Chapter Text
For all her experience, the task wasn’t easy. Any idiot could detach and replace a metal hand, if that hand was only for show - but a hand that could grasp and twist and hold, that was something else entirely. When Carmilla took the girl’s wrist in her own and slid her hands over the tool that her father had built, she could feel the delicacy that had gone into crafting it, the thousand tiny connections he’d built between her nerve endings and the functions of the hand.
“Sit down,” she directed eventually. The girl glanced about her for a seat, and finding none available - the sole seat Carmilla kept at her workspace currently occupied by two pairs of winders and an experimental wing design - she sat neatly on the edge of the bed. Carmilla eyed her there, perched among her sheets and lame pillow, and sighed. She gathered her preferred tools - clockmaker’s gadgets of steel and glass - and sat beside her.
It took her a half hour or more to coax away the existing hand. It would have been longer, but the girl - Laura, she reminded herself strictly - was clearly practiced at holding herself still whilst someone worked on the prosthesis. Carmilla didn’t let herself think about that too much, only slid her glass knife along the last of the fine wires that bound her skin with the hand, and pulled it away. When she dropped it onto the bed between them, it fell heavily into the poor mattress, barely rebounding.
Laura watched it sprawl heavily onto the bed. Carmilla expected to see relief in her face, freed from the weight of the thing, but instead she looked almost hurt, cut by the loss of the thing.
“It’s strange to be without it,” she said briefly, pulling her now unencumbered arm against her chest and cradling it. The limb sat oddly, strangely short without the extension she’d grown used to, and Carmilla tried not to stare at the socket where her arm now ended.
“The new one - you’ll get used to it soon,” she promised awkwardly, and held out her hand for Laura’s arm. She gave it over, slowly, and Carmilla could tell it cost her to do so.
The silver socket had been neatly embedded into her arm, she saw. She’d already seen that the join was good, the protruding wrist bone at the top of the forearm sitting just above it and helping to give it stability. She palpated the skin around it gently, feeling for nerve endings and bone stability, and the girl only twitched, not flinching as she might have expected.
“Sorry,” she offered belatedly, realising her poking about was inevitably hurting the girl. But she only shrugged.
“I’m more than used to it,” she answered, and seeing Carmilla’s curious glance, added, “It’s more than just you who’s interested in my hand, Carmilla. For more than one reason.”
Carmilla’d almost forgotten that, her earlier allusion to the interest that men took in the girl they called clockwork. She scrunched her nose in disgust, but chose not to comment, instead fixing her attention on the girl’s arm again.
“This is how I thought,” she said, as though to herself, then shook herself to address herself instead to Laura. “It’s a good join, but you’ve lost a lot of small bones here. I can give you something more flexible than that one, but it won’t have the flexion of your other hand. It’s too… you can’t build in that much flexion without losing strength, and without muscle to hold the bones tight in place it would have no strength to it.”
“Yes,” the girl answered. “But you can build me something better than the last?”
Carmilla shook her head. “Not can. Have.”
She slid from the side of the bed, returning to her work bench. She rummaged among the pieces there, the endless collection of metal and oil and silk and rags, and pulled out the hand she’d spent two days making.
The last hand had been a work of genius. A strong tool, nearly hand shaped and capable, but rigid and incomplete and difficult to use with any delicacy.
This one was a work of art. A far more delicate piece than the last, silver metal and the enlivening spells she’d beaten into it shining bright. It had half as many pieces again as the first, tiny struts and cogs in place for each bone she’d lost, and a kind of ivory coating over the hand and its fingers, all five of them. Only the wrist lay bare and silvery, ready to attach to its new owner.
The girl gasped at the sight of it, her only hand coming to her mouth and covering it and then her eyes. But when she lowered it again, the look she gave Carmilla was only suspicious.
“Why are you doing this for me?” she asked.
Carmilla sat by her on the bed again. She didn’t reach out, only waited for the girl to offer her arm again.
“I told you. I’m paying off a debt,” she answered, and at last the girl reached out again.
Attaching it was less complex than she’d feared; detaching the last had been complicated largely because she was feeling out someone else’s work, trying to find contacts and delicate lines without damaging them. Now she was quick in attaching the contacts she’d built onto the girl’s socket, humming the nerves to the surface and coaxing them to align with the micro-impulses she’d spelled into the hand. It was delicate work, but not hard, and once she’d joined them the hand and wrist slid neatly into the socket of Laura’s arm, clicking tightly into place.
“Go on,” she said, when the girl didn’t immediately lift her arm. “It should be working now, I’ve lined up the bone with the… it doesn’t matter. Try it out.”
Laura raised it slowly, the hand limp until it came level with her eyes. Then she flexed it, bringing the metal knuckles down into a fist before extending them gracefully into a wave, all five fingers moving easily with her thought.
“Wow,” she breathed, and Carmilla bit her lip at the joy on her face.
Laura wanted to experiment, after that. The hand wasn’t as strong as her old one, Carmilla warned her of that immediately - but the old hand had been able to fracture metal railings and cut concrete. This one - Laura’s heart shone out her eyes when she picked up glass baubles from the desk, when she slid fingers through her hair, when she reached over gently - so gently - and touched Carmilla’s shoulder.
She shuddered under the touch, and the girl drew away.
“I’m sorry,” Carmilla said immediately.
“It’s fine. I’m used to it - the revulsion. But I thought you -” the girl broke off.
Carmilla stared at her. “That wasn’t revulsion,” she managed to say. Then her hands were on the girl’s shoulders, drawing her in, her face already turning up to be kissed.
It was quick, and needy; the girl’s mouth was already open when Carmilla darted her tongue across to taste. Laura moaned against her, and Carmilla slid her hands into the girl’s loose hair, fisting it into the waves that fell over her shoulders. She used it to slant the girl’s mouth against her, directing the kiss, and the girl came stumbling into her, their breasts pressing firmly together through fabric.
It wasn’t until the girl pulled away that Carmilla realised she’d been grabbing at her with both hands, the silver hand enfolded around Carmilla’s waist just as soft and firm as the other.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’m sorry, sorry - it’s just - I’ve never -”
Her mind was still clouded by the kiss, so that it took Carmilla a moment to understand. Never? … oh. Oh.
“It’s fine,” she struggled to say. “It’s - I don’t - that’s fine.”
The girl shot her an anxious look from beneath pale eyebrows. “Sorry. I’m sorry,” she said again. “I should go, it’s late - I just. Thank you. For my hand.”
Carmilla couldn’t help but follow her about as she found her cloak and then made for the door. She’d rarely felt so incapable, and yet… “You don’t have to go,” she said.
“I do, though,” the girl answered, glancing to the window, and Carmilla remembered with a sinking feeling the threat she’d made earlier, of how just being found with her could ruin her reputation. Well, that would be the least of it.
“Alright,” she acceded instead. “Very well, just please - let me know how it goes. With the hand.”
The girl gave her a half smile, and let herself out. Carmilla leaned her head against the door after her, and listened to her steps until they reached so far down the stairs she could no longer hear them.
“Idiot,” she muttered at herself. “You got the clockwork girl all the way here only to letch on her, you utter giant idiot.”
She banged her head softly against the door, then walked away from it and back to her bed. She threw herself down on it and closed her eyes, willing sleep to come quickly. But all she could see now was the clockwork girl, Laura, sitting on it with intent eyes. She didn’t dare let herself think of the girl lying back, relaxing against her sheets and that poor pillow.
She probably wouldn’t see her again, she thought. Not unless something went wrong with the hand, and she knew her work - it wouldn’t. She bit her lip. No, the hand would work perfectly, carrying out every task Laura asked of it - and one more.
She rolled over, burying her face into the pillow. It didn’t smell like Laura, no matter how much she wished it, and it never would. Not even if the hand worked perfectly - Maman would see to that. No, the tiny microphone and transmitter she’d built into it would work brilliantly, sharing every word the girl spoke and everyone she spoke it to, and Maman would see to it that the girl would never get a mention in her political campaign, that Carmilla’s father’s mistakes would never again see the light of day.
She screamed into the pillow, knowing no one could hear her. That no one would believe her, even if she told.
When she slept, silver fingers danced through her dreams.