Chapter 12:

A Moment's Peace

Three unconscious people lay strewn about the devastated room. Duncan felt his blood rise and he rushed in to make sure that Skeletor had not added mass murderer to his repertoire. Ram Man awoke abruptly at the feel of Duncan's palm against his neck. He instinctively grabbed his wrist. "Easy." Duncan said, and waited for his friend to recognize him.

"We were ambushed," Ram Man chocked out, his lungs felt as if they were on fire.

"By Skeletor, I know. How do you feel?"

"Like I was blasted in the chest."

"Can you stand?"

"Arrg…not without help. Is something burning?

"It is you, my friend."

Ram Man acknowledged this with a groan and allowed himself to be helped into a seated position. He looked around the room and grasped Duncan's hand in earnest, his face distraught. "I'm sorry Man-At-Arms. I don't know how I could have let Skeletor sneak up on me like that. They'll be okay, right?"

Duncan assured him that he was not at fault and went to check on the others. "Who is this woman?"

"This might sound crazy, but I think she's that scary old woman, Ramona."

"Well, she's alive."

Duncan turned his attention to the bed where Evil-Lyn lay prostrate.

"Evil-Lyn?" He touched her face and gently wiped away a drop of red from her split lip. She stirred and he felt the vise that had been gripping his heart ever since he walked into the room loosen a bit. He called out to her again and shook her until she opened her eyes.

"Evil-Lyn! Where is Skeletor?"

She looked up at him and seemed to start when she realized who he was. Instead of answering, she struggled vigorously to get out of his grasp. "Evil-Lyn, relax."

"That is my mother. You have to help her. Is she alive?" Her eyes were wide with dread. Duncan blinked a few times and told himself that later there would be time enough to get the answers to some obvious questions.

"She is alive and she will get help; you all will get help. Just tell me, where is Skeletor?

She looked at him as if he was a dunce, "He left. Please, she needs help now."

"Do you have any idea where he went?

"I don't know, his lair maybe? Don't leave us!" Duncan halted his mad dash to the door.

"If I don't stop him now you'll never be safe, none of us will. Ram Man is here—" Evilyn turned to the man slumped against the wall, too lost in his own battle with pain to reassure her himself, "—and I will send someone up here to take care of your injuries."

"I need you here, now," she said. "Please, don't make me beg, I've done more than my share for today. Just...just help me to my chair," she relented, her eyes downcast. She felt ashamed. Never in her life had she considered herself dependent on a man. She used them, yes, but she had never needed them. That was before she developed that fatal dependence on Carr's touch; then, she had descended to begging for Skeletor's mercy and now, Man-at-Arm's security.

Duncan righted the overturned chair and lifted her from the bed without asking if he could. He felt her sharp intake of breath as a prelude to an objection. He breathed a sigh of relief when she closed her mouth with out saying anything. In addition to everything else, he had no desire to do battle with her too.

"I meant for you to bring it closer to the bed. I would have managed from there," she said when she was settled.

"My way was easier."

He opened the side door to an adjoining larger room that furnished with four cots: two on either side of a large square window, and the other two opposite them against the wall. He deposited the unmasked Ramona onto a cot beside the window.  Duncan returned for Ram Man and helped him into the cot obliquely opposite then went outside. He appeared some moments later with Zodac draped across his shoulders and laid him onto the adjacent cot. 

"I want to sit with her."

Duncan's head jerked down once in an abridged nod. He was panting a little from his exertions. "I still have to get someone up here to take care of the injured." Evil-Lyn mimicked his previous gesture and started to wheel herself to the other room.

"What happened here?" Unbeknownst to them, a small crowd had appeared and was now blocking the exit. "Oh, Man-at-Arms, everyone is looking for you, sir." The speaker was a sandy haired guard Duncan recognized from the field. He was treating Stratos' sprained wrist and cracked color bone. Now he was stooped slightly under the weight of another young guard he was half carrying, half dragging. Behind them were two others with various degrees of damage. "All the beds are filled on the lower floors so they sent us up here."

"Urr ...what happened?" the newly conscious youth asked groggily.

"Oh, we found him around the corner," the guard offered when he saw Duncan eying his charge.

"It's good that you're here…ah—"

"Dathan, sir."

"Dathan, I have a few patients for you in the next room."

"Oh?" He looked behind Duncan for the first time, his genuinely concerned expression changed to one of genuine concern when his eyes fell on her. "Oh…."

"It's all right, she won't bite."

"Hard." Evil-Lyn offered, though her heart wasn't in it.

He looked at her then, unspoken understanding passed between them.

"Fine, go quickly," she looked toward the men at the door. "One of you had better have medical training." With that, Duncan hastened out.

……………………………………………………………………………………

Evil-Lyn watched the dark grey mushrooming cumulus envelope the blue. Rain, finally? More than rain, a storm. She could almost smell it in the still air—a cooling reprieve after weeks of unrelenting heat. But, a storm brings with it its own set of troubles, so did every type of change, she mused and looked down at the woman on the bed who was finally showing signs of awakening.

"You are alive!"

Evil-Lyn made herself smile and raised her shoulders as if to say she could not believe it herself.

"You killed Skeletor then," she breathed a sigh of relief and dropped her head gratefully unto the stiff pillow. Her daughter's brow creased in confusion.

"He lives, mother. How could I have killed him? I was defenseless."

"You did not use your magic?"

"I dared not." Evil-Lyn jerked away from the bed. She did not know what game her mother was playing this time. The hurt and anger was evident on her face as she looked down at the woman who had suddenly become a stranger again.

"No, no. I released you." Her mother reached for her, gently tugging on the torn lapels of her shirt.

Evil-Lyn's eyes widened in surprise, "I did not realize," she said sadly then shook her head realizing that it did not matter anymore.

She rested her elbows on the bed and pressed her palms to her tired eyes then gave in to her mother's persistent pleas to tell her what happened. "You would be so ashamed of me," her voice was barely above a whisper and she refused to lift her eyes from a spot of lint on her mother's sleeve. "I groveled, like a beaten dog, to him—to Skeletor. I told him about my baby and begged him for our lives. I think I must have fainted because the next person I saw was Man-at-Arms," she snorted in disgust; a wilting flower was not the image she carried of herself.

"My child you were terrified not only for yourself but for your child; and you are recovering from a near fatal fall, not to mention your poor eating and sleeping habits in the last few days—do not berate yourself," she said gently. Her eyes darkened in distress as they took in the new scars that littered her daughter's face.

Evil-Lyn recognized her mother's train of thought, and touched her face. "Don't be concerned about me, I will heal. I am just grateful that he did not hit me here," she gestured to her stomach, "lucky for me the bastard likes to see the fruits of his labor."

"I am so sorry. I …I did not protect you. I tried to teach you a lesson, but I almost lost you. Please, can you forgive my arrogance? Please, Lyn." Evil-Lyn replied with a distracted nod. Quiet set in, broken only by Dathan's voice in the next room, admonishing another soldier to stop being a baby.

"I hate him so much for what he did to Carr."

"I know, yet…he did not kill you when he found out about your child." Evil-Lyn shook her head unnecessarily. "Perhaps you know him better than he knows himself." When Evil-Lyn raised a disbelieving brow she continued, "You appealed to his humanity. I don't think even he knew he possessed that quality."

Evil-Lyn did not seem convinced by that logic and continued talk about her tormentor was making her physically ill so she changed the subject. "'Doctor' Dathan checked you out earlier; he said you'll be fine. I was worried. You were unconscious on the floor for a long time."

"On the floor!" she gasped, her eyes twinkling, "How undignified."

Evil-Lyn's wide, red mouth turned up at the corners in a smile her mother rarely saw directed at her. She touched her daughter's cheek and tried to remember her as a child. Sadly, she found that she could not. "I know I have not always been there for you when you were growing up. I left you alone too often and when I finally came to my senses you …you did not need me anymore."

Evil-Lyn grimaced and shut her eyes in frustration. She felt her chest swell with emotion and wondered if there was some malevolent force out to get her—determined to see her overwhelmed by grief, emotionally spent and cried dry. When she opened her eyes, they were spilling over what her heart could no longer contain.

"You would leave me and be gone for months at a time, mother. I used to cry myself to sleep sometimes, certain that there was something wrong with me, something that made you stay away." He voice broke and her mother's arms were around her before the first strangled sob could escape. Evil-Lyn cleared her throat and pushed away. "Enough of this," she said firmly, more to herself than to anyone else. "We cannot change the past and I …I am just so tired, right now."

 "Come."

Her mother made room on the narrow bed and waited for her daughter to raise herself painfully out of her chair. Evilyn rested her head on her mother's shoulder and molded herself to her side. She listened for a while to the tune her mother was softly humming, absently trying to remember the name of the consolatory melody. She let out a protracted sigh at the feel of fingers threading through her hair. As she drifted to sleep, at the back of her mind, a voice was telling her that she was just being weak again, for indulging in this infantile behavior. She decided that she did not care.

……………………………………………………………………….