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Uma is living her nightmare.
She feared that a day like this could arrive ever since Mal and Ben took down the barrier. She had the fear that something bad could happen to her or her loved ones for months after the engagement party. She lived with that fear while she adjusted to her new life in freedom.
Everybody tried to tell her to calm down, reassuring her that nothing was going to happen. That Auradon had the adequate resources to protect its citizens. Gil and Harry cuddled her, humming in her ears, whenever her concern was so much that it didn’t let her sleep and night.
And right when she was about to let her guard down it happened. Her nightmare.
It wasn’t supposed to go like that.
It was a Sunday like many others. Uma was hanging out in the courtyard of Mal and Ben’s castle with her boyfriends and their friends. A normal Sunday in their new normality.
The sorceress appeared out of nowhere surrounded by a black cloud. It all happened so fast that Uma can barely recall it.
Nasira’s curse was supposed to be for king Ben. But Harry jumped in front of him, trying to move him away from the purple light beam coming out of the sorceress’ hands. Harry saved the king and accidentally took the curse in his place.
He fell on the grass, unconscious, completely still. Uma had to continuously keep her finger on his carotid to make sure he wasn’t dead. Because he looked dead. He looked so dead.
Then Uma doesn’t really remember what happened next. She only knows that Nasira disappeared as fast as she appeared, her friends hurried to alert the Royal Guard and Gil took their unconscious boyfriend in his arms, bringing him back inside to make sure he was safe.
It’s been a couple of days now. It took a while to get ahold of Nasira and capture her, thanks to the unexpected help from her brother Jafar. And she confessed that the curse is unbreakable. It was meant to take out the king without actually killing him. There is no way of waking him up.
But True Love works every time. True Love could break any spell and any curse.
And that brings her here. Sitting on the bed by Harry’s side, staring at his relaxed face as he’s still in his forced sleep. It looks so easy: a kiss can bring him back. But it’s not as easy for them. Yes, a kiss could bring him back: but whose kiss? She looks up at her second mate, sitting on the opposite side on the bed, while he lightly caresses their boyfriend’s dark hair.
Uma reaches out for Gil’s hand and holds it over Harry’s chest. The blonde raises his eyes to meet Uma’s.
“We both have to try. Even if one of us will be disappointed and get their heart broken” she says, trying to keep her voice from cracking. She has been so good at not shedding a single tear in these days, but she feels like right now she’s at her breaking point. “We both have to do it. For him.”
Pronouncing these last words, she moves her gaze from Gil to the unconscious boy between them and quickly caresses his cheek, letting her hand brush against the scruff covering his skin.
Gil nods. “It’s the only hope” he agrees. Then he swallows thickly. “You go first.”
Uma takes a shaking breath. Her mind races back to when she lived a similar situation a little bit over a year ago, only Evie was in her place and Doug was in Harry’s. She thought Evie was making a big deal out of a simple thing, at the time, but now she gets it.
She’s petrified, unable to do anything. She doesn’t want to face the reality: that the sort of fairytale she and her boyfriends have been living into in the last few months could be nothing more than just a fairytale. A simple, everyday gesture could change everything. It will change everything. One of them will get their heart broken. One of them will be destroyed. Now that she thinks of it, all of them will be destroyed.
They have found a balance, the three of them. Always together, complementing each other. Harry is the passion, Gil the sweetness and Uma the glue keeping them together. A perfect fit. As it has always been, even before they started defining themselves as a relationship.
And now nothing is going to be the same anymore. But there’s no other choice…
“Okay” she whispers to herself, filling the distance between her and her first mate and closing her eyes.
Uma places a shaking hand on Harry’s face and gives him a small, delicate kiss on the lips, her heart pounding in her chest.
She opens her eyes to the worst realization she could ever have.
Harry remains still on the bed, his eyes shut, his breathing regular.
He’s not waking up.
It didn’t work.
She swears she could hear her heart crack open and shatter into a million pieces. Suddenly she feels her mouth become dry and her eyes become wet, but the forces herself to swallow down the sighs. A single tear escapes from her self-control and runs down her cheek. She wipes it away with a quick movement and closes her fists. It doesn’t matter now. What matters is saving Harry’s life and only one person can do it.
“Now you go” she manages to mumble to Gil, unable to look him in the eyes.
She feels him hesitate, guessing he’s upset by what he just witnessed. Exactly what Uma feared: their balance is broken, their normality is gone. They feel like they don’t belong anymore.
Gil slowly lowers to his sleeping boyfriend. He stops mere inches away from his face and swallows down his fears, then puts his lips on Harry’s.
Time seems to slow down as Gil pulls away from Harry’s lips. Uma’s heart starts beating fast once again as she impatiently waits for her boyfriend to wake up, because it has to be like that. If she isn’t Harry’s True Love, then Gil has to be.
But Harry doesn’t wake up. And the anxiety, the anticipation turns into pure panic as reality slaps her right into the face, crashes every last hope she had. There’s a third option that she hasn’t considered, an option that leaves behind Harry, the one who needs help. Maybe Uma and Gil are each other’s True Love. And this way, they can’t break the curse.
She hasn’t even realized it, but all the tears she has swallowed down are now running freely down her face. She feels Gil’s hand on her cheek, brushing the tears away, as he whispers encouraging words. As he says that it’s okay, that they’re going to find a way.
But Uma isn’t there. She’s somewhere else. She’s in Pirates Bay, on the deck of the Lost Revenge. It’s night and an amazing full moon in shining above her, reflecting on the calm waves of the sea. Harry and Gil are sitting on each of her sides and they are the only ones on the ship. The rest of the crew is in Auradon, celebrating the Royal Wedding.
As they watch fireworks light up the night sky, Uma grips Gil’s knee and rests her head on Harry’s shoulder.
“I love you” she says. “Both of you. So much.”
Gil’s hand slides around her waist, as he gets closer and kisses her cheek. “Me too” he replies.
“Me too” Harry answers.
Uma slides back, in a way that allows her to look at both her boys at the same time.
“I want more” she says. “I don’t want just the flirts and the fun nights anymore. I want it all. I want to hold hands and go on dates. I want to call you nicknames and celebrate dumb things like Valentine’s Day. When people ask me if I’m single, I want to say no. I want a real relationship.”
It’s dark, but she can see a smile appear on Harry’s face.
“I don’t want just the sex” he states. “I want to fall asleep with you and wake up with you. I want to spend the day in bed cuddling.”
Gil raises an arm and cups Harry’s face, making him get closer to him and Uma.
“I want to kiss you in front of everyone” he whispers, closing the distance between him and his pirate and placing a soft kiss on his full lips. “Like this” he adds. He tucks a strand of Uma’s hair behind her ear as he reaches down to kiss her, too. “And make them go crazy as they look at us and wonder what the hell is going on” he finishes, and Uma feels his lusty gaze on her as she pulls Harry in for a kiss.
She wants to be there, but the truth is that she’s not. She’s not in the place where she, Harry and Gil officially started their relationship. She’s in a spare room in Mal and Ben’s castle, Harry is victim of a terrible and irreversible curse and she and Gil have no way of waking him up.
They’ve lost him forever.
She doesn’t realize she’s having a panic attack until she manages to focus her blurry vision again and she finds herself pressed against Gil’s chest, as her boyfriend strokes her hair and whispers in her ear to calm down, to breathe, to come back to thinking straight.
The door to the room slams open. Uma didn’t realize how loudly she was sighing, the noises probably alarmed her friends, who are waiting outside.
“What happened?”
Uma hears Audrey’s voice near her, but doesn’t find the strength to pull away from Gil’s embrace.
“It didn’t work, Audrey” Gil heavily answers. Then he slides his hands on Uma’s face, managing to get her to look up at him.
Uma tries to take a few deep breaths and calm herself down. She doesn’t really succeed, but at least she looks calmer from the outside, so that Gil isn’t that worried about her.
The others start entering the room, understanding what’s going on. Gil stays focused only on his girlfriend, taking her in his arms, stroking her hair, trying to comfort her. Uma knows that comforting her is his way to comfort himself, too. She’s always been the one in charge, the one who always thinks straight, the voice of reason. She always has a plan, she always knows what to do, she can face every situation in cold blood. But now she’s drifting away. Her entire life has fallen apart and the only thing keeping her together are Gil’s arms around her and his lips pressed against her forehead.
“Do you think it’s someone else?” Evie quietly asks.
Gil lightly shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know” he whispers. “What do we do?”
“Maybe it’s Audrey” Carlos suggests. “They had that fling some time ago…”
“No, no!” Audrey almost shouts. She comes closer to Uma and Gil and gives the girl a caress on the hair. “I know it’s you two. It has to be you. I see it every day, I see it in the way you look at each other, the way you make each other happy. The three of you belong together.”
“But it didn’t work, Audrey” Uma replies with a low, cracking voice.
Evie takes a step forward. “Did you try doing it together?”
Uma feels something spark inside of her. Hope. She looks up at Gil, finding the same spark in his eyes.
“Trying again doesn’t hurt anybody” he says.
She takes one of his golden locks away from his face, stroking his cheek. She nods.
They go back to Harry’s bed, sitting by each of his sides. Gil takes Harry’s hand and Uma puts hers over theirs. Together.
At the same time, she and Gil get down to place a soft kiss on the corners of Harry’s mouth. She pulls away a little, not too much, as she still feels Harry’s breathing against her skin. She’s afraid to open her eyes, this time. She’s afraid to crush her last hope.
But then she does open her eyes and finds two pools of blue staring at her.
“You look a wee bit worried, guys” Harry says with a hoarse voice.
She lets out a sigh of relief and just crashes on his chest, burying her head in his shirt. She feels their arms around her as they all tangle together in a tight hug, as if they wanted to merge in one person and never separate from one another.
“You fucking scared us” Gil mumbles. “Don’t ever do a thing like that ever again.”
Uma wipes her tears on Harry’s shirt before pulling up from him a little to look at his crooked smile.
“Don’t worry, Goldilocks. I won’t” he replies. “Besides, it’s not like I can make Uma sob in my shirt more than once in my lifetime” he jokes, sliding his hand in his girlfriend’s hair.
She gives him a playful pat on the shoulder. “Shut up” she talks back, trying to give him a hard look. But she can’t help but melt into those blue eyes as she cups his face with one hand, tucking some messy strands of his hair behind his ear and caressing his cheek. She lowers to him, making their foreheads touch. “I love you” she whispers before kissing him. Then she sits up, opening her palms. Her boys understand right away and hold her hands. “Both of you, so much.”
Harry and Gil smile at each other, then at Uma.
“Me too” they say at the same time.
Just like the first time.
“See? Told you” Audrey speaks. “You just belong.”
Uma would like to turn around and hug her friend, thank her for convincing her and Gil to try again, to try the right way.
But she loses herself in Harry’s blue eyes and cheeky expression and in Gil’s golden hair and sweet smile and she thinks that Audrey is absolutely right. They’re her home.
She glances at their hands tangled together. This is where she belongs.
“Oh, and you’re keeping this” Gil says, breaking the atmosphere, as he strokes the short beard on Harry’s face. “I love it” he adds, winking at him.