Varian hated the snow. It was cold, bitter, and brought up rather unpleasant memories, so it was a bit touchy for him.
He shivered in the frigid wind and pulled the shawl he had snagged off a cart tight around him. He and Juliet had been reluctant to take it from the merchant while the seller was sleeping, but the harsh weather had forced him to slip away cloaks for them. He had, however, promised Juliet – and himself-- that they would put them back.
Varian watched Juliet calmly speak with a group of snowy white owls on a tree branch and felt a familiar snarl of curiosity. He had so many questions about Juliet's abilities and he ached to understand them. Were all animals able to communicate with each other, as Juliet could speak with all animals? Had Juliet learned per species – were animal languages separated by species? Do the different squeaks and chirps constitute different dialects?
Juliet had merely shrugged when asked about it, saying it was something she just knew, like how he knew to breath and walk. Any further investigation into the matter had quickly been sidelined by the need to escape and then trying to implement the plan. Varian supposed that would have to wait until after.
Something twisted something in his stomach at the thought of after. What would life be like after? They didn't want to kill anyone – the murderous rage that had rose the last time he tried to corner Rapunzel had subdued quickly and he knew Juliet would balk at the possibility if he brought it up. Not that he would. Death wasn't going to get them anywhere and he realized that he really didn't want someone to die at his hands.
After they got revenge, would they simply just be locked up again? Would they be able to escape? If they were just stuck back in that dungeon again, would this plan really do anything? Lord knew that if they were to be imprisoned again, the King would strictly forbid them from being cellmates and Varian couldn't imagine a life without Juliet. Not anymore.
Juliet laughed at some of the chirps the owls said. "No, I don't think that will be necessary. But thanks anyway." She reached down to twirl the ring on her right hand. Varian at first hadn't noticed the ring Juliet always wore – it was very small and all shine it once had had dulled. But it turned out that Juliet was very attached to it; something about it seemed to be connected to Juliet the way his goggles always were on his head.
The largest owl gave one more chirp and turned his head to the side. Juliet nodded once. "I promise you, we don't any of your brethren to get hurt and will do everything in our power to keep them safe."
And that was another thing about Juliet – she was a frequent promise maker despite their sketchy history with promises. Her tone and stance were one that portrayed complete confidence that she can and will get that promise done, and Varian felt in his heart of hearts that she would get what she said done.
He blocked his thoughts before he could think back to the last people he had once thought that of.
He felt something rub against his boots and he looked down to see Rudiger nuzzling against his leather boot. He rolled his crystal blue eyes and reached down to pick up the nocturnal mammal.
"I thought you wanted to stay behind," Varian said to him. Rudiger said something to him, but as he did not have that same talent as Juliet did he didn't quite get the whole picture, and so Varian shook his head in slight exasperation and smiled at him instead. Rudiger returned with a smile of his own. Though Juliet may understand him literally, Varian had known Rudiger far longer and so could communicate with him in his own peculiar way.
"I thought Rudiger told me he wanted to stay behind," Juliet said, having broken away from the owls finally. Varian saw her approaching them, her feet making a slight indention in the blanket of snow covering the ground and the small drizzle of flakes finding purchase in her brunette ponytail.
"I think he changed his mind," Varian said. Rudiger followed this up with his own comment and Juliet laughed. Varian raised an eyebrow at the exchange.
"What did he say that was so funny?" he asked. Juliet let out last chuckle and crossed her arms across her chest from the cold.
"Something along the lines of 'obviously'," Juliet answered. To this Varian did laugh lightly, the movement in his chest causing a slight rumbling that did not please Rudiger all that much. Rudiger tittered a few times and jumped towards Juliet, who quickly took him in her own arms.
"Oh, my fairy godmother," Juliet said, hugging Rudiger tightly to her chest, "He's freezing! Oh, goodness, Rudiger, why did you come out here? Your fur won't keep you completely warm, you know that!"
Rudiger looked up at her with a pleading expression and said something to her, but Juliet dismissed what he said with a 'tsk!' and a stern expression.
"No excuses, mister," Juliet said. Her eyes shot towards her human companion. "We need to take him back."
"Now?"
"Yes, now," she said to him. Varian looked at her, flabbergasted.
"If we go now, we'll lose a whole night," Varian said to her. Juliet rolled her eyes and held up Rudiger, his small black eyes looking into Varian's blue ones directly.
"Look at this face," Juliet said. "Say no to this face. Let this face get sick." Her eyes narrowed. "I dare you."
Varian, who really didn't want Rudiger to get sick at all, sighed and ran a hand over his eyes over-dramatically, more for pretense than anything else.
"Alright, fine, let's go," Varian relented. Juliet smiled and moved past him, Rudiger looking rather sheepish as he made eye contact with Varian.
"Sorry," Varian whispered to the racoon, hoping Juliet couldn't hear. There was no stopping Juliet once she got started, and now she had decided that Rudiger needed to return to their hideout. It would be best for all three of them if they just let her return the racoon back before it turned into an ordeal.
"Varian!"
"Coming!" he said, following her. They made their way back to the hideout in relative silence, the only sounds being their gentle steps against the loosely packed snow and the rustling of their cloaks.
The silence didn't bother Varian all that much, it wasn't awkward but instead was a comfortable one. Neither one bothered to breach the quiet which allowed Varian's thoughts to return to his own musings.
What was the future? Juliet – unlike him – had technically been innocent of the crimes she was accused of. While he still believed what he did to have some justification, busting out of that jail cell had been her first transgression against society and after the plan was implemented, she would rack up many more of them. Any leniency that had been allocated for her would be gone if they were sent back, as would the small amount that had been lobbied for him against his wishes.
If this plan was going to send her spiraling into the possibility of a punishment far worse than what they had in the dungeons, could he go through with it? Could he let her go through with it?
"Do I even want to go through with this anymore?"
Varian blinked at such a bizarre thought. Where had that come from? Of course, he wanted to go through with it! That's what all this was for! There was no going back now....
Right?
"'Rian!" came Juliet's voice, calling him back from his thoughts. Varian shook his head and looked up at her after a moment. Her head tilted to the side in confusion – Rudiger mimicking it in a way that was not creepy at all, Varian swears, no really, -- at the door of the hideout. Rudiger was still clutched tightly to her chest in a protective, maternal way.
"Varian, did you hear anything I just said?" she asked him with a furrowed brow. Varian fumbled for a moment as he decided on if it would be better to fake pretending what she said or outright telling her he literally had no clue what she told him. It turned out he didn't need an answer, because she took his silence as an answer. She sighed once and opened the wooden door, letting Rudiger in before once again shutting it with a gentle thud and turning again to face him.
"Give me your cloak," she said to him, holding out her hands.
"What?" he asked.
"Dang, you are really confused tonight," Juliet said, "I need your cloak, so I can take them back." Varian blushed once in embarrassment – of what, he wasn't sure – before quickly shaking his head at her.
"No, I'll take them back," he insisted, holding out his own hand. She crossed her arms and leaned forward, her lips downturned into a bored frown.
"'Rian, I think we both know I'm the one that needs to take them back," she said matter-of-factly. He rolled his eyes, a nice smile being his confrontation to her frown.
"And why, pray tell, are you the one that needs to return them?" he asked.
"You got them, so you've already been seen. I need to go return them, so that way people won't detect a pattern," she said. When she said it like that he made prefect sense and it made him a little upset with himself he had to have it explained.
"Oh, well, when you say it like that, "Varian said, scrapping a foot across the ground. Juliet gave a laugh which made him blush in embarrassment. He looked away from her to hide it because the thought of her seeing him flustered only embarrassed him even more. Why was he blushing so much tonight?
"Okay, so just hand it over," she said. The brunette held out her hand again expectantly. Varian looked down at the cloak and moved to take it off before an idea popped into his head. He smiled with mischief in his eyes and looked up from under his eyelids.
"What this?" he said, motioning downward to his cloak. She raised an eyebrow at him, unsure.
"Yes, the cloak, Varian," she said sternly. He smirked at her and held his hands open at his sides, inclining his body down slightly in a bow.
"Well, come get it then," he said. Varian then aligned his body straight back and Juliet's eyes widened at his implication. He then took off towards the tree line, his boots kicking up the snow around him. He heard a groan behind him and then the sound of rustled snow as Juliet took after him.
"Varian!"
He weaved his way through the nearby trees; he remained near enough that remaining light from the village let him see. The sounds of Juliet hurrying after were getting closer and closer by the second and the combination of his rushed pace and her encroachment making his heart flutter faster and forcing his adrenaline to pump in considerable amounts. All around, he felt alive and well at the moment.
"Not so fast!" she exclaimed, latching onto his elbow and pulling him back towards her. This pulled him backwards except his left foot, which got caught on a nearby tree root. This pulled him down to the ground and took her with him and they fell back into the snow.
"Ah!" they scram in fusion as they hit the white ground beneath them. He tried to shake out his foot from the tree root, but it mostly resulted in him banging his appendage against it. Once he finally managed to slip his foot free he looked over to see a glowering, snow-covered Juliet.
"You!" was all she said. She reached blindly for a fistful of snow; her gaze never leaving Varian as she fixated him with a steely glare. Varian eyes widened as she thrust the loose and disorderly bundle of snow towards him, which hit him squarely in the middle of his leg. He laughed at the lack of pain the feared snowball had inflicted and fell back into the snow. Snow nestled into his hairdo and most likely the eyes of his goggles, but he really didn't care all that much.
He heard the rustling of snow and looked to the side to see Juliet crawling towards him, very red-faced and very upset. She tried to push him away – even though she had come closer to him – but her hand was slick from the snow, and just simply slipped off him. This caused her to lose her upper body balance and she fell into the snow next to him with a 'hmpf!'
"Oh, I hate you, Varian!" Juliet said. Varian just laughed at that, knowing that she really didn't mean it. "Why are you laughing? You – you – you –"
A nearby bird chirped something and she pointed to the general direction the bird had tweeted from. "That. Varian, you are a nicer version of that."
He cocked his head to the side in confusion. "You realize I have no idea what they just said, right?"
"Oh, you probably don't want to know," Juliet said. Varian raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything else to her on the subject. Juliet shook her head and shivered once as she leaned up. Varian quickly followed her motion and leaned forward, casting his hands back behind him to distribute his weight a bit more evenly. Something crossed Juliet's face as another beat of silence enveloped them, her gaze lingering on him for so long a moment that it became a bit awkward for him.
"What'cha thinking about?" Varian asked. Juliet snapped out of whatever daze she had been drawn into with a series of frenzied blinks. She then sighed and looked away from him.
"I was thinking how nice it would have been if we had met without this huge target on our backs," Juliet said. "We could go outside, just hang out, do all the things fifteen years old are supposed to do. Not planning what amounts to treason. You know?"
Truthfully, Varian hadn't thought a lot about what that would have been like. He had come to accept a long time ago that being a normal fifteen-year-old kid was not in the cards for him. He chose not to dwell too much on wonders about what it would have been like to meet Juliet back before all this began, or even in a world where none of this happened.
"Not really," he admitted honestly. "Our lives are really different than most people our age. I don't like to dwell so much about the lives we could have had."
Juliet chuckled softly in her throat and pulled her legs closer to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. "I think about it a lot. I just wish – I don't know, that we could be normal. The only good thing out of all this was the fact I got to meet you, everything else has just been paranoia and running." She looked over at him, a smile on her lips. "Running around, joking, everything we just did, I wish it could be like that all the time." She scoffed at herself once. "Once, I actually had a dream about a life like that. We were best friends, your dad was free, and Rapunzel never turned her back on us."
"Sounds like a great dream," Varian said, mostly to himself.
"It was," she said. "Just about the only weird thing was that Rapunzel was my sister, so that was a bit strange."
"Oh God," Varian said, starting to laugh again. Juliet rolled her eyes and slapped his shoulder gently.
"Don't make fun of my dream," she warned, her tone harsh but eyes teasing. "In the dream, me and Rapunzel were close, like back when she first found me, and I felt something you know? That got me thinking about all this, about what were we doing, made me ...... second guess? I don't know." Juliet shook her head and averted his gaze.
He furrowed his brow and put a hand on her shoulder. "Are you wanting to call off the plan?"
"Of course not!" she immedailty reacted, before retracting back. "Yes? Maybe? I don't know." She growled and threw her hands up. "Why is this so complicated?" She turned to him, her gaze sharp. "All I know is that I'm starting to think I reacted too quickly."
Varian blinked as he processed all the information Juliet had laid bare. So, he wasn't the only one having second thoughts after all. Like her, he wasn't completely sure he wanted to call this whole revenge plan off, but somewhere in the back of his mind he had decided that maybe it was okay if he wanted to back out. Just free his dad and get out of Corona as fast as possible after. Maybe.... Juliet and he could do that after all.
"Jules," he whispered, wrapping his arm around her in a comforting hug. She smiled at him and inched forward. Varian suddenly became very hyper aware of how close the two really were when he felt her breath on his nose, and all emotion wiped from his face at this realization. Juliet – who apparently hadn't noticed how close they were yet – furrowed her brow at him.
"'Rian, what's wrong?" she asked.
"I – uh, um..." He scrambled for something to say. It's not that he didn't enjoy having Juliet this close to him – because he was finding with every passing moment that he did enjoy it --, but he didn't want to insult her by saying something like her needing to move away. If she wanted to move away, well that was her right and he couldn't stop her, but he didn't want to push her away.
He began to search for anywhere to look besides her inquisitive eyes, and found his eyes drawn toward her pink lips. And then, all at once, all he could think fixate on was her lips and how small and amazing and perfect they were. He felt the all-consuming need to lean down and...
As if sensing his change in mood, her expression shifted from worry to something indiscernible to him.
"'Rian..." she whispered softly.
"I really want to kiss you," he breathed, leaning his forehead against hers. Her eyes slid shut at the contact and slithered her hand up to rest on his neck.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" she said. "Kiss me."
And there went the only thing holding him back. He leaned down and captured her lips in a kiss, hand resting on her cheek. It wasn't a fancy or all that spectacular kiss if one were to consider in context of all kisses between humans, but to Varian it was the best kiss to ever transpired. He really didn't have all that much experience in this area since this was his first kiss ever, although he had serious doubts any kiss he ever had would be as good.
It made his head feel like it was spinning around and set off butterflies in his stomach so that they changed into fireworks in his chest. Juliet's lips were soft and warm, and he never wanted to pull away from them. The feeling of her pulled against him and his lips moving in union with hers almost made everything that had happened – being on the run, being in prison, all of it, -- worth it.
It wasn't that long of a kiss, and they broke apart quickly for air. For a moment they just stared at each other in an awed silence, their foreheads still touching. Eventually Juliet blinked, and the moment became awkward, and she quickly stood up and held out her hand to him. Varian looked at her in confusion.
"The cloak," she eventually said, her voice notably devoid of any detectable emotion. "I need to take it back."
"Oh, right." Varian quickly slipped the cloak off and Juliet took it silently. She slipped it over her arm and turned to leave, before stopping just before the tree line. She then spun around as quickly as the snow would allow and stared at him with wide eyes.
"I, uh, really liked the kiss," she said. Varian moved to stand, to react, to do something, but then she was gone into the village. He reached out a hand, as if that would bring her back, before returning it to his side. He smiled softly to himself and gazed at the direction she had went in.
"Me too," he said aloud, even though she couldn't hear him. He shook his head and turned to weave his way back towards the hideout, his thoughts clearer then they had been all night.
"I thought this was all I could be
A giant dollop of broken dreams and promises,
But now I see, I can be more that I dreamt I'd be
Thanks to her, I see that all along
I never actually knew myself at all,
She makes me proud to be me,
And I know no matter what I do
I will make sure she is safe,
She is safe...."
"There he is!" called a voice the second he exited the tree line. Varian snapped up to see a guard at the entrance of the hideout, another one directly next to him and holding Rudiger roughly in his arms. "Get him!" He felt a pair of strong arms grasp him from behind and he struggled to break free of it, but he was only a fifteen-year-old and there wasn't much he could do to hold off a fully frown man.
"Let me go!" he demanded, but as expected (seriously, why he even said it, was the real question he asked himself) no one let go of him.
"Whoa, easy there, kid," said the arms holding him, and Varian stopped struggling. That voice. It couldn't be. There was no way it was him that managed to capture him. Varian swiveled around his neck to look up at the man holding him, and sure enough it was Eugene of all people, decked out in full winter gear.
"There we go," Eugene said, still not letting go of Varian. "Do you have any idea how hard it was to track you down? The least you could do is not resist arrest, please."
Varian would be lying to himself if he wasn't at least a little glad he made them scramble to find him.
The guard not holding Rudiger held out a pair of chain handcuffs, but Eugene dismissed that with a shake of his head.
"That won't be necessary," Eugene insisted, before coming around to face Varian, still keeping a firm grip on the boy's shoulders as a means to keep him there. "Varian, please, I know you're angry with us right now –"
"Really, what tipped you off to that tidbit of information?" Varian snarked.
"– but I need your help, right here, right now," Eugene continued, as if never having been cut off. "If you help us, we can convince the King to let you go free. I need you to tell me where Juliet is."
Varian balked at that and looked at Eugene as if he asked him to murder Rudiger, which honestly was what it felt like. How had only five minutes ago he'd been laughing with Juliet and having his first kiss with her, and now he was facing turning her in for his freedom? Varian felt his mind clear for the second time that night and felt something with in him finally click.
Before, he had never understood why Rapunzel hadn't gone to help him. But almost all at once he saw it with stunning clarity. He was now being forced between keeping Juliet – his Juliet – safe and out of the grasp of guards or striking against Rapunzel and her friends. While he still was angry with them, he suddenly understood the impossible choice Rapunzel faced that day in the palace hallway. Two wants and needs tearing at you, knowing in your heart which was the best and having to do it.
Rapunzel's choice had been her kingdom or her friend, and Rapunzel had with justification chosen her kingdom. Now this was Varian's: making sure Juliet got the freedom she deserved or getting revenge on the people that had put them in that dungeon. His wasn't as important as Rapunzel's, but this was his. This was one of his crossroads. At all previous ones, he had chosen wrong. Messing with the rocks, going after Rapunzel in a blizzard when he should have been with Quirin, lashing out at the royal family, every one of the decisions had been wrong. And every single one of them had gotten him to this exact point, lead to his life as it was now.
Maybe finally, he could break that streak.
"Juliet?" he asked, feigning disgust with a sneer. "You mean that annoying girl that was thrown in the cell with me? I'm glad when I busted out that I finally got to get rid of her nasally voice."
Eugene frowned at him. "We've talked to the guards on shift while you two were in custody. They said you two were always whispering, that you two were really close. I know you know where she is."
Varian saw over his shoulder a whisper of brunette hair at the corner of the street and for a second met the terrified eyes of Juliet. He could see it all now, her running forward and loudly revealing herself. He subtly shook his head, his gaze directed at her, before meeting Eugene's eyes again.
"Can't help you," Varian said. "Last I saw her, she was saying something about running back home. You know with her dad, Azul the Swan or something like that?"
Juliet must have heard what he said – and gotten the idea that it was supposed to buy her time to escape – because she turned on her heel and back around the corner she had come. Varian smiled inwardly at seeing her leave. He felt Eugene's disappointment in him at what Varian said, but he didn't care.
This time, Varian had finally chosen correctly. Maybe this choice was one he could learn to live with. Maybe this choice would give Juliet the freedom he wanted – no, needed – her to have. And maybe, just maybe, this choice would have been one that made his father proud.