Hello lovelies! Part three has arrived! Enjoy!
Chapter 2: A Tour with the Warlock
Although for the past few hours Sam had been a complete gentleman, Kurt couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. Sam seemed like he was…faking attraction? But why would anyone ever see the need to pretend to be attracted to Kurt?
So Kurt decided to start looking around at the architecture, and completely fazed Sam out of the conversation. It wasn't very hard, because it was really a beautiful sight to see. Everything was done in the colors of a sunrise, all soft blues and purples and pinks. Sam himself was wearing a pale pink blazer with a silver tie. If he wasn't acting so…false, then Kurt would have fantasized about the fact that Sam's tie matched his silver vest. And that his powder blue bowtie perfectly matched the décor.
Kurt watched in fascination as Sam's assistant blew bubbles to various places, all containing things. "Are the bubbles made from a special solution? Where's the propeller? The engine? Are they remote controlled somewhere?" He asked Sam, trying and failing to seize a bubble for closer examination.
That was the first genuine laugh he got out of Sam the entire day. "Oh, no. Those are magical bubbles. Actually, they are directly encouraged by my mind, which I reroute to my secretary so that I don't have to do much. It's all very complex stuff, you understand it once you're a Warlock."
"Right." Kurt replied, not liking the dismissive tone that Sam had taken with him.
"So, would you like to see my bedroom?" Sam asked, with a suggestive wink. Kurt's insides burned with annoyance. There was the other problem. Sam would go from not liking him, to saying completely rude or utterly stupid remarks. The last one had been all about equating him to a rose, and he couldn't decide if the secretary had written it, or if Sam had gotten someone else to.
Suddenly, they passed a machine of whirring machines and people monitoring them on headsets. Kurt froze when his own face appeared on one of the screens, from an angle to his left. "SAM! What…? Why?" He gasped, looking over at the area.
"Those would be cameras in bubbles so small you can't see them." Sam answered non-chalantly, not seeing the big deal, but when he saw Kurt's look of absolute outrage he decided that he would once again explain things to this tedious boy. "There are warring factions, right? So, those bubbles are to monitor the outskirts of them, although once they get to close they get destroyed."
Kurt leaned in to get a closer look at the faces on the screen. The first was one of a field, where a crow was sitting on the neck of a man who seemed to resemble a scarecrow. "That's part of the Scarecrow faction. That crow was sent to gather information about you, because you're new. He's reporting it back to that Scarecrow, who will then relay that information to their leader, Wes." Sam refused to go further than that, deciding that Kurt didn't need to be aware of how absolute Wes's control on them was. It was, frankly, a bit disturbing, and why they had been outlawed in the first place.
Kurt nodded, seeming to accept that that was the most elaboration he was going to get, and then moved on to the next screen. "Oh, oh my, this is beautiful!" Kurt breathed, not really knowing what else to say when confronted with silver spires that seemed majestic, and gold sky scrapers. But at the same time, he felt a pang of sadness, because all of it looked to be chipped or broken. "What happened?"
"That's the iron city. Well, that's the outskirts. No one has been allowed inside except the Metal Men since the rebellion started. But it's actually in ruins because the Metal Men had started experimenting with different power sources, and something went wrong. In the blast, many of them became disfigured, and all of them became immortal. None of them have aged a day, and all of them have metal parts to replace the flesh ones they lost." Sam once again stopped shy of the full explanation, this time deciding to omit why they were no longer considered citizens by Oz, which was because of those very same metal parts and their immortality. Kurt was about to move on to the scene in the forest, when a boy appeared on the screen. He moved to sit on the ground with a bronze gun, which obviously meant he was on guard duty. His green eyes looked out into the world with the kind of boredom only found in someone who had never cared for anything a day in their life. "Hey," Sam said with a chuckle. "It's my Tin Man. Looks like he's back today, to see if he can spot my camera." Kurt frowned at the description. If anything, the boy was bronze. He had beautiful slightly tanned skin, and bronze colored hair that Kurt wanted to run his fingers through. But it was that inherent loneliness that had Kurt wishing he could reach out to comfort the boy through the screen. No one should look like they felt so alone. It tore at Kurt's insides, that he could tell that this boy had never had anyone who gave a damn.
Suddenly, the boy reached up to catch a wink of tin that had tumbled through the sky. "That would be a tin message that the Metal Men use to talk to each other." Sam explained, not liking the enraptured look on Kurt's face. Kurt watched as the boy's expression went slack in shock, and watched the intake of breath that he had taken. It looked like someone had given him the best kind of surprise, the one you weren't expecting but definitely needed. Kurt smiled at the disappearance of that frightful expression of nonchalance. Maybe this boy did have someone to care for after all.
….
Sebastian had been sent out on guard duty for the 8th time that month, and was given the same excuse. "Damaging City property is not allowed, Sebastian. You have to do your community service to make up for it. Everyone does their part." And then he was send with a bronze rifle and a pat on his back, out to the big scary outlands of the city, where he would have the sense knocked into him. Only, here was the thing. The outlands were boring. So Sebastian just sat on the ground seeing if he could spot the Warlock's camera. He refused to call him good. That bastard hadn't done a good thing his entire life, and he made life in Oz a misery. He sensed the tin message before it came down, assuming that it would be some reminder to stay vigilant, like anyone would come this way on purpose. Instead, he got a message from the head of the guard.
"Sebastian- this is a picture of the prophesized boy. Look out for him, on the off chance he comes your way, and make sure to come to the meeting tonight so we can discuss how to get him out of the clutches of the Scarecrows and the Warlocks. The boy doesn't need that."
But Sebastian was hardly even looking at the scrap of tin's message. Because below the message was a beautiful pair of cerulean eyes he could get lost in, paired with delicate looking skin and an expression of innocence, paired with a dual expression of wisdom. Sebastian laughed self-deprecatingly at his train of thought. You forget, he told himself, something happened besides the loss of your arm in that blast. You lost you ability to feel, and every fuck buddy in the world won't change that.
But Sebastian wondered, even if just in the privacy of his own mind, that maybe he felt enough that he was worried that if he got involved with the boy, then the angel would get hurt. But he was equally sure that if he didn't, the Scarecrows and the Warlocks would hurt him much worse. Sebastian's feelings were like a shock to his system. He had never cared about anyone after the accident. And yet with one glance to a camera he couldn't see, this blue-eyed boy had made him wish he could.
AN: I promise this was going to be longer, but I wanted to stop with our first insight to the mind of Seb. So I'm going to put that in the next chapter instead, which will get posted tomorrow. Sounds ok? Ok. Thoughts? Requests? Leave a review!
