Chapter Text
“Like other celestial bodies without internal light sources, the Moon acts as a cosmic mirror, catching the Sun’s rays and redirecting a portion back.”
-What Makes the Moon Bright? The Science of Lunar Illumination
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During her childhood, a brief education before being enrolled into a handmaid’s duties, Cassandra was once taught that the moon only shines as bright as it does because it reflects sunlight. It produces no light of its own. It’s a rock, and if it were removed from the orbit of the sun it would simply hang in space, dull and alone.
It makes sense, a sick joke told by the cosmos; even in the height of her destiny she was playing second fiddle to Rapunzel. For a brief moment the scale was tipped, when she had reached for the sundrop and held on with both hands. Just for a second she was the one holding innate power, the one who wielded it without the sacrifice of muscle mass and sleep and other earthly things.
Then Zhan Tiri struck, and destiny was ripped away from her.
It’s funny how all hatred was torn out alongside it.
This is something which she spends a lot of time ruminating on in the days that follow the eclipse. Time moves strangely; she lays in her old room like a corpse awaiting burial, numb to everything that goes on around her. Medics dip in and out of her room, all with stony expressions, testing her reflexes, examining her body. When they had chiseled her out of the rock armour, no longer holding its unbreakable properties, it had been a quiet pain. The rock had been holding together body mass which had rapidly wasted away over the months she had been bound to the celestial stone. Without that layer walling her into her body, she realised for the first time how truly weak she had become.
The person she was before grabbing the moonstone would have fought tooth and nail to avoid prying eyes and probing hands. The person she is now simply lay back and let it happen, staring up at the ceiling and screaming for herself to feel something.
Rapunzel had wanted to accompany her, but with an entire kingdom in disarray, she and Eugene had their hands full. It’s just as well; Cass doesn't think she can take any more kindness right now.
It’s funny, though. In Rapunzel’s presence, she had been able to smile; crack jokes; hold onto her warm body and feel her heart thrumming back to life. The moment Raps walked away the hollow feeling the moonstone left in its wake returned with full force, and she’s been numb ever since.
Like the moon without the sun, Cassandra is empty and alone.
…
Varian visits two days later. The examinations carried out by the palace physicians had concluded vaguely, mystical side effects being outside of their expertise. So in marches Varian, determined to draw his own conclusions, with a clinical professionalism that feels unnatural on his soft, anxious features. Numb as she is, she recalls that he used to smile more than this.
“We have some serious work cut out for us if we’re going to get to the bottom of all this,” he says briskly, as though Cass is already clued in on his intentions. “Obviously I can’t run tests on the moonstone since it's gone now, but I've had a lot of time to think about this. Judging from your current condition and your movements before and after holding the moonstone, I’d wager it acted as some sort of a parasitic force on your body. Your weight is down, your complexion is extremely pale and gaunt… have you lost any teeth?”
“No,” she breathes out. She tries to keep her focus on him, but it’s hard when all of her senses feel dampened, as though she is experiencing this conversation underwater. “My teeth are fine.”
“Well, good. Scurvy can be ruled out, then, although I still think a diet rich in protein and citrus fruits will help speed up your recovery. Did you eat at all in the time you held the moonstone?”
“In the first week. Just out of habit. Then the ghost - Zhan Tiri…” She finally feels something - immense stupidity at how naive she was - and grits her teeth. “She told me there was no need. That the moonstone would carry me.”
“A bit of a snake oil salesman, that Zhan Tiri, huh?” Varian tries for a dry joke, but she can’t smile back. There isn’t anything funny about it.
“I shouldn’t have trusted her on anything. Not the moonstone, not the things she showed me in the House of Yesterday’s Tomorrows. And clearly not - this.” She gestures, and as she does she catches sight of the state of her hand.
With the healing incantation Rapunzel had cast to bring her back, there had been a small improvement to the state of her hand. For a while before they reached the Dark Moon Kingdom, she was beginning to worry that her hand would continue to decay beneath the gauntlets she had donned, and had staunchly refused to look at it in case watching its condition worsen would somehow expedite the process. The skin is no longer black but several shades of pink and brown, reminiscent of burn scarring. The fingernails have grown back, although they are incredibly tough and bumpy to the touch where they used to be smooth. To her immense disappointment, her grip is weak and uncoordinated. All of the strength training she did following the injury has been undone.
Varian doesn’t feed her any false platitudes. He regards her with something suspiciously close to pity, which somehow stings worse than outright contempt.
“No, you shouldn't have,” he agrees, leaning forward and resting his chin on his fist. “But it’s a little late for that now. And you aren’t the first person she’s manipulated.”
No, but she sure as shit is the one who was played the longest. It took embarrassingly long to train and plan and attack and defend and antagonise and ruminate and resent - all without once twigging that she was a puppet whose strings were being pulled.
“Anyway,” Varian steers on, as Cassandra stares up at the ceiling once more, “so you didn’t eat. Did you drink?”
“Not really.”
“Sleep?”
“No.”
He clears his throat. “How about, uh, urination? Bowel movements?”
She doesn’t even flinch.
“Nothing.”
“Ooookay then, we’ll make sure to include some fiber as well.” He jots this information down as he goes into a small leather notebook.
“How about, uh, men… menst- uh, hmm.” He clears his throat again, and her gaze finally flits over to him. The tips of his ears are reddening and she realises that this professionalism truly is a show. For whose benefit, she isn’t sure, but she’s reminded that beneath all of this he’s still a teenage boy, and apparently discussion of her menses is what has finally caused him to falter.
“Not since I took on the moonstone,” she tells him before he tries again. It’s a small bone to throw, but the relief washing over his features is as plain as day.
“Thanks. Okay, noted.” Another scribble in his book. His eyes scan over her, taking in all that is left. “Do you mind if I take samples? Just in case there’s any moon magic left over that I can analyse back at my lab?”
Cassandra gives the tiniest of shrugs.
For the next ten minutes he plucks strands from her hair, clips a fingernail, swabs her nostrils, pricks her finger for blood and has her spit into a small glass vial, all which are quickly contained and placed in his worn satchel. She can’t imagine any of it will bear fruitful results, but she doesn’t fight it. All the while he asks after hair fall, lightheadedness, nausea, acne, joint and muscle pain, bone brittleness. By this time, if she weren’t still in this post-resurrection haze, she would be getting pissed at the barrage of questions. She just… can't find it in her to react.
Nothing matters anymore.
“Any numbness?” he asks.
Finally, a question she can answer in the affirmative.
“Yes,” her voice comes out small and reedy, and now it’s her turn to clear her throat. Varian’s eyes meet hers.
“Okay. Where, exactly? Perhaps the moonstone caused nerve damage, or atrophy, or circulation issues, or…”
Cass shakes her head.
“Not in my body. In my…” She swallows. “In my soul.”
Varian pauses, quill pressing hard into the paper, and he regards her again.
“Your soul?”
There’s an edge to his voice, and she briefly remembers that this is Varian, the kid who abhors anything unscientific. If she’d said heart, he would have assumed something physical. She supposes it could be - the longer they watch each other, the tighter her chest feels. If she’d said her mind, though, that might be all he needed to declare her melancholic, or hysterical, and make the one arrangement that she’s always dreaded. Spending time hidden away in a convent won’t fix this, she knows that much.
“Yes, my soul,” she croaks, forcing herself upright. Her arms tremble slightly but she pushes through it. Her fingers tangle into the tunic she’s been redressed in, knotting themselves in taupe linen above the spot where the moonstone had once nested in her breast. “I felt everything in such extremes when the moonstone was connected to me. Rage or anguish or horror or joy… nothing was ever balanced. But now it’s gone…”
Even now, it feels like there’s a panel of glass between the two of them, as unbreakable as the black rocks had been. She can see Varian’s features marred with concern, she can hear the comforting lilt of his voice as he says something, clear and concise and yet her mind just can’t process it.
“I don’t feel like myself anymore,” she whispers. “Or anyone. I just feel…”
Dead.
Perhaps she should have stayed down after her head slammed into the castle wall. Perhaps if Rapunzel hadn't revived her they could have closed the chapter on this sad tale once and for all.
Like I’m nothing.
She could be covered in a white sheet right now, stowed away in the kingdom’s morgue until someone dug her an unmarked grave.
Like I’m not even here.
She could be buried quietly, with nobody weeping for her, and promptly forgotten as a casualty of the invasion. The world could let go of her memory, and she could be gone, and then this numbness wouldn’t ache so badly–
“Cass.”
A strong hand grips hers, and she startles. The glass is gone. Varian’s anxious face swims into view, and she lets out a ragged exhale. Cassandra’s ears ring a little, as though she has been swimming and the water has finally trickled out.
“I know I should have died,” she blurts out, suddenly her voice all too loud in the emptiness of the room. “When my head hit the wall - when I stopped eating and sleeping - one way or another I should be gone. The moonstone kept me going out of spite, but the sundrop…”
The sundrop - or rather, the woman who wielded it - was always the driving force. It brought her back from death. Its existence empowered her to keep pursuing Rapunzel again and again. Its existence was the reason Rapunzel was able to smile at her every day and cry with her and hold her and remind her that there was still a splinter of something good, something incorruptible within her soul.
“The moment that the moonstone left my body, this haze of anger and pain lifted. It left me feeling so flat, and the only thing that was able to bring me back into focus was Rapunzel.” It feels horrible to speak these words aloud, to lay herself bare like this and hope that Varian may somehow understand. “Because of her, I was able to help stop Zhan Tiri. But as soon as she left my side, that numbness came right back. And I don’t know how to snap out of it this time.”
Varian exhales. “Cass, I… I don’t know what to say.”
“You said that the moonstone was parasitic,” she hears herself say, reaching up to loosen the lacing at the front of her shirt. “It preyed on my body mass and my temperament and made me dependent on its power to sustain myself.”
“It certainly seems that way,” Varian agrees. His expression wavers in confusion as she loosens the shirt further. “Cass, what are you-”
“It clearly fueled those volatile emotions in me,” she continues, “but do you think it ate through my soul in the process? Do you think that it might have taken more than I could afford to give?”
His mouth opens and closes, words failing as she drags the neck of the loosened shirt down past her collarbone and sweeping it along her sternum. But then his eyes land on what she intends to show him, and the silence becomes one of abject horror.
The crater in her flesh left behind by the moonstone reminds Cass of how larvae burrow themselves to feed off of livestock, but the healing incantation almost appears to have cauterised it. It holds a similar appearance to the burns left behind on her hand, but with the addition of broken capillaries. They flower outwards from the point of entry like a spider’s web and snake across her sternum and down the slope of her left breast. The vines in the Great Tree spring to mind as she stares down at it.
“Jesus, Cass,” Varian gasps. His hand lifts out as though to touch the mass of scarring, before he thinks better of it and allows it to simply fall onto the open notebook in his lap. He gnaws on his bottom lip, expression pinched with worry. “I didn’t realise that the moonstone did that to you.”
“I did this to me,” she corrects, trying to take some of the responsibility back in the face of yet more pity. Her voice falters, though, and she hurriedly slips the shirt back up and begins to refasten it until the laces pull taut. Putting a shield between the world and her wound comforts her, as though she is putting an unpleasant dress back in her closet never to be touched again. “I’m only showing you this because I need you to know that this isn’t just in my head. This feeling of all emotions being torn away from me… it happened. And now…” She blinks rapidly and exhales through her nose, still clutching the area of shirt resting over the entry point. “Now I don't know how to reverse the damage.”
From the look of amazement and distress plastered across Varian’s face, she's guessing that he's just as clueless.
“I don't know if scarring like that will ever truly go away,” he says gently, a forlorn grimace tugging at the corners of his mouth. “The same with your hand. It looks as though damage caused by magic is far more difficult to reverse, even with the healing incantation.”
“Of course.” Her heart thuds and she leans back against the headrest, biting the inside of her cheek hard enough that she tastes a swirl of blood on her tongue. Of course. Of course magic leaves far more permanent scars. What does that mean for the rest of her body, then? The muscles that are weak, the body fat that has been shed, the void in her heart the moment Rapunzel leaves a room?
“Talk to me, Cass,” Varian encourages. “Help me understand.”
It's difficult to break it down further than this. The concept just feels so abstract. If it wasn't already happening to her, Cassandra isn't sure she'd believe it either.
“When Rapunzel broke through to me after the moonstone was taken… there was a small part of me that thought maybe I wasn't too far gone. Somehow there was still hope.” Cassandra squeezes her eyes shut and rests her forehead against clasped hands. In the darkness behind her eyelids, she can picture the way Raps had smiled at her - all teeth and soft lips and freckles and dewy eyes and long brown hair… Her light was so contagious it actually made Cass believe in a better world, if only briefly.
“I think the only reason I felt anything back then was because there was still traces of cosmic power left in both of us. I think somehow I was still feeling her light. I can't feel anything when she's not here.”
She hears the sound of quill scratching on paper, then a small sigh.
“Maybe there isn't anything supernatural about this at all?” he tentatively asks. “I mean, you care for Rapunzel despite everything, clear as day.”
Of course he would try to rationalise this with sentimentality and love.
“This isn't like that,” Cass grits out. “I mean… it's so much more than that. If it was just missing her I’d be able to deal with that, no matter the state of my head. I can’t focus, I can’t process, I can’t feel. I don’t feel like I’m me, or that I’m here in my bed, or that you’re here and I’m talking to you, it all just feels… empty.”
She realises, dully, that she truly has become the same cosmic mirror as the moon, only able to produce something of her own when the light of the sun - of Rapunzel - is near enough to touch.
She can only mimic it, and hope that it will someday return to her.
“I think I need her light,” whispers Cassandra.
“You listen to me, Cass,” Varian bleats, and the edge to his voice is back in full force. She nods, eyes still closed, but he reaches for her shoulders and squeezes. Dragging her head upright, she tries to take in every worry line, every tremble, every scrunching of his facial features as he addresses her.
“You are your own person,” he continues, squeezing her shoulders more firmly. It hurts a little, and when it registers that there’s no gap anymore, no barrier, she swallows and nods. “Whatever you think you need Rapunzel to help you feel, you don't. Whatever you think the moonstone has broken, we can fix.”
“How?” she asks flatly. “You know as much about the moonstone’s effects as I do.”
“Sure,” sighs Varian, head bobbing with a nod, “sure, I might not know a damn thing about the moonstone itself. But I know a thing or two about failing, becoming isolated, becoming absorbed by the notions of hatred and revenge… and when Rapunzel got through to me, I didn’t feel so different.”
He breaks eye contact for a moment, staring down at his lap as he steels himself.
“I get it,” Varian follows in a small voice. “I do. When she reminds you that there’s still an ounce of something good left in you, you hold onto that like a lifeline. And when she leaves the room or turns the corner or even breaks eye contact, you catch yourself wondering if you’re still good if she’s the only one who sees it. Are we still deserving of a second chance if she’s not watching?”
The ache is back in Cassandra’s chest, and in the base of her throat, and in the backs of her eyes. The words make her nauseous, and she gulps desperately to keep something from rising like a high tide - vomit or tears or maybe something closer to a scream. She grips the bedsheets hard enough that her knuckles turn white.
“Some of this might be damage from the moonstone, that’s true,” he agrees. “The emotional blunting, the dissociation. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it did make you feel too much for too long and now you’re spent.” He looks back up at her, protruding front teeth gnawing on his bottom lip. “But Cass, I felt the same when I was at my lowest. And I found a way to claw out of that mindset. It took time, and a lot of reflection, and I’d be lying if I said I don't feel guilty most days. But it’s because of Rapunzel giving us this second wind that we have the choice to define how we feel going forward.”
His eyes bear into hers, burning fiercely.
“Rapunzel isn’t the only one who sees your light, you know?”
Cass exhales, but it comes out as a hoarse cry. The dam breaks with his words, tears in her eyes finally spilling over. The sudden wave of grief that slams into her makes her gasp out again, a lurching sound that reminds her of a dying animal. She hangs there in the bed, still being pinned in place by Varian’s hands, and she can distinctly feel the firmness with which he holds her there. A tether. A tether.
“I… ugh, I didn’t mean to, uh…” She sniffles and shakes his hands free, wiping at her eyes uselessly.
“No, don’t try to hold it back. I mean, isn’t it a good thing that you’re reacting this way?” His voice takes on a hopeful note. “The catharsis from crying might really benefit you.”
Cass doesn’t reply. She half expects him to hold out a vial and ask for her to weep into it, but mercifully he stays right where he is, though the grip on her arms has softened. Eventually the hands slip away, returning to his notes.
“I'm going to brew something for you,” Varian promises. He scribbles something new in his notebook. “Borage oil for sure. Perhaps some St.John’s Wort. I'll need to go to an apothecary in town and figure out what combination will work best for your blunting, but we will handle this. I mean, clearly you still have plenty of emotion left over. Despite everything, it looks like the moonstone didn’t completely tap you out, right?”
The tears don’t show any sign of stopping; every time she thinks they’re through, a new wave of grief rolls over and the cycle begins again. He’s right, though. Up until his affirmation, with far too much confidence in her, Cassandra had truly believed there was nothing left. Perhaps the moonstone left her with only negativity laying in its wake, not just the crushing numbness. Or perhaps she hasn’t slept properly in almost a year, and she’s at her limit.
“You really think a tonic will balance me out?” she asks with a wet cough, once again trying to dry her eyes on the sleeve of her tunic.
“With the right combination? Absolutely. We can try bloodletting too if you’d like. I know it’s starting to fall out of favour but the physicians in Old Corona still swear by it, so if it would put your mind at ease…”
Varian rattles off a list of potential treatments - salves, tonics, heroic treatments, leeches to name a few - sounding more enthusiastic by the word. Cassandra watches him as best she can through eyes that refuse to stop watering, and figures that if there is more than one person in this world who would go through all of this trouble for her, maybe she isn’t so dull alone after all.
With a helping hand or two, maybe she can make her own light.