AN: Okay, so I realized that I have this story finished on LiveJournal and not on this site, so here are the final three chapters of this story. So sorry for the long wait! Hope it hasn't been long enough to shake you from reading! Enjoy!
Chapter Eleven:
Cain woke sluggishly, his mind taking a moment to process the situation at hand. He'd been on a horse, riding from something . . . No, to something. The . . . healers? Why would he be riding to the–
And then it struck him. Ambrose was hurt, was probably dying. Cain didn't have time to be thinking about what was going on. He needed to get back to the inventor, no matter what it took.
The tin man sat up abruptly, only to be pushed back down onto something soft by warm hands. "Please," he begged weakly, unable to open his eyes, "please, my friend is hurt. I need to get back to him. I need a healer. He . . . He might . . ."
A comforting hand stroked his hair. "Rest, Cain," a very familiar voice said softly.
Cain squinted his eyes open, looking up into the face of a concerned friend. "Raw?" He asked slowly, his head throbbing somewhat. "What are you doing here? I thought you were at the palace."
"Family need help rebuilding," Raw explained quietly, carefully. He soothed the tin man's headache some, and the blond relaxed a bit more. "Palace worried."
"I'm a bit worried myself," Cain admitted drowsily. "Ambrose . . . He's in trouble."
"Hurt bad," Raw agreed with furrowed eyebrows. "Sent help."
"Yet sent someone?" Cain asked hopefully, opening his eyes again and watching as Raw nodded in confirmation. "Good . . . What time is it?"
"Morning."
Cain tried to sit up again, fighting against Raw's grasp to no avail. "When did you send help? We have to go!"
"Sent help last night," the healer said, firmly pressing Cain back against the make-shift bed of various fabrics and leaves. "Ambrose probably fine now. Cain need rest."
The tin man would have liked to disagree with Raw – oh, he would have liked to very much – but his body, unfortunately, seemed in cahoots with the healer, and he found himself slipping into a deep and comforting sleep.
0 o 0 o 0
Raw could sense the worry emanating off of his friend, even as the tin man slept. He knew the danger that Ambrose was in just by looking at Cain. And he could also sense that the bond between Ambrose and Cain had deepened considerably. He really did not want to delve any further than that. The memories that the tin man kept hidden were private, and Raw had never been one to stick his nose where it didn't belong – or so he liked to think.
He certainly hoped that Ambrose was doing well. It had taken a lot of convincing to get one of his own to go to the village. He couldn't imagine how his people would react if they knew who Ambrose really was. Raw had seen a great many things when he had attached himself to the inventor's memories.
Truth be told, the man scared him. He had always been afraid of the unknown, but Ambrose made all of those things look so small in comparison. And Raw did not like it one bit – being ashamed of being afraid of such minuscule things and being afraid of one of his very good friends. But he felt the fear deep inside of Cain too and knew he wasn't alone.
Ambrose was frightening, but he was also a friend. And friendship would always come before fear.
0 o 0 o 0
Ambrose arched under the healer's touch, gasping and shuddering. The healer – a childhood friend of Raw named Mema – grunted his frustration and tried to hold down the man as securely as possible. He expertly blocked the memories surging towards his consciousness, wary of the warning Raw had given him. He had not mentioned why this human was dangerous, only that a great darkness lay within him and that he should protect himself, lest the darkness take him too. Mema was a curious creature but not unintelligent. He knew when curiosity could get the better of him.
"Is it working?" A voice whispered beside him. Mema sighed with annoyance, not because of the question, per say, but because of the number of times it had been asked since his arrival. Jeremiah was just as curious as the healer and possibly ten-times as vocal. The young man hadn't taken his eyes off of him since he'd started to heal Ambrose, and Mema was seriously considering having him removed from the room.
"Works faster if Mema concentrates," he replied instead, his tone steady and patient.
"Are you concentrating?" Jeremiah inquired with interest, looking sheepish when Mema shot him a pointed look. "Oh. Sorry."
The healer snorted and returned to his work. A while later, he lowered his hands, sighing with exhaustion and satisfaction.
"You're finished?" Jeremiah asked with wide eyes, looking Ambrose up and down.
Mema nodded. "Physical healing done." All that was left was mental and emotional. But Mema couldn't help with those things. However, he had a feeling that the strange tin man he had tackled the day before would be able to . . . at least he hoped so.
0 o 0 o 0
Ambrose drew in a deep breath before he opened his eyes. He knew that scent. He'd smelled it for too many years, in his childhood and his adulthood. It was a woody-pine sort of smell with the distinct flavor of earth and mulch and domesticated animals.
This was home. And he didn't know whether to feel at ease or frightened.
0 o 0 o 0
"Jeremiah, will you check on our patient? See if he's awake yet?" The doctor asked the young man as his wife poured tea into small, white porcelain cups. Mema sniffed his cup skeptically before taking a cautious sip and shuddering with disgust. As Jeremiah stood, he slid the milk and sugar towards the healer.
"Try these," he whispered with a smile before heading to the door at the other end of the room. Mema sniffed at both before heaping a good portion of each into his cup and smiling satisfactorily at the result.
"Uh, Doc?" Jeremiah's hesitant voice echoed into the room. "I think he's up."
The doctor stood and started in the direction of the door. "Well, let's have a look at him."
Jeremiah appeared in the doorway, eyes wide and eyebrows raised high on his forehead. "H-He's gone," he stuttered, and the old man pushed past him quickly. The room was empty, save for the balled-up blanket at the end of the recently-vacated cot.
The doctor sighed. "Go spread word."
"What do we tell them?" The young man asked, not wanting the newcomer to get hurt.
"Just say that the stranger is missing and that he might still be injured." He paused for a moment before adding, "And that he isn't dangerous, just confused and probably scared."
Jeremiah nodded and went to relay the message to the village.
0 o 0 o 0
Cain wanted nothing more than to race back to the village, but under Raw's firm insistence, the two made the journey at a moderate pace, the tin man on the horse that the village had let him use and the healer on one from the palace. They would most certainly never make it before mid-day.
While Cain was busy brooding, however, Raw was leading them towards flatter ground. It wasn't necessarily a short cut, but the going would be quicker without trees and rocks to dodge.
Just after mid-day, the village came within sight, and Cain was too relieved to wonder how they had gotten there so quickly.
0 o 0 o 0
"What do you mean he's missing?" Cain demanded angrily, glaring at the doctor. His eyes were red from exhaustion, but with the way he was fuming, anyone would have thought they were red with fury. The old man stared back at him calmly. He'd dealt with far too much in his life to be intimidated by a silly tin man with a silly crush on a silly – and missing – inventor.
"M-Mister?" Jeremiah took a feeble step forward, and Cain pinned him with the same glare. The young man swallowed audibly before taking a deep breath and continuing. "Uh, he was just . . . gone. I went to check on him, and he wasn't there." Cain's look did not waver. "W-We've got the whole village looking for him. He couldn't have gone too far. We'll find him eventually."
"And then what?" The tin man spat, turning his rage back onto the doctor as Jeremiah flinched away. "You plan on bringing him back and making things better?" He scoffed and looked at the small group of people in front of him. "No wonder he left this place. You people are . . . intolerable!"
Jeremiah was the only one among them with the decency to look hurt.
"Well, Mister Cain, if you think so poorly of us, why aren't you out there looking for him?" The doctor asked matter-of-factly, his hands placed one over the other on his cane as he looked up at the tin man, who towered a good six inches over his hunched form.
"Because I don't need to look for him!" Cain bellowed, throwing his hands up exasperatedly. "I already know where he is!"
"You do?" Jeremiah asked curiously, forgetting the insult and the fact that the Wyatt Cain was standing in front of him.
"Yes," the tin man said, crossing his arms confidently. "The only place no one in this village will dare go near."
Jeremiah's eyes widen. "You mean . . ."
"He's gone home," the doctor sighed sadly.
0 o 0 o 0
"It's just down this path, here," Jeremiah pointed down a dirt road that looked like it hadn't been used in years. In fact, the path was barely visible through the grass and brush that had slowly taken over it.
Cain had demanded a guide to take him and Raw to Ambrose's house, and Jeremiah had readily accepted, eager to please the man now that he knew who he was.
"You're really Wyatt Cain?" The young man asked shyly, leading them through a patch of knee-height brush. "The Wyatt Cain?"
"Yes," the tin man said for possibly the dozenth time. He was getting tired of answering that question.
He gently stroked the brim of his hat with the pads of his fingers. Someone in the village had been sent to corroborate Cain's story and had found his beloved hat. There would have been a longer reunion had the situation not been somewhat dire – and were it not for the fact that Cain could clearly picture Ambrose and DG taunting him about his "hat fetish." The tin man absolutely and outright denied that he had an unhealthy obsession with his hat . . . The two had merely been through a lot together – thought the simple fact that he referred to himself and his hat as "the two" should have tipped him off.
"Wow," Jeremiah breathed, a silly smile on his lips. "That's just . . . Wow." He laughed almost hysterically. "I can't believe . . . Wow."
Finally, the house came within sight, and Cain had to stop for a moment to take it in.
The house was not merely large. It was gargantuan, at least four stories, and a small tower-like room protruded from the very top. Paint had long given up trying to linger on the now moldy, gray planks of wood that constructed the house, though flecks of white glimmered here and there. Vines grew up against the sides, slithering along the gutters and bursting through holes and cracks. The windows were, oddly, intact, though several rocks lay at the base of the house, indicating that many people had at least attempted to shatter them. And a strange mist snaked its way through the surprisingly green grass, curling around the house as if it were a protective barrier. Cain had no doubt in his mind that it was.
"Still here," Raw stated softly, a hint of astonishment in his tone.
"Not surprising," the tin man commented loosely.
"Hasn't changed in centuries," the young man replied softly, as if he was afraid he might wake some sleeping beast. Cain couldn't deny that the feeling lay like a stone in his stomach as well.
The air was somehow thicker, laced with an energy so palpable it was as if they were walking through mud. It made some kind of sense, Cain supposed. Ambrose had been touched with the magic of the elves, and it was bound to rub off on anything he spent a decent amount of time around.
"Jeremiah, you wait out here," Cain instructed, starting towards the house with a determined stride, Raw at his heels. The young man didn't protest, finding a splintered tree stump to sit on.
Cain swallowed hard as he and Raw stepped onto the porch, the wood creaking beneath their feet. The door was open – actually, it was hanging off of its hinges.
"Ambrose?" The tin man called inside, squinting into the dark, dusty interior. No reply came, and he sighed.
So he's going to make this hard, he thought, clenching his jaw and cautiously making his way into the house.
Very little light reached within, and Cain found it getting harder and harder to see as he and Raw ventured further inside.
"Ambrose?" He tried again, blinking several times and resisting the urge to sneeze as dust bombarded his senses.
"Ambrose lost," Raw commented quietly from behind him, placing a hand on the tin man's shoulder and leading him down the dim corridor ahead of them. The healer could see somewhat more efficiently than Cain, but only so much more that he could navigate a few feet in front of them. It made him rather wary. Usually his sight was far superior to that of other creatures – besides the elves, of course. But this house was strange, frightening . . . bad.
Raw could not think of a more fitting word than that.
"In his own house?" Cain questioned skeptically, grateful for the guidance. He stretched his right arm out, pressing his palm flat against the wall's surface, and using his left hand to feel for anything that might be ahead of them.
"Lost," Raw corrected, "in memories. Bad place for Ambrose. Not safe."
Cain silently agreed. "Can you tell if he's close by?"
"Upstairs," the healer said, looking up at the ceiling warily. "Bad place. Must hurry."
The stairs were tricky, especially in the dark, but the two managed rather well. They stood on the second floor, staring with bated breath at a door near the end of the hall, the only door with a faint light emanating from beneath it.
Cain turned his head slightly until a twitching nose appeared in his vision. "Bad place?" He asked with raised eyebrows.
Raw nodded in confirmation. "Bad place for Ambrose. Too many memories."
They started forward, taking more confident steps now that their way was visible. The glow was eerie, not anything like sunlight, and was splayed across the walls like giant fingers, rotating as if the fingers were slowly wiggling, itching to reach out and grab them.
Cain sucked in a shallow breath and swallowed hard as they stopped mere inches from the door, raising a fist and gently knocking. The door eased open as soon as his knuckles touched the oddly smooth wood, and both the tin man and the healer peeked inside.