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There was no escaping the bugs on the Isle. They were everywhere. On the walls, in the water and food, and buzzing around new and old cuts alike. If you don’t keep them covered, there will be eggs under your skin in an hour, and getting them all out after hurts like a bitch.
They are in your clothes, eating away the only layers offering you protection against brave hands or an over-excited knife. They are in the bed with you (if you are fortunate enough to have a bed), leaving red, itchy, dots on your skin every time you settle in for a spell.
There is no escaping the bugs on the Isle, so when they showed up in Auradon, they didn’t really notice (on a subconscious level, they might even have felt relief for something so familiar and certain in the world).
Auradon noticed, though. The kids living on the same floor would grimace and scowl and tiptoe around them in the hall. They would yelp and squish them underfoot, no matter if they didn’t have enough feet to kill them all. They would dart dirty looks at the door all the bugs trail to, and not be surprised that the Villain Kids live in filth.
Once it became very clear whose room was attracting all the bugs, the issue eventually reached Fairy Godmother’s ears.
Fairy Godmother sighs, looking over all the reports of the same issue. Normally she’d call an exterminator to fumigate the place and be done with it, but because of who it’s about, it complicates things a bit.
The VK’s are… complicated. Oh she’s gotten more than one complaint and report about them, since before they even arrived in Auradon, but those are hardly because they actually did anything.
From what she’s seen, the Isle kids interact very little with the Auradon kids. Sure they are snappish, and rude, and quick to anger, but they haven’t actually started any brawls. Even the arguments are largely, unfortunately, Auradon kids’ faults. So she can’t really blame them for being defensive and keeping to themselves, but it’s been nearly two months now and nothing has changed. They aren’t assimilating, and the other students at the school aren’t helping.
There have been a few who have made token efforts, like Lāng ní (who has unfortunately been dubbed Lonnie by the other students), Doug, and her own daughter (after much pleading), but they are usually met with distrust. The only person they are somewhat warm with, though not overly friendly, is Ben. Even then, there is still a gaping distance holding them separate.
Now she has an actual complaint that requires her attention, and she doesn’t know how to go about broaching the subject without having it blown out of proportion (those kids are under far too much scrutiny, being held to both higher and lower standards than anyone else- and it’s not fair to them).
She does know that she needs to call the crown Prince. While being the only one those kids somewhat trust, they are only here under his Sponsorship. If they were to do anything to get in trouble while still under probation, the responsibility of those actions would fall on him .
The Prince answers on the second ring, sounding far too tired for a boy not even out of school. Sometimes, she doesn’t know what King Beast is thinking, letting his son take on the mantle in a few short months- before he even finishes his primary education. The whole kingdom is mad.
Guiltily, she thinks maybe it’s a good thing that the throne is changing hands. Ben will make a great king. One day.
“I have a situation that needs your attention at your earliest convenience. It is not an emergency, but it needs to get addressed.”
“Is it the Isle kids? Are they okay?” It’s a token to the kind of person Ben is, that he doesn’t immediately jump to the assumption that they did something. Most adults would take one look at those kids and ask ‘what did they do?’ Yes, Ben would make a far better king than his father.
“Everyone is fine. It just appears that we need to have a talk with them addressing the importance of hygiene. There’s a bit of a bug problem stemming from their dorm.”
“Okay. Okay, I’ll- I’ll be right over. I’m leaving now.”
“Go ahead and meet me there. I’m going to see about getting a head start on finding the source attracting them.”
“Alright, I’ll see you there. Thank you Fairy Godmother.”
“Of course, Prince Ben.” Fairy Godmother hangs up the phone with a sigh. Dealing with princes and princesses for nearly 20 years did not prepare her for these standoffish Isle kids. They are all just kind of flying blind here and hoping for the best.
Fairy Godmother grimaces as soon as she gets to their floor. She doesn’t even need to check the room numbers, she just has to follow the line of ants.
She knocks on the door on the chance that they are back from the evening meal. It should be winding down now, so they will be here soon, regardless. When no one answers, she uses her master key to let herself in. If she could just find what’s attracting the ants, they can easily correct-
Fairy Godmother pulls up short when she enters the boys’ room. Students are left to arrange and decorate the rooms however they want short of knocking down walls, but she’s never seen a room so… strange.
At first, she thinks someone might have ransacked the place, before she sees the deliberateness to everything.
Both beds have been pushed together, creating a sort of barrier between the door and the window. One of the mattresses stands up on its side, creating an even higher wall on one side, while the other mattress has been dragged off the bed frame entirely to rest in the pocket of shelter below the window seat. All of the blankets are piled on that mattress, making a nest of sorts and it very clear just where the rooms’ occupants sleep.
The sight makes something uncomfortable twist in Fairy Godmother’s stomach, so she looks away.
The state of the furniture initially distracted her, but as she looks around the rest of the room, other odd things stand out.
Clothes distinctly feminine strewn about. The sewing machine Ben gifted Evie their first week on one of the tables. A sketchbook, normally viciously guarded, open to one of Mal’s drawings resting on the arm of the couch.
The room looks lived in by four people, rather than two. She wonders, faintly, if she were to check the girls’ rooms, if it would be as untouched as the day it was issued to them.
It makes her uncomfortable to think about the girls living out of the boys’ room, but not because she thinks anything untoward has been happening. The children are clearly having an even harder time adjusting than she already realized. She’s not going to try and take away this one comfort. If she tried, it might turn out disastrous and make everything worse, though she has to have their trust in the first place to be able to lose it.
Her eyes land on the desk not holding the sewing machine, which is covered in crawling ants and a few desperate beetles. Fruit flies flit about the room, flying up Fairy Godmother’s nostrils before they cloud over to one of the drawers. She goes to it, praying that they aren’t hiding something dead in there (no one has mentioned missing any pets, a dark part of her can’t help thinking). The smell of rot is heavy in the room, and she wonders how anyone can live in this.
She almost wishes that it was a dead animal.
Because the drawer is full of food. Stacks and stacks of moldy sandwiches, some which are half eaten, plates of other food that might be meatloaf or spaghetti, muffins, and cookies and bread. She pulls open another drawer, letting out a cloud of flies, and this one seems to consist of just fruit, the favorites clearly being strawberries and apples.
Fairy Godmother feels sick- from the fumes, but also from the vaguest sense of understanding (how can she really understand this?).
“What are you doing in our room?” A furious growl cuts across the space loudly and startles her out of her staring. She whirls to face the four VKs in the doorway.
Mal is front and center, eyes blazing with her birthright, and Fairy Godmother’s breath catches in her throat. She looks just like her mother, glaring, with fury roiling off of her visibly in untamed magics.
It’s a sight that makes her chest flutter excitedly as her own neglected magic wants to leap to the surface of her skin. It doesn’t like being caged and hidden, and it recognises kin in this wild, bold, fairy.
Then she remembers that it’s not Maleficent standing before her, Queen of the Moore, but a scared teenager in a new land with no one to trust but her three friends who stand close, guarding her back. Despite being furious at the intrusion, they don’t come further into the room. They remain rooted in the doorway, prepared to either run or fight.
Calmly talking does not seem to occur to them as an option.
It suddenly strikes Fairy Godmother that she should have waited for Ben, and she should have waited for them to let her in themselves. Even if she is technically allowed, and required, to go into students rooms without them present for specific instances, she already recognized that she has to deal with these particular students differently than her Auradon ones.
Fairy Godmother opens her mouth to respond, but then Mal seems to realize just what she’s standing over, and her eyes blaze even more blighty as her agitation mounts. A thin stream of smoak seems to blow out her mouth as she lurches into the room with a hiss.
“That’s ours ! I thought you people here in Auradon don’t steal?!”
Fairy Godmother takes a hasty step back as the child rushes her. Mal doesn’t follow her retreat, though. She seems content to guard the spoiled food- that should be too rotten for anyone to eat anyway- like it's a pile of treasure. Jay, Evie, Carlos- they spread out through the room, taking up new positions like it’s second nature.
Fairy Godmother notices that, now that they are all in the room, the window seems to have become their escape route.
Regardless that they are on the third floor.
She backs up further, hoping that some space would help defuse the situation. “I’m not going to steal from you, dear. I just came to investigate the source of the bugs.”
“Bugs?” Mal blinks, eyes momentarily flickering out to their normal green in her confusion.
“Yes, bugs,” Fairy Godmother nods, encouraged by the fading magical pressure in the room. This girl will be a force to behold one day, once she fully comes into her powers (it will either be a great day for Auradon, or a truly awful one). “Your… stash… is what’s drawing them. It’s a bit of a health hazard, you see.”
She regrets it instantly when those eyes flare back to their emerald brilliance and she bares her teeth in a clear threat. “You are trying to steal from us.”
“Knock knock?” Ben’s voice fortuitously rings out as he hesitantly pokes his head in. He blinks, before pinching his nose. “Whoa, what is that smell? And oh my gods, did someone ransack your room?”
“Fairy Godmother is trying to steal our things!” Mal hisses, turning to the prince with a clenched jaw and a challenge in her eyes. And, oh, she’s looking to him for backup. She’s trusting the crown prince. Fairy Godmother wishes desperately that this was a test that he could pass.
“Um,” Ben blinks, looking to Fairy Godmother in confusion. “What?”
“She’s trying to steal our stash,” Carlos grumbles, closest to the window.
“It appears that what’s drawing the bugs is a pile of food that these four have squirreled away. It’s also the source of the smell,” Fairy Godmother informs him of the situation as quickly as possible.
His wide eyes somehow widen further as he turns them on the defensive VKs. Fairy Godmother feels a tendril of relief as she sees Maleficent’s daughter’s face soften just the slightest bit when faced with Ben’s earnestness.
“You know you guys don’t have to hoard food, right? There will always be enough, and if you ever get hungry in the middle of the night, you can always go down to the kitchen. They have plenty you can pick from.”
“You can’t know that,” Mal hisses, jaw back to being set and teeth looking a little too sharp.
“Perhaps,” Fairy Godmother breaks in, shooting the future king a warning look, “we can replace your stash with non perishable things? Things that are packaged and won’t go bad or attract critters? This can’t be very tasty, or good for you to eat.” Fairy Godmother doesn’t know if they ever ate out of those drawers, or if just having them there was enough. She hopes dearly they haven’t been eating from them.
“We’ve had worse,” Mal grits out (and, oh, how that hurts something deep in her chest), but Fairy Godmother can see that she’s at least caught the fae’s interest by the tilt of her head.
Ben instantly jumps on board with both feet and without looking for the landing.
“Yeah, you guys can pick out anything you want! And we can even get you a sealable bucket to keep them in. That way, mice can’t get to it either.”
Mal glances down at one of the drawers, and her fingers twitch like she wants to just start shoving it all into her mouth to keep them from taking it. Jay, the closest to the young fae, draws the slightest bit closer. Evie twists her fingers nervously, looking between everyone and touching her various pockets like she’s resisting drawing something out (Fairy Godmother, belatedly, wonders how many weapons each of them carry around on their person on the daily).
Carlos is the only one who doesn’t move, crouched ridged on the windowsill like he might swing out at any second as his eyes remain fixed on the two trespassers.
Fairy Godmother tries her best to look as unthreatening as possible. “We want you to feel safe here. If you need to stockpile some food to believe it will always be available to you, we can do that, but it can’t continue on like this. You cannot keep rotting food in your room.”
“But we can’t just throw it out,” Jay says, clenching his fists. “That’s such a- a waste!”
“Don’t think about it as throwing it out,” Evie says, speaking up for the first time, and drawing everyone’s attention. Mal shoots her a look, like maybe she wasn’t supposed to talk, even though the boys have done so already. “Think of it as… giving it to the others back home.”
And, oh. Oh, oh- there are other kids still on the Isle of the Lost, as desperate for food as these children have been likely their entire lives. They need to get them off. All of them. Perhaps she should get more involved with Ben’s program. She was unsure at first, but now she’s not.
The kids on the Isle need to be brought to Auradon. They are suffering under the barrier she created.
Mal stares them down, face stoney and unreadable, but thankfully void of that awful anger. Fairy Godmother feels relief when Mal starts negotiating (she doesn’t know how she could have pressed the issue without making everything a hundred times worse). “We get our new stash first. And you will never come into our room again.”
“You get your new stash first, and I will never come into your room without you present , but once a week I will stop by and make sure there are no perishables in your room. So you either have to eat it by then, or throw it out.”
Mal grits her teeth, fists clenching, her entire body tense like she’s in physical pain. But she agrees. “Fine,” she spits, not even looking at her friends. Fairy Godmother knows that she doesn’t need to. Mal is the leader of their little gang. The rest will follow.
Fairy Godmother nods. “Good. Then follow me. Let's get you some snacks that won’t go bad.”
“W-wait, now?”
Actually throwing out the food is painful for everyone. Despite agreeing to toss it, they still won’t let Fairy Godmother or Prince Ben anywhere near the drawers.
They hover around the desk just staring at the contents for a long time. When Mal eventually gets up the courage to start moving the rotting food from the drawers to the trash bags, it’s vividly clear that she doesn’t want to. That it takes all of her effort.
Her entire body shakes with it. And then there is more staring for a while before she practically throws the bag at Fairy Godmother with a snarl curling her lip. Carlos looks like he immediately wants to leap after it, but Mal’s entire demeanor shifts into one of disinterest. As if she could care less about the whole ordeal.
It would be a very convincing front, if she hadn’t just spent the past twenty minutes warring with herself with every piece that went into the bag.
Fairy Godmother almost regrets making them give it up. No, she does regret it, but it’s necessary. She wants to soothe them and tell them how proud she is of them for managing it, but she suspects that that wouldn’t go over well with these kids.
So instead, she gives them a nod and pretends she doesn’t feel every single one of their eyes trained on the bag as she leaves the future king to smooth their ruffled feathers.