Chapter 10

Cassandra hacks her sword through the foliage in her path.

Flynn follows behind her as they travel through the forest. Rapunzel is trailing further back, silently pulling Maximus alongside her.

The canvas of leaves overhead blocks out the sun creeping toward its peak in the morning sky.

They've packed their cloaks and gloves into Max's saddlebags, with the warm air no longer requiring so many layers of clothing.

Flynn brushes a low branch away from his head, struggling to keep up with Cassandra. "I know you almost killed me the other day, but you know what? I'm not one to hold a grudge. I'm willing to put it behind us. Unless you're still adamant on reaching a first name basis."

Cass doesn't look back at him as she continues to walk. A part of her doesn't even want to respond to that, but she realizes she still hasn't told him her name. She supposes there would be no harm in telling him now, especially considering they're going to be spending a lot of time together.

"Cassandra," she tells him, unenthused.

"Cassandra," he annunciates every syllable, as if testing how it feels on his tongue. "See? That wasn't so hard." He wags a finger in the air, "I'll remember that one."

They continue to walk quietly for a while longer.

All that can be heard is Cassandra's sword continuously slashing through the leaves of the luscious forest, and their boots shuffling through dirt and fallen twigs. After living in the mountains for so long, they can't remember the last time they'd seen trees so green and full.

Eventually, Flynn interrupts the silence again. "Soooo… Your friend. Is she seeing anyone or…?"

Rapunzel is trailing far enough behind them that she doesn't hear.

Something within Cassandra flickers with irritation, before she realizes she isn't surprised he'd be asking her that question right now. It seems to be the only thing on his mind since they met him. Still, he's only just opened his mouth and she already regrets letting him travel with them.

"Yes. She is," Cass answers in a stern tone. Maybe telling him that will prevent him from trying anything with Rapunzel in the future. Then again, that seems unlikely.

He doesn't notice her annoyed expression from behind her.

"Oh," Flynn says, sounding disappointed. He briefly stumbles over a boulder on the ground, then pretends it didn't happen. "And how come I don't see him around?"

Technically, her and Rapunzel are not actually together. They've never talked about it. Therefore, Cassandra shouldn't act like they are, no matter how badly she wants Flynn to know. Because really, who is she to decide whether Rapunzel is available or not? Even if they were together, it's none of his business what their relationship may or may not be.

Thankfully, Flynn doesn't push the subject. When Cass doesn't answer right away, he continues, "You two must be pretty far from home, now that I think about it. Where is home for you, anyway?"

Her mind instantly shifts to Corona, which – there's no way she's telling him about that. Talking about it is one thing, but giving him any clues that her and Rapunzel are actually royalty would be extremely dangerous.

"It doesn't matter anymore," she says.

"All right. So, the past is a touchy subject. Noted." He eyes her curiously from over her shoulder. "And what are you, her bodyguard?"

Cassandra aggressively swipes her blade through another tree branch in her path. "Yes."

Flynn stops for a moment, blinking after her in surprise. "Wait, really? That's a thing?" He'd only meant it as a joke. "Well, that explains the armour, I guess. And the… various weapons I see you have on you. Which are not intimidating in the slightest." He eyes the bow and quiver of arrows strapped around Cass' torso, as well as the dagger he can see on her belt from here. Not to mention the sword in her hand that she's managed to threaten him with twice now. He jogs to catch up to her, soon forgetting about it. "So, why does she need a bodyguard?"

"I have an idea," Cass stops abruptly, turning to face him. "How about I be the one to ask the questions here?"

He shrugs carelessly, "Go right ahead."

Cassandra turns again, continuing forward. She exhales steadily in an attempt to calm herself. "The men who were chasing us. What do you know about them?"

"Not much. Just that they're a pretty well-known group of warriors in that area that like to cause trouble. They call themselves the Brotherhood."

"What do they want?" she questions.

"Probably what any other band of thugs could want out here: Whatever they can get. As long as it serves their own personal gain."

Cassandra supposes that would makes sense. It wouldn't be the first time her and Rapunzel have dealt with their kind. Though, she can't help but feel like there's something else to it.

"You sound like you speak from experience," she comments.

"When you've been on the road as long as I have, you meet all kinds of people. I just don't identify myself with any of them," explains Flynn. "Sure, I may have gotten into some trouble here and there, but it's always just been me, myself, and I."

As Cassandra lets that stir in her mind, she chooses not to say anything more.

She just hopes it can go back to that way for him soon.

A small badger waddles across the forest floor. It's sniffing nose burrows in the dirt as it moves along, until an arrow plunges directly into its neck, and its body seizes.

In an instant, the creature falls lifelessly onto its side.

"Wow," Flynn comments as he stands within the bushes a distance away, "Remind me never to get on your bad side."

From next to him, Cassandra steps out and into the open a moment later, bow held by her side.

Rapunzel guides Maximus through the trees behind them.

Kneeling down in front of the creature, Cass emotionlessly plucks her blood-stained arrow from its flesh. She returns it to the quiver strapped to her back, and picks up the dead animal by its tail with her opposite hand.

They still have enough food to last them a couple weeks, but she couldn't pass up the opportunity to catch some fresh meat while they're out here, since it's not something they were able to bring from home. Whatever they don't eat, they can dry the rest and take it with them on the road.

The sun has already begun to set. So, after nearly a full day of walking, they find a clearing in the woods to set up camp, cook a well-deserved meal, and rest for the night.

Cassandra builds a fire, skins and roasts the badger over it, all the while denying Flynn's persistent offerings of help.

A couple hours later, when they're finished eating and the sky becomes dark, the forest falls into tranquility.

There's a slight chill to the air but the flames of the crackling fire provide a comforting warmth and an orange radiance over the otherwise silhouetted trees. Crickets are chirping rhythmically into the night. An owl hoots from somewhere distant. The camp smells strongly of smoke and lush vegetation.

Cassandra stares absently through the flames as she sits on a fallen log, with Maximus idling behind her. Rapunzel sits on the ground at the opposite side of the fire, with her knees pulled tightly to her chest.

Flynn's footsteps break the quietness of the night. He wanders across the small encampment, crossing behind Rapunzel. "You cold?" he asks her softly.

The princess peers up at him standing behind her, unable to deny her slight shiver. "Oh. A little."

He reaches near Rapunzel's leather bag on the ground, retrieving her cloak that he remembers her wearing. "Here." Coming up behind her, he bends forward to gingerly wrap it around her shoulders. His hands linger around her for a moment afterward.

Rapunzel pulls the cloak tight around her neck. "Thank you," she murmurs, flashing him a shy grin.

Cassandra glares at them from across the fire.

She doesn't mean to do it. In fact, she tries not to. She merely flickers her eyes in their direction over the flames, biting her tongue.

She expects Rapunzel to meet her eyes after that, but she doesn't. It makes Cassandra wonder if Rapunzel is avoiding her gaze on purpose.

Flynn seats himself in the dirt a few moments later, pulling his knees up in a similar manner to Rapunzel. To Cassandra's surprise, he manages to keep his distance from her.

Still, just sitting here watching the two of them is making her fists clench.

"I'm going to get some more firewood," Cass announces abruptly. She rises to her feet and begins to walk away.

Rapunzel follows her with her gaze. "Do you want me to come with you?"

"No. Stay here." Without looking back, Cassandra disappears into the forest before anyone can say anything more.

They listen to her footsteps fading away, her silhouette soon vanishing into the darkness.

Once she's gone, an awkward silence falls within the camp.

Flynn flickers his eyes over at Rapunzel.

She avoids his, instead staring after the spot in the trees that Cassandra had disappeared into.

"Sooo…" he begins, hoping to ease the tension somewhat, "She's a little… intense. Don't ya think?"

Rapunzel chuckles weakly. "She means well. You just have to get to know her." She can't deny that about Cass, or that it might be alarming to a stranger. Still, Rapunzel doesn't see her that way. At least, not all the time. "She's been through a lot."

"Oh, yeah?" As Flynn watches her, he sees something else in her eyes that he hasn't yet seen on her before. Something distant and somber. Something that intrigues him. "And what about you? Where you from?"

At first, she thinks of Fairview and Aunt Willow. The mountains. Their little house. Then she thinks of her home before that, only to immediately force it out of her mind with a shake of her head. "No where," Rapunzel murmurs.

"Come on. I mean, we all gotta come from somewhere. And it's not like we don't have the time."

She hears Cassandra's voice in her head telling her to keep her identity a secret - that no one can know about her powers, or that she's a princess or even from Corona. She'll have to be careful with what she reveals to him.

"Cass doesn't like to talk about it, but… our home was destroyed. About a year ago." She stares absently through the crackling flames before her as she recounts it all. "There was a raid. Bandits attacked the village in the middle of the night. I barely even remember it. It all just seems like a blur." Her heartrate accelerates, just as it does every time she thinks about it. "I remember the screaming. I remember the smoke. There was… so much fire. Just… bodies everywhere. I thought I was gonna die." She awkwardly shifts to stare down at her own hands, never meeting Flynn's gaze. "I lost my parents that day." Her horrified expression melts into one much less emotional, reflecting the softness of her voice. "Cassandra got me out of there. And… we never went back. I wouldn't even be alive right now if it weren't for her."

Flames crackle. A bird twitters distantly.

"Well, that explains a lot about Cass," says Flynn with surprise. When he looks over at Rapunzel again, he realizes he'd done nothing but make her feel worse, and a wave of guilt washes over him. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

"No, it's okay," she assures genuinely, "Sometimes, it feels good to talk about it. I've spent so long keeping it inside."

"Well, you can talk to me. I'll be honest, I haven't made the wisest decisions in my life so I can't promise my advice is anything to go off of. But I can try." He leans toward her slightly as he speaks, flashing her a comforting grin that almost makes her blush.

"Thanks," the princess smiles, before looking away again.

They don't hear Cassandra returning to camp a few minutes later, nor see her cradling a pile of firewood just on the other side of the bushes.

When she hears Flynn's slightly muffled voice speaking to Rapunzel, Cass isn't sure what prevents her from interrupting it. Instead, she freezes within the shadows.

"You and Cass… It sounds like you've been through a lot together," she hears him say.

"We have." Rapunzel's voice is distant too. "We grew up together. We don't always agree on things, but… I've never known a life without her. She's the strongest person I've ever met." It's quiet for a few moments, before she admits wholeheartedly, "I hope I can be like her one day."

Something twinges within Cassandra's heart – just hearing Rapunzel say that. Something warm, yet also close to sadness. In a way, it makes her ache.

"What, angry and intimidating?" Flynn jokes.

Rapunzel's forced smile at his attempt at humour doesn't quite reach her eyes. "No," she says. "Brave."

That makes a part of Cassandra want to cry. Suddenly, she is overcome with an unexpected gloom.

She's never thought of herself as brave. Only a little girl who was forced to grow up too fast. Forced to fight and kill in order to survive, despite never wanting to.

It didn't make her brave. All it did was ruin her.

Cassandra doesn't ever want to imagine Rapunzel becoming like that. Because why would anyone ever want to be like her?

"Well, if you ask me… I think you're worth a lot more than you think," he coos. "If you'd let me… Maybe one day I'll show you."

His words are like a taunt in Cassandra's mind.

She expects – hopes that Rapunzel will decline that offer. To tell him she isn't interested. That he's overstepping a line, and her heart is set on someone else.

Her words instead break Cassandra's heart.

"I'd like that."

As the night goes on, Rapunzel is the first to fall asleep. She's curled up in her bedroll on the forest floor, alongside a sleeping Maximus.

The bright firelight from earlier has been replaced with the moon's pale shimmer, now faintly illuminating the dark woods. A scent of residual smoke lingers in the chilling night air. Over a continuous hum of chirping crickets, the occasional tweeting of wildlife are all that can be heard. That, and the rhythmic sound of Cassandra running a stone along the blade of her knife.

She's leaning forward on a fallen log, with her knees apart and her elbows resting over them.

Flynn is sitting on the ground across from her with his back against a tree, forearms resting limply over his pulled-up knees, head leaning back tiredly.

The flames of the campfire between them have long since died into mere flickering embers.

It seems no one has spoken for hours. But Cassandra refuses to sleep while Flynn is still awake. So, she continues to sharpen her knife in silence, every once in a while flickering her gaze upward in Flynn's direction.

He's currently doing nothing but trying to remain awake, it seems.

Eventually, she breaks the silence, eyeing him with suspicion, "So, what's your deal?"

Rapunzel is far enough away, and enough of a heavy sleeper to not wake from the sound of her voice.

Flynn almost laughs. He raises an eyebrow at her. "My deal."

"You haven't yet asked us why we're going to the Dark Kingdom." She watches his reaction closely, though shadowed in the night.

"To be fair, you haven't given me much of a chance," he retorts. There's a faint smirk on his face. "Although now that you bring it up, I'm curious."

Smugly, Cassandra shoots the same smirk back at him. "Let's just say we have a personal connection to it." She waits again to see if he'll press the subject.

He doesn't.

With one last swipe of her knife, she raises it to her lips and blows on it briefly. Then she pulls out an apple from the sack of supplies laying by her feet, and begins cutting into it. "That town we found you in. That where you're from?" She raises the knife to her mouth again, biting a slice of apple right off the blade.

"Not particularly. I travel from place to place. Never stay anywhere for too long," he shrugs. "Who's to say what home is to me anymore."

Cassandra notices the way his gaze falls somberly as he says it.

She thinks about that for a moment, surprising herself as she realizes she can actually relate to something that comes out of his mouth. She doesn't know anymore whether Corona is still her home, or whether Fairview is truly her new one.

"You said we'd both be screwed if the Brotherhood caught you too," Cass continues, remembering their first meeting. "Sounds to me like you had something to run from. You some sort of criminal or something?"

"I've just gotten mixed up with a lot of people." Flynn inhales steadily, tiredly. He lolls his head to the side to meet her gaze. "I'm sure you can say the same for yourself. Because between you and me… Neither of us are entirely innocent, are we?" Something darker flashes across his eyes. Almost accusatory.

Cassandra glares at him.

Despite the intensity of his words, there's a casual, matter-of-fact tone to his voice as he goes on, "Maybe you've done some things you regret... Maybe there's a darker side of you that people don't know about."

That silences Cassandra - in a way that Flynn has never been able to before. He seems to notice it just as she does, and there's a faint look of satisfaction on his face now.

It irks her.

Just like that, every bad thing she's ever done is now pooling at the front of her mind. Sometimes, she thinks the bad outweighs the good.

She thinks of every man she's killed, all the faceless shadows that have haunted her nightmares ever since – ones that she'd hardly even looked in the eyes before ending their life, never even thinking twice. She's killed so many people, she's lost cost. She murdered her own mother in cold blood. Sometimes, she thinks she still hears her voice.

To say that Cassandra has a dark side wouldn't even begin to describe who she really is.

Just from the look on her face - always so hard and confident, now faltering into something else entirely, Flynn knows he is able to see right through her. Her silence is enough confirmation of that.

"You see?" he says. "You've got your secrets. And I've got mine."

Cassandra's hard stare doesn't falter. Her fist is clenched around the hilt of her knife.

What secrets could he possibly have? He knows nothing of regret. He's probably never even hurt a fly. And who does he think he is to judge her? He doesn't know the first thing about her.

"Hey."

Rapunzel's sweet voice coming up behind her interrupts Cassandra's boiling thoughts, and her body relaxes immediately.

"What are you guys talking about?" The princess is emerging from the trees, with a blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders like a child. She's stifling a yawn as she approaches them, eyes drooping tiredly.

"Nothing," Cass deliberately avoids Flynn's gaze as she forcefully rises to her feet. "We were just about finished."

Rapunzel and Cassandra hover close as they mumble a few words to each other, quiet enough that Flynn can't hear.

He takes that as a signal to push himself to a stand too. He wanders away a few steps, before turning to face them again at a distance.

Both of their backs are turned to him. Cass is crouched now, shuffling through their things. Rapunzel is next to her, slithering back into her bedroll.

"Hey, uh, you guys don't happen to have an extra one of those blankets, do you?" Flynn asks, receiving no indication that they'd even heard him. He raises his voice, "No? That's fine, I'll just—I'll be over here. By myself. In case you guys need me." He tests out the ground by stomping on it a few times. "I'm practically a pro dirt-sleeper at this point. Did you know dirt is actually very good for your skin?"

He raises his gaze again just in time to be smacked in the face with a surprisingly soft black blur. He catches it in his arms, realizing it to be a folded blanket.

"Watch out for snakes," Cassandra calls over to him.

At that, Flynn jumps in fear, releasing a short shriek while peering worriedly down at the ground.

Once he hears Rapunzel giggling softly, he suddenly remembers there are no snakes in these woods.

"Ahah… Very funny. That's great," Flynn sighs, shaking his head.

Across the camp, Cassandra is crouched down next to Rapunzel, who is lying comfortably within her makeshift bed. "You all right?" Cass asks, adjusting the blanket for her.

Rapunzel has heard that question enough times to know what it really means. Are you warm enough? Did you eat enough? Do you need anything?

Still, she likes when Cassandra asks.

"Yeah," the princess hums contentedly with a smile, before realizing that Cass hasn't laid down yet. Her knife is still on her belt instead of beneath her pillow, and there's that usual distant look in her eyes. Like her mind is on something else. "Aren't you gonna sleep?"

Cassandra uneasily lifts her gaze in Flynn's direction.

He's laying curled on his side a distance away, adjusting himself. His back is facing them.

She focuses on Rapunzel again. "I'll keep watch for a bit."

Rapunzel gives her a pleading look.

"You just get some rest," murmurs Cass, before Rapunzel can protest. Because she knows she wants to. "I'll be right here."

Knowing Cassandra's paranoia, or inability to get a full night's sleep, Rapunzel doesn't argue with that. She trusts that Flynn won't try anything but understands why Cass might think he would. Besides, having Cass awake makes Rapunzel feel safe, in case anyone else tries to hurt her in her sleep.

So, the princess closes her eyes, and allows herself to drift.

Cassandra adjusts herself to sit on top of her own blanket, with her back leaning against a tree and her knees pulled up to her chest. Flynn is in her line of sight. The fact that Rapunzel's head is right next to her feet brings her immediate comfort.

With a soft gaze, she leans her head back against the tree, and twirls her knife in her hands.