Title: Learning to Live 1: Scraps
Author: purplerhino
Disclaimer: Not mine. Never was. Damnit. I could be rich and famous and have Wyatt Cain as my personal attendant if I did own them.
Spoilers: Everything.
Rating: PG-16
Characters/Pairing: DG/Cain, AZ/Jeb, Glitch /SemiOC
Summary: He felt… conflicted. Of two minds about everything.
Glitch sat in his workshop staring at the glass ball with whirring gears and clicking switches held carefully in his palm. He wore a band about his head with a little arm that reached out above his right eye, holding a magnifying lens. His hair, a slightly messy tousle of black curls, mostly covered the fine line of a scar where once a zipper had been.
Right now, he was having a blank moment. He knew what he was doing. It was there, on the tip of his brain. This would read the weather, how heavy the air was, the temperature and humidity. It should warn of impending storms. If they put one of these in the six lighthouses around the kingdom they would have several hours notice of bad storms. At city and town centers it could also come in handy… if he could only remember what he had just done. Had he tightened the invariated spring working the barometer? Or had he changed the cog, to add additional fine-tuning on temperature readings? He sighed and set the globe down.
He felt… conflicted. Of two minds about everything. In the most literal sense. It had been a month since the best experts in alchemy - healing and magic - had reintroduced both halves of his brain to one another. They were connected and seemed to work most of the time. However, he had these moments. Times when he wanted to be proper and reflect the nobility of the crown, a strong voice tended to remind him to 'loosen up, blockhead.'
He never would go back to being the old Ambrose. He remembered being Ambrose, he vaguely remembered how he had thought, the propriety and genteel mannerisms. But he had become someone else. He couldn't stop being one to move backwards into the other. In many ways, Ambrose had been innocent. He'd been young, and unable to comprehend the things that had happened to him, for all his loyalty and bravery. Glitch knew too much, had seen and experienced things that Ambrose never would have, even if he did retain a bit of that 'wide eyed optimism'. And if his starched collars chafed at formal occasions, it was good. It meant he had grown. The person he had grown into was considerably more fun that Ambrose and his self constraints.
Yet, still the memory seemed to jump and he'd lose track of a conversation he really was interested in, or little things would show up that meant the old, grey matter roommates weren't always getting along.
The whole thing became irrelevant when the door to his lab burst open and two women entered. The dark skinned woman closed the door and stood just inside, blocking the entrance. The other ran right to him and flung her arms around him.
"Glitch you have to save me. Do you have anything that will make me invisible?" DG, High Princess of the O.Z. did not stand on propriety. Especially with her friends.
"Still working on that one, doll. Isn't your husband supposed to save you. Or Marion over there?" He wiggled his fingers at the woman blocking the door. here was a twitch to the corner of her full lips, though she maintained a serious mask while shaking her head. Evidently, the princess was on her own there.
"Wyatt's in a trade negotiation with my father and the emissary from Florin. Marion won't get involved unless the seamstress actually attacks me with scissors, although pins seem to be allowed." She narrowed her eyes at her bodyguard.
"Builds character, your Highness." Marion offered, her stoic mask never slipping. That kind of retort would be unheard of in any palace but this one. A bodyguard should never talk unless the safety of their charge was an issue. They did not befriend or entertain their ward. They were professional, invisible and disposable, to almost every other Noble and country except this one.
"I'm going to outlaw corsets. Cruel and unusual torture devices. They were invented by men who discovered a new fetish and then advertised it as fashion." Only DG would see her and Azkadellia's female guards need for freedom of movement and shown them the double slingshot contraption they had all taken to. It spread through the ranks of female guards and military. THEY were already wearing pants. But it was acceptable when it was uniform. Some women had even taken to the cupped bit of fabric outside of those in uniform.
"The O.Z. needs more feminism. Name one thing a man can do that a woman can't. " DG announced as she flopped into the plain wooden chair next to his.
"Father children?" Glitch grinned hugely.
"Pee standing up," Marion offered from her position by the door. One shoulder gave a little shrug, but she still managed to look foreboding.
"You are NOT supposed to help the peanut gallery," DG scrunched up her face at Marion. "Besides, give me a funnel and I could do that too."
"Father children?" Glitch's eyebrows nearly hit his hairline.
"Nooo... pee standing up. You got me on the fathering thing, but since men are too squeamish and unable to handle pain, we get double points for pregnancy and childbirth, rendering your comment invalid," DG smirked, quite happy with her argument.
"To get back on track here, you have to act like a princess sometimes. That means an occasional dress, and corset. After all you've already shocked so many with your trousers and new foundation wear. The people need a bit of glamour. A bit of glitz. There's a fundamental need to look at sparkly, pretty things. Be it a fancy frock or a..." Glitch looked past DG and hopped up, rushing to a shelf where a shaft of sunlight glinted off his sonic wrench, "Hey, I've been looking for that."
DG grinned then threw herself into another hug with Glitch. "You are a genius."
"You finally noticed?" His smile a bit unsure. What was she thinking?
"I'm going to design my own dress. Red carpet all the way. They want me in a dress then I'll give them glitz and glamour Otherside style. My terms," DG headed back towards the door and collected Marion to brave the seamstress once more. The hamster wheels obviously turning in her devious brain.
She better not credit him with whatever she was planning. He didn't think a dress made of red carpet would be more comfortable than a corset. It'd be awfully stiff. What were the chances he would get out of this without Cain trying to kill him?
She watched with wide eyes, as the men in hats and big coats pulled three people out of an apartment in one of the back alleys of Central City. The men in handcuffs were silent, but glaring. The men with the guns barked orders like angry dogs. She huddled against the wall. Loud voices, anger; they were bad. But the tin stars were supposed to mean good. 'Once,' she thought. 'Maybe.' The thought slipped just out of her mental grasp, dissipating like mist.
She felt she should be here. She was supposed to be here. She didn't know how or why, but she sometimes knew things. When she remembered them. She 'wasn't right in the head'. That's what some people said when they sniffed and sneered. Others pointed to the zipper in her muddied and matted mass of hair and said she was bad. Bad doggy, get away. She wasn't missing something, she had replacement parts. Bits and pieces patched together on one side. That was one of the things she knew. Different people shoved in to see if it worked. Little girl lost wouldn't be missed.
She knew she had to be here. There was food in the house. After the men made of tin left, she could sneak in and get some. Her stomach growled and she placed a hand over it. Quiet tummy. Bad dogs get kicked, chased away with stones. Or hands grabbed and pinched and hurt.
She curled up behind some bins and waited. Eventually, she went to sleep.
It was very, very dark when she woke up. She didn't know where she was or why she was there. An apartment. She had to be at an apartment. Something important was waiting there. Something big. Her future was in there. Her stomach rumbled. Food. There was food in there, too. Or where they both the same?
Six floors up she climbed. She was a bit weak and shakey from her tummy. Had she eaten today? Yesterday? She didn't know.
The door had red ribbon decorating it. Like a present just for her. No bow, but it would do.
Someone in her head knew how to do the thing with the… things. Two wires, feel the click, move the tumblers. The door opened. She twisted and turned so as not to disturb the pretty ribbons.
The apartment smelled. Smoke and stuff gone bad. Anger had been here, and hate. Hate was bad. Made you sick. She wasn't sick. She wasn't right in the head. Bad doggy.
She padded to the cupboard and found cans of glass and tin. Tin cans, tin stars, tin men, tin suits, tin bars.
She found a loaf of bread and started ripping into it, chewing carefully. She did actually remember eating too fast when she'd not eaten in a long time, and vomiting it all up again. The waste of it was as bad as the sick of it.
She got hiccups from the bread. She drank the hiccups away with milk. It was wonderful.
"Sir, you really shouldn't be out here." Detective Morgan Leevy was sitting behind a dumpster, watching the apartment of the Reeges they had arrested earlier.
Besides him sat Frank Garalli, the Commissioner himself. Head Tin Man and one of the last of the Old Guard. Garalli had his black hat tipped low and he chewed on the end of a cigarillo he'd normally be smoking. But the smoke might give them away. So now his large, salt-and-pepper moustache twitched as he chewed.
"Son, the day I can't sit a stakeout is the day they drum me out of the job."
The New Regency Alliance was a spread-out group of rebels who wanted to oust the Gale dynasty and kill the current line of royalty. They were convinced the eldest princess was never possessed, but pure evil in her own right; and the family was protecting her. Frank had met the princesses. Danced with them both when his friend, Wyatt Cain, had married the youngest. Twern't an evil bone about Azkadellia now. Just a fragile, broken girl who had seen too much.
The Reeges had been dealt a terrible blow six months ago. They had kidnapped both princesses and planned to do to them what ought never be done to a woman, then kill them. Wyatt, his boy, and some sort of specialized group of guards, swept in and cleaned the place out. Cain got his girl back. Many of the leaders of the New Regency Alliance had been either killed or arrested. The groups would find some son-of-a-bitch bigger and meaner than the rest to start trouble again. However the numbers were getting low. There were death throes goin' on in the movement.
The hope of this stakeout was a member of another cell would come and try to clean out the place.
"We have movement." Morgan was watching the window of the apartment through binoculars.
Both Tin Men ran across the street and bounded up the stairs. The door to the apartment was open, but the crime tape remained intact.
There was a shadow of movement inside.
"Freeze and put your hands up." Frank's deep rumble filled the room. There was a small meeping sound.
"Just come out, hands up," Morgan ordered.
"Tin badge, tin hands, tin hearts, tin cans," the voice sounded sweet and female.
"Come on out," Frank urged.
The figure that stepped into the light was pitiful to behold. If it was a girl, it was hard to tell. She held something out in her hand offering it up.
"Gun." Morgan reacted before he thought. His revolver bucked and the near-skeletal creature folded to the floor.
"Damnit, Morgan! It's a street scamp. Call for a Healer, NOW." Frank was furious. He hated people with twitchy trigger fingers.
He approached the figure on the floor with caution and a thin, graceful hand held an apple out to him, even as she whimpered in pain. "Eat. It's good," She tried to look down her body. "My tummy hurts."
Matted hair; pale, pale face smudged with dirt; silver eyes too big for the face were wide with shock. She was wearing a shift of some sort, made up of hundreds of bits of different cloth. Scraps sewn together with an unskilled hand. The dirty covering was growing wet with blood.
"Hang in there, kid. Don't you die on me and give an old man's conscience somethin' more to bear," he knelt on creaking knees and placed pressure on the wound. She rewarded him by passing out.
A/N: I mentioned a semi-original character. 'Scraps' was introduced in the book 'The Patchwork Girl of Oz', and played major parts in 'The Gnome King of Oz','The Wonder City of Oz', and 'A Runaway in Oz'. She has been 'TinManized' by me. So she resembles the character in a new, unique manner.
Editors: "erinm_4600" erinm_, bets_cyn, "Naomi Starsiak" n_e_star