My Heart Doth Wander
Chapter 12 : Preparations and Dead Babies
Healing comes so painfully
And it chills to the bone
Will anyone get close to me?
I'm damaged – as I'm sure you know
I'm scared and I'm alone
I am shamed and I need for you to know
I didn't say all the things that I wanted to say
And you can't take back what was taken away
Cause I feel you, I feel you near me.
"Damaged" – Plumb
From the psyche – troubled and remembering- of Casssar, Queen of Robotropolis.
My Castdecass.
Cast has been odd the past few days. Whatever the Princess had said unsettled him immensely. At times he is relaxed and confident, assured in his plans of retaliation. And then he changes....becoming akin to a desperate man living his last days. This annoys me to no end.
He gets clingy, unwilling to part from my side (I must admit, to a degree, I don't mind that!) and then again a change...
He becomes a turtle, withdrawing into his shell, brooding there in the darkness. He turns the lights down, or off, so the red glow on the console doesn't show. He doesn't know I am aware of that. I know how much it haunts his mind. He sits in the near-darkness, the only available light catching in his large eyes and reflecting back at me. He is not very good company when in such a state.
He is muttering now. His fingers are clacking on the keyboard in front of him; he is standing by the console typing furiously, his teeth bared. I can see an image on the monitor....it looks like troops of robots, and when Black Flower hits different keys, the troops go into different positions. It is some kind of program for coming up with robot formations, and defenses, or so Black Flower told me.
I yawn. Not very interesting...not very interesting at all. I would prefer to go out and use my magic against them. It would be extremely fun. I haven't said anything, because Black Flower has that certain gleam in his eye, that strange air of wanting this battle all to himself.
And I understand that feeling very well...
It's so dull though, perched here on the throne, staring at his back. He hasn't sat down for hours. "Black Flower..." I call. "Aren't you hungry? I am getting famished."
"No," he says in a distracted way.
"I am."
"Hmr?"
"I am hungry."
"Then get something to eat..." He bangs one hand on the console. "Dammit! That formation WON'T away from there for a while. Let's go eat."
"I'm not hungry, Casssar," he snaps.
I aim one finger at his lean back, narrowing my eyes. Ah, does he make me quite angry at times...oh yes. I can see him now on the floor, his back arching, and his fingers curling, racked with pain...I can almost hear the crying whimpers and begs that would come from his mouth. A smile curves on my face. I can feel magic rushing to my finger, warm and tingling like blood. I can do it to him, so easy. I can make him scream...
"Please?" My voice is wistful and girlish...but my finger is SO evil, tracing an imaginary line up his spine. I can put fire in his nerves...he would feel like he was burning from the inside out...
I really shouldn't, though. I should try not to be cruel...
"Goddammit!" He snarls again. "I am VERY busy here, Cass...so kindly take your grumbly little stomach and leave me the hell alone!"
I don't even think. It's a surge of raw power. Out my fingertips it comes like a bullet...but it misses him. I want to give him a chance to apologize...
The console emits a peculiar noise as the wires and computer chips inside melt from intense heat. The monitor cracks and then goes black. I smell the sickening stench of burnt electronics.
"What the-" He stumbles away from it, wringing his hands. They are burnt from resting on the console, and he draws them to his chest. He whirls around, meeting my eyes for the first time in hours. They are wide, spangled with red veins and dark underneath. He has barely slept since the Princess's message. "CASSSAR! What the FUCK did you do?!"
I lean back in the throne, smiling in satisfaction. "Are you hungry now, Black Flower?"
Oh...he's fuming! His teeth are unsheathed and his fists clenched hard enough to whiten the knuckles. "You selfish little bitch." He spits. "Don't you care about my LIFE? That's what's at stake here!"
How absurd. He is succumbing to those ridiculous fears again. "Don't be foolish." I scoff.
"Go AWAY, Cass, if you're just going to laugh!" His voice is rising steadily. "You think it's fucking funny?! Maybe I do want to die..." And he turns and grips his coffee cup, which I am quite sure he had drained an hour earlier. "But NOT by their hands, dammit! Never! Never HIS!"
"What are you speaking of?" My voice competes to be the opposite of his. Calm and smooth as glass. It maddens him; I can see the shivers taking hold of his body. My Black Flower is a trembler. He has shoved emotions down into his skin and soul for quite a long time. His body feels the affects of that now. His body shakes when it can no longer hold such furies in.
"I TOLD you!" He clutches the cup to his chest frantically. "HE's coming-"
"No, he is NOT!" I curl my claws into the throne's armrest. It makes a horrible squealing sound. "He is NOT!"
"SHUT UP!" He screams. "SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"
I am too surprised to even duck. But his aim is poor due to his blinding rage and the shaking of his arm. The coffee cup comes hurtling, barely missing the top of my head. It shatters behind me on the top of the throne...my ears flatten to my skull at the noise and I feel sharp shards raining down on the back of my neck.
He is running towards the door, whether in fear, or desire to be alone, I cannot tell. I do not care! I leave the throne, I feel my feet floating above the ground, I feel my body burning like a torch. He trembles from excessive emotion – I shudder from the surges of raw power...anger in magic form...anger that I must release!
"I TIRE of this foolishness!"
He stops and glares at me, defiant. "Shut-"
I catch him up in enchantment and feed the magic into him. I see his body stiffen. He is feeling the pain...tears spring into his eyes and he lowers his head to hide it, his teeth clenched.
It makes me smile viciously, to see him shaking...to see him breaking. Ah...I can almost laugh as a whimpering sob comes from his mouth.
"Go ahead then!" He lifts his head and screams. "Hurt me! Be like all the others!"
Like all the others?
I feel my eyes widen. Pain comes to my own body, like my spell has turned back on me.
I see myself lined up in a row with his father and his uncle and...
Oh, but the cruelty is so easy...the cruelty is me.
I am lined up in a row with all of his kin. And my father is there too, smiling so sickly, his big hands reaching for me...
No. I can't be like HIM.
The spell fades from my veins. I feel weak, wanting to double over and gasp for breath. Instead, I sink into the throne. Black Flower slips down to his knees on the cold floor and watches me through watering eyes.
"I'm going to die, Cass. You have to let me work...or they'll kill me."
"Why do you believe this? She hated him too, Cast. She hated him...she fought her whole life against him, didn't she? Why would she bring him back, tell me this?"
"You don't get it," he says. He isn't wiping his eyes, even though they are still leaking. I like him wet-faced...childish vulnerable beauty. "She hates me even more now. She'll do anything to get me. She'll bring him back...she WILL. She said so, right on the camera...she said it direct to me. She said I was going to die. She had HIS flag."
Black Flower's voice is flat and monotone. His eyes have gone all dead. I have seen this look. In my mother's eyes...sometimes. Before she was totally gone. Before she...
It's a look of hopelessness. 'I will never get out. I will never win.' It's a look of accepting all this. It's a look of submitting to pain. And yet...
And yet...there's something in it that says you want to TRY to change. You are dead, but some pulse still beats, and it WANTS you to get up again and walk!
I don't know if I should be glad to see that look...
Or terrified that he has sunk that far.
His eyes have shifted to the floor and his hands are crossed over his chest. He is like the last solider on the battlefield, waiting for death.
"But you forget something..." I rise, I join him on the floor. "You're not alone this time. I will fight WITH you. For you..." I slip my fingers under his chin, lift his face to see me.
His eyes dart over my features, his brows frowning. Then a sob escapes him and he tightens his lean arms around me, burying his face into my neck. I caress his back with my hands, wondering at the structure of bone and muscle beneath the gray fabric. It feels so nice, to feel something so solid and alive.
Warm and breathing...and mine.
He pulls away, sniffling and laughing weakly. "It's easy to forget...that you have a friend...when you haven't had any in so long..."
"Tut." I poke him lightly in the nose. "Not just a friend, Black Flower!"
"Yes yes..." He finally wipes his crystalline eyes, erasing the tears. "A lover too..."
"Most certainly," I say very solemnly, while my hand squeezes his rear end. He chuckles, and this time it is stronger and more genuine.
"Alright," he says, untangling himself from my grip. "Let's uh...let's go have that lunch now, eh Cass?"
"We should just collect all the explosives we can and bomb every damn factory and building in sight!" Geoffrey was the first to throw out a suggestion at the meeting/dinner that evening.
"Where do we get all these explosives?" enquired Sally, arching an eyebrow. She had met Geoffrey's eyes and words with coldness all through the dinner. Now they sat with their desserts on their plates, discussing the means in which to go about the 'Final Mission'.
"We build 'em up. Over a few weeks. That's all we do, is make explosives," said Tory, who was in high agreement with Geoffrey. "Then we collect all the people willing to go and overrun the place."
'An army of children, men, and women who have lived their lives in the village? Who have never been out on the warfront? Who have never even set foot in Robotropolis? Some who have never even set foot in Mobotropolis?'
"They may be willing, Tory, but I'm not sure if I, or," she waved her hand around at her friends, the core Freedom Fighters, "any of the others would be willing to let them go."
"Please," Tory scoffed. "Geoffrey said there was no retaliation from Snively at all! The punk doesn't know what the hell he's doing."
Some of the villagers muttered.
"Yes, Princess, maybe we should....just all go in. Even if it's a little dangerous," the man speaking sounded bemused, as if he were thinking the Freedom Fighters weren't all that brave after all, "It's worth it to take down Snively, isn't it?"
"Look!" She clanked her fork sharply on her plate. "Just because Snively didn't do anything that time doesn't mean-"
"You just want all of the glory!" A voice crowed from the back and everyone swiveled their heads to look. Whoever had spoken had fallen silent and all the villagers were looking around aimlessly, so not to lay blame on the speaker.
"Who said that?" demanded Sally, standing up. Sonic was standing too, his quills raised.
"Ya'll think that's it?" Bunnie too had stood, her fork still clenched in her hand. "Ya'll think we go there fer fun, to make ourselves look like heroes? Ya'll know what? Ah would love to live in safety. Ah would LOVE nothin' more than to be able to live a real life, a life where Ah could be happy and free! Ah could care less about stinkin' glory!"
Sonic sat down. Geoffrey smirked at him.
"Yeah kids, listen to Ms Rabbot," the skunk said. "We ain't wanting no glory shit...but in order to bring Snively down, we have to fight."
"They don't know HOW to fight," said Sally angrily. She cast her stormy-blue eyes to the knot of villagers in the corner. "You people have NO idea how dangerous the city is! I HATE going there! It scares me! But at least we know our way around...and we know how to deal with the robots and..."
"You could train us." A male dog (Sally loosely remembered his name as 'Bernard' or something) "We don't have to stay here like cowards. No one ever bothered to ask US if we wanted to fight, they just assumed we were yellow-bellies who just want to stay in our cozy little homes! Well some of us DON'T!"
"Fine." Sally relented, dropping her fork. "Fine. It's your life. I don't want to get more people involved then necessary, but if you want to risk your lives, fine. Who am I to say you can't? Who am I to want to protect what remains of my people?" She was fiercely ashamed of the wetness filling her eyes and sat down again, letting her thick hair fall over her face.
Bernard sounded slightly less volatile. "I know what you're saying, Princess. But it is OUR lives."
King Acorn cleared his throat. "I don't believe that ordinary citizens should be getting involved in this. It's all very well and good that you want to help...but you can help here."
"You can help make explosives," Tory said. "We'll need people to do that."
The King nodded. "I am not quite sure about Geoffrey's direct approach to the attack, but I imagine using some explosives would be a good tactic. Sally?"
She waved a hand listlessly. "Whatever."
Sonic put his hand on her shoulder. "Yeah, ok. I like the idea of blowing stuff up too, but that can't be ALL we do, you know? We're going to need a game plan for the robots too. Snively ain't just gonna sit around while we blow up all his buildings!"
There was muttering from the knot of villagers. One of Sonic's pointed ears perked up. He caught the end of word... a word that ended in 'itch...'
"What did you say?" He aimed an accusing finger at them. "I HEARD that!"
"Why doesn't the witch just use her powers?"
Everyone stared at Sally. She didn't lift her head, but she could feel the weight of their eyes. Across the table, she caught a glimpse of one person watching. It was the girl wolf cub.
Her eyes...unlike the others...were not accusing, or questioning, or angry.
They were shining in awe and respect.
Casssar amused herself in the kitchen by making the plates float out of the cabinet and onto the countertop. Snively turned away from the large fridge, holding a few packages of foodstuff in his hand, one eyebrow raising at the sight. "We'll need some glasses too," he said.
She obliged. They clinked down on the countertop and she eyed the packages Snively was setting down. "Do you have nothing else but that weird stuff?"
"It's just dehydrated," said the small man, opening a page marked 'turkey slices'. "We've eaten it before. You never complained."
"Ah. What about your master? Didn't he have a secret supply?"
"I'm not touching HIS food." Snively grimaced. "I wouldn't be surprised if that was Mobian meat in his stash."
"Ugh." She crinkled her nose. "I'll suppose I'll pass on that as well!"
Snively prepared the food by putting it a machine marked the 'Hydrator.' When it beeped, the small man opened the door. On the plate was fresh turkey slices, lettuce, cheese and bread.
"Magical," the ermine queen said.
"Hardly." The small man snickered, fixing sandwiches for them. He eyed the plates and glasses. "Though I'd love to know how you do that."
"Oh this?" She levitated a glass over to him so he could pour their drinks. "It's quite simple, once you know how to do it."
"And how do you learn?"
She crinkled her nose again. "I'm not sure. It has something to do with extending your energy outward to affect the energy of another object. At first...I couldn't bring things to me. I couldn't move them about... I discovered the knowledge by accident. It was my first magical achievement."
"Really?" He blinked, looking interested. "How did it come about?" He slid her glass of liquid over to her. She wasn't sure what it was. It was some deep red drink, with a strong fruity taste and a hint of liqueur.
"My emotions were so strong that my energy could no longer be contained in me. It went out and it knocked over..." She flitted her eyes down to the liquid. Deep red...maroon. Too dark to be blood, but it reminded her of it, nevertheless. "It knocked over a table."
A lie. She had told a lie. But it wasn't the first ever, was it?
He seemed to know it, too. Those scrutinizing blue orbs were narrowed.
She lifted the glass to her lips and closed her eyes as if savoring the thick tainted flavor. But on the insides of her eyelids she could see a scene played out, the real truth of it, and it wasn't a mere table that had taken the brunt of her first magical attack.
She was nearly eight years old. Before then, she had known there was something inside her, something laying dormant. Sometimes she felt tingles of it in her fingertips. But it never seemed to rise up and come out of her...not until now.
Daddy had come back to them when she was five. And when she was six, the full effects of his bathing in the tainted Source Pool had taken hold. And on it went, through six, through seven, through eight and nine years until she fled for good at age ten.
She was eight and she was living in a world of fear and pain. She did not go to school. She stayed home. Mommy stayed home. Daddy stayed home, except when he went out to hunt. He brought home wild animals, dead and bloodied. Sometimes they had teeth marks in them, like he had gotten hungry on the way home and taken bites raw.
Today, Mommy was sick. Daddy was out hunting.
"Are you alright, Mommy?" Casssar asked, helping her mother to their ratty couch. There were books and sewing scattered all about. They used to have a radio that Mommy listened to, but Daddy had broken it a while ago.
"I'm fine, dear." Mommy's face had healing cuts on it. It always did. But Mommy didn't sound fine. She started to cry, waving her hand at Casssar. "Go out and play for a while, honey. Before your father comes back, go out and get some air!"
"You need air too, Mommy, come on." The girl tugged at her mom's hand.
"No honey, please!" Mommy suddenly jumped up and ran into the bathroom. Casssar could hear her retching into the toilet. Now she was very scared. Was Mommy sick enough to die? Casssar knew when she got sick enough to puke, it meant she was very sick indeed, and Mommy would fuss over her. Daddy used to too...before the Source. Now he just laughed when either of them weren't feeling well.
He never seemed to get sick or weak.
"Mommy!" She squeaked. "Mommy, you're sick! You need a healer!"
Mommy started to sob, her head on the edge of the toilet. "No, honey...I'm not sick..."
"What is it?" Casssar stood there, stiff and terrified. Her Mommy looked so sad, sadder than she had EVER looked. It nearly made Casssar want to die.
"I...I have a baby inside me," her Mommy whispered.
"A baby?" Casssar felt tears in her eyes. She knew people were supposed to be happy about babies. But what would Daddy do to a baby? She didn't want to imagine it. She didn't WANT a baby to be born into this house. It would be utterly cruel. "Oh Mommy..." She moaned and sank down next to her mother's white-furred body. "Mommy...what are you going to do?"
"Nothing," the older woman said grimly, drawing the child to her. "It won't be born."
"How can you stop it?"Her mommy's face crinkled up like used tissue. "It isn't the first one, honey. When your daddy hits me..." She put her hand in her daughter's hair. "It kills the baby."
The girl's eyes went wide. She tried to hug her mother, but the older woman shooed her away. Casssar went outside and played with rocks, throwing them viciously against the trees. She imagined Daddy's face on the bark.
She felt incredible rage growing inside. She wanted to kill him. She wanted to rip his face off. She didn't care if he had been good before...it didn't matter. She wanted to hear him scream.
"Cass?" Snively was staring at her.
She shook her head, raising her eyes from the deep crimson of the glass and to his face, those pale ice-blue eyes. "It wasn't really a table," she said, lip curling.
"I figured as much." He pushed her plate towards her. She bit into the sandwich viciously. "It was your father, wasn't it?"
She smiled, lifting her eyes to the ceiling in a coy gesture. "It was supposed to be. But my aim wasn't very good back then." She laughed without mirth. "I wasn't really aware of what I was doing."
The thing that had laid dormant inside her was starting to rise. She could feel it. She stumbled back against the tree, her head back, staring up at the orange and blue sky, panting. It felt like blood from deep within her was spreading to the surface veins of her body, and this blood contained an intoxicating feeling of...of POWER. Power and energy!
She let out a ragged cry, not sure whether she was elated or alarmed by this... She turned her eyes on the rocks and the trees, the thought of daddy in her mind...the thought of Mommy's baby becoming nothing but bloody paste to ooze out onto the floor... She thought of it because it seemed to fuel the feeling inside. It was rising...like heat rose from a head that wasn't wearing a hat...that's why Mommy told her to wear her hat in the winter...
But she wanted it to escape. Her breath came in harder, and she felt herself shaking, like she was cold...but she wasn't... her skin was crawling...and her fingers were tingling so bad, almost painfully, like they had been frozen and were now thawing.
And then it escaped. She knew it had, because she felt suddenly weak and lightheaded, and around her, the rocks went flying in all directions! She stared at the ground in awe, trying to catch her breath.
She went in to tell her mother about this odd new thing.
There was the horrible sound of whimpering and begging. "No...Henry...please."
Daddy was home! Her eyes narrowed and her breath hissed in rage. She didn't know what had come over her...this sudden anger...it was so violent that it overshadowed the fear. She ran into the kitchen to find Mommy backed away against the table and Daddy standing in front of her with his powerful arm drawn back. "You stupid whore. Think I care if you're sick? You stupid bitch."
There was a bundle of dead rabbits and squirrels laying on the table, but Daddy knocked them off and tried to force Mommy to lay down there, so he could do the very bad thing to her. Casssar saw Mommy's stomach slam very hard into the table's edge as she struggled weakly. A moaning cry came from her mouth.
"NO!" She cried and Daddy snapped his head up and stared up at her.
"Oh, so the little whore has come in at last! You'll have to wait your turn sweetie." He started to laugh in that sickening way that normally made Cass shiver. But today...it made the feeling rise up...
"It came out...but it didn't hit Daddy like I wanted, " the ermine mused, swirling the liqueur in her glass. Snively was still eyeing her, silently. He hadn't touched his sandwich yet. "It knocked over Mommy instead. She fell onto the table and bit her tongue hard. I remember the blood coming from her mouth...because her fur was so white...it showed up so vividly. Daddy thought it was hilarious. He thought she'd tripped."
Mommy had hit her stomach again on the table. So hard a blow that no unborn baby could survive. Casssar sometimes wondered later, if indeed she had been trying to hit Daddy...or if her rage had turned into sympathy and that great pity had killed the fetus in order to prevent it from suffering in life. She wondered about that, many times, until finally she buried the thought under uncaring rocks. It didn't matter anymore. But now it was unburied, and she wasn't sure what to do with it.
She took a sip from the glass. "After that...I didn't try to hit Daddy anymore. I tried to ignore the power...but it wouldn't go away. Eventually, I started practicing around the house and outside when he wasn't around." She grinned over at Snively, her lips smeared with the liqueur. "I got quite good. As you can see..."
"I see..." He said, very quietly, finally taking a nibble of sandwich.
"I was hoping maybe one day...I could kill things with my mind. Then I could kill him. But after Mommy shot herself the power went away for a while. It didn't come back until after I ran away. I think...I think it's because after she died...I died too."
He swallowed very hard, setting the sandwich down. "Yes..." his voice had dropped to a whisper. "I know...I know what you mean by that, Cass."
"Well...that went nowhere..."
"Tell me about it." Sonic was gazing into his reflection in a round hand mirror. Sally was leaning out the window of her hut, gazing at the treetops and the black sky. She couldn't see any stars. A thin veil of clouds, nearly as dark as the sky, was blocking them out...or maybe they just weren't there anymore.
"I'm so mad. Daddy shouldn't have agreed to let those villagers come!"
"Yup. They'll just get in the way. Slow us down..." The hedgehog grinned into the mirror, tilting his head this way and that. Admiring his teeth or the spike of his quills.
"More than that, Sonic...they'll get hurt! They think the city is some playground or something!"
"They're right about that."
"SONIC!" Sally turned her head to glare at him; he flinched and grinned sheepishly in the mirror.
"When you're a mondo speedy hedgehog, it is!"
"Well, they're not." She returned to the futile star-gazing. "They don't know anything about that place. And if they get killed or hurt...you know it's going to end up being our faults, somehow."
"Eh..." Sonic finally set down the mirror. "They won't. Needlenose is nothing like Robotnik."
"No." Sally stared hard at the clouds, desperate to seek out one pinpoint of light. Stars were symbols of hope. Why? Because they were always there? They were cold. They didn't care anything for the fates of mortals on tiny planets. They were just burning balls of gas. "Snively isn't. Robotnik liked robots. But Snively...he just wants us out of his way. He doesn't care about roboticizing."
"You're saying he'd rather just kill everyone?" Sonic scratched his brow. "I don't know if he's that bad, Sal-"
"Look what he did to his own Uncle!..." She faltered, falling silent.
"But Sal, you-" Sonic didn't finish the statement. There was a long awkward silence.
"So...we've got the explosives...and the villagers..." Sally said, finally. "We'll have the Wolf Pack. But we need a PLAN."
"Run in and bust stuff up."
She rolled her eyes. "I don't think so."
"Seriously Sal," Sonic actually sounded serious, which alone made Sally glance over. "How much do you think ole Noseboy is going to throw at us?"
"Who knows. Judging from what happened during the water refinery attack, it doesn't look like much. But-" She held up a finger as Sonic opened his mouth. "Like I said at dinner, that doesn't mean he won't this time. Who knows what's going on in his mind?"
"We'll give it another try tomorrow. Come up with a plan among ourselves." Sonic spoke with slight disdain; he clearly did not think the villagers up to the task of Freedom Fighting. Neither did Sally. For once she could agree with his scorn.
"Yes. A plan not only for us to win...but to protect them too."