A/N: Thank you for your patience! I scrapped like 4 or 5 drafts of this chapter before it finally started to work with me. Only one more chapter planned for this piece at the moment, but since it's basically just a series of one-shots I could see continuing it at some point.
Usually the long hours at work don't bother Aurora much—she knows what she has to do and she knows why—but this particular day is beginning to weigh on her spirits. She left her phone at home, she spilled hot coffee on her wrist first thing in the morning and the burn is still smarting, and she can feel the sheer length of the work day in the nerves of her heels as she trudges home.
The door of Aurora's apartment has three locks: the normal one that always locks when the front door is closed, a second lock on the same knob, and a deadbolt. Only the first is locked. Aurora feels her stomach drop as she enters her apartment.
"Aurora." Aunt Flora's voice is not particularly wide-ranging in terms of tonal quality. It can be overbearing, it can be jovial, or it can be severe. "I hope you have a very good explanation for your behaviour." Strike that—it can be jovial or sincere. It's always overbearing.
"Aunt Flora?" Aurora says simply as she lets the door fall closed behind her. Anything she could ask would be a mistake. She doesn't know how to proceed until she knows why her aunt is upset.
Aunt Flora produces Aurora's phone, left unlocked, of all things, and with a text message window open. She can't quite make out the text from across the room, yet somehow she knows instantly what Aunt Flora has found. She can't quite remember exactly what she wrote to Maleficent over the last day or two, only that it was more than enough to lead a casual observer to disastrous conclusions.
"I am worried about you, Aurora," Aunt Flora begins, and Aurora feels a fresh twist of panic somewhere in her abdomen. Much of what follows is a blur, or garbled, perhaps, and distant, like Aurora is hearing it from underwater. Indeed, she feels very much like she might be drowning. Her feet are positively throbbing, as is the fresh burn on her arm, and the rest of her has gone icy cold and unsteady.
The word unnatural is thrown about, as is the word abomination. Sickness, too, and at that, Aurora thinks she might experience a far more tangible form of such an accusation. In the end, Aurora finds that she is beginning to lean heavily upon the back of one of the chairs at her little kitchen table, and Aunt Flora has taken her place at the door, waving her phone in front of her face, nearly screeching words Aurora can hardly bring herself to comprehend.
"You can't do that!" Aurora cries out suddenly, without thinking. "I pay for that!"
Mistake. But then again, anything she said would have been a mistake—she knew that going in. "Oh?" Flora counters. "And who paid for your food and clothes and shelter for eighteen years? Who helped you when you were sick last year, out doing Lord-knows-what when you wouldn't even acknowledge Hubert's son, who would have been glad to have you for some reason? Where would you be without me?"
Better off, Aurora almost spits back, but too soon a wave of guilt washes over her, like an illness in itself, and she feels the room spinning with the force of it. She sinks into her chair and watches helplessly as Flora nods pointedly, says something else that involves the phrase for your own good, and leaves. She sees the door slam, but cannot hear anything besides the pounding of her own heart in her ears. It occurs to her vaguely that Aunt Flora would have locked her inside her own apartment if she could.
The next thought that occurs to her is perhaps even more depressing. She wants to talk to Maleficent, but hasn't a phone with which to do so.
She lays her head down on her kitchen table and cries senselessly for some time. She tries not to think too much about the words Aunt Flora spoke to her just now, but each cruel phrase returns to her unbidden, and brings with it a fresh wave of tears. The most painful thought that plagues her—and also the most prominent—is that of course this was going to happen eventually. Of course she couldn't be happy forever. Of course she couldn't do anything she really wanted to and expect to get away with it.
She kicks off her shoes at long last, and orders a veritable fuckton of Chinese food from the place down the block, one of few indulgences she ever allows herself. She fires up the old laptop she inherited from Aunt Fauna and, for lack of anything better to do, wraps herself up in a mountain of blankets and pops in the disc for the movie she borrowed from the library on a whim.
The similarities are funny, and not a little unnerving, but once Aurora gets past the familiar names and even mannerisms, she finds the movie oddly soothing. Once she's sufficiently stuffed herself with Chinese take-out, she finds she's no longer hovering quite so close to the edge of renewed despair.
Sometime around the part where the princess learns the truth of her identity, Aurora hears a gentle knock upon her door that startles her. She untangles herself from her blankets and approaches the front door with hands at the ready, as though she might somehow shield herself from whoever has come to call upon her.
The face that greets her through the peephole is certainly not one she expected, and Aurora feels her stomach flip in an entirely different fashion then. She flings open the door, delighted, but then stops cold once faced with the reality that is her Maleficent, the one of this world and not the one in the children's movie, and the dreadful reality of her own situation.
"Forgive me for intruding," says Maleficent. She isn't quite as coiffed as usual. Her hair, which she usually keeps slicked back, falls in damp tendrils about the sharpness of her face. Her scarf, which bears a few flecks of melting snow, isn't neatly knotted, but rather thrown on haphazardly over her coat, like she left in a hurry. She is somehow even more beautiful in her disorder. "And if your message was genuine, I shall leave you be without further question."
"Message?" Aurora echoes.
Maleficent quirks one eyebrow subtly. "That," she says crisply, "is precisely what I thought." She produces her own phone, almost a mirror of the one that was waved before Aurora's eyes a couple of hours prior, unlocked and with a text window open.
"What happened between us was wrong," Aurora reads aloud. "Do not contact me again." All her composure, all the warmth of the comfort food and the silly movie with the familiar names and mannerisms, flees from her in an instant, and she is left feeling cold and empty and lost once more. "I'm sorry," she whispers, before she covers her face and begins to cry all over again.
She feels long-fingered hands upon her shoulders and flinches instinctively, leans into the softness of the disorderly scarf against the hardness that is Maleficent's spindly frame, and allows herself to be held while she cries. She is infinitely thankful that Maleficent does not press her for an explanation just yet—she doesn't know where to begin.
Maleficent threads her fingers through Aurora's hair, and the tingle that both soothes and excites is enough to mitigate the force of her sorrow considerably. She swipes at her face with her sleeve and meets Maleficent's dark eyes, hoping in vain that she'll think of something to say and coming up woefully short. "Thank you for coming to check on me," she manages, with a tremulous attempt at a smile.
Maleficent's brow furrows subtly, a silent question, but aloud she says only, "Of course."
"I..." Aurora tries to begin, but she feels dread tugging at her stomach, like she's sure Aunt Flora will hear whatever she says somehow, find out any secret she might speak—like the walls of her own apartment hold no safety for her.
Maleficent watches the way Aurora's eyes dart about and seems somehow to read her thoughts. "I wonder if, perhaps, you might like to come and stay with me for a few days? It's nothing special, but I can assure you my walls have no ears, real or imagined."
"Oh, I...wouldn't want to put you out," Aurora stammers, even as she feels a peculiar sort of lightness taking root within her heart.
"Nonsense," says Maleficent. "If you insist, you may repay me—at your leisure, of course—by regaling me with the tale behind the curious text message I received earlier this evening."
"Oh, thank you," Aurora breathes, and her relief seems to wash over her in waves. She throws her arms about Maleficent's shoulders, buries her face in Maleficent's neck, and inhales the faint scent of shampoo and the crispness of a winter's night. "Thank you," she whispers again.
While she throws some things into a bag, Maleficent inspects her apartment. "You investigated the Sleeping Beauty movie after all," she remarks.
"The similarities are a little unnerving," Aurora confesses.
"My name is no coincidence, as it happens," says Maleficent. "My mother was absurdly fond of this movie. Hence the reason I recognized your presumably accidental reference."
Aurora pauses a moment in her haphazard packing, takes the time to relish this fragment of personal information she's been offered at long last. "I've never seen it," she says, after a beat. "Do the princess and the evil fairy get to have a standoff?"
Maleficent leans upon the wall, focuses her attention upon Aurora. "They never even speak, actually."
Aurora frowns as she zips up her bag. "Well, that's no fun."
Maleficent rewards her with one of her rare almost-smiles, and a low, silky chuckle that seems to reverberate in her very soul.
The snow is coming down in sheets when at last they depart, but Maleficent had her taxi driver wait for her. Before they descend the stairs, Aurora throws her head back and smiles up into the sky, the little flecks of cold against her face strangely uplifting. She remembers suddenly something else Maleficent said to her a few months back, when Aurora was struggling to make another confession.
It was unpleasant for me, she'd said, her own cryptic confession, but I came out of it all right.
They take the taxi ride in near-silence. Aurora presses her nose against the window to watch the snow fall, still struggling for words she both desperately wants and does not want to speak. She is somewhat distracted by the sight of Maleficent's building, though she realizes of course it oughtn't to come as any surprise that Maleficent lives well. She's remained cryptic about what exactly she does, insisting that the details would bore Aurora terribly. Aurora has taken her deliberate mysticism to mean that she's probably a high-brow smuggler or the leader of a band of undercover assassins or something, though in truth she imagines the answer will be just as simple as the answer behind her unusual name, and Aurora will be left forever to wonder why Maleficent is ruled by such a consistent need to dissemble.
Maleficent's apartment is unsurprising: elegant in its minimalistic design and immaculately clean. Aurora feels a bit like a blemish upon its surface just for setting her things down, but Maleficent seems utterly unconcerned. She offers Aurora the remote control for her television and asks if she'd like a drink.
Aurora flips idly through the channels, unaccustomed to having so many options, and settles upon some old sitcom she thinks she remembers Aunt Merryweather enjoying. She wonders, not without a touch of bitterness, what her other aunts must be thinking of her right now, and whether she even wants to know.
Maleficent offers her a glass of wine and joins her on the sofa. She surprises Aurora by curling her long legs up onto the sofa. Aurora can't quite contain her strange amusement in time, and Maleficent regards her with a raised eyebrow as she sips her own wine.
"What?"
"Sorry, it's like the cheese fries all over again," Aurora shrugs, feeling suddenly almost cheerful. "Sometimes I forget you're a person and not an ancient being of infinite power."
Maleficent doesn't smile, but her dark eyes glitter in the dim lighting. "I think I ought to be insulted," she says lightly. "However, I confess I don't mind giving off that impression."
Aurora follows Maleficent's lead and settles into the couch, takes a sip of the sweet wine Maleficent has poured for her and savours the rush of warmth that courses through her as it goes down. She sighs deeply and closes her eyes. It's strange to feel safer here than at home, or even among family. All things considered, Aurora realizes all too keenly that she knows very little about Maleficent.
She tries to understand now, in this moment of relative peace Maleficent has carved out for her, what exactly it is that makes her feel so at ease, so quick to trust, and comes back to the usual conclusion: that whatever it is about Maleficent that makes her seem intimidating is the same thing that makes Aurora feel safe.
Where Aurora hedges, Maleficent stands strong. Maleficent says exactly what she wants to say, or she says nothing at all. When Maleficent has a question, she asks it—does not demand it, but makes giving her an answer into an inevitability. When faced with something that seems off to her, such as a text message telling her to leave well enough alone, she questions it immediately.
If Aurora had received such a text message, she realizes suddenly, she wouldn't have questioned it. She would have fallen unquestioning into a kind of resigned despair, because she has been waiting for something to go wrong, for Maleficent to tire of her and abandon her to the tragic monotony of her life.
"I wish I were braver," Aurora breathes, barely audible above the white noise from the television.
She feels Maleficent's eyes on her, but Maleficent says nothing, only waits in silence.
"I wish I weren't so afraid to just...be," Aurora continues, frowning. "I wish I didn't have to just sit and wait for something to go horribly wrong. I wish..."
She sets her wine glass down on the coffee table and draws her knees up against her chest while she measures her words. "You're so...steady," she begins, haltingly, "so sure of yourself, and it's...it's almost terrifying." She looks up to meet Maleficent's dark eyes, abruptly feels a fresh wave of terror, and averts her eyes once more.
"I wish I could be...like you," she says. "I wish I didn't feel this dreadful rush of nerves every time I sent a text message. I wish I didn't feel badly every time I didn't want to wear make-up, or do my hair, or didn't want to talk to someone, or every time I did want to talk to someone. I wish I could just..." she holds out her hands, searching, reaching, "tell you...how much I want you, how much I like you, and want you in my life, but I'm..." The words catch in her throat, and somehow, impossibly, she finds that she has more tears to shed this evening.
"But I'm afraid," she whispers through her tears. "I'm afraid of what you'll think, and what my family will say and what everyone will do and so I don't, I don't say anything, and I just sit and wait for the day you disappear forever and I'm left here alone, just doing the same thing over and over and over again."
A flicker of movement catches Aurora's eyes, and Maleficent reaches out to lay a hand on her shoulder, light, hesitant, perhaps even a little awkward. Aurora reaches up to hold it, clings to Maleficent's spindly fingers like the lifeline they are.
"I left my phone at home," Aurora explains at last. "My Aunt Flora came over while I was at work to snoop around and got exactly what she was looking for. And you know what I thought, first, before anything else?" she dares a glance in Maleficent's direction.
"What?" Maleficent wonders quietly.
Aurora closes her eyes, and takes in a shuddering breath. "I thought I should just...agree with her. My aunt, I mean. Walk it all back, pretend it was all a horrible mistake, endure whatever she put me through for however long it lasted, because someday..." She sniffles, and drags her sleeve across her face. "Someday, eventually, they'd manage to make themselves forget. They'd really, genuinely believe that everything was fine again, and they'd never even see how I'd died a little bit inside."
She feels Maleficent's grip tighten on her shoulder, and leans her head against it.
"I'm such a coward," she says, low and harsh. "I'd change every last fragment of who I am, give up every notion of who I'd like to be, just to save myself from a little grief."
"I don't think that's true," says Maleficent, almost gently by comparison.
Aurora scoffs quietly. "Then you must not know me very well."
Maleficent turns her attention to the television, eyes glassy and unseeing, brow furrowed in contemplation. "Shall I tell you something about myself?"
This catches Aurora's attention immediately. Twice in one night? she almost retorts.
Maleficent stares impassively at the television screen for some time before she speaks. "I was with a man, once," she says, and now it's Aurora's turn to be struck utterly speechless.
"My mother had already thrown me out by then, my sisters hadn't spoken to me in years, and my circle of acquaintances at the time preferred simply...not to acknowledge my romantic proclivities," Maleficent continues quietly. "Aside from the expected snide comments from people whose opinions shouldn't matter, I had no outside reason for doing it."
She takes a long sip of her wine. In the background, there's an uproarious laugh track from the sitcom. "I wondered if I could take it all back," she says. "All the fighting and the snide comments and the pretending not to notice and calling it polite." She shakes her head. "It was dreadful, from beginning to end, and that's certainly not a commentary upon the gentleman in question. He was...uncommonly understanding, actually."
Maleficent closes her eyes. "The truly dreadful part," she says slowly, "the part that has never quite ceased to haunt me...is that I could have taken it all back. Anyone, everyone, would have been willing to accept that I had changed my mind, or mended my ways. That everything that came before had been a mistake, or a sordid affair borne of the uncertainty of youth."
What happened when you didn't? Aurora wants to ask, but she holds her tongue. She's sure this is the most Maleficent has ever spoken to her at once, and she cannot even begin to take it all in. She fears anything she might say will spoil the moment, and Maleficent will withdraw into herself once more.
Maleficent turns dark eyes upon Aurora, alight with some emotion Aurora would be hard-pressed to describe as anything other than certainty. "My point," she says, "is that you aren't a coward for wanting an easier life. We all do what we must to get by from day to day." She withdraws her hand from Aurora's vise grip and places her fingertips over Aurora's heart. "My advice to you is to be honest with yourself. Lying to others is often entirely necessary. Lying to yourself..." she averts her eyes a moment "...that will tear you apart."
Aurora wipes at her face with her sleeve again, and then she nestles herself into Maleficent's outstretched arm. She wraps her arms about Maleficent's slender waist and rests her head upon Maleficent's chest, just under her chin. Maleficent allows it in silence, and wraps arms about Aurora to accommodate her. Aurora breathes her in, tries somehow to soak up everything about her, to remind herself when at last she disappears that the whole thing wasn't a very lovely, very tumultuous dream...to remind herself why she will never, ever walk this back, never pretend even for a second that it was a mistake.
Aurora awakens some indeterminate amount of time later, with the sensation of flying, or falling, or something hovering on the fine line between the two. She grasps sleepily at Maleficent's neck as she realizes she's being carried, and is reluctant to let go when Maleficent lays her down upon the softness of a proper bed.
Maleficent, silhouetted only by the light from the other room, pulls the covers up over Aurora's shoulders, holds a moment, and smoothes Aurora's hair from her face before she moves to depart. Aurora catches her arm.
"Stay," she whispers.
Silence, stillness, and a long moment passes before Maleficent moves at all. She frees her wrist from Aurora's grasp, and Aurora is sure she'll leave, but she pulls at the covers of her bed once more, and Aurora shifts, more than a little surprised, to make room for her. She can sense the hesitation in the stiffness of Maleficent's arms, the way she pauses a moment before her hands find Aurora's waist, tenses a moment when Aurora pulls her closer.
But outside the snow picks up, beats gently against the window, and eventually, Maleficent begins to relax.
"I think..." Aurora murmurs, impulsively, and more than half asleep. "I think it's a little weird, how safe I feel with you. I mean...there's no real reason for it, just that...you don't make me feel like I'm expected to say, or do, or be anything in particular. Besides...you know...myself, and honest. I only wish..." she feels Maleficent's fingers curl subtly upon her waist, and the words catch in her throat a moment. "I wish I could offer you the same understanding, I suppose."
"You think that you don't?" Maleficent wonders. Her voice reverberates low and so, so near, and Aurora feels her body tingling all over.
"I feel like...I've told you so much about myself," says Aurora, "and you've told me so little. I don't mean to sound...I just...I hope you don't...feel like you have to hold your tongue, or something. I don't know. Am I making any sense?"
Maleficent's hand moves to smoothe Aurora's hair, and she leans in to place a kiss, gentle as the falling snow, upon Aurora's forehead. "You possess an uncommonly kind heart, Aurora," she says, low and rich and wonderful. "Perhaps in time I may promise to tell you anything you wish to know. For the moment, consider that sometimes, the leisure of feeling no pressure to speak is a more immediate need than the leisure of speaking freely."
Now it's Aurora's turn to curl her fingers, to draw Maleficent just a bit more closely against her. "Well then," she says, allowing her eyes to fall closed once more, "may you never feel..." she yawns "...any pressure to say a single word, while I talk your ear off for the rest of eternity."
Maleficent chuckles quietly and presses another kiss to Aurora's forehead. "Thank you, Aurora," she says, so warmly it feels like a part of a distant dream.
No, Aurora never manages to voice before slumber envelopes her, thank you. After what happened earlier, how could Aurora ever have imagined she would be able to sleep peacefully?