The nights are long, and dark. What cold wind howling in from the coast that doesn't land fruitlessly against the dark rock of the cliff or the walls of the city blusters its way into the capitol, flapping the shudders of a large and cluttered workshop lit only by the orange glow of a wide, round coal fire and a lantern or two swinging lazily from their chains on the ceiling.

Overall there is the sense of warmth, and comfort, and sleep about the workshop--and not only because its craftsman is draped belly-up over a sturdy wood table, snoring quietly into a pile of leather scraps and thick, rusted bolts with one wing lolling off the edge far enough to brush its tips on the floor. The forge is napping with him, quiet though its coals glow so bright, puffing black smoke through the chimney as if snoring, itself.

(He calls her Angel, his devoted bride, in bars, knocking back pint after pint. Sometimes he laughs a little too hard at it. Sometimes he doesn't laugh at all.)

Outside the city is humming with life, strung with lights and boughs of evergreen though the festival has either not ramped up or already passed--he cannot quite remember--but in here it is only the creak of the swinging lanterns, the slap of the shutters, and a knock at the door.

Hugo frowns, without opening his eyes, trying to bat away sleep. A knock at the door. He rolls off the table in a sudden boom of sound, scattering parchment and scrap metal and bolts and tools and graphite. A knock at the door. "Hold on!" he says--more urgently than he'd expected--scooping as much of the mess as he can into his good wing and dropping it back on the table before stumbling through the fog of waking toward the heavy wood door, simply built and braced in cast iron.

A knock at the door. Before it, Hugo closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and tells himself: you're okay.

The door swings open at Hugo's behest, and Marisol is on the other side, orange as his feathers in the glow at the heart of his workshop. He smiles, something that seems so very at home on his face. "Commander," he says, "it's a dangerous time to go leering through doorways--there's mistletoe on the loose this time of year." He tilts his head back, to look at the door frame and, seeing nothing, shrugs at her as if to say maybe next time, before stepping back to invite her inside.

"Are you aware it's late?" he says, and it really isn't--past sundown, sure, but sundown is so early this time of year--but his grin somehow widens anyway, the tip of one wing against his chest. Hugo gasps. "Did you bring me mistletoe?"

She looks at you, in the way many people do. For a moment you feel bitter, a bile that rises in your throat and sits behind your teeth. You hate when people look at you like that, with the raised brow, a question that demands the answer. You don't know the answer. You've never known it. Just another one of those things that slips through your fingers even as you stretch your hands toward it because you're-- what? Depressed? Burnt-out? Something altogether else that cuts as sharp as one of your perfectly balanced blades?

You swim through the fog of sleep and bitterness toward the surface, ears ringing with the weight of it. If your smile is mirthless it is surprisingly well-hidden except for a quiet strain tucked into the corners, where no one can see and especially in the shadow cast by the glow of the coals as it hits your back.

In your dreams, Arkwright, she says, and it feels simpler now. Marisol never asks much from you except what you're good at, and that is creation. Rickard said you were an artist, like he never quite was. Rickard said you loved it in a way that few people can, like you breath molten steel and your body is sustained by making and doing. He had just never told you what to do when the fire runs low and your bellows huff fruitlessly in your chest.

But it is still simpler, and all the bitterness drains out of your face as she speaks. It is still sitting in your heart, like an animal, but it is a quiet and sleeping one.

You will use it, later. Fold it into steel and iron. Make it into something beautiful and simple and almost holy. As you do everything.

"Who's 'awake,'" you joke, "I've never met her." The table is a mess of scraps and tools and malformed ingots laid over the plain, rough Oak top. You look from her, to it, back to her (that question again, that offends you for reasons you can't quite place-- because it's warranted? Because it hurts in some nameless way to be seen not working? Because you should be working but you're gripped by a fear that says what if it's not enough? so many times that you hear it when your hammer strikes?) Without saying anything, without dropping your smile, you start to put things in their places, pulling out drawers and dropping rivets into them, hanging your tools beneath their respective shelves.

It seems easier than anything else. It is easier than anything else. "Anyway, you're glad you caught me awake?" you say, stacking templates in a way that feels pristine and neat but really isn't, to the outside eye. There is some big black hole in you, yawning. It, not you, is what turns back to her and waits.

It’s interesting, that she would look at you and think of a weapon–not the creation of one but the weapon itself, sharp and poised and ready–when you have never felt like this tall, jagged mountain she wants. You have only ever felt small. Weak. Empty.

You are small, weak, empty - and though your bones rebel, though they stretch and grind and ache as you grew, you will only ever be small, weak, empty.

To echo: right?

She smiles like you might smile if you weren’t paying attention, as if she only halfway knows how. You know this look well, wear it day and night, and it drags something like sympathy out of you, a feeling that begs you to rest a wing on hers, tell her it’s alright, and never quite say just what “it”‌is. Instead it just tucks that one corner of your mouth in a little tighter, draws your brow together almost imperceptibly, puffs your cheeks out as you breathe through pursed lips the second she turns her back.

All your things are in their places now, or close enough. The clutter, you know, is just clean enough to settle your frayed nerves but still messy enough that you fold yourself back into it if you need to, run and run and run until you are buried in the calming clink of metal or the wooden shuff of drawers opening, and drawers closing.

The silence is prolonged. Marisol is still looking at you like that and it sets your teeth on edge, sends your wings shuffling themselves over your back, folding and re-folding in an attempt to find a comfort that you have never quite mastered. The silence makes you wordlessly wish for your body to dissolve. You are privately wishing you could stop your heart just by wanting it badly enough up until the second she draws a breath to speak.

Did your family ever work on Prudence?

Your lips purse. Your wings shuffle again. In spite of your best efforts your body still stubbornly refuses to dissolve.

That one corner of your smile untucks itself. It is perhaps the most sober you’ve looked in years. “I’d assume so.” you say, a sentence that falls out of you like a rock and clatters at it hits the ground. The only thing that outweighs your sudden and unbelievable grief is your curiosity. “Whyyy?”