Disclaimer: The originals belong to L. Frank Baum, the new guys belong to Sci Fi and the actors, and everything else belongs to the Great and Terrible blah blah blah.
AN: These are almost all 100 word drabbles, but I cheated on "Trust" and "Respect" cause I just couldn't fit what I wanted. Grr for the prolific-ness of Wyatt Cain! "Ties that Bind" ran long as well. Hope you like!
Fight
"You, there."
Azkedelia watched the blonde man walk toward her, bend low in reverence. Oh Gods, she thought, please. Please. Look at me.
"Your majesty," he said, his voice a mixture of emotions. The witch crooked her finger at him even as Az struggled.
Please. Just look at me.
Finally, finally he turned his eyes up, caught hers, and he startled back for a mere second before Azkedelia felt the witch reign her in. "What is your name?"
Azkedelia ceased her efforts. If he had seen, it didn't matter. The witch was far too powerful for her.
"Zero, your highness."
Magic
"I didn't do it!" she told Hank, glaring at her principal. "Pop, I really didn't do it."
"Well of course you didn't, DG. I know that. But you did something, alright, and Mr. Jackson here needs to know what that was. Greg darn near got himself killed falling off that swing."
"I just wanted the swing to go faster! I swear I didn't push him! I didn't even touch him!"
Hank shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe he jumped."
But both knew that Gregory Thompson's broken arm had nothing to do with jumping off the swing, and Hank wasn't telling his side.
Out
"Where's dad?" Jeb asked one day, his hand ghosting across the fabric of her dress.
"Out," Adora responded, trying to quell the mix of anger and fear in her breast. She had given her blessing, she could hardly retract it now.
"Out where, mom?" he half-whined.
"Just out!"
Jeb took a startled step backward, and Adora Cain sighed and reached for her son. He couldn't help the fact that his father had always wanted to save the world. She wrapped him in her arms, pressing a kiss onto his head.
"Out saving the world, just like he always does."
Please
The witch never left her alone. She had kept her in a stranglehold for years, while she stole life from the O.Z. Azkedelia barely fought anymore.
Except there were times like these when resistance won out.
"Zero, I want you to go to Wyatt Cain's home, and I want you to take care of him." No! Azkedelia thought, and she felt her body stumble slightly as the witch was caught unawares.
"Sorceress?"
"Go!" the witch demanded, but Zero was watching her eyes.
Please don't. Please. Another resistor thrown into an iron suit, another family left to suffer.
"Now!"
He obeyed.
Love
"No! Leave him alone!"
They had fought the night before, with Jeb looking on in fright and confusion. He wanted them to leave, wanted his wife and child to go into hiding. Though he never said it, he knew he'd been found out – someone had told the Long Coats that Wyatt was fighting for the resistance.
So she had fought. For her marriage, for her boy, who idolized his father. In the morning she had told him she loved him, biting back tears as he held her in one arm and Jeb in the other, kissing each in turn.
"No!"
One
Her family had deserted her. Her mother had not met her eye from the very first time she came back from the cave. Her father had left before DG was even in the ground.
She had been alone for a very long time.
Sometimes she felt as if all she had left was the witch.
But then there were times she didn't – and those were the times that Azkedelia and the witch were two different beings, and not the Sorceress. Those were the times when there was no one, when Azkedelia screamed to be freed. Only no one ever came.
Fatherhood
Two days after DG turned sixteen Hank bought her a bike. It was the one she'd been secretly wishing for, coveting from afar, through the window of a local shop. He led her to the shed with hands over her eyes, and then grinned at her a moment before he pulled the tarp free and she shrieked with glee. Before he could say much of anything she'd pulled him into a quick, fierce hug, and then began a serious survey of the machine.
He asked only one thing of her. "Now you promise me you'll always come home, you hear?"
Penitentiary
Azkedelia invented the island when she was twenty four. The witch would never have known how to do it, but Az had spent far too much time in Ambrose's lab. It was with mixed feelings that she watched the witch shrink her mother and send her into the little globe-like prison. She wanted to see the woman who did not save her in pain, and there some small part of her was glad to get her out of the dark and dingy recesses of her holding cell.
In the end, she couldn't bear to look her in the eyes.
Dream
In high school DG took a drawing class in her senior year, and her last project was to draw whatever prompt they pulled from the teachers hat.
DG ended up with "home" and spent two weeks staring at a blank sheet of paper. Then one night she dreamed of a gazebo by a lake, and a hot balloon floating above it. She spent the rest of the night furiously sketching, and when she turned in her project and her prompt, she wearily wondered why she hadn't drawn Number 39, and why she was suddenly very sure 39 wasn't her home.
Bloodlust
When Jeb was fifteen he nearly killed Zero. Zero had shown up at the seedy bar where Jeb met with one of his contacts from another resistance group, and Jeb had felt blood rushing in his ears, had stood before he even realized. His hand had clutched at the dagger at his hip – his contact shook him to stop him from making his move. It would have been foolish – he would have gotten himself killed in the process. But even as he watched Zero walk out of the bar, he knew without a doubt it would have been worth it.
Moment
She was alone in her room when it happened. She woke from a dream and the witch was gone. She was off the bed in a daze, walking on legs not quite her own – she stumbled over a desk and a tin tumbled to the floor, and the door to her rooms swung open to reveal Zero. He glanced around the room, found no intruders, looked at her in confusion. "Sorceress?" he asked tentatively, unsure.
"No!"
But it was too late. She felt the witch return, and could only watch Zero's eyes widen as he retreated behind the door again.
Marbles
Glitch had had a brain once, he was sure of it. He'd been a smart man – maybe. In the din of Central City he couldn't bear to not know, but out in the wilderness, with no one to notice the zipper in his head or the time-worn finery that might once have been a sign of royalty, he could peacefully lose himself. He did not dream, outside the city, of hazy images of a little girl handing him a flower, or of a dark office filled with bright ideas. He simply was, and that was just fine with him.
Glimmer
They told the witch of the fall of the Northern Guild.
"Look at me!" Azkedelia felt her body shake with the effort it took, but she held strong to her mind. Every Long Coat in the room looked up at her, but Zero held her gaze when the others deferred.
His own eyes flashed with something dangerous and strong, but it was too much for Azkedelia. The witch made sure to punish her for it, but in the recesses where Az lurked, all she could remember was the worried look as Zero had turned his eyes away from the witch.
Home
Emily settled into her chair on a sigh, and stared across the coffee table at her husband as he rifled through guide books – Australia, Paris, Greece.
"Hank, what are we gonna do? We can't let her run off across the world."
"Oh, she's a kid, Em. Let her be."
"Hank," Emily frowned, "she's not a child anymore, and thats the problem. She has to go back."
Hank looked heavenward, thinking of his girl, of the inevitability of her leaving them. Of returning to her home, of becoming who she was meant to be. He'd much rather have her in Australia.
Dead and Buried
DG?
DG was dead. She was sure of it. She could remember the pain she'd felt tearing through her as she tried to fight the witch, as her sister died before her.
Zero watched her as his men dug, but she barely took notice. She hid as far from the witch as she could, trying to remember those days – but she'd been fighting, then, and most of what she remembered was internal.
All this time...
"You lied to me! She's alive!" In that moment, it was all Az could do not to join in the witch's hatred of her mother.
Trust
"Mister Cain?"
He had long stopped wondering why her voice made him dizzy.
He heard her squirming, turning towards him in the dark. "Are you sure you aren't cold?"
He ignored the fact that he was freezing without his coat. "Go to sleep, DG."
He heard movement, and then felt her moving near him. He forced himself not to react when she sat down next to him, nor when she threw his duster over the both of them and nestled against his shoulder.
Early in the morning he uncurled a hand from her breast and sat on slightly higher ground, ignoring the way she turned into the spot where he had been.
Schooldays
When Ambrose was sixteen annuals old he fell in love with a girl who knew the periodic table better than he did. He never told her, and she went on to marry a Tin Man who later became a Long Coat. But Ambrose barely remembered her, for he had a greater love. Knowledge.
When Ambrose was nineteen he fell half in love with another girl, a princess who wanted nothing more than to see his brilliant creations.
When Ambrose was twenty-eight that girl had had his brain torn from his head.
He'd never really had much luck with girls.
Resist
Jeb had been locked up in the Suit for two days after his mother died – was freed by one of his men, who had come looking for him. His mother had been buried already, her name carved into a piece of siding from the house.
It had taken Jeb a day to calm himself.
A few weeks later, scouts reported that Long Coats were escorting prisoners up the road that they used most often for skirmishes. For his mother and father, he ordered a group be put on the road to wait out Azkedelia's men.
For his mother and father.
Respect
It was the suit that stopped him in his tracks, and for a moment he felt a bolt of unease: his son had used him as an example? But he hadn't, not really. A reminder was something Wyatt knew all about.
They called his son "sir" like it was a given, and though he threw it off with a 'just worked out like that' Wyatt was undeniably proud. His heart, so newly restored to usefulness, beat unsteadily in his chest; the loss of Adora for a second time, the reality that Jeb was alive, the worry over how he would ever find DG now.
Two
"Two little princesses, dancing in a row..."
The power was pulsing through her, severing some of the bonds the witch had created, which terrified Az, and DG was alive and there and she was looking at Azkedelia, holding out her hand, crying for her to take it. But the witch was all she had known, for so long, she couldn't...
"Take my hand!"
She'd let go. Deserted her. She couldn't...
"Take my hand," she said, and Az pushed past the pain, the fear, and reached, reached...and caught DG's hand. Her sister held tight, and Az was free.
"Hold on!"
Justice
"Why can't you just send someone else?"
He gave DG a look, and she bit her lip and sighed, glancing across the room at her sister, who seemed oddly interested in Zero's fate, if the look she was giving them was any indication.
"Just...come back, okay?"
Wyatt couldn't help but smile, even as Jeb gestured for him. In a gesture that was quickly becoming too frequent, he leaned forward to pull her into him, pressing his chin on top of her head.
"You bet, kiddo."
He forced himself not to smile too much when DG glared at the nickname.
Blame
They spread it around like wildfire, but for the most part it is on themselves, which makes the situation worse, because no one can tell you that you can't blame yourself. It never works.
It is, in a sense, the worst kind of ego trip, to throw the weight of the world on your shoulders, but it is subconsciously done, and is hindered by the care of others.
Azkedelia tries very hard to blame herself, for being weak, and for not fighting the witch. But she can't help but blame everyone else instead, and that, perhaps, is her greatest strength.
Adore
Wyatt Cain loved a princess.
He endured the looks from her parents – both sets – he fought off his son's mixed emotions, and he ignored Glitch's teasing ways. But he did not tell DG. He couldn't.
So when, one day, she ordered him to sit, and she pulled out a sketchpad and charcoal, he listened, acquiesced, and nearly kissed her when she spent twenty minutes staring at his bottom lip. But mostly he fell further, when she smiled at him and leaned forward to tilt his hat over his eyes, and then continued her study of the shadows of his face.
Semi-annual
Ambrose had been in a form of stasis for five years, so when Glitch reconnected with himself he was somewhere in between twenty-eight and thirty-three, but he felt closer to eighteen. Perhaps it was the fact that Azkedelia had blossomed beautifully – just as he'd known she would – and was nearing twenty-five. Perhaps it was that the Queen looked too old, or that Wyatt Cain and the princess DG were dancing around each other like fools, and Cain just must have been older than he.
Perhaps it is because he is far too young to be so old.
Parental Units
Hank and Emily were named honorary members of the royal family, though they had always been just fine as mom and popsicle. They watched their daughter grow into her role with pride and a touch of sadness.
She was every bit the girl they raised, though. Even now, when she knew where home was and seemed content with it, she was just rarin' to see the world.
And as she fought with both her mother and Mister Wyatt Cain, Hank grinned at Emily and swung an arm around her waist. Cain let out a frustrated growl.
"That's our baby girl."
Ties that Bind
In the end Zero was one of the few Long Coats who received a punishment from the state. There had been a general consensus to lock him up in a Suit for eternity, but one of DG's first actions as princess had been to order them all destroyed
Instead it was decided that rather than locking him up, or banishing him, they'd keep him close – they sent him to work with Ambrose, setting up the sun seeder and doing grunt work all across the kingdom.
Azkedelia found herself...relieved, and though she rarely paid him any attention, when he was near she felt her two lives connecting.
For that she could not begrudge DG her vindictive streak.
Torment
Wyatt Cain was an expert in all areas of torture.
At least, DG thought so.
For the last five months he had been her constant shadow, always near, always hovering, being that horribly fantastic pillar of strength, always there whenever she needed him.
He was driving her insane. Whenever he touched her he sent her blood boiling, never acting on what was quite obviously there. And now, sitting next to him at dinner, with his hip flush against hers and her color rising to a noticeably fever-like hue, she was sure he was going to torture her to death.
Penitent
It was Ambrose, not Glitch, who woke from his surgery to find Azkedelia pacing before him, and it took a moment for things to click into place. He was nearly equal parts Glitch and Ambrose when she turned to him, her eyes lighting across his face and her worried gaze holding his. He stumbled for something to say, for Glitch was frightened and Ambrose nervous, which together tied his tongue in knots.
"I..." she said, then frowned and sighed.
He smiled brightly at her, reaching instinctively for the hand loose at her side.. "I know exactly how you feel, doll."
Possible
Jeb Cain wondered how his father dealt with Princess Dorothy. She was impossible.
"Did I just hear you say 'no'? Cause I'm pretty sure I did, and I seem to remember this one small – oh, right! I'm in charge around here!"
"You are not going gallivanting around the O.Z. on that bike all by yourself!"
"I never said I was going by myself! I was going to ask you to go, but I think I changed my mind."
He watched his father soften. "You were gonna ask me?"
She huffed. "Yeah. I was."
Jeb rolled his eyes, hiding his grin.
Love, or something like
Once, when she was in Glitch's – Ambrose's – oh who knew? – lab, she was startled to find the blonde man DG had fittingly punished staring at her from behind a flurry of wires. Her eyes widened, she pressed her fingers into her hand, watching him for a moment, before Amb – Glitch – Ambrose saw her and excitedly waved her further into the chaos, chattering about his new idea, gesturing with wide arcs of his arms. She glanced back to look at Zero, confusion stirring in her chest, and then slipped her hand into Glitch's, barely wondering where the other man had gone.
Finally
She turned twenty-two annuals as the clock struck midnight, and all around the room people clapped and cheered and smiled, toasting her good health and many more annuals, but she had eyes only for the man who was currently making a beeline for her. He looked determined in his navy blue suit, and when he reached her, and she felt her heart skip a beat.
"Happy Birthday," he said softly, pausing to carefully wrap an arm around her waist.
She could take his teasing games no longer. "Just kiss me, damn it."
He was only too happy to oblige.