Zach is fourteen when he graduates with his first official degree in Metaphysics. It's a very long, hot, hard day. Belle sunburns since she's wearing Mal's skin when they go out. She likes the attention that the colorful hair garners, and she's pretty enough to keep people's attention after they notice her. It makes Ben antsy. He doesn't like older boys taking glances at his little seven-year-old.
Zach is the shortest person on stage, but everyone regards him as someone cool that they like. He's an inspiration to be graduating with something that advanced in such a short amount of time. Also, his parents are the King and Queen, and he's two years off of becoming King, so there's a certain level of respect that has to be garnered.
Zach stumbles off the stage at the end of it all and rushes over to them for photos. "Look!" He exclaims, smiling broadly as he waves his diploma. "Look! I did it!"
He stops in the sunlight so Mal can take a few photos of him, and then he jumps to her side. "I want a photo with you!" He exclaims. "You and Dad. Hey! Tyler! Can you take our photo?"
It is a very weird feeling to be standing beside her graduated son while her other son takes a bunch of photos. It is even weirder when she looks over and Zach and realizes she's now looking up at him. He's officially passed her.
Belle first asks about the Isle of the Lost when she's nine and both Zach and Tyler hush her before Mal can even start to formulate a response. Their reactions are so perfectly timed and so right-off-the-bat that it takes her even longer to figure out what to say. "I don't talk about it much, do I?" She asks aloud. Zach and Tyler both shrug noncommittally and turn away.
Evie and Jay talk about their experiences on TV and in interviews and every year on the anniversary of the barrier falling. Carlos will talk about it with anyone who asks. But not Mal. She's never been too comfortable sharing her experiences with others.
"Would you like to go with me sometime?" She asks her children.
The boys look shocked at the offer, but Belle perks up. "Sure!" She agrees, ever eager to go somewhere with her mom.
"We'll have to go before Zach is crowned," Mal decides. They don't have a lot of time. Already, Zach is being booked with suit sizings and cake testings. Ben's been pulling him into the office more and more to show him how things work and the cathedral is already booked for coronation day.
A week later, Mal returns to the Isle for the first time in a long time. She drives them in herself. Ben stays behind in Auradon. He's never quite liked the Isle. But he promises to have dinner ready for them when they get back and asks them to call when they make it across the bridge.
"I remember this place!" Tyler announces from the backseat as they start to cross into the older parts of town that will never be renovated because they are a memorial to the horrible conditions people lived in.
Belle wrinkles her nose up. "People lived here?" She demands.
Mal stops the car outside a crumbling lot and lets the kids get out and wander. Only Tyler has been here before, though Belle will probably come with her sixth-grade class when the time comes.
"Do you see that big stone building?" Mal asks, pointing to a high-rise home.
Belle wrinkles her nose even further. "It looks like it's about to fall over."
"That's where I grew up," Mal reveals. All three kids fall silent. Mal offers her arm to Zach and then begins to lead them in. Mal shows her pass to the security guard as they step in, proving who she is and what this place means to her. The castle isn't open to general public without an appointment. The guard lets them all pass without much comment, though.
The door to Bargain Castle swings on two rusty hinges. Rust and dust float to the ground as the door slides open. Belle coughs and Zach wraps an arm around her small frame. Mal and Tyler light their eyes up in an effort to see more, but Belle and Zach simply wait for the dust to settle. "When I came home from school," Mal begins, entering her old home and opening a window to let the daylight in, "I always took my stuff up to my room because my mom had friends who would steal my stuff and sell it if I didn't keep track of it."
The room is probably as big as their living room, but much taller because part of the second floor caved in and added some jagged height to the room. The wallpaper is peeling off worse than it was when Mal lived here and some things are knocked over, but it's overall the same. Rusty kitchen utensils hang along the wall beside a hazardous stove. Mal peels off her jacket to reveal a tank top, which she wore today on purpose. Tyler's face goes red as he watches her turn and put it down on a chair and she knows he's reminiscing when he drew all over himself because he wanted her 'battle marks'. He has scars now – the three marks Zach gave him in their fight years ago, a few things from getting hurt on set or being too reckless. And now that he kinda has an idea of how hard something has to hurt to leave a permanent mark, he doesn't talk about any of Mal's stark white shapes on her back.
Mal turns the underside of her arm over as Zach peers cautiously at the fridge magnets, which have been arranged to say 'Wicked' and "Evil'. "My mother was delusional," She calls, fighting to keep her voice from clamping up as she tries to explain these hard, hard things to her children. "She was sure that that was a locked safe and decided she didn't know how to open it. She used to go over and throw herself at it until someone helped her."
The scene she describes is almost comical, but no one laughs. Mal holds up her elbow and shows them an odd mark hidden behind her elbow, right on her tricep. "You had to be the right person to help her though. She usually wanted the Evil Queen or Cruella to help her when they were over. I tried once and she was so furious that she held my arm to that stove as punishment."
Zach jumps away from the stove like it's alive or dangerous. Belle spins away from Mal so she doesn't have to look her mom in the eyes. She goes and curls up in her oldest brother's side and they draw comfort from each other as Mal fingers the odd patch on her skin. She glances at the creaking, crumbling steps that lead to the second floor. "Let's go upstairs," she decides, turning to head towards the steps.
"I don't want to go up there!" Zach yelps, peering at the gaping hole in fear.
"It's safe," Mal assures him. "They lead tours through here, remember Tyler?"
Tyler's face is white. It's looking like he does remember, but he didn't exactly get this rundown the first time he was here and he doesn't want to be getting it now. Chances are, all the school said was: "This is where Queen Mal grew up," if that.
"That's not what I meant," Zach trails off. His face is pasty white as his gaze flickers between his mom, the stove which will probably haunt his dreams, and the upstairs.
Mal starts up the stairs, and slowly all three kids follow.
Up here, it is cleaner than it was when she lived here. She used to have to navigate piles of metal, bricks, and glass in the dark. And all the doors are open so people can peer in as they walk through. Mal lets the kids examine the bathroom briefly before pointing to the door closest to the stairs on the left side. "This is my old room."
One by one, the kids peer inside. She can see them drawing up visions of their comfortable rooms at home and comparing them. Her old room is much, much bigger than any room in their little apartment. A very large and cushy bed fills most of the space, which would look inviting if not for the broken, rotting posts, the moldy grey and green sheets, the rips and tears visible along the entire thing, and the odd depressions scattered along in the mattress. On one side of the room is a wall of shelves. Plastic and metal and wooden shelves that she built out of old boards and rusted nails or little plastic sliding drawer compartments that she screwed to the wall to discourage her mother from stealing them. Large gouges of sheetrock have been punched out of the wall – literally in some cases. Mal points to the back of the room where the paint has been stripped away in most places and the wall is full of holes like a honeycomb. Old blood streaks the walls. "That was my area," she says and even now, forty years later, can't keep the hints of pride out of her voice. "I practiced hitting there. You can't tell from here, but I once punched a hole through the sheetrock and out through a board that was serving as the exterior wall. I was so proud – even though my room was cold after that."
"It's so… dark in here…" Belle whispers, leaning into the room and peering from side to side. A velvet rope across the door forbids them from going any further.
"We didn't have lights," Mal nods in agreement. She sets a hand on Zach's shoulder and he almost jumps through the roof. "I think Dad told you something about my mom when you were younger? About how she used to take money and information?"
"She sold you," Zach confirms flatly, face going a bit green as he avoids her eyes. He's older now, and he mostly knows what that statement means though he avoids thinking about it. Tyler jolts in shock to hear it.
Mal nods to the bed, with its flamboyant oversized-ness and odd depressions near the middle and the edges. Her hands shake against her sides. "That often happened here," she tells them and then turns away.
Maybe she can't see their reactions, but she can hear Tyler and Zach breathing carefully like they've been punched as they gape a few seconds longer at the room. Part of Mal wants to dig a little deeper. She's never really felt brave enough to tell them about all of this and doubts she'll ever be able to again. She wants to describe the horror she felt every individual time and the struggle it was and how her mother would bang on her door and shout to not make so much noise if she happened to cry.
But part of the boys are still young and innocent to her past. And the bigger part of Mal wishes they'd always stay like that.
"This is Grandma Maleficent's room," Mal announces when the three finally stop comparing their lives with her old one and wander down closer to her. Maleficent's room is by far the filthiest, with piles of black fabric and heaps of charcoal and half-drawn blueprints of the Isle of the Lost strewn about. They can't see her bed from this angle; only the trash and a few random stools and a large foreboding statue are visible from the door. "I wasn't allowed in this room."
Not much is left to be said.
The last room is one that Mal doesn't introduce. She leans against the doorframe as the kids look inside. Tyler knows what it is but doesn't announce it. Zach catches on quicker than Belle does. When he realizes, he stumbles back down the hall, shaking his head. "No, mom," he moans, covering his ears with his hands. "No more stories, please?"
"You can go back downstairs if you want," Mal says softly. However, Zach doesn't. He just hovers where he can't see the inside of the room.
Inside, the room is almost entirely made of stone except for one patch of wood underneath four hanging chains. On the wall hangs a variety of scary-looking tools ranging from knives to screwdrivers to handsaws and forks. Everything is twisted and rusted over with age. A few things probably still have blood on them, though none of the kids will know that in the dim light. They can, however, see the state of the wood on the floor. She doesn't say anything as they take in the depressions made from dripping liquid over a long period of time and the thick brown stains on the floor.
"This is where I would stay if my mother was mad at me," Mal says simply. She has to keep it simple, otherwise, her brain will remember everything and try and block out the bad memories. "If I did something wrong or if I couldn't finish something she told me to do or if she was in a bad mood, then I'd stay here instead of in my room."
"And she'd chain you up?" Belle asks softly.
Mal nods. A dull ringing is filling her ears. "Do you see all the things on the wall?" She asks.
Tyler and Belle nod. Zach covers his ears down the hall.
"My mother's favorite was the fork," Mal reveals.
There are several long moments of silence. Then, Tyler manages to croak out: "Did she just… rake you with it?"
Mal shakes her head. "No. See, it was harder if I had the energy to struggle, so she'd string me up by my wrists and shoulders for a few days until I was hungry and too tired to move as much. Then she'd use the knives to make the cuts before sticking the fork in and twisting it. That's why I have so many ugly marks on my back. She also liked to separate my skin from my back using the screwdriver."
She turns away then and walks back to the stairs because the ringing in her ears is getting louder and she feels dizzy. It's been thirty years, but she can still feel her mother's maniacal laugh as she pulls skin straight off of muscle by running that thing between the two layers.
"How are you alive?" Belle asks in a shaky voice as they wander down the stairs again.
Mal shrugs. "I guess I was too stubborn to die," She decides. "Or maybe I just got used to it."
"But Grandma did try, right?" Zach croaks out as he stumbles back onto the ground level.
Mal nods. She should have figured this would come up. "Every so often," She confirms. "I usually just left home and went to stay with friends until she forgot about it."
None of them feel like wandering anymore, so they all sit out in the sunshine on the hood of the car while Mal pokes around at her past, telling stories about Evie and Jay and Carlos and the chaos they'd cause or what school was like over here. She works her way from the beginning slowly, skipping over the worst or the longest stories because it's not what she can handle. She ends with her version of the one they know the best.
"My mother's goons moved behind my friends. She told us we'd been invited to go to a different school in Auradon. This was about an hour before the limo picked us up. We packed up and our parents gave us a mission to steal the wand. A long, sleek black car pulled up right here. All the other kid's parents came down to see the car but my mother stood up there so she could watch me get in. One of her fingernails was green." She drums her fingers on the car's hood and then glances over to see her children staring at the sky while they listen intently to her. "And then I went to Auradon that day."
"And met dad," Zach huffs, watching the clouds roll on by.
"And met dad," Mal affirms.
Belle curled up. "I want to go home," She moans, closing her eyes. Her hair shifts color from purple to blonde and her skin tans over. "I want to go see dad."
Mal snorts and sits up. "Me too," she whispers. "Let's go."
The drive home is mostly silence, though they stop and get ice cream through a drive-through on their way home. "This is where we told Zach and Tyler that we were going to have you, Belle," Mal calls to her youngest as she passes towering ice cream cones around.
"I'm still mad you're not a boy," Tyler grumbles, sinking into his chair.
They stumble through the door; an array of kicking shoes off and dropping coats and balancing ice cream as they come. Ben watches, amused. It's been the same show every day of their lives. Zach hugs him first, burrowing his face into his shoulder before stumbling off to the hall to go down to his room. Tyler is next, giving Ben a quick hug before sitting down at the bar to finish his ice cream. Belle burrows into Ben's side and nuzzles against his chest for several long seconds before her hair starts to pick up purple streaks again. "I don't like the Isle of the Lost," She whispers in his ear.
"Me neither," Ben mumbles, running his fingertips up and down her back with a glance to Mal. "Are you gonna go sit in your room for a little bit?"
Belle nods and withdraws from him. "I might try to write a song again," She sighs and disappears. She's taking piano now, and so a keyboard is set up in her room for when she doesn't feel like going down to the palace sitting room to use the baby grand piano. Mal sets her ice cream down on the counter and pulls out two spoons to share with him. Tyler takes chocolate syrup out of the fridge, coats his ice cream, and leaves for his room. They wait until piano tones are floating down the hall and Tyler's door has closed before Mal sits beside Ben and leans her head against his shoulder. He wraps an arm around her without a word.
"I did it," She whispers against his shirt.
He hums, a deep rumble in his chest that almost immediately lulls Mal to sleep.
"It wasn't so hard to talk once I got there."
He rubs his fingertips up and down her back.
"Do you think I've raised them right?"
This is the first thing he responds to after he hoists her off her chair and into his embrace fully. "Well," he sighs against her ear, tickling her hair against her lobe, "Considering we're putting a fully-fledged genius on the throne in two weeks and he's set to gain a degree in both psychology and political sciences next year, I don't think there's any way you could be considered a bad mother. Not to mention Tyler's a talented enough actor to be looking into television roles and Belle's set to perform the national anthem at Zach's coronation."
"Even though I just dragged them through the worst place in Auradon and traumatized them?"
"Traumatized? Hardly. Zach's been asking things since he was six. And he needs to know what's out there. They all do. It's good you finally told them."
"Are you sure?"
He kisses her hair and squeezes her tightly until she can't feel her mother's thirty-year-old hands on her skin and all she can feel is him hugging her. "Positive."