Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"... Forget the poems of saints and ghosts
I'm the one I fear the most
Little did I know that I was only crying wolf...

...I don't need a metaphor for you to know I'm miserable
No, I never sold my soul..." 

"What's Wrong" by PVRIS

:: :: ::

acting :: Harriet Hook

:: :: ::

There are times she can see herself acting, like she’s outside of her own body, nothing but a puppet on strings of fire. Mania, she’s heard in whispers, and they don’t have a word for the opposite part of it on the Isle but there definitely is one. She’s not always in that state, unlike her brother, and often, it’s an act. The contrast is as sharp as lightning and feels like a thunderstorm. Gray and wild.

She never exposes her weakness outside of the safety of her hideout. Sometimes when Uri’s around (though only when he’s sensible, when the pain in his knees and ankles is milder, when he can see the people in front of him and not his own sparking agony). Occasionally when a few of the less tempestuous members of her gang are with her, on the street for a few nights (not cared for they’re just underlings, they still return to their parents sometimes).

But never does she falter when her family crosses her path: not since she was denied their father’s hook in a twisted competition and lost a half-built half-wrecked ship in his rigged game; not since her baby sister disappeared into the streets and turned feral; not since their middle brother with too similar a name began cackling hysterically anytime punishment was unleashed on either of them for their failures.

Not since she failed to protect them. Harry, in particular. She’s older but she can’t do it all, and he never saw it the same.

Not since her father lashed out one final time, barring her from his own ship while ranting about her rumored promiscuity among his men—and she finally put her foot down on top of his sword. She escaped that night, to the sound of him shouting for her to never return to the docks, never come back into their crumbling house again, go be a whore on the streets as it’s all a pretty thing like her can be.

The act doesn’t keep her own turmoil concealed, but that’s not the point. Every day she gets up and controls her section of the city, and leads her own gang, and has never once been desperate enough to fall into the profession her father accused her of being in.

Calista Jane sneers when she comes within earshot on the far side of her territory, and Harry’s own mania carries him further from her with every begrudging moment a turf war simmers under the surface of her street aligned with his wharf, but there is no answer in Isle life for how siblings keep each other. Every person is either in alliance or an enemy, and having a blood link means nothing, in the end.

She doesn’t know why she thinks it should: the Isle raised her stronger than that.

Still, she maintains her territory without infringing on either of their splinters. Still, Uri draws strands like pearls from his sister, small bits of information about both their siblings’ lives, even though he and Uma are also constantly at odds. Still, when the biggest alliance between the Isle gangs starts, she allows their voices to be heard in Council (in that she does not protest, instead feigning glee as Mal and Uma snap and snarl at each other, tracking her brother’s gleaming grin in the background).

No one questions her or suspects that she could be crueler to them, could upset their little schemes and wicked wanderings. But she’s a gang leader for a reason, and it’s because she acts like it. Gang became family, but blood ties linger underneath her act.

So, when Maleficent comes back in all of her wrathful glory as she’s negotiating at the territory line with Anthony, when she hears that the docks went aflame and that an old pirate’s ship in particular was destroyed, she almost doesn’t turn up.

Almost.

Yet, maybe in the desire to stand victorious over the ashes, maybe because she’s just that foolish, she goes when Asya summons her to the docks. She finds her brother at the makeshift hospital. He is in bad shape but at least has his own compatriots nearby and looking over him. Their sister is unaccounted for, which on an island this small, either means she’s an unrecovered body or she left for Auradon with the other villains. She searches the burning wharf and drags her father out of the wreckage of his crumbling ship. Her father’s crew is destroyed and he’s not waking up.

They hate each other and it still hurts that he’s wasting away without being dead yet. That her baby sister is missing. That her brother is injured but wouldn’t want her nearby if he does wake.

There are times she is grateful that she can pretend to care, and times where she wishes that it were all and only an act.

:: :: ::

dust :: Anthony Tremaine

:: :: ::

There is dust in his mother’s room, on top of a bookcase in the corner. Nothing appears to sit atop it, but there are clearly cobwebs there in a room where all else is kept impeccable. One day, he decides to stand on a chair and look. There, he finds a photograph laid flat, facedown, and turning it over he finds a smiling royal couple dressed all in shining white. They are running down the widest set of stairs he’s ever seen under sunlight brighter than any that can surely exist and smiling a way he’s never seen anyone smile before.

He replaces it quickly and dusts himself off outside of her room, determined that she not know.

It’s only a few weeks later that he recognizes the woman in the photograph. And then he understands.

Grandmother hates the woman in the photograph, the step-sister who got it all and left them with nothing. Nothing but the world’s oldest profession. Yet Grandmother had a title of her own, separate from her long-deceased husband and nothing could take that away from them, not even this dirty waste-basket island. Or their work.

“Blood is blood, whether heroes respect it or not,” she’d murmur to him at bedtime. He knows what his grandmother wants him to pretend. There’s one lesson she taught him without compromise, and it’s that appearances matter.

There are other things he understands by watching his mother. He knows why his mother so carefully sneaks extra stiff rolls into his young female cousin’s hands and why her laughter takes on a higher pitch with the younger two boys. Their fathers were memorably belligerent, after all, and don’t tend to take no for an answer when it comes to his aunt’s availability, and also demand time with their sons. The boys are learning things and their fathers are painful memories. Dizzy’s father had been better to the woman with whom he spent a handful of nights (but he’s also never come back).

He knows why she keeps his sister inside as much as possible, and why their rooms are in the back of the house and separated by an extra door with a second lock. He’s eleven when his mother entrusts him with it, eleven when she teaches him how to block the door with a chair as an extra measure. The front rooms are for business, after all. And his mother will do anything to keep his sister out of the family’s line of work—including screaming matches, outright defiance, and, in compromise, additional days and nights given up to the work. (She teaches him to do the same for his sister, though he observes that’s not how siblings tend to be on the Isle).

He knows why she bows her head whenever Grandmother speaks. He knows because he watches, so still in corners and around doorways and under bridges, keeping himself so still that dust could scatter across his shoulders and back with ease if he watches and listens long enough.

But his mother also teaches him the subtle art of caring for another person, even while pretending that your attention and drive stem from elsewhere—because this is the Isle, and all the things Anastasia Tremaine is inside have been hidden for so long, forced down by her mother, that Anthony thinks she doesn’t even realize all that he learned from her.

He doesn’t have a name for it when he meets a young Gaelle, freshly scarred and stubborn, a lingering seasick feeling coiling in his stomach. It’s like he’s on the barge, water is moving underneath his feet and gloved hands quickly pawing for the most useful materials. But he knows not to pay attention, knows that this is not safe, knows this could be a weapon used on him. Appearances matter.

Gaelle sticks around, though certainly not with intent to be a part of the youthful work-minded of the Isle. His gang is the rabble that knows how to work with their hands in labor or acquisitions, or how to work with their bodies. A number are semi-employed in the front rooms in his Grandmother’s house. Girls like Freddie, irregular, leveraging her need for extra pennies into a deeper alliance between their two gangs. Boys like Diego, who comes and goes at will and without seeming to care why he’s there.

And as the man of the house, it falls to Anthony to make sure the girls don’t receive such awful treatment that they can no longer work. There are too many girls like Claudine, whose mind is so beaten that the times she shows up, he has to lay down her rules and keep an ear out for her. He’s the one to drag customers kicking and punching from their house, the one whose bruises come more from Friday nights than gang fights. He’s the muscle and Grandmother coldly smiles down from the landing of the stairs.

Anthony goes by his mother’s lessons far more than he’d ever admit: he quickly establishes a reputation and a protective ring, leveraging the labor-minded workers as muscle. The move earns him more leeway with his Grandmother.

And Gaelle starts coming around more, dusting off the edges of his practiced ruthlessness. Wedging herself into the corners of his very being until he can no longer remember a life without her in it. Until he no longer remembers what it felt like to stand on solid ground without an anchor in her eyes, in the twist of her lips upwards, in the dance of her fingers.

Isle life has no room for this secret. If he had a dusty bookshelf of his own, he’d have to place a photograph of the two of them there.

There’s a salon on the side of the house, a small storefront that could be considered reputable. It’s Anastasia’s pet project, a hopeful business venture allowing her to bring in more bargained goods without needing to be at her mother’s beck and call. Anthony notes his grandmother’s disdainful eyebrow and knows that the fledgling business might not last a few more years, but she’s allowing it for now. They get some profit, but it’s a rare villain who cares much about looking nice anymore.

This is none the more evident than the fateful day that the sky alights with dragon’s fire. Maleficent never much cared for them at all, and he’s not surprised that his home bursts into flames with one blast to the storefront. It’s pure luck that Dizzy was in the middle of the structure instead of the shop, her mother having sent her back into the house for a forgotten bucket.

Anastasia’s the one who covers her tiny niece when the fireball hits the salon. She’s the one whose back and hair are burned, who screams for her sister—a sister who will never answer, again. Part of the house collapses from the inside, grandmother in her chamber, the boys in their beds, Asya flinging herself to the front of the house as it remains standing along the main street.

Anthony makes it back through the streets from a negotiation with Harriet at the edge of his territory. He takes Dizzy from his mother’s arms and gets Asya down, and they douse the weak flames as quickly as they can. Half the house is gone but it’s been less-than-stable before, and only visible from the back. Now open directly into his territory, his gang has taken shelter in the ashes left behind.

Their family, they finish burning in the pyres. His sister and cousin go lead the wounded in recovery, and he remains behind to take charge of the living. Their alliances are all that is left, as the dust settles around them, smudged as any picture too well-handled and forgotten in time. Whether they will be disturbed from this state remains to be seen.

:: :: ::

scar :: Gaelle Gaston

:: :: ::

Her father’s hand. Baby brother Gil, pale, crying. Sharp stabbing silver. Pain. It’s all she remembers of that night. There’s no doubt where the scars came from, who put them there, how much she fought back. Before defeat.

She doesn’t like remembering.

The world itself was scarred for a long time. Fractured into gray angles and dark shadows, a wretched island even more treacherous and damnable for a girl with no voice. A lost place, where she can’t bring herself to ever really face her youngest sibling, only watches him closely from the shadows because his own scar can’t be seen and she failed him when he was too young to know it. A wicked place, where she actively avoids and attacks the twins in turn, because they might be younger than her but already mimic their father down to the walk, talk, and stalk. Their father didn’t shake them they were in the crib, not like Gil, and she couldn’t stop him then and she didn’t succeed in saving herself.

That scar in her heart has always hurt more than the one on her face.

But there are rays of color, muted though they are, that glimmer along the lines that bind her existence. Threads like the young faces that look up at her, similarly scarred or silenced, speaking without words—in hands, letters, gestures. They can talk across the market, around each corner, from rooftop to alley. Walking wounded, broken as they are, yet not alone.

Not all of her gang is scarred on the outside, but then, no one on the Isle goes through life with all of their pieces put together.

And not all of the cracks in her composure happen at a glimpse of her twisted father. No, there’s the gentle wave of dark hair framing an aristocratic face of high cheekbones and a neatly-pressed suit. Never mind that those locks tend too long, that even Anthony’s skin bruises and breaks, that the threadbare suit needs mending in a top-story window of a grand yet battered house.

She watches, after all. “The only way to survive is to keep your eyes open and your footsteps light.” Doing so earns her fewer scars, after those first, most ragged ones.

Mirrors are few, but the smudged house windows work just as well when dimly lit and slightly warped. From the corner of her eye, there are thick lines on her cheek and jaw. In the flash of her hair and the shade of her eyes, she sees her other parent.

Mother is a woman lost to ramblings. Formerly tight hugs dissipated long ago into complete stillness, a vague inclination to resist survival altogether and drift into a void. The woman no longer keeps her name, let alone her memory or her expressions. She’s a hollow shell that wants to be a wisp of air. She wasn’t always this way, but Gaelle cannot recall any expression approaching affection on her mother’s face. She does recall the utter devastation in those so-similar eyes the day they saw each other again after the scars. After that moment, all the rest of her animated light fluttered away, a final magic act from the daughter of a circus magician (and now, she’s no better than her circus-born sister who fell under a Judge’s clenched fist).

All she has left now is a weathered scrap of a letter addressed to someone else.

Her mother has scars, too. They’ve always been on her belly and hands. Like mother, like daughter, they spoke more than they should and paid for it. Unlike her mother’s doused embers, Gaelle’s fire has turned into an inferno.

She can never forget. And she will never forgive.

When a roaring dragon fills the sky, and she knows her bastard father and the copycat twins will be tailing her back across that sea, Gaelle does not pursue. She takes care of her own. Wraps their burns. Makes sure the other gangs are still standing, stands firm at Anthony’s side in Council. Slips that old letter into one pocket and a hunting knife into her belt, preparing herself to find a way off the Isle.

He left her with scars. She’s going to leave her own on him before their story ends.

:: :: ::

faith :: Freddie Facilier

:: :: ::

Of all the ideas lost on the Isle, for faith to be sticking around always struck Freddie as particularly cruel. With a father like hers, thinking the world devoid of gods and goddesses is laughable. And to be stuck in a rotating spiral of hellfire and damnation like the Judge is more hilarious than any half-choked out joke in the Slop Shop.

After all, the fact that gods and goddesses exist doesn’t mean that they ever think about this wretched pit of an island.

Freddie watches her father cackle his way past the mad priest at the occasional gathering of terror, falling in the midst of autumn before the coldest months begin, and she knows. They’re all mad, here, in their own ways—either full of rage like Doctor Facilier, or full of insanity like Judge Frollo, or full of disbelief like everyone who thinks there is nothing beyond their world. The heathen and the crusader are the same kind of ever-looping song, stuck together even while flinging barbs and blades. Perhaps that’s what drives them.

Her family used to be under the care and watch of the darkest of deities, her father taught her, the followers of the gods who played life and death itself like toys. He trains her to know his gods and their vile, turbulent, exquisite power lies out of their reach, to his ever-increasing fury. Even as he rages, he reminds her that to be given powers by the Other Side is to be at their command, not the other way around. Not prized and protected by them, but watched the way a cat considers its prey.

No, the gods are not human, and neither are the goddesses, but someday maybe the dark mothers will hear her offerings, left in a dark rooftop altar her father doesn’t know about. Maybe someday they’ll hear her chants and give her a chance. An escape.

Devotion isn’t the word Freddie would use, because the Isle works this way: no loyalty, no companionship, and no meagre attempts at goodness. Here is: alliances for as long as it suits both parties involved; roaming with someone at your back and waiting for them to stab it; and survival at its dirty, grimy, chaotic worst. She’s not above using any part of herself to keep on top.

And yet, her altar has the look of a devotee, if she takes the time to pause at the tail end of a long night, another offering joining the rest on the low-set table draped in symbolic trinkets to call for the watching, the following, the divine blessings. She pushes the boundary of Isle normalcy with this secret altar, and never once considers abandoning the faith. Her thumbprints of blood on the edges of the offering dish soak in the misshapen candles, made from the remnants of burnt candle wax and a thick wick of thinly torn cloth. When she has no valuables, she gives offerings of her own body.

She’s tied herself in with all the assurance of a person who has nothing to lose. Nothing exists on the Isle for her, not even a raging father whom she fears and avoids more than she works alongside, now. There was the time that she learned at his feet, soaking in the very knowledge laid out before her on this altar, taking in the names of their gods and goddesses into her bones where they won’t be lost.

The lessons must have ended between the fourth or fifth time that Facilier and Frollo murdered each other in yet another explosion of intense religious fervor—but she can’t remember.

The altar’s not the only secret she keeps from the shadowed doctor and from her gang. The goddesses know, if they happen to be hearing her prayers.

Freddie started watching the Judge’s daughter just before the third time their fathers clashed, because life with the Judge has no other possibility but to be a nightmare. Claudine’s mother is a zombie in all ways possible without Facilier power behind it, just like Gaelle’s mother—strung out into small pieces that no longer truly exist.

(They were sisters, the two daughters of a poor circus performer who got caught up in the glory of Hermie Bing’s show. To have fallen to pieces in such a similar manner—it’s a story that repeats itself, out here.)

Since she has no one, Freddie began to keep track of Claudine, not to carry on their father’s grudges, but because her secret is an altar and Claudine’s is a broken cross and somehow, it doesn’t look too different to her. Not when they both end up on their rooftops and pray to a silent, uncaring sky. When Claudine’s shattered inside, clinging to tales in battered hardcover books to escape from reality. When Freddie pretends that her eyes don’t linger on any human form in appreciation. It doesn’t look too different, for either of them, when they do whatever it takes to survive (at the Tremaine house, a few extra pennies in trade, no shame in necessity).

But Freddie would never admit that any of it makes her feel more than a casual acquaintance with the girl. She’s a ghost in her territory, a leader who gains followers of the orphans and the homeless, because they know she’ll cast her shadow wide and take them in, knows she’ll keep an eye out and rarely, if ever, stabs any of her own allies in the back. Just like her father, there’s a mystery to her fierceness and a chaos in her eyes that comes from the root of a secret no one else believes.

She has to believe she’d walk with blessings and weapons from the Other Side if the barrier was down. Faith keeps survival meaningful.

When the barrier does fall and she’s suddenly hyper-aware of strange little currents in the air, of the ground roiling and seething under her very feet, of the crashing ocean singing an ancient mother’s wrathful harmony in her ears, at once she knows that her prayers were heard all along—but it’s too much, too strange, beyond her will to touch, only witnessed in overwhelming capacity.

Her father was not devout the same, making his faith a display and a battlefield. His power is different, and he can’t sense hers, doesn’t even ask, because the madness that has guided his footsteps all this time turns into violence.

Her father steps out of the shadows with a blade. Her father asks her to prove herself his child, and when she can only stare dumbly over the sheer volume of ocean waves in her ears, his eyes twist with disgust and disappointment.

She loses the fight before it begins, in those few dazed minutes of trying to understand that the very world around her screams.

Darkness.

Voices in the darkness.

They speak to her, shake her bones and twist her into a tool, a weapon, a goddess’s presence in the world.

Because she has, for most of her short life, given tokens of her own blood in offering.

She had nothing else to give them but herself.

And then the Other Side spits her back out into her rapidly-healing body. The ground still swims underneath her feet and the ocean’s motherly chiding is fierce and soothing at turns, and a few streets down she finds Claudine clinging to life with her beloved books scattered on the cobblestones underneath her bleeding body.

A poetry in their fathers has always existed, a synchronicity despite their conflicts.

They are not the only abandoned, left-to-die children, intentionally-made-orphans rather than murdered. There must have been just enough lingering barrier magic to cling to their bodies as they were injured, because those on the Other Side weren’t trying to save them all. Gods and goddesses don’t particularly care like that, don’t interfere with human affairs unless their devotees ask, and even then, don’t always answer.

That they answered Freddie—she can’t even think about it for long without a headache.

Freddie takes Claudine to Asya’s makeshift hospital, on the whisper that the goddess who demanded her allegiance also demanded Claudine’s. When that particular conversation will happen, she isn’t sure, but the pale weary face of her ally-friend-partner unnamed-something… She wouldn’t be able to turn away, even without the Other Side prodding.

And it’s definitely prodding the one who had any faith on the Isle: there’s a mad Doctor to take back into the shadows, in exchange for her devotions.

Chapter Text

"...Only fools make feasts of gold

They rot the fruit on tables

When did I get so pitiful?

Just a goddamn corpse in a centerfold..."

"What's Wrong" by PVRIS

:: :: :: 

chaos :: Asya Tremaine

:: :: :: 

These are three truths and three lies:

While there are no calm places on the Isle, there’s a particular kind of turmoil in the Tremaine house. She dreams of a life off the Isle. What she has and what she needs are two completely different desires. She considered joining her family’s business despite her mother’s vehement insistence that her place was in the back. When barred from the front rooms, she cried. She always loved her family, because she knows what love feels like.

Asya’s not the one to reveal the answer. For all anyone knows, they are all true. Or none of them are—because she is chaos wrapped in dainty dresses.

The fiery end of her known world is merely another moment.

:: :: ::

hair :: Ginny Gothel

:: :: ::

The shorter her hair, the better. That’s what she told Uma the first time, when she was nine years old, a few weeks after running away. Well. As far as the Isle lets anyone run, which can feel further because people don’t care if you’re a runaway. They don’t help runaways be found—that would be good, and everyone here is evil.

She says it when her hair is lying over her shoulders. She has thick, dark curling locks. They made her mother angry or sad, but it wasn’t until the night she ran that they made her mother grasp it in tight fists and brush until her scalp bled and slide back and forth between covetous of those locks and fury at her refusal not to continue being a son. The choice to run wasn’t even made—she blinked twice and her feet were pounding down the street.

“You sure, girl?”

“Do it,” she says. In the background, Harry cackles from his post at the window of Ursula’s shop. She shifts on her seat, uncertain exactly why she’s trusting this older girl with rusty scissors so close to her head, but then, this is the first place she’s been allowed to eat and not been kicked to the curb at closing. The girl behind her simply shrugged and said she could get on board the ship, if she wanted not to go home so badly.

With each screeching click of the scissors, her mother’s obsession falls away. The length leaves her breathless for a moment, but only for that long. She’s had harder shocks than this, including the night she finally ran from home. Even now, the thought that she could be found keeps her shivering at night.

After a month, she stops having nightmares every single time she sleeps. She starts playing with the other kids that hang out at the docks. One of them teaches her how to tie together a net with rope.

Uma shows her how to cut her own hair, seems odd for a person whose own braids display an impressive dedication. She even helps Uma, once taught, quietly spinning tighter and tighter braids until she’s allowed to work on the front instead of the back. And then, she sometimes gets a smile from the girl who leads, the girl who takes care of them, the girl who’s rarely feminine except for in these moments.

She’s fifteen when Maleficent scours the docks with her dragon’s fire, fifteen when she hides in an abandoned pipe with a burned arm and a blessedly unbroken body and watches the villains who allied themselves with the dragon-fae in their exodus from the Isle. Fifteen when she catches a brief glimpse of her mother again, on her way to Auradon and her vengeance.

Fifteen when she knows that all she wants is to not have had nightmares at all.

:: :: ::

salt :: Uri, the Sea Witch

:: :: :: 

Deep-sea dives to the ocean’s floor turn up ragged oysters and tiny fish and jagged rocks. Cut into palms, sharp edges, cut into feet and skin the knee and let the salt sting the cuts clean. That’s the dive, that’s the wave. That’s how to be brave.

Close to the shore it’s murky gray water and trash and entirely too many rotting wood boats. Too many dirty feet and patched pants and tired souls. So many souls. They are bruised and battered ones, broken and bent ones, twisted ones. Entwined around each other and fighting each other and coldly turned away from one another.

They are his sister’s braids. His mother’s tentacles, kept because the barrier only prevents full transformation from state to state, and born on land means land-worthy legs. Legs that ache at the knees, knobby and bruised. Stabbing pain in the ankles. Toe-cramping at every step.

Sea salt soothes. Waves wash rough edges away. Only while floating does the world feel enough. Sometimes at Harriet’s side, too, does everything make sense again. But only mostly.

Only when on fire is the world almost ready.

:: :: ::

paint :: Dizzy Tremaine

:: :: ::

She is bright splashes of yellow and orange, swirls of neon and swatches of deepest red. Where these colors come from is unknown to her, in her youth: or as least, that’s what Grandmother thinks. She’s too smart to be fooled, too curious not to notice what her mother does for a living.

Dizzy’s the girl who makes friends (though they can’t be called that on the Isle, it’s always minions or allies here). She likes the sound of the word friends, though, and wishes she had some. Maybe Evie, who is the closest that she’s ever come to a true-blue friend.

While everyone has their own color scheme, Dizzy spends so much time making everything look shinier than it is, she doesn’t notice her own lack of a signature style. If pressed, she’d guess that a combination of her mother and aunt make their appearance in her colors. At least the guess unifies the look that she absentmindedly maintains while dreaming of softer cloth and fancier baubles.

Losing her shop was hard: losing chunks of her entire world (family) is harder. She never knew it could hurt so much. Her only certainty in the world now is that, of course Anthony and Asya would be keeping her together, taking care of each other.

Still, there’s no paint that can cover up the bloodstains on her knees. Caring for hurt people is hard, but it makes her feel better when the world’s gone and torn itself apart.

:: :: ::

blanket :: Hobart and Jace

They have one blanket between the two of them, now.

And still, they’re better off than their fathers ever were underneath Cruella’s thumb.

Joining up with Freddie's group wasn’t a bad idea, after all. Even if Carlos is the one who kicked them to the curb (and the three of them pretend that it was mean, pretend that Carlos wasn’t worse off with them gone and meaning it). Even if it was just a way to get some decent work in, being nothing but brawn themselves. Carlos was the brain, their fathers always reminded them. Never mind those maths or that writing, you two, you’re the muscle and that’s all there is to it.

There’s not much to miss when the Isle burns and their fathers do, too. The strain had put up walls between them all years ago.

The blanket’s threadbare and used to be black, but at least it’s still with them.

:: :: ::

luck :: Big Murph

:: :: ::

Some landlubbers have all the luck.

He’s not one of them. He’s not even all that big, like his pa, and he ain’t a sailor, either. Never did manage to get off the docks, never did manage to figure out how to make his weak tongue work right. No one could ever understand him, no matter how much he tried to use those lungs and work that throat the way it looked. His pa had kicked him off the Captain’s ship early enough when it was clear that his voice would never work quite right.

A’ least Gaelle’s got a use for his guarding, for his warning signals with quick-dancing fingers, for his ability to keep an eye out around every corner with the help of all those littler ones.

As luck would have it, he made his own place on land and never looked back out at the sea.

:: :: :: 

unwanted :: Hermie Bing

To be unwanted is to be normal on the Isle, and Hermie’s never been too normal a gal. She’s a smirk and a scowl all wrapped up in a ringtop master’s gear, trained as diligently as her father can make her when they don’t have the best-working equipment no more. But then, a circus performer’s always made do with the rickety, the rumbly, and the rusty. That’s part of the movement of the road, even when they can’t even travel from one end of the Isle to the other.

Her father wasn’t the best at caring for animals, but his damned pride was busted when he got busted out to the Isle. He wasn’t a blustery type, more the sullen-by-the-fire type…but whenever she walked into the room, his eyes brightened up a little bit just for her. 

“Don’t make the mistakes I made, my darling,” he’d tell her. “Doing them over won’t get us off this island, but maybe your rising star will get noticed by someone who can take you to the ring again.”

When she was in bed, she’d hear her mother say, “You shouldn’t encourage her. Get her hopes up like that.” She’d be saying this while brushing out her beard: Hermie’d hear the sound, soothing and repetitive.

Father would say, “You’d prefer she be like the rest?”

To that, her mother would never reply. She did not understand it until she was much older, and had to fit in, and hid her abnormality like it was shameful. Hermie Bing was not unwanted, and that was not safe on the Isle. Protecting herself meant a lot of faking it. And faking it means making sure Harriet keeps her eye on the front of their tent's street, makes sure that her family's protected even as she hides that fact from her leader. 

And because Hermie Bing was not unwanted, when the circus tent burned, she tried to save them. She failed. Her father’s all she has left now, and he probably won’t be waking up again.

Maybe it would have been better to be unwanted, if this feeling wouldn’t be sitting like lead in her chest.

Chapter Text

"This skin don't feel like home

It's all overgrown but you'll never know..."

"What's Wrong" by PVRIS

:: :: ::

wine :: Harry Hook

:: :: ::

The night his sister left, he was on his knees cleaning spilled wine just after the moon started sinking back toward the horizon. He’d lost track of time by then, lost the number of swallows their father took and the volume of raging growls. Lost count of how many times he ignored the ache in his shoulder. He must have looked away, embarrassed and angry that she stood between him and their father. And that was it.

When his sister leapt from ship to shore and took off down the docks, he must have been wringing out the cleaning rag. Later, that’s what he’d remember: there, blink, rag, blink. Gone.

Uncommon: no. Considered: no. He moves on jerky strings, sometimes bursting out in flailing limbs with too much fire in his veins, other times ruled by the icy grip of apathy that keeps him cruel. Harriet is a thought that can plunge him to the deepest degrees of either emotion, wild with it, unable to predict his own responses.

Uncertainty is familiar.

Most of his words now filter down through his captain before coming out of his mouth. Without her, he wouldn’t know reality from his own rampant imaginings. Most of his actions now filter through the reactions of his second mate. Without him, he wouldn’t know if he was ruled by fire or ice on any given day. None of this knowledge is upsetting—he doesn’t know life any other way, though he can see that others seem not to experience the lightning currents that jerk his limbs like puppet strings.

Most of his whines are strangled before ever tripping off his tongue. Not like anyone else on this rock would care to hear him: none but their crew ever notice that he’s left something unsaid, now.

The Isle leaves no room for softness like feelings. There’s nothing but the fact that they can choose to matter by force or choose to be forgotten. And, after losing Harriet—‘tis better to be full of wrath and venom and reckless, wild glee than to go find her to bring her home.

She left for the land. That’s it. Chose to be forgotten.

Just like their father, and their third sibling—each lost in their own ways. The old captain is so deep into bitter wines he forgets that just because the bottles seem endless, doesn’t mean he should tempt the volatile seas. Calista Jane is oft found on the arm of a lunatic, Yzma’s boy, and he’d hunt them down except—

Everyone chooses. Force or forgetting?

Either way: not him. So at night, he curls up between his chosen crew, his chosen family, the ones he chose with a ceremonial night of sweet wines and burning whiskies, a celebration of their very own ship, ragged and patched as it may be. He makes his choice, too: to keep these ones. Seems like they might choose him, for once. That’s enough.

Then fire falls from the sky. He wakes up from what he thought was death, aching limbs and throat burning for some wine, and sees: yes, they chose to keep him.

:: :: ::

found :: Gil Gaston

:: :: ::

One time, he found a rock, and he wanted to keep the rock. It was a new color. A lot of the island is gray and the rock was a new kind of red. Not the blood kind, or the fire kind. It was nice. He wanted to keep it. His brothers did not want him to keep it. So he could not keep it.

A lot of things he wanted to keep would not be. His brothers did not let him keep much. Not the fish that was very large and very shiny. They ate it. He cried when they did not see. Not the stick which was knobby and felt heavy in his hand. They broke it. He cried when they did not see. Not the book. It had torn pages and no cover but it had pictures with the words. They tore it more and threw it in the water. He did not cry that time. There was no point. But he did not like that. And his father did not stop his brothers. He did not like that, either.

His sister might have let him keep the rock and the fish and the stick and the book. She looks scarier than his brothers and his father when he sees her. He never sees her from close up. She is on rooftops a lot. She is around corners and jumps behind market stalls. She uses her hands to speak to her crew and he wishes he knew how to speak like that too. But she does not come near him. She stays away. He does not like that. He does not cry about it a lot, anymore. Just sometimes. Just on the ship if he’s lying down late at night and Harry’s on one side and Uma’s on the other. And if they have just mentioned their own siblings. Then, he might cry. Usually he does not.

His sister might have left but he thinks she also might have found something better. He thinks his brothers and father are not people to stay for. That’s why he went to Harry and Uma. They are better.

He knows that on the Isle that better is not actually better. Bad is best. Good is worst. This sometimes makes sense. Sometimes it does not. But Harry and Uma know more than him and they do not yell at him and they do not make him hurt when he messes up. As long as he does what they want he will be doing the best. And when he messes up and they make him fix it, he knows for sure that he is doing his best.

That’s why he dragged Harry out of the sudden fire. He found him even when there was a lot of black. And smoke. And fire. And a dragon. He found Uma, too. He found his crew. He found their ship. He found others who were hurt and put Harry with them. But he had also hurt himself to find Harry. Uma made him stay in place, then, and let Dizzy make the pain ease. He even saw his sister watching when Harry was still not waking back up.

He did not feel completely better until Harry woke up. He did not feel completely better until Uma was no longer scowling all day. But being found by his sister was really great, too. He liked to be found, just like the rock and the fish and the stick and the book. He liked it because Harry and Uma and his sister would not let themselves be taken away like those things he had found.

:: :: ::

prison :: Uma, the Sea Witch

:: :: ::

The sea and her mother and the Isle created her prison cell. (A shop, a busted ship, and an insane brother: what treasures she has inherited and fought for!)

Her ship and her crew and her ambitions were the rust and worn hinges. (Her heart beats in two chests, a fact she will never admit and never stop attempting to conceal.)

Dragon’s fire and Mal and Auradon broke the walls at their weak points. (There could be room for her blood family in her chosen one, if only Uri would come closer. If only he weren’t afraid of something he’s Seen—she still knows him well enough to notice that his eyes have been watching a future, not the present. The thought that he stays away because of what he’s keeping secret makes her grit her teeth harder.)

Their rebellion will free her completely. (Tear ‘em down.)

:: :: ::

minion :: Diego de Vil

:: :: ::

Never a leader, always a follower: Diego’s long accepted that he makes a far better minion than a villain. In fact, he’d probably be better off as a bystander, gaping at the atrocities and idiocies of his desperately grasping peers.

This is what gets him into Yzla’s good graces within moments of crossing paths in school. She walks past him to the left, eyes darting and assessing, and he wants to know where those sly eyes focus, where that confident strut will lead. And she is just as interested in having a clever follower as backup.

In all their dealings, he’s bound to her as minion to master. The power dynamic is evident and he finds that the world makes more sense when he’s not cast adrift to make all his own choices. On the Isle, there are few enough of those to go around anyway, and while their peers mimic their parents’ patterns thinking that they will become better, he hasn’t fooled himself. He’s not bright, innovative, or clever like his cousin. He’s not as dumb as the Gaston twins, or as crafty as Mad Maddie. He’s barely a solitary entity at all.

There’s a secret to their dynamic that no one ever notices, because they always assume. It’s one that makes him sure he was born in the right place, once he understood it. And it’s one he’d never disabuse them of because it works to their advantage.

It’s simple: he’s never been attracted to anyone. Meeting Yzla, and being hers, doesn’t change that. Their connection is a different kind of thread—one of common purpose and certainty. She gets it, when he tells her that if he could feel attraction, she’d be the one. But raging hormones seem to have swept right by without touching him, and she takes that facet of his service without question.

Necessity causes him to head to the Tremaine house on occasion. Taking customers isn’t exactly pleasant—he’d prefer anything else, but the Isle does not have many options for the homeless mediocre villains while the big-name gangs strut around. Being Yzla’s and hers alone means they need less, but sometimes, they do. So he goes when they need the money. Or, as not everyone pays with coins, supplies. Food. Clothing, too. Everything they need, staying wherever they find a place for the night. The rocky outskirts are best.

His father hasn’t been around in a long time. He sees him, occasionally, at the market or from an alleyway. They never pause when they see each other, anymore. What’s the point? A minion does not care, and his father’s been one almost all his life. In this one aspect, Diego is fulfilling a family legacy of shadowy dealings and skulking.

This is his role, after Auradon has fallen and the Isle becomes a base of operations for rebellion. He watches, and listens, on the rooftop above, crouching in silence, out of sight. And he hears.

He breathes the night air and thinks. Snorts. Shrugs with no one else to witness. Wonders. Dares to consider—

(Could the gangs…?)

He lingers long after an Isle girl and an Auradon king are gone, deciding what report this minion will give to his master.

:: :: ::

bells :: Claudine Frollo

:: :: ::

Books and prayers are her bells. They clamor and cry, ring peals of sweetness and disturbance to her ears, and keep track of her time. There’s nothing else that fits correctly in her life but those ragged, ratty covers and the sweetness of whispers on shadowed rooftop.

There is little else in her life that she cares to remember.

(Don’t think about Mother’s warm, dark skin pressed against her cheek, Mother’s dark and twisted smile as she tried to hide her pain. Don’t think about Mother saying father took too much she did not want to give. Don’t think about Mother apologizing for leaving her behind. Don’t think about Mother’s dark hair flapping as she flees with blood on her thighs—)

There is little else in her life that makes her feel calm.

(Don’t think about Father saying she made Mother leave, not him. Don’t think about Father locking the outside doors at night and not having a lock on her bedroom door. Don’t think about Father’s fearsome anger and twisted lust. Don’t think about Father’s hands—)

Little else in her life that keeps her sane.

(Don’t think about large, watchful eyes that keep her safe on her rooftop. Don’t think about reckless laughter and wrathful scorn and gentle hands so delicate at the wrist—)

Little else in her than fragile dreams.

(Don’t think about hope or goodness: there is none here. Don’t think about love: that’s not allowed, either. Don’t think about her—)

Books and prayers are her bells. They ring louder than her own sobs, ring softer than her hidden wishes. And they have cracks, just like her.

:: :: ::

crown :: Yzla of the Kuzconian Empire

:: :: ::

Knowledge that Yzla possesses: her royal crown was stolen; memories of her brother Zevon have always centered on competition; and their mother Yzma played the long game.

Theories Yzla has: Yzma encouraged violent rivalry because she always knew only one of the twins would inherit their throne; Zevon is the weaker twin, as much for his lack of planning as for his choice to go to Auradon with Yzma; and she was left behind because the long game had ended, surviving only due to her minion’s forethought.

Choices Yzla will make: help these petty heroes return to their home; take advantage of the war to enact vengeance on her betraying blood family; and return to Kuzco’s kingdom and sweep it out from underneath his feet, minion at her side.

Knowledge Yzla does not yet have (but Uri does):

The war will hinge on a turning point that is someone else’s choice. Her minion will be at risk during the conflict.

And Diego matters more to her than revenge.

:: :: ::

letter :: Eddie

:: :: ::

Edgar II never received nor written a letter in his life. The crumpled paper found in his father’s coat pocket catches his vague interest as he prepares to grieve. In the end, the note is nothing more than a reminder of errors in judgement and a promise to one’s self to raise a better son.

Eddie was never meant to read it. He was supposed to grow into a young man who occasionally partnered up with Anthony Tremaine in order to follow in his father’s profession. Those times he was able to do so, he knew that his father was proud. When the Tremaine family lifted their chins and pretended to not desire professional staff’s services…well, he was used to knowing that he wasn’t a real butler, and never would be. Used to being a disappointment to his father. At least, that’s what he thought—according to the note, this was never the case.

Potential loss propelled a ransom scheme involving beloved pets in the elder.

True loss motivates only the desire to see the cause of that loss dealt with—swiftly.

Chapter Text

"I know it's wrong

but I'm so far gone..." 

"What's Wrong" by PVRIS

:: :: ::

torment :: Mad Maddy

::: :: ::

Torment is a hum. Words that repeat in a mother’s tongue are guttural music. Her fingers move in magical patterns that result in nothing, and the music starts again.

…‘cause I’m the mad, mad, mad…

On the worst days, the chant becomes the worst sound, set to the stomping and waving arms and throwing teapots near her head that shatter against the wall behind her. Those are the times that she cries and her mother cries and they both lament her inability to be more than a failure.

…mad, mad, mad…

On the best days, her mother knows that there’s a barrier and that’s why there’s no magic around them and her daughter can wave her hands all day but never produce a spark. Those are the times that they curl up on the bed together and rant at the unfairness of life and her mother pets her hands and calls her darling and tells her that one day, one day, one day…

…mad, mad, mad…

Darkness is her magic, the truest manifestation, sweeping her off her feet in a storm when the barrier shatters. Her mother shrieks in delight, clutching her with the exuberance evident in hugs on her best days.

…Mad Maddy Mim!

Time for some torment and fun. 

:: :: ::

award :: Zevon

:: :: ::

And the award for the most evil twin, the one who would win, the one Mother favored, the one with all the brains and all talent, the one who seized his chance to scheme his way into a crew heading off the Island, the one who laughed as the flames grew and didn’t think to look for either member of his pathetic family—

To Zevon! Finally, a winner.

:: :: ::

mirror :: Gaston Jr. and Gaston III

:: :: ::

What do they have to complain about? They’re the ones who did everything right. They’re the ones who knew their place, which was always above herand definitely better than him.

Father’s the best in all the land and they—well, they’re a mirror image, each.

:: :: ::

obey :: Shun Yu

:: :: ::

Her father’s word is law. A daughter’s obedience is essential to perfection.

She followed the rules of her people, the rules of her father, and knows that the empire they regain will be stronger. She is a princess to her people. She is above the scum that landed on the Isle. Her birthright is the kingdom stolen from them.

Demanding training, demanding a tidy household, demanding for her to be better than any Chinese warrior ever could be—her father’s demands are all she wants, herself. This is who she would be, no matter where or when she lived, and so she obeys.

:: :: ::

paper :: Hans II

:: :: ::

Earliest memories: a paper bird in flight.

His father’s never been a cruel man. Not even by comparison—mother says he’s truly a prince. They lived as well as they could, despite where they were, and that’s no easy task on the Isle of the Lost.

He also learned well. A kingdom is more than any paper contract, treaty, or set of laws bound by generations. A kingdom is its ruler, and a ruler must be…firm. They would have had a kingdom. If not for magical monsters. And he was raised, trapped by magic.

His father’s claim to a snowy kingdom is tenuous at best, but as a song of his own kingdom, well. That should have been more concrete a foothold. He should not have been cast out by his own family when schemes fell.

No, he has little interest in a monster’s kingdom…he’s more concerned with the excuses of his grandparents and uncles. His revenge is not a failed scheme. His is the paper signing into effect his own removal from his birthright kingdom.

:: :: ::

laugh :: Clay

:: :: ::

His mother used to laugh. Somehow, his father would always manage to make her smile.

There’s not much reason to smile, on the Isle. Or laugh. Yet, that was the sound of his home.

Except for when his father would be reminded of the reason they were trapped on an island. Then he raged, loud voice and flailing fists, and his mother would sit quiet in the corner, sewing, lips pinched and eyes sad.

“They weren’t even human,” his father would repeat, again and again. Still unable to understand how his family could be mistreated so, for the sake of mere creatures.

Creatures didn’t cry. Didn’t laugh.

The family business was gone, and their imprisonment was a cruel and unusual punishment. Those are the facts as he knows them. That, and how the older he got, the less his mother would laugh.