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“You lied to Jay, you lied to Carlos - you lied to me. ”
Evie’s voice breaks on that final word. She never thought she’d need to be strong enough for this, simply because her brain could never invent a situation that feels as gut-wrenching as this does.
Right now, she is looking at Mal and she doesn’t recognise her. Her best friend, the person she has grown and changed alongside. Her, Jay, Carlos, they have been the only constants in her life. The only people always present, through thick and thin.
Evie has never felt anything like this. Her heart feels heavy, weighed down by shackles, by the betrayal. The deepest, rawest betrayal she has ever experienced.
Before now, Evie didn’t think it was possible for a heart to ache, but it’s physically painful. It’s like a fist is wrapped around her heart, squeezing relentlessly, not stopping until her very soul is destroyed.
Worse than all of that, it’s Mal’s hand doing the squeezing.
They’ve been in it together since the very beginning. There is no one on this whole planet Evie trusts more. They grew up together, clawed their way out of the very Isle of the Lost together.
She thought they could help others get out, too. She thought they could use the influence they had gained to share the dream life they had won. She thought that dream could become a reality for even more people, who were just like them. Who came from what they did, who deserved what they did, what they received only by chance.
Evie thought Mal wanted that, too. That was another mistaken thought she had.
Mal tries to plead with her, and despite her heart actively shattering in her chest, all its jagged pieces digging into her very insides-
Evie turns away. She doesn’t think she could ever leave Mal permanently; she doesn’t know if she’d survive it. But she needs time, and she needs space. To think, and to process - to be able to hold a conversation with Mal without yelling at her.
Before she can so much as take a step, there’s a blinding flash of light, a thick swirl of pink fog, and suddenly Evie can’t move a muscle.
Neither can Jay, or Carlos, or Ben, it seems. They’re all within her field of vision, enough to confirm what’s happened to them all.
Their skin is grey, cracked. Each one of them is unnaturally still, frozen - stuck in stone, just like she is.
The stone hasn’t stopped her racing thoughts. Her body is prisoner, entirely frozen, yet her mind is just as active as ever; the one thing she wouldn’t mind being silenced still kicking, and louder than ever.
Evie can’t stop the relief that floods her when Mal steps into the line of her gaze, entirely unharmed.
She reminds herself that she’s mad at her. The statement is still entirely true - she practically feels her veins alight whenever she thinks about those children, still stuck on that island, and how Mal promised to look out for them but she lied - yet she can’t help it.
Her heart is beaten, bruised, and bleeding, yet it still increases its pace as Mal walks towards her. Fluttering because of her, despite everything still beating for her.
Evie doesn’t know if Mal can tell she’s conscious. Somehow, she doubts the thought has even crossed her mind.
She lifts a hand slowly, extending it towards Evie. Towards her cheek, settling there and cupping it gently. Her thumb glides up and down in broad strokes, somehow comforting despite both of them being entirely powerless in this situation.
For the first time, it’s Mal who radiates warmth towards Evie. It’s always been the other way around, Mal constantly running cold and turning to Evie for shelter which she was more than happy to provide.
Now, though, her natural heat has been drained away by the stone prison she’s encased in.
In the course of a single conversation, everything has been shifted between them, not even their body temperatures being spared. Everything is different, and the look on Mal’s face seems to send more jagged cracks running through Evie’s heart. Her face is entirely crumpled up, folded like a wet piece of paper. Her eyes are glassy, and after only a moment of lingering, she steps away.
Presumably to fix this mess. Evie really wishes she didn’t trust her to deliver.
•·················• ✦ •·················•
Mal’s departure means Evie is suddenly entirely alone. The others are right there, just feet away, but they too are trapped. Stuck in a shell, unable to move, to blink, even.
Able to think, though. And Evie’s mind has been capitalising on that, thrusting her back into the past, memories playing on repeat throughout her brain however much she tries to reject them.
To be honest, she’s tried to block out most of the memories from her childhood. She’s proud to be a VK, she really is. She loves nothing more than to show everyone that they are not their parents, that they can become whoever they wish. She will always be a girl from the Isle, and that’s not a bad thing in her eyes. Not anymore.
That doesn’t mean she had a good start in life. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t vehemently regret the things she did, and longs even more desperately to forget the things that were done to her.
The one thing she could never, ever regret is Mal.
They really were menaces, all four of them. Scrabbling desperately to become the biggest fish in a ridiculously small pond, to prove themselves as worthy.
Evie remembers the adrenaline of being chased through the streets, hurling insults back at whichever poor soul they were tormenting that day. She remembers the thrill of being at the top, or at least second, only their parents still looming over them.
The loveless home they returned to is far too prominent in her mind. A place where their only vague semblance of value was whichever atrocious deed they had committed that day. It was never enough to please their parents; it was always do better, or, in their words, be worse. Be the most ruthless, be the cruellest.
There is one thing she misses, and that’s how close they were as a family - not their parents, just the four of them.
She misses pretending to roll her eyes at whatever Jay had stolen that day, while deep down being impressed at his prowess. She misses teasing Carlos, ruining his hair by ruffling it yet still being gentle all the while.
She’d be lying if she said she didn’t miss Mal most of all. Sneaking up onto the roof of their hideout, sitting beneath the stars and just talking. Laughing, too, or complaining, or just soaking in the silence and each other’s presence.
Their hideout was the centre of their map, and especially its roof. It was their safe space - barely held together by rotting wood and cracked tiles, jagged and uncomfortable to sit on.
But it was their roof. Their space, in their hideout. Carlos and Jay joined them, too, of course. After a bad day, a bad week, or just to stop and take a breath, they constantly found themselves up there. Together.
That hideout is Evie’s one good remembrance of the Isle of the Lost, the one place she misses. They got out, a fact which amazes her to this day. They survived, and they escaped unscathed.
Yet, a part of her will always miss when it was simpler. When all she needed was their hideout, and the company of her three favourite people.
Now, their life is a dream in comparison to what it was before. Despite the mess their lives are sometimes, despite the struggle to fit in, everything over here is infinitely better than anything over there.
Evie wants to share it. She wants others to have what they have, and she’s willing to fight for it, tooth and nail.
She thought Mal was, too.
She can’t believe how far they’ve come - from the scrawny, dirt stained wannabe villains, terrorising the streets, yet deep beneath it all just needing someone, anyone, to notice them. To look out for them.
They have the chance to give that to others. To help them become their best selves, people they can be proud of. People constantly growing and changing, and thriving all the while.
They used to be lost, and now their names are literally on the map of their home. They have become beacons of hope for everyone, no matter who they are or where they came from. Especially for the kids like them, though. On the map, a place for everyone to gather and be safe.
They went to having one safe place on their map, to being safe people and places for everyone, on all the maps.
Evie thought Mal wanted to share their life as badly as she did.
It’s like driving a knife into her own chest to say it, but maybe she doesn’t know her as well as she thought she did.
What she needs right now, more than anything, is to be back on that roof with Mal. She needs to be able to talk to her, to understand why she did what she did.
Was it an attempt to please others, those displeased by the potential for new villains being released? Another desperate bid to fit in? Or was it her desperate desire to preserve the life they have now?
Her answers will determine where they go next. Whether they continue to walk together, or have to drift apart?
Evie hopes with all her heart it will be the latter, but she won’t know until Mal returns.
With nothing else to do, she waits, her mind once more returning to the hideout.
Their hideout. Their map.