Chapter Text
"What the fuck"
His gruff voice startled me as I dropped the screwdriver I held between my teeth. I looked up and saw him right above me, looking at a screen atop the table I was in the middle of fixing up.
That's what he-Heisenberg- kept me around for he said, "To work on all that annoying small stuff that's a waste of time". "Small stuff", I learned, can range from fixing his workshop tables to almost losing at arm dealing with his fucked up cyborg-zombie-soldier things.
He caught me looking up at him and smirked. I suddenly realized how at this height my face was positioned right in front of his crotch. I swallowed and felt my face heat up before he mercifully looked back to the screen and nodded to it. "Get a load of this. It's one of the mega-bitches little minions. Probably her least graceful attempt at getting some dirt on me yet" He backed away leaving space for me to get up and take look.
It was one of the maids from Lady Dimitrescu's castle. She had a look of terror completely etched into her face. Even on the crunchy CRT screen, I could see the gauntness in her features and the ripped hem of her skirt, shivering under a thin ratty cloak. My heart lurched. I always felt bad for the ones who were stuck in the castle. For all the near-death trauma Heisenberg inflicted on me with little remorse too, he at the least kept me well fed and warm.
I absent-mindedly fiddled with the screw I was going to use for the table and spoke out "I doubt she's here to spy. There's a hundred and one better ways to break into this shit-hole than just walking through the front gate". The screw flew out my hand and shot up, narrowly missing my nose. I flinched and scowled at him. "Sorry, I meant there's a hundred and one better ways to break into this shit-hole sir"
He chuckled and I felt a small smile break across my own face. In the beginning, the talking back felt like a means to survive, to be interesting enough to give him a reason to let me live. But eventually, those sardonic laughs of his seemed to... melt into something more genuine in a way that made me want to hear that sound, as rare as those sounds were.
He spoke into the microphone and his voice screeched through the outdated factory PA system. "Hey sweetheart, I don't know why my oh-so-lovely bitch of a sister assumed I was receiving guests today but unless you're here for my experiments to have a good time with, I'm not. So. Get out." The poor girl looked around blindly, not sure where the voice was coming from before stuttering "I'm- suh-sorry but- but"
It wasn't fast enough for Heisenberg. Of course, it wasn't. "Spit it out girly," he said in the unnerving showman-like voice he liked to put on. "I'm here for you're assistant!" she said so quick, I thought I misheard her for a second. Heisenberg seemed surprised by this too . He then growled "No. They're mine."
I looked at him wide wide-eyed but he was still looking at the screen, now with a fist clenched. The back of my neck heated up. Fuck. Why did I care that he said that? Worse, why did I like it?
"Tell the mega-bitch to find her food somewhere else already or-"
"N-No! I- I have something for them!" The maid clumsily shook away the front of her cloak and showed a fancy-looking box with a letter stuck in the bow on the lid. I decided to help out the girl, it's bad enough having a murderous mistress without having to deal with her bully of a little brother, and grabbed the mic from him. "I'll be right there".
He glared at me. "My my, getting a little too comfortable pushing me around aren't you kid." His tone was smooth but the sharp pieces of scrap littering the room rose in warning. I straightened up and looked at him trying to keep my voice even. "I just didn't think you would want to go all the way down for 1 little package sir."
He stared at me wordlessly behind those stupid sunglasses. I never liked them. An extra level of ambiguity was just what I needed when I'm trying to read a man who always seemed just one bad day away from caving my skull in with a piece of scrap metal.
He huffed and turned back to the screen. "Fine. Make it quick". I nodded and ran for the elevator.
A few minutes later I was face to face with the maid. She seemed almost shocked to see me in the flesh. "O-Oh, you're..."
"Human?" I finished. "Yeah so far," I said with a wry smile. I was surprised at a point too. After seeing the experiments in the factory I assumed it was only a matter of time before I joined them
But upon voicing that concern in a frantic plea for him to "not make me one of them" after I messed up fixing a light, Heisenberg seemed almost put off by my desperation. He held me up by my neck, fingers forcing pressure around the sides, and closed into my ear before he said in a low voice.
"Stop crying. I don't use living people for my soldiers. I'm not fuckin' Miranda"
Snapping back to reality I realized I had been tracing my hand around my neck, close to the area where his outburst had left marks that remained for at least a week later on.
"Anyways sorry about him, he gets a little pissy whenever your Mistress is involved, sibling rivalry and all that" The maid seemed at least a little comforted by my nonchalance like we weren't trapped in this ridiculously fucked up situation of being the man-servants to two seemingly immortal and murderous beings.
She giggled and handed me the box. It was pretty, expensive looking and big. Kinda like her mistress. I felt weird just turning her away. It felt like it had been so long since I had just been able to talk to another human like this.
"So, how long you been working for your Mistress?" I asked. She looked surprised that I wasn't just leaving. "I-I was sent to work for her after my parents died in one of the lycan attacks. I... think I turned 20 that year. Might have been, I'm not sure , 5 or 6? years since then" she said with a sad smile like she just realized how long it had been too.
I sucked in a breath. She wasn't much older than me at all and yet she looked like she had been through so much more. Before I could respond, an obnoxious siren went off and lights flashed. He did really like to be passive aggressive about his signals. "Duty calls. You should get out of here, he wasn't kidding about the experiments." I told her.
The maid nodded and awkwardly waved before turning to leave, but quickly turned to say "Um, read the letter before you go through the present".
And with that, she was gone.