Chapter Text
Red had learned very young that touch was dangerous. Not painful - not physically, anyway - but dangerous in the way cliffs are dangerous, in the way storms rolling over the sea are dangerous. Beautiful for exactly one second before they become catastrophic.
*
The first vision came when she was six years old.
She had been standing in the palace gardens beneath enormous red rose arches while one of the assistants tied a ribbon into her hair. The woman’s fingers brushed the bare skin behind Red’s ear and suddenly the world disappeared.
Not disappeared entirely. Distorted.
The sunlight dimmed and the smell of roses vanished. Red saw flashes instead - silver trays crashing against marble floors, blood vessels bursting beneath pale skin, the cook collapsing in a narrow palace corridor years later while people screamed for help too far away to save her. Red felt the woman's terror like it was her own. She felt the final frantic thought repeating through her head:
not yet.
Then it was over.
The gardens returned all at once. Birds singing. Wind moving through hedges. The assistant was still standing in front of her with gentle hands and absolutely no idea that she was destined to die alone on cold marble.
Red burst into tears.
The Queen of Hearts had known immediately what happened. She dismissed every servant from the gardens and knelt in front of her daughter, gripping Red’s chin tightly enough to hurt.
“What did you see?”
Even now, years later, Red still remembered the hunger in her mother’s voice. Not concern. Not Fear.
Interest.
After that day, everything changed.
No one touched Red without permission anymore. Servants wore gloves around her. Seamstresses stitched long sleeves into every dress she owned. Tutors kept careful distance. The Queen had custom leather gloves made for her daughter before the week ended - deep crimson that reached nearly to her elbows, lined with silk inside so Red would tolerate wearing them for hours at a time.
“Your ability is rare, a side effect from using the Looking Glass perhaps,” the Queen told her. “You must learn to control it.”
But there was never any control to learn.
Skin to skin contact triggered the visions instantly. Sometimes they only lasted seconds. Sometimes longer. The older Red became, the more detailed they grew.
And the visions were never random.
They were always fate.
Absolute. Unchangeable. Cruel.
At eight years old, Red touched a stableboy’s hand while helping him up after he fell in the courtyard. She saw him twenty years later betraying the person he loved most for money he would regret taking almost immediately afterward. At nine, she bumped into one of her tutors and saw him dying peacefully in a garden beside a woman Red had never met. At eleven, she accidentally collided with a palace guard and saw fire swallowing half of the eastern wing during a winter attack.
That vision terrified her enough to try changing it.
For weeks she begged the guards to reinforce the walls. She warned her mother constantly. She cried herself sick over it.
The Queen listened patiently before saying, “And did the vision change?”
“No,” Red whispered.
“Then stop wasting your energy grieving things that already belong to fate.”
The fire happened three years later, exactly as Red had seen it.
After that, she stopped trying so hard.
Not because she wanted to. Because failing hurt too much.
Every attempt to interfere only twisted events into new shapes that led to the same ending. People still died. People still left. People still became the worst versions of themselves no matter how desperately Red tried to steer them elsewhere. Fate adapted around her interference effortlessly, like a river bending around stones.
The knowledge hollowed her out slowly.
Because sometimes the visions were awful in obvious ways - death, violence, grief - but other times they were quieter than that. Sometimes Red saw futures where people survived and still ended up miserable. Others she saw marriages decaying into resentment over decades. Saw friends betraying one another. Saw loneliness stretching endlessly ahead for people who did not yet realise they would someday be abandoned.
Those visions almost felt worse.
At least death ended eventually.
The Queen of Hearts insisted the ability was a blessing.
“People fear what they cannot understand,” she would say while fastening Red’s gloves before royal events. “Fear is useful.”
But Red knew the truth.
Her mother liked the power because it made people afraid of them both.
Courtiers bowed lower around Red, avoiding eye contact. Rumours spread constantly through the kingdom about the cursed Princess who could supposedly see death itself. Some stories claimed looking directly into her eyes was enough to doom you. Others claimed she drank blood to fuel her magic.
She was used to the name calling by fifteen.
Heartless freak.
Cursed girl.
The names didn’t bother her.
The worst part was that nobody understood how exhausting the visions truly were. They thought Red saw simple prophecies, neat little glimpses into the future. They did not understand that the visions carried emotion with them. Fear felt real. Grief felt real. Panic, heartbreak, rage - all of it flooded into her body during those few horrible seconds of contact.
*
Ace and Chester had arrived at Wonderland High halfway through the semester.
The pair were loud in ways Wonderland students usually were not. Chester laughed too hard at his own jokes and leaned back dangerously far in his chair during class. Ace talked to everyone like they were already friends with him. Neither of them seemed to understand the strange social rules that wrapped around Red like invisible barbed wire.
Most people kept their distance from her instinctively.
Ace sat beside her in Maddox’s science class the second day he was there.
“Do you always draw during lectures?” he asked casually, dropping into the empty seat beside her.
Red shifted father toward the wall.
“Aren’t you supposed to be listening?”
“I can multitask.”
“You’re failing at both.”
Instead of getting offended, Ace grinned.
It caught Red off guard enough that she looked at him properly for the first time.
He was annoyingly attractive.
Not in the polished, princely way most Wonderland boys tried to be. There was something careless about him - dark curls falling into his face, sleeves rolled unevenly, ink smudged across the side of his hand like he constantly forgot pens exploded in his pockets. He looked like someone incapable of understanding how dangerous this pace actually was.
That made Red nervous.
Chester noticed her discomfort long before Ace did.
“You’re freaking her out,” Chester muttered while dropping into the seat on Ace’s other side.
“I’m literally sitting here.”
“Exactly.”
Red expected that to be the end of it. Usually people stopped trying after a few awkward conversations and a handful of rumours from other students. But Ace and Chester kept returning anyway.
At lunch, Ace would appear across from her with an overloaded tray and absolutely no invitation. During study periods, Chester started silently sliding books across the table toward her whenever he noticed she was missing notes.
Neither of them treated her like glass.
Neither of them seemed afraid.
That was the problem.
Red spent the first few weeks trying very hard not to like them.
It became difficult quickly.
Because Ace had this terrible habit of looking directly at her when she spoke, like every word mattered. And Chester, despite pretending to be perpetually unimpressed, was strangely observant. Once, he wordlessly handed her a cup of coffee during an early morning class without asking why her hands were shaking.
Nobody had ever paid attention to her gently before.
Her mother would have hated them. Not Ace and Chester specifically - though probably them too eventually - but what they represented.
Connection.
The Queen despised attachment in all forms. Friendship made people disloyal. Love made them weak. Grief made them reckless. The Queen ruled Wonderland through fear because fear isolated people from one another, and isolated people were easier to control.
Red had heard her mother say it countless times growing up.
‘Anyone who needs someone else can be manipulated through them.’
The Queen herself never kept friends. Servants rotated constantly. Advisors disappeared the second they became too familiar. Even affection toward Red had been kept minimal, sharpened into something possessive rather than loving.
So Red learned early that relationships were liabilities.
Which meant the growing warmth she felt around Ace and Chester came packaged with dread.
Still, she let herself have it anyway.
A little.
Sometimes after classes, the three of them would sit beneath Tumtum trees or in the Tulgey Wood while Ace talked endlessly about stupid things - professors he hated, ridiculous rumours about the school, conspiracy theories Chester insisted were fake. Red rarely contributed much, but she listened.
And slowly, terrifyingly, she started laughing. Real laughter - the kind that escaped before she could stop it. The first time it happened, Ace stared at her in genuine shock.
“Oh, that’s horrifying.”
Red’s smile dissipated. “What?”
“You actually have emotions.”
Chester snorted quietly into his drink. Red rolled her eyes, but warmth crept into her face anyway. It scared her how quickly they became important.
Especially Ace.
She found herself watching him unconsciously in crowded hallways. Memorizing the sound of his voice. Noticing tiny details she should not have noticed at all - the way he tapped his fingers against tables while thinking, the crease between his eyebrows when reading, the stupid victorious grin he got whenever he beat Chester at cards or chess.
And because fate was cruel, Ace started trying to touch her without realising what he was doing.
Not deliberately. Not flirtatiously, at least in Red’s eyes. Ace was just one of those people who moved through the world like closeness belonged there naturally. He bumped shoulders when he laughed, tugged sleeves to get attention, leaned too near while talking like personal space had never occurred to him.
To anyone else, it would’ve been nothing.
To Red, it was formidable.
Every small movement became something she tracked obsessively.
If Ace sat too close at lunch, she shifted her chair back slightly. If he leaned over her shoulder to look at a sketch, she closed the notebook too quickly and stood up before his arm could brush hers accidentally. Even passing objects became calculated - only holding the edges of books, or handing things over by setting them down first.
At first, Ace did not seem to notice.
Chester did.
Of course he did - he noticed everything.
Like the time Ace had dropped half of his deck of cards after attempting to shuffle them to impress Red.
“That was embarrassing," Chester laughed.
Red rolled her eyes and bent down to pick up one of the fallen cards before noticing too late that Ace was reaching for the same one. She jerked backward instinctively before their fingers could touch.
The movement was so sharp it looked almost panicked.
Ace froze.
“You know,” Ace said carefully after a second, “most people don’t react to me like I’m carrying a deadly disease.”
“You might be,” Red muttered.
“I showered today,” Ace joked.
“That doesn’t narrow it down.”
Normally that would have made him laugh. This time, he only watched her for a moment longer than usual.
Red hated how perceptive his expression had become.
Over the next few days, Ace started noticing more things.
How she tucked her hands into her sleeves whenever crowded hallways forced people close together. How she flinched whenever someone brushed past her unexpectedly. How she’d started wearing gloves more frequently - even indoors or in the suffocating afternoon heat.
During potion theory, he leaned over and whispered, “Are the gloves a fashion statement or are you secretly planning a murder?”
Red kept her eyes on her notes. “Maybe both.”
“Red.”
She looked up before meaning to, noticing that Ace was watching her with a look of concern.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said, “I was just asking.”
Red swallowed hard and looked away, because she did want to tell him.
She wanted to explain why touch terrified her, and how she was burdened with the unbearable weight of carrying futures she could never change.
But she knew she couldn’t.
What would her mother say? Probably something along the lines of ‘Kindness is weakness, darling. Love ain’t it.’ Then, she would likely tell Red she was no longer allowed to have friends, and confine her to her tower for a month.
However, her relationship with Ace began to blossom.
She began waiting for him in the mornings, and saving seats for him in class. She started noticing the expressions constantly shifting across his face - exaggerated annoyance whenever Chester corrected him, crooked smugness after winning arguments, bright unguarded laughter that made something twist painfully beneath Red’s ribs.
Once during fencing practice, another student made a joke about Red being cursed under their breath.
Panic invaded Red’s expression. Ace looked at the student and shrugged as if he hadn’t heard anything. Red laughed it off, but she knew deep down fate would punish her for. it.
Red knew the inevitability of something going wrong. Just because she didn’t know someone's fate doesn’t mean it wasn’t going to happen.
*
It happened on a regular day.
Red, Ace and Chester had been sitting around a failed attempt at a campfire in the Tulgey Wood - near enough to the Royal Palace for Red to escape home if necessary, but far enough that they wouldn’t be spotted by the guards or staff.
“Here,” Ace said, passing a hand of cards to the girl.
Red reached automatically.
Carelessly.
Their fingers touched.
Bare skin against bare skin.
And the world began to shatter.
Red saw towering crimson banners hanging from the palace walls. Rows of card soldiers stood perfectly still beneath them, faces hidden by black and red masks. The air smelled like smoke and iron and something deeply rotten beneath both.
Ace stood among the soldiers.
Her stomach dropped instantly.
He stood with rigid posture, clad in royal armour marked with the Ace of Clubs, alongside the royal insignia of Wonderland. Bruises darkened the edge of his jaw beneath the mask straps. His expression looked empty, yet exhausted in a way that felt carved directly into bone.
Beside him stood Chester.
Blood stained one sleeve of his uniform. His wrists bore fresh marks like the restraints had only recently been removed. His eyes were not expressionless like Ace’s - they burned deep, reckless hatred directed toward the throne.
And above all of it sat the Queen of Hearts, elegant and terrible upon her throne.
Amused.
Satisfied.
Red felt her mother’s realization unfolding through the vision with horrifying clarity.
‘You made friends.’
Not disappointment.
Not anger.
Delight in a sense.
The Queen hated relationships because they created loyalties outside of her control. Friendship gave people courage. Love made them willing to rebel. The Queen destroyed it all.
Red noticed that the boys did not look much older.
They actually didn't look older at all. Ace had an ink smudge along his cheek, one that he’d acquired in class that day.
Then, darkness crashed back violently.
Red gasped sharply, nearly falling off the log she was perched on. Her pulse thundered so hard in her ears that she felt sick.
Ace stared at her in alarm. “Red?”
She stood up rapidly before he could touch her again.
“Don’t.” The word came out strangled.
Red could not breathe.
The woods blurred around her, Ace and Chester’s voices becoming muffled beneath the violent pounding of blood in her ears.
“Red.”
Ace’s voice came closer carefully, cautiously, like approaching a wounded animal. “Hey, look at me.”
She did.
That made it worse.
Because he still looked normal now. Confused, concerned, alive in the easy careless way he always was. Not beaten and broken beneath a soldier’s mask.
Not yet.
“You need to leave,” Red said, still slightly dazed. Her chest was heaving like she’d been without oxygen for days.
Chester blinked. “What?”
“Both of you. Right now.”
Red shoved her glove back on so violently she nearly tore the leather. She looked toward the palace, noticing how the sky had darkened unnaturally fast, clouds rolling heavy and black over the kingdom.
She grabbed Ace’s wrist before realising what she was doing - gloved fingers only, no skin - and pulled him closer. “You need to go to the Pool of Tears.”
Ace frowned. “The what?”
“It’s at the top of the hill,” Chester said quietly, eyes widening slightly as the realisation hit him. “It’s supposedly a bridge to wherever your heart desires.”
“Why would we need to go there?” Ace asked, still sounding completely. lost. “Red, what did you see?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it almost immediately. How could she possibly explain what she’d seen without making it real?
“I saw what happens if you don’t.”
That alone was enough to make Chester go pale. Not because he understood, but because the fear in Red’s voice clearly terrified him too.
A sharp horn echoed somewhere within the palace grounds, far too close for comfort. Every muscle in Red’s body locked. A second horn sounded, even closer than the first. She squinted, barely able to make out the red figures approaching from the exit of the hedge maze.
Card soldiers.
She stumbled backward as panic detonated between the three of them. They could hear the thunder of metal boots against the cobbled paving which headed toward the woods.
Rain began to crash down in violent sheets, soaking them instantly. Lightning split the sky above as they ran toward the Pool of Tears. Farther ahead, beyond rows of black trees that lined the climb, Red could see the old stone archway which stood in front of the viewing platform.
The Pool of Tears.
Freedom.
They’d almost made it.
Almost.
Card soldiers emerged from the treeline before they reached the archway. Red stopped so abruptly that Chester slammed into her shoulder. Six soldiers blocked the path ahead. Another five blocked the path behind. They were trapped.
The soldiers advanced in eerie synchronisation, weapons drawn but not raised. They moved like a single being rather than individual people. Red had never entirely understood how the Queen monitored her soldiers, but she had a feeling they weren’t acting under their own control.
One stepped forward.
“The Queen requests the presence of her daughter,” he said monotonously.
“She can request all she wants,” Red laughed.
More soldiers emerged through the rain. Too many. Far too many.
Ace lunged first, grabbing one of the soldier’s swords before slamming the hilt into another’s face. Chester attempted to tackle one sideways. Red stood frozen in place. She knew that she couldn’t change their fate - there was no point fighting it.
The rest of the day was a blur.
Red vaguely remembers being dragged to the courtyard.
One of the leading card soldiers pressed a heart shaped seal against Ace’s chest, and Wonderland magic answered instantly.
Ace screamed
She saw the crimson light explode beneath his skin like cracks spreading through glass. She watched in horror as red and black armour began crawling over his body piece by piece, forming directly from magic - a chestplate, gauntlets, and finally the sharp edges of a soldier’s mask sealing across his face.
Ace convulsed hard against the ground, but the soldiers held him down anyway. The transformation didn't just change his appearance, she could see it happening behind his eyes - the Queen’s magic hollowing things out. Rewriting loyalty. Twisting thought into obedience.
Ace’s movements became weaker until he finally went still. She watched as the mask finished sealing across his face, then he rose to his feet mechanically.
Not Ace anymore - a card soldier.
She’d been so focussed on Ace that she hadn’t noticed Chester’s.
Where the brown haired boy had previously stood, there was now a small cat in his place.
Red fell to her knees. She didn’t cry. Not even when the cat flashed her a wide toothed smile before his tail disappeared, followed by the rest of his new found form.
And suddenly she was alone again.
*
When Uma’s letter arrived from Auradon Prep, Red had expected her mother to decline the invitation.
Yet here she was, staring at her reflection in the car window instead of the world outside.
Rain followed them for the first few hours, heavy against the glass, turning Wonderland into dark smears of burgundy and crimson in the rear view mirror. The palace disappeared slowly behind them - towering spires vanishing into fog, heart heart shaped banners snapping violently in the wind high above the turrets.
Red did not look back once.
The Queen had not come to see her off personally - though Red had not expected her too. She had sent a driver instead, along with a single folded note left waiting on Red’s seat when she entered the car that morning.
‘Do not mistake distance for freedom.’
No signature.
There never needed to be one.
The note remained folded in Red’s jacket pocket the entire journey, like something alive pressing against her ribs.
Outside the windows, Wonderland slowly gave way to other kingdoms. When they passed through the Rabbit Hole, the roads straightened, the forests became less threatening, and the villages stopped looking like they were built to survive war.
Auradon announced itself gradually through colour.
The rooftops reflected golden under the evening sun. Houses adorned overflowing flower boxes beneath windows. Nobody watched the streets like danger might emerge at any second, or flinched when guards passed nearby.
People here existed carelessly.
It unsettled her.
She watched as families walked together openly in the streets, children running ahead of their parents without looking worried. Red curled against the car door, gloved hands tucked into the sleeves of her jacket while she watched the world outside transform into someplace unrecognisable.
Everywhere looked alive.
Red stared too long at some girl fixing flowers into her girlfriend’s hair while they sat on a bench outside a café.
She looked away immediately, though she knew the driver noticed.
The Queen had framed this entire arrangement as diplomacy. A gesture of cooperation between kingdoms. But Red knew the real reason her mother had agreed to send her to the school.
Wonderland had become more complicated after Ace and Chester.
The palace halls were filled with endless rows of card soldiers standing motionless beside doors and garden gates. Sometimes, if Red looked too quickly, she caught traces of familiarity beneath the masks.
She stopped looking closely months ago, once the guilt had begun wrapping around her heart like barbed wire.
And Chester still wandered the palace gardens occasionally in the form of a light brown cat with burning golden eyes. He never came near her anymore. Whenever Red approaches, he disappeared beneath hedges or climbed high into the Tumtum trees where she could not follow.
The Queen had not spoken their names since the transformations. She simply watched Red more carefully afterward, like she was waiting to see whether grief would make her weaker or crueler.
Maybe both.
By the time the car finally passed through Auradon Prep’s gates, the sky had turned deep blue with evening.
The school rose beyond enormous iron gates like something carved out of a storybook - towering stone buildings wrapped in ivy, glowing windows ricocheting sunlight across the wet courtyards below. Students crossed pathways carrying bags and laughing together beneath lantern lights.
Too many people.
Too much noise.
Red pulled her gloves tighter.
The second she stepped from the car, conversations nearby quietened. Some students recognised her, others only noticed the burgundy coat and the Wonderland insignia embossed onto the royal car.
Curiosity spread quickly through the courtyard.
A few students moved out of her path - good.
Fear was easier to understand than friendliness.
Red grabbed her own bags before the driver could help and headed toward the dormitories without looking back. She noticed how the air smelled strange here - cleaner somehow, mixed with wet grass and old stone instead of smoke and roses.
Behind her, the driver muttered something about orientation schedueles.
Red kept walking.
Inside, the dormitory building felt painfully warm compared to the evening air outside. Students crowded hallways, dragging suitcases between rooms, doors hanging open while music drifted from somewhere upstairs. Everything felt lived in in a way the palace in Wonderland never had.
The Queen’s castle had always been beautiful but painfully empty.
This place was messy with people.
Red moved carefully through the halls, avoiding accidental contact whenever students passed too close. A boy carrying books nearly brushed her shoulder and she stepped aside so sharply he looked startled.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
Red nodded once and continued walking.
Room 214 sat at the very end of the corridor. She paused outside the door longer than necessary. Roommate. The word lingered in her mind. Even the concept of it made her slightly uneasy.
In Wonderland, Red had spent most of her life alone, even inside crowded rooms. Sharing a bedroom with another person felt strangely invasive.
Red turned the door handle slowly, the wood creaking as it opened.
The room was already half unpacked.
Blue dresses hung neatly inside the wardrobe, and books line shelves in perfect stacks. One side of the room looked almost aggressively organized, every object carefully placed like a display rather than somewhere someone actually lived.
Red hardly had time to process any of it before the bathroom door opened.
A cerulean haired girl stepped out carrying folded towels before stopping abruptly at the sight of her.
“Oh.”
Her brown eyes widened slightly in surprise.
She looked exactly how Red imagined Auradon royalty would look - polished posture, perfectly styled hair, soft expensive clothes in shades of blue and silver. Even standing still, she somehow looked rehearsed.
“You must be Red.”
Red stared at her quietly for a moment. Not suspicious exactly, just uncertain.
Silence settled awkwardly between them. The girl recovered first, setting the towels down before stepping forward with an easy, practiced smile.
“I’m Chloe. Chloe Charming.”
She extended her hand.
Red looked at it. Then at Chloe directly. Then back at the hand. A strange expression crossed Chloe’s face as several seconds passed without Red reacting at all. Eventually, she lowered her hand slowly.
“I’m Cinderella’s daughter,” she added.
Recognition flickered faintly. Red knew who Cinderella was, obviously. Everyone did. But Wonderland never treated fairytales with the same reverence Auradon seemed to. Heroes and villains were equally as dangerous where Red came from.
“Oh,” she said finally.
Another silence.
Chloe looked like she was waiting for excitement that never arrived.
Red moved past her into the room and dropped her bag beside the empty bed near the window. She could feel Chloe watching her carefully now, trying to figure out whether Red disliked her or simply behaved strangely.
It was mostly the latter.
“You wear gloves all the time?” Chloe asked, attempting to start a conversation.
Red glanced toward her. “What an interesting first observation.”
Chloe’s face flushed. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be rude.”
“I know.”
Red understood, distantly, that she was probably making a terrible first impression. But Auradon conversations felt exhausting already - too layed with politeness and hidden social expectations she did not understand yet. The people of Wonderland were simpler in some ways. Cruel, yes, but direct.
“So,” Chloe said after a while, “what’s Wonderland actually like?”
“Loud,” Red answered, folding one of her sweaters carefully.
Chloe laughed softly at that, probably expecting something more dramatic. Red glanced toward the window where lantern light spilled gold across the campus outside.
“It’s colder than here - physically and metaphorically,” Red added eventually. “People don’t trust each other as much.”
“That sounds lonely,” Chloe said, her expression softening.
Red shrugged. “It’s normal.”
The answer silenced the room for a moment. Chloe studied her with open curiosity now rather than fear. Red was not used to that. Most people in Wonderland either avoided her entirely or treated her like something dangerous to survival.
Here, Chloe just looked interested - it was unsettling.
Then Chloe laughed under her breath.
Red looked over. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re smiling at me.”
“I just expected someone scarier.”
Red’s hand tightened a little around the shirt she was holding. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know. You’re the Queen of Hearts’ daughter. People talk.”
“They talk in Wonderland too.”
“About you?”
Red looked down briefly while adding another t shirt to the stack of clothes in front of her. “Usually.”
She did not elaborate.
Neither of them spoke for a little while after that. Chloe continued unpacking while Red arranged pencils and sketchbooks carefully on her desk. The room slowly began looking shared instead of divided.
Red’s gaze drifted to Chloe. Once. Then again.
Her heart panged the same way it had when she’d seen Ace for the first time. Her mother’s words were still burned into her mind.
Do not mistake distance for freedom.
But for the first time in a year, Red let herself feel. Let herself be free. Let herself exist completely in a world outside of her mother’s control.