Mal... Mal... Mal...
It was dark, it'd been dark. The darkness was everywhere, it spanned for miles.
Mal...
Her back hurt. It always hurt. It hurt. It was agony. The painful reminder of what was taken from her, of weakness, of the disgusting lie that was love.
Mal...
There were screams down here. Screams of the lost. Screams the excess magic, the beautiful excess magic, created. The magic that she wanted to soak up, she wanted it, it needed to be hers.
Mal...
Her mind was playing tricks on her, it made her see things that weren't there.
She could feel hands. Hands on her waist, hands on her shoulders, hands on her face.
She could him. She could hear the promises he gave, the lies. So many lies.
Mal...
She swore she'd never be weak again. She'd make them beg. She'd be the one with the power, while they screamed and cried and lived their miserable lives.
Mal...
They humiliated her. He humiliated her. He took her wings, he tried to take her Moors. It was only fair that he'd lose his daughter.
Mal...
But no. She was weak. She liked his begging, she altered her spell.
She should have never waited sixteen years. She killed Stefan, she found her wings, and the princess was to sleep for a hundred years.
Then those wretched fairies, those human sympathizers who turned their back when she was slighted, stepped in. They brought the prince.
Mal…
She turned into a dragon. She never knew she could.
Maybe if she'd practiced before, she wouldn't have been stabbed.
She wouldn't have been dead.
She wouldn't make that mistake again.
Mal...
She couldn't remember the Underworld. Maybe she hadn't been judged yet. But she remembered coming back, because she woke up on an island, without her magic, without her wings. The wings she'd just gotten back. They were taken away from her, again. The iron cuffs burned her skin, her wrists, her neck, she couldn't breathe. The guards only took them off when every last one of the originals was there.
She still had the scars.
She almost lost her hands.
How she wanted to kill the beast.
Mal...
How she wanted off that rock.
Mal... Mal...
She swore she was going to make Auradon pay. She was going to get revenge on them all. On every single human that walked the earth. She was going to reign supreme.
She even had a daughter to help her achieve it. If she couldn't get off the prison, then maybe the child could.
Mal...
But she should have never trusted the brat to do it. She was weak, just like her father.
She felt too much. She cared too much.
She even sabotaged the child throughout her life to harden her heart. She played the game, she manipulated and threatened. She did what she could to tear her daughters friends away.
She should have killed Jafar's kid when he stubbornly refused to leave her side.
Mal.
Her daughter betrayed her.
Mal!
She chose the prince. She chose Auradon.
Mal!
She chose the humans.
Mal!
She was going to regret that.
MAL!
She could feel the warmth before the space around her lightened, the glimmering of the gems.
For the first time in a month, Maleficent smiled.
AN: For some context, I am mixing all three versions of Maleficent here. A lot of her backstory is canon to 2014 Maleficent, but she had too much hate to love Aurora. She managed to get her wings back herself, killed Stefan, and ofc does turn into a dragon. Like the original movie, Phillip kills her and wakes Aurora with true love's kiss.