Thank you once again to my wonderful reviewers - southernrebel96, yop, MissusGages, DancingKitKat, FrostSapphire, AwesomeGizmo. So glad you're enjoying it, it's spurring me on! :)

A Heart Returned

Maleficent's heart felt full - and it was agony. Emotion had come flooding back down the years with such sudden force, that she wondered how she was still flying with the weight of it.

The faerie was hovering above the great, green expanse of the moors like a dragonfly over a pond. Her immense, powerful wings beat out of time with her frantic heart as she scanned the trees and the skies for a distinctive vision of black.

Diaval. She had to find him.

He always came back. Why had he not come back? Aurora had simply voiced that which Maleficent had been worrying about all morning. Ever since the faerie had woken to find him absent, she had turned the previous night over in her mind...

A pounding heart beneath a smooth, firm chest... eyes dark and burning... cheeks stained a deep rose red...

She shook her head, irritably, as her own cheeks began to flush. The whole situation was impossible to begin with, and furthermore, it frightened her.

She would think on it no longer. She would find him and scold him, neglecting to impart that he had worried her sick for more than just one reason, and then she would smile secretively as he apologised in his submissive way, and they would carry on just as they had before.

Maleficent scanned in every direction, swooping here and there, behind rock and around tree, turning toward the castle and away from it, looking up into the blue, cornflower sky and down into the green lush of the forest below, but she could not see him.

And then she laughed like she had not laughed in many a year.

How foolish was she? Her Diaval was a man... a man right now, not a bird... and had her mind not been telling her this all morning in the form of last night's memory?

She rolled her eyes and flew down beneath the boughs of the forest branches. She would continue her search on foot.

That raven would be the death of her, she thought as her feet touched the smooth grass, still wet with morning dew.

Of course she had not changed him back; she had left his side so fast and full of fear that it was the last thing on her mind. She hoped he was alright... he very rarely spent the night as a man... and why, when she had sent him to guard Aurora, was he not there when the girl awoke? Beastie had not seen him, which meant that he had either guarded her through the night and left when he knew her to be safe, or...

Her heart gave a strange stab again, as though it were using parts it neglected to use normally.

He had to be alright. He must be. He was. That he wasn't was unthinkable.

The faerie walked ever faster, scanning the woodland for his glistening black eyes and fetching, pale face... his sassy smile...

And the faster she walked, the more memories came flooding into her mind like a film in fast forward... a questioning, keen eyed raven landing on the stones of a ruined castle... a transformation of a beautiful, ill-fated bird into a handsome, powerful man, unabashedly bare and cautiously curious... a shapeshifter who followed her every action, even when he knew them to be morally questionable... a dark, observant figure on the sidelines, seeing all but saying nothing (though when he did it was to impart a bold observation or complaint - and he was usually right though she was loath to admit)... a bird who cared for a human child as though she were his own chick... a giant, protective firebreather of raven black... and a pair of dark eyes taking more than one fleeting glance at her lips, for yes, Maleficent had noticed, and chosen to ignore...

And yesterday, as the sun was setting over the magical Moors, he had stood by her side, close enough to touch... close enough to grasp his hand in hers.

Maleficent took a faltering breath.

Then there was last night. She knew he was watching her from the tree and had teased him deliberately. She had called him pretty - admitted she was nothing without him... and she found him, minutes later, his chest as bare as the day she transformed him, and not a day older... but sixteen years wiser, and many shades of red darker in the face. His behaviour was unusual. She had not seen him in anything less than a decent state since the day their pact was formed... perhaps her compliments on his person had driven him to "appraise himself" as he had put it.

Maleficent stared into the trees, unseeing. He had complained of an ache in the centre of his chest... oh, how had she not spotted that statement for its true meaning? She had been oblivious, and touched him for the first time, not realising how much this would mean to him as a human.

This time, she couldn't control the vivid memory of his reaction from invading her mind. His pounding heart... his burning eyes... his stained cheeks...

Her own cheeks flushed, a twinge in her belly bringing into greater clarity that which had evaded her for so long.

Aurora was right. Her heart had grown, and what's more it seemed to be working furiously to find other ways in which to express itself... ways in which a certain loyal raven man seemed to sharply feature.

Suddenly breathless with burden, Maleficent saw the trees spin as she felt her knees buckle.

But she didn't hit the floor.

Strong arms embraced her falling frame, and she was staring up into the concerned gaze of Diaval.