Chapter Text
Eugene stumbled through the east-facing French doors leading from his suite onto the wide patio that wrapped around the building. The sun was at least two diameters above the horizon.
“Sorry I'm late,” he said. He kept his eyes on the sun as he spoke, registering the patio's other occupants only in his peripheral vision. “I had a security meeting that ran...well, longer than I'd prefer.”
“That's alright,” said a familiar voice to his left. Most people easily mistook his wife and daughter for each other. Eugene still found the resemblance eerie. “But aren't all your meetings longer than you'd like?” she added.
He chuckled and turned to his daughter, who, like her mother and her own children, wore as little as possible during her morning sun-bath. “Has she said anything yet?”
“He really does sleep like a rock sometimes, doesn't he?” said an even more familiar voice to his right.
Eugene was instantly fully awake. He spun around to find Rapunzel standing casually near the railing. She beamed at him—which was not surprising for a sun—and wiggled her fingers in his direction. He closed the distance in two large strides to gather her into an embrace. To his horror, his arms passed through air and he felt the railing hit his mid-section. He yelped in alarm, stumbled back a few steps, and stared at his wife. Only then did he notice that she was more-or-less transparent.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly, shrugging her shoulders. She held a transparent hand up in front of her face and studied it for a moment before lowering it again. “It's a start...I guess.”
Eugene stared at the glimmering, golden, but otherwise familiar form of Rapunzel. He exhaled deeply. “I...uh...suppose.”
She took a step closer to him and peered up into his face. “I said it's a start, dearest. I'm still exploring myself, as it were. I seem to have an awful lot of potential. I might be able to actually take corporeal form.”
Eugene stood bolt upright, a broad smile threatening to split his face open.
“I said, 'might,' dearest. I really don't know. But I'm not about to settle for just holographic 'me' either.”
“So,” said Eugene uncertainly, “this...” He gestured at his transparent wife. “...is what, exactly?”
“It's...sort of a projection. It's actually more complicated and I'm not sure I fully understand it myself...which kind of concerns me...but that's about the best way I know to describe it.”
Eugene gazed into his wife's eyes. “Honey, at this point, I'm not going to be picky. You have no idea how good it is just to see you.” At her raised eyebrow, he added, “I mean, as you were...you know what I mean. I know we've been seeing you for a week...well, except for that cloudy day. But I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around you being the sun and I still think of you like this.” He gestured at Rapunzel's transparent form.
She smiled. “You and me both.” Then she straightened up. “Oh,” she said, as though suddenly surprised, “you two go on and take your sunbath. Dawn won't last forever.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Sophia.
Rapunzel shrugged. “Watch?”
Eugene looked at her like she'd lost her mind.
“What?” she said. “What else would I do? It's not like I need to take sun-baths any more.” She looked over her shoulder at the blazing orb rising inexorably into the sky.
“Oh,” said Eugene flatly.
“So,” said Sophia, “do you watch us from there...” She nodded at the projection of her mother. “...or from there.” She nodded at the sun.
“Uh...” said Rapunzel, “a little of both. I can be in two places at once...sort of.”
“Honey,” said Eugene, “you're amazing. I'd kiss you if I could touch you.”
Rapunzel smiled. “I'm working on that. Since matter and energy are more or less the same thing...or, at least, interchangeable to a point...it should just be a matter of switching from one to the other. I'm not sure how that will work, though. I'm still learning.” She settled back against the railing...or at least acted like it. “It's a good thing there are so many things that are automatic about being a sun. Like, I don't have to think about shining.”
“Well, that's something.”
“Now, you two be quiet and enjoy your sun-bath,” said Rapunzel, making a dismissive gesture.
They shrugged, and then turned toward the sun, closing their eyes and craning their necks upward, feeling the star's rays on their skin.
After a few moments, Eugene spoke. “How will we know?”
“When you can touch me, silly,” replied Rapunzel.
“Will it feel like you?”
“Eugene,” said Rapunzel, her tone indulgent and bearing a not-so-subtle tone of exasperation, “just relax. I have no idea. It will be the way it will be.” After a few more moments of silence, Rapunzel continued. “Do we really look like that when we sun-bathe?”
Eugene opened one eye and regarded the projection of his wife. “I presume so. How do we look?”
“Like you're in rapture.”
“I'm bathing in my wife,” said Eugene.
“Ha, ha,” said Rapunzel flatly.
“I'm not going to go near that one,” said Sophia, her own eyes still closed, “not even with a ten thousand foot pole.”
Young Harold chose that moment to appear. He'd inherited his father's disposition for sleeping in, despite needing his sun-bath just as much as his siblings did. He looked from his sister to his father and his gaze rested on his mother, who beamed back at him. “Father?” he asked, without taking his eyes off of Rapunzel. “Who's that, why does she look so much like Sophia and...” He frowned. “...why is she...transparent?”
Rapunzel tittered. “I'm your mother, sweetheart. And I'm transparent because I'm the sun and this is another way I've learned how to appear to you, besides that.” She pointed at the blazing light rising inexorably higher in the sky.
Harold raised an eyebrow.
“She's right, son,” said Eugene. “Remember the stories I've been telling you?”
The boy nodded.
“That's been leading up to this. Your mother has become the sun.” He glanced up at the image of Rapunzel, then back at his son. “I don't really understand it, but it's the truth.”
“Oh,” said the boy as he looked at Rapunzel. “Is that what you always looked like?”
“Yes,” said Rapunzel, “yes it is.” Then she looked pensively at her feet and made a hmming sound. “I wonder...” A pair of ballet flats suddenly appeared on her feet. Rapunzel jumped noticeably. “Gaaa!” she exclaimed and the the shoes vanished, revealing semi-transparent, bare feet. “Holy Mary mother of God and all her wacky nephews!” She looked back up at her family. “Virtual shoes on virtual feet and they're still uncomfortable!”
“Well,” said Eugene, a chuckle in his voice, “some things don't change, do they?”
Rapunzel shrugged. “I guess not.”
“Honey? At least it reassures me that it's still really you.”
“Aw,” said Rapunzel, cocking her head at that sheepish angle Eugene always found so adorable, “you say the sweetest things.”
“If I could kiss you...”
“I know,” sighed Rapunzel.
“Good grief,” said Sophia, rolling her eyes, “are you two ever going to not be all mushy with each other?”
Eugene and Rapunzel looked at their daughter, then at each other and shrugged. “I seriously doubt it,” they said in unison, then broke down into giggles.
“Alright, Harold,” said Sophia to her brother, “let's you and I go get some breakfast and leave our parents to...whatever it is they're going to do.”
“Anything to get away from all that mushy stuff,” he said as he followed his sister off the balcony.
“Just you wait, young man,” called Eugene after him.
“Right, Dad,” he called back.
Eugene and Rapunzel looked back at each other and sighed. “Well,” she said at last, “we did say we wanted some more adventures.”
“And running a new kingdom while fixing all the damage done by its previous management and in the ruins of the Digital Age wasn't enough?”
“Apparently not,” said Rapunzel with a shrug.
They both laughed. “I love you,” said Eugene.
“I love you more,” she replied.
“I love you most.”
They spent the next while just gazing into each other's eyes, Eugene trying not to notice all the things he could see on the other side of her.