Author's Note: This chapter contains material that is rated M, NSFW, or my personal favourite, NNA.

Only Cowards Stay While Traitors Run

When Last We Met: Trapped on the Other Side on the guilt-ridden whims of his princess, Cain has made DG a promise: to fix up the house of her childhood, damage done by the storm that had ripped her from that life almost an annual before. But what is to happen after the work is finished, Cain has yet to find out -

Chapter Forty: Of Cowards and Traitors

Cain was growing impatient.

Near a week had passed since he'd arrived, and he'd been kept busy helping the old man fix up the farmhouse while DG fretted about with nothing but platitudes and indecision to give him. Each night she shared his bed, chaste and innocent once more and stiff against him as the turnings of her mind kept her awake into the wee hours of morning.

She went to work tired and unsmiling, and returned the same way.

His determination to return her to the O.Z. didn't faze or falter. Home was where she – where they – belonged, and no matter how she might be attached to the farmhouse, the town, the diner, it wasn't home to her, and she knew it. The people therein, those she loved, knew her by nothing but a lie, and she was fine to live it, still willing to give up everything to repay her mother, he supposed, for the life she'd given twice, once with birth and once with Light.

And still, still they avoided, they danced, out of rhythm and out of reach, but by the gods, they tried.

The days began to take on a familiar pattern, always tempered with a bumbling hesitance that spoke true of their intention with each other. Love, as they had so declared – after their own fashion, to be sure – the heavy words had taken their toll, stealing the unspoken and leaving only deeds, uncertain as they were. She beamed each day to see the work done to her childhood home, the new windows, the mended roof, the fresh paint. When they were alone, she was free with her affection, with every kiss and embrace. The looks she gave him at times, so full of longing that it was all he could do to stop from taking her to bed again.

All of it left him wanting, and he could not even for a moment guess as to the reason. And so he watched her, watched as she stood on the porch come nightfall, watched as she smiled for him more each day, watched the quiet sadness that overtook her when she didn't know he was keeping an eye on her.

She was thinking on home, he knew. They both were. It held them together then, and it kept them apart.

Cain finished the roof on a Sunday.

It had been a relentlessly sunny day. His neck and shoulders ached, his knees were cursing him with every other step, but it felt good to be finished. Kelley had quit for the day hours beforehand, the sun too much for him, but determination had seen Wyatt through. The brand spanking new grey shingles would be the first thing the girl saw as she came up the drive, and it was with that thought that he went inside to shower.

Over the sound of the water beating down on his shoulders, he didn't hear her come into the house. It wasn't until his shower was finished, when he was dressed and dry that he noticed the truck parked crookedly in the yard.

Room by room, he went on a search for her. Her work shoes were on the porch, dingy laces and faded red canvas. Her bag was on the kitchen table, contents spilled every which way. She wasn't in the living room, nor was she in the back bedroom they had been sharing.

It was the creak of floorboards above his head gave her away. He walked the length of the front hall, thick with the gloom of late afternoon. His own footsteps were cushioned by the ugly old runner rug that covered the floor. With one hand on the wooden railing, he leaned in and glanced up the stairs.

The door at the top of the stairs was open.

To his credit, it did cross his mind to give her the time and privacy she needed. She often wandered up there, and he'd never followed. It seemed to be her space, and he was hesitant to encroach upon it. But bothered by thoughts of the newly-shingled roof over her head, the tightness in his shoulders, the impatience that had rooted itself so gods-damned deep in him...

Slowly and with heavy footfalls, Cain mounted the stairs. One flight, and then a second, up into the open attic where DG sat cross-legged on a narrow, metal-framed bed, still in her gingham-skirted uniform and pigtails. She looked up at him as he came up through the floor to stand – just barely – at the top of the steps.

She smiled. "I was wondering when you'd work up the courage to come up here."

"You're back early," he said, finding to his displeasure that the low eaves and closed quarters made him feel very, very uneasy.

Cain looked around, briefly. The fresh boards that made up the roof were raw, the bright colour of new wood, and in need of a good sanding. It was a stark contrast to the walls, rough planks, scuffed and peeling. Tacked and taped to the walls on almost every available vertical space were photographs, rough sketches, watercolours, landscapesand portraits. It warmed the heart to see the talent she possessed in those nimble hands of hers.

DG patted the worn coverlet beside her, inviting him to sit. The springs gave an antiquated creak beneath his weight.

"Sundays are always slow once the brunch rush is over," she said, giving him another feeble smile, but it was honest at the very least and he was glad for it. But it didn't distract him from her graceful change of subject. "I can't believe you finished the roof."

"Like it, do you?"

"Very much," she said, stretching up to place her chin on his shoulder. "What did Mr. Kelley have to say about it?"

"Grumbled all the while the paper was crooked," Cain said, smirking and looking down at his red, calloused hands. "Used too few nails, and can't swing a hammer worth a damn. Doubt he got anything done today with how close he was watchin' me."

"So you figured you'd get it all done before he came back?" she asked. Her chin dug a little deeper into his shoulder as her smile widened.

"Something like that," he muttered, and then turned abruptly on her when she made to speak again. "Don't go thanking me just yet, Deege. Time enough for that once the job's finished."

Looking into his eyes, the resolution he hoped she saw there, she lost her smile. "But, Cain –"

"No 'buts', and I mean it."

It took a moment, but she agreed with a nod, her mouth twisting unhappily. She'd asked for his help, and he knew it was difficult for her to just stand back and let him do what needed to be done without getting into the middle of things to help herself. Kelley's well-meant grousing never seemed to bother her. On the days when she wasn't at the diner, she'd scraped and painted, weeded and mowed, cleaned and polished until the new windows shone and winked in the sunlight. She'd endured her fair share of dust, bites, blisters, and splinters.

If the past days on this side had made one thing clear to Cain, it was that DG could belong here. There was a place for her, carved out over the annuals she'd grown from girlhood, friends who cared for her, a family made by bond and not by blood. Independent, capable, and stubborn, she could have made it just fine here on her own.

But life's got a way of happening regardless of what we think is meant to be or not. His appearance had tossed a wrench into the intricate workings of her mechanical living. He'd made her feel again, shown her the difference between living and just being, and from that she was still recovering. It was hard for him to push her, the guilt drove him near mad during nights when she lay in his arms, quiet and curled inward on herself.

Still, he had to. He had to push, or he'd never get them home.

"Why do you come hiding up here?" he asked, gently as he was able.

"Habit," she said, picking at loose threads on the coverlet.

"Hope I'm not the one giving you cause to hide."

She shook her head, but did not elaborate further.

Sighing, he stood, accompanied again by the sound of old springs. He turned his back on her only because the sight of her sadness was too much to bear without action or interference. Instead, he walked the length of the room, skirting the bed and ducking his head under the slanted roof. While working on the roof these past two days, he'd glanced inside once or twice through the gabled dormer window, but to be inside her small, private space was another thing altogether.

There were so many drawings lining the walls. It seemed she'd done little else with her free time but draw.

Most all that he saw were rough sketches, done with the thick, heavy leads she favoured, which she would shade and smudge until her fingertips turned black. The image of her wasn't hard to conjure, he'd seen her at it a hundred times over. He expected to see her mother featured prominent in her work as she'd done before when they'd journeyed south, but he saw nothing of Lavender there on those attic walls. He only saw himself, their friends, and everywhere, always, skeletal sketches of the ruins where she'd last had her feet on home soil, damaged by sand, sun, and the passing of the ages. Broken walls, tall lancet windows, the upper balcony lined with doors, rooms overflowing with crumbled debris and rusted ironwork. All of it was there, represented in one form another, whether subject or only the backdrop to one hunched figure or another.

Every now and again, his eyes would skim over a painting or drawing done in full colour, and he'd skip back to it, back to the splash of vibrancy amid the dark, thorny pencil lines. He remembered those colours, those lifeless portrait gazes. It shouldn't have surprised him to see the great figures done over once more in DG's own hand, but it left a horrible sinking feeling in his stomach to see those haunted faces again.

As he walked the room, he found them all. The old woman wreathed in a lavender glow; the wasted woman with the axe, raising it up to a blazing blue sky; the one-eyed crone with her singular, golden gaze; and Glinneth herself in all her fiery red glory. And even – yes, pinned near the head of the bed, the little girl on her emerald throne. DG had drawn red slippers on her feet. Why red, he couldn't fathom a guess. In every tale he'd ever heard told, the shoes had been silver.

"Darlin'," he began, wanting to know, but she turned on the bed, shifting onto her knees to look him square in the eyes.

"I wanted to tell you a story," she said. His mouth snapped shut, certain she meant to elaborate upon her sudden declaration, but all she had for him after that bluster was a shrug of her shoulders. When he raised an eyebrow in question, she turned defensive. "I came up here to try get it all straight in my head."

"And what'd you come up with?"

She sighed, mouth crooked. "I think I was meant to come back here, Cain, right from the beginning. It's how the story ended, isn't it? After it's all said and done, the witch in the south sends the little girl home."

"That's true enough," he conceded. He remembered telling her just that, once or twice upon a time. It was how Lavender had seen the story play out in her dreaming, and she'd warned him, tried to warn him. "You didn't wish for this, DG."

"Means to an end," she said dismissively. "Only it's not the end, is it? So if it's not the end then what happens next?"

At the sight of her smile, he took a step closer to the bed, and her reaching hands came to rest on his arms as he put them around her. It was a comfort to them both, the steady presence of the other that drew them in and kept them there.

"I guess that's up to her now, isn't it?" he said, raising his hand to give a tug on one of her pigtails.

He tilted his head down, a natural progression, to shadow her face as that smile faded into a bitten lip. He kissed her as her eyes slipped closed. She responded immediately, eagerly, pushing up on her knees, taking over with a daring tongue and searching hands. He recognised it then, still mindful of that boldness of spirit that had betrayed her naiveté the first time she'd given herself over to him.

Now – well, now was no different. Her warm mouth with its wicked smirk as she pulled him down to the bed on top of her, the roll of her hips pinned beneath his, these sweet tells wove a far more experienced tale than the trembling of her hands as she fixated on the buttons of his shirt, the flush that filled her cheeks as his hand slid down her backside and up beneath her dress. The old frame groaned under them, the springs unaccustomed to such rough treatment. The rusty noise cut straight through him.

"We shouldn't be doing this again," he said, futile words, empty, they both knew. His fingers found the cotton edge of her underwear, and he played with it between thumb and forefinger, going no further.

"I don't care," was her response, whispered against his collarbone as she nuzzled his neck. She pressed her hips up, teasing him; the breathy moan that slipped past her parted lips was a far greater torture, and it was too easy to lean down, to kiss her and pull her next breath into him, to taste the soft laugh that came with it.

"I'm beginning to think seduction wasn't a huge part of your plan," she said, her head falling back to the mattress.

Despite himself, he chuckled, giving her thigh a gentle squeeze. "Didn't factor too greatly, no."

"And now?" she asked, her words all patience but her wriggling was saying something else entirely.

"Rethinking things," he said, and he meant it. He'd come to accept over the past week that there'd be no fitting the pieces of their separate lives back to where they'd been when – when, if – they made it home. Were he given a choice, he wouldn't leave her side again upon their return. In his mind, whatever deeds needed doing to keep it that way were just platitudes and paperwork.

"But you still want to go home," she said, and the sadness wasn't there, that weighty melancholy that he'd come to expect from her when she'd start musing on such things as home and family.

"Not without you, darlin'." He sighed, stroking her breast with a heavy hand. Her eyelids fluttered.

"You'd stay here with me," she said, and the corners of her mouth trembled, as if wanting to turn up to a smile if she could just dare to. He leaned down and kissed her, guilty as ever for his part in what made her slow to dare and dream, missing his girl who had been quick to act and damn the consequences.

"I'll stay with you," he said, and there was that smile of hers, ready to steal his breath away. "Wherever you decide we need to be." The reassurance tasted stale as he said it, but he said it all the same. Retreading the same old ground, making the same old promises.

She reached up to trace gentle fingers along his jaw, and he fought to keep still, so unused to this even now, the sentimentality, the softness of her love. Everything she was, everything she gave of herself, of this she showed so little, and she showed it only to him. Her trust should have honoured him, it should have humbled him. What he felt staring down into those sky eyes, he couldn't rightly say, not then and not there, in the eaves of a farmhouse in a world so far-placed from their own, surrounded by ghosts set to paper by a grieving hand.

He just knew he loved her, and damn the rest. For saving him, for letting him run and not branding him a traitor, for waiting on his cowardly heart.

Cain kissed her soundly then, twice for good measure, overcome with nothing so crass as want or need, but consumed by something deeper, far greater than himself, and so willing was her response beneath him, the curl of her fingers and the heat of her tongue, that he found himself floundering for a reason why it shouldn't be. The rest of him heartily agreed, and was quick to betray him, remembering the warmth of her body with a fondness that lent itself wholly to impropriety.

His fall went as fast as it had their first time, with nothing to remember it by except the frantic unbuttonings and glimpses of bare flesh. Clothed, crazed, craving, he took her in that dim, dusty attic while the bed beneath them groaned its dismay. She accepted his weight between her legs, her eyes widening as he pressed into her, then closing once more as he worked himself within her, and his big hands on her slender waist were full of blue gingham. If he caused her pain, she gave no sign, but still he watched for it even through the dumbstruck haze clouding his mind as she lifted her hips to his again, and again until the watching became excruciating and he let his head hang.

Release mounted in him, too quick and anything but quiet; he cried out as his climax came, the ache still there, and he was reduced to whimpering as he rode out each wave, sense drowned out by the rush of his blood and breathing. And when it was done, he laid his sweaty brow upon her aproned breast and listened to the pounding of her heart.

Wherever she decided, he had promised. Truly, what did it matter, so long as he could stay right where he was.

Cain awoke to the shadows dancing across the slanted ceiling. His first conscious thought was that he was alone; there was too much space on the narrow bed for it to be otherwise. He shifted and the bedsprings gave a quiet creak, echoing the one he felt spread silently through his bones as he moved. Sitting was an eventual thing, and he was even slower to stand. He could feel the lead-darkened eyes of DG's pictures looking down on him. He didn't dare raise his own to meet them.

In a reversal of the day's path, he went down the stairs to look for his princess, searching room through room and finding only small traces of her, dirty clothes on the floor, damp towel hung to dry, a light or two left on. Her bag was gone from the table, as were her keys. A glance out the back door confirmed with his eyes what his heart had already told him. The driveway was empty, and there was no knowing how long she'd been gone.

The dark, lonely old house was no comfort to him, and he moved through it uneasily. He went about cleaning himself up, changing out of his rumpled, sweaty shirt. He was slow, wanting to give her time to return before he could no longer avoid missing her or worrying over her, but there was only so much could be done before his mind settled once and for all on where the hell she'd got to.

Restless feet took him to the porch, and the cool night air kept him there. A breeze had picked up, a welcome respite from the heat of the afternoon, a memory that still radiated from his aching, sunburned shoulders. He sat down in an uncomfortable dusty cane chair to wait, watching as every now and again sets of headlights blurred by in the black distance.

An hour or more passed before a set of dimmed lights finally turned down the drive, and Cain heard the familiar rattle of an old and faithful suspension. She pulled to a stop and cut the engine, climbing out with nary a suspicion that he sat on the darkened porch waiting for her.

The gate creaked softly as she opened it, followed by the crackling of parched prairie grass as she crossed the yard, then came the sound of her feet on the steps. It wasn't so black outside just yet that he couldn't make out her silhouette against the night, but all else was lost to shadow.

She didn't go straight into the house; he hadn't expected her to. She stood on the porch staring out into the dark just as she had most every other night since he'd come, and probably for every night since her own crossing over, as well. Her arm wrapped firm around a support post, head leant against it, embracing or hanging on or just plain tired, he couldn't begin to guess, nor could he know just how long he sat and watched her as he'd always watched her.

"Somewhere," he heard her whisper.

Grudgingly, he spoke up before she became any more lost to him. "Deege." It was all he could manage.

Her head snapped round, but she hampered whatever cry or shout had started to grow in her throat. What was left, what came out, was choked and meagre. "How long have –"

"A bit," he cut in. "Didn't hear you go. You sure are getting quiet."

She stepped a bit closer until she stood before him and her knees brushed against his. "I'm no quieter than I was the first time you caught me sneaking out," she said, and he smiled at the memory of wisps of shadow and trainers on pavement. "You are sleeping heavier, though. That helps." She gave no resistance when he pulled her down into his lap.

"You're wearin' me out, kiddo."

"Hardly," she said, laughing.

"You gonna tell me where you went off to?"

She nodded against his temple, looping an arm around his neck. "I went into town. Carter was less than thrilled to see me on his doorstep."

Carter, the boss with the quick temper, whose concern for DG had seemed nothing but genuine, though his general dislike of her was also entirely the same.

"Something that couldn't wait until morning?" Cain asked, his own interest a little less selfless.

"I thought I'd waited long enough to give my notice."

And there it was. It sunk in slow, and sweet. "You're sure, darlin'?"

She nodded again, her hair tickling his jaw. "The storm's come and gone. I want to go home. I'm so tired. Besides, you know what they say."

He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her in a little tighter. "What changed your mind?"

"You did. What else?"

He kissed her temple, and said nothing.

"Mother shouldn't have made me leave, not if it was going to lead here no matter what I did," she said, soft as can be, and he couldn't be entirely sure she was speaking directly to him. Musing to herself as it were, words said aloud only for the sake of conviction. "I don't want to think about what will happen when I get there. I don't want to worry about any of it. I just want to go home, and after everything, that shouldn't be too much to ask."

Sometimes it is, darlin', he thought, but kept such woes to himself. Sometimes a home waiting for you at the end of the long road is just too damn much to hope for.

It wouldn't be that way for her, and it wouldn't be that way for him any more, either. Not if he had his say.

But by then his silence had gone on too long, and she wasn't about to let that happen. "Will you stay with me?" she asked, a firm and direct question she already knew the answer to. She pushed up a bit on his shoulder to better see his face, though in the darkness he was sure it proved difficult all the same. Perhaps it was easier that way, for her at least. For him, he didn't know.

"'Course I will," he said, and pulled her in to kiss him.

The girl had a point; she couldn't say what would happen to them when they returned, but just then, such details were unimportant. Love, hope, resolve, they had these things in abundance, and it would see them through. It felt good to know the truth inside, to hold it in his heart, for what he'd told her, he'd told her true. It strengthened him, eased his worries and guided his steps, this truth, this promise of love and home.

After the black, after the storm, between and beyond what had happened and where they'd been, the time had finally come; their running days were done.

The End

More Words:
Thank you to, well, everyone ever, but specifically those that read, those that favourited, followed, and reviewed. Eternal love to reviewers who keep me on track and encourage me. To all the good friends I've made in this fandom and others.

I'm a little sad that after two years, no one recognized or pointed out where I'd gotten the title from.

I promised myself that I wouldn't even start outlining my next piece until this was done. Well, let the plotting begin. Already got my bunny all picked out. Don't be freaked out if you see a few Dragon Age updates from me before you see a new Tin Man one.

See you down the road, my pretties. ;)