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It had been getting bad again.
Because sometimes it does, with no reason behind it at all. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night not screaming, because you have learned not to make noise, but with your heart racing and fear lodged so deeply in your throat that it takes you hours to remember how to breathe again. Sometimes you have to lock yourself in your closet where nobody can touch you nobody can fucking touch you and stay there for a day or two. Sometimes you forgo eating because when you sit down at the table, its emptiness chokes you and reminds you of two families that used to eat with you- the one taken from you long ago, and the false one forced upon you, and now neither are here and you have quite lost your appetite.
It happens. It happens, and Cassandra can move past it. She will move past it. After all, there are still council meetings to attend and paperwork to be read through, and a debt to this city that will never be repaid.
Nobody else notices, and she likes it that way. She has far too much work to be distracted by the fact that she might be going insane, and it won’t help if she has to deal with the frightened stares and whispers of others, or even worse, their attempts to help her. She has no idea what that help would look like. She’s not sure if she even can be helped, really. As she sees it, some things are just as they are, and it’s far better to accept them as such. She doesn’t need, doesn’t want the extra attention that would come from outside assistance.
Her hands shake in meetings and she tucks them in her skirt. She stops sleeping, and stays up doing paperwork instead. Her meals go untouched and she hides the food in plants where servants won’t see, and leaves the dishes, licked clean, outside the door. Nobody notices, and that is fine.
Unfortunately for her, her brother has always been annoyingly perceptive.
He confronts her in her office one afternoon, slipping in just as the sun begins to glint off of the Alabaster Sierras. It’s a beautiful view, one she wishes she could partake in more often.
“Cassandra.” He says, in that brisk manner of his. He and the rest of Vox Machina have just returned from- well, she actually doesn’t know. She supposes someone must have told her at some point, but it has slipped out of her mind. She is far too busy to worry about Percival all the time, after all. (It’s much easier to forget than to spend her days wondering where her last living relative is, if he’s alive or dead, if he’s left her again if she is going to be alone-)
“Percival.” She responds, matching his tone. She doesn’t look up from her writing. It doesn’t seem to deter him as he pulls the other chair out from underneath her desk and sits down, heavy oak scraping against the floor.
“What can I assist you in, brother?” Her quill scratches against the paper.
“Well, to be frank, I’m concerned.”
“A common occurrence. What is it this time? Another dragon? A giant?”
“I’m concerned about you, Cassandra.” The scratching stops, but only for an instant.
An instant too much, as she is ever aware of Percy’s keen eyes on her, tracking her moves, evaluating her. An instant in which she is reminded of feeling like prey, of feeling like somebody is peeling back her many layers of careful deception, and of feeling far too vulnerable.
Only for an instant, however, and then her mask comes back up, a picture of careful indifference and bemusement.
“For me? I’m so flattered.” She signs off on the form, forces herself to put down the quill and looks Percy in the eyes, sneering, making her voice drip with sarcasm. “Tell me, what is it I’ve done to warrant your ever-important concern?”
His eye twitches. Cassandra takes pride in the way she has always been able to push Percy’s buttons. It’s an incredibly useful tool for getting him to leave her alone. However, it doesn’t seem to work this time as he makes no move to leave, only breathes out slowly in an effort to curb his frustration.
“It’s more what you aren’t doing, actually. I’ve heard from some of the servants that you’ve stopped attending meals.”
“I prefer to eat in my study.”
“Hmm. And the reports from the guard of seeing light and hearing noises from your room throughout all the night?”
“I’m a restless sleeper, I’m afraid. I like to keep a candle on.”
“Of course. And all the council members coming up to me saying that you’ve seemed distracted lately?”
“All overly cautious, and I can’t blame them. After all, I did, as you’re aware, betray the
city and cause the deaths of hundreds.”
He winces, and she hates that for a moment she is pleased. If her past mistakes are going to forever live in her mind, if she will dream of them every night and carry their weight every day, then somebody else should remember them as well.
“Cass.” He says, a little warningly. She ignores him.
“If that’s all you have to bother me with, brother?”
“Cass.”
“I do have to get these reports done soon, if you don’t mind. Unless you and your friends have unleashed yet another horror upon the world?”
“Cassandra.” His tone sharpens and his face puckers in annoyance. Good.
She ignores the stab of guilt in her stomach, the idea that perhaps her brother does not deserve this, that he is only trying to help her. She does not need nor want his help, she reminds herself. She did perfectly well on her own for many years. It’s better for the both of them to keep this careful distance they’ve crafted between each other, where neither of them have to deal with the other’s problems.
Or where you don’t have to deal with your own, something inside her whispers. She ignores it.
Percy leans forward in his chair. “You aren’t taking care of yourself, and it’s worrying.” He says bluntly. She resists the urge to scoff.
“You aren’t eating. You aren’t sleeping. And you won’t tell anyone what’s wrong. This isn’t healthy, Cassandra.”
Who is he to talk about health to her, this hypocritical, over confident- She shuts down the thought before it finishes. Takes a breath, deep, slow, and measured. Lets it out. Then looks up at Percy with the most condescending stare she can muster.
“Is my work suffering?”
He blinks. “What?”
“You heard me. Have I done something wrong? Is there a problem in Whitestone I am not seeing? Is there a decision of mine you find to be at fault?”
Their parents raised them far too well for Percival to gape at her, but the way he stares at her makes her think that he wants to very badly.
“Wha-no, of course not. You’re doing extremely well, I’ve told you how I feel about-”
She cuts him off with a shuffle of her papers. “Well, then, if there’s no danger to the city, then I do believe my actions -which may or may not be happening- are of no consequence.”
Cassandra gives him her best blank, diplomatic smile. This time, he actually does gape at her, sputtering over his words.
“No conse-for God’s sake, Cass, your eye bags are darker than Grog is tall!”
Dick. She stands up with a humph, pushing the chair back with a little more force than necessary, grabbing her stack of paperwork, ignoring the swelling anxiety in her chest. Percy’s eyes follow her as she moves.
“Percival, I appreciate your concern, but everything is fine. Whitestone is safe and thriving. There’s nothing to worry about anymore.”
“Do you honestly believe I’m here because I’m worried about Whitestone?” He snaps.
No, she didn’t. “Yes, as you should be. As we both should, as rulers of these people-”
“We are rulers, yes, but we are human first! You are important to Whitestone as a person, Cassandra, as a living, human person, not just as some infallible leader!” His voice begins rising, and the feelings she has been ignoring with it. A familiar tightness begins to take her chest, filling her with ugly, swirling bitterness until she feels like she is about to burst with hatred. She whirls around, glaring at Percival, voice deadly sharp with measured anger.
“To be a leader, brother, often means sacrificing the parts of myself that are human for the good of Whitestone. It’s entirely normal to push myself past what others deem appropriate when it comes to this city and its people. Perhaps you have trouble understanding that because you’re never here.”
She regrets the words as soon as they left her mouth. Regrets them as soon as she sees the millisecond of hurt flash across Percy’s face before being replaced by his own mask. Regrets them as soon as she sees his shoulders tense almost imperceptibly and his fingers tighten on the arm of the chair. But she can’t take them back, and so she makes no move to apologize. She simply waits for whatever will happen next.
“Perhaps.” Percival says, and his voice is ice cold. “I will admit that I am limited in that regard. However, I am wise enough-and I thought you were too-to understand the difference between dedication and needless self-sacrifice. One is admirable. The other is idiotic. ‘Pushing yourself’, as you put it, is not normal, nor should it be. And although I am loath to admit it with every passing second of this conversation, even you are owed time for yourself.”
She chokes down the hysterical laugh that bubbled up inside her chest. Her shoulders rise to her ears.
“And I am so very glad to hear it. Might I remind you, brother, that my time is my own?”
“Yes, of course-”
“And as it is my own, I dictate how it is spent.”
“Well-”
She spins around, cutting him off.
“I decide what I do and when I do it. I make my own choices. Not you, not the council, not the B-not anybody. I have said it before and I will say it again, Percival. You. Have. No. Power. Over. Me.”
“I am not trying to!” Percy all but shouts in frustration. He dropped his head into his hands, but she doesn’t give him any time to recover before spitting out more venom.
“Then why are you bothering me? Why the questions and the stares and the incessant nagging? Why?! You are not here. You haven’t been here, not since I was a little girl and you left me, and now you come back and you want to pretend to be a good big brother and take care of poor little Cassandra. Well, I don’t need you. All you are to me right now is a burden.”
She is losing it, her emotions, her composure, she can hear it even from herself. But she can’t stop. It is as if every nightmare, every flashback, every random surge of fear and of anger that she thought she had pushed away has just been building up in the back crevices of her mind, biding its time, and it attacking her full force, pushing and pushing until the dam has broken and she cannot stop a single word out of her mouth, cannot stop the hatred that fills her suddenly and quickly, like poison building up in her chest, the only way to get rid of it being out.
The dam is about to break, and she fears Percy will be the one to drown, but there is no time.
“I don’t need you. I never have. I survived in absolute, utter hell for years without you. I am running a kingdom without you. I am stronger than you will ever be, and I control myself now. I fought for that, and you will not take it away from me. I fought every day of my life!” She is screaming now. “I fought every day, and you were not here! You still aren’t! You refuse to come home, you refuse to take care of your responsibilities, and you leave the first chance you get to go gallivanting across the world in search of something to kill! So why am I to believe that you should get any say in my life at all? Why, if you clearly do not care about anything else in this goddamn castle, should I believe that you care about me? Why do you care?”
Slam. Percy’s hands hit the desk. “Because I love you, Cassandra!”
She stops dead in her tracks.
Her breath, so ready to be used to hurl another insult, catches in her chest. She feels as if every muscle in her body instantly freezes. Even her tongue lies limp as for a split second, a moment within a moment, she is paralyzed.
It’s not as if her family was lacking in love, growing up. Quite the opposite. They were, however, proper nobles, good De Rolos, and good De Rolos did not leave their emotions on the table so clearly. Such words were saved for long after dark, when mother stopped being Lady De Rolo and started smoothing hair and kissing foreheads, or when siblings chased each other into the woods, far away from the eyes of the townspeople, where they were allowed to be children for just an instant.
The Briarwoods had been more vocal. Every morning, every evening, every time they hurt her or controlled her or made her do something that left her feeling sick with self-hatred, they smoothed over the wound with charming words, comforting whispers, the sweet sense of We love you, my child. And then they would hurt her, again and again and again, until Cassandra stopped associating the words with any sort of meaning, because there was none behind them when they said it.
Cassandra remembers the last time somebody had told her they loved her and meant it. It had been a long time ago. Long enough that she had been a completely different person, a little girl who loved to read and to explore and still had the bright love of life in her eyes. She remembers Vesper leaning down and cupping her face, looking more serious than Cassandra had ever seen her, so serious that it made Cass feel very serious as well, even though she didn’t know what was happening and she wanted her mother very badly. She remembers lips brushing her forehead, and Vesper’s grey eyes looking into Cassandra’s own, as she said, “I love you so, so much, Cassie. Now run.”
That had been the last time she would ever see Vesper alive.
All of this flashes through her mind in a split second, trapping her in icy claws for the briefest of moments, throwing her off of what balance she had left. She tries desperately to right herself, but she can feel her emotions slipping away from her, away from the anger so familiar and into something smaller, more hidden, and much more painful. By the time she recovers, in that second of vulnerability, it’s already too late- she has lost her momentum and Percy is gaining steam, giving her no time to put up her defenses.
“I am so, so sorry, Cass, for leaving you, every time, and for putting so much responsibility on you, and for not being here when you needed me. And I won’t ever stop being sorry for leaving you with-with them, the first time, and you don’t ever have to forgive me, but I will never stop loving you, either. I never have. I loved you when I thought you were dead, and I loved you when you betrayed me, and I will love you now, even if you can’t love yourself.” His eyes are piercing hers.
“You are my family. And I will die before I let you continue to run yourself into the ground like this. I will keep you alive, goddammit, even if I have to force you at gunpoint into anything that resembles a healthy lifestyle, because you do not get to die. Not when you have someone on this earth who cares about you, who needs you. Do you understand that all? I need my sister. Cassandra, you are all I have left of them, of-of everything.” Percy’s voice cracks just the smallest bit on the last word, and to her horror, a bit of her heart cracks with it.
“No.” She whispers at first, then louder, shaking her head. “No, you can’t-you don’t-you have others, you have Vex’ahlia and-and-and you don’t need me, you don’t, I can’t...I don’t deserve-”
“And exactly why not?!” Percy snaps. “Because I can tell you what you don’t deserve.”
He strides forward, cutting off the distance between them as he talks. “You didn’t deserve to have your family murdered. You didn’t deserve to be left here with those blood-hungry bastards. You didn’t deserve to be brainwashed and forced to betray your city and-god knows what else they did to you, but you didn’t deserve any of it. Do you hear me? You were a child, Cassandra, a child, and you didn’t deserve to have that taken from you.”
The pressure in her chest is mounting.
“None of that should have happened to you, but it did, and now you are coping with it as best you can, and I am proud of you for that, more proud than I am of anything I’ve ever accomplished. But it’s hard, Cass, and you’re going to need help. You need me to be a far better brother than I have been, far better than I am capable of being, but gods help me I am going to try, because you need to be loved. You deserve it. If nothing else gets through your stubborn goddamn skull, hear me on this: You. Deserve. Love.”
The dam breaks.
She feels tears sliding down her cheeks before anything else.
The warmth on her skin is so unfamiliar to her by now-crying, in the past five years, has become something that she simply does not do.
The wave hits her next.
A rush of emotion, of fear and confusion and yelling why is he yelling please no stop it so powerful she actually staggers backwards. And suddenly Cass is 14 years old again, unsure of what is happening or where her mother is, watching her brother run away from her as the blood trickles out of her body, watching her family be strung one by one on the tree, calling this new woman Mother. The breath is shoved out of her chest as she is quickly overwhelmed by the sheer mass of feelings, of grief and of anger and hurting, always hurting, and she didn’t even get to bury her family, and she watched her countrymen die at her hands, and she is so alone and so afraid and-
-and now Percy hates her, he must, he must be lying-
-and people are screaming for her, for her blood, her head-
-and now somebody is coming to kill her, they are coming for her, they will not be stopped-
-and she deserves it, every bit, she is sick and she is damned-
- and it is too much, too much, too much too much-
Cassandra’s hands go limp and numb. Her senses dull and slow until all she knows is the rapid beating of her heart. Her vision goes murky. Her chest burns.
She is at the bottom of the ocean now, she thinks. She is drowning.
She wants to scream, or to kick, or to fight, to do something, anything, to drag herself out of this pit like she has so many times before, but she just- she just can’t. Wave after wave of agony washes over her, choking her and tossing her every which way before she can suck in a breath. She tries to kick, but grief wraps around her legs like a chain, dragging her down, down, down into the darkness, it is choking her, suffocating her, it is becoming her-
Cassandra.
She hears the name as if from far, far away, above the surface.
Cass, I’m right here. You’re safe. It’s alright.
No, she’s not, she wants to tell the voice. She’s not, she hasn’t been, why doesn’t anyone see that?
That’s okay too. I see you. I’m here, Cassandra. It’s Percival. You’re safe.
Percy?
I’m here. I’m not leaving, not ever again.
All of the sudden, light breaks through the darkness pulling her down, illuminating her descent, fracturing around her broken mind.
Percival is an annoyance. He’s infuriating. He’s arrogant. He’s the lucky one, the chosen one, the one who made it out and left her behind. Even after all this time, he’s still a source of pain for Cassandra.
But he’s here.
He is here, against all odds. He lost just as much as she; he knows her pain perhaps closer than anybody else ever could. More than that, he knows darkness intimately, and yet he is still alive. Not only alive- Percival is living. He’s happy. He smiles more now. He has a purpose that Cass has been lacking for the majority of her life, even after falling so far.
He is here, even after everything she has done, after everything he did. They are the two broken ends of a family tree, two deeply flawed people that against all odds have found their way back to each other.
A new emotion sparks deep in Cassandra’s chest, underneath all the parts of her that are hurt and broken. Somewhere, deep down, in the part of her that belongs to her mother, untouched by Delilah, hope grows.
Maybe it is time for her to stop pushing Percival away. Maybe his declarations are not empty words. Maybe he is here, and maybe he is still her brother, and maybe she can be helped. Maybe, just maybe, Cassandra is loved.
And with that thought in mind, Cassandra looks past the panic and the pain and summons up every ounce of strength she has left, and breathes.
She sucks in air like a dying man, gasping and choking, hands trembling. Her senses slam back into her like a warhammer, surroundings becoming clear once more. There is her desk, papers piled high, and there is the window, with the sun now slowly lowering behind the mountains, and there in front of her is Percy.
Percy, crouching in front of her -when did she end up on the ground?- with a look on his face Cassandra has come to realize means he is hiding worry, arms partly outstretched as if dealing with a wild animal. His shock-white hair falls in front of his face, disheveled for one rare moment. He’s talking, she realizes, murmuring to her in low tones.
“There you are, Cassandra. You’re okay. Breathe with me now. You’re in Whitestone. You’re safe.”
“Perc-” She tries, but her breath gets caught and she chokes on her words.
“I know.” He says, and hesitantly reaches out to smooth her hair, hand almost unnoticeably trembling. “Cass, I-oomph!”
That’s all he can get out before Cassandra’s body takes control and she launches herself at her brother, almost knocking him over with her desperation, gripping his shoulders as if he is about to be pulled away. He surprises her by hugging back just as fiercely.
She almost freezes, despite being the one who initiated it, so used to sweetly sick hugs followed by horror, to hands combing though her hair only to sharply pull on it, but this is different. This is-this is real, in a way that the Briarwoods never were. Percy holds her firmly, centering her, tying her to the real world, but not tightly. If she needs an out, he says without words, it is hers to take.
In that instant, she has never loved him more.
The realization sparks a fresh wave of tears. Her chest burns, but not with crushing, overwhelming bitterness. Instead, the overwhelming sensation of being loved, and loving in return, feeling safe in the arms of her family she has a family mounts and mounts until her whole frame is racking with sobs, overcome in a way she can’t really explain.
Percy, to his credit, doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t pull back, doesn’t comment on how she is surely ruining his coat with snot and tears. He just holds her, even when she collapses into his arms, five years of terror finally taking their toll on her body. He strokes her hair and shields her from the world as she sobs and sobs, a rock to cling on in the rising waters. His heartbeat presses against Cass’s ears, the subtle thump-thump, thump-thump slowing her breathing like a metronome when it starts hitching again, until finally, finally, she feels like she is treading water instead of sinking. It’s as if a giant weight, one that has been there so long she had quite forgotten about it, has suddenly been lifted.
It’s a long time before Cassandra is finally dried out, and longer still before her breathing calms even more. Percy makes no move to disengage the entire time, and she gets the distinct sense that he needs this just as much as she.
He is, however, the first to talk.
“Better now?”
She huffs out a laugh.
“Hardly.” Her voice is ragged, throat sore.
“Yes, me either.” He squeezes her a little, and chuckles. Instinct tells her to tuck her face into his shoulder in a way she hasn’t since she was very young, and she obeys, too tired to be sensible. It feels good, in a strange way.
“I quite feel like taking a nap.” Percy says suddenly. “Don’t you agree?”
Cass just sniffles. She knows it’s unladylike, childish even, everything she is not, but maybe not being herself for a little while will do her some good. Maybe handing the reins over to Percy for a moment will not be the disaster she thought it would.
“Well said, sister.” Cassandra hears the smile in his voice, and for the first time, allows herself to draw comfort from it. He presses a kiss to her temple. When he speaks again, his voice is a little more hesitant, but just as strong.
“You’re going to be alright, Cassandra. We’re going to be alright. And I will be here every step of the way.”
And he will, won’t he? Cass muses. Say what you will about Percival de Rolo, but he is nothing if not stubborn. If he says he will be here, he will stay here. If he says that he loves her, then she supposes she is loved. And if he says that things are going to get better, well…
“I know.” She says, and it is enough. “I know.”