Title:
Penance
Disclaimer:
Not mine…
General Info:
Rated K+
Family/Angst
Author's Note:
I wrote this awhile ago for an online competition and decided to post it here now that the competition is over. (This is one of the reasons my Better or Worse story was on hiatus) PLEASE read and review. I love to hear your opinions. As always, thank you for taking time to read my story.
She thought he'd be there waiting for her, his arms outstretched, leather vest over his broad, inviting chest. The ever present holster still in place no matter how obsolete and tight ass pants that left nothing to the imagination. Crooked grin plastered on the usually stoic face, a twist of the lips that could melt the ever elusive emerald into nothing more than a puddle. The bluest eyes ever seen shaded by a rumpled fedora, eyes she longed to see again somewhere other than in her dreams. She longed to have those orbs slowly peruse her body causing her blood to pump furiously beneath the surface of her skin under his penetrating gaze. She missed his eyes most of all.
But he wasn't there.
It left her reeling as the truth of why finally caught up.
For only a few years Adora Cain believed her beloved husband was still alive, and even then she thought for sure it was just wishful thinking. After all, no one could survive such a torture for longer than a couple weeks. She'd been so certain. But arriving here on the opposite side of the living was all the proof she needed as to how wrong she'd truly been. If Wyatt was dead he would have swept her up in his strong arms the minute she crossed over.
He was alive.
And she wasn't.
Her parents, and his, made an appearance. Hugs were exchanged along with words of pity at the rough life she was forced to lead in the wake of the Sorceress seizing power. While it felt good to see and talk to her cherished family, the two people she cared for most dearly were not present and only the absence of one left her feeling relieved when in reality both should have.
A deep regret began to gnaw at her emotions.
Adora never thought to go back and look for herself, certain in her belief of his death. She made Jeb promise not to venture into the past, if only to save him from the horror of being the one to discover the remains of his idolized father.
As she looked down upon the world to which she was born her eyes fell on the accursed metal tomb she thought to be the final resting place of her husband. Adora swooned, knowing full well he was alive and breathing in the close quarters beyond her sight. She thought her life had been hell after she lost her husband, but now she was fully aware of how lucky she had actually been.
The true victim in all of this was Wyatt.
Forced to stand there and watch as the worst day in their lives replayed in front of him forever, an accursed loop of pain and terror.
"Oh, Wyatt," she muttered. "I'm so sorry!"
The need to be punished for her actions, or rather the lack there of, was extraordinarily strong. Adora willed her surroundings to reflect the atrocities she committed against the one she loved more than all others, her child the only exception. But the paradise of the afterlife remained just that. She wanted to be encircled by fire, death, destruction, ash, desert, anything but the pristine landscape of a country vineyard.
The small trees were full of life, green and luscious, leaves soft to the touch like felt under the fingertips. The grapes were large and full of color… red, purple, and green… plump and juicy and went on as far as the eye could see.
It was beautiful to behold and made her that much more angry.
The vineyard stayed firmly rooted in place in spite of her fury. Blue clear skies the likes of which were rarely seen in the OZ of late and lush green lawns freckled with yellow flowers reminiscent of the color of the suns. A clean, tinkling creek could be heard in the distance as the water ran over smooth pebbles and down tiny waterfalls on its way to larger bodies further down stream.
It was as if the spirit world was mocking her, for she knew she deserved none of it.
Glancing back to her former world she ceaselessly watched the never changing iron maiden. No matter what pain she felt she never once looked away.
Her personal penance!
--
Surprisingly enough given her emotional state, time passed much more quickly than she anticipated. Soon she was witness to a young woman jumping in the fray of nonexistent longcoats. With bated breath Adora saw the same woman and her headcase companion do what she could not, did not… they released Wyatt from hell.
He fell to the ground, a gray heap of clothing, skin and hair, a shell of the man he'd once been.
She did this to him.
She left him to rot.
If she had just turned around and checked… but she was too weak, too scared. Afraid to open the door and have his remains spill out over what was once their lawn, where he gave Jeb piggyback rides, planted her a garden and held her hand as they gazed at the star-strewn sky the night before their family was destroyed. Jeb could have had his father, could have known the man who risked everything for something he believed was right.
But she kept them apart.
And now he was jaded and blinded by revenge, focused solely on the death of Zero. It wasn't as if she could blame the man, but she knew deep down it was not Wyatt's way to seek out a person's death with every fiber of his being.
He was different.
He was hollow.
However, in no time at all, this new woman was able to resurface some of Wyatt Cain's previous personality as he took it upon himself to lead them safely to Central City. It unsettled her how easily this DG made it look. But who she was mattered little to Adora. All that counted was her husband was visible once more.
As they traveled through the fields of the papay on the outlying borders of their little property, she was lost in thought. Remembering back to the days when those fields resembled her current paradise.
Once upon a time they had been magnificent orchards going on without end in every direction. The fruit was plentiful, providing more food than the inhabitants could ever hope to consume. Leaves were the greenest imaginable, and it was a fabulous place for young couples to take long walks, enraptured by their company and the ambiance at the same time. It was where Wyatt had taken her on their first official date; a magical day that seemed an eternity ago.
But no more.
The tenders were vicious creatures now that their food supply was eradicated. Withered trees were now brown and dusty, some covered in a cocoon like contraption used to digest the new prey of the once peaceful animals.
It surprised her little when they made it out of those fields alive, with Wyatt there guiding and guarding it was just a question of how. Though jumping off a cliff had not been high up on her how to list.
--
When the shot reverberated off the marble walls of the Princess's former bedchambers Adora knew her heart would have stopped in that moment, that is, if it was still beating. She watched in horror as it impacted the chest of her husband with enough force to punch him through the large picture window into nothingness.
He fell.
And to her everlasting shame, part of her rejoiced.
She was not evil. She did not wish for him to die.
She missed her husband.
However, Adora knew there would be a time for a reconnection with her lost love later, once his time in the OZ was at an end. He still had things to accomplish and their boy to find.
So, as he crashed through the ice covered lake Adora pleaded with all the Ozian Gods in her vineyard paradise to save him from this watery death. She watched, in a stunned silence, as he rose up from the cold depths without kicking a leg or twitching an arm and nothing there to explain why. Once he reached the surface he rose higher still, then hovered a moment before floating to the still solid ground of ice in front of the Northern Palace's main entrance.
A sigh of relief fell from her lips.
It was not enough to make up for her previous failure but it would suffice for the time being.
She would have to find more ways to make amends along Wyatt's long journey ahead.
And with the luck of the Gods he would have a long life to give her the chance to fulfill her penance a hundred times over.
AN: If you never reviewed before, make it your penance to do so today!