Jan. 13th, 2008 12:50 pm
Title: Impermanence 1/5
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lovely_ambitionTitle: Impermanence 1/5
Pairing: Glitch/Cain
Disclaimer: They do not belong to me. They really don't.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: One annual passes and the wound still aches.
“Cain.”
One. Two. Three. Four. Five and there was a flash of light so blinding that his eyes fell shut in that inexorable slow-motion that accompanied the echoing voice in his ears. He was counting for a reason, but he hadn’t been sure why, other than that counting had been better than spitting out a babble of desperate instructions.
The patient, yet desperate voice came again. “Cain.”
He had been counting to still his mind from wandering to the pain, to keep himself from acknowledging the ebbing and flowing of severe hurt within his stomach. Someone was calling his name, but the qualities that determined whether it was male or female weren’t visible to Cain’s weary mind and all he heard was his name echoing as the world spun around him. If he paid attention to what was happening, he would realize that he was outside the palace and his hand was pressed firmly to his stomach.
No. Wait.
His own fingers weren’t that thin or delicate.
“Cain,” the voice entreated again, more desperate this time.
It was useless, however. Cain slowly succumbed to the blinding light that washed into darkness and all he heard in the steady depths of the unknown lands was the thrumming of his own heartbeat, again and again. It felt like a sweeping wave of water cascading over him, like a darkness he didn’t fear.
When he next awoke, the pain had subsided and his vision no longer blurred so badly. With foreign blankets, smells, and sounds wrapping their way around him, Cain had the distinct déjà vu of another moment like this one; another foreign place where he’d been kept under a watchful eye while he healed. This clearly wasn’t a room he had spent any time in, but then, in his time around the O.Z. before Azkadellia’s reign, he hadn’t exactly been a friend of the palace.
Snatches of memory were slowly trickling back in to him, making him wonder if this was all just karma for all the times he’d referred to Glitch as ‘zipperhead’ or ‘headcase’, even if it was only just in his mind. It really was a thing that bowled you over, watching the world around you and not knowing how you got there or who was with you. Instantly, he felt more sympathy for Glitch than he ever had before, though he was fairly sure the man had never wanted sympathy from him.
“Wyatt, honestly, you don’t need to go over there on your own.” Ambrose had joined him on a walk in the morning, citing the need for fresh air and wanting to experience the O.Z. without fear of being accosted. They hadn’t counted on stumbling across two troublemakers, pelting objects at animals and attempting to beat the living breath out of the other, in ‘play’.
“It’s just two kids. This won’t take long.”
Cain had been on his way when Ambrose grasped him by the arm to yank him back, just long enough to hiss, “Do you ever actually listen to anyone in your life?”
“You haven’t been around long enough to know me.”
“Ever the heartless…”
“Cain,” the utterance of his name interrupted the flood of memories, and Cain slowly shifted in the bed, pressing a hand to his stomach and wincing lightly, but not as much as he should have. Not considering that he’d been in a larger deal of pain before, when the blackness had crept over him like a blanket.
His blurry vision cleared mildly and then it was obvious that it was Ambrose in the doorway with a bowl of soup on a tray. Funny, Cain thought to himself, but the man looked like he’d gone a round with one of his machines and lost. His clothes were tattered and had blood on them, his groomed hair was out of place, and he looked even paler than usual.
He looked more like Glitch than he had in the three months it had been since all the last traces of his friend had reintegrated with the man he was before the Witch’s reign.
Oddly, Cain felt a flash of guilt about his appearance, even if he couldn’t place why.
“You look like a mess,” Cain mustered the words out, lifting his shirt to inspect his gut, discovering nothing there but a puckered little bit of a scar, with only the remnants of phantom pain. “I look pretty good, considering.”
“Yes,” Ambrose replied, evenly, eyes on Cain devotedly, refusing to move his gaze, like he was scared Cain was just about to up and leave or something. “You do,” the softness of a joke was there, too. It’d been a real pleasure for Cain to discover that even if Glitch had absorbed back into himself, he was still all there; just a little more curt at times and with a tendency to be a lot more patient with his actions and his words both. “Do you remember what happened?”
The irony of that sentence definitely didn’t pass Cain by without giving him the lightest of amusements.
Three months ago, it was Glitch that couldn’t remember unless Raw was connecting him to the machine, just long enough to use his seeing capabilities, Ambrose’s brain, and DG’s otherside tech to combine a solution to the problem in the form of something technologically advanced, which Ambrose referred to as a ‘Data-Containing-Unit’ and DG called a ‘chip’. All his knowledge was implanted upon it and then it was a matter of allowing Glitch to interface with the knowledge and one sunny spring morning, Glitch woke up as Ambrose and that was that.
Cain rubbed at his head lightly.
“Was I shot?” he managed a guess. That made no sense, though, considering the wound was fully healed and it couldn’t have been further back than yesterday when he’d gotten it.
“Raw, please, hurry,” DG was begging desperately. “I can help, I can finish, just heal him!”
“Trying! Hurts to heal!”
“Would someone just heal him already and stop talking about it! Focus!”
Cain closed his eyes tightly. He was heading for a full-on headache at this rate, the way the memories decided to come punching at the walls of his brain. His fingers were still twined in his short hair – a length he felt comfortable with, seeing as the moment he let it get too long, he got the strangest sensation of panic, as if he were back in that metal suit.
“I was shot,” Cain said, more firmly, while he watched Ambrose set up the tray in front of him and perch delicately on the edge of the bed. “DG and Raw healed me and…you got me inside.” Which explained why Ambrose looked like a mess and a half. Cain reached up to brush his hair back into place, coiffed with the rest of the black curls, as if that small gesture made up for all the heavy lugging the man had done. “Is this soup?” he asked, unable to sound more than slightly bemused.
“Your son mentioned…” Ambrose began hesitantly, setting a spoon down in perfect alignment with the bowl. “Well, he mentioned that you used to enjoy a bowl of soup after a cold day out at work. He barely remembered the piece of information, but it seemed to sound right when he did.”
“Thanks, Ambrose,” Cain murmured, already going at the soup like it was a good stiff drink.
Ambrose lingered for some time, long enough for the two men to discuss the event fully, for Cain to ask what he could do to make it up to all of them, and for Ambrose to deny any retribution firmly.
*
Though the wound had been healed by the best magic in the O.Z., Cain couldn’t help his hand seeking out the scar from time to time when the phantom flash of pain arrested him in his step. It had been six months since the Witch’s fall and three since the shooting, when two longcoats who had nothing better to do than be a pair of violent little brats had gotten the best of Cain, who had resolved to work in peace.
He hadn’t expected the gun.
“Ever the heartless vigilante, aren’t you,” Ambrose had sighed as Cain made his way over.
“Boys, you want to stop that fighting and explain to me what’s going on?”
The piercing and shocking sound of a bullet ricocheted through the air, then all Cain could hear was the sound of sprinting footsteps. Cain watched through wide eyes while he fell to his knees and Ambrose so efficiently and capably took care of the two boys, sending them to unconsciousness before kneeling at Cain’s side and grabbing at his hand; all the while applying pressure to the wound.
The memory of the event was slowly trickling back with time. As well, the accounts that came from other people helped him, which he had full access to. The fact was that it seemed like no one trusted him to heal by his lonesome. Jeb and Ambrose were the worst, but DG would have been on par with them if she didn’t have her sister’s welfare to worry over as well. His son always took lunch with him and sat around until the sun went down and it was always ever only an hour before Ambrose would amble along to retrieve Cain for dinner.
“You’re all treating me like I’m about to do something,” Cain mentioned one evening while they walked through the large palace halls. “Hate to break it to you, but you and everyone else here is stuck with me.”
Cain never really thought that it could be the other way around.
Maybe it was that Jeb didn’t want to be on his own in a league of strangers, no longer resisting anything. Maybe Ambrose didn’t know how to sit in his own silence, constantly expecting himself to go on and on. It was difficult to think of it that way when the pain kept pulsing again and again in his gut.
One day, Jeb and Ambrose came together at lunchtime.
“We have to go somewhere,” Jeb announced. The avoidant manner that radiated from the both of them told Cain that he was not going to like this one bit. Cain pulled on his vest and jacket with steady hands while looking at Jeb until it was all too apparent that he wasn’t going to give any answers. Then, his gaze slipped to Ambrose, who was all too intently looking at Cain with all the worry that was contained under the suns. It was too easy to get caught up in that look and he’d done it before, when he was Glitch, when he was Ambrose, both. It brought up too many things that Cain wasn’t ready to acknowledge or deal with.
Not yet, at least.
“It’s Zero, Dad,” Jeb said, and even though he’d grown up so much in the passing annuals, he sounded like the petulant boy that Cain remembered coming home to every night, as if Adora hadn’t cooked him what he wanted.
He clenched his fingers at the mention of the name.
“What about him?”
“Azkadellia wants him to pay the highest price. The death sentence. I thought you might want to go…” Jeb trailed off.
The only fitting punishment for Zero, in Cain’s mind, was the only one he knew how to dole out. Annuals and annuals inside an iron suit. That was the only fitting punishment. His fingers were clasping the fabric of his vest and an unhappy glare had flitted over his face, only dispelling slightly when he felt light fingers rest against his wrist.
“Cain,” Ambrose spoke evenly, and patiently. “Come, we’ll go talk to Azkadellia and I’ll lodge your suggestions. If nothing else, I’m sure a prison sentence can be given to him.” His fingers wrapped slowly around Cain’s wrist until he nearly had Cain’s hand in his own.
Jeb had elected to look away while the two men spoke in their hushed whispers.
“You know what he did to us,” Cain protested lowly, anger resonating in his voice.
“More than anyone, Wyatt, so calm down and trust me. Not all battles need to be fought with your weapons. Sometimes, words do the work for you,” Ambrose assured lightly, releasing Cain’s hand and leading the way to the Queen’s room, as though he could face anything with that full brain of his back.
*
One annual after the shooting, Cain found himself still clasping at the scar, as though unsure as to why it still ached so much.
He had never stopped to consider that it wasn’t the gunshot anymore that assaulted him with the ache, but instead was something else. Something he wasn’t ready to acknowledge or even attempt to explain.
It would be many months yet before Wyatt Cain understood that feeling in the pit of his stomach.
tbc
Pairing: Glitch/Cain
Disclaimer: They do not belong to me. They really don't.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: One annual passes and the wound still aches.
“Cain.”
One. Two. Three. Four. Five and there was a flash of light so blinding that his eyes fell shut in that inexorable slow-motion that accompanied the echoing voice in his ears. He was counting for a reason, but he hadn’t been sure why, other than that counting had been better than spitting out a babble of desperate instructions.
The patient, yet desperate voice came again. “Cain.”
He had been counting to still his mind from wandering to the pain, to keep himself from acknowledging the ebbing and flowing of severe hurt within his stomach. Someone was calling his name, but the qualities that determined whether it was male or female weren’t visible to Cain’s weary mind and all he heard was his name echoing as the world spun around him. If he paid attention to what was happening, he would realize that he was outside the palace and his hand was pressed firmly to his stomach.
No. Wait.
His own fingers weren’t that thin or delicate.
“Cain,” the voice entreated again, more desperate this time.
It was useless, however. Cain slowly succumbed to the blinding light that washed into darkness and all he heard in the steady depths of the unknown lands was the thrumming of his own heartbeat, again and again. It felt like a sweeping wave of water cascading over him, like a darkness he didn’t fear.
When he next awoke, the pain had subsided and his vision no longer blurred so badly. With foreign blankets, smells, and sounds wrapping their way around him, Cain had the distinct déjà vu of another moment like this one; another foreign place where he’d been kept under a watchful eye while he healed. This clearly wasn’t a room he had spent any time in, but then, in his time around the O.Z. before Azkadellia’s reign, he hadn’t exactly been a friend of the palace.
Snatches of memory were slowly trickling back in to him, making him wonder if this was all just karma for all the times he’d referred to Glitch as ‘zipperhead’ or ‘headcase’, even if it was only just in his mind. It really was a thing that bowled you over, watching the world around you and not knowing how you got there or who was with you. Instantly, he felt more sympathy for Glitch than he ever had before, though he was fairly sure the man had never wanted sympathy from him.
“Wyatt, honestly, you don’t need to go over there on your own.” Ambrose had joined him on a walk in the morning, citing the need for fresh air and wanting to experience the O.Z. without fear of being accosted. They hadn’t counted on stumbling across two troublemakers, pelting objects at animals and attempting to beat the living breath out of the other, in ‘play’.
“It’s just two kids. This won’t take long.”
Cain had been on his way when Ambrose grasped him by the arm to yank him back, just long enough to hiss, “Do you ever actually listen to anyone in your life?”
“You haven’t been around long enough to know me.”
“Ever the heartless…”
“Cain,” the utterance of his name interrupted the flood of memories, and Cain slowly shifted in the bed, pressing a hand to his stomach and wincing lightly, but not as much as he should have. Not considering that he’d been in a larger deal of pain before, when the blackness had crept over him like a blanket.
His blurry vision cleared mildly and then it was obvious that it was Ambrose in the doorway with a bowl of soup on a tray. Funny, Cain thought to himself, but the man looked like he’d gone a round with one of his machines and lost. His clothes were tattered and had blood on them, his groomed hair was out of place, and he looked even paler than usual.
He looked more like Glitch than he had in the three months it had been since all the last traces of his friend had reintegrated with the man he was before the Witch’s reign.
Oddly, Cain felt a flash of guilt about his appearance, even if he couldn’t place why.
“You look like a mess,” Cain mustered the words out, lifting his shirt to inspect his gut, discovering nothing there but a puckered little bit of a scar, with only the remnants of phantom pain. “I look pretty good, considering.”
“Yes,” Ambrose replied, evenly, eyes on Cain devotedly, refusing to move his gaze, like he was scared Cain was just about to up and leave or something. “You do,” the softness of a joke was there, too. It’d been a real pleasure for Cain to discover that even if Glitch had absorbed back into himself, he was still all there; just a little more curt at times and with a tendency to be a lot more patient with his actions and his words both. “Do you remember what happened?”
The irony of that sentence definitely didn’t pass Cain by without giving him the lightest of amusements.
Three months ago, it was Glitch that couldn’t remember unless Raw was connecting him to the machine, just long enough to use his seeing capabilities, Ambrose’s brain, and DG’s otherside tech to combine a solution to the problem in the form of something technologically advanced, which Ambrose referred to as a ‘Data-Containing-Unit’ and DG called a ‘chip’. All his knowledge was implanted upon it and then it was a matter of allowing Glitch to interface with the knowledge and one sunny spring morning, Glitch woke up as Ambrose and that was that.
Cain rubbed at his head lightly.
“Was I shot?” he managed a guess. That made no sense, though, considering the wound was fully healed and it couldn’t have been further back than yesterday when he’d gotten it.
“Raw, please, hurry,” DG was begging desperately. “I can help, I can finish, just heal him!”
“Trying! Hurts to heal!”
“Would someone just heal him already and stop talking about it! Focus!”
Cain closed his eyes tightly. He was heading for a full-on headache at this rate, the way the memories decided to come punching at the walls of his brain. His fingers were still twined in his short hair – a length he felt comfortable with, seeing as the moment he let it get too long, he got the strangest sensation of panic, as if he were back in that metal suit.
“I was shot,” Cain said, more firmly, while he watched Ambrose set up the tray in front of him and perch delicately on the edge of the bed. “DG and Raw healed me and…you got me inside.” Which explained why Ambrose looked like a mess and a half. Cain reached up to brush his hair back into place, coiffed with the rest of the black curls, as if that small gesture made up for all the heavy lugging the man had done. “Is this soup?” he asked, unable to sound more than slightly bemused.
“Your son mentioned…” Ambrose began hesitantly, setting a spoon down in perfect alignment with the bowl. “Well, he mentioned that you used to enjoy a bowl of soup after a cold day out at work. He barely remembered the piece of information, but it seemed to sound right when he did.”
“Thanks, Ambrose,” Cain murmured, already going at the soup like it was a good stiff drink.
Ambrose lingered for some time, long enough for the two men to discuss the event fully, for Cain to ask what he could do to make it up to all of them, and for Ambrose to deny any retribution firmly.
*
Though the wound had been healed by the best magic in the O.Z., Cain couldn’t help his hand seeking out the scar from time to time when the phantom flash of pain arrested him in his step. It had been six months since the Witch’s fall and three since the shooting, when two longcoats who had nothing better to do than be a pair of violent little brats had gotten the best of Cain, who had resolved to work in peace.
He hadn’t expected the gun.
“Ever the heartless vigilante, aren’t you,” Ambrose had sighed as Cain made his way over.
“Boys, you want to stop that fighting and explain to me what’s going on?”
The piercing and shocking sound of a bullet ricocheted through the air, then all Cain could hear was the sound of sprinting footsteps. Cain watched through wide eyes while he fell to his knees and Ambrose so efficiently and capably took care of the two boys, sending them to unconsciousness before kneeling at Cain’s side and grabbing at his hand; all the while applying pressure to the wound.
The memory of the event was slowly trickling back with time. As well, the accounts that came from other people helped him, which he had full access to. The fact was that it seemed like no one trusted him to heal by his lonesome. Jeb and Ambrose were the worst, but DG would have been on par with them if she didn’t have her sister’s welfare to worry over as well. His son always took lunch with him and sat around until the sun went down and it was always ever only an hour before Ambrose would amble along to retrieve Cain for dinner.
“You’re all treating me like I’m about to do something,” Cain mentioned one evening while they walked through the large palace halls. “Hate to break it to you, but you and everyone else here is stuck with me.”
Cain never really thought that it could be the other way around.
Maybe it was that Jeb didn’t want to be on his own in a league of strangers, no longer resisting anything. Maybe Ambrose didn’t know how to sit in his own silence, constantly expecting himself to go on and on. It was difficult to think of it that way when the pain kept pulsing again and again in his gut.
One day, Jeb and Ambrose came together at lunchtime.
“We have to go somewhere,” Jeb announced. The avoidant manner that radiated from the both of them told Cain that he was not going to like this one bit. Cain pulled on his vest and jacket with steady hands while looking at Jeb until it was all too apparent that he wasn’t going to give any answers. Then, his gaze slipped to Ambrose, who was all too intently looking at Cain with all the worry that was contained under the suns. It was too easy to get caught up in that look and he’d done it before, when he was Glitch, when he was Ambrose, both. It brought up too many things that Cain wasn’t ready to acknowledge or deal with.
Not yet, at least.
“It’s Zero, Dad,” Jeb said, and even though he’d grown up so much in the passing annuals, he sounded like the petulant boy that Cain remembered coming home to every night, as if Adora hadn’t cooked him what he wanted.
He clenched his fingers at the mention of the name.
“What about him?”
“Azkadellia wants him to pay the highest price. The death sentence. I thought you might want to go…” Jeb trailed off.
The only fitting punishment for Zero, in Cain’s mind, was the only one he knew how to dole out. Annuals and annuals inside an iron suit. That was the only fitting punishment. His fingers were clasping the fabric of his vest and an unhappy glare had flitted over his face, only dispelling slightly when he felt light fingers rest against his wrist.
“Cain,” Ambrose spoke evenly, and patiently. “Come, we’ll go talk to Azkadellia and I’ll lodge your suggestions. If nothing else, I’m sure a prison sentence can be given to him.” His fingers wrapped slowly around Cain’s wrist until he nearly had Cain’s hand in his own.
Jeb had elected to look away while the two men spoke in their hushed whispers.
“You know what he did to us,” Cain protested lowly, anger resonating in his voice.
“More than anyone, Wyatt, so calm down and trust me. Not all battles need to be fought with your weapons. Sometimes, words do the work for you,” Ambrose assured lightly, releasing Cain’s hand and leading the way to the Queen’s room, as though he could face anything with that full brain of his back.
*
One annual after the shooting, Cain found himself still clasping at the scar, as though unsure as to why it still ached so much.
He had never stopped to consider that it wasn’t the gunshot anymore that assaulted him with the ache, but instead was something else. Something he wasn’t ready to acknowledge or even attempt to explain.
It would be many months yet before Wyatt Cain understood that feeling in the pit of his stomach.
tbc
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