"Not that I expect it to matter in the relevant case," mutters Rapunzel under her breath, "but if she turns out to be right I am going to be furious with you."

"I haven't lied to you about anything," he says. "I won't swear I'm magically absolutely right that you're the missing princess, but after the time we've had and the queen's portrait and all, I'm as sure as sure gets. And I know she's plain wrong about people being so terrible. Terrible people exist but there's just not that many of them." He glances after Gothel.

"Yeah."

Walk. Walk. Walk. Hair hugged in a bundle to her chest.

"...Do you want a hug?"

"Okay."

"I-I'm sorry."

"...For...?"

"Not - trusting you? Not wanting a hug? I don't know."

"It's okay. I don't mind. I'm taking you to the city because I want you to have a chance to see what's true for yourself, and I'm offering you hugs because you look sad and I want to help. There's no reason to get mad at you about any of it."

"Okay."

Walk walk walk.

"How long do you think it will take us to get there?"

"Another hour or two, maybe." He sighs. "I'm worried she's going to try to stop us somehow. I'm at least reasonably confident she isn't following us, but she knows where we're going, so she doesn't have to be."

"I don't know what she'd do to stop us. But she - gave up fast."

"In my experience, people who give up that fast about something they've invested this much in aren't actually giving up. And I can think of all kinds of varyingly ugly possibilities for what she might do, but I'm not sure if you want to hear them."

"Well... from what I know about her, my first guess is that she's going to try something like hiring some people to pretend to be the kind of people she warned about and kidnap you away from me, and she'll have some arrangement with them so she can 'rescue' you afterward. She might not be that terrible, though, or she might not be able to find anybody - it's hard to just run across somebody like that unless you already know exactly where to look, and I don't know if she does. So the other thing she might do is go ahead of us to the city and get the Royal Guard and have them arrest me the minute I show up. The problem is, there's only the one bridge into the city, so whatever she's planning, we can't really go around it. We could try looking for a boat, but sometimes the Guard searches boats coming into Corona City, and if they search me - " He hefts his bag and shrugs wryly.

"I suppose I could wear the crown if it comes to that. The idea being that it's mine."

"Well, that would be one way to do it, yeah. It might even work. Do you want to try a boat, then?"