Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This was something new.

There had been days in months previous, before the journey beyond Corona, where Lance was made to cringe at the taste of blood and hack up giant roses so blue they were almost black and had to pluck away bright yellow Aconite from his collarbone; spewing many more flowers with darker meaning to the floor at random times, often before he went to bed--or before his soulmate went to bed, he supposed.

It worried him, but there was nothing he could do. His soulmate had barely had anything happen to him since Lance had come away from prison and only vaguely understood he had a soulmate.

Little clusters of lilacs sprouting here and there from his shoulders that felt a bit like scorched heat and bursts of static in multitudes on occasion and sometimes even too often. Tiny seeds from an Aspen tree dropping from him like raindrops that made Lance's stomach churn with the shame echoed through the connection. Black licorice colored clover blossoms along his eye or along his nose and his knees every so often that left Lance in bad enough a mood that any cellmate he had at the time, or friends after prison in his vicinity, gave him a wide berth.

So when the dark blooms came with an emotion following after that felt both like drowning and a black hole in the heart, Lance put in some effort to looking for someone going through a terrible time. Through town, through all the bars, along the roads when Max was free and willing to give him a lift; he even took a gander through the dungeons, but couldn't find anyone who fit the bill.

There had been a brief pause in the week before the royal family had been attacked, but Lance practically felt his stomach drop into ice cold temperatures with the reveal of a burning red Cyclamen surrounded by snow white Lilies rising from his palms after the alchemist Rapunzel tried to help was put away and their ragtag group was suddenly on the road.

He had a thought, and almost looked back at the wagon coach Stan and Pete were driving back to the castle, but stopped himself.

Lance had been too afraid, because asking the question would have made it real and...he just wasn't ready yet.

He kept the telling blooms in vases and jars he'd found in the caravan, and all the ones that followed them, dried or used for cooking ingredients.

Marigolds were quite useful for cooking. Begonias could be made into headache and fever reducer. Aconite was good for the common cold, even if he really didn't like how much they kept coming up. The Buttercups, yellow Carnations and Butterfly Weed were beautiful, but he still tossed them or buried them almost the moment he found them, regardless of Rapunzel wanting to keep them for sketches, "I'm sorry, Princess, but no."

He allowed her to keep the white Heather and white Poppies as time wore on, but only because he could just stand to look at them.

When, one dawn three months out on the road, Cass saw him burn a cluster of six of the darkest blue roses she'd ever seen, mottled with black at the petal tips, he was too numb to be thankful that she started morning tea and breakfast for everyone when it was technically his turn on the roster.



But this was new.



Spiderwart, like a young corn stalk growing from his chest to bead and blossom a light purple bloom while Lance felt rather breathless; and the tiny clovers along his palm that bloomed with a scratching sensation spelled out: EAT IT.

Lance was barely conscious and cognizant of what was going on around him while Eugene was getting married to someone Lance had no fond memories of, but he was also on borrowed time, and knew, in a moment of reality brought on by death knocking at his door, his soulmate was a sort of tortured genius.

He ate the flower.

He was only half aware that it tasted like water. 

The breathlessness returned for a moment with the flower settling in his belly.

Another grew from his chest, a little to the left of the other, and he ate that one as well.

The awareness returned, not with the snap of a finger, but with the passing of ten minutes.

Lance could breathe, and felt himself slowly get off the floor, glad of yet another bloom forming tall and proud from the right of his chest.

He made his way carefully out of hiding, chewing on the roots and stem and petals, and picking up a frying pan left behind by a chef the Baron had hired.



Eugene was stunned speechless when Stalyan was knocked unconscious by his best friend that he'd left to wait for the antidote, swaying a little on his feet, but pallor drawing back and raised skin from the poison going lax. 

Before too many questions could be asked in the middle of the fight that was still going on around them, a last stalk grew from his neckline, almost at his throat, and Lance only just gave Eugene a grin before ripping it off and almost swallowing it whole. It was such a tiny thing.

Eugene didn't look especially happy at that sight, rather he appeared almost queasy, but he just gave a shaky smile in return and they both went about dealing with the Baron. Lance stepping over Stalyan's prone form with barely a thought.

--

Later, he would look up the flower from the pages of the book that Rapunzel had bought in a town they'd visited after Lance refused to going into detail about the flowers that kept blooming from his skin.

He would blink when he found the illustration and explanation and he would feel something like acid trying to crawl up his throat and he would toss a china cup at a wall in the caravan in anger before borrowing a pumice stone from Eugene to scrawl carefully across his arm: Are you alive?

'Yes,' returned on his other arm, blooms of clover once more beading up that fell off almost instantly.

'I'm grateful, but NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.'

That flower only came from drowning or being strangled, loss of air in the lungs planting the seed. In being revived, the flower blooming tall and horrible and life saving only from the other end of the connection.


'NO PROMISES.'


The damn broke even as the connection was made clear as a diamond in his mind.

Lance tossed another teacup, a plate, and a vase full of Marigolds he hadn't dried yet at the wall once more when two words appeared on his other arm. Defiant and terrifying enough to rub him in all the wrong ways after the day he'd had.


He had to sit down and breathe deep breaths. The sun had set and the sky was black as the moon was new and wouldn't shimmer in the sky until the next night.

Eugene grew worried when the soup was hot and the fish were cooked and the snagged pieces of abandoned wedding cake were set out and Lance hadn't shown up at the first smells of food after a day of cheating death.

He opened the door to find the pieces of broken grass rattling to the side on his entrance, stray petals and crushed leaves following them, and Lance with his head in his hands, still breathing heavy and too fast.

And with tears.

-

Eugene couldn't understand it exactly. He was lucky enough to be bound to his soulmate through a connection of color rather than plants and flowers. Most things retaining a similar shade, but with an obscure shade of gray over all, until he'd found Rapunzel and all had become clear and shining. Like the world had been covered in a curtain before she'd brought in the light.

Color Soulmates were a lucky bunch, they'd both recognized that in the orphanage when they was too young to understand everything, but enough. 

Not everyone had a soulmate, but the ones that did had a pecking order: Color Finders, Writers, Red Strings, Count Down Timers, Compass Arrows, Tattoos, Music Lovers, and Weeds.

Okay, well, polite society didn't call them Weeds, they called them Flora, but the pity in their standing remained.

Eugene couldn't imagine his soulmate being in some kind of pain, emotional or physical, and getting a plant representing the problem burst out of his skin. But, then, he knew who Rapunzel was, and he tried not to think of what he'd have to look at back when she was in the tower suffering emotional abuse every time she was anywhere near Gothel, or when he was stabbed and saw what bloomed from the act of his dying from her skin.

But Lance was his best friend and he'd explained it, so Eugene didn't hesitate to immediately wrap him in a hug the moment he saw the condition he was in and the book opened on the bedside speaking volumes.

"Oh, Lance, I'm so sorry. We should have been faster with getting the antidote."

"He's not dead," Lance shook his head, tears still falling and decorating Eugene's vest in an ugly stain, "He's just really hurting. Even before saving my life from some spider venom at the cost of friggin' choking or drowning himself. He's been hurting for over a year now, and I can't do anything about it, because I'm not there and he wouldn't trust me anyway. He doesn't trust anybody anymore, and I can't blame him. I don't even really know him, even if I kind of know what's happened to him. He's so close to just giving up, and he's so young, Eugene. It scares the hell out of me."

"...You know who he is?"

Lance let go, torn between shaking and nodding, wiping at the rivers pouring down his face.

"I think I do. I didn't then, months ago, but there were signs and...and after today I don't think there's anything left but to ask him when we get back. If he survives that long."


They didn't speak of it after that, Eugene just trying to be there when he could for his best friend and Lance no longer showing as much inclination towards Adira as the journey progressed. He showed affection, of course, because she was amazing and seemed like she needed something like a friend, but the romantic banners he'd been trying to wave in her face practically burnt down to ashes.


His shared worries spread through the connection and he found himself suddenly collecting Borage and Valerian in droves enough to flood a field; he stuffed them in vases and when he ran out of room, he crushed them and treated them into powders and tinctures that he poured delicately into tiny corked jars kept in his pockets and the satchel belt he never thought he'd get the chance to use; just in case.

'Just in case' would come one way or another, regardless of whether he wanted to use them or keep them as a reminder.



At some point this would come in handy, after they dealt with King Trevor's Seal's wedding and left Hook Foot in the company of his brother and Shorty; once the group came to the House of Yesterday's Tomorrow and all of its dangers and inadvertent gifts. The Mirror Demons, the return to childhood's hour, the mind games, Rapunzel's being almost taken away...

Cass stumbling out of that door with an air around her that made Lance uneasy.

But he wouldn't think about until they made it to the Great Tree and they found the Decay Incantation, experienced the danger of it, and the lot of them were chased by the feral wild man Adira obviously had history with.

And by history, he meant Tattoos.

Not just the mark of the Brotherhood, either.

-

This is where things really began to change.

-

Lance was certain that he was the only one who saw their marks, so he approached Adira when night fell and they assumed they'd put a good distance between them and the man she called Hector. She wasn't sleeping as he knew she wouldn't and tried to be unseen a few yards away from where Cass was keeping first watch, but Lance was more observant than most people gave him credit for. 

She had habits, as every person did. It was just a matter of waiting until she thought they were all asleep and then removing his shoes so he wouldn't make noise when he went to speak with her.

"So, I take it this Hector isn't just mad at you because you left to find the Sundrop, huh?"

He wouldn't mention it, but it was a little thrill to see her flinch, having not heard his approach and trying to maintain her cool appearance.

"I'm sure he isn't. Hector was never one to let go of a grudge."

"That include both of his soulmates leaving him here? Or does it have something to do with Quirin being trapped in Amber and blaming you for not being there for him?"

The way she turned to look at him, fire in her eyes and something like despairing fear plainly shown against her features, would have been enough to give just about anyone whiplash.

"How...How do you--?"

Lance took a seat nearby on a fallen log, waving off her worry and keeping a respectable distance, his toes digging into the moss covering the ground like a living carpet. He might as well get comfortable for an uncomfortable subject.

"Soulmate lore and tells are some of the few things I'm practically an expert in. Your fight with him made your gauntlets move around more than usual, and his sleeves didn't cover his shoulders altogether. He had a Tiger Eye Blood Moon that kept blinking during the fight. You have sigils of conjoined Will and Sword that looked like they were stinging you. Both of you have pumpkin vines that look half dead with a yellow hue to them that doesn't look natural. Everything else is just guess work, but it's not hard."

She looked at him for what seemed to be thirty heartbeats, focus so intent on him that if he hadn't made up his mind about her some time ago, he would have blushed. But in this avenue, he didn't blink and he didn't fidget and he would not back down.

Then she sighed and seemed to consider her words very carefully, "I underestimated you."

He shrugged, indifferent to a true fact.

"I assume he's not going to stop trying to keep us from continuing our journey without a fight?"

"You'd be correct, again," she hummed, shining her sword and eyes straining in the darkness around them disturbed, seemingly, only by the moon and the flame of the fire starting to dim, "Regardless of what we are, his loyalty to King Edmund's wishes supersedes everything else. Hector is nothing if not loyal."

"A shame. He'll need to be there with you when Rapunzel frees Quirin from the Amber. I'd hate for bad blood to be between you when that happens given that he'll need all the love and support he'll be able to get."

"You think...Quirin's still alive?"

He didn't want to give this woman false hope, but he hadn't been lying when he said he was practically an expert in soulmate lore. 

Lifting from his seat and loping over to her, Lance lifted a hand expectantly, "Can you take off your left gauntlet?"

Hesitantly, she did as asked, removing the steel and leather and setting it to the side with her sword, but not automatically allowing him to touch her hand nor wrist.

The mark was there as he'd said; inked leaves and vines that had once been vibrant and rich with green circling her wrist, now seem dulled or dimming with sickly yellow--like lichen. She didn't like to look at them, knowing what had happened through her search for the Sundrop and the aftermath of the Battle of Old Corona; everyone hissing whispers about their beloved royals put in danger by that alchemist and the former villagers nodding along that it was only a matter of time before Quirin suffered for his son being a threat. Adira couldn't imagine what Hector thought of it, being in his self-imposed station at the Great Tree and simply seeing the vines turn stiff and flaxen.

Lance didn't touch her, but pointed to the pulse point on her wrist, where the base of the vine began, "If he was really dead, that ink would have turned pale gray when his heart stopped and the rest of the tattoo would have slowly turned white and blended in like old scar tissue. Since you still have color and it just looks a little frayed, it's likely he's still alive. But sleeping, frozen in the Amber."



Hector's arrival cut off anything Adira might have said to that, her having to bolt up into a battle position and rush over to Cass when she heard her soulmate's approach, but Lance saw the look in her eyes when he finished his sentence with his own attitude of assuredness.

She had hope.

-

The fight still happened, because it was perhaps expected of two rivals of personality and ideals. There wouldn't be any peace between them until they spoke their truths in their own self-righteousness.

But when Adira offered her hand, wrist showing Quirin's vines, there was a change in what might have been. What would have been much worse.


Hector would still grab her and slam her into a tree, unconscious. But in this time, Quirin's mark was exposed, a twin to the one along his shoulder, and a thought crossed his mind through his duty and honor of King Edmund. Just a whisper of a thought, like a ghost of the Past come to wave at him in his proceeding to do what he must when it came to intruders searching for the Moonstone.

'I can't lose you, too.'


Something else important changes from this exchange as well.


While there is still a shock passing through the group at Cassandra taking a beating before tossing Hector down into the bottom of Zhan Tiri's Tree, the bearcats following after, Lance was ignoring that he'd forgotten his shoes and tending to Adira; vials filled with the promise of a quick sleep clinking delicately against poultice and numbing agents, brushing glass with innocent seasoning and spices that fit between his fingers easily as he passed smelling salts under her nose and offered up the paste he didn't like to think about the source of but that would work well enough for the bump forming at the back of her head.

The possession Hector was forced into when he removed the spear from the heart of darkness was bound to happen, but Lance was far enough away from the main action of Eugene being bound up to see and hear all that was in front of him.

Rapunzel panicking at the sight of Eugene in trouble; Hector no longer himself and Adira blank faced with how terrified she was for him; Cassandra begging Rapunzel to trust her.

Lance wasn't exactly aware of himself taking Rapuzel's moment of distraction at Eugene's pain to move, but he did.

"Wither and De--"

The root of the Valerian was enough to knock out a fully grown, three-hundred pound man with a mere four drops. And it tasted horrible.

Later, Lance would be sorry that he had to pour the whole vial into the princess's mouth, but he wasn't sorry that he did it.


When she collapsed into his arms, looking at him like she didn't even know him, Lance would look back at that moment, nights later and heavy thoughts interrupting his sleep along with even more blooms he didn't want, and think, 'Oh. That's how it must have felt for...'

But at the time, he was too occupied with picking her up and looking over to Cass, completely ignoring the look on her face to say the right words, "Well? Go for it."


In the end, he still wasn't sure how Cass managed to cut enough of the vines to free Eugene, to isolate Hector; how she managed to dive into the abyss of the Tree to return the Spear to the Heart.

He was aware of Eugene dropping down next to Rapunzel and taking her from Lance, but Lance wasn't sure how he managed to simply look at Adira and know what she intended quickly enough to help her secure Hector before he dropped from his possession like a ragdoll into the dark where Cass disappeared to.

There was movement, and joined hands, and using his own sword and Adira's something like steps in a cliff face, holding on despite the blood along his palms and both feet torn from splinters and bladed foliage; the both of them dragging Hector back up onto solid ground where the warrior woman pressed her ear to his mouth and chest and looked like she would cry when she found him still alive and breathing. Drained of energy from whatever the Tree had done, and heavily injured from the previous fall, but he would live.

Lance was the only one with enough sense to toss Rapunzel's hair over the edge when Cass called up for some help; his holding tight so as not to cause the princess any discomfort and reaching out a bloodied hand when Cass reached the edge--the two bearcats tied with golden plaits around her middle and more than eager to get to their master when they saw his head in Adira's lap.

Even their scrambling for freedom with sharp claws wasn't enough to remove the huge smile on Cassandra's face.

Not even what came after that could pry the pride and reinforced self-assurance from her.



Lance would somehow get used to walking barefoot in the months ahead, because he completely forgot to go back for his boots.





"Stop giving her that look; it would have been incredibly dangerous to leave you behind in that tree and it's not like we can trust you to your own devices here."

"Then let me go."

"You can't even go anywhere. You're still injured and if you weren't barely holding on while being isolated and malnourished before, that Tree hijacking your body did you no favors."

"I am going to abide by my king's wishes."

Lance sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Being injured and too weak to do much of anything didn't stop Hector from being obstinate and verbally rude as hell; this including calling Lance a Weed when he first put the pieces together of their group having herbs in supply for injuries when they hadn't made any stops for purchase, but it always came from Lance.

It might have been easier to talk to the man if he wasn't always suspicious Lance was going to lay him unconscious just by being present; like he would sneeze and expel Valerian root dust at the slightest movement.

Adira promised that wasn't a side effect of the medicines or sedatives, it was just his personality.

Which was why Eugene smacked the man on the back of his head the first time he referred to Lance as such; followed by every single time after when he was in earshot.

Lance suspected that might have been partially because his best friend was offended on his behalf and partially because Hector said it right in front of Rapunzel and both Eugene and Cass had to explain to her--as boyfriend and lady-in-waiting, respectively--why it was incredibly rude and disrespectful in polite company.

Adira didn't seem pleased when Hector reacted that way when first waking up either, but Lance barely reacted at all; he just made sure the Binturongs were comfortable on both sides of Hector, both succumbing to exhaustion once the group retrieved the caravan and it was up and rolling; then he'd checked the man for any signs of allergic reaction as the warrior woman secured the damn rhino so it would follow them away from the Tree without attacking as they carried on to the Dark Kingdom proper.

"How on earth did Adira get stuck with you as a soulmate?"

"The same reason Quirin got the both of us," she replied, completely stoic and honest, polishing her Black Rock blade, but remaining seated on the floor near the palate they'd set up for Hector. Like it was a somewhat dead horse of a joke that she'd repeated a thousand times.

"That doesn't answer my question, really," Lance smiled, almost like a grimace, as yet another small, unripened cluster of apples dropped from his shirt that he hadn't bothered tucking into his trousers or securing with his vest since almost a day to-the-minute after they'd passed through the forest with Hector practically forced to accompany them.

The fruit had been forming and falling from his skin for the better part of a week and Lance had already grown tired of doing much to acknowledge them, other than banging his head against a table or a wall if he wasn't already occupied.

Eugene knew what it meant and kept Rapunzel and Cass from asking questions almost starting the very moment it happened. Adira and Hector probably knew what it meant, but apart from one being smarmy and one being her usual aloof self, they didn't bring it up.

Lance, on the other hand, was doing literally anything he could not to think about it at all.

Because if he thought about it, he would start puking his guts out.

The Dark Kingdom in all of its blanked out misery and emptiness from the Black Rocks was in sight. They'd be on their way back home soon enough and he could confirm his suspicions then.

Even if he still, over a year into their journey, wasn't sure about how exactly he would go about doing that...



Hector, laid out in bed for over a week, and still weak on his legs once he was up and about with one arm in a sling, somewhat warmed up to the idea of Rapunzel finishing the journey to complete her so-called destiny to reunite the Sundrop and Moonstone. After having no choice but to listen to the considerations from every side, he could at least admit there wasn't very much he could do to stop them anyway. And sneered enough to show his teeth when he did so.

Adira understood what was hidden in his words when they were a day out from the castle proper and she stopped their caravan, her imposing figure still as a statue at the sight of one dark figure on the other side of the great chasm separating open, fruitful land, from the desolation of the Dark Kingdom itself.

She turned to look at Hector in something like accusation, but with tinges of that hopefulness Lance had seen on her face back at the Great Tree.

Hector did little more than return her eye contact and give what Lance had come to know as his nervous smirk, "You can't have expected him to actually be dead? He was always the best of us, after all."


There would be some disagreement about that, once the dust settled and Lance had to force himself to stay calm and collected and not punch "the best of them" in the face.


Crossing the canyon with the barely hanging on gondola or having Adira and Hector lead them through the tunnels built throughout the Dark Kingdom's history was put to a vote. Rapunzel and Cass wanting to get there as soon as possible, regardless of the figure awaiting them on the horizon; Eugene, Adira and Hector being more reserved, wanting to prepare themselves, even if it meant having to walk through miles of spooky subterranean networks probably filled with any manner of insects and vermin.

Lance broke the stalemate, surprising everyone, but most especially Eugene--who knew his problems with spiders went well beyond just his bad time at his forced wedding to Stalyan.

"I know, I'm shocked too," he'd whispered, while Hector instructed the bearcats and rhino to take the horses along a much larger and safer expanse of road along the canyon that would take them longer than the humans to get there, but would at least allow them to actually make it to the destination--Max being adamant in going, complete with aggressive snorting and poorly made drawings in the dirt; "But I think we have a better chance to prepare for whoever is guarding this place."


This was, looking back, the correct course of action, allowing them room enough to maneuver once they made it into the castle proper and found themselves immediately in a fight with a man in a bear mask that both Adira and Hector were hesitant to engage.

But they all had little choice in doing so when the figure's first course of action was laying Rapunzel unconscious, head making an ugly sound when it bounced off the wall, and Eugene went on offensive.

It was exhausting, fighting the guardian and fighting the spirits bound to the statues that Lance was the first to break and rain cursed stone down on them, all of them already through the ringer, when the bear mask was torn off by Adira and the man--King of the Dark Kingdom, Edmund--had Eugene pinned... Only to call him son.

That pissed Lance off more than most of anything on their journey--the confirmation of such an outrageous statement being some dizzy crow swooping down into the great hall their fight had kept to, dropping a familiar piece of parchment before Adira and Hector (who both looked at each other like they agreed Edmund had lost his damn mind). A yellowed, inked group portrait of the orphanage Lance and Eugene had spent their youth at, both of them tiny and off to the side, watermarked and faded but clear to the eye.


The anxiety that practically flooded Eugene's system was like a wave, black and terrifying, as Rapunzel was just waking up to see the look on Eugene's face and the earnest hope in Edmund's eyes. Lance taking the pause to insert himself between his brother and the man that dared call Eugene his own, looking the king right in the eye. He didn't care if the man seemed hurt by the disconnect, Lance only cared that Eugene could breathe and wouldn't feel like the walls were closing in with this new piece of information thrust upon him with his adrenaline clouding and sharpening everything all at once.

They were all stalled from moving forward into the dysfunction of whatever the fuck that little nugget of truth would have turned into, thankfully, but Cass sneaking away from their little moment.

She took up the Moonstone, and it didn't kill her.

Rapunzel begged her to answer why she would betray them, and Cassandra's response made Lance reconsider the relief at her surviving contact with the stone, later; even if he hated himself for it.

"Corona's Royal family's sins have come home, Rapunzel. It has to be this way!"


Those words, the way she said them, rang through Lance like the echoes of a hundred-thousand church bells in an omen of the past repeating itself. A pit of ice shot through his veins directly into the pit of his stomach.

--

(Lance wouldn't know until he was back with the others in Corona, weeks after Cass got there before them, but that feeling manifested in warning through the pit of his stomach and over through the connection he had with his soulmate. Sea Holly, large as a carriage wheel, so blue it was almost black, thorned like a warning of the Black Rocks returning with a vengeance. A beacon Lance didn't know he was sending that many would be grateful for.)

--

Cassandra sealed the entrances and exits to the castle with spires of Black Rocks and stole the balloon Edmund had hidden away, leaving them behind and not looking back.

They got out through a couple windows they only found because Pascal heard Max and Fidella and a black and white horse named Domino belonging to Edmund screaming for them outside the castle in worry, agitation building up in them at the sight of the balloon in the sky and the rocks of the palace following after it in small clusters, like a sick euphemism of trailing breadcrumbs. The bearcats and rhino were far more contained, but both of the predators still charged up castle to the windows to help secure Rapunzel's hair like rope to help them down, nuzzling Hector and Adira both on their landing.


The knights and Edmund didn't have much of a choice but to follow the lot of them back to Corona, agreeing that whatever Cass had planned would most definitely involve them down the line, and it was better to have strength in numbers. Not to mention the personal reasons they had--being Adira and Hector had an idea of how to free Quirin with Rapunzel's help, and Edmund wanted to get to know "Horace."

Lance did punch him for that, the first night they had to make camp, and he did it with a smile, shaking his head at Edmund and making direct eye contact with him, "No. Not Horace. Eugene. You lost the right to call him that name when you abandoned him instead of, say, entrusting him to one of your loyal subjects."

He made a motion to both Hector and Adira with the hand he'd used to punch with, both of them looking ready to attack him, but also exceptionally guilty when he put it like that. Adira even eyed the scrapes on his knuckles with a wince.

"Lance, he did what he thought was best," Rapunzel said, trying to keep the peace, probably meaning well, finding Eugene's shoulder and giving it a squeeze without even looking to find Eugene looking sideways at her, entirely uncomfortable with her defense of a man she didn't even know. It was one of the things he loved about her, seeing the good in everyone, but Lance was absolutely right, at least in this.

"It doesn't matter that he meant well, it only matters what he did," Lance replied calmly, "Kind of like when your father restricted you in Corona and then locked you in a tower, princess."

Turning his back on Rapunzel and what would probably come out of her mouth in defense of her own abuse--which was exactly what it was, even if her mother told her the king meant well and she'd defended them both to Eugene on multiple occasions after Old Corona--he started looking through their supplies to start dinner.

He was very glad to find the bearcats had added a couple rabbits to the pile of Lance's apples that even Max couldn't eat more than a few of at a time; they were so bitter and swallowing them felt like something was burning down the throat. Meat went very well with his marigolds as a saffron substitute and he supposed he could make a pie with the apples, since he also had maple seeds to go with it (which he hated almost as much as their conversation, but it would be a while until they made it to another town and beggars couldn't be choosers).



Eugene didn't sleep with Rapunzel that night, volunteering first watch, and sneaking over to give Lance the biggest hug when they traded post, "I love you, Lance. I really should say that more."

Lance smiled, a little sadly, before returning the hug and letting Eugene drop off into his warm spot, "Love you, too, big brother."

--

A week before their entrance into Corona proper, Lance woke up one night screaming, clawing and ripping at his shirt to get it off. He sounded like he was on fire while sweating enough to soak.

Literally everyone woke up, including Rapunzel who had started nodding off while on watch before dawn, but Eugene was out of his bed and up like a shot over to Lance, helping him get the shirt off and finding bloodied edelweiss flowers and those aspen seeds they'd all become so used to had begun sprouting and growing into the dirt beside the pallet while still blooming from his skin.

Eugene literally had to slap Lance to wake him up entirely, yanking at the plants and using the ruined shirt to mop up the blood.

"What's happened, Lance? What is this?"

"Something...something's wrong. Something's gone wrong," Lace heaved, great lungfuls of air, one after another so that he wouldn't outright vomit at what had come out of him, the connection stinging horribly and reading like something broken being put back together with fire and metal. Like scorching gold on open wounds.


They quickened their pace into Corona after that, though perhaps they should have known it was a trap upon the sight of the Black Rocks congregating outside the great castle, like guards without living souls, as living souls could not be trusted; at least, in this.

The flag of Saporia flew from every tower and every abandoned house and shop in the kingdom proper.

No movement came from within, but some did some from without.


Every prisoner from the dungeons and that boat Eugene and Max had fought on, scattering familiar faces of the Baron's thieves guild, were upon them.

That ponce of a pretty boy Andrew at the head of them, carrying the Captain's sword in threat.

"Surprised you came back, princess. Your parents aren't here and their guards are gone, too. Even most of your precious citizens fled like rats off of a sinking ship."

--

They'd had no choice but to split up and separate to figure things out, in the ensuing chaos of the too many enemies coming down on them like hoards of poison arrows and locusts. 

Eugene, Rapunzel, and Edmund, along with Max, Domino and Pascal, were forced further into the abandoned kingdom. The princess calling over her shoulder that they'd find a way out and catch up to them later.

Lance, Adira, and Hector, as well as Fidella, the bearcats and the rhino, found themselves flying for their lives outbound to Old Corona to try and reconnoiter, as well as come up with a plan.

Lance trusted his brother, and Eugene trusted his.

Neither of them looked back.

Chapter Text

Lance knew they were coming onto something before they even passed into the boundaries of what remained, which was to say the absolute nothingness, of Old Corona.

He knew it before he saw it, which was probably why he made for Fidella to still in her running and motioned for the Hector to halt his rhino. The bearcats growled and hissed at its flanks, sniffing the air and puffing up when Fidella jostled at the sight that came up along the nature growing where once had been ruined houses.

It was that raccoon that had caused chaos in Corona over a year ago, almost two years by their return, really; timed by their leaving and their standing there again, staring at it.

Lance was vaguely aware that it wasn't as big and terrifying as the last time, almost cut down to a third of the size it stood at before, but eye level with Fidella and intimidating for something that probably reminded the horse of a wolf or bear instead of a monster wreaking destruction for its master in revenge--or to settle a score, Lance never could get a straight answer of which.

"Uh, Ruddiger, right?" Lance chanced, slowly easing Fidella over the the alchemically advanced creature, taking a chance that it wouldn't attack him, or the horse for that matter, right out of the gate as it just kind of stared at him critically, "We were looking for the other Coronans since, uh, it looks like the kingdom was empty and taken over, and we'd like to help it...y'know, not be."

Not his finest way of talking his way into something, not by a long shot.

But absolutely the right thing to say.

-

The raccoon brought them through the forest of Black Rocks along what looked like a newly forming footpath among the trees and small brooks and streams running through the decimated territory; though it tried to weave and bob away from leaving tracks, looking over its--his--shoulder every so often to be sure the rhino wasn't leaving too obvious a trail.

They came upon what looked to be a high mossy hill formed from out of nowhere, before the rolling forest that had started invading the lived-in town; heavy with wild grass and plants of all manner edging the trees that Lance was certain were not there on his last visit during the battle with the massive metal golems, some tall but all new to Lance's eye; familiar Aspen shoots as tall as Lance himself that made his stomach clench.

Exactly why that set off alarms for him became obvious as sin when an arrow landed not one foot before Fidella and the rhino in turn, two shadows rising from hiding in along the lines of clustered Black Rocks as well as boulder and hill clusters Lance was sure had never been there before despite their weathered appearance, both newcomers emerging with an obviously lethal set of arrows each pointing at them.

Lance couldn't make out their features, but he had to restrain his facial muscles from quirking at the attempt at intimidation that came from the voice that called out.

"State your names and business!"


"Thought some old friends could use a little help, Pete."


The taller shadow came closer into range and made eye contact with the welcome face Lance couldn't restrain much longer, even if the palace guard was trying his best to be scary--it really didn't work when Lance had seen the man once return to the castle with a mallard perched on his head, "Lance? Who's that with you? Where's the princess and Eugene?"

The smile Lance had been working up faded a bit into something dry, "We got separated looking for everyone else after we were attacked. This is Adira and Hector of the Dark Kingdom; they're here to help as well."


When Pete finally removed himself from the shadows, letting the hood fall away from his head, it wasn't the usually ditzy and cheerful guard looking back at Lance, but a much more mature specimen that was probably the result of Cassandra's occupation of Corona with their enemies. He bore a much more serious, calculating expression and looked as though he hadn't had access to a proper razor in some time, given the five o'clock shadow making an effort to adorn his face. 

(Lance had to give the man a break somewhere; Pete really didn't have the body type to show more than peach fuzz still lighter in color than his eyebrows.)


The smaller shadow that finally adjusted their arrow back into the quiver and bow to their shoulder, was a more welcome sight; jumping down from the peak of the nearest and tallest boulder and throwing their hood back to greet them all properly.

"Lance! I'm so glad you made it back! We could totally use all the help we can get!"

Pete lost his overly serious demeanor to make something of an attempt at scolding, but it fell a little flat with the amount of affection in his tone, "Catalina, what have I told you about leaving your station when we're out here?"

The young girl, now ten, hair cropper short like her sister from last Lance recalled, smiled with all of her teeth at the elder, but also moved to climb up Ruddiger so she could hop onto Lance; squeezing his shoulder and clinging to him like a baby possum, "I know, I know, 'Don't leave your post until ordered,' but it's LANCE!"

Pete had no argument and welcomed them about as well as one could expect, with a nod to each human and swinging around a tree after tilting his head towards where the sun was disappearing along the treeline, "Alright, welcome then. We should reintroduce you to the queen, I guess."

-

The mossy hill was, in fact, an extremely well hidden entrance that opened up into the reinforced, steel hiding place that had once been the basement to someone's home; an open mouth of earth ripped downwards with something much bigger than shovels and stone picks.

A weight settled through Lance when he looked across an expanse tunnel that made him think of it something like a crossroad, sectioning off the old from the new, and Ruddiger immediately blocked off the end of the old that had a derelict door at the other end with bits of yellow light shining through the seams.

Ruddiger gave something of a warning chirr the likes of which a lion would fear, and Lance backed away to look back towards the newer tunnels, Red pulling him forward so he could lead their party into the unknown.



They had to watch their heads and pay attention moving forward with their animals, eyes wide open in the warren of tunnels Pete had to take the lead on through for twenty minutes before they came into light.

It was actually really beautiful, from a certain perspective Lance was of a mind to agree with.


They followed the guard into a cave system that followed down, down, down and outwards into what appeared to be an expansive ecosystem below Old Corona; pockets of sunlight or moonlight streaming in through holes drilled carefully up towards the sky, enhanced by the earth within being lime-washed white and large mirrors and more forest glass than Lance had probably ever seen in his life hanging all around the place; all illuminating the, for lack of a better term, underground kingdom.

The old houses and shops that had been above ground had been moved into the new location, patched perfectly with seaweed thatch and what looked to Lance to be gold or bronze metal, newer houses made from driftwood or handmade earth bricks dotting here and there, with life shining through the place in mothers doing their wash or baking in cooking spits outside their homes and children running about without fear, having fun. Some elderly citizens could be seen from their porches and windows relaxing.

Fidella was the first to break Lance's observations of just how calm everything seemed by running forward at movement heading their way in the form of some of the palace horses, all nickering and pleased to meet her halfway.

Their guards followed after them, and Lance had never been so glad to have Pete nearby when they all looked stunned at his being there with two people none of them had ever seen, a pair of bearcats at their feet and a rhino bringing up the rear.

He would have felt as awkward as a schoolboy if he wasn't itching to find out what the hell had been happening.

And then he was taken to the Queen in a house built into the most solid of the earth, two massive metal golems patrolling what must have been her garden in splendor even so far below the barren land above their heads. Inside was what could be called a council room that pollinated with a war room and something almost like a medical station trying to merely exist in the far corner with materials carefully lined in cabinets; Pot Marigold in liquid that smelled strongly of salt water and dried roses beside vials and jars filled to the brim with blood red liquid that shined when the light peered in.

Arianna's hair was braided tight with a tail and she had none of the trappings of royalty that she had last he'd seen her waving goodbye and good luck. Merely the clothing of a man, black as ebony, with a blood red vest and ribbon hair tie. No longer looking delicate, but like she could fight a thousand legions to win back the kingdom.

Her lack of ornamentation made the situation obvious, but after Lance introduced her to the Brotherhood Knights and explained what he knew, he had to ask the hard questions anyway.

(She looked at them with something like pity, but her body tensed at their adding to their introduction in calling themselves Quirin's soulmates. Her eyes seemed to look right through them and she changed her mind about taking a seat before explaining things. Ruddiger at her side at once getting up and wandering with precise, delayed movements towards a room in the very back of the house that Lance had seen Pete disappear to, saying he'd check in on Stan and Angry with Catalina.)


"How did you escape and come to be here?"

She chose her words carefully.

He couldn't say he blamed her when her opening was, "We received a warning from the most unlikely place."

-

There was a prisoner, the one that had caused so much trouble for the King that he had immediately set about taking as many petty revenges on him as possible the moment he was in the prison system. The prisoner that spent three straight months in solitary confinement the moment he was recorded into the system, leading to Stan and Pete forming a petition to let him out of that (Lance didn't so much feel himself clench his fists at the very idea, as he heard all of his knuckles pop.) 

The prisoner who was rotated in and out of general population for a week at a time, sent to cells with prisoners up to three times his age and size, with far shorter tempers. Sent to the women's ward once when the Captain had caught the Stabbington's trying to strangle him without him making any effort to fight back.

The one who was moved in with Andrew of Saporia when it was made clear the women's ward wasn't safe for him, either.

The one who was allowed into the castle to perform manual labor only after the queen herself decided to see how he was doing and found out that her husband's idea of 'helping' him was to wear him down to a thread before sending him off to sea seven months into his sentence. The one who caused the sort of row the royals had that was of great interest the next day in palace gossip, thanks to the king's assistant and advisor taking the king's side in the matter.

The one that had started screaming that something horrible was coming to the kingdom weeks before Cassandra even arrived, removing himself from his cell through ministrations Arianna still didn't know the whole story of; a hoard of flowers left behind until he came back to the palace after the siege and tried his best to sneak as many innocent people out of the kingdom and castle as possible.

Who had convinced Arianna just by coming back when he didn't have to, but Frederic and his elite guard wouldn't budge, so certain that they could defeat Cassandra and dispel the danger on their own; saying it was folly to trust the one that came back, so certain of their own righteousness. 

The one that Arianna let slip caused Quirin to be bound in the amber; a statement that had Hector finally reading her body language properly, his terrifying acid eyes looking to where their three guides had left to go.

The one called Varian, tucked out of the way in a room in the house Arianna tried to explain and defend him, and say the king was dead, as well as most of the men who had remained with him, in spite of Varian trying his best.

But Lance knew Hector didn't really hear any of that. He only heard that the person responsible for his soulmate being encased and out of his reach was down the hall.


Adira knew that, too, which was why she was actually ahead of Lance when Arianna ceased her tellings and Hector made his move.

There was a momentary tussle the man in black had with Stan and Pete in the hall before the door; Pete at the ready but still no match for Hector merely tossing him over his own head, Adira ducking his fall and Lance having enough sense to catch the man before he smashed into the wall and split his head open. Stan on the other hand (also not wearing the guard armor Lance had become accustomed to; mustache perfectly trimmed as ever and hair combed neatly without the helmet, clothes not too different from Pete's own, though with a bit more dark green than the dark brown and black) wasn't as prepared and was knocked out of the way before he even registered what had happened.

Lance was only just glad enough that Red and Angry had apparently gone off somewhere else before Hector had the door practically torn off of its hinges and into the room.


Neither Adira, nor Lance, expected him to go rigid and still in the threshold.

They very nearly ran right into him, it was so fast; both of them more than tall enough to see over his shoulders into the room proper, despite the only light coming in from an expansive window that looked out into running water falling down that none of them heard from the rushing in their ears.


Varian, asleep, lad out in a bed that was so large it seemed to swallow him up along with the shadows surrounding him.

Varian, obviously unwell, barely breathing, lacking a shirt to go with his too loose linen trousers, doubtless, because of the cloth bandages tied around his left arm and gauze taped to the same side. Tinges of pinks and reds from possible infection peeking out along the edges.

Varian, too different and too much the same from when Lance saw him taken into the prison cart. 


Overwhelming any rage, or fear, or thought that might have been inside each of them upon entering the enclosed space that seemed like a hollow, came the visceral impression of that moment in childhood that most people had at one point in their lives, even if it wasn't fully remembered.

It was exactly like finding a baby bird, tossed from the nest too soon, injured, and not long for the world.

Skin so pale it was almost translucent; eyelids dark from exhaustion beyond awareness that made it seem they would never open again; figure and form emaciated and too small for seventeen. Hair sweat laden, some wisps plastered against the pillows and his forehead; that one bright teal-blue streak drooping off to the side and probably the most lively thing about him.


Their observation of this grotesque display of many things gone wrong was disturbed only by Ruddiger growling low, getting up from where he was hidden beside the bed, looking over a book Lance would learn later was part of the reason for the room smelling so thickly of burn salve and poultice that did little good, but were the best the people of the underground could do under the circumstances. A book of spells and magic making from the elder Saporian, Clementine, that Red had gone to steal with Angry for the Queen on a raid; they'd been caught halfway out of the city and Varian took the initiative to gab the girls and carry them through an abandoned building he'd set on fire the Saporians wouldn't go through, but the Stabbingtons tried.

(The Queen had been rather grateful for any upper hand that they might get through subterfuge, but she still had to hold onto Red when the girl blamed herself and cried the entire three days Varian was treated by Stan with some of the herbs in the Queen's garden.)


"That's Quirin's son, by the way," Lance interrupted the silence and Ruddiger's growling, picking up the words he had meant to call out when Hector took off.

Neither of the knights had been expecting those words, like being pelted by stones, and looked back at Lance to be sure they'd heard him correctly.

When there was not a single sign that the man was joking (he wouldn't, they knew, but they had to be sure) and he looked them both in the eye with a solemn nod, they retreated back, back, back and out of the house.


Lance followed, apologizing to Stan and Pete, but he still followed the knights out into the yard of the house, the Queen already on the veranda, observing the reaction.


They were both unmoved and not at all surprised at Hector vomiting into a ditch along the path they'd taken, Adira holding back his hair with her nose scrunched up and teeth digging into her lower lip to prevent herself from crying pitifully. The rhino and bearcats hovered near them, but didn't move to comfort their master, looking up at the house and back to Hector as he continued to heave what little was in his stomach and then continued to heave stomach acids and spit.

"What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck," Lance finally said out loud right beside Arianna, his own hands braced to the railing and fingernails digging into the wood; though his voice remained civil and steady, there was also the promise of something darker running just below the surface of his calm veneer. Not too unlike when he'd punched Edmund in the face, but with a little more spite.

She didn't meet his eyes, staring forward out into the place that Lance was absolutely certain she had no hand in making in such a short amount of time, "My feelings exactly, the first time I saw him in the dungeons."

"So you didn't know."

It wasn't a question, but she answered anyway, drawing a dagger from the scabbard at her hip and passively stabbing it into the column of the house closest to her.

"I should have known, but I trusted my husband to keep his promise to our daughter. I trusted him the same way I trusted him to have Rapunzel's best interest at heart whenever he did something extreme and apologized when it blew up in his face."

Lance sighed, heavy and tired, and didn't ask if she regretted it.

There were really no words to put to that kind of regret.


-
After some handful of days, hanging around and getting their bearings, Lance asked absently about what the warning they'd received had been, exactly.

Varian had been up by that point, or at least cognizant of his surroundings, after Lance had given over most of his own medicines and vials of what was deemed useful to the Queen and those who knew how to use it. Ruddiger had fluffed up like an excited baby chick at the mere sight of the edelweiss and aspen root vials, snatching them up and setting about to apply them to Varian's burns (thankfully none of them more than second in degree, only appearing worse because of the young man's overall health).

(Lance was there when the treatment was applied, and could breathe easier when the tension drained out of Varian swiftly and assuredly; the barest smile creeping like ivy across his face even in sleep.)

Getting around on legs like a newborn colt, Varian had shown Lance the warning, where he'd been keeping it; he felt like the group deserved to know.


It would figure, Lance considered in retrospect, that something so personal was kept in the chamber behind that door Ruddiger had blocked their first foray into the tunnels.


Quirin remained the same as Rapunzel described on their journey to the Dark Kingdom, suspended in blinding yellow Amber, reaching up an arm gripping a piece of paper unable to be read in such a position.

Below him was a small grove of newly forming Birch trees sown in by hand, three all told, surrounding the biggest, scariest Sea Holly flower Lance had even seen.

Lance was aware of Adira eyeing him from where she stood beside Hector, forlorn in their knowledge of a life trapped, but herself distinctly aware of the way Lance tried to offer comfort in his shadow towering over Varian and listening to his words.

"I figured I should keep the vestiges of the most important people in my life in the same room."

"People?"

Varian graced the tips of his fingers across of the Sea Holly barbs, drawing the merest speck of blood and smearing it on the Birch bark, "My soulmate must have the biggest heart, don't you think? It'd take a pretty deep dig at our Connection to send me a warning like this."


Lance didn't respond, merely leaning forward to give Varian's (too thin, too hurt) shoulder a gentle squeeze and just barely hiding the newly bloomed clover at his fingertip in his pocket at the same time.
-

There were things to learn and things to be done and Lance couldn't bring himself to say the words, no matter how much he wanted to and saw how much Varian--his soulmate, absolutely, he was sure and so, so afraid--needed to know beyond doubt that there was one person that had been worrying about him long before he fell into darkness and had to tear his way back out of it with Ruddiger and knives and his own blood leaving trails just as assuredly as Lance left flowers in the wake of catastrophe.

So he helped Stan and Pete (absolute soulmates, the both of them with an Arrow on their wrists nobody ever saw when they were in appropriate guard attire; Stan's pale blue and Pete's a blood red that would shame the palace linen, pointing directly towards one another, always) in their self-imposed protection of the youngest (former) prisoner Corona ever had. He also became something like a third father to Red and Angry when it became clear they saw the damaged alchemist as something of a brother after he'd risked his already poor health to drag them into safety.

He observed that Varian very rarely was awake during the day and was most active at high dusk and before dawn; the night hours in-between lending him more ideas in the solitude Lance knew he didn't particularly like, but needed because his time in a barred box below the castle had left more marks inside him than the ones clear to be seen on his skin. Had Lance been in his shoes, he'd have succeeded in killing himself or disappeared into the wilderness the first chance he got.


-
"You're much stronger than people give you credit for," he hadn't meant to say aloud after some days helping Varian plod around the cave system and work out where he could drill some holes into the outside to allow water from the river to wind through and back out again without it causing any real change or disturbance that could be noticed by enemies.

Lance really appreciated seeing this facet of his personality; helping other people as much as a he could despite some of the people only willing to repay him with contempt when the Queen or her guards weren't around. Still, he tried his best and Lance would take every opportunity to let him know his efforts were never for nothing.



Varian had been carrying a boulder around with them, unwilling to let Lance carry it when the man had already volunteered to carry the maps, charts, alchemy balls and charcoal pencils on his back; he nearly dropped it at the compliment, and chewed on his lip nervously before he answered in such a small, scratchy voice, "I've had practice."

Lance made a point of waiting until Varian met his eyes again before stating plainly, "That's not what I meant."

Varian did not answer, hefting his boulder more comfortably and continuing on with it until he set it down where he'd send his automatons later to drill, but he didn't deny Lance offering help and becoming accustomed to his presence later on.
-


He listened to the Queen as she went over strategies and helped where he could in being a master thief, showing her weak spots in the new regime's patrols; lending an ear when new information came in about what Cassandra was orchestrating and glad to hear when Eugene and the others were spotted with what remained of the rebellion inside the city.

(The Captain was alive and doing his best, but worn down to a thread by the time their party had arrived, and little better even with Eugene making full use of himself to get the others out of trouble, teaching them to pick locks and get out of rope bindings. Rapunzel was good at rationing food and making sure that whatever they had would both last and taste good. Edmund revealed himself to be a better military leader and king than Frederic ever was or might have been--even if Lance got the impression from letters delivered by the damaged raven that Eugene was still on the fence about his feelings about him.)

There was also the Queen's garden he couldn't help tending to voluntarily when she'd let slip it technically belonged to Varian as all that grew within the plots came out of his skin at some point or another. Ruddiger had approved in Lance helping and often assisted Fidella in tilling the long lines of blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and a godforsaken amount of strawberries Lance knew the meaning of and had blushed so hard at the Queen's information that Arianna had been worried he suffered an allergic reaction and insisted Stan give him a once over in the medical office that had expanded during their stay.


"The girls will be pleased," Stan had stated in what the man probably thought was subtle, but made Lance want throw himself into the waterfall beyond Varian's room that lead to the sea in case everyone needed evacuation; he'd hoped nobody would notice, but Lance could admit that he'd never been that lucky when it came to his own life, "Catalina said that his soulmate better be worthy of him, otherwise they'd have both the Silent Strikers to contend with."

"Assuming I can sack up, stop watching him like a creeper, and stop dragging my heels long enough to tell him?"

Stan sat down across from his and snorted into the black tea he only drank when the girls weren't around, grinning deviously but with a softness Lance was still becoming accustomed to since he'd realized the guards of the Underground were tremendously better than when Rapunzel had set out into the world; competent and such, "You are not that bad. Trust me, I would know. I have Pete, after all."

Lance would eventually learn to not even bother asking, of observing the differences between romantic soulmates like Stan and Pete, or Platonic Soulmates like Adira and Hector, but he wouldn't learn it for at least another month. 

"...Haven't you guys been together forever?"

Stan lifted his free hand and made a waving motion that made him almost look like proper royalty before the masses. 

"He didn't show me his Arrow until after he shaved off his mustache and I grew mine in. We'd known each other five years by that point, but I had to wait four before he took off his goddamn gloves on a dare."

...That certainly put some things into perspective.

-


"You have to tell him."

"I know, I know, I know," Lance moaned pathetically, squishing fresh bread dough between his fingers, white flour coating up to his elbows and Fidella glaring at Adira where she stood out in the garden outside the Queen's house. The horse giving a very pointed warning not to disturb her new rider when he was trying to calm down from the anxiety piling up and over him.

(Lance really loved her and didn't know if he'd be willing to give her up to Rapunzel or Cassandra once all was said and done.)

(Fidella wouldn't go; she loved him too much by the end, too.)


There had been little news from or about Rapunzel and the others for almost a week, but the Queen told them to try not to be disheartened.

Plans had been in place and building up all the more ever since their arrival, to either set about disarming Cassandra's army or call for help from neighboring kingdoms. They could go on underground almost in perpetuity, in no small part due to the safety Varian had built into the place.

"Out of sight, out of mind," he'd said in that pitch black way of knowing from experience, but without cruelty directed at anyone but himself that had softened the more Lance tried to get to know him and the Brotherhood tried to find ways to endear themselves to him as family might, but never really went away.

It probably hadn't helped his incredibly low self-esteem by Hector blabbing about Quirin being alive in the Amber a week into their stay; sleeve yanked up so hard he'd torn the fabric, soulmark that same faded yellow as Adira's. The man being set off by Varian noting that Hector visited the not-hidden-but-not-open chamber more often than he did.

Lance had no doubt Hector did regret that confrontation, drawn out by Adira's silence in showing her own mark to the too small young man.

There was no surprise in Pete and Stan literally putting themselves between the knights and Varian--that look on his face had them all on edge. But there was quite the emotional whiplash when Lance rose to his full height, back straight and shoulders wide and dragged both knights out of the Queen's war room to have a little chat with the both of them on how there had been enough Varian had to endure without compounding the feelings because the lot of them were entirely helpless in their situation.

He'd ranted with such contained fury that he hadn't noticed the unfamiliar blooms of Jimsonweed until Adira had met his eyes and then steered her own directly down to where they were growing at his navel.

(He'd never had to look over his shoulder before pulling out a bloom before, and the both of them knew it. It took Hector a little while longer than Adira to put it together, but Lance wasn't going to complain when he replaced calling him "Weed" with "Dandelion" the next day.)

Neither of them were actually that subtle about trying to make up for the incident, but Lance appreciated Adira's attempts a lot more than Hector's.

Until she lost patience with Lance's indecision and pining and decided to ambush him when dusk had set in and Varian was off with Hector and the little Silent Strikers to test out a formula he'd been working on that mixed Saporian magic with his alchemy so that after Ruddiger or the bearcats took it, they could change form at will comfortably without the need for digesting anything else.

(It would work, and Lance wasn't surprised when they all rode back on colossi twice the size of Rhino; the bearcats carrying the girls and Hector and changing back for convenience; Ruddiger only shrinking down to be at eye level with Fidella once more and help her with tilling the growing field of wheat that was the result of both Lance and Varian--though nobody else knew it; certainly not the two themselves.)


"Are you afraid he won't like you or something?" Adira coaxed softly, turning away from him to do her exercises of military yoga that existed once in the Dark Kingdom that she continued with even years later in exile. It looked quite relaxing until five minutes in when she would take jabs at the air with the heels of her palms or the balls of her feet; she'd once accidentally cut clean through one of the stalagmites of the cave, and though it was impressive, it had also set off a type of magic ruin Varian had carved into his automatons. Lance had never seen her look as embarrassed as when the metal golem had her pinned flat to the earth, half the guards and their horses circling her with weapons at the ready and the Queen looking entirely unimpressed and thoroughly annoyed. (Though, Lance didn't count it as a total loss that day; he'd made a joke while Varian had eased the golem off of the knight--he didn't even remember what he'd said, only that it had been dry--and the young man had snort-laughed so hard he'd alarmed Ruddiger.)

"I...don't think so? I just," Lance considered, balling the dough up and then slamming it back onto the counter, again and again, "I don't want to put him in a situation to feel more uncomfortable than he already is."

"You think you make him uncomfortable?"

"I think he has the worst luck in the world when it comes to interpersonal relationships and the very idea of finding out the universe has dropped one right in front of him is going to set off every single one of his triggers."

She blinked over her shoulder, looking him in the eye in that way she did, that way that said she'd been alive for decades more than him and he was acting ridiculous, so he finally just rounded out the dough into a pan and draped a tea towel over it so it would rise before he'd bake it (a little recipe he'd been working on to give to the girls as well as Stan and Pete for all the work they'd been doing along the perimeter of Old Corona; being sneaky enough that he was exceptionally proud of them) and add sugared icing.

"...I also want to be sure that he actually likes me a little?"

"He likes you plenty."

"You can't possibly know that!"

"He laughs at your terrible jokes, he lets you into his lab, he lets you follow him around the caves like a puppy, he actually makes eye contact with you."

She didn't raise her voice, but he could read the subtext in her tone, What else did he want?

Lance sighed, wiping off the last of the flour and going to sit on the veranda, observing the moonlight's effect on the underground; the villagers going about their evening much like they would back at the kingdom, feeling safe despite their circumstances.

All of them owed their lives in freedom to a young man they hadn't given a second thought to when he'd been in prison, abused and then escaped to build this place they were living so they'd have somewhere safe to hide once Cassandra used the Moonstone to uproot their lives and put them all in danger in pursuit of some agenda with the Saporians and people involved with Lady Caine in one way or another.


It made him angry, but mostly it made him sad.

"Nobody likes rejection."

-

A betting pool would form to the size of a betting ocean among the people of the underground by three months' time. It was one of those secrets universally recognized that Lance and Varian were soulmates and the amount of bank and odds were gigantic as well as ridiculous in its simplicity.

There were only two rules that were the people followed at any given time, with a few smaller ones they toed at, but wouldn't cross because Arianna was in on it, too:

Lance or Varian had to admit it aloud so that they both KNEW and were CERTAIN they were soulmates.

Nobody else could interfere.


Adira started a group military training session among the residents to work off the steam that inevitably came from the frustration--Hector jumping in to help with duel training in earnest when he couldn't take watching anymore.



So, of course, it was rather good for morale and forming bonds and being prepared for what came next.

Chapter Text

The change in things that had been steady, but building up since arriving in this changed kingdom and changed city, came in the form of two people Lance never thought he'd see alive again being brought before Arianna in blindfolds and headscarves and arms bound. Out of sorts and dirty from Angry and Catalina not being especially careful leading them through the tunnels and their constantly hitting the walls because they forgot to say, "Turn here."

The queen had a look on her face when Stan lead her out, strong and blank and like a true monarch was supposed to be--not giving anything away, but willing to at least listen to what was said without bringing her own bias and assumptions into things. Which was what was steadily making her out to be a much better leader than her husband had ever been, if Lance was being honest.

Still, her eyes and face practically lit up when the blindfolds and headscarves were removed and the female captive was revealed to be Willow.

The male turned out to be Dwayne, which Lance would have found more interesting, had Willow now immediately screamed joyously and launched herself--still bound by the arms--at Arianna, "AHHH! There's my big sister!"

The sister part was most likely the biggest reason neither Adira nor Hector drew up to attack the woman. The second being that the queen swiftly removed the bindings herself and the both of them hugged it out like the last time they met hadn't ended in a near disaster.

While Lance dug his pinkie into his ear to stop the ringing that came from Willow's always high volume, he noted the Uumlaut Willow had been charged with peeking out from the bag Catalina had taken from the woman. It seemed clean and healthy and very curious as it observed its mistress and finally climbed out of hiding to bounce over and engage Arianna's ankle with its own clumsy hug.

(The rattle Lance was distinctly aware it was never supposed to be away from was hanging on its back by what looked like a bracelet made of Willow's hair. Practical.)


Lance allowed them their moment, turning back to Dwayne as the younger man was released from his bonds by Pete, trusting Willow enough to trust the person who had probably helped her out of the city. The royal might have been flighty and incredibly irresponsible, but she had been with Rapunzel according to some of the letters they'd been getting, so Dwayne must have been a part of that as well, despite previously having worked for Lady Caine.

Getting thrown off a carriage and being called dead weight could do that, after all.

"What are you two doing here?" Lance asked seriously, but without iron in his tone, arms crossed and looking Dwayne straight in the eye.

"I was ordered by Fitzherbert to get Willow here and help the Queen ready for the rebellion to make their way here. Cassandra is about to start going through the older sites that lead to the Demanitus Chamber while readying the Saporian flagship to send an envoy out to gather allies among the other kingdoms that will support New Saporia in light of King Frederic's death."

"That makes sense in sending the queen's sister," Hector butted in, his arm sword out an lazily drawing lines in the sand beneath his feet, "But not someone we've never heard of such as yourself."

Dwayne broke eye contact with Lance to actually manage sending a glare Hector's way, puffed up and offended, "You wouldn't have heard of me, because it as necessary to keep me out of messages. I have been helping the rebellion with information about what Cassandra is doing, after all."

"Obviously," Adira confirmed, but with a dissatisfied look, "But how is that, exactly?"

Dwayne shifted, hands in his pockets, "I'm a thief, but not one good enough to be sent out on the prison barge and I'm good for manual labor, but not strong or scary enough to be missed. And stuff."

The squint Lance gave him spoke so many volumes that Dwayne actually craned his neck back so he didn't have to look at him and guess what he was thinking, "Are you saying that you've been a spy these last months?"

"...Technically longer. The alchemist, Varian, and I shared a cell. When he told me what was going to happen--and it actually happened--I wasn't too keen on letting it go on without a fight. Honestly, Cassandra isn't much better than her father and the king in some regards, and I really don't like some of the things Andrew of Saporia and The Baron put into her head would be justified."


"How do we know any of this is true? Just because you knew Varian in prison, does not mean you were his friend;" Hector hissed 'friend' like a curse--not in itself, but the idea that anyone had shown his nephew any kind of fellow feeling in the bowels of the dungeons that weren't Stan and Pete or the Queen.

Given Lance's own position, he wasn't quick to correct Hector's assumptions, but...something stirred within him that gave him pause to immediately attack Dwayne or call bullshit on his explanation.

The slippery thief that was also the dumbest thief Lance had ever met seemed to deflate at the knight's question and implication, even as the Queen allowed him to stand on his own without the bindings he'd been brought in, Stan and Pete both weary despite Catalina and Angry dragging the man in all by themselves (with all the presence of a pair of wolf pups bringing home their first kill for their parents to see; it was cute).

However, he had a card up his sleeve, and was keen to use it; hands coming to cup around his mouth as he yelled out and towards the house where everyone knew Varian was probably half asleep over calculations involving what he could use Clementine's book for.

"I WANT TO SEE MY BABY UNICORN!!"

While Lance appreciated the look on Hector and Adira's faces, eyebrows dangerously close to leaping off and into the atmosphere, Stan and Pete seemed to brace themselves; both guards caught the girls by the arm and drew them back to cover their ears.

Arianna followed suit with an entirely Unimpressed™ look on her face.


Lance looked over to the Queen's keep, not noticing the disappointment at how anticlimactic the call turned out to be, (kind of,) too focused on how a couple of birds that had been around the underground for over a week barely moved from their place on the veranda as the upper half of the carmine dutch doors creaked open slowly.

Varian was getting better about being awake in more daylight hours, but Lance wasn't surprised to see him with a shawl belonging to the queen (fire and blood and autumn red) draped over him, giving him an even more sickly look than usual.

Still, when he looked over to find Dwayne among people he trusted, Lance couldn't help but be pleased when he smiled and waved lightly, opening the bottom half of the door to make his way down to them at a lope that said he'd been sleeping in the hard wooden chair at his desk--again, "Dwayne, hey!"


Lance had never seen Dwayne look so...well, young. At once worried and relieved, meeting Varian halfway and wrapping wiry, but lean arms around him in a firm but gentle hug that culminated in Varian actually squeezing back as best he could, "Ah, kid, I've been worried; but hey, you're looking better than the last time I saw you."

Nobody was surprised at his words (except Willow, who looked like she was going to pass out when the words hit home and she probably got dizzy looking Varian up and down from where she stood; her eyes meeting Arianna's and her lips mouthing, 'WHAT? WHAT?!' with the queen looking like someone killed a fawn in front of her, motioning for silence, but her eyes promising an explanation...later) but more-so surprised at how happy the two of them looked in the other's embrace and company.

The Brotherhood Knights seemed almost more anxious than Lance, because it was their nephew being held by some stranger, but Lance seemed to be happy that Varian was happy. And the Connection wasn't popping up anything bad, but something kind of warm, like the reminder of safety; sunshine peeking yellows and pink behind thinning gray clouds after a storm. Or water warming up under the warmth of a new day.

(Varian seemed to always feel like water in all its forms when Lance pushed at the Connection as time went on in the Underground. Sometimes like rain, or snow, or ice; sometimes like the smallest trickle held in Lance's palms. Sometimes like the ocean.

He wondered what he felt like on the other side, to Varian. Was he hard and cold like metal? Was he hot like embers in a forest after a lightning strike? Lance didn't think he'd feel like water, mere, or marsh.

Maybe he'd ask when he could find the courage to tell their shared Truth...)



Dwayne had been Varian's cellmate that helped him escape. As they explained it, later, by the fire pit lit up in the underground square where everyone was getting ready for the new arrivals Willow and Dwayne had promised were on their way from Corona proper. 

Food had to be prepared for the hungry, bandages and makeshift beds for the wounded, water set up for the thirsty. Clothes and blankets for those who needed it.

The automatons had been making spare houses in the weeks before, Lance and the guards supervising to be sure they were ready for those fleeing Cassandra, and already there were twenty with three bedrooms between, all with two beds each. But if they ran out of room, Stan and Pete had been sweeping through the streets getting names for those who would volunteer space as needed.

The beginnings of a trickle were brought down by some of the other guards while Stan and Pete organized; frazzled mothers with their scared children, the elderly that hadn't made to leave months ago with the Queen's own legion following after Varian.


Then the more familiar faces that, while Lance had been baking basic breads and laying towels over them to keep them warm, had Varian silencing himself and stating that he'd be going out through the tunnel at the far end of the cave system that led out beyond waterfalls--they hand't secured that run and both Ruddiger and Fidella were willing to follow him up while everyone else was busy. They'd caught the smell and look of fear across his being, recognizing some guards Fidella recalled to be not especially kind, and some citizens Ruddiger had been present to see throw rocks or chase his boy based on nothing more than some poisoned words.

Lance handed him a flask full of a kind of milky tea with a chocolate aftertaste he'd been working on, as well as a napkin full of cherry-almond teacakes, in case he took some time (he understood not wanting to speak to people that would give nothing more than scorn at his presence) in getting back. Which Varian appreciated tremendously, giving the kind of tired smile that Lance did his best to bring out as often as he could, and returned in kind as the three slipped out of sight.


Adira and Hector were helping the queen look the people over as they came, checking for weapons and evidence of their sneaking in like snakes into a rabbit den, but it wasn't long before their eyes and ears saw more than that; Feldspar and Uncle Monty joined in near midday, huffing and puffing, but complimenting the Queen on her finding a place for her people that was so secure they would never have found it if they hadn't been told.

Then came Xavier, looking thinner than Lance had ever seen him, but with keen eyes taking in everything of the man-made river, the architecture, the weapons, and the metal golems still building and guarding at the same time; he knew and he spoke praise towards the Queen's choice in what seemed so long ago and yet not long at all, "I see Quirin's son came through for all your trust in him, your majesty."

"He did," Arianna agreed, taking a moment to smile with her eyes over at the blacksmith for having enough sense to know that while she might have been a good ruler, was proving to be one even as they experienced the same moments distilled in time, she couldn't have found the place they stood or so much as dreamed all the gifts before them into being.


There was a confused, almost outraged, sound raised by both the cobbler and the confectioner, realization crossing their faces stained in disbelief that both the Brotherhood heard and Lance saw.


Lance had handed Xavier his freshly made loaf of bread--brioche glazed with strawberries from Varian's garden that half the guards, Catalina and Angry, and many of the horses had been made to gather at the Queen's behest for Lance at their message from Dwayne and Willow; with as much gathered, there was still two thirds of field left to stand with berries of every shade and flavor, as well as fruit and vegetables, spices and herbs that if Lance looked at for too long he ended up making a fool of himself--and almost got into a verbal slaughter with the two.

Almost.

But his Connection thrummed, like a piece of loose ribbon tied to a fence, winding wild in a monsoon breeze.

It seemed as though he had stepped out of time for a moment.

He blinked himself back into awareness on his knees, Adira before him with a hand reaching out like she would have touched his face if he hadn't come back to himself, and Hector behind him looking at the unwelcome guests like a wolf looks at a pair of Spaniel trespassers.

Lance swallowed down bile that had risen in his throat, bringing a hand to the back of his head and pulling back to find small blooms that an untrained eye would think were Hibiscus, but Lance knew better.

They three all knew better.

All three were off like a shot with the Queen's silent order and blessing.

--

"God fucking dammit!"

There were mistakes and regrets that Lance fastened to and released almost as soon as they came; Adira, Hector and himself out of the tunnels, out through the waterfall and into the open area where a fight had taken place, perhaps mere moments before they'd gotten there.

There was nothing any of them could have done to change their slight carelessness, but when Lance caught sight of Varian's goggles broken on the ground (metal warped and glass splintered in the light, as if stomped on) and the two animals stalling at the sight of the three mere yards away from where they'd almost been headed in a dead run, Lance couldn't stop himself from wishing.

Fidella, at least, was more than happy to pick him up out of his worry and rage, bolting over to let him mount, Ruddiger offering up his back to the knights, and the lot of them off like fish in a stream.

"Those tracks weren't that many and they couldn't have gotten far, Dandelion," Hector soothed in as much a way as he was able, leaning into the colossi raccoon's shoulders with care to Adira's general aversion to riding, making sure her hands were at his sides or back at every jump and scurry.



The 'they' in question, as it turned out, were some particular enemies all the way from Vardaros that had actually been out by the river on Cassandra's orders, stowing away with other unconscious allies that would be useful as bargaining chips for possible assistance from other kingdoms they had slighted, or to trade with Rapunzel and Arianna when the time came.

Finding Varian had merely been a happy accident--and they never passed that sort of thing up if it meant they'd get something out of it.

--

The last clusters of the free people came in the scurry of Lance and the others giving chase to the edge of Old Corona's borders; Angry and Catalina made aware by the Queen of so much going on, and glad that Hector left his colossi bearcats for the two to ride with Stan and Pete in the event of emergency.

Emergency which came swiftly on the heels of Rapunzel and Edmund leading the people to where Dwayne told them to go before he'd been off with Eugene and Maximus; Willow had offered to help in their drawing off a small group of Cassandra's legion, but been made to stay behind with the Uumlaut by her sister's order, "Just in case Rapunzel gets in over her head."

Really, their biggest problem came when Domino limped into the hidden chamber, the Captain on his back wounded and the pub thugs doing their best to cover Rapunzel against the encroaching enemy, but only having just been trained in the most basic of warfare, they weren't doing very well.

Willow would report what came next to be rather distressing, but to her sister alone she would say it made her worry if Rapunzel was really ready to be in a position of such power. 


"She didn't even call out a real warning before she loosed the incantation."

The hair that turned from gold to obsidian wrapped tight around the amber turned the color of the cellar around them, darker tones and shadows rising out of the ether as the decay spread out from her.

The large sea holly and sapling birch trees remained steady in their place, but not because they were immune.

Rather, it was because the amber had begun to melt and run, covering the plants in protection from the incantation and threat.


Edmund, carefully herding the guards, allies and still loyal people down the tunnels leading from the door they'd knocked down saw this terrifying and breathtaking sight; and he saw Quirin take a breath as he landed in the puddle of the amber seeping out and away from where it had held him for over two years.


The slippery golden liquid felt almost like gallons of honey underfoot as the king launched himself across the separating distance; the enemies that had chased them down into the hidden place retreating in swiftness from Rapunzel's terrifying power--dragging their weakened out in a slow lope that had him think aloud of injured stags and rabbits--and Edmund was quick to snatch Quirin up and back to the door where the Queen's guard were waiting with open arms.


All of the Saporians and convicts had gone, save for the young woman Juniper, paused at the mouth of torn stone and grass, looking at Quirin rather than Rapunzel.

(There was an honor that many Saporians held, an uneasy truce between them and other criminals, and while Andrew tended to ignore that from time to time and very often at that, Juniper recalled the young man stuck in a cell across from her for months; the youngest of criminals in those dungeons that alternated from dead silence staring out at the world with cloud eyes and arms wrapped around himself, to weeping for a father he hadn't meant to hurt but had probably consigned to endless suffering, to screaming like the ghosts of the dead Juniper had seen in her youth when he'd been removed from general population and put back in The Box.)

Edmund noted the young woman's shoulders seemed to ease when she caught Quirin blinking into awareness, and she left much like a deer back to safety.


(Juniper would tell Kai and she would tell Maisie and, eventually with the threat of violence if spoken to anyone else, she would tell Clementine. Because they had all, in their ways with the assuredness that they were not monsters and maintained their humanity, somewhat cared for Varian and all hoped that he would somehow get a happy ending. Not like Dwayne, who had become something of a brother to the younger, but still they cared.

She would not tell Andrew. He might have been of the Saporian royal line in blood--not the highest of the line, maybe little more than a viscount--which was why he lead, but he was not to be trusted with manners of the heart or human kindness.)

--

There were still mallows blooming at the base of his skull, a mild pounding in his head, but Lance was probably more focused than he had been in quite some time as he ran forward, dagger loose in their holsters, sword tight against his back, Adira and Hector right behind him in their launch.

There had only been the barest of moments to plan, but there was confidence they could all make it work.


Ruddiger was ready and caught him in that spin they'd planned, spur of the moment, three counter-clockwise turns, release at the height of his strength, and Lance was loosed into the air.



He had just enough time to see Fidella braced at the edge of the cliff if he didn't make it, but he pulled his daggers and slid them home into the wooden bow of the airship with its people that hadn't seen them, his weight going limp on impact, because if he tensed up, he would have made too much noise.


The tears of the scars along his hands and the blood, a repeat performance from his time at the Great Tree saving Hector, would have bothered him--but he was focused on the present and not the past and not his own pain.


Lance barely remained cognizant enough of his surroundings to register both Brotherhood knights had stuck their own landing, quite literally, on either side of him; all three angry still at what Cassandra was doing enough to be in perfect tandem in their mission. Fidella and Ruddiger below and behind them had their orders to follow as fast as they could along the cliffs and rocks and come into the fray if they got the chance.


(And they would get that chance. Leaping onto the airship from the last high peak of the cliffs out of Corona proper, full of fight and skills they'd learned in their waiting for the turn of the tide. Impressive and powerful, but not without mercy.)


None of that mattered as much to Lance as moving up and forward, clear headed but still pissed as he felt and tasted red algae form along his cheek and tongue.

He couldn't spit it out and didn't want to, so he let it rest under his tongue to keep him focused.

--

Stalyan really wasn't one for taking orders from those she deemed beneath her, so it was little surprise to Eugene when literally everyone on board the airship told her that if she managed to capture Varian at any point in time between Cassandra recruiting her and the Baron and their attacking Rapunzel as she fled, she was was NOT TO PUT HIM IN A BOX; she went and did it anyway.

There was a little surprise that her gloating was so short lived, though. 

After she applauded herself and made a show of kicking the crate that looked far too small onto the deck, the Baron behind her doing nothing to stop her and everyone else that Eugene knew had been in the prison system (sans the guy that looked too much like him and he just knew was regretting all of his life choices leading up to that point) looking about ready to punch her in the face if she didn't knock it off; she opened the lock and put her hand inside to pull out the prisoner.


He wasn't going to pretend that her subsequent screaming both made him tense up and feel oh so happy.


(Later, he would remember the way the convicts looked rather pleased as well. Not one of them moving to help her; Caine and the Stabbingtons allowing a grin to split their faces in something like pride.)


"Get off me, you little--!"

The crate was knocked onto its side and Stalyan dragged the young man some feet away, shaking her arm and hitting him with her other hand, but his teeth were embedded in her flesh and snapping tendons, jaw set firm as a bear trap and totally unwilling to let her go until the Baron lifted his leg and literally kicked Varian away and off of his daughter.


Eugene felt his blood turn cold as ice, eyes following a cluster of bright red-orange and pale purple petals from the crate all the way over to where Varian slid down the side of the ship onto his stomach, hands unable to catch him as they were tied behind his back, head making a resounding 'crack' on the wood (he was so pale, he was so thin, the blood on his neck that ran down from his hair was like fire engulfing rice paper).


Nobody (with morals) moved for a moment; Eugene's lookalike glancing from the young man to Stalyan with the speed of a hummingbird's wings, the Baron wrapping his daughter's hand with the ascot from his neck, and Stalyan hissing and moaning like some wild animal.

Being the daughter of a mob boss, a child racketeer, an untouchable, Eugene was willing to bet money that she'd only been willfully injured by the number of fingers on one hand. He was willing to bet there had never been blood involved.

Which was possibly (likely) why, when Varian took a breath and turned his head to the side to vomit white foam and bile, Stalyan reacted so badly; she took up her dagger and marched over to his prone form with intent.


"That was not wise, boy," she hissed, angered further by his finally blinking up at her and not looking afraid. A mask of indifference and irritation taking the place of his agony when he looked her up and down and it seemed as if he knew who she was.

"I'm not sorry," he answered, carefully finding his back braced to the wood of the ship and taking a sitting position to look her in the eye, reminding Eugene of his time enraged at Rapunzel, and reminding Dwayne beside him of his time in the dungeons when he was no longer desperate and could tell every word Andrew spoke was bullshit, "Especially when you had it coming."

"Excuse me?"

Varian didn't look away as Stalyan bent over him and didn't flinch even at the dagger still in her hand, "You're that bitch from Varadaros who tried to get Eugene to marry you by poisoning Lance, right? You've certainly earned a little bloodshed."

"Aww, is that fat coward a friend of yours? Didn't think he had the ability to make friends that couldn't do things for him."

"Because you obviously can't?"


The Stabbingtons hadn't been kind in their portrayal of Stalyan in the dungeons and Lance, while kind as a person, hadn't left out much when the Queen asked him about enemies they'd have to be weary of. And Varian was very good at using words to his advantage.

Though, at least to the Stabbingtons and Lady Caine off to the side, Max reigned to a post where Axel stood only really observing one person on the ship, Eugene and Dwayne tied up and feeling helpless--it didn't feel that way.


"How dare you talk to me like that," Stalyan hissed, terrifying and low. Eugene himself still as a stone under that specific tone she'd used many a time when he'd offended her without meaning to. The ropes were suffocating him under the sound of her voice.

"When you talk like that about Lance, I'll speak to you any way I please, you nasty bitch," Varian replied evenly and without fear, eyes meeting hers without hesitation and her blood still painting his lips.

Being considered nothing by the King and his guards, and useful by the Queen and her own guards, and something else entirely by a great number of people throughout the years had left the young man with little fear of repercussions. What would be would be.


As it so happened, what would have been Stalyan moving to backhand him, was actually Lance launching over the ship's side, his bootless feet perfectly hitting Stalyan in the face and smashing her backwards into her father as Adira and Hector followed after in full battle ready stance.

--

The fight was short, for what it was; with Lance cutting Varian free of ropes and offering up his sword and back for the other to lean on, the knights assisted by Ruddiger and Fidella jumping from a cliff to land on the ship to fling and toss their enemies overboard back onto solid ground rather than their deaths that they assumed by their own admission in their screaming.


It had been a surprise to find Axel had released Max without fanfare and gone to help Dwayne as the white stallion made to help Eugene; their riders and their mounts in tandem pushing Stalyan and her father back and off of the ship. 

Caine and the Stabbingtons didn't fight, knowing when to cut losses. The twins stepped off the side like they were stepping from a gondola, waving back without a trace of fury or smugness at the look on Eugene's face in their being rather mature in the whole thing.

"'Til next time then," Lady Caine called from the mast, stepping onto the last reach of stony outcropping as the ship left Corona lands and sky, mountains reaching higher and higher.


All of them were unsure whether to call it a victory as they floated away.

--

In the silence that followed, Lance was the first to move and speak, putting away his dagger and gently taking his sword from Varian to look him over; callused hands and fingers tracing bruises and cuts, "You had us all worried there for a bit."


(There comes a time when the universe decides to stop casting die and simply set things in motion. Sometimes it's an earthquake, sometimes a tsunami. This time it was a tiny hand grabbing a much bigger one to take a look at blood slowing along open cuts along the palms.)


"I thank you for the help, but," Varian struggled with a sigh, pulling a handful of marigold and violets from where he'd tucked them out of sight in his pocket before the fight, his fingers working them into a fine paste and snatching Lance's hands into his lap smear it over the cuts that had been old and now turned new in the fighting, "Never do that again."

Lance wasn't one to turn down a challenge when Varian was actually meeting his eyes, firm and so sure that he wouldn't argue.

It was always nice to prove him wrong.

After the poultice was applied and he wasn't likely to ruin Varian's work, Lance smiled wide and took the red algae out from under his tongue, and the mallows he'd hidden in his own pockets, handing them over for Varian to chew on them both and swallow if he could, "No promises."

The smile they gave each other could have lit up a villagescape enough for Rapunzel to paint it after dark in the dead of winter, the both of them were sure.

And the ringing, tea kettle sound the others made from where they were eavesdropping and watching from around the deck could have woken the entire Underground.

(Eugene flipped rapid fire from absolute joy for his little brother, "I'm so happy for you!" to "This is so awkward!" with a diminishing smile so quickly, there might have been whiplash if anyone bothered to keep track; Max standing adjacent to the ex-thief to keep him from embarrassing himself, reminding him to breathe with a little nudge every so often.

Dwayne and Axel shared a similar dynamic, but toned down from a 10 to a 5; mostly because Dwayne had seen the betting boards back in the Underground and Axel really had no clue what was happening, except that his person appeared fairly happy for the tiny human.

Fidella and Ruddiger, Adira and Hector, all told, just settled for basking in the fact that the two had finally said something to each other. Adira leaning against Ruddiger and Hector sitting astride Fidella, all just smiling as the two cleaned each other up.

Really, they were all rather lucky that the airship didn't careen into a mountain for the ten minutes they all took to be rather stupid.)

--

There was talking to be had with Eugene and Max; understanding brought to light in why they should trust Dwayne and Varian of all people, and Axel of all horses. The animals had taken care of Max easily enough, reminding him of that 'wanted' poster he'd found and reminding him that it had never been Lady Caine on his back, but Dwayne, and there was loyalty there; no matter that he was placed on a barge in the middle of the sea with other criminals that Cassandra had taken up and taken in for her campaign to do what she thought was right in fixing Corona's mistakes--it wasn't as if the guards would have listened when Axel was taken away from Dwayne and the dungeons on land, no matter how he kicked and brayed even days after being set on the barge.

Eugene was both a little more difficult and a little easier. He could believe that Dwayne did almost everything that would suit his own interest, he never saw him on raids through the city or confrontations with the new order--he was a petty thief who slipped easily out of prison and never hurt anybody. Dwayne just didn't seem the type to follow after Cassandra, no matter what she was selling that seemed to appease so many other criminals they'd fought.

It took him a little more explanation and proof to believe that Varian was on their side, had been since Arianna had forgiven him his trespasses and asked his own forgiveness for what she knew in the kingdom doing him evil in their ignorance. Lance was a big help with that, reminding him of what happened at the failed wedding between his brother and Stalyan and Varian giving details in how he'd bribed the Stabbingtons into choking him repeatedly before Stan and Pete had barged in thinking they were going to kill him.

Eugene seemed to half believe him at that, arms crossed and looking green along the edges at the idea of those two men in particular being bribed to do menial violence onto someone that looked like a stiff breeze would knock him flat on his ass.

Still he held out a bit, bringing up the Captain and some of the things he'd said about the alchemist that had Lance near enough to exploding--Hector and Adira right mad enough to hiss and spit; for Hector to gesture at the young man pointedly, "Are you shitting me?" and Adira to grind out, "Look at him, Fish Skin, I know you are not that stupid," with all the animosity Lance was sure they felt they could get away with if Eugene told Edmund about it later--before Varian went for the kill.

He wasn't happy about it, hesitant and silent, tears rolling down his cheeks when when he pulled up the (still far too large on his too small frame) sleeves of his shirt and held his arms out, undersides bared to the sight of all.

Lance had thought long and hard about those blue roses before he'd burnt them and was grateful he only ever saw them the once, but Eugene didn't see them. Only Cass saw them, and only Cass had snuck a look at his book to find the meaning; so when Eugene saw them, he didn't think about Lance numb and sick at heart and grateful to the former lady-in-waiting making breakfast when it was Lance's shift, he only thought about what was before him in poorly healed skin with scar tissue thick from infection that left traces much more apparent than if he'd actually been treated well.

--


"With all my crying, it's amazing I get anything done."



There was an agreement among all of the party (stuck on the airship headed for the Great Tree for more ancient books and scroll work, with maybe a side tour to Vardaros and Equis in search of allies) that even though Eugene's day hadn't been great, being snatched up to be used as a bargaining chip, Varian's day had been much worse. So Lance had suggested they draw straws for who would take first shift in steering the ship, and lo and behold, Eugene and Max got it first.

Eugene had made sure to pull the shortest straws on behalf of both himself and Lance, who wanted to get Varian below deck, not just for a rest, but to find a basin to fill with some water and start cleaning the dirt from under his nails and the blood from out of his hair.

The knights of the Brotherhood had taken the Dandelion and Harbinger's descent bellow to have a moment of privacy on the other end of the deck, siting a search for food and to, "Steer carefully, Fish Skin, don't think I trust you at the wheel anymore than I trust you to steer the caravan," with trust in Fidella and Ruddiger to cover for their need of their own new information in a turn of events they hadn't dreamed getting on the same day Lance and Varian finally CONFIRMED their connection.

They somehow ended up below deck and just a room away from the galley, sounds of water gently sloshing easing them to a halt in the shadowed annex. Both Hector and Adira smiled, watery and sincere, looking at their marks glowing brightly in the dark with the telling of Quirin alive, Quirin free, Quirin worried, and squeezed each other's hands, but didn't turn the corner to where Varian and Lance were in the middle of their own little moment. They would tell them later. 

The two of them needed this, the knights knew. They needed the closeness after the long day and the long fight and the worry doubtless settling in Varian's bones about what would have to be done once they returned to the Underground and he had to face people that had made his life hell, but still had to work with.

Varian let Lance brush sure and steady fingers through his hair after Varian himself had filled a basin and placed it in Lance's lap, getting comfortable where they'd settled on the floor and then between legs almost as long as Varian was tall. He trusted Lance and the chef-thief-gentleman didn't let him down, careful of the cut along his scalp and kind enough to let him doze into a sort of half-sleep as he cleaned Varian up and then dried him off.

There was so much to be done, and so much to be said, but Lance himself was tired and simply settled the both of them into a hammock in the cabin area, removing Varian's boots and tucking them off to the side. His own feet were still naked as he'd never gotten around to buying, or even stealing, a new pair.

When they were both comfortable, Lance let Varian settle on top of him, small hands curled into Lance's vest and head tucked under his chin.

Varian was fast asleep by the time Lance thought to answer the words he'd said earlier, but even if the younger man didn't register it, the knights still hiding in the shadows watching them took the words to heart and were grateful.


"I told you, you're stronger than you look."