Chapter Text
Nighttime- Isle of the Lost
Mal’s room/Mal’s POV
Everything hurts. So so bad.
Hangout spot/Evie’s POV
Always a disappointment. The mirror, while dirty and fragmented, never failed to highlight the clear imperfections that my mother wanted to beat out of me. I’ll always be ugly. *clang* I turn my head sharply towards the hideout’s entrance to see Mal. An unconscious mess on the floor, bloody and bruised. Her fierce purple hair, now dull, going every which way. What the hell.
I crouch down to try and get her attention, “Mal!” I nudged her gently, getting rougher the longer her bout of unresponsiveness lasted. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do, ignoring the unconscious fae below me, I was completely alone here. No one was going to help me or Mal.
I began to break down, I hated the fact that I was reduced to a sobbing mess on the floor besides my best friend's unresponsive form. I hated the fact that this happened to her and was going to continue to happen to her. And I hated the fact that I hated myself for crying here on the floor and going against my mother’s wishes. “A lady never cries” she says. It will only make me uglier.
“E?” I was stirred out of a devastating haze by the person that caused all my worry. “What’s wrong?” I hated her for doing that. For pretending that everything was okay and that everything was going to be okay when it wasn’t and never will be. But I knew I couldn’t take that from her, her hope. Hope of the fact that we would get out of her, or at least away from the people who hurt us. So I threw on a mask. For her.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” I said with the most comforting grin I could muster. Never a smile though, “it will cause wrinkles!”, she says. “Let’s get you cleaned up, huh?”
“That sounds like a good idea E.” She tried to smile but I could tell it hurt. As I tried to discretely scan her to avoid her embarrassment I noticed she only had one black eye, but a growing bruise on her right cheek that resembled a hand print. She had a cut on her forehead that hints to Maleficent having gone for something other than her hands. One of Mal’s sleeves were rolled up and I could see that she had cuts big and small all the way up her arm, indicating that she tried to shield herself from her mother’s incoming onslaught. It hurt me to see her like this, or any of them like this. *ahem* I was knocked out of my daze as I heard her clear her throat, feeling ashamed as I realized she had caught me staring.
“I’m ok Evie.” A genuine look on her face, to an emotion I couldn’t assign. I nodded my head resolutely and pointed at my old seat in front of the mirror and dresser. She went to sit down while I went to the cupboard near the back farthest from the entrance and began to gather what I needed. A bowl, a bottle of alcohol, cotton pads, gauze pads, and bandages. I brought it to the dresser that supported our one and only dirty and fragmented mirror within the hideout. I noticed Mal staring at herself in the mirror, once again with an emotion I couldn’t assign.
She seemed to jump but only slightly as I unceremoniously laid all the supplies down before her.
I uncapped the bottle of alcohol and poured a bit of it into the bowl. Lightly dabbing a cotton pad with the alcohol in the bowl I began to clean Mal up. Starting with her right arm. She grimaced but never flinched as her cuts were dabbed with the alcohol. Upon reaching the top of her arm I fetched the bandages and covered her newly clean cuts all the way down her arm.
Moving to the other side I rolled up her sleeve, I assessed that there was damage there too and I should have been gentler as Mal snatched her arm back out of my grip. “Mal, it’s ok.” Reaching my hand out slowly so as to indicate for her to give me her arm again. A slow calculated breathe was taken in and then out by her and she rolled her own sleeve up and gave me her arm again. I followed the same process as the other arm, thankful that it wasn’t worse. Until I reached the hardest part.
Her face. Her damaged porcelain skin. Blemished by the actions of her mother. Grabbing her chin and tilting her head up to get a better angle at the rather large gash on her forehead. Tutting at it I grabbed another alcohol soaked cotton pad and gently dabbed the cut. This was when she broke.
She painfully creased her features, and tears started to roll down her cheeks. Dripping onto the dresser. The tears increased and the dam broke as Mal broke out into a sob. She grabbed onto me and I only stood there and held her. Knowing that was the best I could do to offer my friend comfort, it made me feel weak and vulnerable alongside her.
I rocked her back and forth and her tears eventually ceased, she was exhausted and I revised to hurry up as I dabbed the gash gentler than ever before until it was clean and I was able to grab a gauze pad for it. The bruises only needed ice and we didn’t have that.
*Sigh* Wanting to clean up but deciding it wasn’t worth it, I ended up leaving the stuff on the dresser and grabbing Mal instead. She was half asleep as I dragged and heaved her down onto our old and stolen mattress. In bad condition like everything and everyone else on the Isle. I laid down next to her and fell into what I wish was a dreamless sleep. Only hoping it was different for Mal.