When she arrives at the dungeon's door, carrying notebook between her hands, it is almost nightfall. The last of the day is at her back, urging her onwards. Her shoes tick against the tiles as she ventures down the hall.

Everything looks different during the day. At night the navy air was a haze, clouding her thoughts, magnifying all the negative feelings within her. Now her head is clear, and the waning blue day urges her onward, fueling all the positivity and determination in her.

"Your majesty," the guards hold their halberds higher, puffing out their chests, as if to show they're strong for this kingdom, "Is there something we do for you this evening?"

"Thank you, Stan, Pete." She folds her hands and inclines her head in a sort of bow to each of them. "There is, in fact."

They stand expectantly for her request.

"You can let me into the dungeon."

They glance at each other.

"Of course, your majesty," Stan bows, reaching for the door.

"Um…May we ask what this is about?" Pete steps forward, more hesitant.

Perhaps servants ought to do what their masters ask without hesitation. But, in a way, it was only fitting—some might say even more in line with their duties—for him to be apprehensive. He is concerned for his monarch's well being after all. It wasn't exactly normal for her to go down to the dungeon, nor is it a place a Queen would be most welcome.

"You know Varian is down there, right?" Pete speaks behind his hand when she doesn't answer.

"I am aware. In fact, he's the reason I'm going down there in the first place."

Their eyes widen, then they give each other a look.

She steps forward before they can say anything more. "He's just a boy," she says softly.

"Uhh, yeah, a boy who fed me evil cookies!" Pete exclaims. "And let's not forget, he kidnapped you!"

"Well…yes, that's true. But he's still just a boy." She looks down at the notebook and runs her fingers along the cover. "He's hurting, he needs help" she says half to the air, "…Besides, he can't hurt me from behind bars."

"But—with all due respect—your majesty—"

"I appreciate your concern," she says in a conversation-ending way, stepping forward and placing her hand on his shoulder, "but…this is something I must do."

They glance at each other once more, before lowering their heads and opening the doors, reluctance in their motions.

Her shoes sound against the winding stone staircase, leading her down, down into the realm beneath the castle. The last dregs of day drip from the open door along the staircase a few steps ahead of her, as if saying Hey, come on! Follow us! Don't be afraid! We'll be with you each step of the way.

Arianna is not doing this for him. She reminds herself of this. He was not gentle that day, and she knows prison is unlikely to have made him any tamer. He never asked for her forgiveness, whether or not he wants it, and he will not likely be kind in his responses, like the boy she had once met in the castle halls above. He no longer belongs to those halls; he haunts the space beneath them. At least, that's what everyone thinks…including him.

She's trying not to.

She must admit, she is doing it for him in some way; in that she, even now, even after everything he did to her, even after—or perhaps because of—the sleepless nights… she cares. Some would say it's one of her fatal flaws. She wants him to realize there is more to him than this cell, these chains, and a few black—and one amber—rocks sticking up from the floor. He is more than metal and moonlight.

But she also knows if this is for him and him alone, she will fail in her endeavor. If she thinks she is saving a poor, lost boy's soul, she will lose both their souls in the process, and leave them wandering in the dark.

Forgiveness has never been about the one who did the crime.

"Your majesty!" the guards patrolling the dungeon bow low. "What an honor! What can we do for you on this fine evening?"

"Thank you." She inclines her head in return, then says without a hint of hesitation or anxiety, "You can take me to see Varian."

"You're…here to see… Varian?" They glance at each other. "Your majesty, with all due respect, are you sure you want to do that? Varian he…hasn't been very cooperative."

She gives a small, sad smile. "I understand. I'll be very careful."

They stand on either side of her, leading her to him.

This was something important, something she had to do. For her state of mind, and of her soul and conscience, even if no one else understood. The bars and chains would be enough to keep him from any attempts at action, and the guards would be ready to act at the moment anything went wrong.

On her walk to his cell, the other prisoners spit in her face and footsteps, laugh her name as she strides by. She had come to accept their attitudes and actions, and ignore them, a long time ago; let them have their threats, a few pitiful insults are all they have left in here, and they are not enough to make a dent in her pride anyways.

Varian is not some beast, like the one he sent after those she loved that day—(then again…neither was that creature truly a beast)—he won't claw through the bars.

Still, as she draws nearer, her heart speeds up.

Why does stone and metal seem so feeble now, when it was unbreakable, when it was alive, then?

Maybe its the one who was using the metal; he was someone who understood what it was made of, sympathized with its chemistry.

She may know nothing of metal…but she knows what he is made of.

And she sympathizes.

They bring her to the furthest cell from the door.

Her expression softens when she sees him; he's on the bench in the corner of his cell, hugging his knees, like the world forgot him.

Fractures of light drain across the form of a boy—even smaller and weaker than before, his hair greasy and long—and sizzle on the cold, stone floor. Though the rays dance, urging him to come play with them, as they had with Arianna, they can't seem to cut through the shadows upon his face. Already it seemed he had told himself the sun couldn't reach him down here, even when it was draped across his eyes.

They even chained his hands …which is more than he did with her.

She can't exactly blame them. He is the most dangerous person in the kingdom, after all. Or so he's called. And, being here in his presence—or, more so the presence of the memories seeing him brings—she isn't exactly complaining about the extra precaution.

But he is still just a fourteen-year-old boy.

—(Or was it fifteen now? Had he had his birthday in this cell? She hates to think of that, of a young boy spending his birthday without presents, or parties, or a cake, or even so much as a nice wish from his dad. She tells herself that he must be fourteen still to ease the pain.)—

Sitting in the dungeon he hasn't changed; hasn't transformed into some sort of monster just by being caged and fed scraps. He is still so young. Just a boy, who deserved better. Fourteen years old, all rage, and pain, and grief.

The queen holds the notebook she brought—the reminder of her intentions in coming here—tighter to her chest, which itself is growing tight.

She is a queen, yes, but also a mother. Not his, but something motherly in her sees his hurt, and wants to comfort it, sing to it, read to it, hold it close, and tell it everything will work out in the end, even if she isn't sure it will. She knows what it's like to lose family, to have tragedy in your heartbeat.

Kindness, childhood innocence, is something people take for granted. Everyone has their troubles—more pressing matters—so, there are times when everyone brushes this kindness by, knocks it to the cobblestones, in the presence of the problems we must face and fix, here and now, while we are still young—(though we are no longer innocent ourselves). At some point everyone denounces something so bright and precious as their own conscience, as naiveté and ignorance, so as not to regret their actions. They don't mean it, actively think it, but it's there, all one must do is stop looking away. That compassion was all he had, all he was, at one point. A heart full, forgiving and, kind. The mistakes he made were just that; mistakes. Not some purposeful show of capability, and control.

That was before. Before the storm, and the amber, the broken promises, and the flower.

Fourteen years old, yes. But he is not a child. Maybe he wasn't before either, but it's different now. He's different now. Something's missing. Something important to making you a child. He's missing something…someone. She knows what that's like. She once missed someone. Something important to making her a parent.

She knew Rapunzel never meant any harm, never meant to break her promise, and that she had to make the hardest decision of her life that day, the day she and Frederic were gone—(oh how she wished they had never left). She also knew Rapunzel hadn't chosen wrong, nor had she chosen right, she had simply chosen, and that's what being queen is all about. What being human is all about. …And that is everything wrong with being queen. Everything wrong with humanity. Rapunzel had just learned that too early, or perhaps too late. (Everything always felt too late when it came to Rapunzel, and it made Arianna feel sick sometimes).

The fact that the breaking of a promise, and the breaking of a heart, is enough to cause an entire kingdom to falter in one night, is not something one can ever really get used to, no matter how long the crown has been sitting on their head.

But maybe—something bright, hopeful…naïve? in her wonders—though it isn't Rapunzel's fault… maybe it isn't completely Varian's either.

Maybe there isn't ever only one at fault. Maybe the fault lines run along each of us—much like the black rocks jutting up from their kingdom's ground—they are everywhere, in all of us alike, creating cracks in solid relationships, there's no pattern to them, no way of really breaking them. The best we can do is try to understand them instead of ignore them. We can only hope to build bridges, and that we won't burn them down as we cross them.

There aren't a lot of people like Varian. In the kingdom, in the world, she supposes; fourteen-year-old boys with heads full of knowledge, and hands that liked to slip, a heart full to the brim with nature of a good kind, but a bit too bittersweet, a little too easy to break. And when his hands didn't do what he told them, important things, like glass, and trust, shattered upon the floor. There were fourteen-year-old boys who were smart, and ones who were kind, there were clumsy ones, and funny ones, and inappropriate ones, and sly ones, but this one, with all the kindness, and intelligence, in tandem with all the clumsiness, and the grey, was a rarity. It was rare for someone to be so bright, and so dark. Most people are just one or the other.

They didn't take into account the messes he made, how he could wreck his hometown on accident, simply because he had…what was it? a vision? a dream? an ambition? a simple hypothesis? A plot, a plan, a ploy. All depends on the word you use; words are like spells, sometimes creating the affect you intend simply by repeating them enough. He could destroy a town on accident, all because there was something, something good he wanted to do, a problem he wanted to solve, and he miscalculated a percentage. They didn't take into account that they really should have been asking themselves, if this was a miscalculation… what kind of damage can he cause when he does the math right? If this was an accident…what kind of damage can he do on purpose?

They all shared blame for the unasked question. But when Rapunzel came home that first day she met him, Arianna never took a second to—instead of smiling at her stories, and the drawings in her journal—ask if maybe that made him dangerous.

And when her daughter came to her after the storm—her hands curled into fists, waging war against the tears in her eyes, and ran to her, burying her face in her chest, her arms around her, saying she didn't think she wanted to be queen after all—she never once thought to ask if maybe they should send someone to go check on Varian.

Then, on that day he was not the flowery drawings Rapunzel made of him in her journal, not the boy she had met once, on a sunny afternoon, not the desperate child crying for someone to save his dad in the midst of the storm. He was still confident, and stubborn, and his words were still playful… but without the smile. He was still desperate, without a single tear, or plea for help, he was everything he once was, without the light. He was a mask, the color green shimmering in her eyes, her title, and a command to sleep. He was a cause, a curse, misguided conviction, desire, and grief. Not a fourteen-year-old boy, not compassion, not kindness, or naiveté, just that stubbornness, that desperation. Everything else, even those things that he once would never touch with his disobedient hands, became means to his end.

"I'll make them hear me!"

…Was that all he wanted? If that was all, why couldn't they listen? Why couldn't they just go check on him, and see if maybe, just maybe, he wasn't okay? They should have listened to him. One of the saddest things in the world is to watch a child's words fall on deaf ears; to watch a child standing in a crowd, going after person after person, tugging at their clothes, trying so hard just to be heard. And eventually, if they never are, the scene either inevitably ends with anger or tears. All they had to do was listen. It would have been so simple.

When Arianna was younger, first growing accustomed to the weight of a crown, they told her that villains would topple the woman beneath, spill her blood, to reach the jewels. She would receive threats, some real—backed with blades and armor—and others empty as the hearts who made them, and she would have to learn to tell the difference. Frederic had said in a show of sweet, but somewhat sappy, sentiment, that she was 'the kingdom's most precious jewel', and her protection was his first priority, no matter the cost. She was grateful for the gesture, but being an adventurer, she was perfectly capable of handling herself. Adding a crown to the weight of the life she already knew how to protect didn't rattle her.

She never imagined that one day, she would be kidnapped, and the one to succeed would be, not bandits on the road, or separatists, or sorcerers, but…a kid.

When she woke up in his lab, chains around her ankles, the blue of his eyes not much better than the pale, emotionless glow of the mask, she still couldn't believe the sweet kid she had once met was behind that ice. No, not this boy. Not this villain. Maybe she didn't know him before, but when they did meet, it had struck her how bright his eyes had been. His eyes, his voice, his smile... Without that light he seemed like a different person.

"Any moment now, your highness." he had hissed, before singing that he had made a pact with the darkness, that they deserved all this, and they he might not be ready, but he was as ready as he'd ever be…

Varian scared her.

There was no other word for it, no other way to describe it. She would have tried to deny it; it seemed silly, after all, to be afraid of a fourteen-year-old boy who had once posed no threat, who she had even joked with. In fact, she would have once laughed at the very thought that he would one day scare her. But there came a point where there was nothing left to think but the truth.

When all it took was a drop of a mistake, a mistake he made that led to the rest, a mistake her daughter made that led to a test, an amber crypt, a few hurt-soaked words…that scared her, he scared her.

Because there came a time when that green chemical he had teased her with fell and burned on the black, turning amber and solid, cracking, crawling—not inanimate crystal, but some creature, alive, after all the things she held dear—towards her…

Watching orange and golden spires crackle closer, her heart couldn't remain steady. And, yes, it would have been scary for anyone; to sit there while imminent imprisonment, or demise—(they couldn't know which)—crept ever closer, while they were tied to the floor, with no means of break or escape….but that wasn't quite enough to cause this sort of reaction.

She'd faced life-threatening situations; her own death or imprisonment before. One could never face it with a steady heart, breath, and sense of reason, but there was an exhilaration to it too; being close to death made life closer too. When the bandits put swords to her throat, or some creature took her back to its lair, yes she was scared, but sometimes she'd smirk at Willow, and, as she cut herself down, as she clashed swords with the villains, she would feel so very alive.

There was nothing exhilarating this time, nothing exciting, nothing that made life feel as close as death. She'd had no one-liners or fun strategies…was she just getting old?

He was very different from the bandits she had once faced in her travels. He wasn't some sniveling storybook villain, or routine thug just looking for some extra cash. He had much deeper reasons for doing this.

He told them that they deserved this. All this pain. That sweet boy in the sunlight thought they deserved to be torn from each other, and used for their parts. Was that possible? Was any of this possible?

He had much deeper reasons for doing this. He was hurting. He was human. And that makes for a far more terrifying villain; the toughest villains to face are not the strongest, or the most powerful… but the ones we can see ourselves in. Because we have to break the mirrors, and that may just give us seven years' bad luck. Break our views of ourselves. Break our views of the other. And maybe see them as people like us, worthy of being saved, of forgiveness. How had it had taken her thirty-odd years to learn that?

It wasn't he himself she was afraid of. What made fear truly latch on to her, was just how easy it all was. How one drop of his solution could create a prison of amber. How one choice could lead to a path of hatred. How easy it was for him to watch his father become entombed in a prison of gold, to lose a parent, then turn to face her daughter, and attempt to take a parent from her. All because she broke a promise; chose to save the kingdom over him. That was enough for him, enough for him to find a place for that pendulum of blame to land. What scared her more than her own peril was how easy it was for him, for this compassionate, sunlit boy, to throw everything else aside, away, shut off the light, and plunge himself into darkness.

—(And, if he was human, didn't that mean she could do that too?)—

And, as far as the life-threatening went, what scared her most was not her fate; not the amber, nor the chains, not the kidnapping, nor the blame. Her own peril may have unsteadied her heart, but what made her blood run cold as that storm with both fear and anger was her daughter's life and safety being teased before her. How easy it was for him to hold his friend's life in the balance. The way she cried out in pain as he hooked her hair up to that machine—(he once did so long ago with no ill intent)—the way she cried out in pain in that lab, that lab that lab—

This fear for her daughter, more than her own well-being, had been a part of her for a while now. Ever since Rapunzel was born. Even more since she came back. When she was told of the dangers of wearing a crown, she wasn't afraid for her own fate. But when Rapunzel was born everything changed.

It was Rapunzel. Always Rapunzel. When their daughter was born, she learned there was a jewel worth more than her life, and the weight of a crown. Suddenly Frederic's statement about 'the kingdoms most precious jewel,' the lengths he went to save her life, made sense.

And all too soon, she learned then what it was like to have someone you love snatched from you, without warning, or threat, or a second glance.

That night, when Rapunzel was stolen from them, just like she was another jewel.

That night, when the wind was quiet, but fast, and cold, and the moon was full, and their little sundrop was stolen away by a woman in a cloak of night.

She knows how hard it is to forgive that person. She could understand that. How hatred and revenge burn in your gut, and can corrode through your heart if left unchecked. The weight of the faultline is a heavy one. She could understand how, especially when you're young, it would be difficult to accept such a weight upon yourself. That one might do anything and everything in their power to slough it off, to keep from breaking the mirror. And if you are simply looking for someone besides yourself to place the burden of blame on, how everyone could suddenly seem at fault. But she also knows how to move beyond vengeance, into forgiveness—or, perhaps not so far as forgiveness, but at least something that isn't unforgiveness.

This boy is not Gothel. He is different. She knows that. He is just a boy, a boy who is unbelievably smart, a boy who was kind, but whose kindness they mistook for naiveté, and brushed aside, enough that he forgot himself. He is a boy who lost someone, just like she did. He is grieving, and misled within his own head, just like she is. And she knows how much easier it is to hate someone else, than to admit you were wrong. That they're gone, and even if you didn't mean to, even if it was by mistake, some of the fault lies with yourself…

She could have hated him for what he did to her. She could have hated him more for what he did to her daughter. She could have chosen revenge, and unforgiveness. No one would have faulted her for it—she wouldn't even have to bear the weight of the faultline.

But that isn't her. She isn't going to turn around and do to him what he did to them. It had taken this long to forgive—(or something close enough)—Mother Gothel, to choose the fact that she had Rapunzel back, the light, over wallowing in the dark. She isn't going to throw away what she learned then, now, especially not when she knows that that light hasn't abandoned him, even if he tried to abandon it.

She isn't going to abandon him.

It was a parent he lost, and it is a parent he needs.

What matters is not that Gothel took Rapunzel from her, but that she has Rapunzel now.

What mattered to him—whether he knew it or not—she was sure, was knowing that there was still hope, still something, someone there for him now. She has to help him realize that it is not about what he has lost, but what he still has—(which was more than they all think. A mustard seed of kindness is more than most of us have). She wishes they had arrived soon enough to teach him that earlier. She hoped she could still show him that now.

He is still fourteen-years-old. Still a kid. A kid, lost, and hurting. Despite her own animosity, she could detect the desperation in his voice, the pain flickering behind his anger when he cried "It's not my fault! None of it is!" And when those blue eyes blew out their circuits, and swiveled to their daughter, all rage and pain, looking for somewhere, some place, someone, to blame, and his voice became so much like a beast's growl that the adventurer in her wanted to hunt him down—

"It's her fault."

…But he was—he is—not a beast. Even then.

That's what made it so scary, after all; that he was still human. It would have been easy to call him a monster. That would have made things easier on the rest of them at least, to forget he was human. Easy to lock him up and leave him. But what was scary was that he was, and is, human, and she would never be able to forget that. What made it so scary was the pain behind the growls. If she had forgotten, she could have left him here in the dark without guilt or precedent.

The part of her that wants to denounce him as a beast doesn't want to admit there is something else there, something searching to be redeemed, searching for any last hope, and…And that was something she understood. Despite the fear, how easy it was, she knew what it was to look for anything, any single shred of hope to cling to. And how even a spiderweb of hope can save lives.

And wasn't the ease the other thing that scared her about him? How he turned to the dark so quickly?

So no, she wasn't going to go gently into that goodnight.

He wasn't completely right then, about Rapunzel. But he wasn't completely wrong either. Some of the blame didn't find its home with him. It didn't justify the lengths he went to, and how easy it was for him to leap them, but they had left him, after all. Someone should have gone to see him, to make sure he hadn't lost his way in the storm.

This, and one other small fact led her to believe that he wasn't completely gone; he never chained her hands. Just her feet. He didn't do it kindly, and she was sure he didn't intend it to display mercy. Others may have called it an empty gesture, said So what? You were still chained, what's the difference?

Thinking about it later, it was the smaller gestures like this that mattered, that betrayed the spiderweb's difference between hope and despair.

It's the hands that are dangerous; they're what slip, and let things break, and catch us all the same. He only chained her method of escape, not her hope to twist his plans—(almost if deep down he wanted her to twist those plans, like he was giving her that thread of hope himself).

He is a fourteen-year-old boy, and they left him there, in the dungeon. And that is not something she can live with. She was the one he kidnapped, so perhaps she is the one with the most right to be angry.

But they left him to rot in here, like the Flower she hadn't known Frederic had kept.

He stole a flower to save the one he loved…that sounded like another story she knew well, and that story had ended in disaster too.

The more she thought about, Frederic couldn't see how, when Arianna herself was dying, he would have done anything to save her life, and how Varian, in a way, was doing the same thing. That didn't excuse his methods, but, still, the similarities gave her pause. They were both angry, both afraid, desperate to save those they love. But Varian wasn't a king, and his methods were not so pure, so he was left to the dungeons, his father still trapped, and the king walked the halls above, his wife safe and well, without punishment, even though they both stole the sun in the hopes of healing the hurt, making the clock reverse.

She wouldn't have necessarily wanted things to turn out differently, still, she had to admit there was irony in the situation.

If she had been angry, if she had come down here to spit in his face, they might have called it justice.

But that is not who she is. Who she wants to be. Forgiveness may not be a word she can quite use with Mother Gothel, but she did everything she could to fight the dark then. When Rapunzel came back, she did everything she could to stop herself from locking her up and keeping her safe from everything that dared hurt her.

She let her go out and make friends with him…but letting people in meant giving them the chance to betray you. The only way to keep her completely safe was to lock her away. …But doing so would have made her the villain. And she of all people knew danger was the name of living.

Forgiving him doesn't mean she approves of what he did. Doesn't mean she isn't afraid, or angry, or has fully recovered. It just means that she isn't going to let the darkness that had taken him so easily have its way with her too. She didn't want to leave him, she wanted him to be better, she believed that he could be—she had seen what was right in him, she had seen what was left of him. She needed to let him know that someone cared, that she believed he was human, like the rest of us. Not a villain, not a monster, and that she didn't think he deserved to be left behind in chains. …But he had to see it too.

When she appears before him, a progression of bars and some well-trained guards don't seem like quite enough—though once upon a time she talked to him without the bars, or the animosity, and he had seemed more than harmless then.

There are no words of respect. He doesn't bow, or even address her, or look at her at first. She isn't a queen here, to him, anymore; she is simply the mother of the girl who never broke a promise, except the one she made to him. She is simply a chess piece he once chained to the floor of his lab.

He doesn't give her any sign of respect, or that he's even noticed her. But he also doesn't throw curses at her feet like many of the other prisoners did.

At first, he remains silent. His eyes both have somehow lost their fire, and are as electric as they were that day, glowing in the cold grey of the room.

Everything grey. No black or white here.

"Varian." Her voice is steady and sober.

"Your highness." His response pounces, sharp as a claw through the bars.

His words are grey too.

He merely addressed her, but there is a bite behind her words. That sting doesn't feel so empty in his mouth as it did in those of the other prisoners—(just like how he felt different as a villain, now he feels different as a prisoner)—but the words are worn, ragged, from his voice being kept too long silent. A quiet resolve. A lost, broken conviction, but standing nonetheless. He doesn't hiss the phrase like he did then—all dauntless, and confident he is right, and they're all wrong, sure he cannot, will not, lose—but he also doesn't say it kindly, in any way that asks for forgiveness, or implies respect. Nothing betrays the fact that he is a broken boy, lost and hurting. It is simply stated as a fact, hanging there in the air; she is her highness, she walks the castle high above him, and he is here, in this cell fading in the darkness below.

But she is no angel, and he is no demon, even if everyone else treats him like one.

He is just a boy. She has to remind herself of that. Over, and over, until it finally sticks. That, and the fact that she is not doing this for him.

She is doing this for herself. For her own heart. If she doesn't forgive him, if she tells herself that the light cannot—or worse, should not—reach him down here, she really is letting darkest parts of herself win.

Forgiveness has never been about the one being forgiven, but about the one doing the forgiving.