The New Dragon

Chapter Seven

A/N: I always feel bad about not including Freddy, whom I love, and need more of. She barely even exists in canon... So here you have it!

This chapter also contains a pretty vivid and cruel flashback to the Isle, as well as a very brief, non-graphic killing of an animal, so be aware of that. It also contains a trans character and frank discussion of fluid and confusing sexuality. As always, please let me know if I'm being insensitive, as I want everyone to get representation, and I don't trust myself to do it without messing up, as I myself, am a cis person.

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Much to Mal's happiness, there was no parade for Wonderland. According to Hart, the residents had a bizarre aversion to parades, and feasts were much more common.

"Sounds perfect," Jay grinned, "I'm starving from the ride."

"As long as the food doesn't make us grow or shrink." Evie added teasingly.

"You taught us the best lesson of all at your wedding, Mal." Cora had noted, with a wry smile. "The best way to your subjects hearts is through their stomachs."

And then, Winter Regalis had added "Yeah, and you never, ever forget your first feast."

For many of the kids on the Isle, Mal and Evie's wedding had been the first time any of them had had enough to eat, for the first time in their entire lives. The hunger was always there, it always ate at them, and sometimes it hurt so badly that it woke them up at night, worse than even the nightmare of what their parents would do to them if they didn't turn out to be perfect villains. Mal could remember her first feast as easily as she could recall her last meal before Auradon. Before everything changed.

They had all been living in the crypt then, but slowly gaining power, in the month it took Evie to brew the poison that would kill Jafar. Jay was as good a fighter as Mal, and she was no longer hiding. Now, the walls of their hideout were brightly emblazoned with her sigils, the Long Live Evil tag that denoted Mal's territory. 

(And may hell itself have mercy on anyone who tresspassed it)

It had been a barge day, in October, and Mal recalled the crisp, cool air that made her zip up her leather jacket and snap up her collar to protect her cheeks from the cold. They were well known on barge days, the four of them. As they all stood in a crowd, in the cold, and waited for the ships of garbage from Auradon, Carlos went around, weaving his way through the group, tying people's shoelaces together, so that when the frantic crowd rushed for the boats, they'd fall, and Carlos' melodious laugh would be the last thing they heard as their hope died.

Lots of men and women had missed their chances for food that month, and had to barter or steal just to stay alive. But it was us or them, Mal thought back then, and still believed now: that the less competition there was, the more likely that she and Evie and Jay and Carlos would survive the winter. Death was necessary, even the deaths of the few unlucky souls who'd been trampled by the barge crowds over the years. 

Death was necessary.

But that year had been life too. That had been the year Dizzy was born, and the year of the first feast of their lives. Jay had somehow managed to snag a full bag of apples, and Carlos had gotten a trash bag full of all kinds of good and useful things, from sugar to potatoes.

(They weren't even bad yet, but apparently Auradon people didn't realize they were still good with the eyes sprouting. Even better, potatoes with eyes meant that you could replant them, if the Isle was anything other than a barren sea-battered rock off the Auradon Coast)