(Disney) Kiss Of Life
Title: Kiss Of Life
Fandom: Disney - Tangled/The Little Mermaid
Pairing: Rapunzel/Ariel
Rating: R
Words: 2986
Notes: AU - Rapunzel runs away before her 18th birthday. For Femslash February, 100_women, prompt "beginnings", and Porn Battle XV, prompt "Ariel/Rapunzel - freedom, hair, new, water".
Summary: Rapunzel's drowning, not in the ocean but instead in fear. Ariel manages to rescue her anyway.
She’s always been so good, she’s always done exactly as her mother told her. Sure, she’s asked questions occasionally, faced the wrath those questions bought down on her, no matter how innocent she’d thought they’d been. But she’s never fought, she’s never argued, she’s been so good.
But there’s a limit to Rapunzel’s patience, a straw inside of her that’s been waiting to snap, even if she never knew it was there. And when Gothel bellows at her once again, denies Rapunzel her eighteenth birthday present, denies her the chance to see the floating lights, something within her mind begins to crumble and tumble and fall to pieces.
It’s like a jumble of noise, drowning out everything, even thought. Constant roar of disappointment and frustration, and when it finally starts to subside, Rapunzel’s bare toes are touching grass.
She doesn’t remember sneaking from her bed in the night. She doesn’t remember letting down her hair and sliding to her freedom.
She’s always been so good, and Rapunzel stares up at her tower with her mind slowly clearing, knows that she should return, that her mother would be so worried and anxious and livid if she knew.
Instead Rapunzel runs.
She runs until her feet bleed, until her muscles burn and ache with every step. She only pauses to sip water from springs, to nibble berries from bushes, to nap restlessly under the shade of trees, skin buzzing with the need to keep going, to escape while she can. She runs and runs, always scared to look back, scared her mother may be right behind her and reaching out with grasping fingers.
She runs until she reaches the ocean.
It’s not until her knees sink into the sand that it hits her.
She’s free.
She’s free and she’s alone.
Her hands fist over her thighs, head drooping, breathing suddenly difficult as she gasps and gasps.
She doesn’t know how many days and nights she’s been running. Rapunzel kneels there on the beach and cries, sobs wracking her whole body. Cries until there are no more tears, until she feels dizzy and weak, until the water laps around her thighs.
Cries until a hand touches her elbow, and she yelps with a voice that’s barely even there any more, croaky and sore, jerking to the side, slashing in the high tide.
It’s not her mother. The face staring at her in confusion and concern is younger, softer, sweeter. Beautiful, with wide blue eyes and hair a shocking shade of red.
She doesn’t know what it is about that face that settles the anguish within her, that makes her relax just that tiny little bit, but it’s enough that the exhaustion she’s been fighting since leaving her tower finally catches up with her. Her eyelids flutter, hand reaching dreamily for that wavy red hair before falling to the water, and Rapunzel sleeps.
The first thing she’s aware of when consciousness begins to return to her is that her head is pillowed on something cold and wet, and that there fingers moving through her hair.
It’s Gothel’s face in her mind, the memory of her coaxing Rapunzel to sing for her as she lovingly stroked long, golden hair, that makes Rapunzel’s eyes snap open.
“It’s okay,” says a gentle voice, and Rapunzel doesn’t even know why but she trusts it.
The girl from before, the girl with red hair, is gazing down at her. She’s smiling, earnest and open, and Rapunzel finds herself smiling back, although she imagines it must be small and watery.
“I won’t hurt you,” the girl says with sincerity. “My name is Ariel.”
Ariel’s voice is lilting, soothing, and a little heat seeps back into Rapunzel’s bones at the sound of it, despite the chill of the ocean. When Ariel helps Rapunzel sit up on the sand, she’s realises that she’d been resting her head upon Ariel’s lap, and that instead of legs Ariel owns a shining, green tail.
A gasp escapes her at the sight, and Ariel suddenly looks nervous, like she’s only a breath from scrambling away. But Rapunzel apologises, explains that she was merely surprised, that she’s never seen anything like it before. She explains that she’s never seen much of anything before, and Ariel looks at her with sad and understanding eyes, takes Rapunzel’s hand and says, “Tell me everything.”
And so Rapunzel does. She talks long into the evening, until she’s shivering in the cool night air. She excuses herself to gather driftwood, and Ariel is fascinated as she watches Rapunzel build a small fire to warm herself beside.
She wakes to find the fire still smouldering softly, doesn’t even remember falling asleep. Definitely remembers watching Ariel poke at the flames with a stick, a look of awe on her face, and remembers smiling in a way she’d been scared she might never do again.
The morning sunlight is weak and Ariel is nowhere to be seen.
Rapunzel’s legs are shaky underneath her as she gathers fruit for breakfast. She stays to the edge of the tree line, where the water is always in sight, and when a flash of red amidst the blue catches her eye she finds the strength to rush back to the water’s edge.
Ariel is smiling broadly, waving enthusiastically as Rapunzel stumbles a little on the sand. She’s holding handfuls of wet, slippery plants that Rapunzel has never seen before. She insists they’re edible, and Rapunzel finds them a little too chewy and salty to eat raw but when she dries them out beside the fire they make a delightful compliment to the forest fruits she’s gathered.
They sit together on the sand, Rapunzel’s toes and Ariel’s tail in the water. Ariel has a family, a father and sisters, and that’s why she had to leave in the night. But the day is theirs, and they spend it together. Ariel shows Rapunzel a cave she knows of, further up the beach where the sand turns to pebbles. It’s small but it’s a potential shelter, ground raised higher at the back so there’s somewhere the tide can’t reach her at night.
There are tears in her eyes as Rapunzel explores it, but they’re tears of happiness, and it’s strange that she could feel more excited to be living in this dark, dank cave than the safety of her tower. But the tower was a prison, she knows that now, and this cave is hers.
Ariel tells her of a small kingdom along the shore some distance in the opposite direction from the cave, where she may find all sorts of things she needs to make the cave more comfortable. Rapunzel sighs and shakes her head, because she may never have been to a market but she has heard her mother complain often about the price of things, about how much it costs to raise a daughter.
Ariel only smiles, squeezing Rapunzel’s fingers between her own. “Leave that to me,” she insists, excited to help, and the next morning she presents Rapunzel with a beautiful necklace from a sunken ship which she can use to barter.
The village is an entire morning’s walk away, and once there Rapunzel discovers that each bead of the necklace is valuable enough to buy her not only food but clothes and books and paints and blankets. She carries her haul home, spreads it out on the beach, and the two of them examine and pour over every item.
It becomes a routine. They spend their days together on the sand, half-in and half-out of the water. They read books together, and Rapunzel buys a needle and thread and teaches Ariel to sew. They braid Rapunzel’s hair, and Ariel decorates the plaits with a mixture of flowers from the forest and shells from the sea. She coaxes all sorts of fish to the shallow water, introduces them to Rapunzel, tells her their names, their likes and dislikes. Rapunzel dances for Ariel, and Ariel shows her how to swim.
Once a fortnight Rapunzel will travel to the town to buy new treasures for them to play with. She buys herself a pair of shoes for the journey, but she never wears them in Ariel’s company. Ariel prefers her barefoot, and Rapunzel never comments when she catches Ariel studying her toes, only breathes shallowly and tries not to press into touch the afternoon Ariel first casually lifts Rapunzel’s leg and explores the arch of her foot and the bones of her ankle with delicate fingers.
It takes several more days for Rapunzel to bolster her own courage, to reach out and stroke her hand over the curve of Ariel’s bare waist and her stomach, the way she’s longed to do since they first met. Ariel watches her silently, eyes lidded and lips slightly parted, shifting closer across the sand into the crook of Rapunzel’s arm.
“Do you worry about your mother finding you?” Ariel asks one evening when she’s preparing to swim home to her family.
“Sometimes,” Rapunzel admits, although that life seems a world away. The terror is there, of course it is, but it’s hard to focus on when she has Ariel beside her.
“I know of somebody who could help,” Ariel says quietly, and there’s a tension in her shoulders all of a sudden, her eyes carefully not meeting Rapunzel’s own. “I’ve heard the sea witch has great power. Perhaps she could protect you.”
“No,” Rapunzel says simply. She gathers Ariel’s hands, holds them clasped between their bodies. This sea witch is dangerous, she can tell by the stutter of Ariel’s breath, and she does not want any harm to come to her closest friend. “If my mother comes, I will face her.”
Ariel looks at her then, eyes bright and fierce and determined. “You will not face her alone,” she promises, and Rapunzel shivers at the strength in that beautiful voice.
There is peace then, for a time, but it cannot last, and the day comes when a seagull flies towards them, screaming in warning.
A woman is approaching their beach, and she wears the same dress and cloak as Gothel, has the same curly hair. She is angry, Rapunzel learns, and she feels herself trembling almost instantly at just the thought of being dragged back to her tower.
But Ariel straightens, jaw set, fingers laced tight between Rapunzel’s own. She tells the seagull to keep the woman back, to scare her off, and the bird soars away. Ariel pushes Rapunzel towards her cave, promising to keep watch over both her and this approaching woman from the safety of the ocean, and Rapunzel does not want to leave her sight but she knows she must hide.
Sound echoes within the cave, and soon Rapunzel can hear the shrieks of birds, the carp of seals, the splash of fins. Ariel’s ocean friends are fighting their hardest, trying to drive Gothel back, but Rapunzel knows her mother, knows that she cannot be stopped.
And when she hears her mother’s voice, for the first time in what feels like an eternity, Rapunzel’s knees weaken and her heart crashes against her chest and she leaves the safety of her cave as if her name upon her mother’s lips is a command she cannot disobey.
“Foolish girl,” Gothel hisses, and she is so old, old in a way that should not be possible in the few months since Rapunzel saw her last. Her curly hair is now white and patchy, her skin sunken and sagging about her face. She is as wrinkled as a ball of paper, and in her thin fingers she clutches a handful of vivid red hair.
Ariel’s eyes are not panicked, but Rapunzel can see how sorry she is to have been captured, to have made things worse.
Rapunzel does not blame her. Gothel is tricky and her reach cannot be escaped, she knows that now.
“Come to me,” her mother commands, water up to her knees and a manic look in her eyes, and Ariel screams at Rapunzel to stop, to leave, to run, but Rapunzel has run enough. But the display of wilfulness from her hostage angers Gothel, and she reaches to her belt, pulls a knife from its hilt, the blade angled towards Ariel’s throat.
The world around them seems to freeze. Nobody moving, nobody breathing but Rapunzel, and she reaches for her own knife, the one she bought at the market, the one she did not tell Ariel about, the one she hoped never to use.
“You want my hair?” she shouts in a voice suddenly like sandpaper against her lips. “Then take it!”
The blade of her knife slices cleanly through her hair, and Rapunzel shakes with fear and with fury as endless blonde locks begin to tumble to the sand around her, turning from gold to brown as they fall.
Gothel’s scream is unholy, inhuman. She drops her knife, drops her hold on Ariel’s hair, stumbling forward with twitching, curled fingers, and for the first time Rapunzel sees that her mother can be afraid.
She had hoped this would be enough, that without the magic of her hair Gothel would no longer pursue her. She had not expected to watch her mother twist and screech and crumble to dust before her, as dry as Rapunzel’s throat.
When she collapses, it’s into Ariel’s waiting arms. Rapunzel shivers until long after the waves have carried her mother’s ashes away.
She sleeps on the beach that night, and Ariel stays with her. They lie on their sides in the sand, face to face, fingers moving restlessly over each other’s arms, necks, faces. When Ariel leans close and kisses her, Rapunzel realises that a tower prison and a dark cave are nothing to her, because home is the taste of Ariel’s lips. They kiss deeply and slow, realising that this is the start of something, that they have forever to enjoy it, wrapped up in each other, fire that glows beside them nothing to that heat that burns between them.
In the first rays of morning light, Rapunzel wakes to find a man watching them from the water, his expression steely with anger.
“Daddy?” Ariel whispers.
“This is where you’ve been? This is where you disappear to, day after day?” the merman sneers. “To spend time with a human?”
But Ariel raises her chin, stares her father down and says in a firm and steady voice, “Daddy, I love her.” Sure and proud, something she has clearly wanted to say for a long time, and Rapunzel cannot help the way her arms instinctively circle Ariel’s waist, bracing herself for the explosion of anger she is certain will follow.
It doesn’t. The man’s expression softens slowly, cycling through confusion and hurt and sadness and finally resignation. “You are sure?” he asks, his voice now quieter, more caring, and Rapunzel no longer sees a man out to ruin them but instead a father, in the way Gothel was never a mother.
“Yes,” Ariel replies, and her father nods in understanding, the trident in his hand tilting down to touch the surface of the water. Light flows from it, rippling across the tide, until it touches Ariel’s submerged tail.
The glow of it is almost bright enough to hurt, but Rapunzel cannot look away.
And then Ariel’s tail is no more, two slender and pale legs there instead beneath a sparkling purple dress, and the sound Ariel makes is giddy with disbelief and happiness.
“Visit me often,” Ariel’s father says with a sad sigh.
“Of course,” is the reply, and he seems surprised that it comes from Rapunzel’s lips. He studies her briefly, with eyes that seem to search down into her very soul, before smiling fondly and inclining his head towards her.
He dives beneath the surface, and then Rapunzel has an armful of squealing, delighted redhead. She helps Ariel to her feet, still dizzy with the realisation that Ariel now has feet, and together they wobble up the sand, Ariel’s body leaning against Rapunzel’s own as she struggles to get her balance.
Ariel’s eyes are watery as they reach the tree line, as she touches grass and bark and twigs for the first time, and she kisses Rapunzel fiercely, more and more of her weight pressing against Rapunzel’s body until they tumble to the ground in a fit of giggles. They roll together across the dirt, skirts riding up, legs tangled until their thighs slot together, until they rub high between their legs, until they can grind down against each other, and Rapunzel watches with hungry eyes as Ariel gasps and croons for the sensation.
“I love you,” she murmurs earnestly, and Ariel’s back arches, fingers grasping at Rapunzel’s shoulders as she comes.
They spend the day discovering each other in new ways, only pausing to eat and drink when their thirst grows too much. Rapunzel shows Ariel how to touch her, how to open her with slim fingers, moaning and bucking her hips desperately when Ariel proves to be a fast learner. She licks between Ariel’s legs, fingers tugging at her short, brown hair as Ariel pulses beneath her tongue.
It’s only exhaustion that finally halts them, and they lay in a naked twist of limbs, planning their new lives. Tomorrow Rapunzel has plans to visit the market, and this time Ariel can walk through the stalls beside her. There are more treasures in a cavern beneath the ocean, a whole collection, and Ariel assures her that her fish friends will be happy to bring them more necklaces and rings and ancient gold coins. They may even have enough to buy a house, a place for them to live together, to fill with art and books and trinkets, but Rapunzel wouldn’t even mind if they spent the rest of their lives on this beach, because with Ariel is the only place she belongs, the place where her life finally begins.
Fandom: Disney - Tangled/The Little Mermaid
Pairing: Rapunzel/Ariel
Rating: R
Words: 2986
Notes: AU - Rapunzel runs away before her 18th birthday. For Femslash February, 100_women, prompt "beginnings", and Porn Battle XV, prompt "Ariel/Rapunzel - freedom, hair, new, water".
Summary: Rapunzel's drowning, not in the ocean but instead in fear. Ariel manages to rescue her anyway.
She’s always been so good, she’s always done exactly as her mother told her. Sure, she’s asked questions occasionally, faced the wrath those questions bought down on her, no matter how innocent she’d thought they’d been. But she’s never fought, she’s never argued, she’s been so good.
But there’s a limit to Rapunzel’s patience, a straw inside of her that’s been waiting to snap, even if she never knew it was there. And when Gothel bellows at her once again, denies Rapunzel her eighteenth birthday present, denies her the chance to see the floating lights, something within her mind begins to crumble and tumble and fall to pieces.
It’s like a jumble of noise, drowning out everything, even thought. Constant roar of disappointment and frustration, and when it finally starts to subside, Rapunzel’s bare toes are touching grass.
She doesn’t remember sneaking from her bed in the night. She doesn’t remember letting down her hair and sliding to her freedom.
She’s always been so good, and Rapunzel stares up at her tower with her mind slowly clearing, knows that she should return, that her mother would be so worried and anxious and livid if she knew.
Instead Rapunzel runs.
She runs until her feet bleed, until her muscles burn and ache with every step. She only pauses to sip water from springs, to nibble berries from bushes, to nap restlessly under the shade of trees, skin buzzing with the need to keep going, to escape while she can. She runs and runs, always scared to look back, scared her mother may be right behind her and reaching out with grasping fingers.
She runs until she reaches the ocean.
It’s not until her knees sink into the sand that it hits her.
She’s free.
She’s free and she’s alone.
Her hands fist over her thighs, head drooping, breathing suddenly difficult as she gasps and gasps.
She doesn’t know how many days and nights she’s been running. Rapunzel kneels there on the beach and cries, sobs wracking her whole body. Cries until there are no more tears, until she feels dizzy and weak, until the water laps around her thighs.
Cries until a hand touches her elbow, and she yelps with a voice that’s barely even there any more, croaky and sore, jerking to the side, slashing in the high tide.
It’s not her mother. The face staring at her in confusion and concern is younger, softer, sweeter. Beautiful, with wide blue eyes and hair a shocking shade of red.
She doesn’t know what it is about that face that settles the anguish within her, that makes her relax just that tiny little bit, but it’s enough that the exhaustion she’s been fighting since leaving her tower finally catches up with her. Her eyelids flutter, hand reaching dreamily for that wavy red hair before falling to the water, and Rapunzel sleeps.
The first thing she’s aware of when consciousness begins to return to her is that her head is pillowed on something cold and wet, and that there fingers moving through her hair.
It’s Gothel’s face in her mind, the memory of her coaxing Rapunzel to sing for her as she lovingly stroked long, golden hair, that makes Rapunzel’s eyes snap open.
“It’s okay,” says a gentle voice, and Rapunzel doesn’t even know why but she trusts it.
The girl from before, the girl with red hair, is gazing down at her. She’s smiling, earnest and open, and Rapunzel finds herself smiling back, although she imagines it must be small and watery.
“I won’t hurt you,” the girl says with sincerity. “My name is Ariel.”
Ariel’s voice is lilting, soothing, and a little heat seeps back into Rapunzel’s bones at the sound of it, despite the chill of the ocean. When Ariel helps Rapunzel sit up on the sand, she’s realises that she’d been resting her head upon Ariel’s lap, and that instead of legs Ariel owns a shining, green tail.
A gasp escapes her at the sight, and Ariel suddenly looks nervous, like she’s only a breath from scrambling away. But Rapunzel apologises, explains that she was merely surprised, that she’s never seen anything like it before. She explains that she’s never seen much of anything before, and Ariel looks at her with sad and understanding eyes, takes Rapunzel’s hand and says, “Tell me everything.”
And so Rapunzel does. She talks long into the evening, until she’s shivering in the cool night air. She excuses herself to gather driftwood, and Ariel is fascinated as she watches Rapunzel build a small fire to warm herself beside.
She wakes to find the fire still smouldering softly, doesn’t even remember falling asleep. Definitely remembers watching Ariel poke at the flames with a stick, a look of awe on her face, and remembers smiling in a way she’d been scared she might never do again.
The morning sunlight is weak and Ariel is nowhere to be seen.
Rapunzel’s legs are shaky underneath her as she gathers fruit for breakfast. She stays to the edge of the tree line, where the water is always in sight, and when a flash of red amidst the blue catches her eye she finds the strength to rush back to the water’s edge.
Ariel is smiling broadly, waving enthusiastically as Rapunzel stumbles a little on the sand. She’s holding handfuls of wet, slippery plants that Rapunzel has never seen before. She insists they’re edible, and Rapunzel finds them a little too chewy and salty to eat raw but when she dries them out beside the fire they make a delightful compliment to the forest fruits she’s gathered.
They sit together on the sand, Rapunzel’s toes and Ariel’s tail in the water. Ariel has a family, a father and sisters, and that’s why she had to leave in the night. But the day is theirs, and they spend it together. Ariel shows Rapunzel a cave she knows of, further up the beach where the sand turns to pebbles. It’s small but it’s a potential shelter, ground raised higher at the back so there’s somewhere the tide can’t reach her at night.
There are tears in her eyes as Rapunzel explores it, but they’re tears of happiness, and it’s strange that she could feel more excited to be living in this dark, dank cave than the safety of her tower. But the tower was a prison, she knows that now, and this cave is hers.
Ariel tells her of a small kingdom along the shore some distance in the opposite direction from the cave, where she may find all sorts of things she needs to make the cave more comfortable. Rapunzel sighs and shakes her head, because she may never have been to a market but she has heard her mother complain often about the price of things, about how much it costs to raise a daughter.
Ariel only smiles, squeezing Rapunzel’s fingers between her own. “Leave that to me,” she insists, excited to help, and the next morning she presents Rapunzel with a beautiful necklace from a sunken ship which she can use to barter.
The village is an entire morning’s walk away, and once there Rapunzel discovers that each bead of the necklace is valuable enough to buy her not only food but clothes and books and paints and blankets. She carries her haul home, spreads it out on the beach, and the two of them examine and pour over every item.
It becomes a routine. They spend their days together on the sand, half-in and half-out of the water. They read books together, and Rapunzel buys a needle and thread and teaches Ariel to sew. They braid Rapunzel’s hair, and Ariel decorates the plaits with a mixture of flowers from the forest and shells from the sea. She coaxes all sorts of fish to the shallow water, introduces them to Rapunzel, tells her their names, their likes and dislikes. Rapunzel dances for Ariel, and Ariel shows her how to swim.
Once a fortnight Rapunzel will travel to the town to buy new treasures for them to play with. She buys herself a pair of shoes for the journey, but she never wears them in Ariel’s company. Ariel prefers her barefoot, and Rapunzel never comments when she catches Ariel studying her toes, only breathes shallowly and tries not to press into touch the afternoon Ariel first casually lifts Rapunzel’s leg and explores the arch of her foot and the bones of her ankle with delicate fingers.
It takes several more days for Rapunzel to bolster her own courage, to reach out and stroke her hand over the curve of Ariel’s bare waist and her stomach, the way she’s longed to do since they first met. Ariel watches her silently, eyes lidded and lips slightly parted, shifting closer across the sand into the crook of Rapunzel’s arm.
“Do you worry about your mother finding you?” Ariel asks one evening when she’s preparing to swim home to her family.
“Sometimes,” Rapunzel admits, although that life seems a world away. The terror is there, of course it is, but it’s hard to focus on when she has Ariel beside her.
“I know of somebody who could help,” Ariel says quietly, and there’s a tension in her shoulders all of a sudden, her eyes carefully not meeting Rapunzel’s own. “I’ve heard the sea witch has great power. Perhaps she could protect you.”
“No,” Rapunzel says simply. She gathers Ariel’s hands, holds them clasped between their bodies. This sea witch is dangerous, she can tell by the stutter of Ariel’s breath, and she does not want any harm to come to her closest friend. “If my mother comes, I will face her.”
Ariel looks at her then, eyes bright and fierce and determined. “You will not face her alone,” she promises, and Rapunzel shivers at the strength in that beautiful voice.
There is peace then, for a time, but it cannot last, and the day comes when a seagull flies towards them, screaming in warning.
A woman is approaching their beach, and she wears the same dress and cloak as Gothel, has the same curly hair. She is angry, Rapunzel learns, and she feels herself trembling almost instantly at just the thought of being dragged back to her tower.
But Ariel straightens, jaw set, fingers laced tight between Rapunzel’s own. She tells the seagull to keep the woman back, to scare her off, and the bird soars away. Ariel pushes Rapunzel towards her cave, promising to keep watch over both her and this approaching woman from the safety of the ocean, and Rapunzel does not want to leave her sight but she knows she must hide.
Sound echoes within the cave, and soon Rapunzel can hear the shrieks of birds, the carp of seals, the splash of fins. Ariel’s ocean friends are fighting their hardest, trying to drive Gothel back, but Rapunzel knows her mother, knows that she cannot be stopped.
And when she hears her mother’s voice, for the first time in what feels like an eternity, Rapunzel’s knees weaken and her heart crashes against her chest and she leaves the safety of her cave as if her name upon her mother’s lips is a command she cannot disobey.
“Foolish girl,” Gothel hisses, and she is so old, old in a way that should not be possible in the few months since Rapunzel saw her last. Her curly hair is now white and patchy, her skin sunken and sagging about her face. She is as wrinkled as a ball of paper, and in her thin fingers she clutches a handful of vivid red hair.
Ariel’s eyes are not panicked, but Rapunzel can see how sorry she is to have been captured, to have made things worse.
Rapunzel does not blame her. Gothel is tricky and her reach cannot be escaped, she knows that now.
“Come to me,” her mother commands, water up to her knees and a manic look in her eyes, and Ariel screams at Rapunzel to stop, to leave, to run, but Rapunzel has run enough. But the display of wilfulness from her hostage angers Gothel, and she reaches to her belt, pulls a knife from its hilt, the blade angled towards Ariel’s throat.
The world around them seems to freeze. Nobody moving, nobody breathing but Rapunzel, and she reaches for her own knife, the one she bought at the market, the one she did not tell Ariel about, the one she hoped never to use.
“You want my hair?” she shouts in a voice suddenly like sandpaper against her lips. “Then take it!”
The blade of her knife slices cleanly through her hair, and Rapunzel shakes with fear and with fury as endless blonde locks begin to tumble to the sand around her, turning from gold to brown as they fall.
Gothel’s scream is unholy, inhuman. She drops her knife, drops her hold on Ariel’s hair, stumbling forward with twitching, curled fingers, and for the first time Rapunzel sees that her mother can be afraid.
She had hoped this would be enough, that without the magic of her hair Gothel would no longer pursue her. She had not expected to watch her mother twist and screech and crumble to dust before her, as dry as Rapunzel’s throat.
When she collapses, it’s into Ariel’s waiting arms. Rapunzel shivers until long after the waves have carried her mother’s ashes away.
She sleeps on the beach that night, and Ariel stays with her. They lie on their sides in the sand, face to face, fingers moving restlessly over each other’s arms, necks, faces. When Ariel leans close and kisses her, Rapunzel realises that a tower prison and a dark cave are nothing to her, because home is the taste of Ariel’s lips. They kiss deeply and slow, realising that this is the start of something, that they have forever to enjoy it, wrapped up in each other, fire that glows beside them nothing to that heat that burns between them.
In the first rays of morning light, Rapunzel wakes to find a man watching them from the water, his expression steely with anger.
“Daddy?” Ariel whispers.
“This is where you’ve been? This is where you disappear to, day after day?” the merman sneers. “To spend time with a human?”
But Ariel raises her chin, stares her father down and says in a firm and steady voice, “Daddy, I love her.” Sure and proud, something she has clearly wanted to say for a long time, and Rapunzel cannot help the way her arms instinctively circle Ariel’s waist, bracing herself for the explosion of anger she is certain will follow.
It doesn’t. The man’s expression softens slowly, cycling through confusion and hurt and sadness and finally resignation. “You are sure?” he asks, his voice now quieter, more caring, and Rapunzel no longer sees a man out to ruin them but instead a father, in the way Gothel was never a mother.
“Yes,” Ariel replies, and her father nods in understanding, the trident in his hand tilting down to touch the surface of the water. Light flows from it, rippling across the tide, until it touches Ariel’s submerged tail.
The glow of it is almost bright enough to hurt, but Rapunzel cannot look away.
And then Ariel’s tail is no more, two slender and pale legs there instead beneath a sparkling purple dress, and the sound Ariel makes is giddy with disbelief and happiness.
“Visit me often,” Ariel’s father says with a sad sigh.
“Of course,” is the reply, and he seems surprised that it comes from Rapunzel’s lips. He studies her briefly, with eyes that seem to search down into her very soul, before smiling fondly and inclining his head towards her.
He dives beneath the surface, and then Rapunzel has an armful of squealing, delighted redhead. She helps Ariel to her feet, still dizzy with the realisation that Ariel now has feet, and together they wobble up the sand, Ariel’s body leaning against Rapunzel’s own as she struggles to get her balance.
Ariel’s eyes are watery as they reach the tree line, as she touches grass and bark and twigs for the first time, and she kisses Rapunzel fiercely, more and more of her weight pressing against Rapunzel’s body until they tumble to the ground in a fit of giggles. They roll together across the dirt, skirts riding up, legs tangled until their thighs slot together, until they rub high between their legs, until they can grind down against each other, and Rapunzel watches with hungry eyes as Ariel gasps and croons for the sensation.
“I love you,” she murmurs earnestly, and Ariel’s back arches, fingers grasping at Rapunzel’s shoulders as she comes.
They spend the day discovering each other in new ways, only pausing to eat and drink when their thirst grows too much. Rapunzel shows Ariel how to touch her, how to open her with slim fingers, moaning and bucking her hips desperately when Ariel proves to be a fast learner. She licks between Ariel’s legs, fingers tugging at her short, brown hair as Ariel pulses beneath her tongue.
It’s only exhaustion that finally halts them, and they lay in a naked twist of limbs, planning their new lives. Tomorrow Rapunzel has plans to visit the market, and this time Ariel can walk through the stalls beside her. There are more treasures in a cavern beneath the ocean, a whole collection, and Ariel assures her that her fish friends will be happy to bring them more necklaces and rings and ancient gold coins. They may even have enough to buy a house, a place for them to live together, to fill with art and books and trinkets, but Rapunzel wouldn’t even mind if they spent the rest of their lives on this beach, because with Ariel is the only place she belongs, the place where her life finally begins.