If You Put it Down, Maybe We Could Fall in Love || Rapunzeen
Rapunzel stood there, too nervous to sit. A smile graced her lips a bit at that. Wendy really was one of the most accommodating people she’d met. If there was one thing she regretted about the sweet Darling girl, it was that she didn’t get to know her all that well. Well, that, and the fact that she was in love with her husband. Wendy would never be one that Rapunzel would wish pain and hurt upon, and if anything she was more afraid of that than anything. Wendy didn’t deserve it. But how could Rapunzel hide that she loved him for much longer?
She huffed a bit as Nav mused over her selflessness and her strength. The only time she ever felt strong was around Nav, and he was the thing she was most selfish about. “I’m not that strong, you know.” She mused, looking at her hands, now fidgeting out in the cold air. “I think I’ve been out of love with him for a while now, possibly even before I accepted his engagement. I think….I think I just thought that he would be the only one who would come along and want me. How is that even selfless? I shouldn’t have said yes in the first place.” She breathed, choking up a bit but not letting it really get to her.
The chill in the air stung at the skin on her hands, reddening them with a tint of color. She listened to him talk of Wendy, and how he’d worried that he would lose her. In one way or another, that would be another reason that Rapunzel envied the sweet girl. People all over the place seemed to be afraid of losing her, and Nav, he had feared losing her as well. Where Rapunzel had wondered if anyone feared losing her. Her mother certainly did not, and Flynn had be so quick to leave her at the first sight of losing her, he hadn’t even fought. Perhaps that was her weakness. One of them.
Rapunzel finally moved over to the bench after a moment, propping herself on the edge of it so that she could somewhat face Nav, now she listened to how he didn’t think they would be married if not for the fear of losing her. She smiled a bit at the memory of the cocky, grinning prince he had been when he arrived. She opened her mouth to tell him he’d grown since then, but shut her mouth again without a word. Instead she continued listening to his words, taking in everyone as if her very life depended on them. She didn’t want things to change for them. But in a way, she guessed that she did. She wanted to be with him, to hear that he loved her too. But never would she ask for it.
She glanced up in time for his hand to cup her cheek, and she leaned into it, warmth leaking out of it from being in his pocket. It was such a simple gesture, and yet it settled some of the knotting nerves in her stomach. Her eyes stayed with his, and her breath came out evenly, appearing in front of her face before becoming unknown once more. With every new word that left his lips, she felt as if she was dreaming. Never in a million years would she have guessed that Nav would say his marriage was over, that he loved Wendy, but that she wasn’t necessarily the one for him anymore. She watched his own breath leave him and appear in the chill of the air before dissipating, just like hers had. It took a moment for her heart to catch up with her head, and for the words to process enough to make sense to her.
She didn’t know whether to feel sorry for the fact that he and Wendy weren’t all they’d started out to be, or to feel joy over the words that had left his lips. “Nav…I…I hope I didn’t cause problems with Wendy…” She breathed, her heart screaming at her for saying such words. Of all the things she could say, that was what she chose? “I just want you to be happy.”
Happy.
If Rapunzel hadn't mentioned that word, Nav thought maybe he could have kept up the act he'd spent the last few months crafting. He thought maybe he could even have a future with being an actor should he ever felt the need to pursue such a thing, because his ability to fake a smile had become second nature.
"You didn't," Nav said, his voice cracking with a sort of pain he hadn't been able to express yet. It was the kind of pain you ignored, buried, smothered because acknowledging it made the cause of the pain real, and Nav wasn't ready to face that yet.
His hand slipped from Rapunzel's cheek and fell back to his side as he stood up, burying his face in his hands as his features crumbled into something unrecognizable.
"God, Rapunzel, how do I even say those things and act like they're true?" he spat out, not in anger, but in hurt. He wanted the words as far away from him as possible, because they were dirty, and wrong, and awful because Wendy was his wife. She was supposed to be his wife, his forever, and instead he could feel her slipping through his fingers the way her hair did as he carded his hands through the locks, her chest rising and falling as she slept, probably dreaming of being somewhere else.
"It hurts. It fucking hurts. I grew, and I changed, and I matured and became someone I'm damn proud of being, but what the hell is it even worth if the person who caused that change is finding solace and warmth from someone else?" he choked out, alarmed to feel tears slip onto his cheeks, his voice strained and tired, feeling like his whole body was on fire. He wondered how hard it would be to run to the nearest cliff and fling himself from it. He imagined the rocks would be softer than whatever it was he was feeling in that moment.
"I can't do it," Nav admitted, sitting back down, this time on the ground. "I can't lose her, and I can't pretend that losing her won't destroy me for your sake. I love you, Rapunzel, in so many ways that I don't even fully understand, but Wendy is Wendy. And she's my wife and it's not supposed to be like this."
He pounded the ground with his fist, not caring that it was concrete, that his knuckles split open, as he yelled out this time, voice hurt and shattering like glass.
"It's not supposed to be like this!"