Video - Attempting This Princess Leader Thing

[mal_contented]

[Mal closed her connection to Merlin and considered what he had said when she arrived, about what a princess is here, about leadership. Then she opened her connection to everyone through her mirror.]

"Alright. Listen up. Someone is missing and we've been asked to go help. Those who chose not to. stay in the assigned apartments. Yours or together with others, I don't care. If things go sideways it will be easier to keep you lot safe if we know which one building you are all in."

[A deep breath.]

"For the rest of us. We need to work together. Most of you probably don't know or like me. That's fine. Most of you if I know you... I don't like you. But we don't have to like each other for this. We just need to work towards the same goal. After, if you want to tear into me, fine, you're welcome to try. But until we all come back successful and safe, we are horns out, not in. We are one."

Comments

//in person/private

[strangeandunusual]

Well, it wasn't perfect, but none of them were. Lydia looked up from where she was dying some garish clothes from the Emporium for them both in the bathroom: black dye in the bathtub, purple in the sink.

"That took a lot of guts, Mal. I think it was a great start."

Re: //in person/private

[mal_contented]

"Glad someone thinks so," she said, tossing the mirror aside for now to don a pair of gloves to help. "you know, that shirt you grabbed for yourself? With the net sleeves? What if we made it all black except just give one sleeve something bright, like a red or a purple?" Lydia didn't much strike her as the green sort.

[strangeandunusual]

"Oh, I never would have thought of that!" Lydia beamed. "I love it! Let's do red. Purple is your color. I can start another batch of dye in the kitchen sink and we'll just eat out today."

[mal_contented]

"Works for me. And yeah, I could see is working splashes of red into your look in a few places. You could totally work black with red pops."

[strangeandunusual]

"I've only really worn red once," she admitted, rummaging through the bag of dyes she'd grabbed from the Emporium before finding the color in question. "It wasn't my best look, but ... then again, it was this giant frilly dress that made me look like an overgrown cupcake. Thankfully I didn't have to suffer in it for too long."

[mal_contented]

"Ugh. Hard pass on giant frilly dresses. Been trying to wear them for..." she shook her head. "Never mind. Just trust me, NO ONE looks good in giant frilly dresses."

[strangeandunusual]

For the boy, Lydia guessed. Ben. Mal had skirted around him, and she knew there was probably a reason.

"Yeah, trust me. I didn't pick it. It was kind of ..." She sighed. Setting the dye was going to take a while. "So, you told me about how screwed up everything is in Auradon. I should probably tell you about ..."

She looked around. Even in another dimension, you couldn't be too careful.

"... him."

[mal_contented]

Now this sounded interesting. ".....him?" she repeated in a dramatic whisper, fighting a smile. "So there's a him?"

[strangeandunusual]

"Nooooot like that," she insisted with a wide-eyed shake of her head. "But trust me: he wishes. The thing is... He's a ghost. And you summon him by saying his name, three times. So ... I'm not sure if that's still true here."

[mal_contented]

"So not saying his name, just in case. But if writing it is safe enough you'll do that when we're done with this mess so I have some heads up incase it is an issue here. So, he wishes, and you don't I'm guessing? Something against ghosts in general, or is he just special?"

[strangeandunusual]

"He's gross," Lydia said immediately. "I needed his help to save my friends, and he tried to use that to make me marry him."

[mal_contented]

"Uh huh," she said, unimpressed with this guy already. "How did he think that was going to work exactly?"

[strangeandunusual]

"It's part of a bigger story," she admitted. "But they were going to ... Someone was going to destroy them. And it was my only choice. And he knew it."

[mal_contented]

"So extortion, huh? Sounds like one of Doctor F's friends all right."

CW: suicidal ideation

[strangeandunusual]

"That's an idea," Lydia realized. "We can just call him B."

She huffed out a sigh. "I mean ... He did save them. And he talked me out of ... Um, well." She fidgeted a little. She'd never talked about the note she'd written to anyone with a pulse, and it was suddenly awkward. But Mal had trusted her with the hard, ugly parts of her life, and she felt a need to follow suit. She started fixing the red dye to have something to do with her hands, a focus besides Mal's reaction to what she was about to say.

"... Joining them."

Re: CW: suicidal ideation

[mal_contented]

"Joining them?" she asked, not sure what she meant, but aware that it seemed to be something big.

[strangeandunusual]

"You know." She poured the powder into the water, watching it bloom, and breathed out. She could do this. She could say it to another living person, just as easily as she'd said it to Beetlejuice, to Barbara and Adam. "They were ghosts. I wanted to ... I ..."

She gripped the edge of the counter, and the memory of how utterly wretched she'd felt that night came flooding back to her. She set her jaw against the tears, tried to remind herself that it was just a memory, that she wasn't utterly alone anymore. "I wanted to die. I was going to jump off the covered bridge at the bottom of our driveway."

[mal_contented]

Mal considered a moment as she worked at her own part of the dying, then she looked over shaking her head. "Far too painful way to go," she said finally. "If you really wanted to there are easier ways." Getting to the reasons not to would come after, later in the conversation. Probably.

[strangeandunusual]

"I wasn't really thinking about what was easy," she said. It hadn't quite been the reaction she expected ... but somehow, that helped. "I was thinking about what I knew I could do. And Adam and Barbara died falling off the same bridge, so ... it was ... I thought it'd be kind of symbolic. I was the only one who could actually see them. So they kept trying to get me to talk my parents into leaving, but my dad and my step-mom wanted to use them to make money off living in a haunted house." She took her frustration at the memory out on the cloth, plunging it into the water and wringing it tight. "So I felt like I was a tightrope, and they each had hold of an end of me, and ... and ... no one was listening to me. I felt so alone, even though no one would leave me alone. It was awful. I couldn't take it."

[mal_contented]

She nodded, considering as she worked. "And killing yourself seemed the better choice to killing your family?" she asked, curiously.

[strangeandunusual]

Mal sounded suspiciously reminiscent of Beetlejuice himself, in that moment. She knew he'd wanted to get rid of her father and Delia and Otho far more permanently than Barbara and Adam had had in mind.

"I wouldn't kill my Dad," she objected. "I love him. ... Delia's awful but ... I wouldn't have even thought of killing her. Murder just ... wasn't something that crossed my mind. I just ... being a ghost seemed like it would be so much easier, and more fun. Then Adam and Barbara could have been my real family. But ... "B" ... he said he could help me go over to be with them without my having to die. So that's why I agreed to let him help."

[mal_contented]

She nodded. "If it helps any, I didn't want to let anyone kill my mother either, when it came down to it. she happily would have let the kingdoms burn, just for the joy and heat of the flames. But... she's still my mother. So I get it. So, you made a bad deal, what happened then?"

[strangeandunusual]

"They tried to hold a seance for Adam and Barbara to make them show up and entertain their friends like... like trained animals. That was awful enough, but it went wrong, and I think it was turning into an exorcism, because they started crumbling and falling apart. That's when I agreed to marry B. ... He scared off the others and saved Adam and Barbara, just like he said he would."

She mashed her hands down into the dye, watching it seep into the fabric, changing it from the disgusting pastels she'd bought into something darker, better.

"And the next thing I knew he had me in this awful red wedding dress, and starting a ceremony. Right there. In our living room."

Lookit, icons!

[mal_contented]

"Ugh. Malicious or a an idiot using magic he didn't understand?" She tried to pull her brain away from, thoughts of Auradon. Sometimes even smart good people could be idiots who open the door to evil.

Ooooo shiny!

[strangeandunusual]

"Definitely malicious." Lydia made a face. "He said he needed to get married so he could 'meet some people on the other side', which ... I really have concerns about now that I've seen what he did to my step-mother's friends. He had a ring in his pocket, and everything. On a severed finger. It was disgusting."

In retrospect, the gothic literature buff in her could appreciate the ambiance, and she still smiled just a tiny bit. It had been funny what he'd done to Otho, after all. But, no. No. Over all, the scales didn't balance on the B-guy.