A/N: Yes, that's right, I wrote a Tangled fanfic NOT about the Captain of the Guard. This was written for a recent fic exchange hosted by Airplane.
The Cousins
Mary, Martha, Morgan and Madeleine Jacobs were not bad girls; in fact, some of their neighbours would say they were among the nicest children in the whole kingdom. The four sisters – only those who knew them well could tell them apart – were always friendly, always polite and never hesitated to make newcomers feel welcome. These are the kind of girls who should be rather popular.
They weren't. Those neighbours may have praised their behaviour, but they wouldn't allow their own children to go anywhere near them. The girls were isolated at school; even their teacher looked at them with suspicion. They were afraid of them, and the little girls knew why.
They were afraid they'd turn out like their cousins.
The girls didn't know that much about their cousins; they'd never met their aunt (their mother, Suzanne, always said she was too far away, and hoped her daughters would never pick up on such an obvious lie) and she had never brought her sons to visit them. What they did know was this; their cousins were much older. They were twins; multiple births were common in Suzanne's family, or so she said. They had red hair, just like the girls, and they were very, very bad men. So bad, in fact, that their shadow hung over their unfortunate relatives, darkening their reputation until even the girls' father was given unfriendly looks.
Nobody talked about the cousins; at least, not to the girls. Those little nuggets of information were picked up from conversations; frantic whispering between the adults when they thought the girls weren't listening. No one ever mentioned the cousins' names; just the crimes they'd committed, or the rumours concerning them.
Once, when Morgan had crept downstairs for a glass of water, she'd overheard her parents talking in the sitting room. Her father's voice was calm and reassuring; her mother was crying. It was clearly not something they wanted their daughters to hear, because they'd attempted to close the door; attempted, because the door was slightly ajar. Morgan had always been more curious than her sisters, and the temptation was too much. She crept towards the gap and peeked inside.
In the far corner of the room, she could see her parents, hunched over a piece of paper. Her father was supporting her mother; her head was on his shoulder, and tears were running down her face.
"It was going to happen," he was saying in the soothing voice Morgan had noticed earlier. "We all knew it, Suzanne."
"But why here, Bert?" Suzanne sobbed. "Why'd they have to come here?"
"Why not here? Corona's no different from anywhere else, love. Criminals come here, too."
"But why them?"
Bert sighed, unsure what to say. His wife glanced down at the piece of paper again. Morgan badly wanted to see what it was, but she held back; if they saw her, she'd never find out. Maybe she could see it later, when they'd gone to bed. Her father was always leaving things lying around. If she found a good place to hide...
"Thieves," Suzanne muttered, jolting her daughter out of her thoughts. "That's what it says here. They're thieves."
"Well, we know that, don't we? They've stolen before."
"Yes, but look!" Suzanne jabbed the piece of paper so fiercely she made a dent in it. "Their names are on here! Their faces, too! People will recognise them, and we both know what's going to happen, don't we? What always happens?"
"It might not be that bad, love. Not this time-"
"Not that bad? Not that bad? They're on a poster, Bert! These things are all over the kingdom! Everyone is going to see them, and do you think they'll cut us any slack? No! They never do, Bert! No one wants anything to do with us because of them! They are ruining our lives, Bert, ruining them, and I've had it!"
She leapt off the chair, crumpling the piece of paper into a ball, and started towards the door. Morgan jumped back, but before her mother could leave, Bert grabbed her arm.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"Packing. We're leaving; all of us. We'll go somewhere else, somewhere new-"
"Suzanne, you're being irrational."
"I'm being irrational?" she cried, but she stopped struggling. Bert pulled her into her arms and held her tightly, stroking her hair as she sobbed into his brown shirt. Morgan watched, fascinated by her mother's behaviour but also a little bit scared. She'd never seen her mother behave like this. She'd always been so calm, so composed... unless the cousins were mentioned, of course. But even then, it hadn't seemed to bother her that much; it ruffled her feathers, certainly, but it hadn't made her mother cry before. Morgan didn't like seeing her mother cry. Suzanne was supposed to be the brave one, the one who enforced the rules in their household. Seeing her like this – well, it just wasn't right.
"Why us?" she moaned. "What did we do to deserve this?"
"It's just the way life goes, love," her husband replied.
"I should've helped her."
"Who?"
"Rebecca. I should've helped her. I should've let her stay with us. They might not have turned out like this-"
"You couldn't have known, Suzanne. Besides, she'd got herself into that mess. She was the one who'd been going about with all those men. She didn't ask for your help."
"But I should've offered it!"
"What good would it have done? We could barely take care of ourselves back then! Besides, you were right to turn her away. Couldn't have had a bunch of bastards running around under our roof, could we?"
"No," Suzanne groaned. "We get a bunch of thieves instead. A bunch of thieves who won't go away."
They were quiet for awhile, and for the first time, Morgan noticed just how old her parents looked. Their hair was streaked with grey, and their faces were lined with age. They weren't even that young in the first place, especially in comparison to the other couples the girl had seen, but, that night, they looked more like her grandparents. She didn't dwell on it for long, however, because at that moment, her father announced that they should go to bed. Her mother nodded meekly, and Morgan just had time to duck under the stairs before the door opened. Her parents ascended the stairs, Suzanne leaning on her husband, and as they did, the piece of paper dropped from her hand and landed in the hall. Neither of the adults seemed to notice. Still, it was only when she heard their bedroom door close that Morgan snuck out and retrieved it.
When she returned to her room, the other girls were waiting.
"I thought you'd gone for some water," said Mary, eyeing her sister curiously.
"I found something better." Morgan held out the crumpled piece of paper. "It's got the cousins on it."
Mary and Madeleine gasped and crept towards her. Only Martha stayed where she was. She was the quietest of the girls, younger than them by several minutes, and she had always found the cousins very unsettling. They affected her life far too much for a pair of people she never saw, especially since they were such bad men. Her sisters, however, found them fascinating for that same reason.
"What is it?" asked Madeleine.
"A poster, I think. Mama and Papa were looking at it." She decided not to tell her sisters about their mother's reaction to it.
"Are you sure it's them?"
"That's what they said."
Morgan placed the poster on the floor, smoothing it out as her sisters crowded around it. Even Martha, giving in to her own curiosity, leapt out of bed to get a look. When she saw it, her eyes widened.
"It's a wanted poster," she whispered.
"Of course it is," said Mary. "They're bad men, remember?"
But the poster itself wasn't important. What mattered to the girls was the picture – the picture, and the names below it. The girls finally had a glimpse of the men who, until this point, had been nothing more than the subject of whispered conversations. Men who had been a part of their lives for as long as they could remember, but they'd never had a name or a face... until now.
The cousins glared out at them, their image rendered in thick black ink. The guards hadn't bothered to add any colour; if the girls hadn't already known about the men's red hair, they'd never have guessed. The picture only showed their heads and shoulders, but their necks were thick with muscle and their jaws looked strong. They looked tougher than the girls' father, at least. Yet, even without the red hair, the girls could spot the family resemblance; the cousins had Suzanne's blunt nose and long face. Below the picture were the names of these men, and they shocked the girls. The guards had never seemed to be afraid of anything, but even they wouldn't write the cousins' full name. Were the cousins that bad? So bad, even the guards didn't want to mention their names?
Still, what they had written was enough for the girls. The cousins had a propername at last, and a title to go with it.
Stabbington Brothers. Thieves.