Chapter Text
Red doesn’t care much for Max, she decides.
It’s not a particularly surprising revelation. She doesn’t care much for most people, she tells herself.
She cares for Maddox Hatter, her closest confidant, the way he seemed much too smart and good to be true in a kingdom that should’ve driven him mad. Of course, the insanity he outran for so long caught up to him eventually; in a time that both is and wasn't. All because of Red’s decision to go back.
Because she cared. About freedom, and contradictorily, about her mother’s restrictive, conditional approval, even in the midst of a hostile coup. Because she cared, enough to realize that after it all—the dial of a watch, the swap of a life, it ended with Red meeting a girl with curly blue hair, and a smile bright enough to light up a kingdom, who also seemed too smart and too good to be true. And Red can’t say she really minds.
If there’s one thing Red does care for, perhaps across all variations of their time, it’s Chloe. Her now-roommate of Auradon Prep, the only person who fully knew the extent of their shared truth, and maybe the truest friend she now has.
The first person who stared at her, beyond the reputation, and said sincerely, you’re a good person, Red.
The problem starts like this: Chloe’s not the wanderer type. Sure, she’s by all means curious, and there’s practically stars in her eyes whenever she’s off embarking on the latest cram prior to a historical events exam, but—she doesn’t just leave.
Except it’s all she does. And she still smiles, but it’s stilted, and there’s always something tight in her expression, like she’s forcing herself not to squint, or for her face to contort, and it seems to take up so much of her energy.
She’s always twisting something. Her hands, a coil of hair, bunching up her knuckles in her clothes.
It seems like the universe’s droll idea of humour, the way Red almost loses Maddox and Chloe.
Red tries to offer herself reassurance. She's not avoiding Red anymore, but she just exists, in their space, taking up so little of it that it seems deliberate. She fills the spot next to Red, always, but it doesn’t make her any less absent.
She’ll talk to me when she’s ready, Red says to herself, leaning slightly into the Madrigal boy, and watches in the corner of her eye as Chloe’s entire stature changes as Max approaches their table. Chloe glances at him, then sharply darts her eyes away in any-whichever direction.
Red cares about Chloe. It’s exactly why she doesn’t care about Max.
Chloe wonders what kind of nursery rhymes, fairytales, and loves stories the children on the Isle grew up with—if at all.
It’s not as violent as before, them intertwining. They try not to let it be. Max doesn’t mention the condemning amount of stupid vulnerability that had spilled out of Chloe that one night, but in exchange, they talk a little more, and let themselves get bitten a little less.
They still kiss. Neither of them are really that good at talking.
She wonders what Max thinks of when he kisses her.
Chloe was raised on recipes for true love as a little girl; a glass shoe here, a perfect prince there. Rinse, repeat. She grew up craving the ordinary, in hopes that it would slot her life into perspective, be just right the way it was meant to. Her premeditated destiny—one she would love, and live with. Forever and ever.
And yet she was always more Charming than Ella, the way she wielded blades like they fit in her palms better than silk-gloved hands, how the dream of being a knight sounded so much more wondrous than being the pretty princess rescued instead. Maybe, maybe, she thinks, she turned out irreversibly wrong, because she thinks if she took a dagger to any part of her skin, she’d bleed cinder and ash instead of iron. Every part of her crumbles like a leaf held to a flame.
It’s maybe why she always tries to burn herself in this arrangement. She was raised to be spun like sugar, and ended up a misplaced thing—one made of glass.
When she’s with Max, she kisses him like an apology.
It’s an attempt at soothing, trying to mend a part of him the way she was always taught how. Love is meant to fix everything, Chloe hopes is conveyed, as she presses their mouths back together, tries to give him something maybe he would want. Maybe she doesn’t want to be wanted. This is love, and it will heal.
I’m sorry, she almost breathes against his mouth, in between the softer kisses they’ve grown used to; that they’re pretending that either of them want. I’m sorry that I can’t fix it. That I’m part of the reason you’re hurting. I’m sorry that I don’t know how to help.
Sometimes, the apology is self-soothing. Trying to clumsily stitch together parts of herself that she’s slipped away from.
I’m sorry for giving in, Chloe thinks to her parents, squeezing her eyes shut as she forces her hold to relax around Max’s neck. I’m sorry that I'm not everything you wanted me to be. I’m sorry that this isn't a fairytale, and I couldn’t find your happy ending. I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m sorry—
But if Chloe hurts too much, she starts wanting it again—so she forgets about the cinders that stuff her body whole, the feeling of something wrong pressed against her chest, slithering like tendrils inside her throat, and loses herself—loses it in her first kiss, second, third, maybe seventeenth.
She’s sorry that none of it means anything close to true love.
“Chloe,” Max whispers one night, and Chloe sucks in a breath before surging back, but Max is carefully holding her face and she wishes anything—any of it felt right. “Chloe.”
She exhales out sharply, and she’s not sure when everything she’s tried to smooth over materializes suddenly in her voice, because then she’s hiccuping and gasping, and she’s burying herself in, pressing her forehead into the crook between his neck and shoulder. “I’m sorry,” Chloe shakily says, and her hands are trembling as she inhales, squeezing her eyes shut, trying to will her tears to not escape.
Max’s arms come up around her waist, holding her steady; carefully. He lifts one hand to gently run through her hair, tending, soothing—and the erratic rise and fall of Chloe’s shoulders gradually soften.
He brushes his lips gently, the ghost of a feather-light touch, against the corner of Chloe’s mouth, closer to her dimple than her cheek.
The wind whistles behind them, merciful this time, and as Chloe breathes softly against Max’s hold, she thinks he’s apologizing, too.
They don’t meet for a while, after that.
Red grew up observant.
It’s what happens when you have a cruel, authoritarian dictator for a mother, and get used to thinking on your feet in a walled-off kingdom where half of everything practically wants to eat you.
It goes like this: she assesses, thinks, reacts. The third step is the most critical. She doesn’t usually linger on the second—until now.
It’s almost every night now that Chloe’s come to their dormitory late, and her scuffed-off shoes that she kicks away in their entryway have dirt and grass plastered to their bottoms. With her entrance invites the aroma of cedarwood, pine, and cobblestone; everything distinctly foreign. Other nights, when her shoes come back less dirty, the room simply feels off-axis—tilted wrong. Like another presence has made itself known, and carved out a shadow of Chloe in her absence.
The smallest consolation to Red is that Chloe has stopped sporting as many little cuts over her lips. The once-indented incisions have mostly scabbed over, leaving darkened marks in their wake.
Sometimes, Red still sees Chloe rest the pads of her fingertips against her lips, thinking idly, almost pressing into the ghost of a previous pain. Other times, she unconsciously licks it over, and seems to fight a wince when reality comes to.
Where did you get those from? Red wants to ask, and turns the question over in her mind. What’s distracting you?
Please, talk to me, Red had pleaded, right when it was the flush of summer heat, all the way back in Wonderland.
Nothing good came of it, and maybe nothing will if Red dares to say something.
So she waits, and waits, and waits to react. In the meantime, all she can do is think. And all of her thoughts have been clouded by the girl who helped her save the world.
One night in the waning November month, Chloe returns half-past midnight. The moon is carved out behind their blinds, and it’s the only reason Red blearily rubs her eyes, blinks the dregs of sleep away as the moonlight paints Chloe’s soft features aglow. Red makes herself look away, forces her breathing to still, body unmoving on her bed in some imitation of unconsciousness.
But the Cendrillon princess looks exhausted.
Red abides by her process and waits. The floorboards creak softly as Chloe pads over to her side of the room, shuffling under her covers, and seems to promptly collapse into the mattress.
Time passes slowly. By the time Red arises, her body is stiff from unmoving. She tiptoes lightly, crossing the small distance over, and when she’s sure Chloe is asleep, she lets her fingers trail, rubbing soft circles over Chloe’s bare arms. A soft reminder, a grounding anchor. Chloe is here, Chloe is real, Chloe is okay.
Chloe’s breath hitches briefly, and Red’s touch stills—watches, waits, for any other sign of movement. And it doesn’t come, but for a second, Chloe releases a long exhale, jaw trembling.
She’s shivering, Red realizes, and her trailing pauses, becomes more exact. Chloe’s arms are flecked with goosebumps.
Her other hand comes to rest against Chloe’s forehead. She’s burning to the touch. Feverish.
Red sighs, pressing her lips together tightly.
“What’s always waiting for you outside?” Red whispers aloud, hand moving to card through Chloe’s curls, loosened from the wind. She can’t remember them being this dark.
And why is it worth getting sick for?
It’s about two weeks before Chloe meets Max again.
When they do, it’s the first night of December.
In their time between, their group busies themselves. They exchange glances, sometimes, but the majority of their time together is spent separately.
Max entertains the next card trick Felix’s got up his sleeve, and it’s weird how they all collide, because then Pink’s pitching in about the magical card deck her mother owns back in Wonderland, and Hazel pries herself from the Smees enough to make a wry comment or two. If not, she’s grousing about the change of environment at Auradon Prep, and I’d rather get hunted down by Maddox again. No offense, Max, and then Robbie with, you killed a kraken but can’t take a World History period? and sometimes, Chloe pushes away the hurt inside of her enough to remark, hey, everybody has their limits. And Red laughs. And it hurts all over again.
Because Chloe’s busy pretending to be settled in next to Red, and she’s settled in next to Luis.
Chloe and Max do not talk, acknowledge, even really look at each other in public. And the answer to that uncertainty can sum up almost every single one of Chloe’s inactions: because it hurts.
They’re used to kissing and mending, fleeing and pretending. It feels wrong, in front of an audience, like Chloe’s been unveiled, held under a microscope, and everyone knows exactly what she’s thinking and everything they’ve done.
Because everyone does know. That she didn’t just entertain villainy, but lost herself to it. And every time she looks at Max is a reminder—of their partnership, their plan, and now their arrangement. And exactly why any of them formed.
Chloe doesn’t talk to Max, because she doesn’t want to think about it.
About her mother, and the kingdom of Cendrillon, and just how easy it is to disappoint when you don’t even know which unwritten line you’ve stepped over. About everything she’s learned, everything her future was meant to be, everything she wants to want. About smooth red hair, and soft brown eyes, who taught her what it even meant to want in the first place.
About not even being able to recognize herself, neither in mirrors nor the weight of the world reflected around her, and she can’t stop herself from spinning out of control, out of the reins of everything that she should want—comply—know.
A charming prince. A throne bearing her name. A best friend she should want as nothing more. A life with amongst the heroes—as the perfect princess.
Everything she pushes down until it has to spill out.
Through cutting her own mouth, through connecting to villainy the only way she can, to lose control and throw herself about, spinning around, around, around.
Unless—until—she cries. Because that becomes too dangerous, encroaching on the boldest border she knows she shouldn’t cross, and does it anyway in front of him—twice. The only visible sight of reparation is through another performance, and ignoring that it never happened.
Chloe and Max don’t talk, no; but they don’t meet, because the only way shame knows how to spill through her mouth is in an apology.
They don’t meet.
Until now.
Chloe’s sitting by the fountain, the faint trickle of water echoing behind her ear. The sound will eventually halt, one day or another, succumbing to winter’s growing presence. Almost on cue, something laces up her spine, makes her involuntarily twist her neck in a shudder, a primal instinct seeking warmth. These days, she can’t remember the last time she went out with a jacket blanketing her. She doesn’t suppose it would matter, anyway—she feels cold, with or without.
Even before their meetings temporarily ceased, the setting sun comes so much earlier, and with it, the wind she’s come to know. So she lingers, under archways, watches the moon halo its surroundings, and for a second, pretends she can blend into the landscape—to be one with the fickle breeze.
There’s a tight coil, and it just winds up, stirring the cinder inside of her, and it grows, putters out in bursts. It’s everything wrong.
It’s a misstep in her fencing routine. A skill that this version of herself should know. Sometimes, it’s Red, laughing with Luis, or a crystal that comes too close to the wrong shade of blue, but most of the time, it’s mirrors, mirrors, mirrors.
It’s a pure madness inside of her, and though normalcy is spinning, spinning, spinning around her, she’s yet to follow the direction, and even yet to extract her Wonderland-founded insanity out. So it gnaws, and she can feel it in every one of her nerves, pushes it down until it spills out.
Today, it’s her notebook. It’s embroidered, the same one she got for her twelfth birthday in both timelines, but then she flips through, trying to find the recipe for this surefire fever relief she’d scribbled down ages ago, and—and the pages are littered with words she doesn’t recognize, scrawling all over the pages, ink drawn with a practiced hand and writing that she just doesn’t remember—doesn’t know if she wrote it, drunk off of a fatigue-ridden stupor, or if it existed, long before her consciousness was thwarted here, past and present split down the middle, but—
It’s just all too much, it’s always been, and it’s wrong, and she’s wrong, doesn’t know how to be right, what even classifies as right in this timeline, and—
One second the notebook is in her hands, the next it’s off the wall and on the floor, and she can’t remember herself doing that, either.
Her hands are fists, and her teeth are already cutting her lip, and it’s too much, too much, too much.
So—she’s sitting by the fountain, cold a better company than her own memory, and that’s when she hears it. There’s a distinct lack of white, despite the frigid weather, but there is a patina of frost, and now, thick boots crunching through it. It’s the only reason Chloe raises her gaze from her lap.
Max falters, something hesitant in his stance, and takes a seat beside her.
Chloe recognizes it. The frantic, almost crazed look in his eye, the way his hands look unnaturally stiff at his sides, the way they come up to twist his fingers, trying to restrict himself. He looks conflicted, and apologetic, but not any less desperate. It’s all too familiar.
"Come here often?” Max jokes, a half-hearted attempt. His hands are flexing absently in his lap.
Chloe slowly turns, folding her arms loosely, hugging them protectively against herself. “Max,” is all she can manage to voice.
Max doesn’t meet her eyes as he shifts, not fully facing her. “It’s just for tonight,” he says, and she exhales.
“I told you I can’t—” Chloe tries, and breaks off, because it’s a reminder. It cools the air distinctively, and she’s never minded the outdoors, even less, spending it with him, but—I don’t like hurting you.
“Chloe—”
“I told you this wasn’t sustainable,” Chloe practically hisses out.
Max’s face hardens, though taken aback, and returns, “you’re the one stopping it.”
Chloe takes a deep breath. “I can’t.”
“You can,” Max challenges.
“If it’s hurting you, Max—”
“Then it doesn’t have to hurt,” Max pleads, finally facing her, lightly grasping her hands in his. The touch is foreign. She’s not sure if it’s unwelcome. “It’s like you said. I just need a distraction for a little bit. Please.”
Another apology. Another veil to hide behind.
Chloe exhales sharply, and says, “you can’t just decide to forget about something that affects you so much.”
Max’s jaw tightens. “Fine.” His eyes are sharp. “So what do you propose, then? Because you’re avoiding everything just as much as me.”
Chloe almost flinches back, as if stricken. “That—that’s not fair.”
Something shifts, but doesn’t soften. “Nothing is, princess.”
“I’m trying to help—”
“And you’re not.”
“Max, it doesn’t have to go this way—”
“You know it’s the only way we know—”
“I’m not—then just talk to me!” Chloe cries out, and this—this isn’t right either, and—
Chloe? Please—
Talk to me.
Her nails dig half-crescent moons into her palms. She’s dizzy with deja vu.
Hypocrite.
She’s flushed with vertigo, and now she’s the one not looking at him, because she can feel his recognition, his understanding, all at once. And—
The wind picks up, a gale practically bursting through the silence, and Chloe exhales, resting a hand on his shoulder. Remorse is twisting at her gut, already preparing to forgive herself. “Promise me something,” she hoarsely manages out.
Something too bittersweet for relief blooms across his eyes. Max shifts, and cups her face. “It’ll be the last time,” he says, pleading. “I promise.”
“That,” Chloe whispers, agreeing. “And—we have to talk.” Her grip slackens, feeling numb from the cold and her indecision, carrying through those months, all that quiet. “About this. About whatever’s going on with you.”
The memory of her argument, night clouding the cottage, comes back to mind.
Convenient, Chloe, Red had spit out, and she wasn’t wrong.
Avoiding a conversation she chose to never have.
Hypocrite, Chloe’s mind whispers again, and she tears her eyes away, focuses on something in the distance.
If the shoe fits.
“Okay,” Max says under his breath, and she wills herself back into the present. “I promise.”
Chloe doesn’t even know if she can let herself believe that. But it’s just as much for her as him.
Selfish.
She relents, and kisses him.
It’s a practiced rhythm at this point, more of another performance than rehearsal. They don’t fit together like puzzle pieces, but she’s used to fabricating. Pretending that any modicum of this will help. But the better part of knowing, at the very least, lets every ministration and movement become like second nature. She closes her eyes, and the world around her with it.
Their mouths crash together, and it’s just as violent as she remembered.
Chloe tries. Tries to soften the jagged edges Max is so desperate to cut himself on, presses tender words against the softest parts of his mouth. But she knows what he wants, knows his grief just as intimately as hers. So: her teeth skate across his bottom lip in between apologetic kisses, and she bites hard enough to make it sting. He’s turning his head, and she’s losing her breath, and it’s more of a fight than anything left to be desired.
She kisses him hard, fingers in his hair and his nails against her skin, and it’s so easy to veer towards it. Easy to lose herself in this desperate enmeshment of sensuality and hurt and just forget.
They kiss—and kiss—and kiss.
Make it go away, Chloe begs. She doesn’t know if she’s asking him or himself.
And then the taste of copper fills her mouth, and she doesn’t know which one of them is bleeding.
Max pulls away first, eyes searching and wide horror, and guilt, and Chloe touches her fingers to her lips and they come away red.
She makes a small sound, in the back of her throat. She thinks it sounds like, Oh.
“I’m so sorry,” Max breathes out, and now his hand is on her face—trying to apply pressure or wipe away the traces, she isn’t sure. “Shit—I didn’t mean for that to happen. Shit.”
His breathing is a bit more shallow, and there’s concern etched all over his face, and—Chloe thinks she sees herself, in his realization, in his regret.
It’s how she felt every time she touched her bruised lips, felt the cuts, left her reeling, horrified. Because she must’ve done the same to him—maybe even worse.
“Max,” Chloe says, taking ahold of his hand, cradling it on her legs. “I’m fine. It’s okay.”
He’s still noticeably shaken, but she notices the way he’s trying to drown himself in her words, trying to let himself believe it. She hopes it works.
Max swallows, finally looking away from her mouth, but the cold is blurring out her pain sensors, so she’s still half-numb when he murmurs out, “my father’s on trial.”
Chloe inhales softly, still holding his hand. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Max dips his head, eyes locked on the ground, or maybe their interwoven fingers. “All this time, I knew he had it coming for him. I mean, kidnapping the Queen? That’s an easy way to get yourself on every kingdom’s prison radar.” A laugh escapes him, hollow and humorless. “It’s just… I finally got used to the kind of person he was. How being his son didn’t excuse me from anything. His inventions, his need for control, or something larger than life. And then it turns out that—that he was right.”
Max stiffens, shifting, the words rushing out of him. “I thought he was mad, all of these years. And he still is. He hunted me down, because he couldn’t see anything other than the pocketwatch. But in another life—” His voice cracks, inhaling a jagged breath. “Could we have—would it have been different?” A beat. “I already know. And it was. I just… I don’t know.”
Chloe looks down, too, her thumb now tracing idly across his knuckles in careful shapes, trying to mimic something she felt once. “I’m so sorry, Max,” She breathes out. “This isn’t fair to you.”
Max’s head moves, just a fraction of an inch to the side in acknowledgement. “Not much of my life has been,” he echoes, another reminder of before, and Chloe wraps her arms around his shoulders, hears his intake of breath, holds him close. His hands slowly come up, hugging her back.
“Sometimes, I remember us running through the maze,” Chloe admits, voice barely audible, even in the dead of night against his shoulder. “I miss it.” The bracelet around her wrist. The wind in her hair. “It wasn’t even about the pocketwatch, after a while,” she whispers. She doesn’t admit the second truth that comes with it. I remember us, finally being selfish. “I just felt so free.”
“Because it was easy.” Max exhales, a faraway look in his stare. “I think about it, too.”
It’s twisting again, that uneasy feeling in her gut, that guilt for wanting. That guilt for being. So Chloe comes up, lets her fingers hold his face one last time, and presses a small kiss, barely against his mouth. It’s closer to his cheek than anything.
“I’m sorry,” Chloe mumbles, pulling back her breath faintly huffing out in clouds close to his face. For not turning back the dial. For starting this in the first place. For everything we should be.
Max holds her hand on his face, then brings it down. Slowly, a small smile spreads, curving his mouth into a softer shape, one she can’t even imagine that bites. “I think we need to stop doing that.”
Chloe tilts her head, looking at him amusedly. “What, apologizing? Or kissing?”
Max hums, intoning faintly as he folds his arms, looking off into the distance. “Can it be both?”
A startled laugh escapes Chloe’s mouth, and she swats his arm, smiling wider than she has for—a while.
There’s a faint rustle in the distance, but then Max is helping her to her feet, gloved hands at her arms and Jesus, princess, you’re freezing, where the fuck is your jacket? and Chloe remarks, hey, never question a lady’s decisions.
Then, Max is nodding his head to the side, motioning towards a part of Auradon’s castle, and: “do you wanna come up and spend the night? We can just… talk.”
Chloe laughs again, and casually twines her arm around his.
So, they do.
Red startles, hand against the archway, fingers pressed against the cold stone, Chloe’s notebook resting in her hand.
Chloe, standing with Max, arm-in-arm.
Chloe and Max.
Chloe, throwing her notebook against the wall, and Red, hearing it from a few doors down. Chloe, storming down the hallways, bristling by, which Pink relayed to her older sister. Chloe, alone, without a jacket, again.
Red was cradling the Swords and Shields letterman in the crook of her arm, bursting down the halls, trying to remember the internal navigation of this massive castle. She craned her head in every direction, twisting and looping around the courtyard at least thrice, and was about to give up just as she spun around the corner, under the foliage, to Auradon Prep’s hidden corner, and their fountain. A fountain Chloe was sitting by.
And Red readied herself, because—because this was when it had gone too far. She thought silence was a choice, a careful boundary she was giving her, one Chloe could step over, finally cross whenever she so much as wanted. But what if Chloe had been the one to put it there, had been using it as a shield all along?
Red readied herself, to call, to rush over, and to drape the jacket around her shoulders, and—and then her view adjusted, adjusted to make space for a trench coat and streaks of purple hair.
Max.
It didn't do anything but steady Red’s resolve, because to be out with a VK, and was that where Chloe went every night? and company doesn’t make anybody less cold.
Red moved forward, but then the tip of her boot got caught under a twig, and she cursed, twisted, stabilized herself with her hand on the column. She looked back, and—
Chloe leaned in, hand against his jaw, and kissed him.
Chloe kissed Max.
And then it’s now, and they’re standing, but time is moving slowly, and it’s leaving Red behind. She thinks the twig snaps underneath her foot, but she doesn’t care. It’s now, and they’re arm-in-arm, and Chloe throws her head back and laughs.
It echoes everywhere, rattling through Red’s chest, twisting something so deeply, viscerally in Red’s gut that she thinks she might be sick.
Chloe’s notebook slips from her hand, falls to the floor, forgotten.
Chloe and Max. Chloe kissed Max.
On the first snowfall of the year, Red feels her world drop out from beneath her.