Chapter 7: Bones, Bonds, and Chains
Of the 20 months since the Assembly's Heir Ultimatum, nineteen of those months I had been married to Az (publicly only for 10). Of those 19 months, we had lived 7 of them separately (but obviously not celibately), and 12 months, a whole annual, we lived together.
And still no baby.
Fortunately for Az but unfortunately for the Gale Dynasty, DG had not gotten pregnant either. Az had given in after an annual of our trying and failing and let her and my father know that she would not resent them if they entered the Great Baby Race as well.
But each time they failed, they got to feel relieved. Az and I, however, felt more pressured. And it was taking its toll. Especially, on Az.
The few people who had hoped we or my father and DG would win the Race were now looking at how they could get their hooks into the runner-up, Zif Atto. This puppet lordling was highly favored by the greedy-grasping politicos. His father had been a war hero, spying for the Resistance, while his mother had taken him to be safe in Ev. A malleable mama's boy, he was. Always in favor of the easy route. We just didn't know if he was Vy-sor's candidate or the easily swept aside obstacle for his real one.
The Queen and Ahamo's reactions to all this didn't help matters. Azkadellia's mother had been out of practice for so long on being a mother that she had difficulty separating that role with her monarchial one, resulting in her inability to hide her disappointment and just be a comforting port in this anxiety-ridden storm. Ahamo did this much better; however, as failed conception had the prerequisite of his daughter engaging in sexual relations, he did not like to broach the subject if he could help it.
After each disappointing monthly meeting with Raw, she would become withdrawn; and if her energies were not being consumed with whatever was her current project, she would sit listlessly and gaze at nothing. And with each consecutive failure, these manic-depressive episodes would last longer. This last one had lasted over a week. Not even Horatio 'Bones', the overgrown mutt that I had gotten her, could bring a smile to her face.
Four months after our 'Rededication Ceremony' (as DG liked to call our Assembly-attended Contract Signing) was Azkadellia's birthday. That was the acknowledged reason for getting Az the walking, drooling attention man-whore of the canine species. Those in our inner circle suspected it was my attempt to cheer up my wife, for we had just celebrated our first anniversary and the childlessness was becoming more than worrisome now that we were past the halfway point.
I had gotten the idea from a former comrade in arms. He had gotten a dog for his daughter who had lost her mother to cancer of all things. I asked Raw in passing if he thought it was good idea. I can only assume he mentioned my inquiry to DG and/or Ambrose. And they in turn mentioned it to the Queen and Consort because Ahamo approached me three days later with a name of a breeder he knew.
He forgot to mention it was a breeder of Bandogges.
The litter consisted of four pups. All were brown and orange tiger-striped, except for one of the males. He had a white patch on his chest, right forepaw, and just below his lower lip. DG called it a 'soul patch'. It made him look rather jaunty. He was the friendliest, and he was lap-dog size.
The breeder forgot to pass along how much bigger they got and how much they eat.
His head was now the size of a salad dinner plate, his paws at seven months of age were the size of Azkadellia's fists, and he stood at Kalm's chest height. We expected his head to continue to grow to the size of a small serving platter. By the time he was full grown, we expected his paws to be the size of mine or worse, my father's. He was going to be around 150 pounds, if he ever gained meat on his bones.
A princess and her consort do not feed their pets. Palace servants do that. However, on top of the eating his mountain of puppy chow, he also felt the need to eat two pairs of my slippers, one of my boots, a sofa cushion, and a significant portion of the legs of every piece of furniture in all three of our suite's rooms.
But Az adored him. He could slobber and drool over her entire shoe collection, litter her room with feathers from every one of her destroyed pillows, and play keep away with the Shiz restoration plans, and he would still be her 'Horatio Darling' or 'Bonesy Sweet'. Gag.
The feeling was mutual. The two of them were a classic case of love at first sight. She looked at him and her heart melted, her typical poised and proper demeanor fell away, and she put DG the Indecorous Royal to shame. He laid eyes on her, and the center of his universe went from one sun (his stomach) to two suns (Mama-Az). I ceased to exist for nearly two weeks after his arrival. The few times my wife did acknowledge me though, I was rewarded with a beatific smile. I even got away with organizing her stuff. Granted, it was for the purpose of moving it to a 'puppy-free zone'; but still the act of getting her a dog kept me out of the doghouse, when in her previous state of emotional funk, something like that would have gotten me a nasty, snarled comment or two.
The point to all this is that if the mutt's antics didn't bring a smile to her face or she was passing off her little darling's afternoon exercise outings onto someone else consistently for a whole week, then my wife had fallen into a great pit of despair. She even quit special ordering flowers for our suite, leaving me to be pestered by the maids about it.
I cluelessly picked orange blossoms. My frustrations with being unable to fix our baby-less state precluded me from giving a damn about flower meanings. All that I could dwell on was the fact that my attempts to save her were failing (despite all medico assurances that I wasn't sterile). My 'Babies are Contrary' theory was proving to be correct.
Never have I hated to be so right.
And of course, when it rains, it pours.
At this juncture of my tale, it's been nearly four years since the Eclipse. One would think that Az and I would have talked about the Dark Annuals, her being the former Sorceress and me, the avenging son of a Tin Man, during this time. But, I guess, our relationship has never been conventional, logical, or predictable.
Oh, every once in a while, we discussed her life as the Sorceress, such as the first night of our honeymoon, or my life as a resistance fighter, but only as it pertained to my strange habits like cleaning my gun. More often than not, we discussed the consequences of her fifteen years of possession: the lingering prejudice and all the safety concerns that brings with it.
So the Dark Annuals weren't like a big ass elephant in the room. It was just that we saw no need. We both knew that we had issues, but we also knew that we were coping. So why make a big deal about it? The present had enough troubles.
But on top of the intense pressure and burden of Baby Countdown, Fate added the trial of Zero. So past and present collided creating a tumultuous emotional shit-storm.
Zero. The war criminal and worst abuser of Being-rights next to the Witch and possibly Nikadok. Dad and I had gone back for him as soon as things had settled down, the justice system up and running again, and a more secure prison could be found in the O.Z. for the likes of that snake. So nearly a month, month and a half, he was in that iron suit, compared to my father's near decade. Apparently, that was sufficient time for him to weasel out of immediate termination.
His first time before a judge, his defense representative was able to convince the Honorable Idiot with the help of Zero's outstanding performance that he was mentally incompetent and unfit to stand trial due to his "prolonged" time in the iron suit. So to a psychiatric facility, he was sent.
It took my father over three years to get a psychiatrist-medico shrewd enough to see through Zero's blithering dimwit charade and a judge to overturn the ruling.
The trial was indeed a trial. My father was called to the stand to witness what he knew of Zero's Sorceress-supporting activities, including his part in leading the Slaughter of the Tin Men on that dark day of Central City's history. The TDESPHTL was replayed for all the court to see of his breaking apart my family. Azkadellia was called to stand witness of the crimes that she was aware of him doing on the Witch's behalf as well as those that hadn't been ordered by her but were nevertheless thoroughly reveled in. And I was called to give testimony of his brutal murder of my mother while I watched locked in my own iron suit.
All the suppressed emotions came bubbling to the surface, and therefore, the nightmares were as intense as those first few months after Victory Day, and they did not abate when Zero was finally executed.
That night, after tossing and turning in sweat-soaked sheets for hours, I gave up and headed to the sitting room to pour myself a generous glass of brandy or whiskey or whatever the hell we had that would numb the pain of grief. I thought that Az had gone to bed hours earlier, as she had no longer been making her usual agitated sounds. However, she was sitting ram-rod straight on the settee, gazing into the slowly-dying fire with her hands clasped tightly in her lap and tears pouring down her tired and wan face.
"Az?"
At my concerned inquiry, she slowly turned her anguished gaze to meet my own, whispering hoarsely, "I can't sleep. I see their faces. The victims. I see Zero and other Longcoats like him. Their gleeful expressions matching my own – matching hers – at all the misery. I hear her dreadful voice in my head. Her poisonous words and laughter. I scream – you don't hear me because I've silenced my room – but I scream only to have that gagged by their souls being sucked down my throat."
At that her carefully maintained control broke, and she let loose a despairing sob, "Oh, J-J-Jeb…!"
I went to her then and held her, wrapping her up in my arms and rocked her, like my mother used to do for me, before the horrors of the war turned me into a hardened soldier.
We sat like that in silence for some time, but when all that could be heard was an occasional sniff, I began to tell her of my nightmares. Of the bloodshed. The 'death' of my father. My mother. My friends and comrades and mentors. The helplessness and hopelessness, the loneliness and despair. I hadn't told her of these things before, partially because I wanted to forget, and partially because I didn't want to sound accusatory or add to her burden of guilt. But I'm glad that I did that night. Share, not add, that is.
After my confession, the last wall between us fell and the dam burst, and to continue with the mixed metaphors, we shed our respective armor and bared our souls. We swapped war story after war story – and not the glorified and romanticized kind in which heroic moments are described, but those moments of cowardice and paralyzing fear. Of those darkest hours, when the will to fight – to leave the sanctuary of the hills to do one more Longcoat supply raid, to not succumb to the Witch's lies, to find yet another way to save an OZian and yet have it appeal to her sadism – was not there.
We shared of those un-heroic moments when we reveled in our baser bloodlusts, in the suffering of our foes. For Az, it ranged from traitors like Lonot to Viewers like Lylo. Their crime – not Seeing the truth, not Seeing her. For me, it was Zero, Longcoats, collaborators, and at times, basically anyone not in the Resistance.
We exposed the deepest darkest parts of ourselves, including the guilt and the shame for being less than a Gale or Cain ought to be.
Eventually, we felt all talked out and all that was left of the second fire that Az had magically rekindled were a few glowing embers. The relieved if not peaceful quiet that descended upon us was broken by my own hoarse and raspy chuckle, "Oh, what a pair are we."
Azkadellia did not respond with a corresponding laugh, as I expected. Instead, however, she withdrew from my embrace slightly to search my face with raw intensity. Just when I was all a manner of befuddled, she breathed huskily, "Yes, we are a pair."
And then she kissed me.
I cannot coherently describe the sequence of events after that, but I do know that I eventually returned the favor.
Tongues danced. Hair and clothes were tugged at. And she straddled me at one point. I lifted her up and carried her to my room at another. (Bones was in her bedroom. No dog, purebred or mongrel mutt, was going to watch me make love to my wife.)
And make love we did.
This time it wasn't about procreation. It wasn't even about pleasing each other or expressing affection for the other. It was about feeling and need, about giving and taking, about us. It was about one scarred and scared and lonely soul brushing against another equally scarred and scared and lonely soul. Our souls joined and fused together just as our bodies did. We soared together, rising above all our misery as one.
Our combined orgasms were so intense that we both blacked out. And when we came to, I refrained from making a wise-crack about 'how that was how sheets should become sweat-soaked', and instead just held her limp body to me, as finally my own tears began to fall.
~*~OZ~*~
The late morning sun woke me. I had meetings that I had to attend to. One of which was with her father about consort diplomacy duties. So as much as I would have liked to stay in bed with the first princess of the O.Z., I couldn't. Thus, with a shallow sigh of protest (so as not to disturb said princess who was still temptingly half-draped across me), I slipped out from under her and got into the shower.
When my morning ablutions were done, she was no longer in my room but dressed in her morning robe sipping her tea at our breakfast table, reading her newspaper. Just like any other morning.
But it wasn't. As soon as I sat down, she set aside her paper and … blushed, whispering a heartfelt 'Thank you.'
At least half a dozen replies raced through my mind – 'my pleasure' or 'no, thank you'. However, I settled for reaching over and giving her hand a gentle squeeze and letting my eyes, which had locked with hers, do the talking.
Eventually, we disentangled ourselves and settled back into our comfortable routine. There was an element or undercurrent that was different however. Raw or DG or even Glitch might have been able to name it. But I was Jeb Cain and she was Azkadellia Gale, and these were unchartered waters for the both of us. But whatever this thing was – I liked it.
For two weeks, we dwelt in this idyll harmony. Life marched on. The problems of Vy-sor and Doctor Crack-pot, the greedy grasping nobles, the heir ultimatum, and the ghosts of our pasts were still there. But we had each other.
Somehow that was not love in my mind just yet. Perhaps it was because our path hadn't been the traditional one. Perhaps our arrangement as strong as it was still felt temporary. After all, our vows had an expiration date.
Whatever the case may be, I just knew that for those two weeks, Princess Azkadellia Gale was my bonded partner. We had a purpose. We had affection. And we had a deep, if slightly twisted in guilt-ridden roots, connection. (Ambrose thought we were quite the pair – mutual admirers and mutual self-loathers all in one). And we both had solid nights of restorative sleep because every night of those two weeks, Az and I slept in my bed, thus keeping the nightmares at bay.
The afterglow of this experience did not last long. This new bond-thing that we had created that night was put to the test the evening Ambrose burst into my office, waving a missive frantically into the air and blurting almost Glitch-like in his agitation, "Cain. Jeb Cain! Letter from Wyatt Cain. DG's been kidnapped."