Chapter Text
She's naked without her staff, unarmed and weary. It's already broken, because Regina took the Dark Curse, but she's kept the stick and its silver dragon headpiece because they are hers, yet cannot help her. For once, magic can't aid her and no amount of dragon's strength can get her out of this position.
She should have suspected Regina would lead to pain. Beautiful women often do and as long as she's lived, Maleficent should know better than to fall for anyone, especially someone like Regina. Yet from the moment Regina walked into her castle, so timid but unafraid, Maleficent knew she was special. How special, she couldn't have truly understood, and maybe doesn't even now. It's complicated falling in love when humans are so brief and beautiful, like a perfect spring afternoon that can't possibly last.
Ursula and Cruella, her last allies, can't help her. Snow White and her prince, the heroes, have refused to aid her against the queen. Regina's preparing the Dark Curse; the taste of it hangs like a summer storm, and the air's thick with anticipation. She won't touch her belly and whisper to the child deep within that she'll protect her. She won't lie to this sleeping little life and promise that she will know a world free from the Dark Curse. There's so little she can do to stop it, and she's so tired, so she won't fight.
She walks to the gate of Regina's castle, hands at her sides. The black guards level arrows at her chest and whisper her name as if she's the devil made flesh. She only holds up her hands. "I surrender."
They don't believe her, even when they've searched her for weapons, running their rough hands over her body. They retreat like scared rats if she moves too quickly so she's still as stone, for her child. All of this, all humiliations are worth it, for her daughter. She's unarmed, carries no magical amulets, no spells, and no scrolls. She can shift her body into the dragon at any moment but nothing they have can stop that. Regina has no magic that can keep her in her human form, unless she's invented some.
This time, the dragon can't help her, because even as the mightiest of beasts, she'll still be subject to the horror of the Dark Curse. She walks forward down Regina's dark corridors, spearpoints against her back, swords drawn at her sides, and chains around her wrists. She takes all of it, accepts every sneer, because it is for her daughter. Their daughter. She didn't think the child could know Regina, didn't think it would work, but she has to try. If she can't save her, maybe Regina can. Maybe she will, if there is still some of her left.
There must be.
Her entourage of guards march her into Regina's chamber, circling her with steel.
"The sorceress, Maleficent," one of them announces through his mask. "She has surrendered, your majesty."
Regina, dark, terrible Regina, doesn't even turn in her chair, leaving Maleficent to stare at her bare back wrapped in black leather. "Leave us."
They shuffle away, retreating like the insects they are before their queen. Regina still doesn't turn, making her wait and watch.
"You don't need those," Regina says, waving open the irons on her wrists so they fall to the floor.
"Don't I?" Maleficent asks, staring amused at the chains lying near her feet.
"You know as well as I that they were for show." Regina stands, leaving her drink. "Something to comfort my soldiers." She turns, and her familiar eyes, those beautiful brown eyes, are hard and cold.
"What do you want? You'll never get the Dark Curse from me and I'm disappointed that you're here to try. I didn't want to kill you before, but now--" She stops and fire blooms in her hand.
"Don't," Mal begs, holding up her empty hands. "Please."
Regina raises her eyebrows and the eyes beneath are cold. "Please?"
"That's not enough?" she asks, staring at the woman she loves who must be buried somewhere beneath this mask of pain and hatred. Pulling up her heavy skirt, Maleficent falls to her knees on the marble floor. "Please, your majesty, allow me audience."
Smiling like a serpent, Regina watches her plead. "To what end? For you to tell me how horrifying the Dark Curse is? How it will hollow me out and leave me a shell of myself?"
Maleficent shakes her head, takes a breath, reminds herself that beneath Regina's anger, lies that woman, the one full of hope, who gave her the daughter in her belly. This is for her: everything is for her. "I'm here to beg."
"For yourself?" Regina strides towards her, reaching for her cheek. "How quaint. The dragon has learned a new trick."
Regina's cold fingers stroke her jaw and she has to hold herself back from leaning into it because she wants to be with her again. She'd give anything to be with her again, to hold her, to lie next to her and listen to her breathing in the darkness.
"I'm not begging for me," she says as Regina's nails dig into her neck.
"Oh?" Regina's laugh cuts into her stomach, cold and cruel. "So whom is this about? Me? You're actually trying to save me from myself?"
Maleficent holds her gaze even as Regina's nails sink deep into her skin. "Not you, my dear. I'm here to beg for your daughter."
That finally makes Regina pause. "My what?" She pulls her face closer, leaning in until they're almost kissing.
Remembering the taste of her lips stings like poison in Maleficent's throat. Tears burn and threaten to escape from her eyes but Regina's only gleam with pain and fury in response. "Your daughter, Regina, the one you've given me."
Regina drops her cheek, then backhands her face, glaring. "That's not possible."
"I'm pregnant," Maleficent explains, tasting blood. Her tears are free now, coursing down her face as Regina pulls her hand back to hit her again.
"As I said, that's not possible." This time Regina uses her open palm, striking hard enough for Maleficent's tears to fly from her skin.
Blood trickles from her nose, and she lets it fall to the stone beneath them. "And yet it occurred."
Regina paces, striding across the room, caged and furious to cover her agony. "I burnt that possibility to ash and salted the earth, so to speak." She glances down at her own belly, flat and perfect beneath her corset. Her eyes are liquid fire, molten and desperate. "Your child, if there is a child, cannot be mine."
It hits her like being dropped into the icy sea, Regina used the infertility potion, the one that cannot be undone. She took her own chance for a child and made it ash. Maleficent can't imagine why she'd do it, and the naked agony in Regina's eyes suggests her mother was involved, because no one else has ever cut her that deeply.
"Oh Regina--" Maleficent's control falters and she wants to hold her, to promise Regina that the monster who is her mother cannot hurt her anymore. She forgets, only for a moment, that she's here to protect the baby who does not yet exist, yet will, because she feels her stirring, already affecting her magic from within her.
"I don't need you, or your lies, and I certainly don't require your pity." Regina raises her hand again, but instead of another blow, she sends Maleficent away, down to the dungeons of her castle, where fire crackles amid the damp straw and the stink of festering flesh.
The cell is cold, and the stone closes her in, heavy and damp. The guards take her dress, ripping it with daggers and their bare hands because no prisoner of the queen may wear anything so fine. They leave her sackcloth, ragged and already old and she wears it for Regina, because this is the price of trust. She can wait. At least, she will try, but it's cold and if she weren't pregnant she could find the heat to keep warm, but for some reason their daughter takes so much energy. She curls up in the filthy straw and the fleas from the last inhabitant of the decrepit cell scurry over her but she waits, because she must. All this is endurable.
Regina, or her guards, take pleasure in the bad food and the dank conditions. If it weren't for the rats, she'd barely be able to sleep, but they're meat and easy enough to catch, so this too she will survive. At least she tries, but Regina's daughter lies within her and she will not tolerate their diet of rats, stale bread and gruel. It was hard enough to govern her body in her own castle, where she was safe, here she retches into the corner of her cell and the eyes of the guards roam over her bare shoulders.
She weakens. Not enough to endanger the child, not yet, but she's running out of time, out of resources, out of ways to wait, because their daughter is already so hungry, so demanding of her strength. She may have to flee before she loses the ability to do so, admit her defeat and try to keep the child safe as long as she can before the curse takes them all to that place of unspeakable horror.
She's lost all track of time when Regina visits, doesn't even realise that it's her until she realises that the boots standing before her cell, as she retches up half-digested rat once again, are delicate leather, finely polished.
"Prison does not suit you, my friend," Regina says in mocking sympathy, kneeling before her so their faces are level. Maleficent can't recall the last time she saw her own reflection, or brushed her hair, because Regina's taken her time coming down here. She must have thought she would have left by now.
Maleficent's not even sure that she has the strength left to teleport away. She'll probably have to fight many of the guards before she has enough space to become the dragon.
"I can survive prison," Maleficent replies. "It's your daughter that's the difficult one."
Regina's mask falters and she's human for the briefest of moments. "That's not--"
"Tell me, your majesty, what do you know of dragons?" She retreats to the softer hay that she's made her bed and Regina follows her outside the door. "Do you know what it takes for us to even conceive a child? How rare it is for that to occur with one of our own kind, let alone with a--"
"A monster?" Regina interrupts, drawing on her hatred and self-loathing to protect herself the only way she can.
"A human," Mal finishes for her, curling up in her awful nest. Lying on her side, even with her knees up against her stomach, must have given something away, because Regina's gaze falters. She sees something. Has the child begun to show? How long has she been here? "Ask your dear mentor Rumplestiltskin. See if he'll explain it to you." She shuts her eyes and lets Regina watch her tears. It takes love to conceive a child. Dragons are the prickliest and least amicable of beasts. Their immortality is tempered by their inability to stand each other's company. So few dragons can put aside their egos long enough to let a fragile human get close to them, but if they do-- the consequences are all encompassing.
Regina's back the next night to watch her sleep. Perhaps to see if she'll try to escape, but she doesn't. Perhaps she no longer can. She could summon the dragon to protect her child, but she's not sure how long she'd stay on her feet and flying is entirely out of the question. The next morning though, the food is a little better and she keeps it down. The rat who wanders through her cell that night gets a reprieve.
Regina still won't speak to her, but her food improves to the point where she can mostly keep it down. She doesn't know if Regina watches her through her mirror, but the blanket that arrives after one particularly cold night is much appreciated. Tiny things appear near her cell, scraps of books, then an entire dogeared volume, bound in mouldy leather. She reads it before she allows herself the pleasure of burning it for warmth because she's already counted all the cracks in the wall and her mind's starting to slip away from her. She's not meant to be caged, Regina knows this perhaps more than she does, but she will not fight. This time, she surrenders.
Dredging up her reserves of patience, as well as strength, because her daughter grows, and she can't get enough food, or stay warm, and the thin, worn fabric over her belly's starting to cling to a roundness that was not there when Regina threw her into this cell. The physicality of her daughter makes it easier, because she's here, real, something she can touch, so she waits.
Regina finally finds the book that tells her the truth about dragons one frigid night when the wind howls around the walls of the castle. Maleficent has a second blanket now, but it's not enough because her daughter, Regina's daughter, needs so much of her energy, and she shivers beneath it, curled as tightly as she can be around her belly.
"I found this old, obviously unreliable, volume in my library," Regina says without pretence, pacing in front of her cell. Once again, Maleficent has no idea how long it's been, but she must look worse, because Regina's struggling to keep up her uncaring veneer. "It has some information about your kind which is of questionable accuracy."
"If I told you it was true, you wouldn't believe me," Mal replies, forcing herself to sit up. The wall's too cold, and her teeth start to chatter, but she won't give in to Regina so quickly.
Regina's gloved hands falter against the old tome. "It's not possible."
"The potion you drank," Mal whispers. Her voice is too weak, too quiet and Regina's so impatient that she's through the cell door in a puff of smoke.
"What about it?" Regina wrinkles her nose in disgust, and Maleficent realises just how accustomed she's gotten to the stench of this place.
"You burnt the field and salted the earth, but that potion did nothing for your seed."
Regina raises a hand again and Mal almost welcomes the blow, because it'll come with heat and she's so very cold. This time, Regina doesn't hit her. She holds up the book and leans close, too close. Her lips are so very red. "This book claims that dragons cannot conceive without--" she can't find the last words. "That can't be true."
"Another book will tell you the same."
"Stop--"
"Regina," Mal pauses and runs her tongue over her dry lips, trying to keep her teeth from chattering so that she can speak. "I conceived your child because of my love for you. I didn't think that I had fallen for you. I doubted I ever could, because I haven't opened my heart since Briar Rose crushed it, yet here is the proof of my weakness, and she is yours." She rests a hand on the swell of her belly that is the cause of so much suffering yet brought such small hope. "I don't care what happens to me beneath your curse. I'm not sure I care what happens to me now, but she should be with you, and you with her, even in the new dark world that you're taking us to. Please."
"Don't--"
Maleficent shakes her head, and reaches for Regina's perfect cheek. Her fingers are so dirty that she won't let herself touch her; she holds them above Regina's skin. "It's too late. I love you, and no power of yours, Rumplestiltskin's or even my own, can change that."
"You can't," Regina protests one last time.
Maleficent's dirty fingers and Regina's tears make grey tracks on her face. "Yet I do."
Regina disappears, leaving purple smoke that smells ever so faintly of her. Maleficent clings to that, holding the memory of Regina close until she falls asleep.
She wakes elsewhere. It's not a cell, at least. The tiny room has a window, though it's high, small, and provides little light. The bed is raised up off the floor and seems to be free from fleas and biting insects, though Mal's skin is still covered with the marks. She can see the little red bumps on her skin because for the first time in weeks she's clean. Her hair's clean, and her skin. It's obviously been achieved through magic, because she slept right through it, so Regina does care.
She lies in the grey dark, listening to the castle wake for the morning. The food they bring her now actually tastes like the animals it once was, instead of slop, and she has her first afternoon without nausea since she realised she was pregnant. Regina doesn't visit, because she won't, not until she's less vulnerable, but a book slides under the door, and the servant girl leaves her a candle and that night when she sleeps, she's finally warm.