Authors note: when I wanted to write this fic I wanted to bring forward a version of the isle that is darker than the one in the films. I thought to myself what would it look like if you lock an entire generation for the sins of their parents and let them be poisoned by the anger and need for vengeance of said parents. for the most part I think the movies handled the concept beautifully (Jay and Carlos gorging the candy in the limo is funny only until you remember that they probably have a- eat now cuz who knows when will you have food again- attitude) . I wanted to push this idea further- to create the isle as some sort of bad neighborhood meets lord of the flies. this is why in this chp you will see more of the mundane darkness which the film was lacking because... well... it was for kids.

this chapter also comes with a song- Davy Jones's theme (Pirates of the Caribbean)


Chapter 4 - pomegranate

It's only a week later when I even start sifting through his belongings.
A part of me keeps expecting him to be there when I get home from practicing with the crew, sitting at his table working on more and more way to try and wring magic through the barrier into the isle. I expect to find his desk overflowing with paper work; I expect to find dirty dishes in the sink. It takes me two days to come in and not do it as quietly as I always used to and it takes me longerto realize that I don't have to take my boots off right away. He won't scream at me to take them off. He won't scream anything. It's a week later and I still sleep in my hammock in my corner that is still covered by the sheet.

It's stupid and I know it. There is a perfectly good bed in the other room and I don't even need the cover anymore because there is no one but me in the house. But my habits, apparently, have little to do with logic.
When I try to sleep without the cover on my corner I feel like he might come out any second and tell me to cover up, and when I try to sleep in his bed I feel like an intruder. The house as a whole feels just as cold and quiet as it did the first night alone. Suddenly I notice everything- the ways in which this old building ticks and clicks at night, the sound of rats running through the wall, the patterns of dust in the air. There are nights I think I can even here the mould as it grow.
So I try to be in the house as little as I possibly can- luckily there is much work to be done.

The crew works towards the next opportunity to escape the isle. The next time the magical barriers would be taken down for the limo to come in and carry another lucky little brat to the promised land of charms and goodness. We estimate from the previous times we saw it happen that the barrier would ACTUALLY be down for only a few moments. But Uma insists that if we await those moments one of the hidden spots near the barrier itself we should be just fine to slip through.

Unfortunately this seems to be the only part of the plan that Uma knows to be safe and fault proof. The rest of the plan has an… improvisational sort of vibe to it.

Taking herself across the border and all the way to Auradon undetected was child's play for her. With the magic disabling system gone she could muster up enough power to shift into her other form, that terrifying she-octopus that was her mother's only form. When she was shaped like this fearsome creature she could swim as far and as fast as necessary without being detected once. As kids she would always beat all of us with any sort of competition that came to swimming- with the actual powers of the ocean at her finger tips she was something to be feared.
This was all fine and great- but carrying a whole crew through and across was going to be much trickier. And require some actual careful preparation.

The first thing that became abundantly clear is that not the whole crew could come across until the barriers were shut down from within Auradon. Crossing at that moment when the barrier would be down ( what we came to simply call "show-time") would take a small and quick vassal that would feet 4 or five at the most, and that's without any cargo at all. So Uma had to choose a smaller, more efficient team to make the first task force.
After much arguing and negotiating within the crew the dream team (or nightmare team… depends if were to be with or against us) included Uma, Harry, Gill and myself. The rest would have to wait for us to bring in the cavalry.

The cavalry, as it turned out, was a part of the plan that Uma entrusted almost fully to me. She was absolutely sure in her belief that once I touched land where magic was alive and willing I'll be able to summon- I'll be able to command the forces of the underworld to bring chaos to our enemies. It took me three whole days to explain to her that despite knowing all the mechanics and working of a summoning spell- I have never actually attempted.
She argued back that what was the point of my lessons if I couldn't perform the magic when everything we've built depended on it.

"I am not saying I can't!" I would argue back "I am just saying it and that there is a difference between doing magic in theory and doing it in practice"

"like what?"

"I don't know!" I would yell, sometimes throwing my hand in the air infrustration. I didn't know if I could do it, what if I am no good in magic? Or what if I inherited my mother's instead of my father's, power over spring instead of over death. What if I would just end up summoning flowers and baby ducklings- now that would surely scare Auradon into submission.

Aside from the planning and scheming the crew was busy with other tasks. There was constant work to be done and it seemed to not exhaust them at all but rather fill them with a weird sense of purpose.

Boredom was as much a killer of the isle as disease hungers and stab wounds. Boredom could make you stir crazy, it could make you do reckless things and make mistakes you had no hope of correcting simply for the heck of it. When nothing moved and you had no way to change your life and your circumstances you found that suddenly blowing stuff for the hack of it did not seem like such a crazy notion. When nothing could ever change and you were powerless- you found that nothing mattered. When nothing mattered it was easy to beat someone bloody over a drink, to stab over a turf war, to leave the boy you love bleeding in an ally while to try to make it home before passing out.
It's why Uma fought with ferocity of an animal to make a name for herself, it's why Gill followed anyone strong enough to promise better, it's why Harry treated himself and others like nothing, and it's why I treated others like they were barbed wire.
It turned out to my astonishment that simply giving the crew what to do and them believing that it could actually change something was enough to bring out something I have never seen in the isle. Hope. It was like a different kind of magic on all of us.

That week was work around the clock.

Scouts were out gathering information on potential Auradon candidates and when they may be scheduled to be removed from the isle. Others built the boat that would carry us of when show-time arrived.

Uma and I worked day and night on all sorts of spells and tricks that would help us on our journey. The work was all theoretical because of the lack of magic on the isle like any other magic lesson we ever had. We ended us receiving help for an unsuspected source- her mother, Ursula, occasionally throwing in backhanded tips and insights. Never committing to help or to guide… turns out when one lost absolutely everything it was hard to make them hope again. Thinking of that made me feel a surge of pride at my cousin and her first mate, who had everything they could want at reach, lost it, and still fought tooth and claw for it.

It was over a week after the night in the bar when Harry finally spoke to me again. For all this time he kept his distance, never picking fights, not teasing or touching. The familiarity gone, but so was the hostility. He was being true to his word – he was being an adult about the whole thing.

But as the day of departure was drawing nearer, and with the knowledge that we will be in close proximity until the mission is done, this tense quite between us was getting near unbearable.

Today, it would seem, he had enough as well.

"You are tying it wrong" he comments. He sits, sprawled like a cat on the ship's edge, shining his hook with a tattered piece of cloth.

"What?" I ask

"Your knot" he says and gives a jerk of his head "you need to keep tightening it as you wrap the rope, otherwise it will come undone when it gets wet"

"Oh" I say, looking down at the knot I was practicing. Having never sailed anywhere of the isle and not coming from seafaring background like the others-I had to try and catch up quickly. Tying knots, opening sails and prepping a ship to sail was second nature to Uma and harry. They grew up on stories of the ocean much like I grew up on stories of the underworld. I had to learn quickly and so I had Simon, Smee's son, teach me the basics. He was patient and taught me to the best of his ability- and I hoped that with enough practice I could be good enough to at least not get in the way. Maybe.

"Here" he says and moves over from his perch. He kneels beside me and grabs the rope. He wraps it around his palm and yanks it forcefully, the rope lets out a sound almost like a pained moan but it hold tighter around the wood. Ok, so this is how it's done.

"You have to do that for every new wrap of the knot you add" he says and hands me the tense rope "otherwise it won't hold"

"Thanks" I say and take it back. I yank at it and finish the knot.

"Don't mention it" he says. He gets up and kicks the knot forcefully. It doesn't move an inch and Harry gives it a satisfied smile "it's no good if we drown because you are a shite sailor"

The comment is given so lightly and with such and easy smile that I can't help but chuckle "worst case scenario I summon you with the rest you my army"

"IF you can summon an army" he retorts

"If" I agree "if is good"

I look at him in this moment and I feel like there is something unsaid there. He doesn't look at me straight in the eye anymore, not sober anyway. When I asked for him to be an adult about us I didn't imagine he would end up actually being good at it and it frustrated me. I am just about to make some lousy joke to defuse the tension when Uma and Gill draw our attention.

"It's tomorrow night!" she yells.

They are running towards the ship, their faces beaming with joy as they keep yelling those words over and over. The wait is finally over.

Tomorrow night. The barriers would be open for a few moments, during which we will not be here anymore- we would slip out on our little half mast boat and sail away from this place.

After 18 years, on a day like any other at the end of summer, I am finally getting off this prison. It seems completely unreal.
I realize that this would probably be my last chance to look through my father's things for anything useful.


As expected there is a lot of junk there.

The boxes have unfinished spells, knick knack, positions with expiration dates that must predate my own birthday.

I find some clothes, an old cloak that I have to cut sorted so that it won't drag behind me, a few small blades I add to the sheaths at my back and hips. Among all the sort of useful stuff I find even more old suspicious vials.

I have about a dozen vials of who knows what terrors at hand when I decide to try and find a safe way to dispose of them. Simply throwing them in the trash won't do- Almost every trash bin on the isle is being looked through at least once a day) hell- I've done it myself before) and I don't want any unlucky idiot to think it's a good idea to try and drink any of this. I would have to bury them somewhere and ask aunt Ursula how to deal with this when all of this is over… a potion master as good as she is might actually be able to salvage some of this. But I would need a strong container that won't break or leak.

So I practically crawl into the storage until I fish out a box that seems sturdy enough. It takes some time and some rummaging through a decade of hoarding when I finally find a box that seems like it could do the trick. The box I find is one I have never seen before, which is not so strange considering how little of all the other stuff I've seen. It's made of black marble that is smooth and cold to the touch and it had no markings on it that I can see.

I open it carefully, scared of what my father may have kept in a box like this but am greeted with nothing my the smell of dust and black velvety inside- the box is nearly empty.

Except for a locket

I pick it up slowly and inspect it. It dangles off a silver chain; it's red and oval… perhaps the shape of a heart. But rounder. An apple?

I turn the locket in my hands, entranced by the shade and beauty of it. It's blood red and smooth, and it's by far the most expensive thing I have ever touched. The chain alone could have fed us for nearly a year and the locket itself… cut out of a single piece of some clear red gem.

As it catches a ray of sun from the dusty window it's like it comes alive, the light breaks within it and colors the room with dots of red stars.

At the top of the tiny orb there a delicate shape almost likes a crown. I turn it in my hands a couple to times more when I realize what is the shape of the locket.

It's a pomegranate.

It's the fruit that damned my mother to the underworld. It's the fruit that gave her me… before she left to be with her mother she ate six grains of the fruit that bound her to him and made sure she had to spend half a year with him in the underworld. It would seem like a horrible thing to do to a lover but she always said she named me after the one place she was happiest and free. The underworld. At the bottom of the locket there are words engraved in a delicate swirling writing.

"My love, so that you will always find your way home"

My breath catches in my throat and I find myself reading them over and over.

I don't need to wonder from who was this given or to whom. It was made by my father Hades as a gift to my mother Persephone.

I clutch it in my hands at if simply loosening my grip on it could make it vanish. My thumb presses down on the crown of the fruit and suddenly I hear it click.

Panicked, I look at it in fear that I may have broken it but instead I see that it opened in half.

With hands shaking I open it wide and look inside it.

Inside the fruit there is a mirror of the blackest obsidian on one side and a picture on the other. I have to squint my eyes to see all the details of it and when I do I wish I hadn't.

I don't remember ever seeing my father smile like that. It's like looking at a completely different person. He is smiling, standing tall, beaming, and the light in his eyes can only be matched by that in the eyes of the woman beside him who looks at him with so much love in her eyes and a smile frozen in time.

It's her.

I have never seen her, not even in pictures, but seeing her now I realize what he always meant by his cruel insult comparing me to her. We look so much alike. Her face is the same face only sun kissed and warm colored, the same nose, the same lips, the same rich golden hair. We are so similar it hurts to look at. You could put us at a crown of millions and anyone could spot the resemblance.

And she left me.

I am so much like her I am practically a carbon copy and she left me here before I could even remember her to be properly angry. She left us both to die here and ran off to her old life.

I drop to the floor and I can't even feel the pain in my knees.

I have been crying for a while, without even feeling the tears but now there is now stopping them. I clutch the locket to my chest as sob after sob rattle through me. I probably sound like a wounded animal but for once in my life I can't bring myself to stop or to care.

In those moments I feel younger than I have ever felt. Sitting in a dirty apartment, clutching the one thing I have ever had of my mother among the things left behind by my father crying the parent that didn't bother to stay and the one who tried but couldn't. I sit there on the floor and I don't just sob anymore- I fucking scream.

There are no words there, I just let shouts of pain I didn't know I was holding back and ripped out of me and fill the room. I cave down of myself and I just can't stop.

All the tears I didn't cry when he was dying and I had no one to turn to, all the tears I didn't cry at the funeral, all the tears I didn't cry this entire weak are being ripped out of me and I can't stop.

I don't know how long I've been there. I tried to get up and pack, partially aware that it's almost sundown and that the crew would be waiting at midnight at the docks but I can't seem to get my body to function.

It's pathetic. It's everything my father had ever hated.

When harry comes in to check on me- this is how he finds


boy that turned out depressing. I hope you enjoyed it.

till next time