[TEAM MACHINES] (TINGO) DID IT LOOK THIS GREY

[edenaziraphale]

Title: Did It Look This Grey
Prompt: Tingo - To steal everything from your neighbors house by borrowing and not returning
Rating: T
Tags: au, preslash, kinda magical realism??, not safe for newbies/nick



The snow here doesn’t come down in flurries or in sheets like Kurogane had expected. It drives with the wind, shores up in drifts along the road and between trees, impossible to cross without either modifying his route or undertaking the frigid and exhausting effort of digging his way through. He could climb, but it would be dangerous at the best and deadly at the worst. He’s already seen two holes where travelers made the mistake of thinking they could ease their journey by going over rather than around. One of them still contained a body, long dead from exposure to Celes’ lethal cold. It had been foolish of Kurogane to even check, probably. It’s not like there’s anything he could have done for the poor bastard regardless.

He doesn’t have any desire to sacrifice safety for speed, but it’s not going to matter if he doesn’t find somewhere to spend the night soon. The temperature drops steadily with every passing hour, which is frankly fucking unbelievable, considering that Kurogane’d started at the country’s border when the sun was still creeping its way toward noon, and he’d been certain then that he’d never felt a bitterer cold in his life. With the blizzard going the way it is, he doesn’t have a chance of reaching town before Celes’ winter makes a corpse of him, too.

On a good day, this trip would’ve taken two hours, tops, but it’s not a good day, and the wind knifing through Kurogane’s clothes makes him wonder how anything at all survives on this rock. Every breath he takes here prickles and burns down into his lungs, makes his chest tight. His frozen eyelashes clump together where the wind made his eyes water and every inch of exposed skin burns rough and raw. Kurogane’s not necessarily a pessimist, but he’s not really an optimist either, and the reality is that he’s done traveling for the night. He needs to find shelter even if that means carving out a place in one of these drifts to try and weather the night.
And it’s going to have to be soon, because Mokona is getting more and more sluggish as time wears on, the cold sapping her energy while the howling of the wind and the chattering of the ice make her spookish and paranoid.

Kurogane pats Mokona’s neck and slides gently from her saddle, boots sinking down into the snow with a muffled crunch. He takes her reins and leads her off of the road into the trees. Inside the forest the dark becomes denser, mottled where the silvered light of the moon struggles to reach them through the heavy, snow-laden branches of towering pines. The precarious light of his torch sputters occasionally under the assault of the snow, but they’re sheltered some from the blizzard here, and the further he leads them into the forest, the lighter the snow blows around them.

Mokona’s steps are a steady counterpoint to his own and other than the soft crush of the snow and their cloudy breathing, the forest is so quiet that Kurogane could believe the two of them are the only living things in all of Celes. The snow has an insulative effect on sounds, but there’s not so much as the rustle of birds bedding down for the night and it only seems to grow quieter the further they go into the forest.

They walk on, mile after slow mile, feet dragging gashes in the snow. Behind, the dark of the forest swallows them whole.
***
“Yoohoo,” Something taps at the side of Kurogane’s head, pointed and incessant. “You’re alive, aren’t you? I’d hate to have to dig a grave in all this cold, hm?” The tapping comes again, a little harder. This time trapped somewhere in the folds of his cloak near his shoulder. Kurogane slaps at whoever it is irritably, not managing to make contact before the offender steps away. “Wonderful!”

Kurogane grimaces and shifts, cracking his eyes open only to be blinded by the cold, unforgiving light of the sun reflecting off the snow.

“You look like a mountain waking up,” muses the same voice from before as Kurogane rises, shaking himself out. The man- Kurogane can see him now, eyes adjusting enough to take in the blond hair and blue eyes of this new nuisance- seems to consider that thought for a moment. “You could be, with a face like that. Did I disturb the slumber of an old god?”

“Shut up.” Kurogane manages, opening and closing his fists a couple of times to make sure he still has all of his fingers. Stiff and burning, but there, the same as everything else. At his feet the embers of last night’s fire are still glowing, alive and warm against all odds. “Where’s my horse?”

“I’d be a little friendlier to the person saving your life,” the stranger murmurs musically, his lips curling into the barest edge of a smile. “You can’t spare so much as a good morning for me, Mr. Mountain?” Kurogane glares at him, but before he can ask again one slender hand produces a purple-red pear from the sleeve of a heavy white coat. “Ah-ah-ah! What if I said I fed your horse, and she led me here to find you?”

Glancing at the tree to the left, Kurogane can see the remains of Mokona’s lead, chewed clean through. Again. Dammit.

“I’d say that she wasn’t smart enough,” Kurogane bites out, regretting it even as he says it. Mokona has taken care of him for years, no matter how pissy he gets. She’s more loyal than most dogs. “Where is she?” Across from him, the pear disappears back into the stranger’s fur-lined sleeves.

“A mountain should have more patience-”

“Stop calling me that.”

“My name for yours?” The stranger offers, smiling again, a little wider this time. “You can call me Fai. And I can call you…?”

“Kurogane.” Giving his name away freely is’t the best choice he’s ever made, but it’s not the worst, either. “Now tell me where my fucking horse is.” Across from him, Fai tsks.

“I put her in the stables like a decent person, Kurgs.” This time Kurogane growls, but Fai continues as if he doesn’t hear him. “She was cold and she was hungry, and now she’s neither! I’ll take you to her, as long as you promise to keep that,” he points to the gun at Kurogane’s hip, “tucked away.”

“I’m not going to shoot you.” But it’s not an irrational conclusion to jump to. Fai would be a fool to trust every wanderer to come through these woods, and Kurogane hasn’t exactly been personable.

“I don’t think you will,” Fai agrees, and his smile makes Kurogane wonder if he might actually be insane.

Fai leads him across the snow, picking deftly over the white expanse before them. The gentle, brushing trail his coat leaves behind is incomparable to Kurogane’s own heavy tracks, and Kurogane half-considers asking how he’s managing to move so freely before he spots it. A faint hum of barely-there blue haloing Fai as he moves. He’s got the Gift. It’s probably how he found me. There’s no way for Mokona to have led Fai here, if she’s locked up in the stables like he said.

Kurogane follows without mentioning it, figuring that if Fai tries anything funny he can always change his mind about shooting him.

Exiting the woods leads them into the same bitter wind Kurogane had tried to escape the night before. Fai’s hair whips mindlessly, snowflakes catching in the fine gold of it, but he doesn't draw his hood. “Just this way, beneath the hill.” Following Fai’s line of site, Kurogane sees something that looks suspiciously like a stone tower, rising from behind the crest of one snowy outcropping.

“Is that a castle?” Kurogane asks, attempting for a tone resembling flat and missing the mark entirely. Fai blinks at him, expression open in a way that Kurogane can only describe, conversely, as deceptive.

“Only a small one.”
***

‘Only a small one’ turns out to be somewhat true, as far as castles go. The main building only has two floors if you ignore the tower, which Kurogane does, because he doesn’t care. He demands to see Mokona, and Fai leads him to a set of stables that, upon entering, do seem to be heated. Kurogane’s practiced ear can hear the clicking of a distant boiler, but he ignores the somewhat aggravating display of wealth in favor of being relieved at the sight of Mokona’s mottled face, whole and unharmed. The chewed end of her lead still hangs somewhat pathetically from her harness.

“Don’t look so smug,” he tells her, trailing a hand down the white of her nose as he pulls the ruined leather off. “Nobody likes a beggar.” Unashamed, she noses at the pale hand that appears beside Kurogane’s own.

“Well, now. That’s simply untrue, Kurgy!” The pear from before reappears and Mokona lips it carefully into her mouth. “This young lady is a delight and she can beg all she wants. Besides,” he glances over his shoulder toward the stable doors. “I don’t think either of you will be going anywhere until that stops. Unless you were excited by the possibility of frostbite?”

“My name is Kurogane, yo-”

“Ah-ah,” Fai says again. “I’m about to offer you a place to stay, Kurgs, you can’t be rude.” Kurogane turns to take in the snow, weighing his options. Outside of the stables the wind howls. “Think of her.” Mokona crunches through the pear, pieces of it falling into the hay at her feet. “You wouldn’t make a princess brave a blizzard like that. It isn’t right.”

Mokona is so far from a princess that it’s almost laughable, but Fai isn’t wrong about the blizzard. It was a stretch to say that Fai had saved his life by waking him up- Kurogane would have been fine, but for Mokona, being alone in those woods would have been a death sentence, and Kurogane doesn’t know the area well enough to say that he ever would have found her.

“I can’t pay much,” he says, skeptical. In his experience, when something looks too good to be true, it usually is.

“I wouldn’t take your money, Kurgs! Friends share! And it’s not my castle, anyway.” Fai laughs and the sound rings like bells. The blue halo around him shimmers. “I’m only the caretaker. You can pay the owners, if you’re still here when they get back.”

The matter evidently settled in Fai’s mind, he pats Mokona’s neck one final time and then crosses back to the stable doors, sweeping his arm out grandly. Kurogane follows behind.

“How long will the storm last?” He asks eventually, once they’ve fought their way over the castle grounds and are shaking themselves free of snow and ice in a warm hall.

Fai’s coat drapes heavily where it hangs over a radiator. “It should let up in a few days. Until then, I can show you to a room.” He fluffs his damp, bedraggled hair with his fingers. “Follow me! A bed will be better than sleeping in the snow, I’m sure. You can even draw a bath, if you like.”

The corridors of the castle are relatively straightforward, easy for Kurogane to remember, and Fai points out various rooms of interest as they walk, including the kitchen and a large study where a crackling fire burns. Fai talks the entire time but Kurogane finds his focus fading in and out, catching on doors, walls, and portraits. All of the places Fai touches. His fingers leave a smudge of faint, whispery blue that sinks below the surface slowly. That explains at least part of why this place feels so weird.

“This is you!” Fai raps against the wood of a door, identical to what must have been six or eight others they passed. “You’ll find clean linens inside, of course, and everything you need for a warm bath. I’ve got some business to see to, but I’ll find you when lunch is ready, hm?” He disappears then, steps tupping lightly away as Fai leaves even more abruptly than he came.

Fucking weirdo.
***
Kurogane’s mother had the Gift, too, and she passed it on to him. His earliest memories of her are of charms and of stories, and the gentle radiance of her Gift in her fingers. Magic stays in everything a person touches, she’d told him, once. If they have enough of it, the magic never leaves. He knows that it’s true, because her things had ached of her for years after she died.

Not all Gifts are powerful enough to be seen, and it’s rare that they shine all the time. Kurogane’s own comes in crackles of red while he works, sparking in and out of existence as he needs it. He prefers it that way.

There are laws, she would tell him, repetitive, to ensure he never forgot. The most important is balance. For everything that magic gives, it will take away. There’s a cost to using it. Usually the exchange is simple energy- but sometimes what magic wants is bigger than you’re willing to give. His mother’s Gift had taken her health, leaving her sick and exhausted.

Fai has the brightest Gift that Kurogane has ever seen, and the most versatile. Where Kurogane’s is really only useful for the machine work he uses to make a living, Fai’s appears to be multifaceted. Kurogane wonders what it demands of him, to be used like that.
***
Fai doesn’t find him at meal time, but food arrives at the door to Kurogane’s room regardless, and he can’t help but wonder what would make someone be so generous to a stranger. Celes isn’t known broadly for the generosity of her people, and Kurogane isn’t known for having the friendliest of faces.

Could be lonely. There doesn’t seem to be anyone but the two of them in this castle, and if the owners have been away for a long time, it’s possible that Fai doesn’t get much in the way of real conversation. He can’t imagine that any friends, no matter how close, are coming to visit in this cold.

Two days pass that way, with Kurogane moving between the stables and the castle proper and little to no break in the storm outside. He sees Fai rarely, but in the evenings it’s easier to catch glimpses of him, Kurogane discovers, staring wistfully into the fire in the study. The food continues to appear outside of his door, and sometimes Kurogane thinks he can hear Fai, moving somewhere just out of sight.

Kurogane takes to exploring the castle, moving through room after room, hall after hall. Usually there’s nothing worth looking at. Beds and books and cleaning supplies. He whittles away some of the hours in the library, leaving once the inactivity begins to eat at him.

Passing through the library leads him to what appears at first glance to be a small den, filled with maps and desks and bits of broken machinery. A soft, mechanical clicking draws him further into the room where, partially hidden among curling piles of paper, a little automaton sits, half-constructed, one hand shifting and clicking over a piece of paper. It writes in sharp sweeps, a curling script that Kurogane has never seen before. Line after line it writes until it runs out of paper. The left hand swings suddenly, dragging fresh white paper out and shoving the old to the join the mountainous stacks beside it.

“What the hell?” Kurogane moves closer and examines the heaps of paper piled chaotically around the table. He doesn’t need to, really, but it confirms his suspicions that these were all written by the same mechanical hand. Which should be impossible. The thing looks disassembled at best, half broken at worst. But there’s a curl of magic whispering out, faintly blue where it disappears inside the machine.

“It’s an old language,” Fai says behind him. Kurogane jumps, a sharp exhale leaving his throat as he turns to level a pointed glare at the other man. Fai smiles placidly. “I can count the number of people who can still read it on one hand. Do you know what it says?”

“I know that it’s stealing from you.” Fai’s history lesson, as strange and interesting as it would undoubtedly be, is put on hold by the shock that bursts over him like a bubble.

“I’m- what?”

Without answering, Kurogane takes Fai’s hand in his own and presses it to the automaton’s head. The blue shimmer around Fai flickers and sparks sporadically. Kurogane rips Fai’s hand away from the automaton’s metal body just as the flicker begins to dim and Fai snatches his hand back, chest heaving.

“It’s stealing from you.” Kurogane repeats. On the table, the automaton twitches, the motion of its hands somehow more frantic than before. At the opposite end of the table, a single round gear begins inching precariously along, drawn toward the automaton’s hull by a bright blue ethereal thread. “It’s been trying to rebuild itself at your expense.” Kurogane picks it up with all the delicacy that he’d show a tin can and turns it over, exposing the automaton’s somewhat mangled innerworkings. The automaton draws on Kurogane but comes up dry, unable to catch purchase on a Gift that won’t present itself. That’s the cost, he thinks. The danger of constant exposure.

“How is it- is it evil?” Fai sounds hoarse, and Kurogane has the presence of mind to feel a little bad about that. He shouldn’t have left his hand on there for so long.

“No. They only do what they’re programmed to do.” Kurogane begins popping gears out with his fingers one by one and peeling back metal sheeting, removing springs as he goes. The body of the thing is too small and dark for him to really see what he’s doing, but. “There should be-” The calloused pads of his fingers catch on a sharp, aggregated point. “There.”

With one final tug, the crystal pops loose. “Here,” he tosses it to Fai, who catches it with a deftness that belies the sudden circles under his eyes.

“Kurgs,” Fai murmurs. “You really shouldn’t have! A guest for only a handful of days and you’re already breaking the antiques.” But there’s a wisp of blue-grey smoke where Fai is trying to coax his magic back home.


“Yeah, yeah.” ~the end.


Thank you for reading! How did I do?
Please score my fic according to these guidelines:
1. How in-character was this fic? (1-10)
2. How well did this fic handle the prompt? (1-10)
3. How well did this fic fit their team’s theme? (1-10)
4. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? (1-10)
5. Was the fic tagged correctly (Yes or No)

Remember that you must provide some form of identification (a link to a blog or profile on another site will suffice) for your vote to be counted!

Comments

vote

[(Anonymous)]

10
8.5
10
9
yes

The automaton stealing from fai doesn't exactly fit the prompt but its still an interesting interpretation. The story was short but really well written.

[miyakodea]

1. 8
It was hard to get a feel from the characters as the story was so short.

2. 7
It was an interesting spin, it just could have had a lot more focus.

3. 6
There wasn't much mention of machines aside from mentioning Kurogane's occupation and the ending.

4. 7
I enjoyed the story. I just felt like it could have been written differently and a bit longer to give more impact. It as hard to really even get a handle of the world you created, though it seemed interesting.

5. yes, I guess

[travellinghobbit]

1. 8
2. 7 - The automaton didn't seem to be stealing for himself, so i didn't think it exactly fit.
3. 7 - It seemed like a little cross between the two themes actually.
4. 10
5. Yes

I really like the premisse and would like to read more on it! =)

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/thetravellinghobbit

[flowerspeaks]

1. 8
2. 7
3. 7
4. 8
yes

Loved your premise and what you have started here- I couldn't believe it was over so quickly though! It just ended so abruptly- and I was getting really into this world and narrative and then it just stopped.
I really do hope you decided to continue elaborating this piece, it just has such great potential.
The characterizations were good so far but didn't really get enough time to developed- especially Fai. The prompt came in at the very end, i liked your take on it but it needs to be further explored as well as the theme which only popped up in small details.
I did enjoy your fic though, by the end I was looking for the next chapter button but only to find none. I really do look forward to more if you ever do decided to make more.