KansasWolf

At one point she'd thought just being a teenaged 'Choicer' was bad enough. It wasn't. Not even close.

The only real person that had truly loved cared about and protected her since she came to live in the little two-bedroom Kansas farmhouse was now gone and the only things left of her that she could really have any kind of claim to were her own memories and the little black furred scrap of a pup that had been snuggling against her chest during the services.

She'd finally decided to call him Toto thinking he needed a better name than just 'Hey, Puppy' or 'Boy' but she'd have to wait until he woke up from his nap to try it out.

"Well, it's like you keep saying about if she'd just use her head more before she'd talk about crazy things like talking Scarecrows and Cowardly Lions then he wouldn't have thought about having her committed in the first place."

Dorothy froze at the grumbled words her heart freezing and pounding all at once at the meaning behind them. So that was what Aunt Em and Uncle Henry had been bickering about when they thought Dorothy wasn't listening to them in the last weeks her dear Aunt had been bedridden.

"Come on Zeck what happened to all that courage you had before talking about how Dorothy was brave to even want to talk about what she thought happened to her while she was up in that twister?" Hunk pointed out as he and Zeck pounded away again in another attempt to fix the broken wagon they'd just dragged to a stop beside the ladder leading to the hayloft and Dorothy's current hiding place.

"That was before I heard Mr. Gale yelling at Hickory about sacking him if he said one more word about how he should be going along with Em's last wishes and keeping Dorothy out of that nuthouse when it wasn't his business in the first place." Zeck growled back

"It's not that I've lost my nerve it's just I don't want to risk losing my job did Dorothy's wild imagination. He will too with money being so tight after that last twister."

"You and me both pal. Jobs too good to let even a nice girl like her spoil it for the rest of us." Hunk agreed at last.

For once Dorothy was glad of her uncle's scratchy yells from the other side of the barn wall sending the two farm hands below her back out into the yard letting Dorothy slip from the loft with Toto now tucked under her arm as she climbed back down the ladder one-handed.

She thought it over quickly as she pulled the strap of her travel bag over her head letting the familiar weight of the slippers inside it fall against her hip as she hurried back into the relative safety of the barn not knowing if or when Hunk and Zeck would be back as she kept a firm hand on the now awake Toto not really trusting him enough just yet to come back if she let him down.

Why not? It wasn't like she had a home here anyway with Aunt Em gone. And Glinda had said when she gave it to her that Oz was in need of there savior again with Zelena back to terrorizing the people that had been so kind to her on her first wild journey in that strange other land.

Dorothy could feel the invisible shift around her the second her mind was made up. She redoubled her grip on Toto (No way she was leaving him behind) while a growing warmth seemed to wash over her back as a snowy gust of wind wrapped itself around her at the same time. But why the warm fuzzy feeling settled along the curve of her left shoulder blade into what she just knew had to be an animal paw print without even looking at it was a question for another day as closed her eyes whispering one last goodbye to her beloved Aunt before her feet hit solid earth again.

"Toto welcome to Oz." Dorothy introduced as she opened her eyes to a more than welcomed sight just a little ways ahead of her. "Let's just hope they let us stay after I've left them to Zelena's mercy or lack thereof for far longer than I should have." she sighed setting her little dog down beside her as she set off toward the warm lights of Munchkin land.

For Ruby Lucas, it wasn't until that horrible night when she learned the truth about who or rather what she really was that finally trumped her finding out she was evitablely going to be an adult 'Choicer'.

Red had tried to cry herself to sleep again but the rolling beat of the rain against the barn roof wasn't helping much. Only reminding her painfully of the scrapping of chain links against each other as they pounded against the newly discovered werewolf's sensitive hearing as a curious but comforting warmth started to spread over her right shoulder. At first, she had thought it was just Snow's hand circling along her shoulder blade as she cried into the rough fabric of the flour sack she was using as a makeshift pillow.

It wasn't until she heard slow even breathing from the only other person across from where she was curled up that the werewolf found she was wrong.

However, at the moment whatever was causing that soothing heat in her shoulder seemed to ground her against herself and her own self-hating thoughts in a way that Snow or even Granny could at the moment no matter how much they tried. It was pushing at least some of the pain of what she had done to Peter away as she clung onto it leaning into the little feather-light brushes from whatever it was as she rolled over, quietly digging in the small bag Snow had brought with them until she found the broken mirror tucked at the bottom of the pack. It had taken some maneuvering to allow her to see properly once Red had pulled down enough of her shirt to see what was happening to the smooth skin of her back.

A road? No not just a road a brick road. But what did a brick road have to do with the one that was meant for her? Peter was gone so why was fate showing her an outline of a brick road following the curve of her shoulder blade when her true love had been lying dead because of her back in the woods in the next town over?

Unless….

Her broken sob must have woken Snow because not a half second later the other woman's arm were around Ruby's neck pulling her in for a comforting hug while the wolf's fresh tears soaked into the shoulder of her traveling cloak. "It was an accident Red. It was just a tragic accident." Snow whispered to her rocking them from side to side as her hands smoothed out the werewolf's long hair down her back as she cried. "He knew you didn't mean for it to happen I'm sure of it." her friend added her voice cracking at the fresh round of tears that brought from the woman she was trying to calm down.

The thing she didn't know was that Ruby wasn't crying because of Peter anymore (well not completely. She was still incredibly guilty about what had happened) no Ruby was crying for the unknown choice someone out in the world had just made that brought the thickening almost golden colored lines now hidden under both her shirt and her cloak as she curled into Snow's embrace.

How could she endanger anyone else let alone her apparent soul mate because of what she was if she couldn't even keep herself from killing the first boy she had ever liked?