Disclaimer: Tangled belongs to Disney.

Author's Note: This story takes the mercenary, manipulative aspect of Eugene's character until he "turns it all around" and proposes an AU scenario in which it does win out. Their relationship has a dark edge in this story, so don't read if you think this might bother you.

Warnings (please read these first): Smut, dubcon, dark!Flynn, depiction of a messed up relationship, references to character deaths.

The Lighthouse

It's a cold, rainy night, and a dank chill fills the entire stone lighthouse. Rapunzel sits in the velvet-cushioned armchair that Flynn bought for her. Pascal curls up against her shoulder, turned a deep shade of blue, and gives her a look of sympathy. The privacy screen hides her from the customers, a desperate young mother and her sick infant. It's not for Rapunzel's safety; plenty of people would be able to identify her, the miracle healer. It's because she doesn't want to see them. She doesn't want to see the anguish and desperation in their faces, because if she did, if she could see them as individual people and put faces to their stories, she would hate what Flynn is doing even more than she already does.

So she doesn't think about them. Instead she closes her eyes and sings the familiar incantation in her beautiful soprano voice.

"Flower, gleam and glow... let your powers shine... make the clock reverse... bring back what once was mine."

Golden light radiates down her hair, which tumbles to the floor and winds around the screen to the young mother's lap, where her deathly ill baby rests.

"Heal what has been hurt... Change the Fates' design... save what has been lost... bring back what once was mine... what once was mine." The minor key of the final verse leaves its haunting tone in the air as Rapunzel stops singing and the light illuminating her hair fades away. She opens her eyes and takes a deep breath.

On the other side of the screen, there is an infant's healthy cry, and the young mother cries out in joy. Rapunzel smiles in spite of herself.

"Thank you so much," the young woman exclaims in a choked voice. "She saved him."

"That's what she does," Flynn says. Rapunzel can almost see the winning smile on his face, the smile that is so good at persuading people.

"How... how much do I owe you?" The woman's voice is now wobbly, hesitant. Miracles cannot come cheaply. Behind the screen, Rapunzel's smile vanishes.

"Just fifty gold coins," Flynn says. So matter-of-fact, but there's a certain something in his voice that Rapunzel recognizes. He's trying to persuade this woman that she's getting a really great deal. Rapunzel knows how good he is at persuasion.

There is a pause. This is a lot of money for the woman. Anger starts to boil up in Rapunzel, and she wants to leap out of the armchair, dash around the screen, and tell the woman that there is no charge. But she doesn't.

"That's my husband's entire income for last month," the woman mumbles. She pauses again. "But our son would have died without this. I can't put a price on his life." She must have opened her purse, because Rapunzel hears the clinking of money as she counts out the coins into Flynn's eager hands. Then she hears footsteps as the young mother leaves the room. The door opens and closes. More footsteps. She's walking down the central staircase in the lighthouse. Rapunzel can't bring herself to get out of the chair yet, but she hears Flynn shuffling around, and out the single window on this side of the room, she sees the beacon of light at the top of the tower vanish. There will be no more customers this night.

She stands up and takes a deep breath before emerging around the screen to face him, this person for whom she has such conflicted feelings. Not Eugene. She can't think of him as Eugene anymore. Crushed for years, Eugene made a last valiant appearance that one time in the cave, but at some point over the next two days, he disappeared again and hasn't been seen since. She treasures the memories of her birthday and the sweet, unselfish young man whom she fell in love with that day. She doesn't want to associate his name with this person who took her away in the dead of night and now sells her powers.

There's just one problem. She resents how he uses her hair to enrich himself, but there's something else there too. She can't separate Eugene and Flynn enough to love the one and despise the other. She knows deep down that sequestering her memories of him from her birthday, figuratively embossing them with a coating of silver, and sticking his birth name on the package is just a mind trick, a way to avoid facing the more complex feelings that she has now. She castigates herself for having those feelings, but she can't help it. And he knows it.

He grins at her. "Excellent night," he remarks, opening the door to the niche in the wall that used to store gunpowder and weapons and now hides the bags of money that he has accumulated from selling her healing powers.

She glares back. "You shouldn't have charged the last one so much."

He quirks a brow. "She had the money. Besides, if you start giving anyone special treatment, word will get around and everyone will demand a discount. Then some people will complain that it's still too much. People are always trying to get something for nothing. Believe me, I know from personal experience," he says with a dark smile. "If it keeps up, you'll be healing everyone who shows up for free. Is that what you want?"

She doesn't know how to respond. No, that is not what she wants... she would never have any freedom if she offered her magic at no cost to anyone who dropped by, and she knows it... but it seems like a justification for charging people whatever he likes.

He smirks at her silence and strides over, leaning in, brushing away a stray lock of hair from her face. "See you in bed, Blondie." He wags an eyebrow.

She seethes in irritation. Why couldn't she think of a response? There must be a good comeback to this sort of argument, if only she could think of it. She watches as he leaves the room. When he opens the door, he turns around quizzically to look at her again, wondering why she isn't coming out. She sighs, gently sets Pascal down on the windowsill, and emerges into the stone hallway, following Flynn up to their bedroom. Pascal looks back at her plaintively.

"It's all right, Pascal," she says gently. The chameleon gives her a skeptical look before scurrying away into a pile of dirty laundry, out of sight. Rapunzel feels bad about it for a moment but decides it's just as well.

Flynn is waiting in the stone corridor, an eager expression on his face as she emerges. He swoops down the few stairs that separate them and lifts her up bridal-style in his arms. Her tresses sail fluidly through the air and settle into a soft ripple down the stairs, the magic keeping the hair silky, smooth, and unnaturally lightweight. He leans over and plants a firm kiss on her mouth, and her heart leaps in her chest. It always does when he does things like this. She suddenly feels miles away from her irritation with him, and yet, there's a sense of it being another person who is acting now. It's like she is split into two people—one that seethes with anger when Flynn uses her magic to make money, and one that can't get enough of him. Right now the second one is in control of her body. She wraps her arms around his neck, clinging to him. He smiles in satisfaction and carries her upstairs.

The lighthouse is in a remote, desolate area, which is a good thing for them. Otherwise people would hear her scream for him. It's embarrassing enough to her that he has this effect on her in spite of everything, but she can't help herself. He can bring her out here, sell her magic, overcharge people, take over the money, and she still wants him.

Afterward, she lies curled up against his sleeping form, thinking about how much easier this would be if one "person" in her mind would just win the day and eliminate its competition and thereby her conflict. On the other hand, she supposes, nothing about this relationship was ever easy or simple.

She glances toward the bookcase in their darkened bedroom. Books that he bought fill the shelves. They both like to read, and she recalls that he always takes her with him to bookstores. She wonders briefly if he merely buys her nice things, things she likes, to manipulate her into staying. He has to know that all she has to do is take a pair of scissors to her blonde locks and there will be nothing he can do about it.

And yet, if she did that, she isn't sure if he would still want her around. If she did it as an act of spite or vengeance against him, that would surely end their relationship. The intent behind the hypothetical shearing would mean far more than the deed itself, and they both know very well that she has no one else.

He's awfully good at manipulating the situation so that she has no choice but to turn to him, she thinks bitterly. She remembers how she trusted him that birthday night.

Trusted him with her safety. With her very life. And, yes, with her heart.

The last lanterns fade out. The show is over. He rows back to the kingdom, a winning, handsome smile on his face, and hands the crown over to Maximus.

"You know what to do with this," he tells the horse, who looks flabbergasted, but quickly takes the crown in his mouth to return it to its rightful owners.

She trusts him enough to curl up against him, lay her head down in his lap, and nod off to sleep, lulled into dreamland by the rocking of the boat in the gentle waves and the serene joy in the idea that she, the girl who had never set foot outside her tower, had managed to reform the kingdom's most wanted thief in a day and a half.

She trusts him the next morning when she discovers that the boat has been docked at an abandoned lighthouse with no other signs of civilization around. The kingdom isn't anywhere in sight, and she has no idea where they are or how far they have rowed or how to get back home—but she trusts him still because of what he tells her they have escaped.

"The redheads we saw at the dam followed us. I overheard them on the opposite shore," he says. "It sounded like they were in a fight with a woman over something she had promised them that went wrong. I don't think she got away."

There's something evasive in his words, but she doesn't immediately pick up on it. She's too shaken by what he has said, and she's so thankful to him for getting her away from danger that she doesn't worry about the fact that she has no clue where they are in relation to her home, or even to the island kingdom. She doesn't let it occur to her that she is completely dependent on him unless she wants to stalk off into the woods with no idea where she's going. She certainly doesn't question whether he might have taken her away on purpose, knowing that she would be at his mercy. She has definitely questioned that a lot since then, but she doesn't have it cross her mind at the time.

"So I had to take you far away from them," he says. "This lighthouse is an old hideout of mine that they don't know about."

She still trusts him, even though Pascal is giving him evil looks and the lighthouse is another tower.

Later that evening, when she proposes returning to her home because she thinks her mother must be on the way back, the truth comes out. The redheads. The woman. The substance of the argument he overheard. The specific promise she had made them. The crown.

The girl with magic hair who could heal people.

Rapunzel starts crying. "My mother," she whispers. She begins to shake. Pascal curls up against her and turns blue to signify that he is sad for her too, but it's not quite enough.

Flynn wraps her in his arms. She clings to him as if her life depends on it, shaking tremulously and sobbing into his shoulder. She still trusts him throughout that night. He sleeps next to her, holding her gently.

The next day he tells her about his plan. He says, in what seems to be a logical argument, that they have two choices: He can return to thievery or she can use her magic. It seems reasonable on its face, but there's a very calculated tone to his words.

As it sinks in, she feels the lighthouse closing in around her. She can't run off. She has no idea where this place is, and it occurs to her that he must realize this. She tests the idea, saying that she is worried about revealing her powers and that she can just head for the kingdom and take her chances there. He asks her smugly if she knows how to get there. Hurriedly, apparently aware that he's said too much, he then promises to keep her safe if she does offer her abilities to the public. He would never let anything happen to her.

The look in his deep brown eyes is awfully sincere, and the words cry out to her, Believe me, believe me. She does. For all her misgivings that she has later, she never doubts that he will protect her.

He wants her that night, and she soon recognizes that as long as he's not knocked out with cookware or held under duress, Flynn generally does get what he wants. He doesn't need the "smolder," just his looks and voice. Lying on her back that night, her chest heaving and her body sweaty, desires that she didn't even know she had now sated, she realizes exactly why he was so self-assured the day that he climbed into her tower. She also realizes that he's got her.

One day, a white horse staggers up to the lighthouse. His coat is covered in burrs, and his mane and tail are scraggly and dirty, but Rapunzel, Flynn, and Pascal would recognize him anywhere.

"What are you doing here, Maximus?" she exclaims, dashing outside to tend to the horse. He gives her a doleful look, shaking his head. She doesn't understand and regrets that he cannot speak. Something must have happened, though. She cannot think of any other reason why the law-abiding horse would have abandoned his kingdom to track them down through the woods.

She takes out a length of hair and places it on his shank. He may have been hurt in the journey from the kingdom to this place. She sings the song. While the burrs remain stuck in his hair, the mane and tail become fuller and healthier, looking just as they did when the horse was one of their little party of four.

Maximus stays with them, dutifully guarding the lighthouse, a lone sentry when its occupants are asleep. He eats feed and apples and drinks from the trough that they set out for him. He lets Rapunzel ride him happily. He doesn't disappear only to return with a regiment of guards. He doesn't even get into tussles with Flynn. They don't know what to make of any of it until one evening when a customer from the island kingdom shows up bearing a mangled, infected, blood-soaked arm—and news. There was an invasion from another little state whose leaders didn't approve of the predominant religious denomination of Corona. There's a lot of that in Europe these days, it seems.

Rapunzel doesn't want to hear his story. She doesn't want to think about the happy, carefree little island kingdom being torn by war. She wants this man out of the lighthouse as soon as possible, so she sings the healing incantation from behind her privacy screen where the man cannot see her.

"Were you a guard?" Flynn asks him, uncoiling her hair from the now clean and unwounded arm.

"No," he says. "Civilian. But everyone had to get out there and fight the invaders once the king and queen fell."

"The king and queen were killed?" Flynn says in surprise.

"Yes," the customer says sadly. "But Corona still belongs to its own people. We drove them out and now we have a town council, since the lost princess was never found." His tone takes on a note of pride amidst the sadness.

The man leaves shortly afterward. Rapunzel quickly leaves the room to look for her purple-and-gold flag, the flag of the sun kingdom. She finds it in the bedroom. Taking it out of its trunk, she leans back on her bed and holds the flag up, remembering the day that he bought it for her. It's so sad to think of the marketplace, where she danced and painted and had her hair braided, as a battlefield. She wonders how many of the people that she met on her birthday are now dead.

As she gazes at the sun emblem, another image floods her mind: the image of a toy above her face. Blurry people in the background. Then the faces morph into another memory, the mural that she saw on her birthday of the king and queen and... their blonde-haired, green-eyed infant daughter.

Her.

She leaps off the bed and dashes down the stone staircase of the lighthouse. Flynn is on the way out of the parlor, apparently looking for her, but she continues to the bottom. Her face is red, her lungs heaving. She unbolts the heavy door and flings it open, dashing outside. In the labyrinth of rocks and scrubby trees protecting the entrance to the lighthouse, she finds a secluded spot and sinks down on a smooth stone that looks almost as if it were formed to be a seat. She puts her head in her hands. Tears fall from her face.

She doesn't cry for the loss of her real parents. She never knew them and can't mourn them as individuals. She cries over the knowledge that they died without knowing that their daughter was still alive. She cries over the life that she can't have now. Maybe she could return and claim her title, but then what? The little nation has moved on and elected some of its own to rule... and what would she know about ruling a country, anyway?

She realizes that she is crying over something else too. In a deep, irrational part of her, she had the idea that they could both go back and he would again become the person from her birthday. Now she has to accept that this was a creation of her own selective memories. A partial person. It's the whole person that she actually has.

A sob wracks her body. She had assumed, of course, that she had no one but Flynn after she learned of Mother Gothel's death, but now she definitely has no one but him. Her abilities are well-known around here, and if she left him and suddenly had to fend for herself, she knows it could easily turn out very badly. Even if she cut her hair, people might think she still had some healing powers left—and he wouldn't be there to protect her. The fact that she needs his protection infuriates her, since he got her into this situation in the first place. Now she knows that she could have cut her hair and gone to live in the castle, if only she had worked it out in time... if only...

He finds her after a few minutes and sits down next to her. "What's wrong?" he says.

She lifts a tear-stained face to his. "I'm the lost princess."

He blinks. He stares at her for a moment and then blinks again. His sharp mind seems to be working it out, checking over the facts himself. His face changes as it all fits together for him too, and he seems to be struck dumb. Then he leans over and embraces her tightly.

She is stunned. "What are you doing?"

"You would've been killed if you'd been there," he says in a husky, trembling voice. He buries his head in her shoulder, closing his eyes as if to block out the thought itself, and squeezes her tightly. His body shakes.

Curse it, she thinks. That's true too. Does fate itself favor him?

She finally does it. After the last customer leaves the lighthouse, she confronts Flynn. She says that he uses her vulnerability to keep her in the lighthouse with him where he can make money off her hair and emotionally manipulate her into bed.

He says that he doesn't do anything of the kind, that she just says that to make herself feel better about her own desires. That if she wanted to leave, he's not stopping her. That after months of living here and numerous trips to the local markets, she knows where the lighthouse is located now and could find her way to Corona if she really wanted to leave, but that she chooses to stay.

The assertion infuriates her, not least because she can't argue with it. What he has said is true. It's quite a distance away, but she does know where the island is in relation to this lighthouse. So she stands there clenching her fists and sputtering in outrage.

He laughs at her silence and stalks off arrogantly, saying that if she means what she says, then all she has to do is tell him to back off tonight, but he'll see what actually happens.

That's what she'll do, then, she thinks wrathfully as she storms into the bathroom and pours hot water from the pot over the bathroom fireplace into the washtub. She scrubs herself raw in the bath and swears that this night, this night, will be the one when she tells him no. When she tells him to sleep on the couch and backs it up with a threat to cut her hair and cut off his stream of income. When she calls his bluff.

She dresses in her long nightgown and walks from the bath to the bedroom. She stops short when she sees that he is already there, sprawled out on the mattress, waiting for her to show up. Her resolve weakens as he wags an eyebrow at her and grins, making the same expression he did on the day they met. That day, he was tied up in a chair with her hair. Now she feels that she is the one bound by the blonde locks.

"Hey, Blondie," he says seductively.

She musters all her remaining resistance and glares back out at him. "Get off my bed," she manages to snarl.

"Your bed?" he asks with a raised eyebrow.

"My bed," she says. "It was paid for with money I earned."

He gapes for a second and then starts laughing. "So," he says through chuckles, "so, you've decided to own it now?"

"Own what?" she sneers.

"The usefulness of your hair," he says, grinning ear to ear. "Or more specifically, turning a profit with it."

She stands there flabbergasted as the implications of his remark hit her. She feels hot embarrassment creeping over her. One side of his mouth curls upward in an arrogant smirk. He stands up, strides across the room, and places his hands on her shoulders, peering down at her with that smile still on his face. She doesn't move.

His right hand moves off her shoulder, sliding down her back and locking around her hip. "However, the reason we have this bed is because I made the proposition."

She becomes aware of his hand gripping her hip tightly and tries to twist away, but his grip is too strong or her movement is too feeble.

"So it's my bed too, sweetheart."

His voice has now turned into a desire-filled growl, and the word is not exactly a term of endearment the way he says it, but a statement of possession. She puts her hands against his chest to try to push away from him, but it's halfhearted and he knows it. Of course he does. He always knows when she is wavering.

He lifts her off her feet. The room shifts as he drops her down on the bed and half falls, half captures her on the mattress. His hands press against the bed on either side of her, forming a cage. She can't move out from under him even if she wanted to—though she won't admit that she doesn't want to. His hands find their way under her nightgown immediately. She is furious with him, but she's even more furious with herself, so she grabs his face with her hands and pulls him down. They bite at each other's lips, perhaps with more gusto in her case than is really necessary, but she has to channel her anger somehow. She wants to make him pay.

"So you want to play rough?" he growls when she rakes her teeth over his lower lip, leaving it red. A look of resolve comes over his face, and his eyes darken. With a forceful yank of his arm, he pulls her nightgown down her body and tosses it aside. She gasps in simulated outrage, but her heart is pounding so hard that he is bound to feel the pulse. He smirks and rips away her drawers, leaving her completely naked. He leans in, kissing her mouth hard and rough, while he slides a single finger between her legs. A satisfied smirk fills his handsome face at what he finds there. He unbuckles his doublet and tosses it aside with his shirt.

A reckless part of her wants to say something cruel and cutting to him, but she can't make herself do it. "You make me so mad sometimes," she snarls instead.

He slides down his pants. "Why, because I'm right that you can't resist me?"

She glares back at him for a fraction of a second before he enters her. She gives a gasp. He begins to move in her.

Rapunzel's fists grip the sheets until her knuckles turn white, in sharp contrast to the flushing of most of her body. Her breaths come quickly and deeply, their pace growing increasingly faster, rising to a crescendo. Above her, he grips her shoulders fiercely, pushing her into the mattress, sweat pouring down his rippling muscles as he fills her over and over again. Sweat quickly dampens the lock of hair that falls roguishly across the side of his head.

She feels it coming and involuntarily releases her tight grip on the sheets, moving her hands to his back and digging her fingernails into him. He winces, gasps, and in a fluid motion, releases her shoulders to pin her arms above her head, holding her wrists with one hand. The other one moves to her hip. She wraps her legs tightly around his waist and lets out a little cry.

A gasp of breath escapes him. He makes a powerful thrust. She contracts her muscles around his length, squeezing him tightly, and throws her head back against her pillow, surrendering as the wave of intense pleasure breaks over her, feeling as if she has been taken out of her own body. At some point she hears him give a broken cry.

"Mine," he whispers raggedly as he has his release. At this single word, a little flare-up of pleasure ripples over her body against her will, but that only makes a part of her angry once more that he can reduce her to this. He apparently feels her little shudder, for he smirks at her as it passes. Now he knows how she reacts to being claimed by him.

They collapse in a boneless heap. His chest heaves against her bosom. He releases her hands and runs his own up and down her sides, leaning over to kiss her forehead. She feels his hot breath against her head as he does. Suddenly she realizes that he seems weak, even vulnerable. He's shaking.

"I love you so much. Don't ever doubt that, please," he gasps, taking his hands away from her sides to caress her cheeks. Despite the heat and anger from before, his words sound sincere.

Rapunzel's thoughts, always turbulent, become a veritable hurricane as the words sink in. If he kept her shut up in the lighthouse and forced her to use her powers to make money for him, it would be easy to despise him. But he doesn't make her stay indoors, and in fact, he takes her with him whenever she wants to go along. He gets nice things for her. He doesn't betray her to thugs. He protects her and keeps anyone from harming her. She could perhaps convince herself that it was only because of her hair—if not for moments like this.

Something changes that night. She realizes what she has known all along inside.

He looks down at her, wide-eyed. "Rapunzel...?" He trails off, but they both know what he's asking.

She takes a deep, if shaky, breath. She looks up at him and meets his gaze. It's intense. Burning. Desperate. He needs to know.

He needs something.

Silently, she nods.