Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You may have been a worthy adversary once, Princess...” Zhan Tiri‘s voice echoed through the room. She peered down at the Rapunzel, who struggled in her fist. Her grin shone a stark, fanged white against the inky shadow of her silhouette. “But now you are NOTHING.”

Gold—blue. The glow from the Sundrop and Moonstone on Zhan Tiri’s wrists—in her eyes—was too bright, too surreal.

Rapunzel clenched her teeth and tried to wriggle from the monster’s grip, but to no avail. Dry, hissing laughter echoed through the chamber, wicked and ancient, but—

Zhan Tiri didn’t throw her down.

Instead, she stretched out a taloned hand and picked up Cassandra—who still slouched weakly, left devoid of the impenetrable armor she’d worn for so long, and now didn’t seem to know how to hold herself up without it.

“And you,” the monster mocked, lip curling to show one huge fang as she grinned in Cassandra’s face. “You lost before you even began, girl. Just like your mother—felled by your own ego.”

Zhan Tiri squeezed them both tight in her fists—too tight, tight like the way Varian’s robots had that’d made fear rise in Rapunzel for her mother and Cass; tight like the way Cassandra herself had squeezed Eugene in a fist made of the rocks. Tight enough to make a person fear for their life.

Cassandra shouted out first, as if the force had caused the sound to escape from her that had been trapped inside otherwise. The sound was so jagged and broken, and held so much agony that Rapunzel thrashed against the grip, only to be held so tightly that she cried out in pain too.

Zhan Tiri threw Cassandra down, and though her vision swam, Rapunzel could see her go rolling across the floor like a discarded doll.

“Cass!” She tried to watch to see if her friend moved after, but Zhan Tiri held Rapunzel up to her face and forced her to stare into her glowing eyes.

One gold, one blue. Despair tried to crawl up Rapunzel’s throat and strangle her.

She has both. How are we going to get—?

“As much as I’d love for you to watch your beloved Corona be reduced to rubble and ash... I don’t think I want to leave you as a liability.”

Zhan Tiri’s tentacles slithered as she turned to smirk toward Cass. Rapunzel forced her head around just enough to see her friend on her hands and knees, struggling to get up. Cassandra had frozen, and was staring at them with the wide, distant eyes of someone who was still in shock.

“You, however... I think this will be good for you. You shouldn’t mind watching what you threw away perish, after all.”

Then the world whipped and blurred, and with enough force to wrench her neck wrong just from the whiplash, Rapunzel was thrown down hard to the floor.

“Raps!” a voice shouted hoarsely near her.

Everything turned dark, as if the moon had wholly swallowed up the sun.

—

The tower room that had been converted into Rapunzel’s art studio had several tall windows—gold frames and red drapes and blue sky surrounding her many projects, perfect for letting in light or a pleasant breeze.

In front of one of them, Eugene stood in a picturesque stream of golden morning light. (She was never sure if he picked out spots to stand like that specifically. Maybe she’d ask him? It sounded like a question he’d appreciate.) He rubbed his chin as he examined the scraggly-looking crow that stood on one of the craft tables.

“Ya know, Hamuel, here I didn’t think it was possible for you to look any more...” He drew back and gestured vaguely in the bird’s direction. “...like that.”

Across from him, slumped comfortably into a plush armchair with her chin propped in one hand, Cassandra let out a huff of a laugh.

“He’s molting, genius,” she said, with words that sounded pointed but a tone that sounded amused. “Owl does the same thing.”

“Ah yes, molting,” Eugene agreed readily. He nodded several times and gestured to the bird with an air of understanding. “Molting. The thing that birds do. That’s specifically happening to this bird in this instance. That molting; got it.”

Cass rolled her eyes and shifted her chin in her hand, but her expression was warm.

“Their feathers get worn out after a while, so. The old ones fall out, and new ones regrow.”

Rapunzel stood near them, fighting a sense of grogginess as she tried to recall what wasn’t right about the scene. There couldn’t be anything wrong with it—she was here in it, after all. But—

Slowly, in broken fragments, it came to her.

Eugene was here with Hamuel, she noted slowly. He wore his red-and-white captain’s livery, looking polished and handsome as ever.

That was one thing.

Cassandra seemed relaxed, at home in a way Rapunzel hadn’t seen since they’d all grown to be friends at the castle for the very first time. And yet—

Her eyes held a hesitance to them that was unfamiliar. Although her words were blunt in a way Rapunzel had missed, and her voice held a warmth more whole than before, every time her eyes flickered, something deeper lay behind them. It took Rapunzel a moment to realize what it was.

Guilt.

Rapunzel’s heart pounded. She looked to Eugene again, then back to Cass.

Eugene had Hamuel. And Cass was here.

Eugene was captain. Cass was being friendly. They were both here at once, like nothing at all was wrong.

...How did they get here?

—

When Rapunzel awoke, it was to the vague sense of alarm that comes with waking up to someone sounding stressed.

“Nonono, ugh—”

And to concerned chameleon squeaking.

And to something rough being pulled off of her feet.

And to a pretty bad headache. She bit the inside of her cheek and closed her eyes tighter for a moment, putting a hand on her forehead to quell the pain as she tried to sit up.

Somewhere near her, Cassandra drew a sharp breath and stilled.

Was it good to recognize the sound of someone even after a year of barely seeing them? She wasn’t sure. It gave her a sense of relief, at least. It felt like something unique to being friends.

Gingerly, Rapunzel forced her eyes open and squinted at her surroundings. A room? A small room—dimly lit, with the curtains drawn. There was a wooden dresser in it. She was lying on a bed she didn’t recognize. Pascal—oh thank goodness, Pascal was alright—had hopped from her shoulder to the bed and was staring up at her in worry. Something dark was branched down the wall. A decoration of a tree, maybe?

Beside it all, a shadow moved. Except—

It wasn’t a shadow. (At least not literally. Maybe metaphorically?) It was Cassandra, clad in grey, arms drawn around herself as she stared with wide eyes.

Rapunzel rubbed her temple. Memories returned in abrupt patches: Zhan Tiri the little girl, Zhan Tiri the ancient demon, the Sundrop and Moonstone ripped from their hosts. The emptiness—was it emptiness? It was a faint lack of warmth beneath her skin, and the sensation was strange—she felt was because she was no longer the Sundrop. The lack of spikes and glow surrounding Cass was because she no longer wore the Moonstone.

She knew that. She had just seen that. It was why it was odd when her mind played a trick on her—for the briefest of moments, Cassandra’s suit glimmered and looked obsidian black again, and her eyes and hair were electric blue.

She blinked hard, and when she refocused on Cass, there was only grey and black remaining.

Familiar grey and black, though. Grey and black like a friend she hadn’t seen in a long while.

Rapunzel flashed her best disarming smile... and then felt something snaking across her feet again.

“Ack!” She shot up in bed, drawing her knees up and pulling her feet out from under it. When she jumped, Cassandra jumped, and then Cassandra grabbed what looked like a dagger off the dresser and plunged it toward something at the foot of the bed, which made her startle again. Pascal screeched and darted back up her arm to her shoulder, where he stood tall and raised his little fists.

“Get out,” Cassandra growled, stabbing the dark shadow of something long and branching on the end of the bed. Whatever it was jerked back and recoiled, sliding off for the time being. “Dumb plant—why are you following us?”

“What is that?” Rapunzel asked, pushing herself further up against the pillow and away from whatever that was. Her hair—brown, which was going to take getting used to again—streamed over the side of the bed, and for a moment she wondered if it could’ve fooled her eyes somehow.

The sound of her voice seemed to make Cass falter. She pulled back and put her arms around herself again, still holding the dagger.

Cass being here—protecting her from something—felt almost as much like an illusion as her dream.

“Some kind of vines?” Cass said, in a tone that sounded like she meant to say it roughly and seriously—in her villain voice, as Rapunzel had come to think of it—but it fell halfway between that and her regular old tone, and came out as more of a question. “They’ve... been trying to get at you.”

The branched silhouette on the wall moved. It seemed to curl back up into a gap in the ceiling boards slightly. On her shoulder, Pascal crouched protectively and stuck out his tongue.

At Rapunzel’s partly blank, partly bewildered look, Cass folded her arms a little tighter and continued.

“I’ve been, uh... moving you around. The castle wasn’t safe with how much it was shaking, so. We went to the stables, but the vines started finding you. I thought it was something Zhan Tiri did to the castle, and that they wouldn’t come here, but—“ Another tendril started to stretch up over the end of the bed, and with gritted teeth, Cass stepped forward and plunged her blade into it to make it retreat. “—apparently they did.”

Vines. Creeping over her, pulling consciousness from her, trading life for dreams, tying her down. If she weren’t so dizzy and still scrambling to make sense of it all, she would have dwelled more on why she cringed from muscle memory.

Cassandra wore an expression that said please let’s not talk about what I did the last few hours more clearly than it seemed an expression should.

There was a method to talking to Cass. She usually seemed all right with being on decent terms if you didn’t put her in a corner where she felt she needed to defend her decisions.

For Rapunzel’s part, pretending everything’s fine so we all get along was familiar enough and felt relieving enough that it was far more appealing than starting that discussion just yet. Cass was protecting her. Cass had spared Aunt Willow’s vase. Cass looked defensive and mildly mortified. That was plenty enough evidence that they could move on and pretend, for a bit, that some things hadn’t happened.

(They had, but—okay, maybe she needed time to process the fact that they had happened, too.)

“Where are we?” she asked instead, rubbing her temple as she looked around the little bedroom.

Cassandra’s voice was still serious, with a trace of wavering uncertainty that was just a hairsbreadth away from awkward. It was hard to find the right balance between feeling endeared and cautioned by it.

“One of the maids’ houses. Zhan Tiri’s attacking anything that seems important to anyone. We might get hit by accident, but I don’t think she’ll target it.” Cass stared at where the vines had spread down the wall. “Unless she’s controlling these vines, which... is possible.”

On the wall across from the bed, a family portrait hung in an old—but meticulously dusted—frame. Rapunzel blinked in surprise at the woman in the picture.

“Oh. We’re in Ethel’s house.” She’d never figured out quite how to satisfactorily befriend her, but the older lady-in-waiting was a good person and a hard worker nonetheless. “Is she home?”

“No. It looks like everyone evacuated after...”

Cass’s gaze flickered to a cluster of black rocks that stood ominously near them, spearing up through the floor. They were a familiar onyx color—not the gold rocks that Zhan Tiri had been spreading.

There was a long moment of silence.

Rapunzel looked up at Cass and tried to catch her gaze with a little smile.

“Well... it’s a good thing you scared everyone out of here when you did.” Cassandra’s gaze jerked over to meet hers, uncertain. Rapunzel smiled humorlessly and glanced back toward the window. “I don’t think Zhan Tiri is going to mind if she hurts people.”

...People. Zhan Tiri would hurt people. Memories and responsibilities and priorities started flooding back like a landslide. Where were her friends? Eugene? Her parents?

Cass interrupted the thought with a series of sharp slices through the vines on the wall with her dagger. They spasmed as they shrunk back and shriveled at the ends.

“Can you walk?” she asked, curtly, but not without a cursory glance to gauge Rapunzel’s expression. “You should get out of here.”

In a tentative motion, with muscles that were definitely sore and—ow, a pretty bad bruise all the way up her left side—Rapunzel stood and mentally felt herself over for injuries, then nodded.

“Yeah. I can.” The little window in the room didn’t face toward the castle, and it was hard to want to be anywhere near those vines regardless. Rapunzel made a face at them and glanced to Cass, trying to ignore how much she wanted to ask if you should get out meant I might go with you. One step at a time. One avoidance of creepy plant tendrils at a time. “Let’s... get away from that thing.”

There was the briefest of seconds where she could’ve sworn a hint of a dry smile flickered on Cass’s face at her tone. It was gone before she was sure she’d seen it, and Cass’s expression went almost distant and deeply unresponsive again.

They had gone so long being friends, and she’d always come to hope for that signature gleam of Cass in her eyes. It was hard to go so long without it. It was hard to know the right thing to say.

Cass seemed to want to be all business, right now. That was alright. She could do that.

“Did you see the others?” Rapunzel asked, following Cassandra out of the room. The bedroom door led to a short hallway, which led to a short flight of steps, which led to a living area that didn't span a wide space either.

Cass shook her head. “No. I—uh, we went out the back. Heard fighting, though.”

A window in the front room faced a road that led into the castle courtyard, and Pascal’s claws gripped tight to her shoulder as Rapunzel ran to look out of it.

Rocks, both black and gold, along with rubble and stone littered the street. The sun and moon had since slid away from each other, but their light and shadow was faint, and the world was still dim under a blood-red sky. Flecks of ash and dust from destroyed buildings floated down and settled on every surface.

Her kingdom. Her home. Corona was her responsibility, and seeing it look like something out of a nightmare made her have to fight down a deep dread that tried to creep up her spine.

There wasn’t a clear view to the castle. Rapunzel was at the door and turning the knob in a moment.

“Raps—“ Cass said stiffly from behind her.

Rapunzel glanced over her shoulder. Cass’s eyes were wide and uncertain for a moment, but then they closed off again. Her gaze shifted to some distant point beyond the black rocks that jutted through a frayed hole in the fireplace rug.

When she didn’t say anything, Rapunzel tried an encouraging smile. “Yeah?”

“Don’t...” Cass’s voice was even rougher than when she had been trying to sound dangerous. She looked like the words tasted sour on her tongue—but, Rapunzel noted, she was still asking them. "...run into anything crazy, okay?”

Maybe it was bad timing; maybe it was the kind of humor Cass liked. Maybe... it was worth taking a risk.

“Crazy like a bunch of black rock wolf heads with big scary teeth?” Rapunzel asked, narrowing her eyes with a teasing smile.

The corner of Cass’s lips pulled up for just a second, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She looked down at a distant point past the floor again.

Rapunzel didn't open the door for a moment. When Cass noticed she hadn't moved and looked up, she smiled again.

"If... you wanted to come show me how not to, I wouldn't mind."

Cassandra stared as if she wanted to say no. She pursed her lips and looked away again as if she wanted to say no. A silence stretched between them, as if she were contemplating how to say no.

"...Fine," she finally muttered, meeting Rapunzel's gaze again with the most longsuffering look Corona had ever seen.

Despite everything, it was hard not to smile at that.

Rapunzel opened the door and tilted her head in a gesture for Cass to follow, and the two stepped out carefully into the ruined street.

Chapter Text

“Raps!”

The word had wrenched itself from her throat before she could help it. Zhan Tiri cast a long shadow across the remains of Rapunzel’s room, all the way to where the princess had slammed hard into the floor with enough force to do damage. Rapunzel lay in a heap and didn’t move.

Cassandra whipped around to stare up at Zhan Tiri.

“What are you doing?” she snapped—or tried to snap, though the horrified tremor in her voice probably belied any confidence she could affect. The chances of anything she could say having any effect here was slim—it wasn’t like anything Rapunzel had said had deferred her from trying to do this very thing, and if Rapunzel couldn’t talk someone down, what chance did she stand?—but it was also the only desperate idea she had. “We had a plan!”

Sure enough, the creature curled a hand to its chest and struck a mocking, offended pose.

“No, I had a plan. You, child, had a mummy who didn’t love you and the gall to turn your back on everyone who did.” Zhan Tiri sneered. “You had no plan. That was why you fell for mine.”

A dagger to the ribcage would have felt preferable. Cass tried to glower back, tried not to let her racing heartbeat show in her eyes, tried to steel her limbs so she didn’t crumble under the weight of ancient evil and irreversible failure.

The demon leered, all dark shadow and twisted horns against a blood-red sky.

“Now if you’ll excuse me... it’s time I finally deliver on a promise I made LONG AGO—”

Zhan Tiri raised the Sundrop and Moonstone in a motion fiercer and more full of anger than Cassandra ever had. Sure enough, the powers sensed it—and with a rumble like an earthquake that made Cass certain they would die from the tower falling, great arcs of electricity shot from both stones, creating thundering waves that blew rubble and objects out in a blast around her.

A cage of yellow rocks sprouted from the floor and encompassed the area she and Rapunzel had been thrown to. Zhan Tiri’s tentacles grasped and slithered as they carried the monster to the gaping hole where the window once was, then out onto the crumbling balcony.

Zhan Tiri laughed in a way Cassandra recognized—one born of bitterness so deep it turned hearts to stone, of hate tended like a garden until it bloomed into a desire to see others suffer.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” the demon mocked, mimicking Cassandra’s tone as she paused to smirk over her shoulder. She glanced Cassandra up and down, as if she were a last moment of afterthought barely worthy of attention. “You have been rather useful, getting me here. It's a shame you only care for your own vague ambitions—if you weren't so fickle, I might've let you take your mother's place as my student."

Zhan Tiri laughed again, barking and scornful.

"But then, you've inherited her self-absorption quite thoroughly, haven't you?"

Tentacles covered half the opening as the demon crawled onto the outer wall of the tower, then disappeared from view.

Again—again, again, Cass was left alone with the aftermath.

—

“Raps,” she whispered for the third time. “Rapunzel,” for the fourth.

Rapunzel lay limp on the floor, half-covered in a sheet of long brown hair. Her hair trailed across the ruined carpet and out through the other side of the cage. Locks of it had gotten caught in the yellow rocks that curved overhead.

Cassandra shook the princess's shoulder again, as hard as she dared.

Why were you gentle until this time? nagged a voice in her head. What does that say about—

“Shut it,” she snapped. Not at her friend, not at a ghost, not at an ancient demon who was now quite obviously not either of the prior two things—just at herself.

That was all she had left now, wasn’t it?

Cass rolled Rapunzel tentatively onto her back, into a less crooked position.

“Rapunzel, you have to wake up,” she said loudly—like she had on occasion back before.

Up and at ‘em, Raps; her own voice echoed in her head from long ago. This room was warm and sunlit and just beginning to be homey, then. You’ve got a busy day today.

Still no response.

Pascal hopped up and curled worriedly over the princess’s heart, and his slight bobbing up and down was what assured her Rapunzel was still breathing. Two fingertips under the corner of her jaw confirmed a weak but stable pulse.

Cass sat back on her feet and stared down at Rapunzel, a faint frown overtaking her face. She glanced over toward the gaping hole in the wall, where shouting and rumbling echoed from outside. Then, she looked the other direction, at the doors of the room. A hundred painted birds still flowed across that wall, seeming to burst from the door and soar upward inside the room.

A door. A way to the rest of the castle—to anywhere else.

Slowly, with motions that felt stiff and detached from her mind, Cassandra padded up to the rocks that trapped them here. For all of Zhan Tiri’s boasting, the demon had overlooked one thing—the amount of gaps in the rock-cage that looked wide enough to squeeze through.

Sure enough, while narrow, there was a spot where the rocks angled apart that would just accommodate a person forcing their way out.

She could get out of here.

Cass pushed her way through the gap. The room seemed to open up around her as she took a tentative step forward.

The tower quaked.

Pictures pivoted on the walls and decorations fell and shattered. More chunks of the walls and ceiling fell, plaster dusting the floor. Cass dropped to a defensive crouch, trying to shield her head with her arms while staring furtively upward around the room, because who knew when an important piece of the ceiling would come down?

The shaking stilled, and Cass stiffened, ready to bolt.

Gchrrr. Chrr-grrk!

...And then she stiffened even further, more awkwardly this time, because Pascal had raced around her and now sat emphatically in her path. The chameleon—all five inches of him—squinted fiercely at her. He stood up on his hind feet and puffed out his chest, then pointed a little claw behind her at where Rapunzel lay.

Cassandra groaned. “Pascal, move.”

Pascal squinted at her in disapproval, turning a dark gray color with a light gray stripe that spiraled up from one foot to end in a starburst shape over his heart. He tapped the latter spot repeatedly, then pointed at her with an accusing look.

It took her a moment to know how to respond to that. The crushing weight of it was trying to come back full-force.

You lost, said a voice in her head that sounded like herself and had her mother’s cutting tone. You threw your life away for worse than nothing.

“Yeah, I know,” she said, voice thicker with emotion than she thought it’d come out. A heavy dread was starting to creep up her limbs, and she balled her fists and shifted her feet, trying to subtly shake the sensation. “She took it. It’s gone. I failed again, worse than anyone’s ever done. I need to go.”

Pascal scowled at that, making a sound like a growled squawk. He crossed his tiny forelegs and tapped a foot like he was waiting for a different answer.

The dread crawled further up her. Her hands and feet went numb.

Get out of the way, I need to move, her thoughts said desperately, as if the tiny lizard in the floor was truly keeping her here. Why did she care enough to not walk straight past him?

“Listen. I don’t know what to do. Okay? Everyone’s probably going to die because of me." The words tasted horribly sour on her tongue. She tried to look elsewhere, but it seemed as though every surface danced and wavered out of focus. "I—I didn’t want that. I can’t do anything now.”

Her limbs felt so numb, and her mind so blank that she wasn’t certain she would stay conscious. Cass dropped to her knees in a stiff motion, painfully aware how distant her gaze was and how hard her heart pounded against her skin. She knew what the signs of shock were. It added the awful weight of humiliation to know she was experiencing them.

“Rapunzel won’t want to be anywhere near me,” she heard herself saying. Calm down, calm down—get it together, breathe, focus— “I’m going. I have to leave.”

She couldn’t force her body to match her words. She clenched her jaw and put a shaky hand over her face—her right hand, which she could feel the charred skin of chafing against the inside of her gray suit-gloves. She shut her eyes tightly.

Even behind her eyelids, her vision clouded over. Her skin felt so cold.

After a half-second, or maybe all night—a faint chrrrk drew her out of the haze. She opened her eyes blearily, staring down at where Pascal had approached her.

There was pity in his eyes. He put a little forefoot on the hand that lay limp in her lap, as if to comfort her. He was frowning, but looked more wearied by the situation than by her, now.

A few years ago she would have written herself off as imagining that a chameleon could have that expression. After so much time, she knew better.

You knew better, whispered a soft voice that sounded unfamiliar. It took a long moment before she realized it sounded like her own voice, just her voice, without any façades of toughness or cynicism. It sounded almost like the care-starved little girl she’d heard singing to herself in a shell-house so many months ago. You know better.

Cassandra clenched her jaw and shut her eyes until her head stopped swimming.

“Fine,” she huffed down at Pascal, prying her stinging eyes back open again. He was looking at her—not quite hopefully, but expectantly—like he was waiting for her to do the right thing. “But this wasn’t my plan.”

Pascal gave her a relieved look that turned somewhat unimpressed.

It looked like he was saying Good. I don’t like your plans anyway.