AN: So in all honesty, I did not expect that it would take me this long to get this chapter up. But it WAS the all-important campfire scene, and as such it deserves a lot of time (and I hope it was worth the wait). I'm mostly pleased with how it turned out, and I hope you enjoy it.

FL 6

Disclaimer: I do not own Tangled.

Chapter 7- Eugene vs. the Unbelievable Hair

"I have tried in my own way to be free."

-Leonard Cohen

After we had pulled ourselves out of the river, the sun had started to set. So I told her that we'd better camp out tonight, because I had no intention of traipsing around the woods all night, soaking wet. She agreed, and patiently waited for me to find a suitable camping spot, which I finally did.

I also decided that we should make a fire, to help dry our wet clothes. Though I wasn't too good at it; it took me multiple times to light it. But that was partly because I was still thinking about the weirdness of her hair- the hair knocked her best friend frog out of first place in my list of Top Ten Weird Things About Blondie. But her glowing hair did partly explain why she had thought I wanted her hair when she first met me. Because you know, magic glowing hair- it's something everyone wants. You never know when you'll need glowing hair to light up a room. In case you didn't know, that was sarcasm. The mystery of her hair was still just that…a mystery.

I grunted while I tried to light the fire, but eventually I was successful. "See, I told you I could do it, Blondie," I told her triumphantly. "Never underestimate the power of Flynn Rider!"

"Yes, I see," she said diplomatically. Even though she looked calm, she was looking at me…kind of oddly. "Very good."

I thought briefly of asking her if there was something bothering her, but she began to speak again before I could."Um, so do you remember what I said about my hair?" she asked hesitantly. "About it being magical?"

Okay. So I know the world has titled on its axis and we've entered this alternate universe where hair actually glows. But that doesn't mean I lost my perfect memory. And you shut up about it meaning I lost my sanity. Because I totally did not, thank you very much. Do I have to repeat my previous explanation about the profound lack of magic in Corona?

Anyway, back to the story and my brilliant response. "Of course I do!" I told her with an incredulous look. "I never forget anything." Besides that, I especially didn't forget something that somebody had told me only around two hours before.

But the odd expression remained on her face. "And you remember….that I said…it doesn't just glow?" she asked carefully, as if she was worried about my reaction. Probably she was thinking about my….minor astonishment after I saw her hair glow.

I gave her another surprised and incredulous look. "Yes. And I'm still waiting for you to explain what you mean by that." That was absolutely true, but I wasn't sure why she was telling me this now though. Couldn't she have told me before this, like when she had first said it in the first place? I mean I was rational enough to hear it, don't you think? Well, I do. So I don't know why she had waited until I had…..oh. Ugh. "Oh no," I said, horrified. "You're not going to tell me that it can light a fire, are you? Because you should have told me that before I…." ….wasted all that time trying to light that blasted fire.

She cut in quickly, even though by the look on her face, she wasn't somebody who interrupted people that often. Of course not. "No, no!" she said. "It can't light a fire. But it can do something else." She watched me carefully, as if she thought I was going to freak out again.

Please. I'm not that easily surprised. I'm a thief! "Oh, you mean it can do something more than be a big lantern?" I joked. "Because, you know…."

Unexpectedly, she grew impatient with me. "Eugene!"she said, clearly exasperated. "Just get over here, and I'll show you okay?"

I stared at her in surprise. I hadn't pegged her as someone who could be particularly…..snappish. Yet I did what she said anyway. "Yeah, sure, Blondie," I said, and walked over to her. I sat by her on the log, though I left a fair amount of space between the two of us. I was many things, but a creeper wasn't actually one of them. Besides, I didn't want to scare her, especially when she looked so nervous already.

She took a deep breath. "Okay," she said. "So remember when you told me 'don't ask questions' today?"

Seriously? She had to ask me that again? Hello? Did I suddenly warp in our alternate universe and turn into Morris Stabbington (aka an idiot)? "Of course!" I told her. "Like I said, Flynn Rider…"

Had she actually just rolled her eyes at me? Whoa. No girl had ever rolled their eyes at me, and here she had done it twice in one day! Blondie here was something else, for sure. "….never forgets anything," she finished. "Right. I got it," she said with a hint of sarcasm. "Well, I need you to not ask me questions right now, okay?"

I decided to humor her, and do as she said. Why not? It could be an interesting social experiment to see what she would tell me. "Well, sure, Blondie."

She sighed in apparent relief."Great. So can I have your injured hand, please?"

Stunned, I stared at her again."My…what?" Was this some kind of strange come-on? Like woo, give me your injured hand, wink-wink nudge-nudge? Let me show you something?

Her eyes didn't look flirty at all though. If anything, they looked…..nervous. "Your injured hand," she said again politely. "I need it to show you what my hair does besides glow."

On second thought, she didn't strike me as somebody who played those kinds of games. Where would she have learned them anyway? Besides, she radiated a kind of….purity and innocence. No, I decided, she wasn't making some kind of weird come-on, even if her request was awfully strange. "Um….Well, okay," I agreed finally. I extended my hand with the gash out to her.

"Thank you," she said, and cautiously took my hand in hers. Obviously she had never held any man's hand before. Thought I guess it isn't fair to say that what she was doing was "holding" my hand. Because she so wasn't (even if it felt as if she was to me. My hand actually started to tingle- hers just felt so nice, so small and soft. Ugh. What was I thinking? ). She was examining it as if she was some kind of physician or something, entirely silent as she did so. Then she started to wrap the end of her hair around it.

My whacked-out pleasure evaporated then. Was she seriously wrapping her hair around my hand? Could this be any weirder? What could her hair possibly do that made it necessary to wrap it around my hand? Now the silence felt as stifling as our almost drowning and I had to break it. "So," I said. "You're being strangely cryptic as you wrap your magic hair around my injured hand."

Suddenly her hair scraped my scratch painfully and I winced (but don't get the wrong impression that her hair was rough or anything. Because it so wasn't- it was unbelievably soft and silky). "Ah…"

"Sorry," she apologized. A barely audible sigh escaped her lips. "Now, don't…don't freak out, okay?"

I kind of stared at her for a second, and immediately tensed. Can I just say now that when somebody is going to show you something, it's never a good thing when they preface it with something like don't freak out? Because if they say that, it's pretty likely that you will. And, I'm embarrassed to say, because I pride myself on my composure, that I totally did freak out even though she told me not to.

But that was in the future. Right in that moment, she closed her eyes and began to sing softly:

Flower gleam and glow

Let your power shine

Make the clock reverse

Bring back what once was mine

Heal what has been hurt

Change the fate's design

Save what has been lost

Bring back what was once was mine

What once was mine

As soon as she began to sing, her hair began to glow again- but this time, I could see it shine from the top of her head, and continued to spread through her entire seventy feet of hair. It was actually one of the most amazing things I had ever seen, but at the same time, it was vaguely disturbing. I had never seen anything quite like it before. I glanced at her frog, and he seemed to smile at me again, and pointed to one of his paws- did he mean something about my hand? What? I looked at my hand, and the hair around it had begun to glow….and almost emanate some kind of heat too. I have to tell you that I had no idea what was happening at all. In all honesty, I was completely bewildered.

Soon, she finished and cautiously met my eyes- almost hesitantly, as if she didn't know how I would react. Please. But something about the way she looked kind of….threw me, so I carefully removed her hair from my hand. And you'll never guess what I saw.

Wait. Did you just say that my hand looked completely whole? Like nothing ever happened? Aw, you've heard this story before, haven't you? That is the only explanation for the complete lack of surprise in your face. Well, even if you're not amazed by that, I sure was. And you would be too, or you're in complete denial. I mean, come on. Her hair totally erasing my gash was unreal- and the weirdest thing I had ever seen. And I thought her hair glowing was weird! There was only one thing stranger than magic hair that glowed when she sang- and that was magic hair that glowed and healed when she sang. My mouth opened, and even though I had never screamed like a girl before…..I was about to scream like a girl.

Or I would have if she hadn't immediately pleaded me not to. "Please, don't freak out!"

The scream instantly died in my throat. "Ahhhh…." I sputtered stupidly, while I scrambled frantically for something to say. It wasn't often that I was without words, but after seeing her hair glow and heal, there was too many things to say- and too few at the same time. I mean, how could I express the extent of my amazement in words? So eventually I gave up, and came up with something else, put the attention on her. "I'm not freaking out, are you freaking out?" Not very clever, but hey. I wasn't at my best.

I'm not going to deny that it was a rather idiotic question, because she clearly wasn't freaking out. She was almost annoyingly calm- maybe she did this kind of thing often? But how did she know that her hair would do that anyway? Like, did she wake up one day with some scratch and said hey, why don't I just sing a little ditty and it will go away? Yay? Isn't it stupendous to be me? Maybe if her hair had done that for a while, it ceased to surprise her. Was that even possible?

Whatever. It hurt my brain too much to try and imagine it. I guess you can get just used to anything, even magical glowing healing hair. But to me, this was just too bizarre and I still wasn't used to it. A million questions popped into my mind to ask her; chief among them was had her hair always done that? "I'm just interested in your hair and the uh….magical qualities that it possesses," I said with complete fake nonchalance as I looked at her. "How long has it being doing that, exactly?"

She smiled slightly and shrugged. "Um…forever, I guess?" Forever? Really? I continued to look at her.

She sighed deeply. "Mother says that when I was a baby, people tried to cut it. They wanted to take it for themselves."

Her eyes grew….almost sad then. Which wasn't actually a typical expression for her, I could tell. She was an almost annoyingly perky person, and she'd been generally happy since we had left the tower. Well, except when she was sad about her mother….and when we were about to drown…..and now. But it wasn't too hard to imagine why: her story was making me sad too. The thought of somebody exploiting this sweet girl (which she absolutely was-I'd been nothing but a brute to her, and she still tried to save me from being beat up, captured by guards….she had healed my hand, and apologized for a mess that was my fault entirely. She was unbelievably kind, probably the nicest girl I had known since my mother) for her hair….disgusted me. Ugh. That meant I disgusted myself too, because, like I said, I had been a complete jerk to her this whole day (in fact, I think this day was making a record for jerky things I had done, starting from the very beginning). So why she was telling me all this was beyond me. Why she trusted me to keep all this a secret was beyond me too. Don't get the wrong impression though, because I wasn't actually going to tell her secret. I wasn't that cruel. More seriously, I think I've already established that I wasn't someone whom you could trust. But somehow she did. She had to, otherwise she wouldn't have told me her deepest secret (and it was clear that this was).

However, she was still talking. She moved her hair so I could see a tiny stub of brown among the blond. "But once it's cut," she continued. "It turns brown and loses its power. A gift like that…It has to be protected. That's why Mother never let me…" Words died up in her throat. "That's why I never left and…" She stared at her hands, instead of at me.

Suddenly, all of those nagging questions that I had about her were answered: Like why she acted so afraid of me when we met, why she had thought I wanted her hair ….and why she hadn't immediately answered my question about she hadn't left the tower before. I had a pretty good feeling that that's what she was attempting to say now. Unexpectedly, I felt much more than a twinge of sympathy for her. Trying to help her, I finished her sentence for her."…That's why you never left that tower." I understood now why she hadn't left, but that didn't mean that I agreed with it: You see, if she didn't tell anybody that her hair healed (which was an option; sure, people would wonder like I did about the length, but I hadn't figured it out. And if I hadn't, others wouldn't either. Besides, do I have to mention the profound lack of magic in Corona again? Nobody would be expecting magical glowing healing hair), then they wouldn't exploit her- and she'd be just fine (and a lot happier). I didn't get why her mother couldn't have realized that. It wasn't exactly difficult logic. Maybe her mother was stupid? Though how she could be with such a smart daughter was beyond my comprehension.

She met my eyes, almost tentatively. "And you're still going to go back?" I asked her in my most gentle tone. Deep down, I didn't want her to- I had seen how happy she had been when she had finally left her tower, and if I were her, I couldn't imagine going back after being free.

And apparently she felt the same way. "No!" she said immediately. "Yes?" She sighed again. "It's complicated." She buried her face in her hands. Another wave of sympathy washed over me- this poor sweet girl, imprisoned by her hair. It was awful. Her face remained in her hands, and I hoped she wasn't going to cry again. Because I had a strong feeling I wouldn't be able to resist comforting her in some way…and not with words. I had a similar urge to sit on my hands so I wouldn't. It would ruin my dream to start liking this girl- even if she was ridiculously easy to like.

She ran her hands through her hair and sighed. Then she looked at me…..almost coyly. "So, Eugene Fitzherbert, huh?"

Huh. I had almost forgotten that I had told her my real name, which was stupid because she had totally called me that. "Ah…yeah," I said. I didn't know exactly what to say after that- my childhood was….rather disheartening. And no one usually wanted to hear it, or even cared. Generally, people saw me as one thing- and that was the amazing thief Flynn Rider. And usually that was okay, but that meant that they didn't know who I was before. Usually I was also okay to keep it that way, but with her it didn't seem fair. She had unveiled her soul to me, and it didn't seem right for me to give her nothing in return. "But I'll save you the sob story of poor orphan Eugene Fitzherbert. It's a little…" Hmmm. How to explain that my story pretty much…would depress anyone. "Well, it's a little bit of a downer."

Instead of saying something like oh okay, like most would have, she scouted closer to me and propped her chin in her hands- her clear way of saying she wanted to know more. Unbelievable. Why did she care? I forced a laugh to mask my surprise. What to tell her? I really didn't want to talk about my mother….or my father. I guess I could tell her about where I found my name though. "There was this book," I said finally. "A book I used to read to all the younger kids- The Tales of Flynnigan Rider." If you haven't read this book, you really need to. It's amazing; I still have a copy of it that I read sometimes. I glanced at her. She still looked interested- more than interested actually. Her eyes were…..almost fascinated by my story. Wow.

Well, I might as well play it up as much as possible. "Swash-buckling rogue," I continued. "Richest man alive. Not bad with the ladies either." I looked meaningfully at her. "Not that he'd ever brag about it, or course."

She smiled at me. You know something? She really has a lovely smile. " he a thief too?" she asked.

Huh. I had no idea she knew that I was a thief. I sure hadn't told her. In fact, I had been very careful not to. How would she feel knowing-that after trying so hard to avoid ruffians- she was traveling around with a wanted felon? The irony of the situation killed me. But I guess she had read the wanted poster back at the Snuggly Duckling. Clever girl. And now she thought that I modeled myself after Flynnigan Rider because he was a thief. And he wasn't. "Ah, well no." I looked away from her, feeling kind of foolish. Here I'd been using his name, and he wasn't even a thief. He didn't need to be one, the fortunate bloke.

"Actually," I told her. "He had enough money to do anything that he wanted to do, he could go anywhere that he wanted to go." Or, in other words, he was completely free to do whatever, be whomever he wanted to be. Lucky rascal. He had that freedom that I had always craved- freedom from the stigma of my last name, and the almost invisibility that came with it. But he never had that problem: When he talked, people actually paid attention to him. What he did mattered to people. And I wanted the same for me. I wanted to be somebody. Though I guess doing that through stealing doesn't make sense to you, but it doesn't have to (though I assume you've heard the phrase "money is power"? My sentiments exactly). It did to me. At least it had until I had told Rapunzel about it. Then it didn't make any sense at all. Surely there was a way to do something important that wasn't thieving. I just had to find out what that was.

She had stared at her hands before, and I supposed it was my turn. Because that's just what I did. "And, and, for a kid with nothing, I don't know," I almost muttered. "It just seemed like the better option." Better than being Eugene the nobody forever.

I looked up at her again, curious to what her reaction would be. But "Hmmm," was all she said, but in a completely neutral voice. And her eyes were the same: no condemnation, no censure, no criticism- just an attempt to understand…..me. Amazing.

As nice as it was, this was enough soul-bearing for one day. "You can't tell anyone about this, okay?" I told her, trying to steer the conversation in a whole new direction. "It could ruin my whole reputation."

She smiled again. "Ah," she said, almost teasingly. "Well, we wouldn't want that!"

Now we were more on my comfortable turf- witticisms. "Well, a fake reputation is all a man has," I joked back. She laughed at that, and then met my eyes again, with a large smile in both her eyes and her face. You know something else? Her eyes are really beautiful- they were big and green ….and altogether lovely. They're the kind of eyes you can just stare at forever, and I have to say that I pretty much did that for at least thirty seconds without realizing what I was doing. While I did, I had to admit that I was more than a little attracted to this sweet girl-Rapunzel, not Blondie. And if I was reading her right, she was too, though I doubt she was aware of that yet.

But this, in other words, was a complete recipe for disaster. I did not need to fall in love right now, it would ruin basically everything. I blinked, knowing that I needed to break up this little party. She probably wouldn't, because I had an inkling that she wasn't feeling the heat that I was-and let's just say it wasn't from the fire. The air almost fizzled with the chemistry between us. Need. To. Go. Now. I stood up. "Um, well, I should, uh," I scrambled for some bogus excuse to leave. My gaze wandered over to the fire. Fire. Firewood. Good. "I should go get some more firewood." Without waiting for her to say something, I started to walk off. It would be better that I did, before she realized that the fire didn't need any more wood.

But her voice stopped me."Hey," she said. I turned around and looked at her. Please don't figure out my excuse, please don't figure out my excuse….

She hadn't. In fact, what she said was nothing relating to fires at all. Thankfully. "For the record," she said. "I like Eugene Fitzherbert much better than Flynn Rider."

Unbelievable. Had she truly just said that? Did she know what that meant to me? She had basically said that she liked Eugene the orphan- the nobody- over Flynn Rider, the notorious thief. Really? Nobody had cared about him in ten years."Well, you'd be the first," I told her. "But thank you."

And then I walked off into the woods.