Author's Notes: This one, as most of my stuff so far, is totally unbeta'd. So I own every shiny mistake, all by myself. :P
Now for the Disclaimer... I simply don't own them... not Glitch, not Cain, not anyone or anywhere in the O.Z. And if I did, I wouldn't share. LOL! Now, onto the story...
"Noether's Theorem"
Cain watched over Glitch while he slouched woodenly on the dark bench near the brain tank, and wondered when the nightmare would end for his friend. All the horrors of the past 10 years were suddenly culminating towards something that he could barely fathom and had never ever imagined would come to pass.
They were going to destroy the other half of Glitch's brain.
If Cain was horrified, he knew Glitch must be nearly driven mad. To look so long for a stolen part of yourself, to risk life and limb and actually find it…and then have to give it up to destruction? Cain considered it more of an execution than anything. And it was a violation of all he stood for. Ambrose had committed no crime other than being brilliant. And he had already paid a hefty price for that. Now it seemed he was being asked to sacrifice even more--submit to one final additional cost.
A slow low keen started. And for a moment, Cain was on alert for an attack. But then the bleak noise gradually grew and Glitch leaned over, folding in on himself. Cain was there before he even realized he'd started moving. His first touch was tentative, a mere shadow of fingers along Glitch's bent spine. But it seemed to loosen something within his friend and the noise from the balled up man became a wail of deep grief.
Cain sat down next to him and pulled Glitch into his lap, squeezing him too tightly. He knew that sound. Abject horror, misery and loss. He had made that noise many a night in the beginning of his imprisonment. He had lost a son and wife…pieces of himself instantly, torturously flayed away. This was almost worse. "Shhh….I'm here."
Cain didn't know what, if anything his presence could lend. But it wasn't in him to watch his friend suffer alone. The others had left when Glitch loudly sent them away so he could be alone with his other half until it was time. But Cain had stayed, just inside the doorway, and Glitch hadn't seemed to care. He didn't want to leave Glitch alone, and not only because he thought his friend needed him. He simply couldn't bear to be someplace else while someone he cared about faced another difficult, painful path.
He'd done that with Adora and Jeb…been forced to stay locked away, thinking them dead while they traversed the O.Z, defeated and lost--just trying to survive. He wasn't ready yet to address within himself exactly why Glitch's plight was hitting him just as hard. Maybe his feeling for the zipperhead were becoming deeper than those of friendship now. And maybe he just needed to be here, not useless, for his own selfish reasons. He didn't know which it was. But as the shaking body in his arms cried out in futility and aguish, Cain knew that whatever the reason, he was right where he was supposed to be.
"Glitch, it's time. Wake up." Cain gently eased Glitch out of his lap.
"Glitch looked around confused for a moment and then sobered as he saw the brain tank. "Already? Thanks for letting me…well, you know." He actually blushed, pale and drawn as he was.
Cain just patted him on the shoulder. "You ready for this?"
"If I say no, will they put it off?" Cain gave him a sympathetic look. Glitch snorted inelegantly. "I didn't think so." The former Advisor watched the Queen, Ahamo, DG and others enter silently. Then came the medicos in their crisp white jackets. "Gods Cain, I don't think I can be here."
Cain agreed wholeheartedly and put a protective clamp on Glitch's forarm. "If you don't want to…if you can't… Glitch, no one in the whole O.Z. would dare say that you have to witness this. Do you want to get out of here?"
Glitch leaned into his shoulder while he gathered his resolve. "No, I need to be here. I…he deserves at least that." Cain nodded, not surprised by Glitch's stance.
Then the mask was in place. The one Cain had seen Glitch plaster on many times before. The one that said nothing was really wrong, especially when there was. "Hey Raw…DG…you're both here."
"Wouldn't not be" Raw said simply, casting a worried glance first at Glitch, then Cain.
"So…uhm… I must admit… I glitched when this was being explained." He gave a nervous laugh. "How does this work, again?"
DG reached out to touch Glitch's hand, tears coming to her wide eyes. "The medicos simply disconnect the brain from the system that keeps it…"
"HIM!" Glitch suddenly burst out, making everyone flinch.
"Sorry, keeps 'him' alive. Then we wait." The Queen looked like she wanted to approach, but a warning glance from Glitch and she froze in place.
"Does he know?" Glitch dropped his chin and glanced sideways at the tank.
"I don't suspect he does." Ahamo offered when DG seemed ready to break down.
"I'll tell him then." Glitch's brown eyes were set with grim determination and only Cain tried to argue.
"Glitch…."
"Don't Wyatt. He needs to know why. He deserves to know why. Otherwise we're just murdering him!" And the Queen couldn't help but gasp.
Good, Cain thought. Let her understand what this costs. "Okay, Glitch. We've got time."
"You understand, this is for the safety of the Realm, dear Ambrose." The Queen's namesake eyes were full to brimming but everything else about her was properly regal.
"Don't call me that please." Glitch said in a low voice that Cain almost thought might be a threat. "Ambrose will be dead soon. I'm just Glitch." Then he turned his back to his Queen and faced the Seer. "Raw, can you help me tell him?"
"Yes. But Glitch sure?" Raw asked sadly.
"Yeah, Raw, I'm sure." And he stood in front of the tank, just like he had the day he helped them save the O.Z. from his own invention--and he closed his eyes, waiting.
Glitch felt a large, warm presence that could only be Wyatt. A calloused hand took his and leaned in for support. "I've got you, Sweetheart."
Glitch smiled. "Thanks, Tinman" And then Raw reached out and touched the tank. When he completed the connection by laying gentle, furred fingers on the back of Glitch's head, he nearly seized with the sensation of an additional, distinct intellect.
"Glitch!"
"It's alright Wyatt, it's just a little startling to talk to myself again." He huffed an artificial laugh in between gasps of air. "Takes a minute to get used to." And he didn't complain when Cain tightened his grip to better support his friend.
"Hey…me." Glitch was again assaulted with the total barren quality to Ambrose's interior mind. Like this side of his brain couldn't remember sunny hillsides anymore.
The sleepy intellect slowly deigned to recognize the additional presence. "You…I remember you. Freedom…"
"Yeah, about that…" Glitch had argued to be here, and now he didn't know what to say. He was afraid of Ambrose's fear of death. He was afraid to lose this part of himself that had featured so largely in what plans of the future he could hold onto. He was just plain afraid.
"You promised wholeness. But I haven't heard from you since." Glitch could feel the slightly acrimonious flavor to Ambrose's address as the mind he was in contact with seemed to liven a bit more. "You're hiding something."
"No, I'm here to tell you. I just need to find the right words." Glitch knew one thing, there was no use in lying to, ostensibly, himself.
"…not putting us back." There wasn't any recrimination there, just observation.
"No they aren't." Glitch started looking for the words to do this. Drowsy sounding or not, his other half was frighteningly perceptive.
"What then?" Glitch could feel Ambrose pique.
"You'll be free soon, just not the way we'd planned." And he instantly felt horrid guilt crashing down upon him just as he sensed a kind of naïve excitement from his other half.
"How? How will I be free?"
"They…uhm….They can't put us back together. It was never meant to be reversed. Even with magic, we'd probably die. And if we survived, we'd never be…right." He felt like explaining it all…the examinations, the interrogation of imprisoned scientists and medicos, the court hearings about his detached self.
"I see. So only this. No feeling, no hearing, no seeing…No love." Glitch mentally flinched. Why in OZ had he tried to do this! He wasn't up to this!
"No! You aren't staying like th…I mean… Damn it all! Maybe you can think of a way to put us back together!"
"It wasn't my science. HER people were the monsters." And Glitch was almost amused at his other self's sense of supercilious disdain.
"Yeah… and they say it's permanent."
"It...it probably is. So how…how am I going to be free." And Glitch found he couldn't answer. "Glitch?" Ambrose was sounding more and more alert. The truth would be coming out soon.
"Did we ever believe in God, Ambrose?"
"Of course, Glitch. Ev…everyone does." Ambrose sounded intrigued by the change in subject.
"I beg to differ, many scientists don't."
"They do," Ambrose stated with unequivocal surety. "They just don't realize it. The Otherworld…had a physicist whose work we liked to read, upon a time. His name was Einstein. He once said that 'God was the ultimate mathematician'."
"Come again?" Glitch asked.
"The Universe, Glitch… we're made of the same elements found almost anywhere in the Universe…Water, Carbon, Ammonia, and a handful of others. The same parts of any star, any planet. We're brother to everything and everything is our brother. If that isn't God, I don't know what could be." And Glitch was in awe of his other half. Underneath what he had always assumed was a sanctimonious man of cold science was a philosopher of great depth.
"But what about our souls, Ambrose." Glitch needed to know what Ambrose thought about souls before he could bring up death.
"Ah…" Ambrose's internal voice sounded nostalgic. "The first law of thermodynamics, my brother." Glitch was shocked to be named so distinct a thing as a brother. It meant that Ambrose saw them as separate on some real level. He truly perceived his predicament. This was a terrible thing to realize.
"That's the one where nothing really goes away, it just moves around." He guessed.
"Indeed." Ambrose seemed pleased. "In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total amount of energy in any isolated system remains constant but cannot be recreated--although it may change forms."
"We were an isolated system." Glitch mumbled forlornly.
"Perhaps, though through service to our Kingdom, we became parts of a greater whole." Ambrose was shiningly proud of this fact. Glitch could feel it more strongly than anything he had ever sensed from his missing part.
"Yeah…But now we're two separate isolated systems."
"Not when we're like this, Glitch."
Glitch was nearly overwhelmed with panic. He had to find a way to save Ambrose…himself…them both! Even if it meant they weren't in the same body! "But I can't stay!"
"I know. And…It's alright. I know what's happening."
"How did you…" But Glitch could sense the truth of it. Ambrose knew.
"Raw is good at this. I'm beginning to know what you feel. And some of what you think. And really, it's alright…"
"No, it's not!" Glitch screamed in his mind.
"Yes, Glitch. IT IS. I am alone here…as you said. Separate from the stars, separate from everyone. Rejoining us into one person isn't meant to be. And if you leave me like this, our beloved Queen Lavender is correct--Someone could come along in the future and misuse what we know…just like Azkadelia did." Glitch found Ambrose's calm acceptance to be almost worse than anger or anything else he might have felt.
"I know… but…there has to be another way. This isn't right!" And Glitch realized he was the one who was angry. Angry at the Queen and everyone else.
"Perhaps not in some ways. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be… If this is what my kingdom needs, my Queen needs--then it IS what is right and true."
"But…"
"Freedom, Glitch. Set me free…to be with the stars."
"Okay. I'm so sorry, Ambrose."
"I'm not. He loves us. And I didn't have that before. It will be enough."
"But how will I…" Glitch was so overwhelmed with grief that he didn't know quite what he was even asking.
"Radanheim's Theorem, my brother. Now go. Go and let them do this last thing my kingdom asks of me.." And then Ambrose asked Raw to separate them.
When Raw disconnected the two parts of the Queen's former advisor, Glitch gasped loudly, his knees caved and only Cain's quick reflexes kept him off the floor. "Whoa there! I've got you."
"Cain, I think…I…I hate this."
Cain held him up, disturbed at how long it was taking Glitch to gain his footing. "Yeah, me too, Glitch. Me too."
Glitch spotted the movement of white coats, the disentanglement of aged wires and diodes and wanted to fight them. But he didn't. "Let me be with him when he fades."
"No! Glitch…" Cain was about to pick the man up and carry him out of that cursed tower room.
It was Raw who stepped in to help. He gently pulled Glitch's pale face forward. "This death not safe…not for you, not for me."
"Please, Raw." Glitch pleaded softly. "I wouldn't ask, but…"
"Ambrose wouldn't want this Glitch, and I forbid it." Cain was surprised to hear DG give the order--a royal order. And he was beyond thankful she chose that moment to put on her princess cap.
And then Glitch collapsed.
Radanheim's Theorem was apparently something that was tantalizingly on the edge of Glitch's ability to understand. Cain had watched his favorite headcase bury himself in Ambrose's old library looking up everything he could on that notable Ozian physicist. All to no avail--And Glitch was killing himself trying.
Weeks passed, the nightmares kept him from sleep, the lack of sleep kept him from concentration--when the 'glitching' didn't. And he barely could be brought to eat. Cain's best friend was a man possessed. The Queen had eventually tried to get involved, only to be given the business end of Cain's temper. Cain had made it clear in no uncertain terms that Glitch had given up more than enough for her kingdom and he would heal on his own terms, not hers. She didn't return. But In the end, Cain knew realistically that Her Royal Majesty Lavender II had butted up against Cain's guilty conscience, more than anything. He knew only too well that duty to kingdom was a powerful thing, that Ambrose had been a necessary sacrifice. But he remembered all too well what his duty to Kingdom had cost his family. And it still stung.
Cain was afraid--genuinely afraid. He couldn't get through Glitch's frantic obsession in order to help his friend. And it didn't help that the more time he spent with Glitch, the more confused he became about the actual nature of his feelings. It was getting to the point where he seriously considered knocking poor Glitch out…or waiting until he 'glitched'--getting him out of the lab and burning the whole thing down.
Whatever had passed between Ambrose and Glitch in the moments before they ended Ambrose's existence had robbed Glitch of the ability to move on.
Then one day, Ahamo, of all people, showed up. He gave Cain a compassionate if annoyingly knowing smile. Then he went over to where Glitch was bent over the same old table, reading.
"I borrowed this one, Glitch." Ahamo patted him lightly when he jumped at the intrusion. Then he handed a small red leather book to Glitch, who--once he read the title--looked like a kid at Wintermas.
Then he looked hurt, betrayed almost. "Why did you take it! You know I've been trying to figure this out."
"Well, I didn't know if I could help. I was a bit of a scientist back on the Otherside. But I needed to understand what you were trying to master before I would know if it was beyond me. Ambrose was years ahead of me, clever as I am." He grinned as he squatted next to Glitch's tattered work chair. "And I think I have something else you might need." He handed Glitch a book called 'The Complete Idiots Guide to Noether's Theorem'. With the blaring black and vibrant yellow cover, it was quite possibly the ugliest book Cain had ever seen!
"What's this?" Glitch asked, a boney, pale hand running over the hideous cover.
"I nipped over to the Otherside to a bookstore to get this for you. When I read Ambrose's book, I thought Radanheim's Theorem was very similar to a theorist's work on the Otherside named Noether. She expanded on modern physics making conditional understandings for the occurrences of certain thermodynamic rules. The first law of Thermodynamics, for instance, is understood to be a consequence of Noether's Theorem…or in the case of the O.Z., Radanheim's Theorem." Glitch looked at the ugly book like a man with watching a glass of water after staggering in from the Barren Wastes. He didn't even thank Ahamo, he dived right in.
Cain didn't know whether to thank the Queen's consort, or kill him.
As Ahamo walked to the door, he clasped a firm hand to Cain's shoulder. "If anything can help, this will. Just hang in there, Wyatt." And Cain didn't know what to say to that. It was more a matter of picking from a million things, rather than having nothing at all to say. His mind gave up when the war to choose became too much.
He turned back from Ahamo's retreating form and watched his friend begin to franticly pour over the new tomb. And something began to resolve itself in him. Cain had been seeing loss, seeing decay. He had spent the last many weeks looking on a friend who was slowly surrendering to madness. But what the Tinman saw just then was someone he loved, standing at a terrible crossroad.
Someone he loved...
So Cain went to Glitch and carefully pried the book from protesting fingers--knowing his friend would follow where the book went. Glitch was led to the laboratory's worn sofa where Cain made him lay down in the lawman's arms while he read Ahamo's strange book.
Hours later Cain was woken to the sound of loud weeping. He raised his head from the back of the couch to witness Glitch sobbing into the tacky yellow and black book. "Glitch, sweetheart?"
"Cain! He…I…" But whatever he was about to say was lost in another wave of tears.
Cain stroked Glitch's neck and shoulders, whispering calming phrases off the top of his head. Eventually the exhausted man wound down from his lamentation. "Cain, I...I think I understand now." He hiccuped and sniffled while wiping at the thin, damp pages of the book.
"Tell me." Cain had never truly understood the quest Glitch had been so set upon. But if Glitch had reached some peace, that was all that mattered to him.
Glitch emphatically tapped the open pages. "This, Radanheim's Theorem…Noether's Theorem… Ambrose was trying to…" And Glitch clutched the book to his chest and tried to gather his scattered control. "He was telling me about symmetry, about souls, and love, and letting go."
"Not that I'm not glad you understand him…But how…What?" Cain was tired and his back was cramped from sleeping upright with a zipperhead scientist in his lap. But he needed answers at this point almost as much as Glitch did.
"Noether's first theorem derives conserved quantities from symmetries." Glitch drug a damp sleeve over his red, swollen eyes.
"Come again?"
"It states every symmetry of a physical theory has an associated conserved quantity; if the theory's symmetry is time invariance then the conserved quantity is called "energy". I was a singular body of energy, then Ambrose was split from me and I became Glitch. Now he's loose energy, spending itself somewhere out there in the cosmos. But I'm still whole...my symmetry is constant. I'm okay, because of Radanheim's Theory of conservation symmetry! Just as I was losing Ambrose permanently...losing him for good--I was gaining you! Cause that's how things just work..." Glitch sighed deeply, settled back onto Cain's lap and was almost instantly asleep. Cain would have been worried about the abrupt surrendering of consciousness if he hadn't spent the last several weeks in this very room, witnessing Glitch's mad exertions.
"Oh…" He sat there for a moment, soaking in the fact that Ambrose's last message had been as much a message for him as for Glitch. "Goddamnit, Ambrose! Couldn't you have just said so--plainly!" Of course, knowing a little of what Ambrose had once been like, he probably had.