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Cliff wishes he could shut himself down again. Like he did before, for years on end. All that mattered was setting up the cars, making sure that everything ran properly. It was the only thing that kept him sane, because, no offense, living with Rita and Larry certainly wasn’t doing that. The Chief had been right. Keeping up a hobby was good. Even when that hobby inevitably reminded you of what had happened to turn you into a monster.
And now Niles was gone. Sucked into a fucking hole in the fucking ground. The only one of the people who’d been swallowed who hadn’t come back, as far as they knew. And there was really nothing that they could do about it for the time being, since Paraguay had been a bust. At least the world wasn’t going to end anymore. At least not for awhile.
So he just focuses on his cars. He has some he doesn’t use, and he works on finding places for them. Parked outside his grocery store or waiting outside his drive-through or set up so the tiny people (he needs more people-The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter painted a few for him, much better than he ever could) can watch the movie that’s always about to play at the drive-in theater. But there’s still some left over. Some that are going to keep collecting dust.
Someone opens his door, just then, and Cliff would have jumped if his body weren’t too heavy for it to happen without extreme amounts of effort. There was a blur of pink and beige and someone-though there was really only one person it could have been, wasn’t it?-crawled under the table that held his landscape, pulling the thick black cloth that covered the bare table down behind them.
Cliff hardly has time to register that before his door is opening again. This time it’s Victor, who for some reason thinks he doesn’t have to knock whenever he wants Cliff’s attention. “Did Baby Doll come in here?” He asks, confirming Cliff’s suspicions. “We’re playing hide-and-seek.”
For a moment, the edges of Cliff’s world start to wrinkle. “No, she’s not here,” he says, imagining Clara giggling in the closet behind him, hands clamped over her own mouth so she won’t give the game away. “I think I heard her run down the hall.”
Victor nods and takes off running in the opposite direction of the room. He’s been surprisingly willing to hang out with Baby Doll. Cliff’s not totally sure how much things have changed out there in the rest of the world, but he’s pretty sure most teenage boys (is Victor even a teenager? Cliff suddenly realizes he’s got no idea how old he is) wouldn’t want to spend a lot of their free time with little girls. And maybe Victor doesn’t, but he sure does put up a good show of having fun.
Cliff closes the door behind him. “He’s gone. You can come out now.”
Baby Doll peeps her head out from under his table, blinking up at him with big eyes. Cliff uneasily remembers what happens the last time she saw him. What she said. What he’d imagined his own daughter saying. How she’d demanded that he leave in that way little kids did where you could tell there would be a tantrum if you didn’t listen up.
This time, though, she scoots out a little more, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his room and chewing her lower lip thoughtfully. “You’re not that scary,” she says, finally. “I thought you were, and then I thought you were just pretending to be scary. But you’re not pretending to be scary and you’re not really scary. You’re just like the Iron Giant.”
“The… What?” He says when he’s done deciphering what she said. She’s little, maybe it’s an imaginary friend? Someone from a kid’s book? A character from a movie he hasn’t seen, since the only movies he’s been able to watch since he got here were ones from Rita Farr’s filmography? If it came out any later than the accident, or slightly before, he’s got no idea it even exists. “Who’s the Iron Giant?”
“He’s the Iron Giant,” she says, like he should obviously know what he’s talking about. Maybe he should. “He’s like Superman.”
Superman he has definitely heard of. It’s hard not to. Everybody’s heard of Superman. And Batman, and Wonder Woman, and the Flash, and Aquaman, and that chick with the wings, and possibly Cyborg, and whoever the hell else is running around saving people in their tights or with their robot parts these days. Some of those guys were even active back when he was really around. The Justice Society or something like that.
Maybe it’s a documentary thing? But why would a little kid care about a superhero documentary? Well, it’s probably more interesting than a regular documentary... “Sorry, kid,” Cliff says when the silence gets too weird and her direct eye contact gets too uncomfortable, “I don’t think I know who you’re talking about.”
Too late, Cliff remembers the sheer joy kids get out of teaching you something they think you don’t know. In two seconds, she’s grabbing onto his hand and giving a valiant effort at dragging him out of his room, game of hide-and-seek forgotten. Something inside of him lets him follow her. “Jane got it for me,” she explains. “It’s in my room. You gotta see-”
Somehow, he ends up on the floor of her room, Baby Doll wrapped in a blanket next to him, letting her show him her movie. It’s animated, which is nice. Animation is familiar. Victor sees them and gives Cliff a thumbs up at one point, so at least he’s not still roaming the mansion looking for her. Cliff can’t even bring himself to wish that he had decided that Cliff needed saving from babysitting duty. He wants to-well, he wants to want to, but he can’t. It just feels so nice to take care of a kid again.
The movie is nice. The animation is beautiful and the story is admittedly very heart-tugging. And he can… Sort of see what Baby Doll was talking about. He tries to avoid looking in mirrors (Larry and Rita feel the same way, or at least Rita does. There aren’t very many mirrors in the manor), but he thinks maybe he does kind of look like the robot. Especially his jaw.
It’s once the movie is over that it happens. He’s staring at a mostly dark screen, not entirely sure how to turn her little player off, and even if he did, he’d be worried about breaking it. He’s been breaking a lot of things lately. And then Baby Doll scoots a little closer to him (it’s not Clara. He knows it’s not. He knows she’s not. But she feels so achingly familiar-) and pats his knee and says, “I like you.”
Not quite sure what else to say, Cliff responds with, “Thank you?”
“Jane does too,” Baby Doll promises. She pats his knee again. It makes a slightly louder sound. Cliff finds himself wondering what her ability is-Jane had said they all had one, hadn’t she? Everyone but her had a superpower, right? “She thinks you’re safe.” She tilts her head back and squints up at him before smiling a little. “I think so too. You’re not that scary, and like Rain Brain says, your voice is nice. You’re just big. But that’s not bad. You’re… Sheltering.”
Cliff suddenly finds himself feeling the very peculiar sensation of a phantom tightness in his throat. It feels wrong to feel it and not be able to register a burning in his eyes or blurry vision. Like he’s only pretending to be feeling emotional. But he’s not pretending, is he? He doesn’t want to be pretending to feel things. He wants to pretend that Baby Doll is just another one of Clara’s friends that he’s supposed to watch. He wants to pretend that things are the way they were before. But he doesn’t want to pretend to have emotions.
Which must mean they’re real, doesn’t it? God, he hopes they’re real. He hopes all of this is real. And that’s new, too, because for so long he hoped that he was going to wake up back in his old body, his real body, and it would have all been a dream. Maybe he still would’ve been on the outs with his wife, maybe Clara would still be upset at both of them for it, but he could fix it. With his eyes on the road this time.
“Thank you,” he gets out. “I’m glad you’re not afraid of me anymore.”
She beams at him. “Me too.”
Cliff thinks he might go crazy if the screaming he can hear from outside doesn’t stop. He’s not worried. That would be ridiculous. Rita had said that Hammerhead was outside “blowing off steam” when he’d asked about it in the first place, but that had been about an hour ago (though it could’ve been longer-Cliff had difficulty with time now that he wasn’t flesh and blood), and she hadn’t come back inside or stopped yelling.
He could go upstairs. Rita gave up trying to watch one of her movies and did exactly that approximately fifteen minutes after he came downstairs, and since she hadn’t come back down to complain that she could still hear it where someone would actually be able to listen to her, presumably she couldn’t hear her up there. But…
But if he went upstairs, Hammerhead would still be outside, screaming. He knew she didn’t really like him the way Jane and Baby Doll did. She was rude and abrasive and she’d punched him that one time, though to be fair, they’d probably punched a lot of people and were rude to literally everyone. They’d also called him a monster. But she could be in trouble, or Jane could be in trouble, and he couldn’t let that happen, could he?
So he goes outside, and finds her still screaming, kicking what looks like large wooden crates up and down the lawn. They’re already splintered to hell and back, and it’s a wonder they’re still recognizable. Cliff doesn’t even know where she could’ve gotten them from. Maybe Flit had gotten them for her…
“What are you staring at?” Hammerhead spits when she notices him watching her. He’s pretty sure their knuckles are bleeding. Maybe she’s not super-invulnerable, just super-strong. (He’d do anything to be able to bleed again.) “Fuck off, tin can.”
“I could hear you screaming from inside,” Cliff says. He wonders, for a second-if anyone on their little team-not a team, group- is strong enough to make him feel something physical again, it’s Hammerhead. “Rita said that you… I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Of course I’m okay.” They kick at the remains of a crate by her feet and it makes a loud crack and snaps in two. She’s breathing heavily, hands clenched tightly into fists. He remembers what they said about existing for a reason. This doesn’t seem very reasonable, but hey-what does he know about any of this stuff? “I’m just running out of fucking wood. And Larry says I can’t touch his trees after last time.”
“Hit me instead.” It comes out before he can stop it. He remembers the last time she punched him. The way he’d been rattled, literally, but hadn’t felt pain. Hadn’t felt the impact, not really. He’d braced for it but nothing had happened. Just a clang and the knowledge that he was done falling, that it was time to get up, that it was time to fight his friend. “I’m a lot tougher than wood-”
The world spins sideways on its axis as she literally tackles him before he can finish his offer, smashing him into the grass as hard as she can. Hammerhead drives their fist into his chest almost immediately, and the metal hardly dents, though it does make a loud sound. She punches him again. Still no feeling, but the sound is louder this time, so he thinks they might have hit harder.
Again, and again, and again, and again, and again, until Cliff doesn’t know anything but the ringing in the ears he doesn’t have anymore.
Finally, she stops, bracing her arms on his chest and lowering their forehead down. He hears her touch it. He can’t feel it. He can’t feel them shaking, either, but he can see it. The tremors running down through her whole body. She’s as small as Jane is. She doesn’t grow like that big one-what’s his name, Sun Daddy?-does. She just seems bigger because she carries themself differently.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Cliff asks. It feels right to ask. Even if she’ll probably refuse.
“Hell no,” Hammerhead snaps. They peer up at him through her arms, teeth bared. He remembers how they screamed in the church. How they’d stared up at the big stained glass window. He wants to give her a hug, but he knows she’d never let him. “Just because you’re Jane’s friend doesn’t mean you’re mine, rust bucket.”
“Okay.” He lets his head fall back onto the grass. “That’s fine.”
Cliff sighs and braces himself against the doorframe. It creaks a little ominously but doesn’t give. He’s pretty sure Niles had to reinforce all of them so they could bear his weight. He must’ve predicted a lot of exasperation. “Now what’s going on?”
The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter looks at him, frowning a little and adjusting her grip on the large paint-stained palette in her hand. “What?”
“This.” He waves his hands, gesturing to the scene before him. Larry’s awkwardly sitting on a stool, usual heavy jacket set off to the side. A small mound of paint bottles sits beside the two of them, along with a big jar full of water, some rags, and a cup full of paint brushes.
“I’m painting,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. To be fair, it kind of is. Of course he can tell that’s what she’s doing. He’s not blind. But there’s no canvas, unless she’s going to… “Rita and Larry thought it might help him feel more in control if he got to pick what was on his bandages.”
“Ah.” He watches her apply a curved line of deep blue paint to Larry’s chest. He doesn’t know much about art terminology, but he remembers when Jane and The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter painted outside the first time he met them. It had looked nice, before the rain had started falling, and even then the colors had still been beautiful. “Well, have fun.”
“I could paint you too, if you want,” she says before he can leave. Larry grips the edge of his stool a little tighter. She applies some more paint, purple this time, before reaching for a slightly lighter shade of blue. “Not today. I have to paint Larry and then Mama Pentecost wants to do some crosswords and Hammerhead has a knitting project she has to get back to. And Flit wants new shoes. But maybe tomorrow?”
“Thanks, but I don’t know.” Cliff shifts a little, metal briefly scraping against metal. There’s a brief flicker of electrical white-blue light inside Larry’s chest, and he freezes for a second. The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it. Larry twitches. “Maybe I could just watch you paint something instead?”
She looks at him for a second, lips pressed together. There’s some pink paint on her cheek. He’s not sure how it got there, he can’t tell if she’s even used the color yet. Cliff fights the urge to lick his thumb and try to wipe it off. For one thing, that seems like an overstep of boundaries, and for another, it’s literally physically impossible. Still, he feels like he should do something. At least tell her that it’s there.
“Cliff, can you leave?” Larry whispers.
“You’ve got some paint on your cheek,” Cliff says.
“I guess we could do that,” The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter says.
Unfortunately, they say all of these things at the same time, and it becomes nothing more than a mixed-up jumble of sounds that aren’t even words anymore. For a minute they all just blink at each other. Or at least Cliff’s pretty sure Larry’s blinking. He can’t exactly tell since he can’t see his eyes. But the thing inside him (he’s pretty sure he’s heard Jane call it “the negative spirit” at least once) is fizzling, and that’s enough to make Cliff want to get out of there.
“Alright, then,” Cliff says awkwardly, taking a step back. The further away he moves, the fainter the shine under Larry’s bandages gets. That’s good. Probably. “I guess I’ll just go. See you two later.”
(the Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter finds him the next day and drags him back to the spot outside where she likes to paint. He doesn’t ask why she was painting Larry in the basement, of all places, and she doesn’t tell. She paints something he hasn’t seen before, this time. A girl with glowing eyes and flaming skin and sparks for hair, hands pressed flat against a windowpane. If he looks closely, he can almost see her winking.)
“You’re so boring, Cliff.” He stumbles sideways and backwards as Flit’s weight suddenly presses down on his shoulder. She’s not that heavy. He lifted a piece of street as a shield before. But it still puts him off balance, and he almost crashes into the wall. Luckily, she’s gone almost as fast as she appeared, landing neatly in front of him instead. “So are Rita and Larry. You’re all so boring.”
“You try being stuck in this hole,” he argues, even if he agrees that their lives right now are pretty mundane, minus the whole “trying to rescue our leader from a guy who’s literally not all there and also was on a 30s supervillain team after we sort-of stopped the world from ending” thing. “You can go pretty much anywhere. If you’re so bored, go break into a movie theater and watch some teens get eaten in a jungle or something.”
“Please don’t advocate for crimes around me,” Victor’s voice drifts out of the next room. According to him, he needs alone time every day to “recalibrate”, whatever that means. Cliff hopes he doesn’t know what that means. “Flit, if you’re bored, do something productive.”
“There’s nothing productive to do!” She throws her arms up. With a soft swish sound, she’s gone, and Cliff hears her voice coming from behind him. “Hammerhead and Black Annis say we shouldn’t go out in case what happened last time happens again ‘cause they’re squares but The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter wants more paint, and Baby Doll wants to play with Cliff’s dumb cars, and Jane wants to watch a real movie, not just one of Rita’s again, and Penny wants to read, and I want to do everything!”
“So do everything,” Cliff suggests. Hopefully Flit’s not going to take that to mean something destructive. But she’s more likely to do that when she’s bored than when she’s got herself set on a mission. He hears Victor lock the door to his guest bedroom next to them.
She’s suddenly in front of him again, and he stops to keep from running into her. “What’s that even supposed to mean?”
“Get new paints from a fancy artstore for The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter and make sure she knows they’re from you so she doesn’t let Rita eat your favorite cereal again,” Cliff says. “Do it fast so Hammerhead can’t get mad at you. None of you can play with my cars until Hammerhead apologizes for breaking one of my buildings, and they’re not dumb, but while you’re getting paint you can probably find a movie all of you can agree on or at least one Jane likes, and then Penny can read when it’s over.”
“But I’ll still be bored,” Flit objects. “I’ve already counted all the red objects in the house twice and I’m halfway through counting grey things but I don’t think Cyborg will let me count all the smaller bits of metal.” She tosses her head a little to push her wild hair out of her face. Cliff imagines pulling his hand through it. He’s sure it’d get stuck on the joints of his fingers, not like it would’ve if they were flesh and blood. “And last time I tried to go in Larry’s room the negative spirit chased me out.”
Cliff sighs. “Why don’t you do all that stuff and then come back and find me, and I’ll have something for you to do that won’t make the robo-teen angry. That way everyone’s happy except maybe Hammerhead, and you won’t have to be bored all day. How’s that sound?”
Flit blows air out between her teeth and rocks on her heels. She’s got bright pink sneakers on instead of the big steel-toed boots Jane and Hammerhead and The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter seem to prefer. Her shirt is looser, too. Cliff thinks she might actually be wearing three shirts, one loose and two tight, but he’s not totally sure. “Fine. But if your idea sucks, I’ll tell you so.”
And then she’s gone again, leaving Cliff alone in the hallway, trying to figure out what will keep her occupied for at least three hours by the time she finds him again.
“Hide me,” Jane hisses, skittering around to stand behind Cliff. He’s big, but he’s not big enough to completely hide her. He stands still anyway, and she presses close behind him. “Rita keeps asking me about weed. Don’t tell her I’m in here.”
Cliff can’t help but laugh at that. “What? Why would she be-”
“It’s a long story and it’s all Larry’s fault. Please don’t ask. Just don’t tell her that I’m here.” She realizes that he’s not really the best shield and ducks behind the couch next to him instead. Again, he’s struck by how… Small she is. He knows he’s taller as a robot than he was as a man-a real man-but even if he were the height he was supposed to be, she’d still be shorter than him.
“...Alright.” He goes back to what he was doing-mainly, sweeping some stray remains of Dry Bachelor that they all missed on their initial mansion deep clean off the floor and out the door, where it’ll be dealt with later whenever he remembers it. “I won’t. Good luck.”
She shoots him a thumbs up over the back of the couch, and he remembers Penny. He sweeps some paper and what looks like a suspiciously large pile of dandruff (Kipling said they were made of dead skin, right? Super gross) toward the door and busies himself trying to arrange the actual papers they need on the little wood desk that looks a little scorched but otherwise fine.
Finally, after he’s put it off long enough and there’s not much he can pretend to be doing anymore outside of mess around with the pens and pencils left out on the desk, Cliff says, “Hey, Jane?”
“Yeah?” She peeps her head over the couch. He’s pretty sure she’s reading a book back there, but how she got it in without or pockets to hide it under he’s got no idea. Maybe she stuck it down her shirt. Maybe she has a big stash of books behind every sofa in the manor just in case she has to hide there so Rita can’t talk to her about weed (for whatever reason).
“Do you think you could do me a favor?” Cliff accidentally breaks the tiny yellow pencil he’s been pretending to try to find a place for. “Aw, shit.”
“Depends what it is.” Jane frowns at him. Her frown is different from Hammerhead’s, he’s noticed. Hammerhead draws their eyebrows closer together than Jane does. More like a scowl than a real frown. And Baby Doll doesn’t really frown, she pouts instead.
“Do you think you could tell Penny I’m sorry for yelling at her?” He accidentally spills the whole cup of little pencils and fumbles around trying to pick them all up, cursing his clumsy fingers. “I don’t think I actually told her, and I think it just made Hammerhead more mad at me.”
There’s a soft ping and he realizes that Jane has just thrown one of the pencils at his head. He picks it up and turns back to look at her. She’s resting her elbows on the back of the couch, chin on her hands. “When you talk to one of us most of us can hear you, unless they’re like Flaming Katy and live deeper underground, or unless they don’t want to or I don’t want them to or something. So… We know. She knows, Cliff.” The corner of her mouth curls up. “She says thank you.”
Cliff hopes that she can tell that if he could, he’d be smiling.