Chapter Text
Just like every other night, Chloe Charming sits at her desk, working on her homework. This was her nightly ritual while waiting for her roommate, Quinn “Red” Hart, to return from whatever adventure she had decided to go on that day. Today, however, rather than Red walking right in, a loud knock echoed through their dorm. Closing her book, the girl rises to her feet and walks over to the door. Opening it, she finds a stocky man in an Auradon Prep Security uniform, a few papers in hand.
“Chloe Charming, dorm 17?” he asks, looking up from the papers.
“Yeah, what can I do for you?”
“It seems your roommate,” he begins before looking down at the packet, “Quinn Hart, has passed. I'm sorry for your loss.” As the man hands the small stack to the girl, time seems to slow, warping as she closes the door. Falling to her knees, warm tracks of tears flow down her face. Glancing through the documents with blurred vision, she looks for answers. According to the pages, a single bullet entered her friend's head, killing her almost instantly, and the police ruled it a suicide. Though she only met the girl a few months ago at orientation, the red-head had become her best friend, and now she was dead. Not only was Red deceased, but she had done it herself. Red had opened up about her mom, but Chloe didn't think it was this bad. Not bad enough that Red would leave her, that she would… No. She can't think about it right now. Finally picking herself up off the ground, she looks at the clock to find that an hour had passed since she answered the door. Suddenly feeling drained, she changes into a pair of light blue pajamas, falling onto her bed. Looking to her bedside table, she plucks a picture frame off of it. Inside is a picture of the two of them that her brother had took at the last family weekend. Red was wearing a patchwork cutoff with her signature red leather jacket and leather pants. The girl had her arm around Chloe and a big grin on her face. Surrounding the photo is a frame the wonderland princess had made for her, pressed dried roses on the wood. Looking at the photo makes the blue haired girl miss her hugs and her laugh and the way her hair seemed to glow like fire in the light. The more she thinks, the more tears flow onto her comforter. Cold and empty, the room echoes her sobs, almost mocking the grieving girl. As she slips gently into sleep, her frame stops shaking and her body relaxes, causing the picture frame to slide from her fingers. With a crack, the glass shatters, breaking the most important piece of her best friend.
~•~•~•~
Cracking her eyes open, Chloe could still feel the weight of exhaustion pressing on her body. Wiping the sleep, as well as some crusted tears, from her eyes, the blue haired girl begins to get ready, opting for a more comfortable outfit than her normal, dressier clothes. Striding over to the other side of the dorm, Chloe moves to wake up her roommate, stopping just shy of the halfway line of the room. Glancing up, she begins to tear up at the sight of the red-haired girl’s side of the room, everything as neat and tidy as when the girl had left the day prior. Shaking her head, the Charming grabs her backpack and exits the dorm, locking it behind her. As she makes her way to her first class, Chloe catches glimpses of people staring at her, most of them whispering to the others beside them. Sitting down in her first period, a small flicker of scarlet causes her to whip her head over to the spot next to her.
“Red?” Chloe asks hopefully, desperately. Taking in the sight before her, the blue haired girl’s face falls.
“No, sorry, Chloe,” Astrid, daughter of Anna and Kristoff, sighs. “I'm really sorry for your loss. I know how close you guys were.” Astrid and her brother, Josef, had been their friends since the start of the semester. Now they were just her friends.
“Thanks,” she says, attempting to cover her exhaustion and distress. “I just don't want to talk about it.” It's true, she didn't want to break down in the middle of her math class. Though, nobody would blame her. Almost everyone heard about her roommate taking her own life. Auradon may be a school full of royals, but hardly any of them acted like it. VKs were the ones giving her the most sympathetic looks out of everyone. The rest of her day drones on with nothing more than sorry glances from other people. Once Chloe reaches her dorm, she places her hand on the knob, hesitant to enter the once shared space. The only thing Chloe hates more than the empty sympathetic stares is the thought of having to go into the empty room. Pushing past her grief, the blue haired girl pushes open the door. After placing her boots on the shelf and her jacket in the closet, she tosses her bag onto the floor next to her bed.
“Red, my day was-” Clenching her jaw, the bluenette turns away from the scarlet side of the room. Collapsing on her bed, she runs through the rambles that Red would tell her whenever she felt bad. Whenever the Charming girl would get home from a particularly hard day, the red head would cradle her in her arms, similar to how Chloe would whenever Red had a nightmare, and card her fingers through her curls, reciting stories from back in Wonderland. One night, after Chloe felt like she let her Swords and Shields team down, Red held her close and listed off all of the inventions her tutor, Maddox, had shown her.
“One time Maddox showed me some lunar powered moth bots and they went haywire,” Red chuckled that night, fingers entangled in the girl's hair. “And before I left he showed me a really cool pocket watch that was a time machine. I was going to swipe it in hopes that I could fix my mom, but I chickened out and just hoped I would find someone to be my anchor.” With a smile she added, “Someone like you.” Wait. That's it. The pocket watch. She could use the watch to go back and stop it. Stop everything. She just needed a way to get into the rabbit hole.