Disclaimer: Bloody well don't own this, got a problem with that?...Yeah okay, maybe I should be getting more sleep.
Author's Note: And with this chapter I do hereby (theoretically) retire this computer to the land of faulty back-ups. I am very excited at the prospect. You might have noticed that it took me a while to update...okay, a long while to update...that's because after starting this chapter four freaking times it was like pulling teeth to write and I'm still not entirely happy with it (as Quality Control knows by now, the more difficultly I have writing a chapter, the more I obsess over it). I still feel the end could be better...but at the rate I am going, if I don't accept QC's passing grade, I'm going to end up committing charactercide just out of pure frustration. So help me, the next narrator better darn well cooperate...
PS On a positive note, I have passed my first internship and have been immediately slingshotted into my second (which might account for some of my burnout on the writing front), but so far, so good. Cheers
...
DG remembered that one time when she was about twelve and had managed, through some miracle, to convince Momster and Popsicle that it was okay to leave her home alone for one night while they had to go out of town to do something important (she learned many years later that Momster had developed a glitch and the whole thing had been an emergency trip to find replacement parts). She'd been sure she'd be fine, she'd insisted, she'd yelled, she'd repeated at length that Bobby Gibbons had been allowed to spend a whole weekend by himself (with plenty of food in the fridge and the neighbours alerted) when Shelly's mom had gotten sick. DG was a big girl now, she'd declared, she could take care of herself. The tic toks had been reluctant – extremely reluctant – but in the end they had succumbed, in Gulch's words, to the fatal blue eyes, and after a quick telephone call had hastened out the door.
The youngest princess had a lot of fun that day, sure it'd been sweltering hot, but she'd been the master of her own domain, all grown up and tending the house for herself. She'd made herself supper, she'd cleaned up the dishes, she'd shown what a mature, responsible young woman she was, able to handle a whole day by herself and not a spot of trouble had she gotten into, she could do anything...
...she just hadn't been counting on the storm.
The angry thunder clouds had rolled in about the time the sun had begun to set, and even the twelve year old had to admit (only to herself) that the empty old farmhouse was just a touch creepy after dark. The way the howling wind shook and rattled the walls didn't help any. DG had intended to stay up well past bedtime as a statement of what a big girl she was, she just hadn't meant to be spending that time huddled beneath her blankets with her flashlight on. Then the booming thunder had started, preceded as it was by blinding flashes of lightening.
Normally DG loved storms, there was something about their energy that called to her, but this was the first one she'd ever faced alone, and was that the sound of footsteps on the porch? She didn't know but she was sure that was the squeak of the front door opening. There wasn't supposed to be anyone else here, Momster and Popsicle weren't due back for hours and they hadn't been able to get a hold of anyone to babysit...when the downstairs floor creaked DG had been off her bed and out the window without a second thought. The heavy winds had practically knocked the miniscule girl off the porch roof, but that was where she'd wanted to go anyhow and she'd hit the ground running full tilt for the barn.
It wasn't raining yet when she set out across the back roads on her bicycle, but it was so pitch black between lightening flashes that she may as well have been blind. It was well that she knew exactly where she was going, especially once the floodgates finally opened, she wouldn't have made it otherwise.
She'd arrived at the Gulch homestead soaked to the bone, cold, tired and miserable – and rather alarmed to discover all the lights were off and the inhabitants apparently bedded down for the night. DG hadn't wanted to disturb anyone, she'd just wanted a safe place to sleep since, apparently, there were monsters at her house. Fortunately for her, Officer Gulch was in the habit of leaving his window open in summer and hadn't, she discovered upon breaking into his bedroom, yet returned for the night. Noticing that the water was getting in, the twelve year old had been so good as to close the window behind her before stripping out of her wet pyjamas, ransacking the cop's dresser for one of his copious t-shirts and crawling into his oh so comfortable bed. Exhausted, the young girl had fallen asleep to the sound of Papa Gulch snoring down the hall.
Officer Gulch had been rather bemused to find her here there when he dragged himself through the door sometime later. Awakened by the crackle of someone speaking through his police radio, DG had merely stared at him blearily and awaited events. On any other night the policeman probably would have asked what she was doing there, he'd probably even have had something pointed to say on the subject of people who were scared by the creaking of an old house yet had no trouble biking five miles across country in the dark to seek alternate accommodations. As it was, the cop had merely peered owlishly at the storm raging outside his window, grunted something that almost could be interpreted as 'she's here' into his radio, then set it and his swiftly unloaded gun on the dresser, before grabbing a pillow and crawling fully clothed into the bottom of the bed. DG had wanted to lodge a protest about the big stinky feet suddenly in her face, but it was evident from the deep breathing that Officer Gulch had fallen asleep pretty much the second his head hit the pillow, and the sound was so soothing she couldn't help but be lulled back into the realm of dreams...
It wasn't until much later the next day that DG had learned that the voice on the other end of the radio had been the Chief, rather panicked to find, when he went to check on her as Emily had asked, that DG wasn't anywhere in the farmhouse. He hadn't actually understood a word Gulch had said either, but since the younger cop hadn't gotten upset at the news that DG was MIA, he'd rightly assumed that his subordinate had a visual on the truant, locked up and carried on with his night. Officer Gulch, meanwhile, had been coming off a strenuous double shift that had followed up on a week's worth of sleepless nights, and hadn't been the least bit prepared to deal with the discovery of a twelve year old girl in his bed. He'd had a few nebulous thoughts about how she was both far too old and far too young to be climbing into an adult male's bed, especially an adult male not related to her, and had he had a few more functional brain cells probably would have taken himself off to sleep on the couch. As it was, he'd been dying to go to bed for hours and there'd been a bed right there, dammit, so he'd compromised as best he could under the circumstances.
Officer Gulch was like that. There wasn't a single person in the small Kansas town who would have walked into the policeman's bedroom the next morning and worried anything was amiss (Mama Gulch's only concern upon discovering them had been about finding the camera in time to capture the sight of her son, sprawled across the bed, snoring around the grubby foot of the twelve year old wrapped around his leg like it was a giant teddy bear), but that didn't stop him taking precautions anyhow. He may be clumsy at times, occasionally tactless upon delivery, and frustratingly oblivious with blind spots a mile wide at the most provoking of moments, yet when he decided to look out for someone he'd leave no stone unturned, no bridge uncrossed, and often no bone unbroken in getting the job done. She'd never tell him, at least not in any way he'd have to take seriously (it went against all the rules of their gleefully antagonistic relationship after all), but the Menace had been her hero once. DG hadn't really realized it at the time, even as she'd scoffed at Missy for idolizing her own older brother with not even a fraction of the excuse (not that there was anything wrong with JR), but Officer Gulch had been her honest to goodness, correct me when I do wrong, protect me from the unknown, not-invincible-but-seemingly-indestructable-save-me-with-a-smile-a-kind-word-and-a-portable-soft-landing childhood hero.
DG doesn't remember the O.Z. the way she does the Otherside. This isn't terribly surprising, most people didn't remember much before the age of five, and the magical interference has left what might have remained splintered and faded. Like ghostly echoes, the fragmented images of forgotten times would flit and tease at her consciousness, rendering the O.Z. past into a fairytale life, her parents strangers she'd had to learn to love again, and her sister a painful promise of what might have been. DG remembered Azkadellia as she had been. Fractured though her recollections were, they still contained the vision of the kind, brave, intelligent, confident and strong-willed girl that had been the youngest princess' first childhood hero. The sister who had taught DG to skip stones and make dolls fly, the sister who would chase after her mischievous sibling and face down bears, the sister who had stood firm in the face of the wicked witch...and had paid the price for DG's curiosity.
Azkadellia had shone once, and DG's had been the fault that had blighted that radiance. However innocent, however young, however well intentioned she'd been, it was because of the actions of the youngest princess that the eldest now needed every scrap of that immense courage just to make it through the day, that her confidence was shattered and her once indomitable will is only evident in the fact that after fifteen years trapped in the mind of the Sorceress, she is still Az. Damaged and tortured, haunted by nightmares so loud that sometimes DG hears them in her dreams, but still Az.
And the worst of it was that DG could do nothing to mend what she'd marred. Sure, she'd helped melt the bitch that'd harmed her sister, she could be Az's security blanket, could keep the eldest princess steady while Cain kept the monsters at bay, but DG couldn't make the O.Z. accept her. Anything the great and magnanimous Crown Princess did or said on behalf of the former Sorceress was just the wonderful Hero of the Eclipse being, well, great and magnanimous and angelically forgiving. Her parents were similarly handicapped, apparently blinded by their love of their fallen daughter; the Tin Man's words could be discounted (shockingly enough) on account of his well known loyalty to the youngest princess, Raw and Glitch ditto, Tutor, too, and then there was Ambrose, so fatally and obviously terrified of Azkadellia still. It was so painfully frustrating, but the possibility remained that the best good deed DG had managed to achieve on behalf of her sister since the Day of the Eclipse had been a complete and utter accident.
She really hadn't meant to drop that tornado on Gulch after all. Nor had she intended to drag him into the O.Z. and leave him vulnerable to Cain's practical (and possibly desperate) suggestion. And while DG knew, she knew, she should have stopped the Tin Man, should have truly objected so that they would send the cop home – the Menace deserved to be allowed to live his life in peace (well in peace now that she was supposed to be out of the picture) – the youngest princess had found herself unable to do so because Azkadellia had so patently wanted him to stay. For the first time in the near year – annual – and a half since they'd banished the darkness, the eldest princess had finally shown a spark of interest, a glimmer of hope, and it could mean Az's salvation...or her utter destruction.
Because some things just can't be made to happen, couldn't be asked or commanded, only given...
...and she remembers telling Gulch once that there was a damsel in distress somewhere just dying to meet him...
...and, damn it, that's the biggest darn blind spot he's got and Azkadellia's standing right in it...
...but if there was one thing the Menace was so infinitely good at, it was mending broken princesses. She should know...
...and then the world is rearranging itself and DG's thoughts are interrupted as she finds herself being whirled protectively behind the Tin Man's back. A deafening roar shatters the cheerful gaiety of the Royal Ball as Cain deals decisively with the assassin of the day while across the room Gulch...is being Gulch. It is a bizarre experience watching her old unwitting guard move to protect someone else; his actions just look so chaotic, she wonders if they always have...
...and as a hush settles over the ballroom, only to be broken by the incongruous sound of bubbling, joyous, innocent laughter – Azkadellia's laughter, a sound the youngest princess hasn't heard in over fifteen years, that only existed as a whisper of a memory – DG realizes that he who was once a hero is a big damn hero still. And she can only hope – and wish and plead and beg to anyone who might happen to be listening – that Officer Gulch will choose to be Azkadellia's hero, too.