Chapter Text
Mal drew thick, dark lines into the wall mural of Jay. She focused particularly on the contour of his shoulders and long, streaky hair. Rain pattered down on the roof and rolled off into the streets below. The door onto the scaffolding was shut, and the window blockaded with cardboard and duct tape. Outside, it had been raining for two days. It was late October, so the precipitation was a mixture of dirty water and grey slush. God bless the barrier for preventing air circulation and giving everyone on the Isle garbage-infused rain.
They weren’t freezing, mostly thanks to Evie who made their clothes and kept them warm, and Jay for hauling cardboard and tin sheets on top of their roof to help seal it up. Mal had been layering for the last three days. Tank top on long-sleeve shirt on short-sleeved shirt on Evie’s special Isle jacket. Carlos, Jay, and Evie were also layering. Right now, her team was huddled in a small spread of ratty blankets amid the few mattresses they’d managed to pilfer. Carlos was fiddling with one of his gadgets, Evie was embroidering something, and Jay had leaned back, pulled his beanie over his eyes, and gone to sleep.
As Mal added a vibrant blue color over the emblem on Jay’s jacket, she heard a panicked gasp from behind. She spun with the spray can outstretched and stared at Carlos, who was looking around in surprise. Both Evie and Jay looked equally surprised.
“Did you guys hear that?” Carlos asked in shock.
“Hear what?” Jay asked. He looked around the apartment suspiciously. Mal studied the look on Carlos’s face. He looked amazed as he searched for the source of the sound he’d heard. A sense of dread spread throughout her stomach.
“It was a girl,” Carlos said, sounding amazed. “She asked, ‘what’s your name?’”
Mal had to swallow a gulp as she lowered the spray can and pressed her arms to her sides to stop them from shaking. “No one said anything, Carlos,” she said softly. “You probably imagined it.”
“Or it could have been your soulmate.” Evie shrugged, setting down your project. “Did you get kind of a warm or a cold feeling along your spine?”
“Yeah.” Carlos nodded. “Yeah, I did. What’s a soulmate?”
“Just your other half.” Jay waved the question away, sitting back like everything had been resolved as Mal’s grip grew increasingly tight on the can. “It’s not as big as it’s cracked up to be.”
“I think they’re wonderful.” Evie’s eyes turned dreamy. “I haven’t had my first contact yet, but I’m sure they’ll be royalty from Auradon!”
Jay snorted. “Yeah, whatever,” he scoffed. “It’s not automatic True Love, Evie. A soulmate is more like… your best shot at a best friend.”
Carlos leaned forward, listening to every word. “What do they do? Who are they?” he asked.
“It’s someone who you connect with better than any other person in existence,” Jay said. “Almost everyone has one. If you get really in-tune with yours, you can actually start sharing thoughts and senses, but that’s extremely rare. Most people just get to talk with theirs mentally every once in a while. You usually hear them for the first time when you’re twelve to fourteen, but evidently with some people it happens a bit later.” He leaned over and pinched Evie’s arm, who yelped.
“You have one then?” Carlos asked. “A soulmate?”
“Yeah.” Jay nodded. “I heard mine almost two years ago, back when I was thirteen. She’s a girl. We talked swords for a few seconds.” And, like clockwork, they looked up at Mal, who had to fight to keep the telltale colors of sickness off her face. “Do you know yours, Mal?” Jay asked.
Mal stared with wide eyes and a cold began to creep down her spine. For a moment, she thought it was dread, but then she felt her soulmate’s tentative emotions creep through her and realized it was actually their connection opening. Horrible timing. She panicked. “I don’t have a soulmate,” she said quickly. “I’ve never felt a connection like what you’re describing.” There. Clever words.
Against her will, a deep and resounding sense of betrayal filled her. She turned back to the wall and arced the spray paint over her mural.
“ Why would you say that ?” her soulmate asked. “ That’s hurtful .” Mal bit her lip as she tried to shove his feelings away like they were her own, but unfortunately, he was much more accepting of his emotions than she was. She didn’t know how to explain that her own connection was unlike anything she’d ever heard about and it freaked her out. She didn’t know how to tell him that she had never felt the things he felt on a daily basis and they scared her every time their connection randomly opened. She did know, however, to tell him to quit doing that in as commanding a tone as she could. It rarely worked .
“ It’s a weakness. An abnormality. They could tell someone. ” Mal said in a brash, stubborn tone. Not just someone, of course. If this information ever found its way back to her mother, who knew what would happen? Maleficent, the Mistress of Evil, had never had a soulmate and felt nothing but disdain for those who did. The words “weakness” and “abnormality” had fallen straight out of the Dark Queen’s mouth. She was powerful, she had told Mal, because she didn’t have some pathetic fool attached to her like nearly everyone else. And, she had pointed out, more people lacked soulmates on the Isle than anywhere else. To have a soulmate… it was a characteristic associated with Auradon and heroes and everything good in the world. The thought that her own daughter could have such a trait - it was too shameful to consider.
“ So what? ” he asked, just as stubbornly. Mal felt anger, hot and fierce, spike through her. She couldn’t tell if it was hers or his. The more they talked, the more the emotions blurred. She heard his voice in her ears like he was standing next to her. His emotions ran under her skin in an icy stream that seemed to warm her up as it rushed by. It was strange.
“ So, I don’t want to get beaten up because my soulmate and our whole connection is super freaky ,” she snapped. It wasn’t just an insult. Most people had their first connection when they were twelve or thirteen, like Jay had said, but she’d had hers at the age of five. As she’d gotten older, they’d had more and more full-length conversations, which was practically unheard of. And despite that, he was secretive. She didn’t know his name, his age, his parents, anything about him. Mal wondered if he was the son of a minor villain and was embarrassed by that. She could let slip who her mother was and lord it over him, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of finding out things about her when she knew nothing about him.
“ Who would beat up someone because of their soulmate? And besides, our connection’s just different because - ” He stopped talking abruptly.
“ Because...? ” she asked with a furrowed brow. Realization began to dawn in her head. He knew. His guilt crept through her spine; cold and condemning. “ You know? ” she sputtered. “ You know what’s wrong with us? ”
“ Nothing’s wrong with us ,” he corrected. Indignation began to build in her heart.
“Oh really? So everybody blabs to their soulmate as much as you do?” She looked back up at the mural on the wall and realized her eyes had started to glow as she aggravated herself more and more. She quickly calmed herself down before her friends could notice.
She directed her attention to him. He had noticed something that was making him uneasy.
“ It’s because you have magic, ” he said quietly. “ Really strong magic. Am I right? ”
She blinked. That hadn’t been at all what she was expecting. “ Is that a problem? ” He must have felt the power surging behind her eyes - an all too common occurrence, as anger was a very common emotion on the Isle. Mal wondered how he knew that he’d been feeling the effects of magic. Fascinating.
“ No, not at all. It’s just… I think that’s why our connection is so strong. I thought it was ...” he paused. Her irritation grew into frustration. The Isle of the Lost’s barrier suppressed all magic within its borders. Yet somehow, even though she couldn’t use it, she got all the awful side effects. Side effects like him .
“ Whatever, ” she thought to him, officially done playing host to this mysterious voice for today. “ Whatever, whatever, whatever. ” Then she screwed her eyes closed, focused, and threw him out of her mind. The chill faded in her spine. She felt a sense of accomplishment at being able to shut the door between them, even though she knew it would now be a few more weeks before she’d have the opportunity to wrench any more answers from him. That, and the next time they talked, their connection would be stronger. It always was when they learned new things about each other or about the connection. She wondered what would be different this time. Maybe she’d actually be able to shut his emotions out of her system as she could with hers?
“Jay,” Carlos said, pulling her attention back to her friend’s conversation. “How can I talk to my soulmate again?”
Mal groaned internally. If this was their conversation for the next hour, she was going to scream.