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"What are you going to do now? Go through me and steal my watch? I think there's a word for that, actually. It stars with a V, oh right, Villain.”
What the red-haired princess didn't know is that Chloe was a much smarter person than she expected. Well, with a movement of her sword, she managed to take the watch from her hands.
So Chloe was now the one in control of things. And Red had to convince her to stay, if they wanted a chance to change everything.
"Hey, wait. Use your brain…”
But as far as Chloe knew, Red was just another villain in the story. The same girl who had threatened to feed her to a certain Jabberwocky, and who had ordered her mother to be beheaded.
Returning her to the present would be a complete mistake. It was clear that she was going to take her mother's side and warn her, she didn't believe anything she said about her intention being to come back for a few minutes and steal her mother's deck of cards. She was about to stop her, not help her.
But… if she left the princess behind, she wouldn't have to deal with her. Surely she would do some damage, but King Adam would put her in her place when she was crowned, and she would spend the rest of her life locked up on the Isle of the Lost, learning her lesson.
Yeah, it seemed like a good deal. It was the best idea she had ever come up with.
Chloe looked at Red one last time, noticing the bewilderment in her eyes. She could feel her hands tense, wanting to snatch the watch back, but she couldn't.
"See you in another life, princess," Chloe whispered, declaring her intentions with a smile.
Red lunged at her at the last second, but Chloe was already one step ahead. With a tap on the watch, she activated the mechanism, feeling time begin to surround her. The colors and shapes around her faded, and Red's face, frozen in an expression of fury, became a blur.
"She didn't," She murmured, looking at the empty place where the blue princess was before. "She... she's going to come back, right?"
Red tried to reassure herself with that idea. Chloe was going to come back, right? She was a princess with strong moral values, and she would not abandon her...
When five minutes passed, and she didn't see Chloe return, she realized the mistake she had made trying to save that princess from her mother's punishments. She was locked in the past, and without a return ticket.
She only had one thought in her head. When she saw the girl again, she was going to make her pay.
When Chloe returned to reality, she expected to find herself in the same place she was. The Queen of Hearts carrying out a coup d'état, her mother being taken away by guards, panic, chaos... The things that were happening, of course.
However, she did not imagine, at all, that she would be among a long line of soldiers dressed in red, who were looking directly at her... Or at the person next to her.
It didn't matter. She had a mission, and if she had to kill everyone in front of her to stop the hit on Auradon, then she…
Chloe drew her sword, but the person next to her grabbed her hand, stopping her.
"Look ahead, don't look at me," the woman whispered, still holding her hand tightly. "Your mother is fine, if that's what's worrying you, she's in her palace, doing queenly things, I think."
Chloe just moved her eyes, trying to see the person who was talking to her out of the corner of her eye, without much success.
"This is not a coup d'état. I'm going to take your hand, and slowly we'll go to a quieter place, princess. We're not going to put on a show in front of the army, are we?”
Chloe turned her head slowly, to see the person in front of her. Brown hair with a couple of red highlights… Brown eyes…
Chloe paled, as the gears began to turn in her head.
"Who are you?" She murmured, as they began to walk out of the atrium. Hoping not to hear the words she already imagined.
"Thirty years waiting for this moment... Don't tell me you don't recognize me, princess.”
Chloe swallowed as she walked next to that woman, feeling her cold hand with every step.
Red… Red? It couldn't be.
However, it was reality. There she was, as grown up as her mother, like the Queen of Hearts. Of course, she had left her trapped in Merlin knows what time... But if the Fairy Godmother was young... Red herself had said the answer to her question. Thirty years.
She had left her locked in the past for thirty years.
There was a reason, at least, for her eyes to look at her as if trying to cut through her like a blade.
When they reached a hallway, Red directed her to a door, where there was an empty room.
Red let go of her, and Chloe could see the passing of the years reflected on her face. Definitely, the girl was no longer a teenager, not at all. There was something different about her, as if every second in that past that Chloe had let her endure had marked her deeply.
Red stepped closer, her smile lacking any trace of warmth.
"You can sit down, dear. It's not your palace, but you're my guest" She murmured, inviting her to sit in one of the armchairs in the living room while she poured herself some tea for both of them.
However, Chloe didn't accept the tea, nor did she say a single word, something that made Red raise an eyebrow.
“Really? Don't you have anything to say to me, after all this time?" Her voice, although familiar, had a much deeper tone, and there was something dangerous in it.
Chloe took a step back, as fear began to enter her entire body and fill her chest. That was not the reality she had known, that was not her reality. Red had broken something in the past, and it was her fault.
She had to go back...
Chloe tried to take the watch that protected her from her pocket again to activate it again, but Red was faster, taking the watch in her hands, snatching it away.
"You would have thought about coming back for me thirty years ago, not now," she declared, cleaning the watch before putting it on a shelf, out of Chloe's reach. "I've been waiting too long to see you back for us not to have at least one talk between you and me. Take the tea.”
Chloe took the cup in her hands, taking a small sip, before continuing.
"I… I didn't know..." Chloe tried to say, searching for words that sounded convincing, but Red let out a cold laugh that cut off any attempt at an excuse.
"You didn't know?” Red repeated, her voice filled with a venom Chloe had never heard before. “You knew exactly what you were doing. You left me trapped in a time that wasn't mine, in a world where I didn't know anyone. Thirty years old, Chloe Charming. Thirty years waiting, planning... to be able to see you again and collect for everything you did to me.”
Chloe took another step back, feeling the cushion of the couch behind her. The sword still hung from her belt, but she did not dare to draw it. Not in front of this version of Red, who now looked like the villain she feared so much.
"Red, I... it was all a mistake. I thought... that it was the right thing to do," she stammered, although she knew her words were not enough.
Red raised her hand, asking for silence, before speaking again.
"If you had listened to me, Chloe, none of this would have happened," she shouted, squeezing the cup tightly. "We could have stopped everything at the right time. But no, you wanted to come and rescue your mom, you wanted to do it alone, right?”
“I…”
Red silenced her again, demanding silence.
"You're going to hear my story for thirty years, Chloe. Because now, you have obligations to fulfill.”
Chloe wasn't sure she wanted to hear that story.
Red wasn't stupid. Saying her name in the past could be silly, anyone would relate to her in the future, they weren't going to forget her face so easily.
"Are you sure you want to change your hair color, Hur? Red suits you very well.”
Hur. That was her new name. At least, that was for her mom. The young version of her mother. Bridget of Hearts was nothing she had ever imagined. And when she found her in the hallway, and asked her who she was...
Well, Red still wanted to remember where she came from. Taking a name from her ancestors would erase any future suspicion of her name. But get Hurrem It would be too obvious. Hur was something more discreet.
"Yes… Red doesn't suit me" Red bit her tongue as she said that. There were the remains of her favorite color, "Besides, you say there's going to be a dance, right? We have to look better than ever for that occasion.”
Castlecoming. A couple of hours had been enough to know that that dance was the trigger for everything.
Her mother, in the future, had mentioned something about a joke. And seeing that Uliana, Ursula's sister, had sworn revenge against the pink girl... well, one could imagine what was going to happen.
But she had read enough science fiction books to know that changing important events in history could ruin the entire reality. That prank had to happen, and she had to figure out whatever happened next.
"I still don't understand how something like that can give them so much emotion. I'm having more fun now than I ever will at that dance.”
The girl who had spoken, and was handing some beauty products to Bridget, was none other than Ella, the future Cinderella.
Yes, the same one she had ordered killed. The mother of the person who had left her in the past, without a return ticket, because of course, Maddox hadn't been born yet. It wasn't long away, but she doubted that a baby a couple of months old would be capable of doing a feat like a time machine.
Seeing how close they were -Red could swear that her mother was in love with Cinderella-, and how everything had ended in the present, Red already imagined that Ella would have something to do with the joke.
But everything would be easier if the blue girl had accompanied her, instead of leaving her abandoned in the past.
"We'll see if you say the same when we get there," Red responded, while Bridget let out a small laugh.
"What do you want to tell me? That my mother played the prank on yours and that made her evil? I'm sorry, I can't believe that.”
In reality, Chloe didn't believe anything that this Red guy was telling her. Her mother? Hating royalty? Please! Her mother was the perfect definition of what royalty was.
"If your mother had played the prank on mine, maybe things would have been easier." Red admitted, looking into her eyes. "At least my mother would have known that yours hated her, and she wouldn't have expected false hope." .
Chloe paled at Red's words, looking away, feeling discomfort and bewilderment at the intensity in Red's eyes. It looked less and less like the reality she had always been accustomed to.
"Hopes?” She asked, trying to sound defiant, but her voice trembled slightly. “What hopes could your mother have had?”
Red sighed, letting out a bitter laugh. She took a step closer, never taking her eyes off Chloe, as if she were assessing whether she deserved to know the truth.
"Hopes that the royalty of Auradon was fair, that there was a place for us," Red answered. "Your mother... Cinderella. My mother saw her as someone special. As an ally, perhaps. But, when she needed her most, she left her alone.”
The prank had gone... much worse than Red had expected.
Wow, that cupcake really had been poisoned. Uliana had gone too far in her joke. Not even she would have imagined doing something like that.
Well, but that was something that could be expected. Uliana and her gang had made it clear that they were villains. The villains were just that, the villains. Despicable beings who only thought about doing evil.
As her mother said, clumsiness could be forgiven. The villains had been clumsy to pull such a prank on a person like Bridget. Red was sure her mother was going to forgive them all for it.
The ones she was not going to forgive were the entire group of princes and princesses of the future Auradon. They, the ones who were humiliating their mother at their first dance. That was cruel.
"Bridget!" She shouted, drawing the attention of her mother who had turned into a monster. "Let's get out of here, Bridget. Come on, I'll accompany you.”
Had Bridget had someone like Red to accompany her to the enchanted lake at that time? Surely not. After all, Bridget was still looking for Ella, the girl she considered a friend, seeking her refuge.
But Cinderella was too busy dancing to pay attention to her supposed best friend. How hypocritical.
Seen like this, she could understand her mother's pain. She could understand the reason why her heart had grown cold, and had become so insensitive to love. She understood her phrase that love was not that.
She didn't justify it, but at least she could understand it. The people to whom she had always smiled, and had given everything of herself, had turned their backs on her.
"Bridget," Red murmured firmly, taking her mother's paw and squeezing it with all the strength she had, "You don't have to go through this alone. I am here.”
Maybe, it was what Bridget really needed. Knowing that she still had someone by her side. Someone who still chose her at that moment, someone who was unconditional to her.
Bridget's monstrous figure slowly turned towards her. Her eyes, though red and angry, seemed to soften slightly as they met hers. Red felt a flash of relief, as if, for a brief moment, Bridget had recognized her.
"Hur?” Bridget growled, her voice deep and broken, hardly sounding like the smiling, loving girl she knew.
Red swallowed and nodded, trying to stay calm. She still couldn't get used to the new name she had invented for herself.
"Yes, it's me. Come on. You don't have to put up with this here, in the middle of them all," she said, casting a look of contempt at the princes and princesses who looked at her with fear and mockery, enjoying the spectacle at their mother's expense.
Wasting no time, Red began leading Bridget towards the exit, brushing aside anyone who tried to get in her way. Some princes muttered cruel things, whispered comments between laughs, while other princesses walked away with frightened looks or pretended they didn't see anything.
Finally, they managed to get out into the garden, where the calm and moonlight seemed to dull Bridget's pain. Red guided her to the enchanted lake, and let Bridget soak in the healing waters of the lake, removing any trace of the curse she might have from her body. Although, that didn't stop Bridget from doing nothing but looking at herself in horror when she looked at her reflection.
Bridget wanted to cry again, as her body began to shake from something other than the cold of the night and the water. Red noticed, and held her again.
"You don't have to look like that," Red whispered. "You don't have to be the monster they want you to be."
Bridget looked at her, her eyes shining with tears of regret and pain.
"Hur, I... I tried to be like them, I tried... to be the friend Ella deserved, but... Why wasn't I... why wasn't I enough?”
Red felt her mother's pain become her own pain. Not really knowing how to react, she squeezed Bridget's hand tightly, feeling the harshness of reality.
"You don't have to change for anyone, Bridget. I love you just the way you are," she told her, her voice trembling. "And if they can't see that, then they're not worth it."
That's when Bridget finally decided who really deserved her friendship and trust. Who would be in her circle, when she took the power.
Ella and Auradon didn't deserve it. Red, yes.
"So, is that it?" You joined your mother after the prank and you both decided that being the villain was the best thing you could do?” Chloe asked, losing her patience.
She didn't know what had happened, she didn't know where she was, or at what time. But, if the things Red was telling her were true... Auradon didn't exist.
And if Auradon didn't exist, that meant neither did her parents.
"That's what you'd like, right?" Red mocked. "You'd like to hear that we turned bad, to calm your memory about the mistake you made, right? That was what was always in our veins.”
Chloe felt a knot of frustration and confusion in her chest, her thoughts becoming tangled like never before. Red watched her with a cynical smile, enjoying watching her reel from a truth she was completely unaware of.
"Do you really think we are the villains of this story?" Red mocked, crossing her arms as she looked at her superiorly, "I guess that's how you ‘heroes’ like to see us. Makes it easier for you to sleep at night, right? To think that it was us who failed, that we allowed ourselves to be consumed by evil.”
Chloe clenched her fists, feeling her blood boil, but she restrained herself. She knew that losing her cool wouldn't do her any good, Red was now the one in control of the situation. Escaping into that new reality was only going to cause her death.
"And what am I supposed to do? Feeling guilty about something I don't even know is true?" she responded, trying to keep her voice steady, "If you wanted to save your mother so much and be a hero, why didn't you do it? Why are they still conquering everything?”
Red gave a sarcastic laugh and, without saying anything, pulled a worn photo out of her pocket and showed it to Chloe. The image made her take a step back, unable to process what she saw. In the photo, Ella and Charming were together, smiling at what was clearly a wedding ceremony. They looked happy, radiant, oblivious to the world of problems they were living in now.
"Do you believe me now, Boo?" She asked, watching her take the photo. "Your parents are fine, being happy in their fantasy world. Maybe too much fantasy.”
Chloe remained silent, lowering her gaze.
"My mother… she tried to be a better person. But no one wanted to give it a chance. No ‘hero’ reached out to her, not even the person she considered her best friend. Nobody. And yet, I did everything I could to keep her at bay so that the darkness didn't consume her like it originally did, so that she wouldn't be like that person you and I knew.”
Chloe felt a pang of guilt and looked down, somehow it seemed like Red's words were sincere. What had she done?
Had things really been like this?
"Why don't you say anything?" Red interrupted her, with a challenging smile. “Do you want to know why everything went to hell? When your beloved King Adam, in her desire to be the perfect king, decided to found Auradon and ‘unite’ all the kingdoms. The peace that she promised meant, for us, living under the shadow of all of you. Be treated as spoil.”
Red no longer had any doubts. Her mother had had many reasons to become the ruthless villain she had become.
Not with her daughter, it wasn't her fault, but, as the years went by... Wow, she was beginning to believe that her mother had raised her that way just so she wouldn't have to suffer everything that had been done to her.
It was twisted and questionable. But what was going on was more questionable, and no one seemed to make a fuss.
Red had never met her grandmother. She only knew that her mother had ordered her to be killed at some point in her life... Or had she accidentally poisoned herself? She wasn't sure, her mother always alternated the story.
What hadn't changed was that when Bridget turned eighteen, she was crowned the new Queen of Hearts. Which, Red considered complete madness. Eighteen years of life were too few to have sufficient experience for a position of that magnitude.
Fortunately, she was experienced enough to become her mother's royal advisor, to help her with all the stress that came with her new responsibilities.
Like dealing with an idiot who called herself the Supreme King, for example.
Red, Bridget and Adam had never really spoken to each other. The young prince had been bewitched long before her mother left Wonderland. Nor had she had the pleasure of meeting Belle, the one who had become her wife, because Bell3 had been an ordinary town girl.
But boy, someone had to give that poor girl a reality check, because no one deserved to have to deal with an idiot like Beast for the rest of their life.
To say that the man had delusions of power and greatness was to speak too highly of that person. Adam was obsessed with not having anyone put his below his greatness again.
Red watched Adam from her spot in the throne room, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at every word of his speech. The young king had summoned the leaders of all the kingdoms, with the intention of founding Auradon, a unified kingdom under his rule.
The plan seemed noble on the surface, but Red knew what it really entailed. All the kingdoms submitted to the will of a single man, who would truly be the one who pulled the political strings of destiny. And to top it all off, he intended to ban magic and lock up villains on a distant island, as if they were pests that had to be banished.
Red looked at her mother, who maintained an expression of cold indifference. Bridget had endured a lot in her life, and Red knew that the last thing she would do was kneel before someone like Adam. However, her mother's eyes had a sparkle that Red would recognize anywhere she went. The Queen of Hearts was holding back her anger.
Adam continued to talk about “peace” and “order,” words that sounded as empty to Red as the heads of most storybook heroes. They believed that their goodness gave them the right to decide the fate of others, without stopping to think about the consequences of their actions for those who did not fit into their dream stories.
They were no better than the villains they planned to lock up and revive. They were still the fools who had made fun of their mother at a dance, the same ones who made their lives miserable for two years by being too strange for their high standards.
Red looked at Bridget and noticed how her mother, although maintaining her composure, clenched her fists. That spark of fury contained in her eyes was the same one Red saw every time someone tried to humiliate her, that they missed her.
And now, here was young Adam, a man with barely enough judgment to rule his own castle, trying to impose his worldview on all the kingdoms.
Finally, Adam turned towards them, waiting for their response, with a self-satisfied smile.
"So, in the name of peace, I ask you to join us, to abandon your old ways and accept the new rules of Auradon," he declared, in a tone of voice that left no room for negotiation. "Together we can create a future where no one suffers from the mistakes of the past.”
It was no wonder that war had broken out. And that it was the same Red that had signed to start the conflict.
Yes, her plans never included being the leader of the bloodiest and most brutal war that Wonderland had ever known. And it was not in her plans to be on the front line of the battle.
But she had not grown up as a rebel, not to defend what she considered right.
To say that they had crushed Auradon would be patronizing and trying to manipulate history so that the children wouldn't suffer trauma when they learned that part of the story.
Auradon hadn't even stood a chance against Wonderland.
“Taxes? Do you really think I'm going to believe something like that? They conquered all of Auradon and just taxed it? Auradon is a satellite state of yours!”
If Chloe wasn't a princess, she would have said a couple of bawdy words that she had heard from her brother on occasion.
Red rolled her eyes.
"Hey, we don't conquer anything. But Auradon has to remember that they cannot dare to confront us. It's politics, not villainy.”
Chloe snorted. In her head, there was no difference.
"And what do you plan to do now? You're second in command of everything, from what I understand. Good way to earn a place in the world. Are you going to kill me?”
Red let out a dry laugh, as she crossed her arms and looked at Chloe with a superior expression.
"Kill you? Do you really think I've come this far for that?" She mocked, shaking her head, "No, princess. If I wanted to get rid of you, I would have already done so when I had the watch in my hands. But where would be the fun in that? I have other plans for you.”
Chloe gritted her teeth, feeling anger and fear stir inside her. She didn't like at all the way Red looked at her, as if she were a piece in her game. Thirty years of experience were not in vain
"Oh, yes?” Chloe replied, trying to sound defiant. “What kind of plans?”
Red was about to respond when a knock was heard on the door. The woman raised an eyebrow and glanced toward the entrance, before turning back to Chloe with an enigmatic smile.
"You'll have to wait to find out. You abandoned me once, but that's something that won't happen again, and you won't have any escape," she said in a playful tone, and turned toward the door. "Go ahead."
Chloe paled until she looked like a ghost when she saw the person who had just opened the door, with a completely natural innocence.
No... It couldn't be... Time travel didn't work that way. If there were two identical people, then…then…
"Excuse me, Hur, am I interrupting you? I don't mean to," said the person from the door, while Red smiled.
"Princess Red! Not at all, in fact, I was about to go look for her" She declared, giving Chloe one last look, "There's something you need to know.”
"Oh, yeah?" She asked, entering the room with a little curiosity. "What's going on?"
"I'm afraid to inform you that your fiancée, Princess Chloe, was injured in training this morning." She hit her head, suffers from amnesia.
Chloe was about to faint, she felt like her world was shaking and breaking into pieces.
Two Reds. An adult, astute and enigmatic, with thirty years of accumulated experience after being left in the past.
And the other... identical to the Red she met, the same young girl with reddish hair, with that playful spark in her eyes, and - how was it possible? - her supposed fiancée.
She tried to maintain her composure, but her legs were beginning to give out. The young Red, the one who had just entered, approached her with a frown and a grimace of resignation.
Not that she liked Chloe very much. If she had accepted that commitment, it was only to fulfill the whim of Hur and her mother, but Chloe Charming was nothing more than another of the prissy and boring princesses that her mother had taken under her protection, due to the ineptitude of her parents.
It was boring and bland. She had nothing to contribute to her life. And now without memory... ugh, that really was a martyrdom.
"So, I'll introduce you again," said the older Red, enjoying watching Chloe's mental breakdown. "Princess Chloe, I present to you Red of Hearts, princess of Wonderland, and her betrothed in holy matrimony."