There was a reason she'd been avoiding him. So many people here she knew and none of them who knew her. Or so they claimed. In a few cases she wouldn't put it past the people in question to lie. But a few others...
She wasn't sure which scared her worse - not that she'd ever admit to being scared, of course - that he'd not know her, or that he would. It had hit her at some point when she realized she had been avoiding him, that the only ones who could have hurt worse from the kingdom to not recall her would be Lydia or Ace. Maybe not. When had Sylvando started to matter to her so much? She had been trying so hard not to let anyone in. Lydia had slipped in easily enough because in a lot of ways... Lydia was like her. Not quite one or the other. They shared more than just aesthetics. They were both a foot in each world, both stuck between.
So Lydia made sense. And... it made sense to her why Lydia and her.. why... At the end, Lydia had other people around. She didn't need Mal anymore the way Mal had stupidly let herself need Lydia, and that made the things Lydia normally would have just accepted as Mal being Mal weigh more heavily. They had been too much alike. Mal had seen the issues coming when Lydia accepted Beetlejuice. When another Lydia shown up, that had just been it. She didn't blame Lydia, not really. Mal knew what she was like. And hey, a huge fight was the least bad way she'd ever lost a friend. At least Lydia hadn't betrayed her or tried to kill her.
But Sylvando...
Sylvando she didn't understand at all. Where Lydia could easily have passed as a VK who moved to Auradon... Sylvando was like... Auradon plus. She didn't understand him at all. Which was dangerous, because... he seemed to understand her all too well. She couldn't predict what he'd do next at any given time, except that he would do it in the loudest most flashy gaudy way possible.
When had that gone from irritating to endearing? Ugh, she was disgusted with herself. But... Sylvando was a friend now. The whys and wherefores didn't matter as much at the moment, what mattered was that somehow... she cared. A lot. She had tried so hard not to. But she did.
And Sylvando not knowing her, like the rest...? She wasn't sure she could survive that. Kaiba? Fine whatever. Atem... well that hadn't gone well. But Sylvando...?
Thankfully she had a decent idea of the kinds of places he frequented. So she avoided those. But she couldn't evade her own thoughts.
If he forgot her too, that would hurt. A lot. If he remembered, he'd work to undermine the rep she was building and that would be... tricky. But worst of all....
In the kingdoms, they had needed each other, the apprentices. But here? What if all this time he'd been working his way under her skin was because they had to stick together, because he was trying to make sure she would do her part, or worse, because he had designs on taking over that world and was trying to subvert her because he wanted to get her out of his way or use her? What if he remembered her here, but since he no longer needed her...
What if he had been playing her this whole time?
It always struck Mal as odd how brave people thought she was, because for all she tried to play up to that appearance, what she remembered most of those times was fear. When they thought a dragon was coming up on them on the way to Nowhere, and the others fled... they told her later how brave she'd been standing there, but it had been fear, she had been paralyzed with it. When she had walked through the fog that scared the others... it wasn't that the fog wasn't scary, it was that facing her mother as a failure was scarier than any fog could be. First on the bridge leaving the Fortress. Even facing her mother at the coronation. Fear. All of it. She had never confessed that to any of them. Well a little to Evie, but no one else. Because fear was a weapon you aimed at yourself and handed to your enemies. You couldn't show it. Ever.
That was why she needed the rep. Here especially. For some reason her magic wasn't as strong here as the native magic was, and she wasn't learning the new stuff fast enough. If she showed fear, she was dead. Done for. She had to convince everyone else that she had the swagger, that she had the confidence which meant that she had to have the power to back it up.
And if he did remember her and he did actually... if he was actually her friend? Then he would be his usual sparkly self and try to soften her, try to make her less thorny. He never seemed to understand why she needed those thorns, why they were so important.
and so far here there was no big bad for her to prove herself against. In the kingdom she had been able to square off against the corroded. She had been able to prove herself against a measuring stick they all had. Between patrols and missions she practically lived out there half the time, among all that danger. and always came back looking like she stepped out of her dorm room, fresh and ready for the day. In Auradon...? She was the one who stood up to Maleficent, as well as being a VK. No one saw her as soft there. And on the Isle? She was Mal. Maleficent's kid. Ever since Evil Queen refused to invite her to Evie's party when she was five and her mother banished the pair of them for ten long years as outcasts on the Isle... Very few people had ever been brave enough to mess with her on the Isle. Jay, though that was mutual and people saw that. Uma, who she got her own revenge on. Maddy. She'd proved herself with Uma and Maddy. And she was the only one who pushed back against Jay publicly. And oddly enough, stopping her mother hadn't made her the pariah on the Isle that she had expected to be. To the true villains it made her more. Worse. She had taken down the worst of the worst of them. Her motivation almost didn't matter. What she had wanted conflicted with what Maleficent wanted, so she took Maleficent down. She would have earned her E in Selfies for sure, if she still attended Dragon Hall. And to the other VKs who wanted to try being good? Apparently it had put the four of them on a pedestal.
The memory of Bargain Castle trashed... except for her room which was just as she left it. The Anti-heroes club.
No... people feared her, or at least respected her in a "she could destroy me if she wanted to" sort of way wherever she went. Sylvando... didn't. And he tried to tear that down, tried to make her more like what she was becoming in Auradon. Soft.
So it was a weird and complex terror that had kept her to lurking around back alleyways. And well, skulking about at night was second nature to her, and it wasn't like she'd actually SLEEP in that dorm. Her familiar stayed there at night to make it clear the bed was HERS. But like in the Kingdom, she found somewhere else to sleep. Or not sleep, as the case more often was.
She had been throwing herself into her paintings more and more the last few days as exhaustion was pulling on her. Stay awake spells apparently had less and less potency over time. She'd have to see if there was a local version.
That was why her usually sharp hearing didn't catch the sound of someone approaching over the sound of her painting. he should have heard him coming. should have. But the first clue she had that she wasn't alone, the first thing she heard was... "Mal, darling."
The paint can fell from her hand in shock. Thankfully the tension in the spraying finger went first, so the art wasn't ruined.
All this time being afraid, telling herself she was preparing for any answer and for a second she was frozen. Paralyzed again.
He knew her. And sounded like he'd been looking for her. That... was good, wasn't it? Was it? Relief she refused to admit ran through her, along with an urge to... to run up to him and hug him. Or to cry. Or both.
Stop it, she scolded herself. Are you evil or are you Auradon soft? Choose!
She had tried the Auradon way, all that was left was evil. It was all she was good at. And he knew that already. She bent to pick up the can as he spoke, to buy herself time to get under control.
Finally when she thought she could pull off the attitude she was sure he expected she turned to face him, smirk on her lips, purple brows raised. One hand was on her hip, the other was holding the paint can. "Then maybe you weren't aiming properly," she said, trying for a cool and under control joke. She would have tossed the paint can in her bag, but rather than looking cool it would have shown off the fact that she was shaking slightly. The stance was wide enough to hide most if it, but her aim would betray her. So she kept her hand on the can, all calm and casual seeming.
If she could fool him, that was. She never was sure when she managed to fool him and when he was just playing along. It was part of what made him so dangerous, really. Which had been fun in the kingdom but was terrifying here.
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She wasn't sure which scared her worse - not that she'd ever admit to being scared, of course - that he'd not know her, or that he would. It had hit her at some point when she realized she had been avoiding him, that the only ones who could have hurt worse from the kingdom to not recall her would be Lydia or Ace. Maybe not. When had Sylvando started to matter to her so much? She had been trying so hard not to let anyone in. Lydia had slipped in easily enough because in a lot of ways... Lydia was like her. Not quite one or the other. They shared more than just aesthetics. They were both a foot in each world, both stuck between.
So Lydia made sense. And... it made sense to her why Lydia and her.. why... At the end, Lydia had other people around. She didn't need Mal anymore the way Mal had stupidly let herself need Lydia, and that made the things Lydia normally would have just accepted as Mal being Mal weigh more heavily. They had been too much alike. Mal had seen the issues coming when Lydia accepted Beetlejuice. When another Lydia shown up, that had just been it. She didn't blame Lydia, not really. Mal knew what she was like. And hey, a huge fight was the least bad way she'd ever lost a friend. At least Lydia hadn't betrayed her or tried to kill her.
But Sylvando...
Sylvando she didn't understand at all. Where Lydia could easily have passed as a VK who moved to Auradon... Sylvando was like... Auradon plus. She didn't understand him at all. Which was dangerous, because... he seemed to understand her all too well. She couldn't predict what he'd do next at any given time, except that he would do it in the loudest most flashy gaudy way possible.
When had that gone from irritating to endearing? Ugh, she was disgusted with herself. But... Sylvando was a friend now. The whys and wherefores didn't matter as much at the moment, what mattered was that somehow... she cared. A lot. She had tried so hard not to. But she did.
And Sylvando not knowing her, like the rest...? She wasn't sure she could survive that. Kaiba? Fine whatever. Atem... well that hadn't gone well. But Sylvando...?
Thankfully she had a decent idea of the kinds of places he frequented. So she avoided those. But she couldn't evade her own thoughts.
If he forgot her too, that would hurt. A lot. If he remembered, he'd work to undermine the rep she was building and that would be... tricky. But worst of all....
In the kingdoms, they had needed each other, the apprentices. But here? What if all this time he'd been working his way under her skin was because they had to stick together, because he was trying to make sure she would do her part, or worse, because he had designs on taking over that world and was trying to subvert her because he wanted to get her out of his way or use her? What if he remembered her here, but since he no longer needed her...
What if he had been playing her this whole time?
It always struck Mal as odd how brave people thought she was, because for all she tried to play up to that appearance, what she remembered most of those times was fear. When they thought a dragon was coming up on them on the way to Nowhere, and the others fled... they told her later how brave she'd been standing there, but it had been fear, she had been paralyzed with it. When she had walked through the fog that scared the others... it wasn't that the fog wasn't scary, it was that facing her mother as a failure was scarier than any fog could be. First on the bridge leaving the Fortress. Even facing her mother at the coronation. Fear. All of it. She had never confessed that to any of them. Well a little to Evie, but no one else. Because fear was a weapon you aimed at yourself and handed to your enemies. You couldn't show it. Ever.
That was why she needed the rep. Here especially. For some reason her magic wasn't as strong here as the native magic was, and she wasn't learning the new stuff fast enough. If she showed fear, she was dead. Done for. She had to convince everyone else that she had the swagger, that she had the confidence which meant that she had to have the power to back it up.
And if he did remember her and he did actually... if he was actually her friend? Then he would be his usual sparkly self and try to soften her, try to make her less thorny. He never seemed to understand why she needed those thorns, why they were so important.
and so far here there was no big bad for her to prove herself against. In the kingdom she had been able to square off against the corroded. She had been able to prove herself against a measuring stick they all had. Between patrols and missions she practically lived out there half the time, among all that danger. and always came back looking like she stepped out of her dorm room, fresh and ready for the day. In Auradon...? She was the one who stood up to Maleficent, as well as being a VK. No one saw her as soft there. And on the Isle? She was Mal. Maleficent's kid. Ever since Evil Queen refused to invite her to Evie's party when she was five and her mother banished the pair of them for ten long years as outcasts on the Isle... Very few people had ever been brave enough to mess with her on the Isle. Jay, though that was mutual and people saw that. Uma, who she got her own revenge on. Maddy. She'd proved herself with Uma and Maddy. And she was the only one who pushed back against Jay publicly. And oddly enough, stopping her mother hadn't made her the pariah on the Isle that she had expected to be. To the true villains it made her more. Worse. She had taken down the worst of the worst of them. Her motivation almost didn't matter. What she had wanted conflicted with what Maleficent wanted, so she took Maleficent down. She would have earned her E in Selfies for sure, if she still attended Dragon Hall. And to the other VKs who wanted to try being good? Apparently it had put the four of them on a pedestal.
The memory of Bargain Castle trashed... except for her room which was just as she left it. The Anti-heroes club.
No... people feared her, or at least respected her in a "she could destroy me if she wanted to" sort of way wherever she went. Sylvando... didn't. And he tried to tear that down, tried to make her more like what she was becoming in Auradon. Soft.
So it was a weird and complex terror that had kept her to lurking around back alleyways. And well, skulking about at night was second nature to her, and it wasn't like she'd actually SLEEP in that dorm. Her familiar stayed there at night to make it clear the bed was HERS. But like in the Kingdom, she found somewhere else to sleep. Or not sleep, as the case more often was.
She had been throwing herself into her paintings more and more the last few days as exhaustion was pulling on her. Stay awake spells apparently had less and less potency over time. She'd have to see if there was a local version.
That was why her usually sharp hearing didn't catch the sound of someone approaching over the sound of her painting. he should have heard him coming. should have. But the first clue she had that she wasn't alone, the first thing she heard was... "Mal, darling."
The paint can fell from her hand in shock. Thankfully the tension in the spraying finger went first, so the art wasn't ruined.
All this time being afraid, telling herself she was preparing for any answer and for a second she was frozen. Paralyzed again.
He knew her. And sounded like he'd been looking for her. That... was good, wasn't it? Was it? Relief she refused to admit ran through her, along with an urge to... to run up to him and hug him. Or to cry. Or both.
Stop it, she scolded herself. Are you evil or are you Auradon soft? Choose!
She had tried the Auradon way, all that was left was evil. It was all she was good at. And he knew that already. She bent to pick up the can as he spoke, to buy herself time to get under control.
Finally when she thought she could pull off the attitude she was sure he expected she turned to face him, smirk on her lips, purple brows raised. One hand was on her hip, the other was holding the paint can. "Then maybe you weren't aiming properly," she said, trying for a cool and under control joke. She would have tossed the paint can in her bag, but rather than looking cool it would have shown off the fact that she was shaking slightly. The stance was wide enough to hide most if it, but her aim would betray her. So she kept her hand on the can, all calm and casual seeming.
If she could fool him, that was. She never was sure when she managed to fool him and when he was just playing along. It was part of what made him so dangerous, really. Which had been fun in the kingdom but was terrifying here.