Evie kept a cautious eye on her best friend as she served lukewarm tea from a cracked pitcher and passed around a platter of stale biscuits with moldy jelly for their rowdy guests. The purple-clad girl was sitting in a stained worn-out leather chair, watching from the living room with a numbed expression, as if her mind was a million miles away.
“M?” The blue-clad girl finally slipped up to her friend, “I know I kinda forced your hand back there…but I really believe in what we’re doing here…so-so thank you.”
“You’d have made a great queen, E.” Mal gave her a tiny smile, “Why Ben fell in love with me, I’ll never understand.”
“Well, you did spell him,” the blue-clad girl smirked, “But, I’m glad he didn’t pick me. I’m afraid I might turn into Mommy if I was queen.”
“No way that happens.” Mal shook her head.
“We all have our crap to deal with, don’t we?” the purple-clad girl continued, sighing as she hauled herself to her feet, “Let’s do this then.” Ambling into the kitchen with Evie at her heels, she cleared her throat for attention, “Morning all, I know it’s been a little while since we all gathered here…so, ah, so…thank you for coming.”
Pausing, her eyes swept around the room, measuring her words carefully, “I-I also want to apologize.” she continued, “I want to apologize to you all for all the crap I’ve done over the years. Guys, I don’t even remember half of it so I can’t come out and list everything but I know you guys remember every slight, every lie, every theft, every insult, everything…so I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry.”
She took a deep breath to gather her courage, “And I say all that because I know it’s not gonna be easy, but I wanna try and do what Evie said—for us to be equals on the Isle.”
*o*o*0*o*o*
Doug squirmed and pushed his breakfast away as Jane cleared her throat for attention. Once this story was out, he knew he’d never live down his cowardice and deception.
“It was my fault!” he suddenly blurted out, preempting her, “I’m so sorry, guys! If I’d just kept my promise, Evie—all of them—would be home right now. But I blew it!”
“It’ll be okay, Doug,” Ben gripped his arm firmly, “You don’t have to beat yourself up. We’ve all done things. We’ll get ‘em back.”
“If it’s Doug’s fault,” Audrey piped up, “It’s mine too.” She blushed a pretty pink, “I-I’m sorry, guys.”
“What?” Chad leapt to her defense, “No way! You’re perfect!”
“It was my idea to go over there in the first place.” she shot him a look, “Then I was a total baby and we broke our promise too.”
“Um, children,” Fairy Godmother broke in, “maybe it would help if you started at the beginning so we can get the whole picture.”
“Let me,” Ben waved Doug and Jane off, turning red as he started to speak, “I guess you saw our departure. Sorry for the shock that caused. But we were all pretty desperate to go.”
“Jordan got us to the dock where our leftovers come in,” he continued, frowning as he made a mental note to change that, “Then Freddie, Jay, and Carlos arranged us into groups of two or three with them leading. We traveled together, but they were our point persons.”
“Our nerves were on high alert,” Audrey took up the story when he stopped to take a drink, “so they decided it’d be a good idea to get Yen Sid’s antiheroes to come help.” She smiled tightly, “Extra eyes to guard, you know.”
“Freddie went to Dragon Hall to get them,” Ben resumed the story, “while the rest of us waited on the beach then we headed for Maleficent’s castle—Mal’s castle.”
“The trip went really well,” Lonnie spoke up, “The antiheroes are great sentries! We didn’t have any trouble, even though the whole Isle was going crazy about Pleasure Island opening up.”
“As you can imagine,” Ben’s face reddened again, “Mal and Evie were not pleased to see us but they decided pretty quickly that it was too dangerous to go for Yen Sid with all the craziness over Pleasure Island so they decided we’d have to have a slumber party and go to him in the morning.”
“The trouble started,” Doug explained, his face turning scarlet, “when Evie went out to settle some gag they played on Gil—that’s Gaston’s youngest son—this morning.” He shook his head, still not understanding, “She had to kiss him for some reason.”
“As you can imagine,” he ducked his head, “I didn’t like that too much—”
“Of course not!” Prince Charming interrupted.
“I wouldn’t either!” Prince Philip nodded, instinctively wrapping an arm around Aurora’s shoulders.
“No guy would want his girlfriend going into that riff raff alone.” Shang affirmed.
“Yeah, well,” Doug muttered, reddening again, “I bet you guys wouldn’t have gotten all panicky and gone after her like I did.”
“Are you kidding?” Prince Charming vehemently shook his head, “We would totally have panicked.”
“That’s right.” Shang agreed, grinning slightly when Mulan rolled her eyes, “Don’t mistake our ability to take effective action with not panicking. Our hearts are totally in our throats when we have to go into battle.”
“I think Mufasa said it best.” Philip reminded them, “Even kings get scared and we’re really only brave when we have to be.”
“Yeah, well, it turned out I didn’t need to be so worried about Evie.” Doug sighed, “She was just fine and I was the one who put us all in danger by breaking my promise to stay with the group.”
“We put everyone in danger when we left.” Audrey corrected; blushing deeply as she stared at her hands, “It was really hard for me to be there-in-in Maleficent’s castle—Mal’s—I was such a wimp and Chad was just trying to protect me.”
“No one can blame you for that, sweetie!” Prince Philip sympathetically squeezed her shoulder.
“Still,” she shook her head, “When Doug told us what he was doing, we went with him. I-I thought we could go to Yen Sid and come back early.” She frowned, “For all my big talk at school yesterday, I was a real loser when I got over there. I’m sorry, guys.”
“But it was my fault!” Doug argued, “I knew you didn’t want to be there and I wanted some help finding Evie so I asked you to come. I took advantage of you.”
“I, for one,” Chad spoke up in a lofty tone, “thought it’d be a piece of cake to defeat the villains. I mean, we’re heroes, right?”
A shocked murmur of disapproval ran through the adults, much to the embarrassment of Cinderella and Prince Charming, but Ben quickly resumed the story.
“Once we realized they weren’t in the castle, Mal immediately went to Yen Sid for help. Then while she was gone Evie and Sophie showed up. Then Yen Sid came with Freddie’s little sister, Celia. He called the limos and we all came home.”
He dropped his gaze to finish, his voice a whisper, “The only hang up was that Mal stayed at Dragon Hall to distract Dr. Facilier. Yen Sid gave them a half hour to get her but they weren’t back when time ran out so we had to leave without them.” He gave Beast an agonized look, “He wanted us to come back to see that things got straightened out here.”
“I’m sorry, son,” Beast dropped his head too, “I’m sorry everyone. I let my temper get the better of me. I should have known better.”
*o*o*0*o*o*
“So, what’s the point of all this?” Uma asked warily. She’d held her tongue while they ate but as breakfast was winding down she had questions, “Are you just trying to get us off our guard?” Her fist tightened around her mom’s necklace, “Our position is strong now Mal. No one is just gonna go back to you. We saw what you did.”
“No-no,” Mal took a deep breath, fighting her natural response to a challenge, “I-just—”
“You told me you didn’t care about being equals last night.”
“No, I said I didn’t care about our fight anymore.”
“What’s the difference?” the green-clad girl bristled, “I care about it? You just don’t care about me!” She smirked, “But you should.”
“What she really meant was that she had a lot on her mind last night.” Jay stepped in before a full-blown fight broke out, “We all did. We left a lot back in Auradon.”
“Yeah, like the wand?” Uma snorted, “Great job, by the way.”
“More like great friends.” Jay frowned.
“Why’d you come back if you love it so much?” Harry leaned on his elbows on the table.
“I-I-I” Mal stammered, feeling like she wasn’t in control of the narrative; this was more truth-telling than she was comfortable with the pirates knowing but somehow the truth tumbled out of her mouth anyways, “I just didn’t think I could do it.”
“In other words,” Uma snorted, “you blew it for all of us.” She gripped her mother’s necklace, “You’re a fake, Mal. You’re just a fake.”
“You really think any of us gonna believe that?” Harry suddenly launched to his feet, “You’re Maleficent’s daughter.” He pointed at her, “You’ve spent your whole life owing everything on this Isle. We only got your crumbs.” He gestured at the purple-clad girl angrily, “Then you go over there and have a chance to set us all free and you wimp out? I don’t think so. What’s your real game, Mal?”
“This isn’t a game, Harry.” Evie rose to her feet slowly, her expression as cold as her mother’s, “I mean, I get it. Mal was a punk her whole life here.” She shrugged, “You didn’t witness the change first hand but we did.”
“That’s why we’re back now.” Carlos added, “We all changed over there and we didn’t want M to come back to nothing alone. We know this place is nothing.”
“It’s gonna be something!” the green-clad girl’s eyes flashed with contempt, “Pleasure Island is just the first thing I’m gonna give this place.”
“And we wanna help.” Evie affirmed.
“As equals.” Mal added, taking a deep breath.
Uma raised an eyebrow, “Sounds like you just wanna take over again. Sorry, Mal. We know what your leadership brought us. Now it’s my turn.”
“It’s our turn.” Evie countered.
“Excuse me?” Uma’s eyes flashed again, “I’ve done—
“Oh, come on, Uma,” Mal’s eyes finally sparked green, “Even you didn’t go to Pleasure Island until we all went together. How much fun do you think it’s gonna be next week? Or the week after that?” She snapped her fingers, “Everyone be bored again by next week. We can give this place something better.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“No one has ever gotten tired of Pleasure Island!”
“No one ever went more than once.” Carlos snorted.
“Hey, yeah, that’s right.” Jay smirked.
“What this place needs,” Evie gave a wistful sigh, “is a big shot of Auradon.”
“Then go get the wand!” Harry snapped, “Like you were supposed to in the first place!”
“Why is it so hard for you to understand?” the blue-clad girl retorted, glaring at the young pirate, “Fairy Godmother’s wand won’t do a thing for this place. Not in the long run. What we need here is understanding and love. That’s why we came back.”