Princess Fantasy D X-2
A/N: I have never been inspired enough to write stories about any fanart before, until I saw the work of deviantart artist Skirtzzz, specifically her Final Fantasy Disney Dressphere series. With her blessing, this will be another part of a series of final scene rewrites, using the powers of the dresspheres to possibly change the script, or failing that, make the scene worthy of a Final Fantasy series. Replicating the feel for such an incredible franchise will be a challenge, but I swear I'll do my best!
If you haven't seen any of the movies or their endings, this could be a little spoilerific, but if you have or don't mind, hang on for the ride!
Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.
Locks of Life
The dresser in her room was knocked off-kilter with a crash as Rapunzel stumbled back into it. Her breaths came short and fast as the realizations and memories hit her all at once.
When she thought about it like this, everything made sense: why the lanterns only flew on her birthday, why she was never allowed out of the tower in all these years, why Mother Gothel tried so hard to get her back when she found out she had escaped…
Her stomach turned over at the thought. Mother Gothel, the one who had cared and nurtured her for all these years, was the one who had taken her away from a caring, nurturing family in the first place, and kept her isolated and alone and dependent on her – all for her selfish need to keep her and her gift of healing under her control. And for all her talk about protecting her from the world that would use her… Gothel was the very person she needed to be protected from.
It was at that point she heard said very person calling out to her, having apparently heard the crash. "Rapunzel? Rapunzel, what's going on up there?"
The girl squeezed her eyes shut, emotion raging within her heart. Half of her wanted to burst out and confront Mother Gothel about the truth for the first time, and the other half wanted to hide away and hope that this was all a dream; that the one person she trusted for nearly all her life was not also her jailer.
Gothel's voice grew louder. "Are you alright?"
Finally, Rapunzel couldn't take it any more. She emerged through the curtains of her room, barely acknowledging Gothel at the foot of the stairs. "I'm the lost princess," she murmured under her breath.
This made Gothel sigh in exasperation. "Please speak up, Rapunzel. You know how I hate the mumbling!"
"I am the lost princess of Corona!" Rapunzel finally burst out, looking directly at her caretaker. "Aren't I?"
The silence that followed, and Gothel's widening eyes full of dismay, were all the confirmation that Rapunzel needed.
Disbelief was replaced with a simmering anger and her eyes narrowed. "Did I mumble, Mother? Or should I even call you that?"
Gothel was stunned silent for a few more moments, before her demeanor changed to one of dismissive humor as she ambled up the stairs towards Rapunzel. "Oh, Rapunzel, do you even hear yourself? Why would you ask such a ridiculous question?"
But Rapunzle wasn't fooled anymore. "It was you!" she exclaimed in revulsion, shoving Gothel away from her. "It was all you!"
At this, the older woman's expression turned stoic and solemn, like a mother trying to discipline her child by being unmoving in the face of a tantrum. "Everything I did was to protect you."
Rapunzel could not believe she had the gall to try and justify her actions. Angrily she shoved by her down the stairs. "Rapunzel!" Gothel said sharply.
All the resentment at being locked up nearly all her life came rushing out of Rapunzel now, fueled by her outrage. "I've spent my entire life hiding from people who would use me for my powers, when I should've been hiding from you!"
"Where will you go?" countered Gothel coldly. "He won't be there for you."
Upon the mention of Eugene, Rapunzel's blood ran cold. "What did you do to him?"
"He stole the Kingdom's treasure," came the indifferent answer. "That criminal is to be hanged for his crimes."
Rapunzel gasped upon hearing this. Gothel's voice turned kindly once more as she tried to take advantage of that moment of emotional vulnerability. "Now, now, it's alright, listen to me," she soothed, "All of this is as it should be." She reached out to pat Rapunzel on the head like she always did…
… only for her wrist to be grabbed by a now-livid Rapunzel, who obviously had had enough of Gothel's honeyed words. Focused on each other as they were, neither woman noticed Rapunzel's hair flicker slightly with light as her emotions flared.
"No!" she snapped, eyes blazing, even as Gothel tried to pull free. "You were wrong about the world! You were wrong about me! And I promise you, I will never let you use my hair again!"
Finally Gothel managed to pull free of her grasp, but in doing so she stumbled back into the massive full-length mirror behind her, knocking it over. The resulting crash from the glass spilling out onto the floor echoed through the room, as Gothel stared at her shattered reflection from the multitude of fragments. A determined look on her face, Rapunzel turned and made for the window.
Watching the golden head of magic hair slide away from her, a dark look came over Gothel's face.
"You want me to be the bad guy?"
A hand curled around the handle of a frying pan that was resting on the nearby table.
"Fine; now I'm the bad guy."
Rapunzel did not even have time to turn around or yelp before Gothel struck her in the temple with the cast-iron cooking utensil. The clang still reverberating around the room, she collapsed to the cold stone, insensate, as Gothel uncaringly strode around her and to another set of doors.
"I hoped it would not come to this," she commented to herself, taking a key from her dress and unlocking the door, opening it to reveal a hidden closet, "but if you won't be my willing daughter…"
She turned back towards the unconscious Rapunzel with a length of heavy chain and a pair of manacles in her hands, "…then you'll just have to be my unwilling treasure."
As she began to affix the manacles to Rapunzel's wrists, she glanced down at her golden locks. "Well, so long as I'm here…" she shrugged, before scooping up Rapunzel's hair and running her fingers through it. Then she stopped as a thought came to her, before she sighed.
"It's going to be such a pain to do this myself from now on."
With that, she began to sing, feeling the magic flow into her like it always had. As she did so, she couldn't help but feel that it seemed a little… slow.
She shrugged and continued singing. It was probably just her anxiety.
The serenity of the woods was split as a white blur raced through it, hooves shaking the leaves under his feet. On the back of Maximus the stallion, the gentleman rogue Flynn Rider (or Eugene Fitzherbert, as he was now thinking of himself) gripped the reins, focused only on one goal: rescuing his love Rapunzel from the overbearing and selfish Mother Gothel, whom she probably never suspected.
Being thrown into jail and sentenced to hanging may have been terrible, but what was possibly worse to him was never seeing Rapunzel again. Even if he had to throw everything Gothel had done in her face, he was getting her out from under her thumb.
"Come on, Max, faster!" he shouted to the horse. The horse determinedly sped up as Eugene kept close track of their surroundings. Down the back, over the fallen tree, through the leaf curtain, into the hidden cavern…
Eugene's spirits rose as the two of them rode into the concealed ravine, with the tower still standing tall in the centre of it and the small waterfall pouring from the high stone cliffs that hid it from view. The grey and gloomy clouds framing the towertop gave it a rather forboding look.
Eugene shoved the thoughts of the weather out of his mind, as he leapt off Maximus's back and ran to the tower's base. "Rapunzel?" he shouted up to the top, where he knew Gothel had probably taken her.
There was no reply.
The thief's rising spirits faltered as he thought the worst. "Rapunzel, let down your hair!" he cried again.
Still nothing.
Now sure of the worst, Eugened determinedly grasped at the worn stones of the tower for handholds and footholds, prepared to haul himself up by his teeth if he had to… but then stopped when he heard a creaking from above his head. Hopefully, he looked up.
There were a few more creaks… or were those clanks?... and then, like a ray of sunshine, a trailing, gleaming, very familiar tumble of gold hair was thrown out the tower window and spooled all the way down. A huge smile on his face and hope in his heart, Eugene grabbed onto the twist of hair and began hauling himself up hand over hand.
It wasn't long before he had hauled himself to the very top of the tower and pulled himself in through the windowframe. "Oh, Rapunzel, I thought I'd never see you again!" he began, then he froze as his eyes widened in horror.
Rapunzel lay in the middle of the room, arms chained behind her back and a gag over her mouth. Only her large blue eyes were visible and they were looking at him and then behind him in panic, as she tried to scream out behind the gag while trying to scrape it off.
Before Eugene could do anything other than feel the ice in his veins, all of a sudden he suddenly felt a sharp, steely pain in his side as all the energy suddenly drained out of him in a moment. His legs gave out beneath him and he crumpled, hands clutching at his ribs as even breathing seemed to take all the strength he had. As he groaned in sheer agony, a cold, callous voice reached his ears.
"Now look what you've done, Rapunzel."
Rapunzel managed to scrape the gag off in time to see Eugene get stabbed, and her heart all but shattered at the sight. "NO! Eugene!" she screamed, struggling against her bonds.
"Oh, don't worry, dear," Gothel said cruelly, stepping over Eugene's writhing form, "our secret will die with him." She stepped over to a nearby pillar and began undoing the chain that bound her to it.
"No! Let me go! Let me go!" Rapunzel all but shrieked, eyes brimming with tears, as Gothel started to drag her away. "I have to heal him! I can't let him die!"
"Oh, forget him, Rapunzel," Gothel snapped. "You'll never see him again. We are going where no-one will ever find you again!"
"Shut up!" a distraught Rapunzel shouted at her. "I will not follow you! You won't control me again! I will save him! Eugene! Eugene!"
The weakened man could do nothing but groan as he felt the life drain out of him. Rapunzel was in hysterics as she was hauled further and further away while the person she loved died before her eyes, the power of healing in her hands but no way to reach him.
Loved…
She did love him, didn't she?
Now she fought even harder, her wrists almost bloody from the exertion. She willed with all her might, wishing that by some miracle, she could take that drop of magic inside her, send it across the room that seemed like a mile in distance, and heal him with just her heart alone.
"Rapunzel, really! Enough already!" Gothel strained against the chain, pulling on the girl like a disobedient dog. "Stop fighting me!"
"No! I won't stop!" Rapunzel cried. "For every minute for the rest of my life I will fight! No matter where you take me, I will get away! You cannot keep me locked up any more than you can stop the sun from shining! Especially for the one I love!"
From the moment of her birth, Rapunzel had been the carrier of the Drop of Sunlight, passed down from her mother, and its magic was hers to command. As innocent as she was as a child, all she or anyone had to do was sing the incantation, and the magic would be channeled out of her hair to restore whoever it touched. However, with no-one other than her "mother" to heal, she had never made any attempts to take that ability any farther, or try to prevent it from being used against her will.
But at that very moment, with Rapunzel's heart filled with so much emotion, and every iota of her will focused towards saving and protecting the one she loved with all her being, the drop of sunlight contained in her heart couldn't help but respond to it.
Resonating perfectly with the desire to restore and preserve life, the drop began to transmute every bit of that raw emotion into pure healing magic. And with her will shaping it into a light of healing stronger than anything ever produced before, the magic of the drop blossomed from within her, blazed out through the conduit that was her hair like the sunlight it was… and changed its carrier in ways no-one could ever imagine, mind and body.
Both Rapunzel and Gothel's struggles froze when the former's lustrous hair began to shine brighter than it ever had in her life, glowing so brightly the gloomy inside of the tower was lit up as clear as day. Even Eugene, agonized as he was, stared in amazement as the light washed over everything in the room.
"What… what is going on?" gaped Gothel, releasing the chain in her shock.
Rapunzel gasped as a warm glow flooded her entire body, and as her shimmering hair took on a life of its own and rose into the air, wrapping around her like a cocoon. A moment passed, and with a swirl, the shell of gold strands unravelled.
Everyone's eyes widened at the new sight.
Where Rapunzel was once wearing her usual lavender dress, she was now clad in a snow-white robe that reached all the way down to her feet at the back, but only to her thighs at the front. Her legs were encased in thigh-length white boots, and a white hood covered her head, with her golden locks spilling out from under it. Every piece of clothing was hemmed in beautiful pink and purple patterns, and above where the front of the robe was laced up with pink cord, was a small collar of ruffly lace.
Eugene could only blink, the pain and slow death pushed all the way to the back of his mind. "I must've died faster than I thought," he murmured, "It's the only way I'm seeing an angel now." A few drops of blood trickled out of his mouth.
The radiant Rapunzel turned a concerned gaze on him, then closed her eyes, willing the magic in her to cross that short distance between them and heal her love. Softly, she began to sing, "Flower glow and power shine, heal the hurt and restore what's mine!"
Instantly, her hair began to shimmer even faster, as what appeared to be motes of light began to float off of it. Blowing in an invisible wind, the motes flew towards Eugene and swirled around him, slowly merging with his body particle by particle.
"No… no… that's impossible!" choked Gothel. "How can you heal him from that far away?!"
Barely a moment passed before the lightshow faded and the last few particles disappeared into Eugene's chest. Slowly he sat up, feeling his body over and looking at the hole in his tunic, before lifting his shirt to reveal seamless skin where there once was a bloody wound. His blinking, astonished expression met Rapunzel's relieved look.
"Amazing," he breathed.
Rapunzel breathed a sigh of relief, before turning a defiant look towards Gothel, who looked even more unhinged than before. "I've never imagined this little gift of sunlight could do so much, until today, when I've needed it the most. And if not for you, I never would've realized not only what I am capable of, but what matters most to me."
"I almost feel I should thank you."
The palpable defiance in her voice only served to fracture Gothel's state of mind further. "Rapunzel…" she gritted through clenched teeth, "This disrespect of yours has gone on long enough! I will not stand here and be belittled by my own daughter!" Angrily, she reached down to grab Rapunzel's chain again…
… only to find it suddenly whipped out of her reach by a recovered Eugene, whom she did not even notice had moved, fixated on Rapunzel as she was. The rogue was now holding the chain linked to Rapunzel's shackles, and both of them were standing a short distance away, looking at her with nothing short of pity.
"Oh, drop the act already, lady," Eugene scoffed. "She's not your daughter, and if you really believed you were her mother, then you're less plain evil, and more crazy, than I thought."
"You insolent cur!" Gothel looked mad enough to spit fire. Her fingers were twitching towards her belt, where her dagger was sheathed. "I demand you return my-"
"Gothel, there is no need to continue this," Rapunzel cut her off, pulling back her hood to look at her directly. "You took me away from my family, lied to me my whole life, hid me from the world outside and tried to sever any ties I tried to make to it, all for your own selfish desire to stay young forever." An accusing finger was pointed in the witch's direction.
"I made my promise. There is nothing you can say or do that will make me want to go back to you, and there is nothing you can say or do to force me to either. Nothing."
Gothel could only snarl at the accusations, not finding any purchase to convince her otherwise. Still, she scrabbled desperately for one. "Then… how will you escape from this tower? You can't hope to climb down in chains, which means the only way out is how we just came in! And without me, you'll never get out!"
Rapunzel blinked in realization at this, which gave Gothel a small spark of potential victory. But that spark was stamped out when Eugene merely smirked. "Really, has everyone forgotten what I do for a living?" With a flick of the wrist, a pair of lockpicks were in his fingers, and he bent down to start picking at the shackles.
At the sight of her last, desperate contingency to keep her youth falling away, the remnants of Gothel's self-control and composure went to pieces. "No… no… I can't lose my treasure…. I can't!" Snatching her dagger, she ran straight at Eugene, her face twisted in anguish.
Both Eugene and Rapunzel gasped upon seeing the crazy woman running towards them, but the latter was quick to recover. Eyes fluttering shut, she intoned with a croon, "Flower glow and power shine, shield us from harm and protect what's mine!"
The robed princess's hair rippled with her words, and another stream of golden motes rose from the gold strands. In the blink of an eye, they shot in front of Gothel and arranged themselves in a honeycomb lattice that stretched from wall to wall and floor to ceiling.
Gothel ran face-first into the lattice, but all that happened was that the barrier shimmered with more blue and gold light, and did not budge even an inch. The woman collapsed like she just ran headlong into a stone wall, the dagger clattering to the ground a short distance away.
"I already said, Gothel," Rapunzel said calmly, "I am done caring about what you want. There's not a thing you could offer, no threat you could make or carry out, that would make me do anything you say. You do not hold any power over me."
"…and… there!" Eugene declared triumphantly as the lock finally gave way. With a clank, Rapunzel's shackles fell away. The princess rubbed her wrists to get the blood flowing back into them, as she fixed the recovering Gothel with a serene look.
"Now then, let me tell you what is going to happen. The two of us – sorry, three," she amended, catching sight of her faithful pet chameleon Pascal looking pointedly at her, " – three of us are going to climb down this tower, and then we are going to go back to Corona and rejoin my family, the loving, caring family I should've had from the beginning, where I will be out of your reach forever. You could follow us if you want when this wall disappears, but I doubt the king will look favorably on the woman who kidnapped his baby daughter."
Eugene chuckled humorously, hooking Rapunzel's hair on a hook hanging from the rafters outside the window. "Maybe you'll like the view of the gallows from the prisoners' perspective more than I did." He glanced at Rapunzel. "See you at the bottom?"
"I promise," answered Rapunzel, a fond smile on her lips as she took the weight on her arms. Eugene returned the smile, before hopping out the window and rappelling swiftly to the ground.
Rapunzel waited until she felt her hair go slack, then turned back to Gothel. The older woman looked despairingly at her, her golden hair made all the more luminous by the rising sun.
"Rapunzel… please… you can't leave me…"
"I already have, Gothel." If Gothel had any more doubts about Rapunzel's resolve, the solemnness in her voice dispelled all of them. "You never saw me as anything more than a living potion of youth and beauty, and everything you did out of 'love' was only to keep me in your gilded cage. The fact that that cage kept me safe as a child is the only reason I am not hauling you back to Corona in the chains you put on me."
Rapunzel drew her white hood back over her face and stepped onto the windowsill, Pascal the chameleon hopping onto her shoulder. "You should have enough time to put your things in order. Farewell, Gothel. I hope we never see each other again."
With those final words, Rapunzel took hold of her hair and pushed off, sliding down the strands and vanishing out of sight of the windowsill.
Gothel stood there staring blankly at the window for a moment more, watching the lock of hair unhook itself from the rafters and fall out of sight, before she bolted for the trap door that led to the hidden passageway. Desperately, she pelted down the tower, hoping against hope that she could talk some sense into her and keep her beauty…
… but when she burst out of the entrance and rounded the tower, that last iota of hope disintegrated and blew away on the wind.
In front of her was the idyllic landscape of the hidden hollow, green grass around her, a soothing wind blowing through it, the morning sun smiling down on her, but Rapunzel, Eugene, and the horse Maximus were nowhere to be seen. Only a few hoof-shaped indentations in the grass marked that they were ever there, with a few birds twittering around them.
Said birds instantly took flight at the scream that echoed through the canyon a second later.
"NOOOOOOOOOO!"
The sun had reached its apex in the sky when Rapunzel and Eugene were finally escorted up to the palace balcony. After arriving in Corona, the palace guards seeing Eugene had almost smothered him in their anger until Maximus managed to convince his ex-master, the Captain of the Guard, to hear them out.
The seat of the man's uniform pants probably still had hoof-marks.
When Rapunzel had announced herself as the princess, the guards were obviously skeptical, until she had started singing and made her hair shine like the sun above, upon which no-one could object to her identity. The Captain was so floored by her return that when Rapunzel requested that Eugene be pardoned for his crimes, he couldn't do anything more than give a blank nod.
As the two of them looked over the horizon at the kingdom below them, Rapunzel clung to Eugene's hand like a lifeline. "Eugene, I'm scared," she murmured, "what if they don't recognize me? What if they don't believe who I am? What if…"
Eugene gave her a gentle peck on the lips, silencing her protests. "They will, Rapunzel. I promise you, they will." Rapunzel smiled and leaned into him, burrowing her head into his shoulder.
Suddenly, they heard the sound of the double doors opening behind them, and both of them turned around to see a middle-aged man and his wife looking right at them. Rapunzel's throat constricted and her stomach began trembling. Even facing off against Gothel hadn't been as pressuring.
The queen was the first to step out towards her, her eyes glimmering with hope and emotion, while her husband could only stare frozen at the girl he hadn't seen in 18 years, when she was still a newborn. The golden hair was no more than a symbol; it was the girl it was attached to that mattered the most.
Yet another moment passed between the two women, as Queen Primrose tentatively reached out and lifted Rapunzel's chin. Their eyes caught each other. Two pairs of eyes that looked exactly identical to each other.
The queen gave a tentative, hopeful laugh.
Rapunzel gave the exact same giggle in response, eyes brimming with tears.
That was all the confirmation Queen Primrose needed, as she pulled Rapunzel into an embrace with a muffled sob, clinging onto her with all the love a real mother could give her child. Upon feeling that love, all the pressure on Rapunzel's shoulders fell away, and she relaxed into the motherly embrace. The embrace of her real mother.
A moment later, Rapunzel's eyes lifted from her mother's shoulder to look into the face of her father for the first time in 18 years. Almost instantly, the years fell away from him and he tearfully embraced both women, his family complete after so long.
Eugene could only smile happily at the sight. But he suddenly gasped when he noticed Rapunzel's hair starting to twinkle and shine, white sparkles starting to rise from it. The next moment, the long locks that had been with Rapunzel for all her life disappeared in a flurry of glowing white strands, before her robes began to shine like a star, forcing Eugene to cover his eyes once more.
When the light finally died, both King Thomas and Queen Primrose were staring in surprise at Rapunzel, whose was now wearing her regular lavender dress, a strange card in her hand, and her long, gold locks now replaced by a head of short, brown hair, the exact same shade as her mother's. But rather than making her look odd, the change only made her look more like a part of the family than ever.
The reunited family stared at each other for a moment longer, before smiling happily and continuing their embrace. But the Queen only paused long enough to grasp Eugene's hand and drag him in as well.
And above them, the sun's warmth seemed all that much stronger from that moment on, as if it knew that the one that had received its gift was back where she belonged at last.
Well, here's another chapter ready for everyone! Hope you enjoy it, and sorry for its length!
Once again, I hope this chapter passes muster. Honestly… I have my reservations about this chapter. Heavy dialog was really never my forte, especially since Rapunzel didn't really gain any new skill; only had what she already possessed taken up a notch or two.
Still, I'm glad that Rapunzel finally got to stick it to Gothel the way many of us probably wanted. I might go through it again a few times if I feel it needs perking up, but for now, I'm content.
If you're wondering why I didn't make Gothel start pleading or begging, can you honestly see Gothel throw away her pride and vanity for anything, even when its all about to be taken away from her? I honestly can't.
Skirtzzz, thank you so much for waiting again! I really hope you enjoy this installment!
Find Rapunzel's white mage costume, created by the talented DeviantArtist Skirtzzz here (scrap all the spaces)!:
skirtzzz . deviantart dotcom / art / White – Mage – Rapunzel – 289211739
Review and Critique please; I'd really like to know someone's reading this! But please, no flaming!
Next Chapter: Jabberwock Jackpot