third day

[aimedforthemoon]

The third day is spent much as the second: in forge.
Nine days," he says. "Nine days you will spend with me, one for each of the nine years my wife and I were together.
She's making a bird, adapted from the model planes Esfir knows so well. The radio part is easy; making it look like a swan is not. Still, she's talented, and has been throwing herself into it, and things are coming together.
You cannot escape
The swan is for not her, not for him, but for the lovely, silent woman Weyland keeps around.
and you cannot ask me to let you go.
(only half of it is because he asked to be surprised)
You will not return to the bar during those nine days
But after so many hours, her heart isn't in it anymore. She looks up, rubs the back of her neck (ignoring the oil and grime on her hands)

(nine days)
and suddenly stares at him, eyes narrowed.

Comments

[mechanicalswans]

"It isn't," he agrees. "I imagine Mireille has nearly finished cooking dinner, if you are hungry."

He is careful not to give anything away, not to lead her. He wants to see what she will do.

[aimedforthemoon]

("Nine days," he says. "Nine days you will spend with me.")

"I am. It would be rude of me to leave before having dinner, not to mention wasteful. So. I will go back after dinner."

(and you cannot ask me to let you go)

"And you will take me, as I am unable to go on my own."

(she's not asking)

[mechanicalswans]

"I will take you at the end of the nine days, if you have not displeased me," he says. "This has only been three. You have six days more, and then we will go. Perhaps you would like to go shopping tomorrow also? After the airport. There are lovely little shops downtown."

[aimedforthemoon]

"You never said anything about nights."

[mechanicalswans]

She shows promise. He had suspected, before, but he thinks this may confirm it.

"Nights are included, of course," he says impassively. "Why would they not be? Do ninety-day warranties pause at sunset? They do not. There are still six days."

[aimedforthemoon]

"But you are not selling a used car. You are a god. Are you not bound by the old rules of agreements? Where a day starts at sunrise and ends at sunset? Where the nights are separate, and thus the tales speak of heroes who travel for days and nights.

You said days. Not nine lots of arbitrarily formed twenty-four hours."

[mechanicalswans]

Three approaches, he will allow himself. Only three. If she can withstand them, she will win.

There is a subtle shift, and then he is no longer a god pretending to be human. He seems taller, more imposing; his hands are clearly made of a dull black metal, and there is a feeling of unnaturalness, of being against nature, about him.

He advances toward her as he speaks, eyeing her as though she is prey. "I made the ladder they used to paint the stars, and the sword that Freyr was to carry in the final battle at the end of days, until it was lost. I have dwelled in the halls of the gods and the halls of the dead, and I will still be here at the end of things--and you, a dead mortal, a mere girl, are questioning me in my own domain?"

[aimedforthemoon]

Yesfir Shostakovna is small, thin, dead; she is his prisoner, a plaything with only his word that his word is his bond; she meets his eyes with her chin up, her hands steady, and heart beating faster than it ever did during launch.

But she is also Leytenánt Aviátsii Yazycova. Her nerve was tempered by the Siege of Stalingrad, five months of bombs and fire and cold where the soldiers joked that Hell was just another suburb of the once beautiful city. She took five hours to die in a small metal box, grimly holding onto her sanity until the end, without any hope of rescue - just to spite her murderer.

Here, she has a chance.

She will not let it go, no matter how much the fear is battering at the back of her mind and throat.

"No. I am telling you."

[mechanicalswans]

One.

Of course a woman who has had the training of a fighter, who has been into space when it is still dangerous and not commonplace, would have the courage and self-control to resist that approach. He would have been very disappointed if she had given in to his intimidation... it has been so long since anyone has resisted it.

But he has other tactics. He holds her in his stare for a good long moment, before slouching ever so slightly and looking up at the sky. His mother's ancestors were sea monsters, and he can be just as hard to pin down when he tries. He seems now hollow, empty, every moment of his wife's absence tangible in the air around him.

"You would leave?" he asks softly. "These past few days--it has been so very long, but your strength and vibrance, it has been like someone has lit a lamp in the darkness. It will feel even emptier if you go away."

[aimedforthemoon]

She had been engaged, once, years ago when she'd been young(er) and still uncertain. And she'd loved him, loved Vasya with everything that she could.

But it was not - could never be - with everything that she was.

(he'd called her cold, selfish, and she gone yes, yes I am, and thrown the ring out the window)

"I would not stay for love, let alone pity."

[mechanicalswans]

Two.

His beloved Hervor had not stayed for love either. She had wanted to be free, had wanted to fly, and so she had. He would not have respect for a woman who would be swayed by claims of affection or sadness; such women are too soft, too easily used. Or possibly just full of vanity, to think that only they could be the ones to warm the mechanical heart of the god of the forge.

Many women had tried.

He shakes his head, chuckling quietly as he watches her, not hollow now but confident, calm.

"You're very strong," he says with a genuine smile. "I am impressed. And I could use someone with your courage, your intelligence, your experience... I could make you a goddess, a queen, give you everything you have ever wanted if you would only stay here and help me rule my people. There is nothing I cannot make of metal, very little I could not do... and it would all be at your hand."

[aimedforthemoon]

"I would be a very, very bad queen. Not to mention, I do not believe that kings and queens and the whole feudal system. The people should rule themselves.

But I am too selfish, too cold, to stay here when I could have my freedom and do as I wish, and leave the ruling of people to those who have the patience for it.

I say no."

[mechanicalswans]

Three.

Oh, yes, he had chosen well this time.

It had been a long time since someone had resisted his offers--ninety-four years, if memory serves. It does make life more interesting.

"And honest," he says, the smile not fading. "I admire that. You may claim your reward, your heart's desire, and I will take you back whenever you like."

[aimedforthemoon]

Eyes going slightly wide for a moment (heart still going faster than she is used to), she nods.

Slowly.











"Can you make me alive?"

[mechanicalswans]

"It would depend on your definition of alive," he says without hesitation. "Why you would want it. Living in exactly the same way as you were before, starting where you left off, in the conventional way where one is born and lives and then dies, no. But in other ways... yes, certainly. It would be painful, but all worthwhile things are."

[aimedforthemoon]

She opens her mouth to speak, and then turns away to look back across the eerie blackness.

"I want to fly."

She can't face him and talk like this.

"I want to fly and not be tied down. Not be trapped and at the whim of people I don't know and cannot see. I have existance of sorts at the Bar, with a a-friend with a door and the war I told you about, but I cannot stay there. I'll fade away. And his door comes so irregularly, I can't even count on it opening every three days.

I want to be alive enough that I can be free."

[mechanicalswans]

He listens, turning his attention to the sky as he runs through possible methods. There are many ways of restoring the dead to a semblance of life, but in his experience it has been either putting a soul into a new mechanical body or reanimating a body without a soul. The Milliways arrangement is new to him, but he is sure it will translate.

"I imagine, then, that you cannot go back to your own world," he says eventually. "Would it bother you, to know for certain that you could never go back there?"

[aimedforthemoon]

"Yes.



But no more than being dead in the first place."

[mechanicalswans]

"I can give you a reality in this world," he says, "that would keep you from fading, and leave you free to go anywhere you like, but you would not have a door back to your own world without special effort--it could be done, if you truly wanted to go, but it would not be a natural thing like doors are for the living."

He lights another cigarette. "You would also not be able to have children, not without special effort. But on the other hand, you would be much more durable than a conventionally living person, resistant to illness, quick to heal from injury. And if you were to be 'killed' again, you would simply need to be reset, like a circuit breaker."

[aimedforthemoon]

She nods, head still bowed.

"Would I be able to go to Han's world, or have to be-have to stay here?"

[mechanicalswans]

"You would be free to do as you please," he says with a light shrug, "stay here, stay in Milliways--if you wanted an apartment in the city here I could get you one. The only requirement I would have is that you not betray me, as I am still involved in a war, but beyond that, you are free."

[aimedforthemoon]

"I was under the impression that I offered my services in your war. If I did not, I now do.

And I would never betray you."

[mechanicalswans]

"Then we shall not have any trouble."

He takes a drag on the cigarette. "And if you should ever need any help, you have only to ask. It is rare that I have as interesting a time as I have the past few days. You would not believe how dull things can be when you have seen and done as much as I have--I would not curse you with immortality; you will have a choice when you want to be done."

[aimedforthemoon]

"Thank you," she says. Then she stops.

"If you've found my company entertaining, I really can't imagine what the rest of your life must be like."

[mechanicalswans]

"I am used to seeing the worst in people," he says. "In the old days, there were more people who would come to me out of desperation; their loved ones needed saving and only I could help them. They came to see me for reasons beyond simply themselves. But now, the ones who come to me do so for purely selfish reasons--they want wealth, they want power, they want immortality. There have always been such people, of course, but it seems that the balance has been shifting; and I find it refreshing and a curiosity to be reminded that there are still people who would, for instance, turn down all my offers for the sake of a promise to a friend."