Disclaimer: Um...pretty self-explanatory. Disclaimers are rarely used when claiming ownership. I own nothing but the plot bunnies who took this supposed one-shot and mutinously stole my fingers for two days and seventeen pages.
AN: So I realized I've been completely influenced by quite a few different texts and movies – and maybe someone will catch my Titanic reference. And if you catch the Harry Potter reference I will create a shrine for you and worship you twice every day.
This started out trying to be cutesy and fluffy, but the last book I read was Atonement, and that's hardly light and cute material to work with, so blame Briony Tallis for the tension.
This isn't beta'd, so any mistakes are mine.
With Music
Part One: Love Song
head under water/and you tell me to breathe easy for a while
"I'm never getting married," she announces one day to a room full of people. Advisors stare at her in the way that has become natural to them. DG is exasperating, and they have no idea what to do about their princess and future queen.
Her mother gives her a half-disapproving look, but Cain still vaguely remembers peeking out of his bedroom, his mother and father speaking in low voices about future Queen Lurline and her refusal to marry any number of suitors wanting to court her. And then of the whispers, after her parents died, of her courting a Slipper. So the rest of the look is understanding, though when Lurline glances at him he stares down at his feet and scrubs the image of that little hollow between DG's neck and the blade of her shoulder from his mind. Then, to remind himself, he stares at the worn ring that adorns his finger, and forces his charge out of his mind.
Ahamo just smiles, like this is something he expected from his stubborn daughter – he is amused by the thought of having her to himself as long as possible, as every father must wish for.
Glitch – or Ambrose, because he looks a bit disapproving today, stares down his nose at DG. "Don't be silly, Princess. You'll have to get married someday."
She crosses her arms and shakes her head, and from Cain's spot in the dark shadows of the room, with his hat tipped low over his face and his duster unmoving at his ankles, he notices the cute way her bottom lip pokes out when she pouts.
"Never getting married," she repeats, and for good measure, she hikes up trousered legs onto the table, crossing them at the ankle.
the breathing gets harder/even i know that
"He's stupid. I mean, actually, he's really smart, and funny, and handsome, and actually kind of amazing and perfect."
"But he's stupid." Cain forces himself to keep any opinions of the Duke of Whatsit to himself. It's not his place.
He watches DG pluck a flower from a nearby flower bed, and glares at the gardener when the man opens his mouth to reprimand her, and stares in fascination as the princess cups it in her hand and flexes her palm, staring at the blossom in concentration. The bud slowly closes, and then opens. It repeats this for a moment, and then DG loses interest, and turns to him with a smile. She leans forward and presses the blossom onto the lapel of his jacket, and when she lets go it sticks.
He glares, and she merely grins at him and continues as if she had never stopped.
"Okay, so what's really stupid is that I don't like him. I mean, not even a tiny bit. Not even a little. He's like – I don't know, prince charming or something, and every time he gives me that stupid dimpled smile thing that should probably have me swooning all I can think is – I wonder what the weather's like in Kansas right now."
"You must think about Kansas a lot," he replies, remembering how many times he'd wanted to strangle the Duke for that stupid smile.
"Okay, I just meant that – I don't always think about Kansas." Her cheeks tinge, and just the tips of her ears turn red, but he catches it, and can't help but wonder what she does think about, if not Kansas. Probably something he doesn't know about. Or approve of. "The point is," she tells him, her eyes suddenly anywhere but him, "is that he's perfect, and I don't even like him."
"You'll find someone," he says, and his chest tightens at the thought of the day he'll see her eyes light and watch her fall in love with some perfect guy.
She sighs, and stares at a spot just above his hat. "It's so stupid," she says, and it's all he can do not to agree.
made room for me/but it's too soon to see
"The thing is," she says one day, leaning against a tree and staining her shirt, her hands, and her lips with a pomegranate she was absolutely ecstatic to find in the woods near Finaqua, "I don't really get this whole courtship thing. It's totally medieval," his brow furrows, but he continues to listen to her and not get the least bit distracted by the way she'll stop in the middle of her sentence to suck out seeds from the fruit he's never actually seen eaten before – one his grandmother had once told him was poison for anything but a Papay. "And, okay, sure, so is this whole matriarchal queenhood thing, and the whole 'consort' deal, but back in Kansas, things are done differently."
He blinks and looks up at her like he's been listening. "What?"
She glances at him and for a moment he's sure he's been caught, but instead she continues, and he stares at her eyes to make sure he doesn't get distracted. "Dating. I mean, I was kind of a tomboy so I guess I didn't date that much, but all this 'princess' and 'highness' stuff is just – well, it's dumb, isn't it? I mean, I'm just DG. In Kansas a guy thought you looked good and he asked you out and you made out in his car for a while after the date and then he tried to feel you up and you knocked his head against the steering wheel and ran into the house. Not all this...pomp. What do I care if Prince whats-his-face has a castle in the mountains and the windows are made out of rare pink diamonds mined by Gillikinese slaves three-hundred years ago? Back on the Other Side those stupid things would be called blood diamonds and no one would be flaunting their origin."
He understands about half of this.
"They attacked you?" he asks, and she cocks her head at him and looks at him with big blue eyes.
"You weren't listening to a word I just said. And they didn't attack me, they just...pushed their boundaries a little. Every girl has to learn how to defend herself against an amorous Kansas boy. Anyway, it helped for when I had to deal with truckers at the Cafe."
"What? What did the truckers do?" He has no idea what 'truckers' are, but the word leaves a decidedly bad taste in his mouth. He thinks of ratty plaid and suspenders.
"Nothin' much, and I could handle them just fine by – the point is dating on the Other Side is very different from courting in the O.Z. And, okay, I guess they're both kind of ridiculous in their own ways, but courting is like... makes me feel like I'm Aurora or Ariel or something."
"Sounds like this is a bit safer than dating in Kansas." He has no idea who Aurora and Ariel are, but if he brings the fact up she'll go on a rant and then he still won't know but he'll be even more confused.
"Except at least in Kansas I could accept or decline. This way I just have to act all... princess-y and pretend to be prim and proper when really what I want to do is tell most of them to just stick it."
Cain needs to write a dictionary. That way anyone who ever has to talk to DG understands what she's saying. He'd probably make a lot of money. It'd be some novelty, to have an Other Sider translation guide.
He wants to tell her that if she ordered the Advisors to stop sending her suitors, they would, by all rights, be forced to stop. But, as always, he is merely a Tin Man turned Royal Guard detail, and she is a princess. There are barriers.
And some barriers can just never be crossed.
if i'm happy in your hands/i'm unusually hard to hold on to
"They're teaching me how to dance," she tells him as their horses trot slowly across the meadow towards the mountain trail DG is particularly fond of. Not that anyone but Cain knows that.
"Dance," he repeats, and imagines her being swung gracefully across a marble dance floor by Duke Perfect. Her hair is pulled up and styled beautifully and her dress is ridiculously big and looks ridiculously good on her despite the fact. She is laughing.
"Yeah, like...real dancing."
He turns to look at her, his eyebrow rising. "As opposed to fake dancing?"
She grins. "You know, like..." she shakes her hips back and forth on the horse, and raises her hands in the air, gesturing oddly, then shrieks and grabs the reins tightly as her horse whinnies.
He isn't sure what that was, but whatever it was, it was odd, and fake dancing doesn't seem the right way to categorize it.
"I never was a very good dancer," she tells him conspiratorially, leaning to her left so that he hears her half-whisper.
They are quiet for the rest of the ride, and she watches him dismount with a strange strangled look on her face, then stares up at the canopy of trees for a second. When she looks back in his direction her face is tinged with red.
"Do you dance?"
"Only when forced."
"What if I asked nicely?"
He sighs. "I thought someone was teaching you how to dance?"
"Well, yeah, but I'm not going to dance with him at the ball."
His chest does not tighten at the implication. And when she sort of skips her way over to him and takes his hand, completely invading his personal space, he is not secretly thrilled that she does this, and isn't scared to do it.
Instead of watching her face, he stares at their feet as he tries to remember the steps to the Ugaban Waltz, and most definitely does not inhale the scent wafting from her hair, and when she stumbles over his toes and presses close to him he doesn't stop breathing for a moment.
Eventually, they get the hang of it, and Cain remembers the steps, and instead of them stumbling around the clearing, Wyatt Cain spins and twirls DG until they are both dizzy and out of breath, laughing at themselves and each other.
It is only afterwards, in the silence of the palace, as he heads to his rooms just off of DG's, that he realizes the last time he danced like that, it was with Adora, and even then there had been music to spurn them on.
blank stares at blank pages/no easy way to say this
"Leave me alone!" she yells to her mother, and storms out of the council room. Azkadelia tries to stop her, but she shakes her sister off and screams loudly when one of the Advisors grabs her arm. He's never seen the girl so angry, but he takes off after her, worried what she might do in her state, even though his heart is already racing in his chest and he feels ill thinking about why DG is upset.
He follows her through a maze of hallways, watching as she continues to disappear around corners, hair following, whipping behind her, until she slams open the door to her rooms and then, as he is skidding to a stop before them, slams them shut with some kind of magic, because she is already halfway across her room.
"Hey, kiddo, open up," he says after a moment, and taps lightly on the door. He reaches for the handle, and isn't surprised that it doesn't budge.
"I said leave me alone!"
He leans his head against the door, surprised to be included in her anger. "Come on, it's just me."
"Go away!!"
"DG, open the door."
Nothing, this time, which he knows is because now she is crying and doesn't want him to hear the hitch in her voice.
He wishes he weren't the impenetrable Tin Man, but is happy he is, because otherwise he'd probably be doing a little crying of his own – although how it could help alleviate the pain in his chest he's not sure.
"DG," he says again, and then grabs the doorknob again, intent on tearing the thing off in order to get into her room, but to his surprise it opens easily and, because he'd been so intent on force, he swings wildly into the room.
DG's shoulders are shaking, and she's making no noise, so he quickly shuts the door again, locks it like he knows she wants, and then moves over to her. He shuffles across the edge of the bed, sits down next to her. "It's not so horrible as all this," he says, his hand following a path of its own across the bedcovers and across her back to settle at her waist, anchoring her against him.
"They're f-f-forcing me to –." She bites her lip, and brushes her arm across her nose, sniffling. "Cain, they can't make me just pick someone!"
He rubs a circle against her side, and doesn't say a word, because if he does he might overstep his bounds, or upset DG, and either way, it isn't going to help.
"What kind of parents are they? Letting the Advisors just decide I need a husband? What – what kind of person do they think I am that I'm just going to sit here and let them... let them dictate my life? I'm not some fairy tale girl who's going to sit back and let some stupid Councilor arrange a nice little marriage for her and just wait for Prince Charming to come fix everything!!"
Cain clenches his jaw shut.
"I'm not gonna just sit here and let them truss me up in finery and have me pick some pretentious, pompous prince to marry!"
She shoots up from the bed, tripping on a shoe left by it, and then picking the bulky heel up and throwing it angrily across the room, where it hits the door with a satisfying 'thunk.'
"God!!"
Instead of saying anything, Cain merely grinds his teeth together, like a good little guard dog, and imagines a time when he'll no longer be able to enter her room like this, or comfort her like he does when she wakes from a night terror, or go on rides with her and dance to no music in an empty clearing. A time when her husband will be the one doing all that.
And he does not speak, or tell her that she doesn't have to choose one of them. It's just not his place.
you mean well/but you make this hard on me
He is leaving DG to her lessons one day, hurrying to meet Jeb because their ride up the trail ran late today, when he crosses paths with Ahamo, and the man greets him smilingly. "Mister Cain," he says, stopping a few feet away from him. "How goes it?"
He tips his hat at Ahamo, who has always insisted he be called Ahamo, and not sir, or highness. "Well, sir," he says, then feels like a teenager. He finds himself twirling his wedding ring around his ring finger with his thumb, and consciously forces himself to stop.
Ahamo nods. "And how's my girl?" he asks, and there is something in the way he says it that makes Cain feel like he's being asked as something other than a bodyguard.
"Probably not enjoying her lessons," he responds, in a way that he is sure can garner no second meaning. "But I'm sure she's fine, other than that."
Ahamo, he realizes, is at least twenty years his senior, and probably more, considering Cain has been in a constant form of stasis for the last nine years, and suddenly he feels unbearably young, and more than a little nervous under the gaze of DG's father.
"Girl's a pistol, she is," Ahamo tells him. "Hope you can handle her."
"Been in charge of her for a while," he responds diplomatically, and Ahamo frowns, a little bit. Cain clears his throat. "Actually, I've been thinking about that."
"Oh?"
"I'm not..." he puzzles over how to word this. "DG and her...fiance," the word stings against the top of his mouth and in his throat, and somewhere else as well, "are probably going to want a new guard once they're married, so..."
"A new one?" Ahamo stares blankly at him, and Cain feels a streak of anger. Like it isn't obvious to DG's father why the future Mr. Gale might not like having Cain around all the time.
"So I thought you might want to have some options open, when...DG decides."
Ahamo now just looks confused. "Options."
"Yeah."
"Well, I guess I'll just let you be the judge of that, right?"
He wants to punch the man, for a moment, but knows that Ahamo is stronger than he looks. "Yeah...maybe."
They are quiet for a moment, and then Cain clears his throat again. "Is there...something you wanted?" he asks.
Ahamo blinks. "I'm makin' you late to something, aren't I?"
Cain says nothing, but Ahamo is already continuing anyway.
"Well, you go on ahead, don't think you gotta stay behind for little old me."
Wyatt nods, says "Sir," then takes off at a trot down the corridor, knowing he strikes an imposing figure with his duster flying out behind him, hoping to catch Jeb before he has to go back to work. And that Jeb doesn't catch on to the anger practically radiating off of him.
i'm not gonna write you a love song/cause you asked for it/cause you need one
She really does look beautiful, he thinks, as she crosses her arms over her chest and ignores the tailor who absolutely hates her telling her that he needs to adjust her bodice. "You adjust anything more and I'm going to stop breathing and fall right out of this stupid thing! Which is hard, because there's not much that can fall out!" She gestures to her chest, and he swallows a lump in his throat instead of refuting her claim.
"Really, your Highness, this dress must be finished quickly," the man said. "The ball is in two days!" DG frowns at the mention of this gowns occasion.
The problem is that DG has refused to wear everything else and this dress is a last ditch effort that DG finally liked enough to agree to have a fitting.
"Then finish it and go away," she says, and her voice is commanding and – regal. She's at least learned that in the last year. It doesn't sound quite as primped up and royal as her advisors might like, but it's the way she says it that makes the dressmaker quickly finish pinning and then wave Cain away so he can let DG change.
He returns to the room as the tailor rushes through it, muttering obscenities and glaring at Cain on his way, to find DG leaning against a pillar and staring up at the ceiling.
"You know," she starts, startling him. "I've been living here for a year, and I never even noticed that the ceiling in this room isn't a ceiling."
He glances up and realizes she is right. There are panes of glass far above them, that by some miracle only half let in the light of the O.Z.'s twin suns.
"I've been here for a year and I still don't know anything about this place. And I..." she trails off.
"You have a meeting with the Council in a few minutes," he says in a placating voice, and DG sighs.
"If I ran away, would you be obligated to follow me?"
He watches her drag her feet across the room, and hides his eyes with the brim of his hat. She reads him far too well, though he's sure he hides most of the emotion that involves her well enough. "And bring you back."
She shakes her head and shuffles past him, and something, somewhere inside of him breaks.
you see i'm not gonna write you a love song/
cause you tell me its make or breaking this/
if you're on your way/
i'm not gonna write you to stay/
if all you have is leaving i'm/
gonna need a better reason/
to write you a love song today