Chapter Text
Plink. Plink. Plunk.
The dungeon is the oldest part of the castle. Coldest. Iron bars line the walls, crooked and careworn like rows of rotting teeth — they are true cages from ages past, set in stone and reinforced time and time again to keep Corona’s most uncomfortable subjects at bay.
They lead empty little half–lives, the lot of them. Eat, sleep, work, mingle. Barter here and there, maybe gamble, as much as the guards let them. Pace. Count the bars. Stare up at the ceiling.
Andrew’s cell is five steps wide and four long. There are fifteen bars, not one of them loose. In the ceiling, two cracks.
He keeps his belongings in a bag under his cot. Juniper's things are scattered all over — she rearranges them every few days, decorating and redecorating. She likes to sit close to the light and listen to the guards on patrol as they joke and gossip, watchful for the tiniest shreds of their conversation. Maybe it’s about some vicarious sense of normalcy, or maybe she's waiting for some kind of information that would save her. It's anyone's guess.
A golden palace stands above. Water perpetually drips from the ceiling.
Plink. Plunk. Plink.
It’s been two years of this shit.
Two years since any of them had seen a patch of sky other than the one viewed at an angle through the tiny windows of their cell. Two years since the last momentous battle for the kingdom of Corona, a story so glorious it makes you puke.
Some of the prisoners take advantage of the so–called reforms that Rapunzel — now the crowned queen, oh spare them — has been implementing. They listen in on classes held by brainwashed pawns and do filthy work, calling it rehabilitation. Content to act like Corona’s troubled little pets, put in time–out for their bad behaviour.
But the people of Saporia need no absolution from the usurper queen, and so, proudly, they sit and rot where she put them. It’s the last thing they can do, this show of honour. Inch by inch, they feel themselves disappear. Everyone goes about it in a different way: Andrew grows number while Juniper suffers on the other side of the room, sharp and loud. Clementine tries to spend her time well — not a day passes by when she isn’t chanting, humming, and snapping her fingers in the adjacent cell, waiting for the one spell that’ll work. None do. Without her tools, Clementine’s as useless as mud, and she knows it.
“Shut the hell up, will you?” a tired voice echoes through the dungeon. She only laughs, resuming her pointless work. It’s her way of staying sane, Andrew thinks. Or as sane as Tinnie is capable of being.
She laughs like a goddamn tavern wench. The sound is still ringing in Andrew's ears when the long–awaited sound of footsteps draws near — two guards pass by their cell, and then soon after, another pair. None of them spare him and Juniper so much as a glance, but Andrew knows where to look: a bright–blue feather has been tucked into one of their boots.
He understands the message.
Juniper’s smile glistens in the darkness.