Who. Jason Todd 7 Rapunzel When. December 20 (I know, I know) Where. San Francisco; the Mission District What. It's Jason's second day. Clearly he needs a bokstore!
God, if they were in Gotham she would get eaten alive.
Ben had taken care of Jason in the morning and Rapunzel happily took over tourist duties with a cheerful wave after her friend. If the face-with-hearts emoji could be a real person, it was Rapunzel. Pascal immediately began eying Jason with about as much trust as he’d had for Flynn Rider. Clearly the chameleon had more self-preservation instinct and sense than the blonde with her hair tied up into a crazy braid that defied logic and physics. It should have been impossible for her to walk around with that much hair, much less keep her head up.
“It is very nice to meet you in person,” Rapunzel said, beaming up at the tall man. He reminded her of the lovely men she’d met at the Snuggly Duckling though she wouldn’t be able to say why if someone asked. Maybe it was just his size. “Was Ben able to help you get everything you needed? We can do more shopping if you want to. Or I can show you some of my favorite places. Oh! And we can take the trolley,” the blonde said excitedly as she led the way. As usual, she was barefoot and wore a handmade dress that didn’t fit in with the fashion in the immediate area.
"I've got the basics," Jason told her. Enough that he'd be able to get by for a little while, at least, though he was going to have to do a bigger trip when he had more of an idea what they still needed around the apartment. Lucky for him, Dick had to do most of the initial stocking by himself, so Jason was sort of just... filling in the gaps, and taking care of his own needs.
He'd had a mental image of Rapunzel, based on her profile image and interacting with her on the network, but it was nice that she fit into it so nicely. Her eyes took up half her face and her hair didn't make any sense, but other than that she was cute and quirky and probably needed someone, possibly several someones, to look after her to make sure that she didn't get herself into more trouble than she could handle.
Looked like that was at least partially his job, now.
"Any bookstores nearby?" That was the one thing he hadn't spent any money on yet, but Jason had a feeling he was going to need to eat up some time until he got himself situated and enmeshed in the underground scene in the city. Once he had his ins and his contacts, his schedule would fill up, but Jason could always make time to read.
To Rapunzel, the 'basics' weren't very much and she hadn't needed a lot of things herself so she took Jason at his word. When he asked about books, her eyes got just a little more wide and she grinned as her hands came up to clasp in front of her chest.
"You like to read?" Rapunzel asked. "I have one that I love to visit. There are many more books than I ever thought possible," she continued, pausing to get her bearings before aiming them at a corner to take a turn there. "I read a lot back home but it was the same books because they were all I had." Rapunzel held up fingers as she counted them off. "Cooking, geology, and botany. I read them more times than I'd be able to count." Even for how depressing that sounded to an outsider, the blonde didn't lose the bounce in her step. "What do you like to read?"
"The classics, mostly," Jason told her. "I'm an Austen guy, but I like Dumas, Shakespeare..." He didn't mention the books on tactics and political treatises. When people heard you read Machiavelli for fun, they tended to assume certain things about your personality. Not that he thought she would think that. Or even know who Machiavelli was, if she'd only ever read three books in her life. He guessed she really had been locked in a tower... or at least locked up somewhere without access to a library.
"Please tell me you've read more than those three books now that you're here," Jason very nearly begged. He just really loved books, and the idea of someone not having the chance to enjoy them as much as he had after Bruce had taken him in was intolerable.
The laugh that answered Jason's plea was bright and honest. "I have read a lot of books since coming here," Rapunzel assured him. Pascal seemed to be attempting to count on his limited fingers and just shook his little amphibian head as though that helped the blonde's argument. Her hands tucked behind her as she walked, chin tilted up dreamily. "They have a very large building called a library and I like to go there. You can borrow books and return them in order to get more books without having to buy them. It seems like a much better idea or I could easily run out of space with the shelves in my room. And I like the idea because you are sharing books with people you may never even meet. Or maybe you have met them and you have no idea that you shared the same book, read the very same pages."
Rapunzel smiled up at Jason again, not watching where she was going. Sidewalks were safe, right? "But I like to buy books. Then they are my very own and I can read them whenever I like at whatever time of day I want to. I don't recognize the names you gave but I don't know if I have or have not read them. Would you recommend a book to me when we get to the store? That would be like sharing, too, in a way."
Jason kept an eye out ahead of them, ready to guide her out of harm's way if he needed to. "Yeah, I think I can do that. I'll probably start you off with some Austen," he decided, "just not sure which one yet. I think you'll like her."
Jason was a little biased though. He thought everyone should like Austen. Maybe... hm. Yeah, he was going to have to think about it. He wasn't sure what would make the best introduction to someone who probably had absolutely no idea about the time period it was set in.
"And you can pick out one for me, maybe?" It would be good for Jason to broaden his horizons, too, he guessed. He couldn't just live on the classics alone if he wanted to know what people were talking about.
Rapunzel's eyes got big again, excited, and her grin grew and she clasped both hands against her chest. "Yes! I would love to pick one out for you," she said quickly, a little squeal following the end of the sentence. She wasn't sure if she would pick something she had read before and enjoyed or if she would pick something that looked interesting but that she hadn't read. And maybe -- just maybe! -- he would be willing to let her borrow it later if he enjoyed it. See? Sharing.
"Oh! There it is," Rapunzel announced, pointing though the building was across the street and they'd need to reach the next light to get there safely. That was something she'd learned about rather quickly: cars could hurt and they couldn't stop as quickly as a horse who was able to stop practically on a leaf on the ground. She caught someone looking at the pair as they approached and Rapunzel put on her best, most friendly smile and waved. "Hello!" But the person quickly turned away and made themself scarce. Come to think of it, a lot of people had been getting out of their way. Odd. Rapunzel often had to dodge people if she was hurrying along her path.
Jason looked down at her, bemused. "Do you do that a lot? Say hi to strangers?"
Maybe it was just a Gotham thing... but no, nowhere in the world had he seen a place where people were that friendly by default. God, if they were in Gotham she would get eaten alive. He was surprised that hadn't happened here, yet.
Didn't matter. She had him to look out for her now. She could go on being so nice and friendly that he didn't really know how to cope with it being directed at him.
She blinked up at him, the smile diminishing but only because she was confused. Rapunzel thought for a moment as they neared the intersection. "Yes?" It wasn't a question, though the tilt at the end made it sound like one. "Some people might need it. You never know if someone is having a bad day," Rapunzel explained.
"And," she continued, looking ahead of them again as she tucked her hands behind her back in a carefree way, "it was so long that I couldn't talk to other people except Mother and Pascal that I can't help it. Maybe they need a friend and all it takes is that hello or good-morning to get that started." Like it was just that easy.
"...huh." Jason hadn't thought of it that way. He didn't think about ways that he could make someone else's day better often. Usually, if Jason was intruding on someone else's life, it was to make things worse. "Right. The locked up in a tower thing. Was that... how old were you, when that happened?"
Surely she'd had some kind of life before that. Right?
"I was a baby," Rapunzel said and the words were oddly devoid of any real emotion behind them. She had no emotional attachment to her life before leaving the tower because it had just been life. It had been the way she'd been living for so long that it was perfectly normal. "I don't..." It was there that Rapunzel finally faltered because she was trying to give him more information but she didn't have it all. "Mother saved me when I was a baby. Someone tried to steal my hair for themselves and cut it but it doesn't work like that. The lock of hair lost its magic and-oh." Rapunzel realized that she had left out a huge part of the explanation and looked up at Jason sheepishly. "I have magic hair. I can heal anything. I think. I haven't tried on everything."
"Magic hair," Jason said, blandly, like it was something he heard every day. Honestly, it wasn't the strangest power he'd heard of, and definitely more useful than some of them. "So, what, you just spent your life locked up in the tower until you ended up... here?"
That was pretty shitty, but he could see why this place seemed like a good change to her after that. Honestly, so far? It wasn't a bad change for him, either. Even with what was apparently magical weirdness happening once in a while. He could handle magical weirdness, as long as it came with people who were actually decent. Who fed strange young men and took them out shopping and helped them find the nearest bookstore…
When he didn't question her about the hair, Rapunzel beamed. He understood and he wasn't interrogating her about it. She had found that those people tended to be good ones. At Jason's question, she shook her head. "The day after. I left the tower because it was going to be my birthday and I made a deal with Eugene and he said he would take me to see the floating lights if I gave him back his bag and then he would take me back home. We went to sleep in the woods and I woke up here."
As though all of that were absolutely and completely normal. "There's the bookstore." They had reached the light and she pointed at their destination. "I showed up here on my eighteenth birthday. So that was-" Rapunzel squinted in thought as they waited for the walk signal to light up. "Goodness, almost two years ago?" Which made her twenty though the calendars weren't the same.
Yeah okay, Jason just... he couldn't even question that one, really. It made such little sense that either she was completely insane (and he knew what that looked like) or it had to be true. So... birthday, floating lights, bags, and woods. Check. That made total sense.
"Why would you go back?" he asked instead. "If you finally got out, why were you planning on going back at all?"
The traffic light began its beep, indicating they could walk; Rapunzel went to step off the curb and hesitated with her bare foot hovering just above the asphalt. It took only a second and she shook it off as she began walking across the road.
"Mother would be furious," Rapunzel said quietly and she wasn't sure she would be heard over the sound of the passing cars and the idling ones they walked in front of. "At least if I returned, she would maybe forgive me. I could promise to never leave again and things would go back the way they were." The chameleon on her shoulder looked up at Jason; he agreed with the man. Rapunzel shouldn't have planned to go back to the tower. She could have been free. He might have been against the whole idea at first but that had been everything to do with Flynn Rider. Eugene. Pascal didn't trust the thief one bit.
"I don't... know if it works like that," Jason told her, as gently as he could. "But, hey, you ended up here instead, so no worrying about it, right?"
He wanted to kill himself for putting that look on her face even for a second, for making her quiet and small like that. Shit. Why was everyone here so nice? Why did they all need a jackass like him to watch their backs and make sure no one took advantage?
"Maybe," Rapunzel agreed and she turned a smile up at him as they finished crossing the street. "But, yes, we are here and now we are here," the blonde said with a grin and spread her hands in a very ta-da! fashion. Her fingers from both hands wrapped around his bicep and she tugged, excited. "Let's go see the books!"