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Varian is used to the silence, and the cold. Cold, still, breathless, free silence, cocooning him in a blanket of surety and blustering against the goosebumps on his skin. He doesn’t feel much of anything…even with the fate of the world curled and crinkled between his fingers, the wispy hair sticking to and tickling his neck, the only thing preventing him from falling into the endless abyss of a distant and dismal world below being a mere few inches of equally cold, dark black rock. It meticulously encloses around him like a fist, and he presses a cautious hand against it, feeling his heart somersault in its own cage, refusing to give up as he had and clamoring relentlessly for him to do something, anything but wait. There is nothing but uncertainty, cold and chasmic and quiet, and with every minute the sun sinks further down the sky, illuminating with its weakening rays a horizon devoid of the people who were supposed to be here, who were supposed to be coming to rescue him.
He blinks back an unwarranted surge of tears, clenching his jaw in resolve. No, they would come. They would. They had to, right? If not for him, then at least for the scroll…the scroll he had just burnt.
Suddenly, a loud voice booms across the precipice, startling him abruptly out of his reverie.
“Moon witch!” It is powerful, it is certain, it is…
Varian’s heart briskly stammers, wilting and leaping into his throat as his mind scrambles for purchase. Dad…?
“Ah, a member of the esteemed Brotherhood.” He hears the echoes of Cassandra's cackles bouncing haphazardly off of her glass ceiling and slithering into his ears despite how far away he is, ringing and wrangling the rest of his weaning hope. “I would have preferred you show up later, when the real fun was due to begin. But I'm not one to deny guests.”
“Where is my son?”
No. The inkling of what may be about to happen suddenly settles into his mind, and Varian’s breath catches in his throat, discordant with his pounding heart. Despite having been anchored to the same place, suspended over the endless abyss, Varian has never felt so hopeless before. No, no, no. She was going to use him as leverage. She was going to hurt his dad.
Varian quickly looks down at the paper, with the incantation scribbled in his hasty yet clear handwriting. He is at an utter loss of what to do. If Cassandra manages to ask the right question, he would be giving her invaluable information and would possibly be dooming them all. However…there was no way Cassandra would know there was a fourth incantation, unless she had her doubts and tried to retrieve the scroll herself-
The scroll he had burnt.
Tears of frustration and panic begin to blur Varian’s vision of his writing. Maybe…maybe it wouldn’t hurt to memorize it, if the only other alternative was for Cassandra to somehow find the paper herself and…heaven forbid, use it against Rapunzel. Suddenly, the cage quakes, the bars trembling around him as his ears are struck with a grating sound. Jolting out of his rumination, Varian quickly folds up the paper into the smallest square he can manage and stuffs it inside his shirt, ensuring his vest was secure before hastily moving his hands away once he feels he has come into Cassandra’s field of view.
“Varian!” He hears his father’s frantic cry, and he turns his eyes only to see something he never thought he ever would:
His father- the pumpkin farmer, the man who relished in whittling away on rainy evenings, who caught young girls from apple trees and who walked old men across streets-stands fully decked out in shining metal armor, accentuating his bulky figure as he steps forward into a battle-ready stance, a large sword expertly clasped in his gloved hands and an unabashed fire ablaze in his eyes.
Varian opens his mouth, only for the claws of his cage to suddenly and momentarily unwind, quickly wrapping around his entire body in one swift and stout motion, trapping his arms against his aching torso and forecfully lifting him off of his feet, which dangle limply. The grip is inexplcicably tight and yet measured with a cold, calculating gruesomeness-only mere centimeters away from squeezing the life out of him as his heart thunders in his ears, in tandem to his father's cry of shock. Varian gasps as he feel the claws tighten almost imperceptibly yet still definitely, wincing as the cruel irony of the moment sinks in. He wonders, with a fleeting yet overwhelming sting of remorse, if this was how Cassandra had felt in the grip of his automaton.
“Let my son go!” Quirin demands, his voice a thunder above Varian’s heart, an angry streak in the sky of darkness surrounding them. Trying to quench his growing alarm, Varian stiffens the tremble in his lips.
“Dad.” He allows, and he hates that it sounds so meek and quiet and cracked from the hours he had spent screaming for Cassandra to allow him out, hates that it cannot be a soothing balm to his father’s doubtlessly, endlessly worried heart. He hates that he can’t be for his father what his father tries to be for him. He hates-he hates...“Please, Dad, don’t make her mad.”
“Yeah, shut up, Dad.” Cassandra drawls.
Varian watches a dark, deep red bloom across his father’s face the subtle way his fingers tighten around his sword handle, the way the point wavers despite his steady and practiced grip in sheer, suppressed rage.
“Don’t test me, moon witch. I’m not here to play your games.” Quirin warns, his voice barely above a whisper, a hiss, aflame with an ugly and unfamiliar fury Varian only remembers feeling in a time not long ago. "I will not ask this again. Let my son go."
Cassandra’s smirk only grows,. “No, I think he has proven to be quite useful. For now, that is.” Without sparing Varian a glance, she pats the top of his head condescendingly, keeping her cold blue eyes trained on Quirin’s fuming face. Varian winces when he feels her fingers intertwine painfully in his disheveled hair and drilling into his scalp, like the pen of fate scratching and pacing and lacerating away all over his being. “Unless you can offer something he can’t?”
The silent question lingers tentatively in the tense silence that lapses between the two warriors, only broken by a hiss of pain that escapes Varian’s lips as Cassandra rakes her fingers more forcefully through his hair. He squirms under the burning weight of her eyes, face burning with humiliation that he had to be like this in front of his father. Quirin looks between Cassandra and Varian, the first signs of suspicion and despair beginning to shine in his eyes despite how he evidently tries to mask it so under his steel gaze and unyielding grip. “What exactly would that be?”
Cassandra shrugs, not taking her eyes off of Varian. “I happen to be in the market for a set of very successful and invaluable warriors, whose skills are unmatched by anyone. And I cannot help but notice that that armor looks quite dashing on you. It sure would be…fortunate, for you and your friends to reconsider your allegiances and…I don’t know…submit to my will unquestioningly?”
Quirin’s face falls, and Varian holds his breath in anticipation. He wants to yell, to say something-yell at Dad to leave, to forget about him and go help the princess-where was the princess? Quirin’s jaw clenches. “People are going to get hurt, aren’t they?” He broaches quietly, a morose yet fleeting despair run-in through his face as he stares back at Cass, trying to gauge her intentions. “You’re going to hurt Corona. You’re going to doom the world.” He says it with renewed disbelief, eyes quizzically narrowed as they look past her at Varian’s struggling figure.
“I don’t want to hurt you or Varian-I know this isn’t your fault…yet. But it can and will be, if you insist on breaking your back and selling your son for the very princess who abandoned you both in your times of need and continues to do so.”
“And…if I do?” Quirin finally asks, gazing up worriedly and wistfully at Varian's troubled countenance. “If I do submit, will you let my son go? Will you swear that no harm will come to him, that you will keep him out of any and all trouble?”
Varian’s breath hitches. “No, Dad, you can’t!” He protests, an unbidden rush of tears threatening to spill from his eyes. The princess, he needed the princess. He needed all of this to end. My dad-my dad is in danger-Princess, I need your help-
Cassandra rolls her eyes. “It’s not my fault he keeps finding it.” She drawls, anchoring her fingers under Varian’s chin and snapping it upwards so that he now fully faces his father. “Isn’t that right, Varian?” Varian sharply sucks in a breath, trying to detach himself from the frigid tips poking into his flesh, the draft blustering in from the small opening behind him… It’s so cold…too cold…and quiet. He closes his eyes, not wanting to see the renewed fire Cassandra had sparked in his father’s.
“Don’t touch him!”
Cassandra feigns a pout, before her gaze is raised and a slow, maniac grin creeps up her lips, slithering into her cold, calculating eyes as they crawl over the writhing body of her victim. “To answer your question, I can't let him go for this specific moment. I know this may be difficult, Quirin, but I can do whatever I damn well please. I know that you'll crawl over to me anyways. What's the point of making promises I don't have to keep?” Her voice tapers off into a low, threatening hiss, the feigned kindness from it replaced crudely with scorn and impatience. “I am offering you mercy, a chance to save both yourself and your boy by allowing you in my ranks. I am doing more for you both, for us, than that wretched kingdom ever did!” She lets go of Varian and slowly walks forward, eyes locked on Quirin’s own as the man holds his ground and crouches, preparing for anything. “That kingdom, that locked your son away when he cried for help, yanked him out of his own creations in chains and starved him, deprived him to shape him into the darkness he has become. He and I are cut of the same cloth and spun from the same strings- capable, powerful beings born under the wrong starts and the wrong parents." She spits in Quirin's direction, and Varian's blood boils, gritting his teeth when he notices Quirin's shell-shocked face.
She lets go of Varian and slowly walks forward, eyes locked on Quirin’s own as the man holds his ground and crouches, preparing for anything. “You know what I am, Quirin. You’ve seen first hand what the moonstone is capable of. You know you don’t stand a chance." Smirking, she lowers her voice, an almost sickly sweet tinge coating it immediately, though not near enough to honey the bitterness of what leaves her mouth next. "You’ve failed your son before, and you’re going to fail now. Only this time, without my help, neither of you are going to make it out alive.”
A sudden, unblemished rage surges in Varian at the slight quiver of his father’s brow, the way his tongue presses against his teeth as though repressing what he had been about to say, silently downing the truths and falsehoods Cassandra threw his way. Who was Cassandra to talk? Who? She had abandoned him as well-she had led an armed offensive against him. How dare she stand there and act the savior, belittling his father and digging her heel into his efforts? “Like you were much help before!” He cries out to Cassandra, silently begging his father to look in his direction, to stand down and go back to the princess. “You were the first to turn on me! You were the first to want me arrested!” Cassandra pointedly ignores him, still advancing towards his father.
Blood boiling yet again at the prospect at being unheard, Varian tries again, his ear roaring with his voice, louder and angrier than before. He allows the familiar vexation to swaddle him, weave its way into his heaving, harsh breaths as the claws around him seem to tighten. “Don’t stand there pretending like you’ll actually give a damn now, like you wouldn’t jump at the chance to stab us in the back once again, like you wouldn't throw us away for your fucked up dreams of glory. Don’t act like you know what you’re doing any better than Rapunzel does!”
Cassandra stops short in her tracks, snapping her head towards Varian. Her eyes are wide, vanquished of the previous impatience and flooded to the brim with something uglier, an anger more rampant and ready than his own. "Would you care to repeat that again?" Varian's mind spins with the poweful surge of adrenaline, accompanied by sudden nausea as Cassandra strides forward to block his view of his father. His tongue wedges and thrusts against his teeth, demanding to answer under the serum still in his system.
"Y-Yes." Varian cannot help but grind out. "I said-"
Cassandra doesn't get to hear the rest of his answer, for she is hurled to the side and tackled by none other than Quirin himself. Varian stares in shock as his father leaps from seemingly nowhere, his sheer weight throwing Cassandra off her feet and locking her onto her back, holding her arms down with his knees as he raises his sword high above his head, eyes wide and blown with instinctive and primal determination, ready to jam it into where the moonstone is embroidered to Cassandra's heart-
-only to be abruptly thrown off as the moonstone flashes brightly, its energy sizzling and crackling from where Cassandra's fingertips curl against his leg and sprout a new wave of black rocks. Varian screams, but Quirin manages to roll away just in time for another wave to shoot upwards and coruscate violently towards and around him. Varian watches, stunned speechless as his father spins through the air, swiftly and niftily dodging and leaping and escaping each of Cassandra's bursts and lashes and flickers, while she growls and yells in frustration unleashed. The sound of the rumbling resonated through his being, the chamber shaking and crumbling and reforming, clog his senses, leaving only a faint ringing as he watches his father try to escape the cold grips of death.
Readjusting his grip, Quirin takes the one chance Cassandra is distracted and leaps towards her yet again, sword raised and arms poised as he takes his strike. In an instant, his sword shatters into shards that scatter haphazardly as though bats shying away from light, one of them grazing Quirin's cheek and sending a small trickle of blood weeping down his face.
When Quirin momentarily turns away so that the shards don't cut his eyes, Cassandra grabs his meaty arms roughly and pulls him forward, immediately sending a thick coat of black rocks encasing his arms and sweeping over the rest of his body in no less than a few seconds, the crackle of the cold and unforgiving hardness blanketing his skin and paralyzing him becoming the only thing Varian can sense. Varian's breath hitches, the memories of his father's arm being slowly engulfed by the flowering amber and his father's resigned expression as he stared back at his fate flashing through his mind's eye.
Varian struggles futilely, his arms and legs only tensing with suppressed in their cages, he needed to get out, he needed to help Dad. And yet, as the rocks crawl up to Quirin's neck, as his eyes bulge out of their sockets, as the veins in his neck throb and pop out from how he strains in a vain attempt at movement, his breath faltering and heaving in ways it shouldn't, a terrified and frustrated scream erupts from the boy. Not again. Please, not again. "Cass! Cass, no! No, please! Not him! Not him, PLEASE!"
Cassandra doesn't heed to his desperate cries, eyes narrowed in concentration and trained carefully on the man as she holds her hand steady and outstretched in front of him. "Are you going to shut your boy up, Quirin, or should I do it for you?”
Inhaling deeply to prepare himself for what he is about to do, Varian pours every ounce of hatred, frustration, anger and contempt he had spurned and spared only for himself, wheedling away at his own sanity in dark nights and dark prisons and dark rooms and dark robots crafted of cold, unfeeling steel.
"Why don't you come over here and do it yourself?" Varian yells, his throat chafed and chest inflamed with a dull ache as his heart continues to pound and thunder and wretch and roar. He had only said it to his innermost demons, to himself when he wished he could respond with anything more. "Come over here and make me shut up, you fucking coward!”
Cassandra turns to him, the cold ice of her irises glistening in the faint aura of the moonstone her heart adorned, the wisps of her hair glowing and pulsing with the neon light as her lips twitch and her rocks stop suffocating the father. Her eyes lock on Varian still, no longer holding their previous rage, crisp and crafted with a practiced control as they run over his tear-stained face, the movement of her rocks haven blown away the wayward strands of his hair so that they stuck to the sides. Finally, she spares Quirin a glance, as though deeply contemplating what she was about to do, before calmly walking up to Varian once more, her arm outstretched behind her to summon the stem of rocks holding a still-struggling Quirin in place, though his breath has calmed considerably and the bonds no longer seem as restricting.
"Varian." She begins measuredly, without a trace of emotion in her voice. "Where are your goggles?"
Varian blinks in confusion, having already braced himself for a blow or something worse. "They're in my bag." He answers automatically, looking back at his father questioningly. The man looks just as clueless.
Cassandra narrows her eyes. "Why did you take them off?" Varian blinks again, not understanding where she was going with this until his mind conjured up the answer his tongue was forced to give..."I-I needed to use them for-" oh shoot.
He immediately catches his tongue, and the first burst of pain begin seeping and catapulting their way through his being. Had he been free, he would have fallen to the grpund and writhed in the sheer agony he wrought-as though there was a fire blossoming from the tip of his tongue to the back of his throat, slithering and swiveling into his lungs and battering him for each breath he spends refusing to yield the truth. Cassandra's eyes study him for a moment, before coming forward, slowly loosening the grip around his body and sending the faint tingles of his muscles suddenly relaxing in the slightest and being allowed reprieve. It does nothing to help his dilemma, though.
"Varian." Cassandra repeats, a deadly silence befalling them. Quirin blinks in confusion, but Varian can only keep his eyes locked on the floor, trying his best to quench the bile leaping in his throat and the blur of tears skimming his vision. "You're not impressing anyone. You know there's no point in resisting it." He knows very well what she's referring to. "What were you using them for?" Cassandra's voice is clear, sharp, distant, and Varian knows he will be unable to hold back any longer.
"I was...using them to...t-translate the fourth incantation."
Cassandra's eyes widen, genuine surprise splayed over her features as she quickly examines the boy over. She stands in front of Varian, blocking his view of his father once again as she grabs his bag and flips it over, urgently wringing it for all of its contents. The books and sheets she had allowed him to bring splatter to the floor, along with his goggles, which crack from the edges at being thrown so carelessly. Her eyes then find Varian's again, a new rush of simultaneous accusation and suspicion curling in her face tightly and unyieldingly. "Varian, where the fuck is the scroll?"
Varian suppresses a sob as he forcefully clamps his teeth down on his tongue, the metallic taste of blood flooding his mouth and only rousing his nausea further. Unfortunately, his fate is sealed. "I burned it."
SMACK! Varian’s frail figure jerks dangerously as the powerful backhand swiftly snaps his head to the side and nearly off his shoulders, sending an awful sensation of prickling needles across his cheeks and lips.
A firm pair of hands grab him by the shoulders, the heel of the cold palms and the tips of the cold fingers grounding into his flesh, forcing him back to fully facing her, a stark and direct command silently burning its way into his tear-filled eyes. “What the fuck do you mean you burned it?” Cassandra hisses menacingly, her whisper the bare lick of a flame waiting to spurn.
“I-I mean…” Varian croaks, swallowing away his momentary shock adamantly and trying to steel his voice, trying to flush in moisture to his dry throat. “It caught on fire when I was translating the fourth incantation, which was written in photo-reactive ink at the back of the paper. I used my goggles to concentrate a beam of sunlight and reveal the words, but it caught on fire.”
Please don’t ask me for it. Please.
“What was that incantation for?” Cassandra demands, lifting him off the floor with her own hands and shaking him with a strength he never fathomed she could possess.
“It-ugh-” Varian chokes in utter panic, his tongue refusing his feeble attempts at control and his mind refusing him any semblance of reprieve. “-It was for the sundrop! Ok? It was for the sundrop to unlock and wield its ultimate power!”
Cassandra’s icy blue eyes widen, the aggressive urgency and unthinking ferity in her eyes disappearing behind the familiar orbs. She drops Varian, who hits the floor hard with an “oof!” And curls his knees to himself, bracing his hands against the cold floor. Her eyes continue to glower down at him, an eerily calm acceptance morphing from the fleeting flash of shock before growing and shifting through the way her brows knit together and her lips tighten in disappointment. “You were planning to sell me out, all along.” She speaks in her normal volume, her normal voice, her normal…no, this wasn’t normal. She wasn’t the normal Cassandra-not Cassie-not Cass. She isn’t…so why did he feel a pit of despair growing deep in his belly, sprouting and sizzling its way through his clamoring heart, swimming in every pulse that bounces in his ears? “You-you were going to give Rapunzel the final incantation to kill me, weren’t you?”
Varian sucks in another breath, trying to push his way to his feet while not taking his eyes off of her.
“N-no! No, Cass, I would never-I didn’t even know what it could do then.” A mutinous flush of self-righteous impatience consumes him. Why was Cassandra angry at him, and why was he even bothering to justify himself to her? What-had she expected for him to lie down and let her take over the world, threaten his home, family, and friends? “And even if I did-“ he continues, summoning the old defiance he had long since repressed despite how Cass’ eyes narrow to challenge him. “-it would be to protect Rapunzel and everyone else. You-you want to destroy Rapunzel! You want to endanger innocent people in the process!”
“I wouldn’t have! I was keeping you and other people out of it!” Cassandra insists, infuriately pointing at herself. “I told you I knew it wasn't your fault, I told you I didn't want to hurt you. Why then did you go and meddle in things you don’t understand?!”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Varian yells back exasperatedly, ignoring Quirin’s questioning, pleading glances. “You involved me by kidnapping and drugging and caging me! You almost killed my dad!”
“No, Rapunzel involved you by giving you the scroll in the first place. You involved yourself by telling me you could translate it, and giving me the means to make you talk. Your dad involved himself by walking straight into my fortress and trying to fucking kill me.” Cassandra adamantly replies, seeming to get angrier by the second. Her eyes glow a brighter blue, matching the hissing emanating from the moonstone as she towers over Varian, and Varian begins to step back cautiously, hands curled into whitened fists by his side, his father’s yells and swears and struggles going ignored.
Cassandra’s hand pushes his sore shoulder, the force of it sending him sprawling across the floor. Before he can try to get back up, thin wisps of black rock shoot up and curl around his wrists and ankles, leaving him anchored to the floor on his back.
A plethora of flashbacks hit him like a shockwave-being hauled out of the dark depths of his own automatons and shoved into the blinding light, the heavy shackles straining and weighing down on his twig-like wrists, the way they rubbed and dug noiselessly against his bone and flesh, the marks that had remained too long afterwards, marks that his father had kissed and rubbed cream after cream onto in the hopes that little by little, they would move on-he thought he could move on. He closes his eyes, trying to pace his breaths and calm himself down.
A voice above him chuckles. “Look at that, Varian. Back where you belong.”
“Varian!” His father’s voice sounds distant to his ears, a ringing in the otherwise stiff and unrelenting silence, a faint brush against his heart.
Tears clogging his vision as his muscles strain uselessly in their restraints, Varian gulps away the sob that threatens to escape. “C-Cass.” He stammers. “Cass, can’t you just use the cage?”
“If you’re going to act like a villain, I’m going to have to treat you like one.” Cassandra simply replies, a condescending and feigned patience laced in her voice as she positions her foot over his chest, pressing lightly only to allow him to familiarize himself with its weight. She leans in closer, brows furrowed, the same eerily calm smile still etched into her face. “Although, something seems to be missing.”
Something sharp and small pricks the back of his neck. Varian gasps in horror as the sudden cold meets his unprepared skin, coruscating goosebumps as his ears bluster with a loud crunching sound. It’s an unsettling discomfort, a persistent and unpleasant yet painless weight on-no, around his neck. He feels the tendrils of the black rocks shaped as fingers wrap around his throat, growing small spikes in some areas that barely graze his skin.
It was a collar.
Cassandra waves her hand, eliciting a loud protest from Quirin as she moves the rock encasing him directly behind and below her, disallowing him from looking at his own son. “Do you like it, Varian?” Cassandra whispers, crouching down and leaning in close so that she can glare a mere few inches away from his distressed eyes. “I couldn’t stop thinking of how perfectly it would suit you. After all, what’s a good dog without his collar?”
“What-what do you mean?” Varian manages to croak, terrified that at any moment, the spikes could grow further and puncture his skin.
Cassandra flicks her wrist sideways, growing the same ring of rock around Quirin’s mouth and effectively silencing him. Quirin's eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets again, small, muffled cries escaping in protest, but she doesn't spare him a single glance. “Varian, where are your friends? Where are the friends you so desperately want to protect, who you so vehemently defend, for whom you and your dad are sitting uselessly here right now?”
Varian blinks back tears of terror, the helpless twitch of his tongue refusing to relent him a moment of peace. “I-I don’t know.”
“What was that?” Cassandra demands, and she stomps down her right foot in the center of his chest. Varian gasps as the discomfort blossoms into a brief and thin wave of pain, heaving for breath, his muscles twitching and coiling agonizingly yet unable to move still. Somehow he knows this isn't the worst pain he will have to endure. Cassandra leans her weight on his chest again. “I couldn’t hear you over your pathetic sniveling. And to think you were just trying to show me how much you’d grown up.”
“I don’t know.” Varian repeats louder and clearer, his voice thick with unshed tears and breathlessness.
“You don’t know.” Cassandra echoes in affirmation, eyes gazing up at the ceiling before turning to her right shoulder. After a moment of eerie silence, she smiles unsettlingly. “How strange you are, Varian. The only person who gives a damn about you is the father you tried to kill.”
A cold, empty shock courses nauseatingly through Varian’s veins, only for the sensation to be torn away by the sudden feeling of spikes digging into his back. He tries to speak, tries to cry out, before-
“AGH!” Varian shrieks when he feels a sharp pang shoot up the space behind his shoulder to the center of his back, trying to arch his body when he feels the blood begin to pool from the puncture wound. It’s not deep enough to be fatal, but agonizing enough to make him whimper and squirm in restraints, which seem to pull harder at his arms and legs, sliding with the floor and pulling at the burning opening in his back, forcing it to stretch and bleed more.
“You have no one to blame for this situation but yourselves and Rapunzel, and yet you continue to lick her feet and crawl back to her, insisting that she’s your friend, that she deserves to live, after all she's done to both of us." Cassandra grinds out, placing her foot on the center of his stomach this time. "You lecture me about changing, thinking someone like you can ever be anything more in my eyes than a bad example, acting like I should be assured when I look at what’s left of you after all that’s happened. You have the gall to preach to me about change when you haven’t changed yourself.” She emphasizes each word with another press of the foot as Varian's stomach twists and lurches, the terror and helplessness coaxing more tears to his eyes. He tries to turn his face away, tries not to show his father and Cassandra his moment of weakness, but gosh-it's so terribly hard-with the gaping holes in his back and the foot on his body and the collar sitting heavily around his neck.
“I-I have.” Varian tries to say steadily. The sinking pit in his stomach won’t stop burrowing his weaning hope for all he was worth, won’t stop drilling into his frantic mind for assurance or answers or something to console himself… “I have changed. I’ve grown for the better.”
“Have you?” Cassandra asks patronizingly, feigning surprise and beckoning him to speak more as she takes away her foot and decides to crunch it onto his hand instead. Varian winces as the sting in his hand intensifies the longer they remain under Cassandra's merciless weight, but inhales through his nose and answers her nevertheless
“Yes.” Varian insists, less out of obligation to the truth serum and more to himself. “I have. And Rapunzel has too. We’ve made amends…whatever problem we had with each other has been resolved.” When he realizes Cassandra smirking at him, he frowns, trying to ignore the sudden light-headedness he feels. “It’s the truth.”
“No, nothing has been resolved.” Cassandra replies instead, extending her arm into a make-shift sword and tracing light circles onto Varian’s palm, ignoring how he tries to clasp it close and poking it threateningly against his skin. She stares at where the tip presses into Varian in thought. “That’s something that you want to believe. And that’s the only truth you allow yourself to know. It hasn’t been resolved. You’ve just shoved it aside, forgotten it, deluded yourself into thinking that you’re moving past it all so well-what with your fancy new clothes, your upgraded lab, even your slightly-more attentive dad.” She waves a hand in Quirin’s direction. “You sit there and preach me about how deluded I am, while you’re living in a delusion right now, what with this talk of growing up and being better. Although…” Cassandra pauses tilts her head in thought, examining him with distasteful scorn. “-you certainly did grow up. Just not better.”
Varian tries to glare at her questioningly through the wayward strands of hair obscuring his vision. “Did Rapunzel own up to abandoning you in your time of need? For pulling you along this insane mission in the first place? For making you keep secrets from your own family?” Quirin’s brows furrow in confusion, his frantic eyes searching Varian’s own. Though Varian had told his father of his fall to villainy, he hadn’t told him about Rapunzel’s involvement in the first place.
“N-no.” Varian allows numbly, his mind whirring as it tries to keep up with Cassandra’s accusations and interrogation.
“Did she even apologize?” Varian feels the burning weight of his father’s and Cassandra’s expecting eyes on him, the shame and mortification and despair returning and multiplying tenfold as the silent woes of his heart fight and scathe their way through his collared throat and parched mouth, rolling off of his tongue shamelessly. The world mocks him, Cassandra mocks him, hell-Dad must be mocking him too. Here he lies, defending and apologizing for things he barely knew of himself, convincing himself that he deserved friendship, or love, or any kindness offered in his direction.
“No.”
As the realization begins to stem itself into his gut and etch itself across his disheartened doubts, Varian feels like a fool. Perhaps that’s why they befriended him. They took pity on him, saw that he was more than willing to let them use him. Had-had they-?
“Look around you, Varian.” Cassandra outstretches her hands, never breaking eye contact with Varian’s tear-filled orbs. “If Rapunzel has really grown as you said, why is she again leaving you and your father in your time of need? Why is she still pulling you into dangerous secrets and business and letting you pay the price? Why is she still putting her responsibilities on your shoulders?”
“Because-because I want to. I want to make it up to her. I want to help-I want to feel wanted. I want-” His choked voice is cut off by another sharp slap, and he muffles a cry as the taste of blood floods his mouth again, the bruise on his cheekbone throbbing into his flesh. His face burns with humiliation, his eyes burn with tears, his hand with agony and heart with shattered hope ingrained to its ledges, steaming and persevering in where they sever across the distant memories of his friends smiling at him-memories of his first, new friends, who seemed to actually want to want to him. And he...he had wanted that. He had wanted that so badly -when would this end?
Then, a mocking howl of laughter, whistling and whipping his already battered heart. “Are you listening to this, Quirin? He's still keeping a few secrets in there!” Shuddering as the first of his sobs begin to force their way out, he feels Cassandra's cold breath near his face yet again, and hesitantly opens his eyes to stare back at her own-cold, lifeless, pitying, unfeeling. “I know I said we were similar. But all of this just proves that we're not the same.” Her fingers come to lock under his chin again, the tips sharp against his tear-stained cheeks. “Varian, they used you. That’s all everyone does." Cassandra states coldly and simply, her fingers forcing Varian's chin upwards so that he could look at her directly. "They use you when they need you and throw you away when it’s convenient. The only difference now is that you’ve learned not to complain. You’ve learned to be a better lapdog than you began. You had to grow up and learn that the only way someone won’t try to shut you down or try to keep you silent is if you’re a good lapdog to Rapunzel just like your father was to her father. Hence the collar.” She taps at the rock collar pointedly, a cruel smirk weaving its way through her face yet again. "I was going to be forced to do the same thing, but I escaped. You willingly dropped everything and went back, when you could have won. You went, with your tail between your legs and your head bowed, kissed Rapunzel's feet and coddled her with the attention she always wanted, batted your blue eyes and weaseled your way back into her good graces. You're the coward. You're a fucking coward.”
Despite having to blink through his tears, Varian scowls in defiance. He would gladly take any other insult...he would rather take any other insult. But this one he could not understand. "No, I'm not." He breathes, gritting his teeth and stemming a cry of pain when another pointed rock pokes at the same wound in his back and retreats into the ground again.
“You had to grow up and know better than to think you have any more worth than I do, in a kingdom that thrives on the backs of the luckless and the frolic of childish princesses, freeloading ex-convicts and mindless thugs.” Cassandra continues calmly. "But you're still a coward because you didn't change anything...in the end, you chose to support it. If it means getting to hide behind the princess and getting your special praises, you would gladly lie down and let her walk over you. Gosh, if only I had a friend like that." Cassandra emphasizes the last sentence by stepping onto Varian's body fully, balancing both her feet and sinking their soles into his stomach. Varian jolts in shock, crying out fully as he tries to breathe and bear the unspeakable weight on his middle. Stabbing pain, seeming to directly pierce through his middle and creeping up his panicked lungs as the pressure on his diaphragm becomes almost too suffocating to bear.
"I’m the one changing the way things work, Varian. Don’t you see?" She says, still not letting off of him and placing her hands on her hips as though she didn't notice his struggle in the slightest. She ignores Quirin's muffled screams, ignores the next bout of Varian's stifled sobs. "If I give in to Rapunzel like you did, it will just prove to her that she will always get her way. If I give in to Rapunzel, I will be back to square one, just like you-nothing more than a tool, a crude painting in her little sketchbook, a sub-par friend on her long list of thugs and ex-convicts and suspicious swordswomen who she’d rather canoodle with and take advice from instead. If I give in to Rapunzel, I will be back to being her obedient, unassuming lady-in waiting, almost as brainlessly subservient as you-and I can’t have that. I want to show Rapunzel that for once, the universe can’t give her everything she demands. It won’t turn friends or give gifts to stroke her over-sized ego any longer, not when I control its every whim.”
She finally, slowly steps off of Varian, and the boy gasps in relief, the stream of tears on his face burning with every minute they are left to dry, only to be replaced by new ones. His arms and legs quiver, his quick, shuddering breaths trying to claw their way back into his being for solace. But he is not prepared for what Cassandra does next.
She retracts the cuffs around his wrists and ankles, and Varian feels sensation finally seep its way back into his sore, numb muscles. He isn't allowed to collect himself, however, before Cassandra grabs him roughly by the collar of his shirt and hauls him up in one swift, unstoppable motion. His figure jerks, his head swimming with dizziness and his heart battering his rib cage once again. "You haven't changed, Varian." She whispers, not hesitating before curling her fingers against the pristine buttoning of his maroon vest-a vest Eugene had specially selected for him, claiming it made him look so grown up, smiling at him and assuring him he would stop by to check up on him. He had said so. “You’re still a scrawny little nerd, you’re just wearing clothes that make it look less pitiful." And in that instant, she tears the vest apart, leaving him scrambling backwards with its torn remnants hanging from his shoulders as the small pocket of paper fell out.
"You’re still working all alone, only in a bigger lab." Cassandra adds, swiping at Varian with her arm-sword and missing him by inches as he tries to push himself away, not having the strength to get back up so quickly. The floor is so cold-Cassandra's eyes are so cold, and he has to get Dad and himself out-
She latches her fingers onto the back of his collar this time, lifting him up again and dangling him in front of his father, who stares back helplessly with fresh tears still trekking down his face. "You’re still not talking much to your dad, but at least he can now look at you for about two seconds longer than he used to and can actually bear to be seen with you in public. That’s what you seem to think of as progress. That’s your growth.” She scoffs, shaking Varian mid-air before throwing him back, sending him skidding painfully across with his chin slamming into the floor.
A gruesome, sinister grin begins to form on the woman's face as she observes Varian's eyes stare back up at her in terror and heartbreak. The boy feels an unexpected chill run down his spine, frozen in place, his eyes flitting this way and that for some way to escape, some way to fight back, anything. “Do you know what happened to me the last time I tried to lay down my life for Rapunzel?” Cassandra then asks, her voice a bare blade devoid of life and ready to cut. She lifts up her blue hand-the hand she had swiped at Varian with mere moments before. “She burned me. Reminded me of the things I have to be willing to bear to be at her side. It's only fair that you prove yourself too, Varian. If all you have been meant to do was replace me as the princess' loyal lapdog, it's only fair that I, someone who is quite experienced on the subject, provide you a nice little tutorial on what that means.”
Cassandra turn to crumble away the gag on Quirin’s mouth, loosening his bindings. Immediately, Quirin rushes towards a stunned Varian, but Cassandra lifts her hands parallel to each other, opening her palms and closing her eyes. She begins singing just in time for Quirin to reach half the distance between them.
“Wither and decay,
End this destiny,
Break these earthly chains
And set the spirit free!”
The alarm in Varian’s head soars as his ears ring with every melodious tremor of the curt and chopped chant, the tendrils of the incantation weaving its way through the searing throb in his chest and crippling every bone in his body with wave after wave of unstoppable agony. He is swathed in it, smothered and submerged fully in it, his knees buckling and every bone in his body suddenly feeling too heavy to hold in place.
When he lifts his head, he watches his father slide to his knees as well, eyes beginning to hollow into their sockets from where they had been latched onto his face, the blood draining from it as he crumples and seems to wither, like a mountain crumbling to its foundations. His face is drained of blood, pale and ashen and greying like a decaying corpse, and Varian has never seen a worse sight. With every ounce of strength he has left, he attempts one crawl in Quirin’s direction before he sinks to his side, doubling over and bracing his hands against the floor.
It is death and darkness, once distant and now discordant, permeating the air with a suffocating musk that clings to his every breath and clogs every attempt to breathe.It encompasses, cocoons him, violating and corrupting him, feeding the greedily growing pit at the center of his being and spiraling anywhere and everywhere, sending blistering effluxes of unparalleled and inescapable excruciation with every pulse that seems to echo and fade into the ambience of the ringing and singing and breathing. He shakily tries to gasp for breath, trying to evade the persistent emptiness eating away at his insides, only to allow the fire into his lungs, battering his heart for breath and pacing its fury with fire, cold fire springing through his entire body, tingling at the tops of his toes and scorching the chambers of his heart. He-he’s so tired, and cold-everything felt so cold, so lifeless, so empty, as though the marrow from his bones and the oxygen in the air had been sucked out by a vacuum of increasingly empty space. Empty…it all felt so empty….
From his blurring, spotted vision, Varian manages to gaze up at Cassandra.
“Do you want to see him perish, Varian?” Cassandra asks, her glow the only light he can see as the image of his father blurs. His father’s lips are moving-Quirin’s calling out to him…he thinks…he wishes he was…is he? Cassandra taunts, she mocks, she cackles as she gleams in the electric blue aura, standing tall and unfazed by the death surrounding her, as though each pulse from their weakening hearts give her brighter flashes of light, piercing to Varian’s decaying eyes. “Do you want to watch your daddy dearest die for real this time, because of you?”
And Varian will never know why he did what he does next. Perhaps it was by looking at his father’s hand fly to his heart, his throat…thick, stale tears dripping down his face. Perhaps it was by looking up at the ever-blue eyes, only slightly brighter than his own, and wishing to show her how different they truly were. Or perhaps it was because he was tired of not being able to breathe, tired of the heavy weight on his heart and his throat and his shoulders, tired of being expected to stand and walk and exist with burdens he could never be truly free of. Perhaps Cassandra was right.
Perhaps Cassandra was wrong.
His hands fly out of his own accord, and grab onto Cassandra’s own. He feels a similar buzz and rumble of static electricity as the powerful course of energy shoots up his arms and concentrates around his gloves. Cassandra-Cassandra’s hands are warm-as though touching a flask of simmering cocoa with his bare fingers. Cassandra’s hands are warm, even when the energy sizzling from them devour away his gloves and begin to latch onto his flesh, sparkling and glistening as they begin to singe and consume him inch by inch.
And suddenly, Cassandra’s hands aren’t warm. They are scalding, searing, a red-hot poker spurting and pumping lava through his hands until he can feel them no more. Varian forces his hands to stay there despite the incredible urge to tear them away, latched on firmly and determinedly even as he feels his skin being to peel away, his flesh morphing and muscles molten. He loses all track of time and sensation, his mind blinded by the white-hot flashes of agony crippling his senses and snipping away at his consciousness. He doesn’t hear Cassandra’s cry of shock as he feebly tries to stem her power for but a minute and begins all but melting in front of her. He doesn’t hear his father’s shout as he summons the barest amount of strength in that one minute and takes advantage of Cassandra’s surprise, pushing and hurling the woman across the room, stopping the incantation short. He doesn’t hear himself screaming his throat raw, his mouth still open even as he fell to the floor seizing and trembling uncontrollably, eyes rolled back in his head and face pale as a sheet.
The world is so cold, too cold, even with his arms burnt. The world is so cold, too cold, and quiet, for he can’t otherwise feel or hear a thing. He doesn’t hear his father's cracked cries of distress and disarray, blustered in warm-not scalding, not painfully hot, just warm- breath above his nose and kisses raining upon his forehead, his cheeks, his nose. He doesn’t feel his father’s warm-not scalding, not painfully hot, just warm-arms slowly wrap around him and hold him fiercely to his chest. He doesn’t hear Rapunzel rushing in and flinging her hair towards Cassandra right before she tries to dispose of the paper with the incantation written on it. He doesn’t feel Eugene helping his father lift his limp body onto Maximus' back. He doesn’t hear the people who weep for him, who apologize profusely for not being able to come sooner, who do smile at him with purpose and who do want what he has wanted all along. He doesn’t feel his father gently squeezing and kissing what was left of his arms before the doctor cut it all away.
When he wakes up, it is still silent, but he is not alone. Nor is he cold. Not really. His father is asleep by his bedside, his back bent over Varian’s limp form and his head ducked against his shoulder. At the other side of his bed, Kiera and Catalina are asleep in Lance's lap, who is yawning and nodding off. Behind him, Eugene and Rapunzel are leaning against each other, blinking away exhaustion and fatigue as they rub at the dark circles around their eyes. Upon noticing his groggily opened eyes, however, they leap to their feet, and Eugene pats Quirin’s shoulder lightly to wake him.
The father jolts awake, meeting Varian’s tired eyes instantly. And seeing his father’s eyes, so lively and brown and not-hollowed-in-their-sockets despite being drained and rung with dark, deep red circles, Varian has never felt so relieved. Seeing his friends and family here, waiting for him and smiling at him and weeping for him, Varian has never felt so complete. He is unaware of his tears or tremors when his eyes fall upon the space where his arms should be, but he does feel his father embracing him in comfort, promising that they would get him fitted for a prosthetic, that they would even help him put his own designs and additions on it. He does feel Eugene poke his half-shoulder teasingly (before quickly apologizing) and promising another trip to the market for a new vest. He does feel Rapunzel nearly squeeze the life out of him, swathing him in her hair and endless apologies and promising him that next time she would try harder. He does feel Lance patting him on the back and telling him that he didn’t need hands to try his newly trademarked pancakes.
They leave him to rest afterwards-all except Dad, who vows to never leave him alone again. The father taps at the scar on his son's neck, quietly telling him that Rapunzel had burned off the collar the moment she had discovered the incantation.
And despite basking in the new silence once again, Varian no longer feels cold anymore.