Evey stayed quiet and still. Maleficent's words washed over her. Some she mentally acknowledged; some she ignored as if they did not exist. Evey thought she understood, on some level, the desire to stay. For all of its wildness, the island held the safety of knowing what one faced. Evey did not know what was beyond this island. She didn't know what sort of city lay beyond the corner of the savage world she and the collective had managed to tame. Perhaps, if there had been something useful for her to do, she would have stayed as well. But even now - even now, when she could hardly feel the heart inside her chest - there was a drive inside her to keep on going. It was faint, and it was weak, but it was there -- a part of the iron core deep within her. No one could have called it 'deterination' or 'strength'. It was closer to a spring, wound perpetually. There was no denying it. But now, there was no purpose behind it either. It just drove her, blindly, and she was no less lost because of it.
"What are you?" Evey asked instead of answering the questions she couldn't even approach in her own mind. "Really. Under your power and your coldness, what moves you?"
It was a wholly unfair question. She knew it as she asked it. But that had always been the question she wanted to have answered, even before the collective evacuated the island. What was Maleficent? A destroyer? A protector? A controller? Evey wanted to know the heart of this woman, because there was something about her... something eerily familiar, though she knew she'd never known Maleficent before their meetings on the island. Ordinarily, Evey never would have been so direct or so blunt. But here, now, there was nothing left to preserve and nothing left to fear. Here, now, it didn't matter what happened if she asked the question and Maleficent didn't like it.
Freedom, she heard a ghost say in her head. Her heart twitched once and fell silent again. Freedom felt nothing like what V romanticized. This sort of freedom felt like death.