Work Text:
Digby believes that creation is an act of love.
He finds problems to solve, looks for them in every interaction he has, for as long as he can remember. He is driven by needing to help, the best way he knows how. When he is young, he makes little paper hats for his younger siblings, basking in their giggles as they play pirates in the yard. As he grows older, he tinkers with appliances under the watchful eye of his father. Adds easier to use buttons, brighter colours. Always, always, he looks for things to do to help those around him.
He spends countless hours in the lab, learning how to design and calculate and build. Being able to put a smile on someone’s face is worth writing papers and doing proofs. He slaves over his capstone project, and when a little girl’s mouth drops open when he explains it to her at the presentation evening, he smiles so much his cheeks hurt. He learns about affordances and ergonomics and tries to give everything he makes a little bit of magic.
Digby falls in love with Wilma at first sight, and builds their relationship around his heart afterwards. She’s the friend of a friend of a friend. Their friendship groups collide in the line for a club event on campus, and they chat about the different types of pizza being offered. It’s not the most exciting conversation in the world, but for fifteen minutes, it’s the most interesting topic he can imagine. He will learn, over the course of long years with her, that she is confident without being overbearing, strikingly intelligent, and the kindest person that he knows.
The first time he sees Gorgug, he almost falls to his knees. The feeling of wanting to protect his son is overwhelming. He looks to Wilma and sees his love reflected back at him, and he knows that whatever life the three of them build, all his love will be returned to him threefold.
Wilma believes that creation is an act of love.
She spends a lot of time in her childhood wanting to help. Her heart leads the way. She follows it to church and wonders if she could be a cleric, but she has no talent for healing magic. She follows it to after school music lessons, which are fun but ultimately just a way to pass time. She follows it to artificing class at Aguefort, where she watches her classmates make with their own hands what others get given to them by the gods, and she thinks, I could do this too.
Wilma starts listening. Her party’s cleric complains about how hard it is to keep things organised when they’re on the move, so she makes a bag organiser with pockets that latch shut even when they have to run. Her rogue needs a way to keep lockpicks on her person, so she makes a bracer which can also turn her invisible. Her party’s bard has trouble carrying cables, so she starts researching wireless transmission. Wilma builds and builds and builds, and even though her party splits up at graduation, she still keeps in touch with them.
Wilma barely remembers meeting Digby for the first time. But somewhere along the line, without her really noticing it, he worms his way in. He becomes the first person she thinks of telling when she has news. He is the one she wants to find when she finds a fun fact worth sharing. And he becomes the person she makes the best things with, building off each other’s ideas and complementing each other’s weaknesses. Her wedding day is a riot of color and joy and she cannot imagine anything better to celebrate the relationship that they’ve built.
She never bears her own children, but holding Gorgug in her arms, all she can feel is love. Her own shines the brightest, building with every beat of her heart, but she thinks she can also feel love from his birth parents as well. What else would have created something so wonderful? Now, it was up to her to build a wonderful life for him. She won’t let herself do anything else.
(Gorgug learns that creation is an act of love. Metal roses turn out more lifelike when he knows who he’s making them for. Every battle gadget he uses to protect his friends does just a little bit more than he originally planned. And when he designs something new for someone he loves, everything comes together just a little more easily.)