AN:\ Ok, hard to believe, I know, but I've managed to get my computer (sort of) working and set about trying to get the chapter two draft into some sort of workable condition. As this was the chapter that I was happiest with. And it took a month. The full time the whole thing should've taken.
Still, though it took far longer than it should have I did manage to get it done, which feels like something of a miracle at the moment.
And yes Silverwolf it is Philip.
To anyone looking her way at that exact second, Audrey appeared the pinnacle happiness, sat on the steps with her father's arm round her. Inside however she was feeling a complete mess, as guilt threatened to overwhelm her at every second.
Over the past few weeks, Audrey had become aware of a series of mistakes, no, failings, that she'd made. Her conduct had been less than perfect, and while some of that was with the best of intentions, she couldn't deny a baser side to the rest.
First, and most obvious to casual onlookers, she'd failed one of her friends so completely that she didn't know what she could do about it. She had apologised for laughing at Jane following her unfortunate 'demakeover' and her apology had been accepted, but it was clear now that while Jane had forgiven the insult, she'd totally missed the point that said makeover wasn't needed (though she suspected that being insulted on world television by Snow White hadn't helped matters).
She knew she was, barring her mother and (possibly) some of the other royalty, the worst person in the world to have that conversation with, but even so she thought Jane had understood it. Or she liked to think that rather; had she focused less on how her own hair looked from the back and more on Jane during that talk, she might've realised that her constant fidgeting and the way her eyes never left the floor meant she wasn't able to believe what she was being told. And the fault there was all the greater because though most people wouldn't believe it, she understood exactly how Jane felt; when she was 12 she invited a boy she kinda liked over to her castle, and said boy took one look at her mother and fell head over heels.
She knew it wasn't her mother's fault that people preferred her, it was Maleficent putting a spell (Charm? Curse? Geas?) on her that among other things she would be 'beloved by all who know her', and it hadn't bothered her for some time, but she certainly understood how Jane felt. Yet she had done the bare minimum with catastrophic consequences.
Her next failing, made the same day as the other one, was that after a long discussion about how evil a certain trio of their fellow students were, and how their king-to-be (who she still couldn't think about with anything approaching magnanimity) was an imbecile for not seeing it, someone, possibly Jane, possibly Lonnie, possibly anybody really had pointed out that their 'villains' were in fact a quartet and asked if anyone could find fault with Carlos – which got a resounding silence.
Her, indeed their assessment of Mal, Evie and Jay may have been wrong, but it fell squarely under the 'with the best of intentions' category. That nobody tried to extract Carlos from what they honestly believed was a bad crowd could be summarised as 'too much like hard work; can't be bothered', and that was a greater sin by far.
Also on that day, she'd had to acknowledge an earlier mistake, made out of her own selfishness. For the duty of showing the newcomers around was at least in part hers, and because she'd wanted to squeeze in some extra time with… no, she still couldn't bare to say the name, even within her own head, she'd palmed them off on Doug, and by leaving him to deal with them alone she'd set him up to fail; abandoned him when he needed the support of someone who wasn't a mortal enemy. Without said support Doug had ended up utterly heartbroken and try as she might there was nothing she'd been able to do to help.
What had really thrown her mind into upheaval was that it was unneeded, because as much as it pained her to admit, she was wrong. While contrary to popular belief she was sure, she hadn't wanted or hoped that they would be evil and villainous, she had seen it as an inevitability based on two things: Firstly that magic and fairy magic in particular was evil (and why her parents kept standing up for the trio despite always reiterating how much they disliked it she still didn't understand) and secondly that shortly after meeting them she deduced that their manners and etiquette were not suitable for high society, completely forgetting that the same applied to the vast majority of the population yet most of them weren't evil.
She was interrupted from her reverie by one of them appearing in front of her.
"Um, excuse me, do you have a moment?" Evie was shaking slightly and while it was getting chilly Audrey had a feeling she was nervous.
"Is there a problem Evie?" she asked.
"Actually I was wondering if I could talk to your father." That surprised her – as far as she knew they'd never spoken before. It was another guilty moment for Audrey as she realised that 'never spoken before' was one of the more positive relationship histories Evie had with anyone in royalty.
The arm that was wrapped over her shifted slightly as her father leaned around.
"What do you need?" he asked, his voice soft.
"Well, I understand if you don't want to talk about it, but I was hoping you could tell me about your wedding?"
Whatever Audrey thought Evie would want to discuss, it wasn't that.
"Well, let's see, we came down the stairs together, two of the fairies kept changing her dress between pink and blue-"
"No, sorry, I should have been clearer. I meant something before the wedding. In the words of my mother 'the Princess's relationship was damaged beyond conceivable repair, than Maleficent waltzed along and fixed it for her.' What did she mean?"
Audrey felt her father tense up next to her.
"Right. I don't know how much of this you know but when I was about 5 or so my father set up an arranged marriage with a neighbouring king. Fast forward just short of 16 years and the day before the wedding I fell for a peasant girl in the forest. With me so far?"
"And how did your father react?"
"Not well. We had a huge argument over it and I left the city, heading straight for my sweet Briar Rose."
"Briar Rose?" Evie asked.
"That's what he and the fairies call mother. It drives Grandma crazy for a reason we won't be going into." Audrey replied, still trying to figure out where this conversation was going. Years ago when Audrey had asked him why he called her that he'd told her that 'Princess Aurora is a baby I can barely remember, Briar Rose is the woman I fell in love with'.
"Anyway, I arrived at her home, got ambushed, and then Maleficent told me where she was sleeping. She said it was her intention to free me after a century as on old and decrepit man but as it was I got rescued after about half an hour, not that it would've worked – it's been rather more than a century since then and I'm not so decrepit yet. But that's off topic, and unusual circumstances, yes, strictly speaking, it could be argued that Maleficent fixed our relationship, as I'd have never found her otherwise."
Evie was fidgeting. "So just to be absolutely clear, when you fell for the princess you were in fact under the belief she wasn't a princess?"
"Yes," he replied. Audrey felt she'd finally grasped what Evie was getting it.
"Father, if I may, I think what she's is trying to ask but doesn't have the nerve is, if I were to fall madly in love with your castle's chief stable-hand would you be happy for us, and should I care?"
"Audrey he's fifty three." It took a lot to leave her father looking scandalised, but somehow she'd managed. "Has he been trying it with you? I'll have a warhorse knock him over and crush a certain part of his anatomy into dust."
"No, no, it was just a hypothetical example. A hypothetical bad example as it turned out but hypothetical none the less. Replace him with a random young man, able to have children so the kingdom could have an heir but not planning it for a while yet, for which the only objection is being low born, base born or like Evie here, prison born."
Her fathers response kept her from seeing Evie's reaction to being described in that manner.
"Well, I'd probably insist that you both be checked for all forms of hypnosis and ensorcellment but assuming you passed that, I'd be happy for you and I'd hope you'd be happy for yourself too, though I fear not." Her father then turned back to Evie before Audrey could ask for clarification on that last bit. "If we're going to continue this conversation I'm going to have to ask you a few questions and I need you to reply honestly, OK?"
"OK." Evie nodded.
"Did your mother only let you come here in the hopes that you'd get a prince?"
Evie hesitated for a moment. "Not the only reason, but a very big one."
"And have you taken any notice of it?"
"Well, I flirted once with Ben when I arrived but he clearly wasn't interested so not again…"
Audrey noted she kept the 'and dating your daughter at the time' part out of it. Then again, she thought to herself, it was possible that Evie didn't realise they were together until after that.
"Then I thought I was with Chad until Audrey kissed him."
Audrey forced herself not to scowl. She'd heard that from Jane and Lonnie too but she hadn't truly believed it. After all, Chad spent all his free time telling her and Ben (and anyone else who'd listen) how much he disliked Evie and her fellow villains. However, he did have a reputation for messing girls around, he was after all caught on camera having a different girl for every subject in the curriculum, indeed the only reason she herself was willing to date him was to take her mind off Ben.
And she realised that her internal monologue had just given his name without her crying.
She became aware that her father had a raised eyebrow in her direction but Evie continuing meant she didn't have to deal with him just yet.
"And then I realised I was falling for Doug and I didn't know what to do about it because he's notably not a prince, and then before I had a hope of figuring it out everything went to hell, I'm sure your mother-in-law explained that part in exquisite detail already. And that's basically it."
Her father turned back to Evie again. "You know, Evie was it?" she nodded. "There are a few things I could say at this point. But first, Audrey, I think you should say something here."
He was right of course. Audrey's sense of guilt was back again in a major way.
"Evie," she began, "I just want you to know that I would not have grabbed Chad if I thought you were together, nor would I have let him lead you on in the first place, since I still don't know just how it was between you. Chad, while a great friend and a great kisser is not someone you want to be in a loving relationship with. There's a video somewhere of the dozen or so girls he was dating finding out about each other. I assumed you knew."
"We don't exactly get many videos where I come from. Celebrity gossip on the isle is barely any more current than Mulan leaving a prince at the alter, for which by the way my mother said she was 'a pathetic, stupid, unworthy excuse for a woman, as she'd disgraced herself too far to use the term lady'. Sorry, getting side tracked, where were we?"
"Are you mad at me?" Audrey asked nervously.
"At you, not so much. At Chad, yes."
"Well, Evie, do you really like Doug? Because if so you shouldn't let your mother tell you that you shouldn't. He's a decent enough guy, nothing particularly wrong with him." Audrey both wanted and dreaded to know the answer to this. Both answers carried their own problems, and the set of problems to at least one answer were in part her fault – if Evie really did like him, then it was her duty to fix it.
"I..." Evie faltered. "I do, or at least I did a week ago, but now, I'm really not sure I can trust him."
Her father looked confused.
"There's a missing link I'm not seeing here. Then again, this was never my kind of conversation."
Audrey gave him an exasperated look, this was obvious to her.
"How did he go from encouraging me to be a better person to abandoning me in the span of five minutes? How can I trust him again?"
"As to the how, have you considered asking him?"
This time Audrey and Evie gave her father incredulous looks.
"Evie, would it help if I told you what a complete mess he was after that?"
"He's had a week to apologise if he missed me that badly. I haven't gone anywhere."
"He barely slept, barely ate... frankly we were really worried about him. Nothing any of us said could cheer him up and none of us knew what to do. He didn't apologise because we were telling him that he was better off without you, because we honestly believed you were evil, and while he didn't want to believe us he couldn't bring himself not to. Chad's always had that effect on Doug. Sorry?" Audrey winced, but she knew that would have to come up at some point.
Evie seemed unsure for a moment but Audrey had little time to relax, for this time it was her father giving her a stunned look.
"So you were worried about Doug and you couldn't help him? What was the next chapter in Doug's health and safety saga, because I'm guessing he didn't suddenly improve?"
"Well, we patted him awkwardly on the back, but that was really all we could do." She knew she'd messed up where Doug was concerned, but it was only now she found herself telling her father about it that she realised just how badly. Because she knew what his next question would be, and she also knew that she didn't have a good answer.
"As you were so worried about him, did it never once occur to you to seek help?"
Audrey couldn't meet his eyes, so full of shame she might have collapsed had she been standing up. Nonetheless there was an explanation for that and she was going to have to give it.
"Well, it did, but what could we say? 'Hey, we're worried about Doug because since we told him the girl he's crushing on was evil he seems to have fallen into depression'? How were we supposed to say that? It's not like we could prove they were evil, so as far as anyone we could tell would be concerned we would be considered..." Audrey broke off as she realised there were many words that could go next, none of them flattering, and all of them true.
"So let me see if I have this right. You didn't tell anyone about Doug because you were worried about being accused of slandering someone. Of all the stupid things I've seen... I expect this sort of behaviour from your grandmother, but I thought you knew better. Despite what you may believe there are things more important than keeping face. By the grace of God nothing bad has actually happened, at least where Doug was concerned, but that's no thanks to you."
"I know father." She did know it too, and that hurt, a lot. Not quite so badly as utterly failing Jane as a friend, but a close second.
"Right, you know what, I think I'm going to talk to him." Evie looked around. "If only to see where I stand. Oh, wait, he's with Dopey and the other dwarfs, I'll have to wait until tomorrow."
Audrey and her father both looked back to her, having all but forgotten that she was there.
"Well, now who's being stupid?" Audrey asked her. "You know that if you want to be in any way close with him then you're going to have to deal with the seven dwarfs at some point and you know what, they're actually pretty nice, though I'll concede that Snow White can be a pain to deal with if she's around, and there's really no time like the present. You might have a bit of trouble at first but they'll warm to you soon enough. I'll just have to make them like you."
She forced herself to her feet, practically pulling her father up with her, and placed her free arm around Evie's shoulder and quickly spied Doug, and as Evie noted he was surrounded by his family. One way or another, she would sort this out.
"Hey, Doug!" she shouted, dragging Evie along (her father had pulled out of her grip and was following at his own pace). All meaningful chatter around them stopped in an instant and Doug turned to face them, and though the darkening skies hid it well he paled considerably.
"Hello," he greeted, looking awkward.
"OK, Doug, Evie, you two need to talk to each other. So talk." She pushed Evie onto him and stood back, turning to face her father. "I feel like I missed something?"
"A minor detail darling but an easy one to fix." He walked forward and whispered something she couldn't hear in Evie's ear at the exact moment Doug introduced Evie to the dwarves. Audrey had to admit that for one so clueless her dad could choose his timing well – now even if the dwarves had the thought to be nasty to her they wouldn't dare to make so open an affront to any of Auradon's kings, which meant Evie had ample time to charm them herself.
And if Evie could so easily charm her father (a feat that sometimes Audrey wasn't sure she'd managed) then the dwarfs shouldn't be too hard. But first Evie had to get past all this awkwardness with Doug and if left to their own devices then Audrey suspected they would still be standing there at her eventual coronation (though she doubted either of her parents would give up their crowns for a very long time). So she decided to prod them in the right direction.
"You know, there's another party in a little while, you two should totally go. Don't you think they should Bashful?"
"Well... I suppose..." the dwarf spluttered.
"You can lounge around and see if you can really connect again."
The conversation between Doug and Evie turned to whispering but going from expressions Audrey felt that it was going quite well. She snuggled back under her father's arm and watched the two (she hoped) lovebirds staring into each other's eyes still trading whispers at high speed.
Then they leaned back a little and Doug asked, loud enough that Audrey could hear: "So how about it Evie, would you care to accompany me to the swimming pool?"
And that was where it went horribly wrong. Audrey saw shock in Evie's face quickly turn to alarm and then horror as she took a few steps backwards.
"Evie?" she and Doug asked at the same time.
"Sorry, I'm afraid I can't."
With that Evie turned and ran for the school building, and after a quick look between each other Audrey and Doug headed off after her, Audrey again dragging her father with her. Still, Audrey doubted that Evie would be hard to catch, after all she was heading for a side door and Audrey was reasonably certain they were locked.
Or at least they would've had Carlos not been on the other side to let her in before heading out himself. More through luck than anything they made it to the door before it closed again and followed her in.
Doug eventually caught up with her outside of her room, Audrey and her father a moment or two after.
"Evie, what's wrong?" asked Doug.
"I just can't go there with you Doug. I'm sorry, I wish I could, but I can't." Tears ran down Evie's face making a complete mess of her well made up eyes.
Audrey finally released her father and pulled Evie into a big hug, rocking her and gently rubbing her back until she stopped crying. She felt a bit silly doing it but if it helped then she could live with that.
"OK Evie, let's get you cleaned up." Audrey said and steered them inside Evie's room. "Come on Doug, I think this is at least a two person job. Father, you too."
Audrey sat Evie on one of the beds and sat herself down next to her and Audrey was extra careful to ensure that there was as much space between them and the caged miniature dragon that someone had for some reason decided this was a good place to store as possible.
"Evie, please, tell us what's wrong?"
"I can't, it's... well, it's a little embarrassing."
"Embarrassing?" Audrey tried to keep her voice as sympathetic as possible.
"Well, it is now that I've realised what Doug was actually asking me, but I'm afraid that I still can't. It's something I don't feel I can safely discuss with people, OK?"
Audrey stepped back, defeated. She knew that if she tried to press the issue any further Evie would retreat even more and she'd get nowhere. She was just going to have to let Evie deal with it for the moment. She went passed her father and stood next to Doug, giving him an 'any ideas' look.
At that point Mal stormed into the room, Lonnie close behind her, looking like she could quite easily kill someone. Audrey watched as she took in each of them in turn, noting the ever increasing surprise.
"Hey Mal, Lonnie?" Audrey ventured. She really didn't know how to cope with Mal, and her now one-sided love for Ben didn't help matters in the least. Doug also greeted them before Mal glomped Evie and gave them all an accusatory look.
"Alright, what have you done to her?"
"That's what we've been trying to figure out." Audrey held her hands up in an attempt to look as non-threatening as possible. The last thing she wanted was for Mal to get the wrong idea and curse her.
Doug gave his brief account of it before there was a flurry of movement, ending with Lonnie falling on Mal's bed.
"What, she's just a tiny lizard, right?" Lonnie asked, and Audrey realised she'd attempted to get close to Maleficent while everyone was focused on Mal.
"Just because something's smaller than you doesn't mean it can't sting deep. She learned that from me, and I'd like to think I left a lasting impression." There was something nice about hearing her father telling other people about his heroic exploits. Mal however did not seem to find it so amusing.
"What's this Audrey? Another one of your relations come here to insult me? OK Philip, out with it then, let's see what you've got."
"Audrey, what's going on?" Her father was back into stern-voice mode again.
"Mal and grandmother didn't exactly hit it off. Or more precisely, they kinda did and then I got in the way."
He walked over to Mal and knelt before her (Audrey was too shocked to even consider gagging).
"Well I hope you will not group me in with my mother-in-law. After all, she's not the hugest fan of me either."
Sometimes he really was maddening. Audrey knew that there were tensions in her family going back to before she was born, because Grandmother Leah and Grandfather Stefen had only had their daughter back for a few hours before the wedding, and they didn't even see her for that. And the fact that both Philip and the faries refused to use her mother's real name didn't help matters. While his reasoning for it might've been different for him, as far as grandmother was concerned it was like they didn't consider Aurora to be her daughter at all, and it's fair to say that's something of a sore point for the old queen, who hated having to give her up. And amidst all that Aurora and her parents had a difficult time bonding, indeed Audrey had a better relationship with her gran than her mother did. But the notion that her father might actually consider that to be a valid topic for discussion... She had to stop him.
"Mal, I assure you we're not here to insult you, sorry about that by the way, we're here to try to help Evie. It does seem to have backfired, but it was done with the best intentions."
"I asked Philip for relationship advice."
"And he gave you bad advice?" Lonnie asked, pulling herself off Mal's bed.
"Not bad. But there are certain things that they didn't consider. As they've not been on the Isle I can't really hold that against them."
"What things?"
"Doug asked me to go to the swimming pool with him."
Mal winced, and Audrey started to wonder if the term 'swimming pool' meant something radically different on the Isle than it did here. But surely Evie would realise if it was dangerous they wouldn't use it as a party venue.
"I am not seeing the problem." Lonnie piped up.
"The problem is..." Mal began, then her face took on a look of shock as she spotted the door. "Well, that! Carlos, what happened to you?"
Everyone looked to the door, and sure enough Carlos was standing there with Jane, and they were utterly drenched, in fact deluged was probably the better term.
"I think Chad just tried to kill me."
An2:\Well, that was about three times the length that I thought it would be, and Audrey still has a way to go on her self-written apology list. I'm extending its projected length to six chapters - I suspect of very varying size.
By the way, please tell me if there's a formatting error. I've already had to reverse an issue where for some reason the second half of the document went into bold print.