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She does not know what she is.
No one has ever told her, and the mirrors never show her.
Though they show the room, Mother, and Pascal, the mirrors refuse to show Rapunzel. As if she’s a forbidden word they cannot speak, a creed they cannot break, and showing her would betray the trust of the gods.
In the circular room that is her tower—the room where she bakes, and sings, and plays dress up, where mother brushes her hair, and Pascal plays hide-and-seek—a mirror (as large, round, and formidable as the room itself) sits, waits, and taunts her.
She begs it to tell her its secrets.
It never complies.
Well, her appearance isn’t really a secret, is it? Not to anyone else. Just to her. Just to the one who needs to know it most. Or, at least, the one it’s about.
Maybe it doesn’t matter what she looks like. Maybe we ought to know ourselves least of all. Maybe we aren’t supposed to see ourselves for what we really are, or know what the mirrors say behind our backs.
The only other person here is Mother. The girl has often asked her why she is different. Despite knowing only one other soul for eighteen years (for all she knows, only two people exist in the universe) she knows that much.
She drinks blood. The people in her books shudder at the sight of it, and mop it away when it falls to the floor. Mother herself doesn’t indulge in the taste. She has pointy teeth and ears. Those traits are attributed to monsters in her books.
“Am I a monster, Mother?”
Mother laughs.
And she can’t tell if it’s because the idea is ridiculous, or if it’s because her daughter is.
She laughs and says that though she is her mother, and though they in the books are people too, they are not quite the same kind.
Rapunzel doesn’t know what that means, and Mother doesn’t explain.
Being different isn’t so bad—nothing in her world is. She has never had any reason to complain, really. But when she asks to go outside, Mother says that out there, when she asks that question—"Am I a monster?”—They will not laugh. They will not smile, and pet her hair, and say “I love you so.” Out there, they will not have pointy teeth like hers. Out there they will answer that question with shouted agreement, with garlic, and spears. That out there, even the sun itself will harm her
So she stays inside.
Her voice frail, soft, and timid, her gaze on the ground, she often asks Mother what she looks like. Mother says she is strong, confident, and beautiful, that she has green eyes, and white teeth, and of course—she runs her hands through it—golden hair. She kisses her head and says she shouldn’t worry about things like appearance.
She tries not to.
Then Rapunzel grabs her paintbrushes, and tries to draw what she thinks she looks like. Her dreams, and fears, and wonderings fall onto the pages of her sketchbooks, and splatter across the walls. But Pascal always shakes his head sadly, or tries to smile, though they both know she still got it wrong. And the chameleon’s own interpretations are...hard to interpret.
She tries to keep her chin up, to believe that one day she will know. She should after all. One day she’ll get it right—she tells herself—one day a mirror will be kind to her.
It’s not all bad; she can have fun with her lack of a reflection—some of the many games she plays up in her tower are with the empty space; like making objects and Pascal float.
She asks Mother to bring her back antique mirrors, and old dishes, and things that could, and should, reflect her. Mother sighs, and tells her that empty antiques won’t give her what she wants, but brings them to her anyway.
Maybe, just maybe, the girl thinks, this one will like me.
They never do.
So Mother tells her, again, not to dwell on them. That all mirrors are bullies anyway—even those with reflections would say so.
She throws them out the window.
The girl never sees the pile of shattered glass they make below; daring any intruder to come and face something that doesn’t like its own reflection.
(Or face themselves.)
Sometimes she saves one of the mirrors, and paints on the metal itself; leaning against it and tracing herself, creating an outline she can step into, she can see herself in. She keeps her favorites in her room, just so she can see some form of her reflection smile in it every day.
Mother tells her she shouldn’t ask for the mirrors—(she shouldn't ask so much of them)—that maybe they shouldn’t even keep any mirrors in the tower at all. She even tries to break the one in the main room, one day, but when Rapunzel finds her, she shouts, and begs her to stop, and makes her promise to leave it alone.
No matter its feelings towards her, Rapunzel likes that one; talking to it, playing games, thinking maybe today you will show me. It’s a stubborn friend to her.
She doesn’t want to give up hope. Hope that it will listen to her pleas. Hope that it will reply. She doesn’t want to give up hope that she will one day know herself.
Often, days go by when she doesn’t much care, when it doesn’t matter if she knows what she is or not. It’s not like she needs it for everyday life, or that there’s anyone else here to look pretty for. She has other things to do, other games to play, other books to read, other muses to paint.
The clock turns, and she wonders. The blank space, the emptiness where I should be gnaws away at her, like moths at clothing. Days go by when she paints a smile on those empty mirrors, and leans her forehead onto the cold metal, and does anything but smile.
She whispers this time—(she doesn’t ask loudly, or optimistically)—tears forming in her eyes, spilling onto the metal, smudging the paint.
"Please just show me."
There are days when she can’t take it anymore, when she cries, and screams, and rips into pieces the pages of her journals where she drew a girl who is beautiful, and confident, and strong, who has green eyes, and white teeth, and golden hair, and who is not her.
One day this will end. One day, she will know. One day she will meet someone who wants her to know just how beautiful she is. Who will not tell her that appearance doesn’t matter, and that she shouldn’t care. Someone who knows how much it means to her, someone who will spend his money (stolen or earned, they can’t tell the difference), and more importantly, his time, on something other than himself.
And on that same day she will see a lost princess painted on the wall—a girl who has green eyes, and white teeth, and golden hair—and she will wonder for a second that maybe, just maybe—
Is that me?
She does not know what she is.
Quite frankly, neither does Eugene. And he’s comfortable with that. The fangs, the thing about blood, the lengths he must go to to keep her out of the sun, and the whole locked-in-a-tower situation.... he tries not to think—(well, as a general rule he tries not to think)—of the stories, or let the word vampire come to mind.
Because she is... somethin' else. The hair, and the bright eyes, the smile, the songs, and the…ahem…frying pan…
She is not those stories. The stories, of course, not being the swashbuckling adventures he based his life on. No, these are legends of a darker, more bone-chilling kind.
And she is the brightest thing he has ever encountered.
And you’d think it’d matter that this girl he...well he isn’t quite sure how to fill in that blank; he isn't quite sure how he feels about her just yet...you really would think it would matter if she was, well…you know. But somehow it doesn’t. Or maybe it does, but somehow she is more important than that.
When she tells him—(offhand, the way you mention something that's a big deal to you, something you want to bring up somehow, but you don't want them to think it's a big deal, so you say it like its no big deal, even though if they have any kind of brain, they know its a big deal...you know?)—she's never seen her reflection—(which is not a red flag at all, Eugene) he says something along the lines of “What? I mean everyone has a—” And she steps in front of a shop window—which, if she has any amount of 'normal human being' in her, will hold some sort of reflection...aaand it doesn't—and he says, “Oh, yeah, you…you don’t have a reflection. That’s...that's not freaky at all! I'm not creeped out! I think you're the one creeped out here, Blondie! Not me! No, sir. Mm mm mm. Not. creepy. at all.”
And he realizes two things:
One: she...is. Creeped out, that is.
Two: he wants her to know what she looks like.
And this isn't some 'guys, i wanna castle' kinda want.
He wants her to know the way her hair shimmers in the sunlight. He wants her to count her freckles—(what?! No! He hasn't done that!) He wants her to see how her dimples tug at the corners of her mouth when she smiles, and how her pointy teeth are actually—(he won’t admit it)—kinda cute—(no, they’re not scary, like one of the thugs at the Snuggly Duckling said). He wants her to know the way her eyes seem to hold all the green in the entire world—every windwept tree and budding flower— all the green she never saw. It didn’t matter if she saw it, her world had been green her entire life, because her eyes were the ones that saw it. Her eyes painted over the darkened corners, both literally and figuratively.
And now his world is green too, because her eyes are in it.
He tries to draw her, actually—on the back of one of his own botched wanted posters. But it…doesn’t exactly work well—(when she comes and asks him what he’s working on, he crumples it up and shoves it into his pocket).
As he does so, his fingers find the coins in his pocket (he doesn’t remember where he got them from, probably a heist of some sort).
He asks the old artist in the town square how much for a painting, and can, uh, can I get it for less, or do you take apples as payment? He also asks if he can capture her appearance from here, perhaps while this whole dance-thing is going on in the town square, so he can keep it a secret.
And, a rarity in Eugene's life, the painter agrees. He agrees to do something for him, out of nothing but the kindness in his heart. The painter is old, and has a warm smile, willing to do this for the sake of a girl who doesn’t know herself. Eugene won’t admit that that means something to him. He swallows any heartfelt thank you in his throat when the painter mentions something about love, and he must brush it off.
If that simple act of kindness was enough to shift Eugene’s view of this entire kingdom, it's nothing to the look in Rapunzel's eyes when she sees it.
When they’re out on the boat (she leans over the side and twirls her fingers in the reflection-less water) before the lanterns arrive, she gives him a crown, and he gives her her reflection.
The warm glow of the coming lanterns are nothing to the light in her eyes.
He’s never heard anyone say his name with such an amount of thankyouthankyouthankyou behind it.
And when she hugs him, he forgets his own name.
She holds it up—a painter herself—at different angels and examines all the brushstrokes and details.
But then she stops. She runs her fingers along the canvas with one hand, and along her own cheek with the other.
“Something…wrong with it?”
“Oh, no! Nothing’s wrong with it! I love it! I really do! It's just...I just…” she pauses, looking out across the water, at the castle, and the sunset, then down at the still water that holds nothing of her. “I’ve spent my whole life wondering, and now that I know…I don’t know what to feel.”
He wishes he knew what to say. There isn’t exactly a manual for vampire-girl-sees-herself-for-the-first-time. Not that he would read it if there was one. He was always more a fan of fairy tales than instruction manuals.
“Well…that’s good!” he blurts out.
“I-It is?”
Crap. Now it’s on him to say something inspirational. Don’t screw this up Fitzherbert.
He clears his throat. “Well…uh…not knowing what to feel...” he looks away too, as if he’ll find wise words in the sky, “it’s good because…” he looks back at her, at the green in her eyes that he doesn't want to leave behind, and the joking, uncertain tone leaves his voice, “because...that just means you get to decide how you feel.” There's a silence, and he can't tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing, so he fills it, resuming his antics. "You know, when I first tried an orange I was like ‘ehh I don’t know if I like oranges.’And then I was like ‘no, you know what? I’m putting my foot down, I'm deciding it here and now, I like oranges! And no one’s gonna stop me!’”
She laughs, and the sound chimes like all the gold in the world, but it's worth so much more.
She looks at the painting again, and runs her hand through her hair.
“Well, then…”
There’s a second.
A second when she doesn’t know. A second that encompasses all those years of wondering, crying, and trying, trying to figure it out, trying to make an image of empty space, trying to make the mirrors listen and reply, to make some deal with lifeless silver. Trying to know what she is. A second when she wonders if this is who and what she wants to be after all.
"I love it!” her voice rings, and there is no hesitation in her tone, and no lie in her eyes.
He beams back. “Good! Looks like my work is done here!”
In truth he didn’t know what to feel either, but he thinks he’s starting to decide too.
Rapunzel carries the painting back to her tower home like it’s as breakable as a mirror itself; like it’s made of glass and gold. She tries to hide it from Mother.
When Mother sees it, a potion brews in her eyes; dark and seething and dangerous. But she doesn’t let the boiling concoction reach her voice; though she takes the flowers from her hair, and looks at the painting in disdain, she still speaks kindly.
That is, until Rapunzel realizes. Until she realizes something about that infant girl she saw on the wall. Until she stares at the painting, and thinks of how lost she was until this moment. And she thinks of another piece of art, of a lost princess, and another reflection.
And it is a reflection.
She is not just a pretty girl, nor is she a monster…she is a princess. And she has been lost for far too long.
Until.
And gone is Mother’s kind tone.
The first thing Mother does is chain her. The second, is take out her knife, and rip the painting in half. She repeats her words from before, the words that once sounded so motherly, that she shouldn’t bother thinking about appearance, and her smile is sly, broad and wicked. Gothel says that the artist didn’t even capture her; the girl in the painting is too pretty, the smile’s too wide, the eyes are too green, that she looks too human.
The Lost Princess could never be a vampire.
And the word physically knocks her back, it hammers against the walls in her head too; it echoes until the sound fills the chamber.
Because she knows the stories. Mother never told her what she was, but she did find a book once or twice, a legend or two—did Mother want her to find them?—and wondered. And Mother neglected to say the myths were about her, and laughed and lied when asked.
Was that all those eighteen years were made of? Laughs and lies?
Rapunzel knew now she was keeping that information until the proper moment, the moment when it would hurt the most. She didn’t intend to tell her the stories, and tell her what the stories got wrong; that no matter what they said, she was not a monster. To tell her clearly and proudly what she was, in a way that would make her say it to the world in the same crisp, confident tone. No, she intended to keep it secret until the word was a blade.
And it was. The word was just one of the many weapons in her arsenal. It was the sharpest today; it and the real blade that severed her reflection, and the heart of the man she had been learning to love.
And later, that mirror Rapunzel had once protected reveals itself to be her friend after all—just not in the way she thought it would. It shatters, Eugene slices a broken shard of her missing reflection through her hair, and it bullies Gothel by showing her for the monster she herself really is. And she falls into the sharpened heap of its fallen brothers below.
With the princess’ tears, the affects of the physical blade are rewritten.
But as for the other blade, those affects cannot be rewritten with rain and sunlight.
After they both regain some semblance of peace, when she tells him she’s the Lost Princess, and he replies that they should tell someone—her real parents probably—she falls to tears again (not the healing kind) again and says, even now, she still can’t leave. That she is, and was, and always will be the monster of those stories.
Eugene takes the time to tell her, softly, and proudly she is not a monster. He strings the words together, and he is eloquent in his own little way, and he pulls a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket to show his meager, sloppy, imperfect little drawing. His drawing, in which he had tried to capture her essense with no artistic ability. He tried to draw her first. The picture wordlessly conveys this is what I see.
He is not an artist. He has not spent eighteen years becoming friends with brushes, paints, and paper. Her own half-correct sketches look better than his.
Still, she likes his better. Not because it’s more accurate, but because the crude excuse for a girl has the brightest smile, with adorable fangs, scribbled hair, that’s probably less exaggerated as it seems, and eyes that he obviously tried to draw multiple times, trying to make them just right. This is his heart. It is her reflection in his eyes.
There will come a time where there will be many paintings of her, when her parents, (her real ones), will want to fill the castle with the words you’re beautiful.
But it is Eugene’s picture she keeps in her room. She puts it on the vanity that still refuses to show her—the mirrors here are unkind as ever. But this is all she needs.
It is not what all those stuck-up artists think of her, nor is it some perfect recreation of reality. It is what he thinks of her. It is her reflection; he is the mirror who finally spoke back.
Because she learns when people look in the mirror, they don’t see themselves as they are. Reflections change, and are living things. When people look into them, they see their mistakes, and their flaws, they overlook certain things, and see other things about them accented. All the lenses are tinted. The mirrors are all bullies in some way, because we are bullies to ourselves. She learns that it's best to find your reflection in another's eyes, even if yours hasn't gone missing.
So this is truer as a mirror than the most perfect picture. This is all she needs.
Because when she sees it, she knows what she is.