HI! I'm back! I'm just going to stop making promises cause frankly I just can't seem to keep them!
Well enjoy this next bit sorry it's been so long!
Meticulously quick Eugene snuck past the palace walls and skirted behind shrubbery all the way to the main entrance where Rapunzel stood at now, awkwardly trying to begin conversing with the guard on duty. It was understandable that she was nervous; she hadn't talked to many people yet, not to mention how does one tell a person they are a princess? Something must have caught her eye, because her head swiveled in his direction and she immediately found his hiding spot. Her tentative grimace morphed into a beaming grin to see him. He silently chuckled then nudged his head subtly to the blissfully unaware guard. Promptly she turned back to her target, and finally chose her opening line.
"Hi," she said loudly, with a jumpy smile.
"Hi," the guard returned uncertainly, caught (pardon the expression) off his that it must have been some fantastic luck that they arrived while this poor idiot was on post. He was just as young and just as inexperienced as Rapunzel, it looked as if this was the first time a pretty girl had ever approached him, let alone spoken to him too.
"Hi," Rapunzel repeated, having exhausted all of her conversation techniques, short of using her frying pan that is.
"Hi," the guard wasn't complaining, it seemed. Rapunzel shot her gaze back at Eugene pleading for help. Through the bushes he urged her to just say anything she had this guy in her pocket practically.
"So can I talk to the Queen and King?" She said quickly, perhaps she could have put it a bit more delicately, but again it was just their luck that it was this kid they were dealing with.
"I-um-yea- why?"
"I think I'm—their daughter…" she blurted out.
"The princess?" the guard's voice gave an adolescent crack on the last syllable.
"Yes,"
"Oh, I um, oh!" he stuttered out before running for high heavens.
When he was gone, Rapunzel shuffled closer to the topography, and whispered, "Was that a good thing?"
"I don't know…." Eugene responded equally confused, stretching his head out of the bushes to get a better view of where the boy ran off to, "I think so…these guys are pretty skittish anyway."
"Miss," Another guard was suddenly approaching Rapunzel, this one looking a bit more seasoned and at ease speaking, "Please follow me."
She must have looked like the biggest freak to this guard, looking longingly behind her to the bushes, before obliging to go with her with his eyes, hoping that guard was not leading her to the dungeons for being as bold as to impersonate a princess. Surely others had tried to claim the crown in the past, not that he knew the punishment for such a crime. Thankfully Rapunzel was lead inside the castle; Eugene hurried to keep her in sight
From his memory of the castle's schematic he understood that she was being taken to the balcony at the head of the palace. He also knew there a trellis that grew up the side of that balcony.
Rapunzel stood and waited on the balcony, eyes busily following the buzz of the city below. She saw the center square and thought about the day before, she had been down there, dancing wild and free for the first time in her life, content with dreams of lanterns. Now she stood well above it all, a princess, heir to the magnificence of the city. Never in a million years would she have thought she'd be standing here preparing for such an event that was about to happen, all she had wanted was to see the lights, and she had been given so much more, could she handle it all? She wished with all her heart that she could forget the things Gothel had said to her, that she was all wrong, but still the tiny voice of criticism popped in and out of her head repeating words of discouragement. A slap of a hand on marble broke her thoughts, and so startled she jumped expecting to see someone there with her. She turned quickly behind her to find no one.
"Blondie!" a horse but exceedingly familiar voice called out to her.
"Eugene?" she answered looking for him.
"Here," he called again, and there he was, trying to clamber over the ledge of the balcony.
"Eugene!" she rushed to his well needed aide. She tugged him over the edge by the bottom of his vest, and he slide over the banister, and collapsed on top of her.
"That trellis is a piece of work," He huffed, scrambling a bit to get off of her and slumping onto the floor instead, "I've been spoiled, your tower was a piece of cake compared to that."
"Aww," she let out, her voice caught between a gush and a chuckle, sweeping his unruly hair out of his eyes, then helped him stand up to lead him back to the center of the balcony, "Come on, they're coming."
"Hey do you think we should have changed clothes?" Eugene asked as she pulled him along, carelessly examining their clothes. He had a point, Rapunzel hadn't thought about it before. Though very clean, in the tower she had never been horribly opposed to wearing the same clothes a couple day's in a row, but she was realizing the lapse in her logic now after being out running through dirt and grass, for three days. Her silken pastel dress was wrinkled, and the hem line was significantly 's attire wasn't much better, his white shirt was definitely more of yellowy beige now, and still had a maroon stain over his near fatal wound. His already faded blue vest had a hole in it, and one of his pant legs was curiously sopping wet. When they returned to Rapunzel's starting spot, she glanced down and noticed a fountain under the trellis on the wall, "well that was that," she thought with a smirk.
"Wow," Eugene said softly, looking out over the view he had gotten so used to, "Look at that." He sighed, leaning on to the banister.
"Yeah, it's something isn't it?" Rapunzel said copying him.
"It's yours," he corrected, mischievously.
"Yeah," she said breathlessly, in realization, the nerves setting in again, "I guess so."
"How are you feeling?" he asked in earnest, catching her uncertainty.
"Good," she tried at first, "anxious," she attempted again, "Petrified."
"What's the matter?" Eugene asked.
"Oh, a lot of things," she started, placing Pascal off her shoulder and onto the railing of the balcony her words began to spew out at an accelerating pace, "I'm meeting these people who were supposed to raise me, they must be expecting so much and they're just getting me, and now that you've brought it up, our clothes are all kinds of gross, and maybe we should go back to the tower, I'll make some new ones-"
"Slow down a second," Eugene stopped her, stuck on her previous point, "Run that by me again?"
"Clothes," she said, thinking she could change the subject, "I've been making mine all my life, made this dress," she rambled on, "I've never made pants before, but they look pretty easy, and the shirt too, maybe even the vest," she was laughing frantically now, and then began mumbling measurements "I've got plenty of material, I could do it a week or ten.."
"Rapunzel! what's going on?" He had to end her tangent finally, grabbing her shoulders. Her breath was ragged, and scared.
"I don't want to do this," She blurted out shaking, "Let go back, better yet let's leave," her eyes big with a plan, "Come on, down the trellis, through the gates and out to sea! Like we were never even here!"
"First of all there's no way I'm touching that trellis again," Eugene said flatly, "Rapunzel, what's gotten into you? I'd expect this kind of thing from me, but never you."
"It's just too much, I can't do this, what if they don't want me?"
"They will," He said soothingly.
"How do you know?"
"How do you know they won't?" He countered.
"Well why would they?" she said, "I'm not a princess."
"Oh, but you are!" he said grandly gesturing at the palace they stood at, she laughed without mirth, the sound unfitting in her usually melodic voice. "You're going to be fine." He said in a genuine voice.
"How do you know?" She asked again, urging him for an explanation, logic of any kind. She was hunched in defeat leaning over the ledge.
"Because once, I felt exactly the same way," He said going her eye level, "I stopped being myself a long time ago, because, frankly, I thought it sucked being me. And then," He continued in an amused, but pointed air, "I met this girl, who, for some reason beyond my comprehension, thought the world of me. And for the first time ever," His narrative tone wore into a whisper as honest as a confession, "I felt like I was fine. I felt like I was enough, just me, for her." He craned his neck over, to search her eyes, to see if the message had stuck yet, "Now, I can't believe that she, of all people, can't even give herself half as much faith in herself that she has in me." She stood tall again, her finger tips lightly grazing the marble banister.
"Do you believe in her?"
"Absolutely," he answered smiling at the quasi third person they were speaking in. His callused hands smoothed her cropped hair to the sides of her head, and he kissed her on the forehead.
"Then as long as you're here she'll be fine." Taking one of his hands into hers, she conceded finally, with a relieved exhale, looking back out over the island. They stood contently for a moment suddenly the creak of the large oak doors behind them opened.
Hopeful I've got the next one coming soon, if not please just hold tight till i do!