Once Upon A Time

by hara-leah

Once Upon a Time, they were beautiful and strong. Once Upon a Time, they were the evil-doers, the malicious ones. Once upon a time, they were magnificent. Once Upon a Time, they didn't need their children to be beautiful and cunning and powerful for them. Once Upon a Time, they didn't need to send their kids to rule the world for them, because they were already doing it themselves.

14. He Had Friends On The Other Side

Once Upon a Time (He Had Friends on the Other Side)

Twenty-one-year-old Felicia Facilier was deadly. Her father raised her as a demon, to make deals and cash in on the souls of innocents. They would serve you. People with whom you'd made deals would be your friends, your supernatural partners for taking over the world. But her father never completed his end of the deal.

She did.

Allies were so much more willing to help if you gave them what they asked for. Bones of an innocent? She'd have it by Samhain when the walls were weakest and her friends could grant her wishes. Felicia could have broken down the barrier. She knew. Her father didn't. Her customers didn't. She didn't break it down because of them. They were her power and her customers and her friends on the other side.

Losing them? Would be to lose the game, and she couldn't let that happen.

{Felicia provided other services too. Services even the single hospital didn't provide, services that made her vomit into the toilet bowl every night, because she knew she had to do it, knew she was doing the right thing for those girls, but Christ, it was awful, watching them writhe, scream, and beg for her not to stop. Not that she could}.

Felicia was unaffected by the four going to Auradon. They weren't customers, and they owed her nothing. Smart kids. Knew what they were about.

{Or, that's what she said. Really, she knew, any debt would be paid, no matter the distance}.

She couldn't even feel that much betrayal at them when they betrayed Maleficent. Really, this worked better for her purposes. More and more people came, desperate for a way off, to crush the scumbags who would betray the Isle.

What would they think if they knew about her?

Her daddy had died young, in the real world. In their world, he was her greatest customer, addicted to all the magicks she could give him because she was born on the Isle, and the barrier had only half the effect on voodoo. In their world, her daddy had forced her to braid patterns into her hair for better magic collection, even though it pushed her skull tight. In their world, her fingers were capped by bone pieces and her necklace was made of teeth and magic flowed through the silver and bone piercings in her mouth and nose till she choked on it. She didn't even use magic.

In the real world, her daddy would pay.

Debts were three times the price in the real world. Ten times the price in theirs. She wouldn't cash in until he lay on his deathbed and owed her thousands of years of service. He would never rest in peace, never fulfil his debt. He'd be stuck in the halfway for all eternity, unable to serve her to fill his debt, unable to move on until he did. A perfect conundrum.

Her daddy wasn't very good at paying his debts.

(But she was.)