Tangled: Between the Kisses

Act Three: Journey Towards Destiny

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Vigor the Visionary

Rapunzel and Eugene meet Vigor the Visionary…

Written by @tangledbea and @the-writer1988

Read on AO3

Ficlet inspired by this ask from @antiquepearlss

Flynn's boots skidded to a stop on the grass and he gazed up in horror at the towering rocks that prevented any forward progress for him and Lance. It was too tall and smooth to easily scale - the nearest handhold was a good two thirds of the way up. He could hear his best friend panting for breath behind him as he considered their next move. He was, after all, the brains between them.

"Dead end! Great job!" Lance joked as he gulped air.

"Yeah, ha ha," Flynn deadpanned. "Okay, here's the plan, you give me a boost, then I'll find a tree or rock or something to anchor a rope to and pull you up after me, just like in Equis."

"Gotcha."

Lance braced his back against the rock face and cupped his hands to give Flynn a leg-up. Flynn made sure his precious crown-holding satchel was secured before putting his foot in his friend's hands and waited for the lift. Like a well-oiled machine, Lance straightened, tossing Flynn like a caber significantly higher than he'd have gotten even standing on Lance's shoulders. At that hover point at the top of the parabola, in the moments before he started his descent, Flynn grabbed a protruding tree root with one hand and grasped a jutting rock with the other. His boots slid against stone until they found purchase, and just like that, he was most of the way up the wall.

As soon as he reached the top, he began looking for somewhere to secure a rope, but the whinnies of horses and the shouts of guards grabbed his attention, instead. Quickly, he looked back down into the short gorge to see how Lance was doing.

"Any minute now, buddy, they're right on our tails!" Lance pointed out urgently.

Shit. Flynn peered through the trees and thought he saw flashes of red and white as the guards closed in. Time to pivot.

"New plan, Lance!" he called down. "Get the hell out of there. We'll meet up at the Snuggly Duckling later, got it?"

"Got it!" Lance answered, and was sprinting from the dead end and diving into the brush. Flynn only hoped he'd be able to get away, but he didn't have a lot of time to think about that right now. He had his own tracks to make. A crossbow bolt barely missed his ear, and he took off at a sprint. Fuck, the guard had split up to catch them both!

Keep your head down, Lance, he silently hoped, then put all of his focus into evading the guard and finding some place to hide.

~*~*~

So, yeah, I almost immediately realized that they could plan to meet up at the Snuggly Duckling, but circumstances make it so that Eugene leaves with Rapunzel before Lance is able to get to them, thus opening Lance up to wondering what Flynn's game plan is.

This is from the first scenario, by the way.

Oh my god, this is such a good question! It immediately set my mind awhirl with possibilities! It couldn't have come at a better time, because I just finished editing the next chapter of BtK last night, and my head's in the Eugene and Lance feels!

Okay, so, first, would this mean that Eugene would double-cross Lance and take the satchel/crown for himself? Or would he be a good friend and help Lance out of that dead end?

In the first scenario, I see it falling back to "No Time Like the Past" rules, where if you fall behind, you get left behind. Lance would understand this, at least on the surface. But the stakes would be much higher, since theft of the crown was a much bigger deal. Also, if Eugene and Lance were still partners, the bounty on Lance's head would match Eugene's. I don't think Lance would give himself up to the guards without a fight, but I don't think he'd want revenge on Eugene, either. This may lead to a second act reunion, at the campsite, rather than Gothel joining forces with him. I can see Lance showing back up as a third wheel after Rapunzel and Eugene's talk about his past and why she stays in the tower, etc. In other words, they just opened up to each other, got vulnerable with each other, she showed him her magic hair, then here comes Lance, putting a jovial divider between them.

Oh! Oh! Okay, so what if Gothel doesn't recruit Lance, but she does tell him about the girl with the magic hair, and then sends him to the campsite with his own assumptions about what's going on? So now Lance thinks this is a ploy to keep Rapunzel chill until it's time to take/use the hair or whatever else. He thinks Flynn is still working a ruse and doesn't realize he's falling for Rapunzel and becoming more and more Eugene as time goes on. He might feel put out if he thought Flynn was trying to keep the big prize for himself, especially after also taking the crown. And if Eugene starts to explain the situation, Lance would think it's the long game to get the satchel back, and Eugene wouldn't yet have the strength of character to admit that he was falling and was starting to reconsider being a thief.

So now we've got Lance third wheeling it and Eugene trying not to show how much he likes Rapunzel while they're in the kingdom. (Bonus: that's twice the wanted thieves in the party now, while Punz is just trying to have a good time on her birthday!) We get to just before "I See the Light", and wouldn't you know it, the only boat left would be cramped if all three of them took it out! Lance, can you please stay here or take another boat or something? Again, Lance suspects that Flynn intends to make off with the crown without him for a second time, because they made no plans to meet up after this whole charade is over, and he's getting really irritated. Instead of enjoying the lights, he makes his way to the far bank, signals Eugene with the lantern, etc. Now when Eugene goes over there, he and Lance argue about the next step in the game. Think Miguel and Tulio towards the climax of Road to El Dorado. Eugene is just like, "Fine! Take the crown! I don't even want it anymore!" And Lance is like, "You mean you don't want to be partners anymore. You think I'm blind? You think I can't tell what's going on with you and the girl Eugene?" I don't think they'd get into an actual fistfight over this, but here comes Gothel with the steel chair a tree branch and knocks them both out, trusses them up and sends them back to the kingdom in a dinghy, then goes back to Rapunzel and shows her how, in the end, Flynn chose his life of crime over her.

In prison, Eugene and Lance are able to have a real heart-to-heart, clearing the air between them. Lance is able to see that Eugene was never out to betray him, and that he just wants a new life, a clean slate, with Rapunzel. He talks about the old lady who told him about her hair, and Eugene puts two and two together. Now it's Eugene and Lance who get broken out of prison by the Pub Thugs, but Lance stays with the Thugs to hold off the guards, urging Eugene to go save Rapunzel. Climax of the movie is the same as it is in canon.

For the second scenario, this means that Lance would be third wheeling it from the very start! They'd both find and climb the tower, Rapunzel would knock them both out and hide them both and interrogate them both. Lance and Flynn would be on the same page at the start, just trying to get the satchel/crown back from the girl, who is being a royal pain in the tuchus about this whole thing. But the thing is, with a second friendly presence who's also influencing Eugene the whole time, there's a lot less wiggle room for romance. I think there'd have to be some notable changes in order to keep New Dream on track in this version. It's hard to brew romance unless you can get the intended couple alone. I guess I'm saying it would need to be more like El Dorado in this version, where the (previously) Eugene perspective is now turned into a buddy flick, and that would need to be harmonious with Rapunzel's POV. Good for her that she makes two friends, but the impact of that means that she and Eugene are less likely to find time to fall.

Ooh, perhaps Lance doesn't get stuck in the cave with them, though? Yeah! Rapunzel and Eugene get stuck in the cave, Lance does not, they all get separated. Now Rapunzel and Eugene can have their opening up to each other stuff, Gothel can still set the suggestion to Lance that Eugene's trying to get Rapunzel's magical hair for herself, and we can pick up from the campsite scene in the first scenario! Yeah! But now, Lance is aware of the chemistry between Eugene and Rapunzel, and he's a bit more... reserved in the kingdom. Now he's playing the long game, waiting for the opportune moment to confront Flynn about Rapunzel and the crown and the hair and all that stuff. They fight after "I See the Light," continue on as in first scenario!

And this, my friends, has been a stream-of-consciousness brainstorming session by Bex!

The thing is, I don't think TTS would have ever had an episode with a one-to-one parallel with any of our holidays. After all, their Valentine's Day episode (which aired in August) was about The Day of Hearts, not Valentine's Day, which doesn't exist in the Tangled universe. So I don't think a Halloween episode would have been about Halloween.

People like to say that "The Wrath of Ruthless Ruth" doesn't count, because it's not actually Halloween, but the elements are all there: it aired in October, a dark and stormy night, autumnal iconography like pumpkins and grey skies, poltergeist activity, possession, being trapped in a location, the characters feeling terror and panic, a corporeal ghost... I'm not sure why it doesn't count to so many people when none of our holidays are represented as we literally celebrate them in the entire series.

I literally am @lokoteibex (that's my art blog), so you already have my answer. XD

LokoteiBex. I only have one fic with smut in it posted, and it's not a first-time smut fic (it's only in the epilogue chapter). The writing I've done in that regard has been in roleplay format, not in fanfic format. My RPs don't, for the most part, get posted on AO3. (Except that one fic with the smut chapter. XD That was an RP.)

I'm not sure where this ask is coming from. lol Not only do I have tons of ideas what it might have been like, I've written it myself, and I post all my fics on AO3, so I am well aware of it.

The Buddy Song animatic by Anna Lencioni

The series is wildly anachronistic as it is. The thing I love about it not being in a set time period is the ability to give the characters modern vernacular without it seeming out of place.

I'm seeing a lot of questions/comments on @syrasenturi's wonderful if brief analysis post, so I decided to throw in my take without clogging up their post.

No, I do not think Rapunzel was physically abused by Gothel, for the most part. Gothel wanted to keep her happy and complacent, and physical abuse is not the way to do that.

However, towards the end of the movie, after Rapunzel realized she was the Lost Princess, she was ready to leave. She turned her back on Gothel, intent to go out the window. To which Gothel uttered the infamous, "You want me to be the bad guy? Fine. Now I'm the bad guy." Mere moments before, Rapunzel proved she was physically stronger than Gothel. When she gripped her wrist to stop her from patting her on the head, Gothel had to really struggle to get free, and only managed to wrench her arm away when Rapunzel let go in order to walk down the stairs.

This leads me to conclude that Gothel had to physically attack Rapunzel, knock her out, in order to chain and gag her as she was when Eugene arrived at the tower. In my mind, Gothel hit once, but once was enough. (She did, after all, knock out each of the Stabbingtons with one swing of a tree branch each.)

Follow that up with Rapunzel knowing that Gothel had no qualms with stabbing Eugene. She probably realized in those moments that Gothel could have gotten physical with her any time she wanted.

In the series, Rapunzel flinching away wasn't a result of reaction to physical abuse, but a generalized reaction to trauma, to being afraid of angering people because Gothel would emotionally abuse her any ol' time she felt like it, but especially when she was displeased. Rapunzel had six months (at the start of the series) to process her entire relationship with Gothel, and you know she didn't come to any nice conclusions. She never showed any fear of Gothel until the series (with the exception of when Gothel was actively scaring her in "Mother Knows Best" and its reprise). Even as Gothel fell from the window, Rapunzel reached for her.

Six months of processing that relationship, processing that trauma, made Rapunzel fear Gothel and what she was capable of. And that, in turn, made her flinch away from anyone who might be upset with her.

I've always headcanoned that she found a way to keep going in her life with hair-like tools. I once came up with the idea that she used yards and yards of silk fabric with small weights sewn into the end so it would have the same heft as her hair when she threw it.

Incidentally, my favorite thing she does with her hair is from the movie:

Probably "Curses!"

I don't remember that exact line, but they definitely had a heart to heart by a river, and he was definitely being critical of how she was acting in that episode.

I think it was 100% the Captain being overprotective. As Captain, he was the one who told her when she got to be a guard (in "Great Expo-tations" and "Not In the Mood"), he's the one who set conditions ("if you finish all your handmaiden duties first"), and he's the one who handed command of the entire guard over to her when he was down for the count (in "The Secret of the Sundrop").

And again, part of why I think Corona isn't a sexist society (at least in terms of whether or not women are allowed to be guards) is because there was already a uniform and armor available for Cassandra to wear. The armor even had the boobs bump built in, so it's not like she was wearing armor designed for a man.

EUGENE EUGENE EUGENE EUGENE EUGENE EUGENE!!!!!!

Frankly, I think Rapunzel would have lost it. Like, Cassandra threatening him was the catalyst that made her give in and recite the next incantation. His life being in danger was what made her use the Reverse Incantation against Hector Tiri in the Great Tree. I think Cassandra outright killing him would have made Rapunzel not hold back in the slightest at the top of Cassandra's tower. Hell, she already looked like she wasn't putting any effort into using those powers.

Cassandra was putting out hella effort, trying to take her down.

All of Cassandra's body language was forceful and energetic while Rapunzel's movements were serene and simple, and Rapunzel was still more powerful. So, I think that if Cassandra had killed Eugene, it would have broken Rapunzel, and she actively would have tried to take Cassandra down. Not kill her -- at least, not on purpose -- but she would be a broken woman, mad with grief, not really making any effort to be gentle.

(Note that if she had killed Cassandra, she would have felt terrible about it.)

The long of the short of it is that I don't think Zhan Tiri would have had the chance to come back to full power, because Cassandra would be out of the picture, and Rapunzel would have made the effort to return the Sundrop and Moonstone to the heavens, as she initially intended to do in the Dark Kingdom right then, at the midseason episode.

I think it depends upon the witch and their actions and motivations. A good witch, who used their magic to help the community, would be treated well, with gratitude and kindness. A witch who cursed people and stole children would be hunted down and punished.

Not really. One of the things we need to remember is that Zhan Tiri was deliberately egging her on, keeping her angry. I don't think she would have listened to him any more than she tended to listen to Rapunzel when she was calm.

As for the justification of her anger, sure. She was feeling betrayed in general, and on top of that, she found out that he'd kept the identity of her mother from her. Another betrayal.

But mostly, she was just being manipulated.