Story [Robocop: The Series] Ripples and Waves [Mods Picture Challenge]

Title: Ripples and Waves
Fandom: Robocop: The Series
Character: Diana Powers, Charlie Lippincott...
Notes: Written for the Mods Picture Challenge, of which I had #18. Word count... somewhere around 1,600.

~*~*~*~

The techroom at Metro South was, at first walk-through, very dull and boring, she observed as she pushed the doors open to reveal a man in a tan lab coat studying a computer screen. She watched him for a moment as he made minute changes to lines of code, and then cleared her throat to get his attention. It took him a moment to respond, and then he turned to look at her. "Hi. I'm Diana Powers..."

"Oh, right. The extra help that I don't need," he said with a sigh as he stood to greet her. Then he really looked at her and blinked. "You're fairly well-dressed for a tech, Miss Powers."

She stared at him. "I'm not a tech. I'm an administrative assistant. And you are...?"

He sighed and held out his hand, which she shook haltingly. "Charlie Lippincott. And I don't need an administrative assistant."

"You don't?"

"No."

Diana looked at the computer terminal he'd been working at. "I could help you look through the lines of code for errors, too."

"You can?"

She smiled, nodded. "I minored in computer linguistics."

Now Charlie smiled and beckoned her further into the room, and motioned to something that had been out of sight before. Diana followed him, and then gasped at the cyborg sitting there with his helmet off, eyes closed. "The lines of code are his."

"Is it safe to approach him?"

"Carefully. If he starts moving, back away." She turned and looked at him in confusion. "Sleep cycles can be touch and go. Nightmares... his strength of four-hundred foot-pounds?"

"Oh." Carefully, gingerly, she approached the cyborg and studied him. The armor looked sturdy, but with the helmet off... he looked vulnerable. For an absurd moment, she pictured him with hair and blinked in recognition... one of the police officers killed during that crime wave a few years back. But... "Does he know?"

"I'm sorry?"

Slowly, Diana turned to look at Charlie, then glanced at the still-sleeping cyborg. "Does he know?"

"About...?"

"The fact that he died during a crime wave? I remember hearing about it, all the way from Ann Arbor."

Charlie frowned at her, gave the barest of nods. "Safe to say he knows at least part of it. After all, he caught them."

"I... oh." She glanced at the cyborg again. "How...?"

"I never ask what he does and doesn't remember. Some things are just too hard to talk about. Be here a while and he gives hints... and then there are the nightmares." A sudden whirring of servos caught their attention and Charlie drew her further away. "Like now."

She sorted through the jumble of her thoughts, then took a deep and calming breath. She'd known precious little about the world before entering the workforce straight from graduating university, learned a lot while working in the so-called OCP typing pool, but this... "About those lines of code?" This was another matter entirely. How does a person die but not really die? It didn't make any sense. But then... the streets of Detroit being patrolled by a cyborg who was formerly a police officer that had been killed by a drug lord... that was never going to make any sense. Not at all.

Charlie led her to the computer terminal and they sat down together. "If you really want to..."

"I do."

And then he was explaining what each part of the lines of code did and she was asking questions and managed to accept that the world had been turned on it's ear inside of a minute.

~*~*~*~*~

It had been an interesting month of working with Charlie and on Robo's lines of code and interacting with the men and women of Metro South when Diana got noticed that she was being reassigned again. She didn't like it, and Charlie didn't either as he stared at the printout that Sargeant Parks had handed to her when she'd arrived at the precinct that morning. She'd had just enough time to be flabbergasted and then annoyed his handling of a little girl who obviously just wanted to be listened to and paid attention to that she didn't get to voice her protests to him. "It's not fair."

"No," Charlie said, his voice carrying the disappointment that she also felt. "It's not."

She glanced at the empty chair that belonged to their charge. "I don't even get to say goodbye to him."

"That's what you're upset about? Saying goodbye to Robo?"

She shook her head and smiled at Charlie. "No. Not just that." She handed him an envelope. "My contact information. Call me later?" Then she kissed him, and smiled again into Charlie's shocked face. "What? It's been one of the best months of my life. And I think..."

Charlie blinked at her. "I think so, too."

"So call me and we'll set up a date," she told him. "Go dancing?"

"I would love to," Charlie answered and then watched as she walked out the door. Was it too much to hope she'd end up back here at Metro South on another assignment?

~*~*~*~*~

Three weeks later and she was dead, the very unlucky victim number twelve or thirteen of the Dogtown Rippers... who just happened to be the Dogtown Boys (a street gang), and her new (and now former) employer Chip Chaykin, and Doctor Mallardo. They'd all been caught, Robo had been down for the count and then she'd fixed him after Charlie and a bunch of techs had also fixed him... and she was trying to piece together how exactly he'd taken a blast to the chest that strong, until she 'read' all the reports. A cobra assault rifle cannon?

Which... brought her back to the immediate problem of Charlie. Before everything had gone crazy, they'd had a date scheduled for tomorrow. How was she supposed to go on a date like this?

"Diana?"

The voice made her look up to find him standing there, staring her, sitting in the flux stream. "Oh. Hi."

He pulled up a chair and sat down. "Long story?"

She smiled. Only Charlie! "Long and weird... Did you know finding errors in paperwork can lead to being killed?"

Charlie blinked in surprise. "Really?"

"I have the worst timing."

He chuckled, despite himself. "You do?"

"What are you doing up here?"

He paused and nodded toward the door, and she looked to find Robo standing there, watching them. "He thought I might want to look at the public works systems, see if anything needed to be fixed after the mess with Doctor Mallardo. He didn't mention you."

She whirled out of the flux stream and marched up to Robo and stared him right in the visor. "That was mean, Alex!"

Robo's lips seemed to quirk. "You would have wanted him to know. Eventually."

"I was still working on how to explain it!" She put her hands on her hips in a huff, then smiled. "Thank you." When the cyborg answered her with silence, she turned around and looked at Charlie. "So..."

"We'll work something out," Charlie told her gently. "I guess it won't be dinner?"

She sighed. "Or even dancing. Can a computer date?"

He frowned at her. "You're more than that."

"So far this week, my boss tried to fire me only for the Chairman to admonish him into better behavior, and then I died..." She turned and looked at Robo again. "And I think I know how you feel, or at least have a good idea. And I'm confused. Very."

"Then that's what we'll do," Charlie said into the silence that followed. "Just like your first day at Metro South."

She whirled herself back into the Flux stream and looked at him. "Huh?"

"Conquer the confusion?"

"Oh." She considered him for a moment before nodding. "We could do that. What do you suggest?"

"Show me the lines of code affected by the virus?"

She did, and Robo quietly, and almost unnoticed but for the whirring of servos, slipped out the door and left them to it. There was much she wanted to say to the cyborg, but it could wait for a better time. For now, she was going to enjoy her not-quite-a-date with her boyfriend.

~*~*~*~*~

Almost a year to the day that she'd walked into the tech room at Metro South, and they were standing on a simulated beach, watching the waves crash ashore. It wasn't perfect, and apparently Gadget made fun of him every time she found Charlie using the VR gear to enter the system, but Diana was happy to have him here where she could touch him. "You've got ten minutes," she told him, still refusing to leave his embrace. "I think."

Charlie chuckled, and then broke the embrace and got down on one knee. "This isn't conventional by any means, but... will you marry me?"

For a very long moment, she stared at him, not quite believing those words had come out of his mouth. "I'm sorry? What?"

"Marry me?"

So it wasn't her imagination. "Charlie!"

"What?"

"I'm mostly dead!"

"So?"

"Ninety-nine percent of the time, I can't even touch you!"

"What does that have to do with anything?" He waited while she stared down at him, stunned.

She took a deep unneeded breath and opened her mouth to protest further, that the idea was ridiculous, that it could never work, and the refusal died on her lips. He didn't care about the details. "Yes."

Then he stood and gave her a kiss that would have curled her toes if she'd still had toes. The rest could wait. Right now, it was just them, two people on a beach, real or not.


(...here endeth the tale, though the story goes on...)

 

That made me tear up! But I loved the end -- so sweet! Charlie sounds like an amazing guy.

 

Fantastic, Daena. You encapsulated their relationship wonderfully with your words.

 

NYCitygurl: Thank you, Nat.

Mira_Jade: There's two AU's at play here with them... this one, where they met before the badness, and the other one where Charlie WASN'T napping at the wrong time and missed the surprise that is Diana saving everybody when she can't save herself. And they both deserve a little happiness. Totally. Glad you enjoyed it, Mira. Thank you.

Nyota's Heart: Hi! Thank you!


And... Re: the unexpected three-way tie that resulted in colors. I've had colors before, but never for fic-writing. Wow... (Also: Congrats to my co-winners!)