Disclaimer: none of this franchise is owned by me.
Author's Notes:Playlist song for this chapter: "Dark Paradise" by Lana del Rey.
:: ::
let the shadows fall behind you
::
part 4
::
In all his eighteen years of life, Ben has spent no more than three consecutive days in the wilderness during camping trips with his friends. They went on more than one such trip, without servants—bodyguards came, but carried their own belongings and cooked for themselves, not for the young royalty. A campfire and a kettle and a pan, that's what they used, and thick sleeping bags and a tent with an open front so they could sleep under the stars. They'd laughed a lot at their own inept cooking.
He's never spent the night cold, dirty, and hungry in a cave on the edge of the water. At high tide, the sea roils restlessly against the sheer edge of the cliff, a cliff dotted with sparse trees. Yards from their enclosure, the spray melts into the pounding rain. No, this is nothing like a camping adventure, and it is occurring while a thunderstorm rages outside.
Of an island.
Of the so-called lost.
Surrounded by classmates, led by two on whose home turf they stand, he thinks that this whole ordeal might work as a chapter in a heroic adventure. If he were able to think beyond his gut-wrenching worry and fear, he might even have laughed at the irony of escaping his kingdom's former prisoners by running to their former prison.
(Gods and goddesses. His parents. The kingdom.)
Yeah. No one is laughing, not here. Fellow royalty and nobility alike are soaked through, gathered around a tiny fire heating at their center. Kristian and Janet knew enough to put one together without much trouble, having grown up knowing wilder areas of the world. His classmates are huddled together, normal friendships alongside sudden truces that defy their regular life. Athlete Phil and black-sheep loner Hugh, brothers who rarely show any sort of acknowledgement toward each other, are now shoulder-to-shoulder and knee-to-knee. Even Megan and Mervin, whose fiery hair clearly links them through their mother—and matches the tempers they inflict on each other over hatred of each other's fathers—share a swath of plaid over both sets of shoulders.
Not many of them have layers to take off—their captors didn't exactly care if their prisoners were in the same outfits for days, and actually found the damage done to coronation-worthy gowns and jackets rather hilarious. He had to admit, that had done a number on their morale, too.
He picks at the fraying cuff of his coat. The royal tailor had assured him that his coronation outfit would last for decades. Clearly, he hadn't taken death-defying stunts into account when selecting the fabric.
To his right, Mal and Carlos engage in a debate that began with whispers and secretive body language. Cautious of the ears around them, they still stand close enough that when they begin to forget that they have an eavesdropping audience, it is easy to hear snippets. Especially when the pouring rain outside the cave tapers to a steady drizzle, the storm beginning to calm.
"—avoid the coastline."
"Well, yes, but also the market."
"It's the best place for how many we have."
"That's the most likely place."
"We don't know for sure—"
"Mal, you didn't see," Carlos insists, voice rising with just enough certainty that the second-closest member of their group, apathetic Felix, swipes a hand through his dark hair, tired eyes keenly focused without pretense on the short, until-now quiet, boy. "They weren't all there, when she welcomed allies off the Isle."
"That doesn't mean the others are still here," Mal argues, her shoulders stiff with all the emotions she kept from her face. "Or alive."
And with that, Ben can no longer sit on the sidelines to watch the muffled argument play out. He scuffs one shoe against the ground and interrupts. "Who else might be here?"
Two sets of blank eyes snap to meet his.
He isn't fooled by the look that seems to declare innocence and ignorance. There's a slight twist to Mal's lips that speaks of her regret, and an arch to Carlos' eyebrow declaring him nervous.
He stands. The movement draws an end to the murmuring buzz of tired voices muttering about the weather, for lack of other topics to discuss. All attention is on the two people who have a clue what kind of land they're standing on.
Crossing his arms, Ben adds, "We're trusting you to lead us here, because this is where you have the experience and knowledge. But you have to let us in on what we need to know. We need to be able to keep everyone safe."
His two Isle-born peers exchange a glance that seems to carry equal parts uncertainty and discomfort. Carlos is the one to say, "After you were all…in the dungeons, the rest of the villains came from the Isle. They declared their allegiance and stuff. We—Jay, and Evie, and I—were there." He breathes deeply. "But not all of the villains were, so they might have played the power card again and declared the Isle theirs."
Mal jumps in, then, deferential. "Or, they might not have, considering who some of them were. It's far more likely they aren't here."
"Where else could they be?" Ben asks, trying to remain calm. "Where might they have gone?" Trying not to start calculating what defenses they might need, soon, while they were newly-arrived and sitting soaked-to-the-bone around a pitiful campfire in a tiny cave.
(Who is he trying to kid? He is not calm.)
In the pause before she answers, he does notice something new, a tension he did not recognize on Mal until she's flicked her purple hair back the way he's seen Audrey do a hundred times. So he knows it's going to be something uncomfortable for her to admit, possibly even awful, before she says, "Not everyone on the Isle followed the rules. And if they didn't, when the barrier fell and it was possible…Maleficent would have eliminated them."
An awful, your-mom-also-wants-to-kill-you-now tension infects the air.
Carlos adds, "Or she didn't get around to it, yet, and just left them here with no way off the Isle. Either way, we probably aren't alone, and we have to be careful about where we go and really stick together. So we should get to the Fortress."
"We definitely need to keep track of each other," Ben replies. Logical. A few murmurs arise from the others in their group. Then he asks, "What's the Fortress?"
Mal rolls her eyes. "Not a real one, it's just called that. Carlos thinks it's the safest place we could go, at least until we knew for sure who's here."
"But it is in the marketplace," Carlos stresses.
"What's bad about the marketplace?" Chad interjects. Ben leans forward, ready to leap in, but his teammate sounds more subdued than antagonistic, for once. "Wouldn't we find food and other stuff we need there?"
"Yeah, shouldn't that be a good thing?" Aria asks, her soft voice managing to sound musical despite the weary way she rests her chin in her palms.
There's another pause, a longer one. Mal has a funny twitch to her eyebrow when she says in monotone, "Some of the unaccounted-for villains, for one. And others. That's something you need to understand right now: no one goes anywhere alone here."
"What does that mean?" Chad presses. "Like, I don't think any of us are in the mood to take a walk through the forest, but come on, we have to find someplace for a bathroom."
And hadn't negotiating that in the cell been decidedly awful. They all shudder a little in remembrance.
That might be why an uproar begins when Mal replies, "No one goes anywhere alone."
"What? You can't be—"
"I refuse to be humiliated—"
"Surely we can at least—"
"I'll have you know, I—"
"This is what's deemed important for an argument?" he heard curly-haired Janet drily comment to Kristian, who shrugged in response.
Ben holds up his hands and gestures for everyone to calm down. The little outburst can't be entirely stifled, though, with more and more arguments shot through the air like weapons, until Carlos puts both fingers in his mouth and whistles.
The sharp pitch cuts neatly through all the words and brings all eyes to the blushing, furiously scowling boy. "Because even if the villains we need to be concerned about are dead, that doesn't mean the Isle is empty. Almost none of the other kids here went to Auradon."
"She never considered any of us to be a threat enough to eliminate," Mal adds, her stony face betraying no further emotion than a cold fury. "They're definitely alive, and I can't predict what their reactions to you all will be."
Knowing just how dangerous Mal and her friends were, Ben begins to feel even more ill at ease in their haphazard hideaway. He's not the only one now eying the entrance to the cave uncomfortably.
"So...they might hate us, or might not care at all," Carlos finally says. Even he's eying the storm outside. "But that's better than on the mainland."
Quinn mutters, "Not by much."
"Are they likely to have left the Isle on their own?" Nakul asks, soft voice breaking the silence.
Mal shrugs. "Maybe. Harriet would have her dad's ship, now."
"The ship was never in Auradon," Carlos interjects. "We kept an eye on the waters, just in case. If Hook's alive somehow, he left around the far side of the Isle. We'd know for sure if we checked the bay."
"The docks are where the wharf rats would be," Mal counters, eyes flashing. "And without Jay, they won't work with us."
"What about Anthony? He'd be holed up, and he's never been too bad—"
"His sister and cousins are always his first priority. If the breakout happened before the last barge came…" Mal shakes her head.
"What's the barge?" Lonnie interjects. Ben, knowing already, holds back his grimace.
Mal eyes her. "Food and supplies. If the last one didn't get here, then they're lower on food than normal."
Ben jumps in. "Is there anything to scavenge in the forest?" Another obscure report, another lack of detail, that made him question how the Isle was set up when he was just beginning to dream of the reintegration program.
From the look on Carlos' face, it is the right question asked too late. "Not enough to rely on," the younger boy said, biting one lip. "We brought some rations with us, but not enough. There wasn't time."
"Is there anyone you think would help us?" Megan breaks in, her usually perky voice tentative and fragile.
Carlos looks her in the eye. "Isle rules: look out for yourself first, because no one will help you." He looked back at Ben. "That's why the Fortress is the best place to go."
"But it's dangerous," Mal adds. "The most likely populated areas are all around the marketplace. We could head to the far side of the Isle—"
"Where there's nothing and no one," Carlos argues. "And no scavenging. And no certainty that someone else hasn't holed up there. And it'd be harder to escape if anyone came looking." Mal looks grimmer with each additional point Carlos makes.
"There is no escape."
A new voice, hoarse and lilting as though holding in a laugh, lashes through their circle.
A heartbeat after realizing that no one around their fire has spoken, screams and leaping figures have put their backs to the tiny blaze and prepared themselves with swords at hand. Ben finds himself with one arm nearly looped around Mal's, each of them having reached out as if to block the other from harm.
He feels the faintest tingle in his cheeks when their arms drop simultaneously. Mal and Carlos leap toward the empty entrance to their little cavern, and Ben almost thinks it was an illusion until he sees the downward angle of Mal's sword.
Between their feet, he sees the face of a teen his age with a head full of long, white, waterlogged hair. He'd think the newcomer related to Carlos if not for the sheen of purple to his skin, marking him as something other than human. That, and the webs between his splayed fingers where he taps one hand on the stone ground, propping up his chin with the other.
He smirks, eyes darting between the various faces stuck frozen in the cave. "Look what the fae dragged home," he says.
"What do you want, Uri?" Mal snarls. Ben nearly jumps in surprise, hearing—for the first time—a true threat from this beautiful girl. Her voice sounds sharp enough to cut glass.
"What I always have, and always will," is the reply. The face turns almost apathetic, only his eyes continuing to dance about the cave. "I'd hate to think a little hook, a line, and a small bird would start singing about your little treasures back there." The newcomer—Uri—shrugs as if to give up, arms almost unfastening from their casual pose in readiness to leave.
Mal's arms loosen a fraction as she asks, "And are you going to meet that bird soon?"
Puzzled by the strange question, Ben almost misses the moment that Uri's face goes from apathetic to wild delight. "Not remain," he says. "No one, actually. I'm free. You?"
"I'm free, too."
Surprised, Ben's hand loosens on his sword when Uri chuckles and Mal sheathes her sword. Flummoxed faces turn to him, and all he can do is shrug at the others and lower his own weapon.
Uri's lanky arms shift and he pushes up against the ground, a display of strength made even more impressive when his lower legs are revealed to be, unmistakably, tentacles. Ben darts a quick glance to Aria, seeing the moment she realizes who this boy is, and the flare of panic, fear, and anger that she masks in moments.
"You're not sushi," Mal declares, dropping to one knee.
"And you're back," he replies, raising one eyebrow. "Did the little fae finally find her way?"
Shoulders raise, arms cross, and suddenly Mal is on the defense. "My way?"
Ben edges closer at the sight, watching as the boy's hands tug and tangle in the cords of various baubles around his neck and wrist. "Of course," Uri says, finally locating and separating one of the pieces. "Your feet finally found the right path for you, Mal. It took a while, but." He tosses the small object into her hands. "Love is not weakness."
Whatever Mal's holding, combined with those recognizable words, it's enough to freeze her in place. Carlos places one hand on her shoulder. "You're better now," he says.
Uri's grin turns wide and true. "The barrier burst. I got my legs." He demonstrates by moving them into a curly fan. Looking at Ben, expression far more serious, he asks, "You ever lived every day feeling like you were walking on coals?"
Something in the other's expression indicates awareness, eerie knowledge: Uri knows who he is, and Ben can only give him an answer. "No, I don't."
Uri hums, tilts his head, and says, "Yes, you do." The teen's eyes glint silver. "Except it's all on the inside, in the snarling, isn't it?"
Personal, secret, and dire, Ben nearly staggers back at the uncanny knowledge this stranger possesses. And, from deep inside, comes the snarling—a raging, possessive, beastly part of him, one always chained and never explicitly mentioned. Never allowed out.
By now, of course, those who are with him have all seen that side glimmer through his careful control. They tried to hide their fear, but he knows they would and are whispering. His father's curse has lingered. He feels Chad at his shoulder almost immediately, though, a show of true friendship sometimes obscured by the other's less admirable qualities.
Mal's darted her eyes to him by the time the immediate burst of panic has been tamped down, and she whirls back on Uri with a sharp call of the other's name.
And, without having recognized the glow, Ben watches as Uri's eyes dim back to normal shades of gray. The teen blinks slowly, expression turning stoically blank. "That was unnecessary."
"I'll say—"
Ben calms Chad with a hand to his shoulder. "Just unexpected," he says, leaving an opening for an explanation.
Uri shrugs. "Mother never learned to control it," he replies. Aria's shoulders stiffen further. "I didn't know I had it until the barrier was gone. Now the future just comes and goes in waves, with a will of its own."
"The future?" He doesn't mean to ask, doesn't want to have this private conversation around so many, but he's startled by the information.
A wry smile mars the carefully neutral expression. "It's not out of control." The cryptic message is all he says before lightning flashes again behind him. His visible lower limbs twitch at the sound. "Time for me to go back to my new hiding place. A dragon-fae is rediscovering her hatred for incompetence, and the tides are strong."
"We need your advice," Mal says, blunt as ever. "You know the state of the Isle and we need that information. Can you come back in the morning?"
Uri gives her a delighted smirk. "A trade?"
"What do you want?"
"What I always did, and always will," Uri replies, sliding his legs off the ledge and bracing his torso up with only his arms. "Though since Evie's not here, I suppose you'll do in a pinch."
Carlos' eye-roll and Mal's snort are suspicious enough without Uri's parting wink, but the laughter as he disappears from sight in the increasingly heavy downpour is what finally tips Ben from uncertainty to dislike. The possessive side, awoken, huffs in annoyance at the back of his mind.
He tunes back in as Audrey snaps, "What was that?" The princess stomps her way from the fire toward the Isle duo. "He is Ursula's son. Why were you talking to him like a friend?"
Mal crosses her arms. "Because he's an ally. And more importantly, Uri knows the current situation on the Isle. It doesn't matter who his mother was."
From her spot by the fire, Aria snaps, "It certainly does matter."
Mal's eyes flash dangerously. "Did it occur to you to wonder why he said he has a new hiding place?" Without waiting for a response, she jabs again. "Or does his current misfortune not matter because of your parents' past hurt?"
"Who cares what he's dealing with now? His mother tried murder mine!"
"And Uri is not his mother!" Mal leans in, having closed the distance between herself and Aria. "Just like I'm not mine! If you could follow me here, you can deal with who else we meet."
A ringing silence fell as she spins on her heel and marches to the very edge of the cave. The increasingly heavy rain starts to spritz her, but she doesn't move from her wide-planted stance at the entrance.
Aria tucks herself back into a pair of friends and Ben stands, uncertain, not liking the way his companions are fracturing. Carlos sidles up to him.
Ben meets his eyes and asks, quietly, "Why does Uri have a new hiding place? What would have happened to the old one?" Kristian and Felix to tilt their heads to hear.
"Maleficent hated Ursula," Carlos replies. "No way she would have left her alive. My guess is that their old place is gone. That, plus gaining his magical abilities when the barrier broke, means that Uri could truly be in the ocean instead of just swimming in the tiny patch of it at the docks."
Pieces start to click together. "He was a magical creature, cut off from magic. That's why he was always in pain." Unable to transform the way his body was designed, unable to get into the ocean the way he was meant to… While many of his subjects only had one shape, he knew a mermaid who'd given up her mother's choice of a human life to be in the ocean again—claiming she never felt right until she was in the water.
Melody would be missing her younger sister. A sister who always said she felt completely right on land, but was now stuck here and sobbing angrily to her sympathetic friends. It was unfortunate luck that Uri was born more sea-person than land-person.
"It's amazing that he's okay," Ben murmured.
"He's not, though." Carlos raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you wonder why he wasn't quite making sense?"
A knot deepened in Ben's stomach. "I thought that was from his magical abilities."
"Nope. Being in constant pain all your life can do that to you."
Carlos spoke about pain as normal, as expected. In a way that makes Ben want to ask: and was pain also your everyday experience?
That twists his gut into a massive, Gordian knot, and drives him to pat Carlos on the shoulder and move to where Mal stands, braced against the wind and rain.
He slows as he nears her, angry lines in every part of her leather-suited frame. The outfit is like an armor, like she's covering up whatever wounds and scars she now carries. He has to force the memory of blood from his mind. But he makes sure to stand carefully, not directly behind her, and only halts in her peripheral line of sight.
He lets her choose when to speak, mostly because he does not know what to say.
Pulling away from his outstretched hand is a clear enough signal. So is the way her eyes keep darting away seconds after they meet his own. If she wants him close, or nearby, or even just within sight, he can do that for her. A fragile love lingers between them—but until their lives are no longer in danger, he's not sure if she wants to think about it.
Standing watch, silently, at her side…he can do that.
:: :: ::
Not only did Ben stand watch with her for a long chunk of the night, but when Carlos came to relieve them, he gently nudged her towards the fire and took a place further from it. Between her and the wall, actually.
His presence helped soothe the nightmares. The lingering chunks of her mother's voice is in her brain, the echo of her in every breath taken on this wretched Isle of the Lost. She is lost again, all right, swirling in the memories and emotions she forbade herself to feel again. Even referring to her only known parent as a parent is supposed to be off-limits, and she still keeps slipping up.
On top of that, the warm outline of her first kiss was at her back all night. She wanted to reach back for him. She wanted another kiss. She wanted to cut those feelings out of her with a knife, excise them out into the world and leave them behind. What is she, a former villain-in-training, supposed to do with those warm emotions? Nowhere was that question more evident to her than on the cold floor of a cave.
And, in the morning use of a nearby tree as a bathroom, with Jane nervous and blushing on the other side, she knew that when they came back he'd look up and smile at her with an emotion in his eyes that he doesn't realize is more terrifying than the thought of Maleficent's rage. Despite the tension among their group of co-habiting busybodies who were all grinding on each other's last close-contact-overload nerve—he would look at her like that, and smile.
(Cannot handle it. Unstably ally. Focus on that.)
She's right to correct her attention when the sea surges below them in the morning light. He's later than she anticipated, but not so late as to make her wary. Shining droplets cascade down as he propels himself up into the air, latches on to the side, and hauls himself up. She's ready for his appearance, ignoring the displeased mutters of hungry, tired, and dirty royalty all lingering in the cave's shadows.
Mal seats herself on the dirt next to him. Without prompting, she holds up her trade: strips of dried meat and a fruit-nut mix from the morning's rations, a part of her own share sneakily hidden from Ben's watchful eye. Carlos had supplemented it with some of his portion, too.
(Ben has to be making that Annoyed Prince Face behind her.)
Uri's neutral expression flashes into delight. That's always been the thing about him—he never has hidden his emotions, and he's always on the furthest edges of all his feelings. Fury, delight, despair. Never mild happiness, rarely serene. As a villain-in-training, she'd seen it as a tool to exploit—and it was also what made him a valuable secret as an ally. Incapable of secrecy, Uri's main line of defense was his uncanny ability to predict movements, gauge social temperatures, and provide an extra food source to Isle inhabitants that only he—or his mother, who never bothered—could reach.
Sure enough, he grins widely and one tentacle lifts up a seaweed-strung line of fish. There's enough to feed everyone in their cave. The gesture means that he'll want something else in trade for his information later, but Mal can see the subtext: he knows that they will be around later to make his request. He has good news for them.
The string of fish ends up in Carlos' hands and he takes them back toward their campfire. Uri wraps up the traded food with care, only turning to her once the task is complete. She waits patiently and ignores the mutters that pick up the longer he fiddles with his trade.
Finally, he turns his gaze back onto her. "The alliances remain. The dragon-fae decided to scour the Isle once she'd taken her false throne, and only took those she considered her followers. The rest, she burned."
Mal swallows hard, hearing the ache of loss in Uri's voice. "I'm sorry."
"Mother didn't care," he shrugs, tapping at his lip. "It wasn't the first time she died."
(Awkward. What to say?) Mal tries to redirect him. "Who else is still here?"
"We should swim to the bay," he replies, reaching out to grasp her wrist delicately. His fingers form a loose circle. "The marketplace will be full with the remains."
Oh, no. "She burned them in the marketplace?"
(She cannot see the bodies. Cannot see what her mother wants for her.)
Uri blinks at her, frown light upon his forehead. "The elders burned on every street. Just the alliance remains, in all their halls."
Mal sighs. "So only the descendants are left. And they still follow the rules?"
"They call. A new queen must rise from the ashes."
(New queen?) "What do you mean?"
"The queen, the queen. She must sing." Uri's eyes glow silver. "And she must find her wings."
Uncertain of Uri's newfound magical gift, she debates demanding a clearer statement. Instead, she sighs: maybe it would make sense later. Mal places her free hand on his own, still wrapped around her wrist. "Okay. We'll go to the marketplace. Will you go ahead for us to warn off their guard?"
"There is no guard," Uri replies. His lips twist up into a smirk and his eyes fade back into their regular shades. "We should swim to the docks, now. The marketplace will be full."
With that, he lets her go and slips back over the edge into the sea.
Mal stands as Ben steps out of the cave, his eyes scanning the sea instead of meeting hers. "So, he already told them we were here?"
"Seems that way," she replies, rolling her shoulders and attempting to appear unconcerned with the unanticipated move. Predictable Uri? Not anymore. "He must have known we'd be going there."
"I don't like it," Chad says. "He betrayed us."
"No," Felix counters, "his abilities are precognitive. Maybe he liked the outcome he saw."
"But will we?" Janet points out. "I thought we were going to this Fortress. You said it was safest."
Carlos raises his hands. "To hide, yes. But if they know we're here then we can't sneak in and stay hidden anymore."
"I still prefer that plan," Chad mutters. Audrey nods sharply.
Janet takes a ribbon to her massive curls and firmly declares, "If Mal says marketplace, then that's what we should do." An echo of her father's wild-man voice rolls in her tone, confident and determined.
Aria looked ready to argue, until Ben halts all further speculation.
"We have to believe that it will work out," he declares, with a kingly demeanor: serious, and a bit foreboding, he makes eye contact one by one. "We're taking a risk by being on the Isle, but we're also placing our trust in each other. Mal and Carlos know this place. They know their peers, their allies, and what to expect from them. We're following here, and I have faith that we will be fine. As long as we stick together and pay attention."
He turns to her. All Mal can think to say is, "Uri doesn't set traps. He escapes them. If he says they're waiting for us, then they are. And if he doesn't say that they're going to hurt us, then they won't."
The Aurodonians appear to believe her, but only just. She only lingers on Carlos for an instant for the brief awareness to flicker between them—that Uri did not say they are headed toward a welcoming alliance, only that they are expected.