It's just another mask.
It's just another mask.
It's just another mask. Alex tried to lie to himself as he clenched and unclenched his hands in his lap again.
After the – Alex will forever deny it – tearful reunion. The King and Queen – his Mom and Dad – arranged for him and the rest of his friends (at Ben's proposal and Alex's 'innocent' look) to come spent the weekend at the Beast Castle (apparently his home).
His parents stayed as Ben acted as an errand boy to deliver Evil-knows-how-many-messages since he was going to ride with Alex the next day while they had to leave for the night.
The Isle kid did notice he looked a little shaken when he returned, but Alex was way too focused not to have a panic attack to try and figure out if Mal decided she was mad enough at the situation to do something not so Auradonian.
His – Their parents barely spared Ben a glance when he returned, and the King had to half-heartedly drag his wife away at the end of the day.
The rest of the night went as well as it was expected.
A couple of more panic attacks from him only, since his friends didn't even bother to try to sleep, a couple of hours spent looking at the wall not talking and barely blinking, which Alex knew made his friends more nervous than any panic attack.
The teddy bear, that Mal named Furry-dead-thing, laid abandoned in the sink in the bathroom with the doors closed, like it was on quarantine.
It had been a long night.
A long night filled entirely with Alex's dread and his friends' hidden anxiety.
The whole thing had been too unexpected. Too sudden. They had been unprepared for it.
Alex knew the meeting went well enough by Auradon standards. And that the King and Queen were probably still in tears, smiling happily at the thought of getting their youngest child back, which was actually the problem here.
The child they were so happily ready to meet was Alex.
Not Prince Alexander.
Not the Lost Prince.
Not the Next Golden Boy.
Alex.
Alex from the Isle. The Tower Boy. The Wolf of the North. The Bane of All Pirates. Alex of the Wildfire.
By Isle standards the meeting went awful – and not in a good way.
He had been too sensitive, too emotive, had actually let himself be spooked like some – some amateur.
'But this isn't the Isle of the Lost.' A voice in his head kept repeating like a broken record.
Did that make it better?
Alex barely spent a week in Auradon (that he could remember). A place complete opposite of where he grew up, which meant he still didn't know how to act here.
Alex clenched his hand tighter, his scarred knuckles turning white as he tried to ignore how itchy the new seats from the probably newer limousine felt like.
He wasn't meant for this.
He simply didn't belong around things like these. So new and clean and expensive and good. Maybe once he did, but that had been a lifetime ago for him. It was like a dream he couldn't remember. A dream he still wasn't even sure he had.
He was bad and rotten and broken and most of all damaged.
He couldn't pretend to be a prince. He hadn't been trained for it.
Alex turned his head slightly to watch Evie better with the corner of his eye as she reapplied the blush on her cheeks.
Evie had that sort of training. Whatever Bore-drey thinks or says, Evie was a princess. And even she couldn't blend in with these people. Her posture and make up were perfect all the time. Her head was held high and her voice purred, strong and seductive, better than any politician.
The princes and princesses here were kids compared to any of them. The 18-years-old Auradonians were kids compared to the toddlers from the Isle.
So blind, ignorant and, for the lack of a better word, stupid.
They were unprepared and too dependent. They couldn't survive on their own one night in their own parks, much less on the Isle.
The five of them were stronger, but the Aks had the territory. They knew the rules and how to bend them and they were more than happy to point out how odd the Vks behaved.
Evie trained to be royalty her whole life. Before Alex was even born. And she still couldn't do this as well as any of them expected. He had no chance whatsoever.
His fingers started shaking again and he tried to control his breathing without alerting Ben who was still staring at him with that puppy expression of his.
This limo had two benches face to face, him, Mal and Carlos on one side and Ben, Jay and Evie on the other.
Mal was covering her plotting by pretending to sketch next to him, also keeping an eye out for everyone.
Ben had tried to start a conversation with him for almost forty-five minutes, but Alex had just nodded a couple of times, pretending to look out the window while he tried to sort his thoughts and not freak out even more.
Carlos and Jay started bickering the first time Ben shut up and adopted a worried look, to cover up the silence.
Alex didn't know if Ben was staring at him to try and figure out why he was so silent or not, but if he was, then he was doing the 'figuring out' part very poorly.
The future King still held a few polite conversations with the others and Alex knew those meaningless exchanges of words were killing his friends from the inside, but he wasn't sure what was going to happen if he opened his mouth.
His hands didn't stop shaking this time, red flags appeared in his head as the seatbelt he'd been staring at for the last four minutes suddenly became blurry.
Ben didn't seem to notice yet, too busy trying to catch his eye, but even he wasn't that blind.
Mal's left heel gently hit the floor of the car. The motion was so natural, like she just shifted to try a new position. The sound was almost nonexistent, and Ben didn't even blink from his spot right in front of her, but for the rest of the Isle kids it was louder than if she'd have cleared her throat.
Jay shifted from his seat like he wanted to look out the window and bumped lightly into Evie who dropped the brush she was holding, making Ben finally turn his head on instinct at the commotion.
Mal moved again this time placing a hand on Alex's and back on her sketchbook before the future King turned his head.
Alex didn't need to look down to recognize the shape and the coldness of the small metal in his hand.
A paperclip.
His fingers finally stopped shaking. Curling around the small not rusty, familiar, object. He didn't look down, but his fingers started moving, bending the metal.
Carlos always had to keep his hands busy. Most likely with a mechanism he built or more recently with video games or a Rubik's cube. His head was always thinking. Always calculating one thing or another.
Alex wasn't like that.
He could keep still. He had been trained to sneak around and he couldn't do that unless he kept still.
But he liked paperclips. The first time Mother Gothel locked him in the closet with a key he had been lucky enough to have a paperclip on him. Dizzy placed it in his pocket saying it might help after she saw Freddie Facillier use one to unlock a window.
Paperclips were a rarity on the Isle. The ones that ended up there were either rusty or broken, but they could still do the job.
They had been his only weapon before he got his hands on a couple of knives. After that they weren't a necessity anymore. They were just something to help him calm down. Something small enough that Mother Gothel stopped bothering to confiscate before duping him in the closet all chained up.
Dizzy liked it when he bended them to make shapes. A sword, a shoe, an apple, a hat, a ring. He'd make just about anything. Avery time he had some, he'd make every shape that came to mind just to see her smile.
That smile that always brightened the dark prison they were locked into.
He'd do it till his nails are broken and his fingers are bleeding and she starts to scream at him for it, her chocolate eyes flaring as she slapped the metal from his hands so she could inspect the damage.
The thought of Dizzy cleared his head a little.
Right.
The mask. He needed a new mask.
He'd spent his whole life with a mask on.
The mask for school. The mask for the streets. The mask for threatening and running errands. The optimistic mask for Dizzy. The Auradon mask.
He could do this.
Just another mask.
The mask of a prince.
Changing completely wasn't an option. He didn't have time for that.
He had been trained by assassins, thieves, murderers and generals. He was bound to be able to use some of that training here, right?
He'd known Ethan for a few days now. Alex wasn't stupid, he'd seen how stunned and in awe the kid looked at him sometimes. When they walked together down the halls and the blond tried to copy his walk.
Alex didn't have to change everything about himself, he just needed to figure out what to show. From what he gathered, Auradonians weren't that complex. Except from a few fake smiles here and there, they didn't hide their emotions and if people were going to get all tearful at the whole 'The Lost Prince is back' story, then Alex didn't even need to choose much to show.
After all, people always saw what they wanted to see.
If he played dumb and smiled at them that should be enough until he figured out something else, right?
He could try and copy Ben's lost puppy look…
His friends might make fun of him silently, but that was probably it.
On the Isle you were either slouching or you were proud, and Alex had only been proud since the day he learned how to knock other people's teeth out.
He'd have to hide his scars. He couldn't care less who saw them on the Isle. Everybody had them. There it meant he was a survivor. His forearm guards weren't meant to hide them. They were there to stop the chains from digging into his skin and create new scars. Or Mother Gothel's sharp nails when she grabbed him and dragged him back at the Tower. And to hide his throwing knives. Or to be used as bandages. Dizzy spent weeks working on them to make them absorbent, so if he got a wound that wouldn't stop bleeding, he had something to use.
Here he wasn't sure what his scars meant, but after the incident at the pool he doubted it was a good idea to show them off…
Talking. He almost gagged at the thought.
These people were always so talkative. Alex didn't have a problem listening. Or pretending to listen.
But being the one who had to do the talking?
Seriously, just shoot him now.
"What do you have there?" Ben suddenly asked, interrupting his line of thought.
Jay and Carlos quieted down their bickering, giving him the choice to answer only if he wanted to.
But he had to answer this time. He'd been quiet for too long and Ben didn't look like the kind of person who'd keep this particular information to himself. At some point he was bound to babble about this to someone who won't like not receiving an answer.
Maybe it wasn't too late. If Ben gets wrapped up in the conversation, he might forget said conversation started almost an hour too late.
"Paperclip." Alex answered simply, testing his voice.
He hadn't spoken at all since yesterday and there was a bit of an edge to his voice, but thankfully his brother didn't notice.
A paperclip was innocent enough, right? Playing with it shouldn't be too odd, right?
Alex wanted to hit himself for not testing this with Ethan first.
He played with the idea of changing the subject but decided against it in the end.
He quickly bended the last edge and held it up for Ben to see. The paperclip now had the form of a limo.
Ben's eyes lit up, stunned.
"You made that from a paperclip?" he asked, awe in his voice.
He sounded so much like Dizzy, Alex lost his thought again for a few seconds, the awe in his brother's voice feeling like a punch in the gut.
Concentrate.
So, Ben saw it as a good thing. That didn't necessarily mean anything. The first time he met the five of them, he looked the same.
Audrey looked disgusted.
"Mhm." Alex agreed and handed it to him.
"How did you manage it?" Ben asked as he inspected the former paperclip like it was made of gold and diamonds.
"Practice." Alex answered carefully. 'There's not much to do while you're stuck in the darkness of a closet for days.' He added in his head as Mal pursed her lips but didn't say anything.
Alex knew she would have liked to just shout in his face how horrible it was on the Isle compared to the luxury life the Future King had. Just so she could get him to smile less.
He wouldn't have held it against her if one of these days she did. He really wouldn't.
"Keeps the hands busy." He continued, struggling to keep the conversation going. 'And clears the mind to prevent panic attacks.'
"How many shapes can you do?" Ben asked curiously.
He looked sincere enough, still admiring the limo paperclip, but Alex wasn't sure if he really did care or just wanted to keep the conversation going, too.
"A lot."
He never had enough to try and see what he can do, but he's done a lot.
"Do you do it often?"
"Every time I can." The words started coming easier now. "I've just never had a lot of them." The words slipped out and he heard Carlos clench his jaw, making him realize he screwed up, before his mind registered what his mouth had just spitted out.
Damn it.
Ben looked up from the paperclip, his smile slipping a little.
"What?"
Alex wanted to hit himself.
Seriously, just shot him now and be done with it.
Then the limo stopped.
So sorry for the long wait, I just wasn't sure how to write this chapter. I'll try to update faster, but no promises.
If you have any idea at all, I'll be happy to hear it.
Hope to see you soon.
Frostbite out
P.S.: Reviews usually make me update faster.