Work Text:
What Joanna remembers most about her daughter is her hair. She held Rapunzel for such a short time, so long ago, that despite Joanna’s most fervent, frantic efforts, most of the look and feel and smell of her has faded from memory. But the hair remains. How could it not, so long, and golden, and glowing?
This woman in her arms now, this Rapunzel, has short hair, as dull and brown as Joanna’s own.
*
“Well,” says the man, Eugene. “How about that?”
“You need a room,” Joanna says to Rapunzel. A worry creeps into her head. “Unless… Unless you were planning on staying elsewhere. With Eugene, perhaps.”
“No!” Rapunzel says, fixing her gaze at last on Joanna. “I mean, if you don’t mind having me here, I’d like to stay. Here. If it’s all right with you.”
Jerome cups Rapunzel’s face with his hand. “We want you here, Rapunzel,” he says. His voice is deep and watery, and when he tilts his head the sunlight glints off a tear on his cheek. “Of course it’s all right.”
“Thank you,” Rapunzel whispers, ducking her head.
“I’ll show you to your room,” Joanna says, resuming her normal decisiveness. “Eugene, you’re staying as well, I think? Jerome will show you to your quarters.”
Joanna leads Rapunzel out of the parlor and up the grand spiral stone staircase to the family quarters. The stairs and corridors are wide enough for them to walk side by side and three feet apart.
“Um, Your Majesty?” Rapunzel says.
The words echo down the broad hallway, and Joanna winces. “You needn’t call me that.”
“Well… What should I call you?”
Joanna takes a deep breath to steady herself and says, “You could call me Mother, if you wanted.”
Rapunzel reaches up to wrap her hands in hair that’s no longer there. Joanna knows it was cut recently; Eugene told her that much. Only a few days ago, Rapunzel’s hair was still long and golden and glowing.
Rapunzel still hasn’t spoken. “My given name is Joanna,” Joanna says. “You can call me that, if you like.”
*
It drives Joanna mad with worry. “What if she gets hurt?” she asks Jerome one night as they lie down to sleep. “Or dies? Or gets kidnaped again? Why does she have to wander so far?”
Jerome strokes her hair. “She’s a young woman. She spent her childhood in captivity. Of course she wants to wander.”
“Doesn’t it bother you? That she’s gone so often? And that she tells us so little?” After a month, Joanna and Jerome still know almost nothing of their daughter’s life—only that she was taken by a woman named Gothel for her hair’s healing properties, that Eugene found her a month ago, and that Gothel died when Rapunzel’s hair was cut.
“It does,” Jerome says. “Of course it does. But I think we need to give her time, and space.”
Joanna is the Queen, and she’s not used to giving anything time or space. But she can try.
*
During these times, Eugene stays at the castle. He spends his days by Rapunzel’s room, speaking softly to a door that never speaks back.
“What are you saying to her?” Joanna asks one day.
“I’m telling her stories,” Eugene says. He turns from the door and sits slumped against the wall. Joanna sits next to him.
“What stories?” she asks, smoothing her skirts.
Eugene smirks. “Flynn Rider stories. Adventure stories.”
“Does it help her?”
“I don’t know,” Eugene says. “I’ve only known her a little longer than you have, you know. But I hope it helps. I hope she even listens.”
Joanna grasps his hand. “Eugene,” she says, nakedly desperate, “do you know what’s wrong?”
Eugene sighs. “I think I do.”
“What is it? Please, tell me.”
“No. I’m sorry, I can’t.”
Joanna squeezes his hand until she can feel bones grating. “You must! I have to know. I… I order you to, as your queen.”
Eugene pulls his hand from her grasp and instead lays it gently over her own. “No, you don’t. You order me as her mother, and I can ignore that kind of order. Actually, I can ignore the other kind, too, but it usually leads to more running.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“What I’m talking about is I can’t betray her trust. You don’t want me to, anyway. It’ll make things worse.”
“Eugene,” she says. “Please.”
Eugene shakes his head and pats her hand. “Do you want to tell her a story? Or a poem or a song or a joke, or anything, really. It’s just to make her happy.”
Joanna stands. “I don’t know what makes her happy,” she says, and leaves.
*
Once, when the whole family, plus Eugene, is out for a walk, they come to a little bridge over a stream. As they approach, Rapunzel pulls a sack of coins from her purse.
“What are you doing?” Joanna asks.
“I’m getting the coins for the troll,” Rapunzel says.
“Is there a troll under the bridge?” Jerome asks.
Rapunzel stares at him, a little confused, a little scared. “Bridges have trolls, don’t they?” she says.
Joanna and Jerome glance at each other, and in the pause, Eugene takes Rapunzel’s hand. “Not as a rule. But let’s see for sure if this one does!” he says, and races off across the bridge, Rapunzel just behind him.
There are other moments like that. On a carriage ride through the country, Rapunzel asks why wheat seeds are being put in the earth, instead of being ground for flour. Once, she refuses to step out in the rain, for fear, she says, of the acid. She spends a day talking about how much she’d like to see a “yeah-kinth,” and only after seeing the encyclopedia entry does Joanna realize that Rapunzel is trying to say “hyacinth.”
For three months, Joanna watches silently. But she always doubts, and as autumn approaches, it becomes more and more difficult to keep her silence. And why should she? Eugene and Jerome may be mistaken. Eugene admitted he hardly knows Rapunzel, and Jerome has always been too passive. It is one of his greatest flaws.
So one night, at the end of a chilly week in which she has only seen her daughter for about half an hour, Joanna waits in the entry hall for Rapunzel to return from Eugene’s apartment. She fixes her eyes to the grand oak doors, and still almost misses Rapunzel’s entrance, so quietly does her daughter open the door and close it.
Rapunzel jumps when she notices her. “Joanna!” she says. “I didn’t see you there.”
“I’m sorry to startle you,” Joanna says. “I only wanted to see you for a little. How was your day?”
“It was fine,” Rapunzel says, as if her cheeks weren’t flushed and her eyes sparkling from the day’s adventure. She starts up the stairs, and Joanna falls in step with her.
“Did you and Eugene do anything fun?”
“Oh, we went to see the forest. The leaves are changing color!” Rapunzel blushes and looks away. Joanna wonders if she’s blushing over the leaves or Eugene.
They climb in silence for a flight. When they reach the second floor, Joanna can hold it in no longer.
“Rapunzel… Do you not enjoy spending time with us?”
“What?” Rapunzel says.
“It’s just that we hardly see you. You’re so often away, and you tell us so little.”
“Am I not allowed to be away? Do I have to tell you things?” Rapunzel’s questions are surprisingly angry. She raises her gaze to Joanna and makes eye contact—a rare occurrence. A challenge.
“No! I only want you to. It hurts me, to have you so distant.” Joanna doesn’t understand Rapunzel’s challenge. She has never understood why it is so important to Rapunzel to be so far away.
Rapunzel lowers her eyes and breathes softly. Suddenly, she stiffens her back.
“No!” she says. “I’ll be distant if I want to!”
She runs off, and Joanna, lost for words, watches her go.
*
Joanna, Jerome, and Eugene pause in their conversation. It is the first time Rapunzel has called Jerome “Father.” He beams and passes the salt.
Two weeks after that, Joanna walks in on her husband and daughter in the library, cheerfully poring over an old encyclopedia together.
As the weather gets colder, the scene becomes familiar. Joanna catches Rapunzel and Jerome making cocoa, toasting marshmallows, and cataloguing the castle’s vast collection of art. Once, she joins them, but Rapunzel turns quiet and soon leaves to find Eugene.
“She hates me,” Joanna says when Rapunzel is gone.
“I don’t think so,” Jerome says. He gathers the cocoa mugs and moves them to the dirty dish bin. “I think you’re scared of each other.”
“Scared! What do we have to be scared of?”
“How should I know?” Jerome says. “I’m only telling you what it looks like to me.”
That night, Joanna lies awake thinking. She can understand what Rapunzel might be scared of—or rather, she can’t, but Rapunzel’s history is such a blank slate that she can imagine a thousand reasons—but she can’t figure out why she might be scared.
Her daughter is returned to her. The fear should be over.
*
Now, Joanna watches her husband laugh at a joke Rapunzel has told him, and she wants to throttle him. She can hardly speak to him when they’re alone, she’s so overcome with rage and envy. They have no more conversations about Rapunzel, no more discussions of how to proceed or what might be going on with her; Joanna doesn’t trust herself not to say something unforgivable.
Joanna and Jerome were together in their loss. But only Jerome has had the joy of the return.
In a distant cupboard in the castle, Joanna has kept Rapunzel’s baby clothes. Over the years, she’s visited them many times. She kept them hidden far away, because they caused Jerome pain, but it always helped her to see Rapunzel’s things. To remember the size and shape of her daughter. She hasn’t visited since Rapunzel returned, but she goes there now. It isn’t until she sees the tiny pink slippers, and runs her hand over the delicate, yellowing lace nightgowns, and begins to sob, that she understands why she has come.
Eugene finds her a few minutes later, head bent over the tiny patchwork quilt from Rapunzel’s crib, soaking the fabric in tears. He roams the castle, sometimes, on rainy days when Rapunzel is spending time with Jerome, but Joanna hadn’t known he was here today.
“What’s wrong?” he says, crouching down beside her.
She tries to scrub her face dry on the quilt, but she catches a faint scent of talcum powder and instead cries even harder.
“I miss my daughter,” she moans.
Eugene sits next to her on the cold stone floor, rubbing her back while she cries herself out. Eventually, she sits up and dries her eyes. Eugene pulls his hand away from her with visible relief. Nothing discomfits a cocky adventurer like a crying woman.
She wonders, though. Eugene has been nothing but polite and comforting to her. He’s proven trustworthy, both with Joanna’s material possessions and her daughter’s heart. And right now, he’s the closest person to her who isn’t Rapunzel or Jerome. The things Joanna feels at the moment, she can’t share with them.
“I never gave up on her,” Joanna says.
“Rapunzel?”
Joanna nods. “I think, after a few years, my husband came to believe she was dead. Who can blame him? I didn’t. But I also never stopped believing she was out there, alive, somewhere.”
“She was!” Eugene says.
“Yes, she was,” Joanna says. “But I spent so long thinking of her out there, and I was thinking of my baby. I knew she’d grow, and sometimes I thought of her grown up, too, but… she’s not like I imagined. Of course she’s not.”
“You…” Eugene says, but Joanna holds up a hand to stop him. She must say this, and she must say it now, before she loses her nerve.
“I think it’s my fault that Rapunzel and I can’t be close,” she says. “It’s difficult, sometimes, for me to see her as the same person as the baby I lost. Sometimes, she doesn’t… Sometimes, she doesn’t feel like she’s my daughter. I think she can sense it.” She stops, and waits for Eugene to judge her most terrible secret.
Eugene lets a long moment pass, making sure she’s done before he speaks.
“I’m very sorry,” he says. He’s so serious, with her. She never sees him being so serious with Rapunzel. “Maybe, though, maybe she doesn’t feel like your daughter because you haven’t gotten to know her very well yet.”
“Then it’s hopeless. She’ll never let me know her.”
“You might be surprised,” Eugene says. “She’s getting better. If you keep trying, I think she’ll be ready, soon.”
Joanna knows Eugene well enough by now not to ask him what he means by “better.”
*
In the end, Rapunzel decides the matter for them: The lights will stay. In fact, they’re all she wants for her birthday.
They’re not all she gets, of course. The citizens of the kingdom send thousands of gifts, too many to catalogue: flowers, handkerchiefs, lanterns, food, trinkets. The royal courts of allied kingdoms send fewer gifts, but grander ones: a magnificent gown, a solid gold chess set, the seeds of a rare flower. Eugene gives her a gleaming copper frying pan, which she loves for reasons surpassing understanding. Jerome gives her a new book of natural history that he commissioned from a foreign scholar. Joanna agonizes for weeks, and finally settles on a new palette and a hug, many-hued set of paints. One thing she does know about Rapunzel is that she loves to paint.
The paints go over well, as do all of the gifts. Rapunzel is euphoric, blissful, and for once everyone is happy and getting along. Rapunzel even gives Joanna a kiss on the cheek before she goes to bed.
The next morning, Joanna is woken by frantic knocking at her bedroom door. Jerome, a deep sleeper, doesn’t wake up. She answers the door to find Eugene, who had spent the night in his guest room. He is red-faced and flustered.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I went to wake up Rapunzel so we could go on a boat ride we had planned, but she’s shut herself in her room.”
“Have you tried talking to her?” Joanna asks.
He shakes his head. “She’s asking for her mother.”
Joanna pushes past him. She hurries down the corridor, ignoring Eugene following in her wake.
She can hear the sobbing several yards away from Rapunzel’s room.
“Rapunzel?” She knocks on the door. “It’s Joanna.”
The sobbing lessens slightly.
“May I come in?”
The sobbing stops completely, but nothing else happens. Joanna turns to Eugene. He shrugs. She is about to knock again when the door opens.
Rapunzel is no longer crying, but her face is wet and red, and her hair is tangled. She has wrapped her dressing gown around her tight as swaddling.
“Come in,” she says. Her throat sounds dry and soar.
Joanna and Eugene both start in, but Rapunzel holds out her hand to stop Eugene.
“Just Joanna right now, okay?” she says softly. “I’m sorry.”
Eugene kisses her forehead and gently closes the door after them. Joanna and Rapunzel are alone.
It’s been almost a year since Joanna has seen the inside of Rapunzel’s room. Once, it was a guest room, stately and barren. It is unrecognizable, now. Rapunzel has replaced the heavy velvet draperies with breezy lace curtains, and early sunlight filters through them, brightening the murals that eclipse the walls. Rapunzel has painted a hodgepodge of people, animals, buildings, and landscapes. Joanna recognizes a nearby chapel, the local greengrocer, and the bridge without a troll in her handiwork. Winding through it all is a long, glowing golden braid. When Joanna traces it to its source, she finds, in the darkest corner of the room, a tiny painting of a little girl sitting with a curly-haired woman.
Everything in the room is relentlessly bright and cheerful. The bookshelf is painted pale blue. Vases of flowers rest on the shelves, the dresser, and the bedside table. Joanna recognizes the stunningly colorful patchwork quilt lying rumpled on the bed as a welcome-home gift from a local seamstress. There is no gloom here—except in Rapunzel herself.
“You called for me,” Joanna says.
“No, I didn’t,” Rapunzel says. She stares at the window, unmoving.
“But Eugene said…”
“He misunderstood.” Rapunzel sits on the bed and twists the quilt in her hands. “Do you love me?”
The question leaves Joanna speechless for a moment. “Of course I love, you,” she says, and though she’s never said it to Rapunzel before, it’s true. Saying it is like letting out a breath she’s been holding too long. Joanna knows nothing about Rapunzel, she struggles to find even the smallest connection to her, but she loves her.
“What if I did something terrible? I mean, really terrible. Would you still love me?”
Joanna pulls a squashy armchair over from the corner and sits eye to eye with Rapunzel. She can hear her own heartbeat. Her lungs feel shallow and tight.
“Rapunzel,” she says, “there is nothing you could do that would make me not love you.” And that’s true, too.
Rapunzel buries her fists deeper in the quilt and looks away. “I killed my mother,” she says.
“I don’t understand,” Joanna says.
So Rapunzel explains.
In twenty minutes, Joanna learns more about her daughter than she has in the past year. She learns about eighteen years locked up with a madwoman and manipulator; about a brave, terrified attempt at escape; and about Gothel’s defeat, and the full circumstances of her death. Finally, some of Rapunzel’s oddities, some of her distance, begin to make sense.
“I miss her,” Rapunzel sobs. She is looking away, as she has throughout her entire story. “She kidnapped me, and I miss her, and I love her. And I killed her! She raised me, and I betrayed her!”
“You didn’t kill her,” Joanna says, interrupting for the first time. “Eugene and your… little chameleon friend killed her. And they were absolutely justified in doing so.”
“I know,” Rapunzel says. “She was kidnapping me. I know. But she raised me, too. She could have just chained me up from the very beginning, but she didn’t. She gave me a home, and books, and paint, and nice clothes, and she told me she loved me. She didn’t have to do that.”
Joanna’s rage at her husband is a child’s tantrum compared to her hatred of Gothel, but she says, “It’s okay to love her.”
“Is it?”
“It’s okay to love anyone you want. I just want you to know that you don’t owe her love. You don’t owe her gratitude. Not chaining you up wasn’t a favor. It was just a less awful thing than she could have done.”
“I’m not sure I understand the difference,” Rapunzel says. She glances briefly up at Joanna, and Joanna—who hasn’t hugged her daughter since that first embrace, who has spent a year with three feet between her and Rapunzel at all times—Joanna wraps Rapunzel in her arms and doesn’t let go for a long, long time.
“That’s okay too, for now,” she says.
“I can’t call you Mother,” Rapunzel says. “I don’t think ever.”
It’s a disappointment, but compared to the living, breathing reality of her daughter in her arms, a name doesn’t matter. Joanna backs away enough to see Rapunzel’s face.
“Do you love me?” she asks.
Rapunzel hunches her shoulders and draws away. “I don’t think so,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
That is what Joanna has been scared of. But if Rapunzel can face her fears every day, so can Joanna.
“It’s okay,” Joanna says. “You can love whoever you want to.”
“I want to love you.”
“Then maybe someday you will. Rapunzel, it doesn’t matter if you call me Mother, or even if you love me. I love you, and I always will.”
Rapunzel nods, but Joanna doesn’t think she understands. Someday, though, she will. Joanna will make sure of it.
Joanna stands, goes to the nearest wall, and runs her hand over the mural. “I’ve always wished I could paint,” she says. “But I was never much good at art.”
“I could show you,” Rapunzel says.
“I would love that.”
Rapunzel helps Joanna to set up the eases, stretch a canvas, and mix the paint. Joanna takes up a brush, and Rapunzel wraps her hand around hers, guiding her across the canvas.
And Joanna misses her daughter a little less.