To everyone who's reviewed/favourite/signed up for alerts on this story, Thankyou so much. I'm sorry for the long update, I'm moving at the moment (not just house, but country), but, here is an extra long chapter for you… x
Evil-Lyn got her apology exactly 6 hours later, when she went to visit He-man with his dinner. She greeted him with frosty silence, as she'd been planning to for the past hour and a half. However, he cut through her chilly demeanour with a sincere "I'm sorry", followed by "I acted wrongly." Evil-Lyn was surprised to find she felt a certain degree of pleasure at hearing He-man say these words to her.
"I accept your apology". She gave him a curt nod, but He-man asked her a question that threw her off track.
"Did Tri-Klops have any family?"
Evil-Lyn sighed at He-man's question. "Why do you want to know, has he been appearing to you in visions again?"
He-man gritted his teeth at her tone, but reminded himself not to overreact. His emotions, he knew, were out of control at the moment. He couldn't afford to lose Evil-Lyn, who seemed to be his only ally in Snake Mountain. Perhaps 'ally' was too strong a word, he reflected, but he could speak to her, and sometimes she would concede to be honest with him. He was actually beginning to warm a little to her company. However, he knew this was probably due to the fact he was friendless, any company seemed perhaps better than none.
"I'm just interested" was the reason he finally settled on. Luckily for He-man, today was one of the days when Evil-Lyn conceded to be honest with him. Her eyes met with his, and she said;
"He had a mother and a father, obviously. I don't know much about them. I think they're just poor villagers in some farm town, and he hardly ever saw them. But I do know that he had a sister who was quite a lot younger than him."
"A sister?"
"She'd be about fourteen, and her name is Lana. He mentioned her once or twice. Though given the age gap, I don't think there was any real closeness there."
"Do they know what happened?" He-man asked. A slight incline of the witch's head told him that they certainly knew Tri-klops had died.
"They don't hate you" she said mechanically, knowing it was what he wanted to hear, but bored of this constant topic at the same time "They knew what Tri-klops was risking when he began work here. They're just surprised it didn't happen sooner."
He-man didn't react for a moment, then, he said "So, Tri-klops wasn't married? Had no children?"
Evil-Lyn raised her eyebrows and smirked mockingly "Well, no wife. Tri-Klops was just about married to his machines. As for children, it's hard to say. When someone travels as much as Tri-klops, I suppose they could have got attached to a woman or two along the way. But, put it this way, he didn't have any children as far as he knew."
He-man nodded slowly, digesting the information. He was starting to become curious about the witch as well.
"What about you?" he asked "Are you married? Any children?"
"Are you serious?" she scoffed in return.
"Well, why not?"
"Being completely evil doesn't go hand in hand with happy families." She simply stated.
"Lyn-you're not completely evil." He-man truly believed this. He'd seen her laugh, and smile. She was so… …human. That fleeting essence of life she had, something her cold, dead comrade no longer possessed.
"Yes, I rather think I am" she replied, but He-man stubbornly shook his head.
"I won't believe that. I can't believe that." He-man insisted. "There's still a chance for you to-"
She cut him off by raising her hand "He-man, this has gone far enough. I know what you're doing"
"You do?" even He-man didn't know fully what he was doing.
"You're trying to see something in me that isn't there. Something good." She said the word as if it was distasteful to her, but she didn't want to let He-man go on deluding himself into thinking that an evil lifestyle was just something she was pursuing for lack of better options. "I'm not Tri-klops." She added.
"What does that have to do with anything?" he asked, frustration creeping into his tone.
"Everything." She replied "You couldn't save Tri-klops, so you're trying to save me. From this, from all of this." She gestured around the crimson walls of Snake Mountain.
"That's not…" began He-man, but a soon as he started, he knew she was right, and the words that had formed so readily on his lips floated away, as fleeting as butterflies. He looked at her, her crossed arms, the hard expression on her face, and at last, he saw her. Evil-Lyn, the dark witch. Not some trapped girl, waiting to be saved, not some misguided, yet still friendly woman. He saw her short, snowy hair, her tired yet still curious violet eyes that had seen so much evil in their time, her proud features that put her on the same level as any queen. He finally understood her connection to this place. She was as much a creature of Snake Mountain as she was of her native land. She was comfortable here. He understood that she had made her choice to be evil, and was now at peace with it.
A flood of emotions and sorrow came to He-man, as he saw all of the evil minion's faces, including that of the deceased Tri-klops, in his mind. Each of them choosing this path, making sacrifices, small and large, for their choice, he couldn't save any of them. He sunk to his knees in absolute despair and realisation that any chance of redemption was hopeless; it had to be death for him, or a lifetime in this cell, nothing else.
When He-man finally gathered his senses, Evil-Lyn was gone. She did that a lot.
In Snake Mountains' kitchen, Evil-Lyn sat, thinking of her exchange with He-man, her hands were clasped around a cup of hot tea. He-man had seemed so much better, and then he'd just collapsed to his knees. Trapjaw was in the far corner, watching her.
"Your hands are trembling" he said. There was a moment of silence, and when the witch didn't reply, the blue warrior shook his head.
"You're gettin' too attached" was all he added.
Evil-Lyn looked up blankly; genuinely unsure of what he was talking about. "What?"
"You're gettin' too attached-to He-man. I see how talkin' with him changes your moods"
The witch shook her head fiercely. He was wrong of course, but if he mentioned this idea to Skeletor, he could make trouble for her.
"I ain't sayin' you're gonna marry him or something" Trapjaw explained "Just that you're getting' used to him bein' here, and you shouldn't, coz we all know Skeletor's gonna do away with him sooner or later. You don't wanna go gettin' attached to a dead man."
Evil-Lyn fixed her gaze on the table, but she narrowed her eyes a little and spoke slowly, "He's not dead yet…"
"But he will be soon enough"
In a rare moment of weakness, Evil-Lyn put her face in her hands for a split second, and found herself wishing that Skeletor could get He-man to join the side of darkness. He seemed, in his moments of clarity, to have a lot to offer, but she knew Trapjaw was right, He-man wouldn't join the side of darkness, and He-man was going to die. That was all there was to it.
"I'll take him his breakfast tomorrow" Trapjaw was saying. Evil-Lyn didn't reply, what was the point?
He-man was surprised the next morning, to see Trapjaw walking into his cell in Evil-Lyn's place, carrying a tray of food. He-man didn't know what the food was. It didn't taste bad, but day after day, the meals started to blend into one.
"Where's Evil-Lyn, is she sick?" he asked.
"No." was all Trapjaw offered.
"Then why are you here?"
"Well," Trapjaw said "Apparently you've been annoyin' her with your mood swings and strange questions." It was a bit of a stretch of the truth, but it was better this way. He-man didn't need to know how his newfound complexity was getting to the witch. Otherwise, he could mistake her intrigue for something else…
"I didn't ask any strange questions!" He-man insisted. Trapjaw rolled his eyes in response.
"Apparently you was asking her personal questions, about whether she's married or not. Don't bother askin' me. You ain't my type."
"I just wanted to know if she had family" He-man explained. "Do you know anything about her mother and father?"
"Only what I've gathered over the years"
"And what's that?" He-man stared at Trapjaw, intrigued.
"Why should I tell you?" Trapjaw asked, quite reasonably.
He-man shrugged, and the inquisitive light in his eyes turned dull and flat once again "Well, if I'm going to die anyway…"
Trapjaw, feeling a sudden surge of self importance at possessing the information He-man needed, sat down on a nearby rock.
"Well, this is just between me an' you, mind. I know her mother died when she was a baby. Poor woman was just a kid herself, sixteen when she married, eighteen when she had Lyn an' died, hardly got to enjoy life. "
He-man nodded, he didn't want to utter a word in case something he said disrupted Trapjaw from his narrative.
"From what I understand, Lyn's dad was a wreck. Not mean to her or nothin', but up and down moods all the time, coz' of losing his wife. He couldn't work coz he was a recluse or somethin', so Lyn had to basically 'beg, borrow and steal' so she and her father could survive. She was best at stealing, but one day, she got caught stealing from a market stall."
He-man nodded again solemnly, eyes on the red rocks that made up the floor. He wondered how many times Evil-Lyn's pointed boots had walked over this floor, what other prisoners had she spoken to here?
"The stall owner dragged her back home, and told her father everything about her stealing and the like. Lyn's father realised what he'd put her through, I reckon he had some kinda 'breakdown' over it, coz it was at that point that Lyn decided to run away, she was seventeen."
"So young," He-man thought, "The same age as Adam."
"She met us an' Keldor, and joined our ranks. Some say she an' Keldor were friends, or even lovers, I dunno, and I don't care. Either way, she's been here ever since."
He-man assumed the tale was concluded, but then, Trapjaw said something that made him freeze where he was standing.
"I reckon Skeletor will give Lyn her marching orders soon though…" Trapjaw added this in an offhand casual way, He-man's jaw dropped.
"What? Skeletor's going to get rid of Evil-Lyn?" his voice rose a little.
"Well… …we dunno for sure, but it's a rumour." Trapjaw smirked, smug at his own importance.
"Why would Skeletor get rid of his most powerful minion?" He-man asked, bewildered.
"Skeletor's always favoured power, but in his old age, he's starting to question our loyalty. Lyn's good, but she's unpredictable. One minute she's on your side, next she's stabbin' you in the back. He's knows she betrayed him once, and he reckon she maybe betrayed him again, but he can't prove it. It's no good tryin' to take over Grayskull with someone who might be tryin' to overthrow you at any moment." Trapjaw explained.
He-man tried to digest this "So, he's just going to get rid of her?"
"I dunno, maybe. It's what we all reckon. There's hundreds of mages who want her job. Maybe not as powerful as her, but Skeletor could always hire more than one of them…"
Trapjaw then surveyed He-man's breakfast. "You'd better eat that, it's gettin' cold" he simply said, and with that, he walked from the cell, his arm clanking noisily as he went.
He-man, still in disbelief, moved towards the tray. What did someone like Evil-Lyn have without Snake Mountain? She'd be jobless, and homeless, maybe even penniless. Who would help someone like that, especially when they were evil? The Masters would take her in, but she'd be a prisoner, she'd be in jail for the rest of her life.
He-man had always thought that's what she deserved. Now he was in a cell himself, on the other side of the bars, he wasn't so sure.
Suddenly, a slight shuffling noise made He-man look up. It was Evil-Lyn, barely visible; she was standing cloaked partially in the shadows of his cell. He hadn't even noticed her presence, but he could tell from the stricken look on her face, which she was trying to mask, that she'd heard every word of his conversation with Trapjaw.
