bakerstreet | Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines...

Normal husbands sprain their ankles doing housework.

Alex Murphy loses a screw where his kneecap used to be.

It's stupid, really. Ever since the bombing and the new body and...things that made his old beat look like a field trip, he's suddenly found himself missing parts of his old life. The big stuff. Being able to hug Clara and feel her heartbeat, for starters. To be able to hold hands with David and not have to pick between the cyborg one and the real one. Then there's the little stuff like household chores. When he notices the lightbulb go out in the living room, he decides to change it himself. It's something to do, at least. Something that doesn't involve spending his free time looking for repeat shoplifters because he already went down the list of murders, rapes and arson.

So he goes for the lightbulb.

Someone must have put the wrong screw in his last maintenance check because one moment Murphy's staring up at the lightbulb, a scan telling him everything from the wattage to the manufacturer, and then he's suddenly on the floor. His leg gives out under him. The floor rocks from the thud. Something feels...different, a warning flares up at the corner of his vision like the floaters he sometimes got pre-OCP.

[CHECK SERVO]

It's still blinking away when Clara walks in, her husband on the floor with his leg crumpled under him.

"Clara?" It doesn't even sound like a question with how his voice comes out these days. Everything from his new body either sounds like a statement, an order or a threat. It's another thing that he could do without, just like that CHECK SERVO blinking on-off-on as if he didn't get the message the first time. "Could you get a screwdriver? And a flashlight?"

Clara's sitting in the kitchen, attempting to make a grocery list that isn't mostly made up of mac and cheese, soda, and pop tarts (which, to be fair, is what she gets for letting David make the grocery list this week) when she hears the crash. She quickly leaps off of the stool she was perched on and dashes in to find Alex on the floor, causing a slight moment of panic until he asks for a screwdriver and flashlight.

She gives him a nod and a "Don't move, I'll be right back," almost treating the situation like it was just a normal day and he had simply been slightly injured. Once she gets into the garage and opens up the toolbox to grab a screwdriver and suddenly realizes she has no clue what kind to grab. Without really thinking about it, she grabs the toolbox and a flashlight sitting on a shelf and heads back into the house and rushes back to Alex as the ridiculousness of the situation sinks in and she has to hold back a laugh.

"I didn't know what kind you'll need." She hands him the flashlight once she's at his side and puts the toolbox on the ground so that she can open it up. "What did you do?"

The good news is Clara takes this like a champ. He appreciates that.

Murphy sits tight. In theory he could probably struggle his way into a car and drive himself to get properly repaired but there's that human part of him that's stubborn and wants to do this at home. The old fashioned way, without sensors and fiddling with computer chips, without a lab coat in sight.

He goes too-still as he waits, his eyes unfocusing as he retreats into a body that doesn't feel like his. That's the thing about being mostly-machine these days: fidgeting isn't something that happens anymore and when he has nothing to do, it seems like a good idea to simply stop. Go far too still for any human being, as if he's powered off. Busy himself accessing his database, browse old security footage; anything to ignore CHECK SERVO which seems to be trying to imprint itself on his subconscious because he can't shut it off. He seems to recall Dr. Norton muttering under his breath something about "trying Netflix sometime". He should ask about that.

Murphy's still in that frozen state when Clara comes back. His head turns toward her, whirring quietly. "Changing a lightbulb."

He points. Up there. This would probably be a good time to throw in how many cyborgs does it take to change a lightbulb. It would make her smile.

Murphy says nothing, just fixes Clara with a look that's quietly thankful as she drops down to her knees.

"The Phillips number two. Can you rotate my leg?" The leg in question is bent at an impossible angle for a human, almost pointing backwards.

Clara smiles slightly and shakes her head at the fact that changing a lightbulb of all things is what got him into this mess and a small laugh bubbles out. "You've never been the best at housework."

She fishes the screwdriver out of the toolbox and passes it to him before going about rotating his leg back into place. There's a little voice in the back of her head that keeps trying to point out that this isn't normal that she's choosing to ignore.

Once she gets his leg back into place, she looks at him expectantly. "What next?"

He grunts out his own laugh, a little clipped at the edges. You think being a multi-billion dollar cyborg would make everything short of world peace easy. "Yeah, I guess not."

It doesn't take too long to get his leg pointed in more or less the right direction. Every now and then the ankle will twitch, something sparking out from the seams as it convulses every couple of seconds. Since his HUD isn't screaming at him, Murphy's going to assume that's not considered major damage and it's related to the servo error. He has to lean over to hold the ankle down so he doesn't accidentally clock Clara in the knee with it.

She's only human, after all.

"See that panel?" Murphy leans over, points. He holds out his hand like he wants to take her hand in his and guide her to it, but hesitates. "Open it. Careful you don't shock yourself."

That might be a huge sigh of relief that escapes her once he holds down his errant ankle. Most definitely not for the first time, a little part of her wonders if it would be in poor taste to refer to him as her knight in shining armor. Even if this time the only thing he's saving her from is his own damn ankle.

"How bad of a shock would it be?" The question comes out as she reaches for the panel. She pauses briefly as the thought crosses through her mind that maybe going to grab the rubber gloves that she keeps under the sink might be good plan, just in case. She shoves the thought away as quick as she can and gets it open, focusing as hard as she can to keep her hands steady.

"600 volts. You don't want to know the amps," Murphy says helpfully and then wishes he'd kept his mouth closed. It used to be easier to hedge around that kind of thing before. Being the newest face of the law means it's gotten much, much harder to lie even when you should. "You really don't want to get shocked."

He watches as Clara composes herself before she dives in. She does that little pause he remembers - he's glad he remembers, after everything - the one where she stares right at you and you can practically feel her filing her thoughts together. She'd said once it was her "Jedi center" and he'd laughed, thinking he married the most amazing woman in the world. His face might be trying to smile now, rare as those come to him these days.

Murphy tilts his face to watch her progress, his chin dipping down. The panel in question isn't too big, made for easy access and small hands. Clara gets it open without killing herself.

"Touch the..." Murphy pauses to consult his schematics. " - Orange switch. Not the red one. Definitely don't touch the red one."

Edited 2014-02-25 08:13 (UTC)

It occurs to Clara that this is the first time that she's really touched him since the rooftop. It wasn't that she had consciously avoided touching him, just that...she honestly wasn't sure what it was. Hesitation? A subconscious fear that she'd eventually forget what Alex felt like before?

It quickly strikes her that she needs to avoid that train of thought, at least for the time being. She needs to focus and doesn't even seem to realize she's muttering "Orange...orange...orange..." before grabbing the flashlight because the red and orange switches are just a little too close shade wise for her comfort that she doesn't want to risk doing something catastrophic because of bad lighting. She makes sure that she touches the orange switch before asking, "What would happen if I touched the red switch?"

It's the muttering he missed. That's pure Clara right there. He'd missed it back when he first woke up, paralyzed with some stranger in his face and realizing all talks with Clara were monitored and guarded.

Murphy replies with something like "you're doing fine, honey" and "there you go". From the way she's not pushing buttons, he guesses there's a problem. Maybe she doesn't have a machine's ability to distinguish, clearly, what is red and orange because there is no room for discussion, no ability to go well, it could be redish-orange.

"It would self-destruct the leg in 30 seconds," Murphy says with a straight face.

So his timing on lightening the mood had better days. He's trying. There hadn't been much room for joking after that night and the days after, the endless tests and sometimes seeing Clara and David peeking at him through a window. He'd wondered if that really happened or if it was another dream.

Edited (typos) 2014-02-25 08:51 (UTC)

"I shouldn't have asked." There's a steely edge to her voice. The fact that anyone would even think that putting something like that inside of him infuriates her. She tries her hardest to reign it in, but can't help but clench her jaw and make a mental note to talk to Dr. Norton about that at some point in the future, because she refuses to be okay with the idea of anyone possibly being able to blow her husband away again. Especially using his own leg to do so. But right now her anger doesn't do either of them any good, so she shoves it as far down as she can.

If Alex were to ever ask, she would be more than happy to confirm that they had been by the lab as often as they could. Clara definitely wasn't too proud to admit that she had spent a couple days there on her own while David was at school. Not that she remembers those days all too well considering she was running on very little sleep, adrenaline, and more coffee than the human body should be able to handle.

"What do I do now?"

From the way her voice takes on that quiet, flat tone that's even scared him a few times, Murphy can say his attempt at joking fell far from the mark. Maybe it wasn't funny to begin with. The truth is he could be joking now but if there's an actual self-destruct in him somewhere, he doubts it would be in his internal schematics and that thought must've occurred to her before too. It's not like OmniCorp was on the ball with him the entire time. He falls silent, aware of Clara's anger filling the room like an invisible sheet.

Weird how that works. Murphy physically can't waffle about the color spectrum anymore but he can still sense when his wife is pissed. Dr. Norton would probably find that worth some tests. Knowing him, he'd probably boil it down to neurochemical reactions in his brain or responding to body cues. Or something.

"You've shut down all power to the leg from my knee down." To demonstrate, Murphy lifts up his hand to show that his armored foot isn't spasming anymore. Clara's knee is safe. "I think something came loose. Check the wires or the screws."

If she realized he was joking, she probably would've reacted better. Probably. There's the fact that just doesn't trust OmniCorp. She still has a hard time trusting Dr. Norton now that she knows the truth about why Alex had behaved the way he had in the weeks after he had finally come home.

Clara might have flinched slightly when he lifted his hand up, as if preparing for the foot to still be active. And suddenly most of her anger dissipates as something clicks and she lets out a completely undignified snort of laughter. And maybe it isn't as funny as it is in her head, but she can't resist. "What you're telling me is that you think you might have a few loose screws?"

The flinch hurts. That's the surprising part, that there's a part of him that can still wince to see Clara act like he could kick a hole through her chest (and the worst part is knowing he might be able to, with this new body). He masks it by smoothing his face over, trying to look police-neutral here. Professional.

It doesn't last long, not with the sound that comes out of his wife. Something in the air lessens, the tension fading.

Murphy raises an eyebrow. The corner of his mouth quirks, like it wishes it was a grin. "When in doubt, check the basics? It's always a screw."

Okay, that's more his professional opinion than OmniCorp's best and finest talking. He's sure a scientist somewhere out there just had a hernia. They probably would've wasted hours - days, even - putting him through MRIs before they thought to check the damn screws.

"If it isn't a screw, there's always duct tape." Clara shoots him a slightly cheeky grin that only grows when she sees the quirk of his mouth. For a moment she wonders how the various OmniCorp higher ups (since she's fairly certain Dr. Norton would simply take it in stride) would react if she were to bring Alex back to them with his knee wrapped in duct tape. Even if she did manage to fix him on her own, she almost thinks it would be worth it, if only to watch their collective heads explode. Almost.

After all, she knows what a bitch it is to clean up anything that's been covered in duct tape.

Figuring out what the problem is should be a simple process of elimination. She first checks the wires, gently tugging at them so she doesn't make the problem worse if they are the culprit. After coming to the conclusion that, no, the wires are seemingly fine and this is probably something she can fix on her own, she gets to checking the screws. While it may not be the most orthodox method (except she's fairly certain that there is no standard practice for how to check if the screws in your husband's knee are loose, so that point's moot), she places a finger tip on each one and tries wiggling them. And finds that there are a couple that do, in fact, wiggle.

"Can I have the screwdriver?"

The duct tape mention makes his ghost of a smile start to look like the real deal. Duct tape is something they've been very, very careful not to let David around anymore. Not after that time he got his hands on some when he was younger and thought it'd be a great idea to duct tape his door shut. He'd had to climb in through their son's window.

Alex hasn't thought about that in a long, long time.

With the power off in his leg, he doesn't get the usual feed from what's happening where - no updates popping up, just a kind of radio silence he actually finds relaxing because it's so rare in his new life. His chin dips down as she asks for the screwdriver, something whirring again that he can feel in the roots of his molars. They said he was built as quiet as possible but all they cared about was how he sounded moving to other people: they never warned him about what it was like in the inside.

"Here." Alex tucks the screwdriver in her hand, his armored fingers brushing against her skin. "How many?"

Clara treats this like troubleshooting the DVR, going by process of elimination instead of some elaborate scientific method with a lot of technobabble thrown in. Compared to the average maintenance shift, it's downright relaxing.

The only time Clara had ever had any real worries about how much of Alex was still in there were in the weeks after he came home, and to be fair, her concerns at the time were very real (and she doesn't know if she'll ever be able to fully forgive Dr. Norton for that). But there were some things about him that she missed and sometimes worried were gone for good. And the smile that he was (finally!) beginning to show probably topped the list.

She had noticed that whenever he handed her something or (rare as it may be these days) touched her, he tended to favor his flesh and blood hand. So him handing her the screwdriver with his other hand takes her by surprise. It's a different feeling than she's used to, but by no means bad.

"Two. There's a third one that doesn't feel like it's come as undone as the other two, but it's still wiggling a little, so I figure I might as well tighten that one too." She finally slides her hand away from his, almost hesitant to do so and sets about tightening the first screw.

"Maybe next time they need to fix you up, they should just have me come in to do this. At least we'll know you've been properly sc-" Clara stops herself before she finishes that sentence. There was once a time when screw jokes would have come to her easily, but now...not so much. And she realizes that it's something (one of many, many somethings) that they haven't spoken about since Alex came back. "-seen to."

Alex swallows - or what's left of his throat tries to swallow. It's not like Dr. Norton left him that much to work with and warning him about phantom sensations didn't really help with day-to-day life like this. Like the fact your Adam's Apple is missing. Or that when you're a cyborg, you have a permanent case of dry mouth and you can never work up enough saliva to fix it.

The silence turns awkward as it sinks in. He'd had a general idea things would be different when Clara touched his new body and ran her hands over graphene instead of skin and there had been that hesitation. But he's made an effort not to think of what else didn't survive the car bombing and it had (mostly) worked until now. But he knows and she knows they can't ever be intimate again. Those days are over. He couldn't even cuddle up with Clara on the couch with popcorn and a movie without poking her with the damn armor.

"You could be my chief engineer." Alex tries to sound encouraging. More silence as he watches her tighten the screw. "Sorry about this, by the way."

In that awkward silence (which is yet another thing Clara has added to her running list of things that are part of of their new normal, much as she hates to admit it), she finishes tightening the second screw and moves on to the last one. And as much as she tries to focus on the task at hand, her mind can't help but wander slightly. There are moments, most of which sneak up on her in the middle of the night as she's curled up alone in their bed, when she wonders if he resents her at all for making this choice for him. If he blames her for his current state since it's her signature on the paperwork.

"I'd be better at it than whoever it is now, from the looks of it." She doesn't realize how grateful she is that he broke the silence until it occurs to her briefly that he managed to keep her from sliding down the blame spiral that creeps up on her on occasion (thankfully far less now than in the weeks following her first meeting with Dr. Norton, but still frequent enough that she has a list of therapists that she needs to finish narrowing down since she's fairly certain that she can't handle it on her own).

As soon as he says 'sorry,' her head shoots up and she stops tightening the screw for a second. "Why are you sorry? This isn't your fault."

No kidding. Norton supposedly had the best of the best and brightest of the brightest working for him, but sometimes they were so busy with the technical stuff they didn’t see the forest for the trees. They missed tightening the screws all the way because they were too worried about when his graphene armor got scuffed by a shotgun round or whether his neurochemistry was up to snuff today.

His new body isn’t exactly shrugging material but Alex tries, anyway, his eyes locked on Clara. “I got careless, back with the car. What would’ve happened if you and David had been sitting in there?”

Ultimately he knows it’s Vallon and his crew that were responsible for putting the damn bomb there in the first place, but still. Alex thinks of the what-ifs. It’s hard not to. Dr. Norton assured him that it was a good thing he was bothered by it, that it’s the human thing to do. It probably didn’t help that now he can look back on the press conference and after, and realize he hadn’t even looked at Clara and David after he tasered that man. Hadn’t even thought of them until after the fact. His hand goes over hers, squeezing. He’s careful to make it as light as possible because any more than that and he could crush every single one of Clara’s bones in her hand.

What would’ve happened if Clara hadn’t been there? If she was just…gone?

There are a million what-ifs that have gone through her mind over the past few months. What-ifs about everything that had happened in the aftermath of the car bombing. What-ifs about if she had convinced him to just let the alarm keep going. But that's one what-if that she can definitely say had never crossed her mind. And just the thought of anything happening to David makes her heart pound.

"But we weren't." There's an unspoken 'and you practically were' that hangs in the air that Clara doesn't dare acknowledge, let alone come out of her mouth. There are so many ways this conversation can go and she wants to finish it before it begins so she can stay focused on fixing him.

Him squeezing her hand? Definitely doesn't help matters. If her heart wasn't already pounding, it would be now, if only for different reasons. Added with feeling like she has butterflies in her stomach, she almost feels the same giddy nervousness that she felt in the early days in their relationship when Alex and everything about him was just so new to her.

She presses on, his hand on her's, and finishes tightening the screw. "I think that should do it."

It's a subject they've both danced around. Alex wanted to forget and Clara wanted to move on. But it was still there and if he was thinking about it all those the nights lying on that cradle in Norton's office, waiting for the sedatives to keep in, he could believe Clara was thinking the same thing when she was alone in a house that used to have three.

From the way she gave that final screw a twist and focuses on the work, Alex guesses now isn't the time.

"Orange button again," Alex says, his voice sounding a stranger's. "I'll do it. Maybe you better step back in case it acts up again."

He hates that he has to have safety warnings these days, like a power tool that could drill through someone's hand as soon as through a wall. It's times like this that he flounders, wonders what he should say when it used to come so naturally to him. Exchanging looks with his wife, he leans over and presses down on the button, sending power flooding once again into his knee down. There's a loud hiss as decompressed air shoots out of the seems around where his kneecap used to be, Alex testing out the leg with a few flexes before he gets up.

Once he's up, he's reminded how much he towers over Clara now. "Thanks. Feels good as new."

Clara scoots back and watches him press the button, holding her breath slightly and hoping she hadn't accidentally made matters worse. She lets out a relieved sigh once he starts getting up, while she stays on the ground so she can return the screwdriver to the toolbox. With a quick glance up, it occurs to her just how absolutely giant he is. Not that she wasn't aware that he was tall (he was always tall, to be fair, they just happened to have made him taller), but from down on the ground she finally got the full impact of his height.

Once the screwdriver's put away, carefully placed on top so she can easily grab in the future if Alex comes home with less-than-complete maintenance, she closes the toolbox and stands up. "I'll grab a fresh bulb and the step-stool while I'm out there."

Alex turns to watch Clara get up. “I can still change it,” he says. “Promise I won’t fall apart.”

He knows his face is capable of smiling, but that it’s harder than before, that everything comes out muted and subdued even when he pictures grinning in his head. They’ve kissed a few times. It’s not the same as it was before and he can tell Clara’s still struggling even though he’s about as back as he can humanly get. Dr. Norton even gave him the all-clear on the neurochemistry front. He sees her as his wife, not some law-abiding citizen he can ignore.

"Fine, fine. I won't grab the step-stool, but I do need to put this out there and grab a light bulb."

Once Clara gets into the garage, she puts the toolbox back in its place before leaning against her car and taking a few deep breaths to steady herself and stop letting all of this overwhelm her. Her mind is racing and she just doesn't know how to deal with all of the things she wants to say to him and can't find the words to tell him. Because the truth of the matter that she tries to keep from admitting to herself is that she misses the way things were and would give just about anything to set things right. That things will never be the way they were, no matter how hard she tries.

She clamps down on the tears that are on the brink of springing up. There's a time and place for crying and in her garage when she's supposed to be grabbing a light bulb isn't it. Anyways, Clara's cried enough over the past few months. Hell, there's enough photographic evidence of her tears to make her slightly embarrassed by it (thank you ever so much, photographers of the Detroit press, for documenting what she's certain were the worst months of her life). She goes to the shelf where they keep the light bulbs before eyeing the toolbox and pulling out the duct tape, sliding it on her wrist like an oversized bangle.

She eventually breezes back into the room, her eyes slightly red from the crying jag that she managed to stop before it began. "One lightbulb and a roll of duct tape. Just in case."

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Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines...

Clara Murphy | Robocop (2014)

Lemme know if you want me to switch to past-tense

Present tense is fine!

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iiii need to get some sleep. i'll tag back in the morning!

Sure!

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figure we could end the thread around here unless you wanted to go in a specific direction?

Here seems good!