anyway i thought it would be fun to post snippets of unfinished fics so that maybe people bully me into finishing them, so i've picked a few and will be posting one a day for the next week or so? idk. anyway here's an unfinished descendants rotten ot4 piece that's one of my favorite things i've ever written for this fandom imo. tentatively titled ‘looking for someone to help you when you scrape your knees.’ tw for mentioned child abuse, maybe eating disorder, general isle behavior, injury, etc
mal finds carlos stumbling around outside his house with a broken arm. mal thinks if he moves it the wrong way this will end with carlos’s bone protruding from his skin. she shivers. she’s seen some nasty shit in her fourteen years of life, but this? this scares her, and that makes her heart beat quick, like a frightened rabbit. she takes him to the hideout, swallowing her bitter fear and turning it into rage.
it’s evie who asks what needs to be asked. “what happened, ‘los?”
“i fell,” carlos stammers, through the pain. mal and evie are trying to set the bone, and jay’s gone out to find something, anything, to trade to anthony tremaine to get his mom to make something that will hopefully save carlos from infection. mal’s seen people die of infection on the isle, and it’s as though the fever burned them from the inside out. she won’t let that happen to carlos. she won’t.
“bullshit,” mal shoots back. she doesn’t believe that for a second. they all know — they all know that cruella is a bitch, in every sense of the word. sure, evie’s mom pinches her in the sensitive spots that no one will ever see where she claims that evie has ‘yet to lose that horrid baby fat’ and jafar's hit jay before and they all know it'll happen again, and mal’s mom has a tendency to hit mal with her staff and there are times mal has had scratches from her mother’s too-long not human nails clawing lines up her arm, raised and red, but... cruella is worse, somehow.
“was it your mom again?” evie asks softly, while attempting to use a ripped up shirt of jay’s as a sling to keep carlos’s arm in place.
carlos doesn’t say anything, and mal knows that his lack of a response is as much of an answer as they are going to get.
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“i'm going to fucking kill her,” mal hisses. she can feel her magic rising up within her, pushing against the barrier, and it feels like ants crawling under her skin. she knows her eyes must be flashing green. jay shrinks back, and a small part of mal relishes in that. even jay is scared of her. ‘you could bring them all to their knees, if you had to,’ her mind whispers. it comforts her to know that.
“you can't,” jay murmurs, quiet so as to not wake carlos, who’s asleep in the other room. anastasia tremaine had given jay a sleeping tonic and something to numb the pain, as well as something to stave off infection. she’d gotten far, far less than she’d given, but if the old bitch wanted to barter the entirety of her wares away, that wasn’t mal’s problem.
“just watch me,” mal hisses. her magic is buzzing under her skin, and, not for the first time, she feels like it’s going to rip through her skin and burst out of her in one big explosion. the emotions in the room are high, and mal can feel the press of evie and jay’s emotions on her own — jay’s gold and evie’s royal blue are muddling her purple. she’s angry, but they’re scared, and mal shoves their emotions back, concentrating on only her own anger, burrowing herself in the safe, deep purple that feels like coming home. “i'm going to fucking kill that bitch.” her voice is deadly calm, like a snake about to strike.
“and if you can't?” jay snaps back. there’s tension in the air like the fishing wire uma uses to mark her borders ready to snap. run too fast, not knowing it’s there, and, well. it’s a mistake you won’t make twice. mal’s struck silent for a moment, and jay plows ahead. “if you can't kill cruella, mal, do you know who dies? carlos. carlos is dead, because if we try to kill her, and we can’t? that’s his fucking death sentence.”
“and if we don't?” mal snaps back, her eyes flashing, her teeth sharp. “nothing gets better for him. cruella might kill him anyway. shit, jay, look at what happened this time. it's a fucking miracle she hasn't killed him already.”
“fine,” jay says, long and low. “tell me you can fucking stand to have his blood on her hands if we try to kill her, and we can’t. tell me you’re okay with that, mal, because i sure as fucking hell am not.” he steps closer to her, whispers in her ear. “malevolence, i swore i would never use your true name without your permission. but believe me when i fucking say that if you do this, i will break that promise. i will make sure you can’t get within an inch of cruella de vil.”
shivers tickle up mal’s spine at the sound of her true name. “you fucking swore, jabran,” she hisses, his name spitting out of her mouth like a curse. “you swore you’d never use that against me. look at you now, you little fucking snake. biting the hand that fucking feeds you.” he wouldn’t. he has to know if he does this mal will turn the entire isle against him. he won't survive a day — no one would. she’ll get her mother to take out a bounty on his head, and mal will make damn well sure that everyone on this fucking rock knows that you don’t cross her.
“do not test me, malevolence,” jay murmurs, dragging her true name out in her mouth like he’s savoring it. “if it’s what i need to do to keep carlos safe, you will find that i very much can. and will.”
“fuck you,” mal spits, and she’s about to keep cursing every aspect of jay she can think of when there’s a soft voice from behind her.
“he’s right, mal,” evie says, and mal spins around, only to see evie, her lips a hard line of determination, her lipstick red as a poison apple and just as deadly. “who's going to protect you?” she asks. “i'd kill cruella if i could, lord fucking knows she deserves that and more, but... i can't. none of us stand a chance against our parents. they're the villains of legend, and we're... we're nothing.”
mal and jay and carlos and evie protect each other. that's how it has always been. mal takes a breath, and she can feel the magic under her skin calming slightly, settling down, like a dragon curling up to sleep. evie’s right, of course. she always is. “you’re right, eves,” she murmurs, and evie smiles softly at mal, her eyes mournful.
mal levels her gaze at jay. “you’re right, too, even if you are a complete fucking asshole,” she mutters, and jay snorts a quiet laugh at that, running a hand through his hair. it's the closest anyone gets to apologising on the isle. apologizing is a sign of weakness, and mal is not weak. “and if anything happens to carlos, you're my backup. understand?”
“of course,” jay responds, with no hesitation. jay might stop mal from harming cruella while she still has a hold on carlos, but if carlos is gone, then all bets are off. if anything happens to carlos, mal knows as sure as she knows her own heartbeat that jay and evie would be by her side, taking vengeance in the form of blood.
mal finds evie crying in an alley in skid row, rummaging through one of the trash piles that the residents have piled up outside their house. her cheeks are gaunt and hollow when she looks up at mal, and mal tries not to recoile from the sight of her. “what happened?” mal asks, gently.
evie takes a shaking, shuddering breath. “i haven't eaten in at least a week. god, mal, i'm so hungry.” the words spill out of evie’s mouth like a flood, and mal bites her lip so hard she tastes blood.
“why haven't you — ” mal stops suddenly, as it hits her. the evil queen must have decided that evie wasn’t losing her baby fat fast enough, and thus must have taken matters into her own hands. there’s a deep, quickening fear pressing in on mal, royal blue, and mal can feel it mixing with her own fear that she knows well, and the two emotions create an awful, sickening indigo shade of panic that settles in the pit of mal’s stomach. “shit, eves. we’ve got to get you to the hideout. i’m sure carlos has some food stashed away he can spare, or i can send jay out to — ”
“no.” evie’s voice is harsh and breaks through mal’s frightened rambling. “if this is what she fucking wants, mal, i’m going to give it to her.” she’s sunk down against the wall now, her back against the bricks, her head in her hands.
“so you’re going to starve yourself to death to spite your mother?” mal laughs a little, hollow and empty. “talk about cutting off your fucking nose to spite your face, evie.”
evie smiles at that, but it’s brittle and empty. “that’s the plan,” she murmurs, a half-grin still on her face.
“well, tough fucking luck,” mal mutters under her breath. she’s made up her mind. if evie wants to starve herself to death, she’s doing it over mal’s dead body. “get up, evie. i’m not letting you fucking starve yourself to death.”
“why can’t you just leave me alone,” evie hisses, her face twisting into something hideous, and for the first time, mal can see the witch that queen grimhilde turned herself into reflected across evie’s features. “what does it fucking matter to you, anyway?”
“because i’m not fucking losing you, evie,” mal says, her tone harsh, and evie blinks. there’s a kind of shock registering across her face, and mal bites her lip. “i’m just not, okay?” she won't lose evie. just like she won't lose carlos or jay. she won’t.
there are no friends on the isle, but there is something deeper — family. but not just the family who shares your blood. the kids on the isle know better than anyone else that sharing blood doesn't make you'd lay down your life for them. and mal knows, suddenly, in her heart, that she'd lay down her life for evie. or carlos. or jay. in a heartbeat. if it was her life or theirs? theirs. it’s a selfish move on her part, because mal knows she can’t live without them. it’s half a death wish and half a sacrifice.
there's a deep blue pressing in on mal, but it's not the breathless fear she felt from evie moments ago, but something different. the blue settles over her, almost like the calm blue of the ocean outside the barrier that mal's never touched. this feeling, too, mal can't quite identify — it settles a bit in her chest like comfort but drifts to her throat like mania before resting itself, lightly, in the palms of her hands, warm and sturdy.
“mal?” evie murmurs, her voice soft. “will you take me home?”
home. it's a word mal's never heard used on the isle before. mal steps in, scoops evie up — she's nearly as light as mal is, and mal knows she weighs about half as much as she would if she were a full human, and the thought of how little evie's had to eat the past few days sends a sharp pang through mal's heart.
“sure, evil. want me to get you up to your room, or drop you off with your mom?”
evie shakes her head, her face buried in mal's neck. “not with my mom. not harlot square,” she murmurs, and mal can feel evie's warm breath on her neck. she shivers. “the hideout.”
“shit. shit. fuck. shit.” mal's not really thinking about what she's half-muttering through panting breaths, only that if she doesn't get to the hideout before hades’s dogs catch up with her she's going to have a lot more than a stab wound in her leg to contend with.
harry had caught her on uma's territory, and ever since her and uma had gotten into that fight months ago about a stolen shipment from the barges, uma had made it very, very clear that mal was no longer welcome anywhere near her. which, mal would like to point out, is entirely unfair, because she wasn't the one who stole it, and uma knows she can't lie. but she digresses. what's done is done.
she'd been on uma's territory — she'd needed a good look at what had come in on the barges — and she'd run almost directly into harry hook. everyone on the isle knows that harry’s practically begging for a fight at literally any time, and combine that with uma's hatred of mal, and well. it would have been an understatement to say that he'd been particularly eager.
he'd left her with a nasty stab wound in her leg. mal had left him with some nasty scratches in his face, so it wasn't as though he'd gotten out entirely unscathed. but still, he wasn't the one trying to haul ass before hades' dogs hunted him down. he was probably safe and sound in the one of the run down shops king beast had had constructed on the isle in the hopes that the villains would find themselves presented with capitalism and reform. so far, mal notes, this had done exactly jack shit, aside from giving the villains homes — generally, the villains tend to stick close to the shop in their name, hades being an exception. some of them even do have a kind of business going through these shops, but it's never the kind king beast intended. the queen of hearts runs a casino. lady tremaine runs a brothel. dr. facilier runs a black market for magical items that have made their way through the barrier.
“mal!” there's a shout from above her, and she looks up to see jay, running along the rooftops beside her. “are you bleeding?”
“what's it look like, dumbass?” mal snaps, in between breaths. hades’s dogs are catching up to her, and she can hear their howls. she'd always thought that the legends that they ate kids who didn't behave were bullshit that cruella kept spouting off to carlos until the dogs had caught some poor soul when she was ten. they'd torn him apart so badly that they couldn't even identify the body. she remembers the iron smell of the blood that lingered in the air. she remembers that the tang of iron that lingered in the air had made her cough up sickly-green blood for a week.
mal feels someone grab her and purple fear swells in her chest and threatens to swallow her whole. “wait! who are you? let me go!” mal snaps instinctively, trying to squirm away, before she realizes that it's just jay.
“thought you needed a little help, tanin,” he murmurs in her ear, his voice lilting into a slight purr as his nickname for her comes out of his mouth, and mal feels something unfamiliar curling like smoke in the pit of her stomach.
“yeah, yeah, don't brag about it already,” mal mutters, false annoyance in her tone. she has to admit, he's a lot faster than she was even while carrying her. the deep red, too, of jay’s worry is pressing in on her, but there’s something else there too, something bigger, something that presses down through mal’s chest where comfort rests and burrows underneath her ribcage, curling up like a cat. it feels comforting. it feels like home.
the first thing that mal notices in auradon is that jay has no shadow.
the second thing mal notices is that it’s as though a weight’s been lifted off her, and her magic grows under her skin, practically itching at her as it feels itself free from the anti-magic barrier for the first time. she longs to try it, but she knows she can’t. not here, not now. not in front of all these people.
the third thing mal notices is the overwhelming press of emotions all around her. the fear emanating from fairy godmother and her cohorts makes mal’s heart beat fast, and she has to resist the urge to pull the knife from her boot and keep everyone at arm’s length. she settles for wrapping her arms around her torso — a makeshift armor of her own flesh. the continual press of emotions that aren’t hers makes her weak, and makes her head ache as though she’s been drugged.
on her first night in auradon, mal sleeps like she's dead.
