Later that same night, Ben and Mal go to sit on Zach's bed. He glances between them with a little fear in his eyes as they sit on either side of him. They already decided how this conversation should go, and exactly how they should filter things for their seven-year-old.
"You've been asking some very grown-up questions lately," Mal begins, leaning into the wall and inviting Zach to lean against her side. Ben stretches out, leaning on his elbows and running a comforting hand up and down Zach's spine. "Dad and I had to think about how we should answer you. I'm sorry I scared you today."
Zach doesn't respond. He just wraps his tiny arms around her midsection and cuddles into her further. Ben shifts his weight a little more towards the small child. "It's good to ask questions," He whispers. "We want you to feel like you can talk to us. We might not have the answers right away and sometimes things are harder for us to talk about, but we'll always try and help explain things."
Mal pulls Zach onto her lap and starts combing her fingertips through his hair, which matches Ben's straight down to the texture and style. She kisses his forehead and lets him hug her a little longer before she asks: "Why were you reading about Grandma and Grandpa?"
"Because," Zach starts in a little whisper. "I'm gonna be king one day and kings have to know a lot about where they live."
Mal pouts. "Baby, you're not gonna be king for a long, long time," she frowns. "Don't throw your childhood away. You can worry about the crown later."
"But that was very thoughtful of you," Ben butts in, raising an eyebrow at Mal. "You know that you could have asked us, right? We would have told you."
"But I like books," Zach reminds him, and Ben snorts.
"Okay, champ. Well, what questions do you have about your book?"
Zach leans towards his headboard, where sits the Auradon history book. He cracks it open and points to scribbles in the margins of the book. "Why was Grandma Maleficent in charge of the evil guys?" he asks.
Mal's lower lip wobbles. "Because she was the evilest of them all," She replies. "And she had magic, so she was very powerful."
"I think Judge Frollo was eviler," Zach mutters as he writes the answer in underneath the question. "He burned people inside houses."
Ben silently disagrees. The longer he's married to Mal, the more deserving he thinks her mother is of the title 'Mistress of all Evil'.
"Why were Grandma and Grandpa in charge of the good guys?" Zach asks, turning the page to show a photo of a mural of Belle in her yellow dress, dancing with the Beast.
"Because Grandma was very smart and knew how to get people to listen to her," Ben explains. "She wasn't as smart as you, though."
Zach mostly ignores the compliment as he flips a few pages forward to show them a map. "What's the Isle of the Lost?" He repeats, pointing to the dark scatters of shadowy cliffs and rocky beaches that make up the jagged place Mal used to call home.
Mal lets out a long, slow breath, and Ben realizes that she needs to do a lot more of this conversation than he originally anticipated. "The Isle of the Lost is where Grandpa lives. You've been there, remember? There's a big, long, white bridge? Dad and I put it up." She puts her finger down on the label on Zach's map. "But before Dad and Mom knew each other and before Grandpa Hades was allowed to come over here, it was a big jail for bad people. And I was born there, so I was trapped in with all the bad people."
"With Grandma?" Zach asks.
Mal nods. "Yes, I had to live with my mom just like you have to live with me. But my mom wasn't very nice to me."
"Were you abused?" Zach asks, innocently enough.
Ben's mouth drops open. "Where'd you learn about that?" He asks.
Zach points to his favorite book - his dictionary - and recites "Abuse; harmful treatment of a person or an animal."
Mal draws Zach's attention back to her using two fingers under his chin. "That's a hard question for Mom," she tells him. "Grandma wasn't very nice to me, but neither were a lot of people. Let's think of it like this, Zach. Let's say we have a friend who likes to hurt people. And they don't care if they get in trouble. So you send them away so they don't hurt anyone. Like a jail, right?" Zach nods along to her words. "Well, the Isle was where we sent everyone who wanted to hurt other people. But just because there wasn't anyone nice to hurt doesn't mean they stopped being mean. They just all hurt each other. My mom hurt my dad and my mom's friends hurt her and it was dangerous because it was like a game to some people. A game where they try to hurt you. And that's where Mom, Evie, Jay, and Carlos were born."
"So everyone wanted to hurt you?" Zach deadpans, looking extremely disappointed in the figurative friend Mal described. "Why didn't you leave?"
Mal hesitates. "Well... it was a prison for bad people. And Grandma and Grandpa thought that because our parents were bad, so were we. So we were trapped too."
Zach draws a fingertip down the spine of his book. "So you were trapped with lots of people who wanted to hurt you until Dad became King and said that you should come to see Auradon," he puzzled out.
"You've been reading ahead," Ben mumbled, staring at the book and spotting a bookmark near the end.
Zach nods and slumps into Mal's side. He rests a hand on her ribcage as he thinks about everything. "Mom?" He asks softly. "Were you evil?"
Mal looks like she's fighting back tears as she swallows and says: "A little, baby. Mom was a little evil."
"She wasn't evil," Ben disagrees. "She just didn't know what good was."
"Did you do bad things?" Zach asks.
It takes a long, long time for Mal to formulate an answer. Finally, she chooses the simple and truthful, "Yes."
"Why?" Zach frowns, sticking out his lip in a perfect pout that he inherited from her.
"Well, at first it was because people wanted to hurt me. Then it was all I knew how to do. And then it was because I wanted to show off and be mean. I wanted to be like everyone else." Mal does her best to explain, but she trips and fumbles up her words as she goes.
"What sort of bad things did you do?" Zach asks. Ben looks up to make sure she's holding herself together well enough to answer.
She kisses his head and combs his hair to the side. "I'll tell you that when you're a little older," She whispers. "And not before bed. I don't want to give you nightmares."
"Dad gets nightmares when she tells him things," Ben confides to his son. "And he's been listening for a long, long time."
"Does Mom get nightmares?" Zach asks. He looks up at Mal for an answer. Ben wishes there was an easy one. Not something that is like: "Every night, but sometimes more than others. Most of the time she can forget her own nightmares. Then other nights she wakes me up because she's holding onto me. And other nights she wakes herself up screaming and begging invisible monsters not to hurt her or me or you..."
"Sometimes," Mal whispers in the dark. "But I'm a big girl. I can deal with them."
Zach nods, gives her one last squeeze, and lies down. "I'm glad I live in a castle," he yawns, "And not in a prison."
Mal chuckles as she pulls the covers up around him and tucks him in. "Me too, baby," she whispers. "Goodnight."
Tyler turns six at the beginning of December and they celebrate by organizing a skating party with his friends from school along with a bunch of his cousins. Tyler blends right in with Evie's vibrant haired twins, and his spontaneity is only combated by Jay's two sons. Zach skates and then talks with the other parents and some of the older children for about two hours and then dozes off into his dad's side with a book.
On the way home with two little boys chattering in the backseat wildly, Ben takes a high overpass and they stop by a fast food joint for ice cream. The royal family crowds into a booth near a window and Mal barely manages to get Tyler's shoes off before he's off to play on the giant indoor jungle gym they have here. She sighs irritably, kicking his shoes under his chair, and puts her head down on the table. Ben laughs and rubs her back while Zach calmly removes his shoes and stows his book safety behind the salt and pepper in case ice cream happens to get on the table while they play. "Did you know that the first jungle gym was patented by Sebastian Hinton before Auradon was even formed?" He asks. "And that government regulation requires at least a foot of cushioning material underneath them?"
"I knew that," Ben nods. "Do you know why?"
"Because a fall from more than six feet can be lethal, especially if you're not landing on your feet," Zach replies.
"You can jump from higher if you don't lock up your joints and roll with the fall," Mal yawns noncommittally. "I once jumped from three stories up, had my fall broken by cardboard about halfway down, and rolled when I hit the ground. Didn't even bruise my ankle."
"That's dangerous, Mom," Zach deadpans. "Even a fall from ten feet can crush your spine. Gravity makes you accelerate to the ground at a rate of nine-point-eight-meters-per-second-squared. and you can't level out your acceleration at that point either, so you can't reach free fall."
Mal groans. "Well, I could tell you about the speed up thing you were talking about, but I don't know all the numbers."
"That's high school curriculum," Ben furrows his brow at Zach. "What have you been reading?"
Zach shrugs. "I found some big books in the back of the library. I don't like the one on chemistry, but the biology and physics ones are interesting. I also found some math books. Right now I'm reading about how they discovered the number for pi."
Ben drums his fingers on the table in thought and hums. "We need to go get you tested," He hums. "See what level you're at."
"According to the national standardizing system, I'm at an eleventh-grade reading level, a ninth-grade math level, a tenth-grade science, and a fourth-grade writing level. Also, I have lots of random knowledge," Zach informs them.
"I'd believe it," Mal sighs.
Ben snorts and nods towards the playground. "Go play, Zach. Keep your brother from beating anyone up for us, please?"
Zach nods and bounds off towards the structure. As he disappears into the towering plastic tubes, Mal says a little prayer of thanks that her son, despite how advanced he is, still finds joy in jungle gyms and recycled plastic forts. "Whose bright idea was it to have a son who's smarter than both of us?" She sighs.
"It's not that bad," Ben sighs, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her hair. "It's going to be interesting to see what he does."
He squeezes her body closer to him and Mal closes her eyes and groans again. "Now," she sighs, "If only Tyler could lose a little energy. Goodness, gracious."
Zach and Tyler come tumbling out of the slide together, laughing their heads off, and then take off towards the swings which hang under the fort and which you can swing back and forth on. Mal finds Ben's hand around her waist and squeezes it. "I like this," She whispers. "This is nice."
"It is," Ben agrees.
They stay for an hour or so. Long after the ice cream is finished and when Mal is half asleep, Ben finally calls them to get their shoes on. With flushed red faces and sweaty bodies, they clamber back out to their table where Ben and Mal start helping them get ready to go.
"It's really fun when we do things like this together, huh?" Ben asks as he helps Tyler slide his shoes onto his feet. "I like it when you guys play nice together."
"I like it when we fight," Tyler yawns, stretching his arms above his head.
Ben hides a smile as he finishes double-knotting Tyler's laces on one shoe and then glances at Zach. "Zach's been a really good older brother to you," he reminds Tyler. "Do you think you'd be a good older brother too?"
"No," Tyler frowns. He crosses his arms, daring Ben to refute his statement.
Zach pauses where he's been pulling on his coat and squints at Ben. Mal laughs - they look like twins when he does that. "Are you and mom having a baby?" He asks.
Zach's mouth falls open and his eyes grow wide in comic shock. Ben nods, trying to hold back a smirk, and pulls Zach towards him so he and Tyler stand side-by-side. "We're going to have another baby in our family in May," he announces slowly. "We don't know what it'll be yet, but we do know that Mom's going to be very tired until them, okay? So she might not be around as much."
"That's okay," Tyler straightens up. "So long as it's a boy and he doesn't get any of my toys. Also, if mom has to go to bed early, that's fine, but I think I should be allowed to stay up later while you tuck Zach in."
Ben hummed, sending a glance at his oldest as Zach rolls his eyes. The truth is that Zach is getting older now. Bedtime routines are shorter. He doesn't want them around when he's reading and he doesn't need lots of hugs or kisses before he goes to bed. Some nights he doesn't even wait for them in his room. He comes and waits in the living room, talks with them a little before bed, and then with a hug and kiss each walks himself off. His bedtime has, without Tyler's knowledge, been moved back. So long as he gets up on time, it'll stay that way.
Ben scoops up his youngest, soon-to-be middle child, into his arms and pokes his side where he's ticklish while Tyler writhes. Zach scoops up his book into his arms and then goes to Mal and holds out a hand to help her up. She chuckles a little at the help and then picks him up too. Zach, however, frowns and pushes her away a little. "Mom!" He whines. "I'm too big to be held! I wanna walk."
Tyler, upon hearing his older brother's words, starts beating his fists against Ben's shoulders. "Me too!" He exclaims. "I'm a big kid, dad! I can walk to the car by myself!"
"Race you there," Zach challenges, a competitive glint in his eyes that usually isn't there. Ben sets Tyler down and the purple-haired kid narrowly avoids running into the table in his haste to race his older brother. Both boys run out into the snow and begin fighting over the handles on the car.
Mal looks heartbroken. Her hands are miming the action of holding something, trying to understand when Zach became too big for her to carry. Sure, he's been getting heavier for the last few years, but now that he's told her, it's breaking her heart. Ben stares for a few seconds as he unlocks the car and the kids clamor in. Then he walks over and hugs her as she hides her face in his shoulder and calms back down. Before she can pull away to follow the children outside, he catches her face and whispers in her ear "Are you too big to be held?"
Mal gives him an odd look, and then he sweeps her off her feet. She yelps as he hooks an arm under her knees as she locks her hands around his neck. He carries her out past the other patrons, who are laughing, and into the car where the two kids are whining, begging for them to start the car. She laughs as the snow falls on their faces and when he sets her down on the hood, with the boys still complaining in the car, to kiss her, she responds with equal, almost childish vigor. Ben can't hear Zach and Tyler groaning and complaining in the car, but he sees them turn away, covering their eyes and pretending to barf, and can't stop the bubbling laugh that rises inside of him.