Mal.
Seventeen. Junior Year.
"Okay, I have to ask. How do we drive to the Underworld?" Mal laughed, feeling lighter than she had since she'd confessed to Ben where she'd be spending her summer.
"We don't." Hades laughed, clicking his fingers. A portal appeared in the middle of the road. There was a faint blue tint around the edges of it - outside the line was the road towards Auradon City, but inside were green fields leading up to a black stone mansion.
Hades didn't even flinch as he drove straight towards it, the car transitioning as seamlessly as if he had taken an off ramp.
Mal...not so much.
The moment she crossed over into the Underworld, she felt a power she didn't recognise surging through her. It was like it started deep within her and burst free, rushing towards the surface and warming her from the inside out. Like it was changing her very DNA, burning away the fairy and replacing it with the demigod.
When the heat reached her skin, it didn't stop there. Mal felt the pressure building, right up to the point where she felt like she was going to explode and...she burst into flame. Literally.
Purple flames obscured her vision as she jumped in her seat. Looking down, she gasped when she saw her hands were encased in fire. Her hair - what she could see of it - suddenly had blue highlights through it. Her skin was glowing.
"What the...?"
"Welcome home, kiddo." Hades laughed, clicking his fingers and putting the flames out. Which really was helpful because Mal had no idea how to turn it off. Or not set fire to everything around her.
Once the flames were gone, she held up her hands in wonder. Nope, they were definitely glowing. She looked at her father and frowned. He was not glowing.
"When your powers settle you'll be able to turn it off and on. But for now, you'll need to live with it." Hades shrugged, turning off the road and taking a winding path that looked like it would take her to the imposing marble building in the distance. "I put a blocker on most of your powers when your mother and I separated, and I've been lifting what I can while you were in Auradon. But there's no easy way through the transition back to full power."
"That wasn't full power?" Mal repeated warily, forgetting for a moment that she should be playing it cool.
Trying to buy herself some time, Mal leaned forward, making it obvious that she was getting a better look at her father's palace. It was definitely marble - and it looked like it was at least three times the size of Beast Castle.
Mal felt sick suddenly, the realisation that this was hers hitting her like a freight train. She wasn't just Mal from the Isle anymore. She was Malia of the Underworld too.
And she clearly had no idea how to be a demigod.
She knew she was discovering new powers the longer she spent away from the Isle and the barrier. And, sometimes, they scared her. Because she'd been able to feel the power growing, with no idea if she could control it or not.
She'd never mentioned it to her father. Never let on that she was struggling. She'd thought she should be able to handle it. It was her birthright, and if she didn't know how to control it, maybe her father would see she wasn't worth his effort and ghost on her again.
But.
That hadn't even been full power.
She was screwed.
Mal felt her eyes fill with tears against her will.
She was terrible at being a villain.
And now it turned out she was a terrible demigod too.
Maybe her mother was right and she was just a useless-
"Mallie, stop."
Clenching her jaw and trying to keep her face blank, Mal glanced to her left.
"No one expects you to be able to do this all right away. You missed out on years of training, but that's on me. And your mom. Not you."
Mal tried to take his words at face value. To push away the voices that said he was only humoring her and it would only be a matter of time before he realised she wasn't worth his effort. Taking a deep breath, she nodded. Even if she wasn't sure she meant it.
Then she looked over at her father properly. He looked so...parental, sitting there in the driving seat of a car that was probably very expensive and was also very unnecessary. He could have just appeared in the middle of the driveway in a burst of blue flames, and taken her back to the Underworld the same way. She'd expected that.
But he'd turned up in a car. Like every other parent. She didn't even know he could drive. It wasn't like they had cars on the Isle. And she'd never been anywhere else.
She didn't know how to deal with...any of this.
These feelings...they were all so new.
She was used to feeling rebellious and inadequate and chaotic.
But since coming to Auradon, she was in a constant state of overload.
New powers. New feelings. New experiences.
New tortures.
The others, they were doing so much better at adjusting than she was. Carlos wasn't scared of dogs anymore. Evie had a boyfriend who loved her and a side business and a five point plan that would let her buy her first castle in a few years. Jay was the future of tourney, he'd found somewhere where it was okay to be just a little bit bad.
But Mal was floundering.
She read every newspaper article. Every gossip blog and opinion piece.
Ben told her not to worry about it. That it would blow over when people realised they didn't need to be scared - or when Queen Leah found a new scapegoat.
But it had been months.
People were still blaming her for Ben and Audrey's break up and taking bets on when she'd snap and kill them all.
That kind of scrutiny didn't sit well with learning how to fit in.
She liked art class. She was a good student. She was getting better at being open with her friends. The thing with Ben was possibly the most stable, if unhealthy, chaos she'd engaged in since getting between Harry Hook and Uma.
She knew she'd hurt the boys and Ben by keeping them out of the loop for so long. Carlos was still being openly disappointed with her, which was almost worse than Jay's constant bad mood. Ben - pure, sweet, innocent Ben - couldn't hold a grudge to save himself. And even he had avoided the topic with her for two weeks.
And as for her other friends, they hadn't even known until her father stepped out of his car. She hadn't had a chance to talk to them - not properly - but she knew they were shocked. And hurt.
She had been able to feel their feelings.
Well, everyone except Ben. But he'd seemed like he had her back. He'd walked over and introduced himself to Hades as if it was nothing. And she supposed it wasn't. They knew each other from the Council - Ben had been a member for years now, so there must have been at least eight of the quarterly meetings that they'd both been at together, never mind the optional monthly ones.
This was the first time Mal had ever felt...guilty.
She'd done plenty of wrong in her life. And plenty of evil.
She'd kissed another girl's boyfriend, and felt nothing but fireworks. And a desire to do it again.
She might be in Auradon. But she certainly wasn't 'good'.
"Mallie, if you keep going down that rabbit hole of brooding, you'll start looking like your mother."
…
An hour later, Mal was unpacking - she'd accumulated so many things since coming to Auradon, and now she had a bedroom to put them in, and that was a mindfuck in itself - when she felt her cell buzz in her back pocket. Then again. Then again.
Instinctively, she pulled it out. She didn't use it all that often - mostly messaging the boys where to meet them, irritating Ben, or talking to Lonnie and Jane about schoolwork. She preferred to keep her conversations out of writing, where there was no evidence of what she'd said.
Her mother's lessons came in two forms - ones where Maleficent explicitly told her something, and ones where Maleficent made her figure out the lesson herself. This one fit into both, which made it important.
Always remember Mal, there's no crime if there's no proof. Oh the thing my minions could find out, simply because those fools in Auradon loved to minute every moment of their boring little lives.
Maleficent made it her mission to catch Mal out, always. Aside from her relationship with Hades, it was only in the last year on the Isle that Mal consistently managed to fly under the radar.
Mal was starting to worry about just how many of her mother's lessons in evil translated to life in the sun. Because instead of her mother's wrath, now she had to worry about things like phone hacking and screenshots and people who weren't really friends (looking at you Jilly Cricket and Sally White) selling things to the newspapers.
Auradon was not as black and white as she'd grown up believing.
Glancing down, Mal laughed at the list of notifications.
Evie created the group 'Hot Girl Summer'
Evie: We're doing this
Lonnie: That's not the correct use of the term
Evie: Why not? We're hot. We're girls. It's summer.
Jane: It means you're single.
Jane: And you added the guys to the chat.
Evie: Oh.
Evie: Well I like it.
Evie: Doug knows I love him dearly.
Doug: I have no objections to the group name.
Doug: Bennyboo? Jaybear?
Ben: Shut up.
Ben: Why does Carlos escape the nicknames?
Carlos: Because I am fluent in girl speak and will happily help them take the best photos to post on social media.
Carlos: I got you, don't worry.
All Mal could do was laugh at the absurdity of it all.
She was here. In the Underworld. With her father. Watching Evie plan a Hot Girl Summer in front of her entirely non-threatened boyfriend.
They could have never imagined this life a year ago.
Never.
Deciding to save the boys from themselves, she walked over to her balcony and snapped a picture of the view, sending it to the chat.
Rolling fields. Perfectly manicured gardens. The odd demon running around.
She had to put the effort into her friendships if she was going to survive Auradon. And taking part in a group chat after lying to her friends was the first step.
Mal: Not to digress, but I expected more brimstone.
...
"I have something for you."
Mal paused mid-bite, her fork halfway to her mouth.
Today had been...like something Lonnie would expect from her parents.
Hades had helped her take her bags to her room, even if it was just a click of his fingers. Then he gave her a tour of the palace and grounds - and somehow, Mal retained all the information easily. Perk of her new demigod powers, seemingly.
Then he let her unpack, and then they had dinner. He'd made her favourite Isle foo, his potato and lamb moussaka. She only ever had it in the mineshaft - the ingredients were too hard to pass off as something you'd just stumbled on by chance. But it felt like her childhood. And he'd made chocolate cake. With strawberries.
Mal had almost cried.
Almost. If that was the kind of thing she was liable to do.
And now he had a present for her.
She would not let tears betray her again.
So instead, she lowered her fork to the plate and kept her features blank. "Dad…you didn't have to go to all this trou-"
"I couldn't do all this before. Not without your mom knowing. But you're off the Isle now, and everyone knows who you are." Hades shrugged, but his tone was sincere.
He was trying to play it down, to make her more comfortable. But Mal could tell it was important to him, so she started running through all the ways she'd seen Evie react to gifts. Surely one of them would be appropriate.
"Traditionally you'd get this on the eve of your introduction into Olympian society. But I'm not really one for tradition, so…" He handed her a long rectangular jewellery box. It was wooden, varnished and polished to the point that she could see her reflection in it, with flowers and snakes rising from the wood.
It was beautiful. It was regal. A work of art.
And that was just the box.
Slowly, still fighting to keep her face blank, Mal set it on the table and lifted the lid. The hinge was a little stiff, as if it hadn't been opened for...seventeen years.
Inside, was a delicate silver bracelet. The band was a simple loop, with a number of stones spaced out around the end. Evie would have been able to tell her what the stones were, but Mal had never had much of an interest in pretty things.
Carefully, she lifted it up, touching it with only the tips of her fingers. She held her breath, not trusting herself not to break it just by being in proximity.
The stones glinted in the light, suddenly glowing as she lifted it to her eye level. Almost as if the bracelet had...recognised her?
Impossible.
Mal's eyes widened as she brought the band closer, confirming that the stones were definitely glowing.
"I had Hephaestus make it when you were born." Hades began to explain as the light in the stones began to swirl, drawing her in. Mal ran a finger around the edge, over the stones, in awe of they way they hummed with life beneath her fingertips.
"He's used to making weapons...and that's exactly why I used him. The stones are embers, shaved off my own. They don't give us power, but they are powerful weapons that respond only to those in our bloodline. To anyone without godly blood, it looks like a pretty little trinket. Just aquamarine, pink and blue sapphires, spinel and amethyst. But everyone on Olympus will know exactly who you are."
Mal was speechless.
It was hers.
But not.
Her head was spinning.
Her father had commissioned this when she was a baby. That had to mean...something. You didn't commission a gift like this for someone you were planning to leave.
Something had changed. But Mal didn't know what.
And did it even really matter now? Years later. After she'd grown up in a broken home, on the Isle, hiding her true nature?
The bracelet was the perfect gift for a daughter of Maleficent and Hades - the purples and the blues, and everything in between. It was a gift for a Princess. A true daughter of darkness.
It was a gift for Malia.
But Mal wasn't that girl.
Malia of the Underworld had ceased to exist the moment her father walked out the door. And now, in her place, was this version of her. Mal the Lost Girl.
The only remnant of the life she could have had was right there in her hands.
Two parents. Maybe even one who loved her.
A bedroom she'd lived in her entire life.
Powers that were second nature.
Comfortable in her own skin.
A big family. A full belly.
A kingdom, all of her own.
"It's beautiful." Mal whispered finally, slipping it onto her wrist before she could lose her nerve.
The bracelet slid into place instantly, warm against her wrist, like it had always belonged there.
Like she'd found a piece of her that she didn't know she was missing.
Maybe Malia was still in there after all.