Hearts Fall Unnexpectedly

Chapter Four: Fake

The girl pauses as she turns around to find her spell book in Ben's hand and she freezes in fear. The look on his face says he is not happy. It has become apparent in the past few months that Ben's dislike for magic has grown ever since the VKs came to Auradon. First with being spelled by the core four, then with Pan being spelled and his kiss not working to wake her up — embarrassing him drastically, and finally with the breaking of the barrier and Maleficent escaping and trying to attack Auradon.

This growing hatred toward spells of any kind drew a rift between Pan and Ben. If Mal had realized this soon enough, she wouldn't have gotten so involved with him, but once she saw it, her feelings for the boy had already grown tremendously.

As the boy sits in front of his newest girlfriend holding her spell book, he chuckles in slight shock, "What's this?"

"I, uh.." Mal stutters out as the boy looks at her for an explanation, looking at it thoroughly, "I actually threw that in there super last minute. In case it rained or.."

"Speed reading spell," Ben cuts the girl off, opening the leather flaps to the bookmarked pages. She doesn't respond so he continues, "blonde hair spell.. cooking spell."

Ben looks at Mal in disappointment and shock, and she just looks down knowing she's been caught. She knew how he felt about magic and she used it anyway.

Ben slams the book closed, "And I was giving you props for fitting in so well! For doing your best!"

The king scoffs in disbelief at this new information he's just discovered. Seconds later, he hears Mal muttering to herself with her hand stretched out.

"Take back this moment that has passed, return it..reverse it."

Ben stands up in complete anger and shock, "Are you trying to spell me right now?!"

"It has been so hard for me!" Mal says at the same time as Ben.

"Yeah! Some things are hard!" Ben yells back over her. "Do you think learning to be king has been easy for me?!"

"No!" Mal nervously chuckles.

"I thought we were doing this together!"

"Ben, we are in this together," Mal pleads with the boy.

Ben scoffs, "But we're not, Mal. We're not!"

The king takes her moment of silence to continue, "You've been keeping secrets and lying to me. I thought I was done with that. You know magic is one of the reasons Payton and I ended things and you went and did it anyway! Why can't you guys see that this isn't the Isle of the Lost, Mal."

Now it's Mal's turn to scoff in disbelief, "Yeah, believe me, I know that."

"Then why are you doing this?"

"Because.." Mal starts before scoffing at his plea, "I'm not one of those pretty pink princesses, Ben. I'm not one of those ladies from the court. Neither was Payton. I'm a big fake, okay?"

Ben's face reads as 'come on, don't say that,' but he knows it's true as she continues pointing out everything. He never stopped and thought about how his demands may have hurt her, hurt them, so much. He was never on the Isle, so he doesn't know how differently it truly is.

"I'm fake!" Mal continues, her voice quivering slightly. "This is fake," she points toward herself, "this is fake," she points onward the food, "this is fake," she grabs onto her blonde hair.

She sighs before grabbing her book back from Ben and opening it to a certain page before reading, "Take this feast, this sumptuous meal, return it back to what is real."

Waving her hand around, a green sparkle follows it and when it lands on the table everything goes back into what it originally was. A glass of milk and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, grape jelly to be exact.

"This is who I really am," Mal pleads with her boyfriend.

Having enough of their argument, and Ben's judgment, Mal storms out of the gazebo and Ben tries to stop her, but fails miserably. His lip quivers as he gets flashbacks to seven months ago.

Payton and Ben sat in the woods at 'their spot.' No conversation had happened between the two since arriving. Ben begged Payton to go on another date with him, trying to beg and plead for her to stay.

"Pay.."

"Stop," she cut him off, "just stop. Why are we here, Ben? You obviously care about her, and I don't want to be a second option."

"I.."

"And before you say," Payton cut him off again, "that I'm not, stop and ask yourself when the last time we hung out was. Then ask yourself when was the last time with her."

"We're just friends.."

"Yeah, well, I was just a friend once too," Payton snarked out, "and you see how that turned out."

"That's not fair!" Ben argued. "You spelled me!"

"No!" Payton screamed back in his face, standing up from how much anger she had stored inside of her at that moment. "No, Mal spelled you! She wanted you originally, but Carlos pushed me in front of her so you looked at me first! I didn't even know until the day before the coronation! You knew before I did!"

"Well, you should've let me see her!"

Payton looked at Ben in shock, and his face showed that he regretted what he said, but she pushed his hands off of her, as he had tried to grab her, and stormed away.

"We're done, Benjamin."

Ben looks at the sandwich Mal left on the table and angrily grabs it before turning to scream at the girl storming away, "Peanut butter and jelly is my favorite! Payton knew that!"

Mal doesn't stop or turn around. She just continues to storm away, just like Pan did.