fic: Stay Stay Stay

[furloughday]

Stay Stay Stay
Aurora/Mulan, 5k, Aurora and Mulan are bad at living together until they're not.
Author's Notes: This is my first Once Upon a Time fic, and was written for the holiday ouat-exchange for shopfront. Thank you to my lovely beta faithgrowsold ♥


Mulan hears the voice before she realizes what it is. When she's pulled from her dream, it's like being tugged up from deep water, the voice like the mermaids Mulan had once seen. She's been dreaming about the sea all week.

She rolls out of her sheets and moves downstairs quickly on the balls of her bare feet, following the voice down the stairs and through the dark living room into the kitchen, which is lit only by the stove light. The numbers read 4:08 in red.

But it's just Aurora. Of course it is. The sight stops Mulan in her tracks in the doorway. Aurora has her back to her. She's wrapped in her housecoat, washing the dishes by hand instead of using the dishwasher, and there's a mug of tea on the counter, and she's-

"Why are you singing?"

Aurora starts, but doesn't drop the pot lid she's holding. She looks over her shoulder, then resumes washing. "Couldn't sleep," she says after a beat.

Mulan steps into the room. "But why are you singing?"

"I don't know, it's something I do?"

"Well, don't," Mulan says. And maybe it's not the most polite thing to say, but really, who sings at the top of their lungs in the middle of the night, anyway? Mulan’s heart’s still beating fast. "I mean. You could have been in danger."

Aurora laughs. "From who? Singing bandits?"

It's true. Mulan almost feels embarrassed but that dissipates when Aurora hums a few notes defiantly. Mulan stares at her. She thinks about how this is somehow something she's grown to love about Aurora, how Aurora does whatever she wants, whenever.

Anyway, she's not full out singing. It's a compromise.

"Thank you," Mulan tells her. Aurora raises an eyebrow and turns back to scrubbing a pan.

The moment stretches, only Aurora’s humming and the sounds of water between them, and when Aurora doesn't make further attempt at conversation, Mulan takes it as her cue to leave.

She heads back upstairs, bars of moonlight falling through cracked curtains and pieces of furniture looming in the dark like beasts asleep. In bed, it takes half an hour for her pulse to really settle, thinking about this new world with a hundred things that could go wrong, this precarious existence.

They've been in Storybrooke, in this house, for a week, living together despite how they would have chosen otherwise. Something has to change, she thinks. She and Aurora are here now, existing for better or worse in this foreign town, with no clear direction. In all honesty, it's been kind of terrible.

Mulan decides then and there, wrapped in sheets and half-awake, that she’ll make sure it works.

That settled, she closes her eyes. She takes deep breaths and wills her thoughts away. At least one of them should sleep.

"You'll take the house on Gingerbread Lane," Prince Charming had told them that first day, after they'd sprung up through a broken mine shaft. There'd been tearful reunions between Emma and her son and Snow and Charming, while Mulan and Aurora stood off to one side.

Mulan had ducked her head, uncertain whether she was supposed to stand on tradition, but Aurora had no similar compunction.

"There has to be more than one house left in this whole town," she’d said.

Mulan had frowned at her feet. Because while it was true that there wasn't a reason for them to stay together since they'd made it to relative safety, half of her rebelled at the thought of Aurora being anywhere out of her line of sight.

David had considered them, before finally saying, "There's not much room to live here. The curse seems to have created just enough homes for everyone, so you'll have to share."

And that had been that. Snow had deposited them at this house with the white fence and red mailbox, along with a cardbord box of clothing that might fit.

Mulan answers the door now, and Snow is back in a pink cardigan, smiling.

"Mulan," she says, and hands Mulan a basket of fresh bread. Even though they’ve spent the last few weeks together, Mulan still feels compelled to drop down to one knee.

Aurora pushes past her while she’s fighting the urge. "Snow!"

Mulan watches Aurora kiss Snow's cheek like they're old friends, and then goes to put the bread in the kitchen. Aurora and Snow are like two princesses out of the fairy tales Mulan's mother used to spin when the fire was low in wintertime.

"It's not that I don't want to live with her," Mulan hears Aurora say quietly from the other room. "It's just that we hardly know each other. We’re not friends, not really."

"Things are going to be fine," Snow tells her, at which point Mulan makes herself stop listening and goes to the living room, because eavesdropping never results in anything good.

Once Snow leaves, Aurora comes in and throws herself onto the couch and puts an arm over her face while Mulan stands in the doorway examining a photo on the wall. It's of three kids and two parents, all with red hair and toothy smiles. This is someone else's house, not her own.

"We're just strangers here," Aurora mutters, like she's thinking the same thing.

"We'll just have to try," Mulan tells her.

Aurora sighs and picks up a magazine from the coffee table. "I guess."

She spends the next hour reading. Mulan tries to read a book but thinks more about the future and how she's going to make this work. After a while, when Aurora begins commenting on dresses and shoes out loud, and Mulan looks up to listen.

Aurora tosses the magazine over to her to show her something particularly shocking, and after a while of this back and forth, eventually closes her eyes and lets the magazine drop to the floor. Her face is smushed into the pillow, hair messy, which shouldn’t be as adorable as Mulan is finding it. But there’s a small frown on her face, even in sleep.

Watching her, Mulan is filled with greater resolve. That afternoon she plants poppies in the front garden.

Part of Mulan wants to say, of course it's not going to work out.

Living in Storybrooke is nothing like being out in the world, it's nothing like the steady conviction of a quest. Where Mulan is used to the open forest, her tent planted in the middle of a clearing in the middle of nowhere. Here, the people of Storybrooke are a mess of enemies and friends living next door to one another. Mulan is used to being put to sleep by the pop of a smoldering, rain-doused campfire and woken by birdsong, but here there are cars outside and knocked elbows on the couch and the reality of a shared toothbrush holder.

But even though she feels tentative around Aurora, on-edge and wire alert in this own skin, Mulan can't entertain the thought of leaving her alone, either. Maybe Aurora doesn't realize, but for all their locks and double paned windows, the picket fence and locked sidegate, they're out in the open, unprotected. And that's just reason number one.

Two weeks in, it’s three in the afternoon and a breeze is coming in through the second story window. Mulan is seated in front of a mirror. She's already brushed out her hair one hundred times and is rebraiding it into something tight, when there's a crash downstairs.

She's on the landing in an instant, and then three seconds later she’s drawing her sword from the umbrella stand by the front door. She crouches in the living room, blade at the ready. There's another crash and what sounds like people yelling and she gives up cover and races in and attacks, swinging her sword in a swift arc and makes contact.

From over on the couch, Aurora screams.

"Mulan! What are you doing?"

Mulan is breathing hard. "What?"

"The TV! You broke the TV!"

Mulan looks around. There’s glass and metal showered all over the floor.

"Oh. Right."

"Why would you swing without looking first should really be my first question, but why at all-?"

Mulan catches her breath. "I thought you were being attacked." She leans her sword against the fireplace. Saying it aloud now feels kind of stupid.

When she looks up, Aurora doesn't look mad anymore. Her cheeks are pink and she has a queer look on her face that makes Mulan straighten her shoulders like she's preparing for daily inspection.

"You have got to stop reacting like we're in the real world," Aurora finally tells her.

She's right of course. Mulan knows she's right. She has to remember that this stillness of the house is not the calm before the storm, it's the aftermath.

It's hard to get that through her head though, hard to let go of years of reflexes that have always made the difference between life and death, defeat and victory. Next time the phone rings, Mulan vanquishes the shit out of it.

Aurora starts to take in hurt animals. Mulan finds her splinting the leg of a squirrel in the kitchen one day, the door open to the backyard. Outside there's sun and the wooden fence that separates theirs from other homes, a well-manicured row of flowers under a tree, a couple chairs on the patio. When she looks back at Aurora, Mulan loses what breath she has in her. Sunlight is picking out gold and red highlights in Aurora's hair and she's concentrating so hard, her mouth screwed up in concentration, taping the squirrel's leg. She's beautiful.

"What are you doing?" Mulan asks, more to announce that she's there than for any answer.

"Splinting his leg with a chopstick," Aurora says. The squirrel is sitting still, barely even shaking, like it knows it's in good hands. Mulan watches her finish and then lower squirrel to the floor. It looks up at her until she says, "You can go now, it should heal in a week or so. And remember, from now on, look before you leap."

She and Mulan watch it skitter across the hardwood and then out, off into the sunlight where it hobbles into a bush and disappears.

"Hi," Aurora says, looking up at her.

Mulan nods and look just past Aurora's shoulder. She can't help it, it just hits her sometimes. Lucky her soldier's training has taught her reserve and how wait such feelings out until they ebb.

All the while, Aurora's watching her. Mulan finally says, "I was about to eat."

"Yes, I'll have pancakes," Aurora tells her. "Don't hold back on the butter." She packs up her first aid kit, expecting Mulan to follow orders.

Mulan grabs the flour.

Later, she finds that the squirrel chewed through her favorite blanket. It’s the third time this week.

Despite how different this world is from the other, Mulan thinks things are improving for both of them, that it's possible things are going well.

Archie comes by twice a week to see how she and Aurora are adjusting, and it's much better than the first week when Archie had seemed so soft and nervous, the sort of person that got killed off quickly in battle, and Mulan had had to admit to him that she spent most of her waking time under blankets. But by now, week three, Mulan’s making Archie tea, kind of happy to see him, almost like he's an old friend. She listens to him talk about culture shock and other terms that go over her head and it’s nice.

And other people come to check in. Ruby from the diner brings them a cherry pie, hot and just baked that morning. While they're eating, she tells Mulan about the local animal shelter.

"Oh," Mulan says, the beginning of an idea forming. "Aurora loves animals." She's been trying to think of something for Aurora to do that isn't reading and cleaning. Aurora's hopeless at baking, for instance. Just the other day Mulan had tried to show her how to make cake, but Aurora had folded whole eggs into the batter.

Ruby smiles and turns to Aurora, who’s paging through another magazine. "You do? I’m sure they’d love to have you, if you wanted to help out. Maybe get out of this house a little?"

"That’s so nice of you," Aurora says, and goes back to reading. It isn’t an answer at all, but it’s far from what she would have said a week before, at least.

"I’m working on it," Mulan says, when Ruby shoots her a questioning look.

Ruby puts her hand over Mulan’s. "Give it time."

Mulan thinks about this while she gardening that afternoon. The weather's getting warmer and she's on her knees in the grass. She watches Aurora try to figure out the lawnmower and finds herself smiling as Aurora frowns and walks around it.

Suddenly, Mulan realizes they've got something good here. It's like an epiphany. They've got something good, how even though the situation found its roots in tragedy, she and Aurora were lucky enough to find each other.

Aurora lets go of the lawnmower to wipe her face on her sleeve. "I don't know if this is going to work out," she says.

Mulan rolls her eyes, but fondly. She’s hands deep in soil, weeding around the poppies. "The directions say to pull the cord until the engine catches. Try it again."

"No, this," Aurora says significantly, looking at the house, then back to Mulan.

Mulan feels her stomach drop out, sun hot on the back of her neck. Her hands still in the dirt. "Oh."

"Yeah," Aurora says.

Mulan swallows. "Why not?"

Aurora frowns at her, but it's more pitying than anything."Oh," she says. "Oh, Mulan."

Mulan stands, crossing her arms over her chest even though that means getting dirt on her shirt. She's embarrassed by how hurt she feels, would never say it out loud.

She watches Aurora watch a car drive by, the silence stretching until Aurora says, "It's not you. I know you've been trying."

"I am," Mulan confirms.

"It's this town," Aurora continues. "I hate it. And I hate this house."

"Oh," Mulan says again. She's not sure what Aurora's saying, but it extinguishes the incredulous part of her anger and leaves her feeling half-annoyed, helpless. She knows it's not all up to her, but she wishes she knew how to make her happy.

"Come on," Aurora says, abandoning the gardening tools and lawnmower to link her arm through Mulan's. Mulan follows her into the house.

In the kitchen, Mulan washes her hands of soil while Aurora opens a cabinet and pulls out tea cups. She sets about making them something peachy, humming that song she's been singing for weeks.

"That's always stuck in my head," Mulan accuses. Aurora smiles and hands her a cup, apparently in a good mood now. Mulan rolls her eyes. She’s trying to stay annoyed at Aurora, but she's easy for her, that much has been clear since the moment they met.

"You were willing to die to save me," Aurora tells Mulan after sipping her tea.

It seems neither here nor there. Mulan waits for the question. When it doesn't come, she says, "Yes?"

Aurora shakes her head and looks around the kitchen for a minute. "We could remodel," she finally says instead of answering.

"Huh?"

"Look, I know you hate it as much as I do. We could change the house." She nods to the wall between the entryway and the living room. "Remodel."

"Oh." Mulan is mainly just confused now.

"I was thinking," Aurora says. "It might help."

"That sounds perfect," Mulan says.

Knocking down a wall shouldn’t be that hard. Together, she and Aurora have trekked for days, battled trolls, and avoided being killed by the Queen of Hearts, after all. One wall shouldn't stand a chance against their joint resolve.

Aurora comes downstairs in braids, her hair back in preparation for the days project, and has put on on tennis shoes and a t-shirt. Mulan only stops staring when Aurora hands her a small hammer and says, "There was just this and a saw in the garage."

"How hard can it be, really?" Mulan agrees.

It isn't hard, but it's slow-going and tedious.

Mulan smashes holes in the wall, avoiding beams, and then pries away pieces of drywall bit by bit, while Aurora tries to just saw straight through it.

"Aha!" she says, after at least an hour when she finally jimmies the saw out the other side. Mulan goes into the other room, and, sure enough, the saw tip is peeking out that side of the wall.

After another half an hour her hand feels numb with hammering and Aurora is obviously bored. She starts slacking, sawing slower, until finally she sits heavily on the couch, dropping the saw to the carpet and blowing loose hair out of her face.

Mulan takes a step back to survey the little they've done. "We need a better tool if we're going to keep doing this."

"Well, there’s that nice man next door," Aurora says. "Maybe he has something."

Mulan puts on shoes and walks to the mansion next to them that dwarfs their house. The knocker is a gargoyle and Mulan can hear her rapping echo inside. It takes quite some time until she hears footsteps, and Mr. Whale looks harried when he cracks the door minutes later.

"Sorry to bother you," Mulan says.

Mr. Whale pushes his hair back behind his ear, and opens the door an inch wider. "No, no, you’re not interrupting anything. How can I help you?"

"We’re knocking down a wall," Mulan tells him. "We wanted to borrow some sort of tool. Do you have anything?"

He smiles. "Yes, of course! One moment."

The wall is no match for the chainsaw. Aurora is visibly cheered, and Mulan finds herself beaming back.

"So earlier," she tries to say over the noise, feeling suddenly brave.

"Sorry," Aurora says loudly. "I can’t hear you."

The room is a mess, crumbles of wall all over the carpet, dust in the air. They probably could have planned this better, but it’s exhilarating. Aurora laughs when Mulan takes over and instantly hits a wooden beam and cuts it halfway through.

"Oh," Mulan says.

"Maybe we should wait on that," Aurora says. They both look at the wall skeptically.

There's a knock at the door.

Mulan gingerly presses the 'off' button and puts the saw on the couch. "Probably."

"I'll go up and change," Aurora says. Mulan wipes her hands on her pants and goes to open the door.

Emma’s son is on the doorstep, his backpack slung over one shoulder.

"I have things to tell you," Henry says, before she can even say hello. "Can I come in?"

He pushes into the house when Mulan begins to respond, and makes a beeline to the fridge and pulls out hot dogs.

"Can you cut these up into pieces?" he says.

"Why don't you do it yourself?"

He raises his eyebrows at her. "I can't use knives! I'm only eleven, I'm just a kid!"

"All right," Mulan says, and pulls out a cutting board.

Henry sits down in a kitchen chair and in a couple minutes Mulan is sliding a plate of bite-sized hot dog pieces his way.

"You're Emma's son," Mulan says. She only met him briefly. "You talked to Aurora in your dream."

"Yep."

"You're very brave. I'm Mulan."

He raises his eyebrows. "I know! I have a book that's written about you guys!"

He pulls out an almanac from his backpack and thumps it onto the table. Mulan sits and waits while Henry flips through the pages for a few seconds before landing on the right one. He spins the book and points down at a picture.

"What does this mean?" Mulan asks.

"This book is the story of your lives. Everyone's lives! It's how I knew Emma had to break the curse, it's how I knew I had to come find you!"

Mulan's never heard of a book like this, but she doesn't doubt him.

"What does it say happens next?" she asks after a moment. Because she's not interested in the past. She already knows what's happened. On the page in front of her there's a wraith painted in black, sucking its way into a medallion. At the time, Aurora looked just like she does in the picture. Mulan remembers how she'd leaned over Philip's cold body, crying while Mulan stood back, completely frozen.

Henry leans forward. "It was your destiny to end up here, with us. It's your destiny to be together! You and Aurora!"

"That's-" Mulan shakes her head.

"Don't tell me you don't see it?" He searches her eyes with his. "Mulan, you searched for her! You rescued her!"

"That's true, but-"

"Did you ever think that maybe you weren't just helping Philip, you were searching for her, too? You were trying to find her the whole time? And now you've found her and you're letting her go!"

Aurora steps in, then, and Mulan meets her eyes across the room. Aurora comes over to sit at the end of the table.

"Small Prince," she says.

He grins at her. "Aurora!"

"These are lovely illustrations." She touches the page of the open book. Mulan sees the moment she realises. Aurora pulls her hand away and Mulan watches as she grimaces and looks back to Henry.

"Is it true that you were asleep? Forever?" Henry asks her, looking awed.

She shakes her head. "Not forever."

"Obviously," Henry says, and raises his eyebrows at her. "Thanks to Mulan."

Aurora laughs. "Yes, thanks to Mulan."

The conversation moves on. Henry finishes his hot dogs while asking Aurora questions about home, and Mulan watches Aurora while she tells him about the old castle and her father and mother, life at home before the twenty-odd years that took them from her.

There's another knock at the door, eventually, and Mulan goes to open it, in a daze of remembering. She finds Emma is standing on the doorstep, shifting from foot to foot, looking worried.

"Hi, Mulan," she says. "Is Henry here?"

"Emma!" Henry shouts from the kitchen. They both watch as Henry gathers his book under one arm and hug Aurora. He heads out the door, but before he goes turns to tell Mulan, "It's all real. Everything!"

"What's real?" Emma asks her.

"I'll tell you later," Mulan says. She looks back to where Aurora's humming to herself, organizing some flowers in a vase. "I believe you," she says to Henry, quieter.

"You do?"

"I do. I just don't know where to go from here." She doesn't think an eleven year old could help but she has to say it out loud, to someone.

"Don’t worry too much," Henry says, and when he waves goodbye, he looks happy. "Just believe in happy ever after."

When Mulan goes back to the kitchen, Aurora doesn't ask, just nudges Mulan with an elbow and hands her a daisy.

"You seem concerned," Archie tells Mulan when she tries to bring it up.

"It's probably nothing," she says. "It's just Aurora- living with her is-"

"Don't worry," Archie tells her after she's paused for a full thirty seconds. "No one likes their roommates all the time."

"It's not that," Mulan says, looking at the table. "Kind of the opposite really. I thought she hated it here but lately she's been trying, and it's confusing. And I really like her. All the time. Despite how bossy she is, or sulky."

"Ah," says Archie.

"I'm very loveable," Aurora calls from the couch. She's learning to use a laptop, the internet's like magic, Ruby had explained, except anyone can use it.

"It's true," Mulan tells Archie, feeling morose.

The Evil Queen is to blame for everything really. She's caused many of the misfortunes in Mulan's life up to this point, is at fault for the fact that Mulan is in this strange world that she's only just getting used to. And it only continues when Regina shows up at their door the next week, interrupting Mulan's afternoon practice.

Aurora is singing in the kitchen, but it's daytime and she's kind of happy now that Mulan and her tried to break down the wall. Even if they abandoned the project, it felt like progress, and progress is important Archie had said.

The doorbell rings and Mulan goes to open it, only to find Regina on their doorstep, looking angry.

"Is my son here?" she demands.

"Is that Emma's jacket?" Mulan asks, ignoring Regina's question and feeling real fear. "What did you do to Emma?"

Regina looks shocked, then guilty. "No, this is- I borrowed it."

"Borrowed it?"

"It's none of your business. I can't get ahold of her, and I was supposed to meet them- meet Henry."

Mulan narrows her eyes. "Why don't you call her if you think she's with Henry?"

"Her phone isn't charged because she left her charger at-" Regina cuts off. "You know what? Enough with the questions. I am the mayor of this town and I was told that Emma sometimes comes by here. Where is she?"

"They went to get ice cream," Aurora snaps, coming up to Mulan's side. "Now please leave, you're very rude, and Mulan's doesn't deserve that kind of treatment."

"Ice cream," Regina repeats, mostly to herself. She turns to go. "Of course."

They watch her for a moment and then Mulan looks at Aurora, who's still glaring at Regina's back.

"You called her rude," Mulan says to her. "Stood up for me."

"So?" Aurora frowns, crossing her arms over her chest, eyes flicking to Mulan's expression then away. Mulan rubs a hand over her face to cover a smile. Aurora's frown deepens. "Don't laugh at me."

Mulan shuts the front door and Aurora trails her to the living room, which will probably always be that way, half-destroyed, the saw still on the couch and the coffee table shoved up against one wall.

Aurora says, "Regina's a jerk. And no one should talk to you that way."

"You're adorable," Mulan tells her with feeling.

It wouldn't be a problem except that Mulan's doesn't say things like that out loud. She's been trying to hold back saying it for weeks, and the minute that slips out her smile falters and she catches her breath and just stands and stares at Aurora. Aurora smiles but the longer Mulan doesn't say anything, the more awkward the moment becomes. She tries to say something, anything, but just stands there instead, the smile slipping off Aurora's face.

Aurora is a princess and so was told from a very young age that she could ask for what she wants in life. Mulan loves this about her, now especially, because just when Mulan is going to walk away, Aurora presses forward to kiss her, quiet and with certainty. The whole house suddenly feels so big around them, Aurora's hands on her face and Mulan doesn't know why they're doing anything other than this, they've just been wasting their time while they could have been working things out this way.

When they break apart, Mulan kisses Aurora again and then at the corner of her eye and says, "Aurora-" feeling her heart stutter, but then Aurora twines her fingers through Mulan's hair and pulls.

Mulan takes the hint and walks her back against the wall where Aurora gets her arms around her, kissing her for what feels like eternity, like time's been suspended again but it's good this time. At some point Aurora gets her leg up around Mulan's waist and Mulan grabs her under the knee to help. She thinks crazily how she's never been happier about a sundress than now, pushing her hand up the back of Aurora's thigh, kissing her mouth again until Aurora's making humming noises and trying to pull off Mulan's jacket.

It's absolutely not going to work. It takes five minutes for Mulan to unlace the thing herself, and she's used to it. Mulan moves to help her and in so doing lets go of her. When Aurora leans back against the wall, hand grabbing for Mulan's arm, the wall, weak from where they'd been trying to break it down, crashes in, taking both of them with it.

"Ow," Aurora says, lying legs akimbo in the rubble.

Mulan takes a deep breath but coughs when she breathes in dust. They've fallen through into the other room. She sits up, wincing. "Wow."

She tries to brush drywall out of Aurora's hair but Aurora gives her a look and says, "Seriously, Mulan?" before shoving her onto her back and climbing on top of her to kiss her again.

"Oh," Mulan says when she can five minutes later.

"Right?" Aurora says.

She feels red all over, Aurora smiling down at her, happy.

The next morning, Aurora's probably trying to torture her, dancing around the house and giving Mulan quick hugs from behind. It's springtime and Mulan woke up with a crick in her neck that morning, the sun on her face, with the conviction that she had to make a giant breakfast they couldn't conceivably finish. They'd fallen asleep on the couch the night before watching some terrible show that everyone else in town loved, but Mulan hadn't paid attention, hadn't been able to get over Aurora's hand on her stomach, smoothing over her waist.

"Why don't we-" Mulan starts, but when she turns she gets a face full of Aurora's hair.

Aurora carries on, moving to the counter to get more coffee. Mulan turns to watch her. "I want to go into town today."

"Ok," Aurora says.

"I thought I'd find a job."

Aurora stills and doesn't answer for a second, but then resumes stirring cream and sugar into her coffee. Mulan's watching her hands so almost misses the tremor in her voice when she says, "Of course. You can go whenever you want, obviously."

"Aurora?" Mulan asks, confused again.

"You don't have to worry," Aurora says. "About me, I mean. And you're much happier now, fitting in with everyone and thinking about jobs, and you haven't broken any appliances recently and-"

"Aurora."

"Well I suppose it's because there aren't any left to break, maybe," Aurora's musing while Mulan looks around their kitchen and to their half-renovated living room and sees how Aurora's not looking her in the eye, is talking too fast and is looking away. "I honestly don't know how I've managed to keep you this long. You're just so loyal, and you swore to protect me, but I'm safe now, so-"

"Aurora," Mulan says, for the third time which always works in the stories. When Aurora looks at her, Mulan thinks again that she almost died for her, that she'd do it again. "This is my life," she tells her. "This is what I want."

"Oh," Aurora says.

"Come on." Mulan holds out her hand, and Aurora looks at it with a question on her face until Mulan sighs and tries to look more imperious about it.

A smile blooms across Aurora's face, pinking her cheeks as she puts her hand in Mulan's and lets herself be dragged against her.

"Finally," Aurora says, pressing her nose into the side of Mulan's face.

Mulan wraps her tighter in a hug. "I honor agreements," she tells her.

"Shut up," Aurora says. "That's not all this is."

"No," Mulan agrees.

"I've been thinking, you should open a bakery," Aurora tells her, and Mulan pulls back to stare. Aurora kisses her again and then says, "This is going to be great."