Title: The Altar's Coin
Author: Prentice
Rating: Teen
Pairing: DG/WC
Feedback: is very much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own. No infringement intended. No money made.
Author's Notes: I'm churning out stories at an alarming rate lately so please be patient for updates. I've a lot on my plate.
Story Notes: This story spans, quite literally, decades of Ozian time, starting a few months before DGs born to wherever the end may take us. Please be aware that this is based solely on Tin Man, with inspiration drawn very lightly from other sources.
Summary: One simple decision can be like the flap of a butterfly's wing in time.
The Altar's Coin
by Prentice
Prologue
Queen Lavender Gayle stared silently out the window; a hand curled protectively against the gentle swell of her growing stomach, and resisted the urge to call the man behind her a liar. It would do neither of them good and serve only to further prove what she feared most to be true of him: that what he spoke was truth. A great and powerful terrible truth.
"How can this be possible?" She implored quietly, eyes flashing with confusion and fear as she turned towards him. "How can you know what you saw might come to pass and is not just a glimmer, a possibility, of the future?"
"That it is a possibility," the man murmured, words like smoke and sinew between them, "is enough to make even the wisest of men be cautious, my Queen."
Inclining her head, Queen Lavender swallowed thickly, dark curls spilling over her shoulder in a tumbling mass, eyes turning once again to search the darkness beyond the window of her room. Fear crawled through her veins, the white hot rush of it making something inside of her click and coil, the deep well of her magick bubbling and swirling, encasing the baby in her womb with love and affection even as she knew it wouldn't be enough. It wouldn't be enough.
"I love my child," she whispered, hand rubbing tenderly against the silken clothe covering the growing bump of her unborn daughter. That it was a daughter shining inside of her, she had no doubt. Fore Gayle women always mothered daughters, never sons, to the world of Oz, thus ensuring the power that Dorothy Gayle, the first of their kind to step through the veil from The Other Side, had born in their veins was to be passed to other's like her. Even now, Queen Lavender could feel the Light pulsing inside her, pouring into her child, her angel, her impossible miracle.
"I love my child," she repeated again, voice soft but firm as she turned back to the mystical man listening behind her. His eyes were like deep swirling pools, staring into her with a power that even she couldn't comprehend. "And now you ask me to give her up, to give her away, to an unknown future, an unknown fate? How can you, Wizard, how can you?"
For long soundless minutes, the two stared at one another, their magick thick and twirling, like ribbons in the wind on a warm summer's day. How, Queen Lavender's eyes beseeched, how can you ask this of me? To lose my miracle, my angel, my gift, before she is even mine, how can you ask?
But her silent pleads are there in vain, pointlessly tormenting them both with a request of damning kindness. The Mystic Man has never lied and even for she, Queen of Oz, would he not break that promise and bond of truth. Closing her eyes, Queen Lavender wept, for her self, for her child, and for the man that would never know her daughter's smiles.
But most especially, she wept for Oz, fore after today, it would never be the same.