"Maleficent doesn't know anything about love, or kindness, or the joy of helping others."
-The Good Fairy Fauna
"Let evil die and good endure!"
Maleficent jolts awake in the dead of night, gasping and burning, long limbs thrashing in the bedsheets. She's brought back down by a cool hand pressed against her shoulder and soothing murmurs in her ear.
"It's all right, it's all right now," over and over, like a mantra, like a benediction.
Maleficent draws a deep, shuddering breath and stills. She rolls over to face this source of comfort, clutches her tight, as if letting go would be too much to bear. "You're here," she whispers into the dark. "You're not-"
"I'm here," Aurora affirms. "I will always be here." She kisses Maleficent's cheek, then her jaw, then the side of her neck, until Maleficent's vise-like grip lessens ever so slightly. "I'm not going anywhere."
The weight of Aurora's head on Maleficent's chest, tucked beneath her chin, anchors her, keeps her heart from rattling out of its cage; she breathes in the familiar scent of Aurora's hair and stares unblinkingly at the ceiling. It is beyond reason, even after this many years, why Aurora should be here at all, why she would choose to stay at Maleficent's side. Maleficent, who had lived her life alone and been destined to die alone, who was laughably ill-equipped to repay the kindnesses heaped upon her by one who owed her nothing.
"Please, try to relax." Aurora trails a hand down Maleficent's arm, pries her fingers loose from their hold on Aurora's nightgown and brings them up to plant a kiss on Maleficent's bony knuckles. "You need to sleep better than this."
It was true her nights had been more restless of late than usual, even by the wicked fairy's standards, but try as she might now, nerves overwrought, sleep will not reclaim her.
Aurora moves, and Maleficent can sense the scrutinizing gaze on her face, hear the quiet, thoughtful hum vibrate against her clavicle and fill the silence created by her own non-response. It is only when she feels Aurora's wandering hand reach over the jut of her hipbone, palm dragging across the thin fabric covering her belly, that she stirs. "Aurora, you don't-"
"I want to. If you'll let me? It pains me to see you in such turmoil."
It hadn't taken Aurora long at all to figure out the exact combination of words sure to overturn Maleficent's objections the quickest. Not trusting herself to speak, Maleficent nods her acquiescence and drops her head back onto the pillow as Aurora resumes her ministrations.
A deft hand slips beneath Maleficent's shift, where the touch of fingertips exploring the sensitive skin along her pelvis elicits a sharp intake of breath. Aurora hooks one of her legs between Maleficent's, nudges them further apart with her knee and drives her thigh up, a pressure against the gathering heat that surges pleasure throughout Maleficent's body and causes her to grit her teeth.
Aurora glides up the length of Maleficent's torso to press soft lips upon her furrowed brow, and Maleficent remembers to breathe, huffing a strangled laugh and raising an unsteady hand to run through Aurora's hair. She feels Aurora's mouth curve into a smile before skimming from her forehead, between half-lidded eyes, down the bridge of her nose to find and capture Maleficent's lips in a kiss as startling by its suddenness as its intensity, which she returns with matching fervor. The ever-present tightness that Maleficent carries in her chest seems to expand and fill her consciousness, all thoughts and logic dissolving into a haze of sensations that threaten to engulf her entirely.
And Aurora chooses this moment to withdraw her thigh, replaced with fingers that caress and rub circles outside and stroke and curl inside, again, and again, until Maleficent's back arches off the bed and hoarse cries escape from her throat, while Aurora whispers in her ear, "It's all right, it's all right, I'm here, it's all right."
Maleficent comes undone on the crest of a wave that rises from Aurora's touches, deep and molten, sparking across her body to the edges of perception and leaving a heady numbness in its wake. Tears sting the corners of her eyes as guilt and gratitude war for dominance, because how can it ever be all right? But as Aurora continues to whisper sweetly and hold her close, she surrenders these apprehensions for now and, for the first time in a long while, sinks into a sleep unplagued by nightmares.