a/n: I told myself I was going to update once a week but I got so excited about this fic I've been writing whenever I have the free time to do so. Thank you so much for the reviews, follows, and positive opinions! I hope I don't disappoint.

Aurora awoke in the familiarity of the attic bedroom of her cottage home, where she had spent all her life up until recently. She breathed in the scent of gardenia flowers, lavender, and wisteria vine that grew throughout the room along with ivy that peeked out from the walls and dusty draperies. Turning her head she spotted the golden leafed crown on the small table next to her bed. Daylight filtered in through the window, bathing the room in soft, white gold.

She turned back to the ceiling and closed her eyes.

Maleficent had not let Aurora kiss her.

Maleficent, her fairy godmother.

Her shadow, her protector. Her true love.

A sudden sob escaped her lips and she covered her mouth, the weeping came on with the violence of a thunderstorm. Turning to her side, she gripped the bed sheets as her body shook with the force of her realization. The disappointment, embarrassment, and fear that Maleficent might only love her in a maternal sense, and that she might have made a grave mistake and ruined something beautiful.

Impulsive, she was so impulsive.

In all her excitement she had been too bold. The bond of love that she and Maleficent shared might exclude the strange urges that bubbled up inside of Aurora, she merely wanted to be closer to her distant guardian. Including a physical way that she did not fully comprehend. A year ago she would not have been so perturbed by Maleficent's barriers, but this rejection hurt to an extent she could not fully grasp.

Once the sobs had died down Aurora rose from the bed and rubbed her puffy eyes.

"I will fix this." She said to herself in a near whisper.

She had to speak to Maleficent about last night, had to apologize, make it up to the fairy. She could not go back to the days where Maleficent kept herself to the shadows, hiding from her.

She jumped up from the bed and made to run from the room, but stopped and grabbed the crown as an afterthought.

As she opened the door and sunlight splashed into her eyes, the thought struck her.

Perhaps Maleficent had been afraid.

"Fairy godmother!" Aurora called, partly walking, partly jogging through the woods to the boarder of the Moors where thorn walls had once stood; a rush of nostalgia came to her as she recalled being in a similar state on the eve of her sixteenth birthday. "Fairy godmother!"

Things were different then, she did not understand how Maleficent had been suffering all those years. Now she did, now she had the whole story and she would do everything in her power to keep her fairy godmother from being hurt so badly again. The thought of causing Maleficent pain felt as if she were taking a blade to her own heart.

The sound of feathers against wind and a gust of air from behind, "I am here."

Aurora whipped around to face the fairy; a stony expression of indifference met her. What Aurora had once thought was stoicism, was, she realized, another wall Maleficent had built for herself. It was a mask.

"Maleficent I'm sorry I-" she blurted but the winged woman raised a hand to halt her words.

"No need to apologize, I am not upset."

The queen let out a sigh of relief and took a few steps closer, timidly, "Then we're just as we were?"

Maleficent nodded and her face finally cracked into a small smile, "We are just as we were." She reached out a hand to touch Aurora's tear stained cheek. The queen lay her own hand over Maleficent's and gave her a watery smile.

She braced herself to tell Maleficent the truth of what had been welling up inside her of late, the reason why she had tried to kiss her fairy godmother. She opened her mouth to speak, but the cawing of a crow cut her off and Maleficent withdrew her hand. Their private moment was over.

"Into a man." Maleficent said as she flicked her fingers and the crow swooping down and stumbled into the form of a human.

"Why must you always do that!" he said, scornfully as he caught himself, "Always in mid flight!"

The fairy only gave a quiet sound of amusement and smirked.

Aurora tucked a foot onto the strap of the saddle and pulled herself up, swinging her leg over, Maleficent steadied the young queen by holding her waist, Aurora was very aware of the contact and she blushed. As she settled onto the horse, Maleficent's hands left her and she was looking down upon the fairy. Behind Aurora awaited the royal guard to escort her back to her human kingdom, to the stone walls of a castle that she did not feel was truly her home.

"You know, they would rather me sit side saddle instead of astride. The men say it is not lady like, but I think it is silly to sit sidesaddle." She said to try lightening the situation.

Maleficent tried not to show it, but Aurora knew all of the iron clad soldiers made her uneasy, for her eyes were more green than gold and she continued to cast a threatening gaze at them. That would have to go, she thought. No more iron. She had the power to protect the fay now, just as Maleficent protected her from the human world of vanity and oppression that she was beginning to take notice of. Even if that protection had been unintentional at first.

"I would much rather live here in the Moors with you." The queen said, "Like you promised I could."

Maleficent turned her attention fully to Aurora and her expression softening, "The promise stands. This is no less your home than that castle." She inclined her horned head towards the home she had left sixteen years ago.

"It is more so." She extended her hand, reaching out for Maleficent. For a moment, she worried that her fairy godmother might not take it, but just then, Maleficent's hands came to cover her own and squeezed lightly. "I will return as soon as I'm able."

Maleficent's hands dropped, "Off with you now, beastie."

Aurora laughed and took hold of her reigns, throwing one last brilliant smile at Maleficent before galloping off into the mist.

She waited.

And waited.

And waited longer still.

Aurora did not return. Not for a day, then another, then a week, then a fortnight, then a month, then several more.

Diaval took flights back and forth the two kingdoms on a constant basis at the insistent demands of his mistress. Gathering news of the happenings in the human kingdom and the state and activity of the queen.

So far Aurora was neither dead nor dying as far as Diaval could tell. Still Maleficent worried about her extended absence. She could not remember going so long without so much as a glimpse of the girl.

"Well?"

In his human form, Diaval leaned forward, hands on his knees in an attempt to catch his breath, these missions were beginning to weigh on him physically.

"What did you see of Aurora?" Maleficent said, annoyance in her tone.

"This time…I saw," he huffed, "nothin'."

Maleficent glowered at him, "If you continue in your lack of usefulness you can look forward to a long life as a dog, sniffing in the dirt and licking your own-"

"Wait wait!" he straightened up, "You have a nasty temper about ya', you know? You miss her, I understand. I miss her. And she's got to be missin' you somthin' awful too."

The horned fairy pursed her lips and resisted the urge to zap him into a worm.

"I didn't see nothin' of Aurora this time but I did hear some rumors this time."

"And?" her wings twitched.

"And…" he looked at the ground, then back up at Maleficent, "And there is a rumor that an…an engagement might be made."

Maleficent gave a short, cruel laugh and smiled to cover her hurt, "An engagement? Between Aurora and who? That fool of a boy?"

"Prince Phillip, yes. But it is only a rumor."

The talk of a marriage between Aurora and Phillip was nothing new in the Moors. Knotgrass, Flittle, and Thistlewit prattled almost non stop about a grand romance between the two. Though if now it were talk even in the human kingdom…

Maleficent turned her back to Diaval as she attempted control the familiar feeling of betrayal and to keep the tears from escaping her eyes.

It was happening all over again. Stefan, all over again. Aurora spending her youth and misleading childhood love on her, leaving with a promise of return only to succumb to human ambitions of power, to marry and leave her. Leave her scarred and alone.

Aurora had returned her wings, she reminded herself, not taken them.

Aurora had returned her heart and affection, not squandered and spoiled it.

No, Aurora was not Stefan, this was her beastie. Her kind hearted, beautiful, precious beastie that watched the water dancers with wander and splashed around in the mud, her beastie that treated every living creature with kindness. There were similarities to the past, but the story would not be the same.

"Thank you, Diaval."

She did not see the man shaped crow drop his jaw and stare at her in surprise of her statement.

Maleficent spread her wings.

"The world must be comin' to an end if the great Maleficent is grateful to a bird."

She turned him back to his original form, mainly to just shut him up before lifting her wings into the air and pushing herself up from the ground with the force of the strength Aurora had given back to her.

There was a great rushing sound at her balcony window, a sound she knew instantly. Feathers brushing against the night. Immediately Aurora was out of bed, tossing the covers off and running to the glass door of the balcony and throwing it open, finding exactly who she had been expecting. Who she needed.

Maleficent's figure was silhouetted by moonlight, the same moonlight settled into Aurora's hair and turned it a liquid silver that fell like a waterfall over her shoulders and down her back and then Maleficent was drowning in it as Aurora's arms wrapped tight around her middle and the fairy breathed in the smell of her. Even at this hour of blackness her beastie smelled of spring.

"Oh I missed you, I missed you, I missed you! I couldn't leave, I'm sorry, you were waiting for me, but I knew you would come for me, oh I just knew." She spoke in a passionate rush, her cheek pressed against Maleficent's chest, her embrace tight and warm.

Maleficent said nothing, but kept her arms around the girl for a long moment, letting relief wash over her, her earlier fears dissipating into nothing but a shadow of a memory. Replaced with revived joy and complete and utter adoration for this girl.

"And I missed you, sweet Aurora."