Chapter Text
Cassandra burst out of the door, coughing.
“Cass!” a voice gasped.
The world spun for a moment, hazy, bright, but a face shone out from beyond, sweet, green-eyed, bright. She had been born only to protect. She wondered if it was fair. She wondered if it was destiny.
A crushing hug made Cassandra aware of Rapunzel prattling on, worried, always worried. The sky was less blue, and the remains of the House of Yesterday’s Tomorrow crumbled away, defeated.
Loyalty was something Cassandra understood.
Loyalty was something that would always be Cassandra’s downfall.
The moonstone was dangerous. Unpredictable. Powerful.
And Cassandra, by the barest definition, wasn't.
- - - - - - - - -
“Sunshine,” Eugene stood in front of his fiancé, “Listen to me, this is wrong. You know just as well as I that the kid will turn against us any second-“
“This is wrong?” Rapunzel’s voice was on the verge of cracking, “And leaving a fourteen- year- old for months on end alone with the corpse of his father wasn’t?”
“Blondie,” Eugene sighed, “We need to focus on the now, we need to save Corona, I-“
“You knew it was wrong too,” Rapunzel’s eyes found his.
Eugene froze. His eyes, tired as they were, guarded as they always were, were suddenly a mirror of Rapunzel’s, flooded with guilt, overcome with the sense that as much as he had done good, he had also done nothing to prevent one small, small, tragedy, a tragedy that surely would not matter on the bigger scale, and yet a tragedy that had cost a young boy both his father’s life and his own.
“Eugene,” Rapunzel’s hands found Eugene’s, and she smiled up at him sadly, “You have always believed in me, and I am so grateful for that, but sometimes you forget that I believe in you too.”
Rapunzel took a deep breath.
“Which is why,” she set her gaze firmly, solemnly, on her fiancé, “You have to tell me when I mess up.”
Eugene’s eyes found hers, and he sighed.
“I will,” he promised, and the smile she gave him, Eugene was relieved to see, was a tired, resigned smile, but a smile nonetheless.
He sighed. It wasn’t going to be easy, and he had figured that whatever was coming was not going to come without consequences. What consequences? What he didn’t think about probably wouldn’t happen.
He just hoped he could stomach the nightmares.
-
Dreams were short and fleeting, too good to be true and too nightmarish to be false. Dads melted away into puddles of amber, princesses’ voices echoed around long and twisting halls that had no end, idols stared down with disgust and fear, and he felt so very sick, so very faded.
I don’t know why I’m alive.
Varian woke up to a room that was not his, to a reality he wished was fake. The guest room Rapunzel had put him had high walls and cold floors. The light that shone from the towering window was unnaturally bright. Smooth polished furniture gleamed under the moonlight, sitting still like rows of obedient servants. Varian shivered.
I want my Dad back.
How cliché. A year of screaming and pleading and hoping and he was back on square one. Or even worse? Varian didn’t know what being dead was classified as. There was no guide for being dead, he supposed.
He didn’t want to stay at the castle a minute longer, lounging in a soft, royal bed, being pampered simply because someone had felt guilty for him. Guilt was no stranger to Varian, and guilt wouldn’t bring back his dad or make the memory of the queen and Cassie’s cries as they got crushed by a red, flashing automaton any quieter.
It wouldn’t.
Varian kicked the soft, white blanket off him. The castle was quiet, waiting on another reset of a day. The halls were all sharp edges and shadows, and Varian walked down them, aware of every shaky breath he took.
Varian.
A face appeared from beside a flowerpot, pale and fading and frozen in amber, and Varian tripped over himself, stumbling as he fell hard on the ground. Blood pooled from his cheek and forehead, and he shut his eyes tightly and slowly opened them again, cursing. A pile of gold-embezzled clothes had been tossed near the flowerpot, unavoidably making said pile look like a face. Curses. He really was going paranoid.
“Boy?”
Varian froze. Down the long, cold hall, a real voice rang out, clear as day. Oh no. No no no.
“What are doing here at this hour?” the King’s stride was quicker than Varian had anticipated, and before he knew it, the King of Corona was peering down at him.
“Your-your majesty,” the title felt bitter in Varian’s mouth, but he swallowed it down, “I was just-uh, out for a stroll.”
“A stroll.”
"Yes.”
The King stared at Varian, and Varian stared back.
“Do usually bleed on strolls?”
“Yes.”
Before Varian could fully register enough of his surroundings to come up with a better bold-faced lie, the King had taken one of the golden cloths in the corner and, hesitating, pressed it against Varian's cheek.
“You’re the boy, aren’t you?” the King’s voice took up all the air in the cold hall, and Varian squirmed underneath the King’s gaze, half- hidden in the shadows, clearly contemplating something. Contemplating what? There was nothing to contemplate anymore. Memory loss or not, Varian wasn’t playing the King’s game anymore. He had new plans. New strategies. The King would not be part of it.
Varian swatted the King’s hand away.
“You don’t have to bother,” Varian hissed, gesturing to the cloth, which was now stained darker than its original colour, something that Varian really did not want to think about, “I-I died in your dungeons, Your Highness. Whatever epitaph you want to deliver, I don’t- I don’t care.”
There was, not surprisingly, silence.
“I see,” the King finally sighed, and to Varian’s surprise, started ripping the gold cloth into long strips, “I supposed that might be the case.”
The King leaned down and started bandaging Varian’s forehead .
“I’ve heard-” the King’s eyes were thoroughly focused on the bandages, but Varian could see the edge of his mouth tugged into a grimace, “I’ve heard so many things about you, boy.”
Varian sat still. What was there to tell? Not good things. Not positive things. Had there ever been good things? He couldn’t remember anymore.
The King tied up the bandages clumsily, finishing his handiwork up with a crooked bow. Oh, well. The night was drawing to a close, and soon enough, the world would reset and Varian would wake up in his apple orchards, the King in his throne room, both of them unblemished, one of them wiped clean. The ugly bandages could’ve not even existed.
The King’s face, lined with something irreversibly stern, darkened.
“My daughter was stolen from me a long time ago,” his voice was loud, echoing through the hall, “I was the father of the lost princess for a long time. So much so, that-“
The boy and the King sat in silence.
“I suppose I forgot that I was not the only father in the kingdom.”
Varian stayed quiet, and the King got up.
“I’m not sure what I can do, boy,” the King’s eyes were dark, “You’ve threatened my family, you’ve posed a danger to my kingdom. I worry what you would do if I lock you up, I worry what you would do if I don’t. And yet my daughter, my Rapunzel, she tells me things about you that-“
“Your Majesty,” Varian started, done, and looked up at the King. Dawn was approaching fast, and with every dusty ray of light the King’s eyes seemed to lose something, “Your Majesty-“
Blaring lights lit up the King, his eyes totally blank, and Varian heard- shrieking?- in the distance as the whole world filled up with white flecks. The day was restarting, and Varian’s words were soon lost among the roar of the blinding light that lit up everything that stood before him.
Your Majesty, you wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore soon.
-
Varian woke up to the queen screaming as he stood over her, the chemicals in his vials cascading down her hands in slow, lazy trails, him pouring out every single drop.
The vials shattered as Varian dropped them, his eyes open wide at what he didn’t remember having done, his feet frozen in place. His voice could not work, and yet somehow, he heard himself repeating what he had told the King.
“You wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore, Your Majesty.” A sob escaped him, and as daylight filled the Queen’s room, cold and white, unnaturally so, Varian’s hands slowly became colder, paler, the tips of his fingers slowly turning into a sickly black colour. Decay. He should’ve known.
The curse was starting to break.
Time was running out.