Chapter 4
The morning came with a feeling of exhaustion that, for lack of a better label, Flynn called comfortable.
He opened his eyes, not really waking because he hadn't slept. At least he didn't think he had, but it was much brighter than it was the last time he looked.
His face was buried against something warm and soft that smelled like sleep and girl. It took a long, thoughtless moment for him to realize that it was Rapunzel's collar bone. She still held one of his hands, although not as firmly. Heavy with sleep, it weighed his own hand down against his chest. Sometime in the night he had wrapped an arm around her waist and fisted his hand in the back of her nightgown, which was now crumpled and damp with sweat. Her hair trailed across them both, draped over her shoulder and his injured side to fall off the bed onto the floor.
He had no desire to move at all.
He couldn't look up to see her face without disturbing her, and now that she had passed out, he should let her sleep. She had been up most of the night with him, telling him everything about her day and the day before and the day before that. She talked and distracted him and never expected a response. When she got tired of talking she sang. When she got tired of singing she talked again.
The pain in his side had lessened significantly. Maybe he'd become habituated. In the night he decided to accept it, embrace it, relish in it. He started this adventure expecting to die, he might as well go out with a bang.
Maybe he was too worn out to really notice anymore.
Maybe he was actually healing.
It felt uncomfortable, and he had the urge to curl in on himself to find some relief, but he didn't want to move. He didn't want to wake Rapunzel or move away from her.
He held his body unnaturally still, and although he'd been in the same position most of the night, consciously deciding to stay put made him feel antsy almost immediately. His muscles tensed and his desire to shift around grew stronger by the moment.
His side stung with every inhale, and he tried to make his breathing shallower, only to feel as though he wasn't getting enough oxygen. He gasped, and that hurt like nobody's business.
He stared at the rise and fall of Rapunzel's chest as she slept. It was a nice view. Slowly his breathing fell into sync with hers. Slowly the exhaustion took hold of him once more.
His next conscious thought was that he had to get up. He had to move. He couldn't stay in that bed another moment.
He was sore from lying in the same position for so long, and his muscles felt both twitchy and lazy. Even though he had just woken up, he was already bored to death.
His second thought was that Rapunzel was missing.
He sat up slowly, fighting off dizziness and cringing through the pain. He took a break after sitting half way up, then again sitting up all the way, then again after easing his legs over the side of the bed.
He rethought his plan at that point, then looked down at his pillow and how tragically far away it was. Too late. He'd committed himself to it. No turning back now.
Pushing himself off the bed caused the world to spin around him. The floor was cold against his feet, draining his energy and anchoring him to the spot.
After a moment of blinking and staring off into space, he shuffled towards the door. This was very irritating, because he had never in his life shuffled anywhere. He swaggered. Stupid injuries throwing off his groove.
He leaned against the doorjamb when he reached it, catching his breath and looking around at the rest of the tower.
He'd expected it to look like Rapunzel's room, cluttered and chaotic, covered in scraps of paper and chunks of sheet metal, pens and screws and thread and gears. But it wasn't. The big, circular room was surprisingly tidy, with polished wood floors and bright, natural light coming in through skylights in the ceiling. It was decorated sparingly, an elaborate clock on one wall and bright ivy painted on the handrail of a curving staircase, a mirror and a rocking chair and a table. It seemed as though Rapunzel had confined all her creative energies to her room.
She sat at the table, playing a quiet game with the chameleon. It took her a moment to notice him, at which point he adjusted his posture into something more casual and less pathetic, much to the protests of his many injuries.
"What are you doing up?" She bounced out of her chair and hurried towards him anxiously.
"Oh, you know. I just thought I'd go for a walk."
She frowned at him, slipping under his arm on his good side and leading him to the table. It was too late to try to look cool. She'd already seen him at his worst and there was no way she would just forget about it, even though that would be fantastic.
He slumped into a chair, only to realize that his teeth were chattering for no apparent reason. Rapunzel's hand went immediately to his forehead, and he clenched his jaw and raised a cynical eyebrow at her in hopes she wouldn't notice.
Her hand retreated and he closed his eyes, taking a deep, careful breath. A moment later he found himself wrapped in a quilt.
"Are you hungry? You haven't eaten since breakfast yesterday."
Thinking on it a moment, he considered the possibility that one of the uncomfortable feelings in his stomach might be hunger. But then again, another one was nausea and the nausea was winning.
"No."
She had already disappeared into a side room that looked a bit like a kitchen. "I'll make you some broth."
"I don't really-"
Her head popped out of the side of the door frame, her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed.
"Broth… Yeah… Great… Thank you."
She nodded in satisfaction and disappeared again in a flurry of blonde hair.
He propped an elbow on the table and scrubbed at his face, looking through his fingers at the chameleon, whose eyes shifted with a jerk to focus on him.
"Hey. How's your day going?"
The chameleon blinked, then ticked at him, sounding as though its gears had stuck on something.
Flynn found he didn't have the energy to figure out what it was trying to say.
Rapunzel returned to set a bowl of steaming liquid in front of him, complete with an embroidered cloth napkin and a glass of water. A single whiff of the broth made his stomach churn dangerously, and he pushed it as far away as he could without catching Rapunzel's attention.
She might force feed him if she realized he wasn't eating.
He watched her and Pascal as he tried to figure out the rules to their game and not fall asleep at the table. They had a stack of uniform, metal bricks that formed a small tower. Then they took turns removing bricks then placing them on the top of the stack, causing the tower to slowly grow taller, but more unstable.
She would roll her cuff out of the way, then press a brick forward with one finger, to pull it carefully from the other side. Then Pascal would take a brick, slowly extending his tail with the smallest of high pitched whines. And back and forth.
Occasionally the tower would sway – always on Pascal's turn – and Rapunzel would grin, her eyebrows raising up to her goggles.
Then every so often she would turn away from the game to sketch something on a pad of paper. They looked like designs for some sort of machine. As she was lost in her work, Pascal would finish his turn then wait patiently for her to finish drawing, getting her idea down, running it through either to its conclusion or until she hit a snag.
"What are you working on?"
"What?" Her head snapped up and one of her hands moved immediately to cover her work.
He raised an eyebrow at her. "You're sketching something. What is it?"
"Oh. Nothing."
"Nothing?"
She gave him one of her smile-cringes and chirped, "Yup."
Clearly not buying it, he sat and stared at her until her fake smile faded and her shoulders dropped.
"I'm supposed to be working on a watch design. Someone ordered one – someone very important, Mother says - and I need to have at least a design when she gets back to show I haven't been slacking."
"That's what you do? Make watches?"
"Mmhmm. I make them and Mother sells them. People started asking her for specific things so now I have to make those."
"What kind of specific things?"
"Well…" She flipped back several pages to where she had a photograph and a slip of paper with notes in handwriting different from her own clipped to a page filled entirely with doodles. "This man wants a hunter-case pocket watch with star movements around the outside, an etching of his family on the inside, and a knotted wire chain." She rolled her eyes and dropped the pages, letting them flutter. "That's what everyone wants. It's too much for one watch. It starts looking too busy. But I'm not sure they care. They just want to say they have one.
"I don't want to make the same thing over and over, and it's getting boring. It's hard to do something original when they want you to just make the same thing all the time. I wish someone would ask for improved accuracy, or for it to be quieter or tick out a little song."
Pascal promptly made a little series of clicks that came very close to forming a melody.
"Like that! Oh, Pascal, you're so clever!" Plucking it up in cupped hands, she nuzzled her wrinkled nose against the chameleon's forehead.
She sighed, lowering Pascal. "But what I really want to make is a watch that doesn't need to be wound every day."
"You can do that?"
Her eyes lit with excitement. "I don't know! That's the exciting part. It's a challenge. See? I've been working on designs for a perpetual motion machine – for a clock you wouldn't have to wind. I feel like I'm close, but I'm not quite there yet. Something's missing." She held up her pad of paper so he could see, but it might as well have been written in Greek for all the sense it made.
She frowned, then pushed the pad away, turning back to her tower of little bricks. "Do you want to play?"
"Nah. I'm good. You knock yourself out." His hands were shaking too much to even attempt it.
"What kind of games do you play?"
"Uh, I don't know. Mostly cards."
She paused to look up at him, her finger poised to remove a brick. "Cards?"
"Yeah, they're like… uh…"
"Business cards. I know what those are." She sprang up and left before he could correct her, her hair dragging behind on the floor.
It keep dragging.
And keep dragging.
She returned with a box stuffed with business cards and slid back into her seat with a smug grin.
"Your hair," he said, taking a good look at it for the first time.
Her hand froze half way through pulling out a single card. Her eyes widened, then snapped to his face. "What about it?"
His inspection wandered down to where her hair coiled by her feet. "I kind of remember... But I was really out of it."
"Remember what?"
Something about her voice took him by surprise, something sharp and almost threatening. He turned back to her face, realizing he'd struck a nerve, but not knowing exactly which one.
"It's just so long. I haven't seen anything like it before. I thought I was imagining things."
Her shoulders relaxed slightly and she turned back to her cards. "I'm sure you imagined a lot."
"That's for sure… So, why is it so long?"
"Why not?" she said, brushing him off with a shrug.
"Doesn't it… get in the way?"
"Sometimes."
"Does it get dirty being dragged around on the floor all day?"
She laughed. "I like to keep the floor clean."
"Hmm."
She presented him with a card, effectively changing the subject. "Here. See? Now what games can you play with them?"
They were minimalistic cards, a plain blue border around a single line of text. Gothel Time Pieces.
"Hey! I know this brand. I've stolen some of these."
"What?"
"Who's Gothel?" he asked.
"My mother."
"She makes watches too?"
"No. Just me."
"Ah. Of course." Because that made sense.
His sarcasm was lost on her as she inched forward in her chair and brought the conversation back to the cards. "What do we do first?"
"First, you need actual playing cards. These aren't going to work." With the card tucked between two fingers, he extended it back.
Her face fell a moment before brightening again. "Can we make them?"
"Uh-"
"What do they look like?" She snatched up her pen and readied herself to write out notes on the construction of playing cards.
"I don't think that's-"
She looked up at him, all big, curious eyes and a little happy smile.
He sighed.
Under his lazy instruction, she threw herself into building her own card deck, spending a great deal of time drawing pictures of the royals and debating with Pascal over which suit was the best.
When Flynn got bored he flicked cards at her, hitting her squarely in the forehead each time, then feigning innocence by pretending to be asleep. Her aim was not nearly as good, but she enjoyed throwing things at him nonetheless.
He started building a house of cards, only to have it collapse almost immediately under his groggy fingers. She watched his little houses fall, be rebuilt, and then fall again, before she attempted it herself, forming a structure three stories tall.
In irritation, he blew on it, only to pull something in his side. The structure swayed ominously.
Then it stabilized.
Her wide-eyed look of suspense eased into a smirk.
In response, he accidently kicked the table leg.
She turned out to be a very bad poker player, which didn't surprise Flynn in the slightest. Every time she had a good hand she would grin, bite her lip, and push her entire pile of washers – which they used as chips – into the pot.
"This is fun," she announced after he took all her washers for the third time.
"You're losing."
"So?"
"…Never mind."
"I made you a new shirt," she said, attempting to shuffle the deck the way he had been doing it. "I'm not sure how it will fit, but it looks about the same as your old one."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. Maybe you can try it on after we change your bandage later." She tried to bury the hope in her voice, her eyes darting to his face then away again.
"What? You don't think I'm going to win all the beauty contests wearing this quilt?"
She considered him, narrowing her eyes and looking him up and down.
He smirked at her.
"It doesn't matter what you wear. You'll lose because you smell."
"Maybe you should give me a sponge bath."
"Maybe you should give yourself a sponge bath."
"Aww, but, Blondie, I'm so helpless. I don't think I can manage alone. I need a pretty girl to help me get all lathered up, so I don't keep bugging you with my enticing musky scent."
"Enticing?"
"Terribly enticing."
She held back a giggle, and attempted another bridge, not managing Flynn's even flutter, but not spilling the cards everywhere either.
He leaned forward, dropping his voice and putting on his best smolder, drawing her forward ever so slightly.
"Some even call it enthralling."
Biting her lip only held back her laughter for a moment before it burst free, frightening her chameleon into changing color.