#liddell!reader

You yourself hadn’t been one for sports - aside from the occasional caucus race - that is, until Ben joined the tourney team last year. He must have spent every spare moment leading up to his first match trying to explain the rules to you with no luck, but the moment the referee blew her whistle, you were enamored watching him play. And it’s simply been that way ever since. No matter what it is, you know it will be a fantastical time if Ben’s the one playing. This seems especially true today. 

Ben tears up the field like an absolute animal - no pun intended - and within minutes has scored yet another goal for Auradon. The Fighting Knights are pulling out all the stops, and through even your unwavering faith in Ben’s athleticism, it’s starting to look like a close call. You pull out a teacup from your bag, the china cool under your fingertips. It’s adorned with a white catchfly and chestnut print, but you don’t pay much attention to it. 

Your eyes are locked on Ben as he races down the field, and you pour the spout of your tea pot shaped bag into the cup. Warm, perfectly brewed rooibos and nettle tea trickles from its spout. You shake it absentmindedly a few times, and some lemon slices and lavender sprigs fall in, floating atop the beverage. You take a sip of the warm, perfectly seasoned herbal tea, nearly choking on it as Jay drags Carlos across the field. You watch with bated breath as they move strategically, setting up Ben to score the perfect winning goal. The ball flies straight into the net, and you jump up, cheering and applauding, not even noticing the rooibos and nettle tea stain on your skirt. The crowd roars right along with you, applauding and cheering deafeningly while the announcer congratulates Auradon Prep on their win. Before he can even finish speaking, Ben grabs the mic from him.

You stop dead in your tracks, brow furrowed.

That’s not like him. 

Not at all. 

“Excuse me, excuse me!” Ben pants, still out of breath as he tries to get the crowd’s focus. “Can I have your attention please?”

The stands quiet as he speaks. 

“There’s- uh, there’s something I’d like to say!”

What in the Knave’s good name is he doing? Your mind races, trying to remember if he’d said anything about something like this. Were there any speeches, any announcements, anything like that he was going to make after the game? You can’t remember him mentioning anything like that. Besides, he always runs his speeches by you first to make sure it comes across the way he intends it too. Even something as small as an opening statement or homework presentation, he always gets your feedback first. You watch the way his eyes dart around, the way he hesitates as he tries to figure out what he’s saying. Your stomach drops. He’s improvising this. This whole situation feels surreal. Most peculiar, and most definitely unlike him. 

After another moment of floundering, he finally addresses the crowd. 

“Give me an M!” 

The crowd complies, shouting out the letter and mirroring the shape he’s making with his arms. 

“Give me an A!” 

“A!” 

While the crowd complies yet again, throwing their arms over their heads in an A shape, your eyes fly over to Audrey. You’re afraid you know where this is going, even though it makes positively less sense than the most twisting turning riddles you’ve ever encountered in Wonderland. Your horrified, bewildered expression is the opposite of her hopeful one, and you realize you’re thinking the same thing. Your stomach sinks in a sick, twisting feeling. Your mind races in a dreamlike panic. 

He can’t seriously be asking Audrey to marry him, could he? 

There’s no way. There’s simply no chance that the Ben you’ve known for longer than you’ve been brewing tea would do something so… impulsive. Everything about Ben is calculated. Well thought through. Ben agonizes over each and every decision, he lies awake at night paralyzed by the potential consequences of each action, each choice not being thought all the way through and analyzed from every possible angle. If proposing to Audrey was even a thought in his mind, he would have told you about it. 

There’s simply no other way. There’s no possibility this was even an option in his mind. Just last week when you had quietly implied that maybe he should consider ending their relationship, his silence spoke louder than any words could have. You had seen that. You saw it in his eyes. There’s no way he could be changing his mind that quickly, and not consulting you - or someone about it? You know you would have gotten wind if he even implied he was toying with the notion. Ben does not flip-flop. So what is… this?

“Give me an L!”

Audrey’s face drops. Yours floods with relief. 

He’s not proposing. 

“C’mon, I can’t hear you!” Ben calls out into the mic, hyping up the crowd. They yell Mal’s name again at Ben’s encouragement. You think you see where he’s going with this. It makes sense - Jay and Carlos each got a big starring moment during the tourney game. Now, Ben is giving a shout out to Mal and Evie so they can share in the glory, and won’t feel left out. It’s a brilliant idea, you realize, but you still can’t figure out why he didn’t plan something like this ahead. Did he realize last minute that Mal and Evie might feel excluded? It’s possible. And right now, it’s the most rational explanation you have for this unusual behavior. Before you can feel too relieved, he leans into the mic. You wait for him to instruct the crowd to give him an E, beginning to spell Evie’s name, and-

“I love you, Mal!”

Your stomach drops. You freeze again, brow furrowed more than before. The world around you spins as you stand in the crowd, disoriented. He says it like a deathbed confession, the words tearing from his throat. Through your confused stupor, you can hear the sincerity, the yearning in his voice. 

What?

You don’t even think to look over at Audrey, but you’re sure as anything her expression is exactly the same as yours - completely and totally shell shocked. Probably moreso, you think, she is his girlfriend after all. But is she? Anymore, that is. You can’t imagine she would want to be after a display like that, after Ben publicly- 

Ben…

Ben. 

His gaze flicks over to you for a split second, not even long enough for you to silently ask him what the hell is going on. But it’s just long enough for you to see a flash of something. A look in his eye. Fear. Confusion. Everything you’re feeling for him right now. His attention is ripped forcefully back to Mal. Whatever was there, you can’t see it now. 

“Give me a beat!” Ben demands overzealously to the band. They start playing something for him, something loud and fast. Ben begins singing Mal’s praises. Literally. You’re still frozen, sick with a cold, confused feeling that makes the world around you feel like a strange dream. Unreal. You begin to question if you are dreaming. Through your dazed state - which you only later realize has begun to be accompanied by hot tears blurring your vision - you could swear you saw Mal and Evie share some sort of look, whisper knowingly. They giggle. Mal pulls a zip top bag of cookies out of her jacket pocket and they both start giggling. Laughing. 

A noise catches your scattered attention and you notice Ben has launched himself into the stands, crowd surfing to get all the way over to Mal. He climbs down, grabbing her waist and pulling her close. It’s so intense, so passionate, so unlike him to do something like that in public. You start to gasp, but you can’t. The stands are so loud, each noise feels like a gunshot deafening you. Your lungs feel like they’re being squeezed from the bottom up like paint tubes, gripped by an artist desperate for the last drops of cadmium yellow deep. 

His hand rests firmly on the small of her back.

Just like it does on yours.

Something sickening twists through you, contaminating your heart and sapping away at your strength. Audrey’s voice cuts through, piercing and shrill as she announces to Ben that Chad is her boyfriend now. You see them kiss in your peripheral vision, eyes still locked on the way Ben’s hand sits on Mal’s back. He doesn’t seem to notice Audrey either, or at the very least, he doesn’t acknowledge her. Normally you’d giggle privately at how much that would irritate her, but nothing so frivolous crosses your mind just then.

“I love you, Mal!” Ben exclaims into the microphone. “Did I mention that?”

He leans closer, aching for her, needing her. But she puts her hands on his chest, trying to keep more distance between them. 

“Mal,” he begs, panting as his breath fans across her face, his cheeks flushed. He grips her tighter, leaning closer until he’s practically dipping her. The crowd watches, shocked at the sight of Prince Ben - who is known for his diplomatic reserve and continuous composure - acting so bold in public. “Will you go to coronation with me?”

“Yes!” Mal’s response comes a little too easily. 

You stare off into space in his general direction, choked with disbelief. You feel so frightened and confused and unwelcome. It’s a cold, isolated feeling of strangeness you’ve been running from since you could walk. You knew what people said about Wonderlandians, what they whispered behind your back when they thought you couldn’t hear. It was always Ben who made that feeling go away. He had seen the change in you, too. The more time you spent together since you were littles, the more he included you and sent disapproving princely looks to anyone who dared to tease you or make you feel like you’re not a part of Auradon, the more it started to work. He saw you relax, saw you believe him when he said he was happy to see you. He saw the shame and paranoia from accepting the fact that everyone around you was teasing you behind your back, spreading lies and rumors fade away. 

Ben watched you grow into yourself the moment he showed you that you were safe to do so. Now, after ten years, that horrible feeling is back and Ben is gone. You turn, rushing out of the bleachers, hopping down to solid ground and turning underneath the stands. You’ve barely stopped before the world caves in around you, and the familiar scent of earth and night and the good kind of confusion envelop your senses, like a hug from your mother. 

You fall down the rabbit hole, and you weep. Shamelessly, loudly, uncontrolled. Your tears fly off into the air above you as you fall, no longer afraid of prying eyes. You cry and cry, losing your sense of time and space as you fall deeper and deeper away from the world that never seems to lose amusement in stinging you when you least expect it. You take in a breath, but before you can let it out as another aching sob, you’re plunged underwater. 

Your eyes flare open in the deep waves around you, the black void of a sky above. You kick yourself up to the surface, gasping as you tread the current carrying you downstream. The water splashes around you, getting into your mouth, and it’s salty. A stork sails by on a little wooden raft, adjusting her captain’s hat. “Well, that would do it!” She exclaims in a thick, Wonderlandian accent. “I was wondering what caused these high tides.” 

She maneuvers her raft towards you and hauls you onto it, her gangly legs wobbling awkwardly as she keeps her balance. She pulls a handkerchief out of her pocket and hands it to you, her long feathers tickling your fingertips. 

“Dry your eyes there, dearie, or else we’ll be having to build a new dam!” 

You sputter an apology, which she dismisses goodnaturedly, and begins singing a confusing sea shanty as she navigates the waves, coming and going as you try to calm yourself. After a few minutes, a particularly large wave pushes you two over the river’s edge and sends you spinning into the forest. 

“Well, there you have it.” She says, taking off her cap and dumping out water, sand, a few shells, and a very irritable codfish. She unties the strings of her raft, gathering up the large sticks used to make it into a bundle, and tucking them under her arm.

“Quite useful, you know,” She says softly, before handing you a piece of nicely shaped paper. It reads The Two Blwo’s Shipping Survise. “And if you ever need something lickety split, I do hope you’ll give me a call.”

She tilts her hat and lopes off through the woods into darkness. 

You plop yourself down on the nearest thing - a large, bioluminescent blue mushroom with little purple spots that makes a sound like a big deep drum when you sit down on it. Several smaller mushrooms varying in size scatter near the base of the one you’re seated on. As you pull your foot up to get comfortable, you graze a few of the litter ones, and let out different tones and types of drums too. Normally this would fascinate you. Normally you would be taking pictures, writing about them in your journal, and trying to learn how to play a song on them - if they’re in the right sort of temperament, of course. But today you don’t even notice.

Your mind is still spiraling, sucked down into a whirlpool of the day’s events. You go over and over what happened, hoping to make sense of it, but unable to really process anything. That was so strange, Ben is acting so strange. Why is he acting like that, you wonder. Did he hit his head? Has he somehow been possessed by a very extroverted poltergeist? Why would he do that? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t even make nonsense. Even in Wonderland, there are still patterns, there are still rules and motivations for doing things. Even if those rules and patterns don’t make sense to anyone else, they’re still real. Wonderland is illogical and absurd, but it’s not purely random. 

You rock yourself comfortingly on the bouncy mushroom, the soft noise providing an ambiance that helps you start to think again. There’s no feasible pattern or non-pattern or non-pattern pattern to Ben’s behavior. If there were one, you would be able to find it, especially if you know him as well as you do. And you do. You glance down and see some beetles marching in a line, carrying leaf umbrellas to avoid any more falling tears. You wipe them from your cheeks quickly. 

“My apologies.” You say, your voice polite and fragile. The head beetle chirps, clicking his wings and tipping his hat. He ushers the others past your mushroom quickly, putting their leaf umbrellas onto an umbrella leaf bush nearby. 

A few bread-and-butterflies flitter over, carrying a tray of tea and cakes. They place it before you gently, brewing you a cup of blackberry earl grey with extra honey. You thank them, and they nod, flittering off and leaving a trail of buttery breadcrumbs as their wings flap. They land nearby, listening to you mutter to yourself as the line up to form a loaf. The tea and cakes are delicious, full of jam and honey, and they steady your nerves. You take in another breath, less shaky this time, and begin to think. Not panic, really think. 

“There has to be a reason,” you mumble out loud, “There simply has to be. Ben doesn’t just lose his composure like this. He’s not devoid of sensibilities and decision making. He’s worked so hard to hone his reputation as someone trustworthy, someone full of common sense and compassion, and that… being that person for Auradon is everything to him.”

You place down your tea cup firmly, brow furrowing as your confusion melts away to determination. 

“Everything! He would never do something so… impulsive, and foolhardy, and- and… not like him!” 

You stand up quickly, landing on your feet. 

“I must get to the bottom of this.” You pause. “Or top. Either way.”

You gather your things, fix your hair, and wring out the water from your dress. Even if Ben doesn’t care about his reputation anymore, about his future, the very future of Auradon and all who reside within it, you do. Your loyalty to Ben simply cannot be broken by a day like today.  You won’t let him throw away everything he’s worked towards for no reason. For any reason! If he’s just gone mad, that’s one thing to be dealt with. But there’s a good chance he’ll come back to his senses sooner or later, and you refuse to let everything to hell in a handbasket until he does. 

You are going to figure this out. You’re going to do as much damage control as needed until Ben is back to you and Back to himself. And he is going to come back to himself. You’re sure of it.

Filled with tea cakes and determination, you summon a rabbit hole back to Auradon, and jump through. You flip and twist through the darkness, falling past a bookshelf that floats along with you for a moment, offering a few titles that might prove useful. 

When light breaks the surface and you hear the cracking of polished stone floors, you climb through and emerge into the library. You dust the dirt off yourself and off your hands, setting down your books on a table. You begin to look around, rushing through the library and moving with purpose. You pull book after book off the shelves until you can hardly carry them to the checkout desk. Many of them will be fruitless, you’re sure, but anything is better than nothing in times like these.

“Doing some light reading, Ms. Liddell?” The librarian asks, chuckling at the imposing stack of books you’ve placed before her as she scans through them. 

She has all she needs to have to prove this. Corvid’s feet that crinkle on her eyes from each time you’ve made her smile, the paperwork she got registered overland, and most importantly, a feather and leaf from the Neonatal Cabbagestork who had delivered you to your mother on the unsuspectedly wonderful day now known as your birthday. 

Your birthday is one of Alice’s most favorite days of the whole calendar year. She knows all your favorite days too, being that she is your mother and all. She knows much about you; just how you enjoy your tea the most, which chocolates you tend to skip and pick over in boxes of sweets, the precise look on your face that says you need a hug, and what sorts of things you look forward to. 

Alice knows just how much you look forward to Parent’s Day each year at Auradon Prep. 

You see, Parent’s Day - along with Darents’ Pay, the Remarkalous Cow Crawl of Sluthering Seights, and the Diurnal Pock Parade (both Primary and Tertiary. The Secondary Diurnal Pock Parade is a well known farce and is only kept around to be exploited by greeting card companies and boiled peanut salesmen. It’s truly nothing short of a laughing stock) - is your most favorite holiday. 

Many may not consider Parent’s Day as such, but you and your mother certainly do. Why, the last time Alice can recall hearing you speak so eagerly about any such event was during preparation for the two dozen worm salute performed at the Changing of The Fertilizer in the White Palace’s gardens last year. What a lovely and commemorative day that had been. 

Traditionally, the usual process of preparing for a very Big And Exciting Day at the Wonderland Embassy involves lots of excitement. Typically you’d be running all over the Embassy in a flurry of giddiness as you got yourself dressed, nearly forgot to drink enough tea for such a busy morning, fussed with your hair until you gave up and let your mother fix it for you how you like. That sort of hustle and bustle. 

Alice can - and often does - fondly recall the state of your closet and bathroom and vanity on such joyous days (a state of chaos she only discovers once you’re both home and much too tired to worry yourselves with tidying up.) A large part of why Alice knows this is because she often finds herself in just that same state of getting readiness, and its ripple effects in her own closet and vanity. 

She’s sure she could never begin to guess where you get that particular trait from. 

But as the morning of Parent’s Day dawns, the Embassy is… quiet.

Eerily so. 

She walks through the halls, only to find them void of shoes and dresses being tossed about, lacking the standard trail of tea and cakes trailing from room to room. Even the royal Card Guards - guards comprised of cards - aren’t stirred up into anything remotely close to a tizzy. And Card Guards are quite impressionable, you see. If there were an ounce of excitement or a haypenny of anticipation anywhere within the glittering marble halls of the Wonderland Embassy, Alice would surely hear it. The fluttering of Card Guards rushing about and trying to be useful, the giggles, the chattering and chittering to oneself. 

Where are you?

It’s just then, that exact moment that Alice realizes with a sudden sinking in her stomach - the kind of troubled waterlogging of the grand ocean liner within her heart, at which you are always at the helm - that she’s unsure… well, that is… she doesn’t truly know just how much time you’ve been spending in Wonderland. 

Spending time in Wonderland, of course, is a part of your heritage. It’s only natural for you. But it is quite the dangerous heritage to inherit. Wonderland in all its wondrous beauty can be quite unimaginably dangerous, the hills and slopes so very slippery that one would surely lose one’s balance. Even with shoes comprised only of the purest velcro, the stickiest glue, and the stabbiest ice picks. 

Even for those who love the spontaneity of unsolid ground, they must have something to rely on. All dreamers must have a soft place to land. When not the ground, perhaps it’s a soft sort of person that grounds you, or a particularly fluffy feathered variation of the chicken dance performed at weddings, bat mitzvahs, and North East Wuzzlewick Stew Pot Inaugurations. Perhaps you find the sounds of nail guns constructing dog houses for in-trouble husbands soothing, or find yourself always able to relax when you rest your face just above a bowl of ice to breathe in the soothing smell of cold. 

Alice knows what grounds you, naturally. And what grounds you when you’re feeling flighty or floaty or all turned about is… 

Well, what grounds you is Ben.

Herself as well, of course. But she and him are two separate kinds of grounding. There’s the everlasting soft sort of comfort you get from the loving hug of your mother, even when her arms are not technically around you in that moment. But then… then there’s the sort of hand-in-hand, steadfast grounding found in the mutual company and understanding of a dear, dear friend. A peer who sees you as you are. As you have been. One who imagines you as you would like to be imagined. And Ben sees you not as his little girl, as that little wrinkly crying bundle delivered in a flurry of stork feathers all wrapped up in cabbage leaves, but as you are. 

As you hope to be. 

But Ben’s sturdy, gentle guiding hand seems to have slipped from yours most abruptly in these recent days. Some may say this is merely the normal pushing and pulling tides of adolescence. But Alice knows better. Alice knows most adamantly that this is not so. She will not believe that after all, after every year and day and weekend spent in company, after every giggle fit and shared understanding (both with and without words being present) that right now of all times, the bond you and Ben have built and fostered, the bond you share would arbitrarily begin to crumble.

Words must be had. Answers must be discovered. And neither can happen before Alice finds out where in the Red Queen’s Gardens you’ve run off to. 

But she knows with all forms of certainty that if there’s one place you’ll be found on a day such as today, sooner or later, it shall be the big and grandiose Parent’s Day event at Auradon Prep. So instead of continuing to flit about in circles, she selects her carefully selected outfit from her wardrobe, readies and steadies herself, and heads off to the school. 

Surely your heads will be right on her tails. 

There are two fogletoads sitting on your feet today. You find them there each and every time you look down glumly - which has been so much more than your usual metric for glumness. One is jovial, positively alight with whimsy and anticipation. On the other foot you have one as depressed as a weeping widower, coming to terms with the fact that he will never again wake up to fussy beverages brewing or large tufts of hair globbed up onto the shower wall. It’s most difficult to keep your balance on such an excitable day to begin with, but it seems impossible to even stand upright in your current state. Staying on your feet is proving to be quite the feat indeed. 

Knots of worry twist and tug, tangling up your insides as you wonder just how in the Red Queen’s Gardens you’re supposed to dilly dally and meander, how you’re supposed to just go about your business when half of your body - the left half - is trying to run into your mother’s embrace and rejoice in festivitating with her. All the while your right half is so heavy you feel it could only lie down in this very spot and cry for so long that you disrupt the water cycle, create your own floods to wash away all the confusion of what your world Overland has become. 

But the persistence of time is quite simple, and it is simply time to persist. 

So persist you must. 

You feel much like an uncured piece of kintsugi pottery. You’re holding yourself together, but… only just. Perhaps if you tie yourself up with enough ribbons and ruffles and eyelash glue, no one will notice that all that glittering gold is really cracks threatening to break your carefully composed composure. 

So you do just that. You wrap yourself up in the pretty clothes and all the other little bits and bobs you’d long since selected for just this day. You glue yourself down to that pretty blue dress you love so much, you tape down your stockings to hide all the ungrounded cracks creeping along you from the bottom up, lock your uncured form in a gilded display case of chokers and heavy heeled boots marked FRAGILE! DO NOT SHAKE SHOVE OR PITY!

You practice your smile in the mirror. You practice making that strange face over and over, the one that forces your cheeks to lie where your eyes cannot in a way that should be convincing to most. You try to coax out the crinkles that always bump up and down over the edges of your eyeliner, try to talk your shoulders into relaxing. 

And it’s that very moment that you realize what Ben means when he says- or, said. Used to say, you suppose - that you’re really quite transparent to those who know you.

You let the staged upside down frown fall from your cheeks with a defeated huff. 

“Shit.” You mutter, carefully pressing your hands to your face in a way that soothes without fussing up your makeup.

Then for a moment, you feel almost grimly lucky that there are really only two people who do know you well enough to look up at the sky and see if it’s truly blue, rather than being fooled by the blue tarps and stage lights you’re setting up to mimic beams of sunshine on a cloudless day. 

With your conviction as set as you can possibly make it, and a large amount of strategically placed vitamin d lamps of forced smiles and practiced conversation, you head to Parent’s day. The closer you get, the more you can sense it. 

The people. 

The crowds. 

Your dread builds, and you remind yourself again and again. You’re not doing this because you can, not doing this because you’re able to. You’re doing this because you have an obligation to do so. Plain and simple. 

As you search for your mother through all the bustle and hustle feeling much like a sailor lost at sea, with no lighthouses, no cartographers to guide you to shore, one thought lingers. It tugs at you, like a child tugging on your sleeve, eager and insistent to get your attention. 

If you asked Maleficent for a list of all the things wrong with her daughter, she could easily fill a book. Probably several, but Mal doesn’t think she actually cares enough about her daughter to pay close enough attention to do so. If she found out her mother put that much effort into listing her flaws, she thinks that would be the most mother daughter bonding she’s ever received. She might try becoming worse somehow, just to disappoint her mother further and give her more to work with. 

Many of the things her mother thought of her, she had started to believe over time. But now, Mal finds herself in an unusual, almost funny position of being able to add a new failure, a new flaw to that eternally winding, growing list. 

Mal is getting attention from a boy. And worse, she likes it. 

So really, it’s two for one. 

Being around Ben felt weird at first. He kept trying to kiss her, which was… gross. Mal justified it as being above all that, being too wicked and rotten for mushy gushy matters of the heart. Maybe it’s really because it’s just… too much. It’s all so much, happening so fast. A week or two ago she couldn’t be alone with anyone without trying to figure out who was going to shank who first. 

She knows that’s not how Auradon works, she knows the crime rate here is basically zero, and she wonders if she’ll ever be able to shake that feeling. Like being safe is somehow worse than being in danger. At least danger is familiar. That’s probably why she’s able to strut playfully across the rickety old rope bridge the way she is. Behind her, Ben chuckles nervously, holding tight onto the sides.

It was annoying at first, all the attention. She laughed about it with Evie. Or she tried to, at least. But the more time they spend in this frilly princess infested hellhole, the more Mal notices Evie seeming… different. Their banter and mean spirited jokes that flowed so easily seem to have evaporated overnight. 

She can tell Evie’s not as into it anymore. No one else could, but Mal can. She wonders if this means Evie isn’t as into her anymore. Mal wouldn’t call them friends. She wouldn’t call any of her friends friends. But no one would ever deny the bond, the loyalty between the four of them. The thought of Evie drifting away, pulling back from her like this hurts. It would be so much better if she just full on betrayed Mal, stabbing her in the back and sabotaging her. At least that way, they’d still be speaking the same language.

She thought if anyone would be excited about getting some idiotic prince in her clutches, a figurehead to manipulate and make dance like a puppet, it would be Evie. But now, for the first time in her life, Mal feels like she cares more about boys, about bagging a prince than Evie does. It’s strange. It’s unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and she doesn’t know how to fix it. How to make things normal again. 

It’s not like she could even call Evie out on it, either. She’s being normal enough. Mal could see her beaming ear to ear with that dazzling, blinding smile before she even got the question out of her mouth - will you help me get ready for my… date? She gagged a little when she said that, but Evie was too busy hugging her and talking about what to do with her hair to even notice. When they talked about dresses and blush undertones - something she’s still not sure she fully understands - things were great. They were better than normal, she felt like she and Evie were more in sync than they have been in years. It felt good.

 It’s when she brought up Ben that she noticed Evie’s light dim a little. Her heart just wasn’t in it. So Mal did what she does best. She deflected. She started talking about split ends, and kibbe types, and other stuff Evie has encyclopedic knowledge about that Mal has never even heard of, and just like that - boom. The sparkle was back in Evie’s eyes, the sincerity back in her smile. So Mal swore to herself that she just wouldn’t bring him up. Unfortunately, that’s proving to be easier said than done. 

Ben isn’t making things any easier for her, either. He’s been so nice, so disgustingly kind and considerate that it makes Mal sick. The worst part, the thing that really fills her with dread and sickening disgust is that he’s been like this the whole time. Before this stupid spell and the stupid cookie, before the stupid tourney game. He’s been thoughtful and considerate and kind, and good since the moment they stepped foot out of the limo. If limos don’t normally come filled with candy, that means he was good and kind even before they got to Auradon.

She feels giddy around him. Sick, and giddy. Despite everything, despite a lifetime of training for this, she can’t stop leaning into it, indulging herself. It’s so fucking stupid, she barates herself even as she turns and smiles at Ben, lets him guide her through the forest. 

“Tell me something about yourself you’ve never told anyone,” Ben requests gently, so gently it makes her flinch. For a moment, she’s pulled out of her spiraling maelstrom of self loathing.

“Um…” She hums out loud, silently letting herself revel in this feeling of captivating someone. Not scaring them, not grabbing them by the jaw and locking eyes while hers flare green, imposing her will, but actually having someone want to listen to her. Voluntarily, and not under threat of bodily harm. 

“My middle name is Bertha.” 

Ben chuckles behind her, and she turns back around away from him quickly so she doesn’t have to look at him. She’s not even sure if that’s true, and for the first time, she feels a dull pang of guilt for lying. It sounds stupid, the kind of thing no one would lie about, but Mal doesn’t even know if she has a middle name. She doesn’t know if she has a last name, other than Young Mistress of Evil, but having an embarrassing middle name sounds like something that other normal people her age would experience. 

So she goes with Bertha. 

She makes some little comment about her mom, and it gets a laugh out of Ben, one she tries to laugh along with.

“Mine’s Florian.” Ben says in understanding. “Ben Florian Lemaitre-Alarie Leroy de le Lumme-Mont.” 

Mal turns her head away, but she can still feel his eyes on her. 

“Wow. How princely.” She quips. 

“Yeah,” he chuckles, trying to look at her. She starts walking again. “It’s- it’s a mouthful…” 

He follows her closely, and soon they reach the end of the bridge. 

“Okay, close your eyes.” He instructs, placing his hand on her shoulder to stop her. 

Her stomach drops. Her brow furrows, and she shifts away from him on instinct. 

“Why…?” She asks skeptically. 

He pauses for a moment, then laughs sweetly at her reaction. 

“It’s okay, it’s just a surprise.” He says, his voice so earnest she can almost bring herself to believe him. “You’ll be okay. I promise.” 

Sixteen years of muscle memory force her to dig in her heels, to throw his allegedly good word out the window. But against her better judgment, her mind clouded with that squishy sappy dizzy feeling, that contact high she’s been getting from being around him too much, she reluctantly agrees. She knows that Ben won’t harm her because he can’t - not as long as she’s in his head.

She thinks back to the relief that flooded her when she finally pieced the plan together. She had two obvious choices; a love spell, or some sort of mind control. Mind control would have been ideal, she thought. It’s more predictable, plus it will score her some major points with her mother. 

She thought about  how great it would be, following in her footsteps and hypnotizing Ben with incorporeal hypnosis, just like her mother had hypnotized Audrey’s to touch the spinning wheel. 

She tried her hardest, she really had. But it turns out that hypnosis with eye contact or an artifact is already hard enough to begin with. Incorporeal hypnosis is about a thousand times harder. Worse off, Mal had never been able to practice magic a day in her life. All she knew until recently was theoretical second hand knowledge, gleaned from her mother’s drunken recollections of the good old days after a few too many absinth martinis. 

Mal never knew how her mom could drink that stuff. She once tried a pinky dip of the poison ivy infused gin her mother made to use in her drinks, and quickly realized it was a terrible mistake. It tasted like bitter greens and itchy, fiery spice. Her mouth was burned for a week, but her mother could easily down two or three over dinner, insisting the poison ivy gives it just the kick it needs. She asked her mother about it once, and shocked Mal when she actually answered her question instead of glaring or going off on another delusional tangent. 

“Oh, it’s a dragon thing.” She sighed. “Once you’ve had fire in your mouth, nothing tastes strong enough.”

For a moment, Mal could pretend this was what things were always like. They were always a normal mother and normal daughter. She always got advice and anecdotes from her mom. She’d get scolded if she came home scraped up or too late because her mother always cared enough to notice. Then Maleficent grabbed her shoulder, bringing Mal to look out the window at Auradon with her. 

“Someday you’ll know what I mean. After your first time transforming, you’ll understand.” She had chuckled. For a moment, just one moment, Mal dared to see the faintest glimmer of hope on the horizon. Maybe things will get better, her mother will care about her, be proud of her already. 

“Because one day, Mal, we’re going to get out of this dump… and onto the throne. Right where we belong…”

That was the day she’d been forced to let go of that hope. Her mother doesn’t care about her, just that she can have an extra pair of hands, a faster set of reflexes and a sharper pair of eyes. But she never quite let go of making her mother proud. That still seemed like something she could try for. 

That’s how she came up with the whole cookie angle. She found a simple amplification and extension spell, and managed to bake it into a cookie. Once Ben ate it, the spell would be absorbed into his system longer, making it easier to control him. After days and days of research, she came to two conclusions - one shocking, the other terrifying. Shocking was that love spells don’t actually exist. The only ones she could find word of were gimmicky ads in gossip magazines, and even those were few and far between. That’s when the second realization hit. She has to figure out how to make hypnosis work. That’s her only hope, her only chance.

Ben’s hands are strong on her waist, strong enough to make her jump and pull her from the memory that seemed to envelop her out of nowhere, hiding her from the world. She lets him guide her through the unfamiliar terrain. She tries to shake the memories, tries to get rid of that sinking, disorienting, cold feeling. Right now, she has a part to play. She has to be a good girlfriend, she has to get the wand and make her mother proud. 

It’s all part of the plan. It’s part of the evil scheme, that’s why she’s acting so coy and flirtatious, that’s why she’s letting Ben keep his hands on her waist and guide her gently through the forest, his voice soothing in her ear as he instructs her on where to turn and where any rocks and branches might block her path. She keeps telling herself, reminding herself of this because maybe if she tells herself enough, she’ll be able to ignore the fact that she’s enjoying it, leaning into the attention and safe presence of Ben’s big hands and strong chest behind her. 

“Oh, watch your foot… there you go.” He coaxes, guiding her past an overgrown shrub, careful to make sure she doesn’t get scratched up. “You good?”

He asks so gently, so sincerely, that Mal feels herself almost shrinking back a little. 

“Yeah,” she says lightly, with a forced chuckle.

“Good,” he breathes, and she can hear the smile in his voice. He moves her so easily, positioning her so she stands just in front of him, his chest to her back. She doesn’t like how small and… dainty, and pretty, and fragile she feels around him. It’s intoxicating and terrifying.

“Okay,” he says, gentle voice spiking with anticipation. He rubs his hands up and down her arms softly, struggling to stifle his excitement. 

“Ready? Open.” She hesitates, then complies. She sucks in a breath, eyes widening at the most breathtaking thing she’s ever seen. 

Covered in ivy, and vines blooming with morning glory and lilac, an open air greek pavilion sits in the middle of an enticing, crystal clear lake. Even though only half of the pillars and colonnades remain, the circular stone base is solid. Buttery golden sunlight dapples peacefully through the lush flora and plant life all around them, hiding it from sight. 

The lake itself - calm and so blue it’s almost green - is surrounded by rocky, grassy bluffs, just high enough to dive off of. To Mal’s shock, nothing around her looks… menacing. The cliffs aren’t jagged and ominous, the water isn’t murky and threatening. The rocks are smooth. Inviting, even. The crumbling pavilion itself seems like it’s been worn away from time, not from neglect or destruction. There’s no litter or trash, there’s no graffiti, no broken beer bottles or cigarette butts. 

It all seems so… welcoming. Safe, and friendly. Peaceful. After a moment of basking in the haven of tranquility before her, she notices a blanket spread out on the middle of the stone floor. It’s a bright, vibrant blue, and is free of any stains or patches or holes. Laid out on top of the blanket like something from a magazine is a spread of the freshest, juiciest, most wonderful looking food she’s ever seen. 

She gasps softly, turning to look at him, and sees he’s been looking at her the whole time. She studies his face for a moment, trying to figure out if this really is all for her. His smile tells her everything she needs to know. She lets out another breathy gasp as she turns back to the pavilion, feeling like it’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to do in this situation. 

She knows it’s all pretend, playing the part of the pretty damsel like this. The type of girl who’s wanted, who strong, influential people like Ben always protect. Somehow, knowing that it’s pretend doesn’t get rid of the way it feels - the good feelings, or the sickening ones. 

When the rocks have magically moved themselves to form a footpath onto the pavilion, Mal lets Ben guide her some more, and sit her down for their thing. Even thinking the word date still feels strange and uncomfortable. She’s quickly distracted from the uncomfortable knowledge that she’s on a date by how good the food is. 

Good doesn’t even begin to cut it, it’s delicious. Better than that, but she can’t think of anything better than delicious. It’s the kind of food she used to dream about, the kind that would show up in lavish spreads and banquets. She would always stuff her face as much as she possibly could, wanting to get enough before she woke up. Before it could disappear. 

“Is this your first time?” Ben asks softly, a knowing smile on his face. She startles slightly, forgetting he was there for a moment. 

“Um…” She starts, licking the powdery sugar off her fingers. “We don’t really date on the Isle. It’s more like gang activity.”

Ben chuckles, but it’s really not an exaggeration. 

“I meant your first time trying a jelly donut.” He clarifies sweetly. She pauses. She’s rudely awakened by that contextualizing feeling of abnormality. No, everyone doesn’t grow up not knowing their fruits and vegetables. No, everyone isn’t used to living off scraps and whatever can be scrounged together. It’s not a common, shared experience to have soggy boxes stacked up with nutraloaf bars shipped in on rat infested barges as an after school snack. 

She blinks, trying to pull herself back to the present. 

“Is it bad?” She asks cutely. Ben doesn’t chuckle like she expects. It doesn’t seem to land as endearing with him, but as a genuine question. 

“Not-”

Her eyes flare green before he can finish. Once they do, Ben chuckles. He leans closer to her, smiling softly.

Wipe the sugar off her cheek. Caress her. Act like you mean it.

No sooner does she transmute the orders into his mind that he complies. He leans in as he does, more invested in the sticky powdered sugar dusting her lips, and has her mirror his gestures. 

“Go like this…?” He says, licking the sides of his own lips where sugar sits on hers. She does, and he giggles again before reaching over to brush the rest off. Mal smiles, looking away coyly. 

“Can’t take me anywhere, I guess…” She looks away and bats her eyes like she’s seen Evie do before. Even though it’s familiar, it feels staged and contrived. It doesn’t feel natural, but like something that anyone in her position should do, so she does it. She glances down at her hands to look for any remaining sugar, and for the first time she can ever recall, she finds herself bothered by the jagged edges of her bitten nails, the chips in her worn down purple polish. 

Across from her, Ben is looking at the ground near a big old elm tree. Mal adjusts in her seat, but he doesn’t notice. She stares at him more intently, but he’s still looking off into the distance, transfixed by the place where the gnarled roots and lumpy trunk meet the grass. The illusion around Mal begins to crack. The immersion of playing princess to his doting prince starts to slip as she realizes that for the first time since casting the spell, she doesn’t have his full attention. Her expression grows stony with a cold, sick feeling as she watches his distant, almost melancholic gaze fixed on the tree.

“A tumtum what?” He had asked you one day with a chuckle.

“A tumtum tree!” You’d exclaimed back with a smile, as though you were having to explain to him something as common as clouds or air or tea. You had sighed playfully, gesturing with your hands as you explained.

“Tumtum trees have only ever been found in Wonderland. They’re quite large, even their seeds are around the size of your fist. They look like…”

You trail off, trying to think of a suitable comparison. Ben waits. He’s used to this, these pauses in your descriptions of Wonderland. The problem that you’ve found when trying to tell him about your home down there is that not everything is always like something else. It can be quite hard to describe something out of nothing, or nothing out of something. No sooner had the perfect thing popped into your mind.

“An elm tree.” You exclaim with a resolute snap of your fingers. You nod in satisfaction as you clarify, “Like a wych elm tree. A bit, at least.”

“Like which elm tree?” Ben asks, unsure if he had heard you correctly. 

“Exactly.” You nod confidently, drawing a confused, familiar smile from him. Ben watches you in fascination as you continue to describe the trees in question.

“Tumtum trees are usually quite friendly. Good at watching over one when one should find oneself in need of a cat nap.” You state, nodding surely. “Good conversationalists, too.”

Ben lets out a laugh, free and organic from his chest. 

“I forgot trees can talk down there,” he says.

“Some of them,” you say, then nod solemnly. “Some prefer other methods of communication, like pelting those they dislike with acorns, or pollen.”

He laughs again, contagiously, and it begins to spread to you as you continue.

“The most notable thing about tumtum trees is their roots and their bases. They’re usually quite big and tangled, curling in and out in lumpy little nests and sprawling through themselves-”

Ask about her.

It grabs him by the neck, roughly yanking him from his thoughts. He’s pulled from the pleasant memory of you, the voice destructively ripping through his train of thought. 

Look at her. Look at her. You have to know everything about her right now. You’re dying to know everything about her. 

The orders repeat over and over in his mind, his eyes glassy and green for the shortest moment as he’s locked into Mal’s toxic glower. The words begin to ring true. He finds himself burning with an almost painful need to know every possible detail about her. He leans closer to her.

“Tell me everything about yourself.” He asks, only hearing the question for the first time as it leaves his lips.

Mal smiles, acting surprised and flattered by the question she made him ask.

“Well,” she starts with a soft sigh, as if trying to find where to begin, “I’m sixteen. I’m an only child, and… I’ve only ever lived in one place.”

The poisonous light glows from her eyes for a moment, casting strange shadows around them. Ben responds quickly, as if he were waiting for a cue. 

“So am I! We have so much in common already,” he laughs, leaning closer. Mal laughs too, leaning away. 

“No, not as much as you might think.” She glances away, then back up at him. “Anyway, you’re going to be king soon, huh?”

Ben’s laughter grows stale, and he begins to get that distant look again, the same one he had when looking at the elm tree.

“A crown doesn’t make you a king.” He says softly, more to himself than to Mal. 

“Well… it kind of does, yeah.” Mal says dryly. She waits for another laugh, but no laughter comes.

“Your mother is the mistress of evil, my parents are the poster for goodness, but-” he hesitates, searching for the right words. “That doesn’t mean we’re automatically like them.” 

He finishes quietly, eyes falling down to his signet ring. Even with his mind a blank slate, weaved around Mal’s fingers like an obedient snake, he can still feel all the pressure, all that he has to live up to. Everything he wants to be is still right on the horizon. 

“We choose who we’re going to be.” He finishes softly.

Across from him, Mal’s heart pounds. She didn’t make him say any of that. She didn’t tell him to, he did it himself. He said that she’s not like her mom. He said that. Her heart pounds, and she wants so badly for him to say it again. His words ring in her mind like a bell, over and over. We choose who we’re going to be. No one had ever said that, or anything remotely like that to her before. No one had ever made her believe it. 

Those strange shadows dance across Ben’s face again, and Mal squeezes her trembling hands, trying to calm herself. 

Say it again, Ben. Tell her. Say she’s not evil. Say it. Tell her right now. Tell her she’s not evil. You don’t think she’s evil.

He leans in even closer. He moves his hand onto her cheek. He locks eyes with her, oblivious to the shared glowing green light between them. 

“I can look into your eyes and… tell you’re not evil.” He says with certainty. “I can see it.”

He moves closer, letting his eyes drift shut softly, tilting his head to the side-

Mal jerks away, letting go of the active control with a sudden drop. She lets out an uncomfortable laugh, scooting away from him. The pressure on his chest eases, and it almost feels like he can think again. Having a modicum of control over his thoughts and actions again, he stands up. He nods his head, gesturing for Mal to join him. 

“Come on. Let’s go for a swim.”

“Uh-” Mal falters, eyes darting between Ben and the water. “Um, no. I think I’m okay.”

“It’ll be fun,” Ben coaxes with a smile. 

“I- I think I’m gonna stay behind and try a strawberry. I’ve literally never had a strawberry before.”

She grabs a nice juicy berry and bites in, humming performatively for Ben. It takes a moment for the flavors to explode in her mouth. She can’t believe something so delicious could come from a plant. It’s so sweet, and a little bit tangy, but in a good way. It’s a different sort of sweet than sugar, though. She can’t put her finger on exactly what it is, but there’s a light twist, a depth and complexity to the taste that she never could have imagined. It somehow tastes like a bright clear morning and a darkening rich sunset all at the same time.

“Mmmh…” She hums, for real this time, taking another bite. She eats the whole berry - stem and leaves included - and Ben chuckles softly. He says something she doesn’t catch, then goes off to swim. The moment he leaves, Mal has only two things on her mind. 

Strawberries are fucking delicious, and Evie is going to love this. All of this. Picnics, strawberries, pagodas or pavilions or whatever the hell they’re called. She can see it clear as day; taking Evie out here with Carlos and Jay, the two of them can sit and talk while the boys are off splashing in the water. Evie will be so excited that she makes her and Mal matching sundresses in their colors - blue and gold, and purple and green. 

They can eat strawberries and laugh when the juice gets everywhere. They can throw shells and tourney balls into the lake for Carlos and Jay to get to keep them busy while she and Evie talk. Mal will scoff and laugh and roll her eyes when Evie reminds them all to wear sunscreen. She and Carlos will agree, but Jay will insist he doesn’t need any, and they’ll spend the following week treating his sunburn. Evie will insist on braiding Jay’s hair or twisting it up into some kind of bun or ponytail so it doesn’t get tangled. 

She’ll make Mal hold all the bobby pins and hair ties, and she’s sure Evie will have some sort of goop to put in Carlos’s hair so the water doesn’t turn it green. What’s that called again? Evie had been going on and on to Mal before they left for Auradon about how some water can turn blonde hair green. Cholera? Fluorine? Chlor… chlorine maybe? Yeah, that sounds right. There’s no chlorine in the water in the Isle, but since it can affect your hair, Mal’s not surprised that Evie knows everything about it. She doesn’t know if lake water has chlorine, but she’s sure if hair is on the line that Evie will be cautious. 

She’s only pulled from her hazy strawberry high when the berries have run out. She catches a remaining drop of strawberry juice on her finger from the edge of the bowl, and brings it to her lips. She looks around and sees Ben on top of one of the taller grassy bluffs. He waves at her, and after a moment she waves back hesitantly. She looks at his swim trunks, then yells across the lake.

“Are those little crowns on your shorts?”

Ben smiles a little, remembering when you had helped him pick them out. 

“Maybe,” he calls back. 

He lets out a loud, animalistic roar, then jumps.

She looks away before he hits the water. Her eyes fall down to the empty bowl of strawberries, the ones Evie would love. The ones Ben provided her with. She starts to relax a little now that he’s not watching her. Her facade, her perfect princessy persona starts to slip. She relaxes - her shoulders, her jaw, her posture, the grip she keeps on Ben. 

She takes a few deep breaths, trying to reorient herself, to figure out how she feels. She’s so confused, unused to acting sweet - at all, but especially around other people. She has to keep it together. She needs to use these few minutes of Ben swimming to make sure she has her head on straight and her eyes on the prize. She has to stay focused, stay grounded. 

She clenches her fists so tightly that her nails, bitten short and chipped with a deep plum polish, dig into her palms. 

She hopes the slight sting will get her head back where she needs it. The pain is good. A reminder of where she came from, what she’s here to do. She tries, but this time, it’s not enough. Not anymore. She shakes her head a little, hoping it will clear her mind, make her feel like herself again. Her hair is fried under all the purple dye, and she can tell it’s growing frizzy from the humidity and movement. She lets out an annoyed huff, and reaches up, trying to fuss with it until it looks like Evie made it look before. 

Are you kidding? The thought shows up suddenly as she catches herself worrying about her hair of all things. Realization sets in that not even that is enough to snap her back to herself. A sense of shame washes over her as she realizes how deep in all this she’s getting. In the moments after that realization, her mind begins to wander. It goes further and further from anything she had ever let herself think before. 

Maybe she could… make this work. Maybe there’s a shot at pulling it off. If she could keep Ben under her spell a little longer than necessary, she could make him fall in love with her for real. She can implant so many thoughts and repeating orders until it scrambles his brain and… makes it real somehow. Then he’ll want to look after Mal on purpose, not on principle. He can get her and her friends into witness protection or something, get some guard gargoyles and knights to watch over them.

She can talk Ben into giving her a little cottage deep in the woods - it will be safest for them there anyway. And that’s what he wants, for them to be safe. He wants that because Mal wants that, and when a prince like Ben loves someone, he makes sure they have whatever they want most. And what Mal wants most is a safe, secure, roomy cottage in the woods for her and Evie, Jay and Carlos. They’ll have a little lake just like this one, and maybe like, some ducks or something. Cats, or snakes, or whatever makes a good pet. 

Jay can chop the firewood, and Carlos can fix the computers whenever they get weird. Mal still barely understands how to use smartphones and dropbox, but Carlos has taken to all that stuff like… well, like his mom takes to furs. She’ll make sure there’s a nice big room for Evie to sew, and she won’t complain as much when Evie uses her as a dress form. They’ll have more delicious, fresh food than they can eat, and they won’t need to worry about any of this anymore.

She’ll reluctantly let Evie teach her how to use blush, and style hair. 

They’ll sit in the nice sunshine in the fresh clean air all day. She’ll make Evie crowns from all the pretty flowers that grow here so she can have as many crowns and tiaras as she wants, and Jay and Carlos can play tourney and climb trees and do whatever else they’re always doing. She can see it clear as day; Evie’s head resting in Mal’s lap while Mal uses her spellbook to weave together flowers, enchanting them to make them sparkle while Jay and Carlos laugh and roughhouse nearby. 

They’ll still share bedrooms. That’s the one thing Mal has actually kind of liked since moving to Auradon, sleeping in the same room as Evie. Getting to be close to her. She’s sure Jay and Carlos sleep better knowing they’re not by themselves, too. Maybe if the cottage is kind of small she and Evie can share a bed. She’d be fine with that. They’ll bake non magic cookies and eat strawberries, Evie will have all the ingredients she needs to make every kind of face mask and hair mask and lotion she could dream of. 

Ben will come and check in on them sometimes. Not very often, just once in a while. He’ll stop by and make sure they’re safe and protected and left alone all the time, because that’s what princes do when they’re in love with someone. They’ll never leave unless they want to, and they’ll have VIP tickets to all the balls and galas and sporting events in Auradon. Mal will go with them, because she knows things wouldn’t be the same if she stayed behind. Even though parties are boring and sports are dumb. But as long as Evie’s having a good time, she’s sure she can handle it. 

If only… if only she could figure out that it’s a sure thing. Then she’d be all the way in. 

You can’t recall a time your heart pounded in your chest like a jackrabbit as it does now, as you tread through roots and bushes and grassy forest terrain to the enchanted lake. You’ve been following the white rabbit who had alerted you to Ben’s whereabouts until you arrived at the lake. You find a little hidey-hole in the brush and gnarled roots of an old elm tree within eyeshot of the pavilion, and crouch down. You can almost make out what he’s saying, but not quite.

You fumble for your teapot bag, digging around for something you’re sure must still be in there. 

“Come on, come on…” you murmur frantically. You let out a gasp as your fingers close around the monocle, and you pull it out quickly. You’d pawned it off a ring of ring-a-ding worms in Wonderland several months ago. You weren’t sure how trustworthy they were - which usually means not very trustworthy at all if you’re doubting it in the first place - but you simply couldn’t help yourself. The monocle was a very old sort of subtitling spectacle, a kind of eyewear that lets you see what people are saying. They’re not always right, nor are they always perfect, but right now you’re desperate.

“Please please work,” you ask the glass silently before holding it up to your left eye. You squint at Ben and Mal, and between the fragments of conversation reaching your ears and the monocle, you’re able to understand things a bit better. 

“...You’re not evil. I can see it.” Ben says to Mal, as you watch and listen to his words intently. The sun is closer to setting and brillig draws nearer, basking everything in that not quite sunset glow. You try to crawl closer to see and hear better, not even noticing when you nearly lose one of your shoes in your efforts. You rub your eyes in disbelief, waiting to see what they say next. An elm leaf falls, tangling itself in your hair, and you find yourself unable to believe what you’re seeing. If you were using two monocles, you would surely dismiss it as the subtitle spectacles breaking. Unfortunately, there’s no disguising the truth you see before you. 

Ben leans in to kiss Mal, and you recoil backwards, suddenly and in shock. Your stomach twists in that terrible way, and you’re sure you’re going to be sick. You grip the grass tightly, hoping it will stop your head from spinning. This doesn’t make sense. None of this makes any sense, or nonsense at all. The world around you makes positively nothing. You can deal with chaos, with spontaneity, but this? This is just cruel. The world is… mean for making you live through this. 

You summon a rabbit hole back down to Wonderland faster than you can blink. You tumble down, dirt sprinkling down on you as you fall. Right before you’re swallowed by the earth, you scratch your arm on a rough patch of bark and roots. You catch a glimpse of your blood and tears falling in beads before you’re shrouded in darkness, blurry and delicate. They dance together like pained flurries of your heart and mind’s shared turmoil. You let yourself fall carelessly, the stuffy air disturbed by your stifled sobs slipping out where you don’t want them to. 

You don’t plan on staying long at all. You just need a few moments to collect yourself, to gather your thoughts. You take in a few deep, heavy breaths, your brow furrowing with determination. You must overcome this. You must stay focused. You have to if you’re going to have any chance at helping Ben. You let out a sharp breath with a sharp little noise attached to it, and you can feel your head coming back in place. There will be time to deal with all of this, there will be time to cry, but that time is not now.

The second Mal turns away and pulls her face from his gentle embrace, Ben takes in a deep, panting breath, feeling like his chest is suddenly less tight than it had been. He hadn’t noticed it before, but he feels the absence of his contracting muscles and shallow breaths now that they’re gone. He immediately looks back over to that elm tree, the one he was looking at before. For a moment, just a moment, he could swear he saw your fingertips, the ends of your hair, the dark glint of your silky blackberry bow falling into the earth. But he blinks, and whatever might have been there or not is gone too quickly to tell.

He shakes his head a little, hoping to reorient himself, but a breeze blows by and he could swear on anything there’s a trace of your scent carried in the air. The faintest hint of something so quintessentially you - your perfume, your smell, your blood. His chest squeezes again, this time with longing. 

He’s about to realize how long it’s been since he saw you, about to realize this is the longest he’s gone without even speaking a word to you, but something drags him back, keeping his thoughts here and now. He turns back to Mal, with that dull, throbbing headache he hasn’t been able to shake since the tourney game. 

“Let’s go swimming.” 

The enchanted lake is one of Auradon’s hidden gems. It was a gift to the newly united front of Auradon as a whole from the gods of Olympus; a thank you, an offering of goodwill for assisting in the containment of Hades. Hercules and Megara had gone through many lengthy strategy sessions and battle plans with Adam and Belle, trying to figure out how to prevent Hades from another attempt to overthrow Olympus. Adam and Belle knew that Hades was dangerous - he is a god after all - but they had no idea the extent and reach of his power. 

The First Villain Uprising was a dark time that spread over many years. Most people know the events of VU1; the poison apples, the sleeping curses and dark magic. They’re familiar enough with the coups and the curses, the unregulated dark magic running rampant through the land, wielded by power hungry loonatics. Villains. Brave leaders and heroes in countries from down near the Southern Isles to way up north in Winter’s Keep refused to cower in the face of evil. They did everything they could to stop it, and for many years the villains were presumed dead. 

The problem came from all the different countries not having a united front, not communicating with each other. There was no teamwork, no global council, so no one knew that the moment Maleficent was pierced through the heart by the sword of truth was the same moment Hades had managed to claw his way out of the river styx. The first thing he did once he got his bearings was drag Maleficent down to the underworld. She wasn’t dead, not quite yet, and they both saw the opportunity before them. A combination of Maleficent’s dark fairy magic and Hades’ rule over the souls of the dead meant they could drag the worst villains back from the depths. 

That was the start of the Second Villain Uprising. 

When the rulers figured out what was happening, they knew they had to band together, be stronger as a whole. That’s when Adam gathered up as many kings and queens as he could to start planning the first crusades. Fairy Godmother sent word out to the most powerful wizards and fairies and sorcerers she could, pleading for them to join the fight against evil. 

It didn’t take long to start rounding up villains, but they needed somewhere to put them. Eventually, Fairy Godmother devised a plan. With the help of Merlin of Camelot, Yensid of Schwartzvald, the Great Genie of Agrabah, and the Three Good Fairies of the Moors, they were able to create a magic barrier around an abandoned isle off the southern coast of Belle and Adam’s kingdom. This became known as the Isle of the Lost, the only secure place where villains and all the evil they bring with them can’t escape. 

As a thank you to the mortals down below, the gods gifted them with the enchanted lake, right in the heart of Auradon. Each god added a blessing or a gift of some kind, which is how it got such steadfast healing properties and good magic. The lake itself is magical, which is something that Belle and Adam decided not to advertise during the aftermath of the expulsion of evil. 

There was so much terror and fear in the land, people afraid of something going wrong, of some new villain popping up right when they let their guard down. Adam and Belle decided to keep the lake’s properties under wraps for the most part, preemptively stopping any attempts to stockpile or weaponize magic purely to get the upper hand in a magic cold war that has long since ended. 

The cleansing and healing properties of the enchanted lake are simplistic, but effective. Ben remembers a time when he was young, there was a brief few weeks when Adam seemed to lose control over shifting his form from man to beast. His condition was ultimately traced back to stress, a comorbid symptom of some nasty migraines, and high cholesterol. 

Rumors of his condition began to circulate, and Adam found himself splashed across the covers of gossip rags on newsstands and store checkouts. Fairy Godmother was able to fix him right up, and instructed him to fully submerge himself in the enchanted lake once a week for about a month or so. He followed her instructions to the letter, and was soon back to rights.  

As he stands on the small cliffside overlooking the serene, enticing water, Ben’s not sure what jogged that memory, or why it’s at the front of his mind right now. He shakes his head a little, but it keeps coming back, tugging at him like a child vying for their fathers attention. 

“Are those little crowns on your shorts?”

Ben glances over at the pavilion where Mal sits. He looks down, then chuckles.

“Maybe,” he calls back. Their eyes lock as Mal gathers her thoughts. Ben can feel it, the tightness coming back in his chest. Before it reaches all the way up to his head, his instincts kick in. He lets out a loud roar, then he jumps.

The water hits his skin. Instead of cool and refreshing, just the way he remembers it, it feels like a freezing cold burn. The world goes quiet as he sinks deeper and deeper into the lake, eyes widening in shock at the unpleasant, almost painful feeling. His skin burns, and he scratches at his arms and legs and chest. His hands move, frantic and sluggish in the water as he itches his neck, then his cheeks, then his head…

He freezes, muscles relaxing, limbs falling still as the water soothes him and purges the last of the fizzing magic out of him. He had no clue what was happening until it was over, and now, hovering underwater, it’s over. He knows he can’t have been down there for too long, but it’s when his instincts scream at him to hyperventilate that he realizes he’s still underwater. His eyes widen, and he fumbles, swimming to a rock hidden from the shore. 

He drags himself out of the water, chest heaving, body shaking. The surface of the rock is smooth, but he struggles to maintain his balance. He manages to flip over and lean back on the rock, praying for some stability. His free will, his mind, his cognizance is all coming back to him at once. He feels like a computer flashing a blue screen from too many programs running and downloading at the same time. 

He clutches his chest, unable to control his breathing. The disorientation starts to fade and his eyes widen with horror as the reality of the situation starts to set in, cutting through the painful panic gripping him. Mal… drugged him. Or worse, cursed him. His stomach drops, twisting sickeningly, his hands trembling out of control. He’s not normally like this. He never lets himself get like this. He heard stories about extremely powerful villains being able to use mind control or hypnosis on rare occasions, but he never expected it to feel so… violating. 

His gaze drifts downward to the rippling water. No one can know about this. This can never get out. If even a whisper of this gets out, the consequences and aftermath would suffocate him. She just jeopardized the entire future of the United Republic of Auradon. She could very well have just pounded nail after nail into the coffin containing the lives and futures of all those poor kids stuck on the Isle, the ones she claimed to care so much about. She may have destroyed lives, futures, an entire nation, for… what? 

He tries to figure out why. Why would she do this? She has to have some sort of motivation for reaching into his brain and jerking him around like a puppet, making a fool of himself in front of the public. Oh god- he thinks, remembering the tourney game. He never acts like that. He never acts erratic or impulsive. What must his parents think of him? What must you be thinking of him right now? Or the entire country? 

His throat tightens up as he starts to panic again, mind already clouded by the doom of plummeting in the polls. He’s unopposed for king, but after a disaster like this, who would want him? Someone else will run and win, because no one in their right mind would trust someone who voluntarily lets themself become a villain’s personal sock puppet to run a goddamn country! He breathes harder, flexing his fists open and closed until his knuckles go white. Why would she do something like this? What does she want from him, a second date?

He pauses. That must be it. A new wave of rage overcomes him as he realizes - unless he’s given a miraculously better explanation for this - that Mal pressed a self-destruct button for the entirety of Auradon because she has a crush on him. A stupid, goddamn teenage crush. And now his political career will be over before it could ever start because of it. He’s going to be the first king to be impeached before he’s crowned. He can’t stop spiraling, can’t stop the racing thoughts drowning him above the water. 

A loud, animalistic roar tears from his chest. It’s much more primal, more beast-like than he ever allows himself to be, but he supposes that it’s understandable for something like that to slip out given the circumstances he finds himself in. 

“Breath,” he tells himself, swallowing thickly. “Breathe.”

If he can’t get his head right, if he can’t be smart about this, it… well, that’s not even an option. He has to collect himself. He has to live up to the person his parents think he is, his country thinks he is, that you think he is. He has to be that person. He only has a few moments of this realization to reorient himself before he hears Mal’s voice. 

Instead of enticing and distracting like it had been before, now it feels like the lure of an angler fish’s light in the murky depths, it feels jarring. He shudders, recoiling like she just threw glass at him. She calls out for him again. This time, he can hear the spike of fear carried along in her voice as it echoes across the lake. Is she hurt? In trouble? He starts to go check on her, then for a moment, he hesitates.

All the thoughts racing through his mind like the piston cup find their way to the forefront of his head again. His chest aches as he relentlessly beats himself up over this. How could he let this happen? This is exactly what his parents warned him about, what he promised them - gave them his word - that he would not let come to fruition. And yet, here he is, sitting on a rock with the livelihoods of innocent people at risk because of him and his naive, stupid optimism. 

This, the wellbeing of all innocent people of Auradon, is what he’s devoted all of his time and power and care and focus and everything else he’s got within him into. All that work, all that potential for good, and now he lays paralyzed below the sword of Damocles. He can only stand there, watching the ropes fray one after another. 

“I can’t…” he pants, chest squeezing in terror again. “I can’t let this happen.”

He swallows hard, muttering to himself.

“Can’t let them win.”

He can’t let Mal achieve whatever the hell her endgame is here. He has to stop this before it gets worse. And above all, this cannot become known to the public. He can see the faces of disappointment and fear on the members of the council, on the senate. He was never ready to be king, they’d say in hushed, justified tones, the boy is a fool! How could we let him bring evil into our homes on purpose?! 

The voices in his head go on and on, painting the worst outcome possible in vibrant colors. The nation will lose any trust or faith they might have had in him. More painfully, he realizes how deeply disappointed his parents will be in him. The kind so irreparable that they can never even speak of it. His father will go silent, his mother will try to smile at him, but her tears will give her away. Disappointing his parents, disappointing you…

Oh god, you. Where are you? Where have you been during all of this? You and Ben are usually joint at the hip, but he hasn’t seen you in days. The realization makes him feel sick, like he’s just come to the realization that he hasn’t had air to breathe. What have you been doing without him? Have you been in Wonderland, or at the Wonderland Embassy with your mother? Why haven’t you texted him? Or at least called? Worse fears attack him relentlessly from the inside out, worse than ruining innocent lives or his political career because these fears are about you. 

A scream, followed by a large splash, then another more fearful scream pierce his senses, pulling his attention out of the momentary panic over you and your wellbeing. It must be Mal, he thinks, it has to be. She’s the only other person out here. She must have gotten into the water to look for him, but why does she sound like she’s struggling? He listens intently for a moment. She definitely sounds like she’s struggling. He stands up to jump into the water and find her, but before he can, something unusual happens. 

He hesitates.

After everything she’s done to him, and to the people of Auradon, after she stabbed him in the back and violated his free will for days, should he even bother trying to help her? What if this is part of some elaborate ruse, luring him into a trap by pretending to drown. Maybe she’s going to turn him into a bug and trap him in a jar, letting him suffocate slowly while she shakes it and laughs. 

What if she just… had an accident? Anyone could drown in a lake if they weren’t being careful, and he’s sure children of villains aren’t raised to be super cautious. Maybe it would be better that way. It would certainly give Ben one less problem to worry about, one less moving part to constantly keep track of. 

He dives back into the lake, swimming towards her. He bites his cheek, dismissing the fleeting, impulsive thought as quickly as it could intrude into his stream of mind. He’s not even going to waste time considering it or letting it argue his case. He knows who he is, and he knows who he chooses to be. He is never going to choose to be the kind of person who lets someone else get hurt when they can do something about it. 

If he can help anyone - regardless of who they are or what they’ve done to him - he’s going to. Even if it’s from a distance, he can’t knowingly be complicit in tragedy befalling anyone. That’s why he’s bringing over the kids from the Isle in the first place. He can’t sleep at night knowing that there are people struggling and suffering while he has the power to do something about it. 

He has to give his parents credit for raising him to have such strong moral character. That’s why, against his better judgment, he swims as fast as he can back to the pavilion. It only takes a moment for him to see her, kicking and flailing mere feet from the pavilion.

He dives as deep down as he can. He hopes that the longer he’s under the water, the more submerged he is, the less likely any more magic she tries on him will succeed. Or at the very least, she’ll have less time to try and pull something on him. His hand skims the bottom of the lake, brushing against something uncharacteristically sharp. He sees a cluster of glowy crystal like geodes - a wishing stone, he realizes. He grabs it, and shoves the rock into the pocket of his swim trunks. 

It’s not much, it’s barely anything really. But he’s sure any mildly sharp object is infinitely better than nothing when facing off against an unpredictable dark fairy. Trying to use a wishing geode to defend himself from dark fairy magic - either as a magic shield or a physical weapon - is like trying to use an umbrella in a hurricane. He’s really going into this blind, but at least he’s aware of the disadvantage he’s working against. In spite of all the massive errors and failures he seems to have accumulated out of nowhere, he can at least say he’s not stupid enough to be entirely unarmed at a time like this.

He can see Mal, splashing and thrashing about, slipping below the surface as she loses her footing. He rushes closer and grabs her, scooping her up and confidently walking them both out of the lake. He catches his breath, focusing everything he’s got on one thing - he cannot let Mal know that he knows. He has to keep his face neutral, act sweet and normal, not say or do anything that could possibly tip her off. He’s in the lion’s den, and one wrong move could ruin everything beyond repair. 

He silently thanks his parents for years and years of diplomatic training, for teaching him how to maintain his composure no matter how overwhelming his emotions are, no matter how much pressure and scrutiny he finds himself under. He reaches the pavilion in just a few steps, and sets Mal down gently. She doesn’t seem to notice anything about his behavior is different, so he keeps doing what he’s been doing. It seems to be working so far, which provides him with the briefest sense of relief. 

“Ugh!” She shrieks. He shakes the water out of his hair, trying to clear his head, and she swats at his chest, “You scared me!”

Ben falters for a moment, nearly letting a grimace loose at the nauseating feeling of disgust permeating him from this, from having to be so close and sweet to her after she violated his mind, his free will. And she did it on purpose. 

“Uh,” he starts, trying with everything he’s got to sound so light and casual, like she made him sound before. “You… you can’t swim?” 

It’s really not that important to either of them right now, but it’s the first thing he can think of that doesn’t start with why the hell or how the hell or jail. 

“No!” She yells indignantly, like it should be obvious. 

“But you live on an island.” He notes. He never would have been able to challenge her under the curse she cast on him, not even something as small as asking why she can’t swim. He watches her expression closely, wondering if she’ll notice.

“Yeah, with a magic barrier around it, remember?” She demands incredulously. There’s a shrill tone to her voice with a venomous sting, like Ben was the one who cast her out and put up the barrier himself. He flinches at the sound of her voice.

She can’t swim. She nearly drowned looking for him, and he let himself consider allowing it to happen. A stab of unwelcome but justified guilt catches him off guard for a moment, causing him to falter. 

“And… you still tried to save me.” He murmurs solemnly, mostly to himself. 

He hates this. He hates that she did something so horrible and so kind to him right after each other. It’s tempting to dismiss her searching for him in the lake, to let himself focus only on the pain and damage she’s caused in such a short time, and he tries desperately to cling to his moral values. Values that he’s always sworn to himself he will never abandon, no matter how hard or complicated things get.

Now here he stands, looking hard and complicated square in the purple framed face. 

People are nuanced, he tells himself, trying to remember it. Nobody is all good or all bad. People… people are complicated. It’s a hard philosophy to hold onto, and an even harder one when you’re the one that’s been made a fool of, made to dance around in public and cater to her every whim. It’s hard to remember that people are nuanced, not all bad when you’ve been made into someone’s bitch. 

“Yeah, and do you thank me?” Mal demands rhetorically, “No!”

He struggles to follow her. Her voice makes him flinch, buzzing around his head like an angry hornets nest. It makes his ears ring. He feels that strange, painful headache stirring up again - the one that got worse and worse every time she forced her voice into his mind. 

“All I get is soaking wet!” 

She looks at him expectantly, then huffs. It sounds exactly like the noise Audrey would make when she wanted something that wasn’t handed to her instantly. A new wave of indignant rage begins to bubble and boil up inside him as he realizes what she wants. She wants him to grovel. She wants him to apologize, and kiss her hands, and beg for everything to be smoothed right over. He swallows hard, managing to contain it. Just barely.

In a split second, he realizes he has to do something. The more time they spend together, the sooner Mal will realize she doesn’t have control over him again. If she finds out, that will open up more trouble than Ben would care to count. He has to pacify her, just enough to get them both home as fast as possible. Before she can do anything else to him. 

He reaches into his pocket, handing her the geode. 

“And this, uh… this fancy rock.” 

His stomach twists, spiking with anxiety as he offers it to her. Wishing stones - also called wish geodes - are a natural and common byproduct of fairy magic. They can vary in strength and appearance based on what fairy they came from, and since they usually form underground or by bodies of water, they can be hard to find. They’ve become even harder to source in recent years as less and less people use magic - fairies included. 

The ones near Auradon are from Fairy Godmother’s magic. The ones way up north in Schwartzvald are from the mainland forest fairies deep in the Fantasia Woods, the ones out west are from the Blue Fairy, and any wish geode you find on the northeastern coast will always be from Flora, Fauna, or Merriweather. Since wish geodes are essentially nature’s way of recycling magic leftovers, they’re usually not too strong. Unless they were charged up with something, like a blessing, or a falling star, or enchanted spring water from Olympus. 

Ben, however, is painfully unaware of this. He hasn’t studied magic and magic theory as extensively as you have. He suspects sometimes that you may know more about magic than the good fairy herself. He does know some introductory magic theory, and a few little facts from you that he’s remembered over the years. 

What he does know is that wishes and hypnosis or mind control or whatever the hell Mal did to him are two completely different kinds of magic. He knows that if he gives Mal the stone, even if she did wish for something, it couldn’t possibly do more damage than she’s already done. At this point, it’s the lesser of two evils. Really, it’s the only viable option he’s got. The geode shimmers and glitters, glowing softly against her skin in a luminous pearly hue. She glares up at him, and he plasters on a smile. Hopefully, a convincing one. He gestures back behind him. 

“Make a wish, and throw it back in the lake.”

Unless her goal of hypnotizing him was to somehow end up with a good grade on the next test, or a really good hair day, this rock will do nothing for her. It’s just not strong enough on its own, which makes it the perfect placebo. Mal scowles up at him, and winds up to throw the rock bitterly into the lake. 

In that moment, her heart’s unsung desires cry out desperately, begging for something that not even her mind can grasp. I wish what he said was true, her heart cries, that he doesn’t think I’m evil. I wish Ben would keep being nice to me, even after I break the spell. I wish Ben would defend me from all the people who act like they’re afraid of me, I wish he would make me feel like I belong here!

The rock sinks into the water, bubbling and glowing as her desires are realized. A soft whispered voice floats into the air, seeming to speak only to her.

“Malorie Valda Faery, Princess of the Moors and Young mistress of Evil… your wish has been heard, and your wish has been granted. So long as you do not act on the evil inside your heart, and stay trustworthy, honest, and kind, he shall see no evil inside you.” 

It’s so faint, so hard to hear that she thinks she must have imagined it. She falters, thrown off guard for a moment, then stands up and shakes off some of the water still clinging to her. The glowing water swirls and pools around Ben. An almost ticklish, tingling feeling floats down onto him. It’s so light and so soft, it’s gone so quickly that he struggles to remember if it really happened.

He takes in a breath, his brow softening as he realizes the panic is retreating. A breeze blows by, carrying the scent of magnolia and the impending night air that quickly makes its way closer to them as the sun sinks. Little goosebumps prickle down Ben’s arms and back as his defenses begin to relax back to normal. He picks up his varsity jacket to wrap around Mal, and grabs a towel for himself. The last thing either of them need right now is to catch a cold. 

He takes a few more breaths as she sits down, mildly puzzled at why it’s so easy to breathe now, but so difficult just a few moments before. He searches every crease and crevice of his mind for what was bothering him before. He doesn’t usually struggle to remember what he was thinking about, but this particular thing just seems to evade him, like a child playing hide and seek. He knows it was important, really important, but he just… can’t remember. He looks down at Mal in hopes of jogging his memory, but seeing her sit there, all sad and wet and swallowed up by his jacket, all he feels is a pang of sympathy. 

He feels himself relaxing, his reflexes softening from a state of panic to their usual level of low, constant background anxiety. Look at her, he thinks, does she really look like she wants to overthrow an entire country? The question is rhetorical, and the answer clear. No. She just wants a home, somewhere to fit in. She looks so small, so vulnerable and powerless like this. He chastises himself for letting himself lose sight of why he brought her and her friends to Auradon in the first place.

She’s here to grow, to heal - they all are. Of course she’s going to make some silly mistakes like spray painting her locker, or cutting class, or using magic to get Ben to go out with her. Besides, with coronation coming up so fast, it makes sense that she would feel like she couldn’t find an opportunity to ask Ben out without a little extra help. That’s all this is, a silly mistake. It’s nothing to be blown out of proportion, really. He sighs, sitting across from her, feeling a dull nudge of something that could grow into fondness with time.

He reaches over to fix her hair, and she looks up at him. She searches his eyes, desperately looking for any signs of hate or change in how he views her. That’s what this is, he confirms to himself. She just has a crush on him is all. He would never say that to anyone, he wouldn’t run the risk of embarrassing someone dealing with such delicate feelings, but it does make sense. She said herself just a while ago, dating on the Isle is more like gang activity than picnics and drive in movies. Of course she wouldn’t know how to talk to someone she likes, how to find ways to spend more time with them. 

Ben almost chuckles at the thought, the idea of her trying to figure out how to enchant her crush into liking her back. It’s sweet, really. Nothing malicious at all. Besides, everybody knows that love magic doesn’t exist, there is no such thing as a love spell. So if she still doesn’t know that yet, could her knowledge of magic really be that dangerous? It can’t possibly be. She just used a harmless little spell to speed things up a little. No one would ever act out like that if it wasn’t for some matter of the heart or other. It’s almost flattering in a strange way.

He decides to test his theory, letting his fingertips linger in her damp, sugar plum hair, twirling it lightly.

“Mal?” He starts, getting her attention. 

“I, uh… I told you that I loved you. At the tourney game.” He says, jogging her memory. He looks at her, studying her face. “What about you?”

This is perfect, he thinks, this is the most opportune way to offer her a way to tell him how she feels, get it all off her chest. 

“Do you love me?” He prompts.

Normally, he would never be this direct with someone. But he feels it’s warranted, given the circumstances. It’s taken many years for him to learn to trust his gut with things like this, and he’s not going to doubt himself now. Yes, what she did was bad - unforgivable, even - but at the end of the day, she’s just a hormonal teenage girl with a crush. She can’t possibly be faulted for that, for having feelings. 

“I…” Mal starts, swallowing thickly and looking away from him again. She clutches the sides of his jacket, pulling it tighter around her. It smells soapy, like it’s too clean. She knows she should probably be feeling something, but she has no goddamn clue what it is - much less how to recognize and articulate it. She feels… queasy. Kind of shaky and sweaty. Are you supposed to feel like that when a boy says I love you? That has to be the feeling that people are always talking about, getting butterflies in your stomach. Mal supposes butterflies just don’t agree with her. 

“I don’t think I know what love feels like.” She replies simply, in a rare and impulsive moment of vulnerability. If she’s ever going to be vulnerable, it will be when she can control how the other person reacts to it. She looks down. Instead of looking at Ben, she traces her eyes over the skirt of the dress Evie put her in. It’s calming, relaxing. There’s the faintest trace of Evie’s perfume, and it makes Mal feel a sense of warmth and longing that she desperately needs right now. 

Ben’s heart squeezes sympathetically. He feels so bad for her. That tragic compassion reassures him that bringing her to Auradon was the right decision, and this whole thing was just a silly miscommunication. A mistake. 

“Maybe I could teach you.” He says softly. He puts his hand on her arm, helping her stand up.

“Come on. Let’s get you home.”

When you show up to the Wonderland Embassy, the home away from home you share with your mother, you look positively and uncharacteristically ragged. It’s merely a pebble’s throw from campus, so it couldn’t have been a particularly tiring walk - unless you walked your way from Camelot, which is highly improbable. Your blackberry bow is loose and slipping off towards your ear, your skirt is all rumpled, and you haven’t even noticed the run in your favorite pair of knee socks. 

Worst of all, worse than your slouching or lethargy or the tear tracks down your cheeks, are your eyes. The vibrancy, the hope and curiosity is all but gone. Your dear mother, Alice - better known as Alice Liddel, Ambassador of Wonderland - notices all of this right away. You answer her usual question, are you ready to embark on your weekly mother daughter dinner, before she can even ask it. 

“I’m afraid I can’t make dinner, mother,” you say, babbling around the tea biscuit you grab from the counter and hold in your mouth, keeping your hands free to drop off the useless information you’ve gathered throughout the day and search for a few books in your mother’s collection. 

“But I promise I’ll get something more than tea and cakes from the school kitchens tonight.” You assure her half heartedly, more worried about her peace of mind than your dietary habits. The moment the words leave your lips, she knows that something is wrong. Not wrong in the sort of way that a leaf floats down a brook, but deeply wrong, like a subaquatic shrub. 

Shrubs are not subaquatic by nature, and if one is found it’s recommended to bring it to the nearest tree surgeon as quickly as possible. She looks at you, her darling daughter, her wonderful little dear, and sees a subaquatic rose garden. You never skip dinners with your mother, not for the tiffletoo flu, or final exams, or anything else regardless of urgency or importance. The only time you’ve skipped dinner in the past was one time, one terrible night where Ben was rushed off the tourney field with a broken wrist and a nasty concussion. 

The standard for skipping dinner and tea with your mother is one that’s very rare and quite  extreme, so you’re not too terribly surprised when she stops you from leaving the Wonderland Embassy with a gentle hand on your shoulder. 

“Nunz yet, my love,” She says softly, soothingly. She fixes your hair in that comforting motherly way of hers, then moves on to fix your bow how you like it. 

“I can’t watch you gyre like an overwrought sulphide marble for a moment longer.” She looks at you softly. “What’s got your mind so snaggled, sweets?”

Your mother, your dear dear mother is your most favorite person in both worlds, right alongside Ben. You’ve always found your inability to lie to her or hide your feelings as a relief, a blessing. Now, however, you find yourself wishing for the first time that you were able to lie to her as easily as Audrey and Lonnie lie to their mothers. Your stomach twists uncomfortably. You don’t like this feeling. You wish it would just go away, but you know you can’t tell your mother everything that’s going on. Not yet, at least. 

She’s so close with Ben’s parents - in both business and personal regards - that if you were to make the wrong move, it could mean a world of nasty repercussions and consequences for Ben. The exact ones you’ve been maddening yourself trying to shield him from. You trust your mother implicitly, but you also know she has a duty - not just as a politician, but as a parent - to inform Ben’s parents imminently of any perils regarding Ben that she is made aware of. 

You sit down, fussing with the pleats of your dress, tugging at your stockings to buy yourself some time, give yourself a moment to carefully choose the most right, non incriminating words you can muster up.

“Ben has been behaving strangely.” You state. Your voice is soft, but not fragile. This worries your mother. If your voice were fragile, you see, it would mean this was all very new and fresh. But the reluctant acceptance in your tone of voice tells her the severity of the situation in which you’ve found both yourself and Ben. Your voice is quiet, your words simple, and a soft hum of understanding leaves your mother’s lips. She nods empathically, silent in the moment that follows so you can continue. 

“And, I… can’t quite seem to figure out the reason why.” You continue, even more quietly - almost shamefully so.

Your mother hums again, this time with a deeper, more resolute understanding of how you’re feeling and why exactly you must be feeling the way that you are. You and Ben have been so terribly close for so awfully long, that if either of you had felt at any point during your numerous years of friendship that you were mildly confused by the behavior or the other - much less left clueless and in the dark, as you currently are - that that in and of itself would be nothing short of anomalous. 

So naturally, when something this catastrophically unusual occurs, it should come as no shock at all how deeply distressing it would be to you. The very worst part, you realize, is that your mother has already come to this conclusion with barely a fraction of the information you have. You shudder to think about how distraught she’d be on your behalf if she knew everything you do about your trouble with Ben’s unusualness as of late.

“Lovey…” Your mother says warmly. She reaches over to you, handing you a warm porcelain teacup and saucer of her ever perfect chamomile tea. It’s sweetened with just the right amount of honey, but not so much as to overpower it - a mistake that you’ve seen many people make quite often - and topped off with just a little bit of shaken cream and rose pollen.

You’re never sure how she manages to make it so perfectly with so little effort every single time, but it must be a mother’s touch, you suppose. A gentle hug and a warm cup of her specialty tea always gets you to open right up to your mother, no matter how mimsy and gallymoggers you may be feeling. 

Your expression drops, and your mother recognizes it instantly as the look of finally allowing yourself to let in the very best of ideas. Your posture straightens imperceptibly, and your mother disguises her proud smile with a sip from her own teacup. She loves seeing you like this, lighting up as your mind is flooded in a flash brainstorm. 

“That’s it…” you mutter again, aloud this time. You stand up, careful not to spill your beverage, and you take a great big sip before setting it down hastily. 

“Thank you,” you sigh gratefully to your mother, giving her a squeeze around the middle, and a honey chamomile kiss to the cheek before you depart. 

“I really must go now,” you say regrettably, but she’s already waving you off with affection. 

“Be safe, dear.” She smiles, then gives you a subtle and humorous look. “And don’t lose your head.”

You let out a laugh from your nose. 

“I think you’ve come close enough for the both of us.”

The bird before you in this instance, is a rather frantic little chickadee. She swooped down to find you, losing a few feathers in the process. “Miss Liddell! Miss Liddell!” She cries, fluttering over to you, worked up into quite the tizzy. “Oh dear, Miss Liddell-”

She chirps and sputters, trying to gather her scrambled thoughts. 

“What is it?” You ask, brow furrowing as you lean in to listen.

“Oh Miss Liddell, it’s about Ben.”

Those three words caught your attention firmly, like a dodo in the jaws of a bandersnatch. 

“What about Ben?” You ask, voice growing lower and more urgent. 

“She- she’s down at the lake, you must go see her!” 

“See who?” You implore, trying to understand the bits and pieces falling frantically from her beak. 

“There’s just no time! Come quickly!”

You scurry across the school grounds for several minutes before plunging into the forest. You pause, calling up to her. “Ms. Chickadee!”

She flutters back over. 

“What, what? We have to go!”

You remember suddenly that you can get there much more quickly with a rabbit hole. Once you’ve explained this to her, she nods frantically. After a quick slip into Wonderland, you pop right back out on the shore of the enchanted lake. In your haste, you nearly tumble right into the lake.

“Oh- goodness!” You exclaim, scrambling back onto the shore. Your skirt is damp and muddy, as are your hands. But you pay no mind to that, nor the snags now torn into your stockings. Your breath heaves the chilly evening air as clouds roll in, making the skies seem even darker, and you look around frantically. You’re unsure what you’re even looking for, but you trust the brave Chickadee who delivered your message. 

There’s a trilling noise above you, and you look up to find Ms. Chickadee in the flesh - or rather, in the feathers - as she lands on a nearby branch. Her little body heaves as she catches her breath, and she chirps out another trilling note. A moment later, the water of the lake ripples, beginning to rise as a fluid figure emerges.  

Your eyes widen as a Naiad takes shape before you. Her hair is curly at the bottom, and carefully braided and wrapped in little sections, like the graceful rivulets of a waterfall as it cascades down her back and shoulders, blending back into the lake where they meet. 

“Oh…” you begin, intrigued and curious. You crouch down to speak to her so as not to loom over her intimidatingly. Looming intimidation, you feel, is something that should be used sparingly, and not when one is being gifted with help, or valuable information. 

“Hello.”

She looks right back at you with an equal - if not more nervous sort of intrigue. She waves. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” You say, bowing your head and gripping your muddy skirt hem to curtsy as much as you’re able to in your crouched position. “I didn’t know there were any naiads at the Enchanted Lake, or surely our paths would have crossed sooner.”

“There aren’t. Not usually.” She says in a soothing tone as her words flow from her lips. “I’m a bit of a shy duck. I like being somewhere that I won’t be disturbed, where I can keep to myself.”

“Naturally.” You nod, sensing her relax slightly at your understanding. She moves closer, leaning in to speak more freely, lowering her voice into an urgent whisper. 

“Well, I can feel it when somebody uses the lake’s magic.” She begins, the water around her rippling more quickly as she begins to get worked up at what she saw. “When Prince Ben and that- that purple fairy were here… something strange happened.”

The realization strikes you that this naiad could know exactly what happened to Ben, what Mal did to him. You lean closer, as does she, seafoam bubbling up around her edges as she stretches out to you. 

“It felt like- like mind control.” She says in a babbling whisper. “When Prince Ben submerged himself in the lake, it…”

She shakes her head, staring at nowhere in particular at the memory. 

“I’ve never felt anything like it. Not in all my years in the lake. I- there was a moment I feared the lake wouldn’t be able to break it.” She says, voice trembling as her eyes brim with tears. They spill, but she nods her head quickly. 

“But it did.”

The relief that strikes you in that moment is positively unmatched by anything else you think you’ve ever felt. Hope finally seems tangible, a solution, a resolution glowing as a pinprick of light in the distance of this suffocatingly dark tunnel of misfortune Mal has carved your way into. 

“But then… there was something else.”

Just like that, the flame of hope you were so desperately tending to flickers. 

“That purple fairy… she made a wish.” She begins. Dread and relief war within you. “And stranger still-”

She leans in even closer, stretching up to meet you as you stretch down, trying not to fall right into her lake. Cool water mists onto your skin as she speaks in an anxious whisper. 

“It was granted.”

Your stomach sinks like an anchor into the wet, wet mud of an unfamiliar shore. 

“I can’t say what it is she wished for-”

“Naturally.” You nod, agreeing. It is never the right of another to say what someone else wished for. Speculation is one thing, but knowing is another. 

“But…” she hesitates, trying to figure out how to phrase what she’s trying to say. “Her own conflicted heart will be her downfall. It’s very likely that she will break the conditions of her wish all on her own.”

Like the cooling gel of an ‘ello-vera plant after much time spent bathed in moonlight, a tentative sort of relief washes through you, soothing the frayed ends of your nerves. It’s not exactly what you wanted to hear, but like your mother always says, beggars can’t be choosers, and choosers can’t be indecisive. This is a much better piece of information than it could have been, and you nod gratefully as she continues.

“Her wish, despite everything, is only a temporary benefit to her, I suspect. Don’t preoccupy yourself with that over everything else, it cannot possibly last very long at all. When put to the test, she will not be ready to succeed.” She says urgently. “Don’t lose sight of your goal - see the rivers for the ocean.”

Her words seem to sear themselves into your mind and heart. You let out a soft, determined breath. 

“I can’t begin to thank you enough for this,” you say in a low, intent voice. “Please, tell me if there’s anything you should need in return.” You promise, standing up. 

The naiad nods anxiously, and looks around.

“Good luck!” She says quietly before disappearing back into the depths of the lake, leaving only a swirling current and bouncing ripples in her wake. 

Her words echo in your mind as you stand up, not caring one bit for the mud and water on your clothes. See the rivers for the ocean. See the trees for the forest. That’s something you can certainly do. 

A video call from your parents when you’re away at boarding school should be a good thing. A chance to douse the flames of homesickness that have no doubt been burning away within you for as long as you’ve been away. But in truth, it depends on who your parents are, and how you feel toward each other. In Mal’s case, the answer to both is bad. Both literally, and figuratively. This callous truth also applies to Evie, Carlos, and Jay, a knowledge and camaraderie they share as they sit anxiously at their desks in the Remedial Goodness classroom on a Saturday. 

“Now, as you know,” Fairy Godmother begins, addressing the students with a warm, anticipatory smile. “Sunday is family day here at Auradon Prep. And because your parents can’t be here due to- uh,” she sputters, looking for the most gentle way to say locked up on an island, as if the four of them weren’t raised in the prison built from their parents’ sins.

“Distance,” she decides. “We’ve arranged for a special treat.”

Their stomachs collectively sink as a large screen is rolled out in front of the blackboard, twisting with a sickening feeling. Evie’s breathing immediately picks up, and she finds herself fussing with her hair and nails, tugging at her clothes and trying to apply a little more lip gloss without anyone noticing. She drags a finger under her lower lashline, knowing she gets a little mascara fall out around this time of day. 

Carlos places Dude on the ground, his heart breaking for the dog as he nudges him away as gently as he can with his foot until Dude gets the message, scurrying off and watching him sadly. Jay is already shrugging off his tourney hoodie and wiping the smile off his face, waiting with a stoic scowl and crossing his arms defensively in a way that hides the shake in his hands. 

“I don’t see anything… nor do I hear-” 

The sound of her mother’s voice drains all the blood from Mal’s face in a way that no amount of blush could disguise. She rubs at her lips with the back of her hand, taking off the strawberry flavored lip gloss Evie had managed to persuade her to wear that morning. She’d been so excited about it, too. I couldn’t stop thinking about the whole strawberries thing… you’ll have to tell me if this tastes the same! Her brilliant Evie had managed to find strawberry flavored cosmetics, just because Mal couldn’t stop talking about how delicious they were. 

She rubs at her eyes, smudging the light makeup Evie had taught her how to do, feeling a sinking sense of grief as she ruins it. This was the first time she did it by herself - well, the first time Evie only had to hold her hand a little bit - and she makes a mental note to apologize to Evie for ruining their work later. Armed with chapped lips and dark rings smudged around her eyes, she strategically scratches at her scalp, hoping her hair looks damaged and unkempt, just like it always is. Was. Like it should be. 

She doesn’t need to look at her friends to know they’re all feeling exactly the same thing. Evie flips over her papers, hiding the A- grade she’d received yesterday and been beaming about ever since. Carlos guiltily rips off a bit of his breakfast bar and tosses it out of view, wordlessly trying to apologize to Dude for shoving him away so suddenly. 

Jay shoves his beloved Fighting Knights team hoodie that he’s been wearing with love for days onto the cold floor by his feet, silently praying it doesn’t get covered in mud from his cleats. The soft fleece and vibrant team logos woven together with a sense of camaraderie and belonging are replaced with his signature sink or swim, no team in I scowl, the one he picked up by copying his father’s face when he looked at Jay. 

There’s more discoordinant bickering that seems to suck all the goodness out of the room, no matter how remedial it is. Even Fairy Godmother seems tense. Finally, the image of their parents loads more clearly as their end of the video call finishes connecting. 

“Evie, it’s mommy!” Comes the condescending sing-song voice of the Evil Queen. Her under eyes are slightly swollen, Evie notices. She definitely got more back alley botox. And another CC of lip fillers, by the looks of it. She’s going to get a nasty rash from using dirty needles, just like she always does. All in the pursuit of beauty, she would tell Evie while making her daughter cover her itching, inflamed skin with expired psoriasis cream. 

“Oh, look how beautiful,” Evil Queen coos, and Evie plasters on the same smile her mother made her spend two hours a day practicing. “Just like your mother. She gets it all from me.”

Evil Queen turns between the other parents and Fairy Godmother, speaking to no one in particular as she continues.

“You know, they say having a daughter just sucks all the beauty right out of you. I’m sure they do, in most cases,” she says, looking between Maleficent and Fairy Godmother. “But with me, oh, I just sucked all that beauty right back.”

She lets out a stiff laugh, smiling as much as she can with all those frozen, swollen muscles in her face. 

“Evie looks just like me when I was her age. I mean, I didn’t have that little potbelly, and I actually wore lip liner instead of god knows what that is…” She murmurs, glancing at Evie’s mouth. “But, you know what they say, the poison apple doesn’t fall far from the heirloom tree…” 

Evil Queen leans closer, looking in the bottom corner of the screen, clearly looking at herself and paying no mind to anything else. 

The knots in their stomachs get bigger and bigger, harder to sit with as they watch their parents waste away half their sparse video call time jabbing at Fairy Godmother instead of talking to their children. Mal risks a glance at Evie, only seeing the blue hair she’s fussing with as she looks away from the group. Evie didn’t even get a hello. She was just used to prop up a mirror for her mother to obsess over and preen herself in, just like always. 

Fairy Godmother isn’t immune to their nasty ways either, growing increasingly distracted and impatient with their jeers and jabs, totally unaware of the pain on the children's faces behind her. The sky outside dims drastically for a moment as a bank of clouds pass by, blocking out the sun. The world feels dark and cold and small again, suffocating in that moment of chilling darkness. 

“Mal…” 

She tenses at her mother’s saccharine, deceptively sweet sing-song voice. “When can we see you again?” 

Her expression and words are tense, but their true meaning is clear. Have you gotten that damned wand yet? 

“Uh- there’s a coronation in two days,” Mal says in a low voice, trying to sound relaxed, looking at  her mother’s nose instead of trying to look at her eyes. “So probably after that.”

Maleficent hums, but it sounds more like a growl to Mal. 

“Well,” She starts tensely, the disapproval and growing impatience clear, “Let’s see if you can make that sooner.”

Mal flinches at her mother’s tone, looking away from the screen, but Maleficent doesn’t notice. The four parents descend into more arguing, starting to use language that causes Fairy Godmother to shut off the screen abruptly in fear of someone overhearing their profane, cruel words. 

The silence that follows is crushingly heavy, bruising their muscles and straining their spines from the sheer weight of it. 

“...I am so sorry-” 

Fairy Godmother’s words are sincere, which makes them even more difficult to hear. “It’s fine.” Mal says in a quiet voice, not having the energy to be snippy even when cutting her off. “Really.”

“We’re used to it.” Carlos supplies in a hollow voice.

Unable to stand being in this goddamn room any longer, Mal moves to leave. Everyone else quickly follows her, just as desperate to get out, but waiting for her cue. The door slams shut behind them as Mal marches back to their dorms. The air is thick, and their chests feel painfully tight. Invisible hands seem to wrap around their necks, choking them tighter and tighter, pushing harder against their stomachs as more heavy silence envelops them. 

Arriving back in Mal and Evie’s dorm, Evie immediately sits down at her vanity, pulling out her tweezers to obsessively remove facial hair that isn’t there. Carlos curls up on the floor in front of Mal’s bed, and Jay stands in front of the closed door, arms crossed. Mal paces, picking at her chipping polish. Jay’s stomach twists as he builds up the courage to speak. His words are quiet - quiet for him, at least - but they still feel loud. He knows they’d feel loud no matter what.

“So… what’s our next move?”

He feels like he shouldn’t even be asking, but he has to. Someone has to. They all need to know what the fuck they’re supposed to do next. Mal slows her pacing, trembling under the crushing weight of guilt and self blame, the hatred of herself for letting herself start to get comfortable, for even considering leaning into this cushy, sugary, strawberry flavored life. Her shoulders are so tense she almost feels lightheaded. She can feel a headache coming on. 

There’s a fraction of a moment before she answers. She hates this, hates being the one in charge. She hates being the only thing standing between her friends- between Evie and Jay and Carlos, and abject misery. She hates bearing the weight of holding back everything worse they’re trying to avoid. It’s aging her, she thinks. Or it would be if fairies aged like humans. She’s sure she’d have gray hair, aches in her joints, a tremor when she walks. She hates this feeling, and whenever it comes, she knows how Atlas feels, crushing yourself under the weight of the sky to try and stop the people behind you from suffocating faster. 

“We pull our heads out of our asses.” 

She tries to sound sharp, intimidating, but it doesn’t quiet land. She sounds afraid. 

“We wake the hell up, and we do what we fucking came here to do.”

Her words are like the click of prison shackles, tightening on their wrists and ankles as they march toward a seaside cliff of inevitable doom. That’s not the answer that any of them wanted.

It’s later that night, so late that even Carlos has fallen asleep. Evie was up later than Mal had thought. She was sure she knew what Evie was doing in the bathroom for so long, but didn’t have the heart to try and stop her. What could she even say? My mom is right, but yours is totally lying? Mal slips out of bed and walks quietly into the bathroom. 

A box of baking soda sits on the counter, mirrors propped up for a 360 view, rubbing alcohol… Mal’s throat tightens as she inspects the damage. The air smells like rubbing alcohol, and vomit disguised with the smell of fake floral room spray. Daring to look at the sink, she sees it. Smudges of blood, sprinkled with grainy yellow lumps. She swallows thickly. 

It’s not the first time Evie’s tried to give herself lipo. She mentioned once when it was late at night and they were both feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable that she’d been four when her mother first showed her how to jab under her skin with a needle and suck out the fat. She’d nearly gone septic in the sixth grade when she forgot to clean the needle properly. 

When she was finally well enough to come home from the shitty excuse of a public clinic on the Isle, the only thing her mother did was pinch her waist and stomach and arms. Well, at least some good came out of your carelessness. There’s still quite a ways to go, obviously. It’s a miracle she’s still alive, Mal thinks. It’s a miracle any of them are, much less all of them. 

There was one time years and years ago when her mother caught Mal trying to purge like Evie had shown her how to do. Her mother just pulled her up by the hair and dragged her out of the bathroom, raving about how she shouldn’t waste her energy on something as foolish and trivial as that, she should be working on a way to get them off this godforsaken rock. Mal wasn’t sure how an 11 year old could do anything to get them off the Isle, but once she was locked in her room for a time out, once she’d beaten and kicked her threadbare pillows until she wore herself out, she started brainstorming, scribbling down fruitless ideas by the embers of her shame. 

She shakes her head, trying to dispel the unpleasant memories. She exits the bathroom and walks over to Evie’s bed. She looks pale. Mal lifts up the blankets, just a little, and nudges up Evie’s shirt. Her stomach has a few bandaids on it, but some of them have fallen off, leaving little red pin pricks in their wake. Her heart sinks slowly, pulling the blankets back up, knowing Evie went to bed dizzy and cold and hungry. She should get Evie something to drink. Maybe some juice or something, maybe one of those sports drinks Jay has after tourney practice. 

She grabs her spellbook and sneaks down into the kitchens. She digs around a little, finding a bottle of sugar free apple juice, and a bottle of blue ischyros-ade. There’s a sponsored photo of Hercules on the front, with some dumb slogan and black and white Greecian designs. She flips through her spellbook, knowing she should be practicing more than she has been, and finds a simple transportation spell. She sets the drinks down, focusing as she tries to cast the spell, tracing her hands around the bottles. 

“Destination, free of fare, move these- uh, bottles, from here to there.”

The tendrils of smoke that had been building dispel, with the fizzling pop of failed magic. She lets out a frustrated sigh and tries again. 

 “Destination, free of fare, move these bottles from here to there.”

It almost works this time, there’s more smoke and a building feeling of anticipation, but it still fizzles out at the last moment. She’s about to give up and just march back up to her dorm herself, but she hesitates. She thinks about Evie, seeing her in her mind’s eye. Her heart aches, crying to reach out and hold her, to comfort her best friend, to kiss her and tell her she’s the most beautiful thing in the whole world.

“...Destination, free of fare, bring these bottles from here to there.” 

The words flow more freely this time, not feeling as forced. There’s a rush of blood to her head, and when she looks back down… they’re gone. She smirks to herself. Of course the one time she nails a spell is because she’s worried about Evie. 

She starts to close her book, but something falls out. 

An index card in her scratchy writing, detailing a… cookie recipe. Oh god, Ben. She totally forgot about him. She’s been so preoccupied with keeping an eye on Jay and Carlos, and worrying about Evie that she… forgot Ben existed, if she’s being honest. She doesn’t have a choice. She’s going to have to enable her mother to bring on a new age of darkness and evil, and… Ben is going to think he’s in love with her the whole time. 

She thinks that if she were able to feel any worse than she did, she would now. But she’s just… maxed out. She doesn’t have any guilt of self hate or fear left for Ben. But she knows that keeping him under her control is… it’s just a step too far. Mal swallows thickly, then grabs a bag of chocolate chips from the pantry. There’s a recipe on the back for something called s’mores, and another recipe next to that. Trollhouse mini chocolate chip cupcakes. 

She fumbles around the kitchen, clumsily throwing open cabinets and rifling through them, dropping ingredients halfheartedly onto the stainless steel countertops. Her mind is a blur as she mixes them together. She doesn’t notice that she forgot to add the cinnamon, or that a few bits of eggshell ended up in the lumpy batter. She just can’t bring herself to care. 

Waiting for them to finish baking is the worst part. She shoves everything back in the cupboards even though they’re not in the right place, and she takes a towel and gets it wet, squirting a generous amount of dish soap on it. She wipes down the counter as soap bubbles fill the air, the green viscous liquid dripping off the edge of the counter and splatting on the floor. 

The chemical smell of fake apples and soap fill her senses, and she throws the sudsy towel in a basket for towels that need to be laundered. She takes another towel and wipes off the suds, leaving behind a sticky, chemical residue as she throws that one in the hamper too. She’s startled from her dazed attempt at cleaning to keep her hands and mind busy when the little egg timer buzzes. 

She pulls out the mini muffin tray and sets it on the counter, nearly burning herself in the process. The acrid scent of scorched chemical dish soap wafts up and mixes with the sweet, fudgy smell of the cupcakes. She looks through the tray at the unfrosted, gooey chocolate baked goods before her, and picks one of them up. She dumps the rest in the trash and drops the tray by the sink. 

Stretching up to grab a spoon and can of chocolate frosting, she sees a figure standing there where there hadn’t been just the moment before. She nearly jumps out of her fucking skin, seeing you there looking like you clawed your way out of a grave. 

Your striped tights are snagged and torn, you’re smudged with mud and dirt, there’s a twig or something tangled in your hair. Your makeup is smudged too, making you look… almost frightening. Without hesitation, you step forward as the last parts of the tile floor close themselves up behind you. You’re looking at her with a surprising intensity, eyes locked on her like a predator hunting down its prey. She starts to say something, but you don’t care, wasting no time as you ensure she can’t run out the door past you - not that she would, you don’t think. It’s merely a strategic precaution. 

“Do you even realize what you’ve done?”

Your voice is lower than usual, sharper and rougher and serious. You speak quickly and sharply, like your tongue itself is a vorpal blade that you’re all too comfortable wielding. Mal tries to answer, but you cut her off before she can. 

“Because I find it hard to believe that anyone could be so stupidly foolish.” You spit, taking a step forward. 

“I’m sure you’d love to know the outs and ins of what I know, but that is not a pleasure you’ll have the fortune of crossing paths with as of yet.” You say quickly, cutting straight to the point. “If you value the lives and wellbeing of your friends, or more likely, your own self serving preservation, if you don’t crave a miserable lifetime in a dungeon so deep you’ll never hope to see the sun or breath clean air again, if you don’t wish to resign yourself to a life worse than death, worse than even you could imagine…”

You lower your voice further, and when you speak, Mal feels like she’s been stung. 

“You will not breathe a word of what you’ve done. Not to anybody.” 

Mal’s stomach drops. She swallows thickly, trying not to let you see how thrown off by you she is. You haven’t said what you know, which means you probably know nothing. This is just some cheap attempt to shake her down for information because you’re worried about Ben or something. It’s the only thing that makes sense, but it sounds flimsy even to her. 

“Not only is tampering with the free will of others an unforgivable crime,” You continue, even more intense than before. You’re gripping onto your self control with white knuckles, desperately trying not to give into the madness you’re barely restraining. 

A cold sweat breaks out across Mal’s skin. Tampering with free will… you do know. Somehow you know what she did, what she did to Ben. 

“But you’ve chosen for reasons way beyond my understanding or interest to commit the most egregious act of treason I have ever heard tell of.” You say sharply in a low voice, like the information strategically parting from your lips is only and exclusively for you and her. 

“I’m sure you can’t possibly grasp the ramifications of what you’ve done- if you could you would have turned back long before now.” You say, a note of warning in your voice. “But now it is my duty to prevent your infectious actions from metastasizing further than they already have. It breaks my heart that you would damn so many innocent people who have suffered like you have just for-”

A chilling, dry laugh leaves your throat. 

“I don’t know why, really. Nor am I bothered to care. Not when there is this much damage to be controlled.”

You take yet another step closer. Not close enough to touch each other, but uncomfortably so. 

“You are to keep your head down.” You hiss, “You are to cease any and all further attempts to interfere with the crown, or the mess that you’ve created. And above all else, you are to do nothing to raise any suspicion.”

You’re not threatening her, she realizes. You’re warning her. 

“If you intend for even a moment to step a toe out of the parameters which I have given you, I will assure you the consequences will come faster than you could possibly run from them.”

You sound so sure. You’re so quiet and calm, like you’re just… telling her the facts. You’re not trying to scare her with bluster and intimidation tactics - that she could handle. That she’s used to. But this… she’s never seen this from anyone. Realizing how cornered she is, she swallows thickly, looking around and trying to seem nonchalant, desperately looking for any way to deflect your accusations. Your preternaturally in tune perception of the situation. 

“Look, you’re crazy if you-”

“Oh. Of course.”

You cut her off with a raw, honest stare. She sees something deep inside you, an unstable glint you’ve never let this far out. It’s like you’re finally loosening reins on a creature you’ve always had well trained and under your command. 

“Mad as a fucking hatter.” You say in a joltingly light, casual tone. “The best people are.”

Before she can blink, she’s hit with the smell of dirt. The floor below you cracks, crumbling away into nothing. You drop fearlessly down into the dark maw of the earth, keeping your gaze on her the whole time. In the same breath, the floor closes back up without leaving so much as a trace. 

Finally alone again - at least, she thinks so - she grips the counter tightly, hoping the cool metal will soothe her shaking hands. Her heart is pounding, like it’s trying to break out of her chest. Alice is just some person, some random girl who fell down the wrong hole in the ground. You’re her daughter, so you shouldn’t… how the fuck did you do that?! 

The bird before you in this instance, is a rather frantic little chickadee. She swooped down to find you, losing a few feathers in the process. “Miss Liddell! Miss Liddell!” She cries, fluttering over to you, worked up into quite the tizzy. “Oh dear, Miss Liddell-”

She chirps and sputters, trying to gather her scrambled thoughts. 

“What is it?” You ask, brow furrowing as you lean in to listen.

“Oh Miss Liddell, it’s about Ben.”

Those three words caught your attention firmly, like a dodo in the jaws of a bandersnatch. 

“What about Ben?” You ask, voice growing lower and more urgent. 

“She- she’s down at the lake, you must go see her!” 

“See who?” You implore, trying to understand the bits and pieces falling frantically from her beak. 

“There’s just no time! Come quickly!”

You scurry across the school grounds for several minutes before plunging into the forest. You pause, calling up to her. “Ms. Chickadee!”

She flutters back over. 

“What, what? We have to go!”

You remember suddenly that you can get there much more quickly with a rabbit hole. Once you’ve explained this to her, she nods frantically. After a quick slip into Wonderland, you pop right back out on the shore of the enchanted lake. In your haste, you nearly tumble right into the lake.

“Oh- goodness!” You exclaim, scrambling back onto the shore. Your skirt is damp and muddy, as are your hands. But you pay no mind to that, nor the snags now torn into your stockings. Your breath heaves the chilly evening air as clouds roll in, making the skies seem even darker, and you look around frantically. You’re unsure what you’re even looking for, but you trust the brave Chickadee who delivered your message. 

There’s a trilling noise above you, and you look up to find Ms. Chickadee in the flesh - or rather, in the feathers - as she lands on a nearby branch. Her little body heaves as she catches her breath, and she chirps out another trilling note. A moment later, the water of the lake ripples, beginning to rise as a fluid figure emerges.  

Your eyes widen as a Naiad takes shape before you. Her hair is curly at the bottom, and carefully braided and wrapped in little sections, like the graceful rivulets of a waterfall as it cascades down her back and shoulders, blending back into the lake where they meet. 

“Oh…” you begin, intrigued and curious. You crouch down to speak to her so as not to loom over her intimidatingly. Looming intimidation, you feel, is something that should be used sparingly, and not when one is being gifted with help, or valuable information. 

“Hello.”

She looks right back at you with an equal - if not more nervous sort of intrigue. She waves. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” You say, bowing your head and gripping your muddy skirt hem to curtsy as much as you’re able to in your crouched position. “I didn’t know there were any naiads at the Enchanted Lake, or surely our paths would have crossed sooner.”

“There aren’t. Not usually.” She says in a soothing tone as her words flow from her lips. “I’m a bit of a shy duck. I like being somewhere that I won’t be disturbed, where I can keep to myself.”

“Naturally.” You nod, sensing her relax slightly at your understanding. She moves closer, leaning in to speak more freely, lowering her voice into an urgent whisper. 

“Well, I can feel it when somebody uses the lake’s magic.” She begins, the water around her rippling more quickly as she begins to get worked up at what she saw. “When Prince Ben and that- that purple fairy were here… something strange happened.”

The realization strikes you that this naiad could know exactly what happened to Ben, what Mal did to him. You lean closer, as does she, seafoam bubbling up around her edges as she stretches out to you. 

“It felt like- like mind control.” She says in a babbling whisper. “When Prince Ben submerged himself in the lake, it…”

She shakes her head, staring at nowhere in particular at the memory. 

“I’ve never felt anything like it. Not in all my years in the lake. I- there was a moment I feared the lake wouldn’t be able to break it.” She says, voice trembling as her eyes brim with tears. They spill, but she nods her head quickly. 

“But it did.”

The relief that strikes you in that moment is positively unmatched by anything else you think you’ve ever felt. Hope finally seems tangible, a solution, a resolution glowing as a pinprick of light in the distance of this suffocatingly dark tunnel of misfortune Mal has carved your way into. 

“But then… there was something else.”

Just like that, the flame of hope you were so desperately tending to flickers. 

“That purple fairy… she made a wish.” She begins. Dread and relief war within you. “And stranger still-”

She leans in even closer, stretching up to meet you as you stretch down, trying not to fall right into her lake. Cool water mists onto your skin as she speaks in an anxious whisper. 

“It was granted.”

Your stomach sinks like an anchor into the wet, wet mud of an unfamiliar shore. 

“I can’t say what it is she wished for-”

“Naturally.” You nod, agreeing. It is never the right of another to say what someone else wished for. Speculation is one thing, but knowing is another. 

“But…” she hesitates, trying to figure out how to phrase what she’s trying to say. “Her own conflicted heart will be her downfall. It’s very likely that she will break the conditions of her wish all on her own.”

Like the cooling gel of an ‘ello-vera plant after much time spent bathed in moonlight, a tentative sort of relief washes through you, soothing the frayed ends of your nerves. It’s not exactly what you wanted to hear, but like your mother always says, beggars can’t be choosers, and choosers can’t be indecisive. This is a much better piece of information than it could have been, and you nod gratefully as she continues.

“Her wish, despite everything, is only a temporary benefit to her, I suspect. Don’t preoccupy yourself with that over everything else, it cannot possibly last very long at all. When put to the test, she will not be ready to succeed.” She says urgently. “Don’t lose sight of your goal - see the rivers for the ocean.”

Her words seem to sear themselves into your mind and heart. You let out a soft, determined breath. 

“I can’t begin to thank you enough for this,” you say in a low, intent voice. “Please, tell me if there’s anything you should need in return.” You promise, standing up. 

The naiad nods anxiously, and looks around.

“Good luck!” She says quietly before disappearing back into the depths of the lake, leaving only a swirling current and bouncing ripples in her wake. 

Her words echo in your mind as you stand up, not caring one bit for the mud and water on your clothes. See the rivers for the ocean. See the trees for the forest. That’s something you can certainly do. 

A video call from your parents when you’re away at boarding school should be a good thing. A chance to douse the flames of homesickness that have no doubt been burning away within you for as long as you’ve been away. But in truth, it depends on who your parents are, and how you feel toward each other. In Mal’s case, the answer to both is bad. Both literally, and figuratively. This callous truth also applies to Evie, Carlos, and Jay, a knowledge and camaraderie they share as they sit anxiously at their desks in the Remedial Goodness classroom on a Saturday. 

“Now, as you know,” Fairy Godmother begins, addressing the students with a warm, anticipatory smile. “Sunday is family day here at Auradon Prep. And because your parents can’t be here due to- uh,” she sputters, looking for the most gentle way to say locked up on an island, as if the four of them weren’t raised in the prison built from their parents’ sins.

“Distance,” she decides. “We’ve arranged for a special treat.”

Their stomachs collectively sink as a large screen is rolled out in front of the blackboard, twisting with a sickening feeling. Evie’s breathing immediately picks up, and she finds herself fussing with her hair and nails, tugging at her clothes and trying to apply a little more lip gloss without anyone noticing. She drags a finger under her lower lashline, knowing she gets a little mascara fall out around this time of day. 

Carlos places Dude on the ground, his heart breaking for the dog as he nudges him away as gently as he can with his foot until Dude gets the message, scurrying off and watching him sadly. Jay is already shrugging off his tourney hoodie and wiping the smile off his face, waiting with a stoic scowl and crossing his arms defensively in a way that hides the shake in his hands. 

“I don’t see anything… nor do I hear-” 

The sound of her mother’s voice drains all the blood from Mal’s face in a way that no amount of blush could disguise. She rubs at her lips with the back of her hand, taking off the strawberry flavored lip gloss Evie had managed to persuade her to wear that morning. She’d been so excited about it, too. I couldn’t stop thinking about the whole strawberries thing… you’ll have to tell me if this tastes the same! Her brilliant Evie had managed to find strawberry flavored cosmetics, just because Mal couldn’t stop talking about how delicious they were. 

She rubs at her eyes, smudging the light makeup Evie had taught her how to do, feeling a sinking sense of grief as she ruins it. This was the first time she did it by herself - well, the first time Evie only had to hold her hand a little bit - and she makes a mental note to apologize to Evie for ruining their work later. Armed with chapped lips and dark rings smudged around her eyes, she strategically scratches at her scalp, hoping her hair looks damaged and unkempt, just like it always is. Was. Like it should be. 

She doesn’t need to look at her friends to know they’re all feeling exactly the same thing. Evie flips over her papers, hiding the A- grade she’d received yesterday and been beaming about ever since. Carlos guiltily rips off a bit of his breakfast bar and tosses it out of view, wordlessly trying to apologize to Dude for shoving him away so suddenly. 

Jay shoves his beloved Fighting Knights team hoodie that he’s been wearing with love for days onto the cold floor by his feet, silently praying it doesn’t get covered in mud from his cleats. The soft fleece and vibrant team logos woven together with a sense of camaraderie and belonging are replaced with his signature sink or swim, no team in I scowl, the one he picked up by copying his father’s face when he looked at Jay. 

There’s more discoordinant bickering that seems to suck all the goodness out of the room, no matter how remedial it is. Even Fairy Godmother seems tense. Finally, the image of their parents loads more clearly as their end of the video call finishes connecting. 

“Evie, it’s mommy!” Comes the condescending sing-song voice of the Evil Queen. Her under eyes are slightly swollen, Evie notices. She definitely got more back alley botox. And another CC of lip fillers, by the looks of it. She’s going to get a nasty rash from using dirty needles, just like she always does. All in the pursuit of beauty, she would tell Evie while making her daughter cover her itching, inflamed skin with expired psoriasis cream. 

“Oh, look how beautiful,” Evil Queen coos, and Evie plasters on the same smile her mother made her spend two hours a day practicing. “Just like your mother. She gets it all from me.”

Evil Queen turns between the other parents and Fairy Godmother, speaking to no one in particular as she continues.

“You know, they say having a daughter just sucks all the beauty right out of you. I’m sure they do, in most cases,” she says, looking between Maleficent and Fairy Godmother. “But with me, oh, I just sucked all that beauty right back.”

She lets out a stiff laugh, smiling as much as she can with all those frozen, swollen muscles in her face. 

“But, you know what they say, the poison apple doesn’t fall far from the heirloom tree…” 

Evil Queen leans closer, looking in the bottom corner of the screen, clearly looking at herself and paying no mind to anything else. 

The knots in their stomachs get bigger and bigger, harder to sit with as they watch their parents waste away half their sparse video call time jabbing at Fairy Godmother instead of talking to their children. Mal risks a glance at Evie, only seeing the blue hair she’s fussing with as she looks away from the group. Evie didn’t even get a hello. She was just used to prop up a mirror for her mother to obsess over and preen herself in, just like always. 

Fairy Godmother isn’t immune to their nasty ways either, growing increasingly distracted and impatient with their jeers and jabs, totally unaware of the pain on the children's faces behind her. The sky outside dims drastically for a moment as a bank of clouds pass by, blocking out the sun. The world feels dark and cold and small again, suffocating in that moment of chilling darkness. 

“Mal…” 

She tenses at her mother’s saccharine, deceptively sweet sing-song voice. “When can we see you again?” 

Her expression and words are tense, but their true meaning is clear. Have you gotten that damned wand yet? 

“Uh- there’s a coronation in two days,” Mal says in a low voice, trying to sound relaxed, looking at  her mother’s nose instead of trying to look at her eyes. “So probably after that.”

Maleficent hums, but it sounds more like a growl to Mal. 

“Well,” She starts tensely, the disapproval and growing impatience clear, “Let’s see if you can make that sooner.”

Mal flinches at her mother’s tone, looking away from the screen, but Maleficent doesn’t notice. The four parents descend into more arguing, starting to use language that causes Fairy Godmother to shut off the screen abruptly in fear of someone overhearing their profane, cruel words. 

The silence that follows is crushingly heavy, bruising their muscles and straining their spines from the sheer weight of it. 

“...I am so sorry-” 

Fairy Godmother’s words are sincere, which makes them even more difficult to hear. “It’s fine.” Mal says in a quiet voice, not having the energy to be snippy even when cutting her off. “Really.”

“We’re used to it.” Carlos supplies in a hollow voice.

Unable to stand being in this goddamn room any longer, Mal moves to leave. Everyone else quickly follows her, just as desperate to get out, but waiting for her cue. The door slams shut behind them as Mal marches back to their dorms. The air is thick, and their chests feel painfully tight. Invisible hands seem to wrap around their necks, choking them tighter and tighter, pushing harder against their stomachs as more heavy silence envelops them. 

Arriving back in Mal and Evie’s dorm, Evie immediately sits down at her vanity, pulling out her tweezers to obsessively remove facial hair that isn’t there. Carlos curls up on the floor in front of Mal’s bed, and Jay stands in front of the closed door, arms crossed. Mal paces, picking at her chipping polish. Jay’s stomach twists as he builds up the courage to speak. His words are quiet - quiet for him, at least - but they still feel loud. He knows they’d feel loud no matter what.

“So… what’s our next move?”

He feels like he shouldn’t even be asking, but he has to. Someone has to. They all need to know what the fuck they’re supposed to do next. Mal slows her pacing, trembling under the crushing weight of guilt and self blame, the hatred of herself for letting herself start to get comfortable, for even considering leaning into this cushy, sugary, strawberry flavored life. Her shoulders are so tense she almost feels lightheaded. She can feel a headache coming on. 

There’s a fraction of a moment before she answers. She hates this, hates being the one in charge. She hates being the only thing standing between her friends- between Evie and Jay and Carlos, and abject misery. She hates bearing the weight of holding back everything worse they’re trying to avoid. It’s aging her, she thinks. Or it would be if fairies aged like humans. She’s sure she’d have gray hair, aches in her joints, a tremor when she walks. She hates this feeling, and whenever it comes, she knows how Atlas feels, crushing yourself under the weight of the sky to try and stop the people behind you from suffocating faster. 

“We pull our heads out of our asses.” 

She tries to sound sharp, intimidating, but it doesn’t quiet land. She sounds afraid. 

“We wake the hell up, and we do what we fucking came here to do.”

Her words are like the click of prison shackles, tightening on their wrists and ankles as they march toward a seaside cliff of inevitable doom. That’s not the answer that any of them wanted.

It’s later that night, so late that even Carlos has fallen asleep. Mal shakes her head, trying to dispel the unpleasant memories. She grabs her spellbook and sneaks down into the kitchens. She digs around a little, finding a bottle of apple juice, and a bottle of blue ischyros-ade. There’s a sponsored photo of Hercules on the front, with some dumb slogan and black and white Greecian designs. She flips through her spellbook, knowing she should be practicing more than she has been, and finds a simple transportation spell. She sets the drinks down, focusing as she tries to cast the spell, tracing her hands around the bottles. 

“Destination, free of fare, move these- uh, bottles, from here to there.”

The tendrils of smoke that had been building dispel, with the fizzling pop of failed magic. She lets out a frustrated sigh and tries again. 

 “Destination, free of fare, move these bottles from here to there.”

It almost works this time, there’s more smoke and a building feeling of anticipation, but it still fizzles out at the last moment. She’s about to give up and just march back up to her dorm herself, but she hesitates. She thinks about Evie, seeing her in her mind’s eye. Her heart aches, crying to reach out and hold her, to comfort her best friend, to kiss her and tell her she’s the most beautiful thing in the whole world.

“...Destination, free of fare, bring these bottles from here to there.” 

The words flow more freely this time, not feeling as forced. There’s a rush of blood to her head, and when she looks back down… they’re gone. She smirks to herself. Of course the one time she nails a spell is because she’s worried about Evie. 

She starts to close her book, but something falls out. 

An index card in her scratchy writing, detailing a… cookie recipe. Oh god, Ben. She totally forgot about him. She’s been so preoccupied with keeping an eye on Jay and Carlos, and worrying about Evie that she… forgot Ben existed, if she’s being honest. She doesn’t have a choice. She’s going to have to enable her mother to bring on a new age of darkness and evil, and… Ben is going to think he’s in love with her the whole time. 

She thinks that if she were able to feel any worse than she did, she would now. But she’s just… maxed out. She doesn’t have any guilt of self hate or fear left for Ben. But she knows that keeping him under her control is… it’s just a step too far. Mal swallows thickly, then grabs a bag of chocolate chips from the pantry. There’s a recipe on the back for something called s’mores, and another recipe next to that. Trollhouse mini chocolate chip cupcakes. 

She fumbles around the kitchen, clumsily throwing open cabinets and rifling through them, dropping ingredients halfheartedly onto the stainless steel countertops. Her mind is a blur as she mixes them together. She doesn’t notice that she forgot to add the cinnamon, or that a few bits of eggshell ended up in the lumpy batter. She just can’t bring herself to care. 

Waiting for them to finish baking is the worst part. She shoves everything back in the cupboards even though they’re not in the right place, and she takes a towel and gets it wet, squirting a generous amount of dish soap on it. She wipes down the counter as soap bubbles fill the air, the green viscous liquid dripping off the edge of the counter and splatting on the floor. 

The chemical smell of fake apples and soap fill her senses, and she throws the sudsy towel in a basket for towels that need to be laundered. She takes another towel and wipes off the suds, leaving behind a sticky, chemical residue as she throws that one in the hamper too. She’s startled from her dazed attempt at cleaning to keep her hands and mind busy when the little egg timer buzzes. 

She pulls out the mini muffin tray and sets it on the counter, nearly burning herself in the process. The acrid scent of scorched chemical dish soap wafts up and mixes with the sweet, fudgy smell of the cupcakes. She looks through the tray at the unfrosted, gooey chocolate baked goods before her, and picks one of them up. She dumps the rest in the trash and drops the tray by the sink. 

Stretching up to grab a spoon and can of chocolate frosting, she sees a figure standing there where there hadn’t been just the moment before. She nearly jumps out of her fucking skin, seeing you there looking like you clawed your way out of a grave. 

Your striped tights are snagged and torn, you’re smudged with mud and dirt, there’s a twig or something tangled in your hair. Your makeup is smudged too, making you look… almost frightening. Without hesitation, you step forward as the last parts of the tile floor close themselves up behind you. You’re looking at her with a surprising intensity, eyes locked on her like a predator hunting down its prey. She starts to say something, but you don’t care, wasting no time as you ensure she can’t run out the door past you - not that she would, you don’t think. It’s merely a strategic precaution. 

“Do you even realize what you’ve done?”

Your voice is lower than usual, sharper and rougher and serious. You speak quickly and sharply, like your tongue itself is a vorpal blade that you’re all too comfortable wielding. Mal tries to answer, but you cut her off before she can. 

“Because I find it hard to believe that anyone could be so stupidly foolish.” You spit, taking a step forward. 

“I’m sure you’d love to know the outs and ins of what I know, but that is not a pleasure you’ll have the fortune of crossing paths with as of yet.” You say quickly, cutting straight to the point. “If you value the lives and wellbeing of your friends, or more likely, your own self serving preservation, if you don’t crave a miserable lifetime in a dungeon so deep you’ll never hope to see the sun or breath clean air again, if you don’t wish to resign yourself to a life worse than death, worse than even you could imagine…”

You lower your voice further, and when you speak, Mal feels like she’s been stung. 

“You will not breathe a word of what you’ve done. Not to anybody.” 

Mal’s stomach drops. She swallows thickly, trying not to let you see how thrown off by you she is. You haven’t said what you know, which means you probably know nothing. This is just some cheap attempt to shake her down for information because you’re worried about Ben or something. It’s the only thing that makes sense, but it sounds flimsy even to her. 

“Not only is tampering with the free will of others an unforgivable crime,” You continue, even more intense than before. You’re gripping onto your self control with white knuckles, desperately trying not to give into the madness you’re barely restraining. 

A cold sweat breaks out across Mal’s skin. Tampering with free will… you do know. Somehow you know what she did, what she did to Ben. 

“But you’ve chosen for reasons way beyond my understanding or interest to commit the most egregious act of treason I have ever heard tell of.” You say sharply in a low voice, like the information strategically parting from your lips is only and exclusively for you and her. 

“I’m sure you can’t possibly grasp the ramifications of what you’ve done- if you could you would have turned back long before now.” You say, a note of warning in your voice. “But now it is my duty to prevent your infectious actions from metastasizing further than they already have. It breaks my heart that you would damn so many innocent people who have suffered like you have just for-”

A chilling, dry laugh leaves your throat. 

“I don’t know why, really. Nor am I bothered to care. Not when there is this much damage to be controlled.”

You take yet another step closer. Not close enough to touch each other, but uncomfortably so. 

“You are to keep your head down.” You hiss, “You are to cease any and all further attempts to interfere with the crown, or the mess that you’ve created. And above all else, you are to do nothing to raise any suspicion.”

You’re not threatening her, she realizes. You’re warning her. 

“If you intend for even a moment to step a toe out of the parameters which I have given you, I will assure you the consequences will come faster than you could possibly run from them.”

You sound so sure. You’re so quiet and calm, like you’re just… telling her the facts. You’re not trying to scare her with bluster and intimidation tactics - that she could handle. That she’s used to. But this… she’s never seen this from anyone. Realizing how cornered she is, she swallows thickly, looking around and trying to seem nonchalant, desperately looking for any way to deflect your accusations. Your preternaturally in tune perception of the situation. 

“Look, you’re crazy if you-”

“Oh. Of course.”

You cut her off with a raw, honest stare. She sees something deep inside you, an unstable glint you’ve never let this far out. It’s like you’re finally loosening reins on a creature you’ve always had well trained and under your command. 

“Mad as a fucking hatter.” You say in a joltingly light, casual tone. “The best people are.”

Before she can blink, she’s hit with the smell of dirt. The floor below you cracks, crumbling away into nothing. You drop fearlessly down into the dark maw of the earth, keeping your gaze on her the whole time. In the same breath, the floor closes back up without leaving so much as a trace. 

Finally alone again - at least, she thinks so - she grips the counter tightly, hoping the cool metal will soothe her shaking hands. Her heart is pounding, like it’s trying to break out of her chest. Alice is just some person, some random girl who fell down the wrong hole in the ground. You’re her daughter, so you shouldn’t… how the fuck did you do that?! 

You and Ben, however, used the opportunity to learn about more and more of the nuanced aspects of politics, social graces, and media training. Your parents were both glad for this, and since you seemed on track to be real politicians and not just socialites, it was a perfect fit. However, saying that you have to go to your class for advanced political studies, world history, social graces, and media training is a little too clunky for your taste. You and Ben never grew out of calling them etiquette lessons, so the name stuck to this day.

On this day in particular, you now find yourself sitting next to Ben at a large table in one of the many makeshift conference rooms on campus. You’ve been in and out of meetings and lessons and debriefings about the Isle kids’ arrival, and now you’ve finally made it nearly to the end of your to do list. Ben insisted you didn’t need to stay late with him to do all this paperwork, but you insisted equally as much that you wouldn’t dream of leaving him to do it all himself. Now as Ben skims the monotonous text, signing on lines and initialing boxes, you dig through a seemingly endless database of forms, trying to find the right one. 

You bounce increasingly obscure form titles back and forth for a few minutes. After coming up with nothing, Ben lets out an amiable laugh. He should have expected something that seems straightforward would take at least ten times as long as it should. That’s government for you, that’s what his dad would say. A knock at the door draws both your attention, and Jane pokes her head in awkwardly. She tucks a section of her dark blunt bob behind her ear, then speaks nervously. 

“Uh, hi. My mom sent me,” she says in a quiet, hesitant voice. “She said she’s going to be about half an hour late. There was a problem with some ducks in the forest, or something?” 

Ben smiles at her politely.

“Thanks, Jane.” Ben says politely. Jane nods and leaves quickly, fussing with her short hair. You let out a puff of air from between your lips.

“Even more delays…” you murmur, clicking onto page 23 out of 66 of forms to look through. “How fun.”

Ben chuckles, agreeing as he stands up to stretch his legs. He walks around for a moment, and turns on an extra lamp. It’s starting to get dark out, and the last thing either of you need right now is eye strain. Wait, it’s already getting dark out? He stops in his tracks.

“Shit.” He mutters, reaching for his phone on the table. He completely forgot about dinner with Audrey, but he has to find these forms and get them filled out tonight. You try not to look like you're listening too closely as the phone rings, but Audrey’s voice is quite hard to ignore. Before he can greet her, she’s already demanding to know where he is and why he’s late.

“No, no. I- I didn’t forget. I… well… uh, no. It’s-” Ben rambles around Audrey’s interjections. He gets up, pacing around a little, and walking across the room away from you. He doesn’t want you to have to hear this. 

“We’re just running behind. No- No! I would never intentionally… stand you up… I-” 

“Right!” Audrey snaps on the other end, forcing a smile. “Well then. Maybe we should just cancel!” 

“Wh- uh, okay. I- I’ll make it up to you. We can… uh, later this week? We’ll - before the next tourney meet? I…” 

Ben sighs and pulls his phone away, looking at the screen. Call ended. He walks back over to the table, sitting down to continue trudging through the task at hand. You wordlessly slide a teacup over toward him, the colorful porcelain filled with warm chai, perfectly sweetened. He cracks a smile, and accepts the cup. 

“Thanks, bunny.” He says quietly. You hum warmly in response. You settle back into your comfortable silence, trudging through forms and digging through documents. As you sit across from each other, the pile of completed paperwork steadily grows taller. Hours pass, and you don’t realize how late it is until you’re finally ready to call it quits for tonight. You stumble through your bedtime routine, grateful that you have your muscle memory to carry you through. As soon as your head hits your soft pillow… nothing happens. You toss and turn for a few minutes, trying to get comfortable, then let out an irritated sigh. You managed to get through such a long day and mountains of paperwork, and you still can’t sleep. 

In the opposite wing of the dorms, Ben has no trouble winding down. He’s cozy in his silky royal blue and daffodil yellow sheets, and he’s satisfied with a long day of hard, productive work. He lets out a soft breath, feeling himself teetering on the brink of sleep. Then he hears his door creak open. Soft, muffled footsteps creep across the wood floor, then grow silent as they meet the expansive carpet covering the majority of the floor. He doesn’t move, doesn’t open his eyes, but he can feel someone crouching next to his bed. 

“...Ben?”

He cracks a smile at the sound of your voice, how quiet and tiny you sound in the lateness of the night. You smile a little too when you see him fighting a little grin. After a moment, he answers. 

“Yes bunny?”

“Are you asleep?” You ask carefully. You wait in the darkness for him to answer. 

“Yes.” 

You smile at his sarcastic response, letting out a little breathy giggle through your nose. You kick off your bunny slippers - complete with little tophats - and crawl into bed next to Ben. He’s already scooching over and lifting up the blankets for you, pulling them over your shoulders the way he knows you like. 

He doesn’t need to ask if you couldn’t sleep, he already knows you couldn’t. You’ve been doing this, sneaking in for sleepovers when insomnia gets the best of you, for as long as he can remember. Something about his presence comforts you, relaxes you through even the longest, most never ending nights. No matter how tired he is, he’s always happy to be there for you on nights like tonight, he’s always happy to keep you warm and talk you to sleep. 

And that’s just what he does. He lets you lead the conversation, rambling about whatever springs to mind, emptying out your brain so you can rest. He’d like to think he knows you pretty well by now. He knows just what to do to help you settle down, to give you the best chance of having a restful night. It’s no surprise to him that you mostly seem to be thinking about the Isle kids. 

“I mean, this is real. Our actions mean they get a chance at a better life.” You mutter drowsily. Your cheek is squished against his pillow and your words are heavy with fatigue. Ben can’t help but think it makes your Wonderland accent that much… cuter. 

“Yeah,” He agrees. He traces his hand along your back soothingly. He glances down and notices you’re wearing the white button down shirt you sometimes wear as a pajama top. He asked you about it once, and you said it made you think of him. He smiles a little as he settles back into his pillows.

“I just hope they’ll be able to assimilate well.” You say, a tone of worry now present in your words. “The only thing worse than doing nothing would be having their decisions made for them because of social pressure…” 

“We’ll keep a close eye out for that.” Ben says. His voice is husky and drowsy. It fills you with warmth, with an appreciation for him and the way he stays up with you even though you know how tired he must be. You nod a little, then find yourself rambling again. 

“I just wish there was a way to guarantee that they felt welcome and not… ostracized.” You mumble. You inch closer to him, snuggling into his warm chest and listening to his soothing heartbeat. It speeds up almost imperceptibly as you do.

“Make sure they know that we know them as people. As individuals, and not just…” You continue, cutting yourself off with a yawn. You stretch a little as you do, then curl back up. Ben looks down at you, smiling a little at how sweet you are, at how clingy you get when you’re sleepy. 

“As the children of their parents…” You finish. Ben hums in agreement. He notices how heavy your eyes are getting, how your speech is slowing, how the flow of your thoughts have gone from a fully blasting garden hose to a subtly dripping kitchen sink. You’re about to fall asleep, which means he can let himself sleep too. He couldn’t have gone to bed before now if he wanted to. If he knows you can’t sleep, he won’t be able to either. But feeling your soft breaths across his skin, feeling the way your chest rises and falls as his hand lays comfortingly on your side, knowing that you’re warm and safe here, with him… Ben feels more relaxed than he has in a long time. Probably since… the last time you couldn’t sleep. 

Sometimes when it’s just the two of you like this, all drowsy and late at night, in the moments before he falls asleep, Ben sometimes gets… weird thoughts. Weird, random, impulsive thoughts that are not at all like him. Totally out of left field stuff, like… wanting to kiss you. Like, really, really wanting to kiss you. Sometimes that turns into wanting to hold you, too. And not like this, not holding you platonically, like a best friend, but… holding you a different way. Maybe wanting to hold you tight in his arms, and lay you down in his big, silky bed, and… 

Ben squeezes his eyes shut tight for a moment before relaxing his face. He puts a manual stop to that train of thought, absolutely refusing to let it continue anymore. He won’t entertain it, he won’t let it heat up his cheeks anymore. He doesn’t like thinking things like that about anyone, and he certainly won’t let himself think anything like that about you. He sighs softly. These crazy thoughts will be gone by the morning. They always are. They have to be. 

Besides, it’s so late, he won’t even remember this by the time he wakes up. That’s what he always tells himself. The last thing he would never admit to anyone - not even to himself - surfaces right before he falls asleep. It must be the late hour, where everything vulnerable feels completely abstract and intangible, but he thinks it’s a lot easier to stop himself from thinking those things about Audrey than it is to stop thinking those things about you. 

While you and Ben drift off to sleep, safe and sound in each other’s arms, someone else is wide awake. Sitting in the dorm she shares with Evie, Mal sits on her bed, scouring her spell book exactly like she’s been doing since Ben left earlier that afternoon. After hours of hitting brick wall after brick wall, Mal is met with the back cover of the book. Again. She lets out a frustrated noise, and flips back to the beginning.

“There’s not a single love spell in this whole fucking book!” She exclaims. She looks over the first few pages, reading them more closely in hopes that she somehow missed something. Evie sits across the room in front of a lit up mirror, plucking meticulously at her eyebrows. 

“Are we…” She winces, then inspects her skin and eyebrows again. “Are we sure we need a love spell?” 

Mal rolls her eyes at the question. Yes, obviously they need a love spell. Evie is oblivious to her irritation, and continues thinking out loud around her careful use of the sharp tweezers in her hand. 

“I could… just work my charm on him. All it would take is one look into my…” Another wince. “Hypnotizing eyes, and he’d be wrapped around my finger.”

She leans back, taking a final look at her work, more satisfied with her appearance now. 

“I mean, he’s not really my type, but…” she shrugs, and looks at Mal, waiting for some kind of reaction from her. Mal doesn’t look up at Evie’s eyebrows, she just keeps digging through her book and ignoring the sound of Carlos and Jay playing videogames.

“No, we need a spell. This has to work. It has to be foolproof.” 

Evie grabs a jade roller and some hydrating gel. She still can’t believe how amazing the makeup and the skincare in Auradon is. She hasn’t seen one half wilted aloe plant, and this gel is infused with roses from Aurora’s moors, glacier water from Arendelle, and caviar fished from the Caribbean. She can’t wait to get her hands on a decent blush, and a lip liner that doesn’t double as eyeliner and an eyebrow pencil. 

Evie notices the scowl on Mal’s face as she hunches over the spell book. Normally she would scold Mal for making faces that will give her wrinkles, but now that she has her hands on retinol, hyaluronic acid, and hydrocolloid patches, she can fix any stress wrinkles Mal brings upon herself. After what feels like an eternity of searching the same pages over and over, something catches Mal’s eye, causing her to stop in her tracks. It’s more of her mothers rambling annotations and scrawled notes, this time on the topic of hypnosis. 

Hypnosis can be useful as long as you’re stealthy with it. Jafar got sloppy, he kept hypnotizing that stupid sultan over and over, not bothering to use hypnosis for it’s true purpose - a means to an end. If you’re an evil genius like I am, and you use hypnosis sparingly, no one will be the wiser. Don’t get me started on that oversized calamari - Ursula has to be the best example of what not to do when you’re hypnotizing a bonehead prince to make him think he’s in love with you. Something as easily breakable as a necklace? Please. Besides, everyone knows the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. 

Her mother’s scratchy handwriting goes on for a while, some anecdote about her and Mal’s father, something she’d rather not read. Ever. She thinks back to what Evie said about wrapping Ben around her finger, and in one desperately needed moment of clarity, everything falls into place. A plan begins to form in her mind. 

“This… this could work.” She says. Those three, quietly spoken words get the attention of everyone in the room. Evie sets down her gua sha stone, and Carlos pauses their videogame. They all walk over, hesitant and eager to hear what Mal figured out. Mal lets out a laugh of disbelief. It seems so simple now, she wonders why she didn’t think of it sooner. She can just hypnotize Ben into falling in love with her. She can trick him into thinking that he loves Mal more than he’s ever loved Audrey, then - boom! Front row seats to coronation, which means front row seats to stealing the wand out from under their noses. 

While Mal silently hashes out the details so she can tell her friends, Evie inspects her cuticles. She really should push them back. She stands up, grabbing a cuticle pusher and an orange wood stick from her pencil cup before making her way back over to Mal’s bed. As the three of them wait with bated breath, Mal looks over the hypnosis spell again and again. After a few moments, she tucks a piece of paper between the pages, marking her spell to reference later. She slams the book shut, and looks up at her friends.

“Thanks.” You say quietly, accepting it and looking down to tuck it back into your bag. You fuss with the zipper for a moment as you approach the uniformly shaped hedges in front of the school. In your attempts to get your bag closed back up, you don’t notice yourself veering off the path in the wrong direction until you feel Ben’s hand on your back. You look up at him as he guides you to the right with the rest of the group. 

“This way, bunny.” He says quietly, and you smile, slightly embarrassed at having started to go the wrong way again. You’re both so used to Ben course correcting you like this that you don’t notice it anymore. But Audrey notices. She always does. Before she can grab onto his arm again, he uses it to draw the Isle kids’ attention to the school, leaving her unable to hold onto him. 

“Auradon Prep; originally built over 300 years ago and converted into a high school by my father, when he became king.” 

As Ben talks, it reminds you of your own class’s orientation day at the school a few years ago, led by Ben’s dad. You were so nervous that you must have stayed within two feet of Ben the entire time. He’s come such a long way since then, you both have. You could listen to him speak about the school, about this country, about the dynasties of royal families and the positive changes they’ve made for their people for hours. He sounds so much like his dad, and it fills you with a tender sense of pride. 

He pauses in front of the statue of his dad and you smile, knowing exactly what’s coming. He looks up at the granite likeness of his dad’s familiar face, his powerful stance, and claps twice. In an instant, the stone shifts and morphs, depicting him now in his beast form. A shrill scream pierces the air behind you and you jump at the noise, clutching your pearls as you startle. You both look back as Ben instinctively places his hands on your shoulders. It feels stable and reassuring, and you feel your heartbeat begin to calm down at the contact. Audrey waits to see if Ben plans on comforting her too, but he just looks down at you, making sure you’re alright.

“You okay?” He asks quietly. You nod, and he lets out a soft breath.

“Yeah.” You breathe so quietly anyone else would have missed it. 

Audrey lets out an irritated huff, crossing her arms. After that brief moment of reassurance, you look over at Carlos, who seems to have jumped into Jay’s arms. It’s quiet for a moment as Jay unceremoniously drops Carlos back onto the ground, and Carlos attempts to salvage what’s left of his dignity. Ben chuckles lightly, but not maliciously. Carlos notices this and seems confused that someone is actually laughing with him and not at him. 

“Carlos, it’s okay.” Ben says, “My father wanted his statue to morph from beast to man. To remind us that anything is possible.”

Ben hears you finish the last part of the sentence under your breath with him. You’ve both heard his father say those same words thousands of times, and it brings a sudden smile to his face that takes him a moment to get back under control. Part of you wishes that Belle and Adam were here to see him now, see how well he’s doing, how much he seems like both of them in this moment. You know in your bones that if his parents could see him like this, see how naturally and gracefully he talks about the school and the history of his country, they would be proud beyond words. But you’re here to see it, and that feels like enough. 

Mal looks at the statue, seeming unimpressed.

“Does he shed much?” She asks with a note of snarkiness to her voice.

“Yeah,” Ben deadpans, “Mom won’t let him on the couch.”

His quick response wins a look of approval from Mal, a chuckle from the other Isle kids, and a loud laugh from you - the kind that takes a moment to trail off. Once you’ve caught your breath, you turn to him to keep walking, this time in the correct direction.

“There’s lint rollers hidden all over the palace.” You add through a giggle, making Ben laugh audibly. Audrey seems less impressed by the ice breaking banter, keeping a tight smile plastered on her face and fighting the urge to roll her eyes. 

By the time Ben has brought you all into the foyer of the dorms and explained a little more about the history of the school, Mal is already asking about magic. She seems very curious, but like she doesn’t want to seem like she cares all that much - a defense mechanism, you assume. What people don’t know you care about, they can’t ruin. 

“Like, wands? And things like that?” Mal asks casually. 

“Yeah, it exists of course.” Ben begins, “But it’s pretty much retired. Except for some forms.” He finishes, gesturing to you, knowing you’re much more qualified to answer magic related questions. 

“Right.” You agree, “You see, Wonderland magic is based in nonsense, but here in overland where everything is sense, nonsense doesn’t make nearly as much sense, so it really doesn’t work quite as well - or quite the same way - as it would in a place where things don’t make much of any sense at all…” 

You begin to explain, only catching yourself mid ramble towards the end of your train of thought. You trail off, clearing your throat a little. 

“But that’s really a story for another time.” You finish. You don’t want to overwhelm them with information on their first day, and Wonderland rules (or lack thereof), are confusing to most people on a good day. Besides, none of them are from timeless domains, so anything they would learn about Wonderland could only be theoretical. Realization crosses Mal’s face, and she points to you. 

“So you’d be…”

“Alice’s daughter. Of Wonderland.” You clarify. Ben smiles a little, the way he always does when you introduce yourself like that. He thinks it’s so endearing how you think any Alice other your mom would spring to someone’s mind upon meeting you. 

“That explains the teapot bag…” Evie mutters. Someone chuckles, you’re not sure who, but you find yourself hoping this wraps up somewhat soon. You’re trying so hard to be patient, but you were dragged away from Wonderland so suddenly, and it’s always disorienting for you  like that. Besides, you’ve heard whispers of a nest egg that’s sure to hatch soon, and you’re dying to go back to Wonderland so you can get a look at it, maybe get some pictures. 

“Exactly,” Ben says, turning to you. You’re so grateful that he’s always here to help you navigate awkward moments, like when you don’t notice you’ve been rambling, or make a joke that doesn’t make sense to anyone except him. 

“She knows the most about magic out of anyone at Auradon Prep.” Ben continues, turning to you, “It’s just like you said, bunny. Most of us here are just ordinary mortals.”

Mal scoffs at that for two reasons. Not only did a literal prince just call himself a regular average Joe, but you’re supposed to be the one who knows the most about magic? She doesn’t think so. Not when she’s the one with her mother’s spell book hidden in her bag right now. She doubts you’ll still be the one who knows the most about magic starting pretty damn soon. There’s a new queen in town. 

“Ordinary mortals, who… just happen to be kings and queens.” She says. At the discussion of royal status, Audrey suddenly finds herself interested in joining the conversation again. She’s always been a little too eager to talk about royal status and bloodlines for your liking. 

“That’s true!” She says with that glimmer in her eye that only appears when she’s bragging. She reaches for Ben’s arm again, finally managing to grab it. “Our royal blood goes back hundreds of years…”

She pulls Ben’s arm around her shoulder, and he chuckles awkwardly. He catches your eye for a brief moment, silently praying for a graceful way out of yet another moment made uncomfortable by Audrey’s superior attitude and love of public displays of affection. You know exactly what he’s silently telling you from one look at his face, and you nod your head subtly toward the stairs, drawing his attention there. He looks over, spotting Doug on his way down to the great hall. 

“Doug!” He calls, lifting his arm off Audrey to wave Doug over. “Doug, come down.” 

Doug nods, and jogs down the last few stairs. He walks over to meet Ben and you, standing in front of the Isle kids.

“This is Doug.” Ben introduces him to their new students. “He’s going to help you with your classes, and schedules, and show you around the rest of the dorms.” They’re silent, and he can sense their apprehension about being handed off to someone, no matter how well they mask it. 

“I’ll see you later, okay?” He says, with a small smile. There’s a reassuring quality to his tone of voice that puts everyone in the room at ease. The Isle kids seem to relax a little, and Ben continues, “And if there is anything else you need, please, feel free to-” “Ask Doug.” 

Audrey jumps in yet again with that tense smile, cutting off Ben for the… you’ve lost count of how many times, at this point. There’s some more forced laughter between Audrey and Mal, then before you know it, Audrey is dragging Ben away. You start to leave as well, reaching into your bag for your journal to check where you’re supposed to be right now. 

“Bunny!” Ben calls, and you turn your head. “This way.” 

You turn and scurry a few steps to catch up with him and Audrey. As Doug leads them to their dorms, Evie looks back, her gaze lingering on Ben’s hand resting on your back. Something he’s done very casually a few times in the short while they’ve been here in Auradon, but never once to his actual girlfriend. Evie might be a pretty face, but she’s definitely not stupid when it comes to love. She sighs, and crosses Ben off her mental list of potential princes. One girl she can easily compete with, but two other girls fighting for his attention means he’s just not worth her time. Besides, if Audrey doesn’t stand a chance against you - which she sure doesn’t seem to in Evie’s opinion - she’s sure it won’t be easy for anyone else, even someone as gorgeous as her. 

Across the great hall, Audrey stares straight ahead. She refuses to look at you, rolling her eyes and forcing a smile before turning specifically to look at Ben. 

“But Bennyboo,” She says patiently, “We’re supposed to have dinner tonight, remember?”

Ben’s brow furrows for a moment before he remembers the plans they had made.

“Oh, right.” He wonders how he could have forgotten that, but chalks it up to the very busy, very important day. 

“So we should probably get going,” she says to you, insincerely sweet. “Let’s catch up later, ‘kay?”

She begins to drag Ben away from you, but he hesitates for a moment. Suddenly he remembers why he hadn’t been thinking about dinner with her yet. 

“Actually, Audrey, we’re uh,” he looks at you before turning back to her. “We’re having dinner later. After the council stuff this evening.”

Finally, her mood drops in a way that no amount of chipper facades and tropical punch energy drinks can disguise. 

“...Right.” She says slowly, watching Ben take another step closer to you. 

“We actually need to…” He says, trailing off as you hold out your pocket watch for him to look at. The hands are a little too close to the word Late! for his comfort. 

“Oh god.” He mutters quietly. Audrey huffs and he turns back to her, really needing to wrap this up. 

“You’re welcome to join us, if you want.” He offers, kindly telling her that either way, you two need to leave right now. Her forced smile grows stale at the idea of having to sit through even more boring meetings, especially unnecessary ones. 

“I have a thing.” She says quickly, “I really need to go over the cheer routines we’re doing for the next tourney match. I cannot let Jane be an embarrassment to the squad again.” 

“Okay, so dinner later.” Ben confirms. He walks over to give her a chaste peck on the cheek before dragging you away to the next meeting you’re almost late for. She watches the way his hand stays on your back, even when you must clearly know where you’re going. She watches the way you talk to each other as you leave, animatedly and closely in a way that feels too intimate for her liking. 

You call back to them quickly before running into the trees and looking for a grassy clearing big enough to make a rabbit hole. You find exactly the spot you’re looking for, and quickly summon a rabbit hole to bring you back to Auradon. You watch the earth crumble and sink in front of you as the rabbit hole forms at your feet. As soon as it’s big enough, you jump in feet first, and the ground quickly closes around you. You fall for a few moments, plummeting much faster than before, spinning through the dark earthy air. After a few moments of tumbling through the darkness, there’s a rumbling as the earth opens up above you. You grab onto the ledge, and hoist yourself up, crawling onto your dorm room floor. You let yourself get your bearings for a moment, before remembering why you’re in such a rush.

“Shit, shit, shit…” You mutter again, brushing the dirt off your clothes as you hurry out of your dorm room. You scurry down several flights of stairs, twisting and turning through corridors to get to the reception for the Isle kids. You dust yourself off and straighten up all the little parts of your outfit, including the ribbon you always wear on your head in some way or another. It’s soft and worn, a gift from your mother dyed with Wonderland blackberries. It always carries the familiar scents of sweet summertime tea and fruit, and the reassuring embrace of your mother’s hugs. Lost in the thought, you find yourself tripping over your shoes and stumbling the last few steps to the great hall. You let out a loud noise of surprise before you manage to catch yourself.

“Oh- goodness!” You exclaim. You look around, hoping no one heard you, and you’re relieved to see that there’s no one else inside the great hall. Everyone is already outside for the reception, and the cheerful melodies of the school band must have covered up any noise you made. Wait, the band is already playing. 

“I must be later than I thought…” you mutter. You scurry down the cobblestone path, spotting Ben with Fairy Godmother and Audrey just past the statue of Ben’s father. You move quickly, managing to take your place among them, hoping to seamlessly blend in as if you’d been here the whole time. 

“Late again, Ms. Liddell?” Fairy Godmother asks quietly. Ben looks down in surprise, just noticing your arrival. You flash him a brief look of encouragement, one that says see? I told you I’d be here on time. More or less. Ben smiles, warm and sincere as he feels a renewed sense of reassurement and confidence that always seems to arrive along with you. After that moment of eye contact, you reply softly to Fairy Godmother. 

“No excuse, ma’am - I’m simply on Wonderland time.”

Which is, to say, no time at all, what with Wonderland being a timeless domain and such. The main difference between Wonderland and Neverland is that in Neverland, time stands still, but in Wonderland, it doesn’t exist at all. You’ve always had a hard time remembering that time is so important overland, hence the pocket watch. The feeling of Ben’s hand on your neck snaps you out of the thought, and you look over at him as he plucks a sparkling pink leaf off your collar, letting it fall to the ground as the limo pulls up.

“Thanks-” You barely have time to whisper before the car doors open, and two rowdy looking boys tumble out, fighting over a large piece of fabric. The band stops playing, shocked at the unusual display of behavior. Fairy Godmother approaches as the other two climb out of the car. The purple haired one - Mal, if you’re correct - nudges the boys and mutters something to them, causing them to straighten up. You wait next to Ben, with Audrey on his other side, as Fairy Godmother greets them and begins her introduction of herself, and Auradon Prep. Your eyes fall to the manicured hedges surrounding the brick path leading into the school. You let yourself watch the leaves rustle fluidly in the ambient breeze, thinking about the foliage in Wonderland. Given a choice, you prefer Wonderland plant life - it all feels much more dynamic and interesting. You think you could watch those little pink leaves shimmer and glisten all day long, if you had the time, of course. Although, you must admit to yourself how fond you've grown of these hedges too. They're uniform, but still individualistic when you look close enough. They’re quite stately. A real treat. 

"It is so good to finally meet you all."

You snap back to attention as Ben begins to speak, and introduces himself. Excitement starts to stir inside you as you and Ben both realize in that moment that it's finally happening. All your hard work is about to pay off. The only one who doesn't seem to realize the importance of this moment is Audrey. Ben barely has time to introduce himself before she cuts him off to interject. 

"Prince," she emphasizes, "Benjamin."

She squeezes his arm and looks up at him. 

"Soon to be king!"

You fight the urge to share a knowing look with Ben, all too well aware of how frequently Audrey seems to derail serious discussions and meetings for things that are barely relevant at best. Though his expression doesn't show it, Ben doesn't even need to look at your face to know the exact expression present on it. 

In front of you, the blue haired girl - the Evil Queen's daughter - steps forward and extends her hand to Ben with an excited look on her face. 

"You had me at prince," she says, clearly infatuated with Ben’s title. Her voice is breathy and flirtatious as she speaks, but something tells you that the stakes are higher for her than she's letting on. "My mom’s a queen, which makes me a princess…"

Before the sigh can leave her lips, Audrey interjects again. You watch her face subtly warp into one of the fakest smiles you've ever seen as she speaks with a performative, forced friendliness. 

"The Evil Queen has no royal status here." Her tone is somehow even more fake than her smile. "And neither do you!"

It's silent for a moment as Evie tries not to make her rejection known. Status seems to be important to her, and coming from a place like the Isle where one has so little, it seems cruel to you for Audrey to strip that away so carelessly. After another moment of painful, sad silence, Ben chuckles politely in an attempt to smooth things over. 

“...This is Audrey-”

“Princess Audrey.” She emphasizes. You wonder if she’s deliberately trying to make Ben’s job harder, or if she’s just that callous. Audrey grabs Ben’s hand in spite of the awkward distance between them - not far, but too far to hold hands comfortably. 

“His girlfriend.” She finishes, “Right Bennyboo?”

You don’t say anything, you don’t make a single noise at any of her comments. Somehow your silence is louder to Ben than anything else you could have said. You’ve never been a fan of Audrey’s nickname for him, something Ben has a slight suspicion about. You think his name suits him perfectly well. All of the cutesy modifiers seem to be because she likes saying them rather than for expressing her affection for him. A nickname, you think, should be like a kiss to the cheek. Soft and natural, pleasant every time it happens. But Bennyboo? It has never hit your ear right from the day she came up with it, and you find yourself cringing a little whenever its said in your vicinity. 

Ben leans over awkwardly, allowing Audrey to hold his hand for a moment. He knows it will make a worse scene if she doesn’t get her way, so he finds himself more prone to compromising with her in cases like this - which happens often. After that brief moment, he finds a graceful exit in removing his hand to bring you forward and introduce you. He rests the hand closest to you on your lower back, gesturing to you as you wave to them politely. You can take a little while to warm up to people, you’ve been that way since you were kids, for as long as Ben can remember. He rubs his thumb over the fabric of your shirt encouragingly. It’s familiar, a reminder that he’s there for you. 

The Isle kids’ eyes linger on you as Ben tells them your name, but Audrey’s eyes linger on Ben’s hand still placed comfortably on your back. After you finish greeting them, Fairy Godmother steps forward again.

“Alright!” She says, chipper attitude disguising the worry and stress beginning to fringe in around the edges of her mind. She gestures to you, Ben, and Audrey. 

“These three are going to show you around, and I’ll see you tomorrow in class.” She states in her usual soft, sweet tone before launching into one of her classic monologues, “The doors of wisdom are never closed!” 

The Isle kids look surprised at the way she speaks, gesturing dramatically. You and Ben share a look, knowing exactly what she’s about to say. 

“But, the library hours are from eight to eleven,” she adds, “and as you may have heard, I have a little thing about curfews.”

Ben catches a glimpse of you lip synching along with her, silently following along with a little thing about curfews at the same time as she says it. It catches him off guard, and he has to stop himself from laughing, which of course, leads to you suppressing a smile too. Audrey clutches her purse irritably as Ben tries to disguise his laugh as a cough. She takes note of the way you keep your eyes firmly fixed on the ground, the way you try to bite back a laugh and a smile of your own. You know if you look over at Ben then you’ll both devolve into inconsolable laughter, the kind only the closest of friends can bring about in each other. 

Fairy Godmother leaves, and Ben is able to collect himself, stepping forward toward the Isle kids to begin his speech. An uncharacteristically nervous flutter appears within him, making his stomach flip. He wishes he had had time to run it by you again, just one more time. But he got to run it by Audrey - sort of. Regardless, Audrey said it was good. She gave it her seal of approval, and as his girlfriend, Ben needs to trust her judgment, and trust that she has his best interest at heart. He lets out a little breath, preparing himself. 

This is it.

This is his chance to break the generational cycle that’s been created, to end the years of being stuck in an echochamber of war and unrest, to heal the trauma that the nation has collectively suffered - especially the innocent people stuck on the Isle. This is his very first chance to bridge the gap,to really connect with the Isle kids and let them know that they’re welcome with open arms, and they’re accepted unconditionally. It sounds improbable to say that seven teenagers can make history, but that’s truly what this is - history in the making. History that will benefit everyone in the nation years down the line. They’re building the future in this very moment. 

“It is so, so…” Ben begins, stepping forward, “so good to finally meet you-”

He’s cut off with a grunt as one of them punches him in the chest. Your eyes flare in concern for a moment, but Ben’s smile denotes it as a sign of camaraderie. Nonetheless, it catches you both by surprise. Ben recovers quickly and seamlessly, just like a politician, a future king, should. It’s one of his talents, and is something you’ve always admired about him. You walk next to him, and greet the first person in line - you’re almost sure he’s Jafar’s son - as Ben shakes the other girl’s hand. Your shoulder brushes against Ben’s, and he falters for a moment. He stares at Maleficent’s purple haired daughter blankly for a moment, all too aware of how close your arm is to his. He snaps out of it a moment later, and continues his speech.

“This is a momentous occasion,” he begins. You realize he’s going to do the full original speech, that he didn’t revise or edit it for this less formal occasion. He moves to shake hands with the next person. 

“And one that I hope will go down in history…” He trails off, feeling something sticky rub off on his hand. He looks down at the dark smudge, and brings his hand up to his nose, sniffing hesitantly. It smells sweet, and he’s a little relieved. 

“Is that chocolate?” He asks. 

His enhanced sense of smell inherited from his father confirms that it is, in fact, chocolate. Milk chocolate, with traces of peanut butter. Ben glances over at you for a brief moment as you flash him a knowing smile. Candy and sweets in the limo had been your idea, a welcoming gift to lift their spirits and ease their travels. Based on all the plastic wrappers and brightly colored sugar crystals here and there, it seems to have been a successful welcoming gesture. As you reach Cruella De Vil’s son, you pull a lacy handkerchief out of your tea pot bag, and hand it to him so he can wipe the rest of the chocolate off his hands and face. He thanks you quietly as Ben continues his speech.

“As the day our two peoples began to heal.” He states, as confident and well rehearsed as ever. Before he can continue, he gets cut off by Maleficent’s daughter.

“Or the day that you showed four peoples where the bathrooms are.” She says in an exaggerated, sarcastic tone of voice, eliciting a laugh from her peers. Just as you feared, this whole thing is way too formal for the occasion. Maleficent’s daughter seems to be the ringleader out of the four of them. 

Ben falters for a moment, realizing that he should have taken your advice and edited his speech before now. But when would he have found time to? He thinks back to his interaction with Audrey and realizes that she was more motivated to tell Ben all her gossip than she was to actually look over his speech with a critical eye. He remembers what you told him earlier, your concerns about it being too formal for the occasion. Once again, your judgment was spot on. You’ve never been one to say I told you so, but in this moment, he would let you if you wanted to. He's able to recover quickly.

"A little bit over the top?" He asks with a chuckle. She seems impressed that he wasn't outwardly hurt by her comments.

"A little more than a little bit." She retorts.

“Well, so much for my first impression.” Ben jokes back, eliciting something close to a chuckle out of her. You let out a small breath, relieved that he diffused the situation, and can now get their welcome and orientation back on track after breaking the ice like that. Being able to seem like a leader without coming across as intimidating or authoritarian is already a hard balance to strike, and it’s even more difficult when you need to seem personable and friendly without being unprofessional. Add in the unknowns of blazing a trail into all new territory like this, and what Ben is doing is truly impressive. Although you’re incredibly proud and impressed, you’re not at all surprised at Ben for being able to pull this off. If anyone could, you know it would be him. Moments like these really exemplify his passion for politics, for using his power the way it was intended - to improve the lives of everyone in Auradon. He's always been like this, you both have since you were knee high to a march hare. It's one of the reasons you have such a close bond. You've never minded too much that your peers are more inclined to the social aspect of your titles than the political end of things, you think it’s best not to venture into something as taxing as politics and government when you don't love it. On the hard days, that love, that drive to help is what gets you through. As if proving your point, Audrey’s overly chipper voice disrupts the atmosphere again. 

"Hey," she gestures to the purple haired girl, "you're Maleficent’s daughter, aren't you?"

You can sense Ben and yourself tense up, freezing imperceptibly. Nothing good can possibly come from this, and you both brace yourselves for the inevitable.

"Yeah, you know what?" She continues, "I totally do not blame you for your mother trying to kill my parents and stuff." 

Her tone is perfectly chipper, but paired with her underhanded words, the meaning behind them is crystal clear. Your stomach sinks, and you’re sure Ben must be stifling his panic better than you are, but the expression on Mal’s face says exactly what you and Ben - and presumably, the rest of the Isle kids - are thinking. You know Ben is going to have a lot to say to Audrey about this later. If she brushes off her petty at best behavior like she usually does, you’re not sure you’ll be able to restrain yourself from sharing some choice words of your own. The only thing stopping you is Ben. You know calling Audrey out would do more harm than good, and the best thing you can do for Ben is support him and help with any damage control he does later. 

Audrey has a habit of excusing behavior like this, especially if it’s hers, but she fails to see the fundamental difference between bitching about the other girls on the cheer squad and what she just did - there’s life beyond high school, but politics can have real, lasting consequences and effect innocent people’s lives for generations. This isn’t some junior counsel mock trial, you’re in the real world of royal government now. Every day that Ben’s coronation gets closer is another day you’re getting deeper and deeper into real politics with real people. 

“Oh, my mom’s Aurora.” She continues. You really, really wish she would stop talking. “Sleeping-”

“Beauty!” Mal quickly finishes for her. There’s a barely concealed, dangerous look on her face, and her eyes glow green like poison, flashing menacingly. “Yeah, I’ve heard the name…”

You can tangibly feel the years of resentment and hatred for her passed down to Mal from her mother, now directed right at Audrey. 

“You know,” Mal continues, “and I totally do not blame your grandparents… for inviting everyone in the whole world,” she takes a step closer to Audrey giving her a look that could kill, paired with a venomously fake smile that… could also kill. “To their stupid christening!”

You look between them, growing nervous. Audrey either doesn’t notice the venom in Mal’s words or simply doesn’t care, because she replies with a smile that’s approximately as real as her hair extensions. 

“Water under the bridge.” She says, deliberately scrunching her nose, trying to replicate the way that you do naturally - the little nose scrunch you’d never noticed until Ben pointed it out a few months ago, telling you how cute it is. 

“Totes!” Mal agrees sarcastically. They both let out an insincere laugh in unison. The tension between them jumps out astronomically with just those few words, and you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t getting a little overwhelming. Ben glances over at you, knowing you’ve never been good with tense atmospheres like this. His eyes immediately flick down to your hands, taking note of the way you fidget with the strap of your bag. He also notices the way you subconsciously shift your weight, unable to feel comfortable with so much animosity burning between Mal and Audrey. 

He needs to get the Isle kids away from Audrey before she says anything to make this already less than ideal situation worse, but more importantly, he needs to get things moving along for your sake. Without realizing it, his top priority is immediately you and your comfort. Once he gets them all settled into their dorms, he can pull you aside and check on you, make sure you’re okay. He has to get the Isle kids settled into their dorms, go over their arrival with Fairy Godmother and a few council members, then he has a late dinner with his parents… he’ll have to find time to finish the mountain of paperwork that’s in progress, too. 

Even though it’s a lot to get done, he finds himself looking forward to it - even the paperwork. Especially the paperwork. He’s always found it relaxing, mostly because he knows you’ll be in the room with him while he does, journaling and organizing your photographs. You’re always happy to keep him company and ensure he has a warm cup of tea in his hands. 

He would never tell anyone that he likes doing paperwork - except for you, of course. He knows that if he told Audrey or her friends or the guys on the tourney team, they’d never let him hear the end of it. It turns out that being in line for the throne doesn’t mean you’re immune to being called a dork. But you’re always happy to keep him company. He has a feeling you find spending time quietly working on your journal while he goes through different forms and reports just as relaxing as he does.

You let out a little breath and he looks back over at you, at the polite smile plastered on your face and unsettled look in your eyes. It snaps him back to the present, and he looks between Audrey and the Isle kids.

“Okay!” He says, clapping his hands casually, but just loud enough to get their attention. “How bout a tour?”

He looks over at you, silently signaling that he has your back. You nod, matching his energy, and smiling at him. 

“Yeah.” You say softly.