Chapter Text
Good is not born. Good is chosen, day in and day out, much in the way evil is. That is why so many do not fall under one label or the other, but in a myriad shades of grey, evil some times and good others. For all that Mal has chosen good on one momentous occasion, it doesn’t mean it comes naturally. Thankfully, she has some help.
“Are you ever going to stop it with the graffiti?” Ben asks as Mal shuts her locker, now decorated with a gold crown over a royal blue background. He likes this one much better than the last one, but it’s still Bad, and there’s enough heroism in his heritage for it to get under his skin.
She smiles and links an arm through his. “I don’t know, I like my locker the way it is. Don’t you?”
That pulls a smile out of him too- she likes being marked as his. He’s not supposed to like that as much as he does. “I mean, yeah, but it’s still, you know, not what we do here. We can get you as many canvases as you want to paint on, you don’t have to use your locker.”
“Why does it matter?” Mal asks, carefree smile still in place.
He stops. “You really don’t know, do you?”
Her expression slowly fades. “What do you mean?”
“Your parents, your mom- she really didn’t teach you any morals. I mean, I knew that, but it just didn’t really hit me until just now. We all grew up putting our toys away and sharing and everything, but you guys grew up on graffiti and stealing. I just…” he trails off under Mal’s scrutiny. “Let me show you.”
“Okay,” Mal says slowly.
He smiles. “Tonight.”
They meet up by her locker after dinner, when the custodial crew is making their rounds. She’s in makeup and a pretty dress; he’s in rubber gloves and an old worn button-down of his father’s. “I feel overdressed,” Mal says.
“You look great,” Ben offers.
“What are we doing here?”
He hands her a bottle of multi-surface cleaner and a brush. “We are cleaning your locker. Every time you graffiti your locker, someone has to do exactly what we’re about to do right now, and that’s why we don’t graffiti things.”
She examines the objects in her hands. “What do these do?”
Ben reminds himself that she has a villain out of storybooks for a mother and a gigantic question mark for a father, and that the Isle of the Lost has very different standards than Beauty and the Beast about cleanliness. “They clean things. They’ll help us get the most of the paint off your locker, and then we’ll repaint it the correct color. That’s what somebody does every time you graffiti something.”
“Why?” she asks.
“To make it look clean and pretty,” Ben says, “And because things like Long Live Evil aren’t necessarily encouraged in the kingdom.”
She points to the crown. “That’s your crown. You’re the king. Isn't that a good thing?”
“Because everything is supposed to match here. Because the locker isn’t yours, you’re just borrowing it, and the person who actually owns it wants it to look like all the others so next year, whoever uses this one won’t have your graffiti on it,” Ben explains, as patiently as he can. He remembers when Chad got a little sister and when Aunt Rapunzel had her first child. The little ones were always asking questions, and for all that Mal was much older than them she had about as much experience with how the kingdom worked and how good people behaved as a little child. Of course, anyone who mistook Mal for a little child would regret that decision almost instantly. She just... has some learning to do, about how Auradon works.
Mal considered the brush and spray. “Huh.”
“You asked me why you shouldn’t graffiti things.”
“Tag,” she says, scrubbing experimentally at the locker.
He shows her how to spray the wash on the locker before using the brush, and once she’s scrubbing away, he echoes, “Tag?”
“I tag things with graffiti. Especially when I did it with Mom’s symbol. It’s called a tag.”
“See? We’re both learning things,” Ben says with a smile. She grins back at him and goes back to scrubbing at the locker.
There’s a moment of peaceful and companionable silence. “This is terrible,” she says.
Ben nods. “Yep.”
“This is a horrible date.”
“I know.”
“Why are we doing this?”
“Because if we don’t, he will,” Ben says, pointing and waving at a passing custodian. The guy bows and smiles at them. “And you made this mess, so you’re cleaning it up. And I like you, so I’m helping.”
She continues to scrub. “Maybe… maybe a canvas won’t be so bad.”
“You aced Goodness 101, so maybe I can get you into art class,” Ben says.
She nods. “You’re a king and I turned my mom into a tiny lizard, so between the two of us I think we should be okay.”