Let Down Your Hair

I woke up on a cold stone floor, my head lolling around on my shoulders. The Doctor was a few feet in front of me, strapped down to a chair but fully alert.

“Doctor?” I whispered, my voice hoarse.

“Oh lovely, Rapunzel, you’re awake. Don’t worry; I’ve got everything under control. Just a little misunderstanding with a built in security system,” he rattled off cheerily, like our situation was a bucket of sunshine and rainbows.

“Why are you strapped down to a chair?”

“I believe the Singing Muses just want to have a little chat, isn’t that right ladies?” The Doctor shouted the last half of his sentence, his voice echoing loudly all over the room.

“Exactly right, Doctor. We’ve heard a great deal about you.” A low and sensuous voice came out of the darkness, sounding melodic. It was a woman wearing a red hooded cape, her face shadowed in darkness. All I could make out was the curve of her bottom lip, twisted into a sneer.

“What are you doing on this planet?” The Doctor demanded, his hands shifting in their binds. His long fingers seemed to dip into a pocket, but the Muse didn’t notice.

“What am I doing on the planet?” The Muse said smugly, “My dear Doctor, I created this planet. My sisters and I created this planet as a refuge for our precious flower. Our last chance at resurrecting our race. Which, I seem to recall, you had a hand in destroying, Doctor.”

The Doctor destroyed his own race?

I saw his shoulders tense, his hands fiddling a bit.

Then I saw it, the green, glowing nub of the sonic screwdriver. He’d managed to slip it out of his pocket! I began to inch forward, while the Doctor continued to verbally battle the Muse. Her voice made me a little woozy, there was too much power layered in her words.

“It was for the greater good, you have to know that! War was making them insane, they were planning to destroy the universe! All of it!” I wrapped my hand around the sonic, pulling it near me and hiding it under the folds of my dress.

“You killed them, Doctor! Do you feel no remorse?”

“Don’t you dare,” the Doctor whispered in a low tone, his voice sounding like gravel grinding against concrete, “suggest that I don’t feel remorse. I’ve felt it every day I’ve been alive, and I’ll feel it long after I’ve died. Sadness and regret have a way of sitting in the heart. Don’t insult me.”

Then the Muse’s attention suddenly turned towards me. “What are you doing?” She asked harshly, but she didn’t have time to stop me. I pointed the sonic at the Doctor’s metal binds and they came clean off; he was up and on the offensive in a flash.

The Muse screamed, a high-pitched wailing that pierced my eardrums like a dozen razor-sharp pins.

Suddenly an arm wrapped around my neck, pulling me again someone’s body. “Doctor!” I screeched, but a warm hand covered my mouth.

“Now, now, Rapunzel. Didn’t I tell you not to leave the tower?” My blood ran cold, I felt like ice had been injected directly into my veins.

“Mother,” I breathed. In a rush of anger, I jammed my elbow into her stomach and spun on her. “You lied to me,” I yelled. “You’re not my mother! You stole me from my real mother, my real family and for what? So you could stay young forever?”

“Oh Rapunzel, you still don’t get it.” Mother chuckled. “It’s not about staying young. It’s about resurrection. Since even before you were a baby, we had been gathering the flower’s essence, as much regeneration energy as possible, and do you want to know why?”

“You want to resurrect the Time Lords,” The Doctor stated grimly. The other Muse was in a heap on the floor, unconscious. When faced with my curious gaze, the Doctor answered me. “I made her hear her own voice.” And that was that.

“Why, yes, Doctor. We do.”

“It’s just two of you now, isn’t it, Gothel?”

Mother scowled, hatred consuming every inch of her being. It was like I was seeing the side of her she kept hidden beneath the surface, the side of her that only emerged when she was angry. “A clever one you are, Doctor. Only two Muses remain after the war. We were lucky to escape with the flower.”

“Why is the flower in me?” I said shakily, gripping my own body with my arms. “Why does my hair glow when I sing?”

“Your birth mother was the Queen, Rapunzel, and she was dying. Those filthy human vermin tracked down the flower and destroyed it, but the power in it made the Queen strong. Then she had you! And you were the embodiment of flower and could even activate the energy with the incantation, and my dear Rapunzel, you made everything so much easier.”

My mother was the Queen? I’m the princess?

“The lanterns?” I whispered brokenly, the first hot stream of tears running down my cheeks. My fingers touched the wetness and I stared at it incredulously.

Mother smiled evilly, and it slashed at my heart to realize that this was the only genuine smile she had ever given me. “It’s your dearest mummy and daddy wishing their only daughter back, how lovely,” she crooned, malice dripping from every word.

“You…” I felt the anger build inside my chest, like a ticking time bomb about to explode. “You… witch!” I ran at her, fists flying, desperately wishing I had a frying pan, and that was my fatal mistake.

I hadn’t seen the shining glint of metal, a glint that could only belong to a dagger hidden in Mother’s coat.

In one move Mother had me pinned, the flat side of the dagger pressing against my throat. More tears streamed down my face, and I looked at the Doctor, pleading.

“Help me,” I croaked, wincing as the knife pressed harder.

The Doctor, for the first time since I met him, looked genuinely worried.

“Now, Gothel, violence is not necessary—” He tried in a calm, soothing tone.

“Oh shut it, Doctor! You could end this, you know. If Rapunzel cooperates,” the knife pressed again, “we could do it, we could bring back the Time Lords. Gallifrey shall rise!”

“At what cost? A couple planets? A few races of people? Even if you could manage to resurrect the Time Lords, they wouldn’t come back the same. They’d be broken. What’s dead is supposed to stay dead!” The Doctor had agony on his face, as if every word was causing him pain. It hurt to breathe; my throat was so clogged up with tears. More than anything, I wished I were back in the tower, that none of this had ever happened. My world was unraveling.

I was beginning to understand what the Doctor meant when he said this would be world-ending.

“Put the knife down, Gothel.”

“Make me.”

“I’ll do it!” I said desperately. “I’ll do it! I’ll cooperate! I’ll do whatever you want me to do, just let the Doctor go, please, Mother!”

“Rapunzel, no!”

“It’ll be okay, Doctor,” I said, trying to smile but failing miserably.

Mother only smiled, dropping the knife and dragging me to the chair. The binds were fastened around my wrists, and Mother stood in front of me, her face twisted into a mask I could barely recognize.

“Now, Flower, do mummy dearest a favor and sing.”

I only nodded and opened my mouth.

“Flower gleam and glow, let your power shine,.” I began, fumbling over words as a golden glow began to fill the room. My hair was falling out of its braid, strands of it were sticking to the tear tracks on my face.

And then the glow went out.

My head felt ten times lighter.

“No!” Mother screamed, falling to her knees and pulling her black hood over her face. She fell over to her side, and I watched as the years she should have gained happened all at once; her fingers withered to the bones until they were not even that.

I watched my Mother degrade into dust, her scream disappearing into the air. The other Muse was nothing but her red cloak.

“Well this is certainly something I’ve never seen,” the Doctor quipped, throwing the discarded knife to the ground. He undid the bindings, and I saw my hair lying in a heap on the floor.

It was all brown, and none of it was attached to my head.

“You…” I was at a loss for words.

“If you were going to say ‘you cut off my hair’ then yes, I did.”

“I…” I brought my hands up to my hair, which was sloppily cut and just above my shoulders. My hair, it was gone. I no longer had any power.

I did the only thing I was capable of doing in that moment.

I fainted dead away.

***

I woke up later in the TARDIS console room, stretched out on a couch with the stuffing sticking out of it.

The Doctor was staring at a monitor, messing with some buttons and sliding menus across the screen.

“Doctor?”

He spun around giddily, a light dancing in his eyes as if he were a child on Christmas morning. “Rapunzel! You’ve woken up, how lovely! Now, there’s this wonderful planet in a cluster meteors where it is literally a sunset every hour of the day, I was thinking we could go there first--?” I cut him off.

“Doctor, I don’t want to go to another planet.” I was lying, I really did want to, but it wasn’t the most important thing to me anymore. “I want to see my parents. I want to meet them.”

The light in the Doctor’s eyes was extinguished, and his face fell.

“Ah, yes, that makes sense. How stupid of me.” He returned to the console, messing with more buttons. The TARDIS lurched and then stopped.

The Doctor pointed to the doors.

“Your parents are right outside those doors.”

It caused a fluttery feeling in my heart, thinking of meeting my real parents, the people behind the lanterns that floated past my window on every birthday.

“Doctor?” I asked lightly, and he looked at me warily. “Will you come back? To visit?”

He smiled, a sad one. “Of course.” He was lying. I had the feeling that he never visited anyone, not anymore.

I opened on of the TARDIS doors, looking out into the sunshine. I was about to step out when the Doctor called out one last thing.

“Rapunzel?” He looked nervous.

“Yes?”

“Just do one thing; remember me. Please?”

I grinned. “Always, Doctor. Always.”