The concept of the soulmarks is taken from The Name is the Mark by hisfoolishgirl on archiveofourown.

The name "fairy lover" is basic on a creature from Celtic folklore called the leannán sí. If you're interested, you can read more about it on Wikipedia. In this work, Mal isn't one of the Aos Sí, but I felt like the title suited.

I'm working on a pretty big story for another fandom now (Girl Meets World) but that doesn't mean I'm leaving Descendants behind forever. I love it too much.

Whipped Cream & Other Delights,

TheHarleyQueen

To have a soulmark was to carry the vilest things that your soulmate believed about themselves on your skin.

Ben was five when the first word appeared. It cut itself across his face, so black it looked as if someone had cut a hole in space and time itself to write the word fairy in elegant script above his eyebrow. Even at his age, Ben was no stranger to soulwords, the ugly names that etched themselves onto skin, the worst things your soulmate believes about themselves across your skin for all eternity.

His mother had the word monster behind her left ear, the font copied directly from a book. The word witch hung itself on his father's hip in the same font. Beast, the first word his mother had used to describe his father, curled around her wrist like a bracelet, and shone gold like one. His parents, by some coincidence, both had the word freak printed on their jaws. And by no means did his parents have the most (or strangest) words in Auradon.

King Stephan was long dead, but it was no secret that he'd worn the word MALEFICENT like a collar, deep purple and looking as though someone had carved them into wood (or bone). He'd also had the word fairy, Ben knew, he'd heard his parents talking about it before.

Queen Ella didn't have any words, but King Charming had so many they covered his skin like a tapestry {some stood out above the others, Cinder Wench and Dirty Ella and Cinderella, to name a few}.

So Ben was no stranger to the ugly words that cemented themselves on skin, but it saddened his heart that his soulmate had had something so intricate to her used against her.

He swore to himself never to use someone's inherent differences against them.

After the first word, they started appearing at an alarming rate. At seven, he'd felt the word slut fix itself to his ankle, and a mere three months later the word bitch carved itself across his collarbone {he'd asked his parent what the words meant and they'd just smiled at him sadly. Eventually, it had been Audrey who told him what they meant}. At seven, the word monster appeared on his right hip and he'd wondered who in Auradon was being treated so terribly.

At eight, the word whore wrote itself at the back of his neck, where his hair stopped, and he'd been forced to grow his hair out, to cover the word. On his ninth birthday, his parents stared at him, eyes full of worry, as demon burnt its way onto the back of his knee. Nine, and he had more words than his parents combined.

He was ten years old when he got possibly the biggest clue yet. The word princess, black as hell and swooping in an elegant hand, found itself above his left pectoral. And God knows he doesn't understand, but he doesn't take his shirt off to swim anymore, and quits the swim team, joins Tourney instead. He won't endanger his soulmate unnecessarily {no, that job was for his parents}.

They started fixing themselves to him regularly - once a month or so {why does she believe the names with such ease; why are so many slurs being thrown at her. Whoever did it will be sorry, one day}.

cunt

witch

siren

devil's wife

Ben's soulmate hated herself with a terrifying passion, believed every insult thrown at her like it was gospel. And Ben couldn't do anything about it, because he didn't know who she was.

Mal knew many things about life. She knew how to avoid the Auradonian Guard Force and she knew to stab a man between his second and third rib. She knew the words fixed across her mother's brow - MAD KING - echoed the ones on King Stephan's body, MAD QUEEN. She knew her father had died because he cared for her {Diaval was not her mother's soulmate, wasn't even human, and the magic her mother had used to keep her companion human on in the Isle of the Lost had burned through his system. Her mother had tried to remove the spell, but he'd insisted, preferring to be a father to his daughter for a short while than to be her pet for the rest of his life}.

She knew she didn't have a soulmate.

She'd seen her allies collect their words, seen them wear the phrases with a sense of pride. She'd watched as Jahin and Carlos threw insults at each other, during their worst fight ever, and had seen the word coward write itself along Carlos's jaw in blocky red letters while callous found it's way under Jay's right eye {had watched them notice and embrace, had slipped away, jaw set and swearing to herself that she didn't want a soulmate anyway}.

She'd watched as the names collected on Evie's skin, wench and waitress and human and daughter in a fine metallic script that was the colour of the deepest parts of the ocean. She'd kissed Uma's skin where words like prostitute and whore and slut and second fairest sat, before pushing her into Evie's arms and reminding herself that she didn't need to end up like her mother.

But through it all, her skin remained blank, and even the children of Auradon had words marring their pretty skin {the most well-known case being that of Prince Ben, a young royal with the word fairy on his face}.

The daughter of Maleficent had no soulmate, and her mother pressed a kiss to her hair and told her it was better that way.

When Prince Ben announced his first official proclamation, it was for exactly the reasons he told his parents.

But the idea had come to him when he'd been staring at Audrey.

{They were by no means soulmates. Audrey wasn't a fairy, and if someone called her a whore or a slut, they'd have felt the wrath of her parents immediately. Audrey wasn't one to keep quiet, about anything}.

They'd been attending a pool party together, and Audrey was never really one for un-called for modesty. She'd pulled off her white dress to reveal a bikini in the same shade as her words, which read slut and Isle rat and conceited.

It was Isle rat that sprung out at him, magenta, beneath Audrey's collarbone; and he'd thought about how Audrey would never meet her soulmate {Ben didn't know it, but that was the reason that Audrey seemed so cavalier with who saw her words. She had no one to protect}. He'd sworn to himself that Audrey would meet her soulmate {and she would, at twenty-one, but she would be unhappy with him for a long time- until they fell into bed together, and found an equilibrium}.

Choosing who to bring over had been easier than he anticipated. He'd immediately selected the daughter of Maleficent (her mother was known for being the worst of them all, and he'd known he had to get her out of that house). He'd also immediately selected Carlos de Vil- Anita and Roger had been begging his father to bring him over for years, had sworn to pay for his upkeep and even adopt him as their own, they were so worried about Cruella's treatment of her son. Choosing Carlos de Vil had meant choosing the son of Jafar, because the two of them had a registered soulbond, and he couldn't bear to separate them.

It was the last space to fill that had stumped him for a while, before he'd decided to speak to some of the Auradonian Guard Force and they'd told him that his chosen three wouldn't go anywhere without the daughter of the Evil Queen- Evie, they'd called her, with sick smirks that Ben didn't want to think about.

That was how he'd chosen- the daughter of Maleficent, the daughter of the Evil Queen, the son of Cruella de Vil, and the son of Jafar (had he known of the bond between Evie and the sea witch's daughter, he'd surely have brought her too, but Evie's mother had banned them from registering their bond, insisting that it was platonic {there was no such thing as a platonic bond, not really, but it was a homophobic gesture of the past that Evie was too scared to challenge}).

His first meeting wih his soulmate went uncelebrated- for a long while, they hadn't even realised they were soulmates. He'd been smiling and laughing, and he'd had Audrey on his arm (they weren't soulmates, but they liked each other well enough, and Audrey was certain that she was never going to meet her soulmate, and she'd sworn that she'd step aside, should he meet his). He'd joked with her, kissed her hand, even as Audrey snarled at her through the guise of a smile {niether of them knew- how could they? Ben covered most of his marks, and she didn't have any}.

She'd introduced herself as Mal, and he'd thought it odd, before recognising that the name she gave was like Evie or Jay- not a real name, a moniker, based on her parent, to remind everyone who she was. He'd wondered what her real name was, but hadn't asked (too private).

Rather, he'd shown her and her friends around the campus, noting Carlos's fear of the beastly statue and how Evie's eyes flickered with something {almost like guilt} as she flirted.

Jay and Carlos had been invited to join the Tourney team, and they were running drills that day. Figure eights- jog across the breadth of the field, when you reach the corner, you turn and sprint to the diagonally opposite end of the field. The entire team in a line- for each time someone overtakes you, you run a plain lap at the end of practice. They'd started in the order they'd finished last time they'd done the drill, and added Jay and Carlos to the back. So far, everyone was running two laps, and Jay and Carlos were at the front. Every time they sprinted, they raced to beat the other, and so they'd gained a fair few laps themselves. Ben wondered if they knew that overtaking each other also counted towards laps.

Most of the team had ditched their shirts a while back when the material started becoming heavy with sweat. The boys from the Isle kept theirs on, even though they were entirely drenched by now {Ben did the same thing, but by this point, it was hardly a secret amongst the schoolboys that the word princess adorned his chest}.

After the 20th lap, Coach called a break, and Jay and Carlos raced to their water bottles while the rest of the team first had to stop and breathe. Everyone else collected their shirts from where they'd been dropped on the side of the field, and Jay and Carlos took theirs off to wring them out, before putting the disgusting things back on. But suddenly, Ben understood why they hadn't wanted to remove the shirts in the first place.

It wasn't the scars, although there were more of those than Ben could even register in the short time he'd seen them- it was the words. Most of the bost in Auradon had a couple, but even the ones on their chests were relatively tame- bitch was common, and so was something along the lines of spoiled brat.

Jay and Carlos had matching fonts and colours {obviously, all soulmates did} and their bodies were so thick with words it was scary. Ben had only ever seen a couple of people with so many. King Stephan, for one. Audrey, for another. Himself for a third.

The Tourney guys all made awkward eye contact, but none of them said anything. It hadn't been announced that Jay and Carlos were soulmates, Ben didn't think that was proper, but it was glaringly obvious now. It was also obvious that the two had had more than their fair share of insults thrown at them.

{Ben didn't say anything, just shook his head at his teammates and told them not to bring it up when they were in the locker room- Jay and Carlos already having vanished somewhere. But later that night, when he lay in bed, his hands ghosted over fairy and princess and monster and considered, not for the first time, the possibility that his soulmate resided on the Isle for the Lost. He had no definitive proof, of course, just a gut feeling and the question of what had burned its way across his soulmates skin}.

Jane had the word selfish beast branded across her nose and cheekbones for the world to see. She often covered it with makeup, but it was still there, glowing silver and glittering with magic {the fairy in her. Mal's would look similar if she had any words to mar her skin}.

Mal, however, could provide what Jane needed to make the brand go away- magic. A simple glamour would suffice, but she wouldn't use it. Rather, she did Jane's hair and told her that the magic wand was the only thing that could hide soulmarks.

{Later, Jane would learn that what Mal had told her wasn't true, and would shout at her in front of the whole court, calling her a liar. Ben wouldn't even realise, in all the commotion, that the word had found itself on his skin until much later, when he'd take Mal in his arms and press kisses to her neck and face, telling her that she wasn't that monster she made herself out to be}.

Mr Deley had called her up in front of the whole class, and she'd panicked. She'd never done Chemistry before, not like this. She could cook up just about any potion or poison, knew the properties of cyanide and Hemlock like the back of her hand, but couldn't tell you what atomic weight was with the help of all the books in the world.

{So maybe she cheated, but what was she supposed to do? She didn't want to look like an idiot, no matter how often her mother said boys didn't like smart girls (that was fine, Uma liked smart girls).

Later, Chad Charming asked her to do his homework, called her babe, and on the Isle of the Lost, Uma burned with fury when the word appeared on her bottom lip

That night when she was undressing, Jane would catch a glimpse of something shining on her back, and grab another mirror to bend the reflection. Cinderella's son glowed on her shoulder blades, and she sighed, and didn't tell her mother}.

Jay's hip said Rotten to the Core.

Carlos's spine read the same.

Ben wore his like a bracelet.

The words curled around Uma's ankle.

Ben watched Jay flirt with the girls who all tittered and giggled around him, watched as Carlos looked on fondly, and a deep frown of confusion set onto his face

{How was he to know it was a defence mechanism against more words like faggot and cocksucker cementing themselves on the boys' skin?}

They won the Tourney match, and for once, and name that Jay was called didn't form on Carlos's skin

{Jay wrote it on Carlos's heart, later, with a sharpie. Most Valuable Player}.

{Audrey cornered Mal when they left the field, and Ben felt his left index finger burn. When he got a chance to look, later, it said homewrecker. He started wearing fingerless gloves, after that, just long enough to cover the belief}.

{Her middle name wasn't Bertha. His was Florian}.

He was wiping the jelly doughnut off her face and her eyes fixed on the word above his eyebrow. Fairy. She didn't have a soulmate, but if she did, would they have that word on their body? Her mother's soulmate had. She remembered the first time it had been flung at her. She was seven and one of Auradon Guard Force had sneered at her when her eyes glowed green (after he'd slapped her).

"Tell me something."

I don't have a soulmate hovered on her lips. Instead, she turned to safer territory.

"And now you're going to be king."

Suddenly, her skin was scorching hot, just above her heart. She cried out. She'd been beaten and touched and burned, but she'd never felt a pain quite like this one. Her hand flew to the spot, trying to press the pain out of her skin, but it wasn't affected at all.

The pain died down a second later, and Ben stared at her with shock.

"Mal-" he stopped, unsure of how to continue.

She had no such qualms, pulling the neck of her dress down to reveal a soulword. Specifically, the word King, engraved in midnight black calligraphy, looking as though it had been there her whole life. Her eyes widened with fear.

"No- no." Ben insisted, hand reaching out to touch, only to pull back at the last second, "That's not possible."

A spark of offence shot through Mal, but was overshadowed by the fear- she didn't have a soulmate. The one thing she knew, the one thing that had kept her sane and whole. She'd never turn out like her mother, broken and angry at a soulmate who'd abandoned her.

"Why not?"

Even if she didn't believe they could be soulmates, their fonts matched. Everyone knew what that meant, even people without soulmates. But he was so sure, she wondered if it could just be a coincidence. Surely there was more than one pair out there with the same font- there were only so many, after all.

Wordlessly, he removed his shirt. There, in the same place King was now branded across her heart, in the same font that rested above his eyebrow, it said princess.

{Mal wasn't on the pavilion at the Enchanted Lake anymore. She was twelve-years-old, stood in front of the Captain of the Auradonian Guard Force. He called her a slut and a whore, but those words had already been thrown at her so often they meant nothing. Then he turned to his second-in-command and asked him how much Maleficent would pay for the princess. When she'd insisted she wasn't a princess, he'd laughed and told her that if her mother was Queen of the Isle, that made her the princess.

King Stephan's soulwords were no secret- Maleficent was the Mad Queen of the Moors and the Isle}.

She doesn't know how to say it. Ben, they called my mother the queen of fairies, the queen of evil. If she's their queen, I'm their princess. She doesn't know how to detail that night when the Captain of the Guard Force had kissed her and told her she was a needy whore.

In the end, she doesn't have to. The fonts are enough to match them, and if not, she says King and he says fairy. That's all they really need to know.

She has a soulmate.

She drugged her soulmate.

Ben smiles at her softly and whispers soulmate and it's all Mal can do not to scream. He runs his fingers over the word on her breastbone and she shivers, the touch pressing directly against her magic.

She presses their foreheads together and she can feel where the word fairy is pressing against her skin. She wants to go home. She wants to go back to never having a soulmate.

Ben hardly reacts when the word soulmate sears across his palm seconds after he's said it. He's used to the words burning, knows how his soulmate (Mal!) takes things to heart. Tears are glistening in Mal's eyes and he doesn't understand, so he does what he can {this is scaring Mal- his soulmate- the best thing to do is just go on like normal, right?} so he invites her to swim and she tells him she can't- snaps it at him. She's scared. So, instead, he offers that they go back to Auradon Prep, and he swears he sees a sadness in her eyes when she nods, but he begins packing up anyway.

He bends down to fill his bottle with water- water from the Enchanted Lake it the sweetest, clearest water of all- but the moment he touches the water, he drops the bottle, and it's like a veil that he didn't even notice is lifted from his senses.

He looks over at Mal. She's definitely his soulmate, but his lungs don't feel like they're going to close up when he sees her, and he knows (like he knows Lonnie doesn't have a soulmate, like he knows the glittering words on Jane's face refer to Chad) that she had a love spell on him. But her face is crumpled with guilt {she doesn't know how he knows, but his expression is enough- disgust, despair, pity, something else} and he pulls her into a hug (not forgotten, not yet, but forgiven).

They don't tell anyone- well, mostly. Evie, Jay and Carlos don't count as anyone, they're practically a part of Mal.

{When she sees her mother, she's glad she's wearing something with a high enough neckline that her mother won't see. Maleficent always believed her greatest victory was a daughter who was born without a soulmate- part of the 0.001%- and Mal doesn't want to see her mother's face when she sees how similar mal's mark is to her own. King and Mad King, Mal thinks, how ironic.

Her mother is wearing her cowl, to cover the mark, and the Fairy Godmother says nothing, not even when she sees Second Fairest on Evie's mom's arm (the Evil Queen is her own soulmate) or Cruella, with ugly cuts dragged through all her 'marks.

Soulmates are a private thing, in Auradon.}

On Family Day, Mal's eyes catch on soulmarks {they're so much more prominent now that she has one, can feel her magic dancing through it on her heart}.

Jay and Carlos are kissing at a table, chocolate staining both their mouths. Jay had sworn he was going to give the uptight Auradonians a shock when he only put on a leather vest, nothing to cover his arms or much of his chest. He was definitely succeeding.

She sees his parents' faces when he introduces her as is girlfriend and is certain that holding off with the soulmate announcement was a good plan.

She's wearing blue and purple and white, trying to show how she's acclimatising to auradon, and there's no leather near her (unless you count Jay) but his parents are still openly disapproving.

Later, she's talking to Audrey's grammy and the woman is spitting poison about apples and spells and tapestries of soulwords, Mal and Evie and Jay and Carlos freeze, but so do Ben and Audrey {they know that the Isle of the Lost renders just as many soulmarks as the Age of Heroes did, if not more}. But no one says anything, Mal and Evie and Carlos and Jay too scared of being sent back to the Isle, Audrey always on grammy's side, and Ben sworn to secrecy.

{Back on the Isle, Uma's skin burns as she lies next to Harry and Gil, and gold digger and cheat sit on her fingers like heavy rings}.

{Jerk writes itself on Jane's clenched fist as Evie says it, and her mother notices but doesn't say anything. Jane's been distant, as of late}.

Evie whispers coward, just loud enough for Doug to hear, and somewhere a girl with sky blue eyes and brunette hair feels the skin on her upper arm burn.

Ben hasn't left Mal alone for five minutes when the inside of his wrist burns and the words bad girl infatuation appear when he leans against a wall to check. He swears he'll punish whoever said it- Mal's taken enough shit on the Isle of the Lost.

Mal undoes Jane's hair and tells Audrey that her soulmate's name is Anthony Tremaine, and that he doesn't want the soulmate whose words read brat and beauty sleep {an old nickname from childhood, when the kids had told her she obviously needed to sleep more, that she wasn't nearly as pretty as her mom}.

They're not stealing the wand, they decided that the moment Mal revealed Ben was her soulmate. Ben's going to be crowned King, then he'll bring over Uma and Harry and Gil and Dizzy {and later Antony and Ginny and Harriet and Diego}.

Jane grabs the wand and screams at Mal, calling her a liar, saying that true fairies didn't need the wand, but Jane did. That she'd take away the marks herself.

{Chad remains frozen, thinking about the silver words so well hidden, ugly bitch and unloved. He and Jane have known they were soulmates for years; they grew up together, had been shocked when the first words came and the fonts matched. He'd been the one to tell her they couldn't tell anyone}.

Mal wrestles the wand from the girl, holding it loosely {it's not revolting against her like it did against Jane- she'll think about what that means later}.

She moves the give the wand to the Fairy Godmother, and is interrupted by the Mad Queen herself.

{The Fairy Godmother is out of practice, and her mom freezes the hall. Her mom is mad.

"It's not what you want."

"You don't know what I want."

"The only thing you'll ever want is your soulmate, Maleficent. And you don't have one of those."

Mal thinks about the word carved into her heart but says nothing. She won't let her mother hurt him.

The name is on Ben's skin- King Stephan come again.}

It's when she's trying to convince her mother about the good qualities of love {remember daddy, mama?} that something clicks in her mother's eyes.

"He's your soulmate," her mother confronts, and Mal shrinks back in confusion.

"He must be," she continues, pacing, wand in hand, "For you to defend him so. Show it to me!" Her mother commands and magic obeys her will, ripping the collar of the dress Evie so lovingly crafted and letting the material fall down her shoulder, exposing the black mark that glows with power.

Her mother's face seals off, then, and mal knows that her mom won't bother trying to convince her anymore. Her mom doesn't believe in true love, but she does believe in the power of a soulbond.

{Everything after that is a blur. Her mother transforms into the black and purple dragon she'd been once before when Prince Phillip drove a sword through her heart. She's too large for the room, and her wingspan takes out stone columns that Mal expends all her energy keeping upright.

The Fairy Godmother says that her mother shrank to the size of the love in her heart, but Mal's mother loves her, she knows that and she loved her father and King Stephan and Sleeping Beauty, and Mal can feel her magic pulsing around the lizard when she goes near it, knows that it's her keeping her mother contained.

They have minutes to evacuate the church before it all comes down on their heads, she tells the Fairy Godmother, but with a wave of the wand, the job is done for them. Mal takes a second to imagine that kind of power before letting go over the magic holding the structure up.

Letting go of the magic, feeling it all rush into her, sends such power into her veins that she can't take it. Mal has never been this close to her magic. The heady feeling knocks her out, and the last thing she sees is Ben running to catch her.}

Mal wakes up a week later, and the entire kingdom knows she's Ben's soulmate. It was broadcast on live TV, after all. She's got new words, too. Her hip says untrustworthy and her fingers say obstinate and foolish and weak-willed, and she asks Evie about it but Evie says she'll tell her later, hand-in-hand with Uma {everyone on the Isle knew that Uma was Evie's soulmate, even if the Evil Queen denied it. There were riots at Ursula's shop before Ben managed to get Uma out, and now it says traitor's whore on Evie's ribcage}.

A hundred years later, when Mal and Ben's grandchildren have sat on the throne, they add a new exhibit to the Museum of Cultural History, called Fairy Lover: The Princess without a Soulmate. It details their love story, from beginning to end, and their friends' pairings are also on the walls- a picture of Jay and Carlos at their wedding, Evie and Uma at theirs. Audrey and Anthony with their children (they never married) and Jane and Chad in his new office- Principal of Auradon Prep (she prefers to teach free-lance, specifically magic).

Mal and Ben were recognised as a love story, as powerful, gracious rulers, and as heroes even after the Age of Heroes had ended.