Fifth Floor Common Room, Tuesday evening

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

Bruce could be out of his room without feeling the need to find a more private place with the first person he saw. It was a good feeling. A good enough feeling that Bruce was willing to actually risk messing with the television in the common room again. But first? Threats.

"If you act up on me, I will end you," Bruce whispered while kneeling in front of the set. "There's a window right there. I will throw you out of it. You will be destroyed. And then I'll buy a new TV for the floor. I can afford something that will make you look like you're a black and white set. Nobody will miss you. So behave, or you'll force me to prove that I'm serious."

Bruce settled into a seat on the sofa and turned on PBS. It worked just fine. "I'm glad we could come to this arrangement," Bruce said with a bit of a smirk.

Good job badgering the inanimate object into working, Bruce.

[OOC: Much like the writing utensil I use exclusively for writing the third vowel, this post is open.]

Comments

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"I'm not sure you really want to know," Bruce said. "How are you tonight?"

[didntchewgrass.livejournal.com]

"Other than having to take care of a fake baby, I'm rather well," Elphaba admitted. It'd be cliche and incorrect to say she had a new lease on life, but there was a teeny bit more confidence in how she projected herself. "I think I've made my first true friend since coming here, actually."

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"Motherhood tends to bring out the social side from what I understand," Bruce joked.

[didntchewgrass.livejournal.com]

"Yes. Melena is exactly the cause of it," Elphaba agreed with a chuckle. "Even if she a tik-tok abomination to Lurline. And I'm not even religious."

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"There's an anti-robot religion where you come from?" Bruce asked.

[didntchewgrass.livejournal.com]

"No," Elphaba said. "There's Tik-Tokism, of course, though it's more sort of... I don't know how to put it. But Lurline doesn't exactly hate tik-toks, as far as I know. These things just... give me the creeps."

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"If it eases your mind at all, Skywalker wouldn't give you anything dangerous," Bruce asked. "Just annoying."

[didntchewgrass.livejournal.com]

"Oh, I don't think it's dangerous," Elphaba said. "Just... it's like it's too much like a real child, but not enough like a machine."

Sadly that was the closest she could get to saying 'The Uncanny Valley factor'.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"Trust me, it becomes much more like a machine if a monster breaks its neck," Bruce said. "Especially since the neck clicks a lot then. It ruins the illusion."

[didntchewgrass.livejournal.com]

Elphaba raised an eyebrow. "You broke your fake child?"

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"No, a monster did," Bruce said. "They were all over the island, and the baby's mother was a bird."

It was a night for Bruce to say things that sounded insane, yes.

[didntchewgrass.livejournal.com]

"If I'd not seen first hand some of the stranger things on this island, I'd be asking you if you'd hit your head today," Elphaba said. "Did you fail the project?"

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"No, actually," Bruce said. "Skywalker fixed it while I was helping fight off the monsters. I did get a stern warning, though."

[didntchewgrass.livejournal.com]

"If only real children were so easily mended," Elphaba said. She frowned for a moment when she realized how careless those words truly were.

"And have you heeded the very important lesson Master Skywalker is teaching us?"

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

Well, that was an interesting slip.

"I don't have any children of my own. I think it's safe to say I took something from that lesson," Bruce said.

He always used protection.

[didntchewgrass.livejournal.com]

Elphaba chuckled. "That's a very specific way to phrase that, Bruce," she said.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"There are times where specificity is useful," Bruce noted with a smirk.

[didntchewgrass.livejournal.com]

"You rake," Elphaba said with a chuckle. Yes, she was using words from the books she read. "But you're a smart boy, and that's what matters, really." That was her honest appraisal of Bruce. And her bizarre attempt at friend making.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"Thanks. I like to think both of those things are true," Bruce said. "I haven't been disappointed by either yet."

[didntchewgrass.livejournal.com]

"Very confident, too," Elphaba said. "I do hope you're not too confident. Everyone does have their limits, after all."

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"The key is to understand where those limits are," Bruce said. "That's a lesson I've had to be reminded of now and then around here. I'm sure I'm not the only one, though."

[didntchewgrass.livejournal.com]

"Fair enough," Elphaba said. "I don't think I've ever asked where you are from, Bruce. Would you mind... sharing?"

If she sounded a little uncertain, it was because the relaxed sort of congeniality was very new to her.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"No, that's fine. I'm from Gotham City. Lots of crime, rarely in the same state as you make your way through the multiverse," Bruce said. "It's a strange place."

[didntchewgrass.livejournal.com]

"Strange," Elphaba said. "Wait, multiverse? There are other Gotham Cities?" That was a thing she'd not quite been exposed to.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"Some with demons, some with aliens, some in New Jersey," Bruce said. "That's not counting whether it's Gotham in the future or the past, either. It's somewhat bizarre."