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“Percy.” The act of lifting his head hurts, it all hurts, everything hurts. He hardly remembers how he got down here, into this cold damp darkness. Each movement brings back a new wave of memories; Anna Ripley and her voice as she—
He can’t think about that, he can’t stop to dwell on it. His body sings with a thrumming voice, in the rhythm of his rabbiting heartbeat. Not safe not safe not safe, they’re dead dead dead, alone alone alone.
Or not alone. There’s no light down here so even when he blinks away the stars dancing in his vision, there’s nothing to attach to the voice.
“Percy.” There it is again. Recognition makes his breath catch.
“Cassandra?” His voice is barely there, from the shouting, crying, and lack of water for all of this time (how long it has been, Percy has no idea).
There’s a little whimper out from the darkness. He knows it well. The sound of his baby sister crying, the same sound she’d make when someone shouted at her, the same sound she’d make when she lost her favorite doll a couple years ago, the same sound that came from her lips that time she fell and twisted her ankle when she was six. No one ever liked seeing Cassandra cry, always tripped over themselves to soothe her. Now he can’t even see her crying or reach out to comfort her, can only listen to her try to quiet her little sobs.
“Where are you?” He asks hoarsely.
“I’m here,” she whispers back. “I can’t get the lock open.”
There’s a long silence, only punctuated by the scraping of something against the lock on his cell. When did Cassandra learn to pick locks? How does she even know where to start?
His eyes are adjusting to the darkness while he lies there, unable to gather the strength to lift himself. He’s in a dungeon cell, that much he already knew, and he can make out Cassandra’s shadowed silhouette through the bars. He turns his eyes from her to his surroundings. A bucket in the corner that smells used, a bloodied rag on the ground. Another cell next to him too, this one also with shadows inside it. He can’t quite make out what makes up the shapes, it’s too jumbled and dark.
“Cass, I think there’s… what’s that over there?” The scraping stops. He can hear her sharp, panicked breathing.
“It’s nothing,” she says eventually. “Don’t look over there. Look at me.”
There’s an alarm bell going off in the back of his mind but he doesn’t have the motivation to listen to it.
Minutes or hours later, he hears the sound of a rusty lock falling opening. Cassandra gasps shakily in relief, pushing open the cell door.
“Percy, Percy, Percy,” she whispers frantically, coming to him and putting her tiny hands onto his face. “Percy, are you hurt?”
“Yes,” he says.
She chokes on a sob. “We have to go.”
He nods, and grunts as he tries to push himself up. “What about you? Did they hurt you?”
“Not badly,” she says after a moment’s hesitation. He doesn’t believe her but they don’t have time for that. She supports as best she can while he stands on knocking knees, bracing himself against the bars of the cell. Three deep breaths later, he swears to himself that he will not slow them down. Injuries be damned, he will not be what keeps Cassandra from surviving. He may have been a shit brother, may have belittled her for her age and brushed off her attempts at affection, but he loves her wholly. He will not be what kills her.
They step out of the cell together. Percy casts his gaze around to try to look for anything of use. Perhaps in the other cell there might be a weapon or a disguise of some sort.
He steps towards it. Cassandra tugs on his shirt sleeve. “Percy, no—”
His eyes catch on something shiny, reflecting just barely in the darkness. He steps further forward, ignoring how Cass grasps at him and the pain that ensues from it. It’s a ring, he realizes, leaning against the bars of the second cell. A ring. On a hand.
A ring with the de Rolo crest on it.
He steps back, nearly tripping in his haste. “Oh, oh , no— ”
“Percy, we have to go ,” Cassandra says, voice sharp even as it trembles. His little sister, stronger than him in the face of… this.
“Who is it?” He knows his voice is too loud but he can’t help it. “Who’s in there?”
There’s a long stretch of a particular kind of silence, like waiting for the other shoe to drop or the moment before you leave the eye of a hurricane.
“Everyone.”
There is no sound, no breathing, nothing in the seconds that tick past until Cassandra squeezes his hand so tight her fingernails dig into his palm. This new pain makes his head feel less fuzzy.
“Let’s go.” And he follows his thirteen year old sister, leaving behind the corpses of the people he called family in the darkness. Somehow, he knows that this will be the last time he sees them. It feels like an end. He does not look back.
She hadn’t meant to end up in jail. Percy had told her not to go after Ripley, though she could see how he practically ached to dig his hands into her throat and watch life leave her eyes. Cassandra wants the same. And maybe she’s not as strong as Percy is, maybe she’s not as smart as he is, so she hadn’t listened to him. She knew how foolish it was when she left their campsite after his breathing had evened into sleep, but she couldn’t stand to not try. Ripley who had tortured Percy until he broke, Ripley who had tricked her mother and father and everyone, who had been the Briarwoods closest confidant… no, Cassandra wouldn’t let this chance pass her by.
So she took her knives that she had picked up along the way these past years, pulled the hood of her cloak over her head to conceal her face, and stealthed her way into the town. Ripley was staying at an inn that Cassandra had noted earlier in the day. There was only one window with a light in it and Cassandra couldn’t imagine that Doctor Ripley would be going to sleep at such an early hour. Second floor, third window down the line. It was open. Maybe Ripley was stupider than Cassandra had thought.
Cassandra had spent her childhood climbing, hiding, sneaking, despite being chastised for it. Since her and Percy’s escape, she has only improved. This scale up a rough brick wall was easier than when she had scaled a knotty oak when she was ten. She’d fallen then, from the top, and muddied her pretty dress but this time, she wouldn’t fall.
She pulled herself up to peek over the windowsill, perching her toes on the jagged edge of a brick. Her boots barely fit but she didn’t care. She wasn’t scared; she only felt rage.
Ripley was bent over her desk, dark hair pulled back in that tight bun, sharp shoulders wrapped in that same coat. Cassandra felt her vision tunneling, her hands shaking. She pushed open the window and threw herself inside in a single moment, adrenaline pulsing in her veins, heady and exhilarating. She was a girl on a mission, a girl who had her family taken from her, a girl who didn’t feel like a girl anymore because of this monster in front of her. Her girlhood had been torn from her, never to be returned, and her grief was more intoxicating than any liquor.
She barely had time to reach for the knives on her belt before she was pulled back by her hair, a scream of pain leaving her lungs against her will.
“Who’s this little thing?” A gruff voice demanded in her ear. Cassandra bucked against her captor’s grasp but could do nothing as they grabbed hold of both her hands and wrenched her arms behind her back. Cassandra could only watch through tear pricked eyes as Ripley calmly stood from her chair and turned around.
“Well,” Ripley said in that damned proper punctuated voice of hers. “I’ll be. Couldn’t say I predicted this tonight.”
Cassandra didn’t say anything, feeling the heat of anger simmering in her belly. She was so close, if she’d had a second longer she could’ve thrown a dagger right into her throat and watched blood pour from her mouth, she had been so close .
“Cat got your tongue, Miss Cassandra?” Ripley smiled. “You’ve grown, though not very much. How you take after your mother. Beautiful Johanna.”
This was too much for Cassandra. Her mother’s name in Ripley’s mouth, Cassandra’s own middle name, was fuel to Cassandra’s recklessness. Though she knew it was in vain, she struggled against the man holding her arms, which only made him tighten his hold, twisting her right arm at an unnatural angle. Cassandra spit out every swear she knew, every way to say “I hate you” that she could summon, crying out like an animal going to slaughter.
Ripley clicked her tongue. “I thought we could be civil. I assumed too much of you.” She sighed, cracking her knuckles absently. “Take her to the jail. I don’t have time for this. Have her learn her lesson so this never happens again.”
So Cassandra had been dragged from the room, kicking and screaming and frothing at the mouth. Ripley had said nothing more, and had barely looked at her at all. Cassandra had not done it, had not avenged anyone, and had landed herself in this damp cell. The guards had not been kind. “Learn her lesson” to them meant that she likely has a few bruised ribs and blood in her hair and her mouth. She supposes she should be grateful; not all young girls are as lucky as her to be only adequately beaten at the hands of several men. She’s lucky, she tells herself. Has she learned her lesson? She isn’t quite sure. Well, maybe she is sure. If Ripley was in front of her, she would reach for a knife again and again until she succeeded.
It feels too much like the dungeons in Whitestone, dark and quiet and smelly, making her fear kick up every time a sound interrupts the silence. She doesn’t know how long it has been since she got here. Hours, she knows, at least. She’s hungry and thirsty, but isn’t she always? Percy will have seen that she’s gone now, surely. He’ll come looking for her. He’ll help her. He’ll save her. They save each other, that’s what they do. She’ll get out of here.
But how will Percy know where to find her? She hadn’t told her plans, so he doesn’t even know that she’d gone after Ripley. He might think she was kidnapped, taken from him in her sleep. And even if he did know where to look, Ripley obviously has connections with the guards. They wouldn’t let him see her. She tries not to panic as the minutes and hours tick pass. At some point, she falls asleep. For how long, she has no clue. There’s no sense of time down here, no point in even trying. Percy will be terrified with worry now, thinking he’s lost his only remaining sister.
No food or water comes for her. She realizes dimly that they aren’t going to let her out of here alive. “Learn her lesson” means they are going to let her die of dehydration in a cell where no one will know her name. More of a lesson for Percy than for Cassandra, she thinks, but maybe that’s the point. She’ll be buried in an unmarked grave before he thinks to look at the jail and then he’ll never know.
Reality sinks in and she curls towards the wall of the cell, flitting between sleep and wakefulness. She did this to herself, willingly. This is the consequence of her reckless behavior. She’s paying for it with her life.
The door at the top of the stairs opens. Light floods into the dark basement and she turns towards it. The voices follow soon after.
“Grog, watch your head–”
“Keep an eye out for anything interesting.”
“You mean anything shiny, Vex.”
“Always, darling.”
There’s several unfamiliar voices overlapping, making Cassandra’s already pounding head hurt more. The light and the new flood of noise makes her want to draw away back into the shadows but she can’t, not when she has this chance. She pushes herself up to sit, holding onto the bars of the cell.
“Hello?” She calls out in a scratchy voice, hardly able to make sense of the dim figures walking about the halls of this jail. It’s still relatively dark down here, with the only light coming from the half open door. The chatter stops. She calls out again, “hello? I need help, please.”
A beat passes where Cassandra thinks they will ignore her and leave this mysterious, probably addled prisoner behind. But thankfully, a figure approaches, dressed all in dark browns and blacks. She can see long, wicked daggers hanging from his belt. She already has mourned her own hard earned weapons that she will never get back. Her one method of protection, gone.
“Who are you?” The person crouches down at her eye level. She can see him a little blurrily in her starved and dehydrated state, dark hair and tan skin, long delicate fingers that come to rest against a bar of the cell.
Cassandra swallows. “Wrongfully convicted."
The man cracks a smile. “I was thinking more like a name.”
“Cassandra,” she says before quickly moving on. “Do you have any water?”
He hands her a waterskin that she takes gratefully, taking small measured sips, though she wants to gulp the whole thing down. Her hands, shaky as they are, clutch to the object like a lifeline. It is her lifeline, it’s saved her from a terrible fate. She feels like crying. She will live, at least a little longer. She will remain.
“Gods, you’re a baby,” the man mutters after a few minutes. A few more people have joined them, standing behind the man’s shoulders in silence. Cassandra tries to observe them in her peripheral vision, but can’t make out any details besides a blurry shape or the color of their clothes.
“Not such a baby,” she replies and hands the waterskin back. She can see a little clearer now; the man’s expression is open and sad, looking at her dark eyes filled with a sort of melancholy. She hates being pitied. She will not be pitied.
“How did you get in here, Cassandra?” Someone new asks. Cassandra lifts her head but finds she doesn’t have to look up very far. It’s a gnome woman with lovely chocolate brown hair and huge blue eyes, dressed in shining armor. She looks kind.
“It’s rather a long story,” she says, licking her chapped lips. “I would love to explain it in vivid detail but I think my brother may be looking for me.”
“Brother?” The woman blinks. All the people standing seem to exchange knowing looks.
“Yes,” she says. “Have you seen him? Tall, pretentious looking. I need to get to him.”
“I think we probably do,” the gnome says. “Your brother has been tearing this town apart looking for you.”
This makes Cassandra’s lips curve into something like a smile. “He has a tendency to tear things up. I’d be grateful if you helped me out of this place before he burns everything to the ground.”
They agree. One of their party somehow convinces the head of the jail to let Cassandra go— How? She has no idea and does not ask. She’s helped to her feet by that same darkly clad man, a gentlemanly gesture that she appreciates more than she can admit. Kindness has been so rare these days, even if it stems from pity. She wants to walk on her own, but finds it much easier in theory than in practice. Her ribs scream at her with each step, bringing tears to her eyes and a shortness to her breath. She’s able to disguise it for perhaps thirty seconds after they’ve exited the jail before she has to stop and put her head between her knees to keep from fainting.
“Oh, poor dear,” the gnome woman coos. Cassandra hasn’t bothered to ask for names yet. Cassandra lifts her head, feeling dizzy. “I can heal you, if you’ll let me.”
“I…” She’s never been magically healed before. Her only experiences with magic have been very brief stints in her childhood and then Lady Delilah and her demon of a husband, swirling dark magic and her horrid voice as she cast spells, the mind control that had been used on her briefly. She doesn’t like magic very much.
But she hurts so much. So she nods mutely and braces herself for whatever is to come.
But it doesn’t hurt. It feels… warm. Like being covered with a heavy quilt or dipped into a steaming bath. It feels like her mother tucking her into bed and kissing her forehead and singing her a soft lullaby. When the spell has passed and the warmth fades, the tears on her cheeks are not just from pain. She hopes that they all attribute it to that.
“Thank you.” She sniffs, wiping at her cheeks swiftly. The group— that she quickly learns is called The S.H.I.T.S… apt, if she might say— takes her to a tavern. Someone goes off to find her brother, promising her that they’ll do him no harm. Cassandra is sat down at a table in a busy room and food is placed in front of her, a large glass of water. She feels utterly mothered. It’s a welcome change, if a strange one.
She only gets a couple minutes of eating before the door to the tavern slams open. Percy’s eyes scan the room until he finds her.
She stands, walking to meet him halfway before she’s pulled into his arms, crushed in an embrace. Percy’s not a hugger, not by any means, so she’s shocked when the air is almost knocked out of her lungs.
“Don’t fucking do that!” He barks, lifting her off of her feet in his enthusiasm.
She laughs. “It wasn’t my intention.”
He pulls away, looking at her sternly. “Don’t smile, I’m very cross with you.”
She’s back on her two feet now. “Yes, very cross, I’m sure. Now come meet my saviors.”