Title:  The Wizard, the Witch and the Whirlwind

Part 8:  We’re Off to See the Wizard

Based on The Wizard of Oz  (1939)

Parts 1-4 published in Spiced Peaches XXXV

Parts 5-7 published in Spiced Peaches XXXVI

Author:  Shoshana

Summary:   Spock and McCoy pay a visit to Jim Kirk in Riverside, Iowa.  But the three don’t stay there.   

Pairings:  S/Mc    Dorothy/original character(s)   

K/Antonia    K/Edith

Rating:  PG-13    sexual innuendo

Word count: 4500

Disclaimer:   Brief dialogue quoted/adapted from The Wizard of Oz, screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf, based on the children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.   I do not own The Wizard of Oz or The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Nor do I own Star Trek.  Not a molecule, atom, quark or vibrating string of it.

Author’s note:  Novella length.  Though a Spock/McCoy marital relationship is an important element of the story, the fic is primarily a trio friendship story.  For the purposes of this work, Jim does not disappear/die in 2293 aboard the Enterprise-B. 

This section not beta’d.     

“You’re alive.”  Frayne stared at them from the other side of the half-open Dutch door.  “You’ve rescued the girl.”

Spock held up the broom.  “We have retrieved the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West.”  

“You . . . killed her?”

“He did,” Jim said, swinging his head in the direction of Leonard.  “Threw water on her.  It melted her.”  Frayne continued to stare disbelievingly.

Leonard was growing impatient.  “Let us in, for goodness sake.  The girl’s been through an ordeal.  We all have.”

“Yes, yes, of course.  I’m sure you have.”  Frayne fumbled with the lock on the door.  He took them to their prior room, where he offered them amenities such as food, medicine, new straw for Spock or buffing for Leonard.  He grew increasingly nervous as the favors were turned down. 

“We’re here to see the Wizard of Oz,” Jim said.  “He agreed to see us if we brought back the Witch’s broomstick.”

“I will have to . . . advise the great Oz he will be having visitors,” Frayne stammered.  Wiping his brow, he left the room.

“Our host seems nervous,” Jim said.

“Indeed,” said Spock.

“You’d think he is as afraid of the Wizard as he is of the Witch,”

Leonard said. 

It was not Frayne, but Demelza, who came to take them to the Wizard.  She, too, was noticeably nervous as she led them to a small antechamber.  “Go through this door when the great Oz calls for you.”  She left. 

A stentorian voice called:  “You may enter.”

The light in the huge hall was dim.  At the far end of the room, in front of a wide screen of silky green fabric, and hanging above an ornate throne, was a huge, disembodied head.

“You wish to see the great and powerful Oz?”  Fire and smoke billowed around the floating head.

“Yes, we do,” answered Jim.

More smoke and fire billowed, as the floating face said, “I am told that the girl killed the Wicked Witch of the East, and that the tin man liquidated the Wicked Witch of the West.  Very resourceful.”

“Actually, sir, Leonard and I killed the witches accidentally.”

“Even so, your group has acted with great courage,” the imposing voice said.  “Emerald City and all of Oz is indebted to you.  As a reward, you are offered permanent homes here, if you wish.  To the lion –”

Jim said, “We’re not asking for residence here.  We want—”

“Be quiet!  Do not interrupt the great and powerful Oz!  To you, lion, and to the dog as well, I give permission to hunt the wild animals in the vicinity.  The deer and the mice eat too many of our crops as it is.  Oh, and the bird may consume the insects.  But only outside the city walls.  We’re vegetarians here, after all.  Our metal workers will keep the tin man in repair for free, and he may study with our healers if he so chooses.  The scarecrow will have his pick of Emerald City’s choicest straw and hay for his maintenance.  The girl may choose a family to live with, and will be given fine clothes and jewels.  All of you will be honored, and will be supported here in Emerald City permanently.  You need not earn a living unless you so choose.”

“I don’t want charity!” Dorothy said, indignantly.  “Uncle Henry and Aunt Em wouldn’t approve of me living on charity!  And I certainly do not want a new family!  I have a family back home in Kansas!”

“You dare challenge the beneficence of the great Oz?  Silence!” 

Intimidated, Dorothy quieted.

“Spock . . . Bones,” Jim said, whispering.  “Does the Wizard remind you of anyone?”

“The fireworks remind me of the Witch,” Leonard replied in a low voice.  “The big mouth, too.”

“Do not whisper in my presence!  I cannot hear you!”

Jim said, “Bones, distract the Wizard.  Talk with him.”

“Me?  Don’t you remember the trouble I got us in, arguing with the Witch?”

“I hope you are reconsidering the city’s offer of hospitality!” boomed the floating head.

“Yes, you, you’re good at arguing.  But do it with him, not me.” 

Grimacing, Leonard put down the padded box, and took a step forward toward the throne.  “O great Wizard, the good witch Glinda –”

“Spock, remember Balok?”

“Yes,” Spock said.  “Or more precisely, Balok’s puppet.”  Balok was an alien commander who had hidden his childish, unthreatening appearance from the crew of the Enterprise through the guise of a fearsome-looking puppet.  “This appears to be a holographic projection, not a puppet, however.”

Jim nodded.  “Exactly what I’m thinking.”

“—sent Dorothy to you in the hopes that you could send her home to Kansas.  My friends and I have accompanied her, hoping you could change us back into our original forms—”

“Stop this effrontery!  Do not arouse the wrath of the great and powerful Oz!”

“I want to know what’s behind that curtain.”  Jim motioned his head towards the box on the floor.  “Oswald, fly back there behind the curtain.  Tell us what you see.”

“—and return us to our own home.  The lion—”

“Silence!  Leave me and come back tomorrow!”

“—scarecrow, blue—” 

Oswald took flight.  Leonard startled as the bird flashed by him.

“—bluebird and I all came from Iowa, where—” 

Oswald called excitedly, “Frayne is back here, pushing buttons on a wall!”

The group rushed to the front of the room.  Oswald was fluttering above a small, curtained booth.  Leonard tore open the curtain, to find Frayne standing at an elaborate panel of buttons and levers.  Looking alarmed, the green-suited man grabbed the curtain, closing it.  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” thundered the disembodied face’s voice.  

Leonard yanked open the curtain a second time.  “Looks like you were right, Spock.  This fake doesn’t have the power to send us home.  Or change us back.”  

Oswald made an awkward one-legged landing on Spock’s shoulder.   

Jim said, “The game’s up, Frayne.  We know who the Wizard of Oz really is.”

“The Wizard is a fake?” Dorothy asked.

“The visage we saw is an illusion,” Spock said.  “Frayne has been projecting the image mechanically, along with the smoke and fire.”

“Yes,” said Frayne, his head hanging in abject apology.  “I’m afraid it’s true.  There’s no other Wizard but me.”

“You’re nothing but a humbug!” Dorothy said.  “You’re not great and powerful!  You’re not even a magician!”

“Yes, my dear, I’m afraid I am a humbug,” Frayne admitted.  “But I am a magician.  A very good one, actually.  A sleight-of-hand magician, rather than one with supernatural powers.”

Frayne recounted His history.  His real name was Franklin Baum.  Born in Iowa in 1864, he had been a self-taught electrician and engineer, as well as an amateur magician.  After briefly working at the turn of the century with Nikola Tesla in Colorado Springs, he had toured the American Midwest as an itinerant magician and electrical repairman.  In 1905, while in Ozark, Missouri, his wagon had been caught up in a tornado, and he had been carried to Oz. 

Impressed by his abilities as a magician, a group of people in Emerald City befriended the newcomer.  At the time, the city’s politics had been in upheaval, with the citizenry living in fear of an attack by the Wicked Witch of the West, who had recently conquered the flying monkeys.  Frayne and his friends had used his magic and his mechanical abilities to rise to the leadership of the city.  Only the Council of Elders knew the truth about the “Wizard” of Oz.

“So the council of Elders is based on deception,” Jim said.  His tone was contemptuous.  “On, literally, smoke and mirrors.”

“The seven of us rule with a light hand.  The populace is happier, and less fearful, than they were before my arrival.”

“These days a lot less fearful,” Leonard said, “with both of the Wicked Witches out of the way.  No thanks to you, I might add.”

“True,” Frayne acknowledged.  “I spoke the truth, that we are indebted to you.  The Council had agreed to thank you, in the only manner available to us.”

Jim said, “In the unlikely event we came back with the broom.”

“Yes.”  Frayne paused, then asked, “Please do not reveal the truth to the citizens of the city.”

“I’m thinking about it,” Jim said. 

“You would have been forty or forty-one when you came to Oz,” Spock said.  Frayne appeared to be in his early fifties.   “The flying monkeys were conquered more than fifty years ago.  How long have you been here?” 

“I have been in Oz forty-eight years.  Their years.  People age here   much more slowly than in our world.  Animals, as well.”

Spock nodded.  “The Witch attempted to induce us to turn Dorothy over to her, by promising us extended lifespans along with our normal forms.  She failed to mention that long lives were a normal corollary of being human.” 

“Living a long time would be nice,” Oswald said from his shaky perch on Spock’s shoulder.  “But I’d rather go home to my people. 

His head sagged to his chest.   “I miss Dori and Gaila and Glenda and Peter.”  Gently, Leonard collected the injured bluebird and returned him to the padded box. 

Dorothy said hotly to Frayne:  “And I miss my friends and family. 

If the Wizard of Oz is a humbug, how am I supposed to get back to Kansas?  How can my four friends return to Iowa?”

Frayne shook his head.  “My dear, I don’t know.  When I first arrived, I wanted very much to return to Missouri.”   

“Glinda sent Dorothy to see you,” Leonard said.  “Does she know you’re a fraud?”

“Oh, yes,” Frayne said.  “She knows.”

“Well, I’d like to have a talk with this Glinda!  Why did she send Dorothy to you, if she knew you couldn’t do anything to help the girl!”

“Look!” said Dorothy, pointing to a small, iridescent bubble which was floating in the in the air.  “It’s Glinda!”   The bubble grew, and within in it a woman’s form could be seen.   The bubble dissolved and Glinda stood before them.  She was lovely, with curling golden hair, and she wore a full-skirted pink dress which reminded Leonard of the fairy costume he had seen hanging in Peter’s basement.  She had wings, and carried a star-tipped wand. 

“You called me?” Glinda asked.  Her voice was sweet and lilting.

“I said I wanted to talk with you,” Leonard said.  “Is that all we needed to do, for you to show up?”

“Yes.”

Leonard pointed an accusing finger at Glinda.  “Why didn’t you tell Dorothy that, before you sent her off on a half-cocked journey down the yellow brick road?  Why did you even send her to Emerald City?  The so-called Wizard of Oz has informed us you were aware all along he’s a fake!”   

“Useless?”  Glinda laughed, a lilting sound which held amusement rather than derisiveness.  “Leonard, how long do you think Spock would have hung on the pole in the cornfield, or you have stood frozen among the sunflowers, if Dorothy had not been following the yellow brick road?  Jim was looking for you, but he did not have hands to oil you, or to lift Spock off his pole.” 

“If you knew we were there, you should have helped us!” Leonard insisted.

“I did not wish to venture into these lands while the Wicked Witch of West was alive.  Her magic was more powerful than mine.”

Leonard was enraged.  “And you sent a child off instead?”

Dorothy asked, “You didn’t tell me I could call you for help, so that I would find Spock?  So that I could help him find Leonard and Jim?”

“In part, yes,” Glinda replied.  “And also because there were lessons you needed to learn while you in Oz.  What have you learned, Dorothy?”

“I’ve learned that with the help of other people, I can face terrible things.”  Dorothy smiled as she looked at her four friends, then turned back to Glinda.  “Though in a way, Uncle Henry and Auntie Em already showed me that.”  Dorothy’s parents had died when she was very young; she did not remember them. 

“Yes.  And what else have you learned?”

Dorothy’s brow wrinkled in concentration.  “I understand better now why my friends Al and Si don’t want to stay on the farm, or even in Kansas.  I used to think just going into town was exciting.  But after seeing Oz, I would like to see more of the world.  The real world, I mean.  It might not be as beautiful as Oz, but I think there must be wonderful and beautiful and interesting things in it.”  Dorothy looked at Glinda.  “But that lesson doesn’t do me any good, if I can’t get home.  And I do want to go home, even if I think I might want to leave it eventually.”

“But
                           you can get home, Dorothy,” Glinda said.  “You’ve always had
                           the power to go back to Kansas.  And your friends now have the power to return
                           to Iowa.”

“I surmise that you refer to the broomstick and the ruby slippers,” Spock said. 

“You are correct,” Glinda said.

“Would have saved us all a lot of trouble, if we had known that to start with,” Leonard grumbled. 

Dorothy said.  “Will the shoes take Toto home, too?”

“Toto, too.”

“I’ll be glad to go home,” Dorothy said.  “But I will miss my friends.” 

She turned to Leonard, who held the box in which Oswald was sitting.  She reached out a hand and stroked the bluebird’s feathers. “Thank you for finding me in the Witch’s castle.  I don’t think Toto would have been so brave for a stranger.  And I’m sure no other bluebird would have been.”

Leonard placed the box on the ground and he and Dorothy hugged each other.  “Thank you for fixing my arm,” she said, sniffling.  Seeing a tear sliding down the metal cheek, she took the loose end of her sling and wiped first Leonard’s eyes, then her own.  “Don’t cry, you’ll rust.”  She kissed him on the cheek.

“I don’t know if your arm will be healed when you get back home,” Leonard said, his voice ragged.  “Be careful.”

She hugged Spock next.  “Thank you for agreeing to come with me on the yellow brick road.  I hate to think what might have happened to me, if you hadn’t.”  Spock did not say, “You’re welcome,” but neither did he say, “It was the logical thing to do.”

He bent down for her kiss, and when he returned Dorothy’s embrace he felt no impulse to shrink from her touch, as he had experienced when she had clung to him in terror in the forest.   

Dorothy hugged Jim last, putting her good arm around the shaggy head.  “I think I’ll miss you the most of all,” she said, kissing the dark mane.  “Thank you for standing up to the Witch.”

“I’m glad we were there to help you.” 

Dorothy turned to the others.  “Goodbye.  I hope all of you get home to Iowa safe and sound and back to your normal bodies.”   

Leonard handed Toto to the girl.  Dorothy waved the terrier’s paw.  “Say goodbye, Toto.”

Glinda asked, “Are you ready?”

“Yes, I’m ready.” 

“Then close your eyes, and tap your heels together three times.  And think to yourself – ‘I want to go home; I want to go home.’”

“I want to go home.  I want to go home.  I want to go—” 

Dorothy had vanished. 

Leonard sighed.  “I hope she’s really home and safe.”

“She is,” Glinda assured him.

Jim asked, “Does the broomstick function the same way?  We just hold on and think about going home?”

“Yes,” Glinda replied.  “You don’t have to click your heels, however.  And Oswald could sit on one of you, rather than on the broomstick itself.” 

“Good for me and Oswald,” Jim said wryly, thinking of his abraded ankles and Oswald’s splinted leg.  “Well, gentlemen, are you ready to leave?”

“No.”  Leonard’s clipped, no-nonsense tone caught the attention of Spock and Jim.  Leonard did not notice his friend’s questioning look or his husband’s raised eyebrow.  His eyes were riveted on Glinda. 

Leonard said, “You kept some important information from Dorothy.  I suspect you’re keeping some from us.  The Wicked Witch of the West told us we could go back in time, to our younger selves, while retaining our current memories.  Is this true?”

“Bones, don’t—”

 “I want to know.”  Leonard’s voice was quietly obstinate.  “I need to know.”  He was still looking at Glinda.  “Well?”

“You can go to any place or any time you wish, including the far future.  It need not be a time or place you’ve been before.  You do need to go together, however.  If you travel to a time before Oswald’s birth, he may or may not be born depending on how your timeline is changed.”

Leonard nodded.  “Except for Oswald needing to come with us, that’s consistent with what the Wicked Witch told us.”  He turned to his companions.  “I don’t want to go back.  Not to our present.” 

Memory plucked at Jim and Spock.  Leonard, standing before them grave and determined, announcing he was staying on Yonada to marry Natira – staying, to die.  They had argued with him that day, and had lost; in losing, they likely had saved his life.  The chances were vanishingly remote, had the doctor returned to the Enterprise, that anyone would have uncovered from the Fabrini databanks the lost cure for xenopolycythemia.  Spock had discovered the cure, thereby sparing Leonard’s life and allowing him to stand here in the Wizard’s chamber years later; but the drug’s debilitating delayed effects were the reason (Jim guessed and Spock knew) Leonard was refusing to return to their own time.  

Jim said, “Bones, we can’t go back to our past.”

“You heard her!  We can!”

“That isn’t what I meant.  We shouldn’t.  It’s dangerous.”

Leonard snorted.  “Dangerous.  That’s easy for you to say.  You’re not the one whose body is falling apart prematurely.  Jim, I’ve spent days here without fatigue or pain.  You can’t make me go back to that.”

“Are you going to strand me and Spock here in Oz until we accede to your wishes?”  Jim’s voice was disbelieving. 

Oswald’s voice peeped from the box on the floor.  “And me!” 

Leonard ignored the bluebird.  “How do you know the tornado didn’t kill all of us?  You both said the last thing you remember was the house caving in.  And even if it didn’t, think what going back in time could mean.  You would have the chance to save your brother and his family!  And David!  And God knows how many other lives!”

The tufted tail lashed in irritation.  “My God, Bones, do you think all that didn’t cross my mind while the Witch was trying to suborn us?  I had the good sense to reject the idea.  As did you.”

“Dorothy’s life isn’t on the line now.  We’re free to do as we wish.”

Jim’s ears were pinned back.  “As you wish, you mean.”

“You don’t command me anymore, Jim.  Like you said down by the stream, I’m my own man now.”

Jim growled.  “That doesn’t mean—”

Spock held an appeasing hand toward the lion.  “Jim, let me handle this.  You and Frayne leave the room.  Let me talk to Leonard in private.  Frayne can take Oswald.”

Jim and Spock looked at each other.  As Spock gave a barely perceptible nod, relief washed over Jim.  Spock would support not his husband, but his friend, in this.  Jim was not certain that Spock’s logic – or love – would be any more successful at dissuading Leonard than he had been.  He did feel assurance that bondmate or no, Spock would not be swayed by Leonard’s manipulative arguments. 

Jim was not immune from them, though.  There were many reasons he was tempted.  Miramanee, stoned to death.  The missed chance with Antonia.  Crewmembers who had died under his command, and doomed natives of numerous planets.  Spock collapsing, blind and burned, in the reactor chamber.  The psychic attacks on Bones, so numerous Jim had marveled his friend had never experienced a breakdown, save when he was carrying Spock’s katra.  Sam and Aurelan and their two older sons, dying in agony from the neural parasites.  And David.  His own son, David, his flesh and blood dead these eight years under a Klingon knife.  How easy it would be to let Khan and the other Augments die in their pods . . . .  

For one wild moment Jim wondered, if he changed his mind and sided with Bones, if Spock could be persuaded to go back in time.  The Vulcan had his own compelling reasons to want to do so.  But this was madness.  Jim reminded himself of the hidden dangers of time travel.  Spock, dying in the Vulcan desert as a child.  Gillian, killed in a shark attack while checking on George and Gracie, two months after her exuberant arrival in the twenty-third century.  His heartbreak at seeing Edith’s lifeless body lying in the street.  But even worse had been the horror of knowing his world’s timeline had been profoundly altered, the consequence of a stray injection of cordrazine and a crazed McCoy traveling through time – and the result of Edith Keeler not dying in 1930 as she was meant to.

Spock could make the case better than he could.  Jim said to Leonard, “A few minutes ago I asked you to argue with the Wizard instead of with me.  Now you can argue with Spock.  Maybe your husband can talk some sense into you, since I can’t.”  Jim held his tongue and didn’t say “into your empty head;” Leonard was arguing, as was his wont, from his heart, not his head.  Jim turned to their erstwhile host.  “Take the bird.” 

“Wait,” cried Oswald as Frayne lifted the box.  “Why don’t I get to say anything?  I’m nine years old.  That’s old for a dog my size.  I have some arthritis and I get tired easier than I used to.  But I don’t want to be born again or live part of my life again.  I want to go back to my people, to where I belong.  I’ve lived my life.  It’s been a good life.  It’s not fair to live it a second time.  I think that’s cheating.”

“Sensible bird,” Frayne commented.  “Or dog.  You should listen to him.”   He followed Jim out of the hall.

Leonard made a sound of contempt.  “Frayne has some nerve, saying that while he’s living out an extended lifespan here in Oz.”  He turned to his husband.  “We can relive years of our lives.  Decades.  This time, together.” 

“Leonard, Jim is right.  So is Oswald.  We must return to our own time.”

“All those years we wasted pining after each other!  We’re together now, but who knows how long we’ll have?  How long I’ll have?  Please, go back with me.  Jim will change his mind, if you do.”

“Leonard, I would cherish more time with you.  If I live a normal lifespan for a Vulcan, I will outlive every Human I have so far known, even Fallon.  That knowledge weighs on me, as does the knowledge of your condition.    

“But you and I know, who better, the dangers of time travel.  As the consequence of my stepping into the time portal of the Guardian to observe the birth of Orion, I died at the age of seven during the Kahs-wan, and my mother soon after in a shuttle accident.  That alteration of the timeline was corrected, but at the cost of the life of my beloved pet.  As the consequence of you stepping into the Guardian, the history of Earth and of the Federation was altered.  That change, too, was corrected – at a terrible cost to Jim.  Dr. Taylor died soon after coming to the twenty-third century.  I have speculated, as you know, that her death was the timeline correcting itself.  Gillian Taylor was not meant to be in our time.  As we are not meant to relive our lives.”

“This is different,” Leonard insisted.  “We would be in our own time.  We would know what was going to happen.”

“Our altered behavior based on that knowledge would inevitably alter the timeline, perhaps beyond recognition.  Someone we love might pay the price, perhaps with their death.  Jim – or you or I – might die on a mission we never otherwise took.  Joanna or Fallon or my parents or Saavik could die on the way to visiting us.”

“You don’t know any of that will happen!  You can’t know!”

“True.  I do not know.  But are you willing to take the risk?”

“To be young and healthy again, and with you, yes.  When we touched by the walnut tree – when we shared memories while the Witch was trying to get us to turn Dorothy over to her – I know you wished you could go back.  Don’t you want to go back?”

Spock remembered, with pain, the wave of longing that had swept over him in that moment.  To have their young adulthood back, to have Leonard – healthy, beautiful, virile – as mate . . . yes, he had wanted it.  He wanted it even now.  But he was Vulcan.  He was not ruled by his emotions.

“Yes, ashayam, I want it.  But I will not risk the lives of my loved ones, your own included.  If we were to return to Yonada in 2269, you would be my mate, not Natira’s.  Without you acting as husband and mediator, she might not spare our lives when we try to access the Book of the People and the medical knowledge necessary to save your life.  Her wrath might even be accentuated by sexual jealousy.  Perhaps more problematically, our mission surely will have unfolded differently by 2269.  The Enterprise might not be in the vicinity of Yonada at the time of our encounter with that world.  The Federation could end up destroying Yonada after all, along with the Fabrini records.  In either case, the time we would have together would be far shorter than what we have had.”

“We could recreate the formula for the cure.”  Leonard’s voice had a new desperation.  “Your memory is phenomenal.”

“I might be able to recreate it.  I might not.  I will not risk your life on the chance I would fail.”

“We could go back after I’m cured,” Leonard pleaded.  

“That does not address the other issues I raised.  You speak of saving lives that once were lost.  We spent most of our lives serving on a starship.  It is a certainty – not a probability, but a certainty – that other people will die in a timeline even subtly changed.  As in one altered timeline my mother and I died, and as I-Chaya died in another.  Oswald, who has been such a great help to us here, might not be born.”

“He’s a dog,” Leonard said.  “He wouldn’t be living much longer anyway.”

“Even so.  We might kill Khan Noonien Singh in 2267, only to see someone born who would be even more destructive.”  Spock spoke gently, as he asked, “How will you feel, ashayam, when people die, strangers or not, knowing that they had previously lived?”

Leonard was silent.

Spock held out two fingers toward his mate.  “Let us cherish the time we have had, and look forward to the time remaining us.”

Leonard nodded.  A pair of metal digits touched two fingers of straw.  “Let’s go home.”