"Only Cowards Stay While Traitors Run"
Title: Only Cowards Stay While Traitors Run
Author: Rissy James
Characters: Cain, DG, Glitch, Raw (appearances by: Jeb, Tutor, Lavender, Azkadellia, Ahamo)
Pairing: Cain/DG
Rating: 14+ (subject to change)
Summary: The fade to black was merely the blink of an eye. Respite for only seconds. After all, the road is long.
Only Cowards Stay While Traitors Run
When Last We Met: Tension is mounting as the days in Central City stretch on. Cain, knowing his feelings for DG are being used to gain his aid, is unsure of his place in Central City. He awaits conformation that the time has come to take DG, along with Glitch and Raw, out of the city and out of the decreasingly imminent danger's way.
Chapter Seven: Writing on the Wall
Hurry up, and wait.
Central City was beginning to weigh heavily on Wyatt Cain's spirit. The long days of shadow and filtered sunslight played tricks with his eyes. The constant hum of the urban sprawl pounded inside his skull day and night. There was no rest to be found in the Central Palace. If he slept, he dreamed of the iron suit; he'd awaken comforted by the familiar ache in his chest, and that left him feeling rattled and alone.
He knew he wasn't the only one feeling the pressure of the brick and brass bearing down on him. Raw had taken to hiding, and Cain often wished he were able to do the same, but he did not share the Viewer's empathetic handicap, and couldn't make the same excuses.
Day passed into uneventful day. The stack of reports and inquiries on his desk began to grow; minor incidents of vandalism, arson, assaults on known supporters of the queen. A curfew came into effect in the Central district; through their own form of passive protest, the men and women who stood at the gates day and night in recognition of Lavender refused to obey. Candles burned throughout the night.
Hurry up, and wait.
Life in the palace began to shift imperceptibly; if Cain hadn't had so much time on his hands, he wouldn't have noticed it. He took to watching, and he wasn't the only one.
Glitch hadn't cracked an abstract insult at him in days. The mutt began to look as haggard and forlorn as he'd been fresh out of the Sorceress' dungeon. DG began to spend less time with her mother, and she gained herself a shiny new escort, a round-faced corporal who didn't know the first thing about keeping up with her, let alone protecting her. There were other changes that caught him by surprise; it took two days to notice he hadn't been seeing anyone resembling a physician or healer on the palace grounds. His request for an audience with Lavender was denied.
Hurry up, and wait.
Every last detail of their departure was planned, ready to be executed. He hated being on the ready at all times; his nerves seemed to be fraying with each day that passed.
Raw stayed secluded. Glitch forced himself into blissful distraction. And DG... DG still had no idea her friends were waiting for the order to smuggle her out and hide her deep in Lake Country. What else she was thinking, doing, how she was coping, he didn't know. She didn't want him to.
If he looked back, Cain would always be able to pinpoint the moment he knew - down to his very marrow knew - that he was in over his head. The moment was so insignificant, but with the pristine clarity of hindsight, he would always be surprised with himself that he hadn't recognized then the sign for what it was.
He'd stopped at DG's suite after dinner with the intention of cornering her once again with questions. It didn't occur to him that it was growing late, or that he might not be welcome. All his patience was wearing thin, there was little left for tiptoeing around the tiny forgivenesses she'd granted him. He was beyond caring if he overstepped his bounds.
Her new shadow was stationed in the hall, and Cain gave the kid a once-over glance. "She still awake?" he asked, hating that propriety demanded he curb his actions.
"Yes, sir."
Without waiting, Cain rapped sharply on the door with his knuckles - a mere formality - then entered the room and shut the door behind him before DG had been able to give a response. That he might be interrupting her sketching, or dozing, or weeping, it didn't quite matter.
He found her reading. The tome propped up in her lap looked to weigh a solid four kilos. Now, Cain generally wasn't too fond of old books, their cracked leather or musty pages. After annuals spent in the company of the Mystic Man, he'd come to adopt the opinion that the older and dustier a book was, the more he did not want to know what was written inside.
And the table next to her was stacked high and deep with them.
"You'd better be here for no reason at all," she said; she didn't look up from her book. "I've retired for the evening, and that means I'm not dealing with any more drama until tomorrow morning." These last two words, she said especially firmly.
Cain smiled to himself. He had no doubt that he could coerce her into talking with him; her cloudy mood just meant it would take a bit longer to warm her up.
"Why is the boy in the hall?"
DG looked momentarily puzzled, but realization widened her eyes. "Him? Well -"
He cut her off. "You like company, Kiddo; I haven't ever known you to volunteer to be by yourself." She'd rather have someone there to ignore than be completely alone. The girl before him was so much like himself that it unnerved him.
"We all like our space," she said; the words weren't said nastily, but they were aimed to hurt; he wasn't about to let her deflect his concerns with her petty baiting.
"I'll make sure to give it to you," he said, and, true to his word, he sat down - again, without invitation - close to the door, as far from her as was possible without moving into the other room. "What are you reading?"
"'A Sometimes Fabricated but Mostly Accurate History of the Outer Zone,'" she said. She hefted the book out of her lap with a grunt to show him the cover, but the lettering was so faded and angular that he couldn't read it; he was going to have to take her word that she wasn't pulling his leg.
"You skipped dinner."
She looked up. "I didn't, I ate."
"Didn't ask if you'd eaten. I said 'you skipped dinner'."
"You know, they hired someone to watch out for me," she said, "I don't need you keeping tabs, too."
Cain glanced back toward the door. "How's the kid working out, anyway?"
"All right, I guess," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "He said he was a scout in the Resistance. He's nice; a little on the shifty side, but -" She sighed, and shook her head. "I don't need protecting."
"I know that, and I'd wager your sister does, too," he said, being careful not to go riling her up. "But it's putting someone's mind at ease to have you safe."
DG hid the glower on her face behind a curtain of dark hair as she bowed her head over her book again. "Well, as long as someone's mind is at ease, right?"
He didn't answer her; she wasn't expecting one. Silence settled over them; as much as he hated to admit it, sitting with her in the quiet of her room was just about the most comfortable and relaxed he'd been in a long while. He didn't care to think back on all the occasions since arriving in Central that he'd sat awkwardly waiting for words that weren't coming, action that never wanted to happen.
DG's focus on her book was intense; he could almost have sworn he could hear the scrape of her eyes over the pages. She'd shut him out completely, and he was all right with that. He didn't need to go coaxing at her when he knew it would only send her scurrying to get out of his line of fire - or preparing for a volley. He wasn't about to give her opportunity to pick his brain; it was the last place he needed anyone, DG especially.
To keep his attention away from her, lest she catch him looking, he let his eyes wander. Little had changed since he'd last been in her sitting room, the night the tension had boiled over; like the mess he'd found that night, everything around him seemed to have quieted some, resuming what one could almost assume as normalcy. Cabinet doors were shut, no longer spilling their contents; the curtains were modestly drawn, despite the emerald-tinted privacy glass; aside from the stack of books next to DG, nothing in the room seemed out of place - except, of course, for the girl herself. She was airy, summer cotton against the elaborately-woven brocade of her rooms.
Cain sighed heavily at himself, closing his eyes in annoyance. When the hell did you get so lyrical, Wyatt? You been in this palace too long. Get out, and do it soon.
When he looked up, DG was staring at him. "What's the matter?" she asked, more suspicious than genuinely concerned; he supposed, considering their situation, that was to be expected.
"Not much the matter," he said; who had said lying was as easy as breathing? The guilt he felt near clenched his throat shut. "Just wondering what the mutt was thinking to pile all this reading on you."
"I'm not reading this for Tutor," she said; she glanced down once more at the tome in her lap, as if making a decision. She seemed to come round to it after a few moments, as she let the book fall closed and she set it precariously on top of the others. "I don't think he'd like it if he knew I had them."
Cain frowned; he remembered her giving him a similar answer when he'd caught her practising her shadow magics outside the palace walls. "Where did the books come from, DG?"
"Around," she said vaguely.
He chuckled. "Around where? You were talking not three days ago about a definite shortage in big old books."
"These aren't books that are going to help my mother," she said slowly. "There are just... theology, history. Mythology. All about the past, which the Sorceress never had any interest in. Erase it, remember? These books have... questionable reliability, which is probably why they survived the purge. Anyway, my sources are limited."
"Then where did these come from?" he asked again.
A rueful grin overtook DG's face. "The Seeker, of course."
Cain nodded, trying not to smile himself. It made sense; why would the father, who had come from the Otherworld, not do all in his power to help his daughter understand the world she'd been taken from? In the weeks following the eclipse, DG's thirst for knowledge had gotten her into trouble more than once as she asked the wrong questions to the wrong people; it wasn't just the recent past DG wanted to know about, although there were those who resented her for wanting to dredge up all the pain and suffering of the war annuals.
"Have you managed to learn anything?" he asked; he thought back to the title of the book she'd been reading, and sincerely questioned it.
"Nothing that I couldn't have learned from the fossil of a historian Mother wanted to tutor me," she said, and the smile on her face widened, brightening her eyes. "I don't go much for classroom structure."
Cain shook his head, hiding his smile with his head bowed as he stood out of his chair. "Why doesn't that surprise me, darlin'?" His breathing stopped short at the unbidden endearment tumbled out of his mouth before he could grit his teeth against it. It was easy to brush it off, pretend the word hadn't frozen them both in place, but the moment lingered between them long after they'd moved onto much more important matters.
"So why did you come to see me?" she asked him, her voice softening a bit toward him as he wandered the periphery of her room. His feet wanted to move, to run, but he wasn't about to head out when she was starting to open up to him, even if it was his own asinine mistake that had it happening. "Was it just to scold me for leaving my new shadow in the hallway?"
"If he knew any better, he wouldn't listen to you."
She scowled at him, looking torn between hurt and anger. "So you came to patronise me, then?"
"I already told you why I came," he said. "You missed dinner, I came to check up on you."
"You could've asked anyone where I was. This entire place knows about it the minute I sneeze." Her gaze was relentless and full of expectation; he felt himself chafing under the intensity of her. It vexed him to no end how one girl could affect him so entirely, and it left him wondering about the damage she could cause to him if he ever let her in to have her rampant way. She was young; she loved wholly, without restraint or reservation. She had love enough to destroy them both. Could it really be so foolish of him to so readily court destruction's end?
"I didn't want to ask anyone else," he said matter-of-factly; it sent her eyes skipping away.
She rewarded his honesty with her own. "I didn't feel like sitting through dinner with everyone."
"And why's that?" There was no empathy in his voice, just curiosity; he wanted to know what could distress the kid so much that she couldn't repeat her daily dinner performance, pretending that she was interested in the moment instead of worrying about uncertain future. For her sister and father, for her friends, for perfect strangers.
DG opened her mouth to answer him, but stopped herself short. She paused long with her lips screwed up into a frown; whatever she was thinking back on, reliving it wasn't doing her any favours. It took her a moment to focus her blue eyes on him when she finally decided to look up.
"My mother," she said. He thought she might not say any more, as if he were supposed to immediately and completely understand what those two words encompassed. While he was sure he had a fairly good idea, Wyatt Cain couldn't exactly pride himself on knowing the princess in front of him as well as most would assume. But DG wasn't finished. "She - well, we argued this afternoon. Badly. I - you know what, never mind. It's not important."
"It's important enough," he said; he kept his distance from her, knowing better and begrudging himself for it.
"No," she said, resolute. "What's important is finding a way to help her."
Cain bit his tongue against her naïve intentions; they'd done this once before, hadn't they?
"Don't go losing your head, and forget about what's really important."
He shut his eyes tight against the memory, wanting to cut off the heartbroken, misguided response he knew was coming. When he opened his eyes once more, he saw that DG had twisted in her chair to fully face him, her fingers clutching the cushioned backrest tightly enough to anchor her in one place.
"Deege," he said uneasily; the hope in her eyes was unsettling.
"I have to help her," she said, effectively ignoring his grimace, still staring him down with those sky eyes. "She's running out of time."
He looked away from her; an uncomfortable lump was forming in the back of his throat, and he was near to choking trying to swallow it away; talking around it seemed impossible. He didn't want to crush her by demanding she see the despair of her situation; who was he to do that to her?
"She's still fading," she said quietly. "Doctor can't fix her; Viewer can't heal her. Magic could save her; it saved me."
Something inside Cain went cold. "DG, I don't think talking -"
Crossing her arms across her chest, she turned away from him. "Right, right, talking doesn't solve anything. Do you want me to pray to broken gods, too? Or wait for help that doesn't come from powers that abandoned the O.Z. centuries ago?"
"A little praying might not be such a bad idea."
He cursed himself as her shoulders sank and she hugged herself all the tighter. She glanced over her shoulder, her face pale and unreadable.
"How are you supposed to know when things are out of your hands?" she asked him steadily.
"I reckon you just do. Just like being in love, there isn't anyone that can tell you different than what you feel."
The tiniest smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, so fleeting that he might've imagined it. That brief slide of happiness across her lips amidst the anguish that tucked in her cheeks and weighed down her lashes; that sign he should have known as the harbinger of his undoing. There and then gone, leaving him enveloped, clumsy and clueless, in the warmth of its wake.
Table Of Contents
One - Two - Three - Four - Five
Six - Seven - Eight - Nine - Ten
Eleven - Twelve - Thirteen - Fourteen - Fifteen
Sixteen - Seventeen - Eighteen - Nineteen - Twenty
Twenty One - Twenty Two - Twenty Three - Twenty Four - Twenty Five
Twenty Six - Twenty Seven - Twenty Eight - Twenty Nine - Thirty
Thirty One - Thirty Two - Thirty Three - Thirty Four - Thirty Five
Thirty Six - Thirty Seven - Thirty Eight - Thirty Nine - Forty