Only Cowards Stay While Traitors Run


When Last We Met: At the end of the world, in the ruin of a once-great palace, the group finds no hint nor trace of the witch they've sought since Finaqua, nothing but a likeness in an old painting. Tired and weary, the princess has given up, and her friends are left with no choice but to face the return journey, and all that lies waiting for them in the realms of the O.Z.


Chapter Twenty Eight: For Every Night After

The moons were rising out of the east, and the wind-swept prairie beyond the courtyard was dark and cold. Soon, the clean white light of the moons would wash over the black of the young night.

Wyatt Cain stood watch outside the courtyard, his back resting against the high wall. The night was clear, and the stars burned bright; the sky was vast and unending above him. To the north, the silhouette of the red mountains was a comforting reminder that there was still a road home.

He hoped that the path would be illuminated for DG, so that she might see the moons' gaze and all touched by their light, and not the bleak, empty darkness that had fallen.

Alone with his thoughts, she was his greatest concern.

He didn't mind this alone time during his watch; there was something cathartic about long, uninterrupted stretches of quiet. Even without sleep, he rested easily with his thoughts as they slowly took shape in his mind. There was no rushing when he was by his lonesome, each breath was at pace, and each stress and worry began to relax, and lessen. When he could – and he arranged it so he always could – he took the second watch, the blackest stretch of night between midnight and dawn.

Over the course of their journeys together, DG had gotten into the habit of crawling out of her bedroll to join him while the others slept soundly nearby, often spending close to his entire shift with him, even if it was only in comfortable silence. These past few tension-filled nights had put an end to her visits, and he realised now, listening to the southerly winds buffet the cliffs, that he sorely missed her invasions on his solitude.

He sighed quietly, hoping her to be deeply asleep and untroubled by their earlier argument. To think that she might be laying awake, listening to that lonely wind as he was, was enough to cinch his throat tight with guilt. She'd gone to bed furious, if only to hide her tears from him. The thought did little to warm him.

His intention had never been to anger her, let alone alienate her, and he knew she was aware of that, otherwise he was certain she would have argued with him until the suns had begun to rise, or even longer if it meant getting her way. She wouldn't fight the fact that he was right, he knew, but she wasn't about to acknowledge it, either; he was all right with that. After all, he'd known, even before the words had left his mouth, that she wasn't going to be happy with what he had to say.

It had been after supper, or what semblance of an actual meal they'd attempted without a fire, cold and comfortless, when he'd cleared his throat and drawn four pairs of eyes to himself. "We leave for Finaqua in the morning," he'd said, as calm and rational as he'd ever been as he'd laid it out. "We aren't going to push it, but we should make it in five days."

In the deep blue of the evening, he'd not been able to register the emotions that so clearly played out on the faces of his friends; the shadows did not betray them, but he could hear in their voices their confusion – and their relief.

"We're done? That's it?" Glitch had asked.

"If that's what DG wants," Tutor had said, the only one who seemed disappointed. "Is it, DG?"

"No," she'd said sharply. "I said I wanted to go home. Back to Central City."

"Ohh," Glitch'd said, "that's not a good idea, Deege. No, no, no, we can't do that."

"Yes, we can, so yes, we will."

"DG –"

Cain had cut in then. "DG, Finaqua is your safest bet."

Wearily, she'd said, "Don't start in on my personal safety, Cain, not after coming all the way out here with me."

He hadn't backed down, bristled to annoyance of her constant shifting between his given name and his surname. "I know you're itchin' to get back, princess, but we can't –"

"I'm not staying in Finaqua, Cain. I'm going home to my sister. I want – I want to see my mother."

If he'd ever been one to let sensibility carry him, he'd have let that simple plea cripple his will; too bad he'd always been a heartless bastard. "You can't charge head-first into this. We've been out of Central for weeks, and I want to know what's been happening before we rush in there."

"Says the man who –" The saturation of bitterness in her voice near hurt to hear, but she'd stopped herself, bitten off the sentence abruptly, and sighed. "You know what? Never mind." Her words were tight, full of hidden edges, and he found himself glad he couldn't see what her face might show. "We mustn't ever do irrational things because of our families. Finaqua it is."

Just the thought of those cutting words now, alone, left him breathless. Shivering in the wind, Cain turned the collar of his duster coat up, slouching just a little more against the wall.

She'd gone to bed soon after that, refusing all attempts at placation, and he, not wanting to speak to anyone, had started his watch early. The others had soon followed DG to sleep. Hours had passed, but still he was haunted by her unhappiness. It had been easy to decipher the meaning of her words, and to come to terms with the fact that she'd called him out as a hypocrite, but what was harder to understand, by his way of thinking, was how deeply interwoven her anger and hurt was with what had happened between them on the balcony. He knew he'd sent her mind reeling when he'd kissed her; hell, his own mind was still trying to sort out how it'd happened when it did. After all, the moment hadn't exactly been opportune. Her sadness had driven his actions, hindered his – groaning low, Cain let his head hang. Justification could do nothing when the honest truth was that in his heart he'd known it was just time for it, and that was that. Heartless bastard, indeed.

"Please, Wyatt, take me home," she'd said, with all the faith that he'd honour her without fail. He'd turned it around on her, passively denying her request even as she demanded and negotiated as only the young can, those who still innocently, wholeheartedly believe that perseverance begets possibility.

"She cannot go back." He heard it in his own mind, these four words that had coloured every decision he'd made since their arrival in Finaqua, where closing his eyes had led to more questioning, more doubt and uncertainty, than he'd ever experienced. Since then, since that single, strange dream, his mind had been his own, never again had the image of a dying woman revisited him in slumber. He never fully accepted that it hadn't been all his own overtaxed imagination to begin with. Maybe it was time to let Lavender's faint plea go, time to listen to DG. He owed her no less.

He settled back, content with this thought. Even the reality of this dismal failure of a mission did little to dislodge the peace that he'd found in knowing he could still set things right.

He heard footsteps.

More than once, often in times such as these, when the night was lonely and oppressive, he'd considered that perhaps DG could read his thoughts, or that the girl was attuned to him, more sensitive to him than his mere human self could comprehend. As she stepped out through the archway, fully materialised and wholly herself, with no shadow magic to trick his eyes, he wondered if she could sense his ease.

Or maybe, he thought with a wry half-smile, she'd just been awake this whole time, feigning sleep in an effort to hide herself and her weaknesses. He kept his tongue firmly in his head as she spotted him, walked slowly over, and situated herself next to him, back to the wall and wool coat buttoned to the throat. She didn't look at him, didn't speak, only shivered and watched the twin moons rising into the sky.

"You know, princess," he began, but found he didn't know where he'd go from there.

She did. "That's the second time you've called me that tonight. You trying to make a point about duty and responsibility, Tin Man?"

"No," he said slowly, "it's just a point we've been forgettin' of late."

"I don't forget that," she said, bitterness leeching through into her words.

"Well, I do," he said, turning his head to look at her. The pale moonslight allowed him to see her eyes, her sweet, unsmiling mouth, and that stubborn set of jaw that his resolve had broken against so many times before. "I do forget on occasion."

She didn't seem to know what to say to that. She searched his face for signs of sugar-coating, of the pretty white lies she'd become so accustomed to; he hoped, perhaps vainly, that all she would find was his honesty laid bare.

"Now here's what I can't forget," he said, and he coughed when the words almost caught in his throat, as he choked on the truth. "I can't forget there are damn good reasons you're meant to stay out of Central, reasons I can't let you ignore." She scowled at him, but he wasn't finished. "What happens once we get to Central is your affair and not mine, DG, but there's no knowing whose eyes are watching the walls."

She shook her head, dismissing his worries without pause to consider them. "So we sneak in quietly; it's not exactly difficult."

What, he wondered, had inspired such confidence in her, that it was spurring her to outright recklessness. The gentility of his words was almost forced. "The outer realms might not know you're not in Central City where you should be, but there's folks in the city who know full well you aren't, and you can assume they know you're not in Finaqua, either."

"So?" she asked carefully. Could be she was beginning to doubt her own mettle, such was the quivering lilt in her voice, so clear for so little.

"So, your family might not be expecting you, but you'd be right in thinking that someone is, someone who hasn't gone ahead and put you out of mind," he said, much harder than he'd intended. She flinched visibly; inwardly, he berated himself. He didn't want to frighten her, only wanted her prepared. "You need to warn your sister before you start running up the brick route. She's the one that'll get you safe into the city, not any planning between you or me."

DG slumped a little against the wall, and she let go a long exhale; had she been holding her breath as he'd come down on her? "So we go to Finaqua," she said, a picture of misery in her defeat. "Send a messenger."

He nodded. "None of us are gonna stop you if you want to go home, darlin', but we aren't gonna let you risk your life to do it. Well, at least no more than we usually do."

The smile she gave him was as weak as the light that shone upon it, but it was there, and very real, and he'd learned along the road to take to heart what he knew to be honest. She leaned a little closer into him, resting her cheek against his arm as the wind whipped her long hair about her face. She was quiet for minutes beyond counting, and he was content with her presence next to him, the reassurance of her weight pressing into him.

Above them, the sky played silent sentinel to their refuge. The stars kept watch for him as he closed his eyes, head bowed to his chest. His thoughts remained quiet, leaving him to the moment of peace he'd found in so unlikely a place. It wasn't until the girl shifted against him, saying his name so softly he almost didn't hear, that he was brought back to the reality of a lonely, empty world and a cold stone wall at his back.

He looked down; her eyes were on him, pale and haunted.

"Will you stay in Central City?"

Sighing, Cain watched her face carefully as he answered. "I'd been thinkin' on it. I suppose it depends on the welcome we get." Such purposeful evasiveness caused her to look away, but all it took was her name from his lips to bring her eyes back to him, heartbreak written at the edges of her painfully detached expression. With hesitation born of the turmoil inside, he reached up a hand and lightly brushed her windblown hair away from her face. She stood still and unsure as his cold fingers lingered a long moment on her cheek. "I'll stay with you, darlin', if you'll have me."

She let her eyes meet his then, confusion lacing into her furrowed brow. He was certain there were more pacifying words to give her, little nothings to take the worry and the guilt out of her face, but damned if he could make himself say them; his tongue stayed firmly put in his head, to keep in the promises that wanted to spill out at her feet, promises for her to walk forward on with faith and courage and sweet, sweet hope. Promises he'd only made to one other person, in a life that had shattered so completely for this one to be able to exist.

"Do you think they'll let us stay?"

"Can't say."

She nodded mutely, wrapping her arms about herself. Another hard gust of wind hit them, picking up her hair in a wild flurry, and for a moment he was speechless, watching the shadows dance about her. She bowed her head and shivered and the spell was broken with the force of the wind as he stepped closer to her and slid his arms about her waist, sheltering her as she shook. Slowly, as the wind died away for a time and the safety of his embrace did not abate around her, her body stilled. Her arms were thin, but strong and sure, as they went about his neck; she pushed up on her toes to press herself close into his chest. He wondered, as he felt a different kind of tremble begin to course through her, how deeply into him the girl would need to bury herself before she felt truly safe.

When finally she drew away, lowering herself onto steady feet, she kept her eyes on his face. Even in the pale light of the moons, he saw more clearly than he ever had before the love she'd once upon professed to him, her final desperate attempt to sway him the night she'd laid her heart bare and he'd turned his back and walked away. It crossed his mind to make an excuse, to disentangle himself from this embrace he'd begun, anything to distract her, himself, to end this moment and leave himself with some semblance of his dignity intact.

But no, fool that he was – coward that he was – he stayed still as she tipped up onto her toes again, pressing her lips to his with all the gentleness she had in her small frame. It was tentative and new, the whisper of her mouth against his, her breath on his tongue as she pulled back a bare inch with a shivering exhale. Later on, he'd blame the wind, cold on his lips as he'd leaned in, closing the gap to seek out the warmth her parting had left him wanting. He could taste the lonely night wind on her lips with every brush made against his, and when he finally, reluctantly, broke away from her, it was with the sure knowledge that it wasn't going to be so easy again.

Her eyes opened slowly, her lashes casting muted webs of shadow across her pale cheeks. Another ragged breath escaped her tender mouth, and she reached up a hand to touch her lips before her eyes made their way up to meet with his, and she froze under him.

"Wyatt –" she began, but there was a dangerous questioning in her voice that threatened to counter his intent. His arm tightened around her waist with a jerk, and she gasped at the suddenly intimate press of their bodies, and a newer, fiercer knowledge settled over him as he realised the girl in his arms, the girl whispering his name, hadn't the faintest idea that she could so easily undo him with a few heated kisses.

"You need to get yourself to bed, darlin'," he said, and the undercurrent of warning was not lost on her; she did as she was bid with a woeful little stare, a half-smile that could turn pout in the blink of an eye if she so wished. The final glance over her shoulder as she disappeared through the archway near had him calling her back, to better know that spark of curiosity that was so clear in her face.

Cain settled back against the wall once more just as another gust of wind threatened to unbalance him again. Strange, being alone with his thoughts wasn't quite as appealing as it'd been before.


Sleep was no friend to him that night, in the long hours before dawn. After waking Glitch for the last watch, he'd taken up a stretch of wall inside the courtyard, near to where DG had curled up in her bedroll. As he'd passed her, he'd leaned down to tuck the corner of her blanket around her shoulder. She hadn't stirred.

His own bedroll was bereft of any comfort, and he'd sat with his back to the wall, head bobbing every now and again as he'd dozed. He'd wake in those moments, glancing up at the black blanket of the sky, woven through with thousands of stars. Infinite above him, the sky kept its watch, and his heavy head would ease a little deeper into sleep. At his last half-awake glance, the sky had been fading to a softer grey, the stars still burning bright. When again he opened his eyes, it was to blue sky and streaming sunslight, and the distant barking of the damn dog, somewhere out beyond the walls.

He sat up a little straighter, rolling each of his shoulders in turn before pushing himself to standing. He was alone in the courtyard, the belongings of himself and his companions still scattered here or there, all in some sort of state of being repacked for their return home. He stood silently for a moment, drinking in the quiet, the subtle warmth of the morning suns that hadn't yet grown to the full, blinding intensity that would come later in the day.

They'd leave come first sunset. While he didn't much like the idea of lingering one more day in this cursed place, he wasn't about to subject his friends, or their horses, to the scorching heat of the open prairie. Dusk would be falling soon enough.

On the other side of the wall, Glitch was settled down in the dirt, languid legs stretched out, smile as pleasant and free as could be, as if he were basking in the suns on some sweet-breeze lakeshore, and not an inhospitable ruin in a dead land, a broken stone cast to the end of the world. No, his spirit could not be affected by such things as sun and wind. That hauntingly contented smile had weathered far worse.

"I was just thinking of giving you a kick good morning," Glitch said as Cain approached.

"I'll kindly thank you not to. I'd hate to have to hurt you."

Glitch laughed, as he always did when Cain slipped into the comfort of violent allusions. Physical strength was of little use when outmatched by sense and speed. "I assume we're waiting until dark to leave," he said. Never did his eyes leave the golden, grassy sea that spread out in all directions before them. In all his life, Cain had never expected to find himself on so distant a shore.

"I want to have the horses saddled and ready by the time the first sun goes down," he said, anchoring his thumbs to his belt as he leaned back against the wall. It was becoming his customary perch, this small stretch of wall just to the left of the archway. Scanning the prairie, it wasn't long until he spotted a bit of brown moving quickly and aimlessly through the long grass. "What's got him so worked up?" He looked down to see his friend shrug.

"I haven't the faintest idea," Glitch said, and he ran a hand over his shaggy hair. Only a few weeks out of Central City and the man's head looked to be turning wild again. "You don't think that if something was wrong, he'd keep it from us, would he?"

"Wish that I knew," he said, and sighed. "Least this way he's not putting ideas into the kid's head."

Glitch looked up at him, raising a critical eyebrow. "Still calling her that, are you?"

"Old habit," he grunted, as non-committal as possible.

"If you say so, Cain."

A silence fell, as thick and uncomfortable as the warm, dusty air he was pulling in with each breath. Around him, the whir of insects reminded him that this was not, in fact, a dead land. The wind played through the grass, the rush of it at times drowning out the mutt's insistent barking.

Daylight, bright and unforgiving, did nothing to lessen the loneliness of this place. Gods, but wouldn't he be glad to leave it behind.

"Where are Raw and DG?"

Glitch took his time in answering, notching up a knee to rest his forearm upon before looking up at Cain. "Holed up inside," he said. "The two of them took the horses for water early this morning; I figured it would do DG some good to get away from here for a few hours, but when they got back, she marched straight back inside with her sketchbook, dragging poor Raw with her. She had her 'gonna try something' face on, so I assume –"

Cain growled low to himself as he stood up straight. He left Glitch to stammer out the last few words of his sentence, lost as he disappeared around the wall. He crossed the courtyard, sparing a glance for the crumbling fountain as he passed it. The doors into the hall were opened wide, and while he couldn't see either of them as he entered, he hadn't expected to. He knew where they would be.

He heard their voices – rather, heard hers – as he made his way down the length of the hall to the split staircases at the far end. If either of them took notice of his presence as he crossed the hall below them, no one called out to him to show it. He mounted the steps two at a time, sand scraping beneath his boots. When he reached the wide, circular balcony, he moved quickly past a long row of rooms empty of naught but rusting iron and rotting plaster. Above the entrance, the long curve at the top of the hall was brightened with the morning sunslight, making the deep shadows of the night before a distant memory as the painting blazed with colour.

"What're you two doing?"

Raw turned toward him, looking quite unlike himself. Exhaustion marked his features, the same as each and every one of them, but there was a heaviness in his every movement, a sadness that weighted even the contours of his face, so that when he turned and tried to smile, it was such a visible effort that Cain couldn't help but wonder what about the princess had him vexed so.

"You try," he grumbled wearily as Cain reached them. "Raw cannot – DG won't see."

"I can, too," she said, but her back was turned to the both of them. Her hand was on the wall, on the second to last panel, the tall woman in a dress of flowing red.

"Raw said won't." And he walked away.

Cain waited until the Viewer had descended the stairs, and crossed the long hall. Only once he'd heard the finality of the doors closing downstairs did he clear his throat – loudly – but it had no effect on the girl. She went about tapping her fingers on the painting impatiently; there'd been a word she'd used for it, damned if he could remember, but it didn't seem to matter. Whatever the otherworldly term she'd used, it was just paint, just a picture from the mind's eye of an artist who'd lived and loved and died centuries before.

He said her name; she went on pretending he hadn't. Finally, he went over to her and laid a firm hand on her shoulder.

"What was that all about, DG?"

"Won't see," was all she said, muttering under her breath. At least she hadn't shrugged off his touch. "What won't I see?"

"How about you tell me." He tried to turn her away from the painting, but she wouldn't budge.

"I don't know," she said, and she let her head fall. Her palm stayed flat on the wall, her arm seemed to be the only thing holding her up. "I asked him what he felt in here, I thought – I thought –"

He sighed. "You thought it'd be like before."

"Or not," she said, fingers on the wall flexing.

"Doesn't quite work that way, does it?" he asked, not unsympathetically. He couldn't imagine this place, desolately cold as it was, would harbour recent memory. Fresh memory could spill like blood, but over the annuals the walls of the great hall had been scourged clean by grit, and sun, and desiccating wind. Memory faded with the life that left it behind, and if Raw had felt nothing, then no living eyes had ever set upon this place.

"I tried, I thought it was worth –" She stopped herself as her voice broke, and her arm shook as it gave out, and she crumpled into an ungraceful little heap at the feet of the red woman in her framed panel. To her left, the one-eyed, golden-haired woman looked down balefully at her; to her right, the girl-queen upon her emerald-haunted throne. Cain tore his eyes away from the eerie image to focus on what was real and true before him. He knelt down in front of DG, ignoring the red panel rising over them.

"Time to walk away from this, princess," he said, brushing a knuckle over her knee, tucked so closely to her chin. She hadn't reached the point of tears, but her sky eyes were lidded with guilt.

"It's just a story," she said quietly; it was all he had in him not to pull her into his arms then. "Just a story."

She didn't jerk away from another pass of his touch over her knee. That she accepted his presence when she was at her weakest – falling prey to her own emotions – did not escape his notice, and he settled his hand down on her knee to offer what comfort he could. "Can't fault yourself for wanting to believe it."

"Trying to."

"You won't," he said firmly, fixing her with a cutting glare. "I've never seen someone go so far for someone they loved." It was a lie. He had. Otherwise, the girl before him would've died a child, and he'd still be trapped in iron.

"Except for you, I didn't." The words were said so quickly, on such a rush of breath, that he wasn't sure he'd heard her right. But it was there, written all over her face, in the restless flutter of her hands as she tried to brush his touch away.

"Even for me," he said, allowing her to knock his hand away so that he could bring it up to gently turn her face toward his. He wasn't one for all this talk on past matters, especially of the personal sort, but he had to make her see. "You think I don't know how hard it was for you not to come after me? What you were willin' to do if it meant I'd stay?"

Her cheeks flared with colour, and she cast her eyes downward. He let his hand fall back to her knee. She didn't move.

"I know how big your heart is, darlin'. We've done crazier things together than chase a story to the edge of the Zone," he said, getting a smile out of her at last, however faint and brief it might have been. "Truth be told, I never did think you were gonna sit tight in Finaqua when when all this started and we left Central City." Again the smile, a little wider.

"I just –" She sighed, didn't go on.

"I know."

A few moments later, he was helping her to her feet. There'd been no tears, no woeful lament; he could honestly, and with a small amount of pride, say that she was handling this loss well. Whatever expectation she'd built up on the journey here might have shattered at her feet, but she seemed almost ready to step over the pieces and move on.

Together, they walked the length of the upper balcony, stopping only once to fetch her sketchbook from where she'd stashed it among some tumbled bricks. It was good to see that she was still keeping the book close, these past few nights had lent little time for drawing.

The only sounds in the hall were the touch of their feet against the stone and tile, and the lonely wind blowing through the lancet windows. As they descended the stairs, he took in what he hoped to be his last glimpse of the sandsea, endless and entirely uninviting to his mind. Under the windows, the western and eastern staircases curved round and joined into one, a long landing and five steps down to the tiled floor of the lower hall. He was a few steps ahead of her – Gods, that he'd turned around, grabbed her by the hand, and dragged her from the hall.

The coming days would be plagued with thoughts of what he should have done.

When his boots hit the tiled floor – the grit-coated, undisturbed tiled floor – he made a half turn, thinking her to be right behind him. Instead, he saw that she had stopped on the landing. He raised an eyebrow at her, said her name, but she shushed him, and held up a hand.

"Did you hear that?"

"I didn't –"

She shushed him again, sharply and loudly. All was silent and still in the hall, but for the wind, always the wind. He heard nothing, but should he expect to? No, it was his eyes he used then, his eyes he trusted as he watched the girl – watched her tilt her head, watched her blue eyes widen as she straightened once more. She looked down at him, her teeth digging into her lower lip.

She turned and bolted back up the stairs.

Oh, hell.