Title: Brothers' Truce

Rating: T

Warnings: As usual, some swearing. I don't think I can write Eugene without him swearing at least once.

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by the Disney. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended

Author Notes: What's this? Larry gets a second chapter already? I couldn't help it. Half way through writing the last chapter I decided that I couldn't just leave it where I did between Lawrence and Eugene. I also decided that we needed to have a little fan service *grins*

Thank you to my reviewers: Silviatangled, Frostystuffs, Reviewer1, Stagemanagertargaryen, TangledFrozenLuv43

Also, check out the community Tangled Ever After. It has a great collection of Rapunzel/Eugene(Flynn) fanfiction. I was recent asked to add this story to it and just thought I'd put in a bit of promotion for it.


It was the morning after the Court Banquet and Lord Lawrence was walking through the gardens of the palace. It was in part to get away from his grandmother. She was in one of her moods ever since the night before. Almost as soon as they had returned to their guestrooms, she had started in on a list of complaints about the evening. Especially about the lack in effort he had put forth in securing Princess Rapunzel's favour and the fact she had retired so early in the evening.

Lawrence had been in no mood to try explaining that there had been more to it than that. He was also preoccupied with his own thoughts on the confrontation he had had with his half-brother and on what the Princess had said afterward.

On the one hand it still gulled to know that his father had sired a bastard. The shame it would bring to the family if it became public knowledge was great. It could ruin their reputation. On the other, Fitzherbert hadn't acted like he even wanted to be acknowledged as Lawrence's brother. That he would be just as glad as to remain as a man with unknown parentage and an apparently dubious past.

It was such a bizarre and foreign concept to Lawrence that he couldn't even imagine why this man would want that.

And then there were the Princess's comments. The cool and disappointed tone she had used had stuck. It hadn't been a scolding, not really, but it had felt like one. That, in and of itself, was unusual. No one had ever scolded him like that before. As the Heir to the duchy, no one had ever dared to scold him. Not that he was never been disciplined. But that had always come from his father or grandmother, never from a young woman two full years his junior. Most girls couldn't stop fluttering their eyelashes at him to be bothered.

Such an unfamiliar attitude only made her suggestion to rethink how he acted toward others stand out all the more. And, to his surprise, he actually found himself doing just that.

It was in that conflicted frame of mind when something most unusual broke into his thoughts. It was an unsteady series of metallic clangs and bangs, much like a sword fight. Yet, Lawrence was fairly certain that he was nowhere near the practice yards used by the Guards. Also it only sounded like a single pair and not a group practice. Intrigued, Lawrence followed the sounds. They lead him through a rose garden and around an ornamental hedge. As he rounded the end of the hedge he came on an open yard and in that yard was what had to be the strangest thing he had ever seen.

Eugene Fitzherbert stripped to the waist, squaring off with a frying pan against a white horse that had a short sword clenched in its teeth.

The two battled back and forth across the open space. Though he had never seen a horse fight like this one, even Lawrence could see that the animal was a fairly decent swordsman (so to speak). But a sword-fighting horse was only half of the unusual pair. Watching the other man block and attack, Lawrence was able to get a sense of the way Fitzherbert fought. He had a rather showy and flamboyant style and unlike most other swordsmen, including himself, Lawrence noted that Fitzherbert fought left-handed. He was also managing to hold his own against his opponent, despite the unusual weapon.

The match went one for a few more moments until, with a complicated corkscrew parry; the horse was able to disarm the man. The frying pan was flipped out of his hand to go skittering across the ground to end up near Lawrence's feet.

"Goddamn it Max that hurt." Fitzherbert shook out his hand and gave the animal a disgruntled look. There was good-humour as well as annoyance in the man's tones. "I know I asked to do some practice, but…" He trailed off, noticing that the horse was looking over his head. Before Lawrence could back away or move on, his half-brother turned just enough to glance over his shoulder. There was a moment of silence and then Fitzherbert turned his back. "Oh, it's you. What are you doing here?" he asked coolly.

Lawrence clenched his jaw and shifted his weight slightly. "No reason." He temporized, "I just happened to be passing by."

The horse and Fitzherbert gave almost identical snorts and Lawrence could almost hear the man rolling his eyes. "A bit out of the way to be passing by. Nice try, but I know bullshit when I smell it. Care to take another crack?" The man turned around again and crossed his arms over his bare chest.

Lawrence could help but note that his half-brother had a decent build for a fighter. Lean and wiry instead of overly-muscled. There were a few scars one the man's arms and torso. Most were thin white lines, but there was one that was different. One his right side, just below his ribs, was an odd golden mark that didn't match the rest of Fitzherbert's lightly tanned skin.

"I… I heard the noise and noticed your practice bout." Lawrence answered this time, after a quick scramble to find some other reason for him to be there. He wasn't quite ready to be honest with his brother just yet. He bent down and picked up the rather battered looking frying pan. He turned it over in his hands. "I have to say it's a most unconventional choice of weapon."

"Don't knock the frying pan until you try it, Larry. It's a more versatile weapon than you think." Eugene said as he walked over and plucked the pan out of Lawrence's grip. He gave it a little toss, sending it spinning on its axis, and grabbed it by the handle out of the air again. "By the way, strike two. You're still lying. Going to try again?" The man turned on his heel and walked over to where a bucket of water sat on a bench with a sword sheath leaning against the bench as well. He set the pan on the bench and took up the dipper that was in the bucket.

Lawrence blew out an annoyed breath. "All right, fine! I thought about what happened last night, and I came to the realization that… we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. That maybe I allowed certain… ideas to cloud my attitudes. And I thought that… perhaps I would… make amends. Since you had taken offense to my words."

As Lawrence made his speech, Eugene took a drink of the water and then dumped a second scoop over his head. He then picked up a towel that had been sitting next to the bucket. Before using the towel though, Eugene paused to give Lawrence a singularly unbelieving deadpan look. Then the man smirked. "Swing and a miss. Strike three, you are out."

"Oh for the love of…" Lawrence muttered to himself before demanding, "Is everything always sarcasm with you? I am at least trying to apologise!"

"And you suck at it." His brother said in annoyance, rubbing the towel over his hair. Before either one of them could continue, the horse stepped in. It came up beside Eugene, dropped the sword in its teeth, and whickered pointedly. He turned his head to frown slightly at it. "What?" he asked sounding a little surprised. The horse whickered again even more pointedly, flicking its eyes and nodding its head in Lawrence's direction. "What! No. No, Max. I am not…" Eugene was cut off as the horse pawed the ground firmly and actually glared at the man. Eugene stared at the horse then narrowed his eyes before stating flatly. "Oh, you wouldn't."

Max just raised an eyebrow. Lawrence watched this by-play with a cross between confusion and un-ease. The horse was acting like no animal he had ever come across before and his brother was actually behaving like this was normal. In fact it was like the horse was really talking to him and Eugene was responding just as if it was another person.

Eugene groaned and covered his face with one hand. "Of course you would. You are as bad as the frog, you know that?" he said in exasperation. He took a deep breath and looked back at Lawrence. "Look, Larry, I know why you're doing this. Blondie talked to you. Got you to agree to 'make nice', didn't she?" He made air-quotes around the words make nice.

"I have no notion what you're talking about." Lawrence said, trying to deny the fact that anyone could have made him change his mind. In the back of his mind, he had to wonder why the man used the nick-name of Blondie for the Princess. It was obvious that she wasn't blonde at all. He didn't even realize that he had stopped thinking of his brother by his last name and had started using the man's first.

"Oh, really?" Eugene smirked and raised an eyebrow. "Try that on someone who doesn't know her as well as I do. I know she did. Trust me, that girl can con anyone into anything." He tossed the towel on the bench and picked up his shirt.

"Is that the voice of experience talking?" Lawrence asked snidely, not out of curiosity. His tone was still a little rude, he realized after he spoke, but there was no way he could bring himself to take it back.

Apparently his brother ignored that rudeness. Eugene's voice was a little muffled by his shirt as he put it back on. "Well, duh. In case you didn't know, this is the girl who got an entire pub full of vicious ruffians and thugs to sing and dance about their hopes and dreams." Shirt on, he then nodded in the direction of Max. "Then she managed to talk the Kingdom's most justice-happy and dedicated horse into not arresting a wanted thief just because it was her birthday. Not to mention getting said thief to take her to see the lanterns in the first place. So, yeah, you could say I have experience.

"But look, my point is she has this gift to get people to do things they wouldn't normally do." He said after pausing to pull on a black jerkin and buckle a belt over it. "You aren't immune to it. I'm sure as hell not. I don't even think Franko and Rosalie are. So there's no need to deny it."

Lawrence decided that his brother's point was a valid one. "All right. I will admit that the Princess did speak to me last night and that it did cause me to rethink a few things." He paused for a moment and then added, "Where is this going to leave us, exactly?"

"I don't know." He replied, folding his arms again. "I can't say that I like you very much and I'm guessing that you aren't feeling the warm and fuzzies towards me either. What I do know, however, is that if we don't settle this, we aren't going to hear the end of it from her and, unlike you; I've got to live with her. So…" Abruptly he stuck out his hand. "Truce?"

Lawrence looked at the offered hand then back at Eugene's face. "There isn't some sort of catch is there?"

The other man chuckled. "Just for that, I could almost believe we might be related. Since that is very much a thief's answer. There isn't a catch unless you want there to be. If you want, we could just make this a temporary thing and once you go home we can go back to hating each other's guts again."

That managed to get a chuckle out of Lawrence as well. "Like any good brothers would?" he suggested as he took Eugene's hand and shook it. "Fair enough. Truce." Lawrence could have sworn that the horse was looking at them smugly as the two men made their deal. Eugene looked down at their joined hands for a moment then shook his head slightly. Lawrence could tell though that it was more to do with the man's own thoughts than anything else. Curious in spite of himself, he asked, "What is it?"

"Nothing. Just…" Eugene glanced at the horse for a second then shook his head again. "Just that the last time I made an agreement with someone for Blondie's sake, that one welched on it the second her back was turned. Don't think I'm not watching you." He grinned, let go of his hand, and pointed a finger at Lawrence.

"Did that really happen?" Lawrence asked, amused.

"Oh, yeah." His brother nodded and gave a sideways look at the horse. "Isn't that right, Maximus?"

Maximus froze and looked back at them with wide eyes. The horse then began to look around as if pretending to look for whoever Eugene was talking about and trying to look the picture of innocence. If the animal had been a human, Lawrence would have expected it to start whistling any second.

Eugene snickered. "You are so full of it, Max. It's no surprise that your eyes are brown."

"You, uh… You talk to your horse?" Lawrence asked, giving him a sideways look of disbelief.

Maximus appeared to take offense to the idea that Eugene had any kind of claim on it. The horse instantly dropped the innocent act and glared at Lawrence. In his turn, Lawrence took a step back without even thinking. Eugene put a hand on the horse's shoulder as if to keep it from attacking.

"Technically Max isn't my horse. In theory, he's still Captain Hecky's, but in truth he's really a law unto himself and picks whoever he wants." Eugene explained and then shrugged. "Why me, I have no idea. I'm pretty sure he barely tolerates me."

"Maybe because you're a thief and it's to keep an eye on you." Lawrence suggested and then winced. The words had popped out before he had even thought them through. "Sorry. That was rude and uncalled for."

His brother gave him a long look for a moment and then sighed. "But not entirely untrue. I was a thief. Was being the operative word. I don't do that anymore. I've given it up and I've even been given a Royal Pardon. Still, the name Flynn Rider probably does still ring a few bells."

"Can't say that it do… Oh." Lawrence said and then it hit him. "Oh!" He stared at the other man. Now it all made sense. "No wonder you didn't want Grandmother to recognize you. She's still …" he trailed off as he tried to think of the right word to describe how Duchess Camilla felt about Flynn Rider and what he had done to Chamelton.

"Pissed?" Eugene suggested with wry humour. "I figured as much. Although, like I told the Queen, it wasn't like I started that. I just… egged people on and took advantage of the situation." He gave Lawrence a grin.

Lawrence gave his brother a sour look in return. The Market Riots and the damages caused during them had been a very expensive and to say that his grandmother had been pissed about it was an understatement. Though, from what he remembered about the incident, there had been enough tension between rival sport groups that the whole mess was likely to have happened anyway. He sighed and shook his head. "I must remember to hire new sketch artists when I become Duke." He muttered. When he caught Eugene looking at him, he clarified, "Because, having now met you, I can see that ours were highly inaccurate."

His brother laughed. "You should have seen some of the monstrosities they had done up here. I swear the only artist that has ever managed to get it right is Rapunzel. Everyone else has always gotten my nose wrong." As he spoke, Eugene turned and dumped out the bucket of water, sheathed the dropped sword, and put it and the frying pan inside the bucket before slinging the towel over his shoulder. "Well, as nice as all this male-bonding is, I've got things to do and I'm sure you want to go back to whatever it is nobles do while on vacation."

"Oh, I was rather hoping I could ask a few more questions." Lawrence said, trying to not sound too hopeful. "That is if you didn't mind the company."

Eugene stood there holding the bucket and gave him a long look. After a moment he shrugged a little and thrust the bucket at Lawrence, forcing the younger man to take it or end up with it landing on his foot. "As long as you don't mind getting your hands dirty." He said as he headed out of the little yard with the horse on his left. Lawrence ran the few steps to catch up on his other side. After a few minutes of walking in silence, Eugene asked, "So what's your burning question?"

At first Lawrence drew a blank on what he wanted to ask. He actually hadn't had any questions in mind when he had asked to remain in his brother's company. He shifted the bucket so he was carrying on his hip and as he did so he found his eyes drawn to the place on Eugene's side where that strange golden mark was, now covered by shirt and jerkin. Eugene's words from the night before came back to him and suddenly his curiosity was eating him alive. So he blurted out, "Did it really happen?"

Both man and horse looked at him. Lawrence felt the back of his neck flush, but he continued on gamely. "What you said last night. Did it… did you really go through that?"

"… I did." Eugene answered quietly after another long moment of silence.

"But… I don't understand." Lawrence tilted his head a little and gave his brother a sideways look. It wasn't that he didn't think Eugene wasn't telling the truth. The way he had described it all last night, even Lawrence could tell the bare honest truth to the man's words. There had been a painful honesty in the way he had spoken that could make it plain to even the thickest idiot. Still it was hard to wrap his head around. "I mean it's just that you seem awfully alive for someone claiming to have died. And you are a little too substantial to be a ghost."

Eugene ran a hand over his hair and gave a sigh. "That is rather a long story, Larry…"

"I've got time." Lawrence interrupted before his brother got a chance to give an excuse. He didn't really want to seem so eager, but he couldn't help himself. Also, he suddenly didn't mind the nickname so much anymore. "Grandmother and I aren't leaving until the day after tomorrow."

"Well, if you insist." The other man said slowly. He looked around as the gardens they were passing through gave way from ornamental to utilitarian. "Though I would really rather not talk about it here. Too many pairs of ears listening. So… You do ride, right?"

Lawrence snorted and rolled his eyes. Of course he did. He had been thrown on the back of a horse almost before he could walk. "I've probably been riding longer than you have." He said, his tone dropping back into arrogance.

"I wouldn't bet on that. I am the elder after all." Eugene replied with the same tone and then looked at Max. "Well horse, better go find which of your buddies wants to go out for a bit of exercise."

The horse whinnied and trotted ahead of them to the stables. When Eugene and Lawrence caught up, a brown gelding was waiting with the white stallion. Lawrence expected that one of the stable hands to come and tack up the animals for them. Instead, Eugene took the bucket with the sword and frying pan from Lawrence's hands and led the way to the tack room. He set the bucket inside the little room, removed the two items, and, to Lawrence's surprise, stuck the frying pan through his belt instead of the blade.

"Dantris' tack is there." He said, pointing before taking down another set (which Lawrence assumed was Maximus'). Together they carried the gear out to the waiting animals. Eugene immediately set about getting Maximus saddled.

Lawrence had to think for a moment before getting started. It had been a long time since he had to actually tack up his own horse. Usually he left that for the stable hands to do. Still he wasn't about to let his half-brother show him up so he gamely went ahead and got it done. Once Dantris was tacked up, Lawrence glanced over at Eugene. The other man was shaking out one hand and frowning slightly.

He wasn't sure but he thought he heard him mutter softy to Maximus, "Dammit. Max, next time don't be so enthusiastic in the disarming. My hand's all numb."

Lawrence thought that a bit odd since it was the first he had notice his brother having trouble and Eugene was shaking out his right hand instead of his left. He shrugged it off however. Maybe he was mistaken and besides, it wasn't any of his business.

The two men mounted up and rode down through the city. After several minutes passed without any attempts on Eugene's part to begin talking, Lawrence decided to prod his brother along. "So… I thought you were going to tell me your story."

"Right. I suppose I've delayed long enough." Eugene said. He then sat up straight in the saddle. "This is the story of how I died…"