Author's Note:
Hello, everyone! Thanks for checking this out! First of all, this story was written by me and Peppery, an awesome person. The next chapter will be released by her. Check her out here: u/4399639/
Also, if you haven't read Frozen Hearts, Shattered Minds, my dark rewrite of Frozen, you can also read that here: s/10495328/1/Frozen-Hearts-Shattered-Minds
DISCLAIMER: We don't own Tangled, we only own this alternate story!
This is the story of how I died.
You can probably tell it's a pretty depressing story. There are some happy things along the way, but for the most part… yeah, it's pretty grim. This is the story of a girl named Rapunzel, and it starts with the sun and the moon. Once upon a time, a single drop of sunlight fell from the heavens. And from this small drop of sun grew a magic golden flower. It had the ability to heal the sick and injured.
Once upon a time there was a drop of moonlight, too. It landed next to the flower, and out from it grew a patch of vines that surrounded the flower and protected it. These vines were beautiful, but with the right song, they turned deadly. They hid the flower for many, many years, and during that time, the old witch Gothel used the flower to make herself young and beautiful.
It didn't stay hidden forever. Things like this never do. Centuries passed and a kingdom grew just a hop skip and a boat ride away from that little gold flower. The beloved king and queen were finally going to have a child, and there was excitement across the kingdom.
But then the queen got sick. Really sick. And all that excitement turned into a desperate search for a miracle. That miracle just happened to be guarded by deadly vines and an old witch.
While the kingdom began searching, Gothel made sure to hide the flower, but one night, she was careless. A guard passing by the vines saw the glow of the flower and moved the vines away to see it sitting there, a gold beacon in the night. As he pulled it up, one thin vine curled around the flower, trying desperately to protect it. But both were uprooted, and the silver vines were left to wilt and die as the guard carried the flower away.
The magic of the golden flower healed the queen. A healthy baby girl, a princess, was born. She had beautiful golden hair that shone silver in a certain light. The king and queen marked her birthday by launching a lantern into the sky. Grand celebration swept the king and queen were more happy than they'd ever been.
Gothel was not.
She had seen the guard take the flower and knew a part of one vine still clung to the flower. Her hope was that the vines' magic had mixed with the flower's to save the queen. During the celebration, she went up to the queen in the crowd, hidden beneath a cloak. She carefully placed her hand on the queen's shoulder and sang the deadly song of the vines.
Within a minute, the queen collapsed on the ground, dead. And during the panicked confusion and the stampede of the crowd, Gothel stole the child from the queen's still grip and just like that-gone.
The kingdom searched for a killer and kidnapper, but no one even knew how the queen had died. After a while, they dismissed her death as illness, but no one could explain the princess's disappearance. Gothel hid Rapunzel in a tower in the forest and raised her as her own child. The magic of the flower, woven in Rapunzel's hair, kept Gothel young.
But one day it didn't work. It was like Rapunzel's power had just...run out. Gothel searched for a way to make the hair work again, but every spell she knew did nothing. While Gothel was away, bandits climbed up into the tower. It was three bandits against a little kid who was taken by surprise. They tried to attack her, and in her fear, she began to sing, but had no idea where the words came from. Her hair twisted around the bandits while she sung and sucked the life right out of them. Their deaths left three streaks of silver in her hair and Rapunzel unsure of what she had done.
Gothel returned to the tower quickly after, and from the corpses and strange streaks in the young girl's hair, she realized that Rapunzel had some of the power from the vines as well. When she sang the flower's song, Gothel became youthful again. She realized what Rapunzel would have to do if Gothel was to remain beautiful.
Every month or so, when Rapunzel's power to give life had faded, Gothel would find someone, a prisoner in line for execution-Rapunzel refused anyone else. And she would...well. It wasn't a happy way to grow up, but Rapunzel didn't know anything else.
"Mother, I don't think this is right."
"Don't be silly, darling. These people have done terrible things. You are taking the lives they have wasted and using them for good."
"I don't-"
"Don't you trust me, Rapunzel?"
"Yes, mother."
So Rapunzel would take a life and give it back to Gothel. The cycle went on and on, until Rapunzel didn't know how many people she'd killed. She could only focus on who was next. Because of the bandit incident, Gothel insisted that Rapunzel stay in the tower and let her mother retrieve the people who would lose their lives to her hair. Rapunzel was fine with this for a long time, too scared of the world outside the tower, which Gothel told her was awful and full of pain. And Rapunzel could never forget the terrifying bandit attack. But over the years, her fear faded and her curiosity grew.
Every year, on her birthday, Rapunzel would see the same scattered light spread across the night sky, and over time, her curiosity about the lights grew and grew until it was a desperate urge to run from the tower and find out what they were for. She was sure that not everyone outside the tower was as awful as the bandits. The only thing keeping her in the tower was her love of her mother. But even that was sure to fade.