Eugene's breath caught in his throat. It was her, it really was. There was no denying it. She was wearing Gothel's cloak, and she had pulled the hood off so he could see that it was her. He swallowed hard. He thought he might never see her face again, but there she was, her hair short and brown, just as it had been the day he'd cut it off. Her eyes looked sad, and he wondered why.
"Rapunzel, it's really you," he said. "After all these years, I've finally found you."
Rapunzel smiled, but he could see that her eyes were still sad.
Then a new thought came to his mind. Sunflower had called her Mother. Was she...?
"Sunflower, is she your mother?" asked Eugene.
Sunflower smiled. "Yes... Father."
Eugene didn't have time to be surprised, because all of the sudden, he had a concerning realization. Gothel must have taken Rapunzel, and when Sunflower was born, she had used her for her hair!
"Rapunzel, you need to get out of here!" Eugene cried. "Gothel..."
Rapunzel opened her mouth. "Eugene, she's dead," she said. "Please stop talking about her."
Then, a tear ran down her face.
Eugene ran to her without thinking and wiped the tear off her face. "What's wrong, Rapunzel?" he asked.
Rapunzel looked at him, more tears in her eyes. Eugene felt terrible. He could not figure out what was making her so sad. Sunflower looked up at him with a confused look on her face, and he felt like there was a big, sad secret that only he didn't know about.
Then the pieces of the puzzle slowly began coming together.
Sunflower's mother was overprotective. It wasn't Gothel, as he had thought. Her mother was Rapunzel.
"Rapunzel, are you the one who's keeping Sunflower locked up in here?" he asked.
Rapunzel nodded through her tears.
"But why?" he asked.
She didn't answer.
"Come back with me," said Eugene. "I don't know who took you away or why you're sad, but everything will be alright when you come back."
"No," said Rapunzel. "I can't go back."
Eugene looked at her. "Why?"
Then he had a terrible thought. It was because of him, wasn't it? She'd not been stolen, she'd run away. And it had to have been because of him.
"You left because of me, didn't you?" he asked. "And you kept Sunflower locked up in here so she wouldn't ever meet me. You don't realize that you're keeping her here just like Gothel kept you in here!"
Rapunzel wiped her tears. "I do realize," she said flatly. "And I didn't leave because of you."
That didn't make any sense to Eugene, the first part. If she realized, why did she continue to do so?
The silence went on until Rapunzel looked at Eugene. "You really don't know, do you?" she said, with anger in her voice. "That whole year I was with you, you didn't realize? You didn't see what I was going through?"
Eugene shook his head.
But then the last piece of the puzzle clicked in, and he suddenly saw.
He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe he hadn't seen the sadness that whole year. And as if he hadn't seen, Rapunzel began to explain.
"I lost my mother, the one who loved me most, and they didn't care. There are so many things I miss about her. She used to brush my hair. Now I barely even have hair to brush. And it was my fault she died. I have lived with that guilt for so many years, and when I was there, they didn't even acknowledge that she had existed. So I came back here, where we had lived. I had to get away from there, don't you see?
When Sunflower was born, I gave her all my mother gave me. I didn't have my mother, but she had her mother. I tried to live up to my mother's example, and she turned out much better than me, I think. When I was her age, all I wanted was to leave the tower. And she, she doesn't even have a desire to. If only my mother'd had her as a daughter instead of me. Then she would still be alive today."