Work Text:
She Is Herself
By Prentice
The Tin Man was late.
Staring out at the pouring rain of the Outer Zone skies, Azkadellia pursed her lips, forehead crinkling in resignation. It would be many days, if the darkening skies were any indication, before Wyatt Cain would be able to return to her sister. Many days before the storms – natural storms; storms that nurtured the O.Z.; storms she didn’t create – would break and push off to the west.
She didn’t know how she knew this. Her mind was a fragmented thing. Puzzling, confusing, not-quite-right. Large chunks of it were missing; large chunks of it were blank. Small parts, the little sparks of synapses firing, sometimes lead her to empty spaces. But still she knew things she should not know, like when it would rain, when the wind would change, when her sister…
Azkadellia blinked, pale satin features smoothing out to befuddled blankness. Her sister, DG, named in honor of Dorothy Gale, as she had been named in honor of a great good witch of long ago. It was so strange to think her here, to think her gone, to think her back again. Wasn’t it not long ago they were picking apples in the forest?
She couldn’t remember clearly – there were too many empty spaces between then and now to make sense of time – but something told her deep down it was not. She was older now, different. The face in the mirror was not one she was used to seeing but so familiar all the same. Maybe one day she would be brave enough to look into the mirror-stranger’s eyes and see if she saw herself.
Maybe she would, she sometimes thought. Maybe she would see herself just as she was and always had been: as DG’s older sister. But why then, was she so afraid?
Giving one last glance to the lightening filled sky, Azkadellia turned. That answer would come one day she was sure. For now though, she would use the things she knew, no matter how she knew them, and tell her sister that her Tin Man was late and return to watch the rain. She couldn’t remember a time when it fell without her help.