Evie wants to call a vote- argues that if all of their kids agree, Mal should wipe their memories. Mal had forgotten about how ruthless Evie could be while they were in Auradon and there was no reason to be ruthless. But now they're at war, and Evie's most dangerous qualities are out to play.
Mal refuses though. Erasing memory is a violation of privacy that she won't dare to try- the last time it had been on Ben and she'd never forgive herself for that, even though she'd failed {Return it- Reverse it-
Are you trying to spell me right now?!}
The days tick by, and it's really too soon and it's suddenly Sunday afternoon and Mal still hasn't made a decision. That's when she finally brings it to the War Council.
"You should've told us sooner." Is all Uma says, and somehow that's worse than anything Mal could've expected. Because Uma is furious at Persephone, she can see from the way it's sparking behind her eyes, but her disappointment with Mal is winning out.
"I know, and I'm sorry." There's nothing else for Mal to say, not really. She is sorry. She should have told them sooner.
"What are we going to do?" Lonnie asks, and Mal winces.
"You don't know," Gil says, and it's a statement of fact. "That's why you're telling us now; because you need to give your answer and you don't have one." Gil has a way of cutting through the bullshit everyone else tries to put forward. Mal wishes he didn't.
"We have a couple of options-" Ben breaks in trying to defend her. She wonders if it's possible to love anyone more than she loves him {her love for Evie, Carlos and Jay is a different kind of love, borne of pain and trials and she refuses to compare them anymore}.
"But you don't like any of them, if you're talking to us," Uma says, "we're supposed to be on the same fucking side. We can't be on the same side if you keep shit like this from us. That makes you just as bad as Auradon." She holds Mal's gaze, and Mal believes her.
There's an echoing silence in the room. Mal can't look at anyone as she says, "I'm being selfish. I should just accept Perephone's deal. Auradon will be fine without me. You will all be fine without me."
"No!" Several of them cry, but she only hears Carlos, Jay and Evie.
"I won't let you do that," Evie tells her. "You've sacrificed too much for us already." {She doesn't say it, but Mal knows that she means more than her power on the Isle and her mother and her anonymity- Evie means them, means their relationship and her marriage and she can't think of her marriage as a sacrifice because if she does she'll spiral and she'll hate her husband and her life and herself and she has a war to win}.
"What other options do we have?" Mal means it as rhetorical, but to her surprise, someone responds.
"What if you say you'll take over and then just… don't. Like, let the Underworld go to shit. Who gives a fuck?" Celia says, and she appreciates the sentiment behind it, but-
"She'll extract a Promise out of me tonight, that I'll follow through on whichever option I choose," Mal tells him. "Breaking that Promise is paramount to death."
"Okay," Jane says, "okay. But what if you say you'll do it and then just- don't free him?"
"Mal may be the Queen," Uma interrupts, "But I'll hold her to her Promise too. Every child currently on the Isle of the Lost will be given a chance to come to Auradon if it pleases them. I won't sacrifice those kids for you, Queenie. You're not that important."
Mal wouldn't sacrifice those kids for her well being either. They're going in circles- she's already had all of these options, and already rejected all of them.
"I agree with Uma," she tells them. "There's no way we're leaving kids on the Isle so that I don't have to keep a promise."
"So we don't leave the kids on the Isle." Surprisingly, it's Chad, of all people, who speaks up. His brow is creased and his voice is quiet, but his shoulders are squared and he sounds sure.
"How could we do that?" Uma asks, shaking her head and ready to reject him as another Auradonian who doesn't know what they're talking about. Chad shrugs.
"I don't know. But if Mal promises to take over the Underworld once Hades is freed, and then frees everyone except Hades- Persephone can't hold her to her promise."
Mal is pretty sure that everyone's just staring at Chad. It's probably the smartest thing he's ever said. He shrugs again.
"When you're tricking people into doing things for you, you get pretty good at wording things right." He shrinks back into himself after that, and Mal wants to thank him but doesn't know how.
"How do we do that, though?" Harry asks. "Hades is a god." Like they need the reminder.
Mal stares at the map, watching the names within the palace drift around slowly as their owners move. Her eyes drift up to the master bedroom.
"I have an idea."
She meets everyone's eyes, one at a time, and for the first time, she thinks she sees fear in them. It's bone-chilling.
The War Council goes down to the throne room, and she explains her idea, slowly, clearly, taking her time and letting people offer up their own ideas, spells and magic. She tells them exactly what's at stake, what will happen if they fail and what will happen if they succeed.
Then they take a vote.
It's 84-for, none against, with five abstainers {she, Evie, Carlos, Jay and Ben are too close to this}.
Persephone is waiting outside the barrier. She doesn't need to- she's melted right through it before. This is her trying to show respect for Mal right before she destroys her life.
"Come in, your grace," Mal says, and her voice is bitter. They might have a plan, but that doesn't mean that Mal isn't furious that they were put in this position in the first place. Persephone steps through the barrier like it's water, and Mal feels the pain of being unable to protect her people burn within her.
This is why she can't leave them- because she's the only defence between them and a world that is far too magical for them. And they're targets of this world because of her.
"I take it you've made a decision." Maybe, in another time, Mal would have described her voice as beautiful, but now it's harsh and cruel and Mal thinks it may be the ugliest thing she's ever heard {and she's heard her friends' screams of fear more times than she can count}.
"I'll take over if I manage to free him," Mal says, and she's playing with fire because she knows that Persephone isn't stupid enough to fall for old fey tricks but it's worth a shot.
The queen raises an eyebrow in a challenge- you really thought that would work?- but all she says is, "Will you accompany me around the gardens?"
Mal agrees, albeit reluctantly, and she then embarks on the most awkward walk of all time. Persephone is clinging to her arm, but deathly silent. They walk for almost a mile, by Mal's estimation, before she speaks again.
"Now that we're out of range of your spies, Mal, do you really want to do this? Think of everything you're abandoning. Isn't this crueller than what I asked of you in the first place?"
Mal blinks at her silently, and the Queen sighs.
"Well, if this is your choice, so be it. I'd like a Promise, Korë."
"What would you like me to say?" Mal asks placidly. She's not promising this woman anything more than she's forced to.
"I want you to promise that you'll take over the running of the Underworld when Hades is freed from the Isle of the Lost."
Mal stares for a moment, letting the words wriggle around. Persephone watches her, and Mal wonders how long they stay like that.
Eventually, she breaks the silence.
"If I free Hades from the Isle of the Lost, I will take over the running of the Underworld until he returns," she says, slowly, making sure she says what she means, and that she means what she says.
"I Promise." She feels her magic and Persephone's working together to bind her promise into her life force. It's suffocating, but she lets it happen. This is my only choice, she reminds herself.
Persephone examines her for another moment longer.
"That was easier than I expected," she tells Mal, "I do hope you're not trying to play me for a fool, Korë, because it won't work." Mal keeps her smile as serene as she can. She's not sure that it's working, but then Persephone is gone- disappeared within a second.
She walks back to the palace as slowly as possible, not looking forward to the next phase of her plan. Wondering what she'll do if it doesn't work.
If her mother won't agree.
The magic to turn her mother from a lizard back to a fae is fairly simple. The magic to turn her mother from a lizard to a regular, magic-free human and hold her that is a whole lot more complicated.
She lights a circle of candles around the room and makes Ben create a circle of iron around her and her mother (it's mostly made of pokers and other small pieces of iron they could find around the palace).
She begins her chant, letting the magic fill her body.
Wiðercweðan hrycg æfter dôð morðor duru, hlêoðrian æt ðêah treddian forðrihte ðe.
Wiðercweðan hrycg æfter dôð morðor duru, hlêoðrian æt ðêah treddian forðrihte ðe.
Wiðercweðan hrycg æfter dôð morðor duru, hlêoðrian æt ðêah treddian forðrihte ðe.
{To the others in the room, it sounds like a cheesy nursery rhyme- "Come back through the Mortal door, assemble flesh and walk once more"- Mal loves them, but she'll protect her family's spells from even them}.
Seeing her mother is worse than she had thought it would be. Her mother is still terrifying, even without horns and wings and pitch-black eyes. And the pained shriek she lets out as she realises that she is human, that she is the one thing she hates the most, reminds Mal of days without food and being told to balance on one leg for hours at a time and being beaten if she failed.
"What do you want, daughter?" she asks, and her voice is bitter. Mal can't blame her, really. She'd rather die than be human.
"To make you a deal," Mal tells her, and Maleficent's eyes snap to hers.
"What could you possibly want with me?" she asks, "Considering that fact that you abandoned me."
"I chose a different path," Mal argues, "one that didn't involve genocide and enslaving everyone in Auradon."
"Weak," Maleficent snarls, "You chose the weak path." Mal doesn't rise to the bait, no matter how badly she wants to.
"I can drop the transformation right now," she tells her mother, "and we don't have to do this."
"We do, though," her mother argues, "because you wouldn't turn to me unless you were really desperate. You forget that I know you, Mal, inside and out."
Her mother is the only one who doesn't use the given name her father chose {this is because Maleficent gave Mal a second name when she made her fey, and she refuses to acknowledge any other part of Mal's lineage}.
Mal nods once but remains silent. Maleficent glances around her cage.
"Clever, using iron, even though you brought me back human. You did your research, daughter." Her eyes catch on the people Mal has strategically placed around the room, at the most powerful points of the design she had drawn on the floor.
"I see they're still around," she says, gesturing to Evie, Jay, and Carlos, "I'm not surprised. I'm more surprised that you invited her back-" she jerked her head towards Uma, "-and that the Princeling is still around. What, did you promise to love him forever?"
Maleficent is trying to hit her where it hurts, but Mal won't let her.
"Something like that", she tells her mother, rubbing the Claddagh on the back of her hand. Her mother's eyes catch on the movement, and rage burns behind her eyes.
"You promised yourself to a mortal?" Her mother seethes, "not even one of them? You idiot girl. You could've had a witch or a djinn, but you choose a human prince? You sacrifice hundreds of years of fey lineage, the sacrifices I had to make to make you half-god, for a boy?"
Mal lets her rage, lets her yell and scream in fury. For once in her life, she has all of the power over her mother, and she has a goal. She's not going to give that up, not even to defend her husband.
Over time, Maleficent calms down, and Mal tilts her head curiously.
"Are you done?"
"What do you want?" Maleficent asks again, and Mal relents.
"I want you to help me bring down the barrier," Mal tells her, and Maleficent laughs.
"In case you've forgotten, daughter dearest, I tried to do that, years ago. You stopped me. What do you want?"Maybe Maleficent thinks that asking Mal a third time will compel Mal to answer truthfully. Maybe it does.
"I want to let the kids off the Isle while leaving the adults there," Mal says, "and I'll let you stay human if you help."
"Why the fuck would I want to be human?" Maleficent asks, but there's a tremor in her voice and Mal knows she's got her.
"Because you don't want to go back to being a lizard," Mal says {threatens}.
What follows is possibly the loudest silence Mal has ever heard. It ticks past, and time fades away.
"I'll do it," Maleficent tells her.
"Promise me," Mal insists, and they're both remembering the same thing- Maleficent gripping her arm too tight, and 'Promise me you'll steal the wand'. Mal shoves a scrap of paper at her, where she's written the vow she wants Maleficent to say {the War Council had sat for hours stewing over the exact words and phrases they wanted to use. Chad had been the one to come up with the final answer}.
"I promise that I will help get all the children off the Isle of the Lost, while leaving the condemned villains there, in exchange for being allowed to stay human," her mother says.
The deal is struck.
Maleficent will help them win this war, or she will die.
She has survived too long to die.
They stand in a circle. There are 13 of them, holding hands {Mal, Maleficent, Jay, Doug, Ben, Carlos, Uma, Jane, Harry, Lonnie, Gil, Chad, Evie}. They've said their prayers to their gods, and they've done their research. This will work {this has to work}.
Mother magic, now we ask,
We have one, most vital task,
we must bring our youth to nest,
but we must not free the rest
Wiðtêon dôð cnæpling æt−bregdan duguð îeg
Blinnan wægn forgyltantæfl lêoran
Bearncennicge scînlâc oferhîeran ûs of pro ic biddan
Bearncennicge galdorcræft byrg ûs of pro ic to ûser weorc
They chant the spell thirteen times in thirteen minutes, each time another member of the circle joining in. Magic cracks around them and lightning arcs through the room and none of them can stop, even when Mal feels the others growing weaker {they're human, how could she forget, they're human and they won't survive this}. She gives them her magic, and Evie and Uma and Jay give theirs, but it's not enough, Mal can feel Ben's life force slipping away.
Mal feels a stray tendril of wild magic, still strong. Her mother's magic, she knows {it feels like Audrey had felt when Mal went to fight her. It feels like abuse}.
Mal latches on and pulls her mother's magic into the wild mess of it, even as her mother goes limp {she and Evie hold tighter because they can't break the circle}. She wrestles it into submission until it tastes like her own magic {like spray paint and honey and red wine}.
But her priorities have shifted, and thus the spell does too, focusing on keeping her people alive instead.
The barrier is open, though, and she can't stop what's going to happen next.
When the spell ends, the power of the fey and the gods cracks in her bones and, with certainty, she knows four things:
Her mother is dead.
Her father is free.
She has won.
She has never been more alone.
