Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The worst thing you could be, as a villain kid, was visibly neglected.

The bar for "neglect" was, of course, different on the Isle than anywhere else, but no one wanted to be visibly on the far end; looking as if the basic level of care wasn't being done was practically advertising that anyone could attack you without consequences.

Due to his small frame and his tendency to bruise, learning stealth had been a matter of survival, for Carlos. He wasn't quite as graceful as Jay; in fact, depending on how hurt or hungry he was, he could be very shaky. But he was quiet, and subtle. He knew how to hide exploitable injuries, and he was good at quickly identifying which, out of every potential danger to him in a given moment, was the worst.

He was eight years old, the first time the dark and half-dead woods became his safest path.

He was being chased by his mother on one side- for he had run away from home to get something to eat -and a street vender on another side- for he had stolen the food. He didn't normally abandon his chores, but he was hungry, and he had to eat. Even now, almost cornered at the treeline with a soft apple in hand, he didn't regret it.

He plunged into the woods, and no one followed.

Everyone knew that there were monsters of all sorts, in the dark between the trees, and no one wanted to be the larger prey.

For the moment, they couldn't touch him.

Carlos caught his breath. He was still close enough to look his mother in the eyes. That was no good; if she kept looking at him, she would keep remembering why she was mad, or at least that she was mad. And that meant he couldn't go home tonight, which meant he was in huge danger. But if she went away, she would have time to forget. He strayed deeper into the woods; if she couldn't see him for long enough, she would get bored, go home, forget.

He breathed. Walked. Wished he were graceful like the son of Jafar, and could walk through the crunchy, dead grass without being heard.

The air was so much colder, in the woods, and it was so much darker. He tried not to think about sharp teeth, or claws...They were all he could think about. Shaggy fur, drooling maws, something big, huge...

He told himself that he was still little. He had seen the tiger once- Shere Kahn -out in the streets. He had been frozen with fear, and the tiger had drawled, "Well, look at this wisp of a man cub. Not even worth eating, are you? No meat on you at all." He clung to those words; he wasn't worth eating. Anything, any rat that crawled in these woods, would make a better snack than he would.

He couldn't see outside the forest, anymore. He couldn't hear the venders in the street. He was surrounded only by trees and wind.

At a point, he was too scared to walk anymore- couldn't make himself move an inch in any direction.

He wondered if he would die here.

He wondered if death was a place where his dad lived, or if it was just nothing.

"CAAAAAW!"

The fact that the crow's call was so sudden startled him; the fact that the crow had swooped so close to his head as it let out its cry terrified him; and the fact that the crow cried out in not the standard bird way, but with an unmistakably human voice, got him running. He ran and he stumbled over his feet, because he wasn't Jay, who was always in control of the way he moved- he was Carlos, who was never in control of anything.

He skidded to a halt and landed hard on his backside (which hurt a lot). His fingertips sank into the soft apple still clutched in his hand.

"Ya lost, boy?"

Carlos quailed, staring at the bird from whose beak had come the question. It was a different crow from the one which had flown past his head. It was perched low in a nearby tree. "N-no," he lied. "My mom's coming to get me any minute."

A distant voice- another bird -started singing the song that Carlos's mother most hated, the one with her name in it. Carlos's blood chilled; that meant the crows knew who he was.

"I can show you the way to the treeline," the bird in the tree offered. "Ain't the best time o' day to be lost in the woods."

"I'm not lost," Carlos maintained. Juice was gathering at his fingertips. He could throw the apple at one bird, but only one, and he knew that there had to be more than the three which had made themselves known.

Sure enough, a symphony of voices cawed out their laughter from the treetops.

"Boy say he ain't lost!"

"They don't call this the Isle of the Found!"

"These young people don't know how to accept no kinda help!"

Carlos went for broke and ran again. He felt wings fluttering all around him and heard their voices close to his ears (both the mocking voices and the ones trying to convince him to relax and let them help), but nothing actually touched him, and soon enough the sounds of the crows began to fade into the distance. The woods were even thicker around him, and he could hear every individual sound with uncomfortable ease.

Something was moving nearby. Something big, based on how much greenery it was rustling.

He moved slowly and silently away from the sound.

He wasn't sure how long he wandered directionlessly through the trees, but eventually his ear caught the quiet song of a wooden flute. He followed the sound, as monsters couldn't play flutes, and hopefully it would lead him closer to the streets. In the distance, he began to see the faint orange glow of a faraway fire, in the same direction as the music. He edged warily closer.

Past the leaves of the shrubbery he was currently crouched behind, there was indeed a small fire, over which about four figures were roasting what appeared to be a duck. Where had they come by a duck?! They were hard enough to find by the docks, but here in the woods?

Carlos's mouth watered, at the smell of the meat.

Then he looked again at the figures around the fire, and it took him a moment to understand what he was seeing; what he had initially assumed to be four people was actually, on second glance, two. But they were shaped unusually; their upper bodies were human, but their lower bodies were like horses. Great black mares, but where their horse necks should be, instead there were human waists, leading up to human torsos, arms, shoulders, necks, heads. Jet black horse skin transitioned to the deep, deep copper brown of human flesh. They both wore halter tops that appeared to have been made of the various grasses that could be found nearby. One wore her hair in many braids that spilled liquidly down her back; the other had her hair twisted into an updo, framed by a ring of...of brightly-colored somethings. Were those "flowers"? Carlos knew about flowers, but he wasn't confident he could identify them on sight, and he certainly couldn't believe that this person had them in her hair.

The one with the braids was the one playing the flute, while the one with the brightly-adorned updo turned the meat. For a while, Carlos watched them, forgetting where he was. They looked so calm. They had music and food and maybe-flowers, and they showed no signs that they were anxious it might all be taken from them. No walls protecting them, no weapons that he could see, and yet their faces were relaxed. Didn't they know that they were in the dark forest? Didn't they know that the world was a scary place?

"You've read the stars rightly," the one with the updo commented to her companion. Her voice was high, like a whistling breeze.

The one with the braids paused in her flute-playing long enough to reply, "I always do." Her voice was lower. More river-like.

"Not always," the first one teased, "but often enough, I suppose." Then, terrifyingly, she made direct eye contact with Carlos. "There is enough for three, little one; are you hungry?"

Carlos froze once more, as if she hadn't already seen him. His stomach growled.

"My name is Sunflower," the centaur continued. "I swear that we mean you no harm. Will you eat with us?"

Believing someone just because they swore was stupid, and as a rule Carlos didn't do it, but the apple in his hand had never felt so shriveled and small, and the duck smelled so good that his eyes were tearing up.

When Sunflower brought him a section of the duck, he took it. Like the stupidest person in every story.

He went and sat with them.

He ate with them.

Chapter Text

They were Sunflower and Otika.

They let him eat some of their food, and he didn't die or fall into a deep sleep or turn into anything.

When Carlos– swallowing the gristle from his allotted section of duck, having picked it clean of meat already -asked them how they could be so calm and act so safe in these dark woods, Otika lowered her own food from her lips to answer:

"We've been here a very long time."

"Longer than your mother was of this island," Sunflower expounded. "Longer than her mother was of this world. Before even this ground broke from the mainland and joined the sea, we were here. Long ago, these woods touched the woods of Auradon. There was no Isle of the Lost. We were children at that time."

"And Auradon had another name," Otika added, beginning to raise her flute and play a song that sounded both familiar and slightly forbidden, to Carlos. Not forbidden like the "Cruella de Ville" song was forbidden, lest his mother lose her temper. Carlos didn't know what to fear would happen if this song was sung aloud; he just felt that there was some risk to it. Something attached to the other end of it that might bite if you pulled the line. But the tune...it was pretty. Cheerful.

Maybe that was the problem with it. Cheer where it didn't belong. Something like that.

"What name?" he asked hoarsely, in reference to the last words they'd spoken. He had never heard of Auradon having another name.

"It's not Yen Sid," Otika mused, "but it's something close."

"The name can no longer be spoken," Sunflower said. She drank from a waterskin pouch, and Carlos longed for a sip but couldn't embolden himself to ask. She handed the pouch to Otika when she was done, dried her lips on a cloth, and continued, "This island is an island because we are condemned. We and the crows and the cats."

"My mom is condemned, too," Carlos offered.

"Yes, but in a different way, little one."

"What do you mean?" He was getting too comfortable, just sitting and asking questions. The impulse to run was certainly in him, but Sunflower and Otika were like no one he had ever met, and it felt wrong to leave without knowing them. He believed them when they said that they had been around for a very long time.

"They don't teach the magic of stories anymore. They don't teach magic at all, but stories in particular hold a very old and special magic that lives in the lifeblood of this world. The lifeblood of Auradon is stories."

"In the stories they wove, they portrayed us wrongly," Otika said, with her face turned toward the stars and her flute still poised close to her lips. "They betrayed the wickedness in themselves, and they couldn't bear it. And so they hid us away. Condemned us."

"So...you're not here because you were bad, but because they were bad, and they didn't want to think about it?" Carlos said.

"Because they were ignorant," Sunflower said softly. "They didn't understand us and didn't care to. I suppose that is a form of evil. A common evil, unlike cursing a baby."

Otika handed the waterskin to Carlos. He drank until it was empty, and then he started trembling when he realized he'd finished all of it. Sunflower took the empty pouch from him, and he shrank in on himself, whispering, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take so much."

"Dear little foal," Sunflower said, tucking a flower from her own hair behind Carlos's ear with a deeply pitying expression, "you took nothing we would begrudge you."

The notes of Otika's flute were on the air, and Carlos listened. The more he listened, the more he felt that he knew the song she was playing, though he couldn't remember ever being taught the words. My oh my, what a wonderful day, he almost sang along.

His eyelids felt heavy.

"The sunflower will show you the way home," Sunflower told him. "Before you fall asleep," she added wryly.

This was still the Isle, and Carlos knew better than to trust strangers, and Carlos wasn't like the idiots in the stories who got themselves killed trusting the wrong people (especially because no one loved him enough to save him from such stupidity with a grand, magical gesture). He wasn't stupid, really.

But he was fed, and he'd had water, and these ancient centaurs seemed very much as though they were telling the truth about not being evil.

So, in a great blending of bravery and stupidity, he asked, "Can I stay here, just for tonight?"

"I'm afraid you mustn't," Sunflower said, with a sad look. "It is dangerous for humans to sleep in these woods, especially at your age."

"Can I stay here if I promise not to sleep?"

"You will sleep," Otika said gently. "Because you are tired. Go, little one. The stars tell me that when you go home, you will be safe. Just follow the flower."

He walked numbly away. He knew better than to ignore signs that he wasn't wanted somewhere. It made him sad, but it made sense that they wanted him gone. He'd eaten their food, finished all their water...His eyes prickled as he went.

"Good night, little friend," Otika's faint voice bade him.

The crows didn't speak to Carlos, on the way home. Nothing in the woods seemed to notice him, even though it was night and he smelled like food. The flower in his hand leaned away, and he walked in the direction it leaned, and nothing bothered him. Sometimes the flower changed direction drastically, leading him in intricate, winding paths, and he thought that the way out of the woods should be just a straight line, and he worried that really the flower was just getting him more lost, but he didn't have anything else to go by, so he followed, and he wasn't eaten. Eventually, he started to see the thinning of the trees, and a tension left him.

He left the woods and stood in the marketplace once again. Not that much safer, at nighttime, but human threats couldn't see or smell him in the dark, if he hid quick enough. And he wasn't lost anymore.

But once he was past the woods, the flower started to point the wrong way.

He knew the way home from here, and it wasn't the way the flower was pointing.

He paused, conflicted.

The children who died in the stories trusted the wrong people.

The children who died in the stories didn't do what they were told.

Foolish obedience...Foolish disobedience...

Maybe it was just really easy for children to die, either way. After another moment of thought, he arrived at the fact that he didn't want to go back to Cruella's house tonight, and if the kind centaurs had promised safety on the other side of this flower, then he would follow, until he had reason not to.

He let the flower point his way. Keeping out of sight, as shady deals were conducted in the streets surrounding him.

The flower led him to Jafar's place, and then it straightened at the stem, as though finished.

Jay, son of Jafar, was outside. He was sitting on the roof, swinging his legs and letting his heels bump the sign over the door. Jafar, somewhere inside, called out plaintively for him to cut it out, but Jay ignored him.

Carlos stilled. Jay had seen him, because Jay always saw everything, but he didn't speak or move from the roof.

Carlos knew Jay, and they talked a lot at school, but they weren't close enough to visit each other. They didn't trust each other. They didn't talk outside of school.

Did the flower think Carlos lived here?

After a full minute in which Carlos stood there, unsure of what to do, embarrassed to even be here and both hoping and fearing that the flower would change its mind and start pointing the correct way home, Jay broke the silence by hopping down from the roof and approaching Carlos himself. "You here to buy something?" he asked.

Carlos shook his head. He hid the flower behind his back, which was stupid because it drew Jay's attention to it.

"Well, what's your problem?" Jay questioned him, crossing his arms.

It wasn't an option to just stand here being stupid. He had to say something or leave. "If I do your Weird Science homework for you, can I stay the night here?" he finally asked.

Jay's posture lost some of its edge. Even if his home situation wasn't as bad as some, he understood not wanting to sleep at home. He got the gist of what Carlos wasn't saying. He glanced past Carlos, then asked, "Is your mom following you? Will she show up here?"

"No. I hid in the woods for a few hours and came out once it got dark."

"The woods?" Jay swore. "Who knew you had a spine, under that brain."

Carlos shrugged.

"Come on," Jay added. "You gotta climb to my window from outside, so Dad won't see. Stay quiet."

Carlos throat felt tight again. Sure, the flower had made a mistake, but it had taken him to a safer place than his house, and he had eaten well, and the centaurs had called him "friend", and Jay was letting him sleep in his room. He would probably be robbed blind, when he awoke, but he also probably wouldn't be in a bear trap.

And that felt like plenty to ask of a flower.