Twisted Destiny

Contest

Cassandra walked up to the wreckage of the caravan that she had been traveling in for the past year and started to dig around in it. "Come on..." She murmured.

She spotted some kind of paper and reached over to pull it out, but it was just one of Rapunzel's obnoxious paintings of her and Cassandra being happy friends together. She frowned at it, her eyes narrowing.

"Why have you come back here?" The girl asked as she floated over to her.

"Thought I might find something of use." She sighed, staring at the picture.

"Are you having second thoughts?" The girl asked, floating up to look over her shoulder.

"No." She rolled up the poster. "I'm just..." She groaned.

"You feel guilty." She confirmed. "You and Rapunzel were very close and, while the truth of what she did to you stings, you still miss her."

"No." She shook her head. "I don't miss her. I'm just..." Cassandra sighed heavily. "It's hard to just...pretend it all didn't happen. Which is part of why it hurts, because of all the fond memories being...tainted by the knowledge that she stole my mother from me, on top of everything else she put me through."

She heard hooting and looked up to see Owl flying over with a piece of paper. She took it when he got close enough and frowned. "Speaking of stealing things..."

It was a painting by Rapunzel of her with Eugene, Varian, and Andrew. Apparently, she'd not only stopped Andrew's takeover, but turned him from a foe into a friend. And it looked like Varian had also turned a new leaf and forgiven her for everything, too. "Why does she always get everything?" She clenched her fists on the sides.

The girl made a sympathetic noise. "The princess has no restraint. Surely, she knew that making him her friend before you could reconnect with him as a potential ally would hurt you."

Cassandra let out a yell and threw the picture, a black rock shooting out and stabbing through it with her rage. "I should've just left her when I had the chance..." She said through clenched teeth.

"What do you mean?" The girl asked curiously.

Cassandra sighed, walking over to sit on the remains of a bed. "It was shortly after she came back from the tower..."

--

"It's just on the other side, almost there!" Rapunzel said as she opened a door and led a shy-looking maid through into a dark, creepy-looking room. The teenage maid looked around with wide, blue-gray eyes as she hesitantly followed her in. "Just a liiittle farther!" She sang as she passed by a crate, which moths flew out of and spooked the maid. She stopped in front of a curtain and pulled it aside. "Da-da-da-daaaa! Secret passage!"

The girl looked past her at the dark, gloomy-looking tunnel with rats and cobwebs all over the place and took a hesitant step back. "Uh, what does this have to do with being a Lady-in-Waiting?"

"Weeeell, you never know when you might need to sneak outta the castle, right?" Rapunzel said, taking her wrist and pulling her along. "Plus, it's so much fun down here!"

The girl looked at her surroundings with a dubious look, then gasped. "O-Oh my. Is that a millipede?"

"Oh, it's a centipede, actually." Rapunzel assured her, looking at the critter closely while the maid tried not to have a panic attack. "But, you were only off by a few hundred pedes."

The maid fled and Rapunzel sighed before going out after her. She caught up to her and found her clinging to Varian's sleeves, her face buried in his chest. Eugene was standing next to them, looking amused.