Operation Phoenix

Chapter Fourty-Seven: Together: Part Two, Rapunzel

She'd heard a gunshot first.

It was enough to have her spin around almost instantaneously, facing the door in sudden horror as her heart pounded ferociously in her chest. Her immediate reaction was to freeze, standing almost perfectly still as she tried to comprehend what just erupted somewhere in the house. There was a long pause, and she listened, practically shaking as she stood just a few feet from her window—though she was turned to face the door. The chains around her wrist had nearly gone taught as she had made her way towards her only salvation, the pane that looked over the District. She was going to throw it open, as she'd needed the fresh air after saying goodbye to Hiccup (it had been a little hard to breathe, because of the fear or the sadness she did not know). Eventually there came a loud bang, like the sound of splintering wood and Rapunzel jumped, a yelp leaping from her lips as she raced towards her small, wood burning stove. She yanked the frying pan from the burner and held it at attention, backing away from the entrance as far as her chains would let her.

Rapunzel was not in shape to be fighting anyone else. Though the IV had been taken out of her arm, her chains still held her and that would prove to make battling someone especially difficult. It didn't help that Zel was particularly tired of fighting, and all she wanted to do was go home and see her boyfriend—though she wasn't even sure he was okay at the moment either. Images of King Black came to her in flashes. It was him, those sounds were her grandfather—it had to be. They were coming back for her and she'd be whisked away and thrown back into her old room... or worse, a cell. She'd be forced to continue to research the medicine and she probably wouldn't see Hiccup again. Her stomach churned uncomfortably, she tried to calm it by swallowing the small amount of spit in her mouth but only succeeded in making herself hyperventilate. She pictured herself, limp and lifeless on the floor of her bedroom, bleeding, broken, or both. Thought she knew that New World wouldn't exactly kill her, she also knew that she wasn't going down easy.

The thing she feared most was dying. Hiccup had already left, she assumed, and if that were the case she most definitely could not be seeing the end of her days today. Her only thought was to make especially sure her older brother wouldn't be left alone. If she died too, she wasn't sure he'd have anyone else. Her thoughts trailed back to their horses, to Toothless, to Babytooth, to Angus... to Maximus. Were they okay? What had their fates come to?

And what of Megara, Tooth and Hiro? What had happened to them after she'd been captured? What would happen to them after if she died?

There was only one single resolution she had... she was going to find out. Despite her being chained, despite her utter exhaustion over fighting nearly everyone she came across—she was going to prevail and she was going to see Hiccup again. King Black could send his strongest, his most lethal, but she would always, always fight back. She'd come up with a plan, she'd gather comrades, she'd train, she'd go behind his back—she'd do whatever she had to, to see the people she cared for again, there was no doubt about that. Determined, she gripped the handle of the pan harder and held it in front of her. She suddenly remembered the morning at the cottage, when she'd first been kidnapped. She'd used this weapon too, and she'd lost that fight with it.

She shook the those ideas from her head and made sure one thing was certain—if New World had come for her, she wouldn't leave alive.

Rapunzel was yanked from her thoughts when she heard her window open aggressively, nearly slamming against its barriers as it was thrown wide. Zel spun around with the weapon in her grasp, only to have it snatched from her fingers while something cold and thin latched onto her upper arm. As she looked up, she came to realize it was her mother—furious and disheveled after climbing the ivy that surround Rapunzel's window—in an attempt to arrive before her rescuers did (though Zel had no knowledge of this). "You're mine!" Gothel hissed, ultimately hysterical at the thought of losing her daughter.