The village was much smaller than Cain had anticipated, sporting only a grocery store and a few indeterminable buildings. The tin man suspected that the actual homes were hidden behind the trees surrounding the area.

It didn't take long for the two of them to be noticed. It was sometime after mid-day, and Cain guessed that nearly the entire village was out and about.

Many of them gaped or whispered, and some of the women gasped, clinging to their children and their husbands. Only one person ventured towards them – a young man no older than Jeb.

"Mister, you all right?" He asked cautiously, looking between him and the man slung lifelessly over his back.

"My friend needs a doctor," Cain panted, his knees shaking badly. Several men rushed forward, gently relieving the tin man of his burden. The young man that had first approached him placed his shoulder under Cain's arm, helping him along as two others carried Ambrose, another two clearing a path through the growing crowd.

"Where are you fellas from? It's a long way from the next town, and looks to me you were headed in from the darklands," the young man said conversationally, curiosity shining in his eyes. He definitely had Jeb's spirit – always wanting to be anywhere but the place he was in.

"We're from the palace, on our way back," Cain explained wearily, and the young man's eyes widened.

"The palace? Really?" He asked with excitement. "Do you know the queen? Have you met her? And the princesses? Is Princess Azkadellia really not evil anymore? And Princess DG sure is pretty. I've seen her picture a couple of times in Central City." He craned his neck to give the tin man a grin, his brows furrowing as he studied him more carefully. "Ain't I seen you somewhere before, Mister?"

"Jeremiah Lynch, if you ask that man one more question, I will take you out of this world just as messily as I brought you in," a craggy voice scolded from ahead of them. They both looked to find an old man with a wooden, splintered cane standing on the stoop of what appeared to be the local doctor's office and glaring daggers at the young man.

"Sorry, Doc," the kid says sheepishly, helping Cain up the stairs.

"Inside with you," the doctor points his walking stick towards the door, shuffling in after them. "Don't get much of your kind out here anymore. Not since the witch melted, anyway."

"My kind?" Cain asked with a wince as Jeremiah helped him to a chair. It was white, like the rest of the room. The blond man didn't like it much.

"Tin men," the other replied with confidence, nodding once to emphasize his point.

"A tin man?" Jeremiah's eyes grew round again as he looked at Cain. "A real one? Like Wyatt Cain? Captain of all the tin men?" The doctor turned away, shaking his head and snorting.

"Yea," Cain nodded with a strained smile. "Just like Wyatt Cain."

"Wow," the young man whispered, a somewhat dreamy expression taking his face.

"You can ogle him later, Mister Lynch," the doctor said loudly, banging his cane against the floor.

"But, Doc, he knows-"

"Later!" The old man insisted firmly. "Right now, I need to have a talk with our guest, and you need to go see the book keeper and ask him for the big book." Jeremiah's eyebrows rose, but he nodded quickly, leaving in a rush. "Now then," the doctor dragged a chair over, plopping down with a grunt and eyeing him critically, "we have some things to talk about."

"Is my friend all right? Shouldn't you be looking at him?" Cain questioned desperately.

The doctor held up a patient hand. "He's in good hands right now. As soon as he's cleaned up, I'll have a look at him." The tin man visibly relaxed, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "The men who brought him in said you came from the edge of our fine village."

"That's right," Cain confirmed.

"Not much out there but woods and animals," the doctor points out, watching the tin man's reaction carefully.

Cain merely nodded, knowing he was being tested but far too tired to care why. "Bears."

"Is that what got ya?"

"Got him," the tin man explained. "I got there too late. He . . . backed into a trap. His leg is . . ." Cain couldn't finish.

The doctor nodded slowly, considering the man's words. He'd seen too many people – many of those from the village – who'd been the victims of tin men, and not necessarily the tin men under Azkadellia's rule. "You seem like an honorable man, Mister Cain. But it perplexes me how you and that man in there came to be traveling with one another."

"Why is that?" The tin man inquired drowsily, wanting nothing more than to find a warm, cozy bed to sleep in. The doctor's next words, however, managed to acquire his full attention.

"Because no one has seen that man around here for close to five-hundred years."

0 o 0 o 0

Jeremiah knew as soon as the doctor had asked for the big book that something was up. And when he walked in on the doctor and the newcomer, book in hand, he knew their silence said a whole lot more than it would if they had been talking.

"Five-hundred?" Cain murmured softly. When Ambrose had mentioned he had been around for a long time, five-hundred years had been the furthest thing from his mind. Not to mention the fact that it didn't include the number of years he had lived in the village to begin with.

"Doc?" Jeremiah said softly, stepping forward and holding up the rather heavy book.

"Thank you, Mister Lynch. If you'll just set it on the table."

Jeremiah did so and wiped sweaty palms on his fading brown pants. He shifted nervously, staring at the tin man.

"Something you'd like to ask our friend?" The old man inquired with feigned curiosity. Cain grimaced. He didn't think he could stand being questioned any further but swallowed hard and gave the boy as much attention as he could.

"Uh," Jeremiah stammered, swallowing and clearing his throat. "Uh. . . I, um . . . No." He quickly ducked his head and made his way towards the front door. "I'll see you later, Doc." He stumbled down the stairs of the porch and disappeared.

Cain was grateful, if only for a moment. The old man was staring at him with a look he didn't think he liked.

"Somethin' you'd like to ask, Doc?" The tin man inquired a little less politely than he'd intended. But the doctor seemed unfazed.

"Your friend," he grunted, nodding towards the door at the back of the room. "He's dangerous. You sure you know what you're getting into?"

"Listen, Mister," Cain leaned forward in his chair, a hard look on his face and fire in his eyes, "that man in there is one of the reasons the O.Z. is getting back to normal. The witch lost her power because of him."

"The witch was given power because of him," the doctor countered harshly.

Cain growled, standing and leaning into the man's face. "You don't know what you're talking about, Doc, so just shut up and make him better so we can be on our way."

The old man snorted, thumping his cane on the floor once and narrowing his eyes. "You don't intimidate me, sonny. Now sit down and be quiet. I'm not looking for a fight. I just want you to listen."

Cain eyed the doctor skeptically before reluctantly complying.

"He invented some very nasty things, Mister Cain," the doctor said cautiously, studying the tin man carefully. "For a long time he was thought to be an evil wizard, making torture devices in the very house his parents died in. Some claimed that he was being possessed by the angry spirit of his deceased father, tormented by the fact that his son had killed him."

Cain was taken aback. "Ambrose didn't . . . He couldn't, have . . ."

"Are you so certain?" The old man questioned skeptically.

Cain furrowed his eyebrows, nodding determinedly. "I'm sure. He could never do something like that." But a seed of doubt had been sown in the tin man's mind. How much did he really know about Ambrose? He knew what the inventor had told him, but how truthful would one be – could one be – if their past was seen as questionable? Shaky? Or, dare it be said, evil?

"He didn't mention where the elves found him, did he?" The doctor asked curiously, offering the man a sly look.

Cain hesitantly shook his head, staring at the doctor with a mixture of curiosity and an insatiable need to know. "How do you-"

"The inventor is a part of our folklore, Mister Cain. It would stand to reason that he had a story of his own." Cain went silent, waiting for the man to continue. "The elves were said to be in need of a child that could absorb the abilities of those around them and use those abilities for dark purposes."

Cain felt like a child again, holding his breath as his grandmother spun the most intricate tales. The doctor lifted the heavy cover of the thick book, revealing a page almost entirely blotted out with black ink. Figures and shapes stood out starkly in bright silver lines and swirls, despite the book's age. The figures had sharp teeth, gnarled claws, and narrowed, beady eyes. The tin man realized that the shapes on the page weren't merely figures. They were monsters. And there was only one place in all of the O.Z. Where monsters existed.

"Ambrose is from the darklands," Cain whispered with an almost accusatory tone.

The doctor nodded. "The elves kidnapped a young woman from a nearby village and took her away to the darkness, where she was tortured and raped for many, many years by the creatures of the dark." Cain looked down at his hands, finding them clenching the arms of his chair in a white-knuckled embrace.

"But he's human," he protested weakly. "Ambrose is human. He looks . . . human."

"Of course he does," the old man agreed. "The monsters in the darklands have no shape. They are made up of fear and nightmares."

Cain shivered, closing his eyes and picturing the monsters that took his great-grandmother's brother. They were shadow, blackness, swallowing land and people and animals alike, thrusting them into eternal darkness, where the only things that met their screams were low, haunting cackles. Eyes peered from every direction, large and owlish and accompanied by wide-toothed grins and the constant sound of scratching and the ripping of skin.

Cain opened his eyes with a start, breathing hard.

"You all right, Mister Cain?" The doctor asked, a look of concern adorning his face.

"F-Fine," the tin man stuttered, wiping his brow. "What happened to the woman?"

"She became with child, and when the baby was born, the elves came and took it away before the dark things could get to it." He looked very sad then. "And they killed her."

"The monsters?"

The man shook his head. "The elves." Cain looked surprised. "Whether out of malice or sympathy, no one knows. But she died, and the elves took the babe away to their kingdom." The doctor leaned back some. "I'm sure you've heard the rest."

Cain nodded.

"That boy was born with dark in his heart, Mister Cain, and a dark soul to go with it. He may not know it, but he is capable of a great evil – more powerful than Azkadellia and the royal family put together."

Cain did not want to believe it. He knew he couldn't – knew he shouldn't. But for some reason it nagged at him, wiggled into the back of his mind and settled in the warm recesses, content to stay exactly where it was.

And Cain felt absolutely horrible for it. He'd known Ambrose for quite a while – Glitch for quite a while longer – and all it took to shake his faith in the other was a story from a decrepit old man and a very large book.

"It was found," the doctor started, "after the inventor left to serve the royal family." He closed it, running the pads of his fingers along the spine and over the delicate designs on the cover. It was red, or used to be anyway. Really it was more of a rusty brown than anything. And the design on the front was intricate and smooth, a number of swirls and nonsense patterns etched into a thick, leather-like fabric – probably made by Ambrose himself.

"There are a great deal of things in this book," the old man continued dazedly. "Invention designs that no one has been able to duplicate, drawings with the most livid details . . . and dark thoughts, nightmares that have kept him awake for weeks at a time." He swallowed and sighed. "A very old and tormented soul in a very young-looking man."

Cain's jaw muscles rippled as he ground his teeth. "I'd like to see him now." The doctor looked up, shaken from his revere, and nodded.

"Of course," he said quietly, standing on weary legs with the help of his cane. The tin man followed suit, allowing the doctor to lead him into another room just as brazenly white as the first. The brightness was beginning to hurt Cain's eyes.

An old woman – the doctor's wife – was bent over a very sickly-looking Ambrose, who was lying on a cot with blood-soaked blankets and sheets; the only color in the room. His form was devoid of any signs of dried blood, but his skin was still pale and clammy. He was shivering and breathing hard, moaning and muttering incoherently. The woman looked up as they entered, a stern, determined look on her face.

"I've stopped the bleeding," she said softly, a wet cloth clutched in her right hand. "But he may need more than we can give him."

The man beside Cain nodded thoughtfully, stepping forward and beginning to examine the inventor himself. "His wounds are deep. He's lost too much blood. We may need to summon a healer."

"You know how wary they are," the woman scolded, clucking her tone and using the cloth in her hand to wipe the sweat from Ambrose's forehead. "They know the stories just as well as we do. And the inventions were used against their people more than anyone. We'd be lucky to get any word to them at all."

"I can get word to them," Cain said bluntly, breathlessly, his eyes never leaving Ambrose. The married couple looked up at him, their expressions stating they'd almost forgotten he was there to begin with. He swallowed hard and repeated himself. "I can get word to them. I know a healer."

"Their village is a good seventy miles south," the doctor explained as if in warning. "Even with our fastest horse, you might not be back until morning."

"I can make it back by sundown," the tin man promised. "All I need is a horse." The doctor eyed him skeptically, nodding finally and leading him back out the way they had come.

0 o 0 o 0

The horse the village had been able to offer was a far cry from Cain's own horse back at the palace, but it would have to do. He wasn't making the best time either. Cain had already been forced to stop a few times to rest the equestrian, taking the time to survey the surroundings and make sure he was still headed in the right direction. There had been a dirt path the first few miles out of the village, but after that, nothing but forest and rocky ground. The tin man was still surrounded by trees, which slowed his pace rather annoyingly.

The horse whinnied behind him, and Cain cast him a fleeting glance. "Yea, I feel your pain."

Before long, he was off again, skirting around trees as quickly and as carefully as possible. Fortunately, the horse seemed used to the constant dodging and needed little assistance to weave his way through the forest.

Cain figured it couldn't be more than another mile or two to the healers' village, but the suns were already approaching the horizon at a distressingly fast rate. The tin man feared he may not be able to keep his promise.

A low growl, suddenly, sounded on his left, and he was knocked to the ground, his vision blurring before starting to gray. Before he completely blacked out, he heard voices above him, low and grumbling.

"Human?"

A furry face swam in his limited vision, and a nose sniffed him distastefully. "Tin man," the voice that belonged to the face spat. A pause, then a hesitant, "Knows Raw."

Cain heard no more after that.

AN: So... I'm not exactly happy with the flow of this chapter... I'm really kind of disappointed with it. But I s'pose it'll do. I wish I could have gotten more in this chapter, or at least added a few details that I wanted... But no more whining!!

And holy freakin' crap, I totally did not know this before I started writing this, peeps, I swear!!!

Am·brose [am-brohz]

–noun 1. Saint, a.d. 340–397, bishop of Milan 374–397.

2. a male given name: from a Greek word meaning "immortal."

Yup, that's right. BOOYAH!!! My subconscious had a hayday after I read this. :D