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Red found herself back at the cave, where she, Ace, and Chester were resting during their climb to the top in search of the Pool of Tears, a place rumored to be the only way out of Wonderland after the rabbit hole had been locked up. They weren't even sure it was real, but at that point, there was no turning back.
The cave was quiet except for the crackling fire and the distant sound of dripping water echoing through the stone walls. Chester kept watch while she slept.
"Hey, Sleeping Beauty," Chester said with a grin.
But something suddenly felt wrong.
When Red turned toward him again, Chester was gone, and in his place sat a cat with glowing eyes. It stared at her silently before vanishing into the darkness.
A cold hand grabbed her shoulder.
Red stumbled back in panic, coming face to face with a card soldier.
"Ace! Run!" she shouted.
No answer.
The figure didn't move. Its painted grin stretched across its face as Red's eyes slowly drifted downward to the symbol on its chest.
The Ace of Hearts.
Her breath caught in her throat.
"Ace…?"
The soldier tilted its head unnaturally.
Then everything around her began to melt into darkness.
Red jolted awake in her dorm room at Merlin Academy, breathing hard as moonlight spilled across her bed. She quickly looked around the room, trying to steady herself, only to realize Chloe was awake too, surprisingly awake for a goody-two-shoes princess who usually fell asleep before midnight.
"Couldn't sleep either?" Chloe asked, setting her book down beside her.
Red let out a sharp breath.
"Obviously," she said bluntly, shooting a tired look at the blue-haired girl across the room.
Chloe blinked.
Red sat up straighter, running a hand through her hair. The nightmare still clung to her thoughts, refusing to fade.
"You've been on my case about a lot of things," Red continued, voice edged with frustration. "Lying to Merlin about who we are, getting us into trouble, acting like I don't know none of it has consequences—"
"Red—" Chloe started, more softly this time.
"Look, I know it's not my place," Chloe said carefully, her voice softer now, "but I know something is bothering you. Because I can't sleep either."
Red hesitated.
The frustration in her chest didn't disappear, but it shifted like it had nowhere to land anymore.
Chloe continued, a little more gently, "I think talking about it might help more than just… lying awake."
For a moment, Red didn't respond.
She looked away.
“I don’t do that emotional thing,” she said finally, quieter now. “And we have other things to deal with. Like making sure my mom doesn’t end up like… my mom.”
The words landed heavier than she expected.
A silence followed.
Not uncomfortable exactly—just full.
Chloe didn’t interrupt it.
Then she shifted slightly on her bed, lowering her voice.
“Whatever isn’t letting you sleep… it’s sticking with you for a reason,” she said gently.
Red’s eyes flicked toward her again.
“And I don’t think it’s good to keep something like that in your head,” Chloe continued. “Not if it’s going to stop you from doing what we came here to do.”
Red’s jaw tightened.
“And what I say isn’t going to make it disappear,” she snapped, voice rising again. “You don’t know what I’ve lived through. It’s not like talking is going to bring them back—”
She stopped.
Too late.
Chloe tilted her head slightly, studying her.
“…Who is ‘them’?” she asked quietly.
Red didn’t answer.
Her jaw tightened instead, like she could physically hold the words back if she tried hard enough.
Chloe didn’t push immediately. She just watched her for a moment.
She looked down slightly, as if remembering something her mother had told her when she first met Red.
“Some people act mean at first,” Chloe thought, “because they’re too afraid to feel.”
Chloe met her gaze carefully.
“I don’t think you’re angry just to be angry, Red,” she said. “I think you’re trying not to fall apart.”
For a second, Chloe thought she wasn’t going to answer.
Then Red laughed quietly under her breath, though there was no humor in it.
“You really don’t know when to stop, do you?”
Chloe gave a small shrug. “Usually no.”
That almost earned the smallest reaction from Red.
Almost.
A long silence stretched between them before Red finally spoke again, her voice lower now.
“Before… back in Wonderland, I didn’t really have friends,” she admitted. “Everyone was scared of my mom, and because of that, they were scared of me too.”
Chloe stayed silent, listening carefully.
“Then one day I met this boy named Chester,” Red continued. “He was different from everyone else in Wonderland. He broke rules, caused problems, and somehow always managed to drag me out of my miserable daily life.”
For the first time since waking up, something softer crossed Red’s expression.
“He had a friend named Ace,” she said. “And together… we decided Wonderland needed shaking up.”
A faint, almost nostalgic laugh escaped her.
“So we did.”
Chloe tilted her head slightly. “You three caused trouble together?”
Red smirked faintly.
“We became known as the Wonderland Party Commission.”
Even saying the name out loud made something complicated flicker across her face—half warmth, half grief.
“And for the first time in my life,” she admitted quietly, “I actually felt free.”
Chloe watched her carefully, noticing the way Red’s expression changed when she talked about them.
Not guarded.
Not angry.
Just… sad.
“That sounds nice,” Chloe said softly.
Red gave a short laugh under her breath. “Yeah. It was chaos, but it was ours.”
Chloe pulled her knees closer to her chest. “What happened?”
The question was gentle, but it still made Red tense.
Her eyes dropped toward the blanket in her lap.
“After we threw a party at my mom’s castle, everything went wrong,” Red said quietly. “We got caught.”
The earlier warmth in her voice disappeared completely.
“We ran,” she continued. “For a while, we actually thought we could get away.” A bitter laugh escaped her. “Turns out card soldiers are a lot harder to lose when the Queen herself wants you found.”
Chloe stayed silent, listening.
“They caught up to us near the woods outside the castle.” Red’s fingers tightened around the blanket. “Ace and Chester stayed behind so I could get away.”
A pause.
“I tried to go back for them.”
Her voice cracked slightly on the last word.
“But it didn’t work.”
“My mom took them away from me.”
The words barely came out above a whisper.
But in the quiet dorm room, they felt impossibly loud.
Red stared down at her hands, her vision beginning to blur despite how hard she tried to stop it.
“One day they were there,” she continued quietly. “Then they just… weren’t.”
The grief in her voice sounded old. Like something she had been carrying alone for far too long.
Chloe’s expression softened immediately.
Without saying anything, she carefully climbed off her bed and moved closer to Red.
Red stiffened slightly as Chloe sat beside her.
Then Chloe gently wrapped her arms around her.
For a second, Red completely froze.
Like she didn’t know what to do with kindness when it wasn’t being asked from her.
“You don’t have to hold all of this by yourself,” Chloe whispered.
Red’s hands clenched tightly in the fabric of her blanket.
Part of her wanted to pull away immediately. To snap something sarcastic back and rebuild the walls she had spent years perfecting.
But another part of her—the exhausted part—didn’t move at all.
Slowly, shakily, Red let herself lean forward just enough for the hug to become real.
And once she did, everything she had been forcing down since Wonderland began to crack.
Red shut her eyes tightly.
And for the first time since arriving at Merlin Academy, Red finally let herself cry.
“We’re going to fix this together,” Chloe whispered softly.
Red let out a shaky breath against her shoulder.
For once, she didn’t argue.
Didn’t snap.
Didn’t push her away.
The dorm room stayed quiet except for Red’s uneven breathing and the faint sound of wind brushing against the windows outside.
Chloe held onto her carefully, like she understood this was the first real crack in the armor Red had built around herself.
“You don’t know that,” Red said eventually, her voice small and strained. “What if they’re really gone?”
Chloe pulled back just enough to look at her.
“Then we’ll still face it together,” she said firmly.