A/N: So I've read a few stories like this before, but it was HermioneThaliaEmma who inspired me to actually write one, something I didn't think I'd do, while working on Heroes of the Darkest Age. Thanks to everyone who's recently followed me as well, because getting five email a day saying someone has followed you is a great way to inspire the will to write. As always, please review.
Whipped Cream & Other Delights,
TheharleyQueen
"You!"
"How- how are you here? And how have you stayed so young?"
"Queen Leah, it's okay! Maleficent is still on the island! This is her daughter, Mal. Don't you remember my proclamation to give the new generation a chance?"
They should definitely not have come. Carlos had immediately looked up and began heading over when Queen Leah yelled {ready to defend from a mad-woman, always on the edge of falling into memories}, and Jay was tensed, ready for a fight {the magick that had been bound to her flesh on the Isle was wild, stretching a thrashing and feeling}. Evie was scared, the screams sending her back to a far darker place, a place where screams meant no food, where screams meant pain {Mal ached for her beautiful Evie, her most innocent lover, the one who deserved more}. Mal knew they shouldn't have come, not to this place full of PTSD-ridden heroes who hadn't once bothered to see a shrink because they were too good for that. They were now going to pay the price.
Chad immediately came closing in, coming to Audrey's defence from the four evil, rotten kids who would never learn good. The Faerie Godmother immediately came close, trying to defuse the situation. Lonnie stood to the side, uncertain. And darling Prince Ben came to the rescue that would only make things worse. This isn't the Isle, she screamed internally, but the wild magick that whipped around her didn't seem to recognise that, just danger.
And Queen Leah was talking about how they'd destroy Auradon, and wasn't she supposed to be the good guy? Audrey clutched at her grammy's hand, face sombre but eyes sparkling with victory. Faerie Godmother tried to console the queen that had ruined Mal's life out of pettiness against faeries, and Mal saw red because the Faerie Godmother had turned her back on her heritage, on what gave her power. Evie, Carlos and Jay were right next to her at this point, separated from her only by Ben {and right now, she wanted to push him out of the way. She needed to stand with her own}. And then.
"My daughter was raised by faeries, because of your mother's curse." The racism in Queen Leah's statement was obvious to Mal, and to Jay and Evie and Carlos {a djinn and a succubus and a Dökkálfar}, but the Auradonians just accepted it, and how wrong was that? {Fucking heroes}.
"Her first words, her first steps. I missed it all!" And Mal couldn't, wouldn't stand here, not through this abuse, these false accusations. These assumptions. Because Evie had permanent blisters on her heels and broken ribs from where the corsets cinched too tightly, and covered up his tattoos every day, and had whip marks scarring his back, and Carlos was a myriad of bruises against skin pulled taut against bone from malnutrition. She'd protected them the best she could, and they still looked like hell. And she still took abuse. And maybe, maybe she could have handled it, but Ben was making that guilty face, that face that meant that he was even considering what Queen Leah was saying, and she'd have been better off sticking with Carlos, Evie and Jay for this mission, because at least they fucking loved her.
"You mustn't trust her."
Something deep, deep in Mal snapped. She couldn't stand up to her mother like she wanted to. She could certainly stand up to this liar. She stepped forward, away from started to speak, but she cut him off.
"I don't feel sorry for you," her statement caused gasps and shrieks, but Mal just shrugged, "Raised by faeries? So was I. And I can promise you that my faerie was worse." She took a breath and Evie took her hand. Jay and Carlos stood on either side of them, backing them up. Just like on the Isle. They still had to defend themselves.
"No one loves the villains' kids. Not even the villains. We can only love each other. But we're only taught to hate, because our parents don't care for anything else." She had their attention now, their fickle attention that would catch onto something else faster than the speed of light if she didn't act now. She caught a glimpse of the Faerie Godmother, clutching her chest as if she was surprised. And that just spurred Mal on.
"You all say I'm the leader of us four. Well, you're right. But I'm the leader because I took the most shit, got hit and hurt the most, and still defended my love for them. I'm the leader, because I'm the one that helped Carlos with his five-page list of chores, even when I was so sore I could cry. I'm the leader because I convinced the Evil Queen that Evie didn't need lessons on how to be a whore, even though my mom? She broke each of my fingers for that. I'm the leader because I'm the one that patched Jay up after his father whipped him so bad he passed out in Coward's Market, even though my mom tied me up without food for a week for helping someone."
Mal was furious, but Evie was holding her hand and Jay stood at her shoulder, ready to defend, and Carlos was clutching the hilt of the dagger he hid in his coat and she remembered that she couldn't teach these people with magick, because she was doing it for them.
"I was the witch of the Isle. the Witch and the Slut and the one who would beat people up 'cause her momma told her to. I was the weakling and I was the strongest, 'cause I fucking put up with it. But I wasn't the only one." Lonnie was seriously crying, again, even though she already knew that their parents didn't love them. The altercation had drawn an even bigger crowd by this point, and Mal was speaking to three women- mother, daughter, and granddaughter. Doug was flinching under Evie's glare, and Ben and his parents had crossed over to stand on the side of the Auradonians. A true face-off.
Evie spoke next, softly, that princess training that was beaten and starved into her making an appearance in her nervousness, "Mommy used to give me injections and implants to be prettier. Once, she bleached my skin with acid so that I'd be as pale as Snow White. And she had these mirrors that would insult the way you looked, to make me try harder. And she," Evie pulled back her lips to reveal a huge scar, cut into her gums, "one time, she didn't want to spend the money on surgery, so she just cut out part of my cheek, because my cheekbones weren't defined enough." A woman was crying, bawling her eyes out, and Mal would bet anything that it was Snow White. Fucking hypocrite.
Everyone's eyes drifted to Jay, and Mal figured that they'd come up with their own plan, so why deny them? She nudged Jay, getting him to focus. He glared at her, and instead of turning to their audience and making it a show, he grabbed her face and kissed her, hard. There were more gasps, but what was one more revelation? He turned around, smirking, and lifted up his shirt, showing the spectators the criss-cross patterns that Jafar's whip had burnt into his skin, the welts from being hit with a cane. The tattoo at the nape of his neck, done by his father one drunken night. Worthless. Jay was always a man of actions and not words.
"So, I do hope you all understand. It's been hell. And I won't make Carlos talk about his pain because it leaves a scar like no one when your mother thinks her clothes are more important than you."
"But I want all of you to remember- especially you, Sleeping Beauty, especially you, Queen Leah- that we are always going to be villains because that's what you made us."
And then, even better, Chad tried to save the day by insulting them, by hitting Evie. And no one, ever, hit Evie. Mal and Jay were on him before he could even blink, and they got a few good hits in before Evie used the sleeping potion. Even the villain kids wouldn't hit a man while he was down {well, they would. But not in front of Auradonians who could send them back to the Isle}. The Auradonian high-society crowded around Chad, and Mal and her lovers could make an escape, running as fast as possible, Jay at the back to protect what was his.
"I mean- he's never gonna make a villain a queen."
And they still hadn't learned their lesson because Ben hadn't even come to speak to them, and Audrey was needling them like always, and Jane had joined her and they deserved better than this. Chad and Doug and Audrey and Lonnie and Jane, they were the villains now, and they thought that they were better because they didn't have to go through the crap that Evie and Jay and Carlos and Mal had gone through, thought that they had the right to be assholes because of what had happened on the lawn a few moments ago, and they were wrong.
So Mal undid the glamour she'd cast over Jane, and the other girls clutched at their own locks, terrified that Mal was going to undo their hair, and how shallow could you be?
"There's a lot more where that came from." More, and worse. Because Mal might not have been able to perform magick on the Isle, but in her mother's worst moments, she muttered curses {Take this child that has strayed, turn her into something unmade/This little girl continues to resist, so now she shall cease to exist} that Mal had memorised, because if she could, even for a moment, she get rid of Maleficent. Permanently.
And who did she think she was?
"Well, I think I'm the Daughter of the most dangerous villain to ever exist. I think I am her hate and her pain, rolled into a being and shoved through hell. I think I am the Heir to the Fae, a title your mother keeps from me because of conquest. I think I am the girl you have judged and found guilty, without knowing her crimes. I think I am the girlfriend of a princess that's more beautiful and hurt than life itself, of a slave who was never let out of his own house, of a thief that will one day rule an army."
"I think I am Maleficent Morgana the Second. And I know I am more powerful than you could ever be, Audrey. Because I've suffered through hell for love. And you don't even know what it is."