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Rapunzel stares out of the window of the highest room of the tallest tower, and waits.
It is, of course, the highest room of the tallest tower in the castle of the Snow Queen, but it is close enough for her intentions. It isn’t where she feels most comfortable, certainly, but it is where she feels most at home.
Gradually, second by second, she convinces herself that a single hair is being pulled, from a distance, somewhere far below her feet. The signal, she decided, years ago, that tells her that her mother is listening.
“It won’t be long now. Soon I will have undone all you did to me.” Rapunzel whispers into the night air. “I will not need to live afraid. I will not have to live alone. I will not have to live at all.”
Her fingers wind through the threads, imagining them to be her own book bindings, and pull hard. They float away from her.
“Pointless,” she whispers, a perfect impression of her mother. “it will only grow back. Twice as long, twice as thick, twice as fast.”
The impulse remains, anyway. Strand by strand, pieces of her hair fall to the ground around her slippers. Rapunzel closes her eyes, as though the blistering, dark static on the back of her eyelids shields her from anything that could be real.
She does not think of the tower. Rapunzel must not think of the tower. Doing so is a death sentence, at least for the next 30 minutes as she spirals further into the thoughts, the stairs that lead back to the others melting away, the spire of the castle becoming a single tower, her own hair turning against her, snaking around her throat, catching in her mouth, choking her -
There is a tight, painful squeeze around her wrist and she jerks from her haunting reverie, narrowed eyes glaring at whoever would dare to try and pull her from her room again.
There is nobody. There is empty space. There is, as there always is, a coil of her own hair wrapped around her hand.
Since her first death, since the first suicide (she cannot call it her suicide, even now), it takes a mind of its own. Rapunzel cannot help but wonder if that is the truth, if the mind her own hair wields is in fact someone all too familiar to her, whispering lullabies. She pushes this idea back before she can slip into her usual spiral.
The window boarded up. The room, dark and humid. Floorboards creaking. A rope, a noose, weaving itself from her hair.
A mother, watching.
That part isn’t true. Something needs to be alive to watch. A corpse, slumped in a corner, long rotted, eye sockets empty, cannot watch anything anymore. No matter how much Rapunzel wishes, vengefully, bitterly, that her mother could see what became of her precious legacy.
That must be the start of it, Rapunzel thinks. Once, twice, thrice… what number could she even be on, now?
“Surely you must have counted.” She whispers to herself. She isn’t certain whose voice she is using.
Only in the tower would she allow herself to lose her composure. Only there, as far away from the ground as possible, would Rapunzel crumple. Sink to the floor, fists clenched, nails digging into her scalp, eyes wide open and staring at the only window as though it were the sun. As though it may blind her. As though she wished it would.
She does none of this. Rapunzel remains standing, composes herself, stands posture-perfect at the window, hands folded, face neutral, smiling. Charming.
Princess of Thorns, she thinks. How many times will you have died before I meet you? I hope you’re like me. I hope you lose count.
She thinks of her own thorns, scratching through eyes, limbs, and a prince's handsome face. Part of her wonders if Sleeping Beauty will be similar to her. She would certainly be easier to coax to their side, if she was.
A thousand lifetimes. Before birth, to death. Who else's story starts before their birth? Even Cinderella had been happy, once. Rapunzel had been someone else’s property before she was even alive. The Princess of the Tower. Always, and forever. Until happily ever after, beyond, and beyond, and yet beyond.
But not for much longer.
So Rapunzel sits on the bench by the window, pulls out a comb, and begins to brush.
And she waits.