Charlie Bradbury (ofletters) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2013-12-05 20:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, charlie bradbury, sam winchester |
Who: Sam & Charlie
What: coffee & TOP SEKRIT DISCUSSIONS
When: 11/18-ish & 11/24 - time hop.
Where: A coffee shop outside of the tower. Then Charlie’s room.
Warnings: A little talk in regards to S9 E4 of SPN.
Status: log; complete.
For the most part, Sam had gotten a handle on the business of having watched his future and then experienced it in his sleep. He’d processed it enough that he’d mostly returned to feeling like his normal self, or the self that he was in this world-- who’d come from one of the worst moments of his life and somehow climbed all the way up an emotional hill to feel better than he ever had. The memories were just a store of knowledge for him to draw from when necessary, he’d mostly put the feeling of being old and exhausted and eaten alive by the trials behind him. Except sometimes, timelines got vaguely confusing inside his head again, and that mostly happened when he was talking to Charlie. He still hadn’t quite figured out how to deal, mentally, with the business of having seen her on tv and then experienced meeting her in his mind and then physically meeting her here in an entirely different way. It wasn’t problematic, exactly, except that it confused his instincts where she was concerned. He was vaguely concerned about her emotional state, in terms of having watched herself on television and otherwise, and hadn’t managed to get enough answers from her to put his mind at ease about it. He wasn’t sure if she actually felt awkward talking to him, or if that was just him projecting his own awkwardness with the situation onto her. But he liked Charlie, a lot, and he wanted to get the awkwardness out of the way. He figured the only way to do that was to spend more time together, so when she’d asked to get together and talk about something, he took her up on it immediately. And he was also curious about what it was she was thinking about-- it had something to do with the show, which had started his brain off on tangents about what she could mean, the most ludicrous of which involved her wanting to try and get to Oz from here, which he was pretty sure wasn’t possible. But if she had an idea about that, he supposed he’d be willing to consider helping her with it. Or maybe she wanted to talk to him about what dying was going to be like for her, or how it would feel to come back from that. But that only involved picking his brain, not his resources, strictly speaking. Well, whatever it was, he supposed he’d find out. When they got to the coffee shop, he sat down across from her with his cup and took a sip, then gave her a slight smile. “So. Is this top secret enough for you to tell me what you need my help with?” --- If Charlie had even a slight clue that she’d worried Sam as much as she had she would have been sure to clue him in better--as it was she wasn’t burdened by the thoughts he had. Instead she bounced across the booth seat until she could settle with her satchel near the wall and center herself across from Sam. “It’s perfect, thanks for indulging me.” She smiled brightly while tipping her head back and forth, there was a buzz of hyperness to her that always seemed to come when she was most excited. Having Sam and Dean around for LARPing, getting to go out into the field with them, not really knowing what she was getting herself into and all that made for a pretty hyper and happy Charlie. Her frappe was pushed out of the way so she could bring her laptop out, her fingers tapping furiously once it was opened. “So, there was that episode, right? Oz and all that,” She stopped only momentarily to look at Sam across the top of her laptop, “Dorothy, hot, right? Who’d have thought,” she gave a quick smile before allowing her eyes to fall back to the screen. “So I was thinking, I mean it never really got into it and it’s really a shame, but bottle episodes, am I right?” She laughed to herself while pulling up the codes she’d already been working on since watching the episode. “Unfortunately I don’t have the insight that I’ll have when I get back, but if I can compile all the information of every monster known to man on my ipad, I think I can figure out how to create my own tracking systems.” Charlie’s voice had grown a little softer towards the end of her sentence though her typing seemed to get a little more dramatic before she finally spun the laptop around to show Sam what she’d been working on. The coding scrolled a nostalgic green in a tiny black window near the lower right hand corner while a simplified map of North America was open near the center hidden behind a corner of the other window. Small blue lights blinked randomly and information scrolled freely to the left of the map--none of the information would make sense to Sam, yet. “What do you think?” She beamed brightly though her voice remained soft and raspy in its whispered tone, still it was obvious she was proud of herself and the work she’d done, “I mean it’s not even close to being half finished. It’s rough to say the least, but with your help and Cas and them to fill the database...I mean, with a system like this, anything is possible. Angels, demons, windigos, banshees...you name it. I’ll be able to find and track the beastie.” With that she grabbed her frappe in both hands and pressed her back into the soft padding of her seat and finally took a long sip through her straw. --- That wasn’t quite what Sam had been expecting, but naturally his mind had gone to the worst case scenario. After a lifetime of worst case scenarios, he was essentially programmed to think that way. Sometimes he turned out to be right; more often lately, he ended up being pleasantly surprised when things weren’t quite as bad as he’d thought. Thankfully this was one of those times. “Oh yeah,” he said, eyes lighting up at the thought of it. It was genius, really-- but then, she was a genius. There was a reason why he’d called her the smartest person in the room. “I like that. I like that a lot.” He examined what she’d been working on. While it didn’t make complete sense to him, he saw the logic behind the format of it-- the map of North America, which reminded him of the light-up map in the bunker at home-- and the coding and lights which gave the general gist of being meant to locate and provide information regarding what she was tracking within the geographical limits provided. “I’d say at the top of that list, we should put vampires. The tesseract seems to like those a little too much, especially the Buffy and Twilight kind.” So far, the recent arrivals from Buffy’s world had been behaving, so far as he knew-- and he had a feeling he’d know pretty quickly, given his connections both to that world and to the VTF. But the tesseract had also taken to spitting out vampires that hadn’t been willing to behave at all. “If we’re tracking angels and demons, at the moment it’d probably just be Cas and Meg. But no harm in checking to see if there are more. Neither of them want more of their own kind around, I don’t think, so I don’t see them minding that.” He started to smile, lifting his gaze to Charlie. “We should maybe add supervillains to that list, too, if we can. Though they’re a bit harder to dig up information on, especially the ones that are native to this world. And not necessarily supernatural, so… would that work?” Mainly, he was thinking of the fear gas attack. It would have been really nice to have seen something like that coming-- to have been warned that whoever had loosed it was coming for them. If that was possible, probably SHIELD and superhero types would’ve done it already. But on the other hand, they weren’t Charlie, so even if they’d gotten the idea, they might not have pulled it off. He’d never seen anyone with her talent for this sort of thing. --- Charlie’s gaze slowly raised towards Sam and her enthusiastic aura seemed to tinge just a little as her mouth skewed in something akin to disgust or maybe shocked horror, “Eww,” the sound was emphasized somehow all the more probably because she was trying to swallow and say it at the same time. Made for one perfect immature moment on her part, one she wasn’t sorry for in the least, “Twilight? Really? I was just starting to like this place…” Her voice faded off as she latched onto the straw again and fell into whatever thoughts Sam had enabled her to produce suddenly. She took in everything Sam had to say, sometimes nodding, sometimes humming around her straw and only when he was finished with his input (of which she loved) did she finally pull the cup from her face and set it down. Both hands wrapped around the nearly empty plastic cup now as she looked towards him, “I may...or may not...have done something like that already.” Her face squinched up a little like a child giving a confusing and wordless apology with small shrug included. “I mean,” she pointed over the top of the laptop instead of turning it to face her, finger tapping lightly on the plastic border around the screen so as not to smudge it, “that’s what I started with. It was the easiest for me. That’s why there are so many blinking lights right now--it’s tracking known...or well, the superheros I know about. And not really, I mean, like I said, it’s not a fully operational program. But come on, I work for Tony Stark and Sage, Sam, Sage is basically my mentor. It was almost too easy figuring out how to handle them. It’s like...well it’s sort of like working for Sword only, not, because I guess monsters wouldn’t be considered extraterrestrial, but I’m not exactly a Shield agent either, and I don’t exactly...oh but…” She faded off again into her own thoughts. This time it only lasted a couple of seconds though. Her hands fanned out in front of her as if clearing what she’d been saying before, “Point is, right, those lights are the heros I could dig things up on. Total surface area stuff, but I have my own database on villains right in my laptop so configuring it shouldn’t be an issue at all. And you, you!” She pointed at him and smiled again, “I would have never thought about vampires, well not the Buffy type. Do you have an in with them? I mean, Buffy, not the vampires...though I guess sampling and creating a new database just for them would be good. I mean I can wiki the hell out of them but why not get a little face time, right?” She shrugged and leaned back again, fingers now tapping as if using the table as a keyboard. After another moment or so she nodded, pursing her lips, and seemingly coming to some silent conclusion. “Totally doable. All of it. With time, but...this is going to be so much fun.” She couldn’t help the laughter that followed, it felt good to have a purpose again. --- Sam chuckled. “Yeah, really,” he said. “I’ve seen more of those sparkly bastards than I ever wanted. I even met Edward Cullen. Even weirder, he’d seen some of our show.” He shook his head. That had been one of the weirdest encounters of his entire lifetime, meeting the vampire douchebag who’d been the head of a craze for vampires as some kind of sex symbol. Having met him, Sam still utterly failed to see the appeal. “There was one of them here a little bit ago, one of the female ones. I’m not sure if she’s still here or not.” He really should be keeping better track of who came and went, the way he’d originally done, but he’d been so busy lately that it had fallen through the cracks a little. “Anyway, they should be on the list of beings that we’re tracking. Along with the Buffy vamps, and I have notes on some vamps from a couple other worlds, too. Plus a different kind of angel, a dog-demon, a shapeshifting succubus… ” He trailed off, trying to remember if he’d run into anything else. There was the kind of shifter Sam was, the kind of werewolves Red and Kate had been, and probably others as well, but he decided not to continue listing them. “Anyway, I can get you my notes on everything I’ve seen come through. That’s easy enough.” The difficult part would be translating it into a search and tracking program, but she already seemed to have managed to do that. He was also pleased to see that she’d thought of his suggestion ahead of time, and smiled. He finished examining the screen and leaned back in his chair, running one hand through his hair. “I have an ‘in’ with the Buffy world, yeah,” he said. “And with the vampires, or one of them. Angel… is a friend of mine. I also know Wesley and Giles and Xander and Buffy, but less well.” He was aware of how weird it was for him to be friends with a vampire, but Angel was different from any vampire he’d ever met. More human-- and so much like Sam in some ways that the parallels, under other circumstances, probably would have made him uncomfortable. But since being in this universe, he’d gotten more used to the idea that creatures from other worlds actually could resist their monstrous instincts and manage to behave as much like humans as could be expected of them. “What kind of samples do you need?” --- “Too bad you don’t know the cyber witch, she’d be a big help in techno witchery for a program like this,” Charlie mused with a slight smirk as she reached out to finally turn her laptop back towards her, once she’d pushed her now empty cup away towards the end of the table. “Angel would be cool to talk to, a little too broody sometimes but a nice jaw and seems reasonable enough.” She nodded more to herself as she started to close her programming down, the time the tapping of the keys not nearly as furious as they had been. “The Watchers are bound to be able to give me information then too, and your notes are going to be invaluable in something like this.” When the programs were closed she closed the laptop and slid it back into her bag near the wall, “For the things I don’t get to run into, or have a good sense of, the program will work on speculation for now...I mean I’ll obviously tweak it as time goes on and if more things pop up. It really isn’t any more difficult than the programs storm chasers use...the tesseract has an incredible power source and the signatures of each little creepy crawly are going to have unique signatures too.” She was also spouting off Buffy jargon as best she could remember it from the “Initiative” days. Charlie had always been a good manipulator of situations, but it wasn’t until Dean forced her to play FBI that Charlie realized she was going to have to start reaching deeper and pretending she knew what she was talking about if she was going to get a promotion from junior hunter. What better way to know like you know what you’re talking about than talking about something you know that maybe not everyone else does? Pop culture just happened to be something Charlie ruled at, well for most genres anyway. “Well, between this, the new job, and the security cams and programs I’m working on for the house, if there ever is a house, I’m going to need a new laptop...or two...and lots of coffee. And I’m going to have to download a lot of new music, so much fun is going to be had.” She smiled and bounced just a little on her seat from anticipation of it all. It wasn’t just the coding and geeking out that had her excited...she felt useful, and it had been years since she’d felt like she’d belonged anywhere. Or rather belonged in a certain place that involved people...people she actually went to instead of running from (though she had tried running from them, just didn’t work). Her lips pursed slightly as her eyes darted to the table top and her expression changed from excitement to deep thought. Her voice was soft but not to keep others from their conversation, she instead sounded distant as if still lost in her own thoughts, “It was selfish to go to Oz and not do this for you guys first, I’m sorry.” Not like she could change it, and honestly she was happy she was going to go, but it still felt...wrong. --- “Cyber witch?” Sam asked, raising his eyebrows. He hadn’t met anyone that he would consider a ‘cyber witch’. Then again, that was kind of her point. He shrugged. “Well, I’m fairly broody sometimes, too. I guess that’s why Angel and I get along.” He was less broody here than at home, even in her time, but the point remained. He’d been through enough to know what brooding was like, even when he wasn’t doing it; he didn’t have to reach far down in his psyche to feel how those moods in other people resonated with his own experiences. But actually, as she spoke, the things she was saying brought another (also somewhat broody) person to mind: Bruce Banner. He’d talked about tesseract signatures, briefly, and Sam hadn’t known the exact details of what he’d meant (nor had he expected Dr. Banner to explain, since he was somewhat obligated to keep SHIELD’s secrets, even if he’d stated that he wasn’t their guard dog), but then-- as now-- he’d understood it on some level. Supernatural things gave off different wavelengths from people, it was why the EMF meters worked, why lights flickered when they were around. No doubt the tesseract was similar. And it made a lot of sense to him that those wavelengths, or signatures or whatever, could be used to track things down. He also completely understood the desire to be useful and productive, since those were two of his very favorite feelings. Just being a part of this project, and knowing that it was happening, made him feel better. More like the world was something they could control. Sometimes it got a little out of control around here, and that wasn’t a comfortable feeling. But his smile softened into sympathy, mixed with forgiveness, when she continued. “Hey, you might’ve done enough on it for us to be able to get it to work, even if they haven’t shown it,” he said. “And it’s not your fault we all got distracted by the Wicked Witch of the West. Which… is going on my list of ‘weirdest things I’ve ever said’.” He smiled. “We know you want to help, Charlie. And have your quests, too. We wouldn’t stop you from doing that, even though… you know. I’m a little worried about you being in danger out there.” And he was sure Dean was worrying too, at home. Would be worrying here, if he’d known, but he’d chosen blissful ignorance, which was just fine by Sam. Dean seemed to need to feel in control even more than Sam did, so he was really hoping that this project would be good for Dean’s sanity, even more than for his own. --- “I hope so,” Charlie mused in response to Sam’s positive outlook on the whole ‘angel tracker’ being up before her vanishing into Oz. She doubted it, but who knew how many hours were spent doing what between those cut scenes where she wasn’t involved. Apparently she’d had enough time to reread...no that wasn’t fair, she could reread a book in less than an hour. Especially the ones she’d already reread more than five times over the years. As for the earlier comments on being broody, Sam just got a sidelong glance and silence...it wasn’t her place to correct him. If he felt a connection with a vampire...at least he was making friends? Didn’t Dean have a vampire buddy anyway? Things change, people grow, or regress...whatever...Sam wasn’t possessed by Lucifer and that’s all that mattered. That brought up the whole angel possession thing, and had Sam been Dean she’d have blurted the thoughts out, instead she went into a ramble about Willow Rosenberg. If she was around this place Buffy would know, and if Sam could meet her, well maybe she would be able to help with things as well. Eventually topics ran dry and there wasn’t much more Charlie could show Sam or figure out without starting to write new script there and then. Her fingers itched to get started and a run to the nearest electronic store was necessary. Hugs and thanks were given before their departure from the coffee shop and ways were parted. Over the following week Charlie made sure to do exactly what she’d told Sam she would: Code and grab as much information as she could. Though she was able to get most of her wanted information out of Sam’s notes, she started tracking people down with her programming on her own just to make sure it worked. Miles was her first target, the little Spider-Man that actually was on the move more often than she’d expected. Her program stuck to him like glue though, so much so that the poor kid thought she’d bugged him. Charlie had basically gone into hiding since her talk with Sam. Her room was her haven outside of the labs at Stark Tower and random runs to electronic stores for more and more tech gear. Eventually though she was happy with what she had and felt that the programming was as complete as it was going to get. Her bed was pushed to the left near the windows, which were blocked by light-blocking curtains, and to the right of the door was a large desk that mashed three computer screens neatly near one another while the towers rested on the floor just giving Charlie enough room to stick her legs under the table. There were little bobbles as well, a literal bobble head figure of Hermione was on the desk while other figurines she’d picked up or had shipped to her were grabbing at monitors and items from the Con were near by (including the staff she’d gotten from Felicia Day among other items). All work and no play and all that. The only light in her room was from a projector that was casting a slowly circulating image of deep ocean imagery and the soft glow added by her albino betta fish’s tank. The three monitors were off for now and she was pretzeled comfortably at the center of her bed with her laptop making sure other little programs were functioning to her liking as well. When everything seemed ready she finally pulled her phone out and sent Sam a text to swing by, if it was possible. --- It was rare that Sam had a free moment these days, but as it happened-- probably, luckily, because it was a Sunday-- he was in line for coffee at Java Moment when Charlie’s text came. He’d been planning to go back to studying, but it was nothing he couldn’t drop for a friend. So he sent a text back to let her know he’d be there in ten, and to ask if she wanted him to bring her anything. Once he’d gotten his order, he headed for the elevator. Normally he took the stairs, especially when he was giving himself a study break-- the extra time and extra exercise tended to be a good thing for his mind, giving it a rest and an extra bit of blood to the brain at the same time-- but he’d promised to get to Charlie sooner rather than later. He still had a key to their apartment, so he opened it and stepped inside, glancing around for Charlie-- or Dean-- as he closed the door behind him. When he didn’t see them immediately, he headed for Charlie’s room, appearing in the doorway. “Hey,” he said, smiling in greeting, holding out his offering that he’d brought from the cafe. “What’s up?” --- Charlie heard the keys jingle as Sam let himself in, a tap of keys on her laptop pulled up the security feed from the camera that faced the door and sure enough, it was Sam. She smiled happily and pushed her laptop off to the side before standing up and stepping down off the bed so she could meet Sam, “In here,” she called out and nearly walked face first into Sam as he came towards her room--which had of course been his before. “Oh, ha,” she laughed quickly and took the offered iced coffee drink, “Thanks!” “Just that, over there.” She messed with her glasses until they sat firmly on the bridge of her nose before stepping out of Sam’s way so he could walk around her towards the triple monitor setup. “I mean, it’s up and running and even learning.” Her voice took on an ominous tone in mock before dragging the straw of her drink into her mouth and taking down a large gulp while walking towards the computer. While trying to not get a brainfreeze she pointed to the rolling black chair and tapped it a couple times in some silent physical language to tell Sam to sit down. “Ah, almost-brain-freezes suck.” The cup was placed down away from the keyboard before she tapped the spacebar and the computer whizzed to life, she tapped in her password without looking and not minding if Sam could pick up the mix of numbers and letters. Once the giraffe background stretched across the three screens she smiled. “Alright, so you’re going to learn how to get everything started and do the things that make this baby run...just in case.” WIth that she began her lesson with showing him where the program was, what to do to bring up the program and create the waterfall of text that would transform into the previous blank map from the coffee shop. --- “Learning?” Sam asked, smiling in slight amusement as he raised his eyebrows. “Did you go and build an artificial intelligence or something?” He wouldn’t have put it past her. When, years into his future, he’d called her the smartest person in the room-- well, he felt sure he’d meant it. He and Dean had skills with computers, and he considered himself a fairly talented hacker, but he had nothing on Charlie. He had no problems admitting that. Following her lead, he took the offered seat and watched what she was doing over the top of his own cup, which was filled with coffee. Not iced, but warm; it wasn’t freezing outside yet, but it was still too cold for that, in his opinion. “Drinking iced coffee in the winter’ll do that to you,” he said with a slight smile, and then sobered as she continued. He knew she’d felt guilty about possibly leaving her project at home unfinished, and while it was unlikely she’d run off in the same way here (for one thing, he doubted they’d find access to Oz from this universe), he wasn’t going to deny that there was a transience to their existence here. Thanks to the tesseract that had brought them here in the first place. “Alright,” he said, instead of joking about yellow brick roads, or something to that effect. He didn’t want to think about Charlie disappearing, but he wasn’t about to say that it wasn’t going to happen. He’d been here long enough, watched enough people come and go, to know better than that. “I’m up for that. Go ahead.” --- Charlie went into serious mode pretty quickly, tapping Sam only lightly on the shoulder for his lack of empathy towards her brain pain, but she moved forward easily. She explained things like how most of her coding was for show--green words in Matrix waterfall form was awesome to see, but it was also just Hollywood-hacker-hype. The brain couldn't actually understand code like that, at least she'd never been able to, and she'd tried. Opening up about her secrets was harder than she'd expected though and often she paused with frustration towards herself, it was hard feeling this exposed though. It may have only been cyber talk and secrets about things she'd learned and taught herself over the years...but it was stuff she'd never shared with anyone. It was still hard on some level. And thus the next few hours were spent between the two; breaking down code, highlighting text, and making sure that the 'what if' questions were answered far in advance to the best of her ability. It was a long night...but most of her nights were becoming long...at least this helped make her feel a little safer and comfortable knowing that if given the chance back home...she was really going to pull that angel tracker off without a hitch. |