Mal has always been strong. She had to learn it, quick, from the moment she could form a thought- from the moment she was born, really, because even if she can't remember those early days, babies can still learn.
They can learn to shut up, and be quiet, they can learn the atmosphere in the room that tells them they need to disappear into the background unnoticed. Growing up under the demanding hand of Maleficent, she learned quickly what the fairy wants and expects, and when. When the time to be loud and hellish is, and when back talking would not be met with a small glimmer of satisfaction, but rather a blow to the head.
Kids learn quick on the Isle, or they don't make it past adolescence.
Mal is strong because she knows that she can't ever, ever back down (unless it's to her mother), because backing down is weakness and weakness doesn't survive. Mal is strong because she knows that if faced with the options of fleeing or a knife, she should always take the knife, because one knife is better than the dozen that will follow if thought weak and an easy target. She needs to be fearless, untempered, mean, and unforgiving in her responses. She can't show mercy, because mercy won't ever be shown to her.
Mal is strong because she always, always, has to be the best, come out on top, control everything, or everything will be out of control. She gets very good at controlling everything. The Isle is very predictable in the way it runs and what to expect of the people.
That all changes in Auradon. Suddenly, she has control over nothing. She doesn't control where she goes or when, when she eats, the other people around her. The Auradon kids are scared of her, but only to an extent.
They don't care if she hears their whispers, or sees their dirty looks. She can't control them at all, except by being so big and loud that they keep their distance. She can't lash out. She can't throw or destroy or hurt things. Because then she'll be sent back, and that's not an option for several reasons.
She doesn't feel strong in Auradon, despite everyone there being so very soft. She suddenly feels small and weak and like she's newly out in the Isle market for the first time and hasn't learned her lessons. There is no Maleficent out here to protect her, just as there was no Maleficent when she sent Mal out for the first time with only a pocket of change and orders to bring home a loaf of bread.
It was a test, one she failed when the world only turned out to be worse than her mother, and she returned that day, bloody and bruised, pockets empty, but somehow alive. Maleficent punished her for her failure, of course, and that's when she learned unequivocally that failure is not an option (though she failed often in the eyes of her mother, even if she rose quickly in the eyes of the Isle).
Each new test, she survived with a new lesson etched in memory (and often her skin).
But in Auradon, Mal is suddenly faced with a world of new rules that are almost contradictory to every one that's been written into her bones since the day she was born. It leaves her feeling flatfooted and wrong and like she's desperately scrambling for- something- she doesn't know, but everything in her tells her not to show her uncertainty, so she gets louder and more unpleasant when she's feeling particularly out of control, which is nearly all the time.
She tries. She tries to fit in, to be friendly and giggly and shallow, but then someone nearly stumbles into her and she's suddenly snapping and rude and making them flee.
This is the wrong thing to do. She knows this because the adults tell her so (the adults taught her the rules on the Isle, too, though they taught their lessons very differently than the ones in Auradon- and that sets her on edge, too; the rule she learned that first day at the market was not to trust adults).
It's not just the Auradon adults telling her these rules. It's Evie and Carlos and Jay, too, who are blending so much better than she seems to.
It's Evie, who ducks her head close as she leads Mal away before any adults can come racing to the 'rescue,' "You can't just snap like that, Mal. Not here. It's different here. The rules are different."
Mal grits her teeth, even though they already hurt with how hard her jaw is clenching. "I know, Evie. I'm trying. It's just so…"
"Just take a deep breath. Being the biggest and baddest isn't what's going to keep us alive out here."
It's Jay, catching her around her waist and throwing her bodily into an empty classroom before she can sink her teeth into his arms that grabbed her. He uses his body to block the door as her chest heaves and her eyes burn, and her skin feels wrong.
She wants to throw herself at him, tear through him and the door and anyone else who stops her from ripping into shit that tripped her and laughed. She wants to pull out her knife or beat him bloody so that no one ever targets her again. She wants to make her knuckles bleed on his face so everyone knows that she's not weak, not someone to mess with, someone they should all scatter at the sight of. She's been too lenient here, this never would have happened on the Isle.
"Easy," Jay says, hands held out. He knows he can't stop her, not really. She will beat him down, too, for challenging her, no matter if she'll have to fix him up later when they don't have an audience. "Mal, think. You get in a fight, it's not going to be that Auradon kid that gets in trouble. It's us. Fighting isn't going to protect us, it'll just get us back on the Isle."
"Maybe that's what needs to happen!" Mal snaps. "This place is awful, I hate it here! I hate everything about it!"
"We can't get sent back. You know that," he says, running his fingers anxiously through his hair. It's odd for him to be the reasonable and patient one. "We are dead if we go back without that wand."
Mal screams and flips a desk, then throws a chair across the room. It's loud and hurts her ears, and it's not enough. There is something moving underneath her skin that wants out- she wants it out.
Carlos tells her, too. He catches her wrist before even she can react, and she blinks into his brown eyes. She doesn't smack it away, because it's Carlos, and it's so very rare that he seeks out contact on his own, especially out in public, let alone meets anyone's eyes for more than a few seconds.
"Breathe. Hold it in until you get back to the room. Just hold it in."
It feels impossible to hold it in. It feels impossible to breathe. All the conflicting rules are jumbled in her gut, in her very nerves, and her brain goes all wonky with what her brain sometimes knows that she should do, and how her body definitely knows what to do. But they often conflict, so something is getting wired wrong, and suddenly everything stops working, stops functioning, the way it's supposed to.
Her reactions feel wrong no matter what she does, so suddenly, instead of yelling and screaming and making them run away, she freezes as her brain goes static and her heart is everywhere except her chest, and they keep telling her to just breathe in these situations, but she suddenly can't.
Everyone keeps telling her she's wrong, she's wrong, she's wrong, and she can't seem to fix herself, to learn, when learning quickly is so vital on the Isle. She has always been strong, and she takes her lessons to heart so she only has to learn it once, but she's not getting this one. Not when it goes against all her others that were far more painful to learn.
Though this one seems kind of painful, now, since she thinks she might be dying.
She's only felt this dizzying, spinning, world, and the pain in her chest where she can't catch her breath, when she's dying. She doesn't remember being injured, though, and Carlos is the only one near, and he wouldn't betray her.
Right?
"Mal?"
He can't have betrayed her. He wouldn't have. She's too- she's too-
"Mal, what's wrong."
Mal is Isle and Carlos is Isle. They are gang, but maybe she's been too soft, even here. He joined her crew for protection, because she was strong, but here she isn't. Here she can't protect them from anything.
He should knock her off, by rules of the Isle. He should find someone stronger, someone who can actually keep him safe.
Hands are on her, and she can't even fight them off. She should get them off. She needs to get them off, but there is a new voice in her head, one unfamiliar but persistently insistent saying, don't fight, don't fight, don't fight. It will get your entire gang killed.
So her limbs remain locked in place, rigid and painful, as her muscles cramp with the effort to 'just hold it in,' 'that's not the way things are done here,' 'if you can't assimilate to our rules and standards, there's nothing I can do to keep them from sending you back,' and 'we are dead if we go back without the wand.'
Something sharp and stinging lands across the side of her face, and she lunges forward with a snarl, catching two wrists and following the body to the floor.
"There you are," a soft voice sighs in relief, and Mal blinks down at pretty brown eyes and the perfect halo of blue hair across the floor. The world warps as she pants and colors swirl in. The wrists in her hands are thin, nearly too thin, and she's stradling a familiar waist.
Her chest still heaves as she quickly looks around herself and realizes she isn't in the school hallway any longer. She's in a classroom she's never been in before. Her whole gang is there.
Mal quickly releases Evie, throwing herself backward with a shocked inhale. She doesn't know how she got here- she doesn't like that at all. Losing time is… not good at all. Not when she doesn't know what happened to her in the space between.
"What happened," she spits, anger rising as a default to her panic. Her chest still hurts, but it eases slowly the more gasping breaths she takes.
"I… don't know," Carlos says, standing not too far away. "You just started freaking out. Like- me- except… I don't know. You weren't moving or reacting at all. Evie slapped you to snap you out of it. Seems to have worked."
Mal's hand raises to her stinging cheek. She hasn't been slapped in a very long time. Not since she was little, and before Maleficent started using her scepter instead.
"Thanks," Mal says, letting her hand fall.
"Mal, what was that?" Jay asks, brow furrowing, and he's looking at her differently. He's looking at her like- like he looks at Carlos or Evie. Something to be protected, something he needs to worry about.
It sets off something ugly in her and she leaps to her feet. "I don't know, okay?" she snaps. "This place is just messing with me. Let's just focus on getting the wand, and going home. Auradon sucks."
Her gang exchanges looks with each other.
Her chest is still tight, the world still spinning. She's tired. She's so very tired that her limbs feel heavy and like she can't take a step back out the door, can't face whatever's out there. She feels weak, and she knows assuredly that it's going to get her killed.
A/N: Mal puffs up and plays the big bad to keep herself safe. Please let me know what you guys think! The other's lessons will follow at some point. Probably. Haven't written them all yet, so guess I shouldn't really promise anything.
~Silver~