Oil in the Garden

A/N: I started to write a little Big Four Steampunk AU idea. It's too elaborate for me to really work out nowadays, but I still have ideas for little snippets. Like this one! For this, all you need to know is that Jack is a steam-powered robot, who has escaped the constrictions of his clockwork life, but danger waits for him at every corner. If you like a visual reference, look up 'Rabbit' from Steam-Powered Giraffe, because I sure had him in mind as I wrote Robot!Jack.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, but I hope you enjoy!

He is in a garden: that is the word that eluded him before. As the sun becomes bright enough that he can disengage his nochto-luminescient goggles and see the world with its own illumination, he recognizes the place he's never been in: a winding path lined in seashells, flowers blooming brightly and organized in neat beds. Garden. He has never been in a garden before; he would gladly take the opportunity to learn more, but he hears the door to the house opening.

His first directive takes precedence: do not be seen.

He clutches his damaged arm to him and ducks under a bush covered with light colored flowers. He keeps his glass-blue eyes focused on the human who comes out of the house. Will he be Scientist, Police Officer, Man of Power, or...?

But the human is none of those things. This human is female, something he has not had the luxury to examine in person. She wears a light purple dress that leaves her ankles and feet free to run and skip. Her hair - as bright yellow as anything he has seen, ever - is long and loose except for a big bow, which matches her dress. Short dress, loose hair - together they mean child.

He feels the gears inside of him turning and churning, but he suppresses the urge to run up to the child and introduce himself. So what if that is what he was programmed to do from the moment of his creation? One, he is Making His Own Way In the World, and that means ignoring his own programming to find something truer, something more earnest. Two, a girl child, still in the thrall of her parents, is dangerous to him. He can't afford to be found and caught. Not now. Not now.

So, he watches.

The girl has an easel and a board of watercolors under her arm. She spends a moment simply looking out at the world with her lips quirked up at the corners, before proceeding down the steps.

She walks a bit and stops, bending down to pick up one of the seashells lining the path. She puts the structure of calcium carbonate up to her ear, and holds it there awhile.

With it there, her expression changes. The smile she was wearing fades away.

What the devil was she listening to it for, he wonders, if it would only make her not happy?

Then her expression changes again. She looks focused and confused. She puts the shell down carefully and walks forward five paces, before bending down again to -

Oh, no.

There was a dollop of black oil on the path. She reaches out to touch it with a bare hand, then pulls out a white handkerchief. When she daubes the handkerchief in the goo, it stuck.

The fugitive in the bush begins to feel the first stirrings of panic. What should he do now? Should he run? Should he try to scare her off? Uh. Uh. Uh? What would Byron do?

… What Byron would do would probably get him arrested in several counties...

Oh devils. She's coming closer... how was she able to find him so quickly? He'd not heard humans were so...

He'd left behind a trail of oil! Damn his damaged arm, damn it to scrap metal!

He had to get rid of it. Maybe if he disconnects it... on the other hand, he does like this arm very much...

While he deliberates, a large easel shoves the leaves aside. The girl-child stares at him, and then shrieks, falling back. The leaves shield her from sight once more, and he considers making a run for it.

Two, three, four seconds pass, and he darts out of the bush, only to be met by the girl, waiting for him, her oils and canvas discarded and the easel folded up and held out like a sword. She points it at him.

"Who are you?" she asks. "And what are you doing in my garden?"

He declines to answer, trying to make a run for it. What he doesn't know, though, is the layout of the garden. He sprints for the far gate, only to trip, and tumble, and fall into a ha-ha, a sunken reverse-fence.

And he lands on his bad arm.

Wincing as the metal limb bends awkwardly under him, he looks up to see the face of his hunter looming above him, green eyes wide.

"Who are you?" she says again. "Answer, or - or I'll call the police!"

No, no, not the police, not them, anyone but them -

So he blurts out his answer: "I'm Jack. I'm Jack. Just Jack. Don't call them. Please."

She leans a little more over the ha-ha, her expression no longer quite so forbidding. "What are you? Are you a clank?"

"I am an automaton," he answers. "And I am certainly not a clank."

"You're metal, right? Are you hurt?"

He looks up at her, and realizes the name for what he is feeling: fear. He is damaged, unable to simply pull and spring his way out of this dreadful ha-ha. His escape is almost certainly ruined; the fate before him is grim. The only thing he can do now, he realizes, is trust her.

He sighs, a puff of steam leaving his exerted silver lungs. "I am hurt. I need a place to hide."