Permanent

Chapter 5

Sunlight creeps through the heavy clouds gliding overhead in shafts of warm yellows. The pair walk hand in hand through them, and Maleficent watches as the sparse rays light up Aurora's hair and darken again as they cross shade. The air smells damp, promising rain; Maleficent enjoys the time just before a storm almost as much as the event itself, but her golden irises are nearly stuck in the corners, watching the young woman beside her.

Maleficent had not spent any time imagining what exactly it would feel like strolling with Aurora and she is having difficulty assessing just that as they keep a leisurely pace down the sidewalk. Aurora said they were heading to a nearby park with trails that wove through the woods right along the shore, where she could get some photos of the fog suspended over the water and hopefully some of Balthazar, if he stood still long enough. Maleficent is tired of analyzing the situation and is doing her best to simply enjoy it, the warmth of Aurora's hand intertwined with her own, the sound of her voice as she carries on about her nature project.

When Aurora's explanation of the project lapses into silence, Maleficent feels a distinct pricking at her neck, a sense of waiting on Aurora's part - it's her turn to say something. She searches the sidewalk almost desperately, the hand holding Balthazar's leash clenching as her palms begin to sweat. It's still very jarring to her how unhooked she feels from her normal self in Aurora's presence. It's very much like walking into a room and forgetting the reason, over and over again.

Maleficent clings to a piece of her self and solidifies it. She is the older of the two, she should certainly be more calm than this. Turning to Aurora, she finally poses a question, having come to the realization that despite having had several conversations with her, she knew very little of her personal life other than who her father was, what she was going to school for, and that her roommate was in love with her. Which is something Aurora might not know herself, but that is a subject for another time.

"How is it that I've spent my entire life in Sun City and have only just met you?" Maleficent's head tilts. "This city is large, yes, but I think I would have noticed you before."

Aurora's cheeks seem to be in a perpetual state of various stages of blushing. She looks at their clasped hands and then to Maleficent's eyes as she speaks. "I was born here, but I didn't grow up here. After my mom died, I moved in with my aunts a few hours away." Blue eyes flick off to the distance, as if she could spot her house from where they walk. "I didn't visit my dad much except in the summer, but he almost never let me go out. I always loved it here, though. It's such a colorful place." She turns her eyes to the buildings as they pass them, small business and restaurants, most of them closed this late on a Sunday. It is very different from Sun City's usual state, the loud, vibrant, busy epicenter that it usually is. Maleficent feels like she is behind the scenes of an elaborate movie. "I grew up in a very small house," Aurora continues, "literally in the middle of the woods. No joke. I had to ride the bus for an hour to get to school. And my aunts were always very protective of me, too. Still are. They really didn't want me to move here. The only thing that convinced all three of them that I would be safe was Phillip coming with me."

"You and him have been friends for a long time, I imagine?"

"Since grade school. I still remember the first day I met him. First grade, first day. I was going to the bathroom and I found him wandering the halls almost crying because he was lost." She laughs, squeezing Maleficent's hand with her own. "We've been practically inseparable since. What about you and Diaval? How long have you known him?"

"Twenty years or so. We were interning at the same parlor. I was only sixteen then, which is not old enough to be working in a shop, and Diaval was the only one who knew I was lying about my age. I told him I would let him live if he kept it a secret." Maleficent grins tightly at Aurora's responding laugh. It becomes increasingly easier to talk as they continue down the sidewalk. Aurora is loaded with all sorts of questions - why did you want to be a tattoo artist? Do you remember the first tattoo you ever did? What's the hardest tattoo you ever had to do? - and Maleficent answers them just as she would if it were Diaval in Aurora's place. The growing comfort melts the tension that had been growing in Maleficent's shoulders, and soon she is smiling openly, even offering a few laughs to Aurora's great pleasure. Even when they fall into silence again, it is not uncomfortable.

The park comes into view at the very edges of the city, a desolate, unkempt place that had probably not seen a child in the better part of five or ten years, let alone any lawn care. Weeds and tall grass have wound their way around what remains of the decaying equipment, as if it were trying to pull it beneath the earth. Maleficent's eyebrows rise - this is certainly now the flowery garden park she had been expecting.

"Isn't it lovely?" Aurora bounces on her heels, gesturing with a wide arc of her arm. "I took some pictures here for my last project. I just love how mysterious and lonely it is here."

"Seems a bit gloomy for someone like you," Maleficent remarks cooly.

Aurora makes a face at her, which is far too adorable for her own good, honestly. "I'm not all sunshine and rainbows, you know."

"You could have fooled me."

Laughing, Aurora gives the hand she still holds within her own a slight tug, and she leads Maleficent across the abandoned, sad little park. She studies a swingset with no swings, a slide tilting dangerously on its side, and a seesaw that has snapped in half at the middle. Curving around the back of the park are the trails Aurora had mentioned, disappearing into the thicket of the woods.

Aurora insists on taking a photograph of Balthazar at the mouth of the farthest trail and with some hesitance, slowly unhooks her hand from Maleficent's. Maleficent releases Balthazar from his leash and he obediently waits to be directed, trotting over to the trail and sitting just where his owner instructs him to. She beams under the praise of having such a well behaved dog, and watches with a smile on her face as Aurora snaps a few pictures from the camera hanging at her neck. Aurora becomes fully immersed in the task, her face a slate of calmness that Maleficent had rarely, if ever, seen on her, and watches, fascinated, as she kneels in the dirt and darts around, this way and that, cooing to Balthazar as if he understood a word of it. When she seems satisfied with her shots she stands, grinning over at Maleficent. The two meet eyes and there is a moment where Maleficent thinks Aurora has come over some sort of spell, the way her blue eyes deepen and damn near start sparkling in the waning late afternoon sun.

Maleficent could get used to this kind of staring.

"Maleficent?" Aurora says, cradling the camera fondly in her hands. "Could I …?" She holds it up, a hopeful smile on her face, a finger hovering over the button.

Maleficent's initial response is to say no, to dismiss the idea so strongly that it would never be brought again. She can't remember the last time she allowed anyone to take her picture. Her appearance is solely for her own enjoyment, and she didn't trust the type of social technology that could put her privacy at risk. But looking at the girl, so expectant and pure, she can't get the word 'no' to form in her mouth.

"Just one," Maleficent relents, and Aurora looks about ready to explode.

"Thank you! Could you stand next to Balthazar and, I don't know, look … like you usually do? You know," she grins, "all … otherworldly."

Chuckling, Maleficent moves to stand beside her pet, one hand smoothing over the slope of his nose. "Is that how you think of me?"

"Is that not how everyone thinks of you?" The blonde winks. She raises the camera and stares through the lens for a few moments. Maleficent straightens her back, her fingertips still balanced on the top of Balthazar's head. In her black cloak and horns, she's sure she looks like she just walked right out hell.

That's how she likes it, anyway.

Aurora squirms in what Maleficent can only assume is delight when she finally takes the picture. "Thank you! I know you're a very private person - I promise this won't end up on Facebook."

Maleficent tries not to look as relieved as she feels. She simply nods, then turns toward the trail. "Shall we?" With a grin, Maleficent offers her elbow, and watches a shade of pink that would put the freshest of tulips to shame collect in Aurora's cheeks. Maleficent finally feels like herself again; powerful, a force to be reckoned with.

Biting her lip and apparently unable to actually speak the words, Aurora nods and slips her arm through Maleficent's. She presses probably a bit closer than necessary, but Maleficent finds she doesn't mind.

Balthazar moves ahead of them but never at a worrisome distance - Maleficent tells Aurora how difficult it had been to train him as a puppy, but now she would trust him with her life if it came down to it. Aurora takes a few more pictures of him as he examines the ferns framing the winding trail on either side.

The ocean is heard long before it is seen, and the crisp, sharp smell of saltwater causes Maleficent to inhale deeply almost subconsciously. She does not frequent the beach often (as if her ghostly complexion didn't already make that blatantly obvious) and upon seeing it she has to pause to take it all in, as it had probably been years since she had so much as driven by. This secret spot that Aurora had managed to find is more rocks than it is sand, but the water laps at the edges as clear as glass. There isn't a soul in either direction, and the way the shore curves around on either side of them leaves the area almost completely cut off, a reverse island. A thick, persistent white mist hovers over the edges of the water, moving toward them like a haunting. Maleficent can't see more than maybe a few hundred feet across the ocean's surface.

It is very private. Very special as well apparently, Maleficent notes, as she looks toward Aurora again, who has stepped away from her and is staring out across the building waves with such awe and wonder, Maleficent would have believed her had she said it was the first time she had ever been here.

"I don't know for sure," the girl starts, her arms crossing over her chest. "I mean, I don't have any pictures as proof, but I think my mom might have brought me here when I was young. There's just something very … familiar about this place."

Maleficent shifts with discomfort. She heard a lot of sob stories in her line of work - nearly everyone these days had to have some sort of huge, life-changing reason to get a tattoo. She wishes she could rewind a dozen years or so, when people were more impulsive, when the majority of her clients were fresh adults looking to piss off their parents. Maleficent doesn't usually care the reason, doesn't care for backstories, but she stares at Aurora and suddenly she does.

"Can I ask - it is none of my business, feel free to ignore this question -"

"How did she die?" Aurora moves to sit on an old piece of driftwood. She touches the space beside her pointedly and Maleficent sweeps her cloaks over the rocks and sits. Aurora, her expression distant, takes a deep breath and looks out over the water again. Her delicate fingers absently trace the edges of her camera. "Cancer. It hit her hard and fast. I was so young, I didn't really understand it … one minute she was alive and bubbly and beautiful, and the next she was gone." Sadness dips the corners of her mouth. It is gone before Maleficent can even comment, giving her head a slight shake as she brings the camera to her eye. Aurora smiles at the image through the lens and snaps a picture.

Maleficent places a hand on Aurora's knee. "I am truly sorry. I hope that the crown I made for you does her justice."

When Aurora turns to look at the woman beside her, the smile blooms. The sadness that had threatened to take root there pulls back its awful tendrils and there is only the kind, sweet Aurora that Maleficent had come to know. "Thank you. I'm positive it will."

Aurora is staring at Maleficent's mouth. Maleficent is staring at Aurora's mouth.

In the span of one blink, an old memory that she thought she had buried long ago breaks through the warped mist of time like a ship in the fog. It is of Stefan, smiling crookedly, young and handsome and leaning against the gnarled trunk of a dead willow tree, coaxing Maleficent over with one hooked finger. She thought she was going to sail straight into the sky when he kissed her.

Her eyes open again. It is not Stefan, it is his daughter, and Maleficent feels like flying again because she wants to kiss her.

Leaning away, Maleficent releases a breath she did not know she had been holding. Aurora hesitates in her peripherals and fidgets with the camera. Neither comment on the moment that slipped between their fingers like sand, and Aurora is quick to fill the silence by talking about the project again. She takes a few more pictures of the rocks and the fog, a few of Balthazar jumping playfully in the water. She is laughing and warm and sweet again.

Maleficent cannot shake the mounting sense of dread on her shoulders, cannot help but feel she is doing something terribly wrong. She never thought that Stefan could have ruined something inside of her so beyond repair that it still affected her now; she watches Aurora tip-toe across the rocks and feels like a weed in a garden, a poison that would only make Aurora wilt.

Maleficent stands abruptly. She approaches Aurora from behind, can smell something like vanilla when the wind moves through her hair. The girl is calm when she looks over her shoulder, not scared or nervous at all, and she stares up at Maleficent like she can't really believe she's standing right behind her.

There really is no use in denying it, Maleficent thinks, gesturing toward the camera with her hand. "May I?"

Aurora tries to bite her grin away, but it is too strong of a force. Pearls of teeth split her lips apart. "Really?"

"It's only fair."

Giggling, Aurora pulls the camera over her head and places it carefully, but with trust, in Maleficent's hands. "I suppose you're right."

Maleficent holds the camera to her eye and peers at the miniature blonde through the lens. "Come on," Maleficent teases. "Don't be so stiff."

"That's rich, coming from you!" Aurora throws her head back and laughs. Maleficent snaps the picture with a click.

Liking her is too easy and comes too naturally to be a dark thing.

Rain chases them through the woods. Balthazar bites at the air and pulls on his leash, urging the two women to go faster. Maleficent's cloak gets snagged on the thorn of a tree and Aurora laughs so hard she looks ready to collapse. "You look so cute when you're stuck," she says, too purposefully for it to be casual as she pulls Maleficent free.

Grinning despite herself, Maleficent snakes her hand around Aurora's and towers over her. "You're a little beast."

"I did tell you I wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, right?"

Thunder growls across the sky as they cross the park, back onto the sidewalk, toward the corner where they had met. The rain is light, darkening the shoulders of Aurora's pink jacket until they're peppered red. She talks of her and Phillip's apartment that they're subleasing for the summer, how it's small but cozy and how happy she was to be out of the dorms, and Maleficent listens with a smile, relieved suddenly to know that Aurora isn't leaving for the break. She ignores the nervous twisting in her gut at the promise of seeing more and more of Aurora over the next three months and focuses on only the electric excitement in her veins.

For the first time since she was sixteen, she is looking forward to the next time.

Maleficent is even almost sad, if that is the correct word, when they approach a small duplex that Aurora points to with a wide smile. The squat brown building leaves much to be desired, but there are flowers in the windows on one side. Without having to ask, she knows that it is the side she shares with Phillip.

"Stay," Maleficent says to Balthazar, who promptly sits on the sidewalk leading up to the duplex. He watches the pair with curious eyes as they step onto the porch

Shielded from the rain by the awning above the door, Aurora turns to face Maleficent, resting her back against the screen. "Come in," she says. "We have more than enough room for both of you." The words are not quite a demand but not necessarily a question, either.

The word 'yes' burns on Maleficent's tongue, but she does not speak it. Peeking through the diamond shaped windows in the door, the woman shakes her head. "I do not think your roommate would like that very much."

Aurora gives the hand she still holds in her own a slight tug. Maleficent tilts forward. "He's just … protective. He knows how much I like you, and he wouldn't do anything to mess that up."

Maleficent's red lips curl into a broad grin. Hearing the words out loud is a rush she had not been expecting. "You fancy me, then?" She raises one hand, watching Aurora's eyelashes flutter as Maleficent's fingernails trail over the very edges of her yellow hair. Her hand shifts to flatten against the door, half pinning her there.

"As if -" Aurora's breath catches in her chest. She tries again. "As if it wasn't obvious."

"You can be a bit transparent at times." Maleficent is close enough now to feel the uneven, warm breaths that Aurora is releasing at a choppy pace. She watches Aurora's tongue slide across her lower lip, and that is about all she can handle.

Maleficent leans forward, almost catches the gasp the rattles out of Aurora's mouth when their lips nearly meet.

And then she pauses. Does not pull back, does not step away, just stops, golden eyes meeting Aurora's blue.

"I'm your father's age," she says.

"Then why are you here, Maleficent?" Despite her worrisome breathing and the flush in her cheeks, Aurora sounds sensible. Her eyes are bright.

Maleficent cannot answer that question, so she doesn't try.

To the sound of monstrous, thundering footsteps in the sky, Maleficent kisses Aurora with her eyes closed, and does not think about anything else for a few precious moments - or perhaps it's minutes, with the dagger-like ends of her fingernails curling against the door, her other hand winding around Aurora's waist and pulling her as close as their bodies allow. Time escapes her when Aurora's lips part with a sound that goes straight down Maleficent's spine and her tongue quickly fills the space. She tastes hot and wet and like surrender; Maleficent can feel the girl's knees trembling against her own.

Maleficent pulls back slightly, to catch her breath, to chuckle gently against Aurora's panting mouth. The girl's hands, at some point, had found fistfuls of Maleficent's cloak, and at the spreading distance her grip tightens, tries to pulls the woman forward again.

"Beastie," Maleficent says fondly, the hand at Aurora's waist seeking skin between the hem of her jacket and the top of her jeans. When she finds it, the warm flesh riddles with goosebumps at the slightest touch of her fingers. Aurora trembles like a leaf, and Maleficent's pretty convinced she would simply blow away in the storm if she wasn't in the way.

Maleficent is confident, strong. There are no nerves, no disgust, no Stefan. She captures Aurora's mouth again, feels a smile on the other woman's mouth, and chuckles deep in her throat. The next time she pulls away it's with the intent to explore the pale plane of Aurora's neck, to nip at her jugular and bring out more delicious sounds, but a flash of movement in the window behind Aurora's head drags Maleficent's lips to a halt on the girl's jawline. It is there and gone in half a second, but it is unmistakably the probing, jealous eye of Phillip.

To her dismay, Maleficent pulls back. She feels Aurora tighten her grip again, a protest on her lips, but she moves her hand from the door and places the tip of a single digit to the girl's open lips. "My apologies, but I should go. Poor Balthazar will never forgive me for leaving him in the rain like this."

It takes her a few moments, but Aurora eventually comes to her senses, blinking away the blur that had eclipsed her eyes. She looks disappointed, her fingers trailing down the edge of Maleficent's cloak. "Okay," she says, reluctantly, then taps a finger against Maleficent's sternum. "Wait one second, though, please?"

With a confirming glance to the window that it is empty, Maleficent nods. She is still dizzy from the kissing, a distinct burning gathering in the pit of her stomach that ebbs away as the rain begins to pelt harder into the ground.

Aurora all but trips into the house. Maleficent laughs to herself, patting her thigh to invite Balthazar onto the porch with her. Mistaking the offer as going inside, the dog nearly leaps right past her, and it is only with great skill that Maleficent manages to hook her fingers around his collar before he can speed his way into the house. She holds him tightly by the leash as he shakes off the rain. Her scolding is interrupted by a figure filling the doorway and she raises her head to tell Aurora goodbye, but it is Phillip's sour face that greets her. Even Balthazar seems to freeze in place. Phillip's expression is not a friendly one.

Straightening, Maleficent slips easily into her usual icy persona. It is much easier to do when Aurora isn't around, she notices.

"Do you always spy on her, or is it just me you do not trust?" Maleficent's sharp brow arches over her forehead, her eyes challenging.

Phillip, to his credit, is not as frightened as she wishes he would be. His arms lock across his chest. "Just you," he says stiffly.

Amused, Maleficent tilts her head. She watches Phillip's eyes jump to her horns and back again. "Is it because I might be a bad influence on her, or something else?" She looks Phillip up and down pointedly. He squirms under the stare, and Maleficent realizes she shouldn't find that as funny as she does. "Regardless," she says, waving a hand dismissively. "It's not like it matters. You're not her father."

The boy's eyebrows dig into an unfriendly arrow over his nose. "He'd probably have a stroke if he saw you."

Maleficent's smirk is tight. "Oh, you have no idea."

Phillip glances sidelong and must spot Aurora approaching, because his expression melts in an instant. As she emerges, her eyes fix solidly on him until he steps away. She moves out under the awning again, a massive purple umbrella in her hands.

"I'm sorry he's being weird," she hushes under her breath, holding out the umbrella. "And I'm sorry this is so … purple."

"Nonsense." Maleficent turns and pops the umbrella open, holding it at her shoulder. "Thank you."

"Thank you for modeling, and thank you too, Balthazar." She scratches at the dog's ear. His tail thumps on the stair of the porch. "And thank you for the date, even though it rained, and thank you for, uhm, that kissing bit -"

"I enjoyed the kissing bit." Maleficent grins at the flood of color to Aurora's cheek. "As well as the rest of it, of course."

"So … again? Maybe? Soon?"

"Hm." Maleficent spins the umbrella in her fingertips. Her free hand balances below Aurora's chin. Her thumb smooths over it. "I would like that."

"Me too," Aurora gushes. Maleficent watches her throat bob as she struggles to swallow. "Me too."

Chuckling, Maleficent leans forward, relishes in the way the girl reacts at the proximity. Her lips ghost over Aurora's, a whisper of a kiss, and then she turns, leaving as breathless as the girl who stays behind.

By the time Maleficent arrives at her apartment, the sky is full of lightning, and her blackened heart is alive with it.