A/n: I think that for a place like Ever After High there are some benefits and some complications that would come from going to a school filled with future rulers to kingdoms.
The benefits would of course be gaining future allies through friendships and learning to be more open minded with a vast array of cultures.
However some of the downsides I would think would be… what would happen if the people who used to bully you ruled a very large kingdom relatively close by on the map? And vise versa; what would happen if the person you used to bully had a kingdom that was close by and was also traditionally a very key ally in both trade and influence with other countries of the same culture?
Very awkward business meetings was the first thing that came to my mind, they might not like the other ruler(s) personally but both of their people benefit greatly from the two of them working together.
But in this story's case I had decided to give the Queen kingdom a parliament government that worked with the ruling royal family, a kind of mix of both a monarchy and a democracy, so technically Clawstorm wouldn't be required to deal with Snow White, her former bully, directly.
So that left me wondering what I was going to do with Snow White? I had based her on people I've observed in the past who bully others both because the other kids in their group are doing it and also because they are mad that this other person has a cooler life and future to look forward to and that makes them angry enough to act out. I tend to find that as these people grow older they eventually apologize to the people that they wronged, treat them the exact same way they did when they were younger, or would simply prefer to pretend that the people they bullied never existed at all.
I had a loose end in my plot line that I had been wondering what to do with for some time now but was hesitant to develop the storyline the way I had set things up in the following chapter… I didn't want to make Snow White out to be completely evil, but at the same time I had wanted the past that she had been ashamed of to come back and bite her so that I could develop her character better.
So in the end I gave in and you guys are not going to like Snow White for a few more chapters at least, but I'm hoping that some of you might scrape up some little bits of pity for how life is getting back at her through her daughter, Apple, who for the first time in her life is not happy with her mother.
XXX
"How was keeping all these secrets from me supposed to help or protect me mom? Daddy?" Apple demanded to the people on her phone screen in a heated tone. "I was made a fool of and nearly lost one of the most important people in my life! And instead of figuring out a different solution to things Raven ended unable to trust me and now she had to give up her fairytale birthright and marry a pervert!"
"Raven did what?" A hesitantly stunned woman's voice came from the phone.
Raven fidgeted in her seat at her desk as Apple launched into a long overdramatic explanation. The witch tried to focus on doing her thronework and not the heated way Apple was speaking to her parents, who not to long ago the princess used to think the world of before truths were revealed and things went sideways.
Raven felt guilty for being a small part of this ultimate switch between Apple wanting a happy ending just like her parents seemed to have, to wanting almost nothing to do with the two adults after she found out that it was all just one big lie.
It was painful to hear Apple unleash her ire at her parents, especially since the more time passed the more Raven realized that Apple had probably never raised her voice to her parents or defied them before, and the witch suspected that the two adults probably were under the impression that Apple could never get this angry or lecture so sternly that a gremlin would be cowed into apologizing for any harm that it had wrought on something.
Raven realized with a guilty flinch that Apple probably never tapped into this side of herself before she had met Raven. The witch had grown so used to their near constant fights about destiny that she was barely shocked by the princess's capabilities of verbally shaming people into their place and knew how to navigate her own arguments so that both she and Apple usually ended up calling a draw. It had been almost easier just after Legacy Day when Apple had been unpracticed and tried in vain to use tears and her you-are-so-cruel-to-this-pure-damsel-shame-on-you routine to get what she wanted, but once it sank in that such tactics only resulted in Raven unconsciously treating Apple like a bratty child for days after each argument… well the princess hadn't been all that pleased.
Raven had been unaware that she had been doing this until Apple irritably pointed it out while the witch had been cutting up the princess's food into bite-sized pieces one day… Raven swore up and down (while still cutting up the princess's food) that it had been unintentional… and that maybe Apple kept triggering some latent witchy maternal instinct and it wasn't like Raven could just simply ignore instinct since a great deal of hers were part magic based, part primal drive. And it wasn't like Raven minded cutting up the other girl's food and Raven really thought that Apple should be eating more greens to help build up her immune system for the coming cold months.
Weeks after that Apple had given Raven the stink eye (it didn't help at all when Raven would automatically chide the princess for making that face and warned her that it just might stick that way if the princess kept it up), it was almost a relief to them both, in a very twisted sort of way, when Apple got better at arguing and Raven's instincts started to see Apple as more of an adult and worthy adversary than a child. As a side effect it soon became known throughout Ever After High to avoid getting into a verbal match with Apple, about anything, because if the princess got her mind into it she could reduce many to tears, and terrify almost all the bystanders watching from the sidelines (which was partially why Apple and Raven tried to keep their arguments behind closed doors these days, and also there was the fact that some people at the school enjoyed watching them bicker like it was the best entertainment ever).
Kitty still looked back on that period of time fondly, much to both the witch and princess's chagrin.
"I'm not the only one that you should be apologizing to." Apple snarled suddenly grabbing Raven by the wrist and dragging her over to stand awkwardly in front of the king and queen of Ever After.
Suddenly Raven realized why Apple had made her wear her wedding dress.
Snow White made a shocked sound as she inhaled and quickly covered her mouth with her hands. The king didn't seem to know where to look when his gaze darted over Raven, her visible scars, and her tattoos.
Raven swallowed guiltily, both adults looked like they were about to cry.
"Your majesties." Raven greeted politely, putting her left fist into her palm and bowing deeply, the most common witch way of showing great respect. "It is my hopes that your harvests prove fruitful and that the moon goddesses my look down upon your lands favorably." The witch added for good measure, her father always told her that it always paid to attempt to be polite in the face of awkward political situations.
"Don't be so formal with them." Apple reprimanded, smacking Raven's arm lightly. "They're my parents, not the freaking empress and the royal consort to the middle sea empire."
"They are the queen and king to the most powerful kingdom of Ever After." Raven whispered desperately back, still bent over in a bow. "Plus they've graced my lands with profitable trade and open kindness to my people and merchants in years past."
"And you're the heir to both the most powerful witch kingdom in Ever After thanks to being a Queen, and the oldest human kingdom thanks to your dad being a king." Apple rolled her eyes while she forced the witch back into a standing position. "Geez! You never treated me like this when we first met."
"You were my princess, there's a different protocol to honorably address you in that situation." Raven informed, looking like a spooked animal as her gaze was forcibly met with two pairs of wide eyes.
"Protocol?" Snow White blurted out questioningly.
"She means the honor code that every villain has for their counterparts." Apple waved the woman off. "Now-"
"There's an honor code?" Snow White asked weakly.
"Yes… there is…" Raven bit her lip, feeling on edge. "I do not know the reasons why my mother would not have told you, but every villain family abides by a code of conduct tailored specifically towards looking after our story counterparts. It is the job of the first-born and heir of the Queen territories to watch over their princess and prince, and ensure their safety and happiness through their pre-fairytale life as well as helping prepare them for the trials of the future, and shelter them from any cruelty that the future queen and king may run into. If they so wish for something that we have the ability and the desire to provide them with then we will do our best to fulfill any desires that we deem that we are willing and able to provide. We are taught at a young age that we must do our best to balance serving the future monarchs of Ever After as well as doing whatever is needed to serve the needs of our own people in our own kingdom."
"Oh." The king said faintly.
Snow White seemed to pale, suddenly bursting into tears. "She knew." The woman sobbed. "Oh gods she knew." The woman continued before fleeing out of sight.
"My apologies I did not mean to upset- mmmph!" Raven soon found her mouth covered by Apple's gloved hand.
"Don't apologize for doing nothing wrong!" Apple ordered sternly. "Daddy, what was that all about?"
The king hesitated but in the face of his daughter's (surprisingly scary) glare he soon folded.
"The late Evil Queen-." He glanced at Raven before quickly amending. "Clawstorm Queen, as your mother often told you as a child, used to poison your mother on a regular basis. Now years later and in hindsight we can see that Clawstorm had done this out of self defense in the face of… certain wrongs being committed towards her at the time."
"And by that you mean how mom used to bully Raven's mother back in high school." Apple piped up, hugging Raven protectively, still glaring at her father.
Prince Charming winced looking down. "Y-yes… and of course you remember your mother telling you over the years about how she had dreams about her perfect happy ending every time that she was poisoned. Well… as time wore on and my… preferences started to make themselves known to both your mother and I… we both fell into our own personal ways of heavily denying the impending truth; I began arranging dates with anything that was female and your mother… began becoming addicted to being… poisoned by Clawstorm. She began to showing up at Clawstorm's dorm demanding for a poisoned apple or else she would harass the young woman for the rest of the day."
The king paused; slightly frightened at the way his daughter's eyebrow began to tick. "I have no idea what had gone on in those dreams but… I'm ashamed to say that aside from the day that you were born I had never seen your mother happier than after she spent some time in a poisoned dream induced state. Some issues did arise as our fairytale grew closer and it had become more and more obvious that we had been headed for a doomed happily ever after… Clawstorm had to cut your mother off of the poisoned apples at times due to the fact that your mother was starting to not do well in school and people were starting to get suspicious, especially since your mother had began cutting out her friends in favor of dreaming."
"Raven's mom knew that you two wouldn't work out." Apple deduced dryly. "That's why she gave mom those dreams of a perfect happy ending with you."
"…Actually, according to your mother I was not the Prince Charming of her dreams, in a twist to no doubt get back at your mother… Clawstorm made it so that your mother's dream prince was a suave warlock who dressed in black leather instead of me dressed in shining white armor." The king looked off to the side shiftily.
"This imaginary warlock's name didn't happen to be Maelstorm was it?" Raven eeked out sounding pained.
"Yes it was." The king confirmed. "How did you know?"
Raven scrunched up her eyes. "One of my mother's talents aside from making golems is gender shifting, while she cannot go completely male in certain ways, she could pass off as one pretty convincingly. Back when I was young she and my dad used to make the time to run around their kingdom's rougher districts in disguise and act like… well two drunken idiots, sometimes my mother would be in her male form and sometimes she would stay female. She used to change genders at will while she was raising me too for reasons that I'm still in the dark about, she and my human grandmother used to joke while playing their weekly games of strip poker that my mother had to be both a female and male role model for me because my father could be such a crybaby at times."
The witch looked between the two human's incredulous stares in confusion. "What?"
"Okay. One of these days you and I are going to sit down and have a serious talk about the people who raised you." Apple told the witch sternly.
"Why do people keep saying that to me?" Raven asked pouting.
"For very good reasons that's why!" Apple hissed.
"Obviously your mother had been merciful towards us." Prince Charming coughed, changing the subject. "And I suspect that in her own way she had been looking out for us while she worked at the same time to keep us as far away from her as possible. She was the one who had taken pains to offer up glowing references of several warlocks who eventually came to work for us as our personal staff not long after Apple was born… and one of them… he and I have become very close in recent years…"
"You owe Anton sooo many flowers for keeping him your dirty little secret from me." Apple glared at her father. "He's a good man, practically helped raise me while you and mom were busy working, he deserves better."
"Anton will be ecstatic to know that you think of him so highly." Apple's father seemed to shrink slightly. "He's been worried that you might grow to hate him."
"As if." Apple rolled her eyes. "He's obviously head over heels for you if he so willingly put up with me going on and on about how in love I thought you and mom were, for years. That must have really hurt him."
Prince Charming winced.
"Before I hang up, is there anything else that Raven and I should know? Seeing as how there is a bunch of lunatics running around trying to kill her and her family off." Apple demanded with false sweetness.
"Heavens help those foolish enough to oppose you if you decide to go without your fairytale like you have been threatening to do recently." The king chuckled nervously. "Actually… I think that there might be something you should know…"
XXX
"Was I the only one who heard that… angry howl?" Mira asked, looking around her. She and Blondie were walking back to the dorms from their interview with Tiny.
"That's not exactly an uncommon sound to hear every so often." Blondie waved off the other girl's worry. "You should have heard Edward shriek the time when Duchess threw him out a window."
XXX
"I can't believe them!" Apple roared, pacing the room like an enraged caged beast. "They knew that those lords were up to no good with your kingdom and yet they still authorized to send them raw materials for who knows what and allowed one of our advanced magics divisions to construct some sort of giant magical magnet laser, blissfully choosing to believe that it was for mass transportation services? That meteorite that nearly flattened you was made up of seventy percent iron! How could they just stand back and-"
While Apple continued to rant Raven salvaged the princess's phone, which had been thrown across the room, from atop her bed's canopy. Prince Charming was still on the line, looking at Raven shame-faced.
Raven quietly signaled for the man to stay on the line and sneaked onto the balcony where it was quieter.
"Would you be willing to send over the specs for that laser, as well as a list of the raw materials you sent over, and a list of all the names of the people involved with asking you for those things?" The witch requested quietly.
"You will have them by tomorrow morning." Prince Charming promised solemnly. "It is the least we could do… for all the pain we've caused. Though know this Miss Queen; if either one of us had any concrete evidence that we had been aiding what could have been a horrific tragedy, we would have never done business with your known enemies. We had been told that they were trying to use magnets and magic to create a cheaper subway system rail track much like the system that your kingdom currently uses, we didn't think to check over what they had our experts inventing until after our air traffic sensors detected an anomaly of magic in your airspace before the meteorite crashed."
Raven nodded, it made sense, the tip of the White kingdom was across the east side of a very large bay that it shared with the Queen kingdom that led out to the North Sea, close enough for both of their kingdom's air radar systems to detect something amiss in the sky.
"You didn't say anything to my family about any of this before." Raven stated feeling a little disjointed.
The king nodded. "Another mistake on our part. We had… guessed that your mother's poisoning of Wonderland and all those other worlds had been due to a mental break down that had been a direct result of our careless actions… we feared that your grandmother would have made our mistake public to get back at us, so we kept quiet hoping that it would all just… blow over in time."
"She didn't exactly poison those worlds." Raven's emotionless tone felt odd to her own ears. "We've stumbled across new evidence that she only made it look like she had poisoned those worlds so that she could trap our most violent enemies, the same ones who had organized that attack against us, who had fled into hiding in them. She's far from innocent but she isn't the evil person we all thought she was. Her sanity might need to be called into question but all the wrongs of the past have not broken her completely, her tactics are all of misdirection and sacrifice for the sake of both her family and her kingdom, she has at least retained that much dignity with herself."
"I might need to call upon you again for help, will you offer it to me without me having to worry that sensitive information will go to the wrong hands?" Raven asked in the ensuing stunned silence, all business.
"I think that my queen and I are… finally done with placing wrongful blame upon your family for our own issues. I… apologize, for the both of us, it was not our place to help facilitate events that eventually led to your mother's… rash insane decisions and all of the pain you must have had to endure over the years." The man spoke looking down, thoroughly chastised.
It was one thing to be talking to the girl under the assumption that at least her mother had been far worse in her crimes against the world then they had been with their ignorance and prejudice against anything that had to do with their former classmate... but to know that the woman wasn't actually evil, had actually been willing to go so far as to make every kingdom and territory believe that she was a monster of the worst kind, all for the sake of ensuring that the same people that had harmed her family and kingdom were trapped in an unfamiliar place without anybody from Ever After able to help them escape… all for the sake of protecting both her family and people…
And here he and his wife were, the king and queen of the largest realm of Ever After, cowering away from the fact that they had nearly started a gruesome war, all because they had held onto such childish ill will and did not want to face their actions of the past; his wife's cruelty towards Clawstorm, and his selective ignorance to it. As a result their daughter now hated them, Clawstorm had been forced to protect her people through extreme means and was despised universally for it, and Clawstorm's young daughter had been left to clean up the damage.
Raven glanced over to Apple who was still pacing and ranting. "How's about you promise to help me right these wrongs and to stop hiding things from Apple, and I'll see if I can keep your guy's role in aiding a terrorist plot to kill thousands of my people out of the official reports when I relay all of this information to my family and in-laws. Does that sound doable?"
"That sounds like an act of mercy." The man looked vulnerable.
Raven narrowed her eyes coolly at the man. "Apple still needs you guys to be around and out of trouble with the public eye, despite the fact that she is really mad at you right now, and there is the fact that I still have half a mind to take action against you… but I won't, because your daughter needs you… and for some strange reason my instincts are yelling at me that my mother might be in need of your guy's help in the near future too." Raven said before ending the call.
XXX
"So you can speak to a person face to face with these things too?" Clawstorm in her Mira disguise spoke in awe to Little Red Riding Hood on her new mirror-phone. "How do I make it so that I can see your face?"
"Swipe the screen to phone menu options and tap the mirror-chat icon." Simone instructed.
"Swipe?" Clawstorm asked.
"…Hasn't anyone at your little club commented to you about your lack of computer skills?" Simone sighed despairingly.
"I told them that the magic mirror despised new technology so I wasn't exposed to it much. They've been very helpful in teaching me the basics of computer work so that I can do my part, at the very least I know how to type." Clawstorm hummed while she flicked through her phone options distractedly.
"Oh! There you are!" The witch cheered when she accidentally got her friend's face to pop up. "You're all upside-down!"
Simone sighed again. "The reason why I called is because my sources are telling me that, your father has been poking around into your past, coming dangerously close to finding out who Raven's father is more than a few times in the process. And he's discovered that you attended a school in a foreign dimension, I can't be sure but he might have his own contacts in that monster universe and if he does it would be practically nothing to find out that you've gotten a doctorate in mad science, emphasizing in… what was it again?"
"It was nano-technology, my thesis was based on my work of incorporating the right levels of magic into microscopic talismans, originally I had intended for my experiments to eventually be used to help fight against genetic diseases, curses, and for it to be injected into the body and act as a synthetic immune system for people who lack one." Clawstorm smiled wryly. "Can you imagine the look on that old man's face if he ever got his hands on my thesis, it might just break his mind to see something so entirely un-evil that had been written by the most diabolical criminal in Ever After history!"
"I think that he'd be more concerned over your mental health and what went wrong." A deeper voice spoke.
The Big Bad Wolf came up behind his wife in his human form and gave her a kiss on the cheek in greeting.
"Hello Bane." Clawstorm greeted her old friend. "You're back home early."
Bane rolled his eyes. "I take it that she's not at all concerned by the fact that the Headmaster is combing through her life history?" The man asked his wife.
"Not in the least." Simone shook her head. "She's not even a little incredulous."
"Well the cat's already out of the bag that I'm not the same evil genocidal, world-conquering person that everyone thought that I was. The way I think of it, him finding out about my thesis and all the work that I've been conducting from my former prison via instructing the lab monkeys through a series of charmed mirrors that the university has set up, is the perfect way of gauging how well he might be manipulated into doing something that's actually beneficial to us, and also the initial freak out will be well worth observing. A revenge I suppose you could say over how worthless the bastard used to make me feel when I was a kid." Clawstorm snickered, an evil looking grin on Mira's face.
"Speaking of; have you had the time to check in with your boss and substitute yet? I know that you're on a year's sabbatical and everything but you did promise to call them every once in awhile, we don't need them getting worried and trying to find you, especially since they don't know about your second career as the Evil Queen." Simone reminded.
Clawstorm chuckled. "The boss man just wished me a good year to celebrate getting unstuck from an enchanted mirror, he's still buying the story that I had gotten stuck in it after a little "mishap" with a home experiment. My substitute and former student, Tiki, is doing a good job terrorizing the lab monkeys and keeping our latest project on track. And she gets a gold sticky star for making a guy from a rival university cry for his mummy after she caught him trying to steal project secrets."
The couple gave their witch friend a flat look. It figured that Clawstorm would have found a place of employment that was just as crazy as she was.
"Back to the issue at hand; what if the Headmaster finds out that your former prince and princess were the ones who helped your enemies create a doomsday weapon?" Simone asked. "What will you do then?"
"He won't find out." Clawstorm shook her head, Mira's red hair swaying to and fro as a result to the motion. "I destroyed the paper trail as soon as I found it and fabricated a new one that is just good enough for a cursory bystander to assume that it had been the Waco Clan who had helped them, and even if he does look closer to find that those documents are fake… then the king and queen of Ever After would still be the last place that anybody will look."
"Why are you protecting them like this?" Bad Wolf demanded. "I can understand the concept of loyalty but I can't understand your loyalty to the people who have been nothing but disloyal to you. Why didn't you let them bear the consequences of their actions and force them to face the repercussions?"
The witch looked off to the side, shadows appearing under her eyes. "The request forms that I had found stated that my enemies had said that they were just looking for help in making a magnetic railway that was more efficient and cheaper than what is found on my lands. The king and queen probably didn't even know that they had been conned."
Clawstorm shrugged. "It all could have just very well have been a case of human error for them not to think to check up on such a thing, logically my enemies could have learned of my past grievances with those guys, how their kingdom's government system works, and knew that there was a possibility that they wouldn't check into the project because they had made it pretty clear in certain circles that they had wanted nothing to do with me. So there was a chance that they knew that the king and queen would not want to get in the middle of my kingdom's silent war against those lords, not check what was really going on with the project, and if the king and queen raised any fuss then my enemies would have a form of leverage over them, making it look like they had been the ones wanting to wipe out one of the very few witch territories in Ever After, leaving my land's people too suspicious to accept the help and trade that we rely on from their kingdom."
"And what if it wasn't a mistake? What if it was their intention of using your enemies to take you guys out for them?" Simone asked, looking grave. "Can you really take that chance?"
"I have to." Clawstorm defended her eyes misting over despite her best efforts not to cry. "Because if that were true… I just can't believe that they would hate me, or my race so much that they would be willing to endanger so many lives! Not after the history my family has had with theirs! And Ever After is a land that is home to so many different races, many of those citizens have originated from my lands, what could they possibly have to gain from killing us? I just can't think of any beneficial motive for them to have knowingly done what they did, and I can't bear to think about what I'd do if it were true because… because how will my family and lands ever find peace if they turn into the enemy of us?"
Simone and Bane shared a look.
"My enemy is a small but influential radical group, that is run half by greedy rich people who want to profit from war and the spoils of conquered land, and half by social climbing racist idiots with ideals of humans becoming the lone superior race. They may not hold enough power to be taken seriously by all of the kingdoms of Ever After, especially since they have been cut off from their leaders and a great deal of them have been recently arrested and will be stripped of their titles, but they do have that weapon, and if they ever get as lucky to cast doubt on my land's allies in the eyes of my people as they had before with the king and queen, they could start some real trouble, perhaps even war." Clawstorm mused out loud. "If we are going to beat these guys once and for all we need to destroy their weapon and outfox all of the most influential players, leaving the rest of their followers no choice but to disband and to flee before the light is shined on them too."
"But in order to protect your family you could not share all this information with them. How are you going to shed light on anything when you are still a criminal and have about half a dozen worlds calling for your blood?" Bad Wolf asked.
Clawstorm smirked. "Remember how Kline-bastard had injected Raven's blood with the micro-talismans he had paid that stupid mad scientist wannabe to create based on my research? The ones designed to keep her from preforming good magic if he had failed to kill her but succeeded to kill me? Well… I didn't have the time to clear her blood of the stuff but I did have the time to create a new batch of talismans and I had injected my daughter's blood with this new batch, which was designed to keep a certain crowed of crazies away from her… well you already know that they had filtered Raven's blood so that she could be free from those things and let's just say that I left a pretty big clue on the batch that I had made…"
XXX
"The reports from those samples you shipped out on high priority are back Healer." A man in a lab coat set several envelopes down on Healer Phalange's desk.
"'Bout damn time." Healer Phalange groused as the man took his leave. "How long should it take for a bunch of eggheads to stop drooling over something new and shiny to get a freaking report written up? It's been weeks!"
As she looks over the reports Healer Phalange ticks one eyebrow up in an impressed manner, which many of her staff and patients have learned over the years to be a very bad sign.
"It was concluded that the previously unidentified wording of the talisman specimen used to ward off a specific individual or individuals was translated to 'Ordinem de Malleus Maleficarum et Maleficorum'… which roughly translates to…"
"What the hell?" Healer Phalange snarled picking up her phone and dialing.
"Hello? ...This is Healer Phalange of the Ever After High medical wing I must speak to your Broom-Mistress Elenore immediately, it is of urgent importance that I talk to her right away!"