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When Chloe wakes up, she feels off. Not her normal off feeling, but something heavier. Chloe feels sunk into her own bones, aware of every effort it takes to twitch a muscle. Chloe doesn’t want to get out of bed today, and as the thought passes through her head, she’s mildly shocked that anxiety doesn’t chase after it and drive her to check the time for good measure to see if she somehow missed her alarm.
She waits a moment, but that thick, heavy apathy remains, and she lets her eyes slide shut.
Then the alarm actually goes off, distant and irritating, and Chloe buries her head under her pillow, trying to block it out. She feels a flash of thick, clogging anger, and then she feels like crying in the next instant.
There is a thump of something hitting the floor, a clatter as someone fumbles the alarm, and then blessed silence. Until a voice cuts through even Chloe’s earmuff pillow.
“What the fuck.”
Chloe sits up, hair staticking and fritzing as she lifts her head, and squints through the red stands at the girl sitting on the floor between the two beds. Chloe’s own face looks back at her, eyes wide. She watches her lips part, and her hand drop a blue curl that she had been inspecting. She leans forward slightly. “...Chloe…?” Chloe’s own mouth whispers hesitantly.
Chloe blinks, then she drops her eyes down to her chest, and the chaotic red waves spilling over her shoulders. She plucks up a lock, and, yup, that’s not her hand. Or her body, or her bed. A sweeping exhaustion washes over her, and she slumps back into Red’s pillows with a groan. “What now,” she sighs.
“What the fuck, what the fuck,” Red, in Chloe’s body, evidently, says as she climbs off the floor.
“Could you not use my mouth to say those words?” Chloe requests the ceiling, absently rubbing her thumbnail over an itchy spot on her side. This body feels weird, she notes groggily.
“Chloe, what the fuck?”
“I heard you,” Chloe says, turning her head in her roommate’s direction, and watching as her chest rises and falls quickly. Red’s hand fumbles at the front of her shirt, pressing hard against her chest.
“What is- why is-” she stutters, blinking rapidly as she stumbles backward until she collapses onto the edge of Chloe’s bed. Her knuckles turn white as she clutches the edge of the mattress.
Chloe slowly sits up, watching her struggle. A thread of concern worms into her awareness, and she slides her legs out of the blankets. “Hey, you need to breathe. You’re having a panic attack.”
“I’m not having a panic attack,” Red immediately argues, because she just always has to be pigheadedly recalcitrant.
Chloe rolls her eyes, weirdly unmoved by the insanity of waking up in someone else’s body, and slides to the ground in front of the other girl gasping for breath. “You are,” she says, grasping her knee as a grounding point. “Come on, breathe with me. Inhale-”
“Shut up! I don’t need your fucking help,” Red snaps, batting her hand away and glaring.
A flash of anger blazes through Chloe, quickly followed by a deep anxiety and insecurity. The following emotions don’t erase the ones from before, only clashing and colliding with them. They all flutter inside of her, confusing, conflicting, and making her not sure which one to latch onto. All of them are unpleasant. She places a hand to her chest as the suddenness and intensity almost chokes her. It definitely surprises her, as it’s the most she’s felt all morning.
“Woah, this isn’t normal,” she mutters.
“This isn’t normal, either!” Red hisses, hitting her palm against her chest three times, pointedly, and clutches at the fabric over it. “What the fuck, Chloe, it feels like I’m going to die. Like you’re going to die. Like everyone is going to die, and I don’t know why.”
“Oh. That. Yeah, that sounds about right.” Chloe itches her ribs again and climbs to her feet, since Red doesn’t want her help. Red never wants her help. Even after all they’ve been through, she still doesn’t trust Chloe. She probably doesn’t even like her. They only became friends at all because she just happened to accidentally get pulled back in time with her. Are they even friends?
A wave of exhaustion washes over her as she straightens, and she’s tempted to just crawl back into bed and go back to sleep. Actually, she’d be perfectly okay doing that and not ever waking up ag-
Chloe rocks back a step, stunned at the path her thoughts violently and all too easily veered. Woah. Where did that come from?
“That stupid statue!”
Chloe jolts as Red bursts into movement, blinking back into awareness. She watches dumbly as the other girl trips over air, and then hits her knees in front of the red jacket she had discarded in the middle of the floor the night before.
“What?” Chloe asks, watching her fumble the pockets. Her brain feels slow, dragged down with the lingering thoughts from before.
“The statue,” she repeats unhelpfully, and then makes a noise of victory Chloe has never heard come from her own throat as she wrestles something free of the fabric. She lifts it into the air, turning to Chloe with a wild look in her eyes. Does she look like that when she spirals? She feels like she should be backing up. Or helping put her to bed.
Then she sees what it is she’s holding, and it clicks. The statue. The one from yesterday, that had been sitting on one of Principal Uma’s bookshelves, the one Red had broken when Chloe had tried to stop her from touching every single thing not bolted down.
Chloe bolts for the hamper and her own discarded pants, drawing out the other half. She knew they should have come clean, but when they heard Uma returning, Red had shoved her piece into her pocket, and Chloe had copied her in a panic.
“How do you know it was this? You touched a dozen things on that shelf before you broke this- any of them could have had some weird magic attached to them. And I touched them all, too, because I was straightening them after you got your paws on them.”
“It’s a weird, broken, lion- hybrid- thing, and we both took a piece,” Chloe watches her own face deadpan. “You’re the ‘A’ student, you do the math.”
That feeling strikes her again. A flash of fury- a bubbling, insecure hurt that makes her want to melt into the ground. Chloe closes her eyes, taking deep breaths. “I have. And lots of things could have triggered this magic. Skin contact. The energy from our argument. Both, or neither, we just don’t know. You’re jumping to conclusions without any real evidence. But, sure, Red, let's just go with that. It was the chimera. So what do you want to do to fix it?”
Red hesitates, an uncertain look crossing her face. She takes a step closer to Chloe, hesitantly lifting her piece. “Maybe, just… put it back together?” Chloe stares at the jagged part of the lion’s back, it’s open maw facing her. Then, with a sigh, Chloe lifts her piece, a goat head, and aligns the edges until it’s smooth and almost impossible to tell they aren’t one solid figure.
They hold them there for a moment, waiting for something to happen. A flash, a transformation, but the magic wasn’t flashy when it happened, and nothing happens now. Chloe drops her arm.
“Wait-” Red says, face painted in familiar stress. She grabs the goat head from Chloe’s limp hand and hurries over to one of the desks, carefully placing the pieces on top and arranging them so that they sit together, balancing without support. “Maybe- maybe they just need time to fuse back together. It took a while for us to swap, so maybe it just needs a while, too,” she rambles.
Chloe mostly just wants to go to bed. And she feels a strong craving for coffee. Which is insane, because she normally hates coffee, and caffeine makes her anxiety a hundred times worse. And this body won’t stop itching.
She reaches under her shirt with an irritated huff and rakes her nails over the stubborn irritation. Terror instantly washes through her, cold, along with burning pain, as she feels the skin give away. Hard and crusty, it lodges deep under her nails, along with something wet that seeps into the cracks of her nailbeds.
She freezes, scared to move. Then, slowly, she withdraws her hand to stare at the bright red blood wedged under her/Red’s nails and smeared across the back of her/Red’s first knuckles.
She yanks her shirt up to view the damage she did, and her breath leaves her in a rush. She expects the panic to come, then, fast and immediate, and consuming. But instead, it’s numbness that washes over her, still somehow just as consuming.
“...Red?” she utters.
The other princess answers absently, eyes still fixed on the figure. “Hm?” Her eyes only flicker in Chloe’s direction, distracted, and then swings fully around with a gasp. “Hey!” She scrambles back to her feet and yanks the shirt from her hands and back down. “Don’t look at that,” she snaps, “That’s not yours to judge.”
“I’m not judging,” Chloe says, blinking at the shame and defensiveness plain on her own face. She wants to reach again. To take another look at the line of cuts she had accidentally ripped open. She wants to make sure they are treated and don’t get infected. She can feel one single bead tracking the slowest of trails down her side and making the skin tickle where it touches.
She steps away from the scowling girl to grab a couple tissues. Red immediately snatches them away, and Chloe jumps as her hands intrude under her shirt before she can do it herself, unhesitatingly pressing it against her ribs. Chloe watches her pulse hammering away in her neck.
“How long has this been going on?” she asks softly.
“I don’t know. Years,” she snaps. “It’s not any of your business.”
“Maybe,” Chloe acknowledges. She plucks another tissue, using it to pick the scab and blood out from her fingernails. “But I care about you, and you’re hurting yourself.”
“Do you, though,” Red scoffs, disbelieving. “Do you actually care? Because from where I stand, all you care about is being right. You think you’re so perfect, but you-” She cuts herself off, jaw clenching. Her hand lifts away from Chloe’s arm to press flat against her chest. She takes a couple ragged breaths.
“I can’t believe you, Red!”
“Oh-ho, can’t you princess, because last I checked, you were the one to draw a sword.”
“I told you to just ignore him!”
“And let him think he can just get away with saying that shit?”
“Yes, Red. It was just words, and the more you engage, the more it eggs him on, and now we are the ones in trouble because you made it physical.”
“Oh shut up, you were right there beside me-”
“Because you decided to fight someone! What else was I supposed to-”
“ENOUGH.” Chloe’s jaw snaps shut as Principal Uma whirls on them, fire blazing in her eyes. “To my mother and Triton, both of you shut up!”
Red falls instantly silent, too, and her jaw jumps as she rocks a step back and her arms cross her chest.
The pirate captain turned principal glares at them in exasperation from across the table. “Look, this isn’t the Isle where brawling in the corridors is acceptable behavior. I didn’t think I’d have to explain this to Cinderella and the Queen of Cupcake’s daughters.” Chloe has to bite back a protest of the use of her mother’s abusive nickname. This definitely isn’t the time to be correcting a teacher. “This school is my responsibility, and the welfare of its inhabitants is something I take very seriously. All of its inhabitants, no matter who is at fault or who threw the first punch.”
“So it only matters if it gets physical?” Red bites defiantly, in a way she should never talk to someone in authority, whether she thinks they are right or not. “Because you didn’t even ask why. Austin called Chloe a-”
“Trust me, I’ll handle him, but only after I deal with you two, because y’all appear to be fighting each other just as much as the fucker talking shit in the hallways.”
The pirate stares them down in challenge, practically daring either of them to argue. Chloe would like nothing more than to sink through the floor. She can feel her throat closing and making it so she can’t breathe.
The moment is broken as the door bursts open again, and one of Uma’s pirates pokes his head in. “Captain. Need you a moment.”
A spark of irritation blazes in her eyes as she turns her head. “Can’t it wait? I’m in the middle of something.”
“Not really.”
Uma stares for a moment, as if judging the validity of the claim, before she pushes herself upright. “Both of you, don’t move.” Chloe watches the pirate captain stalk out the door, face burning in shame. She’s never gotten in trouble before. And though she knows she did the right thing, stepping in to help Red, it stings.
She turns to see how the Wonder is handling everything, only to find that the girl has immediately left her side and wandered toward the shelves.
“She said don’t move,” Chloe huffs, trying to shake off the wrong feeling in her limbs and mentally prepare for the scolding that hasn’t even really begun. She holds her position for all of a moment before she sees Red curiously pluck up and set in motion an infinity pendulum. Then Chloe darts forward to still the clacking balls as Red moves on to playing with the next thing, setting it spinning toward the edge of the bookshelf.
“Red,” Chloe says, stopping it and setting it back where it was before Red got her hands on it. She goes entirely ignored by the rebel, and Chloe feels a flash of anger. “Red!” Chloe reaches out to touch her arm, and she jerks. The figure goes tumbling, hitting the edge of the shelf, and it’s heavy enough that the entire shelf jumps and sends something else that was sitting on the edge tumbling over.
Chloe gasps, reaching out, and she fumbles with the bobble, not exactly catching it, but it bounces off of her fingers onto a lower shelf where it knocks over even more knick-knacks.
Chloe kneels, quickly righting them, and she bites her lip as her hand lingers on a small, ornate, mirror with a large crack splitting the surface in half. She hopes that crack was already there.
Red draws her attention with a muttered, “Shit,” and she looks over to see her kneeling over a statue. “I hope this wasn’t valuable.”
“What did you do,” she hisses, reaching for a chunk as Red does.
“Me, you made me jump!”
“I know, you always jump, you always flinch,” Chloe feels tears burn in her eyes. “Even when I’m furious at you, I’d never hurt you. You know I won’t. So why do you still- why do you- when have I ever hurt you?”
“It’s not about you or what I know,” Red spits.
“What else could-” Principal Uma’s voice is suddenly directly on the other side of the door, making Chloe leap to her feet with a gasp. She watches Red shove the piece of the figurine she was holding into her pocket, and gapes. “What are you-”
“Hide it!” she hisses, and Chloe protests. For a moment. And then the door opens and Chloe panics, shoving the little goat head into her back pocket.
She thinks they’ll immediately be caught with where they are standing in the room, and because of the absolute guilt etched into Chloe's face, but their principal just breezes past them, mumbling curses that a person of her position should really not be saying in front of them.
Chloe and Red drift away from the bookcase as she goes behind her desk to start rifling through papers. “Look,” she says without looking up, “I don’t have time to deal with the two of you, so here’s what’s going to happen. Saturday detention, in here, with me. If there are any other incidents involving the two of you, this will be a standing event for the rest of the year. Got it?”
“Got it,” Red says.
“Yes ma’am,” Chloe echoes more respectfully.
“Good, now get out of here and figure your shit out.”
Red’s hand retreats from Chloe’s shirt, turning and tossing the tissues into the waste bin. “This isn’t working. We’re just going in circles. Why isn’t this working?” She turns to the figurine sitting on the desk, and Chloe’s eyes drag to it, dull.
“Maybe because it’s missing a piece,” Chloe says, brain turning as she finally sees it fully. Lion body. Goat head on its back. “It’s a chimera, and look- it’s missing its tail. It must still be back in the office somewhere.”
“You’re telling me that we’re going to stay like this the whole day while we wait to sneak into the principal’s office?”
“Why do we always end up sneaking into the principal’s office?” Chloe sighs. “Can’t we just, I don’t know, tell her?”
“So she can give us Saturday detention the rest of the year?” she counters. “Not happening.”
“Fine,” Chloe sighs. She doesn’t have the energy to argue, so she crosses over to Red’s dressers, pulling the drawers open.
“What are you doing?”
“Going to class.” Even if Chloe doesn’t think she has the energy to make it through the school day. Coffee. She needs coffee.
“Seriously? You’re worried about your perfect attendance?”
“I thought you were worried about detention? If we both don’t show, immediately after yesterday, someone will come looking for us. Now come on. Get dressed. We get to play at being each other today.”
“Wonderful,” she bites.
“Look at that. You already got my humor down,” Chloe jokes. Red shoots her a side-eye glare of annoyance, but her lip twitches the slightest bit, betraying her true emotions, as reluctant as they may be. She huffs, and Chloe sits down to start trying to wrangle Red’s hair into something acceptable.
She quickly realizes that Red’s hair is different from her own, and reacts differently. The red hair had always looked a bit untamed- like Red hadn’t even tried to brush it, but now she can see why. She ran the brush through the hair once, and what was a clear wave before is no longer. Now it’s just a shapeless frizz that looks even more like it needs to be brushed.
“Your hair is stupid,” Chloe utters, staring down at the useless brush. She thought this kind of hair was supposed to be stupid-easy to deal with.
“And yours isn’t?” Red huffs, not even attempting to deal with Chloe’s as she just ties it into a knot on top of her head while she noisily crosses the room. “Here let me-”
Chloe turns at her approach, and finds Red much closer than she expected and already reaching for her. She didn’t expect the hand to already be inches from her face, and a flash of fear blazes, blindingly and senseless, through her while her body reacts without input. It recoils, bracing backward and eyes squeezing shut.
Red and Chloe both freeze, meeting each other’s eyes. “Sorry,” Chloe stutters after a moment, muscles slowly releasing her. “Sorry, I.. I don’t know why I-”
“It’s okay,” Red says quickly. She averts her eyes and reaches again for the strands of unkempt hair. She starts parting it without comment, dividing them into sections for a braid. “I do... You might not have my memories, but that body remembers.”
“...Oh,” Chloe says softly. Discomfort wars with understanding, but even stronger, in a pit that grows into her stomach lining and invades her organs, sinks a terrible sorrow and guilt. Oh. Oh, no. It really isn’t about trust. It really has nothing to do with Chloe.
Red’s hands work efficiently, but gentle on the braids, twisting them into her normal buns, if she decides to do anything with her hair at all. As she works, that feeling in Chloe’s chest grows and morphs, becoming a slogging, aching, longing she doesn’t know what to do with.
But Red’s body seems to know that, too, because she can’t in any way stop the way it tries to tilt into the touch. Chloe closes her eyes, because she feels completely out of control of her reactions as tears begin to well in her eyes.
She doesn’t like being in Red’s body very much. She lets out a shaky breath as Red finishes and pulls her hands away. She wants to crawl back into bed, or into a hole, and rot there forever. She takes another breath that aches. This is just chemicals, she thinks to herself. It’s just brain wiring.
“Red, I think you’re depressed,” Chloe murmurs.
“What? I’m not depressed,” she scoffs in return, going back to Chloe’s side of the room to search for something to wear.
Chloe shifts to watch her. It’s strange seeing her body move, and emotions cross her own face, that Chloe has no control over or connection to. It’s not like watching a video of herself. More like looking into a mirror and her image not matching up- it’s off- it’s not her. It’s deeply disturbing. “I keep wanting to go to sleep and never wake up.”
“So?”
“I’ve never had those thoughts before, until suddenly waking up with your brain. Someone fine and dandy doesn’t have those thoughts. Something is wrong.”
“Oh but having a feeling of doom inside them the moment they wake up- that is so strong that they’re not sure how they could possibly function- is right?” she returns.
Chloe had thought so. She can’t remember a time it wasn’t like that and had kind of just assumed everyone had that and merely functioned better with it than her. But… maybe it’s not? “Okay. Fine,” Chloe decides, “We are both seeing a psychiatrist after this. And possibly getting fully medicated.”
………………
Chloe is already having a strange morning, so when her feet take her directly to the coffee machine, and she feels an actual thrill as it splashes against the bottom of the cup, she just accepts it. Something in her settles and soothes at the first sip. No wonder Red is a nightmare until she has caffeine in hand. Chloe immediately starts planning her mornings to include time for bedside deliveries in tandem with her efforts to rouse her- once they get their own bodies back, of course.
Her next issue comes when she turns to the buffet lines for students to choose from. She loses a long moment, staring at all the options. None of them catch her attention. None of them look appealing.
“Gods, your appetite is as bad as mine,” she sighs, joining her body in the line. Chloe is used to a nervous stomach, but this isn’t that. This is- a distinct lack of interest, and even a bit of revulsion at the very idea of putting anything on her tray let alone her mouth. “I can’t deal with this today. What’s your safe food?”
Red is clearly a million miles away already as she turns her absent eyes in Chloe’s direction. “Safe food?”
“Yeah, you know. The food that’s maybe not the most nutritious, but you can always manage to eat at least some of it to get something in your stomach?” Red looks at her blankly, and Chloe feels a flutter of discomfort that maybe she read this wrong. Maybe Red doesn’t have the same issues, even though it kind of feels like it right now. Maybe this is still just Chloe. “Nevermind,” she mumbles
She reaches for some pre-sliced fruit, eyes passing searchingly along the line. She pulls a yogurt onto her tray as well, and then does the same to Red’s, who hasn’t made a single attempt to reach for anything.
Then she leads the way to a table along the edge of the room.
Chloe finishes her coffee before reluctantly turning her attention to her meager pickings. Chloe forces herself to eat. She feels the little energy she just gained from the caffeine drain a little with each bite.
“You need to eat,” Chloe prompts her roommate, who is still deep in her head. She’s wrapped a napkin so tightly around her finger that it’s cut off circulation. She unwinds it, then does it again to her thumb.
“I’m not hungry,” she mutters, leg jumping under the table so hard that it rattles Chloe’s empty yogurt cup.
And Chloe is? “I know,” she grunts irritably. She doesn’t know when the emotion crept up on her, but it’s there, dull, as if it shares the rest of her body’s exhaustion and merely exists on principle. It feels like Red’s body only exists on principal, out of sheer stubbornness and a ‘fuck you.’ “But I have a high metabolism, so you have to anyway. It’s my body, so you have to take care of it, you asshole.” She stabs grumpily at a grape. “And trust me, if you have to throw up later, it's less painful if you have something in your stomach.”
That finally seems to draw her attention, because she turns to look at her with alarmed, furrowed, brows. “I’m going to throw up? You throw up?”
“Not always,” she shrugs. Anymore. “But if I get anxious enough, sure. But now it’s usually only after tests or before competitions.” Or if she even perceives one of her teachers to be unhappy with her for some reason. She’s lucky she didn't spew her guts in the principal’s office the other day. At least she managed to hold off until getting back to the room.
“I didn’t know that,” Red says softly, reaching for the yogurt with a grimace. But she pulls off the lid and attempts to eat.
“It’s not like I advertise it. It’s embarrassing.”
…………………….
At least it’s not storming, this time, when they find themselves once more outside the principal’s door.
Chloe watches with folded arms, impatient, as Red uses her hands to pick the lock on the door. She really hopes the pirate doesn’t booby-trap her office like Merlin had. She straightens as she hears the lock snick, and the door is gently pushed open.
Nothing moves from the dark expanse.
“Okay, let’s get in and get out. Merlin might have enchanted flying, killer swords, but I’m more scared about ending up on the other end of Principal Uma’s.”
“Ditto,” Red agrees, taking Chloe’s offered hand to help her to her feet.
They both quickly cross to the shelves they were at the other day, crouching down to look along the floorboards. Chloe uses her phone flashlight to try looking under the shelves, but they’re too close to the ground to actually see anything, so she wiggles her fingers as far as she can underneath.
She shivers in disgust as she feels only dirt and cobwebs. She quickly retracts her hand, running it desperately down her thigh as she gags. “Gross,” she mutters.
“Keep looking,” Red hisses at her.
“I am,” Chloe quickly retorts, and then looks along the shelves themselves. Maybe the tail got knocked onto one of them as it fell. Whoever dusts these shelves should really consider dusting under them, too.
“Found it,” Red sighs breathily, relieved, and passes her phone off so she can use both hands to set the figurine up right there on the ground. The pieces slot almost perfectly into place- lion, goat, snake.
When Red tries to pull her hands back, the goat head slides off the lion’s back. As she fixes it into place, the tail clatters to the floorboards. Chloe watches silently as each time Red attempts to fix the pieces together, her hands get shakier and shakier in their attempts.
“It’s not working,” Red mutters. Then again, “It’s not working.” She rocks backward, falling onto her butt as her breathing picks up, coming in small, hitching, gasps as her gaze stays locked on the statue that remains broken and unremarkable.
For a moment, Chloe feels lost. Not surprised at all, because she didn’t really expect it to be that simple anyway (magic never is in all the stories), but she feels discomforted by Red’s anxiety.
It makes a welling wave of restless helplessness bubble up in her that she doesn’t know what to do with. It’s stupid and under her skin, and she really hates it- she hates Red’s body- probably about as much as Red hates Chloe’s right now.
She finds her hands reaching for the shelves. Not to look for the item that caused this, but because her insides feel dysregulated and learning every groove and gem on this ornate dagger is much better than just letting herself exist in this misery.
But then she realizes what she’s doing and stops herself. Because she’s not helpless. Her insides are a mess, but she knows how to cope. She takes a deep breath, and it doesn’t really help, but she reaches for Red’s face, physically dragging her fixed gaze away from the useless statue.
“Hey, hey,” Chloe says. “Look at me. Or, well, yourself.”
Red snorts, the action interrupting the irregularity of her breathing for a moment, and startling her enough that she locks eyes with her. The flash of humor quickly shifts back to morose. “You were right,” she gulps. “This was stupid. I’m so sorry, Chloe, I screwed everything up. I always screw everything up.”
“Well, that’s just not true,” Chloe refutes. “You saved my mom. You saved Auradon.”
“You did that. I would have gotten sliced up into ribbons if you weren’t there. And now I’ve got us into this mess because I couldn’t just behave-”
“Hey, okay, listen,” Chloe says, tugging on her hands to keep her attention from drifting. Her breathing isn’t getting any worse, but it’s still not right. She’s going to get dizzy soon, if she hasn’t already, if she doesn’t get some real air. “I’ll admit, some of the things you do drive me crazy sometimes, but mostly because I just didn’t understand them. I think I do, now. And… I’m sorry, too, Red, because I hadn’t been trying all that hard to understand.”
“I didn’t try either,” Red says, hands coming up to pull Chloe’s hands from her face so that she can wipe it with her own hand. Well, Chloe’s- but she’s the one in control of it so it’s- nevermind. “I thought that you were so controlling because you only cared about being right, but that’s not it at all. It’s because you feel like everything is going to fall apart all the time, and you’re just trying to keep it from doing that. It’s miserable in here, princess. I want to go back to not caring about anything.”
“You don’t ‘not care,’” Chloe argues, and she’ll die on that hill if she has to. She’s felt it. Like a finick-y, fragile trigger waiting to be set off. Like a pile of clothes shoved into a closet and only held up by the straining hinges of a door. “You just don’t know what to do with it. When it’s not buried under cement, it’s all jumbled up and confusing.”
Red’s hands drop slowly from her face, finding Chloe’s hand in the small space of the floor between them. Her fingers curl, a slight tremble to them, and squeeze. Chloe squeezes back.
Then a sound like glass cracking splits the quiet. It’s a small sound. Like someone stepping on shards. It has the hair on Chloe’s neck standing on end, and as she turns her head to the source, something in her gut feels like it gets hooked and yanked up while the room itself seems to invert in a wash of vertigo. Chloe feels her heartbeat stutter, her brain trips, and she feels a wash of nausea that has her releasing Red’s hand and bracing forward against the ground, trying to breath through the rush of saliva in her mouth warning her of the very real possibility of throwing up.
“Oh gods,” she murmurs, swallowing desperately. Absently, she’s aware of her voice, but it’s the coursing static bubbling under her skin and coiled in her chest that reveals the reason for the largely unpleasant sensations that just ran through her.
“Fuck,” Red mutters in her own, rough voice.
Chloe’s eyes flicker open, instinctively searching her out, and then eyes drawing to the bottom shelf in front of her, where a faint glow rapidly fades to nothing. Chloe reaches for it, drawing out the familiar mirror that she recalls righting, and the crack that had run through it. Her own face stares back at her, slightly pale, a sheen of sweat sticking the rings by her ears to her face.
There is no crack now. It just looks like an ordinary mirror.
“Is that…?” Red asks as Chloe turns it over.
Lines of script stare back at her, and she instinctively reads it off aloud, even though every Auradon kid knows not to read mysterious scripts and books out loud,
“In this glass, truths divide,
Speak with care, or shift your side.
When understanding blooms anew
The mirror mends what broke in view.”
For a moment, it’s silent, then Chloe snorts. It bubbles up in her throat and spills out, and then bubbles even more.
“What,” Red says, confused but lips twitching in the face of Chloe’s amusement.
“It was literally because of our fighting,” Chloe gets out between wheezing laughter.
“That’s….” Red shakes her head slowly. “Why? Who would make something like this?”
“I don’t know. Do you think Principal Uma knows what it does?”
“She does now,” a voice cuts through the dark of the room, making Chloe yelp in terror. Red’s hand clamps tightly around her arm just above her elbow, squeezing. Her stomach rolls as a shadow moves in the darkness, sitting up from where she’d been laying flat on the indistinct shape of the couch.
“Were you sleeping here?” Red croaks.
Chloe yanks her arm out of her roommate’s grip and scrambles for the small trashcan by the desk. She barely makes the lip before the meager pickings Red managed to eat that evening hits the bottom of the fresh liner the janitor put in. It burns a trail from her stomach to her throat, and she very nearly faints as her stomach muscles release her. She catches herself with one hand on the edge of the desk, the other on the floor as the room spins dizzily.
“You alright, kid?” Principal Uma asks from her spot across the room. She doesn’t try to move closer, but she does reach for a lamp beside her position on the couch.
“She’s fine,” Red answers for her without even looking at her. She’s not looking anywhere else except the pirate as she raises to her feet. “What are you doing here?”
Uma lifts an eyebrow while Chloe resists the urge to throw up a second time. “What she means to say,” Chloe rasps, “is that we are very sorry for intruding, please don’t expel us.”
“I’m not going to expel you,” she deadpans, then points at Chloe. “You sure you’re good, kid?”
“I said she’s fine!” Red snaps, stepping into the pirate’s line of sight with clenched fists and a locked jaw.
“Red,” Chloe pleads.
The Wonder glances back at her, shoulders stiff, but as her eyes take Chloe in, there is an imperceptible shift in her expression. It’s just a slight softening around her eyes, but when she turns back front, her glare is directed at the ground rather than the principal. “Sorry,” she mutters.
“I’m okay,” Chloe inputs wearily. She doesn’t know how they could possibly walk away without an expulsion, or at the very least a suspension. Fairytales, she’s going to call their moms, isn’t she.
Her panicked stream of thoughts are interrupted by one of Red’s hands uncurling and lifting slightly away from her side. After a moment, Chloe grasps the offered hand, using it to haul herself up. She feels reluctant to let go, and Red makes no move to herself, so Chloe lets herself cling to it.
“Right,” Uma drawls. She shifts, crossing her legs and leaning back into the couch. She waves a casual hand at the armchairs across from her. “Well, why don’t you both have a seat, then. I have some questions.”
Red doesn’t move immediately, so Chloe does, tugging her forward and to the armchairs neither of them want to sit in. But they sit, because they are obviously in the wrong in this scenario and it’s best to just get this over with.
“About the body swapping?”
“No, actually,” she says. “I think I’m pretty caught up on that.” Her nails tap on the couch arm as she studies them. Tap, taptap. Tap, taptap. “Tell me about this time you both saved Auradon, because last anyone was tracking, it was years ago the last time it was in any danger.”
Chloe jolts forward, stomach once more trying to expel the anxiety from her body.