Author's Note: Thanks everyone for the great reviews of the "But It Wasn't The Same" chapter, it feels so good to know you care.

Now, it's time to torture Gothel some more. :)

Gothel and the Big Hair

It had been a hard, cold winter. Gothel was annoyed at those, but the hair could cure frostbite and even malnutrition, but it couldn't do anything about the hunger itself. One thing the tower was missing was a good storeroom. She had established long ago a garden and a root cellar next to it to store food, but going out of the tower was always risky when the vine curtain that kept them hidden was gone.

Fortunately the tower was easy to keep warm. At least as long as they kept the upper shutters closed. It had been so cold and they kept the fire going all the time.

30 feet of hair was nice in that you could wrap it around yourselves and stay warm, but it had been so dry this winter it was getting out of hand. They hadn't washed in months, but both of their hairs had become like dandelion fluff when ever they brushed it.

And they had to brush Rapunzel's hair every day, Gothel didn't dare let it tangle again. That had happened once when Rapunzel was little and it had been so painfully hard to untangle it, it took weeks, with Rapunzel screaming the whole time. Once she had been so frustrated she actually thought of cutting out the tangle before realizing what that would have meant. Gothel had very carefully put the knife away in her drawer and then had the shakes for a few hours after.

Now her biggest worry was the fire, hair caught fire and burned too easily. Now after she brushed it, the hair would stand up on end and nearly fill the whole tower so Rapunzel had to sit away from the fire, which Gothel didn't like and neither did Rapunzel.

Gothel had learned that if you touch metal the hair would fall out of the air but fry pan was only big enough for her own hair, but for Rapunzel that had not been big enough. She didn't know why you needed a bigger piece of metal for her hair, probably because she had so much hair, but they didn't have a piece big enough.

The biggest piece of metal was on top of the tower, a large copper ball, but you couldn't reach it from the inside. Gothel was annoyed, why would anyone put a large, expensive copper ball on the outside of a 50 foot tower?

There was a lot about the tower she didn't know. It was old when she found it, carrying the baby Rapunzel, thru the forest. She had only intended to stop and rest for a moment, she had just barely escaped from being caught by the seneschal himself and a bunch of guards at the Snuggly Duckling. She had paused to sit on a rock when a breeze had moved a curtain of vines, she had followed it in, and found the tower.

She'd used the trapdoor for years until Rapunzel's hair was long enough to reach the ground. She had been very careful to keep it a secret. There wasn't any metal down there, the ladder was wood, and the stairs stone.

Wait, there was another piece of metal, there was a copper wire that ran up the backside of the tower. She had almost forgotten about that, but had been the first thing she had found after the tower its self and then the entrance. Looking around the tower to orient herself, it would pass by the window next to Rapunzel's bedroom.

Gothel had given Rapunzel the only bedroom, so there was someplace to send her when she needed to be punished. Sending her to the nook wasn't far enough away from the middle of things. Having Rapunzel bouncing on the bed asking if she could come out now, over and over again, had driven her to distraction.

Gothel had never learned how to braid hair, her own hair was too curly. She had tried braiding Rapunzel's hair once but the results were so disastrous that combing it out had been nearly as bad as the tangle.

now Gothel gathered up all of Rapunzel's hair as she brushed it, fighting it to keep it under control. Pet was doing her best to sit still, but both of their skins were feeling very strange. The hairs all over their bodies were standing up now.

Gothel knew there was a small zap when she touched the frying pan but there was no way for her to know just how much energy had been built up in the coil of hair she held. It was ballooning, and Gothel had to have Rapunzel stand across the room to try and keep it tight.

The hair didn't even want to fall to the floor anymore, and even then there were stray hairs that were standing straight up. Gothel moved up the stairs to Rapunzel's room. She opened the window, the cold, cold air prying at her skin and saw the copper wire. Of course, it was way over there, maybe just barely in reach. Wrapping the end of the hair around her hand one more time she stretched out over the dizzying height. Laying up against the side of the window she reached blindly for the wire.

ZAP!

With a scream, the golden hair fell to the floor and Gothel nearly toppled out of the window. Dragging Rapunzel forward she grabbed the edge of the window and pulled her hand back in. She closed the window with her other hand to keep the cold out. Then she examined her hand. There was a burn down the side of her fingers and her hand was shaking uncontrollably.

"Mommy, are you okay?" Rapunzel padded over in her bare feet, feeling it safe to come to Mother now that her hair was limp.

"Ow, no, I'm not." Staring at her hand. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before, the zap when she touched other metal things was small but this had been huge and she was pretty sure she hadn't touched it either.

Rapunzel gently wrapped her hair around Mother's injured hand and sang her healing song. "There, that's better isn't it?"

Gothel felt the pain ease and vanish and saw the burn glow and heal and her hand stop shaking under the healing power of her flower's hair.

"Thank you, dear. That was very nice. I love you very much."

"I love you more."

"I love you most." and Gothel gave her flower a hug and a kiss on the hair.

Author's Note: Okay, I made up that copper wire, but that copper ball is on the tower, and it has all the hallmarks of a lightning rod. A foot of hair can generate 500 volts of static electricity in dry winter conditions. 30 feet of hair could potentially produce 150,000 volts of static electricity, enough to be dangerous.

Does anyone know where the door under the stairs to Rapunzel's room leads to? Obviously, not the exit, I'm guessing a bathroom. The sideview of the tower we have, when Gothel falls, doesn't show a lot of room for much of anything.