so sorry, it's broken

Mythra figures she's bad (or at least, not good) with machines the same way she's bad at cooking. She just can't get used to the set of feedback that humans look for, to know when things are burning or how much salt is appropriate for what size of steak. If Addam had let her practice a bit more, maybe she'd be good at it by now. A year isn't long enough for ten thousand hours, but hey, making more than ten dishes total probably would have helped.

So with Hugo's little machine-part monstrosities, Mythra hasn't learned to gauge the right amount of force to wind a spring, to break a piece of mineral along a fault line, to insert a nail to just the right depth.

Well. Not like Lora's good at it, either, but Hugo doesn't...flinch when she begs to have a try. Does he?

Mythra watches again, whenever anyone approaches the little emperor. Surely she's seeing things.

No. No, Hugo flinches at anyone's approach, save Aegaeon's - even Brighid's! He hides it well, but he has to recollect himself, has to take stock of what he's holding and what he, apparently, doesn't want disturbed.

"Brighid doesn't bite," Mythra says, sitting down next to Hugo (he always takes up the minimal amount of space on a log or a rock, legs prim and straight, and makes nary a bone about who it is he's seated alongside) with crossed arms. "Not you, anyway."

(You know, like Hugo needs her telling him that, or anything, but it gets the point across that she needs it to. And it gets Brighid to peer warily in her direction, just for fun.)

Hugo smiles with his eyes and nose both. "I shall keep that bit of insider information in mind, thank you Mythra." Snark completed, his pace of speech slows: "My apologies, I had not..."

Mythra shrugs. "I'm not offended. Sorta used to it, by now."

"But you do know it's not just you?"

An almost imploring tone.

"...yeah. Sure."

But nobody would be flinching at all, would be banding together around a campfire, if Mythra weren't here, so like, isn't it just her? Isn't the point that the Aegis has set everyone on edge?

"I'm just...very particular. You would argue that so long as the machine works, toward its intended purpose, it doesn't much matter how its innards hook together, does it?"

"I dunno if I'd say that," Mythra replies, but she thinks maybe she can see what Hugo's getting at. Addam and Lora, they're all about getting the job done. Jin does things his way, but he does them so fast that how could anyone possibly tell if he was off, by a quarter micron? "I guess. My first concern would be getting the thing to work, yeah."

Hugo nods. "And then, once it works, you wouldn't bother unbolting the chassis to tighten up all the screws so they're all at perfect angles with each other, would you?"

Yeah, but that's silly, Mythra thinks. Really? You need everything lined up perpendicular? That's it? That's why you won't - don't want to - let anyone else touch your work?

But then, Hugo doesn't like passing around his products for inspection even once he's, ostensibly, finished with them. Addam, crowing about masterpieces and elbow grease, had insisted that Mythra try on the Glutton's Mask and practically pressed the Comb of Prosperity into Haze's waiting hands. Meanwhile, Hugo, down-to-earth Hugo, could fill up a whole Golden Mug with Droppicium and no one'd ever be the wiser.

"Are you ever satisfied?" is what Mythra comes out with, at last.

Sighing, Hugo gives the tip of his screwdriver another wipe of the rag. Mythra absently notes that it's probably the fifth time he's done it, without any actual screwing interspersed. "I try to take pride in my workmanship, yes, but it's difficult. If I were a cook, perhaps it'd be easier. Perishable things are so much easier to make peace with."

Make peace? With a pot of curry?

"I count my screws, you know."

Mythra eyes the Alloy Sheeting, studded with gearheads, wobbling precariously in Hugo's grasp. "Like...per project?"

That makes sense, after all. Wouldn't want to go and blow your whole budget all at once, since the machine parts don't exactly grow on trees. Knowing what she's learning about Hugo right now, it's possible that he diligently retrieves spare parts from old, abandoned builds, but it's also possible that he could never bear it.

But neither is quite true. Hugo gestures with the tip of the screwdriver, freshly polished, at the pouch of screws sitting in the hollow of dirt beneath the arch of his foot. "Every new one we collect. I check for holes in the bag thrice a day, if not more."

And that's not crazy, right? It's just...stewardship of resources. Just knowing what you've got going, and taking care of it.

But, "You don't mean approximately, do you?" Mythra's pretty sure Addam has nothing more than estimates in his little ledger that he keeps, to follow who's promised what to whom and when they've got to deliver it.

"Down to the last," replies Hugo, solemnly.

"So when someone tampers with your stuff..."

"It's a lot of wasted time, to be perfectly honest. I don't like that I do it. It doesn't make me any more respectable, as the emperor."

"Doesn't make you any less," Mythra points out, because obviously however much time it is that Hugo thinks he wastes, he's never been anything like deadweight for their team. Hell, he's the one tanking the big hits, buying all the rest of them time. If he wants to count a few screws, or have a few loose, let him.

Hugo sighs, rolling his neck, and is about to raise the rag for the umpteenth time when instead he plunges the tip of the screwdriver into the dirt (definitely an unexpected show of violence) and then patiently draws it back out and sets about cleaning it, again.

Maybe Mythra's just never paid enough attention, or maybe Hugo just hides this compulsion of his really well - behind wiping the sweat from his brow, for instance.

"I don't waste the drinking water on washing my hands," he says, suddenly. "I don't."

"No, 'course not," says Mythra. "You've got Aegaeon for that."

Probably, though, in the Ardainian palace, it is filtered freshwater that pours out of the faucet to scrub those imperial implements.

"They don't let me make my own bed, in the palace," Hugo continues, echoing Mythra's train of thought. "But I always have to fold the linens, or else I'll never get any reading done. Which makes it seem like I spend an awful lot of time reading."

"The cleaning staff don't tell?"

Hugo's eyes are glazing over with preoccupation. "Who would they tell?"

Who would they tell? And so it's lying, too. Unassailable secrets.

Mythra works her hands in her lap, cracking third knuckle here, fourth knuckle there, and then, remembering her audience, turns methodical and pops all eight (four, once each from above and from below), for completeness.

It's not that she doesn't appreciate the completeness herself, and certainly all the data flowing through her Core is enough to bog anybody down, but it's never quite like this.

"Could I build something, with you? I promise I'll be careful."

It's not about careful. It's about specific. Particular. Hugo shrugs, a forcible imperial slouch, and hands Mythra the screwdriver, refusing to look at it one second longer.

She doesn't ask questions, just works slowly, and tries not to flinch herself when Hugo reaches in to correct something, move her hand or case a wire.

They never actually build anything that's worth much of anything, but with each failed attempt, and each bundle of new parts Mythra scores from an old piece of machinery that she spots quicker than even the fastest ambient inspection by the emperor, she sees those flinches shrink, Hugo's posture broaden.

He lets Minoth test the Heart Compass before it's been properly gilded with all Smellactite and Forrestone (and it needs the Smellactite, but the Forrestone turns out to be just there for show), laughs as Lora trips and breaks one of the Flamii wings attached to the eponymous Wing Booster before graciously accepting the artifact for repair.

He could be masking. Could just be pretending to be so carefree. Which would be sad, but Hugo seems to be genuinely happier, like even if he's pretending he hadn't ever known that he could pretend this well.

No shot that she like, cured him (that Mythra could ever cure anybody, like that). No shot that he even needed to be cured. Ugly word, coming from someone who was, apparently, born wrong, acts wrong. But if patience for the self is a universal good, there's more of it, in the world, now.

A little, anyway.

And then he dies (doesn't die - is killed), and Mythra is forced to admit that he and Milton weren't just people who didn't, particularly, deserve to die, but actually important to her. Her friends.

Nasty, stupid, coarse way to treat your friends.

Brighid, beautiful Brighid, and dutiful Aegaeon are taken by the Special Inquisitor, returned to whence they came.

Mythra finds that it follows her for a lot longer than she'd like it to, how that little pouch of screws had spilled out over the Soaring Rostrum and no one had even bothered to sweep them up, let alone count them.

Does it always end with everyone dying? Is that how the story goes? Is that the only way out?

The sick irony of it is, Torna doesn't need a leader now. Even if its people hadn't been scattered to who knows where, would they accept Addam?

Maybe they would. Maybe they would see Mythra for what she was: uncontrollable, a freak.

So she has to wonder, for the reality of Mor Ardain's future reign, if Hugo's judgement, specifically addled or not, really could have been all that great, if he'd tried to befriend someone like her.

i feel like i should note that i yoinked the OCD from somewhere, and though realistically i probably would have come around to throwing it in myself eventually, now i feel like i can't use it. because i didn't think of it 1000% organically. canceled! banned! blocked! yeah i'm blocked so we're just going to pretend everything is copacetic