...You Don't Forget, Ch. 17/18
Title: ...You Don't Forget, Ch. 17/18 (+epilogue)
Author: blindswandive
Characters/Pairing: Ambrose/Cain; feat. various palace people
Rating: PG13 - PG16
Summary: This is a very long story that has been going on for a very long time. There are broken people and awkward relationships. There are unhappy pasts, a complicated present, and an uncertain future. There are intrigues and secrets and implications and uncertainties. There is alien hand syndrome, post traumatic stress disorder, and more petty injuries than are probably fair. There is, above all, love. And it all started with brain surgery, one time or another. I recommend starting from the beginning, or from the other beginning, depending on your tastes in beginnings (or in brain surgery).
This chapter contains dreaming, waking, separation, reunion.
Warnings: A stuffed animal and a stiff neck.
Disclaimer: Characters and Oz and O.Z. belong to Baum, SciFi, etc. Storyline/writing are mine, and I'm not turning a profit from it.
Word Count: 3386
Cross posted to glitch_wyatt.
Feedback is always, always love. Story is finally finished and will be posted approx. 1-2 chapters per day (+ epilogue) until it's all up.
Previous chapters/series:
Sixteen •
Fifteen • Fourteen • Thirteen • Twelve • Eleven • Ten • Nine • Eight • Seven • Six • Five • Four • Three • Two • One • Evil Like That (1-5)
Chapter 17
They were brought in separately. The damage each of the two had done on his own was enough, and combined, it was agreed, it would be more than the sum of its parts.
Cain was left in town, sore and uncomfortable, for another half hour after the fire was put out, while they brought around a cart, and when they bundled him in, they took the road around the wood, and a further fork to keep them off the green and away from the cottage. He couldn't even see how much of the cottage was still standing, whether the search party was still there, whether they'd all gone, whether--whether there were any bodies...
On the way, he sank further and further into himself. All he could think of was fire and smoke and Ambrose, so he tried not to think at all. He wound down until he had stopped moving altogether, and twice he was nudged to assure he was still alive and aware, and hadn't gone into some sort of attack, or catatonic stupor. He grunted each time, but nothing more.
He marched obediently (--limped, obediently) when they got him up; he sat when they sat him down, stood when they stood him up, spoke when they required, but didn't remember what he said. Maybe something about it being his fault, about leaving everyone else alone.
Maybe not.
The world closed in on him like a shell, like some cocoon of silence and torpor, and he registered little but the cell he was carried down to, and the unearthly quiet and emptiness down there in the shade. There was a dim electric light, but it seemed far away.
The bolt of the lock seemed to echo as it slid into place.
He had never felt so lonely.
***
There was emptiness.
Even in the suit... Even then, Cain had had Jeb and Adora with him, albeit in an endless loop of torture and his own impotence to help, to do anything to stop it. Here... Here, there was nothing.
It could have been peaceful. There were no screams, there was no chatter; the light made occasional crackling hums, but they were quiet, thin as fireflies in the night. A broom would sweep down along some corridor, now and then, but the sight of other bodies was rare, and sleep could have come easily on the cot. He seemed to be alone, down here.
He slept, sometimes.
He kept no track of time.
He heard no clock, no ticking of the hours, no grinding of gears. His own heartbeat was as silent to him as if it were miles away, buried in loose earth.
There was nothing. Desolate, peaceful quiet.
Cain slept, and didn't; he dreamt, and didn't.
***
Cain dreamed of Adora.
He dreamt of her hair, of her swaying with the baby on her hip while Jeb's tiny fingers curled and tangled in one of the long blonde wisps that had escaped her braid, pulling her down until she nuzzled his forehead with hers, kissed his nose, cooed and puffed at him.
He dreamed of Jeb, of his thin hands working to mold lead, to carve thin details, to paint, hands fine as his mother's. He dreamt of needles, and sewing, and sutures.
He dreamt of different hands, finer still, stitching into purple velvet, into colors like plums and leaves and berries, winding tiny screws into tinier bolts, bending fragile wires, pulling zippers and freeing buttons. He dreamt of Ambrose, and his fine hands, one obediently clutching his coat, the other plunging out into fool's errands, tangling in fabric, crushing berries, pushing on doors, grasping onto people.
He dreamt of Ambrose, leaning out of Azkadellia's window, fingers twitching on the wind where her body had been. Pushing? Grasping? He saw his own hands, folding around Azkadellia's throat, saw hers below them, fluttering and becoming still, but never clutching, never clawing.
He lurched awake. He wished he hadn't.
***
After what may have been days, or hours, or one long night or two, some semblance of life took up in his surroundings. Or if it had been creeping in already, Cain began to take some small notice of it again. Someone would pace through quietly now and again; someone would bring food. He began to hear sounds like clicking, like paper, and wondered if someone was playing cards in some room out of sight, down some thin corridor. He heard occasional chatter, low voices murmuring together about nothing important.
Nothing seemed important.
Cain wondered if the silence would have been better.
On the heels of the useless sounds, other things began to creep in; there was a dull throb in his chest, in his stomach, a feeling like sickness and gnawing. There was a pain in his shoulder that was gruesome, and it took his breath away when he moved and it caught him unawares.
He was tired; achingly, deeply tired.
Cain eventually pushed the wooden bench in his cell until the end butted up against the bars, so he could straddle it and have somewhere to lay his forehead. The bars were cool, and when he registered his skin at all, it felt hot and uncomfortable, and the cool metal helped. Laying his head forward on the bars took some of the weight off of his shoulder, and off of a back and neck now stiff as sin.
This way, too, he could watch, though there was nothing much to see.
But then, like out of a dream, there was something. Just a glimpse, in slow-motion; there was a metal grinding sound, the clink of chain, and it drew his eye to a corridor.
It was hard to tell, between the guards; the restraints were such that the shape was blurred and hard to make out, and the movement was lilting and lurching from the short lengths given at the ankles, and what seemed to be some sort of chronic state of imbalance. But the shape was familiar just the same, and the gait, however altered, the uneasy swing and twist.
And Cain could see dark hair, almost black, and a glimpse of wild black eyes.
"Ambrose," he groaned, in a thin rush.
He fancied the wild eyes did dip up to him, then, did lock onto his. He fancied there was a brief connection, and instance of unity over the distance. And then Ambrose was gone, across the corridor and away, and it was over.
But in spite of himself, Cain felt the lump, lump ticking as his impossible heart tried to pound in his chest. And all of its settled silence and stillness was undone, and he hurt all the way down to the center. It knocked the wind out of him. And when he got his breath back, he used it for sounds undignified and uncontrolled and wove an arm through the bars tightly to keep from being swallowed down by the current.
****************
There was a delay, while realization clicked into place, but Ambrose finally shouted, "Cain!" just after he lost sight of him. Or, at least, he tried; it was lost in the gag.
That, someone had tried to explain, was for his own good, since his bursts of violent ranting sometimes sounded dangerously like sedition, and that wouldn't help him any. Plus, it was keeping people up at night on the floors above, haunted by the wailing.
Very little of this had actually registered on Ambrose. Very little of anything actually present in his world had been absorbed as it was.
The shackles had been too much. The shackles, the sight of Azkadellia before him, the way his body was screaming, "Danger, run!"--it had all been too much. Ambrose had lost hold and couldn't get it back. The world was a nightmare blur of pain and terror, and he couldn't do anything but fight, but hide, but try to get away.
The fact that the binds persisted--and, indeed, naturally, increased by layers, every time he managed to injure another person--and that his surroundings were dark and dim and cell-like (in fact, a cell); the fact that there were guards, the fact that he was alone, the fact that some part of his shell-shocked brain knew Azkadellia was involved, all of it fed into the fugue state. He wept and he fought, whoever came to him, whatever was happening.
They had tried to clean his clothes; he hadn't let them. He worried at the burnt and blackened edges of a sleeve whenever he could reach it. They had tried to tend the burns on his left arm; he had tried to bite them (another reason for the gag). Everything that came to him was dangerous; everything that touched or neared was one step closer to oblivion.
He didn't eat. He didn't sleep.
After the first two days, they stopped sedating him, since the exhaustion seemed to have caught up with him. When he was weak enough, and not inclined to scream, they tried ungagging him, tried to question him, interrogate him, even to just get him to confirm his name (though they knew who he was), but rarely did his answers correspond to their questions. When they did, it seemed more by accident than design.
Eventually, they had had to give in and move him, in hopes the medics and the viewers could do something in their own space they hadn't managed here.
And that's when Cain glimpsed him; when Ambrose felt his first jolt of connection to the world, felt a panicked crumbling of some dangerous veneer from the surface of things, like the shattering of glass.
His comparatively sedate march ended. He twisted, tried to turn back, and when he couldn't, he buckled his knees, tried to break back and away, tried even just to fall to get a little closer, to get one more look at Cain.
He tried to argue through the gag--even coherently, not that they could tell--tried to beg, wanted to clasp his hands in the universal gesture of pleading, but his arms were fixed behind him and immobile. In the end, he only succeeded in falling to his knees, bowing over them in a strange resemblance of prayer, of submission.
To his escort, this was not particularly distinguishable from anything else he'd done previously, so he was hauled back up to his feet and out.
***
It was understood to be a risk to move Ambrose out through the palace. For one, he was dangerous to move and to be around; the Princess Azkadellia was recovering slowly and reluctantly under the care of the medics and healers nearby, and they'd had enough guards put out of commission as it was. For another, the palace was abuzz with very, very angry people (and some with conflicted feelings of their own), so it might not be particularly safe for him.
And for another, the Princess DG--despite seeing his involvement with her own eyes, witnessing his assaults on guards, seeing Azkadellia hidden in his home, confirming he'd lied to her and to the Inspector--was determinedly reserving judgment on the entire situation, and if she saw him being hauled through the halls in chains, she would probably cause trouble. A lot more trouble than they wanted to deal with.
But they couldn't come up with anything else to get him sobered, compliant, or non-violent, so they took the risk.
***********
The guards withered uncomfortably beneath the scrutiny of the medic. He stood, arms folded, silent as a menacing schoolteacher, eyebrows arched expectantly.
"He was--I'm sorry, this is just--out of the blue..." one began, but it died out.
Ambrose was sitting quietly--even primly--in the examination chair, fingers laced together on his knees, ankles crossed, back straight. The guards looked infinitely foolish.
They had made something of a fuss for the medic, warning him of the dangers of the former advisor, of the incoherence and ranting, of the violence. And when the gag came off, Ambrose had stood quite still and tall and asked them fairly acidly if they could please get him a glass of water, as the gag was wreaking havoc on the balance of the delicate systems of his mouth, and he'd rather not wind up with cavities over such a simple oversight. Or, for that matter, dehydrated and dead. He reminded them he had not had any water since they had stopped injecting him with it, along with their sedatives, and that soon it would reach something of a danger point.
The medic's look had clearly read, "This is unacceptable," but he had refused to say it out loud, and the guards had scrambled to explain themselves--to explain the cautions they had taken, the orders they were under. Ambrose sat back quietly, mind spinning on a giddy high of tiny triumphs while the guards dug themselves a hole, undeserved though it might have been.
"He hasn't eaten, either?" the medic confirmed.
"The blisters haven't been treated, or even examined?" he had interjected. And that was when, against their better judgments, the men had been cowed into unbinding him down to the ankles, from what looked in the filtered mirror of Ambrose's lucidity and calm like a clear case of excessive caution. Ambrose had winced and whinged tenderly when the medic had set to work soaking the fabric off of his damaged skin--the burns had grown ugly and damaged by now--but had kept up a suitably brave face, otherwise, with only a hint of sulky satisfaction.
The sight of the burns when they were uncovered was almost too much for his calm, though; blisters had torn and grown infected, terrible blotches of white and red mottled his angry forearm up to the elbow. The medic changed tactics long enough to lecture the escort on the danger of untreated burns of this size, especially when they grew infected, and informed them that, indeed, hallucinations and delirium were a sure sign of dangerous infection, and that Ambrose should have been brought in immediately, and it was a wonder he wasn't dead.
Ambrose, understandably, did not disabuse him of this notion. He was fairly sure he had been the largest obstacle to his own care, and that the wildness was of its own making, but there was too much else at stake.
He was single-minded, now. He must get back to Cain.
***
Ambrose spent the next two days in relatively low security, tethered to the sterile cot by a cuff on his right wrist (and still with a short length between his ankles--the guards had not given that one up) while he was under the care of the medics for his arm. He tried very hard not to look at the swollen blisters--especially the infected ones--when the gauze was changed and the burns were soaked, as his stomach seemed to have gone quite delicate, but he took enough glances to make sure the arm was behaving itself.
It twitched, now and then, fingers wavering in water, but he was perversely thankful that the damage seemed to have sedated it, for the time being.
When they began treating him for the infection, though, his certainty of his own health began to slip. There was a persistent, low-grade fever, they'd told him, but when his body got the help to fight it, he felt sicker than he had.
He wondered if he'd been running on momentum and adrenaline, and if--now that he was comparatively safe, comparatively sound--it was going to evaporate, and leave him in a sickly crash.
And that is, approximately, what happened.
***
The fever got worse before it got better, and two more days passed that Ambrose could frighteningly recall very little of. He found himself in the cot, now, with only the barest restraint, but as he didn't think he had the strength to stand, he entertained no brave ideas of escape.
He felt nauseous. He wasn't sure whether it was the medicine or the fear that if they hadn't brought him in, he might have after all gotten very sick, indeed.
The weakness was unbearable and frightening.
Hours disappeared at a time, without trace, and Ambrose began to fear he would slip, again, that he would lose hold and find himself back in the cell, or (worse) lost back in the dream of Azkadellia, and the years before. He cried without realizing he was doing it, tears of fever and fear.
But in a late afternoon, he woke to something soft and plushy and covered in fur, clutched in his good arm. There was a hand resting on top of it--small and pretty, with the nails chewed to the quick--and he blinked his eyes mildly until he saw DG sitting beside him, idly petting whatever stuffed animal she had brought him in his sleep.
When she saw his eyes open, she gave him a weak, brave smile.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," Ambrose tried to reply, but the sound didn't come, caught dry in his throat.
DG looked at him long with her big and curious eyes, sad and studying, and Ambrose couldn't meet it for long, looked back down to her hand, to the tawny tufts of the unidentifiable plush.
It was quiet a little too long, but finally DG moved, pulling her hand back to her lap to worry at it.
"Azkadellia won't let us help," she said, uneasily. "Can we--Raw and me--can we see about speeding this thing along?"
It took Ambrose several blurry moments to extract the promise of healing out of that, but when he did, he swallowed, swept sick with guilt, but nodded, once and twice. He hadn't even noticed Raw, tucked back and over behind his Princess.
Ambrose nodded again, forced his throat clear enough to say, "Yes," and "thank you," and when DG and Raw joined hands and came up against the cot, he closed his eyes and clutched the toy and tried not to cry anymore.
*****************
DG didn't ask him about what had happened. The healing was enough, for that; it meant that, while he wasn't at peak condition, he would be well enough to be returned to the cells, to participate in the investigation. And once Ambrose was able to clean and dress himself, shakily, in the bland and shapeless and colorless clothes they had to replace his damaged ones, his wrists were secured carefully behind his back, and he was walked back down through the palace, to the low stairway and lower corridor, to the scattering of cells that still lurked beneath.
"Can I... Can I be closer to Cain?" he heard himself asking, quietly, when they reached the bottom of the stairs.
There was a hesitation in the guard with him (not one of the ones he'd left looking foolish and cruel, thank the gods), when they reached the junction of the two small blocks. He had a mixed reputation, now, for certain. But he must have looked frail enough and tired enough and lonely enough, because after a long moment, the guard tugged Ambrose's elbow gently to the left, instead of the right.
Ambrose wordlessly stepped into the empty cell the guard opened, turned placidly so the guard could release him, and murmured a thanks along his shoulder as the man locked the door and left.
He was alone in his new cell, and there was no one to either side of him, but when he turned to grip the bars, to lean against them, he saw a sleeping figure far back in the cell across and slightly over, shadowed by the bad light, but familiar enough.
Ambrose didn't want to wake him, but he studied where Cain's bench was placed, and quietly as he could dragged his own over to a similar spot, and laid himself across it on his stomach, folding his chin on his wrists to watch the cell opposite.
The fear that had been blossoming and spreading twisted down into a tight knot in his belly, more acute and painful, but more manageable.
The reprieve of quiet and sickness would end soon. They were both here, now, healthy enough and lucid enough, and the specter of Bernhaben's investigations loomed large over him.
But if Cain was here... If Cain was close enough that Ambrose could see him, if not touch him, not with his fingers even stretched full out across the way to Cain's... that was enough.
*******
(Onto Eighteen and the Epilogue)
Author: blindswandive
Characters/Pairing: Ambrose/Cain; feat. various palace people
Rating: PG13 - PG16
Summary: This is a very long story that has been going on for a very long time. There are broken people and awkward relationships. There are unhappy pasts, a complicated present, and an uncertain future. There are intrigues and secrets and implications and uncertainties. There is alien hand syndrome, post traumatic stress disorder, and more petty injuries than are probably fair. There is, above all, love. And it all started with brain surgery, one time or another. I recommend starting from the beginning, or from the other beginning, depending on your tastes in beginnings (or in brain surgery).
This chapter contains dreaming, waking, separation, reunion.
Warnings: A stuffed animal and a stiff neck.
Disclaimer: Characters and Oz and O.Z. belong to Baum, SciFi, etc. Storyline/writing are mine, and I'm not turning a profit from it.
Word Count: 3386
Cross posted to glitch_wyatt.
Feedback is always, always love. Story is finally finished and will be posted approx. 1-2 chapters per day (+ epilogue) until it's all up.
Previous chapters/series:
Sixteen •
Fifteen • Fourteen • Thirteen • Twelve • Eleven • Ten • Nine • Eight • Seven • Six • Five • Four • Three • Two • One • Evil Like That (1-5)
Chapter 17
They were brought in separately. The damage each of the two had done on his own was enough, and combined, it was agreed, it would be more than the sum of its parts.
Cain was left in town, sore and uncomfortable, for another half hour after the fire was put out, while they brought around a cart, and when they bundled him in, they took the road around the wood, and a further fork to keep them off the green and away from the cottage. He couldn't even see how much of the cottage was still standing, whether the search party was still there, whether they'd all gone, whether--whether there were any bodies...
On the way, he sank further and further into himself. All he could think of was fire and smoke and Ambrose, so he tried not to think at all. He wound down until he had stopped moving altogether, and twice he was nudged to assure he was still alive and aware, and hadn't gone into some sort of attack, or catatonic stupor. He grunted each time, but nothing more.
He marched obediently (--limped, obediently) when they got him up; he sat when they sat him down, stood when they stood him up, spoke when they required, but didn't remember what he said. Maybe something about it being his fault, about leaving everyone else alone.
Maybe not.
The world closed in on him like a shell, like some cocoon of silence and torpor, and he registered little but the cell he was carried down to, and the unearthly quiet and emptiness down there in the shade. There was a dim electric light, but it seemed far away.
The bolt of the lock seemed to echo as it slid into place.
He had never felt so lonely.
***
There was emptiness.
Even in the suit... Even then, Cain had had Jeb and Adora with him, albeit in an endless loop of torture and his own impotence to help, to do anything to stop it. Here... Here, there was nothing.
It could have been peaceful. There were no screams, there was no chatter; the light made occasional crackling hums, but they were quiet, thin as fireflies in the night. A broom would sweep down along some corridor, now and then, but the sight of other bodies was rare, and sleep could have come easily on the cot. He seemed to be alone, down here.
He slept, sometimes.
He kept no track of time.
He heard no clock, no ticking of the hours, no grinding of gears. His own heartbeat was as silent to him as if it were miles away, buried in loose earth.
There was nothing. Desolate, peaceful quiet.
Cain slept, and didn't; he dreamt, and didn't.
***
Cain dreamed of Adora.
He dreamt of her hair, of her swaying with the baby on her hip while Jeb's tiny fingers curled and tangled in one of the long blonde wisps that had escaped her braid, pulling her down until she nuzzled his forehead with hers, kissed his nose, cooed and puffed at him.
He dreamed of Jeb, of his thin hands working to mold lead, to carve thin details, to paint, hands fine as his mother's. He dreamt of needles, and sewing, and sutures.
He dreamt of different hands, finer still, stitching into purple velvet, into colors like plums and leaves and berries, winding tiny screws into tinier bolts, bending fragile wires, pulling zippers and freeing buttons. He dreamt of Ambrose, and his fine hands, one obediently clutching his coat, the other plunging out into fool's errands, tangling in fabric, crushing berries, pushing on doors, grasping onto people.
He dreamt of Ambrose, leaning out of Azkadellia's window, fingers twitching on the wind where her body had been. Pushing? Grasping? He saw his own hands, folding around Azkadellia's throat, saw hers below them, fluttering and becoming still, but never clutching, never clawing.
He lurched awake. He wished he hadn't.
***
After what may have been days, or hours, or one long night or two, some semblance of life took up in his surroundings. Or if it had been creeping in already, Cain began to take some small notice of it again. Someone would pace through quietly now and again; someone would bring food. He began to hear sounds like clicking, like paper, and wondered if someone was playing cards in some room out of sight, down some thin corridor. He heard occasional chatter, low voices murmuring together about nothing important.
Nothing seemed important.
Cain wondered if the silence would have been better.
On the heels of the useless sounds, other things began to creep in; there was a dull throb in his chest, in his stomach, a feeling like sickness and gnawing. There was a pain in his shoulder that was gruesome, and it took his breath away when he moved and it caught him unawares.
He was tired; achingly, deeply tired.
Cain eventually pushed the wooden bench in his cell until the end butted up against the bars, so he could straddle it and have somewhere to lay his forehead. The bars were cool, and when he registered his skin at all, it felt hot and uncomfortable, and the cool metal helped. Laying his head forward on the bars took some of the weight off of his shoulder, and off of a back and neck now stiff as sin.
This way, too, he could watch, though there was nothing much to see.
But then, like out of a dream, there was something. Just a glimpse, in slow-motion; there was a metal grinding sound, the clink of chain, and it drew his eye to a corridor.
It was hard to tell, between the guards; the restraints were such that the shape was blurred and hard to make out, and the movement was lilting and lurching from the short lengths given at the ankles, and what seemed to be some sort of chronic state of imbalance. But the shape was familiar just the same, and the gait, however altered, the uneasy swing and twist.
And Cain could see dark hair, almost black, and a glimpse of wild black eyes.
"Ambrose," he groaned, in a thin rush.
He fancied the wild eyes did dip up to him, then, did lock onto his. He fancied there was a brief connection, and instance of unity over the distance. And then Ambrose was gone, across the corridor and away, and it was over.
But in spite of himself, Cain felt the lump, lump ticking as his impossible heart tried to pound in his chest. And all of its settled silence and stillness was undone, and he hurt all the way down to the center. It knocked the wind out of him. And when he got his breath back, he used it for sounds undignified and uncontrolled and wove an arm through the bars tightly to keep from being swallowed down by the current.
****************
There was a delay, while realization clicked into place, but Ambrose finally shouted, "Cain!" just after he lost sight of him. Or, at least, he tried; it was lost in the gag.
That, someone had tried to explain, was for his own good, since his bursts of violent ranting sometimes sounded dangerously like sedition, and that wouldn't help him any. Plus, it was keeping people up at night on the floors above, haunted by the wailing.
Very little of this had actually registered on Ambrose. Very little of anything actually present in his world had been absorbed as it was.
The shackles had been too much. The shackles, the sight of Azkadellia before him, the way his body was screaming, "Danger, run!"--it had all been too much. Ambrose had lost hold and couldn't get it back. The world was a nightmare blur of pain and terror, and he couldn't do anything but fight, but hide, but try to get away.
The fact that the binds persisted--and, indeed, naturally, increased by layers, every time he managed to injure another person--and that his surroundings were dark and dim and cell-like (in fact, a cell); the fact that there were guards, the fact that he was alone, the fact that some part of his shell-shocked brain knew Azkadellia was involved, all of it fed into the fugue state. He wept and he fought, whoever came to him, whatever was happening.
They had tried to clean his clothes; he hadn't let them. He worried at the burnt and blackened edges of a sleeve whenever he could reach it. They had tried to tend the burns on his left arm; he had tried to bite them (another reason for the gag). Everything that came to him was dangerous; everything that touched or neared was one step closer to oblivion.
He didn't eat. He didn't sleep.
After the first two days, they stopped sedating him, since the exhaustion seemed to have caught up with him. When he was weak enough, and not inclined to scream, they tried ungagging him, tried to question him, interrogate him, even to just get him to confirm his name (though they knew who he was), but rarely did his answers correspond to their questions. When they did, it seemed more by accident than design.
Eventually, they had had to give in and move him, in hopes the medics and the viewers could do something in their own space they hadn't managed here.
And that's when Cain glimpsed him; when Ambrose felt his first jolt of connection to the world, felt a panicked crumbling of some dangerous veneer from the surface of things, like the shattering of glass.
His comparatively sedate march ended. He twisted, tried to turn back, and when he couldn't, he buckled his knees, tried to break back and away, tried even just to fall to get a little closer, to get one more look at Cain.
He tried to argue through the gag--even coherently, not that they could tell--tried to beg, wanted to clasp his hands in the universal gesture of pleading, but his arms were fixed behind him and immobile. In the end, he only succeeded in falling to his knees, bowing over them in a strange resemblance of prayer, of submission.
To his escort, this was not particularly distinguishable from anything else he'd done previously, so he was hauled back up to his feet and out.
***
It was understood to be a risk to move Ambrose out through the palace. For one, he was dangerous to move and to be around; the Princess Azkadellia was recovering slowly and reluctantly under the care of the medics and healers nearby, and they'd had enough guards put out of commission as it was. For another, the palace was abuzz with very, very angry people (and some with conflicted feelings of their own), so it might not be particularly safe for him.
And for another, the Princess DG--despite seeing his involvement with her own eyes, witnessing his assaults on guards, seeing Azkadellia hidden in his home, confirming he'd lied to her and to the Inspector--was determinedly reserving judgment on the entire situation, and if she saw him being hauled through the halls in chains, she would probably cause trouble. A lot more trouble than they wanted to deal with.
But they couldn't come up with anything else to get him sobered, compliant, or non-violent, so they took the risk.
***********
The guards withered uncomfortably beneath the scrutiny of the medic. He stood, arms folded, silent as a menacing schoolteacher, eyebrows arched expectantly.
"He was--I'm sorry, this is just--out of the blue..." one began, but it died out.
Ambrose was sitting quietly--even primly--in the examination chair, fingers laced together on his knees, ankles crossed, back straight. The guards looked infinitely foolish.
They had made something of a fuss for the medic, warning him of the dangers of the former advisor, of the incoherence and ranting, of the violence. And when the gag came off, Ambrose had stood quite still and tall and asked them fairly acidly if they could please get him a glass of water, as the gag was wreaking havoc on the balance of the delicate systems of his mouth, and he'd rather not wind up with cavities over such a simple oversight. Or, for that matter, dehydrated and dead. He reminded them he had not had any water since they had stopped injecting him with it, along with their sedatives, and that soon it would reach something of a danger point.
The medic's look had clearly read, "This is unacceptable," but he had refused to say it out loud, and the guards had scrambled to explain themselves--to explain the cautions they had taken, the orders they were under. Ambrose sat back quietly, mind spinning on a giddy high of tiny triumphs while the guards dug themselves a hole, undeserved though it might have been.
"He hasn't eaten, either?" the medic confirmed.
"The blisters haven't been treated, or even examined?" he had interjected. And that was when, against their better judgments, the men had been cowed into unbinding him down to the ankles, from what looked in the filtered mirror of Ambrose's lucidity and calm like a clear case of excessive caution. Ambrose had winced and whinged tenderly when the medic had set to work soaking the fabric off of his damaged skin--the burns had grown ugly and damaged by now--but had kept up a suitably brave face, otherwise, with only a hint of sulky satisfaction.
The sight of the burns when they were uncovered was almost too much for his calm, though; blisters had torn and grown infected, terrible blotches of white and red mottled his angry forearm up to the elbow. The medic changed tactics long enough to lecture the escort on the danger of untreated burns of this size, especially when they grew infected, and informed them that, indeed, hallucinations and delirium were a sure sign of dangerous infection, and that Ambrose should have been brought in immediately, and it was a wonder he wasn't dead.
Ambrose, understandably, did not disabuse him of this notion. He was fairly sure he had been the largest obstacle to his own care, and that the wildness was of its own making, but there was too much else at stake.
He was single-minded, now. He must get back to Cain.
***
Ambrose spent the next two days in relatively low security, tethered to the sterile cot by a cuff on his right wrist (and still with a short length between his ankles--the guards had not given that one up) while he was under the care of the medics for his arm. He tried very hard not to look at the swollen blisters--especially the infected ones--when the gauze was changed and the burns were soaked, as his stomach seemed to have gone quite delicate, but he took enough glances to make sure the arm was behaving itself.
It twitched, now and then, fingers wavering in water, but he was perversely thankful that the damage seemed to have sedated it, for the time being.
When they began treating him for the infection, though, his certainty of his own health began to slip. There was a persistent, low-grade fever, they'd told him, but when his body got the help to fight it, he felt sicker than he had.
He wondered if he'd been running on momentum and adrenaline, and if--now that he was comparatively safe, comparatively sound--it was going to evaporate, and leave him in a sickly crash.
And that is, approximately, what happened.
***
The fever got worse before it got better, and two more days passed that Ambrose could frighteningly recall very little of. He found himself in the cot, now, with only the barest restraint, but as he didn't think he had the strength to stand, he entertained no brave ideas of escape.
He felt nauseous. He wasn't sure whether it was the medicine or the fear that if they hadn't brought him in, he might have after all gotten very sick, indeed.
The weakness was unbearable and frightening.
Hours disappeared at a time, without trace, and Ambrose began to fear he would slip, again, that he would lose hold and find himself back in the cell, or (worse) lost back in the dream of Azkadellia, and the years before. He cried without realizing he was doing it, tears of fever and fear.
But in a late afternoon, he woke to something soft and plushy and covered in fur, clutched in his good arm. There was a hand resting on top of it--small and pretty, with the nails chewed to the quick--and he blinked his eyes mildly until he saw DG sitting beside him, idly petting whatever stuffed animal she had brought him in his sleep.
When she saw his eyes open, she gave him a weak, brave smile.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," Ambrose tried to reply, but the sound didn't come, caught dry in his throat.
DG looked at him long with her big and curious eyes, sad and studying, and Ambrose couldn't meet it for long, looked back down to her hand, to the tawny tufts of the unidentifiable plush.
It was quiet a little too long, but finally DG moved, pulling her hand back to her lap to worry at it.
"Azkadellia won't let us help," she said, uneasily. "Can we--Raw and me--can we see about speeding this thing along?"
It took Ambrose several blurry moments to extract the promise of healing out of that, but when he did, he swallowed, swept sick with guilt, but nodded, once and twice. He hadn't even noticed Raw, tucked back and over behind his Princess.
Ambrose nodded again, forced his throat clear enough to say, "Yes," and "thank you," and when DG and Raw joined hands and came up against the cot, he closed his eyes and clutched the toy and tried not to cry anymore.
*****************
DG didn't ask him about what had happened. The healing was enough, for that; it meant that, while he wasn't at peak condition, he would be well enough to be returned to the cells, to participate in the investigation. And once Ambrose was able to clean and dress himself, shakily, in the bland and shapeless and colorless clothes they had to replace his damaged ones, his wrists were secured carefully behind his back, and he was walked back down through the palace, to the low stairway and lower corridor, to the scattering of cells that still lurked beneath.
"Can I... Can I be closer to Cain?" he heard himself asking, quietly, when they reached the bottom of the stairs.
There was a hesitation in the guard with him (not one of the ones he'd left looking foolish and cruel, thank the gods), when they reached the junction of the two small blocks. He had a mixed reputation, now, for certain. But he must have looked frail enough and tired enough and lonely enough, because after a long moment, the guard tugged Ambrose's elbow gently to the left, instead of the right.
Ambrose wordlessly stepped into the empty cell the guard opened, turned placidly so the guard could release him, and murmured a thanks along his shoulder as the man locked the door and left.
He was alone in his new cell, and there was no one to either side of him, but when he turned to grip the bars, to lean against them, he saw a sleeping figure far back in the cell across and slightly over, shadowed by the bad light, but familiar enough.
Ambrose didn't want to wake him, but he studied where Cain's bench was placed, and quietly as he could dragged his own over to a similar spot, and laid himself across it on his stomach, folding his chin on his wrists to watch the cell opposite.
The fear that had been blossoming and spreading twisted down into a tight knot in his belly, more acute and painful, but more manageable.
The reprieve of quiet and sickness would end soon. They were both here, now, healthy enough and lucid enough, and the specter of Bernhaben's investigations loomed large over him.
But if Cain was here... If Cain was close enough that Ambrose could see him, if not touch him, not with his fingers even stretched full out across the way to Cain's... that was enough.
*******
(Onto Eighteen and the Epilogue)