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Kidskin Slippers
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The first night in the palace, Rapunzel is much too happy to do anything besides drop back onto her new, giant bed and sleep until dawn. Nothing disturbs her there – not the fireworks high in the sky nor the sound of the door creaking open as her parents steal another glimpse of their new-found daughter. Not even Pascal, crawling up her bare shoulder where the sleeve of her new lacy nightgown has slipped away.
Only when the sun rises and golden light fills the room does she wake, blinking in awe at her surroundings. It still feels so strange to wake up in a new place, this beautiful room her parents have given her. The bare, creamy walls are just waiting for the touch of her paintbrush.
The city bells begin to chime the hour – it is seven AM, and there is not a broom nor dust pan in sight.
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She lasts a day before becoming completely and utterly fed up with her slippers. The royal seamstress had claimed they were to protect her delicate feet from harm, but when Rapunzel studies her soles later in her room, she cannot see why her feet need the protection. Her skin is toughened, strong, and she can see no point in trapping her toes in a layer of soft kidskin. So she checks that her skirts are long enough and then hides the slippers beneath her bed and skips through the palace in bare feet.
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That first sennight flashes past in the blink of an eye. There is so much to do, so many new things to see. Rapunzel tries once to race from one end of the palace and back, just to see if she can, only she gets lost twice before nearly running into her father (her father! Her father!)
"Oh! I'm so sorry! I'm so, so sorry!" she apologizes repeatedly as she straightens his tunic and smoothes out his hair. "Are you all right? I didn't hurt you, did I? I'm so sorry."
And he smiles and chuckles and looks quite bemused by the whole affair. When Rapunzel explains just what she had been doing he laughs a little more and advices her that it might be best if she slowed down indoors.
"I will! Oh, I will! I promise!" she exclaims immediately. And when they part again she walks with a measured pace, even through it feels like one of the hardest things she has ever had to do.
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When she shows up at the palace kitchen after simply ages of searching for it, the cooks fawn over her and watch her dotingly as she strolls around the counters and peers into pots. When she offers to help with the meal, they are all much too shocked to say anything back. The blank stares she receives, though, tell her enough not to ask again.
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She is working on the first mural in her new bedroom when her mother (her real mother!) opens the door and stops short. The queen's mouth is hanging wide when Rapunzel turns to look, and she wonders if it is because of the sight of her bare toes peeping from beneath her skirts, or because she shouldn't be using this chair as a stool.
"Do you like it?" Rapunzel asks anxiously, because no one has ever seen her art before –no one except for Mo – Gothel, who doesn't count, and Eugene, who really doesn't count, if for a different reason. "It's supposed to be the lanterns in the sky, and me and Eugene in the boat and the castle in the background-"
She lifts her hand to point with her paintbrush, and a large drop of blue splatters on her cheek. Rapunzel wipes it away impatiently with the back of her hand and waits for her mother's response.
"If – if you wanted a mural, we could have commissioned the royal painters," the queen says finally.
It is the last thing Rapunzel expects to hear, and one loud, thudding heartbeat passes as she remembers that here at the palace, everything is done by other people. Reluctantly, she steps down from her chair and drops the paintbrush in the pot. "I, uh, didn't think of that," she says finally, and the smile she tries on is crooked.
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She forgets, sometimes, that her long, golden hair is short and brown now. She pulls the hairbrush too hard every morning, until her shoulders are bruised from where the handle hits her skin. She finds herself moving her head too quickly, overcompensating for a non-existent weight. When she runs through the garden, she feels lighter, freer, as if she could jump and float up, up, up like the birthday lanterns.
Eugene says he likes brunette on her. She does not ask her parents because they do not know what it looked like before, but she knows they are pleased that she resembles them now. She is pleased, too, but all the same, there are times when she catches herself off guard as she passes by mirrors, times when her hands reach for hair that is no longer there.
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Studies are the bane of her existence. Rapunzel thought she had been done with all that when she'd fled the tower, but apparently there are a whole number of things a princess should know that Gothel never supplied. Whole hours pass each day as she is taught and tested. The birds sing right outside the window, but on the third day of lessons the tutor closes the shutters because the sound is too distracting.
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The chair Rapunzel sits on is hard and unforgiving, her gown tight and constricting. She stares down at her feet and wiggles her toes. The cool air is comforting on them. She won't be able to feel that if they are stuck in soft kidskin slippers all day long.
Rapunzel looks up at the half-finished mural on the wall opposite her. With a sigh, she pulls the slippers on.
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"You seem kind of down lately," Eugene observes one evening as they lay on their backs in the garden. A wall of shrubbery hides their presence from anyone passing by on the path, but there has been no sound of footsteps for some time now.
She wrinkles her nose and shrugs, wiggling her toes inside the slippers. "I guess it's more to get used to than I first thought."
She does not intend to elaborate, but Eugene hears the sadness in her voice. He knows how to pick at her until she spills, all at once and with her eyes beginning to water. She tells him everything, about the paint and the cooks and the slippers, until her mouth is dry and she begins to feel quite embarrassed about the whole thing.
"Never mind," she says, and starts to sit up, but Eugene catches her arm and pulls her down again with a stern look.
"There will be none of that," he orders, and sits up himself, reaching down to pull one slipper from her foot at a time. "Tonight," he declares, "will be your night."
"But-" she starts, and he holds up a hand to stall her.
"No protests allowed," he declares, and lifts an eyebrow at her wide-eyed expression. "I believe you have a paintbrush in your room?"
"Yes, but-"
"Race you there!" he interrupts, and before she can react, Eugene leaps up over the row of bushes, twiggy branches cracking as he pushes past the old tree.
"Hey!" she shouts as she scrambles to her feet. Then, "Eugene!" But no response comes and with a breathless laugh she dashes after him to her bedroom.
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Two long, wonderful days pass before Rapunzel even realizes that she left her slippers behind the bushes in the garden.
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FIN
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A/N: Tangled has become one of my favourite movies EVER. I would list things I like about it, but that would really just turn into restating the movie. (But I definitely have a crush on Flynn/Eugene.) So, seeing as I love it so much, I couldn't really help myself when I began to think about how difficult it would be for Rapunzel to adjust to life as a princess.