Again, inspired by just this heart 'verse.

The second time Eugene and Anna crash through the wall in Elsa's study goes slightly better than the first; Rapunzel does knock over one of Elsa's bishops with the queen in her hand by accident, but at least no paintings are ruined.

"Again?" she asks.

"That door just won't budge," Anna whines, a mess of tangled limbs as she scrambles up and makes her way to their table "Hey, chess! That's fun."

Elsa swats her sister away as she leans forward to grab a pawn. "Rapunzel follows the rules," she says, and then, at Rapunzel's questioning look: "We played last week. I was winning, so she invented a political crisis and threw the board down the balcony while I was away."

"And then I won!" Anna says, cheerfully.

"And then you damaged a priceless heirloom," Elsa corrects, scanning the board as Rapunzel moves her rook back two spaces. "How much longer do you plan on doing this, anyway?"

"Until we map out the whole thing," Anna says, throwing herself onto a nearby armchair. Said easily enough now, but still; Rapunzel remembers the day they discovered the trapdoor under the south wing office—the way Anna's freckles had suddenly stood stark against her pale skin as she realized that there might have been a way out all along—

Rapunzel swallows, remembering how she herself had shrunk back from the darkness, for an instant. Anna'd ignored all of their protests and thrown herself down into the hidden passage that day, and Eugene had followed her, because…

She looks at him now, sprawled out carelessly on the floor in a way that makes it really hard to concentrate on the lost cause that is her king's side knight. "Find anything?"

"Nope," he tells her, but slight rasp in his voice and the way his hand strays to his ribs tell her that he means not yet.

If Eugene Fitzherbert and Flynn Rider have anything in common, it's that neither of them are ever exactly sure when a place is safe, and this uncharted place had thrown him off, too. That's—okay, Rapunzel thinks, hand darting up toward her hair; they all know about old habits.

Anna, meanwhile, has gone back to The Door Problem. "It's the only way we can get to the other side of…whatever, and we've tried everything. The machine Rolf gave us didn't work right—"

"She dropped it," Rapunzel tells Elsa in an undertone.

"—and some people won't even help even though they probably could—"

"I'm not going to 'magic' your door," Elsa says flatly, "I still have no idea what that even means."

"—so it's just there mocking us."

A pout. Rapunzel most definitely doesn't giggle, and then clears her throat. "Have you thought about waiting until Kristoff comes back from his ice harvesting trip?"

There's a pause, then Eugene says, very quietly: "Ah."

"Ah," Anna echoes, bouncing up. "Ah! Why didn't you—"

"Why didn't you, he's your—"

"I bet he—"

"Of course he can, have you seen his shoulders—"

"I don't know if he'd—"

"If we make him hunch over—"

And there are definitely people in the world, Rapunzel thinks, who can finish each other's sentences, but Eugene and Anna seem to have bypassed that stage entirely.

"Right," Eugene finally says, pushing himself up, "Our heroics can continue another day, then."

"Exercises in stupidity, more like." Elsa says, out of the corner of her mouth.

"Nuance," Eugene and Anna say in unison, and grin.

Rapunzel just laughs.