In the short amount of time when you were young and Rapunzel was still home in the palace, you'd spend a lot of your days around her and your mother.
The room was bathed in sunlight, and you felt safe enough to throw open all the doors and windows to let in the salty sea's breeze. Your mother would be in an armchair near her bassinet and you would be sitting on the rug, poring through books and tracing a small finger over the maps your father had found for you in the library that stretched far and wide into lands you didn't fully comprehend were real at the time. Your sister, cooing and laughing and occasionally crying, would sleep through most of the day when she was not being cradled in your mothers arms.
Late into the evenings, your father would join you three. He'd kiss your mother on the crown of her head, explain the maps to you from top to bottom, and hold his youngest daughter in his arms with the slightest of smiles and the gentlest of hands.
It was good.
And, after she went missing, it hurt to acknowledge that Rapunzel would never remember these moments. That she would never feel the warmth of family around her, or at least she would never feel the warmth of the family she was born into. She would never wear the crown she was made on the eve of her birth and have it fit her head.
It hurt to acknowledge that she wouldn't remember you, grown and with your own crown, if you were to see her in the city on the street. And neither would you.
It hurt that you were strangers.
—
You can't breathe.
Rapunzel?
All you can do is look at her. Her bright eyes. The soft smile on her lips.
Through the flames that make her image wave in the heat. That make her seem a mere mirage in the middle of a blazing desert. She must be a mirage, a figment of your imagination.
You repeat her name under your breath. "Rapunzel."
Your sister. Your lost sister.
Something deep within you wants to pull her into an embrace, to hold her close and not let her go. You want to tell her everything, and you want to believe that she'll listen carefully and welcome it all. You want to call her sister, and you want her to do the same. You want her to come home.
Another part of you doesn't believe any of this. There's a part of you that thinks you're dreaming, a part of you that thinks this is a sick joke. There's a part of you that thinks this is a coincidence. That rejects that any of this is possible. That part of you has your head spinning, your pulse racing. Your heels digging into the earth to keep you steady.
"You... okay?" Rapunzel asks when you say nothing. She offers you a soft smile when you meet her gaze.
"I..." you begin, still reeling. "I'm gonna go grab a drink."
—
Beside the river you'd climbed out of just hours earlier, you crouch and watch the reflection of the stars ripple in the serene waves. It seems most of the dam's water has been funneled out of the canyon at this point, so the river has become more of a deep creek. Calm, rushing gently downstream, dark and murky. Lowering yourself down to yoour knees in the damp grass, you take a breath.
Your plans have changed after all, you suppose. The satchel is no longer at the forefront of your mind. Hell, it isn't even in your mind anymore. There's something else you have to take home now. Someone else.
But she can't know.
Neither of them can.
No one can know who she really is until you're sure she's safe, away from anyone who'd do her any harm if they did know.
You don't know who you can trust. Not the woman in the tower, not the palace guards, and – most of all – not Flynn Rider. The thief, who likely wouldn't hesitate to do anything for an extra coin. You can only count on your parents. Still, they're a million miles away, locked up in their castle where no one but you and the guards can reach them alone. There has to be some way to get her home. Some way to reach your parents and convince them you've found their daughter.
It'll be harder now that you've evaded the royal guard so many times and they're actively on the hunt for you, but they're your parents. They have to believe you. You repeat it in your mind as if it's any substantial consolation.
Footsteps thump softly against the grass behind you. You turn.
It's Flynn, a bundle of firewood in his arms. He watches you against the light of the fire through the trees behind him.
"You recognize her or something?" He asks you. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
In some twisted way, you guess you have.
"No, I..." you start, though you don't know where you're going with it. "How do you know her?"
Flynn whistles and turns his head up to the sky, as if to say it's a long story. "She wants me to take her to see the lanterns. Your sister's lanterns."
So he doesn't know who she is. Good.
You pause. "That's tomorrow."
Flynn hums, running a thumb over his freshly healed palm. "Don't you have to be there for that, princess? Lift your own lantern or something?"
You scoff. "Aren't you wanted dead or alive in my kingdom, thief?"
"Well, unless you're planning on turning me in, I don't plan on getting caught," he says, a smile on his face as he walks over the grass to stand next to you. "Are you?"
You raise a brow.
Flynn Rider is a lowly thief who's stolen enough from your kingdom to get him wanted dead or alive across the region. And he thinks you're a pampered princess who's never stepped foot off the castle's marble floors in your life until today. As much as you push back against the notion in your mind, to some extent he's right. And it kills you.
Still, an odd feeling comes over you. He's saved you from the guards. He's kept you alive when he didn't need to. And you have, him. At this point, why would you put all that to waste and turn each other in now? It couldn't hurt to have someone else on your side to make sure Rapunzel makes it home safely. Even if that isn't completely his intention, you aren't as well acquainted with this part of the forest as you'd like to think you are, or as he seems to be.
You remind yourself that you still can't trust him. You'll turn him in to the guards once this is all over. Hopefully that'll be enough to get you forgiven in the captain's eyes.
You shake your head. "Not for now. As long as you're not planning on turning me in, I want as much as you to get her to those lanterns. Like you said, I've got to get home in time."
You aren't lying. Not completely. There's no way you're getting home on your own from here without help, and so no way you can get Rapunzel home along with you. You're tethered to a thief, and he knows it.
Both of your eyes are on the stars.
"And... after that?"
He says it with a smile, as if he knows the answer already.
"You'd better be long gone."
—————