A/N: This story is, from now on, going to probably one of the most OOC things you've ever read as far as Maleficent is concerned. It's to the point where I think I might vomit x_x But I shall post it nevertheless.
Trumpet owns nothing.
Reviews are greatly appreciated!
Months passed like days to the servant and his queen, who now interacted more like close friends or siblings than mistress and henchman. They constructed a nest by the cottage, since traveling was taxing on both of them, and they split their time between making sure the fifteen year old beastie was still alive and ensuring the wall's safety. Maleficent would spend days slaving over potions, but none of them ever worked. Gradually, Diaval's hope faded, but hers remained, though quite a bit weaker than when he had first been attacked.
She realized that it had been nearly six years since he lost his eyes and more than sixteen since he had become her servant. They did everything together, neither daring to leave the other's side, even though Diaval had become increasingly mobile as the years passed. They ate together, slept together in the most innocent and literal of ways, and they even on several occasions bathed together—Diaval couldn't look, and his mistress had seen him naked before, so what was the big deal? And, though neither would admit it, each had begun to crave the other's presence like a drug.
The raven knew that his feelings for his mistress went far beyond that which she would be comfortable with, but he didn't voice them. He loved her. He loved her enough to stay silent so that he could be near her. But, unbeknownst to him, the fairy was harboring her own feelings deep within herself for the raven who had become a man who had become her servant who had become her closest friend. Together, they reared the little beast from afar, and they loved her from a distance, though each was ashamed to admit it to the other.
Maleficent watched the three pixies usher Aurora into her attic room while the teen protested that she wanted to stay up later to read a book of fairytales that the fairy had clandestinely placed at their doorstep for the girl to discover. Outside, the fairy turned the page of her own book, which was also a book of fairytales, though it was quite a bit darker and more morbid than the one she had given the princess. Beside her, Diaval's head drooped onto her shoulder, and he gave a slight snore. A bit of drool leaked onto her collar.
She gave a wistful sigh. If this moment could never end, I would be happy forever. And that was true. In that moment, thoughts of Stefan and his soldiers and their fire and iron banished, she was happy. Her best friend (what a childish term) was with her, their hatchling (dear gods how did this happen to her) under her watchful eyes, the sun setting with such a smooth tranquility that she almost didn't miss her wings (her wings, her wings, they would make this complete).
But all moments must end. Though spring had almost officially arrived, winter's cool breeze was bringing back a chilly reminder of the blizzards they had suffered—one in particular had left them both shut up in that decrepit palace for the greater part of a fortnight, and Maleficent would dare to say that each of them was near the point of killing the other when the snow finally cleared enough for them to wedge the door open and flee into the frigid world. She nudged the raven man gently with her elbow and whispered, "Diaval? Wake up, pet." She liked the way the blush tickled his cheeks when she called him that.
"Mmm…" His eyes opened and blinked blearily, and he still rubbed them even though his vision would never be clear again. "Mistress? How long did I sleep? What time is it?"
"It's just nightfall. You weren't asleep half an hour." She took his arm in that familiar way and pulled gently at him. "C'mon. We need to get some sleep." After a moment's pause, she added, "Pet."
"You could invent a worse nickname, I suppose." He struggled to his feet, and, after he steadied himself, she started to lead him toward their shared nest. "A peculiar bird called me No-Eyes the other day. Must've been an owl. They're the only ones stupid enough to think stating the obvious works as an insult." He yawned.
Amusement played around the corners of her eyes. "I thought owls were supposed to be the wisest of birds."
"That's what they think of themselves. Prideful as peacocks and just as vain."
"Sounds about like you, then."
"You know me so well." The ground changed beneath his feet, and he knew they were at their nest. At the time of its creation, each of them had rebuked the idea of sharing it, but they were much too lazy to go through the trepidations of constructing another one, and considering Diaval's habit of grabbing onto her in sleep, two nests might've caused more problems than it solved.
He lay down, and soon she did as well. The familiar weight of his arm came onto her waist almost as soon as his first snore left his mouth, and she smiled in spite of herself. His touch made her skin warm and gave her a sense of safety. Her eyelashes flicked closed.
It was perhaps an hour when her eyes snapped open again. Diaval's hold on her tightened, and he pressed his face into his hair. He often suffered from disturbed dreams, and sometimes he spoke aloud in them, but this one felt different to her, and if she were somehow inclined to guess the severity of his dreams on instinct, she would place this one as much worse than the rest.
She rolled over in his arms, only to have her face uncomfortably squished into his chest. "No. Not her. Me instead." She struggled enough to earn herself a little wiggle room and peered at his face, which twitched and ticked with his nightmare. He repeated that line four more times. "Me instead," he said, again. "Love her."
Maleficent's heart twitched in her chest, and she couldn't help but wonder what his nightmare contained. Was he dreaming of her? No, of course not; that was a ridiculous notion, no matter how much she wished it was true. "Diaval, wake up." It was cruel of her to watch him sleep like this. "Come on, pet. Wake up."
His obsidian eyes snapped open, and he shouted, "No!" and shook her. She wriggled quickly out of his grasp and pinned his arms at his sides.
"Diaval! Diaval, it's me." His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard, taking a quaky breath. "Calm down." Her heart was flopping like a fish in her chest. "I've got you. I'm right here." This was by far the worst dream he'd ever had. She found herself prodding at his cheeks. "You're feverish. Do you feel sick?"
He shook his head and tried to relax next to her. "I'm fine." His arms curled about his chest. "I'm alright." He seemed to say this more to reassure himself. "Just a bad dream. A bad dream, is all." He was repeating things to comfort himself.
She guided a canteen to his lips. "I'm here." He grasped her hand, and she squeezed it. "Do you want to talk about it?"
He shook his head. "No, no, I can't—no." He took another gulp of air and relaxed into the nest. He was trembling with fever chill, and she tugged a blanket over him. "It was just bad."
She rubbed his arm until the tension in him had dissipated, and she lay down next to him. "Wake me if anything starts hurting." She knew he wouldn't. She knew he was still awake, but his arm slipped over the small of her back and pulled her, ever so slightly, toward him. She knew that, if he could see, he would be looking right at her, and she didn't dare look to him, because her tender feelings that she kept so carefully hidden toward him were threatening to make themselves known.
She was certain she was already dreaming when she swore she heard him whisper, "I love you," into her hair. Her breaths leveled in sleep, and soon so did the raven's.
"This will get rid of your fever!"
"It's disgusting!"
"It is not!" she rebuked, thrusting the hot, watered down tea brewed with herbs at him. "Drink it!"
"You wouldn't know how gross it is; your senses aren't constantly overcompensating for your blindness!"
She sighed. "Diaval, I know you feel like absolute shit because you look like absolute shit. Just drink the damn tea." She softened her voice a bit. "It'll make you feel better, I promise."
The fight had been going on between them for nearly ten minutes, and the tea was now not so much hot as it was tepid. His fever had not faded in the night, as she'd hoped, but rather had only worsened to his current flushed, chilled, trembling, burning state. She feared he was coming down with the flu again (that particular tale from two years ago was not something either of them wished to revisit), and she intended to nip it out before it ravaged him again, but he was most certainly not helping.
He finally accepted the glass and slurped at it. His face told his repulsion, but he drank all of it. "Sometimes I really don't like you." His throat was already hoarse.
"It's mutual." It wasn't. She took the glass from his hands and thrust the canteen at him. "Water. Wash it down." He consented while she ran her fingers through his hair, trying to comb it down the way he liked best. It was soft to her touch, and she noticed not for the first time the feathers that were intermixed there. "Now go to sleep."
"I just woke up!" he complained, though he couldn't deny the sleepiness that dragged at his eyelids. "Mistress…" His voice was getting dangerously near a whine.
"Stop complaining," she scolded. She was reminded of all those years ago when she had saved his life and chastised him for his chutzpa. How long ago had that been? It seemed like a hundred years. Sixteen, perhaps? Yes, that would be a good estimate. Sixteen years. That was quite a long time. She imagined that, had things gone differently, it would be about time that she released him from his servitude. But things had not gone differently, and he was blind and reliant on her for survival, a fact that neither of them would admit.
He sighed dramatically. "Will you read me a story, please, mistress?" He poked out his lower lip in the slightest. Human expressions had begun to become more natural to him over the years. She remembered with some fondness the day she had grudgingly allowed him to feel her face with his hands, and he had ended up poking her up the nose, in the mouth, and in both eyes.
"Anything to make you shut up," she whispered, careful to project it so he would hear. She pulled out the book that she had read from the night prior and started to spin the tale written on the page. "Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess named Cinderella. And she had a very, very wicked stepmother…" Diaval had snuggled back down into sleep by the time the ugly stepsisters cut off their toes to fit into the slippers. She was glad he didn't have to dream with that morbid image stuck in his head.
She lowered the book back down to the ground and looked to his face. His hand fumbled upward for a moment, and she clasped it. His face relaxed into a smile. Her heart gave a squeeze, and she felt like she could smile back and cry at the same time. She knew. She had—oh gods, she had fallen in love with her closest companion. She had vowed to never do this again. She couldn't love. Love was a foreign thing to her; love didn't exist!
But it did exist. It existed in Diaval, who stayed by her side not just because he had to, but because he wanted to. It existed in their far-off fledgling, who had never met them, but who they both cared for more than was healthy, considering her curse.
That's a silly notion and you know it, a voice whispered to her. Another responded, Diaval loves you. You love Diaval. Love is real.
Her only problem was that the voices were talking too loud for her to think, but neither was stronger than the other. She felt suddenly ill to her stomach, and she lay down next to her raven friend. With a touch to his forehead, she determined that his fever was cooling. A relief came onto her chest, and she let herself relax into the quieter, less argumentative places of her mind.
Though his fever was quelled, his lungs still became congested, and for several nights Diaval couldn't sleep for the phlegm that kept spattering out of his lungs. Maleficent remained sleepless alongside him and spent her time reading to him and brewing tea over a fire to keep his fever manageable. When he could sleep, it was tormented, and he often awoke shouting and thrashing. His mistress deeply feared that some strange illness of insanity was worming its way into Diaval, but she didn't voice it. After a week, his illness had left him, but he still suffered those terrible dreams.
"Are you sure you won't tell me about it, pet?" Her hand hovered over a pot of boiling water.
He shook his head rapidly. "What are you brewing, mistress?"
"A sleeping draught. It will make you sleep sounder."
He stiffened, but didn't comment. He had come to dread nighttime and dark circles lined under his eyes constantly. She knew he was exhausted, despite having done nothing but recuperate from the flu for three days. "It's always about dogs," he confessed finally. He chewed his lip, a habit that he had taken to doing when he was deliberating.
"You often talk about a girl."
"I talk in my sleep?"
"Almost every night." She didn't miss that he fails to address her point about a girl, but she didn't push it. "This needs to steep for a few hours. Do you feel up to going to the cottage?" she queried.
He nodded earnestly and stood without assistance, only to knock his head on a tree. "Ouch, damn." He rubbed his head and gave a lopsided smile. She touched his arm fondly and tugged at him, not needing words to summon him. He felt that familiar tingly sensation when she touched him, and he felt his heartbeat pick up just a bit. He yawned and stumbled after her, and soon they were seated at their tree where she could watch and he could listen. His head leaned onto her shoulder. Their fingers were intertwined, as they usually were. "This is nice," he murmured. She gave a noncommittal grunt.
"Do you get bored?" she asked him.
"Not often. Time spent with you is never boring, mistress."
Her lips quirked into a slight smile while she watched the teen girl and "Auntie" Knotgrass argue over whether or not beetles should go in their cake. The princess rarely yelled, but the girl was obviously averse to consuming beetles, and Knotgrass just couldn't seem to grasp quite how disgusting the whole idea of it seemed. It made Diaval a bit nauseous just thinking about it. Maleficent tilted her head back against the trunk of a tree and stared up it. It was a dizzying viewpoint. Her mind slipped away from her, even though her eyes were wide open.
"Mistress?"
She snapped out of her stupor. "Yes?"
"Are you alright?"
"Quite. Why?"
"Your breathing was weird. Almost like you were falling asleep."
Maybe she had been. Her eyes felt gritty and rough, and she rubbed them vigorously. Then she yawned. Yes, she must have been falling asleep, even with her eyes wide open and the day still bright in the sky. "I think I must have," she replied softly. His hand seemed larger than usual; as it squeezed hers, it seemed to suck away some unidentified negative emotion in her chest.
He pressed his forehead to the outside of her upper arm in an odd act of affection that they rarely demonstrated so fully. "I dream of dogs, mistress. After all these years…all this time…I thought I was getting over it, when really, I was just becoming more afraid."
"You are no coward, Diaval, if that is the point you are trying to insinuate."
"Am I not?" His voice trembled. She wondered how long it'd been since he'd gotten a restful sleep. "I am utterly helpless to everything. I can't even feed myself without getting confused between food and dirt."
"All the braver you are, then, pet. You are brave enough to wake up every morning and keep trying."
He frowned. "That's different. I have you." She squeezed his hand tighter. How sweet. She couldn't decide whether or not that comment should be dripping with sarcasm; it was a mental debate before he continued, "I don't have you in my sleep. Just me and dogs, and I can't ever make them stop."
"Dreams aren't real. You are real." She drew comforting circles on the back of his hand with her thumb. "I am quite curious about this girl that you constantly mention in your sleep-talks, though." She smirked and raised an inquiring eyebrow, though she knew he couldn't see her.
He promptly blushed and turned his head away. "It's nobody," he mumbled.
His whole demeanor screamed out that he was a liar. "That's a lie, and you and I both know it, pet. Spill. I want to meet this girl."
"You can't."
"Why not?" She was a bit offended by this. "Who are you to tell me what I can and can't do?"
He swallowed hard. "Unless you time travel, mistress, I think it would be quite impossible for you to meet yourself." There it was. His grand secret was spread out before her, and he was stripped bare. Now she would leave him, and he would die. He wasn't sure that would be a bad thing, though, not really. He hoped he would be able to see in the afterlife. Death, while not welcome, would not necessarily be its opposite.
She was silent. "Diaval…"
He decided to tell her all of it. "And the king's there, too, and he's trapped you in an iron net and he's bludgeoning you to death and I can't do anything because I'm helpless and I'm blind!" He was near tears; his hand had become a vice on her wrist. "The curse will take effect soon—we've got less than a year, now!—and…and…" He released her. His arms curled about him like they did when he felt broken. "I'm scared."
She touched his shoulder. "That much is evident," she quipped, though his words had shaken her, as well. How could they not? He suffered from nightmares where her—their, at this point—mortal enemy killed her. "The wall will stand, Diaval, and we are both safe. We both my regret my actions toward the princess, but the curse will take hold regardless." Her voice was a bit strained. It was hard to admit that they had both become so attached to the girl over the years of raising her from afar. "But we are safe as long as we are behind our wall."
"But we're not behind our wall. We're at this cottage," he pointed out.
"We'll be behind our wall by the time they come for us," she promised. "Come now, pet, you're being paranoid. You are safe."
"My fear isn't for me. No one here needs me, really; I am just another life, just another being. But I, along with every being in the moors, am lost without you. And that, I believe, is my greatest fear." Maleficent hadn't been hugged since she was a child, and she had never been wrapped in the embrace of a blind man, but he threw himself at her and, for a man with no eyes, had relatively good aim. But he wasn't attacking her, no matter what her instincts argued. He snaked his arms around her and buried his face in the crook of her neck.
She tentatively reached out, wrapping her arms around him. It was—dare she think it?—quite comfortable, and not very different from the nights when he clutched her to him and they both slept easier. She had vowed to never let herself love anyone again, but she had grown to do just that—love. She loved Diaval. A few tears wetted her neck. Her arms tightened around him. She hadn't seen him cry since that first night, that first terrible night. Not even his dreams could properly emulate that horror.
Almost of their own accord, her lips pressed to his forehead. "We're going to be okay, Diaval," she promised. "We're going to be okay. Don't give up yet, my pet."
He squeezed her tighter about the middle. He wanted to tell her his great and terrible truth—that he loved her—but he didn't dare. So, instead, he kissed just below her jawline, where he could feel her pulse thrumming beneath the skin. What was this now? Just friends. Just friends holding each other and comforting each other in a tough time. And, though both of them longed for something a bit more, they were perfectly okay with that.
