Descendants Imagines

So In Love That You Acted Insane (Harry Hook)

You are lying on your bed in a dorm room in Auradon Prep, and if you close your eyes, you can almost convince yourself that you're somewhere else entirely. Your roommate hung a lantern in the window, and with the glass pane cracked halfway, the light sways back and forth on the ceiling, painting shifting golden silhouettes on the perfectly painted ceiling. If you let the present world fade into the corners of your consciousness, you can pretend there are flaws in the endless pristine magnificence. You could even pretend that you aren't on the continent at all.

No daughter of a princess should ever be anywhere but in Auradon. That's the way it should have been, but you ran the second you got the chance and ended up amongst criminals and sons of thieves instead of with other prettily polished girls. Is it a terrible thing to admit that you miss it more than anything?

You shouldn't, that's the worst part. You left them willingly. As time passes, though, you're starting to think that what you thought was one great fight with the so-called lowlifes of this world might have been the greatest time of your life. It's like fording a raging river; while you're in the thick of the waves, you think you might drown, but when you're safe on the dry shore again, all you can think of is the coolness of the water, how the flood had sparkled like a thousand sapphires.

You shut your eyes and then you're back again, just a kid, happier than you've ever been and twice as free. It had been easy to leave, actually, easier than it should have been. In your family, there were enough siblings and cousins and relatives that just one girl could go unnoticed. It's not that Ariel intentionally tried to blur all of her daughters together in her memory, but it couldn't be helped. She was one of seven daughters, and you were one of many as well. It wasn't her fault, no, but it was your excuse anyway.

It turns out that nobody bats their eyes at a mermaid's daughter when she's running headlong towards the surf. You dove into the waves and came up to shore miles away. Your mother was terrified of losing any one of her children to the endless sea just as her father lost her to land, so none of you were allowed to stray that close to the beach. Of course you would see how far you could go the second you were unsupervised. Of course you would push the limits just to learn where you would break.

You ended up scaring the daylights out of a boy in a small sailing craft not far from the limits of the Isle of the Lost. You hadn't meant to go that far, but you were giddy with the feeling of doing something wrong and he was trying to escape as well. He'd offered for you to hitch a ride with him so long as the wind was good. You thought that suited you well enough, so you took the hand he gave you and listened when he introduced himself as Harry Hook.

He said his name the same way you did, emphasis on the first name and not the last. It's the exact opposite way any child of a prince or princess does, and you think that might have been why you liked him from the start. The sun shone overhead, and you talked to him about running away and taking to the sea and all the things you wanted to do if you just had time.

Neither of you wanted to leave, not really, but of course all good things have to come to an end at some point. You watched the sun sink lower and lower in the sky with all the dread of a doomed man going to the gallows. You must have looked seriously unhappy, because you remember Harry laughing and saying that you could meet him tomorrow, if you wanted. You wanted that more than anything, as it turned out, so you eagerly agreed.

Harry took you as far as he could towards Auradon again, and watched as you dove into the water. You can still remember how he'd watched you go, the way his eyes had tracked the water as if he could look at you forever, even after you disappeared from view. He stayed there for a long time before finally forcing his ship to turn around again. You'd know; you stayed there on the ocean floor watching him back until he was gone.