A/N: Well, that's my first Tangled fanfiction EVER! I'm so glad I wrote this, because it was so fun for me! Although I know that my English sucks (correct me, okay?). Anyway, I hope you'll like it, because I'm going to write next chapters.

© Tangled belongs to Disney

PROLOGUE

Tight alleys were seething with people. Peddlers were ripping out their throats, raving prices like they were proposing devout chants; two not so young men were furiously arguing for the last cod, for what, it could seem, depended their whole future; some guardsman was chasing a little boy, who had stolen an apple from nearby stall and just put it to his mouth by his dirty hand; hands of clock of town hall tower were laboriously climbing up to finally chime noon.

Uproar was thundering, but some old woman named Gothel didn't care about that at all. She was slowly strolling down between stalls, rubbing shoulders with passers-by and squinting eyes in the sunlight.

She tried to remember all those things as best as she could, so later she'd be able to reconstruct every single detail of this town in her memory; every breach in the wall and every split in cobblestone.

She was implicating into her lungs the sweet smell of new baked bread, which hadn't fixed with the stench of dirty streets yet, and gloating over the scent of multicolored flowers upped for sale. She touched every tree by her wry hand and was carefully observing every coach, which was passing by.

For the last time... For the last time she was in this town, for the last time she was passing by the cobbler's facility, where she earned her first Thaler, for the last time she was peering into dead end, where she knew the sweet taste of love for the first time.

She was nearly ninety and she knew that the end was inescapable, and probably not so yonder as she's always thought.

For years she'd been feeling the frigid breath of Death on her nape, Death was receding and then coming closer, delivering Gothel to insanity.

How much she willed everything to finally end! If she could have left this vale of tears by now, not worrying about anything nor wondering whether she would see the next sundown...

That morning, when she opened her eyes, she felt that this day had already come. She was about to set her free from her all earthly frets and finally feel peace. 'But before it'll come, I have one thing to do yet,' she thought and, not giving a fig for her achy legs and increasingly wheezy breath, she covered herself by the overcoat and set off to the town. To say goodbye.

When she reached to the door of the old inn, where she was stolen one day, bad memories haunted her and she couldn't dispense them in anyway, and she decided it was time to go back.

She went through the square at a dizzying pace and almost ran through the alleys, which she had been going along for several hours the previous time.

As much, as she wanted to recall her memories from the best part of her life, without any fear just a while ago, now she didn't desire anything but only to run away from them.

She was breathing hard, but she didn't stop going until the green expanse of forest appeared before her eyes.

She peeped at the sky, which changed its color from azure to coral and was about to descend to navy, and she went deeper to the damp green bushes.

She had no idea where she was going, and in an inexplicable way her old feet led her to a small glade, where there were lying few mossy tree trunks cut down by the storm.

'Well then,' thought Gothel, 'all right, I'll die in the forest.'

So she sat at one of tree trunks, deciding to wait for her old companion, who wasn't about to come. Instead of her the evening came, slowly covering all the trees with a murky curtain and making that place - which had seemed to be so nice before - look demonic.

Gothel shuddered, hearing an owl's call just above her ear. When a bat floated over her head, touching a strip of her gray hair, she jumped up. And then she saw it.

She could have sworn it wasn't there before, but now she had it just before her eyes and there was nothing she was so certain of as the fact that it was real.

She was staring at it for a brief moment, and then she bowled over her knees and reached to it. Then she noticed that it wasn't just yellow - it was gold. And when she ran along its petals by her shivering hand, she realized that it wasn't just gold, also: that flower was simply glowing. The color of its light on the top petals was amber-orange on the bottom. She's never seen a flower which even the slightest resembled this one. She was looking around all corners of her mind - there were no results; she couldn't manage that before.

It reminded her of the light... But not weak light of stars, which had just started to appearing in the sky... That flower was like sunlight. But maybe it was exactly that? Light sent to her from the heavens?

She greedily hid it in her hands and she was about to pick it, when the words of an incantation - a song she hasn't heard in her entire lifetime, but she knew so well, dropped out from her mouth...

Flower, gleam and glow

Let your Power shine.

Make the clock reverse,

Bring back what once was mine,

What once was mine...

When she started, the petals opened and the flower began to glowing even more, filling the whole glade with a garish radiance. Gothel felt as if the flower's warmth was filling her along with blissful peace.

She opened her eyes and froze. What she saw was so unusual, but also so frightening, that she could hardly stop herself from screaming. She didn't do that only because she didn't want to entice to the glade any people, who would want to posses the magic flower. She covered her mouth with her hand and observed in disbelief, how her body was changing, smoothing out and slowly, slowly becoming younger and younger. She had hands as soft as a young girl again. Wrinkles and furrows decorating her face and neck in so many places had suddenly disappeared, and her hair turned raven, as long ago. When she saw her reflection in the small lake nearby, she couldn't believe that it was her. Old Gothel had disappeared without a trace and in her place appeared a young woman full of vitality, just over thirty, with a sensual, velvety voice and impressive shapes, in whose tanned face still reflected remains of former beauty.

"Thank you," she whispered, looking at the flower and feeling tears swelling in her eyes. They were about to go downhill onto her cheeks. Florid, smooth cheeks.

She realized that death wasn't the only solution to her problems.