A/N: This was a plot bunny that I stole from glitchwyatt livejournal community
Cain watched Glitch from the other end of the dining table. He had been to many dinners at the palace before, but this was the first when he hadn't been sitting next to and been thoroughly involved with, Glitch. It had happened over a week ago, during a typical moment of casual closeness, Glitch had given him a penetrating look with wide eyes and said, "We don't fit anymore." and then he frowned. Cain remembered saying, "Look, Sweetheart, you fit right here in my arms." in a thick voice as he tried to keep his heart from breaking, tightening the embrace around his scarecrow. Glitch had kept on, "We fit before, when you were a little fixed and I was a little broken, but now I'm a lot broken." he looked away, " . . . a lot broken . . . " It wasn't a glitch, just thoughtful.
"Or at least now I know how broken I am." He gave one of those remorseful chuckles he always did when something wasn't remotely funny. Cain had wanted to say they were still just as broken as ever; a smashed vase and a rusty spittoon, that he could fix Glitch, but it was true, they didn't fit anymore. Glitch was missing his past the same as Cain had missed all those years on the outside while he in the suit praying for vengeance for Jeb and Adora. Zero had been punished for what he had done and Cain was reunited with Jeb, putting the ghost of failing Adora to rest. Glitch's past, however, had become a walking, talking apparition, showing him exactly what he was and what he could have been, without Az, without DG, and without Cain.
When they first tried to settle Glitch's brain back into his head Glitch went completely out of commission. At first his heart rate had risen dangerously while his breathing slowed. Then after a few hours, when that had equalized with an oddly syncopated rhythm, he had to be bound because he began seizing. After a day the seizures had mostly stopped, but were replaced with a loss of intelligible speech and frequent involuntary movement. Glitch/Ambrose couldn't swallow anything other than his own saliva (when he focused enough to coordinate that) so he had to be fed intravenously. It had been hell. Cain had spent each day by Glitch's bed. The worst day had been the day of the seizures, it was excruciating to watch Glitch continuing to seize for fifty minutes, no rest for his body or his dueling minds. There had been struggling and restraining,trying to hold his jaws shut just to keep Glitch from choking on his own tongue. After that Glitch just looked at Cain with teary eyes when he could manage to keep the lids from fluttering and forced out, "I can't."
So Cain told the Queen to take the brain out.
The Queen wanted Ambrose, so she told him to wait.
Healers came, monks prayed and meditated, many Viewers came, Raw came and did the best he could with his sight.
On the best day Azkadelia and DG used their magic to try to settle the two sets of conciousness together. It had been really nice. When Az and DG unclasped their hands, Glitch opened his eyes and looked to Cain, saying, "Hello Stranger." with a smooth smile that didn't have the quirk to his lips as it would have on Glitch's face. Glitch/Ambrose had dressed himself, been able to eat real food, and even ask the cooks to make his favorite dishes, recounting the recipes that had been lost during the time the wicked witch had run things. Everyone had laughed at the stories he told about the Queen's secret trysts with Ahamo. In one story Ahamo was visiting the queen at night and had meant to alight into the Queen's bedroom from his tethered balloon, but he had misstepped and fallen to the ledge the next floor down. The Queen couldn't go down to get him herself (it being a secret that Ahamo was there and she indecent in her nightgown) so she sent a servant to get Ambrose. Then after poor Ahamo had been there on that ledge, clinging for dear life Ambrose comes to the window, swiftly pushing the curtains open and nearly scaring Ahamo to death.
"And let me tell you, Ahamo is no featherweight." Glitch/Ambrose confided, clearly incredibly amused to be able to tell the story.
Later on they found one of Ambrose's old records and Glitch/Ambrose had danced, first by himself, pantomiming a partner with over the top dips and throws. Then DG had asked for the next dance and had been happily obliged. Then a slow bluesy number came on and Cain cut in. Glitch/Ambrose had moved with all the grace Glitch had displayed in battle, but the look he gave Cain all through their intimate movements was so intent it had sent shivers down Cain's spine. That night they had lain in bed together just holding one another, every moment so precious that there could be nothing more perfect.
"It's a miracle," Cain had whispered to Glitch/Ambrose, "You're well and you're here with me."
Cain awoke to Glitch/Ambrose's flailing arms. Overnight the man had regressed almost to where he had been right after the surgery. It would have been selfish to keep doing that to this person who had been through so much, to rewire him every morning and forget about the consequence until the next. So Cain petitioned the Queen again.
And the Queen had seen the day that Glitch had been restored to something like her advisor, she still wanted Ambrose.
The queen was not without mercy, they induced something like a coma in Glitch. Ahamo and his daughters built a body for the new Ambrose, looking just the way he had in the memory Raw had shown them, young and lithe with unscarred porcelain skin, a taut young face that had no adornment but faint laugh lines. Cain though it completely lacked that character that made Glitch, Glitch.
The surgery came, and the brain that had been in the jar all those years was placed in the new vessel.
The two bodies had risen at the same time.
"Good Morning Sweetheart." Cain said to Glitch before kissing him softly.
"Ambrose." the Queen had cooed at her manufactured doppleganger.
"My Queen." It had replied as she pulled her best friend close and his head came to rest against her shoulder.
Now here they were, all dressed and strewn about the Queen's dining table in all her finery, gleaming mahogany wood, gold leaf on the walls, and a crystal chandelier above them. Cain sat, still watching Glitch across the table who did his best to nonchalantly ignore Cain except when he couldn't remember to, and then stared at Cain longingly. Cain loved Glitch's soul, but maybe now that Glitch knew how he could be, he didn't feel soul or rhythm could hold up compared to all he lost. The Queen and Ahamo sat in their traditional places at each end of the table, Cain supposed to give some protocol to the complete unconventionality of their relationship, but Ambrose sat at her right hand. They talked intensely and laughed at one another; all culture, knowledge, and social erudition. As Cain watched them he tried to understand how those academic things made up for heart and soul.