Teresa, her anger still simmering, made her way through the palace, her boots clicking sharply on the polished floors. She wasn't about to let Dorothy's tears deter her; the girl was obviously too lost in her fairy tale world to see the truth. She knew she had to confront the others as well, and she knew exactly where to find them. Soon enough, the sounds of clanking and rustling led her to a small, sunlit courtyard, where the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman were engaged in a rather clumsy game of beanbag toss, their usual companions nowhere to be seen.
"Well, well," Teresa announced, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she marched into the courtyard. "If it isn't the dynamic duo, the masterminds of manipulation, the champions of cruelty."
The Scarecrow, his straw head cocked at an angle, blinked his button eyes. "Why, hello there, Teresa," he said, his voice a bit scratchy. "What brings you to our little… uh... recreational area?"
The Tin Woodman, his polished axe held loosely in his hand, creaked and clanked as he turned towards her. "Is everything alright?" He added, his voice a bit hollow.
"Alright? Is everything alright?" Teresa echoed, her voice rising in pitch. "You two have the audacity to ask me if everything is alright? After what you've done, after the way you've treated Professor Wogglebug for all these years, you dare to ask me that?"
The Scarecrow and Tin Woodman exchanged a confused glance. "But we've always been good friends to the professor," the Scarecrow said. "Haven't we, Tin Woodman?"
"Indeed," the Tin Woodman confirmed, his chest clanking softly. "We've always included him in our games and discussions. Sometimes, we even help him out with some of his work at the university."
Teresa scoffed, folding her arms across her chest. "You 'included' him? You 'helped' him? You dragged him along on your little adventures, barely acknowledging his intellect, always dismissing his ideas, and treating him like some sort of amusing sidekick! How could you both be so utterly callous?"
The Scarecrow looked genuinely perplexed. "We always valued the Professor's insights," he insisted. "He often has unique perspectives that help us along the way. Why just the other day he-"
"Stop it!" Teresa interrupted, her voice almost a shout. "Stop acting like you're innocent. The only thing you care about is yourselves. You both manipulated him and kept him in his place because you were both jealous of his intelligence and knowledge. You didn't want to be outshone, did you? And what about that college you all invented? Was that to help him? No! It was so he wouldn't bother you with his intellect and so you could keep him locked away from everything."
The Tin Woodman creaked as he stepped forward, his metallic face etched with a kind of rusty confusion. "The college was started to help the professor achieve his greatest goals. We didn't want him to be a nobody for the rest of his life."
"Oh, you didn't, did you?" Teresa said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. "Because obviously someone who was in a position to become the leader of Oz would have to be forced to teach and lecture little children for the rest of their life! You call that helping him! You kept him from being the leader of the entire world and all of it's people! All because you were too conceited to share leadership! You were nothing but bullies! You wanted to keep him from the adventures and challenges because you couldn't handle being challenged by someone smarter than yourselves!"
The Scarecrow nervously plucked at a loose strand of straw. "Well, he... uh... he liked the college, didn't he? He seemed happy there."
Teresa's patience finally reached its breaking point. "Happy? He was utterly miserable! And why do you both keep pretending that you are just too stupid to understand! You know good and well what you did! You know how much you hurt him! You both invented that college to get him out of the way so you could have all the adventures and never let him shine!"
"How can you say such terrible things?" the Tin Woodman asked, his voice a low groan. "We never meant to cause the professor any harm."
"Harm?" Teresa shrieked, her hands curling into fists. "You didn't mean to cause harm? You are both so utterly evil! So utterly self-absorbed that you were blind to the harm that you were causing. You were jealous of his potential. You were afraid of being outshined by his intellect. That was the only reason you invented the college. To keep him away from the adventures he really should have been included in, you despicable pair of self-serving monsters!"
The Scarecrow took a step back, his straw body trembling. "We… we never thought of it that way," he stammered.
"Of course, you didn't!" Teresa spat out. "Because you only ever think of yourselves!" She began circling the two of them now, her words like daggers. "And do you know why he had to go live in that stupid Air Castle? Or why he was forced to take that stupid vacation? Because of the curse that you, yes you two, are responsible for. A curse that changed him from his true self. A curse that turned him into a caricature of the intellectual genius that he truly is! And do you know why he had that curse put upon him in the first place? It's because you two are so utterly jealous of him and his amazing brain!"
The Tin Woodman, his voice now tinged with a touch of anger, clanked his fist onto his chest. "We have nothing to be jealous of. We are both respected all over Oz!"
"Respected?" Teresa laughed, a short, bitter sound. "Respected by a bunch of mindless puppets that think you are both amazing simply because you happened to travel with that little witch! You were always just lucky! You have no accomplishments of your own. You have no intellect of your own! All you've ever done is leech off of Dorothy's so-called fame! You are nothing but useless, empty-headed cowards! You are absolutely worthless!"
Teresa reached her breaking point. Her eyes scanned the courtyard, landing on a bucket sitting innocently near the Truth Pond. Without another word, she grabbed the bucket and strode purposefully toward the pond. She dipped the bucket in the water, the surface of the pond rippling gently, and then she turned back toward the Tin Woodman.
"You, you hollow, heartless excuse for a man!" she roared, her face contorted with rage. "You have never once showed the slightest bit of compassion for anyone! Well, let's see if this makes you any less callous!" And with that, she threw the entire bucket of water right in the Tin Woodman's face, the cold liquid splashing over his head and cascading down his body.
The Tin Woodman stood there for a moment, water streaming down his tin form, his joints creaking even louder. Then, he let out a metallic shriek as the water started to rust his body.
The Scarecrow looked on in horror, his eyes wide with fear. "Teresa, stop it! You are harming him!"
"He deserves it!" Teresa hissed, throwing the empty bucket to the ground. "You both deserve it. You are monsters, through and through. I hope the both of you rust to pieces and rot away! And you are both not welcome at the new Air Castle! EVER!" With that, she turned on her heel and stormed out of the courtyard, leaving the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow standing there in stunned silence.
The Scarecrow rushed to the Tin Woodman's side, his straw hands fumbling to find his oil can. "Oh, Tin Woodman, are you okay?" He carefully began applying oil to the rusted areas, his touch surprisingly gentle. As he worked, he used the edge of one of his glove hands to wipe the water from the Tin Woodman's face, the droplets of pond water leaving streaks on his polished surface.
They stood there for a long moment, the only sound in the courtyard the soft scraping of straw and the gentle creaking of tin. The Scarecrow had always been the one that knew when something was wrong, not the Tin Woodman with no heart. But now the opposite was true. He knew the things Teresa had said were true as he felt the sorrow in his heart. He felt the truth of it all.
"She's right," the Tin Woodman said at last, his voice barely a whisper. "She's right about everything. I always knew that I wasn't perfect. I always hated that I didn't have a heart. That I couldn't love others or feel compassion towards them. But… it never crossed my mind that this would make me cruel. But I guess I was cruel, wasn't I? I never even thought about it from the Professor's point of view. I was so caught up in my own needs. My need to prove I wasn't heartless, that I forgot everyone else needs too. And that maybe they were all more important than mine."
The Scarecrow nodded slowly, his button eyes fixed on the ground. "Me too," he said quietly. "I was so proud of my brain, of all that I knew. I wanted to feel like the smartest person in the room and now I am realizing that all I did was try to make everyone else feel small and stupid. And I never noticed. I never noticed because I was always so caught up in myself. And that stupid college. Why didn't we notice what it was doing to him?"
A wave of realization washed over them both, a feeling so intense it made their usually cheerful faces look somber. All those times they had teased the Wogglebug about his silly inventions and lectures, all those times they had dismissed his ideas in favor of their own… it all came back to them now, clear and sharp. All the ways they had unintentionally put him down in favor of themselves. They finally could see how the professor must have felt. How miserable he must have been for all this time. It was as if a curtain had been pulled back, revealing the truth they had so carefully avoided for so long.
"We did cause that curse, didn't we?" the Scarecrow asked in a voice barely louder than a whisper. "We forced him to be what we wanted him to be. What we needed him to be. What he never was supposed to be in the first place."
The Tin Woodman nodded, his tin body swaying slightly. "I think we need to go apologize. We need to fix what we have done to him. We need to make sure that he knows we are truly sorry. We can't just keep acting like nothing was ever wrong."
The Scarecrow agreed. The thought of the Wogglebug finally being free of their influence, finally having a life of his own, without them dragging him down, was both painful and liberating. "We've been terrible friends," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "We have both been terrible friends for far too long."
They remained in the courtyard for a long time, both lost in thought, each one grappling with the weight of the truth. The water from the Truth Pond might have rusted the Tin Woodman's joints, but it had also begun to wash away the rust that had settled on their hearts. And it was the Scarecrow's straw, or lack thereof, brain that finally got the message. They finally realized how truly terrible they had both always been. And both finally understood that this was not the end of their story. It was the beginning of a new one.