A/N—I haven't been able to find any kind of reliable time-line in terms of ages and so on for our characters, so I'm just going with our actors' birth ages and running with it. The only actors whose ages I couldn't get were Rachel Pattee, who plays the young DG, (I'm banking on the idea that she's about 7 years old), and the boy who plays young Jeb. So that taken into consideration, here's a rundown of their ages, and the resultant time-line—

In 2007, the actors who played our beloved characters were:

DG (Zooey Daschanel)—27

Cain (Neal McDonough)—41

Glitch (Alan Cumming)—42

Azkadelia (Kathleen Robertson)—33

Young Azkadelia (Alexia Fast)—14

Jeb (Andrew Francis)—22

So, according to the birth ages of the actors—DG released the Witch when she was 7 and Az was 14. DG returned to the O.Z. 20 years later (at the age of 27).

If Cain was 41 when she came back, then he was 21 when she left. If Jeb was 22 when Cain was 41, then Cain was 19 when Jeb was born. Let's assume that Jeb was 9 when Cain was imprisoned, that means that DG is 3 years older than Jeb, and Cain was 28 when he was imprisoned. So when DG 'died,' Jeb was 4—when Jeb was 9, DG was 12, and had been 'dead' for 5 years. So Cain was locked in the suit for 15 years.

That's my time-line for ages and plot in the O.Z. This makes DG a little older than she seemed to be in the mini-series, and in fanon, she's usually written as early 20s. I prefer her a little older, I think that it makes her character (motivations, actions, etc.) more genuine. Ditto with Jeb… 22 and a Rebel Leader is a little more plausible than 17 and a Rebel Leader. Not much, but more.

So, sorry for this incredibly extensive author's note, but I wanted everyone to be able to see my age and time referencing clearly—not that they're going to be all that relevant to this fic. Maybe in later stories it will be more pertinent, but in the meantime, I thought that it would be useful both for myself, and other readers/authors out there.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program:

Cain swung the heavy duffel bag into the back of the old truck, breathing hard. Apparently, not even DG, a paragon among women, could travel light. Oh, come on. She traveled around the O.Z. with nothing but the clothes on her back and a new tattoo. He leaned against the bumper, waiting for her to come out of the palace, eager to leave. He saw her slim figure exit the rear kitchen door, wearing a simple cotton dress that was a far cry from the silk and satin of her station.

Even from a hundred yards away, he could tell that her walk was tense, although he saw that she was carefully walking slowly, trying to make herself seem unhurried, unexceptionable. As she drew near, he gave her a thin-lipped smile, and a polite nod.

"Ready to go, Princess?"

"If you're ever going to start calling my by my name, Wyatt, now's the time." She smirked at him, and climbed into the cab. She favored Jeb, in the passenger seat, with a friendly smile as she pulled on the lap-belt, and winked at Cain as he got into the driver's seat on her other side. She was practically glowing with hope and happiness.

Jeb tapped her arm to get her attention.

"Is the glamour on all of us? Covering the truck, too?"

She nodded. "And I can do that Jedi mind-trick when we get to the gate, and they'll just think that we're a delivery van." Jeb and Wyatt ignored the Otherside reference, used to glossing over them. Soon enough, thought Wyatt, resigned and intrigued at the same time.

Wyatt watched his princess from the corner of his eye. She really was incandescent. He felt himself soaking up her radiance. He was still a little numb, even now, and she pierced that with her light, made him remember to shake it off, to feel alive again. Jeb, too, made him feel again. With the two of them, with his family, he remembered that he did in fact have a heart, one that was quite passionate, and violently possessive. When he gave it a thought. Or when it was jolted into beating.

Once they were on the road, Cain felt himself starting to relax, marginally. They would drive until dark, and then hide on the edge of the Papay fields. DG's presence would be enough to keep them safe, and she'd cast a shielding charm for extra protection.

He felt more than heard Jeb and DG murmuring about different Otherside customs. He should be paying attention, taking this opportunity to get some last minute cramming in on an alien culture before he found himself catapulted into it head first, but he found that he needed this time to think. He was leaving the O.Z., where he'd spent all of his life, and starting over, somewhere else.

He didn't think that he would miss much. There was nothing left for him here; he was taking everything that he valued with him. Everything that he had once loved had been destroyed annuals before, when he had been locked into that metal suit. He had had to start rebuilding his heart from scratch, had to find and build his own family, nearly new.

The tragedy of spending years in a metal suit, watching his first family tortured over and over, wasn't that he had to relive the experience. No, the real tragedy was in becoming numb to the pain. At first, he had re-lived every moment of the projection as it had happened to him. After a while, he found that he had nothing to keep him from insanity; he had gone mad for awhile. But like all things, it too had passed. When there is no time, no sunlight, no food… madness will only keep you entertained for so long. And then there was nothing. He could try to distract himself with memories, but even the happy memories, so greedily hoarded and gloated over that he had worn the edges off of them, even the happy memories ceased to pierce the numbness that had settled over him.

He remembered watching DG as she had attacked the projection of the Longcoats, and then gone about freeing him. His mind and his eyes had clutched at the newness, the fire, the pain of her. For the first time in annuals, he had something to see that wasn't the projection. He remembered clinging to the dim and dusty goal of revenge in the face of the legion of emotions that had threatened to overwhelm him after centuries of feeling nothing. He had to stay focused.

"Heart's got nothing to do with it," he'd told her. He'd lied, though. Beneath layers and layers of numbness, the numbness that allowed him to function, there was a heart. And she'd kept jolting it. Over and over again. Eventually, he'd spent more time feeling something, anything, everything, because of her, and then because of Jeb, than he'd spent feeling numb. Hell, being reunited with Jeb was more than a jolt. It was more like being dumped in a freezing lake… not that he hadn't done that, either.

He answered Jeb and DG in monosyllables, too involved in his own thoughts to contribute to theirs. They'd only looked at each other in understanding, before falling silent. After a bit, Wyatt found DG's head pillowed on his arm, her neck crooked uncomfortably. He leaned over and wrapped his arm around her, allowing her to rest across his shoulder and chest. Jeb, who was half asleep against his door, had winked cheekily at him, and grinned, mouthing something unintelligible. Wyatt rolled his eyes, pleased that his son was so relaxed, and discomfited at the boy's—no, the man's—too keen perception, knowing that his mind was always at work behind those clear brown eyes, eyes that reminded him so much of his late wife.

When Jeb had first found Wyatt, they had both been too stunned to see each other to be truly happy. Now… thank Ozma, now he had his son, again. Jeb was a grown man when he and Wyatt had met again, a far cry from the stripling that Wyatt found himself remembering. Wyatt, too, knew that he was a different man than the one that Zero had forced into the suit. He hadn't gotten his little boy back. Jeb hadn't gotten his father back. No, they were far more peers now than they were father and son… but they were family. They'd known it when they'd spent their first tense months getting to know each other again. They were different, they were men who had each been through the fire of war, tempered in different ways, but they knew that they had a home in the other, if they wanted it. Eventually, they had.

Wyatt brought himself out of his internal dialogue as he began to look for a safe place to pull the truck into. He eased a kilometer or so into the orchard, and stayed silent in the truck while DG paced off a circle around it, and waved her glowing white hands.

"You've been pretty silent all day." Jeb was standing next to the cab, stretching before he began to help set up camp.

Wyatt shrugged, pushing his fedora up on his head a bit. "Just getting a bit of closure, son." He started to get ready to build a fire… a small one. No need to advertise their presence. Between the different stories that they'd scattered in all directions, they shouldn't be missed for another week, but there was no reason to behave stupidly.

Eventually, the three found themselves around the small fire, sitting on blankets before they slept for the night. DG was staying up to take the first watch. He stayed awake for a time, just watching her stare off into the darkness, staying alert for him and his son.

The woman was so much more comfortable out here than she'd been in the palace. He could see it in her posture, in the curve of her neck, in the movement of her hands. Wyatt and Jeb had been her bodyguards since the Eclipse, well over a year ago, and he didn't think that either of them had ever seen her so unguarded. Even when she was with her friends alone, she didn't loose that watchfulness. Perhaps it was the opulence of her surroundings. From what she'd said, she'd been raised as a farm girl—not much preparation for becoming a princess inherent in that upbringing. The Cain men knew that… they'd been farm boys, too.

Or maybe it was just that she knew that she was escaping forever the pressures put on her by a family that had never done well by her—escaping the expectations of royalty, of a loveless political marriage, and of gilded prisons.

No, Wyatt was taking his family—his son, who had lost too much, seen too much, too young, and his DG, a girl with all of the love and hope, the girl who embodied possibility, and maybe, when they were all healed, maybe his future; he was taking them away from this country where human life was cheap, no matter what woman sat on the throne.