Safe
Notes: I did a fic request for someone who wanted a father/daughter story about Claudia and Artie on Tumblr, and I thought I'd share it ship and what happened to it are real. Everything else is made up.
Obviously, I own nothing.
The mechanical buzz of the Farnsworth woke her. She jolted upright, the paper her face had been pressed against stuck to her cheek and very nearly toppling over the back of her chair. Groaning, she pulled the paper away from her face and rubbed her eyes.
With a sigh, she flipped open the Farnsworth to see two unharmed, if slightly singed, agents peering back at her through the circular glass.
"Yo," she greeted.
"Hey, Claude," Myka returned. "Is Artie there?"
Claudia grimaced. "No, Pops's gone out. You got the artifact?"
"Yup—snagged, bagged, and waiting to be tagged," Pete said.
Myka raised an eyebrow. "You're still angry with Artie."
"Pshhh, no, of course not."
"Claudia," Myka said, her voice taking on the placating tone she normally saved for Pete, "it was a risky job. He just doesn't want you getting hurt."
"Yeah, yeah," Claudia sighed. "Look, I'll see you guys when you get back, alright? Post-artifacty-ice cream?"
"Sure thing, we'll be on the next plane out," Myka smiled.
The Farnsworth screen clicked off; Claudia closed the cover before leaning back in her chair, hands behind her head and eyes closed.
Myka wasn't wrong—Claudia was angry with Artie. It'd been ages since she'd been out to collect an artifact, and she was convinced that surely, surely she'd been out in the field again soon. The next mission will be the one, she'd thought. But it wasn't.
When they got the ping about the turret from the SS Mont-Blanc, Artie had not bothered with subtlety.
"Pete, Myka, you're going to Nova Scotia," he'd announced, dropping think files on the table in front of the two agents. "Claudia, you are absolutely not to go with them."
"What? Why?"
"On December 6, 1917, a French tramp steamer called the SS Mont-Blanc collided with another ship leaving the Halifax Narrows. The collision caused a fire which ignited the ship's cargo—a load of wartime explosives. The result left approximately two thousand dead.
"The ship's captain, Amie Le Medec, was blamed for the accident and charged with manslaughter, but the charges were dropped. Le Medec blamed himself; he never sailed again. The spyglass he used, however, went on another seven voyages, each one ending in similar disaster."
"So it's a spy glass that sinks ships?" Pete asked. "Are we going on a boat?"
"Someone donated the glass to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic back fifteen years ago, around the eightieth anniversary of the Mont-Blanc's explosion," Artie said. "Since it's been there, the Museum has had six separate unexplained fires, each getting progressively worse. We've only just been able to work out a pattern."
"So it's due for another fire," Myka said.
"Which still doesn't explain why I can go," Claudia added, arms crossed and glaring at Artie.
Artie pulled off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose—something, he noticed, he hadn't done before this girl had broken her way into the Warehouse. "You can't go," Artie began, "because I said you can't go. Pete, Myka, get out of here. Now."
Myka and Pete passed her, bidding their goodbyes as they went.
"What gives, Artie?" Claudia demanded. "What, you don't trust me?"
Artie waved a dismissive hand at her as he grabbed his bag. "You know, I don't have time to argue with you. I have some research to do. You wanna help, man the computers."
So she had. And it had been remarkably uneventful.
The umbilicus door swung open, and Artie entered, bag and suran-wrapped plate loaded with cookies in hand.
"Heard from Pete and Myka?" he asked.
"Yep, artifact snagged. They're hopping the next plane out of Nova Scotia," Claudia replied, not bothering to turn to face him.
Artie set the plate on top of a stack of papers next to Claudia's arm.
"Oatmeal raisin?" she asked, wrinkling her nose as she picked at the wrapping around the plate.
"Oatmeal chocolate chip," Artie corrected. He fell into a chair next to her, eyes narrowed in appraisal.
"I had a good reason for having you stay here," he said. "It was a dangerous grab."
A moment passed before Claudia responded. "I know."
Artie sighed, pulling off his glasses and cleaning them with his shirt before sliding them back on his face.
"I let your brother get trapped in another dimension," he said. "I nearly let you get killed. Pete and Myka risk their lives for the Warehouse every day."
"Yeah, I get it," Claudia huffed. "Protective Artie is protective. But you can't keep me locked in here forever."
"I know," Artie sighed. "You're an intelligent and capable agent."
"That's right."
"That doesn't stop me from feeling responsible for some of the things you've been through. A lot of the things you've been through. So can you really blame me if, every now and then, I want to do what I can to be sure that you don't get set on fire?"
Claudia cracked a smile. "Right, 'cause there's no chance I could get hurt sitting in a warehouse full of magicked-up knick knacks."
"Fair point. I can't keep you safe from everything. But, is it really so bad if, now and then—only now and then—I do a little extra to keep something bad from happening to you, just because I like having you around?"
She laughed as she pulled the plastic wrap of the plate and grabbed a cookie.
"No. No, I guess it's not so bad."
END.