Chapter Text
Night 1:
It was a chilly, fall evening in the kingdom of Auradon. Chloe shivered at the crisp autumn air as she stood diligently at her post. She made sure to keep her stance exactly as she had been taught. Her posture was perfect, her shoulders pushed down and back, and her head held high.
She watched as the gentle glow of the setting sun peeked out from behind the trees of the distant woods. She had been assigned to watch over the highest tower of the south wing of the castle, the perfect place to witness the beauty of the entire kingdom as the world transitioned from day to night.
She shifted a little, awkwardly trying to get used to her new position. Feeling out of place was not something she felt often. She had been a natural born swordsman her entire life, and top of her class in the knight academy. But, she’d never been to this part of the castle before. A fact that made her a bit uneasy, infact she wasn’t sure many other people had been there either which made it feel eerily secluded.
The wind began to pick up again. She blew a piece of hair that had blown onto her forehead out of her face and looked back out at the sky. The sun was setting now, the gentle glow of golden hour was rapidly drifting away below the horizon.
The result was a beautiful orange and red colored sky, contrasted by the dark shadows cast by a flock of birds flying overhead. She watched as the birds flew further and further away, over the expansive kingdom laid out before her. Even though she had been looking at the same view her entire life, It would never fail to take her breath away.
Beautiful view aside, Chloe was prepared to make her first night as an official royal knight a success. She felt like the sunset was her parents' way of watching over her, wherever they were now, she thought wistfully to herself.
It was a reminder of all she had worked for and why tonight had to go well. “I’m gonna make you proud, I promise”, she whispered into the wind as it gently rustled her bright blue curls. She liked to think the breeze could carry her words up to them.
As the night grew darker and colder, Chloe became thankful for her armor, which kept her nice and warm. Unfortunately her face and hands were left exposed, giving her a feel for how truly cold it was. She balled her hands together and blew into them, something her father had taught her to keep her hands warm. “A true knight is always prepared for the conditions of their surroundings”, she remembered him saying.
She took a moment away from watching the castle’s surroundings to look over at her helmet, which she had long discarded and tucked safely into a corner of the tower. It had been her fathers, from all the way back when he was a knight. The steel had long lost its shine but Chloe thought it looked as noble as ever.
When she first started at the knight academy she’d insisted that she wear it, it had become a good luck charm in a way. Unfortunately it was very hard to see in and seeing as Chloe’s entire job was to keep watch, she had decided that the helmet would remain on the sidelines for now.
When she looked back out again, Chloe noticed something strange hovering above the forest. She strained her eyes to get an idea of what it was and made a mental note to invest in a pair of binoculars for the future. The longer she watched, the larger it became until she could plainly see what it was. There was a small spiral of smoke rising out of the forest. This could only mean one thing, someone was camping out at the edge of the woods, waiting to make a move on the castle.
Chloe decided that she needed to focus all of her energy on this little stream of smoke. She needed to make sure she saw when it stopped. She plopped her elbow on the ledge of the tower and settled her head on her open palm. She squinted her eyes and locked in on the smoke, which was continuously getting thicker.
As she watched, Chloe felt almost hypnotized by the gray plumes of smoke. It twisted and twirled around, forming silvery patterns in the dark purple sky. She felt her eyes drift back and forth, following its movement.
She’d been staring at the single stream of smoke for hours and it was getting so late, before she could even realize her eyes had drifted closed.
On the contrary, she was very aware of when she woke up. She jumped awake so quickly that she almost toppled right over. With her heart pounding in her chest, she scrambled to pull herself up and whipped around. Hastily scanning her surroundings Chloe came to the skeptical conclusion that she was alone. However she could have sworn she’d heard a whooshing noise accompanied by a red blur.
Chloe felt disheveled. Her knees were shaky, her brain felt scrambled, and her stupid heart was still going nuts. She felt like she was thrown off her game. She tried her best to rationalize in her head. She was most likely just paranoid because she’d fallen asleep on the job, on her first night no less. But there was still a small part of her that was so sure that someone had been there and that she had completely failed at keeping the castle secure.
The whole situation made her feel sick to her stomach. Being a knight was her entire identity. Not only has it been the one thing she’s been training for her entire life, but it was one of her only connections with her dad. What if she had just let an infamous murderer into the castle? What if the blame got traced back to her and she was kicked out of knighthood?
No, she refused to let anything like that happen. With thoughts of sleep far from her mind, Chloe vowed to stay up all night and watch for the mysterious red blur, which she was now sure she’d seen. She figured that if whatever it was was sneaking into the castle through this tower, then it must be coming back out that way too.
She positioned herself back on watch, this time facing the entrance of the tower. She couldn’t help but think that it was a little silly that there was no door. It’d be a lot easier to defend a locked door than an open hallway.
Chloe stood and watched said open hallway with a new sense of agency. She had her father’s helmet on the ledge next to her as a reminder of her mission.
Some time later, she heard a quiet rustle behind her and with lightning fast movement pulled out her sword and pointed it straight at her target, only to find an owl blinking back at her. Huh? This isn’t what she’d expected. The owl tilted its head at her and ruffled its feathers before flying off into the early hours of the morning.
Feeling a bit droopy and disappointed, Chloe sluggishly turned back around, fully prepared to slump against the wall in defeat. But before she fully got back around she spotted something out of the corner of her eye at the opposite end of the tower, the unmistakable color of red. “Aha!”. She called out, hand readily on her sword, she sprinted to the other end of the tower, all but threw her head forward to peer over the side, and found…..nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The sickening feeling was back again. Now she couldn’t blame this whole thing on sleep deprivation or anxiety. There really was something or someone going in and out of the castle and she had failed to stop it.
She felt her breathing get heavy again, she paced back and forth for a bit to calm down and went back over to her original spot to retrieve her fathers helmet, that was sure to help calm her down. But when she got there another wave of anxiety rushed over her.
Now there was one more very pressing issue, her father’s helmet was gone.
Night 2:
Walking up the many flights of stairs to get to the top of the tower, Chloe went over her plan in her head. She was almost certain that the red blur had stolen her fathers helmet and she was going to negotiate to get it back.
This plan would mean going against the knight code of conduct, which she would normally never do, but it was like her mother used to say, “sometimes you gotta get your hands dirty”.
She had spent the entire past day thinking about the sunset, and the smoke, and the owl, and the red blur, and most importantly the helmet. It was like a broken record, cycling through on an endless loop. Helmet, smoke, owl, blur, helmet, owl, helmet, smoke, blur, owl, helmet.
She felt her mind spiral and the loop was just starting again when she finally made it to the top. She tentatively walked forward and looked down at the familiar scene below her. Once again the sun was setting making everything glow gold.
Chloe decided now was the time to put her plan into action, pulling open the small bag she’d brought with her. She started with the trip wires. She rigged the entire doorway from top to bottom with thin strings, they would become perfectly invisible in the dark. She would know, she’d tested it in her closet to be sure.
Next she added the small bells that she’d taken from a dismantled wind chime. She’d technically stolen it from the castle garden, but once again it was all for a good cause. Chloe stood back with her hands on her hips and admired her handiwork. The trip wires were placed perfectly, it would be hard to notice them if you weren’t directly looking for them.
She’d placed the bells in such a way that they wouldn’t jingle in the wind, something else she’d tested in her closet. She was slowly becoming aware that she probably looked a little insane from an outside perspective from how much she had been in and out of her very small closet that day.
Satisfied, Chloe checked the first box off her list. Now, if her suspicions were correct, she would have to watch and wait for at most a couple minutes.
She peered out at the woods watching the orange sky right above the trees. Just like she suspected, after about a minute, plumes of smoke rolled steadily out of the treetops. With that, Chloe checked the second box on her list.
Now for the boring part, lots of waiting.
Chloe blew out the torch in the same corner of the tower that the red blur had escaped on, gathered all her things, and sat down in the very same corner. This way she would be hidden by the dark and her target wouldn’t see her when she blocked their exit. If she fell asleep again, the bells on trip wires would wake her up, she had never been so glad to be a light sleeper.
She decided to do some light reading until the sun went all the way down. She’d brought along “A History of the Art of Sword Fighting” and it kept her quite busy, reading about those who pioneered something she loved so much was incredibly fascinating.
Before she knew it, the words on the pages were no longer visible and she prepared to put the final part of her plan in motion.
The next thing she knew, Chloe spung awake at the sound of bells, her reflexes willing her to immediately unsheath her sword and thrust it in the direction of the noise, the source of the noise stopped in their tracks. “Ha, it worked! I caught you!”, Chloe exclaimed, mostly to herself, in excitement. There was nothing she loved more than a meticulously crafted plan going exactly as she’d wanted. If she was going to keep this plan running smoothly, she would need to think hard and carefully on how to continue. Unfortunately her new captive didn’t seem to have the patience for that.
“So what now? You gonna run me through, turn me in. Believe me I’ve gotten out of a lot worse”.
Huh?, that was definitely not the voice Chloe had expected. It was then that she really took a look at her captive.
A young girl, around the same age as her. She had bright red hair mostly covered by a black leather hood, a very full bag of what Chloe assumed was loot, and the most piercing, yet warm brown eyes glaring at her from behind an ornate red mask. Slouched back against the brick wall with her arms loosely crossed, her body language seemed much too relaxed for someone standing opposite to the sharp point of a royal knight's sword.
Chloe was instantly intrigued by this girl, something about her drew her in as she took the girl's appearance in. The air was thick with something but Chloe couldn’t quite place what it was. All she knew is that her heart was pounding hard for what felt like the millionth time in the last 24 hours, but this time it felt slightly different. This time it was very hard to distinguish whether it was from fear or excitement. Maybe it was a bit of both.
But now was not the time to be focused on that, it was time to enact the final part of her plan. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”. Chloe asked, thrusting her sword forward a bit. She desperately tried to hide the shakiness in her voice and assert as much control over the situation as possible.
“I’ll do you one better. Who are you!?”. The mysterious hooded girl fired back. She was trying to hide it, but Chloe could hear a hint of distress in her voice. “If you’re gonna interrogate me the least you could do is let me see who I’m talking to”.
Dang she’s good, Chloe thought, the girl had quickly recovered the tone of her voice and she now sounded much too confident for Chloe’s liking. She tried her best to match the redhead’s energy and after a moment spoke again, “Fine, but if I do will you agree to cooperate?”. The girl simply nodded, her sharp eyes not faltering for a second.
Chloe took a deep breath and stepped out of the darkness and into the light allowing herself to be illuminated by the still lit torches on the other end of the tower. As she did so, the girl slowly looked her up and down. Chloe felt her face get hot and her brain went completely blank.
“Are you gonna question me or what?”, the girl’s voice pulled the thoughts back into Chloe’s brain. “Oh”, she quickly cleared her throat, “Right”. She noticed that her sword was now facing the floor, she pointed it back at the girl at lightning speed before enacting the very last step of her plan.
“Who are you and what have you done with my dad’s helmet!”Chloe finally forced out. Not exactly what she wanted to say but it got the job done.
She inched forward in an attempt to communicate that she meant business, “Now!”
“Ok ok, I can’t tell you who I am because y’know I’m doing the whole secret identity thing and I really don’t want to have a target on my back”. A beat. “There’s a lot of people counting on me”. She said the last part a bit quieter than the rest.
“And the helmet?”Chloe pressed, willing her voice not to break, she was so afraid that it might be gone forever. “You mean the one I nicked from you last night? I sold it this morning in town. Besides can’t you just get a new one, with the amount of taxes he takes the king probably has a million of those things made a day”.
What? Chloe didn’t know how to feel. She felt her entire body lurch to a halt as several emotions washed over her in a mere millisecond. Anger at the way someone could be so nonchalant about something so dear to her. Worry, at the possibility that the helmet might be gone forever. And confusion, what did she mean by “the amount of taxes the king takes”?
In the end the anger won out, “That was not just some helmet, I need it back”. Now it was the time to make her ultimatum, something she had carefully drafted up and perfected earlier that day. “Listen, I’ll let you go and I promise not to turn you in, but you have to hunt down my helmet and bring it back. And you have to come back here and check in with me every night so I know that you’re following through with the agreement”.
The girl bit her lip and squinted her eyes for a moment, as if to think everything over. Then she reached forward and tentatively, slowly pushed Chloe’s sword down and out of her face. Chloe felt her shoulders tense and her mouth gape open slightly at the movement. Nothing but her eyes dared to move as she watched her sword helplessly clatter to the ground. Was this girl a hypnotist or something?! Everything she did left Chloe entranced.
“As much as I hate to say it, you’ve got yourself a deal”, she stuck a hand out to shake on it. Chloe snapped her mouth closed and swallowed down every possible embarrassing thing she could say in the moment and reached out her now empty hand to give the girl a firm handshake.
Not seeing any reason to keep her any longer, Chloe promptly dropped her hand and awkwardly motioned to the side of the tower that was still unlit. “Y- you can go now”. Without a word, the redhead pushed herself off the wall to stand up straight and for a fleeting moment Chloe swore she saw a small smirk adorn her lips but it was so quick she wouldn’t be surprised if she’d imagined it. She almost seemed to glide as strode off into the dark and just like that she was gone.
The second the girl was out of sight, Chloe practically flew to the edge of the tower and threw her head over the side, but there wasn’t a glimpse of red in sight, only the deep purple of the late night sky. Just as quickly as she’d appeared, the mysterious thief was gone.