This is not a story about heroes.
This is a story about four children who went through four times the abuse, and who changed under it. It is a story about a child bride and her child groom, and what that did.
It is a story about monsters.
It is a story about soulmates.
Soulmates carried each other's scars on their skin, felt each other's pain. That was a fact that no one had denied, not since the formation of the United States of Auradon, not since Queen Belle wrote her thesis on the magickal bruises and claw marks and gunshot wounds that appeared on her skin, citing thousands of tests and control groups and other 'soulmate' pairings (Kit Charming famously carried the scars of his wife's chores on his hands and knees and back, and Briar Rose had the same burn marks down her side as Phillip).
But soulmates weren't always in pairs of two. In fact, triads were considered fairly common, in some parts of the United States of Auradon (Peter Pan, Wendy Darling and Tiger Lilly/Alice, the White Queen, the Mad Hatter/Aladdin, Jasmine and the Genie) most of the time, one member of the triad was considered to be 'platonic' (if they weren't, they were told to shut up about it and never reveal that they were part of a triad, how immoral).
There were a few people that didn't have soulmates. Their skin remained blank, the only scars and marks they carried their own, not tinged with the golden shade that signified a soulwound. They were considered soulless by Auradonian superstition and were never mentioned in polite conversation.
There were a minority of people that had more than two soulmates. Their skin was considered ugly, they were considered 'problematic', considered lesser, and often persecuted and locked away because their soulmates betrayed their base nature.
The discovery of soulmates was always a joyous occasion in Auradon. The newly-minted soulmates would often throw a party, and soulmate pairs were considered legally married under Auradon law (even if they were under the legal age for marriage, a documented soulmate pairing was legally married- triads had to choose two members to be legally married).
It was something else on the Isle of the Lost. It wasn't something to be celebrated, it was something to be ashamed of, something to hide. All the best villains had no soul. Soulmates made you weak, divided your loyalties.
Those were the beliefs that Mal held her whole life. Which was why, when she was six months old and a golden cut appeared at the base of her skull, her mother tried to burn it off (and the Evil Queen sobbed at her pretty baby that was born with a burn mark at the nape of her neck, and Jafar rolled his eyes when his one-year-old screeched in pain).
Those were the beliefs that Evelynn grew up with, and the reason that her mama taught her to paint her face with potions that hid scars and bruises because not a day went by when her pretty girl didn't have golden marks on her face.
That was the knowledge that Jahin took as fact and the reason that he bit his tongue at nine-years-old when he felt his leg seize and felt metal clamp around his calf.
The villains' superstitions were the reason that Carlos said nothing when, at six, he knocked a purple-haired girl over and felt his cheek burst when her face hit that ground.
But all of the superstition and hatred for soulmates that the citizens of the Isle of the Lost harboured was nothing compared to the bonds that those who share soulwounds feel. And so, despite their best efforts, Mal and Evelynn and Jahin and Carlos gravitated towards each other (or, more accurately, Mal and Evelynn and Jahin sprinted over to Hell Hall on Carlos's eleventh birthday, when they felt a whip crack across their backs).
They never escaped that day, not in the eyes of their parents (that day gave Maleficent leverage over her daughter, gave the Evil Queen an excuse to rage against Cruella for marking up her beautiful girl). They were forbidden from registering their soulbond by their parents because the Evil Queen still expected her daughter to snag a prince and Cruella would never give up her control of her son and Mal would one day be auctioned off to the highest bidder to continue Maleficent's legacy).
And all of Auradon customs couldn't keep them from the pull between them, couldn't keep them from falling into a romantic relationship when Evelynn, the youngest of them turned thirteen and they couldn't stay away, couldn't pretend that they were 'just friends', that all Evelynn wanted was a Prince Charming and that the rest of them were soulless automatons and that Mal didn't mind slipping into Rosie's every night and only stumbling out the next morning with her heels in her hand and a bed head and $200 stuffed into her lingerie.
It didn't go well for them when a spy told Maleficent that he'd seen her daughter kissing the banished blue-haired girl.
Ben was very definitively Audrey's soulmate. No room for discussion on that one. They'd discovered it at twelve. One day, he was fooling around before a fencing lesson and his partner and whipped him across the bottom of his ribs, and she'd screamed in pain from the sidelines where she'd been reading a trashy romance novel, her hands flying to the golden line that exactly mirrored his injury.
Neither of them had any permanent scars, but sometimes, when one of them was feeling insecure, they'd press their nails into their own palms and watch the golden crescents blossom on the other's skin. It became a coping mechanism that they never told anyone about.
The party to celebrate their marriage (because that's what it was considered) went on for four days. When Ben became King, they'd have a real wedding, and that would last for a week. But the celebration of their soulmateship was so large, so prominent, that even Audrey (who loved the fanfare that came with soulmates) was sick of it by the second day, and both of them whispered confessions to each other about how they loathed the idea of a week-long wedding.
Because he had a soulmate, a wife, Ben didn't spend his time thinking about the children of the Isle of the Lost. His first edict wasn't about the daughter of Maleficent (it was still kind-hearted because that was who Ben was).
And because he didn't ever think about the Isle of the Lost, it was a shock to him when an announcement came, announcing a four-way marriage between Evelynn Ó Baoill, Jahin Alam, Carlos de Vil and Malakia le Fay, all soulbound.
Maybe he should have.
"The United States of Auradon does not negotiate with terrorists, or villains!" he spoke clearly, calmly. Queen Audrey clasped one of his hands in hers and smiled proudly.
He'd do anything for her.
"The Fae are refusing to consent to anything less than war. They are led by Mal le Fay, a faerie who cannot be allowed to continue like this, terrorising our towns and our livelihood!"
The world watched with bated breath as the course of the USA changed forever.
"This is an official declaration of war on the forces of the Fae and the Isle of the Lost!" Queen Audrey raised her fist in a salute of power, the King's hand clasped in hers, the other hand resting on the swell of her stomach.
King Ben would do anything to protect his family.
The War was bloody and ugly, and more soldiers died than Mal cared to admit. The Battle of Blood Lake had lasted for days before the Fae won, even as Auradonian soldiers collapsed into the Enchanted Lake, causing it to run red.
Mal had lost many people, good people, in that fight- she hated him for it. King Benjamin of Auradon, too prideful to surrender, was the reason Uma had been scythed into the mud, was the reason that Evelynn's legs stopped at her knees, was the reason that Dizzy was dead (and Gil and CJ and Freddie), was the reason that Jahin had those scars under his eyes, mimicked in gold under hers and Carlos's and Evelynn's {an old ritual, dating back to the time of Attila the Hun, when grievers would pull out their own hair and cut scars below their eyes so the fallen warriors would be mourned by the blood of men. But the Tears of Blood ritual didn't just mourn, no, it bled out the mourner's feelings, so they could serve without distraction. Mal had been toying with it for years, but it was Jahin who had eventually performed the ritual, chanting the Old Language and cutting his face between strikes against Auradon}.
But they were always going to win, Mal thought, even as she carried Evelynn up the hundreds of steps to Auradon palace. After they'd captured the Fairy Godmother's wand, the outcome of the Batte of Blood Lake was a given {not that the wand existed anymore. Mal fought with rituals and Old Magick, and after getting the wand, she'd let it sink into her skin, returning to the magick it was made of, joining her mother's staff in the markings on her body, green and silver mingling in swirls}.
King Ben and his wife, Queen Audrey, stood at the top of the steps, both draped in white, both clasping hands around a flagpole that flew a flag of surrender. The queen's other hand cradled her newborn baby (three months). When they were stood in front of the present rulers of Auradon, the King and Queen immediately knelt. And Carlos took Evelynn from her arms, knowing the plan (they'd been dreaming of this day for years). Mal turned to the golden statue of Queen Belle and King Adam, turned all her rage and anguish towards it, and changed it. It rippled and warped, and shuddered once, before melting before their eyes. The liquid gold ran in rivulets down the marble stairs and cooled under a breath from Mal's lips.
She turned to face the crowd at the bottom of the stairs, stretching out so far she almost couldn't see the end.
"Brothers and sisters!" her voice rang with woven magick, "We are your deliverance!"
She let the words echo as the crowd roared, growing louder and louder, growing into a cacophony that she smiled against.
"They would persecute you, would lock you away. We will honour you!" Again, the cheers of the crowd overwhelmed her voice.
"Under us, you are free! We are breaking the cycle of oppression! We are your heroes!" (that wasn't true, but she liked the way it was responded to, with delight. She liked the idea that she could have been more than a warrior, in another life).
Malakia, Evelynn, Jahin and Carlos le Fay went down in history. As villains, as monsters, as soulmates, as heroes.
They raised King Ben and Queen Audrey's son as their own. They renamed him Myrridin, after the great Morgana le Fay's lover, after the greatest warlock of all time. He continued their legacy (their ugly, beautiful legacy filled with pain and satisfaction and pleasure and death).
King Myrridin I had three soulmates, Aerwyna le Fay (a genie like her father and a faerie like her mother), Dariyah Hook (the daughter of Gil and Uma, who both died before they could love her as much as they wanted to, who was raised by their third), and Mary Mac Gabhann (the daughter of Doug Mac Gabhann).
Malakia, Evelynn, Jahin and Carlos overthrew a dynasty and established a New World Order because they loved each other.
It was gorgeous.