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“we did nothing,” maleficent grumbles to herself, her fringe casting a shadow over her glowing eyes, the black strands shimmering with both the sickly glow emanating from her sceptre matching the green in her pupils, and the haunting red of the night’s glow seeping in through the gaps of the dungeon’s entrance behind her, “we were— we were perfect, we did— hrmph— did everything right! and she still leaves us behind!—”

she grunts with the effort of once more tugging at the towering doors to the werewolf dorms with all her might, snapping out yet another curse in the tongue of dark fey when the heavy walls of wood don’t budge.

she immediately hunches back over the large silver lock stretching its tentacles of restricting chains across every inch of the door before her; leaning her sceptre impossibly closer with one hand, as her other achingly returns to meticulously gesturing her magic to unlock the door—and, her black lips in a foul sneer, return to furiously muttering about her beloved girlfriend that has disappeared for the last two whole days.

“she’s in there, hiding from us…” her voice grates like rusted nails along bare skin, unforgiving and yet still feeling its own pain, as sharp ends dull against the endless strikes, and are forced to swallow bitter flakes of skin and drown in rivers of blood, “she’s laughing to herself, smug as she thinks about us slaving away out here, crawling on all fours, chasing after her like a pair of fucking dogs—well, she’s the dog, she’s the mutt that’s going to regret ever daring to abandon me!”

suddenly, she breathlessly whirls to face the boy behind her, “right?!” she demands with unbidden tears flinging from her eyes, her desperate voice barely restrained from riving her apart in a sob, “we’ll make that monster pay!”

shadowing her—a statue stood immovably in the centre of the narrow hallway, mercilessly depicting a young god with his tight fists stuffed into his jacket pockets and a stony expression made of edges that crack with heartbreak—is hades. his eyes barely flicker from glaring holes into the aether ahead of him to acknowledge his girlfriend.

with a monotony lacking his usual inkling of playfulness, he replies, “yeah.”

maleficent’s every nerve ending is frayed, not a single feeling reaching the heavy heart sinking in the core of her chest other than a protective fury that distracts her from the terrifying failure of sadness—even if hades had fallen to his knees with his ringed hands to his chest, pleading yes, my darling, i’ll skin our girlfriend alive and sew her remains into a new cloak for you, she would still have found an escape from the pain to latch upon, to futilely attempt to pass the ache onto someone else like the lonely little girl inside her has done all her life.

“silence,” she hisses back at him, mouth curled in disgust at the furious crackling of his hair tinging overwhelmingly with angry warm tones that outshine even the bask of the crimson light outside, “we’re sneaking in after curfew, you fool,” she scoffs at the still consistent pattering of flames, even as hades bites down his jaw until it snaps to try to silence the manifestation of his deepest anxiety. but, he’s quickly freed to return his hopeless stare back to the impassable door blocking him from you, when the wrath maleficent’s glare is stolen by an incessant squawking for attention bursting from a frustrated raven, who flaps in circles around the lengths of red light echoing in from the night sky beneath the door they entered through.

“shut your trap or i’ll do it for you!” she screeches, stomping a menacing foot towards her familiar, “everyone needs to simply shut up. otherwise, i will never be able to concentrate!”

she turns back to the door after one last glare fans over to bully even the slightest shadow lurking in the hallway, back to huffing under her breath and demonstrating the definition of madness; repeating the same old spell meant for breaking binding curses, in an attempt to shatter the lock out of her way.

hades—who now does nothing more than stare over the top of his girlfriend’s head at the wooden carvings, depicting the lunar cycle in intricate little pictures he’s now bitterly memorised every crease and curve of—would usually be sidling up to his grumpy girl’s side already by now. his low voice would offer something only slightly teasing as a thin veil over his genuine inquiries, searching for anything he could do to help ease that permanent crease between her sharp brows—but now, the boy made of fire is frozen bone deep, by the ice cold breeze that marks the possible beginning of a winter where one of the fires warming his life is snuffed out.

his supposed ferocity courses through his veins like a winter’s snowcapped river, the rushes of frost that clench his fists and grit his teeth fuelled by a tortured anger. at you, for thinking that you could get away with slipping from between his fingers, as if his hold on you meant nothing at all—and at himself, for being the one that hadn’t held on to you tight enough to keep you with him.

but invincible gods forged from hellfire don’t hurt, they don’t falter, they don’t crumble to bow before that weak thing palpitating lovesickly in their chest, they don’t choke on tears over some girl that made their cheeks turn pink and their aloof walls collapse into swarms of butterflies only three days ago (back when you were still there, and he still believed you’d say right where he wanted—needed—you, forever). untouchable gods get what they want, and they don’t lose it—and even if it does escape, does abandon them without a single glance back-ways, they never actually wanted it in the first place, right?

so hades convinces himself that he’s not being torn apart by the hole of your absence from his life; he’s strong, he’s above all of this tender nonsense that runs through people like you who aren’t destined for evil greatness like himself and maleficent. so he doesn’t comfort the other girlfriend that he’s still holding onto, because there’s nothing to comfort her over. they’re both vengeful, ready to put a treacherous little beast in her place for being too disgustingly cowardly to grant them the mercy of just officially breaking up. there’s nothing soft for them to hurt over, if they only convince themselves that the tears pouring from their hearts are shards of solid blades ready to be wielded against the traitor that tricked them into ‘caring’.

“couldn’t even… show her face—” maleficent slams her side into the door with a groan when she misses her place in the spell, “—scared, was she?... she— she should be, should be terrified… for daring to… ignore us!…”

with one final heave, maleficent throws all the weight in her lithe frame against the doors… and they part, scraping along the stone floors; the sound of victory swelling in their thunderous rumbles, and the twinkling of silver chains rattling to her feet.

hades is faster to stride forwards determinedly, than maleficent is to recoil at the pungent fumes, of wet dog spiked with the unmistakeable metallic sting of blood now wafting in from the werewolf wing (everyone’s heard the rumours of how rowdy the werewolf students can get, apparently they’re not even allowed furnishments in the main hall because they kept scratching up armchairs and slamming paintings over each other’s heads—but maleficent has visited you in here before, and though the telltale werewolf stench of rain-soaked fur and muddy paws wasn’t absent, it certainly wasn’t this… concentrated, distressed, sharp, like the pointiest claws’ ends all hooking into flesh and digging until the void spits out from the seams like a scream). a pale hand lurches up to protect her nose while the other strains to close the door behind her, the frown that’s worried her face for the past two days slicing through the air down to her feet when she notices the lightest tapping of footsteps.

“no,” her voice, though muffled behind her hand, is still severe as the day she scolded him for not spreading his wings perfectly, ‘like so’, on his first leap from the nest as a fledgeling, as she fixes diablo’s ruffled little figure with a resentful glare, “you have proved that you cannot behave, so you will be keeping guard, outside.”

without waiting for a response, she turns her back and slams the doors shut.

…and misses the frantic leap of her beloathed raven slipping through the crack a moment before it seals, silently joining her on the other side.

rattily muttering to herself again, slightly hunched over to wipe the remnants of general werewolf grime staining that door off both her palms, maleficent takes barely a single, smallest, step forwards before raising her head resolutely—and immediately halts in her tracks.

three dorm doors on either wall of the wide hall cascade onwards, before reaching the halfway point perfectly in line with the doors to smallest rooms in the werewolf wing, where hades is blocked from nearing any closer towards your room at the head of the hall.

enid sinclair is a girl one year your junior, always dressed in the kitschiest clothes dyed all the brightest colours of the rainbow, with a matching smile twice as dazzling as her glittering makeup; the daughter of two inconsequential werewolves that have yet to offer their child anything more than the smallest room in this dorm wing, and the curse of being a werewolf well past the due age of her first transformation, swiftly bringing shame to her entire pack back home. but, for what she lacks in the scruffy fur, and harrowing howl, and a social acceptance even among kids so young as first years who have already transformed before their elder, she makes up for with her ability to make you instantly forget that in the blink of an eye.

maleficent, for a second, doesn’t recognise that this is the doe-eyed girl who follows you around like she’s your pup, with two-toned pastels dyed into blonde hair that bounces as she skips along your side like reanimated fairy floss—because, here, in the dark illuminated only by the moonstone hanging from a necklace of shimmering beads upon enid’s neck, and the final torch at the end of the hall mounted by your door, the girl’s eyes reflect a coldness deeper than the night. the strands of hair that usually frame her face with girlish curls at the ends are pulled back taut, as the softly ebbing luminescence of her moonstone casts a long shadow of her painted nails, elongated into razor sharp claws that poise defensively by her side.

enid is your best friend down here, the optimistic, but skittish, girl who always curls in on herself with a grimace when you force her to cross paths with your villainous partners. but now her free hand clutching her bulging pockets close to her torso isn’t frightened of the vk’s teasing her for the glitter gel pens tucked within them; she’s righteously protective—of what looks like a ring of keys older than any student here, weighing down her diy colour-block washed denim jacket, rustling amongst other items maleficent can’t make out from so far back.

she doesn’t try to subtly assess the couple on a meticulous scale of whether she thinks they’re good enough for her “bff” like she did when you first tricked all three of them into playing nice at an afternoon attending rumpelstiltskin’s travelling festival. here, in her kinds’ dungeon, under the cloak of night, she is what archimedes is to merlin’s sacred office, what cerberus is to the impenetrable gates of the underworld—she does not face “friends-in-law” that she tolerates for your sake, and hades and maleficent do not face the single person you staunchly forbid them from tormenting; they face a guard hound, and she faces trespassers.

“you,” maleficent seethes, an accusatory finger aiming at enid like an arrow poised for the head—the audacity of this pre-pubescent failure of a mutant to bar your partners from seeing you!  “this is all your fault, keeping her from us—!”

hades’ voice is lower than the depths of the styx, his deceptively even tone already quaking impatiently with the first word his dry throat utters, “let us through.”

just as hades’ heavy boot makes its first fall to step around enid, fluffy bunny-faced slippers meet him toe-to-toe, as she brandishes her claws inches away from slicing at his face, “no way,” she denies readily, her deep frown and sharp scowl clawing at rosy cheeks as her watchful glare shifts back and forth between the incomplete couple, “you’re not allowed down here. get out, or i’ll summon merlin.”

inside, maleficent has become nothing more than a broiling cauldron, bubbles of acid bursting against her ribcage, violent fumes licking at her spine like flames, her eyes alight with a resentful concoction of; indignation, the horror of imminent heartbreak, and a dash of lifelong hatred for bubbly little girls who always get what they want—including what’s hers.

she takes a bitter joy when enid grimaces at the raised volume of her crazed cackle, words jagged like thorns leaving the dark fey’s mouth as she takes a step forward for emphasis, “you sabotaged our relationship! because, what? you were jealous of all her attention not being on you?!”

enid’s threatening stance falters, “…what?!” though she quickly shakes her head, tensing her arm where it still outstretches to tease at the tip of hades’ nose, that flares with every heavy breath, “just leave, no one is allowed to be down here right now!”

maleficent scoffs, “don’t deflect, sinclair, you’re not getting away with this by batting your eyelashes. what was the plan, hrm? getting in our girl’s head and convincing her that we’re not good enough for her? convincing her to ghost us, just so perfect little goody two shoes can have her all to herself? your innocent act never fooled the likes of me,” she spits out the last word, “princess.”

sputtering, enid drops her claws to her side as her tense shoulders sag in disbelief, a bewildered expression shattering away her aplomb.

“what?!— do you seriously think i’m trying to, like… break you guys up?! she’s my friend too, y’know! i wouldn’t do something like that, ‘cause— because, what? you think i’m ‘jealous’?!”

“i’m done here,” hades glowers, shouldering enid as he begins to storm down the hall with heavy steps that awaken clouds of tracked-in dirt trailing behind him as they rumble the stones beneath him.

scrambling back in front of him—with only two rows of dorms left separating him from the door that he can now see is hanging ajar, like the patient open mouth of the black lagoon’s looming eel awaiting its fated victims, biding its time, for it knows that all will fall upon its tongue in the end—enid grabs at the collar of hades’ leather jacket with the hand no longer holding the mysterious items inside her pocket, and draws the deadly tips of her opposite hand’s claws to the vulnerable skin of the towering boy’s neck.

“don’t make me rip you to shreds, ‘cause i will,” she whispers, a promise, “for her.”

but the tense air of the standoff has withered under hades’ unyielding push towards you, and he only leans further into her hold, holding her gaze even when ichor threatens the surface of his skin, “try me.”

before anyone can so much as inhale their next breath—let alone make true on their threat to peel the skin off a god—a flash of feathery darkness swoops in on the entangled pair, sending both of them tumbling apart… and disturbing enid’s pocket with a well-placed brush of a talon, causing its contents to cascade, down past rainbow leg warmers splattered with foreign deep reds, bouncing off erect bunny ears that bend at the tips like a pout, all the way down to the floor, in a haunting scatter.

hades and maleficent freeze at the sight, their gazes snapping to watch the items fall; a used roll of gauze with barely enough left to wrap around a single injury, a crumpled little clump of bandages in various sizes mixed in with the wrappers of ones already used, a damp tea towel the size of a handkerchief like the ones uliana demands hook fetch her to wipe off her beads of sweat in the summer… and a smattering of bloodied tissues.

a ragged gasp escapes maleficent.

no longer impeded by the girl who now scrambles to retrieve what fell, hades sprints the final stretch to and past your gaping doorway.

enid’s panickily whispered shouts fall on deaf ears as maleficent soon rushes after her boyfriend, the couple slamming your door all but off its hinges as they burst into your room expecting the worst.

you’re hurt, is all that hades can process, with violently shaking hands that reach out into the darkness in the fear that you might already be waiting right there, breathlessly limping over only to collapse helplessly halfway, he let you out of his sight, he didn’t fight hard enough to pull you back into the safety of his arms the moment you inched out of them, and it’s all his fault that this landed you in a place of suffering where he couldn’t reach you—blood is dripping out of your eyes in place of tears, your teeth wrenched from your mouth one by one and fed back to you like seeds to her raven, until you can’t scream for their names through bloody gums and shards of bone, maleficent’s wet eyes blur across your cavernous dorm room in a struggle to locate you, as her mind conjures up nauseating visions of you wailing in the gloom for a help that never came, you’re limp, lying in the shadows of the trees circling the clearing where all the other kids play pirates with their friends, skull shattered from the fall as the shrieking fragments of bone try to flee, from the pain of knowing no one will come to help you, through the streams of red gushing from your ears.

this whole time they’d feared being the ones waiting in the dark for someone that will never come home, working themselves up with the thought of what could’ve been—but it was you, lying here, with your only company the blunt strike of night and a panicked friend rushing to stitch up wounds that had already long bled out; cold, broken, alone.

you whimper.

it echoes, bouncing through the dorm room that’s never felt bigger than now, when you could be tucked away into any nook or beneath any shadow, swiftly withering away without any way to save you. with her feet melded to the floor in terror, it would take maleficent the rest of her life to find you, like a reoccurring nightmare where you’re always just one more step out of reach.

she doesn’t know if he’s just fighting at the darkness in defeat, or if hades’ keen vision and hearing attuned to your heartbeat has detected you, when he lurches further into the room—only to once more be tugged back by enid.

she’s going to say something to hades, but what little equanimity maleficent might’ve had left is moribund, as she lets her sceptre clatter to the floor so she can take enid by the shoulders, clutching her with a grip like the teeth of a piranha, “what did you do to her?!” she pleads through the rumble of rising tears.

“seriously, i didn’t do anything!” enid’s face is contorted with anguish, red-rimmed eyes meeting theirs with a silent plead for the couple to keep their voices down, “she’s just having a… really, really bad moon cycle…”

maleficent’s voice is a brutal hiss that tears from her throat like a zombie biting out a chunk of flesh, “what does the moon cycle have to do with our girlfriend dying!?”

“she’s not dying!” the words burst out of enid in a weird reassuring frenzy, before confusion gradually melts over her features, “it’s just, y’know?” she frowns when neither show any sign of recognition to her expectant shrug, “she’s a werewolf…?”

returning enid’s grasp holding him back, with an unforgiving grip searing into her arm, hades breathes down her neck, “we fucking know that—” his face falls, his arm dropping enid’s limply, “oh.”

on the other side of the room, diablo makes himself known with taps of his beak against the crystal ball maleficent gifted you (it had marked a milestone in your previously ‘casual’ relationship, when she’d insisted upon keeping in touch when your father decided on a whim to send you to a far off neighbouring kingdom for a werewolf sleepaway camp in the middle of the semester) its round face reflecting a clear image of the blindingly red, full, moon outside—the light from the miniature moon casting down to where she finally lays eyes on you, never having looked so helpless and small, curled up in the corner with nothing more than a threadbare blanket dragged off your bed to hold you together, surrounded by snakes of bloodied gauze that tore off your torso when it started mutating with rippling wolf muscles, with the beginnings of blood-speckled tufts of fur growing along your icily chattering cheeks sparkling in the red light.

letting out a weary sigh as she realises that the couple hadn’t known about your time of the month, the weight on enid’s fatigued shoulders and the shadows under her eyes suddenly make themselves clear, like moonlight peeking through wispy clouds, as her hold on hades eases away, along with maleficent’s on her.

“everyone’s been having a really hard past few days, half the wing had to be forced out of their infirmary beds, where they were getting treated for the pain, so we could lock them in their cages on time,” she shivers, and maleficent feels something rotten build up in her throat at the thought of you being one of those bodies writhing upon the rough fabric of a gurney, as a growing snout tears waterfalls of blood, down the remnants of your nose, and past your parted lips with a wail and a gurgle, “i really tried to get her in her cage, too, but she’s so weak, she can barely open her eyes…”

“…enid?” you croak, squinting through weighted eyelids, your mind barely aware of anything other than your ragged breaths as you struggle to register the sound of your friend’s voice.

“h-hey…” enid whispers your name, failing to hide the shake in her voice that rattles with worry at the sound of your own pained voice, “your, uh, partners are… here.”

your mouth falls open in the smallest ‘o’ shape, before swallowing thickly a couple times to try to ease the sandpaper in your throat, “hi,” you greet hades’ hair illuminating his face like a vibrant halo (that has begun fading back from frightening oranges to his usual blue at the confirmation that you still draw breath), and the vague darkness seeping in beside him where you aren’t sure if you can see your girlfriend, or if your delirious mind is once again imagining the shape of the big bad wolf approaching the dinner table to help you with your homework, “sorr-y…”

while maleficent struggles to remember how to exhale, hades takes a hesitant step forward—then another, and another, and several more nervous little shuffles until he’s easing himself down to sit by your side. though he fears if he so much as grazes the tip of your blanket he’ll only pull you too close and hold you too tight, shattering your shifting bones, it only takes you a laggard moment to process his presence, before you’re heaving an inhale, steeling your aching muscles, and exerting every last drop of your energy to lean in until your head is tucked against his warm chest.

you let out a serene sigh, and he steadily convinces himself that you won’t shatter into a thousand little scraps of fur if he brings his left hand up to warm your side that had previously been unpleasantly scrunched into the corner.

“you’re, like, super witchy, r-right?” hades shushes you with an unbidden smile of his own when you try to crane your neck up to smile at him for his oath that you have nothing to be sorry for, as enid turns to maleficent with wobbling lips and hands gesturing jitteringly, “if you maybe, um, have literally anything—like, spells? or, just, something—that could help her—”

maleficent finally turns away from watching her partners longingly, bleary eyes drowning in uncertainty (are you really okay, are they sure you’re not secretly bleeding internally, or decaying before their eyes so slowly that they won’t recognise it until its too late, or—? or is this is still all just some cruel joke that ends with you breaking up with them… or even, only breaking up with her, leaving the problem behind while you fall asleep in the arms of the partner who’d actually succeed in never letting this happen to you ever again—he knows how to hold you gently, and all she knows is how to trip over her feet with a mouth full of cotton flowered from thorned vines when you need her most, how to bite at your tongue when it soothes her dry lips, and push everyone away when the shadows start closing in; before they can do it to her. she should leave, now, before she forces you to strain your aching voice to remind her that she’s never been wanted here, save herself the suffering and leave with one final, desperate, grasp on the delusion that it will be her choice…).

enid’s doe eyes meet maleficent’s, a desperation in them not unlike the naïve little fey that used to wallow in that sinking loneliness that would overcome her when none of the other kids would climb the trees with—or even acknowledge—her.

“just— she needs help, a-and… she loves you, both of you, like— i think you’ll help her feel better,” the crystal ball’s midnight glow of red shimmers across the sickly sheen smeared atop enid’s pale skin, the wobble in the squeamish girl’s every word and movement now clear without adrenaline haphazardly holding her together, “because i’ve tried everything i can think of, and it’s just not working— and she needs something, anything… please?—”

her shaky voice is quickly lost under the breeze of you meekly calling, “…mali?” from across the room.

and in the moment maleficent meets your eyes—wet pupils, reflecting the ambient light of hades’ hair, searching for her sharp black voids that have gone tender with fear, lifting a shaky arm from where it had been clutching your stomach, as if trying to keep your innards from unravelling amidst the agony, to reach out to her with trembling fingers—her heeled boots are suddenly thumping against the floor faster than the fall from the tallest treetop, to find her collapsing in a puddle of dark silk accented purple lace at your feet.

she doesn’t speak, as her hands (with a nervous shake in them almost rivalling the burning fluster in yours) delve into her pockets to produce a few crystals bundled together with twine, to which she mutters to herself with a shake of her head, and a hand on the floor vaulting her forward to lean carefully over your cushioned head, reaching to dig through the pockets of hades’ leather jacket, where the two of you have made a habit of stashing everything from ancient magic talismans, to crumpled up pages of lecture notes that you can’t be bothered to carry yourselves.

a handful of vials in varying shapes and sizes spread across the floor, thin consistencies of liquid staining the glass fervently as they swish where other, more viscous, concoctions barely bubble at the upheaval. maleficent promptly sorts through them, turning a long, thin, vial holding something barely visible tainted with pink in her palm, before discarding it back into the pile of intertwined gemstones, in favour of retrieving a flat circular vial, holding an opaque white liquid reminiscent of milk, that reveals hints of leaves sparkling like stars against the sky floating beneath the surface when she lifts it to eye level—stoppered with a thick bundle of fabric tied together by one of those same leaves, all of which she tears out with one fell swoop of her sharp teeth.

when her unoccupied hand hesitates short of taking your chin into her fingers, a warm palm comes from behind to hold your jaw gently, encouraging your dry lips to part as your neck shivers with the stretch of the backwards tilt.

with the cold glass of the vial held to your lips, the potion slowly droops to meet your tongue, a cold liquid that tingles like a brisk breeze, soothing the tightness in your throat as you swallow. nothing heals immediately (as much as you praise your girlfriend like she is, she wasn’t blessed by the sun with instant healing powers like zellie) but it no longer stings to inhale the cold air of your room, and your breaths don’t graze against the inside of your throat quite so roughly.

discarding the vial, maleficent produces another one; tall, slim, with a thick amber liquid inside. once more, she removes the stopper hastily, this time pouring the contents onto the tips of her fingers, and carefully avoiding the bloodstained tufts of fur sprouting along your feverish cheeks, as fluttery hands softly steady your face so she can smooth the balm along your sweaty forehead.

your breaths even for a peaceful moment, as her cold fingers lather the potion across your skin—your own twitchy appendages dipping in a mindless exploration; over the black silken skirt bunched over her knees, grazing the golden-goose bumps atop her porcelain skin, and venturing further down to the cold stone tiles below. it’s almost like it’s just any other day, and you’re digging through your girlfriend’s desk drawers like a dog with its head buried in the backyard, not stopping until you find a flimsy little knickknack to fuss over, or an ominous magical item that she repeatedly tells you off for playing with—and, today, your adventure leads the chapped pads of your fingers into the pool of emptied pockets where maleficent’s knees bend under her, grasping onto the icy body of a striking blue crystal hidden amongst a huddle of dusk-dark purples and greys that dare no lighter than the shadiest charcoal.

you choke on a surprised giggle when your girlfriend’s sticky hand drops to wrap around yours, the tingling amber potion melting into the back of your hand as her fingers assist your own weak ones in closing securely around the crystal.

“it’s…” she tries (but fails) to hold back a wince for your sake, “good luck?”

you meet her eyes with a hint of a cheeky smile, hades humming knowingly behind you, “r-really?”

“…no,” she sighs with a shy smile, ducking her head as she runs the tips of her fingers over your knuckles and to the pointed edges of the precious stone, “i think i stole it from grimhilde? it’s not magical, and…” she mutters to herself, with an amusing mixture of the upturn of her lips that she can’t fight, and something of a displeased sneer directed at the angelically light blue thing in your clutch, “it’s not even black, or purple.”

you’d shake your head fondly if it didn’t scrape at your bones like nails on a chalkboard, so you settle for widening your dry-lipped smile.

“i like it,” you whisper, the solid gem grounding your unsteady hand as you cautiously turn it over, tilting it just-so to reflect the sharp light of hades’ hair into the swirling lagoon inside its icy walls.

“keep it,” she whispers almost breathlessly, her fingers still holding yours, brushing your lips when you bring the cold crystal to your cheek like an ice-pack, her frosty eyes melted adoringly, “i like it now, too.”

you let out a contented hum, a thank you without the words that would further maul your inflamed throat to utter.

your eyes flutter shut as you settle back into your boyfriend’s chest with the guidance of his comforting arm around your waist. he offers a rare hint of a heartening smile to maleficent, which she returns with a quivering breath of relief, at the sight of your pain stricken face taking on a lazy serenity—forgetting the beginning of a billowing wolf’s tail rearranging bones to make room for it to tear the skin of your lower back asunder, no longer fearing the migraine that will shatter your skull like glass when your ears sprout—even if just for a single moment of peace more; simply indulging in the arms of your partners in the space between the next cramps to strike down against your misshaping limbs.

“i…” you take a shallow breath like a shiver, “…missed you.”

your partners repeat the same sentiment back without hesitation, hades reassuring you that they’ll never leave you to fend for yourself alone ever again, with his hand on your waist pulling you even closer, and maleficent pressing a kiss to the tip of your scrunched up nose with an apology (for not being here when you needed them, for—in those frostily lonely moments—believing the worst of you and your love for them, and for the pain you suffer at the height of each of these cycles, which she only wishes she could concoct a cure for).

you make a tiny attempt at a “mwah” sound back at your girlfriend, to which the twinkle of her softest giggles and the rumble of hades’ chuckle vibrating his chest serenade your weary eyes closed like a lullaby.

you drift in and out of a feverish sleep, consciousness blurring until you can’t differentiate your father sitting in the kitchen explaining arithmetic, from the squinted blur of the room shifting before you, as three sets of familiar, loving, hands steadily guide you to the safety of your securely locked cage across the room.

there’s a harsh snap down your spine, and the vague shape of a fully transformed werewolf with the same colouring on his coat that was passed down to you is handing you a quill so you can attempt the next equation yourself, so you reach out; finding one large, warm, hand clutching the bars of your cage beside a dainty, manicured, hand that returns the jagged shape of something blurred azure that had escaped your grasp in a spasm only moments ago, back into your palm, before holding your hand just the same.

and then the disfigured relief of worlds you cannot make sense of slips away, until your vision tunnels, until your teeth grow too big and violent for your raw mouth. until your fragile hind legs scramble for purchase on the cold stones paving the floor, like a baby’s first steps in a body too rigid, too fresh. until a shudder rattles deep beneath your skin, and you let out a growl where a gasp used to be. until your palms bleed fur, and your nails harden like raw diamonds, and you’re more of what you’re not than what you were—only then, do the hands comfortingly gripping yours slip away.

but the glittering blue stays, tumbling between paws, sharply catching the light before wild eyes.

the wolf stares, huffing, puffing, blowing grunted breaths out strong enough to knock a house down. but, when the howls of fellow werewolves begin to clamour down the hall, this wolf does not heed their call—it halts where it had been sniffing at the crystal, a conflict seizing its imposing figure. a cacophany of barks and growls are left unanswered by the creature with its paw tenderly tightening over the glistening blue.

an arm reaches out to hold the other protectively, as the wolf begins to inch up against the bars, nearing closer and closer towards the two figures standing closest to the threshold—but instead of lustfully inhaling the tense air like the hound out for blood they’d expect, the beast almost looks shy, with its mouth whistling out shaky exhales as its head hangs low, and a paw curls up to its chest. right over its monstrous heart, where it used to claw down to bone and rip all humanity from deep within just to trample over it along the blood-soaked ground, it now treasures the crystal with a warm hug.

and then it looks up—steadily, slowly, nervously; in all the ways unbecoming of the daughter of the biggest, baddest, wolf—until a large face stitched together of nightmares, but padded with innocence, lifts forwards, and meets green and blue eyes with a harsh, glowing, red. but, the moment the partners freeze under that terrifying gaze, the uneasy glare in its eyes is gone, as the wolf breathes them in with a growing ease of gentle breaths, and a fog like the clouds encircling the blood moon outside parts, fading to mist as it reveals a trusting calmness behind the animalistic reds; you.

maleficent straightens from where she’d been tucked into hades’ side, the boy’s mouth falling open in a silent awe, that creeps toward a smile, when the big bad wolfling tilts its head like an inquisitive puppy.

“she’s never done this before,” enid gasps from where she’d been relieving her light-headedness, seated on the edge of your mussed bed with a palm clutching her chest, “she’s usually angry—hurting—not…”

you take the crystal between your razor-sharp teeth, wide maw curled up almost like an attempt at a smile as you hold it with the utmost care—only to drop it at your paws, and nudge your wet nose against it until it slides under a gap in the bars.

in tune with maleficent’s burst of shocked laughter, hades grins, completing enid’s sentence lost to stupefied staring, “playful?”

enid can’t find the words to reply with more than a nod, an acute inhale losing itself amongst the normal werewolf sounds still flooding in from outside, as well as the assured taps of your boyfriend’s boots stepping up to your cage.

you recognise the waft of smoke and decay, forever tinted with the dark aroma of that floral perfume adorning the girl with potent fey blood running through her, before you even lift your heavy head to meet him at eye level. both of you seem to be drawing surprised smirks out of your girlfriend today, as you crouch like a scrunched-up ball of paper as to not tower over hades, causing him to breath out a soft chuckle at a fluffy face that he can properly appreciate as endearing now that it’s not actively mutating out of human flesh.

when he kneels to retrieve your crystal, you drop onto your stomach to join him—and stay there when he rises with a smirk, your wide eyes now focused unwaveringly on his hand wielding the translucent blue gemstone.

with a single step closer to your cage, he has your ears perking up intently.

another step, agonisingly unrushed, has the coherent mind in the back of your disfigured skull remembering that this is the boy who’s been playing catch with cerberus before the pup was daunting enough to guard so much as a doggy door, and knows exactly how to ramp up a dog’s energy until it’s all but pouncing for the ball in his grasp.

then, his hand is closing in on and unlatching a hatch meant for passing through bandages on only the very worst full moons—and a choked laugh from a fellow werewolf echoes brightly from behind hades, as your tail thumps rapidly against the floor.

your eyes lock once more, his flooded with mirth as yours burst with excitement. throw it, throw it now! you want to beg, but it wrangles out of your panting mouth as a high-pitched yelp, only earning maleficent’s “awww,”—which clatters into a surprised cackle, when she’s certain you were so impatiently exuberant that you were already leaping into the air before the crystal had actually left hades’ hand.

scrambling in a cloud of fuzz and dust, a paw swats at the crystal middair, flinging it to the corner of your cage, where you rapidly chase it in an entanglement of limbs giddily slamming outwards in unpredictable directions. there’s a desperate swipe of a hind leg impatiently stretching further than it can reach, a rattling thunk! as your head slams against the floor in a failed attempt to wriggle your way out of tripping over yourself—and, finally, heavy pants filling the air louder than your most celebratory yips, when you all but swallow the crystal whole victoriously.

and in a flash, you’re back, dropping the slobbery makeshift ball at hades’ feet, demanding again! again! again! with a series of imploring yaps, and bounces teetering atop your hind legs so hot-footedly that the fuzz outlining your body blurs.

so, he does; lobbing the crystal into the air so high your snout kisses the ceiling, or flinging it across the floor just hard enough so it bounces and rolls like an erratic golf ball, every time you return it to his feet. until maleficent inches up to his side, pinching the saliva-caked gemstone between the tips of two black polished nails, and snorting when you flop onto your belly to catch the toss in the hairy folds of your stomach.

as the game of fetch stretches on, enid slips out of your room with the door closing silently behind her—glancing behind her one last time to smile along with your partners, as you accidentally collide with the crystal midair, sending it flying back through the other side of the cage before you can catch it with a startled yelp—fleeing to her own dorm room with wobbly, sleep-addled, strides, already sighing in anticipation of the blissful fragrance of her fairy floss scented candle and the warm embrace of her fluffy covers… but, most importantly, grinning to herself at the thought of teasing you, for every little jubilant flap of your bushy tail and totally adorbs twitch of your ears every time your partners chuckled warmly, tomorrow.

it doesn’t take much longer for you to tire, bringing the game to an abrupt end as you flop onto your stomach with an exaggerated huff—and, though your partners titter at your dramatics (and the slow, untroubled, blink they get in return, likening you more to a regally pampered cat than a wolf that just tired herself running in circles), they soon settle down with you.