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Varian is a man of science.
He’s familiar with the protocols of it, the formalities as well as the process. He’s formulated enough hypotheses, answered millions of questions with at least twice as many solutions, in all kinds of scenarios. And he’s by far no stranger to unexpected outcomes, either. Sometimes his calculations are wrong, sometimes it takes some trial and error, sometimes he just makes mistakes.
And sometimes, it’s all of the above.
The idea was straightforward enough. Get on the ship, and neutralise the Quirineon. Simple, right? In theory that is, but theory and practice hardly ever align perfectly, Varian is well aware of that. There wasn’t really a way around a fight; that much can be filed under expected difficulties, and to be fair, they didn’t do so bad.
Clinging to the rail of a ship that’s hanging in the air in a vertical position, supported by a single balloon that’s not going to hold it up much longer… may not quite have been within his calculations.
Varian’s heart is racing, but even so it can’t seem to keep up with his mind. The ship is going to crash and people will be getting hurt and everything he’s trying to do here will have been for nothing. The Saporians will have succeeded in the destruction of Corona he assisted them with, and even if he makes it out the crash alive, he can be sure no one is going to forgive him for that. He didn’t want anyone to get hurt, but he was stupid enough to fall for Andrew’s lies, and-
No, he forces these thoughts from his mind, it’s not over yet, but it will be if he allows this to keep going on. There has to be a way to solve this. They just need to keep the ship in the air until it gets away from the island, that shouldn’t be an impossible job for an alchemist and engineer like himself. The single burner won’t generate enough heat to do that, but maybe there’s something else they can use, anything-
His eyes land on the barrels, and his mind comes to a halt for a second.
The realisation doesn’t hit him with relief and enthusiasm like it should, but deep, cold terror. His heart sinks, slowing down but beating with such an intensity he can feel it in his throat now; it hurts, and makes it difficult to breathe for a moment. Part of him urges him no, this is a terrible idea, there has to be some other way, but his mind refuses to budge. He has firsthand experience with how much heat the Quirineon can generate, more than anything else on this ship. It’s the most likely option to lead to success.
He also has firsthand experience with what happens if Quirineon is heated. On a far smaller scale, where the consequences (say, get slammed into a wall) stay within a range he’s well familiar with.
He glances down for just a moment, to the houses that seem to be far too rapidly growing bigger underneath the ship. His hesitation implies that he has the luxury of a choice. “I- I have an idea.“ Even through the wind and blood rushing in his ears, he hears his voice tremble at those words.
(Those words, those familiar words that are like muscle memory of his tongue. Such a simple, and yet such a big part of everything he ever believed himself to be, of everything he did. A protocol of his whole life, if you will.
I have an idea, said with childish joy and optimism as seven-year-old Varian scribbled down notes for an invention he never successfully completed.
I have an idea, said with motivation and confidence while he gathered his beakers, preparing the setup for testing a new, better formula.
I have an idea, said with stubborn frustration before he turned away from the black rocks, fully intending to return with a different chemical that might finally be the one he was searching for.
I have an idea, said with anger and despair in front of a broken drill and the withered leaves of a flower that no longer holds the power of the sundrop, in a shade all too reminiscent of amber.
I have an idea, said with reluctant hope at the weight of Clementine’s wand in his hands, because for all his insistence that he’s a scientist and not a wizard he has made use of potions before, and maybe this will be the way to fix everything he’s done.
I have an idea, said with hollow certainty, with dread and regret and and silent determination, on a Saporian airship that’s about to crash into the kingdom he doomed with his actions once again.)
Rapunzel nods. If she noticed his tone, she doesn’t say anything (because she trusts you, a voice inside his head tells him, despite everything, she trusts you, and the thought of it doesn’t hurt anywhere near as much as it should). “What do we do?“
We, she says, all so naturally and without a second thought. Like they’re in this together- no, that’s wrong because they are in this together, regardless of how it came to happen. She says it like they’re equals. Like they’re friends. Like she’s already looked past everything that happened, everything they did to each other, and Varian doesn’t hold a fine chunk of responsibility for the situation they’re in. Like she had a choice in the matter, and isn’t just forced to trust him because he’s the only one who can fix this mess. (That’s right, he thinks, he’s the only one who can fix this. There is no we, no matter how desperately he’d wish for it.)
It shouldn’t feel this good. Not when he’s about to throw all of that away, to be the one to betray their friendship this time. (A cynical part of himself tells him that they’re even now, at least one good outcome of the situation, but the bitterness doesn’t give him the satisfaction it probably would have a year ago. If anything, it makes it hurt worse.) Not when they’re just pretending everything is alright between them because they have to. Varian hates lies, and it shouldn’t feel this good to choose to believe in this one.
And yet, he finds himself smiling as he reaches into his pocket, for the smooth shape of one of the bombs he didn’t get to use. A few more seconds and the illusion will crumble, but maybe he can allow himself to embrace it first.
There are so many things he’d like to tell her. He has played this scenario to himself over and over during his time in prison (he didn’t get the details quite right, looking back, but how would he have predicted a situation like this) and it has always looked a little differently, mostly depending on the mood he was in. He’d imagine himself yelling at her, telling her how much he hated her, how angry he was, that she destroyed the lives of the people of Old Corona, his father, all on top of Varian’s, that she betrayed him and he didn’t understand, why did she never come back? Did she never even care about him in the first place, was their friendship just a convenient lie even before the blizzard? Was Varian in the wrong for believing in her from the start, was everything his fault after all?
But she wasn’t here, he never got to say anything of it to her face, and it only made it worse. It felt like his insides were spilling over with so many emotions and no outlet, the words stuck in his throat suffocating him. Best he could do was scream it into the emptiness of his cell until his voice went hoarse and his throat burned, but with no one here to listen to him but Andrew, it didn’t bring him any sort of relief.
And now that he finally has the chance to say it to her, to soothe the burning pain that’s been destroying him from the inside out for more than a year, he… doesn’t. There’s no time for a great speech, and maybe he doesn’t want things to end on such a note. He has imagined this moment in so many ways, but as it turns out, he got neither the situation right, nor what he’ll tell her. No, despite everything, he never thought this would be the thing he wants her to know the most right now, but as the words leave his lips, he knows he truly means them. “I’m sorry.“
“Varian, wha-“ She is cut off by an ear-piercing bang and a flash of white as the bottle shatters in front of her.
Varian squeezes his eyes shut, both to protect them from the fumes, and so he doesn’t have to see the look in her face. (If he had time, he’d probably regret it. It’s the last thing he’ll ever see of his princess- his friend?- and he’s running away from it because he can’t handle the consequences of his own actions. What’s new on that matter, really?
But he doesn’t have time, and that’s why he simply counts the seconds until he opens his eyes again. He’s alone on the ship.)
For a split second, Varian has to fight the urge to look down, to check up on her or make sure she doesn’t try to get back or for no particular reason at all, but he shuts it down. The bomb was mostly meant to startle her; fine, it had some light sedatives, hopefully enough to disorient her until he gets the ship out of her reach, but not enough to risk her actually passing out and get hurt from the fall. (Hey, he’s working with what he has on him, it’s not like he planned for something like this to happen, okay?)
The irony of the situation hits him with full force, and he’d probably laugh if it wasn’t so painful. So not only did he turn his back on any trace of friendship that might or might not have sparked between them again in that cell, he endangered her again, too. Traitors to Saporia pay with their lives, Andrew’s voice echoes in his head, and makes his insides curl. Sure, add that to the pile of things he’s done to deserve death if you must, what’s one more. Such a fitting end for someone like him, isn’t it?
He dwells on the thought for barely a second, before he remembers that this is too long already. He needs to get this ship higher up in the air, and his resources for achieving this are limited enough without him wasting time. He gathers his bubble bombs (and his hands are shaking so badly he almost drops them) and throws them at the barrels; he he hits two of them (which has to be enough, please, this has to work) before he aims the last one at his own feet.
He should have probably practiced this, because even just keeping his balance is difficult, without the additional task of moving himself and the two barrels in the right direction. It takes more coordination than he has, but after a few attempts, he manages to hold the bubbles in a suitable place for a moment and sprinkles the neutraliser on it. The barrels drop down, one of it almost falls off the edge before he gets a grip at it and pulls it back. He throws off the lids, bright green shines back at him, and reaches up for the burner. Any sense of accomplishment he’d usually experience in such a situation (or, well, the daily life equivalent of the mess he’s in right now) remains absent, but he made it.
The easy part, that is.
At least it’s working, the ship slowly rises higher again as the Quirineon heats up, and it doesn’t take long until Varian feels like it’s going to melt his skin off, so much that for a moment he almost misses his mask. He pulls his goggles over his eyes without thinking, because it’s not going to make a difference in a few minutes, but the motion is routine, close to an instinct by now. Perhaps that’s what he wants, a tiny fraction of normality, a play-pretend game that this is a regular experiment, like all the thousands before. Something to make him forget about what’s coming next.
It’s an awful plan, if he thinks about it, because there are so many variables that might backfire. Maybe Rapunzel will make it back on the ship somehow, or worse, Andrew or one of the others. Maybe his calculations are wrong (which is why he’s in this situation in the first place, after all) and the Quirineon will explode before it gets the ship up high enough.
Maybe he doesn’t want to die.
His brain registers the thought, but can’t seem to process it right. He’s going to die. This is it, the end, there’s nothing more to it. That small spark of hope that started to flicker in his chest was misled, because the future can’t be better if there is no future at all.
But what else is there for him, anyway? Somehow the list of his crimes is only growing longer. Rapunzel trusted him because she needed to, who’s to say her opinion won’t change once the immediate threat is gone? (He doesn’t want to think like this, it feels like it’s ripping out his heart by itself, but there’s a small part of him telling him he isn’t being rational, that if he disregarded his desperate wish to start over, the cold hard facts left behind are that she has no reason to defend him, and that he’d probably get executed at this rate.)
It’s not like he never thought about dying, either. It hardly filled him with any less dread than it does now, but he has maneuvered himself into a pretty hopeless situation in the past two years, hasn’t he? And since the ’Erase the memory of everyone in Corona and start over’-ship has sailed (haha, how very funny of his brain, really original joke), this is… the only thing he has left to do to fix his mess.
No, he thinks, and the realisation weighs heavy on his chest, this is for the best. Not only for the kingdom, but also himself.
(He wants to believe it so badly.)
Ironically enough, he never thought he’d die in an explosion. Most of his village did, which Varian knows despite never being told, and his father did, which Varian knows because he’s been told on multiple occasions. But Varian himself? The occupational hazard aside, he knows better than to get himself killed by his own creations. He’s good enough at his craft for that.
(Good enough as long as there are other people paying the price, a voice inside his head hisses, malicious and sneering and far too familiar, as long as they clean up your mess, or get encased in amber in your place-)
If the thought of his own death isn’t enough to shatter the fragile wall of defense Varian has built in his heart, his dad’s sure is. For a moment, his legs feel like they’re about to give in, and there’s a part of Varian that wants to let them, almost as if he could escape it that way. He doesn’t, because he’s better than that and his dad would be disappointed if he knew and it’s not going to help, there’s nothing he can-
His heart squeezes, his breath hitches in his throat. So many years he has spent trying to prove to his dad that he isn’t the child that he still seems to see him as anymore, and now? All he wants to do is hide under a blanket that’s not going to protect him from the monsters outside, but give him the comfort of illusion anyway. (Not that the monster would be on that side of the blanket, haha.) Varian is a man of science, illusions and lies are the last things he’s supposed to seek out in times of trouble, but right now he just wants his dad. He wishes he was here, wishes he’d hug him and tell him he loves him and he’s proud of him and everything will be alright, (even if none of it is true.)
But his dad isn’t here, and all Varian can do is think back to a destroyed house that hasn’t been a home in more than a year, an amber mountain splitting what used to be his favourite place in the world. (It still is, in a sense, because neither the castle nor prison are real competitors here.) And in the middle of it his dad, frozen in a position that’s been etched in Varian’s mind to the point of no healing. In his hand, a note he’ll never get to read.
He blinks away tears, tries to swallow the lump in his throat, but it only thickens. Since the amber- no, actually, since the black rocks got out of control, Varian has done so many things he regrets, but if he’d have to pick the worst of it all, everything concerning his dad clearly takes the crown. It’s not even just about the amber. It’s that he didn’t listen and, maybe for the first time, understands that it was wrong, and he will never get the chance to apologise for it. It’s that the last conversation they ever had was a fight, and how his dad was right because the research on the black rocks did prove to be dangerous, but he was the one who had to carry the consequences, not Varian. It’s that he’s leaving him behind, bound to be forgotten and eternally encased in amber.
It’s that he didn’t even get to say goodbye.
A sob gets stuck in his throat and he bends over, squeezing his eyes shut. He hasn’t been with his dad since his arrest, and before that, he… he didn’t talk to him, but he had no chance of knowing better back then, this hadn’t been what was supposed to happen, he was-
(Perhaps his mind is clouded, his memory too blurry, but looking back, he has no idea what he thought would happen. What his plan was. He was so caught in his rage he neglected the reason he was doing all of this in the first place, he didn’t even say anything to his dad one last time, even if he probably couldn’t hear him anyway. Add that to the list of things he wishes he’d done differently, if the attack wasn’t on it for other reasons already.)
Varian straightens up again, slowly, carefully. His body moves on its own, he almost feels like a machine, and catches himself wishing it was true for a few seconds too long. There’s a throbbing pain pounding in his head and eyes, his throat burns so much even just breathing hurts, and yet none of it compares to the things clawing at his heart.
On top of it all, he’s scared. For a moment, he even wishes Rapunzel back on the ship, just to have someone by his side, but that’s impossible, unfair, unreasonable, and he probably doesn’t deserve any better. He was his dad’s only hope, and now he’s leaving him. He promised he’d break the amber no matter what it’d take, and if his dad is- was- still alive, he’d know that Varian lied to him.
And even so, his dad is the only one he has, too. Besides Ruddiger, but that thought only goes along with the realization that he has no idea where his raccoon friend even is right now. Last time Varian saw him, he was napping on his bed, but he’s probably awake by now. (Varian wonders if he’s looking for him.)
No, taking the way he’s treating his loved ones right now, he really doesn’t deserve to have any of them by his side. After everything he’s done, he should have probably come to terms with that months ago, anyway.
He wishes it’d stop him from yearning.
But here he is, all alone on a ship high up in the air, just him and the Quirineon. Hah.
It’s not what he had in mind when he named it (well, for the record, the same applies to its effects and usage), but maybe he can try to find some comfort in the thought. That he’s with his dad in some way in his final moments. That he didn’t just leave to never return again, that he… didn’t forget him.
Varian is a man of science, he’s rational and logical and solution-oriented (or that’s what he always wanted to think of himself. Looking back at his life now, doubt is starting to grow in his chest) and yet, for a moment, all he wants to do is curl up next to the barrels, wrap his arms around them and pretend that the deadly heat is his dad.
He doesn’t, instead just stares at the Quirineon until the bright green burns itself through the blueish tint of his goggles, deep into Varian’s mind and eyes. They’re burning, whether from the heat or not blinking for too long or choked back tears he doesn’t know, but for once, it doesn’t seem all that important in light of the situation. As much, as desperately as he wants to push the thought away, he can’t help but feel like his dad wouldn’t be happy with him right now. That thought isn’t unfamiliar to him, he’s seen it reflect in his dad’s face whenever one of his experiments went wrong.
What’s new is that Varian believes he’d be right.
There is no fooling himself, he realises, not anymore. It hurts. He has made so many mistakes, he has done such terrible things both on accident and not, and he’ll never get to make it right. Perhaps that’s his punishment for not giving Corona a chance, for accepting that there’s no way they will forgive him; now all he can do is clean up this mess, and in return he’ll never get to ask for the chance he denied them. So much of what he believed has turned out to be wrong (great going for an alchemist, what a fitting end for his career), this is where it led him, and he can’t do anything but accept it. And the worst part is, he’s starting to think it’s for the best.
He’s just so tired. Tired of running away, figuratively and literally. Tired of being angry. Tired of trying to make up for something when there’s still a part of him that tells him he’s in the right. (The look on Rapunzel’s face when he entered the throne room comes back to his mind, a blend of shock and anger and something else he doesn’t want to pin down- hurt? Fear? Hatred? Neither seems quite right, but he’d like it all to be true- and it felt so good to be looked at that way by her. It was like he finally achieved everything he had wanted after her hair had failed to break the amber; to hurt her like she hurt him, take something from her that’ll make her understand what she did to him. He doesn’t feel that way anymore, or at least he thinks so. Perhaps the greatest part of him wishes everything could be undone, and they could just be friends again.)
No, maybe that’s the wrong way to put it. Varian has done so many things he regrets, things he wishes he could take back, but forgiving the people who turned their back on him when he needed them the most isn’t the core of the issue. The part that hurts the most, the part he’s so tired of and just wants to end, is being alone.
The thought doesn’t sting anymore, doesn’t feel like burning iron driven straight into his heart like it used to, but barely radiates a dull ache that tastes bitter more than anything. Perhaps it’s because he knows it’ll be over soon enough. Perhaps his mind is finally catching up with the situation, and the world around him slows down for the first time ever since he can remember.
It’s not calm, it’s not peaceful (then again, when has his life been the last time?), but it’s comforting. Everything is coming to a halt, and he gets to rest, no matter how superficial it may be. His shoulders drop, he closes his eyes for a second. They unfocus when he opens them again, he lets it happen. Breathes in. For some reason, the air smells so much clearer now.
A jar shakes the ship, and the Quirineon ignites.