There comes a point in waiting when it's useless to wait any longer. The Stabbington brothers watched this time come and then pass with a dull sense of finality.
Flynn Rider was not going to show up, and their job shifted from retrieval and delivery to search and destroy. They didn't mind this. They were expecting it. They excelled at it.
The only issue now was finding Rider. Their job would be easiest if he made it to the airships, then died there. Such an uproar would surely draw attention, and it wouldn't be hard to find someone to tell the story. It'd be easier, but then again, they wouldn't get the satisfaction of killing the little snot themselves.
If he was smart, he would have fled the country as soon as they let him loose. Sort of smart. No, not really that smart. Rider was incapable of making intelligent decisions, and they'd track him down no matter where he went. He could run to the ends of the earth, they'd find him. And the longer they chased him, the more violent and satisfying his end would be.
It didn't take the brothers long to find a troop of royal guards, looking frazzled and pained, and rushing so much that they ended up standing still.
The younger brother prepared his pistol, ready to take them all on and then beat the information from them. But the older brother rolled his eyes and shoved the pistol away. Killing a whole troop of guards would draw attention, which would go against one of the few stipulations imposed on this job by their employer.
Stealth. Always stealth.
Rider, coward that he was, might have not even made it to the battery, and an attack on the guards would give away that something was up, be a complete waste of effort, and they'd have to stop later and buy more bullets.
The younger brother growled, putting his pistol aside, but not away.
They waited. They watched. And it took all of five minutes to learn that, against all odds, Rider had been successful. He had stolen the battery straight from the queen's hands and thrown all of Corona into chaos.
The older brother raised an eyebrow. Despite being a piss ant, and despite taking the battery for himself (and in so doing making himself the enemy of every country on the continent) he'd still done half his job and brought the empire down a peg or two.
Admirable. But not enough.
It took a day of traveling in the general direction that the airship Rider stole was reportedly headed before it became clear that the entirety of the Corona army was heading in the same direction, converging on a single point. En masse they were easy to follow. The difficult part was doing so without arousing suspicions. At that point the younger brother got the joyful excuse to take out two of the soldiers, taking their poorly fitting uniforms and rolling their bodies into the river.
Thus disguised, the Stabbingtons traveled, hiding in plain sight within the chaotic army, and the next day, just before sunset, they came upon the camp surrounding the tower. It loomed over them, quiet despite the bustle at its base and the dried and hardened oil coating the sides, evidence of the last sudden and violent outburst. It seemed impenetrable, and the force the army had gathered just emphasized this point further.
They glanced at one another, then back up at the tower, silently agreeing that somehow, against all odds, they would need to get inside.
The constant march of guards in the direction of the tower caught the attention of others as well. Businessmen with entrepreneurial spirits, bakers and brewers, smithies and iron workers set up stands and tents near the camp and along the supply trails that began to form. A small performance troop even set up a makeshift stage. None had quite grasped the direness of the situation. None really noticed or believed that the empire teetered on the brink of destruction.
The sudden foot traffic and general disruption caught Gothel's attention as well.
She didn't like seeing guards at all, much less in such numbers. She couldn't risk them finding the tower, finding Rapunzel, and with her heart pounding faster and stronger with every mile and the ever thickening patrols of the guards, she ran home as if the wind itself was chasing her.
And her heart nearly stopped when she reached the valley, surrounded by men trying to breach the stones that held it upright, men come to take her daughter and her livelihood, come to drag her to a cold cell in the castle dungeons or worse.
She would never allow that to happen. Never. Ducking into the shadows and narrowing her eyes she swore as she forced her breath to calm that she would fight till her dying breath to keep what was hers.
Somehow, against unbelievable odds, she had to get Rapunzel out of there.
Flynn closed his eyes and took a deep breath, crossing his arms over his chest to have some place to put his hands before frowning down at Rapunzel's still form once more.
"It's poison. Isn't it?"
Pascal didn't have an answer. He just dashed worriedly back and forth across her chest and shoulders. He ticked and squeaked and let loose bursts of steam, his eyes rolling and head jerking back and forth. His tail rolled in on itself so tightly that it scraped metal on metal.
Flynn wished it would calm down. Its panic on top of his own fears was making him edgy and snappish.
Her breathing was still ragged. Her eyebrows furrowed and twitched in pain over eyes that refused to open. He'd placed a damp cloth over her forehead to try to bring down the fever, but of course it wasn't helping.
There really wasn't much that could help.
He wracked his brain for any slight scrap of advice he'd heard about poison, but it was all just warnings and horror stories. The dominating, circulating rumor was that if you were attacked by an assassin chameleon you simply wouldn't survive. The only thing to do was avoid them at all costs.
He tore through her room to finally find her medical book under a pile of papers and origami flowers, them flipped through it frantically to find anything that would help. He was met only with grim illustrations of certain doom and brief instructions for how to induce vomiting if the poison was ingested. If poisoned by an animal that injected the venom into the blood stream, he was supposed to suck it out – which sounded horrible and was coupled with an equally horrific picture. But Rapunzel had healed her wound, so there was no longer a place from which to remove the poison. And it had been in her system so long now.
He swallowed and quietly admitted the awful truth.
"She needs a doctor."
The chameleon thoroughly agreed with this idea, but that didn't make it any easier.
Only when she shifted slightly in discomfort, her breath catching for a heart-stopping moment before resuming its unsteady rhythm did he push himself into action.
He grabbed her handkerchief, which she'd been using to hold tiny watch parts and dumped the itty bits carelessly onto her workbench, then used the cloth to grab the battery. Snatching up a crowbar, he marched into the main room.
Pascal made a string of terrible noises and chased after him, grabbing at his pants leg with the barbs in his tail.
"Damn it! What? What do you want?"
Pascal growled, one eye glaring at him, the other swiveled backwards and locked onto Rapunzel in the other room.
"You think I'm leaving? Well, I'm not. Not right this second anyway. I got her into this and now I'm getting her out, even if she is a bratty, crazy, obnoxious..." He trailed off as his heart sank to his stomach.
He glared at Pascal, then scooped down to grab him, dumping him unceremoniously on his shoulder. "Let go of my pants and shut up if you're not helping."
The spiral stairs were covered in thick slabs of stone that were not at all easy to pry off so the battery could be shoved underneath, and not at all easy to put back in place so they looked as though they hadn't been moved.
"You see where I put that?" Flynn asked.
Pascal gave him a blank stare.
"No. You need to remember where – oh never mind. You useless piece of-"
The chameleon hissed at him, a warning as his tail shifted and clanked, curling and uncurling and curling again, but Flynn was beyond caring.
He raided her closet next. That's where she said she'd put the rest of his clothes. Keeping the shirt she'd made him, he shrugged on his vest and stolen uniform jacket, noting that she'd patched them as best she could. His fingers traced over the careful stitching.
Next he went after the drapes over the windows, which came down easily when he pulled on them. The chameleon filmed him as he tied them all together, making a rope long enough to reach the ground. He wasn't sure he wanted his final acts documented like this. If Rapunzel survived, would she watch this film later? What would she think?
He shook it off to give Pascal instructions. The chameleon needed them to be clear and crisp and direct, or his memory would get hazy and he would forget. He didn't really trust the machine to carry out any part of his plan, but it wasn't as though they had a choice in the matter.
"When I'm done climbing down, you pull this rope back up. That's important. Pull the rope up. Take care of Rapunzel while I'm gone. And then don't lower the rope or let anyone back in until the doctor comes. I might not be with them, but if the doctor's there, you let them in. Got it?"
Pascal looked confused and tilted his head, probably recording the film at an awkward angle.
Flynn groaned. "This is going to be a disaster."
He grabbed the chameleon again and headed for Rapunzel's room to say his goodbyes. The idea of goodbyes made him downright ill.
He sat on the edge of her bed and checked the cloth on her forehead, realizing belatedly that he had only done so to postpone the moment. The cloth was warm to the touch, just like her skin, but he didn't know what to do about that except toss it away.
Shit. He didn't know what to do about anything.
She looked so pale, so lifeless when he was used to seeing her run, seeing her smile.
He spoke to Pascal without looking at him, his fingers busy stroking the hair back from Rapunzel's face. "Can you record me?"
A moment later there was the familiar click of a tape recorder and Flynn considered it a small blessing. His voice came out softer than he was expecting when he began to speak. It was almost gentle and that was strange because he was still so angry at her. He was more angry at her now that she was so sick, that she was threatening to leave him to continue their idiotic adventure alone.
He tucked the brown stands of hair behind her ear.
"Hey Blondie. I-" He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry I got you into this. Really. That just sucks. But I'm going to make it up to you. I'm getting you a doctor to make you better. So don't think I'm running away or anything. As soon as they get you fixed up, you give them the battery. Alright? It's hidden under the third step from the bottom on your staircase. Tell them I took you hostage. They only want me and the battery, so you'll be safe."
He threaded his fingers through hers where they lay limp and folded across her stomach.
"Rapunzel, I want you to live. And not just up in this tower. I want you to really live. Go see the world. Do everything you've dreamed of doing."
The truth was that all the times he'd set himself up to die, he'd never had a real reason. He'd never had something worth dying for. Not the battery or downfall of the empire. Nothing.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, his life had purpose. Her life and safety, her happiness, those were worth protecting. And that realization gave him an invigorating clarity, that washed over him in waves, cleansing him. It was wonderful and terrible and left him more alive than he'd ever felt even as he was walking to his death.
He pressed his lips to her forehead, smoothing her furrowed brow with his thumb as he pulled back.
He sighed and started talking again, even though he hadn't planned to say anything more. He hadn't really planned on any of this.
"My real name is Eugene. Eugene Fitzherbert. Pretty bad, right? But – oh shit, I don't... I - I just thought you might like to know."