All Hope of Repair, chapter 5
Aug. 8th, 2019 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shinonFandom: Final Fantasy VI
Characters: Edgar/Locke
Word count: ~5000
Warnings: Strong language, alcohol, continuing to oscillate wildly between humor and angst
Notes: [shrug]
Locke waited by the train platform and thought maybe he wouldn't show. Maybe he was secretly carrying a grudge. Maybe he'd send a note saying something had come up and he couldn't get away after all.
This was weird, right? This had to be weird. You might go somewhere with your revolutionary contact, or you might go somewhere with your friend, but you didn't go places with your friend the spy who was obviously and pathetically horny for you. Who wanted that kind of trouble?
A train pulled in. A train pulled away. He didn't see anyone familiar in the crush.
And then someone tapped his shoulder. "Boo."
Locke said, "If I turn around, and there's anything stuck to your face that shouldn't be, I'm gonna rip it off and make you eat it."
"Oh. In that case, give me two minutes." Locke whirled around. "Made you look," said Edgar, with a triumphant smile. And no mustache, thank fuck. Nothing untoward at all. He was just Edgar, dressed like a regular rich dumbass and not the rich dumbass in charge of the entire desert, which was probably the best disguise he could manage.
Locke wasn't sure if he'd ever been happier to see anyone in his life. And he was probably being just as obvious about it, and just as pathetic, as he'd feared. But — this was his friend. It didn't have to be anything dire. You could be that happy to see your friend.
If you were a total sap, anyway.
He laughed at himself and socked Edgar in the arm. "Right. Let's go cause some trouble."
Locke woke on the third morning with such a thundering hangover that for a few seconds he thought the couch he'd passed out on was breathing. He weighed his options: would it be worse to try looking around, or to lie here and live with the knowledge that furniture did that now? It eventually started to weird him out enough that he mustered the strength to turn his head, but then —
"Don't," said a hoarse voice, somewhere above him. "Do not."
"Okay," he said, and settled back.
The voice said, "All systems are balanced in a delicate equilibrium. Everything will be fine, as long as neither of us moves. But if I'm jostled in any way, I'm going to die." Long pause. Audible gulp. "And I promise you I will make it your problem."
Right. Okay. He remembered now. They'd hit four bars last night and somebody hadn't been able to make it back to his suite unaided, so even though they'd booked separately this time, Locke had graciously come to his aid. Then sat down on the couch for a breather. And some colossal idiot had forgotten that the endgame for this maneuver was supposed to be a bed, and had sat down next to him.
And here they still were, except that over the course of the night, gravity had done its usual thing.
"You will be prosecuted" — another pause, a careful breath — "at the bare minimum, for lèse-majesté. At most for my assassination. Don't speak. Blink twice if you understand."
"Morning, Edgar," Locke mumbled. It made sense now, the breathing. What he'd first taken for the world's worst-designed pillow was, actually, the King of Figaro's chest. He had some dim awareness that under normal circumstances this would be awkward, but right now his biggest concern was not letting his eyes crawl out of his skull.
"I said don't speak."
"I didn't do anything. You assassinated yourself." And he'd tried pretty hard to bring Locke down with him. Holy fuck, this guy drank.
"No, I didn't. I didn't die."
"Yet."
"You're right. Could still happen."
It didn't happen. They didn't die. It was warm here.
Locke's head had been pounded full of railroad spikes and his stomach wanted to go somewhere without the rest of him, but — he was warm. His skin was stretched on too tight, like a grape rotting on the vine, ready to burst any moment. But he was lying here feeling the slow rise and fall of someone else's breathing, and the steady thud of someone else's pulse where his jaw lay against someone else's chest. He was sick, and he hurt, and it was so fucking long since he'd had this. He should be ashamed of himself. He was. But the alternative was to feel this shitty in some other room all by himself. Why not make it worthwhile? Why not give himself something to really feel bad about?
He missed her. He couldn't stop missing her, and the way she'd tucked her hair behind her ear and the way she'd defend him to anyone else but never put up with any of his shit when they were alone, and the way she said his name. But he missed this, too: just lying down with another warm body. Maybe all hope of that closeness didn't have to be buried with her. Or maybe this was what was wrong with him, the fact that he could still want it with her gone.
The fact he could want more than this.
(He tried to remember. He might have said something compromising last night, something in the key of "You're my best friend and I love you, please don't go anywhere," and Edgar might've patted his cheek and said something condescending. Maybe, condescension aside, it had been the answer Locke wanted. But this would've been at the third bar. No one would ever know the details.)
He shouldn't stay here. But he couldn't make himself go. For one thing, he dreaded the prospect of even trying to move. But beyond that, he missed feeling like — even if he didn't deserve it — somebody gave a damn about him.
Fucking hell. His eyes were leaking. Well, he decided, with a sudden clarity of thought, I'll just be low-key about this and hope he doesn't notice. It'll blow over.
It didn't blow over as fast as he hoped. And then a hand closed softly over the back of his neck, which must mean he'd been found out. He couldn't imagine that was standard procedure. It was not something you did when you were awkwardly sharing a couch with somebody and you didn't suspect him of maybe crying into your shirt a little.
Be cool, Locke told himself. Edgar's thumb grazed over the knobs of his spine. This made it harder to be cool, and in fact might kill him on the spot. He bit his lip. "Sorry," he said, in the coolest and most wryly detached way he could manage.
"Don't worry about it. After a night like that? This stuff happens."
"What, ever happen to you?"
"Well. No. Honestly, I was just trying to be nice." He kept running his thumb up and down over the exposed skin in slow, gentle sweeps. Locke, barely suppressing a shudder, told himself, Do not get a boner. At least have that much self-respect. He's gonna fucking know. "It's a documented phenomenon, though."
"Oh, great. It's documented. I feel so much better now."
"You should," said Edgar. "You're not alone."
Eventually Locke gave up trying to decide if there was a double meaning there, or some secret triple or quadruple level of meaning, or whatever the fuck headgames Edgar did for fun, and he gave up trying to work out whether he was betraying anyone by staying here, and he stayed here. Edgar had told him not to move, anyway. So he was allowed not to move. He shut his eyes. It was okay if he didn't think about the past, or the future, just for a bit. It was okay if he let the world look after itself for just one morning, while he lay here, where it was warm, and he wasn't alone.
At length Edgar took a deep breath, and slowly let it out, and said, "Perhaps... a less ambitious plan for this afternoon. Maybe if we kept things... sedate."
Locke snorted, and then regretted it, feeling like it had shaken loose some critical element in his skull. "Ya don't say." He blinked a few times. Eyeballs still intact, against all odds.
"It is with sincere and mortal fear that I ask you this," Edgar began, and then stopped, collecting himself. "But could you let me up?"
"Weren't you gonna die?"
"Yes. But. Bathroom."
"Oh. Okay. Well, be brave. If you do croak, I won't tell anyone how. I'll make up a really nice cover story."
"Sweet of you."
"'He died doing what he loved' — actually, any preference? Sex, machines, or sex with a machine?"
"Ah. I take it back."
On the fourth day — the last full day before Edgar left for home the afternoon of the fifth, but who was counting — Edgar went off to get a massage. Locke, who hadn't recovered from the previous morning on the couch, and worried it had opened some kinda sluice inside, such that the next time anybody touched him he might start bawling — or immediately jizz himself — didn't go along. Wasn't his thing anyway. He sat around in a coffee shop lazily thumbing through newspapers.
It was part of the job to know all this shit before it ever saw print, but sometimes reading it after the fact was good for a laugh. Oh, you'd think, is that how they're gonna spin it. And sometimes it helped for stringing together big-picture stuff.
This week in bizarre Gestahlian propaganda: a big splashy picture of the latest graduates from army officer training. They looked keen and serious and, to a one, suspiciously baby-faced. What was this supposed to say? "Meet the bright young things who will soon be crushing you beneath their heels!" or "Look how dedicated our citizens are!" or "Come try us, motherfuckers, we don't even spare our own children!"
In the second before he threw the paper down in disgust, he noticed what they were standing in front of.
Edgar showed up for their lunch reservation in a state of such smug relaxation he no longer appeared to have bones. Glowing obnoxiously with health and good spirits, he began an elaborate process of decanting himself into a chair. Locke, across the small square table, kinda hated to ruin it for him — but Edgar caught on during the salad. "Something amiss?"
The restaurant was crowded with the tail end of the lunch rush; no one appeared to be paying the two of them much attention, but there were too many people around to keep track of. Locke flicked his glance around the room to indicate, y'know, lunch rush. "I'd like to pick your brain about something later. Could use an expert's opinion."
Edgar blinked. "Whatever for? You haven't met a girl since yesterday, have you? My, my." He shook his head sadly. "I'm always the last to know."
"No," said Locke, stung. "I meant the thing you're actually good at."
Edgar sniffed, still in high theater mode. "That's not called for. But if you feel discretion is a priority, I'll happily accompany you back to the inn once we're done here."
The lunch was good, but to Locke's mind, not worth the expense. Then again, he found it hard to imagine anything good enough for that price tag. If it wasn't fifty times better than a sausage and a potato, what business did it have costing fifty times as much? And nothing was fifty times better than a properly seasoned potato. Q.E.D, as Edgar would have said, except for his massive blind spot around all this rich-people bullshit.
Whatever. It was Edgar's money.
On the way back Locke said, "We'll use my room. It's boring, so it's less attractive to eavesdroppers. And yours has too many hiding places."
"Have we been made?" said Edgar. Brisk, alert, all business. It was not an Edgar you saw very often, even though, if Locke had to pick, he'd probably say this was the real one.
"Nah, I have no reason to think so. I just wanna be really sure nothing leaves the room. But if you wanna swing by yours first and grab some stuff, I'll meet you there."
"No need. Or rather, no use. I'm traveling without my usual toys this time."
"Huh. Really?"
"I brought nothing but clean clothes and dirty literature. If someone asked me to fix a window fan right now, I couldn't do it."
"What, you couldn't seduce hardware out of someone?"
Edgar looked thoughtful. "Bolts, maybe. Washers. Most of my target demographic doesn't have nuts, and those that do don't give them up lightly." Locke groaned. "Come on, I'm showing remarkable restraint. The things I could say about a drill press." They walked a few steps further before he said, "Wait. A hammer. See? You should be thanking me. And I didn't mention screws, either. Only the most highbrow of tool-related innuendo around here, my good sir."
"Heh. 'Tool.'"
"Oh, grow up," said Edgar in mock disgust.
That brought them to the inn. In the middle of the day, most people were out and about — they passed only a maid doing the rounds, and a quick check under the doors suggested nobody was at home in either of the rooms abutting Locke's. So he bolted the door behind them and pulled the newspaper out of his inside jacket pocket, passing the picture to Edgar.
There were several seconds of intent silence. Then Edgar said, "Good eye."
"Think we've found your platform?" said Locke.
"Unfortunately."
A bulky machine stood behind the Gestahlian Empire's best and brightest, out of focus, halfway out of frame — but there as predicted, centered in the front plate, were four components in a ring, the muzzle of a terrible gun.
"I don't want to say this looks like a cavalry unit," said Edgar, faintly, "but it sort of looks like a cavalry unit." He pointed to a front-facing wedge shape at the machine's lower left. "I'm willing to bet that articulates like an ankle joint, so it can find stable footing on different terrain. But I can't speculate on how maneuverable they are in general." He dropped the paper onto the table and started pacing the room. "They'd need another power supply for locomotion, in addition to however many are wired up to the cannon. And depending on total mass" — he frowned, thinking back — "well, that barrel component was hardly lightweight, but it has to withstand a substantial energy discharge. It's possible they could have constructed the rest out of a lighter material. Unless — I've never seen one of their guns up close enough. Do they have much recoil? I would assume — but then, this is magic, and we already know that has only a passing relation to normal physics." He stopped pacing and looked at Locke expectantly.
"What?"
"The recoil," said Edgar, as if it were obvious that was the one word Locke should have picked up. Oh, sure. "You've spent some time nosing around Imperial installments. Have you seen one of their weapons fired?"
"Tell you what, I'll take notes next time. Then when they ship you my ashes in a canister, you can sift through 'em and try to decipher my final message. 'I'm sorry, I can't tell you if there's any muzzle flip, because all my bones are melting together. Aah! My bones!'"
Edgar rolled his eyes. "It was just an idle thought. If you're going to have your bones melted in the pursuit of knowledge, there are more important questions you could be answering."
"Man, you're all heart."
"That said, you'd better not ship me your mortal remains. They wouldn't go with my decorating theme."
"So redecorate."
"What, do you want top billing in a museum of the macabre? I never thought you harbored such ambitions. Then again, I can't be totally surprised, given —" He stopped. "Anyway, I'd better get to work on this."
He spent the next hour in near silence, sketching out proportions and estimates and obscure equations on scrap paper. He paused frequently to frown at the image, at first in open dismay, but gradually sliding into an attitude of dispassionate analysis. As if it really were a puzzle, and nothing else. For his own part Locke kept catching himself staring at the guy too much — who had time to read that much into every twitch of an eyebrow, calm the hell down — so he moved away, and sat down on the bed, and idly ran through knife tricks.
"Could I learn to do that?" Rachel had asked him, once.
He'd actually just nicked himself trying to pull off a triple spin, but he kept all reaction off his face and hoped she didn't notice the blood. "Maybe, but you gotta have pretty strong wrists. Why?"
"Do I need a reason? Maybe it's more fun if we're both delinquents."
Locke had snorted. "You could never hack it —"
"Sure I could. I can be a delinquent for three hours. Then I need to go help Mom with dinner." And she'd leaned in closer, her eyes big and dark. "Show me how."
He'd all but forgotten that afternoon. He twirled his knife around and did that same spin, and couldn't believe he'd fucked it up back then. It was so easy.
He wondered if he'd forget this afternoon, too.
He wondered — did this say anything about his type? Applicants must be responsible, but open to stupid mischief, and also must be absolute fucking dorks.
He wondered if they'd like each other. How had that question never occurred to him before? They were bound to meet someday, right? Once Rachel was alive again and the two halves of his life finally knitted back together. Like a broken bone, finally set.
"I wonder," said Edgar, breaking his reverie, "if you could weigh in on my shopping list."
So they debated, prioritized, rearranged — once almost argued over — this list. Information Edgar wanted, supply lines to be interrupted, an endless and improbable stream of miscellaneous gadgetry. We don't have the manpower for that kind of infiltration, Locke would tell him, so think again, or, Maybe if we'd started this six months ago, or, People are going to die. And the only answer Edgar had for any of it was: I know.
Sometime around six in the evening, mentally and morally exhausted, Locke said, "Some vacation this is, huh?"
"Well, what do you propose we do instead?" said Edgar. "Ignore the call of duty and neck furiously in the cloakroom?" Locke choked. Edgar smiled wryly. "Doesn't have to be the cloakroom. We've no doubt been noticed vanishing together into both my room and yours; any third location should be enough to convince the staff we're total perverts. I'm open to suggestions."
Locke finally got control of his facial expression. "Man, the staff doesn't have time to waste noticing shit like that. This is a pretty high-volume inn. You're not as interesting to the common people as you think."
Then again, he was a common person, and Edgar was plenty interesting to him. He waited in dread to be called on it. Instead — with a calm smile and the closest approach Edgar Figaro made to sincerity — "Well, I'll leave that door open for a more opportune time. For now, I'm perfectly happy to sacrifice one evening's worth of tomfoolery for the greater good. Our entire friendship is predicated on subversive activities anyway. What better capstone for this little jaunt, hm?"
"I guess you're right."
"And besides. After today, I'm not sure how much more help I can be in matters mechanical."
He said it too casually. Locke narrowed his eyes. "What are you talking about?"
Edgar sighed. "The Empire has lately made it plain they're aware of my... little hobby." He added hastily, "They don't know I'm here, so there's no risk in my helping out today. I'm sure of that. If I thought I was being watched that closely, I wouldn't have come in the first place. It's just —" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's just hints, so far. These cutesy little gifts."
"That paperweight?"
"Do you know those gears don't even mesh? It's hideous. And I wish they'd stopped there." In mounting indignation, he said, "They sent me this kit — a child's toy — the most flimsy and insulting piece of —" He stopped. He took a steadying breath. He went on in a more controlled tone. "Either they don't know my capabilities, or they're giving me enough rope to hang myself, but regardless — I think my best defensive move is to keep playing the dilettante." A muscle twitched in his jaw. "It's fine," he said shortly. "It's in my citizens' best interest. I need to keep the castle's defenses a secret, which calls for a whole cascade of additional secrets —"
"So you need me to not blow your cover."
"I'd say to only use me in this capacity in case of an emergency, but" — he flashed a fleeting grin — "everything's always an emergency."
Locke chewed on his lip. "No — you have a point. You being in the Empire's good books is important for the cause, too. I can't ask you to risk that."
"Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? Even if I can't do much now, I'd be even less helpful dead. Please believe that I've done the math."
"Edgar. Even if all you do is stay buddy-buddy with Gestahl from now until the day we attack, that's plenty."
"Thanks. That's kind of you to say."
"But if you really had to give up your inventions, I think I'd worry about you."
And something in Edgar's expression told Locke that, yeah, he'd be right to. But then it vanished, whatever it was, behind the standard ironic little smile. "Now, where were we?"
They were up late, and got a late start the next day; there was just enough time to stroll around the city for an hour or two people-watching, and then stop in at a cafe (ignoring the papers this time). All too soon Edgar was checking his pocket watch, and Locke said, "Want me to walk you to the station?"
"No, no." Edgar got up and grabbed his bag. "I can find my own way. Anyway, I don't hold with long goodbyes." He held out his hand. "Don't be a stranger. Otherwise I'll have to get inventive again."
"What, 'again?'" Locke shook the proffered hand. "When was the first time?"
Edgar laughed, and drained the dregs of his coffee, and without further fanfare went home. The cafe was a duller place on the instant.
Magitek Armor was fielded for the first time two months later.
Edgar had written, "All right, forget the risks. I would kill to take one of those apart." In the spring, he proved it.
"If I'm caught with this, I'll have to make a present of it to the emissary," he said. In a tone of vacant astonishment: "We just found it in the sand! Do you know anything about this? The operator must've gotten lost or something! Is this yours?" In his own voice again: "Or maybe I should mistake it for something from an earlier age? ...No. Any story I came up with would tax even my ability to play the simpleton. I'll just have to not get caught."
"What do we do with the body?" said Locke. The soldier had stopped his armor and gotten out — maybe it had been overheating as he crossed the dunes — and had sat down in its shade, checking his compass. It wouldn't help. Locke had faked his orders, sending him out into the desert alone. He'd known he was singling the guy out for death, but it wasn't hard if he thought about Kohlingen. Maybe the fucker had been there. Maybe not. Maybe he'd heard a friend bragging about it, and bought the next round. Wasn't that as bad?
While trying to find his next heading, the soldier had sprouted three crossbow bolts from his chest. Edgar had stepped over the body and crossed to the machine, and started looking for a way up.
"Good question," he said now, from the control seat. "It won't decompose out here."
"Anybody finds this, they're gonna know there was foul play. Three gaping puncture wounds don't scream 'dehydration.'"
"There's water in blood. Surely the case could be made."
Locke crouched down next to the corpse and started sawing through the heavy crossbow shafts with his knife. He could at least get rid of the most obvious signs. He balanced precariously on the balls of his feet while he worked; kneeling might've been easier, but he was pretty sure the sand could cook him through his clothes. Sweat ran into his eyes. He made conversation. "The crossbow. An Edgar original?"
"Working on a new trigger mechanism. But not to worry. I brought more conventional weapons in case anything went wrong. Anyway — the hope is that I can move this thing down into a cave system I've heard of nearby. If so, we take the body with us and decide how to dispose of it from there. If not, we leave it here and make it look like bandits got him. Shot him and stripped the armor for parts."
"Shot him three times from the exact same angle," Locke noted. "Pretty organized bandits you got around here."
"Yes," said Edgar. "That was a mistake."
"And if they thought bandits got him on your turf, wouldn't they expect you to crack down?"
"No doubt. There are many reasons banditry is only my second choice." He did something with a series of levers and toggles. The Magitek Armor sputtered awake and then lurched upward, in slow stages, like a tired old dog rising off its haunches.
"Is it broken?" Locke said. "Or do you just suck at this?"
Edgar did something else with the controls. The machine lumbered forward, planting one ponderous foot and then the other, kicking up great plumes of yellow sand. Each movement was so glacial and deliberate, the product of so many incrementally moving pieces, that Locke felt like it'd be faster to walk. But then, when you looked at it from farther away, saw how long those strides really were...
And you couldn't walk around with a big fuck-off cannon bolted to your chest, either.
About two hundred feet away it clanked to an abrupt halt and Edgar scrambled down. Locke, still standing by the body, shouted over to him, "What gives?"
A hose worked loose under the thing's shoulder joint. A gout of steaming liquid blew out into the air and hung in red droplets, like — no. That was a dumb thought. Even the Empire didn't run machines on blood, and Edgar could probably tell you how badly that'd gum up the works. It was more of a fluorescent pink.
The armor slumped like a wounded thing. Edgar stood motionless, staring at it.
"You okay?" said Locke, approaching him. "It didn't burn ya, did it?"
"I'm fine," he said, but there was something in his voice. "I'm fine." But he looked — furious. "I'm surprised it made it this far. My best guess is — with temperature cycling, you know, the hoses expand and contract, and some kind of obstruction could've — but if they'd designed around it, or trained their troops better in how to maintain" — he bit off something scathing. "Right. We let it cool off and salvage what we can." Locke did not express his doubts that, under this baking sun, anything would cool off ever again. "Dammit. If all I'd wanted was parts, I could've just..." He shook his head in disgust. "All this for nothing."
Locke had a hunch. "I mean, it kinda sucks, but it's not nothing. You got to mess with the controls and you get to cherry-pick what you're taking home to look at. That's gotta be worth something." Edgar didn't reply. Carefully, he put his suspicion into words. "Edgar. Have you killed anyone before?"
Edgar huffed a colorless laugh. "Such a naive question, coming from you. My decisions as king have always had the weight of life and death. This is no different in principle from anything I've already done."
"Sounds like a fancy way of saying 'no,' but go on."
Edgar looked at him. His eyes were hard. "This is what weapons are for. It's easy to think in abstractions in the workshop, and say, 'oh, this is just a proof of concept.' But when I'm no longer obliged to keep this sham of a peace —" He turned his face to the steaming armor unit, dark against the desert sky. "I'll be ready."
Locke watched him for a long moment, but he just stood there. Finally Locke sighed. "Okay. That's what the king says. What about my dumbass friend?"
"Not at home to visitors," said Edgar, looking briefly rueful. "Please understand." Back to business: "Nothing for it, anyway, but you might care to loot the corpse." Locke frowned at him, still catching up. "If we're claiming this was bandits. I'll look the other way, so go ahead and pick him clean. Strictly in the interest of verisimilitude, of course."
"Okay. Strictly in the interest of whatever the fuck you just said, do we wanna disguise the wounds at all?"
Edgar rolled his eyes and grumbled, "Fine, point taken, next time I'll just slit his throat."
He would do it, Locke had no doubt. He wouldn't flinch. But Locke wanted somehow to spare him from all the next times.
Characters: Edgar/Locke
Word count: ~5000
Warnings: Strong language, alcohol, continuing to oscillate wildly between humor and angst
Notes: [shrug]
Locke waited by the train platform and thought maybe he wouldn't show. Maybe he was secretly carrying a grudge. Maybe he'd send a note saying something had come up and he couldn't get away after all.
This was weird, right? This had to be weird. You might go somewhere with your revolutionary contact, or you might go somewhere with your friend, but you didn't go places with your friend the spy who was obviously and pathetically horny for you. Who wanted that kind of trouble?
A train pulled in. A train pulled away. He didn't see anyone familiar in the crush.
And then someone tapped his shoulder. "Boo."
Locke said, "If I turn around, and there's anything stuck to your face that shouldn't be, I'm gonna rip it off and make you eat it."
"Oh. In that case, give me two minutes." Locke whirled around. "Made you look," said Edgar, with a triumphant smile. And no mustache, thank fuck. Nothing untoward at all. He was just Edgar, dressed like a regular rich dumbass and not the rich dumbass in charge of the entire desert, which was probably the best disguise he could manage.
Locke wasn't sure if he'd ever been happier to see anyone in his life. And he was probably being just as obvious about it, and just as pathetic, as he'd feared. But — this was his friend. It didn't have to be anything dire. You could be that happy to see your friend.
If you were a total sap, anyway.
He laughed at himself and socked Edgar in the arm. "Right. Let's go cause some trouble."
Locke woke on the third morning with such a thundering hangover that for a few seconds he thought the couch he'd passed out on was breathing. He weighed his options: would it be worse to try looking around, or to lie here and live with the knowledge that furniture did that now? It eventually started to weird him out enough that he mustered the strength to turn his head, but then —
"Don't," said a hoarse voice, somewhere above him. "Do not."
"Okay," he said, and settled back.
The voice said, "All systems are balanced in a delicate equilibrium. Everything will be fine, as long as neither of us moves. But if I'm jostled in any way, I'm going to die." Long pause. Audible gulp. "And I promise you I will make it your problem."
Right. Okay. He remembered now. They'd hit four bars last night and somebody hadn't been able to make it back to his suite unaided, so even though they'd booked separately this time, Locke had graciously come to his aid. Then sat down on the couch for a breather. And some colossal idiot had forgotten that the endgame for this maneuver was supposed to be a bed, and had sat down next to him.
And here they still were, except that over the course of the night, gravity had done its usual thing.
"You will be prosecuted" — another pause, a careful breath — "at the bare minimum, for lèse-majesté. At most for my assassination. Don't speak. Blink twice if you understand."
"Morning, Edgar," Locke mumbled. It made sense now, the breathing. What he'd first taken for the world's worst-designed pillow was, actually, the King of Figaro's chest. He had some dim awareness that under normal circumstances this would be awkward, but right now his biggest concern was not letting his eyes crawl out of his skull.
"I said don't speak."
"I didn't do anything. You assassinated yourself." And he'd tried pretty hard to bring Locke down with him. Holy fuck, this guy drank.
"No, I didn't. I didn't die."
"Yet."
"You're right. Could still happen."
It didn't happen. They didn't die. It was warm here.
Locke's head had been pounded full of railroad spikes and his stomach wanted to go somewhere without the rest of him, but — he was warm. His skin was stretched on too tight, like a grape rotting on the vine, ready to burst any moment. But he was lying here feeling the slow rise and fall of someone else's breathing, and the steady thud of someone else's pulse where his jaw lay against someone else's chest. He was sick, and he hurt, and it was so fucking long since he'd had this. He should be ashamed of himself. He was. But the alternative was to feel this shitty in some other room all by himself. Why not make it worthwhile? Why not give himself something to really feel bad about?
He missed her. He couldn't stop missing her, and the way she'd tucked her hair behind her ear and the way she'd defend him to anyone else but never put up with any of his shit when they were alone, and the way she said his name. But he missed this, too: just lying down with another warm body. Maybe all hope of that closeness didn't have to be buried with her. Or maybe this was what was wrong with him, the fact that he could still want it with her gone.
The fact he could want more than this.
(He tried to remember. He might have said something compromising last night, something in the key of "You're my best friend and I love you, please don't go anywhere," and Edgar might've patted his cheek and said something condescending. Maybe, condescension aside, it had been the answer Locke wanted. But this would've been at the third bar. No one would ever know the details.)
He shouldn't stay here. But he couldn't make himself go. For one thing, he dreaded the prospect of even trying to move. But beyond that, he missed feeling like — even if he didn't deserve it — somebody gave a damn about him.
Fucking hell. His eyes were leaking. Well, he decided, with a sudden clarity of thought, I'll just be low-key about this and hope he doesn't notice. It'll blow over.
It didn't blow over as fast as he hoped. And then a hand closed softly over the back of his neck, which must mean he'd been found out. He couldn't imagine that was standard procedure. It was not something you did when you were awkwardly sharing a couch with somebody and you didn't suspect him of maybe crying into your shirt a little.
Be cool, Locke told himself. Edgar's thumb grazed over the knobs of his spine. This made it harder to be cool, and in fact might kill him on the spot. He bit his lip. "Sorry," he said, in the coolest and most wryly detached way he could manage.
"Don't worry about it. After a night like that? This stuff happens."
"What, ever happen to you?"
"Well. No. Honestly, I was just trying to be nice." He kept running his thumb up and down over the exposed skin in slow, gentle sweeps. Locke, barely suppressing a shudder, told himself, Do not get a boner. At least have that much self-respect. He's gonna fucking know. "It's a documented phenomenon, though."
"Oh, great. It's documented. I feel so much better now."
"You should," said Edgar. "You're not alone."
Eventually Locke gave up trying to decide if there was a double meaning there, or some secret triple or quadruple level of meaning, or whatever the fuck headgames Edgar did for fun, and he gave up trying to work out whether he was betraying anyone by staying here, and he stayed here. Edgar had told him not to move, anyway. So he was allowed not to move. He shut his eyes. It was okay if he didn't think about the past, or the future, just for a bit. It was okay if he let the world look after itself for just one morning, while he lay here, where it was warm, and he wasn't alone.
At length Edgar took a deep breath, and slowly let it out, and said, "Perhaps... a less ambitious plan for this afternoon. Maybe if we kept things... sedate."
Locke snorted, and then regretted it, feeling like it had shaken loose some critical element in his skull. "Ya don't say." He blinked a few times. Eyeballs still intact, against all odds.
"It is with sincere and mortal fear that I ask you this," Edgar began, and then stopped, collecting himself. "But could you let me up?"
"Weren't you gonna die?"
"Yes. But. Bathroom."
"Oh. Okay. Well, be brave. If you do croak, I won't tell anyone how. I'll make up a really nice cover story."
"Sweet of you."
"'He died doing what he loved' — actually, any preference? Sex, machines, or sex with a machine?"
"Ah. I take it back."
On the fourth day — the last full day before Edgar left for home the afternoon of the fifth, but who was counting — Edgar went off to get a massage. Locke, who hadn't recovered from the previous morning on the couch, and worried it had opened some kinda sluice inside, such that the next time anybody touched him he might start bawling — or immediately jizz himself — didn't go along. Wasn't his thing anyway. He sat around in a coffee shop lazily thumbing through newspapers.
It was part of the job to know all this shit before it ever saw print, but sometimes reading it after the fact was good for a laugh. Oh, you'd think, is that how they're gonna spin it. And sometimes it helped for stringing together big-picture stuff.
This week in bizarre Gestahlian propaganda: a big splashy picture of the latest graduates from army officer training. They looked keen and serious and, to a one, suspiciously baby-faced. What was this supposed to say? "Meet the bright young things who will soon be crushing you beneath their heels!" or "Look how dedicated our citizens are!" or "Come try us, motherfuckers, we don't even spare our own children!"
In the second before he threw the paper down in disgust, he noticed what they were standing in front of.
Edgar showed up for their lunch reservation in a state of such smug relaxation he no longer appeared to have bones. Glowing obnoxiously with health and good spirits, he began an elaborate process of decanting himself into a chair. Locke, across the small square table, kinda hated to ruin it for him — but Edgar caught on during the salad. "Something amiss?"
The restaurant was crowded with the tail end of the lunch rush; no one appeared to be paying the two of them much attention, but there were too many people around to keep track of. Locke flicked his glance around the room to indicate, y'know, lunch rush. "I'd like to pick your brain about something later. Could use an expert's opinion."
Edgar blinked. "Whatever for? You haven't met a girl since yesterday, have you? My, my." He shook his head sadly. "I'm always the last to know."
"No," said Locke, stung. "I meant the thing you're actually good at."
Edgar sniffed, still in high theater mode. "That's not called for. But if you feel discretion is a priority, I'll happily accompany you back to the inn once we're done here."
The lunch was good, but to Locke's mind, not worth the expense. Then again, he found it hard to imagine anything good enough for that price tag. If it wasn't fifty times better than a sausage and a potato, what business did it have costing fifty times as much? And nothing was fifty times better than a properly seasoned potato. Q.E.D, as Edgar would have said, except for his massive blind spot around all this rich-people bullshit.
Whatever. It was Edgar's money.
On the way back Locke said, "We'll use my room. It's boring, so it's less attractive to eavesdroppers. And yours has too many hiding places."
"Have we been made?" said Edgar. Brisk, alert, all business. It was not an Edgar you saw very often, even though, if Locke had to pick, he'd probably say this was the real one.
"Nah, I have no reason to think so. I just wanna be really sure nothing leaves the room. But if you wanna swing by yours first and grab some stuff, I'll meet you there."
"No need. Or rather, no use. I'm traveling without my usual toys this time."
"Huh. Really?"
"I brought nothing but clean clothes and dirty literature. If someone asked me to fix a window fan right now, I couldn't do it."
"What, you couldn't seduce hardware out of someone?"
Edgar looked thoughtful. "Bolts, maybe. Washers. Most of my target demographic doesn't have nuts, and those that do don't give them up lightly." Locke groaned. "Come on, I'm showing remarkable restraint. The things I could say about a drill press." They walked a few steps further before he said, "Wait. A hammer. See? You should be thanking me. And I didn't mention screws, either. Only the most highbrow of tool-related innuendo around here, my good sir."
"Heh. 'Tool.'"
"Oh, grow up," said Edgar in mock disgust.
That brought them to the inn. In the middle of the day, most people were out and about — they passed only a maid doing the rounds, and a quick check under the doors suggested nobody was at home in either of the rooms abutting Locke's. So he bolted the door behind them and pulled the newspaper out of his inside jacket pocket, passing the picture to Edgar.
There were several seconds of intent silence. Then Edgar said, "Good eye."
"Think we've found your platform?" said Locke.
"Unfortunately."
A bulky machine stood behind the Gestahlian Empire's best and brightest, out of focus, halfway out of frame — but there as predicted, centered in the front plate, were four components in a ring, the muzzle of a terrible gun.
"I don't want to say this looks like a cavalry unit," said Edgar, faintly, "but it sort of looks like a cavalry unit." He pointed to a front-facing wedge shape at the machine's lower left. "I'm willing to bet that articulates like an ankle joint, so it can find stable footing on different terrain. But I can't speculate on how maneuverable they are in general." He dropped the paper onto the table and started pacing the room. "They'd need another power supply for locomotion, in addition to however many are wired up to the cannon. And depending on total mass" — he frowned, thinking back — "well, that barrel component was hardly lightweight, but it has to withstand a substantial energy discharge. It's possible they could have constructed the rest out of a lighter material. Unless — I've never seen one of their guns up close enough. Do they have much recoil? I would assume — but then, this is magic, and we already know that has only a passing relation to normal physics." He stopped pacing and looked at Locke expectantly.
"What?"
"The recoil," said Edgar, as if it were obvious that was the one word Locke should have picked up. Oh, sure. "You've spent some time nosing around Imperial installments. Have you seen one of their weapons fired?"
"Tell you what, I'll take notes next time. Then when they ship you my ashes in a canister, you can sift through 'em and try to decipher my final message. 'I'm sorry, I can't tell you if there's any muzzle flip, because all my bones are melting together. Aah! My bones!'"
Edgar rolled his eyes. "It was just an idle thought. If you're going to have your bones melted in the pursuit of knowledge, there are more important questions you could be answering."
"Man, you're all heart."
"That said, you'd better not ship me your mortal remains. They wouldn't go with my decorating theme."
"So redecorate."
"What, do you want top billing in a museum of the macabre? I never thought you harbored such ambitions. Then again, I can't be totally surprised, given —" He stopped. "Anyway, I'd better get to work on this."
He spent the next hour in near silence, sketching out proportions and estimates and obscure equations on scrap paper. He paused frequently to frown at the image, at first in open dismay, but gradually sliding into an attitude of dispassionate analysis. As if it really were a puzzle, and nothing else. For his own part Locke kept catching himself staring at the guy too much — who had time to read that much into every twitch of an eyebrow, calm the hell down — so he moved away, and sat down on the bed, and idly ran through knife tricks.
"Could I learn to do that?" Rachel had asked him, once.
He'd actually just nicked himself trying to pull off a triple spin, but he kept all reaction off his face and hoped she didn't notice the blood. "Maybe, but you gotta have pretty strong wrists. Why?"
"Do I need a reason? Maybe it's more fun if we're both delinquents."
Locke had snorted. "You could never hack it —"
"Sure I could. I can be a delinquent for three hours. Then I need to go help Mom with dinner." And she'd leaned in closer, her eyes big and dark. "Show me how."
He'd all but forgotten that afternoon. He twirled his knife around and did that same spin, and couldn't believe he'd fucked it up back then. It was so easy.
He wondered if he'd forget this afternoon, too.
He wondered — did this say anything about his type? Applicants must be responsible, but open to stupid mischief, and also must be absolute fucking dorks.
He wondered if they'd like each other. How had that question never occurred to him before? They were bound to meet someday, right? Once Rachel was alive again and the two halves of his life finally knitted back together. Like a broken bone, finally set.
"I wonder," said Edgar, breaking his reverie, "if you could weigh in on my shopping list."
So they debated, prioritized, rearranged — once almost argued over — this list. Information Edgar wanted, supply lines to be interrupted, an endless and improbable stream of miscellaneous gadgetry. We don't have the manpower for that kind of infiltration, Locke would tell him, so think again, or, Maybe if we'd started this six months ago, or, People are going to die. And the only answer Edgar had for any of it was: I know.
Sometime around six in the evening, mentally and morally exhausted, Locke said, "Some vacation this is, huh?"
"Well, what do you propose we do instead?" said Edgar. "Ignore the call of duty and neck furiously in the cloakroom?" Locke choked. Edgar smiled wryly. "Doesn't have to be the cloakroom. We've no doubt been noticed vanishing together into both my room and yours; any third location should be enough to convince the staff we're total perverts. I'm open to suggestions."
Locke finally got control of his facial expression. "Man, the staff doesn't have time to waste noticing shit like that. This is a pretty high-volume inn. You're not as interesting to the common people as you think."
Then again, he was a common person, and Edgar was plenty interesting to him. He waited in dread to be called on it. Instead — with a calm smile and the closest approach Edgar Figaro made to sincerity — "Well, I'll leave that door open for a more opportune time. For now, I'm perfectly happy to sacrifice one evening's worth of tomfoolery for the greater good. Our entire friendship is predicated on subversive activities anyway. What better capstone for this little jaunt, hm?"
"I guess you're right."
"And besides. After today, I'm not sure how much more help I can be in matters mechanical."
He said it too casually. Locke narrowed his eyes. "What are you talking about?"
Edgar sighed. "The Empire has lately made it plain they're aware of my... little hobby." He added hastily, "They don't know I'm here, so there's no risk in my helping out today. I'm sure of that. If I thought I was being watched that closely, I wouldn't have come in the first place. It's just —" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's just hints, so far. These cutesy little gifts."
"That paperweight?"
"Do you know those gears don't even mesh? It's hideous. And I wish they'd stopped there." In mounting indignation, he said, "They sent me this kit — a child's toy — the most flimsy and insulting piece of —" He stopped. He took a steadying breath. He went on in a more controlled tone. "Either they don't know my capabilities, or they're giving me enough rope to hang myself, but regardless — I think my best defensive move is to keep playing the dilettante." A muscle twitched in his jaw. "It's fine," he said shortly. "It's in my citizens' best interest. I need to keep the castle's defenses a secret, which calls for a whole cascade of additional secrets —"
"So you need me to not blow your cover."
"I'd say to only use me in this capacity in case of an emergency, but" — he flashed a fleeting grin — "everything's always an emergency."
Locke chewed on his lip. "No — you have a point. You being in the Empire's good books is important for the cause, too. I can't ask you to risk that."
"Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? Even if I can't do much now, I'd be even less helpful dead. Please believe that I've done the math."
"Edgar. Even if all you do is stay buddy-buddy with Gestahl from now until the day we attack, that's plenty."
"Thanks. That's kind of you to say."
"But if you really had to give up your inventions, I think I'd worry about you."
And something in Edgar's expression told Locke that, yeah, he'd be right to. But then it vanished, whatever it was, behind the standard ironic little smile. "Now, where were we?"
They were up late, and got a late start the next day; there was just enough time to stroll around the city for an hour or two people-watching, and then stop in at a cafe (ignoring the papers this time). All too soon Edgar was checking his pocket watch, and Locke said, "Want me to walk you to the station?"
"No, no." Edgar got up and grabbed his bag. "I can find my own way. Anyway, I don't hold with long goodbyes." He held out his hand. "Don't be a stranger. Otherwise I'll have to get inventive again."
"What, 'again?'" Locke shook the proffered hand. "When was the first time?"
Edgar laughed, and drained the dregs of his coffee, and without further fanfare went home. The cafe was a duller place on the instant.
Magitek Armor was fielded for the first time two months later.
Edgar had written, "All right, forget the risks. I would kill to take one of those apart." In the spring, he proved it.
"If I'm caught with this, I'll have to make a present of it to the emissary," he said. In a tone of vacant astonishment: "We just found it in the sand! Do you know anything about this? The operator must've gotten lost or something! Is this yours?" In his own voice again: "Or maybe I should mistake it for something from an earlier age? ...No. Any story I came up with would tax even my ability to play the simpleton. I'll just have to not get caught."
"What do we do with the body?" said Locke. The soldier had stopped his armor and gotten out — maybe it had been overheating as he crossed the dunes — and had sat down in its shade, checking his compass. It wouldn't help. Locke had faked his orders, sending him out into the desert alone. He'd known he was singling the guy out for death, but it wasn't hard if he thought about Kohlingen. Maybe the fucker had been there. Maybe not. Maybe he'd heard a friend bragging about it, and bought the next round. Wasn't that as bad?
While trying to find his next heading, the soldier had sprouted three crossbow bolts from his chest. Edgar had stepped over the body and crossed to the machine, and started looking for a way up.
"Good question," he said now, from the control seat. "It won't decompose out here."
"Anybody finds this, they're gonna know there was foul play. Three gaping puncture wounds don't scream 'dehydration.'"
"There's water in blood. Surely the case could be made."
Locke crouched down next to the corpse and started sawing through the heavy crossbow shafts with his knife. He could at least get rid of the most obvious signs. He balanced precariously on the balls of his feet while he worked; kneeling might've been easier, but he was pretty sure the sand could cook him through his clothes. Sweat ran into his eyes. He made conversation. "The crossbow. An Edgar original?"
"Working on a new trigger mechanism. But not to worry. I brought more conventional weapons in case anything went wrong. Anyway — the hope is that I can move this thing down into a cave system I've heard of nearby. If so, we take the body with us and decide how to dispose of it from there. If not, we leave it here and make it look like bandits got him. Shot him and stripped the armor for parts."
"Shot him three times from the exact same angle," Locke noted. "Pretty organized bandits you got around here."
"Yes," said Edgar. "That was a mistake."
"And if they thought bandits got him on your turf, wouldn't they expect you to crack down?"
"No doubt. There are many reasons banditry is only my second choice." He did something with a series of levers and toggles. The Magitek Armor sputtered awake and then lurched upward, in slow stages, like a tired old dog rising off its haunches.
"Is it broken?" Locke said. "Or do you just suck at this?"
Edgar did something else with the controls. The machine lumbered forward, planting one ponderous foot and then the other, kicking up great plumes of yellow sand. Each movement was so glacial and deliberate, the product of so many incrementally moving pieces, that Locke felt like it'd be faster to walk. But then, when you looked at it from farther away, saw how long those strides really were...
And you couldn't walk around with a big fuck-off cannon bolted to your chest, either.
About two hundred feet away it clanked to an abrupt halt and Edgar scrambled down. Locke, still standing by the body, shouted over to him, "What gives?"
A hose worked loose under the thing's shoulder joint. A gout of steaming liquid blew out into the air and hung in red droplets, like — no. That was a dumb thought. Even the Empire didn't run machines on blood, and Edgar could probably tell you how badly that'd gum up the works. It was more of a fluorescent pink.
The armor slumped like a wounded thing. Edgar stood motionless, staring at it.
"You okay?" said Locke, approaching him. "It didn't burn ya, did it?"
"I'm fine," he said, but there was something in his voice. "I'm fine." But he looked — furious. "I'm surprised it made it this far. My best guess is — with temperature cycling, you know, the hoses expand and contract, and some kind of obstruction could've — but if they'd designed around it, or trained their troops better in how to maintain" — he bit off something scathing. "Right. We let it cool off and salvage what we can." Locke did not express his doubts that, under this baking sun, anything would cool off ever again. "Dammit. If all I'd wanted was parts, I could've just..." He shook his head in disgust. "All this for nothing."
Locke had a hunch. "I mean, it kinda sucks, but it's not nothing. You got to mess with the controls and you get to cherry-pick what you're taking home to look at. That's gotta be worth something." Edgar didn't reply. Carefully, he put his suspicion into words. "Edgar. Have you killed anyone before?"
Edgar huffed a colorless laugh. "Such a naive question, coming from you. My decisions as king have always had the weight of life and death. This is no different in principle from anything I've already done."
"Sounds like a fancy way of saying 'no,' but go on."
Edgar looked at him. His eyes were hard. "This is what weapons are for. It's easy to think in abstractions in the workshop, and say, 'oh, this is just a proof of concept.' But when I'm no longer obliged to keep this sham of a peace —" He turned his face to the steaming armor unit, dark against the desert sky. "I'll be ready."
Locke watched him for a long moment, but he just stood there. Finally Locke sighed. "Okay. That's what the king says. What about my dumbass friend?"
"Not at home to visitors," said Edgar, looking briefly rueful. "Please understand." Back to business: "Nothing for it, anyway, but you might care to loot the corpse." Locke frowned at him, still catching up. "If we're claiming this was bandits. I'll look the other way, so go ahead and pick him clean. Strictly in the interest of verisimilitude, of course."
"Okay. Strictly in the interest of whatever the fuck you just said, do we wanna disguise the wounds at all?"
Edgar rolled his eyes and grumbled, "Fine, point taken, next time I'll just slit his throat."
He would do it, Locke had no doubt. He wouldn't flinch. But Locke wanted somehow to spare him from all the next times.
