Chapter Text
Eugene could tell a big change was coming, and it wasn't going to be a good one.
Call it 'a thief's intuition', the kind that tells you to leg it cause too many things have gone wrong and there's no salvaging the job. The kind of instinct that told you to duck into an alcove and pretend to, or actually, kiss the person you're with so the people looking for you feel too awkward to look too closely. The feeling that says the person you're traveling with and trust is probably going to stab you in the back pretty soon. It was a handy trait to have, but it often left him feeling overly paranoid.
Eugene estimated there was a respectable eighty percent chance something terrible was going to happen in the coming days, bumped up to ninety, maybe ninety-five if magic was involved. And with Rapunzel, magic was more often than not a given. Even visiting a fortune telling scam turned out to be real magic.
"Stupid Demanitus," Eugene grumbled to himself, balancing a knife on the tip of his finger. "Stupid monkey".
Lance swallowed the last bit of the meat pie he had been chewing and looked over his shoulder at his partner. "So the wizard was a person, then he put his brain into a monkey, then the monkey was just a monkey until you two came along, then the monkey brain became the wizard brain, then the wizard brain got used up, and now he's just a monkey again but with no wizard?"
“Yeah, that about tracks,” Eugene said.
The two of them were sitting on a grassy knoll next to a clear-blue lake. Ducks and geese happily swam in lazy circles, the occasional frog on a lily pad giving the occasional croak. It was a beautiful piece of calm that contrasted harshly with the view it overlooked.
The lake emptied out into a waterfall that led to a barren landscape of dead trees and giant brambles, each one with thorns the size of a horse. But these examples of angry looking vegetation were positively charming next to the fields of Black Rocks that dotted the landscape further past. Eugene was willing to bet they were fast approaching the end of their journey.
“He said something about the monkey brain not being able to contain all of his wizard brain. So now the monkey's even dumber than before. I think."
"And this fortune was in a fake jewel on the monkey's head?" Lance was holding the small paper with Demanitus's final warning written on it in both hands. He held it up to his face to read the tiny print and whatever else he could see. From a vest pocket the larger thief produced a loup, the kind used to assess jewelry, for a better look.
"Correctomundo," Eugene sighed.
"And you're certain it'll come true? I mean, from what you said, the whole fortune teller thing sounds like it was just a Grandmother Pearl job with a Lampshade Surprise. We learned how to pull one of those from the actual Grandma Pearl. Throwing in a Cryptic Call-Back like this could just be a clever twist to get a repeat customer."
"No, I'm pretty sure this one was real. We ended up going through a whole mystic maze and chased around by another automaton like the ones Varian made, only nastier". Eugene strategically left out the part where the whole being chased part was his fault for not paying a magic water fountain. Lance didn't need to know that. "Pretty sure that's not in any scam we've ever pulled, and we've pulled almost all of them."
"You've got that right." A smirk of pride crawled across Lance's face.
"Look, you know I'm not one to believe in superstitions," the highly superstitious Lance brazenly lied, "but this sounds like a real thing you've got to follow up on. I mean, ‘when Rapunzel enters the Dark Kingdom, one of her team will turn against her’ sounds pretty bad".
"Well doy, obviously. I just… don't know how to do that. It's not like I can call a meeting and accuse everyone of being a secret traitor." Eugene immaturely pulled up a clump of grass between his fingers in frustration.
"Say, this is a pretty good fake. A little wax and a little attitude, and I think we could pawn this off for a pretty penny." Lance said while holding the fake jewel up to a loup he wore on his eye. Eugene patted down his pockets, silently cursing to himself. Lance had pulled a fast one on him, which meant the score was now thirty four to twenty nine. The tally was still in Eugene's favor, but Lance was catching up on their pocket picking of each other.
Eugene sighed and let Lance continue examining it.
"Yeah, I didn't exactly come to you for your so very talented appraisal skills, amico . You're the only one I can absolutely trust when it comes to being untrustworthy.”
Lance put the jewel and loup in a vest pocket and lay down on the grass, hands behind his head.
"Fine, fine. I'll help you, but you owe me one." Eugene just shook his head at his partner's smugness and sarcastic tone. He joined him on the grass looking up at the clouds.
"Well, for starts, what makes you think you can trust me?" Lance asked.
"Hah!" Eugene barked, a single syllable containing a lifetime's worth of friendship.
"Oh I know I can't trust you, buddy. That's what makes you so trustworthy. It's mighty hard to stab someone in the back when you're so upfront about it." Without turning his head, Eugene reached out to give a friendly shove to the bigger thug's bald head, and Lance shoved him right back.
"Hey, I could totally betray you all for power and riches," Lance insisted only faintly serious.
"Oh yeah, you totally could. Greed could get the best of you and force you to turn your back on all the friends, family, and food you love." Eugene countered. "Face it mi amico, you've gone soft."
Lance chuckled. "I blame you," he said, "I guess there really isn't all that much to tempt me with anymore."
The two thieves lay there staring at the clouds, silently contemplating their fortune. Turned out the apple they had been chasing was the friends they made along the way, or inside of them all along, or something equally cheesy. Eugene could tell Lance was equally distressed by the thought, perhaps more so, when the larger thief did a full body shudder.
"Well, maybe for Adira," Eugene said to give Lance a conveniently corrupt copout.
"Oh, in a heartbeat. If my beautiful warrior goddess promised me her hand in exchange for all your heads, that fortune is definitely about me." The two laughed at the ridiculousness. Still, Eugene made a quick glance at his friend's expression to confirm that this was, indeed, a joke. The goofy 'in love' expression on Lance's face assuaged any fears Eugene had.
"Nah, the fortune isn't about you." Eugene concluded after a moment's pause.
"Eh, you're probably right. So who else is left? Hookfoot left to go on tour with his brother, so unless they became a heck of a lot more organized since we last saw them, I doubt we'll have to worry about them coming back with a posse of ruffians to rob us." Eugene rolled his eyes at the possibility of his comrade's idea.
"Yeah, like that'll happen. If those two bozos could pull off something like that, we deserve to be bamboozled by them."
"So he's out. How about the frog? Never trust someone who can change their spots at the drop of a hat, I always say," Lance said for the first time in his entire life.
"Hey, first of all, Pascal would never betray Rapunzel. I don't think he could even conceive of the idea. Second, I'm the only one who gets to call him 'frog'," Eugene said, mildly offended.
"What, you've got ownership over calling the little guy a frog?" Lance said, pushing up into his elbows with a confused expression. Ok, maybe Eugene had reacted a bit too impulsively.
"Well, no… it's just that's our thing, y'know? Between me and the frog. I just… don't want anyone taking that away from us." Eugene pushed himself up to match Lance. He was already feeling embarrassed about his little outburst, he didn't want to be looking at Lance from a different elevation, too.
"You know we're thieves, right? Taking things without permission is kind of our thing." Lance said, obviously seeing the opportunity for teasing and grasping it in both hands. Eugene waved his hands at Lance as though that would magically dissolve the other's ability to tease him.
"Ex-thieves! Whatever, fine, do what you want. Let's focus here, huh?" Eugene turned and crossed his arms as the larger thief laughed at him. Lance was the only one Eugene allowed to get to him like this.
Well, it used to only be Lance. More and more there was a certain brunette that could get a rise out of him. A brunette he didn't mind giving a rise to. He and Lance shared a familiarity that almost was family. But there was an exhilaration he felt whenever he was verbally sparring with Cassandra…
"Alright, so not Pascal. Who's our next suspect? Shorty?" Lance said, thankfully taking Eugene out of his thoughts.
Lance raised an eyebrow and turned his head to Eugene, who turned his head right back. There was a loud silence between the two of them before they guffawed even louder at the concept. Eugene wasn't sure he actually knew what a guffaw was, but this felt exactly the right time to use it.
"Oh, yeah, I'm so~o worried about Shorty," Eugene said between laughs, struggling to breathe.
"Right? An old coot like him?" Lance continued, wiping tears from his eyes.
"Sure, he's clearly some secret mastermind playing the long game," Eugene said as sarcastically as possible as his laughter died down and he regained his breath.
"Shorty is a lot of things, but the word 'master' ain't one of them. And definitely not 'mind' !" This launched the duo on another bout of laughter.
"Ahahaha, stop, my sides!" The pair took their time in enjoying the insanity of the idea. A few hardy slaps on the ground and a roll or two of laughter later, the two finally calmed down.
Eugene stood up, brushing the grass off his backside and Lance followed suit shortly thereafter. From their position on the hill they could see the entire glade. Off to the left the caravan sat looking admittedly worse for wear, the horrendous landscape to the right and just beyond the cliff seemed to have gotten cloudier, and the lake in the middle which was an odd patch of serenity in between.
What Eugene couldn't see was Shorty.
"Say, do you see Shorty anywhere?" Eugene asked, his earlier laughter becoming increasingly less amusing.
"Huh. Not really, no," Lance responded, holding a hand above his brow and squinting to see better. "He's not the easiest to spot, what with being so short and all," Lance said after a moment of searching.
"Yeah… he just kind of appears and disappears like that." Eugene said, his voice growing more serious.
"How old do you think Shorty is?" Eugene asked after a moment of the two searching.
"Ya'know, I never could tell. He's got to be getting up there. Didn't you say when Shorty, Cassandra, and me got turned into kids he became a baby?"
"Yeah, that Matthews jerk said the older you were the younger you got," Eugene practically spat the cultist's name. He was still upset about what he'd done to Rapunzel.
"Are you thinking about that saying?" Lance asked.
"Yeah… there's dumb thieves, and there's old thieves…" Eugene began
"But there ain't any dumb, old thieves" Lance and Eugene said in unison. They looked at each other and Eugene could see the same look of concern on Lance's face as on his own.
"No," Eugene said with hesitation in his voice.
"That's ridiculous," Lance said with even more hesitation.
"We didn't exactly invite him on this trip," Eugene pointed out.
"Like you said, he just sort of appears and disappears," Lance agreed.
"We should go down there and see if we can find him." There was a bravado in Eugene's voice that he really only used to cover up panic. And he was definitely feeling a growing sense of panic.
The pair did the ridiculous looking sort of half jog down the hill one does when trying to go down an incline quickly but don't want to fall over.
This was nonsense, right? Shorty wasn't a threat. He couldn't be. He was just a perpetually drunken old man who loved yams and couldn't navigate his way out of a paper bag.
A perpetually drunken old man who loved yams and had somehow survived in a profession that had a morbidly high fatality rate and required skill, wits, and planning to even last a year.
Eugene picked up his pace.
"You check the boy's side," he ordered Lance, "I'll check this one." Eugene flung open the door to the girl's side of the caravan, leaping inside like he would catch Shorty red handed.
Nothing. No little looter, no pint-sized pickpocket, not even the smell of fermentation that usually preceded the puny pilferer's presence. He wasn't here.
Except for a thud. Eugene spun on his heel, staring down Cassandra's wardrobe. It wasn't like her war-drobe back in the castle, filled with weaponry and armor, but it was still intimidating in its own way. Even more so now that it intermittently shook with the telltale sign of something, or someone, in it.
Eugene slowly crept forward, drawing the knife he had been playing with before from inside his sleeve. "If there's someone in there, you better come out right now!" He ordered in his most intimidating voice. Nothing.
"Ok, you want to do this the hard way? We'll do it the hard way." Reaching out with one hand and the knife ready in the other, Eugene unlatched the dresser door.
A bundle of black feathers flew into Eugene's face, nearly bowling the man over. "What in the–" Eugene couldn't find the words. Scrawny talons latched onto his lapels and wings beat against his head. "Oh, come on! Not the face! Not the hair! Not the face or the hair!"
He dropped the knife and scrambled to get whatever this creature was off of him. Stumbling, Eugene fell backwards out of the caravan where he finally was able to detach himself from whatever was attacking him.
"I'm here, buddy! I got your back!" Lance came skidding around the caravan, fists readied for a fight.
Eugene sat up and ran both hands through his hair, touched his nose, and patted his cheeks. Everything seemed in place without any discernible scars. He looked up as he heard a shrill "ba-caw!"
"A raven!?" Eugene said in shock.
"Ba-caw!" shrieked the black bird as it circled.
"There was a raven in the caravan. There was a raven in the caravan! Why was there a raven in the caravan?" Eugene's head spun back and forth until he spotted a pebble by the caravan's wheel.
"Ba-ba-caw!" The raven crowed as Eugene nailed the dumb bird. The raven spiraled, crashing on the caravan's roof before taking off again. Obviously dazed, it flew a zig zag path towards the terrible landscape beyond the cliff.
"That's right!" Eugene shouted at it, already hefting another stone.
"Whoa there, partner. I think you got it," Lance said as he placed a hand on Eugene's wrist. The shorter thief heaved as the adrenaline of his anger began to subside. Eugene took a few steps towards the water, tossing the stone into the lake. He stopped dead in his tracks as the stone left his hand like a marble statue of an athlete mid-throw, causing Lance to bump into him.
“Hey, what’s…” Lance simply couldn’t finish his sentence.
What the two saw was quite the unusual sight. A gaggle of geese surrounded a raft of ducks that in turn surrounded two separate pairs of graceful swans.
"Excuse me! You are dithturbing our swim!" Came a voice from the between the two pairs, each swan swimming in sync, forming four corners. Ducks filled the space between each swan in a loose circular formation and the geese formed two wedges that were slowly rotating along each side. And in the center of it all, wearing a full body striped bathing suit complete with swimming cap and goggles, floated Shorty.
A single duckling was balanced on his head.
"I will be filing an official complaint with the committee!" A head of cabbage, a yam, and a wheel of cheese were lined up at the edge of the water. For some reason Eugene felt ashamed of himself.
"Please excuse my compatriots. It's not their fault they're so uncultured. Alright team, from the top!" And with that Shorty slowly sunk beneath the water until only the top of his bathing cap and the single duckling was visible. The whole procession drifted towards the center of the lake.
"…" Eugene looked at Lance.
"…" Lance looked back at Eugene.
"How did we miss that?" Eugene finally shouted, full of shame.
"Yeah, I think we may have been over thinking things a little," Lance responded, rubbing his temples with two fingers of each hand.
"Never speak of this again?" Eugene offered.
"Speak of what? We just had a relaxing afternoon by the lake," Lance replied with a level of earnesty only achievable by the truly unearnest. Mercifully, the sound of approaching hoofbeats provided the two a new topic upon which to focus.
"You know," Lance began, "there's one person we haven't talked about yet." He jerked his chin at the approaching riders and threw a sidelong glance at Eugene. It was a subject Eugene had been deliberately avoiding, but there were only so many people to consider before they landed on the Lady-in-Waiting.
"Eh, I don't think Rapunzel would turn on herself," Eugene mumbled, trying one last effort at avoiding the subject.
"Hah. Maybe, maybe, you never know what anxiety will do to a person…" Lance said, continuing the joke but only half heartedly. The two thieves slowly made their way over to where Maximus and Fidella had been stopped by their riders. "I'll distract Rapunzel while you do what you gotta do." Eugene nodded at his partner a silent thank you, to which Lance reciprocated with a soft punch to the arm.
"Lance, Eugene! You'll never guess what Cass and I found just now!" Rapunzel said with all the cheeriness Eugene loved about her.
Like a duck takes to water, or as just demonstrated, like a duck to Shorty, Lance sprung into action. Many a grift required an adequate distraction, and Lance knew exactly how to keep a mark looking in one direction while Eugene came for their pockets from the other. "Really? Ooh, I love a good guessing game. Hmm, how many guesses do I get? Cause I've got a pretty active imagination, and I don't think my first few guesses should count." Lance took the reins of the two horses from Rapunzel and Cassandra and began guiding the them around to the other side of the caravan.
"Oh, you really want to guess? Yay! Okay, how about three guesses?" Eugene knew Rapunzel so rarely got someone to indulge in her more time wasting frivolities. Before Cassandra could get swept into the wake of the frivolous conversation Eugene put a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey, Cass, you got a minute?" Eugene asked, cocking his head over his shoulder towards the cliffside.
"Actually, yeah," Cassandra said as the other two disappeared behind the caravan. "Now would be a good time to talk." The two walked up the grassy hill towards where the plateau met the sheer drop, not saying anything until they were sufficiently out of earshot of the guessing game. A lot of Lance's guesses seemed to involve either gold, food, or golden food.
"We should come up with a plan for when we get there," Cassandra said, pointing at what looked like a massive cairn made of the Black Rocks. "From what Raps and I saw, that's probably the castle of this 'Dark Kingdom' that Adira mentioned. At the very least it's where all the Black Rocks seem to be converging."
"Yeah, a plan…" Eugene realized he didn't have a plan for this conversation , much less one for their current destination. It's just… Cassandra had been so nice recently! At first Eugene was worried Cassandra was avoiding him, but after seeing the Brothers Hook off she had become downright amenable towards him. He would even go so far as to say she was being friendly.
If he didn't know any better, he'd call her affectionate.
"Actually, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. Uh, I was more hoping we could talk about you. Like, how you’re holding up.” Eugene didn't know why this was such a hard conversation for him to have. If it were Rapunzel, he could just turn on his charm and let the words flow. Of course, Rapunzel was a lot more open with her feelings; Cassandra wouldn't just say how she's doing.
“I'm doing good, Eugene. Really good. Thanks for checking in with me.”
Ok. Or maybe she would.
“Oh, that's good. Yeah, good. Good, good, good…” the word was beginning to lose meaning.
“Was that all you wanted to talk about?” Cassandra asked, looking at him with a playful smirk. There was something about the hand on her hip, the sway of her stance, the tilt of her head and that oh-so-playful smirk… who did she remind him of?
“Uh, yeah, just wanted to check in with you and… I mean, that's not all I wanted to talk about. I just think you've been, I don't know, different recently.” For some reason the words just weren't coming to him, and Eugene could only think of a different conversation where the words hadn't come to him. One held on a terrace on the afternoon of the visit from the Griffin of Pittsford, had while the two of them were both hopped up on magic mood potion.
What was it she had said back then?
“You know how great it is when you can just ‘be yourself’, right? That’s what it’s like when I’m around you.” She had been wearing armor back then, too.
“I guess I've just been in a good mood recently,” the Cassandra of the present said.
The Cassandra of back then continued, “I don’t need to be polite or hold back my opinions. I can just say what’s on my mind.”
“Look, Cass, you know you can ‘be yourself’ around me, right? You don't need to be polite or hold back any opinions or nothing.” When in doubt, just throw whatever the person said back at them. That usually worked.
And it did, kind of. Cassandra’s face shifted. Her smile softened and her eyes dropped a little, but she still seemed ‘good’, as she had put it. “Eugene…” Cassandra began, but she looked away and towards the Black Rocks. What was it about the way she said his name that reminded him so much of…
“I just feel ‘good’ recently. You're right, something's different. Maybe it's because we're getting close to the end of our journey. Somewhere in there Destiny is calling to me. Calling to all of us.” Eugene made a mental note of how she pronounced the capital ‘D’ in the world Destiny as she said it. Her tone and body language made it seem Significant, and that was with a capital ‘S’ that put his ‘thief's intuition’ on high alert.
“I don't know why I was holding back for so long. I was so busy waiting in the wings that I didn't see what was happening center stage, right in front of me. Like they played my cue but I kept on waiting.” She turned to face him, the energy of her excitement so bright it was like she was radiating a blue and orange light.
“Do you remember the day after the Science Expo? After the ‘fiasco’ with Rapunzel's wind machine and the so-called ‘science expert’ Master St Croix? When you were interrupting my work to avoid meeting with my dad?”
“Well, I wouldn't say I was… yeah, ok I totally was. Carry on.” There was that something again, a half-cocked smile making him feel oh-so-comfortable.
“You said something that day that I'm only just getting the hang of. It didn't matter where I came from, or how I grew up. And it definitely doesn't matter who my Mother was. I'm the one who gets to decide who I'm going to be.” Something she said gnawed at his ‘thief's intuition’ but Eugene was so close to figuring out what it was about Cassandra's behavior that was oh-so-familiar.
“You don't know how much I've been denied, Eugene. But I'm done holding back, it's my turn.” Cassandra gently stroked his shoulder, running her hand tenderly down his arm to hold his hand and Eugene finally figured out what it was that Cassandra was reminding him of this whole time. It was a who.
For the briefest of moments Eugene could see the ghostly image of Stalyan smirking in that oh-so-disarming way. The kind that could lead any man into the oh-so-safe looking faerie circle before slowly turning around to show its oh-so-sharp teeths.
He had loved that Stalyan.
Until the teeths part, that is.
Although… Cassandra didn’t have the oh-so-sharp teeths part, did she?
Then, with a squeeze of his hand, the image faded away and there was just Cassandra. Well, not ‘just’ Cassandra. Not for the first time Eugene had to mentally acknowledge that there never was anything ‘just’ about the Lady-in-Waiting. Or not waiting, if he understood what she meant.
“Thank you, Eugene. I really feel like, if we’d met sooner in life, we could have been friends. Better than friends. Without my duties to Rapunzel and your relationship with her, we could be something great. This whole trip, these past two years, I really could just ‘be myself’ around you, and I'm sorry I didn't do that enough.”
As the Lady-in-Waiting, the Swordswoman , turned to leave, Eugene realized he never got around to his original reason for talking to her.
“Now, hold on…”
It takes a special kind of luck to step in precisely in the right spot, put exactly enough pressure, shift the balance in just the right way, to make an edge of a cliff collapse.
Eugene had always been lucky.
What had begun as an attempt to grab Cassandra's wrist to continue their conversation ended up as a desperate grasp for help to avoid falling into the giant brambles below. Neither attempt succeeded and Eugene found himself falling backwards and heard someone shouting in terror. It was probably him, but with so much going on figuring it out was not high up on his list of priorities.
Something grabbed him by the waist and he felt himself spinning.
“Oh Blondie, you’re a lifesaver,” he said before he processed what had actually grabbed him.
“Tuck and roll, Fitzherbert! I got you!” Cassandra shouted.
Oh, it wasn’t Rapunzel’s hair that had caught him, but Cassandra. The woman in a full suit of armor and did not have seventy feet of magical hair.
“You’ve got me? Who’s got you?!” Eugene screamed as the giant brambles fast approached. Regardless of the answer, he followed her instructions and they rotated in the air. Eugene looked past Cassandra at the fast approaching ground. “Oh, this is much better!” He said, quips being his go to coping mechanism when faced with intense bodily harm.
If Cassandra was going to respond, he couldn’t hear it. The pair crashed through the giant brambles, wood breaking and giant thorns snapping. All Cassandra could do was grunt as her armor took the brunt of the fall. Eugene had to tuck his arms in, lest they get shredded on the way down.
And then everything stopped with a wet thud.
For a moment all Eugene could hear was the sound of the waterfall nearby. Eventually he opened his eyes, unaware he had even closed them. In front of him lay Cassandra, a red liquid dripping from her face and pooling around her head.
“Oh no. Oh no, no, no, nonononono.” Eugene desperately tried to find the wound, lifting her hair, checking her neck, and running his thumb across her cheek. All he accomplished was to smear the red liquid around her face. Eugene realized he wasn’t even sure if she was breathing . He leaned in towards her nose, listening for the soft sound of air going in and out. “Thank goodness for that at least.” He gave a weak smile and looked at Cassandra’s face.
There’s a sound someone makes when they inhale a huge breath suddenly. It has this sucking sound that’s all throat and no lips. It was a sound that distracted Eugene enough that he didn’t move out of the way in time.
Cassandra’s lips met his and stayed.
…
Time stopped.
…
Eugene closed his eyes out of instinct.
…
Was that a… was there a hand on his cheek?
…
Two stray neurons collided in his head, sparking a chain reaction that eventually became thought.
Eugene pulled away, launching himself backwards with his arm covering his mouth.
What just happened?
“What was that?” he muffle-shouted into the crook of his arm.
The idea that she'd kiss him was… it was… that she'd want to put her lips against his lips was… "What was that?" He repeated into his arm. Why would she want to kiss him? Did she hit her head or…
“Oh good lord she did hit her head! She’s gotta be delirious, or hallucinating, or concussified or… some other word about head injuries!” Eugene shuffled on his hands and knees back to her in a panic.
“Cassandra? Cass? C’mon, you still with me? Talk to me, Dragon Lady. Can you move?” Eugene held her head steady, hoping she hadn’t broken anything saving his life, of all people.
“Nhnn…” Cassandra mumbled, rubbing her cheek into the palm of his hand. He tightened his grip to keep her head from moving.
“Don't try to move, there might be something wrong with your neck”
“I’m… I’m fine, Fitzherbert.” Cassandra’s eyes fluttered open. “Eugene, I said I'm fine.” She pushed his hands away and slowly sat up on her elbows. “You can let go now, Tiger. There's nothing wrong with my neck.” She turned her head in demonstration, taking in their surroundings.
“Oh no, your back! It’s covered in… mud?” Eugene stroked the back of Cassandra’s head, pulling back the red liquid in clumps.
“It’s silt, Eugene. So, yeah, a kind of mud. Red mud.” Cassandra stood, looking up at the cliff face. Eugene only now realized he hadn’t thought to do that, too preoccupied with the turns-out-was-not-paralyzed Cassandra. “I don’t think they’ve noticed we’re missing.”
“You’d think with all the yelling they’d have at least taken a look,” Eugene said disappointedly.
“I don't think they heard us over the sound of the waterfall,” Cassandra said, pointing at where the falling water turned the red soil into silt, AKA red mud.
But then Eugene remembered how good Lance was at playing the distraction. He probably didn't need to share part.
“Yeah… the waterfall…”
Cassandra cupped her hands and shouted. “HEY! RAPS! MAX! WE FELL OFF THE CLIFF! FIDELLA? LANCE? SHOR- I’m not even going to bother calling for Shorty.”
Eugene propped himself up and patted Cassandra on the shoulder. “That’s probably for the best." The pair stared up at the cliff face for a moment.
"So, uh, what do you think? Climb? Or maybe make our way to a side not as steep?”
Cassandra shook her head and almost bit her glove like she was going to take it off, but stopped herself before she could bite the metal gauntlet of her new armor. “Uh, Eugene, make a circle with your fingers. Not those fingers. These, here, like this. No, like this. OK, good, now don’t move.” The woman leaned forward, took his fingers into her mouth and whistled.
And it was loud.
Eugene cringed at the sound being right by his ear. “Thank you,” Cassandra said simply, wiping her mouth on Eugene’s sleeve while Eugene wiped his hand on his trousers. “That should get their attention.”
From this far down the cliff they were able to see a very small dot with a bushy white beard, a swim cap, and goggles, looked down. “Aw, nuts. All we got was a Shorty. Here, do the whistle thing agai-”.
“CASS? EUGENE? ARE YOU TWO OK?” The wonderful sound of Rapunzel’s voice echoed over the sound of the waterfall. Oh how he loved that sound beyond any reason. It was a situation that didn't happen very often, but when you've fallen down a sixty-ish foot cliff side, it was very convenient to have a girlfriend with seventy feet of magic hair.
It was getting late, making it harder for Eugene to see up the cliffside. He held up his hand as a makeshift visor and looked upwards. “MOSTLY! CASS HAD A PRETTY BAD LANDING. THINK YOU CAN PULL US UP, SUNSHINE?”
“YEAH, JUST WAIT RIGHT THERE!” Rapunzel shouted back down.
“Rapunze~el♫ Let down your Ha~ir♫” Cassandra called out in a sing-song tone. She smiled brightly at Eugene. “I’ve always wanted to say that.” It rang a bell for the retired thief, but he couldn’t put his finger on its source.
“Where’d you hear that from?”
“Oh, uh, it’s just kind of something someone from my childhood used to say.” Well that sounded cryptic as all get out.
“How could someone from your childhood have even known about Rapunzel?” Eugene probed the question as casually as he could.
“I said ‘kind of’,” she said with a half smile and a shrug.
A heap of golden strands fell next to them with just enough slack for an additional ten feet or so. Eugene grabbed onto a portion and put his foot on the wall, but before he could move onward and upward Cassandra pulled him back down.
“Here, this’ll be easier on Rapunzel’s neck.” The Lady-in-Waiting used her expert knowledge of her Lady’s hair to wrap a bowline around the two of them. When she pulled it tight she and Eugene were squeezed face to face and out of instinct he pulled her into an embrace. He could feel her fastening the knot at the base of his back.
“This is gonna suck combing out later, but I think Raps will understand.” She cupped her hands again and shouted upwards, “OK! GOOD TO GO!”
Eugene looked up. The others seemed to have set up an impromptu winch with the caravan for Rapunzel's hair. There was a pinch around his waist and under his shoulders and then he and Cassandra were pulled even closer together. As they started to ascend the pair held onto each other for dear life.
In a bit of meteorological serendipity, the clouds seemed to part just enough for the setting sun to shine through. Being hoisted up the cliff face like this gave the two of them a perfect view of…well it was still a dangerous field of giant brambles and sharp Black Rocks. But it was softened somewhat by an orange glow that made the unforgiving landscape look like it could forgive a thing or two after all.
“Ya'know, this isn't half bad.” Cassandra said wistfully as they were hefted upwards a half dozen or so inches at a time.
“Oh totally agree. It's been a while since I was bound together to a beautiful woman,” Eugene said earnestly, a smirk on his face. “You remember Stalyan, right?”
Cassandra didn't respond. Instead he felt a weight against his chest and when he looked down he saw a head of silt laden brunette hair resting against his chest.
“Oh, right, you've got to be pretty tired. Is your back ok?” Eugene loosened his embrace in case he was putting too much pressure on any injury, but that only caused her to hold on to him tighter. He went back to embracing her like he had been before; they didn't want to fall a second time, after all.
“Hey, uh, thanks for that, by the way. For saving me. You didn't have to do that.” The rogue had full faith that the same luck that had caused him to fall in the first place would have helped save him from a giant bramble induced fate.
Probably.
“Of course I had to, Eugene. I'm not going to abandon someone I love,” she said into his chest.
Eugene made a sound that was somewhere between a scoff and a chuckle.
“You love me, huh? We're definitely gonna need to have your head checked out when we're on solid ground again." He chuckled again.
"Just don't let Sunshine hear you saying things like that; she'll start thinking you're trying to take something from her." Eugene felt Cassandra hold him tighter and he tightened his grip, too, just in case they were slipping again.
There was a period of silence as the couple were hoisted upwards a couple of inches at a time, holding each other for dear life.
“I've been thinking about my Mother a lot recently. My birth Mother," Cassandra said so softly Eugene almost didn't catch it.
Ah, that made sense. He used to this kind of conversation. It was a conversation Eugene had heard many times before. He'd given it a few times, himself. In fact, he was pretty sure the two of them had gone through it before. Twice, actually.
“I've been feeling so good recently because I’ve realized my Mother leaving me behind wasn't my fault. For so long I thought I wasn't good enough or I did something wrong, but recently someone helped me see what happened a lot more clearly.” Cassandra pulled her face from his chest and smiled up at him. The way the setting sun bathed half her face in a beautiful golden orange and cast the other half in a blueish shadow only served to accentuate the beauty she so often hid behind a scowl or snarky expression.
Something stirred in Eugene’s heart and he couldn't help but smile back. There was no way this face could betray him.
“Eh, I've got my moments,” he said, proud of himself. “Orphans’ve gotta stick together, after all. I tell’ya, coming so far in life as I have, I don’t think I’d even want to find out why my birth parents left me. No matter the reason was for your birth parents abandoning you, they made the wrong choice. You're better than whatever it was.”
"Oh, I know, Eugene." The way Cassandra was looking at him was truly something else, and Eugene couldn't help but stare right back. He kept staring even after she rested her head against his chest again.
"But it means everything to me hearing you say it."
He felt Cassandra tighten her grip on his waist again. In kind, Eugene held Cassandra tighter with one arm and risked removing the other to stroke the back of her head.
For now, the Swordswoman nestled her head into the Rogue’s chest, embracing him like he was the last line between life and death. The Rogue petted the Swordswoman’s Tangled mess of hair, imparting as much security and care as he could with each stroke of his hand.
Eventually the two would part. They’d both need medical attention and a good wash. The Rogue would return to the Princess and the Swordswoman would return to being alone. They would need to prepare for whatever came their way tomorrow when they entered the Dark Kingdom. Everything they knew about themselves would forever be changed by what they’d find within its borders. Destiny with a capital ‘D’ was calling to them.
But for now, for this sunset ascent, the Swordswoman and the Rogue found comfort in each others’ embrace. It was as though their hug was a physical embodiment of a shared love only their mirrored lives could produce.
Affectionately.