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One of the first things anyone notices about the children from the Isle is the head to toe leather they sport, expensive in any realm and priceless on the dark streets of the Isle. It keeps you warmer than the rags that most people wear and it lasts a lot longer, makes you look more intimidating, but most importantly, it protects. You come home with fewer cuts and stolen items. They wore it from their knuckles to their necks to keep their skin from touching anything the fae did not want tainting their scarred and bruised bodies. But the leather was no protection at home. You didn’t disobey when you were told to bare your arms or back or hands for a lashing, so it was to protect from worsening the scabs and scars that lay beneath the colored skins they donned.
When he shook their hands, the first thing Ben noticed was that they all had leather gloves, styled and studded to match the rest of their outfits. He thought they were just fashion statements, but as he got to know them he learned the truth behind the innocent accessories. They were far from accessories and far from innocent; they were utterly necessary. He found that Mal’s knuckles were so raw and split that the slightest pressure would make them bleed. Her gloves were constantly soaked in her own blood because she refused to stop using them, both in fights with people and fights with magic. Learning magic as powerful as she had access to took a toll on the body; she wore the damage on her fists.
Carlos’s hands could barely uncurl, they were so damaged from hours of scrubbing and cleaning, both furs and floors. His hands were chemically burned and discolored from the harsh soaps that were the only thing the Isle could supply. Ben learned that Evie had done the best she could with lotions and poultices, tried to soften his hands and help them uncurl because no magic seemed to ever work on them, the Isle dampened Mal’s magic. And Mal had tried on him time and again, it just wasn’t enough.
Evie prided herself on her appearance and her mother taught, trained, tortured, it into her that it was all that mattered; the face that she showed the world. But she needed to physically cause pain other than hunger, so she hit Evie’s palms with a splintered switch when she wasn’t beautiful enough, talented enough, perfect enough. Her palms and wrists were shredded and scarred; she had stripes across the insides of her arms were it was softest and healed the darkest. She would come to Mal sobbing, hoping the fae could help her, and she tried. She would bind Evie’s dripping hands and chant as many spells as she could think of to desperately try to help them heal because if Evie came back with more imperfections in her skin her mother would beat more into her. It was cyclical and bloody and they couldn’t escape it.
Jay, like Mal, used his fists for violence when needed. He wore studded gloves that Evie had made for him and Mal had hexed. They were harder than his bones and never shattered like his joints did. He could drive his whole force with them and know his knuckles wouldn’t break more than they already had. He needed his hands fully functional; you can’t snatch things from people’s pockets if you could barely control the ligaments in them.
When they came over from the Isle Mal healed her friend’s scars and badly healed bones and in the process nearly destroyed her own hands. It was worth it to her though, to see Carlos uncurl his fingers for the first time she could ever remember and watch the acid burns fade away to nothing. To see the tears that Evie wept when her skin no longer bore a pattern of scars that marked her as ugly and horrible and not enough in her mother’s eyes. To see Jay finally take off the studs and move his hands gently, smoothly, the way he had when he was a child and would play with his mother’s hair.
Yes, she nearly destroyed her own hands healing those of the people closest to her. And they still bled if she wasn’t careful. But it didn’t matter because Carlos’s hands didn’t have bubbled skin on his knuckles anymore, because Evie no longer hid her hands or gasped in pain when she put too much pressure on her palms, because Jay used his fists for kindnesses and protection. They healed along with their hands; slowly but surely becoming what they once were.