Work Text:
The day Enver had requested a room to be repurposed to function as a workshop in Wyrm’s Rock, he had been then met with raised eyebrows by the stewards and some of the commanders. Their amusement at his “whimsy” had gradually transformed to respect when he emerged with schematics, for improved designs for the Steel Watch, for other implementations around the fortress. How easy it had been to impress some fools with simple pumps to ease the access of water. The kitchen had been the most delighted by the implementation. It stifled any objections when he retreated to the workshop – not as large as the one he had in the Foundry – to work on whatever rattled around his skull and to be alone where no one dared to bother him about trivial matters.
Just like now, as he sat over a cluster of gears and screws that provided the biggest lifting force of his Steel Watch, there had been palpable relief when he announced he was going to tinker on some modifications. It had been several hours since the battle ended. People still dug desperately around the rubble and ruins of collapsed houses. Within the first hour he had put the emergency plans he had drawn up the night he had come to terms with the plot being doomed to fail into motion. There was some organization in the recovery efforts, the chaos subdued to what it could have been. A full blown disaster had been averted. And it gave him some time to come up with the final touches on the schematics he had been working on long before.
That damnable night… he had been too exhausted to notice her presence. She could have easily killed him, with her blade pressed right on his throat. Instead, she had pleaded with him to reconsider, to remain in a position to guide the city out of a disaster he had orchestrated to begin with. The irony was not lost on him, the hero begging the villain to drop their plans. A fairytale worthy of a puppet theatre at the street corner he used to watch as a child. Long before he had been sold to the house of hope, there had been a time where he had soaked up these little pieces of art whenever he could. Then the mechanisms of machines, of little cogs and gears had fascinated him, their ticking and clicking its own art. In a way, he relished in this moment of peace, where he could sit down and think of this new puzzle to solve. More leverage was needed so the Watchers could lift heavier, more obstructive hurdles out of the way. He had worked out the crux of the issue, what needed to be changed. All that remained was putting the pieces together and an anchorage point for it all to be stable. For a moment, he thought back to a point so many moons ago. Of the Dark Urge’s presence beside him as he explained how to link several scrying eyes so that no individual wizard had to cast each eye, when he fixed a simple trap mechanism that had their eyes sparkle the more he explained how to maintain and disarm it. The glide of their skin over his came to forefront of his mind as he screwed in a connective bridge between two steel bones making up the arm of the Watcher. No matter how and when, there always the scent of iron clinging to them. Yet, in the dark hours in the morning, when they laid nestled in the crook of his arms, he had allowed himself to love them.
And then their corpse had been plastered before his home in the Upper City by Orin’s courtesy.
Their memory had dulled, buried alongside with them. Now in little moments he allowed his mind to stray, Ilyana’s image imposed itself on them. How she had threatened him whilst still pleading with a knife to his throat in a visibly unpracticed manner. In hindsight, it had been laughable and he certainly had been more than capable of throwing her off of him. But he had been too captivated: by her audacity, by the closeness, his hands on her arms, the way her hair had brushed his face, the smell of ozone lingering underneath the smell of the soap she used.
And then she was gone, like a violent storm: suddenly there and gone leaving the world reeling in the aftermath. He had promised her an alliance, even had wrangled an oath out of her at his coronation. And another one when he had retrieved her from the docks after he reminded her that he had not forgotten how she had forced him into accepting her terms. He could not allow her to invade and wind herself around more of his musings like a coil any further than she already had.
Yet, somehow, his subconscious had his thoughts circle around the sleeping Ilyana safely tucked away in a tower.
The last cog slid into place, spinning along as it connected with the engine of the deactivated Watcher on his bench. A tenday ago he hadn’t imagined being hunched over the problem of assembling a prototype designed to clear away and recover citizens from a battle’s aftermath.
He had always found ways to get out of things that were once deemed inevitable. He had worn many identities before, reinventing himself to fit the circumstances to always come out on top.
Such as becoming the crafty Archduke who stepped up after the battle.
This time, his jaw clenched at the thought as did his hands into fists, he would not allow anything – anyone – to change him again.
Least of all the sorceress who lingered persistently in the little moments where his thoughts strayed too far into dangerous territory.