Happily Ever After is as big of a cruel lie as true love. 

You learned that with Flynn, with your so-called birth parents, and with being a princess. 

You sliced your magical hair off, and traded a tower for a castle. 

Soon it was clear that all a princess did was wave and wear corsets. 

You were no longer allowed to play music, do pottery, or paint. The way was not your own, as your life was not your own. 

But worst of all, this morning you had caught the famous Flynn Ryder with his trousers around his leather boots, and one of your handmaids on her knees….for the fourth time this week. 

That was the last straw. 

So when it got dark, you disappeared into the woods. It was easier than you thought possible, no guards or worried family. 

You simply wore a cloak and slipped into the fog.

Your feet carried you through the wood without direction, without thought, and yet the further you walked, the more free you became. 

Something about these vast trees looming over you should have made you feel small and insignificant. 

But instead you experienced that mystery, that maybe here you weren’t Rapunzel, weren’t expected to kiss babies' heads and make a man happy. 

Your feet stepped on moss and clove, the dew squishing under your feet. 

Every now and then, a firefly would light up, reminding you of a time when you believed anything was possible. 

Like glowing lanterns swirling into the sky, only now you understood so much more. 

You still feel a warmth seeing the little bugs flash in the night. 

The longer you walk the more the woods seem familiar somehow.

It isn’t until you take another turn that you realized you’ve carried yourself home.

Not the castle with your husband and parents, no, your childhood home. 

You push some vines aside and slip through them to see the same stone tower that used to be your prison.

You should turn around, should run away, but as you see the broken window at the top. You long for a simpler time. 

Taking a step forward, you hear a clearing of throat from behind you. 

Twisting around you think it would have been wiser to bring a sword, a dagger, even a frying pan. 

“Who goes there!” You shout, keeping yourself in the dark, hiding your face.

It isn’t until the dark figure’s pale long fingers reach up to push her cloak down that you see the dark curls cascade down, save for one long white grey streak. 

Your breath catches as you see the familiar face in the moonlight, she’s aged, but still so beautiful. 

“Mother.” You say and her lips curl in delight.

“I’m happy to hear you have not given my title completely over to those strangers.” She concludes, and you don’t know what to do. 

You won’t run away, but you also can’t seem to find fear in front of her. 

“My hair is cut, there’s nothing left for you.” You say dropping your own cloak to show her that it in fact was all gone. 

“Is that what they told you, I was here for your hair only?” Gothel doesn’t back down.

“They told me you stole me.” You curl your lip in disgust, but you can’t bring yourself to hate the woman. 

She makes a comical ‘oh of course’ look and nods condescendingly at you. 

“You lie, that’s all you do.” You reason and step back, Gothel’s eyes move at your motion, anxiety grows at the idea of you leaving. 

“Yet here you are, back to the tower. Did the thief not keep you company enough? How is life in the castle, princess?” Mother Gothel taunts, but she’s being calculated, eyeing you like a wounded animal. Afraid you’ll tuck tail and run into the night. 

“It’s everything I hoped.” You lie outright, puffing your chest out and the woman who raised you has the nerve to smirk. 

“Flower, you never were one for fibbing. I never taught you how.” The dark-haired woman seems to shine in the moonlight now, proud of you. 

“How are you here?” You ask the question that you cannot ignore. 

“Miss me?” Gothel taunts, and you don’t answer. 

“You…..You died. Are you even-” The words don’t make it out of your throat and shiver in the night. 

Gothel eyes your form and seems to hold back, reminding you that you need to dress warmer. Trying to pick her battles now, it seemed. 

“It seems true love kept me alive. I crawled back into the tower. Gained my strength back…” Gothel explains, but you shake your head furiously. 

“You lie, god all you do is lie!” You yell into the dank forest. 

Gothel's features darken like they had that day and you feel fear now. 

“My sweet girl, I have lied to you before, yes. But I did not believe in true love either. I believed it a fairytale like all others-”

You put your hands over your ears. 

“Stop it, stop lying to me!”

Mother Gothel stops and puts two hands out to ease her young princess. 

“Fine, I’m the bad guy. Is that not so much easier? You are having a wonderful life with your thief and breeder parents in their castle made from coin forged from blood. All is well and you live happily ever after! Is that it?

“Yes!” You shout back, clutching your chest as hard as you can, right over your heart which feels like it’s aching. 

“Fine, fine my flower! Then riddle an old evil witch this: why are you in the middle of the night doing in the wreckage of a tower you were held captive?” Mother asks and when you can’t answer her perfectly sculpted eyebrow lifts. 

You let out a huff and twist to leave. 

“Wait!” She calls to your back, and you hesitate but can’t make yourself look back. 

“What do you want from me?” You whisper facing away from her. 

“Nothing, no magic hair or powers. I-I simply miss….” Gothel winces at her own desire for you. 

But you turn around not believing that she was really saying this. 

You turn back to yell at her now;

“You stole me, made me keep you young, isolated me in a tower and then tried to kill my betrothed all to keep yourself young - you don’t care about me!”

Gothel flinches and you can’t believe you have the power to do that still. 

“So then why did I bring you paintbrushes? Why did I teach you how to play music, to cook, to sew, to read? If I-I never cared when didn’t I lock you in the dark and never let you see the light? My sunshine, I was horrid yes- but-” Gothel loses steam, and she shakes her head, you see grey hairs where you never had before. Time has touched Gothel now, but still she seemed gorgeous, regal and seductive. 

“What Mother?” You ask with venom lacing your voice, your fists balled up. 

“I love you, Rapunzel,” Gothel said straight to your face and then she turned, bringing her cloak back over her head. She walked with a slight limp, but still as swift, moving towards the tower. 

She looks like she belongs here, in the ruins, in the dark. 

You should leave her here. 

Where the dark could eat at whatever was left of her shrill lonesome heart. 

You watch her dark figure fading and your feet move you. 

You hate yourself for it, but you move all the same. 

As Gothel is about to go to the bottom entrance, she stumbles on a root on the ground, and you reach out and grab her arm. 

Catching her so she won’t fall forward, it surprises the woman, but she’s quick to curl her fingers around your bicep. 

You push the makeshift stone to the side, and let Mother lean on you. 

The two of you make your way up the tower until you reach the top. 

Mother goes to the small hearth as she throws logs inside, you see her magic flow and it turns to blaze. 

You stumble back at the new knowledge of her power, she pulls down her cloak and puts her hands up. 

“You-you..” you swallow thickly and try to move backwards towards the door. 

“Flower, I mean you no harm. It’s old magic, few tricks, I would not harm you!” Gothel insists, her temper flaring at the end. 

“Where have I heard that before?”

“I was filled with rage and envy that you had disobeyed me and fallen for some common thief!” Gothel reminds you and you laugh cynically, and the older witch has not seen this side of you before. 

With the years, you’ve grown sadder, less giving, less kind. 

Gothel's eyes are apologetic as she looks at you in a new way. 

“Sunshine, what have the castle walls done to you?” She asks with such tenderness that you wish you could cry. 

“Some pieces of fairytales you forgot to mention at bedtime, Mother.” You say and look down at the stone steps you used to dance around in your dress. 

“Flower, I-” Gothel didn’t finish her words, and you didn’t linger. Instead, you walked around the home that was once your world. A melancholy walk through memory lane.

The paintings on the walls lingered, ideas and dreams so bright had warn and cracked with time. 

Flaking in the corners, you walked up to the bed, the stairs and books all stacked, losing their brightness. 

“And I’ll keep wondering and wondering….when will my life-” Your voice cracks, and you can’t finish it. Not now that you see your bed broken and drapes fallen to the ground like the shroud of childhood coming apart at the seams. 

You didn’t hear Mother Gothel as she moved in the kitchen below, making you dinner at home once more. 

She longed to go up and comfort you, but what good was true love from a villain? What was she to say? To confess that she raised her true love, fell in love, but by the time she learned it she was falling down a tower to her death?

No. 

Gothel knew her looks were faded, hair going grey, crows' feet, and the veins in her hand showing a story of what happens when you lust after something that never belonged to you. 

Mother Gothel knew she did not deserve a happy ending. 

But hearing the wood in the tower creak above her head once more, made her close to tears.

The witch had imagined you in this stone tower once more; sometimes she spoke to the empty space, imagining you there, smiling at her again. 

But it was as if the shadows only grew longer, and in every corner she was sure they were laughing at her misery. 

Gothel's hands were calloused from the labor it took to keep the tower warm and herself fed.

The magic she practiced now was nothing special; she didn’t dare dream of having more.

Not like so long ago. 

When you made your way back to down the fire seemed to cast light across the carpet but not into the pits of your mind.

Nothing could warm that. 

You moved into the kitchen, Gothel tried not to make a scene of staring at you. 

But as she cut with a dull knife herbs, you moved in unison to the large pot. 

You and Gothel moving in synchronization, the song old and out of style but the moves ingrained in you. As easy as breathing, Gothel would pour in stock and you would push the ladle counter clockwise for the the moons rotation.

You cracked a small grin and it was the brightest light Gothel had seen in so long that it struck her heart like lightning.

“I never thought of all the witchy things you taught me until others were making fun of me.” Your smile dwindled just like cold sticks to a flame. 

“Did it keep you safe?” Mother asked, hating the nervousness in her tone. 

You looked into her sorrow-filled stare.

“It did.” You say back, meaning it. Some of the magic she’d taught you kept you alive. Enemies didn’t stop when a crown was placed on your head, the opposite in fact. And you never believed your own blood, or your husband, to be the ones who wished you gone the most.

You huddle your shoulders to keep your emotions towards the task. You could cook next to her, which you could do. 

Stirring, you get your first waft of home. 

You inhale the soup and are taken back in time.

Your head falls back as a sense of calm takes over.

Gothel watches, transfixed by your every movement. Afraid to blink and have you disappear.

It’s only that she sees by the low light a scar over your eye. 

She can’t help it, the foolish woman she is, she reaches out and grabs your face harshly.

You flinch, but the older witch doesn’t scare you, after years outside if her - touch is what frightens you now.

“What happened to your face, Flower?” Gothels temper flared again, she’d never been good at keeping it at bay. 

But seeing you scared up was making her murderous. 

“Happy Endings.” You try to smile but it’s just too hard to fake it now. 

“Flower, tell me! Tell me who did this to you?” Gothel demanded angrier now.

“I suppose you were right, I shouldn’t have ever gone outside.” You shiver now, but something about the way Gothel grips your face makes it impossible for you to leave your body. 

Seeing your scars reflected in her eyes is too much to bear.

“Sunshine…” Gothel doesn’t know how to soothe you anymore, afraid to try again. But willing to do anything to cradle you to her bosom now.

“I suppose I’m no longer your perfect flower? No hair, no beauty, no youth….only barren womb and forgotten dreams.” You can’t hiccup a sob demanding to be felt, but too much time has passed, and there were years of grief that had stolen parts of you away. 

Gothel grabs at your waist and pulls you against her body, it makes your whole being come to light. 

Her breasts in that corset are tight against your own, you shudder to breathe through the tears and the sensation. 

“My own vanity was never meant to reflect on you, I apologize, Rapunzel. You were, and are so much more -I.” Gothel struggles to explain it. 

How does one explain the warped ways a witch like her was raised?

How could she apologize for being such a poor example to you?

How could she apologize for lusting after you once you had come of age? None of this was how the story was supposed to go. 

“It’s okay,” You say back as Gothel's face only read anger, but for the first time you thought you saw more. 

Anger was easy, it was easier than all the kingdom-sized weight of other emotions that demanded to be felt. 

You yourself had rathered anger, just like Gothel. Anger at your life, the one you’d chosen, angry at your husband for his inability to stay in your marital bed. Angry with your parents for forgetting you just as soon as you’d come back to their lives. Angry at your body…..for not supplying the one thing that would keep the crown safe. 

So as you watched Gothel experience all of this rage, you felt a new kinship. 

“It’s okay,” you repeat, forgiving her for something deep in the fiber of all this hurt. 

Gothel stared at you with wonder. 

“How do you do that?” Her voice turned too shrill for what she’d meant to be loving. Why couldn’t the witch do this right? Why wasn’t she as suave and handsome as the thief?

You twist out of her hold, mostly because the intensity makes you confused and excited. And you don’t know what to do with all of that. 

“Do what?” You grow cold just long enough for Gothel to lose confidence that she was out of the woods yet. 

Her body longs to have you pressed against her for another moment. 

“Be a ray of light like that, just that easy?” She asks and you sneer a bit. 

“I’m not saying all of what you did was right.” You remind her and Gothel turns back to the soup, hiding from you again. 

“I see, but you’ll forgive your thief for hurting you. How is that? You can forgive him for being unfaithful but you cannot forgive me?” Gothel snaps and her words are too honest. 

Your silence has her panicking as she turns back to see you angry again. 

“How did you know Flynn was sleeping with other maidens?” You say so quietly that Gothel feels like it’s the sizzle before the explosion.

She closes her eyes in upset; she’s been caught. 

“I did not meddle, I only enchanted the water-I needed to see you.” Gothel tries to explain, but your anger is fuming again. 

“You only lie more!”

“I lie, yes! I lie about your magic and hide you away from the cruel world! I lie about why I want you home! I lie and am struck from the tower! I lie and wait and want for you! Now I’m the bad guy! I’m the old hag who watches in the tower wishing for you to be-to be happy.” Gothel croaks at the end, and it’s so wrong.

The soup starts to boil, and she takes the moment to go back to her task. 

A crone in her kitchen, a witch and her cauldron, a recluse in the darkness - this was far more fitting. 

“Am I to believe you love me now? Now that you have told me how you sneak in the shadows and watch from afar?” You hated this, hated being coveted; the commoners did this to you too. Believing you to be something worth the pedestal. 

But you were just a girl who’d lost her way. Who happened to wear a crown, with no real ability to make positive change. 

You were nothing more than a painting, something to be looked at, but never to hold. 

Gothel moves the soup off the heat and pulls at her fingers until she’s turned to you once more. 

“I do, but not as I was meant to. Rapunzel, I love you as….as a man would love a princess.” Gothel tries to explain it, just as she used to try to teach you maths or how stars in the sky shine down. 

But your pale reflection only seemed further puzzled.

“You lust for me?” You ask instead, surprising your past captor by not showing disgust at the sentence. 

“No Flower, well, yes, but not that simple. I- It- Let us eat.” Gothel deflects, and you are further baffled. 

But soup is poured into chipped bowls from your pottery days, the two of you sit by the fire. You give Gothel the worn-out armchair, noticing how she’d stitched it to keep it in one piece. 

Where you sit on the wooden chair you’d once bound Flynn to for questioning. 

You take the wooden small spoon and keep your shoulders back, face straight, moving the spoon back and forth over the brim. 

Mother Gothel watches confused, never seeing such a display from you before.

“There are no knights or wealth here, Flower eat before it gets cold.” She beckons and your whole demeanor relaxes as you shovel spoonfuls into your mouth and moan rudely in delight. 

It’s garlic, it’s rosemary, it’s stew and potatoes and all the things you were not allowed. You shovel it into your mouth before chewing the next bite. 

Now this is a sight Mother has seen before; her own small smile is hard to hide at the obvious compliment. 

But she ruins it just as fast as it blooms. 

“Do they not feed princesses anymore?” She tries to joke, but your body goes rigid, and you stop eating. 

Gothel regrets whatever she’s poked to lend you to this shifting way. 

You swallow now, losing your appetite at once, even for food you had dreamed of having again. 

Your spoon pushed a potato down, smashing it against the side, wanting to disappear into the sauce along with it. 

“They tend to like princesses thin and quiet.” You respond, thinking of all those hours of lessons, and meals where you were given four grapes and a slice of cheese. While the men and king ate meat off the bone, the sinew getting stuck in their teeth and beards. All as it was washed down with enough ale to float the kingdom's fleet of vessels. 

You got lost in the memory, and Gothel wrenched her body backwards and grabbed a hunk of day-old buttery bread, not bothering to tear it in two. 

She dropped the bread into your bowl, making you jump a little at the intrusion. 

“Eat, you're far too frail.” Mother insists, and your trembling hands grab at the bread. You dunk it with your fingers, feeling as though you were getting away with something forbidden of your own.

Just as you had the first hour outside of the tower. 

“What else did they teach you in the castle?” Gothel hates that her desire to know outweighs her own shame. 

Your mouth is full so you take a moment to swallow before only coming up with negatives. 

“Princesses are to be seen and not heard, we are to-” You stop and look back down at your bowl. The light flickers across your face, and Gothel looks at the scar above your eye and tries to decide if it was a blade or a fist that caused it. 

Wondering who she could skin or change into a goat. Surely husbands and kings weren’t always guarded. 

Her murderous plot stopped when she realized what had caused your current mortification. 

“To bear an heir, is that it?” Gothel tries to keep her voice level. But she’s an angry, stubborn woman. A witch in this story. And damn it all if she hadn’t enough jealousy to lay waste to this whole dreaded forest. 

“It seems I didn’t bloom… correctly.” You whisper, but take a big bite of the bread. Calming your own mind by remembering the recipe, the way you and Mother used to make it. 

The way you kneaded the bread at, letting it sit out and rise. How you’d dangled your hair and legs over the side of the tower and sang as Gothel worked, make this stew. 

You did what you had to, to keep yourself sane, you took yourself out of your body. And remembered a warmer memory. 

But Gothel stood up, and her stew was slammed to the side. Her long dress rippled as she strode to the fire and picked up the poker. 

You watched her stab at the flames over and over, in a violent motion. 

“The only thing incorrect is how I should have broken the thief's nose clean off so that no wanted poster would ever identify his remains,” Gothel growls, sinister and wicked, into the fire. 

A younger version of you would have been appalled. 

But that girl was gone. 

And as you ate the last of the bread, and slurped at your stew. 

Gothel worked very hard to calm herself, as her face contorted with rage, she commanded herself to stay by the fire. 

Not coming back to you until she was convinced she could keep herself regulated. 

By that time you had finished your stew. 

“More?” Gothel asked, knowing you loved seconds. 

“I don’t think I’m used to eating that much,” you answer honestly, and Mother nods. 

“Later then, you have your old bed, I’ll stay by the fire.”

You open your mouth, and Gothel assumes it’s to argue. So she cuts you off with her hand. 

“The forest is far too dangerous for a beautiful woman to be traipsing about at this hour. Just because you were able to make the ugly oafs at the melt. Doesn’t mean others won’t harm you. I cannot stand idly by for that. You rest, I’ll ward the tower again. I’ll keep my distance. I simply want you to rest.” Gothel explains, unsure how to promise you that she won’t take this for granted. 

But you seemed unworried by the witch causing you any distress. 

“Won’t you be uncomfortable in your chair?”

“No, I will be fine by the fire. Go up,” Gothel insists as she stands and collects the bowls to clean. 

When you seems to move up to the bed, Gothel keeps herself busy, cleaning up before picking up a book she’d read many times before and ploping her old bones down into the chair. 

She unsinched her corset, letting her breasts free, her long dress velvety and well-kept. Her long dark hair cast over her shoulder as she breathes out a painful sigh. 

Gothel could always hear the soft pads of your feet as you tried to get out of bedtime, and it seemed today was no different. 

You held a long blanket and a pillow under your arm. 

Gothel swore you looked young once more. 

“What are you doing?”The witch snapped a little too harsh, but you were unfazed by her tone. 

“It’s kinda creepy up there alone, too many ghosts,” You reasoned and laid the blanket down on the ground, fluffing the pillow a bit and then tucking yourself in by Gothe's feet. 

Mother was at a loss. 

She was the villain, you were the princess, and here you were curling around her feet like she was your knight and shining armor. 

“I suppose you’d like a bedtime story now, too Flower?” She joked and you gave a little grin. 

“If you would be so kind.” 

Both of you saw the humor in it, but Gothel wouldn’t let you down, not now. 

She opened the book, the spine bending for her strong hands, behind her the log in the fire popped and burned low. 

“Once up a time-” She began as though it were all that simple. 

“No, not that story.” You looked instantly hurt by the idea, and Mother looked taken aback. 

“What-”

“Not a story with good and bad, tell me a different story?” You beg, unable to hear more simplified stories where lies were made to be taken as truth. 

Gothel closes the book and balances it against her breast. 

“Somewhere dark in the woods, a young woman ran along a small trail next to a stream, the promise of freedom just moments away…” Gothel began, and you turned with the covers up to your chin, your whole attention captivated by such a start. 

“Now that’s a good story,” you said honestly. 

“I thought you might like this one,” Gothel admires, unable to lie now. This wasn’t just a fairytale. This was the truth, and she was going to tell it to you for the first time. 

“Would you come down here?” You interrupt before she could continue. 

“Where?” The witch croaked. 

You lift the blanket, and Gothel laughs a little at you, but it does nothing to your outstretched arm. 

“I’m too old to crawl around like a bug on the floor.”

“But you’ll keep me warm,” you pout, and Gothel’s heart must have grown two sizes that moment. 

Because there she was, climbing off of the chair, wincing at her hurt leg, but moving under the large quilt. 

Surprisingly, you both, you move your back to her front, reaching for her arm you wrap it around your middle. 

Amazed at the strength of her hold, the heat of her body, and how safe you felt now. 

“Anything else, Flower?” Gothel tried to pretend she wasn’t vibrating with awe at being allowed this. 

“Story time,” you said, and both of your heads rested down on the pillow. 

Gothel tried to remember the story now, but all she could think of was how perfect you were in her arms. 

“I-” She stuttered out, and you tried to ignore how your body tingled against the older witch. It was how you thought you were supposed to feel on your wedding night, but you ignored it all. 

Instead, you aid Mother Gothel in the start of the story once more;

“Somewhere dark in the woods, a young woman ran along a small trail next to a stream, the promise of freedom just moments away…”

Chapter 2?