AN: Well, hello again! Hope everyone's having a good end-of-the-school-year. I, myself, am out of school for the summer! Yay college... :) Unfortunately, I will be working working working. 40-hour weeks with only one day off, which means about as much time to update as when I was in school... So yuck. But I'll try! But no more distressing about work and the horrible things they will make me do. On with the story!

Chapter Three: Day the Second

Ambrose woke with a gasp, sitting straight up and digging his fingers into the dirt. He seemed to be waking like this more and more often – save the musty smell of a forest morning and the painful kink in his neck – finding, to his dismay, that he could not recall the nightmare he had been having. The only indications that he even had one were usually his tear-soaked cheeks and the knot twisting in his stomach.

Glancing around, he found no sign of Cain, and his heart fluttered before he realized the man was probably wandering around doing O.Z.-knew-what. He was into all this woodsy stuff.

Probably out wrestling lions or tigers or bears, the inventor mused with a snort, but his humor was short-lived. The nightmare still had a decent grip on him; his hands shook and his chest shuddered with every breath. Pulling his knees up to his chest, he wrapped his arms around his legs and buried his head, shivering despite the rather warm morning.

This is how Cain found him, huddled near the dwindling fire and shaking like it was the dead of winter. "Hey," he said softly, not wanting to startle the other man as he cautiously approached him. Ambrose looked up, and the tin man winced at the shadows he found beneath those dark, piercing eyes. Tear tracks were evident on his cheeks, and his skin was a ghostly pallor. "You all right?"

Ambrose stood quickly, ignoring the sudden head rush as he stumbled back a step. He nodded firmly, brushing off Cain's attempt to help steady him. "I'm fine." He glanced distastefully at the rabbits clutched in the tin man's hand. "Breakfast?"

"Well, it's no palace cuisine," Cain shrugged with a smirk, "but they'll do."

Ambrose was not one for rabbit . . . or any meat in particular. He could barely stand to think what Glitch had eaten during his wanderings after the witch had removed his brain and turned him loose, but he had sworn to make up for it. He eyed the few remaining apples left beside the fire.

"Thank you, but I think I'll decline," he said absently, reaching down for the fruit.

Cain raised an eyebrow. "Suit yourself."

The next moments were filled with the ripping sounds of Cain skinning the rabbits and Ambrose crunching on the surprisingly still-ripe apples. He smiled slightly at the sweetness of them. He remembered apples like these when he was younger; his mother would use them in as many recipes as she could. The thought of his mother made his smile wane, and he lowered the last half of his apple to his lap, staring into the fire with a distant look on his face.

Cain watched him carefully, slicing into the small creatures he'd caught, disemboweling them, and preparing them for the fire he'd rekindled. "You sure you're all right?"

Ambrose started at the words, his gaze snapping up as he set wide eyes on Cain's solemn face. "Yes, of course . . . Why do you ask?"

The tin man sighed, laying the rabbits on the propped-up stick placed over the fire. "You were pretty restless last night; tossing and turning, mumbling about . . ."

Ambrose swallowed hard. "About?" He asked as nonchalantly as he could muster.

Cain considered telling the man what he'd been shouting – not mumbling – in his sleep. It had taken the tin man nearly twenty minutes to calm the man down, using a trick he'd learned from his wife when Jeb was younger and had night terrors; he'd stroked his hair, murmuring soothing words into his ear until he'd settled back into a quiet sleep. Adora had always told him it was better to try and sooth them in their sleep rather than wake them – there was less of a chance they'd remember the nightmare if they didn't wake up.

"Cain?" Ambrose questioned, pulling the man from his thoughts.

Cain lowered his gaze and shook his head. "I don't know. It was mostly just nonsense, nothing I could make out."

No! Stop! Please, I-I can't tell you! Stop! It hurts! I can't give you what you want! Please!

The tin man winced at the words that echoed in his mind, Ambrose's frightened voice still very vivid. He looked up, finding a skeptical look on the inventor's face as he curled in on himself again.

"Probably just a nightmare," Ambrose shrugged. "We all have them, right?"

Cain clenched his teeth. "Yea." He watched the rabbits begin to turn a dark brown. "Yea, I guess we do."

0 o 0 o 0

They'd been hiking for hours. Ambrose's feet were aching, despite the heavy palace boots he wore. Cain seemed unstoppable, always a few paces ahead of the adviser and usually having to slow his pace so the other could catch up. The tin man tried not to remind himself that he could have covered the ground they had traveled in about a third of the time they'd taken if he had been alone. Still, Ambrose had yet to complain, much unlike his alter ego, who had whined as much as possible whenever possible on their past adventures before the witch had been stripped of power.

And as much as this made Cain's journey a little more pleasant, it still made several questions spur to life in his mind. Ambrose obviously had skills enough to provide food for himself in the woods and had even expertly helped Cain break camp with no instruction. Although he was slower at trekking the uneven ground than Cain was, he was still better than most tin men the other had met or trained, able to spot gruesome-looking hunting traps hidden beneath piles of fallen leaves, jagged rocks that would bite through even the toughest of boots, and a few sinkholes that could swallow a full-grown man within a matter of minutes.

Beneath all the inquiries lay one question that surfaced more and more often than the rest: Who was Ambrose?

"Cain?" Ambrose's voice was small, reluctant, as if he regretted the fact that he was speaking at all. Cain stopped and turned, finding the adviser halted a few yards behind him.

"You all right?" He asked, leaning against a nearby tree and waiting for him to catch his breath.

"Do you think we could rest for a moment?" Ambrose was breathing hard, and Cain had to wonder how long he'd been pushing himself without saying anything.

"Yea, sure," the tin man agreed, squatting beneath the tree and checking their surroundings. The trees were less dense now that they were getting further and further from the border. He hadn't wanted to say anything to Ambrose, but the night before had been one of the most frightening since his first few days in the metal suit.

Cain didn't know much about magic or the palace life, or even half of what the inventor rambled on about when talking about a new invention. But he had grown up on folklore. His bedtime stories had been about monsters and the darklands beyond the border. His grandmother had even insisted – to his parents' disapproval – that she'd traveled beyond the border once with her brother, Jack. She and Jack had been sent to the river to get water for their mother, and Jack had dared her to cross the borderline, calling her names until she had finally relented and they both climbed over the forbidden wall separating the darklands from the O.Z.

It was dark, she'd whispered to him in a haunted tone one night while he lay in his bed, the covers pulled tightly up to his chin. We'd barely gone over the first hill when the screams began. Hundreds of them; voices screeching like crows: 'Run! Run as fast as you can!' And then a dark figure swooped down on us, forcing us back down the hill. We tumbled and tumbled, yelling like death itself was after us. When we reached the bottom, Jack fell hard against the ground. All I could see was the blood dripping down the front of his face, and his eyes – oh, they were so cold, so distant. I ran away, leaving him behind; back to our home, where mother was standing outside calling for us. I sobbed in her arms and told her what we'd done. My father ran to the wall to look for Jack.

Did he find him, Nana Jill? The young Wyatt had asked, his eyes wide and shining with a terrified curiosity. Did he find Jack?

Nana Jill's eyes had saddened, and tears fell down her cheeks as she shook her head. No, dear. Jack was gone. And I forever hold the blame for it in my heart.

You couldn't have known, Nana, he had tried to comfort the old woman gently. Nana Jill had nodded with a forced smile and gone to bed after kissing his forehead.

And that had been the end of it. She'd passed away that night in her sleep. The doctor said it had just been her time, but Cain still maintained to this very day that it had been the heartache that had released her soul into the woods; cursed to forever wander until Jack was found and brought home.

Cain's parents had forbid anymore talk of faerie tales after her burial, contradicting his grandmother's stories by telling him that she had been very sick and old and confused, that she had never had a brother named Jack. But that had not stopped Cain from believing. He'd kept only one thing of his grandmother's when his parents had thrown her stuff out – a picture of her and Jack hand-in-hand as they walked towards the river, a pail swinging carelessly in Jill's fingers . . . It was the very last photograph of them together, because it had been the very last day that she had seen her brother.

There were monsters beyond that border. Cain knew there were. His grandmother had been old, yes, but not sick or confused. She had spoken with too much emotion for her stories to be false.

And Cain could swear he'd heard her the night before as Ambrose slept unsoundly, whispering in his ear: Run! Run as fast as you can!

The tin man shivered, forcing himself out of his own troubled thoughts and focusing on Ambrose, who was standing and dusting off his clothes unnecessarily.

"You ready?" He rasped, clearing his throat and wincing when his knees cracked as he stood. The inventor nodded, watching the man carefully.

"Are you?" He asked sincerely, his eyes conveying a slight worry.

"Yea." Cain swallowed. "Let's keep going till dusk, then we'll stop and make camp."

"All right," Ambrose replied, his tone and quiet manner almost making the other man wish he had Glitch with him – at least the head case would be enough of a distraction to keep him from dwelling on thoughts of the past. Cain waited for him to catch up before continuing their trek through the forest.

AN: Next chapter to come soon! Keep a look out. :) Later, Gators! Catch you on the flip side.