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Anita often wondered about the de Vils.
Cruella was gone, away on the Isle, Anita’s puppies safe from her forever.
But Cruella’s brother Cecil had also gone, saying that he could not let his sister go to the Isle alone. He’d given Anita a look of such betrayal that it still haunted her.
Cruella had been a villain, yes. But did stealing dogs really warrant life imprisonment? Weren’t there laws about prison terms for different crimes or something? And to send Cruella to the Isle when she was so...unhinged...
But Cruella and Cecil weren’t the de Vils that Anita wondered about.
News came from the Isle, sporadically. Mostly through people who had relatives there. It was through this quasi-legal grapevine that Anita heard that Cecil de Vil had married, and that a son had been born to him and his wife a year later.
Two years after that, she heard that Cruella had given birth to a son.
There was no provision for getting children born on the Isle off the Isle.
Should there have been? Would villains make good parents?
Cruella might have, once. When they were younger, before she began to fixate on anything black and white or made of fur, before she began to torment animals for fun. When she had laughed like a child and competed with Anita to see who could run down the hallway of the school the fastest before a teacher spotted them and stayed up until three in the morning sketching design after design as they flowed into her head almost faster than her hand could move. Back when everyone, even herself, had referred to her as “Ella.”
But now? Now, after she had schemed and stolen her way to get her precious furs, after she had planned to kill one hundred and one puppies for their fur, after she had built up her fashion empire by destroying other people’s businesses, after she had physically assaulted, with her cane, the inspectors who came to tour the factory, after she had sliced open the cheek of her own lawyer with her fingernails, after she had strode onto the ship bound for the Isle holding her head high with dignity - she would not suffer the disgrace of being dragged kicking and screaming onto it, not her - and shrieked at Anita from the prow where she stood, her unnatural black-and-white hair flying in the wind, resplendent in ebony and ivory and scarlet, like some avenging demon - ”You betrayed me! How dare you! You betrayed me, Cruella de Vil! You will regret crossing the de Vil name! This I vow - you will pay!”
The expression of pure fury and hatred on Cruella’s face haunted Anita as well.
Cruella was sent to the Isle, and long-suffering Cecil accompanied her, and their mother and father and brother were dead, and there were no more de Vils in Auradon.
There had been. Cruella had had a niece named Ivy and a nephew named Hunter. They had been de Vils, and like all the family, were generally involved in some kind of suspicious scheme. Cruella had roped both of them into assisting her in her various plots.
But they had seen through it, and didn’t want to. They had rescued as many puppies as they could from the basement, and dumped them all into the back of the van, which the barely teenage Hunter drove, having to stand because his feet couldn’t reach the gas pedal. Cruella had followed them in her red roadster, screeching after them at breakneck speed - at literal breakneck speed, it turned out, because Hunter had been forced to accelerate the van so that it, not built remotely for speed, was going barely faster than his aunt’s car; going around a sharp curve, it had overturned, killing him and Ivy instantly.
They’d found Cruella sorting through the puppies, making sure they were all right, completely ignoring the bodies of her niece and nephew not ten feet away.
Could a woman like that be a competent parent?
Didn’t Anita owe it to her former friend, to the woman she had once been, to check on the wellbeing of her son and even her nephew? Ella would have cared, even if Cruella did not.
All the letters she and Roger sent to Cruella and Cecil were returned unopened, stamped RETURN TO SENDER, as though the address had not been found.
If there was a phone on the Isle, Anita didn’t know of its existence.
And of course, visits were out of the question.
“If nothing else,” Roger told her, when they had exhausted all options of contact, “Cecil will take care of her son. He’s a good man, you told me yourself.”
Anita nodded, weary. Cecil de Vil was a good man undyingly loyal to his family, and, unusually for a de Vil - for anyone - self-sacrificing to the extreme. He had always done what he thought was best for his little sister, to the point where he had voluntarily consigned himself to life imprisonment rather than let her (and him) be alone. He was the only person who had any sort of influence over Cruella.
Life moved on.
A decade and a half later, several children were brought off of the Isle of the Lost as part of a rehabilitation program spearheaded by the new young king. The news spread like wildfire around Auradon.
One of them was Cruella’s son. Carlos, his name was.
“We should meet him,” Anita told Roger. “We should talk to him.”
“He may not want to meet us,” Roger, ever-pragmatical, reminded her. “He will be busy with school. With adjusting to a new place. With trying to prove that he can fit in here. And...his mother may have turned him against us.”
Given the expression on Cruella’s face the last time Anita had seen her, there was no “may have” about it.
So they wouldn’t meet him right then. In a few months, perhaps, once he’d gotten settled, once everything the villain children did didn’t become a headline.
Somehow, it never happened. And less than two years later, provisions were being made for all the Isle children to be brought off of the Isle and to live in Auradon, with their first option being their parents' enemies, and Anita and Roger hadn’t met Carlos once.
All the people who had faced off against villains were being encouraged to meet the children of said villains, the idea being to promote acceptance and encouragement of the VKs among the general population. Also to reassure the VKs that nothing was held against them, if, indeed, nothing was held against them. In fact, several people had applied not only to meet their respective villain’s children but in fact to adopt them-the de Chateaupers, the Fitzherberts, the Darlings.
And now Anita and Roger were going to meet Carlos de Vil and his cousin - Diego, his name was, according to the paper they’d been given.
“We should have said something before now,” Anita fretted as she dashed around the living room straightening everything. “He’s going to think we wanted nothing to do with him.”
“Calm down,” Roger soothed. “Wait until we actually meet him. Be calm - don’t mention Cruella-”
The doorbell rang. Anita and Roger both ran for the door, hesitated for a moment, reached for the doorknob at the same time and bumped their hands into each other, before finally Anita stepped back, allowing Roger to open the door.
There were four of them there.
She hadn’t expected only Cruella’s son. She’d known he had a cousin. But these were four people, not two.
There was a boy of about fifteen or sixteen, with a shy, nervous smile and black hair that bled into white - not split right down the middle like Cruella’s - and Cruella’s same unnatural pallor.
There was a boy a year or two older that looked like he could be his brother, but he was taller, with a healthy flush in his cheeks, and stood with more confidence.
And the other two-
Anita stumbled back, feeling dizzy. She heard her own heart pounding, the blood rushing in her ears. Beside her, Roger looked just as rattled.
“It’s you,” she whispered through numb lips as Roger stepped in front of her. “How did you leave?”
The young woman standing next to Carlos and Diego de Vil had black and white hair split right down the middle, perfectly red lips curved up in a sardonic smile, sharp cheekbones, and dark green eyes.
“Cruella,” Roger growled.
She looked the same, the same as she had the day she’d been sent to the Isle. It had been more than twenty years. How was this possible?
The de Vil woman shook her head, her eyes widening with an expression of chagrin that had never appeared on Cruella’s face. “I’m not-I look like her, but I’m not her. She’s my aunt, that’s why we look so much alike.”
“Your aunt,” Anita echoed, feeling steadier. But the only niece Cruella had ever had was-
“I’m Ivy,” the woman who looked exactly like Cruella said. “These are my cousins Carlos and Diego-” She gestured at the two boys, not saying which one was Cruella’s son, although they already knew- ”and Hunter.” She motioned to the last member of the de Vil group, a man who appeared to be in his midtwenties, who shared Carlos’s freckles and Ivy’s green eyes.
Ivy de Vil. Hunter de Vil.
“Is this a joke?” Roger asked.
The de Vils exchanged glances. Subtly, Hunter and Ivy shifted so that they were in front of Carlos and Diego.
“No,” Hunter said slowly, his voice gravelly, so different from a child’s high voice. “Why would it be? We were told to come here...we can leave if you want. You’re the Radcliffes, right?” He and Ivy, as the oldest, seemed to be speaking for the group.
He looked the same, but...not.
“You were dead,” Anita breathed.
Hunter looked almost embarrassed. “Oh. Yeah.” He and Ivy shared a look. “We kind of were.”
The de Vils all trooped inside and washed their hands in the kitchen sink and sat or sprawled on the carpet in the living room, even Hunter, instead of the couch or the armchairs, as though they weren’t in a strange house with the people that their mother or aunt had stolen from. As though, together, they felt perfectly at ease. They all politely refused any refreshments.
“So, we were dead,” Ivy said, sitting cross-legged. “In the accident. You know about it?”
Roger and Anita, sitting together on the couch, nodded simultaneously.
Hunter’s eyes were dark; he stared off into the distance as though looking at something far away. Of course; remembering your own death couldn’t be pleasant. And he had been thirteen, older than Ivy had been. He would remember far more.
Diego shifted so his arm was touching his older cousin’s, as though to remind him that he wasn’t alone. Hunter gave him a small smile.
“But, you know,” Ivy continued, “they brought all the dead villains back to life. They did that to us too.” She shrugged, as though it was simple.
“But then how did you end up on the Isle?” Anita asked.
Ivy blinked. “That’s why they brought us back in the first place,” she scoffed. “To imprison us on the Isle. Because death was too good for us, apparently.”
“You were seven,” Roger said suddenly, leaning forward to look Ivy in the eye. “When you-died. You were seven, and they brought you back from death only to send you to the Isle.”
“Yes.” She didn’t look angry. She just looked weary, as though all her anger had gone its course and burned out of her. “Hunter was thirteen. We woke up at Hell Hall and gave poor Uncle Cecil a heart attack. Carlos and Diego were only a couple of years younger than I was then. Took...quite some getting used to. Everyone was rather confused.” She laughed bitterly.
“Well,” Carlos said suddenly; it was the first time he’d spoken. He flushed at the attention he’d called to himself, but continued. “If they hadn’t brought you back, or if you’d stayed in Auradon, me and Diego wouldn’t have had you. I mean - not that it’s right that they sent you to the Isle, it’s terrible-”
“We know, Carlos,” Hunter sighed.
Diego grinned. “We filled out lots of complaints! I know the forms by heart.”
“Let me finish! But,” Carlos continued, “then we wouldn’t have had you. I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t been with us.”
“Me either,” Diego added.
“Or me,” Ivy deadpanned, and they all laughed, somehow. Perhaps it was a gift, to find laughter in the darkest moments.