AN: I'm actually (again) really pleased with this chapter because I think it's pretty funny. Of course, I crack up at my own writing anyway, so that doesn't mean that you'll find it as amusing. But I hope you do.

School update- 2 more finals and a paper. YAY. I do want to know who invented finals, though, so I can hit them with my own personal Hesty.

-FL 6

Disclaimer: I do not own Tangled

Chapter 6- Rapunzel's Magic Glowing Hair vs. the Water

"To die will be an awfully big adventure."

-James M. Barrie, Peter Pan

You would think that we would have been safe- there was an impassable stone pillar between us and the guards, us and the Stabbs. However, although the pillar could keep out all those people who wanted to get me, it didn't keep out the water: the water began to pour in, and Blondie and I immediately rushed away from it, hoping that there was some way to get out.

But-and quite unfortunately- all we found was a very stony dead end. I glanced at Blondie for a brief second. Her face was grave, and it was obvious to me that she knew enough about the world to know that, unless we found a way out, she would drown.

Somehow I couldn't let that happen, and before you start thinking I'm some kind of do-gooder, I wasn't. Need I remind you that if she drowned, I would drown too? Of course I didn't want that. What would happen to my island dream then? Besides, I was too young and handsome to die. And if I had to die someday, I wanted it to be somehow…..spectacular and dramatic. Drowning didn't accomplish that at all. In fact, if I had heard that somebody as famous as Flynn Rider had….drowned, I would probably laugh. It was just such a pathetic way to die.

Right. You're giving me that "and I care why?" look again. On with the story. So, before you think I'm some selfish jerk, I didn't want her to die either. If I was too handsome and young to die, then she was too pretty and young to die. Besides, it would be so incredibly unfair to her if she did. It wasn't her fault that I was such a good thief that everyone had the urge to capture and incarcerate me. Anyway, since I've now established that I wanted neither of us to die, I dived into the cold water, searching for some kind of way out. It was much too dark, though, to really see anything- just utterly black water that seemed to go on and on. While I was doing that, she was trying to pound some kind of dent into the hard stone wall with her frying pan. Kind of silly of her, but I appreciated what she was trying to do. I resurfaced when I couldn't hold my breath any longer. I noticed that she was still pounding the rocks with her frying pan, and I examined the rocks too, searching for some kind of weakness. However, the only thing I found was a sharp rock that scraped my hand- and gave me a very painful gash. I tried bravely to ignore the burning though, and dove under once again. And once again, I found absolutely nothing.

I resurfaced again, despondent now because I couldn't find a way of escape. "It's no use," I told her. "I can't see anything." She looked at me for a second, then took a deep breath and plunged under the water. Immediately, I dived down and pulled her up. I couldn't let her drown herself trying to find a way out, even if we were minutes away from drowning anyway. Besides, I wasn't sure if she knew how to swim. "Hey, there's no point!" I said, gently pushing a lock of hair out of her eyes. "It's pitch black down there." She stared at me, her face crumpling in despair. And I could tell she finally understood the dire situation in which we had found ourselves. She slumped against the stone wall.

I suppose that she finally realized that we were about to die. Funny thing about near-death experiences is that the things you think about are….pretty strange (and I would know, as I'm sure you've heard. I've only had around three of them (or maybe four. Some days I lose track. In any case, three in this story). Well, I guess the last doesn't count because I pretty much actually did die. I remember thinking that this is when some people think about things that they wished they had done, and others think about things that they wished they hadn't done. Or, in other words, what they regretted. I firmly fell into the latter category, but most people probably only regretted a few things. I regretted pretty much everything I had done in my life since I was about eleven years old. In case you were wondering, that was about ten years worth of regrets. But the thing I regretted the most was forcing Blondie to go to the Snuggly Duckling. If I hadn't, well….she would probably be safe. Ugh. Why did I have to be such a confounded idiot sometimes? It was one thing to doom myself through my utter stupidity; it was quite another to bring another innocent person-a pretty and kind girl- down with me. I glanced at her, hoping she wasn't too mad at me.

Tears welled up in her eyes. "This is all my fault," she said softly. "She was right. I never should have done this. I'm so….I'm so sorry, Flynn." She began to cry quietly. Her tears made my heart wrench again because I actually…felt bad for her. Shocking. Who knew I was capable of sympathy?

I also stared at her, once again bewildered by her. She was sorry? Why should she be sorry? She hadn't done anything but have a dream- like everyone had, like I had myself. I couldn't let her take the blame for that, for chasing after something that obviously meant a lot to her. Like you've probably figured out, if anyone was to blame, it was me. This whole mess was entirely my fault. If I hadn't been such a complete jerk and tried to lose her- and if we had never gone to the Snuggly Duckling- we would probably be safe traveling on the road to Caermoor instead of trapped in a cave after the chase. A chase that was (once again) all because of me. If anybody should be sorry it should be me, and I found that I was. She didn't deserve to drown with a disreputable thief named Flynn Rider. Flynn Rider….I pondered that for a minute. Hmmm. She had called me Flynn, and as far as she knew, that was my true name. It wasn't (but I'm sure you already knew that because I go by another name entirely). Well, I reasoned, if I was truly going to die, I might as well die with the name that I had been born with- the name my mother had given me. Besides, my namesake would never do something as stupid as get trapped after a chase and drown. He was much too clever. Great. So I wasn't just a disgrace to my poor mother, but also my hero. This was really not my day. "Eugene."

She immediately stopped crying and she looked at me, confused. "What?" she asked with a teary voice.

I decided I might as well tell her. After all, what did I have to lose? My reputation would die with me anyway. "My real name is Eugene Fitzherbert," I told her. "Someone might as well know." Since I'm about to die, I finished in my head.

She smiled slightly, as if she understood that I had just told her my deepest secret. My name wasn't quite that, but it was close. "I have magic hair that glows when I sing," she said.

I stared at her again, shocked. "What?" Had she really said what I thought she said? No, there was no way- it was too weird. Maybe she had said….I have tragic flair that flows when I swing.

On second thought, maybe not. That wasn't any less odd. But still. Magic hair that…glows? When she sings? I looked at her, wondering if she was actually in earnest.

She was. In fact, her eyes were starting to shine as if her glowing hair was something stupendous. She clung to her hair and repeated excitedly, "I have….magic hair that glows when I sing!"

The water had risen to our necks now, and I figured we were only seconds away from total immersion. Drowning would probably follow soon after and so I couldn't understand her excitement at all. Didn't she know by now that we were probably going to die? I took the deepest breath that I could, hoping, I guess, to prolong the inevitable. Blondie, though, began to sing quickly. "Flower gleam and glow, let your power shine…."

The water engulfed us, and I speculated about how long it would be before we would both suffocate and drown. Suddenly, though, golden beams of light began to shine, and I wondered for a brief second if I had died already and reached the pearly gates. The light didn't come from heaven though, but Blondie's hair: it glowed almost like a kind of lantern. Apparently, she hadn't been kidding when she said it glowed when she sang- because it had just started to glow and she had sung. It was the strangest sight I had ever seen, and I wondered if I was experiencing some kind of weird hallucinations from the hits on the head I had experienced earlier in the day, hallucinations that caused me to see things that couldn't really happen- like magic glowing hair. Shocked, I put a hand to my mouth and just stared at her, and at her hair. Her hair started to glow from the top of her head to the bottom- and illuminated some kind of bottom of the water as well. At the very bottom, though, there were a pile of loose rocks.

Well, hallucinations or not, I couldn't resist checking it out. I darted a glance at Blondie, and it was clear from her face that she saw it as well. I was the first to dive down there, though, and quite determinedly. Like I said, I had no interest in drowning, so I pulled the rocks apart (hoping there was some kind of way out) and she soon started to help me. These rocks were movable, but that doesn't mean it didn't take effort to pry them apart. But it was worth it because eventually my hand clutched glorious- and waterless- air. We tumbled headfirst out of the tunnel and into more water, but this time it was a river. And rivers I could deal with. I swam to the shore, and took a deep gulp of air. Now that I was no longer in danger of drowning, I began to think hard about her hair. Had it actually glowed? It must have, because otherwise I would be dead. Right? But it was still unbelievable.

Blondie, on the other hand, wasn't thrown at all by her hair, and was more concerned with the fact that we hadn't died than the fact that her hair glowed. "We made it," she said, relieved. She beamed with joy that she hadn't met an early and watery grave.

I, on the other hand, was entirely too stunned by her hair to rejoice. "Her hair glows," I said, completely incredulous. You might find my reaction odd, since Rapunzel's story is generally considered to be a fairy tale-a tale where magic is prevalent. This is true, because there is quite a bit of magic in this story. And most of that magic comes from Rapunzel herself. But Corona, on the other hand, doesn't have much magic. Period. There aren't fairies, or talking horses, or crazy witches, or fiery dragons as is common in other fairy tales (which by definition should have a fairy in it). It's actually almost freakishly normal for a country. The closest I had ever been to magic at that point was the magic that my mother made when she told me fairy tales.

Blondie bounded happily back onto the shore. "We're alive! We're alive!" she said giddily.

I was still hung up on her hair. "I didn't see that coming," I said, ruefully running a hand through my hair. You're staring at me smugly as if you think I lost my mind, and I have to say I find that incredibly annoying. You think you would have handled this situation better? Fine, but there's a huge difference between hearing someone say they have glowing hair, and actually seeing that hair glow. I'm telling you, something like that can really rock your world. And I just told you that the land of Corona wasn't known for magic.

Blondie tried to get my attention, probably because she thought I was losing my mind too. "Eugene," she said. It's actually kind of funny how after I told her what my real name was, she immediately called me by it. As if I had actually liked my real name or something. I hadn't. Come on. If I had liked my name, why would I have changed it? I didn't mind the Eugene part- because the meaning was noble, and, of course, I was an incredibly noble person. But I loathed my last name- I just hated it and that was mostly because it reminded of someone I had tried very hard to forget. When I was eleven and started thieving, I told everyone (well, everyone that hadn't known me as Eugene. But, then again, I told them even those who had known me as Eugene) that my name was Flynn Rider. If you're curious, I did this for two reasons, one of which you might have picked up: One, a new name had the effect of erasing my old past. Two, Eugene doesn't sound like a thief. It just doesn't, no matter how much you might try to make it sound roguish. Eugene sounds like some kind of…I don't know, maybe some kind of academic or something, and I sure wasn't that. So, until today, I hadn't been called Eugene for about ten years. It was pretty weird to be called that again, and if Blondie had been anyone else, I would have told her that she needed to call me Flynn. But I don't know, there was something different about her saying my name.

But that didn't mean that I wasn't too stunned to even hear her say it. "The hair actually glows." It was one of the strangest things I had ever seen. My thought process literally went like this: Hair. Magic hair. Magic hair that glows. Magic hair that glows when she sings. Magic hair that glowed when she sang- and I had actually seen it happen. It seemed utterly impossible, but I couldn't deny what I had seen.

Blondie tried again to get my attention. "Eugene," she repeated.

However, I didn't hear her that time either. I have to confess that I was so completely baffled by her hair that I actually started to talk to her frog. Maybe it could explain to me the reason why her hair glowed in the first place. Something that strange had to have some kind of explanation. "Why does her hair glow?" I asked it, half-crazed now (and almost on the verge of hysterics).

She again attempted to get my attention, because-as she explained later- "Eugene would never talk to Pascal if he was completely sane," (which is actually true) and she was concerned about my mental health. "Eugene!" she said, very loudly.

Finally her voice managed to cut through my foggy brain. "What?" I said with wide eyes. What could she possibly say at that moment? Part of me wondered if she was going to explain something about why her hair glowed, or something reassuring to make me feel….less on the verge of lunacy. However, that wasn't the case at all. If anything, what she said made it slightly worse.

She was perfectly calm though. It's actually amazing how calm she was after she had captured a wanted thief, convinced thugs to stop beating me up, escaped the Stabs and guards, and nearly drowned. And this was a girl who had never been out of her tower! Whereas I, who had seen almost everything, was undone by her glowing hair. Anyway, what she ended up saying, as she pulled her hair out of the river was, "It doesn't just glow."

Like that was reassuring. So her hair didn't just glow while she sang, but did something else entirely. I looked at her frog again, and, maybe it was my craziness, but I could swear it was almost grinning with some kind of sick pleasure at my discomfort. "Why's he smiling at me?"

Would the insanity of this day never end?