It had been a long ten days.
Seven days to recover from a wound to your torso that would have killed any mortal man, three days getting back up to form, dealing with the fallout of the incident that Anne and Joy had caused while you were out. You had heard all about it, how the pair of them had been taken into custody by the authorities after they had found the remains of the doctor in your room, a doctor that they had admitted wasn't exactly human.
Three days of hell.
You had been told multiple times that you were expecting unreasonable amounts of leeway given that you had two of the Enlightened in your charge now. Anne was bad enough they had said, knowing that she wasn't exactly the most stable of people from the way that she had reacted to them at points, with the way she had engaged in your rescue. Joy terrified them. The manner in what she had crushed the doctor had scared them enough, the fact that she had partially devoured him made it all the worse.
Fortunately, Joy hadn't been reprocessed by the Clockworkers when the peelers had come to remove the pair of them, taking them into custody so that they couldn't cause further trouble. Initially it was because they hadn't believed that she was what she claimed to be, and after they had confirmed that she was indeed what she claimed to be, they hadn't wanted to for an entirely different reason.
You.
They didn't want to do such a thing because of you, the guild master of the Clockworkers had confirmed your identity while you were sedated, confirming that you were indeed the driving man behind their entire project. You had provided them with means to interface the basic creations they had with a brain, you had provided them with the means to program a brain to allow it to serve as the thought center of the machine. You had created a jelly like substance that retarded the regrowth of a body once a brain was encased within it, you were the one that had provided the means to think to their initial crude inventions.
When you had awoken he had come to visit you, commenting on how he was shocked when he had heard that you were captured, that this was the first he had heard of your return to the city. He had remained silent, he had informed you, hiding his shock at the mention of your name, at the fact that you had returned. You. The one that had provided the byzantine means of programming the brains of the Enlightened for the purpose they required of them. You. The one who had managed to imprint an override, a failsafe into the entire process.
When he had inquired about you, about the creator, they had all stated that the creator had been located, they had all known somehow that you had returned to the city and that Joy was the key. Never once would he respond with anything other than Joy's designation, never once would he acknowledge that she had once been a person.
Never once, were you entirely sure you trusted him.
Before he had left, promising to visit again yet never doing so, he had left a badge with you, commenting on how upon learning that you were suffering from amnesia that it was odd that you would end up so close, yet so far from home. Home. You had never thought of the Clockworkers guild house as being such. You were officially a member of them however, officially one of their higher ups.
Officially maybe, yet they never mentioned your part in the guardian project.
They didn't want to admit that these creations were not entirely mechanical, after all.
They didn't want to admit that what they had pushed for so hard, the outlawing of the Enlightened, had been for the creation of more of these things from those they captured. You weren't suprised, you knew that if the public knew exactly what went into these things creation, that they wouldn't view the Clockworkers with such favourable light any longer.
Ten days total and most of them confined to bed, most of them a jumble of memories, of dealing with people you could barely recognise with how heavily sedated you were. You had suffered from nightmares though, terrible nightmares of shrouded figures with beaks staring at you from the darkness, figures who stood there silently, ominously.
Ancient and evil.
The nightmares were vague, yet they felt real.
Too real.
You had wondered how you would get Anne and Joy returned to your custody when you had noticed the letter, that letter that had been delivered to Anne some time prior. A letter that you stared in disbelief at the seal on. You knew that seal, you knew who it was from, and you knew that you could use it to secure her release. You knew that the only reason such a letter would be sent to somebody like Anne, was if it was an invitation, or a pardon.
It hadn't worked entirely as planned when you had presented the letter, stating who it was from, you yourself had been arrested. You had were released several hours later as the peeler involved attempted to express how sorry he was, as they had found that this letter was authentic and that the queen had apparently been quite displeased to find that the one it was sent to, was languishing in jail.
It was this chain of events that had brought you to the place you stood now, brought you to Buckingham Palace, with the three of you stood inside the entrance hall as new servants and old alike stopped and stared, some of them approaching you to say how nice it was to see you again, others keeping their distance.
You snapped from your reflective reverie as a man servant approached you, coughing to get your attention before he spoke. "Her Majesty will see you now," came the mans words, while both Anne and Joy clung to your arms, one of them intimidated, the other mimicking the others behaviour, believing it to be the appropriate thing to do.
Anne was bedazzled by the halls that you were lead through, gazing in awe at the decor that adorned the place, at the paintings and furniture that dotted the place, at the panneling that covered the walls. You were familiar with it, knowing somehow that you had been here before on many occasions, almost unconsciously pulling in the direction you were to head next before the man servant himself turned.
You were lead to a study, one in what a figure sat with a book and a cup of tea, a figure who's face lightened up as the door was knocked upon, as her eyes fixed upon you. A figure who you felt familiar with in more than passing, as more than just a subject, more than a citizen who could only dream of such a moment. Anne almost started to hyperventilate as you slipped your arm free of hers, while Joy made no effort to resist you doing so.
"Your Majesty, I present to you-" the man servant started, though you were fast to step past him, doing something that you knew would no doubt sent a look of shock and horror across his face as you broke every form of etiquette involved in meeting somebody of this standing. She was somebody that you had known from a very young age, somebody who you had seen grow up. To others she was the queen of england, to you she was a friend, an equal.
"Alexandrina, it's good to see you again," you laughed, feeling the burden of recent events lifted from your shoulders in her presence.
"Eurochkoles! I am so pleased to see that you are well once more," she responded, gesturing to a seat opposite herself as she motioned for you to sit, to join her. As you pulled the chair out there was a thud behind you, though neither you nor the other womans attention shifted from each other as you settled down.
"She appeared to have fainted Ma'am," came the voice of the man servant. "Should I take her out to get some air?"
"No, set her down on one of the chairs, I will require time with her when she comes too," she stated in response, pausing briefly as she did so. "Once you have done so, you may leave."
"So, how is my favourite little girl?" you asked, prompting a slight blush along with laughter from the woman as she shook her head slowly.
"I am hardly a little girl any longer, though I do appreicate the sentiment that you have always lavished upon me. You still appear just as you did on that very first day we met. Do you still remember that day?" she asked, while you leaned back, closing your eyes as you focused on the memories that you could feel surfacing.
"The day we met... I was introduced to you on a warm summers day, in the gardens of a local lords manor. You looked up at me, clearly tired as a child would be with all the adults around and told me as I started to speak to you, that I was to address you properly. When I laughed you went to tell your parents on me and-" you paused as she interrupted you.
"They told me that I wouldn't get any ice cream unless I was nice to you-"
"-by the end of the day, you weren't paying the slightest bit of attention to a thing I was saying, but you were sat there, looking ever so content as you sat there with a bowl full of ice cream. You then pinched mine, you little brat."
You opened your eyes to see her grinning impishly, before she collected herself, though she could barely supress the smile that crossed her lips now.
"My little princess is all grown up," you sighed, looking down at the table before you as you did so. "Now she's my little queen, who's empire is one that the sun never sets upon."
There was a long moments silence as those words lingered, no doubt serving to remind her of her mortality, of the fact that you had been here before she had been born, that it was possible that you would be here after she was gone. It was a sobering moment during this joyous reunion, a reminder that in the end, you had the potential to outlive everybody, be it in this incarnation or your next one.
You knew that your time was coming to an end, that your thousand years were almost up, that you would have to face one who sought to set that cycle into motion again. Beneath the book she had before her you noticed something now, the edges of a document that bore a familiar emblem printed upon it. A document bearing the form of a cog, the Clockworkers symbol.
"What is that?" you asked, after a moments silence, gesturing towards the document as you did so.
"This? Oh, this book is on the topic of-"
"Not the book, the document beneath it."
"Oh. This is something the Clockworkers sent me detailing how they were unable to obtain a majority vote in parliment to permit them to send operators and guardians out of the city, to investigate why shipments of tin have stopped arriving from one of the cornish mining villages that they have a contract with. I believe they're expecting me to apply pressure to get this overturned, when it appears a lot like their reaction is to make a lot of noise to get their own way."
You mused briefly over this, knowing that if you offered to assist with this matter you could take a break from the city for a short while, though you knew you were in no way obliged to do such a thing. Did you want to handle this matter once you were done here, go visit other cities, or do something else entirely was the question.
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Topic: They told me I could be anything... (Read 78981 times)