Found -- Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure Oneshots

BETWEEN THESE WALLS THAT TIME HAS DARKENED

Cassandra thinks that Eugene deserves better than his father.

His father, who, for all intents and purposes, never lifted more than a finger to help him. His father, who, his only act of care was to point him out of the kingdom. His father who, despite having a child, chose to stay and fight a dead man's fight.

Cassandra knows what it's like to stare at a shitty hand blankly. Knows what it's like to have to play the full game anyways, knowing damn well you're primed to lose.

Eugene, to his credit, did his best. It was always obvious to Cassandra, even without all of the little conversations that the rest of them came up to her with. Even still, she can see where everyone's own person bled through. Varian; "He's right to be cautious, but god, it hurts. Cass, it- it hurts a lot. What does it mean when something you were supposed to have is ripped out of your hands, only to be returned again?... At least I was trying to get it back. Eugene, he... he couldn't do that. It's not fair." Rapunzel; "It's so wild, y'know? to know that there's this whole other life you could have had, if things had gone just a little bit right. It makes you want to curse your luck sometimes, like, oh, god... why did it have to be like this? Why do I get this hint of a life now, rather than when it could have done me better?" Lance; "He was the only one of us to ever care about having parents. He was a dreamer, when he was young - still is. It's just... it was different, when he was Flynn Rider. It's like -- he got to live all these adventures that kids shouldn't have, the youth everyone wants for themselves. He used to smile so viciously. We both did, really. Now, he... He's older." Catalina; "The King doesn't make him happy." and Kiera; "He deserves to be happy."

Cassandra wonders, sometimes, what she would say if she could be any of them. Coming to her with emotions too big to handle on their own. Would she talk about parents that only ever care with their words? Not with their actions, not with their chest, but with empty promises? would she say something about learning to live past the event that defines you, only for it to chase after you? Would she cry over the grief of what could have been, if people were just a bit more compassionate?

She thinks, maybe, of telling Eugene all of this. He's so prickly, when it comes to his father -- all false bravado and an undercurrent of dispair. She thinks they share that -- the dragging tides of something primally sad, pulling at their ankles and drowning them. She can see this image, every time she gets like this -- a thumbs-up poking through the water. It's reassuring, so long as you don't dive down to see the deep sucking the rest of the body in.

It doesn't matter, if she tells him or not. King Edmund is dead, now -- only two years after Eugene had met him.

The horrible part is this; nothing could be done about it.

The horrible part is this; Eugene is fatherless again, and he'd never wanted a father when he had one.

The horrible part is this; Eugene had always mourned something that could have existed, and his father dying changed literally nothing.

He hasn't been sleeping with Rapunzel in their shared room, ever since he found out the news -- Rather, he's taken to a hidden room that isn't in the castle's blueprints. The first time he'd dissappeared, everyone had gone searching for him: Catalina, Kiera, Lance, Rapunzel, Varian,  and Cass had been the one to find him in the room she'd found, when she was still young and curious and small. The room is underneath Rapunzel's old room, that's now furnished as if it were some kind of game room. It's just space, really -- a hidden nook, in case of a castle invasion. It's never been in any of the blueprints because of that reason exactly, but the King and Queen know where it is.