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hannahhook7744 · 2 months ago

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Blood Is Thicker Than Water;

Summary: Everyone knows about Carlos, Diego, Ivy, and Hunter de Vil. But what about the other de Vil cousins? Co written with @dragoneyes618 . Please use clean language when commenting on this fic. Author's Note: The five that go to Auradon are: 1. Carlos de Vil. 2. Mal Bertha Fae-Athanasiou. 3. Princess Geneviève ‘Evie’ Evelyn Grimhilde-Westergaard Of The Southern Isles. 4. Jakeem 'Jay' Al-Jazira. 5. Hannah Artemis Hook. Trigger warnings: Child death, horrible isle conditions, child abuse/neglect, murder, extreme untreated mental health issues, briefly implied cannibalism, etc.

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Hunter was eleven years older than Carlos and the oldest of the de Vil ‘kids’.

Yet he was the one Carlos related to the most.

They were both the ‘quiet’ de Vils; the nervous wreck de Vils who were less intimidating than a wet paper bag.

Both of them were the most well known inventors in the family and the ones who found it the hardest to relate to others. Both were claustrophobic (because of Cruella) and both were well-known animal lovers, and barely tried to hide it.

They were also the de Vils most scared of Cruella.

The two of them just clicked better together than they did with the rest of their cousins (and siblings, in Carlos’s case). Not to say they didn't like their other cousins, of course.

They just enjoyed each other's company more.

It had always been that way.

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“Book!”

Fourteen year old Hunter sighed, looking up from the radio he was tinkering with and over to the doorway where Carlos was standing tall (well, as tall as a three year old who was barely taller than his one-year old brother could). A determined look on his little face as he struggled to hold up a large book.

Carlisle was supposed to have put him to bed hours ago.

The blonde didn't know why he was surprised that the other boy (who was also his age now, wasn't that weird?) didn't.

Carlisle never did anything anyone other than his mom (and sometimes his siblings) asked him to do because he knew he was Cruella’s favorite and that he wouldn't be getting in trouble for disobeying whoever was in charge. Even if it was Cruella he was disobeying.

Hunter should have known he was asking too much of him when he asked him to put Carlos to bed. That he was taking up ‘dear’ Carlisle’s precious fireworks time by asking him to do what Cruella should have been doing anyway.

And knowing him, he hadn't put Remi or any of the others to bed, either.

Great.

Just great.

Cruella was gonna kill him. Again.

“The Tales of Flynnigan Rider again?” Hunter silently promised himself that he'd strangle whoever wrote the stupid book he'd had to read a million times to his younger cousins and the various kids the de Vil’s various henchmen had had, over the years.

He was sure he'd never hate any more than he did the book, except for Cruella, of course.

Carlos shook his head. Tapping the book’s cover with the palm of his hand. “Nu-uh! M-mech-an-ics and… and.. mech-a-tisms!”

It was gonna be a long night.

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As terrible as it sounded, Carlos hadn't always liked Ivy.

She was loud and scary at times, bossy and demanding and an all around terror who never hesitated to get into screaming matches with Carlos’s mom.

Carlos's mom, who terrified him (and some others) more than anything and because of that, Ivy also terrified him.

She just looked so much like Cruella.

Sure, Ivy had never been violent towards him like his mom had in the past. But she just reminded him of Cruella so painfully that he couldn't help but be scared and run for the hills.

Her forcing him to play dress up with her in his earliest memories hadn't helped that fear or helped quell the disdain he'd had for her in his youth.

It was a secret that wasn't a secret.

At one point, Carlos had been sure that no one but him knew that he was afraid of her. Convinced that he'd be able to take that with him to the grave. And then he'd remembered all the hurt looks he'd caught glimpses of on Ivy's face when he'd been so small and so bad at lying and so desperate to avoid spending any time with her—and realized that Ivy, and probably others, had known all along that Carlos hadn't liked Ivy.

It had changed over the years, of course, when their numbers had started dwindling alongside the Baduns but it wasn't something that could be easily forgotten. It stayed unspoken but it had definitely left a nasty looking spot on their relationship.

Even if they now could talk and laugh with one another over their inventions and outfit designs; Ivy would never forget that Carlos had been afraid of her.

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Carlos cried a lot as a baby; cried and cried until he couldn't anymore. Until he was red in the face and couldn't breath.

He cried.

And he'd cry worse when Ivy tried to soothe him.

Kicking and flailing and choking until Hunter or one of the other de Vil (or henchmen) kids came to get him away from her.

Carlisle thought it was funny.

Ivy didn't.

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Hunter and Ivy told Carlos separately.

Some parts were easier for one of them to say than others. So they took turns.

“You’re going to Auradon, you should know this,” was the explanation, like Carlos wouldn’t be running off to talk to Diego the first chance he got.

If he had time, that was.

Enough time before he left.

It made sense.

It explained the nightmares both Hunter and Ivy had; they’d both woken up screaming too many times to deny it. It explained why their birth dates didn’t quite match up to their exact ages.

It explained the strange, almost otherworldly feel they had sometimes, a feeling they shared with all those who had been brought back from the dead prior to being imprisoned on the Isle, but that no other members of their generation—not Carlos’ generation, but the generation older than him, the one consisting of the children who had been exiled to the Isle with their parents—shared.

Ivy had been dead.

Hunter had been dead.

Two more of the people who had helped him build his tree house as a child had been dead.

Ivy had been six. Hunter had been twelve, just a couple of years younger than he was now.

They’d been resurrected and sent to the Isle, just like everyone else.

What would it have been like? To be dead, cold and lifeless, childhood and life abruptly cut short, only to be thrust gasping and breathless into the world of the living years later, at the exact age you were when you had died?

“Do you…remember anything?” was the first question Carlos asked after Ivy finished, both of them sitting with their legs dangling off the edge of the roof.

“Not really,” Ivy said, and then sighed. “Sort of. It’s complicated. I can’t really explain it….Hunter’s the same way.”

She moved her hand in a vague, all–encompassing gesture. “Like I remember—sort of—shadowy shapes, but not anything clear. Strange lights. Colors that don’t exist. Sometimes I dream about it, but I can’t remember it when I wake up. I remember best when I’m half awake, or just about to fall asleep. If I try to remember more, if I think really hard about it, it’s like…it’s like I’m not supposed to remember more. Like there’s this—this barrier, I guess, stuck in my head, and if I ever got past it it would be….”

“Bad,” Carlos supplied.

“Yes.” She looked lost for a moment. “I’m sorry. I wish I knew more…well, sometimes I wish I knew more. I know it’s not what you wanted. I can’t tell you anything about what it’s like for them.”

Like all of his cousins, Ivy knew him better than anyone else did. The de Vils were very good at reading each other, at seeing what they didn’t say, knowing each other’s history and body language, the way they thought, the way they dreamed…

Them .

Both of Carlos’ sisters, each of them bearing the same name, neither of them ever knowing the other.

Carlotta.

Lotta , he’d called both of them. While their family generally didn’t do nicknames—at least, he’d never known anyone except his mother and P.H to allow themselves to be called by one—he’d called his sisters ‘Lotta’.

According to Ivy, in a much different heart-to-heart years ago, another rare occasion she’d opened up, when he’d been learning to talk he couldn’t fully pronounce his older sister’s name. He’d been able to manage Lotta, but not Carlotta. And so he’d called her Lotta.

She’d been three years older than him, and he never remembered being alone.

She’d always been there for him. She’d been the one to look after him, much more than their mother had been, and they’d both preferred it that way. Most of his early memories consisted of him following her around wherever she went.

He’d adored her.

She was gone when he was seven. He came home one day and she had vanished.

Asking his mother yielded no answers, even when it was Hunter or Cecil. There had been no sign of her. To this day, there still had not been.

She was dead.

She must be.

Carlos knew it in his bones.

While it wasn’t unheard of, on the Isle, for children as young as she’d been—she’d always seemed so mature and capable in his eyes, and it was always with a small shock whenever he realized that he was now several years older than she’d ever been—or even as young as Carlos had been to run away, or to be left orphaned, to be homeless and alone, she wouldn’t have left without him.

She wouldn’t have left him alone. Even if the others had refused to go (but they wouldn't have. None of the living ones would have refused to leave, even Diego with the parents he'd loved so much. Even the Baduns would have gone if she'd asked, which she never did because she didn't run away— ).

There were many ways for people to disappear on the Isle. Half of them would barely even need any sort of special effort.

People who disappeared on the Isle, with a few rare exceptions, were generally never found again. Not alive, at least. If you ever got lost—well, if you weren’t found again after a few hours you’d be lucky if your body was.

Especially with the witches on Cannibal Cove around.

Carlotta had been one of those who was never found. There’d been no signs, no traces. No body, no blood, no footprints, nothing. It was like she’d ceased to exist…..at least, his mother pretended so.

His little sister had been born eight months later—the second Carlotta.

Mother hadn’t bothered taking care of the baby. She’d barely ever noticed her. It had been Carlos at the age of eight who had scrounged and searched for milk and formula, Carlos who had woken up every time she cried, Carlos who had named her.

( Just like his cousins and siblings before him, when adults weren't capable of doing so for him and the others).

He’d named her Carlotta, the only name he could think of, the name of the sister whose presence was always on his mind, whom he desperately missed.

She’d been such a sweet little girl.

She’d been very quiet, of course, in a way that growing up with Cruella as your mother warranted, quieter even than him. Which was funny, in a way, because his older sister had never seemed meek or quiet to him. He had a vivid memory of her standing on her tiptoe while she and Ivy shouted at each other…about what, he’d forgotten, and he wasn’t going to ask Ivy.

But maybe it was the way of older siblings to go out of their comfort zones for their younger siblings. He certainly had for little Lotta. Would she have remembered him as he thought of himself —shy and timid? Or as someone who spoke up for her when it was needed, who shielded her from the worst Mother and the Isle had to offer?

He hoped the latter.

Then again, it wasn’t like he’d actually been able to do anything for her when it mattered, had he?

She’d always been in delicate health. She was small for her age, just like him. Oh, she was healthy, and could run and jump and clap like he imagined carefree Auradon children doing. But she was susceptible to illness, always came down with every little cough and sniffle that made its way around. He’d spent many nights awake at her bedside, trying to cool a fever or get her to drink as she shivered, wracked by chills.

It hadn’t been sickness that had killed her last year, but it certainly hadn’t helped.

When he was twelve years old, he’d gotten his leg caught in one of Mother’s bear traps. He still had a slight limp. Carlotta, four years old, had run to get Hunter and Ivy. As he lay in bed recovering —the week following was the only time he remembered ever being exempt from his mother’s long list of chores—he’d heard his uncle Cecil shouting at his mother—his only memory of Cecil ever raising his voice—that those traps were going to get someone killed one day.

Well, he’d been right. Twice.

He’d been able to survive the pain, the shock, the blood loss, even the infection. A little girl like his sister (and a little boy like Joseph Badun)? Not so much.

The house now reminded him of the months after his older sister’s death—eerily silent, Mother’s unhinged laughter echoing from the corners, ghostly visions of long hair and dark eyes in the shadows. Seeing her everywhere and nowhere, because she was gone. Gone, to that place Ivy and Hunter had been in.

Ivy and Hunter were alive again. None of his siblings or the Badun kids (or the various other children of his mother’s henchmen who'd died in those very halls or this dratted Isle) had been given the same courtesy.

Carlisle and the twins hadn’t been given the same courtesy.

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Carlos remembered Carlisle better than he remembered the twins, but that wasn’t saying much given the fact the three of them had died within a year of one another.

He remembered his silverish-gray hair, his unnaturally blue eyes, and his maniacal smile.

Remembered his laugh that sounded hauntingly similar to their mother’s laugh.

He also remembered how much of a mama’s boy his brother was—and Carlos’s own jealousy that he hadn’t even been able to name at the time at how much more their mother had loved him and the twins when she loved him and the others all so little.

He knew that when he was five, he had hated the older boy—had hated him so much that he went out of his way to make things difficult for him just so that he could spend more time with Hunter. Made things difficult when Carlisle hadn’t really deserved it.

All because Carlos had been jealous of how much better off he was.

It was stupid, in hindsight. Carlos knew that.

Carlisle had only been fourteen when he died— had only been the age Carlos was now .

It wasn’t his fault that he sounded and acted like their mother (to a much more dialed down degree). It wasn’t his fault that he found fireworks and explosives entertaining more than the rest of them did. It wasn’t Carlisle’s fault that he’d outlived both of the twins.

It wasn’t his fault: he was just a messed up kid with no friends who’d never known any different than the horror that was their family.

But of course, it had taken Carlos nine years too late to realize that.

Because all his five year old self had seen was a warped reflection of the scary mother who didn’t love the rest of them enough instead of his big brother who did his best to bond with Carlos, Carlotta, Remi, and the others.

Even after Carlise had died—having bled out after trying to show off how cool his new fireworks were to a girl he’d had a crush on; only for the firework to explode in his hand.

Carlos still had nightmares where Carlise lay bleeding out, screaming for their mother who did her best for once to help as she cried and cried—cried harder than she had when both of the twins had died because the last child she truly fully loved was gone.

She hadn’t cried for either of the Carlottas.

(And deep down, Carlos knew that if he or Remi joined them tomorrow she wouldn't cry then either).

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Conway and Codias both had heads full of curly red hair that no one was quite sure the origin of, freckles, big brown eyes, and missing teeth in different places from all the roughhousing they did with one another and Carlise.

They’d both been only nine when they died.

And Carlos had liked them both well enough.

At least, Carlos thought he did—he couldn’t really remember them all that well.

He vaguely remembered Conway trying to teach him how to draw as he poured them both a glass of the blue ink he loved to drink so much only to cry when he got sick from drinking it and remembered even more vaguely Carlise screaming at Codias until he cried because he accidentally broke Carlos’s arm when playing with him.

Hunter said Conway was the shy twin and that he didn’t like to leave Cruella, Carlisle, or Codias’s side for longer than he had to when outside—and that he had been so excited when Carlos was born and was the reason that Cruella even bothered making both Carlos and Remi baby blankets.

Diego said that Conway was good at much more than just drawing and that he was just good at artsy things in general; except music of course, because he was just as tone deaf as Hunter and Ivy were.

And all Ivy had to say about Conway was that he was an idiot for drinking ink till he died just because he liked the way blue ink tasted.

(And later, when she cooled down, she’d tell Carlos how much Conway had liked the color blue).

Carlotta claimed that Codias had liked to be called ‘Cody’ and had only let their mother call him his actual name.

Uncle Cecil, in the rare moments where he was open to questions about the siblings and relatives Carlos didn’t remember, would quietly remind him of the wooden plane that Cody had carried around. A plane Carlise had apparently made for him (he apparently made the wooden toy tools Carlos had played with years after his death, too).

Ivy called Cody stupid and reckless, saying that the broken arm Carlos remembered getting wasn’t the only time the redhead had accidentally hurt him.

Hunter grimly noted that the swing that had eventually plunged Cody into the cold, icy waters and jagged rocks that killed him had been the one that little Cody had tried to push a one or two year old Carlos on as an attempt to bond.

But Carlos couldn’t confirm or deny any of it.

Because he didn’t remember and their little brother, Remi, wouldn’t either.

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And now it was just him and Remi. The only surviving children of Cruella de Vil. And it was him ( not his little brother who he may never see again after this) , the one chosen, out of all of their cousins, out of everyone on the Isle, to be one of the five to go to Auradon.

Lucky him, right?

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“Are you sure you aren’t mad?” Carlos asked his brother for what had to be the third time that hour as he packed what little belongings he had.

He could barely meet his brother’s eye.

He hadn’t even gotten to tell Remi that he was leaving for Auradon himself—no, Remi had found out from his friend Hannah who was also being forced to go to Auradon with Carlos and the others on Maleficent’s orders.

The inventor knew that his little brother had to be mad at him.

He’d be mad, in his shoes.

Remi huffed, plopping down on the ground dangerously close to one of their mother’s bear traps without even a hint of fear (Carlos couldn’t help but shiver at the memory of what had happened to the last two children other than him and Evie who’d been close to those traps). “For the last time, I’m not mad at you—but I will be sending you down to Davy Jones’ locker if you keep asking if I am.”

“Dude, I don’t speak pirate—”

“You can speak dog —when you’re terrified of them—but you can’t pick up simple pirate lingo that I’ve been speaking since I was six?”

“It doesn’t make any sense!”

“It makes perfect sense!”

“It’s a locker underneath the ocean! Pretty self-explanatory as to how someone would end up there!”

“It doesn’t even exist!”

“Whatever.” Remi rolled his eyes. “I said, no, I’m not mad at you. You’re getting out of here, why should I be mad at you? Just get us off, too, once you’re out there. Don’t forget about us.”

Don’t forget about us.

Carlotta and Carlotta. Carlisle. Codias. Conway. Ivy and Hunter and Diego and Remi. All of them. Every one of them. Carlos could visualize the faces of each of them, even if it had been a decade since his eyes had seen their faces, that they had breathed.

His family . All of them, all the de Vils. Together. What was left of them, anyway.

“I won’t,” Carlos vowed softly. “I would never.”

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His first night in Auradon, Carlos popped in the only pair of earbuds he'd ever seen on the Isle and listened to The Bad Apples on the old, cruddy MVP player his cousins and brother had quickly fixed up for him as a going away present.

Listening to every single song on repeat until he finally managed to fall asleep with tears in his eyes.

Missing his long-gone siblings.

Missing Remi, the only one left alive.

Missing Hunter and Ivy and Diego .

Diego, who had grabbed all of his bandmates to record all of their songs just so that he could hear them whenever he wanted to. Just so that he wouldn't feel as scared and alone as any one would in his situation.

Diego, who Carlos hadn't even always been sure liked him all that much.

Did that just for him.

It even made Carlos enjoy his cousin's music for the first time in his life.

(Diego)

“The Beast will take off with your dreams,

And shatter them in the night.

Rip your heart apart at the seams,

He's nothing more than a blight–”

(Harriet, Claudine, and Ginny as Chorus)

“–A BLIGHT ON OUR LIVES,

Gotta fight to survive—”

Even if it was a bit cringey.

( “Oh shut up, Carlos, my music’s not cringey you just have no taste—”

"Just keep telling yourself that."

"You're the only one who doesn't like The Bad Apples" ).

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Carlos wasn’t quite as surprised as he thought he perhaps ought to be when he found out he had family in Auradon.

Plenty of people on the Isle had family in Auradon, after all. Most of the de Vils had been sent to the Isle, but there were a few who hadn’t been, distant cousins and the odd long-lost uncle. They were bound to be out in Auradon somewhere.

No. His surprise was, when he finally found out about them and met them, that he actually had already known them. Or one of them, anyway.

His mother had a brother Carlos had only heard about from Cecil’s occasional mentions (one he was much more willing to talk about than the one who had been on the isle with them, once upon a time, Cristin de Vil), Divus. Some time after the rest of the de Vils had been banished to the Isle, Divus had married a perfectly ordinary woman named Eleanor who was not connected with any villainous or heroic families in any way. The two of them had one son, a little boy of about seven named Henry.

Carlos had met Henry. Last year, during the schoolwide scavenger hunt. He and Jane had stumbled upon a lost little boy who had been separated from his mother on a trip to Auradon City, and had helped him find her.

To Carlos’ surprise, Henry had known who he was, and had been shocked—awed—to actually meet him.

Carlos usually forgot that he and his friends were kind of famous. The Isle was small enough that everybody knew everybody at least by face, and he and his friends rarely ventured out of Auradon Prep. But everywhere else?

Well, the decision to bring over several VKs to Auradon had made national news. Their arrival had been televised. So had the coronation. So had Cotillion. At this point, it was safe to say that Carlos and the others were probably recognizable on sight anywhere in Auradon.

And, to his own shock, it turned out that they had fans. Carlos, at least. One fan in particular.

It turned out that Henry had idolized him before even meeting him. Which felt weird . Was this what it was like to be Ben, multiplied by a couple million?

Henry also liked to tinker with machines and electronics and figure out how things worked and come up with new ideas, just like Carlos. It was like meeting a miniature version of him, minus the black in his hair. The kid actually had white hair, unlike any other Auradonian child Carlos had seen.

(“It was actually black-and-white, like normal— normal for de Vils, I mean,” his uncle Divus would tell Carlos later, his own black-and-white hair safely disguised by the grey streaks in it and the lines on his face. “We dyed it black for a while, but around the time he turned six he started driving us crazy to have it white instead, and eventually we gave in. If he couldn’t have it black-and-white he wanted it white, at least, so it could be like the kid’s he saw on TV. You.”)

(The relatives of villains sent to the Isle, even though they’d been lucky enough to escape banishment themselves, were often treated less than kindly in Auradon due to the actions of their relatives. There was a reason Divus hadn’t reached out to Carlos until now, a reason he’d dyed his son’s telltale hair even as an infant.)

Carlos and his friends had helped Henry find his mother—his aunt, Carlos now knew—and Carlos remembered watching Henry and his mother hug each other, both of them crying tears of worry, relief, joy, and he had thought that he had never, ever been as excited to see each other as Henry was. That his mother had never been as worried about him as Henry’s mother had been over her son disappearing for half an hour.

In that moment, in that image of a relieved mother and son uniting in joyful embrace, Carlos had glimpsed something he could never have, and had turned away quickly, leaving his girlfriend to explain to Henry’s mother how they’d found him.

He’d wallowed in self-pity for a while, the look on Henry’s tear-streaked, beaming face as he looked up at his mother like she’d hung the stars in the sky haunting him.

Carlos had never looked at his mother like that. From his earliest memories, Cruella was something to be feared and avoided and obeyed unless you were Carlisle and the twins.

It took him a while to realize he was jealous. Jealous of Henry. Jealous of Ben and Lonnie and Jane. Jealous of every kid in Auradon interacting with their parents that he’d ever seen. Jealous that they had something the Isle had robbed him of, him and every VK he knew, for even those villain parents who did care a whit about their children never showed it in the free, easy way affection was given in Auradon ( because they couldn't on the isle—showing you cared just painted a target on your loved one's backs and made you look weak—) .

Then he found out that Henry was actually his cousin. Divus was his uncle, Eleanor was his aunt by marriage, and little Henry was as much of a cousin to him as Ivy and Diego were, the youngest de Vil.

All Carlos could think of as he sat through that first, awkward meeting with his newfound family members was how normal they were. How, well, Auradonlike, but in a good way.

They took him out to an eatery in the city that the Auradon students often frequented, the Mad for Tea Caf é . Carlos didn’t eat much. He mostly just watched them. Occasionally Ally, who worked there after school as her parents ran the place, would appear over his shoulder to refill his tea cup, give him an encouraging wink, and boop Henry on the nose.

They—Carlos couldn’t help but think of them as the Auradonian De Vils— talked. They laughed. They occasionally made an effort to include him in the conversation, but not too often, so it didn’t feel like an interrogation, not like when the well-meaning Anita and Roger Radcliffe had met him; this allowed him to sit quietly and observe them, how they moved, how they acted. Eleanor sometimes chastised Henry for acting too wild or reminded him to “use your fork” or “chew with your mouth closed,” but she never smacked or shouted. They all seemed at ease sitting close to each other and occasionally touching each other, none of them clinging to each other or, conversely, sitting stiff and still to ensure not touching each other, both actions being what characterized every de Vil family meeting Carlos had ever been in, even the ones consisting only of himself and all his cousins.

They acted like other Auradon families Carlos had seen. How Jane and her mother talked. How Lonnie and her brother sat next to each other by lunch. How Audrey and Ariana gossipped in the halls, how Arabella and her cousins all did their homework together in the common room while draped over each other in a big pile.

Divus and Henry and Eleanor acted normal .

And Carlos realized he was completely, inexpressibly glad , glad that little Henry was growing up with parents who were just like Auradon parents, glad that this little branch of the de Vils seemed somehow to have escaped the curse of madness and grief that inexorably ruined all their lives, glad that Henry would grow up happy and free and safe and as unlike the lives of the other de Vils as he could get.

Little Henry would walk a path of light and happiness, unlike the warped, shadowy path that the rest of them followed through life. At least one member of the de Vils could get a happy life. If it couldn’t be Carlos, if it couldn’t be his older sister or his younger sister or Remi or Diego or any of them, at least Henry could be carefree.

A real child.

A normal child.

A normal life.

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