Wow look at me crawling out of the woodwork.
It's with a heavy heart that I'm updating today, with the recent passing of Cameron Boyce still so fresh in my mind. He was an incredible young actor and his love and passion for life came through in everything he did, and I still can't believe that he is no longer part of this world.
He will be missed, and loved, and remembered by all of us.
That being said, the last thing I want is for this story to go unfinished and so I will still be updating, it just might take a bit to get my thoughts together on just how things will progress. Bear with me, and thank you to those who have stuck it out and made it this far!
As always, make sure to heed the Notes!
To the reviews, shall we?
Nyehhhh: Sorry about the confusion, though I am glad you enjoyed the chapter! I can't promise you won't continue to be confused, though that it what happens when you're dealing with an unreliable narrator. ;) But I hope you will continue to read and enjoy!
Guest 1: Thank you for leaving a review! In answer to your questions, it's a bit more of the latter. Mal is still very much the head of the group, but she is deferring to Evie in this instance/for the time being, and following the other girl's lead, which is huge for Mal since being in control of things is so important to her. It's a huge sign of trust and so we will see how the dynamics change from there.
As for Elsa, her attitude towards Isaac isn't all that it appears to be. Isaac is very much an unreliable narrator, and so his perception of things tends to be a bit skewed, for better and for worse. In that particular scene, he was remembering all the different 'versions' of Elsa/The Snow Queen that he had experienced, and wasn't 100% aware of Elsa as she was. She is far from cruel, though she does tend to be unforgiving towards those that present a danger to her family and people.
I'm glad you're enjoying this story and I hope you will continue to read and enjoy! :)
Descendants5HLM: Hey! It's ok that you didn't review the last chapter, I'm just glad to hear from you this chapter. :) I'm really glad you liked dominant Evie, lol. I was really proud of that moment too, both for Evie for standing up to Mal, and Mal for realizing that she could/should rely on other people. For all the VKs' closeness to each other, they're still learning how to rely on each other outside of life and death situations, so it was really fun writing Mal giving up control. I'm still not 100% sure of the direction I'll be taking for Jay's magic. I'm mostly playing with the idea of dormant magic for him, since Jafar's magical ability was granted to him and not innate/genetic, and only for a short time before he was made not a genie, but we'll see.
The biology teacher flashback was in deed a reference to Chad. And now I've made you angry again, haven't I? ;)
Thank you for your love of this story and your patience! I hope you will continue to follow along and enjoy!
Danifan3000: I am not following the events of the Maleficent movie for this story. I took the Moors as inspiration as I'm using a Gaelic/Celtic origin of magic, but the Maleficent in this story is very much the classic villain version, with additional inspiration/source coming from the Descendants movie itself.
Also you are correct in that there are very little fics showing Dizzy coming to Auradon with the VKs. I remember reading one or two but that was back in the very beginning of this fandom and I haven't seen any since. But never fear, you will be seeing more of Dizzy and the Sea Three later on, both in this story, and the inevitable sequel. ;) In the mean time I hope you'll continue to read and enjoy!
A: Thank you so much for your kind words! I'm glad you enjoy this story so much, and that you enjoy my darkness, lol. I too, was surprised at the lack of darkness in the fics, but I suppose it's due to the source being Disney. There are a few good fics out there though that I was definitely inspired by, but which have either been discontinued or otherwise hiatused. But those works include "Detours", "The Apple doesn't fall far from the tree", and one that has since been lost to time but the plot revolved around Chad attacking one of the VKs and was my sole fic for the 'Chad is a disturbed and misunderstood asshole' train until I wrote this story.
Also pretty much everything written by TheHarleyQueen and screaminginternally. Their works for Descendants are to die for and if you want awesome, good dark stories for Descendants then look no further. :)
As for where I get my darkness from, it is entirely within my own mind, haha. Some of the main inspiration comes from the fact that when I heard 'children of villains' and 'island of villains' I immediately thought it was going to be dark and edgy and full of the consequences and ramifications of all the terrible things these villains have done and would do to children, and was frustrated with the fairytale we got. So I decided to do what I would have done, and dig into the darkness and all that entails.
I love fantasy, both for the fantastical good and the fantastical bad, and how magic can bring about the depths of human desire and human nature. So the genre of fantasy/magical fantasy for sure is a huge inspiration to me there, as well as a few authors in particular whose style I enjoy and learn from. But the 'darkness' is all me and my own depraved mind, lol, though I am glad you enjoy it and don't run screaming like any wise person should, and I hope you will continue to read and enjoy! ;)
.princess: Thank you for the welcome back and the kind words! In terms of magic, yes, they all do have magic in their veins in some way and I'm definitely looking forward to exploring all of that. As for Isaac, technically yes, he is the most powerful magic wise in this story, but his Curse has made him unstable and unable to harness his powers the way he might have when he was at his full ability. But if it were to come to a straight fight between the two, Isaac would win because he would simply write Maleficent out of existence. ;)
I hope you'll continue to read and enjoy!
EvietoyourMal: Thank you for the review!
Jay was having a dissociative episode in the museum and having trouble staying in the present, and then on top of that experienced a flashback. Yeah, overall a really poor combo and the poor kid was just not having a good time of things. As for Mal, she's also having a tough time of things, realizing that she can't keep control of things like she had in the past, and her own traumas and issues are surfacing, just like all of the VKs are. It's going to be a fun and bumpy ride as things start being addressed, but it also means they're on the road to recovery/things getting better. :)
I hope you'll continue to read and enjoy!
Gracfully: I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter! I hope you'll enjoy this one too! :)
Random Reader: Thank you so much for the kind words! I'm really glad you're enjoying the story, despite my long absences. I hope you will continue to follow along and enjoy!
ceara1888: Lol, they definitely just need a break, but they've got a bit more crap to get through first. ;) I hope you'll continue to read and enjoy!
A2: Haha, don't worry about being late my dear, look at me. Bursting in eight months late. I don't think I can judge anyone at this point. Also I ask myself that every chapter. I still don't know. Pretty sure I black out and something else takes over, but the chapter gets written so I try not to question the process. ;)
Yes, Ben is trying but he's going to have a bit to learn before he can truly help. I'm glad you like my portrayal of Isaac though. I love the 'unreliable narrator' trope so much, it's one of my favorites when done right, and I had a lot of fun with his pov and playing with the unreliability myself. Also, you not being able to figure it out means I did my job right, lol. ;)
I hope you'll continue to read and enjoy!
Guest 2: Thank you for the review! I'm glad you enjoyed and I hope you'll continue to enjoy!
Guest 3: Thank you so much for the kind words! I'm glad you like my writing style and this story, and I hope you'll continue to read and enjoy!
Guest 4: Thank you so much! I'm glad you're enjoying this story so much and that you'll continue to read and enjoy!
Tiredandlazy: LAZY! Oh boy am I glad to hear your voice again…read your words again. Whatever. You know what I mean.
It is ok if you haven't seen the films, though I would highly recommend them now especially as the actor who played Carlos (Cameron Boyce) just passed away, and the films are now his last work/the last thing he starred in. But if the fantasy genre is not your average cup of tea then it is perfectly acceptable, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise, even me.
Moving on to the rest of your review, I'm glad I have your permission to psychoanalyze, lol. I've only just begun to read the books so I can't fully say for sure. I'm enjoying them for the lore and further backstory that they're giving me though, I can say that for sure, lol. (I know I use lol too much, shut up.) But you are correct, there is no better place for whump or wish fulfillment than fanfiction, and I am all too happy to provide!
No need to grovel for answers (though the sadistic writer part of me will accept your begging anyway ;)) I will give them to you darling. Carlos has Chad's cell phone. ;) The only contacts in the phone are his parents, Ben, and Audrey, and the text messages that Carlos read were from Audrey, in reference to the scene where Chad and Audrey spent a night together. (Platonically and entirely innocent, mind out of the gutter, Lazy.)
And absolutely no worries on not knowing. It's not something that's typically in most people's awareness circles. The gist of it is homophobia is where people, for a variety of reasons and none of them ok, hate/fear/discriminate against those on the LGBTQ spectrum for being LGBTQ. Internalized homophobia is where LGBTQ people hate themselves for being LGBTQ, typically as a result of being told that being not-straight is wrong, and have trouble accepting themselves and their identity. It can lead to all kinds of mental health issues like depression and anxiety, and can also lead to suicide.
It can also make people lash out for fear of being perceived as wrong, as is the case with Mal lashing out at Aziz and refusing to fully acknowledge her own past relationships, or her potential feelings for Evie.
ANyway! Heavy stuff aside, I will definitely keep up the song lists. It is not weird at all, I do the same thing when a fic has song lists, and even if it doesn't I'll find myself listening to a particular song and just thinking about how it can relate to the story.
I hope you will enjoy my latest bout of madness, and I look forward to hearing what you think!
Guest 5: Ask, and you shall receive! Lol, I hope you'll continue to read and enjoy!
Viv: Welcome to the story and thank you so much for the review and kind words! I hope you'll continue to read and enjoy!
Lavallen: Your pun is excused, although I do love a good pun, haha. ;) I'm glad you're enjoying this story and I hope you'll continue to read and enjoy!
Zee: Apologies that it took so long, but the next chapter is here and I hope you'll continue to enjoy!
BerserkBookWorm: Thank you so much for the review and the kind words! I'm really glad you're enjoying this story so much. There is a lot to go until the happy ending, but I will say that the beginnings of the journey to happiness are happening, though it doesn't look like it. There will be more of Mal and Daisha, including the inevitable falling out, and the dynamic is an interesting one for sure and definitely one of my favorites to write. Isaac and Carlos will be reunited, don't you worry, and Elsa's plot will be revealed soon.
As for the timing, the villains and kids would have been on the Isle for 14 years, and as part of the punishment, since the whole point was bringing the dead villains back to life to serve time in exile, the magic of the barrier prevents the villains from dying. The Villains from dying being the operative word there. Those on the Isle who are not villains aren't recognized as such by the magic of the barrier, and therefore are able to die. Which leads to all sorts of terrible situations as I'm sure you've realized.
I'm glad you're enjoying this story and I hope you will continue to read and enjoy! Let me know if there's anything else I can clear up for you. :)
Savannah9137: Thank you for the kind words! I'm glad you're enjoying and I hope you'll continue to read and enjoy!
Guest 6: Thank you for the review! I'm glad you're enjoying and that you like my Jane and Carlos interactions. I'm sorry it's fallen to the wayside but it's definitely an important dynamic that I will be exploring more, don't worry!
Guest 7: I have updated :)
Guest 8: Thank you for the kind words! I'm glad you're enjoying this story. I will say this, don't worry too hard. Elsa's portrayal is not all that it seems to be. She is still good, and I'm following the core of her characteristics. It's simply that the character that was interacting with her at the time (Isaac) is an unreliable narrator due to circumstances and so the way he views the world and experiences things isn't necessarily how they truly are in real life.
Regardless, I hope you will continue to read and enjoy!
Lscash: Welcome to the story and thank you for the review! I'm glad you're enjoying the story and I hope you will continue to read and enjoy!
Friendlypotato: Thank you so much for the review and kind words! I'm glad you're enjoying this story and my writing style and I hope you will continue to read and enjoy! :)
Nix: Hey! Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad you're still sticking around and I hope you'll keep reading and enjoying!
ThornyRose09: Thank you so much for the kind words! I'm really glad you're still enjoying this story and I hope you will continue to read and enjoy!
Kry Chi: It's so good to hear from you! I'm sorry it's been so long but I'm glad you enjoyed the last chapter! It almost makes me feel bad for all that happens this chapter….
I had to laugh so hard when I read your review because yes, I have seen OUAT and loved it (minus the last few season where I stopped cus I got mad about certain character decisions. Now that it's over I'm going to have to go back and binge from Season 1 and cry over everything again, lol) But yes, Isaac is the Author from Once Upon a Time, and I had intended him to be such from the beginning. It is a personal headcanon of mine that Isaac is Carlos' father, and so I'm thrilled to be able to portray that in this story. :)
And you are always so spot on with your predictions, like man! I don't even have to write anything do I? You just figure it all out! Yes, Arandelle basically became a sort of 'safe haven' for those who didn't fully agree with everything Auradon stood for, and Elsa did not join her kingdom to Auradon's and thus, did not send any villains to the Isle.
It looks like I'm going to have to try harder if I want to stump you, though the challenge is one I look forward to. ;) I hope you'll continue to read and enjoy!
Alright, Author's Notes!
The ***WARNINGS*** for this chapter include the usual, violence and threats of violence, language and some crude humor, implied and explicitly stated child abuse (physical, emotional, mental abuse), panic attacks and a dissociative episode, talk of therapy and therapists, realistic depictions and discussions of trauma and how it affects people, brief mentions/implications of puberty and implied/referenced assault.
Also be warned that there are two separate instances where a character panics/dissociates, and both the first and the final scenes (Jay's POV) heavily features a dissociate episode.
Be safe reading, and I hope you all enjoy and as always, I look forward to hearing what you think! :)
For those interested, the songs that inspired this chapter are: 'Do you feel it?' by Chaos Chaos, 'Sleepsong' by Bastillle, 'If I ever feel better' by Phoenix, 'Let the Flames begin' by Paramore, and 'Kara's Theme' from the Detroit: Become Human OST.
Chad
(It's all Jay's fault, when it comes down to it.)
He hadn't meant to be walking through the auditorium, but it was the shortest way to get to study hall, and he'd wasted about a quarter of the hour anyway searching for his cell phone. He'd had it the other day, and it practically never left his pocket. But he had been talking with Audrey more than usual (which, for the record, he also did not mean to do), and so he wouldn't be too surprised if he'd ended up leaving it somewhere else. [Like on a table, unattended, where anyone with less than ideal moral standards and more than ideal sticky fingers to find.]
So Chad was rushing to class because he was late, and if he was late again, and over something as 'trivial' as a lost phone, Fairy Godmother was going to put him back in detention, and that was the last thing he needed right now.
And so it's only fitting, he thinks, that he misjudge his distance from the door and his backpack snags in the frame. Only fair that he lose some books to gravity and the mocking, tugging door. Only poetically just that he has to scrape and scramble and curse after each textbook, and only all too horribly wrong that when he stands it's to a sharp hitch of breath that is not his own.
"The fuck?" he hisses, purely for the release of the sudden surprise, but then it turns into a more genuine hiss because Carlos is staring at him from the stage.
More specifically, Carlos is staring at him from behind some half constructed set on the stage, and the set piece itself is…moving?
"De Vil?" Chad mutters, then swallows when the boy bares his teeth at him in response. "Carlos," he corrects himself. "What…what are you doing here?"
Carlos' expression remains fixed, something between a snarl and a grimace curling his lips, but it's panic and desperation in his eyes; and Chad does the opposite of what is the obvious right choice here and takes a step closer to the stage. Carlos stiffens, curling closer to the- it looks like a stump of some kind- and fixes Chad with a glare.
"Well I'm only here cuz it's the shortest way to class, but um…you look like you're…not ok."
Carlos' eyes flicker to the set, then back to Chad, and Chad registers that while Carlos did look terrified, he was not, in fact, hiding behind the set as he'd previously thought. It's almost as if he's guarding it. The thought solidifies when Carlos signs, gesturing briefly to himself before tapping his thumb against his chest in a 'five' handshape.
[I'm fine.]
"Ok," Chad drawls, slowly sliding his bag off his shoulder and into one of the seats. "You're fine, but- someone else isn't, is that it?"
Carlos' jaw tenses; grits together, and a growl starts up in his chest. Chad stops just at the lip of the stage, recognizing the warning for what it fucking is. He didn't get paid enough to deal with this shit.
"Alright, I get it," he says in spite of himself, lifting his hands slowly in hopes that showing how defenseless he was would help. And not just for the target it put on him. "I can take a hint, I'm not that clueless. Most of the time."
Carlos' eyes narrow, but the growl stops, at least, and Chad slowly slides his hands down until they're at his sides. He wants to shove them in his pocket, but he thinks it might be taken as threatening, so he settles for resting them where his pockets are and just tucking his thumbs into them.
"So…you're ditching class because, what? Something freak you out?"
Again, Carlos' eyes cut to the set piece, and it's from his closer view that Chad can tell that it's not a tree stump, but a beanstalk. Or half of one, at least. It didn't technically matter, but Chad notes that it's tall enough to conceal more than just Carlos from view.
"Look, I didn't sign up for being a dog whisperer or anything de Vil, so if something's wrong and you want my help, fucking say it, alright? Otherwise I'm just gonna go to class like I'm supposed to."
He's about four steps away from doing just that when he hears scrambling from behind him, followed by:
"Cha-cha-chad, wait!"
He freezes, his brain tripping to an equally abrupt stop because did Carlos really just-? He turns, and Carlos is leaning forward on his knees, fists gripping the fabric of his (non-Auradon-uniform) shorts. The other boy looks almost as shocked as Chad does at having said his name, but then he continues.
"Please."
And Chad really didn't get paid enough for this shit.
"I'm waiting," he says, and Carlos' expression twists as he shifts back sharply onto his heels. Chad recognizes his mistake immediately and softens his posture, taking a step back towards the stage. "I'm here, Carlos. What…what do want me to do?"
Carlos' eyes flicker, and he rocks minutely, fingers fidgeting and wrinkling his shorts. Chad fights the urge to sigh, and instead places his hands on the edge of the stage.
"Am I allowed to come up?" he asks, and though Carlos looks incredibly panicked at his suggestion, his head nods jerkily, and Chad carefully hefts himself up, swinging his legs up and over the ledge.
Instead of immediately approaching the other boy, he sits there on the edge, crossing his legs beneath him, making sure his hands were still in view.
"Cool, so now what?" he says, and Carlos swallows, lips pressing tightly together as his eyes flicker again to whatever it was behind the set piece.
"I…I don't kn-kn-know how to…." Carlos tries, then stops, biting his lip.
Chad takes the liberty of moving forward, and though Carlos tenses at first, he lets Chad close enough that he can tilt his head and see behind the wooden set.
And…huh.
That's new.
"That's new," he says aloud, and Carlos whips his head up to glare at him sharply. "I said new, not bad," Chad protests, but he can't deny the part of him that thinks that this all too wrong.
Jay is not supposed to be cowering behind a rickety set carving of a beanstalk. Carlos he can handle, can understand and sympathize and coax. But this is Jay, and it is wrong.
"I thought the panicking was your freak out thing," Chad blurts, because it's all he can do when faced with this, and Carlos bares his teeth like he wants to growl again.
"Jay doesn't pppanic," the boys rasps defensively.
No, Chad thinks as he carefully shifts just a bit closer. No it didn't look like it. Not really. There was something off, though…the older boy too quiet. Too still. Too blank and distant and….
"Oh," Chad mutters weakly as it hits him. "Oh. Of fucking course he dissociates."
Carlos flinches, his eyes going wide. "Ho-ho-ho-how?"
And it's Chad's turn to stiffen, though he makes sure to keep his voice even, not betraying anything. "Just a guess."
"But you know-you know- you know Jay?" Carlos says, and it takes Chad a minute to realize what he means by that.
"No well I know what dissociation is," he fumbles, trying to figure out how to get out of this, how to resolve this without digging too much into the how. "But I don't…I've never had to…"
"Help," Carlos snaps, and though the word is clipped, there's a plea in there somewhere. "You- you have to..."
I don't technically have to do anything, the asshole part of Chad wants to say. I don't have any responsibility over a bunch of villains.
"What even started it, anyway?" the…other…part of Chad says. "Weren't you guys supposed to be in-?"
"Class," Carlos finishes with a brief nod, eyes flicking again in Jay's direction. "But I don't…I don't know wwwhhat-."
"Shit, I do," Chad mutters, and his stomach debates between clenching tight and turning. He remembers snapping at some of the guys from the team he'd overheard making jokes about…. Well he'd thought that was all it was, jokes. Until Ben had shown up looking like he'd just killed something. And then he'd found out about….
"This is about the-"
"Chad."
It's a clear warning note in his voice this time, and Chad nods his understanding even as he fights to keep his feelings in check.
"About Jay," he finishes instead, then sucks a sharp breath because- "Holy shit it's true, then?"
"Chad."
"Sorry. Fuck, I'm sorry I didn't…. I don't think I can help with something like this," he says, and Carlos lurches forward even as Chad shifts back.
"Ha-ha-ha-have to!" he cries, fingers just short of grabbing Chad's own. "You-you-re the only…."
"Look just because I have experience with one branch of freak outs doesn't mean I know them all."
"Asshole," Carlos growls, and the insult would hurt more if it weren't for the terror in the boy's eyes.
"How exactly do you want me to help?" Chad spits back instead, his voice just as frightened and urgent as Carlos.' "It's not like I'm an expert!"
"You do!" Carlos blurts, then grimaces, shaking his head. "Youyou know…you know how to…." He cuts off, his hands shifting through a flurry of signs too fast for Chad to interpret, but he guesses from the way Carlos gestures to himself what he's trying to get at.
"I mean I can try what I did for you but there's no guarantees that it'll work. This…it's…different."
So, so much more different than simply shitty and abusive parenting, but Carlos fixes him with a look in place of answering, and Chad can piece the meaning together well enough. He huffs a sigh and fights to keep his voice from betraying him more than his actions already were.
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell Mal that it was me if this goes horribly wrong."
"M-m-m-make sure things don't go wr-ong then."
It's said with more than just a small growl, and Chad thinks he would feel more threatened if it weren't for the fact that he was already terrified enough. He shuffles closer to Jay, who still hadn't moved or breathed, but when he reaches out his hand, Carlos twitches, and Chad finds himself shoved backwards, and he flings out his feet awkwardly to keep from tumbling off the stage. He snaps his head up in shock, though Carlos looks just as surprised, even as he places himself further in Chad's path, blocking him off from Jay.
"What the hell, de Vil?" Chad says, picking himself upright and settling back into a crouch. He's not as upset as he thinks he should be by what technically was another attack by a VK, but he's in 'help' mode and so he's more confused and wary than anything else.
"Touch makes it wo-wo-worse," Carlos mumbles, and though his voice is quiet, it's firm; his dark eyes flashing in warning.
"Duly noted," Chad replies, and Carlos grimaces tightly. Chad approaches again, slower than before, and keeps his hands at his sides, but the smaller boy doesn't move this time, remaining as a clear barrier between the two.
"Alright, so no touching then," Chad says, keeping his voice level with some effort, not quite making any eye contact. He thinks it's safer that way. "That's fine. I can just talk. We can just talk, right, Jay?"
The older boy doesn't even blink at his name, just sits, curled in on himself, body trembling slightly with how tightly his muscles were clenched. Carlos shuffles anxiously, face twisting with worry and no small touch of panic. Chad takes a breath to steady himself, and tries to think on what the recommended steps were without digging too deeply into the why's and the how's; into the source of it all.
"You know I'm probably gonna be late for class right, Jay?" he says, and Carlos tightens his jaw in a snarl, but Chad hadn't been going for accusing. His voice was still calm. "I'm not complaining, honestly…gets me out of having to sit and listen to Fairy Godmother's lecturing."
There's a noise, and Carlos jerks sharply, and Chad turns his head more calmly to see Jay's brow furrow slightly. It's not much, just barely a flicker of the changed expression before his face goes slack again in terror, his body tightening even further as though afraid of being noticed.
Oh.
Chad tries not to let his own expression twist at that bit of information; to shove aside the desperate clawing at the back of his neck. To breathe.
"Still, not sure if I'd say this is a comfortable alternative," he says, instead of so many other things. "But I guess whatever floats your boat…unless that's a stupid thing to say, I don't know I'm just talking nonsense here but feel free to shut me up whenever you want Jay."
Jay draws a shuddering breath in place of answering, but there's something in his eyes that hadn't been there before. Whether it's further awareness or further lucidity, though, Chad can't tell. He thinks back on the noise Jay had made; the flicker of confusion in his brow when he had mentioned his class with Fairy Godmother, and Chad thinks how stupid he was to not realize before.
"Jay, do you know where you are?" he asks, slowly. Calmly. Urgently.
Jay blinks and draws a short, quick breath, and his eyes flicker and his jaw twitches before clenching tightly, a shiver working its way through his body.
"You know, that's not very comforting," Chad mutters, and Carlos squirms, his fingers pinching and pulling at the dog tail attached to his belt.
Jay's jaw works behind his closed lips, his expression contorting in equal parts terror and pain. Chad tries to slow his breathing even further to counter his thudding heartbeat; wipes his palms carefully against his pants.
"Yeah?" he prompts softly, tilting his head to lessen his stare. "Where are you, Jay?"
"I-" Jay chokes- gags on the syllable, terror sharpening his breath and his whole body twitching backwards.
He freezes like that, eyes flickering back and forth as though waiting for something or someone to come running at him. Chad knows that one. He hates that he knows that one; even as his own throat threatens to close up and the clawing sensation digs into the back of his neck.
"I…I know what….what the Isle looks like, Tremaine."
Jay barely manages the sentence before his exhales sharpen again, but Chad barely notices as his own body flinches instinctively, panic seeming to stop his heart before starting it up again twice as fast.
"Tremaine?" he croaks, his voice barely sound in the space.
Carlos grimaces beside him, eyes flickering with worry and no small amount of panic. "A-A-Antione," he mutters quickly. "Someone from the Isle. He-he-he didn't mmean…."
But Chad was too busy trying to process the fact that he sounded enough like his cousin to be mistaken for him, and also that the VKs knew his cousin; and it takes all of Chad's limited strength to tear his thoughts away before they went too far.
"It's fine," Chad croaks, blinking numbly. Then, "Darian, though, not…not Antione."
He realizes what he's said when Carlos stiffens beside him, and he opens his mouth to try and take it back because he can't—
"How?" Carlos whispers hoarsely, and Chad lifts his hands slowly, placatingly.
"Just forget it," he forces himself to say. "It's not important right now."
Jay cringes further inward as if to reinforce his words, and Carlos shoots him a glare that very clearly says 'not done talking about this' before turning back to the other boy.
"Nno, Jay," Carlos says gently. "Not the Isle. Ssafe. Auradon. Charming, reme-remember?"
Jay's brow furrows in confusion, and some of the hollowness fades from his eyes. "Auradon?"
"Yeah," Chad pitches in. "You're in Auradon, Jay. I found you and Carlos on my way to class with Fairy Godmother."
Jay straightens, his body stiff and not quite yielding to the changing position. "That's…that's not right," he mumbles, expression more confusion now than that horror and panic, and Chad finds his breathing easing in response.
"Why isn't it right, Jay?" he asks carefully, leaning back on his heels.
"Because he was right…he was here...he said…." Jay gestures weakly with a hand still slightly curled, and Carlos growls low in his throat beside him, but Chad swallows his own reaction and forces himself to remain calm.
"No one here but me and Carlos, Jay," he says, his voice shaking in spite of himself. "You're safe."
Jay's eyes narrow as if he doubted the truth of those words, and Chad tries to ignore the way that makes his stomach clench. The other boy's posture unfolds further; head tilting and dark eyes moving quickly back and forth, one hand moving towards his belt as he does. Chad tenses, but there's no weapon that comes up in Jay's groping fingers, and the boy blinks, frowning down at his empty hand.
"Right," he mutters. "They took….my knives."
"I mean to be fair you did try to kill me with those knives, so…." Chad shrugs a shoulder, and Jay's eyes snap up sharply at the movement.
"What," he says blankly, then blinks, expression shifting before settling on something hard and closed off. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
"Oh good, you're back," Chad drawls, more than grateful to slip into his sneering mask this time. "Does this mean I can leave now, de Vil?"
Carlos looks helpless and terrified as Chad climbs to his feet, and he regrets his sudden harshness just as much as he wraps it tighter around him, shielding himself from…everything that had just occurred.
"You can't ju-ju-just-" Carlos protests, but it's cut short by Jay, who also lurches upright, hands shaking.
"Back?" he snaps, and his voice is sharp, but his eyes are haunted and just as terrified as Carlos.' "What's that supposed to…?"
Chad sees the realization hit him as he staggers again, eyes flickering and far too vulnerable.
"Shit," Jay hisses, a shaky hand coming up to tug at his hair before suddenly snapping out and grabbing Chad's collar in a startlingly strong grip. "If you even think of telling anyone…."
"Jay sstop!" Carlos cries, staggering to his feet and forcing himself between the two of them, head turned towards Jay even as his body shifts closer to Chad. "He helped! He helped, it's o-ok."
"Ok?" Jay repeats, but his voice is hoarse from held in screams and his fingers falter, and it's all Chad needs to twist out of his grip. "It's not fucking ok, Carlos!"
"Yeah, I'm taking this as my cue?" Chad says, looking to Carlos because he isn't sure he can look at Jay. "Next time, maybe try asking a professional instead of dragging me through all your shit?"
"Fuck you, Charming," Jay spits, and Chad bites back the scathing retort on his lips, instead settling for:
"I already have someone, thanks, though." And then he realizes what he's said and shit if he wasn't fucked before he was now.
"Probably no one decent," Jay sneers right back, ignorant of the turmoil playing in Chad's head. "No one with any sort of Auradon self-respect would actually fuck you."
Chad clenches his jaw so tightly his teeth make an audible *snap* sound. His hands shake with the suppressed urge to punch Jay in the face, and it takes all of his limited self-control to step backwards instead of forwards.
"Honestly I don't think you're the best one to judge what's decent, considering that you thought this was the Isle a few seconds ago," Chad mutters lowly. "But nice try, I guess."
Jay's the one who reels forward for the punch then, but Chad had anticipated as much and lurches aside with all the stumbling grace adrenaline provided, leaping off the stage and sprinting for the door. He snatches his bag from the last seat in the back row, slinging it over his shoulder to the rhythm of Jay's shouted curses. He's out in the hallway as the final bell rings, and only makes it a few feet before doubling over and screaming into his knees. He screams until there's no more air in his lungs and then keeps screaming, his head pounding shrilly in time with the bell.
Then he stands up, zips his bag, and runs.
Mal
"Look Mal we need to talk about getting your little group in line because this is like the third time I've had to clean up you guys' shit and I'm getting kind of sick of it."
Mal blinks over the cover of her spell book and gets a vague impression of disheveled hair and frantic grey eyes before the words register.
"I'm sorry, you're going to have to run that by me one more time, because for a second it sounded like you were trying to tell me what to do."
Chad makes a face that nearly resembles something she'd seen on the Isle almost daily; that tight, twisted snarl when you know you're backed into a corner but you grin anyway.
"Not to question whatever authority thing you've got going," he pants through his teeth. "But yeah, I kinda am."
She closes her book and revels in the shiver that goes through his body at the green that lights her eyes.
"And why would you do something that stupid?" She whispers, planting both feet on the ground and peering up at him in that way that Carlos had often affectionately called 'creepy.'
"Because I don't know if you've noticed, but you're all kind of falling apart right now, and I don't know if it's just been a gradual thing that was always kind of happening or if it's new, but something has to be done about it and I'm sick of-"
"You mentioned that," Mal cuts in, leaning forward in the soft library chair and tucking her book between her and the cushion. "You keep being the hero, keep coming to the rescue…and I tolerated it before, but now I need to know, Charming. What the hell are you playing at?"
"Playing at?" Chad snaps, hands coming up in a sharp gesture.
Mal flinches in spite of herself, but the librarian's hissed 'Shhh!' distracts Chad as he recoils as well, some of his harsh, static-y demeanor fading slightly.
"Sorry," he mutters, when the woman had stopped glaring at them. "I know better than to do the whole 'fast-movements' thing around you guys."
Mal stiffens, startled and unable to keep it off her face. "Answers, Charming," she manages shortly, gritting her jaw in an attempt to maintain her composure. "What do you know, and what do you think you know about us? Why do you keep…being there?"
"Oh, are we having it out then?" Chad replies, and there's a sneer in the curl of his lips, but his eyes flicker with something like fear, and Mal isn't entirely sure how to read him.
"Chad," she snarls instead of trying, and the fear spreads like a fire across his face before his expression shuts down, and he sits in the chair across from her.
"My mother is Cinderella, as I'm sure you're aware," he manages stiffly, jaw tense and eyes on the wall to her right. "And her…mother…for all intents and purposes was Lady Tremaine."
The way he says the villainess' name is like a curse in itself, and Mal is impressed at the venom before she recognizes its source.
"Ah," she says shortly. "Yeah, we…we know of her. Has a bit of a nasty influence over on the Isle."
"Somehow I'm not surprised," Chad snorts, lips a cruel smirk of amusement as his eyes meet hers for a moment. "She still has a nasty influence over my mother and it's been years."
Mal pauses at that, recognizing the solemn tone in his voice and the weight they added to his words. She shifts in her chair; not quite a squirm, but she can't meet his eyes and drops them to the ground instead.
"Influence?" she repeats softly, swallowing the unease that wants to grip her tighter, her hands fisting their way through the worn fabric of her jeans.
Chad inhales, and it's short and thick with emotion. The sound of flipping papers and hushed whispers from the other hidden residents of the library fill the silence, and Mal is all too aware of the vulnerabilities of her position. When Chad speaks again, his words are just as short and thick, and Mal is grateful she is looking at the floor and not his face, knowing she wouldn't be able to handle seeing the feeling reflected in his eyes.
"Nightmares. Panic attacks. Fear. Memories that tend to come and go."
There's a shift in movement, and Mal's eyes snap up on instinct, cataloguing the shrug of Chad's shoulders, the tension thrumming through every inch of his body.
"Years?" Mal whispers, and her voice is hoarser than she'd expected, something odd stirring in the back of her head.
Chad's lips twitch upwards, though his eyes remain hard, once more fixed on the wall. "Constant abuse tends to stick with a person, I guess. Who'd have thought, right?"
And Mal remembers Dizzy, reduced to a demeaning nickname; the lack of acknowledgement of her as a person. Remembers the sharp lines and edges to her smiles and movements. The scars across her arms and shoulders and back- she was never good at dodging. Remembers Carlos when she'd first found him; small and feral and all too good at dodging. Jay's constant need to rush headlong into violent situations. Evie's inability to judge her own worth.
"Yeah," she finds herself saying, a bitter scoff tainting the air. "It's funny like that."
"I know," Chad says, and Mal looks up sharply and realizes he's staring at her, that he'd been watching her this whole time and there's this weight in his eyes and in his hands and in his words and he knows.
She reels back but there's nothing behind her but a solid chair, and his eyes are locked onto hers and there's something pained and sad curling his lips and she wants to lash out but he knows! And it's everything just to keep breathing in that moment.
"You don't…you don't know anything about…" she begins, faltering, and Chad's eyes flash and he shifts forward slightly, jaw tight.
"'About us?'" he finishes, and there's almost a sneer; almost that asshole that she can hate and fear. But then it shifts and she can't quite hate him, though the fear is still there. "I don't know anything about you? I know more than you give me credit for, and the fact that all that knowledge has done has made me want to help says a lot I think."
"Says you're weak," Mal spits back, her magic boiling in her gut and shuddering in her veins in response to her emotions. "Any smart person would have used it as blackmail and gotten whatever they wanted. Or used it as further proof of how fucked up and unstable we are and had us shipped back to the hole we belong in."
"Yeah I thought about it," Chad replies, nodding slightly. "The blackmail part, not the…I think I can honestly say that I don't want you guys ever going back there."
And the utter sincerity and fervor with which he says those last words throws her for a loop and halts the fear that had been prickling at the base of her spine. She blinks, and Chad blinks, then recoils, shrinking into his own seat and a slight tinge coming into his face.
"I mean…."
"No, you meant it," Mal says, and she doesn't understand, and the fire that had been stinging beneath her skin burns uselessly and begins to eat at her restlessly. "You…mean it."
"I mean a lot of things that I don't say, and say a lot of things I don't mean," Chad sighs, fingers tugging at his hair, eyes not meeting hers now. "But, yeah. I do mean it. I've seen what that shit does to a person, and it's not something I'd wish on anyone."
Mal pauses at that, her jaw working helplessly in a vain attempt to create words. She doesn't know how to respond to anything that's been said, anything that's been done. Chad continues to stare at her though, and she bites the inside of her lip hard to keep from flinging her magic out at him. It simmers inside her instead, slowly eating away at her exposed weaknesses, and she vaguely recalls Fairy Godmother offering to teach her how to better control it. The thought of control eats at her more than her magic was; the concept being a frequent source of tension both within her group and outside of it. Sitting here with Chad feels somewhat like giving up control, and she wishes she still had a knife or something other than her own, useless self; anything at all to combat that *look* in his eyes.
"I thought Ben was the self-righteous sounding one, not you," she says, and he flinches like she'd lain a physical blow. She grins through the fear tightening her expression because good, yes, now things were a bit level. Physical blows she can understand and sift through far better than words.
"Ben is the naïve one," Chad says back, and Mal blinks and tries not to squirm as he stares at her again. "He's self-righteous only in the sense that he thinks that everyone else is or should also be, and he doesn't know what to do when it turns out that that's not the case."
"But not you?" Mal guesses, quirking her lips and hoping it looks as confident and assured as she wants it to be, and not a betrayal of the way her magic stings for lack of focus.
"I'm too pessimistic and practical for Ben's tastes," Chad mutters, and his teeth flash in a smile that is too see-through, too practiced. "Gods only know why he's kept me around so long…. I see all the things he doesn't see, and thinks the things he doesn't know how to think."
"Like the consequences of a bunch of villainous kids running around Auradon?" Mal offers, and Chad laughs- a genuine, if short huff of mirth that cuts off too soon as his eyes flicker up to hers once more.
"Yeah, like that," he says, and Mal frowns, peeling her magic away from her skin in a gesture like pulling down her sleeves, bracing for the incoming assault.
"Mal," he says, and she hums her acknowledgement like a growl, sparks dancing on the edge of her fingertips. "I think we really need to…we need to talk about…."
"About the Isle?" She finishes lowly, the sparks snapping into flame with her will, crawling up her fingers and arcing down her spine. "About us? You sit there and look at me as if you have a right to know these things, like you have any say in it at all. You're worse than Ben."
He sucks a sharp breath and goes pale, though she has no way of knowing why those particular words affect him so and no sense of self-preservation enough to care. She feels her magic swell as her emotions, rising up in her throat and lending further pain to the words as they force their way out of her.
"You're worse than Ben because you know," she hisses, then blinks and realizes she's crying. "You know what it's really like and so there's no hiding from you like there is with him. And the worst part is I think you'll actually do something about it and I don't…I don't know how to defend myself from you. To defend my group from you."
Chad's face is wide and open, his mouth a shocked little 'oh' of surprise and yet his eyes flicker with reservation just as strong as her own fear. His hands shake as they grip tightly to the fabric of his pants, the material so soft looking Mal thinks they might rip and yet they simply wrinkle and bend and fold and warp as Chad's fingers shudder and twitch violently.
"I think I've made a terrible mistake here," he says, and he looks it- his eyes bright with the kind of painful clarity that only ever came with the worst kind of things back on the Isle.
"Have you?" she says, because she must, because if there's some kind of weakness she can use to gain back the upper hand- to erase how honest he'd made her…. "What's that?"
"I was so afraid of the threat that you might pose…that all of you might cause, that I made myself the threat first. And now I'm seeing just what that's done and…and I can't take it back and Iwanttotakeitback."
It's not what she's expecting him to say and it shows in the way her magic abruptly fizzles out, leaving painful aftershocks spasming in her back and shoulders and twitching in her hands that lie useless and empty in her lap.
"What?" her voice is nearly as hoarse as his, and he leans his weight forward over his knees. A part of her subconsciously tenses, but he simply bows over, his shoulder shaking as a rough, depreciating chuckle bubbles up from his throat. A hand comes up to tug and then run through his hair as he sits back, his expression twisted in pained amusement.
"What a pair we make, huh?" he says instead of anything that makes sense, glancing at her with some kind of wry amusement, as if it is a shared thing and not simply his own.
"I'm sorry," he continues, when it's clear that Mal is not going to offer herself up any more than she has. "I know it means nothing to you in words but I am sorry for…everything that I've done to you guys since you've got here. Really, I…looking back I can't begin to imagine what was going through my head or…but I'm genuinely sorry."
He's right in that the words mean nothing to her, but she can see it- can see the wet of tears in his eyes and the tremble in his limbs; can see the shallow breaths and the painful twisting of his face and the hunch to his shoulders and the tilt of his head that if far far too submissive to be anything but honest. No one was that obviously submissive on the Isle- no one willingly weakened and submitted themselves to anyone if they had the strength to do otherwise. Chad had already well established his strength both physically and otherwise and here he was now establishing his submission and his willingness to submit. It means more than his words and more than she herself could ever say, and she has no clue what to do with it.
"Shit," she says, because it's all she can say. "What the Hell am I supposed to do with that?"
Chad's lips twitch upwards on one side like he'd expected something along those lines, and he runs his fingers through his hair again. "You don't have to do anything, if you don't want. You don't have to accept my apology. Just know that it's been given."
She nods, then, but strangely she feels lighter, and she realizes that her magic is no longer running numbness through her veins. It's a kind of sorcery in its own right, she thinks, but the silence that settles between them is comfortable and relaxed; freed from the dangers it had originally posed. She wouldn't say that she trusts Chad, but she no longer fears him in the way she feared him before. A passive ally or a passive threat…she's not quite sure yet where he lies. But she's comfortable enough to pick her book up again and mindlessly flip through the pages, and when he shifts his weight across from her she doesn't flinch.
"Mal," he says, after several moments have passed. She looks up and frowns at the solemn look on his face. She didn't think that he had a right to look so severe so soon after being so submissive.
"Chad," she says back, and he swallows and looks away.
"The other thing I said- about needing to talk. I…I meant that too."
And suddenly her book is no longer interesting, and the peace is shattered and her magic drags itself up into a restless pool in the pit of her stomach.
"Something about getting my group in line and cleaning up shit," she recalls slowly, warning thick and low in her voice.
Chad grimaces and nods, still not making eye contact, and she is annoyed only because the continued submission means she can't see his face to tell if he's still being true.
"I found Jay can Carlos earlier today," he says, and his own voice is quiet and reluctant and knowing again. "Jay was in the middle of a…"
"That thing he does," Mal finishes, dread overcoming her magic and fear creeping like bile in the back of her throat. "The thing the Cricket said…dis-"
"Dissociating," Chad finishes with a nod, like he knows, like he's- "I'm familiar with it, yeah."
"Familiar?" Mal latches onto it because it's a weakness, because he's suddenly become a threat again with his knowledge and if there's something she can use….
"Bits and pieces, anyway," Chad mutters, and his eyes are on hers and they understand, like he knows she's grabbing for power and is letting her. "Carlos got me to stay and help instead of running for the door like I'd been planning on."
"And Jay?" she snaps, because he'd seen because he's known. Because he has power now over them and he could— "Is he alright?"
"From what I could tell," Chad replies, and he shrugs but abandons the gesture halfway through, so his shoulders jerk awkwardly and Mal stiffens in spite of herself. "I didn't stick around long after he came out of it and started threatening me but…"
"But?"
"But I really think you guys need to start talking to someone. And by someone I mean…and believe me I can't believe I'm saying this more than you do but…I think maybe you should consider talking with the Cricket."
It's an odd rush of words and an equally odd rush of emotions, but once Mal interprets them she sits up sharply in the chair, hackles raising defensively.
"Talk to the Cricket?" she demands, feeling her eyes light with green. "And expose even more of ourselves to him, so that once he's picked us apart and learn all our weaknesses those royal assholes can take even more advantage of us? I've been through it once, I'm not doing it again."
Chad goes very still and very quiet with her own rush of words and feelings, and Mal hovers, debating between violence or flight.
"I'm not saying I don't understand where you're coming from," he says slowly, like he's weighing the words between his lips as he says them. "Because believe me, I do. But you need someone who's actually trained in this sort of thing and knows what he's doing. Who could maybe actually help."
Mal feels the scoff twisting her face before the sound leaves her.
"That word again," she mutters, and Chad grimaces and leans back a bit in his chair.
"It's true," he mumbles back, though it doesn't sound as full of conviction as Ben always did.
"I think we'll stick with what we always have, thanks," she replies, forcing her scowl into a less threatening tilt.
"Which is what, exactly?" Chad quips back, brows and mouth lifting in a bemused smirk.
"Not talking about it and staying with each other when things get bad," she responds, and the smirk twitches on Chad's face but doesn't falter. "As long as you don't have anything else planned against us then I don't see why we can't at least try to keep making it work."
"Hey I've already kept an eye on things with Carlos haven't I?" Chad blurts fiercely, leaning forward over his knees and peering at her with sharp eyes. "I mean I can start looking out for Jay too, if you want but I'm not entirely sure how…no wait. I know exactly how I can do that."
His eyes are thoughtful but intent, and Mal isn't entirely sure what to do with this drastic shift of what? Power dynamics? Attitudes? Propositions? She didn't know what sort of relationship this was, only that he was far more genuine than anyone on the Isle had ever been, and therefore far more terrifying.
"What do you want?"
He blinks, and there's a blank look on his face that would almost look clueless if it weren't for how closely his eyes kept watching her.
"What do you mean?"
Mal feels the snarl curling her lips before she can stop it, but she doesn't want to stop it. "Nobody ever does something for free. Not on the Isle, and especially not here. And what you're offering-" Protection, safety, an alliance with a royal by blood but more importantly with someone who knows, someone who understands. "—So what do you want, Charming?"
"I don't want anything," he says, but his voice grows weak towards the end and something flashes in his eyes.
"Go ahead," Mal says, bracing for the demand (for the pain) because an offer this good can only mean pain. "Just say it."
He inhales sharply, expression twisting with something like self-loathing even as his eyes practically bleed with want.
"Do you know…?" He stops, bites his lip. Shakes his head. "Has Ben ever talked with you guys about his plans for the Isle? About bringing more kids over?"
And Mal's hackles go up and a growl builds in her chest because no, no he could not…would not have this.
"He has," she says shortly, fingers gripping tightly to the arms of her chair to avoid gripping them around his throat. "And let me guess: you want me to tell him that it's a bad idea? That any more villain kids would be too dangerous and look at the fuckups you have now?"
"N-no!" Despite her slim composure Chad recoils as if she'd lunged at him anyway. "I mean, maybe don't have him bring over anyone who'd actually destroy the kingdom or anything, but no I think he's right in trying for more."
Mal wipes her own expression even as she silently bristles at his statement. 'Actually destroy the kingdom.' Like they weren't still entirely threats in their own right. Like they weren't trying to do that very thing. At the same time, she notes the way he'd simply said 'kids' and not 'villain kids' or even just 'villains.'
"Then what do you want?"
If anything, the conflict on Chad's face grows, and he rubs the back of his neck before gripping tightly, not quite making eye contact. "Earlier…when I was with Jay and Carlos…. Jay, he…he didn't really know where he was or who he was with, and he ended up confusing me with someone from the Isle."
Oh. Oh Fuck No.
"He thought I was…he called me Tremaine and I wanted to know if…."
oh.
Still…Fuck no.
"…you guys had…if you knew of…"
"Just fucking say it, Charming."
"Antoine," he murmurs through a rushed exhale, as though afraid the name would explode inside if he didn't say it fast enough. "My cousin. Antoine Tremaine. My Aunt Drizella wrote my mom in secret when he was born. She wanted my dad to claim him…to bring him to Auradon but…but Lady Tremaine and the various powers that be refused and so he ended up stuck there just like you guys and…."
Now that the want had been named he was on a roll, gesticulating almost desperately as he talked, his eyes bright and full of too many strange emotions for Mal to identify. None of them were negative or violent, just…full, and she almost felt bad because Tremaine didn't deserve a cousin like Charming.
"No."
He doesn't choke like she'd been expecting him to, which is equally disappointing. He simply looks at her, uncomprehending.
"What?"
"No," Mal repeats, shaking her head for punctuation and shifting back away from him just in case. "He's not an option."
"Excuse me?" Chad whispers, and his eyes narrow in disbelief, an edge there that she can definitely identify.
"I know you heard me so I'm not…"
"What do you mean 'he's not an option?' He's my family and he…we were going to petition for him anyway if the Council ever made a decision but if you…"
"No!" Mal snaps, earning a sharp 'Shhhhh!' from a nearby librarian. She flips the woman off and snarls back, and the woman blusters and huffs something along the lines of 'well I never!' before disappearing again.
"Why?" Chad demands, and he looks nearly as ruthless as one of them, eyes hard and betrayed. "Tell me why."
'Because I said so,' flits childishly through her mind, but this was too serious a want to answer with anything but severity.
"He's dangerous," she hisses, and Chad snarls in disgust, a hand snapping out to point in a vague direction. Mal barely flinches, but does so all the same, and she hates him for it.
"So is everyone on that damn place!"
"Children," comes the librarian's voice, cracking like Jafar's whip. Mal half expects to hear Jay's scream behind it, and when she doesn't she looks up into the wrinkled face with a scowl. "This is meant to be a quiet place of study and research. If you can't uphold that silence then I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"No," Mal says, letting the fire come into her eyes as she twists her scowl into a tight baring of teeth. "You don't."
The woman goes very pale very fast, and Mal almost thinks she might faint until she clicks her jaw shut and turns on her heel. She disappears between a row of shelves and Mal nearly laughs until Chad clears his throat softly but pointedly.
"Don't give me a fucking lecture," she snaps, and he lifts a brow and continues right where he left off, much to her further chagrin.
"How is he any more dangerous than you?"
"He manipulates," Mal answers, deciding that if he wanted honesty she'd give it to him. "Sure, everyone on the Isle is manipulative and sneaky and I'm not saying we're any better but he's fucking good at it. Lady Tremaine trained him as a fancy aristocrat, clinging to what she had from before but the Isle still shaped him and he was too weak and sick and small as a kid to do anything physical so instead she worked on his mind. And he worked on other people's minds. And his own mind worked on him."
Chad loses some color, and something twitches in his jaw, but he remains silent, and Mal continues on coldly.
"He's…twisted and sadistic but still entirely polite and noble about it and you never know if he's gonna be able to function like a human being or whatever the fuck passes for it on the Isle, or if he's just gonna tear you to pieces. And then he's got connections. There's allies, these things you get and throw away as needed, and then there's what he's got and he's got connections and he uses them."
She'd seen the remains left from his failed or broken or expended connections. Had heard the stories from Dizzy and seen the marks on Evie, on Carlos, on Jay and yet…yet he'd never hurt Dizzy. In fact she was the only one he hadn't….
"You're- you're making a face," Chad says cautiously, and she blinks. "Why are you making a face?"
"Because there's another Tremaine that Antoine actually kind of likes and is pretty much the only thing that could maybe keep him in check and if you're actually trying to...you know, do stuff for us then…then maybe…maybe it might…. What now?"
Chad had gone even paler, and Mal wants to roll her eyes at the ridiculousness of it all. They were just talking, it's not like she'd pulled a knife on him or anything!
"Another Tremaine?" he repeats numbly, and Mal realizes what she'd done.
"Oh," she mutters. "Oh yeah, there's a few other Tremaine's, actually. Not all as lovely as Antoine but not like…terrible or whatever. They're just brats, really. Most of them haunt the wharfs but I have a couple in my gang. At least, we think they're Tremaine's. It's a little hard to tell considering…but the cheeks are always the same so we're pretty sure."
"Ho—how many of them? Why did we not hear anything after…after Antoine?"
"Probably because the Lady Tremaine practically beat Drizella within an inch of her life when she found out about the first letter," Mal says, shrugging a shoulder.
"What?" Chad croaks, and if he'd been pale before he looked almost sickly now.
"And then also pretty much isolated all incoming and out coming messages so nothing else really got through to the house," she finishes idly. "What?"
Chad had been giving her a Ben look- that wide eyed, helpless sort of horror he got whenever he heard about Isle life.
"You say it like…"
"Like it's something that happened every day on the Isle?" she finishes bluntly, and he closes his mouth and swallows hard before giving her a more Chad appropriate look of scrutiny and caution.
"To you?"
The question doesn't throw her off guard because really, it was about time someone actually started asking about what happened to them, but it pokes uncomfortably at her all the same. She tries for another shrug but this one is harder, somehow.
"Jafar had a whip," she finds herself saying. "Evie used to find Jay in the alley behind the house with the skin practically gone from his back. I found him a handful of times, usually after one of the more milder ones where it was just broken bones or bruises. I don't know why she always got the bad ones. Always made me feel useless when she'd drag him into the hideout."
Chad chokes but she barely hears the sound, lost in the sudden spiral of all those bad times. They'd had to strap Jay down once, after a really bad one, because he'd kept rolling over in his fevered state and ripping himself open again. He'd screamed a lot through that one and they'd had more than one close call with scroungers and scavengers looking for weaker, smaller things to feed on.
"The Evil Queen had a kind of tower she'd lock Evie in if she felt like she wasn't doing enough to be her version of perfect."
Jay and Carlos used to climb it sometimes to sneak her scraps of food and books. Mal would never be able to go herself, not for a while…not without risk…but she'd send along bits of art for Evie to decorate the walls with; odd bits of fabric she'd found to incorporate into a design.
"Cruella used to chain Carlos up in a closet. We still don't know everything she did to him…he won't say. Can't say, really, without triggering something. But I found him caught in a bear trap once when we were kids and I'd say that's the worst I've ever seen him."
Chad chokes again and Mal realizes belatedly that he'd been fighting some sort of gag reflex. He was definitely sickly looking now, cold and sort of clammy as he worked his jaw up and down, his expression beyond even Ben's usual mournful bewilderment.
"Maleficent had a dungeon," she finishes shortly, because he'd started to make a face like he might be sick, and she doubted the librarian would appreciate that. And also, because his reactions were poking more discomfort at her and she wasn't entirely sure why.
"You-" Chad begins, before grimacing and swallowing hard. "You know that that's…that being treated like that isn't. That's not ok, right?"
"It's just how it is," Mal says back, defensive and hating that she was. "Sure it's not ideal, but there's always a worse fate."
"But you still understand that-"
He must see something in her face, because he stops and tries again. "You still want to get others off the Isle and away from that, right?"
"Those who don't deserve it, yeah," Mal replies, because this is easier. This is obvious. "But not all the kids who are on the Isle don't deserve it, and not all the kids would survive Auradon life as well as we are."
"Yes, because you guys are handling everything so well," he deadpans sharply. Mal fixes him with a look, and he seems to realize her point, deflating once again.
"So what are we supposed to do then?" he says. "Just pretend like nothing terrible is happening over there? Ignore the kids that are still stuck?"
"I did not say that," Mal snarls, fire lighting in her eyes that he would dare think of such a thing. "I just said to be careful of who was brought, unless you wanted more dangerous VKs running around?"
"Fine," Chad snaps, running his fingers roughly through his hair. "Fine we'll do it your way. But in the meantime…"
"Yes, in the meantime we'll work on getting our shit together," Mal snaps, crossing her arms tightly to hide the way her hands shake at the thought. "Hades knows you Auradonians can't stand the thought of anyone not behaving perfectly within the kingdom."
"That's not it at all," Chad protests, but there's something familiar and pained in his eyes at her words. "It's to help you guys adjust to everything and maybe help manage all the shit you're dealing with."
"Fine," Mal mutters. "We'll try things your way. And…and I'll see what can be done about your cousin."
Evie
She remembers the first time she'd been made aware of her own body.
She'd been about thirteen, and was crying because she'd woken up with blood staining her clothes and she'd feared she was dying. She'd heard about people getting sick; illnesses that made people bleed before they died. More than that she feared she'd never get rid of the stain, and her mother had found her that way- sobbing as she ran the fabric under cold water- the only temperature available. (She'd discover later on her own that cold water was ideal for removing fresh blood stains.)
Her mother, in place of being furious, had been ecstatic, muttering things like 'womanhood' and 'childbearing' and 'I was wondering how long that would take.'
Evie had been horrified, protested that she didn't want to have any children, that she wasn't a woman and didn't want to be one, not now, not ever, not if this was what it meant.
Her mother had slapped her for that, snarled that she was a princess, and now she would be able to go and claim a prince. Had continued on in far more detail than a thirteen year old Evie was comfortable with just what finding and claiming a prince entailed. She'd been locked in her room for a week for her resistance.
The second time she'd been made aware she was fourteen stepping out of her mother's tavern, and a man in a nearby alley had whistled at her. She'd jumped at the noise, and he'd laughed at her, wiping hands stained dark with dirt on pants even darker and dirtier. She'd wanted to rush past him, forget she'd ever seen him (forget that he'd ever seen her), but her mother's words rang in her ears, how she could twist any man to do her bidding if she behaved a certain way; and so she'd offered him a shy glance and lifted the corner of her mouth in a coy smile.
He'd licked his lips at that, his teeth flashing sharp in his own smirk. His eyes were dark, and he'd stared at her- at her body- like she was the last bit of food on an Auradon barge. Like he wanted to devour her.
She'd run home, sobbing to her mother about the incident, and her mother had beaten her, screeching and scolding that Evie hadn't done more, hadn't pursued further. Hadn't let the man pursue her.
She started working with Carlos after that, experimenting to see what they can mix together; what potions and chemicals can be made that explode; that burn; that hurt. They came up with a concoction that Carlos thought was beautiful, capable of blinding and burning and death. She thought it was beautiful too, but on the outside postured that she wouldn't need something so horrific; she was a lady, after all.
But the next time she'd seen the man he leered at her, those same sharp teeth almost too-sharp, and she steeled herself and ignored the way her stomach churned and did as her mother instructed her. He followed her all the way to the tavern, and Evie winked at him before escaping inside, fingers shaking where they grip the vial concealed in her pocket, certain she'd nearly needed to use it.
He followed her on her way home from the tavern a few weeks later, and less than halfway there his hand was on her shoulder; his voice rasping in her ear how it wasn't right for her to keep teasing with no delivery. Terror blocked out the meaning of his words long enough for him to grab her tight, jerking her sideways, and suddenly she was in an alley, and brick walls scraped at her hands. There was something wrong about the curves of his face; his mouth too open, too feral. Hands too strong. Fingers…fingers too wide…too much as they rip and tear and push. Teeth too sharp- that bite into the delicate skin of her shoulder.
She'd screamed then, suddenly aware in no uncertain terms.
He'd screamed, too, after she'd smashed the vial into his face.
And she'd ran- not to her mother, never again. The Evil Queen had failed her for the last time. She'd run to her gang, her group, her family; and Carlos had brewed up another potion and slipped it to Jay, and Mal had had fire and blood in her eyes; had left the hideout with Jay and come back covered in the blood her look had promised.
She's not sure what the feeling is sitting at a table in Auradon, surrounded by an assortment of heroic boys and with Doug peering over her shoulder at her notes and occasionally glancing at her with something like fear and awe all at once. He hadn't once made a move to touch her, or made any comments on what he would do if he got her alone, and though she'd given her fair share of testing glances and sideways smirks at him, it was if he was blind to it; ignorant of how he was supposed to respond.
No, that wasn't entirely true. She'd caught him staring at her, blushing and speechless every now and then. But he'd only ever been staring at her face, or trying to catch her eyes, or just giving her a general look of wonder and she can't stand it. Her skin crawls and her fingers tremble where they grip her pencil, digging the lead into a charred mess on the page and she wants to drive it through his eyes and into his skull.
"I'd never thought of the applications of botox as a widespread neurotoxin before," the dwarf boy muses, still staring at her with that fear, which is good- and that awe, which is less so.
"Though I suppose technically, it already is, given the way it paralyzes muscles to smooth them, but to use it in that way-" He gestures to her notes, and the hastily described application of an aerosol-generated vapor "- that's just something else."
"Thank you," she says through her teeth, forcing a smile along with it because she might not like his brand of attention but she was still raised with manners. "It's something I came up with after…." She freezes, the rough feeling of bricks beneath her fingers replacing the previous smoothness of the table.
"After what?" Aziz asks across from her, and both Chad and Nikhil elbow him sharply from either side.
She blinks, and it's paper beneath her hands once more, a pencil between her fingers and not a canister.
"After being attacked enough times to realize that it wasn't smart to go without alternate methods of protection," she surmises sharply.
Doug's mouth clicks rapidly shut and he mumbles non-commitally under his breath, looking uncomfortable, and Evie returns to her notes and assumes that that is that.
"It is smart."
Evie looks up sharply to see Chad Charming staring at her from Aziz's left. His eyes are scrutinizing, unlike Doug's strange rapture, and indifferent where Doug's had been terrified.
"What else are you supposed to do except outsmart and outlast?" He continues with an idle shrug, and drops his gaze down to his own school work when Evie doesn't break eye contact.
She recognizes that lowered gaze; the slow, deliberate intent with which he'd done it. It was a yield in the same way Mal had yielded to her; acknowledgement of her position and establishing his willingness to submit. It was so unlike the gawking of the boy next to her, and so unlike what she'd previously come to expect from Chad that she's the one left speechless, even as Doug continues to babble mindlessly beside her.
"…would be unstable at best," he's muttering, eyeing her and her notes in skeptical turns. "More likely to explode in your hands than to serve its purpose. And with the materials you would have had on hand…there's no way this actually would have worked in any real-life scenarios."
Another jolt goes through Evie and she's no longer sitting at a table, secure and safe in Auradon.
She was standing in the streets of the Isle, shoes torn from her cracked feet and clothes torn from her body and skin torn from her bones sending her own blood dripping into the cracks that were torn from the stones below.
Mal was yelling…screaming…roaring from somewhere to her left, and Jay was panting curses beneath her, ducking another barrage but not fast enough- screaming as the arrows pierced his skin.
Carlos was frantic in front of her, silent for the first time in a long time, eyes wide and wild and determined as he pressed the can into her hands, directing her fingers to the trigger at the top.
'Throw it now!'
At Mal's command Evie jerked, and her features contorted as she screamed, flinging up the torn collar around her throat to shield her face and throwing as hard as she could….
There was a delay of all of a harsh exhale and then it was over in a ragged wave of broken inhales…the soldiers falling back…falling hard…tears streaming and throats closing…bodies spasming in horrific jerks. Falling still. Falling silent. Falling dead.
"Evie?"
She blinks and the scene is gone, and she is safe but no less shaken. She's grateful for the moment she takes to breathe, to clear the shake from her voice as she responds.
"It worked well enough for the one time use," she says, and the table falls silent around her so suddenly she half expects to hear the soft thud of bodies behind it.
"You mean it actually worked?"
Doug is the first to break the illusion, adjusting his glasses to peer at her all the more closely with that wonder and she jerks her hand back and sits on it because she really is going to stab him. "But that's impossible! Not even our most talented Auradon scientists could create a stable gaseous form of botulinum toxin and they've been-"
"Doug," Chad says sharply, and he falls silent. (But not to the floor, and she can't decide if she's relieved or disappointed).
"Right," he says weakly, seeing something in her face, or something in Chad's. "Shouldn't be encouraging that sort of-"
"That sort of villainous behavior?" she finishes, her tone sweet and smile wide. "That sort of evil?"
Doug loses some color, but she doesn't give him a chance to get it back before she's plowing on, her numbing fingers tingling cold all the way through her body.
"I see the way you look at me- like I'm some strange thing for you to unravel and figure out. Enough men on the Isle have tried and I've survived that and let me tell you if you think for even a second that you'll have better luck than them purely because of where we are now you're dead. wrong."
"Evie."
It's Aziz who says it this time, and she blinks and realizes that she really is cold, and that it's not just the numbness of her fear but a physicality that is pushing its way past her skin and out into the space around her. Doug is shivering with it, or with his own fear, but the strange awe is still there in his eyes despite even this and she hates how much it makes her want to see it more.
She's torn herself away from the table and bolted before she could fully think, before she could realize that she'd just left all of her things there; just knowing that she needed to get away and get somewhere safe. Somewhere away from terrified, adoring eyes that saw her without undressing her. Somewhere familiar and known and her feet are taking her without Evie needing to acknowledge them.
She's at the door and flinging it open in the space of seconds, and she's barely made it into the room before she's collapsing. And then shivers because she's just realized she'd left all of her things behind and how could she be so stupid? How pathetic how weak how broken was she that she had just ran like that? Nothing had even happened and yet it had it had it had because she couldn't even handle something as mundane as sharing a table with a group of boys, never mind that it was something she'd done countless times on the Isle. But this wasn't the Isle and she didn't know how to deal with that here; didn't know how to play into their expectations or read their desires in order to twist and fulfill them, and not knowing was dangerous not knowing was death and she didn't know!
"Evie, breathe."
Mal's voice spoke up behind her, cutting calm into the center of her turmoil. Evie inhales sharply at the command and the air burns cold in her lungs but she's breathing, at least. The dorm room door is smooth and cool beneath her hands and so far from the rough chalked brick of her nightmare that it's easy to put it out of mind, to shove it back into the dark and cold recesses of her thoughts.
"Breath, E," Mal says again, and Evie blinks, shudders as she realizes she'd stopped, that the cold was not in fact air entering her lungs but leaving it.
"I…I'm fine," she says, and her teeth chatter through the lie, catching sharp against her teeth.
Mal sighs, low and heavy, and Evie shudders again; wants to turn and apologize. Wants to turn because having her back to anyone was dangerous, and this was Mal so it became even more so. But all she can do is shiver and fail to breathe, and so it's no wonder the other girl is so frustrated with her.
"I'm going to touch you now, ok?" Mal's voice comes again, and the cold stabs panic through her gut at the words. She starts to protest, but all that comes out is a low whine, and then Mal's hands are on her shoulders, arms embracing but not restricting, and the feel of cracked leather is beneath her hands, and piercing green eyes locked onto her own and she can breathe.
"What happened?" Mal asks, and Evie shakes her head because it had just been so stupid.
"Nothing," she manages weakly, trying and failing to ignore the way her voice still shakes. "It was nothing…nothing happened. Nothing happened," she insists at Mal's sharp look. "That's why it's so stupid…"
"You're not stupid," Mal snaps, and Evie laughs but it sounds more like a sob to her ears. "You're incredibly clever and devious and I would expect nothing less from you."
Evie shakes her head, exasperated and fond in turns, but it does little to fully quell the cold in her lungs, to take away the feeling of brick beneath her fingers and the burn of fear in her gut.
"I don't know what to do anymore," she finds herself confessing into Mal's shoulder, fingers playing idly with a loose stud on the edge of her jacket. "I knew what my place was on the Isle; what my purpose was and what I was there for. I don't…they're not like that here and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that."
Mal is silent a moment, and Evie half fears some kind of retort, but then the other girl lets out a breath that shifts her whole body with the force of it.
"Yeah," she replies softly. "Yeah, me too. I've been…I've been so caught up in trying to protect all of you and I keep forgetting that…it's all so different here."
"What are we going to do then?" Evie presses, leaning back but letting Mal seize her hands, running her thumbs carefully over the other girl's knuckles. "Because I've already established we aren't going to be…plotting anything. So what are we going to do because I can't keep…."
"We need help," Mal cuts in, low and nowhere near as firm as Evie had been expecting. "I need help. I can't keep stretching myself all over the place to try and cover all of you and…and after everything with Jay…." She pauses, swallows in the silence. "I think we need to consider our options."
"Options?" Evie repeats, suddenly cold all over again. "Like the Cricket?"
Mal stiffens at her tone, and Evie knows she's crossing all kinds of lines and the last thing she wants is to abuse the yield -abuse the power that Mal had given to her- but she wasn't about to remain silent on this.
"I would have thought you'd be last person to be so trusting of-"
"I don't trust him, that's the problem," Mal interrupts, slow and deliberate. Her hands shift so they press against Evie's with intent. "I don't trust any of them expect maybe the Fairy Godmother…and Jane," she amends as an afterthought. "But I don't really have a choice here."
"You do," Evie tries, desperate. "You keep saying you're alone in protecting us but when have we ever not been able to fend for ourselves? When have we ever looked to outside the group for help? We haven't; that's the point, Mal! It's too dangerous."
"It's too dangerous to assume we can fix this ourselves like we always have," Mal responds evenly, but there's something desperate in her own eyes, too. "I'm not prepared to handle this like I have in the past, and there's no way in Hades I'm going to expect the rest of the group to take that on either. It's not fair of anyone to expect that."
"So what?" Evie challenges, aware she's getting louder now, that the cold is spreading once more. "We open ourselves up to whoever and whatever to take advantage of? You'd rather risk that than…than staying close?"
Something flashes in Mal's eyes too quickly for Evie to catch, before her expression goes stern and blank.
"It's about more than just you and me, Eve," she says, quiet. Dark. "It'd be selfish to assume otherwise."
She stands, then, and Evie can't quite process the shift in dynamic that she's sure had just taken place. Only that the room is cold, and Mal is gone, and she is afraid.
Aziz
"Ok, I'm sorry, you're gonna have to run that by me one more time."
Aziz blinks at Nikhil's words, staring across the bed to his roommate, who is tense and pacing a slow circle in the room before them.
"Look I know I sound crazy, but I think it'd be a good idea," Chad says, not quite making eye contact as he turns to face them.
"You think combining tourney- a violent and dangerous sport, with Jay- a violent and dangerous villain- no offense- is a good idea?"
Chad glares, but has the decency to look slightly abashed, fingers coming up to tug at his hair. "What do you think, Aziz?"
Aziz blinks, because he's not entirely sure what he thinks. On the one hand, he loves the idea, thinks it's be a great way to get back in with Jay and the rest of the VKs, and the added plus of sharing his favorite sport with the other Arabian boy. But on the other hand, he knows there's more to it than just…well, playing a game. There's more risk involved now that elements of the VK's past are out there and he doesn't want to risk screwing things up again.
"I mean, they never turn the lights off at Field 3," he offers with a slow shrug, shooting Nikki a sheepish look. "And I've picked the equipment closet lock enough times to be able to do it in my sleep at this point so…"
"Not quite what I was expecting to hear, but ok," Chad mumbles, and Nikki sighs heavily, tilting his head to peer up at the other boy.
"Where it this coming from, Chad?" he asks, in that piercing way he did when he was trying to see past his friends' bullshit. "I'm not complaining, sort of. Just wondering why the motivation?"
"I get it, I'm the last person in the whole of Auradon you'd expect to care about the VKs," Chad retorts, eyes flashing sharply. "But I promised Mal that I'd try. I promised…I promised my mom I'd try."
Well shit. Aziz exchanges a look with Nikhil, who lifts his brows and nods ever so slightly. If Chad was actually talking to his mom again that meant he was really serious about this. Which meant they were serious too.
"What are we waiting for, then?" Aziz quips, reaching down under the bed and fumbling for his shoes. "I'll go knock on their window and meet you guys on the field in 20."
"Aziz it's after curfew," Nikhil deadpans, and Aziz snaps his head over and pouts through a glare.
"You just said…," he begins to protest, and Nikki lifts a brow at him. "You thought it was a good idea!"
"Technically, I didn't say anything, I just gave you a look," Nikhil replies, lips twitching mischievously. "But while I do think it's a good idea, maybe not when there's a risk of suspension?"
"It's our senior year, you think they're really gonna waste their time with kicking us off campus?" he retorts.
"For you? Yeah, I think they would," Nikhil responds, and Aziz sticks his tongue out petulantly and continues to tie his shoes.
"You think you can get them to come then?" Chad worries by the door, and Nihil huffs a groan as Aziz looks up and grins.
"I mean I could, but I think it might be in poor taste, don't you?"
"You're disgusting," Nikki mutters, but there's a spark in his eyes regardless.
"Love you too, babe," he quips back, dodging the book that is thrown at him with a sharp bark of laughter. "Come on, lighten up. This is going to be fun!"
Carlos
Carlos often thought that if he had been cursed with foresight, he might not have ever stepped foot outside his mother's house. Might not ever have fought Jay for a pack of cigarettes or grown to idolize the other boy to the point of following blindly to Evie, and in turn, to Mal. Might not have joined their group, might not have accepted an invitation to the place across the seas that was supposed to be so much better (worse) than the Isle. Might now have stepped foot into that limo all but a month ago.
And definitely would not have answered the knock on his dorm room window at 10 o'clock at night.
As it was, Jay was in the bathroom again, and Carlos really didn't want to brave another confrontation, already sore from the other boy had punched him the first time he'd been dumb enough to try. So when the knock comes, he's not sure what it is other than an excuse not to think about his problems, and he's shoved aside the curtain and lifted the window before fully realizing what he's doing.
The face that grins at him and then crawls through is not at all what he's expecting, and he leaps back with a startled yelp and immediately darts a glance to make sure the bathroom door was still closed.
"Az-Aziz!" he hisses, and the other boy laughs softly, not even bothering to close the window behind him as he steps forward and throws something at him.
"Hey pup," Aziz greets, and Carlos fumbles but manages to catch the…shoes, he realizes, lifting them up by the laces. "Put those on. Where's Jay?"
"Not fffeeling well," Carlos mumbles, backing away from the vibrant energy radiating from the other boy and sitting on the edge of his bed. "Whwhat are these?"
"Tourney sneakers," Aziz answers, shifting his weight and lifting a foot to show that he, too, is wearing the strange shoes, ridges all over their bottom. "They'll help you run better in the grass. Hey Jay! What are you doing?"
There's a dull, watery sort of thud from the bathroom and Carlos flinches, shrinking back even as he shoots the other boy a glare. It takes all of a minute for Jay to appear in the bathroom door, clad in shorts and a towel around his neck, hair still plastered to his head and making his scowl that much more intimidating. He pauses at the sight of Aziz, something flickering in his eyes too fast for Carlos too fully interpret, only that it makes him look strangely vulnerable. Aziz pauses at the sight of Jay, too, and Carlos would have been worried about that except he doesn't really think that's why other boy was here.
"How'd you get in here?" Jay asks, voice rough, and Carlos winces as Jay's eyes land almost accusingly on him.
Aziz points behind him with a thumb, eyes still fixed on Jay and a look on his face Carlos couldn't interpret. "Climbed," he quips, but it's not as light as when he'd joked with Carlos. "How else was I supposed to get in?"
Jay grunts and rolls his eyes, padding across the floor to his side of the room and grabbing a shirt off the floor. "We have a door, you know."
Aziz swallows, and Carlos realizes with a jolt what he's staring at. Jay wasn't wearing a shirt.
"Less security with the window, though," Aziz mumbles, and Carlos squirms, wanting to warn against any remarks but not wanting to point out what Jay clearly wasn't aware enough to notice.
It's far too late now, as the raised scars and twisted knots of skin are on prominent display as Jay turns his back and shoves the shirt shakily over his head, towel slipping to the floor with a muffled, wet sort of *plop*. Aziz looks sideways at him and Carlos refuses to meet his gaze, ducking his head and pretending to be confused by the laces of the shoes.
"Well, you're here so…what do you want?" Jay turns, and his eyes are clear but Carlos can see the hollowness lurking there, can see the way his fingers twitch a little too hard as he pulls his hair up into messy tangle on top of his head.
"To give you guys the once in a lifetime chance of a late night game of tourney," Aziz says, and there's a smile on his face but it's tight, and Carlos wishes he'd never opened the window.
"You're like the third person to tell us about this," Jay mumbles, glancing to Carlos with a frustrated lilt to his lips. He'd noticed Aziz's weird look, then. Just not the cause of it and Carlos really didn't want to be the one to tell Jay he'd noticed his scars.
"Well that's because it's the single greatest sport Auradon has invented and you guys are going to love it, I swear!"
He's being too bubbly now, trying to make up for it, and Jay's eyes narrow and Carlos stands sharply, intercepting with a careful smile.
"You get to w-wear…weird sshoes," he mumbles carefully, showing Jay the sneakers he now wears. "Aziz says you can rrun on grass better with them."
Jay shrugs, scratching idly at his chest and looking around the room like he was making sure it was still there. "I guess," he says, and Aziz's own smile grows a bit more genuine.
"Awesome!" he crows, and throws a pair of shoes to Jay. He snaps them up instantly, movements sharp and deliberate, and Carlos thinks maybe he wasn't as far away as he'd thought. "Put those on and let's go, the others are waiting on the field."
He clambers out the window before either of them can protest, and Jay stares a moment before shoving his feet cautiously into the shoes.
"I think he gets even more active at night," he mumbles to Carlos, and he lets himself scoff at that.
"He-he'd be perfect on the Isle," he mutters back, and Jay grins before his eyes go sort of vague, his jaw tight.
"Yeah, probably," he rasps darkly, and Carlos wants to say something to that but doesn't know how without setting Jay off again. Instead he says nothing, and follows Jay out the window and down to the ground below.
The first thing he notices when he touches down is that the ground feels springier against his feet, the spikes in the shoes poking pressure at odd places on his feet. The second is that Aziz is still there, still vibrating with that strange energy, though he's quick to grin at them both when they arrive. He puts his fingers to his lips and winks at them before darting off, and Jay heaves a sigh and follows, but Carlos makes it a point to bounce ahead, keeping pace with the other boy.
"Well hey, you can move," Aziz pants beside him, and even through the staccato beat of his run Carlos can hear his amusement. "That'll be good for-"
"You saw," Carlos interrupts, not wasting his breath. Aziz falls silent, and he glances over out of the corner of his eyes to see the other boy frowning, pensive.
"What-?"
"Doesn't mmatter," Carlos huffs, and Aziz purses his lips. "You saw. You shouldn't have. You-you won't say anything."
"I wouldn't know what to say," Aziz murmurs, eyes hard. "Other than I'm sorry, and I don't think…it wouldn't be the right thing."
"No," Carlos agrees, before slowing his pace to fall back with Jay. "Aziz says wewe're almost there."
"Great," Jay quips, and Carlos looks over to see Jay's jaw is set, his eyes not entirely clear despite the brisk pace of their run.
"Sshould we not have come?" he asks, worried now that this was a mad idea and it would only set Jay off. "Wwe can…we can go back if you…"
"No," Jay denies, and he offers Carlos a sideways grin. "I'm not gonna pass up a chance to beat these guys at their own game."
And Carlos isn't entirely sure to what Jay is referring. Only that he's entirely sure he doesn't want to find out.
Jay
Jay's not an idiot, contrary to what his father might have believed. He knows Carlos is worried about him, which is stupid because Jay was fine. He didn't need anyone coddling him or tripping over themselves and tiptoeing around him like he was some weak, pathetic thing. It wasn't like he was broken or couldn't do anything. He didn't get why everyone was making it such a huge point to dig up shit that happened in the past. And he especially didn't get why he was following after Carlos and Aziz when all he really wanted was to burrow himself somewhere far away and pretend that the world didn't exist.
Except he'd already done that and if he admitted that something was wrong –which it wasn't- he'd never live it down. So he snuck along and ignored the way his body (was it actually his?) felt two sizes too big and his limbs didn't quite move the way he wanted them to. Ignored the voice in the back of his head telling him that he hadn't been given permission to do any of this and that when he was discovered there would be pain.
"Come on Jay, the whole point of this was to show you guys a fun time! I can't do that if you're falling asleep on me!"
He blinks, and he's in the middle of a grassy field with no real memory of how he got there, and Carlos was staring at him and Aziz was staring at him and…and Chad? Chad Charming was there and staring at him especially hard and Jay would have been some kind of concerned about that except he was still trying to figure out what they were all doing out here.
"What the fuck are we all doing out here?"
There, he'd asked it. Maybe now he'd get some answers instead of looks.
"Well, Grumpy, we're here for a midnight game of tourney," Aziz answers, and his voice is too light, and Jay glares at the other boy.
It's not that he's…well. It's not that so much as the fact that Aziz's voice was too light, like he was trying to make it that way, and Jay really wished they'd all stop fucking staring at him!
"Why am I supposed to care about that?"
"Oh-ho, just you wait!" Aziz responds, and he grins and it's a bit more normal and Jay can breathe again. Something sails through the air in his direction and he catches it on instinct, coming up with a small white ball that is heavier in his hands than he was expecting for its size.
"The rules of the game are really simple," Aziz is still saying, and Jay looks up and there are sticks with rope nets attached in his hands. "Get from one side of the field to the other and put this ball into that net."
He points, and Jay realizes there are standing metal things on the opposite sides of the field they're on, just barely visible past the light of the…is it a streetlight if it's not a street?
"Wh-wha-what's the catch?" Carlos asks, and Jay realizes that the smaller boy is also clutching tightly to one of the net-sticks, his eyes bright and excited.
"Well there's two teams typically, and each team wants to score and get the most points, while stopping the other team from scoring. Also there's the canons but we won't get into that now."
Jay has the very distinct sound of canon fire in his ears and he is trying to figure out how they could possibly fit a canon on land when they're meant to attach to ships. He doesn't say it out loud, but he thinks Aziz doesn't know how to play his own game.
"Yeah, mostly because it would get us caught right away," Chad is saying, and Jay still doesn't know why he's there. "But come tomorrow's tryouts, then you'll get to see them in action."
"Ok, ok, enough talking!" Aziz hisses, and his voice is much more normal now even if his eyes still flicker between Jay and the other boy he's only just now realizing is there and oh…. "Jay, you're on my team!"
"Wait, what? Does that mean I get Carlos? Wait, hang on!"
Chad is protesting and Jay's head is spinning.
"Come on! Nikhil's not playing, he's just here to supervise and referee, and anyway we can switch if you really…"
"Yes."
Carlos butts in and he's firm enough that he doesn't slip. Jay is almost proud except…except.
"Well…well ok, but we'll start slow so you guys can get a feel for it."
Jay.
…ith me…ay?
"What?"
He jerks, and there's a stick in his hand and Carlos in front of him, eyes wide and worried. "Are…are you wwith me Jay?"
He's not sure.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
He's not sure.
"We're gonna show these princes how we do it on the Isle," he says, and grins.
Carlos nods, but his eyes don't mean it, and Jay shoves forward to grab the ball off the ground –did he drop it? When did he?-
"Alriiiight!" Aziz crows, and Jay charges forward and flicks his wrist and the ball sails sideways to Carlos.
The other boy drops his stick and catches it in his hands, and his lips twitch and his eyes spark and he runs.
Aziz whines something but Jay is already overtaking him and dodging hid pitiful attempt at a block. Really, he was cataloguing his movements far too easily. Jay could slide a knife between his ribs right now for all the good his posturing was doing. Carlos slips by and hands him the ball, and Jay pounds his way up the field and towards Chad, who takes one look and sidesteps. Jay feels his breath leave him in a laugh, and he winds his arm back to toss the ball into the net.
And his arm keeps going back and his body is spinning and wait…and wait…what? Jay freezes, then stumbles, and when he looks down the ball is not in his hand. He looks up and it is not in the net. He hears a laugh and looks to the left and.
"What the fuck?"
The ball is in Chad's stick, and Chad is laughing at him, his lips just barely pressed upwards into a smile.
"Wow you should see your face," he quips, before flinging the stick and…wait that's just not….
The ball is halfway across the field, soaring, in fact, into the net attached to Aziz's stick, the other boy then turning and pitching it into the unguarded net at the other end of the field. Jay turns back to Chad, who immediately stops laughing and straightens up.
"Gotta catch me if you wanna hit me," he says, and he's sprinting across the field before Jay can realize he's clenching his fists.
He does end up hitting the other boy, landing him a solid elbow to the ribs because while Chad is fast, but he's not Isle-fast, and it's incredibly satisfying to hear the other boy's sharp intake of breath cut off into a groan. He regroups with Carlos and they try again, and while the sticks might help the Auradon princes throw farther, they don't know how to maneuver like he and Carlos do.
They don't win. Or at least, they don't score more points. It's…a tie, he thinks. And it's weird how that thought doesn't fill him panic at what his father would think. A part of Jay thinks it's mostly because he hadn't lost and so a beating wasn't something to be feared at least. Maybe no food, but that wasn't so bad.
A part of Jay thinks that he is in Auradon now so he didn't need to worry about even that, but he's not sure.
"Well that was an experience," Aziz is saying, and Jay blinks because they're inside? Somewhere cool and dark but quickly made bright by a flick of a light switch and that still was so unusual, that light was so reliable here. There's lockers in this room and thin long benches, and Aziz and Chad and the other boy…Nik…something. They're putting away the sticks and ball in the lockers and.
"Do you guys want to shower here before heading back to the dorms? Just so it's easier?"
And Carlos is shrugging as he nods and looking to Jay for…oh. Oh and answer. Yeah. Yeah now that he's thinking about it he is hot, and his shirt is sticking to his back and it hurts. Jay fights the grimace that tightens his jaw and arches his back away from the sensation on instinct, though he knows that it's useless until he gets the shirt off and he knows it's going to pull at the….pull at everything and it's sticking and he just wants it all to go away.
He's tugging at the bottom of his shirt before he's thought better of it, and he grits his jaw and he yanks his shirt up and it rubs against the spots on his back he knew it would and his brain sends the old spiking white pain through his body but his shirt is off and…..
"Jay."
Carlos' fingers tug at the loops in his pants, and Jay looks down and blinks at the shirt in his hands. The shirt that is not bloodstained as he had thought, and then he remembers that right, he'd just been sweating, and his shirts always tended to rub the scars on his back raw when he got too hot. It was why he usually just didn't wear a shirt when it got hot on the Isle, but he'd put a shirt on this time because he was in Auradon.
"Oh fuck me."
He was in Auradon, and he'd just taken off his shirt and….
"Someone tell me that's not what I think it is."
And why won't they stop staring at him?