The Silver Smoke of an Imaginary Dragon
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine.

Title: The Silver Smoke of an Imaginary Dragon
Fandom: Tin Man
Characters: Cain, Glitch, Raw
Word Count: 1,076
Rating/Warning: Could be interpreted as a threesome, in which case call it adult content. Nothing graphic, though.



;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

We are the Queen’s Contingent.
Once we were complicated creatures, but there was a simplicity to what we were, too. We had names and we were things that had titles. We were Raw the Empath, and Ambrose the Advisor and Cain the Mercenary.
Now we are simple creatures: we are the Straw Man, and the Lion Man, and the Tin Man.
And now we are vastly complicated. Everything we’ve been through, everything we’ve seen, we are the only ones who understand each other, and the only ones we are interested in understanding.
There’s DG, of course. But she has her family.
Glitch and Raw are my family now.
And when the Queen needs a “job of discretion” done in this vast land of hers, the dangerous and beautiful land of the O.Z., we are the ones she calls. She trusts us more than any other of her faithful subjects, and we are her loyal servants.
But there’s a love that supercedes even that which I feel for my Queen.
I have a family.
And this one I will not fail.

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

I asked him what he preferred, of course. I was more than willing to start calling him Ambrose, but he said Ambrose was sort of dead, and Glitch was fine.

The Queen cried when they told her reimplanting Glitch’s brain wasn’t going to bring Ambrose back, not the way she’d known him. She’d paced around the throne room and talked a lot about "the abomination of that awful zipper", and Azkadellia didn’t show her face for several days, which was probably wise under the circumstance.

Raw and I didn’t know him before so maybe it’s not the same for us as it is for the royal family. We just want him well and happy. The sorcerers at the body shop were emphatic that the restoration had been a success and that there was improvement and that things would only get better with time.

So far the only difference I can see is that he’s a little more emotional than before. A little less easy going. It’s almost like he remembers just enough to know how much he’s forgotten, which is bound to be frustrating. I’m not sure it’s a fair trade off for the ability to do crossword puzzles and work single addition without a pencil, but I keep quiet on that.

Our current assignment will take us across some wild country, which I’m pleased about. I can’t tolerate city life like I used to, not after my long isolation. But it’s also the nadir of the annual, which I’m not so thrilled about. There’s no point complaining about it, though. If the Queen wants to send you into the frozen North, you pack your woolies and you go.

The first week of the journey I take up smoking again. Not a pleasant habit, I know, but it’s calming. Raw says yoga would do the same thing, that it’s the slow exhaling that makes you feel mellow, but I said it wouldn’t be the same without seeing the smoke. When I was a kid I used to fantasize about being a fire-breathing dragon whenever I got mad, of leveling small villages with one puff of my great wrath. (after the villagers and livestock had been safely evacuated, of course. Even as a kid I was overly conscientious.) Now, as an adult, I settle for a curl of grey mist rising into the cold night air.

I give up smoking after three days. It made Glitch cough, and Raw gave me a dirty look every time he did, so I guess it’s yoga now. I think about a silver dragon with tin scales folded into the lotus position and laugh out loud. My companions don’t ask me what’s funny, we all have our strange moments, if it’s something I want to explain, I’ll explain.

Tonight I’m using a twig as a surrogate cigarette. I blow my breath into the air and watch it steam out into the winter evening. I feel more like a dragon than ever.

It’s colder than… well, we don’t use the expression “colder than Azkadellia’s heart” anymore, but it’s cold enough to grope for a similar metaphor.

Glitch is setting up camp for the night, dressing the ground in frost shield and blankets. He’s looking… I don’t know… worried or uncomfortable or something. Like he’s lost something of median importance in the folds of material.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, getting up and leaving my twig behind in the forest litter with a little pang of regret. It was a good twig.

There’s a quarter second of hesitation to tell me, but we all know he will. “It’s the zipper,” he explains, and I feel like an idiot for not thinking about the effect of the weather on metal.

I take my hat off, and set it gently on his head. “We’ll get you something warmer in Snowtown,” I promise. They’re famous for their knitted clothing there, I’ll buy him a hat that’s sufficiently crazy-looking. Made from yarn the color of emeralds and pomegranates. And I’ll stretch it down over his black, matted tendrils of hair and if it pleases him as much as I think it will I might get one of those smiles that comes up a little higher on the right side than the left.

After a dinner of buttered mushrooms, snowpeas, and stuffed nasturtiums, which we eat straight out of the cast iron skillets we cooked them in, I go a short distance away and find a seat on a stone, where I can try to practice breathing slowly while I watch Raw and Glitch get ready to go to sleep. Glitch falls down first as he usually does ~ he still tires before either Raw or I ~ into the center of the nest, which he’s more than welcome to tonight.

Raw stretches out in front of him, more cat than lion. I watch Raw as he licks Glitch’s nose, slow and deliberate, all the way up to his forehead. Then the empath settles in ~ not next to him, but over him, the fur of his chest settling over ‘the abomination’ that we don't find so abominable. Glitch gives that quirky little smile of his as he closes his eyes, and he looks content enough that I know the warmth is helping.

I grind out my imaginary cigarette in the wet leaves and go to join them, so I can add my heat to theirs.