Chapter Text
Ever since Tarvek had met Agatha there hadn’t been a lot of time to sit and think, there was so much to do, just to stay alive, one crisis upon another. When he had finally been excavated from the time-stopped Mechanicsburg he did get a few days to recuperate from being pulled out of time, and from being poisoned and stabbed, time to ruminate, to consider, to contemplate.
“Gil I have to go and do something” Tarvek said.
“Nonsense, what do you have to do, you’ve been in stasis for two years, you should rest before more assassins come for you.”
“I mean it, get me an aircraft, I’ll hopefully be back soon.”
“What!? Where are you going!?”
“Sturmhalten.”
Tarvek landed outside the city in a modest disguise, the city was under Gil’s control of course, but it doesn’t hurt to be disguised when every petty assassin and family member with something to gain is after your head.
He went past the checkpoint into the city, it is guarded decently well these days. Getting into the castle without announcing his identity would normally be tricky, but the castle was designed with the amount of secret passages typical to spark designed buildings, you couldn’t trip in that building without falling down a trap door or opening a hidden room. He made his way to his former lab, and opened a cabinet.
The clank’s eyelids opened, looked around, and finally Anevka spoke.
“Am I alive?”, It was a sad question, a resigned question, and frankly a whole lot to get into so Tarvek just said:
“I don’t know.”
“Why have you woken me?”
“I thought you deserved better.”
“I’m just a ghost in a machine, aren’t I?”
“That remains to be seen,” Said Tarvek.
He began attaching her head to one of the earlier versions of her body, since the original was still presumably being used by Lucrezia.
“What are you doing!? I was going to sell you out, I was going to blame you! Why are you back for me?” Anevka almost cried.
“I think you can be better than what are family made you.”
Anevka was confused, her entire life, scratch that, her entire existence, was political and manipulative, her brother shouldn’t be doing this.
“What if I kill you the second I can. What then!”
“Don’t worry about that.” Said Tarvek distractedly the commands are still present along with a programmed inability to kill me and a few others.
Anevka was still confused but the schemer in her did note the phrase “and a few others”.
Anevka had weighed on Tarvek heavily, thought about her constantly, debated the entire nature of life just to figure out what to do about her. He realized in Castle Heterodyne that no one should have control of their life taken away from them, and even if she wasn’t the original Anevka, the “real” Anevka, or maybe even Anevka. She was still something that could think and it was wrong to take that semblance of life.
Anevka didn’t ask to many more questions, she was uncharacteristically silent. Tarvek had brought some of her things, and she put on a warm winter coat, not that she actually needed it, and a red wig. The red wigs always made her feel real, they were the color her hair was when she was alive, she knew that that meant nothing, but it was something. She followed him back to the aircraft solemnly and without making eye contact.