Archive of Our Own

Work Text

Present Day

The weather on the Isle Of The Lost is always crap. Winters are brutal and merciless, spring and fall are so cold and wet they leave the whole island drenched for days at a time, and summers spike to dangerously high temperatures even with the perpetual storm clouds overhead, leaving everything dark and muggy and disgusting.Ben tried to ask once, when he was younger, if that was on purpose. Had his father intentionally requested for everything inside the barrier, including the weather, to be as terrible as possible? Was that part of the villains’ punishment?… Did he regret it?That line of questioning had gotten Ben punched in the face hard enough to send him sprawling to the floor. Then his dad had stared at his own hand in silence for a long moment before he slowly broke down crying, which had shocked Ben out of his own stupor and he’d cried, too. When his mom walked in a moment later and saw the two of them holding each other on the floor and sobbing out apologies, Ben’s face slick with the blood still dripping from his nose, she’d, of course, asked what happened, and they told her, and then she cried, and…Ben doesn't ask his dad questions about the isle, anymore.He’s perched on the roof of one of the shoddy apartment buildings that serve as housing in the D-list district, shirtless and looking for all the world like he’s paying more attention to the bottle of bootleg rum in his hand than to his environment. On the street below him, a topless prostitute is fanning herself with a folded up poster, trying to look alluring while the heat has her practically melting into the sidewalk. She hasn't noticed him.There’s a handful of other people scurrying about, all in various states of undress, braving the heat to run whatever errands they have to run. None of them have noticed him, either. Nobody ever looks up.Still, on the off chance somebody does see him, Ben keeps his body language relaxed, his head tilted back, his breathing slow and even. The flush of heat on his cheeks and his slight swaying make him look for all the world like he’s drunk enough to fall off the roof and break his own neck, completely harmless. Ben drinks his watered-down booze.The window to the apartment directly below him doesn’t have any glass on it; it’s just a big gaping hole in the side of the building, only partially covered by dirty, tattered curtains. If he strains his ears he can pick up noises from inside, as the occupants move around and speak in low voices to each other.Ben’s Arabic is pretty good, but the people talking are quiet enough that he still only catches maybe every third word. Still, between their calm tones and pointless conversation, it’s enough to let him know that nobody in the apartment has noticed anything is wrong yet. If he’s lucky they won’t notice at all, and Ben will spend the next fifteen minutes or so sitting alone on the roof, pretending to be some random drunk henchman kid checking out the hooker.Ben ran out of luck years ago. He keeps a hand on the hilt of the knife strapped to his thigh, and drinks his rum, and waits.It’s maybe eight, nine minutes later that there’s a sudden hush through the apartment. By the time the shouting starts, Ben has tossed the bottle aside and twisted himself off the roof, fingers digging into rough, decaying shingles, using the momentum to carry him through the open window hole. He doesn’t have time to scope the situation. He draws his knife while he still has surprise on his side and lashes out for the nearest throat.None of Abiz Mal’s thugs have any legitimate children, which is fortunate, since Ben gets squeamish killing kids his age or younger. The adults, though, he’s grown mostly desensitized to, and he cuts another one down as fast as he can. Skin splits like butter under his knife. A spray of hot blood follows. Ben clenches his jaw against the sudden ache in his teeth. There are thirteen men in the room, but only twelve of them are a threat, since all Abiz Mal is doing is screaming for his henchmen to stop Jay. With the two Ben just cut bleeding out on the floor, and the one Jay must have got before Ben swooped in, that leaves nine.Those are still not great odds, but Jay is holding his own well enough. The heavy bag of stolen goods slung over his shoulder slows him down, but he’s still faster than the thugs, and now that Ben is here their attention is divided. Jay cuts down the nearest two when they turn to see who just came in out of nowhere, then ducks to stab a third in the leg. He uses the man’s shoulder as a springboard when he collapses to his knees, vaulting over the crowd in a clumsy roll, careful of the low ceiling.Ben blocks an oncoming sword, kicking the man’s knee as hard as he can, bending it backwards, then he lashes out with his knife and cuts a long, deep slice into someone’s arm. Takes a step back, and then another to keep his balance when an incoming sword makes him jerk to the side, leaving him awkward and unsteady on his feet. Someone grunts and collapses a little to Ben’s right, and someone else starts screaming in Arabic loud enough to drown out Abiz Mal’s pointless shrieking. Ben cuts blindly and gives more ground.Somehow over the clamor Ben hears Jay whistle, high and piercing, and he falls back and follows on blind instinct, scrambling back out onto the roof as quickly as he can.Abiz Mal is still screaming, and his goons come piling out after them like a zombie apocalypse, but Jay is the one who taught Ben how to get around the isle, and the odds of these old, bulky has-beens being able to keep up are slim enough that Ben risks the two seconds it takes to sheath his knife before he sprints after Jay, the two of them leaping over rooftops.It takes them nearly an hour to get to the Thieve’s Bazaar at full speed, and neither are willing to stop or slow down until they get there. It isn’t exactly the safest place to rest, especially given what exactly it is they just stole, but they lost Abiz Mal’s thugs twenty minutes ago and nobody else has any reason to suspect that what they’re carrying is all that important. The center of the island is always bustling with activity, even when it’s swelteringly hot out. If someone is still following them, they’ll probably get lost in the crowd.With that in mind, Jay and Ben duck into a nearby alley, slumping against opposite walls and heaving for breath. Jay’s fingers twitch toward the bag like he wants to double check on it, then go still. Every isle kid knows that the quickest way to get your stuff stolen is to draw attention to it. Instead he turns to Ben, looking him over with a raised eyebrow.Jay looks like an absolute nightmare, shirtless and sweaty and bloody, and Ben assumes he doesn’t look much better. But he and Jay hit hard and fast. Ben doesn’t have a scratch on him, and none of the blood is his. He gives a tired, wordless thumbs up, then raises his eyebrow in turn. Jay responds with a one-armed shrug. He has a nasty-looking cut on his shoulder, curling over his collarbone, but it doesn’t look life threatening, so Ben leaves it be for now. With nothing else to say, they both go still again, waiting for their breathing to return to normal.“Are we bad?” Ben asks, several long minutes later, wincing at the pull of drying sweat and blood on his bare skin. Jay casts a glance at the marketplace, then smirks back at him.“Bad to the bone. Let’s blow.”People hurry to get out of their way as the two walk the rest of the distance to the De Vil manor. Ben can’t blame them; looking like he does, he would probably get out of his way, too. He also isn’t complaining about it. The heat and humidity have settled over the isle like a blanket, and the last thing he wants is to be rubbing shoulders with strangers, trading smears of sweat and whatever other grime people are covered in. The empty streets make for a much more comfortable journey, he and Jay sauntering along side-by-side, an arm’s distance between them to avoid sharing body heat. When they reach Hell Hall they duck around to the back, avoiding the windows, and pick their way through the overgrown yard to the single oak tree standing right on the property line.The hatch to Carlos’s treehouse is locked, of course, but a coded knock and another one of Jay’s sharp whistles has the door being pulled open for them. Ben hauls himself up gratefully, groaning in relief at the cooler air and chance to actually sit and rest. He doesn't offer a wave or a greeting until he’s on the other side of the small room, easing himself down onto one of the rusted metal folding chairs by the workbench while Carlos secures the hatch again.Carlos gives them both a wincing look once he’s slid the bolts and locks back into place. Ben can practically hear Cruella in her son’s head, shrieking about how dirty he and Jay are. For once he almost agrees with the old hag, but with an effort Carlos swallows down whatever he wants to say, visibly shifting gears from the potential mess to the potential injuries.“We’re fine,” Jay says, before Carlos can ask. He’s sitting in the corner directly in front of Carlos’s homemade air conditioner, hogging the cool breeze and already digging through the bag to pick out what he’ll give to Jafar. With a huff, he turns the sack upside down instead, letting it’s contents spill out over the floor, making it easier to sort and organize.The coins are dirty and bent, the silver tarnished, the jewelry mostly broken or dull, but the gold is real and the gems are authentic. For a second Ben just stares. He could buy a hundred meals. He could get medical supplies off the Shadow Man or Gothel. He could buy half the books on the isle to give to his mother with just a handful of those coins.“Gotta pry the gems out of their holders,” Jay is saying, polishing a ruby pendant on his pants and holding it up to admire the shine. “I’m taking them all as my cut.”Carlos is nodding, picking out all the silver and weighing it in his hands, probably calculating how much wire he’ll get when he melts it down.
“I want any sapphires, though. Diamonds too, if there are any.”Jay opens his mouth to argue, but Carlos cuts him off. “I’ll pay you back, whatever price you name. It’s important, Jay.”Jay’s face pinches tight, his jaw clenching, and for a moment he doesn’t say anything. Neither does anyone else. There isn't exactly tension in the air, but this is… A
lot to ask for. Maybe more than Jay can give.But after another minute he sighs, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulders. “Fine. We’ll talk payment later. Ben,” Jay shifts gears, turning to look at him, “What’s your cut?”… Hm. Ben eats well enough, especially since joining Mal’s gang. Freddie Facilier owes him favors that he could cash in on for medicine and such. There are plenty of other ways to obtain books.“Make it worthwhile,” He says, and doesn’t elaborate. They all know exactly what he’s talking about.Carlos stares at him for a long moment, looking both determined and a little bit afraid, though if he’s more scared of Ben’s show of trust or the implied IOU is unclear. Ben only smiles at him, trying to be encouraging.Their plan is a crazy one, but if anyone can pull it off, it’ll be the mad inventor. Ben knows his open affection and loyalty can make the others feel uncomfortable sometimes, so he doesn't voice that thought, but it's important to him that Carlos knows Ben has his back. Finally, after a strange sort of staring contest, Carlos swallows. His voice is thick when he says, “I’ll try.”Before Ben can say anything in response, Jay rolls up onto his feet, breaking the tension with a ruffle of Carlos’s hair. He has most of the gold coins in his pockets, but the majority of the jewelry he plans on keeping are in a neat pile in the corner of the room, waiting to be pried apart later. “We need showers,” He announces, unnecessarily, and offers Ben a hand up. It's all a pretty blatant excuse to leave the treehouse now that emotions have threatened to happen, but Ben feels pretty disgusting, so he takes Jay’s hand instead of calling him out.“Should we expect you tonight,” Ben asks Carlos while Jay fiddles with the locks, “Or is Cruella likely to keep you busy?”Carlos frowns, thinking. “No, I’ll be there. I might be late, but I’ll be there.”“Cool,” Jay says. He throws off a two-fingered salute as a farewell, and drops down the hatch.Ben huffs at his friend’s hasty retreat, and turns to smile at their youngest. “We’ll see you tonight, Carlos. Stay safe.”Carlos nods. “You, too.”With a wave, Ben climbs down the ladder after Jay.Neither of them move until the hatch is back in place, and the sound of sliding locks and clanging bolts has stopped. Then Jay turns without a word and walks off.“Shall I walk you to the shop?” Ben asks, falling into step beside the thief, “Or would you rather bathe at the castle?”Jay doesn't look at Ben when he says, “Let’s stop at the old man’s place so I can drop this off with Jafar, but you’ve got a bigger tub.”Ben nods at that, accepting the answer for what it is. He isn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of his mother seeing him like this, but if he and Jay creep in through the window and clean up quietly she’ll never even know.(Besides, they can both pretend to be unaffected all they like. Several men are dead at their hands. It doesn't matter that their cause was noble, and it doesn’t matter that, under the barrier, death is only ever temporary. Those men will be up and walking again tomorrow, but the memory of their dying gasps will linger. If Jay doesn’t want to be alone right now, Ben can’t fault him. He doesn’t want to be alone either.)Again, the streets clear quickly as people catch sight of the two of them. Ben tries to not look at anyone’s face, but he can’t help the old habit. He knows a few of them from being surrounded by the same faces his whole life, but that’s all they are. None of them are big name villains and most don't even seem to be their henchmen. Who are all these people, he wonders. What did they do to get sent here, to this awful, hellish place? Did they deserve it?The way the crowds all scamper at the sight of two bloody teenagers makes him doubt it.The walk from the De Vil manor to Jafar’s shop is a decently long one, and Ben and Jay spend it in companionable silence. When they finally come upon a wall tagged with Jay’s snake icon in vivid reds and yellows, he speeds up, leaving Ben behind. For his part, Ben keeps meandering along behind his friend, watching as Jay disappears into a building at the other end of the street.Jay doesn’t come out right away, but Ben isn’t worried. Those coins were real gold, after all. Jafar will be pleased. Less so if he knows Ben was involved in acquiring said coins, though. Ben stops a few doors down, in the meagre cool offered by the darker patch of shade under a tattered awning, and waits.He doesn’t have any bathtub booze to keep his attention this time, so when Jay still hasn’t come out of the shop after another minute Ben settles for cleaning his fingernails with his knife. His hands are too sweaty, though, slipping around inside his gloves, and he eventually gives up rather than risk slicing his fingertips. Another minute passes, and Jay still hasn’t come back out. The air is shimmering with heat radiating up off the cracked asphalt, and Ben feels ridiculous standing alone on an empty street, holding a weapon like he’s waiting to blitz the first person who walks by.Another minute passes. Another. Damn, it’s hot. The sweat dripping down his back and shoulders makes Ben itchy. Antsy. He fiddles uselessly with his knife, tries to breathe through the muggy air sitting thick and heavy in his lungs. Five minutes go by with Ben standing awkwardly by himself and the heat pressing in on him from all sides, his mouth so dry but every other part of him dripping with sweat. It’s strange of Jafar to keep Jay this long if he isn’t upset, but those coins were real gold, he’ll be pleased.It’s been six minutes and counting, and Ben’s ears are straining for any noise from the shop. His grip on his knife is white-knuckle tight to keep it from slipping, and he’s cautiously edging his way down the street, creeping up in front of Jafar’s shop, when Jay comes charging through the door with a huff. His hair is still twisted up into a tight bun to keep it off his neck, and other than the gash on his shoulder he doesn’t have any new marks that Ben can see. Jay looks at him, and at the knife in his hand, and raises his eyebrows.“You were in there a while,” he says, half an accusation and half in defense, and Jay snorts at him.“Dude, he started ranting about the Cave Of Wonders again as soon as he saw the gold. Be glad I wasn’t in there for the rest of the night.”Ben sighs, “Oh, right. That explains it.”Jay bumps their shoulders together, and the two head back the way they came.The Isle Of The Lost is terrible no matter where you go, but there’s still a division between Haves and Have Nots. The Haves are all villains of at least B caliber, either for their actual crimes or for their behavior once arriving on the isle. The Have Nots are henchmen and minions who threw in with the wrong villain, or petty criminals who were sent to the isle when the kingdoms purged their prisons.The villains with magic tend to be more feared than those without, even though it isn't really usable on the isle. Maleficent is obviously top of the food chain, second to only Hades, but Jafar and The Evil Queen are both very close behind her. Dr. Facilier, Ursula, and Gothel all fall somewhere below them, with Cruella, Gaston, Hans and Lady Tremaine making up the bottom rung of the A-listers.Ben doesn’t know where his father actually lies on that list. He figures his dad is classified similarly to Claude Frolo or Shan Yu, so reclusive and well-defended that he’s a hard target to hit. He’s sure when his parents first arrived on the isle there was a pandemonium of villains trying to storm the castle, but almost twenty years later the blood lust has died down, and people have mostly… Not given up, but moved on from trying to kill the beast. (Ben ignores the quiet voice in his head saying that it’s probably because they did , over and over again, until their revenge got boring and they finally left him alone.)As a result, Ben’s Father’s castle lies not too terribly far from Queen Grimhilde’s, in the more upstate part of the isle, unofficially dubbed the Thorn District for the way Maleficent’s tower casts it’s shadow over the whole cul-de-sac. The surrounding forests are shady and surprisingly green given they haven’t had direct sunlight in years, but Ben knows better than to wander off the beaten path, or to walk that path with his guard down. Shere Khan never comes up to the castle, but Kaa does sometimes, and there are other creatures in the woods besides.Still, it’s a familiar walk, and Ben and Jay make it to the castle unmolested. Ben leads the way around to an old stone wall, covered in thorny vines, and climbs up using the same hand and footholds he’s been using for years. Jay follows along at a slightly slower pace, and the two slip soundlessly in through Ben’s bedroom window.Ben is lucky enough to have an en-suite bathroom, and in exchange for a few dirty favors (often literally dirty) Carlos came over and tinkered with the plumbing through the whole castle, so now the water that slowly fills Ben’s claw-foot tub is actually warm. Jay has already stripped naked in the time Ben was fiddling with the faucets, and he catches the rag Ben throws to him with ease, stepping over to the sink and using his hands to gulp down mouthfuls of lukewarm water, before he wets the rag and uses it to scrub off as much of the grime and caked-on blood as he can. As clean as he’ll get, Jay slides into the tub. Ben does the same, sighing in relief as he soothes his parched throat and starts to finally feel clean again, and takes his spot across from Jay, their legs overlapping under the water.One of Carlos’s homemade air conditioners hums and clanks in the other room, cooling down Ben’s rooms enough to be actually comfortable, despite the sweltering summer heat. Maybe he’ll ask the mad inventor to fix his shower in exchange for all that silver, as the water he and Jay are lying in has already started to turn murky reddish brown with blood.Jay has his head tipped back, his eyes closed as he scrubs himself off lazily, not even bothering with soap yet. Ben does the same, only pausing when the water becomes opaque enough to gross him out.“Time to refill the tub,” he says, and moves when Jay gently kicks him so he can unplug the drain with his foot.The only real benefit of the isle: no bills to pay. If you can manage to keep your own plumbing and wiring in order, you’ve got all the electricity and running water you want. Unless you’ve managed to get yourself stuck in one of those run-down apartment buildings, of course.Ben moves so he’s kneeling while the tub refills, scratching at a streak of caked-on blood, using his nails to chip it off while Jay gladly takes up the newly-freed space, spreading out in the tub without a hint of shame, his legs falling around Ben’s hips.“Do you have to make this as homoerotic as possible every time we take a bath together?” Ben asks as he grabs the soap, not actually upset.“Dude,” Jay snorts, without opening his eyes, “We’re taking a bath together. It’s already homoerotic.”“Point,” Ben concedes. He’ll never say it out loud, but he’s honestly touched that Jay trusts him enough to do this, especially given what he’s been through. There are plenty of people on the isle who would gladly take advantage of his vulnerability, for any number of reasons, but with Ben Jay allows himself to let his guard down.With the last of the grime finally washed off his body, Ben leans forward, one hand bracing on Jay’s chest, careful not to dunk his head under the water. Jay opens one eye curiously as Ben moves over him, but Ben shushes him, looking at the cut in his shoulder.His assessment earlier was mostly correct. It isn’t deep, but it is jagged and nasty-looking, and already more red and puffy than it should be. Infected.“Dirty knife,” Ben guesses, lathering up his hands and starting the slow, unpleasant process of cleaning the cut out.“Filthy,” Jay agrees, biting down a wince. “Shit stings.”“I’d imagine.”It takes a while to really scrub out the worst of the grime already settled into the cut, and Ben ends up draining the tub and having Jay lie under the running faucet while Ben carefully reopens the wound. Between the fresh blood and water, and a decent amount of soap, they manage to get it mostly clean.Jay doesn’t say a single word when Ben climbs out of the tub and pries the cracked mirror off of the wall to dig bandages and antiseptic ointment out of the hollowed-out hiding space. Ben doesn’t say anything either. Later, Jay will ask Ben to name his price for the medical care, and Ben will give him an answer because that’s how things are done on the Island, but for now, Ben treats and bandages his friend’s injury without comment.Jay makes for a poor patient, grumbling and occasionally swiping at Ben while he does his business, but soon enough Jay is all patched up and Ben shoves his legs out of the way to settle back into the tub for a final rinse. He’s absolutely going to have to ask Carlos about the shower. The one in his parent’s room, as well.As clean as they’ll get, Ben watches Jay meander naked into his room to get them something to change into, grinning at the memory of a time when he would have been watching Jay like a hawk, ready to get violent the second his hands strayed. But Jay doesn’t steal what’s already his, Ben knows. The thief won’t take anything from him that isn’t offered.Ben uses the last of the bath water to scrub his blood-and-sweat-soaked pants, knowing they’re already stained beyond repair and not particularly concerned. They’re just stains, after all, and it’s not like Evie made them. These were work pants.Jay lobs a change of jeans at the back of his head, and Ben half-heartedly flips him off as he stands to hang his pants to dry. He changes while Jay kneels in his place, already redressed in a pair of jeans Ben will have to remember to take back from him, and scrubs his own ruined pants.“... You think he can do it?” Jay asks, while Ben is putting the medical supplies back into their hiding spot.“Carlos?” He asks, just to be sure.“Yeah.”“... If it’s possible, Carlos can do it.”“And if it’s not?”Ben sighs, slumping against the wall. He traces the scar on his left palm as he thinks. If it’s impossible… “Then we’ll be no worse off than we already are,” He settles on. “My parents are convinced there’s no way out, but they don’t know what Carlos is capable of. Or Evie, for that matter. They don’t even fully understand how the barrier works. My dad didn’t want to listen to explanations of the magic and mom says he kept her out of it, too. I think Carlos and Evie can do it, but if they can’t, we’ll just keep looking for another way.”Jay looks at him skeptically for a moment. Long enough that Ben begins to doubt his own words. All of that’s pretty easy for him to say, isn’t it? He may have a rough time out on the streets, but it’s no worse than any other isle kid. Unlike other isle kids, though, Ben has a home to go to if it gets too much. He has somewhere safe to hunker down, with parents who will look after him. It’s so easy for him to act like everything will be fine.Ben is opening his mouth to try and backtrack, not on his confidence in their friends but on the way he’d presented it, when Jay scoffs, wringing his pants out as he stands. “Don’t let C hear you talking like that,” he says, shoving Ben out of the way so he can hang his own jeans up. Ben laughs agreeably.“He’d tell Mal, and she’d call me an idiot.”“She’s right, man. You’re a dumbass.”They bicker for a bit longer before it’s time to part ways. They both have more tasks to do before the day is over and it’s time to meet up with the others. Jay climbs back out the window, and Ben waves him off before returning to his bedroom proper, where he pulls on a shirt and combs his hair into some semblance of order. His undercut is growing out, he’ll have to stop by the Tremaine place before tonight.As presentable as he’ll get and without a speck of blood on him, Ben heads off into the rest of the house in search of his father.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seven Years
Ago

Life on the Isle wasn’t always like this. When Ben was little, his parents had kept him hidden, tucked away safely inside what remained of the castle. He grew up… ignorant, mostly. His parents never told him anything about where they lived or why, only that he was forbidden to go outside. It was too dangerous, they said. Too wicked, plagued by evil villains and terrifying monsters. Ben was expected to stay inside, where his mom and dad could keep an eye on him, and that was final.

For a time, that was enough. More than, in fact. Ben had never been a brave child, and the very idea of the outside world terrified him. He was safe and happy with his parents, who were always around to play with him and tell him stories and teach him things. Sure, life was tough on occasion, but Ben was too young to understand why they didn’t always have food or why his dad would get so angry or why his mom would sometimes just sit and cry. This was all perfectly normal to him. After all, he’d never known anything else.

Years later, Ben would look back and both appreciate and resent his how hard his parents had worked to make him think nothing was wrong. His childhood was… not perfect, of course. There were animals that sometimes crept out of the woods to prowl around the castle, and sometimes Ben could hear screaming off in the distance. (“Just a fox,” his dad would say, and for a while Ben believed him.) There were nights he was stuck in the crawlspace, and told to be silent and still until their visitors left, and his parents came to get him. Those nights had been the worst. The crawlspace was dark and cramped and sometimes Ben would be in there for hours at a time, straining his ears for any muffled sound or stray word he might be able to catch. It was awful, but they always had food the next day, so Ben learned not to complain too much.

It wasn’t until he had nearly reached double digits - which would make him fully grown, by isle standards - that things changed. His parent’s visitors began to show up less and less, and the sounds Ben had struggled to try and overhear his whole life got louder and angrier. One day, the visitors stopped coming all together. His parents started fighting, first in whispers and then shouting at each other behind their bedroom door, late at night while they thought Ben was asleep. His mom told him they would have to start eating less, and his dad opened up a door Ben didn’t know existed and started to pull out the emergency stash of cans and bottles and vacuum-sealed packages he’d been told about once but had never really payed any attention to.

After almost five months, that ran out, too.

Ben didn’t complain that he was hungry. Not once, because he wasn’t dumb and he knew that he ate more food than his mom and dad did, even though they were bigger. They didn’t complain either, but he knew they were even hungrier than he was. Maybe that was why they were always fighting.

Ben didn’t complain, but he kind of wanted to, because he could feel his stomach clenching around nothing and it hurt.

After four days without food, while Ben was supposed to be asleep, he heard his dad get up and creep down the hall. Those four days were the longest Ben had ever gone without eating, and the hunger pangs were keeping him awake. He’d figured the same must be true for his dad, and he’d poked his head out into the hallway to ask if he could sleep with his parents that night.

But his dad had been walking towards the door, something Ben had only ever seen him do when he had visitors. Only, if there were visitors, Ben would be hiding in the crawl space. Confused and alarmed, Ben had watched his dad pull the hood of his jacket down low over his face, undo the locks, and go outside.

He doesn’t remember how long he sat on the stairs, staring at the door in shock before he finally sprung up and ran to wake up his mom. The following hours had been terrifying if only because of how confused he was. His mom had tried her best to calm him down and reassure him, even though she was scared, too. Ben clutched her shirt and tried to believe her. He didn't, really, but it was the middle of the night and he hadn’t eaten in four days and eventually exhaustion won out over hunger and fear, and Ben fell asleep.

When he woke the next morning, his dad was back, and he had food! Ben had sat at at the table and gleefully stuffed his face, and his parents must have thought he’d be paying more attention to that than anything else, because they had an argument right there in the other room where he could still hear them. Ben didn’t understand most of it, but he understood that his dad had gone out and fought the evils and the monsters and the dangers lurking outside in order to bring back food, and his mom was angry and scared because he’d gone alone.

“You needed to stay here!” His dad shouted, one of his earthshaking roars that made Ben’s chest feel hollow. “If we leave him alone and they find him--”

Oh, Ben realised. They were talking about him.

In fact, if he thought back on it, and tried his hardest to remember the other arguments that he’d been trying to ignore… they were usually about him. His parents needed to keep him safe. They needed to keep him fed. They needed to keep him hidden.

With his parents screaming in the other room, Ben stared at the half-eaten food in front of him. He ended up eating it all, because he really was very hungry, but it left a bad taste in his mouth.

Ben wasn’t stupid. He knew his parents worked hard to take care of him. He knew he didn’t do enough to help. He knew, after four days of no food and a year of his parents fighting, that it was time to be a man and carry his share. He just... wasn't sure how.

Ben didn’t jump up and leave the castle that night, or the night after. For months, he sat awake as one of his parents or the other would go out, once or twice a week. They figured out a routine pretty quickly, and one would stay with Ben while the other went out, and they all pretended they weren’t scared. Sometimes they came back with food. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they would come back all shaking and moving weird, and whoever had stayed home with him would wrap them up close and wipe the blood off wherever they’d been hurt, and they would sit together in the dark and hold each other. Ben hid on the staircase and watched.

He had never been a brave child, so it took him almost a year before he found the courage to go out on his own. Ben wasn’t anything like the heroes in the stories his mom had told him; the men who could slay dragons and save princesses and rule kingdoms with fairness and compassion. Ben was just… Ben. He didn’t have what it took to be a hero, but he couldn’t just sit and do nothing. He was ten now, almost as old as Wendy when Peter Pan came to take her and her brothers away. It was time for him to go on his own adventures and start earning his keep.

He’d tried, once, to ask his parents if they would take Ben with them when they went out. He knew better than to try and ask again. They wanted to protect him so bad they wouldn’t even listen when he said he wanted to protect them, too.

So Ben was ten years old when he started carefully counting the nights and keeping track of how much food they had, so he could know when his parents would go out and, more importantly, when they wouldn’t, and one night when his mom and dad were both very asleep, Ben crept out of his bedroom, and down the stairs, and up to the front door.

The line of heavy bolts and locks had been there since Ben could remember, but he’d never actually tried to undo them before. He ended up needing to drag a chair over and climb up to reach the top ones. It took a long time, but he was careful and quiet, and he managed to get all the chains and padlocks and hooks all undone without making too much noise and waking up his parents.

Then Ben put his hood down low over his head like he’d watched his mom and dad do, and took a deep breath, and stepped out into the woods.

It wasn’t running away. He had every intention of coming back. Ben was just… going on an adventure. Like the heroes in his mother’s stories. Like Wendy Darling and her brothers. He would go out and see great and terrible things and make it home safe and sound. If he told himself that enough times, maybe it would be true.

The late October night had been icy-cold, enough to drive Kaa and the wolves deeper into the woods in search of shelter. Ben hadn’t known that at the time, of course, but later he would look back and realise how lucky he had been. There wasn’t any snow yet, but the near-winter chill had settled into Ben’s bones as soon as he stepped outside. His hands had trembled where he clutched his candle. But he had been cold before, and he hadn't come this far just to turn around. The meagre candlelight had been enough to see a few steps ahead of him, and Ben made his way down the narrow dirt path.

He didn’t know what he was expecting, or what he thought he would find, but he definitely

wasn’t

expecting a city outside the forest. It was lighter past the trees, the streets dotted with trash-can fires and the occasional window light. There weren’t many people out, and the few that were had their heads and hands buried deep in worn coats and scarves.

Ben had only ever interacted with his parents before. There were so many new people. Too many people, strange faces and winding streets and he didn’t know where he was or where he was going. He stayed near the edge of the woods.

A braver child might have gone to someone and asked for help, or at least ventured farther than the tree line. Ben had never been a brave child, so, all told, not much happened that first night. He stayed by the trees. He stared and watched. It had been nearly sunrise by the time he’d finally crept his way close enough to feel the heat of one of the small fires near the edge of the makeshift sidewalk. The man who’d been holding his hands over it was short and round-faced, with a big nose and big, square hands. Most of his face had been covered with a hat and scarf all wrapped around him, but when Ben crept closer the man looked up, and his eyes were sharp and stormcloud gray. Ben scurried back to the trees and hid behind a trunk, and the man stared after him for a long moment in terrifying silence.

“... Not gonna hurt ya, gov.” The man eventually said. Sometimes when Ben’s mom was reading to him, she would do voices. The man sounded like his mom did, when she was reading Dickens. “Long as you keep your hands in your own pockets. C’mon, it’s warmer by the fire.”

Cautiously, Ben poked his head around the tree. Then he took a step forward. Then another.

“Aye, there’s a chap. I haven’t a thing for you to steal anyway, so you may as well mind yourself. Come on, I won’t bite. Not like those stupid dogs.” He said the last bit like he was talking to himself.

“I’m not going to steal anything,” Ben said quietly. The man nodded firmly, like he approved. Ben inched closer. “... Who are you?”

“The names Horace Badun, lad. At your service. Who’re you?”

“My name is Ben.”

Ben couldn’t see the man, Horace, smile behind his scarf, but he could see his eyes go crinkly at the corners. He had kind eyes, Ben decided. He smiled back.

“Cold out for a little one such as yourself,” Horace said, and Ben was trying to figure out how to reply to that when a crash across the street made him jump, his heart pounding in his chest.

Someone started shouting, and then more people shouted, too, all at once. Horace sighed. “Do yourself a favor, lad,” He said, as he shoved his hands in his pockets and moved away from the fire. “Don’t ever play poker. Idiots gonna get himself killed, he is.”

“... Goodnight, Mr. Horace.” Ben called at his retreating back. He wasn’t sure why, but it made Horace laugh.

“And goodnight to you, too, Ben. There’s a storm on the way. You’d best find shelter before the rain starts.”

Ben watched him cross the street to a building lit by dim yellow lanterns, with dice painted on the windows. People inside were still shouting, but Horace opened the door and walked right in. Then Ben re-lit his candle in the fire, turned around, and went back home. He was sliding into his bed when it started to rain.

Horace wasn’t there the next time Ben crept out of the forest. Or the time after that. He was there the third time, though, standing by the trash can and looking at the building with the dice on it.

“Hello, Mr. Horace.”

“‘Ello, Ben.”

Ben walked over to the trash can and put his hands over the fire.

“Can I ask you question?”

“You just did,” Horace said, but he was smiling, so Ben smiled back. “G'wan. I may not answer, but you can ask.”

“Why don’t you go inside?”

“What, the casino?”

“Is that what it’s called?”

Horace nodded. “Aye, that’s what it’s called. My brother, he indulges in a few bad habits, see? Him and every other dumb schmuck who wastes what little they’ve got trying to make more.”

He must have been able to see on Ben’s face that he didn’t understand. Horace had frowned like he was thinking, then nodded to himself. “They play betting games. You pay money to play, and then keep putting more money in as the game keeps going. If you win, you take it all home. If you lose, you get nothing.” He snorted, shaking his head. “Bloody idiot never wins.”

Oh. Ben thought he understood. “Is that poker?” He asked, to be clear.

“That it is. Used to be fun when we’d play it together, but he puts in more than he can afford to lose. Right bloody idiot he’s become." He huffed. "Right bloody idiot.”

There was something on Horace’s face Ben didn’t know the name for, so he didn’t say anything else for a long minute. He got that feeling that he should apologise, but he didn’t know what he was sorry for. He said it anyway.

“I’m sorry.”

Horace looked away from the building, the casino, and blinked at Ben. “Hell, you’re not the one bleeding us dry. What are you sorry for?”

Embarrassed, Ben squirmed for a moment before he answered. “You seemed upset,” and then, when that didn’t feel like enough of an explanation, “I wouldn’t have asked, if I knew you’d get upset.”

He didn’t know if that was the right thing to say or not, but Horace looked at him for another long minute and then smiled. “I appreciate it. You have a good heart, lad.”

That was a weird compliment, but Ben knew what to say to that, at least. “Thank you.”

When the shouting started and Mr. Horace went and got his brother, Ben went home. He spent a long time lying awake in bed, trying to imagine the betting game. Poker. Mr. Horace said it used to be fun. Maybe Ben could ask him how to play, next time.

After that, Ben figured out that Horace only came down to that part of the city when his brother was playing poker. He lived somewhere else, close by but farther down the road, but he didn’t want his brother to “Get himself in neck deep, the right rotten fool.” He’d stand by the same trash can every night, waiting, and some nights people would start shouting and breaking things, and he would go and drag a tall, skinny man with his same big nose out of the building and off down the street. But most nights Ben would go home before the game was done, and Mr. Horace would wish him a goodnight and keep waiting.

On the nights Horace was there to talk to, Ben asked questions. About poker, and where he lived, and what he did. But not too many questions, because Horace had a funny way of talking. He’d say things Ben had never heard of, like they were obvious, or he’d say parts of things and expect Ben to know the parts he didn’t say. Ben didn’t want to be laughed at if he told him he’d never been outside the castle, so he was careful to play along.

On the nights Horace wasn’t there, Ben did more exploring. There were other people up and down the street, in and out of the casino and the other buildings. None of them paid him very much attention, and most of them were moving very fast, trying to get where they were going and out of the early winter cold. Ben wandered around the neighborhood. Sometimes, people would see him and call out to him, telling him to come closer to the fire like Mr. Horace had, and Ben could ask them questions, too. Other times they’d say he could come close, but they were lying. The first time a man tried to grab Ben, he had turned and sprinted all the way home, his heart beating so fast it made his chest hurt, and didn’t go back outside for three weeks.

Most of the time, though, people just ignored him. He probably could have learned more from going farther away, or being louder about asking his questions, but then, he might have gotten lost, or another man might have grabbed him, and Ben had never been a brave child.

Baby steps, Ben had decided. That was probably the smarter way to do this. He ventured a little bit farther into the city every time he went out, and he didn’t do much besides look and listen, but looking around was important, too. Knowing things was important. Ben wasn’t brave, but he wasn’t stupid, either.

When winter finally hit, he had no choice but to temporarily put his exploring on hold, but at least his parents weren’t going out, either. The snow built up outside the castle walls until they couldn’t have gotten the door open if they tried. Ben stayed inside with his parents, and they ate what they’d been stocking up on since they started going out, and kept the fire in the fireplace burning to chase away the cold. Ben didn’t mind the winter. It felt like it used to, when he was younger and his parents were always home with him, all the time.

Still, when spring came, Ben was eager to start going out again. The upstairs windows were ones he could actually see out of, instead of all boarded up and covered like the ones downstairs. Ben had peered out of his and the one in his parents' room day after day, and watched the snow melt.

It was wet and cold outside when Ben finally went exploring again, but it had been wet and cold when Ben snuck out before, too. The difference was that, this time, the trees were starting to grow leaves, and even though the sky was still hazy and yellow, sometimes there were stars.

The difference was that, this time, the animals in the woods had started to wake up.

Ben was never a brave child, but he must have been a very, very lucky one, because he made it all the way to and from the city that first night after the winter without seeing or hearing anything amiss. He’d gotten used to the perfect silence of the woods during his late fall escapades, and the chirping of bugs felt eerie and foreboding to him, but they were only bugs, after all. Ben had been chasing them around the castle his whole life. Even the frogs that came around to feed on those bugs were familiar, even though they honestly kind of scared him, jumping around in the bushes in the middle of the night while he was sneaking out of the castle.

He saw Horace again that first night, standing where he was every time before with a bit of rolled-up paper to his mouth. He smiled when he saw Ben, and Ben, as always, smiled back.

“Ben, lad! Made it through the season, did ya?”

“Hello, Mr. Horace. What are you doing?”

“What, this?” He held out the bit of paper. It was on fire on one end, and when Horace breathed out smoke came out of his mouth, like a dragon. Ben stared, transfixed. “I’m indulging in a bad habit, I am. Hard to come by here on the Isle.”

The Isle, Ben thought. Is that where we are? “Why?” He asked instead.

Horace snorted and took another deep breath from his rolled-up paper. “Damn heroes can hardly be bothered to sort what they send us, so even if they do toss a pack they always come in all broken-up and soggy.”

Ben had felt his heart thum-thump in his chest. Suddenly breathless, he stuttered out, “Do you know any heroes?” If there was a hero somewhere, they could come and help his mom and dad. A hero would be brave and make things right. His parents wouldn’t have to be scared and hide in the castle anymore.

But to his disappointment, Horace shook his head, snorting again. He took another deep breath and let it out in a puff of silver smoke. “Not one, lad.” He said, and he sounded very, very sad. Ben wanted to apologise, but after what Horace said last time, he wasn’t sure if he should. “Not a single one.”

Ben was standing awkwardly, trying to figure out how to say was sorry, even though, like before, he wasn’t really sure what he was sorry for, when Horace turned to look at him with his head tilted to one side.

“Never go much past this point, do ya?” He asked, and Ben blinked at him.

“No, sir. I’m not supposed to go far from home.” It wasn’t technically a lie. Ben wasn’t supposed to go out of the castle at all, but it meant pretty much the same thing, didn’t it? And if he told Horace the truth, the man might have taken him by the ear and marched him right back home, like the old shoemaker in a book Ben’s mother had read to him.

For some reason, whatever he said seemed to make Horace happy, though. The old man gave him a yellow-toothed smile that Ben could actually see, without a scarf in the way. “Got someone taking care of you, then? Does my heart good to hear that.”

Horace glanced around, like Ben’s mother did when she was pretending to tell him a secret, so he could go hide and his father could come play and chase him through the house. Ben stepped closer, and Horace smiled at him again, and ducked down close.

“Could I ask a favor of you, lad?” He whispered. His breath smelled strange, like the smoke from the mostly-burned-down paper in his hand. “I wouldn’t, normally, but. Well. Circumstances being what they are…” He trailed off, his eyes glancing back at the building with the dice on it. When he turned back to Ben, his eyes were as sharp and silver as the smoke coiling around his fingers. “I’ll pay you for it, a’course. I’m not expecting free labor.”

“What’s the favor?” Ben asked. He was a little scared, because he wasn’t really sure what was going on, but Mr. Horace was his friend, and Ben could say no if it was something bad.

Horace glanced again at the building with the dice. Ben remembered the crashing and the shouting from before, and the brother Horace had to keep out of trouble, and wondered if that was who Horace was scared would overhear.

“Got a bit of bad news to give the missus. Gets angry real quick, she does, and I know this’ll set her off. Her boy’ll need a place to stay for a day or two, and I can’t take him. She’ll know he’s with me.”

Ben furrowed his eyebrows for a long moment, trying to decode what that meant. “You want me to… babysit?” He asked, confused.

“Don’t need to do much, he’s a real quiet one,” Mr. Horace was quick to reassure him. “Just give him a spot on the floor to sleep and send him on his way the next morning. I’ll be here to pick him up and give you your payment.”

For a moment, Ben wasn’t sure what to do. If he brought some boy to the castle, his parents would know he snuck out. Unless he hid him? But how would he do that? But… Ben had never really talked to anyone his own age before. He’d seen other kids around this part of the isle, but they didn’t let him get close. He thought they might have been as scared of him as he was of them. It could be nice, could be really really nice, to have a friend.

“... I’d have to sneak him in,” Ben said, after a thinking for a while. “I’m not supposed to bring anyone home.”

Horace grinned at Ben with all his teeth, which was weird, because his eyes were shiny-wet like he might have been about to cry. Maybe it was because of the smoke. “I’ll pay you for that, too, then. Bless you, lad. Day after tomorrow, at sunrise, can you take him then?”

Ben’s parents didn’t sleep in very late. “Before sunrise,” He said. “So I can get him inside before my parents wake up.”

Horace noded, and reached out to put a hand on Ben’s head. He ruffled up Ben’s hair like his dad did sometimes, and Ben smiled at him. Mr. Horace was a strange man, because he talked to Ben like he was a grown-up, but Ben liked that about him.

Horace looked at the dice building, which was quiet, and sighed. “I aughta go pull him out while he’s ahead, I s’pose.” He said, and dropped his burned-out paper roll into the trash can. “You stay safe, now, lad. I’ll be counting on seeing you here in two days.”

“I’ll be here,” Ben had promised. “Goodnight, Mr. Horace.”

“And a goodnight to you, too, Ben.”

For a moment, as Horace opened the door to the casino, Ben could hear the people inside, cheering and laughing and shouting. Yellow light sliced across the street and stained the ground. Ben felt something twisting around in his belly, excited and afraid. Then the door was closed, and the street outside the woods was quiet and dark again.

Ben could have gone and kept exploring that night, but he wanted to make sure he remembered everything Horace had said. It seemed important, for some reason. He talked about the Isle and heroes sending things. Ben had a notebook and pencils leftover from when his parents were teaching him how to write, that he kept stashed under his pillow and used to write in about his exploring and the things he learned.

So he turned around and headed back into the woods, up the path, and into the castle. He did up every lock, one by one. He went up the stairs slowly, careful of the creaky wood. He lit the candle on his bedside table and dug around for the notebook, as quietly as he could. Then he sat down on his bed and put the book on the nightstand and started to write.

The Isle. Heroes. Bad habits and rolled-up bits of paper. The woman Horace works for, the one he calls The Missus. A boy.

A boy.

Ben was going to meet another boy. He was going to sneak a boy into the castle, and maybe they would be friends! Horace had said he’d pay Ben, and Ben wasn’t sure what that meant. But he was gonna meet a boy, another kid around his age, for the first time ever!

He was too excited to get much sleep, that night. His parents had commented on it over breakfast, and Ben, panicking, had almost told them he had a bad dream, but that would have made them pry even more, and maybe try to keep him company that night. At the last second, Ben remembered the stack of books by his bedside, and sheepishly admitted, as if he’d been caught doing something wrong, that he’d stayed up reading. He got a scolding, and a warning that staying up late again would see that he couldn’t keep books in his room anymore, but that was fine. As long as his parents didn’t ask anymore questions.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Present Day

Ben finds his dad where he always is -- in the ruins of his study, staring pensively out the cracked window as if wallowing in his own head would somehow give him the answers for how to make everything better. He doesn’t look up or move or do anything at all when Ben comes in. Ben wasn’t expecting him to.

It’s always aggravating, but the heat is making Ben more irritable and impatient than he usually is, and he has to stand in the doorway taking a few slow, deep breaths before he trusts himself to step into the room. When he does he crosses to the window his dad is still looking through and fights with the old, warped frame until it gives and
slides open. A meager breeze drifts through the study. It isn’t much, but it’s better.

“Did you eat today?” Ben asks, glancing around the room. He spots the dirty plate right as his dad mumbles something about breakfast. Okay, cool. There’s that, at least. Ben scoops up the plate and starts to pick up the small bit of clutter that’s built up over the last few days. His dad will clean up after himself when he finally rejoins the world, but that could take days or even another week, and Ben would rather his father at least be depressed in a room that isn’t dirty.

“I went out this morning,” Ben tries, gathering up the trash and dirty dishes and anything else that doesn’t belong in the study. “Snuck out the window so I wouldn’t wake up you and mom. Those stairs are getting ridiculous. I know I keep saying I’ll fix them, I promise I will, I just keep forgetting. Be right back.”

He piles his armload haphazardly and carries it out of the room and down the warped, creaky stairs, where he dumps trash in the barrel and dishes in the sink and grabs a clean rag from the kitchen. Back in his father’s study, Ben putters around, putting books away and shaking out the moth-eaten afgan his dad keeps thrown over the back of his chair.

“Anyway, nothing crazy happened. Jay and I did a job for Carlos, met him back at his treehouse, then split up. I haven’t asked for payment yet, but I’m thinking about the showers? Sometimes baths feel gross, and it’d be faster to be able to just hop into a shower and scrub off, but if you and mom are fine with baths I might wait on that and ask for something else instead.”

He wipes dust off of shelves and puts random clutter back where it goes and leaves again to grab the broom, and his dad stares silently out the window, and doesn’t look up or move or do anything at all. Ben sweeps the floor. He waits.

After another long moment, during which Ben finishes most of his cleaning and is left fiddling awkwardly with the broom handle, his dad says, “A shower… would be nice.”

He doesn’t turn around, but Ben nods at his back anyway. “Cool. I don’t know how soon Carlos can get to it, but I’ll let him know later tonight.”

“... Tonight?” His dad asks, slowly, and Ben pauses from where he’d started carefully scrubbing the now-empty glass case that sits on his father’s desk, and looks up. His dad still has his back turned, but he’s sitting straighter than he was a minute ago. Progress?

“Yeah,” Ben says, carefully. “It’s Friday the thirteenth, you know what tonight is. The whole pack is getting together at the hill at sundown. Rumor has it even Hadie is gonna show up.”

His dad doesn’t care all that much about Ben’s gang, as far as he can tell. Or maybe he does, and just hasn’t said anything for… whatever reason. Ben avoids the gory details, but he keeps his parents updated on the shifting power balance over the isle, half to give them some heads up about any potential threats and half because it’s pretty much the only thing he ever has to talk about. His mom listens intently to basically everything he says, and he knows she’s at least kind of interested, but his dad is… hard to read, sometimes. Hell, he’d hardly even reacted when Ben told him he’d managed to get Giselle working for him.

… Then again, after the twins, maybe his dad is just glad Ben hasn’t sworn a vendetta against Gaston’s kids. Unless he was wishing Ben had, and is disappointed that he’s on good terms with half of them. It really could go either way, as far as Ben knows.

Regardless, Ben keeps talking. Mayhem is one thing he can’t really lie about, since his dad actually came and tried to bring Ben home that first year. He saw the festival back when it was just a few cobbled-together stages and a bar put together by Diego, and over the last four years it’s only gotten rowdier and bloodier and more… well, evil. But Ben does a lot of hand-waving and downplaying. He talks about some of the music The Bad Apples will be performing, and Evie’s accessory stand her mom doesn’t know about. He fills the silence.

Eventually he’s run out of things in his dad’s study to fiddle with or rearrange. The room is about as spotless as anything ever is on the isle, and Ben still has errands to run before tonight. He takes one last sweep of the room and claps his dad on the shoulder.

“Anyway, I need to get a haircut. I don't know if I'll be home again tonight, so in case I don’t see mom on my way out, make sure the door is locked.”

His father doesn’t look up or move or do anything at all. Ben wasn’t expecting him to.

“... Goodnight, dad. I love you.”

He’s turning for the door when a hand grabs his wrist. Quickly, gently, so he doesn’t pull his knife out of reflex. He still jumps, startled, and whirls around. His dad is looking at him in the eyes for the first time in days and Ben, as always, finds himself frozen stiff. His dad looks almost as surprised as Ben does. Is that a good thing? What does that mean?

“... Dad?”

“Ben,” He says, and opens his mouth, and closes it, and opens it again. “Don’t go,” He all but whispers. “Stay-- stay home. We’ll have a game night. I’ll… we can play cards like we used to. And your mom. Don’t go out tonight.”

Oh. That’s.

That’s a lot.

Ben takes a slow, deep breath, and lets it out. Then he takes another one, because he’s still angry. (He’s other things, too, but the anger is louder.)

“How about you drag your selfish ass out of this room every once in a while and pretend you’re actually a part of this family before you try to bribe me with your attention?” Whoops. Maybe he should have taken three breaths.

Ben pulls his wrist out of his dad’s hand and takes a step back. His dad is still looking at him, but now he’s staring at Ben’s chest instead of in his eyes. That’s fine, it doesn't matter. It’s

fine

.

“... I’ll be safe,” He says, because he can’t find it in himself to apologize. (Not when he’s

right

.) “Keep the door locked, I’ll be back tomorrow.”

He doesn’t close the door to the study when he leaves, because it’s hot and stuffy in the castle and getting some air circulating might do his father good. He ducks back into his room to pack a bag, makes sure the air conditioner is cranked as high as it can go, and leaves his door open, too. His dad calls after him again, but Ben is hurrying down the hallway, so he doesn’t hear whatever he says.

Ben had actually been planning on coming back after his haircut to poke his head in and double check that everything was fine for the night, but after that outburst he doesn’t really trust himself around his parents. He kind of turns into a different person, when he has his claws and fangs. He’ll get ready at the Curl Up and Dye. It’s fine.

Ben does make a beeline for the library though, since his mom isn’t upstairs or in the kitchen. The room was destroyed along with most of the castle back when his parents’ home had first been transported to the isle, but they’d salvaged what they could, and Ben has spent the last four years trying to repair or replace whatever they couldn’t. The room is nowhere near the splendor it once was based on the way his mom talks about it (on the rare occasions he gets her to talk about it) but it’s one of the nicest places on the isle, and Ben thinks that deserves some pride.

It takes him a bit to make his way through the rows and rows of shelves, but he eventually finds her curled up by the back window. Last spring he’d gone through and ripped all the boards off all the windows in a fit of frustration, and he hasn’t regretted it once. The window in the library faces west, and there are a few watery streaks of early afternoon sunlight shining off his mother’s hair.

She’s sitting on the floor, curled around the slightly water-stained copy of

The Hobbit

Ben traded Uma four rolls of fishing line for. It wasn’t cheap, but all of the pages are intact, and even though the ink has started to run in some places the writing is intelligible enough to make sense of. He and his mom read it together when he first brought it back, and seeing her reread it now makes him decide that if he comes across a single decent copy of any of the other books in the series, he’ll do whatever he has to to get them for her.

“Mom,” He says, softly, but she still startles and jumps a little when she sees him. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” She smiles. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Lost in the story?”

“Completely entranced.”

She takes his hand when he offers it and rises to her feet, then carefully slips a thin piece of wood between the pages to mark her place, and gently slides the book onto the shelf. Ben watches her with a smile.

“You already know what happens though,” He argues, even though he isn’t any better.

“That doesn’t matter. Good books are forever.”

He makes a big show out of rolling his eyes, but they both know he agrees. She made sure to instill a love of stories into him at a young age. Ben’s happiest childhood memories are of sitting at her knee or curling up next to her in bed while she read to him.

When Auradon is in ashes, Ben is going to gather up every book in every kingdom and have the most beautiful library built for his mother. They’ll sit on silk-upholstered chairs and read together all day long.

For now, he gives her the same quick rundown he gave his dad: He went out for a job this morning and there are two votes for fixed showers, and he’s heading out for the rest of the day to run more errands and then go to the festival.

His mother isn’t any happier about him leaving than his dad was. The difference is, she knows better than to try and stop him.

“Please stay safe,” She asks, wrapping her arms around him. He squeezes her back as tight as he dares. When did he get so much taller than her? He keeps forgetting, and then noticing, and then forgetting again. It’s always a shock, how small she is now that he’s all grown up.

“I will, I promise. I’ll be back sometime around noon tomorrow.” He presses a kiss to her temple, and waits for her to do the same to his cheek before pulling away. “Make sure dad eats something,” he says, trying not to show his frustration.

His mom gives him a wincing look anyway. “I will. We’ll be alright here, you take care of yourself tonight.” She jabs her finger at him. “No crazy stunts, do you hear me, young man?”

“Crazy stunts?” Ben feigns innocence. “When have I ever?”

She gives him a very flat look. He folds like wet cardboard.

“Alright, I promise. I won’t jump off any cliffs or try to fistfight any demigods.”

His mom huffs at him, but he gives her biggest, brightest grin and she has no choice but to drop it. The sullen look on her face sits wrong inside of him, so Ben lets out a sigh. “Okay, mom, I actually promise. I won’t do anything more dangerous than usual tonight, and I’ll have the gang with me the whole time.”

They both know she can’t actually stop him from doing any of those things or worse if he wants to, but Ben has always been a mama’s boy. He’ll compromise because she asked him to. For tonight.

His mom says “Thank you,” and gives him another hug.

He squeezes her back, and they trade their temple-and-cheek-kisses, and then Ben has to hurry before he runs out of time to do all the things he wants to do before the festival starts.

He feels his mom’s eyes on his back as he leaves. She doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t turn around.

The Curl Up and Dye caters to anyone on the isle who can pay, since Anastasia Tremaine doesn’t believe in alienating potential customers. The Tremaine house sits a few blocks away, a solitary building without many neighbors. The back rooms at the manor are where most of the family’s actual money comes from, but Anastasia managed to convince her mother that putting the kids to work out of the house was a good idea.

The old hag is lucky she agreed. The manor is counted as part of Anthony’s territory, obviously, since it’s where he lives, but it’s close enough to Mozenrath’s place that Reza could make an argument about it belonging to the Snakes. He hasn’t, because the Tremaine kids are mostly okay, and Anthony is too useful of an ally to pick unnecessary fights with. But if Lady Tremaine had forced her grandchildren to work the brothel, the Snakes aren’t the only gang that would have taken an issue with that, and Anthony’s unofficial claim to the building wouldn’t have overridden his grandmother’s actual ownership. In another situation, Ben would have been happy to help burn it to the ground.

He isn’t actually sure how Anthony would have felt about any of that, since it’s a hypothetical situation and there’s no point in bringing it up, but Ben can’t help but fixate, sometimes, on the hypothetical.

The salon is barely cooler than the aching heat outside, but Ben takes solace in the knowledge that the sun will set soon, and temperatures will plummet. In the meantime, he strips his gloves off his sweaty hands and uses them to fan his face while he takes a seat. There are only two other people in the waiting area. One of them doesn’t look up from the knife she’s sharpening. The guy who looks like he’s here for a shave peers at Ben with weary recognition on his face. Ben grins with all his teeth, as big and cheerful as he can manage. The man swallows and looks at his feet.

Ben doesn’t wait long. A few minutes after he’s settled in, an excited voice shouts, “Ben!” and he finds himself with a lapful of Dizzy. Even in the sweltering dead of summer she’s still wearing layers of poofy skirts and brightly-patterned stockings, and Ben privately thinks that the littlest Tremaine is made of stronger stuff than he is.

“Hey,

petit lapin

.” Ben gives her a squeeze. “How’s work?”

“Boring,” She huffs, still in his lap. He hopes she doesn’t stay there long. He doesn’t want to make her get up, but. This heat. Eugh. “Do you know how many times I’ve swept the floor today? Oh! Are you going to the festival tonight? I can’t go yet but I heard Evie was gonna be there! Is she?”

Smiling, Ben resigns himself to his fate and leans back in his chair. The streaks in Dizzy’s hair are red and black today, probably to show support for The Bad Apples. Ben gives one a gentle tug. “Yeah, I’m going to the festival. Evie is, as well. That’s why I’m here actually.” He turns his head so she can see the awkward tufts of hair sticking out and up from the back of his skull. Dizzy brightens up like a bonfire.

“Oh! I can do it! Can I do it?”

Ben pretends to think it over. “I dunno,” He drawls, “I was considering getting my fangs back, and you know how particular I am with my appearance…”

“I can do it,” Dizzy insists again, firmer. Ben can’t help but give in.

“Alright, you can do it. I’m counting on you.”

“Yay!” She leaps to her feet and spins on her heel, grabbing him by the hand and all but dragging him from his seat. The two customers who were here before him don’t complain about having to wait longer. This is how things work on the Isle.

Beyond the curtain of paint-stained plastic, the salon is as busy as Ben expected it to be. Mayhem is a big deal for Villian Kids; he isn’t the only one who wants to make sure he looks his worst tonight.

Drusilla and her twin Darcella, the oldest of Drizella’s daughters, are both hard at work curling and styling the two-toned hair of Ruby Heart into the extravagant updos she prefers, but all three girls pause their gossiping when they see him come in. Ben offers them all a wave and a polite greeting, but he’s privately glad that they’re all busy, and that Dizzy is very firmly pulling him away from her sisters and towards an empty chair on the other side of the room.

If he saw Ruby anywhere else, he would take the time to go over and start up a conversation. She’s kind of all over the place, and he can’t always keep up with her, but hanging out with the Princess of Hearts is always lots of fun. Especially since she has less than zero interest in his dick. Darcy and Drew are both wicked girls, they just… come on a little too strong, sometimes.

They pass Astoria, who’s chatting amicably with Uriel while she carefully braids the sea witch’s hair close to his scalp in dramatic, waving patterns. Ben calls a brief hello, and the two echo it back.

Ben goes along agreeably as Dizzy pushes him into a chair and spins him, letting her tilt his head this way and that. She’s chattering excitedly, and he doesn’t really know what all of the words mean, but he recognises most from hearing Anthony or Astoria mutter to themselves whenever they’re working him over, so he puts his trust in little Dizzy and lets her do her thing.

Most of the hair on the back of head is lying in a pile on the floor by the time the curtains part and Anthony walks in. The only boy in the Tremaine clan has his mother’s dark, wine-red hair and pale skin, but his broad, sturdy body and big hazel eyes are remnants of the baker who would have willingly followed him and his mother to the isle, if Auradon had allowed it.

Raising a hand to wave, Ben gives a smile when Anthony spots him, and Anthony returns it with a nod. “Dmitriana,” He says, raising his eyebrows at his cousin. “You stole my client.”

Dizzy tilts her chin up defiantly. “You shoulda got him before I did!”

Anthony gives her a Look. Ben tries not to laugh too loud.

After a brief staring contest, Dizzy huffs, setting down the clippers with a pout. “Fine. Bye, Ben. Be safe tonight!” She leans in for a hug that Ben is happy to give, and then goes skipping off into the shop, probably to do more sweeping.

Anthony stares after her, looking amused, then turns to Ben.

“What’s the damage?”

Ben runs a hand over the back of his head, feeling the soft prickles of his hair against his palm. “I think she did okay, actually.”

Anthony makes a noncommittal sound, and Ben once again lets himself be turned and twisted and examined.

“... Alright,” Anthony allows, finally. “She did fine. Was it just the trim you wanted?”

“No,” Ben clears his throat. “I want my fangs. And a faceup, if you’ve got time, but if you need to get yourself ready I can do it on my own.”

Anthony hums, tilting his head to one side. His eyes narrow as he examines Ben’s face, considering. “You’re getting awfully dressed up tonight. Someone you’re trying to impress?”

Yes. “No,” Ben argues, “But it’s my first official Mayhem as a part of the gang. I want to make an impression.”

It’s close enough to the truth that Anthony hopefully won’t pry. He has a knack for sniffing out things most people would rather be left alone, but Ben’s journey to earn his place as Mal’s third in command is old gossip by now, there’s nothing for Anthony to dig into. (and what Anthony doesn’t know won’t hurt Ben.)

If Anthony buys his excuse or is just in too much of a rush to play inquisitor, it doesn't matter. What matters is that he drops the questions and goes to gather bottles of bleach and hair dye, and sets them on the counter while he sharpens his razor blade.

Anthony carefully shaves the design into Ben’s undercut, turning the line where his hair grows long into the upper jaw of an open, snarling maw. Jagged rows of sharp teeth sprout up from the back of his neck with every careful line of the straight razor. With the lines in place, Anthony paints bleach onto the teeth and shades of red, black, and blue dye onto the rest, so the color will come out dark and bruised-looking like black dog gums.

With the colors doing their thing, Anthony checks the time, then says, “Screw it. Left eye?”

“Always,” Ben grins.

A little under an hour later, Ben’s eyes are rimmed with careful lines of black that scythe downward at the inner corners, stretching down his nose in sharp points like the eyes of some hellish wolf. His left has three sharp lines cutting through it vertically, and Anthony has carefully shaded the points of Ben’s cheekbones and the hollows under them to give his face a gaunt, hungry look. His fangs are on proud display on the back of his head.

Ben bares his teeth in the cracked mirror. “Wicked.”

Anthony grins back. “You do make an excellent canvas, I’ll give you that much.”

Laughing, Ben swings his bag over his shoulder as he stands, and takes a second to dig in his pocket for his wallet, pulling out the stacks of coins that pass as currency on the isle. “Some of that’s for Dizzy,” Ben reminds him. He waits while Anthony counts the money.

“You’ve overpaid,” Anthony muses, peering at him.

Ben nods. “Yeah. I want to use your attic to finish getting dressed. I’m on a time crunch.”

Anthony hums, pocketing the coins. “I’m checking that bag before you leave.”

“That’s fine.”

Anthony waves him off. Ben ducks into the back, then makes his way up the rickety stairs into the second floor of the salon. It’s just used for storage, but Ben doesn’t need anything but some space and privacy right now. He pulls off his clothes, careful not to wreck all Anthony’s hard work with his shirt, and gets dressed in what he packed for tonight.

For all Anthony’s pointed questions, it really isn’t anything all that fancy. His pants are kind of unnecessarily tight and his fishnet shirt is kind of unnecessarily provocative, but it’s Mayhem!

Ben screws on the pointed metal caps that fit over his canines and incisors, and then digs in his bag for the long, sharp clawed rings that he slides carefully into place over each finger, tightening the chains around his knuckles and wrists until he’s sure they won’t fall off.

He’s ready for Anthony’s raised eyebrow and for Drew and Darcy to start blatantly checking him out, but he’s slightly less prepared for Astoria to whistle, low and teasing, and for Ruby to take one look at him and start laughing.

Ben flips her off, ignores the other three, and hands his bag to Anthony.

“I’d pat you down,” Anthony says, after making sure Ben hasn’t stolen anything, “but you can’t really hide much, dressed like that.”

“You’re

welcome

,” Ben grinds out.

“Thank you!” Darcy cheers, and he ducks his head.

He leaves the Curl Up and Dye as quickly as he can without looking like he’s running away, and is halfway down the street when Dizzy calls his name. He turns to find her sprinting out after him, clutching something in her hands.

“Wait!” She says, stumbling to a stop, “Ben, hang on. I need a favor.”

Ben waits. “What’s the favor?” He asks, holding out his hand to take the small box she thrusts forward.

“It’s for Evie, for tonight. I was gonna have Anthony give it to her, but you’ll see her sooner.”

“A present?” Ben pretends to peek in the box, laughing when Dizzy swats at him.

“It’s not for you! You don’t get to look!”

“Okay, okay,” Ben holds up one hand in surrender and slides the container into his pocket. “I’ll make sure it gets to her. See you around, Dizzy.”

“Bye, Ben!”

From there, all Ben has to do is meet up with Evie, ironically enough. She’s waiting for him outside of her Mother’s castle, all done up in blue and red, with her hair curled perfectly and her lips painted the color of fresh blood. She flutters her lashes at Ben when she sees him, and Ben grins right back.

“My princess,” He greets her, and bends to kiss her wrist. Evie giggles in delight, stepping closer to him.

“My prince. Don’t you look dashing.”

He pulls back his lips to snarl at her, metal fangs catching the light. “You look good enough to

eat

.” He makes a big show of putting a hand around her waist and pulling her closer, ever-careful of how easy it would be to cut her on accident with his claws. Evie laughs again, a little breathier, and lays a hand demurely on his chest.

“Oh, dear. It seems I’ve been captured by a hungry beast. Whatever is a girl to do?”

“You could pull that acid out of your purse and melt my face, for a start.”

Evie’s smile turns wicked. “Acid?” She asks, faux-innocent. “Me? Why, my good sir, I’ve no idea what you mean! I’m just a helpless little princess.” She twirls herself out of his arms. Ben watches her go.

“Sure,” He snarks. “Helpless.”

He catches up with her to offer his arm, which she takes. The sun has only just begun to set, and though the light of it never reaches the isle the heat sure does, and it’s still blisteringly hot. But it’s a gentleman’s responsibility to escort a lady wherever she needs to go. Ben sucks it up.

“Here,” He tells her, carefully pulling the box out and handing it to her. “From Dizzy.”

Evie blinks, and pulls away from him enough to peer into the container. He can’t see what it is, but it makes her break into a sunny grin and let out a happy squeak.

“What is it?” Ben asks, leaning forward.

Evie snaps the box shut. “You’ll find out later. And we’d better hurry. Wouldn’t want to upstage Mal by being later than she is, would we?”

The way she eyes Ben while she says it tells him she knows exactly who he’s all dressed up for. Ben bites back a sigh.

There aren’t really any “outskirts” to the isle, since it’s overpopulated to the point that even the most inhospitable areas are packed with people, but some are less packed than others, and the shadow of the Sleeping Mountain only ever hosts a handful of truly desperate squatters, which makes it the perfect place to hold a rager.

Granted, there’s a reason why most adults won’t go close to the mountain, but it’s not like anywhere else on the isle is safer.

It’s the one thing the kids have on their parents. The barrier works it’s magic, but the villains all remember a time when a slit throat would have meant the end for real. But the VKs all grew up with their twisted immortality.

When you’re not afraid to die, most normal limits stop applying to you.

Jay is waiting for them at the foot of the mountain. He’s wearing a skirt and a tasseled belt, so it’s pretty obvious what he plans to spend the night doing.

“Got a hot date?” Ben asks, raising his eyebrows. Jay gives him a look like he just sprouted three heads.

“Man, you’re the one who looks like you’ve got an appointment at the Tremaine place. I’m just here to dance.”

They probably would have devolved into more pointless bickering, but Evie swats them both on the arm.

They’re the first three at the pass, but it’s barely a minute later that the rest of their merry band comes trickling in in twos and threes. Ginny Gothel and Claudine Frollo show up first, escorted by Jay’s cousin Jade. Then comes Reza and Yzla, bickering about magical theory as always. Edward Balthazar makes his way over with Miles Medusa and Gizelle Legume, and Hadie comes alone. Carlos finally shows up with Harold and Jace in tow.

Ben tries to be inconspicuous about looking around, but he’s basically accepted at this point that everybody knows who he’s looking for. His whole gang is laughing at him, and a lesser villain might have let themselves seem embarrassed, but Ben is not a lesser villain.

… He still wishes he’d been more subtle though. Then again, subtle keeps going over Mal’s head, so. Maybe the sledgehammer approach is a better idea after all.

Speaking of. Even over the chattering of their small crowd, Ben can hear the heavy click of her heels on the ground. He doesn't know how he knows it’s her. He just does.

Mal is dressed for the weather as much as he is, which is to say that she’s barely covered in scraps of purple leather and green denim and black lace and Ben can actually literally feel his mouth watering. More to the point, she comes strutting over with her hair wild and her eyes gleaming, grinning like hell come home. She’s holding a half-empty bottle of something she must have been taking swigs of on the walk over. The alcohol has her cheeks flushed.

“Well?” Mal asks, teasing and challenging like she isn’t the reason they’ve all been standing here in the first place. Her mischievous mood is infectious, and with the arrival of their leader what had been a group of kids hanging out in a clump is suddenly a pack of hungry dogs, raring to go. They shift restlessly. “Let’s go terrorize the festival.”

Whooping and hollering, the gang stalks their way down the dirt path toward the festival ground, where Mayhem is already in full swing.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seven Years
Ago

The next night, so late it was almost morning, Ben snuck out again. It was risky, going out so many times in one week, but he’d made a promise to Horace, and anyway it was worth maybe getting caught if he could meet the boy. He pulled on his coat against the early spring chill, tugged his hood down low over his face, and lit his candle like he always did. He crept down the stairs, pulled a chair over to the door, and undid all the locks and bolts, like he always did. Then he stepped out into the night and closed the heavy door behind him, and made his way through the woods, like he always did.

He hadn't known, at the time, that that would be the night his luck changed.

Horace wasn’t there when Ben emerged from the tree line, but that was alright. It was still a little early. Ben tried not to be too impatient. He used his candle to light the trash can, then blew it out and put the stick of wax in his pocket. He waited.

Familiar sounds came out of the casino; shouting and laughing. An alley cat streaked by with something dead in it’s mouth. Ben waited. And waited. And waited.

It felt like forever by the time Horace showed up, but suddenly, Ben didn’t mind. Because walking next to him were three boys! Three of them! One of them had the same big nose and silver eyes as Horace did, and he was probably a little older than Ben. The second one, too, he was older and had the same big nose, but he was all tall and skinny like a stickman, and his skin and eyes were darker. But the last one was very, very small. His hair was all curly and black, and he had freckles all over his face and his hands. He was staring at his feet while he walked, all hunched down and curled up under his coat.

Horace grinned his yellow grin when he saw Ben, and Ben smiled back. “Ben, lad! Ran a bit late I’m afraid, but you aughta still have plenty of time ‘til sunrise. Boys, this is Ben.”

“Hello, Mr. Horace. And… Hello.” Ben waved, nervous and excited, and tried not to do something dumb like scream and run around. He never thought he’d want someone to like him so bad, but he did. He really, really did.

The tall, skinny boy nodded at him, his eyes a little narrow and squinty. “Him?”

Ben blinked, but the boy wasn’t talking to him. Horace shoved him a little, not very hard. “Yes, him. Mind your manners, or I’ll mind ‘em for you.”

Ben didn't know what that meant, but before he could say anything, the boy with Horace’s eyes stepped forward. “Don’t mind Jace,” He said. “I’m Harold. This is Carlos.” Gently, he reached back and nudged the younger boy foreward. The boy peered up at Ben with very big, very dark eyes, and didn’t say a word.

“Hi, Harold. Hi, Carlos. Are you the one who’s coming with me? I don’t have space for all three of you, I’m sorry.”

It was Harold who answered, nod nod nodding his big round head. “Just Carlos. Me and Jace can handle ourselves, we can.” Carlos kept quiet, and went back to looking at his feet.

“... Told ya he was a real quiet one,” Horace said. He sounded sad. “Hasn’t said a peep for over a week now, and he minds himself. Won’t be any trouble for you and yours.”

“Oh,” Ben said,
trying not to sound disappointed. How could he make friends with a boy who couldn’t talk? But Harold seemed nice! And Jace was kind of scary, but maybe if Ben worked for it he could win him over, too! And he could try to be friends with Carlos, even though he was very small and quiet. “How old is he?”

Instead of answering, Horace turned his kind eyes to Carlos, who blinked up at him, then hesitantly extended one hand, all his fingers up.

“One more, lad,” Horace said. Carlos put up one more finger, to make six.

“I’m eight,” Ben said, trying to start a conversation. Carlos looked at his feet, and said nothing.

After a moment, Horace sighed, reaching down to ruffle Carlos’s hair like he did for Ben. “I’d best get the boys home. I’ll come and get you the morning after next, so don’t you worry. Alright?” Carlos nodded. Horace bowed and whispered something to him, and Carlos nodded again, a little firmer. Again, Horace whispered something, until a little stubborn frown was on Carlos's face. He nodded one last time. Satisfied, Horace stood back up. “I’ll pay you plenty for this, Ben, I promise.”

The other boys said their goodbyes to Carlos, which were as weird as Horace’s had been, and then Ben realized he was supposed to lead Carlos to his castle, and the nerves and excitement started up again.

“Goodnight, Mr. Horace. Goodnight, Harold. Goodnight, Jace.”

Jace kept his eyes all narrowed and squinty. “You look after him,” He said. It wasn’t a question.

“Oh, leave him be." Harold gave Jace a shove. "We’ll see you in the morning, Ben. Goodnight.”

Then they were gone down the street the way they came, and it was Ben and a silent, tiny six year old alone by the trees.

“... Stay close to me, okay?” Ben said, because he didn’t know what else to say. “The path is really bumpy and you might get hurt if you fall.”

Carlos nodded.

“... Do you want to hold my hand?” That got a look from him, a little peek up from his lashes like he’d done before. Ben stuck his hand out and smiled his biggest smile. Slowly, Carlos raised his hand, and Ben took it carefully. He thought maybe Carlos hadn’t ever held anybody’s hand before. Ben made sure he wasn’t squeezing too tight, lit his candle in the trash can, and led the way back into the woods.

They almost didn’t make it to the castle. Later, Ben and Carlos both would look back on that night and laugh at how quickly both of their lives could have changed, if Ben had gone back alone, or if Carlos had been just a little slower.

Spring had come, and the earth had thawed. After a long winter of hibernating, Kaa was awake. And he was

starving

.

Ben held Carlos’s hand all the way through the woods, until they came across the part of the path that ran alongside a stream.
The water had been frozen before, but it was slowly melting as the nights grew warmer, and Ben was excited to see it in the summer.

Normally Ben
liked the silence of the woods, but Carlos was quiet as a ghost, and it was only his hand in Ben’s that let him know the younger boy was there, so Ben started to babble a little after they started walking, telling Carlos about the books he’d read and dancing with his parents. Carlos didn’t really respond at all, but Ben got the feeling he was listening. When Ben told him he wasn’t actually allowed to leave the house, or have people over, and the whole thing had to be a secret or he’d get in big trouble, he felt Carlos’s hand squeeze his tight, and it felt like a promise.

In the end, it was his talking that got them in trouble. They reached the stream, and Ben drew up short. He didn’t know why, at first, but he felt like something was wrong. There was a great big vine stretched over two trees in front of them, where they’d have to walk under to keep going, only it wasn’t a vine, because it was moving. And then it lifted it’s head.

Ben had never seen a real snake before. His dad said he used to see snakes in the garden when he was a little boy, and his mom had
told him stories with snakes in them. Ben even had a book all about snakes and lizards and other stuff, but this was the first time he’d ever seen one in real life.

It was big and long and it’s scales were all dark. Ben couldn’t tell what color they were just by candlelight, but he could tell they had little spots and stripes in dizzy patterns all down it’s tail and back. The snake’s eyes were big and yellow and shiny and nothing like the snake eyes in Ben’s book.

“Well,” said the snake, all drawn-out and sleepy. “Jusst what do we have here? Two little boyss out of bed?”

“You can talk!” Ben said, stunned. His mom told him stories about talking animals, too. Usually they were friends with heroes and helped them save the day. The snake didn’t have lips, but it squinted it’s sleepy eyes at Ben in what might have been a snake-smile.

Carlos’s hand in Ben’s was clutched very tight. Ben bumped their shoulders together.

“Of coursse I can, dear boy. That trick hardly sseemss all that impresssive, around here.”

“Around where?” Ben asked, and then, “Please don’t tell my parents I was out this late. I’m not supposed to.”

The snake made a funny little wiggle and a sound like hissing a laugh, and Ben laughed too, because it was all kind of silly, and because maybe he’d make two friends in one night! One of those friends was a talking snake, but that was okay; Ben didn’t mind being friends with a snake if the snake didn’t mind being friends with a person.

“Why, around

here

, of coursse. There’ss lotss of talking done, on the Isle.” The snake drooped closer, tilting its head this way and that, like it was trying to get a better look at Ben. This was the second time somebody’s said that. The Isle. “Not much dessent converssation though, I’m afraid. Ssay, how about you tell me what you’re up to ssneaking around, and I’ll keep your ssecret.”

“I… well.” The snake had gotten very close, now, to Ben. And Ben was staring back, because it was polite to and he wanted to make a good impression, but he was having a hard time. It was distracting, having someone so close to his face. Ben blinked, and blinked again. “You promise you won’t tell?”

The snake laughed it’s hissing laugh and wiggled it’s funny wiggle. “Of coursse, dear boy. You can trusst in me.”

The snake’s big golden eyes got closer, and closer, and Ben though that was probably true. The snake had been nice and friendly, and Ben had plenty of time until sunrise. He could stay here and talk. He could trust him. He could… trust…

“Oh, dear,” The snake said, “Thiss iss why little boyss have bed timess. You musst be sso tired, awake sso late.”

Ben nodded. He was wrong, the snake’s eyes weren’t gold, they were green and pink and blue and green again, and getting closer. They were pretty, but Ben’s own eyes were heavy and foggy and tired. He was awake so late, up past his bed time. Ben needed to, to get Carlos, but he was so tired. He was so, so tired.

The snake wrapped all around him, tight, and Ben blinked heavy eyes up at it. “Ssleep,” The snake said. “It’ss all right, I’ll keep you ssafe. Trusst in me…”

The candle fell out of Ben’s loose hand, moving the light even farther away, making it even harder to see. That must be why Ben couldn’t see the snake’s eyes anymore. Or it’s face at all. It was dark, opening up over him and getting wider, dark and dark and Ben didn’t need to see anyway, so he closed his eyes.

He heard a thunk, and a shout, and the coils all around him went tight and then loose again, yanking him off his feet, and Ben remembered that he wasn’t tired at all, actually.

By the time he’d oriented himself on the frozen ground, Carlos had lifted his stick and hit the snake a second time, a grim look on his little face. Ben realized, like a shock of cold water, that the snake had tried to eat him.

It tried to eat him!

Carlos was a much braver child than Ben. He tried to hit the snake a third time, but he was only six and the snake was very big, and it used it’s tail to knock him over. Carlos didn’t make a sound when he fell, and Ben could barely make out the shapes. Just dark blobs against darker woods, with the occasional streak of moonlight.

“Oh, you little--!” The snake said, and then it was
rushing at
Carlos and staring at him with it’s colorful eyes. “I ssee you have no resspect for your elderss. Perhapss I sshould teach you ssome mannerss!”

Ben watched Carlos’s eyes start to get heavy, like his eyes had gotten heavy. The snake coiled all around and around him, squeezing tighter until Carlos was wheezing, wrapped up in scales all green and brown and black. The snake started to open up it’s mouth, wider and wider, and Ben smelled smoke, and it occured to Ben all at once to wonder why he could suddenly see so well, since the sun hadn't come up yet.

The candle, Ben thought. And then, fire, Ben thought. And then, he saved me, Ben thought.

The fear didn’t go away, because Ben wasn’t a brave child. But being scared of something was no excuse not to do it, when it was this important.

The candle had fallen on it’s side, and at first it didn’t do much but lie there and almost burn itself out. But under the melting layers of ice and snow there were years of leaves and stuff all over the forest floor, and some of them had thawed out enough to be mostly dry, and after a while next to the candle they were all the way dry, and then they were burning. The forest was burning.

So was the stick Carlos had had hit the snake with. It had fallen near the candle when he’d gotten knocked over, and the end was on fire. Ben picked up the end that wasn’t, the wood rough and splinter-y against his hand, and he started swinging.

He hit the snake right in it’s open mouth. Little bits of smoldering wood went everywhere, all over Ben and Carlos both, little stinging embers that made Ben gasp and yelp. They were little things, though, just tiny smolders.

The snake wasn’t so lucky. The inside of it’s mouth was all burned up bad, and it was thrashing. Ben hit it again, and threw the stick in the river so it wouldn't catch anything else on fire, and...

The fire was spreading. Slowly, but still. Ben took two shaky steps toward the mostly-frozen river. He'd heard of forest fires before, read about them in books. People die when there are forest fires. His parents live in these woods. Ben needs... a bucket, or a something. He needs--

Carlos grabbed his wrist before Ben could go any further, tugging him back. Ben looked back at him, then at the fire, and pulled his wrist out of Carlos's hand. He needs--

Something wet and cold fell on Ben's face. Then something else, and then another. Little cold, wet drops, and more, and more.

Ben grabbed Carlos’s little hand in one of his, jumped over the unconscious snake, and took off sprinting for home, making his way almost completely by memory and dragging Carlos along behind him. Dragging might have been a strong word, since Carlos was sprinting as fast as he could, too, but Ben’s legs were longer.

Through the steadily-growing downpour, thin streaks of weak, pale light started to shine through the gaps in the empty branches all around them. The sun was rising, and by the time they reached the shape of the castle Ben could see again. Not much, but enough that he wasn’t as scared of Carlos getting his leg caught on something and falling down. Ben didn’t think he could carry the boy the rest of the way, but he promised Horace and Harold and Jace that he’d look after him, and Ben didn’t want to leave Carlos alone in the woods for however long it would take for him to get home and wake up his parents and get them to run back with him.

But Ben didn’t have to do any of that, because they made it to the castle without anybody falling or getting hurt, or any more snakes showing up. Which meant that Ben didn’t have to tell his parents, and they wouldn’t yell at him and make Carlos go home.

It was thinking about that -- about the fact that Ben was still breaking a rule, and Carlos might not have been allowed to stay if his parents know he was there, even though Ben made a promise and it seemed like a really important one, even though Carlos was little and young and apparently couldn’t go home for a few days -- that made Ben pull up short of the door.

The sun was already up. Ben’s parents would be waking up soon, if they weren’t already. There was no way they wouldn't hear the heavy door creaking open.

Carlos tugged against the grip Ben had on his wrist, blinking at him and breathing hard, shivering in the cold and wet. “We can’t use the door,” Ben panted, “My mom and dad will hear it and know I snuck out. They’ll know you’re here.”

It wasn’t just about keeping his secret. Ben wanted that, too, wanted to keep being able to go out and see the place, The Isle, and meet new people. He wanted to make friends with Carlos and the other boys and hear Mr. Horace’s funny accent.

But mostly it was about the snake that tried to eat them (tried to eat them! They almost got eaten!) and Carlos with his sad little face all wet and pink, and his little hand in Ben’s bigger one. Ben didn't know why Carlos couldn't go home, or why he didn't talk, or why he was so shy, but Carlos saved his life and Ben made a promise and he was gonna keep it.

Carlos just nodded, and it felt the same way it did when Carlos squeezed his hand.

“We’ve gotta find another way inside,” Ben said, trying to think. He looked up at the castle. The other doors were all boarded up and covered; none of them opened up anymore. So were all the windows on the first floor. Ben knew he wouldn't be able to get into any of them.

He’d never seen the castle from the outside with this much light before. It
was helpful, at least. He started to walk around, thinking. Thinking. Carlos let go of his hand to walk the other way.

Ben was still thinking when Carlos came rushing back a minute later, and grabbed Ben’s sleeve to tug at him. Ben followed around to the other side of the castle.

There were vines growing all up the wall, stretching out and around the window a few floors up. They used to be roses, Ben’s dad told him once. They used to bloom big and red, but there wasn’t enough sun, so they were just the vines now.

Ben blinked, and turns around.

The angle
was all wrong with him so close to the ground, but he knew that stretch of woods. He knew those vines. He knew that window.

“That’s my bedroom,” He said, whirling back around to face Carlos. “That’s perfect! We can get right in and my parents will never even know!”

Ben grinned, and Carlos smiled back a little bit.

Then Ben looked back at the vines. “But, uh,” He said, his grin fading. “I don’t know how to climb.”

Carlos frowned, thinking, then walked over and grabs a handful knotted, mostly-dead plants. He tugged. The vines were so old and tangled around the stone bricks, they didn't budge an inch. Carlos tugged again, a little harder, and the frozen vines didn't moved.

Ben came over to tug on the vines, too, because he
was bigger and probably stronger than Carlos, and he should check just to make sure. When everything stayed in place, Carlos put one foot into the tangled mass, pulled himself up, and hung there.

Then he put his other foot in, a little higher, and pulled again.

“I’ll climb right behind you,” Ben said, a little nervous as he watched Carlos rise above the ground. “So if you fall I can catch you.”

Carlos looked over his shoulder and down a little bit, and he smiled, and Ben smiled back.

The vines carried them all the way to Ben’s window. Climbing wasn’t as hard as Ben worried it would be, but it wasn’t easy, either, and the vines might have been mostly dead but the thorns were sharp and tried to scratch him. He was wearing too many layers for it to work, but his gloves and jacket and pants and bootstrings kept catching on the pointy tips and then he had to detangle himself, usually with one hand, while the other one held onto the vines.

Ben looked down once, and then he didn’t do that again.

When they made it to the top of the vines, he and Carlos both had a moment of wondering what to do about the window. It wasn’t locked, Ben was pretty sure, because he couldn't remember locking it and he hadn’t touched it since last spring, but the wood frame was as frozen as everything else, and it was hard to push on it from the outside while balancing on top of a tangle of dead roses.

They pushed, and the window didn’t open, and didn’t open, and didn't open, and Ben was just starting to feel a mix of frustrated and kind of panicked, because if that didn't work then they were back to square one and it was still raining and he needed to get Carlos inside and the window

still wouldn’t open

and --

The glass slid up with a rattling, grating sound that made both boys jerk back, far enough that Carlos almost lost his balance and Ben had to lunge and catch him. They hung there, breathless, three stories above the ground, with Ben holding the windowsill with one hand and Carlos with the other and both of them staring at each other for what felt like a good chunk of forever.

Then Ben realized, hey, that noise was pretty loud, and
he hauled Carlos back up and started shoving at the window again.

Sometimes, being slow and careful
was the right way to be sneaky, because sometimes being slow and careful meant being quiet. But other times it didn’t matter how slow or how careful you were, loud things were loud and there wasn't much you could do about it. If you were really quick, then it was only loud for a second, and you could hope people were too busy with other stuff to notice.

Ben’s window had creaked since forever. Slow and careful wasn’t gonna work.

Sure enough, the grinding, squeaking, scratching sound as they shoved the window up the rest of the way was loud enough that, if Ben’s parents hadn't heard it the first time, they sure did the second.

Heart racing, Ben dove into his room, helped Carlos in after him, and then froze as he heard footsteps on the stairs.

Which was a good thing, actually, because if his parents had been coming from down the hall he would never have had time to shove Carlos into the closet and start yanking off his wet clothes as fast as he could. He got most of them all in a heap in the corner of his room where his dirty clothes usually went, and he was pulling his pajama pants on over his wet jeans and leaning halfway out the window when his door opened and his dad half-ran in.

“Benjamin Florian De Chatillon, what on on god’s green earth are you doing?!” His dad roared, in that way that meat he was more startled than angry. Ben pulled
his head out of the window and grinned like he didn’t just break a whole huge bunch of rules.

“It’s raining!” He said, excited. “That means winter’s over!”

His dad kind of sagged a little like he did when he got all worked up and then stopped being worked up really fast. He blinked. Ben blinked back.

“... Did the thunder wake you up?” His dad asked, a lot quieter. Ben nodnodnoded. His dad sighed and ran a hand over his face. “We heard your window fly open, I though…” Ben didn't find out what he thought, because his dad didn't finish his sentence. Instead he walked across the room to pull Ben away from the window, frowning with his bushy eyebrows.

“You’re soaked,” his papa said, “And freezing! Ben...” Another sigh, but this one was less angry, and more… what was that word? The one that meant you were frustrated with someone but in a way that meant you still loved them.

“I wanted to go out in the rain,” Ben said, sorry. His papa’s face did something really weird too quick for Ben to tell what it was before it was gone again. Then Ben was being picked up off his feet and dropped lightly back in his bed.

His dad said, “It’s still early, go back to sleep. It’ll probably rain like this all day, you can stick your head out of the window later.” His voice sounded like his sigh did. Exasperated. That’s what it was called.

Ben let himself be pushed down and tucked in, but he gave a big reluctant sigh, like maybe he didn't want to go back to bed. “Okay.”

“
Bonne nuit, petit lapin.”

“Bonne nuit papa. Je t'aime.”

“Je t'aime aussi.”

His dad kissed his forehead and pushed Ben a little sternly into the pillows, then he closed the window against the cold outside, shut the curtains so it was dark, and left the room.

For a long moment after the door was closed, Ben didn't move. He laid in bed for one, two, three, four long minutes before he couldn't take it anymore, and he jumped up as quietly as he could and went to his closet.

Part of him almost expected it to be empty, like Carlos and the snake and everything else was a crazy dream, even though he could feel his cold, wet jeans under his pajama pants and his legs were getting really itchy.

But when Ben opened his closet door, Carlos was still there, curled into a little ball on the floor, waiting. He looked up at Ben, kind of scared and wondering and uncertain, but they did it! They had made it home, and had they beaten the snake, and Carlos was gonna stay at the castle for two days and Ben’s parents didn't know anything. They did it!

Ben grinned at Carlos so wide his cheeks hurt.

Slowly, Carlos smiled back.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Present Day

With the sun hanging low and fat on the horizon, the shadows all stretch out far into the east, miles tall and fading into the growing darkness. Fire pits and torches are interspersed with neon lights, staining the tents and ground a dozen shifting, flickering colors, confusing the eye and mind. From off on the main stage, The Bad Apples are already starting their opening set. The deep bass is thumping so loud Ben can feel it in his chest even from the other side of the festival grounds.
Ben fucking loves Mayhem.
For all their rowdiness, the first thing the gang actually needs to do is get Evie signed in and set up at her kiosk -- something she technically doesn’t need much help with, but they all go with her anyway. Evie’s accessory stand sits near the table where Freddie Facilier is selling absinthe and moonshine by the bottle, so she’s guaranteed to see a ton of foot traffic, and most people at the festival should know better than to try to rob her, so all the things she parts with should be things people actually paid her for. Evie is cautiously optimistic.
Ben is also optimistic, but without the caution. He knows their princess is gonna do great.
The wooden stall is painted black, with a red and blue striped cover and lots of shelves and display cases Ben and the others all worked together to help make. It takes a few minutes to get all of Evie’s wares out of her bag and into the places they go, and then a few more minutes for Evie to rearrange everything to her liking, but before too long there are rows and rows of beautiful things on display with Evie’s name and signature on them, and Ben feels so full of pride he could explode.
He can’t cup her face and kiss her forehead in public, but he can grab her by the hips and drag her close, bodies pressed together, growling low and threatening while he scrapes his fangs over the pale line of her throat. Ben sees more than one person stop and watch out the corner of his eye. Good. Let them see. Let them know.
Evie is giggling as she detangles herself from Ben’s arms, blushing sweet and lovely across her cheeks. He’s tempted to chase her; to grab and bite at her, to really put on a show and thoroughly stake his claim, but -- no. Evie is a dangerous and formidable villain in her own right, she can take care of herself. He won’t tarnish her image by making it seem like he’s overly worried.
He can see the same sentiment on the faces of his gang members. Miles is the next to move, predictably, and he scoops Evie right off her feet and twirls her, cackling his slightly-unhinged laugh. When he lets her go, Jay is there to kiss her wrist, and Edward and Harold are both bowing low and deep for their princess. Hadie half-shoves Jay out of the way to throw an arm around Evie’s shoulders and shake her, her eyes glowing red and trained on the small crowd of festival-goers wandering past. Gizelle gives a nod and Jace gives a huff, and it’s Evie who steps forward to reach for Carlos and Ginny and Claudine. Reza and Jade aren’t in the gang, but everyone knows the Snakes and the Unseelie are an unshakable alliance, and Jade throws her arms around Evie’s neck and babbles out her congratulations and well-wishes. Ever-overcompensating, Reza stays against the wall with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face, but when Evie smiles at him he blushes.
Then it’s Mal’s turn, and she can do whatever the hell she wants, because Evie is her property and everybody on the isle knows it.
The group moves out of their leader’s way when she steps forward, giving her all the space she needs to do whatever it is she’s going to do. Mal reaches up to take Evie’s chin in her fingers, turning her face this way and that, examining her, and Evie holds very, very still.
Ben can barely breathe, looking at them. Mal is a head shorter than Evie without heels, but that doesn’t matter. She commands the stall, the crowd, the whole fucking street with just her presence. Her eyes cast emerald lights over Evie’s skin. Her fingernails -- filed sharp like the claws Auradon stole from her -- are so gentle against Evie’s face. Mal looks at Evie like the moon, all care and cruelty, and she doesn’t need to say that she’ll mutilate anyone who tries anything funny tonight. It’s in her eyes where they’re locked with Evie’s own, it’s in her fingertips where they trail over Evie’s skin, and Ben aches and aches and wishes she would look at him like that, wishes --
“I’m sure you’ll turn a pretty profit,” Mal says, quietly. “I’ll take you out this weekend to spend whatever you make tonight.”
Evie blinks hard, gasping in a shaking breath and snapping out of the daze she so often enters when looking at Mal. Her cheeks are rosy pink. Ben wants to kiss them. “I’ll make you proud,” Evie says, barely above a whisper.
Mal smirks in response. “You always do.”
“You two gonna make out, or just stare at each other?” Freddie calls from her booth a little ways away. She’s perched on the bar, swinging her feet and ignoring the line of people there to buy her booze. She’s all done up tonight, white skeleton paint and bone-bead jewelry, her dreads decorated with colorful wraps where they’re piled on top of her head in two twisted buns. Seeing the amount of effort she obviously put into her appearance makes Ben feel validated. Fuck you, Anthony.
“I dunno,” Mal says, turning to face her. “You gonna pay to watch us?”
“Tongue is extra,” Evie says primly.
Freddie throws her head back to laugh. “Nah. No offense, but you two ain’t my type.” Her eyes slide to Claudine, who has been staunchly ignoring her up ‘till now. “... But if that one goes on the market, let me know.”
Claudine tries to ice her out. Freddie flutters her lashes until Clauding turns away, huffing.
“... Anyway,” Mal says, stepping away from Evie. “Someone will check on you every thirty minutes, scream if you need us, you know the drill.”
Evie nods, smiling while she makes little shoo-ing motions with her hands. “You guys all go have fun! I’ll be fine.”
Ben doesn’t doubt it. That bottle of acid comes to mind. But he still gives her another teasing bite -- on her shoulder, this time -- and everyone else makes their own second round of farewells before they disperse, leaving Evie and her jewelry stand alone on Devil’s Road. Freddie starts up a conversation about beadwork, and Ben strains his ears, listening to their voices until he can’t anymore.
By the main stage, a crowd has already started getting rowdy; a sea of gyrating bodies surrounds the shoddy wooden platform on which The Bad Apples are performing, Diego’s vocals nearly drowned out by the cheering voices of the crowd and the distant screams from other parts of the festival. Ben makes no move to either join or retreat, his eyes on Mal. She doesn’t usually dance, but sometimes she does, and Ben wouldn’t consider himself the worst dancer on the isle but he also really isn’t the best, and --
“Okay,” Jay says, rolling his shoulders. “Who wants to get freaky?”
“Pass,” Mal quips without looking at him. Ben tries to be discreet as he breathes a sigh of relief.
Jay gives Mal his flirtiest grin, the one that makes his eyes go dark and his full lips stretch wide across diamond-white teeth, leaning close enough to her that she has to crane her head back to keep eye contact. “Aw, c’mon Mal,” He purrs. “You know you want to get all up on me.”
“Oooooh, yes please!” Yzla cackles, to the surprise of no one. “I’d pay to see that.”
“Go throw your money at the Tremaine place,” Mal snorts, shoving Jay off of her. “And you can find somewhere else to stick your dick.”
“Someone else,” Jay counters.
Yzla cuddles up to him, wrapping around one of his arms and gazing up at him adoringly. “I volunteer!”
Jay twirls a lock of Yzla’s dark hair around his finger, his eyelashes fluttering. Mal rolls her eyes at them both. “I’m sure you do.”
It’s Hadie who interrupts them, hip-checking Mal on her way past. “Any fucking way,” She says, settling next to Yzla, who immediately stops clinging to Jay and starts making heart eyes at her instead. “Mal, you and me in the pit? Last round of the night?”
Mal’s grin goes jagged and sharp. Ben tries to ignore the way his heart beats double-time at the sight of it. “Sure, if you want to get your ass kicked again.”
Hadie laughs, the brilliant blue of her hair sparking to life for just a second before it fizzes out. “I won that fight and you know it, Scales.”
“If that’s what you gotta tell yourself.” Mal says, dismissive. Oooh, they’re gonna have a hell of a rematch tonight. By the cruel grins on both of their faces, it’s gonna be an all-out bloodbath.
… Ben needs to not think about Mal kicking ass and getting all sweaty and bloody while she’s standing right there, dressed like that.
Oh, look, a change of topic! “So,” He says, clearing his throat. “Who’s going where?”
Jade makes her way to stand by her cousin, leaning in to bump her shoulder against Hadie’s. “I’m dancing.” Jay pretends to gag, and goes ignored.
“I’m gaming,” Miles announces, flexing his skinny arms. Gizelle, Harold, and Jace all throw in with him, and Mal shrugs before saying she was thinking of the booths as well.
“Yeah,” Ben is quick to say. “I was thinking the same thing.”
Carlos looks at Ben like he’s an idiot. Ben resolutely ignores him. He’s not that transparent. He’s not.
Edward taps his cane idly on the ground. “I… want a drink,” He sniffs, “And somewhere quiet to sit.”
Miles sneers at him. “What, pussy, can’t handle the crowd?”
Edward’s cane is up and in Mile’s face a second later, the serrated metal tip catching rainbow light. Miles dodges, but it’s a near thing. “Some of us don’t need to overcompensate,” he says, peering down his nose at Miles. “I know what I’m capable of, and so does everyone else. I don’t have to try and prove it.”
“As if you fucking could you smug piece of --”
“We’re in public,” Mal snaps, and like that their fight ends. They both turn apologetic eyes to Mal, who’s already turning away, done with their drama.
Bickering happens, but there’s a limit to how much outsiders should be allowed to see.
Ben scampers to keep up with Mal. Behind him, Claudine, Ginny and Carlos agree to go with Edward, while Reza says he plans to go take a headcount for the missing members of his gang. Gizelle and the boys fall into place around Ben and Mal, and they make their way past the stage and to the game booths.
Next to the performances, the biggest attraction at Mayhem is the Coliseum. The fighting pit is a massive hole, with barbed wire fencing up against the walls. The floor is sheet metal welded together, and onlookers peer down and either cheer or heckle for whoever they bet the most on.
At first, Mal looks like she’s going to brush right past -- she’ll be back tonight for her fight against Hadie, anyway -- but Miles gets close enough to see who’s fighting, and immediately screams “Eat shit and die, Hook!”
Mal doubles back to look in the pit. Ben follows her.
Harry Hook is going toe to toe with Tyler Rourke, and, from the looks of things, losing. It’s surprising; for all his training by his military father, Tyler is a bitch and everyone knows it. He’s sloppy and arrogant, and used to picking on people too weak to put up a fight. He usually doesn’t last long against a real opponent; he doesn’t know how to handle someone other than his dad actually challenging him.
But maybe he’s learned a thing or two, because he isn’t giving into his anger issues like he usually would. He’s focused and contained, dodging Harry’s hook and fist, retaliating with sharp jabs that look pretty painful. They’re both bleeding -- Harry from his nose and lips, Tyler from a number of shallow cuts on his face, arms, and chest. As Ben watches, Harry goes in for a swing with his hook, and Tyler ducks around it, getting a knee in Harry’s gut and sending him to the ground.
“Who got first blood?” Ben asks, loudly enough the crowd can hear him over their own cheering. Some kid -- an Orphan, probably, from the way he’s dressed -- blinks at Ben and then flinches away when he recognizes who it is standing so close to him.
“U-uh, Harry Hook did. Sir.”
Ben grunts and turns back to the fight, and pretends not to notice the kid scurrying off.
Weird, that Harry got first blood and Tyler managed to keep his head enough to get him on the ropes like this. Ben might have to readjust his threat assessment for the prick.
Harry lunges again, this time aiming high, like he plans to get Tyler’s eye, but Tyler ducks and spins and kicks at Harry’s head. One arm up, Harry blocks, but goes stumbling back enough that he bangs into the side of the pit. Barbed wire cuts through his jacket and shreds his arms and the back of his neck, and then Tyler is there trying to drive him to his knees and --
Harry gets Tyler by the ankle, twists, and throws him into the wall. His hook comes down a second later.
It’s always gross to watch someone get gutted. It’s grosser when their intestines are actually being pulled out of their body. Harry makes a disgusted face and flicks his wrist, shaking the innards off his precious hook.
That’s that fight over, then.
People are grumbling or cheering, passing around their bets as the announcer calls out for a challenger for Harry. Tyler can’t drag himself up the ladder, so someone has to go and get him, and the trail of blood and other things left behind is disgusting. Maybe if the guy wasn’t such a prick he’d have gang members who could stitch him up and carry his dumbass home.
“So,” Jace drawls. “Who’s jumping in?”
Miles cackles, showing off his crocodile grin. “Ooooh, someone’s gotta. Let’s draw straws.”
Mal looks like she might be considering it. Ben says “We don’t have straws,” and jumps into the pit.
This isn’t the highest Ben has jumped from -- he turns his fall into a roll, lands shoulder-back-hips-feet and springs up with only a minor ache. He even manages to mostly avoid the smears of Tyler all over the floor, which is a plus.
Harry’s eyes are so wide Ben can see the whites all around them. He’s shaking a little, and his split lips are pulled into a grin that’s always chilling no matter how many times Ben sees it. The hand holding his hook is white-knuckle tight against the slippery layer of fresh blood that soaks his dumb poofy shirt almost all the way up to the elbow.
“Awwwww,” Harry coos, when he registers exactly who it was that just plummeted into the Coliseum with him. “Lookit tha, a poor little beasty fell in ma cage.” One foot, and then another, Harry starts a slow, almost lazy stalk around the edge of the pit.
Ben bares his teeth and snarls low in his chest. His mouth already tastes like iron and salt from his own sweat on his lips and the metal of his fangs. With his adrenalin starting a slow burn through every inch of him, it almost feels more like he already has blood on his tongue.
“Sucks for you,” He drawls, mirroring Harry’s slow stalk. Above, Ben hears the crowd’s excitement spike. He and Harry both have their reputations; champions for two of the most powerful gang leaders on the isle. They’re two predators circling each other, and the only way forward is through. “Mal hasn’t fed me in a couple days. I’m starving.”
“Are ye, now?” They’re moving faster, now, waiting, testing. Tension builds in Ben’s chest and limbs and head, pulsing behind his eyes. Which one of them will cave first? Who will make the first lunge? “And here a’thought Mal’s lapdog was well kept. Or were ya waitin’ to take a bite out of poor Harry Hook?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Harry’s already roughed up from that last fight, but Ben has gone to blows with him often enough to know that that just gets him more riled up -- in fairness, Ben is the same way. If Tyler hit Harry hard enough anywhere to leave a weak spot, Harry hides it well. He saunters around the edge of the pit, twirling his hook. Waiting, like Ben. Hungry like Ben. “You’re not important, Hook. You’re just prey.”
Harry pouts, makes a big show of how upset that makes him. “Aww, Ben, that cuts. And here a’thought what we had was special.” He rests the hand not holding his hook on his chest, over his no-doubt wounded heart.
An opening?
A trick. Harry makes the first move, lunging across the pit, lashing out with his hook. Ben skitters back, brings up his claws -- misses as Harry darts away. Snarling, Ben dives after him. He chases Harry around the pit for a moment, slashing and dodging in turn until Harry fakes him out, reaches open-palm for Ben’s wrist and uses his own movement against him to swing that stupid hook for Ben’s hand. Ben tries to twist --
His claws come away red, Harry’s arm bleeding steadily from four gouges. His shoulder, not his wrist like Ben was aiming for, but it’ll do. He raises his claws to his mouth and licks them clean.
(Iron and salt on his tongue, his heartbeat roaring, roaring in his ears like the call of some terrible beast, a shivery hunger curling up warm and perfect in his belly, whispering “eat him, swallow his heart, make him bleed.”)
“First blood,” He says, loud enough for their audience (Mal) to hear. Then, slow and sharp, Ben grins. “I’m gonna rip your throat out with my teeth, little pirate.”
Harry makes a clipped, furious sound, and dives at him.
Their fight carries them around and around the pit, chasing each other’s tails, snapping and snarling. Ben dodges Harry’s hook again, but not his fist, which crunches against Ben’s nose hard enough it starts to bleed. (Blood in his mouth on his tongue in his throat kill the prey eat it raw.) Ben staggers back, black dots swirling in his vision, and this time the hook catches his chest and rips a jagged line right down, through shirt and skin both. Pain. (Hunger.)
“Uh oh,” Harry taunts. “Looks like I hooked the baby beastie.”
Snarling, Ben tackles him, drives them both the floor. Harry’s hook digs into him, raking up his arm, aiming for his throat -- Ben gets his teeth around Harry’s wrist and bites, fangs sinking into flesh, wrenching bone. His claws in Harry’s shoulders, pinning, rending the flesh from his bones sweet and red eat it.
Harry yelps in pain and drops his hook. Catches it in his other hand. A flash of silver and red through the air -- pain. Ben’s cheek, his jaw.
He manages to let go and dive back before Harry can gouge his eye out, but it’s a near thing, and Ben is left clutching his face in careful hands, stumbling back. Harry follows -- a booted foot presses against Ben’s chest, sending him backward -- serrated metal digs into his back, shredding his skin like fragile cloth as he collides with the wall of the pit, pain -- Ben dives to the ground. The hook gets tangled in the wire, and Ben slashes at Harry’s ankle. His claws tear through leather and into skin. This time Harry is the one who drops, pinning Ben, a hand on his head, his skull cracking off the metal floor.
Ears ringing. Pain.
Hunger.
(Sweet blood on his tongue tear chew swallow)
Ben’s vision swims. This time, when he sinks his teeth into Harry’s skin, he doesn’t let go.
When Harry tries to pull away Ben rolls them, putting himself on top, and without a weapon all Harry can do is pound on Ben’s shoulders and back, try and gouge him with fingernails. He claws at the scratches from the barbed wire, pries them open more, tries to rip off Ben’s skin with his bare hands, but Ben’s teeth are sunk into Harry’s shoulder deep enough for the tips of his fangs to scrape bone, and he holds on with a grip that would make Miles’s crocodiles jealous, lock-jawed and snarling.
(Eat the prey eat it red and juicy tear off chunks swallow by the mouthful eat it)

Ben grips the flesh between his teeth and rips, ligaments straining against the force, muscles separating, skin tearing open blood rushing warm squirming breathing alive in his teeth and the prey’s voice spiking high and panicked --
“I yield!”
Ben stops. Waits.
Harry’s hands fall slowly from Ben’s back, shaking in pain. “I yield. That’s enough.”
Carefully, Ben slides his teeth out of Harry’s shoulder. (No no no EAT IT)
He stands and swallows a mouthful of blood, his and not-his, (hot and metal-sweet) and goes to detangle Harry’s hook from where it’s tangled in the barbed wire. His hands are shaking.
The crowd above is screaming and booing in equal measure. Ben doesn’t look up. (Did Mal watch? Is she proud?)When he turns back around Harry is on his feet and clutching his shoulder, looking pale and pissed-off in equal measure. For his part, Ben feels woozy and sore, his back and face and arm and basically everything burning from being ripped to hell and back. Without a word, he holds out the hook.
As Harry takes it, too quiet for the crowd to hear, Ben asks, “Can you make it up the ladder?”
Harry glances at it. “Climb behind me.”
Ben nods, and up they go.
(Harry’s blood drips in his hair and on his face. Ben fights the urge to lick his lips. The fight is over, there is no prey, he’s a person again. Push it down.)
Standing around the Coliseum, the crowd is fucking pumped, cheering and jeering and shoving each other. A commentator declares Ben the winner, and calls out a challenge. Will he return to the pit? If so, who will face him?
Nobody seems keen, but Ben isn’t paying attention to any of that. Harry slinks off as soon as they get to the top of the pit, and Ben is looking around for --
“Not bad,” Mal says, sauntering over with a grin on her face, eyeing Ben with an expression he can’t place. Beside her, Miles is practically doing backflips.
“Not bad?! That was fucking wicked!” He gnashes his teeth in a poor imitation of Ben, then breaks out cackling.
Harold is at Ben’s side a moment later. “These will get infected,” He fusses. “If you’re going for another round, let me clean you up first.”
His head feels floaty and distant. Ben lets himself be pulled out of the crowd.
Mal looked proud of him, she looked impressed. He got her attention and impressed her, he kicked Harry’s ass. Ben feels like he could punch a god.
… He won’t, because he promised his mom, but he totally could.
They find a bench, and Ben holds still while Harold digs through his bag and pulls out a bottle of something that smells like moonshine and a cloth --
“Motherfucker!” He snarls. It burns.
“Sorry, sorry!” Harold is quick to say. “Harry ripped off, uh… a good patch of the skin on your back.”
… Oh. Hm. Ben thought he’d just tried to skin him, but if he actually succeeded that would at least explain the weird, tickling weight that keeps brushing his tailbone. “Is anything hanging?”
“Almost all of it is hanging,” Gizelle answers, impassive. She’s holding a knife in her hands, so that’s a pretty clear sign of what’s about to happen.
What’s worse is that the adrenaline is fading, leaving Ben to become more and more aware of just how much his body fucking hurts. A quiet, childish part of him wants to whimper no, it’s not that bad, please don’t.
“Sorry,” Harold says again.
Ben closes his eyes.
He feels heat at his back, bodies shifting -- “I’ll do it,” Mal says.
Eyes flying open, Ben tries to peer at her, but she’s already moving behind him, so…
Oh. Huh. There’s the pain.
It’s like flicking on a switch, one moment his back is a nebulous, distant burn, painful but not present, and the next Ben gritting his teeth hard enough his fangs cut into his gums and leave him bleeding there, too, as the full effect of his fight with Harry makes itself known. Fucking hell, oh God, it hurts, he can feel air against exposed muscles and it has him clawing at the bench, swallowing down a pathetic groan.
Hands find his and steady him, brace him. A knife digs through the mess of him, cutting off the strips of useless skin that would have fallen off anyway without proper stitches, and then there’s a pile of Ben’s flesh on the ground and he leans over to puke.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seven Years Ago

Ben knew his parents would figure he’d gone back to bed, so they wouldn’t come and check on him, which meant it was safe for him to take Carlos’s little hand in his and pull him to his feet. He led him through the room and into the bathroom, and Ben had him stand there for a minute while he went and got a towel.

Carlos’s face was all red, and he was shaking a little from being wet and cold for so long. Ben handed him the thickest towel he had. “We can put your clothes up to dry,” he offered. “And you can wear my stuff for now, if you want to.”

Carlos fidgeted uncertainly for a moment, but then he nodded and gave Ben a tiny little smile. Ben smiled back a much bigger one, and went and got some pajamas out of his drawers. He took off his cold, itchy wet jeans, too, while he was at it.

Back in the bathroom, Carlos was still wearing his shirt and pants, but he’d taken off his coat and scarf and gloves and stuff. He was drying his hair, which sprung up in fluffy slinky curls once they weren't being held down by water. Ben reached out and gave one a little pull, until it went straight. When he let go it boinged right back into place, and Ben laughed.

He laughed harder when Carlos wrinkled his nose at him. “Here,” he said, handing over the clothes. “I’m gonna hang your stuff up, but I won’t look, okay?”

Carlos nodded again, taking the pajamas from Ben’s hands. True to word, Ben turned and picked up Carlos’s sodden jacket. He tried to wring out some of the water from it into the bathtub before he threw it over the rod for the shower curtain. Carlos’s scarf and gloves and socks and stuff all followed.

Ben listened to the sound of rustling fabric until Carlos came slipping up next to him. Ben’s clothes were too big on him, so Ben said “Here, let me,” and cuffed the sleeves and the pant legs. When Carlos tried to put his shirt and pants over the shower rod, Ben stood behind him, worried he might fall or something, because he was so much smaller than Ben. But he managed it, so it was okay.

With both of them wearing comfy, warm PJs and Carlos’s clothes hanging to dry, Ben said “We should get some sleep,” and reached, again, for Carlos’s hand.

Carlos stopped when Ben tried to lead him over to his bed.

“What’s wrong?”

Carlos only looked at Ben with big, dark eyes.

Ben frowned a little. “It’s okay,” he said, “I don’t think I snore and I won’t cuddle you if you don’t want me to. But I'm really tired and you should get some sleep, too. Um. I can sleep on the floor if you want?”

That made Carlos shake his head really fast, and grab Ben’s hand, and lead him to the bed. He looked like he didn’t really know what to do once he got there, though. Smiling, Ben pulled Carlos down onto the mattress and wiggled himself under the covers. He threw his blankets over Carlos, shoved the pillow mostly his way, and put his head down.

“Goodnight, Carlos.”

Carlos was much slower about putting down his head and closing his eyes, but when he did Ben closed his, too.

He might have thought the excitement of that night (and the snake that tried to

eat him

) would have made him more wound up, but once he was lying down Ben just felt exhausted. He could hear Carlos breathing across from him, could feel Carlos’s little hand in his, and that meant Ben didn't have to be freaked out, because they made it home to the castle and they were safe now. Within minutes, Ben fell asleep.

When he woke up, it was because he was hungry, which meant breakfast would be soon and his parents would be coming to wake him up. So Ben reached over and gave Carlos’s shoulder a shake to get him to wake up and go hide again.

Carlos didn’t wake up, though. Not really. He scrunched his face up and burrowed under the covers and made unhappy sounds. Ben had to shake him really hard to get him to wake up, and when he did Carlos bolted up like something bit him and looked around the room with big, wide-open eyes.

“Hey,” Ben said, quietly. “My parents are gonna come get me soon, you’ve gotta hide again.”

When Carlos kept looking at him, Ben started to get worried. Slowly, he reached out and held Carlos’s hand. “Are you okay?” He asked. “Do you know where you are?”

That felt like a silly question to ask, but the way Carlos eyed him made him worry that maybe it wasn’t, and Carlos really didn’t remember or something. It took a long minute before he finally nodded, and Ben was so relieved he flopped right back into bed. “Good,” He said, peering up at Carlos. “You scared me.”

The look Carlos gave him was a very sorry one, kind of wincing down and frowning, so Ben made sure to give him a big smile to let him know it was okay. “You gotta hide again,” He told Carlos, now that Ben was sure he was listening. “My parents are gonna come get me for breakfast. I’ll be gone for a little bit, but I’ll be back. Okay?”

With a little nod, Carlos climbed off the bed and started to make his way to the closet. Ben went “Oh!” and jumped up, too. He opened the chest at the foot of his bed and dug out the big fluffy blanket he used on the nights it got really, really cold in the winter, and carried it over to where Carlos was standing. “Here, you can make a little nest and stuff, so you’re not just crammed in there.”

Ben thought Carlos must have been very, very shy, or else maybe all his other friends were just very, very mean, because he was very slow and careful when he took the blanket out of Ben’s hands. His eyes were very wide, which was maybe just how his face looked, since he seemed to do it so often. Ben didn’t have many things, but he took a minute to kick some stuff out of the way so Carlos didn’t have to sit on anything. Then Carlos was nodding and stepping back into the closet, and Ben was closing the door behind him and climbing back into bed, where he pretended to be asleep.

It was only a few minutes later that his mom came to get him. She kissed him on the forehead like she always did when she came to wake him up, and Ben made a big show about yawning and rubbing his eyes.

“Good morning, little prince,” His mom greeted him. Ben smiled up at her.

“G’morning, mama.”

“Your father tells me you were trying to climb out the window this morning,” She said, pulling the covers down off of him and giving him a nudge so he climbed out of the bed. She smiled when she said it, so Ben knew she was joking, but he still shook his head.

“No! I just wanted to see the rain!”

“You couldn’t see it through the window?”

“No,” Ben insisted. “The window was too, um. Foggy.”

His mother shook her head at him, but she was still smiling. “That’s what happens when it’s cold and rainy out, sweetheart.”

Downstairs, his dad was already at the table, holding his head up with his hand and kind of snoring a little.

“Adam,” Ben’s mom called. “Adam. Adam!”

“Hm?!” His dad sat up really fast, snorting. He squinted sleepily at them.

“Good morning, papa!” Ben said, laughing as he ran over and climbed up into his dad’s lap to help him wake up, like he always did. His dad gave him a big big squeeze and shook him a little.

“Good morning,

petit lapin

. Hungry?”

‘Yes!”

His mom set out plates of breakfast, and Ben squirmed out of his dad’s lap and took his own seat. He waited until his parents started talking to each other before he carefully stuffed a handful of food into his pocket. Then another one. And another.

He took a big bite when his dad looked over at him, and chewed it

really

slow, so that they’d think he was eating. He managed to hide most of his breakfast in his pockets without his parents noticing anything, and Ben wiggled a little in his chair, feeling very proud of himself.

It was naughty to be sneaky, but not if you were doing it for good reasons. Peter Pan was sneaky, and so was Aladdin and Robin Hood and Flynn Rider, and even Mulan, when she needed to be. They were all heroes, and Ben wasn’t but he could still do good things and be the right kind of sneaky, he thought.

When breakfast was over it was time to go brush his teeth and get dressed, and then sometimes Ben played with his dad and sometimes his mom told him stories and sometimes he would read by himself, so that’s what he said he was going to do. “I wanna finish my snake book,” Ben told his mom while his dad washed the dishes. “Did you know Reticulated Pythons can grow up to thirty feet long? And that’s not with magic, they just get really big!”

His parents

oohed

and

ahhed

and then sent him off upstairs to get clean and read his book.

Ben made extra sure that his door was closed behind him before he went and opened the closet door. Carlos jumped when he did, and it made Ben jump, too, but neither of them made a sound so that was okay.

“Hi!” Ben said, almost whispering. “Here, I got you breakfast.”

He dug the food and a napkin out of his pockets and spread it out on his nightstand. “You gotta eat it with your hands, though, sorry. I couldn’t get a fork.”

Carlos was very quiet when he came over. His eyes were wide again. Maybe that really was just how his face looked. Ben smiled and smiled at him until he walked over to the nightstand and took a bite. When Carlos looked at Ben again, Ben nodded. “It’s okay, go ahead. I got it for you.”

When Carlos finally started to eat for real, Ben took out new clothes and went into the bathroom to get dressed and brush his teeth. He tried to clean some of the food stuff stuck to his pockets, because he wasn’t sure what his mom would say if she noticed, but he didn’t think he did a very good job.

He checked if Carlos’s clothes were dry -- they weren’t -- and decided that since Carlos would be hiding and Ben’s parents couldn’t yell at him, then Carlos could wear pajamas all day long.

When he came back to put his pajamas in the dirty clothes pile, Ben was surprised to see that all the food was already gone. “Wow!” Ben said. “You were hungry.”

Carlos gave him big, scared eyes, like maybe he did something wrong, and Ben bit his lips. Carlos was scared by most things, Ben was learning. Maybe he shouldn’t say so much stuff. “It’s okay, it was for you,” Ben reminded him. He held out his toothbrush. “I only have one, but we can share.”

Carlos stared at it. Then he reached out and took it, very slowly. Then he stared at it some more.

Ben frowned at him. “... It’s a toothbrush.”

Carlos still looked confused.

“You don’t know how to brush your

teeth

?”

When Carlos still looked confused, Ben scratched his head.

“Um… okay, come here. I can teach you. It’s easy!”

Ben knew Carlos was little, but he didn’t think six was

that

little. Well, what did Ben know. He’d never met a six year old before. Or maybe Carlos’s mom still brushed his teeth for him. Ben knew his parents had done that for a while when he was little, so maybe Carlos just didn’t know how to do it himself yet.

“Here,” Ben brought him into the bathroom and put toothpaste on the brush and held it out again. “You just rub it against your teeth, all over.”

Frowning, Carlos made a face kind of like a smile but with his lips all pulled back, and he lifted up the toothbrush, looking at Ben to make sure that was right.

“Yeah!”

Carlos pulled the brush away and shook his head.

“Huh? What’s wrong?”

Carlos shook his head again.

Huffing, Ben threw his arms up in the air. “You gotta brush your teeth!” He said, trying to sound stern like his papa when Ben was being difficult. “If you don't your teeth get gross and then they rot out of your head!” Ben paused, thinking. “... Well, not your baby teeth. They fall out anyway. But the other teeth you gotta brush!”

Carlos wrinkled his nose when Ben mentioned rotting teeth, staring at the toothbrush for a moment, but he only shook his head again, hunching down.

Ben scowled at him, and then tried to stop scowling at him, because that seemed mean. “Why not?” He asked.

Carlos looked at him with his big dark eyes for a while before he opened up his mouth, really slow, and showed Ben that some of his teeth were missing.

“Oh!” Ben said, surprised. Your baby teeth are falling out!”

Carlos shook his head, though, and reached up to pull his cheek out of the way, and Ben leaned in closer to try and see what Carlos was showing him.

His gums looked all red and puffy like he had a booboo. The places where he was missing teeth were kinda… Wet-looking? Which was silly, because the whole inside of his mouth looked wet, but those parts looked wetter and shiny and dark.

“... Oh,” Ben said. “Did you fall down?” He didn't know how Carlos might have gotten hurt like that, but it

looked

like that was what happened. Like maybe he got hurt and banged his cheek off something, and it knocked out his baby teeth? And the bruise on his face healed but his mouth was still all hurt. Stuff like that happened to Ben a few times, he hurt his knee when he fell down once and couldn't walk for a few days and the bruise went away before the cut did.

Again, Carlos only shook his head, though. Ben eyed the toothbrush quietly.

“You could brush all the other parts, and not do that one?” He suggested. “Or I guess I could do it for you if you want me to, since I can see.”

Carlos had a frown on his little face. He was looking at the toothbrush, too. Finally he picked it back up, and went up on his toes to try and look in the mirror while he scrubbed at his front teeth. He made at face at the toothpaste flavor -- Ben didn't blame him, ugh -- and peered at Ben like he wanted to check he was doing it right.

Ben nodnodnodded and gave him a thumbs up. “Yeah! Okay, do you want me to stay in here or do you think you got it?”

Carlos scrubbed at his teeth at little more before he shrugged.

Ben shrugged back. “Okay. Spit it out and rinse your mouth with water when you’re done. You’re not s’posed to swallow it.” Then he turned and headed into his room to dig out his snake book.

He listened until he heard the water turn on and then off, and Carlos came padding out of the bathroom, twisting his lips over his teeth with a frown.

“Hey!” Ben called. “Come sit with me. Can you read?”

Shaking his head, Carlos came over and climbed up on the bed next to Ben, peering at the book with confusion on his face.

“That’s okay,” Ben told him. “Mama says I learned really young.” He pointed to the page, where a picture showed a chameleon standing half on a leaf and half of a rock, it’s body turning black and green. “This is a book about reptiles,” Ben explained. He put his finger on the page and closed the book, so Carlos could see the whole thing. The book was really big and green and had a bunch of pictures of different animals all over the cover. “It’s called

The Herpetologist’s Field Guide”

and it has a page on every species of reptile that’s ever been found! I wanna try to learn about the snake from last night.”

Carlos’s eyes got really big like they did a lot, and he sat up a little straighter, and at first Ben maybe thought that Carlos didn’t want to until he leaned over and started to reach for the book. His hand stopped over the cover, kind of freezing for a second before he pulled back, looking at Ben like he wasn’t sure he was allowed.

Ben smiled at him really big and shuffled closer on the bed.

“There are three thousand six hundred known species of snakes in the world,” Ben quoted. “Of them, three hundred and seventy five are venomous, but most of them can’t poison humans. Some species are harder to poison than humans are, like Genies, and some are easier, like Dwarves.”

Ben flipped through the pages until he found the start of the snake section. “The snake that tried to eat us last night didn’t bite us, so it wasn’t venomous. It just wrapped all around us like a constrictor.”

Slowly, Ben flipped through each page, looking for a picture that looked like the same snake. The problem was that, while some snakes had cool markings or colors or something, a lot of snakes were brown and greenish and kind of spotted, so finding an exact match was really tricky.

They sat in silence for a while, looking through the book, and Ben was starting to think maybe he missed it and would have to go back and look again when Carlos reached out and put his little finger on the page. Ben sat up straighter.

“Indian Rock Python,” he read out loud. “That looks like it!” He read through the short passage next to the picture, his excited smile slipping off his face while he did. “Oh, but this doesn’t say anything about eyes that make you fall asleep.” Ben sat back, rubbing his face. Actually, now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember reading anything in any part of the book about an animal that could do that.

Ben slumped down, feeling dejected. “... The snake really scared me,” He said, after a long minute of being quiet. The picture in the book didn’t look nearly as big or as mean as the snake from last night. “Heroes go on adventures all the time, and they fight monsters and they’re brave, but I was really scared.” He curled over on himself, remembering how Carlos looked in the firelight, with his little face all grim and frowning. He was really brave, and he saved Ben’s life. Maybe Carlos could be a hero.

“I don’t think I want to go on adventures anymore.”

Carlos didn’t say anything, of course. For a while it was just them breathing in the room, the wind outside the window, and nothing else but silence, and then one of Carlos’s little hands landed on Ben’s head.

Ben looked up, startled. Carlos looked back at him with his big, dark eyes. His hand moved a tiny bit, like he was ruffling up Ben’s hair like Mr. Horace.

“... Thanks,” Ben said. Carlos only nodded, and kept petting him until Ben sat up.

They looked through the book a little while longer, until they’d gone through every snake page and ruled them all out. While Ben was putting it back down on the side of his bed, he saw the rest of the books in his room and said “Hey, do you know Charles Dickens?”

Carlos shook his head, and Ben gave him a big smile and grabbed the book and climbed up next to him on the bed. “I’ll read to you!” He said, scooting back so he was leaning against the pillows. He patted the bed for Carlos to come lie down next to him, like Ben does when his mom is the one reading. It took him a minute, but Carlos finally did, and Ben opened up to page one even though he was actually half way through the book already, and started to read.

“

My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.”

Ben read until the ache of his stomach told him lunch would be soon, and Carlos would have to hide again, and Carlos spent the whole time curled up at Ben’s side, looking at the pages with his big, dark eyes. When Ben finally stopped, Carlos blinked, and looked up at him with a little frown.

“You gotta hide again,” Ben told him. “My parents are gonna come get me soon.”

Carlos’s shoulders slumped sadly. Ben reached over to pat his head. “It’s okay! I’ll keep reading after if you want me to?” Carlos nodded and nodded, and Ben laughed.

Lunch came and went, and Ben again stuffed his food in his pockets (careful to keep it all wrapped in the napkin this time) and told his parents he wanted to go read, and they sent him off upstairs after he helped clear the table.

He didn’t have as much food for Carlos this time, because he didn’t eat breakfast and he was hungry, but he saved about half, so he figured that was okay.

After he ate, Carlos curled up next to Ben, and Ben kept reading. It was really nice, reading out loud to somebody. Now he knew why his mom liked it so much.

They spent the rest of the day like that, with Ben reading quietly to Carlos while he lay down next to him, curled up in a little ball on Ben’s side. Ben took another break for dinner, and then kept reading.

That night, after his mama and papa had tucked him in and said good night and made Ben promise he would go to sleep and not stay up late reading even more, Ben went and got Carlos from the closet, and this time after he’d brushed his teeth Carlos crawled right into bed next to Ben, and put his head down, and went to sleep.

Ben woke up the next morning with Carlos curled up small and kind of lying on top of him. He gave him a shake, and then another shake, and Carlos sat up really fast like he had the day before. Ben wasn’t very worried this time, though, he figured maybe Carlos just wasn’t a morning person.

After breakfast, Ben got changed and this time so did Carlos, since he’d be leaving that night. Ben’s parents had frowned at him and asked if he wanted to come read with one of them when he said he wanted to stay in his room again that day, so he thought maybe he should play with them after lunch so they didn’t come in and catch Carlos. That meant Ben would have to leave Carlos all alone for a few hours, so he dug out his notebook and a pencil and decided he was gonna teach Carlos how to read. He wouldn’t learn all in one day, but it could be a start!

Ben didn’t really remember how his parents had taught him, but he knew he should start with just the letters, so he did. He didn’t try to get Carlos to say them, he just showed him how to write them and read them and what sounds they all made, and then he left Carlos to practice his alphabet while Ben ran around downstairs and got chased by his dad and hid behind his mom’s skirt while she laughed at them both.

When Ben was finally allowed to go back upstairs again, it was after dinner. Ben had almost all of it stuffed in his pockets, because he felt bad that Carlos had to skip lunch. When he got back into his room, Carlos was still sitting on the bed, frowning at Ben’s notebook. Only, he had the snake book open, too, and he jumped and looked at Ben with wide eyes when he opened the door.

“What are you doing?” Ben asked, curious. Be climbed up on the bed and looked down at the books to try and see, because he knew, by now, that Carlos wouldn’t answer him in words.

The Herpetologist’s Field Guide was open to the part on snakes; one of the pages Ben read to Carlos earlier. Ben’s notebook had been turned to a new page. Instead of practicing letters, Carlos was writing… words. They were random and his hand writing was bad, but Carlos wrote “Fang” and “Scales” and other words from the book.

“Oh!” Ben said, surprised. “That’s a good idea to learn how to write. Do you know what words you did?”

That felt like a silly question, because Carlos couldn’t read, so Ben was very surprised when Carlos nodded.

“You do?” Ben leaned back on his heels in confusion. “How?”

Carlos pointed to the word Fang, and to his own teeth, and to the picture of the snake -- a rearing Copperhead with venom dripping from its fangs -- and then back at the word.

Blinking, Ben leaned forward again. “That's right!” He said, impressed. “But how did you know that?”

Frowning, Carlos put his hands in his lap for a moment. Ben didn’t say anything, because Carlos looked like he was thinking really hard about something, and he didn’t want to be rude. When Carlos sat up again, he put his finger to the word Fang in the book, and took a deep breath.

“

Ffff,” He said, very quietly. “Aahh, Nnn, guh.” He pointed to each letter as he said them. “F is

ffff

and a is

aaahh

and n is

nnnn

and g

guh

. Fang.”

It probably wasn’t very nice of Ben, but he was so caught off guard he jumped off the bed and said “You can

talk?!

” maybe louder than he needed to.

Carlos had surprised Ben, so it was probably fair that Ben surprised Carlos, too, and he jumped and flinched a little. Ben still felt bad about it, though, so he sat down again really quick.

“Sorry,” He said, much quieter. Carlos was a tight little ball all curled in on himself like a pillbug, peering at Ben with his dark eyes. “I didn’t know you could talk.” As soon as he said it, Ben remembered what Mr. Horace had told him. Carlos hasn’t spoken in weeks, which meant he

could

talk, he just… didn’t.

Carlos was uncurling from his ball really slowly, but once he was sitting back up he seemed a little better. Ben smiled at him really big and said “sorry” again.

He only shrugged, but Ben thought that meant he was forgiven. “So. You can talk?”

Carlos nodded.

“But you don’t… like to?”

Carlos shrugged.

“Okay,” Ben said, and decided it didn’t matter. They had been getting along just fine without Carlos talking. If he didn’t want to, he didn’t need to. Ben even kind of liked how quiet he was, it was really, really nice to be able to sit and read with a friend. “Oh! But you sounded out the letters, that’s how you knew what the word was, right?”

This time when Carlos nodded, he looked a little happier about it.

“Wow.” Was all Ben could say. “You’re really smart! You learned in one day!” Ben knew he hadn’t learned in one day. His mama said all the time how fast Ben learned how to read, but it still took him a while!

Carlos shrugged again, but his cheeks were kind of pink and he wasn’t looking at Ben, so Ben thought he was happy to be called smart.

They decided to keep reading

Great Expectations

, after Ben gave Carlos the food he’d brought him for dinner, and this time Ben went really slow and pointed at the words as he said them, so Carlos could hear what they sounded like. Carlos stared at the pages like he had before. Ben wondered if Carlos was learning even before Ben taught him the letters.

Ben’s parents come a few hours later and tuck him in for bed, and when they leave Carlos lies down next to him. They sleep, but not for long.

Hours later, after his parents had gone to bed, Ben slipped down the hallway with Carlos behind him. The house was always pitch dark at night -- Ben never wanted to risk lighting a candle while he was still inside -- but he knew where the creaky stair was and stuff, so he kept a hold on Carlos’s hand and whispered to him softly, telling him where to turn and when to stop and wait and listen.

In the kitchen, Ben grabbed a knife.

He couldn’t hold the knife, and the candle, and Carlos’s hand at the same time, so Carlos held the candle instead, and they crept out the front doors and made their way through the woods, fingers laced together tight enough to ache.

They didn’t see the snake on the walk to meet up with Horace, and Ben wasn’t sure if he was more relieved or scared. When they finally made it to the treeline and the light of the city spilled out onto the path, Ben decided on relieved.

Horace was waiting for them where he always was, at the trashcan fire with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t have Jace or Harold with him, and Ben was kind of sad about that, but Mr. Horace saw them coming out of the trees and rushed over with a big smile and pulled them both into a hug. His coat smelled kind of funny, like metal and cold and smoke, but Ben pushed his face against Mr. Horace’s scarf and hugged him back anyway. Ben liked Mr. Horace a lot, he decided.

“Oh, I been fretting myself bald these past two days,” Horace said when he let them go. “But look at the two of you! Right as right, aren’t you both?” To Ben, Horace said, “You did me a great favor, lad, and I appreciate it more’n words could tell.” He picked up a bag off the ground and handed it over to Ben with a smile.

The bag was heavy, and it made clunking sounds when he moved it. Curious, Ben peeked inside.

“It’s not much,” Mr. Horace said. “But it’s honest pay for an honest task, and it’s all I’ve got to give.”

The bag was full of food. Cans and cans and cans, vegetables and meat and fruit, soups and jars of peanut butter. Some of them didn’t have labels on them, and they were dented and rusty-looking, but they didn’t have any cracks, so the food inside was still good.

Horace said something else, but Ben could barely hear it over his own thundering heart. It sounded like “Thank you.”

Ben drew in a sharp breath. “I, wait, so…” He stopped, started again. “If I do jobs, for you, or. For other people. For somebody. If I work, they’ll give me food?”

Mr. Horace looked at Ben kind of funny, his big bushy eyebrows drawing down over his eyes, but he nodded. “Aye, if that’s what you ask to be paid in. Most get somethin’ else, but I know plenty who work for a full belly.

His heart was beating so hard it hurt. Ben clutched the bag close to his chest and stepped closer, nodding and nodding. “Can I do more jobs for you?” He asked. “Do you know anybody else who needs something?”

Mr. Horace was starting to look kind of freaked out, but Ben had

food

in his hands -- enough for

weeks

, maybe more, enough for his parents to actually eat all three meals like they used to when he was little, and all he had to do was hide Carlos for two days?

How much more food could he get, if he did something bigger?

“Now, Ben,” Mr. Horace was saying, but Ben shook his head and shook his head and pushed closer.

“I’m smart,” He said, louder than he meant to. “And I learn fast and I work hard.” Ben remembered how quickly Carlos had figured out reading, and felt himself falter, but he pushed on. “And I’m strong, I help around the house a lot, and I can clean, and --”

“Ben!” Horace put a hand over his mouth. Ben went quiet with a gasp. “Child, breathe, now. Tell me why you need t’ work so hard, hm? Thought you had parents what took care of you.”

“We don’t have enough food,” Ben said, once Mr. Horace had moved his hand. “They can’t get a lot, it’s dangerous, they get hurt when they go out and then they don’t eat because they need to feed me and when I asked if I could help they told me no and wouldn’t listen and I started sneaking out to try to find food but I didn’t know how and then I met you and you asked me to watch Carlos and now you gave me food and I need to find a job so I can get more.”

Mr. Horace stared at Ben for a long minute. Then he raised a hand and pinched the bridge of his big nose like he had a headache. “... Right,” He said, really quiet like he was talking to himself. “Right, ‘course, that’s… well.” He moved his hand, took a deep breath, and gave Ben a steady look. “Times is hard here for everybody, aren’t they? You’ve a good heart, lad. I may know a bloke or two who could use an extra set of hands, but I can’t promise anything. Alright?”

Ben nodded so hard he felt himself go dizzy. “Yes. Thank you so much, Mr. Horace.”

Horace just sighed again. He ruffled up Ben’s hair with one big hand, and finally stepped away. “Right, then. You get that home safe now, ‘fore someone sees and takes it from you.”

Ben clutched his bag tight against his chest, until the edges of the cans felt like they were bruising him even through his jacket. “Okay. Goodnight, Mr. Horace.” He loosened up his grip a little when he turned to face Carlos, though, because Carlos was his friend now and Ben wanted to say goodbye properly. He didn’t know when they’d get to hang out again.

With one arm wrapped in a death grip around his bag, Ben reached out the other and pet Carlos’s curly hair. “Goodnight, Carlos.”

Carlos took Mr. Horace’s hand and waved at Ben with the other. “Goodnight, Ben.”

The surprised, happy look on Mr. Horace’s face when he looked at Carlos was the last thing Ben saw, before he turned around and headed for the trees at a run, pulling his bag over his shoulders as he went.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Present Day

He doesn’t really remember going to his knees, but he’s there, now, feverish and disoriented, taking shaking gulps of humid air like he'd been drowning. His gang keeps fiddling around, cleaning his injuries with burning alcohol and sealing and bandaging, handing him a small glass bottle with Yzla's icon on it and urging him to drink, but the second wave of adrenaline hits Ben like a baseball bat to the head, and he doesn’t really have much awareness of what’s going on around him. It's not the most painful thing Ben has ever experienced, but goddamn it’s close. His skin got ripped off. It's a lot to process. But he knows that there are bodies closed around him, holding rank and watching him, letting him have his moment of vulnerability away from the prying eyes of potential enemies. He knows, over the dull, hazy pain and disorientation, that he is safe. Yzla’s drugs are good shit, and they work fast, and the awful fog slowly clears from Ben’s head, leaving him achy and shaking, but able to think clearly. “Fuck,” He slurs. “That’s gonna be so ugly when it scars.” Giselle and Harold offer their hands to help him stand. Laughing, Miles punches Ben in the shoulder very, very gently. “Ask Evie for some of her scar cream,” Mal says, her voice tart. All at once, Ben feels his stomach drop. Oh, yeah, that was really impressive of him, almost passing out right there in the middle of the festival. He sure did show off how tough and capable he is. “Hah, yeah…” Ben tries to smile, but he knows he looks awful. Damnit, and right after he did okay in his fight with Harry. How is he gonna dig himself out of this one? A hand lands on his head, and Ben looks up, startled. Mal is peering up at him, smirking, and her eyes so, so green. She moves her hand, just once, like she’s ruffling his hair. Then she’s stepping away again. “You done for the night?” “Uh, n-no,” Ben stutters out. “I can stay. I’m fine.” Mal nods at him, then she glances around at their little group. “So, games?” While they make their way as a group to the gaming booths, Ben takes the bottle of moonshine from Harold and swishes a gulp around in his mouth, spitting out the blood and bile still coating his teeth. It’s gonna be a pain in the ass cleaning his fangs later tonight, but that’s a problem for future Ben to deal with. Content to hang at the back of the group and just breathe for a bit, Ben watches as everyone else does their things. Darcy is manning the knife-throwing booth, and she flutters her eyelashes at Ben when she sees him, but gets distracted by Jace stepping up to play. Round one is eight daggers with a stationary target. Round two, the target moves, and round three, the knives are switched out for a set of wonky daggers, all of them purposely unbalanced to screw with accuracy. By the time he’s done showing off, Jace has a dozen bullseyes under his belt and is leaning on the bar to flirt heavily with Darcy, returning her fluttering eyelashes with his own suggestive stares. Harold has to drag him away by the arm, but they move on all the same. Gizelle shows off her own accuracy skills at the Block & Parry booth, hefting the metal bat in her hands like it weighs nothing, knocking solid wooden baseballs as they’re launched at her from three different machines. The hourglass counts down ten minutes of her relentlessly defending herself, and by the time her turn is up she has a collection of awful welts and almost-broken bones, but she also has the highest score for the night so far. Ben and Miles both grab one of her hands and lift them into the air, cheering for her. Harold wins against another henchman kid in a trivia game, naming vulnerable pressure points in the human body and correctly guessing how three different shanks were made just by touch. The kid goes off fuming, and Harold ducks his head at the shower of praise he gets from his gang, smiling small and pleased. Miles darts around like a ping-pong ball to a bunch of different booths before he settles on the Drowning Man. He’s nothing if not predictable, but Ben still cheers him on anyway as Miles dives repeatedly to the bottom of the murky tank, trying to pick the locks and solve the puzzles before time runs out. It’s impossible to do if you can’t hold your breath for very long, and the locks are designed with lots of spring-loaded pieces that pinch and snap slow fingers, but Miles manages it with a whole minute to spare and only one nail ripped off, only coming up for air twice. While Miles puts his clothes back on his lanky body and gets his finger patched, Ben notices Mal looking around thoughtfully, and he makes his way over to her. “Debating how you want to show everybody up?” He asks. She glances at him with a raised eyebrow, her lips quirking. “Maybe I’m just trying to decide if any of this crap is worth my time.” “... I guess that depends on your definition,” Ben muses. At Mal’s look, he elaborates. “Most of the people here are trying to prove themselves -- sure, some are just having fun or showing off, but there’s a reason everybody is trying so hard to break records. Everyone wants to be known for something. But everyone on the isle already knows you, they fear and respect you, so you winning these games seems… kind of redundant?” He tilts his head to one side, trying to find the words. “I don’t think it’s pointless or anything. It’s great that you’re out here having fun with us, I just...” He gestures, a little pathetically. Maybe he shouldn’t say this. “I just want to be sure that you are having fun, and not doing something you’d rather not because you feel like you need to do it.” Mal hums, noncommittally. She’s so hard to read sometimes, he can’t tell if he offended her or not. At least she doesn’t seem angry with him? “How’s your back?” Ben rolls his shoulders, testing. “Numb.” Mal nods. “You going home tonight?” “Uh, no,” He stutters. “I thought I’d stay at the den. Why?” Instead of answering him, Mal turns to check if Miles is decent yet. Seeing that he is, she whistles for the gang to regroup, and starts to walk away. “Have Evie check in on you before you go to bed,” She calls over her shoulder. Ben is left blinking at her in silent bafflement. Mal moves between the stalls idly, dismissing game after game and challenge after challenge, seemingly looking for something particular. When they reach it, Ben pulls up short, his jaw dropping. She isn’t serious, is she? … She is. Mal shoves her way through the crowd in front of The Masochist, cutting in line -- not that there’s much of a line to speak of -- and walking onto the stage like she belongs there. Bruna Stabington laughs to see her, clapping idly at the sight. “Well, there’s a hell of a challenger!” She calls to the gathered crowd. “Any of you spineless little shits wanna test your mettle against the Heiress of all Evil? Anybody at all?” For a moment, Ben thinks nobody will have the guts to step up. He isn’t sure if he’s more relieved or disappointed on Mal’s behalf. Then the crowd parts, and Harriet Hook steps onto the stage. Two in one night, is all Ben can think as she dramatically tosses off her coat and strides over to one of the stools. The scars on her face are very vivid in the flashing neon lights of the festival. Ben feels his stomach curdle. Mal, as always, seems unruffled. She takes the seat opposite Harriet’s, and neither says a word. They aren’t rivals, really -- Harriet’s territory is too far away from Mal’s for them to really clash, but Harriet has been very loud about how much she hates Mal anyway, for taking over her reputation as the most feared kid on the isle. If looks could kill, they’d both be corpses, propped up on their barstools. Bruna makes a big show of getting them both set up, hyping up the crowd. The machine in the center of the stage whirs and flashes, not yet on but lit-up all the same. A shower of sparks, more for show than anything else, fills the air with the scent of ozone and burning things. On Bruna’s request, Mal and Harriet hold out their arms. “Shall we begin?” Two needles each. The thick metal pins are easily the length of Ben’s palm, and they get sunk into each girls’ forearms right below the elbow bend. Neither of them so much as blink. Then comes the first wire, wrapped around the base of each needle, creating a complete circuit through the body and back out again. Then comes the electricity. The machine powers on when Bruna flips the switch with a flourish, a high whine filling the air. Ben can see the muscles in Mal’s arms clench and spasm painfully as she’s electrocuted, but Mal doesn’t wince. Neither does Harriet. “Level one,” Bruna cheers to the crowd. “Looks like both our girlies are stone-faced, though. Maybe we’re going too easy on such tough cookies!” Before Ben can really process what that means, the lever on the machine is clicked up twice. This time, Mal winces. Ben can see her jaw work as she clenches her teeth. At least Harriet looks just as uncomfortable. “Level three!” Bruna cheers. “They’re doing great. Let’s give ‘em more juice!” Level four comes with Mal’s whole body going impossibly tense, her her eyes screwing shut. By level five, she and Harriet are both trembling in their seats, sweating and writhing in pain. The air stinks like electrical smoke. The machine gets turned off for a moment, cutting off the electrical current. But only for a moment, because level six comes with two more needles. Ben can smell burning -- can see it, too, as Mal’s skin blackens around the pins driven into her. The pain has her hunched over, trying to clutch at something to stabilize herself, but with the electricity forcing her muscles to contract she can’t get a grip on anything. Level seven, the smell gets worse. Ben can see the veins in Mal’s face and arms straining against her pale skin, blood vessels rupturing and muscles clenching hard enough she might actually wrench her own limbs out of socket. Harriet is in the same boat, both of them writhing in agony and too stubborn to yield. The whole time, neither one of them makes a sound. (Ben tries to pretend the sight of Mal sweating and squirming doesn't do things to him. He knows she’s in pain, but that… kind of only turns him on more, if he’s being honest. She’s so strong and so resilient, she can endure so much. She’s amazing. She’s terrifying. Ben can barely breathe, seeing how powerful she is.) “I think I speak for all of us when I say holy fucking shit,” Bruna calls to the crowd. “Look at them go! Only three clicks left until level ten. Will one of these loveless ladies finally be the one to make it all the way to the top? What do you guys think?” Nobody dares to cry out against either Mal or Harriet. Still, nobody has ever made it to level ten. Apparently unsatisfied with the quiet discomfort of the audience, Bruna makes a big show of reaching for the lever again. “Although,” She drawls. Something in her voice sounds off. Ben tenses, his breath catching. “Since these are the two baddest babes on the isle,” She says, “And since they’re both taking it like champs, maybe we should skip right to it?”Before anyone has a chance to react to that, Bruna pushes the lever. Level nine comes in the form of bursting blood vessels and burning flesh. Mal’s eyes roll up, her jaw locked, her nose bleeding from the pressure. Her chest is heaving, and it takes Ben a second to realize it isn’t just the muscle contractions anymore. She can’t breathe, her heart and lungs are locking up and she’s struggling for air, she’s gonna die right there on stage, Ben has never seen her die before -- Harriet screams. And screams, and screams. Bruna hasn’t turned off the machine, even though Mal fucking won, and Ben and the others are already shoving through the crowd by the time she realizes that this is not the gang to play these games with. When the lever clicks off, Mal goes still, collapsed on the stage and heaving for breath through her clenched teeth. “Well,” Bruna chirps, trying for charming as Ben and the others storm the stage. “That was a truly impressive show! Let’s all hear it for Mal, everybody!” The crowd cheers, but Ben is more concerned with pulling the pins out of Mal’s blackened forearms. She isn’t unconscious, but the pain has her dazed and dizzy. Harold is already cleaning and bandaging her injuries, and Ben would pick her up if he didn’t know she’d cut him for it. Like they did for him, the gang forms a wall around their leader. Bruna is glared off her own stage, and Ben stays on his knees beside Mal, trying not to hover but unwilling to keep his distance. Mal recovers before Harriet does, by only maybe a minute. She groans, eyes clearing as she blinks her way back to lucidity. Her skin is paler than normal, her eyes red and bloodshot like hell, but she looks up with a little jagged slice of a smile at everyone, proud of herself. Besotted, Ben grins back. “Holy shit, boss,” Gizelle says. The general consensus of the gang is that pretty much covers it. Mal uses Ben’s shoulder to help herself to her feet, swaying once before she stabilizes. She’s still breathing hard, but Ben and the others all know better than to try and help her walk off the stage. She manages fine by herself anyway, and they troup after her like good little henchmen. When they reach another bench, Mal plops herself down into it, leaning her head back and letting herself rest. The first words out of her mouth are “Holy fuck, I’m thirsty.” Laughing, Ben goes scurrying off to buy her a drink. When he comes back, he settles onto the bench beside her, handing her the bottle which she takes with a shaking hand. Too shaky, actually. She can barely hold it, much less sip, and on instinct Ben reaches out to stabilize her. It must be a testament to how exhausted she is from the game that she lets him. Mal’s hand feels very small in his. Dragon scales are almost impossible to cut with anything less than mithril (or very, very enchanted steel) but trapped on the Isle and in her human form, Mal’s skin is as fragile as anyone else’s. Ben could cut her with his claws if he isn’t careful. She’s fever-hot from the game, and the tiny muscles in her hand feel weakened and stiff. Ben can almost feel her pulse through her skin. Together they raise the bottle to Mal’s lips. She drinks, her throat working, her eyes closed, and Ben does everything he can to hold her steady. Water still drips from the corners of her mouth, clearing away some of the blood on her face. It pools in her collarbones, the hollow of her throat. Her neckline is already soaked in sweat, and the water leaves her shirt plastered to her chest. Ben’s own throat is suddenly very dry. When Mal is done, Ben helps her lower the bottle, then goes the extra mile and takes it out of her hand. Mal is still breathing too heavy, but she’s visibly pulling herself together. The gang waits until she’s ready. Once she is, Mal stands on slightly-unsteady legs and stretches all the tension and cramps out of her abused body, back arching, fingers splayed where her arms rise high over her head. Ben stares firmly at his feet. That only takes a few minutes though, at least. When she’s done, Mal gives herself one last shake, and flashes a grin at everybody, baring her teeth. Helplessly, Ben grins back. “Time?” Mal asks, glancing around. Jace peers at his watch. “Almost midnight.” Mal nods. “My turn to check on Evie. Who’s staying?” “I’ll go with you,” Ben is quick to answer. Mal only nods at him as he scrambles to his feet, and they head off together into the festival.(Ben ignores the snickers of his gang. He’s not that transparent.) They walk in silence for a while, Ben just enjoying Mal’s company. Around them, people are testing their mettle at game booths or stumbling drunk and high down the narrow paths between stalls. They pass a Hun kid sitting at a kiosk, diligently sewing ink under the skin of a customer with their needle brush. A couple stalls down someone advertises clean, sterile piercings, which is a crock of shit, since the booth right next to it is doing scarification and branding, and the bloody trails leading out of their tent basically makes the whole damn area contaminated. The air smells like burning meat. Ben thinks of Mal’s arms and almost gags. In the last couple hours, the rest of the performers have finished setting up, and there are people hanging from the scaffolding over the crowd by hooks in their skin, and kids showing off their athleticism on the aerial ropes, swinging across the ramparts. (He’s heard that real Auradon acrobats use silk. Ben’s mom has a few scraps of gold silk tucked away under her bed. The material is slippery-smooth and fragile, and basically useless as far as Ben can tell. He doesn't know why she keeps it.) The crowd in front of the stage has nearly doubled in size. The Bad Apples must have finished their set, because there’s a cluster of pirates performing hard rock sea shanties for the drunken masses. Ben cranes his head over the gyrating bodies in search of a familiar face, and spots Jay on one of the smaller platforms around the area, bellydancing. There’s a group of fire dancers behind him, and the light from their torches caches on the shining coins around his hips, turns the sweat on his skin into a layer of molten gold over sinuous muscle. He has his own small crowd of admirers, clustered around his stage and getting their rocks off to the show. A little ways away, Yzla is giving Hadie a sloppy lapdance. “At least they’re enjoying themselves,” Mal huffs. Laughing, Ben can’t help but agree. Away from the crowd, the games, and the stalls for shoddy body mods, the Devil’s Road is littered with small shops and kiosks selling food and drink -- and other things. Evie is still right where they left her, in her shiny black stall next to Freddie Facilier’s. There’s a pretty big difference between then and now, though, which is that almost every single one of her shelves are empty. Ben is already grinning by the time they reach her. Evie hands some Orphan girl a bracelet, takes her money, and turns to smile at Mal and Ben with her eyes brighter than all the neon lights at the festival. Before Ben can say anything, Mal is already leaning on the stall, smiling proudly. “Well done,” She says. Evie looks about ready to faint. Ben can fully understand.“You did great,” He’s quick to tell her, cutting in front of the rest of her customers. Unfortunately that puts his face in the low light, and Evie’s expression goes from thrilled to worried in about half a second. “Ben!” She gasps. “What happened? Do you need --” “I’m fine, princess,” He reassures her. “I got in the pit with Harry Hook, but I won.” “He did.” Mal’s glances at him out of the corner of her eye, then focuses back on Evie. “But he lost half the skin on his back in the process.” Evie’s face only grows more concerned. Ben winces. “I’m fine, really,” he says. “I took some of Yzla’s drugs and Harold patched me up. It’ll keep me on my feet for the rest of the night, at least.” “I want to look you over when we get to the den,” Evie says firmly.
Mal nods like she’s agreeing for him. Ben makes a big show of pouting, but he’s already under orders from Mal and besides, they all know he can’t say no to Evie. “Alright, Eves. Whatever you want.” Evie turns her nose primly into the air, and Ben grins at her. Beside him, Mal rolls her eyes, but there’s an amused twitch to the corners of her mouth. It makes his heart flutter. They talk with Evie for a while longer -- nobody’s given her any trouble, and everyone else has already taken their turns to check on her. She’ll come join the rest of the party when the last of her wares are sold. Ben absolutely beams at her when she says that, so proud he might have swallowed the sun. She’s almost sold out. Ben wonders what she’ll spend all that money on. Eventually he and Mal have to go or risk chasing off some of Evie’s customers, which neither of them could bare to do, especially not when she’s glowing with pride for herself. (Eat your heart out, Grimhilde.) They pop over to Freddie’s booth and talk idly while Mal buys a bottle of absinthe, then continue on their way through the festival. Mal drawls, “Where to next?” Ben startles. “Oh, uh. To be honest, I think I want to go sit somewhere?” Mal quirks her eyebrow at him. “Done with the crowds, huh?” When Ben nods, she huffs a quiet laugh. “I feel you. Fucking vultures.” “I always forget how much you don’t like people,” Ben finds himself saying. Mal only rolls her eyes at him. The silence they share is comfortable, and Ben finds himself enjoying the quiet walk almost more than he’s enjoyed anything else tonight. Granted, quiet might be a relative term -- he can still hear the screaming and celebrating of the rest of the festival-goers -- but there’s a peace to Mal that strikes him. They pass the bottle back and forth as they make their way to the stage, and Ben catches Mal looking at her arms more than once with a pleased little smile on her face. He wonders at that. It’s probably because she beat Harriet, or maybe she’s proud of herself for enduring so much pain, but neither of those explanations feel quite right. Ben’s own recent injuries throb on his back. He knows he never could have won that game. They end up at one of the rickety tables around the edge of the crowd, sitting quietly and watching the masses. Some of the faces Ben knows well -- Gil in one corner dancing with Jonah and Bonny, Anthony Tremaine perched at his own table a bit away, watching with sharp eyes as his sister flirts with Alim Aghoul, which is not a match Ben would have seen coming. Over the crowd, Jay is still dancing, and Ben watches and admires him for a minute, the way so many other people are, clustered around the foot of his stage and crying out for his attention. Jay ignores them all, his eyes closed as he moves with the music, running his fingers through his own hair. Ben wonders if he went over there, if Jay would dance with him. Ben isn’t great, but nobody would be paying attention to him anyway. He glances at Mal, happy to share his good mood, only to stop short at the stony expression on her face. Her eyes are trained a little ways away, past Jay’s erotic performance and settled on where Uma has Harry pressed against a wall, kissing him right there in the middle of Mayhem for everyone to see. “Hey!” A familiar voice calls, and Ben turns to see Carlos approaching with Edward, Claudine and Ginny. “Hear you two bested a couple Hooks.” Ah, so that’s already spreading around, then. Mal nods, holding out her forearms. “Harriet’s tougher than I thought, that hurt like a bitch.” “You still beat her, though,” Ginny mutters. Ben nods. “Yeah she did, Mal kicked ass.” “Naturally,” Edward sniffs, lowering himself into a chair. “And you?” “Oh,” Ben falters. “Uh, I almost bit a chunk out of his shoulder, but --” “Harry lost,” Mal says, like it’s that simple. “He tapped out when Ben got his teeth in him.” Ben wants to argue, bring up his back, but Mal sounds… proud. All he can bring himself to do is duck his head and smile. “Dude, awesome!” Carlos smiles at him. Silent as ever, Claudine nonetheless looks pleased. “Anyway, what have you four been up to?” “We’ve been sitting quietly and minding our own business,” Carlos says firmly. Ben can’t help but laugh. “You know, from anyone else, that would sound suspicious as hell.” They all chat for a bit until Evie shows up, flushed and grinning, to declare that she’s sold all of her goods. The showering of praise she receives has her fisting her hands in her skirt, her cheeks pretty pink. Moments later they’re rejoined by Jay, who throws his arm over Evie’s shoulder and pulls her close, grinning bright. “Everybody having fun?” They give him a rundown of what they’ve all done so far tonight, and Jay whistles low and sharp to see Mal’s arms and Ben’s back, which is steadily beginning to throb. He could take more of Yzla’s drugs, but that's always risky business. He might have to call it in early. Thankfully everyone else seems to be of a like mind. Evie isn't much one for dancing in huge crowds like this -- too many bad experiences with nasty drunk assholes -- and she isn't interested in any of the games, so there isn’t much left to the festival that actually appeals to her. Everyone else has just about done everything they wanted to. They all collectively decide to take another walk around and see if anyone wants to do anything else, and Ben passes silently by most of the games. He isn’t feeling up to most of the tests for strength and endurance just now, not with his back starting to ache again. He thinks he may just end up waiting while his gang does their stuff and then going to the den. That is, until he sees two familiar heads at a stall a little ways away. The Gaston twins are in line for The Shallow Grave. The game itself is simple; a thin wooden coffin gets chained shut, and the person inside gets buried five feet down. The wood is easy enough to break, but without much wiggle room it takes some real strength to get it to splinter. You could pry up the nails in the top corners, but that requires a lot of flexibility. Regardless of how you do it, once you get the coffin open, you have to untangle yourself from the chains and claw your way out of the dirt before you run out of air. Ben saunters over to watch. It’s hard to see, in the low light of the festival, but Three isn’t wearing his eyepatch tonight, leaving his scars open for everyone to see. Three sharp vertical lines over the gaping socket where his left eye used to be. He doesn't see Ben, which works just fine by him. He’d rather wait and watch, for now. “Alright!” Calls the host, as a last round’s contestants finish brushing themselves off. “Who’s up next? Come one, come all! It’s a good day to die!” The twins are next in line. They insist on being buried together, two chipboard coffins side-by-side and wrapped in heavy-duty chains. Five stage hands work to pour dirt over the coffins and stomp them down, and time starts with a piercing sound loud enough to be heard even underground. Admittedly, there isn't much to see for the people observing the game. All the interesting things happen under a couple feet of packed dirt. Ben waits and watches anyway, counting the seconds in his head. There’s enough air in one of the coffins for maybe ten minutes if you’re careful, but once it’s open you have to hold your breath however long it takes to get your head above the dirt. After a few minutes the gang must start to wonder where Ben wandered off to, because they start trickling in searching for him. When Jay comes sauntering over to prop his elbow on Ben’s shoulder and ask what’s up, Ben only taps the lines Anthony drew on his eye and nods to the burial ground. Jay grins, sharp and mean. “Hoping they stay down there?” Ben shrugs. “Maybe.” Five minutes. Seven. Ten. The dirt on top of one coffin starts to tremble and dome upwards, then the one beside it. As one, the twins crawl out from their would-be graves. It’s the shortest time for the night, according to the chalkboard set up nearby. The Gaston twins shout and pump their fists to the cheering of the crowd. “Mediocre,” Ben drawls. Jay snorts, shaking his head. “You gonna show ‘em how it’s done?” … Hm. Honestly, Ben’s back hurts like a bitch, and he isn't sure he’s up to any more rigorous physical activity tonight. If he were more of a social butterfly he might have been happy to join the dancing and drinking, but he isn't incredibly fond of crowds and he’d been so focused on trying to get Mal’s attention that he’d jumped right into the deep end without any warmup, and now he’s feeling it through pretty much his whole body. He kind of wants to just go to the den and lie down. He’s opening his mouth to say as much when he notices Gaston Jr looking right at him. A second later, Three catches on and turns to look as well, both of them glaring venomously. If looks could kill… Well, he can't walk away now. Ben fixes his face into his sweetest, most polite smile, and raises a hand to wave as he steps forward. For a moment, Junior steps up as well, and Ben braces himself for a fight. But Three puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder and hauls him back, leaning in to murmur something short and frantic in his ear. With one last ugly look at Ben, they both go slinking off like the cowards they are. Whatever. He puts on a show for the crowd as he steps into the light, arms outstretched and fangs bared. Immediately, the game host jumps at the chance to hype the audience, skipping right past the line of people waiting for their turns and gesturing Ben onto the field. “And in the wake of the twin hunters spectacular show of strength, the Beast himself has come to flirt with death! Will he show up our last contestants, or will he end up with his tail between his legs?” Ben rolls his eyes at the tail comment and mostly ignores the host. The same diggers from before haul away the broken coffins and quickly start setting up a new pit, and Ben glances at Jay while he waits, unsurprised to find that a few more members of their gang have come trickling in. Evie is fretting, from the looks of it, likely concerned about Ben’s injuries, but he shoots her a wink and a hopefully-reassuring smile. Honestly, the coffins are just chipboard. He can kick out the bottom and squirm through there, and then he won’t even have to deal with the chains. The ground has been dug up so many times tonight that no matter how hard they try to pack it down, it’ll be loose enough for Ben to claw his way out of. The whole thing should take him… Maybe six minutes? Eight, tops? The twins only took so long because their brainless asses decided to break out through the lids. He suspects most of their time was spent fighting with their chains. He’s eyeing the pile of broken coffins while he waits, when a commotion from near the main stage draws his attention. Idly, Ben turns to look, and -- It’s dark. The lights and music from the stage have stopped, and the blackout is quickly rolling across the whole festival, plunging the Sleeping Mountain into darkness. Immediately Ben is stumbling for the last place he remembers seeing Evie and Jay. They’d had Mal and Ginny with them, she should be -- there, glowing green eyes lighting up the darkness, moving towards him just as quickly. A few streams of yellowed moonlight struggle their way through the cloud cover, but it isn't enough to actually see anything by, and there are bodies moving around Ben on all sides as people regroup and check on their allies. Lighters and flashlights come on one by one, gradually helping to illuminate the area. Ben reaches for the green eyes and the vague silhouettes around them. Hands take his, small and gloved. “The hell is going on?” Jay mutters. Under the pandemonium of the rest of the festival-goers, Ben can hear the click of coins as Jay digs through his pockets. “Power outage?” Evie suggests. Jay flicks his lighter on. Ben breathes easier, actually seeing them. “Carlos and the others were near the Flytrap,” Mal says. “We should meet them --” “Mal!” “Or… They can meet us,” Mal trails off. Lit by the glow of Claudine’s lighter and Hadie’s hair, the rest of their gang is quickly making their way across the festival grounds. Once he’s close enough, Carlos half-sprints to tuck himself back into their small circle, breathing slow and sharp. Ben reaches to run careful claws through his hair. Carlos leans into his touch. In the dark, like this, they can get away with it.Ginny is clutching at Harold, who is in turn holding her close, and Miles is twitcher than usual where he stands next to Gizelle, eyes darting around at the moving shadows as other kids scurry past. There are a lot of reasons to be scared of the dark, on the isle. “I need to find Gil,” Gizelle says. In the flickering firelight, Mal nods. “Take Hadie and Jace, stay together. Come back when you’ve checked on him. We’ll be here.” “Is that a good idea?” Ben asks, shifting. He can hear other people talking if he strains his ears, and most of it sounds confused and inconvenienced -- it doesn’t seem like anybody has gotten hurt -- but that’s no guarantee that this won't get ugly. The whole island comes to Mayhem, big names and henchmen and Orphans with no clue who their parents were, and here they all are, stumbling cluelessly through the dark. “Shouldn’t we all go?”It’s only the glow of Mal’s eyes that tells Ben she’s looking at him. “Gil will be with his crew,” She says. “If we all come creeping up on the pirates, Uma will assume we’re attacking.”… Oh. Yeah, that’s a good point. “Right,” Ben answers, a little stupidly.To Gizelle, Mal says “Go.”Jay and Claudine hand over their lighters. Between that, and the pale blue glow of Hadie’s hair, they should have just enough light to see by. The three vanish into the dark.Ben clutches fitfully at Evie’s hand.“I wonder what caused it,” Carlos muses, still curled up between them all. He’s breathing a little too fast, but other than that, he seems mostly okay for now.“Everything’s always broken on this damn island,” Edward sniffs. “Frankly, I’m only shocked this hasn’t happened before.”“Betcha somebody took a piss on a generator,” Yzla says, laughing. “Hope they got fried.”Around them, every shadow seems to move like something creeping closer. There are voices drifting by -- people talking to their gang members, friends calling out for each other to regroup. In the dark, it all seems so much more sinister. Ben counts heads -- Carlos’s curls tickle his wrist, Evie’s hand is clutched in his. Edward’s cane taps idly against the ground. Miles twitches and fidgets, Harold and Ginny are very still, but the heat of their bodies is close by. Claudine has pulled out another lighter and is holding it above her head. Yzla is still laughing, soft and nervous. Mal’s green eyes keep watch over all of them.Ben flexes his claws and keeps his own eyes on the surrounding darkness. Over the sound of his own thundering heartbeat, Ben hears something. He dismisses it at first -- there are footsteps and voices all around him, it’s hard to determine one sound from another -- but it happens again, and then a third time. Something heavy being dragged across the ground, thunking over uneven pathways, carving through the dirt with a shhhh. Metal sounds, clanging, and --The lights come on.Ben nearly collapses to his knees in relief.The air is split by a high, mechanical shriek before Diego’s voice echoes across the festival grounds. “Sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen!” He calls from somewhere near the stage. “Some drunk fuck dumped moonshine on one of our generators and the whole system went down. We’ve got it all taken care of with a backup and we’re watching the machines more closely to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Please, feel free to enjoy the rest of your night.”Relief sweeps through the festival like a breath of fresh air. All around him, Ben feels his gang unwind and lets his own shoulders slump. With the suffocating press of darkness pushed away, they all carefully detangle from their frightened huddle.Hosts and salespeople return to their stalls, trying to entice the crowds back to them, but a good chunk of attendees seem done for the night. A steady stream of people are walking away, weaving through the pathways to make their way back to the main roads.
Ben considers following. Honestly, he was only gonna play the game to show up the twins, and he’s still straining for any sound of violence or a struggle. It would have been all too easy for someone to take advantage of the pandemonium that blackout caused, it’s really only dumb luck that none of Ben’s gang got jumped just now.
By unspoken agreement, everyone waits, clumped together, until the others return. When they do, it’s in a cloud of pirates. Ben feels his hackles rise, but tries to push it down.Gizelle has one of Gil’s arms slung over her shoulders, the two talking quietly to each other. Uma and Harry linger nearby, their eyes on their third in command. On Gizelle’s side, Hadie and Jace have put careful distance between themselves and Uma’s crew, but they’re both ready to jump in if the need arises.
Not that it will, probably. Gizelle and Gil are a… special circumstance for both gangs. Enough so that Ben isn’t the only one who raises a hand, waving in greeting at Gil as he passes. Looking thrilled, Gil pauses to shout quick greetings, waving excitedly back.“Man, that blackout was really scary, huh? I’m glad everybody’s okay. Hey, did you guys see --”Uma’s hand lands heavy on Gil’s shoulder. “We’re leaving,” She tells him, not unkindly.Gil’s shoulders slump. “Aww, okay. Bye, guys!”Gizelle detangles herself from her brother, and the pirates trail off.“... Yeah, I think I’m done,” Mal says into the empty space they leave behind. “Anybody got any reason we should stick around?”A chorus of negatives answers her, but --Ben feels eyes on the back of his neck.When he turns, the Gaston twins are standing not too far from where he’d last seen them. With only each other to worry about or rely on, they were probably trying to make their way to the path when the lights went out, and instead stumbled back to the Shallow Grave.The host is peering hopefully at Ben, next to the ditch they dug just for him.Well, alright then. “I’ve got something I wanna do,” He tells Mal. “It won’t take long.”She eyes him sharply, but when her gaze trails to the twins, her shoulders relax in understanding. “Fine,” She says, clipped. “We’ll be here.”“Please be careful,” Evie tells him quietly.Ben smiles at her, reaching up to trace one claw down her pale cheek. “Don’t worry,” He tells her. “This’ll be easy.”He leaves his gang standing on the other side of the road, and lets himself be led to the coffin waiting for him. His back throbs all the way to bone, but he’ll be out and back at the den soon. Evie can give him something for the pain there.The Gaston twins glare the whole time Ben walks toward the grave. He blows them both a kiss before he climbs in.The sides of the coffin are cold and perfectly smooth against his bare arms. The lid closes over him, plunging him into darkness. Pins are slid into place, chains rattle. Ben feels himself lifted and lowered into the earth. The hollow sound of dirt hitting the lid.The game host talks the crowd up. The dirt around him shifts as it’s stomped down.The whistle blows.Ben’s first kick is weak and awkward -- he can barely bend his knee, but he wiggles himself down farther and gets a better angle. There.The second kick doesn’t do anything. The coffin makes a strange, hollow sound. Damn, the dirt was packed deeper than he thought. Whatever, he wasn’t expecting to get out of here in under a minute.He kicks the bottom again, and again. Hard, and then harder, putting as much weight behind it as he can, stomping down on the coffin with enough force to leave himself winded.It occurs to him, with a creeping sense that something is wrong, that thin, dinky chipboard should have started to splinter, by now.
The sides of the coffin are cold and perfectly smooth against his arms.Stretching, Ben digs his claws into the walls on either side of him, dragging them sharply -- a grating sound fills his ears, makes him flinch.What the fuck.Panicked fingers slide over the coffin walls, testing. He finds his own scratch marks, feels where a thin layer of wood chipped away to reveal metal underneath.
What the fuck .This time, Ben kicks the bottom hard enough he feels pain lace up his leg. He isn’t flexible enough to feel around very much, but he tries, searching for the edges of the coffin above his head. The seams where the walls meet are welded shut.Okay. Okay. The top isn’t welded down. He can jiggle the pins and get it undone. He can climb his way out, he’ll be fine. If he can get the top two unscrewed he can jiggle the lid down some. The chains will be… problematic, but it’ll be fine. It’s fine.It takes a lot of wiggling to get his arms up high enough to reach the first pin, and by the time he does he thinks he’s lost a couple layers of skin off his forearms from dragging them over the metal walls, but that seems like a theme for tonight, so Ben ignores the pain and the steadily-mounting panic and uses his claws to start picking at one of the pins.It’s harder to get loose than he expected. His claws are too thin, he can’t get a grip on it, damn everything.More wiggling. Ben gets a hand up by his mouth. He has to turn his head to use his teeth, pulling on the chains keeping his claws in place. One finger comes loose. Another.By the time Ben’s hand is free he’s panting, confusion and fear and the awkward ways he needs to contort his body in such a small space have him out of breath, and that realization feels like ice sliding down his spine.He’s already been in this box for, what? Maybe eight minutes? More?He’s running out of air.For a moment, Ben is paralized. Fear demands he throw himself into trying to get out, thrash and squirm and tear at the pins until they come loose. Logic implores him to go slow, conserve oxygen, keep his heart rate low. They clash in the middle. Ben feels a whine tear it’s way out of his throat, trembling and weak.The barrier heals a lot, when it comes to death. Any injury or illness that directly ends with your untimely demise gets patched right up when you come back. Some people claim you can cheat -- slit your own throat soon enough after losing a hand or breaking your spine and you’ll come back right as rain -- but they’re full of shit. The barrier’s magic ignores anything that isn’t immediately fatal.It isn’t the dying that scares him. It’s the brain damage.Ben’s heart thunders against his ribs like a panicked animal slamming itself against the bars of its cage. He tries to keep his breathing slow, but every third breath is a desperate gasp.He gets his fingers around the pin, grips with his fingernails and twists. Dirt gets caught in the thread, sticks in the hole, makes it harder to turn. His fingers slip. He holds the pin tighter, until metal digs into his fingertips. Half a turn. Slip. Half a turn.On the next turn his grip is wrong, his fingernails too close to the thread. He feels the edge of cold, thin metal press up under his fingernail, up --Pain. Tingling up his arm, making him twitch helplessly. He loses his grip.Fuck everything. Ben reaches again for sharp, thin metal.Half a turn.His heart, that panicked thing caught in the cage of his chest, is squeezing up his throat, choking him as much as the coffin walls.
Slip. Metal digging into his fingers.A quarter of a turn.Distantly, Ben thinks he might hear sounds on the surface, the host dramatically taunting the passing minutes. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, will he make it out alive? Ben’s breath hisses through his teeth shaking-sharp, like it’s trying to claw out of him, too. His heart and his lungs, fleeing the corpse of his body.
A quarter of a turn.Slip.An eighth of a turn.Ben feels himself going light headed from lack of oxygen.
Slip.How long will he be down here, airless, brain cells dying and shriveling up, before someone digs him up?His gang was waiting for him on the surface. Will they realize? Was this a trap for them, luring them into a place where he couldn’t be there, couldn’t protect them? Is someone up there hurting them, right now?An eight of a turn. Slip. A quarter turn. An eighth again. Slip.This isn’t working. Over the cacophonous pounding of his heart, the rush of blood in his ears, the echo of his own shaking breaths off the metal walls closing in on him, Ben can just barely hear himself think. What he thinks is, this isn’t working. A quarter turn. A half. Slip.What happens, after he gets these top two nails pried up? He can’t reach the ones on the bottom. The chains won’t let him move the lid enough to snap it free. He won’t be able to squeeze himself out of such a tiny space.An eight of a turn. Slip.This isn’t working.He finally catches his fingernail too hard, yelps as it gets ripped off, blood slipping over his fingers. No, damnit, no .He scrambles for the pin. Can’t get it.Slip. Slip. Slip.His lungs ache for lack of air. Mal , Ben thinks, childish and stupid. Mal.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seven Years Ago

Ben only waited two days before going back out again. It was risky, he knew, leaving so often, and especially on one of the nights his parents might have decided to go out, too. He couldn’t wait any longer, though. After he’d gotten home and very carefully stacked his cans and jars in the storage room, Ben had gone to his bedroom and stuffed the bag in the back of his closet, and he hadn’t been able to sleep at all that night.He had slept slightly better the next night, but only barely. His parents didn’t seem to have noticed the new addition to their food stores, so Ben must have done a good job of cramming things into cabinets and behind other containers, and that was kind of a relief. He’d been worried he might have to hide the food in his room instead, and only bring down cans one or two at a time. But even though his parents hadn’t noticed yet, there were a lot of other things for Ben to feel jittery and anxious about.What if Mr. Horace couldn’t convince the man to give Ben a job? What if he did, and then Ben took too long to come back, and the man picked somebody else? What if Ben met the man and got the job and then did something wrong and got fired, which is what happens in books when bosses are mean or employees are unlucky.Is that what Ben would be? An employee? He liked the way that sounded, all grown-up and important. Calling himself an employee would make it sound like he had a real job to do, and with any luck, he would.Ben didn’t know what the job might be, but it didn’t really matter. He would do anything he had to, to help his parents. It was time to be a man.
So, two days after Ben came sprinting back to the castle with the backpack, he snuck out again. This time he wasn’t holding Carlos’s hand, so he could hold the candle and the knife at the same time.In the dark of the woods, Ben’s hands shook, and the candle flickered.He had been worrying about this, too. What if the snake came back? What if Ben couldn’t fight it off? What if he finally found a way to help his parents, and then he got eaten by a giant Rock Python?… What would happen to his parents if he didn’t come home? Would they go looking for him? Would they get hurt, too?Ben’s dad told him a few times that he thought too much. Ben thought maybe he was right.Still. Ben couldn’t stop thinking.So he tried to do what he always did when he was scared or stressed, and he recited poetry in his head. His dad read him poetry a lot. His mom liked stories better, but his dad liked poems, and Ben liked them both. Stories made him excited and want to go on adventures, but his dad’s poems made him feel quiet. They helped him make his hands stop shaking.
Whose woods these are, I think I know

His house is in the village though

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow
It wasn’t snowing in real life, even though it was snowing in the poem. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening was about somebody getting tired on their way home, Ben was pretty sure. Only they couldn’t stop and take a break because they had important stuff to do. They had promises to keep.Ben had promises to keep.They were only promises to himself, because he had to keep it a secret from his parents, but they were still promises. Ben couldn’t go home yet.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year
Maybe if Ben was brave, he wouldn’t have wanted to. But he wasn’t brave, or strong. He wasn’t a hero. So he walked really slow down the path, and went even slower when he started to shake so bad he almost put his candle out. Every tree had hands to grab him, every branch or vine was a giant snake. Ben had a knife, but he didn’t really know what to do with it. It had been much, much easier to walk to the city when he had Carlos with him.Ben had been creeping through these woods for almost a year. This was the first time he’d ever felt so alone in them.He was so focused on his poems, and on his footsteps -- on putting one foot in front of the other and walking through the woods and not stopping, not turning back -- that he didn’t hear the snake come up behind him.
He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake

The only other sounds the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake
Pythons are constrictors, which was the only thing that saved Ben’s life, because without venom the shake had to grab him before it could kill him.It was lying very still, waiting for him. It’s tail looked like a log over the path. Ben went to step over it, and didn’t notice the diamonds and spots all down it’s back until the tail was curled up and Ben was falling down.His knife and candle skittered off somewhere in the darkness, and the flame went out.Ben screamed.His hands and knees ached from landing hard on the cold ground. He was knocked breathless and dizzy for just a second. By the time that second was over the snake had wrapped it’s tail all around his legs and started to squeeze.It didn’t talk. That was something Ben noticed, when he started thrashing to try and wiggle out of the crushing grip slowly working up his body. The snake talked last time, but this time it was quiet. Ben thought about the burning stick right in the snake’s lying mouth, and felt a tiny burst of triumph.
It didn’t last long. The snake was coiling around him tight enough his legs were starting to ache and twinge, and it was around his belly now, squeezing his back and his spine and it hurt, and all Ben could think about was how constrictors killed their prey, crushing them to death and then swallowing them.Ben thought about rats and mice and lizards, and larger prey like monkeys and antelopes. Ben thought about himself. He could feel the snake squeezing tighter every time he took a breath, just like it said in The Herpetologists Field Guide. The snake was going to squeeze the life right out of him, and Ben couldn’t breathe, Ben couldn’t move .Rats and mice and lizards. Monkeys. Chimpanzees, Gorillas. Mandrills with their big, sharp fangs.Ben could feel the smooth glide of cold scales against his cheek as the snake wrapped up his chest and head. Ben turned his face, opened up his mouth as wide as he could, and bit down.It only made the snake squeeze tighter. Panic spiking, Ben dug his teeth in as hard as he could, until the scales went flaky and broken in his mouth and something cold and awful-tasting flowed down his chin. It ended up in his throat, choking him. Ben sputtered around his mouthful, and the snake made a pained sound and squeezed him even tighter.Only, Ben had a mouthful of the snake’s tail. It couldn’t pull it’s coils in without moving that spot, and when it tried Ben latched on and didn’t let go.The snake made another sound, and went loose again, then tight again. It was using it’s top half to wrap Ben up instead of it’s bottom half, so that it could still coil around him. Through the darkness, Ben could just barely see the Snake’s yellow eyes.The snake’s head got closer. Closer. It’s flat snout brushed his cheek as it started to wrap around his neck.Ben let go of it’s tail, whipped around as fast and as far as he could, and sunk his teeth right into that big yellow eye.The snakeScreamedThe lashing of it’s body sent Ben tumbling out of its coils and right into a tree. His back ached and ached. Ben dug his fingernails into cold dirt and tried to breathe.“You!” The snake hissed. Wheezing, Ben tried to push himself up. His legs felt like they were bruised all the way down to the bone, but even though it hurt worse than anything Ben had ever felt, he didn’t cry. He needed to get up. He needed to get out of the woods.Stumbling to his feet, Ben ran blindly, groping for the trees in front of him. Something heavy swiped at his legs, sending him crashing to the ground again.This time, the snake started with his head. Ben tried to bite it again, but it must have learned its lesson. It kept it’s face well away from his. Suddenly Ben’s mouth was covered, and his nose was being crushed against his face so hard it started bleeding. He clawed at the scaly body over his mouth, but he couldn’t pry it off as it worked it’s way around his neck.There was something hard digging into Ben’s knee. When he moved his leg to kick out at the tail wrapping around him, it cut through Ben’s jeans and into his knee. He could barely feel the pain over how scared he was, but something about that stuck out to him.The knife. The knife!Blindly, Ben clawed at the dirt. The snake had him squeezed so tight Ben thought his head might pop. He couldn’t even get his jaw open to bite it again, but if Ben could get the knife, if he could just find the stupid knife --There!The blade cut his fingers when he dragged them over it, but Ben was too busy scrambling for the handle to notice. He got his hand around the hilt of the knife and dug it into the side of the snake covering his mouth. (Later, Ben would realize that almost stabbing himself in the face wasn’t the smartest idea he’d ever had.)Like before, the snake squeezed tighter before it let go. Ben blindly dragged the knife all along any part of it he could reach until he could breathe again.The snake was thrashing and hissing angrily. Ben lay in a crumpled heap on the ground, heaving for breath. His head hurt. His face, his back, his legs. His ribs felt like they were grinding together when he dragged in breath after breath.He made sure he had a good grip on the knife before he stood up again, and though it was hard to see in the dark, the snake was thrashing and hissing, and Ben could just almost see the other yellow eye glaring at him.Ben decided he was really sick of this snake, and it’s freaky eyes that almost made him fall asleep, and its big long tail that it used to try to crush him. So instead of running away again, Ben ran at the shape he could barely see, squirming in the darkness, and he jammed the knife right into that other yellow eye.
The lights of the city looked smokey and dimmer than usual when Ben finally stumbled his way through the tree line. He slumped against a trunk and decided he could… sit here for a minute. That was fine. He had his knife, and the city was right there, and he could kind of see Mr. Horace, even though he was all blurry like the lights. Ben was just gonna sit and catch his breath. Only Mr. Horace must have seen him, too, because as soon as Ben closed his eyes he heard “Ben, lad?” and he had to open them again.Mr. Horace was coming over to him very quickly, with his big bushy eyebrows pulled down low over his gray eyes. Ben blinked up at him. “Cor,” Mr. Horace said, and bent down onto his knee so he was closer to Ben’s height. His hands found Ben’s face and very gently touched him. “What the hell happened, boy? C’mon, eyes on me, now. Can you tell me what happened?”“... A snake tried to eat me,” Ben said. “I stabbed it.” He picked up his hand to show Mr. Horace the knife all covered in blood, and Mr. Horace looked at him kind of funny.“... Aye, I can see that,” he said. “Snake? The big one with the” he raised his hands to his face and kind of wiggled them in front of his eyes.Ben nodded.“... Cor,” Mr. Horace said again. Then he took off his scarf and started wiping at Ben’s face and hands. He tried to take the knife away, and Ben tried to let him, but his fingers were all stiff and wooden and wouldn’t let go. Mr. Horace sighed and carefully pried his fingers up one by one. “C’mon, lad, you’re all hale. It’s alright, I won’t hurt ya. Let go now.”When the knife was on the ground, Mr. Horace finished helping Ben clean up -- as much as he could, anyway. Ben was still sticky and bloody, but Mr. Horace gave Ben his scarf to pinch over his nose, so the bleeding would stop, and when it was done he wrapped up Ben’s knee with the same scarf and helped pull him to his feet. Ben swayed.“... Right,” He said, quietly. “Let's get you out of the cold now. Come on.” Mr. Horace took Ben’s sticky hand and led him into the casino.It was the first time he’d ever seen inside. The building was smokey and smelled weird, and there were people at tables all around the room playing games. Mr. Horace’s brother was at one of the tables. Ben recognized him by his big nose.
He didn’t notice Mr. Horace walk by with Ben. Some of the people did, but most of them seemed kind… confused. They were loud and dizzy and drinking out of bottles. Ben had read about characters getting drunk before, but he’d never seen it in real life.
Mr. Horace led him to the back of the building and then past a door with PISSER painted on it. Inside the door was a dirty bathroom with lots of sinks and toilets in neat boxes with curtains on them.
“Up you get,” Mr. Horace said, and picked Ben up under the arms to sit him on the counter next to one of the sinks. He undid his scarf and rinsed the blood off of it before using it to finish scrubbing Ben’s hands and face.By then his knee had stopped bleeding too, and Ben was feeling better. The world didn’t look so dizzy and far away anymore, so he took the scarf out of Mr. Horace’s hands and tried to get some of the blood out of his hair.When Ben was as clean as he would get, Mr. Horace helped him off the counter, and they left the bathroom behind.“Um,” Ben said, as they were walking down the hallway back to the casino. “I came out tonight to ask you about the job? I’m sorry for the trouble, I just --”“No trouble at all, lad,” Mr. Horace reassured him. “The bloke I mentioned agreed to give you a shot. I told him it’d be a bit ‘til you could show, as I hadn’t figured you’d be back so soon, but if you’ve a want we can go and see him tonight.”Ben nodded so hard he thought his head might fall off. Laughing, Mr. Horace put a hand on his shoulder and steered Ben out of the building. He paused to glance at his brother, but then he made an angry face and shook his head, and just kept walking. Ben didn’t know what that was about, and he didn’t want to ask.Mr. Horace led Ben through the city, farther than he’d ever gone on his own. So far they couldn’t see the trees anymore, or the casino, or the big tower that Ben sometimes saw poking out over some of the buildings. It was a long and winding walk, and Ben felt himself get more and more nervous as they went. It felt like they might walk forever and never get to where they needed to go, but then Mr. Horace was putting a hand on Ben’s shoulder and turning him off the street and toward a building.The place they were going was a big log cabin, with a deer head mounted over the door. Inside was lit up with a bunch of lamps all over the place, and people were sitting around and drinking and talking. It looked kind of like the casino, only a lot nicer and cleaner and it didn’t stink so bad. There were dead things all over the walls, and Ben wasn’t sure if he thought it was cool or creepy.He thought about the snake, and wondered if it was dead, and if he should feel bad about that. It tried to eat him first, so maybe it was okay? But his mom and dad always said good guys weren’t supposed to hurt other people.Before he could get too upset about that line of thought, Mr. Horace was leading him up to the counter and pulling out a chair for him. “Wait here, chid,” he said, quietly like he didn’t want other people to hear. “And mind yourself, I’ll be back.” Then he walked off and left Ben alone.The man behind the counter frowned at him a little. Ben tried to smile nicely. “Hello,” He said, as politely as he could.
That must have been the right thing to do, because the man raised an eyebrow at him and went back to wiping down the counter.Ben twiddled his thumbs. Most of the dead things around the room were prey animals. Some deer, but mostly smaller things. Squirrels and rabbits and even chipmunks. There were a few birds, but not many. But there were bears, too, and wolves, and a lion. Ben had never seen any taxidermy before, but he’d read about it. It was really freaky in real life, but the longer he looked at it, the more Ben thought it was kind of cool. Hunters killed things all the time, to eat and to make clothes. It wasn’t bad when they did it.… Maybe it was different when the animal could talk, though.Ben stopped looking at the dead things on the walls, and went back to staring at his hands.A minute later, Mr. Horace came back. He was walking with a man even shorter than him, with an even rounder head, although his nose was much smaller and his eyebrows were thin and neat. The man had long black hair and thick sideburns that wrapped around his chin, but he didn’t have a beard or mustache. Ben thought it looked kind of funny.“Here he is,” Mr. Horace said, ushering Ben forward. Ben hopped off his barstool and self-consciously smoothed down his hair. He was very aware that his shirt still had blood all over it. “He’ll do you right, like I said.”The man eyed Ben critically. Ben stuck out his hand a little too fast. “Hello, sir.”Like with the man behind the bar, that must have been the right thing to do. The man with the sideburns reached out and shook Ben’s hand. Ben made sure to keep eye contact and to squeeze tight. His dad taught him a man should have a good, firm handshake.“Good evening, Ben,” The man said. Ben wanted to ask how the man knew his name, but that would have been silly. Obviously Mr. Horace told him. “You’re earlier than I expected you to be.”Ben swallowed. He glanced at Mr. Horace over the man’s shoulder, and Mr. Horace nodded at him encouragingly. “Yes, sir,” Ben said. “I didn’t want to wait too long in case you picked someone else. I thought it would be good to talk to you as soon as possible.”“Punctual,” The man said. “Good. You’ll need to be on time for this.”The man turned away and walked to the counter, tapping it twice. Wordlessly, the other man poured something into a glass and handed it to him. Ben glanced at Mr. Horace, then followed him. “On time, sir?”“Of course,” The man said. “We hold ourselves to rigorous standards here, I expect you to carry out deliveries in a timely fashion.”
Ben’s voice was very quiet when he said, “Deliveries?”
When the man turned to look at him sharply, Ben realised what he’d said, and rushed to explain. “I just -- I’ve never been very far from my house before. This is the farthest I’m ever gone, so I might get lost at first, but --”“If you can’t do it,” The man said, angry now. “Then don’t waste my time. Horace, what were you --”“I can do it!” Ben said over him. “I’m a fast learner, I can figure it out. I can do it.”The man turned to give Ben another sharp look. Ben met his eyes and didn’t look away. The panic of possibly messing this up -- of having come so far only to be turned away -- was eating at him, but Ben tried his hardest not to let it show. He needed to be confident, to convince the man that he was right for the job. He fisted his shaking hands in his shirt to keep them still.Mr. Horace came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “He can do it,” He said. “Gave Kaa a run for his money on his way here tonight, he’ll keep your packages all in order, and he’s smart as a whip. Taught little Carlos to read all in one night.”Neither of those things were really true, but Ben kept his mouth shut. If the man thought good things of him, maybe…“You have one chance,” The man said. “One. As a favor to a friend,” The man shot Mr. Horace a look.Ben nodded so hard he went dizzy. “Thank you,” He said, all in a rush. He was so grateful he could have hugged the man, but he didn’t think that was a good idea. Instead he reached forward and grabbed his hand to shake it again. “Thank you so, so much. I won’t let you down, Mr…” Oh, Ben didn’t know what his name was.But the man seemed to like that Ben was polite. He shook his hand back, and even gave him a tiny little smile. He must not have been too angry that Ben didn’t know him.The man said, “Lefou.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Present Day

The first thing Ben notices is that he’s breathing.The second, that he hurts in a way he doesn’t think he’s ever hurt before. Not worse, really, but in an awful, strung-taut way, like his marrow is exhausted. Wrung dry, worn down. His head is a nebulous ache, throbbing with his frantic heartbeat, sending waves of pain down his neck and to his chest. His lungs feel like something chewed on them, what the fuck, ow .The third thing he notices, slowly, as he tries fitfully to pull his thoughts in order, is that someone is holding him. Dragging him, actually, so it’s no wonder the world feels like it’s movingspinningrushing around him. Someone has their arms braced around his chest and is pulling him up and away, his legs dead weight, feet scratching across the ground. Ben stares down his body at the grooves his heels dig into the dirt, past purple-gloved hands fisted tight over his chest.When he’s put down it’s on hard, cold dirt, on his side, and then there are more hands on him -- his hair, his face, patting down his body. Over the ringing in his ears, he can hear people screaming. Familiar voices, familiar hands.The yellow-black sky above him blurs and melts together like Mal’s watered-down paints when he tries to look around, but his head is slowly clearing as his aching lungs fill with air. Familiar faces above him, worried frowns and wide, frightened eyes.
“What…?” He croaks, but he can barely hear his own voice over his thundering heartbeat.“I didn’t know!” Someone is saying, pleading. A male voice, high and desperate. Afraid. “I swear I didn’t -- hrrk !”Ben lets his heavy head flop to the side.The gravediggers are already four crumpled bodies in the dirt, either dead or unconscious. Blood-stained clothes and limbs bent wrong, twisted out of place. The host is still standing, but barely. He’s backed against the Shallow Grave sign, cradling his wrist to his chest and begging like a coward.
“I don’t know how it happened, please, I wasn’t in on it--!”Mal isn’t listening. Neither are Jay, Hadie, or Claudine, who stand ranks around her, snarling-rabid and looking almost crazed with fury.Mal moves flashing-fast, knife’s edge catching in the neon light.The game host collapses to the ground, gurgling. Blood stains the dirt black.Ben breathes. You really don’t appreciate air enough until you don’t have it anymore, but damn is he grateful for it now. Air is fantastic. Mal must agree, because she’s breathing really hard, too. Good air, best friend.There’s flecks of the Game Host’s blood on Mal’s chin when her face swims into view in front of Ben’s. He gives her a smile, even though it probably looks strained and awful. He croaks “Hey, boss.”Her brows pull into a familiar frown. “Can you walk?” Her voice sounds really soft through the weird filter of oxygen deprivation. His heart trips up, which is really the last thing it should be doing when he’s trying to get it to slow down. He thinks, fondly, that one of these days she’s gonna kill him for good.Instead of answering her with words (because he’s too busy breathing) Ben wedges an elbow under himself, and manages to awkwardly leverage his upper body partially off the ground before a set of strong hands close around him. He barely has time to squawk in surprise before Jay is hauling him to his feet. Ben sways, slumps, and is caught by Carlos’s shoulder. He drops his head into bleached-white curls and waits for the world to stop spinning.“Thanks.”Jay thumps him gently on the back, careful to avoid his earlier injuries. Carlos hums in reply.Ben only takes as long as he needs to before standing upright again. When he opens his eyes, he isn’t surprised to see his crew in formation around him. Their better fighters -- Gizelle, Miles and Jace -- have all pulled weapons and set up a perimeter while Mal and the others were dealing with the immediate threat. With the gravediggers and host taken care of, Hadie and Claudine have joined the circle. Their usual non-combatants -- Eddie, Harold, Yzla, Carlos and Evie, little Ginny Gothel -- are hovering between Ben and the outer ring, ready to either defend or support wherever needed.
It’s their usual setup -- Mal takes care of the immediate problem, usually with the help of Jay and whoever else is best equipped to deal with it. Everyone else gets in formation, with the most vulnerable in the center where they’re safest.Ben isn’t used to being in the middle. Honestly… okay, he can admit, it chafes. He’s touched as always by the loyalty he’s found in this gang where he never expected it, but damn if his pride isn’t sulking right now.It takes more willpower than he’d ever admit to keep himself steady when he turns and takes a step toward the road. He can feel Mal’s eyes burning into him. Ben glances over his shoulder at her and nods.Mal nods back as she brushed past him, taking point. Their formation shifts, closing in tighter and sharpening into their marching line. Ben has gotten used to taking up an outer ring, glaring and grinning at anyone who might come too close to his friends. Being on the inside feels claustrophobic.
Two steps in, he stumbles. It’s barely a thing, hardly even noticeable. He keeps his balance and his next step is much steadier. When one of Evie’s hands curl around his bicep and Harold’s curls around the other, Ben considers resisting and insisting he’s fine.Mal glances over her shoulder at him.Ben shuffles obediently along, teeth digging into his tongue.
The walk to the Dragon’s Den is a quiet one. Nobody is giving warnings tonight, and when two drunk idiots stumble too close, Gizelle drives one away with her fist to his jaw. Edward’s cane shoots out between her body and Jay’s, aiming for the second, and comes away with blood on the bladed end.
People scatter out of their way, after that.Mal keeps spinning slowly on her heel, taking stock every few minutes, checking everyone over. Whenever her eyes land on Ben he tries his best to seem composed.(Whenever her eyes move away again, Ben lets himself wince. It hurts like hell.)Their headquarters swims into view through the usual evening fog like a lighthouse calling weary sailors home. Ben feels his feet kick up, eager to be inside and safe where he can lie down. He waits exactly as long as it takes for the others to check that they weren’t followed and for Mal to chuck a rock at the sign that triggers the locking mechanism on the door before making his awkward, lurching way up the stairs. He has to duck under the still-rising bars, but he gets inside, which is the important part.
The lumpy, slightly singed couch by the entrance is the most comfortable thing Ben has ever sat on. He groans his way into the cushions, ignoring his back’s insistant throbbing in favor of sitting still and savoring the ability to take slow, deep breaths. Footsteps move around him, the metal bars rattle as the door locks. People toss backpacks and boots into various corners.
Someone moves in front of him. Ben opens his eyes.He finds Mal staring back at him with a face carved out of marble, pale and lovely and impossible to read. This time when he smiles at her, it feels a little less like something cut into his mouth. “Sorry,” He offers, hushed. “I should have double checked the casket before climbing in. That was stupid of me.”Mal’s face twists with an expression he doesn’t have time to place, there-and-gone by the time he even notices it. Instead her face settles into a familiar glare. Oof, he’s in big trouble this time. Her gorgeous eyes burn with dragon fire.(It’s almost worth her being mad at him, to see them glow. Almost.)Instead of the oncoming scolding from Mal that Ben is bracing for, it’s Eddie that replies to him, his cane tapping idly on the floor. “The coffin was well made,” He sniffs, examining something in his hands. When Ben peers closer he realises it’s a piece of the casket’s thin, inner wooden lining that he’d shredded trying to get to the metal. “This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment attack on a random victim; they had to make a metal coffin lightweight enough the diggers wouldn’t immediately notice the difference, then cover it with wood and wait for an opportunity to swap them out. It’s pretty clear this was a trap laid specifically for you.”“... Not being omniscient isn’t a failure, Ben,” Ginny murmurs from where she’s curled up in the armchair across the room.Instead of answering either of them, Ben turns his eyes to his hands. His missing fingernail is ugly and swollen, practically asking for an infection. His hand looks naked without --“Hey,” He says, sitting up straight despite the ache in his back. “Did someone grab my--”Carlos drops Ben’s claws into his lap. Ben slumps back into the couch. “Thanks, Mutt.”“Of course.”A hand lands feather-soft on Ben’s shoulder, gently pulling him upright. Evie’s perfume wafts over him like a whole bouquet of deadly nightshade, poison-sweet and alluring.Ben jerks away from her as quickly as he can. “I really am fine. I mean, I can do it myself, you don’t have to --”“Benjamin Florian,” Evie snaps. “Sit still .”Reluctantly, Ben returns to his seat. “Yes, ma’am.”Mal huffs and rolls her eyes at them, but she looks less angry than she did before. Ben counts it as a win.Jay and Harold need to help him squirm out of his shirt, wincing and growling the whole way. While his arms are tangled over his head, Carlos undoes his boots, and Miles’s fingers start tugging at his belt before Ben swats him away with a scowl. “My legs are fine.”Everyone looks at Mal, who looks at Ben. One thin purple eyebrow arches judgmentally.Ben takes off his fucking pants.He’s barely sat back down before something slimy and cold brushes his shoulders. Evie tuts at him gently when he flinches away from her chilly fingers and the vexatious medicinal bullshit smeared on them. With a huff, Ben forces himself to hold still for her while she slathers all his recent mutilations in ointment. The pain will fade as the drugs kick in, but for now it hurts like his back is being torn open all over again.
He doesn’t whine, but enough pain must show on his face for the others to worry, because Carlos’s fingers wind up in his hair, Jay’s hand is on his knee, and Mal keeps him pinned to the couch with her gaze. Evie makes soft shushing noises as she patches him up, occasionally interrupting herself to call an order to Harold or Yzla or Ginny, having them fetch and carry water, towels, bandages, more medicine. Ben is pretty sure this is overkill for him -- it’s painful, sure, but as long as nothing gets infected he’ll be fine -- but he doesn’t want to keep arguing. By the time Evie is satisfied with his care she’s treated and bandaged most of his body and it’s all slowly going numb.She stands back, wiping her hands daintily on a rag. Ben catches her thigh as she moves away, tilting his face up to nuzzle under her chin. “Thank you, princess,” He breathes against her skin. With a sigh, Evie pets through his hair, which is pretty much the only uninjured part of him right now.“Always. Try not to worry us like that again.”“I’m sorry.”“I know.”As Evie detangles herself from him, Mal steps forward and wordlessly wraps an arm around his bicep. “C’mon, bed time.”He lets her pull him off the couch, but digs his heels in once he’s standing. “Mal, I really am fine. You don’t need to put this much effort out, I swear I’m --”“You are going,” Mal cuts over him, cold and unrelenting. “To bed. Now.”“... Yes, ma’am.”The Dragon’s Den isn’t big enough for everyone to have a room of their own. Instead the largest room has been filled with mattresses and cushions taking up nearly the whole floor, and covered with as many blankets and pillows as they can find. It’s big enough for everyone, plus occasionally visitors in the form of Reza, Jade, Dizzy, or sometimes Celia to fit. It’s rare for the whole gang to sleep there at the same time, however. Usually the only time it happens is in the winter, when huddling together for warmth is their only guarantee for survival.It’s nice, a place just for them and their closest allies. Ben is safe at home, but he still sleeps here often enough. His house might not be dangerous, but his parents flinching and wincing whenever he’s around gets upsetting after a while.Under Mal’s steady glare, Ben carefully lowers himself down into the nest and crawls to his favorite corner, easing himself into the pile of soft, clean things. It takes some shifting around before he finds a position that doesn’t exacerbate his injuries. Once he does, he raises an eyebrow at Mal, feeling kind of childish and bratty, but really. This is all so unnecessary.
Mal meets his grumpy stare with one of her own. “Stay,” She orders. Ben sticks his tongue out at her, since that feels about as mature as this whole ridiculous situation. Mal flips him off in response, vanishing out the door and into the den proper.Lying alone in the dim nest, Ben hears voices; the rest of the gang deciding who’s going where. People group up with their sleeping buddies, confirm tomorrow’s rendezvous time. Footsteps trail away. The rattle of the gate as it’s lifted and lowered.Mal walks into the room, clicking the lights off as she goes. Instead of climbing to her own corner, she sits at the foot of the nest. Ben hears the steady metallic scrape of her knife against a strap.“Mal?” He asks, softly.“Go to sleep,” She orders.With a sigh, Ben closes his eyes.
Consciousness brings pain. Ben groans his way awake, breathing heavily through the awful, tearing ache through every part of him, the raw sting of his back. It takes a second before he remembers what happened the night before, but once he does he forces his eyes open. Anger helps him focus through the urge to curl up and whimper.Those fucking twins. Fucking trash . Those weak, petty, worthless little cowards. Ben always knew they were scum, but trying to take him out with a sabotaged game? That’s low, even for them.His fury and indignation drive him to his feet, intent to get dressed and ready for a showdown. He won’t wait to heal, this needs to be dealt with -- today.He’s gonna put them in the ground for good. To hell with this.He’s barely stumbled his way out of the nest before he remembers that he wasn’t alone last night. Sheepish, Ben turns towards the other presence in the room.Mal is already up and dressed in the clothes she was wearing last night, sitting cross-legged on the floor. She’s looking at Ben with her eyebrows raised, the corner of her lips quirked. Ben feels himself flush.“Uh,” He says, before realizing he’s in just his underwear and getting tripped up again. Not like she hasn’t seen it all before, but they’re alone and it’s different .Trying for casual, Ben pulls his jeans in front of himself. “... Bad morning, boss.”Mal snorts and rolls her eyes at his dumb joke. “Goodmorning, dumbass. How’d you sleep?”“Great.” In the wake of his fading adrenaline spike, Ben is starting to feel his back again. He tries stubbornly to get his pants on, but bending his spine and raising his leg has his whole back feeling like it’s being ripped open again. Ben ends up bracing his hand against the wall, breathing heavy through the awful, bone-deep ache.
He’s so distracted trying to swallow down any stupid noises he wants to make that he doesn’t notice Mal stand up and walk over to him until she’s tugging his jeans out of his hand.“Uh--?”“That was painful to watch,” She says, as tart as she always is. Ben stares stupidly while she bundles his pant leg, trying to figure out when he hit his head, because he has to be hallucinating right now.Mal dropping to her knee shocks him out of his stupor. “I can do it!” He insists, louder than he means to with how flustered he is. “You really don’t have to, it’s fine. I can --”“Hush.”Ben wonders when he got into the habit of just letting her talk over him. It seems to be happening a lot lately. “Mal…”She doesn’t answer him, just takes his ankle in her hand and guides one foot into place, then the other. Ben is left holding onto the wall for support. Her hair brushes his thighs as she bends her head, ticklish-soft.Ben stares up at the ceiling, and doesn’t think about it.He also doesn’t think about the graze off her skin against his legs as she tugs his jeans up to his hips, or how he can smell her -- leather and spraypaint and smoke -- when she’s standing so close to him. He definitely doesn’t think about how easy it would be to just take a single step closer, bend his head, tilt her chin up and --Mal starts to tug his button closed.Ben snatches her wrists away with hands that are damn near shaking. “Okay,” He says, sharp and sudden. “I promise that I definitely, really, absolutely can do that part by myself.”Mal eyes him blandly for a second before he realises he’s still holding her hands. Sheepishly, he lets her go and finishes getting his jeans in order. Mal hands him his shirt so he doesn’t have to bend to get it. He winces his way into it and pads out of the nest room after her.While Ben is inching himself down onto the couch, Mal vanishes into the pantry, coming back a moment later with a slightly-crushed can of… chicken? Tuna? And a bottle with Evie’s icon on it.
Ben is all too happy to reach for the painkillers, which he chugs without fanfare. Ugh, the taste is vile, but Evie’s drugs are even better than Yzla’s. They also come with less bizarre and unpredictable side-effects, which is a big plus.While he gulps down the medicine, Mal pries open the can and finds a clean fork for him to use. Ben thanks her warmly and takes the food when she holds it out. “You really don’t need to do all this,” He tries again, although he knows by now it’s a waste of time.Predictably, Mal waves him off. “Yes, handing you a can of tuna was so much effort. You’re indebted to me for the rest of your life.”“Isn’t that usually how fey work?”She doesn’t answer in words, but the dry tilt to her lips has a whole flock of moths fluttering around in Ben’s stomach. He always feels so accomplished when he manages to amuse her.Things fall quiet after that. Mal takes out her paints and starts to spray a mural onto a bare wall, covering up rusted metal sheets with color and life. Ben picks through his can of what he’s still not sure is tuna, listening to the sound of Mal moving around, the hush of the aerosol leaving her paint cans. Color bleeds across her makeshift canvas, but Ben knows better than to try to guess what it might be before she’s done. Instead he tosses his now-empty food can (... Deviled ham? Maybe?) into the trash, and spends a minute digging for the William Blake book he stashed at the Den a few months back.
The heavy tome is one of the books his parents managed to salvage from the initial destruction of the castle library. Although most were destroyed, the sheer amount of books they had at the time made it difficult to ruin all of them, which Ben has always been grateful for. It would be hard to have a fondness for reading if he’d never been exposed to any books growing up.Ben skims over a few of his old favorites -- The Poison Tree , The Fairy , and Sleep! Sleep! Beauty Bright , which Ben’s dad used to recite for him when he would have nightmares as a child -- before flipping to a random page he hasn’t read yet.When he was little he used to read to Carlos whenever he slept over, and it’s a habit he’s never quite kicked. He does so now, murmuring quietly to himself as he reads The Clod and The Pebble .
“Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a heaven in hell’s despair...”
Mal trails into the room as soon as he starts reading, digging around for something -- more paints, probably. Ben noticed a while ago how careful she always is not to distract him; she never makes any sound when he’s reading, and never tells him to be quiet. He tried to thank her once, but she deflected, so he’s learned not to bring it up. Still, it means something to him, how much she indulges his weird quirks and habits. When he’s feeling especially heartsick, he even can even sometimes convince himself that she enjoys listening to him read.The Den stays comfortably quiet for a while after that, Ben reading bits and pieces of various poems. He comes back to The Clod and The Pebble more than once, deciding he likes it enough to try to memorize it. Mal moves in and out of the room on silent feet, trailing past him every few minutes to grab brushes or a snack or occasionally just to sit and fiddle with her knives like she sometimes does. Heat lays over the room like a blanket, but Ben finds he doesn’t mind it as much as he did yesterday.
Soon enough the clank and rattle of the gate being lifted breaks his concentration, so Ben tucks his book away. Jay is the first to arrive, carrying a bag of stolen goods which he empties onto the table and begins to sort through. Ben joins him, Mal returns to the other room to finish her mural, and the rest of the gang slowly trickles in.Evie is the last to arrive today, looking even more carefully primped and styled than usual, which is either good or very, very bad. Ben nearly jumps into crisis mode before she catches his eye and smiles reassuringly. She’s okay, then. Ben lets his shoulders slump, and then immediately goes tense again when Evie insists on changing his bandages and slathering him with more awful, stinging ointment.Everyone spends the next short while more or less just mulling around, comfortably taking up their shared space until Mal taps her fists on the table, drawing everyone to order.Ben is the first to join her, settling at her side as she rolls out their map of the isle. Markers and dividers are quickly laid in place, graphing the ever-shifting power balance and territory lines.
Mal says “Edward,” and their spymaster steps smoothly forward, plucking a piece shaped like a skull out of their trinket box.
“The twins were seen entering the bazaar about twenty minutes ago,” He says, placing the death marker over where they know the twins keep their hideout. “The’ve spent those twenty minutes bullying vendors and shop owners for various goods. If they follow their usual pattern of behavior, we have about an hour and a half before they return to their hideout to stash their loot.”“And if we get there first,” Gizelle says, low and sharp. “We can set up a trap and lie in wait for them.”Wordlessly, Ben reaches over and taps his hand against Gizelle’s shoulder. She knocks her fist against his chest in silent reply.
“Fine, then.” Mal plucks a handful of small, colored stones from the trinket box and begins to lay them out around the skull marker. “We hit them from all sides all at once. The Gaston twins are dumber than rocks, but they have the brawn to make up for it. They’ll be well armed and well supplied.”Another sheet of paper is drawn from the table drawer -- this one a rough sketch of the building, done by Mal with the details given to her from the gang’s last recon mission.A full-scale war with the twins has been inevitable since Ben joined Mal’s crew. Last night was just the proverbial back-breaking straw.“We’ve all heard the saying about knives at a gun fight. Our best bet is to take them by surprise. Surround the building, break in silently, and get the drop on them. Jace, Evie, I want you two in the trees with your knives. If the twins try to break through the top floor windows, take them down. Jay, you’re with me. We’ll be the first in, and scope the area. Miles, Gizelle, Hadie, you three follow on our signal. Everyone else, stay out of sight and out of the firing line unless something goes wrong.”Knocking his fist lightly against the table, Ben clears his throat.Mal doesn’t even look at him. “No.”“Mal--”“You’re in no condition for a fight.”“Against the twins?” He argues, turning to face her fully. “All of us against them?”“They have guns.” Mal enunciates very slowly, like Ben is an idiot.He’s not hearing it, though. “Awesome, we can raid their stockpile after we’re done. I am not sitting this out.”“Ben... “ Carlos starts, but Ben cuts over him with a wave of his hand.“Gaston won’t let this slide. We’re going to war. If anybody deserves the right to make that declaration, it’s me.”Mal purses her lips at him. Ben meets her gaze with his own. He can feel his gang shifting uneasily around him, but he isn’t letting a couple severe injuries keep him out of this.He’s never actually butted heads with Mal before. True, they don’t always see eye-to-eye, but Ben trusts her leadership, and on the few very rare occasions that he felt the need to challenge her on something, Mal was willing to listen and see his reasoning. He’s just starting to wonder if this will be their first real fight since he’s become her third when she breaks their staring contest with a roll of her eyes.
“Fine. You get shot, you crawl back here by yourself.”Grinning, Ben fires off a crisp salute. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”The middle finger he gets in response only makes him smile wider.

Ben knows a decent amount about Gaston’s territory. God knows he wasted enough of his childhood running errands for the prick, he has almost all the buildings and pathways memorized. Some of the newer additions -- like the cabin the twins built themselves -- are a little less familiar to him, but in general, Ben knows the layout of the woods and that section of shoreline as well as any of the people who live there.The trick isn’t getting to the cabin. The trick is getting to the cabin undetected.From the Dragon’s Den, the gang scatters in all directions, splitting up into small groups and doubling back through the winding streets and pathways of the Isle. If it was just Ben and a couple others, they could use the sewers, but the underground is Orphan territory, and no gang or group on the isle would agree to letting Mal’s full forces storm through their terf. Instead, they’ll have to make sure no one notices them all approaching the woods. Gaston doesn’t have any formal spies, but he pays well for important gossip. Someone would have a warning to him before the gang even reached his borders.In their small, broken groups of two and three, the gang scurries along their various scenic routes, gradually slipping down the rocky cliffside that lines most of the Isle’s eastern coastline and regrouping on the craggy beach. Once everyone is accounted for, the Unseelie scale those cliffs and vanish into the treeline, as quiet and dangerous as the Fey they were named for.Between the ocean shore and the dense forests, this part of the isle actually smells like something other than human filth and blood. Ben takes the chance to savor the air as the gang moves silently amongst the trees. His lungs fill and empty, his blood happily goes about it’s business of pumping oxygen through his body. Breathing really does go under appreciated until it isn’t an option anymore.Of course, this is still the isle, so there’s something vaguely chemical-acidic in the air as well. It’s a familiar stink, but Ben can’t quite place it. He sees Evie wrinkle her delicate nose out of the corner of his eye, and waves a hand at her to show he noticed it too.
Of all his gang members, only Evie really seems to get Ben’s issue with the uncleanliness the Isle is steeped in. Everyone else just thinks he’s a germaphobe.The trees gradually begin to thin, and the slightly shoddy-looking log cabin comes into view. The chemical stink gets sharper.With a gesture, Mal sends them all dashing through the woods, falling into their places around the perimeter. Ben makes himself small and still, curled up at the trunk of a tree and hidden in thick shade.He waits. From here he can see the twins moving around inside their cabin. Their voices lift and lower, caught in some argument but too muffled to make out more than general tone. Mal and Jay move across the clearing like flashes of light, duck low under the windows, and circle slowly around.Ben savors every breath of chemical-acrid air. His fingers drum a steady tempo against the bark of the tree he’s hiding under. The claws he’s wearing today are a new model Carlos and Evie recently made for him, the sharp points retractable so he can still use his hands safely for other things. This will be the first time he’s used them in a real fight, but he can’t think of a better way to christen them.Light shines from the window and streaks across the ground. Ben sprints for the cabin on silent feet. The closer he gets, the stronger the chemical stink becomes. Figures the twins wouldn’t even keep their fucking base in order.The cabin door sits wide open, Jay crouched nearby. The tripwire the twins used as a rudimentary security system lies cut on the floor. Inside, Mal is standing by the window. She counts heads, then lowers her knife, letting the weak sunlight reflection fall dead.Her hands flicker. Jay takes point, Mal at his left. Ben slips directly behind both of them and feels Miles, Gizelle and Hadie make up their tail. As one, the group pads up the stairs.Voices become clearer the closer they get. Ben strains his ears, keeps his own breathing calm and steady through his mouth (it stinks in here) and tracks any possible sign that the twins have noticed the oncoming assault.
“Whatever the fuck you spilled --”“Wasn’t me!”“-- fucking soaked my bed --”“You’re the one who --”“All my fucking clothes --”“All over the couch, the floor. Our food ?!”“What even is this shit?”“You tell me, jackass! You were supposed to --”The door at the top of the stairs is open. Ben is moving the second they reach the landing.
All told, the fight is anticlimactic. Gaston Jr and Gaston the third are formidable in an actual fight, but Ben and the others hit too fast to let them retaliate. Jay
gets to Three before Ben does, stabbing a knife through his hands and pinning him to the wall. Miles and Hadie are on him in an instant, keeping him trapped in place. Ben turns his attention on Junior just as Mal is diving for him. He skids up behind him, drops to his knees, curls forward, feels the back of Junior’s legs crash against him. Gaston tumbles ass over tea kettle and slams into the ground, his head cracking off the floor. Gizelle digs her knee into her brother’s chest and her knife into his throat, and then that’s it. It’s done.Mal surveys the two subdued twins with bland disinterest. “Morning.”“Psycho cunt, who the fuck do --”Ben punches Junior in the mouth really, really hard. The metal knuckle pieces on his claws crack unforgivingly against his teeth. Mal raises an eyebrow, unimpressed.“... You fucked up,” She explains, very quietly. “If you’re gonna go after my gang, you should go after all of us. But then, you both lack the intelligence to launch a full assault, right?”Three spits, straining against the hold on him. “The fuck are you talking ab--”“You are going to die.” Mal keeps her voice very calm, almost frighteningly so. Ben glances at Gizelle, suddenly anxious to see her face, and finds only cold detachment. Good. “For good, this time. We are going to destroy your bodies until even the barrier can’t bring you back, and when your father tries to come after us, we’re going to do the same thing to him. You’ll be stuffed and mounted over the Beast’s fireplace.”Ben bares his fangs and snarls right in Junior’s face. He grimaces with his bloody mouth in response.Mal says “Begin.”With a flick, Ben has his claws out and is reaching for Junior’s left eye. Twins should match, after all.He starts at the jaw, dragging just one finger up his cheek. Skin splits like wet paper under his metal claw, tearing all the way down to bone. Again, Ben glances at Gizelle, but she doesn’t flinch or look away. It’s something he admires about her -- she picked where he loyalties would lie, and hasn’t looked back once.She meets his eyes, calm and steady. She nods. Ben nods back.From across the room he can hear Three screaming from whatever Jay, Hadie and Miles are doing to him. Gizelle pulls the tip of her knife away from her brother’s chest to bring it down on one of his pinned hands, wedging it under his fingernail -- his left pointed finger, the same one Ben ripped off trying to claw out of the casket. And through it all, Mal watches the scene unfold with her cruel, beautiful eyes bright with dragonfire.Ben is tracing one claw around Junior’s left eye, ticklish-soft against his lash line, savoring the open fear on his pathetic face, when Evie and Jace both scream from outside.And then the cabin bursts into flames.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seven Years Ago

Ben’s first job came three days later. He hadn’t run into the snake, Kaa, on either his way home or his way back into the city for his first delivery, so at least there was that. Ben still shook when he walked through the forest, but he kept his knife on him and he made sure to pay closer attention to every vine and log he walked near. He wouldn’t be caught off guard again.

(The relief and excitement of getting a job only lasted until Ben was back at the castle. Once he was safely tucked into his own bed, he had curled into a ball and shook so hard his teeth chattered. He had long bruises all over his body, like Zebra stripes, from being squeezed by the snake. Looking at them made Ben want to cry, or maybe puke.)

When he stepped out of the treeline, Mr. Horace was waiting for him where he usually was. Instead of leading Ben to the Tavern (that’s what Mr. Horace said it was called, The Huntsman’s Tavern) Mr. Horace gave Ben directions, and told him he’d need to find it on his own, since that would be his job now. He looked very surprised when Ben pulled out his notebook and a pen, and said he’d come prepared.

The map they drew was kind of wonky-looking, just blocks for buildings and a line for where Ben was supposed to go, but with Ben doing his very best to remember the houses and shops they’d past before, and with Mr. Horace’s help, it was good enough.

“You still armed, lad?” Mr. Horace asked before he let Ben leave, looking at him with a very grim face and his silver eyes all cold and dark.

Ben nodded firmly. He wouldn’t go through the woods again without being ready to use his knife. He knew better now.

Mr. Horace said “If you need it, for any reason -- you use it. Hear?”

Ben wasn’t really sure what he meant by that, since he didn’t think there would be any snakes in the city. He remembered the men who’d tried to grab him before, but that’s all they were trying to do. He couldn’t figure out who Mr. Horace thought he’d have to use his knife against. He nodded anyway.

Ben got lost twice on his way to the tavern that night. Not all-the-way-turned-around-no-idea-where-he-is-lost, but lost enough to need to backtrack and try again. He used his pen to make marks on his notebook whenever that happened, so he wouldn’t make that mistake again next time.

When he finally walked up to the doors of the Huntsman’s Tavern, he wa expecting to be yelled at for being late, but Mr. LeFou didn’t seem angry at him at all. He just waved Ben over to the bar and kept talking to the man serving drinks -- a different one from last time. Ben was surprised, when he looked at the clock on the wall above the bar, to find that he hadn’t taken as long as he thought he had. Maybe he was just being nervous for no reason, maybe it would be fine!

Mr. LeFou finished talking to the bartender, and told Ben to follow him to the back. The Tavern was big, and the main room was full of people, so they had to weave in and around customers to get to the door Mr. LeFou wanted Ben to wait in front of. Mr. LeFou vanished into the back room for a moment, leaving Ben alone, but he returned almost immediately with the package Ben was supposed to deliver.

Whatever he’d been expecting to be carrying -- letters, maybe -- it wasn’t a cage of live animals, but that’s exactly what Mr. LeFou gave him. A box of fluffy brown and white rabbits, the first Ben had ever seen in real life.

“Bunnies?” Ben asked, taking the box. It was heavy, and the rabbits kept moving around inside, which made it feel kind of wobbly. Ben pulled the straps for the box over his shoulders like a backpack, and it wasn’t as bad as he’d worried it might be. Mostly it felt really weird to have something jiggling against his shoulders.

“For Madame Medusa,” Mr. LeFou explained, even though that wasn’t really an explanation at all. “She’ll be personally inspecting the goods, so don’t get any bright ideas or sticky fingers.”

“I won’t.” Ben wasn’t even sure what he’d get sticky fingers over. Why would anyone steal a rabbit?

He pulled out his notebook when Mr. Lefou started to give him directions, and Mr. Lefou seemed as surprised as Mr. Horace had. Then he looked kind of impressed. “Not a bad idea, but we’ll see if it works.”

Once Ben’s map was drawn up, and he had double-checked the box of rabbits were secure on his back, Ben was officially on his first delivery job.

The walk to wherever he was going was much longer than the walk to the Tavern. Mr. Lefou had him take a lot of turns and go through a lot of alleys that Ben wasn’t sure were completely necessary. They took him pretty far away from the city, all the way up to the edge of the woods, and it was hard to see in the dark without the lines of trashcan fires dotting his way. He got lost again, more than once, and it made him frustrated and cranky and kind of scared that he wouldn’t make it in time.

The bunnies against his back hopped around in their cage, probably not very happy about being in there. Ben wondered what they were for. Were they pets?

The building Ben was supposed to go to was only one story, and it sat way out in the middle of a swampy lake on these spindly little stilt legs that made him think of Baba Yaga. The bridge across the swamp was rickety and rotten. Every step he took made Ben feel like he might pitch right into the black water below. He clutched the frayed rope with both hands and tottered his way precariously across to the much more solid platform the house was built on. When he knocked on the door, the sound echoed across the whole lake, and all the bugs chirping in the trees went quiet all at once.

The door opened, and on the other side was a boy! He looked about Ben’s age, with a head of wild red curls and bright, poison-green eyes that kind of reminded Ben of Kaa a little bit. The boy was very skinny, but a little bit taller than Ben, and he had bruises and scrapes all over his hands and face. When he grinned, he was missing a tooth.

“Hiya!” The boy said. Ben tried very hard to look friendly.

“Hi! I’m Ben!”

The boy seemed to think that was funny, because his grin pulled even wider. His skinny shoulders shook. “Hi, Ben. I’m Miles.” He nodded to the box off rabbits on Ben’s back. “Those ours?”

“Oh, um.” Ben tugged on one of the straps, suddenly unsure. “I think so? I’m supposed to deliver them to... “ He double-checked the writing on the tag. “Madame Medusa?”

“She’s inside.”

The boy, Miles, turned and used his thumb to point farther into the house. He didn’t tell Ben to follow him, but he left the door open and peered over his shoulder as he walked away, so Ben hesitantly inched inside.

The house was musty and damp from the wet of the swamp. The carpet was reddish, and squelched under Ben’s feet. The hallway was dim, lit only by a few bare lightbulbs that flickered and hummed, staining everything yellow. There was a weird, kind of gross smell in the air, and Ben was halfway down the hall when something caught his eye. In a pool of dim yellow light, Ben squinted at something on the floor, right where the carpet met the wall, for a long moment before the shapes made sense to him.

Claw marks, through the carpet and the floor underneath.

It occurred to Ben, maybe too late, that if there were snakes in the forest, he should have probably been worried about what lived in the swamp.

The boy, Miles, was still walking though. Ben rushed to keep up. Maybe they were scratch marks, like from moving furniture, or maybe somebody tried to cut up the rug for some reason. Maybe it was an animal, but if it was dangerous it would have eaten the people in the house by now, right?

Ben double-checked his knife, just in case.

“Don’t talk much, do ya?” Miles asked. The hallway wasn’t long. A few feet past the front door, on the wall on the left, was a doorway into a soggy-looking living room, and through that Ben could see part of a kitchen; the edge of a stove, a window. Right across from it was another doorway into a dining room with a very small table and three mis-matched chairs.

“Oh, um,” Ben faltered. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be annoying.”

That made Miles laugh, and Ben was kind of proud of himself that Miles seemed to find him entertaining, even though he wasn’t sure why. “Man, I don’t think I’ve ever worried about being annoying in my entire life. C’mere.”

It was through the living room that Ben was led, and then through the kitchen with its yellow walls. There are more scratches on the floor. “I don’t think you’re annoying.”

“Gimme time.” Miles flashed a grin at Ben over his shoulder. Ben smiled back. He tried to be cool about it, but he thought some of the dumb hopefulness showed through. It was taking a lot of effort from him not to come right out and ask if they could be friends.

In the back of the kitchen there was a door, and through that door was a back porch that floated over the water. It didn’t have railings, but it did have a ramp into the swamp, which Ben found kind of weird. He wouldn’t swim in this water.

There was also a woman on the porch, sitting in a chair and smoking. She had red hair and green eyes like Miles, and his pointy nose and chin, too. The look she gave Ben wasn’t a very nice one until she saw the box of rabbits. Then she showed him a big, sharp smile.

“Oh, you’re early, dear! We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow! Come here, come here, let me see what we have.”

Ben shrugged the rabbits off his shoulders and carried the box over to the woman. She was still smiling at him, and her voice was nice, but… he couldn’t help but feel kind of weird about her. Her eyes freaked him out a little. Still, he put the box on the floor in front of her and held out his hand.

“Hello, Ma’am. Uh. Madam. I’m Ben. I’ll be making your deliveries from now on.”

“Ooh, a little gentleman,” The woman cood. She shook Ben’s hand. Her fingernails dig into his wrist. “I am Madame Medusa, curator of rare and lovely things.”

She stooped to peer into the box, poking not-very-gently at the rabbits inside. Her lips moved silently as she counted them. “Excellent.” She raised her head and her voice. “Boys!”

At first Ben thought she was talking to him and Miles, but then something in the water moved.

In the dark, it could have been a mossy log drifting through the swamp, but it didn’t move like a log. There were two of them, four of them, and they peeked over the surface of the water with beady eyes and long, thin snouts.

Ben remembered his Herpetologist’s Field Guide, and stumbled backward blindly, bumping into the wall just as the alligators breached the water. The two biggest ones were in front, right in front of the ramp. They used their clawed hands to pull themselves out of the water and up onto the porch, and Ben might have screamed if Madame Medusa hadn’t stepped forward right then to lean down and kiss both of the gators right on their bumpy snouts.

They must have been at least twice as long as she was tall -- bigger than an alligator should have been, which was saying something, because alligators get pretty big. Their massive bodies took up almost all the space on the porch, forcing Ben to lean back harder against the wall to avoid any tails or claws or chomping teeth.

“There’s mommy’s big, handsome boys!” Madame Medusa fawned and fussed, lavishing attention on the alligators like someone might for spoiled cats. The two smaller gators had to twist and curl on themselves to squeeze past without getting swatted right off the porch by the massive, happily-swaying tails.

Once they’d scurried past, they ambled over to Miles, who knelt quietly and stroked over both their heads with gentle hands. Ben was too surprised to say anything yet, so he watched instead. The two smaller gators were young, but they were also… skinny. Like Miles, all pointy bones. Their scaly hides looked flaky and dull.

“... The order Crocodillia dates all the way back to the Cretatcious period, and have more biologically in common with birds than they do with other reptiles, because they both directly evolved from dinosaurs. The order includes crocodiles, alligators, caimans, gharial and false gharial. Alligators have wide, round, U-shaped snouts, which gives them a more powerful bite than crocodiles, who’s snouts are skinny, pointy, and V-shaped.”

Miles blinked silently at Ben, still crouched to scritch at the two young alligators rubbing against his legs. Ben felt his face prickle with heat, and rushed to explain. “Um, I really like reptiles. I have a big huge book about them. I’ve never heard of anyone keeping alligators as pets before, that’s really cool.”

“... You’re not freaked out?” Miles asked, cocking his head to one side. His alligators were watching Ben with just as much intent as he was. It was weird that they were paying such close attention to him. The intelligence in their eyes reminded Ben of Kaa. That part freaked him out a little bit.

“No. Um. Can they talk?” Maybe it was a silly question, but Miles didn’t act like it was. He only shook his head and stood up to face Ben for real.

“Nah, gators don’t have vocal chords. They’d need magic to talk. Wanna say Hi?”

Ben assumed that meant he could pet them. Which,

yes

, so cool. He knelt and held his hand out, waiting patiently for the alligators to come and sniff him. Alligators have very good senses, especially compared to other reptiles. Female alligators can hear their young moving around inside their eggs, and their night vision is as about as good as an owl’s.

The first little alligator come over very quickly, and tilted it’s chin up for Ben to scratch. Its -- His? Her? -- rough, bumpy skin felt weird against his fingers. “That ones Narcissus,” Miles said. “He likes attention. Shy guy over here is Bacchaus.” The other little alligator didn’t seem keen to leave Miles’s side any time soon. Well, that was okay, maybe he was nervous around strangers.

“It’s very nice to meet you both,” Ben said, very seriously. “My name is Ben. I’ll be coming around for deliveries sometimes, so hopefully we can get to know each other.”

Narcissus seemed to like that, since he bumped against Ben to demand more scratches, but Bacchaus didn’t look convinced yet. Ben was suddenly very determined to win him over. Maybe if he got along with the alligators, Miles would like him, too, and then they could all be friends.

“Are you finished yet?” Came a sudden snap of a voice. Ben startled and turned around to see Madame Medusa standing by the cage, her arms crossed, tapping her foot impatiently. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Her eyes looked really angry. Ben shied back against the wall, trying to figure out what he’d done wrong.

“Ma’am?” He started to ask, but Miles brushed right past him to go over to the rabbit cage. The two big alligators snapped at his ankles as he walked past, but he didn’t seem scared of them. He ignored them to undo the locks and latches keeping the rabbits inside, then reached in and took one out by the scruff.

Very suddenly, Ben understood why they wanted the rabbits.

… Well. Gators have to eat. It still made him kind of sad though.

Then Miles was tossing the rabbit up in the air, and the big alligators were snapping at it, their massive bodies lunging, jaws cracking so loud Ben’s ears felt like they might pop. Thrashing, the alligators fell off the deck and into the swampy water below, sending frothing waves up over the edge of the wood to add more water stains to the border already there. They fought and beat against each other, there was a ripping sound, and then it was over, and both gators turned back to the porch to wait for the next rabbit.

Miles tossed eight rabbits into the air, one or two at a time, which wasn’t actually very much at all when Ben thought about how big the alligators were. When he was finished there was one rabbit left, which Bacchus and Narcissus waited patiently for. Unlike the two bigger gators, they didn’t snap or bite at each other. They both grabbed the rabbit out of the air at the same time, and pulled it right in half with a snap of their necks. Then they each gobbled up their meal and went back to sitting quietly.

There was blood on their snouts, and it was really gross and kind of freaky. “Cool,” Ben said, because it was that, too.

“Well?” Madame Medusa snapped. She was sitting back in the chair she’d been lounging on, smoking her cigarette with her purple coat pulled around her. “Off with you. I’ll expect your next delivery to be just as punctual.”

Nodding, Ben collected the now-empty cage and strapped it to his back. “Good evening, Madame.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Miles said, which Ben was perfectly happy with. Narcissus and Bacchaus waddled after them, their little claws clacking against the wood floor and scritching over the rotted carpet.

At the door, Miles held out his fist. Ben hesitated, confused, but Miles only grinned and nodded at Ben. He did the same, and when his fist was up in the air Miles bumped their knuckles together in a weird, gentle punch.

“Night, dude.”

“Goodnight, Miles.”

Narcissus padded over for a goodbye scritch, which Ben happily gave. Miles and his alligators waited until Ben had turned and started to leave before they returned to the house. As the door closed, cutting off the light from the hallway, Ben was alone in the dark again.

At least he only got lost once on his way back to the Tavern.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Present Day

Realization happens in three parts. The sound of Evie and Jace shouting from the treeline. The sudden stench of smoke burning over the reek of chemicals. The sight of orange flames licking all the way up the side of the building to dance in front of the window.

For one shaking second, everything is still. The air is thin and empty and

gone

, swallowed up. Ben’s ears are ringing. He can’t breathe.

Ben is on the ground. Above him, sparks float drunkenly in the smoke-choked air. Wood creaks, crackles. Collapses. Pain -- his back, his hands.

Hands. On his chest. Small, warm hands. Purple hair tickling his face.

Gaston the third, above her.

With a gasp, Ben rolls Mal and himself out from under the falling hammer. It smashes against the floor where they’d been lying. Wood buckles and splinters, kindling for the fire.

Movement -- Gizelle and Hadie diving for Three before he can attack again. Jay locking knives with Junior, Miles -- Miles?

Mal twists out from under Ben before he can react, already calling orders. Around them, the cabin groans and bellows like a man begging for his life. The fire eats away at old wood, chewing down to bone, merciless.

Junior breaks from Jay, dives at Mal -- Ben moves, claws up, at the same time she does. Her knife meets his cheek, Ben’s claws his arm. Junior skitters away, eyes flicking between them.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?!” Mal snarls. One of the beams above collapses, shaking the floor. Stinging sparks flurry through the air. The smoke is thick and in his lungs and Ben can’t breathe.

“Out!” Mal shouts as everyone scurries like ants away from the falling timber. The twins end up trapped on the other side, which works out just fucking fine. “Everyone out!”

Hadie’s voice through the smoke and fire. “Stairs are burning!”

Distant, familiar voices down below. Gizellle yells “Window!”

“Where’s Miles?!” Ben can’t see him. Can barely see anything, can barely breathe, where’s --

A hand on his arm, gentle. Miles’s strained voice. “Here. Go.”

half-blind, Ben stumbles for the window, and takes a leap of faith.

Three stories below, where the fire is thickest, hands catch him. They drop him again just as quickly, and Ben rolls more on instinct than anything else, diving out of the way as the next body drops. Clean air fills his chest like ambrosia. Fucking hell, this better not become a trend.

Someone lands hard on the ground beside him. Dark skin, red hair. Hadie hardly looks rumpled, not even breathing hard as she, too, scurries quickly to make room.

“Keep forgetting you’re fucking fireproof,” Jay pants from where he’s crouching nearby, nursing his burned arm.

Hadie bares her teeth at him. “There’s a lot to hate about me.”

Mal and Gizelle fall from the window one after the other, caught safely in the hands of Harold and Jace and Claudine. Yzla shepherds them away from the clump as they land, making room for the next drop, while Evie is already taking stock of injuries. Eddie hovers nearby, unable to do much in this particular scenario but on hand if he ends up being needed, and --

Miles doesn’t jump, and Miles doesn’t jump, and Miles doesn’t jump, and--
“We need to go back in,” Eddie says, strained. There’s still no sign of the twins and the building is collapsing and Miles hasn’t jumped. “We need to go --!” A body, white and red, doesn’t fall out of the window so much as plumet, limp. Hands rush to catch him.
Ben can already see from where he’s standing that Miles is more red than he should be. His shock of ginger hair is copper in the light of the fire, but his shirt is plastered to his body with blood. He groans.

This is… really the worst fucking place for this to happen, isn’t it? In the middle of Gaston’s territory, with a blazing fire right there. No doubt people are already rushing to see what’s up. Ben hovers, half-panicking and forcing himself to breathe through it. He wants to help. He doesn’t know how.

Miles is laid down and rolled over. There’s a hunk of wood embedded in his side, right below his ribs. It’s impossible to tell how deep it is, but every pained breath Miles takes makes a faint gurgling sound, so at the very least it nicked his lung.

“Shit,” He wheezes. He grins a crooked grin full of crooked teeth. Blood drips sluggishly past his cracked lips. “I’ve, hah. Heard of getting f-fucked so hard you can ffffeel --

fuck

, shit -- feel it in your throat, but I’ve never a-actually had someone else’s wood this, uhn. Deep in me before. Hah.” His laugh is ragged and wincing, ending in a bloody cough and a whine. “Aw, hell.”

“Calm down,” Mal tells him, even and cool. “Evie, can we move him?”

“No,” Evie says. She keeps her hands pressed around the shrapnel protruding from Miles’s side, and doesn’t look up. “He’s choking on his own blood, we don’t have the time to patch him up, and moving him right now would be very painful and he’d be dead before we made it back to the den anyway.”

“... Shit.” Jay scrubs a hand over his face. Ben feels a hollow, resigned nausea churning in his gut, cold and dead and miserable. One of them will have to…

Eddie doesn’t say a word. He shuffles closer from where he’d been hovering by Miles’s head and wraps his hands around that pale, skinny throat. He squeezes.

Miles holds his grin until the need for air has him moving instinctively, body trying to shove Eddie off of him. It only exacerbates his wound, makes even more fresh blood gush out onto the grass. Jace, Hadie and Harold hold him down, keep him pinned. Evie looks away. She isn’t the only one.

Finally, Miles goes still. Mal is the one who reaches over and yanks out the chunk of wood. She tosses it off somewhere near the fire. Stands. Says “Go.”

It’s Jay who tosses Miles easily over one shoulder and takes off running, barely slowed by his weight. You don’t need to be careful with a corpse. Ben holds back just long enough to make sure everyone else is up and running before he, too, darts into the forest.

They don’t bother to split up on the way back to the Den. With one dead, half a dozen injured and the rest frazzled, it’ll be better if the whole city just scurries the hell out of their way instead of them slinking slowly home. Of course, that means everybody will connect the burning cabin back to them, but… they were planning an all-out war with Gaston anyway. Distantly, Ben spares a thought to the twins, and wonders if they’ll be burned up to ash, or if there will be enough of them left to regenerate.

The Dragon’s Den, as always, means home. The smell of paint and leather welcomes them into their evil lair; Ben feels lighter just being inside. His exhausted feet carry him as far as the nearest chair before he collapses into it.

The table is cleared off with a wave of Mal’s hand, trinkets and map-making tools clattering to the floor, and Jay lowers Miles onto it, careful with him as if he were still alive. Eddie hovers nearby, blank-faced. “Clean him up,” Mal orders, sounding weary. She turns and vanishes into the nest room.

There’s a flurry of motion as Ginny and Harold and Yzla go about stripping Miles down and fetching things -- stitches and medicine, a new batch of clothes. Evie leaves the room long enough to tie her hair up, ditch her jacket, and wash her hands up to the elbow. Ben watches for a moment. Miles is sponged down, sweat and soot and blood cleared away gently. A needle is set in a pot and left to boil. Evie sticks her fingers into the wound and feels around, testing the depth, checking how bad Miles’s lung is.

By the time Ben finds his feet, Harold is helping to feed a piece of tubing into Miles’s lung, and the blood he’d been slowly suffocating on is dripping down the tube and splattering into a bucket Ginny grabbed. Unmoving, Eddie stands at the foot of the table, watching the scene with cold eyes.

… What a fucking day. Ben’s whole back throbs with his heartbeat when he shoves himself standing, but it’s been doing that since right around the fight at the cabin, so he keeps ignoring it. He leaves his gang to tend to one of their own, and shuffles into the nest room to find Mal.

She’s standing in front of the lone, small window they have on this side of the den, staring out at the empty street beyond. Not that there’s really anything to see, but then, Ben would guess that her mind is wandering somewhere else. Like his dad, sitting and staring and going somewhere far away. Somewhere he can’t follow.

She doesn’t hear him when he calls her name, because he can’t bring himself to speak above a whisper. He reaches out to rest gentle fingers against her elbow. She whirls around to face him, a hand on the knife at her hip. He stands carefully still until she recognizes him and the hostility drains out of her stance. She closes her eyes. Takes a breath. Turns around again.

With her back to him, she says “What are the odds the fire was a coincidence? The twins have a lot of enemies. Somebody else could have gone after them.”

“You almost sound optimistic.” She doesn’t, really. She sounds tired. It makes Ben’s chest ache like he’s fighting for breath all over again.

Her back is stiff and straight, like something nailed in place. Her vertebrae welded together, her shoulders tugged back by steel hooks. Ben raises a hand. Drops it again. Opens and closes his mouth. Hovers, uncertain and unable to help, even though he desperately wishes he could. Mal stares out the window. Useless, Ben waits for her to finish thinking through whatever it is that she’s thinking through.

It takes time. Mal has never been an open book, and she gets even more closed off when things like this happen, and Ben ends up basically just twiddling his fucking thumbs until she finishes picking apart whatever was on her mind.

She says “Come on,” into the silence as she turns and brushes past him. Ben, as always, follows her.

In the other room, Miles’s empty house has been patched up and laid out as comfortably as possible, given the circumstances. The lung wound isn’t what killed him, so the barrier won’t heal it. They’ll have to keep an eye on it for a while.

The rest of the gang are scattered around the room, taking up all the furniture in ones and twos. In the corner, Claudine is standing silently, a hand to her mouth, chewing her fingers bloody.

Mal says “Somebody explain what the fuck just happened.” Jace and Evie step forward.

“There was an arrow,” Evie says. “We didn’t see the shooter.”

Jace drags a hand through his hair, his lips twisted into a snarl. “Somebody was waiting in the fucking woods.”

“They may have only been after the twins, and thought they would get lucky and take us out as well, but given how long the Gastons were in their cabin before the flaming arrow was shot, I’m not sure about that.”

Mal pinches the bridge of her nose. “So that shit we were all smelling…”

“Gasoline,” Claudine says, her voice flat. “I knew I’d smelled it before. I should have

recognized

it.”

Wordlessly, Harold reaches over and pats her shoulder. “Not being omniscient isn’t a failure,” Ben says.

Mal sighs, shakes her head, waves at Jay to move his legs so she can plop down beside him on the couch. They end up pressed together from hip to knee, and Jay drops a hand on Mal’s head and strokes comfortingly through her hair, completely casual. Mal doesn’t exactly lean into it, but she doesn’t brush him off, either.

Ben doesn’t feel any particular way about that. He focuses on the ache in his back instead, uses the pain to ground himself.

It’s still possible they’d all just been caught in the crossfire of someone else’s grudge against the twins, but if they weren’t…

Then someone knew they’d be at the cabin, and laid a trap for them.

Which is ridiculous, right? It’s not like they’d advertised where they were going. Of all the days and all the places they could have had to go after the Gaston twins, nobody could have guessed it would be today at the cabin. Right?

Ben thinks of the night before, the Twins vanishing and reappearing at the Shallow Grave. The metal-lined coffin. His fingers ache.

“Okay,” Mal breaks the silence with a wave of her hand, banishing it like a physical thing. “Here’s how we figure this out. The whole damn cabin was doused in that shit, it’s

still

all over my boots. Who could even afford to get their hands on that much gas?”

Carlos raises a tentative hand. “My mom has a deal with the goblins for any gasoline that comes in, it’s how she still drives her car around. I can figure out who her supplier is, start there.”

Mal nods her approval at him. “It’s a start. Next, that arrow. Nobody saw the shooter, but there might still be clues left behind. Somebody else might have been seen going into the woods, or they might have left footprints or something behind.”

“... You want us to go back into the woods?” Eddie asks, raising an eyebrow at her. He’s moved to perch on the table next to Miles, tapping his cane against his bad knee.

“Yup,” Mal drawls. “The cabin already burned down, if we had been the ones to light the fire then we wouldn’t have any reason to go back. We’ll wait a couple hours to be sure the commotion died down and then sneak in while Gaston is rallying a counter-attack.”

“Speaking of that counter-attack,” Jay says. “Do we have a plan?”

“I’m -- working on that,” Mal huffs. Jay smirks at her, leaning in closer while she avoids his eyes.

“I have full faith in you,” Ben says, maybe a little louder than he needs to. Jay coughs into his elbow, not quite quick enough to hide his grin, but Ben isn’t paying attention to him. Mal has turned to face him. He stands up straighter.

“... You’ll be the first person Gaston goes after,” Mal muses.

Ben doesn’t need to ask her why that matters. “The castle is as secure as anything can get,” Ben says, even while thinking of all the unboarded windows. “Even if someone gets inside, they won’t find my parents.”

Mal accepts that answer with a nod. “Still, let’s push the timetable back. We weren’t as careful coming back here as we usually are.”

“I’ll be surprised if we weren’t seen,” Evie agrees.

“So what, we’re splitting up?” Yzla asks, tugging fitfully on a lock of her hair. “Is that a good idea?”

“Not completely,” Mal reassures her. “But -- I don’t think we should all stay clumped together.”

“Strength in numbers or sitting ducks,” Hadie muses.

Mal nods. “Exactly.”

“So,” Gizelle grunts. “Who’s going where?”

From there, everyone divides into groups -- Eddie and Hadie agree to stay at the Den with Miles, while the Dogtooth Trio inevitably plan on returning to Hell Hall, and they’ll escort Evie home as well. Ginny and Claudine will make use of one of Hadie’s old hideouts from before she joined the gang, while Jay plans on shacking up with the Snakes for the night. After a moment of deliberation, Gizelle says she’ll find Gil, which makes Mal roll her eyes, but she doesn’t argue.

That leaves Mal and Ben.

“... uh. Do --”

“You need someone to walk you home?” Mal asks.

Ben bites down a complicated swell of emotions and tries to make himself look tough. “N-no, I’m fine. I’ll be careful.”

Mal stares at him hard for a long minute, then nods, and doesn’t look at him again for the rest of the night.

The injured are patched up, final plans are made for the next morning, and everyone breaks into their groups. Mal is in the corner talking to Jay about something Ben can’t hear, they’re talking with their heads so close together. Ben lingers, as always, waiting for everyone else to depart before he brings up the rear, but Mal and Jay stay in their murmured conversation even after Evie and Carlos have vanished with Jace and Harold.

Jay reaches up, tugs a lock of Mal’s hair. She wrinkles her nose at him, swats his hand away, but he just laughs, and Mal lets it go with a roll of her eyes. Ben thinks, not for the first time, that they’re absolutely gorgeous together. Part of him wants to just sit here and watch them interact.

Instead, Ben peels his pathetic ass off the wall and slinks away quietly, trying to ignore the complicated tangle in his chest. He pauses to run his fingers through Miles’s wild copper hair and to offer his goodbyes to Eddie and Hadie, but he leaves Mal and Jay alone. Whatever they’re talking about must be important. It would be rude to interrupt them.

Instead of walking through the city proper, Ben makes his way to the nearest Rat Hole -- a manhole cover in one of the side roads a block away from the Den, leftover from Auradon’s initial half-assed attempt to make the Isle livable. There’s nothing useful on this street, so nobody ever comes down here, which makes it the perfect place to hide a tunnel entrance in plain sight.

Ben pries the manhole out of place, drops down onto the ladder below, and tugs the cover back over the hole, leaving him in darkness.

His boots splash faintly when he drops the rest of the way blindly to the concrete. The air smells vaguely musty, but thankfully this isn’t a sewer tunnel. The water rushing by is… not filthy, which is more than can be said for most of the Isle.

He digs his knife out of his boot, slams the butt of it against the metal ladder hard enough to send a clang echoing down the tunnel. Calls “I need safe passage to the Thorn District. I have payment.”

It takes a minute, but eventually the dark is pin pricked by a tiny, flickering light.

Gradually, that light grows brighter, until it’s close enough to chase away the shadows around Ben. The Orphan who answers his call is one he doesn’t know, but to be fair, that isn’t saying much -- there are lots of orphans on the Isle of the Lost, and most of them live underground.

The girl eyes Ben’s knife until he puts it away and pulls off his left glove, holding up his hand to show the scar running across his palm. “I’m with the Unseelie. We’ve never caused any trouble for you.”

“What will you pay?” The girl asks.

Ben digs in his backpack for a moment, comes back out with a flashlight and a handful of batteries he always carries on him just in case he needs to use the tunnels. “I’ve got food and medical supplies, too, if you need it.”

The girl’s frown deepens. She raises her lantern higher, peering at Ben’s face. He stares back as he eyes go wide. “N-no,” She says, suddenly timid where before she’d been suspicious. Well, that’s fair. Anybody can cut their own hand, after all. “This is plenty, you can --”

“Hey,” Ben cuts her off. “I’m not gonna hurt you, alright?”

“Right,” Says the girl, in the tone of someone who very much does not believe him. Distantly, Ben wonders where Jabberjaw and Apex are. Usually one of them is guarding this tunnel.

… Better than nothing. Ben hands over his payment, swings his bag back into place, and follows the strange little sewer rat where she leads. By now he knows the way well enough to tell when she takes him down unnecessary turns and twists, but he doesn’t call her on it. They walk in silence while smooth concrete tunnels give way to rocky, natural caves, and those caves once again fade to manmade paths -- much cruder and smaller than the water lines.
Here, the girl shows him a small, thin crack in the ceiling of the tunnel.

“Thank you,” Ben starts to say, but she’s already busting back down the tunnel. He has half a mind to ask her which rumors she’s heard, that she’s so eager to get away from him.

Probably something sick.

Dismissing it, Ben reaches for familiar hand and footholds in the dim streaks of light shining down from the cracky opening, and drags himself up out of the cave.

He comes up in the woods right by the edge of the Thorn District, in the cramped little rock-filled clearing he’d stumbled into by accident years ago. A stretch, a groan, a moment to shake out the dirt and debris from his hair, then Ben is weaving through the trees in search of the dirt path, and making his way back home.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seven Years Ago

Once Ben got to know a little bit more about where he was going and who he was meeting, working as a delivery boy for the Huntsman’s Tavern was surprisingly easy. Comfortable, even. Mr. Horace was always there when Ben started and ended his night, and he always made sure Ben was okay before he let him walk home. Twice he asked Ben to watch Carlos again, and without Kaa trying to eat them it was easy to sneak in through the front door like Ben always did and scurry up to his room. They would read books together and play games, and after a lot of begging Mr. Horace even agreed to teach them poker someday soon.

He didn’t see Harold or Jace very often, because they were busy doing other things. “They have school,” Carlos said, when Ben asked. “They aren’t allowed to stay out very late. Horace makes them do their homework.”

“You don’t go to school?” Ben had asked. Then, “There’s a school?”

Carlos had nodded to both his questions. “Mom says I can’t go to school.”

Well, Carlos

was

very little. “I wonder if I could go to school,” Ben mused. All those kids… would he make friends? Would one of them know someone who could help his parents?

Carlos didn’t know much about the school though, so the conversation turned to other things.

They didn’t only hang out when Ben was babysitting him, though. The first two deliveries Ben did after Madame Medusa’s rabbits were to carry sealed boxes to a house at the end of a long, winding road and give the package -- live chickens, the first time, and then a box of bones and skin and fur -- to a very tall, very thin man with dark skin, who twirled a cane around in his hand and gave Ben a smile, but didn’t seem very interested in him besides that. The third delivery Ben did was just a box of meat and ice to keep it cool, to a building that smelled like food, and had smoke coming out of it’s three chimneys. Ben got lost coming back from that one, and while he was all twisted around and trying to get back to somewhere he could retrace his steps from, he bumped into Carlos.

He had a bag of things clutched to his chest, and was hurrying very quickly with his head down, weaving down thin alleys and barely looking where he was going. Ben was so surprised to look up and see his little friend that they ended up

literally

bumping into each other, when Ben stepped forward to greet him and Carlos ran right into his chest.

They both ended up getting knocked over, but Ben didn’t have anything in his hands, just the empty box on his back, so he managed to catch himself. Carlos didn’t, he just fell and curled around the bag of things into a tight little ball and shook.

Ben pushed himself up to his feet, wiping his scraped palms against his jeans. He’d had to work really hard to hide all his cuts and bruises from his parents after he fought Kaa, but thankfully scraped up hands would be easy to hide, as long as they weren’t scraped up

too

bad.

Carlos didn’t get up. He didn’t move at all, really. He just stayed curled up around the bag, shaking.

… Oh, no,

Ben reached down to touch his shoulder, worried. “Are you okay?” He asked.

Then Carlos moved, so quick Ben stumbled back again. He rolled up onto his knees, away from Ben, and scooted up against the wall. Then he curled all up and shook again.

Ben blinked at him. “... Carlos?”

That made him stop trying to tie himself all in a knot and actually look at Ben. When he did, his eyes went all big and wide like they sometimes did, and his whole body kind of went all gooey and dripped down the wall like candle wax.

“Are you okay?” Ben asked, again. After a minute, Carlos nodded. He smiled his tiny, shaky smile at Ben, who smiled back a much bigger one. Ben still thought Carlos was kind of weird, but he didn’t really mind at all. Carlos was nice, too, and he was braver than Ben, and they were friends, and that was what mattered.

Carlos started to stand up, and Ben stuck out his hand to help him. Carlos took it, but kept the other hand wrapped around the bag, clutching it tight. “You’re out really late,” Ben said. “I thought you’d be in bed. What are you doing?”

Instead of answering Ben in words, Carlos shyly held out the bag. Ben peered inside, and saw a lump of fur. “What’s that?”

Carlos squished the bag close again. “It’s my mom’s.”

That wasn’t really an answer, but Ben decided it didn’t matter. “Oh,” He said. “Are you going home?”

Carlos nodded. Suddenly so excited he could barely stand still, Ben bounced on his toes. “Can I come to your house?” He asked. His voice was a little too loud for how late it was, but there didn’t seem to be any people around, so Ben didn’t think it was bothering anybody.

… Anybody but Carlos, apparently, who curled away from Ben with wide eyes and shookshookshook his head so hard his curls flew all out around him. “No,” he says, quiet and very fast. “No, no no. You can’t. My mom -- she’d be so mad, you can’t come over, she would --!”
` Ben reached over and put a hand on Carlos’s head, petting him. “Okay,” he said. Carlos’s panic was making him kind of freaked out, too, but he didn’t really understand what was causing it, so he wasn’t sure how to help other than try to calm him down. “That’s fine, I don’t have to come over. It’s okay.”
Breathing hard, Carlos blinked and blinked at him for a minute. Something else Ben was starting to learn about Carlos was that, as quick as he got scared of things, he was just as quick to calm down when he had a little reassurance. Ben asked his dad a couple days ago if they had any books to help him learn about how to talk to people. His dad gave him a couple, but Ben hadn’t had a chance to read them yet.

“... Sorry,” Carlos said, after a few more seconds of Ben quietly petting his hair.

Ben pat him a little harder. “No, it’s okay,” he said. “I won’t ask again. I’m not supposed to have people over either.”

That made Carlos go quiet and still, and kind of peer at Ben. He still kept one hand clutching tight to the bag, but with the other one he reached over and took Ben’s hand in his smaller one. Squeezed his fingers tight. “I won’t get you in trouble,” He swore. He had a very solemn look on his little face.

Kind of confused and kind of touched, Ben squeezed back. Said “thank you.”

Then that whole kind of weird conversation was over, and Ben was still lost, so he asked Carlos if he knew how to get back to the woods and Carlos said he would walk with him. Ben was so excited to have company he bounced on his toes for the first whole minute, babbling about the jobs he’d done since he and Carlos saw each other last, and all the books he wanted to read with Carlos, and --

Somewhere nearby, someone was singing. It was very quiet -- Ben probably only heard it because he was out late at night and he and Carlos were the only people around to make any other noise -- but it was also very pretty. Ben bit his lips as he and Carlos walked, straining his ears to keep listening.

A tower -- not

the

tower -- poked over the tops of the other building, getting closer and closer. Ben was excited to hear the singing get louder, and after a little bit of walking they came upon the road the tower was on, all big and round and made of rough stone. The signing was coming from up in one of the very high windows, where a girl with very pale skin was braiding her long, dark, curly hair.

Ben was waving before he could think better of it, calling “You have a really pretty voice! Hey--”

But the window was empty, and the singing had stopped, and the girl was nowhere to be seen.

“... Huh,” Ben said. Then “Uh oh. I hope I didn’t scare her.”

Carlos huffed a laugh at Ben, shaking his head. Ben stuck out his tongue, and then

Carlos

stuck out

his

tongue, and then Ben wrapped an arm around his neck and messed up his curly hair, which was kind of cheating because Carlos only had one hand, but Carlos got him back by digging his fingers into Ben’s ticklish armpits, and neither of them noticed the pack of kids rushing past until they’d almost been trampled.

It was really only luck that they’d been stumbling off to one side when suddenly the sound of pounding feet filled the air, and a flurry of color burst past where Ben and Carlos were still wrestling, laughing very loud as they went. Startled, Ben let go of Carlos and whipped around to watch them.

There were four of them, two boys and two girls. One of the girls had an odd, lumpy shape on her back, though it was too dark for Ben to tell what it was. The other girl had a head of dark springy slinky-curls, like Carlos’s. One of the boys had pale skin and a long red coat, and the other had tufts of dark hair sticking out from under a beanie, and they were all covered in splatters of brightly-colored paint. Ben was still blinking after them when another set of footsteps thundered down the street, and a man who was absolutely drenched in paint went sprinting past, shouting very dirty swears that would get Ben in a lot of trouble to say. The kids just kept laughing as they turned the corner, disappearing into the night.

By the time the man had caught up to where the kids had been, they were already long gone. He rounded the corner too, still shouting swears and threats and insults. Ben stared in stunned silence, blinking at the empty street where the strange parade had just passed, then he put his hands on his knees and laughed until he was breathless.

“I think I’ve seen that boy before,” Ben said, when he’d stopped laughing. “The one with the hat? I’m usually the only kid out this late, but I saw him walking around once.” Bouncing on his toes again, Ben found himself grinning at the empty street, excitement bubbling up inside him. “Next time I see him, I’m gonna go say hi!”

“No,”

Carlos yelped, suddenly grabbing onto Ben’s arm. His eyes were wide like dinner plates, which is an expression that means they were very, very wide. Ben could see the whites all the way around them. “No, no, please don’t talk to him.”

“Wha--”

“You can’t, Ben. If you see him you need to go the other way, okay? Or hold still and hope he runs past you again.”

“Carlos,” Ben said, frowning. “That’s mean.”

“He’s

mean,” Carlos stressed. He seemed to be getting more upset with Ben arguing with him. “He bullies Jace and Harold and so do Mal and Harry and Uma. They’re not nice.”

Ben thought of the man covered in paint. Technically, that was a mean prank to pull on someone, but… they’d seemed like they were having a lot of fun. “Maybe they just play rough,” Ben murmured. Carlos didn’t seem convinced, but it was late and they both had to get home, so Ben decided to drop it for now. Still, he wondered how Jace and Harold knew those other kids. Maybe they went to school together? Maybe someday Ben could go to school too, and they could all be friends. Ben didn’t mind playing rough.

The girl in the window still hadn’t come back or started singing again, and there were no more paint-stained kids running away from angry grown-ups rushing past them, so Ben and Carlos finished their walk in comfortable silence, ambling along side by side until they got to a familiar part of the city. Ben could see the casino’s yellow lights in the distance.

The usual group of adults was hanging around, some standing by their trash can fires and others moving in and out of buildings. After almost getting very lost, Ben was relieved to be back in an area he knew, even though that meant he and Carlos would have to part ways soon. Still, it had been a nice night! Ben saw more kids out tonight than he ever had before, and he got to see Carlos!

Oh, actually, speaking of. “Hey,” Ben said, turning to face him. “Are you usually out this late?”

Carlos shook his head. “Only when I don’t get all my chores done that day.” He shuffled his feet, then said in a quiet voice “Sorry I knocked you down.”

“It’s okay!” Ben was quick to reassure. “I liked walking with you, you’re good company. Um. I don’t wanna get you in trouble or make you stay out late, but if you have to do chores at night again and I’m on a delivery, do you wanna hang out together?”

The answering smile Carlos gave Ben was small and shy as he nodded. Ben’s smile was much bigger. He reached out to ruffle Carlos’s curly hair.

The night could have ended there, if someone else hadn’t gone running past.

Ben had already said his goodbyes and crossed the street, so he had his back turned when it happened, but he heard the thundering of feet and, thinking it might have been the kids again, turned around quickly, hoping to catch a glimpse.

Instead, he saw Carlos stumble to the ground with a shout as a figure rushed off past him and down into an alley, holding Carlos’s bag.

“No,” Carlos gaspsed, scrambling back to his feet. “No, no, you can’t!”

“What…” Ben started to ask, but then Carlos started running, too.

Ben needed to get the empty box back to Lefou and go home soon, before the sun started to come up. If he didn’t, Lefou might be angry at him, or his parents might wake up to find him gone. Instead of doing that, Ben ran after Carlos.

The thief was older, and had longer legs than either of them. Carlos ran surprisingly fast though, and at first when Ben took off down the alley he thought he wouldn’t catch up and he’d just get himself lost again.

Instead, as he rounded the corner, he saw the vague shape of Carlos’s little self running as fast as his little legs could carry him, and another, bigger shape farther down the street, and Ben put out a burst of speed to catch up.

He knew these streets, technically, kind of. He’d been through them enough times lately to have a general idea of where he was and where they were going. But he didn’t -- couldn’t -- keep track of buildings as they flew past him. He knew the pounding of his feet, and the pounding of his heart. He knew the shape of Carlos just beside him. The shape ahead, turning corner after corner.

Ben chased the thief down a street, through someone’s yard. Tall grass scratched him -- exposed ankles, flashes of hip and belly as his shirt rode up. Over a short fence, another alley, then --

Ben flung himself around a corner and face-first into a trio of trash barrels, stacked precariously high with piles of garbage. They, and Ben, tumbled to the ground with a terrible racket. Ben’s already-skinned palms drug again over the rough concrete.

Carlos skidded up beside Ben, his eyes panicked, his face pale. He was heaving for breath like someone was choking him. He didn’t stop or offer to help Ben up, just made a sad noise and kept running.

Again, Ben pushed himself to his feet.

Even with both of them running as fast and as hard as they could, they might not have caught the thief. Someone older, someone who knew the city better than Ben and even Carlos did, they likely would have only rushed down the wrong alley way and gotten themselves into trouble if they’d kept chasing him.

Instead, as they both rounded the next corner, there was a

thump

and the sound of someone tumbling to the ground, gasping like they’d had the wind knocked out of them.

“Well,” Said a slow, drawling voice. “What have we here?”

Ben and Carlos skidded to a stop at the end of a wide, winding street. On one side of that street sat a big blue house with all the windows covered, and in the middle of the street stood a boy.

He was older than Ben and Carlos by a bit -- maybe even older than the thief, though it was hard to tell in the dark, and with the thief lying face-down on the ground in a pool of shadow, groaning softly. The boy had one booted foot planted on his back, keeping him pinned down. In his hands he held the pile of fur.

The boy gave a soft whistle as he examined it, pulling it fully out of the bag to reveal that the pile was actually a coat, all fluffy black fur and shiny white cloth. Carlos made a noise like he’d gotten punched.

“Excuse me,” Ben called to the boy. “Can we have that back?”

The boy glanced up at Ben and Carlos. His eyes looked brown-ish, and so did his hair, but Ben thought it might be too dark to be sure.

The boy eyed Ben and Carlos silently for a moment, his head tilted to one side. Just when Ben thought maybe he didn’t hear him and was opening his mouth to repeat himself, the boy said “This is yours?”

“Um. It’s his.” Ben gestured to Carlos. “He --” he pointed to the thief, still lying prone on the ground -- “Stole it.”

The boy raised an eyebrow, but Ben didn’t know what that expression meant. “Yes,” he said, dryly. “I assumed as much.”

There was a beat of silence. Carlos, next to Ben, was wringing his hands nervously, and chewing on his lip. Ben waited, shifting on his feet. The boy didn’t say anything else.

“... So, can we have it back?” Ben finally asked. The boy just kept staring at them both. In the dark of the street his eyes were empty pits, swallowing up and over them. Ben, very suddenly, found himself reminded of Kaa.

The thief on the ground made a quiet gurgling sound. The shadow around his head looked kind of… wet.

Without glancing down, the boy picked his foot up and stomped it down hard on the back of the thief’s head with a heavy

crack.

The thief stopped making noise, after that.

“Why?” The boy asked. Ben decided he didn’t like the way the boy talked, all slow and smug. Like he was laughing. “What’s so important about a fur coat? Are you planning to sell it?”

The boy stepped off of the thief, who didn’t move or make any noise. He broke eye contact briefly to glance down at the wet, dark puddle, so that he wouldn’t step in it. Ben took the split second to move closer to Carlos.

He was suddenly grateful Mr. Horace had been so stern about Ben always carrying a knife on him.

When the boy looked up again, Ben reached into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around the handle. The boy glanced at his hand, and his lips twitched oddly. It might have been a smile. Swallowing, Ben said “Please give it back.”

“Why?” The boy asked again. He draped the coat along his arm, still admiring it. “Tell me why you want it so badly.”

“I-it,” Carlos stuttered. Swallowed. Pressed in closer against Ben’s side. “It’s my mom’s.”

The boy hummed thoughtfully. His eyes bored into Carlos like he was mentally picking him apart, pulling him all into bitty pieces to see what was inside. Carlos shrank against Ben, and Ben, shaking, stepped in front of him.

The boy didn’t even glance at him. “What’s your name?” He asked, slow and smug like he already knew the answer. Carlos gave a full-body flinch.

“Hey,” Ben said. “That isn’t --”

“Carlos,” Said Carlos. His voice was very quiet. His hands, fisted in Ben’s jacket, were shaking even harder than Ben was.

The boy’s mouth pulled into something that was almost a smile. Ben thought it looked ugly.

“Carlos,” The boy purred. “De Vil’s boy. You must really want this back, then.”

Ben could feel the heat of Carlos’s shaking body, could feel the press of his face when he buried into Ben’s back, could feel the shaking vibrations of his murmured “Please.”

All in a rush, suddenly Ben wasn’t so scared anymore. Carlos was a tiny little shape curled up behind him, and the boy was grinning with too many teeth, and the thief was still lying face down in a puddle of blood, and Ben was… really angry. About all of that.

The knife handle was smooth and comfortable in his hand when he stepped forward. He brandished it. Said “Leave him alone” with more force than he felt.

To his surprise, the boy stepped back. He held up his hands in surrender, but he was still smiling. “So protective,” He drawled. “You must be one of the Baduns, then.”

Ben didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t care. “Give us back the coat.”

To his frustration, the boy only tilted his head again. Drawled “What’ll you give me for it?”

Ben sputtered. “Wh -- it’s ours! You should give it back!”

“And then it got stolen. Twice.” The boy adjusted his grip on the coat, tossed it higher up onto his shoulder to make the glossy fur catch the meagre light. “Now it’s mine. I’ll let you buy it off me if you’d like.”

Ben made a furious sound and stepped forward again.

Carlos had him by the back of the shirt. “Okay. What do you want?”

This time, when Ben sputtered, it was at Carlos. He only looked back, his eyes wide and calm. Accepting. Miserable.

“I need an extra set of hands,” The boy said.

Carlos sighed. “What’s the job?”

“Tsk. I’ll tell you when you show up to do it.”

“I’ll do it,” Ben said. “I’ll do your stupid job, just give him back his coat.”

Frustratingly enough, that only seemed to make the boy more smug, grinning as he tossed a lock of dark red hair away from his face. Behind him, the thief started gurgling again.

With a cold shock, Ben realized he could actually see the color of the blood. It had gotten lighter on the street. The sun was coming up.

“I’ll do your job,” Ben said again, frantic. “Please give him his coat back, and I’ll come do your job another night.”

“Do you think I’m stupid?” The boy asks.

Ben cut over him. “Please, I need to

leave!”

Carlos looked frantically between the two of them, torn. Then he reached over and gave Ben a push. “Go.”

“No. Not until you get your coat back. Give it back!” Ben stepped forward again, still holding his knife. If the boy didn’t listen, he would… He’d… He’d do something. He’d do something bad.

The boy was looking between the two of them with a confused little frown. He looked at Ben’s knife, and at Ben’s face, and then at Carlos, then at Ben again. He stared really hard, with bright hazel eyes Ben wished he couldn’t see as clearly. Strangely, the look didn’t much remind Ben of Kaa. The boy didn’t look hungry, really, not in the same way as the snake. Ben couldn’t figure out what the look meant though.

“Please” He said again.

The boy blinked. Blinked again. Then he held out the coat.

“You can have it,” He said. “I expect you here in three days, midnight. If you’re not…” His eyes landed on Carlos and stuck there, dark and cold. “I know where to find you, De Vil.”

Carlos made a soft noise. Ben stomped over and grabbed the coat out of the boy’s arms, then turned around and stomped right back to Carlos to push him down the street. “Don’t be late!” Called the boy.

Ben grit his teeth and kept marching.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Present Day

Ben is suffocating. His lungs are full of smoke and dirt, his chest weighed down with it. He has to fight for every breath, and it’s a fight he’s losing. He can taste blood on the back of his tongue. Up, above him, there is burning, and his friends are trapped in it. He tries to claw away the dirt, but it hurts him, settles under his fingernails. Ash and embers melt the skin right off his back. Still, Ben tries, thrashing against the dark closing over him. He’s going to die here, he knows, because the dirt and the smoke are in his lungs and they are heavy and he can’t breathe, and when he dies he’ll stay dead this time, there won’t be anything left of him to revive. But maybe if he can reach the surface, maybe if he gets up there where the burning is, where his friends are, then he can at least get them out safe.
The earth and the dark around him changes shape, grows denser. More bodies are buried, and they are thrashing like he’s thrashing, and Ben chokes on panic and dirt and his own blood. He needs to get out . He needs to get out while there’s still a chance to save everyone. He needs -- what was that? When Ben jolts awake, heart pounding, ears straining for any slightest noise in the blackness, it isn’t because of the nightmare. He can still see after-images of it burned behind his eyes, flashes and movement in the shadows of his bedroom that have him tightening his fingers around the knife under his pillow. He’s half-surprised to find that breathing isn’t a struggle, air comes freely into his aching lungs.The painkillers he took wore off while he was sleeping, and his whole body fucking hurts , but that’s not what woke him either. He knows he heard something.It’s too dark to see if there’s someone in his room with him. The shadows try to tell him there is, but they aren’t trustworthy on the best of nights, and less so when Ben isn’t as clear-headed as he prefers to be. The night is quiet, only the distant animal-calls from the woods and the usual creak of stone, but he knows he heard something.Then, a moment later -- again, a soft tapping against his window. Two, then one, then three, then two again.Ben rolls out of bed, crosses the room, and tosses the curtains open. Carlos de vil is perched on his window sill, bloody and smiling a really shitty, sad little smile.Everything really does just happen all at once, huh?With a sigh, Ben pries open his creaky old window and offers his hand for Carlos to pull himself into the room.
“Hey, Ben,” He says. “Up for a sleepover?”“Cruella?” Ben asks, even though he doesn’t need to. Carlos’s smile goes brittle.
He pauses to spit blood in the trash can and drop his backpack on the floor. “Got home late,” he explains. “Wanted to keep Evie off the main roads. I didn’t get my chores done.”Yeah, Ben kinda figured. “Jace and Harold?” He asks as he fishes out a pack of matches. Around the room, candles get lit, and Carlos has already beat him to the bathroom, where he’s wincing his way out of his clothes. Ben’s recent injuries give a sympathetic twinge.“Jasper didn’t go out tonight, and he would have turned me over as soon as he saw me. And Horace’s house is always the first place she checks, you know that.”Ben hasn’t bothered to get the lights in his bedroom fixed, but his bathroom light still works. Under the dim yellow glow, Carlos’s bruises look like splotches of black against his skin.Ben thinks about burning. He thinks about splinters the size of his wrist jammed inches deep into a rib cage. He thinks about the scars on Claudine’s ankles and Ginny’s shaved head and the way Jay can’t stand to be touched sometimes. He thinks about counting every single one of Evie’s ribs. He thinks about Mal, and then he stops thinking about that, because getting angry won’t help anyone right now.Luckily, Carlos doesn’t have any breaks or sprains, so patching him up is a quick enough affair. The medical supplies get stashed back where they go, Ben downs more painkillers, and Carlos blows the candles out. They settle into the bed facing each other. In the dark, Ben finds Carlos’s hand with his and holds on.They’re barely a foot apart, but it’s so dark in Ben’s room that he can’t see Carlos’s face. Being blind makes it easier to say “I have a really bad feeling.”Carlos sighs. Squeezes down on Ben’s fingers. “Yeah.”For a bit that’s all there is. Just them, breathing together in the dark. Then Carlos says “We need to get out of here.”Ben hums. “Isn’t that already the plan?”
“Yeah, but.” Carlos huffs. “Faster. I need to work faster.”“You’re working as hard as you can,” Ben argues, loyally. He’s cut off by Carlos’s dismissive huff.
“I didn’t say harder, I said faster. I spend so much time waiting. Waiting to find parts, or the pieces I need to make parts, or the things I need to make the tools I need to make the parts.” Carlos’s voice is a whisper, sad and small and thin as smoke. He curls in on himself. Ben shuffles closer, until wiry curls are tickling his neck. Carlos’s other hand fists tight in his sleeping shirt. “We need… we need to get out of here, Ben. I need to work faster.”Ben doesn’t disagree. He doesn’t like the way Carlos said that, though. “You have a plan?”More shifting. Carlos’s head on his shoulder, a leg curling around Ben’s own. They’re both beat up, should probably be more careful about how they’re positioning themselves, but instead Ben throws his arm around Carlos’s waist and holds on. “I have an idea,” Carlos murmurs. “But I don’t think you guys are gonna like it.”When Ben sighs, his breath stirs Carlos’s curls. They spring back, tickle Ben’s chin. “Yeah,” Be says. “I figured. What is it?”Carlos’s hands tense. He kneads anxiously at Ben’s chest and fingers, squeeze and release. “... Tomorrow,” He says. “Tomorrow, when we all get together. I’ll tell you guys then.”“... Alright,” Ben murmurs. “Tomorrow.”
The second time Ben wakes up, it’s because he’s overheated and the sun is up, and his painkillers wore off again, and Carlos is fucking heavy when he’s asleep and also he’s lying with his knee right on Ben’s bladder. Ben groans and nudges him, then nudges him again. When that fails to get a reaction, he finds one of the recent bruises he’d helped patch up last night and digs a knuckle right in, so Carlos jolts awake and rolls off of Ben with a groan of his own.“Ugh,” Carlos whines into the pillow. “Good morning to you, too.”Ben grunts “Gotta piss,” and drags himself out of bed.When that’s done and dealt with, and Carlos has also gone through the necessary morning routine, Ben comes to stand in front of his mirror and eyes himself critically. He’d managed to avoid his parents when he came home yesterday -- they know he’s here, but they also know to leave him alone when he holes up in his room like that, so neither of them have seen the damage yet.… It’s ugly. Ben is used to being beat up by now, but it never gets any easier to look at. He doesn’t watch tv often, but sometimes he’ll catch a few minutes of Auradon’s Entertainment Channel and see an interview with some Auradon prince, clean and neat and smiling diamond-white at a plastic perfect interviewer. Anthony once told Ben he had a princely face, and maybe in another world that would’ve been true.
Somedays, Ben doesn’t mind the mirror so much. Other days he can’t bear to look. Right now he has to, though, to try and comb his hair into place and smooth the bandage over his fucked up cheek to try and hide as much of the damage as possible. He wouldn’t fool anyone by wearing long sleeves, so he doesn’t bother, but. Damnit. He hates this.Carlos watches him fuss over his appearance for a few long minutes, until Ben accepts that it’s as good as it’s gonna get. His skin is blotchy and his eyes are fever-bright in a way that tells him he has an infection somewhere and he’s gonna have to deep clean all these injuries to take care of it before it escalates, but he’s clean and patched up. It’ll have to do.His mom is in the kitchen, sitting at the table and nursing a cup of tea. Ben makes as much sound as he can, stomping down the hallway so she hears him coming. As a result, she doesn’t flinch when he comes into the room. Her smile is brittle, though. “Good morning,” she says. Her eyes flick over him, face and arms and chest where the bandages disappear under his shirt.
The way her smile trembles in the corners of her mouth makes his chest ache. “I’m okay,” he tells her. “It looks worse than it is, I went a round in the Coliseum.”
“Oh,” his mother says. Her lips tremble their way into a slightly less shitty smile. “Well, did you have fun?”“It was a good fight,” Ben answers. “I won. Harry was a good sport about it.”“Good,” she says. “Good.”Carlos pops up at Ben’s shoulder. “Good morning, ma’am.”His mom jumps a little, then relaxes. “Oh!” She chirps. “Good morning, Carlos.” Then her eyes flick over him, too, and take in his injuries, and she is thin and pale and fragile again.
… It is what it is. “Have you eaten breakfast yet?” Ben asks her, making his way over to the cabinets and digging around.She shakes her head. “No, your father is still sleeping. I was going to wait for him.”Ben hums. He wants to ask what time his dad went to bed, or how long he sat in the study for after Ben left. Wants to ask if he… if he moved to the foyer and sat there instead, staring at the door, waiting up for Ben.He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t know which answer he’d be hoping for. He asks her “want eggs?” instead.As he goes about turning on the stove and putting together breakfast, Carlos makes his slow, shuffling way to the table. Even after all these years, he’s still weary of Ben’s parents, and he hovers uncertainly by the table until his mom pulls out a chair and offers him a reassuring smile. Carlos takes the seat and tucks his hands neatly in his lap, eyes on the wood. When an adult is around, he can sit like that forever -- silent, still, doing everything he can to pretend he doesn’t exist -- so it takes Ben by surprise when he hears Carlos start talking.
“Miss Belle, ma’am?”Ben glances back to see his mother sitting up, as surprised as he is. “Yes?”“Um.” Carlos shifts in his chair, glances up at her. Takes a breath. “Your father was an inventor, right?”“... Yes, he was.” Ben’s mom frowns a little, more confused than upset. Ben is pretty confused too, but he focuses on the stove instead.“Did he teach you anything? About machines?”Ah. Okay. When Carlos said he had an idea, this wasn’t what Ben expected.
Clearly it’s not what his mom expected either, which is fair. Ben hasn’t actually… told his parents about their escape plan. He has full faith in his gang, but he also doesn’t want to get their hopes up. He’s asked some questions about the barrier and the way it works, and he knows they’re both at least a little suspicious, but he didn’t want to say anything until there was something more concrete to show them.“A bit,” Ben’s mom finally answers. “I helped him in the workshop from time from time, but I was more interested in fiction than mechanics. I know enough to do some of the maintenance around the house, but that’s about it.”Carlos hums. “If I gave you instructions on how to do something simple, could you copy it?”“Well, yes,” She says. Ben can hear how absolutely baffled she is. It’d be funny, but he’s right there with her. “What’s this about?”By now the eggs are done, so he slides them on three plates and turns to set the table. His mom is staring at Carlos in open confusion, while Carlos, for his part, just stares back. He has his blank, thinking-80-miles-an-hour face on, the one that makes him look icy and cold. Ben’s mom glances at him. He shrugs back.“What about your husband?” Carlos asks, instead of answering. “Could he follow the instructions, too? If they were simple?”She frowns in thought. “Adam… could. He’s a quick learner. He doesn’t have any experience with machinery, so it’ll take him longer. But -- Carlos, Ben, what’s going on?”Ben looks at Carlos. Carlos looks at Ben. Ben shrugs.“We’re… working on something,” Carlos finally says. “I might need more hands, and I’d prefer it be -- people we can trust.”“... Alright.” Of all the things Ben appreciates about his mother, her ability to roll with the punches ranks pretty high up there. He gives her a shrug too, just so everybody understands that Ben has no idea what’s happening, then tucks into his eggs.Conversation is pretty sparse after that, the three of them eating and then Ben and Carlos getting ready for school. Ben’s dad comes downstairs a little before they leave. He’s feeling better, thank god, but Ben doesn’t know if it’s because of their fight yesterday or something else. It’s weird, sometimes Ben or occasionally even his mom will snap and shout, and his dad will go yeah, you’re right, and pull himself back together. Other times he’ll curl in on himself, and it’ll take him even longer to snap out of it. Sometimes it has no effect at all.Ben wishes he could better understand and predict what will get through to his old man, but right now, he’s just happy to see him up and about. When he comes striding into the kitchen, Ben stops packing his bag and instead jumps up, crossing the room to meet him. He’s folded into a hug, his dad’s hands almost starting to squeeze down and then just as quickly going soft and careful as he registers the amount of bandages Ben is wrapped in.“... You didn’t come home,” His dad whispers into his hair. Aw, hell, now Ben feels like shit.“Sorry,” He whispers back. “We crashed at the den. I should have made sure you saw me last night.”“It’s -- it’s fine.” It’s not. It’s the answer to the question Ben didn’t ask earlier. It’s… okay, he was angry when his dad asked him to stay home, but that was two days ago and now Ben is regretting the way he’d snapped, knowing how worried his dad was. “Are you alright?”Ben tells him the same half truth he told his mom. “Got in a challenge fight with Harry Hook. He didn’t make it easy on me, but I won.”The thing about Ben’s dad is, he was a beast. That wasn’t, like, just a random choice or something the Enchantress did to humiliate him. The form he took was meant to match what he was on the inside. So, while Ben’s mom understands sportsmanship and has learned to treat the fights he gets into as a sort of… very hardcore martial arts, his dad gets it. He doesn’t like it, but he gets it.“Well done,” he says. Ben preens.They finally pull out of their hug so Ben’s mom can get a turn, and Ben finishes getting himself ready, then double-checks that Carlos has everything he needs. Then, on impulse, Ben starts up the stove and makes more eggs.By the time he’s done, first period has come and gone, and he and Carlos still haven’t left the castle, but that’s fine. Ben gives each of his parents a goodbye hug, Carlos offers his own polite goodbyes, and the two wander off through the forest.
Dragon Prep is about as full of people as it always is. The thing about the isle is that there’s just nothing to do most days, and being in school is usually at least a little better than hanging around aimlessly. That might have made kids actually interested in school, if there was even a slight chance of anyone having any kind of real future. Learning the ins and outs of Evil is a pretty pointless endeavor when every single person around you is also a villain. Instead, you wind up with a mass of bored, disinterested people going about the motions in an effort to stave off even worse boredom, occasionally interspersed with some nerds.Ben, like both of his parents, is a nerd. He even shows up on time most days, which makes him an even bigger nerd than Carlos, who usually isn’t seen until second or third period. It isn’t even always because of Cruella, Carlos just hates waking up early and takes any opportunity to sleep in. Alongside Ben and Carlos, Evie, Ginny and Harold are the only other members of their gang who really care about school. Eddie goes because it’s the proper thing to do, and Jace goes because it’s where Carlos and Harold are. Everyone else is too cool to show up on time or with any regularity, which is why Ben doesn’t think anything of it when he doesn’t see anyone from his gang for the last half of second period or the entirety of third.It isn’t until lunch rolls around that it occurs to Ben that there should be someone here. Admittedly it isn’t unheard of for him to be the only one at school that day, or for only him and one or two others to be there, but typically after something like yesterday happens everyone prefers to stick together, and if they were going to blow off school to spend the day huddled at the den someone would have come and gotten Ben and Carlos.That’s what Ben assumes is happening, when lunch ends and Jace suddenly shows up, sprinting through the crowds to reach them. Ben and Carlos had been shooting worried glances at each other while they ate, but both of them relax at the sight of one of Carlos’s minions. At least, until he comes close enough for them to make out the look on his face.Jace is pale and sweaty, and his face and sleeves are spattered with blood. He comes skidding to a stop by their table, hunching to grab his knees and pant for breath. His eyes flick wildly at the crowd around them, and he’s jittery and tense, ready for an attack.
“Ginny,” he gasps, when’s sucked down enough air. “Ginny’s -- been murdered. They -- they left -- a message.”The ground shifts beneath Ben's feet. "What?"

Jace isn't done. He raises his face, and Ben knows it'll be bad even before he speaks, based just on the terrified look in his eyes. "Hadie was with her. She's gone. There," he pauses, gasps for breath. "Gold blood. There was ichor on the floor."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seven Years Ago

Worry about what that boy might want him to do kept Ben up that night, tossing and turning. He couldn’t imagine what sort of job the boy might have in mind, or why he’d needed to steal a coat to get someone to do it. Ben would have been happy to work if the boy had offered to pay him! Why’d he have to be such a jerk about it?

And what did he mean when he said he knew where to find Carlos? Ben didn’t like the way he’d said it. Ben didn’t like anything about the boy, really.

He was so twisted up about it that his dad had commented on it when he came to wake Ben up the next morning, frowning at him all big and worried with his bushy eyebrows and asking if he was feeling well. Ben lied and said he’d stayed up reading, which got him a scolding and a reminder that if it happened again he wouldn’t be allowed to keep books in his room. Ben didn’t want that, but as long as his parents didn’t find out about him sneaking out and make him stop, Ben could put up with only reading in the rest of the house.

Mr. Lefou had paid him the night before, even though Ben was late bringing the box back, and Ben had snuck a bunch of food into the back of his closet since he didn’t have time to make it to the pantry when he’d come home. His parents had been waking up by the time he’d crawled into bed, which meant he needed to stay up yet again to sneak the food downstairs after they fell asleep.

The next time Ben left the castle, it wasn’t to do that stupid job for that awful boy. It was to do his

normal

job for Mr. Lefou. Specifically, it was to take a pile of meat to a woman named Gothel, who lived in a big stone tower somewhere on the edge-ish of the city.

Ben looked at the tower, and then up and down the street, and realized it was familiar. This was the place where he’d heard the girl singing the other night. He wondered, as he knocked on Miss Gothel’s door, if the girl would be there tonight. Maybe he could apologize for startling her. Maybe she’d sing again!

Instead, after a long minute of clicking and clunking, the door was answered by an old woman with a head of wild silver curls and eyes as black as coal. She didn’t smile at Ben, but Ben was getting used to that. He smiled at her anyway. “Good evening, ma’am!” Ben chirped. He shrugged the package off his shoulders and started to hand it over to her before he paused.

The woman was very old, so old she was all curled over, and her hands looked frail and fragile, like trying to lift the heavy box might hurt her, somehow. “Um,” Ben said, uncertain, as Miss Gothel started to scowl at him. “Would you like help carrying this inside, ma’am?”

Miss Gothel blinked at him for a minute, and then she smiled sweetly. “Yes,” She said. Her voice was croaky and quiet. Not the same kind of croaky that Mr. Horace’s voice was, which he said was because he’d been “indulging in bad habits” for so long, but croaky like maybe her throat was as wrinkled as the rest of her. That was kind of gross to think about, so Ben tried not to. “Come inside and put it on the table.”

Miss Gothel stepped back, and Ben stepped in. The little room right in front of the door was kind of dim and lifeless, but it was spotlessly clean. Ben almost felt bad walking through with his dirty shoes.

He was led into a small kitchen, and instructed to put the box on the table, which he did. Then he stood there and waited, because he needed to bring the box back to Mr. LeFou, but Miss Gothel hadn’t made any move to unpack or asked Ben to do it for her and he wasn’t sure if offering would seem rude, like he was rushing her. (He’d finally gotten around to reading some of the books his dad gave him. Luckily Ben had always been a precocious child who read anything he could get his hands on. His dad didn’t think to wonder why his son had suddenly become so interested in public speaking.)

After a moment, Miss Gothel said “How much do they pay you?”

Ben wasn’t sure how to answer that. He stared at her for a minute, wondering if the answer would magically appear. “What?” He asked.

“At the tavern.” Her croaky old voice was kind of scary when she snapped like that. Ben found himself standing up taller. “I have a job that needs done. What do they pay you?”

Too stunned to ask questions, Ben obediently gave Miss Gothel a rundown of his agreement with Mr. LeFou.

She eyed him quietly for a moment, her gaze all sharp and dark and beady, and then said “Double, then, since you’ll be getting something rather than giving.”

That made Ben stand up even straighter. “Double?” He asked. Then “Getting what, ma’am?”

And Miss Gothel had grinned.

Mr. Horace might have mentioned the barge once, in that off-handed way in which he sometimes said things he thought Ben should know, but it had been only a single reference in the midst of a very different conversation, so Ben hadn’t asked about it. He found himself wishing he had, as he got himself all turned around the next night trying to find the harbor where the ships came in.

Then, once he finally found it, he found himself

really

wishing he’d asked, because there was no way he could have prepared himself for what he saw.

It should have been an easy job. It sounded like it would be, when Miss Gothel explained it. Ben would go to the barges when the supply ships came in the next night, and he would get one of the green bags with the red cross on it, and he would bring it back to Miss Gothel for

twice

what Mr. Lefou had been paying him.

And

Miss Gothel would tell LeFou what a great job he’d done, so he would probably give Ben harder jobs, which would mean paying him more. Other than getting lost and having to stop and edit his map a couple times, Ben didn’t think there would be any problems! Unless he showed up late and all the bags had already been taken, he thought, but if that was the case he could probably buy it off someone. He was already gonna have to do a job for that boy the next night, so Ben decided he’d work for other people, too, if they were willing to hire him.

The bag of medicine was making him remember a couple winters ago, when his dad had gotten sick and lied in bed coughing and coughing, all wet and rattly. His mom had explained pneumonia to him, and Ben had read the few medical books they had, even though they were too advanced for him to really understand. His dad had a fever and his lungs were all full of fluid, and he was so tired all he did was sleep, or try to sleep. He slept for a really long time -- days and days, so still and pale and not moving. Ben would sneak in and sit by his bedside, careful not to get close so that he wouldn’t get sick too. Mostly his dad coughed even in his sleep, but towards the end of his sickness he got one good long night in, where he finally slept so deep and so soundly that Ben couldn’t even hear his shaking breath anymore. Honestly, it had been really scary. Ben almost thought his dad was dead, especially with the way his mom had just sat down next to him and cried, but when she’d finished crying she’d told Ben everything would be okay, and the next day his dad was almost good as new. After that he just needed a couple more days to finish coughing up all the gunk in his chest, and then he’d been back to perfect health.

… It had still been really sad and scary, though, seeing him so sick for so long. Ben decided he’d been thinking too narrow, only trying to get food for his parents. They needed medicine, too, and probably other stuff he hadn’t been paying enough attention to to notice. He was frustrated with himself for being so dumb and not thinking of it sooner, but he had it figured out now. He’d have to work harder for them, which meant he needed that bag!

So it was with determination that Ben hiked down the narrow trail leading to the beach. It got darker this far away from the city. There were a few people who lived near the edge of the sand, but not many, so there were less lights dotting the path. It was so hard to see in the dark he almost tripped and fell down the cliff. He was relieved to finally touch down on the beach.

He expected… Well, he didn’t really expect anything, because this was all so new and cool (A beach, there was a beach! Did his parents know there was a beach? Could they go swimming?) but if he had expected something, it might have been the ocean, stretching out forever, all blue and bottomless. The ocean was there, and it was dark, but there were also lights in the distance, and shapes, and a great, towering castle. There was something else, too, a little out into the water. Yellow and hazy and hanging in the air. He didn’t really think anything of it, at first -- the sky had always looked like that, and he’d always seen the yellow film in the distance, it had never meant anything to him. The

castle,

though, that was new. There was a whole -- a whole place, a whole city! An entire landmass. Who lived there? Could Ben and his parents go visit?

But after a few minutes of standing and staring, Ben noticed something strange about the yellow film; it didn’t stretch on forever. He had never actually thought much about it before, but once he was looking… huh. It stopped right there in the water, a little ways out. Ben had never been in the water before, didn’t know how to swim, but he thought it might be shallow enough for him to wade in and touch it. What

was

it? Was it smoke? Ben read a book once about the northern lights, maybe was something like that? That would be so

cool.

He was so bust just looking at the yellow glowy whisps and the castle lights in the distance that it took a minute or two for the shouting to register. When it did -- so many voices layered over themselves, a big group of people and they were all really excited about something -- he snapped out of his daze, and remembered he had a job to do. Right, the barge!

It was kind of tricky to sprint across the sand, but Ben tried his best. He chased the sound of yelling until he could see lights, and then kept chasing until he could see the pier, and the boats, and the people. There were… so many people. More people than Ben thought he’d ever see. They were all stacked on top of each other and pushing, except for a few people who were hanging back and watching. They were perched on metal structures around the area that looked like they were built just for that. Ben was shorter than everybody, couldn’t see much of what was happening, so he climbed one of the nearest metal platforms to try and look.

Men in uniforms, and three huge boats staked with crates. A pack of goblins -- real, actual goblins! -- handling crates, stacking and guarding them. Something about the way everybody was shifting and tense made Ben’s hair stand on edge. It was so loud, people were yelling and pushing and nobody had even opened any of the crates yet. The men in the white uniforms were holding long black pole things and pointing them at the crowd.

Ben was watching all of it, but it was so much and there were so many people so tightly packed, and he was so overwhelmed, it was hard to process what was really happening. Which was why, when the odd tension over the crowd wound tighter and someone started scaling up the side of the ship, Ben didn’t really understand what he was looking at. The crowd of people became a rolling sea, so close together they were almost a single organism, swarming over the boxes and trying to climb on the ships. Still, the tension only grew. Shouting voices blurred together into the furious buzzing of a hornet’s nest. Shoving bodies tried to cram themselves into spaces far too small for them. The person on the side of the ship made it almost to the deck, got a hand around the railing and started to drag themself up.

One of the men in the white uniforms turned, and pointed his shiny black stick, and a burst of thunder exploded from the end.

It was like a popped eardrum, like a balloon stretched to bursting. The sound reverberated right over the crowd, and like that the tension was gone, fractured, turned sharp and jagged and spattering over the crowd. People stopped pushing. People stopped shouting. People stopped being patient.

The person who’d been trying to climb the ship fell into the crowd, and got -- they -- they got. At first Ben thought people are just shoving them off, out of the way, but there was --

Oh, god. Oh, god. That was an arm. That was --

They got

ripped apart.

There was more. More people, more -- more parts, flying through the air. Bodies crawling over each other like ants on something rotting, people forming living towers uncaring of who got crushed underfoot. A few more people tried to climb the sides of the ships, and they, too, were shot and left to fall into the meat grinder below.

It was like Ben was watching through someone else. It was horrifying, but he couldn’t look away. He couldn’t close his eyes. Standing there, perched on the edge of a spindly metal tower and gazing down on the carnage, Ben remembered what it was that Mr. Horace had said about the barge, the offhanded comment he’d made so many weeks ago.

Fool’s asking to get killed,

he’d said about his brother’s gambling habit when Ben asked if he’d teach him how to play poker.

Damn near as suicidal as wading into the barge.

People were dying down there. People were

dying.

Ben clutched the tower and started to cry.

Years later, he won’t remember how long he stayed up there, or when he managed to pry his hands loose of their panicked fists and climb down. He won’t recall much more than the fear, and the vague, hazy headspace he had entered, and the bone-deep certainty that he needed to go home. He needed to be in his bed, in his house with it’s locked doors and barred windows, with his parents, where he was safe.

Years later, he won’t remember how it was, through the shock, that he’d managed to stumble his way to the streets without getting dragged into a fight by the people who’d gotten their hands on something and were running off with their meagre scores. He won’t remember shuffling across the beach and up the path, won’t remember following the lights in the distance in search of familiar roads to take him home.

What he’ll remember is the moment he looked up, and saw someone holding a green backpack, with a large red cross on the front. He’ll remember thinking of his dad’s rattling chest, and his mom’s headaches, and the way the inside of Carlos’s mouth was all red and wet and bruised. He won’t remember deciding to run, but he’ll remember running.

Ben screamed, or thought he screamed, but his voice was swallowed by the churning crowd. The boy who held the green bag didn’t hear him, or if he did he didn’t stop to see who was calling after him, and so Ben kept his voice to himself, and he followed.

It wasn’t unlike chasing the man who’d stolen Carlos’s mother’s coat the night before. Ben didn’t have time to wonder where they were going or to try and orient himself, he didn’t have a chance to second-guess -- he just put his head down and wished his legs were longer, and kept his eyes on the boy for as long as he could.

At least the boy was closer to his height. He had a head start, and He was a little bit faster than Ben, but he was as slowed down by the crowd as Ben was, and by the time they made it far enough away from the beach for the sounds of crazed fighting to fade, Ben wasn’t the only one out of breath.

“Wait,” He begged as they slowed to a stop. “Please wait.”

He didn’t think the boy wanted to wait, but he’d managed to chase him into a dead end. The boy rounded on him with angry eyes, clutching the green bag to his chest. “Please,” Ben gasped. “I’ll -- I’ll pay you for --”

“No,” Said the boy. He clutched the bag tighter. In the dim light cast by nearby trash fires, Ben got a decent look at him -- he was taller than Ben, maybe a little older, and he had dark skin and red hair and hazel-yellow eyes so bright the color was clear even in the dim. “Go away before I stab you.”

Ben put his hand in his pocket, just in case. “I don’t want to fight,” He said. “Please. I need that bag. I’ll work for it, I’ll do any job you want!”

“I

want,”

said the boy, “For you to

go away.”

He lunged. Ben jerked aside, slipped, stumbled -- bounced off the wall on the side of the alley. Turned to look, and saw him vanishing down the street.

There was nothing else to do but give chase.

The next time Ben caught up with the boy, he held back. Waited. Watched. The boy glanced quickly around, and Ben managed to duck behind a corner fast enough to go unseen. He peered around the wall. The boy shuffled over to what looked like a hole in the side of a shed, dropped to his knees, and crawled through.

… So. Now what?

Ben thought about going and knocking on the door and asking again. He really would do any job the boy asked, it was that important, and maybe if the boy really really needed the medicine Ben could talk about buying some of it back from Miss Gothel, too, and then they’d all get what they needed. It was going to get harder to juggle all these jobs -- Ben was really, really pushing it, sneaking out as often as he has been -- but he would figure it out. He had to.

What if the boy turned him down again? Ben

needed

that bag. He was doing okay getting food, but it wasn’t enough. He needed to prove he could do more jobs, so that LeFou and others would pay him more. He would start with medicine, and then see if there was anything else his parents needed. Not even just his parents! Carlos and Harold and Jace and Mr. Horace, too, Ben wanted to make sure everybody was okay. Or at least, he wanted to try.

He was just starting to consider maybe… maybe pulling out his knife, and having it in his hand when he knocked on the door, so the boy would know how serious Ben was, would listen to him -- when the boy came shuffling back out of the hole in the shed, butt first. He leaned back on his knees, took a deep breath, looked around -- Ben ducked again. Then the boy’s footsteps were padding off down the street, and Ben was… alone?

He held his breath and listened, just to be sure. There was still shouting in the distance. It made him long for his house in the middle of the woods with it’s thick stone walls. He couldn’t ever hear the shouting, just the occasional fox screaming off in the distance. Other than the shouting, though, there was no sound. No one was nearby.

Was he… really going to do this?

… Ben shoved himself to his feet, looked around much in the same way the boy had, and kept low to the ground as he skittered across the street and through the patch of scrubby grass breaking up the cracked sidewalk. There could be, uh… a dog, or another person, waiting in that shed. There could be a monster like Kaa. There could be so, so many spiders -- man-eating spiders! -- or booby traps, or a trap door that led down to a bottomless pit and Ben would fall and fall forever and die of old age before he could hit the ground.

Try as he might, though, Ben couldn’t talk himself out of what he was about to do. He curled down on all fours, ducked his head, and shimmied through the hole.

The inside of the shed was very, very dark. There were a few watery streaks of yellowed moonlight leaking in through holes in the walls, but not very much. Ben fumbled for his pockets, pulled out his candle stump and pack of matches.

… It looked like the inside of the linen closet. There were blankets and pillows all piled in one corner, and clothes piled in another. There was other stuff, too. Cooking pots and bags full of things Ben couldn’t see. There was more than one pair of boots tucked neatly against the wall, and there, in the corner, was the green bag.

Ben bowed his head, whispered a silent apology, and grabbed it.

He might not have ended up taking it for real, if left to his own devices. The guilt he felt when he shimmied backwards out of the hole was almost overwhelming. Maybe he would have stood there a moment, wallowing in it, and then quietly put the bag back and cried the whole way home.

Instead, he stood for a moment in the middle of the street, silently at war with himself, and then took off at a panicked sprint when someone yelled “Hey! Drop it!”

Ben was doing an awful lot of running tonight. He wasn’t in a familiar area, didn’t know where he was going, but this time he was the one in the lead and he wasn’t going to let whoever was chasing him back him into an ally. Ben didn’t think he was tough enough to pull off the fake out the other boy had done earlier. So he swerved and ducked and ran, and ran, and ran as fast as he could.

It wasn’t fast enough. Just as Ben reached a part of the city he was vaguely familiar with, he felt hands on him face down on the ground. The person chasing him landed on top, and held him down, but Ben had the bag under him and he wasn’t letting go, he wouldn’t.

The person grabbed Ben by the shoulder, hauled him up, and punched him.

Ben had never been hit before. His parents didn’t even spank him. The small fist connected with the side of his face and left him blinking stupidly at the wall. Again, and this time stars dashed across Ben’s vision. His lip hit the side of his teeth. He tasted blood.

And all at once, he was angry. Angry enough that when the person went to hit him a third time, Ben shoved his arm under himself and used the other to elbow backwards as hard as he could.

For a few minutes there was scrambling, the person’s fists and Ben’s elbows and knees and

teeth

when he was nearly put in a headlock. He heaved and bucked under whoever was pinning him down, thrashed like a bull, reared back and rammed the back of his skull into their nose and finally, finally managed to stumble to his feet.

His knife, he needed --

He wasn’t given enough time. The person -- a boy, a different boy from earlier, but familiar -- dove for Ben again, uncaring of the blood on his face. His hand around Ben’s wrist, the knife skittering off into the distance. Blood in Ben’s mouth, on his face. He gnashed his teeth again, tried to

bite

like he bit Kaa. The boy was a better fighter than Ben though, overpowered him, snarled “Give it

back!”

and kicked Ben in the stomach hard enough he gagged.

The bag was on the ground, and Ben needed to throw the boy off of him. He needed to get it and run away, he needed --

The boy grabbed the back of Ben’s head, pulled him down against his knee hard enough Ben’s vision went black. Dropped him to the ground. Raised his boot.

I should have run faster,

Ben thought.

Then a thin, pale figure, white and red, streaked in from the side and tackled the boy off of him.

Miles’s laugh was a bubbling, high-pitched thing. He was already scraped and bleeding, like he’d been in a few fights of his own tonight, but he stood over Ben laughing and cracking his split knuckles like a threat. Said “Hey, Jay, pick on somebody

even smaller

than you.”

Jay, right. That’s what Carlos said his name was, when he told Ben to stay away from him. Oops.

The boy, Jay, didn’t stay down for long. He was rolling back onto his feet almost as soon as he’d been knocked down, and he came up with his fists ready. Ben was still on the ground, trying to get his breath back. The best he could do was try to trip Jay when he went past, but Jay was faster, jumped over Ben’s leg and went at Miles with his hands and then they were dancing around each other, trading blows. Miles wasn’t very strong, but he was fast, and he didn’t seem to care at all about the hits Jay was landing. Jay, meanwhile, was distracted. He kept glancing back at Ben and that bag, and trying to break away from the fight.

Ben wasn’t gonna let him do that. He snatched up the medicine bag, cinched it tight over his chest, and scrambled in the dark for his pocket knife.

Behind him, something crunched. Miles let out a short, pained yelp. Jay snarled, “I don’t have time for this shit!” and Ben turned in time to see him let go of Miles’s arm from where he’d yanked the elbow back way too far. Miles curled forward, clutching his broken arm.

… Ben needed his knife. He needed his knife

right that second.

He couldn’t find it. Jay stood over him with a grim look on his face, hands clenched. “Give me the bag,” he said.

Helpless, Ben whispered, “No.”

Jay’s lips twisted into a snarl.

Oh. That’s where Ben’s knife went.

He watched the silver glint of it through the air, coming at him, and he needed to move, he needed to move, he couldn’t, he was frozen, he was --

A brick whistled through the air and caught Jay in the side of the head. Jace badun stepped out of the shadows, tossing another brick in his hand. “Alright, Ben?” He said.

“Are you fucking

kidding me?!”

Jay snarled. There was blood all down the side of his face, and he was clutching his head in a busted-up hand. His eyes flicked between Ben and Jace and Miles, who had heaved himself to his feet and was grinning again, bouncing on his toes, even though he kept his left arm pinned tightly to his side.

“Yikes,” Miles chirped. “This is

not

your night.”

Jace stepped forward again. Said “Leave ‘im alone.”

Ben had never seen anyone look as angry as Jay looked at that moment. His eyes… the way he glared at Ben felt like someone putting a knife up against his throat. Kaa’s terrible stare didn’t have anything against Jay’s. “I never forget a face,” Jay said. Then he backed away a step, another, a third, and he turned and ran away.

… Oh. “So,” said Jace. “That just happened.”

“That was wicked!” Miles chirped. “You hit him like a sniper, damn that was cool!”

Jace eyed Miles kind of suspiciously, but Miles just bounced right up to him, holding his broken arm again. He winced a little when it jerked wrong, but mostly he seemed to be pretty unbothered by it. Was Ben imagining the way it had snapped?

He glanced back and forth between the two of them. “Oh, uh,” he stuttered. “Jace, this is Miles. Miles, this is Jace.”

“Yo!” Said Miles.

“... You the swamp kid?” Jace gave Miles a dubious sort of look, and before Ben would have said that meant Jace didn’t like him very much, but uh… Jace looked at Ben like that too. Ben thought Jace didn’t like

him

very much, but he’d still stepped in to help. And Miles, who Ben had only met the one time, he was here too, and he was hurt but he was grinning, and…

“Thank you,” Ben said. “Thank you so much.”

Miles flashed him a cheerful thumbs up. “Man, are you kidding? Any chance to piss off one of those kids is a good time for me.”

Jace only eyed Ben. His bloody face, his bloody hands. The white-knuckle grip he had on the strap of the bag. Then he looked at Miles’s busted elbow, and he shoved his hands deep into his pockets, shrugged, and said “I’ll walk the both of you home. C’mon.”

Ben might have had something to say to that, but Jace was already turning away, and Ben was forced to scramble to keep up. His silence didn’t matter much, though, because Miles chattered all the way back to the woods.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Present Day

It’s been years since Ben set foot in Hadie’s old hideout. They’ve all pretty much outgrown the tiny, rundown shack by now, but that’s part of what made it such a perfect secret to keep in their back pockets. Nobody would look at the little gray lump of a building and think some of the toughest gang members on the isle were hanging out inside. Most of their members had barely had anywhere to hide prior to joining up, and most of Mal and Jay’s old haunts were places they’d found when they were still running with Uma and Harry, but Hadie and Mal hadn’t really connected until after the whole Mal and Uma mess, so even the Wharf Rats shouldn’t know anything about the shed.

At least, that was the idea.

When Hadie was little, she’d been just small enough to squeeze through the hole some animal chewed into the corner. As years passed they’d needed to widen the hole a bit, and eventually only Ginny, Yzla, Mal and Carlos were able to still fit through, so they’d weighed their options and decided to fix a carefully hidden door to the front that could only be opened from the inside instead of widening the hole further and risking someone being able to peer in.

It should have been a safe place to hide. Hadie and Ginny should have spent the night sleeping on top of each other, and with Hadie standing around to watch Ginny enter and exit, one of their strongest fighters should have been able to keep watch of one of their weakest.

Instead the front door has been ripped off its hinges, and the little cozy nest is in total disarray. There’s blood -- mostly red, human blood -- splattered all over the floor and walls. The floor is flecked with shimmering gold that seems to almost glow in the early afternoon light.

Someone else has already taken Ginny back to the Den to patch her up, and Ben is so, so grateful that he and Carlos don’t have to look at... don’t have to see… He’s just thankful. Even without the body though, it’s still too easy to figure out what must have happened to her. What must have been done.

There are four holes in the walls, two in either direction in a slight angle, and each with blood around them. Four bloody spikes on the floor where they’d been pried out, to lower Ginny off where she’d been mounted. The air doesn’t just smell like blood, it smells like shit and stomach acid and rotting food.

… The blood is old, and dark, and drying. Only the ichor looks fresh, but who knows how godblood even works, if it even ages the same way.

A human being can survive for up to eight hours after they’ve been disemboweled. There’s enough blood everywhere that she might have exsanguinated before then, but just from the spray pattern it’s obvious not all of it is Ginny’s. Hard to tell how many, though. Hard to guess how many came to kill one of Ben’s friends, drag the other away.

Ben turns away from the wreckage, bends to brace his hands against his knees, and wastes his lunch.

Carlos isn’t doing much better, staring pale faced and wide-eyed at the one wall of the shed that wasn’t damn near torn away. The four spike-holes aren’t the only marks -- there are cracks in the drywall, right where her heels would have been, like she kicked as hard as she could. Like she struggled, tried to pry herself free.

Ginny is small, and fragile, and she doesn’t like violence, but that doesn’t mean she’s passive. As fucked-up as this whole situation is, Ben feels a surge of pride. She would have kicked and screamed, she…

She would have screamed. Someone would have heard.

Ben spits the taste of vomit from his mouth. Says “Let’s get going.”

He and Jace have to take Carlos by the arms and pull him away from the scene, get him out into clean air before he snaps out of it. Ben takes point, leads the way.

Inside the Den, everyone else is already waiting. Another table has been cleared off to make space for Ginny, who’s been mercifully covered by a sheet. Miles is still dead beside her, and will stay that way for at least a few more hours. With how damn silent it is, everyone else might be dead, too.

Harold has taken residence next to Eddie, and both of them are staring silently at the floor. Yzla is pacing futfully, and Gizelle has her head in her hands, breathing deep and slow. Claudine is at her usual spot up against the wall, chewing her fingers bloody.

Ben doesn’t see Evie, or Jay, or -- “Where’s--”

“Mal,” Carlos breathes, and slips right past him to step into the nest room. Jace makes a sound that might be a choked-off laugh, shakes his head. Goes to comfort his cousin.

… Ben stands there, shifting his weight, debating, but. There’s no need for him to crowd them, not when the four of them will be just fine together, and there are other things that need to be done. Technically it’s Jay’s job as second-in-command, but he’s busy with Mal. Ben didn’t work his ass off to get third just to slack off and leave his gang without leadership when they need it most.

He turns to Claudine. “What happened?” He asks, careful to keep the judgement out of his voice. Whatever it was, he’s sure it wasn’t her fault.

Predictably, she doesn’t believe him. She’s bitten her fingers so hard there’s blood dripping on the floor. Quickly, Ben crosses to her, catches her wrist. Claudine lets him take it. She’s shaking.

“I left her,” she whispers, not looking at him. “Last night. I was tossing and turning, my thoughts were racing, so I went to take a walk to clear my head. I stopped here first and traded stations with Hadie. We agreed that Miles could be left alone -- we triple-checked the traps, and it was only for half an hour while I got my head on straight. I came back here and went to bed. I didn’t know anything had gone wrong until this morning.”

At that, Ben turns and eyes the rest of the group. Gizelle raises her head. Her eyes are read and swollen. “I went to pick ‘em up. Though it was still Claudine with her, so I figured I’d swing by, give ‘em an armed escort, but when I got there --” Her voice cracks. She closes her eyes, takes a shuddering breath again. Bows her head. The next words are spoken into her hands when they rise to cup her face again. “Just. Stood there, for a bit. I didn’t… I’m sorry, Ben, I wasn’t careful coming back here. I wasn’t thinking. I couldn’t leave her

stuck there

and I needed to get everybody together quick and I needed to check the shed for signs of anybody who’d been there and I just fucking

panicked.”

Ben only has two hands, so he tugs Claudine with him over to the couch, leads her slowly. Pulls her down beside him so he can wrap an arm around her and an arm around Gizelle and hold them both.

Just. Breathes, for a second. Feels them both shake.

… Okay. First things first. “Neither of you are at fault,” he says. “Neither of you did anything wrong. We’ve changed up groups mid-shift before, and nothing like this happened. You had no reason to think it would be a problem this time. And you reacted exactly the way anyone would have. You got her home, safe, where she can recover. If someone saw you, we’ll deal with it.”

As she passes on her pacing, Yzla murmurs “I told them that.” She goes ignored by everyone on the couch.

Neither Claudine nor Gizelle say anything. Stubborn girls, they’ll keep beating themselves up about this until Hadie is home safe and Ginny is up on her feet again, and then they’ll probably keep beating themselves up just because. Ben doesn’t have a leg to stand on about that, he does the same thing, but it still sucks to know he can’t do anything about it.

Well, moving on. “Has Mal said anything?”

“She had her thinking face on,” Yzla dutifully reports. “She checked in on everybody then went off with Jay, and they’ve been in there talking. Evie got here with the Baduns a little bit ago, and she went in to see what’s up, and Jace ran and got you. Other than that, we’ve all been sitting here.”

“She didn’t give any orders?” Ben asks.

“Told me t’ run like hell,” Jace says. “Said if I didn’t come back with the two of you, and all of us in one piece, that she’d have my guts for garters.”

Claudine shakes her head against Ben’s shoulder. “Her exact words were ‘If any of you die, I’ll kill you twice, and then one more time for making me put out the effort’.”

Jace waves vaguely. “Right. That.”

Ben hums, turns to nudge his head against the side of Gizelle’s skull. Gets a tired nuzzle back. Says “I’ll check on them.”

The girls on either side of him shift to let him stand. Already Claudine is pulling herself up, the moment of vulnerability he’d seen from her fading behind her ice-blue eyes. She raises her still-bleeding hand back to her mouth, stone-faced, and with her legs neatly crossed and her back straight, she takes another punishing bite out of herself. Beside her, Gizelle scrubs her hands over her face and breathes. Jace still has a hand on Harold’s shoulder, and Harold still hasn’t spoken. Eddie is still staring at nothing, his cane tapping idly on the ground. Yzla gives Ben a smile that’s just a little lopsided, her hands twitching. She doesn’t pause her pacing.

… Fuck, it’s been a while since they were all messed up this bad. A long, long while.

In the nest room, he finds Mal sitting cross-legged in her usual corner, and Jay in front, mirroring her. On either side of them sit Evie and Carlos, the four of them close enough together that they’re all touching in some way. They’re all speaking in low voices, too quiet for Ben to catch the words, but he knows the tone. Pensive, secretive. Plotting. Usually that sound fills Ben with a mischievous excitement. It typically heralds good things. Just now, though, Ben doesn’t have it in him to feel anything but grim acceptance.

Four pairs of eyes turn to look at him as Ben walks in. He scrubs a hand over the back of his neck, feeling sheepish for interrupting even though it’s, arguably, justified.

“Ben,” Evie says. She scooches closer to Jay, pats the nest beside her. A little awkwardly, Ben crosses the room to drop into their circle. His knee knocks against Mal’s. She knocks back. “Are you okay?” Evie asks.

Catching her hand, Ben leans in to press a kiss to her knuckles, feels his chest ache at the sad smile on her face. Her mascara is just the slightest bit watery. He only notices because he’s learned to look, for her. He chooses not to mention it just now. “I’m alright, Princess,” He tells her. “Everybody else is shaken, but they’re hanging in there. And all of you?”

“Still kicking.” It isn’t until right then that Ben notices the bandages on Jay’s bare arm. Jay shakes his head at the look on Ben’s face, shrugs carelessly. “Just Uma and her fucking attack dogs,” he says. “Ran into Harry and Gil on my way here earlier. We scrapped, but it was whatever. Neither of them were trying that hard.”

Ben already knows how Carlos’s morning went, so that leaves… “Mal?”

She wears her rage like a comforting cloak. He can see it in her eyes when she looks at him, the promise she’d made all of them when they swore themselves to her service. Bloody vengeance for those who wronged them, the safety of a vile reputation, the kindness of a wrathful girl. What she says, between her clenched teeth, is “I’ve never been so pissed off in my fucking life.”

In spite of everything, it brings a smile to his face. “Yeah, I’ll bet,” he murmurs. He wants to reach out and brush a lock of hair away from where it’s fallen over her face. He wants to rub a thumb along her jaw, feel the muscle jumping as she grinds her fangs. He wants to be there, watching, when she tracks down whoever did this and kills them slow. “We’ll make them pay.”

Somehow, it seems to be the right thing to say.

“We need to go on lockdown,” Mal says. “If Gizelle was followed, then it isn’t safe here anymore.”

Ben feels a pang of sadness at that. They’d worked so hard to make this place their own, the Den is

theirs.

For a while now, it’s been home.

Oh, huh. That might work. “Do you have any ideas?” Ben asks, just in case.

The glance Mal shares with Evie and the boys tells him that’s what they’ve been discussing.

“None that are good enough,” Carlos explains. “My treehouse can’t hold all of us, and it’s not exactly hidden.”

“Can go bunk with the snakes for a bit,” Jay adds. His lips twitch into a guilty little smile. “But, Reza…”

Mal shakes her head before Ben can, nudges Jay in comforting reminder. “No. Until we know what’s going on, we don’t drag anyone into this.”

“Come to the castle then,” Ben says. He’s expecting the other four to turn and stare at him, but that doesn’t make it any less off-putting. He makes himself stay firm. “It isn’t a secret either, but it’s sturdy and defensible, and there’s plenty of space for all of us.”

Evie hums thoughtfully. “What about your parents?”

“Uh,” oh boy, here goes. “I actually. Have been asking them, lately, if they’d be okay with... Yanno. With you guys coming to live with us.”

He might as well have just told everyone that his parents wanted to adopt them, and also kidnap them and keep them all prisoner, and also his dad had taken up yodeling and his mom was gonna marry Gaston after all.

“The castle is huge,” He rushes to explain, “And -- I mean -- it would be optional, of course, nobody would have to do anything they weren’t comfortable with. I just figured, it’d be safer --”

“It’ll work,” Mal says. She stands, dusts imaginary dirt off her jeans. Turns away and leaves the room without another word.

“I upset her,” Ben despairs. Evie looks after her with a concerned frown.

Jay bumps Ben’s shoulder with his. Gives him an unreadable look. Says “Maybe. Maybe not,” and pushes himself to his feet.

When the four of them follow Mal out into the main room of the Den, none of the rest of their pack have moved from where Ben left them. Despite this, they all turn to Mal, attentive and eager to hear what happens next.

Ben is, too. He steps up beside Mal, waiting. Listening.

“We can’t keep running around like headless fucking chickens,” Mal says. “And we don’t have time to sit around and wait for Ginny to wake up and tell us what she saw. The plan hasn't changed, but it has expanded. Carlos, after you ask around about the gasoline, you’re going to ask Diego who was working the Shallow Grave, get me names and locations. Not just the host, the diggers too. Take Yzla and Gizelle with you. Evie, Eddie, Claudine, go cash in on some favors from everybody else we knew at the festival. Somebody saw

something,

I don’t give a shit how irrelevant they might have thought it was. Jace and Harold, you two are taking the bodies to Beast’s castle. Take the tunnels, I don’t give a shit what you have to pay, and you make clear that if those Orphans breathe a fucking word of where you’ve gone I will personally dump gasoline down every manhole on the island and burn them all. Leave the traps up. The rest of us will be sure to be seen leaving. Any luck, somebody will try and get the drop on you two like they did Ginny and Hadie and end up smeared on the wall instead.”

“My parents might freak out a little,” Ben says as the entire room turns to stare at him. “But they won’t abandon a bunch of hurt kids to fend for yourselves. Even without me there, they’ll take you guys in.”

“Which is good, because that’s where you’ll all be going when you’ve finished your tasks,” Mal says. “Be at the castle by sundown. Do

not

make me come find you.”

The chorus of “Yes, Ma’am”’s is only interrupted by Yzla, who tilts her head and peers at Mal, blinking. She asks “Wait, what are you gonna do?”

“Jay and Ben are with me.” Mal reaches for something in her pocket, pulls out a wrinkled sheet of paper. All at once, Ben remembers that Jace said there was a note.

Mal unfolds it, holds it up for everyone to see. It takes all of Ben’s willpower not to turn and look at Gizelle. Her puffy, cried-out eyes, the defeated slump of her shoulders, so out of character for her. The way she’d shook in Ben’s hold when he said it wasn’t her fault.

The words smeared across the paper were probably written with Ginny’s blood. It’s dark and messy, smudged where the page was folded.

Sleeping with the fishes.

Mal bares her sharp teeth, damn near vibrating with rage. Says “We’re going to see Uma.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Seven Years Ago

The next night, Ben goes to work for the boy.

He doesn’t want to -- didn’t want to in the first place, but then he didn’t sleep the night before, tossing and turning. The nightmares wouldn’t stop, even though the sun was nearly up. The images of limbs being torn off and Jay’s furious dark eyes kept eating their way into his dreams. Sometimes Kaa was there, too, waiting for Ben to get distracted so he could put him to sleep and swallow him whole. Eventually it got so bad Ben had to crawl into bed with his parents and hope they didn’t notice he was all bruised.

He didn’t want to go, but he’d said he would, and the boy threatened Carlos if Ben didn’t. Reluctantly, he went.

They met at the same place where the boy had robbed Carlos, in a part of the city Ben wasn’t familiar with. He kept his hand on the knife in his pocket (a new one Mr. Horace gave him) the whole way, jumping at every shadow, wondering if he’d see Jay again. He didn’t. The walk was about as peaceful as any other walk through the city, now that Ben knew to avoid the men with dark eyes and quick hands.

(They’d showed up in his nightmares too. He’d never figured out what would happen to him if he’d been dragged away, but he thought maybe it would be like the barge. Maybe he’d be thrown into a crowd of people and ripped apart. Maybe his arm would go flying over the crowd, speckling everybody with blood, and they’d just dig their nails in tighter and pull more pieces off of him.)

The street corner they met on was lit by actual lamps, mounted on metal poles and hanging over the sidewalk. The boy’s red hair was dark like fresh blood under the yellowish glow. Looking at him made Ben think of the thief lying facedown on the ground, the boy’s boot against the back of his head. The pool of blood around him. Blood spraying over the crowd. Blood on Ben’s hands and face. Blood up his nose and in his mouth and tasting like rust and honey. It made his stomach cramp.

The boy grinned an ugly grin when Ben approached. Ben kept a hand on his knife.

“Well, now,” The boy said. “You made quite a stir the other night. Stealing from those kids takes guts, I’m actually kind of impressed.”

Ben startled, glancing reflexively around like Jay might pop out and try to fight him again. “Wh-- how did you know about that?”

“I know a lot of things.” The boy’s grin got even wider. Ben decided he really, really hated this kid. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to sell you out. If that little stunt is anything to go by, you’ll be pretty useful to me.”

Useful. Not

helpful,

like his mom called him when he cleaned up after dinner or helped her with the laundry. Not

handy

like when his dad needed him to hold something in place or peer under the couch because his eyes were going bad as he got older and he couldn’t see the pen he dropped. Useful, like a

thing.

Ben

hated

this kid. “I don’t care if I’m

useful

to you,” he snapped. “Tell me what we’re doing so I can leave.”

What they were doing turned out to be… nothing, really. Or, what Ben was doing turned out to be nothing. “Just talk to the preacher,” The boy said. “Use those pretty green eyes and ask for confession. He’ll have to let you in. Keep him distracted until I’m done, then you can leave.”

“What do you want a priest distracted for?” Ben asked. He didn’t know there was a church nearby. His dad prayed sometimes, and Ben had read the bible. His mom had explained that lots of people believed in lots of different gods, and Ben wanted to read their books, too, someday. His parents used to have a lot of religious texts, but after the fire most of them were gone. Only two heavily singed books of the Torah and a few pages of the Hadith had survived.

The boy flicked his fingers dismissively. Said “Don’t worry about the why, just make sure he’s paying attention to you. Everyone else I can deal with.”

He said the last part quietly to himself. Ben didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t like the sound of it, but… If it meant the boy would leave Carlos alone, then fine. He didn’t know how he was supposed to distract the priest, or what he was supposed to confess, but he would figure it out, somehow.

The church was also in a part of the isle Ben was unfamiliar with, way in the opposite direction of the tavern and most of the jobs he’d done. It sat far back from the street, through a tall fence and down a winding path, with a huge, scruffy yard dotted with little shack houses. Ben couldn’t be sure in the dark, but he thought there might be red smears over every doorway. Lamb’s blood? To keep out illness, maybe? Ben didn’t think he was very superstitious, but he also wasn’t one to judge, and anyway maybe that wasn’t a bad idea. Anything to keep his parents from getting too sick.

The church itself was a pretty big building -- nowhere near the size of Ben’s home, but bigger than most of the houses or businesses he’d seen. There were murals painted on the windows, making it hard to see inside, and the doors were firmly shut. It was awfully late at night, after all. Ben felt kind of bad for bothering whoever was watching over it, but he didn’t think he had much choice.

The boy hadn’t come down the path with Ben. He’d said he’d find another way in, and told Ben to walk slow and make sure he was seen. At first he didn’t understand what that meant, but Ben felt eyes on him all the way up to the church doors, so he figured some of the people in the houses must not have been asleep. It was pretty creepy, but then, Ben thought he’d be curious too if someone he didn’t know came walking up to the castle in the middle of the night. The eyes on him didn’t really matter.

A severed arm being thrown through the air, and dropless of blood, black against the silhouettes of a thousand people, shoving and tearing at each other like maggots on old meat. Eyes that flashed too many colors, pulsing in Ben’s head. A tiredness that wasn’t real, that wanted him to sleep.

Ben shuddered, pulled his coat tighter, forced himself not to look. Instead he raised a hand and banged the door knocker three times.

It opened after a moment, wood groaning like the movement was a strain, to reveal a girl about Ben’s age, with greasy hair that hung to her waist and a sad, gaunt face. She was almost colorless -- pale and silvery-blonde and washed out in the yellow candlelight -- but for the purple rings under her sunken eyes and the startling blue of her irises. She wore a shapeless black robe that covered her from neck to wrist to the tops of her small, bare feet.

She was… not the priest. Ben floundered a little, wrong-footed. “Uh--!” He said, a little too loud, or maybe way too loud, because the girl flinched and her grip on the door went white-knuckle tight. Ben took a deep breath and tried to remember the books his dad loaned him about public speaking. He lowered his voice.

“I’m sorry for waking you up so late,” He said. “My name’s Ben. Can I talk to the priest, please?”

The girl’s expression shifted from weary to exhausted. When she spoke, her voice was thin and hoarse, creaking like something overused.

“I don’t know what you’re saying. Come back when one of the adults is awake.”

“Oh!” Ben got too loud again by accident, and the girl shied away from him. Ben shied away too, tried to make himself seem small and harmless.

“Sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you. You’re the first other person I’ve met who speaks French!”

That earned him a curious look. The girl peeked out from behind the door.

“... You said your name is Ben?”

“Yes! It’s short for Benjamin. What’s yours?”

“... Claudine. Why are you here?”

“Uh.” Right, he wasn’t there to make a new friend, even though Claudine really looked like she could use one. Ben didn’t know why she looked so sad, but he had the vague thought that if he found out he could help her, somehow. Or at least offer a hug.

“Can I speak with the priest?”

That must have been a bad thing to ask, somehow, because the careful interest on Claudine’s face vanished like it had never been there at all, replaced with a glare that had Ben’s hair standing on edge.

“Why do you need him?”

“I’m -- uh --” Breathe. This was important. It was for Carlos.

“I want to confess.”

That felt stupid to say, because Ben was only a kid, but then he thought about the snake he stabbed and the bag he stole and the way he’d been sneaking out and lying to his parents and maybe giving confession would be good for him after all.

If Claudine thought it was stupid, she didn’t show it. She nodded, and turned, and led Ben into the church.

Nobody -- not Ben or Claudine or any of the people watching from their little blood-marked houses -- saw the red-haired boy climb the fence on the other side of the church, and rush across the yard to scale the side of the building.

The inside of the church was dark and full of color. The hallway was a long, shadowy tunnel, but when they stepped into the chapel proper the air was full of candlelight. Ben was surprised to see people there, kneeling at the pews, praying to… a mural. A blood stain. Praying to a big red smear on the wall.

“Wait here,” Claudine said, and left again. Around him the prayers and murmured hymns continued, but Ben felt the prickle of eyes on him. When he turned his head around to look, he didn’t see anyone peering his way.

… The acoustics in the church were very echo-y. Even the quiet voices of the worshipers bounced off every wall, folding over and over like origami until the sound was coming from everywhere all at once. The room wasn’t anything fancy, but there were plenty of nooks and pillars that someone might have been hiding behind, for… whatever reason.

Ben forced himself to stare at his feet and ignore it. It was fine. He was fine.

He curled his fingers around the knife in his pocket and held on tight. It wasn’t until then that it occurred to him it might have been rude to bring a weapon into a house of God.

When Claudine returned, padding into the room on silent feet with her head hung low, she was accompanied by a very thin, very tall man with wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and mouth, and deep grooves in his forehead from frowning. His hair was ash gray and sparse, and his skin was papery and pale, but his eyes were the same startling blue as Claudine’s. The priest -- because Ben could only assume he was the priest -- looked down at Ben with a considering sort of stare that he’d started to get used to in the last couple months. A look that meant he was being weighed and judged.

Ben hadn’t yet figured out what it was adults were looking for, when they looked at him like that. Maybe they were all looking for different things. But he’d learned to be polite and courteous and firm, and get to the point like his dad said a prince should (even though Ben wasn’t a prince, but his parents told him that didn’t really matter) and that seemed to work out well for him most of the time, so he bowed his head because he wasn’t sure if shaking hands was polite with a priest, and said “Good evening, sir. I’m sorry for interrupting you this late at night. I’m here to confess.”

The priest kept looking down his big nose at Ben for another long minute, and Ben kept his eyes down and tried not to fidget and fiddle too much. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Claudine step back against the wall and bow her head, and she sat there, unmoving, like she was waiting for something.

‘Very well,” said the priest at long last. His icy-cold face started to melt a little. His lips curled up into a not-very-nice smile that immediately reminded Ben of the boy. “Who am I to turn away a young man seeking the grace of God? Come, then.”

The priest turned and walked away without a word, much in the same way Ben had. Ben glanced back at her, curious, but she was still just standing there.

… There was a bright red mark on her cheek that hadn’t been there before.

Ben clenched his fingers around the knife and followed the priest through the chapel, between the rows of pews, and into the confessional booth.

The little room was dark and small and uncomfortable. Nails protruding from the walls at odd angles, and if Ben were older and bigger he would have had to try hard not to get scratched. He settled onto the hard wooden pew, clasped his hands in front of him. Waited.

Hesitated.

He didn’t know how long he needed to keep the priest distracted for, was the issue. Only a few moments? An hour? What was it the boy was doing anyway, that he needed to sneak into a church? What would happen if they got caught? Or if only Ben got caught, because he suspected if something did happen the boy would leave him here.

“I…”

“Is this your first time, boy?”

Relief was a sudden and slightly scary wave. “Yes,” Ben said, grateful for the lifeline. “I -- I don’t know how to begin, sir. Father.”

A low rumble. Ben couldn’t tell what it meant. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned...”

Oh! That’s where that saying comes from? “Forgive me, Father,” Ben repeated dutifully. “For I have sinned. I have… I have disobeyed my parents, and broke the rules they gave me. I did it because I want to help them. I know they’re only trying to keep me safe, but I couldn’t just sit around and --”

“Confession,” The priest said, “Is not a time for excuses.”

“Right,” Said Ben. “Sorry.”

Okay. Okay, just the facts then. Uh… “I sneak out of my house after my parents go to sleep. I do it all the time. And. Sometimes, when I sneak out, bad things happen.” Cold blood in his mouth and on his face and between his fingers and “I think I killed someone. He wasn’t a
person but he could talk. He was trying to hurt me, but I still -- I didn’t have to do that, I don’t think. I had already got him off of me. But he was lying there and I was so, so angry and I didn’t want to just walk away and let him attack me again, so I stabbed him. I stabbed him and I kept stabbing him and I made him blind and I messed up his mouth really bad, and I think he died.”

The priest didn’t say a word. Ben bit his lip. “Uh. I. I stole something. Something important. Medicine. I didn’t steal it for myself, I stole it for someone who paid me to steal it. The person I stole it from -- or, their friend, I guess -- he really wanted it back. I didn’t think about it at the time, but after, I thought, maybe somebody they knew was sick? Or hurt? And they were trying to take care of them? I didn’t ask. I just got in a fight with him. I didn’t stab him, he was stronger than me and faster, but two of my friends, they showed up and they helped, and we fought him off. I don’t… think that was the right thing to do. I think I should have tried talking to him, or maybe turned down the lady who needed me to steal it, or found some other way. I don’t know.”

… Ben didn’t think that was enough of a distraction. He tried to get comfortable on the stiff kneeling plank, wracked his brain for every bad thing he’d done lately, and settled in to tell a story.

By the time Ben was done talking (some of it was the truth, and some of it was embellished, and some of it was outright lies or things that had happened in a book, which was… probably pretty bad, as far as sins go, lying to the priest during confession) his voice was thin and hoarse, and the priest had begun to make slightly alarmed sounds in between confessions. That had to have been enough time, right?

What time was it, anyway? Would he have to run back home? Probably.

After a moment of silence, the priest said, very slowly “... I am worried for your soul, child.”

Ben didn’t like the way the man said it, all slow and smug, like he knew something Ben didn’t. He was getting better at recognizing that kind of thing. “You’ve done a great many terrible things, but there is time still to save you. Perhaps if you work in the name of God instead of running errands for the filth of the isle you could begin to pay off your dept. For tonight, I believe you’ve done plenty, but if you truly care for your parents -- and for yourself -- you should return here as soon as you are able. I’m sure I could find use for you.”

Ben decided he didn’t like the priest. “Thank you, father,” He said.

“Away with you,” Said the priest. Ben stood
up from the floor (his back and knees hurt) and stepped out of the confessional booth.

Claudine was still standing right where she’d been left, with her head down and her hands clasped in front of her, staring at her bare feet. A man who had been praying when Ben walked in was standing near her, saying something with a grin that she looked like she was trying to ignore. She, and the man, and Ben all jumped when the priest called “Claudine! Show the boy out!”

Like she was relieved to get away from the man, Claudine rushed to his side. Ben was happy enough to follow her back out into the hallway again. At this point, he figured either the boy had done what he wanted to do or he hadn’t, and either way, it wasn’t Ben’s problem. He did his part.

But the hallway was very long, and Claudine seemed even sadder than before, and Ben kept glancing at the spot on her face that had, by now, faded into a yellowish bruise, and even though his throat hurt he couldn’t just stay silent. The problem was, Ben didn’t really know how to talk to her.

“So… what do you like to do?”

Met him with a sullen

“I don’t know.” “Do you go to school?”

was answered

“No?”

Like that should have been obvious. Before long Ben resorted to just talking about the books and stories he liked, and hoping there was something in his babbling that would interest her, or at least entertain her a little bit.

He wasn’t expecting Claudine to suddenly perk up, like she was just now paying attention to what he said, and whirl around to face him with her eyes very sharp. She grabbed him by the arm, surprisingly tight with her skinny fingers, and dug in with her nail until he winced.

“Wha--”

“You can read?”

“Yes?”

What was going on?

Claudine dragged him the last few feet down the hallway, until they were right in front of the doors. She shoved him into a corner, looked all around like she was checking for evesdroppers, then pressed in right against him. This close, she smelled… kind of bad. Unwashed, and a little bit like blood and a little like something else, sour and thick. He could see old bruises on her thin cheeks, layered on top of each other and struggling to heal.

She hissed

“Teach me.”

Ben was officially freaked out.

“Teach you -- what? How to read?”

“Shhh!” Claudine looked around again, hunched down lower.

“Yes, to read. Teach me how to read the book.”

“Wh-what book?”

“The book! God’s book! Teach me how to read it.”

“You… want to learn how to read the bible?”

Ben blinked at her, baffled.

“Don’t you hear the priest talk about it?”

Claudine’s grip on him tightened even further.

“Yes,” She said, very quietly. “That is why I want to learn.”

“I don’t understand.”

Her lip curled. She spat

“I want to know how much he’s lying about.”

… Well.

“Okay,”

said Ben.

“I’ll teach you.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

I've mentioned a couple times, on here and on tumblr, that this fic has been a struggle for me because my dumb ass did not properly plot. I've literally rewritten chapter 17 three different times now -- each time having wildly different series of events take place -- and each time I've realized it didn't make sense and had to go back and start over. I am struggling, because I am an idiot.However, I also love this fic. I want to see it completed. I really, really don't want to just say "it's too hard" and abandon it.However x2 combo, I can't keep writing this trainwreck as it is.So, the plan.I'm going back to the drawing board and plotting from scratch. Most of the Present chapters will probably only get small tweaks, with the changes getting more extreme past chapter 11. Most of the Past chapters are getting a full rewrite.If you don't mind spoilers, I'm gonna liveblog the whole process on my tumblr https://thisisallthehattersfault.tumblr.com/ and I'd be super interested in hearing reader feedback.In the meantime, I'll keep writing for this universe -- I have a bunch of half-finished side-stories that I'll start posting before the end of the month, now that I'm not banging my head against the main fic, as well as a handful of better-plotted and more coherent Descendants fics I've been thinking about, so stay tuned for that!I'm really sorry for how chaotic my writing has been for this fic, I'm hoping after some much-needed retcons I'll be more productive and be able to update more regularly once everything is flowing in the direction I want. Thank you all so much for your patience and your support!

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Alright, I've detangled some plot holes and I mostly have things properly on track. Some great news: I don't actually have to completely rewrite. I've managed to save pretty much everything I've already written -- it's all still canon to the story. There are some tweaks that need to be made, but nothing as major as I originally feared. That said, there is still a ton of chapters in this fic, mostly in the Past, that could really be a side story off on their own, and I could probably tighten up the Present chapters too honestly. So, I'd like to ask what you guys think I should do!I can leave this fic as-is and start a whole new TKAAR fic, with tighter pacing, but a lot of the chapters being carried over -- edited, but still mostly the same. Or, I can go back and edit this version of TKAAR without trimming the fat. That is, some of the unnecessary chapters will still be in place, and the pacing will be kind of wonky as a result. Let me know what you'd prefer!

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Before the start of the story: Mal, as a fairy, was born with wings. This isn't magic, it's biological. Ben sees Mal with her wings in chapter 12, Late Night Talks.

("One of the girls had an odd, lumpy shape on her back, though it was too dark for Ben to tell what it was.")

Shortly after Ben begins sneaking out, Malecifent realizes she's begun to lose control over Mal, due to the support system Mal finds in Jay, Uma and Harry. To ensure her daughter stays obedient, Maleficent punishes Mal for having friends by cutting off her wings. (She was always intending to cut off Mal's wings in truth, she was jealous her daughter got to keep her wings when Maleficent didn't, but when Mal was young letting her keep them helped teach her she was better than other people, which fed into the narrative Maleficent used to groom her.) She mounts them to the entryway over the door frame, where Mal has to see them every day, as a reminder of what happens when she "shows weakness" by caring for other people.

To prove to her mother that she learned her lesson, Mal betrayed all three of her friends -- purposely getting them all in trouble with their parents in ways she knew would lead to them being violently punished and putting on a big show about how she did it just to remind them that she doesn't care about anyone but herself. Jay, who knew Mal the longest, saw the missing wings and knew something must have happened. He forgave her. However, due to circumstances beyond Mal's control, Uma and Harry actually got in a lot more trouble than she had intended they get into, resulting in both of their parents actually killing them. Harry and Uma both agreed that whatever Mal's motives were, she still did things that hurt them both, and they couldn't risk trusting her.

In chapter 14, Desperate Measures, the "boy" Ben steals the medicine from is Hadie, pre-transition. Hadie and Mal are half-siblings, and only really connected after Mal's wings were cut. The reason Hadie was so resistant to give Ben the medicine bag, and the reason Jay was so aggressive about getting it back, was because they were trying to patch Mal up. By that point, between shock and infection, she wasn't doing so well.

The mysterious boy in Chapter 12, who blackmailed Ben into distracting Judge Claude Frollo, was Anthony Tremaine. Anthony is an information broker on the island, and a significant amount of his power comes from knowing the truth and spreading lies. At this point in the story, he hadn't yet built up enough of a spy network to have reliable leaks inside Frollo's cult, so he needed to sneak in and gather intel himself, hence him using Ben as a distraction.

The last really important thing to know is that the Isle Of The Lost is not a real place. It is Chernabog -- in Fantasia, he first appears as a mountain, and when he goes back to sleep, he folds into a mountain again. "The Sleeping Mountain" is very literally Chernabog's sleeping body, which is why the adults all avoid it unless absolutely desperate. The kids are a bit more blase about the idea of tap-dancing on the back of The Devil Himself because they've never lived in a world where death was permanent. It's unpleasant for them, sure, but not the end of the line, and it's not like anywhere else on the Isle is safer if he does somehow wake up.

Ben's story was planned out like this: The first several past chapters stay the same, with the first divergence happening in Desperate Measures, with the added context that Adam was actively sick with pneumonia. In Pray For A Sinner, the end was going to be altered so Anthony was nearly caught sneaking around. He managed to escape without anyone seeing his face, but it alerted the cult that something fishy was happening, and Ben isn't a good enough actor at this time to pretend he wasn't involved. Claudine ends up helping him escape the compound, and in return, demands he come back and teach her how to read.

The following chapter, Adam gets sicker, and Ben takes the risk of going out yet again. This time he goes to Mother Gothel's tower where he heard the girl singing before, and sends up a paper airplane asking her if she can convince the woman she lives with to give Ben some of the medicine. Ginny Gothel says she can't, and Ben goes to leave, dejected, only to get jumped by Jay, Harry and Uma (this is before Mal has healed and tried to drive the three of them away.) Ginny throws things from her window to chase them off, and Ben manages to run away. Anthony sees him running and drags him into a hiding spot, since he's proven himself useful. Ben, reluctantly, asks Anthony if he has another job for him, and explains his dad is sick. Anthony says he'll think of something, and sends Ben on his way.

Ben spends the day with his parents, helping his mom around the house and keeping his dad company. He sits at his dad's bedside and tells him some of his favorite stories, including Aladdin And The Cave Of Wonders. His dad, feverishly, wonders out loud what Al and Jasmine are up to right now, and expresses regret for -- something. He's barely coherent, and Ben assumes his dad is having some kind of hallucination.

That night, even though Belle has also gone out, Ben sneaks out, with a mental promise to himself to not run into her. He finds Horace and the usual place, and when Horace expresses surprise at seeing him again so soon, Ben explains the situation. Horace is reluctant, but sympathetic, and eventually expresses that he might know somewhere else Ben can go for work, but warns him it will be very dangerous, and asks Ben to think carefully. Ben says he's willing to do whatever he needs to do to help his family, and asks when they can go. Horace, still reluctant, admits they can go now if Ben is so eager.

Horace takes Ben to Yzma's apothecary. He explains that Yzma is willing to give medicine to those who work as lab rats for her. At first, Horace has Ben wait out of sight, and tries to offer himself as the lab rat for Yzma's tests, but Ben rushes forward and says he won't let Horace do it for him. Yzma sees Ben and states that she wants to work on a child, and although Horace argues, Yzma gives Ben a bottle. She says he needs to drink it right then and there, and as Horace makes a dive to try and take it from him, Ben drinks the whole thing.

He's immediately attacked with painful muscle cramps and bizarre, terrifying visions of his skin splitting open and a monster crawling out, less like something inside him and more like a cicada shedding its skin. He gets the feeling the monster is him, and it’s been sleeping, and lately he’s been waking it up bit by bit. When he comes back to himself he’s got a nosebleed and a migraine, and he’s bruised from the seizure. Horace is holding him and murmuring softly to him, rocking him back and forth. Yzma is watching with an awful grin. She says she wants Ben to stay for the next 24 hours so she can observe the side effects. Ben and Horace argue that wasn’t the deal. She says then no medicine. She’s interrupted by a sudden miniature explosion in another room, and she takes off to deal with it. Meanwhile, Yzla sneaks in and gives Ben the meds, and tells him and Horace to go before her mom comes back.

Ben is still woozy and dazed, so Horus carries him back to the forest, and then walks with Ben the rest of the way home to make sure he gets there safely. He gets quieter and more tense the deeper into the woods they go, and when they reach the castle Horus stares hard at Ben with an unreadable expression on his face. Ben thanks him for his help and goes to climb up the rose vines like he always does, but a wave of dizziness and nausea have him falling, and Horace has to run and catch him before he breaks his neck. Ben is gagging with Mr. Horace rubbing his back when Horace suddenly freezes, says "damn it all," and jumps up. Ben is confused as to why Horace ran away until he looks up and sees his mom. The medicine bag is in plain sight, right next to Ben on the ground. Belle, horrified, asks Ben what he's done.

The effects of the drug only get worse. Ben slips in and out of consciousness, plagued by terrifying dreams of tearing off his skin and eating human flesh. He realizes he's always had similar dreams, but they were softer, less terrifying. He used to dream of being a wolf and running through the forest, soft grass under his paws. Now he's dreaming about all his bones breaking and reshaping, about eating the snake and using his teeth to tear out the throats of Jay and the boy with the green bag. There's a hunger in him. He thinks something inside him has been under tension for a while now, pressure building up, and it's finally broken.

He wakes up in bed between his parents, who are both holding him. Both of their faces are blotchy, like they'd been crying. Ben falls back to sleep. The next time he wakes up he's in bed with only his dad. Belle is in Ben's room, nailing his window shut. Ben argues with her that he's been sneaking out for months now, and this is the first time anything like this has happened. This has the opposite effect, and only makes his mom angrier. She says that Ben is never again going to set foot out of the castle. Ben says she can't keep him a prisoner. The fight escalates until they're screaming at each other. Ben has never heard his mother raise her voice before. Adam, so sick it's a struggle just to stand, manages to shuffle down the hall and slumps to his knees between them, crying. "Please," he says, grabbing onto Ben with shaking hands. "Please."

Ben knows his parents are only worried about him, but he's angry and determined to prove he can help them instead of being a burden. It takes two days before the opportunity presents itself. When both his parents are asleep, Ben sneaks down the hall to an unused parlor and climbs out the window there. He doesn't bother to close the window or either of the doors. He wants his parents to know he left. He makes it to the city and finds Horace at the usual spot. Horace is shocked to see him, then looks conflicted, but settles on worried and asks Ben if he's alright. Ben says he's fine and wants to keep working. Horace says he doesn't think Ben should keep working for LeFou, and Ben argues with him. Horace realizes Ben doesn't know who he is, and debates telling him, but ultimately decides he's safer not knowing. He tells Ben not to go near Gaston's tavern ever again. Ben doesn't understand why he's so worried, but agrees to avoid the tavern if Horace will help him find Anthony.

All Horace knows about the Tremaines is that they own and run a brothel, and he refuses to let Ben be a part of that, so he tells Ben absolutely not. He won't help Ben get himself hurt anymore. They argue, Horace pleading with Ben to just go back home and stay there. Ben is hurt and frustrated with Horace, who had never treated him like this before, and ends up running off to go find Anthony himself. He's caught up to by Harold and Jace, who say they heard what happened with Yzma a couple days ago and they've been sneaking out to follow Horace in case Ben showed up. They say they'll help Ben find Anthony, and watch his back while he does it. They get halfway to the Tremaine house before Horace comes running after them, saying his conscience won't let him leave Ben on his own. He scolds his son and nephew for being out this late, but ultimately just sighs and agrees to go see if the Tremaines have any work fit for a child. He makes Ben promise that if the job is "things of an adult nature," that Ben will go home for now and let Mr. Horace find him different work in a week's time.

At the Tremaine place, the boys are forced to wait outside while Horace goes to talk to the adults. Jace jokes about the brothel and ends up having to explain to Ben what that is. Harold scolds him for talking that way about Miss Anastasia. Jace hunches guiltily and apologizes. They explain to Ben that Miss Anastasia basically raised most of the kids on the isle, running a sort of unofficial daycare, and has always done her best to make sure they're all fed and taken care of, no matter who their parents are. Ben says he'd like to meet her. The Badun boys enthusiastically agree. After a few minutes, Jace says he's curious about what's taking so long, and after debating the boys decide to sneak in and eavesdrop. They end up hearing part of Horace's conversation with Anastasia Tremaine, and it becomes clear after a moment that they're talking about Ben's parents. Ben figures out that Anastasia must have been his parent's "guest," the person who brought them food and medicine and other necessary supplies when he was younger. Ben wonders why she stopped, and wants to go ask her about it, but Anastasia makes it clear that she won't allow Anthony to work with Ben. The boys are confused, but Horace says he understands, and wishes Anastasia well. The boys rush outside before they're caught. Horace says there's nothing for Ben here, and asks him to go home. Ben argues that since the issue isn't "things of an adult nature," then his promise doesn't apply, and he doesn't have to keep it. Horace starts to scold Ben, but Ben is tired of running around with nothing concrete to show for it, and tired of the adults in his world talking around something that clearly has to do with him. He turns around and marches right into the house to confront Anastasia.

He says that he knows Anastasia used to help his parents, and demands to know why she stopped. Anastasia explains that she has children, and if she'd been caught helping his family, her family would have been in danger. Ben realizes someone on the isle really, really doesn't like his parents, and he's starting to have suspicions about why that is. All the commotion draws Anthony out of his room, and he and Ben make eye contact. Anastasia sends Anthony away and kicks the boys out. As they're leaving, a paper airplane falls from the window. When Ben opens it, it's from Anthony, saying he has a job for the night. Despite Horace's hand-wringing, Ben goes. Horace tries to accompany him, but a very drunk Jasper shows up, screaming for his brother and wayward son. Horace has no choice but to get his boys home and see to whatever Cruella wants before she takes it out on Carlos.

Ben meets Anthony at the same place he met him last time, and with him is Gizelle, who Anthony explains is also looking for work. Anthony tells them they're going to help him steal something from Gaston. Ben is hesitant, he remembers Horace saying he shouldn't go near that man anymore, and with his new suspicions about his parents he's doubly reluctant. Gizelle seems thrilled, and when Ben asks why she's so excited, she explains that she's Gaston's daughter, and she hates him. Ben decides anybody who's own kid is willing to betray them like that must be a bad guy. He approaches Gaston's tavern to ask for work that night as a distraction, while Gizelle goes upstairs to where her family lives and picks a fight with the twins to keep her dad's eyes off Ben. LeFou is surprised to see him, and says he doesn't have any work for Ben that night. Ben asks if he can help clean or something. LeFou puts him to work scrubbing counters, and a moment later LeFou is called away to help deal with the Gizelle fight. Ben lets Anthony into the tavern. Everything seems to be going well until Gaston throws Gizelle down the stairs. He follows her down, drags her through the tavern, and begins to beat her, which neither Ben nor Anthony can just ignore. Ben lights the kitchen on fire as a distraction while Anthony throws a bar stool at Gaston. They manage to get Gizelle out of there. She's injured, and Gaston saw Anthony's face, so they can't take her to the Tremaine place. Ben reluctantly suggests they go to his parents and hide her there. Anthony asks Ben if he knows who his parents are. Ben is silent for a minute before saying he thinks he might.

They take Gizelle to the castle, and Ben's folks are furious but more preoccupied with the injured girl. They patch Gizelle up, and when his parents get ready to yell at him again Ben cuts them off to say that he's going to keep going out, and trying to help however he can, and it isn't about his parents anymore. It's about himself, and his friends, and the other kids on the isle. He asks them both to please be honest with him and explain who they are and what's going on. They both tell him he's too young, and to leave it alone. Ben is furious with them for refusing to tell him the truth, even when he's obviously figured it out. He decides to make it on his own as much as possible.

As Gizelle heals, Anthony and Ben discuss their options. Anthony doesn’t care about Ben’s family -- as long as it stays a secret then Anthony will keep working with him. Ben’s resolve to stay away from his parents is solidified. He says he’ll leave the castle and make a name for himself, and Anthony says that he’ll have a hard time doing that alone. Ben thinks of Gizelle being beat by her father, and how scared Carlos is of his mother, and the scars he’s seen on some of his friends, and says he won’t be doing it alone. Ben decides to make his own gang. He knows his parents are going to try and lock him up again, and asks Anthony to help him stage a jailbreak. Anthony agrees, and leaves the castle while Belle and Adam are distracted yelling at Ben.

The next day, Anthony shows up with Jace, Harold and Carlos. Gizelle is still unconscious, so they can't risk taking her away, but Ben resolves to come back for her and, in the meantime, his friends break him out. Ben's first order of business is to find shelter, since he refuses to put his friends at risk by harboring him. As they're wandering he spots Yzla getting into a fight with a batch of older kids, and jumps in to help her. She thanks him and says they're even now. Since she isn't doing anything else that night she decides to tag along. As the group is looking for good hiding places they once again come across the tower and, after a moment, Ben sends a paper airplane up through the window, asking her if she's okay. After a moment the girl writes back, introducing herself as Ginny and explaining that she's not allowed to leave the tower. Ben, furious at the isle at large and at parents who lock up their children specifically, asks her if she wants help escaping. He doesn't get an answer.

After vowing to come back for her, Ben impulsively decides to go find Claudine and make the same offer to her. Anthony reveals he’s been working with Claudine for a while now, having her spy on the cult in exchange for information about the outside world. Anthony’s French is choppy though, and they have limited interaction. Ben, seeing his opportunity, offers to be a go-between for the two of them. Anthony accepts, but says that doesn’t help Ben find somewhere to lay low, and they should all get some sleep soon. Ben agrees. Harold offers his house, and though Ben argues again, he accepts it as a temporary measure. Mr. Horace is angry with Ben, but he can’t leave him on the street. He lets Ben stay the night.

Ben wakes up early the next morning to the sound of screaming, and rushes across the property to see Cruella beating Carlos. He breaks one of her windows to stage a distraction, then runs around the house and drags Carlos out. He learns Cruella is Carlos’s mother, and this treatment is normal, and his anger grows. Horace finds the two of them hiding in Carlos’s treehouse, and tells them both to run before Cruella realizes they’ve gone. He says he’ll take the hit for Carlos, who hugs him. With the two of them back on the street, the hunt for a place for Ben starts up again.

Ben rounds up his friends and they all come together to discuss options, when Miles says he might know somebody who can help -- a kid named Eddie who owes him a favor. He says Eddie won’t cooperate unless they have something to pay him in exchange, which they don’t, so they have no choice but to threaten him. Miles gets his crocs and the rest of the crew get together to track down the Balthazars. They find Eddie in his house, beaten to hell and back and with his leg in a cast. It kind of takes the wind out of everybody’s sails, and Ben immediately goes White Knight, which inspires Harold and Yzla to offer to patch him up. Eddie refuses, and puts on a brave face, but he’s clearly terrified of having all of them in his house. Ben asks who hurt him like this, thinking of his parents, and Eddie tells him Mal and her gang didn’t like him sniffing around. Ben tells Eddie he has beef with them too, and offers to help protect him against them. Before Eddie can answer, the door flies open and Gizelle marches in, looking pissed. She punches Ben in the face for leaving her alone at the castle. Ben apologizes, and Eddie asks what the gang would want in exchange for their protection. Ben explains that he needs somewhere to stay. Eddie tells him about a rumor -- a group of strange children living in the sewers -- and Gizelle goes “You mean the Orphans?”

Gizelle takes Ben to the sewers, where he meets Jabberjaw and Apex, two young orphan kids who explain the rules of the tunnels to him. He swears he won’t cause them any trouble, and that he’ll keep their secrets. Ben asks who else knows about them, and is told that not many people do. No adults are allowed to know, and no gangs looking for domination are allowed to know. Ben says that’s fair, and asks if the orphans know anywhere he could stay. They tell him no, sorry. Ben asks if any of the tunnels get close to the church, and he’s led down a passage that puts him right near Claudine’s place. He sneaks across the field like he did before, climbs up the wall and through an open window, and sneaks through the house. He sees her being raped by her father.

Ben is disgusted and infuriated, and wants to let out his rage on the priest -- but before he can, he’s grabbed by two cultists, who threaten to kill him for interfering. He and Claudine make eye contact, and Ben sees the same rage in her eyes that he feels. He silently vows that he’ll help her get out of here. He’ll help all of his friends. He’ll kill anyone who tries to hurt these kids. He feels the strange, terrible, animal thing inside him lift its head and snarl. As the cultists try to drag him off Ben has an out-of-body experience and savages one of the cultists, tearing out his throat with his teeth. The shock is enough to have the other one drop him, and that gives Ben time to pull out his knife, stab the other man in the heart, and run for the window. As he makes it to safety he hears Claudine laughing behind him.

Ben, bloody and still furious, wanders aimlessly in the city, trying to let out some of his aggression. He realizes he has work for LeFou that night, and decides he might as well get some food to start his own stock. He doesn’t bother washing the blood off. When he gets there, though, Gaston is waiting for him. He sees Anthony, bloody and slumped over in the corner, and Ben flies into a rage. Gaston breaks his arm and drags him through the city, loudly declaring who he is -- he got the information from Anthony. Ben sees Horace rush out of the casino and freeze, wide-eyed and terrified. Horace’s face shifts into determination, but Ben shakes his head. He mouths “don’t.” Horace reluctantly goes still. Gaston drags Ben all the way to the castle, and his parents are forced to watch as he’s tortured. That’s the first time Ben dies.

When Ben wakes up, he's once again in-between his parents, and once again he can tell they've been crying. He says he knew they were lying about who they were, and asks them to tell him the truth. They finally explain who they are, and about making the isle, and the strange events that led them to be sent there -- how they stationed a man named Yen Sid to look after the isle inhabitants, and he sent them frequent reports that seemed like everything was fine. By the time they realized the reports were being doctored, Queen Leah and King Stephen had already come forward with "proof" that Belle and Adam had been the ones responsible. Ben thinks of the kingdom he’s seen over the horizon, and tries to be angry, but he’s too tired. He closes his eyes and goes back to sleep. For the next few days Ben heals bit by bit, and barely talks to his parents. One day there’s a knock at the door, and it’s Carlos and the Badun boys. Ben exhaustedly tells them they shouldn’t be here, but Carlos says friends should take care of each other, and where he goes the Baduns follow. Ben’s parents watch their interactions in silence for a few moments, before Ben explains his history with Carlos. His dad wordlessly stands up and leaves the room.

Ben continues to heal, but the house grows increasingly tense. His existence has whipped the isle into a new fury, and already villains have begun trying to storm the castle. There’s no guarantee how long it’ll be before someone manages to break in. It’s too dangerous for the Badun boys to leave, and Horace can’t get to them through the mob. Ben thinks of the night at the barge, and suggests they throw something down onto the people to hurt them. His parents are horrified, but Carlos and the Baduns agree that it’s a good idea. Jace suggests molotov cocktails, but Ben doesn’t want to risk a forest fire. Two days later storm clouds roll in, and Ben decides that’ll be perfect. They open fire on the crowd and send them scattering, and Ben’s parents rush upstairs to see him and the boys celebrating. Belle looks like she might puke. Adam is completely stone-faced.

With the mob driven away for now, the boys and Ben can safely leave the castle. His parents are hugely against it. Ben says they can’t keep him prisoner -- he won’t let them -- and the fight escalates until he pulls his knife on his dad and tells him that if he lays a hand on him Ben will stab him. With no other choice, his folks let him leave, Belle begging him to stay the whole time. Ben immediately regrets what he did, but he knows he can't stay hidden in the castle forever. He sends Carlos and the Baduns away for their own protection, and promises to meet up with them once he has a place to stay. He's barely made it out of the woods before he's jumped and forced to defend himself. The Orphans won't take him back to their base, but they take pity on him and let him hide out in the sewer. Ben can barely go topside for more than minutes at a time before he's attacked and forced to retreat again, and he can't ask any of his friends if they'll take the risk to stand by him because he can't find them because he can't leave the goddamn sewer. With few other options, Ben takes to wandering the tunnels, mapping them out. He stumbles across the exit that leads to the church compound, and decides if he can't help himself he's at least going to help Claudine, and starts trying to think of ways to leave a message for her. She can't read or write, so he settles on climbing the wall and leaving a bloody handprint on her window. Because the cult is so heavily regimented, it’s easy to skulk around and learn their habits, and Ben is able to start sneaking up to the bell tower pretty easily. He finds Claudine waiting for him the next night, and the two discuss her running away with him. She doesn’t so much as hesitate, just asks him where they’ll go. She isn’t allowed to leave the church, and they check regularly to see where she is at all times. They’ll notice if she breaks her schedule. Ben says he’ll think of a distraction, and tells her to run for the tunnel when everything goes belly-up. She refuses, and demands to be part of her own rescue. After some brainstorming, they decide on setting the church on fire. Again, Claudine laughs as she runs. They make it to the tunnels unscathed, and Ben leads her to his little nest.

Ben explains his situation to Claudine, who says that since nobody outside the church even knows she exists, nobody will be looking for her like they are for him, and she could go and find his friends. The only problem is that she doesn’t speak English. Ben writes a note for her to show them, helps her pronounce their names, gives her his map, and warns her to be careful. Claudine takes his knife from him and says she won’t let anyone put their hands on her. Ben watches her leave, then puts his head on his knees and starts crying. He isn’t really sure why, he just feels like he can’t keep it in anymore. He wants to go home.

Claudine comes back with Gizelle, who again punches Ben before hugging him and saying she was worried sick. Claudine smugly tells Ben that Gizelle speaks French, and Gizelle says duh. She explains that her dad has the whole isle going crazy, and after the rain of fire villains just kept going back to the castle. As far as she knows nobody has gotten in yet, but it’s getting bad. Ben realizes that just walking away from his parents won't keep them safe, but he also doesn’t know how to protect them. Gizelle says she’s willing to help him but she doesn’t know about anyone else. Ben tells her about Carlos and the Baduns. Gizelle says that still doesn’t make an army, and they’ll need one to protect themselves and each other, as well as Ben’s folks.

Gizelle and Claudine leave to round up the rest of the gang, and Ben again sulks alone in the tunnel, wracking his brain to try and figure out what to do. He thinks of Mal, and how afraid of her everyone is, and wonders if he could ever convince her to help. He doesn’t want to ask her, but the more he thinks about it the more he realizes he may not have a choice -- he needs the strongest allies that he can get. Gizelle and Claudine return with the whole squad -- Carlos, Harold, Jace, Miles, Yzla and Eddie, and Ben is shocked to tears to see everybody came looking for him, even Eddie and Yzla who don’t know him well. Eddie reluctantly admits that Ben immediately trying to help him when he’d found him injured was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him, and it seemed like a shame to let someone like that die, then immediately backtracks and puts on a show about how a proper gentleman comports himself with class and it would be tacky to abandon Ben. Yzla says Ben has "good vibes" and she "likes his moxy" and it's really that simple. They go around the circle, everyone explaining their reasons for deciding to watch Ben’s back, and after getting emotional about it Ben explains his plan. Eddie tells him that Mal is vulnerable right now -- she and Jay split from Harry and Uma a couple weeks ago, and nobody has seen her since. She’ll have to either concede to Ben’s challenge or bow to his authority. Ben says that’s perfect.

The next morning Ben leaves the tunnel for the first time in days, and the gang runs interference, keeping people off his back long enough for him to make his way to Dead Man’s Drop, a cliff on the side of the sleeping mountain that overlooks the whole isle. It’s dangerous to reach, but Ben is very good at climbing by now, and he makes it up there and manages to crudely spray paint Unleash The Beast over Mal’s Long Live Evil tag. Much smaller, Ben paints a meeting location, then sneaks down from the mountain and returns to the tunnel. It isn’t Mal who shows up at the meeting place, but Jay, who nearly flies into a rage until Ben explains that he’s seeking protection and wants to ally himself with him and Mal. Jay tells Ben he’s a liability, worthless, and that he and Mal don’t do charity. Ben asks what it would take to prove himself, and Jay basically says that if Ben can’t even walk in public with his head high then he’s never going to be worth the trouble. Ben goes to his friends and tells them what happened. He asks them to train him.

Training montage, the rest of the month is spent teaching Ben how to properly use a knife and Yzla gives him poisons and he and Gizelle fistfight a lot. Ben has increasingly vivid dreams about his inner beast, and on Eddie’s suggestion begins trying to meditate. It isn’t nearly enough, but when the school year starts back up again Ben tells Jace and Harold he wants to come with them. Carlos builds Ben a taser.

First day of school, Ben gets beat to death by the Gaston twins and other kids. He manages to lay a few decent hits, but he still wakes up later to find the Baduns had patched him up and dragged him somewhere safe. Ben has a vague thought that he was dreaming again, about that animal thing inside him. Again, Ben goes to school. Again, he’s tormented and abused and harmed. Killed. Dr. Facilier and Yen Sid seem to take pity on him, chasing the other kids away when he’s attacked, but none of the other teachers care, and Ben goes through hell for two weeks before Evie shows up.

Evie, the mysterious princess, who was locked in her castle and only recently allowed free. Ben immediately thinks of the similarities between the two of them. Shockingly, kids seem pretty interested in Evie -- enough so that they leave Ben alone. That night, Carlos tells Ben that Evie is his neighbor, and he hears a lot of screaming coming from her castle at night. He’s started leaving notes for her in her window, because he feels bad. Evie has started sending her own notes in return, and they might be friends. Ben is happy for Carlos.

Evie’s arrival takes the heat off Ben and he manages to go a whole week without dying. He’s just starting to think things will be okay when Mal comes back. She immediately goes for Evie, revealing they have some history and that she’s the reason Evie was locked away. Ben, never able to keep his head down, tells Mal to leave Evie alone. Mal says that arguing with her isn’t very likely to make her take Ben under her wing. Ben says he won’t mindlessly obey anyone, and that he’d like to work with Mal but he won’t let her bully people who did nothing wrong, either. Mal sneers at him and asks what makes him think his dick is big enough to talk to her that way, and Ben argues back that he doesn’t need her permission to be here. He’s interested in a partnership, not servitude. Before the two can get into a fight, class begins, and Evie quietly thanks Ben. For the sake of honesty, Ben tells Evie about his parents. She pulls away from him, and he reassures her that he isn’t offended if she doesn’t want to be friends. He knows it’s dangerous. But if she needs help she can come find him and he’ll watch her back. Evie thanks him again and tells him she’ll think about it, then walks away.

After school Ben is again jumped by the twins, and this time he fully gives into the beast, managing to tear out one of their eyes (The left eye on Gaston the third) and kill them both. He decides it’s time for him to go home. By now the mob has realized they can’t get inside and cleared out, so there’s no one to stop Ben from approaching the castle. He bangs on the door to be let in, and presents his parents with the eye of Gaston’s son. His mother is horrified. Ben snaps that he’s trying to prove they don’t need to protect him -- that he wants to protect them, that this isn’t a threat or a way to hurt them but an attempt to make them safe so they don’t have to hide in the castle anymore. Furious, Ben turns to leave again, but is stopped by his dad, who says he can come and go however he wants. They’ll let him go to school and hang out with his friends and do whatever he’d like, and he can stay and sleep and eat at the castle. Be a part of this family. Ben agrees. He says he has friends who have nowhere to stay, and his parents say they can come over to, if he’d like that. Ben goes to find Claudine and Eddie and Miles and the others, and extend the offer to them. Along the way he stops to send a letter up to Ginny, and once again asks her if she’d like help getting out of the tower. For the first time, she answers him out loud. “Please. Yes. God, please.” Ben says he’ll get her out and goes to get his friends.

While the crew are heading back to the castle, Ben is approached by Jay, who says he heard about the fight with the twins and the argument with Mal. Ben asks what about it. Jay eyes him quietly for a minute, then says there’s one more person Ben needs to convince, not just him or Mal. Ben asks who. Jay tells him to figure it out. Ben thinks about it, and remembers the dark skinned boy he stole the green bag from and hasn’t seen since.

At the castle, Ben’s parents are at first wary and hesitant around the kids, who are cautious and quiet in return. But there’s food on the table and bandages to pass around, and Ben refuses to let things get too weird. He’s determined to make this work somehow. He explains the dark-skinned boy, and only Eddie has any idea who he’s talking about. It’s just a rumor, but… there’s a kid on the isle who can’t die, they say. A child of death itself. A demigod. Ben explains he needs to find the kid, and somehow earn his… respect, his trust. His approval. Everybody agrees it sounds fucking impossible. Ben says they’ll worry about the how later -- for now, he needs to find the kid. That’s step one. Everyone settles in to discuss their options for how to even begin tracking the kid down. Eddie takes point, arranges the group to be spies and secret-hunters. That evening, they all disperse through the isle, looking for clues.

Ben goes back to the shed. He crawls inside, and almost loses a hand to the booby trap that’s been set by the entrance. He isn’t sure how he knew it was there in the dark, or how he managed to avoid it. He tries not to think about it too hard. Inside the shed he actually takes the time to pay attention to all the clothes and shoes, the stash of food, the weapons. A journal. He realizes the kid must come here pretty often, actually, and that he might be able to wait for him here. He just as quickly decides he doesn’t want to be crammed in a tiny space with the kid. Ben decides to leave a note, like he did with Mal, explaining he’d like to meet and when and where.

The kid doesn't show up to the meeting place. Dejected, Ben and the others agree that they can multitask, and focus on both building Ben's reputation and finding the kid at the same time. Their next order of business is to free Ginny Gothel from the tower. Because of the bars on her windows, it's not as simple as just busting her out and sneaking her down the side of the tower. They’re going to need to keep Mother Gothel distracted for long enough to get in and get Ginny out, which will be difficult, because she notoriously doesn’t leave unless she absolutely has to.

By now Ben has put together two and two, and realized his parents have told him stories about basically every single person on this island. He tries to remember what he knows of Gothel and the story of Rapunzel. He asks Yzla if she could trick the old woman into thinking she has a potion that would help make her young again, and after some thinking Yzla says she might be able to pull it off, but she thinks she remembers Gothel and her mom getting into a huge fight when she was younger specifically because her mom tried the same scam. Claudine asks if they couldn’t just break in and kill the old woman. Ben says they probably could, but she wouldn’t stay dead, and he doesn’t actually want to go around killing people randomly. The crew agrees to keep working on it.

The next day at school, Ben is sitting in the class he shares with Evie when he remembers that she’s the daughter of the Evil Queen, a woman who is also known to be obsessed with youth and beauty. Ben immediately goes to Carlos to ask about the Queen, and Carlos explains that she hasn’t left her castle in years as far as anyone knows, since she and Evie both were under house arrest. Ben says that’s perfect. After school, Ben approaches Evie and tells her what’s going on with Ginny -- he explains that he, too, was locked away in his parent’s castle for most of his life, and that Ginny has specifically asked for help escaping. Evie is visibly sympathetic, but tells Ben she doesn’t know if she wants the trouble of what he’s dealing with. Ben is dejected, but accepts that that’s reasonable, and says he’d appreciate it if she'd at least consider it. Evie says she’ll keep it in mind, and the two part ways. The group once again comes together to discuss their options. There are no new leads on finding the mysterious demigod kid, and Mal and Jay have once again disappeared. Gizelle and Claudine, who have made it a point to hang around the tower as much as possible, report that they’ve been hearing what sounds like pleading coming from inside. The tower is too slick to climb up and peer in, but the last time Ginny sent them a note, Claudine says she got a glimpse of the girl through the window, and she looked bruised and half starved.

That night, Ben is woken by a tapping at his window, and rises to find Carlos, battered and trembling. Carlos explains that his mom is extra angry at him, and he can’t stay with her or Horace for the night. Ben of course welcomes him in, and they cuddle like they did before. As Ben lies awake holding Carlos, he feels anger at the whole situation boiling over in him and thinks maybe he wouldn’t mind killing certain people after all. The thought scares him, and he lies awake for hours trembling, wondering if he’s losing himself to his rage and the animal thing inside him.

The next day, too torn between fear and anger to sit still, Ben skips school to wander the isle, completing his maps and getting a better layout of everything as well as trying to clear his head. He keeps his hood up and his face covered, and goes unnoticed. Eventually he comes across the marketplace, where he’s been only once before on a delivery. He sees Evie examining the jewelry stalls. He’s about to go on his way when a couple of adult men approach her. The men begin catcalling and harassing Evie. Ben decides to stay and watch for a bit, just to make sure she’s okay. When Evie attempts to leave and one of the men grabs her by her wrist and instead tries to drag her back, Ben steps forward. He stabs the first man in the back of the leg, where Harold showed him the tendon was, cutting his hamstring. The men are bigger and stronger than he is, and the other one nearly manages to strangle Ben, but Evie pulls a vial of acid from her purse and pours it on the man’s head. The two men are left lying on the ground in the middle of the marketplace, both permanently disabled.

Evie and Ben duck into an alley and catch their breath. By the time Ben is able to breathe enough to ask if she’s okay, Evie is already speaking. She tells Ben she’ll help him. Ben frowns at her, and says that’s not why he helped her, and she was right to be worried about the danger. Evie says that the market was full of people -- dozens and dozens of people -- and any one of them could have stepped in and done something about those men, but they didn’t. This isn’t the first time they’ve harassed her, though it is the first time they got physical with her, and from the way they talked she wasn’t the first girl they’ve tried to hurt. Out of everyone there, only Ben was willing to step up. That’s why she wants to help him.

Ben is grateful. He takes Evie to the place he and his friends have been meeting up -- a hole in the wall hiding spot Gizelle found -- and they wait there for everyone to arrive. The two talk about life on the isle, and Ben comes to the realization that even though his parents never specifically said they were raising him to be a prince, they still very much raised him with all the etiquette and behaviors of a prince. He’s not sure if he’s annoyed by that or just finds it funny. He and Evie spend the afternoon playing royals, and pretend they’re at a lavish ball. They’re attempting to waltz when the rest of the group shows up.

In a much-needed moment of lightheartedness, everyone gets bullied into dancing. The rest of the evening passes with the kids speaking in increasingly silly posh accents and attempting increasingly silly dance moves with increasingly silly names. While most of the kids are stiff and awkward at first, they eventually do loosen up, and everyone has fun. Ben, sitting in on a rusted metal grate and overseeing the ball like a king on his throne, has the thought that this is the life his friends deserve, and he’s going to do everything he can to give them a world where they don’t look over their shoulders when they laugh too loud, like they’re afraid of someone hearing them and punishing them for being happy.

With Evie now on their side, the group comes up with a plan to approach Gothel about a supposed alliance offer between her and Grimhilde. Ben and the others stay hidden while Evie knocks on the door to the tower and introduces herself. Gothel is skeptical, but lets her in. They talk for some time before Evie leaves again. She walks a few blocks away from the tower to avoid Gothel seeing her speaking with Ben and the others, then tells them Gothel seems cautiously optimistic -- she’s too shrewd to just believe what Evie tells her, but she’s as much of a beauty maniac as Evie’s mom, and approaching her under the guise of “nobody else on this island can relate to the importance of youth and beauty, and surely together the two of you can find a solution to your shared struggle” had the intended effect. Gothel knows about Grimhilde’s Maleficent-imposed house arrest, and has agreed to go and see her that night. The kids lie in wait until she leaves, then Gizelle and Claudine jump her and get the keys to the tower (the boys all felt weird about beating up an old lady and Yzla and Evie were keeping watch.)

Inside the tower they find Ginny Gothel, who it turns out doesn’t just have bars on her window. There’s an iron shackle on her ankle, chaining her to the bed which has been welded to the floor. It’s long enough for her to walk around the room, but no farther than that. She’s stick-thin and clearly horribly starved. At the sight of her, Ben hears a roaring in his ears, and again has an out-of-body experience. This time he turns around and walks back down the stairs of the tower to where Gothel is lying. He cuts her throat while she’s still unconscious.

Ginny is flinchy and timid and terrified, but they unlock her and help her gather her meager belongings. When she sees her mother she cries, but mostly because she’s so overwhelmed. She’s so weak from hunger that she struggles to walk down the street, and certainly wouldn’t make it to the castle. Harold Badun gives her a piggyback ride. Everyone is quiet and gentle with her. She shakes like a chihuahua all the way to the castle, where Ben immediately puts her in the kitchen. His parents are asleep by now, so Ben goes about getting Ginny food. Evie talks him through what sort of things she can eat, and only in small portions, while they build her appetite back up. Gizelle curiously asks why Evie knows that. She goes quiet, and Miles wordlessly reaches over to put a hand on her shoulder.

By the next morning the whole isle has heard that Mother Gothel was tricked and her daughter “kidnapped” though most people don’t believe it was Evie’s doing, as she’d have no motive. Ginny is left in the care of Ben’s parents (who were both horrified at the state of the girl) and Ben decides to go to school. Evie, Carlos and the Baduns go as well, while the rest of the group go off to do their own things and continue trying to track down that mysterious demigod kid.

Jay, who hasn’t been seen since his confrontation with Ben, shows up at the school half way through the day and disrupts class by walking right up to Ben and Evie. He doesn’t say anything, just crosses his arms and regards them both with an unreadable expression on his face. After a short staring contest, Jay says “huh,” and turns and leaves. Ben stares after him, perplexed.

After class, Ben returns to the hideout where the rest of the gang meet up. He’s just begun to ask what everyone did with their day when the Badun boys and Miles suddenly jump up, arming themselves. Ben and others jump as well, and turn to see what had them so on edge. It turns out Jay followed Ben and Evie from school, and is now looking at the group with sharp eyes. Jace starts to demand to know what Jay wants, but Ben stops him, and tells Jay that if wanted to come over he could have asked. He invites Jay inside. After a moment, Jay declines, and says he can’t stick around, but he heard they’ve been looking for someone, and he happens to know where that someone is.

Ben asks Jay what he wants for the information. Jay, after another moment of simply staring at everyone, says that it’s free this time, but he’ll only give it to Ben, and Ben needs to go alone. If he tries to bring his “little wolf pack” Jay isn’t the only person who will come for him. Despite general protest from the gang, Ben agrees. Jay gives Ben a location and a time, then leaves. After a moment of silence, Miles says “Does anybody understand what the fuck just happened?” The general consensus is that no, nobody knows what’s going on. However, Gizelle’s hideout is compromised.

Nearly a full week later, Ben follows Jay’s instructions to a part of the island he’s never been to before, a cave in the side of the Sleeping Mountain that opens into a set of stone stairs, spiraling downwards. The air feels heavy and smells of sulfur. Ben follows the stairs down into the dark, and eventually comes out into a small room. There are more stairs, spiraling deeper and deeper underground, but the mysterious demigod boy is waiting for him here in the first chamber. Or… maybe not a boy? The kid is wearing a dress. Ben doesn’t ask. He does ask the kid’s name, and is told that it’s Hadie. As in, Hades. As in, lord of the underworld and ruler of the dead.

Ben politely introduces himself. Hadie stares at him in silent bafflement, and asks if he’s intimidated. Ben answers honestly that he’s been so scared for so long that he’s basically numb to it now. Hadie, seeming perplexed but also almost impressed, asks Ben what he wants. When Ben says he needs to ally himself with someone powerful, she cuts him off, and tells him to start from the very beginning.

Ben does. He explains the whole story to her, start to finish, and includes some things he hasn’t mentioned to even his friends, like how the food scores are dwindling again and how he’s still having to constantly defend himself from attacks and how he loves his friends and appreciates everything they’ve done for him but unless they all manage to actually gain some kind of foothold all they’ve done is lump together a bunch of mouths to feed. He realizes he’s rambling, and tries to stop, but Hadie turns out to be an excellent listener.

When he’s finally finished, Hadie asks him what he’d do with Mal’s allyship. Ben starts to explain his goals of keeping his friends and parents safe, but Hadie cuts him off. She means what does he intend to do about Mal. Ben frowns, thoughtfully, and after a while remembers his first impression of her all those weeks ago, laughing with her friends in the dark after dumping paint on a pirate. He answers honestly that he’s not sure he likes her, she’s so rough and mean to people who don’t deserve it, but he doesn’t think she’s terrible, either, and if they’d be working together obviously they would need to figure out how to get along. He finally settles on saying he thinks he’d like to try to be her friend, if she’d be okay with that. She seems like maybe she needs more friends. Hadie stares at him for a very long time. Then, slowly, she smiles.

Hadie explains to Ben that she is going to give him an impossible task, and if he succeeds, not only will Mal and Jay be forced to agree to partner with Ben, but Hadie herself will officially put Ben, his friends, and his parents under her protection. The task is this: Find a way into Maleficent’s castle, and steal the object mounted above the doorway in the grand hall.

Here we have The Plot Hole; I do not know how Ben and the kids manage to pull this off. However, they do, after a significant amount of planning and more bonding time among everybody, manage to get Ben inside. The object mounted above the doorway turns out to be a pair of small, dried, leathery wings. Baffled, Ben stares at them for a very long time before he remembers the first time he saw Mal, the strange shape on her back. He realizes these were hers. Then he throws up.

Of course, because nothing is simple, Ben ends up trapped in the castle with Maleficent and her goons all looking for him, and the rest of the squad need to team up to free him. Everyone gets an impressive moment to shine, and in the end they come out the other end all alive and intact. When everyone asks what Ben stole, he shows the wings. The kids who hadn’t been trapped in either a tower or a terrible church up until recently all remark that yeah, they knew Mal had wings, they hadn’t really paid attention to the fact that she. Didn’t seem to have them, anymore. Rumor on the isle is that she’s grown enough to sort of tuck them away now. There’s a somber moment when everyone comes to the same conclusion: That Mal, like them, is just a kid with a shitty parent, doing what she needs to do to stay safe.

The gang meets with Jay, Hadie and Mal in the warehouse the three of them are using as their lair, called The Dragon’s Den. Ben presents Mal the wings. Mal is cold and distant, holding herself above everyone else, but Ben has decided he’s going to befriend her if it kills him, and doesn’t let that get to him. He and the others are all officially welcomed into the gang. Mal tells them they don’t have time to celebrate, and that if they want any kind of power or safety, they’ll need more than the name. They need to actually go out and make reputations for themselves. People need to fear and respect them as individuals, not just as Mal’s allies.

Ben says he’s got some ideas for that. Under the watchful eyes of his new pack, Ben rolls out his map of the isle, and asks some questions, double-checking information he’s gained so far about how death on the isle works; what can be recovered, what can’t, and the known ways to permanently kill someone (burning or devouring the body until nothing is left. Even decapitation doesn’t always work.) With that confirmed, Ben explains that he’s been paying attention to the politics of everything -- not just among the kids, but their parents too. They all have their own alliances, powerful and long-established, or else they’re so reclusive and well-fortified there’s almost no point in going after them. A lot of the adults are simply out of reach of the kids, even if they could somehow pull off the attack, the adult’s allies would retaliate. They need to start with a bang, but it needs to be contained.

Mal looks surprised and impressed with Ben’s tactics. Ben preens a bit under her gaze, but ultimately turns away from her. He taps the map where he marked Frollo’s cult compoint, and locks eyes with Claudine. Ben asks how she feels about seeing her father and all of his flock reduced to ash.

Wordlessly, Claudine grins.

Yikes okay so present chapter stuff which is significantly shorter since this is the point where I gave up on the rewrite but the main plot points are still intact.

Everything about present chapters stays the same, mostly, however, there’s more mention of… weirdness. Nothing overt, but Ben becomes increasingly aware that it isn’t just the people on the isle behaving strangely. The fish in the available parts of the water are mutated and dying, animals are acting out, there are odd growths on the plants in the forest. This all quietly happens in the background, Ben and the others focused on the main issues at hand, but there are subtle mentions that the isle itself is on some weirdness.

Present day plot plays out as a mystery story -- Uma, Gaston, and Harriet Hook are the main Red Herrings. The group are trying to find out who’s after them and also scrambling to finish Carlos’s machine, which will theoretically if it works break a hole in the barrier which they, their friends, and the few adults they like can escape through. As the gang keeps being attacked and finding new reasons to grow weary and distrustful of everyone around them, the isle weirdness increases until it’s impossible to keep ignoring. Uma, Harry, Mal and Jay overcome their differences and begin working together when it becomes clear that the pirates and unseelie have been purposely pit against each other. Belle and Adam catch on that their son and his friends are in even more danger than usual and, after some discussion, decide that it’s time to stop hiding behind Ben. They both leave the castle for the first time in years, and offer to help the kids in whatever ways they can. Yen Sid reaches out to them and tells them concerning news -- the barrier itself is fine, but the ambient magic within the barrier is growing increasingly tainted. Something distinctly demonic floats in the air.

More and more of the unseelie, as well as Uma’s pirate crew, are picked off. It seems as soon as someone returns from the dead another is killed. Adam is killed protecting Gizelle and Gil, who both haul him back to safety.

Meanwhile Mal in particular is increasingly frenzied and distant, it becoming harder and harder to comfort her.

The gang eventually realizes that Anthony Tremaine was responsible for the initial attack at Mayhem; he was the one who threw out the generators, and convinced the Gaston twins to go back to the game. When they confront him, Anthony confesses that his sister and cousins were threatened if he didn’t comply, but that he wasn’t responsible for either digging the actual graves or helping swap out the coffins, and in fact he didn’t know that was going to happen. He just did what he had been told, which was: buy a moment of time for someone to do something, and make sure the Gaston twins were in a certain spot at a certain time. Of course, the person who threatened him turned out to be Maleficent.

The great plot is revealed: Maleficent, Jafar, Grimhilde and Cruella have been experimenting with the magic harvested from the corpses of Chernabog’s demons basically since they came to the isle. The research has been extremely slow going, due to the barrier’s nullifying effects, but they did eventually make a breakthrough: Mal. The daughter of a god and an archfey, raised on pain and seething with resentment, body pumped full of whatever sparse scraps of demonic essence Maleficent could stabilize long enough to transfer them from the demon’s bodies into Mal’s own. Walpurgisnacht, the witch’s night, the day when Chernabog would rise from his slumber if not for the barrier keeping him asleep, is also the day the wild magic under the barrier is at its most potent. The plan has always been to sacrifice Mal as a catalyst to overwhelm and shatter the barrier. Of course, doing so would kill everyone who wasn’t fast enough to escape Chernabog’s inevitable awakening, but Maleficent was pretty okay with that, actually.

The kicker was that in order for the ritual to work, the sacrifice needed to be willing. This was why Maleficent originally groomed her daughter to obey her and hate everyone else. It was the whole purpose behind cutting off her wings in the first place. When Ben and his little pack showed up and ruined everything, Maleficent simply switched goals. She allowed Mal to make friends, to become emotionally attached, even to fall in love. Then she picked them all off one by one by one, while making it abundantly clear that this was all Mal’s fault. That the people she cared for were being hurt because she dared to get close to them, driving her to desperation and making her easy to manipulate.

The big climax is Mal very nearly committing suicide, playing right into Maleficent’s hands and completing the ritual. Ben -- and later the rest of the unseelie -- manage to talk her down. Ben confesses his love, and Mal refuses to reciprocate because she’s scared, but Ben sees through her.

The half-completed ritual is enough to shake some of the demons free, however, and the squad (parents and pirates included, as well as their extended friends in the form of Ruby Heart, the Tremains, and the Faciliers) spend the rest of the night in an awful battle against creatures that will actually permanently kill them by eating them. The stakes are higher than they have ever been, and everyone is having a good time. However: They see the sunrise! Mostly. Anthony Tremaine dies. But most of them see the sunrise! The next day Maleficent and the other villains are, y’know, infuriated. The whole squad goes to reconvene in the castle, but Ben’s parents are mysteriously missing! Terrified, Ben and his friends go out to search through the carnage, but don’t find any evidence of them or their bodies. For days, the kids scour the island, but nothing comes up. Ben is eventually forced to come to terms with the idea that they probably got eaten. He mourns.

Then, roughly a month later, Maleficent’s goons (she too seemingly disappeared after Walpurgisnacht) show up out of nowhere. They grab Mal, Jay, Carlos, Evie and Ben, and drag them all to her castle. The kids are all pissed, but know better than to poke at her -- she may have failed to break the barrier, but she absolutely can still do horrible things to them, and it would be dumb to assume that sacrificing Mal was her only plan. She’s had twenty years to plot, after all. There, they find Maleficent, alongside Grimhilde, Jafar and Cruella -- as well as Ben’s parents, in chains.

After a lot of shouting, Maleficent explains that she has just received a rather curious missive from an Auradon courrier. It seems the queen-to-be is doing a charity outreach program. The five of them will be leaving tomorrow to attend Auradon prep. They will steal the fairy godmother’s wand. They will break the barrier. And they will do so before the New Year, or Ben’s parents and all of their little friends will die, permanently.

Maleficent makes eye contact with Mal, and tells her plainly that all this suffering for her friends could have been avoided if she hadn’t so selfishly chosen her life over theirs, but since this was her decision, she would have to see it through, all the way up until the end. Evie and the boys all loudly protest that it wasn’t selfish, but Mal goes silent and says she understands.

The five are able to explain the situation to the rest of the gang, who promise to do what they can from under the barrier. In the limo, Ben asks Mal what the plan is. What they’re going to do.

Mal traces her fingers over the scar on her left palm, and we’re finally explicitly told that those scars are from when she and the rest of the Unseelie all swore a blood pact to each other. They all have the same, identical scar, even Evie, who was harshly punished for it by her mother.

Mal looks at the others and says “We’re going to see it through, all the way up to the end.”

Ben looks at Auradon, in the distance but coming closer, and thinks, yes. Yes, it’s time to end all this.