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i’m still a believer but i don't know why
It’s almost as if she could reach out and grab the delicate bones of her wrist and tug her backwards into her embrace. Hold her there forever and make-believe that everything that had happened never did. She could hold her tight and imagine they were still partners, still friends, still on their way to loving, instead of whatever it was that had created this chasm between them. There was nothing that could bridge the gap, cross the divide that had split open the ground and left Rapunzel grasping for the frayed edges of a love that she barely even knew anymore. What was left for them? When did the resentment finally become too much? When did it start?
But she hitched up her skirts anyway and made for the castle of obsidian that haunted her view of the horizon. She could still fix this, there was still a way.
—
you are not like the regulars
The red curve of her smile. The gentle moss color of her eyes. The way her lip curled in distaste. Rapunzel caught herself cataloging the moments where Cassandra caused her heart to skip, her stomach to dip and do flips. She caught herself staring at the pout of her lips, the way her eyes widened in excitement or fear. The swish of her hair above her shoulders, the jut of her hip against her sword. She studied and classified Cassandra’s reactions to things she said, when she grabbed her wrist, or reached for a lock of hair. She watched when Cassandra would flinch, or when she wouldn’t. When she leaned in and gave her hope, and when she shifted back and crushed some longing part of her. She noted the way her eyes always followed Cassandra no matter where she was in a room. The way they seemed to orbit each other, like a binary star, perpetually circling in their locked embrace. She watched and she wanted. Oh, how she wanted.
But then Cass slipped away, like she always did, always at the last moment before they would really touch, and Rapunzel was left hoping.
—
The sky was the most brilliant blue she had ever seen. And yet her eyes never strayed from Cassandra’s delicate plumage. The way the lines across her chest mirrored her tunic, the brightness of her eyes that hadn’t changed a shade despite the transformation of the bird soaring across from her. She wondered if Cassandra’s feathers were soft. She wondered if her heart was beating just as Rapunzel’s as they twisted through the air together, away from the world.
Alone with Cass. Alone, with Cass . Rapunzel couldn’t ask for more. Only for this moment to last forever, for nothing to change. For the surging of her heart to fill her chest and expand, fill the valley beneath them with the song she sung to see if she could make Cass smile even with a beak (she could). She wanted this moment, just the two of them, to stretch eternity into the time they had left before the magic came to an end. Just this. Just the two of them.
So it wasn’t a choice really, when they were trapped in this form, with one egg left, to bring Cassandra back to her normal self, if only to see her smile curl from those deep red lips one more time before sense left her. It wasn’t a choice at all.
—
i’ve never been a natural (all i do is try try try)
Whenever she reached for her, Cassandra always pulled back. Pulled away. Whenever she reached for her, Cassandra never wanted to be grasped and held. Never wanted what Rapunzel was trying to give her.
There was so much anger and grief in her, even in their lightest moments, the moments where it felt like there was nothing at all between them, where Rapunzel could reach over and take Cass’ face into her hands and kiss her without a fight, there was still something just barely out of reach. Cassandra was always just out of reach for her.
The feeling of guilt twisted with surprise when she left her then, knocked Rapunzel right off her feet and left her lying in the dirt with an emptiness filling her chest that she was desperate to tear away. When Cassandra left, Rapunzel was left wondering what more she could have done, how much more love she could have given her, that would have made temptation not enough, not nearly enough, to cleave them in two. She was left with the desperate realization that maybe Cassandra didn’t love her, that she never did, that the idea of flirtation that Rapunzel had built in her head between them was just that, an idea. A fiction. A desperate hope that never came true.
She was left struggling with no one by her side. No one left to fight with her. No one at all.
—
It was almost compulsive, the need to recite the words, to sing them. It was almost against her will, the song that flowed from her lips and filled the clearing they stood in, laid flat on the water before her. She didn’t notice the flowers dying around her, the way the earth seemed to crumble beneath her, rotting at her feet. Distantly, she could hear Cassandra calling her, could hear the ringing of her voice in the back of her mind but it was too late, the feeling had taken over. She couldn’t control the words ringing from her anymore; it was like breathing— simple and thoughtless. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t think, couldn’t even imagine what it was that those words would do. How could she have known that it was Cassandra, Cassandra who she held most dear out of everything in the world, that would pay for her carelessness? How could she have expected that she would have harmed her in such an irreparable way? How could she have predicted this?
She tells herself she couldn’t have, if only to make the sting of hurting Cassandra less in the moments where she is left alone with her thoughts and all the guilt that accompanies them.
—
(hush) i know they said the end is near
This wasn’t going to end well, if it ended at all. There was no easy way to do this. There was no simple way to bring Cassandra back to her, to hold her in her arms again and tell her everything would be alright. Too much time had passed, too many things had been done. The damage to Corona wasn’t irreparable, but Rapunzel feared the damage to their friendship was. She had hope, she had to have hope, that if she could just talk to her, make her see reason, Cassandra would come back, things would change.
She tried. She reached out. She gave her so many chances.
But Cassandra replied with words meant to strike, phrases that were intended to hit a target. Had she always thought Rapunzel to be condescending? Was there nothing left between them that Rapunzel could hold up to her to see, to remember?
Had she always just been a source of pain and suffocation?
It wasn’t going to end well, but at least Rapunzel could say that she tried. She had tried so desperately that it was a wonder Cass hadn’t laughed in her face with how she had pleaded with her, but it was all she could do to keep Cass from slipping through her fingers and leaving her forever.
—
flower gleam and glow
It had to work. It had to work because Rapunzel didn’t know if she could keep living in a world where Cass wasn’t. It had to work because there was nothing left for Rapunzel in a world without Cassandra.
let your powers shine
It had worked before, it had worked before when the Sundrop was no longer a part of her, when it’s essence had been the only thing to bring him back. It had worked before and it would work again because that wasn’t love, that was infatuation, that was hope and promise and the idea of freedom, that wasn’t love. This, this however, this was love. This was desperation and longing, hope and fear, this was her entire world that she was trying to bring back, no matter what had happened between them. This was her dream.
make the clock reverse
She had to come back because Rapunzel still hadn’t told her she loved her, she still hadn’t told her so many things she needed Cassandra to know. She still hadn’t kissed her properly. Still hadn’t seen the way Cass looks first thing when she wakes up, tangled in sheets and still half asleep. She hadn’t spent quiet nights with Cassandra, their love out in the open, happiness filling the spaces between their bodies. She still had so much left to experience with Cassandra, so many parts of her to explore. She still wanted so much.
bring back what once was mine
The first thing she noticed was the beautiful green of Cassandra’s eyes.
—
shining just for you
Wanting wasn’t a crime. It wasn’t a crime to ache and long and pray in desperation for something she knew couldn’t— wouldn’t— happen. It wasn’t a crime to hope that maybe, just maybe, in the dark of the night, she could reach between the two of them and hold the curve of Cassandra’s jaw in the palm of her hand. It wasn’t a crime to think maybe, if she moved slowly enough, telegraphed her movements clearly enough, that if she kissed Cassandra, maybe, just maybe, Cassandra would kiss her back. It wasn’t impossible, the thought of it. It wasn’t improbable either. The time alone traveling had left them huddling together in the night more often than not, fleeting touches happening more and more in the spaces where they didn’t speak. It wasn’t a dream anymore, the idea of them being together. Slowly but surely it was becoming a reality, a reality that Rapunzel wanted so desperately she could hardly think of anything else. A dream that could exist in the daytime as well as the night.
But, just to be safe, she had waited until the moon was bright in the sky, the stars a familiar map to guide her on this one great adventure.
She reached in the dark, because she wanted, and she hoped.
—
It startles her almost, the first time she truly hears Cassandra laugh. The sound, so clear and bright and free, totally unguarded, echoed through the room and rung in Rapunzel’s ears. It filled her memories; it was the soundtrack of her dreams. It played through her thoughts, surprising her in moments when Cassandra was the furthest thing from her mind. It played in loops through her head, because once she had heard something so beautiful she ached to hear it again.
So she did little things to make Cass laugh, played little jokes, made funny faces. Did everything she could to coax a giggle from Cass’s lips, a full bellied laugh right out into the open. She had never heard a more perfect sound, something so happy and bright, that Rapunzel knew at once, no other sound would ever fill her with quite as much joy as Cassandra’s laugh. She tries her best to make the sound a constant, an ever ringing harmony to the chime of Cassandra’s voice.
When the day comes that Cassandra stops laughing, the hollow memory rings through Rapunzel’s thoughts until she finds she can’t remember what the real thing truly sounds like. Until she has no memory of it at all.
—
i’m still trying everything to keep you looking at me
“I love you, Raps.”
The ache twists in her chest. Maybe they weren’t meant to be, but Rapunzel had defied fate before, and she would again. And again. However much it took for Cass to be hers, well and truly hers.
“I love you, too, Cass.”