this is another of my ‘i wanted uma and melody to interact’ fics, much like ‘it took me all of my fire to make it out alive and you left me dead in the water.’ but this one involves fewer curses. i think i also wanted this to be like, kind of a series of various movies' aks and vks meeting each other similar to ‘it runs in the family (we're bad in the blood).’ but i never got past this one so. and also this fic was like. i want to talk about daddy's little angel, which my favorite song in the little mermaid musical and my favorite origin story for ursula ever. also all of ariel and eric's girls have musical names — elle is short for acapella — bc i think that's fun. tw for mentioned child abuse and murder (mostly magic murder, but like, they still died, so).

uma meets melody in a coffee shop. harry and gil had wanted to come with her, but she’d told them no. this was something she had to do on her own. besides, ben and gil are already thick as thieves because ben couldn't hold a grudge if his life depended on it and gil is the human version of a golden retriever. and harry and jane had already bonded over what an asshole harry’s father was, so. they don’t have anything to worry about. not like she does.

melody is tall and willowy, with an undercut with long hair. she has dark hair that uma is sure she inherited from her father. she takes a seat across from uma, a mug of something that smells like cloves in her cup. she smiles apologetically, and uma twists one of her braids around her finger nervously. as part of the agreement with king ben, all villain kids were to be mentored by their hero’s kids as they acclimated to auradon, to ‘forge an atmosphere of peace’. melody, the eldest of ariel and eric’s daughters, had offered to take uma under her wing. uma knows they have a few daughters — she’s seen aria and elle around auradon prep's campus and they share some classes — but it was easier, she thought, to be mentored by melody. at least if this went completely sideways and entirely exploded in their faces, uma didn’t have to look at melody’s face every day in their history of auradon class. ‘ just her sisters, ’ a small voice in her head reminds her, and she shoves it down. 

“i’m melody,” melody says, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “but you knew that already, didn’t you?” uma nods, suddenly stuck silent.

“uma celaeno,” she manages finally. “daughter of ursula. it's, um — ” she struggles to find the right words, the ones that are right in auradon and won't upset anyone. not that uma minds upsetting people, per se, but it has more to do with staying in auradon. even the worst place in auradon is a damn sight better than the isle, and uma wasn't about to step wrong and fuck this up for harry, for gil — hell, for her entire crew. “it's nice to meet you.”

melody smiles, patiently. “do you want something?” she asks, gesturing to the tea she has cradled in her hand, and uma shakes her head. sure, they assured her it was perfectly safe, but the isle was still embedded in uma's bones, in her heart and in her mind, and on the isle, you didn't eat food that wasn't fresh from the barges — well, as ‘fresh’ as auradon's trash could be — or that someone you trusted with your life had brought you. apparently that wasn't how things worked in auradon, but uma wasn't about to take any damn chances. not with melody here. they were.... cousins, sure, but her mother had tried to kill melody's, and uma wasn't about to eat anything in melody's vicinity in case melody had some kind of deluded revenge plot. sure, king ben said ‘this was auradon’ and ‘they didn't do things like that here, uma’ but uma wasn't about to take him at his word — she'd've had some questionable revenge plot if melody had showed up on the isle one day. 

“no, i'm good,” uma says. she twirls one of her braids around her finger absentmindedly. 

melody smiles slightly, though her expression looks vaguely peeved. “suit yourself,” she says, taking another sip of her own drink. “what was life on the isle like? are you adjusting okay?”

“um, it was — ” horrifying. violent. isolating. hungry. “it was. well. it wasn’t great, but...” uma trails off, shrugging. “but i got out.” melody quirks an eyebrow at uma, silently urging her to go on. uma feels self-conscious, suddenly, as though she’s on some kind of trial. “mom didn’t like it much... she’d known what life was like, not on the isle, and i think that made it worse. the isle was all i’d ever known, so... wasn’t much to compare it to, really.”

“your mother got what she deserved.” the words hiss out of melody's mouth like a prayer or a curse. 

“she didn't even do anything wrong!” uma spits in response. she hates her mother, absolutely she does, but she'd been fucked over by triton and melody and uma both knew it. “she was ousted from her throne and then made a deal which your mother tried to break.”

“your mother killed her sisters,” melody spits quickly, and uma pales. melody keeps going, a fire in her eyes. “didn’t she tell you? she told that to triton. spat it in his face when he tried to tell her the people weren’t happy with her rule. she says he took her kingdom from her, but it wasn’t hers. it never should’ve been.” uma watches as melody swallows, hard, before continuing. “their eldest sister cordelia... she spelled her to turn into sea salt, limb by limb, and your mother watched as she drifted apart, feeling her body turn into millions of grains of salt. she could feel every grain of salt that once was her body as it swirled in the ocean. she caught nerissa in a whirlpool and laughed as she spun helplessly around until her head smashed open on a rock. she trapped viola and valeria in a tidepool on shore and let them starve to death. and she wouldn’t tell him what she’d done with nymeria or miranda, but they’ve never been found, so it's a pretty safe bet to assume she murdered them like she did the rest of them. and sure, she didn't kill morgana, but morgana was younger than triton, so there was no point in killing her. she wasn't in your mother's way. and do you know what morgana grew up to do? she tried to kill me.”

“i didn’t know,” uma murmurs without fully meaning to. she hadn’t. her mother had never told her that. only said that her bastard brother had stolen her crown and painted her as a villain in everyone's mind. not that she'd done something to deserve it. not that she'd murdered her own sisters. uma was the only one of ursula's children, something her mother had resented. the isle's magic had prevented her from conceiving, since the barrier around the island kept ursula from entering the water and thus conceiving. when uma had asked how she'd been born, her mother had told her that she'd been concvied when the isle was only a concept, in an attempt to keep king beast from imprisoning her there. maleficent, she'd hissed, had done the same. but it hadn't worked for either of them, and so uma, born to a family with a legacy of many children — ursula had been one of nine; melody's mother had been one of seven and, frankly, uma was sure she'd've had more siblings if melody's grandmother hadn't been rammed on the bow of a ship like the wooden mermaids they crucified there — was an only child. it was something her mother held over her head constantly. she'd never wanted children, no, but she couldn't stand to lose to her brother in anything, and one child was far less impressive than seven. 

“she never told me that part. she just said that her brother stole her crown and painted her as a villain after her niece backed out of the deal.” uma can almost hear her now — ‘does keeping my end of the bargain make me a villain? does it make me evil?’ she'd croon, before flying into a rage and smashing plates against the wall, screeching that it wasn't fair, what had been done to her. and uma had agreed. it hadn't been fair, not at all. it had been wrong, she'd said. wrong that he'd stolen her throne, that beast — technically his name was king adam, but uma had never heard anyone from the isle call him that. to them, he was a monster, the worst kind of beast — had locked her up on the isle.

but how much of that was survival? how much of that was because her mother was screeching at her and throwing plates?

“well, she did,” melody says, running a hand through the non-shaved half her black hair. there's a long beat of silence before she speaks again.

“did you know our cousin tried to kill his nephew?” she asks, half of a half-bitter laugh coming out of her mouth before she continues. “it makes me feel a bit better — at least it's not just our branch of the family that's all fucked up.” uma blinks. she didn't know. she wouldn't have even known she was related to melody and her family at all if her mother hadn't always been going on about her bastard of a brother. 

“no, i didn't,” uma says. “what happened?”

“you haven't heard?” melody asks, her voice low. “honestly, i'd've thought that hades would've been all over the isle, complaining about his punishment.”

“wait, i'm related to hades?” uma asks, confused. hades had never given uma any indication that they were related. granted, he spent most of his time down in the mineshafts, and the interactions anyone had with him other than his children — the triplets, hady, heath, and holly — were, well, few and far between. frankly, if uma hadn't seen his dogs roaming the streets on the regular, she wouldn't even be sure he was still alive. 

melody sighed. “yeah. your grandad — my great granddad — is poseidon, who is hades's brother. which makes him your great uncle.”

“huh,” uma said, and thanked her lucky stars that she'd never done anything with the hades triplets. not that she hadn't thought about it, but they'd run with different circles, and, well. now even just the memory of the thought makes uma's stomach squirm as though it had been turned into eels.