Ren had literally never completed an assigned task so quickly in the whole time Gareth had known her.
There had been no explosions. No fuel leaks, no crashes, no fires. Her rats, normally a force of chaos all on their own, had spent the day quietly fetching her tools without her so much as opening her mouth to request them or look up from her project to claim them. She just held out her hand a tool was dropped directly into it. Sometimes by five rats working in tandem if it was particularly heavy. It was honestly kind of unsettling.
Gareth had dragged a phonograph into the workshop at her request, and it played off-tempo jazz. She hummed along to it, generally with a completely different tune. Gareth should probably have been taking advantage of the uncharacteristic silence--relative silence--to finish up some paperwork, but he kept catching himself watching the increasingly bizarre sight of Ren working peacefully... if frantically. And to think, he'd been trying to get her to take the day off to rest. How she could possibly be so active after everything she'd been through the day before was a mystery for the ages. She couldn't even sit properly--she had her legs folded under her on the stool, which was extremely padded to boot.
Three hours before the end of the day, she stood up, eyes glinting. "They're done." She gestured to the diving bell, which practically glistened. He'd been watching the whole time, so he knew that she had, in fact, done the repairs and little else. Not exactly as she was supposed to, but the little improvements she made here and there were ones he was familiar with by now, like signatures on her work. This was also so uncommon as to be suspicious. He would be paranoid by now if not for the fact he knew exactly what was causing it.
Ren had been to see the King yesterday. They had gotten to talking about orphanages. She was supposed to draft up a proposal. Despite everything else that had happened--or perhaps because of it--this was what she chose to fixate on. She'd never drafted anything in her life, and was determined to hit the library--her! The library! What!--and tear through every book on economics and social services they had. She'd made Gareth promise that if she finished her work early, they could spend the rest of the work day there. He'd agreed immediately; it was rare that she asked for anything that didn't require a week's worth of paperwork and arguing with several different departments.
The project she was working on had been scheduled to be finished in three days. Or rather, that's what he'd told her, because it was due at the end of the week and she was never on time.
"Look over them," she demanded impatiently. "I wanted t'send Ralphio to the library to get started but he can't fuckin' read." Ralphio being a rat, this made perfect sense. "Let's go already."
Gareth shook his head, and she scowled, expression turning murderous. "I can look over them later," he said, instead of whatever she had been expecting. "Let's get to the library."
---
Normally, Ren couldn't be bothered with books. Despite her regular complaints of boredom, she never read anything he gave her for her off-hours, regardless of the subject. He'd learned early on that if anyone tried to force the matter, she'd shred the books like a pissed-off cat.
Watching her increasingly frustrated expressions as she tried to focus through even a single book out of the ambitious stack she'd gathered, Gareth wondered if maybe he hadn't overlooked something obvious.
She was brilliant, he justified to himself. She could do frightful things with diagrams and her mind was like a whip, if someone had tied the whip to a ceiling fan. She knew what fish were good for cleaning rivers and what solvents would react with what compounds in a way that didn't just suggest book-learning, it demanded it. That was why it hadn't occurred to him. But it was just that: justification.
Of course, if he tried to deal with it head-on and sensibly, revealing that he'd realized she had an issue, she'd probably be right back to shredding books before he could blink. For someone they'd dragged in half-starved off the streets, she had a completely impossible amount of pride. Just pinpointing exactly what the issue was would take time.
For now, he settled with distracting her with snacks whenever she looked like she was going to give up, cry, or--most likely--set the books on fire out of spite. Then he haggled with the librarian, who knew Ren and did not care for her, in order to let Ren take several of the books back to her room.
"Can I take one of the charcoal pencils and some parchment back to my room?" she asked as they left the library. It was several hours after he would normally have left for home. He was concerned she may have missed dinner. Her arms were full of the books she'd deemed worth struggling through. Gareth had tried to convince her to let him carry them, as she was walking with a significant limp and probably shouldn't have even been on her foot at all. No such luck, of course. No more than he'd had in trying to suggest she take the day off in the first place.
"Wouldn't a quill and ink work better?" he suggested.
"I'm not allowed to have quills. Too sharp," she said dryly. This was particularly ironic, given that he knew for a fact she kept getting daggers that she was very much not supposed to have, somehow. Probably the rats. Also, it seemed like too long after her acquisition for her to still be on the high risk list. To his knowledge, she'd never attacked anyone... Well, other than him, but he kept that to himself, since the attacking was somewhat mutual, in a sense.
Maybe it was the incident with the snake. Ren, or Ren's rats, if such a distinction mattered, had killed one of Grilka's snakes. There had been quite a dust-up about it. Grilka was generally even-handed, but Gareth could certainly imagine em imposing some slightly more stringent rules as punishment, or even out of spite. Ren's rats were, after all, an ongoing issue that the King's Guard were still struggling to deal with, and he felt as though he was always doing damage control in relation to them. They were absolutely key to keeping Ren functioning even slightly, however. They'd tried early on to keep them from her entirely. Not only had it not worked, as no building was entirely rat proof, what rats had come under the effects of her influence had been violent and dangerous. Now, they mostly just stole food.
They stole so much food.
"Are you going to be alright for dinner? It's late," he asked, concerned. She was a voracious eater, despite her naturally slight frame.
Ren gave him a long look that he couldn't decipher, then snorted. She was mad about yesterday, perhaps, although which part was anyone's guess. She'd been quite happy with all of it at the time. "Yeah, I'll be just fine. I'm not hungry anyway."
Ren was always hungry, but he suspected she was right back to claiming she never was, as if the prior day had never happened. For the best, really, if they both pretended it never had.
---
Dinner that night, for Gareth, was slow-cooked ribs. It was fortunate that Ren didn't know that, because dinner for her was a small amount of pilfered bread--an end-crust that one of her rats had managed to get all the way to her room without being caught--and water from the tap. She ate it over a book that was giving her a headache as words blurred into each other. She'd read the same paragraph three times, and she was ready to throw it across the room.
With a frustrated growl, she scribbled some things down on the parchment awkwardly with a charcoal pencil not designed for such things. This proposal was going to be perfect. It was going to be the most sensible proposal the King's politicians had ever seen. It was going to account for everything. It would be sustainable and it would get the girls out of the King's castle and it would ensure that no matter where they came from, they wouldn't wind up right back into the exploitative traps the King's whims had rescued them from. His whims couldn't relied on for anything.
It would be perfection, a flawless solution, and the King would approve it and she would finally have some external evidence that she wasn't insane, that the way she thought the world ought to be had merit.
She spent the night pouring over books like a woman possessed. And possessed she was, possessed of a need for vindication. She would not waste the opportunity she'd let the King fuck her into. She would be perfect. And in that perfection, she would perhaps find the value to not be hopeless.
---
Jeremy shifted from foot to foot anxiously outside cell 13C. This wasn't his normal position, but Devin had just had a kid. It was a high-security wing, but mostly empty. And high-security really only meant there were no windows, since the building really hadn't been intended to be a prison. They'd done what they could with the old barracks, and honestly, most of the work-release folks adjusted just fine and about all was required was locks on the doors. Even then sometimes not.
This hallway had only one resident, and she was going to be late for check-in. This had never happened before, and Devin hadn't said a thing about the possibility. The whole week Jeremy had been here, she'd been out the door the very second the magical locks clicked automatically to 'open'. But that had been ten minutes ago, and her door was still shut, room still dark.
What if she'd escaped? What if she was about to? Oh, god, what if she'd died?! He needed to call this one in, immediately.
Something stopped him, however. No, not some mysterious 'something,' he knew exactly what was making him hesitate. Ren was on lock-down back here, and had been basically since she'd come in. They treated her like their most dangerous inmate: limited down time, *no* yard time--which he hadn't even known was a possibility--a permitted objects list so short it was basically empty. To look at her file, there was nothing she couldn't turn deadly, and Devin had said that while it had been a while since an incident, he should keep his weapon ready whenever she was around.
Which was why he was so surprised the first time he'd seen her, and she'd turned out to be about five feet tall and so thin that a stiff wind would blow her right out a window. Oh, sure, there were the rats--disgusting, feral things--but if it weren't for them, she'd look like the kind of girl you'd give sweets to.
Because she was on so many punishments already, if she missed check-in or caused an incident, he was a bit worried about what her punishment would be. It was stupid, he knew, but he wasn't used to Sir Colin and the whole thing made him uncomfortable.
So instead, he rapped nervous knuckles on the door.
"Ren? You awake in there? You're going to miss breakfast."
Silence. No, the sound of scrabbling feet. He shuddered. What if he opened the door and a wave of rats hit him and tore him apart? He ghosted over his panic button, then swallowed. He could already see her ice-blue eyes locked on him while she dealt with whatever punishment got dished out. Worse, what if he had to do it?! Swallowing, he turned the doorknob and pushed the door open.
There was no rush of rats; there was no rush of anything, actually. The room was dark, and he once again had the terrible fear that he was about to see a corpse. He entered slowly, fumbling for his flint and tinder to see about lighting a candle or something. There were two on the desk near the door, one burned down to nothing. A few strikes, and he managed to light it, dim light flooding across the floorboards. Casting light and shadow over a small, curled up form on the ground. It moved like there was something crawling under it's skin, and he almost screamed, jumping backwards. It twitched, and he drew his sword as fast as he could.
"He doesn't--" The voice sounded strained, mumbling. "He doesn't understand us--"
Oh god this was the stupidest way to die. He took quick steps back towards the door, but stepped on something that shrieked. He almost dropped his sword, and when he looked down, he saw a rat streak across the floor.
The head of the corpse-thing turned, catching his eye, and its eyes caught the light like a rat's. Then the glint of light passed, and he saw blue.
"Gareth?"
Ren's voice sounded thick and tired. Had she been... asleep? Her skin moved again, and he realized it wasn't her skin at all as a white rat poked its head out around her collar. She'd fallen asleep in her uniform. On the floor.
"Y-you--" he squeaked. "You're uh, gonna... miss breakfast?"
"What? Aw, fuck!" she exclaimed, rubbing at her eyes. "Shit! Fuck, if I miss check-in, I'm gonna be toast." She stood up, then wobbled dangerously. He dropped his sword, unthinking, and took a few steps forward to catch her. Stupid. But no rats swarmed, despite the fact that he realized now that he could see them shuffling around the edges of the candle's light.
"Don't fuckin' touch me," she snarled, despite the fact he was the only thing keeping her from falling over. He let her go, and she fell over. "Fuck."
"Are you, um... okay?"
"I'm fine. Jus' tired. Fuck, no time to change--"
"Here, I'll, uh... I'll tell Sir Colin that you checked in with me and don't feel well enough for breakfast."
"Really?" her eyes lit up. "Aw, thanks, Jer, yer a peach. I fuckin' hope the other guy never comes back." She stood up again, slower this time, and stretched. "I'll head straight t'work, I promise. Yer doin' me a favor; I won't burn ya on this. I jus' gotta get changed and get a few things together." She rushed to her desk; there was a spattering of mechanical parts and wires and tools he was certain she wasn't supposed to have. He bit his lip, but said nothing.
"I'm goin' to see the King today," she told him, as if reading his mind. "Got a summons. Whatever yer thinkin' you ought to do to me, I can promise he'll do worse, so don't worry yer lil head about it." She picked up a small box, and shoved it into her work bag. "I'll change in front of you if I gotta," she told him flatly, turning to look at him, putting a hand on her hip. "But I really don't wanna."
"Wh-- Oh! Right. I'll just, um. Go. Tell Sir Colin." He took a step back, and then another one, and then just turned to scramble out of the room in as dignified a manner as he could, closing the door behind him.
...He was really going to need to report at least some of that, he thought, regretfully. She definitely wasn't allowed to have screwdrivers.
"Yer in the third room on the first floor, yeah?" came a shout through the door. His whole body tensed. "I'll make sure th' rats stay outta there! Thanks again, Jer."
...Someone else could call it in. He wasn't waking up to rats in his room because someone decided she could kill a man with a screwdriver. She could barely stand, they kept her so weak. It was fine. It'd be fine. She wasn't... that... terrifying.
He quickly walked down the hall to report in to Sir Colin that she was skipping breakfast and heading right to work, on account of her meeting with the King.
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