Chapter Text
“What is she doing to him?”
Rapunzel had halfway made it back up the stairs to the front door when Eugene caught her delicately by her wrist. His eyes told of something he knew and she didn’t, something that was troubling him deeply.
“Rapunzel,” He let go of her, keeping his open palm outstretched to implore her. “He’s okay. The antidote is working.”
“How do you know so much about it? Have you met her before?” Rapunzel asked.
“No,” Eugene admitted, “But I know how the antidote works. I’ve taken it before.”
“What?” She hesitantly descended to the middle step, but moved no further. She was torn between the conflicted Eugene in front of her, and the screaming from Varian inside his house. “When?”
“It was six years ago. I don’t remember much…“ Eugene scratched his arm uncomfortably, an awful heat tingling under his skin at the memory. “I got bit by this venomous snake while Lance and I were on the job, and I was fading fast. He took me to a medic we knew, and that was when…“
“We’ll give you rubies, emeralds, anything you want,” Lance pleaded, “The clothes off our backs, just do somethin’ for him. What…What’s that…?”
“This will do. Stand back,” hissed a long-bearded man in longer white robes, “And don’t interfere.”
Eugene couldn’t see the medic’s face from where he lay on his dining room table, which had been repurposed into an examination table for wounded thugs and thieves that weren’t heavy enough to break it. He didn’t have the strength to open his eyes. He could only feel, and all he felt was pain. The swelling of his neck, the pounding in his head…Before he knew it his jaw was being pulled open, and a cold glass vial was shoved into his mouth. A sweet, silky substance with a note of chocolate slid down his throat and from there, warmth began to flood his chest.
“This is an antidote of my own design. It acts similarly to antibodies—it neutralizes toxins by binding to them, and disposing of them.”
A low groan came from Eugene, who was starting to tug at his vest. Lance regarded the medic with concerned wide eyes.
“The problem lies in the process of disposal. The ‘antibodies,’ if you will, must destroy their bonds by essentially eating themselves. That process can create a sensation of intense burning in the chest.”
“Like heartburn?”
“Oho, my dear child. No,” the medic replied, “No, this is something much more…”
“Ah—Aghh—Aughh!”
Eugene was shouting loudly now, breathing heavily at a rampant pace. It felt as though a match had been lit inside of both his lungs. The hand that was pulling at his vest began to claw through his undershirt and into his skin, desperate to somehow make the burning stop. Unbothered, the doctor forced his hands to his sides as his legs kicked out wildly.
“Oh, man…” Lance gulped. “He’s gonna be okay, right?”
“Of course he will. Give it another ten minutes and the side effects will subside. He may experience intense chills, but the venom shall no longer pose any danger. Now, about your payment. Rubies, you said…?”
“You know, I think it’s a professional requirement for doctors to not have very nice personalities,” Eugene mused. “Would you believe after all that, Lance still ran without paying the guy a dime?”
“Wow…Were you okay?”
“I don’t know. I think all my limbs are still intact. Can you check?”
“Oh, right.” Rapunzel giggled. She opened her mouth to ask him something else, but a particularly agonized scream from Varian silenced her. Imagining the suffering he was going through, especially the way that Eugene had described it, and knowing she could do nothing but wish for it to end soon was a harsh reality that shook her to her core. Shivering, she reached for Eugene’s hand and Eugene hugged her close, muffling her ears so she wouldn’t have to hear it.
“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered, resting his chin on top of her hair. “He’s going to be okay...I hope…”
Varian was howling in pain. His screams were cut off as he choked and gasped for air, trying in endless fervor to arch away from the flames curling under his ribs.
“Make…” he panted, gagging after sucking in too much air, “Make it stop…”
Cassandra continued to stroke his hair without a word. Close to him, the candlestick that brought the bedroom light seemed to taunt him, flickering in tandem with each searing ache and dripping wax to mock his tears. The vision of being melted inside out caused him to heave.
The force of being turned onto his side alone brought upon Varian a sickening throb of whiplash. His stomach lurched, and finally the last remaining broken bits of his voice spilled out of him with his vomit. He couldn’t even groan as Cassandra awkwardly patted his back a little too hard, which only encouraged him into another bout of dry heaving.
Gertrud whisked the used bucket out of the way to be disposed of later, and found herself unamused by the quirks of her patient’s bedroom. Varian had things scattered about on the floor unlike any ordinary teenage boy; the heels of her boots kept catching onto stray wires that connected to who knows what, and she nearly lost her balance tripping over some unidentifiable metal doohickey on wheels that resembled two toy cars fused together. She swore if she spilled the bucket on herself, she would kill him faster than any poison could.
“Help—*
The voice was not Varian’s, but Cassandra’s. Varian was squeezing her hand with his other over his chest, his jaw hung open and his eyes wide with terror. His breathing had stopped. Cassandra hit him on the back repeatedly, convinced he was choking, but nothing would come out.
“ Enough, ” said Gertrud, “you’re going to beat the poor thing to death. It’s just a spasm.” She set the bucket down and took care not to trip as she came to Varian’s side and rolled him onto his back again. She had just started to rub his chest when his clammy, trembling hand limply grasped her wrist, and in his eyes she saw a boy scared for his life, begging her to do something. Dots of petechiae erupted over his beet red cheeks, sweat pasting his hair to his skin—she had seen worse, but Varian had not, and she knew he was terrified of what was happening to him. She continued to rub in a soft, circular motion over his breastbone, speaking not a word until she could hear him inhale, feeble a breath as it was.
“That’s it. See? You’re in good hands.”
Varian closed his eyes for a long moment, and Cassandra could imagine he was whimpering with the voice he’d lost. All he could register was the pressure to his chest, and faintly, the smell of latex gloves.
The burning began to dissipate. Varian poured what little energy he had left into his next few breaths when he found that each inhale was like an icy wind, chilling him to the bone. Against the odds, he was suddenly cold. He screwed his eyes shut and began to shiver, wondering if it was all just one big cruel joke played by his own body that he kept discovering new ways to hurt. After one pitiful glance in Cassandra’s direction, she took a long blanket that had been sitting on Varian’s floor and jumped dutifully into his bed, draping it around his shoulders. She pulled Varian in close to her, and once he had been safely tucked into a little blanket burrito, she could feel his tremors begin to ease.
“Good thinking,” chimed Gertrud, “A little body heat will help him sweat that fever right out. Now, boy…”
Through his dulled, overworked senses, Varian felt Gertrud straighten the duvet over him and give it a firm pat. “You need a good sleep. Your friend warned me that you’ve been sneaking off left and right when our backs are turned. That’s not going to happen, right?”
Varian mumbled a soft sound that resembled a “Yes, ma’am.”
“We’re not going to make poor old Madame Gertrud search high and low for you with her bad back, right? You’re going to stay put and get some rest . ”
Before she finished talking, Varian was already dozing off, his head nodding before he finally let it drop. Cassandra shifted so that he could lie down properly and shed the duvet from her shoulders so that it could cover him properly.
“That’s what I like to hear. Swordy-pants? Be a dear and go dump that bucket for me, will you? Don’t look so enthused. I’m promoting you to my temporary medical assistant!”
“What an honor,” sighed Cassandra, giving Varian one last pat to his hair before grabbing the bucket.
Varian woke to the sound of gentle rain, crickets, and giggling. He felt buried ten layers deep under his blankets, like he was staring up into the darkness from a hole in the earth as laughter clouded into a heavy mist above. Voices he knew but couldn’t make out rang from no comprehensible direction, just bouncing around in the air. As his blanket slipped off his exposed shoulder, he shivered and wiggled back underneath the covers, finding it wasn’t as painful as he remembered to move. He was still quite sore.
“It’s…good!” a light, sweet but strained voice whispered from the foot of his bed. “Who’s that breathing fire? Oh, that’s…”
“ Not funny.”
“I took artistic liberties. Something you wouldn’t know about,” said a voice who wasn’t even bothering to whisper. “Do you have something better?”
“I don’t draw.”
“Aw, c’mon, Cass. Everybody’s got that artistic fire inside of them! You just have to listen to your heart and let your hand do the work. What is your heart telling you?”
“That there is no way this is going to help Varian free his dad.”
Varian’s eyes flashed at Cassandra’s voice. It must have taken a full minute, but he sat up like he was rising through mud and rested his full weight against the backboard to his bed, coughing lightly. There was a click, and suddenly his vision was flooded by lamplight.
“You’re awake! How do you feel? Sorry, you don’t have to answer that. You should rest your throat. Is your throat hurting at all?”
Rapunzel’s face was glowing an inch away from his, and behind her he could fuzzily make out Eugene, Cassandra and Madame Gertrud.
“...Nn.”
He cleared his throat. His voice was thick, but it was there. “No,” he murmured, “Not that bad. I’m okay.”
“Let’s see what the vitals have to say about that.”
Varian wasn’t sure what the doctor meant, but she touched her hand to his forehead, wrist and under his chin with care, then pressed something metal and cold to his chest. He jumped. It occurred to him distantly that she was using a stethoscope, but by the time he put that much together she was already setting the tool back into her briefcase.
“Any pain or discomfort anywhere?”
“Uhhh…” He wasn’t sure ‘everywhere’ was a good answer, so he shook his head.
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Three—What were you guys talking about? What about my dad?”
Rapunzel beamed and unfolded in front of his still stinging eyes a blue sheet of graph paper. On it, a skillfully designed but admittedly unfitting drawing had been sketched onto it, with flowers and sunny embellishments in all its Rapunzel flare. The drawing showed herself, Eugene and Cassandra all handy with frying pans and beating the amber encasement holding Varian’s father in order to set him free. According to the drawing it was working, as Quirin’s head was sticking out with a smile and Varian was drawn in by his side, overjoyed. Varian—the real one—gave Rapunzel a curious look.
“We’ve been taking turns drawing blueprints to help your father,” Rapunzel explained. “Well, that’s how it started, anyways, but it kiiinda turned into an art contest…”
“I’m not saying mine is the best, I’m just saying that it’s better than everyone else’s,” boasted Eugene. He, too, had a scrap of blueprint paper onto which a bunch of crudely drawn stick figures had been scribbled. From what Varian could glean, Rapunzel was crying over the encasement, and from her teardrops a bunch of squiggly lines with flower patterns had been drawn to show they were somehow melting the amber away with magical powers. Eugene and Varian were giving each other a thumbs up (or the middle finger, he was only going by context since the drawing was unclear,) and Cassandra was up in the top corner above everyone with snakes for hair and breathing fire. Eugene was already defending himself before anyone could say anything, shrugging, “It worked for me.”
Even Gertrud had a paper over her lap. She didn’t say anything about it, but Varian could see herself drawn standing atop stacks of cash with Queen Arianna and King Frederick applauding her, and Rapunzel, Eugene and Cassandra showering her with even more money. There was a tiny little happy face with sparkles on each side in the corner that Varian assumed was him. He looked back at Rapunzel, even more confused than before he had asked.
“You’ve been out for almost two days, so we wanted to do what we could in the meantime,” said Rapunzel. “Cass had some pretty good ideas too, but she threw them away. Most of them involved swords.”
“Oh, I particularly liked the one that involved me falling on my own sword and dying,” chimed Eugene.
“I liked that one too,” Cassandra growled.
“You guys... “
Varian sat speechless for a moment, then his shoulders began to shake. He hunched over, his hand over his mouth as he seemed to be choking something back.
“Are you okay?” asked Rapunzel. She leaned over to pat his back, her eyes shining with worry. “Do you need some water?”
Varian busted out laughing. He wiped tears from his eyes, his chest heaving with giggles that wouldn’t stop no matter how hard he tried. And he was trying; he was feeling the best he had in days, but that still wasn’t very good. His bones ached with each exhale, and he was coughing more than he was laughing, but he barely noticed it over his mirth.
“You guys,” he panted, worn out from the short bout of laughter already. “Oh, man... You guys are awesome.”
Eugene took a seat on his bed, flashing him a warm grin. “ Team Awesome. We’ve been missing our favorite member.”
Varian’s bedroom, which had held nothing but gloom for the last eternity it felt like, was filled with peace and light at last, the brightest of all coming unsurprisingly from Rapunzel. She was brimming with joy, and Varian noticed she looked at least a bit less exhausted than he remembered. If he had been asleep for over a day, he could imagine she had finally gotten the chance to rest as well.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” she said. “I’m so, so glad... “
“Don’t think you’re gonna be getting out of bed dancing jigs just yet,” Gertrud warned him. “That wasn’t a miracle potion you took. Hydration and bed rest, those are gonna be your best friends for the next few days.” She took a long look at the trio huddled around Varian’s bedside, and added with a hint of amusement, “Maybe not best .”
Cassandra clapped Varian over the shoulder way too softly, like she was learning for the first time how to not hit someone. Actually, “like” might not even have been necessary.
“Hang in there, kid,” she said. “We’ll get your father out of there in no time. We have to take care of you first.”
Varian smiled up at her, and though still weak and uncoordinated, gave her a small hug. “Thanks,” he said, “Really...Thank you.”
“Now!” Eugene clapped his hands together as he rose from his stool, “Where were we? Page 193? Flynn Ryder and the Duke’s daughter declare their forbidden love for each other at the winter banquet?”
“Oh, I hated that part,” Gertrud complained. “Those two had no chemistry.”
“You read the book?!” exclaimed Eugene and Varian in unison.
“I have the whole series in my library. What, an old woman can’t enjoy good literature?”
Rapunzel and Cassandra looked at each other, not understanding a single word they were on about, but laughing along anyway. Whatever it was, they seemed to be pretty enthused.
“Mind if we join in?” asked Rapunzel, followed by a not wholly committed groan from Cassandra.
“Perfect, you can be the Duke’s daughter! Cassandra can be...Hmm, how does the cold, unfeeling mercenary sound?”
“Perfect,” Cassandra smirked back at Eugene.
“I’ll be the fruit vendor,” said Gertrud.
“Doesn’t he only have one line?” Eugene asked.
“I like his spunk.”
As the four chattered amongst themselves, Varian sank back into his pillow with a grin that did not falter. He was exhausted, he ached, he was worried...but he was content. Enough to rest for a bit more, anyways. He would let them finish the book, silly voices and all, and drink and sleep as he was told--anything to avoid being dosed by that antidote again. And when he got all better, he would have three friends to help him free his father together. He wouldn’t have to be alone. He couldn’t do it by himself, after all, he knew that now. Maybe their “blueprints” weren’t the most helpful ideas he’d heard of, but with their support, he could do anything. He closed his eyes to the sound of Cassandra putting on a deep voice for her role and Rapunzel going way off script, and to the sound of own inner thoughts telling himself,
We can do this.