And now, our heroine learns some harsh truths. (and takes it a little differently than her mini-series counterpart)

PS: ... babies.

Ten minutes or so later they were walking along an old road lined with yellow bricks, but it looked abandoned and was just as much dirt and weeds as brick. Cain took a quick look up and down the road to acclimate himself, then struck out to the right.

"West," he said, simply.

"How far is Central City, do you think?" she asked Cain.

"Not far. Few hours maybe," he said over his shoulder. She was relieved. She would not have wanted to spend the night out in the woods. Especially if it got cold again, the way it had the previous night. She no longer had a jacket after all. She stumbled on a sharp rock.

"I would have thought it was farther," she commented to Glitch.

"Oh, the roads in the Outer Zone operate on a different planar level from the rest of the world. It never takes more than a day to travel anywhere, so long as you are on a catalogued road," he said. Magic. Right, she'd forgotten. In the O.Z., magic was real, apparently. They lapsed into a companionable silence.

After a while, she glanced up and saw that Cain had pulled rather far ahead of them on the road. Because of her bare feet, DeeDee had been carefully choosing her steps, avoiding sharp rocks and sticks, which had slowed her down. Glitch had slowed his own long stride to stay even with her. Raw had actually passed the two of them and was closer to Cain on the road. She jogged for a moment to catch up, afraid the tin man might change his mind and leave her and Glitch behind. She stubbed her toe on a rock and stumbled.

"How about a break, Cain?" Glitch requested. The blonde man didn't even glance back.

"No time," he said and kept walking.

"Oh, come on, tin man!" Glitch snapped. "Have a heart."

Cain turned and walked back towards Glitch like he might strike the man. DeeDee quickly stepped between them.

"We could all use a rest," she insisted. Glitch moved to the side and sat on a post that stood on the side of the road. DeeDee took the opportunity to motion Cain away. She needed to talk to him out of Glitch's earshot.

"Would you please stop it with Glitch," she hissed. The tall blonde frowned at her.

"Look, I understand he's your friend and-"

"Actually," she interrupted. "I've known him about five more minutes than you."

Her admission stopped him and those ice blue eyes clouded with confusion.

"What I do know is that this animosity between the two of you serves absolutely no purpose. All it does is cause problems and slow us down," she admonished. He didn't say anything, didn't even nod, so she had no idea if he took her words to heart or not. He simply walked away.

She turned to Glitch and saw what was carved into the stone post on which he sat. Central City. And a decorative symbol; a swirl, like a whirlpool, within a diamond, within a box. It was familiar. It should have been, she'd seen her mother doodle it countless times on a scrap of paper as she talked on the phone. She'd asked her once what the symbol was. "Home," her mother replied. "All life's answers are down the old road home." It had been such an odd thing to say, DeeDee had never forgotten it.

"Did you just say 'Old Road'?" Cain asked. She hadn't even been aware that she spoke. He was eying her suspiciously. "That's what the locals call the brick road. I thought you said you'd never been here before."

"I haven't," she told him, still in shock. "But my mother… She used to drawn that symbol. She said it was home."

"Well, I think there might be a town-" before he finished the sentence, DeeDee was off and running down the road.

"Wait!" Cain called after her, but she didn't stop. A town. Home. Her mother was close, she knew it. She could feel it. She could heard Cain and the other behind her, catching up, so she ran faster, fearing they might try to stop her. Just ahead the road forked, a smaller path leading away from the brick route towards a hill. She took the fork.

"Kid, stop!" Cain called. Glitch shouted, "DeeDee!"

She stumbled her way over the hill and fell on the way down, sliding along the wet grass. She came to a stop before a large billboard which read: Everything is better in Milltown. Her mother's home town. Her mom had only ever mentioned Milltown in passing and would never elaborate on it, now DeeDee knew why.

"She was from here," she said, more to herself than the others, who had finally caught up. She was having trouble processing this new information. Her mother was from the Outer Zone, not Earth. Why would she leave her home and live the life she had on Earth, in that awful small town. DeeDee had to find her. She headed passed the sign.

Milltown looked like one of those dilapidated ghost towns you see in slasher flicks. There was even a 1920's looking pick up parked, rusted nearly through, in the street in front of what looked like a general store.

"What happened here?" Glitch asked, awed.

"Milltown's been erased," Cain told him. "Azkadellia's term for cleansing history."

Had Azkadellia caused her mother to leave her home? And, what did this mean for DeeDee? Had her mother stayed, would she have been born in Milltown and grown up in the O.Z.? Was this really her home, as well?

"Uh oh. We shouldn't be here" Cain said forebodingly. He gestured towards a sign with a skull X-ed out in red and the letters NHA. "No humans allowed."

She had wandered farther into town, towards what looked like a saloon. "DeeDee!" Cain called, hurrying towards her. She wouldn't let him take her away, she decided. She had to find her mother.

Suddenly, they were surrounded. People started coming out of buildings everywhere. The word people only half applied to them, they looked like sci-fi rejects; part human, part machine. Each held some sort of weapon, from pitchforks to pickaxes

"Oh, hey guys," Glitch stuttered nervously behind her. "We were just passing through. We were just passing through. We were jus-"

Cain slapped him on the chest to end his broken record act. The double doors to the saloon slammed open and a being that resembled a metal grub with spindly robotic arms, topped off with a human head and shoulders, floated (yes, floated) out over the steps.

"Stoke the pyre!" the thing called to it's compatriots, who cheered in response.

"Pyre?" Glitch choked out. "Could we talk about this?"

"Azkadellia's invaders must be made an example of!" the leader decreed.

"What?! I don't even know Azkadellia." DeeDee shouted. "I hate this fucking place. Everyone is homicidal!" She threw her hands up in defeat. This was just too much. "Is there one person in the O.Z. who doesn't want to kill me?!"

She saw Glitch raise his hand out of the corner of her eye.

The floating being looked at her curiously.

"You who spoke. What is your name?"

"DeeDee," she said, not liking the way it was looking her over.

"Your voice patterns are familiar," it informed her.

"Does that mean you aren't going to kill me and my friends?" she asked, probably lacking the proper amount of deference. A door off to the side of the building opened.

"Peanut, you know I don't like it when you curse," her mother said, coming down the stairs. There was a man with her, who she had never seen before.

"Mom!" the girl cried, rushing forward and into her mother's arms. "I was so scared I'd never find you."

"Don't worry. Everything will be fine now that you're here," her mother assured. DeeDee looked at her. There was something different. Her mother's eyes, always with that little hint of desperate loneliness in their depths were clear and completely happy for the first time in DeeDee's life. She thought she finally understood why. "You're home."

Her mother smiled. "Not just mine."

What felt like anticipation rose up inside DeeDee. Was it true?

"You know how you always felt like you didn't fit in on the Other Side?" her mother asked. She nodded. "Well, those voice patterns Father View recalled were your mother's."

"Yours?"

"No, not mine. Your real mother's."

And the bottom drops out. Father View, the floating grub-man, suggested to her mother (not her mother?) that she explain to DeeDee in private. He promised that her friends would remain unharmed. DeeDee allowed herself to be led away, unable to think clearly from the shock of the bomb her mother (her mother?) had just dropped.

"What do you mean my 'real' mother?" DeeDee demanded. She'd been lead to a bench beneath a lovely tree she could not name, but refused to sit down. The strange man with her mother had come, too.

"We are Series 1487 Nurture Units," the woman who raised her began.

"Nurture Units?" DeeDee said incredulously.

"We were programmed to raise you and love you like our own," the man said. DeeDee glared at him.

"I'm sorry, but who are you?" she snapped. He looked chagrinned.

"I was programmed to be your father, but there was a problem with the traveling storm and I didn't make it through. I was damaged and by the time I could be repaired, it was too late to follow," he said apologetically. DeeDee could only stare at him. This was the father her mother told her had been killed in a car accident when she was two?

"We were programmed to work as a pair, you see," her mother continued. That explained so much of her childhood. Her mother's constant stream of boyfriends and desperate relationships. She had been programmed to work with a partner, but had none. DeeDee felt ill.

"You're a robot?!" she shouted at the thing that she had though was her mother.

"Peanut-"

"Don't call me that!" she yelled. "My whole life was a lie?!" she demanded.

"It wasn't a lie to me, sweetheart," her robo-mom insisted. "I feel like your real mother. I love you."

"You're not even real!" she all but screamed. She backed away from her mother and the man who would have been her father, tears starting to stream down her face. Her mother stood and reached for her, but DeeDee waved her away. "I can't… I can't…"

She couldn't finish the sentence; she just had to get away. DeeDee ran from the machines looking at her like concerned parents and out of Milltown.

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She tripped over a root sticking out from the ground and went sprawling forward. She had not seen the root because the tears blurred her vision. The tears were there because she was crying. She was crying because her entire life was just torn away from her.

Her throat ached, her chest felt as though it were being ripped open. She couldn't even articulate her feelings into thoughts. She felt the need to end things crawl over her, like a comforting blanket. She was familiar with the need, for it had been her constant companion throughout high school and occasionally visited when she had become an adult. It promised release from the pain and this was the worst pain she'd ever experienced. Knowing that none of it had meant anything. None of it was real. Was she even real?

She hated her mother; that thing that told her it was her mother and made her love and trust it. All her life she had felt guilty whenever she'd thought poorly of the woman. All the boyfriends, the men who looked at her too long, coming into her home because her mother was weak and afraid to be alone. But her mother wasn't weak, it wasn't her fault, she was actually programmed that way. She hated it for making her feel guilty and for making her live that life, which was Hell, which was a lie.

That man had told her he was meant to be her father. She could have had a father. She could have had a normal life, with two loving parents. But that would have been a lie, too, she knew. It would have been a better lie, a happier lie. She would have taken that lie over this reality.

God, she felt broken. Just broken. And wanted it all to end. Why wouldn't it just end?

And then, she wasn't alone. Someone picked her up from the dirt and pulled her close. Someone warm and strong, strong enough to hold her even though she tried to push away. She didn't want to be warm ever again. If she was warm then she would not be able to put it all to an end, which she so desperately wanted to do. But he was strong and he held on. His heart beat strongly in his chest, where he held her. One arm anchored her in place, in his lap. With the other, he rubbed her back soothingly with one hand. She did not want to be soothed, but was powerless to stop him. She felt his lips moving against her hair, his mouth pressed to the top of her head. He smelled of leather and gunpowder and a lingering touch of soap that had not washed away in the river.

Cain.

"They took my life," she moaned. He squeezed her tighter.

Cain whispered promises to her. Promises she knew he could never keep, but it was the sentiment that counted.