eddie likes to (riddlethem) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2014-01-29 10:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | cassandra cain, door: dc comics, riddler |
Who: Eddie and Cass
Where: the shared apartment
When: recentlyish
What: tech, tools and not a lot of talking
Warnings: None!
Stephanie’s apartment was getting too small for three people and two animals. Eddie didn’t mind the cramped spaces before since the kitchen alone was bigger than his cell in Arkham. He used to feel like the balcony was an entire garden to walk through, the living room was a grand entertainment center and her bedroom was the safest place in Gotham. The last part was true, it would always be true, but Eddie knew his time at the apartment was limited. He had originally planned to rebuild his apartment and add extra space to entice Stephanie to move in with him. He had planned a lot of things, actually. The bird’s death seemed to put a quick stop to that.
Gotham still lived and breathed as the bat family and their support were put on pause. Stephanie went back to patrolling every night as if she were caught in an endless comic book loop, Eddie spent his time in the workshop and Cass- well actually he didn’t really know what Cass was up to. He had built her a high-tech utility belt and improved her communicator ages ago and just never got around to giving it to her. He could have left it around the apartment with a note. Damian’s death made Eddie more wary of everyone that ever knew the bird, however and he felt the need to check on Stephanie’s friend if only to make sure she wasn’t getting reckless.
Not that Eddie knew anything about staying out of trouble. The harmless looking piece of tech on his wrist had already given him a sneak peek to what it could do and all it took was one booming teleport to Muerte’s funeral home for him to realize what she was. He had an inkling before. The motherly tone she spoke to him in. The strange powers she possessed. Eddie had even named her Machina and found himself having conversations about the technology he was working on with her as if he had an imaginary friend with him in the room.
Tonight he got a sample of what she could do. He asked her to BOOM him somewhere and with a fwwoooosssh crack BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM he found himself on the beach that was filled with more serenity than a goddamned spa candle. He could hear exotic birds in the background, he saw strangely colored butterflies and he was almost certain this place didn’t feel earthly. Eddie sank to his knees, ran his fingers through golden sand and then suddenly tumbled forward into that loud, pixelated teleport back to Gotham.
Machina landed him in the middle of a deserted park in Gotham. The BOOOOOOOOM of his arrival pulling up grass from the ground and knocking over garbage cans. Ping, ping. Time to go home.
Hours later, Eddie could be found slumped on the floor in Stephanie’s kitchen. He stayed with his back pressed against the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him. He pretended the rest of the apartment was lava, cradling Capri Sun after Capri Sun as Matilda trotted in and fell asleep with her head in his lap. It was then, hours later, that Eddie heard the window open and he crawled over to see if it was Stephanie.
“Cassandra.” He said with a smile. Eddie’s face was dotted with scruff. He was more pale than normal (which was saying something) and smelt like sand and salt. “Hey, I made you a thing. A few things. For crime fighting.” He slowly got to his feet. Please don’t say anything please don’t ping. “Are you hungry?” The riddled man was always naturally friendly, even with someone that didn’t have talking as their first language. If there was distress in his expression, it was carefully hidden after years of perfecting a poker face.
The window scraped. It was not smoothly fitted in its casement and the glass rattled if you were not careful. (Cass was always careful). It had taken three nights to learn how to wiggle the window upright and not have it jam and it had taken two more to realize that Stephanie wouldn’t notice even if she heard the window. Cass had done it anyway. The Cain way of doing things was to be silent, even when you could not be heard, to be invisible even if there was no way of seeing you at all. You were quiet - except Cass’s glove had torn somewhere between three and seven am and it caught on a nail and held fast, the thick material stubborn, and the window crashed down behind her instead of easing slowly into its frame. She spun, guiltily. Cass did not have a poker face. It fell cleanly into a nothing expression much of the time but the minute a thought or feeling occurred, it was vividly displayed, crossing her face in a micro-second. Cass had never had to learn to hide anything but fear; she hid nothing but.
There was a streak of dirt across one cheek and much of one shoulder where she had been pressed up against the damp grime of an alley wall. The black suit, new, she had thought the first time, with a little pat of her own hand against her own belly for its very likeability, new - no longer looked new at all. She had been out every night since Damian’s -- Since Damian, as Cass thought of it, abjuring words for the solemnity conveyed by their lacking. Words had no ability at all to convey what she wanted them to. She had tried, outside Stephanie’s door, listening to the sobbing. She had tried ice-cream and pizza and tissues and the kind of dreary movie watched on repeat. She had tried yelling, too, shapeless, wordless anger screamed out on a rooftop somewhere high enough where the wind stole away what sound she made but none of it made anything better at all.
Fighting did.
Fighting did not make Damian not-dead. It did not pull together the fractured pieces of a family Cass was only beginning to get to know and had now utterly fallen apart. It did not make the Bat any less gone. But it helped. Fighting meant that the Bat’s territory was kept clear, fighting kept the blood whistling in her ears and her heart thump-thump-thumping and kept her from thinking (as it had as the apartment got too-small too-quickly, as it had when she had considered where to go next, as it had as Damian’s death registered slowly and silently and awfully) about anything at all.
Cass peeled herself back from the wall she’d flattened herself against and eyed him cautiously as she stripped off the offending glove. Her face lit briefly, like a candle kindling when he said he had things, and she nodded once at food. Food, for Cass, was whatever could be eaten out of its packaging. Cooking looked dangerous.
Eddie wobbled to his feet. Food. He pulled out a box of cornflakes, two bowls and milk. His hand shook a little from not eating all day and he told himself he could have another bowl later or maybe an entire sandwich. Who would judge a skinny little man shoving his face full of food?
He handed her a bowl after pouring in the milk and clinking a spoon into the cereal and smiled. Eddie took a couple thoughtful bites of his own cereal, stomach rumbling impatiently as if it had just remembered it was empty. He ate a little like a raccoon. Like he wasn’t sure when his next meal was going to come. That was just an old bad habit. Eddie held up a finger and then scooted past her, going into Steph’s room so that he could bring out the utility belt and communicator. He set them on the kitchen table and then sat down, motioning for her to bring his cereal bowl over and to sit with him.
“Are you comfortable with sharing a communicator link with me?” Eddie asked, holding up the little ear piece that was carefully wrapped in plastic. “I wouldn’t have access to the bat family’s comm line, but this way you can talk to me if you need information or assistance.” The thing about not having access to the bat family communicator line was a lie, of course. They both knew it. Eddie didn’t exactly sit on the line, though. He wasn’t sure if it was out of respect or he just didn’t really give a damn about their conversations.
Cass ate like someone was about to take the food away always. Very often they had; her father called it incentive as if she knew what the word meant. Now language curled along in her head, a sea of neat little curlicues and dots and hashes, she knew what it meant. It meant hunger, griping at her as she ran, it meant being light-headed enough to only have what she was meant to be doing to hold onto. The cereal bowl clattered, Cass took the spoon and ate like a thing half-grown and not done growing. She reached for the box of cereal and poured another tide of cornflakes over the spoon, uncaring as the spoon splashed stickily against her fingers.
She followed him over, undaunted and leaned against the back of his chair. Cass did not often invite contact, physical and otherwise but prefered proximity. Proximity was safe, proximity meant no one could jump at her but she could feel comfortably almost-with. Cass leaned now, her elbows on the back of the chair and her bowl in her hands and she peered at the belt first and gave it a poke with her still-gloved left hand. It looked tricksy. Cass depended upon her own body first and foremost. She knew her body, she knew the signs it gave when it was tired and when it was likely to stop. She knew how it worked, when it didn’t. Gadgets were new, but they helped the rest of the Batfamily who chattered away on the commlinks like it was normal.
She eyed Eddie as he held up the one in plastic, skepticism writ in the corner of her mouth. Yeah right, he wasn’t going to have access to the Bat Family’s links. Steph had probably already hacked him in, but she plucked the small device out of his fingers without touching his fingers at all, feline, and examined it. It looked the same as the one the Bat Family wore. It just was someone else. Someone she by now (having heard him in the shower, the kitchen, the bedroom -- ew -- and the living room) knew.
“Assistance?” Eyebrow.
Eddie was so used to strange behavior from everyone and anything in Gotham that Cassandra didn’t phase him. Eddie looked like a man that was rarely phased by much anymore and it hardened his brow while driving a darker hue into his eyes. He was comfortable working on projects, comfortable with gadgets and things that were tricky because oh brother was he a tricky man to begin with. And, tricky men didn’t spend a whole lot of time with serious bats like Cassandra unless they were trying to get something out of her. So, this was strange because Eddie didn’t want anything from her beyond personal safety.
“In case something goes wrong.” He said almost like he was correcting her and leaned back in his chair. He folded his arms and exhaled through his mouth like steam escaping a locomotive. His shoulders were pistons winding up. “Or if you need quick information. Works a lot faster than smoke signals.” Eddie had to admit he had no idea how this bat fought crime. If she was the second generation Batgirl, Oracle had to have been in her ear, right? Or did the mysterious little shadow simply creep through the Gotham night looking for trouble? His eyebrow raised in a simple question. Curious. Wondering if there was a cheat code somewhere hidden in her ninja brain.
Cass did not really understand games. Killing little armies like ants on a screen, marching them up and down with controllers; surely it was more fun to do it yourself? To test your own body, your own skills, to do instead of watch? Cheating was even more bewildering, why would you cheat if the point of the game was for it to be hard? She spooned cereal and she considered both the device and Eddie himself with a strong, solemn look. Oracle, her Oracle, the one who had been shot and lived in the tower and was warm and funny presence in her ear, had been the last consistent voice on her communicator. Cass turned off the channel of the Bat-buzz as often as she left it on. She preferred, if her Oracle wasn’t here, to work in silence. To work without, instead of with someone else’s comfort blanket.
But Eddie wasn’t a Bat, even if he was something else. She wrinkled her nose at anything to do with smoke signals; please, the accompanying eyeroll all teenager, even if Cass was a ninja crammed into the body of one, and she watched him like he was a device about to detonate, a computer all punchy logic that she didn’t understand. He read wrong - since the language dump in her head, Cass didn’t read the nuances like a fluent speaker, but she read enough to be comfortable with that over language itself, and Eddie looked like pressure mounting. It was just a device, what was the big deal?
Cautiously, she picked it up. “You on other end?” The implication being, how would he help?
“Right, me on the other end.” Eddie felt like he was talking into a can that was connected to another by string. Not exactly the ideal form of communication. “You see something weird and don’t understand what’s going on? I’m your guy. I’ve got eyes all over the city. I’m an information broker by trade. And, if it’s a big job then you can ask Stephanie for help and the three of us can get something done.” He played the part of Oracle a little too well sometimes. Even without her seriousness or intensity, Eddie could get things done. Especially now with Machina...Machina who was-
Eddie look at his wrist as the tiny circuit board there went ping, ping! He smiled sheepishly at Cassandra and held up one finger. “You want to go on the RC?” Eddie asked his wrist and a flurry of PINGPINGPINGS responded. He nodded, a small smile on his face as he popped the square off his wrist, took off the band and then wandered around the dark living room for the toy car. After sticking Machina to the top and turning the car on, there was a vroom vroom and it started to zip around the apartment on its own. “Artificial intelligence. Who apparently likes remote controlled vehicles. Can’t say I blame her.” Eddie smiled and sat back down.
Cass took this in with as much calm as she had usually, all contained energy and caution. Her eyes widened momentarily, and the spoon hung in mid-air, dripping milk as the circuit board attached to his wrist (this was unusual but Eddie was in general not usual yet, beyond his tendency to make jokes she did not understand) began to make loud, distinct noise and she stared with all the startled shock of the sky tinging faintly to green as she watched.
“How does it do it?” The spoon clattered into the bowl, Cass drew her feet up underneath her as if the car might drive itself toward her, like a cat aiming to rub itself against the legs of whoever in the room disliked it the most. Cass had tried computers. Computers made her feel small and stupid and miss her version of Oracle more than anything at all, but she liked this even less. Cass trusted her body. She trusted the way her heartbeat felt and the prickle of adrenaline when something was more dangerous than it should be. Her body told her things even if she wasn’t looking for them. Cass stared at the car, tracking its progress across the floor suspiciously.
“What is?” she pointed, losing the ‘it’ in the demand for more information, more knowledge, why don’t I understand? made clear.
While Cass didn’t trust computers, Eddie felt empty without them. He liked how limitless they could be and that spirit alone made him a perfect candidate for an alien computer that could do things most humans would not understand. “I’m not sure.” He smiled as if that was the best part of having a supercomputer race around his home. “She’s alien, which means it’ll take a long time before I can figure out exactly what she can do.” Eddie knew calling it she set off alarm bells with Stephanie, but it didn’t feel right calling a super computer it. Somehow Machina had feelings and Eddie had read enough science fiction to understand what that meant.
“So far she’s been able to teleport me places and she cleaned up a cat scratch for me. She can do some other stuff, but frankly it’s a matter of testing.” He relaxed back in the chair and stretched his arms behind him with a yawn. “The nice thing about you, Cass, is that I don’t have to worry about getting a lecture from you about messing around with dangerous stuff.” He smiled proudly.
Cass did not care if computers were male or female at all, gender did not occur to her as especially strange. Alien registered though in the tick of her chin, the cock of her head. She stared at the cheerfully racing car as it dodged about the floor, the super computer attached to its back, her suspicion remounting under this new piece of intel. Alien meant it could not necessarily be understood. Cass’s induction into the world of movies had begun with old, old sci-fis that could be watched on Stephanie’s laptop. No one needed words to understand the aliens were the enemy.
Her eyes brightened at teleport. Cass knew that word. She liked that word. Teleport meant being able to appear, instead of stealth into places and teleport as a concept she liked very much. She looked at the car now with some measure of doubtful anticipation, as if it might suddenly present her with ‘teleport’ as an option.
“Lecture?” It was scoffing. Cass liked danger more than she liked all the other pieces together. Danger made it harder, which made it more exciting.
Eddie smiled at her, all satisfied dog who remembered where he buried his favorite toy. “Good. So, look I know you’re a minimal kind of girl. That’s why I put a very small amount of gadgets in your belt. Mostly sharp objects for throwing, plastic bags for evidence grabbing and a few smoke bombs because they’re neat.” He listed them off on his fingers and then yawned loud and big enough to fill up the entire room. “Use them, don’t use them. That riddle is up to you. However, I think you’ll see they’re at least helpful if you find yourself stuck in a puzzle you can not solve.”
Eddie got to his feet and pointed at the car, which spun around and slowly rolled over to him. “I’m going to catch some sleep. If you see Stephanie, tell her I was too tired to wait up. But, I’ll make it up to her.” Another loud, geeky yawn. “Waffles or some such! Come along, Machina!” Ping, ping! Eddie smiled, saluted Cass and wandered back to Stephanie’s bedroom with the little car at his heels.