Tin Man fic!

[icarus_chained]

I'm in a mood to be soft.

Title: Peace
Rating: PG
Characters: Glitch/Ambrose, Azkadellia, DG, Cain, Raw, Queen, Ahamo, Jeb, random courtiers. 
Summary: But family, friends, they could do that, couldn't they? Bring peace.
Notes: set after the whole caboodle, and probably after my fic, Mind & Soul, but really a stand alone
Disclaimer: Not mine

 Peace

She watched them at the dance, her sister dearest and her friends, from a shadowed corner tucked away near a handy exit. She'd grown used to watching from the shadows, blanketted beneath the auspices of the witch, and her magic pooled itself easily into the task. She wasn't going to be noticed, she was sure about that. So it was safe for her to watch over them.

DG sat down among the courtiers, down with her friends, when all and sundry had expected her to take her place by her mother's side on the dias. Azkadellia smiled at that. Her little sister had picked up a definite, and potentially dangerous, disregard for authority and social demands on the Other Side, and quite obviously couldn't have cared less what the court expected. It was something she couldn't help but admire, in the way she'd always admired her sibling's headstrong, courageous spirit as a child, even when it had gotten them into so much trouble.

So much trouble.

But that was done now. Though it had torn her world apart, shattered even the little scraps of dignity she'd gathered for herself under the witch, Azkadellia couldn't regret what DG and her friends had accomplished. After all, the loss of certainty, of security, of dignity, was so often the price of freedom, and worse people than her had counted it worth the cost.

DG sat on the edge of her seat, tilted sideways from their table to watch the flow of dancers with something approaching awe. Of course. She'd never been to a proper ball, except the one Azkadellia had snuck her into when they were children, and she was as fascinated now as she had been back on that dimly remembered evening. At her side, being far less obvious in his rapture, 'Glitch' was also watching the dancers, his face set into wistful lines, somehow unmarred by the silver scar above his forehead. Azkadellia still trembled at the sight of him. She couldn't tell him, couldn't face him to tell him, how sorry she was. How sick she'd been afterwards, when the witch was torn from her.

It was worse when she remembered him. When she remembered that wistful expression at another dance, and how he'd wilted under the scorn of the fashionable ladies who couldn't be bothered to waste their time with a bookish, oil-stained Advisor. When he'd turned to her shy younger self, and smiled a secret smile, as if they alone had been privy to a wonderful joke at all the others' expense, and twitched the tablecloth slightly so it covered DG's protruding foot.

She almost wished it had been her memories the witch had taken. Her mind. It would never have been as great a loss as his, even if that loss was now mostly repaired.

Movement caught her eyes, a subtle shifting in the other two at the table, the two she didn't know at all. The Tin Man, and the Viewer that had apparently escaped her. No. The witch. That had escaped the witch. Lucky thing. He and the Tin Man were watching the other two, separately and unobtrusively, but she sensed an equal mischief rising in both. She watched them curiously, listening in over the mindless babble of the crowd.

"DG want to dance?" the Viewer asked softly, gently, but she could see his smile. Her sister spun to him in surprise, Ambrose turning with her more slowly, both of them blinking at their tawny friend. Then DG smiled ruefully.

"Thanks, but I don't think I remember how," she said, in that wry tone of hers that bordered on sarcastic. The Viewer shook his head as if disappointed, and then the Tin Man took his cue to step in.

"No problem, kid," he said, straight-faced. "Glitch can teach you. He's a fantastic dancer. Didn't you know?" At his side, the Advisor swung a panicked glare his way.

"Cain!" He sounded half-scandalised, but for some reason, Azkadellia thought it was mostly for show. But the agitated twitch of his hands in the air between them wasn't. DG turned to him with an appraising look.

"No," she said, slowly. "I didn't know that." And he looked away from her raised eyebrow.

"It was a long time ago," he muttered, embarrassed. "I'm out of practice."

"You looked pretty practised with those longcoats," this Cain observed neutrally, and that was a sentance Azkadellia didn't dare contemplate, for fear she'd find the truth. Ambrose shot him a glare full of venom, but relaxed when DG put a hand on his arm, and looked up at him seriously.

"Glitch? You really can dance?" she asked, delight in her voice. He dipped his head bashfully, but a smile was wending its way towards his lips.

"It's just rhythm," he murmured softly. "Once you've got the rhythm, it's easy. Even Cain could do it." That last pitched as a deliberate challenge, but the Tin Man only smirked tolerantly. Watching, Azkadellia felt a flash of anguish as DG stood in one quick movement, and smiled down at Ambrose.

"Teach me?" her sister asked, and he couldn't say no, as his friends had known. He wanted to dance too much. As they watched him pull himself to his feet with the edge of coltish clumsiness he'd acquired from his time as a headcase, she wondered if the Tin Man and the Viewer knew that in their different ways, they both exuded exactly the same air of smug satisfaction. But she didn't really care, because she was watching Ambrose hesitantly fit DG's arms into the correct positions, and start to move her gently into the steps, and remembering another time.

They'd been playing tag in the maze. DG was ahead of her, as always, darting just that little too far out of reach. Until she'd piled to an abrupt stop, and Azkadellia had all but plowed over her. But as soon as she'd seen what had caught DG's eye, she'd forgotten to scold.

Ambrose had been practising in the clearing in the south portion of the maze. Practising a dance, his arms snug around an invisible partner, his eyes closed as he absent-mindedly hummed a tune, with his shirt-sleeves stained with either oil or ink, and a pair of singed eyebrows twitching with every bump of the rhythm. The image was as clear in Azkadellia's mind now as it had been then, the thrill of vicarious delight at knowing a grown-up's secret, at seeing something no-one had been meant to see. A heady thing, to a child, even one who was technically a young woman according to their mother. Ambrose had swept his invisible partner around the clearing with the same kind of hesitant abandon that he now swept her laughing sister around the dance floor, and Azkadellia wrestled with the sudden, searing pang of desire for those more innocent times. Before she'd killed that same sister. Before she'd ripped that same Advisor's brains from his head. Before she'd become someone people flinched from and despised.

She didn't notice that, in her turmoil, she'd dropped the shielding maze of her magic, not until DG spun around for a return sweep, saw her, and called out her name in delight.

"Az!"

She stiffened automatically, head coming up to meet her sister's gaze as DG stepped away from Ambrose and came towards her, one hand stretched out in instinctive greeting. The princess was halfway across the dance floor when the silence really fell, and she paused uncertainly.

Out of the corner of her eye, Azkadellia noted her parents were on their feet, watching the drama with trepidation. Though whether for her, or for their 'angel', she didn't know, and thought with a brief flash of bitterness. But that wasn't fair. It wasn't their fault, or DG's, that at her name every single person in the room froze in place. It wasn't their fault that every aristocratic face there moulded itself into a mask of fear and disgust at the sight of her. Of Azkadellia. The sorceress. The witch.

As the venomous mutterings inevitably began, and DG looked around her in confusion, Azkadellia raised her head proudly, stiffening her shoulders in an instinctive pose of haughty disdain, even as her mouth curved into a sad, bitter smile. Head high, as if their spite meant less than nothing to her, she stepped forward to greet her sister, taking DG's hand gently and squeezing. DG stared back at her, confused and beginning to be angry, and squeezed back.

"Az ..." DG began, shoulders hunched and glaring. Azkadellia touched her arm with her free hand.

"Don't, DG. It's only natural. Can you blame them?"

DG looked back at her, distress in her clear blue eyes. "But it wasn't you!" she pointed out, vehemently. Azkadellia tilted her head to one side as she worried their fingers between them, a brittle smile working it's way free. But before she could try to explain, before she could admit that not all sins had been the witch's, another voice broke the buzzing silence.

"Princess?"

DG turned automatically to face the questioner. Azkadellia was slower, being more used to 'Sorceress'. They both stared at the figure of Ambrose, left abandoned in the center of the dance floor, with a widening circle around him as he drew Azkadellia's gaze in particular. No-one wanted to be beside a man about to personally confront the sorceress. But the Advisor himself paid them no heed at all. As Glitch, he'd gotten more than enough practice at editing out the baleful glares of a hate-trained populace. His attention was all the the royal pair.

"Glitch?" DG began, but he waved a hand to stop her, softening the gesture with a wry smile.

"Sorry. I meant Azkadee, DG," he explained, and turned to face the older princess. And then, for no reason at all that she could see, he gave her a wide, delighted grin, and swept her a low, courtly bow. A bow which displayed the still-livid scar across his head for all to see. Azkadellia didn't flinch from it. But she wanted to.

"Advisor?" she asked softly, as he came back up. He smiled.

"Princess," he continued, mischief sparkling in his gaze, "would you care to honour this humble headcase with a dance?" He took two brisk, precise steps towards her, and held out a hand in determined courtesy. His head was tilted slightly to one side, like a curious bird, and his eyes were crinkled at the edges. Azkadellia stared at him in amazement. He stood there, not the absent-minded inventor of her memories, not the terrified, courageous man her voice had condemned in the witch's name, but the bright headcase, DG's friend. Glitch, who watched her with Ambrose's knowing eyes, and smiled a secret smile, as if he knew a joke that no-one else did. And might just share it with her.

She took a step towards him without thought. The hissed murmurs rose to a buzzing drone around them, spitting denial, but Ahamo had apparently decided he'd had enough, and barked for the orchestra behind them to start playing, slicing through the ill-tempered gossip. Azkadellia jumped a bit at the sudden sound, but then Glitch was in front of her, lively as an imp, and reached out to gently take her hands and settle them where they were meant to go, as he had with DG. And as if the act reminded him of her, he turned to the younger princess with a grin.

"Sorry, DG," he murmured, and let his gaze slip sneakily sideways towards their table. "But maybe Cain can show you the ropes while I try and teach your sister?"

"Not a chance, headcase!" the Tin Man drawled across the intervening space. "I'm not getting on any dance floor that has you on it. No offense, DG ..." he paused, and then seemed to shrug internally. "Azkadellia." She blinked at him, as beside her Ambrose hitched his shoulder up as he smiled, and looked at the Tin Man pityingly.

"Never mind, DG," he commiserated. "Some people just haven't got the rhythm, that's all." And before the irate Tin Man could shoot back a testy response, he'd settled his hand on Azkadellia's hip, and swayed them out onto the empty center of the floor.

For long minutes, they danced alone on that cold expanse of marble, the headcase and the sorceress, the sprightly tap of their steps a strange echo in the unfitting silence. But of all if them, they were the most innured to the long, aching hours of solitude amidst crowds, and the scorn that the ignorant easily heaped on anything they feared. Glitch laughed to himself, eyes dancing as he swirled, gazing up at the ceiling as if it held the mysteries of the universe, and snatched glances back at her as if to hand her pieces of those mysteries for safe keeping. And for some reason, Azkadellia felt absolutely safe, for the first time in years. Because there was at least one person, outside of the family that loved her, who didn't hate her, though he, of all people, had cause.

The tune changed, becoming something slow and soothing, and a gentle chuckle from the side made her look up, to see the Viewer holding out a bare hand to DG, smiling oddly. "Raw dance, if it's slow," he explained softly, and DG looked at him, bit her lip against a smile, and took his hand. He lead her out onto the floor, and for the first time, Azkadellia thought she might understand something of the steady contentment of him, the peace she had never understood, in a creature so designed to feel pain. But family, friends, they could do that, couldn't they? Bring peace.

Then it was her mother's turn. The Queen looked up, her lavender eyes misty with love and remembrence, as Ahamo bowed low next to her chair in proper courtly fashion, and then spoiled the effect by cutting his eyes up to her's in a roguish glance more at home in the Realm of the Unwanted. Her mother laughed softly, the tinkle of bells, and gave him her arm with something that might have been a smirk were it any less dignified. Azkadellia smiled at them as they made their way onto the floor, eyes purely for each other, after so long apart.

She turned back to Ambrose, having to tilt her head a little, though they were nearly of a height, and he looked met her gaze long enough to share a smile for them, before his eyes were caught by something on the sidelines, and his lips curled into a gentle smirk of satisfaction. Azkadellia let him turn her a little in time to the music, and watched as a boy, a rebel, stepped up to the Tin Man where he stood at the edge of the floor with folded arms and an odd smile, and touched him gently on the shoulder. Cain turned his head a little, startled, and then relaxed, unfolding his arms enough to reach up to clasp the boy's hand. And Azkadellia understood. His son. It had to be, for the softness that slipped into that stern face at the touch.

She looked up at her Advisor, at the one man in the kingdom with the courage to be there for her after all she'd done to him, and smiled at the warmth she saw in his eyes as he watched his friends. She shifted a little against him, pulling her hand free of his as he looked back and blinked at her, and then ... she lifted that hand to brush it gently over the silver scar in his skull, smiling sadly as he flinched, and said the words she'd been terrified for so long to say.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, biting her lip as something that might have been tears climbed her throat, and looked down again as she dropped her hand. "I'm so sorry."

He made a strange sound, somewhere between a breath and a laugh, and looked away so he could blink fiercely at nothing. She said nothing, only curled her fingers at his shoulder and dipped her head to hide her tears. He made that small sound again, a quite exhalation, and then his hand was wrapping itself gently around her fallen one, and his other arm came up from her waist to curl around her shoulders and pull her into a hug. "Hey, now," he said softly, with false brightness. "Shush, princess. Shush." He paused, and she breathed tearfully into his chest, warm against him, before he dropped his head to rest his cheek against her hair. "It's alright," he murmured. "My princess. Azkadellia. It's alright."

And she believed him.