Work Text:
She’d forgotten, almost, what it felt like to be terrified.
No, that’s not quite right, not really -- but every day in this world, every day that her brother and his friends bring more refugees to Whitestone, every day that dragons may circle overhead and destroy the last place of sanctity that she has in her life, inspires a different kind of fear. It’s deep and pervasive and weighs down her shoulders every time she tries to straighten them, but it’s something that she can push through, something that could be endured for the betterment of Whitestone and the safety of all that are staying there. With Allura, with Gilmore, it’s easy to fall into the routine of defense -- stressful, to be certain, but more of a constant throb of fear than anything else.
Terror, though -- terror comes in sharp bursts, stealing her breath and speeding her heart and leaving her defenseless in a way that she has been scant times before. The fateful night where the Briarwoods began to tear at the de Rolo family’s seams. The icy shock of the snow as she falls, feeling the claws of her own death as her brother leaves her behind. Watching the rest of her party fall, Sylas leaving her the sole one standing, he and his wife drawing her into a suffocating fold that would take four years to escape from. And now -- and now --
And now getting word that something’s happened to Percy is . . . could be . . .
She can’t think the words; she can’t. Thinking it would make it real.
She’d leapt to her feet without thinking, hardly noting Keeper Assum rising with her, work abandoned as she raced out of her rooms, out of the castle, the shouts of guards trying to keep pace with her ringing in her ears. Any lessons she’d once learned, chastisements about running in the halls, about a calm demeanor under stress, they all go flying out the window in the face of one of her greatest fears.
Cassandra had spent five years by herself, poison poured into her ears and filling her lungs, but she’d known that Percy was out there in the world. Even as she’d been taught to resent him, to hate him, to revile everything he stood for, for the way that he’d left her behind, the intrinsic knowledge that he was alive had been an anchor point. She doesn’t know what she’d do with herself in a world without him in it, in a world that has one de Rolo left: the one that doesn’t deserve to be.
Her breath comes quickly, pulsing through her chest, ringing in her ears, blocking out everything except for the painful thoughts burning through her brain. She doesn’t think to compose herself before leaving the relative privacy of the manor, can’t think of anything else but getting to Percy -- preferably before anything permanent happens, or at least more permanent than what has already occurred.
By the time she approaches the half-completed temple, she vaguely understands her surroundings, but none of that matters in the face of what has happened, at what she’s more than afraid to see behind that door --
Cassandra can remember being very close to death, can remember it as if it were mere seconds ago. The shock of the icy snow, the burning pain in each arrow wound, the shudder of her breaths as they slowed -- the warmth spreading around her, surprising her until she realized that it was her own blood against the ice that warmed her. But all of that paled in comparison to watching Percy continue to run, continue to escape, as her vision began to fade at the edges -- the terror of knowing that she would die, and knowing that she would die alone.
Perhaps it was little comfort, but she would not allow Percy to feel the same fear if she could avoid it -- but he has his friends, has support that Cassandra wouldn’t have been able to conceive of before he’d come home with them, had freed her with them, so he wouldn’t be left alone even if she hadn’t raced here.
Regardless, she pushes the doors open with perhaps more force than she could control.
“Where is he, is he alright?” The words escape her before she can come upon any semblance of respectability, but she doesn’t care, not right now. But her eyes find him, take in the breath coming into and out of his chest, his grumbling at her presence, and she feels immediately comforted by how very Percy that is, answering her own question -- “Oh, he’s alright.”
Her eyes scan his friends, scan the looks on their faces, and she continues to speak. “You scared me, I heard he was --” Vex'ahlia’s words of comfort fall to her ears, and she digests them, feels more of her composure returning at what, honestly, feels more like ordinary Vox Machina chaos than the overwhelming agony of the idea of being alone in this world.
Cassandra takes steps towards Percy without fully realizing that she’s doing so, leaning over him and taking the chance to take stock of his injuries, his broken glasses, his clear exhaustion -- but the fact that he lives even so. “Stop getting into trouble, brother. Please?” It feels childish, even in her own ears, and she hates that it does -- the pleading in her tone, the edges of her desperation lingering there as well.
The de Rolos were never a physically affectionate family by any means, and Cassandra had never questioned it. The Briarwoods had been a little more . . . let’s say hands on, but it had always been controlled, conditional, and on the other side of it all she understands that it had been a tool of theirs: a weapon to make her a weapon. But almost of their own accord, her fingers reach out to run through his hair, solidifying for herself the fact that he is, indeed, alive, here in front of her and being as insufferable as ever, promising her that once the dragons were taken care of that he’d at least consider her request.
She’s still getting used to his hair being white, memories of a teenage boy with brown hair and a scowl in her direction (that she’d earned, thank you) mixing with the man that Percy has become outside of their home. For a moment, she considers that the white becomes him -- and it makes her less self-conscious about her own white strands. Gods, she loves her stupid brother and his stubborn dedication to his friends and to ridding the world of these threats to them all, and she’s certain that feeling plays across her face.
The second that her hand brushes his skin is, unfortunately, a grounding one -- although Cassandra is no seasoned adventurer, she isn’t stupid, either, and the realization dawns on her that Percy was indeed dead, taken from her and from Whitestone and from all of his friends . . . but that they’d brought him back, returned him to the state that he needed to be in, that she needed him to be in. She understands the makeup of the party, knows exactly who to thank and does so almost entirely by reflex, feeling a swell of the panic that had chased her down to the temple building up in her lungs once again.
But she refuses to fall under the waves here—not when he’s alive, and there are people around, and she has a perfect opportunity to be just a bit of a little shit, now that danger has been averted. “Get some food in you and stop being so bloody useless,” escapes her mouth with a hint of a smile at the edges, smacking him a little on the cheek before leaving the temple entirely, composure returning to her as she makes the now much calmer trek back to her rooms -- though, perhaps, at a quicker pace than she would normally choose for herself.
Cassandra manages to get all the way back to her office, to convince her guards that she is alright, truly, to close and lock the door behind her before her knees give way and she falls to the floor, fighting for breath, fighting for control.
Logically, she understands that Percy is alright now, that he’ll return to his usual smartass self in no time and then immediately go back into wider Tal’dorei and become someone else’s problem (the dragons’, hopefully). Logically, she understands that she isn’t the last one left, that the weight of the de Rolo legacy isn’t on her shoulders alone. Logically, she understands that his friends, his party, care for and love him ferociously, that they weren’t going to let him die forever without a fight for him to return to them.
But, right now, Cassandra de Rolo is hardly rational. Right now, Cassandra de Rolo is attempting to process just how close she’d been to losing her brother, to being alone, to losing the last anchor she has to the person that she used to be. Assum, the council, the city -- though they might not all know what she’d done, what she’d been coerced to do, she knows; she knows how she’d betrayed them and their attempts at freedom time and time again, betrayed their love for her and for her family because she’d been convinced that she’d been given something better. The guilt of it all is something that she struggles to carry, to live with, to swallow every day to be able to give her people the type of support and leadership that they actually deserve.
Without Percy, how could she face them? How could she face herself?
She buries her face into her hands, trying to muffle how shaky her breaths are from the guards outside the door. The last thing she needs is them worrying about her, especially as she’s having a terribly difficult time worrying about herself. On trembling legs, she manages to rise from the floor and make her way to a chair, immediately more at ease in a more composed position. Her shaking starts to diminish, her breathing evening out, and should there be anyone surveying her at this moment, they might be tricked into believing that she’s pulled herself back together from today’s strain.
But that’s the trick, you see -- every time Cassandra appears to be pulling herself together, preparing herself for the next steps in her day, for the next wave of refugees, for the next warning that dragons are near, she pushes the panic and the fear and the hatred that has lived in her chest for almost six years down, smothering it under the piles of work that needs to be done and people that need to be taken care of. She doesn’t get to save the world, doesn’t get to fight dragons, doesn’t get to complete quests or free cities -- and, for the most part, she doesn’t want to. She understands that the best place for her to be right now is Whitestone, repairing the bridges that she was once handed the match to burn, and she, quite honestly, isn’t necessarily interested in the kind of life that her brother and the rest of Vox Machina live -- especially not when it got him killed, could get any of them killed at any moment. Cassandra is tired of people dying, of being left behind, of having to pick up the pieces -- at this point, she barely has the time to gather up the pieces before they shatter and scatter anew.
But gather them up she will (she must) and fit them into some semblance of a whole person -- at least for now. There is hardly time for her to crack, for her to break, with everything in the world. So the terror racing through her when she’d heard the news, the coldness of Percy’s skin, the tear-stricken faces of his friends, the desire to collapse and not rise again -- each briefly analyzed, understood, and boxed away for some later date when the world makes sense again . . . or makes as much sense as this world ever does.