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the mechanic that is kidnapped and left in the dungeon to rot is a much different mechanic than the one that comes out of the dungeon, smiles like knives and the baring of her teeth a different kind of gun than any she could build.
she has blood on her hands, for one. it’s not visible—it’s not like she killed anyone herself, took a sword or a gun or a wrench and smashed it into a skull and watched them bleed, bleed, bleed. but she built the false cthulhu parts. the mechanic wishes, wishes she could say it was all instructed of her. she wishes she could say that she was just doing what she was told, what she had to do to survive. (and even these are half-truths.)
the thing about it is:
the lunar cultists are many things. they are not engineers. their blueprints created functional parts, yes, but clunky ones, ones that would break easily, ones that wouldn’t fulfill their purpose. they wouldn’t have known the difference.
the mechanic would’ve. so she fixed them.
they’re better. they’re better than anything anyone but her could’ve ever made. they’re nigh invincible. they’re horrifying. they’re unnatural. she loves them, despite it all, or maybe because of it—how could you not love your own creations?
(how could you not love the things that could maybe, just maybe, save you? )
the first room meredith has after the hero frees her from the dungeon is… quaint. quaint is probably the polite word for it. she doesn’t sleep the first night she stays in it, opting to use the hours to rig up traps, mechanical systems, anything she can think of to sate the paranoia that has bloomed in the space beneath her collarbone ever since she was kidnapped. it’s only a few nights later that she bothers to leave the room at all, looking around the top floor of the odd apartment complex with a furrow in her brow.
the room to her left is empty, but the room to her right has a sign reserving it for the steampunker. meredith heads down the stairs tentatively, one hand on her wrench, eyes darting around the wooden walls. the next hallway is empty, but the signs are enough to stop her dead in her tracks.
a fabric recreation of the man who kidnapped her stares at her from her position on the last step. she thinks she might be sick. (beyond that, she thinks of skeletron prime, and the paranoia in her chest grows teeth sharp enough to rival her smiles. it grins.)
despite the hero having moved her to a snow biome alongside the goblin tinkerer, away from the clothier entirely, dawn feels the vibrations of the destroyer beneath her feet as if they had summoned it to battle.
but they couldn’t have—they had summoned it the night prior to her departure, and that was only a week ago. (it was also the thing that killed her for the first time. dawn felt like a more fitting name after that, the first thing she’d seen through her window, breathing quick and terrified and horribly, horribly proud. ) regardless of that, it was daytime. all three of her creations preferred the night to the beating of the sun.
the vibrations continue. dawn is glad the goblin tinkerer stepped out of their shared home for the day. the sight of her dropping to her knees, rhythmically banging on the brick floors with her wrench, calling the destroyer back home, well. she wouldn’t blame him if he stayed far away from her if he had to witness this.
bang, bang, bang, steady, steady. there are tears dripping down her face, but her hair is still tied up and her vision is clear enough so nothing’s getting hurt. the weakened form of the destroyer bursts up through the brick in moments that stretch out like years, wrapping around her arm and snaking its way up to her neck to settle comfortably. she sobs. it’s so small, still so deadly, so hurt, its primary body somewhere self-repairing beneath the earth. it came home to her.
it had killed her, yes, but that doesn’t matter now. she had designed it to kill indiscriminately when it was summoned, like she was told to. (she did not exclude the lunar cultists like she had been told, but there was never a chance to set the three loose on them before the cultists abandoned her. for shame, really.)
in the end, she can’t blame it for doing as it was told. it won’t hurt her now. the lights along its back pulse, rhythmic.
“welcome home,” dawn whispers, raising her arm to examine its exoskeleton. the destroyer wraps once more around her throat, like some sort of living necklace. she smiles. her lips stretch so far she can feel them expose her gums. this is right. this is home.
the destroyer stays well hidden when others are around. nobody comments much on her newfound affection for scarves and bandanas. (the guide stares at her like they know exactly what she’s done, what she’s hiding. dawn doesn’t meet their eye.) eventually, it will return to the earth and to its body once it repairs itself from afar, but for now it stays.
it stays even as she has to visit the hero’s apartment complex upon their request. it’s mostly emptied out at this point, a far cry from what it was when she had to stay there. the clothier still lives there, though, and this time she sees him in flesh and blood, standing at the doorway to the apartment as she approaches it.
“you seem familiar,” he says, after a long moment. there’s a note of disgust in there, if she’s hearing him correctly. her grip on her wrench tightens. he doesn’t deserve to speak to her like that. “do i know you from somewhere?”
the mechanic blinks— her arms and legs are bound she is dragged out of her house she cannot scream it feels like hours the stone is cold beneath her the cultists have a job for her— and both her and the paranoia smile, wide. “you don’t,” she answers. “you must be malfunctioning. i have a signal to attend to, could you excuse me?”
“that doesn’t… sound right—”
the thunk of her wrench against the doorframe is meaty and loud, and yet she doesn’t realize what she’s done until she lets her arm drop to her side again. the clothier glances between her and the chunk of wood taken out of the door. he takes a step back. he takes a step aside. good. “have a good day, sir. let me know if you need a light changed.”
“... y- yes. you too.”
the disgust isn’t gone, but there’s fear in there now. the mechanic’s grin ticks up a notch before the destroyer curls around her throat a little tighter, not enough to hurt, and she lets it fall. when she gets a floor away from the man, she lets herself fall, too, sitting against an unmarked door and clutching her wrench tight to her chest.
“we’ll get him,” dawn says, to the destroyer and to herself and to her creations who will soon make her way back to her, “and we’ll be free forever. nobody is ever taking us back. nothing can ever make us go back.”
these are the sorts of revenge plans she can never go through with. the hero would kill her in turn, for one, if somebody else didn’t first. she would make herself something to be feared. she’d lose a home and friends in one fell swoop.
still. still, still, still. she knows—knows intrinsically, knows better than herself—that her skeletron prime could crawl under his skin and do just a good a job of puppetting as the original did. it would replace his spine, his ribs, his arms and legs, bloody but functional. it would replace his eyes. his skull. his brain. it would work, because it’s perfect. she knows it.
the intrusive thought horrifies her, vivid. it’s good to know she still has that line. it stays steady and unwavering even when her vision is swimming red, anger/fear/paranoia only further highlighted by the destroyer’s encouragement.
still, still, still. why are the worst thoughts the loudest?
dawn gets to her feet. the destroyer hides itself again, mechanical heart pulsing in conjunction with her own. there are broken electronics to attend to. there is a hero to greet.
she pulls herself together with wires that have long since broken inside of her. if they were real her hands would burn from the exposed copper and electricity. one day she’ll repair herself like her creations do.
for now, she smiles.
a knife has to be good enough to keep her safe until then.