A/N: Because I'm never satisfied, I went back and revised chapter 6. Nothing major, just changed some of the dialogue and added a tiny but important detail towards the end. This is why I take forever to update. I'm always going back and finding things I have to re-rewrite. If you read chapter 6 when it first uploaded, you might want to reread. (If you read it within the last week, you should be fine.)

And if you're a longtime follower who has just found out that this fic is back from hiatus, you'll want to read from the beginning. A lot of it has been changed and rewritten because the original sucked.

~Chapter 7~

"Don't look at me like that. I know I messed up."

Stuffed animals are just stuffing wrapped in cloth and sewn together. They don't have brains or auditory systems, so Pascal obviously can't hear or comprehend anything Rapunzel says to him.

Even so, his little plastic button eyes are looking more judgmental than usual today.

But what choice does she have? There's only so much stress she can work out of her system by brewing cup after cup of chrysanthemum tea. She needs some kind of outlet for her thoughts, some way to sort them out that's not just stewing in her own internal monologue, which tends to spiral into I'm going to flunk out of college and Mother will hate me and I'll never amount to anything whenever she's left alone with her thoughts for too long.

Hence, talking to Pascal.

She may wind up looking like a nut job to anyone who walks in on her, but at least Pascal can't spill her secrets. Being able to talk things out confidentially is supposed to be therapeutic, kind of like talking to a therapist or a doctor, who legally can't share patient's problems with anyone else. Or writing in a diary, as long as no one else finds it.

"Yeah, I should talk to him, I know. But what am I supposed to say?"

Sorry I ran away, I thought you were doing the thing my mom does would just invite more probing questions.

Sorry I've been avoiding you, I'm a mess and shouldn't have been let out to interact with actual humans is just throwing a pity party for herself. Not something a Mature Adult should do.

Sorry I've been avoiding you, I was thinking of all the ways you could have been bad news is both unnecessary and rude.

Maybe she should just apologize again for overreacting and leave it at that.

"Except, I really, really want to stay friends with Flynn. And leaving the issue unresolved would not be conducive to that. He'll forgive me, of course, because he's a nice person, and I should feel bad for thinking he wasn't. But if he doesn't understand why it happened or how to avoid a repeat incident, it'll be left as unfinished business. He might just decide that I'm too unstable and volatile to be around—"

You don't know that, Pascal cuts in before her train of thought can spiral back to the inevitable everyone will hate me and I'll be all alone.

"Yes, I do know that. Anytime Mother blows hot and cold, I know I just want to get away from her and never speak to her again."

And yet she doesn't. Because Mother is the only family she has. And with her health problems, who would take care of Mother if Rapunzel leaves?

There's also the part where she has no idea how to be an adult. She doesn't have a job, or any real employable skills, let alone any money to her name. She can't write a check. She doesn't know how bank accounts or credit cards work. She doesn't know the first thing about apartment hunting, or signing a lease, or paying a cell phone bill.

She doesn't know any of these things, because Mother never taught her. It's like she preaches day and night about the importance of independence and how you're _teen years old now, Rapunzel, you need to start doing these things yourself, while never bothering to show her how to grow up.

Yeah, sure, it's all Mother's fault that Rapunzel is socially incompetent, in addition to completely incapable of taking care of herself. Just blame everything on Mother. While she's at it, why not throw "a horrible, ungrateful daughter" onto that growing list of things she is?

Pascal (how does he manage it?) gives her his classic unimpressed face.

Oh, right, this was supposed to be about Flynn and The Incident.

The note he asked Mulan to pass on is still sitting unopened on her desk. She hasn't managed to psych herself up to read it yet. What if Flynn is mad at her for avoiding him? What if the note is just him cursing her out for being a horrible, fun-ruining, overly sensitive person? What if he's explicitly written that he's done with her crazy and doesn't want to be friends anymore? She doesn't know if she's ready to hear it.

Of course, it could also just be Flynn apologizing for accidentally hurting her feelings and asking to be friends again. Mulan did say he'd been watching their door like a sad puppy.

Except…he hasn't called or texted or messaged her at all. What if he doesn't want any more contact with her, and the note is just his way of definitively letting her know?

So basically, until she can work up the nerve to open the darn thing and read it, it's going to be Schrodinger's note, where Flynn is simultaneously looking to reconcile and cutting off all contact.

All jokes aside, she really does need to talk to him soon. She'd managed to avoid him for the entire rest of the weekend and all of Monday and Tuesday, when she finally elected to get out of her room and spend her regular socializing time at the library instead. Aside from Mulan, none of her friends have said anything to indicate that they know about the incident. Snow did venture to message her on Facebook and ask where she's been for the past few days, but she seemed to buy Rapunzel's excuse of just being super busy.

(In her defense, she didn't spend Tuesday evening in the library entirely to avoid Flynn. He still has her calculus book, which she needed for her homework. And because she still hadn't figured out what to say and wasn't ready to face him, she decided to go to the library to find a copy of the book instead. Because that's obviously what a Mature Adult would do.)

(Shut up, Pascal.)

Wednesday evening, she sneaks out to the dining hall an hour before the time her friends' usual dinnertime and returns with her to-go box to find an email waiting for her from Professor Francesca Robinson.

Hi Rapunzel,
Thanks for writing in. I'd like to set up a meeting with you to discuss your interests and experience. Are you available next Monday at noon?
Regards,
Franny F. Robinson, PhD

Something sharp like a bolt of panic lances through her, and she hastily shoves it aside. Now is not the time for this.

It's such a weird feeling. She usually gets it when she has to work up the nerve to ask Mother for a favor or a gift, like extra notebook paper or a specific brand of paint. It also happened a lot when she was volunteering at Dr. Porkchop's research lab and had to take time out of the postdocs' busy day to ask how she could make herself useful. It's sort of like she feels guilty about inconveniencing other people, especially people who have real jobs and authority over her and better things to do than favors for some random nobody like herself.

The thought of having to take up even more time in Prof. Robinson's schedule to meet face-to-face when she's already imposed on her enough by sending that unsolicited email in the first place… It almost makes her want to slam the laptop shut and spend the next few hours doggedly ignoring it, to pretend like she hasn't noticed the response at all.

It'll be like the "Schrodinger's note" Flynn wrote her: until she opens her laptop back up, Prof. Robinson will be both expecting and not expecting a reply from her.

She's starting to sense a pattern here.

…Which is stupid, because unless she dreamed this whole thing, the message will be there in her inbox the next time she logs in, and Flynn's note will be there on her desk the next time she looks. And procrastination always resulted in Mother being absolutely furious with her for going off-schedule and taking far too long to complete an assignment she didn't want to do. She really should just suck it up and confirm the meeting time with Prof. Robinson. At least do that. She can deal with the potential emotional gut-punch of confirming that Flynn hates her later.

Something simple like Yes, Monday at noon works for me, see you soon should suffice. So why is her heart pounding out of her chest? Why are her shoulders so tense? Why does she feel so wound up, like she needs to run as fast and as long as she can to work it off? Why is her sympathetic nervous system kicking into overdrive at the sight of an email and making her feel like how early Homo sapiens in Africa probably felt when they spotted a lion in the grass?

Why is she so distressed?

(Is this what it's like to have an anxiety disorder? Because the last thing she needs right now is a trip to the student wellness clinic for a counseling session, where she'll probably have to do introspective things and unpack the big questions, like why do I get panicky about premed things or why do I take compliments so badly that I end up completely avoiding people and making them hate me?)

Also, what is this—an interview for a job that she's not even going to be paid for? What is she even going to say? "I spent a summer volunteering in a lab, but I mostly got in the way so I didn't get to do much"? "This has nothing to do with my previous research experience, I just picked your lab because I have no real interests and no idea what I want to do"?

At least the tone of Prof. Robinson's reply seems friendly and more casual than the original message Rapunzel sent her. Definitely less annoyed than expected. And she actually wrote out full sentences, instead of the terse "sure" Ariel received from one of her professors when she wrote in asking for an extension on an assignment when she was down with laryngitis…

Mother scoffs when the topic comes up over the phone that night. "Quit overthinking it and just set up that meeting. You're a college freshman, so she's not looking for any Nobel prize-worthy accomplishments. She probably just wants to gauge how much her lab can teach you."

That's a fair point, Rapunzel concedes. But it still doesn't change the fact that she feels like an intruder and would sooner crawl under her desk and hide than meet with Prof. Robinson and show that she has zero experience—

"You mentioned that they grow the human vocal cord tissue in the lab," Mother continues. "Before you go to that meeting, you should read up on this professor's papers and familiarize yourself with how they do that. Theoretical things, like which genes are supposed to be upregulated or downregulated, what pathways and growth factors they take advantage of. That way, they can focus on teaching you the benchwork techniques and you can make yourself useful around the lab."

Maybe she should have taken Mother up on that offer to follow her to college and get an apartment in Epcot City, after all. It's so much easier to tackle these anxiety-inducing, seemingly insurmountable tasks when she has someone levelheaded and practical to break them down into smaller, more manageable steps and coach her through them.

(She just has to ignore the part where Mother's both the source of and the solution to these problems.)

The door is locked.

Don't panic, don't panic. Don't. Panic.

Why aren't her keys in her backpack? Did she drop them somewhere on campus? Maybe someone will find them and turn them in to the security office…but she doesn't have her name on them, so even if campus security did chance upon them, they wouldn't know to call her.

Agghhhh…

Maybe Mulan and Ariel are home. They did stay up pretty late last night, so maybe they decided to skip class today to catch up on sleep?

Nope. Nobody answers the door when she knocks.

She shoots them a quick text. Hey, I'm locked out. Is one of you around?

Sorry, I'm in class until 4, Mulan replies immediately.

Same, Ariel adds a moment later. Maybe try asking an RA? Or go to the housing office for a spare key?

Max doesn't answer when she knocks on his door. Tiana's not around, either. The RAs aren't on duty until 9 p.m. Who knows how long until one of them returns to Valley Tower?

Housing will undoubtedly lend her the spare key, but only if she returns it within an hour. That's not going to help if her keys are lost. She's going to need to get them replaced. And that costs money. And then Mother's going to find out, and she's going to get in trouble for being so absentminded and irresponsible, and Mother might even decide she's not mature enough for college so she'll stop paying her tuition, and then she'll have to drop out…

Breathe.

Best case scenario, she left the keys in her room this morning. She's usually pretty good about remembering to bring everything she needs, but that's because she keeps everything lined up neatly on her desk and ready to go the night before. So if, for whatever reason, she forgot to put her keys in their usual place last night, then there's a nonzero chance that they're still in her room…which she is currently locked out of.

And she was decidedly not ready to go this morning. She'd stayed up very late last night with her friends, and not because they wanted to this time. One of the guys on their floor—some guy named Louis—decided to get ridiculously drunk, on Thursday of all nights, and was too wasted to figure out how to use his key to get back into his room. His roommate, Ralph, didn't want him puking his guts out in their shared room, so Louis wound up crashing on one of the couches in the common area.

Which was his right, of course. After all, he lives on this floor, too, so he's equally as entitled to use the space as Rapunzel and her friends are. But now that they're nearly two months into the school year, the mindset of "everyone on this floor must be friends because we're family" has shifted and fragmented into a social dynamic of "party crowd goes out, non-party crowd hangs out in the lounge, and everyone else hides in their rooms." To be completely honest, Rapunzel couldn't help but feel annoyed by Louis's intrusion last night, and it surprised her that she'd started to think of the lounge in terms of "ours" versus "theirs."

At any rate, Louis was too drunk to sleep safely, so Rapunzel, Mulan, Ariel, Quasimodo, Aladdin, and Belle decided to take turns staying up and keeping watch on him. Partly to make sure he didn't vomit and aspirate, but also partly so that if an on-duty RA came and found him passed out on the sofa, someone could be there to explain the situation, in case the RA decided this was a case that warranted a trip to the emergency room.

(Flynn wasn't there, because of course on the day she finally worked up the nerve to return to the lounge to face him, he didn't show up.)

And so Rapunzel and Quasi got stuck with the 3-5 a.m. shift. They mostly just sat on the couch on either side of Louis (and seethed with jealousy that he got a full night's sleep), and Rapunzel would prepare to do the Heimlich while Quasi leaped for the barf bucket (repurposed from an extra trash can they found in the common bathroom) any time Louis groaned or shifted in his sleep.

Needless to say, she was exhausted when their shift was up and Belle and Mulan showed up to take over, so she'd climbed into bed, shrugging off her hoodie without even bothering to aim for the laundry hamper—

The hoodie! Of course!

She'd absentmindedly put her keys into the pocket of her hoodie when she got back to her room last night. And then she was too tired to remember to pull them out and set them on her desk next to her phone and wallet. The keys would have still been in her hoodie, on the floor, when she left this morning!

So all she has to do is go to the housing office (if she can find it—she's pretty sure Max or Tiana mentioned during orientation that it's in the basement of the administrators' building) and swear up and down that she's positive her keys are locked in her room and promise to return their spare key within an hour.

She's about to do just that—step into the next elevator that arrives and take a trip downstairs—when the doors open and Flynn steps out.

They both freeze as soon as he looks up and spots her.

Seriously, brain?

She's practiced with Pascal and revised and rehearsed over and over again what she's going to say…and now all she can do is stand there like an idiot.

It's not supposed to go like this. She's supposed to hide in her room after class until it's time to go to dinner with her friends, and on the way to the cafeteria, she'll pull Flynn aside and…what? (Quick—what was the plan again? Apologize for freaking out and then pretend like everything is normal again, right? Maybe duck back into her room and hide for good measure?)

Behind him, the elevator doors rattle shut.

Flynn recovers first. He clears his throat and instantly wipes the deer-in-the-headlights look off his face, his features rearranging themselves back into his usual easygoing half-smirk half-grin.

"Hey."

"Um. Hi."

"You were on your way down?"

"Yeah."

A pause.

…So they're not going to talk about it?

"I'm locked out," she blurts. Not that she owes him an explanation. It's not like he asked. But if he's going to make casual chitchat without even acknowledging what happened the last time they spoke, then maybe it's better to not rock the boat by bringing it back up. Unfortunately, that means the only safe topic of conversation she can think of on the spot is her current predicament.

He blinks at that. "Wait, what?"

"I think I left my keys in the pocket of my hoodie last night. So I have to go down to housing to—"

"Wait. You? Locked out? But you're always so—" he gesticulates at her vaguely "—you know. Put together. On top of things. You always have your shit together."

"The sentiment is appreciated, but, well, clearly today is not my day."

Another pause.

"Well, um, good luck with that." He starts heading for his door, signaling an end to whatever this weird conversation has been.

She sighs and pushes the down button to summon the elevator.

Okay. So that was not quite the first post-Incident conversation she was expecting after nearly a week of radio silence. A little awkward, for sure. But at least they're on speaking terms again instead of avoiding each other. And he seems to be making an effort to act like everything's fine. She'll just have to find him again later today to apologize for real, before so much time passes that bringing it up will feel like reopening a wound for no reason—

"I could help you, you know."

Wait, what?

He's hesitating in front of his door and fiddling with his keys. "To get into your room," he clarifies, eyes darting around and landing on everything except her. "I know how to pick locks with a hairpin—not that I was planning to pick your lock without permission, of course. I don't even have a—wait, do you have one? A hairpin, I mean. Though, your permission to pick your lock would also be nice. Obviously."

"Um…no, I don't have any hairpins," she responds slowly.

(Why is he talking so strangely? It's stilted and rushed and…almost like he's rambling.)

"That's okay! Maybe I can use a spare coin and file it down into a key shape. I just have to get my Swiss Army knife and—"

"Flynn, it's fine. I was just going to go to the housing office and ask for the spare key. And Mulan and Ariel will be back eventually. I'm running on maybe four hours of sleep right now, and I really don't want to deal with the consequences of you doing anything potentially illegal for my sake."

"The housing office is all the way across campus. I can get you into your room much faster, and you'll be able to catch up on even more sleep—hey! I bet I could crawl out my window and use the fire escape to get into your room!"

He opens his door, apparently prepared to actually follow through on his ridiculous plan. Rapunzel sighs and follows him through his room, gingerly picking her way around the piles of discarded clothing on the floor. (How do he and Aladdin tell each other's stuff apart when their room is this chaotic?)

"As brilliant as the window idea sounds, Flynn, I'm pretty sure that's illegal, too."

"Actually, it's not. It's just against dorm rules."

She rolls her eyes and throws up her hands in defeat as he tosses his bag into a chair and makes a beeline for the window. "Oh, by all means, then. That makes all the difference."

"It does." Undeterred by her sarcasm, he grins and starts clearing various potted plants off the windowsill.

"You'll have to remove the insect netting, and then it might break, and you'll get in trouble—"

"Relax, Your Highness. The normal windows in this building have insect nets. The fire escapes don't." He lifts the heavy sash and sticks his hand out the window as proof. "See?"

"You're really going to do this, aren't you? Flynn, someone's going to see you!"

"Well, if they do, we'll just tell them it was a royal emergency."

Unbelievable! He's halfway out the window now, carefully testing the weight of a foot on the ancient, rusty metal deathtrap. It groans slightly in protest, but nothing catastrophic happens. Satisfied, he climbs fully out onto the fire escape and waves cheekily at her.

"You coming or what, Blondie?"

"Um…I don't know if it'll hold both our weights. I'll just…hang back here?"

"Suit yourself." He shrugs and disappears from view, the metal shifting and squeaking with each footstep.

Seconds later, she hears the telltale scrape of the fire escape window next door opening. (Huh. She probably should lock that window in the future. Just in case a potential burglar was watching and noticed how easily Flynn broke into her room just now.) The fire escape groans again in protest as Flynn shifts his weight, probably hoisting himself onto the windowsill.

Then silence.

As she waits, Rapunzel takes the opportunity to look around. It occurs to her that she's never actually been inside Flynn's room before, since they usually hang out in a crowd in the lounge or in Ariel's room. The most she's seen of it has been from out in the hallway, when their gang is knocking on doors to collect everyone for their dinnertime trek to the campus dining hall. It feels a little weird being in Flynn's room without him, but he's in her room now, too, so she figures they're about even.

Flynn and Aladdin's room is a little smaller than the one she shares with Mulan, but their furniture is in a similar setup, with each boy's furniture shoved against the wall on either side of the room, the beds lofted over the desks and wardrobes. There's an entertainment system set up against the far wall, with a flat screen TV and a pair of gaming controllers. Rapunzel recognizes the tiger-print beanbag in the corner as Jasmine's, which she'd brought over from her hotel room one night when she was playing Mario Kart with Aladdin and Flynn.

She also recognizes a pair of Jasmine's earrings sitting on one of the desks, next to what appears to be a framed photo of Aladdin at his high school graduation. Huh. Looks like those two actually are together now. She makes a mental note to ask her friends when that happened and what else she missed.

The bed nearest her, against the wall that separates their two suites, must be Flynn's, then. His side of the room is much less personal-looking than Aladdin's. Just a plain navy blue bedspread and a plaid comforter. No posters on the wall. No other décor. Nothing to clue her in on what kind of person lives in this space or what his interests are, except that he exists. (And apparently prefers navy blue bedsheets.)

Well, Mother always did say that, in statistics, sometimes the absence of data can tell a compelling story all on its own. Flynn's sparsely-decorated living quarters seem to line up with what Rapunzel already knows about him. He doesn't "do backstories." Or relationships. He goes to parties and brings back strangers to hook up with, and he doesn't let them leave hickeys on him, and he most likely sends them away in the morning if they haven't left already. It makes sense for him to present his living space this way, so they wouldn't be compelled to linger and try to get to know him better.

He doesn't seem to like clutter much, either. There's a stack of notebooks (and her calculus textbook) shoved in one corner of his desk, and a plain black desk lamp in the other. No picture frames or other mementos like Aladdin's. The only other thing on the desk is Flynn's laptop, a clunky old thing that looks like it's seen several years' worth of scratches and dents. Unlike Aladdin's, it doesn't have any laptop stickers, not even the generic oval "WDU" stickers that the university gave to all the freshmen as part of their move-in packet. There is a patch of grime near the corner of the lid, like adhesive residue from a sticker that used to be there but which Flynn has long since removed and tried to scrub off. The whole effect is very plain, very impersonal. If Rapunzel didn't know better, she would have expected his desktop background to still be the default Windows 10 wallpaper, the one with the four-paned window and the streaks of blue light. (It's not. He left it open once when they were doing physics homework together, and she saw that it was a picture of a tropical island, probably taken off Google Images.)

Before Saturday, Rapunzel had thought of Flynn as a fairly open person. He didn't volunteer any information about himself per se, but she assumed that he'd have no problem sharing if anyone asked—especially since he didn't have any issues with bragging about the type of female upperclassmen he brings back from parties just to make Snow and the rest of their friends uncomfortable. But now that she's spoken to him and seen the evidence here in his room, all she can wonder is whether any of them actually knew anything about him at all…

Ugh. It's not fair. She knows that there's nothing particularly special about a "bad boy" who hides his past to give an air of mystery and intrigue, inviting naïve and gullible girls to draw their own conclusions and build their own image of how interesting he must be because he presents himself as a blank slate to project their fantasies onto him. The facts remain that Flynn is from Corona, and he doesn't talk about his past, and he has anonymous hookups. Anything else she thinks she knows about him is either based on inference—he takes physics and calculus, so he's probably into math and science (although he could just be taking those classes to fulfill his major requirements)—or completely drawn from her own imagination (as tends to happen with the halo effect). That should be enough to tell her that there's no point in trying to know more. She doesn't even like Flynn that way—she doesn't. None of this should pique her—

She jumps as a knock sounds behind her.

"You still there, Blondie?" Flynn calls, his voice muffled by the wall.

"Y-yeah!"

"I found your keys! Come on over, I opened your door for you!"

Oh. Right. Of course. She hurries out to the hallway, shaking her head to banish away any more thoughts on whatever secret life Flynn might be living behind the façade of his plain blue bedroom and coldly impersonal decorating choices.

She finds him lounging in her desk chair, twirling her keyring on his finger.

"Hey."

"…Hey."

He tosses her the keys, and she tucks them into the pocket of her jeans.

"Thanks."

"Mm-hm."

Oh, so they're going back to this now? How long they can keep this up before Flynn figures out just how horribly boring a conversationalist she is? Now that her predicament with the keys has been resolved, she literally cannot think of anything to talk to him about. Oh hey there, buddy, how've you been since I called you a bad person for something you didn't even say about me? Right. Like that would go well.

"So," Flynn begins, readjusting to sit backwards in his chair. He folds his arms across the seatback to rest his chin on them, regarding her with his wide brown eyes.

She raises her eyebrows at him expectantly, but he doesn't say anything else. He doesn't seem to be in a hurry to leave, though, and it would be rude for her to ask him to, considering he just risked getting caught and broke into her room to retrieve her keys for her.

She decides to sit across from him in Mulan's desk chair and mirror his position.

"So," she echoes.

"Uh…how's life?"

"Life is…okay."

"Yeah?"

(Okay, no, this is excruciating. Better to just bite the bullet and get this over with. They're alone. No friends around to interrupt. What better time than now to address the elephant in the room?)

"I'm sorry," she blurts, hands instinctively flying up to fiddle with the lock of hair at her temple. "About Saturday. And…and everything else. I shouldn't have freaked out, or accused you of making fun of me. It wasn't fair for me to immediately assume you were that kind of person. And, um, I shouldn't have run off, or avoided you afterwards," she finishes lamely.

Somewhere up there on her bed, Pascal is probably face-palming internally. Or applauding sarcastically.

Seriously? She's had nearly a week to formulate what she's going to say, and this is the best she can come up with? If she and Mother had a fight this bad and this was how she apologized, Mother would have sent her to her room to "think about what you did" and made her re-write her entire thing.

Flynn, to his credit, doesn't react the way Mother would.

"Wait, seriously? It was my fault. What I said was really messed up—"

"And I should have found you and apologized sooner, but I didn't know what to say, and I was scared you'd be mad and wouldn't want to talk to me anymore, and I really want to stay friends, I do—"

"Relax, Blondie! Really, it's okay. We're cool. We don't have to talk about it anymore."

He tries to smile at her reassuringly, but there's something…off about him. He's drumming his fingers nervously against the back of the chair, and he almost seems to be clutching the seatback like his life depends on hiding behind it.

Was her apology not good enough? (What a silly question! Of course it was terrible.)

"It was my mother," she says before she can chicken out. Flynn quirks an inquisitive brow (that was, admittedly, a pretty random statement to make), but he doesn't offer any response, so she plows on, "She would make comments to me like…like what I thought you said. I mean, she'd say things that sounded like compliments, but then she'd take them back, play it off like a joke. I always felt so dumb for not being able to tell when she was teasing and when it was real."

Oops, maybe that came out wrong. Flynn's eyebrows are knit together now, like he's upset.

"It wasn't a big deal," she adds hurriedly, with a shrug. "Mother…teased me a lot. It's just the way she is. I just ruin the fun most of the time because I'm too sensitive."

"Is that what she says about you?"

"Is what?" Rapunzel asks, a little too sharply. (Probably uncalled for, but who doesn't get defensive if it looks like someone is about to criticize their family?)

Flynn backs up a little, holding up his palms. "Never mind. I just…if you're okay with it, then I guess… I just remember you were really upset that day, so I wanted to make sure, ah, there wasn't something else going on…?"

"Like…?" she prompts, trying and failing to keep the testy edge out of her voice.

He sighs and picks at a stray thread on his sleeve. "Look, I get that this is none of my business. And I was an orphan, so I'm not exactly an expert on good parenting. I just think confusing the heck out of your kid and making them feel dumb when they can't read your mind sounds a lot like gaslighting."

"What?"

"You know. Gaslighting. When you make someone question their own reality—"

"I know what gaslighting is, Flynn. What's your point?"

"Well, did you mom ever do anything like that? Or…worse than that?"

Well, there was the time Mother marched her out of the house and made her stand on the front porch because Rapunzel had drawn on the walls with marker. (She was young and dumb, okay?)

And all the times she got slapped in the face for talking back.

And all the times she had to sit down and write "I will manage my time efficiently and answer questions accurately" five-hundred times whenever she took too long to complete a problem set or got too many questions wrong.

And all the times Mother would grade Rapunzel's problem sets and would call her into her room every time she found a wrong answer. There were multiple occasions when Rapunzel would return to Mother's room to be chastised for how "sloppy" and "careless" she was for the umpteenth time, and then she would get in trouble for showing any signs of irritation. After all, this was her education, and Mother was just doing this for her own good, so how dare she get annoyed at Mother for her mistakes, and does she even care about her own future?

And there was that time Mother accused her of "losing" her reading glasses (even though the glasses turned out to be on the floor under Mother's bed, where they had undoubtedly slipped out from under her pillow), and Mother added on more and more punishments the longer Rapunzel protested and denied touching them.

That fight had turned particularly nasty when Mother insinuated that Rapunzel was trying to take advantage of her old age and failing health by hiding the glasses to avoid having her homework graded, and Rapunzel, in her frustration, finally snapped and called Mother a name she dares not repeat.

In response, Mother went completely silent and fixed Rapunzel with possibly the most terrifying Evil Eye she had ever received. The house was so still that she could hear the seconds ticking from the clock in the kitchen.

Tick…tick…tick…tick…tick—

Without a word, Mother grabbed her purse and stormed out of the house. She marched out to the driveway, yanking her sleeve away when Rapunzel tried to cling to her. She got into the car, ignored Rapunzel's tearful apologies and promises to be good and pleas to not leave her, and slammed the door, narrowly avoiding taking Rapunzel's fingers off only because she snatched her hand away at the last moment. Then she started the car, peeled out of the driveway, and didn't return for four entire days, during which Rapunzel berated herself nonstop for being such a horrible person that she drove her own mother out of their home—

"Blondie? You good there? …Blondie? Rapunzel! Hey—hey!"

Someone snaps their fingers in front of her face, and she blinks. Tries to focus on his (Flynn's?) face. Shakes her head to clear it.

Unclenches the hand she doesn't remember clenching around her hair.

"Wha…? Oh, yeah! Sorry! Just…spaced out there for a second."

"So, your mom?"

(Not this again! Does this guy ever quit?)

"…What about her?" she replies carefully.

"Did she ever—"

"Flynn. What are you trying to imply here?"

"N-nothing. Sorry to pry. It's none of my business. I'm not your therapist. If you don't want to talk about it, then we won't."

"Yeah, that would be best… Sorry I got defensive," she adds meekly. (Did she imagine it, or did he sound a little annoyed with her just now? Or is she just bad at reading people's tone? Does that kind of prove Flynn's point about gaslighting? No, stop thinking about it.) "I mean—it's not that I don't appreciate your concern. It's just…it's too personal." And I'm a horrible person for even thinking about telling other people unflattering things about Mother.

"Yeah, no hard feelings. I get it."

No kidding. If anyone's going to understand her reluctance to talk about her past, it's Mr. "I Don't Do Backstory."

Is this how it's going to be, then? She and Flynn have gotten along fine when they're doing homework together or talking about neutral topics like school and weekend plans with their friends. But they don't exactly have a great track record when it comes to hanging out one-on-one, without the rest of their gang to act as a buffer and help keep the peace. It took just one question about either of their pasts for one of them to clam up. Heck, just now, the slightest bit of interest Flynn took in her home life was enough for them to get on each other's nerves. And Saturday was probably the only other time they've hung out one-on-one, and that resulted in them avoiding each other for the better part of a week.

Maybe they are just not meant to be closer as friends…

Oh, wait. Flynn's still talking.

"There's a lot more to my, uh, story than what I told you. Like how I was—"

Wait, what?

"What?" she verbalizes.

He's back to studiously picking at his sleeve and refusing to make eye contact with her. (Are the tips of his ears red? Is he blushing?) "My story. You know, that personal essay everyone writes to get into Disney? The note?"

Note?

Oh, right. The note he passed on to Mulan. The note she still hasn't read. The note that's currently still sitting behind him on her desk.

"Flynn, I, uh, have a confession to make. I didn't read it."

"Huh?" His gaze snaps back up to her at that. It flicks back and forth between her eyes before darting away again.

Rapunzel sighs and traces a pattern on the floor with the toe of her sneaker. "I was afraid you were mad at me for Saturday and didn't want to speak to me anymore, so I just kind of…put it off? I wasn't ignoring you, I swear," she adds quickly. "I just…I don't know. It was dumb. I should have just talked to you."

"It's okay." Flynn's eyes are trained on the floor, too, but at least he doesn't sound angry or hurt. He doesn't sound happy or like his usual self, either, but there's definitely some relief in his voice. "It wasn't, like, something urgent for you to know. I was just worried that you were mad at me for embarrassing you, so I thought I'd make us even by telling you an embarrassing thing about myself."

"Oh."

"It was—you know how Mulan threatens to 'out my secret' whenever I'm being annoying? The one I told her that time I played Truth or Dare with her? I thought I'd share it with you, but I was scared you didn't want to talk to me, so I wrote it out."

"Oh."

(She wishes she could say something other than "oh," but hey, at least she's not just sitting there in stone cold silence for Flynn to misinterpret as seething anger, right?)

His laugh sounds just a little nervous (a little forced) as he scratches the back of his neck. "I hindsight, I probably should have just manned up and knocked on your door and apologized. Here—" (he retrieves the note from the desk behind him and holds it out to her) "—it's yours if you still want to read it."

She accepts the offering but hesitates to unfold it. Maybe it's the mild panic that flits across his face for a split second before he puts on a brave face, masks it away. Or maybe their relationship still isn't quite back to normal yet, so it's better to stay on his good side. Either way, she decides against opening it.

"Flynn, if you're embarrassed for me to read it, I won't. You don't have to share if you're not ready for me to know."

With that, she holds up the edge of the paper between her fingers, takes a deep breath and—

Okay, in hindsight, she probably should have realized that this wasn't going to work. The note was folded multiple times, so it was too thick to tear. Obviously, all she was ever going to succeed in accomplishing was bending the paper a little.

But if her life were a movie, this would be the dramatic, emotionally climactic scene like the one in Mean Girls, when Cady gives a moving speech in front of everybody and breaks the plastic Spring Fling Queen tiara. In Rapunzel's mind, Flynn would stare at her in wide-eyed awe as she makes this Big Important Gesture to preserve his dignity, and the background music would swell to a crescendo, and the note in her hand would easily tear into tiny pieces never to be read.

Instead, there is no background music, and the room is silent—apart from Rapunzel grunting from the effort of trying and failing to tear a very, very thick folded piece of paper. It's like the equivalent of someone trying to lean casually against a wall, maybe make a witty remark, only to fall straight through an open doorway.

Oh, and now Flynn is laughing.

"Sorry, sorry!" He recovers quickly and accepts the note back from her, standing up to toss it in the trash. "Thanks, Blon—Rapunzel. It's just…it would have been really embarrassing, so it means a lot that you—wait, that sounded lame. I didn't mean to laugh at you, I swear. You're just really cute—"

(—record scratch— If Rapunzel had to describe her mental state right now, she's pretty sure it would resemble something like TV static.)

He literally facepalms. "—shit, I can't believe I said that! I mean, it's true—I'm just an idiot. I'm just going to stop talking now—"

Huh. So this is what it's like to share a hug with someone after making up. That is, one where they both apologize and the other person doesn't demand a hug and Rapunzel isn't still resentful.

She's not really sure how it happened. One minute she's staring up at him like a deer in headlights, and the next, she's burying her face in his shoulder, and he's hugging her back and patting her on the head. He never struck her as much of a hugger, so she was probably the one who initiated it. She blames her TV-static brain that was still reeling from being called cute.

At least she didn't do something even dumber, like call him cute in return.

At any rate, she's not entirely sure how long they've been standing here. Is this too long for a friendly hug? How long can a hug last before it gets creepy? Are her thoughts racing? Is this all happening in slow motion? How is Flynn this much taller than she is? (Seriously, he's really not that tall. Probably one of the shorter guys on their floor. Is she really that short?)

They finally snap out of it when there's a jingle of keys from out in the hallway. She and Flynn spring apart just as the suite door opens and her roommates burst in. (Well, Mulan bursts in. Ariel maneuvers herself through the doorway, her arms loaded with shopping bags, which she carefully sets down on the counter in the kitchenette.)

"Rapunzel! We're baaaaack!"

"Oh, good, you got in!"

"Did you end up finding your keys?"

"Look what we got!"

"Oh hey, Flynn's here too! Can you help move these into the common fridge?"

As Flynn steps in to help Ariel with her groceries (come to think of it, Snow did mention something about their friends wanting to reserve the kitchen downstairs for the upcoming weekend so they can cook a proper meal in a proper kitchen, with a real stove and oven), he catches Rapunzel's eye and shoots her a wink.

She immediately looks away, forcing herself to take slow, even breaths to calm her heart down before her tomato cheeks can give her away. Except, oops, Mulan has definitely noticed. Her roommate eyes her quizzically, and Rapunzel can't help but think, You and me both.

What was that all about?

Lengthy end note/essay: Rapunzel's reaction when Flynn hints that she was abused might strike some of you as a little odd. Like, here's a golden opportunity to tell someone who's willing to listen and believe you! Why would you throw it away? Why would you defend your abuser now, when not one chapter ago, you were blaming them for your problems?

My experience is that too often in fiction, the abuse victim's narrative goes something like this: Victim thinks the way Abuser treats them is Just The Way It Is. Enter Decent Person. Decent Person is nice to Victim. Victim wakes up and realizes that Abuser was abusive and they deserve better. The end.

And that's just…not how it was for me. And it wasn't how it went in Tangled, either. And I am so grateful that Tangled portrayed Rapunzel's abuse and its effect on her realistically. It's subtle in the movie, but Rapunzel didn't magically see reality just because Flynn was nice to her. She didn't start out believing that Gothel was infallible or that the way she was treated was okay. She got upset when Gothel pulled the "look in that mirror" bait-and-switch on her. She got upset when Gothel called her all sorts of demeaning things in "Mother Knows Best." She didn't necessarily fight back or call Gothel out (probably because she's learned over the years that arguing with Gothel is pointless because the woman would just say things like "do you even hear yourself?" and cause her to question her sanity), but Rapunzel was never okay with it—and that's an important distinction to make. Flynn didn't teach Rapunzel to see that Gothel was abusive. Rapunzel already knew that. Flynn just showed her the possibility of a better life that was there if she was brave enough to take it, and that was what gave Rapunzel the push to start openly defying Gothel.

Victims of emotional abuse aren't idiots, and some of them can recognize that they are being abused—and they still might not come forward. Because even if they're not thinking maybe I'm just imagining it or maybe I deserved it, they could be thinking instead, it's not that bad, it could be worse, if I leave I'll be all on my own, I have no idea how to be independent, or maybe I'm the abuser for badmouthing them to everyone.

I guess the tl;dr from this chapter is that victims of emotional abuse can experience feelings of guilt after they tell someone about the abuse and can try to downplay the situation if someone finds out. The joys of Stockholm syndrome…

(…Is it too obvious? Did I manage to drive that point quite home, or did I overdo it and beat you guys over the head with it?)