Chapter 9
3 months later
Cassandra's eyelids flicker as she slowly succumbs back to consciousness. She lolls her head against her pillow while laying curled on her side, her tired eyes begging to remain asleep. She breathes in steadily through her nose, then like a bolt of electricity, her heart jumps in her chest.
She inhales sharply as she wakes with a start, her entire body struck by fear. A faint whimper escapes her throat as she bolts to a sitting position.
"Shhhh…"
She feels somebody on the bed next to her, grabbing Cassandra by the arms, stopping her from scrambling away any further. Their touch is gentle, immediately calming her yet causing her muscles to freeze up all at once.
"It's okay…"
She recognizes Rapunzel's voice, whispering soothingly so close to her ear. It's familiar and comforting, and sends a shiver trailing down Cassandra's spine.
It isn't until then that Cass' eyes begin to focus on Rapunzel's face now hovering just inches away from hers. The princess is kneeled on the bed next to her, though Cass doesn't know for how long she had been there.
Cassandra breathes a sharp sigh of relief, chest panting for air and slowly learning how to breathe again. She swallows, flickers her eyes, and veers them away to scan her surroundings.
She can't decipher much through the shadows of the room that drape every corner in darkness. All she learns is that they are somewhere quiet and warm, with a lantern on the night table next to them. Its flame provides a dim orange light, casting shadows that dance across Rapunzel's face and along the walls.
Cassandra doesn't remember how they had gotten here, or when she had fallen asleep. Considering the lack of sunlight, she assumes it to be the middle of the night.
Somehow, this place feels familiar to her. It reminds her of a particular tavern they had taken shelter from in a rainstorm, once a long time ago.
When she realizes that they are alone and far from danger, the panic in Cassandra's chest begins to settle.
She meets eyes with Rapunzel again, whose hands are still gripping Cass by the arms, holding her upright.
The princess' paralyzing eyes are shadowed within the darkness, hair draping around her shoulders in silky chocolate waves, soft lips slightly parted and pale skin warmed by the faint flicker of firelight. She's wearing the same pale green nightgown she had worn that night at the inn, the bodice clinging to her slim frame and skirt splayed out around her on the mattress.
"Rapunzel?" Cassandra manages to utter through her disorientation.
She only watches in bewilderment as Rapunzel crawls closer, lifting her knee to plant it on the other side of Cassandra's hips.
Cassandra swears her heart stops as Rapunzel settles in her lap, completely straddling her.
The panic flutters in her stomach all over again. "What are you—"
"I don't wanna be alone." Rapunzel murmurs, her hand coming up to rest on Cassandra's cheek. She peers down into the other woman's eyes as she asks, "Can you stay with me?"
She says it in that same soothing, breathy tone of voice – one that Cass is not sure she's ever heard from Rapunzel before.
The sound of it alone makes Cassandra want to melt, to crumble completely until she forgets her own name. The words lure her into a captivated haze, with the mere feeling of the princess' fingertips against her skin causing her to forget how to speak.
And all Cassandra can do is stare back at those green eyes hovering so close to her own, confused as to why Rapunzel is acting like this all of a sudden, yet doing nothing to push her away. Somehow, a mere look from Rapunzel is able to terrify her so completely, when no one else has ever come close to doing the same.
Then before Cass can even utter an answer, Rapunzel dips her head down to slowly brush her lips against Cassandra's own.
Cassandra flinches, recoiling slightly.
She doesn't mean to do it, but rather reacts by instinct, having only expected everyone in her life to try and hurt her. Never has she been shown such care and tenderness by anyone that it leaves her confused when she is shown the slightest glint of affection, for she doesn't believe she has ever been worthy of such a thing.
She reacts to Rapunzel kissing her like Rapunzel is a flame, and Cassandra is afraid of getting burned.
As Cass pulls away and their gazes meet once more, her own eyes are pleading, silently asking Rapunzel why she is doing this to her, begging her to stop solely because it is far too painful to give in to what Cassandra knows she will never have. Because she would rather push Rapunzel away than allow herself to feel.
But Rapunzel kisses her again, as brief and timid as it had been the very first time.
Cassandra remembers it so clearly – that accursed night that she hasn't stopped thinking about since it happened three months ago, and had wished countless times that they could somehow go back to again.
This time, Cassandra doesn't pull away. Instead, she lets her eyelids slowly fall closed. Her shoulders relax and a deep breath of relief seems to escape her at the feeling of Rapunzel's lips against her own.
Then she is falling into an endless trance, one that only seems to pull her in deeper and deeper no matter how hard she tries to resist.
Cassandra has never allowed anybody else to be so close to her, to touch her in such a way that leaves her so vulnerable. Nobody except Rapunzel - the one person in the world that makes Cassandra weak. The one person that she finds so beautiful it sometimes hurts. The girl she would do anything for. The girl that she hadn't realized she had wanted so badly until now.
When Cassandra kisses Rapunzel back, she doesn't know how to stop.
Rapunzel's other hand comes up to Cass' cheek, cupping her face in her hands and pulling her closer.
With Rapunzel perched in Cassandra's lap, Cass angles her chin upward to reach Rapunzel's lips, their chests pressing closer together. She snakes her hands along Rapunzel's thighs that straddle her, around her hips and up toward her waist. The soft fabric of the princess' nightgown is like silk between Cassandra's fingertips.
She wraps an arm around the small of Rapunzel's back, pushing her down onto the bed.
Rapunzel lowers onto her back, pulling Cassandra down on top of her, with their lips only parting for a moment before finding each other again.
After years of holding back, keeping her distance, ignoring every glint of attraction or jealousy over Rapunzel, Cassandra can't describe how good it feels to finally allow herself to completely collapse into what she has always craved – like a spark of hunger igniting within her.
A nagging thought in the back of her mind tells her to stop before everything is ruined between them forever - to quit fooling herself because she knows deep down that there is no way any of this can be happening right now.
Rapunzel deserves the world, and there's no way that Cassandra can ever come close to being that for her.
She's only a knight. A knight whose job it is to protect the princess, and most definitely not to have infatuations with. Nothing more, nothing less. That's the way it's always been, and the way it always will be.
Despite all of the reasons why this is a bad idea, Cassandra finds she doesn't much care anymore about the repercussions that may come with it, because she is so entirely obsessed with this feeling of pure bliss.
As she hovers over Rapunzel, propping herself up with her arms, Cassandra's lips trail down toward Rapunzel's jaw, planting soft kisses just beneath her ear.
A faint moan escapes Rapunzel's throat.
Then Cassandra wakes up.
As her eyes shoot open again, her gaze is abruptly met with a wooden beamed ceiling above her, gray and decayed. The morning sunlight practically blinds her as it shines through the windows of the familiar room she now finds herself in.
She's lying on her back atop a bed made of straw, with a single pillow beneath her head. Her muscles feel numb, eyes still begging for sleep.
A biting cold lingers in the air, clinging to her cheeks, her nose, her fingertips. White clouds of icy air appear before her lips with every breath that she takes. A shiver overcomes her body that she ignores the feeling of, having grown used to the freezing temperatures long ago.
She glances over at the unoccupied spot on the bed next to her, finding nothing but a vacant pillow and the other unmade half of the blanket.
Cassandra sighs exasperatedly to herself, briefly interrupting the dead silence of the room. Her hands come up to her eyes, and she tiredly runs her palms down her face while resisting an annoyed groan.
It wouldn't be the first time Cassandra has dreamt about Rapunzel in a similar way, though she's not sure it's ever reached that level of realism or… intensity before. If only that were something she could control. Whatever. It doesn't matter anyway. It was just a stupid dream, and dreams don't mean anything. She just hopes she wasn't talking in her sleep.
She doesn't know what time it is, or how long she had been out for. It must be much later in the morning than she had thought considering Rapunzel actually managed to wake up before her, which she doesn't think is something that has ever happened before. Clearly, Cassandra had been so deep in sleep that she hadn't even heard when Rapunzel got up.
The worrisome part of her mind tells her that something bad may have actually happened to Rapunzel, and that's why she isn't in bed. If she isn't here, then that means she's alone, and anything can happen to her when she's alone, which is why Cassandra should probably get up and go look for her.
Tiredly, she pushes herself to a sitting position and swings her legs over the side of the bed. Running a hand through her hair, she groggily stands and stumbles toward the open doorframe of the bedroom, leaning a hand against it.
"Rapunzel?" She calls out into the rest of the house.
The small wooden cabin that they've found themselves holed up in for the past couple of months looks to be completely ordinary to what Cassandra has grown used to. They'd stumbled upon it during their travels one day, discovering it to be once lived in but long since abandoned, and haven't left since.
Whoever had lived here before them left behind a little amount of furniture in the main room – a rectangular table, a few stools, and a log bench positioned in front of the stonework fireplace. The tall shelves lining the walls had somewhat been stocked with stray kitchen items, wax candles, and empty pails. Broken fishing nets and large scraps of cloth hang from the wooden beams lengthening across the ceiling.
The bedroom, being the only other room in the cabin, consists of nothing but a straw bed and an empty dresser whose surface has probably collected dust for years.
The walls, ceiling and floorboards are made entirely of decaying wood, with rays of bright sunlight peeking through the gaps around the front door. The cracks in the walls and the ceiling allow the light to seep inside too, but does little to provide warmth. The glass of the small square windows are murky with dirt and frost, making them difficult to see through.
They'd passed through various settlements and small towns since fleeing Corona all that time ago, where Cassandra was able to sell enough game and earn some coins for whatever she could hunt.
She'd spent the money she made on some new clothes – a fur-lined leather tunic, armoured shoulder pads and brown leather gauntlets. Her boots and her trousers remain the same as they had been, with her belt currently empty of her usual weapons.
As she walks through the cabin, a panic nestles in her stomach at the realization that Rapunzel most definitely isn't here. In such a small house, there are only so many places she could be.
"Raps?" She says, louder this time. When she doesn't hear a response, her mind jumps to the worst possible scenario and her heart begins to pound in her chest.
"Rapunzel!" Cassandra rushes toward the front door, practically slamming her body into it as she pushes it open.
A harsh cold envelopes her as she stumbles outside, coming to an abrupt halt on the porch.
The forest floor that surrounds the cabin is a white canvas of snow, its pale colour practically blinding along with the brightness of the clear gray sky. In every direction is a seemingly endless forest of skinny birch trees. Their branches are naked and decayed, and covered in a thin layer of fluffy snowflakes that slowly drift towards the ground.
The cabin hidden deep within the woods is completely secluded from any other signs of civilization. The snowfall has practically trapped Rapunzel and Cassandra here for months, with their journey to Fairview taking much longer than anticipated. Without much of a choice of where else to go, it's proven to be sufficient enough in terms of keeping them sheltered, at least until winter is over.
It only takes Cassandra a second to notice Rapunzel standing just outside the house, not too far from the front door at all.
She's holding a gloved hand out towards Maximus, who is currently munching on a handful of berries from Rapunzel's open palm. Her other hand softly strokes him on the snout, a faint smile lingering on her lips as she watches him eat with admiration.
Max's reigns are attached to a short wooden fence along the wall, just like Cassandra had left him the day before.
Rapunzel's forest green skirt reaches just below her knees in multiple layers of fabric, with dark tights clinging to her legs and fur-lined lace-up boots. She wears woolen gloves, and a brown cloak draped around her shoulders. The top half of her brunette hair is pinned up behind her head, the rest of it falling around her shoulders in long waves.
Cassandra breathes a sigh of relief upon finding her there, apparently perfectly fine and not in any danger. In fact, Rapunzel looks completely calm and content right now, considering Cassandra had nearly just had a heart attack.
But Rapunzel had to have heard Cassandra calling her a second ago. Why didn't she respond?
The princess briefly glances over at her, though their eyes never quite meet. The corners of Rapunzel's lips seem to fall into a frown at the mere presence of Cassandra. She looks down again and continues to focus on feeding the horse, as if the other girl isn't even there.
"You should be inside," Cassandra tells her, the door to the house still swung open behind her.
Rapunzel's gaze now seems to stare absently through Maximus, her expression dropping disappointedly.
"It's not—"
"It's not safe. I know," Rapunzel interrupts her, as if she has heard the words and recited them so many times that they've now lost their meaning.
The princess drops her hands to her sides defeatedly, releasing a sigh. Her jaw clenches. Her head shakes slightly in annoyance. Then without looking up, she walks over, steps up onto the porch, and brushes directly past Cassandra.
As Rapunzel disappears inside the cabin, Cassandra only stands there. She looks up and inhales deeply, knowing she had somehow upset Rapunzel, yet says nothing to try and fix it.
She remains frozen on the porch for a few moments, realizing that it isn't the first time Rapunzel has reacted toward her in a similar way, before a cold breeze causes her to shiver.
She sighs.
Cass reaches for the door, then stops briefly to look out at the forest over her shoulder.
Her eyes scan the surrounding area for any potential threats or signs of danger. The paranoid side of her expects to see movement or a shadow somewhere between the trees, even in broad daylight.
Finding nothing out of the ordinary, Cassandra steps back inside and shuts the door behind her.