For the first time, for what felt like a very long time, Mal woke up and the world wasn't ending. She knew it hadn't actually been that long in the grand scheme of things but the past few weeks had been a non-stop avalanche. Getting attacked at Sixth Circle. Getting cursed. The manor getting attacked. Asking Evie to marry her. Her father being… her father. Ben announcing the barrier was coming down and the VKs being given full citizenship.

She didn't want to do anything for the rest of the year. Well, maybe one thing.

She turned on her side, turning into Evie's arms.

"Hi."

Evie gave a sleepy smile, "How long have you been up?"

"Not long. Do you hear that?"

"What?"

"Silence. Uma and her gang went back to the Isle for now. Ginny didn't come back here last night. Our house is just ours again."

Evie chuckled, "I don't know, I liked watching you flounder with your exes around."

"They are not my exes."

"In semantics only."

With a low growl, Mal rolled over, straddling Evie, "Why are we talking about them? There are better topics we can be discussing. Or, I can think of a better activity or two to occupy our lips."

Evie laughed, one hand curling into Mal's hair as she dipped down to kiss a path across Evie's neck.

"This is drifting to territory that means we won't be leaving bed for another hour."

"And that's a bad thing why?" Mal asked with a smirk against Evie's skin.

"M," She warned, her tone a bit lower, "There are things we have to do."

"Not today." Mal pulled back enough to meet Evie's eyes, "We've earned one day. I'm staying right here, with you, all day." Her attention returned to Evie's skin, press soft kisses over her collarbone.

"You're going to be very hungry in a few hours."

"I'll make an exception for trips to the kitchen.

Evie laughed again, nudging Mal's eyes back to her own with a gentle prod. She brought her in for a slow, senual kiss. "We can't possibly stay in bed all day."

"We can."

"We can't."

"We need to plan for the kids coming."

"Other people are already working on it. None as brilliant as you, but still very brilliant."

"Was that a compliment to Uma?" Evie arched a brow.

"And you'll never be able to prove I said it."

"We have jobs."

"You are your own boss and Sixth Circle is still partly exploded."

"We have a wedding to plan."

Mal smiled, leaning in to kiss Evie again with an eager excitement. "It's our wedding. There's no rush to make decisions."

"Are you saying you don't want to marry me as soon as possible?" Evie sat up, smirking with a playful look in her eyes.

"Oh, I absolutely do," Mal purred, kissing her jaw and weaving their hands together. She pulled Evie's arms around her waist, "But there's nothing stopping us from making those decisions without leaving this bed, is there?"

She laughed, "Alright, alright," Evie gave in, one hand slipping under the hem of Mal's nightshirt, "You win. We're earned a lazy day."

"Glad you can see things my way."

"There is one thing we will need to do today."

Mal groaned, dropping her head onto Evie's shoulder, "Why do you feel the need to ruin the mood?"

"Because I know it only gets you riled up for later."

Mal's cheeks burned, but she looped her arms around Evie's neck, "Alright, what's so important that it needs to disturb our day off?"

"Have you given any thought to whether you're going to write a recommendation for your parents?"

Mal's posture straighten just a bit at that question.

"If you're asking me, I'm guessing you've thought about it."

"It's crossed my mind."

"What are you going to recommend?"

"I- don't know."

"Which way are you leaning?"

"Thinking about it rationally, there are people who did much worse things than my mother. And three decades is a long time already."

"And if you weren't thinking about rationally?"

Evie closed her eyes, remembering her run-in with her mother on the Isle. "I don't want to be scared of her anymore. I'm an adult now. I want a different relationship with her."

"So you do want a relationship with her."

"I think I do. I want to be able to talk with her. Show her everything I've done. I've accomplished everything she wanted for me."

"There is a glaring thing you haven't accomplished. You're not marrying a prince."

"No. But she wanted that for me because of the status and stability that came with it. I have those already. And when she sees how happy I am, how happy we are, how could she not be happy for us."

"I don't want her to hurt you again."

Evie smiled, bringing her hands to her lips. She kissed Mal's palm, "I know. But we're not kids. We're not going to have the same relationship anymore. She can't control me like she could be before. I won't let her."

"So you're going to recommend she not be moved to a prison facility."

"I don't know if she deserves a second chance, but the best punishment for her has been living in obscurity on the Isle. She of all people might love it to be relevant again.

"Do you… do you want her to live with us?"

"In no universe is that happening. I want to build a relationship with her, not invite her to invade our lives. If she's going to be in my life again, she'll be a part of it. Not the whole thing."

Mal sighed, "I remembered your mother wants a mother-in-law wing and I was worried for a moment there."

Evie chuckled, running a hand through Mal's hair, "But speaking off mothers-in-law, your mom, what are you going to do?"

Mal sighed heavily again. When Uma had taken Ben hostage on the Isle, she'd lost track of her mother in the chaos. In the years since she hadn't resurfaced and Mal was never able to pin down any rumors about her. But then, she'd hadn't been back to isle other than a few days prior to get the emerald.

"I don't have an opinion about my mom staying on the isle, or taken to a prison and that's if we can find her. Or if she's still alive. Who knows someone could have stepped on her."

"Your mother is too stubborn to let a boot be the way she went out."

"Once the barrier is down, I'll look for her, properly. But I'll leave her fate up to Ben."

"Are you really okay with that?"

Mal shrugged, "She's my mom, but she's done awful things to a lot of people. As long as she's a gecko, that proves she hasn't changed. I'm not going to fight for her when she isn't willing to change herself."

"And what about your father?"

Mal snorted, "I don't care about him."

Evie tilted her head, "Don't you?"

"Why would I? He never cared about me."

"He did give you his emerald. And he came to help because you asked."

Mal didn't say anything.

"And I recall you tried to break into his place several times when we were kids."

"Yeah, well, we were kids. Things are different now." She got up, out of bed.

"M, we're not going to turn this into an argument. Whatever you want, I'm with you. Just make sure that is really is what you want. You don't owe him anything. But you owe your heart the chance to honestly go after what you want." She stood up, wrapping her arms around Mal's waist. She kissed her shoulder.

Mal turned in her arms, "And what if I don't what my heart wants?"

Evie gave a little shrug. "You don't need to know everything. Just, don't close yourself off. That doesn't mean you have to give him a chance, not if you don't want to. Just don't stop yourself if you do want that chance."

"Right now, my heart wants food."

"I think that's your stomach."

"And this time of day, those are the same things."

Evie laughed. "Let's go see to that then," She said, taking her hand and they headed downstairs together.

"You're staring at me you know," Dizzy said without looking up from the page in front of her.

"Does it hurt?"

That drew her gaze, looking across the table at Celia. "What this?" She gestured at her bruised face. She shrugged, "A little. My face isn't the worse. My chest really feels like shit."

"That was crazy, what you did."

"Nothing crazier than what you did."

"No. There is a difference between fighting back and looking the enemy in the eye with no way out and still insulting them. I wouldn't have done it. I'm not that noble."

Dizzy was quiet for a moment, then she gave a non-comital hum. "I'm not noble either. Not like Evie or Mal. I was thinking about buying time for them to get there."

"I don't know if I would have trusted them to be coming at all."

"You don't know them like I do yet."

Celia made a soft notice.

"What?" Dizzy asked.

"You really look up to them."

"Of course I do."

"Where was this Dizzy on the Isle?"

"You mean the one who didn't say shitty stuff to your face trying to hurt you?"

"Yeah. I like this you a lot more than the one I knew."

"I said that stuff to you mostly because I didn't want the same to be true about myself. A stupid idea, looking back. But when you told me you liked Esme, you said a lot of things I related too and that scared me at the time. So I repeated the worst things I'd heard my grandmother say thinking it would make those things resonate less. It only made me hate myself, twice over, for thinking I was wrong. And for hurting you."

Celia just stared at her.

"I know I've been asking you to forgive me, but you don't have to. I get me being different now doesn't change the things I said. Or that I hurt you."

"It would be really shitty of me not to forgive you when you've clearly changed so much."

"You know, when I heard you were coming to Auradon I was scared."

"You were scared of me?"

"Scared that if you told anyone what I said to you when we were kids and that it would ruin the relationships I have now. But you're right, I've changed. And the people who matter know me now."

"I don't know you now. Don't I matter?"

"I guess, that would depend on if I matter to you."

"What was the other thing?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You mostly said the things you did about me because you didn't want it to be true about yourself. That's what you said. Mostly. What were the other reasons you said what you did?"

"Oh," Dizzy's cheeks went red, "I was, oh, I was jealous I guess."

"Really? Of Esme?"

"Yeah."

"You liked Esme too?"

Dizzy rolled her eyes, "It wasn't Esme I liked."

"Oh!" Celia's eyes went wide and then she smirked, "Not going to lie, that's a big boost to my ego."

"Oh shut up," Dizzy crumpled up a page and threw it at her.

Celia caught it. She unrumpled it, scrutinizing the one and a half lines Dizzy had written.

"Didn't Fairy Godmother say we need to have these done by tomorrow if we want to give in anything?"

Dizzy groaned, head dropping to the table. "Not all of us can pull out an essay from nowhere." Dizzy stabbed her pen towards the four pages Celia had written. Four pages on her father and Celia had knocked that out in about an hour. Meanwhile Dizzy had barely scrapped together a page for her mother and even less for her aunt. As for her grandmother, so far all she'd been able to get out was a couple of sentences on the page she'd just tossed at Celia.

"I don't know if this is comforting or not, but from the looks of things, your family is probably going to get away with time served. Being assholes to their stepdaughter/step sister is far from the worst thing people ended up on the Isle for."

Dizzy rested her chin on the table, looking about the pages she had written. She flicked her pen, rolling it half away across the table. Celia followed the pen before stopping its path.

"Do you want that?"

Dizzy looked up at her, without lifting her head. She shrugged. Celia snorted.

"That's bull. You know, you just don't want to say."

"What am I going to say? No, I don't want them to go to some maximum prison. But I also don't want them in my life."

"Then you should say that."

"Who is that going to help?"

Celia shrugged, "I don't know. I'm don't actually know if they'll release your family or not. But either way, you should get your say."

"Easy for you say, when you have everything to say about your dad." Dizzy gestured to the pages Celia had written.

"So what? I wrote more than you. It's not a competition. No one is gonna judge you if you write or don't write something."

Dizzy sighed, closing her eyes.

"Why do you not want your family in your life?"

"I don't want to lose my life here. I don't want to go back to my life on the Isle."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but Evie and Mal are both hella protective of you. I don't think anyone is going to force you to do anything you don't want to."

"I know you're right… but even if I know that, it's still hard to believe that they won't suck me back in."

"Things from the Isle have their way of lingering, don't they? Okay, then if you can't believe in it, then don't."

"What?" Dizzy's eyes snapped open.

"Don't believe there's zero chance of your family dragging you back into their circle and making you work at the salon again or whatever it is that scares you. You need to believe one way or another away. All you need to do is take a risk."

"A risk?"

"Should be easy for the girl who distracted a room full of people who wanted to hurt VKs."

"That was different."

"Yeah, if you ask me, that was the bigger risk." Celia stood, gathering her pages up, "When you finish up here, send me a message. I want to hear more about this crush you had on me."

"Oh, shut up," Dizzy spat out and threw another page at Celia's head. She easily dodged out of the way, laughing.

After she left, Dizzy sent a message to Evie, 'I'm doomed.'

Nardragon- until the next page.