Miss patience was rapidly running low on what she considered her greatest asset as well as her namesake. For the past few days Artie had done nothing but constant non stop research on a prototype flare. Even getting food down him had become hard as he refused to glance up from the paper and his tinkering even for long enough to shovel down food, and it showed.

In short he was so far down the research rabbit hole that a horde of donkeys couldn’t drag him out, and Patience really was at her wits end. She had tried his favourite food (which he ate while working, but since he never looked up that wasn’t really enough. She had tried changing the music (that only succeeded in changing the tempo of his tinkering, and the beat of his building, but if it got too slow he simply swapped the cartridge without missing a beat. Or looking up. It was almost impressive in an extremely worrying kind of way how single minded his focus could be.)

Patience had only ever seen Artie in this state once before, right after the loss of his mother, it had taken her months of coaxing to pull him free from that particular mire, and now that he was looking at crawling back in there of his own free will? Patience was scared, in fact she was terrified. Usually her presence helped pull him free of trouble, but this time it wasn’t like looking at Artie, it was like he had swapped places with an Automata under their own command code, with no breaks, no conditions, and no branches. But underneath it all Artie was human, he couldn’t go on forever, no matter how much fuel he was provided. No matter how hard Patience worked to hold him together it wouldn’t work forever. Eventually he would just stop, and with that their world would fall apart. She couldn’t wait forever, but if there was ever a moment when she was needed it was right now.

Long ago when they had been living in the village Patience had made an oath to herself, and she meant it. But resolutions are tricky things, especially with the scary concept that they would not, or in some cases even could not be reciprocated. It was hard to really tell for sure how Artie felt about anything really, once he was in his world of gizmo’s and gadgets and whatchamacallit’s. (Of course Patience knew what a whatchamacallit was actually called. She paid attention, and it was easy to forget that she had grown up surrounded by all of this. That and in order to better understand things and make sense of the world around her she had studied her ass off constantly. Many considered Artie a genius, none truly understood that he wasn’t the only one in this workshop. Through no fault of her own, people don’t really pay attention to the maids, at least the kind of people smart enough not to be distracted by an attractive young woman in a maids uniform don’t pay attention to maids. The other kind are focused largely on assets other than intellect, and almost certainly deserve a thorough slap.)

She slipped back to her room, and began to plot. Pulling out a sheet of paper covered in a childish scrawl of her and Artie in a wedding dress and a tuxedo. Of course some details like them being atop a flying unicorn under a perfect rainbow seemed a bit fanciful for her now. But the goal had never changed. Yet here she was about to gamble their friendship, a friendship of over twenty years, since that time she’d kicked hell out of Billy Sykes for picking on the quiet boy scribbling in the corner, but this was no time to stall.

As always Artie needed her, and right now what he needed was pulling out of that damn hole. Of course should she fail all would be lost. But sometimes in life there comes a time when you must roll the dice.

She stepped into the room, as the countdown to years turn began. She was resolved, this year she was keeping her resolution.

10.

Artie, we have to talk.

9.

I like you I always have.

8.

But if you don’t look up from that work soon.

7.

I’m afraid I might lose you forever.

6.

I don’t want that, I never want that.

5.

Because the truth is.

4.

You are too precious to me.

3.

So please look up.

2.

Artie, look at me please.

1.

I love you.

Then she did the one thing she swore she would never do, as for the first time Artie looked up, and I mean really looked, at her, as she gave her first kiss to the man she loved, and he for the first time realised how much she meant to him.

The next few hours can best be described as fireworks (literal and metaphorical as somewhere down the line somebody landed on the flare launch button, luckily due to the fireproofing spells nobody was hurt. Though it would take a few days to put the tin roof back on. Luckily, or maybe it was more common sense than luck the entire workshop was built like a fireworks factory, and as a result apart from a little charring the walls were completely intact.)

Patience looked around a little shocked by what had just happened.

“I have a confession to make” Artie said with an awkward sigh. “I’ve had a crush on you for years, but I thought you were way out of my league, intelligent, diligent, hardworking, beautiful. I’ve pushed so hard because I wanted to be the best I could be and keep you by my side.”

At that Patience couldn’t help a giggle, she’d been bottling those up for a long time. “And here I was working my petticoats off as a maid thinking you’d never look up from your work long enough to notice me."

“Well now we know, my dear partner. So how about we start really working together?

All those years and they finally noticed, no matter how hard they worked they really had eyes for each other.