Isle of the Lost

Scars IV

Of their little gang, Carlos had the most scars. Gashes, gouges, bite marks. Enough that they overlapped in some places, old scars hidden by new ones.

Despite what some might think, very few of his marks came from street fights. Some did, the line stretching almost across the entire length of his forearm certainly had been, as had the slash cutting across the side of his calf from when his pant leg had got caught on a broken fence. There were others too, smaller cuts and nicks that weren’t worth remembering.

Some of the scars on his hands were from his personal projects, tiny cuts on his fingers from loose bits of scrap metal, marks on the backs of his hands from wires that had sparked when he wasn’t careful enough. Those scars he didn’t mind, they were proof of his craft, proof that there was something he was good at. He might not be the biggest or strongest kid on the Isle, but he was still useful, and sometimes? That was all that really mattered.

The vast majority of his scars were from his mother. Gashes from her claw-like nails catching on his cheeks, digging into his wrists. Lashes on his back from old leather belts and heavy buckles. His arms were speckled with burn marks from her cigarettes, the skin on his stomach slightly discoloured from the chemicals in the few cleaning supplies they - he - managed to scrounge from the dregs Auradon was kind enough to send them, from the times when he’d spilled the stuff on his shirt and been forced to wait until he’d finished his chores before he could swap it for a dry one (until long after the skin beneath had turned raw and irritable). That last one hadn’t really been her doing, but it might as well have been.

Cruella never had much issue finding something to punish him for. Maybe he hadn’t finished his chores fast enough, well enough (he did, he always did, but it was rarely enough). The slightest sign of disobedience, real or imagined, was enough justification in her eyes. On the worst days, when her paranoia was sky high and her patience was buried deep in the ground, sometimes even so much as breathing in her presence was enough to have her lip twisting into a snarl and sharp nails digging into his flesh. Animalistic in a way that made the dogs she cautioned him about look almost human in comparison.

His bedroom hadn’t been safe, though calling it a ‘bedroom’ would be too generous. His mother’s fur closet had been cramped, dark, and - most importantly - the floor had been a mess of partially-rusted traps that his mother set to protect her precious coats from those who might set their sights on them, not caring for the child who’d be forced to navigate around them just to be able to sleep. Carlos had lost count of just how many times he’d accidentally triggered one back before he’d memorised the layout, or on the days when he’d been too tired to care (needless to say, he hadn’t felt tired afterwards). He’d started wearing shorter pants because the extra protection hadn’t been worth shredding the fabric on sharp metal teeth, hadn’t been worth the hassle that came with trying to peel cloth from fresh wounds. Those scars were probably the worst he had - if only for just how many times he’d been caught - but they weren’t the ones he hated the most. No.

Animals didn’t tend to last long on the Isle. A few did, like the ones who had been villains of their own stories, beasts that most of the Isle’s human population knew better than to pick a fight with. Most of the other animals - usually the ones that had been foolish enough to venture onto the supply barge just before it left Auradon - were hunted for extra food, the ones his mother managed to get her claws on reappeared as a new accessory in her collection. But there were others who managed to survive, beloved pets of other villains, beasts that snarled, saliva dripping from their mouths, pointed teeth bared.

Carlos had been cornered by a couple of them once. He knew how it felt to have those teeth sink into his skin, how it felt to have them tearing at his flesh. He’d been lucky Jay and Mal had shown up when they did, he knew it could’ve been a lot worse.

The scars from his mother’s traps were the worst he had. But even those metal teeth didn’t scare him as much as the real ones did.

Isle of the Lost

Scars III

The amount of scars dotting Jay’s body were more in-line with what was expected of an Isle upbringing. Slashes on his arms from blocking knife blades, gouges near his ribs and around his stomach from the times where he wasn’t quite alert enough, fast enough.

The scars on his legs were jagged, marks of a time where leaping between buildings didn’t come so naturally. He’d taken a fair few tumbles after misjudging the distance, or because he’d failed to account for the various spikes that some residents had been smart enough to set up as a countermeasure against people with his particular skill set. It hadn’t been uncommon for him to finish a day by pulling glass shards, scrap metal, or even broken bits of half-rotten wood from his legs, from his side. Over time it became a part of his routine and then, once he’d improved, an occasional reminder to be careful.

Broken bones were also familiar enough to him, annoying, but familiar. Cuts were easy, clean them if they had the alcohol to spare - fresh water if they were lucky enough to get their hands on it - wrap it and hope to whatever higher power they believed in that the wound healed quickly. Jay never claimed to be faithful - things like faith, hope and pixie dust didn’t get anyone far on the Isle - but there was something keeping them alive, whether it was magic or something else entirely didn’t matter. Cuts and stab wounds were annoying but they weren’t too much of a hindrance if you knew what you were doing. Broken bones were practically a death sentence if you didn’t have a gang at your back, not that death sentences were really a true concern here.

He was lucky in the sense that the few breaks he’d earned had been in places that were easy enough to splint with their makeshift medical supplies. If it had been something like his hand, with all those smaller bones clustered together, or his ribs he might’ve been in trouble. Damage to his spine would’ve been even worse, but he was very careful to make sure that never happened. Splints were annoying, they restricted him to street level and the lowered manoeuvrability made dodging attacks awkward, but it was better than the alternative.

Some of his scars were smaller, tiny nicks from his skin catching on jagged edges while he ran with a fresh score. A mild irritant at best, something that would lead to a harsh beating at worst if he’d got stuck and couldn’t free himself in time. The crescent marks around his wrists and shoulders were enough of a reminder of what would happen if he wasn’t fast enough.

Despite what some might think, very few of his scars had come from his father. Jafar had still been cruel, Jay wasn’t that lucky, but he was smart. He needed Jay to swipe things for his store, he needed him to be able to grab things and run without being hampered by a limp, without having to worry about blood making his hands too slippery. Bruises were common on the days where his haul was smaller or if he hadn’t managed to get anything particularly impressive - though, not much on the Isle was - maybe he’d withhold food if he was in a particularly bad mood. It didn’t happen often, hunger just meant he had less energy to work with, that punishment was reserved for the days where Jay had been particularly useless.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t have any marks from his father. The rings he wore sometimes cut into Jay’s skin, the wounds always small enough that the man saw no point in removing them, they left tiny indents on his cheeks that probably wouldn’t look like scars at all to anyone who didn’t know how the marks had got there. There was a nick on his chin from the one time his father had caught him trying to hide one of the items he’d swiped, it wouldn’t have been worth anything in his eyes but that hadn’t mattered as he’d wrenched it from his hands, a corner catching him in the face.

The worst though, was the one on his back. Jay couldn’t remember when he’d first started stealing for his father, but he knew that once he had he wouldn’t be allowed to stop, not unless his father could find a better use for him. The one time he’d dared to come home with nothing, his father had pressed the flat side of a red hot knife against his back, he’d held it there until the sound of sizzling flesh had stopped, not caring about how Jay had tried to writhe away from it, about the blood staining his teeth from where he’d bit down on his lip to hold back a scream.

He hadn’t come back empty handed after that, even if he had to scramble for something worthless at the last minute, anything was better than invoking that particular punishment again.

Sometimes his ears still strained for the sound of hot metal against skin.

Isle of the Lost

Scars II

Out of the four of them, Evie had the fewest scars. Or so anyone not from the Isle would think.

The Evil Queen wanted the perfect princess, and princesses didn’t carry scars. Not the kind that came from the Isle, the ones that spoke of gang violence and brutality, of harshness and survival. Such things were unbecoming of one with royal blood, even if that blood wasn’t recognised as such. To have it smearing rusty blades and crumbling concrete would be disgraceful.

Evie still had those scars, though not as many as others her age. Years of being locked away in an old, forgotten castle with only her mother for company meant that she’d been spared much of those early years where the tension between the gangs was at its highest. But less tension didn’t mean it was gone entirely, it still bubbled under the surface, periodically showing itself in small scuffles that were nowhere near as serious as the outright turf wars, but could be just as dangerous if you weren’t prepared.

And she hadn’t been. Even after joining Mal and the others, she knew better than to think she’d be safe. Jay and Mal were the fighters of their group, and Carlos was scrappy in that way that stemmed from fight or flight being triggered, driven by a need to survive and not much else. Instincts that Evie hadn’t shared, not in those early days.

Her mother had clung too tightly to her memories of life before the Isle, as if she’d one day wake up to see it had all been a dream. It wasn’t, Evie’s existence alone was enough to prove that it wasn’t. Perhaps that was the reason why she so viciously pointed out all of her flaws while ignoring any attempts she made to improve. Whatever the case, her mother hadn’t bothered to teach her anything that would be useful on the Isle streets, at least not anything that she could fall back on should her words not be enough.

She was lucky that she’d stumbled into a gang as quickly as she had, even if things hadn’t started out so amicably. They’d watched her back like she watched theirs, she’d learned to fight, picked up a few tricks that would give her - if not an edge - a chance. It wasn’t enough to keep her entirely free of scars, to stop bits of glass and other shrapnel lodging in her skin either during a fight or after one.

She was lucky, the marks she gained from that were small enough for her to hide. Under leather while she roamed the Isle, and under makeup when she stood in front of her mother.

The only other physical scars she bore, the only ones she didn’t have to hide in front of her mother, were the tiny pinpricks on her fingertips from learning how to sew, how to properly use a needle and thread. On a good day, her mother would deem the scars acceptable, if only because it was undeniable proof that she wasn’t entirely useless. On the bad days, she scorned those too, biting words declaring that a perfect princess would have mastered her craft before scars had time to form. Evie doesn’t hide those scars, but she doesn’t let her mother see them if she doesn’t have to.

There were other things that earned scars here. Evie wasn’t blind, nor was she stupid. She knew what it meant when kids flinched from their parents, knew why some scars were worn like badges of honour while others were sneered at. Her mother had never opted to leave such marks on what was hers, her desire for perfection greater than the need to secure obedience.

There were other ways to deliver punishment, methods that didn’t involve spilling blood. Her mother wasn’t opposed to delivering such lessons with a raised hand, the blows never strong enough to leave anything more than a bruise that would clear up in a day or two. But that wasn’t her preferred teaching method. Her mother had been royal, she knew the power that words could carry, knew that a simple sentence could cut deeper than any knife.

Those invisible scars were hidden, unacknowledged by the less observant, those who didn’t know what to look for. But for those who knew, the scars were clear as day in the way she’d hesitate if she spoke out of turn, a brief stutter whenever she let her true intelligence slip, when she did - or said - something that didn’t fit in with the image of perfection her mother had tried to drill into her. It was clear in the way she didn’t eat as much as the other Isle kids did despite carrying the same hunger.

Not all of her scars were physical, but a part of her wished they were.

Isle of the Lost

Scars

Everyone had their scars, you didn’t walk the broken streets of the Isle for long without them. Brutal lessons etched into their flesh; carved, shredded, bitten. The harsh reminders they could never get rid of, taunting them to be stronger, faster, more ruthless. They covered the ones they could, flaunted the ones they couldn’t. See how you tried to silence me, to beat me down. Those marks screamed. See how you failed.

Scars were a fact of life for them. It wasn’t something they were ashamed of, why should they be? Scars were a symbol of survival, of battles won and lost. Most importantly, they were reminders that they were alive. Reminders of their hardships, of the things that shaped them. Their lives were bloody, cruel, but they were their lives to lead.

Still, as much they all universally liked to pretend otherwise, not all of their scars were worn like badges of honour. Some were blights that they’d rather be rid of, marks that only served to make them feel weak, to remind them of who truly held all the power here.

Marks they all shared.

Marks they knew better than to speak of.

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So, as the description says, this is where I'll be posting random musings about the world of Descendants without the Disney glamour (a bit will sometimes slip in, but for the most part this is intended to be a bit grittier).

I'll mostly be focusing on the Isle of the Lost, especially the original four VKs.

Some general things to keep in mind:

I will be hinting at/outright bringing up themes of child abuse and other potential triggers. I'll do my best to apply the appropriate trigger warnings, but I'm not 100% fluent in the Tumblr tag system. If I miss one or if there's a more well-recognised tag (e.g. "tw abuse" instead of just "abuse") let me know and I'll edit the post as necessary.

All of the posts on this blog are pure speculation/random musings, nothing I post here will be 100% canon-accurate.

I haven't read the books or watched the animated series, all of this is based on the three movies.

On that note, if you recognise a character that showed up in the books or animated series that DID NOT make an appearance in the movies, then their characterisation might be a bit off (I will do my best to keep them as in-character as possible, but some things might slip).

There's also a chance I'll be making my own VK or AK characters for the sake of worldbuilding. If you see an OC with parents who have been shown to have kids in some variation of Descendants media then just know I'm not trying to replace canon characters. I probably just haven't realised that a character already exists.

It's pretty rare that I write for OCs anyway, but I might if I think it'll help cover aspects that the movies didn't really delve into.

I might take requests, so feel free to drop asks but do keep in mind:

I do not intend to bash any of the pre-existing VKs or AKs. Some of these musings will be trying to look into the thought-process behind some actions, so some characters might come off looking worse as a result. But that is NOT done with the intention of bashing, so if you think you've found a fellow hater of [insert character name here] you're probably wrong.

I might occasionally do AU pieces, but that's not the main purpose of this blog so don't expect them too often.

As I said, most of the posts will be focusing on the Isle of the Lost and/or the original four VKs. I will consider requests about other characters, but I'm more likely to think about concepts revolving around those four.

I might write a few ship pieces, but that's not the main focus of the blog so don't expect them too often.

Side note to the above, I WILL NOT be writing x reader at all.

I might add a few things to this post in the future, but I think that just about covers it.