Chapter 2: Leaving Most Things Behind

They couldn't just run away immediately. Supplies were needed. The best that Gothy could guarantee was that they'd make a run for it in the dark of the night, after classes were over.

"Make up any excuses you can think of to explain my absences," Gothy told Audrey before the two went to their Tuesday morning classes. "I got to get the essentials. Hiking bags, non-perishable foods, sleeping gear…"

"I can grab some first aid kits from the infirmary during the break," Audrey suggested. "And once classes are done, I'll go to the ATM to take out all my credit card money into cash."

"You sure?" Gothy frowned.

"My family is the one managing my bank account. Do you want them to track us by checking into my online account to see which bread-and-breakfast we go to?"

Gothy blinked at her. "Are you sure you're a princess?"

"What commoner carries more than 900 dollars on a credit card made of gold?"

That answer was fine enough for Gothy. "You got decent clothes to wear for the trip? There's no way you're wearing fancy rags when we're out."

"I do have yoga clothes."

Gothy sighed. "The gendered clothing in this country is so primitive. Keep the pants and shoes; I'll find you some decent top that doesn't make you look like cotton candy."

It was one of the strange things about Gothy Gothel. She didn't exactly push for details about what had happened to Audrey and gave to her the closest to kindness slack, but the tone she used was enough to inform Audrey that she DEFINITELY will not have the time to act like the princess she used to be.

Morning classes were torture. Thanks to her mistakes, Audrey had to take Remedial Goodness for two straight hours. Though Fairy Godmother did give her a smidge of sympathy, the students in the room sat as far away from her as if she were some rat bearing a plague. When Fairy Godmother asked if anybody knew why Gothy was absent, Audrey lied by saying that Gothy told her she went back to the Isle to give Mother Gothel some proper medicine after the villainess called to inform her daughter of coughing problems she was having. Fairy Godmother nodded and added Gothy's absence to her clipboard.

It was rather warm and sunny at lunchtime, but while everyone stampeded to enjoy lunch outside, Audrey ate her sandwich and tea in the bathroom closest to the infirmary. Once she threw away her leftovers, she waited for the right moment until the nurse left for the lunch break. Audrey waited for the hallway to be completely silent as she used her silver hairclip to unlock the door. She wasted no time and immediately filled her bag with what she could on bandages, disinfectant, cold medications, and a guidebook for more serious injuries. Just when she walked away from the nurse's office as fast as she could, her cellphone beeped. When she heard footsteps approaching, she made a run back to the bathroom. After locking herself in a cabinet, she saw that her family had left her a series of voicemails.

"Audrey, it's Grammy. Please call me back. You haven't spoken at all for weeks."

"Audrey, it's Mother and Father. We know you went through a lot. We know we've made our mistakes… Please, just talk to us."

"Audrey, it's your Grandpa Hubert! Surely you remember! What happened to you? Where's my sweet little songbird of a granddaughter?"

An average person would come to his or her senses and answer the voicemails of the relatives, but Audrey just pressed the screen to delete the voicemails. She really couldn't talk to her family at all nowadays. She didn't even have the guts to yell at their face for how her parents' lacking presences, her paternal grandfather spoiling her, and her grandmother's helicopter custody had damaged her. Her grandfather Stephan was dead since she was a toddler, most of her friends had already graduated, Carlos was dead, Jane no longer talked to her, and nobody else wanted her around.

At this rate, leaving to help Gothy was the only thing that would keep her sane.

Later in the evening

It was the dead of night again. Gothy cautiously opened the door to Audrey's room and double-checked that the hallways were empty. She gestured for Audrey to come out and follow her. Once they reached the front door, Gothy shielded herself with a black hooded cloak that once belonged to her mother. It was merely a stroke of luck, but Audrey had on her the cloak her own mother had once worn while being escorted back home. Both cloaks were dark enough to shield their hiking bags and the girls' forms as they ran as quickly as they could out of the campus. They had to be cautious: it was still early in the tourney season and the new school team was still practicing. Still, Audrey and Gothy managed to sneak their way into the woods. It was tricky to navigate through the trees with their flashlights, but Audrey managed to take Gothy to the river.

"Corona is located near a bay located on the northern parts of the land, roughly before you reach the Auradon Wall," Audrey told Gothy. "If we go upstream, we… What are you doing?" Audrey paused when she saw Gothy splashing her face and soaking her clothes with water from the river.

"Hiding my scent. I don't want that talking mutt to sniff us out."

"You mean Dude?" Then Audrey recalled what her friends told her about Dude being able to sniff out Ben when Mal's group and Uma's gang allied to find him. If Gothy was right about getting the authorities involved being a poor idea, the last thing they'd need was for Dude to sniff them out. Audrey imitated Gothy and soaked herself.

"C'mon," she told Gothy. "Let's go find your sister."

They had walked for a day and a half. They walked strictly in the river, so that their scents would be lost. Eventually, the river got deeper. As time progressed, Audrey and Gothy felt the water rising. By the time it was sundown on Thursday, the water was reaching their waist level. They had to climb their way out of the water before it could drown them and their belongings. The moment she reached mainland, Audrey landed face-first in a puddle of mud.

"No time for a mud facial, Princess." Gothy pulled her up and rubbed the mud off Audrey's face.

"I'm fine!" Audrey pushed Gothy's hand away.

"You're not fine. You're tired, you haven't eaten in days…"

"You didn't want us to make a break to eat."

"We're not on vacation. And in case you've forgotten, Princess, I'm from the Isle of the Lost. I barely have enough to eat." She then poked Audrey roughly on the stomach. "Unlike that well-fed fatness you carry on the other side of your skin."

"No, this is recent!" Audrey protested. "I had a bit of emotional eating…"

"I don't care." Gothy's eyes darted the area. "OK, judging by the wildlife, this place is rather secluded. There should be a creek nearby. We can set camp there and I'll worry about drying our clothes and heating up some dinner while you take a bath."

Audrey's mouth dropped. "You expect me to bathe in the wilderness?"

"What? You're worried about the local fish ogling your well-fed plumpness?" Gothy gave an amused smirk.

"No! Did you ever think that there could be… other travelers out in these parts who might have something else going on if they saw some random teenager bathing in the woods?" Still, Audrey couldn't help but have her own hand pinch her side. Was Gothy being serious about her 'well-fed fatness?'

"That's a surprisingly meaningful statement, but it's Auradon. Who do you will be strolling around here at nighttime?" Gothy pulled Audrey into the concealment of the trees. "But seriously, you reek of mud, sweat, and well-fed fat for nearly two days. I'm not having you stench my cooking."

To Gothy's relief, Audrey wasn't hopeless with helping her set up camp and shelter under some oak trees just a feet away from the creek. By the time the moon lit the night sky, Gothy took round trips between the creek and the camp to thoroughly wash their clothes by hand and hang them over a branch to dry. She had packed some clothes, so she had some black tunic and red pants on while she took care of assembling hazelnuts for the soup she intended on cooking.

"You'd better be cleaning yourself!" She shouted over the crickets.

"What are you, my mom?" Audrey still clutched to her cloak like a towel as she dipped her foot in the creek. It was rather cool, but still, not cool enough to tempt Audrey enough.

"No, I'm not going to be your Goth Mom!" Gothy shouted over her chopping. "Now clean yourself up, Princess!"

"Alright, alright!"

Audrey threw her cloak over a branch and finally let herself slip into the water. This would probably be seen as a scene of ridicule: a princess, so used to relaxing in bathtubs that would drown her in bubbles of chamomile and roses, was voluntarily rubbing her skin clean in some creek in the night of a forest far from the places she knew. It was the opposite for Audrey. Ever since she had been saved from her near-death coma, Audrey kept having nightmares of drowning in a river with ghosts trying to drag her deeper. Mal and Hades had tried to reassure that it was just the temporary result of her nearly being dragged in the River Styx after she was defeated, but Audrey had trouble getting used to baths ever since. There were times when she was too afraid to shower because she feared the ghosts would pour down and drag her down the drain.

Oddly enough, Audrey managed to find a strange sense of relaxation as the cool currents hit her gently. For some minutes, she managed to sit in the creek and just watch the moonshine over the waters like diamonds and listening to the diversity of animal sounds in the wilderness. A strange sigh came out her and her eyes darted to her watery reflection…

A gasp of shock escaped her lips and she caused splashes out of surprise. She could have sworn she saw the reflection of some redheaded, red-coated man standing behind and smiling at her. The reflected smile unnerved her. It was neither predatory nor enchanting. It wasn't a menacing smile nor one of comfort. In a sense, the man's reflection was giving her a smile without definition.

My Queen Of Mean, his reflection seemed to mouth.

Out of fright, a pink blast escaped her. It landed and reduced a nearby tree into ashes. It didn't injure anyone because whoever was the owner of the reflection was nowhere.

"I must be dreaming." She shook her head. When she turned it, she saw a familiar being holding her cloak in its mouth.

"Hello, friend." Audrey smiled at the red stag. She took the cloak from its mouth and stepped out of the creek to dry herself. "I'm relieved. For a moment, I thought there was somebody else observing me."

The stag tilted its head at the tree Audrey had incinerated. Just then, Gothy came in carrying dry, folded clothes. Audrey looked at her awkwardly while Gothy darted her eyes between the pink leftovers of the burnt tree and the red stag.

"I can't leave you alone for thirty minutes, can I?"

"Look, I'm clean, but my eyes were playing tricks on me and I shot a tree down because I thought I saw someone else's reflection…"

"Oh, so you turned the pervert into a stag?" Gothy whistled in amusement. "Nice Artemis moves on the Acteon."

"No! I already know that stag since… my problems started." Audrey took the clean magenta shirt and blue pants Gothy offered her. "It just shows up whenever I'm in the woods." Audrey paused and stared back at the stag. "Wait. You never show up when I'm around other people."

The stag gave her… whatever was the stag equivalent of a shrug and just trotted its way to the campsite.

"I can't believe I'm actually going to have to ask you about your problems over dinner," Gothy sighed in frustration.

Audrey had to recognize that for a VK who never put her foot in a high-cuisine, first class kitchen, Gothy knew how to cook what was perhaps the best hazelnut soup Audrey had ever eaten in her life. She managed to properly sit on a tree's root to drink from her cup while the stag merely relaxed by her sides. And Gothy was surprisingly a good listener, but it was only after Audrey had finished telling her of her troubles that Gothy proved more of her strange criticism.

"So let me see if I get this straight. Your mom was the most useless princess ever, your grandmother made you feel like you're only good at being a useless princess, your only ex-boyfriends are useless, and when the first ex-boyfriend proposed to his not-so-useless new girlfriend, your grandmother made you feel further useless, you tried to make yourself useful by being evil, and even though you got your senses back, everyone treats you like you're useless."

"Yeah, pretty much…" Audrey lost track of how many times Gothy had used the word 'useless'.

"At the same time, I don't get it. I mean, you're literally the princess of Sleeping Beauty's kingdom. You're supposed to be the queen of that kingdom anyway. Why did your family care so much if they thought you should be the next queen of Auradon?"

"I don't know." Audrey finished her cup. "My grandpa Hubert always kept saying that my parents primarily allowed my Grammy to prepare me while they were too busy because she didn't have that chance with my mom. You know, my grandma missed out on my mom's childhood."

"The same way Aurora is practically missing out on yours?"

Gothy's sharp question made Audrey gasp. "She didn't miss on anything!"

Gothy gave her a glare.

"OK, so she only had a quarter of her free time to give me…"

"Give me any number you want, I find your overall life pathetic." Gothy refilled their cups with hazelnut soup. "Do you even know what you'd be doing if you didn't have to endure all the helicopter parenting?"

"Not really." Audrey felt the stag resting its head on her lap and giving her a pouting look. She gave it a small smile and gave it the neck caress it was so fond of. "What about you?" She asked Gothy. "How did you figure out your life since Mother Gothel never cared about you?"

Regularly, this is a question that you shouldn't ask someone because they'd slap you at the suggestion of their parents not loving them. But Gothy, being a VK and unusually critical, didn't seem affected.

"Not that hard, really. I spent my childhood as an apprentice in Lady Tremaine's hair salon before Dizzy was old enough to work there. That's when I started doing hair services at home. Even took some interests in alchemy to learn the basics of fabricating permanent dyes. And rather than spending my money on useless materials for vanity, I saved it for when I'd look for Cassandra. But apparently, villains' currency in blights is not much when converted to Auradonian dollars." She rolled her eyes. "Economy nowadays."

"And what do you think you'll do with Cassandra once you find her? Besides staying as far away from the Isle and Auradon?"

"Maybe find ourselves some kind of cottage in a quiet area?" Gothy shrugged. "Open my own hair salon in a village? Spend nights drinking and ratting about how useless our mother was to us?"

Audrey laughed a bit at the idea of Gothy getting drunk with some dark-haired woman in a tavern. Along with the displayed cynicism, this seemed way too convenient.

"And who knows, we might be able to fit a guest room in the cottage. You could always stop by to visit."

"Really?" Audrey was surprised. "I won't be too useless?" She gave an unexpected smirk.

"Please, I can't even leave you alone for some minutes just to bathe," Gothy replied in sarcastic humor. The stag lifted its head to glare at Gothy. "Fine, I suppose the Bloody Bambi can come along too. A long as it stays away from the laundry."

The next day, back in Auradon

"Ow!"

"Please keep still Mal!"

It wasn't even late in the morning and Evie was having trouble measuring the fabric on Mal for her wedding dress fitting. Evie had posted a blog with all the 365 ideas she had for designs to gain some public opinions and more than three-quarters had gotten popular.

"Ow!" Mal yelped again when Evie poked another pin.

"Mal, I need you to stop moving! I need to measure out the fabric to see if a strapless design is the best fit for your wedding dress!" Not to mention that she had to design the purple dresses for the bridesmaids and many of the people who had accepted the wedding invitations in advance were also ordering their outfits for the event. Evie was stressed.

"I'm sorry, Evie. I'm just worried about Audrey."

The mention of their friend actually managed to de-stress Evie.

"Is it because of what happened with Carlos? We did tell her she wasn't responsible."

"That… I don't know why everyone in Auradon is quick to outcast her just for her brief time of evil. We already told them it was a…"

"Lack of judgment?" Evie finished the sentence.

"Yes."

"Did you try calling her?"

"I texted. I even asked Fairy Godmother to check on her… I'm worried that Audrey is hurting herself more than the others are."

It was then that a massive series of doorbell ringing alerted them. Such an amount could only mean that something was serious. Evie pulled the fabric off Mal and the latter got dressed as fast as she could. The two rushed to the front door and opened it. They were surprised, not in a bad way but in a startled fashion, at the last person they imagined ringing at the door of a VK's cottage.

"Queen Aurora?" Evie was quick to curtsy Sleeping Beauty. Mal didn't. The queen looked like she was on the brink of tears, and if she came ringing to them, it could only mean…

"Please tell me Audrey isn't missing again." Mal shook her head.

"You mean she isn't here either?" Aurora was getting a panic attack.

"We'd better get you inside, your Highness." Mal gently ushered the queen inside and escorted her to a chair in the kitchen. Evie immediately went on to heat up some tea.

"Chamomile or peppermint, your Highness?" Evie asked.

"Chamomile, please." Aurora struggled to hold back her tears.

"Calm down." It was ironic, seeing the daughter of Maleficent calming down Sleeping Beauty was rather ironic. "Please tell us what happened. I really hope your not being serious about Audrey going missing."

"Because the last time she went missing, she turned evil?"

"No, because I noticed that she hasn't been taking things well lately. She's put herself in more guilt than the other Auradonians and VKs are. I tried texting her, but she wouldn't answer."

"She didn't answer our calls either." Aurora shook her head. "We all tried to reach out to her to give her our support, but she didn't bother to answer. And when Fairy Godmother called Phillip and I last night to inform us that Audrey had missed two straight days of class, we rushed to Auradon Prep. That's when we realized that nobody noticed her disappearance."

"Did you check the entirety of the campus?"

"Five times. My mother is currently crying in Audrey's room."

"What about Fairy Cottage?" Evie suggested.

"My godmothers just searched the place at least ten times. Not even there."

"Any chance that she decided to run back home?" Mal suggested.

"My father-in-law is currently having all the guards check the castle and search through the villages. No one has seen her."

"Did you inform Ben?"

"My husband is currently on his way to the castle."

Evie bit her lip. "You don't think she went back to the museum…"

"EVIE!" Mal snapped. "How can you possibly suggest that? Audrey wouldn't go back there after her near-death experience! She's been traumatized about it for weeks!"

"Mal, green eyes…" Evie warned Mal. Maleficent's daughter noticed the angry green glow of her eyes reflecting on the nearest mirror and shook her head.

"I'm sorry." She took a deep breath.

"Thank you." Aurora nodded. "At least you know my daughter wouldn't steal those items again."

"Even if she did, it wouldn't work. Ben has the crown stored in the International Royal Archives and my mother's scepter is no longer working."

This threw off both Evie and Queen Aurora.

"No longer working?" Evie frowned.

"I'm sorry, you must confuse me. Maleficent's scepter was powerful enough to put me to sleep, petrify an entire crowd, and brainwash my daughter. How does a powerful relic… just stop working?" Aurora asked. "Maleficent's scepter isn't exactly some ordinary flashlight."

"I know, right?" Mal sighed and sat properly on her seat. "Sometime after the engagement party, I had an agreement with Fairy Godmother and Hades to double-check my mother's scepter. If it was capable of sensing Audrey's negative emotions to corrupt her when she broke in the museum, we had to make sure that it couldn't affect any of the visitors. But when we went to check on it, we noticed something amiss. The dragon's eye, the jewel that crowns the scepter, was no longer emerald envy green but charcoal black. We all tested it, but somehow, no magic came out of it. We even brought it to the Isle, but it wasn't working."

"Maybe its powers were destroyed when you fought Audrey," Evie said. "After all, you did say that Hades' ember was more powerful than Maleficent's scepter."

"Is the ember still working?" Aurora asked out of curiosity.

"Yeah. Hades and I checked. But even the god of the Greek underworld doesn't think that his powers could have nuked out those of the Mistress of All Evil. But the weirdest part was when I paid a visit to Celia's dad and he said that the scepter's power shutdown was normal."

"In what way?"

"He said 'Looks like Maleficent's time to pay her fee is coming up soon. I'd rather not be around when her friend from the other side comes to collect the fee… in blood.'"