A/N: This movie really bothered me with a ton of plot holes and missed opportunities. But it also has so much potential I really want to see it. Please let me know what you guys think and if I should continue this little series. I have a bit written already, but I was too excited to finish it first before getting your guys' thoughts.

~Silver~

Red's Decent

"Mom, what are you doing ?!"

"I'm playing my favorite game."

The ceiling is dark and arching overhead. The shadows dancing around the room familiar, but also warped. Different in a subtle way that plays with Red's memories. Makes them shaky. Makes them feel a bit unreal, or that reality might be unreal.

Maybe they had done it. Maybe they had changed the past.

Red pushes through the crowd slowly, watching the pink hearts descend from above and the people around her gasping in astonishment. Red doesn't know what to feel. She should feel relieved. She thinks she's relieved, but everything seems so far away in that moment as her mother's smiling eyes lower and catch hers.

They light up in recognition, and she reaches out. Everything seems surreal. Warped. Her mother has never smiled at her like that before. She's never looked at her like that before.

The Queen of Heart's hand touches her shoulder, and Red finches as she's pulled into a hug. She stands stiffly, everything feeling very very wrong despite this moment being everything that she's ever wanted.

She had spent the past couple days in this room, twenty years ago, and it looks remarkably the same. Her feet found the familiar path too easily, deja vu curdling inside her as she and Chloe found their way to their assigned dorm. The same dorm they apparently shared last year as well.

There are small differences. She keeps expecting the walls to be stone and delicate swirling wallpaper, and now the blue paint looks wrong. The comforter under her is wrong. She feels wrong.

The Red Queen pulls away, brows furrowed in concern as she stares at Red, holding onto her shoulders. Red's skin crawls.

"Red?" she asks, and then her eyes dart across the room to take in Blue, hugging her mother for all she's worth. "I saw you leaving with Chloe earlier. Did you finally talk?"

Red's brain buzzes blankly, trying to make sense of the words, of this strange world she is supposed to know. Her mother's face looks more and more concerned the longer Red stares, and finally she blinks and shakes her head. She takes a half-step back, breaking her mother's grip on her shoulders.

"Um, yeah. Yeah, we talked. Everything is fine."

Suddenly, she can't look at her mother at all. At the softness of her face. At her worry. At the white bleeding into the red of her dress, softening it like everything else about this strange creature that was her mother.

A hand touches her cheek, and she flinches again, seeing the red sleeve in the corner of her eye, the red nails she expects to dig into her skin.

Her mother clicks her tongue and pulls her into another hug. "Oh, honey, everything's going to be alright. You two are so close, you'll work things out."

Red rolls onto her side, staring at her limp hand in front of her face.

Everything is different. It didn't take her long to realize that all of her scars were gone. In this world, her mother never gave them to her. In this world, she never felt the need to give any to herself.

She does have one scar on her elbow, one she didn't have six hours ago, that she doesn't know how the Red of this world, who grew up with a loving mother, got.

Every mark on her, that she's had to treat and heal and get over- gone. As if it never happened.

It never happened.

It happened, didn't it? They changed the past. Or was that a dream? Or is this a dream?

"Blue?" she blurts into the darkness of the familiar and wrong room.

It's quiet for a long moment, then, called back through the dark, as if she hadn't been asleep either, "Yeah?"

Red hesitates. Then has to ask, "We did it, right? We fixed it?"

"Yeah," she replies. "We fixed it."

Red's jaw clenches. Then why does everything feel wrong? "Okay. Just making sure."

It's quiet for a while, and Red stares at her arm. At where there should be a perfect row of scars, but there aren't. Because her mother loves her. Because-

"How weird is it that we're childhood friends in this world?"

"I guess Bridget and Ella stayed friends," Red says. It's hard thinking of her mother as Bridget, even after spending the past couple days getting to know her. It didn't feel like her mom. Bridget was just some stranger.

"Yeah."

"What else do you think is different?" Red asks. She half expected the world to be exactly the same as she left it. There had to be more. They had to have missed something. There was no way that just a stupid prank is what turned Bridget into… her mom.

"I don't know," Chloe says. "We'll have to do some research tomorrow. Do you think we should tell anybody what we did?"

"No," Red immediately blurts, heart pounding. It took so little for her mom to flip. What if finding out who she was is what sets her off this time?

"Okay," the princess says after a moment. "Goodnight, Red."

"Night, Blue." The sheets rustle, and then all is silent in the room again.

Red's brain turns and turns, Maddox's warning about changing the past swirling in her head. Things were bound to change. They were supposed to change. That's why she had to do it.

It's a good thing. Everything is better now. This is everything she's ever wanted.

(Is Maddox even her friend in this world?)

It takes a long time for Red to fall asleep, words and images flashing through her brain. She doesn't know if she's actually asleep or awake, but there is screaming. There's her mother's face flipping expressions so quickly, Red doesn't know which one is true, and, "Off with her head!"

Red wakes with a gasp, hand immediately flying to her neck to make sure it's still attached.