15 Annuals, Chapter 7: The Part Where Old Plots Are New Issues
Told you it'd be out soon~
ALSO THIS CHAPTER IS DEDICATED TO WAFFLES. NO, THAT'S NOT ANYONE'S SCREENNAME. IT'S THE FOOD. GO WAFFLES GO. ♥
Title: Fifteen Annuals With Her Gay Guardian Glitch (15 Annuals); CHAPTER 7, AKA The Part Where Old Plots Are New Issues
Rating: NC-17!
Summary: Who needs Roboparents when a Queen's got an Advisor-Ninja to take care of their recently deceased daughter?
This Chapter: Glitch recovers from his mindfucked-ness! CAIN TOPS FOR ONCE. Jeb's got a brain behind his pretty red scarf, and DG gets a conscience, much to everyone's dismay.
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 1: That Part Where Ambrose Gets Executed
Chapter 2: The Bit With The Ninjas
Chapter 3: The End Of The Ninja Bit Thanks To LOTS OF FIRE
Chapter 4: The Resistance Meets A Magical Ninja Princess (And Glitch)
Chapter 5: The Part Where Their Cover's Blown Really, Really Badly
Chapter 6: That Cliche About Stuff Before Storms
Fifteen Annuals With Her Gay Guardian Glitch
(aka 15 Annuals)
CHAPTER VII:
AKA The Part Where Old Plots Are New Issues
It was another two days until Glitch would show his face around any of them, and that was only to get the drugs they’d had him on out of his body. So they did normal things. DG did the laundry with the Cains at her side. They hadn’t left her alone since the Trial. If Hana wasn’t there, they were. And they were there when Hana was there too, usually.
“And he did it at eight,” she whispered, simply staring at the bloody outfit in front of her. “Gods, he went through that at eight. No wonder he left.”
She had been staring at the frayed, dirty coat for twenty minutes now, not even touching it. “You know, that’s what he was wearing when I met him,” Cain said, walking over and deciding he could wash it if DG couldn’t -
She grabbed his wrist. “Don’t touch it.”
“What?” It needed more cleaning than anything he’d ever seen, and that was saying a lot from a man who’d been trapped in an iron suit for six years. Or was it seven? He couldn’t even remember anymore.
“…when he wears that, he’s not my Glitch,” she said. “When he wears that he wants to keep it dirty. Badges and scars of something I don’t know.”
But Cain knew. So he shrugged her arm off and shook it out -
And a small, shining disk fell out of the pocket, looking old and worn around the edges, but Cain stared. DG knelt down, still careful about how she moved after her thrashing and the tender skin around the new, undeniably permanent tattoo on her chest, and looked at it. “What is it?”
“It’s a…” he frowned, and turned to Jeb, who shrugged. Cains weren’t good with technical jargon. “It’s a recording disk. This one’s pretty old.”
“Like fifteen annuals?” DG asked, looking up at the Cains.
“…DG-” Cain began, but she had already stood up, looking around the area until they were surprised to hear her say “AHA!” when she found a large metal bucket, full of rain water, and stood on a wooden bucket. At which point she frowned.
“What are you doing?” Jeb asked as she dismounted the bucket and rubbed the coin between her hands.
“Watching it,” she said simply.
“But I don’t think he’d want you to-” Cain said, walking forward to grab her hand, but it was too late. The disk dropped into the clear, reflective water, where it shimmered.
“This is where I got most of my magic lessons, this bucket,” she said a bit distantly, Jeb joining them at the bucket. “They’ve all got a trigger on them. He said it was a present from my mother.”
“What is it?” Jeb asked, only to have his answer in a burst of that white-blue light from her hand shooting straight for the coin, where it rattled, and suddenly a face appeared.
Cain had to take a deep breath in, because he was staring fifteen annuals into the past. Himself a young Tin Man with a wife and child at home, a drunk, desperate man who looked half dead, the whisper of just a glitch against his throat-
“Hi, DG,” Glitch - no, Ambrose - said a bit hesitantly. “I haven’t even met you yet, but I know we will meet, and I’ll do my best to take care of you.”
“Baby talk,” Jeb muttered, but the recording went on. Ambrose tried to clean up his hair a little more, and Cain was almost tempted to smack him playfully on the arm and say his hair looked tidier than it had in years, until he realized this wasn’t Glitch, and wasn’t even real.
“I’m assuming that if you’re seeing this, I’m either dead, dying, or unable to take care of you any more and you still need taking care of,” Ambrose said.
“Which is why he didn’t give it to me when he was bitten,” DG said, still staring into the water.
“If that’s the case, your mother and I want you to go to a place called Milltown. There’s a nice couple there who will take very good care of you. If you don’t know what the word periphery means, I want you to go there right now.”
DG snort-laughed at that. When Cain gave her a look, she just shook her head with a smile and turned back to the recording, which was obviously waiting for a much younger DG to turn it off and go to Milltown.
“Alright, DG, now I’m assuming that we’ve at least managed to meet with the Kage. If we’re with the Kage and I’ve been killed, I need you to run. Run fast, and run hard. Head for the Resistance. You can find them if you ask in the right places, and by now I’m sure you can figure out where those are. Stay with them until the Eclipse, until you turn twenty, but for the love of all that is holy stay safe, DG. In this same pocket I have fifteen other disks, all done by…well, him.” The view moved to the side, and DG gasped in a fit of childish happiness to see a little dark lapdog lying on a…
“…are they in prison?” DG asked, voice hoarse.
“Probably,” Cain responded.
“I’ve been putting him through his tutoring paces, so he’s a little tired at the moment,” Ambrose said, the view shifting back to him. “And if you’re as bright as your sister, and it’s undoubtedly so, yes, I’m in a jail cell. That’s because I’m going to be thrown into the Winter Palace’s lake in a private execution in…something around five hours. It’s hard to keep track of time in here. No windows.” He paused, looking bitterly wistful. “I really would like a window.”
“Oh gods,” DG whispered. Cain felt like he was being stabbed in the heart, seeing this young man talking about being executed.
“It’s a conspiracy, of course,” Ambrose sighed. “Your sister’s young, but she’s bright, and if she catches wind of either of us being alive when she takes over - and yes, I already know she’ll take over, so does your mother, don’t be shocked. It’s one of the reasons I’m the one she chose to look after you, the fact that I could see it - she’ll kill us both.” He paused. “Again.”
DG laughed at that too, and there was a thin smile on Ambrose’s lips.
“I’m recording this in case I die, and I know that I’m going to do anything and everything I can think of to keep you alive,” he began, face becoming serious. “If I’ve failed in that, I’m sorry for leaving you, and even sorrier for failing you. Azkadellia is going to watch me die in this outfit. It’ll be the first death she hasn’t caused that she’ll ever see. We’re betting it will stick in her memories, so I’m only going to be wearing it on very special occasions. If I’m dead, I want you to burn it. By now you should know how to make a smokeless fire, even how to cover it up when adding cloth to it, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Another pause. “Gods, how can he talk about himself like this?” DG whispered.
“Because you’re everything to him,” Cain said calmly, only to get a nudge in the side.
“Not anymore I’m not.”
Before he could respond, Ambrose started talking again. “Now, we’ve established you’re old enough to take care of yourself and don’t need anyone as a crutch. You’re strong, and I’m betting that if I died, someone found out how much of a threat you - or I, who knows that far down the road - pose to the Witch’s reign. There are clues throughout the OZ for you to find what you’ll need to find to save everything, but I’m going to try and run you straight for it. If you’re old enough to take care of yourself and stand on your own, run for this as fast as you can.”
He took a deep breath, and the three watching found themselves mimicking him.
“Orchards to the hidden world to the magic balloon and his man to the silver shoes to astronomy.”
DG’s jaw dropped, and Ambrose repeated the same words four times in a row.
“You can’t be serious,” she said to the recording, which was repeating itself. “Glitch, you CAN’T be serious.”
“I’m betting by now that either the enemy hands this has fallen into are baffled out of their tiny minds, or you’re a bit angry at my plan on getting the run firmly into your head,” he said a bit shyly, and looked around. “Anyway, it’s cold in here, and I want to get at least a little bit of sleep. It’s been…it’s been a hard time. But not all bad.” He paused, looking back at the disk. “I’m somewhere around twenty right now, by the way. Give or take. And DG…I hope to all that’s holy that you never have to see this.”
With a smile, a hand reached out and covered the disk. The image flickered, and then buzzed out, leaving them staring into nothing but a metallic bucket of rainwater. The disk jumped back into DG’s hand without even a hint of glow around her, placed gently in her palm.
“We’re not cleaning the coat,” DG said, her tone of voice absolute. It was futile, though - nobody was going to clean the thing after seeing that disk.
“Some things are better left in the bottom of your pockets,” Cain said to himself, and went back to doing laundry.
---
“I hurt her.”
“She wanted it more than anything else you or I had ever seen, Tomo.”
“I hurt her, Mother. I hurt Hime.” He shook his head, hands still tangled in his mussed beyond repair brown hair. “Fifteen annuals, Mother, I’ve been doing everything I could think of to keep her safe and free and happy and-”
“And you gave her what she wanted,” Hana snapped. He was still restricted to the small, simple house hidden inside the valley, dedicated entirely to every bit of recovery that a sponsor needed after the Trial. The new full Kages recovered with their peers, rejoiced at their success, numbing the reality of what had happened with the joy of being complete in the eyes of their people.
But sponsors never wanted to see a damn person. He barely thought he could even stomach Cain right now. His Mother, on the other hand, had been his sponsor, and already didn’t seem to mind if they loathed each other on the surface. She called him a useless son, he just took it and wondered what the next favorite insult would be, and things were normal between them.
But this was new. This…with her arm slung around his shoulders, sitting next to him. It almost felt like she was putting some sort of effort into him.
“…thank you,” Hana said.
“I hurt her, Mother,” he said, hands moving back to his eyes, not even noticing the language change. “I hurt DG, and the worst part is that I liked it, Mother, I was enjoying myself.”
“That was the chemicals-”
“I ENJOYED IT,” he snapped, standing up and pacing, punching yet another hole in the wall. Another sponsor, another hole. They never fixed up the house. It was a reminder that their suffering had been someone else’s suffering before. “That was NOT just the chemicals, Mother. I could feel it…the charge of adrenaline, slice of fear, feel every move I made. No thoughts, just action, just…hurting her.” He crouched down, wrapping his hands around his knees. “I hurt DG.”
“Spiral may have hurt her, but any other part of you would have stepped in immediately,” Hime said, completely serious.
It was just too much. It was too much, and damn it all, he couldn’t take it by himself.
“I want Cain,” he whispered into his arms, wincing as soon as the words were out.
But there was no cutting remark, no scathing comment, not even a disapproving noise. Instead he got a quiet, solemn, “Then I’ll get him, Tomo.”
She closed the door behind her, and Glitch - he was Glitch, he was DG’s Glitch - climbed back onto the bed, eyes open, staring at nothing but the holes in the wall and how, if you really looked, they almost looked like an artistically positioned wine rack. He hadn’t drank in fifteen annuals.
His mother was calling him by his birth-name again. And Glitch had no idea what to think of that.
---
Cain hadn’t come running, but he’d certainly been walking briskly through the valley, repeating Hana’s instructions to the house over and over in his head.
The door was unlocked, and it was pretty unpromising to see that it was like that because someone had kicked the door down at some point in time. The floor had dried mud on it, but Cain took his shoes off anyway, having seen Glitch’s by the door. Plaster littered the small house like shrapnel, as if something explosive had gone off in the building over and over, breaking it apart.
He found Glitch easy enough. He even smiled slightly at how he was curled up on the floor with all the sheets instead of on the bed right next to him, a typical Glitch oddity that Cain would never stop finding endearing for no reason he could think of. But when he got closer, and saw that Glitch’s eyes were open, unseeing, looking more like he’d intentionally killed DG than been drugged out of his mind, half-blind, and terrified.
Hana had told him what they’d done to him. What they did to every sponsor.
They drugged them, they sent them over the edge of reason and into nothing but self-preservation, sending wolves and papay scouts and panthers after them at random. Drugged them some MORE, giving them the final ritual words as a trigger phrase before the sponsor was locked in the little box-room, drugged even more, attacked at random in the dim lighting. And then they opened up the doors and all anyone in that condition could think of was attack and escape, so drugged it takes the trigger word for them to even see what - or in this case, who - they were attacking, just trying to survive.
“Don’t judge them,” Hana had said before the Trial. He’d thought she was talking about Glitch and DG, but instead found himself hating the Kage, hating their stupid Trial, hating how Hana treated her son and DG so differently in the household, hated how Glitch always walked with his head bowed just the slightest bit when the sun was up and how he was bowed to when the sun was down.
He kneeled down next to Glitch, brushing a strand of hair away from his face. The other man didn’t even so much as blink.
“It’s nice to see you again, Sweetheart,” he said quietly, just in case Glitch was asleep. Or awake. He wasn’t sure anymore.
That recording of the aristocrat he’d met in Central kept conflicting with his Glitch. THEIR Glitch. His and DG’s.
“I don’t feel very good, Cain,” Glitch said distantly.
“You’ve got enough drugs in your system that it’d kill most animals,” Cain said, trying to sound amused instead of furious, and obviously failing at the type of smile he got. But at least it was an honest one. He sighed. “Where’s it hurt most?”
“I don’t know. Where’s your soul?”
“A wanderer once told me it was all around, floating around us,” Cain said, wrapping an arm around Glitch and pulling him up into a sitting position. He was limp as a doll, hair caked with grime and sweat and blood. He was also wearing nothing but a baggy pair of brown pants, the Mark on his chest dark against his paler than normal skin. Cain could almost smell dried tears on him. “Hey, it’ll be okay, Sweetheart. DG’s fine, she’s scared silly for you though. She also keeps saying you owe her a new fancy collapsing stick…”
He stopped when Glitch curled his arms around Cain’s shoulders, bare chest sliding over his shirt. “I want to leave,” he muttered, legs moving to straddle his hips. “I want to leave the Kage. They’ve caught DG, she’s trapped like me, but nobody else.” Cain got a chapped kiss on his neck. “It’s the sweetest slavery. You’re signed up the moment you hear about the Trial, admitted as soon as you go through it without dying, and then you’re nothing but their puppet if they decide to fight.”
“Your mother-”
“Hana,” Glitch corrected sharply.
“Okay, Hana is in charge of the Kage. Do you honestly think she’ll declare war on someone? Or…something? However it works?”
Glitch looked him straight in the eye. “Absolutely.”
“What? Why?” Cain asked, startled.
Glitch pressed himself hard up against Cain, pushing them both down to the floor again. Glitch kissed him, but it was a strange kiss - his lips were like sandpaper, but his mouth was nothing but sweetness. A very foreign, dark sweetness.
“I’ve brushed my teeth seventeen times today,” Glitch muttered.
“Always good to be clean,” Cain said, not suggesting a bath or shower. Glitch looked like he might drown himself if he got the chance.
“She’ll go to war because I already started it,” he stated. “The Kage will go to war with Azkadellia, but we’ll be forced, Cain. Oh, DG and I would go anyway, but we won’t have a choice.” Another kiss, this one lingering and promising more on their way. “Sweetest slavery, Cain, just like I told you.”
“It’s really, really hard to puzzle out your riddles when you’re pushed up against me and kissing me like that, darling,” Cain said, which earned him an honest smile.
“And you’re even dressed,” Glitch commented, stripping him down and taking his time about it, keeping his own loose pants on. “Don’t flatter me, just tell me how I look?”
“Kind of like your dog just got run over by a tractor,” Cain said, completely honest.
Glitch blinked at him. “That,” he said. “Was a very disturbing analogy.”
“You wanted honesty-OH gods,” Cain started, only for a very, very cold hand to grab onto him and start stroking. He groaned. “Can’t even WARN me?”
“Less fun that way,” Glitch - no, this was definitely that Sweetheart part of him - purred, toying with him, and paused. Gods, Cain hated when he did that. “We’re going to change things up a little for once.”
“Hmm?” Cain frowned, only to be pulled up and kissed again. Sandpaper and sweetness, that was all he could feel, until Glitch gasped, lurching forward against his chest, panting. “What-” he began, only to see Glitch clinging to him, two fingers already inside of himself. “…holy-”
“You’re going to fuck me, Cain,” Glitch groaned, breath sharp.
Cain’s eyes widened. “But I’ve never-”
“You’ll be fine, I promise,” he said, in that purring voice that was always, always there before the sex began. And gods, it would never stop turning him on. “Seen me do it plenty of times, after all.”
“Seeing and doing are - oh holy,” he whimpered as Glitch rocked against him again, breath shallow, eyes half lidded, a single bead of sweat running down his neck. Glitch’s legs wrapped around his back, and Cain was leaned back with another one of those rough, dizzying kisses-
“-Oh holy hell.” Glitch hadn’t even warned him, just lowered himself down onto Cain. His brown eyes were fuzzy but burning, and Cain couldn’t really pay attention to anything but Glitch’s face, intense and daring, and the heat slowly swallowing him, the tight, burning heat-
“I swear, Cain, if you don’t start moving - ” Glitch choked out, and that was all the prompting Cain needed. They both found themselves shouting out in surprise at the first thrust, Glitch’s eyes going a bit blurry, Cain’s going wide at how good that felt and what it did to Glitch and just…EVERYTHING. “MOVE, damn you,” Glitch panted, head right under Cain’s chin, kissing.
So he did, eventually losing himself in Glitch, watching him writhe and twitch and just be so fucking gorgeous, a bead of sweat traveling down his neck, salty against his collarbone as they moved, panting, moaning, clinging and kissing.
“Don’t you ever leave me,” Cain miraculously managed to say in the beautiful, messy, heated mess. Glitch whimpered, kissing him, and with a hard thrust, harder than any of the others, Glitch’s head immediately whipped back.
Cain had thought that would be some sort of good diversionary tactic, make him pay attention or something, but instead he ended up going “OH holy gods Glitch” at a speed that probably missed the sound barrier by just a couple inches and coming, Glitch not too far behind with nothing but a choked whimper thanks to biting Cain’s shoulder hard enough to draw blood.
Cain nearly dropped to the floor right there, the only thing stopping him Glitch’s tight grip on him and the feel of him sliding off, shuddering.
“That…I think maybe we should do that more often,” Glitch said, voice wavering a bit, his muscles twitching all over as he grabbed a nearby towel and started cleaning them up. How Glitch could always found towels was a mystery to Cain, but not one he was about to complain about. He kissed Cain again, hard. “A lot.”
Personally, Cain had no idea how Glitch could do that over and over, whenever Cain even hinted that sex would be a good idea at that moment. He felt like he would have to take a nice nap, preferably with Glitch, every single time. That was hard. And he kind of liked the near-instant sex a lot better, even though this had been…well, pretty damn good too.
“Maybe not a lot, but it’s a do again thing, I’d say,” Cain said a bit fuzzily, which earned him a laugh. An actual laugh. “You’re fantastic, you know that?”
“I try to be, at least,” Glitch said, grabbing the nearby blanket and tossing it over them, curling up against him in that beautifully familiar way. “…I do love you, you know.”
Cain kissed him, nice and easy and sweet, smiling. “Ditto, Sweetheart.”
Glitch’s smile was as warm as noon, but he didn’t say anything, just curled back up and went to sleep, Cain holding him close and thanking all that was good in the world for bringing his Glitch back to him, and to them all.
---
“I’m starting to think Hana’s right and Glitch really is an idiot,” DG grumbled, throwing another rock into the pond as the sun sank behind the valley walls. Not trying to skip it, oh no, just throwing it in and watching the thing sink after a big noisy splash. “Did you hear those directions?” She made a tsk-ing noise. “For such a smart guy, he really is an idiot.”
“I didn’t understand a word of them,” Jeb said honestly, stretched out nearby and enjoying not getting beaten up. Or trained. They were synonyms to him now.
“They’re all fairytales, Jeb,” DG sighed. “The Empty Orchards? The hidden world of thieves? The magic balloon man? The magic silver shoes?” She paused. “Astronomy’s just astronomy, though, so I guess he’s not entirely stupid.”
“I’ve never heard of any of those fairytales,” Jeb commented.
DG smiled at him. “No offense, Jeb, but you didn’t exactly have a normal childhood.”
“Normal enough that I got all the fairytales,” he shrugged, not even bothered by the mention of being trapped in an Iron Suit for two years. “I’ve never heard of any of them. But I’m betting they all start with ‘Once upon a time’. It’s a universal constant or something.”
She paused. “…actually, those are the only ones that didn’t.”
Jeb sat up, frowning at her. “Really? Are you sure they were fairytales, then?”
DG frowned, trying to think them through. “…he always started them with ‘listen well, to the story of blah blah blah’. All the others got the normal start.”
“Tell me one, then,” Jeb said. “I’m pretty sure Glitch wasn’t stupid if it’s so obvious to you and I don’t have a clue what all of that meant.”
“…well, the magical balloon man one is pretty simple. A man lived in a faraway country, always felt like something was missing, and decided to go traveling. He builds this big hot air balloon, climbs in, and this huge gust of wind knocks him and his balloon out of the world, and when he lands he’s in front of this beautiful woman and they go live happily ever after, until their children die and he runs away, taking the balloon with him, waiting for one of his dead daughters to come find him. I never really did understand the end of that one.”
Jeb paused. “DG, I’ve never heard a single story like that.”
“Seriously?” she said, stunned.
He shook his head, sitting up and brushing some grass off of his pants. “He was probably telling you them as a kid just so you’d remember them like this. It means that after you go through the other fairytales, you’ll get to the balloon guy waiting for one of his dead…wait, did you say dead daughters?”
DG blinked, mouth widening. “Everyone thinks I’m dead! Jeb, the magical balloon man’s my dad!”
He smiled at her. “It’s exciting to find them again, isn’t it?”
She just grinned, jumping up off the ground, only to wince, clutching at her heart.
“…how bad is it?” Jeb asked cautiously, only for DG to wave him aside, the searing pain fading back to a dull ache on her skin.
“I just need to stop moving around like that,” she assured him. “It just…well. It kind of feels like the thing gets mad at me when I get excited and move more than I need to.”
Jeb stared at her.
“What?”
“You said your tattoo feels angry, DG.”
She frowned. “So?”
“It’s a TATTOO.”
“It’s the MARK. It does weird stuff, according to everybody,” she defended, and sighed. “Yeah, it’s weird. Let’s get inside before Hana gets angry.”
At that, Jeb picked the pace up quite a bit. She smiled and didn’t say a word about how Hana would be more likely to glare and call them names than actually smack them around.
Jeb hadn’t really gotten the difference between training and real life just yet. She felt a bit guilty about it, but she didn’t explain. It was fun to watch him twitch.
---
Two little princesses dancing in a row,
Spinning fast and freely on their little toes.
Where the light will take them, no one ever knows,
Two little princesses dancing in a row…
The song echoed through the chamber. Green marble on the floor, large, battered wooden columns painted red holding up the arching roof, windows reminiscent of the Winter Palace planted into the walls. Ivy clung to the columns and spread across the ground.
It was like a mirror that showed what you weren’t. The only thing that separated the two women was a pair of spinning dolls, one in each hand.
One of them was gasping, long dark hair loose and hanging over her beige-colored nightgown, dark eyes locked with the other woman’s light blue. The other wore thin, baggy knee-length pants and a matching camisole, dark hair dripping down her shoulders. Each held a spinning doll, the song repeating over and over in the room.
“Are you here to save me?” the long-haired woman whispered, her free hand glowing silver at it clutched at her head, giving the shorter-haired woman a look of desperation. “Sometimes she hurts me so much.”
“…I’d almost forgotten you,” the blue-eyed woman said, her other hand glowing with the same light. “You’re in pain. You’ve been in pain for a very long time, haven’t you?”
Something else was whispering behind the rhyme, but the rhyme grew louder, drowning out the other voice. The dark-eyed woman was panting, nearly falling to the floor.
“Are you going to help me?” she whispered.
“I promise I’ll try.”
The dolls shattered. The rhyme became nothing but a drum in the background as they desperately reached out, glowing hand for glowing hand -
twolittleprincessesdancinginarowtwolittleprincessesdancinginarowtwolittleprincessesdancinginarow
NO
They screamed, and the dream crashed apart.
---
Azkadellia shot up in bed, gasping and feeling like she’d just had her own soul nearly sucked from her body. Sweat had trapped her hair against her forehead, her neck, her chest…she scoffed. She was a mess.
just a dream
“I know that,” Azkadellia snapped quietly. “I know that. It just…it felt…”
It had felt…safe. Free. Terrifying. Painful. Honest. And disturbingly, horribly real. That had been her doll. That had been the floor of her Tower. Those had been the windows of the Winter Palace.
JUST A DREAM, dearest
She brushed her hair out, swallowing, reminding herself that they were the Sorceress, and she didn’t have problems sleeping. She gave others those types of problems, not the other way around.
And yet, even with Ambrose dead, a storm was coming, and…no. She shook her head, glaring into her mirror.
“Yes. Just a dream.”
---
Glitch had tried to sneak in during the night, wanting some time to just…relax. Get used to being back here. To make amends with himself and the house before demanding they get on with their lives and leave, take care of DG’s destiny and take down the Sorceress and put the Queen back on the throne. Honestly, by now all they had to do was get the emerald and into the Tower to take care of Azkadellia. Fifteen annuals had given him more time to prepare than he’d even dreamed of, and it wouldn’t just be him and DG. It would be so many other people too, even if it was just their encouragement and what they had managed to teach DG that he would never have been able to.
His thoughts running about, he nearly tripped over DG, who sat with an entire pot of tea next to her on the table, downing another cup. Everything - even the trial - evaporated at the dark rings around her eyes.
“Hime? DG? Are you okay?” Glitch said, sitting next to her. She blinked a bit fuzzily at him.
“…my Glitch?” she asked, sounding like she’d been punched in the throat.
“Yes, it’s your Glitch, are you alright? You don’t look okay,” he said, putting a hand to her forehead, only to immediately pull it away, blinking at the blue-silver sparks that had erupted from the simple touch. “…Deeg?”
“My sister,” she said quietly, and Glitch blinked.
DG had barely mentioned Azkadellia as anything other than an enemy since she turned eight, and even then it had normally been unpleasant or bitter. Even then, she’d always been ‘Az’ or ‘Azkadellia’. But never, never ‘my sister’.
He ignored the burning sparks that seared his arm as he slung one around her, letting her lean into him. “What happened?”
“She’s still inside there,” DG whispered dryly, despite the amount of tea she was drinking. “My sister’s still inside the Sorceress, and she’s hurting, and she’s dying-”
“She’s still your sister,” Glitch said a bit hollowly, his plans slowly fizzling away. He could see where this was going. “The Sorceress-”
“Her name is Azkadellia,” DG whispered, looking at the crushed leaves at the bottom of her teacup. “And I remember how all of this - ALL of this, Glitch - is my fault. I…if I-”
Glitch put a hand on her head. Again, he could see the burns he would have from this, but DG always came first. Always. “If anything is your fault, you were too young for anyone to really blame you. Besides, Deeg, she KILLED you-”
“Az didn’t kill me, it was the Witch-”
“It was her, DG,” Glitch said, gritting his teeth as the pain intensified at her grief, her self-loathing, her emotions in general. “If your sister is still in there, she’s deep, deep down in there.”
“And drowning,” she stated. “She said it hurt, Glitch.”
He paused. “Are you-”
“YES, Glitch, I’m sure it was her. We…the dolls, and the windows, and…I could feel half of OUR magic,” DG said. “Not just mine, but OURS. The type nothing could break or withstand, the…the light…”
Glitch pulled his hand away, ignoring the angry welts on it, and put the teacup and kettle aside, helping her stand up.
“You need to get back to sleep, Hime,” he said, practically carrying her into her bedroom and plopping the girl into her bed, covering her up. He smiled softly. “That was a lot easier when you were little.”
“I can’t kill her, Glitch,” DG said, curling around her pillow. “My SISTER is in there. I can’t kill her.”
He was silent for a very long time, and then leaned down to put a small kiss on her forehead. “We’ll figure something out.”
“Thank you, Glitch,” she muttered into her pillow as he pulled the blankets over her.
He was quiet when he got into his own bed, Cain as wonderfully accepting of the clinging as ever.
“What’s wrong, Sweetheart?” he finally asked.
Glitch just sighed into his chest, kissing it chastely. “Nothing yet.” No, nothing yet. He could spend at least tomorrow pretending he wasn’t going to hurt her beyond belief one more time. Glitch kind of hoped Azkadellia managed to kill him when he killed her. Then he wouldn’t have to try and explain to DG how some times broken things just can’t be fixed.
But then Cain held him tighter and said “Hopefully never,” and Glitch realized that honestly, he whished nothing would ever be wrong. But he quickly remembered that there weren’t any fairytales in the OZ anymore, just lies and twisted histories.
He tucked his head under Cain’s neck, ignored the pain from everywhere he’d even brushed DG’s skin, and dropped off to a sleep that was only restful to the rhythm of Cain’s breathing.
---
They were leaving the next morning. The day before had been a relatively relaxed one, although DG had been horrified at the welts, but Hana had fixed them up fast enough and Glitch had talked fast enough that it left her conscience fast enough. They all had their packs - Glitch also had a couple tools out and was still apologizing to DG about having dismantled her staff and assuring her that really, nobody but him could have done that - and were heading for the cave when Hana showed up, one last time.
Glitch nearly dropped everything he was holding when his mother hugged him, his eyes wide as he hesitantly hugged back. When she drew away, though, it was the leader of the Kage looking him in the face, not just his mom. “When you move, the shadows will move with you. We’ll feel it.”
He could only manage a strangled “Thank you, Mother,” before becoming a flustered, blushing mess, picking up the destroyed staff and fixing it, and hurrying towards the cave, Cain right behind him until Hana called out a “You aren’t leaving yet, Wyatt Cain.”
He winced, but turned around to face her. “Yes, ma’am.”
Surprisingly, he didn’t get punched. Instead he got a weird-looking red pendant that she shoved into the breast pocket of his coat with absolutely no ceremony. “You saved my son’s life, and you care for Hime as you care for your own son.” He frowned, there was gibberish, and then she paused, gave him a Look, and said, “You can go now, Wyatt.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, confused, but quickly joining up with the others. Jeb was waiting for him.
“What was that?” he asked.
“No clue,” Cain muttered, and then called to the other two. “Where are we going?”
“Fields of the Papay,” DG and Glitch called back immediately.
“Oh,” Cain said. “Well. This should be an adventure.”
DG, in front of them all and having gone through her childhood ‘fairy tales’ for the past three days, snorted. “You have no idea,” she muttered to herself, and stepped out of the cave.
---
ALSO THIS CHAPTER IS DEDICATED TO WAFFLES. NO, THAT'S NOT ANYONE'S SCREENNAME. IT'S THE FOOD. GO WAFFLES GO. ♥
Title: Fifteen Annuals With Her Gay Guardian Glitch (15 Annuals); CHAPTER 7, AKA The Part Where Old Plots Are New Issues
Rating: NC-17!
Summary: Who needs Roboparents when a Queen's got an Advisor-Ninja to take care of their recently deceased daughter?
This Chapter: Glitch recovers from his mindfucked-ness! CAIN TOPS FOR ONCE. Jeb's got a brain behind his pretty red scarf, and DG gets a conscience, much to everyone's dismay.
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 1: That Part Where Ambrose Gets Executed
Chapter 2: The Bit With The Ninjas
Chapter 3: The End Of The Ninja Bit Thanks To LOTS OF FIRE
Chapter 4: The Resistance Meets A Magical Ninja Princess (And Glitch)
Chapter 5: The Part Where Their Cover's Blown Really, Really Badly
Chapter 6: That Cliche About Stuff Before Storms
Fifteen Annuals With Her Gay Guardian Glitch
(aka 15 Annuals)
CHAPTER VII:
AKA The Part Where Old Plots Are New Issues
It was another two days until Glitch would show his face around any of them, and that was only to get the drugs they’d had him on out of his body. So they did normal things. DG did the laundry with the Cains at her side. They hadn’t left her alone since the Trial. If Hana wasn’t there, they were. And they were there when Hana was there too, usually.
“And he did it at eight,” she whispered, simply staring at the bloody outfit in front of her. “Gods, he went through that at eight. No wonder he left.”
She had been staring at the frayed, dirty coat for twenty minutes now, not even touching it. “You know, that’s what he was wearing when I met him,” Cain said, walking over and deciding he could wash it if DG couldn’t -
She grabbed his wrist. “Don’t touch it.”
“What?” It needed more cleaning than anything he’d ever seen, and that was saying a lot from a man who’d been trapped in an iron suit for six years. Or was it seven? He couldn’t even remember anymore.
“…when he wears that, he’s not my Glitch,” she said. “When he wears that he wants to keep it dirty. Badges and scars of something I don’t know.”
But Cain knew. So he shrugged her arm off and shook it out -
And a small, shining disk fell out of the pocket, looking old and worn around the edges, but Cain stared. DG knelt down, still careful about how she moved after her thrashing and the tender skin around the new, undeniably permanent tattoo on her chest, and looked at it. “What is it?”
“It’s a…” he frowned, and turned to Jeb, who shrugged. Cains weren’t good with technical jargon. “It’s a recording disk. This one’s pretty old.”
“Like fifteen annuals?” DG asked, looking up at the Cains.
“…DG-” Cain began, but she had already stood up, looking around the area until they were surprised to hear her say “AHA!” when she found a large metal bucket, full of rain water, and stood on a wooden bucket. At which point she frowned.
“What are you doing?” Jeb asked as she dismounted the bucket and rubbed the coin between her hands.
“Watching it,” she said simply.
“But I don’t think he’d want you to-” Cain said, walking forward to grab her hand, but it was too late. The disk dropped into the clear, reflective water, where it shimmered.
“This is where I got most of my magic lessons, this bucket,” she said a bit distantly, Jeb joining them at the bucket. “They’ve all got a trigger on them. He said it was a present from my mother.”
“What is it?” Jeb asked, only to have his answer in a burst of that white-blue light from her hand shooting straight for the coin, where it rattled, and suddenly a face appeared.
Cain had to take a deep breath in, because he was staring fifteen annuals into the past. Himself a young Tin Man with a wife and child at home, a drunk, desperate man who looked half dead, the whisper of just a glitch against his throat-
“Hi, DG,” Glitch - no, Ambrose - said a bit hesitantly. “I haven’t even met you yet, but I know we will meet, and I’ll do my best to take care of you.”
“Baby talk,” Jeb muttered, but the recording went on. Ambrose tried to clean up his hair a little more, and Cain was almost tempted to smack him playfully on the arm and say his hair looked tidier than it had in years, until he realized this wasn’t Glitch, and wasn’t even real.
“I’m assuming that if you’re seeing this, I’m either dead, dying, or unable to take care of you any more and you still need taking care of,” Ambrose said.
“Which is why he didn’t give it to me when he was bitten,” DG said, still staring into the water.
“If that’s the case, your mother and I want you to go to a place called Milltown. There’s a nice couple there who will take very good care of you. If you don’t know what the word periphery means, I want you to go there right now.”
DG snort-laughed at that. When Cain gave her a look, she just shook her head with a smile and turned back to the recording, which was obviously waiting for a much younger DG to turn it off and go to Milltown.
“Alright, DG, now I’m assuming that we’ve at least managed to meet with the Kage. If we’re with the Kage and I’ve been killed, I need you to run. Run fast, and run hard. Head for the Resistance. You can find them if you ask in the right places, and by now I’m sure you can figure out where those are. Stay with them until the Eclipse, until you turn twenty, but for the love of all that is holy stay safe, DG. In this same pocket I have fifteen other disks, all done by…well, him.” The view moved to the side, and DG gasped in a fit of childish happiness to see a little dark lapdog lying on a…
“…are they in prison?” DG asked, voice hoarse.
“Probably,” Cain responded.
“I’ve been putting him through his tutoring paces, so he’s a little tired at the moment,” Ambrose said, the view shifting back to him. “And if you’re as bright as your sister, and it’s undoubtedly so, yes, I’m in a jail cell. That’s because I’m going to be thrown into the Winter Palace’s lake in a private execution in…something around five hours. It’s hard to keep track of time in here. No windows.” He paused, looking bitterly wistful. “I really would like a window.”
“Oh gods,” DG whispered. Cain felt like he was being stabbed in the heart, seeing this young man talking about being executed.
“It’s a conspiracy, of course,” Ambrose sighed. “Your sister’s young, but she’s bright, and if she catches wind of either of us being alive when she takes over - and yes, I already know she’ll take over, so does your mother, don’t be shocked. It’s one of the reasons I’m the one she chose to look after you, the fact that I could see it - she’ll kill us both.” He paused. “Again.”
DG laughed at that too, and there was a thin smile on Ambrose’s lips.
“I’m recording this in case I die, and I know that I’m going to do anything and everything I can think of to keep you alive,” he began, face becoming serious. “If I’ve failed in that, I’m sorry for leaving you, and even sorrier for failing you. Azkadellia is going to watch me die in this outfit. It’ll be the first death she hasn’t caused that she’ll ever see. We’re betting it will stick in her memories, so I’m only going to be wearing it on very special occasions. If I’m dead, I want you to burn it. By now you should know how to make a smokeless fire, even how to cover it up when adding cloth to it, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Another pause. “Gods, how can he talk about himself like this?” DG whispered.
“Because you’re everything to him,” Cain said calmly, only to get a nudge in the side.
“Not anymore I’m not.”
Before he could respond, Ambrose started talking again. “Now, we’ve established you’re old enough to take care of yourself and don’t need anyone as a crutch. You’re strong, and I’m betting that if I died, someone found out how much of a threat you - or I, who knows that far down the road - pose to the Witch’s reign. There are clues throughout the OZ for you to find what you’ll need to find to save everything, but I’m going to try and run you straight for it. If you’re old enough to take care of yourself and stand on your own, run for this as fast as you can.”
He took a deep breath, and the three watching found themselves mimicking him.
“Orchards to the hidden world to the magic balloon and his man to the silver shoes to astronomy.”
DG’s jaw dropped, and Ambrose repeated the same words four times in a row.
“You can’t be serious,” she said to the recording, which was repeating itself. “Glitch, you CAN’T be serious.”
“I’m betting by now that either the enemy hands this has fallen into are baffled out of their tiny minds, or you’re a bit angry at my plan on getting the run firmly into your head,” he said a bit shyly, and looked around. “Anyway, it’s cold in here, and I want to get at least a little bit of sleep. It’s been…it’s been a hard time. But not all bad.” He paused, looking back at the disk. “I’m somewhere around twenty right now, by the way. Give or take. And DG…I hope to all that’s holy that you never have to see this.”
With a smile, a hand reached out and covered the disk. The image flickered, and then buzzed out, leaving them staring into nothing but a metallic bucket of rainwater. The disk jumped back into DG’s hand without even a hint of glow around her, placed gently in her palm.
“We’re not cleaning the coat,” DG said, her tone of voice absolute. It was futile, though - nobody was going to clean the thing after seeing that disk.
“Some things are better left in the bottom of your pockets,” Cain said to himself, and went back to doing laundry.
---
“I hurt her.”
“She wanted it more than anything else you or I had ever seen, Tomo.”
“I hurt her, Mother. I hurt Hime.” He shook his head, hands still tangled in his mussed beyond repair brown hair. “Fifteen annuals, Mother, I’ve been doing everything I could think of to keep her safe and free and happy and-”
“And you gave her what she wanted,” Hana snapped. He was still restricted to the small, simple house hidden inside the valley, dedicated entirely to every bit of recovery that a sponsor needed after the Trial. The new full Kages recovered with their peers, rejoiced at their success, numbing the reality of what had happened with the joy of being complete in the eyes of their people.
But sponsors never wanted to see a damn person. He barely thought he could even stomach Cain right now. His Mother, on the other hand, had been his sponsor, and already didn’t seem to mind if they loathed each other on the surface. She called him a useless son, he just took it and wondered what the next favorite insult would be, and things were normal between them.
But this was new. This…with her arm slung around his shoulders, sitting next to him. It almost felt like she was putting some sort of effort into him.
“…thank you,” Hana said.
“I hurt her, Mother,” he said, hands moving back to his eyes, not even noticing the language change. “I hurt DG, and the worst part is that I liked it, Mother, I was enjoying myself.”
“That was the chemicals-”
“I ENJOYED IT,” he snapped, standing up and pacing, punching yet another hole in the wall. Another sponsor, another hole. They never fixed up the house. It was a reminder that their suffering had been someone else’s suffering before. “That was NOT just the chemicals, Mother. I could feel it…the charge of adrenaline, slice of fear, feel every move I made. No thoughts, just action, just…hurting her.” He crouched down, wrapping his hands around his knees. “I hurt DG.”
“Spiral may have hurt her, but any other part of you would have stepped in immediately,” Hime said, completely serious.
It was just too much. It was too much, and damn it all, he couldn’t take it by himself.
“I want Cain,” he whispered into his arms, wincing as soon as the words were out.
But there was no cutting remark, no scathing comment, not even a disapproving noise. Instead he got a quiet, solemn, “Then I’ll get him, Tomo.”
She closed the door behind her, and Glitch - he was Glitch, he was DG’s Glitch - climbed back onto the bed, eyes open, staring at nothing but the holes in the wall and how, if you really looked, they almost looked like an artistically positioned wine rack. He hadn’t drank in fifteen annuals.
His mother was calling him by his birth-name again. And Glitch had no idea what to think of that.
---
Cain hadn’t come running, but he’d certainly been walking briskly through the valley, repeating Hana’s instructions to the house over and over in his head.
The door was unlocked, and it was pretty unpromising to see that it was like that because someone had kicked the door down at some point in time. The floor had dried mud on it, but Cain took his shoes off anyway, having seen Glitch’s by the door. Plaster littered the small house like shrapnel, as if something explosive had gone off in the building over and over, breaking it apart.
He found Glitch easy enough. He even smiled slightly at how he was curled up on the floor with all the sheets instead of on the bed right next to him, a typical Glitch oddity that Cain would never stop finding endearing for no reason he could think of. But when he got closer, and saw that Glitch’s eyes were open, unseeing, looking more like he’d intentionally killed DG than been drugged out of his mind, half-blind, and terrified.
Hana had told him what they’d done to him. What they did to every sponsor.
They drugged them, they sent them over the edge of reason and into nothing but self-preservation, sending wolves and papay scouts and panthers after them at random. Drugged them some MORE, giving them the final ritual words as a trigger phrase before the sponsor was locked in the little box-room, drugged even more, attacked at random in the dim lighting. And then they opened up the doors and all anyone in that condition could think of was attack and escape, so drugged it takes the trigger word for them to even see what - or in this case, who - they were attacking, just trying to survive.
“Don’t judge them,” Hana had said before the Trial. He’d thought she was talking about Glitch and DG, but instead found himself hating the Kage, hating their stupid Trial, hating how Hana treated her son and DG so differently in the household, hated how Glitch always walked with his head bowed just the slightest bit when the sun was up and how he was bowed to when the sun was down.
He kneeled down next to Glitch, brushing a strand of hair away from his face. The other man didn’t even so much as blink.
“It’s nice to see you again, Sweetheart,” he said quietly, just in case Glitch was asleep. Or awake. He wasn’t sure anymore.
That recording of the aristocrat he’d met in Central kept conflicting with his Glitch. THEIR Glitch. His and DG’s.
“I don’t feel very good, Cain,” Glitch said distantly.
“You’ve got enough drugs in your system that it’d kill most animals,” Cain said, trying to sound amused instead of furious, and obviously failing at the type of smile he got. But at least it was an honest one. He sighed. “Where’s it hurt most?”
“I don’t know. Where’s your soul?”
“A wanderer once told me it was all around, floating around us,” Cain said, wrapping an arm around Glitch and pulling him up into a sitting position. He was limp as a doll, hair caked with grime and sweat and blood. He was also wearing nothing but a baggy pair of brown pants, the Mark on his chest dark against his paler than normal skin. Cain could almost smell dried tears on him. “Hey, it’ll be okay, Sweetheart. DG’s fine, she’s scared silly for you though. She also keeps saying you owe her a new fancy collapsing stick…”
He stopped when Glitch curled his arms around Cain’s shoulders, bare chest sliding over his shirt. “I want to leave,” he muttered, legs moving to straddle his hips. “I want to leave the Kage. They’ve caught DG, she’s trapped like me, but nobody else.” Cain got a chapped kiss on his neck. “It’s the sweetest slavery. You’re signed up the moment you hear about the Trial, admitted as soon as you go through it without dying, and then you’re nothing but their puppet if they decide to fight.”
“Your mother-”
“Hana,” Glitch corrected sharply.
“Okay, Hana is in charge of the Kage. Do you honestly think she’ll declare war on someone? Or…something? However it works?”
Glitch looked him straight in the eye. “Absolutely.”
“What? Why?” Cain asked, startled.
Glitch pressed himself hard up against Cain, pushing them both down to the floor again. Glitch kissed him, but it was a strange kiss - his lips were like sandpaper, but his mouth was nothing but sweetness. A very foreign, dark sweetness.
“I’ve brushed my teeth seventeen times today,” Glitch muttered.
“Always good to be clean,” Cain said, not suggesting a bath or shower. Glitch looked like he might drown himself if he got the chance.
“She’ll go to war because I already started it,” he stated. “The Kage will go to war with Azkadellia, but we’ll be forced, Cain. Oh, DG and I would go anyway, but we won’t have a choice.” Another kiss, this one lingering and promising more on their way. “Sweetest slavery, Cain, just like I told you.”
“It’s really, really hard to puzzle out your riddles when you’re pushed up against me and kissing me like that, darling,” Cain said, which earned him an honest smile.
“And you’re even dressed,” Glitch commented, stripping him down and taking his time about it, keeping his own loose pants on. “Don’t flatter me, just tell me how I look?”
“Kind of like your dog just got run over by a tractor,” Cain said, completely honest.
Glitch blinked at him. “That,” he said. “Was a very disturbing analogy.”
“You wanted honesty-OH gods,” Cain started, only for a very, very cold hand to grab onto him and start stroking. He groaned. “Can’t even WARN me?”
“Less fun that way,” Glitch - no, this was definitely that Sweetheart part of him - purred, toying with him, and paused. Gods, Cain hated when he did that. “We’re going to change things up a little for once.”
“Hmm?” Cain frowned, only to be pulled up and kissed again. Sandpaper and sweetness, that was all he could feel, until Glitch gasped, lurching forward against his chest, panting. “What-” he began, only to see Glitch clinging to him, two fingers already inside of himself. “…holy-”
“You’re going to fuck me, Cain,” Glitch groaned, breath sharp.
Cain’s eyes widened. “But I’ve never-”
“You’ll be fine, I promise,” he said, in that purring voice that was always, always there before the sex began. And gods, it would never stop turning him on. “Seen me do it plenty of times, after all.”
“Seeing and doing are - oh holy,” he whimpered as Glitch rocked against him again, breath shallow, eyes half lidded, a single bead of sweat running down his neck. Glitch’s legs wrapped around his back, and Cain was leaned back with another one of those rough, dizzying kisses-
“-Oh holy hell.” Glitch hadn’t even warned him, just lowered himself down onto Cain. His brown eyes were fuzzy but burning, and Cain couldn’t really pay attention to anything but Glitch’s face, intense and daring, and the heat slowly swallowing him, the tight, burning heat-
“I swear, Cain, if you don’t start moving - ” Glitch choked out, and that was all the prompting Cain needed. They both found themselves shouting out in surprise at the first thrust, Glitch’s eyes going a bit blurry, Cain’s going wide at how good that felt and what it did to Glitch and just…EVERYTHING. “MOVE, damn you,” Glitch panted, head right under Cain’s chin, kissing.
So he did, eventually losing himself in Glitch, watching him writhe and twitch and just be so fucking gorgeous, a bead of sweat traveling down his neck, salty against his collarbone as they moved, panting, moaning, clinging and kissing.
“Don’t you ever leave me,” Cain miraculously managed to say in the beautiful, messy, heated mess. Glitch whimpered, kissing him, and with a hard thrust, harder than any of the others, Glitch’s head immediately whipped back.
Cain had thought that would be some sort of good diversionary tactic, make him pay attention or something, but instead he ended up going “OH holy gods Glitch” at a speed that probably missed the sound barrier by just a couple inches and coming, Glitch not too far behind with nothing but a choked whimper thanks to biting Cain’s shoulder hard enough to draw blood.
Cain nearly dropped to the floor right there, the only thing stopping him Glitch’s tight grip on him and the feel of him sliding off, shuddering.
“That…I think maybe we should do that more often,” Glitch said, voice wavering a bit, his muscles twitching all over as he grabbed a nearby towel and started cleaning them up. How Glitch could always found towels was a mystery to Cain, but not one he was about to complain about. He kissed Cain again, hard. “A lot.”
Personally, Cain had no idea how Glitch could do that over and over, whenever Cain even hinted that sex would be a good idea at that moment. He felt like he would have to take a nice nap, preferably with Glitch, every single time. That was hard. And he kind of liked the near-instant sex a lot better, even though this had been…well, pretty damn good too.
“Maybe not a lot, but it’s a do again thing, I’d say,” Cain said a bit fuzzily, which earned him a laugh. An actual laugh. “You’re fantastic, you know that?”
“I try to be, at least,” Glitch said, grabbing the nearby blanket and tossing it over them, curling up against him in that beautifully familiar way. “…I do love you, you know.”
Cain kissed him, nice and easy and sweet, smiling. “Ditto, Sweetheart.”
Glitch’s smile was as warm as noon, but he didn’t say anything, just curled back up and went to sleep, Cain holding him close and thanking all that was good in the world for bringing his Glitch back to him, and to them all.
---
“I’m starting to think Hana’s right and Glitch really is an idiot,” DG grumbled, throwing another rock into the pond as the sun sank behind the valley walls. Not trying to skip it, oh no, just throwing it in and watching the thing sink after a big noisy splash. “Did you hear those directions?” She made a tsk-ing noise. “For such a smart guy, he really is an idiot.”
“I didn’t understand a word of them,” Jeb said honestly, stretched out nearby and enjoying not getting beaten up. Or trained. They were synonyms to him now.
“They’re all fairytales, Jeb,” DG sighed. “The Empty Orchards? The hidden world of thieves? The magic balloon man? The magic silver shoes?” She paused. “Astronomy’s just astronomy, though, so I guess he’s not entirely stupid.”
“I’ve never heard of any of those fairytales,” Jeb commented.
DG smiled at him. “No offense, Jeb, but you didn’t exactly have a normal childhood.”
“Normal enough that I got all the fairytales,” he shrugged, not even bothered by the mention of being trapped in an Iron Suit for two years. “I’ve never heard of any of them. But I’m betting they all start with ‘Once upon a time’. It’s a universal constant or something.”
She paused. “…actually, those are the only ones that didn’t.”
Jeb sat up, frowning at her. “Really? Are you sure they were fairytales, then?”
DG frowned, trying to think them through. “…he always started them with ‘listen well, to the story of blah blah blah’. All the others got the normal start.”
“Tell me one, then,” Jeb said. “I’m pretty sure Glitch wasn’t stupid if it’s so obvious to you and I don’t have a clue what all of that meant.”
“…well, the magical balloon man one is pretty simple. A man lived in a faraway country, always felt like something was missing, and decided to go traveling. He builds this big hot air balloon, climbs in, and this huge gust of wind knocks him and his balloon out of the world, and when he lands he’s in front of this beautiful woman and they go live happily ever after, until their children die and he runs away, taking the balloon with him, waiting for one of his dead daughters to come find him. I never really did understand the end of that one.”
Jeb paused. “DG, I’ve never heard a single story like that.”
“Seriously?” she said, stunned.
He shook his head, sitting up and brushing some grass off of his pants. “He was probably telling you them as a kid just so you’d remember them like this. It means that after you go through the other fairytales, you’ll get to the balloon guy waiting for one of his dead…wait, did you say dead daughters?”
DG blinked, mouth widening. “Everyone thinks I’m dead! Jeb, the magical balloon man’s my dad!”
He smiled at her. “It’s exciting to find them again, isn’t it?”
She just grinned, jumping up off the ground, only to wince, clutching at her heart.
“…how bad is it?” Jeb asked cautiously, only for DG to wave him aside, the searing pain fading back to a dull ache on her skin.
“I just need to stop moving around like that,” she assured him. “It just…well. It kind of feels like the thing gets mad at me when I get excited and move more than I need to.”
Jeb stared at her.
“What?”
“You said your tattoo feels angry, DG.”
She frowned. “So?”
“It’s a TATTOO.”
“It’s the MARK. It does weird stuff, according to everybody,” she defended, and sighed. “Yeah, it’s weird. Let’s get inside before Hana gets angry.”
At that, Jeb picked the pace up quite a bit. She smiled and didn’t say a word about how Hana would be more likely to glare and call them names than actually smack them around.
Jeb hadn’t really gotten the difference between training and real life just yet. She felt a bit guilty about it, but she didn’t explain. It was fun to watch him twitch.
---
Two little princesses dancing in a row,
Spinning fast and freely on their little toes.
Where the light will take them, no one ever knows,
Two little princesses dancing in a row…
The song echoed through the chamber. Green marble on the floor, large, battered wooden columns painted red holding up the arching roof, windows reminiscent of the Winter Palace planted into the walls. Ivy clung to the columns and spread across the ground.
It was like a mirror that showed what you weren’t. The only thing that separated the two women was a pair of spinning dolls, one in each hand.
One of them was gasping, long dark hair loose and hanging over her beige-colored nightgown, dark eyes locked with the other woman’s light blue. The other wore thin, baggy knee-length pants and a matching camisole, dark hair dripping down her shoulders. Each held a spinning doll, the song repeating over and over in the room.
“Are you here to save me?” the long-haired woman whispered, her free hand glowing silver at it clutched at her head, giving the shorter-haired woman a look of desperation. “Sometimes she hurts me so much.”
“…I’d almost forgotten you,” the blue-eyed woman said, her other hand glowing with the same light. “You’re in pain. You’ve been in pain for a very long time, haven’t you?”
Something else was whispering behind the rhyme, but the rhyme grew louder, drowning out the other voice. The dark-eyed woman was panting, nearly falling to the floor.
“Are you going to help me?” she whispered.
“I promise I’ll try.”
The dolls shattered. The rhyme became nothing but a drum in the background as they desperately reached out, glowing hand for glowing hand -
twolittleprincessesdancinginarowtwolittleprincessesdancinginarowtwolittleprincessesdancinginarow
NO
They screamed, and the dream crashed apart.
---
Azkadellia shot up in bed, gasping and feeling like she’d just had her own soul nearly sucked from her body. Sweat had trapped her hair against her forehead, her neck, her chest…she scoffed. She was a mess.
just a dream
“I know that,” Azkadellia snapped quietly. “I know that. It just…it felt…”
It had felt…safe. Free. Terrifying. Painful. Honest. And disturbingly, horribly real. That had been her doll. That had been the floor of her Tower. Those had been the windows of the Winter Palace.
JUST A DREAM, dearest
She brushed her hair out, swallowing, reminding herself that they were the Sorceress, and she didn’t have problems sleeping. She gave others those types of problems, not the other way around.
And yet, even with Ambrose dead, a storm was coming, and…no. She shook her head, glaring into her mirror.
“Yes. Just a dream.”
---
Glitch had tried to sneak in during the night, wanting some time to just…relax. Get used to being back here. To make amends with himself and the house before demanding they get on with their lives and leave, take care of DG’s destiny and take down the Sorceress and put the Queen back on the throne. Honestly, by now all they had to do was get the emerald and into the Tower to take care of Azkadellia. Fifteen annuals had given him more time to prepare than he’d even dreamed of, and it wouldn’t just be him and DG. It would be so many other people too, even if it was just their encouragement and what they had managed to teach DG that he would never have been able to.
His thoughts running about, he nearly tripped over DG, who sat with an entire pot of tea next to her on the table, downing another cup. Everything - even the trial - evaporated at the dark rings around her eyes.
“Hime? DG? Are you okay?” Glitch said, sitting next to her. She blinked a bit fuzzily at him.
“…my Glitch?” she asked, sounding like she’d been punched in the throat.
“Yes, it’s your Glitch, are you alright? You don’t look okay,” he said, putting a hand to her forehead, only to immediately pull it away, blinking at the blue-silver sparks that had erupted from the simple touch. “…Deeg?”
“My sister,” she said quietly, and Glitch blinked.
DG had barely mentioned Azkadellia as anything other than an enemy since she turned eight, and even then it had normally been unpleasant or bitter. Even then, she’d always been ‘Az’ or ‘Azkadellia’. But never, never ‘my sister’.
He ignored the burning sparks that seared his arm as he slung one around her, letting her lean into him. “What happened?”
“She’s still inside there,” DG whispered dryly, despite the amount of tea she was drinking. “My sister’s still inside the Sorceress, and she’s hurting, and she’s dying-”
“She’s still your sister,” Glitch said a bit hollowly, his plans slowly fizzling away. He could see where this was going. “The Sorceress-”
“Her name is Azkadellia,” DG whispered, looking at the crushed leaves at the bottom of her teacup. “And I remember how all of this - ALL of this, Glitch - is my fault. I…if I-”
Glitch put a hand on her head. Again, he could see the burns he would have from this, but DG always came first. Always. “If anything is your fault, you were too young for anyone to really blame you. Besides, Deeg, she KILLED you-”
“Az didn’t kill me, it was the Witch-”
“It was her, DG,” Glitch said, gritting his teeth as the pain intensified at her grief, her self-loathing, her emotions in general. “If your sister is still in there, she’s deep, deep down in there.”
“And drowning,” she stated. “She said it hurt, Glitch.”
He paused. “Are you-”
“YES, Glitch, I’m sure it was her. We…the dolls, and the windows, and…I could feel half of OUR magic,” DG said. “Not just mine, but OURS. The type nothing could break or withstand, the…the light…”
Glitch pulled his hand away, ignoring the angry welts on it, and put the teacup and kettle aside, helping her stand up.
“You need to get back to sleep, Hime,” he said, practically carrying her into her bedroom and plopping the girl into her bed, covering her up. He smiled softly. “That was a lot easier when you were little.”
“I can’t kill her, Glitch,” DG said, curling around her pillow. “My SISTER is in there. I can’t kill her.”
He was silent for a very long time, and then leaned down to put a small kiss on her forehead. “We’ll figure something out.”
“Thank you, Glitch,” she muttered into her pillow as he pulled the blankets over her.
He was quiet when he got into his own bed, Cain as wonderfully accepting of the clinging as ever.
“What’s wrong, Sweetheart?” he finally asked.
Glitch just sighed into his chest, kissing it chastely. “Nothing yet.” No, nothing yet. He could spend at least tomorrow pretending he wasn’t going to hurt her beyond belief one more time. Glitch kind of hoped Azkadellia managed to kill him when he killed her. Then he wouldn’t have to try and explain to DG how some times broken things just can’t be fixed.
But then Cain held him tighter and said “Hopefully never,” and Glitch realized that honestly, he whished nothing would ever be wrong. But he quickly remembered that there weren’t any fairytales in the OZ anymore, just lies and twisted histories.
He tucked his head under Cain’s neck, ignored the pain from everywhere he’d even brushed DG’s skin, and dropped off to a sleep that was only restful to the rhythm of Cain’s breathing.
---
They were leaving the next morning. The day before had been a relatively relaxed one, although DG had been horrified at the welts, but Hana had fixed them up fast enough and Glitch had talked fast enough that it left her conscience fast enough. They all had their packs - Glitch also had a couple tools out and was still apologizing to DG about having dismantled her staff and assuring her that really, nobody but him could have done that - and were heading for the cave when Hana showed up, one last time.
Glitch nearly dropped everything he was holding when his mother hugged him, his eyes wide as he hesitantly hugged back. When she drew away, though, it was the leader of the Kage looking him in the face, not just his mom. “When you move, the shadows will move with you. We’ll feel it.”
He could only manage a strangled “Thank you, Mother,” before becoming a flustered, blushing mess, picking up the destroyed staff and fixing it, and hurrying towards the cave, Cain right behind him until Hana called out a “You aren’t leaving yet, Wyatt Cain.”
He winced, but turned around to face her. “Yes, ma’am.”
Surprisingly, he didn’t get punched. Instead he got a weird-looking red pendant that she shoved into the breast pocket of his coat with absolutely no ceremony. “You saved my son’s life, and you care for Hime as you care for your own son.” He frowned, there was gibberish, and then she paused, gave him a Look, and said, “You can go now, Wyatt.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, confused, but quickly joining up with the others. Jeb was waiting for him.
“What was that?” he asked.
“No clue,” Cain muttered, and then called to the other two. “Where are we going?”
“Fields of the Papay,” DG and Glitch called back immediately.
“Oh,” Cain said. “Well. This should be an adventure.”
DG, in front of them all and having gone through her childhood ‘fairy tales’ for the past three days, snorted. “You have no idea,” she muttered to herself, and stepped out of the cave.
---