A/N: Wow. I had gone three days without writing a single word until I wrote this chapter today. This one was easy to write... lots of fun, I think this may be my favorite chapter with the whole Tamaki escaping thing... it's epic, that's all I'm going to say. I'm going to try to write more for my other two Ouran fics today, but honestly I probably won't update either until at least tomorrow, maybe Tuesday. The three days off were desperately needed, but now I need to get my brain to work again. One more chapter to go for this fic, and I'll finish it off by the end of the week!
Disclaimer: Don't own Ouran Host Club or Tangled
Chapter 10: The Rescue
Tamaki doesn't particularly try to resist as he's being led down the hallway. As he idly glances into each cell, he suddenly notices the Hitachiin twins in one of the cells. Quickly knocking both guards out, he springs over, grabbing the pair by their collars.
"HOW DID YOU KNOW ABOUT HER?" he demanded. "TELL ME! NOW!"
"It wasn't us!" Hikaru yelps.
"Yeah, it was the old lady!" Kaoru adds.
"Old lady…?" Tamaki muses. The guards begin to drag him away. "Wait… no! Wait! You don't understand! She's in trouble! Wait!"
The Hitachiin twins exchange glances. Then Hikaru grins wickedly and holds out a key that he snagged off the guards as they grabbed Tamaki. Kaoru shoots him an identical grin and shows that he's already picked the locks on his own shackles, and he quickly moves to help his twin.
Back at the tower, Benibara approaches the bottom stair, looking up to Haruhi's room. "Haruhi?" she calls, beginning to climb the stairs. "Haruhi, what's going on up there? Are you all right?"
Haruhi staggers to the doorway, leaning against the doorframe for support, staring at the woman she's always called her mother with new eyes. "I'm the lost princess," she gasps.
"Ugh… please speak up, Haruhi. You know how I hate the mumbling!" Benibara sighs in exasperation.
Haruhi looks up, her brown eyes positively blazing. "I am the lost princess. Aren't I?" She takes in Benibara's stunned expression. "Did I mumble, Beni? It was all lies, wasn't it? You told me that my parents died!"
It takes Benibara a minute to find her voice. "Oh, Haruhi, do you even hear yourself? Why would you ask such a ridiculous question?" She moves as though to hug Haruhi, but the girl takes a large step back.
"It was you! It was all you!" she accuses. "Everything you've ever told me was a lie!"
Benibara's eyes narrow dangerously. "Everything I did was to protect you."
Haruhi angrily shoves past her and heads down the stairs. "I've spent my entire life hiding from people who would use me for my power…"
"Haruhi…"
"…when I should have been hiding… from you!" Haruhi is clearly stricken, but also furious as the depths of the betrayal really sink in.
"Where will you go?" Benibara demands. "HE won't be there for you."
Haruhi freezes at the implicit mention of Tamaki. "What did you do to him?" she demands in realization.
"That CRIMINAL," Benibara spits out, "is to be hanged for his crimes."
"NO!" Haruhi gasps, shocked and devastated. "How could you?" she adds, understanding the situation perfectly.
"Now, now, it's all right. Listen to me. All of this… is as it should be." She steps towards Haruhi, who has fallen to her knees in horror at the idea of Tamaki's death, and moves to stroke the golden hair.
Haruhi jerks her attention back to Benibara and grabs her wrist angrily. "NO! You were wrong about the world. And you were wrong about ME. And I will NEVER let you use my hair AGAIN!"
Benibara manages to wrench her wrist free of Haruhi's grasp and she staggers backwards, crashing into a mirror, which topples and shatters all over the floor. Haruhi glares contemptuously at her and walks away. Benibara stands us, eyes blazing with cold rage.
"You want me to be the bad guy? Fine. Now I'm the bad guy."
Back at the prison, the two oldest Ootori boys are forcefully wrestling Tamaki towards a door, although he never stops struggling. Yoshio Ootori is walking ahead of them. As he approaches a door, all the other ones slam shut and he finds the door in front of him is locked. He knocks on the door angrily
"What's this? Open this door, right now!" he shouts, and the little hatch slides open, revealing the bright innocent face of Honey.
"What's the password?" he asks.
"What?" Yoshio Ootori asks. He glances back at his two older sons, still holding a struggling Tamaki in place.
"Nope," Honey says, still bright and innocent and happy.
"OPEN THIS DOOR!" demands the Captain.
"Not even close," Honey giggles.
"You have three seconds!" Yoshio exclaims. "One…" Mori calmly walks in one of the doors and knocks the oldest Ootori boy out. "Two…" Mori knocks the second Ootori boy out. "Three…?" Mori grabs the two unconscious sons of the captain and vanishes back out the door he'd come in. Yoshio turns around to see Tamaki standing there innocently alone with a clueless expression on his face. Only then does the door open and Honey hits the captain hard in the face with a frying pan, sending him flying.
Tamaki bursts out laughing. "Frying pans! Who knew, right?!"
Guards appear at the other doors and Mori joins them, and the trio makes a run for it. They are shocked to come face-to-face with the Hitachiin twins.
Tamaki jumps backwards, taking a defensive stance. "What are you guys doing here? I thought… you were locked up!"
"We've decided we want to help you out, Boss," Hikaru says. "She seemed like a nice girl, and the old lady needs to be taught a lesson."
"But just this one time," adds Kaoru. "And we still owe you a thrashing for getting us arrested and for almost getting us drowned."
"After we rescue Haruhi though, right?" Tamaki asks.
"Sure thing, Boss," the twins agree together. Then some guards appear and the twins proceed to beat the holy hell out of them.
The whole group takes off running. They reach a low wall and Mori grabs Tamaki and tosses him over it. Tamkai is surprised to find Honey already standing down there.
"Head down!" he exclaims.
"Head down," Tamaki echoes, taking the stance.
"Arms in."
"Arms in."
"Knees apart."
"Knees apa… Knees apart? Wh…why do I need to keep my knees apa…" He is cut off as the twins vault over the wall together and land on the other end of a catapult that Tamaki is standing on, sending the blonde thief flying through the air. "Waaaaaaaauuuuugggghh!" he cries, and he lands in a cart full of straw.
A hand grabs his arm and pulls him out, and Tamaki finds himself face-to-face with Kyouya. At first Tamaki can only stare at the dark-haired third son of the Captain of the Guards.
"Kyouya… you planned this?"
"Of course I planned it," Kyouya says, pushing his glasses further up onto his nose. "Who else could have put together such a perfectly flawless plan?"
"Thank you," Tamaki whispers.
"It was nothing," Kyouya tells him.
"No… really…" Tamaki whispers, putting his hand over his heart to convey incredible amounts of sincerity. "Thank you. I feel like maybe all this time, we've just been misunderstanding one another and we're really just…"
Kyouya glares at him. "I'm not doing this for you, idiot. I'm doing it for her."
"Oh… Well, I can get behind that. As long as you're helping."
They hear shouts. Kyouya gestures to a pair of horses nearby. "We should go.
"Yeah. You're right. We should go," Tamaki agrees, and they jump onto their horses and take off at a gallop. Soon they are pounding their way out of the town below the castle and clattering across the bridge, racing madly off into the woods.
They reach the tower and Tamaki hurries towards it while Kyouya hangs back. Tamaki peers up. The tower is dark and silent, and he prays desperately that Haruhi hasn't been dragged away to some unknown location by Benibara.
"Haruhi?" he calls out. Only silence answers him. "Haruhi, let down your hair!" he calls out. There's still no answer.
Tamaki decides to climb up the tower in the hope that there will be some clue to Haruhi's whereabouts. He only gets a few feet when there's a creaking noise and suddenly the golden hair flows down and Tamaki grabs it, climbing as fast as he can hand-over-hand. Finally he levers himself into the room, a relieved smile on his face.
"Haruhi, I thought I'd never see you again… What the…?" he gasps, seeing her lying on the floor, bound and gagged, eyes wide with terror.
She utters a few short agonized cries as Benibara appears behind Tamaki, a knife in her hand. She stabs him in the side of the stomach and Tamaki hits his knees as Haruhi screams around her gag.
Benibara stands over Tamaki as he falls to the floor. "Now look what you've done, Haruhi. Oh, don't worry, my dear. Our secret will die with him." She steps coldly over Tamaki's groaning form as he clutches at his injury.
Haruhi pulls desperately at her chain, trying with all her strength to get to Tamaki, but she can't move. Pascal leaps forward to try to help, but Benibara kicks him against the wall and he falls limply to the floor. Then Benibara grabs Haruhi and starts dragging her towards the hidden trapdoor.
"And as for us…" she says, but she can't speak as Haruhi is using every trick she can to keep herself from being dragged away. "Haruhi, really! Enough already! Stop…fighting…me!"
Haruhi squirms some more and manages to get the gag off her mouth. "No! I won't stop! For every minute, for the rest of my life, I will fight! I will NEVER stop trying to get away from you!" Her eyes are somewhat wild as she says this. She lets her words sink in, then continues frantically. "But… if you let me save him, I will go with you."
"No… no… Haruhi, no!" Tamaki groans. Pascal slowly opens his eyes at her declaration. Haruhi manages to ignore them.
"I'll never run. I'll never try to escape. Just let me heal him, and you and I will be together… forever. Just like you want. Everything will be the way it was. I promise. Just like you want. Just… let me… heal him," she begs.
Benibara pauses and seriously considers her options. Finally she walks over to Tamaki and chains one of his arms to a column. "In case you get any bright ideas about following us," she growls at him.
Tamaki coughs weakly, still clutching his wound. It's obvious that the wound will be fatal in just moments unless Haruhi manages to heal him. The second she is free, she flies across the room and cups his face gently in her hands.
"Ta…Tamaki!" she cries. He moans softly. She moves her hand to get a better look at the wound, and she sees that it's worse than she thought. "Oh… Oh Tamaki… I'm so sorry. Everything is going to be okay though." She grabs some of her hair and moves to press it to the wound.
Tamaki bats her hair away from him. "…No… Haruhi…"
"You'll be fine, I promise! You have to trust me! Come on, just breathe," she begs him, still trying to cover the wound.
Tamaki's eyes flutter weakly. He's obviously fading fast. "I can't… let you do this," he gasps.
Haruhi barely manages to choke back a sob. "And I can't let you die."
"But if you do…" Tamaki whispers.
"Hey, shh, shh, shh…" Haruhi murmurs, caressing his cheek.
"…then you… will die…" Tamaki hisses, his voice nearly gone.
"Hey," Haruhi whispers. "I'm gonna be all right."
He manages to smile weakly at her. She smiles back, but her eyes are filled with tears, and they both know that she is lying. Tamaki manages to run his fingers through her hair. "Haruhi… wait…"
She leans closer to him, breathing in the air he exhales. Just when it seems that they might kiss… he grabs her hair and lifts it off her neck, catching every strand in his hand… And in his hand is a long shard of glass from the broken mirror… and he uses that to slice through her hair and his hand falls limply to the ground, dropping the glass to the floor.
Haruhi gasps in horror and reaches up to touch what remains of her hair, which is now incredibly short and turning brown. "Tamaki… what…?" she whispers.
"NOOOO!" Benibara screams. Haruhi turns and both women stare as the long golden hair that practically fills the entire tower turns brown as well. Benibara scrambles to grab the hair even as it turns brown beneath her fingertips. "Oh no… no… no! What have you done?!" she screams as her hands turn wrinkly and her hair becomes white. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" she screams.
She crawls on her hands and knees to the remains of the broken mirror, and she sees many reflections of herself in the mirror, sees her incredibly old and ugly face staring back at her. She covers her face with her cloak, screaming in horror at her own appalling ugliness. The fact that her screams are now raspy and high-pitched sends her into a further burst of screaming over the loss of her beautiful voice. As she staggers about the tower in agonized horror, Pascal pulls out a length of the discarded hair and Benibara trips over it, plummeting right out the window of the tower. She is also shrinking and becoming more wrinkled the whole time. Her agonized howl dies away and she turns into a cloud of dust moments before striking the ground below.