Chapter Text
“It wasn’t my decision, Cass, you know that!”
“Well, was it your decision to push her out a window?” Cassandra snarls at her, hateful and angry and wrong.
Rapunzel gasps, and even as she stammers how Cass wasn’t there, how she couldn’t possibly know what it was like, she hears the voice of the woman who is the cause of all of this misery in her head:
Stop taking everything so seriously!
In another life, she might have listened to it, might have given in to the dent ‘Mother’ left in her self-esteem after eighteen years of derogatory remarks.
In this life, Rapunzel refuses to succumb so easily.
There is a new tower.
Cass knows how to hurt her as only a best friend does—building her stronghold on the ashes of Rapunzel’s former prison (her former home). She had seen the way Rapunzel had cried after the black rocks tore it apart and used it to her advantage.
Not for the first time, Rapunzel wonders if she will even be able to save her. Not for the first time, Rapunzel pushes that thought far away into a corner of her mind, where she stashes away other unpleasant facts (she still flinches like she’ll get berated whenever she mumbles in front of her parents; it was a miracle that she saved Eugene when her hair was brown and she has probably used up all her miracles if such a situation comes by again; her friendship with Cassandra was flawed on both sides before Cass ever took the moonstone).
As they try to figure out a way in, Rapunzel explores the ruins of where she grew up, hoping for a trace of one of her old paintings. She finds traces, yes, but they’re just fragments. Not one of her painting has been left whole. She sees a fragment of her floating lights mural and is filled with this deep, inexplicable sadness. She is almost glad for the distraction when something something glitters in the corner of her eye.
It’s a mirror shard, the sun’s reflection making it noticable. She wonders if it is the shard; if this is what cut her hair and her strings tying her to that selfish, selfish woman. Without thinking about it, she tucks it in her bag.
Rapunzel pleads for Cass to let her in, and an entrance opens.
"I will never stop trying to get through to you! I won't fight you, I won't justify your hatred, and there is nothing you can do to change that! Nothing!"
Cassandra proceeds to threaten and hurt Eugene. All bets are off.
Varian gives her the new incantation, and with a heavy heart she decides she has to use it. A battle between sun and moon, with the most powerful incantations yet.
The shard falls out of her bag.
Everyone is ready to ignore it in favor of a battle, she is about to demand Cassandra lets Eugene go, when it comes alive.
(Later, she’ll learn that all of Gothel’s mirrors were embued with magic that captured the past, including the mirror that shattered and fell when Rapunzel finally stood up to the woman calling herself her mother—but that is later, and for now, Rapunzel’s heart stutters as she lets herself hope she might finally be able to show the truth)
“What is this?” Cassandra asks, thrown off guard as she stares at the mirror shard playing out a scene. The black rocks holding Eugene don’t disappear, but the grip does relax. It is because of that that Rapunzel speaks up as soon as she recognizes the words she hears:
I will never stop trying to get away from you!
How fitting, that it is these words the mirror gives them, when Rapunzel has echoed them just a few minutes ago with just a slight alteration.
“Your mother’s death,” Rapunzel says acidly. Cassandra flinches, wether at the vitriol or something else, she doesn’t know.
She is just so fed up with this. Cassandra wasn’t raised by Gothel, she was raised by a man who is good and kind and doesn’t that mean anything to her? Why would Cassandra want to be constantly mocked and belittled and used?
“She…chained you up?” Cassandra says, hesitantly. The rocks holding Rapunzel disappear. She walks over to the shard where she can see the scene more clearly. Gothel is putting the chains on Eugene now, making sure he can’t follow them.
“She chained me up,” she confirms. “She stabbed Eugene. She did a lot of bad things, Cass.”
She says this all calmly. A small part of Rapunzel wants to just be mean, to throw it all in Cassanda’s face because yes! Gothel chained her up! Gothel gagged her! Gothel kidapped her from her parents! Gothel didn’t let her leave that tower for years! And Cassandra held it all against her. Like it was all Rapunzel’s fault somehow. But it wasn’t.
In the shard, Eugene cuts off her hair. And it’s not his fault, either, Rapunzel fumes in her head. He was just setting her free. He had no idea that Gothel had been using her hair to remain young and cutting it off would reverse that effect. And Pascal? Pascal, who made sure Gothel’s drop would be a lethal one? Pascal was just trying to protect her.
Brown-haired Rapunzel reaches out desperately to a woman who is doomed.
“As you can see,” she says, voice still calm. “Pascal is the only one who you might blame for pushing her out a window. Are you going to shout at my chameleon, Cassandra?”
“I… But…” She seems completely at a loss. Sudddenly, she perks up and glances at her right. “I know that, but look.” She points at the shard. “That wasn’t Rapunzel’s fault.”
The small, mean part of Rapunzel that was still considering getting at least some vindictation dissipates at hearing those words. She does not, however, know at who they are spoken. Cassandra says it all to empty air, nodding along like it replies.
“Let him go, Cass,” Rapunzel asks softly. On the shard, she cries and says you were mine.
Wordlessly, Cassandra does, setting Varian free, too. Eugene and Varian walk over to them, equally silent.
Together, they watch Rapunzel cry over Eugene’s dead body. They watch her sing an impossible song out of desperation, and they watch it work. There’s a hug and a first kiss, and that’s when the shard stops playing one of the biggests events of Rapunzel’s life. She knows, seeing it all again so vivid, she will get nightmares about this again tonight.
No one says anything, until—
“Wow!” Varian is wide-eyed and clearly unable to hold this back, despite looking a little pale at seeing his idol die. “You actually used the sundrop’s power, without being the sundrop! What does that even mean? The possibilites—“
“We get it, alchemist,” Cassandra says flatly. Varian stops talking and takes a few steps backwards. “Would you shut up for a second?!”
Everyone startles at the outburst. Varian looks like he’s considering making a run for it.
“Not you,” she snaps at him. “Her.”
She gestures wildly at the empty air.
“Cass,” Rapunzel says as gently as she can. “There’s no one there.”
“Of course there is!” Cassandra snarls. “The little goth girl. She’s a friend—“
“Or at least she’d like to be,” Varian fills in, shocked. Cassandra’s jaw drops.
“Okay, is anyone going to start making sense?” Eugene speaks up for the first time, trying and failing to sound lighthearted. Rapunzel feels a pang. He just had to see that again, through the shard. She thinks she might not be the only one with nightmares tonight. It is a good thing they have each other. “Because I’m starting to feel real left out. Have you guys started a Little Goth Girl club or something?”
“Shut up, Fitzherbrat,” Cass says without any malice. It sounds so much like old times that Rapunzel feels hope again, hope she will not push away into a corner of her mind. She clings to it, and she hopes that today is the day they bring her back.
Cass stares intensely at Varian, who is starting to look uncomfortable. “How do you know about her?”
“She told me how to find the sun incantation,” Varian says, before hesitantly adding, “But you know, it was in a dream, and it was a weird one, like, her head was huge and it could bend around like an owl’s, and—“
“No.” Her features have contorted as if she’s taken a bite out of a very sour lemon. “That’s not—she wouldn’t do that. She’s been helping me.” The look disappears, is replaced with triumph. “She says you’re lying.”
“You’re going to trust blindly that this girl is telling the truth, when you’ve been given a reason to doubt that?” Eugene says sceptically. “Now that doesn’t sound like the Cass I know.”
“Is she the one who has been making you do this?” Rapunzel pleads, hoping that the answer is yes, hoping that this was all a misunderstanding and Cass will just reject that girl and come back home—
“Of course not.” Cassandra seems less angry now. “Gothel—fine, you might have a point about…that. But she still—she still chose you over me. My own mother!”
“It is not my fault that she was so twisted! Don’t ruin everything for her!” she cries, trying to make her (former?) best friend understand how much this blame is hurting her. “I can’t believe you attacked your father.”
Guilt attacks Cassandra’s face before she schools it into something indifferent.
“He raised you, Cass,” she says softly. “He gave you a better childhood than Gothel ever could have. I’m sorry that she decided staying young was better than raising an amazing daughter like you, I’m sorry that happened to you, but it’s not my fault.”
“I…” She glances to her right, and Rapunzel has to assume that the invisble girl is whispering more lies into Cassandra’s ear. “Fine!” she spits out. “And burning my hand, that just happens to not be your fault, either, right?”
Rapunzel’s eyes widen, familiar guilt flooding her. Not a lie, but the truth.
“That… Neither of us knew the incantation would burn like that.”
“I had a plan. You should have let me follow through!”
“I…made a decision,” she says. “I did what I thought was best. I know our friendship wasn’t perfect. But this isn’t just me you’re hurting, it’s Corona! The kingdom you once swore to protect. Innocent people, Cass.”
Cassandra opens her mouth, then shuts it again. Several expressions—uncertainty, anger, shame—cross her face at once.
“You said we’re not the same,” says Varian. “I know our motivations aren’t. But after I turned against the kingdom, after it was over, the guilt I felt was crushing. I’m trying to do better. If you think that you’ve gone too far, that you won’t be accepted back, just look at me. It’s a long process, but it’s not impossible.”
“My Dad—“ Cass chokes out.
“He’ll forgive you,” Rapunzel hurries to say. “Of course he’ll forgive you. He’ll be too happy to have you back to even think about anger. He misses you so much, Cass. So much.”
“We all do,” Eugene says seriously, before waving a dismissive hand. “But, you know, don’t quote me on that.”
“She won’t leave me alone, Raps,” she whispers, and oh, the feeling that floods through Rapunzel at hearing that nickname from her lips again makes it all, even the shard, worth it.
“The little girl?” Rapunzel would hit the best friend hurting ghost with a frying pan if she wasn’t invisible. “Is she speaking to you now?”
“She wants us to fight. She wants me to make you fight.”
“She does want a fight, doesn’t she,” Varian muses, always figuring things out. “She practically gave us the sun incantation…”
“She’s the one who gave me the idea to grab the moonstone. I met her in the House of Yesterday’s Tomorrow.”
Puzzle pieces Rapunzel hadn’t even known existed slide into place.
“Well, maybe you should ask your friend why she wants the sun and the moon to clash so badly,” says Varian.
Cassandra’s face shutters. She looks between their group and the empty space, breathing heavily. Rapunzel knows even before she starts chanting the incantation that she’s too overwhelmed.
“Crescent high above, evolving as you go…”
Next to her, Eugene tenses, expecting a fight. Rapunzel gets into a protective stance, too. But Cassandra and her rocks are not heading towards them; they are heading away from them. She uses the rocks to run away from the tower.
“Cassandra—“ Wait, she wants to say.
But, as Rapunzel has learned by now, Cassandra does not wait. Not anymore.