“What the hell was that?!” snarls Canta, after his face has finished regrowing, trying to squirm free from her iron-clad grasp. “That really fucking hurt, you know? You psycho!”
Alleluia stops, looking down at him. Lifting him up towards her stiff face, she kisses his bloody forehead and then continues to smile. “Is it better now?”
“What?! No!” yells Canta. “It’s not better!”
She frowns, kissing the other side of his head. “What about now?”
“That’s not going to help. Put me down!” he shouts. Alleluia continues to frown and does no such thing, opting to keep walking up the staircase. Suddenly, she hoists his kicking body over her shoulder with one arm, rather than carrying him cradled before herself.
“Honey, are you mad at me?” she asks.
“Don’t call me honey!” barks Canta. “I’m taking this personally, if you can’t tell,” he says in agitation.
“You don’t like ‘honey’?” Alleluia looks to the side, thinking for a moment. “Prince? Dear? Cookie? Hmm…”
Canta’s eyes twitch as he continues to try to get out of her grip, but to little avail. “It’s not about the pet-names!”
“It isn’t?” she asks, sounding somewhat perplexed. “Oooooh! You mean the crushing your skull thin -”
“- I mean the crushing my skull thing!” interrupts Canta loudly.
“You don’t need to yell,” she says in an offended huff, staying quiet for a moment. “I needed your eye-juice to open the door,” she explains.
“You could have just asked me for it!” he says. “Also. What?! How does that make any sense?!”
Her fingers press down tighter into his soft body, likely because she is becoming annoyed herself now. “You would have been scared,” she argues, puffing out her chest and lifting her nose, as if bothered by his protests. “What would you have said if I told you to let me squish one of your eyes?”
Canta grumbles quietly for a moment. “Probably no,” he relents.
“Probably no,” repeats Alleluia, knowingly. “Ah, can you…?” she asks, sounding somewhat embarrassed all of a sudden. “Uh… you know?” adds the clockwork-girl, fidgeting.
Canta sighs, somehow wanting but not being able to be mad. He could go for a snack though.
He stretches down awkwardly back over her shoulder, reaching for the crank on her back, and starts turning it as best as he can at this angle. Alleluia makes an odd noise, almost like a suppressed giggle, as he wraps his hand around the shaft. "Thanks, cupcake, you’re the best,” she says.
“You still haven’t told me about the eye-juice,” he says, choosing not to engage in her game of pet-names. “Like… what? What the hell is that all about?”
“The dungeon-master, the big shot who ran this place back in the day, was very particular about their designs. The door needed an eye to open,” she explains. Canta hears a sharp tapping over the winding of the chains in her body as he rotates the crank. He realizes that she’s tapping against one of her glass eyes. “A real eye.”
“Sounds like a real kook,” mutters Canta, letting go of the crank and watching it spin back the other way very slowly.
“I’m really glad I have you,” beams Alleluia, squeezing him tightly. A little too much, apparently. Something in his lower spine pops, and his legs tingle for a brief second, before they become entirely limp and flop down against her front. “I had to do that by myself for a very long time. It was really awkward. But now you can do it for me!” she beams. “And now I can do it for you,” she adds mischievously at the end.
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Canta once again ignores her quip, choosing to be the adult in this conversation. “What happens if you don’t?” he asks, already assuming that he knows the answer. “If you don’t turn the crank?”
“If the mechanisms stop turning, I die,” she explains. “Well… no… I suppose that I would just sleep. But…”
“But what?”
“I haven’t ever let it stop. I had to keep turning it myself while I was alone. If I didn’t, I would have fallen asleep, and nobody would have ever woken me up!” she says, laughing rather abruptly and sharply, as if this was a hilarious joke that he just wasn’t getting.
“Huh…” Canta blinks, getting the wet out of his eyes, as his spine regenerates. Sensation returns to his legs. “I would have probably found you,” he suggests.
Alleluia lifts him off of her shoulder and holds him out in front of herself. “No, you wouldn’t have,” she states clearly, staring into his eyes. “If we didn’t talk through the pipes, you would have never gone to my room, and I would have been there asleep forever and ever.”
“Hmm, you might be right about that,” admits Canta, thinking back on it. “Actually, I probably wouldn’t even have woken up myself if you weren’t talking to me back then,” he says without thinking much about it, his eyes wandering towards the ceiling in idle thought.
The world spins, as his back is pressed into the wall, her hands wrapped under his shoulders. Alleluia stares at him with wide, unblinking eyes. “See! See!” she beams. “The universe made us for each other!”
“Uh…” Canta barely has time to lift a finger before she continues raving. “You’re kind of crazy, you know?” he asks, looking at her extremely wide, glassy eyes.
“You woke up because you heard me, and I could only get out of my prison because you found me!” she explains excitedly. “That means we’re meant to be together! That means it was worth staying awake all by myself!” she says, squeezing harder. “Even when I got really sad and really lonely! It was worth it!” One of his ribs feels like it fractures beneath the pressure of her thumb pressing into him.
Canta only just manages to keep his mouth shut as he winces, with water forming in his eyes. Seeing his discomfort, Alleluia loosens her grip a little right away. “Sorry, butterscotch, I didn't mean to hurt you,” she apologizes. “I really don't know my own strength. Are you alright?”
He does his best to keep himself calm and then raises an eyebrow, seeing that she is getting ready to have an episode herself. Maybe it’s best to change the topic in order to get her to calm down, so that they can keep going. “See. You called it a 'prison' before,” notes Canta. “If you call it a prison, that makes it sound suspicious,” he quips, awkwardly looking down at the clockwork-girl who is pressing him against the wall, holding him somewhat higher than herself. “Real talk, are you going to destroy the world or something when we get out?”
Alleluia stares at him for a second, not saying anything. But then she spontaneously starts laughing very loudly, burying her face in his stomach for a moment. “You’re such a silly cuddle-bug!” she says, pulling her face back out and looking up towards him. Canta’s eyes twitch. He’s really looking forward to escaping the dungeon and getting some fresh air. Maybe that will help her settle down? She’s clearly someone who suffers from various sorts of behavioral episodes.
“Put me down,” says Canta. “Let’s focus on getting out of here, okay?”
She tilts her head. “Sure thing, my pudding pumpkin,” beams Alleluia. He sighs.
----------------------------------------
After that, he can walk up the stairs on his own, with his legs working just fine. But he does have to nurse his sore pride. He isn’t sure how he feels about being tossed around like that. It seems pretty emasculating, honestly. But, then again, somehow he doesn’t exactly feel very masculine to begin with in this new, fish-like body.
Was he masculine in his old body? Canta rubs his head, trying to remember. He looks up the stairs, staring at Alleluia, who stands up on the steps above him and has hiked up her dress a little, looking back at him and forcing a heavy wink with her mechanical eyelid.
“Will you settle down, you animal?!” barks Canta. Alleluia laughs and lets the dress fall back into place.
“You’re such a responsible, work-minded person, squeaky,” she says. “I really like that!”
“If anyone is ‘squeaky’ here, it’s you, you rust-bucket!”
Alleluia lets out a loud, offended ‘hmpf’ and looks back up ahead of herself, lifting her nose into the air. “I take excellent care of myself, to make sure that I don’t rust. Anyways, you’re being very rude again.”
“Regular mutilation puts me on edge, okay?” he mutters. “Can you try being a little more gentle? One day, my bones are going to grow back wrong, and I’ll become deformed.”
“A crooked tree holds fruit that is just as lovely as a straight one’s,” replies Alleluia, lifting a finger, as she smiles back down at him. Her temperament has shifted very quickly once again. It’s like she’s snapping back and forth between two different states of mind.
“Wow. Very poetic,” says Canta, rolling his eyes. “I feel much better now.”
“I'm sure!” She nods and grabs his hand. “Come on! I’m really excited about getting out of here! I really want to see a tree!”
“What? Why are you in such a hurry now, all of a sudde-IAH!” Canta yelps as she yanks him up after her and starts running up the stairs. He can barely keep up, his feet dragging across the steps as he stumbles over and over. Noticing that she is dragging him behind herself, like the loose blanket that he himself is dragging behind himself, Alleluia lifts him up and runs. The clockwork-person carries him up towards the bright light, which is starting to form high above their heads, still far off in the distance.
Canta stares up towards it, looking at Alleluia’s face for a second, before letting his eyes drift back towards the light of the surface that they’re really about to reach. They’re really going to escape the dungeon. After all of this dinginess and mildew and rotting air, they are both finally going to see the surface world and finally get a chance to live their new lives.
Much like he has promised himself to change, to become better, and to live up to his truest natural values, Canta can’t help but hope that she has made a similar oath. He really does hope so. Because as the light grows brighter and brighter, as the echoing of her steps becomes less and less, as their sounds are carried out of the stone underworld, he realizes that it is too late to stop this from happening now.
The damage is done, for better or for worse.
“Pumpkin - !” she cries excitedly as they reach the top of the staircase. “We’re here!”
The blinding light envelops them both, welcoming them to the surface world. All around them rings out a chirping chorus, together with the voice of a single singer. Canta recognizes the sounds; crickets and an owl.
Despite it being nighttime, somehow it feels unusually bright to him, and his eyes sting with a deep pain. Only after a minute is he slowly able to start prying them open, so that they can stare out over the boundless world that he sees laid out before them from this high vantage point.
He feels a metal hand grip his and squeeze just a little too tightly.
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