Oh, Cass thought, one Saturday.
Elsa lay in the grass with her head in her lap, the sun kissing her face and bringing out the freckles on her cheeks. She looked up at Cass, her smile causing her eyes to glitter and Cass smiled back. The last time she'd felt like this … Elsa was a Queen (Raps had been a Princess), with a duty to her people. And Cass was a woman estranged from her homeland.
No, that wasn't entirely true. She'd left of her own free will and she was welcome back any time she wished; Cass simply didn't wish to return to Corona.
Everything she'd ever wanted and needed was here. Arendelle was her home. She had a role, a purpose, and a place in a beautiful woman's heart where she didn't feel like she was second fiddle. (Anna and Arendelle aside, but Cass was mature enough now to understand there were different kinds of love, and could never ask Elsa to place her above either.)
It just still didn't always feel real. Destiny had never been kind to Cassandra and there was a part of her always looking over her shoulder for everything to come undone.
"What is it, sweetheart?" Elsa reached up, touching Cass's face.
"I'm scared." Cass leaned into the touch, those two words among the hardest she'd ever said, "Of … all of this. Every time I look at you I feel like I'm going to burst and then you smile or laugh or do that little eye quirk thing and I feel like I'm falling off of a cliff."
Elsa smiled, raising one of her eyebrows, "Eye quirk thing?"
Cass batted at her arm, "Hush."
"I think I understand. We've both been through … a lot. Sometimes I still just get lost in my own head."
While Cass thought of it as brain spirals, Anna called it 'going away' and that was a good descriptor too. Sometimes all they could do was wait for Elsa to snap back to the present. Cass took Elsa's hand and pressed it to her cheek, "What if all my fears turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy?"
"I love you." Elsa trailed her fingers along Cass's cheeks, "And I know love alone isn't enough. That family and friendship and our own interests are just as important. But I love you and I trust you. You have a choice, Cass. You can stay or you can leave. No one is trapping you here and I never want you to feel trapped."
"I'll never leave," Cass assured her. But Elsa's words had managed to hit on that something that had been bothering her. But she didn't feel trapped. Cass belonged here and that was possibly the scariest thing she'd ever realized.
"Is that my Royal Protector talking, or my fiance?"
Cass smiled, rubbing her finger over the ring on Elsa's hand, "Both. Kind of impossible to separate the two now. But I have to admit sharing your bed makes it a whole lot easier to protect you."
Elsa could be deadly enough with her powers if she chose, Cass was well aware of that. It was that Elsa turned to them as a last resort that was a reason she loved her — and a reason that she could act as her shield and sword.
Companion, knight, protector, all of those rolled into one. Cass had already killed for Elsa and Anna and she would do it again without hesitation so that they would never have to live with blood on their hands. But between the three of them anyone foolish enough to attack Arendelle was in for a world of trouble. After all, she'd seen Anna with an axe…
"So that's the only reason I get to see your face every morning?"
"Hardly." Cass grinned down at her, finally letting go of her hand if only so she could be the one caressing Elsa's face instead of the other way around. Her fingers traced the constellation of freckles on Elsa's cheeks as she mused at how quickly she'd fallen for her, "You're the last thing I see when I go to sleep and the first thing I see when I wake up."
Elsa's laugh was, as always, the best sound. She sat up, shifting until she was sitting in Cass's lap and placing a gentle kiss on her lips, "Do you ever think about what your life might have been like if you'd never left Corona?"
"Sometimes," Cass admitted. "But then I'd have never met you, or maybe met you too late for… a lot of things. The only thing I know of for certain is I would have left eventually and not just because of my feelings for Rapunzel. I was so … constrained there by everyone and everything…" She shook her head, "So I have no regrets. Raps is safe and sound and … " She trailed off.
"And?"
Oh, Cass thought. "And I have you. I have this family here with you that's every bit as much of a family as the one I built with Raps. And this is all my choice. To stay, to love you, to make it work. I need to let my insecurities go if I'm going to make it work." She pulled Elsa closer, nuzzling her cheek and throat and then kissing her shoulder.
Elsa threaded her fingers into Cass's hair, "Help you with yours if you'll help me with mine?"
"Always," Cass assured her.