Work Text:
There are good reasons not to invite Maleficent to a christening.
It isn't the first time she's peered into a cradle only to curl her lip. It isn't the first time the infant has sickened after.
The scene in the castle is different only because she brazenly declares her intentions.
After all, how could she be royalty?
Maleficent does not care for crowns.
She may as well twist the knife in their majesties' hearts as well as her own.
*
There are old, old tales of Maleficent's melancholy, because that is an endless blight to all in her shadow's reach.
But if you go back far enough, Maleficent's story isn't a story of a witch.
It's a story of two witches.
A long-ago prince struck at her heart in the only way that matters.
*
Hope springs eternal.
Love grows from blood and ashes.
But grief and hate are familiar, and growth is pain.
There is always a reason to find fault and thwart the cycle.
Not yet.
Not like this.
This isn't the first time Maleficent has sought to kill her lover in the cradle.
*
Aurora's guardians don't know who they're saving.
Would they do it, if they knew?
The thought of their horror is a meagre pleasure.
She also ponders their chances at molding Aurora into something entirely new.
Someone only sweet, a waste of all Aurora can be.
Someone who has no hold on Maleficent.
*
On the sixteenth birthday, Maleficent's chances have run out.
Someone will die: witch, prince, or princess.
She draws the princess close to her. It is a mistake.
She falls to an enemy as blithely innocent as the infants she has killed.
Perhaps the cycle is broken.
Or perhaps, in some future lifetime, it will be Aurora's turn to wake her lover with a kiss.