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Picture this: you’re Chloe Charming, entering her first year at Auradon Prep after being homeschooled all your life. You get good grades, you surround yourself with good people, and everything is going exactly how you want it until Red of Hearts is assigned as your roommate.
In hindsight, she would have immediately preferred to switch to have her friend Zellie as her roommate. As their parents were good friends, they were too. Before attending Auradon Prep, the two were castle-sit together, and life was good. That was until they got a letter from Belle and the Beast (as he was affectionately called) requiring every royal in Auradon to go to the school. Chloe didn’t think it was really fair, as Chad had the choice, albeit he still chose to go. They weren’t even Auradon’s rulers! (It was thanks to some stupid heritage rule, she researched it eventually.) Her point still stood, though.
Chloe wouldn’t have chosen to go, but she did. And at first, Auradon Prep was great. She and Zellie made new friends, and she even got her own room! But then she received news one morning, two months into the school year, as Principal Uma rapped on her dorm room door as she was studying for her chemistry class. She remembers the day like the back of her hand.
Chloe drowsily starts studying at her desk. It’s five in the morning on a Monday, and she wants to get a little more information in her head before she heads out with her friends. There’s a new trampoline park open. Childish, she knows, but a little bit of wonder never hurt anyone.
However, her plans are cut short fairly quickly. She hears a firm knock on her door, along with a call that’s so strong it’s like the person is shouting in her ear.
“Chloe Charming! Open the door in five minutes or I’ll open it for you! Wait, no, that doesn’t sound right.” Uma sighs. “Mal never taught me this part…” she mutters to herself. “It’s always been easier just yelling…”
Chloe stands up from her chair, dusting herself off and moving to unlock her dorm room door. “Hello, Principal Uma. Um… Have a seat?” Chloe weakly motions to her messy desk.
Uma shrugs. “It’s alright, I can stand. I just wanted to come here to let you know you’re getting a roommate.”
Chloe brightens almost immediately. “Oh! Is it Zellie?” She claps. “That’ll be so much fun! Thank you so-”
Uma immediately cuts her off. “No. You know Ben and Mal have decided to extend invitations to the VKs, right?”
Chloe nods. “But all the VKs have been taken care of. They’ve been brought to Auradon, and the Isle of the Lost is a safer place for the rest who want to stay. I heard the actual villains had something else happen to them?”
“That’s correct. But in Wonderland, there’s another VK. Red of Hearts. She’s going to be your roommate!” Uma does something with her hands Chloe can only assume is to show happiness.
“Yay for you! However, you will have to teach her a few things about Auradon. I also hear she’s a bit rebellious, so watch out for that.” Uma glances at the clock on Chloe’s wall and grimaces. “Sorry, I have to meet with Harr- hm. I mean Vice Principal Harry. Enjoy the rest of the day!”
And with that, Principal Uma disappears. She confuses Chloe, sometimes. No, a lot of the time.
And, as she remembers, that’s all it took to get a new roommate the next week. Chloe cleaned, arranged her things to one side, and even tried decorating the new girl’s side of the room. In red, of course. She’d probably like her namesake colour, right?
Besides, what was the harm in trying to do something nice like that? It’s not as if the new girl would hate it.
Chloe found out very quickly that what she thought originally was a lie.
When the new girl, Red, came, Chloe had been frantically organizing, making sure everything was perfectly in order, because she liked being organized. That Saturday, she saw the door open, and a mopey-looking redhead (she means REDhead) burst through the doors, and immediately flopped and conked out. On Chloe’s bed. That… was okay. Surely, she was just tired from the trip. Wonderland was a long way from here, after all. They would’ve had to go through the Creaking forest, and that in itself could take forever.
Whilst she was deep in thought, she looked over to the bed beside her. The girl—Red—looked like she was pretending to be asleep.
“You know I know you’re awake, right? I assumed you slept on the long trip over here.”
Red raises her head slightly and purses her lips. “I can’t hide anything from you, can I?”
Chloe’s taken aback. “I… What? That’s a bit aggressive, don’t you think?”
Red sits up straight. “I don’t have to explain anything I do to you. Now, where’s the bathroom? I need to freshen up.” Her words are straight to the point, and feel sharp as a knife on Chloe’s skin.
Pointing in the bathroom’s general direction, Red hurries, bringing a backpack that looks like it’s been through a lot. It’s red, and the straps are starting to fall off. Chloe brushes it off as just some normal wear and tear.
As Chloe, herself, starts to wind down for the night, she picks up an autobiography, and sits down coincidentally in the same spot Red was just in. Her book? The Chronicles of the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, of course. It’s a thrilling tale that weaves into political satire about Auradon’s history. As she reads, she waits for Red to finish. Starting from the beginning, it takes her until the halfway point in order for Red to finish.
After getting ready, Red emerges from the washroom. She looks a lot different without her sharp clothes and distinct colours. Now she’s just… watered down. Like a cat fished out of water in a cartoon. But as Chloe looks at Red, the redhead stares back with more might than expected.
Red raises her head, her hair stringy. As she mats it with a towel, she speaks under her breath, purposefully, so that Chloe can still hear her. “Hm. I guess I made her lock on to me already.” She looks up at Chloe and flashes a grin, causing the latter to hide her face behind her book, cheeks red with embarrassment.
Red laughs curtly, and proceeds to make her way to the front of the room, where Chloe’s left all her notes on a whiteboard she had personally installed. Grabbing a whiteboard eraser, Red wipes them all off, to Chloe’s protests.
“What in the underworld did you just do?” Chloe buries her face in her hands. “I needed those notes for my test!”
Red cocks her head, and places her hand on her hip. “When’s your test?”
Chloe mutters. “It’s in four months.” She raises her voice. “It never hurts to prepare! And besides, you look like you’ve never prepared for anything in your life!”
A flash of hurt makes its way onto Red’s face, but it’s replaced by a calm, cool, collected facade in the blink of an eye. “That’s the way I had to do things in Wonderland. Fast and easy, just like this roommate situation should be.” the girl decides.
Chloe leans forward on the edge of her bed. “I’m intrigued. What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to have to interact very much, in actual fact I didn’t want to be here in the first place. The only reason I accepted this invitation is because I didn’t want to deal with my tyrannical mother. So, while I do dearly love your arrangement of this place so I could feel welcome,” she pauses, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I don’t really want to talk to you at all . So if we could go our separate ways, that’d be great.”
Chloe nods, albeit still a bit confused. “Then why’d you wipe my board?”
Red winks. “Because I wanted to.”
Chloe blinks twice, before launching into a monologue about how important those notes were. She didn’t realize Red had snuck into her bed and fallen asleep until thirty minutes later.
Two days later, Red and Chloe had to team up together for a lab. Chloe was happy with her maintained 100% in the class, which consequently meant that she had to be the one to show Red the way around, even though the girl had protested that she had received top-of-the-notch educat
Chloe led her to the plants they were studying for their rejuvenation properties. Pointing to a pod-like plant, she started to explain what it was. “That’s a Thorusadap plant. It originated from the Creaking woods, and slowly gained colour. At one point, there was a mutation that caused the roots to stretch underground for miles, and eventually they made their way here as an invasive species. Albeit, their sap is extremely efficient at healing mammals’ wounds, so we’re able to keep their population in check because there are no other natural predators.”
As Chloe looked over to Red, she saw the other girl tilt her head to the side, pretending to sleep as a response to her tangent. She even made snoring noises to boot.
Chloe sputtered in response. “It can’t be that boring! I just love history!”
Red’s head jerked up. “I don’t like looking at the past. My mom burned all the historical books of Wonderland so that she could blaze a new future.” She asserted this with such force that Chloe would’ve believed her if she didn’t know better.
“But how can you stay away from the mistakes of the past if you don’t know what it is? History repeats itself, at least that’s what my parents always tell me.” Chloe finishes with a flourish.
Red stays quiet for a moment, clearly thinking about something, before she shakes it off. “I never needed to. Hey, can we use that sap? I got a paper cut earlier.” She extends her palm, scarred and worn down, with a single line of red blood across it.
Chloe reaches for Red’s hand. “What happened to you? Is everything alright?”
Red yanks her hand away, her anger red-hot. “No! I just asked you to add that healing thing on it! Don’t go sticking your nose where it obviously doesn’t belong!”
Chloe hums softly. “Curb your anger, Red. I didn’t mean anything by it. And that actually ties into our chemistry lab. We have to distill the sap to extract the itchy properties from it.” Motioning for Red to follow her, they walk into a separate room full of equipment. She can hear Red loudly inhaling and exhaling, perhaps as an anger control mechanism. She’s glad that she won’t get punched in the back of her head, at the very least.
“Okay, so how do we do this?” Red instantly reached out to grab something made of glass, but Chloe immediately jumped in front of her.
“We need to obey lab etiquette! Here.” Chloe runs over to a cabinet and fishes out gloves, lab coats, and safety glasses. “You have to wear these before you start itching like you’ve run into two meters worth of poison ivy.”
Red puts on the goggles, and the gloves. “Do I have to wear this plain lab coat? It just seems a bit… plain, don’t you think?”
Chloe rolls her eyes. “What are you going to do about it? We don’t have different colors.”
“Oh yeah? Then watch me.” Red sneers, almost condescendingly. At once, she takes a deck of cards out of her pocket, and throws them down. In a flash, her coat is a vibrant red. As Chloe takes the color change in, her teacher, Fauna, rushes in, gasping.
“Red of Hearts! I would have thought you’d be better than this!” She turns around to face Chloe. “You too, Chloe. You’re not getting off scot-free for this.” Fauna ponders for a second. “Detention, for the both of you!”
Chloe gasps so loud the whole of Auradon could hear, and all Red does is shake her head in amusement.
Chloe had originally thought that she could get Red to change her mind. It seemed simple enough in hindsight; her so-called ‘Charming’ smile and enthusiasm had gotten her out of many sticky situations, but seemingly not this one, to her disappointment. Red was steadfast and steady in her approach of avoiding her, even though Chloe had told her many times that if she needed anything at all, she just had to holler.
Red was like an itch Chloe couldn’t scratch. Not like she couldn’t live with it, of course, but she certainly wanted to put in the effort for some odd reason. Red was just… compelling. Captivating? Chloe didn’t want to dwell on it more than she needed to.
But anyway, night was falling on Auradon Prep. The wind started to blow so loud you could hear it from outside, and the summer sunset was taking place all-too-late.
One of Chloe’s guilty pleasures was going out and admiring the stars. To do that, though, she’d have to go out through the window… in front of Red’s bed. She’d be damned.
Using her legs, she silently snuck over to the window, where it looked like Red was sleeping. Although Chloe was the captain of the Swords and Shields team, she was much more known for her flashy takedowns than her stealthy surprises. She’d been caught off guard more than once.
As she tried to maneuver around Red’s bed, she fell down. Bracing for impact, she steeled herself for a hit that never came. Instead, she was surrounded by pillows. It seemed as if Red had left, and to be honest, that was none of Chloe’s business. She arranged the pillows back and headed out onto the roof, as she had originally intended.
She was able to slide out the door, albeit with more difficulty than usual. As she was making her way to the top ledge of the roof, she saw a winding trail of smoke ahead. Furrowing her brow, she continued on her way, stopping only when she saw Red puffing a cigarette that she’d obviously snuck in (contraband rules).
As the cigarette lost its light, Red sighed, tapping it on a tile to cool the embers inside, and exhaling, smoke flowing out of her mouth as she did so. Red reached her hand out into the smoke, as if to grab something that was doomed to never support her in the first place. Almost poetic, Chloe thought, as she snuck up the tiles to meet Red where she was.
“Hey, Red. It’s late, why are you out?” Chloe asks.
Red jumps where she is, obviously startled. She quickly shuffles her lighter into her coat pocket, as well as her cigarettes, forgetting about the one in her hand as she tries to collect herself in a frenzy.
Sitting down next to the girl, both Chloe and Red pause and look at the sky for a moment. The stars move around them, and Chloe thinks it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. They twinkle brightly, and it reminds her of a rhyme her mother used to sing to her. She hums it softly under her breath.
“Au clair de la Lune,
Mon amie, Red,
Prête-moi ta plume
Pour écrire un mot…”
Chloe nudges Red slightly. “See how I changed it?”
Red smiles slightly. “I don’t know how to speak French, but I do appreciate the gesture.”
“Then what’s got you down in the dumps? Are you alright?”
Blowing out a heavy breath, Red decides that now’s as good a time as any to say what she wants to.
“Do you want to know why I smoke? Wait, scratch that. I’ll just tell you. When I was younger, about ten, I was living a great life. Wonderland was a wonderful place, just as its name stated. But then, I don’t know what happened. In the blink of an eye, my father was gone, and it was like nobody remembered he was ever there. The people changed, but most of all, my mother changed. It was like he buried the secret to keeping my mom happy with himself.”
Chloe was silent. Red took it as a sign to continue. No reason to stop now.
“The main reason I’m here is because of gardening, funnily enough. What I think was two months ago now, my mother invited me into the royal gardens. I thought it was going to finally be some time where she’d be back to being my mother again, but that was a lie. As soon as I stepped in, she closed the doors and berated me on everything I did wrong, and how I was such a mistake that-” Red stopped, absentmindedly wiping tears off her eyes. Reaching back into her pocket, in a swift movement, she lit another cigarette as if the smoke would blow away the memories.
“Anyway, there was an incident with a lot of glass. I had to cover my head from the glass raining down. You know I built that, so my mom would be happy? Everything I worked so hard for was gone, just like that. It was like I was the shattered glass on the floor. A puzzle with too many pieces missing. Then I realized there was one set of choices: give up, or build something new. I ran, and I made my way here. Acting out is just the easiest way to hide how I really feel.” Red breathed again, seemingly done with all she had to say.
“You don’t have to bottle all that up, okay? I’m here. To be honest, I thought you were pretty annoying at first, too. But sitting alone in the dark won’t help. When you can’t see anything, the world is nice and small and manageable. But pushing people away when you’re hurting the most brings more pain into the world. You don’t have to do that. I’m here.” Chloe shuffles.
“That’s only if you want me to be.”
“I’d like that.” Red softly replies. “This feelings thing isn’t that bad after all.” Her tears, silent and thick, make waves down her cheeks. Chloe thinks she can try to help Red, so she won’t have to hold the world on her shoulders. She leans her head on Chloe’s, and they stay there, looking at the stars as they twinkle. They sit there, quiet, at the night sky, ready for anything.