Chapter Text
In his time, the General had managed to achieve his fair share of maneuvers and neat tricks that nobody saw coming. It was something of a point of pride.
But apparently hundreds of years of experience in war, spycraft and plain old-fashioned wiliness didn't have a lick on dumb luck, because when he found the Heterodyne, it was because she accidentally knocked into him on a busy market day in Beetleburg.
Plenty of reasons for her to be there; the market was the straight line from the University to her home, as he'd soon discover. She took that route every day.
Complete stupid coincidence that he was there, though, playing airman on shore leave for the day. Figured, that just when a fellow started thinking himself clever, the Heterodyne would come along to prove that they were all really at the whims of a universe whose laws were bent towards situational comedy.
There was the flash of blond past his face, a sunny banner in the crisp autumn air, and when she clipped him and staggered on her feet, his arms came up automatically to grab on--gently, gently, because he still needed to remember his strength sometimes.
"Oh no--I'm so sorry!" came the blurted words, edged with pain as the young woman pressed a hand to her head.
He opened his mouth to respond, let her loose (not a threat, move on), but then he inhaled, and his hands wouldn't--quite--let go. He made as if to hold her steady on her feet as his mind caught up with instinct. Slow down. Figure this out. It's important, the second layer of his instincts told him, the human parts wrapped around the Jäger like the hilt to a blade.
"S'no trouble," he said, taking a second look at the young woman. "You alright, miss?"
"I'm--" she broke off into a pained whimper, the hand pressing more firmly to her forehead as her eyes screwed shut. "Thank you, I'm fine! I-- I get these headaches-- sorry! Sorry!"
In the pause between words, he inhaled again, needing to be sure. And once he did, he had no idea how he could have had a doubt. The scent of Heterodyne filled his mouth like honey, even though the smell was more like ozone, like the air before an electric storm.
He was afraid he wouldn't be able to command his hands to let her go, but that wasn't an issue at the moment, when it seemed he was the only thing holding her upright.
"No need to apologize," he said. "You going to a doctor?"
"Home," she said, shaking her head slowly.
Home. She had a home somewhere in Beetleburg. So close to Mechanicsburg. He knew he had to follow this thread to wherever it led.
"Here," he said gently, offering the crook of his arm and guiding her hand to hold on. "I'll help you get home safe, then."
She looked up at him then for the first time, and her eyes were green, another puzzle piece for him to file away and fit in later. There was confusion there in her face, but it was strangely diffuse, like she was looking at the world through a blurry pane of glass. Part of it might have been the pain, but there seemed to be something more to it than that.
"I wouldn't want to impose!" she said, her eyes falling on the Wulfenbach insignia on his uniform. "I get these headaches all the time, I'll be fine. I can get home by myself."
"But knowing you got home safe'll make me feel a lot better," he insisted, and then made a show of looking around. "Now, which way?"
"Um... down... down that street," she said, head ducking as her eyes screwed shut again. "Forge Street," she mumbled. "Clay Mechanical."
She cut off as another wave of pain seemed to hit her, and she clung to his arm like a lifeline. Despite her protestations that she could get home by herself--which he didn't necessarily doubt, if these headaches were as common as she said--he was relieved to be there for her.
Clay Mechanical wasn't hard to find, at least. Big, clear sign on the front. Blacksmith working, by the sound of the hammer ringing out of the smithy. Family?
"Didn't catch your name," he murmured softly to her, just as they came up to the open smithy door.
"Oh, I'm Agatha Clay," she said, giving him a smile despite the strain it seemed to cause her. "I didn't catch yours, either!"
"Axel Higgs," he said smoothly.
"Well, then, nice to meet you, Mister Higgs," she said.
There was a heavy metal groan as a tractor was lowered, and the blacksmith turned around, dropping another confusing puzzle piece into his lap.
This was Punch.
This was clearly, undoubtedly, Punch, looking down on him with the full force of fatherly suspicion. No recognition, at least, which in retrospect was a decision Higgs was glad for. Never knew who you'd need to end up spying on, so Higgs wasn't the type to introduce himself to just anyone.
"Adam, this is Mister Higgs," Agatha said, releasing his arm to walk over to Punch. "He helped me get home. I... had to leave early, I got another headache."
Punch put his hand on Agatha's shoulder, and she leaned into it for comfort despite the massive size of it. Then he nodded down to her, and ushered her inside.
He turned to give a look to Higgs, who responded by touching a finger to the brim of his hat and nodding, before he turned. Under the circumstances, Higgs didn't think it was going to go over well if he gave the impression he was lingering around a man's daughter.
But what a hell of a thing he'd stumbled into.
If Higgs was hoping that getting some distance and going over what he knew would yield some kind of answer, or even a working theory for what was going on, the truth was that he ended up going in circles in his own mind, pendulating wildly between the relief at having found a Heterodyne, and the fear of losing her again.
The cure for his internal high-velocity panic episode was, luckily, simply doing his job.
There was a capable gunsmith a few doors down from Clay Mechanical, and a tavern off the market, and a low-brow bookstore that sold filthy tracts just off the University grounds, and if all those spots happened to be both plausible places for an airman to visit and also adjacent to Agatha's usual route between home and University, that could all be dismissed as coincidence. Coincidences existed, after all. Coincidence had dropped a Heterodyne straight into his lap.
Happenstance, now that was harder to swing. There was an art to it, like emerging onto a stage. The switch from background fixture to active player, and Higgs had mastered the precise heel turn into someone's path that would draw someone's attention straight to him.
Even so, Agatha breezed almost right past him on the street, focused as she was on walking, before she stopped, and recognition caught up with her belatedly. Higgs saw it in slow-motion as her shoulders dropped, and she turned haltingly to look at him. The moment hung between them for just a beat too long before her eyes lit up in recognition.
"Mister Higgs!" she declared, sounding proud to have dredged the name up from her memory. "Hello!"
She didn't seem to be in pain today, and there was nothing strained in her smile. Still something foggy in her eyes, but it was impossible not to feel buoyed by that happy look on her face.
"Miss Clay," he greeted very seriously, but let a very small smile slip onto his own face. No teeth, he reminded himself. You're not smiling at a Heterodyne, you're smiling at a pretty girl. No teeth. Yet. "Doing better?"
Her eyes darted aside, almost hiding the twinge of shame. Her smile faltered only a little, before she seemed to rally herself against whatever struggled to bring her down.
"Yes, much better. Thank you for your help the other day," she said. "It, um... I was having a bad day. My parents are very grateful you saw me home safe."
From the stilted way she added that last part, likely the sentiment that her parents expressed was gratitude that he hadn't taken liberties. Agatha was unlikely to be the only town girl to get dire warnings from their parents about airshipmen, and what they were like.
Higgs allowed his smile to widen a fraction. Well, he did have ulterior motives, when it came down to it.
It didn't do to push it, though.
"I'm glad to hear it," he said instead, giving her a polite nod of the head before they parted ways.
The schedule of chance meetings Higgs devised after that was more accelerated than was ideal, but as fast as he could manage on shore leave. It turned out to be suitable enough, when he realized that Agatha wasn't giving it much thought, and he had a much wider margin for suspicion than he'd anticipated.
The point of which was that he ended up inviting her for a drink, sort of. Not the tavern he'd taken to haunting, but he shared a thermos of mulled wine with her, sitting on some steps just off the University grounds.
It was an appropriately seasonal drink. Autumn had turned everything a rusty brown that suited the gold in Agatha's hair, and the weather had taken a turn for the frosty. The mulled wine was hot, and made Agatha's breath turn to steam on the air.
"I've just always had these headaches," she was telling him, staring into the red depths of the TPU souvenir cup that Higgs had bought from a nearby giftshop. "Every time I try to think, or build something, or-- or do anything!" She pressed a fist to her forehead, face twisted in frustration and remembered pain, and then she tapped her knuckles against her forehead like she knew there was something broken inside, and had been eluded by it so long as to grow used to it.
Higgs grunted in sympathy, taking a sip of his own mulled wine, letting her talk.
"I try sometimes," she confessed, not looking at him. "It feels like I almost have it, and I understand, but then whatever I build just blows up." She threw her hands out demonstratively. "Every time! And then I get upset, and I get a headache again! I'm just so stupid, ugh."
He caught her hand when it looked like she was going to grab onto her head again, and drew it away from her face.
"You're not stupid," he said evenly. "Not even a bit. Sounds like you've got a lot of trouble with your head, but you do more than some people with half your trouble, and that's not stupid."
She looked at him, with a kind of wonderment that made him suspect that what he just said was something she rarely heard from people. It twisted at his heart to see her suffer like this. It wasn't something he'd ever expected to deal with. In his experience, the problem tended to tilt the other way, when Heterodynes pursued passions into obsessions and straight off a cliff. Plenty of people and circumstances lined up to thwart them, but most Heterodynes were happy with the pursuit of a thing as much as with success. Most needed that constant pursuit, like a shark that died if it stopped swimming.
Never met a Heterodyne who'd get thwarted like this by their own brain, and Higgs wondered how long she'd be able to bear it, in the long run. It was a strange and cruel thing, all the more because of everyone in the family line, Agatha seemed to deserve it the least. And Higgs was no doctor, but deep in his gut, he felt it for what it was: sabotage. And damn if he was going to be okay with anyone sabotaging his Heterodyne.
Whatever thoughts percolated behind Agatha's eyes, they reached the end point about the same time as Higgs' own musings, and they both realized as they looked down that Higgs was still holding Agatha's hand.
Pretending there was nothing amiss at all, Higgs brushed his thumb over her knuckles and casually let her hand go.
"Want more wine?" he asked, and turned to pick up the thermos.
Agatha, her cheeks turning rosy, only nodded, and he topped off her mug with more mulled wine, releasing hot steam into the air. He pretended not to notice when Agatha hid her face into the mug, or when she gulped down the hot liquid a bit too fast.
For someone who lived as long as Higgs, the stretch of time spent in uncertain absence of a Heterodyne was both interminable, and brief. They always felt that way, especially for him, when he was often the one expected to find one. Not that it wasn't justified, considering that just as often, he had been the one to find a Heterodyne again.
But the expectant tension and forced attentiveness of waiting and watching was never something he enjoyed. And having found the newest heir, he felt the reinvigorating effects of purposefulness again. Now came the fun part. How was he going to maneuver her into her rightful place?
Meeting with her over the course of the week--the chance encounters turning to conversations, then walks home--he found himself having to assess her. What he knew about her was contradictory and frustrating as a mystery ever was, but he thought she'd be easier to unravel as a person.
She was distracted, almost constantly, never quite able to follow a complex thought through, emotionally a mess either as a result, or leading to, whatever ailment was giving her migraines constantly. But she had a tenacity in the face of all her short-comings that Higgs thought he recognized well. All the Masters had had it, especially the ones who were thwarted more times than not. That Heterodyne drive to continue in spite of any and all failures.
So it disappointed Higgs to have to conclude that Agatha did not have the constitution to withstand or navigate the utter political mess of being the Heterodyne in this day and age. Back in the day, when the town was shut tight, and a Heterodyne could go for years interacting with nobody but Mechanicsburgers, it might have been easier to pull off. But here, now? The Baron would eat her alive.
It made his gut roil with discontent to have to think about it, but he'd always had to be realistic about the Masters' limitations. They always had plenty of people egging them on, and not enough to remind them they were still mortal (though mortality was, admittedly, something the Heterodynes had always deemed negotiable).
The cynical solution, which Higgs liked to start from since you could always work your way up from the bottom, was that even hampered as she was, Agatha could still continue the line. Maybe it would even make for a happier life, in her case.
He mulled on this, turning it over in his head on a day when he promised to meet Agatha at the University to walk her home. The thought flitted away from him like a leaf on the wind when he heard the music, though.
The first notes drifted when he turned the corner, and even without Agatha's directions, he could have followed the sound to the music room all on its own. There was something about it--the tune wasn't familiar, or maybe it was so familiar that he'd forgotten it all over again, but it made him want to listen for some undercurrent.
He stopped in the doorway, leaning against the door frame as he watched Agatha play the organ. Even from behind, he could appreciate the lack of uncertainty in her motions, the relaxed line of her back. Higgs had gleaned enough to know that academically she was a disaster, but the music...
The music was chasing something she didn't even knew she had in her, and in the wavering, mute air between notes, like aural negative space, Higgs could almost hear the Heterodyning that should have been there.
It chased the cynicism out, and Higgs no longer wanted to pivot his plans on Agatha's shortcomings. For good or ill, she was the Heterodyne--would be the Heterodyne, and he'd make it happen.
When the music stopped, and she rose from the organ, looking more alert and calm than Higgs had ever seen her after a full day at University, she looked at him and her entire face lit up.
"Mister Higgs, you came!" she declared, still surprised that he sought her company.
"Wouldn't have missed that performance for anything," he said.
"Oh, I..." Agatha put a hand on the instrument, trying to restrain a smile at the compliment. "Thank you! They let me practice on the big organ sometimes. I do better at music than most things. It helps me focus."
Higgs didn't find that surprising at all. But he didn't comment on it. Instead, he picked up Agatha's coat from the hanger by the door, and held it up for her.
"How about we go the long way today?" he asked.
Agatha blinked in surprise, and then smiled, looking especially pleased by this offer.
The days slipped away much too fast from Higgs, and he once again found himself at the despotic mercy of time's constant onward march.
His leave was up. The Rozen Maiden would be in range to pick him up the next day, and he had made a frustrating lack of inroads on a working plan. The very least silver lining in the entire thing was that the Clays did not seem to have any plans of leaving Beetleburg soon, though Higgs knew well they were perfectly capable of bugging out at a moment's notice if anything seemed amiss.
He'd had to endure the paranoid scrutiny of both Punch and Judy on both occasions he'd been invited by Agatha to the house, and even while pretending that he was nothing but a perfectly bland young gentleman trying to befriend their daughter, Higgs couldn't help but try to make himself seem extra harmless just in case.
The day before he had to leave he spent mostly haunting the TPU campus.
Not the most difficult thing, overall. He was dressed ambiguously enough to fit that sartorial overlap between student and back alley hustler, and with the right posture and attitude, he was nobody special. He knew how to have people's eyes slide right off him, no more interesting or memorable than a feature of geography.
He learned what he could about the University, and especially about Doctor Beetle, who was a special point of interest after Agatha made some off-handed remark about being under his protection.
Whatever explanation there was for Punch and Judy hiding out here with Agatha, Higgs suspected Beetle featured in it. Beetleburg was a place the Heterodyne Boys always kept returning to--sometimes with more frequency than Mechanicsburg, especially in the early days--but Doctor Beetle was a common thread. He'd taught Master William and Master Barry, but he'd been Lucrezia's teacher more closely. If Higgs had to guess on whose behalf Beetle had extended his protection over Agatha, he wasn't sure even Punch and Judy's presence weighed that answer more in the Heterodyne favor.
True enough, Punch and Judy may have been Heterodyne creations, but there was a difference in kind between them and the rest. There was a reason they'd been the ones allowed to join the Heterodyne Boys, and though Higgs was not so immature as to resent them for it, he was realistic enough to understand that Punch and Judy were never going to gravitate towards Mechanicsburg naturally. Beetleburg was likely the closer thing they had to a home.
Higgs didn't have any more answers by the time he'd made his pass of the campus, but at least he didn't have any more questions. He smoked his pipe in the small shadowed corner next to a study hall's staircase. It gave him a good view of the door to the administrative building, and as expected, he saw Agatha exit with a stack of papers in her arms, probably heading for Doctor Beetle's lab.
Higgs didn't make any move to draw her attention, merely standing there and enjoying the rising warmth in his chest as he observed Agatha, committing the details to memory.
A group of students passed her, and even as Agatha gave a greeting, one of the students reached out and smacked the pile of papers in Agatha's hands from underneath, sending the top half of the stack sliding off and falling to the ground. Agatha made an alarm sound and hastily tried to catch the papers, but the group of students moved on, their laughter ringing out horribly.
The anger Higgs experienced was instantaneous, and completely flying in the face of all the training he underwent to prevent this exact type of reaction. But the only concession the Jäger part of him made to the human in this case was that, as he stalked down the group of students and caught up with them, he didn't gut them neck to belly. Agatha would not like that, and they were lucky she wouldn't, because it was the only thing that saved them.
Higgs snatched the one who'd knocked the papers out of Agatha's hands easily--he'd been gravitating to the far edge of the group anyway--and before anyone could even notice he was gone, Higgs had pulled the hapless student's own coat over his head and tied him inside it with its own sleeves.
As the student stumbled around blinded and confused, shakily asking for help, Higgs was already away, circling back to where Agatha was chasing down a last piece of paper as the wind kept blowing it out of her reach.
Higgs snatched the paper before it ended up in a patch of mud, and presented it to Agatha as her expression turned relieved and grateful.
"Thanks," she said. "I guess I should keep a tighter grip."
Higgs felt his jaw clench, but he didn't want to alarm her, so he smiled instead.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, brows knitting together as she probably tried to recall if they had plans.
"Thought I'd steal you away," he said. "Last day in town, you know."
"Oh! Right." She couldn't quite disguise the disappointment in her voice. "Well, I still have a few things to do. But would you like to come over for dinner tonight?"
"Dinner," he repeated.
"You don't have to," Agatha said quickly, "but since you're going away, and Adam and Lilith seem to like you, I thought--"
"Home-cooked meal before I go?" Higgs raised an eyebrow.
Agatha flushed.
"Sounds perfect," he said, and then fell in step with her as she began to walk again.
"Great!" she declared, a bit too loudly, then shrank back into herself, embarrassed. "I mean, I'm glad. We're glad. To have you. For--"
"Dinner. Right," he said, grinning at her.
He could hardly refuse. And, if he played his cards right, maybe Agatha would even play the piano for him after dinner.
It was important to have objectives, he thought airily as he walked alongside her.
Leaving Beetleburg was harder than he expected, and he already expected it to be hard. The swoop of worry in the pit of his stomach felt heavy enough to keep him on the ground, but he had to report back to the Rozen Maiden or he'd be pegged as a deserted, and it didn't feel like the right time to burn that particular bridge.
The day he was supposed to leave, he showed up a final time at Clay Mechanical, and on the doorstep of the house, he said his goodbye to Agatha.
She looked crestfallen, but at least it was in a subdued way that wasn't likely to send her spiraling into a migraine. And after she said her own goodbyes, she leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek, which was unexpected, and did nothing to make leaving easier.
As he retreated, he spotted Lilith at the window, giving him a final narrow-eyed look of warning. Likely she didn't expect him to ever show his face in Beetleburg again.
So Higgs resumed his post on the Rozen Maiden, filled with more purpose than he had before, and yet more restless for it.
At least the tediousness of the actual work gave him time to think through his next few moves. While he'd been in Beetleburg, he'd taken the opportunity to send off a few coded messages to his usual contacts in Mechanicsburg. The answers reached him just as he returned to the Rozen Maiden, and none were satisfactory.
The other issue was revealing the existence of the Heterodyne. Telling the Generals on Castle Wulfenbach was a risk. It was a judgement call on Higgs' part, because at the end of the day, there was a reason none of those guys made Spymaster. And there was something to be said about plausible deniability, especially when the Baron was such a wily one.
But no, when it came down to it, Higgs coded the messages and sent them only through the hands of trusted Jägers. It was better for all the Generals to be prepared, if Mechanicsburg was to pass hands back to the Family.
A surprise, two weeks into his return: one morning at mail call, an envelope come to find him.
This was new. All the messages Higgs sent were never by the Empire's mail system, which was trustworthy but too close to being a paper trail for his tastes. All the messages he received, even less so.
Every single eye in the crew quarters turn to Higgs, as the yeoman handing out mail that morning gave the most shit-eating grin imaginable, and Higgs had to trudge all the way from his berth to the yeoman, who didn't hand the envelope over before asking, with a smug glance at the return address,
"So who's Agatha?"
Higgs heard the giddy in-take of breath that would momentarily explode into relentless ribbing. He had to nip this in the bud.
"My great-auntie who lives in Beetleburg," Higgs replied blithely.
"Riiiight," the yeoman chuckled.
But Higgs was so straight-faced about it, holding a hand out for the letter, that everyone deflated in disappointment again. He was no fun, apparently. Good.
When he was back in his berth, alone with just the light over his head, he opened the envelope, carefully ungluing the flap instead of ripping the top; force of habit. He was usually the one poking in other people's correspondence.
The handwriting, a clear secretarial script with just the slightest waver of hesitation around the edges, was painstakingly legible. He thought he could detect, from the first salutation, an uncertainty that a letter would even be welcome.
In truth, he hadn't really expected it, and he had no idea how Agatha had figured out the rather byzantine internal postal service that ensured Wulfenbach personnel got their mail wherever they were posted. Two weeks was a fast turn-around, when one wrong line could condemn a letter to postal purgatory for months. He'd probably underestimated how able Agatha was at her administrative duties at the University.
And the letter was welcome. She didn't have the habit of spritzing letters with perfume, as some young ladies got into their head was fashionable, but the paper still smelled like her, that prickly electrifying scent of Heterodyne that made the blood thrum with anticipation in Higgs' veins.
In the letter, she called him Dear Mister Higgs, probably because he'd still only worked his way up to calling her Miss Agatha by the time he left Beetleburg. There was a small speck of ink, an almost indiscernible trace of hesitation on the first word, but after that the writing grew more confident, the pen marks deeper, the lines of cursive smooth. Where she talked about some new development at TPU or some fascinating new work of Doctor Beetle's, the writing grew sharper and more excited, and where she glossed over some upsetting detail, the letters were bunched together--the equivalent of someone talking quickly to get past an uncomfortable conversational hurdle.
There were six pages, both sides filled with Agatha's thoughts and anecdotes and worried inquiries about how he was doing, and Higgs found himself reading it all after his shift and then late in the night, just by the small light of his berth.
"Awful happy to be getting that letter from your great-auntie from Beetleburg," one of his fellow sniffed at him the next morning.
"Don't get to talk to her much," Higgs grunted in reply.
He didn't think anybody believed him much, but at least they were just doubtful enough about what the truth was that they left him alone.
Meanwhile, having decided that the letter deserved an answer, he spent the next week collecting little tidbits--a couple of less common science journals; some discarded old attempts at Spark work that Agatha would find interesting and that nobody in the Rozen Maiden's boiler room would miss; an interesting beetle construct trapped in amber--and he soon had a box packed up and dropped off at the mailroom. He included only a sparse note, more a reminder that he was thinking of her than anything else. Words weren't always his strong suit, but least of all in writing.
He didn't know when the box arrived in Beetleburg for Agatha, but when the next letter came, sixteen days letter, she was gushing over the contents.
And Higgs started adding up in his head the days of leave that he had left over and hadn't used yet.
When he arrived in Beetleburg again, the town was tucked under a blanket of snow, every sound hushed.
It was late noon, but already getting dark. The windows of Clay Mechanical were aglow in gold from the light inside. He took a moment to observe and set this moment in his mind.
He knocked, bracing himself for Judy's suspicious inspection, or Punch's quiet looming.
Instead, it was Agatha who opened the door, limned by lamplight in such a way that there seemed to be a halo about her.
"Oh," she said, a quiet, surprised sound, before she threw herself at him bodily, and he had to catch her in a hug.
She seemed less like a dream when he had her warm weight in his arms, and when he could sink his face into the crook of his shoulder and inhale until he had his lung's fill of her.
She bustled him in, taking his scarf and coat, ushering him to the kitchen.
"It's so cold outside! You should have something hot to drink," she decided, and set to making tea.
"Thanks," he said, peering around the homey kitchen. He sat at the table where she placed him.
She flashed him a smile in passing, and then set to chattering about everything that had happened at TPU since the last time he'd been in Beetleburg. Some gossip about staff, some complaints about student shenanigans, a lot of scientific talk that went over his head. He absorbed it all, even if he didn't have the context to understand everything, but enjoying the sound of Agatha's voice as she spoke about all these things which interested her. She was a brighter creature when she was happy, or at least content.
"Your parents not around?" he asked. Agatha had set out only two cups.
"Lilith is off for a piano lesson, and Adam is making a house call. Something about a malfunctioning roof heater." She took a sip of her tea, looking nervous now about admitting a young man into the house without a chaperone present.
"Huh. Probably not the best time to drop in, was it?" he said. "With your parents not being here." He didn't really want to antagonize Punch and Judy. Yet.
Agatha brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes, delaying an answer.
"Well, it's not like anything's going to happen!" she sputtered, turning pink.
"'Course not," Higgs said.
"Naturally," Agatha added, mollified and now starting to edge a bit into disappointed. It was probably a nervous gesture, but her hand went to the trilobite locket at her throat.
Probably didn't mean anything. Punch and Judy wore those too, and Agatha might've picked up the habit, not knowing the fit of it.
"You wear that locket a lot, huh," he remarked, his mouth getting ahead of him.
She blinked, her hand stilling on the trilobite.
"Lilith says I should never take it off," Agatha said, and then, to belie that, she took it off her neck. "It... has the photos of my natural parents inside."
She placed the locket down, pushing it across the table, and Higgs picked it up.
Now that was something he was curious about. He wasn't sure what he was expecting when he clicked open the little latch--complete strangers?--but the two portraits inside were perfectly rendered pictures of Master William and his wife.
Higgs made sure not a muscle in his face twitched as he looked at the pictures. This was hardly needed, as proof of parentage went. But it was a wild swing from a past that seemed buried, and he took it just like a punch to the gut. Lucrezia looked as radiantly lovely as she always did. Even Master William looked unusually well-appointed; for once, he was dressed in an elegant coat, instead of his usual array of shirts that could double as grease rags. Not that Higgs could argue with Master William's sartorial choices; when one managed to get ripped up and bloody as frequently as the Heterodyne Boys did, it came down to pragmatism.
"They looked," he cast around for a word that wouldn't reveal too much, "like good people."
"They were!" Agatha said, adamantly. "Not that I don't love Lilith and Adam, too. They raised me, they're my parents. It's just..."
"Can't help wondering sometimes?" Higgs offered.
Agatha gave a small shrug.
"Doesn't everyone want to know where they come from?" she said.
Higgs felt his hand clench around the locket, temptation rising high to tell her where she truly came from. But he resisted.
"What happened to them?" Higgs asked.
"They're gone," Agatha said, her tone turning evasive.
He didn't think she knew. Punch and Judy might have known, but maybe the answer would have revealed too much. It was obvious Agatha was kept in ignorance about certain things, if not, curiously, about others.
He looked at the portraits again, and took another sip of his tea. Agatha likely didn't show the pictures to many people. And if she did, odds were slim it would be someone who remembered the faces. Hundreds of amateur renditions and actors in bad wigs had replaced the people with crude caricatures over the years. If she showed the portraits to the average person on the street, who'd even guess this was Bill and Lucrezia from the stories?
Doctor Beetle would know, of course. Higgs decided to take another close look at Agatha's alleged protector. Ulterior motives were self-evident, but what were those motives precisely?
He brushed the question aside for now, looking up from the locket to see Agatha worrying at her cup.
"Tea's good," he said, breaking up the silence.
"You want more?" she asked, jumping from her seat and moving to the kettle before he could even stop her. From there she noticed that there was no more tea left, so she put more on, and then segued into talking about gingerbread for some reason.
Higgs kept track of this peripherally, because the rest of him was preoccupied with a very sudden and very sharp pain shooting through his head.
The first assumption--that someone had stuck a knitting needle right through his eye and into his brain--was proven false when he rubbed his eye and his hand didn't come away bloody.
But he was not prone to pains like this, and his next hysterical thought was that perhaps Agatha's headaches were caused by some contagious disease that he'd picked up now.
He placed the locket down on the table, and the shooting pain vanished as suddenly as it had come on.
Higgs tried not to be too overt as he shot a glare to the locket. Coincidence was one thing, but he didn't truck with no Sparky tricks.
The locket wasn't just costume jewelry. It was good, solid, Mechanicsburg work. Over the centuries, he'd slipped enough of these into socks to bludgeon someone across the head to know the stuff.
As Agatha was fretting with a packet of tea, Higgs put the locket up to his ear. There was a warning stab of pain, more like a shot across the bow, but he listened. His hearing wasn't as sharp as his smell, but it was as sharp as anything was about Jägers. It served. He listened. He heard.
When Agatha turned back around, the locket was placed inconspicuously on the the table, and she picked it up to put it back at her throat.
"How long are you staying?" Agatha asked.
Higgs made a few quick mental calculations.
"Two days," he said after some deliberation.
Agatha wilted in disappointment for a fraction of a second, before she gathered herself up again.
"You could stay in the attic!" she said, then at his raised eyebrow, continued, "That's where our guest room is. Sometimes Adam and Lilith put up friends for the night, but there's nobody using the room now." She turned shy as she caught herself. "I mean, if you'd like? It seems like a waste to find lodgings in town if you're just staying for a couple of days, and the room's just sitting there empty. I'm sure Adam and Lilith won't mind."
Higgs, on the other hand, was sure they would. But their discomfort with the notion was secondary, and being this close to Agatha for even a couple of days was a soothing notion. Even besides that, there were dangerous holes in his information, and he needed to fill those gaps quickly.
"If it's no trouble," he agreed, and a smile lit up Agatha's face.
Adam--or Punch, rather, but certainly Adam for now--arrived only minutes later, smelling like grease and woodfire. He huffed tiredly as he unlooped a patchy scarf from around his face, and Agatha met him at the door, flitting about him excitedly to ask permission for Higgs to stay. Adam paused with his scarf off mid-way, one boot partially toed off his foot as he balanced on one leg and stared at Higgs incredulously. Clearly not a face Adam ever expected to show itself around Beetleburg again.
As Agatha spoke, Adam's face cycled through a series of very expressive emotions, but whatever he communicated through them to Agatha, Higgs surmised it was the equivalent of 'ask your mother'.
When Lilith arrived to all three of them having tea in the kitchen, and Agatha squirming nervously, she sighed and offered to prepare the guest room for Higgs all on her own.
It was a small room. One bed and one nightstand and a chair in the corner, so clearly not meant for living in, but the narrow bed was set up next to the chimney, and heat radiated from it, making the room feel dry and warm, and welcoming even as a temporary waystation. Higgs wondered about the guests Adam and Lilith had over.
He pushed his duffel bag under the bed and stripped his uniform for bed, but once he got under the covers, he didn't think he was going to sleep. His mind buzzed. He listened instead to the sounds of the house: the creak of floors settling and a roof straining under heavy snow; the heavy footfalls of Adam, the scrape of a chair as it was pushed back; the metallic clicks of Agatha tinkering with something before bed.
Her smell, permeating the home she'd grown up in, all the way up to the guest room.
He fell asleep.
Higgs opened the door next morning, and there was an immediately crash of broken porcelain. He peered at the ground. Apparently, someone had placed a vase on the small table next to the door, right where the door would brush past it and push it off.
That hadn't been there the night before. He'd remember a vase that ugly.
Lilith appeared in the staircase--or perhaps had been there already--with a steaming mug in her hand. She took a deliberate sip as Higgs finally spotted her.
"Sorry 'bout that," he offered, just short of sarcastic.
"Don't worry about it," she said, a distant amusement twinkling in her eyes, "I've been meaning to get rid of that vase."
Yet somehow Higgs didn't think any other guests in the house got their doors booby-trapped. But he couldn't fault that kind of caution, with a daughter in the house. Higgs got the sense that maybe it frustrated Adam and Lilith that they couldn't quite get a bead on him.
"Won't you join us for breakfast?" Lilith asked, gesturing to the stairs.
"Sure," he grunted, and followed her down.
Adam was sitting at the kitchen table, making his way through some sausages and eggs. Lilith had hot tea out, and poured Higgs a cup as well.
And then Agatha came careening through, halfway pulling her coat on. Her arm flailed as she kept missing the sleeve hole.
"Aaaah! I overslept! I'll be late!" she blurted out in a panic, as she snatched a sausage off Adam's plate and wolfed it down in two bites.
Lilith helped Agatha fit her arm through her sleeve, and handed over her hat just before Agatha barreled out the door. After a few seconds, Agatha burst back inside.
"Gloves--!" she said, as Lilith was already holding out said items, and Agatha snatched them up. "ThankyouLilith!"
Like a hurricane, Agatha was out once again.
"This happen a lot?" Higgs asked, as Lilith slid a plate in front of him.
"Sometimes. I think she was up late last night," Lilith said. "All that excitement during the day, I suppose."
Higgs pretended any implications went completely over his head.
"Good sausages," he said instead.
The rest of the day found Higgs keeping busy. He offered to clean the snow off the roof, which at least seemed to endear him to Lilith, though it wasn't much. The roof over the smithy part of the house was mostly clear, the heat from the forge melting everything away even through the night.
But the physical activity, and the crisp morning air, at least helped focus his mind.
He spent the rest of the day helping Adam, mostly with menial tasks around the forge. Higgs got the distinct sense he was being tolerated, rather than helpful, but that suited him fine.
The Clay household seemed to settle in the evening. Agatha returned from the University, looking less excitable than she'd been that morning, and the moment her eyes fell on Higgs, she seemed to remember how she'd left that morning without so much as a word, and cringed.
Higgs didn't exactly take it any kind of way when she ran out that morning, but he didn't mind how she hovered around him the rest of the evening.
Eventually, he ended up sitting in a chair by her desk as she tinkered with something. The door was propped open, and Lilith managed to incidentally pass by the door about half a dozen times, but there was something comfortable about the atmosphere in the room, anyway.
The little beetle construct trapped in amber that Higgs had sent to Agatha in the first gift box was now occupying the desk, like a watchful guardian over Agatha's distracted mechanical dabbling.
She actually took out a book, filled with illustrations of various insectoid constructs, and explained that the beetle Higgs had sent her was the work of some ancient Spark who'd lived somewhere by the Black Sea a couple of thousand years ago. She rambled enthusiastically about the work, done back in the time when Sparks were still making constructs by some mix of selective breeding and holistic chemical inducement, and it was clear she loved it for more than just the novelty factor.
The beetle had just struck Higgs as something she'd find interesting. Seeing her this happy about it was an unqualified success.
Even so, she stopped herself at some point, blinking like the spell had been broken, and she gave him a worried glance.
"I'm not boring you, am I?" she asked. "I know I tend to go on..."
"Wouldn't ever be bored listening to you," Higgs replied. "You're smarter than you give yourself credit for."
This made her turn red and laugh nervously, but then she put the book down anyway, and changed the subject. She asked him about life in the Wulfenbach fleet, like she did in her letters and he never answered, but whatever words didn't come in writing came easier when he was right there under her attentive eyes.
He found himself telling her about his usual duties, and then a bit more honestly about his opinions of his fellow crewmen and the way the airship operated. He thought perhaps he was a bit more transparent than he should have been about his feelings on this posting, but... it was an impulse he couldn't help around a Heterodyne. And he might have surprised even himself with how much he could admit to without going into details too revealing of his actual mission.
Armies were easy. With some variation, they all tended to function the same. It was always easy for him to fall in step, when the rhythms were so deeply ingrained. And for someone who had to function away from other Jagers so frequently, they were a sufficient surrogate to the loneliness while he did his real job.
He didn't tell her that part, of course. The most he did was imply that he missed a home that was now missing, and she could have taken that any number of ways. She didn't pry; a lot of towns were swallowed up by the Wastelands and left behind orphans in the world. She touched his hand in sympathy and offered that her door would always be open, and that was... more than he expected. That meant more coming from her than she realized, and he was unexpectedly flustered by it. Now it was his turn to change the subject, the conversation jumping to another track easily.
When she started rubbing her forehead and yawning, Higgs took it as his cue to let her turn in for the night. He watched, just before the door was closed behind her, how her hand reached for the locket at her neck to remove it.
The next day he would leave, and then the harder work would begin.
The second goodbye wasn't easier than the first. If anything it was harder. He stood in the entrance hallway with his duffel on his shoulder, and his posture slumped as the hesitation hit him as a wave.
He was almost out the door, when he paused with his hand on the door handle, and looked back to Agatha, who was resigned but obviously unhappy about it.
Lilith, standing next to Agatha, took one look at her, and then excused herself, claiming she left something on the stove.
The moment Lilith was out of sight, off to deal with whatever she had most definitely not left on the stove, Agatha was already moving, and throwing her arms around Higgs to squeeze him into a lung-crushing hug.
It took all his self-restraint not to hug back just as tightly, and be mindful of his actual strength. But he managed it somehow, burying his face into her hair, and closing his eyes tight. He could let himself be suspended in this moment for a little while, just enough to push back the fears; just enough to remember she was real and his home was not quite so far out of reach as he thought.
He wanted to stay there for a lot longer, but he had to leave, and he had a terrible amount of work to do and he couldn't get to it until he untangled himself and left. So as far as his own traitorous body allowed him to move, he did--just enough to turn his head and place a kiss against Agatha's hair, and then another one lower, against the skin of her temple.
Agatha pulled back, and released him just enough for breath to rush into his lungs, and then she took it away all over again when she leaned in and placed a kiss right against his lips.
It was brief, just enough to feel her warmth pressed against his skin, and then it was gone, and she stepped back, leaving him with his heart thundering in his chest.
He mumbled a goodbye as they both avoided eye contact, and he managed to smack himself in the face with the door on the way out.
Oh, this was bad. This was very bad.
In between leaving the Clay household and his next planned move, Higgs never actually left Beetleburg. It was a calculated length of time, just enough to give him an alibi. If he'd actually gone back to his post, he'd be on the Rozen Maiden by now.
The truth was that he was not on leave this time. After a quick round of calculations, he decided leave wouldn't be enough. So instead, he applied for transfer to Castle Wulfenbach, and with a bit of forgery and bureaucratic obfuscation, managed to create an appropriately wide gap between the date he was outgoing from the Rozen Maiden, and the date when they were expecting him on Castle Wulfenbach. A few months wasn't nearly long enough to miss a random, low-rank airman.
It was a tactic he'd perfected over the years. That was the thing about bureaucracies, especially large, unwieldy ones that serviced such a large entity as an Empire. There were lots of cracks one could fall between, if one knew where they were. And he could hardly maintain his positions in every notable military force in Europa if he didn't know how to play musical chairs with their paperwork.
The point of it, of course, was that he was here now, in Beetleburg, and nobody would miss him yet. And the two days he'd spent in the Clay household had been educational, in their own right. Especially useful for learning the layout, the routines, the location of every single board that squeaked.
No booby-trapped doors this time as he made his way through the house. He paced himself to the natural sounds of the house settling, and nobody heard a thing as he was in and out again.
When he was out of the house and down the street, he threw the trilobite locket into the lead-lined box he had at the ready, and shuttered the lid down on it forcefully. Then he tucked it under his arm, and disappeared like a thief in the night; no more apt a metaphor.