A/N:

Luiz4200: Who do people in Auradon think Mal's father is?No one particularly cares, no one asked in three movies. To them she's the daughter of Maleficent and that's all that matters

The Fire Within

Age 15

The stomping woke me up. I groaned and covered my head with a pillow.

Then the tambourine started.

"Time to get up, Mali."

"What time is it?" I continued to groan, rolling over I tried to block out my torture.

"Just after six."

"Six!" I threw a pillow at him.

Dad only laughed.

That only hurt my head even more.

"What are you doing?" I gritted my teeth, with my pillow gone I had no way of blocking the sound.

Dad did a turn, slapping the tambourine against his thigh. "Teaching my fifteen-year-old daughter a lesson."

I knew the lesson.

"Okay, okay, I've learned my lesson, can I go back to sleep now?"

He grinned. "Poor Mali, are you sad?"

"Just angry and tired. Stop. Please."

He didn't. Not once did he stop playing that bloody tambourine.

Present

There was a crowd gathering in the square in front of the arch of the broken bridge off the Isle. There was a limo waiting. I'd never seen one in person before, only grainy pictures on the Auradon news channel, the only signal that made it through the barrier. Royalty had fleets of them.

I was surprised it hadn't been pillaged already. Only a single man in a suit and sunglasses stood guard.

No one touched him.

No one would.

No one wanted to risk the wrath of Auradon. On the Isle they were already paying the price of crossing King Adam and his royal friends. They didn't want suffer a worse fate.

I approached alone but I knew his eyes were on me, protecting me and making sure I got away safely. I would miss his watchful eye.

The others, in one way or another arrived with their parents. Carlos was fleeing from his mother, who was yelling at him about fluffing her hair before he went. The Evil Queen was putting the finishing touches on Evie's make up and giving her last-minute advice on how to snag a prince (with a big castle and a mother-in-law wing). Jafar coached his son on the finer points of stealing from the rich (start small, things they wouldn't notice and work his way up to the big score). The long con he called it.

"Bring home the gold!"

"Bring home a puppy!"

"Bring home a Prince!"

Dad's gaze wasn't the only one I felt trained on me.

I looked up to see my mother watching me from her balcony. She glared. I knew that look. I'd seen it a lot in the first five years of my life. It never ended well.

I risked a look around the crowd, seeking the familiar spike of blue hair. I couldn't see it, he liked to hide in the shadows.

I got into the limo.

Carlos and Jay were already digging into the food in the bowls around the car. Carlos' face already smeared with a brown substance I could only assumed was the fabled chocolate we'd heard the adults wishfully dream about when they reminisced about the good old days, usually when they had a little too much of Dr Facilier's poorly distilled vodka.

I'd tried it once. It put me off alcohol for the rest of my life.

Dad had had a good laugh at the hangover and spent the day on his tambourine, almost splitting my head open, to teach me a lesson.

Jay hadn't been so deterred and quite happily stole a bottle or two from the Voodoo Man from time to time.

Evie was checking every angle of herself in a hand held mirror. I knew most of her collection. I hadn't seen that one before.

She saw my stare and smiled. "Mum's magic mirror." In the stories it had taken up an entire wall, I was not convinced and Evie saw it. "It's not what it used to be, okay. But mum says it'll do the job just the same."

"The job?"

"Getting the wand, of course. Getting our parents off the Isle."

Carlos nodded and tried, and failed, to speak through a mouthful of food. Whatever he tried to say Jay nodded in agreement, his mouth full of food as well.

Somehow my mother had roped my friends into her hair brained scheme. "Oh, that job."

The message she sent was clear. If I didn't get her the wand, I wasn't the only one who would be punished. I could protect myself from her, and I couldn't dad would. But I couldn't protect everyone, not from her. If I asked, dad would try, but he couldn't watch all four of us every hour of every day. Somehow, she would slip through.

Friends were weakness, that was what she had tried to teach me as a child. Now she was proving to me that she was right. In the worse way possible.

But dad's voice countered as the limo began to move.

Protect your friends, your minions, and they will protect you. Anyone else just had to get out of your way.

I needed to protect my friends. No matter the cost.

We rolled towards the bridge.

And the straight drop into the ocean below.

"It's a trap."

We screamed.

We didn't fall.

I felt us passed through the barrier. Heat coursed through my veins. The fire that dad had promised.

I wanted to burn. The fire begged for release.

Keep it in check.

Dad's voice echoed in my mind as easily as it echoed through the mine.

A full-on burn and they'll figure out who, and what, you are.

I pushed the fire down, but I didn't let it go out.

I heard another voice. One that had whispered to me since I was a child.

Mali.

Mali.

The Ember.

Its magic finally free from the Isle's curse.

Fire and ember.

My father's gifts to me.

Mother was right; I was my father's daughter.

A/N:I've always wondered what it would have been like for the VK's with magic like Mal and Uma to first step off the Isle and be exposed to their powers for the first time.

Personally one of my favourite Hades flashbacks. I can just imagine him dancing around in the mine. Let me know what you think.