A/N: Written for the 2011 April Showers Drabblethon at the Day_by_Drabble LJ community.
Between Happily and Ever After
We all know how the fairytale goes, right? The handsome and charming young rogue tries to exploit the princess, but ends up falling in love with her, and she rescues him from his criminal past while he rescues her from her evil captor. The king and queen, grateful for their only child's return, invite the still handsome and charming young former rogue into their castle, where they all live happily ever after.
As it turns out, happily ever after doesn't feel quite like I imagined it would back when I was obsessed with the tales of Flynnagin Rider. In fact, sometimes it seems a lot more like happily never after.
For example, Rapunzel and I are walking through the castle one day, when suddenly she gasps and stops dead in her tracks, stumbling over the elaborate skirts and shoes she's not used to, and stares at her reflection in a full-length gilded mirror hanging beside a suit of armor or in the middle of a bunch of portraits of dead monarchs.
"Something stuck in your teeth?" I ask instinctively, immediately wishing my instincts weren't so flippant, because Rapunzel's clutching her lopped-off brown hair. So I tell her what any boyfriend would, that I think she's beautiful no matter what hairstyle she has, and she gives me a little smile and walks on.
After a few times through this song and dance, I get a clue that I've totally oversimplified Rapunzel's problem and ask what's really bugging her.
"Sometimes I don't know myself," she admits, sinking down on the grand marble staircase, drawing her knees up to her chest. "It's like the person I was for eighteen years is just…gone. Does that even make sense, Eugene?"
She looks up at me with those giant green eyes that make it impossible for me not to recognize that she's the same girl I came to and saw had tied me up with her hair and was determined to kill me with a frying pan. But I get it, I really get it. I sit down beside her and wrap my arms around her and kiss her hair that smells pretty and flowery and Rapunzely whether it's brown or blonde.
"When I hear people talking to Eugene," I say, "I don't realize right away they're talking to me."
"Do you want me to stop calling you Eugene? It never occurred to me you wouldn't want to be Eugene." She's so serious that I have to chuckle and kiss her hair again.
"No, Blondie, I do want to be Eugene."
She gives a little smile that says she still likes the nickname even though she's not blonde anymore.
"It's just that I've been Flynn for so long that I'm not sure who Eugene is."
"I guess it'll take time for us to get to know ourselves," Rapunzel says, brightening. "It takes time to get to know other people, doesn't it?"
If only she'd cut herself the same slack when it comes to her parents.
One night, she runs, crying, from the dinner table after accidentally calling the king and queen Dad and Your Highness, respectively, in the same sentence. Naturally, I follow her, catching up with her as she flings herself across her bed.
"Why is it so easy for me to accept the king as my father but I still can't call the queen Mother?" she cries into her pillow. "I mean, I look just like her, and she's so kind and so…so…motherly!"
I'm the very last person who should be giving advice about parent issues, but I take a stab at it, anyway.
"Because you've had a mother for eighteen years. Even though Gothel was a lying, kidnapping, manipulative, psychologically abusive hag, you loved her."
"I feel so stupid for loving her," says Rapunzel. She adds, more quietly, "And so ashamed..."
Her words trail away into sobs, and I hold her, waiting until her shoulders stop shaking and her hiccoughs subside before I speak.
"You have nothing to be ashamed of, Rapunzel. If either of us does, it's me."
"What do you mean?"
I roll onto my back, staring up at the gilt sunburst tray ceiling above her bed, and wonder where I learned terms like gilt, sunburst, and tray ceiling. From Günther, probably.
"Anyone who ever tried to keep me never did for long," I tell her. "It's hard for me to believe this will last…or to look at anything without calculating how much it's worth and whether it'll be missed when I take it on my way out."
Rapunzel snuggles up against my side, laying her hand on my chest. "I thought we were supposed to live happily ever after," she says, so very sadly.
But I don't comfort her immediately because suddenly it hits me-the problem with fairytales.
They never account for psychology. The narrative rolls right along toward wedding bells and horse-drawn carriages without once stopping to consider that the princess might have some pretty big lingering issues to deal with after years of captivity and broken trust and lost magical hair, or that the rogue, suddenly part of a family and literally handed everything he needs and wants on a silver platter, might not have it all together, either.
Neither of which, admittedly, make for a very satisfying end to a story.
On the other hand, who wants the story to end just when stuff's getting started? Don't people want to hear about how the princess and the rogue work through their emotional baggage? When you think about it, the most interesting part of the story is what happens between they all lived and happily ever after. There's a pause in there that the people who make up the fairytales ignore. Probably because their target audience is hyperactive kids under the age of ten.
But for all us adults out there…
I cover her hand with mine, closing my fingers tightly around hers. "We will, Blondie."
"When? How?"
"After we've lived happily one day at a time."