55. Oz
When Lacy had turned thirteen years old her friends had treated her to a movie. It wasn't an extravagant gift, rather cheap really. Movies were twenty-five cents to get into and a nickel for popcorn. Her allowance was seventy-five cents a week, so it was something that she could easily afford.
Going out was different. Her adopted father, John Steed, had a protective edge to him. This was understandable; she hadn't known that she was about to become the most powerful seer of the first half of the century after her Arcana. He had. Not to mention that she was frail and going out every day meant going back and forth to school flanked by her two bodyguards.
Rosamund and William always did try to blend into the background. They were talented sorcerers so it wasn't hard for them. She always knew they were there though and had gotten good at spotting them. The duo had taken the place of nannies in many ways for her and so it had been horrible when they had been murdered by Horvath later that day.
However, the start had been good. The Wizard of Oz had just come out and her friends had taken her to see it. She had chuckled at the portrayals of the witches. She was fairly certain that Morgana had never screamed 'What a world!' for one. Lacy also knew that Bianca, her father's then apprentice and a prominent sorceress, would never wear that sugary, glittering pink ball gown. It was ridiculous to expect otherwise.
Still, it was a good movie. She had enjoyed it immensely. Her friends had been happy and taken her to the soda fountain afterwards. There they had presented her with a beautiful bracelet that they had all chipped in on. Lacy was near crying when they gave it to her. It had seemed a wonderful way to turn thirteen.
Admittedly not thirty minutes after she left the soda fountain she was kidnapped and her bodyguards murdered. After that she was tortured into having her Arcana early by Horvath, a villain she had only ever known from the Incantus. She had heard her father and her father's friends, even some of her own friends, try to protect her in the ensuing battle.
After she had had that Arcana though she had felt like she was in Oz. Only, instead of the world becoming beautifully colored it became black and formless. The Arcana had taken her sight and left her only her hearing. Lacy was grateful that it had at least left her that, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to join the battle at all. The Grimhold would keep Horvath imprisoned for forever, or so she had thought.
For those first few months she learned her world all over again through touch and sound. She missed the colors and faces, always hiding her frustration with her sightlessness. Her father and everyone were just so glad that she was alive that they didn't think how she felt about being blind. Lacy knew she should be grateful for life at any cost, but it was hard when she needed help going down stairs that she had gone down every day of her life.
Her visions comforted her. In those visions she could see everything like it should be. She could see how she looked in the mornings, what the light looked like, she could see everything in her mind's eye. Lacy couldn't draw any longer normally, but when she had her visions she could draw with all of her old dexterity.
There was still a lingering sense of dissatisfaction with her life though. Everything only resembled what it had been. Nothing was the same. She was in the tornado that Dorothy had been in, only there was no magical world waiting for her at the end. There would just be continuing confusion and darkness. When her father bought her her guide dog for her, Teresa, then she even had a faithful furry companion who went everywhere with her.
She sat down on her bed one day and thought about it all. Lacy had been withdrawing into herself little by little, piece by piece over the past few months. She had gone to school, sang with her choir at state, and lived normally. However, at the same time she had also become quieter. Her father had noticed and was desperately trying to help her. Everyone was but they didn't understand.
Laying down on her bed she closed her eyes, although that didn't make a difference. If she was Dorothy though then that made her father the Tin Man. His cold demeanor made many people think that he was heartless but Lacy knew better. He loved her dearly, even though she wasn't even his biological daughter. It made no sense for him to feel that way, but he did and had taken her from what surely would've been a life of hardship and poverty into one of privilege and care.
Lacy giggled a bit at the vision of her father with an axe. She could extend the metaphor a little further. That would make Bianca the Scarecrow then. She wasn't brainless, just like the Tin Man really did have a heart. Sometimes when she spoke though, she could tell that her brain hadn't quite caught up with her mouth. When she was angry, she was fierce.
Finally there was the Cowardly Lion. Oh, that would be Robin. Dear dear Robin. Robin who wouldn't leave her, had tried so desperately to pull her out of her self-imposed isolation. He'd risked his life for her only to prove that he wouldn't abandon her. That wasn't something you got out of a fourteen year old boy. He was a boy who, for all of his physical frailty and poor magical combat skills, was so very strong. He insisted that he was useless while being one of the bravest people she knew.
In the stories Dorothy had pulled it together and led her band of misfits to the Emerald City. If Lacy had been in her place she would just have sat down on the yellow brick road and asked what the point was. She felt ashamed. She had survived one of the biggest magical battles of the century, predicted the birth of the Prime Merlinian, and now she was just going to wile away her life.
Lacy shook her head. No. It wasn't going to be that way. She wouldn't let it. She was alive, she was whole. Everything would be fine if she just kept her mind together. So she forced herself out of that rut in her life, struggling to do so. Almost immediately she felt the improvement coming over her.
When she started singing professionally at sixteen her opening number was Somewhere Over the Rainbow. She had insisted on it and she loved the way it sounded. Lacy quickly moved on to other songs and her venues became bigger. Balance had come into her life, both in the way she moved and in the way she performed. Everything had felt perfect.
In 1942 America declared war on the Axis powers. Robin had been eighteen, she had been seventeen. He'd joined the medical corps right away. He wouldn't wait to get drafted, and he had the experience needed to serve as a medic. She cried when he went away, cried so hard. She didn't let him see it though. Dorothy had only cried when things were completely hopeless. This wasn't completely hopeless.
Lacy took to singing in USOs. She had enough fame by that time in her life to do so. Her father wouldn't let her stray too far from New York. She couldn't blame him. It wasn't just dangerous with the war going on; the Morganians in the city were starting to act up. The daughter of John Steed would always be a prime target for ransom or revenge.
Life had been uncertain then, even for a seer. Then she had dream cast and met her granddaughter for the first time. She had been ecstatic but had bit back her big question; was Robin her grandfather? It was a legitimate question, but she had a feeling that she was better off not knowing. When he came back that night and proposed she had all but decided that it might be a wonderful world after all.
So much time had passed since she had been a little girl dreaming of Oz. She'd married Robin and had a wonderful son. Her father had died, she and Robin had shared the place of Prime for a few years. Then they had stepped down and her son, Gregory, had gotten married. She hadn't really liked her daughter-in-law, but she seemed to make Gregory happy and that was all that mattered to her.
Then that golden girl she'd seen in her visions was born. She had felt excited when she first saw her, and when they had given her Lacy's middle name. A few years later both her husband and her son were dead. Her daughter-in-law showed her true colors and, old though she was, she stepped in to care for the young girl. Becky had needed someone in her life to help her, and she wouldn't let her son's daughter grow up alone when she could do something about it.
Becky had always loved music. She begged her grandmother to let her learn to play the piano. Lacy herself had taught her, touch still being available to her. Somewhere Over the Rainbow was the first full song she learned, a gift for her grandmother's birthday. Lacy had cried and cried when her childish hands had plunked out the tune.
It had been the song she played at her graduation party. Her mother had come back to assert control over her and Becky had complied. She hadn't liked her but she was still her mother and Becky didn't want to burn that bridge entirely. Lacy understood. She also understood that one day Becky was probably going to have to dynamite it. Well, she could learn that in her own time. She wouldn't hear it from her.
That song had played when Lacy had taken off a bracelet from her withered wrist and given it to Becky. It had been hard to do, it had been the gift from friends and a husband now long gone. Becky needed something to help keep her strong though, and if anyone should have it Lacy felt that it should be her.
As a new teenager she had sat in the theater and wondered about that place over the rainbow. Perhaps it would be heaven, perhaps it would be perfect. Well, Lacy was in that place over the rainbow now. True, this wasn't the happily ever after that every girl dreamed about and begged for. Her love and son were dead, and she had outlived nearly all of her friends.
It was still a happily ever after. Her life was peaceful now, no threat of magical death daily hanging over her head. Becky was happy, wildly in love with a man who loved her back with that same passion. Bianca, her lost Scarecrow, had found peace when her immortality had faded. Even Balthazar, the man who had saved her from death when she was thirteen, had found his own 'happy ending' if anything could truly be called that. It was a good life that she had now, a beautiful encore in Lacy's twilight years.
Becky still came over occasionally. It was a long trip from the city to her house after all. The last time she did she had put in The Wizard of Oz. Lacy couldn't see it, but she could still hear the familiar characters. She listened to it and Becky watched; the two of them talking companionably.
The Tin Man. The Scarecrow. The Cowardly Lion. Her father. Bianca. Robin. She really felt like Dorothy now, and not just because her latest guide dog was named that. She had gone through obstacles in her life and now she had come home to a world that, while it might not be colorful, was her own.
