AN: Hi! I finished writing this chapter! After a month...lol. In the prologue, I accidentally put Rapunzel's handmaiden name as Catherine instead of Gothel for some reason. Idk what happened there, but I fixed it. Anyways, hope you guys like this chapter! :)
Disclaimer: I don't own Tangled although I wish I did.
Something was chasing her. She didn't know what it was but from the sound of it, it wasn't friendly. Rapunzel ran as fast as her feet would take her. Her hair wasn't in its usual braid and dragged across the forest floor behind her, slowing her down. She rushed through the trees, desperate for somewhere to hide. It was getting closer. She pulled as much of her hair as she could into one of her arms to help her speed up. Rapunzel looked around as she ran, looking for anything to save herself from the thing. And then she saw it. The perfect hiding place. Vines covered the entrance of the abandoned cave and moss covered the side. Invisible from far away and barely noticeable from close, the cave was the perfect place.
Rapunzel pushed away the vines from the entrance with her free hand and scurried inside, desperate to get away. She pressed herself against the wall, careful for her shadow to not be seen, as the thing thudded past, still thinking that Rapunzel was running.
After what seemed like an eternity, she pushed away from the wall, finally sure that it was gone. She turned her head once to the side to make sure the coast was clear before hesitantly going deeper into the cave.
As she reached the end, Rapunzel gasped, entranced by the sight in front of her. She let her arms drop to her side, her hair landing on the floor. The sight she saw was breathtaking. A tall tower stood in the middle, surrounded by the greenest trees she had ever seen. Peeking out from behind the tower was a waterfall. The water rushed down the side of a cliff, which broke off into a small stream. The sound of the rushing water relieved her of her stress, and for a moment, she was able to relax.
She quickie snapped out of her trance, remembering why she was even there in the first place. The thing could come back and find her. The tower was the perfect hiding place.
As she approached the tower, she noticed the small details she hadn't seen from a distance. The tower was covered with moss which she guessed was because of the lack of use. The structure looked old with its fading purple top and architecture she had never seen before, but it looked sturdy which was good enough for the princess.
She looked around the bottom for an entrance. One hand rested on the tower, searching for a gap between the stones that made up the building while she circled it. She had almost given up when her hand came across a nook that was bigger than the rest. Rapunzel dug her finger into the gap and pulled away the stone. A door handle. This was it, the entrance. She hurriedly pulled off the rest of the stones, revealing a tiny door, one she could barely fit through. She crouched and went inside. From what she could make out in the dark, there was a spiral staircase that hopefully led to the inside of the abandoned tower. Her hands searched for a railing but found none.
She took a deep breath in, trying to calm herself down. Her abnormal amount of clumsiness and the pitch-black dark would surely cause her to fall, but she didn't have a choice. She started up, each step creaking as she climbed higher and higher. On the second to last step, she lost her footing and went tumbling down.
As she fell, her arms flailed before she managed to grab the edge of the step. Rapunzel looked down, which probably wasn't the best idea. She was hovering at least 100 feet off the ground. Rapunzel froze in place, terrified of the height. Her life flashed before eyes before she snapped out of the trance. She swung her leg onto the step, climbing back on. Rapunzel climbed up the last step and pushed open the trapdoor above her, revealing the inside of the tower. She pushed herself up onto the floor and closed the trap door, putting the carpet that covered it before, back where it was.
The place was simple. There wasn't much furniture, just the necessities. A dresser, a few chairs, a stool, and a mirror were placed neatly all around the floor. The walls were a plain tan color. Her hands itched to paint all over them.
"Flower! I didn't expect to see you so soon again! Come, supper is almost ready," said a voice that sounded innocent at first but had dark intentions. She felt her blood run cold.
Rapunzel turned around slowly to confirm her suspicions. Her old handmaiden, Gothel stood behind her on a small staircase which she guessed led up to a tiny bedroom. Memories flooded back, one after the other, filling her mind with images that she had wished to never see again. Each one was of Gothel hitting Rapunzel, punching her, kicking her, and other horrible things for the tiniest reason. She saw the aftermaths; the black eyes, the bruises, those endless nights spent sobbing into her pillow, all which she had to lie about to her parents. Every time it happened, Gothel had sworn to harm someone close to her, someone like…
Eugene. She hadn't seen him in years. Heck, she hadn't even thought about him in years, let alone see him. Ever since that incident...
"Thinking about that horrid boy, aren't you?" Gothel said, almost as if reading her mind. "I don't even know why you even bother, he was such a... What's the word? Oh, despicable creature. Honestly. I can't possibly think of why you even talked to the boy, let alone be friends," she said, saying the last word in disgust.
"How did you find me?" Rapunzel demanded, ignoring her previous statement. She made sure not to let any sign of fear show on her face, not letting her former handmaiden come even close to winning. "You're supposed to be dead. You were sentenced to execution. How did you escape? How did you-"
"Flower, you know rambling is not what a young lady of your stature should do. Remember, you are to give short answers unless asked a question," Gothel chided, cutting her off.
"Stop stalling," she said. "How did you find me?" Rapunzel said, emphasizing each word.
"Find you? You think I want to see you?" she scoffed. "Why would I ever go through the trouble of seeing you. Selfish little brat," she said. "I'm kidding, flower," Gothel said after seeing Rapunzel's look of confusion at her sudden mood swing. "Of course I wanted to see you. I need your hair. I have other... sources, but the little devil had other plans, which is where you come in, dearie. Sing for me," Gothel demanded.
Sing for her? Her hair? What was Gothel even talking about? Then, she remembered.
Every night before bed, Gothel would brush her endless locks of hair and in exchange, she sang for her. Every time, Gothel told her to close her eyes and not peek, so Rapunzel did, not wanting to get hit by her again. Once, she had risked peeking, the curiosity finally caught up with her. She saw some kind of weird glowing, but she wasn't sure where it had come. She quickly shut her eyes again, confused.
Rapunzel had stopped singing that song when Gothel had been supposedly sentenced to execution, which couldn't have been real, seeing as how she was towering over right now.
"No," she said with all the courage she could muster, her voice still coming out feeble and weak. "No, I will not sing for you," she said, her voice now stronger.
"No? You imbecile, you have no right to say that to me," Gothel responded, making her way down the few steps that separated them. "You stupid child, thinking you can do whatever you want. No, you shall listen to me. I think this requires a punishment," she said as she raised her hand to strike her.
Rapunzel dodged at the last second, the hand barely missing her. She sidestepped and ran towards the window, looking for a way to escape. Just when she was about to give up, she saw something. A hook. It was simple, painted black, but it was just what she needed. All Rapunzel needed to do was get her hair on there and slide down, using her hair as a pulley. As she worked, she didn't hear Gothel creep up behind her.
"Trying to escape?" she said. "Yeah, that won't do you any good," Gothel scoffed. "Look down,"
Like a fool, she listened. She wasn't sure if she was relieved for looking down or terrified. The thing that was chasing her
It was horrible. The creature shifted between horrid mutations of fictional and real animals. But she knew one thing for sure. It wanted her. Dead or alive, she couldn't tell, but she could sense it. And that scared her.
"Still want to escape?" Gothel said. She laughed at Rapunzel's look of horror at the idea. "Yeah, I didn't think so either," she said "Sing for me and it'll go away,"
"No, I already told you. I won't sing for you," Rapunzel said. "Why do you want me to sing to you anyway?" she asked.
"Very well. Just remember, you asked for it," Gothel said, ignoring her previous question. Her hand reached out, and for a second, Rapunzel thought she was going to smack her. Instead, she shoved her.
Rapunzel fell out the window, flailing. Gothel watched as she fell, a smile creeping onto her face. She screamed as she fell to her doom, either from the creature of the 100-foot drop. Rapunzel closed her eyes, wanting to get back at Gothel by living her last few seconds of life relaxed and in peace.
But the end of her life never came. Instead, when she opened her eyes, she was back at home, in the palace. She wasn't in her bedroom, though. Instead, she was in the most guarded room of the castle. The crown room.
Rapunzel remembered this memory as it was the sole reason why she avoided the room filled to the brim with valuables, but she hadn't a clue why she was relieving it. This was the memory she kept buried in the back of her head for 10 years, too painful to surface back up to her mind.
She knew what came next and she dreaded it.
She watched her 10-year-old self in third person. Rapunzel could not move her limbs or speak. She could only watch herself do something she would go on to regret the rest of her life.
It was Rapunzel's birthday that day. They had spent the day celebrating. Even though she should have been exhausted, Rapunzel hadn't been able to sleep that night, so she wandered the castle, looking for something to relieve her boredom. She heard rustling and the crashing sound of something falling in the room that held her crown so she had decided to check it out. The guards had let her pass without a second thought, too drowsy to stop her. She shut the enormous doors quietly behind her, not wanting to wake her parents in the room across. Rapunzel looked in front of her and saw something she regretted seeing even now. There was Eugene, his hand extended over the crown.
"Eugene? What are you doing here?" she heard herself ask, suspicion written all over her face.
"Oh uh, hey Rapunzel," he said, the hand he had hovering over her crown now rubbing the back of his neck. "I'm just uh, making sure that there are no intruders. Part of my nightly routine," he said suspiciously. "Hey, anyone in here? No? Good," he told her, trying to convince her. "See, no one. Alright, we can just head out now-" he said, gesturing towards the door.
"Were you trying to steal my crown?" Rapunzel asked, cutting him off, even though she already has a creeping suspicion of what the answer was.
"What…? No! I was, uh…," Eugene said.
"You were, weren't you?" she said, hurt written all over her face.
"Yes, I was," he said with a sigh. "But it's not what it looks like. I-"
"You were gonna steal from me," she said, registering the fact. "I thought we were friends, best friends even," she said, stepping closer to him every few words. "And friends don't do that to each other," Rapunzel said, the hurt in her voice evident. "If you needed something, you could've just asked. You know I would've given it to you, I always do,"
Eugene had started to back away towards an open window. "Look, I'm sorry. I really am," he said right at the edge of the window. Eugene took one more step back and fell out the window. Rapunzel rushed up to the window, screaming his name. She looked down and watched her best friend plummet to his doom.
Rapunzel sat up with a start in her bed, drenched in sweat. She looked around and saw she was in her bedroom. She let out a sigh of relief. It had just been a dream. But not the second one. That was a memory.
"Hey, sweeti-" her mother said as she walked into her room. She stopped at the sight of her frivolous state, her forehead creased in worry.
"What's wrong? Are you okay? Do you want me to call someone? I can help if you wan-" her mother said, rushing to her side.
"It's okay Mom, I'm fine," she lied with a smile, not wanting to tell her mother how she truly felt. Ever since her sister had been kidnapped, she hadn't been the same. There was a time she remembered faintly when her mother was a ray of sunshine. She could brighten anyone's day by even walking by. Her mother kept track of all the small details everyone told her about themselves, which was only one of the many reasons she was so well-loved.
Once Dahlia had been kidnapped though, the light inside her faded. She became a shell of the person she once was. Her mother had stayed inside her bedroom for days, refusing to come out to even eat or drink. She remembered watching servants slip food and water through the crack of the door.
Her mother did eventually come out of her room, but she was never the same. Her emotions were always either too extreme or not extreme enough depending on the situation. She would freak out over the tiniest things and not even care about big matters. However, Rapunzel didn't blame her. She knew it must be hard for her to lose her child. Rapunzel herself wasn't old enough to understand what was going on, but she knew her sister wasn't there and that was enough to make her upset. She could only imagine what it was like for her mother.
Her father was a different story. He sent out guards in every direction, desperate to find his daughter. After weeks of search, they could not find her. The guards had checked every corner of the kingdom and had come up with nothing. He gave orders to keep searching, so the guards did. They searched and they searched but found nothing. He called off the search, now hopeless of his daughter's return.
After that, he threw himself into work, desperate for a distraction. He stayed in his study all day, only coming out for meals. Rapunzel barely saw him during that time.
That was when she had met Pascal.
Rapunzel had become lonely. Her father was busy in his study, her mother was still locked up in her room, and Eugene was nowhere to be found. She was outside, in the courtyard when she saw him. Something small and green zipped past her, a snake on its trail. She watched as the animal stopped, hid, and changed colors to match his surroundings. Rapunzel took a stick and whacked the snake on the head, rendering him unconscious. She walked up to the chameleon and held out her hand.
"Hello, I'm Rapunzel. What's your name?" she said to him, her big eyes light up with curiosity. The chameleon hesitantly walked onto her hand, as if understanding her every word. Rapunzel lifted him to her ear.
To any normal person, it would sound like a bunch of chirps and squeaks coming from a chameleon, but Rapunzel was not normal. She could understand the small animal, the sounds coming from his mouth as clear as day.
"Your name is Pascal?" she asked, trying to confirm what she had heard. Pascal nodded and climbed onto her shoulder, snuggling in comfortably.
Rapunzel snapped back from her flashback, coming back to reality. Her mother stood by her face now relieved at her response.
"Alright, that's good," she said as she sat down on Rapunzel's bed. "I wanted to give you something,"
"Oh? What is it?" Rapunzel asked, her eyebrows raised.
The queen pulled out a small, dark purple box with Corona's sun emblem on it and set it in front of her daughter. Rapunzel curiously picked up the mysterious box, wondering what was inside. Upon closer inspection, she could see that the box was made out of crushed velvet and the emblem had been stitched on with yellow thread.
"I wanted to give you an early birthday gift. Seeing as how your father and I have to go to the bordering kingdom of Lizon to attend the annual Council of Royals meeting which unfortunately fell on your birthday this year, I thought I should give it to you now," she said with a smile.
Rapunzel lifted the lid, suspicious of her mother's odd behavior. She never acted like this. Usually, she would be fretting over her, or she would forget Rapunzel even existed and, not that she minded. She was used to it from both of her parents. Her mother was almost acting like… herself.
Nonetheless, she knew they loved her. They just had a rather odd way of showing it. And gifts were not one of them.
She let out a gasp of astonishment when she saw what was inside. A small necklace with the Corona seal on it lay in front of her. The seal was gold and so was the chain. The sun was dotted with six tiny crystals at each tip and a small sun-shaped one in the center, making it lock kind of like a flower. And for some reason, she was mesmerized.
She asked her mother to put it on her and she obliged. She rushed up to her mirror. It looked beautiful. Rapunzel had never been one to daydream of jewelry or clothes for that matter, but this had left her starstruck.
"Thank you so much! I love it!" she exclaimed as she turned to face her mother. "But what made you choose to give me this?" she asked.
"Well I know you have much interest in jewelry, but I knew you would like this one. It has something… special about it," her mother responded. "Besides, I've been waiting to give you this, waiting for something that's never going to happen. So I decided now is a good time,"
"What do you mean?" Rapunzel asked.
She pulled out another box for the pocket of her dress, identical to Rapunzel's, and set it in front of her.
"There's another one," she said, her mother's face sad. "It's tradition in our family to give these two necklaces to sisters. The one you're wearing was mine and the one in this box was Willow's. I was going to give it to you and Dahlia, but…" she said, her voice trailing off. The queen went into a trance before blinking a few times and shaking herself out of it.
"Well, your father and I leave for Lizon tomorrow morning," she said as if nothing had happened. "I asked Cassandra to wake you up early tomorrow so you can say goodbye," the queen said. She nodded towards her necklace. "And make sure you don't lose that,"
Rapunzel watched her leave, her mother completely different from when she had first walked in. Once she'd left, she picked up the other box and opened it. Inside was the same necklace Rapunzel had, only this one was silver.
The lid felt heavy. She flipped the top to look at the back of it and she gasped. Hidden inside the lid of the box was a tiny portrait of her sister. Rapunzel remembered when it was painted. It was tradition for a portrait of the baby to be made the day it was born. Rapunzel herself had one like the rest of Corona's past royals.
It looked exactly like Dahlia. The portrait perfectly captured her sister's wispy blonde hair, big green eyes, freckled cheeks, and rosy pink lips. In other words, she looked exactly like Rapunzel.
A tear slipped down her face and landed on the picture. Rapunzel wiped her eyes. She tried not to think about her sister too much as it made her upset and gloomy. But this was more than enough to make her cry. She had only known her for a day, but a day was all it took to love her. And she was sure her mother felt the same.
Slowly, an idea crept into her, too insane to even be considered. But this was something she wanted- no, needed to do. If not for herself, then for her mother. Maybe she would even be the same again, not just the hollow version of her past self Rapunzel had come to know.
It had been too long. She needed to find her sister.
Yay! This took me so long, but I finally finished writing and editing this chapter! I had to cut it off early because it was getting too long., so that'll probably be in the next chapter. What'd you guys think? Feel free to leave any suggestions for this story or any other story ideas you might have! R&R! :)