3. we think by feeling

"Can't you just catch them with your hands?"

"Stop talking," Flynn said.

"You can eat the berries if you're hungry," Rapunzel said. "If you'd like, I can show you which ones. My botany text had lots of illustrations to tell you which ones are edible."

"You know what doesn't need instructions or illustrations?" Flynn said. "A fish. Wriggling on a hook. The hooks that are in my satchel."

"I said I was sorry—"

"Show your remorse by not talking."

Unhappy, Rapunzel pressed her lips together. "Berries," Flynn said. "If you really want to help, go rope up a fish with that hair. Though who knows, maybe you won't need it. Maybe you can talk at them until they jump up on the bank and end it all themselves."

Rapunzel jerked, appalled. "I'm not catching and… killing animals with my hair."

"I didn't see these moral qualms when you used your hair to catch me."

"I didn't do it to kill you!"

"We'll see," Flynn muttered, staring ahead with a very resigned expression on her face.

Rapunzel waited a minute, then said tentatively, "You know, if you wanted to, you could eat—"

"Stop. Talking."

"This'll go easier if you hold still."

"I am," Rapunzel said. She tried to hold her breath, remembered it might be better to breathe, and ended up exhaling sharply when Flynn's fingers pinched her skin again. "Ow."

"If you'd just let me make you some shoes—"

"I wouldn't know what to do with them."

"You put them on your feet. And then you don't get splinters. It's one of those preventative things."

Rapunzel gasped again when Flynn dug into her skin with fresh vigor. Flynn's gaze took the briefest of detours, flickering up to hers and then back down to the task at hand. "You know," Flynn continued conversationally, "in all the old tales, bare feet represented innocence. All the pure, beautiful maidens never wore shoes. It was said to disrupt their connection to the earth."

"Really?" She was breathing too quickly. She swallowed, latching on to the casual tone, fighting the urge to take her foot away and let down her hair and heal it herself, the way she'd healed the splinters she'd gotten as a child. Instead she endured it, foot hopping a little in Flynn's grip as Flynn increased the pressure. "You think I'm a beautiful maiden?"

"I think you're a giant pain in my ass," Flynn said, and with a final pinch worked the splinter out, making Rapunzel yelp. "Now stop talking."

.

"Why do you keep sneezing?"

"I'm not sneezing.'Rapunzel' is my name. Not 'Blondie'."

"It sounds like the noise old Bergam makes when he's coughing up breakfast. What the hell does it even mean, anyway?"

Rapunzel paused, hoping she wasn't as impressionable as Mother had always told her she was. She'd already have to bathe to remove the smell of the wilds before Mother returned. Accidentally absorbing the local vernacular... that'd be a little harder to rinse away. "Mother told me it's an herb from her country. She said when she was young she used to eat it every day – put it in stews and stuff, you know."

"Never heard of it."

"I think it goes by other names, too? It grows purple flowers in the summer."

"A purple flowered herb? What, like… wait, you mean rampion? The salad herb?"

"That's it!" Rapunzel was pleased, mostly because Flynn wasn't telling her to shut up. "So you see, it's a name. And you should call me by it, Flynnigan Rider."

Flynn grunted. "S'too hard to say."

"So is Flynnigan. So maybe I should call you 'Meanie' instead and see how you like it."

"As much as that would break my heart in twain and so on," Flynn said, "it wouldn't be the worst thing I was ever called."

Rapunzel took a steadying breath, determined to bring civility back into the conversation. "Anyway, I told you what my name meant. What kind of a flower is a Flynnigan?"

"The kind that's hungry enough to eat its own arm, and then your frog for dessert." Flynn abruptly veered down the left fork of the path, into the sunlight. Peering down the path a ways, Rapunzel could finally see what Flynn saw: a building with a sign out front emblazoned with the words Snuggly Duckling, leaning forward as though it were bracing itself against the wind. "Now shut up and follow me before I decide to flavor both of them with rampion."

… well, she did like ducklings.

"Oh, come on," Flynn said two minutes later, somewhere down on the ground. "Can't your freakout wait until after we've eaten?"

"Go away." Pascal sat on the branch above her, seemingly torn between protecting her and casing the insects crawling on the bark.

Flynn's voice came again through the green. "Blondie, come on. It was just a joke."

She turned her face into the bark to hide, even though she knew Flynn couldn't see her. "You can't stay up there forever," Flynn said.

Go away. She also thought, yes I can. Mother always complained about how stubborn she was. She could, because down below was smoke and giant hands and face hair and creatures lifting her hair from her neck and breathing on the skin and, and, but there was also the lights and the city and she pressed her face closer to the trunk and started to cry. "Oh, shit," Flynn said.

"Go away," she sobbed.

The tree shook. Rapunzel made herself smaller, hoping the leaves would hide her, but Flynn appeared a few seconds later, scratched and sweating, twigs in her hair, up from the nearest shelf of leaves. "Now listen," Flynn said, out of breath, and abruptly lost her grip.

Rapunzel's hand flew out automatically, lightning-quick, snagging Flynn's sleeve. The sudden weight nearly yanked her out the tree as well, but just as quickly Flynn caught the branch with her free hand, and together they managed to haul her back up onto it again. They clung there for a moment, breathing hard.

Rapunzel said, "You tricked me."

"I didn't realize you'd run." Flynn was several shades paler than normal, but she'd more or less recovered her composure. "You reacted a lot more crazy than I—"

"Well, that's what you hoped, wasn't it?" Rapunzel snapped. She was still crying, but this was… and suddenly she realized why she was shaking. It wasn't fear. It was fury. "You took me in that… that horrible place and hoped that I'd run screaming right back to the valley—"

"I was hungry!"

"—hoping they would h-hurt me or steal my hair—"

"Or?" Flynn said. "Hoping to get some food."

"I trusted you," Rapunzel whispered. She scrubbed at her wet face with her palm, but it was dirty. She felt grimy all over – bruised and stuffed up and miserable and desperately, horribly homesick. "I should never have trusted you."

"Yes!" Flynn said in exasperation. "Exactly! You should have never trusted me! What did you think was going to happen when you went off with a total stranger?"

"I don't know." There was a roar building in her ears. She resisted the urge to put her hands over them and closed her eyes instead, centering herself on the rough seat of bark underneath her. "Go away."

"I take you into a tavern and at the first sign of trouble you shoot up the tallest tree in the forest like a demented squirrel. How are you supposed to handle yourself in town, if you're so afraid of people?"

"Go away."

"And me, you think I asked to be dragged all over the countryside? A countryside, by the way, which is populated by people who really, really want my head? Preferably separated from my neck?"

"Then go." Her chest was heaving, but she wasn't crying anymore. She kept her eyes closed. "I'll find my way to the city by myself."

There was no reply. When the roar eventually died down, Rapunzel opened her eyes to find Flynn staring at her with hard, unblinking scrutiny. Compared to her usual monochrome shift between boredom and indifference, the intensity was almost refreshing. "You sure don't make things easy, do you," Flynn said.

The fury came rushing back instantly. "It's you!" Rapunzel shouted. "This was easy, we had a deal, you just had to take me from the tower so I could see the floating lights and bring me back and you never would've had to see me again—"

"I didn't ask to get knocked around with a frying pan, and I sure didn't ask to be dragged out as an escort just to get my own property back—"

"Then go!" Rapunzel kicked out, nearly shoving Flynn off the branch again. "What are you waiting for? I'll follow the lights myself and I'll find my own way back and I d-don't need you anymore…"

"Easy!" Flynn's hand snaked out and caught her wrist. "Just wait a second."

"Let go!"

"For god's sake, Blondie, you're acting like this is the first time you've ever seen a—"

And Flynn stopped, very abruptly.

She could hear the tavern down below, the laughter and the shouts, but it all seemed muted. The birds had stopped singing a while ago, alerted to the confrontation, and the wind had stopped moving through the trees, leaving the canopy still.

All at once, Rapunzel felt tired. Her skin felt hot and sensitive from where the sunlight had beaten down on it. Her legs were sore and so was her neck. She wanted to be at home doing puzzles with Pascal, or baking cookies for Mother.

Distantly, a little impersonally, she wondered if she'd ever be able to get back down to make cookies for Mother again. Maybe she really would be stuck up here forever. Or maybe she could take out her hair and swing from tree to tree until she – but no, then Flynn would catch her and shave her bald.

Flynn suddenly spoke, bringing her out of her thoughts. She sounded resigned. "Well, I guess there's some things we should clear up first."

Rapunzel couldn't look at her. "They're not all like that," Flynn said. "I didn't… I mean, I did, because food, but it's not exactly the most elite crowd in there. If I'd remembered, I'd… I wouldn't have. I really wouldn't."

"Mother said they had fangs." Rapunzel's voice was small. "I should have believed her."

"They do not have fangs. A lot of them don't even have teeth."

"Mother said they were all ruffians—"

"The scariest thing about them is their smell. And maybe their bad taste in living room curtains."

A joke? Rapunzel reconsidered jumping. At least then she could get her skillet. "Here's the bottom line," Flynn said. "I need food. This is not a joke. I can't catch it with my bare hands, and berries make me poop. Sooner or later, this tavern visit has to happen."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

Because I'm not you. The odd turn in Flynn's personality and the sensation that things were moving too quickly around her were making her light-headed. Mother had told her she couldn't, that's why, and Mother never lied. Because Rapunzel was gullible and she was clumsy and she burned dinner and…

… and Flynn wasn't a man. Men were monsters with fangs and claws and appetites. The tavern had proved it. Lying there on the floor in the tower, Flynn had had all the same curves and facial features that Mother did. Eyes, nose, rounded ears, blunt white teeth.

Rapunzel had assumed that because Flynn looked normal—because she wasn't a man—that she wasn't dangerous. Now she was trapped out here with this creature that looked like her and spoke like her, but acted in treacherous, unpredictable ways.

It didn't make any sense to say it out loud. She was too tired. "I'm sorry, Flynn," she said. "You're right. You were right the whole time. We can go back to the valley if you want."

She expected Flynn to jump at the opportunity. Oddly, Flynn didn't say anything at all.

Rapunzel's back began to hurt. She stared at a point beyond Flynn's head and listened to the raucous sounds floating up from the Snuggly Duckling. It had smelled good, she realized, now that her panic had died down. Mostly bad, but some good too. A little like pancakes, maybe a hint of cheese.

"Okay, you're killing me," Flynn said, and held up her hand. "Look."

She was done looking. She shuffled her feet in preparation to climb down.

"Stop squirming and look for a second." Flynn tightened her grip on her wrist. Rapunzel tugged, almost succeeding in pulling away, but Flynn only gripped harder, halting the motion, and they ended up holding hands instead.

The accidental intimacy of the contact was enough to make her pause. Reluctantly, she looked down. Her hand seemed small and pale in Flynn's. There were tiny scars peppering Flynn's fingers, running in and out of the mashed-down knobs of her knuckles. The largest stretched across the back of her hand like a grin.

The size of their fingers was nearly the same, she realized, looking at them a bit closer. Slender and tapered. Hers were a little ink-stained, but otherwise they—

"Crotches," Flynn Rider said.

Rapunzel jerked her head up to meet her gaze. "I'm really good at kicking crotches," Flynn said. "In fact, I once kicked a man's crotch so far up his body he cried yellow. I got that scar on my hand from punching someone so hard they lost four teeth. I can make a man's foot go so far up his ass he'll have to walk from his face."

Flustered and confused, Rapunzel felt her face heat up. "Wha—"

"I can stomp a man's toes into duck feet. I once got myself over a ravine by swinging off a man's nose hairs. I once climbed the side of a fortress in the middle of the night by feel alone, with both feet tied behind my ears. Your crisis of confidence," Flynn said, "is happening at a really bad time. I mean if this had happened right outside your tower, I'd be thrilled. Now we're halfway to the city and it's just annoying."

"I'm sorry, Flynn," Rapunzel said. "I know you're strong, but it's different with me, I can't—"

"Who says? Your mother? Your dragon? Look at our hands. We're not that different. If I can do those things, so can you."

"It's not the same," she said, and somewhere in the back of her head, her mother said, of course it's not.

"Of course it's not," Flynn said. "It's a stupid comparison. If you ever tried to start a fight with someone, one of the deer you picked up in your hair while you were dragging it around the woods would run off with you. But my head hurts, and I'm pretty sure you had something to do with that. Anyway, what do you know? You've only ever seen yourself in your mirror. You're out of your tower now. Who knows what kind of reflection you'll have the next time you look."

She could hear a crash from inside, followed by a drunken roar of laughter. "I'd go on, but this is boring and I'm out of good advice," Flynn said. "We're eating now. And if you have a problem with that, you can stay in the tree until I come out."

Not going back. It was the only coherent thought in her head. Not going back. Also that the hand around hers was warm, and despite what Flynn said, she didn't look bored. In fact, she looked a lot like she was waiting for Rapunzel to talk.

Rapunzel said, "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

"Good." Flynn loosened her grip.

Rapunzel committed the feel of it to memory, then let go herself.

Okay then.

... and, apparently, Flynn turned into an excellent mezzo soprano when two dozen singing thugs were pointing knives at her throat.