I Serve the Sorceress

Zero didn’t like to risk those kinds of odds.

So now he was going up. He was hoping some blundering dignitary would obligingly fall into his path so he could steal something more suited to escape than a jail suit, but so far he hadn’t had any luck. Truthfully, he wasn’t really sure where the party started.

When the Sorceress had thrown one of her parties, it had all been contained on a single floor. She’d never really liked the security hazard of inviting hundreds of people in at once (sensible), so it had always been a select few, chosen especially for the privilege, or suffered for the sake of information. This ball, however, seemed to reverberate through the very walls. It was throwing him off.

He hesitated by a window, weighing up the odds, then pulled it open and risked a glance outside.

The lights of the party were much closer than he’d expected and he pulled his head back inside quickly. Someone was standing on the balcony, barely two floors above him. A woman, alone. No good for stealing her clothes - he didn’t have the time to sort out the petticoats - but maybe...

He chanced another look.

She was alone, apparently taking a break from the excitement of the party, distracted by the night. She was...

She was the lost princess.

No good for clothes, perhaps. But the Tin Men all followed her orders, didn’t they?

This high in the fortress, security had never been as much of an issue. Where lower down had no windows, no balconies and very little in the way of ornamentation, the upper floors were practically decadent in comparison. 

Carefully, very carefully, he pulled himself through the window and let himself hang off the edge. The sills were metal and cold, but corrugated. On a dry night it was easy to keep your grip, provided you didn’t swing about too much.

Trying not to worry that DG would be gone by the time he reached the balcony, Zero started to climb, pulling himself up the window frames, until he reached the lip of the balcony. He shuffled along, until he was sure he’d come up behind her and, ignoring his protesting muscles, pulled himself up.

He allowed himself a moment to lean against the rail as a wave of vertigo crashed over him and his head spun. When he opened his eyes, he half expected to be alone on the balcony. Or, perhaps, to be face to face with Wyatt Cain’s gun. 

But there she was, the illusive princess. He grinned.

The war was won–but somehow it didn’t quite feel over. DG and her sister ruled the Outer Zone together, but the people still despised Azkadellia. She had been the face of the Witch for too long; they could no longer discern the source of their misery from its first victim after the First Gale. Jeb was training to become a proper Tin Man; Raw had returned to his community, to help it heal; Cain was retained, by DG, to reorganize the Longcoats and make them into a force for good; Ambrose was…dead. Officially now.

Brain and body had evolved in their time apart from each other: they were no longer biologically compatible with one another, completely unable to reconcile and reunite. Glitch could count on one hand exactly how many minutes he had been Ambrose again (an astonishing three-and-a-half, all unconscious as far as the others knew), and although the other him had done everything he could to fix his damaged counterpart–there wasn’t much. The genius could not give it all back. Glitch awoke, sweating and gasping, to clinical terms of failure as if he was just one experiment among many.

The heartbreak on DG’s face was almost enough to break him entirely.

The unfixable headcase was kept around, but he had no business being in the Central City…save to run errands like these under the noses of the new queens. DG hadn’t ever seen what had happened to Zero. Azka D has only known he was missing, Raw had his people to worry about, a community to rebuild. Jeb was too busy with his new training to complete the check on the old resistance outposts. Cain had flat-out forgotten with all the new responsibilities on his plate (or so Glitch hoped, unable to imagine his friend as being quite so sadistic). But Glitch remembered. Glitch remembered–a little glade in the woods, and a big iron suit, like the one at the cabin. Something his hands had wrought a long time ago. Something he stood before now wringing his hands.

Light, dark, light. Rain? Was that rain? Or just branches hitting the side of the suit? He couldn’t have been here long enough for trees to grow, had he? No, please please no.

The air was thicker than it had been, he was sure. How much air did he have anyway? Cain had survived for fifteen years - no food, no water; there must have been enough air, then, surely. 

Come on. You know this. You know this.

But no matter how hard he tried to focus on the thought, to close his eyes and remember his lessons at the Academy, he couldn’t catch the memory. It just hadn’t seemed important at the time. Why would he ever need to know exactly how a Tin Suit worked, so long as it kept prisoners contained until they could be picked up?

No chance of that, now. No chance, no hope, how long had it been? 

A voice. Or was that the wind? How did Tin Suits cope in storms? If the suit fell, rolled down a hill, perhaps, would it kill him? Was he even on a hill?

No, that was a voice. A familiar voice. Nix? No, he was dead. Wasn’t he? Who else would come looking for him? 

What had the voice said? Knock? Knock and he could get out?

His hands were shaking and every joint in his body ached with cold, with heat, but he pulled his arm forward and slammed his knuckles against the wall in front of him.

Once he’d started, he found he couldn’t stop. He started clawing at it, bringing his other hand slowly, painfully up to scrabble desperately at the viewport. He started to whine in the back of his throat.

Emerald City

Left: 

1939 The Wizard od OZ 

2013 Oz the Great and Powerful

2013 Legend of Oz: Dorothy’s Return (early concept)

2007 Tin Man

2014 Supernatural

Right:

2014 Once Upon a Time

2013 Legend of Oz: Dorothy’s Return 

2005 The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz

1978 The Wiz