A/N: Hi, nothing majorly important to the story you need to know this time but a couple of people have messaged me and asked about it. The reason I have Mal, Jay, and Carlos doing things like suggest where to look for Evie specifically in the place she was just mentioned to go like when they first got to the isle and they went to the docks or the example in the beginning of this chapter, or with Evie saying how she knows that they will come back for her. I wrote it that way specifically to show the connection between the four of them and just how close they are to each other... anyway thanks for reading and to those of you who noticed.
Mal, Jay, and Carlos got to the the docks where they had left from last time but even after a thorough search of the area there was still no sign of Evie. If she had ever even been there in the first place she was gone now. "Great so now what?" Carlos asked as he leaned against a wall.
"There's nothing else we can do except keep looking. We know she has to be around here somewhere. It's getting kind of late maybe she went to go find something to eat." Mal suggested.
"Let's get going then." Jay said as he got off the wall he was leaning on and walked off with the other two falling into step with him.
Evie was on her way back to the docks after stealing food yet again. The isle had really gone downhill since they left. Not one person even noticed her take a single thing and it's not as if she had been practicing in Auradon. 'The only one who kept up with that was Jay' Evie thought with a smile before snapping out of her thoughts and wiping the smile off her face before anyone could see it.
She didn't need anyone here thinking she was going soft. It was completely beside the point that she was still getting better at the whole good thing and working on it in Auradon. The street rules there are polar opposite to those here.
Evie focused on her surroundings again. Just in time to because she heard footsteps coming her way. She couldn't decipher the voices and could hardly make out the words but she heard something along the lines of 'said he saw... blue hair... this way'.
There weren't exactly a whole lot of people with blue hair even on the isle. Evie got up against the wall and crept closer to the corner. The voices had stopped talking by now but she could still hear the footsteps coming toward her and she wasn't sure how many of them there were but there was definitely more than one person.
"Let's go."
Evie froze before a wide smile spread across her face with no hope of going away anytime soon. She would know that voice anywhere. Evie rushed around the corner and through herself into the arms of the person who that voice belonged to. "Jay!"
"Evie!" Came the shocked yet relieved voices of her three best friends. Jay immediately wrapped his arms around her and held her tight in return as Mal and Carlos joined in on the hug too.
"You came back. You found me." She teared up against Jay's chest.
Jay chuckled in response. "Was there ever any doubt?" he asked.
"No, none at all." she answered as they all pulled back. "Come on. I really want to get out of here."
"Then let's go." Mal said squeezing her hand once before leading the way back to the limo. Carlos put a hand on her shoulder for a moment as well when he walked by. Jay however put his arm around her shoulders with no intent to move it anytime soon. Not that she was complaining.
Evie leaned into his side as they walked through the streets back to the limo. They got some looks but most of the were from isle kids who were terrified to see them back. They laughed at those people in true isle fashion. The other looks they got were those of disgust, clearly the ones who thought the four had lost their villainous touch but a few well placed glares and they backed off.
Once the limo was in sight they started jogging to it eager to get Evie back. They were just getting in reach of the vehicle when Mal stopped them. "Oh wait a minute, Carlos open the trunk." Mal ran around the corner while, confused as to exactly why he was doing it, Carlos opened the trunk. Evie and Jay shared a confused glance while pulling the tarps down before turning back just in time to see Mal turn the corner with the moped Ben got for her.
"I had to leave it behind last time." Mal explained as Carlos helped her lift it into the trunk while Jay gestured for Evie to get in the front passenger side door. Once she was in he slid into the drivers seat. After getting Mal's new ride in the back she and Carlos got in to."Let's blow this popsicle stand." Mal declared. Jay glanced in the rear view mirror just to make sure everyone was here before he started up the car and was peeling out from the hiding spot and down the road.
Evie sighed in relief and leaned back into her seat with her eyes closed. Jay glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and grabbed her hand in his. Evie looked over at him and smiled, squeezing his hand in hers.
The silence that surrounded them lasted for several long and drawn out minutes before Carlos broke it. "You sure you're okay Evie?"
Evie turned in her seat without letting go of her grip on Jay's hand to look at Carlos and Mal. "Yeah. Yeah I'm fine but... a lot happened." Evie stopped talking not sure how to bring up the whole magic thing. Turns out she didn't have to because Mal brought it up for her.
"Hey E, we ran into the Gaston brothers before and they said something about you using magic. Any idea what that was all about?"
Evie nodded her head. "Yeah, sort of anyway. I had an idea to go get Carlos's machine, the one we used to find the Dragon's eye, and use it to make a hole in the side of the barrier just long enough for me to get out and start swimming back to Auradon." Evie was cut off before she could finish her story.
"You were going to what?" Jay sounded like he was about to question her sanity.
"Evie have you lost your mind?" Mal seemed to be on the same wave length as Jay.
"Swim from the isle to Auradon. There's no way!" and that's three for three when Carlos agreed with them.
"I was desperate okay." she deadpanned.
Jay shut his eyes for a moment, a short moment since he was driving but the meaning behind it was still there. "Okay wait. Start from the beginning. What happened in the first place? Lonnie said she saw you going to the front of the car to make sure Ben didn't get lost."
"I was." Evie agreed. "But then these guys came out from behind me and grabbed me and covered my mouth so you guys couldn't hear me. Turns out they were working for my mother and they took me back to her castle." They all bristled at this news and it didn't slip by them that she had said her mother's castle, not her own.
"Yeah, so they took me up to see her. She asked me if I found a prince yet ad if I had a castle. She said that she heard about me being back on the isle and that Ben was here and asked me if 'he was the one I chose'. I told her no and tried to get her to stop talking but she wouldn't listen." Evie was tearing up now, the water about to fall down her cheeks. "She just kept talking. She went on about me coming back without the wand and reminded me that we can't get rid of the barrier without it and how now that Mal chose good and Maleficent was defeated now we would rule over everyone. I just couldn't listen to it anymore and I snapped at her. I told her that I didn't want to be a perfect little princess and that I chose good. She told me that wasn't an option so I told her that I refused to act like something I'm not. I told her that I would never be like her and that she was nothing but ugly. She didn't like that last comment." The damns had burst and Evie had to take a moment to compose herself enough to be able to be Understood.
"She slapped me so hard I landed on the ground and then dragged me by my hair and threw me in my room and locked me in." At this Jay's grip on both and Evie and the steering wheel tightened and if looks could kill anyone he looked at would drop dead. In the back seat Mal and Carlos had similar reaction. Without giving them the chance to start cursing her mother she continued. "Then I decided that for now I had to push everything that happened aside and get out of there so I climbed out the window, up the building, and over to the next one before climbing back down. After I got away from her I got the idea to use the machine."
Carlos cut her off. "Wait so then that means..." Carlos trailed off not finishing his sentence but the others still knew what he meant.
"I managed to get into Hell Hall and into your room, I completely trashed it looking for it but it wasn't in there. I also may have ripped up one of your moms coats but that's besides the point. Anyway I figured it was probably still in the tree house so I went to look there next. I found it easily enough but it needed some work from being left lying around for so long so I went to Lady's Tremaine's place to see Dizzy." Evie smirked now.
"But before I got there I heard Cruella screaming so I assume she saw the closet. Then I got to the salon and saw Dizzy and she let me use her tools to fix the machine. I finished not long before midnight so I left before anyone got there and could tell my mother I was still around. That's when I went to go make the hole in the barrier. I set it up and turned it on and it was warming up when Gaston and Gaston showed up and started taunting me. Before I could do anything the machine started sparking and then it exploded into pieces and we were all thrown back from it."
At their concerned looks she took a moment to assure them aside from a couple bruises from her landing she was fine. "So then I got up and I could see that even though something went wrong it worked and there was a hole in the barrier. I was about to run back to it when they blocked my path, those idiots never even noticed the hole. They wouldn't let me get by and the hole was shrinking and I don't know what happened. I just got so angry and I told them to get away from me and I threw my arms out and I blasted them back, like with magic. Then they ran off and I tried to get to the barrier but it shut before I could get out."
They looked at her in shock, they new that Evil Queen had had some magic powers but Evie had never shown any sign of having magic since they got to Auradon. "So why were you able to use your powers now then?" Mal asked.
"Well I guess I could use them on the isle because of the hole in the barrier but the best guess I can come up with of actually being able to use them at all is between the machine exploding and just being so angry. Guys I don't think I have ever been that mad before, I was so close to getting off of the the isle and back to you guys and they ruined it." her voice got more tense the further she got into her explanation and Jay rubbed his thumb over her hand to remind her that they were here with her now.
"Okay, umm, the next day I looked through the books at Mal's house. Oh I spent the night in your room by the way so thanks. I couldn't find anything to help me understand what happened the night before there so I went to the forbidden section of the Dragon Hall library."
Carlos jumped in shock. "Wait how did you even do that? Dr. Facilier has the only key and what about the spider?"
Evie shrugged her shoulders. "I remembered how he dealt with the spider last time and then I kicked the door down." Jay laughed at the mention of the property damage she caused.
"So then I looked through most of the books in there until I found this." She pulled out her spell book. "Apparently my mother used to have a spellbook of her own. I knew she had some magic for her potions and trasformations and all that but I had no idea it was anything to this level." Evie handed the book back to Mal and Carlos who flipped through it in awe.
"Then I stayed for a few hours looking through it and memorizing some of the spells like this one teleportation spell, except you don't actually say anything you just have to picture where you are and where you want to go."
Mal looked over at her thoughtfully. "Yeah there's one like that in my book too."
"Oh that reminds me." Evie pulled out Mal's own book and handed that back to her as well.
If Mal was in shock before she was completely dumbfounded now. "Evie! Where did you find this?"
"After I left Dragon Hall I went down towards the docks because I figured since that was the last place we saw each other it may be one of the first places you looked. I could tell someone was following me and when I got there the Gaston brothers came out again and tried fighting me because they had their pride bruised by me the night before but between the skills I learned on the isle and in Auradon they couldn't even get near me without get knocked on their asses." Evie said the last part with pride in her voice.
"When I was fighting them I threw my book into the corner so nobody would see it and when I went to get mine I saw Mal's book lying open face down on the ground. Actually that leads to my question. Mal, why did you rip a page out of your own book?"
Mal gave Evie an odd look. "What are you talking about? There aren't any ripped out pages." Evie took the book from Mall and flipped to the missing page. Mal looked confused but not particularly concerned, after all it wasn't like anyone on the isle could use any of her spells anyway with the whole no magic thing they had going on there. "I don't know, I'm not even sure which spell it was." Seeing as Mal wasn't concerned Evie figured she had no reason to be either.
"So Mal do you think you could help me learn how to use these powers?"
"Definitely. We can use the boys as practice." They both laughed wildly at both the comment and said boys' reactions to it.
"Uh don't we have to give our consent to that?" Jay questioned.
"What's wrong Jay don't you trust me?" Evie fluttered her eyes at him.
Carlos answered for Jay. "It's not trusting you that's the problem E. It's more the fact that now there are two girls who could potentially do a good amount of damage to us if they get mad."
"Simple solution then, don't do anything stupid to make us want to hurt you." Evie and Mal high fived and laughed some more at Mal's 'simple solution'.
"Oh no the dresses!" Evie started to panic as she looked to the built in clock. Catillion was going to start any minute and she hadn't had a chance to give any of the girls their dresses. " I never gave out the dresses!"
"Evie, Evie relax. I saw them in the room and took them to the common room so everyone could get it themselves."
Evie sighed in relief. "Thanks Mal you are a life saver." Mal's only response was an unseen eye roll. "Wait I have one more question. Carlos?"
"What's up?" he asked.
"Why can Dude talk now?" Evie questioned and Mal immediately went off in hysterics.
"Yeah Carlos, you never did explain what happened." Jay chose to ignore Mal's cackling assuming, correctly that she already knew whatever it was that happened.
Carlos glared at Mal who was trying desperately to compose herself. "Well you guys know I wanted to ask Jane out but I couldn't find the words to do it. So I asked Mal to make me a potion that would help me tell Jane what I really felt so she made me a truth gummy. I was about to take it but when we were talking Dude jumped up and ate it. Thus we have Dude the talking dog."
Jay and Evie did nothing but blink.
"Is this what we have to look forward to with Evie having magic now too?" he asked.
Carlos nodded his head solemnly. "Most likley."
"Oh boy."
"Oh shut up you two. Carlos it's so obvious that Jane likes you." Mal told the black and white haired boy.
"You're wrong Mal. I tried asking her to cotillion before but she started talking about how we were such good friends and I couldn't do it." Carlos sighed defeated.
"Hey. Come on man don't be like that."
"Jay's right." Evie turned in her seat again. "If you don't believe Jay or Mal then trust me when I say that Jane is crazy for you. She's just a little oblivious sometimes."
"Sounds like some other people I know." Everyone heard Mal's comment but it went ignored.
"Anyway." Jay pointedly got back on topic.
Evie took over as speaker again. "Carlos when we get to cotillion you are going to ask Jane to dance and you are going to tell her how you feel about her. No backing out. She is going to say yes."
"But how do you know." he asked.
"It's a girl thing trust me I know. She also may have mentioned something about you a couple of times but you didn't hear that from me, I told her I wouldn't say anything but I think you needed to know."
Carlos looked hopeful now. "Thanks Evie."
After that they all settled into a comfortable companionable silence for the next portion of their drive. The silence wasn't broken until Jay gave them an estimated time of arrival update.
"We're almost there." Jay informed them. They had already gotten back to Auradon and were minutes away from the school.
"E, when we get back we need to talk." Mal told the girl, any joy left from reuniting with her room mate leaving her as her mind wandered to everything that led her choosing to go the the isle herself. Evie nodded from her seat.
"No." This came from Carlos. Mal and Evie both looked at him in confusion.
"No?" Mal asked with a raised eyebrow of confusion.
"You guys are always going off in a huddle for your girl talk. Jay and I are tired of it."
Jay cut in at this point. "Uh... I'm not."
Carlos gave him a withering look but otherwise ignored him. "Look, we're you're family too. We've been through a lot together. We're not stopping that now. Okay?" there was a pause. "I don't know how to start girl talk."
Jay piped up from his place in front. "What up?"
Evie laughed lightly while Mal and Carlos smirked.
Mal started now "Um, well." She stopped for a moment. "I'm a mess. I am such a mess. I mean six months ago I was, you know, stealing candy from babies and now... everybody wants me to be this lady of the court and I have no idea how to keep up the act." Evie squeezed Jays hand again, sad at her friends obvious pain.
Carlos put a hand on her shoulder. "Then don't" he said simply.
Jay used this time to try and get out of girl talk. "See this was dumb."
Evie turned to him. "Maybe it wasn't" Jay softened as he looked at her. Evie let go of Jay's hand so she could turn around and grab onto Mal's. "We're always gonna be the ids from the isle. It's who we are, those are our roots. There's nothing that can change that. I tried to forget it, I really tried, but I can't. That's who I am, who we all are. The second I stepped foot back on that island it was like I had never left. I was mean, I stole, I laughed when I scared people."
Evie gave Mal's hand a reassuring squeeze before turning back and talking Jay's hand again which he readily accepted again. "We all did what we had to do to survive. After growing up like that it's never going to leave us. No matter what it will always be there inside us. We are not Auradon kids and we never will be. You can take the kid out of the isle but you'll never take the isle out of the kid. It's who we are and we're never gonna be like anybody else here and that's okay."
Jay pulled the limo into the garage and turned it off before twisting in his own seat to look at all of them. "Maybe you're right, maybe having part of the isle in us isn't such a bad thing. We may have picked up bad habits from the isle but we got some good ones too. Chad made a huge deal out of Lonnie not being on the fencing team just because she was a girl, where we're from it doesn't matter, boy or girl if you have the skill we want you."
Evie nodded at him in a sign of her agreement to his statement. "Yes, we are the kids from the Isle of the Lost and that's okay."
Everyone was listening intently to each other now and Carlos voiced his thoughts. "And we can't fake it."
"We can't." Evie agreed with him as well. "But as long as we stick together, maybe we don't have to. We will never be the perfect Auradon kids but we can be us and I think that's alright. Part good and part bad, it's who we are."
"And who we always will be." Jay concluded.
Carlos smiled at them. "Because we're rotten..." he trailed off waiting for them to finish and sticking his fist out. Evie and Jay immediately joined him as they spoke in unison. "... to the core." they all turned to Mal waiting to see her response.
She looked at each of their faces before smiling at them and joining her fist with theirs. "... to the core." she whispered and they all smiled at each other and got out of the limo and stood together, Jay taking Evie's hand in his again subconsciously.
Carlos turned to Mal. "And if Ben doesn't accept the real you then he's not the one. Give him a chance." Mal looked to all of them unsure.
Evie thought for a second before coming to a decision. "I'm gonna make some changes to your dress, and only if you're up for it, you'll wear it to the cotillion." Evie hugged her best girl friend and Mal latched on to her.
Jay looked on and decided to speak. "Mal." once he got her attention he continued. "Come to cotillion. All right? If Ben isn't smart enough to love you and you can't stand another day i'll drive you back to the isle myself tomorrow.
Mal was choked up by this point. "Okay." she agreed.
Evie hugged her one more time. "Okay. It's late so everyone would have left by now for cotillion so you go start getting ready and I'll take care of your dress." Mal smiled at her.
"Thanks E."
"No problem M."
Mal and Carlos went off to get ready but Jay grabbed onto Evie's hand yet again before she could take more than two steps. "We need to talk." There was something in Jay's voice that left her speechless and all the blue haired villain kid could do was nod and follow him.
He lead her past the school entrance and the tourney field to the courtyard where Family day had been hosted in their first few weeks in Auradon.
Jay sat down and pulled Evie down with him so that they were now facing each other sitting criss cross. Jay looked awkward and his eyes were darting around avoiding her face while Evie looked down at their joined hands.
"Evie." At the sound of her name Evie looked up from their hands to Jay's face where their eyes met. Neither broke their gaze away from the other. "You know what I'm like. I have no idea how I'm supposed to do this so I'm just gonna say it."
Evie looked at him with a question in her eyes and just a little bit of hope. "What is it Jay?"
"Okay but just know this is going to sound really mushy and and not like me at all but it's true." Evie let out a giggle at his mushy comment. "I- I'm still working on understanding love and what it feels like so I'm not going to say that's what this is because I don't know. What I do know though is that I really like you and if there were someone that I was going to learn how to love with, I wouldn't it rather be anyone but you.
"Jay that's so sweet." Evie's was ecstatic, Jay returned her feelings, this was like a dream come true. "I always thought my mother was right about love. Love is when a prince chooses you or when every guy is stunned by your beauty but since we got here I realized she was wrong. She didn't know anything about love. If everything with Snow White's father and Snow White herself didn't make that obvious enough then the way that she raised me did because there was never any love. Maybe we can learn what love is together."
Jay got his confidence back. "So what do you say princess? I'm no prince but will you go out with me?"
"I would love to." She agreed. They stood up and Jay pulled Evie into his arms, her head against his chest and his chin on top of her head. "You are so much better than a prince Jay." They stood there for minutes on end just enjoying the moment.
"Come on, you have a dress to change and we have a cotillion to get ready for." Jay and Evie walked back to the school hand in hand and only separated when they got to Evie's room.
When Evie walked in Mal was in the shower so she took this opportunity to work her magic (not the literal one) on the dress. Evie was just finishing when Mal walked out, casting a drying spell on her hair as she did so.
"What are you so smiley about?" Mal asked having an idea of what it was.
Evie smiled at her friend. "Jay asked me out. We are officially a couple now."
Mal smiled, despite her uncertainty in her own relationship right now she couldn't be happier for her friends, and it didn't hurt that this meant she won the betting pool she had going on with Carlos, Ben, and Lonnie, Chad, Audrey, Jane, and Doug.
"Okay we can talk about this later. I need to get dressed and you need to go take a shower. No offense but you reek of isle." Evie pouted but didn't argue or deny it, they all needed long showers with hot water after being back at their childhood home.
Mal and Evie were both dressed and Evie was finishing the last touches on Mal's makeup when someone knocked on the door. "It's open!" Evie called out as she moved Mal's face back in place after she turned it at the sound of the knocking.
Carlos and Jay walked in and stopped dead as Evie finished and the two girls looked at them. "Wow." they said making the girls laugh.
"Thanks guys." Mal said "Now come on, we have a party to crash." she joked.
"And no matter what we'll face it all together." Evie finished with no room for argument. Before leaving they all joined in a group hug. "Let's go."
As they were all about to join hands for Mal and Evie to transport them to the boat, which had already set sail, Mal suddenly stopped. "Oh Carlos, before I forget you owe me twenty bucks, it happened."
"You mean it?" Carlos clarified. Mal nodded her head and Carlos begrudgingly pulled twenty dollars out of his wallet and handed it to Mal who went to put it away. All the while Evie and Jay stood there unsure of what was going on.
"Uh what are you doing?" Jay asked.
"Mal won the bet, she said you guys would get together before the next school dance, which this is, so she just barely won. Congratulations by the way. It's about time you two finally admitted what you felt and got together, It was so obvious" Carlos stated as if it were that obvious.
"Wait you bet on when we were going to get together?" at their nods Evie asked another question. "Who else was in on this?"
Mal answered. "Just us, Ben, Lonnie, and Doug, Chad, Audrey, and Jane. All of whom now owe we twenty dollars."
They just stared for a moment before deciding it really wasn't worth any more thought. "Okay then. Let's get this party started." with Jay's final words they all joined hands and prepared for Mal and Evie to take them to the party.