Chapter 4 - Crash!

The only sound in the car was Rapunzel's chattering teeth. Flynn turned on the air-con and turned the temperature dial to maximum.

They went around a bend in the road and Rapunzel clutched the sides of the car like she was going to fall out.

"Flynn, are you sure this is safe!? We're going so fast!" she yelped.

"Perfectly safe," he replied.

She relaxed after a few minutes and peered out the window with wide eyes, one hand pressed against the glass.

"Wow," she murmured.

"What's 'wow'?" asked Flynn. All he could see was road and trees on either side of them.

"Everything," she replied earnestly.

"If you say so," he murmured, fumbling with the car radio to find something upbeat. He needed some sort of noise to keep him awake.

He wasn't the least bit surprized when Rapunzel exclaimed, "I've never heard music like this before!"

Flynn had, it was that loud bass-dropping electro stuff the night clubs in Corona blasted.

"Where are we going?" she asked suddenly.

"Back to town," he replied curtly. He was too tired to form proper full sentences, all his energy was being funnelled towards staying awake.

"What are we going to do about my mother?" Flynn winced, wishing she wouldn't call whatever that thing was her mother, and wishing that he'd been the only one that had seen it because then he could ignore that he'd seen it at all and get on with life.

"Nothing," he replied firmly.

"Nothing?" she echoed disbelievingly.

"Nothing at all," he repeated.

"B-but… but she was following us? We can't do nothing!"

"Sure we can. What would you have us do otherwise? We can't tell anyone, they'd think we're crazy, and to be honest I'm not entirely convinced that we aren't."

"No one would believe us?"

"Absolutely nobody. What we saw was impossible, heck everything today has been impossible, and I plan on drinking so much vodka when we get back that the whole incident is bleached from my brain."

"But Flynn, that doesn't change that she's out there. What if… what if she finds us? What if she just wants our help?"

Flynn thought about the wicked knife the creature had clutched in its bony hand.

"I don't think she wants our help," he sighed, with a shake of his head.

Rapunzel finally fell silent, and gazed out the window with an odd look on her face. It was awe (probably at the passing scenery – trees, trees, and more trees) mixed with apprehension, and it was rather adorable (Flynn could admit this to himself in his exhausted state, he was too tired to lie to himself.)

Flynn tried to mentally map out the course of action they would pursue. They would return to Corona and report to the Captain what had happened. That was the first order of business. The second order was going home, showering, and sleeping for a few days.

After he was well rested he would find someone to pass on the responsibility for looking after Rapunzel, and then, finally, the bleaching of his brain would commence. He planned to not even remember his own name when he was through.

"What about the Stabbington brothers?" exclaimed Rapunzel suddenly, "Won't they be mad we stole their stuff? What if they think we stole that treasure they were after?"

"The Stabbington brothers we can do something about. I can't believe me of all people is saying this, but our first stop when we get back will be the police station," Flynn had been a troubled youth and had survived a fair few run-ins with the law. The Captain was not his biggest fan to say the least.

"I think we should tell them about my mother," Rapunzel insisted.

"I think we should forget what we saw and never speak of it to anyone ever again," retorted Flynn. Rapunzel frowned, but didn't argue.

They fell into silence.

For an hour Rapunzel stared out the window, awed by everything she saw but so exhausted that her eyelids drooped despite her best efforts.

Eventually she fell asleep, legs curled to her chest, cheek lolling against the window. It didn't look the least bit comfortable but Flynn eyed her jealously wanting nothing more than to follow her into oblivion.

Instead his thoughts chased one another round and round in his head.

Glowing impossibly long hair, hell-bent skeletons, the Stabington brothers… they were all very large concerns.

Too large for his brain, clever though it may be, to tackle in its exhausted state.

Minutes or maybe hours passed, and then one second Flynn was trying desperately to keep his eyes open, the next Rapunzel was screaming at him to watch out. There was a deer, frozen, in the middle of the road…

Time slowed down. Flynn's muscles tensed. His mind honed in on random details, the pattern of white spots on the deer's back, the texture of the steering wheel under his hands as he desperately turned it, the screeching of the tires as he slammed down on the brake…

The car swerved, and missed the deer by a hairsbreadth. There was a split second when Flynn thought they might be all right, but then they tipped sideways off the road.

The car rolled down a steep bank, and Rapunzel screamed as all the windows shattered around them.

They completed a full rotation, only coming to a halt when they hit a sturdy tree at the bottom of the slope.

On impact with the tree, the airbags deployed, and Flynn's hit his face with enough force to really hurt.

He yanked up the handbrake sharply and switched off the engine. Rapunzel wasn't screaming anymore.

The fumbled around with the airbag to get it out of the way so he could undo his seat beat.

"Blondie, are you alright?"

She didn't reply. Her face was tilted away from him, and obscured by her hair.

"Rapunzel, talk to me!" demanded Flynn sharply.

He pushed her airbag out of the way and undid her seat belt.

He leaned over, and gently pushed her hair to one side so he could see her face.

Her eyes were wide and her cheek was cold and clammy where he lay his hand against it. Every bit of her exposed skin was splattered with shallow cuts from the shattered window glass.

Physically she seemed okay, if a little worse for wear. Mentally, Flynn suspected she was going into shock.

To extricate themselves from the car, they were both going to have to leave through Rapunzel's door because Flynn's was pressed hard up against the tree.

Flynn put his hands on Rapunzel's narrow, trembling shoulders and gently turned her to face him.

"Rapunzel, I know that was scary. I'm sorry that it happened. But you're fine, we're fine, and everything, except maybe this car, is fine."

"I t-thought you said this thing was safe," she said shakily in reply.

"And it is! Notice how we are both relatively unscathed? You can thank the safety features of the car for that. Why do you think I made you put on the seat-belt?"

Rapunzel took a deep breath.

"Okay… I'm all right now," she declared with determination.

"Atta girl! Now I'm going to need you to open your door to get out."

Rapunzel fumbled with the handle, and with gentle instruction from Flynn managed to pull on the lever and push on the door correctly, but the door would not budge.

Flynn suspected the outside of the door had been dented in and made concave.

"I think we're going to have to climb out the window..." suggested Rapunzel.

Before Flynn could formulate a reply, she had nimbly hoisted herself through the window, and was standing outside.

It took her much longer to pull all her hair out afterwards. Flynn had to help her because it had gotten tangled with the gears.

Once Rapunzel had her bundle of hair clasped to her chest, and after a lot of maneuvering, Flynn pulled himself through the window too.

Once he was outside, he was horrified to see that Rapunzel had bare feet and was standing directly on broken glass. It was impossible to stand near the car and not be standing on glass. He could see she had new cuts, and was bleeding already.

"Rapunzel your feet!"

She glanced down and very nonchalantly said, "Its fine, I'll fix it later."

Something about what she said and the how she looked, (pathetic with bleeding feet and struggling to carry her huge bundle of hair), made something in Flynn snap.

The same impulse that had him running back into the freezing river for her, had him unceremoniously yanking her off her feet. She yelped in surprise and clutched at his shoulder with one hand.

"Flynn! I can walk perfectly fine!" she cried in surprise.

"Hush Blondie. I'm not very chivalrous by nature, just indulge me this once," he said wryly. "Plus the bleeding all over the forest floor isn't a good idea. Could attract predators."

She clutched at his shoulder more tightly.

"I thought you said there weren't any bears!" she accused.

"There aren't any bears," Flynn agreed.

She glared at him with no real heat and tolerated him carrying her past the crash site glass to the grassy slopes of the bank leading up to the road.

Once they were past the worst of the glass, she wriggled in his grip until Flynn reluctantly set her down.

She plonked right down on the ground, and patted the grass next to her indicating for Flynn to sit.

Reluctantly, he did.

"Now Flynn…" she began, very gravely and seriously, "We're both covered in cuts. You have a bruise on your cheek."

"Umm, sure?" replied Flynn. Where was she going with this?

She scrunched up her nose, and seemed to turn something over in her head.

"Maybe it's best if I just show you. I'm going to do something a little… weird."

"Right…"

Rapunzel got to her feet and draped a loop of her hair over his shoulders.

"Uh, Blondie, what are you-"

"Just try not to freak out, okay?"

She knelt beside him, and started to sing.

It was the same song she sang to the skeleton, and Flynn watched as golden light streamed down the length of her hair. He still was not used to it doing that.

It took every bit of will power he possessed to not leap to his feet and throw the hair away from himself.

As the hair around his shoulder lit up, a curious sensation passed through his body. It was warm and tingly, like the feeling rushing back into a limb after it had gone to sleep, or standing in front of a roaring fire after being out in the snow. It wasn't unpleasant, just disconcerting.

Then he noticed that all the cuts and nicks on Rapunzel's face were gone. He looked down at his own arms in disbelief to see his skin was smooth and undamaged. He pressed a hand hard against his bruised cheek and only felt the pressure, no pain.

Rapunzel finished her song, and gently tugged the loop of hair away from Flynn's shoulder.

Flynn opened his mouth, mind racing.

She pre-empted his freak-out by blurting "Please don't freak out!"

He took a few gulping breaths.

"Me?Freakout?Iamperfectly,calm,andcollected,andallthoseothergreatwordsstartingwithC.Nofreakingouthere."

Again with the word vomit. Flynn exerted considerably effort to slow his racing thoughts.

"At some point we need to sit down and have an adult conversation about your mounting list of impossible feats," he said much more calmly. He had a funny feeling that he was simply too tired to really work himself up into a proper freak-out.

"So it doesn't just glow... Was there anything else it can do? Apart from the healing?"

He didn't really want to know, but he felt compelled to ask.

Rapunzel shook her head earnestly, "When I sing, it glows and it heals. That's all," she insisted.

"Are there any side effects?"

Rapunzel shook her head, and then yawned. It made Flynn yawn too; they were both exhausted.

"Well… thanks for healing me. And I'm sorry I crashed the car," Flynn felt compelled to apologise. He had, after all, nearly killed them both. He could hardly believe he'd dozed off at the wheel like that, but on the other hand, the last time he really remembered sleeping properly was before the Stabington Brothers snatched him, and that was a few days ago.

"Alright, you stay here. I don't want to see you anywhere near that broken glass. I'm going to see if the car can be salvaged," declared Flynn, getting to his feet and brushing imaginary dust of his pants.

Flynn confirmed what he already feared; the car was too firmly stuck, and the bank was far too steep for them to have any hope of getting it on the road again.

He only tinkered for about ten minutes, but when he returned Rapunzel had dozed off, curled into a ball with her hair as a blanket. He felt guilty shaking her awake, but dark clouds were gathering overhead and they needed to move on.

Although they had a huge head start, the skeleton was still weighing on Flynn's mind. He'd feel a lot better when they were somewhere that had doors and locks. They scrambled back up to the road together, and started walking.

Flynn didn't object when Rapunzel took his hand in hers. He was too exhausted to protest, and she was so exhausted she could barely walk in a straight line, so it was better that he had a grip on her so he could tug her along in the right direction.

It started to drizzle during their walk and soon Rapunzel was a shivering from the cold, and struggling to clutch her meters of heavy wet hair to her chest with one arm.

Flynn took pity on her and halted their march to help her twist her hair into a more manageable configuration. He wordlessly hoisted the lasso-like loops over one shoulder and offered her his other hand.

They trooped on in silence.

"W-where are w-we going?" asked Rapunzel through chattering teeth.

"We aren't much farther from the edge of town. I imagine we'll come upon somewhere we can make a phone call from eventually."

"A cone fall, right," she clearly had no idea what he was talking about, and Flynn thought it was a measure of how out of it she was that she didn't question him about it.

Soon they came across a gas station.

Flynn could have wept with joy.

He had the attendant call them a taxi. It wasn't going to be a cheap fare to get them back to his place, but he couldn't have cared less in that moment.

He decided his original order of business needed to be amended, first they would sleep and then they would contact the Captain. He was too tired to explain coherently.

He bought them a bag of candy for the wait, which Rapunzel gobbled up with surprising voracity. When the bag was finished, she stared at it with such blatant longing that he felt compelled to go buy her another.

She was well on her way to finishing the second bag when the taxi arrived.

She froze up when it was time to get in. Flynn wanted to kick himself for making her first car ride so terrible that she was traumatised.

Eventually she steeled herself and got into the car, but Flynn could see that her tiny hands were shaking in her lap.

He clipped her seatbelt into place and related his address to the driver. As the car started moving, Rapunzel grabbed his arm in a vice like grip. She stared at him with wide frightened eyes.

"Relax Blondie, most car rides don't end like our last one," he murmured soothingly, feeling a lot like a security blanket.

Rapunzel seemed to forget her fear as they drove deeper and deeper into New Corona. Her grip on his arm slackened, until she let go of him completely so she could press her face against the window.

She stared and stared and stared, in wonder and amazement. Flynn almost wished he could see his home city through her eyes. Through his own eyes, all he saw was buildings and people rushing around. Nothing special, just every day, boring, life.

He must have dozed off during the drive because what seemed like a heartbeat later, he was woken by Rapunzel shaking his elbow.

He looked groggily out the window. Although his place wasn't much, he'd never been happier in his life to see it.

He lived in an apartment building that was one of the first things to be built after the most recent eruption levelled the old city. This meant it was old. Flynn wasn't sure exactly how old, but definitely well over a hundred years.

The façade of the building was worn and stained, the Corinthian style pillars were all but unrecognisable, so eroded were their patterns, but the building did have character.

Flynn likened it to an old woman with a twinkle in her eye that let you know she was a looker in her youth even though she wasn't much to look at anymore.

Flynn paid the driver and walked into his building, Rapunzel trailing in his wake.

"You live here? Wow!" she exclaimed.

The downside to living in such an old building was that amenities tended to breaking down very frequently. It was just their luck that the single, rattling, death-trap of an elevator was out of order.

They traipsed up six flights of stairs before Flynn realised he did not have his key.

Luckily, (or unluckily) when the Stabbington Brothers had abducted his from his apartment, they didn't bother locking up after themselves.

The door swung open easily, and Flynn was amazed to find that the place had not been ransacked or robbed.

"Right, welcome to my humble abode," Flynn gave Rapunzel a cursory tour, which ended in the bathroom. He showed her how the taps worked (she was very impressed) and handed her a towel, before leaving her to clean herself up.

He had to force himself to keep moving at that point or else he'd stop and not get up.

He went and fetched his spare key to lock up the apartment. He felt a lot better once the door was bolted properly.

He got out some clean sheets and made his bed very sloppily indeed.

At that point Rapunzel wandered into his room clad in just a towel, and Flynn realised all she had was the dusty, old pink dress. He forbade himself from thinking about the fact that Rapunzel was naked under that towel, and distracted himself by turned to his chest of drawers and rifling through for something for her to wear.

He fished out some clean clothes and handed the items to her.

"It'll all be too big, but it'll do for sleeping," he said simply.

"Thank you."

He quit the room to let her change, and to have a shower himself.

The shower that followed was glorious. Hands down the best shower Flynn had ever had. Nothing had ever felt so good as the hot hot water rinsing away all the dirt and grime. Flynn exited the shower feeling like a new person.

When he went back to his room he was glad to see that Rapunzel was already wearing the clothes he gave her, because he completely forgot to knock.

She looked especially tiny wearing his clothes, the t-shirt he gave her hung to the side exposing one slim shoulder, and the shorts looked ridiculously baggy.

She was already asleep, curled into a ball on one corner of the bed with her hair twisted into loops and hung over the bed post.

Flynn shoved on some sweatpants, before turning off the light and collapsing on the other side of the bed into sweet oblivion.

Please tell me what you think, and sorry for typos.