Chapter 1

The girl was petite, and fair-skinned. She had wide piercing green eyes and short, brown, pixie-like hair. She was beautiful, there was no doubt about it, and you could tell that she led a very happy being. So why did she look terrified? She should have been ecstatic, now her life could be the way it should have been all along. But she was so overwhelmed that she could barely string two words together.

"You okay, Blondie?" The handsome man beside her asked, squeezing her closer to him with the one arm he had around her. Although the nickname no longer fit the little brunette, Eugene Fitzherbert had fallen into a habit. "We can do this later if you want…" That earned him subtle glares from the happy and worried man and woman sitting across from them. They waited eighteen- eighteen- years for this, the return of their lost princess. They wanted to know about her life as soon as possible.

"Rapunzel, dear," The Queen said gently, placing her hand on her daughter's knee, "Mr. Fitzherbert is right. We can always wait until you're more comfortable; more settled in our palace, before talking to us about… well, everything." You could tell that it caused the woman physical pain to say this, she wanted to know just what her daughter had been going through for these eighteen years.

"No, no." Rapunzel said, her voice clear over the underlying shakiness. The poor dear, The Queen thought sadly. This must be horrible for her. Normally in a situation like this- who were they kidding, there was no normally in this kind of situation. This was the kind of thing that happened once in a hundred lifetimes. But the Queen thought that, if this were a normal occurrence, wouldn't families just want to let it go? Pretend it never happened? Maybe. But she couldn't. She had to know what her daughter had been subjected to.

Rapunzel's hands rose to her shoulder to collect a lock of hair, but when they found only smooth fabric and cold skin, they flopped pathetically down into her lap. "I can do this," she muttered, so that only Eugene could hear. "Okay," she raised her head to look her parents in the eyes. Her mother's eyes. The exact same eyes she had looked at in her mirror in the tower. Who would have thought that someone else in the world had the exact same eyes, the same nose, even the same lips. The only thing she had seen before this was Gothel's cold, stony grey eyes and hard, sharp features. It was just odd to her. It was so much to take in. She ran her hands over her brand new incredibly short hair and took one more deep breath.

"What do you want to know first?"