It's a tangled up mess, is what it is.

With all the excitement over, Rapunzel had time to sit in the palace gardens, her favorite part of her new home, and think. She couldn't ignore it any more. She had to figure this out.

"Rapunzel?"

She flinched, startled. She had assumed she was alone.

"I'm sorry. Do my dashing good looks still make you nervous, Blondie?"

Usually she would giggle at that. Today, she could only give a smile. "I was just thinking."

"About anything in particular?"

She slid a few inches to her right and smiled at him to ask him to join her.

"Mother. Well, not my mother… I mean…" She hesitated.

"Gothel?"

Rapunzel nodded. Eugene watched her with a steady gaze as she stared into space, her arms pulling her knees up to her chest.

"I just don't get it," she confessed.

"Get what, Blondie?"

She sighed. "There are so many things she did… I mean, there were the bad things she did: she always insulted me, lied to me, of course, never let me out of the tower. But she made me happy, too. She made my favorite food, told me bedtime stories, and—"

She cut herself off abruptly.

"And?" Eugene prompted.

"She said she loved me," Rapunzel whispered, as a tear slid down her cheek. When she had thought of this that day in the tower, all she had felt was angry. But then, it had seemed so simple, so black and white. She lied. About everything.

But that explanation wasn't making sense now, as Rapunzel analyzed the first eighteen years of her life.

"Maybe," Eugene began carefully, his voice steady, but gentle. "She wanted to keep you happy so you wouldn't question it or try to run away. As long as you were happy, you'd stay with her."

This was the expanded version of the simple answer Rapunzel had believed—no question—a week and a half ago.

"But Eugene!" she protested. "She didn't have to do everything she did to make me happy."

Eugene nodded, conceding that point. "You are pretty easy to please, Blondie. Except that you have only the finest taste in men."

Rapunzel gave another smile as she rolled her eyes before going back to her point.

"She always called me flower—I guess I can see why now—but once I asked her what one was. For my sixth birthday, she brought me one: a beautiful wildflower."

"Maybe to keep you from wanting to go out and find one yourself," he reasoned.

"And she told me stories."

"So you wouldn't get bored?"

"And her hugs, Eugene," she continued, ignoring his comments. "They were so close to…to Mother's now. Like she—"

"Didn't want to let go? Couldn't stand to lose you?"

Rapunzel sighed, seeing where Eugene had gotten that from. But she still couldn't believe that M—Gothel had never loved her. "Maybe…maybe she loved me because she needed me?" she ventured.

Eugene tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear.

"But," she whispered, her eyes cast down as his hand rested on her cheek. "She didn't just say she loved me. She said she did very, very much." She sniffled. "And when I would say I loved her more…she'd say she loved me most. Always. She didn't have to do that." She looked into Eugene's eyes with desperation now. He did the only thing he could do: wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest as she began to cry.

"Maybe," he whispered, stroking her hair. "At first, she loved you because she needed you. But loving you isn't a difficult thing to do, Rapunzel. It's harder not to. Trust me, I learned that the hard way." He kissed the top of her head as he chuckled at the memory of the beginning of their journey, when she had simply been an obstacle to be overcome. "So…then she started to love you for other reasons."

She pulled away from him. "But then…then why…"

He expected her to ask why she had locked her up, used her, spoken to her that way, hurt her in any way except the way she mentioned.

"Why did she take you away from me?" she asked in a heartbroken whisper. He sighed, heart aching for her.

"She wanted to keep you all to herself," he reasoned. "Not that I have much room to talk about that…you saw how I reacted to that guy who asked you to dance last week," he added, trying to make her smile. It worked, but only for a small, watery one.

"But, if she really loved me, wouldn't she just have wanted me to be happy? I mean, you—"

"Don't, Rapunzel. Every love is different. You can't compare anyone's love to anyone else's."

He tried not to show his surprise at himself. Where had that come from?

Oh yeah, he remembered. Flynnagen Ryder said that in one of the books. Hmm.

"But it's not just you! Mother and Father…everyone else has been like that. Isn't that just what love is?"

Eugene sighed. He wasn't the best person to be explaining this. He had learned about love from her.

"I think…Rapunzel, I think she did love you—how could anyone not?—but…maybe she loved herself more. Maybe she gave you all the love she could, but…maybe some people just can't love anyone more than themselves."

Rapunzel's tears had stopped, for the most part, but one more found its way down her cheek. "I miss her some."

"She was your entire world for eighteen years," he reasoned.

"I think…I think I still love her anyway," she admitted, looking at him sheepishly.

"Of course you do," he said softly. "It's not something you can stop, I don't think."

"But…part of me hates her too," she said. A week ago, she didn't think she had known what hate was. But seeing Eugene—her Eugene—dead… "For what she did to me...and you. And us."

"I know," Eugene replied, wrapping an arm around her as she laid her head on his shoulder. "I know."

"Eugene?" she whispered.

"Yes, Rapunzel?"

Her voice was still soft, but completely sincere, as she finally said the words they had been dancing around. "I love you more."

He took in a sharp breath and looked down at her, her head lying on his shoulder, her brown hair still shining as it reflected the sunlight, as he prepared to say the words he knew would either break her heart or help fix it. Or both. It was complicated.

"I love you most."