Sorry I'm late; my update schedule is about to go out the window, since I have no more finished chapters.
I would like to note that almost no one in this show is a reliable narrator, up to and including Dorothy herself...
She couldn't sleep.
Dorothy stared at the roof of her little pavilion. It was as sparsely furnished as Mother South's, with just a foldable cot and a few blankets behind the dividing hanging; she'd rolled one up for a pillow, but it wasn't helping.
But it was more than most people had. The camp had far more people than tents, and the only reason Dorothy had one for her exclusive use was because she was an honored guest.
It didn't feel quite real, being back in Oz. Meeting Glinda and West again - Morwen, Dorothy reminded herself - had been a strain, and after that she'd been shown to her tent and given a sketchy supper. Toto had disappeared, back to Leith, Dorothy hoped; and the page sent for Jane had returned alone, saying that she couldn't leave the medical tent just then.
It had all been rather anticlimactic.
Dorothy tucked one arm beneath her head and lifted the other hand, looking at the bare outline that was all she could see in the darkness.
Nothing happened.
She sighed. So far she'd only been able to make the gauntlets appear when she was in the throes of some strong emotion - panic, anger, hate. What if she couldn't learn to call them on command?
I suppose we could just have Glinda insult me until they do. Dorothy snorted and let her hand drop. Mother South seemed convinced that she was a necessary part of fighting the Beast Forever, but Dorothy wasn't sure it wouldn't be better for her to pass the gauntlets to someone else - one of Glinda's up-and-coming witches, maybe. At least she thinks I can give them to someone, instead of having to die first.
Finally she gave up, and sat up carefully, pulling on her pants and shoes before exiting the tent as quietly as she could. The camp was quiet but not silent; there were snores, murmurs, the occasional hushed voice, the crackle of the torches used to light the major paths between the tents. It might not even be that late. I have no idea what time it really is.
She headed back to where she thought the camp's entrance was. If I can't sleep, I might as well stretch my legs. She'd be tired in the morning, but any hospital nurse knew how to survive a triple shift; missing a few hours of sleep was nothing.
The camp had guards, but the privies were outside its boundaries, and the guard Dorothy passed merely nodded when she gave him a little wave. There is no enemy now but the Beast Forever, Mother South had explained. The guards protect us from ourselves.
That made a depressing kind of sense. Dorothy stuck her hands in her jacket pockets and wandered out in the general direction of the privies, but then drifted away to head up the same hill on which they'd arrived earlier in the day.
Only one of the moons was up, the smaller one, and it looked almost like home - like one of those atmospheric distortions when the Moon looked larger than it was, Dorothy thought.
She reached the top of the hill and realized that there wasn't that much to see besides the flickering lights of the camp; everything else was pretty much lost in shadow, with just the barest glints here and there from reflected moonlight.
The stars were amazing, though.
Dorothy sat down in the grass, sparing a grimace for its clamminess, and leaned back to look up. Growing up in the country, she had learned the stars almost unconsciously, and if she had needed more proof that she was far from home, she had it. The patterns arcing above her were completely unfamiliar.
There in the dark, she had to let in the thought that she'd been holding at bay all day.
Lucas.
She had very carefully avoided asking about him. Glinda was the only one likely to have gone looking for him, anyway, and Dorothy suspected the witch would bite out her own tongue before she'd give Dorothy any hints concerning him.
Besides, what exactly would I say? "There's this guy, who might go by Roan or maybe Lucas, who tried to kill me so I left him hung up for the crows. Did anybody find his corpse? Oh, by the way, he's secretly married to the Witch of the North."
Yeah, that would go over well. Dorothy shook her head and combed her fingers through the long grass.
It had been...not easy, exactly, to put him away when she'd returned to Kansas, but in a sense he was part of Oz, which had quickly begun to feel like a dream. Bright and unreal and out of reach. Even if he was the most real part of it.
There in the darkness, under the alien stars, she let herself remember. His sad, earnest eyes - the texture of his rough beard against her palms - the dusty warm smell of him - the way he said her name, and smiled, as if she were the only other person in his world.
I guess, for a little while, I was.
It was hard to untangle those days from one another, to separate out the forces driving her. Fear and curiosity and determination had put her on the road to Emerald City, that and necessity; but it seemed as though every step had divided her, first with Lucas and his wounds and his devotion, and then with Sylvie in her helplessness. They'd pulled her into wider concerns, until she was stumbling around trying to stop a war, no longer sure if it was for the silent little girl's sake or for her own desperate need to get back home.
Lucas had accused her of fearing loss, and he'd been right. But that wasn't the only reason. Dorothy sighed, and traced an aimless pattern in the stars with one finger. Her aunt and uncle weren't young any more, and between Henry's arthritis and Em's overdoing things, they were both at risk. Dorothy knew she couldn't have just let them lose her in such a brutal, inexplicable fashion.
And look where it got me.
She made herself remember that part, too. Roan's hands tight around her throat, his furious rejection, his pleading voice. The stomach-churning ease of sinking that knife into his side.
She'd tried to miss anything truly vital, but between lack of oxygen hindering her aim and the length of the blade, Dorothy figured that sepsis had killed him if the blood loss hadn't done the trick.
It still felt so very strange. Not fighting back; as much as she'd - cared for Lucas, he had tried to kill her. Like the death of the Witch of the East, she could feel sick about stabbing him, but not guilty.
But what the fuck was I doing, putting him back up like that?
All she could think of was that it had made sense at the time, lost in rage and regret as she had been. Now it seemed bizarre and cruel.
That she could feel guilty about.
Her neck was beginning to hurt. Dorothy lay back in the grass, ignoring the dew, and wondered with a small part of her mind if Oz ever had meteor showers. And if wishing on a shooting star actually worked here.
Lucas…
She'd never been in love before, and Dorothy still wasn't sure that what she'd felt for Lucas was love. But it was still deep enough to make her chest tighten and her eyes burn, because he had been something precious, and he was gone.
She didn't cry. But she let the grass cradle her for a very long time before she got up to go back to her tent.
In the morning Dorothy was brought warm wash water and a less than filling breakfast by another of Glinda's girls. Dorothy stopped her before she could leave. "Hey, uh - what's your name?"
The witchling had skin as pale as Glinda's and dead-straight blonde hair, and she was, Dorothy guessed, probably about sixteen or so. She gave Dorothy a wary look. "Susan."
"Nice to meet you." Dorothy smiled. "Do you - can you tell me anything about the girl named Leith?"
Susan looked her up and down, obviously skeptical, but finally spoke. "She's a page today."
That sounded...safe. Dorothy let out a breath. "Is there any chance I could, um, see her? Just for a few minutes." Leith had chosen to stay behind, and really Dorothy couldn't blame her, but she still wanted to know Leith was okay.
"You'd have to ask Mistress North." Whatever exalted guest-status Dorothy possessed clearly cut no ice with the girl.
Dorothy bit back a sigh. "Okay. Then where do I find the medical tent?"
Susan frowned slightly. "It's in the south end of camp. Are you sick, mistress?"
Dorothy shook her head. "No, I just want to find someone who works there."
"It's got an orange pennant. Will that be all?"
Dorothy nodded again, and Susan pulled aside the tent flap and disappeared. Dorothy watched her go, and wondered why everybody but Mother South seemed to dislike her on sight.
She washed and ate, and left the tray on her little folding table because she had absolutely no idea where the kitchen tent was either, and stepped outside.
The sky was no longer clear; low dark clouds covered it, and Dorothy could smell rain coming, though fortunately the atmosphere lacked the heaviness of an approaching storm. Probably just a good soaking rain, she thought, the sort of thing farmers loved in its proper season, but as she looked around at the tents Dorothy realized that this was probably not the proper season - at least for several hundred people living outdoors.
This place'll be a sea of mud in no time. She winced. I hope nobody asks me to settle the weather this time…
Maybe she should have brought an umbrella. Dorothy turned up the collar of her jacket, and started looking for the medical tent.
It wasn't that hard to find. The pennant was raised on a very tall pole, presumably to make it easier to locate in case of emergency, and it was also the biggest pavilion Dorothy had seen so far. She didn't see many people as she made her way to it, but the tent itself had traffic coming and going - mostly older women, and some girls in the dun smocks of Glinda's crew.
When Dorothy slipped inside, she immediately recognized the atmosphere. It smelled of something sharp and herbal instead of sharp disinfectant, but the rows of low cots felt enough like the hospital's ER to put her instincts on alert. Most of them were occupied.
A large part of her wanted to find some disposable gloves and pitch in, but it wasn't her ward, and anyway Mother South had pointed out that Dorothy's purpose in Oz wasn't to care for the sick - it was to help stop the infection at its source.
A round, elderly woman bustled up, shaking some remnant of blue light from her fingers, and Dorothy realized that she too must be a witch though her clothes were dark and shapeless. "Can I help you?" she asked, looking Dorothy over even more thoroughly than Susan had.
"I'm looking for Jane, is she here?" Hangings like that in Mother South's tent kept part of the pavilion out of view.
"Hm, the mechanist? Yes, she's here." The witch squinted at Dorothy, then gestured. "Back that way, on the right."
"Thanks." Dorothy followed her point, down the aisle on the right side of the tent and past the hanging curtain.
There were more cots there, most of them occupied; some of the patients were moving restlessly, but most were still, and Dorothy assumed that they had the illness brought by the Beast Forever (though one man had a splinted leg and a very bored expression). She made her way past them and an additional curtain before finding what looked like a supplies room; it held stacks of crates and sacks, and a small table and a stool.
Bent over the table, working on what looked like some kind of small instrument, was the brown-haired woman who'd sent Dorothy home. "I'm not finished, Thio," she said as Dorothy entered. "This is going to take some time."
Dorothy swallowed against her dry throat and managed to squeeze out a word. "Jane?"
The moving fingers slowed and stopped, and Jane's head rose, glasses flashing back light from the lamp hung over her table. "Dorothy?"
Dorothy realized that she had no idea what to actually say to the woman. Jane stood slowly, her face a mix of delight and anguish. "You came back...oh, I so hoped you'd tell her no…"
"I...people were dying," Dorothy said awkwardly.
Jane nodded, hands clasping one another. "The Beast Forever," she said. "It's brought a plague - fortunately it's not immediately deadly or even all that contagious, but still."
"Yeah." Dorothy couldn't look away from her. She couldn't see any of her own features in Jane's face, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. "I'm, um, still learning about all this."
"There's a lot to learn." Jane was staring back hungrily. "The Witch of the South said that you inherited some of Mistress East's powers - is that true?"
"Yeah." Dorothy flexed her hands, half-unconsciously. "Kind of. I'm still working on those, too."
Jane pressed her hands to her lips. "You're so beautiful," she said softly. "Strong and beautiful and bright." A tear crept out from under her lenses. "Roberto would have been so proud."
Dorothy swallowed against the sudden knot in her throat. She'd wondered about her father too, of course she'd wondered, but she'd had nothing to build an image on. Aunt Em's sparse description of Karen Chapman had been Dorothy's focus all those years. "What - what was he like?"
Jane smiled wistfully. "A good scientist. A kind man." She shook her head. "He was so excited when we found out I was pregnant. But he died a few weeks later and - well."
There were so many questions; for every answer Dorothy got, she seemed to think of more she wanted to know. But the most important one burst out of her without her permission. "Jane, if you're my mother, why didn't you come with me?"
Jane sighed, and lifted her hands as if to touch Dorothy, before dropping them again. "I had to make sure the machine was destroyed, or they'd just come after you again. You weren't truly safe as long as it was in working order."
"Yeah, well, it didn't matter." Dorothy folded her arms.
"So I see." Jane pushed her glasses up her nose. "And I am your mother. I know it might be hard for you to believe, but - "
Dorothy jerked one shoulder in a shrug. "People in Oz lie to me a lot. Even you," she pointed out.
Jane grimaced. "Yes - I'm sorry, but I was trying to keep you safe."
"Why didn't you just come with me the first time, instead of having Karen take me instead?" It had been bugging Dorothy since Jane had first made her claim.
"I couldn't get away. Frank watched me much more closely. Oh, it made him furious when she escaped with you!" Jane's smile was sad. "You know, strange as it may seem, I think Frank loved you, in his own way."
Dorothy snorted. "Sure, that's why he sent me after the Witch of the North."
Jane turned up one hand. "Well, you became a threat. That's what happens when people from our world come here, you know. We disrupt things just by existing."
Nothing good ever comes from the sky. Did that mean that others had come before, like Mother South had hinted? Dorothy pushed the idea aside for the moment. "Did you ever try to escape again?"
Jane sighed. "A few times. But Frank had the vortex machine locked up tight, and in the end I gave up - moved to Ev and set up shop there." She waved at the device on the table. "I work with mechanics most of the time - devices, not car repairmen - and there's some overlap with medicine. Which is why I'm here, I suppose, not left to rot in a dungeon in Emerald City."
She twitched her skirt aside, so Dorothy could see the cuff on her ankle. A coil of chain led from it to one of the tent pegs. "I'm useful, you see."
"What - why'd they do that?" A pulse of horror ran through Dorothy, an echo of her dream of Lucas' resurrection, but it shaded rapidly towards anger.
"I came here with the Wizard; I helped build his machine. Well, actually I built most of it myself, but that was a state secret." Jane shrugged. "And I think the Witch of the South wanted me as bait as well. For you."
"It worked," Dorothy said, though finding Jane had only been part of why she'd come back. And I'm gonna have something to say to Mother South.
She dropped to a crouch for a better look at Jane's shackle; it encircled her booted ankle neatly, and there didn't seem to be any kind of lock attached. "Magic?"
"I'm afraid so." Jane sounded resigned, but Dorothy didn't look up, instead reaching deeper into the anger that was burning in her chest.
The metal suddenly cradling her hand was warm. Dorothy extended one gemmed finger and touched the shackle, and the two halves bent away from one another as if they had never been one solid. The whole thing slid to the ground with a faint clank.
When Dorothy straightened, Jane was staring at her, mouth open. Dorothy felt the anger lessen, and with it went the gauntlet, melting away into nothing.
"My word," Jane said at after a moment. "The Witch of the South really was telling the truth."
"I'm not sure I believe it myself," Dorothy admitted, flexing her hand again. It always seemed as if there should be more sensation, but once the gauntlets disappeared there wasn't even a sense memory.
"Mistress?"
Dorothy turned. Back where she'd come in stood a witchling, the same one from Mother South's tent the day before. "Queen Ozma requests your presence. I'm to escort you."
Dorothy wondered wryly how much of that was "requests" and how much was "requires". "Sure, hold on a sec."
She turned back to Jane. "Do you want to leave the camp? If anybody tries to stop you I can - "
Jane shook her head, and lifted a hand to cup Dorothy's face. "I'm grateful, but I can't leave."
Dorothy had to swallow again at the touch. She wanted Jane to be telling the truth, she wanted it so much… "Why not?"
Jane hesitated, then dropped her hand. "I'll show you."
She walked to the next hanging divider, just a few feet away, and pulled it back. There on another cot lay a teenager with curly brown hair and a pointed face, wrapped in blankets. His skin was deathly pale, and Dorothy could see stained bandages where the blankets didn't cover him.
"Jack's still in a coma," Jane explained softly. "I think the grafts have taken, but he needs constant monitoring."
Oh. Dorothy blinked, wondering how Oz's primitive medicine managed to do grafts. Must be magic.
Behind them, the witchling cleared her throat politely. "I'd better go," Dorothy said. "But I'll come back when I can."
Jane smiled, and startled Dorothy by reaching out to hug her. It took Dorothy a moment to react, but then she returned it, feeling sudden tears stinging her eyes at the tight wrap of Jane's arms.
"It's selfish of me, but I'm glad you're here," Jane whispered in Dorothy's ear. "Be careful, okay?"
Dorothy nodded, and made herself let go.
