A mother's revenge

2

So many of you asked for another chapter, here it is.

Mal had been back at Auradon prep for about a week when Ben asked her for the first time if she wanted to talk about what had happened to her while her mother had her prisoner in that tower. He hadn't asked her earlier because he could tell that she wasn't ready but now he could tell that it still bothered her, he understood that, when she went off in her head and grew suddenly sad, it was because she was thinking about what her mother had done to her and he wanted nothing more than to help her get over it.

"I... I don't know if I can, Ben. It's not the kind of story you just share around a campfire on a warm summer night while grilling marshmallows." She shook her head.

"I know it's not going to be a happy and cheerful story Mal, but I still want to hear it, to know what you went through and to help you through it." he insisted.

"I don't want to burden you with this Ben. It's... dark. I'll be fine." Mal replied.

"Mal, you're not fine, I can see it and you could never burden me. I love you, I want to be able to help you through this." He assured her.

"You wouldn't happen to have talked with Evie, have you?" She asked him.

"No, not about this, why?" He asked her, confused.

"She told me pretty much the same thing this morning."

"We all want to help you Mal, you're not alone, you just need to let us know how we can help you." Ben replied, hugging his girlfriend close to him, something he had been doing more since finding her.

"Maybe I should tell you guys... It might help with the nightmares." Mal suggested.

"Are they bad?" He asked her.

"I'm getting used to it." She shrugged her shoulders.

"You shouldn't have to." Ben frowned.

"I... I don't know if I can tell you about it... It might be too hard to say..." Mal told him honestly.

"I know that you talked with my mom before coming back to school, did you manage to tell her at all?" He asked her.

"Not really. She gave me her phone number in case I want to talk to her, and I know she's sincere and really wants me to open up to her, and I want to open up to her, I really do. But I know that if I tell her, I'd have to tell you, and Evie, and Jay and Carlos and I don't want to have to go through it several more times..." Mal confessed.

"You don't have to go through this several times Mal, we could all be there at the same time if you want. Or you could just tell my mother and she can tell us later... Anything you want, as long as it helps making you feel better." Ben suggested.

"I think I should get this over with and tell it to everyone at the same time." Mal decided after thinking about it a few seconds.

"As you wish." Ben whispered in her ear, keeping her in his arms, knowing that she felt better there.

.

"The cell was cold. I think she spelled it so that it was colder than it should naturally be. She fed me a little piece of hard bread a day and two glasses of water. One in the morning, one in the evening. I think she slipped potions in my morning glass of water sometimes to help her get in my head more easily. The only thing in my cell was an old blanket. It was dirty, dusty and I think that I would have been cleaner if I had bathed in Auradon Pep's trash. I tried not to use it because it made me itchy and I hated feeling the need to scratch myself all night long but it was so cold that I didn't have a choice most of the time. " Mal told the room.

They were in the Beast's castle, in the large library with Belle, Beast, Ben, Fairy Godmother, Jay, Carlos and Evie. The usually warm and welcoming Library suddenly looked much darker to Mal, as if she was back in her mother's tower, just by talking about it. Dude was sleeping in front of the fire place and Mal was sitting in front of them, feeling like it would be easier to tell her tale if Ben wasn't by her side, even though he wanted to be there for her, to hug her through it. As a punishment, Audrey was also listening to Mal's confession, through a magic mirror. They wanted her to know of the pain and suffering she had caused.

"I had taken Ben's ring off and hidden it in one of my inside pockets, I didn't want my mother to take it from me but one night I put it on and fell asleep forgetting to take it off again. My mother woke me up furious and took it from me. I used everything I had to get it back and, knowing that she'd destroy it, I threw it out the window to protect it from her fire. I knew she'd destroy it in front of me, or she'd use it to hurt me one way or another, I couldn't let her do it." She added.

"I figured as much when I found it on the ground outside before we found you." Ben smiled.

"At first she only used physical pain, spells that gave me the illusion of being burned alive or of being whipped. I held on, concentrating on the fact that I knew Ben and my friends were coming to save me, that I just had to have faith and be patient. It wasn't always easy though. The pain, the lack of food and sleep... I was exhausted and couldn't really rest. I honestly think that I was about to break when I heard Ben's voice calling my name. One more day and they would have been too late. It was just too much for me to handle." Mal admitted, crying.

"Hey, it would have never been too late. When it's meant to be, it can always be fixed." Ben told her after he rushed to kneel in front of her.

He quickly kissed her cheek and hugged her. Since she didn't look like she wanted to let go, he sat by her side, finally where he wanted to be.

"I tried to keep faith that rescue was coming, to concentrate on Love but it wasn't easy... A couple of times, my mother made me think that Ben was right in front of me and... The illusion of Ben looked so real and said things so cruel... I tried not to believe it, to keep in mind that the real Ben would never say these things but when Ben really came, it took me a few minutes to actually trust that it was him and not another illusion. My last doubts about the reality of it all vanished when we arrived here."

"Maleficent really is the cruelest of them all." Fairy godmother shook her head.

"There's a reason she's had the power on the Isle of the Lost for so long." Jay commented.

"She was being nice one minute, faking being compassionate and immediately after she'd hurt me, reminding me that it was my own fault for falling in love with the son of her enemies to begin with. She repeated over and over again that I needed to be her true heir, that I had the potential to be an even greater Queen of darkness that she was. Her words, not mine. She kept bringing up the fact that when I was 6, Evie invited everyone to her birthday party and not me, that I was sad and angry at the time and that I should go back to these emotions, that I had no reasons to be friends with her now... At some point she talked of a vision she had had when she was pregnant with me, that I'd be powerful and capable to great things. When I resisted too much or told her that I wanted to be good and with Ben, she grew angry and repeated that I was just my father's daughter, that she should have known that choosing him for the powerful genes he'd give me wasn't worth the trouble, that she should have gone with the Red Queen's husband, who apparently was more than willing, and be done with it." Mal informed them.

"Do you know anything about your father?" Fairy Godmother asked Mal.

"All I knew before this was that he was a man who wasn't on the Isle of the Lost. I didn't know if he was dead or if it was something else. Now I know that he was a good man and that my mother changed her appearance to win him over, pretended to be someone else. I think he's a bit younger than she was because I remember her making a comment about it a while back." Mal replied.

"We could try to find out who he is if you want." Belle offered.

"I don't know if it would be worth it. He doesn't know that I exist and he might already have a family. Learning of my existence would only ruin his life." Mal shook her head.

"Maybe he'd be happy to find out about you. I know that I'd be proud to learn that you were my daughter. I mean, if you weren't already my son's soul mate." Beast replied with a kind and reassuring smile.

"I'm also Maleficent's daughter. That fact only could ruin a marriage and my father, whoever he is, doesn't deserve it. Plus, I don't know how you could look for him. It's not like you can compare my DNA with the one of every grown man in the land. He might not even be alive anymore." Mal shook her head.

Everyone nodded but Belle looked at Beast and knew that he agreed with her: they'd look for him and, once they knew who he was, they'd decide if they informed him of Mal's existence or not.

"How did you keep track of time?" Evie asked Mal.

"I... I didn't even know how long I was her prisoner for. When I woke up, it was the end of a day but I didn't know how long she had kept me asleep for." Mal added, feeling like she needed to share it.

"Did anyone else every join you two?" Beast asked her, trying to find out if he needed to send his soldiers to look for someone else.

"I don't think so, no one that was real at least. But now that I think of it, my mother said something weird... I think that this tower is where I was conceived."

"But it doesn't make sense, your mother was locked on the Isle of the Lost for 20 years, you're only 16." Evie shook her head.

"I know, but there is a spell in her book, written in her own handwriting, to freeze a pregnancy in time. She could have used it and waited for the moment she saw in her visions as best to release it. Even if there was no magic on the Isle of the Lost, with the way it was designed, she could have done it." Mal replied, taking the spell book out and showing it to them.

"If that's the case I hope it was cleaner 20 years ago." Carlos frowned, making Fairy Godmother and Belle turn to look at him.

"She thought that it was the best place to turn me back into who she wanted me to be: the next Maleficent, because this is where I was created, where the idea of my existence came to her. Where she had a vision of my future powers. She kept saying that I was supposed to be a new and improve Maleficent." Mal added.

"I think you're definitely a better person than your mother was." Fairy Godmother smiled.

"I think she meant improved in the evil department." Mal replied with a frown.

"Wait, does that mean that your father has powers too? There can't me that many middle aged men with magical powers." Evie asked.

"Just drop it Evie, it's not worth it. I don't want to start hoping only to realize that it would be best if I stayed out of his life." Mal shook her head.

"You are allowed to have things in your life that make you happy Mal, you shouldn't have to sacrifice everything for the greater good." Ben told her.

"I don't. I have you and my friends. That's enough for me." She replied.

"Is there anything else you'd like to share with us Mal?" Belle asked her kindly and Mal nodded.

It was easier than she thought to tell them all everything that had happened to her.

"At some point, my mother made me think that I managed to escape, only to arrive here and realize that 20 years had passed and that everyone had forgotten me and that nobody had looked for me. That was the hardest of all. I only managed to break through it because in the vision Ben had his ring on his finger and I knew that the ring was still in my pocket. Of course she didn't know that at the time..." Mal explained, showing clearly that this particular illusion had hurt her a lot more than the rest.

"It couldn't be real, I could never forget about you and I will always look for you." Ben whispered in her ear, making her smile through the tears.

"She kept on saying what a disappointment I was to her, repeating over and over again every single thing I did in my life to disappoint her. Talking out of turn, being nice to an old lady down the street, refusing to hurt someone... Every fact was punctuated with pain. I was exhausted when the rescue arrived. I think the reason you caught her was because she was overly confident, she knew that I was about to break, that she was about to get what she wanted. Only a few hours later would have been too late." Mal confessed.

"What about your nightmares, what are they about?" Jay asked her.

"My mother breaking out and killing Ben in front of me. Something stupid allowing my mother to escape the Isle of the Lost and her coming to destroy the school before she kills everyone and ends with me. Sometimes I'm still in the tower and Ben's rescue was only an illusion created by my mother. In these moments it takes me a few minutes to decide if what I'm living is real of not." Mal admitted.

"How do you know it's real?" Beast asked her.

"In dreams, or illusions created by my mother, I can't read, so I grab a book and try to read. When I can actually read, I'm reassured that it's all real." Mal replied.

"That explains why you've been reading that book about chocolate recipes over and over again for the past week." Evie nodded.

"It's the only book I have that doesn't remind me of my mother and what she put me through." Mal shrugged her shoulders.

"You can borrow any book you want from my personal library honey, really." Belle offered, making Mal smile in return.

"Thank you." Mal nodded.

"I'm sorry we couldn't be there sooner... We should have followed the mirror from the beginning but instead we followed the magical compass and it mislead us once we got in the woods." Ben added.

"It's okay, you came before it was too late. You saved me, that's what's important. I never had someone who wanted to save me before, it's nice to know I have a group of them now." Mal told them all with a grateful smile.

"We'll always be there for you Mal. We're a family." Evie told her before Belle called the maid to bring them some tea, hot chocolate and cookies.

.

"Have you thought about your name issue?" Ben asked Mal later, while he walked her back to her room.

"Not really, I didn't have much time for that, why?" She replied.

"No reason, I was just curious." He smiled.

"Do you have a suggestion?" She asked him, stopping their walk to look at him.

"No, not really. Unless you want Mal to stand for Magnificent, Adorable and Lovable." he joked.

"I'll think about it." She chuckled.

"Mal, I... I hope I didn't make things worst today, by pushing you to share what happened with everyone. I'd hate to be the reason why you have more nightmares." Ben told her sincerely.

"Don't worry Ben, I know that you have my best interests at heart. Talking about it helped." She smiled back at him to reassure him.

"My mother really likes you." He added.

"Is it a bad thing?" She asked him.

"No, not at all. It's great. I'm just surprised. I thought that she'd naturally hate anyone I could be with, because she's my mother and that's how most mothers are. I'm happy that she likes you so much. Even my father. I'm glad they accepted you so fast." he assured her.

"I like them too. They're good parents, and good people." She smiled.

"Do you really want to go back to your room now or do you want to go and sit somewhere?" he asked her suddenly.

"It's still early and it's warm out. Where do you want to go?" She asked him.

"We don't have time to go to the Enchanted Lake before dinner but we could find a nice quiet spot around here." he suggested.

"Sure, I'd love that." She nodded, always happy to be with him.

Eventually, Ben found them a nice spot and he sat down before pulling Mal down with him so she'd be sitting between his legs, her back against his chest.

"This is nice." She sighted.

"Very nice. I love having you in my arms." He replied.

"I'm barely out of your arms lately." She reminded him.

"I know... It's hard for me to let you go after thinking that I might never see you again. I almost lost it." He admitted.

"What do you mean by Lost it?" She asked him curiously.

"Became a beast, like my father. It's in me you know. It could always come out, at any time." he replied.

"Well, I'm here and if the beast comes out, I'll just have to kiss you to turn you back into a man." She stated.

"True, but if you had died, if we would have gotten there too late... I would have been a beast forever."

"Maybe you'd have fallen in love with someone else." She suggested.

"I doubt it. No one could ever take your place in my heart Mal, you're hold on it is permanent, like a tattoo." He replied, making her smile.

"Just so you know, your hold on my heart is just as permanent." She reassured him.

"That's what it means to be soul mates." He whispered in her ear.

"And it feels great." She nodded quietly.

"So, I heard that you're one of the favorites for Homecoming Queen." Ben told her.

"I know, Jane told me but I think they're only voting for me because I'm with you and because of what just happened to me. It's not really something I dream about, it's more of a Evie thing. She'd be so happy if she got elected." Mal replied.

"Well, you can always withdraw your name from the ballots and give your votes to her." He suggested.

"I can do that?" Mal asked him.

"Of course." he nodded.

"What if they elect you homecoming king?"

"If you withdraw your name, I'll withdraw mine. The only appeal of being homecoming king is to have you as my queen. If you don't want it, then I can give my votes to Chad or another one of the homecoming princes." he explained.

"It's too bad that Doug isn't one of the princes." Mal whispered.

"I know, he deserves this kind of attention much more than Chad or any of the others do. Maybe they'll vote for him next year." Ben agreed.

"Ben?" Mal asked after a few minutes of silence.

"Yes?"

"I'm scared." She admitted.

"Of what?" He asked her.

"Falling asleep. I'm afraid of the nightmares." She confessed in a small voice that Ben hated hearing because it showed just how hurt she was.

"I wish there was something I could do... Did you have a nightmare on your first night back?" he asked her suddenly.

"The one when you slept by my side?"

"Yes, that one."

"No actually, it was a peaceful night. The first one on a few days, but the last one as well." Mal shook her head.

"Do you think it was because I was by your side?"

"I don't know, maybe. Why? Are you suggesting..."

"Why not? If it helps you sleep... I don't see why we shouldn't try. You can sleep in my room with me or i'll sleep in yours with you. We can try." he suggested.

"Are you sure that we won't get in trouble?" Mal asked him, liking this idea.

"With who? I'm the King, remember?" Ben joked before he kissed the side of her head.

"You should at least warn Fairy Godmother though, we wouldn't want everyone to get worried if they don't find one of us." Mal insisted and Ben nodded.

After a few more minutes in their quiet spot, Ben and Mal slowly made their way inside and instead of going to the dining hall first, they went to Fairy godmother's office.

"Ben, Mal, everything's alright?" She asked as soon as she saw them.

"We wanted to ask permission for something..." Mal started to say but seemed to have a hard time to find the right words.

"Actually we wanted to warn you about something." Ben corrected, making Mal and the fairy smile.

"What is it?" She asked them.

"Well, we realized that the only time Mal didn't have any nightmares was her first night back, when I shared the bed with her. You know, just to hold her. We wanted to try it again to see if it'll work." Ben explained, a small blush growing on his cheek.

"Have you really not slept one peaceful night since you came back, Mal?" Fairy Godmother asked.

"No, not one." Mal shook her head.

"Well, under normal circumstances I wouldn't permit such a thing, especially since you're just 16 but your bond is a deep one. Considering what happened to Mal and the fact that you're soul mates, I don't see how I could forbid it. I think you can both be trusted to be responsible." Fairy Godmother allowed with a smile and let them leave her office.

Mal and Ben, still hand in hand, walked to the dinning hall were they ate their dinner with some of their friends. Once they were done, Mal stopped by her room to grab what she needed before following Ben to his own bedroom. he used to share it with Chad but after his roommate had verbally attacked Mal on family day, they had a big argument and Chad changed rooms. Since Ben was the new king, they chose not to give him a new roommate.

"It's still ab bit early, do you want to watch a movie or something?" he asked her.

"Sure, that'd be nice." She nodded.

She was surprised by how natural it was for her to be in his bedroom, to share a living space with him. It was as if they had been doing it for years.

It's without any surprises that Mal managed to sleep the entire night without having any nightmares about her mother's need for revenge. Once she was in Ben's arms, it was like she was under a protective shield, safe from bad memories and bad dreams. He kept her safe and happy and she hoped that this wouldn't be a one time thing. She slept much better when she was in his arms.

So, are you happy about this unplanned second part? Maybe I'll get inspired for a third part, I don't know.

Thank you for the love you've all shown the first part f this story though. It really was supposed to be a one-short but since you liked it so much...

Review please?

Lorelei Candice Black