AN: Wow, it's been a while since I've visited the Tangled section of Fanfiction. However, with Mother's Day tomorrow, I thought I would write this and post it, because even though it's been a long time, Tangled is still one of my favorites to read and write for. I hope you all like this, despite it coming out darker then I first intended. :)
Disclaimer: I do not own Tangled. Disney does.
Occasionally, sometimes, when the weather was nice and her duties could be placed on another's shoulders for a hour or two, she would go there, go back to the tower where she had spent her first eighteen years.
Of course, she never went alone, for even the Queen had enemies amongst her people, a few who had felt wronged at one point or another by something they claimed was her fault. So, in an attempt to prevent any attempts on her life, the number of which had grown for some reason in the recent years, she always took at least six guards with her, all of whom were outfitted with the very best swords and frying pans in the country. They were unnecessary, as far as she was concerned, for Eugene and Max always insisted on accompanying her, but it was them who also wanted the protection, so she continued to oblige them and accept it.
However, standing before the door that would lead her inside, the wood rotted and soft beneath her insistent fingers, it was almost like she was. There was an understanding between her and her escort, an unspoken knowledge that any who disturbed the brief moments of peace she needed here would be harshly punished that was well ingrained into their minds. It was with that that she only allowed them a cursory inspection of the surrounding grounds, a precaution she knew was unneeded, for just entering the glade gave her the sense of abandonment that had haunted the place for years. No one except her and, occasionally, Eugene, had entered the tower in years. No one had dared.
Even her most enthusiastic enemies weren't fools enough to enter the Witch's Tower and risk facing her, both the Queens' and the spirits' that was said to haunt it, wrath.
Nothing had changed.
Climbing the moss-covered stairs, her hand brushing against the wall to help her keep her balance, Rapunzel knew exactly what she would find. A pile of chains, rusted now from time, in a pile at the bottom of the main pillar that had kept her home upward. Scattered shards of glass, one of which was still stained with her husband's blood from when he had cut his palm grabbing it. A basket of dried and wilted flowers, their pinks and purples now browns and greys that would crumble at her touch. A mural over the fireplace that had once been painted by a young, optimistic young girl who knew nothing about how the world really worked, a picture depicting her then greatest dream. And most importantly, a long, tangled mess of dead hair that coiled around the floor, an everlasting reminder of the prison the tower had once been.
Pushing aside the stone that blocked the entrance to the stairs, Rapunzel already knew exactly what she would see, knew that her memories of the place would still be clear and true in comparison to what her eyes recorded each time she visited. Perhaps it was a bit dustier then she remembered, perhaps a few more beams of light shone through the cracks in the walls where time and weather were starting to take their toll, but overall, the scene was untouched, as if it still expected the players that had once graced its stage to return, to finish out the scene that still felt unfinished, despite the finality of the events that had occurred that day.
Sometimes, she wondered if they were still happening, those memories that sometimes blinded her with their vividness, if everything her life had been for the last couple of years was nothing more than wishful thinking that would soon melt away to show her that horrid, familiar face that still inhabited her nightmares. She wondered if this life was really a dream lived out in a second, and the moment she blinks her eyes, she would find that the choices were there for her to make once more, choices that she knew, whatever lifetime they were made in, would always be the same.
She could be given the choice a thousand times, and still Rapunzel would choose to save Eugene and let her mother die.
She knew this, and yet, at moments like these, when she brushed aside the tattered curtain that had separated their rooms from the rest of the house, Rapunzel wasn't so sure. She had long ago come to terms with the fact that Gothel had only loved her for her hair, had only cared about her for the eternal life and youth she promised, but always, deep within her heart, there was a part of her that had refused to believe it.
Had refused to believe that the former Queen was her mother, had refused to believe that she was the princess, and that had refused to believe that she had been nothing more then an object to possess to the woman who had single-handedly raised her for eighteen years.
She had thousands of logical explanations to explain Gothel's behavior in their last few hours together, hundreds of reasons and past experiences to counteract the few flawed, shaky facts that she had obtained, and they had been what had allowed that one little piece of her mind to survive. It had kept her from ever truly accepting the former Queen as her mother, though the title fell easily from her lips within a year of moving into the castle. There had always been a slight seed of doubt, a small part of her that had wondered whether or not she really was the princess, if she was just cuckoo bird in another's nest because the sparrows that lived there were too tired of mourning for their own lost chick.
A thousand people had dismissed her worried, and she herself had never spoken of them beyond that first, initial day, for if it had turned out that she had been right and they all had been wrong, it would have broken everyone's heart, including her own.
Ducking under the second curtain that stood in her way, quickly hurrying past the room and bed that had once been but that was no longer hers, Rapunzel soon found herself standing just outside the one room of the house she had never been in. She had explored everywhere else during the many times she had come here, from the attic to the underground cellar, places she had never been allowed to visit when it had been her home, but never once had she stepped into the room before her. Never once had she had the courage to. It had been the ultimate in forbidden rooms, so much so that she was sure, even with her magical powers that had so far, even with the source of them gone, had kept her from dying the few times an assassination attempt had almost succeeded, she would never have survived the attempt. It was the only room she had never seen but yet knew everything about, and it was the last place she needed to enter before she could reconcile with her past and finally move on.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Rapunzel pushed aside the thick, decaying curtain and entered Gothel's room.
In all honesty, it was as if someone had punched her in the stomach.
Everywhere she looked, little reminders of the woman jumped out at her, searing themselves into her mind now when once before they had just been insignificant details of her. On the dresser was the string of leather that she had always used to tide back her hair whenever she cooked, keeping the long, curling strands free from their food and out of her eyes so she could see. On the small table next to her bed was a necklace she had occasionally worn, a simple gold chain that had fallen close to the hollow of her neck, beautiful in the very fact that it existed and sparkled whenever she turned her head a certain way towards the sun. On her desk was a half-sewed pouch and a pile of partially crushed rosebuds, the exact shade of which Rapunzel knew would have made the perfect pink she had needed all those years ago, a white so lightly tinged with red that it was almost non-existent, a shade that, no matter how hard she had tried, Rapunzel had never been able to make on her own with the paint she had already had.
And right there, hanging on the wall across from the bed, positioned so that it would easily be the first thing someone saw when they first opened their eyes each morning, was the only picture Rapunzel had ever painted on canvas: a family portrait of her and Gothel.
Rapunzel had never mourned the loss of Gothel, for from the moment she had left the tower with Eugene for the second time, her life had been nothing more than one event that had needed her attention after the other. The few times she had thought of the woman, her memories had always been tainted, each and every smile overshadowed by the paralyzing glare she had once been given, every kind word drowned out by her scream as she fell to her death, every tender hug poisoned by the way she had always given special attention to her hair instead of she herself. Because of that, Rapunzel had done her best to block all thoughts of the woman, only allowing herself a few moments to remember each time she can to the tower she had been raised in. Otherwise, it was almost as if Gothel had never existed at all.
Sinking down onto the woman's bed, ignoring the cloud of dust that threatened to choke her, Rapunzel, finally, exactly five years after she had died, allowed herself to cry for the mother she had so loved and lost.