Chapter Text
“Another one,” Caine mumbled to the bartender.
It was around four in the morning, the pub was far from empty but it was a Wednesday night and those who were still out drinking at this time weren’t all looking for a good time. Caine was one of them. She just wanted to drown her sorrows, just like she wished she’d left Cassandra to drown at sea.
Caine’s eyes closed as the scent of the creamy alcohol she’d picked for the night filled her sense, her fingers touched the chilled glass, she took in the sight of the ice cube floating around inside.
She was lying to herself.
The idea of Cassandra drowning or getting hurt still pained her very soul.
She didn’t wish she’d left Cassandra for dead. She just wished she hadn’t fallen in love.
She took a long gulp of the liquid and it burned her throat and brightened her flush.
She should have known better, everybody always left her, sometimes willingly and sometimes unwillingly but her life was one long list of people promising to be there only to leave. Why had she expected any better from Cassandra?
“One whisky, please.” A low yet warm male voice spoke to the bartender close by.
He took a seat next to Caine, and she turned quick, ready to turn down any flirtation attempts or bothersome small-talk—Lance accepted his glass. Caine’s eyes fell back to the bar.
“Just got the girls to sleep. Children, right?” He smiled.
Caine took another gulp without responding.
“So… Is that your fifth of sixth glass?”
“None of your business…” she mumbled.
“Forgot how to count, got ya.” Lance sipped his own drink. “It’s a beautiful night. How about after this round we go for a walk, cool off?”
“I’d rather stay here.”
“You’ve been here since sunrise.”
“And I’d like to stay here at least till it rises again.”
Lance took a deep breath. “Drinking won’t bring her back.”
“Who says I want her back?” Caine’s fists hit the bar as she glared at Lance.
“The fact you’re still here.” Lance responded matter-of-factly. “You could leave, run back to your ship. But you’re here, in the same village they left us in, awaiting her return.”
Caine shook her head. “Bullshit.”
“Oh, come on, Caine, what is denying it going to accomplish?”
“If I say it for long enough, maybe it’ll become true and I can finally move on.”
“Or maybe you’ll kill yourself drinking like your mother did.”
Lance was fast to catch Caine’s fist in his right hand. Another fist with his left.
The bartender said something or other, but neither were listening.
“You want to take this outside, big guy?” she snarled between clenched teeth.
“I would,” Lance said simply.
Caine pulled away, leaving the bar.
Lance paid for both his drink and Caine’s extensive tab.
Caine exited the pub and found the queen sitting on a bench not far from the exit, wearing a purple cloak and scribbling something or other down in a journal similar to the one Rapunzel and Cassandra had shared. She looked up as the door opened and smiled at Caine gently.
“Thank you, Lance.”
“Fucking traitor,” Caine hissed at the larger man, who just smiled.
“She’s rowdy,” Lance warned the queen as he walked back towards the inn.
Arianna nodded, moving along the bench, patting the area next to her.
Caine considered turning and heading right back into the pub, force the queen to follow her and face her on her ground if she really wanted to give her yet another mushy speech about love and sacrifice and whatever it was she’d been mumbling on about while Caine failed to listen. But the cool air and the smell of nature were good.
Caine stumbled over and sat down.
Arianna fumbled through her bag, finding a thermos of cool water, which she handed to Caine. “New record.”
Caine struggled to open the bottle, but once she did, she gulped half it down in one go. “Record?”
“Time spent in the pub. I was getting worried.”
“Sounds like a you problem.”
Arianna smiled gently. Her fingers found Caine’s hair, picking at a few of the knots, her fingers combing through it, worried it’d get matted with the lack of care. “Lance says you’re depressed.”
“Fucking Lance doesn’t know what the word depression means.”
“I see. So how are you feeling?”
“Like I was stabbed in the back and left to bleed out. Like your good-for-nothing daughter lead me on until it wasn’t convenient for her to have me around no more. I feel like shit. I feel angry and betrayed. Not depressed though.”
Arianna nodded. She didn’t say anything.
Caine decided she didn’t like the silence. It felt even more intrusive than the questions. “You?”
Arianna smiled at the gentle question. “Scared.”
Caine looked up at Arianna. Her green eyes were looking to the sky, the moonlight reflecting in them.
“Really scared,” Arianna admitted. “When you have children, they become your entire world, you wish to do everything within your power to care and protect them, to create a brighter future for them. And deep down you know they’re their own people, that they make decisions you can’t control, they get into trouble and it isn’t always your fault but… Whenever they get hurt you still feel guilt. And right now I can’t help but feel immense fear for them both.”
Caine swallowed, remembering when she’d first seen Cassandra’s injury, seen her in the hospital bed, so fragile looking. “I can understand that.”
“I think they feel that a bit too…”
“I don’t follow,” Caine whispered.
“That unreasonable guilt, that responsibility on their shoulders,” Arianna clarified. “It was never Rapunzel’s decision to be granted the powers of the sundrop, but now she has them she seems to feel a responsibility and… Cassandra was pretty much…” Arianna hesitated, trying to find a word which described their situation. “She was brainwashed into this mindset where she was Rapunzel’s guardian, raised to be little more than a tool in her mother’s future goals…”
Caine nodded.
“You should have seen them both when I first met them. They’ve grown and changed a lot in these past two years.”
“Really?”
“When I first met Cassandra, she was terrified of everybody and everything.”
“Everybody?”
“She didn’t trust me, or the guards or the servants. She definitely didn’t trust Frederic. She’d built a fragile trust with Eugene, but really it was only Rapunzel who had her full trust. She’d eye the food we gave her and wasn’t a big fan of the medicines she had to take…”
“How did that change?”
“With time and patience, how else?” Arianna looked at the forest. “And although I can’t approve of their every action, I know I have to keep giving them that time and patience, even now.”
Caine looked to the forest. “You trust they’ll come back?”
“They have to,” Arianna stated firmly. Despite the firmness in her voice, there was fear in her eyes, and Caine couldn’t imagine the fear this mother was going through. Despite everything, Caine’s hand found the queen’s.
Arianna looked surprised, but then she smiled and squeezed the hand.
“You’ll wait with me, my dear?”
Caine hated how different the queen was to the vision she’d formed in her head for most of her life, made her feel stupid, lost, like she truly knew nothing about the world. And yet, perhaps it was nice knowing there was so much out there to discover. She nodded. “Of course, Your Majesty.”
And the queen smiled at the red-head before her eyes returned to the sky. “It’s a beautiful night.”
Caine nodded, and they sat in peaceful silence for a while longer.