Disclaimer: I do not own Descendants.
Carlos was having a particularly bad day in what was proving to be one of the longest weeks of his life - not really though if he thought about it from a not in the middle of it perspective. He had certainly had worse - much, much worse. In fact, there had been a time when the annoyances that were currently troubling him would have been dismissed as petty nonissues.
There had been days, after all, when he had been beaten, weeks when he had gone hungry, and entire countless spans of time when he had wondered why he still bothered to get up and keep trying in the mornings, but he had lost sight of that perspective lately. Auradon was coloring his sense of things, and he was not always sure how he felt about that.
The truth was that he was just in a bad mood exasperated by the new structures and expectations in his life; he was feeling the effects of no longer being on the Isle more sharply than he ever had. He wondered in a distant sort of way if each of them was going to have an existential crisis at some point over the adjustment. Things were just so different here. Every time he thought he had a handle on it, something else that was different (expected or not) cropped up to try to throw him (or that is what it felt like anyway).
If he had felt this way back on the Isle, then he would have gone out and smashed something until the slow simmering sense of rage left him (or at least dwindled to a more manageable level). Jay was, after all, not the only one that needed some sort of an outlet, but no one ever thought that about him, did they? No one ever bothered to check whether he might have the same problems as the others. He was quiet Carlos, happy to be here Carlos, well-adjusted Carlos.
Well, tonight he was not any of those things.
The truth was that he should have canceled on Jane. He should have called and made some sort of an excuse to not meet up with her tonight, but he had not done that. He had actually forgotten in the midst of all his boiling just under the surface agitation that she was supposed to be coming over so they could go on a picnic (something about the very thought just added to his agitation - he was living in a world where people used activities involving food as recreation when he had spent the majority of his childhood never knowing what it was like to actually not still be at least a little bit hungry when he finished whatever passed for a meal).
Jane was grating on his every last nerve - not because of anything in particular, but just because she was being so very Jane. Could she not ever just get mad at his terse answers and simmering poor mood instead of trying to be so understanding all of the time?
It was suddenly infuriating. Before he could stop himself, he found himself actually saying the words - ranting at her about how she was just a silly little girl who did not know anything about life. She was stupid enough to think that things always worked out in the end and a dozen other things that he lost track of in the middle of saying them. It was not really making the rage he had felt all day lessen in any discernable way - he rather felt like he was getting even more worked up as he went. He finished off his rant with a vindictive verbal swipe that he did not even realize was coming until after he had said it.
"Sometimes," he intoned, "I wish . . . I wish I'd never met you!"
He was miserable the instant that he recognized what it was that he had said, and that misery only doubled when he finally actually looked at Jane and saw the expression on her face. She looked horrified (as if he had smacked her across the face although that was something that not even caught up in a rage him could even fathom doing). She was shaking her head in a desperate fashion, and Carlos found himself taking a step forward with his hand out suddenly desperate to do something, anything to make her not look like that any longer.
He flinched when she stepped away from his touch - something that she had never done in all the time that they had been together. When she whispered, he had the strangest conviction that it was not him to whom she was speaking.
"No!" She gasped out in an undertone that he could barely hear. "Please, no!" She looked utterly terrified.
"Jane?" He asked tentatively suddenly knowing somehow that he had no idea what was truly happening. Everything around him - Jane included - just dissolved. He did not have any other way to describe it. She was there and then she was not. The picnic basket was there and then it was not. The next thing that was actually clear was that he was standing in the middle of what should have been the front lawn of the school, but the school was no longer a school. It was a giant pile of rubble with scorched shards of what had once been the building splayed out across the landscape.
Something was very, very wrong and it was not just his inability to control his temper.
"Jane?" He repeated then a little panicked. "Jane!" There was no response and the entire landscape remained eerily still and seemingly desolate.
Then, his feet were flying out from under him and he landed hard enough on his back that the wind was knocked out of him. His vision went fuzzy and the last thing he saw made no sense whatsoever. He was almost convinced that Chad was leaning over him before something thumped him on the head and everything went black.