Chapter Text
This morning, when Cassandra and Rapunzel climbed out onto the roof of the caravan, they finally saw the destination of their year-long journey.
The view in front of them was both ominous and breathtaking. The infamous Dark Kingdom really lived up to its name - it seemed to be constructed entirely from the black rocks, including the enormous castle looming in the distance. Cassandra never thought that the sight of a bunch of these dreaded stones could be so mesmerizing.
The rest of the team seemed to share her amazement. They all quietly exited the caravan to come closer to the edge of the cliff and admire the view below.
“We made it,” Rapunzel was the one to finally break the silence, her voice full of awe. “The Dark Kingdom.”
“Yep! We just need a way to get the old camper down there,” Eugene said with a smile, somewhat breaking the immersion.
Of course, it was the exact moment when their camper decided to roll out the other side of the cliff and fall to its doom. Cass inwardly rolled her eyes. At this point, she wasn’t even surprised by this kind of thing anymore.
They all ran after the caravan, as if it could somehow stop its fall, but before they could reach it, it was already lying at the bottom, shattered to pieces.
“No! Not again!” Eugene lamented.
Cassandra barely noticed some silly little banter between Lance and Shorty. Her attention focused on Rapunzel, who was now glancing in the direction of the Dark Kingdom, looking uncharacteristically hesitant, maybe even concerned.
“Your destiny awaits, Princess,” Cassandra said quietly, staying by her friend’s side.
She didn't believe in destiny, not really, but she knew that Rapunzel very much did. This perceived destiny was the thing that motivated the Princess throughout the entirety of their journey. If it mattered so much to her, Cassandra was going to support her in her search for it, no matter what.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Eugene asked gently, joining them.
“I just wish I knew what this is,” Rapunzel confessed, distressed. “I mean, Demanitus said if I don't grab the Moonstone the black rocks will destroy everything, but I have no idea what to expect to happen to me when I do.”
Cassandra thought about this for the past few weeks, too. She already could see Rapunzel holding the magic of both the Sundrop and the Moonstone in her hands, possessing their presumably limitless power. She could understand why Rapunzel was afraid to hold so much force - probably way more than any person before ever had.
She had to suppress an exasperated sigh. While Rapunzel’s biggest concern was becoming too powerful to handle it, Cassandra was still waiting in the shadows, acting merely as the silent support of the person who was always the shining star. Still, she was desperate to stand by Rapunzel’s side, watching her achieving what she assumed to be her destiny - and patiently waiting for her own moment to finally shine.
“I don't know, but whatever happens, you won't be facing it alone,” Cass assured her, chasing away the intrusive thoughts. “We’ll be with you all along the way, as always.”
“Dragon Lady is right,” Eugene added, putting his arm around Rapunzel’s shoulders. “It's now or never, and we’ll face it head on, together. We’ve got this.”
“We’ve somehow managed to make it this far, right?” Rapunzel joined in with a smile, apparently reassured by their support. “With you by my side, I can do anything.”
And with that, they all started to climb down the cliff, towards the Dark Kingdom. They still couldn't be sure what the future would hold for them, but for now, they felt like they could achieve anything, as long as they were together.
Few hours later, after a brief break they took to eat something and catch their breaths, they continued their journey through the forests surrounding the Dark Kingdom. Rapunzel and Eugene took the lead, and Cassandra and Lance were walking just a few steps behind them, close enough to hear their conversation pretty well.
At first, Cass wasn't paying the two lovebirds any special attention. She focused on talking with Lance, who was trying to show off by doing tricks with an elastic string. For lack of better things to be doing at the moment, Cass decided to entertain his game - and show him how much better at it she is.
“No one is gonna turn against me,” Rapunzel sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than Eugene. She was talking loudly enough that Cass couldn’t help but overhear, and her words were alarming enough that she decided she needed to know what her friend was on about. She squinted and gestured for Lance to be quiet. When he gave her an offended look, she briefly gestured to the couple. “Demanitus has to be wrong. Everyone’s had my back this far. They're not gonna stop now.”
“Unless they think they're protecting you,” Eugene protested, looking genuinely concerned. “After all, that's how Cass injured her hand.”
Cassandra grit her teeth. If Fitzherbjerk really suspected her of treacherous tendencies, he was extremely stupid to announce it in her presence like that. Just like Rapunzel, he didn't even try to lower his voice.
The Princess casted a brief glance in Cassandra’s direction. Cass focused her eyes at the string she was still holding in her hands, hoping that Rapunzel didn't notice that she was listening to what they were saying.
“You don't think that Cass…” she asked quietly. Disbelief in her voice did bring Cassandra a little bit of comfort, but it still stung that Rapunzel was considering such a possibility in the first place.
“Look, look, look, I love Cass,” Eugene said defensively. Cassandra rolled her eyes. Of course he did. “She's become like a sister to me. Granted, you know, an annoying sister you only put up with because you have to, but maybe we should, you know, keep an eye on…”
Cassandra was one stupid word away from snapping at him. Keep an eye on what, exactly? The only person with enough common sense to really care about the dangers their stupidity was constantly putting them in? The one who’s had their backs all this time, even though any other rational person would consider all of them completely hopeless a long time ago? That's who he wanted to keep an eye on?!
But before Cass could say anything, Eugene was interrupted by a raven colliding with his face at full speed.
Cassandra smirked. She never believed in karma, but if it existed, it seemed to be it.
“What is that bird doing?” Eugene stammered, looking at the disoriented raven walking aimlessly around his legs.
Cassandra, however, had bigger worries at the moment. She was the first who heard the sound of multiple birds cawing nearby. When she looked up at the sky she was met with the sight of a large flock of angry ravens coming straight at them, seemingly much more focused and determined than their friend, which was still stumbling around Eugene’s feet.
“Uh, maybe you should try asking his friends,” she said, gesturing towards the upcoming danger.
The following battle against the surprisingly aggressive flock of birds was as annoying as it was short. The entire ordeal ended with Rapunzel catching all the birds in her hair, shaking them up a little and sending them back to the Dark Kingdom. Cassandra would be lying if she said that she didn't get any satisfaction from the fact that Eugene got accidentally caught up in Rapunzel’s hair as well. She felt like he deserved to be trapped with a bunch of angry birds for how he doubted her.
“Wonderful, even the birds in this Kingdom are hostile!” he grumbled, struggling to get back on his feet.
“It's gonna take a lot more than a bunch of birds to stop us!” Rapunzel announced with unwavering confidence. “Um, something like this, for example,” she added nervously, looking at the deep, wide chasm filled with black rocks that was separating them from the Dark Kingdom.
“Anybody have any idea how we get across this thing?” Eugene asked, gesturing towards this unexpected obstacle, clearly exasperated.
As they split up to search for any possible ways to get across, Cassandra did her best to get away from the rest of their company before anyone could stop her. She tried to ignore Lance’s worried glance and Eugene’s untrusting eyes subtly watching her every move. She even sent Owl away to search for a solution on his own. She needed to be alone, and she needed it now.
Cassandra wandered alongside the edge of the chasm, lost in her thoughts, for a long time. She knew she was supposed to be looking for means to get on the other side of the bottomless pit and to the Dark Kingdom, but the conversation between Rapunzel and Eugene she just overheard didn’t let her really focus on the task at hand.
She couldn’t believe that both of the people she considered to be her best friends suspected her of planning to betray them. What did she ever do to them to warrant such a mistrust? Did they believe in whatever cryptic warning Demanitus gave them more than they believed in her loyalty?
Cass took a deep breath. She knew the answer to this question. After all, Demanitus wasn’t the first suspicious intruder that Rapunzel decided to value so much higher than she ever valued Cassandra. The journey to the Dark Kingdom was a difficult test for her relationship with Rapunzel, the test she felt like she was failing from the very first days on the road.
Cassandra was suspicious of Adira and her intentions from the very beginning. She told Rapunzel that this stranger couldn’t be trusted. Adira obviously knew a lot more than she was willing to tell them, she was feeding them whatever crumbs of information she wanted, and her true intentions and goals were a mystery. Not to mention that she was a smug, annoying know-it-all who Cassandra simply couldn’t stand. Nonetheless, Rapunzel decided to let this suspicious warrior woman join their team, and soon enough, she started to value her judgment and advice way more highly than she ever valued Cassandra’s.
The entire situation escalated with Rapunzel becoming simultaneously more careless and more self-assured with every day of the journey, and Cassandra becoming more and more frustrated - with Rapunzel herself, with Adira, with the rest of their team who were always either staying silent or taking Rapunzel’s side in any given conflict, and with herself. She didn’t know if she did anything to make the Princess doubt her like this, to completely ignore all her warnings, no matter how justified they were.
All of this tension was building up for months, until it finally led to the events in the Great Tree. It was another thing that Cassandra tried to warn Rapunzel about. The Great Tree was once the stronghold of Zhan Tiri, the powerful, evil warlock who cursed Corona with a devastating blizzard, and now it was a domain of Hector, the insane man who attacked them with the help of his super-aggressive animal companions just hours before. Of course staying in there for the night was a terrible, terrible idea.
But obviously Rapunzel disregarded her advice again. Instead of at least listening to Cass’ argument, she used her authority as the Princess to order her to stand down and humiliate her in front of their friends and Adira. It was rejection more painful than anything Cassandra ever experienced before.
It still wasn’t more painful than the conversation that followed when Rapunzel was trying to make peace with her, though. Instead of listening to what Cassandra had to say, the Princess doubled down on her imperious, condescending tone.
“Since when did you stop trusting my judgement?”
“Cass, you are the closest thing that I will have to a big sister. But I’m not that naive girl fresh out of the tower anymore. I am going to be Queen someday and I can promise you, I’m going to make decisions that you’re going to disagree with, and I need you to be okay with that.”
It didn’t take long for Rapunzel to make another reckless, dangerous decision that Cassandra very much disagreed with. Instead of allowing her to try and defeat the Great Tree with the spear, the Princess decided to use the decay spell again. The same spell that was draining life from everything and everyone it made concat with. The same spell Rapunzel knew she had no control over. She really decided that it was safer to use this spell than to trust that Cass could save the day herself for once.
Rapunzel went away from this confrontation unharmed, but Cassandra suffered serious injury when she was trying to break the Princess out of the trance that she willingly got herself into. The curse burned Cass’ hand so deeply that she wasn’t able to even hold the sword for days after the incident, and later she had to re-learn to use her hand entirely. Even though she was doing a bit better now, her hand was still pitifully weak in comparison to her earlier strength and agility. She still felt occasional pangs of intense pain when she least expected it, and she couldn’t even look at her blackened, burnt body without getting slightly sick.
Rapunzel, of course, never apologized for injuring Cass like that. She didn’t even acknowledge that she did anything wrong at all.
“I’m mad at you, too. I told you that I had it under control and you didn’t listen,” she said.
Which was an interesting point, considering that Cassandra remembered exactly what happened in the Great Tree. After casting the decay incantation, Rapunzel was just standing there, her black hair tangled around the dying heart of the Tree, and she kept reciting the lyrics of this horrible spell over and over again, even though every member of their team was already free from Tree’s vines. When Cass was trying to urge her to let go, the Princess couldn’t break the curse’s influence. Her distraught voice was still haunting Cassandra’s nightmares.
“I can’t control it!”
Obviously, Rapunzel learned nothing from the entire ordeal. Not so long after that, she decided that it would be an amazing idea to spend the night in the House of Yesterday’s Tomorrow. Once again, she didn’t even take the time to consider what Cass had to say on the matter, and neither did the rest of their friends.
As a result, just hours into their stay in this demonic death trap Cassandra, Eugene, Lance and Shorty ended up imprisoned inside of some cursed, black and white mirror dimension, replaced by the evil doppelgangers in the real world.
“I said we shouldn’t come to this place, but did anyone listen? No…”
“No, we did not. But in our defense, we never listen to you.”
Eugene was right. As painful and infuriating as it was, they indeed never listened to her. They also kept getting into bigger and bigger trouble because of it, but that was a correlation they didn’t seem to notice at all.
Cass’ thoughts wandered to another thing that happened in the House of Yesterday’s Tomorrow. She was trying her hardest to forget what she saw behind this cursed door, about the things this little demonic ghost she met there forced her to recall, and about the advice it gave her. She was doing a pretty decent job at distracting herself from all of that up until now. But now, when she finally focused on her pain and anger, she couldn’t suppress these memories any longer.
“I’m sorry that happened to you, Cassandra. Sometimes the most painful truths are the most difficult to remember. You’ve always felt outshined by Rapunzel, haven’t you? And you always will, unless…”
“Unless?”
“Unless you finally take your destiny into your own hands. Rapunzel believes taking the Moonstone to be her own destiny, and she took everything from you. Don’t you think it’s a perfect opportunity to finally leave her shadow once and for all?”
Back then, Cassandra was too devastated and furious to argue with the suspicious little ghost. She indeed did always feel outshined by Rapunzel, and at the moment, it really felt like the Princess took everything from her.
After Rapunzel returned to Corona, Cassandra was immediately made her lady-in-waiting by the royal couple, even though she hoped that they could finally fulfill her life-long dream of joining the Royal Guard. Not long after that, she had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join Ingvarr’s military. Rapunzel basically guilt tripped her into abandoning this amazing possibility to be a real warrior in a Kingdom where women doing that sort of thing wasn’t frowned upon. Cassandra stayed in Corona as Rapunzel’s servant instead, even though they weren’t even friends back then. Some time later, Rapunzel won the Challenge of the Brave on technicality, even though Cass was obviously more skilled from the two of them. When Cass was trying to prove to her dad and to the King that she was worthy of being a soldier, Rapunzel nearly ruined her efforts to protect the Book of Hearts and arrest this Saporian separatist. And, above all, Cassandra almost got sent to a convent because she wanted to show Rapunzel the world beyond the castle walls and have a little adventure together, just for one night.
It seemed like since Rapunzel appeared in Cassandra’s life, it was just one humiliating failure after another. Even more than it was before, that is.
During their journey things only got worse for Cass. Rapunzel not only was ignoring her warnings and advice, she insisted that she didn’t need Cassandra’s protection at all. She didn’t seem to either understand or care that she could as well straight up call Cass useless. And now, it turned out even Cassandra’s own mother abandoned her because of the precious little Sundrop Princess.
Despite all of that, Cassandra was always loyal to Rapunzel. She did everything in her power to protect her best friend both from outside dangers and from her own reckless decisions. She risked her own safety and sacrificed her ambitions for Rapunzel’s sake, because she felt like this was the right thing to do.
Even after everything Cassandra gave up for her, Rapunzel didn’t seem to value her at all. She didn’t hesitate to publicly humiliate her, she ignored her advice again and again, she kept getting them all into dangerous situations, and she was trusting random strangers with suspicious intentions way more than she ever trusted her so-called best friend.
Maybe taking the Moonstone was the opportunity to finally leave Rapunzel’s shadow.
Cassandra shook her head, trying to get rid of this thought. No. She wasn’t going to betray Rapunzel like that. She will not prove Demanitus and Eugene right. She didn’t come that far to fail in the most important moment.
She had some time to think about everything, and she knew for a fact that the spirit from the House of Yesterday’s Tomorrow, whatever or whoever it was, was trying to manipulate her.
Obviously, the knowledge that even Cassandra’s own mother chose Rapunzel over her was painful. More painful that Cass could even express, in fact. At the beginning it was almost enough to make her consider betraying Rapunzel and taking the Moonstone for herself. Her mother was everything she had as a four-year-old child, and the Princess took that from her, too. Maybe taking her destiny, which she was so fixated on, was the only way to get even.
But when Cass shook off the first wave of grief and anger, the common sense came back to her. How could she blame Rapunzel, who was an infant at the time, for stealing her mother from her? Gothel was an adult - ancient, in fact - woman, and she made her own despicable choices. She decided to kidnap the Princess of Corona for her Sundrop powers, and she didn’t hesitate to abandon her own daughter in the process. Both Cassandra and Rapunzel were the victims of this woman’s cruelty.
Not to mention that Cass heard enough of Rapunzel’s stories to know that she was kind of lucky not to be raised by Gothel all of her childhood. Her life in Corona wasn’t perfect by any means, of course. The constant threat of being sent to a convent, being forced into a role of a servant even though everyone knew about her ambition and abilities, being rejected by most of the people for not fitting into the definition of a lady, not to mention her father lying to her about her parentage her whole life - all of it was incredibly painful, and she knew that she would have to address this at some point in the future. But at least she was allowed to be outside and train to become a warrior instead of cleaning the cottage and cooking meals every day. In the last few weeks she remembered enough of her early days in Gothel’s home to know that this wasn’t a life she ever wished to lead.
She was certain she couldn’t trust anything that she encountered in the House of Yesterday’s Tomorrow. She didn’t know why this strange creature that introduced herself as a “friend” wanted her to betray Rapunzel and take the Moonstone so much, but she was convinced that its intentions were sinister. She wasn’t going to play into whatever plan it had for her.
“Hoo?” The concerned sound pulled her out of her thoughts.
Cassandra looked up. Owl was sitting on the bench of the nearby tree, looking at her with worried eyes. Cass knew her friend well enough to know exactly what he had in mind. He really cared about her - not only if she will bring herself to do the right thing despite everything, but also how she was coping with yet another pain caused by Rapunzel.
Cass managed a small, hesitant smile. It was good to have at least one friend who cared about her wellbeing more than about Rapunzel’s destiny.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him, though it didn’t sound convincing even to herself. “We’ve got this.”