Author's note: I seem to have an obsession with crossovers these days. Tangled is a delightful, humorous musical about an overprotective guardian over an innocent and naive girl who escapes and is manipulated by the first man she encounters. The same can be said for Repo, and the rest of the parallels followed naturally! Both of these movies are just SUPER DUPER AWESOME. Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys. Thank you for taking the time to read, feel free to rate, leave constructive criticism, etc etc.
The rating may change.
"Physically, there seems to be nothing wrong with her," the doctor began, removing his gloves with practiced ease. Antibacterial foam creased between his fingers and he rubbed vigorously. The mother didn't wait for him to continue; she perked up at the start of the prognosis.
"Really! That's wonderful. Thank you so much, it is just awful to be stuck with a sick child." She pursed her lips in a syrupy smirk, seeming to show no concern for the child in question, on the other side of the door.
Nathan rubbed his forehead and tried to understand through the mother's eyes. "Your daughter had a seizure. Have you any concern for that?"
"Why, of course! - I would be, if there were anything to be concerned about." She tossed her crown of hair and laughed. "Flower was overexcited. I'd say that's nothing to fret over."
The doctor could only stare, incredulous and aghast. "Nothing to-?" He stopped himself.
"The scans did turn out fine, didn't they?" she checked.
"Yes, yes. Fainting spells happen to children, especially those who live in towers."
Showing her satisfaction with a ruby-lipped smile, the mother securely fastened her shawl and made to go back into the room where a little girl sat on the examination table, grinning ear to ear and kicking her feet. Nathan put a hand on her shoulder; the other hand offered a square of paper. "Here's my card, with my work number. Call me if anything should happen."
She took the card and examined it, put it in her purse. "My, that's an original one. You big lug, I know I'm the one you want in a paper gown with my backside bared!" She chuckled and added, "Oh, I'm only teasing. Thank you again."
The door closing behind her effectively dismissed him more than a proper goodbye would have.
Dr. Wallace managed to remove the woman from his thoughts and proceeded through the rest of the week without incident. Friday, not two minutes after arriving home from work, he received an urgent call on his personal communicator.
"Doctor? Hello, it's Eleanor Gothel—,"
"Where did you get this number?" he cut her off. "Do you have any idea what a serious breach of—"
"Protocols, boundaries, why yes," she said, sounding breathless. "And more will be breached before the night is dead. No doubt you remember Flower, Doctor, and this is an urgent matter. Please, will you come?"
He thought it over, torn between his duties at home, to manage his own affairs, as he had a right to, and his moral obligation as an honest doctor. Besides, he had to admit that curiosity played a role. He could scrub up later. Having made his decision, his long pause was prompted into change by her exasperated sigh, and she said "Well?"
"I'll be right over."
It would be a simple matter to go quickly through his files and find her address. He went to his computer and did so, surprised to see that she owned her house outright. She owned everything, no debts, and her credit was perfect. Astounding. But he would have to investigate later, and it surprised him that he wanted to. This family had piqued his interest. Professional interest, naturally. He left his home as quietly as he'd arrived, and the drive wasn't terrible. It was late, after all, and traffic had expired.
The Gothel home was vertical, a penthouse of sorts, privately owned and on the outskirts of the city, close to one of the original graveyards. Bemused at the thistles that grew equally with the wildflowers, Nathan kicked aside a bramble that had fallen across his path to the door. He rang. Using the speaker beside the door, Gothel sang out "It's open!" and he found it was. The entry was bare: stone floors, an elevator against the far wall. He went in and took it to the fifth floor. The doors, oddly enough, were not clear, but reflective metal, allowing him no sight of the levels between. What he was delivered into was a mildly anachronistic world, sparkling clean, the wood floors reflective, the clutter somehow organized. He wondered if they had a maid—but the first floor had been dusty, and the yard was overgrown.
Gothel came from a closed room, heart to her chest. She was in a dressing gown, tied tightly under her bust.
"It was so good of you to come," she said, and extended an arm to the open door. "Please, please see to her. I don't know what to do."
Distractedly, Nathan moved by her into the bedroom. The little girl's bedroom, painted lavender, painted many things, with abstract patterns, vines, and self-portraits in all the colors of the rainbow. The lights were on, and on the canopied bed, Flower laid prostrate under the covers, her limbs seized. The position was stiff and awkward, although her expression was one of utmost tranquility. Like dead roadkill. He sat on the bed and examined her. She was either asleep, or a damn good fake.
"I found her like this. Ridiculous, don't you think," Gothel said, having followed him in, and he hoped she was masking her anxiety with a sarcastically bent humor. She put a hand on his shoulder.
"Well, let's try waking her," he said, touching the child's forehead. It was overly warm. "Feverish." Which explained the flush on her cheeks, an unnatural dappling of brightest red on her pink complexion. At his touch, and perhaps at the sound of familiar voices, the girl's body relaxed, and she curled up on her side, hugging at a pillow.
"No, no, let her be," the mother said hastily. "Will she be all right?"
He looked at her strangely. "Yes, she seems to be in no immediate danger." Gothel, in an unexpectedly tender gesture, reached out and petted the girl's long, gold hair. "Now, why don't we let her rest, and you can tell me the real reason you asked me here."
Her smile was sly. She went out of the room and beckoned to him. He turned off the bedroom light just before closing the door.
Gothel served tea and sandwiches. Nathan, who'd neglected to eat lunch that day and hadn't been home long enough for dinner, was grateful. They sat across from each other in wrought iron chairs, the curious doctor and the smug and satisfied mother with a secret in her smirk. She brought her hands together and leaned forward, about to divulge that secret. As she did, the chasm of open skin left by the neckline of her gown proved interesting: generous cleavage, snow white skin, a hint of a silky camisole.
"My Flower is no ordinary child," she told him. "She's... unique."
"Yes, all children are," he said, smiling.
"Oh-ho, but she is in particular!"
At that moment, a tinny voice said sleepily, "Mama?"
Flower hovered in the doorway, dragging her blanket and her long hair behind her. Long-limbed for her age, still she looked so fragile, as fevered children are wont to. Her white nightgown more than touched the floor and made her blushing face look even redder, even brighter. Gothel smiled warmly and beckoned the girl forward. She was somewhat shy and needed more encouragement from her mother to approach.
"You remember Dr. Wallace," Gothel prompted her.
"Yes, Mama," Flower said shyly.
Nathan tried to be kind. It was, however, quite late, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened. It was difficult not to lose patience. Gothel ushered the girl onto her lap.
"May I show him your gift?" she asked. The girl hesitated. "He won't harm you."
"I don't want to hurt," Flower murmured, both curling closer to Gothel's body and moving away from her hands.
"It will only hurt a moment, and then we'll both feel lovely, won't we." She kissed the girl's hair. "Fetch my sewing kit. There's a good girl."
Grabbing a sandwich from the tray and stuffing it in her mouth, the girl went off to hop up on a counter, reaching into a cupboard. She came back with a basket, and sat back on Gothel's lap. Long, white fingers took out a thread ripper that looked closer to a medical scalpel.
"Wait, what on earth are you doing?" Nathan asked, starting from his seat.
Gothel smiled and told him to sit down. "Trust me. Watch."
Against all his professional instincts, he gave in to his wondering and took a seat, watching as she took the girl's hand. She stabbed it quickly, without a trace of viciousness or venom. Mere efficiency was in the heart of the action. Blood sprang up from the tear, and tears sprang up in the girl's eyes. She hastily buried her face in her mother's arms, the hands stroking her hair. Nathan was well and truly horrified. The woman gave no explanation, and instead began to sing.
"Flower, gleam and glow..."
He thought his eyes were malfunctioning. His glasses could not have been that fogged from the hot tea. Had she drugged him?
The hair, the absurdly long blonde hair that Flower dragged everywhere—it glowed like a nightlight, a bright light! Flower went limp and fell asleep smiling. Gothel wrapped a lengthy lock around both their hands, and he saw that the cut healed, and that Gothel... Gothel appeared refreshed, rejuvenated. She gave a great sigh, smiling as well.
After they'd returned Flower to her bedroom, and Nathan had a glass of water to brew over, he managed to say "How?"
"When she was in the womb, she took the effects of a special flower ingested by her mother. That flower once grew in this graveyard, a long time ago. Now, it is barren," she sadly said. "Oh, there are flowers, to be sure. None special. Ordinary weeds that bloom briefly, wither, die."
"Yes, that's life. Her hair... it healed her hand," he said, amazed.
"That is her gift. She's my dearest. I'd never trade her, not for all the gold in the world," she said, and it occurred to Nathan that such a 'talent' would be very valuable. If it fell into the wrong hands...
Well, he wouldn't say a word.
"I don't understand. But I will keep this confidence. Why did you wish to share this with me?" he asked.
"I want you to study it, of course. Doctor, if you can extract the flower's nature from her hair, think of what good I could do with it!"
"Very well. With a sample of it, I'm sure—,"
"NO! No, you can't cut it!" she said in genuine alarm and fear. "If you cut it, it won't work. You must think I'm out of my mind."
"Would have thought so, before I saw a girl's hair light up like the fourth of July," he said wryly. "Oh, God, what am I thinking? This is ridiculous. You expect me to help you because she's a little lightning bug. That does not excuse that you hurt your child in my presence!"
When she chuckled and smirked in response, his anger unexpectedly flared; one hand shot out and took her arm in a death grip.
"You won't report me," she purred.
In a growl, he pressed "Why is that, you impertinent harpy?"
"You're..." She used her uncaught fingers to pry his vise grip from her skin. The marks were red, and then they faded. "Intrigued. A man of science who finds beauty in her blood. You'll do it because you can see the potential, too. To distill a miracle draught, imagine! The death of old age. The death of plagues and decay!"
"There must be another way," he said, made weak by her glorious vision. It was impossible to deny how her ambition sparked his. For Nathan, as well, there was the possibility of remedying past mistakes. His sins might never be forgiven, but if he changed the world, he could feel decent again.
"No. It is activated by her pain. At least, that's been what I've found to be true." Her crimson talons stroked his hand. He removed it with a disgusted scowl. "Ignore your conscience. You'll find no use for it with me. Besides, you're fond of pain, aren't you."
"I find no pleasure in the violence inflicted on another person," he lied.
"Of course not, how silly. In moving forward, we must be calculating and careful. She is my treasure, and I won't let any harm come to her. At the hospital, your skill is remarkable. The last true professional, completely removed from the melodrama of families. Blah blah blah, it gets very annoying. I don't know how you put up with it!"
He couldn't help but smirk. She did have a point.
"That's why I chose you," she told him matter-of-factly.
"Chose me? Nonsense!" he bristled, putting on his coat, picking and plucking at the keys in his pocket. They jingled as pleasant bells.
"Give me some credit, Doctor. To put my daughter's health in another's hands, why wouldn't I research the candidates?"
She forced him, continuously, to weigh himself and rejudge his opinions, mainly those regarding her. Nathan was not used to being questioned. It was irritating.
"Stay out of my files," he warned her.
"Don't worry. No pains were taken to unearth your secrets. Now, can I count on you to help me?" He did not answer right after, still warily contemplating this proposal that was certainly in an ethical gray area. "If it's any consolation to your soul, her condition seems to tie in with her seizures."
She'd lied to him. "Seizures. Then it's happened before?"
She nodded grimly. "Flower had one before she fell ill this evening. Yes."
Nothing left to do. "Bring her to my home tomorrow night. I'll send you the address. She should be fine until then; get some water in her, and call me if something goes wrong. You have my card."
"I do. Goodnight."
The night made the exterior of the premises foreboding, as something out of a fairy tale would. It rose up, towered ominously, few windows and a steep roof. The thistles caught at his pant legs when he walked slightly off the path to reach his car. Nathan struggled with the radio; this far in the distance, all he managed to finagle was static and the occasional crackle of a song or commercial. Bright headlights illuminated the empty and lonely road.
In the cemetary behind Gothel's tower, a tall figure skulked and crept. He picked through the grassy plots, checking for a non-decomposed corpse; alas, they had become mulch. Human compost, of no use to him. The teenager brushed his greasy hair off his face, paying no mind to the fresh earth he'd inadvertently painted on his forehead. "This was a shit tip-off," he grumbled, hefting a bag and prepping for his flight. A car, pulling away from the property, briefly flashed its light right at him. The car slammed to a stop in its reverse. The teenager momentarily froze and felt like a rabbit, twitchy and fast. He squinted but could not make out the driver's face past the blinding lights.
He dropped to the ground in the overgrown grass and held his breath.
"Strange. I thought I saw something," Nathan said. He chalked it up to being tired and overworked, and continued to back out, turn around, begin the drive home. The teenager heaved a sigh of relief. That stroke of luck inflamed his ego, and he laughed aloud as he ran back where he'd come from.
Gothel was late. Nathan found himself waiting by the door, impatiently. Here he was, sacrificing his free time for her mysterious little scheme, and she didn't even have the decency to arrive on time. He'd sent her his address and she'd said six o'clock. Sharp. He checked the time. Oh. It was a quarter to six. How silly. The gate rang out. Hastily, he strode out and let the visitors in the gate and into his home. It occurred to him that no one besides himself had crossed that threshold in years.
"Were you waiting by the door?" Flower asked curiously. She tugged on his shirt. "This is a lady's shirt! It has flowers on it."
"Pet, we mustn't be rude," Gothel shushed her, mortified. She even blushed. "Doctor, so good of you to even consider my offer! How can I ever repay you?"
"My 'office,' if you can call it that, is just this way," he said, indicating the open passage. He'd taken care to stow away any items that would not be fit for company. That did nothing to assuage his anxiety at allowing strangers to poke about in his home. Flower skipped ahead, her hair trailing behind her. Gothel, on the other hand, stood and looked at the portrait hanging over the tunnel.
"She's very beautiful, Dr. Wallace. Almost as pretty as me!" she declared, and chortled. "I'm just kidding. Who is she, dear?"
He sighed. "My wife. She... passed."
Gothel sucked on her lips and evidently came to some conclusion. "Death haunts us all. The world finds beauty and crushes it."
It might have been a moment had Flower not peeked her head around the corner. She was close to hopping with excitement. "Mother, there's a big white table with a giant paper towel on it!" Gothel shrugged at Nathan and followed the little girl down the passageway to Nathan Wallace's den.
She climbed up on the table all by herself, and with a smile let Nathan examine her. He asked how she was feeling, asked if she could sing a special song for him. Mommy's song. Wide-eyed, she went ahead and sang a few more lines of the song than he'd heard before. Absolutely no change. There was nary a sparkle in that abundant head of hair. Her mother's smirk smacked of an "I told you so." He ignored this and reached for a needle.
"If you'll be a good girl and sit very calm and quiet, I'll give you some candy," he said with a friendly gesture to the jar of lollipops he'd set up on the counter. A thought occurred to him; he turned to Gothel, questioning. "That is, if she can have sugar." She nodded. "Good."
Flower turned up her arm and flicked it, sending the sleeve flying back. The forearm was exposed. Expertly, he pushed the needle into the vein. A hand squeezed his shoulder as her blood filled the body of the syringe.
"You were very brave," he complimented her, sticking a band-aid over the red dot. Her mother handed her a blue sucker and told her to run along, giving her a playful swat on the butt. Flower picked up an armful of her hair mid-stride. Really, the girl made him think of a galloping pony.
He became transfixed. In the microscope, his eye fixed on the slide smeared with red and magnified until it became unrecognizable as blood. "Extraordinary. Extraordinary," he murmured, fixing the focus. "Eleanor, your daughter has beautiful blood. It reminds me of..." He removed it, and prepared a new slide with a drop of Zydrate. "Maybe it's a relative, whatever that foreign contaminant to her blood happens to be."
Her touch was on his shoulder. She leaned over him, her breasts gently pressing to his back, and asked to look. Swapping the slides, he nudged the base closer to her. She braced her hands on the table and looked down. He was conscious of her body to his back, and her hair on his neck. A haughty woman, and she had reason to be prideful of her appearance and carriage. Nathan was aware of every breath he took, with her peering over his shoulder. At last, she let go of the table, continuing to lean into his back. Her hands caressed his shoulders and neck, then dipped down the collar of his shirt to touch his chest.
"Wait," he said, turning. She was close to his height, but all woman, and sultry as anything he'd ever seen. "What are you doing?"
"Doctor, it's been a long time since I've been with anyone. Indulge my fancy and I'll see you get your just desserts," she vowed. Swaying to the door, she set the lock. "There. Now we won't be disturbed."
Ho hum, nothing to do here, either, but at least she wasn't home. She welcomed a change of pace. For a while, she skipped about the hallway, hooting like an owl and chasing the echoes in the curves. Her mom didn't come back to get her, or call for her, and she slumped on the ground, bored. She started to count her hairs and gave up after seventy-four; she couldn't count any higher and skipped several numbers because she couldn't remember how they went. She thumped her head on the wall and said she was bored, she was bored, she was so bored. At home, she had her paints. Here, there was... a tunnel. Dragging her feet dramatically, Flower plodded back to the door to the nice doctor's office and put her ear on it.
He and her mom were having a singing contest, practicing their scales on 'oh's and 'ah's. Flower had them both beat. She tried the door. No good; locked. "Oh well!" she exclaimed, and went off to explore the rest of the house.
He had stairs, she'd noticed when they came in. Big ones. She'd not realized how big, now that she wasn't holding her mother's hand. She stared up and wondered what was at the top. It twisted and turned like a vine. There was only one way to find out, and she tried it, putting one foot after the other, up and up. Upstairs were a bunch of rooms. She heard sounds coming from one, so she went up to it and knocked politely.
"Dad?" came a voice, hoarser than her own. "Is it time?"
"Time for what?" Flower asked. A long silence followed. Flower tilted her head and tried again, knocking hard. "Hello! Talk to me!"
"Go away." The voice was closer now, and then far, and then close, then far; the kid on the other side of the door was either pacing or an adept ventriloquist. "I can't have people from the outside getting me sick."
"I won't get you sick. I just went to the doctor," she explained. "Do you have toys in there?"
"What are you doing here?"
"I told you. My mother took me to the doctor, and that's here!" Flower patiently repeated. She tried the knob, rattled it. "What is it with this house and locked doors?"
"That's not right. Neither of us have guests. It's in the rules," the kid said.
"I'm a little girl."
"I'm a girl, too. Dad says I'll grow."
"Please let me in," Flower begged. She wouldn't have wanted to so bad if the girl would just let her in. But no!
"I can't," she said sullenly. "I'm... locked in. For my safety." Flower was about to say that didn't make any sense when the girl begged her to please go away. "There's toys in my dad's room, down the hall. Go play."
"But I want to play with you!" Flower whined. She'd not noticed the step on the stairs behind her, but the girl on the other side of the door did; she gasped and retreated, her sounds fading until there was a thumb that Flower recognized as a jump onto a bed.
"Why are you talking to a door?" her mother asked, laughing.
Flower pointed at the doorknob, and looked at Dr. Wallace, standing behind her, looking frightened and ruffled. The top two buttons of his shirt weren't done, and his hair stuck up all over the place. "There's a girl in there!" she informed him earnestly. "I talked to her!"
"The doctor doesn't want to hear about your wild imaginings," her mother said, taking her hand. She shook it off.
"It's real! There's a girl in there!"
Coldly: "Flower, enough."
"No, Mama, let's open the door! You'll see!"
"Flower!" she snarled, and grabbed her by the hand, jerking her toward the stairs.
Flower screamed, not really in pain, and threw herself on the ground, kicking and thrashing. She shrieked that she had too talked to a girl, she had, and the repeated assertions soon devolved into senseless screams. Nathan knelt and tried to calm her; he was smacked in the solar plexus with one of her bare feet for his efforts. Gothel explained that there was no reasoning with children. She picked up the girl and held her tight to keep her from flailing.
"If you don't stop this at once, you will lose daylight privileges for a week," she told her. The girl's sobs became snuffles, and then she was a teary thing, red in the face and limp in her mother's arms. She put her arms around the woman's neck. "And now she's wiping her snotty little nose on my dress. Lovely."
"I'm very sorry. If it's anything I've done..."
"No, no. She's tired. I'll take her home and put her to bed." Eleanor stroked Flower's back in soothing circles, her fingers raking through the hair.
He saw her to the door, and there was – at least, on his part—an awkward pause at the parting. What to say, what to do. He'd never been one to engage in casual activities, and with Gothel's daughter in her arms, it would hardly have been appropriate for him to allude to what they'd been up to. No kiss on the cheek, no offer to buy her dinner. She thanked him, and apologized for her child making a scene.
He'd misjudged her as a mother, thinking her unfeeling. Gothel had a strange sense of humor, but there was care in how she treated the girl. Affectionate touches went easily between them, and when the child was hurt, she went right into her mother's arms for comfort. She obeyed her every word to the letter.
"I'll let you know if I come up with tangible results," he said.
"Do you ever let up on the doctor speak? Oh, I'm just teasing. You know I am. Take care, and goodbye!"
Nathan was sort of dazed in her wake.
She wasn't happy with him. He could tell from the instant he got the door open. A tiny, white creature overwhelmed by the size of her black wig, she huddled on the bed and narrowed her eyes in annoyance.
"Daddy, you said no guests," she said. He went to her, pushed the plastic canopy aside and sat down. "They messed up your hair." She knelt behind him and set about fixing his hair with her fingers.
"Not guests, Shi, patients. One of them is sick, and I was helping her," he said.
"Which one?" she asked. She stopped preening him and set back to admire his handiwork, letting him gaze upon her. Pale and sweet, she'd drawn dark circles around her eyes with black liner. He frowned.
"You know I can't say. Shilo, that's far too much makeup."
"Mag wears more," she said.
"You're not Mag. And she's a grown woman. When you're older, you can wear more." He got a tissue from her nightstand and gave it to her. "Until then..." She wiped it off, which temporarily made it worse. And then she was clean-faced and he hugged her to his side. She nestled closer and let him rub her arm. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for her to fall asleep this way, before she'd even had her dinner. "You took your medicine, didn't you, precious?"
Behind her back, with slow and careful movements so as not to alert her father that something was wrong, she curled the pills in her palm and slid them under her pillow. "Yes, Dad."