Summary: Shuriki's return continues to be a problem. In the midst of it all, Naomi finds herself having nightmares, and when she goes to Mateo for help, discovers that he's having a hard time handling things, too.

Naomi hovered outside the door to Mateo's workshop, her heart stammering. It was late by her standards—she didn't usually hang around the palace this deep into the evening—but she'd spent the afternoon looking for any excuse to keep herself busy, like she could procrastinate the waning hours themselves. She needed to go home for dinner, but doing so would close the day and send her into another restless night plagued by the shadows of the last week. She wanted to talk to Mateo before she left, but doing so would mean admitting how badly the week's events were bothering her. Still, her childish attempt to stave off the relentless crawl of time had ended in failure, and she'd run out of excuses to not ask for Mateo's help.

Finally padding across the threshold, Naomi stepped into the workshop. Mateo was bent over his worktable, engrossed in a heavy spellbook. His wand was laid out on the table beside it and a cauldron bubbled gently in the corner of the room.

Naomi cleared her throat. "Hey—"

—And he flinched, badly, snatching his tamborita from the table and wheeling on the doorway, the wand pointed right at her. Naomi stumbled backward, hands up and heart racing, a frantic protest on her lips, but the moment was over as quickly as it started. Recognition flooded out the panic on Mateo's face and he let out a rush of air, his wand arm dropping to his side.

"Naomi," he said, breathless. "It's just you." His other hand had been up in preparation to cast, and he tried to pass it off by running it through his hair instead. "Sorry about that."

She forced a laugh, high pitched and uncomfortable. "Yeah, no problem! Didn't mean to startle you." She hated how scared she felt. This was Mateo, not a malvago—he wasn't going to do anything to hurt her. But the sudden fight-or-flight tension coiling through her body at the sight of the tamborita leveled at her chest was a stark reminder of why she was there in the first place.

"Did you need something?" Mateo prompted.

"Yeah. I was wondering if…" She looked down at her hands. The scrapes on her palms were starting to scab over, but curling her fingers over them she could almost still feel—

—hands scrabbling for purchase against the cliff face, grit and gravel digging into her skin, nothing but a withering branch between her and the endless abyss of air, her feet kicking uselessly in the void below her, Shuriki and Fiero laughing down from above, the sweeping vertigo sending her down, down, helpless, alone—

"Naomi?"

She gasped, dragged back to the present. Mateo had crossed the room and placed his hands on her arms, grounding and firm. She was fine. She wasn't falling.

"I was wondering if you have anything for nightmares," she finally managed, her voice thready.

Mateo's face fell, and he let out a sympathetic hum. "You too, huh?" He gave her arms one last squeeze and headed toward the cauldron, peering in to check its contents. "You'll have to wait a few minutes. It seems like half the palace has been through here asking about that these last few days, and I ran out of the potion for it this morning. This batch should be done soon, though."

"Should I come back later?"

"Only if you don't want to stay." He scratched at his neck, sighing. "Actually, I wouldn't mind if you wanted to stick around."

Naomi gave another breathless laugh. "That's good, because I don't really want to go anywhere else right now. It's been a long week."

"You can say that again," Mateo said with a dry chuckle.

"It's been a looooong week!" She dropped into the wooden chair against the wall, sinking into it. The rigid back and cushionless seat hadn't become any more comfortable with time, but it was familiar in a way that felt safe, and she could finally stop and think about what that 'long week' really meant.

The Sunflower Festival felt like it had been a lifetime ago. They'd barely had a reprieve from it when they'd started their ill-fated quest for the Scepter of Night, and now it was all hands on deck in the search for Shuriki, Fiero, and the Delgados. The Council had voted at first to keep news about Shuriki's return limited, so as to not cause a panic. But word inevitably slipped out among the palace staff, and after the failure with the Scepter, Elena had recommended a formal announcement to keep alarm from spreading too rapidly.

Judging by Mateo's potion stock issues, people were not taking it well regardless.

"I feel like I really messed up," Mateo said, breaking the silence. "With the Scepter. I feel like I handed it to Shuriki myself."

Naomi looked up at him. "None of us blame you." It may have been Mateo that led Shuriki to the staff and the first clue, but it was herself and Elena that had led her to the remaining pieces, and it was her alone that had failed to protect them.

"I blame me." Closing his eyes for a moment, he let out a slow breath. When he opened them again, he fixed Naomi with a tired smile. "But I know. Thanks." He turned back to the cauldron and gave it a stir. "I've been trying to do more research on it. Even if Shuriki has all the pieces, she still has to learn how it works. Maybe I can figure out a way to counter it before she does."

Naomi let her eyes wander over to the book on the worktable. If she craned her neck a little, she could make out the violet lines of an illustration of the Scepter. "How's that been going?"

His face twisted into a disappointed scowl. "Not great. There aren't a lot of magical reference books here that I haven't already read through." His scowl deepened. "Shuriki's last reign made sure of that."

The potion burbled loudly, perhaps in sympathy, and Mateo gave the spoon another vigorous turn before withdrawing it from the pot, tapping it against the rim to shake the excess potion off inside. Globs of the stuff fell back in with a splat, and Naomi grimaced at the consistency. She wasn't going to have to drink that, was she?

Mateo set the spoon aside and reached for a towel, wiping his hands off and then running it over his face as an afterthought. The steam rising off the cauldron had plastered his curls to his forehead, making him look even more worn out than he had when Naomi arrived, and she felt a pang of sympathy for him. As awful as the week had been for her, having her and her friends' lives repeatedly threatened over a sorceress's grudge, she didn't have a lifetime of living under Shuriki's heel to frame what a second takeover would really mean.

"What was it like?" she asked. "Living under Shuriki?"

"You've lived under Shuriki."

Hardly. True, the port had been one of Avalor's windows to the outside world, and so Shuriki had kept a high guard presence there to inspect each ship's cargo with a rigor that bordered on obsession. But Naomi's family owned one of those ships. They'd always had the option to leave. Shuriki's villany existed distantly, as an inconvenience to be gossiped about at the dinner table, not something that loomed over their every waking moment.

"What was it like growing up here, then?"

Mateo leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms, staring into the middle distance of his workshop. He was silent for a long while, and Naomi was starting to worry she had dredged up something too painful to discuss when he finally spoke.

"It was lonely. And it was really quiet. Not just because of the 'no parties, no music' thing, but because…" He tightened his grip at his elbows, and the way he spoke sounded almost like a confession. "I didn't exactly have a 'typical' childhood, you know? No one else was secretly studying magic. People found ways to hang on to the rest of our culture, but there was no community for that part of it. I had to do it all alone. And even now, it's hard to wrap my head around how things could have been, what I was really missing all that time.

"I'm really lucky that I had my mom—someone who knew what things were like before Shuriki took over, and that could tell me stories about it. But even that was kind of isolating, because not everyone our age had that. Sometimes, it felt like I was living in a different world from them. I knew Shuriki was a liar, so how could they not know?

"The worst part, though, was that even with my mom and my magic, it was still so easy to forget that things hadn't always been that way. The day to day stuff felt normal. I'd get up, go to school, come home and hole myself up with my books… I mean," he shrugged, "it's not like Shuriki's guards were breaking down our doors every day and marching us all down to the execution block. The worst of that stuff was before my time."

He sounded so matter-of-fact, and numb dread sank into Naomi's stomach as she waited for the negation that never came. Surely that hadn't been such a commonplace part of Avalor's history, right?

"So it was the little things that stuck out," Mateo went on. "The quiet things. You'd hear one of your neighbors complain about her, and then a week later you'd notice you hadn't heard from them in a while. Your mom would teach you an old song and then spend just as long reminding you that you couldn't sing it anywhere but at home, under any circumstances. You'd have to write an essay for your history class about—" his voice tightened suddenly, and he swallowed, continuing with audible disgust, "—about how the 'benevolent and strong' Queen Shuriki 'saved' the kingdom by purging it of all its 'evil' wizards, even when you knew that wasn't true. Or you'd have to hear someone else actually praise her for it, say it was a good thing she did—"

He was getting more agitated by the word. One leg bounced and his brow furrowed, his words coming out fast and clipped. "And it all would start to sink in that none of it was normal. My mom's stories weren't just bedtime fairy tales; they were real! They were who we used to be! We were finally starting to get that history back, and then I had to go and—"

He staggered against the counter, clapping a hand over his mouth and drawing in a ragged breath, his eyes squeezed shut. Naomi didn't waste a second—she sprang from the chair, making it rattle against the floor, and threw her arms around his torso. Mateo gripped her back, squeezing harder than she had expected. He wasn't crying, but he was shaking from the effort of trying not to.

"We can't—I can't go back to that," he whispered.

"I'm sorry," she said, though it felt wholly inadequate. "Maybe I shouldn't have asked."

He swallowed. "No, no, it's fine." He leaned away from her, already hugged-out. "It's a possibility, right? That she could take over again. It's important to talk about." He turned back to the potion as Naomi released him, but he just bounced the spoon against the rim of the cauldron in a rhythm, staring at the pot with a look of concentration.

Naomi wanted to say something, but she wasn't sure what she could say. Her stake in Shuriki's return was mostly personal—the sorceress was a danger to her friends and her new home. It hadn't occurred to her before just how deep the scars of Shuriki's last reign ran across the kingdom, and the scale of what her friends were really trying to protect was as dizzying as the drop in her nightmares.

She ended up not needing to say anything, because Mateo spoke up again before she could sort her thoughts out. "Is it okay if I ask what you're getting the potion for?"

She let out a soft snort. "You worried I'm planning on spiking the punch at the next ball?"

He slowly turned toward her, one eyebrow raised. "Well, I might be now." She snickered, and he managed a huff of a laugh as well, shaking his head at her. "I only meant that if you need something for nightmares, I thought you might want to talk about it."

Chewing her lip, she hesitated. She hadn't planned on discussing it—she'd relived it enough, thanks—but the offer was tempting for reasons she couldn't place. "I've been having nightmares about everything that's happened this last week," she finally admitted. It felt almost petty to say in the wake of everything Mateo had told her, but his face grew somber again, and he nodded for her to continue. "Especially the part where Fiero chased me up a mountain and Shuriki pushed me off the top."

His face fell further. "That sounds awful. I'm sorry."

"It's not really that big a deal," she said, trying to play it off with a what-can-you-do kind of shrug. "With everything going on, it feels kinda silly to be so worked up about that."

"It is a big deal," Mateo insisted. "You could have died that day. We all could've—" He froze again, mouth set in an odd, terrified smile. "Oh, wow. We all might actually die."

Naomi returned the smile, tense and exhausted. "Is that really just hitting you now?" It hadn't fully sunk in for her yet, either. Things weren't quite feeling like the next wacky adventure anymore.

He let out a strangled laugh.

"I could get us all out of here," Naomi offered without thinking. "On my parents' ship. If things got bad."

She knew it was a misstep the moment the words left her mouth. Mateo went from anxious to appalled in a blink.

"This is my home," he said. "I'm not going back into hiding. I can't go back to feeling that—that helpless, and alone." His face softened again, and in a small voice, he added, "I am scared, though."

Naomi nodded. The feeling was mutual.

"You can run if you need to," Mateo said, and Naomi was surprised to hear there was no judgment in his voice. "No one would blame you."

"I'd blame me," she replied. "I don't really want—well, I don't know what I want. I'm scared, too. But I'm not leaving you guys behind."

Though he'd been the one to assure her she could go, Mateo looked relieved by her assertion.

The cauldron gurgled suddenly, and startling, Mateo moved back to it, finally hoisting it off the heat with a grunt. It clanged down hard on the stone countertop, and after a quick check inside, Mateo started lining up a set of short, glass jars beside it.

"I just wish there was more I could do," Naomi said, watching as Mateo doled out a spoonful of glop into one of the jars and sealed the lid. "Waiting around like this while Elena trains with her scepter and Shuriki is planning her next move, and you and Gabe are working—it all just makes me feel…" She shook her head, waving a hand around.

"Helpless and alone?" Mateo suggested, and she gave a dry laugh.

"Yeah, something like that."

"Mm. I know the feeling." He placed the jar in her outstretched palm, and let his hand linger on top of it. "But we're not, though, are we?"

Naomi shot him a puzzled look.

"Helpless or alone. Elena caught you when you fell, right?"

She had. The moment had been an immeasurable relief, swooping through her stomach with the same force terror had just before. Naomi nodded.

"And I made you a potion to help deal with your nightmares. And I've lost track of the number of times you've talked me out of feeling like an idiot. None of us is alone, and I don't think 'helpless' is really fair, either." He smiled, a tiny shake in his voice that he couldn't quite mask, and he let his hand fall away. "I think we'll be alright."

Naomi couldn't quite muster his optimism, but she felt comforted, and she drew the potion back to examine it. She gave the jar a small shake, watching the contents jiggle like flan. "So, I don't… drink this, do I? Or do I go at it with a spoon?"

"Neither, unless you want to knock yourself into a coma for the next month," Mateo replied, with a laugh that was far too cavalier. "What you want to do is dip a piece of cloth or something in it—I just use my thumb, personally—and smear it over your eyelids before you go to sleep."

Naomi pulled a face.

"Yeah, I know," Mateo said. "That's about the reaction I've gotten from everyone, but it's better than having to drink it. Trust me, you do not want to know what butterfrog spit tastes like."

"Don't think I want to know what it feels like in my eyes, either," Naomi muttered.

"Slimy, mostly."

"Ew."

His laugh at her wrinkled nose was almost genuine. "You get used to it."

*slaps the amigos' backs* These kiddos can fit so much trauma in them!

But seriously, I think Race for the Realm is the first time Naomi's life is so directly and specifically threatened like that. Her episodes in the limelight are usually pretty low stakes, and when she does end up in harm's way, it's usually either dangerous but not deadly (i.e. the Duendes), or because one of her friends is getting attacked and she just gets caught up in it by proxy. In RftR, she herself gets chased down and nearly killed while completely alone, and I gotta believe that would've unnerved her a bit.

Also I really wish we knew more about what it was like living in the Shuriki era bc 41 years is like. Multiple generations. There are *so many* people in Avalor that never knew a life before her, including the vast majority of characters we meet during the show, and that's just a lot to think about.