MINE FOR INFINITY

It's Growing Pains

(Mal's POV)

In a haze, sun rays touch my closed eyelids from a happy place above. Nothing really is heard in this odd, silent place, or then is and my nerves are refusing to function. An all-too-familiar smell of cement and paint, with a fishy hint, sneers progressively, obviously annoyingly, in my nostrils and I can feel my nose wrinkling at its stinging feel. And in a sudden flash I am sat right up like I never was otherwise, fallen from that weird in-between reality of a sort, as I realize what the smell is to be associated with. The hideout.

I feel as if I'm standing aside and watching my brain connect the pieces, my location and mood with the sharpening memories of yesterday, together. And I honestly have no idea as to how I managed to drag myself here. It's like I wandered around drunk and just happened to pass out here, except I know I didn't since my head's not throbbing. And since the last thing with what I could've gone out of yesterday is pleasure. The latest I can remember is getting shoved out of one of those Auradon limousines, and watching it drive away throug the newly secured bridge as the barrier closed and locked me in the one place that felt unbelievable to me anymore, without an exit. I'm sure I didn't even try.

The only thing that is now holding down the panick from getting the best of me is my automatic sense of survival. That is something every single child, and older why not, has to have developed as a sixth sense while growing up on a hellhole like the Isle, because if you didn't you were as good as dead. And still, even after having spent all the time I have in Auradon, thinking that would change me inside out, that sixth sense has not erased. It never will, for it stands hand in hand with the trauma. And trauma has a permanent ownership of a part of every VK's brain.

I honestly think that anyone who hasn't seen the Isle from the Isle will never get what it's like. I could tell them everything I wanted, I could describe in as much detail as far too much, but they would never ever understand. They haven't seen edges of streets lined with random dead bodies. They haven't starved for months while already being far too underfed. They haven't had to listen to drunk gangs roam through the alleyways in the dead of night, braking into houses and crushing anything they find. They haven't watched a fight-to-death. They haven't felt a stab. They haven't had to stab. They haven't even had to hold a weapon. They haven't been raped or sexually assaulted. They haven't had to pray to stay alive. They don't know what that's like.

Even the weakest of the Isle could kill someone like Chad, for example, with their eyes closed. People more fragile, that are somewhat in need of protection on the Isle, could easily murder with bare hands. That's people like, Evie.

My breath hitches and my grip on the small windowsill, which I was clasping while staring out to the streets of the Isle, loosens. And tears rise. Bitter tears flowing as a result of bitter unjustice. I really did think that Auradon would, in the end, accept us the VKs as equals to the local people and not keep those prejudices. But I thought wrong. They didn't give me a chance to try and sort it out, or to even explain. They just saw me as an immediate threath, as something always evil at the core, and so decided it was fair to take me out, for their own goods. They didn't much care to consider my, our, view. They went to sit on young love, just like that.

I can't help collapsing on the dirty floor before the window, for my legs can't carry anymore. I hide my face deep into my terribly shaky hands and try to breathe between sobs as my whole body twitches in sync with them. Evie isn't with me. They took me away from Evie. My mind automatically forms an image, for the moment my eyes are closed, that the floor I feel was the wooden and warm one of our dormroom, the light sun was shining in from between our rosy curtains, and my beautiful girlfriend, my reason for life, was there, pulling me onto her lap and letting me wail on her neck as she'd kiss my head. That's what she would do. And now it hurts even worse when I'm almost able to feel her touch around my body. Evie is not here just when I thought she could never leave my side again.