Even Bad Girls Fall in Love

ONE

Mal assumed the worst thing about falling in love was the pressure: the pressure to overcome her upbringing and the influence of her mother, the pressure to conform to this ideal of the perfect princess, and the pressure of loving a boy who wasn't just a boy, but the future king of all Auradon. Pressure building and building, constricting her and demanding of her more than she could handle. Pressing against her and compressing her, confining her inside their boundaries, their borders, the lines in their impeccable little coloring books, until she thought she would scream. Losing bits and pieces of herself, less of the feisty Mal who had spray painted graffiti on her locker and baked amateur spells, and resembling more and more a clone, an immaculate copy of Audrey, and basically every other daughter of a queen who had ever graced the halls of Auradon Prep.

It was only inevitable that she would snap under all that weight. She couldn't take anymore. The pictures, the questions, the demands on her time, her energy, and her resources. The critical eyes and tongues waiting for the slightest slip-up, watching like vultures for the moment she collapsed to the ground and they could swoop in and devour her whole. And, oh god, the demands on fashion! Dressing her up and styling her hair – brushing, combing, pinning, curling, straightening, blow-drying – like their personal life-sized Barbie doll. Through all the fuss and mayhem she endured. She wanted to be good, for herself. For Ben. She loved Ben, she wanted to be with him, but the more she tried to fit into the image of the future king's girlfriend, the less she saw of him, the less she recognized herself. The space between them seemed to widen and expand, and she realized just how different they were. She couldn't do it anymore. She wanted to go home. She wanted to have fun.

So she left. Packed her bags and escaped in the middle of the night. No goodbyes, no messages, just disappeared into thin air like a ghost. Like the criminal she had been born to be.

The Isle of the Lost was exactly as she remembered it. She felt the air change as she stepped through the barrier – flat and devoid of magic, the absence of that delightful buzz that filled Auradon, and replaced with the pungent sights, sounds, and smells of her childhood. Metal and wooden structures crowded close together, half-collapsing and falling in on themselves, held up by the unwilling support of their neighbor. The dirty streets, caked in grime and trash, remains of food and papers, trampled underfoot. A layer of debris and mud inches thick, instead of the eternally clean cobblestones of Auradon. Clothing and useless flying carpets, now nothing more than dusty floor rugs, were draped over makeshift clothes lines. Discarded magical objects, once powerful and dangerous, littered pawn shops and garbage piles. A few optimistic scavengers searched these piles, hopefully trying an object here or there, testing the limits of King Beast's enchantment.

The music of the Isle of the Lost was shouting: yelling, screaming, children crying, the typical indictments and profanities, useless curses that Mal had heard since she was a toddler. Drunken off-key refrains of old men in pubs, singing of their glory days. The rattling and banging of the youth, metal scraping metal, whoops and hollers and peals of high-pitched laughter, as they wreaked chaos and mischief. Another typical Wednesday afternoon. Loud. It was always loud on the Isle, even at night. While the sounds were hardly pleasing, they were comforting in their familiarity.

The air was heavy and thick, hazy with smoke and rancid with the combined smells of human waste, body odor, stale beer, and decay. Mal breathed deeply and smiled: finally, she was home.

Nostalgia was a funny thing. She had spent her entire life trying to get out of this hole, and now here she was, willingly back again. She had missed it. Nothing was changed.

The streets were dark; a street lamp here or there sporadically flickered to life, but most of the bulbs were broken and shattered. Gloomy shapes rose in the night. It was strange for Mal, traversing her old stomping grounds without her three faithful companions at her side. The Four Musketeers. They were the children of four of the greatest villains known to Auradon; even on the Isle of the Lost their names were whispered in hushed, terrified tones. The Evil Queen, vain and cruel, who had once vowed to pluck out the heart of her own step-daughter. Jafar, whose craftiness, power, and manipulation had almost helped him take over all of Agrabah. Cruella de Ville, one of the only among them devoid of magic, but whose cruelty, thirst for blood, and greed knew no bounds, who would have killed a pack of sweet, innocent little puppies just to line her new fur coat. And Maleficent, perhaps the most frightening villain, who had cursed an entire kingdom over a slight at a party. Dark, regal, and terrible, treacherous and unforgiving as the sea, a being of despair, a goddess straight from the Underworld.

It wasn't until Mal lived in Auradon that she had begun to realize children weren't meant to fear their parents. The children of Auradon's love wasn't tinged with the fear of punishment or failure, their minds corrupted with prejudice and hatred, plotting revenge against for the sins of their fathers and mothers against people they had never met. Until Ben, the closest she had ever come to love was with her friends: Evie, Carlos, and Jay. They may have been villains' kids – damned from birth; born with evil in their blood, in their bones; their hearts twisted with malice and hate as they grew up – but they had always been faithful to one another. They had always been there for Mal – her support system, her family, and her home. Their friendship was perhaps the first indicator that the four of them possessed the ability to love, that they were essentially good.

Mal thought of her friends, sleeping peacefully in their warm beds – Dude curled up at Carlos' feet, Evie with a textbook open on her lap, Jay sprawled out at an odd angle – and she smiled fondly. She thought of Queen Belle and the gentle, patient way she spoke to her son, the quiet grace and confidence with which she carried herself; sometimes she would brush the hair away from Ben's face, like he was still a small child, and when he wasn't looking – giving a speech or welcoming the freshmen to their first day of school, Mal watching from the background – Belle would look at him, and the love in her eyes was bright and beautiful. Mal's heart would squeeze in a nauseating mixture of happiness, desire, and sorrow. She knew her mother had never looked at her that way.

Ben's face – his warm smile, his kind eyes, crinkled at the corners when he laughed, his handsome features – swam before her vision, peering out at her from boarded up windows. His head inclined and his lips turned up at the corners, smiling down at her: "I finally understand the difference between pretty and beautiful." The sweet, smooth huskiness of his voice, like music, the sincerity of every word he spoke, the gentleness of his heart played on his face for all to read and see. Mal shook off the image. None of that. She couldn't think of him, not here. He did not belong here among these littered streets and gutters. He was far better than that, than her. She had made her choice. No regrets.

Mal hadn't seen any residents of the Isle (besides her friends) in almost a year. Her mother's shadow had always cast her influence over the city, an inescapable power that made them bend to her will, but Mal didn't know how things had changed since her mother's failed scheme. She didn't know how the other villains would look at her now, changed as she was by her days in Auradon, changed as they were by their freedom from Maleficent. She was different; she could feel it in every pore of her body – the goodness that wanted to spill out of her, like a lantern peeking through a shade punched with holes. They would see it on her face, she was certain. Fake it until you make it – that was her new motto in life. She just needed to act like the royal witch that she was, flaunt her wickedness and false confidence, and pray the Isle's inhabitants accepted her back into their ranks.

"Why, Mal?" the little voice in her head asked, and it sounded oddly like Ben. "Why do you still need to fit in here? What's your long-term plan?"

She didn't have a plan. All she knew was that she had to get away from all that glitter and glare and the prying eyes. She needed a vacation from Auradon, a chance to rediscover herself. This was where she was born – surely she would find herself here if she could anywhere."Shut up," she commanded the voice. "I don't want to hear you anymore."

Laughter and music poured out of the grimy windows and the open door, hanging askew on its crooked hinges, of the old Slaughtered Prince tavern – the favorite watering hole of Villain Kids and drunken villains. It was filled to the brim with old pirates who were missing limbs and eyeballs, recounting slurred versions of their days on the Jolly Roger and filling their heads with visions of Neverland – telling their fairy stories; nameless members of would-be mobs with faces and stories no one remembered, slamming down empty tankards and singing bawdy songs, bemoaning the time they allowed such-and-such an opportunity to slip through their fingers. Blah, blah, blah, the Villain kids mimicked, assured of their own superiority and invincibility in their youth, swiping glass eyes and pieces of silver when the owners weren't looking, mocking their elders and believing in the same situations they never would have made the same mistakes.

In the back of the tavern, hidden behind shadows in dark booths, flames flickering off their cutlasses and swords, the gleam of a hook here or an jewel there, were the worst of the worst. The true villains, with their ruthless black hearts and cruel eyes. They didn't sing or tell stories, bemoan their fates. They were silent, malignant spirits prowling the edges of light, waiting for their moment to attack. They drank. They watched. The other patrons tried their best to pretend they weren't there, and sometimes succeeded in forgetting their existences altogether. As they nursed their mugs of hard liquor, these villains nursed their grudges, plotting and stewing. Their evil intentions only increased in their years of poverty and defeat. Like Maleficent they had ambitions, plans. Unlike her, they intended to succeed.

The smell hit Mal from the sidewalk: ale and sweat, fried meat and unwashed skin, the earthy smells of stale air and bodily functions, too many bodies packed into too warm a room. "Ya dirty, cheating blither!" Someone shrieked, and a half-full mug sailed out the door and landed at her feet. Liquid splashed onto the toes of her heeled boots. There was laughter inside, music, the sharp heavy taps of multiple dancing feet.

She took a deep breath of the sour air, and thought of her mother. Maleficent wasn't exactly Mother-of-the-Year (Queen Belle's image once again popped unbidden into Mal's mind), but the woman had presence. Cool, calm, a little arrogant, grossly self-assured, graceful but scornful of graciousness, mighty and strong. Mal had been taught to abhor all signs of weakness.

She stepped into the tavern, threw her arms at her sides, her head titled just so, that pretty cocky smirk she had perfected at the age of nine painted on her red lips. "I'm back!" she proclaimed. For a moment, the entire room stilled. The carousing stopped, conversation halted. Wide eyes stared at her. No one moved. No one breathed. It was as if someone had hit pause on a movie.

Then: play. Everything jumped abruptly back into motion. A blur of color and noise. The volume increased several decibels. Whoops and hollers, shouts of joy and surprise, mugs banged and hands clapped against the wooden counter. A few of the VKs rushed up to Mal, tentatively reaching forward with their hands to touch her, in case she was nothing more than a figment of their imaginations. They heaped questions upon her, speaking rapidly and loudly, trying to be heard over the others. Mal laughed.

"Well, well, well. Look what the catfish dragged in." From the shadows, a young woman appeared, stepping through the smoky haze like a specter from the Underworld. Her black and blue hair was braided in a hundred braids which fell to her waist. Mal was reminded of stories of the Gorgons, Medusa in particular, whose gaze turned people into stone. This girl had those kind of eyes: hard, hateful, cold.

She was flanked by two young men: one wearing black guy-liner and a pirate's hat, the other brawny and broad in his tattered leather. Mal had known them as boys, when they were small and unremarkable, before Harry cut off his hand and replaced it with a hook, before Gil's dimwittedness was made irrelevant by his physical strength. The perfect henchmen, Mal thought scornfully.

"Uma." Her childhood rival, the thorn in her side. She knew Uma had always been jealous of her. The room fell silent, watching in eager anticipation as the daughter of the Sea Witch strode towards the daughter of the Dragon, her hips swaying and her head held high. She stopped with her face only inches from Mal's. They stared each other down. Neither wanting to show the first sign of weakness and look away. Mal's eyes flashed the glowing emerald green for which she was known. Uma's eyes were so dark as to be almost black. They didn't glow but smoldered, like the last embers of some ruined civilization. Something lurked in their depths, a primal anger and viciousness born in the darkest regions of the ocean, unpenetrated by sunlight or warmth. Mal could feel it, crawling over her skin, burrowing in the pit of her soul. She shivered and glanced away.

Uma smiled triumphantly. "What makes you think you're welcome here?" she demanded.

"I was born and raised here, same as you, Uma."

"You're a traitor. You don't belong here. You're a good girl now." Uma walked a complete circle around the purple-haired girl, inspecting her from head to foot. "I can smell it on you. You had the chance to get revenge, and you blew it. You're one of them."

Mal's hands balled into fists at her sides; how often in her life had she heard the same kind of abuse from her mother? Disappointment, frustration, hatred, as Maleficent attempted to groom her daughter as a pawn in her own plans. Uma was baiting her, trying to get her to lash out, but she would not back down. Her mother had been the unofficial queen of the Isle, which made Mal a kind of princess. She had power here, and Uma knew it. She couldn't let Uma show her up in front of her people.

"I'm tired of being good. I'm back, and I'm looking forward to having some fun. Didn't we always have fun?" Several shouts answered Mal, eager to be causing mischief with her again. She had been to Auradon, she had seen and touched magic. Despite her wicked failures, she was their hero. Mal smirked at the young sea witch. "You're welcome to join us, Uma, but I imagine you won't."

Mal turned abruptly on her heel and left, carried out by the thrill of her success. But on the sidewalk she deflated. She walked down the street and paused, sitting down on the curb with her legs stretched in front of her. In the apartment complex behind her, a man shouted at his wife over the screeching of the children, a woman emptied a chamber pot out the window, and a teen spray-painted his name on a wall under the stairwell over a dozen other names.

Mal sighed and rubbed at her temples. She wasn't sure what she had expected on her return home, to pick up where she had left off maybe, but not confrontation. She hadn't anticipated on being scorned and challenged. With Uma now declaring herself the self-proclaimed queen of the Isle, trouble was sure to be brewing. Once the storm broke, Mal wasn't sure how bad it would be and if she could handle the fall out.

Whatever else happened, she knew one thing: the old saying was true. You really can never go home again.