Work Text:
Satisfaction
Three Months Post Curse Reversal…
Maleficent, Dragon of the West, Queen of Thorns and Firebrand of the Valley, trod carefully in the village at the foot of the Dark Spire castle.
Regina’s castle.
She walked through the streets, examining the dirty little people around her and slowly closing in on her prey.
Regina.
She was owed a conversation with the little sorceress.
Near thirty years of imprisonment. Trapped in her dragon form. Trapped in the cavern. Trapped and killed in the cold, hard earth. Trapped away from the sky and the lands she had loved. Dragged from her homeworld and spat out rudely into her prison without once seeing the sky.
She had died horribly. A sword, an enchanted sword, Charming’s sword, hurled into her heart.
Maleficent’s hand traced over her chest and the faint scar there that remained even in her human form.
Oh yes, Regina owed her words in the very least.
Mal mulled over her revenge.
How should she do it?
It would be too simple just to kill her though Mal finally had the strength to just wipe Regina from existence should she be of a mind to.
It had been three months since she had awoken back in her castle. Torn and ragged though it was from the passage of time. She had wakened there as if that whole curse business had never happened but it HAD and she had come back to a ruin of her fortress, of her life, of herself.
The last three months had been hedonism, Mal would admit, gorging on whatever prey she came across, devouring nearly everything in sight but she was no longer that emaciated drake that had come back from the dead.
She was strong and proud. Her scales gleamed, her fire roared green and loud, her eyes burned and her voice could rattle mountains once more. Her wings were a storm, her claws knives sharpened to points that could rend armour and devastate brick and stone. Her tail could crack the air itself and her hoard was…well, that was a work in progress but she was sure that all those riches must have gone somewhere.
Still, she was herself again and it was glorious.
Now all she needed was her revenge and she could carry on rebuilding her life.
Maleficent worked her way towards the castle. She was the patient sort. You didn’t watch the rise and fall of empires by rushing headlong into things. She did not walk directly to the huge and admittedly intimidating (to mere mortals) gates that led to the main courtyard of the castle. She circled closer, it would take her an hour or more to reach the gates at this pace but she needed to be sneaky if she was to confront Regina without coming across the business end of Charming’s sword in her immediate future.
Mal sidestepped something…rank on the street and wrinkled her nose. She twitched the hem of her cloak away from the…whatever it was. She had forgotten how dirty these little creatures were. She slunk away from the gutters and checked the fit of her hood still covered the mass of her golden hair. She was taller than most men and evidently female, that made her stand out more than most. The subtle aura of malevolence she threw off cleared a path before her and she had never quite learned how to dampen that so that she might pass unnoticed amongst the puny meatbags but at least her face was covered.
Not that anyone save Aurora might recognise her and that little twit was well beyond Regina’s borders.
The gates finally came into view.
Mal felt a quickening in her chest. She was nearly there. Nearly close enough to her prey. She could practically smell her. Mal would recognise the scent of Regina anywhere…in fact…that was Regina’s magic.
THOOM!
Even Mal flinched when the huge gates of the castle portcullis were blasted apart by a concussive blast of magic and fire. The ground shook and the banners hanging from the castle walls billowed in the backdraft but that wasn’t what held Mal’s attention.
No, it was the figure that was hurled from the explosion that caught her attention.
Regina.
Only Mal’s eyes were fast enough to track the tiny sorceress being hurled from the castle gates, fast enough to recognise her despite her flaming skirts and the roar of the explosion and fast enough –bizarrely- to cushion her when she was flung through the side of a tavern like a rock through a window.
Mal’s magic acted before she could stop it, blasting apart the wall a second before Regina hit it and encasing her entire body in a shield of magic that would stop her mortal body from being shattered on the wall on the other side of the tavern.
Mal could only stare.
First at the smoking hole in the tavern wall, shimmering green with her magic, then down at her treacherous hand that had lifted to protect Regina.
Again.
Mal’s lip curled in disgust.
A slip. A relapse. Old habit and fetid weakness rearing its head in the lone soft spot in her heart. She inhaled deeply, drawing her cold reptilian nature over that soft warm spot and cobbled scales over it. She would NOT give in to…feelings again.
She was here to make Regina suffer.
End of.
Still, Mal turned as a snickering figure strolled from within the castle courtyard and through the ruined gates, Regina was hers to destroy. Not whoever this…creature was.
Mal arched a single brow when she saw the black clad woman saunter down the hill from the castle gates towards the Regina shaped hole in the side of the building. She smirked lazily to herself, taking her time and her skin was a deep and verdant green. It shimmered as if embedded with emerald glimmers.
Mal’s immediate thought was pretty want now, immediately followed by; rug.
Not that there was anything wrong with being green. It was a perfectly respectable colour for a dragon of course. Some of Mal’s best friends had been green before they’d all moved on to pastures…uhm…golder.
Still, on a human, it just looked tacky.
“Are you alright, darling?!” The green bit of fluff called towards the smouldering hole in the side of the tavern. “Was my little love-tap a bit too enthusiastic?”
Something clattered inside the tavern and Regina reappeared, looking a little confused, but entirely unharmed. She wasn’t paying attention to her attacker, rather she looked at the jagged edge of the wall she had been thrown through. Her fingers traced over the remnants of Mal’s midnight green magic. She rubbed her fingers together, measuring the texture, and then her head lifted and she scanned the crowd gathering around the two magic users squaring up to fight.
Regina huffed a breath when none of them had the sense to turn tail and run. The very reason she had taken a hit square to the face in the courtyard of the castle was so that Zelena would focus on Regina and no one else would be caught in the crossfire. Snow and Charming were safely back beyond the castle walls but the rest of the great unwashed didn’t seem to have gotten the memo that Darwinism was actually a thing.
Well, she supposed that was what she got for cursing them all to a realm where Creationism was part of the ‘educational’ curriculum.
Still, perhaps Zelena would finish pounding on Regina before Idiots One and Two turned up with the cavalry and succeeded in getting themselves turned into sandwich meat.
Regina’s gaze swept the street searching for the source of the magic that had cushioned her fall. It was green, but a different shade and texture to Zelena’s…but that was impossible. Mal was dead…wasn’t she?
Across the street, Mal smoothly stepped back behind a clutch of peasants and into a shadow. Regina’s eyes were good, but not that good. She’d remain unseen.
“Regina!” The green witch mocked delight. “Still in one piece! Have you been practicing, sister-mine?”
Regina looked up from the glittering magic in her palm and rolled her eyes.
“Zelena, do you ever stop talking?” Regina curled her fingers around Maleficent’s magic and clutched it there. She didn’t want to lose it. Was it possible…?
Still, her sister had to take priority.
“I mean, if you were half as irritating as this when mother squatted you into the world, it’s little wonder that she drop-kicked you into a different dimension.” Regina waved her hand airily.
She knew fine and well that she was about to be humiliated and have her ass handed to her but she would at least deserve it in some small fashion. If she was going to be bloodied then –by all the gods- Zelena was going to be stung too.
“Did you ever think that maybe she just kept you because you were the sickly one?” Zelena bit out. “The one that needed looking after?”
“Nope.” Regina smiled sweetly. “I rather imagine she kept me because I didn’t clash with the lawn.”
Mal’s lips quirked despite herself.
She was outmatched, her little Regina, but she’d never go down with a fight. Not ever. She was fearless. It didn’t matter that her apparent sister could crush her like a bug and would have had Mal not stepped in, she’d spit venom right to the very end.
“I didn’t always look like this.” Zelena began to prowl, her movements becoming predatory.
“Really? I don’t think so.” Regina ran her tongue over her teeth and slunk down out of the tavern and onto the street proper. Prowling as easily as Zelena did. “Admit it, you had an accident. Don’t get defensive! There’s no shame in it, LOTS of magical students that wash out have them. Their power just reaches beyond their cognitive capacities sometimes and a student like that is no use to anyone.”
Mal worked down her chuckle when Regina smirked as she delivered the barb smoothly.
Vicious little queen.
“The only accident I’ve EVER suffered was not killing you decades ago.” Zelena snarled, her lips peeling back over her teeth.
Mal wrinkled her nose when it seemed the woman’s mouth was filled with primarily gum.
“What stopped you?” Regina shrugged her shoulders, still circling, not letting Zelena flank her. “Hmm? Bottle it at the last instant?”
“Rumplestiltskin.” Zelena snarled. “He intervened to save his PET curse caster.”
“So Rumple saved me?” Regina’s hand went to her chest. “How sweet. I knew I was the favourite. Ooh,” Regina bit her lip and mimicked contrition, “sorry. Sensitive subject?”
“I was ALWAYS the better student.” Zelena’s hands curled into claws and Mal tensed.
She was going to- -!
Regina saw it, of course she did.
Magic blasted from Zelena’s palm. Nothing save pure brute strength. No finesse, no skill, just a howling blast of energy as wide as Regina was tall.
Regina spun so she faced Zelena side on, one hand swept down like an axe blade into the oncoming storm, splitting the boiling magic in two so it screamed harmlessly past her, missing her by inches. She hurled her other hand up behind her and dug a wedge of her own power beneath Zelena’s, redirecting it away from the watching peasantry and bleeding it harmlessly into the sky.
Zelena’s eyes went wide and her snarl rumbled across the distance between herself and her sibling. Magic sparked from her eyes and Regina just dusted her hands off casually even though they stung horribly from the heat and friction of all that power.
Zelena was just warming up and it had cost Regina far too much to redirect that. A small measure of her power, true, but compared to what Zelena had just expended…this fight was not stacked in Regina’s favour.
The only reason she was still alive was because Zelena wanted to toy with her.
Zelena glanced at her hand as if it had betrayed her.
Ah, she hadn’t expected that. She had thought Regina would be hurled through another building with that force as she had done when she had taken the first hit in the courtyard rather than let Zelena’s attention fall on Snow and Charming.
Well, long may it continue that Regina surprised her.
“How did…?”
“Oh, just a little trick I picked up along the way.” Regina smiled innocently and her eyebrows raised. “What, dear sister, did you think I stopped learning after I graduated from Rumple’s Dark Magic One-oh-One class?”
Zelena seethed, not entirely getting the reference but one or two people in the audience snickered and that didn’t please her at all.
“Hmm, is that a flicker of uncertainty I see there? Are you out of tricks already, you common brute?” Regina spoke through her teeth. “I can see now why he cast you aside. Too clumsy. Too vulgar. This is the ART, Zelena.” Regina rolled her hand on her wrist and a shower of purple sparks shimmered through the air. “This is the greatest thing that any civilisation has ever mastered and you hurl it around like a hog in mud.”
“Tricks are for weaklings!” Zelena’s eyes blazed. “Me? I’ve got REAL power. Power that requires none of your pathetic slight of hand!”
“Arrogance. Hubris.” Regina cocked her head and smiled, sticking the knife in. Incredibly, the angrier Zelena got, the more Regina appeared to relax. She was enjoying her afternoon’s entertainment. “Stupidity. All of those you have in spades…and they’re exactly what will get you killed.”
“So long as you go first!” Zelena hurled her hand up again and Regina was just barely fast enough to deflect it this time.
Green lightning surged across the distance between them and Regina’s hand snapped out. A pitchfork tore from the grip of a nearby peasant and slapped into her palm with a crack of sound. She roared with the effort of stabbing the fork’s tines into the lightning. The metal drew the wildfire energy into it and Regina screamed as she plunged the pitchfork between the cobbles, shattering them in a three foot radius and grounding the lightning harmlessly away.
She sagged against the pitchfork, breathing hard, strands of her hair torn free of the neat knot on top of her head, but still, she was calm in the face of her sister’s crackling rage. Calm and serious.
“You’re an idiot, sister-mine. Everything you learned, you learned from Rumple and I outgrew him long ago. No matter what you do to me, you’ll always be second best. No matter how many times you beat me into the ground, bloody me, muddy me, I’ll never be broken by the likes of you.” Regina all but hung off the pitchfork but she did not fall and she did not surrender. She spoke with a voice that was low but carried easily.
She had all the experience with public speaking after all.
“I am the Evil Queen. Surpasser of the Dark One, Caster of the Dark Curse, Scourge of the Enchanted Forest, Captain of the Blackguard, She Who Must Be Avoided and Heir to the Red Court. I have kidnapped entire countries, rewritten memory and stolen voices. I have crossed worlds, killed legends and made myths real. I am immortal. You could destroy every history book that bears my name, burn every tapestry decrying my heraldry and strike out the eyes of all who ever looked upon me but I would survive, sister. I would live on in the darkness of good men’s hearts, in the fear they hold of the night, in the seductive temptation of the Other Woman.”
Zelena’s eyes blazed and her mouth opened in rage that she could not give words to.
In the alleyway, Mal smirked. There was her queen.
Bloodied but never beaten.
“And you?” Regina panted but forced herself upright, lifting her chin and sneering down her nose at her sister despite Zelena being the taller of the two. “You were thrown over for the younger model, your own magic turned against you and when it wasn’t doing that it was enchanting household cleaning supplies. Your pets reinvented the heinous stench of Eu de Wet Dog and the only good thing that can be said about your dress sense is that you are aptly pre-packaged for your funeral.” Regina bared her teeth and snarled the last.
The last thing Regina wanted was Zelena to play with her food. If Regina was going to be killed, it would be in a single instant, not over a period of weeks. She had to goad her into unleashing all that power at once and just immolating her before her nerves could even register the pain.
“I am legend, Zelena, and you are nothing more than a green smear on the heel of my boot. Give it a few years and you’ll be nothing but a pitied memory. The woman that tried to outdo the Evil Queen.” Regina lifted her arms, spreading them wide, a malicious grin on her face. “The woman that was doomed to fail because there is only one Regina Mills.”
Zelena roared and hurled her hand up.
Regina had nothing left, Zelena was just too strong, she cried out as a half dozen cobblestones were torn from the road and smashed into her chin. Her feet kicked up over her head and she went down hard, her head cracking off the street with a sickening sound.
Mal tensed, her breathing hitched. She took a step forward before she stopped herself.
This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Regina cast into the dirt, beaten and bloodied. Vengeance would be hers without her ever lifting a finger. Let the other one, her sister, expend all the energy.
Mal swallowed hard.
Yes, let her.
What did she care if Regina perished here and now at the hands of the green witch rather than at Maleficent’s teeth or claws?
Why should she care?
Still, she flinched when Regina cried out in pain again.
Cobblestones rose up in snaking chains and bound the Queen’s wrists so fiercely that the bones creaked in her arms. She ground her teeth as she was hoisted up by the columns of demonic jenga until she was lifted to her knees. She was breathing hard through gritted teeth, biting back the screams of her pain.
She’d not give Zelena the satisfaction.
“Hmm, subtlety’s not looking so high and mighty now, is it?” Zelena sauntered forward with a jaunty swing of her arms. “What was that about being a hog in mud? Looks like I’m not the only filthy one.” Zelena dragged her finger through the streak of mud on Regina’s cheek.
She snickered when Regina wrenched her face away as much as she was able in her stone manacles snaking around her arms from wrist to shoulder. Grinding and twisting tighter and tighter until Regina’s eyes watered.
“I never said,” Regina panted, “that I was subtle.”
“Now who can’t stop talking?” Zelena threw up her hands and then let them fall against her hips, looking around at her captive audience as if for validation. She turned back to Regina and smiled smugly. “Though it is true; anyone with that kind of neckline is just desperate for attention. Compensating for something, Gina?”
“I don’t need to compensate.” Regina spat blood and it splattered over Zelena’s shoe. “Not when you were beaten by my very name before we ever even met.”
Zelena’s response was to backhand her sister hard enough to lift her knees off the ground and wrench her arms so hard in her bonds Regina thought her shoulders might dislocate. She breathed hard, blood dripping from her nose and mouth down onto her chin.
“Tell me, sister dear, how does it feel to be beaten?” Zelena gripped Regina by the chin and hauled her face around to face her. “You’re bloodied and muddied, bound on your knees and your magic done. You have nothing.”
“No.” Regina ran her tongue over her teeth, checking to make sure they were all still there probably but it still made her look feral and the blood staining her mouth just made it seem as if she was hungry for more. “I told you, Zelena. You’re stupid and you’re arrogant and it’ll get you killed.”
“Big words from someone in a stone straightjacket.”
Regina smiled such a wicked and genuine grin in response that Zelena felt a flicker of…uncertainty. It flashed in the whites of her eyes and that was what Regina had been waiting for. She leaned up as far as her bonds would go so that she could hiss into the still ducked Zelena’s ear.
“Just because you can only channel magic through your hands doesn’t mean the rest of us haven’t learned otherwise.”
Zelena’s eyes went wide but she was too close. Too arrogant. Too stupid.
Regina opened her mouth and fire poured out of it.
White hot and tinged with purple. Blazing plasma and flame boiling up out of her gullet. Slamming into Zelena and hurling her backwards, smacking her into the wall of the house across the street, setting her clothes alight and sizzling her skin.
Regina coughed, the flames dying, and she sagged to her knees. Smoke billowed from her lungs with every breath, but she was smiling even if her teeth were blackened with soot. She choked a coughing laugh and hung limply from her bonds that hadn’t loosened despite Zelena being batted across the street and into a wall.
Mal stood in the mouth of the alley, her eyes wide and her lips parted in shock.
Dragon fire.
That had been dragon fire.
Mal had breathed it into Regina herself. A gift of power between –well- lovers. Considering how Regina had changed, Mal had thought that she must have squandered the gift decades ago but she had kept it.
All those years, all those hardships, all of them that had beaten her bloody and laid her low and she had never parted with Mal’s fire.
Never.
Zelena exploded out of the wall with an inarticulate scream of unadulterated rage. Her ragged flesh that blistered even now healing at an accelerated rate.
“You insignificant little trollop, I’ll see you BURN!”
The Witch swarmed across the distance between them and snatched her sister up by the hair. She wrenched Regina’s head back and jammed her thumb into the corner of her jaw, forcing her mouth to open.
Regina gasped in pain but she was done. She had nothing left. Let Zelena rage. She’d faced worse and she’d lost enough. She’d lost everything she’d ever cared about. What was her death in comparison to that?
Regina didn’t fear death, not her own anyway, that was the difference between Zelena and Regina. Regina was not afraid of her and she had nothing to lose.
She met Zelena’s eyes and let her contempt show. She let her utter disrespect pour from every part of her. She was not beaten, not even now, her sister might pour the entirety of her power down her throat and rend her to charcoaled pieces from the inside out but she’d never truly win.
“What’s the matter? All tapped out? Run out of spark? Shall your big sister help you?” Zelena laughed a ragged an unhinged sound. Green fire filled her free hand. “Let’s see what happens when you mess with real fire.”
“Yes.”
Mal’s voice filled the street as she felt her magic overtake her.
“LET US SEE!”
Blood pounded in her head and her vision hazed white until the world fell away and the only thing that was left was Zelena.
The Witch spun, dropping Regina to face this new threat and she blinked when confronted with a black storm cloud of magic that howled from an alleyway. It boiled and spilled forth, purple lightning striking from within, thunder hot on its heels and green sparks flying in every direction.
The sheer power of it crashed over Zelena like a wave in high tide and she was staggered back several steps falling to her knees in a messy sprawl. She caught herself on her hands and stared up at the…the monster that rose above her.
A dragon.
A real dragon.
Maleficent rose up on her hind legs, her great wings unfurling to their full extension and her lips peeling back over razor ivory fangs nearly as long as Zelena’s arm.
Her black scales glittered in the sunlight with every colour of a starling’s wing. Her purple underbelly shimmered with the heat of green tinged fire boiling already in the dragon’s gullet and her horns raked the air when she tossed her head from side to side and roared.
Zelena could only stare. Her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. She would have paled had her green skin allowed it but she could only stare.
“Uhm…”
Those were her last words.
Maleficent fell forward like a force of nature. A landslide would have been kinder, a tsunami less destructive, an earthquake had more mercy than Maleficent in that moment. She became the Dragon with all the horrors, fears and nightmares that would entail. The sight of her was branded into the mind’s eye of all who saw her that day and they would never –ever- forget what she was or what she did next.
No matter how hard they might try.
Her jaws closed around Zelena and she hauled her up off the ground with a scream from the Witch. She tousled Zelena with a rattle of her bones crumbling and a sharp stifling of her screams. Mal shook her like a terrier with a rat, shattering her from the inside out and then hurled her to the ground. She wrenched at her with all ten claws on her front talons, ripping into the pink mush of mess that was left like a raptor on a rabbit. White hot fire vomited out of her mouth and splashed over the gloop that was left of Zelena, burning the magic clean out of it, cracking the emerald that Mal had sensed to be the seat of her power and shattering it into nothing.
She gulped all of it down, the magic, the coal black bones, the charred meat and the boiled green flesh. She devoured every portion of Zelena and ate her heart last.
The head she left, even if it was a charred mess cracked like an egg against the cobbles but that hardly mattered.
She picked it up and, turning to Regina, dropped it down onto her lap.
Regina swayed where she knelt on the ground and weaved backwards so she could look all the way up at Mal. She frowned and then sagged forward to look down at the smoking remains of her sister’s head in her lap.
“Oh.” She croaked, her throat still charred from the dragon fire. “Lovely.”
Mal snorted a long plume of green smoke.
Always so ungrateful.
Mal grumbled and bent, huffing magic over the bricks still cobbled around Regina’s wrists and arms, crumbling them to nothing. She caught Regina against her snout when she fell forward as if to land on her face.
The dragon was entirely stunned when Regina’s arms tortured their way around her dragon’s face and she whispered brokenly against the scales between Mal’s eyes.
“I missed you so much.”
It was there for an instant, that softness, that surrender to Regina’s true feelings, but it was there.
Even if only for a second.
Though there was still the audience.
Terrified by the dragon now dominating the street, a little dumbfounded that said dragon had just eaten someone than not even the Evil Queen had been able to defeat and wondering what might now happen since they weren’t at all sure if they should be pleased that the Queen was on good terms with the gigantic flying furnace.
All too soon, Regina weaved to her feet and straightened up from leaning on Mal’s face. She stroked her hand over her cheek as she drew away and bent to pick up Zelena’s head by her charred hair. Regina wrinkled her nose and then flicked her fingers at it.
The head disintegrated as Regina reduced it to its composite parts and then she turned to look up at Mal. She propped her hands on her hips and studied the dragon for a long moment.
“And I suppose you’re next on the list of Those Wronged by the Evil Queen?”
Maleficent arched a brow and snorted smoke.
“Well, you can hardly blame me, considering past actions between us.” She waved between them and Mal just smirked.
“Not those actions.” Regina rubbed a hand over her dirty face and grumbled mostly to herself. “Save me from the lusts of dragons.”
Mal snorted a distinctly amused sound. Regina had never –EVER- asked for such a thing in the past nor would she ever legitimately ask in the future if Mal had any say in matters.
Perhaps there was more than one way to exact satisfaction from the tiny queen.
Mal’s tongue traced over her lips and she considered Regina from beneath hooded lashes. Regina frowned up at her, pondering out what the dragon was thinking. Her eyes widened when she caught on a half moment before Mal moved.
“Oh, no! No, no, no, no- -ack!” Regina tried to back away but Maleficent’s head darted down as quick as a striking cobra and she had Regina between her jaws before the queen could even get two steps.
Regina shrieked in indignation when she was hoisted up as easily as a kitten by its mother. Mal turned nimbly in the street and went trotting towards the castle with Regina caught gently between her teeth.
She ignored the stares of Snow and Charming and their assembled cavalry. Stepped nimbly over the shying horses and slunk through the castle gates as if she owned the place.
Fair enough, she supposed because –as soon as she could retake her human form- she’d own Regina soon enough.
Mal anticipated the coming confrontation with no small amount of glee.
Satisfaction indeed.