Hello! This is the first time I've been here, and I don't have any sort of spellcheck, so please don't mind any little errors that might be hiding through here; I was trying to get it out quick.

I'm aiming to have a chapter uploaded every Sunday.

Thank you!

Chapter One:

Their faces broke apart, and Eugene was engulfed by the large pair of green eyes peeing into his own. She breathed heavily for a few seconds, her fingers still clenched onto the fabric of his shirt, never blinking, as if asking him for answers.

"What now?"

He hesitated. What was he supposed to say to that?! Her mother - the only person she'd ever had in her life up until a few short days ago - had just met her end and he'd been the reason for it.

What now?

"What did she do to you?" he spoke before he could think, almost slapping himself afterwards.

She finally looked away from him, staring toward the floor now, rubbing her wrists anxiously. "She wasn't my mother," she began slowly. She looked to Pascal, a few feet from them, unmoving since Gothel fell, and when he didn't seem to help in anyway she faced Eugene again, staring at his lap rather than his face. "She took me. When I was a baby. I'm the lost princess."

The lost princess.

It took Eugene a moment. He watched her closely for any hint of confusion on her face with his mouth slightly open, and then shook his head. "Did she tell you that?"

"I figured it out on my own. Then when I confronted her about it, she..." Rapunzel huffed, her shoulders bouncing with the effort and eventually looked up at him again. "She wanted to make sure no one was going to find me again."

"Wow," Eugene let out a large sigh, his hand automatically rising to run his fingers through his hair, amazed when there was no pain in his side from his recent stabbing. "The lost princess..." he swallowed thickly. What to do now. He hadn't expected to be saying goodbye to her after all this mess, but there wasn't really any way around that now.

She wasn't blinking again. Her eyes were a little too big for him to feel comfortable under them. Her hair exploded from around her face, a dark chocolate which he thought suited her much better. Her hands were still clamped around her wrists, he noticed. Where her shackles had been not long before. He was positive if he got her to move them there would be some sort of bruising already beginning to appear.

"She's gone, Rapunzel," he said softly, taking her hands gently and attempting to pry them from her own skin. "She can't get to you anymore."

She burst into tears at that, her eyes screwing shut and her hands finding his own and grabbing at them painfully. He cringed at his bad choice of words yet again and pulled her into his arms, running his hand over the back of her cropped hair over and over.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he whispered over and over again as she buried her face into his neck and her tears fell onto his collar, leaving a wet patch against his chest. These ones didn't seem to be doing much magic, and he wondered whether it had left her completely or whether like her hair, her tears needed that song.

When she finally stopped crying, exhausted, the sun was in the lower half of the sky. Pascal had found his place on her shoulder, leaning against her cheek in comfort, and Eugene's arms had gone numb from holding her to him, and were now relaxed around her as he waited for her to feel better.

"I'm sorry," she sniffed, rubbing at her nose with the back of her hand. "I don't know what to do," she looked up at him once again and he wiped the last of her slightly-dried tears from her cheekbones.

"It's okay," he said gently. He hesitated as long as he was able, but ultimately sighed and made a move to get up, adjusting her so he was able to pull her up with him. "I guess we should figure out how to get you home."

She looked around her tower, panicked. "Where am I going? I need you with me!"

"Rapunzel," he sighed, and for the first time, he was unable to look at her. "You have to go back to your parents. They've been waiting for you for eighteen years. They haven't given up on you - you shouldn't on them, either."

"But come with me," she spat desperately. "If I go back, you have to come with me!"

"You know I can't do that," he attempted to take a step away from her, but she held onto him and went with him. "I just escaped a beheading. There'll be guards everywhere looking for me; as soon as we step into the kingdom they'll have me. If not before."

"But they won't worry you when I tell them who I am."

"They're not going to listen to you in the midst of trying to capture me. I'm the first priority right now. The king and queen might still be waiting for you, but their men have other things on their mind."

"I'll tell them! I'll make sure they don't touch you! You're mine!"

He sighed, staring at her hopelessly. He knew it wouldn't work. But right now she was hysterical and he knew he wouldn't be able to reason with her. She had no idea about how the world out there worked, and she wasn't ever going to get one if she stayed hiding away with him.

"Okay. Max is waiting outside. Let's go."

She seemed desperate to leave. She grabbed a cloak in case of a cold night, made sure she had pascal, and scurried down the stairs faster than he'd ever seen her move before. Once outside of the tower, she made a direct line toward Maximus, not looking around, probably in fear of what she would see. Eugene helped her onto the horse and was about to mount himself, when he hesitated and went back to pick up Gothel's empty cloak from the ground. If she persisted enough for him to stay with her, he would need a back-up plan. He wasn't about to leave her in a hurry, and he'd secretly hoped every minute that she would turn around and tell him to take her far away, where no one would ever find either of them and they could live their lives happily together with people who had never heard of their stories. But she couldn't do that. The lost princess had to be found.

The cloak thrown over his shoulder, he mounted Maximus, wound his arms around Rapunzel and moved them out of the clearing. The girl in front of him never looked back to her only home of eighteen years.