She was always there, he supposed, stuck in her dark tower. Sometimes he could see her, through the window pane, looking out on the world that she was above. The world she was barred from, the world she'd barred herself from. Sometimes all he saw when he looked up was the window, dark with nothing there.
Maybe on those days she'd just been too depressed to look out, maybe she was in that room feeling more trapped than ever. Or maybe she was just too busy with her life up there and all she had to do, to keep her status. Maybe she'd never really been there at all.
Sometimes he wished she'd look at him, really look at him, as a person maybe, as the prince he was, rather than just the boy who wandered around down there, where the other people were. The people who weren't like her. Sometimes he thought that maybe she was looking at him, with curiosity maybe, longing to get out maybe, but she couldn't. It would be impossible to come down after going up, or maybe the truth was she just didn't want to get out. Maybe she was too afraid to come down and see the rest of the world, apart from the corner of it that she ruled over, as queen.
He'd tried calling up to her once, to tell her to come down, that she could do it, and he'd be there waiting for her, but she couldn't hear him. Or maybe it just didn't matter to her. She had a life, friends. Maybe she really did like it. She was a queen after all and she was beautiful and perfect. Maybe she really didn't want him. Maybe the times when she'd stared wistfully down at him were all just his imagination.
There was the one time, though, the one he knew it was real. It had to be real. She'd come down the stairs and to the door, almost outside, almost where he could reach her. He'd watched her burst into tears there. He'd been there, standing just outside her realm, to tell her it was alright, that she didn't need to be the queen up there, in her tower. She'd been comforted, but she still wouldn't come out of the door. And he certainly couldn't come up there.
She'd went back up, after that. And she was fine, but as cold and aloof as she'd ever been. He supposed it was just how queens were. They didn't need anything, so they presumed that they didn't need anyone either. Maybe it was the truth. So she stayed in her tower, completely alone in that one room, surrounded by dozens of others. Them, the people up there. The ones who weren't like him.
It didn't really matter, he had his own business to attend to. He was a prince after all and he had a life, just as everyone else had a life. He'd run about on the grey stone streets, in the darker hallways, and the back alleys. She was just a girl in a tower, a queen in her land, the one who had it all, but had nothing. And he couldn't save her. Maybe she didn't want to be saved.
But sometimes, sometimes she'd look at out and see his world, and he would imagine she was marveling at it, marveling at him. And those were the moments he lived for.
I started this off with the image of a Rapunzel-like girl, but her tower was where everyone could see her, and somehow I got this. A double meaning fic. Weird, eh? Anyway, you know you want to review.