Work Text:
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Very carefully, Varian kept his elbow braced on the table as he tilted a small flask over a larger one.
Drip.
Drip.
There was a distant procession of faint, echoey tapping in the background that his brain managed to not register whatsoever.
Drip.
"You down here, Varian?"
The voice made him jump with a yelp, scrambling for a hold on his flask. He straightened quickly, the flask clasped to his chest with one hand while the other covered the top of it, heart pounding as he whirled to look at who'd snuck up behind him.
Very belatedly, his brain started to catch up with the fact that it was Cassandra—of course it was, that was her voice; how could he not know that—stepping down the last of the long flight of stairs. He had been very caught up in thought laying out three potential rabbit-trail schematics in his head, and to be startled out of that left him grasping awkwardly at what was happening.
"Wha—Cassie!" he exclaimed, in a tone that he'd intended to sound like a greeting but came out more like the stammer of surprise it was. "I—ah... yes. I'm—hi. Yes. I'm... here. As you've... probably noticed by now."
The contents of the beaker on the table beside him proceeded to explode into a cloud of pink smoke. Varian winced awkwardly.
The raised eyebrow and amused look Cassandra gave him for that was enough to make a touch of heat rise to his face. The Demanitus Chamber was poorly lit at any time of day, at least—even with the light from the new lanterns that hung periodically on the walls, and the glow off the huge mass of amber across the room he'd never been able to do much about—and everything always just looked orange down here, so he doubted she could really tell.
Still, he pressed the back of a gloved hand over his face to give himself a moment to grin in embarrassment, before dropping it and trying to give her a much more composed look.
"Pff, sorry," Varian chuckled, before carefully removing the flask from where it'd been pressed against his chest and raising his eyebrows in greeting, hoping to redo that mess. "Hey! What brings you here?"
Cassandra shook her head in amusement and laughed softly—a quiet, increasingly-familiar sound that made him forget what he was doing and just smile at her. It only lasted a moment, though, and he could hear her tone grow more solemn at the end of it.
"I'm... headed out, actually," she said as she walked over near the table beside him to observe the pink goop that was now oozing out of its beaker at an almost entertainingly slow rate. Only then did he notice her satchel, and the lantern that she was carefully holding away from the substance on the table. (He had gotten way too used to Lance and the girls nosing into his projects, judging by the way someone actually showing some common sense about lab safety for once made his heart warm proudly in his chest for a moment.) "I just wanted to say goodbye."
It took a moment, because his thoughts were still all over the place as he mentally hurried to organize them—but he was halfway through grabbing an old towel and mopping up the mess when her words sunk in.
"Out?" Varian repeated, turning to look at her quizzically. "You're leaving?" He quickly jerked his head around to check the clock he'd perched on one of his bookshelves, just in case he'd somehow worked a lot later than he'd thought he had. But no, it was still an hour and some until midnight, and a good three hours at least until he'd figured he should make use of the pile of blankets he'd been using down here to sleep on. "...At night?"
You just got here, his mind added softly, a painful sinking feeling settling in his stomach. She'd only been back a few days. He'd only come down here to work because he'd thought she would still be in Corona for a while. Was she leaving so soon?
Cassandra pursed her lips into a thin smile, though it only barely reached her eyes. She shrugged, almost nonchalantly, and bent to pick up an oil-stained rag to help him with the mess.
"Yeah, I... wanted to get a head start," she explained as she began mopping the substance away from the edge of the table, while he bit his lip and tried to carefully clean up the rest. Something about this didn't sit right with him, but he was more preoccupied with fishing a neutralizing agent out of his apron with one hand and making sure he didn't accidentally mop any of the goop onto her gloves. "I want to make it to Ingvarr in time for tournament practice. They invited me to fill in for one of the competitors."
Ingvarr's tournaments, from what he'd heard, were a big event in that kingdom—a big event that was not usually held until at least late spring, due to the kingdom's much colder climate. Varian poured a splash of neutralizer into the larger flask—causing the entire mess to evaporate with a poof—and bundled up the goopy towels, intending to ask if he'd heard that wrong and it was sooner. But Cass had stepped back to let him finish working, and was looking around the chamber curiously.
She raised her eyebrows, taking in the scaffolding and ladders around the repaired stonework, and the guardrail around the huge chasm where the Demanitus Device had once stood.
"I... haven't been down here in a while," she remarked, if a bit stiffly, looking over the crates of materials and the mismatched array of desks and worktables against the walls. Schematics and notes were tacked up all over the walls wherever there weren't diagrams written in chalk, and various splatter-stained jars of paint and a pile of large brushes still lined one edge of the circular room. "Repairs still coming along?"
The restoration of the Demanitus Chamber was, in fact, coming along really well—huge cracks in the stone walls had been carefully repaired, and new structural support had been built up to the ceiling under his direction. It had taken a few years, since repairing the homes and farms and shops of Corona came first—and working with an entire mountain overhead was a daunting undertaking—but Rapunzel had long since agreed that the chamber was an important part of the kingdom's history as well as theirs, and was well worth being restored. (He didn't know how he'd possibly deserved to be put in charge of the project, let alone why Rapunzel and Eugene had thought it would be a great idea to let him have it as a personal lab—but those were both dreams that had happened, and he'd been putting everything he had into living up to the trust that had been placed in him.)
His desire to show off what he'd been working on had always trumped most other things, and this was no exception—though the sheer amount of clutter and thoughts of she's leaving? and an all-overshadowing she probably hasn't been down here since... that one time made him settle for rubbing phantom pains from back of his head with a sheepish expression.
"Yeah! It's, uh... coming along great. I... was hoping to get it cleaned up before I brought everybody down for the grand tour. The walls are pretty much fixed now, there's just, uh..." Varian quickly dropped his hand, kicking a few wadded-up papers under the table with the side of his foot in a meager attempt at making the floor look tidier. "...stuff everywhere."
Belatedly, he noticed the odd expression on her face, and tried not to look too much like he was mentally kicking himself for rubbing the spot where she'd struck him with a blunt stretch of rock, once, with enough force to knock him out. Of course she'd noticed it. She was observant, and had probably been thinking of the same thing he had—orange light on black armor and an eerie blue glow, with her smirking and him... startled about all of it, really, and wondering if he'd imagined seeing her eyes grow oddly emotionless before his vision flooded with stars.
If her eyes had been serious then, they definitely were now. Cassandra looked... detached all over again at the thought. Was that just how she looked when she didn't like something, but felt it was necessary?
(...Did she feel it was necessary to come down here just to say goodbye to him? It was a long trek through the tunnels to get here, to this hollowed-out mountain where the Demanitus Chamber was located. Was she so intent on leaving now that she would rather come here than wait until he and everyone else was back at the castle tomorrow?)
(The mountain was halfway across the mainland—he was probably her last stop before leaving Corona, unless she was going to pass the several cut-out exits to go back and see anyone else afterward. Was it up to him to try to make sure she didn't leave on a bad note?)
He met her gaze and smiled, hoping she could tell that it was genuine.
Cass looked up, then—and once her gaze reached the huge ceiling, her eyebrows raised.
"What's the tarp for?" she asked, and Varian glanced up at the massive, pieced-together drop cloth that was suspended up against the ceiling by several lines of ropes and pulleys.
...Which was perfect, come to think of it. He'd meant to get the whole gang down here for the big reveal, but a little part of him leapt at the opportunity to show it to Cass first. Would she be impressed? She might be. There was a good chance of it; it was impressive. The thought buzzed excitedly despite his best attempts to push it down.
...Not that he still felt the urge to impress her, of course. She was just hardly ever around, so she missed out on most of the things he did. Cass's reactions felt a little more telling than any of the rest of his friends' did.
"Oh, that's to keep the off-gas from the ceiling somewhat contained," Varian explained, pulling off his pink-tainted gloves and tossing them on the part of the table he'd need to sanitize anyway. "We painted it recently; the thinning solvent and some of the paints use components that aren't great to breathe for a while. Usually, the area would be aired out better, but... a little hard to do that down here. Cloth isn't a perfect filter, but it helps."
The huge piece of cloth was a patchwork canvas, colored with torn flags and balloon silk and other items that had been shredded beyond practical repair during... past events. It made for an almost decoratively colorful mass of cloth, sewn together as it was, and it was lightweight enough to be suspended up there without a huge danger of it pulling down its ropes.
Cass glanced sideways at him with a playful smirk, folding her arms and raising one eyebrow. "I figured you just liked dramatically pulling sheets off of things."
Varian had to blink a couple times at that remark—first bewildered, then surprised, then amused.
"What? You think I—" he began, while mock-indignantly rounding the table to a piece of machinery he'd covered with a patched-up bedsheet, "—would put together this many drop cloths just for dramatic effect?"
With that, he whipped the sheet off of the very unfinished steam engine prototype—which wasn't much to look at yet, but was made far more interesting by the fact that he'd given it such an eye-catching reveal.
Cassandra just eyed him with a pointedly skeptical look, a tiny smile quirking at the corner of her mouth.
"Never," Varian finished confidently, closing his eyes and bowing to her a bit with a little smile, still holding the sheet in one hand. He stood up straight and folded his arms with a playful smirk. "It just gets dusty in here," he explained simply, shaking some dust off the cloth to prove his point.
Cassandra chuckled, shaking her head at him in disbelief, and it seemed as though at least a bit of the odd heaviness in her eyes had dissipated. Varian grinned at the small victory, and looked upward at the billows in the cloth between the ropes with a shrug.
"The paint should be fine by now; it's had like a week to dry. Would you like to be the first to see it, milady?"
"And see you dramatically pull another tarp off of something?" she teased, shooting him an amused look. "Sure; I'm always up for that."
The mild glare he sent her way was somewhat belied by the embarrassed smile that was tugging at his face. Cass just laughed at his expression, and he had to furrow his eyebrows and look away to hide a quick grin.
He had engineered the rope and pulley system to operate with as little work as possible, and with some adjusting, he'd gotten most of the ropes onto one crank. He held up a finger to Cass in a one-moment sign, before tossing the drop cloth back onto the engine frame and hurrying to where the ropes strung down the wall.
"Are we ready, ladies and gentlemen?" Varian asked in his best announcer voice, placing a hand on the crank with a grin. Cass just gave him a half-lidded uh-huh, not dramatic at all look, so he narrowed his eyes playfully and pulled the linchpin out, letting the rope wind out of the reel.
The cloth billowed overhead as it fell, dropping in slow motion with the ropes to the other side of the room.
Varian glanced to her to gauge her reaction—and for a minute, she just stared with eyebrows raised and eyes a bit wide.
Above them, covering the entire (repaired and reinforced, of course) ceiling, a star map stretched out—a deep, shadowy blue that was decked with white pinpoints of constellations and lines indicating the paths of planets. Star charts were familiar to him, but judging by the way Cass' gaze lingered and her brow furrowed just a bit, maybe she hadn't seen many before. A little bit of hope rose in his chest at the thought that maybe she might like to learn.
"Yeah, that's impressive," she finally remarked, staring at it until she glanced to him with a little hint of a smile. "You and Rapunzel teamed up?"
Varian brightened, wiping his gloves on a clean towel and looking up to admire the handiwork.
"Yeah! We both worked on it. Plus—Ruddiger and Pascal, of course. I made up a paint thinner so we didn't have to use so much blue, because that is a lot of surface area." He came up beside her to look up at it from where she stood, trying to look for any errors or spots they'd missed while painting. It... did look pretty impressive, actually. There were a few flaws, but they were faint—and Rapunzel's artistic way of painting stars had merged with his drawn-to-scale charts and the precise lines of altitude they'd based it on fairly well. "It's a star map of the evening of Zhan Tiri's defeat. Since the—you know, the stars shift all year, we thought we'd pick a time that had historical significance."
That night had been... something else, for sure. It had been a tired, post-battle blur, and he'd fallen asleep against his will, using Beast Ruddiger as a pillow as his dad spoke long into the night with his newly-discovered aunt and uncle—but a few memories still stayed with him crystal clear: a red sky and dark earth that healed into something blue and green, rubble and wreckage everywhere, and a grey-clad Cass huddled into Eugene's red coat with her eyes trained unseeingly on the stone floor.
Cassandra had been there with them again, that night. The real Cassandra—not the one who couldn't see beyond a wall of ancient anger and power and obsidian rocks. That Cass was gone, and he'd been relieved. The Cass who'd rejoined them that day had seemed so incredibly different—in place of sharp invincibility was weakly-folded arms and stark vulnerability, and an introspective quietness he couldn't remember ever seeing on her before. The last he'd seen of her that night, she'd been alone, staring up at the sky.
Varian glanced over without meaning to. She was doing the same now, though it was far more muted and natural, after all this time—her arms were folded loosely around her middle, and she gazed upward, the light in her eyes flickering.
Suddenly aware that he had probably paused too long, was probably staring, Varian shook his head quickly and continued.
"She, uh—Rapunzel thought it'd be good to do a project that would take my mind off of everything for a while. And it was fun. I'd like to touch it up with some improved glow-in-the-dark paint I've been working on—I'm not used to dangling up that high to paint like she is, though."
He'd devised a system of pulleys and ropes and platforms for completing the work, and Rapunzel had navigated it with ease. It had made him nervous, because the whole thing was rather temporary and he wasn't quite that confident in how strong it was, but things had gone fairly smoothly. Even despite the ridges in the ceiling, with the help of a graph drawing he'd done to scale, the giant mural had turned out mostly accurate. Although there were little chameleon and raccoon prints dotting the chart that had no correlation to star movements.
Overall, it made the chamber look more like the inside of a star globe than just a cavernous room still half-full of amber, which was probably the result Rapunzel had been aiming for. It was a nice effect, even if he had gotten teased by her for hesitating to disturb dust and dirt on the ceiling that had likely been there since Demanitus' day.
"Did you spot the new star up there?" Varian asked, a little smile tugging at his face as he tried to avoid looking up at it and giving away where it was. Sure enough, Cass eyed him first, with a little smirk that said she probably suspected he'd have trouble not looking at it himself.
But the new star wasn't hard to find. There was a cometlike purple path tracing its way up from the floor into the sky, and the star itself was a small whirl of golden yellow and opalescent blue.
Hesitantly, he looked back to Cass, who was already gazing at it with lips pursed.
"...So that's where it went, huh?" she asked quietly.
Varian nodded. "It's faint, but—you can see it out at night. It definitely wasn't there before."
Cassandra gave a small hum of acknowledgement, and her eyes regained that unreadable seriousness again.
He almost changed the subject with a wince, because he really didn't mean for her to have to think back on all that—but her gaze must have flitted down to the space on the walls near the ceiling, because a bewildered expression suddenly crossed her face.
"Are those windows?" she asked, eyes narrowed and eyebrows furrowed. Sure enough, a row of narrow, castle-style windows encircled the stone chamber at fairly wide intervals, only a few feet below the ceiling.
"Yes!" Varian exclaimed despite everything, because that had been a discovery he was still incredibly eager to share. "I know, right? That drove me crazy at first. I've actually found that there's a system of primitive tunnels running all around this chamber. And only some of them are ventilation shafts. Some of it's caved in, but it looks like Demanitus may actually have lived down here at one time."
Cassandra smiled a little.
"Just like you, huh?"
Her eyes weren't mocking or even really teasing, just friendly as they landed on him and flickered back up to the ceiling. He had to swallow a surge of pride, because without even thinking twice, she'd compared Demanitus to him.
Still, there were a few inaccuracies in that idea.
"Okay, Eugene is the only one who says I live down here, and he is exaggerating. I stay down here sometimes to work. I—love Corona, don't get me wrong, but it is a little easier to concentrate when you're not surrounded by... ah..."
"—The kingdom of nonstop celebration and friendship activities all the time?" Cass guessed, giving him a knowing look. He blinked sheepishly, not having wanted to say it, but smiled and looked away in indirect agreement. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her smile slightly in return. "Yeah. No, I get it."
She fell silent for a moment, her gaze dropping to the stone floor, and once again Varian got the sinking feeling in his stomach that something was... not right.
"It is nice to get away from it all," she murmured, and he was abruptly reminded of why all this didn't feel right.
Reality rushed back to him, and somewhere amidst the thoughts of she's leaving and now? and why?, he remembered his manners.
"Well, I, uh... thanks for coming down," Varian said, because it was suddenly very hard to read whether Cass had just stopped in to say goodbye or if she'd been subtly hoping for company. She always said it was something like the former, when she came to visit like this—but he'd come to realize that it was often the latter. "Sorry it's such a mess; I woulda—cleaned up if I'd known you were coming."
He hurriedly returned to organizing while he talked, stacking the scattered papers on the closest desk and moving some of the books to a set of shelves along the wall. There was nothing he could do about the construction supplies stacked around—but his things weren't too hard to make presentable, and he really should've straightened up his lab space days ago, anyhow.
It wasn't like he was straightening up for Cassandra. That was not a thing he was doing.
He probably would've been preoccupied telling that train of thought to be quiet had her laugh not broken him out of it.
"Tch, don't worry," Cass replied, observing the clutter around him in what looked like mild curiosity. She stepped a bit closer to the desk to be nearer to him while they talked, and his heart should not have warmed like it did at the action. "Have you seen my room at my dad's place? At least this is organized."
He chuckled, but any of the usual eagerness he felt from being around her fell flat. He paused, halfway through putting an empty glass vial back in its rack, and just stared down at the grain of the wooden desk unseeingly for a minute.
"You said you're leaving tonight?" he finally asked, looking over at her with eyebrows furrowed, trying to see anything in her eyes that wasn't confirmation.
For a split second, the look in her eyes faltered, like she wanted to give an explanation for an answer—but the moment passed, and she just nodded silently.
"How long does it take to get to Ingvarr?" Varian asked, trying to remember. It was far northeast of Corona, but the roads between the Seven Kingdoms were wide and at least fairly direct. Walking, of course, could take upwards of several months to get somewhere like that, but by horse?
Cassandra shrugged, looking back out across the room. The walls were still dim and ruddy, lit by the amber reflecting firelight from the torch-ring far overhead, and it cast faint ghosts of shadows across her pale face. "Eh, three weeks, if you make good time."
He looked at her curiously.
"When's the practice?"
She still didn't quite look at him, but shrugged and gave a thin smile.
"Two months from now," she replied, and something about how nonchalant she seemed didn't seem right either. Sure enough, her gaze dropped quietly to the floor. "I just... thought I'd get a head start."
Varian watched her for a moment, quietly, as gears turned in his head and he tried to put all this together.
"...Did something... happen?" he finally asked, voice as soft as he could make it.
Cass was leaning back against the edge of his desk now, hands braced idly on it on either side of her, so he stepped a bit closer to do the same a respectful distance beside her. She didn't answer, at first—she just stared down towards the abyss full of wreckage and amber, and he watched her patiently, distracted for a moment and still struck by how strange it was to see the top of her head.
She glanced over at him—a little bit up at him, really—from under a stray curl of hair, and her eyes were a dim grey in the light, some mixture of amused and sad.
"Do you make a habit of reading into things?" she asked, and her voice would've been teasing if it weren't so resigned. Varian narrowed his eyes briefly at her, not entirely sure if someone is leaving and trying not to look sad was a deduction that took more than basic observational skills to notice.
I don't think you're as closed-off as you think you are, he almost said, but that probably would've made her feel worse, not better. Instead, he gave a thin smile.
"I know what I look like when things aren't great," he replied quietly, hoping he mirrored her look enough for her to know.
She smiled thinly in return, gaze dropping back down in front of them.
There was a palpable weight in the air, the kind that came when someone had something more to say, but was hesitating. Varian waited, an odd nervousness filling his chest. When it came to anything personal or serious—or worse yet, personal and serious—Cass rarely wanted to talk.
(...Or, rather, she rarely did talk. Did she want to? He guessed he didn't know.)
After a moment, Cassandra let out a slow breath that he only noticed in the rise and fall of her shoulders.
When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet enough that he almost didn't hear.
"...Do you ever feel like people shouldn't forgive you?"
Her tone was dismissive, like the question didn't matter that much to her, but he hoped that anyone who knew her at all would know better.
That—was a hard one, because he had spent the last four years trying to fix what he'd done and be worthy of people looking at him as a good person again—or even just as a person, instead of a threat or a risk or the dishonorable, wayward son of a father who should've raised him better.
(That last one was hardest, because no matter what he'd done or why, there were always some people who thought it reflected on his father. That wasn't true at all, and Varian always had to tamp down the part of him that wanted to rise in anger at the thought of people living their lives thinking that and not being set straight.)
But did he think he shouldn't have been forgiven?
"At first?" he asked, shaking his head a bit with a dry chuckle at the memory. "Yeah. I hoped people would forgive me, but... I hope for a lot of things. Being able to be friends with everyone was... nothing I'd earned, at all. I still don't think I've earned it sometimes."
He glanced to her again, not surprised to find her still staring at the center of the room, looking tense in a way that was almost unnoticeable if you didn't know to look for it.
"Why do you ask?"
"It's just..." Cass began after a moment, before biting off the words with a tired huff. He watched her patiently, his eyes not leaving the corner of hers, even though she was still staring down at the stones of the floor. "You guys have been nice, which... of course you are; Rapunzel's like that and she rubs off on people. But—if I walk anywhere publicly, everyone starts getting all riled up about it, and if I sneak around, people think I'm hiding something and it gets a hundred times worse."
She looked up toward the far wall briefly, and he wasn't sure if she was looking at the amber or not.
"Everyone was so... I don't know. Neutral about it last time. I... guess because I was sticking close to you guys. I thought maybe..."
Cass trailed off, eyes downcast again. She was silent for a long minute.
"Sometimes it feels... fake."
Varian blinked, then blinked again.
"...What do you mean?" he asked.
"Everyone... acting like they forgot what I've done," she answered quietly, almost bitterly—and suddenly everyone wasn't everyone, it was her friends, and the sinking feeling regrew in Varian's stomach. Her eyes were narrowed half-heartedly at the thought, gaze still on the floor. "Acting happy to see me. Saying things are fine now when I cost them years of work and who knows how much money in repairs."
Another silence. Varian tried to watch her closely, tried to read her expression, but nothing different showed on her face. He couldn't quite see what look was in her eyes.
Cassandra didn't make an attempt to lift her gaze.
"People can say they forgive me," she muttered, voice almost hollow. "That doesn't get rid of what I've done."
Varian stared at her for a moment, stomach churning.
I know, I know how that feels, but it doesn't END there—
"...Cassandra," he chided softly, because that was all he could do for a moment without releasing an onslaught of rambling she didn't look like she'd want to hear or believe. "We do forgive you."
"Why?" Cass snapped, staring at him sharply, though there was a tiny thread of long-hidden desperation in her voice and eyes and it made his heart hurt for her. She gripped the edge of the desk she was leaning on—though her right hand was closest to him, and he could see it shaking. "I mean, I—did you not see what I did? I destroyed Corona, I wanted to destroy Rapunzel, I kidnapped you, I brought on the rise of Zhan Tiri and didn't even care until it affected me personally—do you seriously think they can forgive all that?"
There was silence for a moment, and through a pang of heartache, all Varian could hear in his head was a soft How do you know if you don't give them a chance?
Cassandra closed her mouth sharply and looked away from him then, her expression unreadable again. Varian bit his tongue, because something in her posture said she wasn't done.
"Zhan Tiri... said that she and I weren't different. That we both had our destinies taken from us and didn't care what it took to get them back."
She fell silent for a moment.
"We were alike," she concluded quietly as she looked straight ahead again, voice holding no real emotion.
Varian drew in a deep breath, closing his eyes and holding it for a moment—because saying NO to that idea as forcefully as it was echoing through his mind wouldn't help—before letting it out.
He stayed silent for a few moments afterward, trying to let his mind cool down as he let his gaze fall to the floor in front of his boots.
"...I've gotten to read a lot about Demanitus," he finally began, voice quiet, not lifting his gaze from the ground. He could feel her look sideways at him in uncertainty, so he glanced up to meet her gaze. "Including things he wrote personally. And you know how he and I were alike?"
"You were both inventors who worked to stop a demon?" Cassandra guessed dryly. She shook her head, as if dismissing the thought, and her voice grew more bitter. "Sorry. To stop someone who should've been a friend but went all deranged for power?"
Varian narrowed his eyes at her and shook his head slightly, hoping his expression said no strongly enough for her to have no question. Some similarities in circumstance or not, that wasn't it.
"He never gave up on Zhan Tiri," he answered. "Even when she used him and took his research. Even when she turned into something he didn't recognize. Even when she hurt him, and attacked Corona, and made it clear she didn't want his help when he kept reaching out."
Demanitus had gotten angry, eventually—angry and hurt, and it was understandable, because by all accounts Zhan Tiri had mocked and sneered and tried to pull rugs out from under him just for the sake of it, unrepentantly, without mercy—but even then, it seemed he had never been angry to the point of not being sad, or of considering her a wholly lost cause. Cassandra wasn't Zhan Tiri, though, and he hadn't had to live the life Demanitus had endured. Varian hoped they'd both done things better, in that regard.
"He never gave up on her, Cass," Varian said quietly, trying to look into her eyes and show her that he meant it. "And I have never given up on you."
Her eyes on him faltered, having widened just a bit so that they looked open, and he wished it wasn't so dim down here because most of what Cass really felt had always ended up in her eyes.
She flinched, seeming to try to push back whatever emotions were trying to show through—and when that didn't appear to work, when he was sure he saw her eyes glisten slightly, she looked away. She let out a breath that would've been silent if it hadn't caught, and her shoulders shuddered just a bit.
Never in a million years would he want to see Cassandra cry, let alone be the cause of it, and the thought froze him to the core. It was all he could do to keep himself from launching into a worried apology—but he'd meant all that, and couldn't apologize for it.
So, he just flinched back and waited hesitantly, too many feelings coiled tightly in his stomach.
There was silence after that, and for a minute, Varian thought with a pang of regret that she would withdraw in on herself again. She always used to, in the few times he thought he'd found a crack in her armor. She'd never liked having her defenses down. She'd never liked feeling vulnerable.
Cass had changed, though, since that time years ago when he first thought he'd known her. Her gaze dropped to the floor, and it was unreadable once more.
"...How do you do it?" she asked, voice quiet but even again.
He knew what she was referring to, of course, but that was such a broad topic that it was hard to tell what exactly she wanted to know. He glanced to her hesitantly. "Do what?"
"Accept all that and move on." Her face was still shrouded in shadow, and her eyes didn't leave the empty spot on the floor. "Be a different person and still be you."
She tensed almost imperceptibly after that, probably a wince at discussing things like being yourself. At one time, it would've amused him how averse to sounding cheesy she was—now, it made him desperate to convince her that it's okay to just talk.
"You... do and you don't," Varian answered slowly after a minute of thought, shrugging the best he could while still propping himself on his arms beside him. "You're always you no matter what, if you're okay with what you're doing. So you mostly... try to do your best, and learn to be okay with not being exactly like you were before."
There had been a time, once, when it had genuinely never occurred to him to get angry or frustrated—now, he often had to watch himself. There were good things and bad things that could take root in you when you grew.
He shook his head just a bit and continued, trying to lay out his thoughts in a way that made sense. "I don't know about you, but I know I'm different than I was before I did what I did. Sometimes, you keep parts of you from... back then."
Varian dropped his gaze and chuckled softly, a bit of a smirk working its way onto his face.
"I mean, ask Rapunzel and Eugene. I never stopped doing my evil laugh."
The corner of her lips twitched upward, and Cass glanced away with a little smile. "Tch. Ask my dad; I've always cackled."
He glanced sideways at her with playfully-narrowed eyes. "You have a nice laugh," he chided gently, and her expression faltered as she looked away at that.
A little part of him flinched, not having meant to make her uncomfortable—but a bigger part could only stare at her in uncertainty, because did she really not know that?
Still, wanting to lighten the mood but not quite sure how to do it, he tried to pull his best smirk as he put a hand playfully to his chest.
"Hey, think of it this way. What doesn't kill you gives you a way more prominent aptitude for sarcasm."
Unlike him, Cass had actually gotten less sarcastic after everything, something she reminded him of with a nearly playful glare sent his way.
"I think a part of you liked being bad," she chuckled, her voice teasing, but light and quiet enough that it gave him plenty of room to give her a cue if her words made him uncomfortable.
They didn't, really. It was... nice, in an odd way, to have someone to exchange moments of teasing about it with. Wasn't that proof that you'd gotten past something? Being able to talk about it—to accept teasing about it—with no hard feelings?
The arch of his eyebrows and the sharp but playful stare he gave her for that were both probably... fodder, for that theory.
"Being bad as in hurting people? No, I don't miss it. But being the bad guy who's got everything right where I want it for once?"
He smirked playfully, shrugging with one shoulder before his gaze flickered back up to the painted stars.
"Eh. I won't confirm that rumor."
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her almost smile. He grinned without meaning to, glancing over briefly.
His grin faltered, however, and he felt his eyes grow serious again.
"...Did... anybody tell you what I was doing when everyone came back from the Dark Kingdom but you?" he asked.
She glanced to him silently, her expression... not quite unreadable, but close. She was waiting for him to continue—and he was suddenly struck with a compulsion to hurry and speak; to make sure she didn't ever have to wait for him.
Despite that, a heaviness still crept over him at the memory, and he hesitated.
"...I was going to make them forget," he finally whispered. "Force them to. ...I made the people of Corona dig in the mines for what I needed to erase their own memories."
He still dreamt about it, sometimes—those mines with their jagged edges he'd only seen once or twice when he'd gone to affirm they held what he needed; his own voice giving cool threats to innocent people so they'd do the work without the need for (much) Saporian intervention. The whole kingdom had felt dark and dusky, at that time—and while it was probably just the weight of his conscience and a darkened imagination, he'd had to wonder if Corona's true royal family really did have something to do with the sun.
Cassandra was still waiting, still listening. His mind hurried to try to put words together—and it was hard, when he'd spent the years since then in a state of that was wrong, never go back; what was I even thinking?
...No. He knew what he'd been thinking. It was just a little hard to say.
"I... thought that was the only way to start over. To go back to normal. Because even if people can learn to forgive, they won't forget. I still hurt them. That'll never change."
And it hadn't. He'd grabbed Rapunzel's shoulders and shaken her out of pure excitement exactly once since then, in this very chamber. It had been so stupid of him—something he‘d been reminded of every time he had barely slept after that, too guilty over the instinctive flicker of defensive fear he'd seen even now, even then in her eyes.
"...People'll never forget," he added quietly, almost as an afterthought. And it would've been, if all of this hadn't been at the forefront of his mind for so long. He'd thought the subject in circles around the moon and back again. "But they can forgive."
Some people'll never do that either, Cass's body language seemed to say, and he regarded her with as much sympathy as he thought he could get away with showing. A heavy silence weighed over them, and Varian glanced back to the floor and tried to think of a decent segue out of all of that before it turned awkward.
"But I mean, look at the bright side," he added with a shrug, looking back at her and trying to get her to mirror a little half-smile. "Do you know how cool people think it is to be friends with a super powerful enemy of the crown who's gone good?"
Cassandra raised an eyebrow, not looking particularly impressed with the notion, but the weight that seemed to lift from her shoulders at the change of subjects was noticeable. "Who thinks that?"
He gave her a little smile, holding her gaze. "I do."
The doubtful look in her eyes faltered a bit into disbelief, and when she looked away briefly, she actually smiled. "That doesn't count; you are one."
"Sure it counts," Varian reasoned with a wave of his hand. "Everyone thinks it's cool to know an ex-supervillain."
She didn't look convinced. "Everyone, huh?"
"Well, except Feldspar. And Mrs. Crowley. And probably King Fred."
It was almost inaudible, but Cass snickered. "Don't let him hear you call him that."
He wouldn't; he could barely say it without laughing in embarrassment. His dad had raised him well—the thought of being disrespectful like that these days felt ridiculous.
"Point being, with someone as cool as you? I'm pretty sure you'll be fine."
The look Cassandra gave him for that was skeptical, and almost chiding, but there was a gleam of genuine—something; mirth or playfulness or weary gratefulness or a mix of the three in her eyes, and it made him want to stand tall and straight and reflect it back to her in a smile.
"Well, I guess you would know," she remarked quietly—as if she thought he was cool?—and he had to push down the silly little lightness in his chest that came at the thought. She really needed to stop being so nice to him if his whole you don't deserve to like her, Varian; she needs a friend plan was going to work.
But—no, no. She was sharing moments with him because he was a friend. She trusted him with this kind of thing at least a little bit, didn't she? She most certainly didn't have to stop, especially on his account. These days, she needed a friend more than ever, and he just needed to stop entertaining the little flip his heart kept doing when she smiled.
"Don't you still hear about it for working at the castle?" Cass asked, her tone casual and faintly sympathetic. Varian shrugged, pursing his lips a bit as he tried to figure how to say yes while still saying it's not so bad.
"Yeah, I... get an earful every year from some dignitary or another. Or else Rapunzel does, and I... feel really bad about that."
The words of strangers didn't bother him much anymore—if anything, it was a mild annoyance to have your whole kingdom come to trust you, only to find out on annual dignitary visits that most other kingdoms still hadn't considered him beyond his crimes. But Rapunzel had long since taken it on herself to defend him to anyone who said such things, and he wished she didn't have to. She didn't usually have to these days, at least—and there were even a few occasions when people seemed curious or even pleased to see him.
Pride swelled up in him at the thought of the most recent time he'd had a whole multitude of onlookers looking up to him, and he couldn't help but continue with a casual shrug and a little grin. "But on the bright side, you should see the crowd that comes when I present at the science expo!"
Cassandra smirked a bit, glancing at him with amusement in her eyes. "So you're the fancy scientist they call in? Instead of Dr. St. Croix?"
Varian chuckled slightly, unable to help the warm sheepishness he could feel creeping up his neck and making his ears turn pink. "Oh, I wouldn't want to judge, for sure, but... basically, yeah. I've been doing it instead of a guest speaker."
Cass seemed much more comfortable having the subject off of herself for the moment. There was a hint of a smile in her smirk now, and the look in her eyes was genuine.
"About time they got a real scientist."
Cass didn't say things she didn't mean—it wasn't her style, and he doubted it had ever occurred to her to do anything but despise false flattery. His chest warmed at her words, and he had to push down the lopsided smile that wanted to grow across his face.
Varian shrugged just a bit, rubbing the back of his neck for a moment as he glanced away. “Well, uh... heh. They trust me enough to not be scared of me, at least. There's... I mean, there's—still whispering, obviously, and not everybody likes science they don't understand to begin with, but by now, people seem to think its cool that I'm on their side."
It was a bit embarrassing, sometimes, to be viewed with fascination by a younger crowd or those with not-so-long memories. But at the same time, the feeling that came with being seen as interesting—skilled, talented, appreciated—was something else. It was a victory that tasted even better after you'd worked hard for it; earning it instead of forcing it. Had Cass felt that, yet? It seemed like something she might appreciate even more than he had.
Varian gave her a little smile.
"Maybe you should show them you're on their side, too."
The expression in Cass’s eyes filtered through a few emotions before it was a little hard to read again, but it didn't seem unkind. She chuckled, a bit skeptically. "Something tells me they wouldn't be too quick to believe that."
"Eh, they'll get over it. Just... it just takes a while; that's all." Varian gave her a little smile. "In the meantime, you've got us. Right?"
A small smile flickered across Cass's face. Her gaze fell to the stone floor of the chamber that stretched out across the room in front of her, and her voice was oddly quiet when she spoke.
"I... don't think I deserve that, but thanks."
Silence threatened to creep in at that, in part because that kind of talk always gave Varian pause. His first instinct had always been to defend others against ideas like that, even when it came from themselves. But now? How could he explain what it'd taken him years to learn—that you couldn't deserve mercy, that it wouldn't be mercy if it was deserved; that you could only choose what to do with the second chances you were given and that wallowing in a self-made prison was not really a great option, take it from him?
Breath crawled up his throat as if ready to say something to that effect—but he let it out in a soft chuckle as he pushed it away. Cass wasn't looking for that explanation. She knew all that, didn't she? It was something she’d already learned the hard way.
He liked to think he wasn't terrible at reading people. There was a reason people said things. Did she—in her stoic Cass way—just not want to feel alone?
"If it makes you feel any better, I'm pretty sure I don't deserve this either," Varian replied at last, giving a small shrug as he glanced out at the rest of the room. He could feel her regard him uncertainly.
"Don't deserve what?"
Varian pursed his lips into what he'd hoped would be a smile, but fell a bit short at the seriousness of it all. He waved a hand vaguely, his gaze flitting upward to the painted sky that arched above them.
"Well, I... all of this. That people even trust me with something this historically significant. That I have friends who will let me do everything I ever dreamed of to help people." He glanced back at her, a small, more effortless smile coming at this line of thought. "That I have... friends who'll walk miles through secret tunnels just to come see me."
Where would he be if people hadn't forgiven him? If he hadn't forgiven? Not here, certainly. The idea that he even could be here—that he could've even gotten close to all this, to being close to people—was still hard to wrap his head around, sometimes. His smile didn't fade, but his gaze fell to the floor again, and when he finished, his voice was quiet.
"I... know I don't deserve all that."
He didn't get this far in life without being able to feel when people's eyes were on him. He blinked and glanced over, not at all having expected to find Cassandra furrowing her brow and giving him a look he faintly recognized—one that held disagreement and doubt mixed with a bit of half-hesitant encouragement, that was just very her.
"Whoa, hey." Cass pursed her lips into what was almost a frown, but the gleam in her half-narrowed eyes was sympathetic. “You've been working nonstop to help people ever since then. And everyone knows it. You brought them running hot water, and cool gadgets, and new ways to protect their kingdom! People love you! Eugene's worried you're stealing his fan club!"
Varian let out an embarrassed snort and briefly ducked his head to rub the bridge of his nose, because he'd almost forgotten about that unfortunate truth, but Cass wasn't done.
"You do deserve it," she stated firmly, eyes resolute and determined and yet gentle. "You've been working to fix what you did for years. Solid! I mean... look, you're brave, okay?" Her tone just barely faltered, and she glanced away for a second as hesitance crossed her face. "Some of us... just... hit the door first chance we got. And somehow hope that helped." She paused for a fleeting moment, before continuing a bit more quietly than before. "...Everyone knows when you just run out on them, too."
It was... true, that there was a fair share of citizens who'd been quite loud about their opinions on what had happened with Cass. For the most part, they were told leaving and heard banished—and the idea of never seeing her again was at least acceptable to them at the time. But there were still others who seemed betrayed that the old punishments in the kingdom were being so quickly forgotten. She got off too easily, some had cried. So many others had been punished far more for far less. And it was true—petty thieves had been tried harshly in the years past. Thieves of valuable things even more so. Kidnappers, especially, had been given a penalty they didn't escape from. Word had somehow spread of what had happened in this long-lost chamber, three years ago—high theft of a valuable scroll, an attack, and a kidnapping. Under the laws they'd both grown up under, Cass... shouldn't have still been here, speaking to him. She shouldn't have still been here at all.
(Somewhere on the way up that dark tower, despite the soreness of his head and the taste of that awful truth serum in his mouth and the unnatural blue glow in her eyes, he'd seen the tenseness in her posture. She knew what she'd been risking—she had probably grown up seeing the fates her own father had overseen for kidnappers.)
(He hadn't wanted that for her. If he'd been called to testify, after all that—if there was an after all that?—he would've said he'd gone with her willingly, he'd decided.)
Despite her compliment, the thought of what could've been, legally should've been made his stomach churn. Her leaving had probably been the best option, all things considered. That way, the people didn't have to worry about her presence, at least until times like these. Rapunzel didn't have to fight through royal advisors nearly as much as she would've had to to let Cass stay. Cass had been able to do her own thing—choose her own path, have her own autonomy, decide fully for herself where to go and what expectations to live up to. They'd all had some time to grow up on their own paths, after the mess they'd all made in their struggles figuring out how to be friends.
It was true, that there were some who were angry that Cass hadn't stayed to repair every stone she'd broken down. (Not that she could've—there were too many. Even if she had, he doubted even that would mean everyone would forgive her.) But if there was one lesson that the universe had made sure to pound into his head over the years, it was that forgiveness had the curious side effect of making everyone involved yearn to be better.
"There's a difference between running and leaving to find your destiny," Varian replied, regarding her quietly. Cassandra's gaze fell to a shadowy spot on the stone floor.
"Yeah, well, who says I can't multitask," she muttered dryly. The humor in her voice fell flat, and he pursed his lips slightly.
"Hey. What I did, I did because I was upset about my dad. What you did, you did because you were upset about not getting your own destiny. Right?"
"Example four hundred ninety-eight of how selfish I am," Cass muttered, raising her eyebrows in agreement. He fixed her with a narrow-eyed stare of no until she seemed to notice and looked away.
Varian bit the edge of his lip, suddenly compelled to look away himself. How did he explain that some things could be different, and yet still the same?
“If... my dad was still trapped now, I'd still be upset, even if I felt bad about what I did."
He glanced back over, trying to meet the corner of her eye. A stray curl had fallen beside her face when she'd looked down, and the side of her face was mostly obscured by it and its shadow. She must’ve known her expression conveyed whatever she was feeling—he had to guess at what to say.
"I don't blame you for still wanting to go out and find your destiny, Cassandra," he offered softly. She still didn't look up. "If I couldn't free my dad by... committing treason and hurting so many people, I'd still want to free him after people forgave me for trying that."
Cassandra's shoulders rose and fell slightly as she drew a breath, then shook her head just a bit before she looked at him, her expression almost sharp.
"It's... different, though. You get that, right?” she replied, and he went still and blinked when he realized he could see her eyes more clearly again. They were just faintly narrowed, but in a way that looked far closer to distress than irritation, and the lines of her face looked nearly sad. She seemed to try to muster up a flash of sternness, though it didn't last for more than a moment before it faded again. "You did all that because you cared about someone. I just... did it for myself."
Varian blinked again, not offended by her tone or words, just... bewildered. Did she not know? Was that how it had looked to everyone—how his story had been told to others?
(DAD, he'd cried once, twice, a hundred times, vowing up and down to make him proud and then deliberately engaging in every single thing he knew his father hated—dishonesty, disrespect, sneaking thievery treason, breaking things and not listening, putting others and himself in danger, cheating at chess against players who had no chance, touching 'magical' items when he was told not to, meeting his own eyes on a wanted poster labeled TRAITOR—)
He had cared about his dad, of course. But that wasn't all of it.
Varian drew a soft breath, his brow creasing slightly.
"...My dad gave me a long list of things I'd need to do, and responsibilities I'd need to take care of if something ever happened to him. Can you guess how many of those things I did?"
Cass didn't offer a guess—she didn't need to. His gaze flickered away under hers as she waited.
"None. I mean—Old Corona was being abandoned, so half the list was irrelevant, but—I didn't even think of trying to take care of other people like my dad did. I was..." Scared, and hurt, and angry, and— "...so, so caught up in how I felt that I didn't care. I mean... I cared about him and wanted him to be okay, more than anything, but... everything I did?"
Every plan he'd coldly concocted, every friend he'd turned into a monster (in reality or in his head), every guard he'd had injured, every person he'd kidnapped, every lilting music box tune that played on cogs that turned as he dwelt on wrongs too much to see rights?
Varian scrunched his eyes shut for a moment, trying to will down the surge of guilt that still threatened to eat at him some days.
"I could've come back and asked for help. I could've just asked Rapunzel to try to help me with the rocks. I know she would've. I mean, the guards didn't want me there, but I snuck close enough to give them cookies—and get into the Queen's quarters—so I know I could've gotten in to talk to her. But I—literally picked the most dangerous, violent, illegal, ridiculously overdramatic plan I could have possibly concocted, and you know what for?"
He let out a huff of a humorless chuckle. With a slow breath—a measured one, a practiced one—the force of the pent-up emotions threatening to rush back relented, fading until all that was left in their place was a tiredness that seemed to seep like molten lead into his very bones.
"...It wasn't to help my dad. I did ninety-nine percent of that to get back at everyone I thought hurt me. It was for me."
Varian finally mustered the courage—or apathy, maybe—to let out another breath. This one felt normal.
"So... yeah, and... and no."
Cass didn't look at him—didn't answer—and he shook his head slightly in an attempt to clear it. She hadn't asked to hear about him. She'd just wanted an idea of what she could do now. Was he making it about himself, just because he was grasping at having a little more closure? Hopefully not.
He'd gotten off track, anyway. Where was he?
"...People are just people. They get over things. They forgive; they change. I've... always figured I needed to do huge things to prove that I'm worth paying attention to, but that doesn't mean it's the only way."
It had taken so, so many hugs from his dad over the years, and so many words of encouragement and serious little talks from Rapunzel and Eugene to make him realize that maybe there was merit to the thought of having inherent value; of truly being seen as good for the small things instead of the big ones he'd always set his hopes on. Did Cass have someone who knew to show that truth to her?
"People know Rapunzel forgave you. People know you're not charged with any crime. It takes awhile, but they'll have to accept that you're not hurting anyone."
He glanced at her, then, and managed a soft smile.
"Hang in there," he said gently, and it had to have been the lighting, because when she smiled at him in return, he could've sworn her eyes glistened slightly.
“Thanks,” she whispered after a moment. Her voice was quiet and a little thick.
The silence that hung over them for a minute after that wasn't... bad. They both stood still, almost close enough to be side-by-side, leaning on the edge of his old desk as the firelight around the room made little shadows dance in the contours of the stone floor.
It felt like it should've been more awkward, standing alone at a late hour with all of that and a stone canopy of painted stars over their heads. There was a part of him that was trying to give further thought to it—to the faint buzz of his heartbeat in his ears, to the thought that she doesn't talk about this with anyone she doesn't trust, does she? Did I mess this up?—but he pushed it aside. There would be time to tell himself to stop overthinking it all later. Somehow, for now, it was almost comfortable, this openness between them.
It wasn't so long before Cass drew in a quiet breath, stretching her shoulders a bit as she let go of the edge of the desk and stood straight again, glancing briefly at herself as if checking to see if she had everything she was bringing with her.
"Well, I'd... better go," she said with a little shrug—not unkindly, and if he was worried it was out of discomfort, his worries disappeared when she glanced at him with a flicker of something grateful in her eyes and a thin but genuine smile.
He stood up too, giving her a small, uncertain smile before his eyes drifted briefly to the floor.
"You... don't... have to go, Cass," he offered quietly. When he looked up again, she had met his gaze, but her eyes were unreadable.
Before he could worry too much that he'd said something wrong, she blinked and glanced away with a faint smile, a portion of the shields she kept up in her eyes lowering.
"...I want to. Did you hear what people were saying about Rapunzel for letting me come back? You guys don't deserve that." Cass looked back to him with a little shrug, and though the solemnness in her eyes left him a little bit unconvinced, she smirked in a friendly fashion. "Besides. It's nice out there. It feels good to go where you're able to get a fresh start."
He didn't move from his spot in front of his desk, even as she took a few steps away, still looking around for a moment before she left. Almost without thinking, he spoke after her.
"...Do you think you would... stay?" he asked quietly, not realizing he'd raised one hand a bit as if to reach out to her until it was too late to hide it.
Cassandra turned to look at him, eyebrows knit together and eyes racing with a mix of emotions she was clearly trying to keep contained.
"...Now?" she asked, staring at him quizzically—though there was a hint of a catch to her voice, like she hadn't been expecting that.
"No!" he reassured her quickly, before flinching at how that sounded and backtracking, because that definitely wasn't what he'd meant. His mind was reminding him that he did have a spare pile of blankets before he had the chance to fully remind it of how propriety worked. "I mean—y-yes, if you don't want to make that giant trek back up there this late, you're always welcome; but I more meant... someday. Do you think you would... stay, again?"
He'd just—how had he even let that come out of his mouth; no. She wasn't staying the night here; of course not. Fortunately, she seemed too distracted by the other portion of what he'd said to mind. Her brow was drawn seriously, just a bit, and her gaze flitted to the stone floor.
"I don't know," Cass said quietly. Usually he was pretty decent at reading her tone and expression—but she had closed up again, her face emotionless.
He was probably just too biased and hopeful here, because she didn't sound as... opposed to the thought as he'd figured she might be. She'd already turned down Rapunzel's inquiries about whether she'd come back, and Eugene's nudges that she could always have a place on the guard.
She didn't want to stay now; he knew that. She knew that. Their friends knew that. But someday?
She'd changed a lot, over the years—but she was still Cass. He had the feeling she'd look more uncomfortable at a question if her answer was really no.
As it was, it could've been the dim light playing tricks on him. Still, he liked to think he could recognize the expression of someone who was fleetingly playing out scenarios in their head, because that so often was him.
Not now, of course. But someday? Maybe she would stay.
Her eyes clouded, and she seemed to shake off the thought.
"...Fidella's waiting for me. I told her we were leaving tonight."
...And there was his other (stupid) suggestion, which she was being polite about by shifting the subject. Her eyes fell on her lantern—which she would need for the tunnels, but had flickered out—and the air of serious conversation that had surrounded them seemed to slip away into the walls without a trace. His heart picked now to push his pulse up into his ears, and the sound of it thudding almost drowned out her question.
"Shoot—can I relight this?" she asked, glancing around at the oddly-placed light sources around the room.
"O—Of course." Did he have a regular torch down here? There were plenty of lanterns lit, in addition to the slow-burning circle of fire that lined the room from the top of the stairs, but lighting one lantern from another required something a little less dangerous than most of the flammable substances he had on hand. Did he have any more matches? If nothing else, he could use a twisted scrap of paper, if he worked quickly—
Out of the corner of his eye, amidst his stuff, he spotted something that gleamed a brassy gold. A metal cylinder stuck out slightly from the pile of supplies and packs he'd brought down to work with. An idea occurred to him—a decent one, hopefully—and he changed courses, hurrying over to grab it instead.
"Hey, uh, better idea! Take this."
He held up the contraption—a telescoping metal rod with a large upright ring at the top, complete with spaces to hold his glowing vials or to hang a small lantern, if need be—and Cass blinked at the sight.
"Your staff?" she asked, raising an eyebrow uncertainly. She'd seen it once before, the last time she'd visited, though he'd really only been using it then as a portable light to read by.
Varian grinned, reaching up to adjust the vials that were mounted into the top piece. He twisted them in a practiced motion, mixing the two reactants that caused the mixture to glow. "Yeah! I never really got a chance to use it, and it's perfect for being out on the road. It's an adjustable light source, and a walking stick."
"Thanks, Varian, but I don't need—"
Wordlessly, he twirled it upside-down and flicked a hidden switch on the side. The bottom nine inches of the staff's metal casing retracted to reveal a steel spearhead blade.
Cass stopped mid-sentence, staring at the gleaming spear with that slightly wide-eyed whoa look she got once in a great while when something impressed her. Varian grinned, part of himself full of warmth and pride for being the cause of it, and the other part just full of warmth, because gosh she had always been pretty when she let her emotions show.
"Correction, I meant 'adjustable light source, walking stick, and weapon',” he clarified. He shrugged, letting it droop in his hand a bit as he glanced at the contraption. "You... don't have to take it, but I think you'd put it to better use than me."
Cass regarded the spearhead with more experienced eyes than he had. "What's the blade made of?"
"Forged steel. I made it myself. ...With Xavier's help, I mean. He's been showing me how to use his forge."
He handed it to her, and she seemed to test its balance, letting it bob in her hand as she briefly swung it sideways, then back upright.
"...It's a nice weight," she remarked after a moment, her eyes lingering on the spearhead. Then, she slid her hand down it a bit and stood the spear beside her with practiced ease. She gave him a fleeting, grateful smile.
"It looks great. Thank you."
Varian rubbed the back of his neck, glancing away with a small smile. Cass nodded once, a bit hesitantly, but gave only a hint of a farewell smile as she experimentally flicked the same switch beneath the spearhead—causing the casing to return to its place around the blade—and flipped it back over so it was once again a staff with an odd display of glowing vials attached, turning to leave.
Varian watched her go for a moment, wanting to say something but at a loss for what to say.
"Hey, uh—good luck at the tournaments! Win one for Corona, okay?"
For a moment, he expected her to say something equally not-so-serious back at him. Instead, her answer was... honest. "I'll try my best."
He didn't doubt that she was one of the most skillful there was when it came to traveling about places unnoticed—with her dark cloak and swift walk, she moved with the shadows on the wall like she was one of them.
She was already at the stairs when he found his voice again.
"...And Cass?" he called after her.
Cassandra paused, one foot on the bottom step, and glanced back at him. The curve of the staff's metal top, the lantern, and her eyes all glinted a muted but fiery color.
"Hm?"
Would he be pushing his luck? He might be. He'd never been one not to take risks for the sake of gauging reactions, though, however big or small. It was in his nature—just like reaching out was, or at least trying to. He didn't like to think twice about it.
He smiled at her, probably crookedly, and wondered if she knew that some people truly would always welcome her home.
"I hope your destiny leads you back here someday."
She dropped her gaze, and a thin smile flickered on her face. It was gone as soon as it'd appeared, and it hadn't reached her eyes.
She made her way up the stairs, and he watched her go, until the soft pink and green glow of her light faded into the darkness.