REMIX: Witness (The Hallway by erinm_4600)
Title: Witness
Author: thecricket
Summary: Life, death and resurrection.
Rating: PG
Warnings: No ship intended, though I think a little DG/Cain slipped in there. But she's a little girl and he thinks of her as his daughter, so there you have it :)
Title, Author and URL of the original story: The Hallway by erinm_4600
Author's note: Though The Hallway is technically part of a larger story, I chose to focus on this particular section. I was completely taken with the idea of Cain being DG's protection detail when she was a child and couldn't stop thinking about how he would react when he found out that the young princess was dead. What about when she was brought back to life?
---
Wyatt wouldn't believe it if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. Sometimes he could pretend that it had never happened, that such horrors couldn't exist beyond his nightmares. But the undeniable truth was that he had watched with stark clarity the whole gruesome event.
Outside the palace, the Northern Island was chaotic with icy wind and snow, but within the fortified walls, wrapped in the warm safety of her bedroom, the young princess was dead in her mother's arms. The Queen's mournful sobs, the sound that had drawn him from his post in an adjacent hallway, echoed in direct contrast to Dorothy's utter silence. Even from the doorway in which he stood, afraid to cross the threshold into the room, he could see her little body was so still, so very still...
Grief struck him hard and fast and as fiercely as any punch to the gut. He would never hear her sweet laugh again, wipe away her tears or chase her around the winding pathways of the maze. She wouldn't grow into the vivacious young woman he imagined her becoming. He'd promised her a kiss on her sixteenth birthday, something he hoped she would forget about when the time came and she discovered that other young men existed beyond the palace walls. None of it mattered now. He had lost his young charge, the Queen and Consort had lost their daughter and the OZ had lost a princess. They were all robbed of life as surely as Dorothy was. And why?
"Azkadellia," he murmured, hatred tainting the name with a bitter inflection.
He knew something was wrong with the elder princess - they all had for quite some time. The darkness sprung up around her seemingly overnight. And not just around her, but inside her; an evil was lurking just beneath the surface of the beautiful Azkadellia. He could feel it in the way his stomach turned sour when she smiled, that viscous line of teeth, and the wave of dizzy nausea that swept over him at her cold touch. While all the advisers and physicians at the royal family's disposal scrambled to define and categorize each symptom of what they referred to as the princess's "illness", an answer - a reason - could not be found. And now Dorothy was dead and he had done nothing to prevent it.
So stunned by his own overwhelming guilt and sorrow, he was only vaguely aware that the Queen had stopped crying. He watched, half incognizant, as a tendril of light streamed out of the Queen and spiraled down into the unbreathing mouth of the princess. With rising horror he realized far too late what he was a witness to.
He'd heard stories, rumors, of dark mages performing rituals designed to bring life back to the deceased. Each time, it was said, the creatures that arouse were not the same people who had died. The true spirit that moved on to the next world could not be brought back. What returned was a sinister shadow where life had once been.
And yet, Wyatt couldn't bring himself to fault the Queen for her actions. Had he the power to bring his son back from death, he would be hard pressed not to correct the grave injustice and damn the consequences.
The princess's chest heaved as she drew a deep, ragged breath. Her hands curled into fists in the bed sheets and her body convulsed wildly. Wyatt flashed to boyhood memories of trout thrashing on the end of his fishing line and butterflies desperate to free themselves from the glass jar he'd caught them in.
Wyatt felt his heart nearly jump into his throat when Dorothy's eyes popped open. Her wide and unseeing blue gaze would forever haunt him, for in that brief moment he saw Death itself fight for its rightful claim and lose.
The Queen, exhausted and drained, slumped over the headboard of the bed as unnatural life stirred the small body beside her with jerky movements of its limbs. In his mind's eye Wyatt saw blood warming and beginning to recirculate through a reanimated heart, and muscles spasming with fresh impulses from firing synapses.
Dear God, what was that thing? What perverse magic now inhabited the princess? Surely it wasn't Dorothy any longer, the child who had grown to be as much a part of his heart as his own son. Dorothy who regularly presented him with tokens of her girlish affection by stuffing the pockets of his heavy red coat with flowers. No, that girl had died and her spirit was gone, waiting to see him again on the other side.
"You know who she is now," the Mystic Man would tell him years - an eternity of painful events - later. Yes, Cain understood it now. The two of them were kindred in their resurrections. And when DG looked at him with the shadow of death in her eyes, he no longer shuddered in revulsion, but reveled in the small flicker of life he saw there too.
Cain tucked the bright red flower more securely behind DG's ear and helped her climb through the window, careful to keep the hem of her dress from snagging on the rough, splintered windowsill. Without a glance back, they left the Mystic Man's dressing room behind and escaped unafraid into the night.
Author: thecricket
Summary: Life, death and resurrection.
Rating: PG
Warnings: No ship intended, though I think a little DG/Cain slipped in there. But she's a little girl and he thinks of her as his daughter, so there you have it :)
Title, Author and URL of the original story: The Hallway by erinm_4600
Author's note: Though The Hallway is technically part of a larger story, I chose to focus on this particular section. I was completely taken with the idea of Cain being DG's protection detail when she was a child and couldn't stop thinking about how he would react when he found out that the young princess was dead. What about when she was brought back to life?
---
Wyatt wouldn't believe it if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. Sometimes he could pretend that it had never happened, that such horrors couldn't exist beyond his nightmares. But the undeniable truth was that he had watched with stark clarity the whole gruesome event.
Outside the palace, the Northern Island was chaotic with icy wind and snow, but within the fortified walls, wrapped in the warm safety of her bedroom, the young princess was dead in her mother's arms. The Queen's mournful sobs, the sound that had drawn him from his post in an adjacent hallway, echoed in direct contrast to Dorothy's utter silence. Even from the doorway in which he stood, afraid to cross the threshold into the room, he could see her little body was so still, so very still...
Grief struck him hard and fast and as fiercely as any punch to the gut. He would never hear her sweet laugh again, wipe away her tears or chase her around the winding pathways of the maze. She wouldn't grow into the vivacious young woman he imagined her becoming. He'd promised her a kiss on her sixteenth birthday, something he hoped she would forget about when the time came and she discovered that other young men existed beyond the palace walls. None of it mattered now. He had lost his young charge, the Queen and Consort had lost their daughter and the OZ had lost a princess. They were all robbed of life as surely as Dorothy was. And why?
"Azkadellia," he murmured, hatred tainting the name with a bitter inflection.
He knew something was wrong with the elder princess - they all had for quite some time. The darkness sprung up around her seemingly overnight. And not just around her, but inside her; an evil was lurking just beneath the surface of the beautiful Azkadellia. He could feel it in the way his stomach turned sour when she smiled, that viscous line of teeth, and the wave of dizzy nausea that swept over him at her cold touch. While all the advisers and physicians at the royal family's disposal scrambled to define and categorize each symptom of what they referred to as the princess's "illness", an answer - a reason - could not be found. And now Dorothy was dead and he had done nothing to prevent it.
So stunned by his own overwhelming guilt and sorrow, he was only vaguely aware that the Queen had stopped crying. He watched, half incognizant, as a tendril of light streamed out of the Queen and spiraled down into the unbreathing mouth of the princess. With rising horror he realized far too late what he was a witness to.
He'd heard stories, rumors, of dark mages performing rituals designed to bring life back to the deceased. Each time, it was said, the creatures that arouse were not the same people who had died. The true spirit that moved on to the next world could not be brought back. What returned was a sinister shadow where life had once been.
And yet, Wyatt couldn't bring himself to fault the Queen for her actions. Had he the power to bring his son back from death, he would be hard pressed not to correct the grave injustice and damn the consequences.
The princess's chest heaved as she drew a deep, ragged breath. Her hands curled into fists in the bed sheets and her body convulsed wildly. Wyatt flashed to boyhood memories of trout thrashing on the end of his fishing line and butterflies desperate to free themselves from the glass jar he'd caught them in.
Wyatt felt his heart nearly jump into his throat when Dorothy's eyes popped open. Her wide and unseeing blue gaze would forever haunt him, for in that brief moment he saw Death itself fight for its rightful claim and lose.
The Queen, exhausted and drained, slumped over the headboard of the bed as unnatural life stirred the small body beside her with jerky movements of its limbs. In his mind's eye Wyatt saw blood warming and beginning to recirculate through a reanimated heart, and muscles spasming with fresh impulses from firing synapses.
Dear God, what was that thing? What perverse magic now inhabited the princess? Surely it wasn't Dorothy any longer, the child who had grown to be as much a part of his heart as his own son. Dorothy who regularly presented him with tokens of her girlish affection by stuffing the pockets of his heavy red coat with flowers. No, that girl had died and her spirit was gone, waiting to see him again on the other side.
"You know who she is now," the Mystic Man would tell him years - an eternity of painful events - later. Yes, Cain understood it now. The two of them were kindred in their resurrections. And when DG looked at him with the shadow of death in her eyes, he no longer shuddered in revulsion, but reveled in the small flicker of life he saw there too.
Cain tucked the bright red flower more securely behind DG's ear and helped her climb through the window, careful to keep the hem of her dress from snagging on the rough, splintered windowsill. Without a glance back, they left the Mystic Man's dressing room behind and escaped unafraid into the night.