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Mal can’t sleep.
Her first day in Auradon was long and brutal, and she has that bone deep exhaustion she normally only gets after having to deal with her mother. She didn’t expect Auradon to be so hard.
Everything is different. The landscape. The light. The way the air smells. The way people act.
It’s weird and confusing, and she hates it more than she expected to. She hates feeling off balance, and she’s been nothing but since passing under the barrier for the first time in her life. Even her skin feels weird and itchy.
Mal shifts, turning onto her side and pulling her knees up to her chest. She threw her pillow off the bed a long time ago. She’d never had one before, and it was too soft. The bed itself is too soft. She practically sinks into it. It’s too open, too.
She was one of the fortunate ones that had a mattress growing up, but it was only ever on the ground, shoved in a corner- not raised up and presented to the room like a sacrificial offering. There’s no lumps, or springs sticking out, or limbs jabbing her while she sleeps. She hasn’t slept alone in a very long time. Not since dragging her mattress to the foundry and moving out of Bargain Castle.
She rolls, pillowing her arm under her head and coming face to face with Evie. The princess’s face is relaxed, and smoothed out. She grew up with a bed on stilts and pillows, and she hugs one to her chest now.
At least Mal isn’t completely alone, but her stomach still churns from being separated from her boys in such a strange place. They have to play by Auradon rules, though. They can’t get sent back before they get the wand.
Anger twists in her gut.
If Jay hadn’t been so hasty, they’d be done with this by now- back in a place where things were familiar and made sense. They wouldn’t have had to split up again to go back to the rooms the dwarf boy took them to.
Auradon is weird. Guys and girls aren’t supposed to be in each other's rooms after a certain time. They are separated by entire floors. It’s not right- it doesn’t feel right. She can’t relax with her boys so far away. She can’t sleep in this stupid, open, room (even though she and Evie already swept it for all the cracks and hiding places a person could squeeze into).
Fucking Jay. She hates him. She hates this bed. She hates feeling so disoriented and unbalanced. She hates this place and not knowing what to expect tomorrow.
Mal sits up with a growl and throws the blankets off of her. “Get up,” she demands, and the way Evie’s eyes open so smoothly lets her know that the girl was never asleep to begin with. “Grab your shit.”
Mal’s things are in one spot- still all in her single backpack, ready for a quick get-away should they need it, so it only takes a second for her to yank it on and then start ripping the bedding from the mattress. Evie silently obeys her orders, moving just as quickly as she goes to the other bed to start stripping it as well.
Mal glances around, glaring at all the shit Auradon just gave them, and decides she wants nothing else of this stupid room. She leads the way out the door (kicking away the chair they shoved under the handle) and into the stairwell, and Evie does as she’s told without any fuss. This is good- this is familiar- she’ll have the boys back where they belong soon. Fuck Auradon and their stupid rules. They’re the ones who want them , not the other way around.
She almost collides with them as she pushes out of the stairwell. Jay leaps back, dropping his own bundle of bedding so he can free up his hands, and Mal almost throws hers too, before she processes who it was that appeared out of the shadows.
“We’re staying in your room,” Mal spits, and then shoves her shit at him for him to carry as she storms past. It’s his fault they are having to stay here longer than they might have had to (it’s her fault- her mother’s fault- for why they are here at all). Mal (secretly) doesn’t really want to take over the world. She was just getting settled on the island. She had a territory, and a crew, and she only had to see her mother a fraction of the time she used to. By Isle standards, she already kind of took over the world- the only world that matters when stuck on that rock (she didn’t think she’d ever see beyond it).
The boys’ room is much more to Mal’s tastes. It’s darker. It looks more solid. More defensible. Mal shoves the chair next to the door back under the handle once her people are all in.
Carlos doesn’t have to be told to start doing sweeps (even though they hadn’t made it all the way down the hall before having to turn back), and Mal snaps her fingers at Jay, pointing to one of the beds.
She’s exhausted, and she just wants to sleep. The prospect of tomorrow sits heavy in her chest.
Jay goes to one bed, while Mal goes to the other, and together, they shove them toward each other. The ends thunk together, and they keep shoving until the heads thunk against the wall. They shove and adjust until there is a triangle pocket of floor between the window and the rest of the room.
She isn’t fucking sleeping on stilts.
She flips one of the mattresses off its frame and into the crack. Mal steps back to observe her handy work. The window is a good escape route if they need it, but it's in the middle of the room and it still feels too open. If someone walks through the door, their sleeping spot would be the first thing they see. It’s really not an ideal location, but it’s better than being farther away from the exit.
“We could flip the other one up?” Jay suggests hesitantly. He knows Mal is angry. “Make a wall on one side.”
Mal pictures it, and he’s right. It’s a little better. Mal nods decisively (she’s not stupid enough to discount his input just because she’s mad at him). “Do it.” He jumps to obey. It eases something in her, seeing that she is still somewhat in control of something. She can still take care of her crew. It’s familiar, even if everything else is not.
“Mal?” Evie calls quietly, and she turns to face the princess standing there holding four sets of bedsheets close to her (they’ve never had so many before, and none so intact). They won’t be in danger of freezing to death here, at least. That’s one notable positive in being forced to be in Auradon. “How long do you think we’ll be here for?”
Mal wants to reach out and reassure her. To hoard her away somewhere safe and familiar, and where they know exactly what to expect from everyone around them. Auradon is strange in its pretty structures, and smiles, and words. Threats come in pretty packaging here, and Mal doesn’t quite know what the threats entail. On the Isle, it was a knife slipped between ribs. It was dungeons, and rats, and fists, and the dark things that happen in alleyways. The threats on the Isle were clear. She knows what to expect there.
“I don’t know,” Mal says, and she hates that. She hates not knowing. They need to get the wand before they slip up and the Prince realizes that the Isle kids aren’t the grateful-for-his-help charity project that he was expecting.
Mal huffs in exhausted irritation. “In,” she says, lightly pushing Evie toward the mattress nook. While Jay helps Evie sort and shape the blankets, Mal turns her attention to Calos who finally seems satisfied that they are the only ones in the room. “Everyone,” she says, motioning toward the rest of their crew.
He scampers over, burrowing down in his normal spot between Jay and Evie. Mal checks the lock one more time, and reassures herself that the chair will hold against the door, before climbing over the bed frame barrier and taking her spot on the outside of her hoard closest to the open room.
The spiders that have been crawling around in her chest finally settle, and the wave of exhaustion that’s been trying to reach her finally washes over her. She burrows down into her blanket (that’s far warmer than any she’s ever had before) and forcefully pushes out some of her nerves through a breath.
It’s fine. Everything is fine. If anything happens, she has her crew with her now.