Chapter Text
Nine months. She’s been… gone… for nine months. She doesn’t remember being gone. She doesn’t remember a heaven or hell or timeless limbo. She was just… nothing. And then she wasn’t.
It was like waking up.
If waking up involved a piercing headache and your best friend crying over you while shoving her entire hand down your throat to make you vomit. If waking up involved a collision of emotions and sensations her brain couldn’t begin to process along with incomplete but devastating memories that aren’t- couldn’t be- can’t be yours. If waking up was closer to drowning.
Red wasn’t Red for nine months, and the world moved on, Chloe moved on. She can’t really blame Chloe.
She could never blame Chloe. Especially when every time Red glances at her, she sees her at the bottom of a staircase. She doesn’t know how they went from that, to dating. She tries not to think about it.
She tries not to think about a lot of things. Like the way she always feels like she’s standing on the edge of a roof, or that her insides feel like they are in the wrong place, or the way the people in Auradon look at her, sometimes.
It’s really fortunate, then, that she’s about to take the finals for an entire school year she wasn’t present for. Drowning herself in textbooks is much better than drowning herself in thoughts she’s not sure are hers, or those of a fucked up girl who decided to play peek-a-boo with people’s lives.
Honestly, she should have just left Red in whatever non-existence she was in.
She immediately winces at the thought, gripping her pencil tighter and shaking her head hard like she could knock that drifting idea loose. She knows that thought isn’t one that’s hers.
A gentle touch brushes over her hand, and she stiffens as an electric current raises the hairs on her body and burrows in the seams of her spine.
“Hey, you okay?”
Red turns her face in Chloe’s direction, but can’t quite bring herself to look fully at her. It’s painful to look at her. She’s scared to look at her.
If she looks, will she see her face pinched in pain long gone, or will it be etched in current grief? The memories from other Red never come in full imagery and recollection. Just a flash of an image. An impression of an emotion. Nothing enough to give her any context.
It’s not her.
But what she does get is enough to know that the other Red loved her best friend. It’s a different kind of love than what she feels for her princess. It’s desperate. Greedy. Guilty.
She wonders if that's not the kind of love Chloe felt for the imposter, too, with the way she’s been acting since that first day in the dorm room. It’s like it’s spilling over and contaminating what was once so simple and easy. Red has never experienced her friend’s love like this before. Anxious. Clingy. Like if she lets Red out of her sight, she’ll slip back into non-existence.
Chloe also cries a lot. For the other Red. And for her. It’s kind of complicated.
Would she rather the other Red be sitting beside her, instead?
It’s another thought that doesn’t feel like hers- passing just on the edges of self. More smoke than substance, but distracting none-the-less. She shouldn’t torture herself by lingering on it.
It doesn’t matter. Chloe is clearly grieving the other Red with at least equal measure that she clings to her with. She isn’t going to make it harder on her by bringing up things neither of them have any control over.
Red smiles at her friend.
It feels off, like even her body knows that she’s not the one who originally belonged in it. “I’m all good, Chlo. Just struggling a bit with this Chemistry stuff. Auradon has very different elements from what we have in Wonderland.”
“Right. Here, I can help.” Chloe slides her chair closer until they are practically side-by-side, shoulders brushing, and the way she presses the side of her thigh against Red’s feels deliberate, like every other touch she’s given Red the past couple days. Rooted in fear and desperation for reassurance. For Chloe or Red, she isn’t sure as her princess seems to beg with her entire body to give and take in equal measures.
So Red allows the touch, even though her skin buzzes and she doesn’t know what the body she’s inhabiting wants in concern to the touch. To lean in or shy away- both ideas seem to be actively a relief and something to dread.
So she just lets it happen, because while she doesn’t seem to understand what her body wants, she knows that Chloe needs it.
Suddenly, those clashing emotions fighting it out somewhere in her intestines, find their way into her chest and start working their way up her throat. At least this time, she can guess at the trigger.
It’s because touch used to be so simple to her. She liked it. She loved physical contact- especially from Chloe. She craved it like she craved sweets, or Chloe’s attention. She initiated and received with little thought. It was never an event to bump up against her friend.
She misses when it used to be simple.
She tries desperately to shove those realizations back down- unmake them- because now isn’t the time. Not in front of Chloe- not later in the shower during the one time Chloe will let her out of her sight outside of classes.
And then that thing happens, as it has a couple times the past couple days. The thick cord in her chest winding ever tighter and tighter suddenly snaps, and the wire comes loose. Red is outside her body, completely cut off from it aside from some loose strings that feel fragile and insubstantial. If she tugs on one, she can move a limb or make her vocal cords work, but it’s difficult and doesn’t seem worth the effort.
The one in her chest is missing, though. The one attaching her to that body. Like she’s floating outside it, rather than in it, and sometimes that seems more fitting than inhabiting it. It’s not hers, anyway, so what would it matter if she just got swept away. Would the other Red eventually return if she leaves her vessel empty long enough? Or will something else try to take up residence?
Sometimes it lasts minutes. One time it was hours.
“…-and so you just input these numbers here and solve from there. Do you want to try a couple practice problems? Here, I think the text book has a couple.” Chloe reaches for the text, dragging it closer to the edge of the table and flicking toward the back of the chapter they are on.
The world comes back in textures. The hard plastic under her. The warmth of Chloe’s leg pressed against hers. The crinkling rub of paper under her arm.
She stares down at the problem Chloe pointed to, brain struggling to piece the past few minutes together with torn edges, and she suddenly feels like crying.
She ducks her head, letting her hair fall forward to create a barrier between her and her friend who is trying so hard.
The least Red can do is try in return. But she didn’t hear a word Chloe had said past ‘I can help,’ and she suddenly has the awful, furious urge to flip the table. To shove Chloe out of her chair and ask her how easy it was to accept the other Red as a replacement.
Her muscles tense, and she desperately clamps down on her entire body. That’s not her. This is not her. It’s not- it’s not.
Red would never hurt Chloe- never want to.
She knows it wasn’t easy in the slightest for her. While Red just ceased to exist, Chloe had to deal with a dupleganger who did nothing but hurt her for the first however-long. She had to deal with damage control, all while damaged herself, and dealing with the other Red’s damage. It wasn’t easy.
“Red..?” Chloe asks uncertainly. She touches the book again when Red doesn’t make a move to start solving the problem, finger helpfully pointing out the numbers. “You just-“
Red clears her throat and slowly sets her pencil down. Chloe’s jaw instantly snaps shut. She’s so careful now, her eyes always searching Red for something doesn’t know how to give.
She clears her throat a second time, with more effort, but it isn’t any more successful than the first in removing the lump she has to work to swallow around.
“I think I need a break,” Red says softly, voice coming out low and a bit gravelly.
“Okay, yeah, why don’t we go for a walk,” Chloe suggests eagerly, maddeningly accommodating and without hesitation, while scrambling to gather their things. Before Red can even rise from her chair, her bag is already packed with notes she didn’t take (with writing that is both hers and not hers) and pressed into her hands.
Red wants to chuck it across the room.
Red doesn’t want to do that.
Red wants to go back to not existing.
Red wants her life back.