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As the Zephyr soared higher and higher, approaching vex, Marya’s complaints of the strange horizon suddenly became much, much more clear to Maxwell. He didn’t understand it at the time, having rarely soared high enough to see Gath’s horizon from above, much less Zood’s.
Well, the difference would be clear to anyone this far up, regardless of their cloud-sailing experience. Zood was nothing like Gath, not in the slightest. It stretched and twisted and wrapped itself beautifully around its sister, Zern.
Zern. Maxwell struggled to get his head around it, all this time pining for the magical land that would somehow lift his grandfather's name from the mud, rescue his memory from ridicule, and he’d never for a moment considered that there would be more than one.
He should’ve at least had the thought, if there was both Gath and Zood, surely there could be more? And yet, the idea had never even reached his mind. Olethra would’ve thought of it, surely. She would’ve dreamed of it in ways Maxwell never could. In fact, she probably had. In a few moments, when she managed to tear herself away from her wide-eyed wonder at the sight -
(Suddenly, Max couldn’t help but feel insecure about his own gaze directed at the horizon. Was he glaring too hard? He always seemed to be glaring too hard.)
- She’d perk up with a grin and say “I knew it!” Because of course she would have called it, of course she would have imagined something this grand, and then pretended as if it was the easiest thing in the world.
Maybe he’d allow himself a few more moments of glaring at Zern, before he fixed his face to look a little more appropriately awed. Not that it wasn’t an awe-inducing sight, even Maxwell could see that, it just never seemed to show on his face like he wanted it to.
The view before him didn’t seem fitting for what he’d heard about the place itself, the wasteland of soulless metal men, evil queens and piles of hearts left behind thrones as trophies, the upside-down Zood described to him by MacLeods papers and Torse’s first-hand account. It just didn’t match up to the larger-than-life braid, twirling itself through the sky.
But it couldn’t be anything else, as hard as Maxwell attempted to imagine something, anything else, he simply couldn’t. Torse had clearly called it his home, and so it was. Who was he to argue with facts? With Torse?
Torse, the metal man with a wind-up heart, who was standing on the deck of his ship. Torse, who was still absolutely caked in gore and viscera from the shoulders down, and Maxwell, whose priorities just shifted so fast he nearly gave himself vertigo.
Knocking himself out of his inner monologue, he braced a hand on the rail of the ship and turned to Torse, breaking the awed silence with his usual bluntness.
“You need to be cleaned.”
A slight whir of worn cogs sounded through the air as Torne looked up at him, and Max could’ve hit himself. He was a Gotch son, for anyone’s sake, he’d been taking classes in proper speech since before he could speak, what was he even doing?
“I mean, uh-”
He cleared his throat and stood up straighter, schooling his face into something stern in an attempt to cover for his blunder.
“Your arms. Would it not be preferable to have them cleaned? I can't imagine the crusted blood is doing any good for your gears. Also, I believe you're scaring my crew a little.”
Sure enough, the little handful of Gotch Air Crew he and Wealwell had brought along were shooting anxious looks towards the cast-iron man, the sight of the horizon forgotten in favor of fear.
Torse let out a hum of agreement, though Maxwell couldn’t tell if it came from his artificial vocal chords or from the machinery inside him, for some reason he found the sound rather nice.
“An accurate assessment, my months of stagnation have not been kind to me.”
For a man of jagged iron and spikes, his voice was remarkably soft..
You know, Maxwell thought, it really was a shame that his crew were too distracted to enjoy the horizon, and really, wasn’t it his responsibility to keep morale high? Perhaps, if he removed the distraction, they could really get a chance to appreciate it-
“I’ll help you.”
Did he say that too fast? Too eager? It didn’t seem like Torse was put-off, at best shocked, so he squared his shoulders and steadied on..
“It’s my ship, after all, I can't have a guest of mine walking around covered in viscera. It’s just past the quarters here, come along.”
For a moment, Maxwell’s hand moved as if he was going to grab onto Torse’s and lead him along, before he quickly shoved it behind his back again, where it was supposed to be. The blood would only dirty his gloves, and the man followed behind him dutifully, so there was no reason to anyway.
And if there was a slight feeling of disappointment that he wouldn’t get to feel the metal against his palm, no chance to squeeze the iron and revel in the firmness, the knowledge that it wouldn’t crumble, the clear rippling of strength no doubt hidden within the warriors arm-
Well, that would just be the day catching up with him, punching dinosaurs and whatnot, on top of all the mushroom spores he’d probably inhaled. Nobody could blame him for being a little off, not that he’d dare to show his discontentment.
It wouldn’t be long before he could sleep this off and wake up in the morning, normal and adjusted. He just needed to help Torse out first, as a show of hospitality, purely.
The short walk was silent, apart from the heavy machinery footsteps behind him and the faintest sound of ticking, it took all of Maxwell's strength to not silently tap along with the rhythm. In fact, it was quiet all the way until the small basin was halfway full with warm, soapy water.
It was Maxwell who broke the silence again.
“The water won't bother your systems, will it?”
He asked cautiously as he grabbed a sponge from a nearby shelf of cleaning supplies (Goodness, these were amazing. Did Olethra bring these onboard?) and gestured for Torse to sit.
“Not anymore than the blood, I assure you.”
There was a thud of metal on wood as Torse sat on the ground next to the basin, legs crossed beneath him.
“Right, of course.”
Maxwell muttered as he sat down beside him. Dumb question, incredibly dumb. What was wrong with him today? Besides the spores, and probably a handful of concussions.
He really wished he could’ve picked another day to be so.. him, preferably one where he wasn't trying to make a good impression on the first person on the ship he seemed to have anything in common with, even just based on a single conversation.
Briefly, the idea of passing the sponge to Torse and fleeing in embarrassment popped up in his mind, but then his crew would see him leave without the metal man in tow, and they’d be all worked up about not knowing where the ‘threat’ was, plus he’d look awkward getting up right after he sat down, and.. as embarrassing as it was to admit, the idea of touching him hadn’t really left his mind yet.
Maxwell was easily the most intellectually curious Gotch brother, after all. He was really just taking advantage of a rare opportunity to study something new, who else was gonna find out what Zernian warrior arms felt like in human hands?
Before he could talk himself out of it, Max grabbed the wind-up man by the arm and dipped the sponge into the warm water, scrubbing at the layers of blood and bits of flesh still clinging to the metal.
Were he a weaker man, a weaker Gotch, he might have gagged at the sight of month-old viscera peeling off Torse, but he wasn’t and so he didn’t. Maxwell was an athlete, he was strong, and he certainly wasn't going to risk offending his guest with such a rude gesture.
But.. if you go by his track record, he might have already done so with his words. The wind riders had made it rather clear that Maxwell was impolite at best, though he didn’t mean to be. He wouldn’t be surprised at all if he spotted Torse the next morning, complaining to Monty about some tone issue Maxwell hadn’t even realised he had-
Suddenly, he was snapped out of his thoughts by a quiet churring. Blinking, he glanced up at Torse. His face didn’t move, and even if it had, Maxwell had never been good at reading people’s expressions anyway. Yet somehow, he thought the man looked.. pleased.
“Pardon the sounds of machinery, sir. Simply a few gears in my arm beginning to turn again.”
Maxwell glanced down at the arm in his hands, nearly half of it had been cleaned, his hands moving independently from him, while his mind was busy following currents of useless winds.
“Maxwell.”
He ended up saying, his mouth following the trend his hands had set. The younger man shook his head, coming back into the moment.
“You can just call me Maxwell. If you’d like, of course. I appear to have been stuck with just ‘Gotch’ by a majority of the crew.” They meant it good naturedly, of course, but somehow it stung a little in a way it wasn’t supposed to, even Wealwell got to be called by his first name. Wealwell!
“If you don't mind, I find myself more partial to Maxwell. There are two Gotches, after all.”
For some horribly embarrassing reason, colour suddenly rose to Max’s ears as he heard Torse say his name, though he couldn’t for the life of him explain why. He cleared his throat, hoping it would distract from it and quickly looked back down again, returning to his scrubbing with double the vigor.
“Yes, that’s.. logical.”
Those were the last words spoken for a while, as Maxwell focused his efforts on removing the bloodstains, revealing the cast-iron beneath. Eventually, he moved on to the upper arm, scooting ever so slightly closer for better reach.
He had a firm grip on Torse’s bicep as he washed off the bits of gore, though the blood was the least of his worries. The wind-up man was so.. muscular. Which was an incredibly strange feeling for a being with no muscles. Against his best efforts, he gave the arm a handful of squeezes throughout the cleaning, just to feel how little it gave way, the solidity of it.
Every part of him was hoping that Torse couldn’t feel it, but judging by the curious mechanical hums and whirrs that followed each time he did it, he knew that he did. Maxwell was deeply appreciative that Torse didn’t mention it, for he would have likely dropped the sponge right there and died.
Maxwell Gotch, survived being nearly bitten in half by a Tyrannosaurus, killed by being acknowledged by a robot man. What a humiliating end to a legacy that would be.
The water had to be changed a handful of times, as the soap slowly began to lose the battle against a slaughter’s worth of blood with months left to fester, but after 3 or 4 basins and quite a lot of moments that Maxwell would be left awake thinking about for the rest of the night, Torse’s arms were clean.
He bent his elbows, swivelled them around, opened and closed his fist, and finally gave Max another one of those not-smiles, which went straight to his chest. He had been thorough, as thorough as possible, cleaning out every little groove and crevice.
“Well..”
Maxwell started, hiding a silent yawn behind his hand as he stretched his own arms and stood up, leaving the sponge in the now empty basin.
“You’re officially fit to walk the Zephyr. Now, if you’ll pardon my language, I am damn tired, and I should be heading off to my quarters now. I trust you’ll find somewhere to sleep? If not, Van should be able to help you.”
He assured the other as he reached down a hand to help him to his feet. After a short pause, he added,
“..Goodnight, Torse.”
The clockwork man stared at him for a moment, silent apart from the ever present ticking, and gave his hand a light squeeze before letting go.
“Likewise, Maxwell. And thank you.”
Torse was already out of the door by the time Maxwell looked up from his hand. He stood in silence for a few seconds, allowing a blush to rise to his face as he clenched and unclenched his fist.
He was right. About the hand, that is. There was strength behind it, strength that could easily overpower Maxwell. No matter how hard he pushed his body, he could never reach the pure strength of iron.
And he felt downright giddy thinking about it.
Maxwell Gotch was not sleeping this one off.