☠ five times my muse thought about hitting yours, and the one time they did.
☠ five time phoebe thought about hitting gigi…
She’s eight when the fact that she’s the daughter of Hades catches up to her. One day she’s happy in her foster home, with ‘parents’ who love her, and the next day she’s being whisked off to this horrible island, where everyone’s the child of a villain and everything smells bad and looks rundown. Phoebe hates it the second she steps foot there, and the kids pointing and laughing at her as she walks down the streets and is led towards her new home just makes it worse. Then she sees Gigi. She doesn’t know her name yet, of course, but she’s got her nose stuck in a book, and it’s one that Phoebe’s read before. “I love that book!” Phoebe says, thinking maybe she can start a conversation with the one girl who doesn’t seem to be laughing at her. After all, they’ve already got something in common -- that’s always been the best way to make a new friend, in her experience. But Gigi doesn’t even look up at Phoebe’s words, and the urge to smack the book right out of her hands overwhelms her. She’s never been angry before, but life is changing, and she casts a glance back over her shoulder, wishing she really had knocked the girl and her stupid book down into the mud before she was whisked away.
In some ways, school in Dragon Hall is completely different than it was back in the real world. The classes are all about how to be evil and make other people miserable, the teachers are super villains she never dreamed really existed, and the kids don’t seem to really be any more than frenemies with each other. Some things are the exact same, though, like the fact that every class has a know-it-all, and in her class, it seems to be Girlston. Phoebe’s got her hand raised and is trying to finally prove to people that she’s not soft just because she grew up with a real family who loved her, but she never seems to get the chance, because Girlston always blurts out the answer. Today’s no different, except Phoebe’s stomach is growling with hunger, and she didn’t sleep well at all because of the sounds of people skulking around outside her window, and she’s just grouchy enough to want to lash out. When Gigi steals her thunder for what feels like the millionth time this week, Phoebe swears she’s going to hit her -- except she’s on the complete opposite side of the room, and before she’s even all the way out of her seat, Mother Gothel tells her to sit back down, and she balls her hands into fists at her sides, mad that she couldn’t smack that insufferable know-it-all to brighten her day.
They’re all gathered in the quad, waiting to find out who’s going to Auradon next. Phoebe’s sure that she’ll be staying on the Isle -- thank Hades, she doesn’t really feel like being uprooted again, not when it was so hard to adjust the last time. But it turns out she’s wrong; her name gets called, and before she knows it, she’s standing by a limo, about to put her things in the trunk and then head to start another new life. None of her companions look overly thrilled, but they’re mostly leaving each other alone. Mostly. Then Gigi makes some comment about how Phoebe probably wanted this to happen, and how she was always too soft for the Isle anyway, and Phoebe lunges for her without thinking. She’s spent years cultivating her attitude and proving to everyone that she’s not soft, that she’s just as much of a villain kid as the rest of them are, so the words bother her more than they should. But just as she moves to hit Gigi, to take her anger out on the girl voicing her deepest fears for the whole group to hear, the limo driver opens the door for them, and pushes her inside, saving Gigi from her hand for another day.
They get paired to be roommates, Gigi and Phoebe. She’s not sure if it’s better or worse than getting paired off with the Southern Isles skank, who’d probably be bringing a different prince into their room every night and sexiling her. It’s definitely better than an Auradon girl, she supposes. But as they step inside and Gigi instantly takes the bed next to the window, and starts unpacking her things and putting them wherever she damn well pleases, Phoebe gets annoyed. She doesn’t share well, but she tries to ignore it and go around unpacking her own things...including the one trinket she managed to keep from her foster home as a kid. Gigi picks it up, turning it over with a look of curiosity etched on her face, but Phoebe’s protected it from anyone for this long -- it’s hers, and no one else is allowed to touch it. “What is this?” Gigi asks right as Phoebe hisses, “Don’t touch it!” She takes a menacing step forward, ready to fight her for it if she has to, but instead her new roommate just says, “Jeez, relax,” and puts it down before Phoebe can start a fight.
Gigi’s kind of growing on her, she guesses. They’re almost friends, kind of like she’s almost friends with Hanna now, too, and it makes Phoebe’s life in Auradon a lot easier. She’s still been uprooted, but there are things that remind her of home -- which is weird, because for eight years she never thought she’d see the Isle as her home, but now that she’s away from it, she can’t help but consider it to have been home after all. There’s still some walls up between her and the other girls, though, and one of those walls is the fact that Phoebe still can’t control her nightmare powers. She tries, but some things get under her skin, and there are nights when she falls asleep and the nightmares haunt her instead, but more than she’d like to admit, she sends them Gigi’s way without meaning to. So when Girlston wakes up screaming, she turns to Phoebe, pinning the blame on her for the horrible images that had been flashing behind her eyelids, saying she did it on purpose because of all the times Gigi said she was going to crack first. Phoebe’s so mad, and she doesn’t know why. She guesses it’s her own fault for starting to consider them friends, so the fact that Gigi doesn’t trust her that it was an accident pisses her off, and she thinks about hitting her. But the words already make her feel like she’s the one who’s been slapped instead, and as much as she wants to hurt Gigi, too, she doesn’t want to make things worse than they already are... Phoebe stalks out of the room, feeling like maybe she is going soft after all.
…and the one time she did.
It’s another nightmare night, but this time, it’s Phoebe’s. She’s seeing things she’s never seen in her waking hours before, and she’s pretty sure she’s even in the Underworld, her dad’s realm. Dream!Phoebe is creeping closer and closer to the throne room, moving towards the realm of darkness, and when she finally pushes open the black obsidian throne, it’s not her father that’s sitting there, terrifying all the subjects. It’s her. She starts to scream, loudly, but she’s trapped in the nightmare, until someone’s shaking her, hard. Her body reacts before she’s even fully conscious, and she hears someone curse loudly as her fist collides with something very solid. Phoebe wakes up out of breath and sweating, and sees in the dim light of the room a bruise already forming on GIrlston’s cheek. “This is the thanks I get for trying to help?” her roommate asks, looking cross, but Phoebe’s so relieved to see her instead of being faced with her own horrible, possible fate, that she cracks a grin and jokes, “I’ve always kind of wanted to do that, anyway. Glad I finally got it out of my system.”
