Chasing Dreams

The plan for this story arc was that it'd take 4-5 chapters to conclude. Not sure where I'll end up with in the long run but for now I'll just let the story go where it will.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Endless Horizon: Part 3

Summary: "This is my dream, Rapunzel," He said, and there was a new quality in his voice, a sort of soft, comforting tenderness in it that made her knees feel weak and her heart flutter. "Being with you, and helping you find your own. I wouldn't trade it for any crown or anything else in the world."

Rapunzel wasn't sure how long the two of them simply sat there in the silence. She felt the rocking of the boat around her, and a sour smell from something in the corner. With a sigh, she leaned her head back against the rough wood of the ship.

The blackness all around her felt oppressive, which was strange. Normally at nights she had seen the darkness as a comforting presence that lulled her to slumber but now it felt... thick. As if it was pressing in on her, hot and stifling. Of course, the totality of the darkness probably had something to do with it – she couldn't see her hand in front of her face.

"What are we going to do, Eugene?"

"Well," she heard him grunt as he tried to shift himself into a slightly more comfortable position, "right now I don't see that there's a lot we can do. Even if I broke us out of this room, we're still on a ship filled with a crew that I'm gonna presume are mostly hostile to the idea of us wandering about freely. So right now, I'm pretty sure sitting tight and waiting is our best bet."

"Oh." She hadn't really thought about it that way, but she supposed it made sense. As long as they were on the ship, there wasn't really any way to escape.

Silence again for the two of them as Rapunzel felt the ship sway on the ocean waves. She took a deep breath and swallowed as she wrung her hands together.

"I'm sorry, Eugene."

"Huh?" His voice was distracted. "Sorry about what?"

She knew Eugene couldn't see her in the darkness, but she frowned anyway. "For this. I mean, if I hadn't insisted on us taking a ship ride we wouldn't have ended up like... this."

This is my fault. It's like Mother said. I keep making trouble for Eugene like this. I can't keep on like that.

She heard a sigh coming from her side. "Rapunzel, thousands of people take boat rides every day. And most of them don't end up being taken hostage. Yeah, we ended up on a ship crewed by crazy thugs. That's just bad luck, and there's no reason to blame yourself or apologize for that."

"But I should have seen it! I mean, Ajax is a bad person, isn't he? So why couldn't I tell?"

"Well, if bad people were all easy to spot, then no one would ever get taken in by them. If it makes you feel any better, I got fooled too." It didn't, not really, but she could tell that Eugene was trying to make her feel better, and so she leaned in against him.

Another moment of silence. And then she heard him chuckle slightly.

"Eugene?"

"Besides, if I recall correctly, you've never exactly been a great judge of character. Remember that time you decided you wanted a career thief to be your guide to go see the lanterns?"

She felt her neck and cheeks heating up, and suddenly she was at least a little glad for the darkness because it meant that Eugene would at least not be able to see her. "Come on, it wasn't like I had a lot of options! And why are you putting yourself down like that? You're a great guy, Eugene! Nothing like Ajax, or – or those brutes you were working with."

Another laugh, although this time Rapunzel could tell that there was some melancholy behind it. "Great guy? Rapunzel, I barely clear the bar for 'decent human being'. And that's only counting the part after I ran into you and got a frying pan to the head for my troubles. Before that? I was a dirty rotten no-good scoundrel."

"Eugene, don't..." she found herself hugging her knees to her chest, "don't say things like that about yourself."

"Sorry, blondie, but it's true. I lied, swindled, cheated and stole whatever I could get my hands on. Nothing was beneath me. If I could get a coin out of it, I'd do anything."

"Not anything."

"Sorry, what?"

"I said, not anything." She nodded – to herself, mostly, because of the darkness. "You weren't willing to... well, use force. Try to intimidate me into telling you where the crown was. You made a deal with a girl you didn't know and you kept up your end of it. Mostly. And I only know that that's something other people would have done after I actually met people like that." A memory of the Stabbingtons' flashed through her mind, now mixed with Ajax's cruel sneer.

Eugene didn't respond for a moment. "Yeah, well... I was a thief. Not a scumbag."

She smiled at that for a moment, before something else struck her. "Hey, Eugene?"

"Yeah, what is it blondie?"

"I'm... not sure if this is the right time to ask, but..." She trailed off, feeling somewhat hesitant.

"Well it's not like we've anywhere to go." She heard Eugene rapping his knuckles against the hard wood of the floor to make his point.

"I guess, but... what you said about only becoming a 'decent human being'..."

"Yeah. No stealing, no lying, no swindling – at least, not unless I can't find any other way to put food on the metaphorical table because if it's your life or my newfound morals the latter's taking a hike any day of the week."

"No, I mean... that only happened after you met me?"

"... Yeah. Gotta live up to you thinking of me as a 'great guy', after all."

"Eugene."

"I'm serious. If nothing else, I don't want you thinking badly of me, okay?" She heard Eugene sigh in the darkness next to her.

She felt a warm rush of happiness at that, but forced the thought down for the moment to focus on what Eugene was saying.

"For the longest time, I was my own man. Who cared if the people I met didn't like me? I didn't like them either and after I finished my business I'd likely never see them again." A moment of silence, and then a sigh. "And then I met you. And, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I realized I actually do care about what you think of me. You think I'm a great guy? Well, thanks, but I'm not. Not yet, anyway. But I want to be. I want to become the person you think I am, if that makes any sense."

"That's... wow." She wasn't quite sure how she felt about that. Happy? Well, of course. Hearing Eugene say that he wanted to become a better person because of her sent a warm fuzzy feeling all through her body, even in the cold damp darkness of the room they were locked in. But at the same time she felt her belly twinge in anxiety. Because of her? What did she have that was special enough to make Eugene want to change? Especially when... "So... you're really giving it up, then? Your dream about that island, and the castle, and all that? For me?"

A long silence, and Rapunzel began to worry if Eugene had actually heard her. And then-

"This is my dream, Rapunzel," He said, and there was a new quality in his voice, a sort of soft, comforting tenderness in it that made her knees feel weak and her heart flutter. "Being with you, and helping you find your own. I wouldn't trade it for any crown or anything else in the world."

She felt her mouth hanging open. "Really? You really mean that?"

A shuffling sound, and she felt the touch of his hand on her waist. Instinctively she reached down to grab it, holding it tight as she heard Eugene say, "Yes. Yes, I do."

She laughed then, a bright merry sound that seemed incongruous in the darkness. All of a sudden, despite still being trapped and left to an uncertain fate, she felt like she could take on the world. As long as Eugene was by her side.

"Ha," she laughed as she slumped back in the seat. "Remember when you first showed up at the tower?"

"Well I was unconscious for a good chunk of it, so no, not really."

"Sorry. But when I first heard you climbing up the tower I honestly panicked. Pascal was telling me to hide, but I saw the frying pan and grabbed it without even thinking. Who knows how things would have gone if I hadn'tPASCAL!" Rapunzel jerked upright. "Eugene! Pascal! He's still in the room!"

She remembered now. He had been tired out and had decided to take a nap in the room. Rapunzel hadn't seen the harm in letting that happen and so she'd left him to slumber while she headed up to the deck.

"Eugene, we have to get out of here, now! We have to go get him! Who knows what Ajax will do if they find him without us around!"

"Well, that does change things." She could hear that Eugene sounded more energized too, ready to spring into action. "Where's Pascal now? Is he with our bags?"

"Er, no. I think he decided to sleep on a pile of rags on one of the desks."

"Good. Because I'd be willing to bet anything they'll have ransacked our bags and grabbed anything they like the look of. If Pascal isn't there they may not have found him yet." She heard a thumping noise as Eugene moved about, until he was tapping at the wooden doorway of the room. "Okay, Rapunzel. I'm gonna need some light."

If someone had asked this of her a month ago she would have simply stared at that person in befuddlement. Now though, she nodded and began to sing.

"Flower gleam and glow, let your power shine. Make the clock reverse..."

As she sang, she saw her hair shining with that familiar radiance, casting orange golden light around the room – revealing the door and the keyhole resting in it.

"Perfect," Eugene said as he crouched by the keyhole. Rapunzel began grabbing at her her, trying to shift the main mass of it to give Eugene a better view even as she continued to sing. As she watched, he reached for his boot and withdrew what appeared to be a set of small needle-like objects.

"Lockpicks," Eugene explained in response to her questioning gaze. "No self-respecting career thief's gonna be caught dead without a set on hand, you know?"

Well, to be honest, she didn't know, and hadn't he just told her he wanted to give up that lifestyle? But she supposed Eugene was still a cautious one, and right now she was grateful that he had kept such a useful set of tools on hand.

She wasn't sure how long it would take for him to finish opening the door, and so she tried to slow her song down, tried to make sure that he would still be able to see what he was working on. Even so, the last glimmers of light in her hair was just starting to fade when she heard a satisfying 'click' noise.

"There we go!" Eugene 's voice held a note of triumph. "Never met a lock I couldn't spring in under five minutes. All right, blondie, here we go." He pushed open the door, and Rapunzel couldn't help the smile on her face as she saw the dim glow of the lanterns that lit the ship's interior.

The two of them crept out quickly, glancing all about for signs that they had been spotted. Luckily the interior of the ship appeared mostly empty. Rapunzel wondered if they were still in progress of executing their mutiny, then decided she really didn't want to know.

Her priority was Pascal. Everything else could wait until later.

It was only when they were almost at the doorway of the cabin that their luck ran out. A sailor she vaguely remembered being called Calico Jones was leaning against the walls of the room, a bored expression on his face. That expression changed very quickly upon noticing the two of them.

"Uh... hi!" Rapunzel said, trying to keep her voice bright as she gave him a hesitant wave. "Are we interrupting anything? Because we just kinda need to go get something from the room-"

A long gleaming blade was in his hands and he was charging at her with a furious snarl. Thinking fast, Rapunzel ducked to the side at the very last second – just as a great shudder went through the ship, pitching Jones forward to slam facefirst into the wall of the ship.

"Sorry," Rapunzel mumbled as the man crumpled to the floor and didn't move. Meanwhile, Eugene had a frown on his face as he picked himself up from the floor.

"That's not supposed to happen," he said as he glanced up around him. "Something's gone wrong somewhere."

"All right. Okay. Let's get Pascal first. We can figure out what to do after that."

Throwing open the door to the room, Rapunzel glanced around frantically. A window was letting light in, but she couldn't see her friend anywhere. Her heart went to her throat. They hadn't-!

"Pascal! Are you there?"

A tiny chirruping noise sounded, and she caught sight of something green poking out from under a cloth that had been thrown into the corner. She heaved a sigh of relief and rushed over.

"Pascal! I'm so glad you're safe! Oh, I don't know what I'd have done if they'd done something to you."

Pascal squeaked in reply before scurrying up her shoulder.

"Well, blondie, I don't know about you." Eugene was glancing over his shoulder even as he said that. "But I don't think we should linger here too long. No guarantee that was the only guard they had for this place."

"But-" Rapunzel frowned. "Where can we go? The deck?"

Eugene took a deep breath. "Maybe if we find a lifeboat we can use that to escape. Either way, there's no point staying indoors – there's no escape here, that's for certain."

"Wait." Rapunzel had already turned to her cloth bag – true to Eugene's prediction it's been overturned and ransacked, and for a moment she felt a twinge at the thought of her personal keepsakes having been lost to Ajax and his thugs. But there was no time for that, and anyway, they've left behind what she really came for.

Her fingers closed around the handle of the frying pan, and she hefts it, feeling its weight. She felt safer already.

She turned to look at Eugene, who have her a knowing smile. And then the three of them were making their way through the dim corridors, heading for the deck.

As they burst out into the brightness of the deck, Rapunzel instinctively squinted against the harsh glare of the sun. As her sight adjusted to the sudden light, she suddenly noticed two things.

First was that there was a large amount of crewmembers, staring at her in surprise and shock. Still, as Rapunzel looked at them, she couldn't help the feeling that there were quite a few less than she had expected.

Second was the realization that the island she had seen just before being locked away in the storage room was now close – really, really close. So close it appeared the ship had come up as near to it as was physically possible.

She barely had the time to process any of it, however, before she saw a dark blur rushing up at them. Another moment, and she realized it was a person. The person's features were obscured by a large tricorne hat, preventing Rapunzel from recognizing who it was – after all she knew most of the crew by name by now. Not that she thought that was a particularly good thing after this...

"What are you waiting for?" the person snapped, and Rapunzel started. Something about that voice seemed... odd. "Jump!"

"What?" she heard Eugene say from besides her. "Are you crazy?"

"You can take your chances on the island, or on the ship with them." Whoever it was, the person hadn't bothered to wait for a reply before vaulting off the side of the boat. And as Rapunzel glanced around at the sailors who were now advancing on her with sharp weapons, she had to admit that it seemed like leaving the boat was the somewhat safer option.

She glanced at Eugene. "You coming?"

He took a deep breath and smiled gamely at her. "I don't have much a choice, do I?"

One more shared smile, and then they were running for the railings of the ship. As shouts to halt came from behind them, Rapunzel took a deep breath and a flying leap off the side as the world and the ocean stretched out to infinity below her.

Chapter End

Author Note: Sorry for the long delay in updates! I'll do my best to try to speed up next time!