Very AU, little dark, not part of Sins of the Father.
Cover image by the supremely talented Phoebe594.
Sugar sweet. Squeaky clean. So perfect.
In some ways, they really were.
Apologies were a way of life in Auradon. You apologized for bumping into someone, regardless of the situation or whose fault it was. You apologized for missing a phone call or for not being able to attend some event and you made your excuses. You apologized for taking too long to reply to a text or email or for showing up to something less than ridiculously early. You even apologized for things you couldn't possibly have any control over, like the weather or someone dying. You apologized just because it was the right thing to do.
There were a lot of things you were supposed to do just because you were supposed to do them. They were called manners. Being polite. Apologies, compliments, small talk, asking after relatives and pets and mutual friends, pretending to be excited to see each and every person every single time. Social niceties that were the foundation of every conversation, every relationship, just because they were.
Because that's the way things were in Auradon, everything in neat, little boxes, literally and metaphorically, all tidied away to the way things were supposed to be all the time. The things you said, the things you did, the things you wore—they all fit into those neat little boxes, everything in its place in every part of your life just because that's how it was.
Sugar sweet. Squeaky clean. So perfect.
But not in every way.
Because the thing about apologies is that they really only count if you mean them, and they didn't always. Apologizing for missing a phone call doesn't count when you hit ignore. Apologizing for missing an event doesn't count if you didn't go just because you didn't want to. Apologizing for a late reply or entrance doesn't count if you just didn't care. Apologizing for anything doesn't count if you do it just because that's the right thing to do.
Because apologizing for the little things doesn't count if you don't apologize for the big things. The things that actually matter in life. Manners don't count for much at all in the grand scheme of things, not when they're as empty as they've always been in Auradon. Not when they're not what you really mean, and what you really mean isn't that nice. Manners shouldn't exist just because they do.
Because the thing is, polite society in Auradon was really only composed of those people who fit into their neat little boxes; anyone who didn't was thrown away or forced to change. Villains and anyone who went against the heroes were shoved to the Isle of the Lost to rot like the garbage they fed them, regardless of laws broken or not. Magic was "frowned upon," regardless of those who were effected most by those laws, the fairies and genies and other folk with magic in their veins who were practically forced to put beloved items away in their museum (not actually forced, of course, that would be bad for image). "Sidekicks" were sidekicks and they worked for the "heroes," regardless of pay or circumstances or desire, just because that's how it was.
Sugar sweet. Squeaky clean. So perfect.
Only when things went their way.
Oh, they pretended it was all the time, that it was who they were, that any problems in the world were someone else's fault because they were so righteous. They pretended that that sugar went bone deep, that their outer cleanliness was a reflection of their hearts, that they were as perfect as they honestly thought they were. But it wasn't and they weren't; nothing was perfect.
They were hypocrites.
Dark abysses of hate and malice and revenge and pride and selfishness candy-coated in a rainbow of love and happiness and peace and sunshine and pretending to be better. Apples, rotten to the core, but glossed to high polish on the outside and pretending to be wholesome. Quartz-encrusted coal pretending to be diamonds. He wondered sometimes if they hated the villains, not because they were evil, but because they were brave enough to show the things the heroes kept hidden. Or maybe because ugly people hate mirrors.
And the truly sad part was that even that hypocrisy and that inner darkness couldn't keep them from being utterly boring. Because they still preached the same sunshine and spun the same sugar webs through the same empty smiles with the same empty words. Because they only rarely let that candy coating crack and even then they pretended it didn't happen and everyone else pretended they didn't see the darkness peeking out. And candy coating was so boring. It only came in so many varieties, and even that variety was nothing but a thin veneer over the same blank white canvas.
Sugar sweet. Squeaky clean. So perfect.
The villains, though. Not all of them, not the truly wicked ones who wanted to hurt and kill and couldn't be stopped, just the ones who lived in that grey area frowned upon by both sides.
Those brave, brave souls who let their darkness shine in its own way, uninhibited, glorying in it. The worthy ones free of hypocrisy, who were just themselves. They'd lie to get what they wanted sure, but they never lied about who they were, never covered themselves in that too white façade, those sticky sugared lies that wrapped up their creators with all the smothering deadliness of any spider's web. They never pretended to be anything other than the liars and thieves that they were.
If they didn't like somebody, that person knew it. They didn't compliment their dress and then call it ugly behind their back in some kind of petty revenge.
If they didn't want to do something, they didn't. There were no excuses, no reasons other than I don't want to.
If they thought something, they said it.
If they wanted to do something, they did it.
Where they wanted to.
When they wanted to.
They were free and honest in a way that Auradon only pretended to be.
They were real and interesting in a way that he'd craved to the depths of his soul his entire life without being able to name it.
They were alive.
He drank it in from the moment they arrived, submerging himself in it until he was drowning, but it was nothing like the suffocation he'd known for so long and he breathed freer than he ever had. He reveled in it, laughing, and decided that he was going to flood his kingdom with this. He was going to bring it into this land like a tidal wave, crushing anything and anyone that dared try to dam it.
A king starting a revolution in his own kingdom was breaking all the rules and it was fantastic.
This was what Auradon needed: wild and wicked and dirty and free and honest and exhilarating.
No rules.
No order.
No manners.
No one restricting them in anyway.
No one trying to press them into a mold and change them into themselves.
No one sketching out right and wrong based on who was doing it.
Not sweet. Not clean. So perfect.
Not at all saying Ben would actually do this or actually thinks like this, but it was interesting to write. And all this because I read the phrase "crooked-crowned prince" out of context while scrolling through some Descendants fics and my imagination lit up.
Have an exhilarating day!
M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng