A/N: none of the characters are mine, etc.

I just couldn't bear the bookstore scene being only seconds-long in the movie. Here is how I think the visit could've possibly gone. Enjoy! Comment! Review!

The Bookstore: A Tangled One-shot

The bells on the door jangled violently as a pair of revellers rushed into the bookstore. Both of them were out of breath as if they'd been running.

The shopkeeper looked up grumpily, having been awoken from his nap, and narrowed his eyes at them. A girl of sixteen or seventeen years with a giant blonde braid didn't worry him so much, but her older male companion looking out the window as if to see if they'd been followed, now he looked oddly familiar…

Before he could ponder the man's appearance further, the girl rushed up to him with a vigour he rarely saw in other youngsters that were dragged inside by their well-meaning parents. Her eyes were wide with excitement, and it softened the shopkeeper's gaze.

"Hello! Is it okay if we look at all of your books? I haven't read anything new in ages, and I don't even know where to start."

"Well, alright. It's good to see a young person so keen on books – just be gentle with them and treat them with care. I'll be in the back." The shopkeeper smiled as the girl thanked him and ran back to her friend. With one last slightly-suspicious glance at the man, the shopkeeper went to the backroom to finish his nap in peace.

"Eugene, I want to look at everything – this is the most books I've ever seen in one place and it's amazing!" She dashed to one of the many shelves lining the walls of the little shop, and ran her hand lovingly along the spines of different textures and colours, until she pulled one from its place and brought it down onto the floor and into her lap.

"Yeesh, if this is amazing, I'd love to see the look on your face if we went to the palace library. It's at least a hundred times the size of this place." Eugene kneeled beside her to see the title of the book she was reading – "The History of Corona: The Kingdom in the Lake".

"Hmm? Did you say something about the palace?" she'd been instantly and thoroughly absorbed in a chapter on the discovery of the island on which the kingdom now sat. The words of new, unfamiliar pages had leapt up and grabbed her mind away unbelievably quickly. Pascal sat on her shoulder, looking at the book as well, though probably was most engrossed by the pictures of flying butterflies rather than the words.

"Nah, don't worry about it. Just perusing your book." He stood up, and went to the shelf himself and pulled off another book, "Twenty Tales of Adventure", and began to leaf through it.

"Rapunzel, can I ask you something?" He said as he turned the pages, waiting for her to look up at him.

"Of course. What do you want to know?" She replied.

"While you were up in that tower, you obviously learned how to read, but didn't you ever get the urge to live the things you were reading about? Get away, have your own adventures? See the world?"

She went to answer him defensively, but then relented, and lowered her eyes to hide them behind a wayward strand of blonde hair. "Well, for most of my life I've only owned a few books. Three, to be exact." She looked up at him again, feeling a bit embarrassed.

"What? That's horrible, Blondie! That's – child abuse, that's what that is!"

"Shhh! You'll wake the shopkeeper, Eugene… I can explain. I did have more books when I was little." She closed her book and he swept up six different volumes at random and brought them down onto the floor, sitting across from her.

"I used to have lots of them, first picture books and fairytales that I learned from, and that Mother would read to me. She even brought me a whole set of books about animals that I would pore over for hours and hours," she grinned at them memory. But then, when I got a bit older, I started to ask her questions about the things I read. I was, well – me, and kept on asking her about where the animals were, why I only saw the odd one from the tower, and whether she would bring them to me, or me to them. Of course, Mother got angry with me and reminded me of all the dangers, yaddayaddayadda. The last straw was when I mentioned one book, "The Royal Zoo Gardens of Corona" and how badly I wanted to see it, and I asked how far away Corona was, and…that did it. She told me we could never go see it because it was full of vicious creatures that would eat me the second they saw me. She told me the scariest story I'd ever heard, and then sent me to bed with no supper. When I woke up, all but three of my books were gone, and she told me someone had snuck in and stolen them all, but even then I knew that she'd gotten rid of them."

Rapunzel sighed and stood, her eyes wandering the titles on the shelves. Pascal climbed on top of her head and patted it sadly with his front paw. He looked at Eugene over his shoulder and nodded, vehemently agreeing with her assumption of Mother's guilt.

Eugene joined Rapunzel and put his hand lightly on her shoulder and said, "we have a lot of catching up to do then, don't we?", and smiled assuredly. He reached up on the top shelf and grabbed the book that had caught his eye, none other than "The Royal Zoo Gardens of Corona". He passed it to her, and the shadow in her eyes was chased away as a light brighter than ever returned to them. She hugged the book close as if it were an old friend, and carried it over to the growing pile in the centre of the floor.

Eugene grinned with relief as he watched her, glad that the memories he'd stirred up had been tossed aside, at least for now. He was sure there were many more that would come to the surface eventually, but not today. He idly searched on the shelves for other titles he thought would interest Rapunzel. An excited gasp made him turn.

"Eugene! Look – I found some stories about Flynn Rider! Oh my goodness, this is what you read as a little boy, isn't it?" She cried, eyes wide and filled with discovery. Six or seven books were open in a circle around her, with pages flipped open at random. The "Twenty Tales of Adventure" book he'd added to her pile earlier was perched on her lap. Pascal narrowed his eyes, looking from the picture on the page to Eugene, trying to discern visual similarities.

Eugene ignored the chameleon and grinned at Rapunzel. It was impossible not to, even if she did say "Flynn Rider" a teensy bit too loud, what with the shop keeper in the back room. He perked an ear to make sure snores were still audible from behind the wall.

Assured by the steady low rumblings, he replied, "Yeah, that's the one. I thought you'd like that." He sat beside her and pulled the Atlas closer, with it's detailed maps of Corona and the surrounding lands. He flipped through the brightly coloured pages as she read about his namesake, not really reading what was before him as he waited for her thoughts on who he'd tried, and mostly failed, to shape himself to be.

"This is… extraordinary," she whispered, "I can see why you'd want to become him. All smooth and dashing and ridiculously rich." She turned to look more closely at his face, studying it while he squirmed and was feeling like a giant fraud with great hair. He opened his mouth to respond, but she beat him to it.

"But you're only a bit like him. Actually, hang on – you're not really like him at all," she said, and engaged in a team-effort nod with Pascal. Eugene's stomach dropped, and he felt himself – HIM, of all people – blush redder than a ripe apple.

"You're better." She finished, offering him a small smile as she blushed a bit herself, and lowering her eyes, suddenly became very interested in the Atlas.

Eugene regained about two-thirds of his deflated self-confidence and rebuilt the flames of his perpetual inner smoulder, and maybe gained a smidgeon of some other feelings. Maybe.

"Oh." Was all he could muster as a reply. They flipped through their books in companionable silence for a while. Rapunzel continued to go through the books one after another, as if they were a feast and she a starving person. It had been so long since new words were allowed to dance in her mind's eye.

She was onto a thick volume that had been layered with a few year's dust titled "Botanical Wonders of the World", when Eugene broke the silence.

"So… um, better how?" He asked, the combination of smugness and curiosity warring for their place in his voice and on his face. Rapunzel arched an eyebrow at him and smirked.

"Oh wouldn't you like to know?" She said, covering the smirk with the huge book.

"You mean you're not gonna tell me?"

"Nope."

"But… why not?" He put down his book.

"You'll figure it out one day. Probably." She flipped her page.

"Probably?"

"Maybe. I'm not telling you, if you don't already know."

"But… you know by now that I'm not big on that whole, 'self-evaluation' thing. Heck, everyone gave me a hard time at the Duckling for not even having a dream that was good enough. How am I supposed to figure out something like this?" He cried, hands out on either side in an exaggerated shrug.

Rapunzel looked up from her book. "I dunno. Maybe since you're channelling Eugene Fitzherbert now instead of Flynn Rider, you'll learn more about who you really are, and why you're more interesting than some gallivanting rich guy." Her head tilted back down to the tome that sat in her lap.

For a girl who spent her life locked in a tower, she sure can cut to the core of things, thought Eugene. What a maddening yet attractive quality, thought another part of his brain. Shut up brain! Replied the other part.

He scooted over beside her and peeked around the giant blonde braid at her face, with its brow furrowed in deep-reader concentration.

"So… I'm more interesting than him too, eh?" He drawled, waggling his eyebrows.

She rolled her eyes and sighed in exasperation, closing the book. It sent up a small cloud of dust, which caused a collective coughing fit which then erupted into giggles.

The sound of fiddles playing a lively reel began to float through the walls of the shop, perking Rapunzel's ear.

"Oh wow! Is that a violin? I've read about them but I've never actually heard one being played. They're so pretty!" She gasped, hurriedly closing the books all around her and standing to go peer out the windowpanes onto the cobbled square, craning on tip-toe for a view of the players.

"Haven't heard a violin? That's double child abuse! You deprived thing. We need to fix this right now." Eugene gathered up all the books and put them back on the shelf, roughly in the place they'd been grabbed from. Sort of.

"Really? Okay, let's go!" Said Rapunzel, eyes wide with glee, hands clasped in front of her. She spun around, heading for the door, and almost whacked him with her braid. Remembering something last minute, she ducked back into the shop, and leaned over the counter and called, "Thank you so much!" to the shopkeeper.

He started awake, spluttering, and replied "Oh, yes. Of course. You're very welcome child. Enjoy the festival."

Rapunzel dashed outside to join Eugene, sending the door bells into a pealing fury, and was already thoroughly enchanted by the sounds made by the musicians. The shopkeeper smiled to himself, and returned to his doze as the light from the late afternoon sun streamed soothingly in through the windows.

~The End~

These characters are far too adorable. I now have the urge to go rewatch the movie. Hopefully you do too :) But PLEASE, pretty please, review first! ;)