Chapter 7
For as long as Rapunzel can remember, Cassandra would never make a sound in her sleep. Which is why when she begins to moan softly and mumble unintelligible words one night, it wakes Rapunzel up next to her.
It's still dark out, the walls of their bedroom buried in shadows and pale moonlight. The violent gusts of a brewing snowstorm creak the house. Soft whistles of wind can be heard from outside.
Cassandra is lying on her side, curled away from Rapunzel who can't quite see her face from where she is. But she's squirming every few moments as if in discomfort, weeping softly into her pillow.
It wouldn't be the first time Rapunzel has found her in a similar state.
She sits up in bed, watching Cassandra next to her with concern. Now at this angle, she sees the crease of Cassandra's brow and the tears glistening faintly on her cheeks, their wetness clinging to her rapidly flickering eyelashes.
"Cass?" Rapunzel whispers.
Her voice does nothing to wake Cassandra, despite how much of a light sleeper she usually is. All Rapunzel hears in response is another faint sob emitting from her throat.
Rapunzel slowly reaches a hand out toward her, her voice louder this time, "Cass…"
When Rapunzel's fingertips make contact with Cass' shoulder, she jolts awake.
It all happens so fast - Before either of them knows it, the knife Cassandra always keeps tucked under her pillow is clutched within her trembling fist. She scrambles to sit up and whips around all at once, the knife plunging directly toward Rapunzel's face.
Then Cass feels a hand grabbing her wrist, stopping her from bringing down her arm any further. For a moment, she fights it, and she yelps a whimper of fear.
"Cass—Hey, it's just me… It's just me."
Now fully awake, Cassandra's wide eyes are darting around in a panic. Her breath hitches repeatedly, fighting her own lungs to breathe.
"It's okay," Rapunzel tells her softly. "You're okay."
This time, Cassandra recognizes that voice - that sweet, familiar voice that somehow manages to soothe her into a hypnotic trance every time that she hears it, because she is so in love with the sound of it and the dream-like memories that it always brings even in times like these.
Rapunzel loosens her grip on Cassandra's arm, now stroking a hand down her back instead.
As Cass' eyes begin to focus into reality, she notices Rapunzel's face hovering in front of hers, otherwise a shadow in the night, sitting directly next to her on the bed. Their bed, in their room – safe. Home.
Now Cassandra realizes that the presence of bodily warmth she had felt somewhere behind her just moments before, the hand that had reached out and touched her on the shoulder had only been Rapunzel. Not someone trying to hurt her. Not a figment of her nightmares. Not the person she thought it had been.
Then her gaze lowers to the glistening blade in her lap, still violently shaking within her fist.
As she stares down at it in horror, she realizes what she'd almost just done. Yet, out of shame, she can't find herself to look up into Rapunzel's eyes. Slowly, she opens her palm to reveal the hilt of it, fingers rigid like claws. "I'm s-sorry," Cassandra quivers, so softly it's almost inaudible. "I'm sorry…"
"It's okay," Rapunzel deliberately keeps her voice as uplifting as possible, as if to reassure her that it's no big deal. That she doesn't have to apologize. That it's Rapunzel's fault, because she should've known Cass would react like that.
Finally achieving a sense of calm, Cassandra breathes a shaky sigh. After a moment, she pulls her knees up on the bed, hugging them tightly to her chest. She dips her chin into her arms, sniffling. Moonlight reflects off the blade that she still doesn't let go of.
The room falls into silence. A gust of wind. The house groans.
Cassandra didn't always sleep with a knife under her pillow. Not until everything changed. Nor did she ever have to explain to Rapunzel why she does it.
Rapunzel just wishes it never had to get to a point where Cassandra felt that she needed to. She tells herself it's probably another one of those things that they'll never be able to come back from, and that saddens her.
But instead of saying any of that, Rapunzel silently lets her head fall against Cassandra's shoulder.
There is the question of what to do or say next, whether they should go back to sleep considering how tired they both are. Whether they should talk about what just happened. But neither of them say anything more for a while, because whatever thoughts are on their minds are somehow already understood between each other without words. All that can be heard anymore are the soft weeping noises coming from Cassandra's throat.
Eventually, she is left with nothing but racing thoughts and drying tears that itch on her face. Her eyes are sore, and her nose is flushed pink. Her pounding heart has been replaced with exhaustion. Rapunzel's hair is tickling her cheek, yet she does nothing to acknowledge that the princess is there, instead staring intensely ahead.
"You know I would never hurt you," Cassandra mumbles into the darkness.
Rapunzel's gaze is absent, unable to see Cass' face from this angle. "I know."
Cassandra's arms come up to tiredly drag her palms over her eyes and down her cheeks. "I just can't get her out of my head," she croaks, her voice breaking all over again - out of hopelessness. Frustration with herself. Desperation for it to just end.
"I know," Rapunzel whispers. She shifts to wrap her arms around Cass' shoulders, hugging her tightly, fighting back tears herself.
Sometimes, Cassandra truly wonders if she would've rather never met her mother in the first place, despite yearning for the moment her entire life. Would she be happier, never knowing who she was? Or would that be just as painful as this?
She wonders how it is possible – to want to love someone that she hates so much.
After a while, Rapunzel lifts her chin to search for Cassandra's eyes. She lowers her arms, loosening her embrace. "Do you wanna talk about it?"
Cass only continues to stare forward with a disturbed mind and a pained crease in her forehead, completely still. She chews her lip in thought, as if debating doing just that. Then she shakes her head and inhales decisively, "I just need a minute."
Without looking over at Rapunzel, she pushes herself off the bed and strides toward the door.
The room is struck with a deafening silence after Cassandra steps into the hallway and pulls the door closed behind herself.
Rapunzel only remains sitting there on the bed, staring after it long after she's gone.
Her first impulse is to follow Cassandra, make sure she's okay. To not let her be on her own right now, because Rapunzel definitely wouldn't want to be. But she reminds herself that Cass has her own way of handling these things. It's one of the many things that make them so different from each other.
Besides, Cass is always like this.
She makes it clear when she wants to be alone, and Rapunzel finds no choice but to respect that. So, Rapunzel doesn't follow her, no matter how badly she wants to.
She drifts back into sleep long before Cassandra returns.
After returning from the cave in the woods the other night, Rapunzel and Cassandra had immediately asked Willow after coming home whether she had felt an earthquake too.
She said she hadn't, going on to explain that they've been known to sometimes occur in these mountains but not for the past few months. Which only confirmed what they were too nervous to admit – that whatever happened in that cave was no coincidence, and that they were the only two people to have experienced it, for whatever reason. Rapunzel would think she'd have gone crazy if Cassandra hadn't been there too at the time.
She hasn't been able to stop thinking about it since.
She finds her aunt in the living room one afternoon, rocking in the armchair by the fireplace, with her legs crossed and her nose in a book.
Rapunzel pokes her head into the room, breaking a silence. "Aunt Willow? Do you have a second?"
Willow flicks her gaze upward, a loving grin appearing on her face at the mere sight of her niece standing there. "Of course," she says pleasantly, closing the book in her lap. "What is it, dear?"
Rapunzel hands are clasped nervously behind her back as she slowly walks further in. If she's honest, she hadn't really planned what she was going to say. But she realizes she's spent too long delaying this. "I wanted to ask you something... About my mother." She takes a seat on the sofa at the other side of the room.
At the unexpected mention of her sister, the corners of Willow's lips fall in realization. "Oh," is all she manages to say.
The topic of Arianna has become easier to discuss overtime yet proves to remain sensitive for them both. But during the early months of Rapunzel and Cass moving in here, it had been such a relief for Willow to be able to share her grief with someone who loved Arianna just as much.
"Is it true she was sick?" Rapunzel asks, "When she was pregnant with me?"
If it were up to Rapunzel, she would've asked her own mother this outright. But Willow is the closest person left to her now, and she figures her aunt is likely to know what really happened when she was a baby.
Suddenly understanding what this is all about, Willow takes a steady inhale. She uncrosses her legs, leaning forward in her chair and resting her elbows on her knees.
Of course, at the time, it was no secret to the kingdom that their queen had fallen deathly ill. It put the entire village into unease for months, with everyone fearing that she and her unborn heir wouldn't make it. Willow hadn't lived in Corona at the time due to her continuous travels, but she remembers visiting her sister all that time ago, heavily pregnant and nearly dying. Only, no one had known how their queen had mysteriously recovered, or how it had happened so quickly.
"Yes. She was," confirms Willow.
Rapunzel doesn't realize how much she is leaning forward in her seat with intrigue. "How did she get better?"
Willow doesn't answer right away. Rapunzel notices her hesitance.
"They wanted to keep it a secret," explains Willow, gazing downward rather than into Rapunzel's eyes. "But I suppose it doesn't much matter anymore. You were going to become curious sooner or later. You deserve to know."
Rapunzel's eyes are wide with expectancy.
After a moment, Willow chuckles softly, shaking her head. "This might sound a bit hard to believe," she begins, deep in thought. "There was a flower…"
"The magic golden flower," finishes Rapunzel.
Willow snaps her head up at that, blinking in surprise. Then her eyes squint in confusion. "How did you know that?"
Truthfully answering that question right now would be a lot to explain. Rapunzel shakes her head. "It doesn't matter."
A part of Rapunzel isn't sure what compels her to tell Willow any of this now, after so long of keeping all of it a secret. All she knows is that she can't go on any longer without answers. She has to know if there was any truth in what Gothel had told her, all that time ago. Willow may be the only person left alive that can tell her.
"The flower that healed my mom… It… changed something in me," Rapunzel isn't sure how to explain it, but she finds herself continuing, "It gave me a gift that I'm still not even sure is possible."
Willow's eyes widen in disbelief, the tone of her voice intensifying. "You still have it?"
It's the last response Rapunzel had expected to hear from her, and it hits her like a violent wave. The princess' brows are pressed together, her expression soon transforming into one of shock and hurt all at once. "You knew?"
"Well… yes," admits Willow hesitantly. "But I thought your parents cut your hair, and the flower's abilities had been lost within you."
For a while, Rapunzel just stares at her blankly, hardly believing she's hearing any of this. "They did… But it never left." Then a helpless ache begins to form in her chest as she thinks of Gothel again, and the fact that a stranger somehow knew more about her parents and her own childhood more than Rapunzel did herself. Her voice softens in slow realization, until her words are hardly audible, "I can't believe you knew. Everybody knew except for me."
From the glint of heartbreak in on Rapunzel's face and the slight anger that tinges her voice, Willow suddenly realizes how this must feel for the girl. She wonders if she should have said anything at all, or at least had worded it differently. "Rapunzel…"
Before Willow can say anything more, Rapunzel bolts to her feet and storms toward the staircase.
She doesn't meet eyes with Cassandra who had just walked through the front door at the same time, swiftly brushing past her instead.
Rapunzel darts across her bedroom, rummaging through her wardrobe and dresser and plucking various items from them. She throws them all into a pile on the bed with more haste than care. Her movements reflect the growing ember of both anger and determination flickering within her chest.
Her mind is a spiraling jumble of thoughts. Muscles are rigid with tension. She's so focused and preoccupied that she almost doesn't hear Cassandra walking in somewhere behind her.
Rapunzel's movements don't slow as she begins to stuff the pile of clothes into a leather bag on the bed. She peers briefly over her shoulder, catching Cassandra's silhouette standing silently beneath the doorway in her peripheral vision.
Her gaze fixes forward again, her back remaining turned. "I'm going," states Rapunzel emotionlessly. "This is my problem, not yours. So don't try to stop me."
Cassandra's soft voice interrupts the noises of Rapunzel's aggressive shuffling. "I'm not stopping you. I'm coming with you."
Finally, Rapunzel stops. Slowly, she lifts her head and turns.
They face each other from across the room, now filled with a newfound silence.
Suddenly, she doesn't know what to say to that. A part of her didn't expect it. Another very much did. Now, all she can find herself responding with is, "Are you sure?" Because she knows there would be no point in convincing Cassandra otherwise.
"Are you?" Cass steps fully into the room, approaching her. "Being back on the road… It's not gonna be easy. You know that."
They're standing directly in front of each other now.
"It won't be forever," says Rapunzel, also convincing herself. "And we'll be better prepared this time. Then once all of this is finished, we'll come home again, and everything will go back to normal. And hopefully my powers will too." Her gaze falls somberly as she rubs a thumb across her opposite palm. "I just don't wanna drag you into all of this."
Despite the uncertainty of whatever awaits them out there, Cassandra's voice remains uplifting. "It's my job to protect you, remember? Which means I don't have a choice, and neither do you. Although… I'm starting to think maybe you don't need me anymore."
It isn't until Rapunzel lifts her chin to meet Cassandra's eyes and that signature smirk of hers that she realizes Cass is joking.
Rapunzel scoffs, finally allowing herself to crack a relieving smile. Just like that, her shoulders seem to release their tension. "Of course, I do… I'll always need you."
Cassandra's grin slowly fades at that. She blinks in surprise, as if she hadn't expected to hear that. At the same time, her eyes are wide with admiration.
Realizing it, Rapunzel looks away awkwardly.
Eventually, the princess' mind drifts away again and she breaks the silence, changing the subject. "She knew. This entire time, she knew about my power."
It isn't that this is Willow's fault. She hadn't known Rapunzel still had her powers, which is why she probably never mentioned it. Yet, Rapunzel can't help but feel disappointed. In what, she's not sure. Willow? Her parents, for keeping such a secret from her? Or herself, for not knowing any of this sooner? But how could she?
Did her parents know she could still heal, despite trying to rid her of her power as a baby? Or did they think it was gone too, just like Willow did?
Either way, if Rapunzel had known about it sooner, maybe she couldn't prevented her parents deaths. Or at least brought them back, the same way she did with Cassandra. Maybe her and Cass' lives now would've turned out so much different. Maybe they'd still be at the castle right now. In their home, with their family. The way it was supposed to be.
Just thinking about it inevitably draws that same hopelessness back that had consumed her just a few minutes earlier. At a loss of what to do, Rapunzel plops herself down to sit on the edge of the bed behind her.
She sighs heavily, burying her face in her hands. "I feel like my entire life is a lie."
Cassandra doesn't need to ask what caused Rapunzel to storm upstairs just now. Willow had told her their conversation.
After a moment, Cass takes a seat on the bed next to her, with Rapunzel's unfinished packed bag somewhere behind them. She too releases a soft, hopeless breath. "I know how you feel."
Rapunzel looks over at her then. In Cassandra's distant gaze alone, now refusing to meet her eyes, Rapunzel thinks again of Gothel. Despite the glumness behind it all, it's relieving for Rapunzel, knowing that she's not the only one who feels this way - who had a life-changing secret kept from them practically since they were born, about who they are, and where they come from.
"I guess you do, huh?" Rapunzel realizes.
"You know it's not her fault," says Cass, her voice gentle.
"I know," the princess admits, knowing exactly what Cassandra means. Deep down, she understands why they kept it from her, but it doesn't make finding out about it any easier. "I should probably apologize to her." Suddenly, she feels guilty for storming out on her aunt like that, when the woman hadn't done anything wrong.
"Let's at least wait until morning before we go anywhere. Okay?" suggests Cass. "We'll have to make some preparations."
Rapunzel can't argue the benefit of that. She realizes now she'd gotten ahead of herself. Again. But it's true they'll need to be well prepared for whatever journey awaits them. "Yeah," she agrees.
It isn't until now that the reality of what they're about to do truly hits her. Leaving their newfound home terrifies her to no end. But she reminds herself why she has to.
The dire thought as well as the uncertainty behind it swells in Cassandra's mind too. Despite it, she releases an exasperated sigh, easing the tension of her own body and the room itself. "I guess the only thing now is… what are we gonna tell Willow?"
A/N: And so the adventure begins. That was all just set-up, but things are going to be picking up from here.
