Work Text:
For Miss Safin, this won’t break.
He’d left the little box with the note in the hands of a servant, instructed her to deliver it to the Queen’s Tailor and then went on about his work.
There was always something to do at the lab. Reinforcing keftas, forging wearable objects out of amplifiers, improving the First Army’s weapons … David never had the chance to get bored, not while he worked. Being tested and discovered as Grisha and especially as a Fabrikator, a Durast, had come as no surprise to him: son of a blacksmith, he’d always been around metal, had always had an interest in forging, assembling, repairing, and that was what he always did, bent on his table, his eyes focused on a new alloy or deep into the pages of a treaty on something metal. Not all of his fellow Fabrikators were like him. They were able to put work on hold and stop to chat, they didn’t bring work with them at the dinner table or to their bedrooms. They spent time with the others, trained with Baghra … he’d spent just one afternoon with her and had never been summoned back again. He hadn’t mind it. The Darkling seemed to appreciate his work just as fine, and David wasn’t one to get lazy. He was always trying to improve himself, his skills, his work. Most of the time he didn’t even hear when people called his name, he didn’t even notice when someone brushed past him. Most of the time. Not always.
He didn’t always turn, but he could always feel her, her voice, her presence, her scent. Genya Safin was unlike any other Grisha at the Little Palace. First, she didn’t even live at the Little Palace, she spent her life at the Grand Palace, tending to the Queen; second, she was the one and only Tailor there, maybe the one and only Tailor that had ever lived; third, she was beautiful and not in a normal Grisha way. Every Grisha had a kind of glow, a kind of beauty that came from using one’s power, and Miss Safin did it so often that that couldn’t be avoided. No, her beauty came from somewhere else, it was something more and almost sad.
David wasn’t oblivious to the gossip that surrounded her, the Queen’s pet, the King’s plaything, and no one had ever seen her express anything but pride in her demeanour. It had attracted her the jealousy of other Grisha and noble women, it had cast her apart from her kind, it had made her an outcast among men and Grisha, but she’d never shown anything but strength. David admired her, felt sorry for her, would’ve wanted her to be free from her armour, to be just herself, to be able to wear a kefta that didn’t scream her status as a servant, to sleep in the Little Palace, to be simply happy. But David had no way of expressing what he felt inside – and what was that? He knew metal, the reassuring, logical, safe metal. Not people. Never people. He didn’t understand jokes nor camaraderie, he couldn’t dance or make conversation, he most certainly didn’t know how to express feelings. He knew his work. He knew metal.
He’d brushed past her on his way back to the Little Palace. Prince Vasily had wanted him to forge a new sword, a hideous thing, heavy, inelegant, and mostly gold. David would have never wanted to be associated with such work, but that had been the Prince’s request – or better, order – and he’d obliged not without reluctance.
He had just left the Prince’s chambers, sometime after dinner – or was it later? He had no way of knowing – when she’d all but run along the corridor, turned right, and disappeared. David would have thought he had imagined her, but there was a very real hairpin on the floor not far from him. It must have come loose, fallen and now it laid broken at his feet.
He bent down to collect it. He should retrieve it. But not like this. Prince Vasily could have his sword forged as he liked – heavy, inelegant, gold, and ugly –, but not Miss Safin. She was beauty, grace and perfection and she deserved no less than that. David let the hairpin settle at the bottom of his left pocket and went on walking, down the Palace exit, on the path lit by Inferni flames and into his lab in the Little Palace. And he set to work.
She was awakened by a light thud on her door. It was early, far too early. Dawn wasn’t yet for another hour or so. What could She want from her at that time? What MORE could HE want from her? She was tempted to dismiss it and go back to sleep, but she couldn’t afford that luxury. She stood up, throw on a white night robe over her white night gown, put on her white slippers – all her clothes where white, another reminder of her being not a real Grisha, not Second Army, just a servant to the Royal Family – and went to answer the door. Another servant – human, not Grisha. She was the only Grisha allowed to reside in the Grand Palace. The Queen wanted her at hand. The King wanted to put his hands on her – gave her a little purple box with a note attached to it. She left it in her hands without saying a thing, then she turned around and set off.
Grisha didn’t like her because they thought her an arrogant, a traitor to her kind; humans didn’t like her because they thought her a witch who had the King wrapped around her witchy finger. They all couldn’t be more wrong. It wasn’t easy being an outcast, but at least the Darkling valued her. Maybe the gift came from him.
She closed the door and sat back on her bed. She set aside the box and unfolded the paper:
For Miss Safin, this won’t break.
She rested her fingertips on the ink-stained paper, on the cramped handwriting. The message wasn’t signed, but she knew who it was from. No, it hadn’t been the Darkling, purple wasn’t his colour. She carefully put the paper on her bedside table and lifted the box’s lid. Genya smiled, the night’s ordeal not forgotten but cast aside, and when she laid down and closed her eyes, her prize clutched in her fingers, she dreamt of him.
A new hairpin shone from her perfectly arranged auburn hair when she walked past the Fabrikators’ lab to reach the Little Palace’s gardens. It was a pretty little thing that caught both natural and artificial light and made her hair seem even more luscious. This won’t break: Grisha steel. Needle and thread, that was the shape. It screamed Tailor. It screamed Grisha. And it was perfect.
David felt her when she walked past the lab, heard her soft footsteps, inhaled her perfume, and saw her smile. The smile she made for him and him alone. She was wearing the hairpin. And David smiled too. For her, for her alone. She wouldn’t break, not completely, and David would always be ready to help her with the repairs.