TM AU Fic: Lights & Shadows; 1/2
Title: Lights & Shadows
Author: Trystan
Spoilers: entire series
Rating: Part 1 - R
Warnings: AU alert!
Pairings: Cain/Adora; Cain/OFC; Cain/DG
Word Count: Part 1 - 2,384
Notable Credits: my betas are awesome!! aphrodite33, bodgei, buffybot76, cg_chevygirl, magickboxgirl and raloria. Cain is not mine, although goddess knows I wish he was. I stole another title; this one is from a Europe song.
Author’s Notes: damn voices.... again! And *whimper* the AU voices that I fought off for so long.... *sigh* also, since I’ve been reading more Tin Man fanfic than is good for me, some themes may have come from fanon, not canon. My apologies if I borrowed your thoughts and you didn’t want me to.
Summary: Wyatt Cain and a team of Tin Men are sent to scout out along the southern border. The assignment is only supposed to last a few weeks, but when there’s no word for over three months, the news appears grim.
The Double Eclipse was over, and the witch was defeated. The O.Z. needed order restored, the Queen had returned the throne, and she and her Consort ruled the land fairly. However, not everyone favored the return of the Queen, and there were skirmishes and border disputes constantly.
A few weeks after the Double Eclipse, the Queen had reinstated the Tin Men units, and assigned several regiments to the palace as personal security. There was bound to be doubt and mistrust about the elder princess, Azkadellia, whom the witch had possessed during her reign.
There was concern for the younger princess, DG, who until recently lived in Kansas, and now had returned to the O.Z. to save her birth land from the darkness the witch had planned. She had returned to the Other Side on two occasions, each time returning with more of her belongings that she insisted she could not live without - including her motorbike.
It was requested that DG try to adopt some of the customs and clothing styles of the O.Z. when she appeared in public, and sometimes she actually did. When she was not required to be at meetings with her parents or any visiting dignitaries, she was working on her bike. Before Cain left for his assignment, he’d told her he would try to find gasoline from Central City that her bike could run on.
Cain... she thought wistfully as she worked on her bike that afternoon out in a shaded area of the palace grounds. She hadn’t spent as much time with her friends as she’d have liked since the day the light returned. Glitch was back with the Queen, as he was once again her Advisor. Raw was the court’s Viewer. Cain was... on assignment somewhere. He told her it was somewhere along the southern edge of the Realm, and didn’t know how long he’d be gone.
She hadn’t meant to count, but before she left her rooms earlier, she looked through the little diary she kept by her bed. Today was day 100. Shouldn’t he have sent word? Some kind of status report as to what was happening?
She stood up from where she was crouching, tinkering with the bike. She was just about to swing her leg over the bike again when one of her mother’s messengers rode up on horseback.
“Princess DG,” he said, tilting his head down in deference to her.
She put her leg down and just sighed.
“The queen wishes an audience with you. Once you are ...” the messenger looked her over, “... presentable.” And he rode off.
“Great,” she muttered. Seeing the sky was turning cloudy, she grabbed a cloth car cover she’d brought back and covered her bike with it. On her way back to the palace, she stood facing south, pretending she could see Cain and his men returning home. She suddenly identified with all the wives throughout time who’d wait for their husbands to come home from war, never knowing.
She missed him terribly. It sucked.
~*~
It was supposed to be a simple assignment: patrol the southern borders for a few weeks to make sure there were no Longcoat camps or factions still loyal to the old witch hiding in the forests along the edge of the O.Z. In his more than 40 annuals alive, he should have known better. Nothing was ever “easy,” and this was no exception.
Sure, he’d heard stories growing up about monsters and evil creatures lurking in the dark, or under his bed. Every child grew up thinking if he’s bad a mobat will carry him or her off for dinner.
There were only six of them on this assignment. They left from Finaqua a few days after the witch was defeated, and were told to report back to the royal palace after three or four weeks. He could handle that. At least Zero was still safe in the palace’s prisons, awaiting his hearing.
At first, it was relatively easy. They set up a schedule of when to patrol, sleep, and keep the watch. As the tedium set in near the end of the first week, he found himself dreaming of a blue-eyed, raven-haired princess. In her quest to find her parents, and his quest to find the man who destroyed his family, they became quite close.
And now she was haunting his dreams.
The night at the end of that first week, he had the First Watch. It was quiet the entire shift, and when it was over, he went to wake David Smithfield, the man relieving him. Before he could nudge the other man, something swooped out of the trees, attacked the back of his neck, and flew off again. He put his hand on his neck, which felt wet. The damn thing had drawn blood.
And then it attacked again. This time, it attacked Smithfield, and the others. The only thing he and the men could do was to remain low, cover their heads, and try not to get pecked. Or clawed, or bit, by whatever it was. There was a chilling screech in the air, and suddenly there were about two dozen creatures attacking them.
He looked up as best he could to see the others covering themselves with their arms, coats, hats, anything they could - but he only counted four others. Where was Christianson?
“Mike!!” he called, screaming, as he ran, dodging whatever those creatures were, towards Michael Christianson’s bedroll. It wouldn’t have mattered - Christianson was a bloody mess, and all he could do was cover the dead comrade with his coat.
What in the name of the Grey Gale are these things? he wondered, and dared look skyward when he thought they were gone. The last thing he saw was what looked like a very small mobat before it flew straight at him, knocking him backwards. He hit his head on a tree root, and then there was blackness.
*
He sat up groggily - what were those things? - and looked around. The woods were quiet again. Too quiet, he realized, and reached for his gun. It wasn’t in his holster, nor was it on the ground next to him. He stood up and looked around, but Smithfield, the others, and even Christianson’s body were no where to be found.
He turned back to look again for his gun, and was face to face with ... Adora?
“What - what’s going on here? Adora? Is that really you?” He thought he saw her façade waiver in the mist, revealing her true face. She was making him see what he wanted.
She reached up and cupped his cheek in her palm. She smiled, but did not speak. Instead, she brought his face down to hers, and kissed him on the lips. He put his arms around her waist and pulled her to him, molding her to his body.
Their tongues touched, and he felt his own body respond. She moaned into him, he deepened the kiss. He felt her arms go around his neck. His hands slid to her hips where they rested for a moment, but then he felt something sharp against his tongue, and then he tasted blood.
He ended the kiss and pulled away from her, the blood taste still in his mouth. She parted her lips to reveal a pair of pointed incisors, and she ran her tongue over them seductively. He tried to pull back, but she brought him to her, and gently kissed his lips, cheek, and trailed kisses to the tender part of his neck.
He felt her lips there one moment, and then pain as her fangs punctured the tender skin. She drank, and he could no longer stand. He sank to his knees. Still she did not stop drinking. Only when his eyes closed and head drooped forward did she release him.
Using her fang, she cut her own wrist and pressed it to his lips. She held him lovingly as the blood roused him, and he began to drink. As he did so, he heard her voice in his head, telling him, teaching him, what he now was.
His mind was muddled, cloudy; all he could see was red haze. Nothing was making sense. He was tired and needed sleep. Her voice in his mind told him the sleep was healing, but never to be in the sunlight. And if he didn’t feed the bloodlust, it could drive him mad. He was a creature of the dark now.
He clung to her, simply accepting all she’d said. He’d make sense of it all out when he awoke. She gently took her wrist away. He was still drinking greedily and wanted more. She replaced her wrist with her lips and kissed away the blood on his. She put her hands on his cheeks and caressed his lips with the tip of her thumb.
“I never stopped loving you, Wyatt,” she whispered, and he opened his eyes again. Her gold eyes never left his face. She helped him stand so he could move to a darker part of the forest and take cover safe from the sunlight.
“Remember all I told you,” she thought into his mind, lightly touched his lips with hers, and melted into the mist.
*
It was dark when he woke from the oddest dream he could ever remember. He was under some thick underbrush, and had no recollection of how he got there. He remembered being attacked by little mobats of sorts - no, these were just the “bat” part of the creature.
And - Adora? - no, that couldn’t be true. Jeb had told him she was gone. That was it then, it had to be a dream. Until he reached up and touched his neck. It was sticky, and his hand came away with a red substance on it. He knew it was blood.
He climbed out from under the branches, twigs, leaves and things, and looked around. Somehow he knew it was nighttime, but he could see the woods as if it were light out. He noted the surroundings and location of his shelter, and left the area to find his men.
When he found the original camp, the other five were dead, and it looked like they’d been attacked by wild animals. Who would ever believe the truth it was bats? At the sight of the blood, something happened that made his stomach turn. He felt his teeth grow into the sharp pointed fangs that She had. He could not think of her as his Adora.
But - good gods - the hunger was unbearable. He remembered her saying he’d go mad if he didn’t feed. But not this. He stalked off in search of prey elsewhere that first night.
He kept track of the days. On Day 30, the end of his original assignment, he made plans to return to the royal palace. But how would he explain the loss of his team? A blood-sucking creature killed them all? The royal family would have him taken away, and he would be the one with a zipper in his head.
The first search party came for him ten days later.
It wasn’t so much a search party, rather three scouts sent out - probably from the royal palace - to report back in just a few days. That night, while they slept, he drained them all. Afterwards, he sat on a tree stump and felt disgusted, repulsed by what he’d done; the monster he’d become.
Part of him marveled at how free he felt. He could hear the night, feel the sounds, taste the air. It was refreshing in an odd way. Eight annuals he was trapped, confined to the dark. Now, while he knew he would never again see the sunlight, he would rule that dark.
He buried the bodies in the woods, and waited for the next group to come looking.
One afternoon, something startled him awake. Slowly, tentatively, he reached his fingers towards the light that was creeping into his dark hideaway. When his fingertips started to smolder, he pulled them back in horror.
Over the weeks he remained in the woods and the surrounding area, he hunted, fed off the creatures that no one had even heard of beyond a scary bedtime story. He learned to control himself, so that he didn’t drain any animals completely, but rather pace himself. It took some time for a warm-blooded creature to replace the blood, and he learned to vary his prey so there were no unexplained deaths.
He slowly moved north, calculating his moves so he would not be caught unawares when the sun rose. He chose his shelters wisely, and roamed the nights, feeding like a wild animal. But his looks had not changed since that day he set out on that first assignment. He’d realized he no longer had to shave, trim his hair, or be bothered with most actions necessary before his change.
He figured it was about the 65th day he’d been gone when he encountered another search party in the woods near Finaqua. By this time, it was not as troublesome to feed off these two men as it had been the first time.
If he took a circuitous route, he could be back at the palace in another month or so. By then, the rumors that something disastrous had happened would be rampant throughout the O.Z. - if they hadn’t already begun.
It was another 25 days before he met up with two more men, heading south in search of the patrol that should have been back two months ago. These scouts never made it home either.
By this time, he was only a day’s ride from the palace, and was able to observe comings and goings to the royal home. He had learned over the past 100 days that he did not have to hide in the dark during the day as long as he never touched the sunlight.
And so, his heart soared the day he saw DG riding on that motor bike of hers she’d brought back from the Other Side. He watched her from afar as she worked on the machinery, fine-tuning it so it purred ever-so-softly. When he saw the Queen’s messenger talking with her, she frowned, and he wondered how bad the news would be.
continued in Part Two
***
Tin Man Fan Fiction
For entertainment only
© 2008 by Caren Franco
Only is the messenger, David Smithfield and Michael Christianson are original. Beta-read by Aphrodite, Bodge, BuffyBot76, ChevyGirl, MagickBoxGirl and Raloria. DG, Wyatt, Adora and Jeb Cain, Glitch/Ambrose, Zero, Raw, Azkadellia, Queen Lavender Eyes, Ahamo, Tutor, Finaqua, mobats, the Grey Gale, the Mystic Man, Central City, Sin District Square, the woman on the corner, and the O. Z. were created by Steven Long Mitchell, Craig Van Sickle, Nick Willing, Robert Halmi, Sr., Robert Halmi, Jr., Imagiquest Entertainment, RHI Entertainment, and the Sci-Fi Channel; inspired by L. Frank Baum. The Princess Bride; the Good-Parts Version, by William Goldman, ©1973.
~
Author: Trystan
Spoilers: entire series
Rating: Part 1 - R
Warnings: AU alert!
Pairings: Cain/Adora; Cain/OFC; Cain/DG
Word Count: Part 1 - 2,384
Notable Credits: my betas are awesome!! aphrodite33, bodgei, buffybot76, cg_chevygirl, magickboxgirl and raloria. Cain is not mine, although goddess knows I wish he was. I stole another title; this one is from a Europe song.
Author’s Notes: damn voices.... again! And *whimper* the AU voices that I fought off for so long.... *sigh* also, since I’ve been reading more Tin Man fanfic than is good for me, some themes may have come from fanon, not canon. My apologies if I borrowed your thoughts and you didn’t want me to.
Summary: Wyatt Cain and a team of Tin Men are sent to scout out along the southern border. The assignment is only supposed to last a few weeks, but when there’s no word for over three months, the news appears grim.
The Double Eclipse was over, and the witch was defeated. The O.Z. needed order restored, the Queen had returned the throne, and she and her Consort ruled the land fairly. However, not everyone favored the return of the Queen, and there were skirmishes and border disputes constantly.
A few weeks after the Double Eclipse, the Queen had reinstated the Tin Men units, and assigned several regiments to the palace as personal security. There was bound to be doubt and mistrust about the elder princess, Azkadellia, whom the witch had possessed during her reign.
There was concern for the younger princess, DG, who until recently lived in Kansas, and now had returned to the O.Z. to save her birth land from the darkness the witch had planned. She had returned to the Other Side on two occasions, each time returning with more of her belongings that she insisted she could not live without - including her motorbike.
It was requested that DG try to adopt some of the customs and clothing styles of the O.Z. when she appeared in public, and sometimes she actually did. When she was not required to be at meetings with her parents or any visiting dignitaries, she was working on her bike. Before Cain left for his assignment, he’d told her he would try to find gasoline from Central City that her bike could run on.
Cain... she thought wistfully as she worked on her bike that afternoon out in a shaded area of the palace grounds. She hadn’t spent as much time with her friends as she’d have liked since the day the light returned. Glitch was back with the Queen, as he was once again her Advisor. Raw was the court’s Viewer. Cain was... on assignment somewhere. He told her it was somewhere along the southern edge of the Realm, and didn’t know how long he’d be gone.
She hadn’t meant to count, but before she left her rooms earlier, she looked through the little diary she kept by her bed. Today was day 100. Shouldn’t he have sent word? Some kind of status report as to what was happening?
She stood up from where she was crouching, tinkering with the bike. She was just about to swing her leg over the bike again when one of her mother’s messengers rode up on horseback.
“Princess DG,” he said, tilting his head down in deference to her.
She put her leg down and just sighed.
“The queen wishes an audience with you. Once you are ...” the messenger looked her over, “... presentable.” And he rode off.
“Great,” she muttered. Seeing the sky was turning cloudy, she grabbed a cloth car cover she’d brought back and covered her bike with it. On her way back to the palace, she stood facing south, pretending she could see Cain and his men returning home. She suddenly identified with all the wives throughout time who’d wait for their husbands to come home from war, never knowing.
She missed him terribly. It sucked.
~*~
It was supposed to be a simple assignment: patrol the southern borders for a few weeks to make sure there were no Longcoat camps or factions still loyal to the old witch hiding in the forests along the edge of the O.Z. In his more than 40 annuals alive, he should have known better. Nothing was ever “easy,” and this was no exception.
Sure, he’d heard stories growing up about monsters and evil creatures lurking in the dark, or under his bed. Every child grew up thinking if he’s bad a mobat will carry him or her off for dinner.
There were only six of them on this assignment. They left from Finaqua a few days after the witch was defeated, and were told to report back to the royal palace after three or four weeks. He could handle that. At least Zero was still safe in the palace’s prisons, awaiting his hearing.
At first, it was relatively easy. They set up a schedule of when to patrol, sleep, and keep the watch. As the tedium set in near the end of the first week, he found himself dreaming of a blue-eyed, raven-haired princess. In her quest to find her parents, and his quest to find the man who destroyed his family, they became quite close.
And now she was haunting his dreams.
The night at the end of that first week, he had the First Watch. It was quiet the entire shift, and when it was over, he went to wake David Smithfield, the man relieving him. Before he could nudge the other man, something swooped out of the trees, attacked the back of his neck, and flew off again. He put his hand on his neck, which felt wet. The damn thing had drawn blood.
And then it attacked again. This time, it attacked Smithfield, and the others. The only thing he and the men could do was to remain low, cover their heads, and try not to get pecked. Or clawed, or bit, by whatever it was. There was a chilling screech in the air, and suddenly there were about two dozen creatures attacking them.
He looked up as best he could to see the others covering themselves with their arms, coats, hats, anything they could - but he only counted four others. Where was Christianson?
“Mike!!” he called, screaming, as he ran, dodging whatever those creatures were, towards Michael Christianson’s bedroll. It wouldn’t have mattered - Christianson was a bloody mess, and all he could do was cover the dead comrade with his coat.
What in the name of the Grey Gale are these things? he wondered, and dared look skyward when he thought they were gone. The last thing he saw was what looked like a very small mobat before it flew straight at him, knocking him backwards. He hit his head on a tree root, and then there was blackness.
*
He sat up groggily - what were those things? - and looked around. The woods were quiet again. Too quiet, he realized, and reached for his gun. It wasn’t in his holster, nor was it on the ground next to him. He stood up and looked around, but Smithfield, the others, and even Christianson’s body were no where to be found.
He turned back to look again for his gun, and was face to face with ... Adora?
“What - what’s going on here? Adora? Is that really you?” He thought he saw her façade waiver in the mist, revealing her true face. She was making him see what he wanted.
She reached up and cupped his cheek in her palm. She smiled, but did not speak. Instead, she brought his face down to hers, and kissed him on the lips. He put his arms around her waist and pulled her to him, molding her to his body.
Their tongues touched, and he felt his own body respond. She moaned into him, he deepened the kiss. He felt her arms go around his neck. His hands slid to her hips where they rested for a moment, but then he felt something sharp against his tongue, and then he tasted blood.
He ended the kiss and pulled away from her, the blood taste still in his mouth. She parted her lips to reveal a pair of pointed incisors, and she ran her tongue over them seductively. He tried to pull back, but she brought him to her, and gently kissed his lips, cheek, and trailed kisses to the tender part of his neck.
He felt her lips there one moment, and then pain as her fangs punctured the tender skin. She drank, and he could no longer stand. He sank to his knees. Still she did not stop drinking. Only when his eyes closed and head drooped forward did she release him.
Using her fang, she cut her own wrist and pressed it to his lips. She held him lovingly as the blood roused him, and he began to drink. As he did so, he heard her voice in his head, telling him, teaching him, what he now was.
His mind was muddled, cloudy; all he could see was red haze. Nothing was making sense. He was tired and needed sleep. Her voice in his mind told him the sleep was healing, but never to be in the sunlight. And if he didn’t feed the bloodlust, it could drive him mad. He was a creature of the dark now.
He clung to her, simply accepting all she’d said. He’d make sense of it all out when he awoke. She gently took her wrist away. He was still drinking greedily and wanted more. She replaced her wrist with her lips and kissed away the blood on his. She put her hands on his cheeks and caressed his lips with the tip of her thumb.
“I never stopped loving you, Wyatt,” she whispered, and he opened his eyes again. Her gold eyes never left his face. She helped him stand so he could move to a darker part of the forest and take cover safe from the sunlight.
“Remember all I told you,” she thought into his mind, lightly touched his lips with hers, and melted into the mist.
*
It was dark when he woke from the oddest dream he could ever remember. He was under some thick underbrush, and had no recollection of how he got there. He remembered being attacked by little mobats of sorts - no, these were just the “bat” part of the creature.
And - Adora? - no, that couldn’t be true. Jeb had told him she was gone. That was it then, it had to be a dream. Until he reached up and touched his neck. It was sticky, and his hand came away with a red substance on it. He knew it was blood.
He climbed out from under the branches, twigs, leaves and things, and looked around. Somehow he knew it was nighttime, but he could see the woods as if it were light out. He noted the surroundings and location of his shelter, and left the area to find his men.
When he found the original camp, the other five were dead, and it looked like they’d been attacked by wild animals. Who would ever believe the truth it was bats? At the sight of the blood, something happened that made his stomach turn. He felt his teeth grow into the sharp pointed fangs that She had. He could not think of her as his Adora.
But - good gods - the hunger was unbearable. He remembered her saying he’d go mad if he didn’t feed. But not this. He stalked off in search of prey elsewhere that first night.
He kept track of the days. On Day 30, the end of his original assignment, he made plans to return to the royal palace. But how would he explain the loss of his team? A blood-sucking creature killed them all? The royal family would have him taken away, and he would be the one with a zipper in his head.
The first search party came for him ten days later.
It wasn’t so much a search party, rather three scouts sent out - probably from the royal palace - to report back in just a few days. That night, while they slept, he drained them all. Afterwards, he sat on a tree stump and felt disgusted, repulsed by what he’d done; the monster he’d become.
Part of him marveled at how free he felt. He could hear the night, feel the sounds, taste the air. It was refreshing in an odd way. Eight annuals he was trapped, confined to the dark. Now, while he knew he would never again see the sunlight, he would rule that dark.
He buried the bodies in the woods, and waited for the next group to come looking.
One afternoon, something startled him awake. Slowly, tentatively, he reached his fingers towards the light that was creeping into his dark hideaway. When his fingertips started to smolder, he pulled them back in horror.
Over the weeks he remained in the woods and the surrounding area, he hunted, fed off the creatures that no one had even heard of beyond a scary bedtime story. He learned to control himself, so that he didn’t drain any animals completely, but rather pace himself. It took some time for a warm-blooded creature to replace the blood, and he learned to vary his prey so there were no unexplained deaths.
He slowly moved north, calculating his moves so he would not be caught unawares when the sun rose. He chose his shelters wisely, and roamed the nights, feeding like a wild animal. But his looks had not changed since that day he set out on that first assignment. He’d realized he no longer had to shave, trim his hair, or be bothered with most actions necessary before his change.
He figured it was about the 65th day he’d been gone when he encountered another search party in the woods near Finaqua. By this time, it was not as troublesome to feed off these two men as it had been the first time.
If he took a circuitous route, he could be back at the palace in another month or so. By then, the rumors that something disastrous had happened would be rampant throughout the O.Z. - if they hadn’t already begun.
It was another 25 days before he met up with two more men, heading south in search of the patrol that should have been back two months ago. These scouts never made it home either.
By this time, he was only a day’s ride from the palace, and was able to observe comings and goings to the royal home. He had learned over the past 100 days that he did not have to hide in the dark during the day as long as he never touched the sunlight.
And so, his heart soared the day he saw DG riding on that motor bike of hers she’d brought back from the Other Side. He watched her from afar as she worked on the machinery, fine-tuning it so it purred ever-so-softly. When he saw the Queen’s messenger talking with her, she frowned, and he wondered how bad the news would be.
continued in Part Two
***
Tin Man Fan Fiction
For entertainment only
© 2008 by Caren Franco
Only is the messenger, David Smithfield and Michael Christianson are original. Beta-read by Aphrodite, Bodge, BuffyBot76, ChevyGirl, MagickBoxGirl and Raloria. DG, Wyatt, Adora and Jeb Cain, Glitch/Ambrose, Zero, Raw, Azkadellia, Queen Lavender Eyes, Ahamo, Tutor, Finaqua, mobats, the Grey Gale, the Mystic Man, Central City, Sin District Square, the woman on the corner, and the O. Z. were created by Steven Long Mitchell, Craig Van Sickle, Nick Willing, Robert Halmi, Sr., Robert Halmi, Jr., Imagiquest Entertainment, RHI Entertainment, and the Sci-Fi Channel; inspired by L. Frank Baum. The Princess Bride; the Good-Parts Version, by William Goldman, ©1973.
~