7

In their eyes, Maleficent sees the orders of Charles. These soldiers, these people – who would be otherwise innocent, plan on having her heart out on a pike.

She is alone against all.

Not a familiar, friendly face.

It would be just like that time under the church's shadow, except now she has THE POWER-

Do you love me, Maleficent? Raki's words in her mind. I love you so much it hurts.. I don't want you to suffer a tragic ending.

"Maleficent!" their commander goes. "My men won't hesitate to slay you."

She restrains the impulse to smash them all.

"There are only two ways this could end," he continues. "Either we riddle your heart with holes, or you can surrender yourself to His Majesty's good grace."

She looks the commander in the eye – he's positioned behind his swordsmen, which is reasonable, given that he is their pillar of strength and morale.

"You know my name, good sir," she goes, bowing (and making tension from their already tensed weapons). "But I don't know yours."

"It's not for someone like you to know."

"Very well. After all, you'd much rather have me think of you as just the commander of this platoon, instead of another person with hopes, dreams, and desires. Likely, you have a loving family, waiting for you to come home safe from your skirmishes. All those beautiful things, which I could only dream. But since you are here as a dog on Charles's leash, with his message of death for me..

"Let me send my regards for him in return!"

And before the crossbowmen can let loose their iron bolts, Maleficent blasts an electric shock through their metallic armours, the jolt flashing between each of them in proximity, shocking their bodies within to paralysis.

Before the commander can shout "Attack!" she conjures up barbed vines from the forest's soil, which ensnare the remaining forces – the barbs injecting doses of non-lethal venom, sending them into unconsciousness.

As for the commander himself, who she's saved for last – he's panting heavily, having seen his troops fall nigh-instantaneously. He's running, and she follows the trickle of urine he's trailing behind, until she finds him trying to stand up after his stumble.

His face is awash with sweat.

He is rapidly breaking down before her, and he pleads for her to spare his life. "I do have a family.. a baby boy, if he grows up without seeing me.. please. Please don't kill me. Let me run back, I promise, I'll never lead troops to even one mile of your presence again."

"What's your name?" she asks him.

"S-Solaire."

"Here is some news; I haven't killed one person in your troop. All I've done is incapaciate them for the time being."

He seems surprised.

"Oh, you're surprised that I could spare them?" she goes. "I have this power yes, and you think me a monster because of what you've been told. It's true that I've killed and resented people over the years. I won't deny that. But if I was truly a monster, then my only choice – not a choice at all rather, is to slay you all without a second's thought.

I can tell you why
People go insane
I can show you how
You could do the same

"But I am not. Once, I was a normal person like you, shunned and feared by people, before betrayal has left me corrupted with hate. It was Charles who betrayed me when I needed his love the most, and it was him who left me behind like a toy he's outgrown. You wouldn't imagine how much it hurts when you find no reciprocation to your need for love.. it's love that I see everyone striving for, everyday, whether they know it or not. The newborns cry for it from their mothers, the young ones find joy when they're held in each other's embraces.. the old people cherish their memories of love, on their deathbeds. Sometimes I see people crying out in the darkness, because love seems to have left their lives.

I can tell you why
People die alone
I can tell you I'm
A shadow on the sun

"It's love that can make real monsters of us all, and yet bring out the best, if we let it. And I know now.." Maleficent extends a hand to Solaire. "I am not a monster. I am Maleficent, and despite the pain of living, I still have a heart that beats, a heart that aches."

And trembling, he accepts getting pulled up.

"That's my regard for Charles," she goes. "He may pity me for what I've done, what I've become, but I too pity him in turn.. his own heart has been misplaced along the way, lost to royalty, and so be it with him if he wishes to love my sister. I move on from him – the only debt I have is undoing my curse on his little daughter."

Despite Solaire returning to tell Maleficent's words to his King and Queen, it seems they do not believe it. Odette thinks it is a ruse from her to let down their guard – she pressures Charles into reinforcing capital defenses, and worries about the fate of their Aurora in the faeries' hands.

A chord is struck in him though.

All this.. this tragic line of events, because Maleficent loved him in the first place. In the bedroom, he looks at Odette, recalling Maleficent's remark about Odette being her little sister, and asks her, "You were her sister once; tell me, what was she like?"

A beat.

"I did not want you to know about her," Odette tells. "I considered her a shame of my family. She was moody around me and my parents, and I'd often find her alone, adrift in her daydreams. The thought of her makes me sad, I don't know why."

Charles puts away his bedtime scrolls. "You didn't think it would be important to let me know sooner? To be fair though, I've never told you of those times.."

"What?"

"Before we were introduced, I was sitting outside in the evening in the town of Gaumont. I was bored of my parents arguing over the ideal woman for me.. and there she was, approaching me in the peak of my boredom. Maleficent. She came to me.. showed me the town, the cathedral and the sunset.. we made love in the forest. I can still remember how she seemed.. almost like an angel at the moment."

He is tearing up – it seems so long ago that it happened, like it was a different, more innocent life he'd lived.

"I had this quaint feeling, like I wanted to know more about the secrets behind her eyes, in her heart. But my family dissuated me from her. She was absolutely not the kind of person who'd be my Queen. And it made me torn – I met you, but at the same time, she was there too in my mind. Even though I didn't really think much of her besides a happenstance.

"What was I to do, when the time came, and we married – and Maleficent.. I.." He sniffles. Is he about to say 'I'm sorry'?

"Please don't blame yourself for what happened," Odette consoles him, rubbing his chest. "I would have done the same in your shoes. Oh, she seemed so mad then, it was unbelievable! I'm glad that even after it was all over with my sister, you went with me. Our sweet Aurora.."

"Aurora? What does our Aurora have to do with it? It's Maleficent.. I wish.."

An indignified look comes over Odette. "You wish what? You'd rather be with that crazed sister of mine, who'd bring shame upon you, simply by being associated with the likes of her?"

"No, no Odette. I just wish if things had gone a little differently.." He pauses. "If I hadn't met her before you, there would be no pain."

Glancing out the grand windows, he sees his city of Paris is alight with diffuse colour, the sky a dark magenta above it. He remembers faint intimations of that evening in Gaumont, that joy.

Maleficent finds it difficult to scour the whereabouts of Aurora. The people know to shoo away her crows, and since the sanctity of own home has been revealed to the soldiers, she decides to move to another location, right in the heart of Paris itself, under disguise with help from her poutrices.

As long as she can obtain the ingredients for them, it should be fine, while she inquires about news related to the royalty from the citizens she encounters.

There is a little disorientation at the fact of having to mingle in with the crowd, the self-awareness of her not being in touch with society for so long – if each of them know who she really is on the inside, they would all be..

Never mind that.

What she's heard is that the good king has sent away his daughter to a hidden location, under the watchful protection of the three faeries. But where exactly? She'll have to eavesdrop on them, and so in her cottage, she devises a hamster to surveil for her.

One day, visiting the castle, she lets loose the hamster down the toilets, and upon heading home, she gets it to scour the dank, smelly pipes, until it emerges up from the royal latrines, where she has it wash itself in one of the baths and afterwards, feed on the storehouse cheeses – the hamster must be feeling like Andy Dufresne from the Shawshank Redemption.

Then she has the hamster hide in whatever nooks and crannies it could find, following Charles and Odette around in their daily routines of ordering the servants around, managing territorial disputes with the diplomats..

Soon, she overhears Odette worry about Aurora, and asks Charles if there's any way of exchanging news with the faeries, despite the risk of Maleficent finding out.

"Hmm," Charles muses. "If we send out a courier to the Black Forest, it might be possible, although it will have to be an indirect route, lest Maleficent realise."

The Black Forest! In Southwestern Germany!

With further hearings through her hamster, Maleficent hears them talk about undoing Aurora's curse, with the prisoners on death sentence getting their hearts preserved for study. And then unimportant things that she's overheard a hundred times already before.

She lingers over her hamster's seeings for a few more days, hoping she might hear more key information from them, but the poor hamster is soon caught by the royal chefs – and is thrown out with the garbage.

She's also running out of ingredients for her poutrices; fluxweed is particularly hard to come by, especially now that Spain is running trade embargos on France.

Thus, Maleficent flees the city, and with her remaining strength in the open fields, she transforms into

a raven
whose wings carry her afar
over the clouds
over the troposphere layer

(nobody will see me, knowing I am above them)

and the sky
is an ocean of fading blue
and white feathery cirrus
and doves

(sometimes the clouds resemble a familiar face)

and she glides along the
wind current
falling forward
like drug's euphoria

until the pines and firs are below her, and she circles around and around, descending below the overcast layer, her body aching from the air pressure differential.

All the trees seem endless, scattered over the horizons and hills and cliffs.

She could lose herself in the depths of this green forest – alien, vast, unknown, untouched, unseen by other human eyes. This must be the joy of every winged animal, to soar beyond the ones earth-bound.

And then she faints.

Her raven body, out of stamina and breath, tumbles down through the branches, pines and needles shaken loose, falling..

..

On the ground, Merryweather discovers a fainted raven, rumpled on its back – barely wheezing in and out. It is covered in layers of tan needles, spider webbing, and a coat of moss. She's gathering wildberries for her pie, and the sight of it brings feelings of pity and sorrow to her heart.

"Oh, poor raven," she coos, gently picking it up in her hands. "What terrible accident has befallen you?" She lays it in her basket, intending to carry it back home to the cottage, where 19-year old Aurora is weaving a dress with Flora and Fauna.