In January, people who know Zach see him with his new books and start throwing around the 'C' word. "He's so smart!" someone in the courts says while staying in the palace for the new year policy turnover and the subsequent overview of the previous year's records. "Are you going to send him to college before he becomes king?"
Other people make passing comments when they see him marking his textbooks up and scribbling little notes in his notepads. "Ben never went to college before he was crowned, did he?" "He's probably smart enough for university now." "What's he planning on studying?"
"He's not going," Mal shakes her head with anxiety clouding her soul. "He's not even eight yet. Not for another few years."
But the kicker is when the talk starts to get back to Ben. Because she can tell everyone in the courts that Zach isn't ready for college, but it's a mite bit harder to tell her husband, who knows their son quite well, the same thing."
"I think we need to get Zach tested to see what level he's on," Ben announces when she drops into bed and buries her face into her pillow. She can feel his eyebrows rise when she lets out a dissonant growl into the cushion. "Do you have an issue with that?"
"Depends," Mal sighs, rolling onto her side. "What's your reasoning?"
"I'm wondering if it might be beneficial to send him to school," Ben hums, reaching over to run his fingers through her hair. "He's smart. With a bit of training, he could be a certifiable genius."
It must be the hormones that make Mal immediately break down. "No," she moans, hiding her face away as her mascara clumps and then sticks to her face. "No, no, no. Ben, please don't do this to me. I'm not even forty - he's too little for college!"
"There are kids who go before they're eighteen," Ben frowns, picking her up and hugging her. "Why are you so afraid of it?"
"He's too smart," Mal sobs, still hiding her face. "Ben, he's entirely from your side of the family and it's only a matter of time before he realizes I have no idea what he's saying half the time and I - I don't want him to grow up and leave me!"
"Mal, he's not going to leave you. Just calm down," He pulls her hands away so he can wipe at her tears. "Listen, he's always gonna be around. He's going to be king when he's older. And you're always going to be his mom and he's always going to love you. He's not going to leave you behind just because he's smart. Do you realize he's smarter than me too? He came to ask me about electro-neogenesis and I didn't know and so he just shrugged it off and understood it wasn't something I had learned. He's not going to look down on you because you haven't learned certain things."
This is true, but Mal understands that Ben's wealth of knowledge is far greater than hers, and so if Zach's already more knowledgeable than Ben, her knowledge is probably insignificant. How did such a brilliant child come from her?
"I left my mother," She whispers. "I left when I went to school and when I learned about Auradon and met you. He could leave me. He could leave us."
"That's different," Ben replies flatly. "You recognized that your mother was abusive. And you still talked to her for years and years. The reason you stopped was because you got sick of her trying to hurt you. We are not abusive to Zach. He's not going to break things off with us."
"But what if he does?" Mal asks in despair.
"I didn't leave my parents," Ben points out. "We still see them every day."
"But what if he does?" Mal repeats, stressing every word.
"Fear of him leaving is a selfish reason not to help him succeed," Ben pinches his lips together and gives her a stern look.
Mal collapses into him. He rubs her back while she cries. It's a low blow, he knows, to point out a villainous characteristic in her, but he needs her to think about what's best for Zach right now. And now, hopefully, she'll come around.
On Valentine's day, Hades volunteers to watch the boys so that they can go out to dinner. It's a little odd - Mal's more heavily pregnant now, and they haven't gone out in a long while, and it's strange to not be with the boys for bedtime. Zach seems nonchalant about them leaving, but he doesn't exactly have them put him to bed every night anymore. Tyler is beyond excited when his blue-haired grandfather comes through the door and spends about ten minutes while Ben finishes getting ready wrestling with him, but when he finally figures out that Mom and Dad won't be back in time for bedtime, he's astonished. Still, he shakily agrees that all will be okay.
Ben's razor needs to be replaced, which is why it's taking him so long to get ready. Mal waits, watching Zach read and Tyler play with Hades, while Ben combs his hair and applies deodorant and grabs keys, wallet, everything he needs. And while she waits, she slowly starts peeling things off. First her gloves and then her scarf and heeled boots. Then her purse is flung onto the table and her hat set beside it. Tyler turns on the new electric fireplace to show Hades, and that's when Mal starts unbuttoning her overcoat to drop it on the cushion beside her. She's wearing a black dress with a low v-neck that's sleeveless. It still looks rather flattering despite her untrimmed figure.
None of the other room's occupants bat an eye as she leans back with more skin showing than she usually allows, and Zach doesn't even notice as he circles a phrase about centrifuges. His cell phone sits beside him along with his dictionary, which is used less now that many of Zach's unknown words extend outside the realms of common usage but is still valuable.
"Mal?" Ben appears from the bedroom, rushing to grab his coat on the wall, "Do you know where my cell phone is?"
"I think you left it on the table over there," Mal leans forwards and twists around to see it from where she sits on the couch, and Tyler lets out a horrified gasp.
"Mommy!" He wheezes as his arms still around Hades's neck, "Why do you have so many owwies?"
Ben stumbles while pulling his shoe on and knocks his elbow into the wall. Hades looks up, glances over his daughter's back, and his mouth drops open. Mal's face flushes deep red as she leans back into the couch, hiding the white marks across her back from view. In the end, it's Zach who speaks up. "They're from Grandma, Tyler," He says without looking up. "They're scars - they occur when the dermis layer of your skin is damaged."
"What?" Mal asks as she reaches for her coat and pulls it back on.
"The dermis?" Zach looks up. "It's the deepest of three main layers of-"
"Sweetheart, how do you know about Mom's scars?" Mal interrupts his explanation. She shoves the coat over her shoulders with a deep frown and buttons it back up. Ben winces from the side of the room.
"I just guessed," Zach shrugs. "Because Grandma used to hit you."
"Hit you?" Hades repeats softly, and Mal glances back and forth between the two boys.
"Who told you that, Zach?" She demands.
Ben takes in a hissing breath. "Mal, that was me," He calls. "He heard you talking about Maleficent and asked me about her. I watered things down, but..."
Zach furrows his brow then. "You lied?" He asks.
"No," Ben shakes his head. "No. I just didn't tell you everything because that's Mom's business and because I don't think you'd like to hear." He glances to the side at Mal. "Sorry," he mutters.
Hades stands up, shrugging off Tyler, and stares at Mal's coat as if he can see through it. "Those were some long hit marks!" Tyler exclaims with wide eyes. "When I hit my hip against my desk, it only made a dark mark. Not a white one. And mine was only this big." He peers through a hole in his hands to accentuate his point.
"They're not hit marks, Beastie," Mal admits, picking up her scarf and avoiding eye contact with her father. "Mom just has lots of old cuts on her back."
"Cuts?" Zach asks.
"Cuts?" Hades echoes sadly.
"Ben, are you ready to go?" Mal asks through clenched teeth.
Ben nods, still looking guilty, and pulls on his second shoe. He retrieves his phone and then picks up Tyler to hug him goodbye. Tyler squeezes him and points at Mal over his back. "I want lots of cool marks like Mom!" He exclaims. "She looks like a warrior!"
Ben and Mal both wince, and Zach sets aside his book, looking very sad. As he's gotten older, he's gotten better and better at reading social cues, and he knows that whatever he just said, he's made a bad situation worse. He hugs Ben around his neck and then twiddles his thumbs as Mal pulls on her gloves and shoes and picks up her bag before giving her his second hug.
"Be good," Ben instructs the boys. "Mom and I will be back before morning. If you misbehave, Grandpa has permission to send the furies after you."
"That's right," Hades agrees weakly. "You don't want to meet them, huh?"
"I could take fury!" Tyler beats the air with tiny fists. "Bring it on!" But then Ben and Mal step towards the door, and he drops his act. "Wait! Mom! Dad!" Tears start leaking down his cheeks, and Hades has to grab him before he follows them or lights anything on fire. Whichever comes first.
Mal doesn't speak all the way down to the car.
Mal knows she's doomed to being a college mom before forty the moment Ben helps Zach out of the car in March. They're not enrolling him(yet), or letting him look at any of the extracurriculars(yet), or even talking about sending him here(yet). They're only there to talk to the dean of admissions, who wants to talk to Zach and get an idea of where he's standing with his education.
Zach looks around with wide, amazed eyes. Everyone is taller than him and carrying backpacks and stacks of papers and clipboards and cellphones. In his arms in his prized dictionary, his lucky blue pencil, and a little notepad Ben let him take from his desk for the day. "This place is so cool!" He says, craning his head to peer underneath Ben's arm at a large cast-iron statue of someone important who Mal doesn't recognize. "Dad, did you go to school here?"
"Nope," Ben replies, putting a guiding hand to the back of Zach's neck and navigating him around a couple of teenaged girls who are chatting on the edge of the sidewalk about how class was. One girl with long, brown hair smiles at Zach and waves at him before gesturing back down to her friends at an assignment she has open on her phone. "I went to Auradon Prep and then became king. There wasn't enough time for me to go to school. But since you're not on grade level, Mom and I thought we'd get you tested here to figure out when you might like to come."
"I like it here," Zach confides in them, leaning forward to see what's to see up ahead. Mal's toes curl into her shoes. Couples are making out and walking around with their hands in each other's back pockets. There are boys wrestling and girls putting on makeup and people she can't tell are boys or girls and shadowy, pale-skinned creatures who bob their heads to deathly tunes. There are things she doesn't want Zach copying yet.
Ben still plays the part of a king as they go. He knocks knuckles with people who recognize him and wave to people on the benches and moves a little slower on instinct if someone holds a camera up. They don't have any security around as people point phones at her and Zach either. Usually, if Mal is around, she's considered protection enough. Perks of being from the Isle of the Lost, but right now, Mal could do with some sort of guard to protect her baby from all the people here.
Ben opens the door to the main building and then finds a secretary who takes them back through several narrow, tan-carpeted hallways before the family pauses outside a grey door. Ben steps back and indicates Zach can knock. Zach wastes no time in stepping up and rapping his knuckles against the metal door A balding man with a bright smile opens it. He isn't surprised to see the royal family, sans Tyler, in the hall. He welcomes them all in, shaking their hands, and offers them all the seats in his office. There's only two, but he takes the cushioned, wheeled chair from behind his desk and offers it to Mal, insisting that he was planning on walking around a lot anyways.
"Well, Prince Zach, it's lovely to meet you," He starts, and Mal is thrown off-guard by her son's title. All the people who know him don't ever use it. Even in the courts, he's 'the prince' or 'Zach', sometimes with adjectives like 'little' or 'smart' thrown in front of his name. He's more commonly referred to as 'Ben's son' than 'Prince Zach', which has always irked Mal a little because Tyler has been described the opposite from the beginning. 'Mal's son', they refer to him, even though both children come from her and Ben. And Tyler looks like Ben has dyed his hair and taken on a new attitude... Zach has her face all mixed'n'mashed with Ben's. Ben's comment from day one has been about how everything from Zach's cheeks down is like someone copy and pasted her facial features onto his. His lips have gotten a little thinner over the years, but still!
"I've always heard you're the palace's little genius," the dean of admissions continues, "and I'm very excited to see how much you know today. You can call me Mr. Jensen."
"I know a Jenson," Zach whispers as he leans forward and shakes Mr. Jensen's hand. Ben's mannerisms. "Are you going to test me?"
"I will in a moment," Mr. Jensen replies. "You're going to take parts of four tests that we've combined into one for people like you. It'll go over English... math... science... and you'll be asked to write a little too. There's part of an International Bachelorette test, an Advanced Placement exam, an Auradon College Testing exam, and then a Scholastic Aptitude test. For the writing part, we're going to have you respond to two simple prompts from this school's admission essays."
"Can I see the prompts?" Zach asks, looking down to list the four tests on his notepad. Mr. Jensen chuckles.
"I have them here," he says, picking up a paper from his desk. He clears his throat and then begins to read aloud. "Describe a problem you've solved or a problem you'd like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma - anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution. And then the second is to describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?"
Mr. Jensen then looks over the tops of his glasses at Zach. "I have some alternates if you'd like them, but many of them are about problems you've faced before. We figured that these would interest you more and that you would have more to say on them."
Zach nods in understanding and doesn't ask to see the additional prompts. He continues scribbling on his little notepad while Mr. Jensen replaces the prompts in a little white folder that Mal assumes is for Zach. "When do I have to start?" He asks when he finishes writing.
Mr. Jensen pulls two forms from his desk and two clipboards from where they are stuck in a bookcase. "Unfortunately, Zach, we have to wait just a moment. Mom and Dad have to agree to let you take everything on the test. If there's something that they don't want you to test on, we might have to come up with an alternative."
Mal feels like both a powerful overseer and a lurking villain as she takes the clipboard from the aged Dean. She could always shake her head and say she doesn't feel comfortable with him taking such an advanced exam, but then she'd crush her little baby. She listens to Ben tap his pen against the clipboard as he thinks and tries to focus. She skims past the purpose and the procedure, then closely examines the risks, which have several bullet points she doesn't immediately like. "Your child will be tested on medical conditions and procedures including but not limited to cancer, chemotherapy, AIDS, Herpes, and HIV. Please notify the test administrator if you do not wish your child to respond to these questions." "Your child will be asked to respond to questions regarding reproduction in both humans, animals, and plants. Please notify the test administrator is you do not wish your child to respond to these questions." "Your child will be asked historical-based questions regarding race, class, war, gender differences, and major political events." Beside the last point, several scribbled notes have been added. "Formation of Auradon, Reign of Villainy, Isle of the Lost."
Mal opens her mouth about the same time Ben does. "Can we see these questions?" He asks with a raised eyebrow.
Mr. Jensen nods and then pulls a large testing booklet out of Zach's folder. He flips through it for a moment, then hands it to Ben and Mal, pointing to a collection of questions. Mal's head starts to pound. She glances at Ben, and he nods in affirmation before Mr. Jensen flips the page a few times. Mal glimpses a collection of Punnett Squares, which she remembers how to use, and some related questions on blood type and sex-linked diseases. Those are okay.
Mr. Jensen flips to the very back of the booklet and then backs off as they skim the questions. Mal sees questions regarding Belle and Adam's decisions to make the Isle, and then a few questions about what year the throne was passed on and what King Ben's first proclamation was about, and then a couple regarding the fall of the barrier and the effects of reopening Auradon. Most of the questions are pre-Auradon, though. Things about Kingdom revolts and different trends in different places and major discoveries 9and events.
"Those are all okay," Ben nods, sitting back and continuing reading the form. "He knows all of those."
"He does?" Mal asks, blinking a little.
"Yeah," Ben nods. "Well, not all of the medical conditions, but he's got the theories behind them. He'll be fine."
"He knows about Aids?" Mal feels her shoulders roll forward. "And Herpes?"
"He knows about pathogens and Helper T cells and how pathogens can lie dormant inside of your body," Ben replies, continuing to skim. "That's what they're asking about. The diseases themselves are just examples." He pauses, then looks up. "Pathogens are just viruses or bacteria. And Helper T cells mark them so your body can destroy them."
Mr. Jensen snorts a little as Ben defines the words for her. Mal feels her cheeks grow hot. Zach slumps back into his chair a little with a sigh. "Can I have a book?" He asks, eyeing the bookcase behind Mr. Jensen's desk.
"We're almost done, champ," Ben hums as he signs his name off on the consent line and dates it. He glances at Mal, who looks back down with a swallow. She reads through the confidentiality statement and then glances at the time duration.
"Four hours?" Mal asks, looking back up. "Four hours straight?"
"He'll take a half-hour break after the first two sections or at the one-and-a-half-hour mark," Mr. Jensen explains. "And he's allowed, because of his age, to go get water or use the restroom at any time. I'll provide a few snacks as we go too." He pulls from behind his desk a large plastic tub with graham crackers, juice boxes, fruit snacks, peanuts, and tiny oranges. Zach's eyes light up. "If he finishes early, then I'll call you and let you know."
"Do you want us to stick around and wait for him?" Ben asks, handing the form and the clipboard back to Mr. Jensen.
"Most participants test better without the pressure," Mr. Jensen shakes his head. "I'd suggest going out and finding something to entertain yourselves with while you wait without going too far."
Mal signs off her name and hands the clipboard to Mr. Jensen. He takes it with a nod and then turns to Zach, gesturing around the room. "Is this a good place for you to take a test?" He asks. "Or would it be easier for you in a classroom?"
"I don't know," Zach shrugs. "I've never taken a test before."
"Let's take it in the classroom then, so you can get used to it," Mr. Jensen decides. He opens a side door and Zach gets off his chair to follow him into a large room with many wooden desks lined up in a semi-circle with seven rows. "Pick anywhere you like," Mr. Jensen tells him, and then brings the tub of snacks in too. Ben and Mal hover in the doorway to watch Zach go to the left side of the front row and sit down to wait.
"You aren't allowed to talk to me at all during the test unless there's a problem with the papers," Mr. Jensen begins to explain. "These questions are all different levels from lots of different areas, so it's okay if you don't know them all. It's better to skip questions you don't know and come back to them later. One strategy a lot of students use is to pick a letter - A, B, C, or D - and then go back and fill in all the questions for that letter if they run out of time."
"Use B," Mal calls from the doorway, interrupting Mr. Jensen's spiel. She remembers that strategy from high school. Mr. Jensen laughs with a nod.
"I can show you where the restroom is when you need it. Please fill in the bubble on the sheet all the way so that the computer can grade it and we can tell you in two days what level you're on. Someone else will have to read the writing portion and tell us about it. Any questions?" Mr. Jensen crosses his arms as Zach thinks for a moment and then shakes his head. Mr. Jensen holds out his hand. "I'll have to take that dictionary away from you, son," He says. "You're not allowed to have it until the end of the test. Do you have a phone?"
"Not here," Zach pouts as he hands the dictionary over. "Please take care of it. It's important."
Mr. Jensen nods and then sets the dictionary down at the lecturer's desk at the front of the room, giving it a little pet to accentuate how it is safe. Then he looks back up at them. "You can leave whenever," he calls. "Just let yourselves out."
"Be good, Zach!" Ben calls, waving at their son. Zach waves back with a little smile, and then they step out of the room and leave the office into the hallway. Ben puts an arm around Mal's shoulders as she sighs. "He'll be okay," he assures her.
They wander out onto campus and through people and end up in a cafe somewhere while Ben checks through his emails and Mal drums her fingers anxiously, peering between her cellphone and a bell tower that rises above the main building on campus. Ben orders them lunch - sandwiches and shakes and cake for dessert - and then has to step outside to call one of his advisors about a file that was sent out incorrectly.
A song Mal has heard before starts on the cafe radio. It's very fast and catchy. She taps her foot along and then the baby kicks against her ribs in a sharp motion that has her wincing and grabbing her side to rub the hurt area.
Ben finally returns and puts his phone down with a sigh. "Sorry," he mumbles and then picks up a sandwich.
Mal shrugs. "Work has to get done," she sighs. The baby kicks again, making Mal groan. "Stop kicking me," she pokes her belly back.
"They like music," Ben chuckles across the table as his phone buzzes and he flips it back over with a sigh.
"What?" Mal raises her eyebrows and Ben looks back up, a little unfocused as he tries to remember what he'd said. Finally, it comes back to him.
"Oh, you always complain about them kicking when music is playing. I think we have a dancer on our hands."
Mal pinches her lips together as Ben goes back to his phone. "I hadn't realized," she mutters under her breath. Ben snorts and picks up her hand across the table. She squeezes his fingers as he finishes skimming the text and then flips the screen back over to gaze into her eyes.
"One genius, one dragon, and one dancer," he whispers.
"Tyler dances," Mal reminds him. "He was asking me if he could try singing too. So maybe we'll have a performer."
Ben snorts, squeezing her hand even tighter. "You're a great mom," he whispers. "I'm glad I picked you."
Mal blushes a little. "I'm just glad that I turned out okay. I honestly was afraid I'd lose control and hit them or scream from time to time."
"No, that's me," Ben rolls his eyes. "But it's okay. We're both doing well. Everything will be okay."
Mal nods in agreement, though her mind jumps back to that classroom where Zach may or may not be struggling with his test.
Four hours later, they pick him back up. His face is red with barely-contained frustration and his pockets are stuffed full of gummy bears and fruit snacks. Mr. Jensen looks amused as he files Zach's responses for someone to read and grade. "He did well," he explains. "But his knowledge isn't un-emcompassable - he was very frustrated with not knowing enough about definitions or terms to answer a question even if he knew the theory behind it." It turns out that Zach had actually needed the full four hours, and he still ended up filling in a lot of 'IDK Letter B's'. He practically seethes as they walk back down to where they parked the car and get in to go to the palace. Ma isn't surprised when he begins to complain as soon as all the doors are shut.
"I didn't know what the options were for the cancer questions, so I had to guess!" He says, crossing his arms and stomping his feet into the floor of the backseat. "And I didn't know any animal hormones or about the endocrine systems, and I didn't know what the Hilbert problems were and two of the English problems asked the same thing and I couldn't answer because they both used the word chimerical." He flips through his returned dictionary while Ben pinches his lips together in amusement. Mal, too, finds it funny that he's so riled up about not knowing things, but she understands. After all, she just spent four hours worrying about exactly how much he does know compared to her.
Mr. Jensen brings Zach's reports up to the palace personally two days later. Zach is in the library when he comes, so Ben and Mal decide to get the rundown first and then take the information to Zach. So they gather in Mal's office as he unloads a few comprehensive reports with a small smile.
"This is his English scoring," he says first, showing them a few bar graphs of knowledge standing based on the averages of other age groups, and Mal's heart aches to see Zach's indicated line up in a sophomore level of college. "And that's also his highest score. Meanwhile, his Science and Math..." he puts down two more graphs, and these are only slightly more reasonable. Science dips into a ninth or tenth-grade knowledge, but a scribbled note reads: "Account for youthful lack of term knowledge - 11th grade." Math reads at a solid tenth-grade mastery level. There's one last paper that groups together general history knowledge, medical information, and then apparently her son knows some German and French? He's scored at the lowest comprehensive level for the two languages.
"I would honestly be comfortable to start him in with college classes if not for one major issue," Mr. Jensen says, pulling out the last paper. He slides it forward, and Ben begins to laugh while Mal processes what she is reading. "Your son cannot write very well," Mr. Jensen finishes. "He writes at a second or third-grade level."
A scan of Zach's question response sheet reveals two shaky lines of a very direct answer. He obviously didn't get the idea of an 'essay'. His handwriting shows the courage of someone who knows what they want to say but holds the shakiness of someone whose hand isn't trained to writing very nicely or for very long amounts of time.
"He's also not quite as mature as he thinks he is," Mr. Jensen continues with a shrug. "He gets frustrated and his attention span isn't very long and he gets distracted easily. But that wouldn't be a huge deal, necessarily. We just have to get his essay writing up to scratch and he'd be fine."
"We'll talk," Ben decides, glancing at Mal. "We might hold off a while. He needs to be a kid for a little while longer and I don't want to push him towards this. If he wants to go, I have nothing against it, but it's not my goal to push him through college yet."
Mal nods along with him. She's more than okay with waiting, and now she has a good cover.
"Are you really thinking of sending him to college?" Evie asks Mal and Ben while all the VK's sit together in the palace library, talking to each other. Mal hums and combs her fingers through Zach's hair. He's sitting beside her and reading a book on unleashing creativity. It's an interesting read for him - he usually doesn't like self-help books.
"Not yet," Ben shakes his head. "He can't write well enough yet. But we're keeping an eye on him and we'll see."
Zach yawns and curls into Mal's side while he reads. In her lap, she's balancing a sketchbook at an angle so she can see the bottom of the paper around her belly. This baby is bigger than Zach was but smaller than Tyler was. Mal's hoping they're a good mediator between the two boys. They don't seem as temperamental, but she could do without the dance parties in her belly every time she's near music. The baby almost tipped her over yesterday with several sharp kicks to the right side of her stomach.
The door opens and Tyler appears in the doorway. They put him to bed a while ago, and so Ben frowns to see him. "Mom?" He whines from the door, flinching away from his dad's stern gaze, "I can't sleep. Can you come sit with me?" He rubs his eyes a little and then Mal noticed his black, weighted blanket pulled over his shoulders like a cape.
"Not now, beastie," Mal hums, adding a long, thick line to her drawing. "But you can come sit with mom as she finishes this. Then I'll come and take you to bed."
Tyler tugs his blanket into the room and comes to hop up next to her. He pulls his blanket up and Mal sets her sketchbook down to help him pull the edge up around his ears. Evie chuckles from across the room as Tyler tucks the corners of his blanket around her legs in a show of goodwill.
"Former mistress-of-evil-in-training turned pillow," she calls as she cuddles her own children to her chest.
Ben rolls his eyes at Evie's description. He loves moments like these when he can see how close his boys are to their mom. He watches Tyler put a hand to his mom's belly and frown. "The baby is kicking me," he complains. "Can you tell him to stop?"
"If only it worked like that," Mal sighs as Zach closes his book and leans his head on her belly.
"Baby," he mumbles softly, patting right beside her belly button. "Kicking isn't nice. Don't kick mom anymore."
Miraculously, the fleeting in the side of her stomach ceases. Mal raises her eyebrow at her oldest. "Oh, of course they'll listen to you," She sighs. Zach curls into her even further and closes his eyes. The other adults laugh as she rolls her eyes and then combs her fingertips up and down Zach's back until Tyler whines and presses his head into her. She keeps drawing aimless patterns on Zach's back while using her other hand to start combing through Tyler's purple locks while both boys lean against her belly like it's a pillow.
"Careful," Ben warns as Tyler closes his eyes. "They're going to go to sleep on you."
"You can help me carry one of them up," Mal replies and then yawns. She closes her eyes and hears Ben stand up. He pulls two more blankets up out of a chest and then she hears him flap them out before one that's thick and fluffy falls over Zach's frame and covers one of her hands. She pulls it out to keep rubbing his back through the blanket and then a woolen blanket falls over her chest and legs. Ben lifts Tyler's head onto the blanket. Despite what he said about not being able to sleep, he's out cold. Zach manages to move his own head, but by the time Ben leans down to kiss the crown prince's forehead, Zach is snoring softly.
Mal peeks out underneath her eyelashes to watch as Ben kisses Tyler's head, tilting his son's chin up so he doesn't start drooling on her, and then kisses her cheek before returning to his seat on the couch with Evie and Doug and Carlos and Jane and Jay. Mal keeps her eyes closed, humming to both of her children and quietly petting them.
"Back when we were teens, I never thought she'd be a good mom," Carlos hums.
"Oh, she's fantastic," Ben replies. "Did I tell you about her Christmas fiasco? She surprised them with origami decorations on their presents. They were thrilled."
"I'm glad she's good at what she does," Evie sighs and Mal can hear her brow in closer to Doug. "It gives me hope that I can do something right."
"You do plenty good," Doug sighs. "You just don't let yourself see it."
"Mal's the same way," Ben says with a groan. "I kinda left this out, but the Christmas present thing? When I told her that it wouldn't matter in the end, she said that if the kids turn out as evil as Maleficent then at least she could say she tried to wrap their presents nicely at Christmas."
"I'm still awake, Ben," Mal made a face in his general direction. "I can hear you."
"Evie had a breakdown when someone gave Lexi makeup. It was a kid's set, but she started crying about how she was turning into her mother."
"Mal always has a tough time when the boys ask her about the Isle of the Lost."
"Wait," Jane interrupts with a tiny gasp. "Are they already asking about the Isle?"
Mal groans and covers both Tyler's and Zach's ears. She's positive they're both fast asleep, but it makes her feel better. "Zach is," she sighs. "Tyler doesn't care yet. He'll ask questions if Zach brings something up, but he doesn't care yet."
"Zach told Hades and Tyler that Maleficent used to hit her," Ben sighs, and Mal opens an eye to watch him pinch the bridge of his nose. "And then we were trying to explain it to him, and he asked if she'd been abused. I didn't even know he knew what that meant."
"He looked me up on his phone," Mal calls, closing her eyes again. "I was looking through his history and he was searching through my old interviews. But he was filtered out by our family system, so he didn't end up reading anything."
"That's scary, " Evie whispers. "I thought I had a few more years."
"I don't even have the years I thought I'd have with Zach!" Mal complains. "He's like a forty-year-old stuck in a seven-year-old's body!"
"You probably still have time," Ben consoles Evie. "But Zach? He's trying to study AP Physics and I'm completely lost."
"That's funny, considering he's your son," Jay laughs and Mal opens her eyes to frown at her old friend as he leans over to shove Ben's arm. "No way those genius genes came from Mal."
Ouch. Mal fixes the blankets around her and the boys as she glares at the carpet. She can't exactly fault Jay even as his words cut deep and sting because she thinks the same thing at least twice with every question Zach has.
"That is not true," Ben hisses, smacking Jay's hand off his arm. Mal lets her gaze flick upwards but doesn't say anything as she tucks Zach's blanket around him tighter. "Just because she didn't have a lot of school time doesn't mean she's not a fast learner. Zach's reading might come from me, but his memory is hers."
"Ben," Mal shakes her head. "He's right. I've accepted it." Sort of.
"No, he's not right," Ben snaps back, glaring at her now. "Don't you dare think that."
His voice doesn't exactly leave a lot of room for argument, but Mal still clears her throat and acts as if this entire conversation isn't hurting her. It's almost as if they're discussing whether or not she's Zach's mother after everything she's gone through with him and how hard she's tried and all the love she has for him in her heart. "Ben, he was four when he first realized that you know-"
"Don't finish that sentence," Ben shakes his head at her.
"You were the one defining things for me at-"
"Mal, go to sleep."
She sighs, opens her eyes long enough to roll them and then lets herself sink back into the couch, cuddling both of her beautiful little boys to her chest. She hears the conversation start back up - Ben starts regaling everyone with tales of the boys' winter recitals. Tyler did a hip-hop dance with his department and Zach had a solo riff in his guitar lessons. He's been talking to them about learning to play the piano lately. She lets the background noise fade into a low buzzing and then slowly feels herself drift off.
She feels herself wake back up hours later when Ben picks Zach up off of Mal and carefully wraps the blankets around him before carrying off. She slowly gets to her feet, yawning, and then gathers Tyler up in much the same way.
When she puts him into his messed bed, avoiding his toys on the floor, she takes the time to kiss his head and tuck the covers around his body. Purple hair sweeps up at odd angles on his pillow, and she can see the lightning-shaped buzz cut he asked for in the side of his hair. Her baby boy. The one that looks and acts like her. Her three boys are her whole life, and she wouldn't have it any other way.
Tyler bursts into a meeting that she and Ben are sitting in on. His shirt has white marks up and down it and more white streaks that look like they're from a chalk marker cover him. "Mom! Dad!" he shouts upon entering and dashes up to the head of the table as everyone jumps and spins around. "Look at me!"
"Why do you have white all over you?' Ben asks as he turns in his seat in obvious alarm.
"Did you get into Mom's paint markers?" Mal demands, seizing his arm and rubbing at the white marks on his arm. "You did! Why were you in my studio?"
"Look, mom!" Tyler proclaims, showing them his arms and pointing to sparse marks up and down his skin. "Now I have battle marks like yours!"
Silence overtakes the room as Tyler keeps an index finger on a smudged line on the inside of his elbow, waiting for praise. A few court members let out breaths as they connect the dots and realize what "battle marks" Tyler means.
Ben seizes his son's arm and uses his leg to push his chair out. Mal's face is burning as the other royals exchange cautious glances between her and Tyler. "Cover me," Ben orders, and marches Tyler to the door quickly. It's open because Tyler burst in and didn't close it. He pushes him out into the hall and Mal can hear his stone-hard voice start to lecture their younger son before Ben closes the door behind them and then the meeting can proceed as normal.
Except now no one will meet her eyes and the marks on her back are burning even though they're almost twenty years old.
"But Mom! I just wanted to look like you!" Tyler whines as he flops his head against his pillow. Mal sits down on the bed with a sigh to talk to him.
"That's not a good way to do it, Beastie. Mommy doesn't like people knowing she has those marks."
"Why? They tell everyone that you can kick their butts!" Tyler wrinkles his nose up as he starts to howl. He's still perturbed by Ben hauling him into the bathroom and scrubbing off every mark with a loofah, leaving sensitive skin behind.
"People already know that, Tyler. Those marks just tell them that someone hurt me. When you came in today, you told everyone that I had been hurt." Mal struggles to explain. Zach understood from the beginning that you don't talk about things that hurt other people, but Tyler struggles to understand the concept.
"But it was a long time ago!"
"But it still hurts me, Tyler."
"Maybe you should get over it." Tyler crosses his arms and glares at her. Mal sighs and struggles to keep a biting remark in the back of her throat. 'Isle remarks' she calls them. Things she would say if she'd never left.
"Maybe you should be more kind," She responds instead, rising to take her leave. She'll try again tomorrow when he's hopefully calmed down more. Unfortunately, Tyler jumps up, scrambles to the end of his bed, and shakes the footboard on it as he starts to scream after her:
"You're not kind! Dad's the nice one around here! You're just the mean, nasty, stupid dragon!" He leans from side-to-side to ram the bed into the wall and Mal waves her hand at it so he can't damage the sheetrock. That only incites him to drive it harder against the wall.
"Goodnight, Tyler." She flicks the light off.
"If you want to die then go ahead because I won't care!" Tyler screams with giant crocodile tears streaming down his face. Mal moves to close the door quickly to hide her tears, but a large hand appears in the center of the door and flings it back open. The handle slams into the wall and breaks off, clattering to the floor. Ben pushes her aside - not roughly, just guiding her over a few feet - and then blazes into the room and snatches Tyler by the back of his shirt. Her six-year-old lets out a piercing howl of protest that leaves her ears ringing. Ben growls right back. She's never seen him so angry. His face is so red and purple it looks like it's bruised over and swollen. He looks taller than he is with his big hands shaking like he's his own personal earthquake.
Mal turns away and leans against the wall, staring at the opposite side of the hallway as she hears a resounding smack echo from inside the room. Tyler's screaming cuts off and then he starts to cry. Meanwhile, Mal covers her ears and closes her eyes.
She and Ben are not above spanking the children for bad behavior, especially when things like death threats come into play. However, it's never really practiced. Zach obeys and listens and is calm. Tyler is the opposite, but he more often needs time to himself or a stern look from one of them. Not a thrashing, usually.
She hears another sharp smack echo from inside the room and flinches. Is she a bad mother, for letting Ben punish their son for his temper tantrum? It's not like she's her mother, digging knives into them and punishing them for using their full names and yelling at them every moment of every day, but she has to wonder if she's allowing the cycle of abuse to circle around to her offspring, even if it is turning a little more slowly now.
It seems like years have fallen off her lifespan before she hears Ben toss their sobbing child into his bed, yank his covers over him, and stomp to the door. "If I ever hear you speak to your mother like that again," he snaps, seizing the wobbly, broken door handle as he starts to step back into the hallway, "I will spank you until you are black and blue. You do not get to say things like that to her."
He slams the door so hard that the handle, already broken on the other side of the door, flies straight out of his hand and into the opposite wall. He cusses at it as it lands back at his feet and then kicks it down the hall toward the living room before stomping away. Usually, he'd stop to reassure her, but she just assumes he's too far pissed to even be able to control his voice and so she turns in the opposite direction to let a few tears slide down her cheeks.
Several minutes pass. She listens to Tyler crying in his room into his pillow and then slowly his hiccups stop and there's only soft breathing. Ben comes back into the hallway to turn off the hall light but doesn't say anything to her still. She glances down into the hole where the handle used to be and, using the hall nightlight to her advantage, makes out Tyler's body. He's lying on his belly with his face buried in the pillow and his arms encircling it, squeezing tight. He looks like he's asleep.
Mal pushes the door open with her foot and steps inside. Not a movement comes from Tyler as she walks to the side of his bed, bends down, and kisses his forehead. He almost scares her senseless when he rolls back over, sits up, wipes his nose on the back of his sleeve, and then leans forward to kiss her cheek before lying back down.
"Goodnight, Tyler," she whispers, running a hand down his back before standing up.
"Night mom," he whispers, snuggling his face closer to hers. She starts to leave, but before she can get out the door, she hears: "I didn't mean what I meant. I'd be very sad if you died."
It's such a small comment, but it makes her eyes fill with tears all over again. She barely makes it out the door in time.
Mal's small family tumbles through the front doors, dropping everything as they go. Ben is already on the couch, finishing up some paperwork, but he'll be moving to their room or his office now that the boys are here. Mal trips over Tyler's shoes, uses her feet to push them aside, raises the jumble of bags she's carrying over Zach as he leans down to untie his laces, and drops everything behind the couch with an exhausted sigh. Ben shuts his laptop and stands up to kiss her. "Guess what I did," He smiles as he picks up a bag with milk and orange juice in it.
"What did you do?" Mal groans, struggling to work her swollen feet out of her shoes.
"I booked a family vacation for four and a baby on a cruise," he announces. Both boys look up.
"What's a cruise?" Tyler asks.
"We're going on a boat?" Zach demands.
"A boat!" Tyler claps his hands to his cheeks in surprise.
"When?" Mal asks, picking up a bag of fresh fruit and furrowing her brow. "I'm having the baby next month."
"Not until July," Ben assures her. "And yeah, I know that they'll only be two months old, but I thought that it might be fun to get out with Zach and Tyler before..." He trails off, giving her a meaningful nod. Mal sighs as Zach pulls his phone out of his pocket to plug in.
"Before what?" he calls, skimming notifications from games and the news app.
Mal sighs and takes a seat as Ben takes the small collection of groceries into their kitchenette. They still eat most meals with Ben's parents as served by the staff, but it's good to have snacks around now that the boys are getting older. "Well, when your essay-writing is better, Dad and I were going to see if you'd like to go take classes at Auradon Accelerated," she admits, rubbing her hands on her knees and clearing her throat so it doesn't feel as tight. "We'd probably book you for morning classes because Tyler is going to have after-school things. You'd have your classes all day while he does his things." Her second child is struggling with math, so he's staying after school for a half-hour to get help. A theatre program was looking for kids to audition for their summer season, and he auditioned and got a small part that gives him enough time to walk with a friend to the theatre from the school after tutoring. If he likes it, he might do the next season's shows too. If not, he'll keep going to dance after school even though some of his other friends have dropped the class and are moving on to things like music and karate and computer-gaming clubs.
"You'd still have to keep up the guitar," Ben calls from the other room, though Zach doesn't look too put-out at the prospect as he smiles and nods eagerly. It's been several years he's been taking it now, and while he's nowhere near a mastery level, he's extremely proficient after so many long hours of practice. "And if you want to do piano, we'd have to balance that too. But it's an option."
"You don't have to do a full schedule either," Mal cautions. "Remember, you have to sit in the class and listen to the teacher to learn everything. If it's too hard to sit for so long, then we'll take you out of it."
"What if I don't know enough?" Zach frowns, folding his arms as he considers everything.
"You might have to get some extra help," Ben replies, walking over and setting his hands on Mal's shoulders. "You might have to stay after to talk to the professor or use your phone to do some extra studying."
"But if it's too much, then we'll make you slow down," Mal says, reaching up to put a hand over Ben's.
"I think I might try." Zach puffs out his chest in determination. "I have a website that's helping me to write essays. If I practice, then I'll get good at it."
"Why don't you just stay home?" Tyler asks, rolling over the back of the couch and falling onto Mal and Zach. "That's what I would do if I were smarter than Ernie Sunshine."
"Who?" Mal asks.
"Albert Einstein," Zach corrects, pushing Tyler's head away from his. "He was a child genius like me. Except he went to school. I think he was very bored."
"Because he was smart?" Ben asks with a laugh while Zach nods solemnly.
"I'm not smart and school is still boring," Tyler yawns, rolling over his Mom's legs and then dropping to the floor. "Being smart is only fun if you don't have to go to school. Otherwise, it's just annoying. But either way, you're annoying if you're smart."
"We're going to be going to Motuni," Ben breaks in before an argument can start between the two boys. "Do you know who lives there?"
Hei-Hei!" Zach looks up with a mischievous grin on his face.
Tyler jumps up from the floor and flexes his biceps into the air. "Maui! he bellows.
"Moana," Mal deadpans. "She's the ruler of that kingdom. We were talking about Moana."
"But she's a girl," Tyler says, looking at them both in confusion. "I thought we were talking about boys."
Mal only sighs and shakes her head.
"Did you know that women were once forbidden to eat bananas in Motuni?" Zach asks as he reaches for his cell phone. "They also couldn't have pork or coconut."
"Coconut is gross," Tyler groans.
"That reminds me that we need to search your phone," Mal sighs. "We were supposed to do it yesterday before you went to bed and we forgot." She holds out her hand for the device and Zach puts it into her palm without a protest. He gets up and walks to the kitchen while Mal unlocks it and begins to skim his text messages.
"What are we gonna do in Motuni?" Zach asks Ben as he gets out a bunch of grapes. "Is this another work trip?"
"Nope," Ben replies, picking up his laptop and turning it around to show Zach. "We're going to go hiking and scuba diving and we're going to walk out in this bay area where you can see sunken ships. Mom's going to collect thousands of seashells for her art supplies and you boys and I are going to go fishing."
"Zach!" Mal snaps to a sitting position and turns to where her two oldest(Ben counts as someone she occasionally has to look after) are pouring over pictures of what their upcoming trip will look like. "Why were you searching for people getting pregnant?"
All of the color drains out of Ben's face. Zach shrugs. "I was wondering how you got the baby in you," he responds nonchalantly.
"Ben!" Mal holds the phone out to her husband with this very specific tone of voice. The tone of voice that says "You better fix this or I don't know what I'll do."
"What did you see?" Ben asks, taking the phone and searching through the history tabs. Zach, who suddenly realizes that he's about to get in trouble, sits down. Mal kicks Tyler's arm lightly with her toes and gestures for him to step out. He doesn't get the motion, so she takes him by the arm to the hall and whispers for him to stay out for a moment while they talk with Zach.
"I don't know?" Zach starts, trying to remember everything. "Most of the sites said the same things about waiting until ovulation and timing-"
"Zach!" Ben cuts him off, covering his forehead with one hand as he stares at Zach's phone in horror. "Why are you searching for this stuff?"
Mal looks over Ben's shoulders and immediately regrets it. Dozens of pornographic images are lined up on her son's cell phone screen. Ben scrolls by as fast as he can, but there's an entire page of them. More than that, when he hits the 'back' button on the browser, four more pages of other images are lined up after the first. Clearly, Zach did more than glance through them.
"Did I do something wrong?" Zach wonders, sinking into the couch and fidgeting. "I thought it was okay because the little block thing didn't come up."
"Why isn't he being blocked from these sites?" Mal snaps, wheeling around on Ben. "I thought the system we had would filter this out!"
"Most of these sites are medical sites," Ben responds, sitting down and looking a thousand years older as he catches himself up on what his son has been finding. "And these ones... I thought our filter would block these sites!"
"Which ones are the problem?" Zach asks, lip wobbling. "I've been reading some stuff for the last few days... most of it was at the library."
Ben sinks further into the couch, looking furious. He keeps scrolling. Most of the search bar history options make sense, but it was clicking on the 'related links' that led Zach to trouble. "How babies grow" turned slowly into "what happens during childbirth" before becoming "implantation and conception." Her baby wasn't meaning to stumble onto these sites, but he somehow ended up there anyway. Ben thumbs into Zach's settings and then to the internet browser. Mal seethes when she sees 'Block Adult Content' still enabled. Still not enough to keep everything away.
"It must have been the different WIFI network," Ben realizes under his breath. "I have the settings enabled from my phone... they must just block him from searching on our WIFI. Being at the library, he's not protected."
"Mom? Dad?" Zach calls and both parents finally look over at him. He sinks into the couch, looking ashamed, and his lower lip sticks out as he begs forgiveness with his eyes. "I'm sorry," he whines.
Mal lets out a breath. "It's okay," she murmurs, glancing at Ben as he pulls out his phone and starts researching for a different filter they can use. "It's not your fault."
"But," she thinks, "you're probably going to have lots of questions now. Questions I don't want to answer."
"Zach," Ben says, patting the seat next to him and then scooting over so there is room for Mal to sit on the end as well. Zach walks over and sits in the middle of them as Ben begins to type in the web addresses that Zach's been searching into a list of blocked websites his phone won't let him go on now. "Why did we let you have the phone?"
"So I could look up things that confused me and call you and mom," Zach responds, leaning into Ben's arm and watching his search history vanish as Ben deletes things, adding them to the blocked sites list.
"And so why would we put filters on your phone if we wanted you to be able to learn things?" Ben asks as he finishes and sets the cell phone down on the coffee table.
"So that I didn't see any blood or guts or scary things," Zach says.
"And?" Ben prompts.
"Bad things." Zach shrugs, glancing over to her for affirmation.
"That's right," Ben agrees, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingertips. "We don't let you look up things with blood and violence because we don't want you to have nightmares, and also because we don't want you to think it's okay to act like that. We don't let you buy things without permission because we don't want you to buy something dangerous to you. We don't let you spend too much time on your games because we know it's not good for your head and eyes to be staring at a screen all the time. Do you agree with all that?"
Zach nods and Ben takes a moment to put an arm around his son. "The things you were looking at aren't good for you yet. Adults don't usually tell kids all about them because we don't want to confuse or hurt you. If you had asked Mom and me, then we could have told you something that would have been easy to understand and that could have answered your questions. The internet doesn't know that you're an eight-year-old kid. It doesn't know how much to tell you."
"You would have lied?" Zach asks, furrowing his brow.
"No," Mal refutes. "It's a little bit like how Dad didn't tell you all about my scars. Some of the stories scare him, and they would have scared you. We're going to wait until you're a little older to tell you everything, but we'll tell you the basics because you asked."
"So, not lying, but still not being honest," Zach crosses his arms.
"No, it is honest. But it's also careful," Ben says. "Zach, did you talk to Tyler about how your day was today?"
"I said it was good," Zach shrugged.
"But you didn't tell him everything!" Mal blurts out, catching on to where Ben is going with this exercise. "You didn't tell him all the books you read or how guitar lessons were or about how many times you went to the bathroom or to go get a drink..."
"It didn't matter," Zach's face twists in annoyance. He doesn't like how he feels like he's the bad guy here.
"Exactly. He would have gotten bored or confused or started talking to you too much about it," Mal says. "And it's the same way. If we tell you everything, you'll get confused or you won't understand what we're trying to say. That's why we're keeping everything in small answers on this subject."
"Why is it so bad?" Zach asks, deflating like a popped balloon. "I was just trying to figure out how the baby got into Mom." He glares at Mal's belly as if it's what's caused the issue.
"That's not all that bad," Ben sighs, treading carefully as he tries to figure out what he wants to say. "But... there is a problem when you start reading about how people get pregnant and start looking at pictures. For one," Ben holds out a finger, "we wouldn't want you to try making a baby with anyone, though I think you're smart enough to realize why that's a bad idea. For two," another finger goes out, "we don't want you sharing that information with friends who aren't ready to understand it. Three, lots of studies have been done, and they say that looking at those bad pictures can do lots of things to your brain. For example, it can lead to low self-esteem and can hurt your relationships with other people."
"Dad just doesn't like them," Mal cuts Ben off. "You stumbled on one of the things he hates the most."
"I do hate them!" Ben snaps at her. "They're... self-indulgent! They encourage you to see other people as objects, not as people. It's a representation of lack of class and discipline and respect! Especially towards women!" He pauses to readdress Zach, who is looking between them in confusion. "Listen, I'm going to tell you now that it's not okay to treat other people the way they're treated in those... comics. Or pictures. Whatever."
"Ben, he's seven," Mal says, putting a hand on Ben's arm. "Calm down."
"It is never too early to teach children about how to respect other people," Ben refutes her, getting up and walking aimlessly around the coffee table. "Zach, what did you see?"
Zach shrugs, cheeks going a bit red. "Not too much," he mumbles. Mal notices, though, the way he's suddenly avoiding looking at either of them and it makes her stomach turn. "I mostly just read stuff and tried to look around the pictures for words."
"Read stuff like what?" Ben gets down on eye level with Zach. "Did it look like a science book or like a story?"
Slowly, Ben begins to tug information out of their disobliging son. He describes at first things he read about where Mom's baby is in her belly and when heartbeats first start and things like that. Then he starts admitting about how people put babies inside themselves and how to increase and decrease that risk and by the time he's gotten around to trying to explain the pictures he was looking at from his innocent seven-year-old perspective, Mal is convinced that the cell phone lying on the coffee table has ruined her baby forever. Ben doesn't seem as concerned as she is, but he didn't grow up on the Isle of the Lost where people were taken advantage of and parents let other villains into their children's bedrooms and...
Oh, wait.
This is another cultural difference, isn't it?
"Okay, bud," Ben sighs when Zach is finished. "From now on, I'd rather you ask Mom and I questions about babies and love and things that are right and wrong. The internet knows a lot, but it doesn't know what you need to know. Mom and I do, so come to us first." He sighs and looks at Mal, emotionally exhausted. "I don't think we have a lot of time left, Mal," He whispers.
Mal slumps when she realizes what he means. Oh. Her baby is growing up even faster than she thought he was. Giving him the phone... he's already halfway to independence.
What's school going to do to him?
Ben turns back to Zach. "You may not have your phone until Mom and Dad set up a new filter that will keep you safe," he whispers, and Zach nods and sighs in frustration. "Do you have any questions about anything we talked about or what you saw?"
Zach shifts back and forth and nods. "A few," he agrees. "I wrote them in my notebook."
Of course he did. Of course he would take notes. Of course. Mal feels like slapping herself. Ben, too, sighs. "You should go get them," he whispers. "Go get them, but let's talk in your room so that Tyler doesn't have to keep waiting in the hall." He glances up at Mal. "Does Mom want to be included in this conversation?" he asks.
Mal immediately shakes her head. "No," she backs off. "No. You handle it. Just... don't go too deep."
Ben nods and Zach gets up and goes to pull his notebook out of his bag. Ben squeezes her hand once and kisses her cheek before the two head out of the room with Ben's hand spread out between Zach's shoulder blades. Mal doesn't quite know what to do after that since Tyler has long since gone to play with his action figures in his room. So goes and curls up with the comforter on their bed while the sky grows darker outside and waits for Ben to sneak back in.
He does, right as the sky is getting dark, and whispers something about how the boys went down to dinner before lying down next to her and wrapping his arms around the comforter and her in a hug that his arms almost aren't long enough for.
"He okay?" Mal asks. Ben nods against her shoulder.
"He knows a lot of crude words now."
"Are we horrible parents for talking to him about this before he's even eight?"
"Better that he hears it from us than the internet or kids at school."
Mal breathes against the pillows and closes her eyes. Another reason to be afraid of Zach going to college.
"Did you know that more people have died in childbirth than in war?" Zach asks, combing his fingertips through Mal's hair as she sits on the couch, breathing slowly, nursing a glass of water as Ben grabs the last few items they'll need from the hospital.
"Zach, baby," Mal takes a deep breath and forces a smile. "That's not very helpful to Mom right now."
"Mom's gonna die?" Tyler exclaims from where he's sitting on the floor. One of his Li Shang action figures is riding his battered, abused, dirty dragon from Christmastime.
"No, Tyler," Zach rolls his eyes. "Mom's tough. And she's already done this twice before, so she's an expert."
Mal starts laughing, despite herself. She could have twenty kids and still not be an expert on this bullcrap.
"Done!" Ben announces from the doorway, swinging a bag over his shoulder. He rushes over to help Mal off of the couch. "Grandpa Hades is on his way. Until then, one of the servants are going to be supervising."
"Can I go?" Tyler shouts, jumping to his feet and tugging at Ben's shirt.
Ben pushes his hands away with a sigh. "Absolutely not," he declines firmly.
"But I want to see them take the baby out of mom!" Tyler howls. "I wanna make sure it's a boy!"
"You can see if they're a boy or girl when we bring the baby back here," Ben tells him.
Zach stands up. "Can I go?" He asks, quieter.
Ben huffs and begins to repeat himself before glancing at Mal. "I don't know," he huffs. "Can he?"
"I won't run around or make any noise!" Zach pleads as Tyler begins to squawk in protest. "I have my book and my phone and a charger cord. I'll sit in the waiting room and I won't make any noise or go anywhere without you knowing, I swear!"
"Can he be in the waiting room alone?" Mal asks Ben anxiously. This is, after all, the Crown Prince.
Ben shakes his head. "Sorry, bud," he pats Zach on the head. "We'd have to bring guards to watch you and it'll take another thirty minutes to get two up here."
Zach pouts. "Than can I follow you there?" he asks.
"I think you better wait here," Mal tells him. "Take care of Tyler for us and be nice to Grandpa. We'll be back soon." She kisses both complaining boys on the forehead as the door opens and Chip appears, panting. Ben begins to fill him in on how far out Hades is and what the family TV passcode is and where the snacks can be found.
"It better be a boy," Tyler snarls, poking Mal's stomach with a dirty look.
"So long as it's not a boy like you," Zach rolls his eyes. He begrudgingly gives Mal another hug. "Did you know that the first time a woman has a baby, her hips have to snap in two to let the baby's head through?"
"I could've told you that," Mal huffs in annoyance, "but it's still not helpful."
"I wasn't trying to be helpful," Zach says crossly as he takes a crosslegged seat on the armchair and pulls out his book. Mal frowns at him and grits her teeth. He's been in a... mood all week and it's starting to grate on her. Ben just says it's because his legs are sore from the growth spurt he's going through and also because Ben and Mal have been rather busy with last-minute prep of the baby and arranging for summer camps for Tyler. In short, he's feeling cranky, sore, and neglected. Which Mal, unfortunately, does not have time to address right now.
"Mal?" Ben calls from the door. He picks up their bag again and waits as she kisses Tyler's head one more time and then heads over to the door.
Zach kicks his legs up over the back of the chair and twists so his hair is falling over the seat of the chair. He cracks open his book, as he's still sitting upside down, and starts reading as Mal quickly thanks Chip and reassures him that Hades shouldn't be more than fifteen minutes away at this point. "Did you know that one out of every thousand babies are accidentally switched at birth? Or that you lose about a half-a-quart of blood during childbirth? Or that-"
"Zachary!" Mal finally snaps, balling her fists up and spinning around to pin her oldest underneath her gaze. Zach falls silent and looks away with more red tones in his cheeks.
Tyler pokes Zach's arm. "Who's the trouble-maker now?" He sneers. Zach shoves his hand away, and Tyler huffs so hard that smoke curls out of his mouth.
"Boys," Ben calls from the door and gives them both a stern look. "Be good, or you'll hear from us when we get home."
They shut the door behind them and then everything is a rush. A rush to the hospital, a rush to get checked in, and a rush with occasional pauses until it's late at night and they're finally making their way back up to their home in the palace.
In the living room, the television is rolling and Zach sits with his head against the coffee table, watching a game show that involves lots of random trivia. Hades and Tyler are curled up together on the couch, reading a book by the light of Hades's hair. Ben opens the door softly and then shuts it with a thud, causing all three to snap over.
"Mom!" Tyler shoves the book and the blanket he was cuddled under away from him and then scrambles to the floor as Zach rubs his eyes and yawns. He gets to his feet as Tyler barrels into Mal and squeezes her legs tightly. "You're back! Grandpa said we could wait up for you."
Ben sighs and sets the baby carrier down by the door. "Well, it's too late to ask Grandpa to send you to bed, but you still have to get up for school tomorrow." He ruffles Tyler's hair and then lifts the carrier's cover to unbuckle the new baby.
"I will. Where is he? Is he asleep? Did he cry a lot?" Tyler crowds over Ben's shoulder as Ben sighs and pushes the button to push the handle out of the way.
"Shh," Mal hums, running her fingers through Tyler's hair. "Not so loud, Beastie. Now listen, I know you wanted a baby brother, but it didn't quite work out like that. This is your baby sister."
"A girl?" Hades asks with a smile, getting to his feet as Ben lifts the little one out of her carrier to show off. "About time. Does she have purple hair?"
"She doesn't have any hair," Ben laughs and holds her forward to show Tyler.
Tyler crosses his arms and pouts. "I wanted a boy!" He whines. "Mom, I told you to have a boy!"
Mal shrugs hopelessly. "It just didn't work out like that, Beastie," she whispers and kisses his cheek. "But you're going to be a good older brother to her, right?"
"I don't think so," Tyler shakes his head. "Not if she cries a lot or likes dresses or if she's a smart aleck like Zach."
"What's her name?" Zach asks, stretching his arms a little as he walks over to them.
"She doesn't have a name yet," Ben whispers. "We have a few ideas but we weren't sure." He pats the ground next to him and nods to Tyler. "Tyler, if you sit down, we'll let you hold her before you go to bed."
Tyler wrinkles his nose up and turns away on his heel, looking much like Mal does when she decides she doesn't like something. "No thanks!" He exclaims. "I'm going to bed. Goodnight." With one last hug to Mal's legs and a hug for Grandpa Hades, he ignores Ben and the new baby and walks away. Ben can't keep in his sigh of exasperation as Hades laughs.
Zach peers cautiously around his grandfather as Hades walks up to examine his daughter's latest offspring and give her a comforting hug. She looks about ready to fall asleep for a thousand years. "She looks good," he congratulates her with a kiss to her temple. "I could do without all of him-" he gestures to Ben with a teasing smile "mixed up with her face, but she looks good enough." Mal laughs. The baby girl has her face shape, but her features are Ben's. Ben's round eyes and softer nose and the corners of her mouth turned up naturally into a smile as his do. Ben's detached ears and sure, she does have Mal's cheekbones, but then Ben's chin and Ben's rounded forehead, just like on Tyler's face.
Ben watches Zach creep up closer and laughs. "You can come see her, Zach," he invites. "You don't remember us bringing Tyler home, huh?'
Zach shakes his head and takes four more steps forward so he can lean down and examine the baby girl. His mouth falls open a little. "Oh," He whispers and then sits down on his knees beside Ben. "She's tiny."
"She is," Mal yawns. "You were point two ounces smaller, though. Tyler was the biggest out of all of you."
"It's because of all that empty space in his head," Zach dismisses casually, not ripping his eyes off of the newcomer. Mal claps a hand over her mouth as Hades lets out a guffaw. It's been a long time since she heard someone get roasted that badly.
"Do you want to hold her?" Ben asks softly. Zach nods eagerly. Ben demonstrates briefly how to balance her head and then sets her into Zach's lap for him to further examine. Zach looks both terrified and amazed as she settles into his hands with half of her body on his lap. Ben waits to make sure Zach's got a good hold of her and then fishes for his phone to take a few photos. Hades ignites his hair even further to help light Zach up enough to get a clear shot.
"Oh shoot," Zach whispers, still staring down at his sister.
"What's that, sweetheart?" Mal asks, leaning down a little to hear.
Zach looks back up at her with a terrified expression. "This is gonna be hard!" he exclaims. "She's too small to take care of herself! What're we gonna do if she gets hurt?"
Mal laughs again. "Well, baby, that's why she has us. We're here to protect her until she can take care of herself." She kneels to trace the baby's features with her fingertips.
"No, mom, you don't understand!" Zach protests. "She has to grow up and get friends and do things she likes but I don't want her to! She's gonna get hurt!"
Ben snorts and Hades shakes his head. Mal nods with pinched lips as she tries to contemplate a response. "Well, everyone has to grow up," she sighs a little, glancing at her husband as he gives her this little "Ha-ha, I-told-you-so" look. "Now you know a little how I feel about you."
Mal holds her hands out, offering to take the baby back from Zach, but he jumps back and a tiny, feral growl escapes his throat. Mal withdraws, holding her hands up, and leaves little seven-year-old Zach to marvel at his sister on the floor. Ben pulls her into an embrace as soon as she's back on her feet. "At least he likes her," he chuckles.
"What names were you thinking?" Hades asks, crossing his arms as he waits patiently for his turn to hold the baby.
Mal yawns and then begins listing on her fingers. "Collette, Avery, Charlotte, Olivia, Claire..."
"I still like Belle," Ben whispers aloud. "I think she looks like a Belle."
"I don't know if I want to have two people in the family named Belle, though," Mal grumbles. "Maybe as a middle name. We were also thinking Marie..."
She trails off, trying to remember her list, and closes her eyes as she leans further into Ben. The only sound is the crackling of Hades's hair and Zach's tiny whispers as he speaks to the newborn in his lap. Mal puts a hand up to rest against the back of Ben's neck, where she runs it through his hair carelessly until she hears Ben snort and focuses more on what her baby is saying to little Fae.
"... big brother. I'm the cool one - you don't need to worry about Tyler. He's crazy. Dad says he'll mellow out. Wow, you're so little, Belle. I have books that are bigger than you!" He puts his finger in Fae's tight grasp. "Hello, Belle. I'm sorry for all the crazy you've had to listen to lately. I swear most of it was Tyler. Hopefully it was pretty quiet inside of mom. Hopefully you don't mind noise too much because Tyler can be pretty wild. Hello, Belle..."
"Baby," Mal calls, opening her eyes back up to raise an eyebrow at Zach. "We haven't named her yet."
Zach glances up cautiously through his bangs and then looks back down at the baby. "Well, I'm gonna call her Belle for now, and maybe if you don't name her Belle then I'll change it."
Ben bursts into laughter, kisses Mal's neck for a second, and then lets her go. Hades chuckles in laughter. "Like it or not, Malie, I think you have a Belle in your family."