Steampunk Shenanigans

Evie stared at the cuffs laying on the floor, clutching her wrist. She held her breath, expecting this to be a dream. Maybe she’d nodded off in the chair again. But several moments passed and the cuffs were still on the floor, and when she moved her hand her wrist was still free. There was a circle of small scars from her older cuff because she’d had it on for so long, but she barely cared about that right now because the cuffs were off. She had been convinced that that would never happen.

“Evie?” Damien said. “You okay?”

Evie raised her head to look at him, feeling tears pool in her eyes.

“Am I okay?” she repeated, her voice going a little squeaky. Despite the tears streaming down her face, she broke into a giant smile and launched herself at Damien with so much enthusiasm that he nearly fell back onto his workbench.

“You did it!” she exclaimed, planting kisses all over his face. He laughed as she kept hugging him, lifting her off the floor and spinning her around.

“I was starting to worry it’d never work,” he admitted.

“But it did work. You figured it out. I told you you were a genius,” Evie said. She still hadn’t let go of him but he set her back on her feet so he could brush the tears off her cheeks.

“I don’t know about genius-“ he started. Evie cut him off by kissing him. When she finally pulled away she was starting to cry again and wiped at her eyes.

“Maybe we should get home and get some sleep,” Damien suggested gently. She nodded, still staring at her free wrist in amazement. Damien collected his jacket and Minnie and they walked back to his house. Evie was glad to change out of the clothes she’d been wearing for almost three days, and after she freshened up she threw on her nightgown and padded into Damien’s room. He was already asleep and she smiled as she climbed up next to him. They slept well into the day, and Evie woke up first.

She sat up and slowly pulled up the sleeve of her gown. She had to confirm yet again that she hadn’t just dreamed about losing the cuffs. She was sitting there thinking about all the times Olessa and Corbin had punished her with the cuff when Damien finally stirred. He sat up with a yawn, trying in vain to smooth his rumpled hair.

“I still can’t believe you really did it,” Evie said, touching the circle of scars on her wrist.

“It probably would’ve taken me a lot longer if you hadn’t gotten the moon crystal.”

Evie shook her head. “No, I meant I can’t believe that you really worked that hard to get both of my cuffs off. You probably could’ve just found a way to disable yours.”

“I promised you I’d get yours off,” Damien said. “I wasn’t going to just leave you with those people, Evie.”

“I don’t even know what I’ll do now that I don’t have to be their little rat anymore.”

“Well you have some time to think about it while we finish work on the spider,” Damien replied. “But uh, it’s pretty nice having a talented protege in my lab with me. So, that option is on the table. If you want. Sylvia or my dad would probably be happy to help you find something, if you didn’t want to stay at the lab. But you can. Stay with me, I mean. At the lab. Stay with me at the lab. And you can stay here, you know, if you need to. So you don’t have to go back to the apartment Olessa and Corbin stuck you in. But you don’t have to, I mean if you want to go back to your apartment you can-“

His face was red as Evie turned and kissed him. They spent the evening at home since they’d slept so late, and tried to come up with a plan for what they were going to do next as they sat at the table.

“We should speed things up with the spider,” Evie said. “If we wait too much longer, they’re more likely to notice that we got the cuffs off. And they might just kill us at that point. Once we get it more or less to their specifications, we can destroy the war machine plans they gave us.”

Damien nodded. “With the cuffs out of the equation, we should stop stalling,” he agreed. “I don’t want to have to look at Corbin’s face anymore and I don’t think I can take much more of Olessa’s flirting either.”

Evie smirked. “What, you mean you’re not interested in her? I thought you were kind of warming up to her, honestly.”

Damien made a face and pulled her chair closer to tickle her sides. Evie giggled and tried to squirm away.

“I’ll be interested in Olessa the day you’re interested in Franklin Hawkins,” he teased and now Evie made a face.

“At least Corbin and Olessa didn’t cuff me to him,” she said with a shudder and Damien laughed.

“Being forced to stay within twenty feet of me was really that much better?” he asked.

“I didn’t really mind,” Evie admitted quietly, blushing. She looked up at him and he got sort of a dopey look on his face.

“You know, Damien, you shouldn’t consider yourself in competition with Franklin. You were never really in competition with him.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re obviously better than him,” Evie said.

“Oh.”

His ears turned red and he still had a goofy expression on his face but after a moment he leaned forward and kissed her. The next day they went into the lab and started making some impressive strides with the spider.

“We’ll still need a way to prevent them from using it,” Evie remarked, blowing some loose hair out of her face. “We have to give it to them, there’s no way around that. But if they’re able to actually put it to use, they’ll probably take over the city with it. I can’t imagine what else they’d want something like this for.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll have something figured out before we show it to them,” Damien promised. They worked diligently for the next week; it was easier without the cuffs and the constant threat of electrocution. They both seemed to be more determined than ever to get this ordeal over with, and Evie was in such a good mood from losing her cuff that she felt almost sparkly. If they could thwart Corbin and Olessa for good, then she’d really be free of them forever.

They were finally summoned again, and Evie made sure to keep her wrist carefully covered with her sleeves so they wouldn’t see the missing cuffs. They made their way up to Corbin and Olessa’s floor, and Corbin wasted no time snapping at them.

“You’ve had plenty of time,” he said. “We want to see what you’ve accomplished. And if it’s not to our satisfaction, we’ll kill you both.”

“Oh, Corby. Are you sure we can’t just keep him?” Olessa pouted.

“You can keep his jar of ashes for the mantle if he fucked this up,” Corbin said, giving Damien a cold look.

“He didn’t fuck it up,” Evie piped up softly, flinching on reflex when Corbin turned his gaze on her. Olessa let out a tinkling laugh and sauntered toward them, swishing her glass of wine and casting a sly glance at Evie.

“I’m sure he did a good job,” she said. “Handsome here is probably eager to be done with this project and no longer chained to our Evie. She’s like a cute little doll, but people always get bored with dolls, don’t they? They end up tossed out with the trash eventually. You know how that is, don’t you, Evie? After all, even your own parents threw you away.”

Evie felt a bit like she’d been kicked in the chest and it must’ve shown on her face because Olessa looked a little smug as she took another sip of wine.

“Enough with the metaphors,” Corbin said impatiently. “We want to see the spider.”