Note: Another sequel of sorts to someone else's fic on Archive Of Our Own (The eulogy ballroom from Lazy8's The SSSSynthesia project). This one is a light steampunk setting. I allude explicitly to most relevant elements within the story. I however need to mention that in the original, Tuuri wanted to university to study advanced mechanics after turning out to be a natural at it, but the Hotakainens couldn't afford it. Emil, meanwhile, got to go, but was so bad at his mechanics major that his family's wealth was the only reason he wasn't getting expelled. Lalli wen there with him as his personal servant. The original was also basically deliberately accentuating some of Emil's negative traits.
Small steps
Emil didn't have time for this. He was supposed to become an army hero, not escort a wounded from another unit home. He wouldn't even have gotten the assignment if he hadn't just happened to overhear the discussion between two seekers talking about one of their wounded waking up with no memory of having joined the army. The wounded in question had been asking for people whose names nobody, not even members of his own unit, recognized. Emil, however, had recognized them. The higher-ups hadn't cared that Emil and Lalli had parted on bad terms. Emil knew him and how to get to where his family was living from the base, which had been enough. In addition to this, Emil had been on his first mission as a full-fledged demolisher when this incident had happened, which meant he had been in no position to refuse the assignment without giving a bad first impression to the wrong people. The doctor had said that it could take some time for his memory to get back to normal, if ever. Because of this, most of the words exchanged on the trip had been Emil asking Lalli if he remembered being in the army or any of the few people from the base he was supposed to be familiar with, and Lalli giving Emil a short negative response. If he could remember only one of these things, they could go back to the base and Lalli's unit-mates could watch him until he got better. Emil could go back to walking the army hero's path and pretend to not know that his former personal servant and childhood playmate was part of the seekers. The lost memories seemed to include the circumstances in which Lalli had quit Emil's service and ended up with his old clockwork red-haired toy soldier. Emil had asked Lalli to throw her away when he had failed to repair her years ago. Just Lalli keeping it would have explained everything, if it weren't for the fact that the soldier was working perfectly well, and actually lasting about thirty seconds longer on each winding than before she had been broken. Lalli only remembered to have actually given the soldier to his cousin Tuuri instead of throwing it away. Emil guessed that the toy had somehow made its way back to him after Tuuri's death. Emil had had to remind Lalli of it. Lalli seemed to believe him, but didn't show much of a reaction other than spending most of trip alternating between napping and staring out the window.
Between getting expelled the university and joining the army, Emil had spent some time at home, which had included helping his uncle, aunt and three young cousins move in. The family could no longer afford to keep both estates, but between them, the four older adults could maintain one and a very small number of house employees. Some servants who could find work elsewhere had quit so Tuuri's older brother Onni wouldn't have to, considering that being laid off after Tuuri's sudden death and Lalli "disappearing" was the last thing he needed. When Emil had asked about Lalli's "disappearance" his mother had explained that Lalli had shown up at the house a couple of days after Tuuri had died, stayed for less than a week, left and, as far as she was aware, had only send one short letter that said nothing of his whereabouts since. At the time he had heard the story, Emil's immediate explanation had been that Lalli hadn't been clear enough on just how sick Tuuri was. Had he known, he would have arranged for Lalli to be able to leave as soon as possible instead of having him negotiate his leave himself and stay a few days to make sure those covering for him would be doing their work correctly. Emil looked at the uniform that he was wearing and in charge of keeping clean himself. At some point, he'd had to find a sweet spot between how good he wanted it to look and how much effort he was willing to invest into making it look good. There had been days where he'd had to settle for "good enough", something he would have considered inconceivable when he was still in university and the family had money. Just yet another thing to which these money-sustained lies had left him blind. Lalli had never asked for leave in all the time he had worked for him, so the mere fact that he was asking for leave at all should have been enough for Emil to know that it was something important enough that he couldn't afford to wait several days before actually getting it. Emil had had plenty of free time despite his studies, he would have probably been able to take some of it to do some of Lalli's work for a few days. Why had his parents done that to him? Because of them, he had humiliated himself in front of the country's best, believing himself to be a genius in mechanics, when he actually wasn't. He had mistaken the only teacher to treat him fairly before the loss of the family fortune for personally hating him. The thought that it would have continued if they hadn't suddenly become poor put a knot in his stomach. It was his parent's fault that becoming an army hero was now the only way he could think of to prove to others – and himself – that he wasn't completely incompetent. The sound of a ringing bell and a voice yelling the name of the next station pulled Emil out his thoughts and Lalli out of his slumber. They were going to need to get off the train soon.
The only room Emil's parents had for him was in the servant's quarters. Emil had no choice but to stay there, as calling his parents out on what they had done to him had resulted in him getting practically disowned for some reason. As it was, he was only tolerated within the house as the person in charge of watching Lalli. Lalli had his own room but, much like the one Emil was sleeping in, it was little more than a closet, which barely gave him more space to call his own than the trainee barracks before people had started failing and quitting. Days were quite boring, as Lalli needed a lot of resting to recover from his injury and spent the little stamina he had for the day on having meals with Onni and spending a little time with him between the end of dinner and bedtime. This made the only means of entertainment in the room was the toy soldier, which Emil was way too old to play with. He had asked Onni about the toy, but had been unable to get more out of him than the fact that Tuuri had repaired her before he had gone back to work. From the depths of memory, Emil had been able to extract that Tuuri had been the one cleaning the room in which he had been taught mechanics before going to university. He had asked Lalli to throw the toy soldier away because he had been convinced, one week into studying mechanics, that if he couldn't repair her, nobody could. Tuuri had managed to so, from access to only part of his own learning material. Emil was slowly, but certainly, realizing that being kept from making it to Tuuri's deathbed on time may not have been the only thing that had made Lalli resign and join the army. Talking about the army, Emil was now bored enough that he'd rather be doing his chores back at the base than watching Lalli sleep. A thought crossed his mind.
Emil first thought had been that he actually didn't mind cleaning clothes too much. It turned out to be quite different from cleaning uniforms when he was on laundry duty, but he got used to it. Then he thought he could do a little housecleaning while Onni watched Lalli as well. Then he'd found various other tasks to do, during which he had little to no chance of running into members of his family. In the end, the only tasks he didn't feel up to were those that would bring him within his family's eyesight. Onni and the other remaining servants were more understanding of this than he had expected. He got part of the explanation when Taru tried to make conversation with him as they were doing the laundry:
-Onni has been better, lately. It was great idea to arrange for him to be able to keep Lalli company a little longer.
Taru seemed to have mistaken his motives for being much less selfish than they were. He decided he could live with that.
-Is it so? I haven't really been paying attention. I tend to be a little tired by dinnertime.
-You're in the army, young man. You'd better get used to it.
As Emil was silently admitting that she had a point, he was startled by the voice of Lalli, who had somehow snuck behind him without him noticing:
-We can go now.
-Why are you in the army now?
Those were the first words out of Lalli's mouth once the train started moving.
-Didn't Onni tell you?
-He told me your family didn't have much money anymore. It explains why there are more people from your family and fewer servants in the house. It doesn't explain what you are doing in the army. One of the reasons I joined is that I thought I wouldn't risk running into you, ever.
-It's complicated, you wouldn't understand.
Lalli's expression suddenly started bearing a vague resemblance to a frown:
-You are telling me this?
That was the end of the conversation. After pouting for a while, Lalli pulled the toy soldier out of his bag, wound her up and let her move along his ever-moving hands and arms, forcing her into all sorts of acrobatics to keep balance. Emil didn't know what to be the most impressed with: the acrobatics or how much more relaxed Lalli suddenly seemed. Emil hadn't realized one could to that with those toys. So Tuuri had repaired the soldier and Lalli was making her do acrobatics that would probably get him decent money as a street performer. What had he done, besides finishing military training? He realized it was stupid to not tell Lalli why he had joined army; he was now about ninety percent certain that Lalli's reasons for quitting included his lack of awareness of some the things had become aware of over the past two years. But he couldn't seemingly change his mind for no apparent reason:
-I have an idea: how about I explain why I'm in the army, and in exchange you promise me to tell your crewmates where you live so I won't have to be the one escorting you home if it's ever needed again?
-Okay.
Unfortunately, Emil had somehow come back to the base with everyone assuming that he and Lalli had been close childhood friends, something Emil knew couldn't be further from the truth, contrary to what he had believed as a child. He had considered himself entitled to Lalli's company and service at the time, and been persuaded that Lalli would be happy as long as he was. He was quite sure that this wasn't how a true friend was supposed to act. However, the only time Emil had tried to set things straight when someone had come to ask him about Lalli, the person had taken it to mean that he didn't have the information they were looking for, when he actually did. Emil decided that getting himself back out of Lalli's life was more important than them knowing the details of their history, so he ended up letting it slide and answering the questions that he could. In the meantime, he worked on becoming an army hero. Unfortunately, every option he considered turned out to be much harder than he had imagined. Whatever he thought of, there always seemed to be at least one other person who was better at it than he was, and hence was the one who got right kind of attention while he just looked like an idiot in comparison.
-Hey, you.
The loud female voice coming from behind his back startled Emil. He got even more startled when he turned to get a good look at its owner. If someone had tried to model a clockwork toy soldier after the tall, red-haired female captain who was standing in front of him, it would have probably ended up looking a lot like the one currently owned by Lalli. She introduced herself as Captain Sigrun Eide, made sure Emil was the person she was looking for, and told him that Lalli had been following around one of the female mechanics under her command, who had started to feel uncomfortable about it. She also mentioned that Lalli had a steady record of turning out to have done inappropriate things in part due to not knowing they were inappropriate. But that hadn't been enough for the mechanic, who wanted to know why he was following her around if it wasn't for the reason she was imagining. Lalli was currently being strangely mute about it, which plenty of people were taking as confirmation that the mechanic was right. Emil connected the dots after a few moments, and asked about where the army got its mechanics from and the woman's background. Free teaching as long as they enlisted for a certain number of years, a low-class family. Everything fit, so Emil told Captain Eide about Tuuri. The next day, he was made to repeat the story to another group of people, that included a young woman who could have been the mechanic and several higher-ups. A few days later, Lalli came to thank him. Emil raised an eyebrow:
-You're really thanking me?
-I tried to tell them, but it would stay stuck in my throat. Even though I knew I was going to get in a lot of trouble if I didn't explain, I couldn't talk. I'm a little mad you told her, but I'm more happy I'm not in trouble anymore.
-I see… hey, by the way, talking about Captain Eide, don't you think she looks a little like…
Lalli turned out to have somehow been able to fit the toy soldier in his uniform pocket.
-I call her "Sigrun" sometimes.
Both of them got called at the same time from completely opposite directions. They couldn't have continued that conversation even if either of them had wanted to.
When someone finally asked him a question that was neither about work nor about Lalli, Emil had to make sure he had heard correctly. It was about a unit-mate that he had come to know, but it was a personal question asked by someone with whom the unit-mate was on bad terms:
-May I ask why you want to know this?
-I heard you usually give answers quite easily when it comes to your former servant boy.
-He's always been a little odd and seems to have not told much about himself to people here. I expect people to have questions about him. Leif, on the other hand, is quite straightforward. Especially about how the two of you aren't exactly best friends. Most people who have asked me about Lalli explained what they needed to know the information for. Captain Eide even let me ask questions. Can I please know why you want this information?
The man pointed to his shoulders, showing Emil he outranked him:
-Your unit leader is going to hear about this, young man.
He walked away. There went his career, Emil guessed.
Strangely enough, no disciplinary action that Emil knew of got taken. But just as he was starting to dismiss the incident as inconsequential, he started noticing people whispering around him and that unit-mates who had so far not decided whether they liked him or not now seemed to unanimously despise him. Eventually, the person he'd tried to convince that Lalli and he didn't get along early on actually asked him the exact reason for it. After getting his answer, he asked a question that startled Emil:
-Then why is he acting like you've done much worse to him?
-What do you mean?
This was how Emil found that half the base was persuaded that he had treated Lalli much, much worse than he actually had, and that it was the cause behind the quirks that he'd had ever since they were kids. He read up on the possible consequences of what people thought he had done to Lalli when he got the chance, and discovered to his dismay that many things could fit in the eyes of someone who didn't know Lalli had always been like that, and was actually closer to normal now than he had been as a child. But someone caught a glimpse of him reading the book while he was engrossed in it. Soon, people knew, and took it as proof of his guilt. Emil tried to set things right and saw signs that Lalli was doing the same, but the whole situation quickly grew far too big for them to handle.
Both of them ended up leaving as soon as they could. Timing for both of their resignation procedures somehow resulted in both of them leaving the same day, at the same time, in the same transportation truck into the nearest town. Those who had shared the truck with them quickly scattered on the streets, while both of them lingered near the drop-off spot. Lalli sighed. When he had heard of the notoriously discipline-heavy and merit-based army, it had sounded like a place worth giving a try. A place where people would actually tell him what to do instead of just scolding him when he made a mistake without further explanation, where those giving the orders had deserved the privilege rather than being born with it. But it had turned out to be less different from Emil's house than he had expected. On the subject of Emil, Lalli was getting the short end of the stick yet again. They had found out that the rumor had been started by a man to which Emil had refused to deliver personal information about a unit-mate. The unit-mate in question had a family member who could give Emil a job, while Lalli was back to figuring out what to do next. Fortunately, he'd thought of the army long before the money he had saved from being Emil's servant had come anywhere close to running out, and new money had come in from being in the army, so he had time to search.
-So, what do you plan on doing?
The Emil from before the army wouldn't have asked. Lalli had to admit that he had changed in a way he liked since he had quit his service, but still not enough in his taste.
-Don't know yet, I'll figure something out.
-Well, Leif told me that his cousin was looking for one or two people to help him out. I've been trying to find a way to make up for before that wouldn't make you even madder at me so…
Lalli thought of it, and decided he wasn't ready to work by Emil's side voluntarily. When it came to trying to make up for before, Emil had come the closest to that at times he hadn't even been trying. On the way back from the incident that had messed Lalli's memory up for a few weeks, Emil had insisted that he had been doing Onni's work only because it was less boring than watching him sleep all day. After that, Emil had been telling other people how to handle him to avoid having to do it himself again. He wasn't sure whether the right thing to do was to point it out to Emil or let this pattern continue on its own until Emil noticed it. But because he no longer had the obligation to assist him, Lalli was going to with the latter.