Work Text:
"Hey," Evie whispered as Carlos slumped into his seat next to her.
He stared blankly at her for a minute before turning away and looking out the window, but he didn't even look like he was registering what he was seeing.
Evie sighed. Carlos had been acting remote and distant for the past month. He barely seemed to register when anyone spoke to him, his grades had been dropping, he hardly ever did his homework, and he would spend hours just sitting and staring into space.
"Right," Fairy Godmother said, entering the classroom and closing the door behind her. "Are we all here?"
There were only five students taking Remedial Goodness class-Evie, Carlos, Mal, Jay, and Freddie-so it didn't take that long to determine that yes, they were all here.
Honestly, Remedial Goodness was pointless. It was basically multiple choice questions on random hypothetical scenarios that would never happen in real life with no context.
"Just pick the one that's the least fun," Mal had said, and sometimes that worked.
Often it didn't, because doing the wrong thing wasn't often fun. And it depended what it was.
They were basically given three or four possibilities, and had to pick one.
The thing was, the VKs had no background for this sort of thing.
"A younger sibling comes to you for homework help," Fairy Godmother began. "Do you, A, tell them to go away? B, help them do it? C, hit them? Or D, find them a cheat sheet?"
"None of us-" Jay started.
"Raise your hand," Fairy Godmother reminded him.
Jay raised his hand. "None of us have any siblings except Freddie."
Both Mal and Carlos winced.
Freddie shrugged. "Whenever Celia comes to me for homework help I do...a combination of B and D, I guess."
"By me it was none of them," Evie said. "Mother didn't want me doing my homework because I could get wrinkles."
Jay snorted. Evie glared at him.
The headmistress sighed. "What about you, Carlos? What do you say?"
Carlos jumped. "What?'
"What answer would you pick?" she asked, and repeated the question.
Carlos was very still. He seemed to be looking at something none of them could see. He said nothing for a long time.
Fairy Godmother had just opened her mouth-to repeat the question, to ask Carlos if he was all right-when Carlos finally spoke.
"You help them," he whispered, twisting his own finger around and around. "You listen to them, and you ask what the problem is, and she sees where you got it wrong, and she gives you hints, and then when you're done she says "Good job," and lets you help her on her project..."
He didn't seem to have noticed that he was saying she. As though no longer talking about himself, but about someone else. Someone in particular.
Carlos shook his head and ran out of the classroom, leaving everyone else staring after him, confused.
In the late afternoon Jane knocked on Evie and Mal's door.
"What's with Carlos?" she asked without preamble.
Evie and Mal shared a glance.
"We're not sure," Mal admitted.
"Look," Jane said, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. "He doesn't talk to anyone anymore, he avoids people, he hasn't been doing his homework or doing well on his quizzes, and I heard Coach said that if he doesn't pull his act together he'll have to bench him for the rest of the season. And Mother said he just ran out of class today."
Evie was about to ask how Jane knew all this. Then she remembered that Jane's mother was the headmistress of the school. Jane probably knew a lot about the academic records of many of the students, the same way Freddie and Celia Facilier knew the grades and detention records of many of the Isle students; Freddie had once teased Jay that he still had a report due back at Dragon Hall.
"We're not sure," Mal repeated. "He's been acting like this for a while, we don't..." She closed her eyes, pressing her palms into her eyelids for a moment. Mal hated not to be in control. Carlos's odd behavior, which none of them knew the root of had infuriated her nearly as much as it had worried her. They could help him, but he refused to talk to them!
"He hasn't told you anything?" Jane asked.
Evie shook her head. "He always just says he's fine and walks away."
"He's not really eating either," Mal noted. "Have you noticed, at lunch-he takes maybe two bites and then says he's not hungry."
This had perhaps more significance to Mal and Evie than it did to Jane. If you were on the Isle, you never wasted food or took it for granted. You always ate what you had, because who knew where your next meal would come from? Unless, you were sick, maybe, but Carlos hadn't shown any other signs of illness, and it had been a month. If he really was sick it would have been obvious by now.
"Look," Jane said. She bit her lip. "I hear things from my mother....The four of you, you were brought here sort of as an experiment, right? To see what the children of villains would be like? As a-a test case before bringing any other kids over?"
"Yes," Mal said slowly.
"Which means that you all have to, like, set an example or something. You have to have good grades and make friends and stuff, sort of to prove that it was worth it, bringing you over, and then they'll judge your case and consider bringing off more kids."
The pressure had been great-it still was-the knowledge that she had to look her best, get top marks, make friends, or else they would fail, and maybe get sent back to the Isle, dashing the hopes of all the children there, but to get Dizzy off the Isle, away from her mother and grandmother, Evie would do anything.
"Go on," Mal prompted.
Jane took a deep breath. "Well, Carlos has been sort of antisocial lately, and his grades have been slipping, and...well, maybe one of you should talk to him." She swallowed. "Just in case."
Of course, when Evie wanted to find Carlos he was nowhere to be found.
He wasn't in his room. He wasn't in the cafeteria. He wasn't in the library. He wasn't even in the science lab.
Eventually, she resorted to Dude.
She got one of Carlos's shirts from his room and gave it to Dude to sniff. "Find," she said, and the dog sniffed the shirt a few times, barked, and began running toward the tourney field. Evie followed.
Only a few short months ago, Carlos had been terrified of dogs, despite never actually having met one. This was due to his mother drilling into him that dogs were "rabid vicious pack animals that eat little boys who don't behave." Cruella had never gotten over being outwitted by a bunch of Dalmatians, and now hated all dogs with a passion. The mere mention of the word "dog" or a barking sound had been enough to drive Carlos into a sweat.
Then Carlos had met Dude, and discovered that dogs-or this one, at least-were actually quite nice.
Carlos was now often to be found petting Dude's fur or giving him a walk. The dog seemed to calm him when he got too nervous or overwhelmed.
Well, he hadn't been doing much of that recently, though.
Dude led her through the empty tourney field into the woods, where they walked and walked some more. There was no sign of Carlos. Evie was about to turn back-maybe they'd missed some footprints or something-when Dude stopped at the base of a tree and barked.
Evie looked up. Sitting on a branch, his legs dangling down, was Carlos.
Evie knew Carlos often liked to be alone, but this was kind of extreme.
"Um, Carlos?" she asked.
He didn't seem to hear her. He'd been getting lost in his own world a lot lately.
"Carlos?" Evie repeated.
Carlos suddenly seemed to notice her. He nearly fell off the branch in surprise, only saving himself from falling by grabbing onto the trunk. "Evie? How'd you get here?"
"I...walked?" she asked him. "Same as you."
"Is something wrong?" Carlos asked.
Yes, Evie thought. Instead, she said, "Can I talk to you?"
"You already are," Carlos pointed out as Dude wandered off after a squirrel.
"That's not what I meant," Evie muttered. "I mean-" She sighed, and began to climb up the tree.
"You're climbing a tree," Carlos said.
"Yes," Evie said, reaching for the next branch.
"I thought you don't like doing athletic stuff," Carlos pointed out. "Because it gets your hair and makeup all messed up."
Evie finally reached the branch Carlos sat on. She scrambled up and flung a leg over it, holding on to the tree trunk for balance. "Some things," she puffed, "are more important than hair or makeup."
Carlos's eyes widened. Coming from Evie, that meant a lot.
"Carlos," Evie said quietly. "What is it?"
"What's what?" Carlos asked, but Evie wasn't fooled.
She glared at him. "You don't get to wander around in a daze for a month and then pretend nothing's wrong!" She hesitated, her voice softening. "Did something happen? Your mother, or your cousins-"
"No." He shook his head sharply. "No. My mother's fine. My uncle's fine. My cousins are fine."
There was an odd sort of emphasis in the way he said that. Like he was leaving out someone. Someone who wasn't fine.
The leaves of the tree rustled in the breeze. The sun felt warm on Evie's face. In the distance, she heard Dude barking.
Evie put her hand on Carlos's arm. "Carlos," she said quietly. "What's wrong?"
Carlos sighed. Evie thought that he was going to close up again, to zone out and act like she wasn't there. But then he spoke.
"Do you..." He hesitated. "No, I don't think you would."
"Do I what?"
"Do you...remember my sister?"
Sister?
Evie nearly lost her grip on the branch.
Carlos didn't have a sister. Carlos had never mentioned a sister. Evie would have known if Carlos had had a sister.
Then again, Evie had only known Carlos for about a year. She'd spent ten years isolated in her castle, never speaking to anyone besides her mother, never stepping foot out the door. Carlos could've had a dozen sisters and she would have no clue.
Then again, Mal and Jay had never mentioned a sister either.
Neither had the de Vil cousins. Evie had only met them once, when she'd first befriended Carlos, although she'd seen them at a distance other times. With their black-and-white hair, they were very recognizable.
None of them had mentioned Carlos having a sister.
But, come to think of it...
At her sixth birthday party, before it had all gone wrong...
She remembered seeing Carlos there as he opened his gift bag and took out a tiny black kitten. His eyes had widened, and he'd showed it to the older girl standing next to him, with black-and-white hair just like his. Evie would have thought that was Ivy de Vil, but Ivy was a bit younger, and hadn't she been the one on the other side of the plaza trying to set off the fireworks?
"She was at...my birthday party?" Evie asked.
"Yes," Carlos said, sounding pleased that she remembered his sister. "Everyone was. Except-" He broke off, not mentioning Mal.
Carlos closed his eyes. "They found her."
"They...found her?" Evie echoed uneasily. But really, a sister who might as well have been nonexistent, who nobody ever mentioned...that couldn't have a happy ending, could it?
"My cousins," Carlos said, once again staring out into the distance. "They found her. In the catacombs-you know the catacombs? Most of them are unexplored, undisturbed, and apparently there's one in the corner of my backyard. I never knew it was there, none of us did. I guess Mother did, though." He laughed, harshly, blackly, mirthlessly.
"Carlos," Evie whispered.
"She's dead," Carlos said bluntly. He seemed to flinch as he said the word. "Dead all this time and I never even looked for her. What kind of brother am I?" He put his head in his palms and began muttering, "Useless, worthless, idiot..."
"Carlos," Evie said sharply. "You're not. Stop talking about yourself like that."
"I'm not?" Carlos asked. "When anyone else, anyone smarter or stronger, would have done something, would have realized-I'm seven years old, and I come home and she isn't there, and Mother says she left us, and like an idiot, I believe her!" He was crying now, two tears tracing down his cheeks.
"Carlos," Evie whispered again. She wrapped her arm around him, and he wept into her shoulder.
Carlos took a deep breath and looked up. When he spoke he sounded slightly calmer. "This is going to sound so stupid," he began, "but I used to imagine that she was out there somewhere, that she left, but she was out there, and one day she would come back and take me away from Mum and we would live together and our cousin would visit and we would live happily ever after..." He laughed humorlessly again. "Well, I got my happily ever after, but she didn't. If I'd actually paid attention and noticed things-"
"You were seven," Evie told him. "You couldn't have-"
"But it's not just when I was seven! I'm fifteen now, and I never figured out what really happened to her! Only when they told me-"
He stopped midsentence, breathing hard. For a while he didn't say anything. Neither did Evie.
"She'd be eighteen now," Carlos said finally. "She was part of the first generation, you know."
Evie nodded. "The first generation" was what the Isle called the children born in the first two years after the Isle's creation. Like Harriet Hook, or Anthony Tremaine, or Sammy Smee. And, apparently, Carlos's older sister.
"She had this purple dress she liked," Carlos reminisced, his voice soft and distant. "It was her favorite. She made it herself. She wore it all the time. That's how they knew it was her, you know. That and the hair."
Evie winced, trying not to imagine a body left to mummify in the dark, dry catacombs, undisturbed for the better part of a decade. She squeezed Carlos's shoulder.
"On my first day of school," Carlos continued, "she told me that if anyone starts up with me, she'll punch him in the nose. She actually did that to Clay Clayton." He laughed again, but it was a genuine laugh, remembering a happy, heartwarming memory. That one, at least, was not tainted.
"She would help me with my homework," Carlos went on. "She wouldn't just tell me the answers-she would help me figure it out on my own." Oh. That explained Carlos's reaction in class today.
Evie said nothing. She just sat with him, and let him talk.
"She was really smart," Carlos told her. "When she was in fourth grade Dr. Facilier said that she could probably be in sixth or seventh, except that she was part of the first generation so the school didn't have a sixth or seventh grade yet."
"She sounds..." Evie hesitated, struggling to find the right word. "Resourceful. Smart. Capable. And like she...like she really cared about you."
Most of these terms might be odd descriptors-which here were meant to be flattering-of someone's long-dead sister. But coming from the Isle, a girl who took on the responsibility of her younger brother and her cousins as well, all while dealing with her mother, a girl who was part of the first generation, which had basically had to work out Isle life for themselves...These were actually very high compliments, and Carlos seemed to think it honored her memory.
"She was," Carlos whispered. "She did."
They stayed there in the tree for a while longer, just sitting there quietly, with Carlos every so often sharing a memory of his sister.
Then Dude came running back and sat at the base of the tree, looking up at them with big beseeching eyes.
"All right," Carlos said, laughing-a real laugh. He scrambled off the branch and down the tree trunk, Evie following him. "Let's walk you back to school, shall we?"
They walked wordlessly back to school, skirting around the edge of the tourney field; practice was now in session.
It might have been Evie's imagination, but she thought Carlos seemed...lighter, somehow. As though it had helped to talk to someone.
Just before they entered the school building Carlos turned to her. "Could you not-tell the others?" he asked. "I mean, I will, I guess, soon, but not yet, and I want to tell them myself-"
"I won't," Evie promised. "Don't worry."
"Thank you," Carlos said, and took a step forward.
"Carlos," Evie said.
He turned back to her.
"We can help you," Evie told him. "We could talk to you, or you could talk to us, or we could not talk at all if you want. I don't know. But-you have us. Not just your cousins, Carlos. You have us. Here. With you."
He paused, his face taking on that all-too-familiar distant expression.
Then his face cleared. "I know," he said quietly. "I know that now. Thank you," he said again, and then entered the school building and disappeared from view.