After a long period of inactivity, I'm finally writing again! This will be a relatively short story, with only two or three parts total, of which this is the first.
This story is recursive fanfiction; more specifically, it is a continuation of "Dendrophilia" by Fabulist, also here on FFnet. However, "Dendrophilia" is an M-rated story that is not hosted on FFnet, but you should be able to track it down easily via Fabulist's profile or a simple internet search. It is a very good piece in my opinion, with hilarious, spot-on characterization and a premise that was interesting enough to inspire me to write this.
For those who do not wish to read Dendrophilia, the premise is pretty simple: canonically, after the floating lanterns scene, Eugene and Rapunzel land on the shore of a little cove, and Eugene goes off with the crown to meet the Stabbington brothers, hoping that surrendering it will get them off his back. In "Dendrophilia", before Eugene goes, he and Rapunzel have sex in that cove. The story ends with Eugene taking the satchel and going to meet the brothers as in canon, but leaving behind a Rapunzel who is much more reassured about where she stands with Eugene.
That's the part that got me thinking. If we don't go with the default implied assumption of "...and then the rest of the movie happened", how would that Rapunzel, who is about to face the brothers Stabbington and Mother Gothel, deal with things? That's what this story is about.
And so, without further ado...
Leaving the Nest
Chapter 1 – The Outset
oOo
"Now how did those girls do this..." Rapunzel hummed contentedly as she attempted to put her hair back into something resembling the compact configuration the little girls in Corona had braided it into.
The activity provided a pleasant distraction from waiting for Eugene, who would undoubtedly return from his errand any minute now. Her body felt slightly sore, but it was a not altogether disagreeable feeling, she decided, a pleasant reminder of the activity she and Eugene had been engaged in. Those memories brought a smile to her face, as well as a resolution to repeat that exercise with him at the soonest opportunity.
The task of re-braiding her hair was not going that well, however; with only two hands and no ability to step behind herself, she could not match the children's efforts. Still, she managed to reduce the amount that trailed on the ground behind her to a fraction of its full length. She was just checking the tightness of the braid and making sure that the leftover length wouldn't get in her way when she noticed a silhouette approaching her through the rising fog.
"Eugene!" Rapunzel let out a relieved breath. "That took longer than I expected. What kept you?"
"Who's Eugene?" The voice was all wrong. As she watched, the silhouette split into two and emerged from the fog as two large, brutish-looking men.
Rapunzel drew back in apprehension, the cold rush of adrenaline washing away her languor. They were clearly thugs of some sort, but they did not look nearly as friendly as the ruffians from the Snuggly Duckling. Well, those had looked fairly intimidating to start with, but then Rapunzel had gotten to know them... These men did not look like they had a hidden heart of goodness under their gruff exterior.
"Rider isn't coming," the second one growled as they approached Rapunzel with menacing steps.
"What did you do to him?" Rapunzel demanded warily, stepping back towards the boat that was run aground on the shore.
"Sent him on his way with the crown," the one with the eyepatch shrugged, indifferent. "The girl with the magic hair is a far bigger prize. You are going to make us very rich."
The other one chuckled nastily. "How much do you think someone would pay to stay young and healthy forever?" He produced a burlap sack and opened it, clearly intending to to pull it over Rapunzel's head to capture her.
"No..." Fear gripping her heart, Rapunzel backed away further, desperate to stay out of his reach. Her back bumped into the prow of the the little boat, causing her to yelp in surprise and the cruel grins on the bandits' faces to widen.
She heard Pascal croak behind her; risking a glance out of the corner of her eye, she saw him in the middle of the boat, gesturing at the frying pan that lay forgotten on the seat beside him.
The idea of defending herself instead of running away helped her fight down the rising tide of terror and her eyes narrowed in calculation. Stepping carefully, she maneuvered around the hull and onto the boat, just ahead of her prospective kidnapper. "Nowhere for you to go," he leered as he stepped up beside the boat, raising the sack.
Rapunzel was relieved to note that the boat was beached firmly enough not to rock and tilt wildly under her weight. Making sure her footing was solid, she bent down, grabbed the pan's handle, and in one fluid motion, swept the frying pan up and around, smashing it into the side of the bandit's head.
Years and years of hauling Mother Gothel up the tower every day had left Rapunzel with considerable upper arm strength. The man gave a choked-off grunt, and she could see his pupils contract to pinpricks before he toppled over, falling onto the sandy ground of the shoreline where he lay still.
"What the–" The second bandit wasted a precious second staring incredulously at his downed compatriot, giving Rapunzel time to reset her stance, but before she could do anything more, the remaining man was hit over the head by a gnarled club of wood. He went down in a manner eerily similiar to the first, revealing Mother Gothel standing behind him, breathing heavily.
"Mother!" Rapunzel broke out into a smile as she jumped off the boat, lowering the frying pan and taking a step towards her, intending to embrace her, before she remembered their encounter in the woods and checked herself. Her greeting smile of victorious exuberance faded to a more contained one of confident self-satisfaction. Her mother had been wrong about Eugene and she had been right; he clearly liked her. It was a bit dizzying just how much he liked her, and she wasn't too sure why that was true, but the fact itself was beyond doubt.
Conveniently, Mother was right here to have these facts explained to her, and she had also witnessed Rapunzel demonstrating that she was capabable of defending herself. I play this right and maybe I can put her silly fears to rest! Visions of joint trips into the wilderness or the city unfolded in her imagination and she had to force herself to stay in the here and now.
"Mother." Her voice was more composed this time, more formal. "It's good to see you. Thanks for helping out." She gestured vaguely at the downed bandits.
"Helping out?" Mother Gothel's voice rose incredulously. "Is that what you call it when I save you from certain kidnapping and depredation?"
"What?" Rapunzel blinked in consternation, indignant at having her achievement belittled. "They only had swords, and not even drawn!" The frying pan was clearly the superior weapon; Eugene had demonstrated as much, taking out an entire squad of palace guard. It had taken Maximus to finally disarm him, a matchup that was unfair on many levels.
"I could have taken him," she added with what was only partly bravado, beholding the burly thug at Mother's feet. Considering how taken aback he'd been at seeing his comrade go down, she'd give herself decent odds in the hypothetical scenario that her mother had not arrived at that point. "But that was good timing!" She turned a winning smile on her mother. "We make a pretty good team, huh?"
Gothel seemed taken aback for a moment, but she recovered swiftly. "Oh Rapunzel." She let out a sigh of resignation, drawing a hand across her face in a gesture that seemed ever so slightly exaggerated. "Here I hoped this misadventure would cure you of your delusion that you are ready to be out in this hostile world. You may have taken that one by surprise, but that would not have worked twice. Men are simply stronger than women, that's a fact of nature, and you are a delicate flower, untrained in violence. I shudder to think what could have happened to you, had I not been here."
"Oh, that's interesting. Yes, let's talk about men and their characteristics." Rapunzel was miffed at how cavalierly Mother dismissed her capabilities, but she pushed that feeling aside and focused on the opening Gothel had left her. Raising a bare foot, she used her big toe to delicately pull at the corner of the nearest thug's mouth, revealing teeth that, brutish face aside, didn't look all that different from Eugene's or her own. "It seems that pointy teeth aren't quite as good an indicator of villainy as I've been led to believe."
If Rapunzel had been blinking, she would have missed the minute grimace that flickered over Mother Gothel's face. She gave Rapunzel an exasperated look. "It was a simplification, for your benefit. You're still young, my flower. Sometimes, a mother has to conceal difficult truths a child is not yet ready to understand." Her expression grew severe. "It would not have mattered but for your disobedience."
The explanation seemed feeble to Rapunzel's ears. Going by the variety of people she had seen during the celebration preceding the lantern festival, she was fully grown, or nearly so. Children far younger than her had been out by themselves. Presumably, their parents had prepared them for the world; they couldn't all be orphans like Eugene.
She decided to pursue this line of inquiry a little further. "I suppose there are other things you've withheld from me for the same reason?"
"Of course." Her mother smiled indulgently. "I assume you have something specific you want to ask about?"
Rapunzel flushed pink as she again recalled what she and Eugene had done earlier, suspended between the trees from her hair. She did not have the words to describe what had happened, nor did she relish the idea of clumsily trying to explain, openly displaying her ignorance to her mother who liked to remind her how naive she was. It was too private and precious to her to let it be cheapened like that.
"Certain differences between men and women that I think most other girls my age probably know about," she finally settled on, succeeding in meeting her mother's eyes despite her embarrassment. She managed to inject some asperity into her voice as she went on. "But I suspect that just like the pointy teeth, you never intended for those to become relevant, either, or did you, Mother? Well, they have."
Mother blinked as she processed this, then her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in shock. Rapunzel observed her reaction with a feeling of growing incredulity. Mother rarely displayed genuine surprise – the rhetoric kind, yes, an artfully crafted facsimile used as a tool to direct conversation. It was a favorite tactic, used commonly enough that even Rapunzel, who usually found it difficult to tell what her mother was really thinking, had caught on long ago. But a display like this was unprecedented. Somehow, she had done something utterly unexpected.
"You slept with him?" Mother finally got out.
Is that what people call it? It seemed a little odd to Rapunzel, considering there hadn't been any sleep involved. But Eugene had wanted there to be a bed, she recalled. Perhaps one was needed to do it properly, the way he had intended before she overrode him.
But bed or not, she was very pleased with how it had turned out. She settled for a decisive nod.
Mother boggled at her for a second longer, before her expression shifted subtly and there was a momentary gleam of something in her eyes – Happiness? Triumph? Rapunzel wasn't sure, it was gone too quickly. Then, incongruously, her expression morphed into one of compassion and pity, and she opened her arms in invitation. "Oh Rapunzel, sweetheart, I'm so sorry. How bad was it?"
It took Rapunzel a second to work out that Mother expected her to come running into her arms, distraught after what she clearly thought had to have been a horrible experience. Bewildered, Rapunzel took a step back instead. Bad? How could it have been bad? It was wonderful!
Well, there had been that part where she had taken him into herself... that had stung a bit at first. If she hadn't been the one in control, if Eugene hadn't been so gentle... if she hadn't been blessed with magic hair – yes, she could see how that might have spoiled the mood. Suddenly, she felt a little bit sorry for girls who did not have magic hair. Its length was hard to manage, but it did have its upsides.
"Did he force himself on you?" Gothel went on, oblivious to Rapunzel's thoughts. "Or did he wheedle you until you gave in?"
Rapunzel burst out laughing; the thought was so patently ridiculous, she couldn't help herself. Not when she had been the one who had done all the wheedling. For some reason, her laughter seemed to disturb her mother more than anything she had said so far.
"What are you talking about?" Rapunzel asked once she regained the ability to speak, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. "The whole thing was my idea." She couldn't quite suppress a small, satisfied smile. "In fact, I'm satisfied with how it turned out."
This time, the grimace was rather more pronounced. She made to speak, but Rapunzel cut her off.
"Face it, mother, you were wrong about Flynn Rider." She was not going to call him 'Eugene' to her face; he had told her that name in confidence, and she feared that Mother would just turn the intimate confession against her if she relayed it. Her mother claimed to tease her, but sometimes the things she said seemed rather mean-spirited to her, despite all her assurances to the contrary. In an argument she could be vicious, alternating seamlessly between biting sarcasm and honeyed but poisonous words that eroded her will to fight, but for the first time in as long as she could remember, Rapunzel felt like she was holding her own in a debate with her.
"Your silly test?" She went on, leveling a superior smirk at her mother. "He passed it."
"Oh?" Mother Gothel only raised one delicate eyebrow. "Then where is he? Where is the crown?"
Rapunzel was unperturbed. "I don't know what he needs it for, but whatever it is, it is irrelevant to the question of how he feels about me. He'll be back any minute now, you'll see."
Gothel gave her a pitying look. "Dear, you really don't understand how the world works, do you? How men work? Now that he's had you, why would he have any further interest in you? He got what he wanted out of you, and the crown to boot! He's gone to look for new conquests. I doubt you'd see him again, even if you went looking."
"Why should I believe that?" Rapunzel demanded, a resentful frown on her face. Like everything else that was different and exciting and new, Mother was trying to shade this in the worst possible light!
"Because it happens all the time, all over the world?" The answer came back without hesitation. "It's a curst cliché, prevalent in tales of romance everywhere, whether true and imagined. The innocent young girl falls in love with the attractive rogue, who leads her on until he manages to seduce her, then has no further interest in her and leaves her with a broken heart."
She pointed at Rapunzel, eyes flashing. "That's exactly what's been happening here, don't you see? Or are you going to tell me that your case is somehow different? Please!" She gave a scornful laugh. "Whatever makes you so special?"
Rapunzel slowly deflated as those words sank in. There was a ring of truth in them, a conviction that she could not help but believe. She closed her eyes and seriously considered her mother's words. Could she be right? she asked herself. Could Eugene have manipulated her, led her to that point and past it, all the while having her think it was her own idea?
No. The answer came back swift and absolute. If she presupposed that using her in the manner Gothel described had been his goal all along, everything else stopped making sense. He had admitted in word and deed that he desired her, rather than pretend otherwise in order to make himself seem more wholesome. She had been the one to initiate the contact, whereas he had repeatedly tried to resist, then defer her, far past the point of necessity if subterfuge had been the purpose. Against all expectations, without really knowing what she'd been about, she had been the one to seduce him.
Also, the concern and affection for her had been present in his eyes throughout the encounter, up until the very last moment when he'd walked away from her to complete whatever errand he had to that involved the crown. She pictured that gaze on a man of the character and motivations Gothel had described and knew the picture for a lie. Perhaps another man could act in such a manner; perhaps Mother had known such men in her time, but she was sure of Eugene.
"No," she said flatly, looking back up at Mother, all her confidence rushing back. Her heart was telling her that she was right, and her head was backing it to the hilt. "No," she repeated. "I know better."
Mother opened her mouth, but Rapunzel overrode her. "You are wrong. Completely, utterly, unequivocally wrong. About me, about the world, and about Flynn Rider, too. I'm not too sure about myself, but what makes him special? That, I am beginning to understand." Crossing her arms over her chest, she stared at her mother with a half-lidded expression that made it clear she was not impressed.
Mother actually seemed to be speechless for once. Now there's something I don't see every day.
Looking around, she realized how dark it was getting. How long had it been since Eugene left? Far too long, she thought.
"Was that your best shot? Because if you've got nothing else to say, I need to go look for Flynn; he should be back by now. Either help me, or get out of my way." She held out her arm, letting Pascal move from the little perch on the rear of the boat back to his customary place on her shoulder.
"Don't look too far; I think that's him over there." Gothel's voice was grim, her raised arm pointing out over the water.
Following her gaze, Rapunzel could see a second boat drifting away in the distance, slightly bigger than the one they had arrived in, with a sail and a steering wheel. At the helm stood a figure.
Squinting into the gloom, she easily identified the silhouette as Eugene. He was gripping the wheel with both hands, staring motionless towards the distant shore of the island city of Corona. Something glimmered near his hands, three tiny points of light. Was that the crown?
"That's not right," she muttered, eyes narrowing. Taking a deep breath, she bellowed his name. "Eugene!"
"You're wasting your breath, child," Mother said behind her, a note of contempt in her voice. "I told you, he got what he wanted and now he's off to look for greener pastures elsewhere."
Rapunzel ignored her, shouting again and watching for a reaction, movement, but there was nothing. Boat and helmsman were equally still, drifting slowly over the water.
There was something wrong with this picture, Rapunzel felt, but between the light fog and the distance, she could hardly make out any details. But distance she could do something about; after all, she had a boat, too, didn't she?
She stepped around the boat, in front of the bow, and placed her hands on the hull, shifting to find a good placement that would allow her to apply the maximum amount of force.
"Rapunzel, what are you doing?" Gothel's voice sounded dangerously calm.
"Sorry, Mother, I have to go." With a mighty shove, the boat slid into the water, starting to move away from the shore at a good clip.
"What?!" Mother's voice was shrill. She heard the crunch of gravel behind her; suddenly afraid that Mother might resort to physical force to hold her back, she broke into a run, wrapping the remaining trailing length of her hair around her arm with one simple motion.
"Hold on tight, Pascal." Dashing to the end of the little outcropping beside which the boat had been beached, she carefully gauged the distance and leapt.
Her aim was solid; the boat bobbed and tilted perilously and she landed awkwardly, but it didn't capsize and the closed surface of the stern provided ample space for her hands to find purchase. Levering herself fully back to her feet, she made sure the boat was stable enough, turned around and reached for the single oar, throwing a glance back at the shore as she did so.
For a moment, Mother Gothel looked like she wanted to wade into the water to pursue her, but the little boat glid swiftly over the calm inlet with the momentum Rapunzel's jump had imparted, already out of her reach unless she intended to try her hand at swimming. "Come back, Rapunzel!" Her voice receded into the fog as the shoreline receded behind Rapunzel. "You are making a terrible mistake!"
"This is something I have to do!" Rapunzel yelled back, then proceeded to ignore the continuing angry cries as she rowed with all her might, alternating sides as she had seen Eugene do. She could make out dire predictions of impending consequences as well as various threats of parental discipline, but the former were too vague and nonspecific for her to take seriously and the latter seemed laughably irrelevant to her current situation.
The fog wasn't too thick; she could still see the slightly larger vessel ahead with no problems, but it muffled sound pretty well. Within a minute, she could no longer hear her mother's voice.
Her heart beat rapidly and her palms were sweaty; even though she was not swayed by her mother's arguments, she could appreciate the fact that her life was changing irrevocably. It seemed less and less likely that she would be able to return to the tower; she wanted to stay with Eugene, and Mother had made it abundantly clear that she did not approve of him.
But she wouldn't have to work out her future on her own. Eugene seemed eminently capable of taking care of himself despite being a wanted fugitive. With him by her side, she could handle anything.
Author's Comments:
The brothers Stabbington – When writing that part, I was a little worried that I wasn't giving them enough credit in letting Rapunzel take one of them down so easily, but on reflection, I feel this is okay. They are a step up from mook level, but they are also a step or two down from badass rank. Besides, in canon, Gothel takes them both down all by her lonesome, which seems even more of a stretch. I guess it goes to show that unlike them, Gothel does qualify as badass.
Frying pans – Better than swords? Yup, I'm totally rolling with that. Though as Flynn vs. Maximus shows, prowess of the wielder is still a factor as well.
But there is no frying pan on the seat! – I'm going to call artistic license on this one. I just like how that sentence flows, and it has to be in relatively easy reach for Rapunzel, so I'm putting it there instead of hiding it under the seat. That poor frying pan never made another appearance after the night in the forest, but it has to be around somewhere, doesn't it?
Rapunzel's strength – Rapunzel does some pretty heavy lifting in this chapter, what with the boat, and knocking out a Stabbington brother in one blow. But she's spent years hauling Mother Gothel up and down the tower, as well as handling her hair all the time. Magical or not, the stuff still has some weight, even if it somehow fails to break her neck.
My judgment is that while she does not have what I would class as honest-to-god super strength, she is way stronger than her size and slim build would suggest. I don't feel that anything I have her do really pushes the envelope as far as the precedents set by the movie go (check out that deathgrip she has on Gothel's forearm in that scene near the end, or how she hauls around Eugene's unconscious carcass when she first captures him), but feel free to chime in with your comments!
Fun ideas – I kind of wanted to have one of the brothers come to during the conversation, groaning, and Rapunzel unceremoniously clocking him another one, then arching an eyebrow at Mother Gothel, but I couldn't find a good place to fit that in. Not enough time has passed in the early part of the conversation, and the latter part is too dramatic to interrupt like that. Ah well. Sometimes a fun idea just can't be implemented; that's writing.
(I did manage to work in Rapunzel laughing in Gothel's face at the suggestion of Eugene forcing or persuading her – that was planned from the start, but I somehow managed to forget it and finished the scene without that part. However, it fit in pretty seamlessly when I found it in my notes afterwards.)
Pascal – I feel like I need to give the little guy some more screentime. Skipping back and forth in the movie, it's easy to see that he constantly has Rapunzel's back. Even when he has nothing to contribute directly, whenever she is in conflict with someone (which happens a lot), whether physical or verbal, you can bet that Pascal is glaring at the other party. Any suggestions for ways to fit in a little more of him would be appreciated.
The argument with Gothel – This is the main meat of this chapter, and as such, the part where any flaws are most likely to be found. Though I'm well-satisfied with how it turned out, my biggest worry when writing it was that I might be having her act too passively or have her be too surprised / taken aback when Rapunzel scores points off her, even accounting for the fact that Rapunzel's lines are designed to do exactly that. She is extremely intelligent and a master manipulator, and that should still be apparent, even if the story requires her to come out second best here.
Gothel is definitely not at her best here. The main reason for that is that she is attempting tried-and-true strategies for dealing with Rapunzel that have worked for her for years, but she fails to account for the new experiences and knowledge Rapunzel has gained while she was out of her supervision, and her inability to predict what forms those new experiences take.
She makes several big gambles while trying to bring things back on track for the plan she has cooked up involving the Stabbington brothers. She is normally very good at this kind of bluff, preying on Rapunzel's doubts and insecurities, as evidenced by this strategy working flawlessly on canon!Rapunzel, but she is too used to knowing all the variables and fails to adapt quickly enough. Several of her reasonable guesses turn out to be wrong, which makes her social attacks backfire.
The reason she pursues this strategy so hard is that she would prefer for Rapunzel to remain her willing, unwitting captive for as long as possible. She knows that that state of affairs can't last forever, but it is by far the most expedient way of controlling her, so she wants to preserve the status quo as long as she feasibly can. She thinks the fallback option of holding her by force is always available by her, but even if Rapunzel deciding to go after Flynn pushed her over the edge (which I haven't really fully decided one way or another), her departure is sudden enough and implemented quickly enough that she is caught totally by surprise.
These are my thoughts / justifications for why she acts as she does. Like I said earlier, this is how the story is meant to go. However, if you think you see a spot where she is blatantly holding the idiot ball, or a place where I can insert additional description to improve her perceived competence level without compromising the flow of the debate, please do mention that.
How did Gothel not witness their tryst in "Dendrophilia"? – Fabulist didn't bother to explain this one way or another, but the fact is, they didn't get interrupted, neither by the brothers, nor by Gothel.
The brothers are tucked away in their cove down the beach. The visibility of the other section isn't too good, they might not have been looking out every single second, and Rapunzel and Flynn were up in the trees, but truthfully, going by the distances shown in the movie, it seems a bit of a stretch that they neither saw nor heard anything, but let's just quietly pretend it isn't, mkay? It seems like the less creepy option.
On the other hand, Rapunzel did not hear Eugene being taken down, either. Maybe not such a huge stretch?
As for Gothel, part of my premise is that she has not witnessed their tryst and is surprised that it happened. I'm going with the explanation that she waited even further down the beach than the Stabbingtons, wanting to be sure that part of her plan went off according to schedule, before circling around to ambush them.
Leaving the Nest – I'm not too sure about the name of the fic. It didn't have one until I was ready to post and I pretty much came up with this last-minute. I think I can get some decent thematic symmetry going with the chapter titles, but I also feel like maybe I could do better with something else. My instinct was to stay with the hair theme somehow to play off of "Dendrophilia", since this is after all a continuation, but I wasn't able to think of anything good. Suggestions are welcome; if I like any of yours, I shall steal it and credit you.