Time Trekkers and Emotional Wreckers
Chapter 4/11 - Everyone Loves the Songs
A black limo was pulling up to Auradon prep and trumpets were playing a jovial tune. A television showed him and Audrey arm in arm, in exactly the same outfits they'd been wearing three days ago. Audrey's hair was curled exactly the same way.
In a crowd of students, Older Mal, still in disguise, was weaving her way through students. "Have the villain kids arrived, yet?" she asked a student who was busy drawing on their iPad.
"Er, no. Just another minute," they replied, very distracted.
Older Mal nodded and craned her head. "Can't see… is Prince Benjamin out yet?"
"Over there."
The limo, unfortunately, shielded Older Mal's vision. She sighed. "Okay. Thanks." She walked away from the kid, making to head towards Ben and the place where the VK's would be. The scene shifted away from her.
The limo parked and the security guard got out and wandered to open the door. Ben braced his sweaty palms against his pants. The door was opened and Jay and Carlos fell out in exactly the same fashion they had the first time Ben had seen them. "You got everything else!" Carlos hollered, hogging something blue to his chest. "Why do you want whatever this is?"
"Because you want it!" Jay grunted, foot to Carlos's chest, and pulled. "Give it to me!"
"No! No!"
Evie and Mal attempted to climb out gracefully. "Guys, guys!" Mal hissed. "We have an audience…"
It played out exactly the way it had. Ben could hear mutters and whispers across the students. Remarkable. As if they'd been filmed in the very moment it was occurring.
And then, back in the crowds, two girls began to chat. "Oh my goodness, look at their hair!"
"Purple and blue – so exotic!"
Older Mal was still battling her way through the crowds, weaving in and out, and heard them as she passed. "Yeah," she snorted. "Word to the wise, buy your wigs and hair dyes today. Blue and purple wigs see a thousand percent markup between now and sixteen years from now."
One of the girls looked blankly at her. "What?"
"Thousand percent markup?" the other girl replied. "That's impossible!"
Older Mal chuckled. "Yeah, you're right. Forget I said anything." She continued on.
In front of the limo, Jay attempted to flirt with Audrey, which made Ben cringe and bow his head. Even worse, when Audrey began to speak in correction of him, affirming their royal statuses. A bad taste filled his mouth. It was a relief when Fairy Godmother finally took their hands and flung them apart from one another. Ben could hear his mother chuckling behind him.
A song began to play as Older Mal wove through the crowds and the scene from two days ago continued to play out. She finally made it to the opposite side of the pavilion from where the six were gathered as the band and the other students turned to clear out. When she saw them, she paused to stare, and the song got louder.
"I want you to want me when you're dead; to roll in your grave like we're not done yet. To call off the whole darn funeral; because our love is so darn beautiful."
She smiled as onscreen Ben went from shaking Jay's hand, fifty feet away, to the young onscreen Mal's hand. And for a moment, his smile dropped and he peered and her, then replaced it and moved on. Apparently, the student body was recovering from the idea that real Ben and real Mal's relationship – whatever this flimsy thing where she thought he was still under a love spell – could last. No one jeered or laughed.
"I want you to know that the past is past; that everything changed when I heard your laugh. Cause you sitting there with your headphones in; you were the point of all this living."
Older Mal continued to smile as onscreen Ben laughed at what young onscreen Mal had said – the bathrooms bit, if he remembered correctly. The scene was as rose-coloured as any romance movie he'd ever seen before. It was a bit odd out-of-context. A woman twice his age specking him out from across the pavilion while he's trying his darn best to be the best king he can be. But if you knew, and you felt the spirit of the scene, you could read into it so much deeper.
Older Mal probably wouldn't be into younger onscreen Ben. Probably. Because she and her Ben had been together for ages. But she was smiling at this memory because of what it meant to her. She loved her life. And she was so excited for her younger self to have her life because it was so worth living.
To Older Mal, Ben had been the point of living up til that point.
And for a second, he glanced over at real Mal, on the blanket beside him, eyes fixed on the screen with an unreadable expression.
A whistling began to whizz through the speakers and the smile was wiped off Older Mal's face. She erected a shield above everyone's heads – just in time. A blast ricocheted off it, ten feet above the younger onscreen Mal, who was saying, "Beauty! Yes, I know the name…". Something about the shield hid from view what was happening. No one seemed to notice. No one except Fairy Godmother, who had just left Ben, Audrey, and the four VK's alone. She frowned and looked around, suspicious.
Older Mal lined her fingers up with where the blast had come from and looked up towards the roof. Partially hidden behind the chimney was Maleficent with her scepter still lit up. Similarly to her previous battle with her mother, Older Mal launched herself into the sky. From up above, she attempted to summon her mother's staff from her hands. The staff whipped towards her and slipped to the tips of Maleficent's fingers, but she held on. Mal landed on the roof with a thud that drew Fairy Godmother's attention from down below. But when she looked up, there was nothing.
"What are you doing here?" Maleficent demanded.
Older Mal didn't answer – only attempted to summon the sceptre again. Maleficent kept a tighter grip, and so Older Mal advanced and leaped forward, seizing the sceptre herself and trying to tug it away. When she touched it, the green ember burned brighter. This older version of Mal evidently had more magic than Maleficent was anticipating.
Maleficent might have been twice Mal's seniority in the future, but Fae didn't tend to age the same way mere mortals did. Ben suspected Mal in real life could easily hit two hundred without showing her age. Thus, Maleficent might have been able to maintain her grip… if not for the fact Mal had grown up wrestling for things and fighting dirty. She stomped on her mother's foot, trying to wrestle the sceptre away. She took a hold at both ends where Maleficent held near the centre and began to twist. Judging by the glow of her eyes, she was putting some magic behind it too. Her charmed brown hair flew out around her shoulders.
Down on the ground, with nothing amiss in the background behind them, young onscreen Ben was saying, "My father wanted his statue to morph from beast to man. To remind us that anything is possible."
Young onscreen Mal was not impressed. "Does he shed much?" she asked, and the student body laughed. She was funny, when you got used to how edgy she was.
Ben felt a little proud when his younger self replied, "Yeah, mom won't let him on the couch." The joke landed with the student body – they laughed. For a moment, you could almost see connections forming between them. Younger Mal gave him a barely-amused look. Behind Ben, Audrey noticed, and didn't seem pleased about it.
On the roof, Maleficent rolled and took her and Mal both down. She tried to slam Mal into the ground, but Mal used the momentum to hurl her mother into the roof. This made everyone – even Older Mal – wince. "I don't want to hurt you," she said. "Just give me the sceptre – we can go back home and I'll explain everything!"
"From prison?" Maleficent snarled, heaving for breath. "Over my dead body." She kicked Older Mal back and Older Mal, who had loosened her grip, was sent tumbling back down the roof, where she spilled over the gutter. She caught it and made to haul herself up, but Maleficent hurried over and raised the staff to smash her fingers again, just like she had in the office. Older Mal immediately released the gutter with a creak and plummeted off the side of the building.
The bushes grew up to catch her and provided a landing that was probably better than the ground would, and then shrunk down to normal size. Older Mal aimed with two fingers and fired a spell towards the roof, which whizzed as it passed by. But Maleficent was not waiting around. She activated the sceptre again and began to fade from view. In seconds, she was gone. Older Mal grumbled and got off the bushes.
Fairy Godmother was walking over at a brisk pace. She spotted Mal standing, brushing herself off, and immediately pegged her for trouble. "Excuse me!" She called, hurrying even more.
Older Mal jumped and spun. "Fairy Godmother!" she exclaimed. "Hi, um, hello, I…"
"Who are you?" Fairy Godmother demanded. "Why are you here?"
Older Mal stammered and swallowed. "I'm, uh… just here for Family Day."
"Yes, well, Family Day is four days away… I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"Absolutely. Will do. Yes, thanks." Mal nodded, inclined her head, and hurried away. Fairy Godmother continued examining the roof as if something were the matter with it.
Older Mal examined Fairy Godmother with an expression reminiscent of sadness. Ben deduced the reason why. "Fairy Godmother must have passed away," he said aloud.
"How do you know?" his mother asked behind him.
"Because Mal from the future has her wand, and it's not blue anymore. And the way she's looking at her. I bet Fairy Godmother probably tutored this version of Mal."
"That really happened," someone said, approaching from the crowd. It was Fairy Godmother with Carlos, who evidently had not been able to stop the movie. She wrung her hands and looked between Ben and Mal anxiously. Ben got back to his feet, as did his parents again. Carlos retook his seat beside Evie, Jay, and Carlos, shaking his head. "That really happened – I met that woman… she left the grounds immediately. I didn't even think!" She put her hands above her head in a bit of shock and glanced suspiciously towards Mal.
"Calm down, Fairy Godmother," Ben said. "You couldn't stop the movie? Couldn't you?"
"Carlos pulled the plug," Fairy Godmother interrupted. "There is no power to the TV right now. Or the speakers. We disconnected them from each other. It's still playing."
Ben glanced at the four VK's on the blanket beside him. "We could send everyone away," he said. "But there's no guarantee that this is the future. The older Mal would remember sitting where our Mal is right now." He gestured towards her on the blanket beside his. "It's a lot of coincidences. But at the end of the day, it is just a movie with lots of great songs.
"Oh yeah, the songs are great," Belle said. Adam hummed in agreement.
"So you want us to finish watching?" Jay asked.
"Or we could send everyone away," Ben said. "What do you want to do?"
No one moved. Slowly, they all looked back to the screen.
Older Mal vanished from the scene.
While this story is completely written, I can easily add details if they are requested. Leave a comment letting me know what you want to see.