These Walls so High
Note: contains movie spoilers.
He's not Eugene Fitzherbert. He can't be. Eugene belonged to a life of poverty, of orphanage stoops and thin gruel and a room crowded with bunk beds and other little boys snoring loud enough to wake him.
He spent years carefully cultivating who he would become: Flynn Rider, dashing and daring and okay, the thief thing wasn't necessarily planned but money was money and if you didn't have it, you had to do something. Flynn Rider: stable-boy just didn't have quite the same ring to it.
He couldn't deal with this, this whole home base; let's live here forever and ever after. Who ever heard of a thief with a castle? Okay, well, technically the castle wasn't his but he was dating the princess and how did that happen?
Is this what a panic attack feels like? It's weird walking past the palace guards and not having to break out into a sprint (granted, it was made easier by the fact that Rapunzel was holding his hand and when he tried to take off she kind of…pulled him back, it wasn't really her fault he landed on his backside). They even took down his wanted posters, and honestly, he kind of misses them. (As to why he misses them remains a mystery.)
The new clothes are kind of nice, he guesses. Not necessarily worth the panicked feeling of claustrophobia that closes over him every time he hears a door shut. But okay, that's not too bad because Rapunzel is usually only a step away. He can do this, he decides, if he focuses on her. Because she's happy. Happy here, in the castle with a family. With him, now if only he could figure out who he was?
"Eugene, are you coming?" Rapunzel smiles at him, holding the door open (a way out, a way out!) and something settles in the core of his existence.
Then again, maybe it's never too late to become the someone you should have been all along. "Yea, just a second." Eugene dips down quickly, placing a chaste kiss at the corner of her mouth.
"Not that I'm complaining, but what was that for?"
He twines their hands together, and man this is going to sound sappy but that's okay, he kind of is sometimes. "For loving me."
Written as a drabble request over at my facebook/livejournal. The original prompt was "those walls you put up are falling" and she requested a Flynn-centric piece.