'Scaring is Caring'
By Indiana
Characters: Edward Nygma, Jonathan Crane, Riddlerbots (Ada)
Synopsis: Jonathan Crane is not a good babysitter.
"When the sun goes down, it is an indication the world is ending. It takes a team of millions on the other side of the world to push it back to its proper height again so life may soldier on. We will never know for certain which of these days they will fail to do so."
It was difficult to tell if he was getting to it or not. It had no true face, so the only indication he had was body language. And it did not always move.
He had no idea why Edward had elected him for this task. He had only agreed to it because he thought it would be amusing to spend an hour or so with a robot Edward thought was his child, but he had not known the robot could not speak. Edward had not mentioned it when he said he was taking his… son with him on some errand and Jonathan had found himself sitting upon a desk in a derelict Orphanage with a three-foot robot sitting attentively on the floor, fixing him with its unblinking facsimile eyes. He did not like it at all. Why did Edward even need him to watch it? Was he concerned it was going to run away? Good riddance, in his opinion.
"I don't want to be here," Jonathan had told it, without preamble. "I'm probably going to leave." And he was about to stand up when he noticed that the robot's shoulders had slumped. A sure signifier of disappointment.
Interesting.
He had leaned back against the desk. "You seem averse to that idea."
It had looked at him before nodding a little. It didn't seem to know what 'averse' meant, though it appeared it had gotten the gist. He had frowned to himself. He was about to leave anyway when he realised something.
The robot seemed to understand not only his words, but nuance. And it had approximate reactions to them. One could almost say it had emotions. It couldn't, of course; that was impossible. But they were reproduced well enough that he may be able to do something with this robot that he could do to no human child.
"How much do you know about the world?" he had asked it. Knowing Edward, it would be the bare minimum so as he could control every aspect of the information it absorbed. Sure enough, it held up thumb and forefinger to its eye at about the distance of the LED within. Splendid.
"Would you like to know more?"
It had nodded, enthused, and he had set himself to thinking of just what might frighten a robot that knew nothing of anything. He had been so far too general. The robot probably did not know what the sun was, what a million meant, it probably did not even know there was a world beyond this Orphanage. He needed to take things only from the world this robot inhabited. Most likely, this room.
He looked around and spotted a child's drawing upon the wall behind him. He removed it and looked over the paper. It resembled some sort of monster, but beyond that it was unrecognisable. He showed it to the robot. "Do you know what this is?"
The robot shook its head and held its hands out. He let it take the drawing and allowed it a few moments to inspect it. "It used to live here," Jonathan said. The robot looked up at him. "It's a crude reproduction, but it depicts a dangerous and vicious beast. It lurks in the darkest of corners and waits for one to be alone before it strikes, dragging its victim away to be dismembered and never seen again."
The robot looked around, and if Jonathan was not incorrect it was searching for pockets of darkness. Aha. He was getting somewhere. "That must be why I'm here. It would surely come for you, once it had learned you were alone."
The robot's head snapped to face him suddenly, and it reached forward and took hold of his leg. He moved it away in irritation. This thing knew no boundaries! "No need for that. As long as there are two, it will stay away."
The robot moved back again. It was pressing its hands together. Jonathan regarded the bulbs in the ceiling. "Do you know what generates the light in this room?"
The robot shook its head.
"They're tiny robots," Jonathan said. "They are plugged into the ceiling to provide light, and that is all. They aren't to move, or speak. They can think, if they like, but I daresay all they think of is how trapped and sad they are, put up there with no escape nor end in sight."
The robot had pressed its hands into the side of its face and was staring up at the ceiling. It made some sort of beeping noise that Jonathan could not decipher at all. Jonathan wondered if he would be able to guess what it wanted.
"You'd like to get them out of there, wouldn't you?" he asked softly. It pressed its hands into its lap and nodded several times. He shook his head in falsified regret.
"Impossible, I'm afraid," he said. "If you took them out they would not live long. They would merely survive a few torturous, painful seconds and then they would cease to operate. Their life up there is harsh and lonely, but it seems better than death, doesn't it?"
The robot shook its head slowly. Hm.
"You would prefer to be dead than lonely?"
It nodded. A robot that was afraid of being alone? Who would have thought?
Oh, but that gave him an idea.
He shouldn't do it. Edward would be furious. He might even be willing to kill Jonathan over it. Come to think of it, it would be an interesting measure of his affections for this robot. They might extend to asking a compatriot to keep an eye on it, but how much further? How much did Edward really care?
"Oh, I forgot to mention," he said, exaggerating his tone to ensure the robot picked up on it. "Your father said to me before he left that he doesn't plan on returning."
It was incredible just how humanlike this robot was! It sank back so that its body was pressed to the floor between its knees and stared at him, shoulders loose. He wished he knew whether it was speechless or if it just knew asking for clarification would be futile. He waved a hand grandly.
"Oh yes. He said he was finished with this project and was ready to advance to another. Now, he didn't quite go into details, but... I'm afraid he may have been referring to you."
He never would have predicted the reaction: the robot leaned into itself, pressed its hands over its eyes, and cried. It could not generate tears, obviously, but it did know how to whimper softly to itself. He was admittedly taken aback by this. The implications! The robot understood the concept of someone or something leaving and never coming back. And its near-immediate response to this event was... sadness.
Could it be this robot actually loved Edward? That he was its father not merely in the non-literal sense? And if this robot did indeed feel genuine love for Edward, did that mean it had learned such a thing from him?
So many questions he would never have answered.
"Jonathan!" Edward snapped, and this was additionally fascinating. How interesting he had suddenly reappeared when his robot started crying! It was exactly what a mother would do for a real baby. He watched him with interest. "Why is my daughter crying?"
Jonathan took a moment to answer, because he was much more interested in watching the robot jump up and run over to Edward, attaching itself to him with enough force to temporarily replace Edward's frown with a wince. But Edward had expected it: as soon as he had seen the robot move he had lowered himself to one knee and prepared his arms to catch it. This wasn't the first time such a situation had occurred. Fascinating. It started beeping and Edward put one hand behind its head, looking down at it. When it fell silent he directed his ire in Jonathan's direction. His jaw was bunched.
"You told her I abandoned her?"
"Oh, come now," Jonathan chided. "There will be no permanent harm. It will be a learning experience, but not a harmful one."
Edward scowled at him. "That doesn't make it right, Jon."
Jonathan tilted his head a fraction to the left. "Since when have you cared for right and wrong, Edward?"
Edward looked away from him. The robot had not moved. It was unnerving.
Finally, Edward said soberly, "Being a good parent requires it."
Oh, that was very interesting. There was finally something in this world Edward cared about more than his own self-promotion, and it was a handful of robots who may or may not have even been behaving the way he thought they were. Wouldn't it be fascinating if it was all in his head? It wasn't entirely; the robot's behaviour did indicate a genuine, of a sort, emotional response. But it would be something to ponder later.
"You can hardly be upset with me, though, can you?" Jonathan asked, keeping his voice as smooth as possible. Edward's brow twitched, and one of his hands moved further around the robot's shoulder. "You had to have known I could not let such a... unique opportunity pass me by."
"I should have known, yes. But..."
"But?" Jonathan pried softly. In the midst of those words, Edward's face had faded into something like... disbelieving recognition. He had discovered some truth about himself. He simply had to tell Jonathan what it was!
"I did know," Edward said quietly. One hand stroked the back of the robot's head gently. "It would be easier to be angry with you. But no. The only place to direct that is myself."
An interesting turn of events.
"I knew better. But I didn't care enough." And he picked up the robot with what seemed to be a great amount of effort and left Jonathan to muse over the situation.
As odd as it was, Edward really did want to be a good father to his... children. But in order to do so he had to learn to be empathetic. To put someone else's needs above his own. To stop and ponder the morality, of all things, of his actions! And Jonathan, in doing something morally wrong, had alerted Edward to his own erroneous decision, which would in turn cause him to make more 'good' decisions in the future! Ah, morality. It posed such exquisite questions. In this case, two wrongs did make a right. He smiled to himself. He still had not quite concluded whether that thing was capable of independent thought as yet, but he had learned quite a lot about Edward. It might be interesting to see just how far Edward would allow him to go. To know just what his limit of infractions towards his children was. Really, Edward should be thanking him.
It seemed scaring really was caring, after all.
Author's note
An anon sent me a message saying, "I woke up last night with the words "Scaring is caring" burned into my brain. I feel that you could make use of it." 'Scaring is caring' is kind of meme-y and I am bad at memes. I had to think of a situation in which scaring could legitimately be caring, if only from one person's point of view. Also I like to write Jonathan being a dick sometimes. It doesn't take a lot to distress Ada if you have her attention because she doesn't know anything.
'Indy, he's being a dick to a child. Why?' He doesn't consider her a child. He literally can't look at her and see anything other than a robot with a robot brain. This is the guy who is most probably technologically impaired. It's gonna take him a while to wrap his mind around AI and he may never accept it in full.