A/N: Well, hello! It has been awhile! Now that my massive work, The Prisoner, is coming to an end, I'm feeling the need to move many of my other long-neglected works along towards completion, so hopefully you may expect much more rapid progress on this in the weeks or months to come.

This chapter was the product of my very first Live-Write, a venture I'll definitely be repeating at least once a month. You can find more info by rooting around in my profile for my tumblr. Thank you so much for your continued interest, and I hope that you will enjoy and continue to share your thoughts!

5. Wish I Were Here

Oh, my love is like a red, red rose that's newly sprung in—oh!

I'm awfully sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you!

Oh, it wasn't that. It's just that you're a…

A stranger? But don't you remember? We've met before!

He was tall. At least compared to everyone she knew. He blocked out the sun through the treetops. Instead of sunlight filtered through leaves it was sunlight filtered through him, through strawberry blonde hair and broad shoulders, through new and exciting and frightening and forbidden.

She wasn't supposed to speak to strangers. Her aunties had warned her every day and night for as long as she could remember. They would not tell her why—would never tell her why—but Rose believed them because she knew they loved her, and they meant only to protect her.

But he sang one of her own songs back at her, I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream, and his hands—that kept grasping at her when she tried to pull away—were warm and smooth, and no one outside of her aunties had ever touched her before. She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to go back to before, to never being touched. Being touched was so immensely preferable to living in an abyss, just a fraction removed from the world she inhabited. Being touched felt like being real.

The handsome not-stranger held out his hands as though to lead her in a dance. She recognized it from picture books, the man bows to the lady and the lady responds with a sweeping curtsey, and then they twirl around a grand ballroom as though they're dancing among the clouds, bound only by the endless expanse of the sky.

Rose hesitated, staring at his hands, thinking of her aunties and how they had warned her, how they so seldom asked anything of her, and surely she could do just this one thing. But she was turning sixteen today, and now they would expect her to be a grown woman, and she still felt like something less than a person, less than a child, less than real, because she existed somehow apart from the world, with only her aunties and the forest creatures and the trees for company.

She had the sense in that moment, foolish though it might well be, that in this man's hands lay the key to the rest of the world. If she could only take them, if she could only ignore her aunts just this once, if she could only just give in, stop resisting, allow him to lead her in a dance, then she might be permitted to see just a sliver of something beyond what she knew, beyond what she could even imagine.

She reached out to take his hands, imagined she could feel the warmth of his hands closing around hers, felt horrible tingles all over as he smiled at her, felt anxious, uncomfortable, like she wanted to leave but needed to stay, like she couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe…

Rose's sixteenth birthday had been the happiest and most miserable day of her life. In the morning, her beloved aunts had unsubtly hurried her out the door to plan a party for her. By midday she had met the most handsome (and also the only) man she had ever seen, and she had quickly fallen in love with him.

In love with him. That was what she'd thought. I must be in love, for looking into his hands reaching out for me feels like a possibility where there were none before. She thought at first that she must never see him again, but he was so kind, and she was in love! Surely her aunts would understand!

She had rushed home, singing and dancing all the way, to share the news with the only family she had ever known, the only people she had never spoken to, the entire expanse of her universe. And Fauna—she remembered the gleeful look on Fauna's face as Rose grasped her hands, tried to share the feeling of possibilities, of new beginnings, telling the woman whom she knew to be a hopeless romantic at heart all about the man of her dreams who had become a reality.

And then her world, her family, the entire expanse, the beginning and end of her universe, had come crashing down around her.

Rose wondered suddenly, chillingly, cold all the way down to her toes and unable to shiver, what they were really like. All of them. The stranger who was the prince whose name she could barely remember, the king and queen whose faces she couldn't even call to mind but who must look at least a little like her, and even her aunties who were not her aunties at all, but centuries-old fairies to whom Rose's entire life was as nothing.

What had Flora been like at Rose's age? Was Rose's age the same as it was for fairies? Was the stranger who was a prince a kind man? Was he charming? The sort of person who often found strange women in forests and convinced them to dance with him?

And what of Rose's parents, the king and queen whose names and faces she could not bring to mind? What sort of people would give their child away? The sort of people who loved her tremendously, or the sort of people who didn't love her very much at all?

Rose could not conceive of a love that stood apart from the material reality of the world, apart from what she could see and sense and touch and feel. She could feel her aunties' love for her, could see it in the ways they cared for her, could return it in the ways she cared for them. She could feel the way her heart had leapt at the prospect of a new entity who matched the idea of a sort of person one ought to love. Stranger, handsome, charming, forbidden, dancing, smiling, possibilities, hands touching, making her feel, making her real, making himself a part of her reality.

But she could not wrap her mind around these people she did not know, stuck out of time like characters in a book, holding any great love for her. After all, what was Briar Rose to them? Nothing. Someone who should not exist. Would not exist. Could not cease existing soon enough.

What, even, was Aurora to them? How could Aurora, who had been but an infant, barely a part of this world at all, when they had sent her away, mean any more to them than they did to her? What was she but a character in a book? What was she but a distant memory, a fraction of a thing that they'd once held in their arms, the way the stranger who was a prince's hands even now felt only like a receding echo of warmth?

It would not have been so bad, Rose imagined now, if she had been permitted some time to grow accustomed to her new circumstances. Jarring, certainly, but not earth-shattering. Perhaps she could have spent some time with her betrothed, outside of sunny forests and dreamy dances, spoken to him of things such as names and favourite colours and what his childhood had been like and what she mae of hers.

Perhaps she could have spent some time with her parents, maybe somewhere that was neither a forest nor a castle, where they could sit at a safe distance and Rose could tell them, explain to them calmly that she was not Aurora, that she could not just simply be Aurora now that she was Briar Rose, that they had lost their chance to have a perfect, intact Aurora when they had given her away, and maybe that wasn't their fault, precisely, but now it was done, now it was over, and Briar Rose was not Aurora, and…

Not their fault. Whose fault was it? Rose had trouble remembering.

Cold, cruel, twisted...knowledgeable, frank, possibly not lying...evil fairy in the story book, waits when I ask, cares whether I live or die, knows, knows I'm me and not her, real and not imaginary, stuck out of time but not for her…

Maleficent.

Maleficent was the reason she was here, but was she really?

Maleficent cursed her, Merryweather tried to fix it, the king and queen gave her away, her aunties made her Briar Rose, lied, obscured, hid away, played games with the entirety of her existence, the king and queen wanted their Aurora back, the kingdom wanted its princess, the prince wanted his bride, the boy in the woods wanted the girl who sang and danced with him, and all of it was real but none of it seemed feasible, because all of them were out there somewhere in reality and Briar Rose was left here, unmoving, unmoved, unreal.

Unreal to them, almost unreal to herself.

Real to Maleficent.

But Maleficent was the reason she was here. Wasn't she? Maleficent was the villain in this story, so much worse than the villain in any book Rose had read, that was what she had thought, so cold, so cruel, so twisted, the way her voice sent unrealized chills coursing through Rose's paralyzed body in horrible, nauseating waves as she laughed at Rose's pain.

Didn't she? Not always. Sometimes. Usually.

We spend our lives being judged, Maleficent had said, she thought, she was almost sure. Perhaps I've acted rashly, said Maleficent, and also, you're cleverer than I imagined, and when she said those things her voice wasn't quite so cold anymore, at least compared to the air around it, but nothing was real, everything was only as real as it was when it touched the things in its vicinity, Maleficent's voice to the air to Rose's ear.

Not crying was the worst. The middle of her body tried to spasm as though from weeping,, but she hardly moved. Her muscles cramped and twisted and sent little shocks of pain coursing one after the other through her, more real than anything else she had ever known, stomach to heart to fingertips to temples, and Rose imagined she could see stars exploding behind her eyelids.

Her eyes stung and the muscles of her face soon joined the twisting, cramping, aching, piercing onslaught of pain. Her face remained serene and unchanging. The boy in the woods who was a stranger and a prince could burst in right now, and all he would see was the young girl he had met in the forest, sleeping peacefully, unreal, unmoved, unmoving, unaware of the time it had taken him to get to her, waiting with endless patience.

Waiting...waiting...waiting for what?

Always waiting. Waiting to wake up and waiting to sleep, waiting to venture out for some berries and waiting as long as she possibly could before she must return home again. Waiting to grow up, waiting to change, waiting to speak to a stranger, waiting to learn something worth knowing.

Now, waiting again. Waiting to live and waiting to die. Waiting to become Aurora, waiting to leave Briar Rose behind, stuck out of time, unreal, should never have existed, could not cease to exist soon enough. Waiting to wake up, but afraid—terrified—of what that meant for her.

Waiting for the fabric of the universe to come apart at the seams all over again.

Waiting for…

True love's kiss. Briar Rose suddenly realized she could hear Merryweather's voice in her head, like a memory but somehow more solid. Not in death but just in sleep...from this slumber you shall wake...true love's kiss the spell shall break.

...why she didn't give a less volatile stipulation...distastefully bad form...Rose was going to be stuck like this...stuck like this until...

Until you receive True Love's First Kiss, Maleficent had responded coldly. But everyone was asleep, and the boy from the woods who was a prince was...where?

Maleficent had captured him. Rose wanted to beg for his freedom, but she had no leverage, nothing to her name, not even a name to have anything to, and her half-hearted plea for mercy upon the handsome stranger had been lost somewhere along the way, overruled by the intensity of her own personal misery. And perhaps she ought to feel a bit badly about that, but the guilt rang hollow, cold like the air around her.

Maleficent had captured the prince, and he would not come to save her, because Maleficent did not want him to. It was Maleficent's fault that Rose was trapped in this miserable purgatory, waiting to live and waiting to die, left with nothing but to wonder at unknowable things that might not matter at all, like whether her betrothed was a kind man or whether her parents loved her, or whether a person who had tried to kill her, who was now keeping her here and laughing—not always, sometimes, usually—at her suffering, might have some shred of goodness within her worth exploring.

"Shred of goodness," the person in question remarked quietly. Icy panic shot through Rose's entire body, from heart to temples to fingertips to toes. She hadn't heard Maleficent enter, had been so lost in thought that she hadn't felt Maleficent's presence, and the way it altered all the air around it, somehow both colder and warmer, like a gathering storm, like the promise of lightning. "I think I preferred cold, cruel, and twisted."

There was something different about her voice now. Today? Tonight? How long had she been here? Maleficent sounded tired, perhaps. Or less harsh. But it was difficult to say which was real, or which was a product of the other.

"You flatter me," Maleficent responded flatly.

Briar Rose wished acutely for the luxury of calculating her words, of thinking before she spoke, but her thoughts raced ahead of her and behind her and all around her, and there was no controlling them, and there was certainly no hiding them.

You're back, I missed you, you're real, you're here, I feel you in the air, I was beginning to think that nothing was real, but you're real.

Maleficent didn't respond. How could she? Rose felt embarrassment, an unrealized flush in her cheeks, unbearably warm in the chill of the air around her, wherever she was, wherever her body lay in torturous stasis, unmoved, unmoving, unreal but for these strange interactions with the woman who kept her here.

Tell me why, Rose thought suddenly, with surprising clarity amid the chaos that reigned in her mind. Tell me why you've done this to me. All of it. Why did this begin? Whose fault is this? For whose crimes must I pay?

"I…" It is an odd sound. Choked. Hesitant.

Please. I need to know. I need to know something worth knowing.

Maleficent was silent for a moment, but Rose could feel that she hadn't disappeared. She was still there, the gathering storm, the promise of lightning. At last, after what might have been an instant or a lifetime, Maleficent began to speak.

"Once," she said, her voice low and rich like distant thunder, "not so long ago, there lived a young queen. In the kingdom from whence she hailed, she was widely known for a somewhat sordid reputation. In the kingdom into which she married, she was known only for her beauty, and for her gentle spirit. Queen Leah was well-loved, by her new husband, and by her new subjects."

The queen...Queen Leah. Rose's mother. Aurora's mother. Aurora's mother didn't know Rose existed.

"The King and Queen spent many happy years together, followed by a handful of years somewhat strained by one small shortcoming: they had been unable, as yet, to conceive a child."

It was odd to think of Maleficent's voice as soothing, but it was so real, so present. Not an echo of a memory or a half-remembered dream. Though a part of Rose feared what this tale might reveal to her, she found a much larger part of her was happy just to have someone telling her any story at all.

Not just anyone, she amended—she couldn't help it. But Maleficent did not comment.

"The usual recourse in such a circumstance was obvious: the king ought to take a concubine, or perhaps bestow the responsibility on some other unwitting woman of low rank and no prospects, that he might secure an heir to his throne, and that she might be persuaded rather easily to keep her thoughts on the matter to herself. But the king was, somewhat singularly, more enamoured of his wife than of his kingdom, and was therefore reluctant to stray from her. Reluctant," Maleficent stressed, "but the passage of time has a way of changing minds."

The king...Rose thought he might have dark hair. And a beard. But she would be hard pressed to say anything else about him. She had never thought that a king would have much cause to matter to her.

"It was around this time," Maleficent continued, "that a certain fairy received, to her immense surprise, a royal summons from the young queen. The messenger boy did not make it all the way up to that fairy's door, mind you, but rather fainted dead away before he had come very close. Fortunately, that illustrious fairy had been whiling away a bit of her time watching his approach, not without some amusement, else he would no doubt have perished from the cold before she had received his message."

From this perspective—namely, when the dark humour was not directed at her, Rose felt herself slowly grasping onto something. It was only a fraction of an observation—how could it be anything but fractured when Rose had been robbed of the better part of her senses? Perhaps it was utter madness at that, but in the tangent about the messenger, though Maleficent expressed amusement in response to his suffering, she did not quite make the final leap to pure evil...she didn't actively want the messenger boy to die. Maybe. Possibly.

Mercifully, this trail of thought came out so vague and muddled that Maleficent likely wouldn't be distracted from her story in order to decipher it. Rose was safe in her uncertainty.

"I had never before and have never since received a royal summons; however, I daresay it was a curious document," Maleficent continued, and there was a new note in the timbre of her voice now. Something brighter? Closer, more piercing. It piqued Rose's interest. "The queen requested that I not make my presence known in any way, particularly to the king."

The queen...Aurora's mother...summoned Maleficent, and did not want to tell the king, who was so in love with her that he would not stray?

"I should like to make clear to my...captive audience...that I would not have answered any summons without good reason."

Captive audience...dark humour but not quite cruel...good reason. Good reason. You thought she was hiding something.

"I wonder…"

Rose heard Maleficent shift. Something like fabric rustling. Perhaps a long dress, or robes, like a sorcerer. Then she felt the air shift just above her forehead, cold, then warm, then something indescribable. An unrealized shiver coursed through her body horribly. She wondered whether she would fall apart entirely if her body ever regained the ability to move.

"May I?" Maleficent asked her.

May I. May I what? Fabric rustling, air shifting...Maleficent's hand was above her forehead. Yes.

And then, yes.

Rose could not conceive very well of the things that lay outside the realm of the physical world. She lived in the world she could see and sense and touch and feel, and touch and feel, and touch, and feel, hand on her forehead, both warm and cold, and so real. So, so real.

Suddenly, more. More than darkness, backs of eyelids or exploding stars, Rose could see images that she knew were not of her own mind. Brighter, sharper, colder, clearer. A lavishly furnished room. A roaring fire in an ornate fireplace, everything deep reds and purples, plush and soft and inviting and quiet but for footsteps.

Something fell and shattered. "It's...it's you!"

A hand. Long, elegant fingers, neatly-trimmed fingernails, and skin that was...green. Then a young woman who looked very much like a mirror.

Oh, Rose thought. She wanted to cry, wanted to reach out, but couldn't. Oh, it's...

The young woman was...it must be...her mother.