A/N: Thank you all so much for sticking with me, and for your incredibly kind words! This story continues to surprise me in a way, so I hope you'll bear with me!
As Briar Rose fell, Maleficent sank to her knees to ease her descent. The three fairies were still crying out for her. The knowledge that they would soon see her like this ought to have spurred her to some sort of action, but she found she could not bring herself to rise.
"Maleficent!"
"You—you—!" Merryweather tried. The youngest of the fairy sisters was a feisty little thing, but ruled entirely by wild emotion, she lacked for words more often than not.
"You fiend!" Flora finished for her. The eldest sister, on the other hand, was of the opinion that she always knew what to say.
Maleficent did not look up. Briar Rose was sleeping peacefully now. She could not hear them.
"Poor, simple fools," she said quietly.
"Get away from her!"
"Haven't you done enough?"
Maleficent felt a small huff of incredulity escape her lips. She combed her fingers idly through Briar Rose's hair, pulled loose strands into place. She was still breathing, but her skin was eerily cold.
"Maleficent?" Softer, hesitant. The voice of the middle sister, Fauna.
At last she made to stand, and took Briar Rose in her arms as she did so. She looked upon the three little fairies at last. Two were enraged, with tiny fists balled up at their sides. One wrapped her arms about herself, and struggled to curb the flow of tears from her wide eyes.
It was to Fauna that Maleficent directed her reply. "Surely you knew that this would always come to pass in the end."
Her elder and younger sister spluttered meaningless arguments. Fauna inhaled, hesitated, then closed her eyes and bowed her head. She tugged at her sisters' sleeves until they fell silent. "There's nothing we can do now," she said quietly.
Flora's expression turned from twisted-up rage to grave acceptance. When she looked at Maleficent again, it was with a far calmer shade of fury. "No," she agreed. "Not now."
Maleficent inclined her head thoughtfully. "I eagerly await your renewed efforts to thwart my will," she said.
The fairies ceased their retreat, and turned over their shoulders tentatively. A small, affected smile graced Maleficent's lips then, and she inclined her head once more, this time in the direction of the little princess she held in her arms.
"But do remember the cards I hold," she finished.
It was a curious notion, to be trapped inside a dream. Dreams were meant to be made out of things half-remembered, bleary and never solid enough to seem real upon close inspection, and since Briar Rose knew so little of the world, her dreams up until now had been similarly finite.
This place was different. Decidedly dreamy, but well beyond the confines of her own mind.
Perhaps she had expected silence, or the murky quietness of slumber, but she was certain she could hear voices in the distance. Talking, yelling, laughing, singing, screaming, all at once, from everywhere and nowhere.
Paths began to form beneath her feet, each twisting into the infinite darkness around her, bizarrely clear against the nothingness that surrounded them. Briar Rose looked down and was surprised to perceive her feet at the crossroads of the winding pathways around her. Darkness all around, yet she herself was not shrouded in it.
A very large part of her, settled somewhere in the pit of her stomach, if indeed such a measure existed in this place, felt very strongly that she ought to sit down and stay right here for the foreseeable future. Wait, she thought to herself, but wait for what?
Wait until her aunties came and found her? Wait until her Prince Charming showed up to sweep her off her feet? What had Briar Rose done her whole life but wait for nothing?
This was a curious sort of dream, to be certain, but it must still belong to her, mustn't it? Nothing here could hurt her.
Could it?
Rose turned in a slow circle, investigated each of the paths that wound away from where she stood, and after a very short while decided it didn't much matter which path she took. How long? she had asked Maleficent, for Maleficent might be cruel, might even be evil, but she had told Rose more of the truth than anyone else. She had asked Maleficent how long she would sleep, and Maleficent had told her that she didn't know.
The path she chose felt strangely solid beneath her feet. Not like walking on nothing, as one sometimes felt in dreams. It was disconcerting to feel as though she were in the center of utter nothingness, but eventually shapes began to form before her, unclear and ill-defined, but also unaffected by the darkness around them.
Unsettling though it was, Briar Rose found that she felt quite relieved to be seeing anything at all, and she quickened her steps towards the strange new shapes as they solidified. She began to see a little campsite, with tents and a little fire in the middle. Something inside her thought to call out as she approached, but she was rendered just as easily silent.
Before the fire was a woman on her knees, cradling a child in her arms. Her head was bowed, but Briar Rose could tell that she was crying.
"What's the matter?" she tried to ask, but the words came out murky and distant, as though they had come from someone very far away.
Still the woman looked up with a tear-streaked face, and she answered. "I knew there was no hope," she said, "and yet still I mourn."
Rose dared a few steps closer. She wasn't certain what to say, struggled to forget the strangeness of her own voice. "No hope?"
The woman bowed her head once more. "Nary a healthy child in this land for years beyond counting," she said. "They try to get the others to come here, but what have they to offer? No hope, no hope, no..." She began to rock the child in her arms, and Briar Rose realized suddenly that there wasn't a child at all, just a bundled up blanket.
Rose knelt before the fire and reached out to the grieving woman. The woman regarded Rose's hand upon her arm with muted surprise, but she did not flinch or lash out, only looked up again. "I'd heard about that," she said gently. "About the children. I'm sorry."
The woman's lip twitched, and her first response was a strangled sort of huff. "It's only getting worse," she replied, and somehow it was the saddest thing she could have said.
"Worse?" Rose echoed.
The woman returned her attention to the bundle of blankets in her arms. "How can it get better? All the medics and midwives in the land slandered like witches. Not a fortnight prior there was a woman strung up in the town square. I didn't know her, but my friend swore it was the very woman who delivered her daughter."
The woman spoke tremulously, but with a stillness about her that unsettled Rose far more than mere words. Horror washed over her in waves. It was a curious notion to be trapped in a dream, but this place was far beyond anything Briar Rose could ever have imagined. "People think it's their fault?" she managed. "The medics and midwives?"
"It follows, doesn't it?" said the woman. "Things the way they are now, whether a baby dies or lives is sure to seem like witchcraft."
"Is that what you think?" Rose asked her.
The woman looked up again. Her face wasn't tear-streaked anymore. Her eyes had gone dark and distant as the void around them. "What will happen when all the medics and midwives are strung up in the town square, and our children still die?" she asked, in a voice that seemed to be fading away. "Where will the blame fall then?"
"Wait!" Rose cried, but she too sounded as though she might fade away into nothingness. The woman and her bundle of blankets were already gone, and the tents and the campfire faded away with her. Briar Rose was left alone once more.
Back at the cottage in the glen, which felt empty and dark without their little Rose to brighten their lives, the three grieving fairies were rather surprised to receive a visitor in the form of Prince Phillip. As far as they could tell, he had been quite satisfied with the previous visit, and they hadn't expected to see him again until the morning's celebration.
Perhaps, each thought to herself with a spark of hope, Phillip really had taken a fancy to his betrothed. Perhaps there might be hope in him to save her from Maleficent's curse.
Indeed, his initial reaction was promising. "Where is she?" he demanded with a fire in his eyes. "What's become of her?"
"The princess sleeps along with her waiting kingdom, for the time being," Flora told him. "But Maleficent will guard her well—"
"Maleficent," Phillip echoed with a sneer. "That monster will not stand in my way!"
"Prince Phillip," Fauna tried, gently. "Maleficent has powers beyond what most humans can even imagine."
"And it's not just that," Flora continued, more firmly. "Maleficent's power is secondary to her thirst for vengeance. She has torn this land apart for the sake of her curse upon the princess."
"Then I shall do the same, ten times over," Phillip replied vehemently.
And perhaps he meant it to sound noble, or devoted, or courageous. But the three good fairies had seen this land torn apart time and again across the span of centuries. Without really understanding the desires that lay dormant within their own hearts, they found suddenly that they had hoped for something a bit different in the years to come.
"Use caution, your Highness," said Flora at last. "We will aid you with our magic in whatever way we can, but it will take something more than mere determination to defeat Maleficent."
Phillip shook his head, almost disbelieving. "What will it take?"
Many things came to mind, most of them unique to each of the three fairies. Patience, thought Fauna worriedly. Cleverness, thought Flora with concern.
"Luck," said Merryweather aloud, but it was not in her usual abrasive way. Her features were grave, and her tone sincere. "Very, very good luck."
Phillip's expression softened at last then. He looked between the three little fairies with a knitted brow, hoping for something more, but Merryweather's sisters did not deny her.
It wasn't long before Briar Rose felt compelled to stand and return to the path she'd followed to the grieving woman's campfire. Rose contemplated the way she had come and the way ahead and decided upon returning to the place where the paths intersected, assuming such a place still existed. She did not relish the thought of becoming lost in such a place as this, and though a particular spot in the midst of nothingness was not very much to cling to, it was all she had.
When she reached the crossroads where she'd found herself first, she chose a different path at random, feeling strangely numb at the prospect of stumbling upon another scene as disturbing as the one she'd just witnessed.
Nary a healthy child in the land for years beyond counting, the woman had said. It was what her aunties had been loath to tell her and what Maleficent had implied, almost gently, like the idea was objectionable even to her. The idea that Briar Rose, or rather the Princess Aurora, ought to be able to provide the children the kingdom lacked. She, herself! How was she to solve a problem that had lasted for years beyond counting?
Shapes began to form in the distance. Another campfire, Rose thought as she drew nearer, but this one was different. Wrong. It wasn't surrounded by tents or trees or signs of life. It was surrounded by cobblestone and shop fronts, like the center of a town square.
In the center of the strange fire, there was a pillar. As Rose drew nearer and the shapes solidified, she felt the air rent from her lungs.
There was a person tied to the pillar.
Rose raced forward. She tried to scream, but could not feel the sound within her own body, could scarcely hear her own voice in this dreadful place. She stopped short when she reached the person on fire, because the person in question seemed...well, she seemed calm. Resigned.
"You're..." Rose tried, gesturing vaguely to the fire. "You're not in pain?"
The woman's face was tear-streaked like the grieving mother, but her features were peaceful. "Not for a long time now," she said.
Rose closed her eyes and sank to her knees, felt she might weep for the horror of this place where she must while away some unknowable span of time. "I don't know what that means," she said miserably.
"I'm just an echo of something that happened before," said the woman on fire. "Many times, many people. People do funny things when they're frightened, when they can't see what lies ahead."
Rose squeezed her eyes closed tighter, struggled to wrap her mind around the words the woman had spoken. "The other woman, with the... She said...midwives and medics..."
"A child dies, the family wants someone to blame," said the woman on fire. "A child lives? The aggrieved don't know where to turn. Why not their children?"
Rose scrubbed at her eyes and looked up at last, hesitantly. "What happens when...when all the medics and the midwives are dead, and the children still die?" Rose asked her, the same as the grieving woman had asked Rose before she disappeared.
The woman on fire smiled. "That is the question, isn't it?"
"Please," said Rose, shaking her head. "Everyone is acting like I can do something to help, but I don't know what to do. What can one person do? About something like this?"
"There is hope yet," said the woman with a thoughtful tilt of her head that reminded Rose rather uncomfortably of Maleficent. The woman on fire turned her head to look beyond where Rose knelt, and Rose scrambled to her feet to follow the woman's gaze.
New shapes were forming, a crowd of people dressed in finery, the likes of which Briar Rose had never witnessed. They were happy, laughing and chattering amongst themselves as a grand ballroom materialized around them. Then the crowd turned and took in a collective gasp before exploding into an uproarious cheer.
A rich red carpet had formed beneath Rose's feet. She followed its path to the focus of the crowd's wonderment: children. Maybe ten of them, all dressed in finery like the rest, most with golden hair, all smiling and laughing.
A sudden, terrible fear gripped Briar Rose's heart and she turned back away from the children and the crowd, but the woman on fire was gone, and there were only more finely-dressed spectators in her place.
Rose turned back to look at the children, felt dread pooling in her stomach as she tried not to wrap her mind around what her body already knew.
The children laughed and chattered and danced in circles with one another. Some of them waved to the adoring crowd, others ignored their admirers shyly. A little girl with golden hair and bright blue eyes skittered away to clutch at what must be her mother's skirt.
Rose watched her go. She felt her whole body tense as she followed the line of the woman's skirt from where the little girl's hands clutched it to the familiar curve of her waist to where she leaned heavily upon a gilded throne, and finally to her face.
It was a curious thing, to look at what ought rightly to be another person entirely, and to see only herself.
Rose fell to her knees once more.
Perhaps it would be wisest to move the princess, take her to some faraway land where no one could trouble her while she slept, infuse into her dreams glimpses of happier things, ideas of a world worth waking up to.
It was a flimsy and frivolous idea at best, and Maleficent would not indulge such a flight of fancy. Instead, she erected a forest of thorns around the castle, a forest of briars for Briar Rose, and she sat by Rose's side and she thought, for once in her life, of very little.
The foolish little fairies would return soon enough. In all likelihood they'd bring their dashing prince with them, inflate him with muddy magic and false ideals in the blind hope that any of them was any match for Maleficent.
Rose had asked Maleficent not to harm the three good fairies she called her aunties. She'd said nothing of the boy.
Rose fidgeted in her sleep, twisted up her face and tossed her head, seemed to fight against the confines of the curse. Without thinking, Maleficent smoothed Rose's hair away from her brow, and felt herself flinch when the action seemed to calm the sleeping princess.
"Do you dream whilst you slumber, little princess?" Maleficent wondered quietly. What would she find in a dreamscape made from magics so disparate as Maleficent's and Merryweathers?
Rose tossed her head again, tensed up her shoulders and balled her hands into fists where they lay upon her stomach. Maleficent considered her a moment. She moved her chair closer to Rose's bedside and reached out to stroke Rose's hair once more.
Rose's features softened.