Chapter Text
Maleficent had taken to late night walks of the streets further from the center of town since Hyde and his people were starting to prove an irritating point. She rarely had to use magic since the first few shows of power. Her mere presence was now enough to stop trouble and have the culprit go to the Sheriff’s station willingly. This night, Lily declined to join her in favor of sleeping through the night.
The whiff of magic she caught made Maleficent tilt her head and feel for the direction it had come from. She knew that magic. It was far more familiar the past few decades of life than any other magic had been in a couple centuries. She stepped off the street and headed through a knot of trees, arriving at a small quarry.
Purple smoke moved through the shallow ditch, lurching boulders about into rough human shapes. The figure who stood with her back to the dragon was long gone yet more known to Maleficent than the woman she now knew. Maleficent didn’t strike immediately, instead coming to stand beside the Queen to watch the magical work.
“Stone may not feel fire, but it can be struck hard enough to shatter.”
The Queen beside her pulled a small vial from her riding coat. “Tell me, would you know the taste of your own sleeping curse after so long indulging in it?”
Maleficent nodded once, allowing a point in the brunette’s favor. “You may doubt the love of a child for a mother, but I do not.”
“A child who’s barely known you a year? Who despises your softness, your forgiveness?”
“You would not be alive if I did not know forgiveness.” And if Maleficent let heat roll off her for a few waves, well, she also had a few reminders to point out.
The Queen scoffed. “You love,” and she spat the emotional word, “HER too much to kill her.”
“No more or less than I have, or do, care for you.” Maleficent looked at the younger woman. “You are so entrenched magically with your golems, it would be entirely too easy to end the threat you pose.”
“And yet you’ll let me bring these destructive constructs into town because you -love- me.”
Maleficent shook her head, but decided to not let the Queen in on her plans to dismantle the golems before leaving the quarry. “I’m going to let you live so Regina will realize she cannot halve herself like this and expect to survive.”
-That- got the Queen’s attention. “What are you talking about?!”
“You are the Regina who would kill her father for the Dark Curse. She is the Regina who shed tears while doing so.” Maleficent fed the heat of her magic into the ground beneath their feet. “Separate, you both have your strengths. And yet, even apart, the two of you are not so different.”
“I am working on tearing this town apart!”
Maleficent scoffed. “You have within you enough magical power to set every home ablaze and strangle the life out of these humans entire blocks at a time. Yet here you are. Building golems. Targets that can be destroyed.” Maleficent shrugged lightly, churning her magic underground. “Neither here nor there. You have maybe until the next new moon before the both of you start to fade out of existence. A soul was not meant to be split in the way you have been.”
“If you think you can scare me back into the wretched creature, you do not know me as well as you think.”
Maleficent turned away, igniting her magic that lay in wait. “I know one thing rings true for you both: neither of you wish to die.”
The quarry became molten lava. The golems were consumed but the heat. The Queen’s rage was lost to Maleficent as she took flight.