only person she ended up speaking directly to the entire day.

The sunset on that first night out at sea was a spectacle - prisms of light danced off the dark water and sprinkled patterns on the mast and in her eyes, almost as if the West was calling her onward. She was only disappointed that the crew roaming the deck around her were indifferent to the beauty.

Her bunk was less of a spectacle. Surrounded by thirty snoring men, she tossed helplessly under the thin piece of cloth and tried not to think about the rats crawling over her feet in the darkness. The only aid she was granted in her pursuit of sleep was the gentle rocking of the ship, persistent in its motions.

When she awoke, she found her arms wound loosely around a small figure. How Olaf had crawled onto her bunk and into her arms without disturbing her slumber was beyond her, yet here he was, face nestled into the crook of her neck. She patted his head lightly, sighing, before resigning herself once more to sleep.

At least she had made a friend.

The next three weeks of the voyage passed in a blur of consistency. The crew did their job and Elsa stayed out of their way. No one spoke to her directly and that was the way she preferred it. She took her meals straight from the galley and out onto the deck. Olaf joined her after a time and they would sit side by side, joking, laughing, and telling tales until the sun, exhausted, hid under the horizon and its cousins, the stars, appeared to relieve it of its place in the sky. Elsa pointed to the constellations in turn, explaining their origins to the wide-eyed, ever-curious boy. Just as her father has done for her all those years ago. There was something about this vast expanse of water that brought out more of the pale beauties, pinpricks on the otherwise inky sky.

It was after one such a night of happy stargazing, the twenty-third night of Elsa's journey across the ocean, that she and Olaf were startled awake by cannon fire.

Disoriented, Elsa sat up, eyes darting blearily around the hold. Half of the crew was thundering up the stairs, some half dressed, and the ones remaining pulling on articles of clothing and grabbing weapons haphazardly.

"Is there a party?" Olaf yawned, rubbing his eyes with his fists.

"Not quite," Elsa said, lifting him from the bunk by his underarms and setting him upright on the floor.

"Will there be dancing?" he asked groggily, swaying with the ship beneath his feet.

"If you would like," she said, swinging her legs over the edge of the bunk. She pulled on jacket over her nightshirt and stepped into a pair of trousers.

"Yes," he said, slowly becoming more awake.

She paused in lacing her boots to smile at the boy, but then the world was splintered as another cannonball connected with the ship - it crashed straight into the hull, whistling past the pair and punching another hole in the opposite wall as it escaped and fell with a splash into the ocean outside.

Elsa and Olaf were thrown to the ground, limbs tangling in debris.

"Olaf!" Elsa said breathlessly, crawling through splintered remains of bunks and materials, trying to find the boy. Distantly, the sound of gunfire and shouting drifted down from the deck as Elsa searched desperately through the rubble for her young friend.

Her bloodied hands finally unearthed a boot and she scrambled to dig the boy out of the mess. He was unconscious, but he was breathing.

A series of thuds was heard from the stairway. Elsa looked over in time to see an unfortunate crew member tumble down and land in a crumpled heap at the bottom of it. Laughter and heavy footfalls preceded a parade of gun-wielding pirates. Half a dozen men spilled into the hold, fanning out to search. The tallest and blondest of the pack, and the apparent leader, was the first to lock eyes on Elsa where she kneeled by Olaf, trying to rouse him.

"Well, well! How interesting," the man said, picking his way through the cannon debris towards her, having to duck his head under the low ceiling.

Elsa watched him approach with dread, eyes wide. Olaf stirred in her arms and her attention was diverted back to him. "Olaf!" she said, shaking him gently. "Everything's going to-"

Her assurance was cut off when a large hand clamped down on her upper arm and she was pulled roughly to her feet, torn ruthlessly away from the boy.

"Stop it, let me go!" she screamed, reaching for Olaf as he too was imprisoned by strong hands and pulled to his shaking feet.

"I think the captain will be very interested to meet you," the tall man breathed into her ear, beginning to drag her to the stairs.

"Olaf! Don't panic!" she pleaded with him, trying to look over her shoulder at the boy, whose cries of desperation pierced through her like a knife.

The man held her weight as she tripped helplessly up the steps and emerged onto the deck, chill ocean wind stinging her face.

"Captain, look what I found," the man said, throwing her to her knees at a pair of sharp black boots. She stared at the intimidating feet before her, terrified, trembling from fear and cold.

A red-tipped pistol passed into her line of vision briefly before it was placed at her chin, forcing her gaze upward to the face of the pirate captain.

"A woman on board a merchant vessel? Now, that is bad luck."

Elsa's fear was instantly replaced by wonder as she took in the sight of the woman above her. A mischievous grin twisted the freckled face that was framed by two plaits of thick, red hair. A floppy, brimmed hat was perched lopsidedly on her head. Her shirt and coat hung loosely on her slight frame, only barely concealing the straps that hung from her shoulders, supporting holsters for the pistol and sword that she held in each hand.

Elsa heard muffled shouts from her left. Minutely turning her head, she saw that the entirety of the crew was in a huddle on the deck, hands tied and mouths gagged. Pirates stood, arms crossed, around them, guarding from dissent. Her eyes flickered back to the captain, whose glinting eyes were still trained on her, narrowing slightly.

Then, the captain spun in her heel and laughed joyfully, skipping over to the hostages.

"Lucky for you, my men haven't found anything worth taking anywhere on your puny vessel. Nothing that we want, anyway!" She made a lazy turn as she paced around her group, catching the eye of the tall man who had apprehended Elsa and winking at him. "We will, however, take these two as a reward for our efforts." She pointed with her sword at Elsa and Olaf. Elsa, having momentarily forgotten the boy, turned sharply to see that he was slung over a pirate's shoulder. He hung limply, but she couldn't see his face to ascertain his condition.

Not one of the merchant crew protested the captain's statement.

"Sorry about the cannonball holes," she said, sighing with mock remorse. "We asked you nicely to slow down and instead you increased your speed. I didn't appreciate that one bit."

She tapped the flat edge of her sword on each head she passed, as though playing some childhood game.

"Retreat to the Revenge!" she barked suddenly at her crew and they instantly set to work removing themselves to the menacing pirate ship tethered to the merchant's. The frozen wind ripped into Elsa, tossing her hair around her face, blocking out the sight of the red headed captain striding back over to where the merchant's daughter knelt on the deck. The woman seemed spurred on by the chaos around her. She stopped before Elsa, inches before crushing the kneeling girl's fingers under her boots, and looked to the tall blonde.

"Good find, Kristoff." They grinned at each other in mutual comradery. "Shall we?"

Without further ado, the pair reached down in unison to hoist Elsa from the ground and throw her unceremoniously onto the other ship.

"Let's cast off!" the captain shouted, holstering her weapons and taking her position at the helm.

Overwhelmed by so much change in only a few minutes, Elsa watched the merchant ship on which she was supposed to return to her father drift further and further away. She reached up to grip the ox charm hanging from her neck as a frozen wind billowed the waves in the building storm. She wondered if this was the kind of adventure her father had wished for her.

"Elsa!" Olaf said from behind her. She turned quickly to embrace him protectively, searching for something to hold onto as the rising waves bucked the ship like it were a mere toy. The pirates paid them no mind as they set about keeping the ship afloat through the gale.

The Revenge pitched suddenly starboard, the figure at the helm spinning the wheel wildly.

"What in the devil's name is Captain Anna doing?" Elsa heard a nearby pirate shout. It was the first mate, Kristoff, who answered.

"Why, this is her idea of fun!" he yelled back, and grinned as the line of the mast he held slid him across the soaked deck.

Using one arm to cling to the sideboard and the other to hold Olaf fast, Elsa chanced a glance up to the helm; a sudden flash of lightning illuminated the captain's face. The grin she bore was that of pure enjoyment - the face of a child. Something in Elsa's stomach dropped at the sight, and the merchant's daughter knew it wasn't seasickness kicking in; it was the sensation of absolute pleasure.