Chapter Text
The problem with Wonderland, Red of Hearts had decided a long time ago, was that nothing ever stayed where you left it. Rivers run backward on Tuesdays. Forests rearrange their trees out of boredom. And rabbit holes - the only stable passage between Wonderland and the rest of the world - packed up and moved like traveling circuses, popping into existence in a new field, a new cliffside, a new abandoned bell tower, whenever they felt like it.
Which was why Red was currently hanging upside down from a half-collapsed clock tower, waiting for a hole that was supposed to be here, according to Maddox's calculations, and was in fact nowhere to be seen.
"You said dusk," she called down to Chester, who was draped over a gargoyle twenty feet below her, looking bored in his specific way, utterly unbothered by gravity, danger, or the passage of time.
"I said around dusk," Chester corrected, examining his claws. "Rabbit holes are not known for punctuality, Your Highness."
"Don't call me that."
"Princess, then."
"Also no."
"Red," he said, "you're hanging by one foot from a crumbling tower because your mother wants a magic mirror shard that may or may not exist in a hole that may or may not be here. I feel like formalities are the least of your problems."
He wasn't wrong, which was the most annoying thing about Chester… he usually wasn't.
Red flipped herself upright, caught the tower's ledge with practiced ease, and swung down to land in a crouch beside him, dark red hair falling loose from its braid, leather jacket creaking. The heart-split-by-lightning insignia on her back caught the last of the sun.
"It'll show," she said. "It always shows. Wonderland's predictable in its unpredictability."
"Very wise. You should write that on a fortune cookie.
"I'll write it on your face."
“Wow, how funny, your highness.”
“I’m hilarious. You’re just deaf to genius.”
“Mm. Genius.” Chester tilted his head, and for a second his easy grin flickered into something more assessing. “You’ve been somewhere else all day.”
“I’ve been right here”
“Your body has. Where’s the rest of you been going, Red?”
She didn’t answer that. She flipped her knife, caught it by the hilt, and looked instead at the shimmer building in the air.
Below them, in the valley where the rabbit hole was supposed to open, something rippled. A sort of heat-shimmer against the darkening sky, a tear in the air that widened lazily, indecisively, like it hadn't quite decided whether it wanted to exist yet.
"There," Red said, already moving. "Told you."
But they weren't the only ones who'd been watching.
Red heard the second team before she saw them - the particular clatter of Auradon-forged boots on the ground, quieter than Wonderland card soldiers but not quiet enough. She dropped low behind a fallen column, one hand finding the hilt of the short blade at her hip, and peered around the edge.
Blue hair. That was the first thing she registered, before the sword, before the shield with the Charming crest, before the absolutely infuriating look of grim determination on the face underneath all that blue.
Chloe Charming.
Of course. Of all the people to be sent to guard this particular hole on this particular evening, of course it was her.
"Well," Red muttered, "this got worse."
Chester, beside her, had already gone very still and very interested.
Chloe hadn't spotted them yet. She was crouched at the rim of the shimmering tear in the world, one hand pressed flat to the ground beside it, head tilted, listening to something Red couldn't hear from that distance. Two Auradon soldiers flanked her, and behind them, unmistakable even at this distance, the sharp red coat of Hazel Hook.
Red did the math fast. Four on two, and Chester didn't count as a fighter so much as an escape plan. Not great odds. Not terrible ones either, if she was smart about it.
She should have retreated.
That was the smart move. Grab Chester, find another way to the hole, come back when the odds were better, when her mother's mirror shard could wait another day.
Bridget wanted the shard, yes, but Bridget wanted a great many things, and Red had learned the hard way which of her mother's wants were worth dying for and which were worth quietly, strategically ignoring.
This one probably wasn't worth dying for.
But then Chloe looked up - right at the column Red was hiding behind, because of course she did, because the universe had never once given Red the dignity of a clean entrance - and their eyes met, and something in Red's chest did the thing it always did when that happened.
A flicker.
A jolt, quick and disorienting.
It had started months ago. The first time it happened, Red had genuinely thought she was having a stroke.
She didn't have time to brace for it now. The jolt came and dragged her under before she could stop it, the way it always did. It wasn’t quite a memory, or a dream, more like a window someone else had left open in her mind, and she was falling through it whether she wanted to or not.
Sunlight.
It was shining warm on her face, and someone was laughing beside her, a laugh she now knew better than her own. Blue hair - not styled, not battle-ready, just loose and wild and threaded through with wildflowers someone had woven in that morning.
A hand - hers, but not the hand she had now - softer, a wedding ring catching the light - reaching to tuck a strand of that blue hair behind an ear.
"You're staring," the laughing voice said, delighted, not accusing.
"I know," her own voice answered, and it was steady with a certainty Red had never once felt in her life. "I like staring at you. I've earned it - "
Red blinked hard. The world snapped back. And inconveniently, the world had moved.
Chloe had already drawn her sword and was closing the distance, and Red - who normally had a hundred witty things to say in any given fight, and who hates getting caught flat-footed by an enemy - just stood there for one humiliating heartbeat, staring at her in the fading light and feeling her heart ache.
"You okay?" Chester hissed.
"I'm fine." She wasn't. She drew her blade. "Showtime."
Chloe reached her first, sword swinging in a clean arc that Red ducked under more from muscle memory than actual attention, and came up close.
Too close, close enough to see the flush high on Chloe's cheeks and the small furious furrow between her brows that meant she was fighting herself as much as she was fighting Red.
Chloe's eyes had gone distant, just for a heartbeat. Unfocused, somewhere far away from a battlefield, her lips parted slightly like she was about to say a name, and her sword arm went slack.
Red knew that look. She'd felt her own face do that look in reflections she wished she hadn't caught herself in.
She sees it too, then. Good. Misery loves company.
There was an opening.
A weakness she should have exploited.
Her mother's words echoed in her head. Strike when they’re weak, Red; mercy is for those who’ve already lost.
But she hesitated.
Chloe snapped back into focus exactly as Red’s hesitation cost her. One of the soldiers she hadn’t noticed came in from her blind side, and pain spread sharp across her ribs where the sword caught her. Not deep, but enough.
Red hissed in pain, twisted away, and put distance between her and everyone else.
“Red-” Chloe’s voice cracked oddly on it, too much feeling for an enemy, and then she reeled it back in, jaw tightening.
The wrap in the air behind them convulsed. The rabbit hole was fraying at the edges, spitting sparks of wrong-coloured light, and Red knew that they had maybe ten seconds before it collapsed.
“Chester!” She shouted while leaning against the column, taking full advantage of the distraction offered.
He appeared at her side like he hadn’t been across the ruin one moment ago, and glanced at the blood soaking through her jacket.t “That doesn’t look load-bearing.”
“It’s fine. Can you get to the shard?”
He looked at the hole already closing in on itself. ”Not without losing a hand, and I’m rather attached to both of them.”
“Then we’re done here.”
_____________________________
Chester patched her up on the way back to the castle, pressing a strip of cloth to her side and tying it off gently.
“There. But you should still get that checked by a professional.”
“Thanks, Ches.”
“You froze,” he said, conversationally, as if it was a comment on the weather.
“I got flanked. It happens.”
“You got flanked because you froze.” He tied the last knot and sat back on his heels, studying her. “You do that lately. When we run into her.”
“I do not.”
“Red,” he said her name in the same way you’d say it to a child who insisted the broken vase simply fell on its own. “I’ve watched you take on five soldiers without blinking. You were smiling as a griffin tried to bite your hand off. You do not freeze. Except with Chloe Charming.”
“I was thinking about the shard.”
He held up both hands, subsiding, though the look on his face - half concern, half something more calculating - didn't fully fade. "Fine. Fine. We'll talk about the shard instead. Your mother is going to be thrilled to hear we came back empty-handed."
Red closed her eyes and thought that "thrilled" was not a word that had ever once applied to her mother.
"Yeah," she said. "Can't wait."
______________________________
Chle was walking in silence, which Hazel Hook apparently found unbearable.
“You went white as a sheet back there, princess,” the pirate said, swinging her hook lazily.y “Right in the middle of it. Thought you saw a ghost.”
“I was focused on the fight.”
“Mhm. Sure. Focused so hard you forgot what the sword in your hand was for.” Hazel’s grin was all teeth. “Four years running these missions, I’ve seen you take on Wonderland’s nastiest without so much as a flinch. But you get within ten feet of the Queen of Hearts’ girl, and you go somewhere else entirely. Curious thing, that.”
“She’s a threat. It requires concentration.”
“Concentration…”
“Drop it, Hazel.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” But she did, falling back to check on the soldiers instead, leaving Chloe alone with her thoughts.
She looked at me.
Not the usual way. Not the sharp, focused look she had in every fight.
It was gentler. Only for a split second, barely there when she snapped back to reality.
She didn’t tell anyone about the visions. Not her brother; Not her parents, who had plenty to worry about without adding your daughter dreams about kissing the enemy princess to the pile; Not the team. She filed it away in the back of her mind, in a corner labeled ‘later, if ever’, and she was quite good at it. Better than most people would be.
Better than Red, certainly, who she had watched flinch and falter every single time, like she didn’t have the first idea how to survive in her own head.
That’s not my problem, Chloe told herself.