Next chapter! Enjoy!

A small campfire burned, the wood crackling softly as Rapunzel and Eugene sat on a nearby log, Rapunzel carefully wrapping her hair around Eugene's injured foot as gently as she could.

"I'm not entirely sure if the excruciating pain is clouding my sense of judgment, but the last time I checked, hair has nothing to do with foot injuries…regardless of whether it glows. Agh!" Eugene winced, pulling his foot back out of her grasp.

"Sorry," she said with a sympathetic grimace. "Just breathe and…try not to freak out." He met her eyes, lowered his gaze down to his foot, and then locked eyes with her again, nodding weakly.

Rapunzel closed her eyes, concentrating hard, as she had back in the cave. After a moment, her hair started to glow again, the beam of bright yellow light making its way slowly to Eugene's foot. He felt it almost immediately, the absence of the constant pain he'd felt since the injury had happened as a wave of relief washed over him. As the light faded away back to darkness, Rapunzel carefully unwrapped his foot and placed her hands around it, feeling for any sign of injury. Eugene stretched his toes and curled them in, rolling his ankle in a circle with shock and amazement.

"Incredible," he murmured softly as he stood up and placed his full weight on the formerly crushed foot.

"You're not…afraid?" Rapunzel asked, expecting him to flee in fear. Her father had convinced her that magic was both feared and coveted in their world, but there was no middle ground. Either she would be taken advantage of and used for her power or she would never meet a soul who didn't fear the power that she had.

"Afraid? The gift that you have…you're amazing," he said, his eyes meeting hers with a softness that surprised her.

"Not everyone thinks so. My father told me that when I was a baby, someone tried to cut it," she said, pulling back her long blonde strands to reveal the short brown piece that Rumplestiltskin cut, still just as short as it was the day that he cut it. "They wanted to take it for themselves. But once it's cut, it turns brown and loses its power. A gift like that…it has to be protected. That's why I never left my father's castle."

"Your father? You mean you're Rumplestiltskin's daughter?" Eugene asked.

"You know my father?" Rapunzel asked, confused.

"He, uh…has a reputation," he said nervously as Rapunzel nodded sadly, lowering her eyes to the ground. "So why DID you leave?" he asked after a moment of silence, a desperate attempt at changing the subject.

"I wanted to believe that I was strong enough to handle myself against all of the evil in the world. But after what happened today…maybe Papa was right," she said, her voice breaking as she hid her face in her hands. Eugene reached out as if to comfort her, but just before his hand touched her shoulder, he pulled it back. Rapunzel poked her head back out after a moment, masking her sadness with a smile, though he noticed that it didn't quite make it to her eyes.

"So…Eugene Fitzherbert?" she asked curiously.

"Uh, yeah," Eugene answered, a nervous smile playing at the corners of his lips. "I'll spare you the sob story of poor orphan Eugene Fitzherbert." Rapunzel, still smiling, slid closer to him on the log. Eugene sighed, running his fingers back through his hair, his smile growing wider. "There was this book. I used to read it every night to the younger kids – 'The Tales of Flynnigan Rider'. Swashbuckling rogue, richest man alive, not bad with the ladies either. Not that he would brag about it, of course."

"Was he a thief, too?" Rapunzel asked, watching as Eugene's smile faded ever so slightly.

"No. He was an honorable man, a hero. He had enough money to do anything that he wanted to do. He could go anywhere that he wanted to go. And for a kid with nothing…it just seemed like the better option." Rapunzel didn't reply, but she couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sadness for him. To not know his family, to be abandoned and left alone…she may not always have agreed with her father's choices for her life, but he was still her family. She still had someone in her life to be there for her, to guide her. Eugene had no one. "You can't tell anyone about this, okay?" Eugene interrupted her thoughts, pulling her back to reality. "It could ruin my whole reputation."

"Ah. We wouldn't want that," Rapunzel said, the sarcasm in her voice thick with a nearly undetectable hint of disappointment lingering beneath.

"Well, a fake reputation is all a man has," Eugene teased, and Rapunzel couldn't hold back a laugh. The second that their eyes met, Rapunzel felt a spark of electricity hanging in the air between them, Eugene's light brown eyes staring deeply into her ocean blues. However, after a moment, Eugene looked away, shaking his head and glancing around nervously. "Well, I should, um…I should get some more firewood." As he stood and started to walk away, still marveling at his healed foot, Rapunzel's voice pulled him back.

"Hey." He turned to look at her.

"For the record, I like Eugene Fitzherbert much better than Flynn Rider." Eugene smiled, glancing down at his foot.

"Well, then you'd be the first…but thank you."

He turned and walked into the forest, into a group of trees so thick that he could no longer see Rapunzel or the campfire. As he leaned down to gather several small pieces of wood lying on the ground, a shadow moved out of the corner of his eye. As he turned, his heart racing, a part of him already knew what he was going to find.

"I see you found my treasure."