I've had this idea since I saw Tangled but I never got around to putting it down on paper/interwebz until I saw Voyage of the Dawn Treader (prettyness! O_o) which reminded me of 'Wunderkind', the Alanis Morisette song from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Somedays I really like the song, and other days I don't, but it was pretty much the inspiration for this fic. It fits really perfectly. (I stole the title from it as well.) Also sort of inspired by Max/Johnny's bit in Penelope about all the stuff she's been missing, and the snowman scene in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, which is the best book in the world.

It takes place after the movie… at some point… I didn't really bother to think about how long after. At any rate, Rapunzel and Eugene aren't married yet. *shrug*

Eugene had to say he was surprised Rapunzel wasn't already outside. It was usually the first place he looked. Not that he blamed her - if he'd spent eighteen years locked up in a tower, he'd be outside as much as possible too. The question was, where was she? He scoured the castle quicker than most would have been able to (he knew it pretty well, after all) and found her in the library.

"What are you doing in here on a day like today?" he asked, barging in through the big double doors.

Rapunzel jumped. She was always a million miles away when she was reading. He smiled when her big green eyes appeared, startled, over the top of her book. "What's today?" she asked, confused.

"Have you looked outside?" Eugene asked, with a face that said 'duh'.

Rapunzel sighed. "Yes, but Nancy said I shouldn't go out."

Nancy was an immense, formidable, terrifying woman, bigger than most men Eugene knew (and that included the thugs from the Snuggly Duckling), whom Rapunzel's parents had hired to look after the princess. There were all sorts of guards and soldiers and other people too, but Eugene couldn't help but feel that with Nancy around, they weren't needed. She'd chased him away from Rapunzel more times than he cared to admit and he'd take the entire palace security detail over her any day. He almost gave up on his plan when her name came up. Almost. "Why on earth?"

"She said I'd catch a cold. Something about having no immunity after living with nobody for eighteen years. And I mean… I have seen snow before."

He leaned forward, giving her a look that was almost a smolder, but not quite. "Rapunzel," he said smoothly, "are you really going to let a little cold keep you from seeing snow for the first time?"

"I don't know," she said, tugging uncertainly at a strand of brown hair. "I've never had a cold."

Eugene straightened up, grinning, "well, then, another new thing for you to experience! Let's go!" He snapped the book out of her hands before she could blink.

"Hey!" she cried, reaching for it.

He held the heavy tome up out of her reach. "Come on Blondie, how much snow could you possibly have seen in that tower?"

"I saw tons of it," she pouted. But then her voice took on that dreamy tone it did when she talked about something she'd been missing. Eugene should have been tired of it by now (there was so much she'd missed, after all), but somehow he never was. "I could see it cover everything - the ground, the forest, the mountains - everything was white and sparkling as far as I could see, and the waterfall would freeze over, and icicles would line up across the top of my window…" she sighed again, but it was a wistful sigh this time.

"But you've never actually been out in it?" Eugene pressed. "Never built a snowman?"

"No," Rapunzel said.

"Never had a snowball fight?"

"No."

"Never gone sledding?"

"No."

"Skating?"

"No!"

"Never caught snowflakes on your tongue?"

She heaved an exasperated sigh. "Eugene, you already know all this!"

He raised a perfect eyebrow, making that I-know-something-you-don't-know face. "Never licked something metal in winter?"

"No, why would I want to - " Rapunzel began.

"Then you haven't seen snow," he interrupted. "Come on, let's go." He grabbed her arm and towed her towards the door.

"But Nancy said - "

"Rapunzel, what have I always said about doing what you're told?"

Rapunzel stopped, a curious frown creasing her brow. "But that was with Gothel, she was… different."

"Not the word I was thinking," Eugene muttered, slipping an arm around the girl's shoulders. "Anyway, in this case, the same thing applies. Besides, you won't catch a cold if you're bundled up properly." They'd reached the door by now and he stopped suddenly, cringing a little.

The princess gave him a worried look. "What? What's wrong?"

He attempted an apologetic smile. "Er, Rapunzel, you're going to have to wear shoes."

She groaned. "Eugene! You know I hate wearing shoes."

"Well, you could not wear shoes," he agreed charmingly. "But you'll get frostbite and your toes will turn black and fall off."

Rapunzel squeaked. "Turn black?"

"All right, so that's a bit of an exaggeration, but really, it's best that you wear shoes."

She sighed. "Fine."

Getting outside was not as easy as Eugene had hoped, and before they could even do that, there was the matter of finding winter clothes. He contemplated 'borrowing' some of the king and queen's things but he decided stealing from his future parents-in-law was probably a bad idea, and so they made their way up to one of the old attics and mounted a search.

It took them two hours, three attics and an unpleasant amount of spiderwebs, but eventually they found what they were looking for.

Eugene heaved open an old trunk, catapulting at least a decade's worth of dust into the air. He coughed. Pascal, sitting on his shoulder, sneezed. He hadn't known chameleons could sneeze. When his eyes stopped watering, the two of them peered into the trunk. There was something furry inside. Eugene grabbed it with both hands and swung it out as he stood. Dust flew in all directions, sparkling in the musty light, while purple velvet and white fur billowed around him.

"Hey blondie, I've got the perfect thing for you." He gave the cloak another shake to rid it of the dust. When he lowered it, Rapunzel was on the other side, staring at it like she stared at every new thing.

"I'm going to wear that?" she asked.

"No, Rapunzel, you're going to eat it," he joked. She looked blank. He sighed. "Yes, Rapunzel, you're going to wear it. Here you go." He flung it around her, letting the soft fur settle on her shoulders. He even tied the ribbon round her neck.

She looked at each side of it, glanced down at it, craned her head over her shoulder to look at the back of it, and finally giggled and twirled around in it. An unconsciously dopey smile commandeered Eugene's lips as he watched. He was unaware of Pascal's pleased expression and therefore that Maximus would probably find out about this soon enough. He was, as he always was, completely mesmerized by her.

She giggled again and stopped, facing him. "What else is in there?" she asked, glancing at the trunk.

"What? Oh! Uhhhh, well, let's see." They knelt down together in front of it to investigate.

Rapunzel tugged the next thing out of the trunk. It was another cloak, exactly like hers only this one was green and brown. "Look! There's one for you!" she cried.

"Uh, no." Eugene said emphatically. "I'm not wearing that."

She frowned. "Why not? It's just like mine."

"Exactly. I'm not wearing a girl's cloak."

She gave him an exasperated look, and he thought she might dump the thing over his head, but something distracted her. She frowned down at the cloak in her hand, running her fingers through the fur thoughtfully. "Eugene, is this… is this fur?"

Uh-oh, he thought. "No," he blurted immediately. He was too fast. She looked at him suspiciously. "I mean, no, it's definitely not. …it's fake! It's fake fur." He actually had a very sneaking suspicion that it was not fake, but he had no desire to tell Rapunzel that several small fluffy creatures (probably bunnies - er, rabbits) had been killed to make what she was wearing.

"Are you sure?"

"Yup, sure. Absolutely positive." She frowned and laid the cloak aside and he restrained himself from heaving a sigh of relief. But he still caught Pascal's disapproving glare. "What?" he mouthed to the chameleon. Pascal shook his little green head at him.

Rapunzel dug through the trunk carefully, taking each thing out and looking it over slowly. Eugene was not particularly paying attention to any of it, choosing instead to watch her. Until she pulled out the unfortunate coat. "Eugene! This looks like it's your size!" she cried.

Eugene snapped his head over to look at it. "Oh no," he said emphatically. "Nope. It's not."

Rapunzel raised her eyebrows at him. "It is too. Look." She pushed it into his chest and held the sleeve out along the length of his arm. "See?"

"Well… it's not my colour," Eugene said desperately.

She giggled. "Don't be silly. You like red, don't you?"

"That is not red," he informed her. "That's… burgundy."

Rapunzel looked unsurprised. And slightly amused. "Let me guess, burgundy is a girl colour?"

"No," he said hurriedly. "I mean, yes. I mean… Oh, I don't know."

"Come on," she pleaded. "It's not that bad. Or do you want to look through every single trunk in every single attic until we find something else?"

He didn't want to, really, it had taken most of the morning to get this far. He wrinkled his nose a little, glancing from the coat to Rapunzel's face to the mostly empty trunk. "Are you sure there's nothing else in there?" he asked, sounding a little pained.

Rapunzel didn't even look. "Nope," she said.

He sighed heavily, looking at the trunk. Then he looked at the coat and sighed again. "Fine."

The princess beamed and all but wrestled him into the coat, then sat back to admire it. "Just a second," she said excitedly. "I think I saw a mirror over here." She dragged him over to a dusty cloth-covered object. She pulled the cloth off and pushed Eugene in front of the glass.

He looked at himself and for a moment he said nothing. His straight face and slumped shoulders made him look decidedly unimpressed. The fur lining of the coat tickled his neck. Then he said, "I look like Santa Claus." He could have sworn he heard Pascal laughing.

"Who's Santa Claus?" Rapunzel chirped.

"I'll explain some other time." When he turned back around Pascal was grinning and Rapunzel was practically glowing. "What else is in there?"

Rapunzel reached in and pulled out two pairs of boots. She looked at him expectantly.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" he asked. "Try them on."

The first pair was too tight - they pinched her toes, she said. He was a little suspicious since she seemed to say that about all footwear, but when she tried on the second pair, she was pleasantly surprised to find that they fit. She wriggled her toes and grinned at Eugene. "What now?" she asked.

He glanced into the trunk. "Mittens," he said. "We need mittens."

Rapunzel's eyes were shining. "I've never had mittens before!"

There was quite the collection of them at the bottom of the trunk - they seemed to be a pair in every colour of the rainbow and then some. Rapunzel fell particularly in love with an bright orange pair which she claimed looked like goldfish (Eugene couldn't quite see it) and in no way matched her outfit, but neither of them really cared. Eugene's gloves were much less flashy - just plain old brown leather. He didn't realize they only served to make him look more like Santa.

Rapunzel pulled something else out of the trunk. "What on earth is this?" she asked, holding the object aloft.

Eugene laughed. "Those are earmuffs, Rapunzel, here." He took them out of her hands and placed them on her head. She whirled around to look in the mirror and giggled again.

"They look ridiculous," she said. "I love them!"

Eugene laughed again and shook his head. "Come on, Blondie, let's get out of here."

Actually getting out of the palace was harder than he'd expected. Turns out, Nancy had lost track of the princess and thought rampaging through the castle like a angered bear would help her find her charge. Fortunately though, Eugene still had a few tricks up his sleeve from his days as a thief, and they managed it thanks to a few unused passages.

He and Rapunzel stepped out into the chilly air already breathless and excited. Snowflakes were still falling gently, wafting this way and that in the breeze, and Rapunzel turned her head up to the sky to watch them come down. They sprinkled onto her nose and melted in with her freckles. She laughed.

"Eugene, I want to do all those things you said," she cried, snatching his gloved hand. "Skating and sledding and making snowball men!"

"It's snowmen and snowball fights, Goldie," he laughed.

"Whatever!" she flung her arms wide, "I want to do it all!"

"Don't worry, you will," Eugene assured her.

The snowman came first. Rapunzel was enraptured with the way a tiny little snowball that fit in her hand turned into an enormous one too big for her to lift. They collected stones for the buttons and the eyes and the mouth and found a particularly oblong-shaped one for the nose. But with only the stones and the twig arms, the snowman looked a little bare. Rapunzel was pleased, but Eugene stood back to think.

"A hat," he said. "He needs a hat."

"Where are we going to get that?" Rapunzel asked.

He thought a moment more, then grinned. "I have an idea."

Eugene led the way to the guard house, where they lurked in the shadows for a few moments. When he was satisfied that it was empty, they ventured inside. It only took them a few short minutes to snatch a helmet and Rapunzel was skipping out the door with it when Eugene spotted a worn-out shield in the corner of the room. He picked it up and gave it a quick look-over, smiling to himself. He knew exactly what to do with this.

Back at the snowman, Rapunzel was trying unsuccessfully to jam the helmet onto its head. "What's that for?" she asked, looking at the shield. But Eugene put it aside with a cryptic, "you'll see."

In the end, getting the helmet on proved to be such a nuisance that they lopped the snowman's head off and made him a new one by cramming the helmet full of snow and then placing it on his shoulders. They stood back to critique their work once more, and Rapunzel immediately giggled. She ran over to a pine tree and broke off a short piece. She kept fiddling with it, being very particular about which needles she pulled off and which stayed on. Eugene had no idea what she was doing.

Until she shoved it into the snow just under their creation's nose. "A moustache!" she cried delightedly. Eugene marvelled at how she could make anything into a work of art.

Eugene burst into laughter. The snowman looked like a rounder, whiter version of the Captain of the Guard. He was bound to see it at some point, and Eugene had a feeling that caricaturing him would lead to some unpleasantness, but it was too good to change anything about it. They left it to guard the lawn and ran off to their next adventure.

Eugene led Rapunzel a long way out behind the palace, to the crest of a snowy hill. They were both panting by the time they got there. "What are we doing here?" Rapunzel asked, but Eugene was backing up, apparently gauging the distance to the drop of the hill. He dropped his shield in the snow and adjusted it with his boot.

"Get on," he told her.

"On that?"

"Of course," he said. She gave him a you're-insane look, but plopped down on the shield. He bent down, hands braced on the edges of the shield. "Hold on tight," he told her. She gave him another look. "Trust me on this one, Rapunzel. You're gonna want to hang on."

She sighed and twined her hands through the straps. He took off at a run, pushing the makeshift sled in front of him. Just before it fell over the ridge, he leapt on behind her. "Eugeee-eeene!" she shrieked. It was a shriek of fright at first, but a few seconds later it turned into delight. She laughed the whole way down the hill and kept going even when she was out of breath at the bottom.

The princess turned around and flung her arms around his neck. He thought she might strangle him. "That was the best thing I have ever done!" she cried. "Can we do it again?" He tried to laugh, but it sounded more like choking.

They did it again. A thousand times, it seemed like. Eugene's legs were burning from trudging up the hill so many times, but Rapunzel was skipping about with more energy than the whole kingdom combined. She gave him a bit of a heartattack when she decided not to hold on the third time down. The last time, however, wreaked the most havoc on his nerves. She wasn't holding on again and he didn't like this arrangement at all, despite the fact that he was holding on, with one hand at least, while the other was around her waist. This was, of course, the time the sled - for no apparent reason - decided to veer inexplicably to the left, spin them around backwards, and then catch on a rock, thereby catapulting the thief, the princess and the chameleon into the air and landing them Eugene-first on an icy patch. It was by far the worst for him. After all, Rapunzel had landed exactly on top of him, and Pascal was buried in her hair, hanging on for dear life. But Eugene… his face was full of snow, there was ice down his shirt, and all the wind had been knocked out of him.

Rapunzel sat up immediately, using his shoulders for leverage and in doing so, shoving his face further into the snow. He flailed a bit before he managed to pull his head back up, spitting snow and blinking ice out of his eyes.

"That was the best one yet!" Rapunzel cried.

"Good thing, since it's the last one," Eugene groaned.

The snowball fight required more explanation than he'd anticipated. Rapunzel asked a million times if it hurt to get hit with a snowball and why people actually enjoyed having things thrown at them. These were questions to which Eugene had no good answer. But in the end, the princess won the snowball fight handily. It wasn't a fair fight, really. Eugene was much too careful about throwing the snowballs too hard or hitting her somewhere it would really hurt. Rapunzel, thinking this was just the natural way snowballs worked, threw them as hard as she could. At several points in time, he was sure he had a black eye forming.

"You were right, Eugene," she announced as he leaned on his knees, breathing hard. "This is fun! But who was the first one to think throwing snow at each other was a game?"

"I have no idea," he wheezed. He hoped whoever it was had died a long and painful death. He thought about this a bit more and changed his mind. He didn't wish that on anyone. Even if he had just gotten pummelled in a snowball fight with a crazy princess.

When he looked up, she was standing with her arms outstretched and face upturned, sticking her tongue out.

"What are you doing?"

"Catching snowflakes," she explained, though it sounded more like 'cathing thnowflakth' since she tried to talk with her tongue still out. "I don't understand, they just taste like water."

"That's because they are water."

"Then why did you make such a fuss over doing it? I can drink water inside."

"Well, yeah, but…" He didn't really have an explanation for this either. "It's just something people like to do. And I figured since you'd never done it before, you ought to at least try it."

She smiled slowly. "Thanks," she said. He hadn't the smallest idea what she was thanking him for, but he smiled back.

The skating turned out to be a bit of an issue; Eugene insisted on walking across the pond before they even started - just to make sure the ice was thick enough, and after that they had to go into town and buy two pairs of ice skates. Rapunzel hoped to find some for Pascal and Eugene found himself explaining that there was no such thing as chameleon-sized ice-skates.

There was a lot of falling down on Rapunzel's part but, being Rapunzel, she always got up ready to try again, and by the time the afternoon was fading, she could make it all the way around the pond without a wobble. The early winter night was already falling, and their stomachs were realizing that they had had no lunch and suppertime was nearing.

"Does snow make everyone this hungry?" Rapunzel asked as they unlaced their skates.

"You're only hungry because we forgot lunch," Eugene said with a wry smile. "We'll beg the cook for some hot chocolate when we go in. Perfect thing for a day like today." He stood, pulling the princess to her feet. He was reaching for their skates when he heard her sigh and looked up to see her staring into the distance. The rising moon glinted off the snow and washed the world in silver-blue light.

"Hey," he said softly. "You okay?"

She kept staring. "I thought it was pretty in the sunshine… but I think it's even better at night," she said.

"Yeah," he said, looking at the starlight in her hair. It felt almost like the time they'd watched the lanterns together. Part of him wished he could stop time and stay in this moment for the rest of his life. But a sudden thought distracted him. "Rapunzel! We forgot something."

She turned around to see him heading to one of the few areas where the snow handed been trampled. She followed him curiously, only to see him turn around and fall into the snow on his back.

"Eugene," she giggled, "what are you doing?"

He flailed his arms and legs in response - back and forth, up and down. This continued for about a minute, after which he sat up, and carefully, carefully got to his feet, making sure to plant them perfectly. Then he jumped away from the image he'd made so he wouldn't mess it up by making a bunch of untidy footprints around it.

Rapunzel tilted her head, studying what he'd made. "It's a snow angel," he told her. She gasped in delight when she saw that it was, indeed, angel-shaped, and threw herself down beside it to make her own. After that they traipsed across the palace grounds, making more wherever there was room.

Finally the moon had risen completely, and it beamed down at them sleepily as they lay on the ground and stared at the stars. Almost unconsciously, Eugene reached out and stole Rapunzel's hand, like he had all those days ago on their little boat, when he was still a thief and she was just a sheltered girl trying to discover the world.

They twisted their necks to share a smile for a long moment before turning their eyes back to the stars.

They lost track of time. But when Rapunzel finally exhaled and looked back at him, Eugene was fast asleep in the snow looking, as always, much more adorable unconscious than he could ever bring himself to look when he was awake. She was sorry to wake him, but she didn't want to leave him out in the snow where his ears could turn black and fall off.

He stumbled into the palace after her just in time to join her parents for dinner. The cook brought them hot chocolate when Rapunzel asked for it, and she sipped it gingerly, finding that Eugene was right again and it was the perfect thing to have.

She turned to tell him so, but he'd fallen asleep with his face smushed into his hand. She blinked in surprise, but everyone else just smiled knowingly.

Poor Eugene. I think running around with Rapunzel would be exhausting.

Oof, this turned out a lot longer than I thought it would be. It just goes to show I can't write anything short. I really meant to include the King & Queen, but I have not seen one fic that managed to capture the beauty they have in the movie, and I seriously doubt my ability to capture it, so I left them almost completely out even though I love them to bits.

I'm thinking about expanding this to include all 4 seasons, so reviews would be loverly!

*ETA: HOLY CRAP! I have never gotten so many reviews/favourites so fast! I think my email just about died from overload of FF notifications. Seriously, thank you so much! You are all amaza-zing!