The Address

He was ten and was staring, head bowed, at his homework which he had spread over the dining room table after he'd gotten home from school. He hadn't actually been doing it. He'd actually been watching TV in the living room, volume low so he could keep an ear out for his father's car pulling into the driveway. That was when he had returned the TV to the channel and volume it had been at when he had turned it on and jumped into his chair at the dining table. His pencil was in his hand but he hadn't written anything. He listened to his father come in and hang up his things and move into the living room. He had to look over his glasses to see that his father was filing through the mail, most of which he tossed on top of the table. The last thing in his hand looked like some sort of magazine which he flipped through for a minute and then sighed and bent down to put it under the table.

He tried to pretend he didn't notice his father stopping next to him on his way upstairs. He couldn't help himself. He looked up.

His father wasn't looking at him at all. He was looking at the homework. It was his French homework and French homework from an English school was much too easy for him, but his father didn't know that. Did he?

His father looked at him, finally, and Edward felt the need to say something but he didn't know what. He had carefully come up with a whole story about how he really had been here doing his homework all night but his father wasn't asking. In fact, he was just telling Edward not to stay up too late and going up the stairs. He'd gotten away with it and he hadn't even had to say anything. He should have felt really good about that but instead he just felt… bad.

What on earth had he felt bad for?

He knew that you knew that he knew you were lying and he let you get away with it. Probably couldn't be bothered to deal with such an obvious setup. Even if he had had the IQ of a river rock he would have had a hard time believing you didn't know the words for your bedroom furniture.

"Let me get away with it?" He stepped around a large pile of garbage bags that appeared to have been parked on the curb for at least two weeks. "He never let me get away with anything."

That's how you choose to remember it, yes.

"'Ta vérité n'est pas toujours correcte,'" he droned. "I know. My father was really a saint and I made it all up. If only those therapists who declared me beyond help could see me now!"

No need to be so hyperbolic.

"I would simply like to know what the point of this is."

Let's put it this way. What would you do if Ada lied to you?

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to the verbal ire of someone using it in the opposite direction. He ignored them. It was obvious he was ruminating. Honestly, they should have expected him to stop. "Why would she lie to me?"

Because she knows if she makes you angry, you're going to yell at her.

"So I would…" Wait. What would he do? What was he supposed to do? It wasn't as though he could discipline her in any meaningful way, given she was a robot. She didn't need to be occupied in the same way as a human child. He could leave her alone for hours –

- or weeks –

- on end without any need for him to provide her with… anything. She didn't need him at all. She would exist in perpetuity just fine if he never found her. In fact, if he did find some way to punish her for misbehaving, she could simply choose to leave and never return and he wouldn't be able to do a damn thing about it.

"Well, I wouldn't hit her," he protested. He found he needed to concentrate on his breaths in order for them to be taken calmly.

You don't know that.

"Of course I – "

You almost hit Alan and he didn't even do anything wrong.

His arms, which he had raised in emphasis only a moment ago, were drawn downwards as though suddenly weighted.

It goes without saying that your father never should have laid a hand on you. But you're equally unhappy with the times he let you get away with it. Not only that, but you have no idea what you would do if your own children did the same things you once did.

Alan had only lied to him once. And he had felt so bad about betraying Edward's trust that he had offered up the truth of his own volition.

You never told your father the truth. You always doubled down on the lie.

"And what? That was reason enough to beat me?"

Of course not. Probably.

"Probably?"

Alan once told you, 'All I am I learned from you'. You know that your father once protected you from your mother. Perhaps at some point he simply gave up and into the only effective form of parenting he knew.

… it was possible. He barely knew anything about his mother, let alone his father's father. Nothing had ever been told to him and he had emphatically put that part of his life out of his mind when he had left Canada. He was having a hard time imagining anyone laying a hand on his father and getting away with it, but he also had a hard time imagining his father displaying any signs of intelligence and his vision under fear toxin had implied that he had in fact done so at some point.

You also have that photo of him at the University of Toronto.

"I'm delighted my father, of all people, is getting a redemption arc," he said, shaking his head and continuing on down the street. "And here I thought I was finally meeting the person whom Selina was willing to provide me an address for despite my apparent insistence on victimising myself at everyone else's expense."

Is pretending your father was worse than he was not victimising yourself? Be honest. For once. How much of what you are can you blame on the things you choose to remember?

He stared up at the crumbling brick façade of his destination. He wanted to protest but the memory was playing in his mind's eye again. The focus had inexplicably shifted. His father was filing through the bills he had to work twelve-hour evening shifts to be able to cover. The magazine was one of the aerospace journals he did not have the time nor the mental bandwidth to read, though he maintained his subscriptions in the hopes they would both come to him some day. And when he entered the dining room on his way upstairs he found his son at the table, hiding something he was far too tired to begin getting into right now. And what was the point, really. What was the point in trying to do anything about a son who did not seem interested in trying himself. Just pretend you fell for it and take a shower and go to bed. Tomorrow will be more of the same but at least today will be over.

What would you have done, Eddie?

"I wouldn't have abused them."

Of course not. You would have had to have spent time with them to get to the point you would have been at risk of doing that. You had them for all of six months, most of which you spent foisting them off on each other so you could spend seventeen hours a day working, and then what? You got two of them killed and the third you got rid of so you could focus on yourself. Your dad is father of the year compared to you. You don't get bonus points for neglecting them instead of hitting them.

"I can't do this right now!" he shouted at the filthy grey brick in front of him, barely preventing himself from slamming his curled fist against it.

Of course you can't. Your father, for all the mistakes he made, put his life on hold for you. You can't even give your own kids five minutes of your thoughts. What does that make you, Eddie? What does that make you?

He didn't know. He didn't have time to think about it anyway. He was busy. Ada, wherever she was, was fine. Of course she was fine.

"Where are you going?"

I'm going home! I'm going to go now so you can try extra hard to help Jonathan get better!

"You're… you're leaving?"

Yes. Help Jonathan get better fast so you can come get me, okay?

I love you, Dad! I'll see you soon!

There had been no home for her to go to.

"I can't do this right now," he repeated to himself in a low voice, drawing the narrowed, suspicious eyes of a passer-by, and he resisted the urge to reprimand her for being rude. Gotham having such a large population was excellent when one was attempting to pull off grand scale machinations, but not so much when one was attempting to achieve something that required less attention. No matter the time of day or night, there was always someone around to bear witness.

The address he had arrived at was actually one he recognised, now that he had his thoughts back on track. He had intended to construct one of his obstacle courses below this abandoned building but had run into a major issue with a fear toxin leak that had forced him to move his plans elsewhere. It was unlikely the leak still persisted, so it was entirely possible someone had taken up residence there. He failed to understand why he would be interested in talking to this person, but he was already here. Sort of. His entrance to the space was actually about three blocks away. This habit made his facilities a little more difficult to locate should anyone be foolish enough to attempt to spy on him.

The staircase and the tunnel beyond were certainly much more well-travelled than he had expected them to be. The dirt was well tamped, as though whomever was down here traversed the space often. Or perhaps there was a hidden encampment of homeless down here. There were certainly worse spaces in Gotham to be.

The ceiling was still lined with the construction lights he had left strung up there, though several of them were broken. This left the way ahead both marked and hidden, which made him uneasy. There were seven dark spots and six lit ones. That made thirteen altogether and he couldn't decide whether that was good or bad.

It's neither.

It had been day four so he had failed to take the sertraline. That made it bad. Didn't it?

That's the exact opposite of what you should be thinking.

He ignored that thought and kept walking. Ahead of him the tunnel turned left and the corner, of course, was dark. There was probably a man with a giant axe pressed against the wall he couldn't see, lying in wait. He hadn't brought a weapon of his own because if he got collared for absolutely anything he could kiss Sabrina goodbye. Not literally. Although that would be nice.

There was nothing waiting beyond the corner for him. Not immediately beyond the corner, anyway. At the end of this continuation of the hallway was something he had expected never to see again:

Riddlerbots.

They were some distance away from where he was standing, so he was unable to determine how many of them, exactly, there were. He hadn't searched the remains of the factory after Selina had destroyed it. Alan hadn't mentioned any other survivors.

He was probably too busy trying to take care of Ada and retrieving the shattered pieces of his brother. Oh, and attempting to determine where his father had gone because everything he knew had just been destroyed and he didn't know what to do next. Because you were in jail, remember? You put aside your responsibilities as a father because you were too busy –

"Okay!" He put up his hands in surrender. "I get it. Can I finish finding whoever it is Selina sent me here to find?"

Your lifestyle is catching up with you. You're lucky it's only started happening now.

"I'm certainly feeling fortunate." As he neared the terminus of the tunnel he was able to identify some of the robots which had gathered here. They were all of them named, of course, but the ones of real importance were the ranking bots. Most of these were drones and wouldn't be able to tell him anything. That meant there must be a supervisor-class here somewhere. One that had been to enough locations that they would be able to direct the robots who weren't able to direct themselves. One who would have been here before. There was only one machine who fit that requirement, and as he scanned the room in front of him he spotted her sitting in one of the corners opposite atop a pile of construction detritus that she must have had the other bots gather there for her:

"Hedy!" he called out, and she, the smallest of his robots, turned her head to look at him. She jolted noticeably in recognition and tugged on the arm of a bot that was currently beyond his plane of vision. He already knew it was Alexander. The two of them could hardly have stayed closer together if he had built them as one unit. He met them close to the centre of the underground chamber, which was somewhat lit with more unevenly spaced halogens. Hedy looked as he remembered but Alexander was almost beyond worse for wear. One of his knees had fused into uselessness and he now only had one large arm with which to transport the legless Hedy. His left eye had gone dark and the other blinked in and out of operation in no discernable pattern. Several pieces of his chassis were loosely attached or missing entirely. He was, as always, eerily quiet for a machine of his size. Wider but not taller than Nikola, Alexander was as part of a select few of larger bots as Hedy was of smaller ones.

I've been making sure they behaved while you were gone, said Hedy, in her usual authoritative way. It wasn't easy to get some of them here. I have a list of the ones who aren't good at following instructions.

Hedy never had quite grasped that she was only in charge of Alexander and nobody else. "They aren't programmed to take instruction from you," he said anyway.

Someone had to do it, Hedy said, tilting her head upward in a manner which suggested she considered herself to have taken this authority with great reluctance. He knew her better than that, though. She had absolutely leapt at the chance to be the boss, even if her underlings were a horde of mindless automatons. Instead of mentioning that, however, he cast a look around the room and asked,

"How many are there, approximately?"

Twenty-two, answered Hedy, but only about fourteen are in any real working condition. A lot of the other ones are too busted up to be useful.

Good lord. She had really let her perceived power go to her head. "I'll be the judge of that," he said with what he hoped was a suitable amount of authority so that she would be reminded of who the true boss was, and in answer she shrank into herself a little.

Of course, she said, most of the haughtiness gone from her tone, I just… well, Nugget is here and you weren't using him even before –

"You brought Nugget?" Sure enough, the heavily rusted robot was parked in a dark corner facing the wall. That was probably the exact position he had been placed in when he had originally been brought here.

Everyone I could find! said Hedy. The factory is gone and I thought you would want to repair the stronger robots with the weaker ones!

It was a logical idea, but… still a bit odd that she seemed to find nothing out of the ordinary with cannibalising her own kind for spare parts. Or perhaps her real motive was getting Alexander back in fighting shape. He was a lot slower now that he had to shuffle along with his ruined leg. "Good work," he said. "But consolidating the remaining robots likely won't be necessary. Your intended task has been… eliminated."

Eliminated? Hedy asked, but before he could even begin to decide if he needed to explain himself there came a clatter of mechanical feet behind him. He didn't even manage to turn in their general direction before their owner had firmly clamped themselves to his shins.

Dad! You're here!

No. No! Not now! Not yet!

I missed you so much! Ada said, and if he hadn't known something was horribly wrong from his previous thought, his subsequent one broadcast it loud and clear:

I didn't miss you at all.

The room felt smaller than he had previously thought it was, the heavy tang of rust in the stale air suddenly nearly physical in his nose and throat. There was no place here he could escape Ada, so he would have to leave. He freed his legs from her grasp and made his way back up the tunnel with the briskest stride he could muster. He still felt suffocated even when he was back in the early morning air. The surrounding buildings and their spaces between were shadowed with a sinister shade of blue-black and for a moment he truly believed the entire universe was conspiring against him. Why else would Selina have given him Ada's address without telling him she was there?! That wasn't fair!

Do you mean to say that if you'd known she was here you would have avoided coming?

He almost burnt his thumb lighting a cigarette. "I would have waited for a more opportune time!"

What's opportune? asked Ada, because she had of course followed him.

That's what people who care about others do. They want to spend time with them. Especially when they haven't seen the person they care about in months.

"It's… a better time."

A more convenient time. To see your daughter again.

He was almost halfway through the cigarette already. His back was pressed hard to the cold, rough brick behind him but the sensation of it cutting into his shoulders barely registered over the electricity coursing through his body. None of his future plans involved Ada. How did they even work with Ada around? She wasn't going to understand any of what he needed to do. All she would understand was that she wanted him to play with her. But he couldn't do that right now! He had relationships to repair and vigilantes to catch and a trial to get through! How was he going to accomplish any of it with a clingy little robot underfoot?

Selina said you were coming soon, Ada said, stooping down to pick up a rock which she then flung as hard as she could into the street. It bounced off the road and disappeared into a sewer grate. She comes and sees me sometimes. She said you were really busy and stuff but I said for her to tell you where I was so you could come and get me as soon as Jonathan was better. She said Jonathan and you weren't even talking anymore and I got a little scared everything got messed up but I just waited as patient as I could. I was very patient, Dad. Hedy was trying to tell me you weren't gonna come because she's evil and I wanted to punch her real bad but I just went in my house I made because you said not to fight with her.

Why wouldn't she just shut up? Why did she have to do this now?

As soon as Alan comes we can go to our new home, right?

"Alan's not coming," he spat. It was hard to put the cigarette into his mouth because his hand was shaking. Ada stilled in front of him.

He's not?

"No."

Why not?

"Because he's dead." Damn Selina for doing this to him. Had she really had to spring Ada on him without warning? "He was dead before we left the toy store."

But… but you said he was coming.

"I lied."

The ensuing silence seemed to raise the volume of the ringing in his ears. He sat down, knees raised, against the building in the hopes that the discomfort would distract him. It didn't. He almost felt as though he weren't actually inside of his body. He merely existed somewhere slightly to the left. This wasn't how any of this was supposed to go. This wasn't what he had planned. Everything was scattering in front of him even as he tried to gather it all into something he could make use of. He had found his daughter and all he wanted was for her to disappear and welcome him back when it was more convenient. He'd somehow catapulted himself past the low bar his father had set and gotten all the way to the rock bottom of deadbeat dad. He couldn't handle this right now. He couldn't.

Ada's voice was very small. Why would you lie to me, Dad?

Now what the fuck was he supposed to say to that?

He finished the cigarette and tossed it into the road. It came to a stop next to a manhole cover. It was raised, about two inches higher than the road, and had probably claimed many an undercarriage. This city had so much money coming into it from so many sources and yet it still looked like –

I think I don't want to love you anymore, Ada said.

I understand.

He heard her leave. She was louder than she had been when he had seen her last. She needed maintenance but Alan had been the only other person who knew how to do it. He should probably go after her and do something about it. Do something about what he had just said. He felt as though he had been cemented in place. Merely blinking took far too much effort.

Don't bother. She's better off with them. Admit it. You never really wanted to be a father in the first place.

"Of course I –"

No. You didn't. Your desire to be a father, just like everything else, was always about your own ego. About proving to your father you could do what he had but better. Surely you haven't forgotten what you said the first time your son called you Dad.

"You don't have to call me that."

Men around the world are right now dreaming of the day they hear their child call them Dad. Some of them are mourning the fact they will never hear it. Your son had to convince you to be his father. Your children fell, fully developed, into your lap and you still couldn't manage to take care of them. What was the first thing Ada said to you, Eddie?

I'm sorry, Dad.

His forehead was pressed against his knees but he barely felt it. There was actually a very simple solution for all of this: waking up. He was asleep. He had to be. There was simply no way he had gotten himself into a disaster of these obscene proportions. The insomnia made it difficult to tell when he had slept and for how long. He was obviously at home right now in his chair. He would wake up any minute now.

This is sad, even for you.

"What am I supposed to do?" It was probably a good thing his voice was muffled by his pants. Anyone walking by would probably mistake him for a ranting derelict, if they hadn't already. "She no longer wants anything to do with me. She is better off with them."

You're her father. It's part of the job to fix it when you wrong her. And it's part of the job to accept it if she decides you can't fix it.

"Great." It was hard to stand up. He was so tired his entire body seemed to have become measurably denser. The purpling sky made his eyes ache. He would go home and try to get some sleep. Lack thereof was making him nauseous again.

And you need to think long and hard about whether or not you actually want to be Ada's father. Selina will take her if you can't be bothered to put in the effort.

Maybe he should leave her with Selina anyway. She'd been so much better for her than he had. She'd been taking care of her all this time he hadn't even been trying to locate her. Selina had probably been delighted to find her while he… he had been disappointed. Had wanted her to shut up and go away. He couldn't even be bothered to kneel down and return her hug. His first thought hadn't been joy that he had found his daughter. It had been dread that she was going to get in the way.

If you do that you will lose both Selina and Ada. Is that what you want?

"No," he said, and both the immediacy and the lack of deliberation of even that one word gave him a modicum of relief. He wanted them in his life for selfish reasons, but what did that matter as long as it meant he did better?

In that case, you have a lot of work ahead of you.

"There's something I know how to do," he muttered, which nearly got him into an argument with a nearby woman waiting to cross the street.

/

Author's note

Been a while since the last update but in my defense Elden Ring is a really long game and it's even longer when you're gathering all the things. My biweekly hours in Elden Ring were higher than the hours on my paycheques and that's no joke. On the bright side, my virtual enemies can now cower in fear at the sight of my octopus hat, mushroom shirt, and golden underwear.

(Actually at the end I was dressing my mans in the Old Sorcerer's Legwraps and Azur's Manchettes and sometimes Goldmask's Rags. Had to show off the cool burns he got from the Three Fingers.)

so happens that ten-year-olds in Ontario do not actually learn the words for their bedroom furniture (I was going off googling teacher resources and even if my school taught French I was pulled from school in grade four) please feel free to correct me with something fitting.