I'm still here. Don't worry, I'm not letting go of this story anytime soon. So funny story. I've had the next three chapters written for...months. There's just certain parts in each of them that I am STRUGGLING with.
I agree with everyone, Mal immediately forgiving her mother is NOT going to happen. That trust needs to be EARNED. I will say, they may be civil with each other when she finally becomes human, err, Fae again, but the hate and distrust will still be there.
THIS ISN'T REALLY AN UPDATE IN THE STORY. This is a flashback because I felt like this makes the next chapter make more sense. Where did I get it from? The second Descendants Book, Descendants: Return to the Isle of The Lost. If you haven't read it, it's fine. I used a small excerpt from it so you guys would have a brief understanding of where I was going here. The next chapter will be the long awaited confrontation between Mal and her mother.
ALSO, I updated the last two chapters. Not by much, I just sodded out some stuff and added a line or two more so that things would flow smoother. This chapter is basically just my own little thing for why things in the next chapter will happen the way the do. When this flashback takes place in terms of movies, somewhere after the first movie, but before still a bit before Cotillion and the planning of that.
ANYONE SEE THE WEDDING? I won't spoil, but did anyone else see that little end bit? Is the story not over? Makes me eager to post my other Descendants stories.
A few months prior
I tapped my feet impatiently, anxiety eating away at me. This meeting had been a long time coming but that didn't mean I had to like it in any way. I could barely feel my own breathing, but still kept enough control of it so it looked to any outsider that I was still at least semi composed. Or so I hoped.
Ben squeezed my left hand. I lifted my head and got to see his brilliant comforting smile. Off to my right, Former Queen Belle gave me a reassuring look, while her husband gripped the back of her chair uneasily. Ben had agreed, almost insisted, that his parents join the meeting, despite the fact that they no longer needed to be apart of anything to do with the Kingdom.
Behind us, Fairy Godmother waltzed into the room, for waltzing or flitting were really the only way to describe the manner the woman moved most days. She was smiling eagerly, but the tension of it was still noticeable.
"Is everyone ready to begin?" She asked the room's occupants. Her gaze flicked to each of us, stopping at the tablet on the desk, and of course the glass case on the side of it.
I'd been avoiding sparing too many glances at it. Belle had taken the case and set it in front of her almost as soon as we walked in. Honestly, that woman was a godsend, not only for her husband.
I must have missed some type of cue or something because Fairy Godmother stepped into the gap between Belle and I to awaken the tablet from sleep mode.
She tapped the camera on to life, and backed up. The screen flickered, as it typically does when trying to video call the Isle. Most Isle residents found technology beyond them at this point and often struggled with it. Surprisingly, Professor Yen Sid appeared in the choppy feed after only a few seconds. I would have figured someone as old as him would have a longer time.
"Professor Yen Sid," Belle said in greeting.
He nodded to each adult present. "Madame Belle, Monsieur Adam. Pleasure to see the two of you again. Fairy Godmother."
"If only it were under better circumstances," Adam interjected roughly.
The professor hummed in agreement. "Evil magic is often associated with unforgiving circumstances. Sadly that cannot be helped."
"Do you have any insight as to our current problem?"
Our current problem being my mother.
It'd been a few months since we came to Auradon and we had only now just now chosen to broach the subject, if that were any giveaway to how little they wanted to deal with this. Better now than in a few weeks, when Ben would be swamped with Cotillion things to do.
After the whole Coronation incident, people had been wondering what the Kingdom had done with Maleficent. Ben told them she was safely put away. Then someone, Chad, let it slip to a Council member that "safely" meant my dorm room in a lizard habitat.
At the next Council meeting, Aladdin pointed out that the Mistress of All Evil (really though, who gave her that name?) shouldn't be allowed to stay with me. Someone else, of who Ben refused to give me the name of, added that I could be secretly plotting a way to make her full Fae again, as if I hadn't been the one to shrink her in the first place.
And so we were here. The discussion was how long she would stay a lizard, and if that situation could change.
"Maleficent shrunk to the size of her heart, you were correct in that, Fairy Godmother," Yen Sid was saying. "The only way for Mal's mother to revert back would be if she learned to love again."
"How does a person learn to love? You can love or you can't," Adam scoffed.
"You did," Belle pointed out. Score for Belle.
"There is a difference between falling in love, and learning to love."
"Is there?"
"Mal," I snapped up to attention. I hadn't expected to actually be included in this, but I suppose Yen Sid had different thoughts. "Would you agree that most villains on the Isle, in one way or another, acted like your mother?"
I nodded slightly, not sure what he meant. "Caught up in the past, bent on revenge, scheming, and being completely crazy? Yeah."
"Do you remember when you visited the Anti-Heroes club and explored the catacombs?" I nodded again. "Do you remember what I said about Evil Talismans?"
I thought back to our first trip back to the Isle and the meeting we had with Yen Sid and some of the kinder VK's.
Yen Sid had motioned to the group to close their books and put their maps away. He sighed heavily and looked each of them in the eye. "Where do you think evil comes from?" He asked.
"The Isle of the Lost?" offered Carlos.
"Close." His voice thundered in the small room. "Evil is a real thing, it lives and breathes, it works its malice through living vessels eager to spread its vile wickedness, but villains cannot be villains without the source of their power."
The younger members of the club began to whimper.
"Every villain has a talisman. These talismans hold the powers that were stripped from them upon their exile to the Isle of the Lost."
"Like the Dragon's Eye scepter," I said. "That was my mother's talisman. Are you saying there are other talismans in the Catacombs?"
"You would have been a good student in my class as well," said Yen Sid proudly. "Yes, the Catacombs of Doom are only one part of the equation. Like I said earlier, when Maleficent escaped, she released so much energy into the surrounding area that it sparked a magical reaction underground and caused the recent earthquakes and unseasonal weather phenomena all over Auradon. I'm afraid she's also awakened four evil talismans that have been growing in the Catacombs of Doom over the years. These talismans are growing in power, and causing havoc with our weather as they draw energy to themselves. Four of these talismans are the most dangerous right now: the Fruit of Venom, the Golden Cobra, the Ring of Envy, and a new Dragon's Egg."
The talismans desire to be found; they have already seduced their masters into looking for them and soon they will call others to their side. They seek to escape the darkness of the underground so they can once again bring chaos and catastrophe to our world."
"You told us each villain had a Talisman that was the source of their evil powers," I summed up. The others in the room had been briefed of our events under the Isle not long after we'd gotten back by Yen Sid himself so they didn't need a recap.
"And what about those without powers?" He asked. "What of those like Gaston, Cruella, Mother Gothel, who had no actual powers to show for? What were their Talismans for?"
I...actually hadn't thought of that. When I first heard of Cruella's Ring of Envy, I was surprised, having never heard of such a thing before. But with all that was going on that day, what the Talismans were used for was the last thing on my mind.
Yen Sid dipped his head when I didn't respond. "They're not just a source of power for Maleficent, or Jafar. Talisman's are real, living objects. As you children may have realized when collecting your parents Talisman's, they fill you with dark thoughts and wickedness from the moment you touch or see them. That power becomes addicting, fueling their masters until they're not even the people they once were."
"So Maleficent's Talisman, her scepter, was what made her the evil woman we all know of today?"
I could almost beam at the way Ben phrased it. He was hoping Maleficent wasn't all that bad, like I wasn't.
"It's not so much her scepter, Ben. It's the green jewel at the top of it. It's called the Dragon's Egg," Fairy Godmother explained. I wondered why she bothered setting a meeting up with Yen Sid if she knew all this in the first place.
"And if she were to be without it," Ben pressed. "Couldn't it be said that she could become good once again?"
"You're assuming she was ever good to begin with," His mother interjected. She glanced lightly at my mother, bored out of her mind in her container. "She found the Dragon's Egg some way. It cannot be said that she didn't purposefully seek it out, knowing what it could do."
"Belle is right, Ben. At the moment, this situation is filled with unknowns. If Maleficent isn't truly all evil, as you said, it is possible that time away from her magic while in lizard form will return her to her natural disposition before her scepter. But even so, she will still need to remember how to love again."
A question popped into my mind that had me speaking before I could help it. "And how exactly would she do that?" The videocall to our parents on Family Day sprung to mind. She could barely even say "I Love You", let alone pretend to be a good parent.
"No matter who they are, everyone is capable of love, given correct circumstances. It can be different for everyone, but she just needs to remember what it is like to care for, and be cared for. To find all the good things in one's life and be grateful for each and every one. Remembering times she was happy without someone else's pain being the cause of it. It is only then, that she will revert to her human form," He surmised.
Well, that wasn't going to happen any time soon.
"Perhaps, you can help too, Mal," I lifted a brow at Belle. "You're her only daughter. Maybe if you tell her about your day, extend some kindness onto her every so often, little things, she can do the same." She gestured to the mini blue fridge and chair I'd given my mother recently. Thankfully no one seemed to care to comment on the spinning wheel.
"That could very well work," Yen Sid agreed.
The meeting wrapped up shortly after that. The royal couple bid their goodbyes and left the room. I knew from Ben they would be off to a French pastry tasting courtesy of their son.
I went to grab my mother's case and leave but Ben's halt in front of the tablet had me pause as well.
"Does something else concern you, Your Majesty?"
Ben wrung his hands together as he contemplated his question. "These talismans, they're what fueled the villains anger for years, right?"
"That is correct."
I raised a brow, curious what he was getting at.
"For the villains on the Isle, they've been without their magic for 20 plus years now. Why haven't they changed?"
Yen Sid stroked his beard in thought. "As I said, Evil is like an addiction. A very powerful one at that. In terms of speaking, the Isle residents are in a state of withdrawal, which explains why their children don't act exactly like them. Because of Mal and her friends, we've realized that their magic, and their Talisman's were under the Isle, waiting for an escape. This magic more than likely seeped into the Isle's air, making the ground infertile, the water murky, and the villains antsy and hung up on revenge."
Ben turned to me now. "We've extracted most of the Talisman's now, and cut off the underground of the Isle from everything else. But that being said," He paused. "Now that magic is no longer in the air with them, is it possible the villains could reach some sense of normalcy as well?"
"That is entirely plausible."
"That's all I need to know, sir," he bowed to the tablet. "Thank you for the help Professor."
Also! I know I didn't do reviews in this chapter, sorta just wanted to post this one as is, but I did get the request for some good Ben X Mal stories, which admittedly I don't read often since I always read stuff on smaller characters or ones with Adam and Belle or the council, but I do have these recommendations! There are more, obviously, but off the top of my head, I cannn name these.
Her Royal Highness(by Wanderlustandfreedom): 30 years after war ends, King Ben is about to ascend the throne, but there's one major roadblock - a child of Maleficent cursed to become his Queen, or else. Now, the two need to rule an increasing number of kingdoms, including Auradon, in uproar over a new Queen, an Ancient land desperate to survive, an Island severed off Auradon permanently, and war going on over their heads.(I've yet to finish, but I enjoyed what I have read so far)
Life & Love(By LovesLight): Now that Mall has finally told Ben that she loves him, follow along with the the ups and downs Ben and Mal will face as there relationship progresses. This will be a journey from cotillion until Ben decides to propose. What dramas and happy times will our couple face? This is a Bal fic!(Rated M! Also, still need to finish)
Not so Different After All(By notyourhabibti504):The King and Queen may not have been to keen on having the children of the worst fairytale villains being on their peaceful Auradon Kingdom, let alone having the daughter of the most malicious (pun most definitely intended) and vicious of their enemies dating their son, the now King of Auradon, but well, they might discover they are not so different after all...(Less Bal and more Mal and his parents, but eh.)
Interrupting A Council Meeting(By Andrea Mikaelson.x): One Shot. A distraught Mal ends up interrupting a Council meeting to find Ben. But as usual Queen Leah has an issue with it.
Watch and Learn(By ginnyrules27): After hearing Queen Leah's attack of the daughter of Maleficent, the Blue Fairy has had it. These were children after all. There was no need to punish them with their parents. Maybe it was time to show the people of Auradon what life really was like on the Isle. (I think her Choosing Family series ends up being more Bal related, but I've been waiting off to read those.)
Inescapable(By Foarrin): The best villains have back up plans, but even Maleficent couldn't have predicted how deviously delicious her 'Plan M' would turn out. That is to say, Sleeping Beauty isn't the only baby Maleficent ever cursed. She cursed her own infant daughter, and now, years later, Mal must battle the terrible fate her mother wrote for her. Mal/Ben. (Story 1 of 2 of a duology)(One of the very first Descendants fanfics I ever read actually. It's been yeeaaaars since I've read this one, but I do remember liking it)