A/N:
Hey there, Heidi here! I thought it would be interesting to delve into Rapunzel's past and explore what her childhood in the tower might've been like. I plan for this book to have three or four chapters. I could use some tips, as I'm new to writing Tangled, so don't forget to let me know what you think!
More to come soon. Thanks for reading!
"Good heavens, what was all that ruckus?"
A five-year-old Rapunzel looked up with glassy eyes from where she was seated on the hard floor. Her knees ached and hot tears ran down her face, blurring her vision. She had tripped and hurt herself on the tiled floor, causing her to cry out in pain. She wasn't bleeding, but she cried as though she had been.
Gothel grumbled something that the girl couldn't hear from the ground. She then knelt down to inspect the situation, putting on a worried face.
"Where does it hurt, Flower?" she asked, voice a mixture of concerned and hurried as if she were trying to get back to what she had been doing as soon as possible.
Rapunzel pointed to one of her knees. The older woman picked it up with one hand, bending and unbending it in front of her eyes, trying to put the pieces together to figure out how such an accident had occurred. "How did this happen?" she finally questioned, her gaze still directed towards the knee rather than at the child sprawled on the floor. It wasn't nearly as bad as she had first thought it was. Rapunzel's knees were slightly blue, but other than that, she was totally fine. Gothel figured she was just being dramatic, as she didn't really care enough to read into it more. Children acted strange all the time, so it likely wasn't worth the extra concern or the valuable time required to investigate such matters.
"I-I tripped," the girl whispered, sniffling.
"Over what?" Gothel asked again, utterly perplexed as to what could have caused her to be injured enough to cry over it. The floor of the tower was spotless. All of her things had been picked up hours ago, so there was absolutely nothing she could have tripped over besides her own two feet. Gothel wouldn't put that past her, though—Rapunzel had been known to be quite the klutz at times.
The girl in question wiped tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand. "M-My hair, Mommy."
Gothel looked at the heap of blonde hair on the floor, which the child was seated upon, completely and utterly baffled. A look of disbelief crossed her face. She couldn't quite comprehend the fact that her golden locks could pose as a problem. After all, the hair was a precious gift in Gothel's eyes.
"And just how did you manage to trip over your own hair, Rapunzel? That's positively mad." The woman was clearly beginning to lose her patience. She was itching to get back to her duties elsewhere, and playing mother was beginning to take up more of her time and energy than she'd initially anticipated.
"I was walking a-and my foot slipped." The toddler sniffed again, trying to keep her tears at bay so as not to make her mother more aggravated with her. Even at five years of age, Rapunzel understood that Gothel was not one to be trifled with.
Gothel sighed loudly as she brought herself to her feet. "Be more careful."
And that was the last thing Gothel said to the girl that evening as she helped her up and took her into another room to get her cleaned up.