I'm sorry it's taken me all this time to update. I've written more a few times but the computer I was using was extremely unrealizable and had a tendency to freeze up for hours then delete whatever I wrote. Problem has been solved now so things should start running a bit more smoothly.
Writing this chapter honestly gave me buckets anxiety because I started looking at the views it was getting and it made me too scared to write before I had enough encouragement from you beautiful people on this site to get me past that.
Every review and PM helped me. So thank you, my lovelies
Chapter 4: Liberation
Rapunzel stood frozen, mouth agape and eyes round as saucers. She was leaning over the edge of the window. Her nails dug into the wooded railing as she tried to comprehend the sight below. For the first time, she was completely speechless. All she could do was stare down at the bottom of the tower where Pascal had pointed to and attempt to grasp the reality of what was happening. But surely this couldn't be real, because at the bottom of the tower… was a person. She just continued her zombie like stare out the window while Pascal desperately tried to break her out of her apparent shock. He crawled in front of her and squealed and pulled her hair but his efforts were fruitless as she gazed, glassy eyed, out the window.
Desperate times call for desperate measures… Pascal had gotten a good view of the figure on the ground and had seen the red liquid that was seeping out of the figures obviously grievous wounds and onto the ground. The girl didn't have time for Rapunzel to freak out right now.
He crawled up the Rapunzel's arm and settled on her shoulder. This might be cruel, but it was the only way he knew for sure that she'd break out of the her ill-timed stupor. The chameleon dropped its jaw and sent out a quick prayer to whatever reptilian gods were listening before shooting its tongue into the blonde's ear.
There was a moment of stillness before the feeling registered with Rapunzel. She screamed at the slimy wetness in her ear before falling back off the window and onto the floor of the tower where she rubbed at her ear. Pascal had leapt from her shoulder and scurried over to where she lay squirming, but stayed out of arm's length, just in case.
"PASCAL! Gosh! You know I hate it when you do that!" She propped herself up on an elbow and scowled at the chameleon for a moment before she remembered what she had just seen. Pascal saw shock jolt into her eyes till it was substituted in an instant by anxiety. "I'm just dreaming right? I mean, I didn't just see what I thought I saw… right? That would be crazy! Ha, this is all just a really weird dream." She straightened up and sat cross-legged on the floor. "You know what? I bet I never woke up from that nap I took earlier and Mother will come calling my name any moment now. Yep, that was all just a crazy dream!" She looked over to Pascal now with a crooked grin painted across her face like she could really hear how crazy that sounded. Pascal let out a slight scoff and scudded back to the window where he looked down at the woman who lay on the grass.
Rapunzel reached out and scooped the small creature up in two hands and held him in front of her face with a hopeful grin pulled over her face. Pascal just let out a deep sigh and shook his head once. The grin slid off her face with a shaky exhale.
"Alright, this… this isn't so bad… maybe, whoever it was left? Yeah, that's it." She shakily pushed herself off the ground and set Pascal on her shoulder. Rapunzel drew in a quick breath to steady herself and set her shoulders before taking the distance to the window in three long strides.
Her confidence faltered, however, when she was a few inches from the edge. The blond hesitated with her hand just an inch away from the window frame. Thin eyebrows pulled together in worry and she drew her hand back, cradling it against her chest with the other. "I can't- OW!" Pascal yanked a claw full of hair down and towards the window. Rapunzel lurched forward at the pain and caught herself slightly bent over the railing of the window. Her pain was forgotten in an instant when she looked down at the figure lying on the ground.
She knew she didn't have a choice now; it would be to go against her very nature to ignore this girl who was in need. She couldn't even entertain the thought of turning away from this when she saw how the grass around her legs had become wet with blood.
Rapunzel squared her shoulders and jutted out her chin before she looked away from the woman and started to look around the room with a fierce determination. She knew she couldn't use the usual pulley system that worked with her mother because the girl on the ground was obviously unconscious and running out of time. Rapunzel's gaze swept over the room before landing on the loose stone she'd found all those years ago.
Her mother had been away at some kind of funeral in Arendelle for the weekend a few years back and she'd been bored out of her mind and decided to do some deep cleaning to hopefully butter her mother up to asking her about the floating lights. When she'd taken out some old rags and scrubbed between the tiles on the floor, she'd been panic stricken as the grout crumbled under her touch. The fear didn't last long before her curiosity took over and she'd found the hidden stairs to the base of the tower (she assumed, having not ventured down herself).
Now, she didn't have time to worry about the fear that washed over the back of her mind and accepted the adrenaline as it pushed back against the anxiety. She didn't have time to worry about herself while she was so obviously needed.
Her thin, dainty fingers had difficulty finding their purchase on the stone but she pulled it up with little effort, having hard muscles formed through years of exercises she'd found in books her mother brought for her. Rapunzel slid down through the hole where the tile used to be before she gave herself a chance to think about she was doing. She placed one hand on the wall to her left as she began her decent. The only light that was provided was from the hole above her and a few cracks between the stones of the walls, but it was enough to guide her down. The train of blond hair followed her down and she gathered a few armfuls of the silky tresses to keep it from getting caught up in her feet.
Pascal saw her disappear down the hole and watched for a moment in disbelief that Rapunzel might finally be taking her first step out of the tower. He rushed after her and crawled up the trail of blond hair that followed her. Rapunzel continued her steady decent and squinted as the light grew fainter while she followed the spiraling staircase.
When she decided that the tunnel couldn't possibly go any further, her foot landed on damp stone and then next step she took was on even land. Her heartbeat jumped in her chest and she felt the walls till her hands found where the stones were smaller than the rest of the wall and didn't have anything to seal them together. She braced her palm against one of the smaller stones and pushed against it until she felt it give out and fall.
Without giving herself a chance to really think about what was about to happen and running purely on instinct, she started pushing the stones back with all the strength she'd accumulated from pulling her mother into the tower every day. She kept pushing at the stones and they fell back one by one till she decided that this wasn't fast enough and that poor girl needed her. She dropped to her knees and searched till her eyes fell on the largest of the looser stones.
Rapunzel placed her hands, now red from the rough surface of the stones, on the rock she'd chosen and pushed until she felt a little give and then sprang back away from the wall. As the larger stone fell, all the smaller ones above it gave out with it. What was left was a gap big enough for her to fit through with easy. It was now, with a clear view of the ground that she'd never been this close to, which she hesitated, staring out the gap in the stones into the grass.
Pascal sensed her pause and scurried over to stand on top of the stones and in her line of sight. They locked their gaze and his eyes bore into hers with all the confidence and support he could muster before he nodded his head once and turned around.
Rapunzel watched as the little green chameleon disappeared behind the stones and reappeared a moment later in the grass where she could see.
She closed her eyes and drew in a shaky breath before she sprang forth in a surge of motion and shot through the breach in the stones. She landed a moment later on the balls of her feet and absorbed the shock with one hand pressed down into the grass.
Grass… She straightened up and spread her toes out in the lush, green blades.
"Huh! It was softer than I expected!" Her exclamation startled Pascal, though he wasn't surprised; the blond was always such a spaz and hard to keep on track. He would have let her explore this new world, but they came out here for a reason, the same reason which was possibly dead or very close to it at this point.
Pascal squealed, loud as he could muster, and her head swiveled over to him but her eyes went past him as she caught sight of the red soaked ground that was currently occupying the second human she'd ever seen. A gasp escaped her and fear flooded her senses when all the warnings her mother had said over the years snaked through her mind.
No, I don't have time to be afraid: she needs me.
There was a fog over her mind.
Am I dead? No, she could feel each shuddering breath she took. Not yet. Lidded eyes opened and she caught a fuzzy glimpse of her own breath fogging in front of her in the apparently warm air. In the state she was in, she didn't even notice how the temperature had risen since she'd lost conciseness.
As she faded back into the smothering darkness, she though she heard a crumbling sound somewhere around where she lay and then the soft padding of bare feet in grass.
Sorry this chapter didn't have very much dialog, I hope to fix that as I get into the interaction between Elsa and Rapunzel.
If the urge hits you, leave a review. If it doesn't, leave me one anyways ;)