Chapter 24: Fredric struggles

I am deeply sorry, but I find myself needed to fix a slight mistake and therefore I have to re-post this chapter. I am so sorry for this. It turned out I misspoke about something. The chapter is still the same, I just corrected slight detail.

Down in the sick room, the physician bent over Varian's crinching body. The boy looked like he had great pains in his head as he kept both hands hard around it and clenching his teeth, eyes hard shut and hitching when he breathed as he leaned sideways on the pillow while sweat sprang on his face. At the foot of the bed, Ruddiger was curled up and hiding behind his striped tail, not realizing what was wrong with his master.

"What happened here?" Phineas asked.

"I... I tried to help him remember how he got here, and then when it looked like he would, he just... grabbed his head and screamed." the young girl explained stumbling, barely able to hold back her tears.

"Everyone, stand back. Let me deal with this!" Phineas said and gently placed a hand on his forehead to see if he got any respond.

"Is there anything you can do?" the King asked, his voice deeply concerned. Ruddiger responded to his voice and looked at him before he jumped out of the bed and over to him, scratching his knee as if to beg him to help. Fredric's respond was to lift him up again. It seemed like he had forgotten how he shouted earlier, as now the critter found a bit comfort in his presence.

"Let me try... Remain quiet, everyone. Not a word!" the old physician said as he led both hands towards both sides of Varian's head and tried to gently, but steady, lirk his fingers through to both temples and begun rubbing circles on them. After a few second doing so, Varian seemed to respond and slowly stopped moaning and his jaw stopped clenching, although his body begun twitching a little. His breath seemed nevertheless to calm down too.

Phineas kept rubbing circles on his temples while they watched. Then he begun mumbling in a foreign language, almost like a priest giving a hymn, only he wasn't singing. It sounded like he was repeating an ancient alphabet and he pronounced short words with only one vocal, and it sounded a little like he was speaking them through his nose. The King, Xavier and Karen watched as the odd, but relaxing words and the rubbing on his palms somehow had a calming effect on the boy's lanky, twitching body and after a while he was lying calm ok the bed again.

"Is he gonna be alright?" Karen whispered low, her bottom lip quivering.

"In Phineas hands, most people are alright." Karen felt a steady hand grab gently around her shoulder, and looked up to face the old blacksmith giving her a warm look in his grey eyes. "Now tell me, child... Did you say he was trying to remember?"

"Mhm..."she said and swallowed hard. "And then he got all weird and..." she looked at him again. Then she looked at His Majesty and at Xavier again. Both men met eacother's look, and Karen had a feeling something was wrong. "What?"

"It's just that..." the old blacksmith begun leading her towards the door. "I think we need to explain a few things. Come with me lass, and let Phineas do his work."

With huge, worried eyes, Karen kept his gaze as she let Xavier lead her outside to the reception room, past a silent Prince Lars, who watched the whole scenario a few steps from the door, with a look in his still moisty, brown eyes that was hard to read. He moved out of the way and let them pass before he closed the door behind them, himself remaining in the room without saying a word.

After seeing him lay still, the physician let a hand rest on the boy's sweat forehead while the other was checking the boy's pulse on his right wrist. Varian was all quiet now, looking rather exhausted after the odd struggle, lying with his mouth open and breathing calmly. Noticing he had gotten still again, Ruddiger moved, and Fredric lowered him on the floor again so he could approach his master. The critter jumped up on the bed and crept past the arms of the physician, who barely noticed his presence as he walked up to Varian's still face, touching it slightly with one paw.

"What can you tell, Phineas?" the King said with chocked voice.

The old man arched an eyebrow at Ruddiger. "First of all, that normally I would never have allowed an animal near a patient, but this one..."

"No, I mean..." He shook his head. "That crinching and screaming and...What was that?"

Phineas didn't reply at first, but lifted up one of the boy's eyelids and gave the open eye a slight blow to see if there were any life. When there was no immediate respond from Varian's side, the physician's face changed, and he raised his head and looked at him with stiff, small eyes.

"I fear, Your Majesty..." he clenched his right fist. "His condition... His memory... It might be worse than I thought."

"What do you mean?" Fredric said.

"I have a feeling that..." he said and rose. "What Your Majesty was witnessing here...was the boy's brain trying to protect him from memories that hurts his soul and heart, like I said earlier. The strain seems to simply have been too much for his young mind to handle, and his brain did all it could to stop him from recalling past events. The body has odd ways of telling us something is wrong with us and that we need to give ourselves time to recover. And I'm not talking of something as simple as a rash. That was pebbles compared to this boulder we have in front of him."*

"But... it looked like it... like he was hurting?" Fredric said.

"That's right. This was his brain's way of telling him that he shouldn't try to regain his lost memories yet, most likely because his young body, or mind for that matter, isn't ready to handle it." He bent over him and let a hand touch his sweat forehead. "Yet!"

"You mean, there is a chance he will regain it?" the King asked with wide eyes.

"It could be. But it is far too early to say." He used a finger to slightly lift up Varian's chin to close his mouth. "I thought it was a chance he could regain it within a week or so if we gave him time to relax, but depending on how much it hurts his heart... After seeing this reaction..." he looked back on the unconscious boy before looking back at the King. "Your Majesty. I was planning to bring the truth to him a while after he had recovered physically, but after what I have just witnessed, I won't recommend it. If the truth hurts him this much, there might also a chance that he will... never recover from this. For all we know... his memories... His fate might be even worse than the man with the torch. We could lose him." He looked up and face him. "Does your Majesty want that?"

"But..." the King looked at him with wide eyes. "That would be a disaster! Considering his actions..."

"Fredric!"

The King felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to face Prince Lars. His brown eyes, still a bit red from his breakdown earlier, were stern. "If the physician says it's a chance to hurt him with his own memory, then is it really a good idea to hurt him even more than he already has been?"

Fredric stood still. Lars' calm, but cross tone cut deep into his heart. It was just like hearing his own mind speaking directly to him, and his words felt like daggers in his heart.

"I want to tell you something." His face became rather dark. "Do you recall I mentioned my... brother? The one who... died so suddenly?"

Fredric blinked a little, thinking back to the meeting in the pavilion, before suddenly remembering. "Oh... Yes, I believe I recall..."

"Well... Before his death... he too did something that... if it wasn't for his title, he would have been... "He shut his eyes hard for a moment before he opened them again, looking lost. "My point is... there was a reason for his actions. If only I had been able to help him sooner... If only he... Then he wouldn't have been driven to do what he did." His brown eyes were getting wet again, and he looked away while blinked to clear his vision. "Let's just say for now that... My brother's fate were similar to this boy's. He died with the reputation of a traitor!"

"No!" Fredric's eyes went twize as wide.

"And I confess, I failed to help him, but... you still have your chance to help Varian." Lars looked him in the eyes again. "Considering the circumstances, and his past, I think you owe him that!"

Fredric gave him a stern look back. "And what about his father? He deserves the truth, don't he?"

The words seemed to sting, and Lars looked away, his voice became a whisper when he spoke. "Sometimes... the truth is not necessary the best way." For a moment, the red haired Prince rubbed his eyes. After a moment gathering himself, he met the King's eyes again, his own brown eyes gave an expression that was hard to understand. "Maybe the truth should come to the lad sooner or later... but right now, shouldn't it be better if we let him recover to a physical state where he might actually be able to handle it?"

"Lars, are you suggesting that I should lie to him?" Fredric asked.

"It's called... holding back parts of the truth until he is ready for it." Lars stated, not changing his expression. "Fredric... You see a traitor in him, and so may many others. Phineas sees a patient." Lars turned his gaze to the boy in the bed. "But all I see is a young boy who is in dire need of help. A boy without his family there, probably scared to his wits in a condition he doesn't know how he got himself into. A boy who's gotten lost because there was no one to guide him. But most of all; When I sat there with him a while ago, I got to see a bright young man who deserves a chance in life." As he spoke, his brown eyes got hard and stern. "He won't get that in a cell!"

All of a sudden, Fredric found that he was unable to give a proper answer. His mind was arguing with his heart, and the subject of a cell made him numb. His thoughts started to wander, back to the day of Rapunzel's departure, where he had met with her after she had gone seeing Varian down in the cell. Not even Fredric had heard how hard they had to deal with him down there. Or maybe he had been told, but ignored it, again. Anyway, his daughter's reaction to it shattered his heart to pieces. As the Captain finally came up from the dungeons and followed his daughter Cassandra away to give them some privacy, she reveled this to him, and Fredric had been stunned at how hurt she was feeling for his behalf.

"Dad... I demand you give him a better cell." she wept into his waistcoat. "I don't want him to be stuck in the dark. Give him a cell where he gets some sunshine. And make sure Ruddiger can come and go as he please. It's not good for him to be there. It's not good for any of them to be there..."

"There there, darling. I promised I would do all I could to help him, and if you think this will help him... get a little better, then I will do what I can."

"I didn't want this to happen, dad..." she sniffled. "I didn't want to hurt him, and it's... it's all my fault." Her voice broke into sore sobs.

"But Rapunzel, there was nothing you could have done to help his father. We saw that ourselves. It didn't work."

"N-not... Quirin..." she gasped and struggled. "V-V-Varian... I... I should have gone... I should have tried... I didn't even try... He was all alone!"

"No now, honey..." he hugged her tighter, hoping it would help her calm down, but she cried even harder.

"If only you had know him before... you would have loved him, dad. He was so sweet and good and he would never hurt anyone ever ever ever..." her sobs got louder and louder as she kept praising Varian as the good kid he had met half a year ago. "Dad..." she looked up at him while clinging her little hands to his waistcoat like she was holding on to life, with a twisted expression on her face and tearful, heartbroken eyes that seemed to have lost all hope. Her voice broke when she managed to utter the next words, which escaped as a long, sore cry.

"I've lost a frieeeend..."

He knew how much her friends meant to her, he hadn't forgotten how she had defended Atilla during his trial while no one else. Only that had been different, and he was proven innocent while Varian there was no doubt about. But during this process, he no longer counted her as a friend, and this realization alone seemed to tear his daughter apart from inside. It tore him up inside to see her so unhappy.

Eugene arrived in time to see her bury her face into her father's chest again. Her sobs echoed in the hallway, and his normally bright appearance faded as he approached them.

"Ehm... everything alright?"

The sound of Eugene's voice made Rapunzel turn around and look up. "Oh Eugene..." her voice broke into tears again as she threw herself into her boyfriend's safe embrace. Eugene, who were quite on alert with Rapunzel's feelings and couldn't stand to see her upset, did not hesitate to give her some comfort by holding her tight and stroking his hand gently over her head as she sobbed into his chest.

"Hey, Blondie. It's gonna be alright. You'll see your dad father again soon. Certain!" He bend down and whispered into her ear, but loud enough for Fredric to hear it. "Hey, I bet that as soon as we're away, your dad is gonna go right up to his room and cry his eyes out. He's just pretending to be tough when you're still here. Right?"

If he misunderstood the reason for her tears or if he had figured out and thought it was better for the moment to try to loosen up on it to make he departure a little easier to bear, Fredric couldn't tell, but he himself decided to play along, hoping it would help Rapunzel calm down. "Would you bet your goatee on that, son?" he said while smiling slyly back at him.

"It grows out again, so I'm not so worried about that!" the former thief said as he smirked and let a finger glide over his little chin beard. "But I believe it would be an unfair match, don't you think?"

Fredric had found this undeniable fact rather amusing, and suddenly broke into a rumbling laughter.

Rapunzel couldn't help but chuckle through her sniffles as she realized that her boyfriend and her father had grown so close they could joke with each other now. Seeing that she had calmed down a bit, Eugene looked at her and smiled when he saw her laugh. Then he reached for his pocket to get his handkerchief and handed it to her. While she wiped her eyes and nose, he turned to the King, still holding around her. "We're all set now. Just waiting for Hook Foot's big toe stop swelling, and we can leave."

"Swelling?" Fredric asked and arched an eyebrow.

"Don't ask!" Eugene replied with rolling eyes.

The worst part was that Eugene had been right. The first moment Fredric had on his own, in his office beside his and Arianna's bedroom, his dam broke and he wept for at least fifteen minutes without stop. And then he spent hours in there and didn't come out before supper.

But when he thought back on that day, he hadn't been certain of why he had broken down that way. He had thought it was because of Rapunzel's leave, but as he stood there now, he wondered if the reason were right in front of him instead; lying there in one of the sick beds, as a result of what he had done.

As he laid there still, Fredric eyed him all over from where he stood. He knew he had been in a dreadful condition earlier that day, but seeing him so calm and without anger as a shield to protect him, he saw how right Phineas had been about him. He had been a lanky figure when they arrested him, but now he really was dreadfully skinny all over, and when he took a look at his face, he felt how all color faded from his face. Because of his condition, Varian could easily be taken for being dead where he laid. He looked so vulnerable, so delicate. So young. The thought of something harming such a fragile being...

Fredric felt a sting in his eyes and had to blink several times.

This is all my fault! Mine alone!

He knew it. He had known it all along. The reason for Varian's actions had been all alone his own fault. His desire to keep his precious daughter safe had led him to take actions that were hasty and unreasonable. Lying to his daughter, the very same way Quirin had lied to Varian, all to keep their children safe, at what cost? The blame was his own, but the punishment had fallen on Varian, harder than it should have. As Fredric realized this, the same voice inside him told him how unfair this was. And that's probably what Varian was feeling as well. Unfairly treated beyond words. No wonder why he refused to cooperate. Right now Fredric didn't blame him at all.

How could he possibly allow this?

Should I have told him the truth? he thought to himself. All of a sudden he were pretty certain that there was a million things he could have done allot different with the handling of Varian, but he realized he hadn't given himself the time to actually do so. How horrid he felt like now. Rapunzel had felt so bad for not taking actions to help Varian, and now he was feeling just the same.

Maybe if I had, then he could have been more cooperative. He could... I could...I should have...

He didn't know how long he had been standing like this when another voice broke the silence.

*I am no expert on amnesia, nor am I a psychologist. I have though, experiences rash when being stressed or deeply worried. Varian's reaction to trying to remembering is a reaction I have borrowed from the episode A Stranger Passed This Way from the western television show Bonanza, where Hoss Cartright loses his memory after an assault. Whenever he tries to remember, or is stricken by something that reminds him of anything, his head hurt, and the doctor there warned them of pushing it, as it could cause great damage on his brain. Hoss' reaction wasn't as violent as the fit Varian got here, but he did have a moment when he had great pain in his head while faced with familiar things. And, things normally seems bigger on cartoon than in a live action show.

Also, thank you 'I'm Enthralled' for making me aware of this slight mistake with temples and palms. Phineas was rubbing on his temples, of course, the palms were just a mistake from me *just slap me*. I am sorry if I misguided you for this. Also, as a thanks, I'll answer your questions. First; the rubbing of the 'temples' is an element I have borrowed from the movie 'The Da Vinchi Code' where we see Sophie do a similar treatment to Langdon in a car where he is suffering from claustrofobics. She had learned this from her mother, who did it to her when she was stressed. It seemed like a natual addition to this. I'm no expert, but I believe the temles are a certain sensetive pressure point that might have effect on the body, not sure, just correct me if I'm wrong. Then; the words were just ispired from Mulan; when Chien Po asks Yao to repeat a calming hymn/verse/strofe... I just had this in mind when I wrote this. It made it sund a little more mysterious. The thought is that the words would have a sort of calming effect and bring him into some kind of meditative state. He just falls alseep after too much mental strain, considering his body isn't actually fitted for resistance right now.

I hope this was informative for you. Just stay alert; I have more chinese science/medicine coming up.