Batman: Indoor Voice
Indiana
Characters: The Riddler, Riddlerbots (three OCs)
Synopsis: Though he does his best, sometimes Edward still needs help ensuring he doesn't repeat the mistakes of those who came before him.
They were all his favourite.
Each of his precious prototypes had their own special value to him; it merely depended on whom he felt fondest towards on any given day that determined which one he was most pleased with. Nikola sometimes took this title, when he helped Edward to construct things Edward himself had neither the tools nor the strength to make alone. He was the first of the three, and the biggest, built for exactly that purpose. They were all strong, but Nikola was moreso by degrees.
Some days, it was Alan; Alan was meticulous and detail-oriented, and whenever Edward asked for some implement to be designed it was always outstandingly done. If Nikola was the one to carry the plan out, then Alan was the one to create it. Sometimes, on the rare occasions it happened such as when he was tired or distracted, Alan would artfully correct Edward's mistakes. Alan was gracious, though a little slow.
Most of the time, though, it was Ada. She had yet to speak at all during these first two weeks of her activation, though she had hardly needed to. Ada spent as much time as possible close to Edward, whether it was hanging onto his leg when he was building something or leaning on his shoulder when he was sitting on the floor with his quadrille paper. He did not mind that at all, and spoke to her even though she never answered, and she really fulfilled that last thing the boys didn't: she kept him company. She got along fine with Nikola and Alan, of course; all three of them worked together quite well. But she preferred Edward, which he didn't disagree with nor discourage. He wasn't precisely sure yet what her role was going to be – she was sort of a happy accident, seeing as he hadn't thought he even had enough scavenged parts to finish her – but being someone for him to talk to was perfectly fine.
Except for now. He had been having trouble with a pipe in one of his properties that would not stop leaking, which he wanted fixed as soon as possible so that he could build there, and she would not stop hanging onto his leg! She had come in about an hour before and if she'd actually had a goal in mind with her visit he had yet to figure out what it was. He had asked her repeatedly to go find her brothers, but she either didn't believe he actually wanted that or she was just being stubborn. He was going with the former; he didn't have a real grasp of her personality just yet, but she generally preferred being told what to do instead of striking her own way. Which, again, was perfectly fine. Except for now.
The last straw came when he pulled the pipe wrench off of the connection, frustrated with the bolt that just refused to tighten properly, and he tripped over her because she would not move! He picked himself up off the ground, already imagining the bruise that was going to spread from his left knee all the way to his shin and, brandishing the wrench, shouted, "Dammit, Ada! I told you to get lost! Go! Get the hell out of my way, for God's sake! I'm tired of having you underfoot! Stop pestering me! Get out!"
She shrank even smaller below him, one of her hands clenched in front of her, and it took her a few tries to gain her footing again. When she did, she said, very quietly, I'm sorry, Dad, and ran off.
It was only when his arm tired of holding up the wrench that he realised what he must have looked like. He dropped it to his side so that it rested on the floor and sighed. Great. Just great. He had threatened his smallest robot with a giant wrench. Nice going, Eddie, he congratulated himself angrily. Some dad you turned out to be.
He honestly didn't even know why they called him that. It was something Nikola had decided to do of his own free will about a week after he'd been activated, and Alan had taken it up on his own as well. He liked it better this way; it was oddly comforting to know that they had chosen him as their dad, rather than him telling them that at the outset. He hadn't meant to hold the wrench over her like that, it had been an accident, and yet… he should have done better. He had no excuse not to have done better.
Should he go after her now, or wait? He decided to wait. He had to make sure he was calm enough to be rational – and right now he was still shaking a little with frustration – and if she really wanted a conversation he doubted she would have run off like that.
And those were the first words she'd said to him! He was never going to forget that. He was never, ever, ever going to forgive himself for that. Stupid. Towering over a child with a large and heavy object. Idiotic. Thoughtless, tactless, cruel. One of the only few people in years who didn't have a preconceived negative perception of him, and he'd gone and behaved like a brutish imbecile.
He was right about me.
No. No, that was wrong. He needed to relax. That wasn't helpful.
He set the wrench against the wall, stepping over the muddy puddle that the leak had left behind, and decided to go take a break. He had a lot to do yet, but overworking himself to the point of snapping at his very best helpers was the biggest sign of all that he needed to stop for now. It would all be easier once the factory was finished, anyway, and he wouldn't have to worry about time constraints quite so much. Alan and Nikola were taking care of that currently. They had insisted he go and do something else after the previous evening, where he'd almost gotten his head taken off by a piece of metal that had fallen from the ceiling, improperly mounted by one of his human henchmen. That man had immediately been terminated, and his boys had said they would spend the next day verifying the entire factory while he went somewhere else. He had agreed; he wouldn't, and couldn't, admit it to them, but he'd been a bit spooked by that. He hadn't wanted the entire thing collapsing on top of him, so he left them to it and got to work on something different.
For now, he climbed the temporary ladder out of the future deathtrap, from one of his acquired old sewer tunnels, and collected a bottle of water from the cooler he had left on ground level. He opened the door that had yet to be calibrated to work electronically and sat down outside. He drank half of it at once and leaned his head against the wall, closing his eyes. It didn't smell the best down there, but Jonathan had been quite emphatic that he keep belowground when the first phase went into effect. And so Edward had listened, even though it had meant building a damn basement beneath the floor of Pinkney Orphanage, he had had to build a tunnel from the factory there so he could move the mech and the robots efficiently because he could not possibly be aboveground, ohhh no, he had to do everything where it was dirty and musty and… now he was getting riled up again when he was supposed to be calming down. If Jonathan had been more forthright with the details, then he would have been fine with it, but he was insistent on being so damn secretive…
God, he was tired. And hungry. And dirty. He decided to take care of all that and then find Ada. There was too much going on in his head to do any further construction today.
Once he'd peeled his sore body off the floor into a sitting position and remembered he'd collapsed on his way to bed after the very brief shower he'd had, which had been so because if he fell in there he really would have been in trouble, he rubbed his eyes hard and stood up, wincing. He'd chosen the Orphanage as his main base of operations because of the facilities it contained, such as clean water for personal and business use, electricity so that he didn't need to build generators, and beds aplenty, though he never actually ended up using those. But he'd had far too many hideouts in which a chair had had to do, and though he never had trouble sleeping anywhere it was not too enjoyable once he woke up.
What had he been doing…
Ada, he had to find Ada.
He went downstairs to the elevator into the tunnel and once it stopped moving he walked out to the factory. It was a bit of a distance away, out of necessity, but he still needed to wake up a little anyway.
He came upon Nikola and Alan as he entered, who appeared to have finished their inspection and gone back to working on the mech, and as he neared them he asked, "Have either of you seen Ada?"
They looked at each other, and then Alan said, Not since she left here looking for you.
Edward frowned, anxiety tightening his throat a little. "Looking for me for what?"
She got her finger stuck in one of the joints, Nikola answered, gesturing at the mech. It broke, or something. She didn't let us see.
Oh, damn.
He put his hands into his pockets, grinding his teeth. Great. He was going to have to use the transponder, then. He preferred not to, giving his robots as much autonomy as possible which included the ability to avoid him if ever the need arose, but there was no other way for him to find her. And if she was walking around with a broken finger, he really did need to override her solitude at this point.
The transponder told him she actually had come back there, and was about fifty metres away, so when he got within five metres he called, "Ada?" so that she still had somewhat of a choice.
She looked out from behind a stack of crates he hadn't had time to inventory the contents of – it was mostly whatever parts his henchmen had been able to glean from any source possible – and he tried to be as calm and inviting as possible. "What are you up to?" he asked.
She didn't answer, but that was normal.
"Do you want to come sit over here for a minute? Nikola said you hurt yourself." He could have just gone and sat with her, but he wanted to make sure she felt it was safe to be near him. He wouldn't have blamed her if she'd thought otherwise. He knew the feeling he'd set upon her all too well.
She came over to him shyly and sat on the floor, and he did so as well, taking her offered hand when he could. It wasn't broken, per se; the joint had merely been yanked out of the socket. He pushed it back in and said, "That's all you need to do if it happens again, all right?"
She nodded.
"Listen, sweetheart," he said hesitantly, because he was not a fan of what he was about to do. "I… I'm… I'm sorry I yelled at you. Sometimes I just need to yell, and it doesn't mean I like you any less. All right?"
She nodded again and climbed into his lap for a hug, which he gave her. He always did, because he wanted them just as much. "You need to listen to me, Ada," he told her, never liking that line of thought and wanting to change the subject from that of comforts he'd been denied. "If I tell you to leave, you need to leave. And you should have just told me you needed your finger fixed."
I didn't want to bother you because you were busy, she said, her voice still small. And you don't mind when I stand with you so I was just going to wait.
"Well, bother me next time," Edward said gruffly. "Don't walk around broken. That's dangerous."
She got out of his lap and sat next to him, albeit so closely she may as well have been in his lap still. Upon hearing a commotion he craned his neck around the corner to see Nikola and Alan, the two of them arguing and hitting each other. His gut twisted.
"Boys! Stop that! There will be none of that, do you hear me? Do not hit each other! You're better than that!" His blood pressure had climbed again immediately upon seeing that, and he was sorely tempted to start hitting things himself. What he really needed was a vacation, but he'd had to act fast to fill the vacuum left by the Joker's death and he had had to put in so much work to stake his claim…
They froze for a long moment, then slowly separated. Okay, Nikola said.
We just wanted to tell you we're done, Alan continued.
"Fine. Thank you."
They started to leave when Ada whispered, You have to tell them you're sorry!
"For what?" Edward hissed. "They were the ones roughhousing! They should know better!"
You're scary when you yell.
Edward's sigh was considerably laboured. Now he was getting parenting advice from his children. Could this get any better?
"Fine! Fine. Alan! Nikola. Come here."
They returned and he told them to sit. He took another long breath and said, "I'm… sorry for yelling. But there is to be none of that in front of me. If you really feel the need to hit each other, do it far out of my sight. I don't want to see it. You're smarter than that, both of you. Just talk to each other. That solves a lot more problems than wanton violence does."
They both nodded in agreement. Ada was hanging onto his leg so much he put his arm around her shoulders and just pressed her into him. She was much happier after he did that.
We won't do it again, Nikola told him, and Alan added, Especially not in front of you.
"I'd appreciate that," Edward said. "The two of you finished, correct?" When they nodded he asked for them to get him some quadrille paper and his pencils and they immediately got up to do so.
"Happy now?" he asked Ada, and she nodded and hung onto his waist again.
I like your indoor voice better, she said, and he silently resolved to always keep that in mind. The yelling was going to crop up now and again; try as he might, he couldn't always keep his temper. But towards his children, surely he could at least make a valiant effort? He would. They would not fear him.
When the other two returned with his supplies he had to reach around Ada to take the pencil to the paper, and said, "Now, the mech is almost complete. It does not yet have, however, any offensive capabilities. Which is why we're going to have to add a laser."
A laser! Nikola exclaimed, leaning over the paper.
"A laser," Edward confimed. "A glorious laser, for vaporising the opposition when they fail to submit to my genius, which we all know they will not. It – "
A green laser? asked Alan. Edward laughed, and realised he was feeling much better. Come to think of it, they always did help when he wasn't quite on form.
"Of course! No other colour will do."
Why is it your favourite?
"Well," Edward said reluctantly, understanding Ada's curiosity but not really wanting to remember anything from back then, "when I was a little boy I… had a puzzle. A Rubik's Cube. It was my first one. I solved it for the green side, and it's been my favourite ever since."
That wasn't entirely true. The colour was more to remind him of the joy of that moment, that second when all of the blocks clicked smoothly into place and all he had been able to see was that perfect square of green. A joy he had rarely recaptured since. That one moment he had gotten one over on the Bat, before he'd been punched in the face at least. He had thought he was going to see it again more frequently with Jonathan, and he had, until the accident. Jonathan hadn't had any time for him since. Then again with each of these three, when he'd gotten them to work.
That's a nice story, Ada said.
He nodded vaguely. One of the nicest he had, and it really wasn't saying very much.
"Anyway. Back to – "
"Mr Nygma, we – are you talking to yourself again?"
He rolled his eyes and shook Ada off, turning to face the moron who had walked in to interrupt. "I am obviously talking to the robots."
"Right," the brute said, in no way appearing to have understood that simple fact. "There's a problem with that one section you wanted done yesterday, it's really hard to – "
"Oh, I doubt that," Edward interrupted, standing up. "Fine. I will come and do the work I asked you to do, because you are simply too incompetent. Lead on, functionary."
"My name is Mike," he said in confusion.
"I know what your name is," Edward snapped. "Go. I'll be along." He turned to the robots – the only ones he could depend on – and said, "Alan Turing, while I'm gone I want you to design me the best damn laser apparatus that has ever existed. That ever will exist. Can you do that?"
Of course! he answered, straightening with pride at being given such an important task, and Edward nodded.
"That's what I like to hear. I'll be back."
He had walked only a metre or so before he heard Ada call, Dad! and had to stop and turn around. "What?"
She waved, and he had to smile and wave back.
She was definitely his favourite today.
Author's note
Someone on Tumblr asked me to write something about Programmer Dad. So here it is. His three children prototypes are Nikola Tesla, Alan Turing, and Ada Lovelace. It's called Indoor Voice because I yell a lot at work – not out of anger, I'm just loud – and I get told to use my indoor voice a lot.