A/N: This took a lot of reworking to make me happy with it, but I think I like the result. Feedback would be much appreciated!
EDIT: I FORGOT, SORRY! Malora, or anyone else who is interested, the link to the first draft is now in my profile, or I'm also slowly posting it onto AO3!
Chapter 2 – Between Nightmares
As of late, Briar Rose found herself with a great deal of free time and quite literally nothing else to do but to ponder. Time passed agonizingly slowly, and Rose found herself completely unable to keep track of it.
A part of her knew that not very much time could have passed since she had believed her life to be simple, for she still felt the sting of her aunts' betrayal quite keenly. The plethora of lies they had so easily fed her over the course of sixteen years occupied much of her time, for she could not wrap her head around them. How could three women who, despite the fact that they were not related to her, had lovingly, and perhaps slightly overbearingly, raised her since she was a few days old, feel that it was acceptable to tell her such an intricate tapestry of untruths? Did that make her entire life up to this point a lie? If so, what was this Hell that had since befallen her? Was this the wretched, unadorned truth behind it all?
The first lie they had told her had been that her parents were dead. They had died in some kind of horrible accident only a few days after Rose's birth, and Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, who were her mother's sisters, had taken her in. As such, Rose had always believed that her aunts were the only family she had. They were the only anything she had, as a matter of fact, because she was not allowed to speak to strangers.
The truth of the matter, though, was that Briar Rose's parents were not only very much alive, they were King Stefan and Queen Leah of the East. Rose knew their names and she knew their faces, but the names and faces of the distant royalty had little impact on the life of a happy peasant girl, who had never known the feeling of having parents, and so could not know what she was missing. Now she tried to conjure the image of King Stefan with his long, thin face and his dark-haired beard and think father. She tried to think of the beautiful Queen Leah with her golden hair and kind eyes and think mother.
And yet these names and faces of people she did not truly know had lived for sixteen years without knowing where their daughter, Princess Aurora, was. In fact, they did not know a single thing about her. They did not know whether she was alive, they did not know whether she was safe, and they did not know that she was called by a different name. They had waited patiently for sixteen years to see if their daughter might show up alive and unharmed on her wedding day, only to give her away to someone else she did not know.
What kind of parents could wait with such patience, Rose wondered? And wouldn't they be awfully disappointed when, instead of their long-lost daughter, Princess Aurora, the lonely peasant girl Briar Rose showed up disguised in a pretty dress? Or would they be just as contented never to know their daughter very well at all? If that weren't the case, could they not have postponed her wedding a few days, at least?
And if her aunts weren't really her aunts but three good fairies who intended to give her back to her parents, and if her parents were actually Princess Aurora's parents and would expect her to be someone she clearly was not, did she really have any family at all? Or even a friend? Was there anyone in this world who truly cared whether she—Briar Rose, and not Princess Aurora—lived or died, beyond what they could gain or lose in the matter?
An indeterminate number of hours, or perhaps even days, after Maleficent had left her, Briar Rose's thoughts dared to drift to her first true impression of the wicked fairy who had confined her to this dreadful state, and to consider whether or not to believe in the scores of new information she had learned during their brief encounter. She wasn't certain how this mind-reading thing worked. Could Maleficent always hear what she was thinking, or only when she was nearby? Could she hear every fleeting thought Rose had ever had, share every memory, and recount every dream? The notion made Rose want very much to shiver. If this were so, Maleficent knew more about Rose than she knew about herself, though that was perhaps not saying very much.
Rose knew comparatively little about Maleficent. Her non-aunts had managed to keep Rose almost entirely unaware of Maleficent's existence until a few months ago. Perhaps this was unsurprising—since Rose was not allowed to speak to strangers, her only sources of information were her aunts and their small collection of books, and Rose was not a very skilled reader. For this reason, she found reading taxing and only attempted it when she most desperately needed an escape from the humdrum world in which she thought she lived. Sometime after she turned fifteen, Rose had stumbled upon a name, a long, unpronounceable thing in an otherwise simple story called The Lost Princess, and she had asked Aunt Fauna, the second-oldest and most mild-mannered of her aunts, for assistance.
Aunt Fauna had looked at Rose as though she had done something horrible. "Oh…" she'd said, wringing her hands. "Well…dear…it's pronounced Maleficent."
"Is it a name?" Rose had asked.
"Well…ah…yes. She's a wicked fairy who lives very far south of here."
Rose had thrust the book into Aunt Fauna's hands and Aunt Fauna had told her the story she had recounted to Maleficent, herself: that the wicked fairy had cursed the princess to fall into a deep slumber. Rose wondered with some indignation whether this lie was the invention of the storybook or of her aunt.
At the time, Rose did not question the story. Her aunts believed very firmly that there were good people and evil people in this world. The good were always well-intentioned and tried to do good deeds, while the evil were always trying to cause trouble whatever way they pleased. It had made perfect sense that a wicked fairy would curse a princess.
But Maleficent was not a character in a storybook. She was a person with a name and some kind of motivation at which Rose could only guess. Her voice had the power to engender a full range of emotions in a single sentence and her thoughts worked so efficiently that she could juggle them and still accurately assess and respond to Rose's muddled jumble of ideas as though they were having a normal conversation. This seemed to Rose, who could scarcely even keep track of her own thoughts, the mark of an unnervingly agile mind. As if that were not enough, this agile mind had the seemingly insurmountable advantage of having Briar Rose's entire essence laid out before her to pick through as she saw fit.
Such a mind, Rose thought, was unlikely to be so spiteful for spite's sake alone. Such a mind must be capable of marvelous and awe-inspiring things, and so why would it resign itself to tossing around petty curses simply because someone deemed it inherently wicked?
Rose was beginning to believe very strongly that Maleficent had a reason—possibly several—for putting a curse on Princess Aurora. She did not simply want Rose dead because she was evil. She wanted her dead for some reason.
It followed logically that Maleficent would also have a reason for anything else she decided to do; for example, stopping whatever it was she was doing to carry on a chat with her prey. It would have been one thing to taunt her as a storybook villain would. It was quite another to answer even a handful of her questions, and the whole thing became an unintelligible mess when Rose remembered the feeling of Maleficent's fingertips against her forehead in an offer, however strange and however unsuccessful, of comfort.
Was it all a part of some complex master plan around which Rose couldn't even begin to wrap her mind? Or merely a thing anyone would do if anyone else were in distress? As little as Rose knew about Maleficent, it seemed utterly absurd to call her just anyone. And yet, was she as far removed from being just anyone as that wicked fairy in the book?
This question—was Maleficent just anyone or more than just anyone or not just anyone at all?—gave Briar Rose a dreadful headache, and so she tried very hard to unstick her brain from it and move on to something else.
The result was a curious and very frightening phenomenon: her thoughts began to swirl and overlap, and she found that she could not move onto something else. There were too many questions to which she needed answers, but every question led to more unanswerable questions.
She tried to think of the boy she met in the woods, but he, too, seemed to have melted into a beautiful lie. He was not a boy in the woods at all. He was a royal like Princess Aurora's parents were royals. What did he want of her, a lowly peasant girl? Did he truly care for her at all, or was he merely leading her on as a fun means of whiling away an afternoon?
Anyway, he didn't know she was Princess Aurora. By agreeing to meet Briar Rose at the cottage, wasn't he forsaking his soon-to-be bride? Or, since Briar Rose was Princess Aurora, was it somehow all right? Did it mean that he, the boy who was Philip, truly cared for her, Briar Rose who was Princess Aurora?
But he couldn't, for he didn't truly know her. Indeed, they'd hardly spoken.
Her aunts—the good fairies—had been so surprised when she had not been elated by their revelation of her new identity. Through her tears she could hear them whispering about that boy she met and whatever were they going to tell the King about some peasant boy in the woods, as though that boy she met were the only reason she could possibly be unhappy. She had just learned that the story of the Lost Princess Aurora was true. Not only was it true, it was she. Princess Aurora and Briar Rose were one and the same. Princess Aurora eclipsed Briar Rose. Briar Rose would henceforth be Princess Aurora.
That boy she met was but a fraction, a tiny detail, of her despair.
How could her aunts not see that? Didn't they care for her at all, after raising her as their own for all these years? Couldn't they see that any person would be upset to learn that her entire life was a lie? Briar Rose was not a princess in a storybook. She was a person with a name she knew and a name which didn't seem like hers. She was a person who had of late become so horribly lonely that her thoughts tended to get away from her, and sure, she dreamed of meeting a handsome prince and being swept off her feet like Cinderella, but she never really expected it to happen. In reality, she was happy to lead a simple existence. In reality, all of this was far too much for her to handle.
And how could her aunts, the only people she had ever known, not know this about her? How could they not know that her world, her reality, and the few simple things which were the only things she knew, would be shattered by this revelation?
"Because, Briar Rose," said Maleficent, and Rose was convinced she nearly died of fright, for she had not heard Maleficent enter or approach, "the span of your entire existence is as nothing to them."
This, the confirmation of Rose's argument with herself that no one in the world cared whether she lived or died, caused her heart to wrench painfully.
"There's no need for melodrama. I meant that when you've been alive for over half a millennium, sixteen years doesn't seem like a very long time."
Half a millennium? She supposed she'd thought her aunts to be in their fifties or sixties. How old did that make Maleficent? Had she been alive since the dawn of time, as Aunt Flora had briefly told her on their walk to the castle?
"Alive since the dawn of time?" Maleficent's voice was positively dripping with derision. Rose felt heat rising in her cheeks as she was reminded that no rumination was safe from her captor, and she wondered pointlessly whether she was blushing visibly. "Do you suppose those imbeciles actually believe the things they say? They have centuries on me! Why, compared to Mistress Flora, I'm a spring chicken! Alive since the dawn of time…"
Rose tried to explain her aunt's reasoning. She said you were the root of all evil.
"Perhaps in this land," Maleficent replied, and she still sounded somewhat incredulous. "But there are countless other realms I've never visited where countless other wicked fairies reign, and of course I had a mother, and she also had a mother. I don't know of any wicked fairies born at the dawn of time who are still alive," she said with a silvery chuckle. "What an absurd thing to say."
I can't help it...it's so hard to keep track of what I'm thinking this way. I would never have said such a thing aloud.
"No, you wouldn't," Maleficent agreed. "And you would have retained the bizarre delusion that I am as old as Time. Perhaps there is something to be gained from your present predicament."
Rose began to feel sick to her stomach. She wondered if she was capable of retching and dearly hoped not, for how much more miserable could she be?
Something to be gained? For what purpose? Wasn't Maleficent only keeping her here until she decided exactly how she wanted to kill her?
Maleficent sighed. "This will be the third time I've told you I'm not planning to kill you."
Why should I believe you? Why should I believe anything you say?
"You know," said Maleficent slowly, "I admire the sentiment behind that thought, I really do. I admire it in you as I admired it in your mother, the Queen. It's not every sheltered, beautiful young woman who has the wherewithal to question what she is told to believe."
Rose wondered with a start what Maleficent had to do with Queen Leah which would spark such a comment—as far as Rose knew, King Stefan and Queen Leah openly scorned and reviled Maleficent, and their only interaction with her had been at Princess Aurora's christening.
This tangential swirl of musings was halted abruptly by the light, chilling sound of Maleficent's laughter. "However," she continued, apparently electing not to divulge the nature of her interactions with Queen Leah, "it would behoove you to realize that your options are somewhat limited by your circumstances. Essentially, because I am your only source of outside information, you can choose to believe me or not to believe me on any given subject. I don't particularly care whether you believe me or not, but I couldn't offer you any evidence to support my claims even if I wanted to. You're going to end up with false information whether you like it or not, because without any other information, and unless by some chance I am telling you the unbiased truth, you will believe a strange combination of what you want to believe and what I want you to believe.
"With that in mind, consider the following: what good will it do you to believe that I intend to kill you despite what I have told you?"
Rose's mind tried to offer up a few suggestions, but they seemed somewhat feeble by comparison. I don't want to die, cried a sad, frightened part of her. If I let down my guard, you will kill me. Of course that was nonsense. Maleficent could kill her any time she wanted. If I believe one thing you say, I will believe everything you say, reasoned another extremely gullible part of Rose—the same part so desperate for company that she worried that she might have fallen helplessly in love with any stranger she'd met in the woods, simply because of the novelty of it.
I don't know, she thought finally. It just seems important.
"If you truly believe I am going to kill you, and you are well aware that you are powerless to stop me, then you will begin to spend every moment wondering when your death will come. That seems to me like a quick and easy way to drive yourself mad."
Then why should you warn me of it? What is your plan, if it's not to kill me and not to drive me mad?
"Don't misunderstand me," Maleficent replied, a hint of mirth in her cold voice. "Driving you mad would be an entertaining diversion. However, I'd much prefer a worthy opponent. There's little sport in driving you mad when you're already hovering on the edge."
So instead of waiting for the right moment to kill her, Maleficent was waiting for the right moment to drive her mad? Rose's head ached with the prospect. This seemed an infinitely crueler fate than waiting forever for the hour of her death...waiting for the moment when she finally lost control over her own mind, the place where she was trapped, possibly forever.
How could Maleficent be even crueler than the villain in the story book? How could she wish upon Rose something even more twisted than what Rose had previously imagined?
Maleficent was not a character in a story book. She was a person with a name and some kind of motivation. She was a person with a life and a past and a present and a future in which the span of Rose's existence was as nothing, and would be as nothing even if she remained under this dreadful curse for a hundred years or more. Maleficent was so much worse than a villain in a book. She was real.
Maleficent chuckled again, and the sound was so much darker than it had been before. Rose was seized by the urge to cry. Her eyes and throat stung and she found it nearly impossible to breathe.
"You're not the first to crumble upon realizing the extent of my wickedness, Briar Rose," said Maleficent, almost pleasantly.
Bizarrely, painfully, Rose's heart wrenched when she heard the faintest tap-tap-tap of Maleficent's footsteps receding from her bedside.
Wait! her mind cried out in anguish as she choked on her own unshed tears. Oh, God, wait! Don't leave me here alone like this! Not again!
The footsteps ceased and there was an eerie silence as Rose gasped for air but made no sound, and her hysteria increased tenfold when she realized Maleficent had ignored her pleas and left her here to choke to death.
So much for her alleged plan to keep Rose alive. Or could she even die this way? Would she choke on nothing forever? Would her mind ever lack for oxygen to the point that it could no longer function, or would that be too much peace to hope for?
After several minutes, Rose's breathing slowed and steadied. Perhaps her aunts had been right, after all. Perhaps the world was much simpler than it seemed. There were good people who always at least meant well, and there were evil people...so much more evil than Rose could ever have imagined...who wished others harm simply because they could, because they had the power to do so.
Rose decided that she had been sorely mistaken, and that Maleficent was far more masterful a manipulator than Rose had previously guessed. It would have been so much easier for Rose to believe that Maleficent might kill her at any moment. This notion—that Maleficent might someday put an end to her suffering—now made her seem positively merciful by comparison to what truly lay in store.
"I do hope you intend to continue contemplating how evil I am all night," said Maleficent, and again, Rose would have jumped out of her skin if she'd been able. "The identity crisis was beginning to wear on my nerves."
Once Rose had recovered from her fright, and then from her surprise, she had completely forgotten what Maleficent had said.
"Have you decided yet whether you're Aurora, Briar Rose, both, or neither?" Maleficent wondered conversationally.
Have you been there this whole time?
"You begged me to stay, did you not? Anyway, I never said I wouldn't enjoy it if you lost your mind ahead of schedule."
Rose didn't know who she was. She couldn't keep track of her thoughts, and her thoughts had always been who she was. Aurora, by contrast, seemed only to be who other people thought she was. Rose did not want to cease to exist. She did not want to be only who other people thought she was. She did not want to be Aurora.
"Then perhaps I have done you a favour," said Maleficent lightly.
The possibility that this was true caught Rose completely by surprise. Was it worse to be forced to become someone else, someone who was only ever what someone else wanted? Or was it worse to be conflicted, confused, and possibly in imminent danger, but still at least mostly herself, even if no one wanted her that way?
Perhaps you have, Rose agreed at last. I'm not much, to be sure...but I am all I have left.
"I would posit," said Maleficent, much of the bite gone from her voice, "that you are more than you know."
This nearly caused Rose's thoughts to spin away from her. If I am more than I know, I don't wish to know it. I am already too many people. I am already more than I want to be.
"You misunderstand me. I mean to say that you, simply Briar Rose, are considerably more valuable than not much, as you say."
This seemed like it ought to be more trickery, but Rose had already come to the terrifying realization that Maleficent was sneakier than that. When she seemed like she was trying to manipulate Rose into thinking one thing, she was really working on another entirely. Who was to say what she was up to when she didn't seem to be up to anything?
Anyway, how could Briar Rose be worth anything to anyone other than herself? Her aunts didn't want Briar Rose to exist anymore. Her parents most likely wished Briar Rose had never existed. Briar Rose only existed because of a catastrophe.
"But you exist, nonetheless," said Maleficent, seamlessly continuing her train of thought. "I am merely suggesting that there is some merit to existing even when someone would rather you didn't."
Even if that someone is you? Rose wondered and then promptly wished she hadn't, and then promptly decided she ought to have wondered just that, for wouldn't it be remarkably risky to accept kind words from someone she had just determined to be unfathomably evil?
"Especially if that someone is me," Maleficent replied, to Rose's immense surprise. "It shows a certain strength of character. And didn't I mention already that I'd prefer a worthy opponent?"
Rose didn't understand. What kind of trickery was this? She supposed, when she thought about it, that she could understand her mixed feelings about Maleficent. On the one hand, Maleficent was terrifying and despicable. She was cold, twisted, and cruel, and she was more than likely just having this conversation as part of some big, complicated scheme to cause unspeakable ill to as many people as possible.
At the same time, she was, as she had made abundantly clear, Rose's only source of information, and of companionship. She also happened to be the second person Rose had ever spoken to outside of her three aunts, and the only of those two outsiders with whom she'd had something like an actual conversation.
And really, when she thought about this, it seemed more and more important to her. Maleficent mocked her, certainly, and almost constant said cruel things to her, possibly just for the sake of being unkind. But she did not seem to take pleasure in Rose's ignorance, nor did she encourage it. Whether or not she was lying or telling half-truths, when it had become clear that Rose did not know something, Maleficent, every so often, provided the answer—or an answer, at any rate—with no provocation.
Perhaps there is something to be gained from your present predicament, Maleficent had said.
Rose had first wondered at the purpose behind such a statement, and she still hesitated to believe it. The instant she believed Maleficent was not wholeheartedly devoted to causing her harm, Rose knew, she would begin to lose track of other important details of her cruelty...not to mention her power, which must be formidable if the obviousness of her intellect was any indication. She would forget, and with no one else to keep her company and so few pleasant memories to cling to, she would grow fond of her captor, and she would begin to believe whatever that captivating voice told her.
Now, though, she dared to wonder what might be gained. Knowledge? Surely such a keen mind as Maleficent's knew things Rose could not even conceptualize. Surely she had traveled outside of this land—perhaps even outside of this world.
Rose had always been exceedingly curious, or so her aunts often told her. 'Curiosity killed the cat,' Aunt Merryweather would warn her, and Aunt Fauna would explain, far more gently, that sometimes—indeed, more often than not, it was better not to ask questions. One who asked too many questions, and especially one who found out too many of the answers, often found herself in a lot of trouble.
Aside from that, a lady who asked too many questions was a nuisance.
Still...if, by some off-chance, Rose were to survive this ordeal, perhaps she could truly benefit from some of Maleficent's knowledge, since no one else seemed particularly willing to indulge her thirst for information.
"It seems we have something in common."
Something in common? The notion caused Rose's stomach to twist uncomfortably. What could it possibly be? The nagging resentment she felt growing for her aunts, the only people she had ever loved? The only people she had ever known, even if it was all a lie, and she was so angry at them that she couldn't imagine how she would even begin to forgive them. Was Rose only a few years or a century or so away from becoming a person who taunted stupid, half-mad peasant girls to while away her time?
Maleficent's response was crisp. "I was referring to your proclamation of a thirst for knowledge, but if you'd like to ruminate on how cruel and petty I am, please, be my guest. It's very original work, really."
Oh. Rose rather wished Maleficent hadn't been witness to that particular string of uncharitable thoughts. Now that Rose thought about it, it was very rude. Especially considering that Maleficent had intended to say something remarkably close to pleasant.
"You're concerned you've offended me?" Maleficent asked, her voice taking on that syrupy-sweet quality that chilled Rose to the bone. "Perhaps you are your mother's daughter, after all."
Offended...not offended. Hurt your feelings, maybe. I'm sorry. I didn't mean...well, I did sort of mean it, but I didn't mean to be unkind. Or to judge you so harshly. I mean...I don't really know anything about you. Or about anyone, or anything...but that's... Again, Rose longed to shake some sense back into her head.
Maleficent was silent for what seemed like a long time, but Rose vaguely realized it was really no more than a few seconds. Perhaps she hadn't been here as long as she thought. Perhaps seconds seemed like minutes and minutes seemed like hours and... "We spend our lives being judged," said Maleficent at last, her voice almost inaudible, but every word still crystal clear. "Forced into the roles others want us to play, for the sake of their personal comfort. One day, when we've grown weary of the constant battle against destiny, we acquiesce. We become exactly what everyone always believed we were."
What does that mean? Rose's head was beginning to ache again.
"It means..." Maleficent paused. It was the first time Maleficent seemed to require any time to think at all. "It means that perhaps I've also acted rashly."
Rose heard the faint rustle of fabric—she wondered whether it was a long dress, or a cape, or robes—and the faint tapping of footsteps, and again her mind cried out in panic.
Wait!
The footsteps ceased. "Yes?"
Taken completely aback by Maleficent heeding her frantic plea, Rose's thoughts began to race with a thousand or more unanswered questions she longed to ask while she had the opportunity. The one her mind settled upon seemed at the same time completely ridiculous and extremely necessary, far more so than any other question she could possibly conceive.
Why have you come to speak with me? I mean...why bother?
After several seconds, or perhaps minutes, or perhaps hours, no answer came. If Rose had any idea what Maleficent looked like, she would have imagined her shaking her head in disdain and leaving...perhaps vanishing into a puff of smoke or fading away into the shadows Rose imagined in the corners of the room she had never seen.
"I spent sixteen years searching for you," said Maleficent finally. Her voice was back to the way it was when Rose had first truly heard it: quiet, controlled, resonant, and with just a hint of an edge to it. "It seems worthwhile to find out why I cared so much. I'm rather glad I did, as it happens. You're a fair bit cleverer than I imagined."
Me? Clever? Rose tried (very unsuccessfully) to scoff. She supposed she had never thought about cleverness very much before. Cleverness entailed knowing things, didn't it? And it had become abundantly clear to Rose that she knew next to nothing about anything. Before, that hadn't seemed like much of a problem to her. Her aunts had told her it was better not to ask questions, and though there were perhaps a lot of things Rose would have liked to know, she didn't need the information for any particular reason.
Briar Rose had sincerely believed that she might forever lead a relatively simple, if perhaps a rather lonely life. To learn that she must become a princess...and by extension, someday become a queen...this completely shattered Rose's vision of what her ideal life might be. In the place of her fondest dreams lay only an empty void, for Briar Rose was no longer free to choose anything about her life, if indeed she had ever been.
But being clever had never seemed particularly important to Rose. Being kind, courteous, and understanding...these were the things her aunts had taught her to value. Now, faced with a person who was obviously so exceedingly clever, and who so obviously did not value kindness, Rose felt completely ill-equipped. What could she say—or think, as it were, that wouldn't sound utterly stupid to someone like Maleficent?
"Well," said Maleficent, startling Rose out of her self-loathing, "you were raised by three of my favourite fairies." Her voice was light, almost pleasant, but all the more chilling for the hint of amusement in it. "In spite of that, though, you're not a fool."
I feel foolish. Especially, she thought, momentarily forgetting that Maleficent could hear her even when her thoughts did not form coherent sentences, compared to her captor.
"Youth," said Maleficent, and once again, Rose got the sense that she might be tired. "Innocence, naïveté…these are not foolishness. And they're not to be underestimated. It isn't the information you possess, Briar Rose. It's the way you use the information you're given."
Rose's head was beginning to spin again. It would only be a matter of time, honestly, before Maleficent convinced her of whatever it was she wanted Rose to believe. Rose wanted very badly to heave a sigh of sorrow for the impending loss of what remained of her sanity.
Why was Maleficent telling her this? Why was she suddenly acting as though Rose's anguish was not her only goal? It made Rose want to cry. It would be so much simpler if Maleficent were a villain in a story book.
And then Rose remembered what Maleficent had said about being judged, being forced to play a role in someone else's story. She remembered the way Maleficent's voice had sounded, as though she were speaking the words in earnest. And perhaps Rose was a fool to believe anything Maleficent said, but it seemed dreadful of her to try to push Maleficent into the role which would make Rose most comfortable when she so feared and despised the same thing being done to her. When Maleficent was, for whatever reason, not doing the same thing to Rose.
Maleficent was the only person in the world who did not want Briar Rose to be Princess Aurora. Whatever her reasons, Maleficent had, in a twisted way, saved Rose from the fate she had so dreaded. Rose was seized by the overwhelming desire to express her gratitude for this in some way, until she realized that Maleficent was probably still standing, unnervingly silent, a short distance away from where Rose slept, listening to Rose's every thought.
Have you decided? Rose wondered, though she wasn't certain she really wanted to know the answer. Why you cared so much?
"I already knew," Maleficent replied. "I cared because I don't like to lose, and I will not endure losing to an unworthy opponent. I didn't need to speak with you to determine that."
Then you avoided my question.
"Does that surprise you, Princess?" Maleficent sneered.
And Rose found that it did. She was trying to hold onto important details about Maleficent—she tried to think cold, cruel, twisted...far more twisted than the evil fairy in the story book—but these thoughts intermingled with knowledgeable, frank, possibly not lying, and you're cleverer than I imagined... And these in turn mixed with Aurora, Briar Rose, both, neither, and by the time she remembered she'd been having a conversation, she'd forgotten what it was about.
"I rather wish I hadn't gotten you off-topic," said Maleficent in the lighter tone that suggested imminent mockery. "Perhaps by the time I go to bed, you'll have worked your way back to cold, cruel, and twisted. On the subject of bed, good evening."
Rose snapped to attention at the sound of rustling fabric and footsteps, and again, her entire body seized up in panic.
Wait!
Maleficent would not wait. Rose knew this already. She had waited before, but that had been an anomaly. Cold, cruel, twisted...not waits when I ask, not cares whether I live or die, if only for her own purposes...cold, cruel, twisted purposes...
"What is it now?"
...Aurora, Briar Rose, cold...what? Rose's swirl of thoughts was stunned into eerie silence when she realized that Maleficent had indeed waited when she asked not once, not twice, but three times during the course of this conversation. Assuming this had been only one conversation. But of course it had...why would Maleficent waste more time talking to her? Rose was merely Maleficent's prey, her captive, and it frightened her deeply that she had to remind herself of this so firmly, despite the fact that the notion made her heart ache with a kind of loneliness she only thought she had understood before.
Desperately, and although she loathed herself for the thought before it had even fully formed, Rose remembered suddenly and painfully why she had begged Maleficent to wait one last time.
Are you coming back?
A long silence followed, but somehow Rose knew that Maleficent had not left, and she struggled to wait attentively for the answer. She wasn't certain how she would react to either answer, a yes or a no, and this, that Rose did not know her own thoughts—thoughts from which she could not escape, no matter how hard she tried—terrified her, perhaps even more than Maleficent did.
"Why wouldn't I?" asked Maleficent finally, her tone neutral, bordering on pleasant. "Whenever I leave this matter to anyone else, it goes to ruin. Now shall you deal with me, O Princess," she chuckled. "Pleasant dreams."
When Maleficent had truly left, Rose knew it. She felt Maleficent's absence. She was alone again, left with nothing but half-formed ideas about things she barely understood and half-forgotten dreams and memories of a life that didn't exist anymore.
Rose's body tried to weep, and her mind flew into a panic, because when she tried to weep, she started choking, and when she started choking, she couldn't catch her breath, and because she was so panicked, she couldn't calm down, cold, cruel, twisted, and was this how the rest of her life would be? Was Maleficent so cold, cruel, twisted as to keep her this way until she lost what little sense she possessed? Was she so evil as to enjoy it?
Perhaps far more terrifying, what if she wasn't? What if she did decide to set Rose free? What then? Rose would cease to be Rose, and her life would become a new sort of nightmare. Was there really any hope for her at all?