TW: body image, abuse, eating disorders, depression.
mother
Somewhere in Rapunzel's heart, she believes that Gothel truly did love her, at some point in their lives. Not her hair, or the youth and immortality that the hair conjured, but her.
Sometimes, Rapunzel loved Gothel too. Other times, she hated her. It had been the most confusing thing in the entire world.
After Gothel died, and Rapunzel learned the truth, she realized how foolish she had been to ever crave the love of a monster like Gothel.
But still, even after eighteen years, Rapunzel realizes that all she ever wanted growing up, was for Gothel to truly love her.
Rapunzel learned to be independent from an early age.
In Gothel's opinion, she spoke too much as a child, and so Gothel learned to tune out her voice sometimes.
Rapunzel would find the most creative ways to entertain herself in the tower despite how small it was and the fact that there was no one else around.
She didn't ask to go outside back then, because Rapunzel didn't realize that was something she wanted.
Rapunzel always did what she was told, and Gothel liked that about her.
She would talk to herself as well as the people in her own drawings sometimes – though Gothel liked to call them scribbles. But she could leave the girl on her own for hours, and Rapunzel somehow never got bored, which made Gothel's life immensely easier.
Still, just as any child would, Rapunzel craved attention from her mother as much as Gothel craved the magic from her hair.
At four years old, Rapunzel often sat on the floor of her tower, beneath the window with her legs crossed beneath her. She'd quietly play with the toys that Gothel bought for her to keep her busy.
"Mommy, will you play with me?" The little girl asks one day when she notices her mother sauntering at a slow pace through the kitchen, appearing as if her own feet are weighing her down.
Gothel runs her manicured fingertips along the railing as she climbs the steps, never meeting Rapunzel's expectant wide eyes. "Not now, sweetheart. Mummy is tired," she says, then Gothel disappears into her bedroom before Rapunzel can ask her again.
Rapunzel listens to the door close, and the tower is utterly silent again. It's a sound she is all too used to hearing.
Just like that, the little girl's face falls entirely. Her shoulders drop and she sighs to herself, a part of herself expecting to hear that. With much less enthusiasm, she continues to play with her toys alone.
The good thing is, when Rapunzel grew up, she forgot all about the fact that on more than one occasion in her childhood, Gothel often told her she was too tired or too busy to spend time with her, because Rapunzel was too happy of a child to know any better.
Since Rapunzel learned how to talk, Mother Gothel always told her about the outside world. She made sure that Rapunzel knew from an early age how horrible it was, and what would happen if she were to ever go outside.
She told Rapunzel about all the bad men that would try to hurt her – that is, if some disease or natural disaster didn't kill her first. She told her that anyone who saw her would try to kidnap her and use her for her hair, and maybe for other things too – which Rapunzel didn't understand at the time. She told her that she would never be strong enough to fight for herself out there, but that she had nothing to worry about, because Mother would do it all for her.
She told her about all the things that would scare a six-year-old child so much that little Rapunzel began to see them in her nightmares.
She saw what she imagined to be these big monsters with pointy teeth, sharp claws and sharp weapons, chasing her through the forest. And being a small child with a big imagination, her mind tended to exaggerate these features as she fell asleep at night.
The cold tiles are freezing against Rapunzel's tiny bare feet as she tip-toes out of her bedroom. The tower is dark and quiet, the sky outside having turned black many hours ago.
Her nightgown and her long golden hair that just reaches the floor trails behind her. She doesn't make a sound as she slowly climbs the spiral staircase to her mother's bedroom on the opposite side of the tower.
She peeks out from behind the door frame, spotting Gothel's dark and curly hair poking out from between the pillows of her bedframe.
"Mommy?" Rapunzel whispers.
Gothel flickers her eyes open as she rolls onto her side, noticing the little girl staring up at her through the darkness. She hums tiredly, rubbing her eyes that are barely open, "What is it, Flower?"
Rapunzel steps fully into the room, nervously holding the fabric of her nightgown between her fists. She lowers her head insecurely as a familiar fear washes over her. "I dreamt about the monsters again."
Gothel closes her eyes and exhales, annoyed – though the child doesn't notice it. "It was only a dream," insists the woman. "Go back to sleep."
"I can't," Rapunzel whispers, her wide green eyes welling up with tears and glistening in the moonlight. She pouts her lower lip as she sniffles, forcing back tears.
Gothel sighs quietly again. She lifts the corner of the blanket, revealing the empty space on the bed next to her.
Rapunzel beams as she excitedly runs over, climbs up onto the large mattress with all four of her limbs, and nestles contentedly into her mother's chest.
At nine years old, the sky is the most intriguing thing to Rapunzel.
Even when it isn't her birthday, Rapunzel finds herself staring outside her window in the middle of the day hoping that she might somehow spot the floating lights again. At least, she likes to imagine they are there, because it makes her feel a kind of way that she could never describe.
Rapunzel stares at the white clouds crawling across the bright blue sky as she sits on the bench beneath the window of the tower, the way she has always done. She crosses her arms over the windowsill and rests her cheek against them, sighing up at the empty sky.
"Oh, Rapunzel. Stop staring out that window and come and help your mother make dinner."
Rapunzel snaps out of her daydream. She looks over her shoulder to find Gothel in the kitchen, pulling ingredients out of the cupboard while something bubbles on the stovetop.
She'd forgotten her mother had been standing there, but the smell of ginger and nutmeg makes her suddenly hungry.
Rapunzel smiles to herself excitedly as she meets the woman in the kitchen, "Mother? I wanted to ask you something," she says, her voice not having hit puberty yet. The little girl springs on her toes as she begins to wash the vegetables in the water basin.
Gothel doesn't respond or even look over at her, instead busying herself with her hands as she waits expectantly for whatever Rapunzel is about to say.
"Do you think the next time you go to the marketplace… I could maybe come with you?" Rapunzel winces as she asks it, as if she is already apologizing for starting the conversation.
"Now, why on earth would you want to do that?"
Rapunzel places the washed vegetables on a cutting board at the opposite end of the small kitchen. "I was just thinking… you go to the marketplace all the time." She faces Gothel, forgetting what she is doing.
"To buy food, Rapunzel," Gothel points out. Her back is still turned, but she peers her head in Rapunzel's direction. "I go because I have to, so you don't starve. Not because I want to."
"I know," Rapunzel agrees in a small voice. "I just want to see what it's like. Just once?"
Finally, Gothel turns around to face her. There's an irritation in her eyes and confusion in her creased brows, as if she can't understand why Rapunzel is asking this. "You have so much here, what more could you possibly want out there?" Her tone hardens even more, "You forget how much I've sacrificed for you. You should be grateful you have a mother who loves you as much as I do, to give you all the things I've already given you."
Rapunzel's small frame shrinks defeatedly, suddenly realizing how foolish it was to expect a different response than that. She's never asked to leave the tower before, but she'd hoped Gothel would have changed her mind, now that she is nine years old.
Rapunzel lowers her chin, obliging with a calm and respectful tone, "Yes, mother."
Gothel clicks her tongue, her hard expression instantly flickering to an apologetic one as her voice softens, "Oh, sweetheart…" She steps toward Rapunzel and delicately cups the girl's face in her hands. "I won't risk your life out there where you are not safe. If I were to ever lose you… it would kill me."
Rapunzel forces a weak smile at that, finding comfort in her soft voice and the feeling of her hands on her face.
She knows that Gothel loves her, and Rapunzel loves Gothel with all her heart, so she trusts that her mother knows what she's talking about.
Deciding to leave it for now, Rapunzel figures she'll ask again when she's older.
Gothel has always been obsessed with vanity – mostly her own, but Rapunzel's too, for some reason.
Rapunzel learned this at an early age, though it wasn't until she was older that she truly acknowledged it. Because when she was a kid, she didn't really understand that stuff, until a few years later when she began to question everything around her, and she noticed things that she wouldn't have ever noticed before.
It seemed that more often than not, Gothel was looking at herself in a mirror - touching her own face, fluffing up her hair, putting on makeup.
Rapunzel has watched her do it since she was old enough to observe, yet not old enough to comprehend anything around her - so much so that it became a regular thing that Rapunzel never really questioned.
Rapunzel never much cared for her own appearance. She had no reason to. She had no one to impress, no one to compare herself to – except in the pictures in her books, and her own drawings too. But Rapunzel supposes she has always been a decent looking girl, at least she likes to think so.
It wasn't until she started to notice how often Gothel talked about Rapunzel's appearance that it really started to alter the girl's perception of herself. How could she not – when all her mother ever did was criticize her?
She became so aware of every little thing that she did because she knew that Gothel was probably going to comment on it at one point or another.
At thirteen years old, Rapunzel realizes that she's grown out of her clothes… again.
It's different than it was when she was younger, though. It isn't only because she's getting taller, but for other reasons too.
She has more curves now, like Gothel does. It means she's becoming a woman. Rapunzel knows this, which is why she never understood why Gothel made such a big deal of it.
One morning, standing in front of her mirror in her bedroom, Rapunzel steps into her skirt on the floor and pulls it up over her legs as she does every morning, but the fabric gets stuck below her hips.
She tries to pull it up, but the waistband seems to be smaller today. She tries using more force. She tries standing in different positions and twisting herself in a way that would get the skirt to go all the way up, but it doesn't.
Usually, it wouldn't bother her at all. Until she remembers Gothel telling her one day after Rapunzel had baked a pie for the two of them, "Don't eat too much of it, dear. All that sugar will go straight to your hips."
Well, Rapunzel didn't really want to bake again after that, despite how much she loved it. But she started to prepare herself for comments like those every time she would do it.
"Mother… my clothes don't fit me anymore," Rapunzel tells her in the living room afterwards.
Gothel peers up from her book, rocking back and forth on her wooden chair with one leg crossed over the other. The subtle flickering of Gothel's eyes as she looks Rapunzel up and down makes the girl want to shrink beneath her mother's gaze even more. "Are you saying you want me to buy you new ones?"
Rapunzel lowers her head, wearing a guilty expression as if the fact were her own fault. "Yes."
It didn't help that Gothel liked to comment on how much Rapunzel ate in general, or didn't eat for that matter.
If she ate too much or too fast, Gothel would say at the dinner table, "Someone is hungry today." And if she ate too little, it usually sounded something like, "How do you expect to have healthy looking skin if you don't eat all your vegetables?"
And if it wasn't about the food, it was about something else, such as, "You look awfully tired, dear. Did you not sleep well?" - when in fact she slept just perfectly.
Well, after so many years of hearing those things, Rapunzel actually started to believe they were all true.
She'd stare at her own reflection in the mirror for far longer than she should, because the longer she'd look, the better she was able to pick out those tiny little details that would've otherwise gone unnoticed if it weren't for what Gothel had to say about them.
By the time she was only fourteen, Rapunzel found herself locked away in the bathroom on more than one occasion, leaning over the toilet and shoving her fingers down her own throat.
She learned how to do it quietly, so Gothel wouldn't hear it from the next room over.
There wasn't much place to hide in that tower, but Rapunzel found her ways. It wasn't like Gothel was often home anyway. And if she were, she didn't much seem to care what Rapunzel was up to in her spare time.
"Rapunzel, darling! It's dinner time!" Rapunzel hears Gothel calling out from the kitchen, her voice muffled.
Rapunzel momentarily closes her eyes, exhaling, still kneeling on the bathroom floor. She considers just not answering, because the thought of food right now is revolting to her considering she'd just puked up this morning's breakfast. "I'm not hungry!" Rapunzel calls back, somehow masking the irritation in her voice.
Like a nightmare-ish taunt, Rapunzel hears her mother laughing from outside – the kind of laugh that makes the entire world sound like a splendid joke. The kind of laugh that manages to irk Rapunzel every time she hears it. "Oh, don't be silly! You're always hungry," her mother says.
And Rapunzel feels sick all over again.
Fifteen years Rapunzel has been confined to the wretched, desolate place that she also happens to call her own home.
She hates it yet she finds comfort in being here because it makes her feel safe, so she loves it all the same. She doesn't know another place to call home, so she settles for what she has without even entirely realizing it.
Rapunzel feels the same way about Gothel.
In all those fifteen years, she found herself at the window more than any other place in the tower. It quickly became her favourite spot to be from an early age.
It was her only connection to the outside world, the only place that allowed her to imagine what lied beyond it. It gave her hope that there was something waiting for her on the other side.
She conjured so many fantasies in her head – dreams of castles and mermaids, girls in feathered hats and ruffled dresses, knights in shining armour riding on horseback. Well, she wasn't sure whether her storybooks held any truth about those things. But she liked to believe they existed somewhere in the world.
Rapunzel can't describe the feeling of wanting something so bad that you can't have.
The rain made her think about that a lot. It makes her feel happy, yet sad at the time. She likes the sound of it, and the smell. She's never walked through rain, never danced beneath it, and never splashed through the cold puddles at her bare feet and felt the mud between her toes.
She likes to stretch her arms outside her window as far as they can go and let the rainwater puddle in her cupped hands. She likes feeling the water on her skin because it makes her believe she is somehow a part of it - as if she's actually standing outside as one with nature.
One day when it rains, Rapunzel finds herself wishing she were even closer. For too long, she has been confined to the wrong side of the window. She knows she can't be on the other side, but what if she could be in between?
Rapunzel peers over her shoulder at the dark interior of the tower, covered in shadows by the dark clouds outside.
Gothel hasn't emerged from her room in hours, her bedroom door at the top of the stairwell still closed. Rapunzel assumes her to be sleeping, despite it being the middle of the day. Hopefully she won't wake up soon.
Taking a chance, Rapunzel cautiously steps up onto the windowsill. Her hands hold onto the wall as she lifts herself up completely.
With both feet now planted up on the ledge, Rapunzel's heart is pounding in her chest. She raises her arms above her head and holds onto the window frame above her for balance, peering down.
She tells herself she isn't leaving the tower. She's still technically inside, but it's the farthest away from it that she's ever been, by a few inches. But those few inches are the most exciting thing in the world to her.
Rapunzel has never been afraid of heights, having grown used to this exact view for her entire life. But standing up here, Rapunzel seems so much further from the ground than before, and it's as if she is seeing an entirely different universe.
Somehow, there is so much more to the view from her tower than there ever was before. The sky seems to be wider, and she can fully see the base of the tower below. She hadn't realized how many flower bushes laid at the bottom, as well as the dark green vines that snake up the tower and nestle between the stone, becoming thinner the higher they wind upward.
After fifteen years, she wonders how she'd never had this idea before.
Rapunzel closes her eyes and smiles to herself, inhaling the fresh scent of the rainy air.
Soon, her skin and dress are soaked with water that makes her shiver. She doesn't mind the cold or the fact that her dress is sticking to her legs and her hair to her face.
It's as if she could fly, right now. She wishes she were a bird – a bird who isn't trapped in a cage, but one who has the freedom to use its wings for its intended purpose.
Rapunzel's eyes begin to well with tears and she isn't sure why she is suddenly so emotional. Despite her broken heart, she finds herself laughing with giddiness. This is the happiest she has felt in a long time.
From now on, Rapunzel is going to do this every day, because this moment is the most thrilling, blissful feeling in the entire world.
"Rapunzel!"
Just like that, Gothel's shrill voice reaches her ears as she feels herself being yanked back into the tower by rough hands.
"Get down from there! You foolish little girl!"
Rapunzel stumbles as her feet meet the floor of the tower behind her, now forced to open her eyes and snap out of her daze. She would have fallen over completely if it weren't for the hands gripping her arms.
It takes Rapunzel a few moments to comprehend what is happening, unaware she had just lost herself so easily.
When she does, her eyes meet Gothel's own – wide, piercing, and striking a kind of fear in Rapunzel that she's not sure she's ever experienced before.
Before she realizes it, Gothel is spitting words at her that Rapunzel has no idea how to respond to, "How dare you think you can leave your poor mother here alone?!"
Judging by the worry in her face, and the accusation of her leaving, Rapunzel realizes what this must have looked like. Whether Gothel believes she was about to jump or run away, Rapunzel scrambles for an explanation. She hadn't meant to do either of those things. She just wanted to feel the rain. "I wasn't going to—"
Gothel slaps her across the face, the striking blow cutting off whatever reasoning the young girl had on her tongue.
Gothel glares hard at her for a moment afterward, her teeth clenching and her eyes raging. Then her expression completely softens, and she gasps in shock.
She steps back and retracts her hand, as if she'd just now realized what she'd done. Never before has she laid a hand on Rapunzel like that.
Horror flashes across Gothel's face, mirroring Rapunzel's own.
All that can be heard anymore is the sound of the rain pattering outside as tears well in Rapunzel's eyes, the sound faded in the back of her clouded mind. The girl only stands there frozen, the hem of her dress dripping and creating a puddle at her feet.
At this point, Rapunzel realizes there is no use in trying to explain herself anymore, if Gothel is just going to continue believing that she is ungrateful. Even if she did try, the stinging sensation on her cheek and the lump in her throat prevents her from saying anything.
Rapunzel brushes past Gothel and runs up the stairs to her bedroom.
Rapunzel sobs alone in her room after that.
Her hair is messy and damp, and her dress still holds cold rainwater. But she doesn't bother changing out of it. The itchy feeling of it is ignored as she sits with her knees hugged to her chest, perched in the center of her bed.
It isn't until hours later when the sun goes down that she hears Gothel pull back the curtain that separates her bedroom from the rest of the tower.
Rapunzel doesn't look up as she listens to her soft footsteps entering the room, instead burying her face against her knees. She feels the mattress dip next to her as Gothel sits on the edge of the bed.
An entire minute passes before the woman's soft voice fills the dire room. "My sweet girl… Sometimes, we must take drastic measures to protect the ones we love, even when we don't want to. That was all I meant to do. Don't blame me for wanting you to be safe. You're all I have in the world."
Finally, Rapunzel lifts her head and peeks up at her with red tear-filled eyes. Her thick eyelashes are wet, her freckled cheeks rosy from crying yet one of them is darker than the other.
It didn't hurt, not really. It was the fact that Gothel had hit her in the first place just for wanting to go outside that hurts Rapunzel the most.
Gothel grins warmly at her as they meet eyes, placing a gentle hand on the girl's knee.
Rapunzel's gaze flickers down at it, staring absently at her clear pale skin, and her long, perfectly shaped nails.
All Rapunzel can think about now is - she wants things to be the way they used to be, when she would climb into Gothel's bed late at night and fall asleep in her arms, believing that everything was all right with the world. She wants back that naïve perception that everything was going to be okay, and that Gothel was all she needed.
But at the same time, Rapunzel hates her.
She hates the way Gothel makes her feel. She hates that Gothel doesn't understand. She hates that she is locked away in this tower. She hates this feeling of complete loneliness that eats away at her every single night. She hates the helplessness of not knowing what lies beyond her window, and the knowledge that she's probably never going to find out.
Despite the hatred, Rapunzel wants to be held right now so badly. She wants her mother. She wants to be loved. Not necessarily by her, but by someone.
At a loss of what to do or what to feel, Rapunzel bursts into sobs again and she collapses on the bed into Gothel's lap, desperately hooking her arms around the woman's waist.
Gothel slowly wraps her own arms around her too, resting the side of her face on top of Rapunzel's hair. "I love you so much, darling."
Rapunzel squeezes her eyes shut against Gothel's chest as the tears stream down her face. "I love you more."
By the time she was sixteen, Rapunzel knew she would never leave her tower.
Gothel made it her purpose to convince her of that for her entire life. Rapunzel thought – hoped that Gothel only meant she wasn't ready to go outside, implying that she would be one day, when she was older.
Now that she is older, well… Rapunzel finds herself confined to her bed more than anywhere else.
Growing up, she convinced herself that she didn't mind the tower. It had everything she ever needed.
She had her own room, all the books she could ever want, and so many walls for her to paint pictures onto. She had nothing to worry about, and all the time in the world to do the things she loved.
But it's hard to convince herself of that when she no longer finds joy in the things she used to love.
She hasn't painted in months.
Rapunzel swears that her teenage years are the loneliest years of her life. Not that the rest of it wasn't lonely either. But Gothel leaves her more often now.
She started going on multiple day-long trips, as opposed to ones that were only a few hours, leaving Rapunzel alone for longer amounts of time.
And even when Gothel is here, they don't talk much, because Rapunzel doesn't want to talk. It's easier not to, because every time she does, Gothel finds some way to make Rapunzel feel worse than she did before.
All she wants to do is sleep, because sleeping is so much easier than being awake.
She cries sometimes too, but Rapunzel doesn't exactly know why. Sometimes, she'll just lay there for hours and sob until sleeps ultimately consumes her. Mostly late at night but sometimes in the middle of the day too.
Eventually, it becomes difficult for her to even get out of bed in the morning.
Gothel notices it too. Rapunzel wished she didn't.
"Still in bed at this hour?" Gothel tells her late one morning in the doorframe of Rapunzel's bedroom. "Why, I've already gone to the marketplace and back and here you are, right where I left you." She laughs, as if the entire situation is funny.
Of course, Rapunzel knows that's Gothel's way of pestering her for being depressed. Not that Rapunzel has a choice. Not that Gothel would understand what that even means.
As a child, Rapunzel talked too much. Now, Gothel says Rapunzel never talks to her mother anymore.
For a while, Rapunzel just stares at her blankly as she continues to lay nestled within the pillows and blankets. Her body feels frozen and heavy, without an ounce of motivation to get up. "I don't feel good," she mumbles, emotionlessly.
"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Rapunzel. You're not sick, you're only acting lazy," Gothel snaps, her cheerful tone suddenly switching to one that just sounds scolding. It isn't the first time they've had this conversation. Then her tone switches back as she says lovingly, "Come now and wash up. Mummy will make you a nice hot tea."
Rapunzel watches her leave in silence, listening to her lively footsteps treading down the steps and gradually fading away.
Instead of getting up, Rapunzel rolls onto her side. She hugs the blanket to her chest, closes her eyes, and dreams about the floating lights.
