“AND AGAIN, I’ll have to tell you I can’t.” What was so difficult about that? It wasn’t as if she were saying their shared KISS had been a mistake; though anything more certainly would be. Robin might be lost to her, for now, but she couldn’t give up hope in him yet. Perhaps she wouldn’t find the situation so… frustrating, were Maleficent not watching her with that knowing look. The smirk that spoke more than any words could. She knew. She knew that she still had a talon or two in Regina, but thankfully her willpower now was much more than it had ever been as a GIRL.
“If it’s a sleeping curse you’re offering now, I’m afraid I’d still have to decline. I do appreciate your… care, Maleficent. However, I’m currently —— involved. With someone else.”
It wasn’t always easy concealing what laid under the surface, a hair’s breadth from leveling everything for miles around her. But Maleficent had a tough skin as only a dragon could. She could hide anything if it was deemed necessary to her, and the sting she felt at being reminded of the denials she faced just one night ago was nothing in the grand scheme. Regina no longer mattered enough to have any deeper effect, not like she once had.
And she never would again.
“Can’t what? Get a little help from an old friend? I was only looking out for you.”
She grasped at the front she put on like it were Snow’s very throat. A deadly grip that none could survive. It was her loss anyway, of which she would be well aware. Surely thirty years in limbo wouldn’t have been enough to erase every memory, nor to dull the edges and peaks that Maleficent had brought the girl to, when she was still just a girl without a clue. She almost had to remind herself that they were not one in the same anymore, the girl and the woman she now was, nor would her slights be totally forgotten in favor of this budding…rapport they were rekindling all in the name of happy endings.
“And if I meant to curse you dear I would have cursed you the first chance I had, yet here you are still fiery as ever.” And yes, it was in fact, a compliment. One that nearly had to grit its way through her teeth.