Work Text
“This ain’t an application,” he says finally, “It’s a popularity contest.”
Celia snorts. It’s not like she doesn’t
know.
Dizzy got her acceptance before they even announced VK day, and she’s over at the salon writing out her application for ‘Juvenile Reunification’ just the same as the rest of them.
“Yeah, dad.” She watches him slide a tarot card out of his sleeve and flip it through his fingers as he thinks.
“You won’t win by being most popular, little rascal.” He drawls, and sets the card flat on top of the application. “You’ll win being the wild card.” He tugs on the brim of his hat and slouches back into his seat.
Celia leans forward and flips the card. The Journey stares back at her. She cuts her eyes to her dad and he raises his eyebrow in return. “Everyone gets a shot, they said. So,” she starts, and the card spins in place as she drags her finger down the list of questions and feels out the edges of the deal. She thinks a lot of kids are going to be princes on paper. But her dad said wild card. “They need to pretend this is legit, so they’ve gotta pull somebody who’s not a favorite. Someone dangerous but reformable, to make it look good.” She takes a breath. “And I’m never going to be the perfect kid, but I can make it look good.”
“You’re perfect to me, rascal.” Dad says, and he’s smiling, the way he always does when she figures it out on her own, his hands folded in front of him.
They spend the rest of the night scribbling on the back of a stack of oil stained takeout menus to figure out how to best make her look like a product of her environment without actually lying. Her tongue pokes out of her mouth as she writes out her final answers on the actual application in her second neatest handwriting, just sloppy enough that the people reading can’t forget that a kid wrote it, and then squints at the
Parental Signature
section. Her nose wrinkles and she waits for the ink to dry before she passes the paper over to her dad.
“I still don’t like that.” She says, the late hour making it come out as a whine, and slouches back. The tulle in her skirt rustles at the motion. She digs her fingernail into the chipping green paint on her chair. “A lot of forgery isn’t going to hold up.” Her dad hums and nods seriously.
“Good instincts.” He says, and picks up a different colored pen to sign his name, large and showy, over the indicated line. It looks nothing like her handwriting, because it isn’t. Ginny Gothel won’t be that lucky.
*
The application is folded carefully in thirds and tucked in the small of her back, under her jacket. Celia can feel it against her spine every time she moves. It’s the only reason she isn’t checking on it every couple minutes, even knowing that it’s a tell for pickpockets. She keeps her steps light and her eyes open as she dodges through the crowds in the streets and makes her way toward Curl Up and Dye. She adjusts her route two blocks out, when she catches a glimpse of the telltale yellow and blue of the Auradon guard. She ducks into the shortcut between the docks and the market district. A pair of guards, in their unnervingly clean uniforms, are attaching a brass plaque to a post at the intersection. She tucks her hands behind her back and leans around them to peek at the sign.
“Evie’s Alley, huh?” She says, and the taller of the guards drops his wrench in his haste to turn around and look at her. The clang as it hits the street echoes a little. Her hair bushes against her shoulders as she turns her head up to look at the other guard, the one clutching at his chest. and she rocks on her toes. “What’s the ‘Department of Disorder’? Is that you?”
She smiles at them and waits for them to relax. They do, but barely. The shorter one smoothes out his sash where his fingers had crumpled it and picks the wrench out of an iridescent puddle with a grimace. He doesn’t take his eyes off her as he passes it back to the other guard.
“No.” He says flat, and his eyes flick toward the sign before resettling on Celia. “The Department was made to manage Isle Affairs.”
“Oh,” Celia says, and twists her mouth to the side. “I don’t suppose you could take my application to them then?” She redirects her gaze to the guard tightening the nuts on the back of the plaque and scuffs her foot on the ground to distract from where she’s slipping her hand under the edge of her coat to grab her application. “I have it all filled out and everything.” She makes it appear in her hand with a flourish. It unfolds to show the seal at the bottom.
“The applications get collected on VK day.” He says curtly and tucks the now oily wrench back into its designated pouch. He forms up with the other guard and they march in step out of the newly dubbed Evie Alley. Celia stands there for a second, then folds her application back into neat thirds and tucks it back under her jacket.
*
Celia stops taking her application with her everywhere after the second rejection. But she doesn’t stop asking every Auradon guard she sees putting up posters over the next 2 months if she can submit hers early, and maybe pretend that anyone will actually look at them. She doesn’t mention it to Dizzy, who actually has hers pinned to a vision board in the closet of her bedroom. She just says she’s still working on hers.
She isn’t
not
working on it. She can’t stand to let it sit like that while she waits for VK Day. The wall across from her booth is covered in a line of posters now, put up while she was out doing her Sunday errands one afternoon. She props her chin on her hand and thinks about it while waiting for customers. ‘
Our hero MAL will NEVER let us down.’
She reads the words for the tenth time that day. She tries to remember what she knows about Mal. It’s more than it could be. They’d met once, she thinks, and she spent about a year keeping an ear out for Hades before Mal left. She never really broke the habit. She hums and squints at the portrait on the poster. ‘
Our Liberator,’
it reads. Mal’s an artist. She used to tag everywhere before she left. A whole bunch of them got painted over, after, and now they’re hard to find.
Celia pulls out a pencil and paper and imagines giving her a reading. Tries to figure out what she would tell the
Isle Princess,
what cards she needs for that. Celia lets her mind wander. She draws
Love and Sadness, Past and Future.
At the end of the day, she packs up and trots home to show off the preliminary sketches for the new cards she’ll be painting. When she finishes, she tucks them in with her application.
*
By the time VK day actually does come around, Celia almost doesn’t grab the paper out of her room. She has to turn around on her way out of the arcade and grab it before the doors open for the day. She knows it’s going to be busy. A nervous tension has been creeping up across the whole Isle for the last week, and when it breaks, it’s going to be all hands.
She promised herself days ago that she would keep her routine as normal as possible on VK day. That’s why she’s set up for fortunes with the cards she made for her application when she catches sight of Mal in the mirror she keeps under her table so she can address customers “before” she can see them. Even though the announcements have been blaring through the loudspeakers for half an hour, it’s still earlier in the day than she anticipated, the sun barely cutting through the Isle’s constant cloud cover. The fact she wasn’t expecting Mal to get her personally jitters through her in a shiver. When the sound of heels on asphalt gets close enough, she lets her work smile slide onto her face and hooks her arm over the back of her chair.
Celia spreads the deck with a challenging smile. Mal smiles back, and picks a card. She twists her fingers and
The Journey
turns back to face her. Celia can feel her eyes get wide as hope tries to settle in. Something sharp and warm and disbelieving settles against the inside of her ribcage. She flips the indicator on her sign and Mal slings arm around her shoulders as they make their way back through the alleys. She itches to break off after a few blocks, too aware of the beating of her heart and the eyes on her as they walk all the way across the Isle. She’s tucked against Mal’s side and hyper aware of it as shouts of her name echo through the streets along their entire path. A small crowd begins to follow them toward the plaza. At the head of the impromptu parade, Celia’s eyes flick to the fire escapes and rooftops.
Celia ducks out from under Mal’s heavy arm as they make it to the plaza for the selection. She throws a glance at the wide open space. It’s loud and crowded. There’s an unfamiliar tension in the air, a focus tinged with too little fear for Celia to be entirely comfortable with it. Someone comes around to finally accept her application and she watches the guard like a hawk to make sure it gets delivered.
“We all picked this girl because we all agreed that she could use a little of Fairy Godmother’s goodness class.” Mal says, only minutes later, and Celia’s proven right in an instant. “Give it on up for Dr Facilier's daughter, Celia.”
“I’m bad.” Celia projects to the crowd, and sketches a bouncy curtsy, flicking her eyes up to where Mal beckons from the balcony overlooking the plaza. She can feel the gazes of the people on her back as they part before her and she climbs up the staircase towards Mal, past the expressionless, but occasionally familiar, faces of the impeccably uniformed guards surrounding her.
*
A week is both too much and too little time to pack for Auradon, even with how she keeps forgetting that she’s actually going. It still feels fake, a day later, when she’s standing in the middle of the arcade, doing her Saturday job, and remembers that she needs to tell Hades she won’t be around anymore.
She wraps up her shift Sunday evening and shuffles her deck before tucking it away. Then collects her bag and gets ready to go to church. She fills it more than usual on the winding route she takes to Hade’s place.
“Hey,” she says, and rolls the can between her palms. He hums a vague acknowledgement and Celia continues. “You might need a new errand rat. I’m going to Auradon this week.” It doesn’t sound much more likely when she’s saying it out loud. “Mal picked me for the VK day thing. I can’t be here much after that.”
Hades jerks in his chair and his boot slips off the arm to slam against the ground. It echoes around the room and he pushes his sunglasses up to his forehead as he sits up from his slump to actually look at her.
“Mal was here?”
“Yeah, Friday.” She tosses the can of tomatoes at him and he just barely catches it before it hits his face. “You
need
to go outside more.”
He sends her a wry smile and leans back into his chair, the can balanced on his chest. “Would if I could, kiddo.” There’s a pause while she unpacks the rest of the delivery onto the table. She looks up when he clears his throat. “When’re you leaving exactly?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Celia’s watching Squeaky and Squirmy cling to their dad when she hears Carlos make a promise. “Alright boys, you're gonna see him soon, ok?” He says, as he tries to encourage them to pry their fingers off their fathers coat sleeves. She’s trained to pay attention to those kinds of deals. It’s important. It’s
always
been important.
She stares after them for a second as Jay and Carlos herds them into the car before she remembers that she’s sandwiched between Mal and King Ben, and they’re
talking
to her. It’s the same loop about how
wonderful
Auradon will be for them, their schedule, all the things they’ll be able to do and see.
“Wow.” She says, for what she thinks is the fourth time, and wishes her dad were here. She’d told him herself to take care of the shop. But– Her hands tighten on the straps of her backpack and the noise of the crowd fades into the background. Her eyes catch on the bare glimpse of water she can see between the buildings. She steps forward just in time to avoid King Ben putting a hand on her back. Eventually, goodbyes are over.
*
“Here, let me help get this off you.” Mal says, and Celia’s eyes go wide and snap to where Mal’s hands are reaching for the straps of her bag. The idea of it being
taken
from her startles her back into motion and she nearly hits Mal’s arm when she takes it off herself and tosses it in the trunk. It slams closed in front of her. While staring at the closed latch, it starts to sink in that this is for real. It’s not just an overnight.
“Ok,” Ben starts and she doesn’t give him time to finish, turning sharply on her heel and going to fold herself into the backseat of the limo before she can show weakness. Mal laughs behind her and it sounds the same as when the guards laughed when Celia tried to hand in her application early. They get into the limo behind her. The sound of the door closing is loud to her ears, final.
“So, as soon as we get to Auradon you
have
to try ice cream.” Evie says, curled close to Dizzy as the limo moves slowly through familiar streets. Celia watches so she doesn’t have to look out the windows at the crowd. Dizzy bounces in place in excitement as Evie promises her all the same kind of things Celia and Dizzy used to read about in those water damaged middle grade books with missing pages. The ones about going to beaches and starting gangs that don’t
do
anything but play together. She wonders if they’re accurate.
Across the bench, Squeaky and Carlos are investigating the limo’s food cache.
“Trust me on this.” Carlos says with authority, and hands Squeaky something unidentifiable. Squeaky reaches out hesitantly to take it.
Celia looks away from Squeaky’s reaction to the food and pulls out her cards. She shuffles them a little to settle them in her hand and turns to fan them out for Ben. He startles at the attention and she gives him a well practiced smile. Mal meets her gaze over King Ben’s shoulder and matches with one just as practiced as he draws the card and hands it to her to “divine.” She tips her head back and closes her eyes to hide the swap as she places both hands flat over the card. Then, she hums and smiles as she opens her eyes back up, flipping the Emperor card for him to see.
“You are going to be a wise and brave king.” She says, and hands him the card. He looks down at the painted king on the card with awe and Mal leans against his back to comment.
“He already is.”
“See? The cards never lie.” She smiles back at Mal, then tilts her head at Ben and holds out a flat palm once again. His head snaps up while she waits and he drops the card when he fumbles for his wallet. She tracks its fall but holds still while she waits for him to pay. Ben presses Auradon money into her hand, and she blinks. She looks again to check the bills when it registers that Auradon money actually means something when she’s
going to Auradon
and then curls around it as her eyes widen. It’s a
lot
of money. Celia tucks it into her pocket and her eyes flick back to Mal, but Mal just smiles at her again.
“It’s Hades!” Celia jolts at a shout from Evie, her heart rate jumping along with it at the volume and desperation. “Stop the car, he's trying to escape!”
Celia twists around to catch sight of him through the back window. When the words sink in, it takes a moment for her to remember to be alarmed. There’s rattling and jostling all around her as the adults rush out of the car, even leaving the doors open and unattended behind them. She ignores the elbow to her ribs as Dizzy and Squeaky crowd against her sides to peer out the back window along with her. After a second, Squirmy joins them. Hades has his head and arm out by the time anyone has done anything about it. He’s screaming. She bites her lip and watches as he claws the hole in the barrier even wider.
Jay, Ben and Carlos rush towards him and Hades does,
something
that makes them drop in the space of seconds. She stares at where they’ve disappeared under the back edge of the trunk and feels something cold and heavy in her chest when they don’t come back up. She’s barely taken her eyes off of the empty space where Jay had been when a flash of movement to her right catches her eye.
Celia turns her head just in time for a cloud of purple smoke to envelop the side of the car, casting half the interior in shadow. Her breath catches in her throat. In another instant, it collapses into a dragon where she’d last seen Mal. A wing brushes the car as she takes off and Dizzy squeaks and ducks into Celia’s side as the car rocks. The motion draws her attention to the white knuckle grip she has on the top of the seat.
She takes a breath that’s more of a sharp gasp when Hades stretches his hand out towards the car and she recognizes what he’s holding. It’s– it’s the
Ember.
She’s seen it before. She saw it days ago, at Hades’ lair, sitting in its dish like always. It glows an arclight blue in his hand and the look of the magic burns into the back of her eyes. She flinches when he fires a twisting beam of blue light at something above them. There’s an echoing screech when it hits something she can’t see from inside the car.
Everyone
outside is screaming.
She can feel Squirmy trembling against her side and peels a hand off the seat to try and comfort him. She gets as far as putting a hand on his forearm, before her attention turns back to the rip in the barrier. Hades is being pushed back by some force she can’t see. His face is intense. Hard and dangerous and
expressive
in a way she’s unused to after ages of only seeing him bored and sad. The beam flickers, stops, as he’s overwhelmed and he rolls away from the closing hole. She cranes her neck and catches a glimpse of scaly legs as they dip into view through a side window. Her breath shudders out of her and she wonders how long she’d been holding it. Squirmy tugs his wrist out from under her shaking fingers and makes for the still open limo door. She follows.
By the time they’ve gotten to the doors, the hole in the barrier is just a glowing pinprick. Celia ducks out of the limo onto the surface of the broken off bridge and it registers in the back of her brain that it’s her first step outside the barrier. She locks her knees and shivers in place as she stares past Evie at Hades face while he glares out at them, eyes skating past her as if she isn’t there at all.
His coat flares out behind him when he finally turns on his heel and walks away. She watches until he’s out of sight, cutting a path through the crowd that she
knows
will lead back to the mine. She shudders in relief when she tears her eyes away from his back and sees Evie bend down to help Carlos to his feet. She doesn’t even realize she’d expected them to be hurt so much worse until she finds herself swallowing down a sob.
There’s a piercing shriek above her and all heads turn to watch the dragon she’d only caught a bare glimpse of drop out of the sky, the same purple smoke gathering around its body. Celia holds her breath as smoke spreads out to cover the car and the sensation of it tingles against her skin. For several terrifying moments, can’t see and she won’t breathe. Celia flinches as she hears a dangerous sounding creak from the direction of the rear wheels. At the same moment the door frame dips under her hand. Both disappear just as suddenly as they arrive, along with the blinding purple smoke. She blinks and takes a cautious breath as she watches King Ben catch Mal when she almost topples off the trunk of the limo, her whole body shaking from exertion.
The rest of the adults gather tightly around her as she clutches at her chest and says something panicked and gasping. The huddle around her gets tighter. Celia keeps her expression as blank as possible and climbs back inside the limousine.
She finds one of her cards on the floor. Almost the top two inches are bent back at one of the corners. She picks it up between her fingers and flips it face up, only to find the card she’d forgotten she drew for Ben’s reading, barely minutes ago. There’s a heavy boot print across the full illustration. She feels sick, looking at it. Dirt almost entirely covers the white of the king’s cape and trying to scrub the pad of her thumb across it only brings the paint up with it. She tucks the damaged card into the middle of her deck just before the rest of the group piles into the back with her.
*
It’s quieter this time, in the car on the way to Auradon. Squeaky and Squirmy are entirely silent, curled so closely around each other that it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Their eyes turned outward and staring. Evie and Dizzy don’t chatter cheerfully about what they’ll do when they arrive. They just hold hands while Evie stares at where Mal’s limp form stretches across the bench seat, King Ben rubbing her spine and murmuring something soothing into her ear. Celia looks out the window and pretends she can’t hear the words. She knows she’s not supposed to.
It gets easier to ignore after a few seconds, when she actually focuses on what’s passing outside the car. There's a bump as the limo transitions from the magically constructed bridge to the real road. It's still smoother than anywhere on the Isle and the knot in her chest uncoils a little when she sees how green it is here, the way the sky is so
blue.
She decides right there that her first step outside the barrier doesn’t count. She wasn’t even off the island. It’s silly to care that much anyway. Her first one in Auradon will be better.
Jay maneuvers the car smoothly past a deserted courtyard. Just before they make the turn, she catches a glimpse of an abandoned blue and yellow sign draped haphazardly over a hedge. It reads, in friendly block letters, ‘
Kids of the Isle make us smile.’
one of the signs reads. Celia snaps her eyes back to the smooth leather of the car seat next to her and fiddles with her necklace while she resists the urge to pull her knees to her chest.
*
Celia swallows the lump in her throat and climbs out of the car when it pulls to a stop in front of a small castle, too small. It’s not the school. King Ben had
promised–
he’d said they’d be going to Auradon Prep, first. It’s
fine.
She stands in the driveway while she watches King Ben lean back in through the door and help Mal out of the backseat. Evie silently hands her bag to her and her fingers tighten around the thin straps. They all watch Mal shudder in King Ben’s arms for a second before Evie turns to them with a perfect showman’s smile. She puts her hands on her hips and welcomes them to her home. She gestures to the sign that Celia had missed and puts an arm around Dizzy’s shoulders to lead them through the front door.
No one mentions Hades, or the School, or Mal’s exhausted slump against King Ben’s side. They just keep sending heavy glances at each other over her head, like they all hadn’t been there. Like Celia wouldn’t
notice.
Celia doesn’t mention it. She also doesn’t mention ice cream or trips to the Enchanted Lake as she and Dizzy and the boys are herded upstairs to the guest bedrooms. Well, Evie calls them guest bedrooms. Celia’s never been anywhere with that amount of spare space, and the one Evie leaves her and Dizzy in looks suspiciously well suited to Dizzy
specifically.
She puts her bag down next to the couch and watches the car’s headlights play across the walls as it pulls out of the driveway while Dizzy inspects the jars of clips and trinkets on the craft table in the corner.
Celia kicks her boots off and wraps her hair before she climbs into the trundle bed Jay had pulled out for her. It’s the softest thing she’s ever sat on. She frowns and fists her hand in the fluffy blanket. She watches the surface of the neatly made bed ripple at the disturbance. The fibers creak under her hand. All of a sudden, she feels tired, utterly drained, despite the fact that the sun hasn’t even set yet. That she should be used to staying up later than this. At home she’d be–
She releases the bedspread and pulls out her cards. She shuffles them mindlessly, setting the damaged one aside. She can’t bear to look at it directly. She draws a three card spread and then shuffles it back into the deck without looking. Celia puts the deck away and curls up on the too soft mattress as she stares at the smooth green walls. Her ears strain for the familiar racket of the Arcade. Instead, there’s nothing. The rumble of hushed voices downstairs, the sounds of real
nature
outside her window. She wants to sleep, she doesn’t want to close her eyes. She wants to stop
thinking.
She can’t.
Hades’ face is swimming in front of her eyes, angry and intense and lit with unnaturally blue light. It’s wrong. Hades isn’t like that. Hades is sad and lazy and dramatic. He wears sunglasses and slouches in his chair so he can take naps in the middle of the day. She saw him five days ago and told him–
Celia doesn’t fall asleep for a long time.