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The warmth of his quarters barely penetrates the shell of his armor, this aberrant suit of quintessence circuitry and closed spaces. For all it may sustain him, it wears away in equal measures—stealing comfort, eroding patience. To tear it from his body would satisfy a base, primal urge to be free, to let his hands and face feel open air once more... but it would kill him—in mere doboshes, by Haggar's estimation. Gratification, no matter how pleasing, must not come before reason, before his life.
The suit stays on, then—for as long as it must, fueling his body with the quintessence it requires to survive. But soon—soon he will be free of it. The familiar arcs and panels of his own rooms surround him now. Tension uncoils from his spine, and the echo of his footsteps paces a fraction faster. His (weary, aching) feet carry him to the safe confines of his bedchamber, where at last he may exist without this armor... provided he bends to other systems of support.
Even to lie aimless on his bed while conduits provide the quintessence he needs... The idea curls in his mind like a heavy weight, a craving powerful enough to ache. Give him that luxury, that freedom, and he will rise again to tend to his empire. But a varga, even—time for his limbs to grow less leaden, for his eyes to see beyond the shield of filters...
He very nearly misses her presence entirely.
His feet scratch to a stop over the floor, clumsy things they are in armor he has yet to learn the feel of. Only sheer will and the anticipation of relief keep a growl of annoyance at bay. He turns, eyes lighting on the cloaked form by his bedchamber's innermost wall, so small and subtle he almost overlooked her in his distraction.
In the vargas since the morning, Haggar stripped a panel of the wall bare and installed the beginnings of a thick, crystal-adorned apparatus where sheer metal once stood. Parts of the incomplete device still lie scattered around the pool of her robes, too many disparate components to name, an asteroid field of disorganization broken only by trays of small fasteners marked with floating glyphs. Her head is bowed over a section he cannot glimpse, small shifts of her shoulders betraying quick fingers at work. Not once does her attention waver; whatever this device might be, its continuing construction occupies her entire focus.
His gaze holds on her a moment longer before he angles back to his destination. Nothing now lies between him and freedom from this suit. Freshly imbued with purpose, he starts for the chamber where the armor will disassemble itself, the glorified closet so newly installed in his rooms the doorframe's edges still bristle with jagged metal.
"Sire."
He stills. Turns.
Haggar's eyes gleam beneath her hood, her back twisted almost too far as she angles to see.
"You must remain in the suit for some time yet." Those eyes blink—all the apology he will receive. "I am installing a new stabilizing system, but at present, the quintessence ambience is in flux. You cannot remove it."
Not even—?
"Not even the faceplate." Her gaze trails from his, eyes narrowing. "The environment is unsafe for you."
He will not be treated as a helpless kit in his own quarters—
She turns back, speaking further as though to the half-finished device in the wall. "I fully installed three of four stabilizing units, but"—a sigh—"the last is the most vital. My apologies, sire. I intended to complete this before you arrived."
He glances over the mess of scattered components. Is mess the right word for it? Or is this another of her organized storms of chaos, orderless to the outsider but as neat as columns and rows to her?
She twists, a hand roving over the metal pieces for... far too long. A mess, then. Beneath his heavy helm, his ears flick—or attempt to. Metal confines them a fraction too tightly, the movement incomplete, and a vice wraps around his chest again—
He breathes, wrestles the feeling down, lets confinement hold no sway over him. Once again, he conjures the reminder that this suit is only a fraction more encompassing than the armor he once wore like a second skin... though when he wore that armor, he controlled it. He could breathe unfiltered air, feel it upon his face; his claws were not so thick and awkward, his senses not a degree removed from all but the sound of his own pulse in his head.
And that... He severs that vein of thought, casts it from his mind entirely (as if he could ever manage such a thing). Several slow, idle steps bring him closer to her—then several more, the allure of a distraction fitting neatly in the gaps where he is meant not to be thinking.
The suit grants him enough freedom to sink to the floor beside her, a better vantage for the dubious glance he casts over her unfinished creation. He may grasp easily the theory of her sciences, but seeing them in practice tests his understanding far more than he wishes to tolerate at present.
Haggar spares him not a scrap of acknowledgment, her attention fixed once more on her device as she applies some tool to a glowing fissure deep within its workings. Her disinterest serves as tacit permission enough that he leans forward (lifting just a fraction of pressure off bones that complained of it for vargas) and attempts a more nuanced assessment of the device.
Halfway through the examination, his thoughts trail uselessly into discontent static. The faint beginnings of a growl tighten his throat, yet he lacks even the energy for that. Several thin invectives stir, none coherent in his own mind, but the bitterness gives him an anchor on which focus. Once, he was not so tired. Once, he was...
No—he swore not to dwell. This is a process, Haggar tells him—but he grows tired of the linear (and non-linear) nature of processes. Give him his bayard (but that is gone). Give him a foe to put down, if only to prove that he can (but can he?).
His eyes fall closed behind the mask of the faceplate, the darkness strangely comforting. When he opens them again, such heavy and needless thoughts go obediently back to the shadowed corners of his mind. His growl somehow finds a way to be, rattling in the back of his throat as he draws in air, another attempt to simply fill his lungs once more.
Haggar watches him now. Her eyes gleam, bright and alert, but the look in them...
No. He cannot understand it. He is tired.
The growl wavers and bites off into silence, and Haggar gives the metal widget in her fingers a single twist, not seeming to realize. Something in him, another feeling he cannot name, reaches for a long-ago past when he was not so weary and finds purpose there, puts words on his tongue before he can realize he means them.
"Allow me to assist."
He inclines his armored head a bare degree to indicate the scattered components lying around. A blink, and Haggar's brows draw together. Another blink. His request was unexpected.
She turns from him, again twisting the widget in her grasp but now searching to find where it belongs. "Yes. You may help."
(Proud creature. He is an emperor; seeking permission is no habit of his, but he knows her—bared teeth and narrowed eyes await any who lays hands on her projects without permission.)
(Even him.)
Where to begin? How to? He will not retract his offer, but it was made in haste. The mess of components both assembled and otherwise leaves his mind strangely empty, thoughts themselves too complex to form in the midst of such scientific chaos. He angles his head farther (the suit making a cumbersome twist of the motion) and looks to her.
She fastens the piece she holds to a port—and not the one he would have guessed, another unwelcome highlight to what he (un)wittingly consigned himself to. His hands still itch to move, his mind aching to fix on an idea and focus. Such work will provide a distraction until she stabilizes his quarters' environment enough that he may rest.
"Find me the..." She trails off, not turning to face him, but lifts a hand, shifts her fingers, and a distinct metal component rises from the floor to hover neatly above her palm, twisting and turning until he can memorize the shape of it. "These," she says. "Several are missing."
He will not say that it is unlike to her misplace anything, though the thought enters his mind and hovers unbidden. Imagined visions of her—tense shoulders, narrowed eyes—merely weary him further. He came not to antagonize her—simply to help.
Another idea settles in behind his eyes instead, a vision of a time—a place—long destroyed, and despite the isolation of the suit, his skin somehow takes on the warmth and prickling ambience of a very different room. A cruel trick. He closes his eyes, lets darkness swallow him. Opens them... and banishes the memory.
Once, Honerva permitted him to assist in her experiments. This is not the same. This is still her, ten thousand decaphoebs and an entire set of memories removed, but there the similarities must end. This is Haggar, and this is one of the few, all-too-rare times she permits him to lend hands to her work.
He casts around the sea of parts, his gaze methodical and roving. Several times his heart leaps at what he thinks is the correct piece, but he soon learns what the look-alikes' tricks are and how to ignore them. In the end, as Haggar reaches to fasten what components she does have ready, her movements smooth and efficient as a machine yet still deliberate like artistry, he curls his fingers around a palm cradling three small parts, the distinct hybrids between a fuse and some manner of crystal array.
She blinks as he presents the silent offering, dipping her head in thanks and taking them. Her fingertips brush his armored palm, but the sensation is empty. He feels nothing—no pressure, no warmth.
His gaze drops back to his cluttered floor though she gave him nothing more to search for, but as she adds the fuse-crystals into their places on the mechanical construct, the movement tempts his eyes back toward her. His gift of components pleased her; this he can tell clearly. The chaos of missing pieces must have weighed on her more than he realized. Trapped by the helm, his ears attempt a flutter as his chest constricts again.
And so it continues. She asks for more parts—first shows him an example to study, then sets him loose to search, or in the rare case that eats a quarter-varga with frustration, can offer only a description as all of them have gone missing, at which point they must comb through the lot together twice before locating even one of several. The device slowly comes together, its inner workings forming the grids, nodes, and wires of a functioning technological body.
Crystals play a significant role, as they often do—most notably in the form of a series of tiny rows nudged into place with tweezers which she tests with pulses of her own magic. When the results give her cause to frown, she supplies almost off-handedly, "This is what would kill you without your armor."
He pauses and blinks, but after recent events mentions of his own death no longer strike him as they once did. Strange, but this one almost lifts a weight from his chest, leaves him feeling somewhat brighter. He had not realized she could be so casual, so carefree if he dares earn her wrath with the word. He forgot the sound of her voice when not weighed down by the leaden anchors of her own thought. Those once-familiar tones vanished into the void of his phoebs spent in oblivion, and he heard little of their kind since he woke.
They work largely in silence as one varga ticks over to the next. Her hands move quickly within the machine as his eyes grow practiced at processing the curves and jags of scattered components he knows not a single name for. At last she leans back on her heels, a frown clouding her features, and summons her design diagrams from her holopad. She projects them large enough for him to see, and the second varga finds them trying in vain to puzzle out where the incomprehensible break might be, just where this last component could go that they had missed.
It strikes him then, a flash of humor wrapped in nostalgia and wrapped again with the weight of millennia's learned acceptance, that this is the two of them, the Emperor of the Known Universe and his High Priestess, sitting on the floor and assembling furniture.
Not quite—but almost. Close enough for him to remember. Once, long ago, he enacted almost the same scene with Honerva, reveling in the stubbornness of young, brave people who thought they needed no servants to do their work, a pair whose combined expertise in household constructions extended to unpacking and arranging that which was already built. Honerva could create a quintessence monitor from spare kitchen devices, yes, but "cat trees," as they were called, were not quintessence monitors, were they?
It was for fun, simply because they could, and when they could not, they only tried harder until the thing finally become the very image of what it was meant to be, at which point Kova leapt atop it with all the entitlement of an emperor receiving a new throne.
His hand stills over the tray of excess components he sorts through, the memory hanging in his mind, soft and golden and too precious to let fade.
...But he must let it go, let it turn back into ash and mist and quietude. Haggar watches him with a strange look in her eyes, her own movements gone still while he lost himself in thought. Wanting is not the word for what lurks behind her eyes, but he cannot read its name from the subtleties of her unusually guarded expression. He quirks an ear before it slams into hard metal, before he remembers she cannot see it regardless. A sigh rumbles tinny and muted in his encased chest.
"What are you thinking?" she asks, her voice quiet.
And he cannot lie to her.
Their agreement: He says nothing of their past, of her past, unless she asks for it... but she did ask, opened a door for every word of it to spill out, except he will condense it into a neat, careful parcel as he always does, her question answered but all the details she did not ask for stripped clean.
...Yet he cannot do that—not now, not this time, not when something in his chest still aches, or aches again, like a wound that never healed. Some things he cannot bear to speak of. Perhaps, with his own mind worn as bare as the careful statement he would have built and given her, an innocent memory of a life long gone finds itself among that number.
Any other time, he would have given her the answer she deserved, the one befitting their habits of trust and honesty, but...
"A distant memory," he murmurs and nothing more, and he knows she will leave it at that. In the spaces between words, in places where only she can hear, he says just as clearly, Please. Do not. And she always knew how to understand that, to spare him pain that should perhaps not be pain, to rein and quell her curiosity or sate it another time—to live in the present while a part of him never learned to stop dwelling in the past.
"...I see," she says, and turns away. Beneath the shadow of her hood, her lips are parted in an odd look, almost shaken.
Even if she asks, she always dislikes those mentions of a past she cannot remember, the one that means nothing to her but somehow still means something, if only because it still means something to him.
She is well aware he does not long for a time gone by, a time when she did not yet exist, not as herself, not as Haggar, and he would reach out with words if not a hand and shore that trust, reassure her—
—but talking of such things always brings to mind the sharp, aching caution of skirting the edge of a minefield.
In the end, they solve the dilemma of her design diagrams. Of course they do. She is too stubborn to give in, too brilliant to remain stymied, and vaguely apologetic when she acknowledges the delay, but after whispering to herself the results of her tests, each one returning a perfect alignment, resonance, ambience... words he cannot understand in context... her satisfaction finally gives way to an eagerly-awaited encouragement that he remove his faceplate.
He lets it slip up and away and breathes air that fills his struggling lungs easier and deeper than a thousand recycled breaths ever could.
She stands and brushes at her robes, removing dust that was never there, and turns to him, every manner of her being as it should be, another glimpse revealed of the clever, sharp, soft and determined friend he knows, still misses, would manage to miss more if he had not somehow changed just as much in the past phoebs. But then he blinks and she is gone, the weight of worries and thought shrouding her again, except that somehow became familiar too.
Her voice, when she speaks, still gives credence to the illusion that nothing at all ever changed between them. "It is missing... one final piece."
He imagines, beneath her hood, the flick of her ears; strangely, the pause in her words was almost self-conscious.
Stepping a few paces away, she bends to retrieve an object he had not noticed before, a vague metal cube, its sheets folding from the center like a blossom and the curved angles alternating in polished silver, violet, and rust-red hues.
"What is this?" he asks.
"Decoration."
She sets in on the ledge of the device she built—very much like a sculpture on a display shelf.
Something in his chest slows, stops, and he steps forward to examine it. With his own eyes—not the filters—he studies the design, and it is indeed as artistic as at first glance. The metal was crafted deliberately, and not in any modern fashion he ever witnessed. Rather, it is almost ancient in its style, and—
There are still things that can open a hole in his chest, put cold where warmth once lay. It is like a stab to his heart, this reminder, stopping it below his ribs only so the next beat can ache. It had been so long... He thought he had already learned how painful memories could be.
This is one he never would have expected. He grew used to seeing echoes of Honerva in everything Haggar is or does, enough so he would almost wonder if her first self had truly gone away, but so much else was consigned to the hollows of his mind that he never thought he would see again. So much was lost with Daibazaal that never took another form to follow him.
But the archives—the archives still exist. Mostly. They may be old, near-crumbling, their data riddled with holes and glitches, shut away until only two, perhaps three, reliably know of their existence... but she is one of that number, and how deeply into them must she have delved to find relics like this?
The statue itself is not ancient, the metal gleaming shiny and new, its corners still crisp and sharp from recent shaping. The words, however, carved into the object's crannies—that language is lost to time, another only they two remember, and one all his scouring could no longer find surviving in any data records. How far did she search for even a single sample of it, let alone this one?
Honerva may have first learned it out of a stubborn desire to connect, but Haggar asked to be taught it again only once she realized he had lost it—lost his own language, entirely—and she never learned the written forms, only the spoken. She must have found a translation along with the words, as she does nothing half-hearted, but to guess that these particular words, of all the quotes from all his people's ancient texts, were the ones he always held most dear... (He had an statue much like this one, long ago, displayed in his and Honerva's rooms. It was a gift from his arav.)
More unneeded proof that she knows him well.
And she made this piece—she, because she may rarely turn her hands to art, but he can always recognize the elements of her designs.
She made it.
For him.
For a moment, just a tick, he aches, and the sight of the sculpture stirs memory like a dry wind stirs red sand and dark leaves. For so long does he stare at it that he almost forgets all else.
When he turns, her eyes are watching him, guarded, something unreadable in their depths, and it steals the words he meant to utter from his mouth.
Her hands curl into fists at her side... and uncurl again, the kind of familiar, restless energy he knows her for. The way she watches him, it is almost as though she wants to speak again... but she does not.
Such looks have grown commonplace as of late. He vowed to himself not to press, for all the words he knows she does not say feel like a jag of empty space between them. Honerva was just the same. She would not speak of what troubled her until she herself could manage it. Whatever haunts Haggar, he knows not, but if any guess would be remotely relevant, he would wonder what stress his "absence" caused. She was left to keep an entire empire from crumbling and to keep him from sinking under just the same. Too much—that is too much to ask of her... but what else are they if not the ones who can carry the other's burdens when needed? He found her screws and fuses for her, after all—and it is a matter of scale, but nevertheless...
"Thank you," he murmurs finally—for the statue, or perhaps for everything else—and the words seem to startle her. She blinks.
Did she not realize he would recognize her handiwork in the design? Craftwork aside, no other would have been able to find the characters to carve in it—no other would have known they existed. And who else would create something for him?
Who else would make him a gift like this and mean it?
Her hands shift again, and her gaze drops from his. "You are... welcome."
The words are stilted, formal, and it would jar a fond rumble from him if his chest had not become too heavy of late for anything but the sharpest emotions to find sound.
He longs to be free from this armor. She promised that in time he may grow hale enough to no longer need its assistance, but now...
"Is the room's quintessence safe?" Perhaps that is not the way to phrase it—the terminology for his condition somehow manages to elude his understanding entirety. His ears pin back as best they can, and at the sheer powerlessness of the statement, the edge of a growl finds a way in: "Am I free to remove this suit?"
His temper, his mood, let loose too sharply there, merely leaves her nonplussed. She dips her head a bare inch, and somehow he restrains himself from whirling immediately toward the chamber that will free him from it.
The whisper of magic, magnetics, and motion pulls the metal from his body, bares him to an undersuit not thin and not lacking, but one chill manages to find him through all the same. Devices hum around him, ambient life support awakening at his presence, and small, concentrated nodes of quintessence embedded in the undersuit burn like fire against his skin, miniature substitutes for the armor which are inadvertently painful enough to remind him to seek an alternative immediately. Their makeshift purpose is to grant him enough time to transfer from one life-support system to another, and upon stepping from the chamber, he dutifully seeks the newly installed quintessence conduits that allow him to lie upon his bed without (undue) risk of his body failing.
He casts a glance around the room, but Haggar disappeared with not a sound nor sign nor empty component tray left behind. Her absence hangs like a growing void in a mind that, in some way or another, had expected her to remain while he removed the suit, but this is... acceptable. She goes where she wishes, and he does not long for her presence. (He does not pine, not even now.)
Something quiets in him at the absence... but perhaps quiet is merely better for resting. He aches. Exhaustion threads through him down to the bones. Rest is what he needs, what he wanted all along when he came here.
When the conduits' connectors secure themselves and the quintessence nodes no longer burn so terribly, his ears angle at the sudden, deliberately audible pad of footsteps. He exhales, and something in him quiets again, a much truer quiet than before (for perhaps quiet is not the word to describe a muteness that still managed to rattle in his mind like shards of glass).
Haggar draws near to the bed, returned from wherever else in his rooms she vanished to, not abandoned him to his rest after all. She will remain; he knows that now, for she always understands the moments he dreads the idea of solitude most strongly, sparing his pride the (unnecessary) sting of having to voice it.
(He missed her. How he missed her.)
"Rest, sire," she murmurs, "and later I will tell you what my new device has to offer."
Very well. She does indulge him, does she not?
A handful of vargas spent wrangling components is not so poor a price to pay if this is his reward.
His lets his eyes fall closed...
...and when he opens them again, the evening vargas are gone, his bones no longer ache so terribly, and Haggar is there to treat him to a lengthy and bright-eyed discussion on the unlikely scientific and arcane methods employed in her new device. She reports, too—regretfully—that several minor crises of state also stirred while he slept, all of which she personally chastened with promises of Imperial retribution should they dare grow out of control before the morning.
For the latter, she has his thanks, and for his thanks he earns a rare look of amusement from her, and then as though summoned, the shadows reappear behind her eyes, twisting inexplicably back into those strange pains and hidden musings.
You will tell me this, he thinks. Eventually.
She will—of course—but nevertheless, he treasures this newfound moment of peace far too much to send cracks through it by poking what ought not to be stirred—not yet. Give her time, he thinks, and so he does, and whether it is a reward for his complacency or not—(he thinks not)—she deigns to scratch his head plating for him, and it feels almost like before.
Almost like before.