what falls away is always

There were so many ways this could have gone, Rapunzel thought. Also now wasn't the time for thinking. Rapunzel was a princess and everything in the tower suddenly looked like a sun, and somewhere between screaming at her mother that she hated her, she'd trusted her and this was what she got for it, Flynn had somehow found the secret entrance, come up cautiously through the trapdoor, and had promptly been stabbed by Gothel.

Now Flynn's fingers were pressed tightly over her wound and her face was a horrible, chalky white, and Rapunzel was more frightened than she'd ever been in her life. Nothing else came close. She was shaking so badly she could feel her calf muscles spasming. "Come along, Rapunzel," Mother said. "It's time to go."

Flynn was convulsing with pain on the floor. Gothel had already yanked Flynn's knife from her sheath and had tossed it well across the room. Rapunzel couldn't see where it had ended up. There was a constellation of blood splatters on the floor.

"Rapunzel." A brutal yank on the chains around her neck, spilling Rapunzel to the floor. "Now."

She climbed back onto her knees, swaying. She automatically tried to reach up and wrap her hands around the nearest length of chain, the way she'd always relieved her neck of the weight of her hair, but her wrists only tugged against their restraints.

In the back of her mind, Flynn reminded her, priorities.

Her mother was still talking, saying something like Rapunzel really and don't make me do something I regret.

She remembered the green in the toddler's eyes in the town square's mosaic.

Back or forward.

Flynn kept bleeding.

Rapunzel took a breath, let it out slowly, and chose.

.

She thrust her heel out at the pot she'd first hidden Flynn's satchel in, because that was closest to her feet. It was heavy and hurt her foot, but the kick sent it rolling. When Gothel turned to look, Rapunzel was already pitching forward onto a shoulder, bound hands knocking clumsily against the floor, to bowl against Gothel's legs.

Gothel staggered, more out of surprise than anything. Rapunzel rolled to her feet, and while Gothel was regaining her balance, spun on the ball of her foot, kicking her leg up as high as she ever had in ballet practice, and brought her heel down on Gothel's shoulder.

Gothel went down to her knees. Rapunzel made a break for Flynn, feet slapping against the floorboards.

A sudden agonizing weight yanked her head back. She instinctively twisted, following it around to avoid snapping her own neck, and saw that Gothel was standing and had a grip on her hair. There was very little love in her eyes.

She didn't have time to think. She extended her stumble, turning it into a half-run, and had time to see a split second of alarm on Gothel's face before she ducked a shoulder and rammed it into her stomach. They both went down.

For a moment everything was a flurry of gold hair and chains and Rapunzel couldn't break free without her arms, didn't even know where she ended and her mother began and—

Then Gothel grabbed her ear and Rapunzel bit at her instinctively, teeth clicking a breath away from the thin skin of her wrist. Gothel let go. Rapunzel twisted, jerking herself around, kicking blindly. She heard the breath woosh out of Gothel's chest. She rolled the other way, struggling to her feet, yanking against the weight of the chain.

Gothel got a grip on her hair again just as she reached the standing mirror by the staircase. She had just enough time to get behind it before her head was jerked back again. She turned with it, using her entire body to check the mirror as hard as she could.

Gothel shrieked, and for a panicked second Rapunzel thought, despite everything, don't land on her, don't let me hit my mother. Gothel threw herself out of the way just as the mirror exploded over the floor, flinging shards in every direction. Several of them clinked as they slid over the edge of the trap door, shattering on the stone steps below.

Her ears were ringing. She picked herself up and raced towards Flynn again doggedly, ignoring the bright bursts of pain in her feet as she stumbled over the glass.

She got within a foot when the chain around her neck yanked her back yet again. The sheer force of it this time spun her around and flung her to the floor, knocking the wind out of her.

Gothel drew the chain in hand over hand, disheveled and pale and furious; wheezing, Rapunzel struggled to keep up, unable to use her hands or get to her knees, pumping her legs helplessly through the glass on the floor to avoid being strangled. When she was close enough, Gothel grabbed the hair by the nape of Rapunzel's neck, wrapped it around her fist, and brought Rapunzel's face close to her own.

Rapunzel's head was forced back and a cold, sharp metal tip found its way underneath the collar, and, with Flynn dying ten feet away, she finally stopped struggling.

.

Strangely, as her mother pressed a knife against her throat, Rapunzel's mind was on other things.

It was the feeling she'd had when she'd splashed her feet in the stream outside for the first time, compared to the feeling she'd had when the water in the cave had risen to her chin. Struggling to breathe in the remaining pocket of air and realizing that no, she'd been wrong about all of that too. Too much of anything could kill her, and beautiful things were no exception.

Gothel was strong enough to hold her for now, but this close Rapunzel could see age beginning to creep in around the edges. Already her skin was getting a little loose around her eyes, streaks of grey hair appearing in the glossy black. It wouldn't be long before Rapunzel would need to sing for her.

Gothel needed Rapunzel to say, I won't fight you. I won't try to escape. I'll do everything you want if you just let me heal her, and everything will be exactly like you want.

Rapunzel had no trouble understanding why Gothel was fighting so hard and so dirty. Gothel was beautiful. She was vibrant and young and strong, and one day in the city had taught Rapunzel just how valuable those qualities were. Centuries of renewal had amplified everything in her mother. Where she'd been passably pretty once she was now stunning, and where there had been an edge of spite before there was now a monster gnashing its teeth in the dark. "That will be quite enough out of you," Gothel snarled, once she recovered her breath. "I can't believe your behavior, Rapunzel. You are stopping this nonsense right now and we are leaving. Do you understand me?"

And just like that… just like that, the rest of Rapunzel's own anger faded under a sudden wave of grief. Somewhere inside there was the mother who had taught her to read and to sew and to play chess. She wished she could have known Gothel as the girl she'd been hundreds of years ago, singing to herself and fetching water from the well for her own mother, inventing games to play by herself in the forest. Picking herbs and berries for dinner and for tea. Saying their names in the language she now used only in her sleep: löwenzahn, hagebutte, melisse, rapunzel.

Rapunzel heard herself say, "I'm going to heal her."

"Oh ho." Gothel's voice held a dangerous lack of inflection. "You're coming with me, Rapunzel, whether you like it or not."

"No," Rapunzel said gently. "I'm going to heal her. And then I'm going to save you."

The chain yanked her neck so cruelly her vision swam. When it returned, Gothel's nose was a scant inch from hers. "Save me?" Gothel asked, voice just as gentle. Calm outside, while the monster inside her threw itself against the gates. "And just how are you planning to save me, flower?"

Rapunzel reflexively reached up to grasp the chain, but didn't try to pull away. She could hear Flynn's labored breathing across the room. In and out, she instructed silently. In and out, or I'll shave you bald. "Or is this you testing my patience?" Gothel's voice was silk, but her expression was mild, almost curious. "Would you like to test the limits of your magic? Just how far it can heal?"

Rapunzel didn't move as the knife tip traced a path, resting against her cheek, light as a kiss. "How far will the magic go?" Gothel murmured, almost to herself. "Will it heal a severed limb? An ear, perhaps? Your fingers? Or will it only heal them into stumps?"

She didn't allow her expression to change, but she could feel herself beginning to quiver inside. Back or forward. Simple things. The way her hand had looked in Flynn's. How the ants had felt traveling over her skin. The way the trees in the forest had loomed endlessly above her.

Inches away, the monster continued to pace behind Gothel's eyes.

The words came slowly. "I'm going to heal her. And you're going to let her go. And then I'm going to go with you wherever you want to take me. I'll never bother you again, and I'll never ask to leave, and you can do whatever you want with my hair until I die."

Gothel's expression didn't change. Her eyebrows were drawn so tightly together they nearly touched.

"If you don't let me heal her," Rapunzel said, "I'm going to make your life miserable. I'll burn your meals, I'll beat down the walls, I'll cover you with paint while you sleep. When I run out of paint, I'll use the fruit you bring up with you. If you starve me, I'll scream until your ears bleed. If you gag me, I'll throw myself out the window. I will never, ever, ever stop trying to get away from you."

Gothel's eyes were the color of stone. She didn't move or blink. The blade hovered at Rapunzel's throat.

"I promise," she said, and felt the sun shudder in her, just a bit, like the blink of an eye.

.

"Well, that was disturbing," Flynn wheezed. "And who taught you how to spin kick your mother?"

"Don't talk, okay?" So much blood. Rapunzel's mouth went dry at the sight of it. She fumbled at the vest's fastenings, trying to determine the damage underneath, but there were glints of white and so much blood.

"Feels good." Flynn's words were slurred. "S'getting hot anyway. Helped air me out."

"Stop talking." Rapunzel snapped her hair quickly, sending a ripple through it, bringing the end close to her. She pressed down on the wound, trying to ignore the way Flynn arched, trying to ignore the way the blood seeped through her fingers. "I'm so sorry about this," she whispered helplessly. "I'm so sorry. It'll all be okay in a second."

Flynn's back slowly lowered to the floor again. Her face had lost all color. "Tickles," was all she said.

Of course it did. Rapunzel felt hysteria build up in her throat and she swallowed it back down. "Hold still." She could feel the shard she'd kicked over from the mirror by her knee. Dipping her head further, allowing her hair to curtain her actions, she fumbled without looking and inadvertently nicked herself on the razor edge before curling her hand around it loosely.

Flynn's voice was barely above a breath. "What are you doing?"

"Rapunzel, really." Gothel, speaking up from across the room. Her voice carried a note of wry significance, the way it had a thousand times before when she'd caught Rapunzel stalling on completing a chore. "We don't have all day, you know."

Flynn's attention was unwavering. "Blondie."

She couldn't do it. She could. In this moment, she was terrified of what she could do.

There was no more time. Rapunzel took some anyway because one way or another, back or forward, this was the end of her life. This was no more grass under her feet and no more insects flitting across the lake after sunset. She deserved this.

Still holding the shard, she slid her other hand along Flynn's cheek, inadvertently leaving a smear of blood. Flynn blinked, so quickly as to be a flutter. "Never told me how you liked the tour," Flynn said.

And there it was – Flynn barging through her carefully-constructed defenses like she'd been doing since the moment she slipped in through the tower window. Rapunzel's eyes began to burn. "If I'd known you were going to be so much trouble, I would have made you do a hundred curtseys," Rapunzel said.

Flynn's lips moved a while before she spoke. "Think of how it would've upset the chickens."

Gothel spoke up again, her voice tight with impatience. "Rapunzel."

Despite the suspicion in it, Flynn's gaze was getting distant. "I never told you," Rapunzel said, voice cracking. "'Eudora' suits you too. It's pretty."

"Oh, god," Flynn groaned.

"I like it. I really do."

"Stop talking."

She pressed her hair down. She readied the shard, and thought, flower, gleam and glow.

Flynn's breath was dragging harshly in her chest.

Let your power shine.

Her hair began to glow before she even opened her mouth. She moved the shard towards her hair and this would take timing, this would take everything she had in her and more.

Flynn's voice was the barest of breaths against her forehead. "Blondie."

Three. Two. "What?"

"What did I tell you about taking that hair out?"

"What," she began, and out of the corner of her eye came a glint.

Then her head snapped to the side, and Gothel began screaming.

.

For several crucial moments, Rapunzel could only crouch there, thinking what.

Then the weight on her head grew staggering, and she caught herself just as the screams escalated into a roar. It took her several more seconds to realize that Flynn's bloody hands were wrapped around a loop of her hair, and that her hair was steadily going brown, piece by piece, as Flynn grunted with effort and hacked at whatever she could find with a shard of the mirror.

For a second Rapunzel thought that Flynn had somehow grabbed hers from her hand, but no, the shard was still there, and Flynn was still cutting with one of her own. "Go, go, go," Flynn gritted.

Rapunzel came alive at last. She picked up a coil of her hair from the floor and, without daring to stop and think about what it meant, cut hard. The glass slid through as easily as it would through butter. "Flower, gleam and glow," she gasped, reaching for more even as she continued to sing. "Let your power shine. Make the clock reverse, bring—"

Gothel was staggering towards them. There was still hair glowing but more and more there was hair tumbling lankly around Rapunzel's face, brown like the lock behind her ear. "Bring back what once was mine, heal," but Gothel was howling, and when Rapunzel looked at her Gothel's skin was flaking off like dry paint. The grey eyes were now lidless and bulging, the mouth sagging open grotesquely, dark hair growing stringy and sparse and white.

Sheer horror had her forgetting words she'd sung all her life. Rapunzel heard herself scream, but Gothel was already on them, already there, knife clutched in her bony hand.

Flynn gave a little sound, somewhere between a groan of pain and a warning. For once, Rapunzel didn't hesitate at all. The knife whispered an inch from her ear as she moved, severing the gold, and the last of the light in Rapunzel fizzled out as abruptly as a candle. She put all her strength into a clumsy shove, hurling Gothel away from Flynn as hard as she could. Screeching in her mother tongue, Gothel reeled unchecked, staggering blindly towards the window.

In an instant Rapunzel saw what was going to happen. All thoughts of betrayal flew from her head. She lunged desperately for her mother, hand outstretched.

She saw one of Gothel's hands reach for it, the white of bone showing through the rot.

Then Rapunzel's hair caught on something behind her, like an anchor, and she was brutally brought up short. Without ceremony, Gothel tripped over a chair, barked the backs of her knees against the windowsill, and went over the side.

Seconds later there was a gruesome thud, and the cawing of startled birds, and then everything was terrifyingly, conclusively silent.

Rapunzel remained huddled on the floor, staring at the blue outside her window.

.

Then Pascal was shaking himself awake in the corner, and coherent thought reemerged, and she remembered, Flynn.

She jerked herself around. Flynn was on the floor where Rapunzel had left her, the shard of glass still in her hand. Scraps of brown hair were scattered around her.

Rapunzel threw herself forward, bloodying her knees on glass. She shoved the hair and scraps of Flynn's vest aside, recoiling when she saw the wound hadn't closed at all. Not even a fraction. Nothing had been reversed, nothing had been healed.

Unable to comprehend it, frozen with horror, she stared as Flynn's chest rose faintly, shallow and slow, barely pulling in air.

No. She sprang into action. She tore through the heavy, uneven curtain of remaining hair, trying to find a glimpse of anything gold, but her fingers were shaking and her eyes were blurring and all she was encountering were waves and waves of brown. "No," she sobbed, frustrated. "No, no, no."

Flynn's eyes were glazed, staring somewhere past Rapunzel's ear. "Looks good on you."

"No!" With a furious cry, Rapunzel slammed her hands against her chest and before she even knew what she was doing she was singing, but there were no flowers and nothing was glowing.

"Come a little closer so I can shave the rest off," Flynn said, and died.

.

"For god's sake, don't you ever stop crying?" Flynn said a magic teardrop later, weak but whole and uninjured and alive. Rapunzel was too busy pounding her chest and weeping into the bloody vest to reply.

.

to be concluded