Disclaimer: Descendants does not belong to me.

She arrived at a bad time (or a very good one depending on one's perspective on the situation). She had provided no warning of her imminent arrival and had fully expected that she might be required to wait while an opening was made in Adam's schedule. She had heard enough to know that openings in Adam's schedule were made not things that occurred organically. (The poor royal pair had, after all, only honeymooned after two and a half years of marriage - the time spent working on unification, the villain round up and hearings, and the construction details of the Isle taking up the bulk of the time before they eventually traveled through all the kingdoms on a working delayed wedding trip after she had been awake to assure them the barrier was functioning as planned.)

She had removed herself from international politics, but she still knew that showing up on their doorstep and demanding admittance was poor form (although there was a time in Adam's past that it would have been downright dangerous to do such a thing). She just did not have it in her to make small talk while requesting an appointment over the phone and sitting down to write the request to send by courier was asking more from the realm of level headed patience than she could manage. Besides, she did not know what she was going to say - had been hoping that some right way of going about this topic would appear for her if she thrust herself directly in the middle of a situation where she must find the words.

Belle comes to meet her in the receiving room, and she feels like the other woman looks flustered. She spent weeks in their company back in the days before everything was final, but that does not mean that she has the same level of skill at reading them that she does with the members of Ella's household. A little boy trails behind her. The two of them have done their best to shield him from too much public scrutiny, but pictures do make their way through the press nevertheless. The child had been invited to Chad's last birthday as well. She had been distracted then - Jane had been at the very start of her no sleeping phase. Given all that, she thinks she would not recognize him if it was not for his mother by his side. He always looks stoic in the pictures - like a giant doll being used as a prop. He is all smiles in person, and his eyes squint up in concern the instant he looks at Jane. (Who, despite her assurance that they were coming here to get help, has spent the entire trip behaving as if she has been caught doing something wrong and is being brought somewhere to receive a punishment. Her eyes are frantically searching the large space as if she expects hidden dangers to start popping out at her - she looks terrified.)

Belle notices but does not comment the way adults so often do as if they believe singling out the child in question will somehow ease the tension. (She knows it works in some children, but her Jane only closes up further when she is made the center of attention.)

"Ben," Belle says to the little boy who is giving a small wave in her daughter's direction, "you remember Fairy Godmother and her daughter Jane. You met them at Chad Charming's birthday."

"It is very nice to see you again," he says automatically, but his eyes add sincerity to the common pleasantry. "Janie helped me fetch Chad's cards when the basket blew over," he tells her. They have trained him well or he is a natural politician or even possibly just a genuinely sweet child - perhaps a little of each. He has managed an acknowledgment and reminder of prior acquaintance, offered a compliment, and gotten Jane to focus on him instead of whatever it is about the room that is making her so uneasy all in one go.

She would take the time to be impressed if she did not have so many things on her mind already. She misses some sort of signal between the mother and son because the next thing she knows Jane is biting her lip as she asks "please?" in reference to Ben's invitation to visit their "upstairs" library. Her little girl is holding on to the older boy's hand and being led from the room nearly as quickly as she nods her head.

Belle nearly pounces. "Whatever you came for - is it an emergency?" There is something in the other woman's voice that induces her to shake her head no. Belle's shoulders slump. "I'm sorry," she lets out in a rush. "That was terribly rude. We're always happy to have you come here."

"But something is happening?" She finishes for her.

"I'm not sure," Belle states carefully. "It's the council. They are being terribly formal and have gone to executive session for the last two days."

Executive session, she remembers, is for high level issues. If you are going to expel all press coverage and allow no outside witnesses to the discussion, then it is generally for nothing less than some sort of a severe security threat to the nation.

"Adam?"

"Is following the rules. He's upset; his temper is fraying. I haven't seen him like this since . . . well, the last attack before the Isle." Belle's eyes cloud over with grief as she says the words. There are some things that lessen with time but never truly heal.

She knows the assassination effort to which the woman is referring. Gaston had proven unfortunately single minded in the time between his hearing and the Isle's completion. The three attempts on Adam's life had been followed up upon by two separate assassins coming within days of each other after Belle (normal prison walls had been no hindrance to the man finding people willing to take on such a job it would seem). The results had been tragic. Ben was their first born child, but he was not their first expected.

"You are still an official advisor to the council."

She is. It is more of a courtesy title than anything else given that periodic status updates on the fact that the barrier is stable passed along through Adam is the closest she has gotten to the council in years. Still, Belle is right. It is a nonvoting appointment to the council. As the holder of such a title, she can request (and will be granted) entry to their closed session. This is not why she has come, but it would seem that she is about to become involved with whatever it may be.

The guard at the door looks almost relieved to grant her request. The fact that the sound of a multitude of angry voices speaking at once can be heard through the thick double doors that mark the formal entryway might have something to do with that.

She finds herself with a view of multiple small group "discussions" that appear to have broken out in the midst of the larger group. Easiest to hear is the man telling Queen Leah that magic had nearly killed her daughter in a tone that implies that she might have forgotten such a thing. Leah was quick to reply that magic was also the reason her daughter had survived the attempt. Her eyes skimmed the visible portion of a copy of the legislation under discussion on the edge of the conference table nearest her, and she processed as quickly as she could. She was less than pleased by the implications of the measure.

She likes to think of herself as fairly even tempered, but she knows that everyone has their limit. It is quite obvious that she has reached hers. She does not yell or slam her hands down on the table or anything even remotely dramatic. She merely allows all the coldly focused fury that has been building up in her to give steel to her tone as she calmly, softly inquires as to when they would like their villains returned to them. It is, perhaps, not the best phrasing, but she has neither time nor inclination to attempt being cleverer about it.

"I can do it now if you like," she offers when the voices in the room have stilled and most of the eyes have turned in her direction. The youngish looking counselor (she has no recollection of ever seeing him before) who had been verbally sparring with Queen Leah is gaping at her as if she has started tossing things about the room rather than asked a question.

"Or, if you would like to compose a press release for the populace first, then we could schedule things for later this week?" She prompts.

"My dear Fairy Godmother," the unknown man speaks. "I am afraid I must have missed some vital pieces of your question - the noise was rather getting out of hand in here I'm afraid," he was all smooth words and practiced to look sincere smiles.

"Of course," she states as agreeably as she can make herself sound - which was quite dangerously agreeable if she did say so herself. "As this body seems on the brink of issuing a ban on magic throughout the United Kingdoms, I was merely inquiring as to when you would like the barrier removed from the Isle?" She could have sworn that Leah sent a knowing smirk in her direction. Adam - never one to cope well with surprises - proceeded to choke on the water he had taken advantage of the lull in the chaos to sip. The poor dear had sounded nearly hoarse as he tried to regain some semblance of order as she came in - she wondered if they were always this unruly.

Ella hadn't sought a return to the council since Chad's birth (and she herself had not been a part of a meeting since the final date for the sealing of the Isle had been set), so she was very out of date on the tone and priorities of the current incarnation. There were a few gasps around the room as her words sank in, but there was mostly a resurgence of the voices determined to make themselves heard over the hullaballoo. She found herself clapping twice in the manner she had adopted for unruly groups of children in the library that needed to be reined in and then wondered briefly if her magic was as gone as she thought when silence immediately descended again - of course the vast majority of them did not know that her magic was gone, so maybe it was some sort of psychosomatic response based on their expectations.

"Allow me to make myself very clear," she allowed the volume at which she was speaking to drop just a touch to ensure that she had their attention. "If you decide that you want a world without magic - even if you could find some sort of a method for policing and controlling such a thing which I am quite certain you cannot - I will personally ensure that you will no longer reap the benefits of protection by it that you would strip away from others."

"You mistake our intentions."

"Do I?"

"Of course. Approved persons such as yourself would be called upon to use your magic for official and sanctioned purposes of state. It is merely the . . . unregulated masses of whom we are speaking. Something like magic . . . something that can be wielded with such capacity for harm . . . well, I'm sure you agree that it is in the best interest of everyone to ensure that proper precautions be taken."

"I understood your intentions just fine the first time. You intend to preemptively punish everyone because someone has in the past or may in the future use a tool in an inappropriate fashion. Magic is a tool. Your problem is with the ill-intentioned wielder - for whom, I might add, we already have laws and consequences."

"I had understood that your advisement to this body had been rather limited in scope in the past," he was still politicking this for all he was worth and she nearly rolled her eyes at him. "How nice that you happened by at this particular time."

"I am afraid that personal matters have taken much of my focus of late," she conceded. She may not be practiced at this game, but she has seen enough to know how to play. "Let us consider today a first step toward rectifying that. I fully intend to pay this body and its decision making its full due of attention in the future." She was nearly certain that something resembling respect flashed through the man's eyes before he gave a slight nod in her direction. She knew how to read that - point to her but game still in play.

What had she gotten herself into this time?

Later, waiting for a man to finish serving tea so that she could speak freely in Adam's office, she was still wondering that.

"Thank you. Everything had long gotten out of hand and nothing seemed to pull them back in - I've never seen them quite so stirred up over . . . well . . . anything."

"I'm afraid I didn't come here to make your day easier."

"I'm still appreciative."

"They had the votes, didn't they? Before I interrupted."

"They were very close."

"And how were you leaning?"

He hesitated. "I only vote in council to break a tie."

"That's not an answer."

"I think too much power without counter can be a very dangerous thing."

She started to remind him that that was not an answer either before realizing that when it was coming from a man who had been offered the position of high king over the United Kingdoms and had insisted on a legislative council as a coequal branch, it actually was.

"I will be the first to admit that I was an awful brat," he was saying. "I was self-centered and inconsiderate. I hear that it is common in teenagers, but I also know that I was fairly extreme and in a position to inflict damage through my carelessness of others. I like to think that growing up would have tempered that, but I will never know for sure. None of that changes the fact that she took it upon herself to arrive at my home and issue a judgment merely because she could - no one was in a position to stop her. And she did not inflict these consequences only on me. She included an entire castle full of people - several of them children- in her curse merely because they happened to be present at the time." He paused, but she sensed that he was not quite finished. "I distrust magic in the same way that I distrust unbridled government - I will always keep in mind the ways in which it can be misused."

"And the benefits?"

"Well, I won't pretend that being able to send them all to the dungeon if they did not shut up wouldn't have been a tempting prospect today," he half-joked. "I know the other side well - I benefit from it daily." He inclined his head in the direction of the window that faced the Isle. "Now, since you did not come solely to save my hearing and my sanity, what is it you need?"

That moment where the words would just come to her did not arrive. She could not start asking questions without providing reasons. She had put off informing the King and Queen of Auradon about Jane. She had wrestled with herself over whether or not it was pertinent information, and she was now backed into a corner. She did not like that, but she liked seeing her daughter suffer even less. If there was any chance of mitigation for what her daughter was living through, then she had to take it. If there were children truly going hungry, then she could not just ignore that either.

It came to this - there were children who were going hungry, and her child was watching it happen. She would not believe that this was something of which Adam was aware without evidence to the contrary. She would tell him all, and she would dare to hope to not be disappointed in the outcome.

"We need to have a chat about the children on the Isle."