Rapunzel AU: Locked away in a tower for eighteen years by a witch claiming to be her Mother, long-haired Sansa seeks freedom and a chance to regain her crown as Princess of the kingdom. But the tower is high as she has no means to get down, aside from her incredibly long hair, and no guarantee of safety in the outside world she has been warned about. One night, when the witch is out, and a thief who climbs the tower seeking refuge happens upon her, she stuns herself by taking a chance and asking him to help her escape. Assuring him that she will have all charges against him dropped when he returns her to her rightful parents, she embarks on a series of first discoveries with her new bandit friend Jon.
From Tower to Tower | Chapter One
The food hadn't been worth the risk. He thinks this to himself as he swipes his sword down for yet another bang, clash against that of the Royal Guard before him.
The man is older, probably wiser. But he isn't as sharp, his sword does not cut the same as Jon's does. The steel isn't Valyrian, isn't handcrafted by a forger of a blacksmith.
The guard tires in that moment, his arm at his side, steel scraping against the mud, his own guard low.
He says something about paying for his crimes, about turning himself over and letting justice and mercy serve him kindly. But Jon only shrugs, brushes this offer off as a lame attempt to lessen the brutality of his own attack. He is not a violent man. But he will be, if need be.
With a final blow, his shoulder-blades pulling at the sensation, he swings the edge of his sword down to collide with the soldier's neck, cutting deep into the thin flesh, blood gushing free and spoiling Jon's wool clothes.
As the man falls, collapses into a pool of blood and death at his feet, Jon pauses, wielding hand shaking, chest panting. His mouth hands open, dry pink lips tainted red. His brown eyes darken and he falls to his knees, unable to stand any longer.
The inside of his elbow is bleeding, a gash running from the crease to his wrist, but cool blood spurts out from the space between his forearm and bicep, where he feels the deadly sting of metal clashing with skin. It burns horribly, but he imagines the pain is worse in his head than in reality.
Dragging himself from atop of the soldier's limp body, he rests the palms of his calloused hands flat on the ground, fingers curling into the mud, the sloppy brown muck encrusting beneath his nails.
Jon pushes himself up with little ease, the muscles of his arms aching as he tries to regain his balance, to stand and force himself onto two feet.
He can feel the wet of the mud soaking through his trousers, the thick grey leather turning dirty, temporarily staining from the struggle.
When he is up on both feet, he drops his hands down his sides, bruised and battered knuckles making his fists clench and unclench from the pain, the darkening patterns spreading by the second. This shall hurt for some time.
He grinds his front teeth together when he feels a stinging sensation shoot up his forearm, from his slashed-open elbow to his wounded wrist. Blood trickles from his fingertips, dropping into the soiled ground and falsifying all trace of his presence.
With a tentative step forward, he near stumbles over himself when his feet refuse to sync with his mind, refuse to obey his command. But he pushes forward, choosing instead to drop to his knees, ignoring the shuddering pain this creates on impact, and drag himself on bony knees and sore hands to the edge of the rope hanging by the tower's base.
It seems almost strange that a tower in the deep of the forest would be equipped this way, would be prepared for someone to climb its great height. But he lets the brief confusion slip to the back of his mind and focuses on the opportunity before him.
The guards will surely be after him, and before long he will be caught. His capture will surely lead to his sentencing before the King, and thus his hanging in the court would follow without delay. Thieves were martyrs, were they not? No matter the reasoning, no matter the need of the small folk, no matter if the perpetrator was an expert of the crime or a mere first-timer. Thieves were terrible human beings.
He was no different, had not been since his mother had passed and he had been forced to age suddenly, from twelve to eighteen in days. He had learned to defend himself, to defend his home, to make life as easy as he possibly could for himself.
But he was twenty now, and grown and strong and knowledgeable enough about the world he lived in. He was no longer a small lad of twelve who took on the weight of the world and carried it on his scrawny shoulders. His shoulders could bare the weight now, could carry what needed to be lifted, could accept his crimes.
Despite this, despite his long accepted fate that death shall one day soon toll at his door, he refuses to succumb so easily, so feebly to his destiny. Fate can wait another day. Let him have a good night's sleep first. Let them take him at dawn.
He tugs at the rope's strength, fist wrapped around the bottom wooden slat. It seemed steady, only swayed with the force of his pull but did not slip from its hanger, over the edge of the window. But its fixture is ingrained into the many branches and vines adorning the side of the tower, green leaves covering most of the rope and making it hard to spot where to step.
He will attempt it though, he determines, forcing himself up to stand and begin his climb. The rope ladder falters smoothly, but remains clinging against the tower's bricks. Death awaits him come morrow, anyhow.
Climbing up the ladder grows easier the higher he gets, the steeper the step. But he keeps checking a hand to his waist, making sure his sword was still in play. Perhaps he would need it.
The bow and bags stuffed full of arrows swinging on his bag shift his weight when he swaps from one foot to the other, from left and right and back again, boots pressing into the cool bricks. But sooner or later, he is reaching the top of the ladder and his hands are curling around the window's ledge.
With a final heave on his arms, he pulls himself through the tower's open window, landing on his back with a huff. The blood on his arm still spreads down his side and he attempts to throw a glance down the length of the tower, trying to spot any clear signs of his injury and whereabouts.
Unwilling to let himself be trapped by any passerby, he goes to untie the thick knots of rope that hang the ladder to the tower's inner walls.
The rope is thick, rough through its thickness but almost soft from its substance. It almost feels like a lady's hair, and he knits his brows at the realisation that the familiarity is truth. How could it be hair, that of a woman and no beast no less?
As he tries to untangle the knots, Jon realises that the softly rugged hair has no end, but instead lays flat at his feet, against the solemn grey bricks and curling around a corner.
"Let me live."
The words catch him off-guard, the soft voice of a fragile heart incarnate echoing throughout the room.
"Let me live, let me live."
The voice continues to whisper, speak to itself, almost like a prayer ushered in a winter wind's breeze, on repeat until a reply is heard.
Moving his right hand from the window's ledge and placing his left on the wall beside him, Jon rounds the corner of the small divide, rough palm smoothing along the bricks. He follows the path lead to him by the unbelievably long thread of thick hair, its light red tint glowing in the night's shadow.
The wall seems to form a full circle, as though it was hiding something, shielding what lay in its centre from anyone or anything who may manage to peer through but not transgress the high tower's window. They would be faced with a rounded blank wall, and drop all curiosity, not seek to venture further, to find what lay behind the wall.
The thickness of the tower tightens as he continues on, an illusion from the outside. He wonders how it could have been possible to have heard such a sweet voice when the space where its keeper surely lay was growing smaller with each step.
As the words begin to grow familiar to him, he recognises that they belong to a young woman. A girl even, perhaps.
She has yet to notice him, to look up from the rather laboured stitching she seems so occupied with. Her head is down but Jon takes note of her pale features, her lips as peachy as a spring flower and her cheeks rosy pink.
"Let me live," he heard her repeat to the silence, the words on her tongue over and over again, spurting them out as though she was condemned to do so forever. Perhaps she was, perhaps that is why she seemed to be shunned to such confined quarters. "and let me go."
She practically sings the words now, gentle voice turning melodious, and he cannot help but smile at her obvious innocence.
Jon takes in her face, from his place behind the wall's edge, and he admires her blue eyes from what he can see of them. They are clear, the colour of melting ice on a strangely warm winter's day.
His gaze shifts to her hair, glossy red and fire-kissed, lips taunt as he comes to the realisation that the hair belongs to her, and its roots are still very much attached to her head.
"Oh."
He glances back up at her face then, and his breath catches. His hands immediately fly up to his sides, bloody wrists beside his head, droplets of red pouring on the floor.
"I did not-"
"Who are you?"
Jon contemplates taking a step forward to reassure her. He is a thief, simple as that. He is no man to lay his unwanted hands on a woman. He refrains though, stays in his place but lowers his hands to avoid any blood spill on her abnormally long locks.
"Who are you?" It's his curiosity that gets the better of him in that moment.
"I asked you first." The girl, no older than he, points out, and Jon watches as she moves the garment in her lap to the side, putting her stitching on hold. But she cradles the sharp needle tightly in her grasp. He cannot blame her for doing so.
Though he knows himself to be no harm to her, he finds it only routine that a young woman found all on her lonesome should wield anything resembling a weapon when faced with an intruder. He knows that is what he is; an intruder, someone who stumbled upon an innocent girl in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere.
"Jon." He breathes. "I am Jon. I killed a man down there." He nods his head behind him, gesturing towards the window that lay somewhere between the wall separating him and the outside world. Honesty shall be his saviour. He doesn't miss the way her breath catches, the way her body stills at his admission.
"And I climbed up here to escape my punishment." He licks his lips, wraps his dry fist around the tilt of his sword. "And you are?"
"Mother will be back, soon." The girl nods, to herself mostly. Her shoulders straighten, and her face stares straight at him. "You need to leave."
"Does your mother climb up your hair, too, or is there another way up here I completely bypassed?"
"She climbs. That is why it's there. That is why I'm here."
"To carry your mother up this tower?" He holds back a smirk, "Pardon me, My Lady, but I cannot help but find that information a little odd."
The woman, girl, stands, and he takes in her height. She is perhaps his height, perhaps an inch taller. She remains barefoot, pulls down on the edge of her long and thick purple dress, tugging it down her legs. It hands heavy on her tall frame and the material wraps over her chest smoothly, tightly pressed against her flesh and he imagines she sometimes struggles to find her breath.
Her hair hangs loose, behind her shoulders and sweeping the floor. It pools around her feet and covers a great amount of the distance between them, and it of course disappears behind him, around the curved wall and around his mind. How is that at all possible?
"You're injured."
Her voice is soft again, and she takes a tentative step forward, one bare foot making a move to close the space between them. She looks to him, as though for reassurance, and he only nods, tries to assuage her uneasiness.
"Aye." Jon confirms, glancing down at his arm, the gash on the inside of his elbow slowly beginning to dry out, his forearm stained red. "Though I have suffered worse."
"Where do you come from?" She asks, still far enough away from him for him to be able to read her face properly.
"Winterfell, My Lady."
"Where the King and Queen live?" She seems to lighten up at that, her face emitting the clearest of smiles.
Jon marvels at her expression, almost lost in a trance at her glee. She reacts as though it is a magical place, as though it is a place even beyond magic. Has she not ventured out? Where did she come from? "Aye. Have you never been, My Lady?"
"I am no Lady." She tells him, taking another step closer.
The floor is cold against her feet but she ignores the feeling, choosing to learn more of this new acquaintance instead. "Mother says I am barely a woman. She says I am a merely girl, will be until I can find the strength to leave her side." She seems to mumble to herself, ignoring his presence suddenly. "No, I have not been. I do wish to go one day, though."
"Perhaps you might." He tells her earnestly. If she wanted to go to Winterfell so badly, why wouldn't her Mother let her? She seemed old enough to make her own decisions. "Do you not wish to leave your mother then?"
"She says if I leave, she will die, that she only lives for me. But it all seems so strange to me, you see, because I have little to no memories of her from my childhood."
Unsure of why this girl is divulging her deepest confessions to him, Jon feigns a smile, glancing around her small chamber. "May I trouble you for some water?" Water, she does not have, but wine she does.
She seems to stop in her train of thought then, looking up at him with wide blue eyes and her lips taunt. However, she does not reply, and only turns on her heel to pour a fair amount of liquid from a decanter into a cup. She passes him the slushy drink with haste and then resumes her position, hands behind her hand, needle cradled tightly between her fingertips.
Perhaps she will kill him herself, and is only humouring his situation as of right now. Perhaps he will die with a final taste of wine on his lips and the final memory of a pretty face to haunt him.
"You're injured." She repeats to herself this time, eyes fixed on his bloody arm.
Jon nods again, "Aye. I fought a man who now lies dead. That isn't to say he didn't get a few slashes in."
"Are you a guard? Are you of the Kingsguard?"
Oh, Jon bashes himself, she thinks him to be truly good. Surely it would do better to lie to her, to tell her he was honourable beyond doubt and no petty thief. But his honour was without question still essence to his being, and he would not lie to someone so whole.
"No. But I believe the man I killed was."
"Ah." The hand she held out,the one that looked ready to grab his arm and heal his wound, retracts and she bites her bottom lip. "Will you harm me?"
"No, My-"
"Mother says strange men would quite happily bring me harm. She says any man is capable of hurting any woman. Mother says killers are repulsive."
He ushers the words before thinking on them, before twirling them around for flavour first, "Do you find me repulsive?"
"I do not know. I would not know a harmful man from a great one if he stood right before me. If he stood in your place. I have never known a man. I have never known anyone other than Mother."
"How is that possible?" Jon frowns, taking a long sip of the wine she offered him. It burns the back of his throat, soothes an ache he did not know he had been housing. "Have you- You have always been here, haven't you?" Realisation hits him for the fourth time this night, and he blinks back fatigue.
His legs are still exhausted from running, his arms still bruised from wielding a sword through the air and cutting down people who mean well.
The girl only nods, her hands moving from her front to her back again. She blinks, lips her lips and takes a step back, heading back over toward her bed.
"That is why you wish to see Winterfell." He pinpoints, shrugging his bloody hand through his dark hair and scratching the back of his neck.
"I believe it to be my home. My true home."
"How so?"
She peers up at him, through long lashes, her legs curling up beneath her on the furs that coat her bed. Her voice is low, silent almost as she whispers, her eyes glancing around as though to catch sight of something, someone, her Mother. "I believe she stole me."
Jon looks her over for a moment, before deciding to fuck decency. He plonks his bag of arrows and his bow down by the wall, and he avoids her gaze as he removes his belt, placing his sword on the ground, careful to avoid touching her hair.
"She is a witch."
"A witch?"
He has heard stories of giants, folk tales of wolves and ogres. But witches were the stuff of other legends entirely.
"A witch. Dark haired and dark souled. I am nothing like her. I am no image of her. Daughters are mirrors of their mothers, usually. I have read about this. I read a lot. She left a book once, one I doubt she ever wanted me to see. But it was strange, and dark, and nothing like the songs she left me to gander upon."
"If she is a witch, and you are not her daughter, then who would you be?"
It is a great mystery to him. Either this girl is sleep depraved and so lonely she has turned to fables of nonsense to make sense of her world, or she is telling the truth and therefor the stolen Lady of some noble household. That was what witches did, was it not? Steal young Ladies from their great houses and force some spell upon them and their true families.
"The King's."
"The King's?" Jon voices this in disbelief, "You would be the lost child of Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn?"
He has heard the tales, though he never paid them much thought. He had been too young at the time, and when he was old enough to understand, he needn't care much for the royal family's chagrin. Stories told that their firstborn daughter had been taken from them, still in her white crib, surrounded by her favourite wooden toys. A deep-red haired witch who clothed herself in ruby dresses and capes was the witch in question.
"You don't believe me."
He would reach a hand out to her, if not for her obvious discomfort around him.
"Forgive me. I came here to seek rest and perhaps a little penance for my crimes, but I now find myself your counsellor. Maester, even."
"It seems to be you are the one needing a Maester." The redhead declares, a brow raised as she flicks a look down at his arm. She pulls on a part of her bedding then, tugging at a cloth and ripping a slice of it off, forcing her needle through the cotton.
Standing up again, she forcefully grabs his shoulders and pulls him towards her.
Is she so good, so decent that she will heal a man she does not know, a man who could be falsely claiming honour?
Is she so innocent that she does not see him fit for punishment rather than care?
Jon watches as she curls a hand around his forearm, and wraps the long strip of cloth around his wound, pressing tightly against the cut to make sure the cloth she knots stays secure. He is half sure she wishes to hurt him, hear him curse.
"Shit."
"Sorry."
Her hand drops then, and they go back around her back. But she does not move, does not step away from him.
"Why are you helping me?"
"I want to know if Mother was right."
"If all men are monsters?"
"If all men are volatile?"
"I believe 'revolting' was the correct term, no?" He sees a hint of a smirk toying on her lips and he licks his lips, shifts his eyes to her hair.
With a dare, a nerve, "Am I, then? Do I seem revolting to you?"
"You do wish to seek penance for your crimes, do you not?" He nods once, almost doesn't. "Then that is enough for me." She speaks truthfully, tongue wetting her lips, feeling under heat beneath his gaze. "Monsters, volatile men, do not seek absolution."
"Then what do they seek?"
"I imagine a great many number of things. But none of them penance."
He smiles, baffled by the woman before him. His day started out with thievery, with bread and wine and small folk telling him of their woes. His night, however, was now being spent with some saint of a girl who almost could not see violence as being true.
"Read that in one of those books, did you?" He is not a man of many words. Books were never his favourite possession.
"I assumed." She states. "But, you do need to leave soon. I gather my ladder is still there…"
"It is, aye." He feels the effect of the wine she had given him begin to take him over. "Though I could do with a rest." Not to intrude anymore. Not to cloud your space. To rest and recuperate and tomorrow face my sins.
"Mother will be here come morrow. She arrives shortly after daybreak." Her arms cross over her chest, fingers curling around her elbows as they fold. "I happen to think a man, a strange man, here would frighten her."
"What if you told her of our conversation? What if you told her of who I was?"
"Still, I-"
"Do you not still believe her to be a witch? A monster like that surely would not frighten so easily."
"She will assume-"
"She will assume that a thief stole into your tower and stole you and your astounding long hair and the space between your legs without so much as a beg. She will take me for a thief. And I am. She will be right."
"But you have done none of those things. Not really." The feels the overwhelming need to point out this fact, though she had been the one to broach the topic in the first place, "You had no way of knowing I was here. And you have not stolen me or my locks or my… You have not even begged for sleep, only asked."
"And yet she will refuse my presence here."
"And yet she will refuse your presence here." With a clearing of the throat, she continues, "But she cannot refuse you if you have already left."
"So you wish to banish me then, to send me back down below where death surely awaits me?" He is teasing her, toying with her sensibilities, she knows this. "Me, your confidante?"
She rolls her eyes, feels an odd sense of ease around this man, "You are not my confidante." Her eyes lift to his, her voice softening. "You are my escape plan."
It happens suddenly, her urge to pack her belongings and follow him anywhere. But she could do it, would do it if he let her.
"And what would being one's escape plan entail?"
"You will help me, free me," she pauses, smoothes a hand down her side, "take me home."
"Home? To the King you only think could be your Father? The King and Queen you have never met not seen nor even been in the same village as?" He blinks back sleep, allows himself to sit down on the end of her bed. She does not react. "And what if this plan fails?"
"We hang, surely. You face the noose, in either outcome. Except if I am who I believe myself to be. If you return me home, if you take me back where I belong, where I am meant to be, I can keep you from harm. I can keep you from the hangman's noose."
"Wouldn't that be a tale for the small folk? Saved the King's long lost daughter. Village thief escapes death due to secret Princess' loyalty." He wants to laugh at the quip, at the possibility. But he refrains. She is serious. She seems like she deserves better. "How would we even leave? Your hair is the ladder. I do not know how it got to be so long but surely there is a reason-"
"She says it is magic. Mother. She says that every year it grows three feet longer. I do not know why. But, as much as I do enjoy running my fingers through it or brushing it out when utter boredom strikes me, I am willing to cut it. The ladder will keep with the hair that holds it."
Jon is completely thrown by the whole situation. Magic hair and stolen princesses and evil witches. He stole some bread. His day was never supposed to end like this.
"Are you afraid of me, at all?" He has killed a man, a man who served the King she believed to belong to, and confessed to doing so. "I am a thief."
"Thief, beggar, take me away." She pleaded, her eyes as bright as fresh ice. "You cannot be here when Mother arrives. But you can leave and take me with you. I will not be a burden, you'll see."
"If anyone is to be a burden, it would be me, I believe." He tells her, perhaps a little too honestly. "This will not be easy."
"Good. I long for something that isn't stitching or reading or cleaning."
Show me something the people write songs about, she wants to ask of him. But he would only smirk, laugh, refuse her. He is a thief, and she a lonely girl with now only two human interactions to her name. The second has been handled surprisingly well, she applauds herself. Perhaps they will cross paths with more people on their journey and she can come to know more folk, make up for years past.
"May I rest first then, Princess?"
"Yes. But we must leave before daybreak. I will wake you."
She watches as he shifts onto the floor, manages to makes a bed for himself with his bag and a wool cloth from his belongings. Fatigue has caught up with him, and he will need sleep if he is to actually follow through with this mad plan of hers, she who seems almost giddy at the prospect of evading her supposed Mother.
"And… Sansa. My name? It's Sansa. And not Princess."
"Aye, as you say, Princess."
She cannot tell if it's a jest, or if he truly wishes to call her Princess because he believes that to be her rightful title. But it matters none.
Even if this ends in both of their demises, it would have been worth the adventure she wishes to gain from it, Sansa thinks as she lies down beneath her furs, intentionally dropping one to the floor for him to borrow. But if she can keep a handsome, half-decent man from the hangman's noose, did that not mean something?
Princess were stolen by princes in the songs, in the stories she grew up being forced to believe. But she was stolen by no prince, but a thief.
Based on a tumblr gifset I made, I procrastinated over this for so long. Hopefully it turned out alright? I'll try and update whenever I can. Let me know what you thought, please :)
Also if you can't tell the difference between an AU fic and something canon-related, then why bother reading something that clearly says AU?