Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author's Note: This is related to my story Janus, but this can stand alone. School is back on after a very lazy Spring Break—can you just feel my enthusiasm? And yes, that was absolutely sarcastic—and I have been reintroduced to the horrors of math. Ah, the joys of high school.

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A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails. ~Donna Roberts

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He takes her there, to the tower, just like he'd said he would. Rapunzel was having a day with her father, leaving the Queen open to go with Eugene, and Maximus, naturally. The horse was protective, particularly of the royal family.

The entire way there, the Queen imagines Rapunzel out here in the forest. She loves the outdoors. Sometimes, the Queen thought that her daughter wouldn't come inside if they didn't remind her.

When she first lays eyes on the tower, something about it feels very…off. It isn't the white bastion that Rapunzel depicted in her murals. It might once have been, but not anymore. Now, the entire thing looks crooked, like it's teetering to one side.

Eugene leads Maximus in a very wide circle, avoiding the single window with its flowerbed of brown and dry flowers. There's a small opening in the base of the tower, a tunnel, by the looks of it. He helps her down and warned, "We're going to have to climb for a bit, Lady."

"I thought I told you to call me Rachel."

He rolled his eyes. She was as stubborn as her daughter. (He reminds her very much of another thief from another time, one with the long-suffering, loving exasperation of an older brother). "We're going to have to climb for a bit, Lady Rachel."

"You act like I haven't done a day's work in all my life, Eugene."

"I'm not sure there's a safe answer to that." He said honestly. "Would you like me to go first?"

"…No."

As soon as she begins climbing, she can hear Maximus whicker, and when she looks back, the horse is tugging on Eugene's sleeve. The thief—ex-thief, though it's not the sort of thing that Rachel thinks it's possible to ever stop being—shakes him off. "She wanted to go first and it's not like I can stop her."

Rachel hadn't realized that it was possible to have half of a conversation without speaking, but Eugene and Maximus accomplished it.

"Well, I could. But I don't think she'd much appreciate it." A pause. "You don't fit up there, Max. Believe me. I barely fit up there."

Another eye roll. "Yes, I'll look after her. Would you just…go…and do…whatever it is horses do?"

Rachel was sure she was imagining the sly grin on Max's horsy lips. After all, animals couldn't smile, could they? She pushed those thoughts from her mind and began to climb. The rocks here were cool and slightly damp, probably from the other day's rain. It had been a long time since her hands had known rough stone and hard work. Her calluses have faded, leaving her hands vulnerable, but she pushes past it all. Something in her needed to see this.

Once she's through the trap door and she's pulled herself up, her eyes hardly believe what they're seeing. The inside of the tower has the shattered remains of violence on the backdrop of childish dreams. There are the fragments of a mirror whose frame still held a few of the pieces scattered across the floor. Lying among the shards was a wicked-looking knife with long dried blood on the blade that lay near a long trail of hazelnut hair. It's a color she knows well, one she saw in the mirror every morning, on her daughter every day. The hair is long, almost ridiculously so, and it feels like it would carpet the floor as it twined around the room.

There are chains lying open near the staircase, slightly rusted in places. And—was that? Yes, it was—despite not having seen such a sight in more than twenty years, Rachel could still recognize blood stained on stone.

"What happened here?" She asks aloud. Though she hadn't heard him—the man never seemed to make a sound when he walked, like he was a shadow or a ghost—she knew Eugene was there. She could see him; probably standing near the trap door, hanging back and eyes flicking around the room, never settling on anything for too long.

When she turns, she realizes that she's almost right. Eugene is indeed hanging back, looking like a child suddenly shoved into an uncomfortable place, but his eyes are fixed on one spot. The one near the stairpost, where the chain and the knife lay as well as where the bloodstain was.

"What happened?" Rachel repeats.

Eugene's eyes finally glance at her. They're dark with memories and secrets. (She doesn't know who this is, Flynn or Eugene because both have darkness, both are naturally secretive) "Do you really want to know?"

"No. I don't. I do not want to know what happened to cause…all this." She gestured vaguely around her. "But I have to know because…if you and Rapunzel could endure it, then the least I can do is listen."

Eugene is assessing her, she can tell. Those weren't the words of a Queen. Those were the words of a girl who knew of the dark things in the world, who'd seen them and become accustomed to them. They're the words of the girl Rachel used to be.

Flynn tells her, doesn't edit anything out (She knows it's Flynn because Eugene sounds very different when he's telling a story). At first, his words are halting and there are long pauses, as though he's reluctant to say anything, but eventually, the words come smooth and a little quickly, like he needed to tell someone.

While he speaks, she circles the room, wanting to see Rapunzel beneath the horror of what had happened here. She wants to see what kind of books she'd read, what she'd liked to do. There are a few baking pans stacked neatly on a stove and only three books on the shelf. One is a cookbook, its pages stained. The other two are fairy tales, children's things, but they're yellowed and well-read, the edges of the pages worn so that they felt like gentle fuzz.

There's a guitar sitting in the corner (He used to play guitar. Used to play it in the corner of their hideout every day. He used to say that the girls loved it, but whenever he and Rachel were alone, he'd say that his uncle taught him, an uncle long dead). It's wood is a little warped and there are delicately painted designs around the sound hole.

And then there are the murals. Eighteen years' worth of them on the walls, the ceiling, some of them even trickle a little onto the floor. (Paper doesn't have enough space…neither does c-canvas) Most of them abstract designs on the ceiling, painted in strong swooshes of purple and pale gold, but then there are the ones that are the little details that made up a child's life—here, a flower, there, a book lying open.

Finally, it registers that Flynn had stopped speaking and Eugene is just standing there, observing. He does that often; just takes in the world, filing it away somewhere in his mind for further notice.

"I've heard worse." She says finally, because really, what could someone say to a story like that? "I've seen worse, but not much."

Flynn snorts a little, but doesn't say anything.

"…What was it like?"

His eyes flicked to meet hers. "What?"

"Dying."

It had been both wonderful and terrible. It had been floating in white nothingness where there was no pain, but there was no real joy either, only the dim shadow of it. Flynn had enjoyed it because there, he was as far removed from his childhood on the streets as he could possibly be. Eugene had been frightened, had wanted to get away from this place and never ever see it again.

But he suspects that none of that is what the Queen wants to hear. "It was like sailing." Flynn said finally because he was the accomplished liar of the two of them. He'd been on a boat, once. "And then there was this…white shore. It was the most beautiful things I'd ever seen." That's a lie because bright green eyes and a childish grin come to mind, with hair the color of gold and hazelnuts. "And, when I got there, everyone was waiting for me."
Another lie. There was no one to wait for him because the one person he would've wanted to see was here, smiling and young and lovely.

"I see. Thank you." She wants to believe that he was telling the truth, that he would've had something like that. That, when her time came, he'd be waiting there along with everyone else from her old life. Not that she didn't love her husband and this life, but the others had been family too.

They leave the tower without another word and, in the same understanding silence, they travel back to their new life. Rapunzel is there to greet them and she hugs Eugene tightly, an embrace he returns automatically and the bittersweet memories of what had happened in that tower fade with her sunshine, like they always did.