Chapter 19

Earlier

Rapunzel moans softly as she slowly returns to consciousness. The cold and hard ground beneath her digs uncomfortably into her bones as she lays on her side, writhing.

"Cass…" she mumbles, half-asleep.

After a moment, her eyelids gradually flicker open, her blurry vision focusing on the hardwood floor just inches away from her face.

She discovers herself to be alone and in an unrecognizable room. It's deathly silent around her. Cobwebs are nestled in the corners of the shadowed walls that enclose her, with nothing but a small murky window to provide a dull gray light somewhere behind her.

She notices a bookshelf against the opposite wall, next to a table with objects on its surface that she can't decipher from this angle. There's a wooden bedframe next to her, small enough to belong to a child, and a closed door leading to somewhere unknown. It looks as if she's in the bedroom of an old house - one that is cold and dark and hasn't been used in years.

Rapunzel doesn't know how she got here. She remembers the bridge. She remembers Cassandra staying behind, telling Rapunzel to trust her and promising that she would find her. She remembers the black horses chasing her and Maximus through the trees shortly afterward. Then Rapunzel had fallen off Max's back somehow and one of the bandits were suddenly on top of her. He'd told her Cassandra was dead. She heard a voice... Then she became weak and tired. Everything became a haze.

Rapunzel doesn't remember what happened after that.

The freezing air sends a shiver trailing up her spine, her breath visible before her lips. Her nose and her ears are pink, numb from the cold.

She presses her palms against the floor, strenuously propping herself up with her hands. The sound of metal scraping along the ground breaks the silence as she moves her arms.

When she looks down, she notices the chains clasped around both of her wrists, snaking along the floor, and connecting to the wall behind her.

Her stomach drops with fear.

Rapunzel bolts upright, scrambling to sit on her knees. She claws at the chains on her opposite hand, failing to pull them off, though she notices a keyhole in the shackles. Her heart pounds in her chest. She yanks her arms away from the wall, a grunt escaping her lips. Rather than break free from them, they only seem to burn her wrists the more she pulls, digging into her skin.

The sudden realization that she is trapped hits her with a wave of panic. Somebody put her here, chained her to the wall and left her, and now she's stuck with no way of breaking free. Her mind instantly goes to the one person she can think of in this moment.

"Cassandra!" Rapunzel calls out into the void, more out of instinct than anything.

Somehow, the hopeful part of her expects Cassandra to be there – to run through that door at any moment and set her free and tell her that everything is going to be okay, or that this has all been a bad dream, just like she did that night at the tavern. Because Cass is always there. She has been for as long as Rapunzel can remember. Rapunzel has never known a life without Cassandra, always protecting her, always hovering by her side pretty much every second of every day. Until she wasn't.

Then Rapunzel remembers that she doesn't even know anymore if Cass is alive. She doesn't know where she is, or what happened to her after Rapunzel left her on that bridge. She doesn't even know how long ago that was, or how long she's been trapped here for, unconscious. It could've been minutes or hours or days. And if it's been days… What if Cassandra never finds her? What if she really is dead and Rapunzel is never going to see her again? What will Rapunzel do then?

The infinite possibilities leave her even more determined to escape this horrible nightmare, because she refuses to believe that any of it could be true. So, Rapunzel continues to pull her arms away from the wall, struggling and grunting until she's screaming out Cassandra's name desperately, "Cassandra!"

But no matter how hard she tries, Cassandra doesn't come. Rapunzel is all alone, for the very first time since they'd left Corona.

"She isn't here, you know."

The voice that fills the room is emotionless, almost dead. But Rapunzel recognizes it as the last thing she had heard before falling into unconsciousness.

"Well done, boys. You've done your part… Now leave her to me."

Rapunzel had been so fixed on trying to break free that she hadn't even realized when the only door in the room had opened, a distance in front of her. She hadn't noticed the figure standing there beneath the doorway, watching her struggle for who knows how long.

But Rapunzel stops as soon as she does, her body suddenly relaxing as she remains kneeled on the floor. She's leaning so far away from the wall that the chains pull her arms behind her back.

As Rapunzel lifts her chin, breathing heavily, she sees the silhouette of a woman, with long, tight curls falling around her shoulders, though her facial features are concealed by shadows.

The room falls silent again.

"Who are you?" Rapunzel pants. "Wh—what do you want with me?"

But Gothel doesn't speak. Rather, she watches Rapunzel for a few moments more, as if in contemplation. Then she steps into the light, revealing her face.

Rapunzel doesn't recognize her pale skin, protruding cheekbones, or dark sunken eyes, nor can she figure out why an old woman would be all alone out here, practically in the middle of no where.

The woman's black hooded cloak conceals a silver knife glistening within her slender fingers at her side, shimmering beneath a ray of light.

It isn't until she is already walking toward Rapunzel that the princess notices the blade, and another undecipherable object in her opposite hand.

Gothel kneels down directly in front of her. Rapunzel leans away in fear, whimpering. But the woman's eyes don't seem to meet Rapunzel's own. Rather, her gaze seems to focus elsewhere as Gothel reaches for a strand of Rapunzel's hair.

"Don't touch me!" The princess demands, uselessly.

The woman doesn't even seem to be listening as she rubs her thumb across the strand between her fingertips, examining it. Then she drops the hair decidedly, grumbling in disappointment.

She grabs one of Rapunzel's wrists, the chains rattling loudly as Gothel forces open Rapunzel's palm.

Rapunzel tries to pull away, though the woman's grip on her wrist doesn't falter. "What are you—ah!" She inhales sharply as Gothel slices the knife directly across Rapunzel's palm.

A bright red cut forms on her skin. Rapunzel hisses from the sting of it. She watches as Gothel guides her hand over the wooden bowl she places on the floor, forcefully squeezing the blood out of her palm.

Rapunzel watches it ooze out of her hand, filling the bowl slowly. A grimace lingers on her face, disturbed by the sight of her own blood.

After a few moments, Gothel stands, taking the knife and the bowl of blood with her. She turns away, walking back to the opposite side of the room.

Rapunzel peers down at her bleeding hand, wincing. When she looks up again, she hears objects clattering as Gothel stands in front of the desk by the door, fiddling with something, though it's difficult to decipher what she's doing from this angle.

She sees Gothel raising her own hands to her face, red and glistening with blood. She trails her fingertips down her cheeks, over her jaw and toward her neck, slowly smearing Rapunzel's blood across her skin.

Then like a haunting lullaby, the woman closes her eyes and begins to sing, "Flower gleam and glow… Let your power shine. Make the clock reverse, bring back what once was mine…"

Rapunzel's eyes are struck with horror. Her heart is pounding with fear and confusion, her entire body paralyzed as she finds herself unable to do anything but watch.

When the song is done, a silence fills the room.

Gothel slowly opens her eyes, blinking softly. She raises her wrinkled and blood-stained hands in front of her gaze. She flips her wrists around, as if expecting something to happen. Then her eyebrows crease in confusion.

In a sudden panic, Gothel scrambles through the objects on the desk in front of her. Various items clatter to the floor as she retrieves a hand-held mirror amongst the cluttered surface, hastily holding it up in front of her face.

She stares back at her reflection for a few moments, blankly. Then her chest begins to heave with pounding breaths. Her lips press tightly together. Her brows fall low over her piercing eyes. With an angry scowl, she suddenly throws the mirror across the room.

It collides against the wall, the glass shattering loudly onto the floor.

Rapunzel flinches.

"It's not working!" Gothel growls, "Why isn't it working?!" She marches over to the bookshelf, grabbing one of the leather-bound books from within it. She quickly flips through the pages, her eyes darting back and forth. Unsatisfied, she throws the book over her shoulder, reaching for another one and frantically flipping through that one too.

She throws it away, whipping around. She slams her hand on the desk behind her, clawing her fist around a sheet of parchment on its surface.

Rapunzel cowers as the woman angrily stomps toward her.

Gothel kneels in front of Rapunzel again. She grabs her by the wrist, clutches tightly onto Rapunzel's bleeding palm, and shoves the page in front of her face. "The incantation. You must sing it!"

Rapunzel struggles to break free from Gothel's painful grip. "I… I—I don't know what you're talking about!" she shouts.

"The words on the scroll, sing them for me!"

"Please stop—"

"Do it!"

Startled by the woman's volume, Rapunzel finds no choice but to peer down at the page being forced in front of her eyes, torn at the edges. Amongst a jumble of words, she sees the image of a sunbeam and a golden flower, though she has no idea what any of it means.

Her voice quivering, she stammers the words aloud, "I—Uh, f—flower gleam and glow… let your p—power shine…" She's not even certain whether she's singing the song correctly, but she scrambles to make up some sort of tune out of fear for what will happen if she doesn't.

Gothel waits a moment. Then she groans in frustration, throwing Rapunzel's arm down. She springs to her feet, turning away once more.

"I don't understand. What have I done wrong?" Gothel mutters to herself. "If your blood will not work, then what will? There must be something else I'm missing." She begins flipping through the open books on the desk once more, her back completely turned to Rapunzel.

"Please… please let me go," Rapunzel's breath hitches, panicking all over again. "I didn't ask for this."

Tears are glistening in the princess' eyes. A lump forms in her throat that she struggles to swallow. She doesn't have a clue what is happening. All she knows is that she's scared, and she doesn't want to be here. None of this was supposed to happen. She just wants to be with Cassandra again.

"I have waited twenty years for this day, and I am not going to let you escape me again," Gothel sneers as she continues to examine the pages before her.

Rapunzel blinks in confusion. Again? She peers at the woman's hunched-over backside, attempting to figure out if Rapunzel knows her somehow. But she doesn't. She knows for certain she has never seen this woman in her entire life. But what does she mean 'again'?

"Do… Do I know you?" Rapunzel asks.

Gothel's frantic movements slow to a stop at that, suddenly calming. She lifts her gaze, though her back remains turned. "You wouldn't," she says, "You were only a baby when last we met. But I have known you for a long time, princess Rapunzel."

What? Twenty years? Escaped her? Rapunzel is only twenty years old. How could she have escaped this woman as a baby? Then like a cog clicking into place, Rapunzel remembers something she'd almost forgotten until now. Something her parents told her that happened many years ago – the whole reason they assigned Cassandra as her knight in the first place…

"You're… You're her," Rapunzel's eyes widen in slow realization. "The one who tried to kidnap me when I was a baby. But you escaped. They never found you again." She stares after Gothel in deep thought, piecing it all together.

The old woman's silence only confirms Rapunzel's suspicions.

All this time… her parents, the captain, they all thought the attempted-kidnapper from that night had been dead. At least, they hoped. The case had been still for years, and eventually, they assumed… Yet here she is, standing right in front of Rapunzel, twenty years later. She can hardly believe it.

"Why?" asks Rapunzel. "Why did you do it?"

When Gothel finally turns to face her, there's a composure within her that hadn't been there before. A devilish look appears in her eyes, with a newfound poise in her lifted chin.

"You have something of mine. Something that belongs to me... It lives inside of you. The power of the sundrop." Gothel paces across the room, her footsteps slowly brushing along the floor. "Many years ago, your mother fell ill when she was pregnant with you, and your parents learned that the magical properties of a legendary flower would heal her, and save you. The same flower whose power I harnessed, to keep me young and healthy for hundreds of years. What your parents failed to learn, however… is that you can't take what doesn't belong to you. But they did. And now… that magic is a part of you. You are the sundrop, Rapunzel."

"What? What are you talking about—How do you know this about my parents?" Rapunzel shakes her head, realizing how ridiculous it all sounds. "That doesn't make any sense. I—I don't know what a sundrop is, and I don't have magic. That's impossible!"

"But it is possible," Gothel insists, slowly approaching Rapunzel. "And they knew the truth. But they lied to you, to protect you. They told you it was because you were the princess, didn't they? But you are much more to me than that, Rapunzel."

Gothel crouches down in front of her, her voice softening to one of a loving mother. Rather than the anger and fury it had held before, her gaze is gentle now, yet something about the way the woman looks at her makes Rapunzel shudder – like she's a prize rather than a human.

"You are worth so much more to this world than you think. You're special. You see… you were born with golden hair. The magical, golden hair that had the ability to heal." Gothel reaches out her fingertips, gently stroking Rapunzel's long brown hair and brushing it away from her face.

But the princess is so stunned by what she is hearing that she doesn't cower away at her touch this time.

"Your parents wanted to hide that gift from the world. To keep it a secret," A somberness glazes over Gothel's face, as if in a daze, remembering something that once was. "So, they cut it, turning your hair brown, and ridding it of its power. But it wasn't enough. And now… Look where it got them. They died protecting you, to keep their little secret."

A scowl appears on Rapunzel's face at the mere mention of her parents' deaths. "You killed them. Didn't you?" She realizes it as the very words come out of her own mouth. "Everything that happened… It's all because of you. You burned down my kingdom. You murdered hundreds of innocent people... All to get to me."

Rather than deny what she is being accused of, Gothel shoots her a cold and empty stare. "Yes," she says, "I ordered the attack on Corona. Those thugs were merely working for me the entire time. But I was only returning the favour. The royals took everything from me. So, I took everything from them. And I made sure that they wouldn't stop me this time."

Rapunzel's brows lower over her eyes, her chest panting in a rising fit of rage.

Nothing makes her angrier than knowing she is currently face to face with the very person who ordered her parents' assassinations – the woman who still lives, while Rapunzel's parents are dead and never coming back.

She's the reason any of this happened. She's the reason Corona is gone, along with everyone in it. It's why her and Cassandra have been stuck out here for months, nearly starving and freezing to death, barely surviving, with absolutely nothing left. It's why Cassandra may even be dead, why Rapunzel is here and Cassandra is not.

And the fact that Gothel is able to admit what she has done so carelessly, as if it meant nothing to her. As if being responsible for so much loss had been easy. This woman has no remorse. Rapunzel can tell just by the look in her eyes and the casual tone in her voice as she speaks of it. And to try and justify what she has done, to act like she is innocent, like she was the victim in all of this, it leaves Rapunzel more furious than she's ever been.

Rapunzel doesn't know if what Gothel is telling her is true – about her parents, the flower, the magic hair… but she does know one thing for certain.

"You're a monster," she jeers in Gothel's face, her fear now vanished.

Gothel chuckles, "Oh, but Rapunzel... I'm not the one who lied to you your entire life about who you are." She strokes her finger along Rapunzel's jaw, stopping below her chin and tilting it upward. "Unlike your parents, I believe your power has great potential."

Rapunzel angles her head away, scowling.

"For the past twenty years, I had been planning my return to Corona," Gothel continues, "But I had become frail without the sundrop's power. I was too weak on my own. I needed to come back stronger, and make sure that this time, you wouldn't get away. All I needed were the right people to help me do it." She rises to a stand, staring down at Rapunzel kneeling by her feet. "I need that magic of yours, princess. Your hair may not hold it anymore, but as long as you are alive, I know it's still inside of you somewhere, and I am going to find a way to bring it out. If that means keeping you here forever, then that's just what I'm going to have to do." With that, she turns her back and begins walking toward the door.

"No," Rapunzel begins to struggle again, refusing to let this happen. "You can't do this!" She fights against the rattling chains that bind her wrists until she's shouting with frustration, pulling herself as far away from the wall as possible, "You're crazy! I don't have magic and I'm not going to be your prisoner!"

Gothel only continues walking away.

"Where's Cassandra?!" Rapunzel demands.

Gothel freezes beneath the doorway. The room falls silent.

Rapunzel's thrashing slows to a halt. There's a broken desperation in her voice as she pants with exhaustion, "The girl I was with. You know what happened to her, don't you?"

Rapunzel knows that she does. She can tell by the way Gothel stopped just now, as if Cassandra's name had triggered something within her. Why else would she have said Cass wasn't here, when Rapunzel had been calling her name earlier?

The woman angles her head over her shoulder. "Yes… I know Cassandra."

Something about the way Gothel says Cassandra's makes Rapunzel nervous. "What did you do to her?"

"I did nothing," insists Gothel, turning to face Rapunzel. "I hired those thugs to bring you to me. I ordered them to cut down anybody that stands in their path and offered them a price to do it. What happens to that girl is none of my concern."

"But… she can't be dead," Rapunzel's chest tightens with anxiety, a sickly feeling nestling in her stomach. Her gaze scans along the ground as her breath quickens again, "She's… she's going to come for me." Rapunzel tries to convince herself, though she doesn't have a clue what to believe anymore.

"Oh, I don't doubt it, my dear," Gothel approaches Rapunzel once more, crouching down in front of her, "And when she does… I'll bring her over to my side."

"She would never."

Gothel laughs pleasantly, "Oh, but I have my ways. Just you wait. Cassandra will do what I say, and if she doesn't… well then, I'll just have to kill her myself." With that, she stands once more and strides toward the door.

The princess only glares at her backside as Gothel pulls the door closed behind herself, leaving Rapunzel alone and encased in darkness.

A/N: You may be wondering – how is Gothel still alive after Rapunzel's hair was cut? The short answer is I'm changing the rules. She hasn't used the magic for the past twenty years, therefore she has merely aged twenty years since she last used it, rather than just dying completely. I've thought long and hard about the laws of the hair and honestly there are many things about it that don't make sense in the movie either sooooo it's fine hehe.