Chapter Text
Carlos knew this would be a bad day when he opened his eyes.
The sign was the nightmares.
Carlos had them often, but not this kind. These nightmares that came before his bad days felt more like memories, and they felt so real that he always woke up sweating and trembling and sometimes even screaming in pain, clutching his non-existent injury.
During this, Jay tried to calm him down, but Carlos couldn’t stand his worried eyes and hands that tried to touch him, so he yelled at him to get out. Jay stayed but didn’t touch him anymore, and he just watched him gulp for air, having the same worried expression on his face that Carlos loathed.
He didn’t need his or anyone's help or pity.
Carlos already loathed himself and his stupid brain because he’s shown weakness before Jay.
You can’t let anyone see your weaknesses at the Isle without them being used to hurting or killing you.
Carlos was pretty sure Jay won’t hurt him, but he couldn’t help himself. He just ignored him, hoping Jay would get back to sleep and won’t be mad at him the following day for waking him up.
After some time, Carlos always calmed down, using a grounding technique he developed at the Isle. He closed his eyes and silently counted to ten, and he repeated it again and again till his breathing got normal and his limps stopped trembling.
Then he went to sleep again, with his back turned to Jay, and when Jay tried to ask him if he’s okay, Carlos ignored him.
They never spoke about it after and just pretended that it didn’t happen. Carlos was glad. The only thing Jay did that indicated something had happened was that he always brought breakfast for Carlos because Carlos often slept through it.
This night was the same, but he managed to be quiet and didn’t wake Jay up.
Despite that, when Carlos woke, there was a plate full of food on his nightstand.
Carlos smiled to himself and took a bite out of the apple.
After he finished breakfast, Carlos changed his clothes, lay in bed, and counted to ten repeatedly, trying to ignore the slight tremble of his hands and flashbacks that threatened to overwhelm him.
When the counting didn’t help, Carlos decided to clean. He couldn’t think of anything else that could ground him, so he figured doing something familiar would help.
Carlos slowly got up from the bed, ignoring his strained muscles, found a broom and started to clean up the room methodically.
After a while, he started humming a song to himself, and the flashbacks became background noise in his head, which he easily ignored, and his hands slowly stopped trembling.
When the floor shined enough for his liking, he decided to dust. Carlos cleaned every surface he found and removed every dust particle until it looked bright new. He sneezed a lot, but it was worth it.
In the end, he was calmer and grounded in the present, and the flashbacks and trembling turned into a fading memory.
Carlos put the broom and duster back where he found them and just stood in the middle of the room, breathing in the fresh air from the window he opened when he felt too hot during work.
Carlos automatically ticked the job done in the list of chores that appeared in his mind during the cleaning.
Having something to do made him calmer, the rules were good, and the order was good. He didn’t have to make his own choices when someone made them beforehand, even though his mind did that. Or rather, the ghost of his mother in his head did that.
Carlos knew he should probably be worried about it. Making a list of chores to do, so he would feel like he was back on the Isle didn’t sound like a good coping mechanism to him, and the others would try to talk him out of it, but they weren’t here.
They wouldn’t understand anyway. They wouldn’t understand that this was precisely what he needed right now.
Carlos knew that now he should be in his treehouse, tinkering with various stuff he collected over the years or cuddling with Beelzebub, but he didn’t have this option here, so he chose instead to sit in a tree, which was near their room, hidden behind a bunch of bushes.
No one would come looking for him there, and it was as close to a treehouse as he could get.
Carlos brought along a book he started reading this week, and once he found a comfortable position to sit in, he relaxed, opened the book, and started reading.
To be honest, he was proud of himself. He handled the bad day pretty well and all by himself. He didn’t have to bother anyone with it.
It was fine until his right hand twitched somewhere in the middle of the book. He stared at it in surprise for a couple of minutes. Then he shrugged and focused on reading again, convinced it was just his strained muscles from the nightmare.
He handled the bad day. He had. He was fine.
Then his vision started to get blurry, and the letters in the book were impossible to read.
Carlos quickly blinked a few times, but his vision was still the same. Then he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, but it was no use.
Then he noticed that the sky was getting darker and darker, and the warmth was beginning to turn into coldness. He must have read for far longer than he thought. And he realised that he hadn’t eaten anything except breakfast the whole day.
Carlos closed the book, and just when he wanted to jump from the tree to the ground, his whole body flinched so hard that he fell.
He fell on his stomach, and the fall knocked all the air out of him. He gasped for air, but he couldn’t breathe. He suppressed the panic rising within him and just laid there, taking deep breaths.
Carlos knew that this was normal when someone falls. It’s not a panic attack. It will be over soon.
After a few minutes, the pain in his chest lessened, and he could breathe normally again.
Carlos got up, picked up the book, and slowly went back into the dorm room.
His whole body hurt from the fall, and his clothes were all dirty from the grass. At least the book was okay.
When he returned to the dorm room, he put the book back into the bookshelf, changed his clothes, and lay down on the bed. Again.
Carlos was angry.
After all his progress with the cleaning, he is back at the beginning.
It’s not fair.
He should be fine by now. He did everything he usually did at the Isle.
Why wasn’t it enough? What else could he do?
Suddenly he got an inexplicable urge to scream.
He quickly turned around and muffled his scream into the pillow.
Carlos screamed until his lungs burned, but when he stopped, he felt exactly the same. The rage inside him just kept building up and up.
He felt like he was going to explode.
Carlos took a couple of deep breaths and tried to think of something that could calm him down.
When he looked at the clock, everything suddenly clicked.
The clock hands were precisely in the right place, showing why he was so restless.
It was the time he was supposed to be with his mother, helping her design.
When he knew the reason for his anger, he quickly got up and went to the only place where he could find peace.
Carlos stopped before the door, took a deep breath, and quietly knocked three times.
He heard a faint clicking of high heels, and the door opened.
Evie looked just as beautiful as always.
She’s got a pair of black pants on in combination with a dark blue sweater, which was the same colour as her hair, now put in a ponytail, and her brown eyes were looking at him with curiosity and a hint of concern.
“Carlos, what are you doing here? Is everything alright?”
Carlos fiddled with his fingers and looked away from her gaze. “Yeah, I'm alright, everything is alright. Why would you think otherwise?”
He hated how his voice got higher at the end. He coughed to hide it.
“Jay said that you don’t feel well today and that we should leave you alone.”
Carlos blinked a few times, surprised. He wondered why no one was bothering him. It was good, but now it just created problems.
“That’s nice of him,” he said after a moment, not really knowing what to say. “But I’m feeling okay now, so I figured I’ll come by when we didn’t see each other.”
Evie studied him for a while.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Carlos nodded and tried to appear upbeat. He even smiled, but he wasn’t sure it reached his eyes.
Evie still looked unsure, but after a moment, she stepped aside, indicating that she wanted him inside.
Carlos stepped into the room, careful not to touch Evie when he passed her.
The room was divided in the middle. The right side was organized and full of dresses and pieces of fabric. The left side was messier, and Carlos saw Mal's jacket lying on the bed.
There was also a big wooden table on the right side, now covered in fabric, paper, and pencils.
Carlos noticed an unfinished design, clearly new, pinned down by a sewing machine with light green fabric.
Evie closed the door and went to him, careful to let Carlos know she was coming before she appeared in front of him, trying to clean the table.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting company,” she laughed, picked up about ten different fabrics, carried them to her closet, and shoved them inside.
“I’m just making a dress for Audrey-”
Carlos knew this was his only chance.
“You can continue!” he blurted out quickly just as Evie reached to put the sewing machine away.
Evie stopped and turned to him; her brows furrowed. “Are you sure? I don't want to make you uncomfortable somehow.”
Carlos smiled, this time genuinely. “You could never make me uncomfortable.”
“Okay, but if I somehow do, tell me, alright?”
Carlos nodded and nervously tugged at his hair.
So far, so good.
Carlos went to sit on Evie’s bed, gesturing for her to continue.
Evie sat on her chair, arranged the fabric back, and turned on the sewing machine.
Carlos stretched his limbs and sat comfortably. The familiar sound of the sewing machine made his anger melt away like a piece of ice left on the sun for too long. His mother didn’t use the sewing machine much because hers was old and broken, but he remembers it from when he was little.
Carlos felt relaxed for the second time this day, and he knew that this time it would last.
His vision was okay again. The pain from the fall disappeared, as well as the tremble and twitching of his hands.
Carlos noticed that Evie was watching with a strange expression, so he quickly tried to distract her.
“Where are Mal and Jay anyway?”
Carlos remembered that Jay was telling him something about a Tourney practice being late, but he didn’t remember exactly when that would be.
“Mal left just a moment before you came here, something about a dinner with Ben’s parents. And Jay has a little longer Tourney practice today.”
Carlos nodded his head. “Yeah, he told me something about it yesterday. I must’ve forgotten.”
Then there was silence again. Carlos didn’t mind it, he and Evie usually sat in silence, but today he didn’t want Evie to notice his appearance. He opened his mouth to say something, but Evie was quicker.
“Why didn’t you feel well today? Another nightmare?”
Carlos stiffened. That was not the topic he wanted to speak about. He opened his mouth to deny it, but then he remembered the breakfast. Jay knew he had a nightmare.
“Y-Yeah, a nightmare,” he confirmed and fiddled with his hands.
Evie let out a sigh. “You shouldn’t have been alone after a nightmare, Carlos.”
“I know, but it was alright. I just slept a little longer in the morning and was in bed all day, reading.”
Carlos concluded that telling her about the cleaning and the fall from the tree is not necessary.
Evie opened her mouth to say something, but Carlos just needed her to be quiet and not speak about this day; he needs... he needs...
“Could you scratch my hair, please?” he blurted it out before he could talk himself out of it.
Then, many things happened at once. The sewing machine got crazy, and the needle hit one spot on the dress repeatedly and then stopped working. Evie stared at him for a whole minute with her mouth open, then she recovered and tried to make the machine work again.
Carlos just sat on the bed and stared at the mess in horror, the realization slowly getting to him.
He ruined the dress! And the sewing machine!
The trembling was back and worse than before.
They were slowly moving from his limbs to his entire body, and soon he fell on his back, unable to stop it.
His chest was rising and falling faster and faster, and his eyes were beginning to water.
He closed them to stop the tears from falling. He didn’t want to ruin the bedsheets too.
Carlos started to rock back and forth and tried to calm his breathing.
Suddenly a voice spoke near him.
“Carlos? Carlos? It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The voice was soft and warm and calm, nothing like his mother’s, but he knew that that was just a new type of punishment – to give him hope and then crush it to pieces.
Carlos whimpered and shut his eyes even harder.
“It’s not your fault, and I will not hurt you. I promise. Just open your eyes, please.”
He started to count to ten in his head.
The trembling slowed down, and he could move his body again. He curled up in a ball and protected his head with his hands.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I will fix it, I-I promise,” he mumbled through ragged breaths.
Carlos focused on deep breaths and the rising and falling of his chest. He counted to ten over and over again.
He was sure the beating would start any minute. He broke two rules already.
But nothing happened. The voice disappeared, and it was quiet for a while.
Then, a soft noise of a needle hit the fabric. A familiar sound that he shouldn’t be able to hear because the sewing machine is broken, the dress is ruined, and it’s all his fault.
The voice appeared again.
“See? It’s okay, Carlos, everything is alright. I’m not going to hurt you. Will you please open your eyes?”
Carlos relaxed his eyelids and slowly opened his eyes, blinking for a while. When he had his eyes shut really hard, the pressure made him see small black bits, even when he opened them, and it took time to get rid of them.
When he could see clearly again, he saw Evie sitting on the floor before him, watching him with concern.
Carlos uncurled, slowly sat up, and leaned his back on the bed frame.
He took a couple of deep breaths before speaking.
“I’m sorry, Mu-Evie, I-I ruined the dress and-”
“No! None of it was your fault, Carlos. None of it,” said Evie sternly, looking him in the eyes. “I was just so surprised by you allowing me to touch your hair that I made a mistake. It’s my fault.”
“But you said it yourself. I asked you something that made you do it. It’s my fault!” Carlos looked down at a small burn scar close to his knuckles. “Everything is always my fault,” he whispered to himself and felt the tears forming at the corners of his eyes again.
Evie sighed and slowly reached out a hand to him. “Can I touch you, Carlos?”
Carlos shook his head and put his knees under his chin. He couldn’t deal with anyone touching him right now.
He counted to ten again, this time out loud. After the fifth time, he felt the tremble slowly disappear.
Carlos tried to focus on the sewing machine again to ground himself, but he couldn’t. Everything was too loud - Evie’s breathing, the rustle of her clothes, and the blanket under him.
His clothes were dragging across his skin, and they were too tight. Everything was too tight.
He put his hands over his ears and waited for the feeling to disappear.
“Carlos, you are okay. You are in Auradon, you are safe, and no one will hurt you.”
Evie’s voice was coming to him muffled, but the words were comforting.
After some time, he knew it was over.
Carlos put his hands back down and closed his eyes.
He was so tired. If he doesn’t stand up, he’ll fall asleep right here. He can’t do that because boys aren’t allowed to sleep in girls' dorm rooms, and he’ll get punished.
Carlos quickly got up and went to the door, but Evie grabbed his arm before he could open it.
He flinched, and she let him go instantly.
“I’m sorry, but where do you think you are going? If you don’t know, you just had a panic attack.” Evie sounded scared, and Carlos felt horrible.
He made Evie scared, and he ruined her dress design and ruined her night. He never should’ve come here, he knew Evie’s fear would turn into anger, and she would punish him, she’ll make him pay, she’ll-
His breathing got quicker again.
He has to get out of here.
Carlos opened the door and ran away, ignoring Evie calling him back.