FIC: Once Upon A Time 5/?
Title: Once Upon A Time Part 5/?
Pairing: Cain/Ambrose
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Despite my seize for power, nothing came of it.
Summary: During the Cains' work to the South, something goes awry. Ambrose has to help, but also faces his own perils along the way.
Notes: Part I / Part II / Part III / Part IV
And then the world falls apart.
It crumbles.
It sometimes changes completely.
And it requires saving or it requires the turning of a blind eye.
The
….....world
falls……
…….down.
*
Cain left the tent before Ambrose did and he did it furtively, as if there had been some sort of misconduct going on behind that closed veil. He had work to do and speaking with each member of their small expedition was in order if they were going to get back to the palace anytime soon.
It took longer for Ambrose to leave.
He had ventured out amidst the camp to investigate the set-up, desperately trying to avoid Raw in the process of it all. ‘Changed’. One single word and Raw had so utterly dissembled Ambrose into tiny, unsure pieces, left to try and put himself back together in some order that vaguely resembled sense. And the truth of it was that he was missing something.
He’d had it all figured out (as there was little doubt that he couldn’t), but something wasn’t right. Something was still missing, no matter how many ways he tried to put himself together.
“I really should have noticed.”
That voice had no place in Ambrose’s self-assessment and he scowled at the intrusion. “Zero,” he acknowledged, knowing that if he continued to ignore the other man, he would only act out more in a desperate ploy for attention. Sometimes, Zero was such a child. “Should have noticed what?”
Zero, surprisingly, looked more like a man of leisure than he did a prisoner. Despite the fact that he remained shackled and bound, he was enjoying the rays of sun that dared to peek out from behind the clouds. He brushed flecks of dust from off his cheek, despite the limited motion his chains offered. He was simply recumbent and looked at ease as he lazily stared Ambrose’s way.
“You. And him.”
“He does have a name, you know,” Ambrose said. At first, it had been somewhat nifty to see just how disgusted Zero could sound when it came to Cain, but it was just growing tiresome now, seeing as it made Zero look more and more like the child he was. It was petulant, it was bratty, and it had begun to drive Ambrose to the point of snapping and wanting to slap Zero around.
Zero didn’t even react. He just plucked up a stem of a weed and let it drift into the calm wind. “I’m sure you enjoy saying it, too. I should have seen it. Should have listened to the rumors.” It was becoming evident that Zero was likely only bluffing, but Ambrose couldn’t be one-hundred and ten percent sure and if he couldn’t be one-hundred and ten percent sure, then he wanted to be ninety-nine-point-seven percent sure.
“Listened to what rumors?”
Zero smiled, the slick one that almost made it look like he wasn’t the kind of man who began to quiver at the sight of spoons. “That you were fawning over him like a little girl. Doe-eyes. Pining.”
“Cain may not want you dead, but I promise if you keep this up, I’ll get him to change his mind,” Ambrose warned, his voice sounding steady despite the fact that he didn’t feel very steady deep down inside. He was wavering like a reed in the wind, unsure as to who was saying this or whether Zero was just saying it because it plucked a very raw-feeling chord within him.
“There you go again,” Zero laughed. “That cute little dark half of you.”
Ambrose ignored him, tilting his chin toward the sky to favor the clouds over Zero. He should walk away was what he should do, but some terribly sick part of him wanted to hear more about what the rumors said about him.
“I’m sure it’ll be just like a fairytale. He’ll forget all about his dead wife and fall madly in love with you. I’m sure he won’t use you at all.”
The whole thing was like a splintered window into a chaotic world. Because, after all, Adora Cain was dead because of this man and now he was speaking of her so cavalierly. This man had so carelessly snuffed out Adora’s life and had changed Cain forever into the man that Ambrose had met and fallen in love with. Zero still had blood on his hands that made him a villain in the piece. He had absolutely no right to make any comments, not when he had taken away one of the things that Cain had cared about most.
Ambrose leveled a long glare upon Zero. “You have no right, absolutely none to talk about this,” he barked lowly.
“Why,” Zero remarked casually, sounding pleased now that Ambrose was sounding more and more distressed. “You don’t want to hear about her last breath? How about all the times I nearly shot that little boy of his. You think he’d be so open to using you if his son were gone too? I’m sure we can test the theory. Why not throw his little DG in there too?” The words were casual, as if he weren’t talking about taking away the people who mattered the very most to Cain.
“Don’t,” Ambrose warned, low and furious, but calm yet.
“I guess when I get free, I could just skip those steps. Kill Cain and be done with him.” He tilted his head slowly to one side to study Ambrose. “It’s fair, isn’t it? A man destroys your livelihood and everything you work for and traps you, you deal with him, right? One little slit then you won’t have to worry about your ex-Tin Man pining over someone else because he’ll be six feet in the ground.”
In the distance, thunder began to rumble over the plains, the wind picking up.
*
“Father?”
Jeb had been standing at the high point of the camp, surveying the weather on the horizon. They needed to start moving quickly and the rest of the camp had already packed up their things, leaving Jeb to scout out the way. He’d come back from the route they planned to take, easily climbing his way down various hills and across tricky areas. Cain was drinking from a canteen, nailing down the remaining tents as the wind began to increase in speed. “What is it, son?” Cain called up to him.
“I think you should come see this,” he said, as if not believing whatever it was he was seeing.
Cain set the hammer and nails down, adjusting the new gun in his holster. Jeb had several extra around the camp from the various Longcoats and resistors to the rightful rule. It meant that none of them would have to go unarmed if they didn’t want to. He checked the bullets for a moment as he wandered up to join Jeb on the high-point, gazing out at the dark clouds that were forming on the horizon and seemed to be rolling towards them with the new winds. Whatever sun was left peeking through the clouds wasn’t going to be around soon enough.
“We need to move,” he said clearly.
“I’ll get Raw and the others,” Jeb agreed and both men began to hurry off. They couldn’t outrun the storm, so they would have to find somewhere to hide.
And fast.
*
“You just don’t understand, Ambrose,” Zero was detailing, even as the wind began to whip plant-life all around them. “What it’s like to hold that kind of power in your hand. To decide who gets to live and die.”
“That’s not power, that’s your delusions,” Ambrose snapped, now actively driven to anger as he stood, towering over Zero - who remained on the ground.
“It was power when I beat Cain within an inch of his life. Has he told you about what happened, every last little dark detail? He did quite a few terrible things in the Resistance, you know, before we found him out. Killing top generals and planting charges. He even once took a run at Azkadellia herself.”
“Stop it,” Ambrose warned, not wanting to have to pick through the truth and the lies of what Zero was saying.
“He bled. We stayed for a day while he was inside the Iron Suit and just listened to his screams. His wife was unconscious after we beat her.”
“Stop it,” Ambrose warned again, his tone losing more and more of its mercy.
“We all took turns with Jeb. I doubt he’s told you any of that. Ask him, sometime, about the scars on his legs.”
Unable to take it any more, Ambrose leaned down and wrapped one hand tightly around Zero’s neck, fingers applying pressure to the exact points that would begin to choke him and the storm around them grew worse and worse. “You never paid for what you did to them,” Ambrose said, half-furious, half-confused by the fact that he was pushed to this, that he could feel this way.
“Ambrose!”
The shout on the horizon was barely heard as he applied more pressure, staring at Zero. “You need to pay,” he insisted, almost out of some desperate need to see the Cain family’s wounds avenged.
“Ambrose!”
*
Cain wasn’t actually yelling about the choking at all, though he was more concerned than he’d ever let on about what could have pushed Ambrose to that. They could deal with that later, but at that very second, the storm had gone from a nasty mix of dark clouds to a barreling twister heading straight for them, thick and unpredictable. It was closer than he’d like and he had to hold onto his hat as he fought the wind. His voice was lost three times to the whipping of the wind and he had to scream just to get Ambrose’s name out.
The storm swayed right, swayed left, paused in place. Then onwards it drove with a fury that was unmatchable by anything not found in nature.
Cain was at Ambrose’s side now, grabbing hold of him with his free hand and eventually, he let go of his hat and let it go tumbling away as he grabbed hold of Ambrose, trying to get him away so they could find shelter with the little time they had left. “Ambrose, we have to move, now,” he warned, prying Ambrose from his chokehold on Zero. To make up for that, Cain drew his gun out quickly and kept it aimed at Zero’s heart as a warning for him not to try anything.
What Cain didn’t expect was a hand on his arm and there he found Raw with Jeb trailing behind, giving an expression of ‘I don’t know what’s going on’, which was a common Cain trait at the moment, seeing as Wyatt Cain was completely lost as to why Ambrose was furious, why Zero was smirking, why Raw looked so calm and why they were all just standing there while a twister spun furiously toward them.
“Can be controlled,” Raw advised, his low voice somehow carrying above the winds.
“No!” Cain shouted. “That’s a whirlwind. We run now!”
“Ambrose.”
“What about him?” Cain shouted right back, speaking for Ambrose because the man still looked dazed, glaring at Zero, his hands twitching as if he wanted to lunge for him and finish the job he had started.
Raw looked to the twister, then to Ambrose, closed his eyes and nodded once. It was the look he got when he was completely and utterly sure about something.
“Created. Controls. Must calm.”
Cain exchanged a dubious look with Raw, wanting to spit out about a half a dozen words that demanded to know what in hell was going on, but he stumbled to get Ambrose over to Raw’s side. “Well, then, calm him down!” he insisted in a loud growl, his gun trained on Zero and he cocked it, taking the safety off as Zero stumbled to his feet. “Don’t even try,” he warned.
Out of the corner of his eye, Cain could see Raw laying his hands upon Ambrose’s temples and the both of them closed their eyes. Jeb hurried behind Cain and the both of them stood there, making sure that though Zero was on his feet and swaying, he didn’t do anything.
“I ever tell you, Cain,” Zero shouted above the winds, “about what your wife’s lips tasted like after my men beat her?” It was a tactic, Cain knew. It was a tactic to disarm him and distract him enough so that he could get away and make a run for it. Tactic or not, it hit its mark.
Cain’s finger was on the trigger before he could stop himself and the sound of his gun firing was easily heard throughout the camp. But Zero didn’t crumple to the ground and he didn’t stagger backwards from the force of the shot.
Someone had pushed his wrist at the last minute and the bullet had embedded into a nearby tree, all because of… “Ambrose,” Cain growled. “You wanted him dead a minute ago!” he shouted. There wasn’t genuine anger in his voice so much as there was confusion. He pushed forward, holstering his gun when he saw Jeb dealing with Zero, and took hold of Ambrose by his forearms, looking straight into his bewildered eyes. Something was going on and nobody understood it, not even the smartest man in all of the O.Z.
Cain wished that didn’t scare him so much. “Ambrose.” The speaking of the name was intimate and the storm was getting slowly closer, but Cain made sure to keep it good and quiet. “Raw says you created this thing.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, sweetheart, so how about you stop it. What machine are you using to do this?”
“I didn’t have any machines,” Ambrose protested wildly and the storm inched closer, pelting them with soil and water, trees and debris littered amongst the more natural components caught up in the winds. “I don’t…I don’t!”
“Okay, okay,” Cain agreed quickly, trying to get him to calm down any way he could, but nothing was working. “Ambrose, please, you’re going to kill us all.”
Even that didn’t work.
“Raw know what to do,” came the surprising voice from beside them and with one hand, he rested it on Ambrose’s temple. The other was pushed lightly against Cain’s heart and for a moment, everything went pitch-black in Cain’s vision. His eyes slammed shut as he focused on trying to calm that storm he could see.
Ambrose, he murmured in his mind’s eye. You have to stop this or else you’re going to kill us all. And I need you. Got it?
His grip on Ambrose didn’t falter and Raw’s hand pressed to his heart was as firm as ever, but the wind around them started to die down very gradually.
Cain, I don’t know what’s going on.
Cain took deep and easy breaths, practicing that self-same meditation he had learned while in the Iron Suit and he had to face terrifying visions every waking moment. He calmed his heart, let his mind rest at peace with the world, and breathed deeply. I know you can do this. For me, Ambrose. Do this for me.
As if a switch had been flicked, the wind immediately stopped dead and when Cain opened his eyes, there wasn’t even a hint of a storm on the horizon. He stared at Raw in wonder and confusion for all of a second before his attention was caught up in the fact that Ambrose had just collapsed. Cain was swift about collecting him in his arms, slowly comforting him on the ground and checking his pulse.
To their side, Zero looked almost frightened -- and not just because Jeb had a gun to his head -- and Raw was looking curious. “Power unstable. Unsteady. Dark. Dark and unleashed.”
Cain could feel Ambrose breathing and that was the one thing keeping him from finding someone who could immediately give them answers. All the men from their small camp were beginning to crowd them now for explanations.
“Ambrose,” Raw started to speak quietly and hesitantly, words meant for Cain only, “could die.”
“Not with me around,” Cain insisted and he meant it more literally than he ever had before. If he could help stop a gods-damned twister, he could keep Ambrose from slipping off. At least, with Raw’s help. He swallowed hard and gave one nod to Raw. “Thanks,” he said, hushed.
“Raw can’t do alone. Needed Cain.”
And Cain needed Raw to help keep Ambrose alive.
And they needed answers.
tbc
Pairing: Cain/Ambrose
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Despite my seize for power, nothing came of it.
Summary: During the Cains' work to the South, something goes awry. Ambrose has to help, but also faces his own perils along the way.
Notes: Part I / Part II / Part III / Part IV
And then the world falls apart.
It crumbles.
It sometimes changes completely.
And it requires saving or it requires the turning of a blind eye.
The
….....world
falls……
…….down.
*
Cain left the tent before Ambrose did and he did it furtively, as if there had been some sort of misconduct going on behind that closed veil. He had work to do and speaking with each member of their small expedition was in order if they were going to get back to the palace anytime soon.
It took longer for Ambrose to leave.
He had ventured out amidst the camp to investigate the set-up, desperately trying to avoid Raw in the process of it all. ‘Changed’. One single word and Raw had so utterly dissembled Ambrose into tiny, unsure pieces, left to try and put himself back together in some order that vaguely resembled sense. And the truth of it was that he was missing something.
He’d had it all figured out (as there was little doubt that he couldn’t), but something wasn’t right. Something was still missing, no matter how many ways he tried to put himself together.
“I really should have noticed.”
That voice had no place in Ambrose’s self-assessment and he scowled at the intrusion. “Zero,” he acknowledged, knowing that if he continued to ignore the other man, he would only act out more in a desperate ploy for attention. Sometimes, Zero was such a child. “Should have noticed what?”
Zero, surprisingly, looked more like a man of leisure than he did a prisoner. Despite the fact that he remained shackled and bound, he was enjoying the rays of sun that dared to peek out from behind the clouds. He brushed flecks of dust from off his cheek, despite the limited motion his chains offered. He was simply recumbent and looked at ease as he lazily stared Ambrose’s way.
“You. And him.”
“He does have a name, you know,” Ambrose said. At first, it had been somewhat nifty to see just how disgusted Zero could sound when it came to Cain, but it was just growing tiresome now, seeing as it made Zero look more and more like the child he was. It was petulant, it was bratty, and it had begun to drive Ambrose to the point of snapping and wanting to slap Zero around.
Zero didn’t even react. He just plucked up a stem of a weed and let it drift into the calm wind. “I’m sure you enjoy saying it, too. I should have seen it. Should have listened to the rumors.” It was becoming evident that Zero was likely only bluffing, but Ambrose couldn’t be one-hundred and ten percent sure and if he couldn’t be one-hundred and ten percent sure, then he wanted to be ninety-nine-point-seven percent sure.
“Listened to what rumors?”
Zero smiled, the slick one that almost made it look like he wasn’t the kind of man who began to quiver at the sight of spoons. “That you were fawning over him like a little girl. Doe-eyes. Pining.”
“Cain may not want you dead, but I promise if you keep this up, I’ll get him to change his mind,” Ambrose warned, his voice sounding steady despite the fact that he didn’t feel very steady deep down inside. He was wavering like a reed in the wind, unsure as to who was saying this or whether Zero was just saying it because it plucked a very raw-feeling chord within him.
“There you go again,” Zero laughed. “That cute little dark half of you.”
Ambrose ignored him, tilting his chin toward the sky to favor the clouds over Zero. He should walk away was what he should do, but some terribly sick part of him wanted to hear more about what the rumors said about him.
“I’m sure it’ll be just like a fairytale. He’ll forget all about his dead wife and fall madly in love with you. I’m sure he won’t use you at all.”
The whole thing was like a splintered window into a chaotic world. Because, after all, Adora Cain was dead because of this man and now he was speaking of her so cavalierly. This man had so carelessly snuffed out Adora’s life and had changed Cain forever into the man that Ambrose had met and fallen in love with. Zero still had blood on his hands that made him a villain in the piece. He had absolutely no right to make any comments, not when he had taken away one of the things that Cain had cared about most.
Ambrose leveled a long glare upon Zero. “You have no right, absolutely none to talk about this,” he barked lowly.
“Why,” Zero remarked casually, sounding pleased now that Ambrose was sounding more and more distressed. “You don’t want to hear about her last breath? How about all the times I nearly shot that little boy of his. You think he’d be so open to using you if his son were gone too? I’m sure we can test the theory. Why not throw his little DG in there too?” The words were casual, as if he weren’t talking about taking away the people who mattered the very most to Cain.
“Don’t,” Ambrose warned, low and furious, but calm yet.
“I guess when I get free, I could just skip those steps. Kill Cain and be done with him.” He tilted his head slowly to one side to study Ambrose. “It’s fair, isn’t it? A man destroys your livelihood and everything you work for and traps you, you deal with him, right? One little slit then you won’t have to worry about your ex-Tin Man pining over someone else because he’ll be six feet in the ground.”
In the distance, thunder began to rumble over the plains, the wind picking up.
*
“Father?”
Jeb had been standing at the high point of the camp, surveying the weather on the horizon. They needed to start moving quickly and the rest of the camp had already packed up their things, leaving Jeb to scout out the way. He’d come back from the route they planned to take, easily climbing his way down various hills and across tricky areas. Cain was drinking from a canteen, nailing down the remaining tents as the wind began to increase in speed. “What is it, son?” Cain called up to him.
“I think you should come see this,” he said, as if not believing whatever it was he was seeing.
Cain set the hammer and nails down, adjusting the new gun in his holster. Jeb had several extra around the camp from the various Longcoats and resistors to the rightful rule. It meant that none of them would have to go unarmed if they didn’t want to. He checked the bullets for a moment as he wandered up to join Jeb on the high-point, gazing out at the dark clouds that were forming on the horizon and seemed to be rolling towards them with the new winds. Whatever sun was left peeking through the clouds wasn’t going to be around soon enough.
“We need to move,” he said clearly.
“I’ll get Raw and the others,” Jeb agreed and both men began to hurry off. They couldn’t outrun the storm, so they would have to find somewhere to hide.
And fast.
*
“You just don’t understand, Ambrose,” Zero was detailing, even as the wind began to whip plant-life all around them. “What it’s like to hold that kind of power in your hand. To decide who gets to live and die.”
“That’s not power, that’s your delusions,” Ambrose snapped, now actively driven to anger as he stood, towering over Zero - who remained on the ground.
“It was power when I beat Cain within an inch of his life. Has he told you about what happened, every last little dark detail? He did quite a few terrible things in the Resistance, you know, before we found him out. Killing top generals and planting charges. He even once took a run at Azkadellia herself.”
“Stop it,” Ambrose warned, not wanting to have to pick through the truth and the lies of what Zero was saying.
“He bled. We stayed for a day while he was inside the Iron Suit and just listened to his screams. His wife was unconscious after we beat her.”
“Stop it,” Ambrose warned again, his tone losing more and more of its mercy.
“We all took turns with Jeb. I doubt he’s told you any of that. Ask him, sometime, about the scars on his legs.”
Unable to take it any more, Ambrose leaned down and wrapped one hand tightly around Zero’s neck, fingers applying pressure to the exact points that would begin to choke him and the storm around them grew worse and worse. “You never paid for what you did to them,” Ambrose said, half-furious, half-confused by the fact that he was pushed to this, that he could feel this way.
“Ambrose!”
The shout on the horizon was barely heard as he applied more pressure, staring at Zero. “You need to pay,” he insisted, almost out of some desperate need to see the Cain family’s wounds avenged.
“Ambrose!”
*
Cain wasn’t actually yelling about the choking at all, though he was more concerned than he’d ever let on about what could have pushed Ambrose to that. They could deal with that later, but at that very second, the storm had gone from a nasty mix of dark clouds to a barreling twister heading straight for them, thick and unpredictable. It was closer than he’d like and he had to hold onto his hat as he fought the wind. His voice was lost three times to the whipping of the wind and he had to scream just to get Ambrose’s name out.
The storm swayed right, swayed left, paused in place. Then onwards it drove with a fury that was unmatchable by anything not found in nature.
Cain was at Ambrose’s side now, grabbing hold of him with his free hand and eventually, he let go of his hat and let it go tumbling away as he grabbed hold of Ambrose, trying to get him away so they could find shelter with the little time they had left. “Ambrose, we have to move, now,” he warned, prying Ambrose from his chokehold on Zero. To make up for that, Cain drew his gun out quickly and kept it aimed at Zero’s heart as a warning for him not to try anything.
What Cain didn’t expect was a hand on his arm and there he found Raw with Jeb trailing behind, giving an expression of ‘I don’t know what’s going on’, which was a common Cain trait at the moment, seeing as Wyatt Cain was completely lost as to why Ambrose was furious, why Zero was smirking, why Raw looked so calm and why they were all just standing there while a twister spun furiously toward them.
“Can be controlled,” Raw advised, his low voice somehow carrying above the winds.
“No!” Cain shouted. “That’s a whirlwind. We run now!”
“Ambrose.”
“What about him?” Cain shouted right back, speaking for Ambrose because the man still looked dazed, glaring at Zero, his hands twitching as if he wanted to lunge for him and finish the job he had started.
Raw looked to the twister, then to Ambrose, closed his eyes and nodded once. It was the look he got when he was completely and utterly sure about something.
“Created. Controls. Must calm.”
Cain exchanged a dubious look with Raw, wanting to spit out about a half a dozen words that demanded to know what in hell was going on, but he stumbled to get Ambrose over to Raw’s side. “Well, then, calm him down!” he insisted in a loud growl, his gun trained on Zero and he cocked it, taking the safety off as Zero stumbled to his feet. “Don’t even try,” he warned.
Out of the corner of his eye, Cain could see Raw laying his hands upon Ambrose’s temples and the both of them closed their eyes. Jeb hurried behind Cain and the both of them stood there, making sure that though Zero was on his feet and swaying, he didn’t do anything.
“I ever tell you, Cain,” Zero shouted above the winds, “about what your wife’s lips tasted like after my men beat her?” It was a tactic, Cain knew. It was a tactic to disarm him and distract him enough so that he could get away and make a run for it. Tactic or not, it hit its mark.
Cain’s finger was on the trigger before he could stop himself and the sound of his gun firing was easily heard throughout the camp. But Zero didn’t crumple to the ground and he didn’t stagger backwards from the force of the shot.
Someone had pushed his wrist at the last minute and the bullet had embedded into a nearby tree, all because of… “Ambrose,” Cain growled. “You wanted him dead a minute ago!” he shouted. There wasn’t genuine anger in his voice so much as there was confusion. He pushed forward, holstering his gun when he saw Jeb dealing with Zero, and took hold of Ambrose by his forearms, looking straight into his bewildered eyes. Something was going on and nobody understood it, not even the smartest man in all of the O.Z.
Cain wished that didn’t scare him so much. “Ambrose.” The speaking of the name was intimate and the storm was getting slowly closer, but Cain made sure to keep it good and quiet. “Raw says you created this thing.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, sweetheart, so how about you stop it. What machine are you using to do this?”
“I didn’t have any machines,” Ambrose protested wildly and the storm inched closer, pelting them with soil and water, trees and debris littered amongst the more natural components caught up in the winds. “I don’t…I don’t!”
“Okay, okay,” Cain agreed quickly, trying to get him to calm down any way he could, but nothing was working. “Ambrose, please, you’re going to kill us all.”
Even that didn’t work.
“Raw know what to do,” came the surprising voice from beside them and with one hand, he rested it on Ambrose’s temple. The other was pushed lightly against Cain’s heart and for a moment, everything went pitch-black in Cain’s vision. His eyes slammed shut as he focused on trying to calm that storm he could see.
Ambrose, he murmured in his mind’s eye. You have to stop this or else you’re going to kill us all. And I need you. Got it?
His grip on Ambrose didn’t falter and Raw’s hand pressed to his heart was as firm as ever, but the wind around them started to die down very gradually.
Cain, I don’t know what’s going on.
Cain took deep and easy breaths, practicing that self-same meditation he had learned while in the Iron Suit and he had to face terrifying visions every waking moment. He calmed his heart, let his mind rest at peace with the world, and breathed deeply. I know you can do this. For me, Ambrose. Do this for me.
As if a switch had been flicked, the wind immediately stopped dead and when Cain opened his eyes, there wasn’t even a hint of a storm on the horizon. He stared at Raw in wonder and confusion for all of a second before his attention was caught up in the fact that Ambrose had just collapsed. Cain was swift about collecting him in his arms, slowly comforting him on the ground and checking his pulse.
To their side, Zero looked almost frightened -- and not just because Jeb had a gun to his head -- and Raw was looking curious. “Power unstable. Unsteady. Dark. Dark and unleashed.”
Cain could feel Ambrose breathing and that was the one thing keeping him from finding someone who could immediately give them answers. All the men from their small camp were beginning to crowd them now for explanations.
“Ambrose,” Raw started to speak quietly and hesitantly, words meant for Cain only, “could die.”
“Not with me around,” Cain insisted and he meant it more literally than he ever had before. If he could help stop a gods-damned twister, he could keep Ambrose from slipping off. At least, with Raw’s help. He swallowed hard and gave one nod to Raw. “Thanks,” he said, hushed.
“Raw can’t do alone. Needed Cain.”
And Cain needed Raw to help keep Ambrose alive.
And they needed answers.
tbc