We Belong - a Descendants story (Bal)

Chapter 13

"Ben, honey, what are you doing here so late?" Belle asks that night when she opens the door and to her surprise sees her son standing there.

His shoulders hang low, his eyes are red, fresh tearstains clearly visible on his face. "She- she's- I don't know where I- I don't know..." he sobs, almost to the point of hyperventilating.

Belle doesn't think twice and immediately pulls him inside, closing the door. He clings onto his mother's shirt while she holds him in her arms. "What happened, sweetie? What's going on?"

Ben just cries into his mom's shoulder, not able to say anything. Only when Belle takes him to the parlor and sits him down on the couch, she can guide him to calm down again. Slowly he catches his breath. "You're really worrying me right now... has something bad happened?" she asks him, never having seen her son so down.

"Mal, she's... she's disappeared..." he manages to tell her, while Belle hands him a glass of water.

"What do you mean 'disappeared'?" she asks, not following what he's saying.

"She didn't show up for the meeting, and- and her car is here, but she's- gone," he tries to explain.

"She has to be somewhere," she tells him.

"No one has seen her, mom... there's no trace..." he sighs.

"You don't think she went to-" she tries to ask, but Ben already shakes his head.

"We've checked, she's not there... not that she would even go there, especially without telling us..." he states.

"And her car is here, you said?" she questions, finding the situation really suspicious.

Ben nods. "It's locked and nothing weird about it. It's just parked like normal."

"We should send guards to look for her," Belle tells him, determined to find her future daughter-in-law. "We'll find her, she's going to be all right."

Ben can sense that his mom is really worried, though she tries not to show it to her son. She doesn't want him to feel even worse. There is hope, nothing's lost yet.

And so the next day, the news spreads throughout the kingdom. Guards are out everywhere to find the future Queen. Posters are being put up, people try to find any sort of clue as to where she's gone.

When Beast hears the news, he doesn't waste a second. He grabs the phone and calls the fairies. Even though the camp is hidden in a far corner of the kingdom, he's not taking any risks.

"You need to make sure that no one, absolutely no one, goes into the camp for next couple months," he tells Flora. "We can't risk any news from the outside world reaching her, okay. Make sure your employees know this, too."

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"One more indiscretion like this and we'll put you in the detention cabin, understood?" the counselor tells Mal, before shutting the door.

Mal sits herself down on the beat-down couch. It's chilly in the dark cabin, but the small room is getting really familiar. She's lost count of how many times they put her in there at this point. It sucks, but everything about this camp sucks. It's now week 5, there's been no news from the outside, staff is really careful to keep everything out. Mal has noticed. They want all patients to be completely disconnected from the outside world. Next week, though, at the 6 week mark she's finally allowed to send a letter. It's been on her mind for weeks now, what she's going to write. There's so much to say, so much to ask... all she wants is to just see him in real life, talk to him, curl up in his arms. She refuses to believe that it was Ben who put her in here, there's just no way he'd ever do something like that. They love each other, they're starting a family, someone else is sabotaging that. Every time she puts her hand on her bump and feels their baby kick, she can only think about how much she wants him to be with her. Moments like that, all the ups and downs during her pregnancy, were supposed to be shared with him. They were in this together...