Well, here's chapter 2. Many thanks to everyone who read the previous chapter. Hopefully you enjoyed it enough to keep going! Special thanks go to The Legend of Derpy, the sole reviewer of the first chapter. Reviews mean a lot, so thank you very much!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 2:

Over the next several weeks, Nick grew more and more worried about his elder brother's behavior. Of course, since Nick was most often at his university, he couldn't be sure how often Will was away from home during the day. Still, when Nick returned for dinner in the evening, Will was usually out, and Nick did not miss the worry on the faces of his parents when they discussed their oldest son's prolonged absences. Apparently he spent large parts of every day out of town.

No one knew where he went. Nick tried asking (and then bribing) the servants, but even they had to confess complete ignorance. Whenever Will returned, the entire household appeared to question him. Irritated, he would evade their questions. After a while, he began coming home late at night, after everyone had gone to bed. It was his way of avoiding their intrusive interrogations.

Since when had boisterous, loquacious Will become so stealthy? It was unaccountable.

"Are you sure you have no idea where he goes?" their mother asked Nick for the thousandth time.

"I'm as worried as you are," Nick replied, staring at the pages of his anatomy textbook but not absorbing a single word.

The upside to Will's random disappearances was that they distracted the brothers' mother from her angst over Nick's unfortunate career choice. Whenever this thought occurred to Nick, however, he condemned himself for his self-absorption.

Finally, one night, Nick decided that Will's time for secrecy was over. He held a vigil by the front door of their home, determined to keep his post until Will returned. If Will didn't come home that night, that was perfectly fine. Nick would hold his post for several evenings if necessary. Never mind that he had three exams the next week and desperately needed to study.

Fortunately, one evening was sufficient. A little before midnight, the door creaked open (the family had taken to leaving it unbolted so that Will might return if he wished) and Will entered. He was greeted by the wrathful face of his younger brother, rising up out of the darkness.

"Not again," Will groaned, slamming the front door behind him.

"If you don't want to tell our parents where you've been going, that's fine," Nick told him, clasping his shoulder in a death-grip. "But as your brother, I insist upon knowing. There have never been secrets between us before."

"You don't need to know," Will grumbled. He tried to shake off his brother's hand, but Nick's fingers might have been nailed down. Will resigned himself to stomping down the hallway towards the stairs, dragging Nick and his powerful grip along behind him.

"Just tell me enough that I can assure our parents you're not involved in anything illegal or immoral," Nick begged as he and Will stumbled awkwardly down the hall.

Will stopped in his tracks, at the base of the staircase. Aghast, he gaped at his younger brother. "Is that what they think?"

"How could they not?"

"Surely that's not what you think."

"I'm not certain." Nick finally released his brother's shoulder.

"It's going to bruise," Will complained, massaging the place where Nick's fingers had dug in deepest. "And you're all wrong. I would never debase the family in such a way."

"Then what are you doing?" Nick snapped. He could barely keep from strangling his infuriating sibling.

Will stared at the floor. The shadows of the hall obscured his face, so that Nick could not quite read his expression. "It would be difficult to explain, now that we've come so far," he finally said.

"What on earth does that mean?"

"I'd have to show you." Suddenly, Will's head snapped upwards, and a massive grin appeared on his face. "Yes, I think I can show you now. I'll take you to meet her! How about tomorrow?"

Nick's blood had gone cold at the word 'her.' Apparently Will could see the horror in his brother's face, for he quickly added, "I'm telling you, everything is perfectly moral and regular. Well, perhaps not regular. But there's no debauchery. Shame on you, thinking such a thing. You always did have a filthy mind."

Before Nick could formulate a reasonable response to this ridiculous accusation, Will had swept past him and was thundering up the stairway. "You'll wake the entire household!" Nick hissed after him.

"We'll leave early tomorrow morning!" Will announced as he reached the top of the stairs. "Be prepared, little brother."

Nick was not prepared to have Will leap upon him at the crack of dawn. The first thing he was aware of was a sudden, stabbing pain in his ribs. He opened his eyes to see Will perched on top of him. "Get off," he tried to say, though all that came was a low, inarticulate growl.

"I told you to be ready," Will said. He hopped off his hapless brother and shoved him off the bed.

Nick found himself lying in a heap of blankets on the hard, wooden floor. Will was grinning down at him. It was obnoxious, but at least Will was back to his usual self. Secrecy did not suit him.

Somehow, in the subsequent minutes, Nick managed to both rouse himself and convince Will to stop behaving like an overexcited lapdog. They were stomping through the woods within the hour. "Don't tell me we're going back to that blasted tower," Nick muttered as he narrowly avoided having his eye gouged out by a stray branch.

"Where else would we be going?" Will asked over his shoulder. He seemed to know the way very well; his frequent visits had actually worn a clear path through the forest.

"I hope you know I'm missing a very important dissection," Nick announced.

"I promise you, there will be more dead bodies for you to examine," Will replied, rather callously.

Soon enough, they found themselves at the base of the all-too-familiar tower. Much to Nick's bewilderment, Will started shouting a strange and vaguely German-sounding word: "Rapunzel! Rapunzel!"

When a blonde, womanly head appeared in the tower window, Nick tried not to give Will the satisfaction of seeing how shocked he was. He kept his face completely impassive as Will called to the woman, "Let down your hair!"

A veritable stream of gold (or so it appeared) tumbled down the side of the tower, stopping a few inches below Will's chin. Will glanced over at his brother to see how he was responding. "So?" he said.

"Tell me that isn't hair," Nick said flatly.

"Touch it and see for yourself," Will suggested with an impish grin.

"What? No. That's disgusting. What on earth is going on?"

"Well, you're going to have to touch it. We'll use it to climb up the tower."

Nick was still eyeing the hair suspiciously. It looked clean enough, but… "It isn't…attached to her head, is it?"

"Of course it is."

"Impossible." Nick gingerly took a few strands of the hair and examined them. "She must have a condition."

"What do you mean?"

"A medical condition. No one's hair grows this long. I wonder if the rest of her body hair is equally..." He stopped when he saw Will's expression darken.

Although there was thunder in his brow, Will swallowed his irritation and began climbing the tower. "Come," he said, grabbing the hair and hauling himself upwards. "You haven't lost your ability to climb amid all that academia, have you?"

"Of course not," Nick grumbled. Ignoring the discomfort in his stomach at the thought of climbing a rope of hair, he began to follow his brother up the tower wall. "Don't think about it," he muttered to himself. "Hair's mainly protein, after all. Nothing disgusting about it." But he felt disgusted nonetheless.

Although he would never admit it to Will, Nick quickly realized that he was rather out of shape. The long hours he spent sitting in classrooms had taken their toll on him, and soon his arms were screaming, begging him to just let go. He glanced down, to see what would happen if he chose to obey his muscles' commands. The terror that overwhelmed him as he saw the ground, many meters below, gave him new strength.

He looked up to see Will clamber inside the tower window. Only a little further. With his final reserve of energy, he hauled himself upwards, grabbed the windowsill of the tower, and dragged himself inside. He tumbled unceremoniously onto the hard stone floor. For a few moments, he merely lay on the floor, panting like a dog and ignoring Will's chuckles. It was the addition of a female giggle that caused him to jolt upright.

Will was gazing down at him with an amused expression. He held the hand of a young woman, whose golden hair streamed down her back, across the floor, and out the window. The tower itself consisted of a single large room, with no furnishings beyond a large cupboard and a wooden bed.

The young woman was rather excitedly looking back and forth between the two men. "You might be the same person!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, so we've been told," Nick said as he hauled himself off the floor. The words came out more crankily that he had intended. He could tell from the woman's startled face that she was unaccustomed to harsh words.

Will, however, was quite used to his brother's grumpiness. He laughed. "Don't worry, his pride's just been wounded. Let me introduce you. This is my little brother, Nicholas. You can call him Nick. Nick, this is my beautiful fiancée, Rapunzel."

"Nice to meet – pardon?" The words stuck in Nick's throat as he realized what his brother had just said. "Will, you can't do this. We have no idea who this woman is."

"Of course you don't. I've been visiting Rapunzel every day since I first climbed the tower," Will replied. He spoke in a calm, measured voice. Evidently, he had expected Nick to protest.

"Your brother is a wonderful man," Rapunzel assured Nick.

Nick only frowned. "How wonderful can he be, giving our parents weeks of sleepless nights just so he can visit a woman?" He turned to confront Will. "What were you thinking? You can't lead two lives."

"I wasn't planning to," Will broke in, gripping Rapunzel's hand a little tighter. "I'm going to introduce her to the family. I thought you could help."

"How so?"

"Mother and Father will be horrified if I bring home a woman I met in the woods –"

"And rightfully so," Nick interrupted. "I'm horrified."

"So," Will patiently continued, "I need you to help me find a way to bring Rapunzel back to town, introduce her to our family, help her become accustomed to society, and convince our parents to allow me to marry her."

"Will it be difficult?" Rapunzel asked in a nervous whisper.

"Very," Nick replied, coldly ignoring her wide, innocent eyes.

"You need to hear her story," Will said. "Her mother has kept her locked in this tower for her entire life. She's never been allowed outside."

Nick was used to Will's exaggerations, so he merely raised his eyebrows skeptically. But Rapunzel herself cut in, "I want to be able to leave the tower for the first time, and see the world, and live with William." Her eyes shone with hope as she spoke, and Nick found himself believing her story.

Still, he had to keep up his display of doubt for a little while longer. "You've been imprisoned here by your own mother?" he said. "Why would she do such a thing?" He tried to keep his eyes fixed on the woman's face, but he kept inadvertently glancing at her massively long hair. Yes, she must have had some sort of medical condition to cause such excessive hair growth.

"Mother says I'll be crushed by the evil in the world," she explained. "I believed her until I met William, and he told me about how wonderful the world is. I want to see everything for myself."

Nick wanted to remark that her mother must have been mentally unstable. He refrained, deciding that such a comment would be markedly unhelpful. Deep in thought, he looked towards Will. The man had always been impetuous, but he was hardly a fool. Surely he had thought through the situation. Surely he had a plan.

"Well then," Nick said to his brother, "what do you intend to do?"

Much to Nick's horror, Will gave him a blank look. "I thought you could figure that out."

If he hadn't been so irritated, Nick might have burst out laughing at the wide-eyed, expectant faces of his brother and future sister-in-law. They looked at him as though he was the savior of the world. Summoning all his patience, he said, "We need a story. A reason for us to be bringing Rapunzel home, and a reason for her to stay." He idly wondered if he would be allowed to study Rapunzel's hair once they had reached town.

"Exactly," Will agreed. "What do you suggest?"

Nick had always delighted in plots and schemes (innocent ones, of course), so he found himself enjoying the situation despite his initial qualms. "We'll say that we went on one of our treks this morning. Along the way, we found Rapunzel being harassed by robbers. We rescued her. Rapunzel herself is from the household of a disgraced noble. She is an orphan, who was taken in by the noble family. Now that their house has fallen on hard times, she has nowhere to go."

"Which noble house? Our parents will want to know," Will remarked.

"I don't know. Let's make it a German one. I think 'rapunzel' is a German word, anyways. Mother and Father don't know much about Germany, so they won't press too hard."

"We should make up a name, anyways."

"No, we can't. What if Father tries to search for the noble? Rapunzel, you'll have to refuse to give the name of the family. Say that you don't want to bring further disgrace upon them by announcing their name."

"Can you do that?" Will asked Rapunzel.

"I think so," she stoutly replied.

"Excellent. Then we have our story," Nick said, feeling rather pleased with himself.

"Actually, there's one more issue," Will said. He gave Rapunzel an uncomfortable glance. "Rapunzel, you see, has lived in this tower all her life, so she's not quite familiar with…etiquette."

"My mother says I eat like a barbarian," Rapunzel shamefacedly confessed.

"We could say it's because she's German," Nick said.

"We can't blame everything on her being German," Will objected. "Also, she doesn't have a German accent."

"Not a problem. We'll say her household spoke English. They're highly educated Germans. As for etiquette, you and I can teach her some basics before bringing her to town. If any shortcomings remain, we will blame them on her being German." This would have to work. Nick had no other plan. He suddenly realized, however, that there was one more wrinkle in their scheme. "How do we explain the hair?"

Silence fell upon the tower. After a good minute of thought, Rapunzel quietly suggested, "We could cut it off."

"No!" Nick immediately bellowed, causing both Will and Rapunzel to stare at him as though he had lost his mind.

"I know the hair's pretty and all that, but honestly, Nick, I don't see why you're so attached to it already," Will slowly remarked.

Nick sighed, wishing he didn't have to explain his academic motivations for wanting Rapunzel's hair to remain as it was. "The hair is...medically interesting," he finally admitted. "I was hoping I might bring Rapunzel to the university for a few tests. Just to see what forces are at work."

Rapunzel seemed intrigued, but Will immediately protested. "You will not treat my future wife like a laboratory animal!"

Rolling his eyes, Nick replied, "That's not how it is at all. We won't experiment on her. And I will personally ensure that none of the tests are invasive. You must understand that I speak on behalf of the entire academic community when I say that unusual phenomena such as what we are witnessing here require extensive -"

"God, I hate his rants," Will moaned to Rapunzel.

Nick stopped mid-sentence, glaring at his older brother. "What if I said I won't help you unless you let me study her hair?" As soon as the words were out, he wished he hadn't uttered them. Such an ungracious condition on his assistance was entirely unnecessary. "I didn't mean that."

"Yes, you did," Will said, looking at him in disgust. "You've always given 'academia' the place of honor at your table, haven't you? Fine. If Rapunzel is willing, then you can study her hair to your heart's content."

"I'm willing," Rapunzel quietly said.

"Excellent. Then we're back to the problem of how to explain the hair."

Nick massaged his temples, wishing he hadn't gone so far, wishing he hadn't roused Will's anger. "I suppose we can say it's a genetic mutation. That's a likely enough explanation, at any rate. It's unfortunate that the hair is so attention-grabbing, but there's nothing we can do."

"Not if we want Rapunzel 'examined,' at any rate," Will snorted.

"Dear, it's alright," Rapunzel murmured to him. "Let's not dwell on it, yes?"

A pause. "We should bring her home as soon as possible," Will finally said. "How long will it take to tutor her in etiquette?"

"Two weeks would be enough to cover the basics, I think. But if you don't want to wait, we can try doing it in one."

"I don't want to stay here any longer than a week," Rapunzel declared.

Nick glanced at her in surprise. She certainly seemed to know her own mind.

"There's one more issue," Will said. "Father wants me to accompany him on a business trip this week. I won't be at home for the next four days. Nick, you're going to have to come here and give Rapunzel her etiquette lessons."

"Oh, but I don't want to cause him trouble…" Rapunzel began to object.

"It's fine," Nick sighed. He could already see his grades plummeting. Still, for his parents' sakes, he needed to get Will to come home and stay home. If teaching this bizarrely long-haired girl how to behave properly would do the trick, then he was willing to do it. Besides, this was an opportunity to get back in Will's good graces.

It was time to go. Nick looked away uncomfortably as Will and Rapunzel said their affectionate farewells. "Nick will be back tomorrow," Will promised her. "I'll come next week to get you out of here and bring you back to town."

"That will be wonderful," she said, enthusiastically bobbing up and down.

Yes. Etiquette lessons were a must, Nick decided. Bobbing was unacceptable.

"Until tomorrow," he said as he began descending her golden rope of hair, all the while attempting to convince himself that he was, in fact, awake, and that this madness was, in fact, reality.

And there you have it. Let me know what you think! I promise I have nothing against Germans, by the way. My entire family's from Germany. Just thought I'd play on some old "barbarian" stereotypes...