Heaven || Harry Hook

FIVE

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[CHAPTER FIVE: ENEMY OF MY ENEMY]

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The only thing CJ could compare Merchant's Lane in Auradon City to is Main Street on the Isle. On a basic level, they're the same, a stretch of vendors standing outside wooden huts, their tables filled with goods and trading services. Merchant's Lane is an entire pier long basked in sunlight and surrounded by Belle's Harbor.

Right across the water from them sits the Isle of the Lost. When CJ looks at it from this side of the barrier it seems smaller somehow, like she could walk from one side to the other in a few minutes. She's unsure just how much area the island takes up, it's big enough to house two thousand villains and miscellaneous other criminals. That's not counting the generation that came after them. For all CJ knows, there could be closer to four thousand people living on that island today.

For every person in that prison, there are ten bodies, half of which are the children that die every day of neglect, dysentery, starvation, tetanus, or any other manner of miserable end that shouldn't be lived by a child.

Yet, here is CJ, one of the lucky ones to have a family name, one of the survivors standing near a street of items that could give every person on the Isle three meals a day for decades. CJ understands privilege, she's had it her entire life, and somehow at the same time, her circumstances she will never put her on the same playing field as the people currently walking around her like she doesn't exist.

CJ would rather sit with her misery in peace, but that isn't an option today, so she sits with her misery in silence, following the group of older teens around the City without so much as a complaint. Freddie matches CJ's energy, quiet as a mouse, blissfully wandering from place to place. CJ didn't ask Freddie to do this, for some reason, she just does, like a friend in solidarity hell.

Chassie and Mal keep their distance from CJ and Freddie as they wander through the market.

Surprisingly, Freddie is the one to break the silence.

"What's your problem?" She asks, bluntly and without an ounce of hesitation.

"What's your problem?" CJ repeats, picking up a black leather trench coat, similar to the one she wears, just not covered in patches and lazy stitches to keep it together.

"I would be enjoying myself if it weren't for your obvious inner conflict," Freddie declares.

"Fuck you, I just don't want to be here," CJ argues.

Freddie scoffs, "You'd rather be back in that shit hole?"

CJ looks up, seeing the Isle shimmering in all its decrepit glory. In truth, yes, she'd rather be at home, in her bed with a crappy novel without a happy ending. Yes, she'd rather be in a jail cell than in this massive world where she's still an insignificant number on the census because at least in the jail cell, she doesn't feel like an outsider.