SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

[goneawaymod]

SHEET CAKE MEETUP

“Who the fuck is Linda?”

The question pops up every few minutes, a little tack of punctuation above the offensively-inoffensive music being piped in*. The room the hires have been ushered into is clearly just a conference room, with a layout that requires either sitting at awkwardly-spaced intervals around a giant table or milling and scooting around the smaller folding table, where the “big surprise” the corporate officers promised them is on display: a sheet cake.

A sheet cake that that still bears HAPPY BIRTH DAY LINDA in blue icing across the top, although someone has, at least, gone to the effort of writing welcome, to the team new hires in Sharpie on a purple flashcard and used a Popsicle stick and tape to plant it like a dismal flag right in the middle of Linda’s “DAY”. Dedication aside, the cake itself looks pretty suspect too, not as if it were poisoned but more like if it were salvaged. The cake part looks dry, and the frosting seems strangely...sweaty. No one’s eating yet, and yet there’s already a piece missing.

However, there’s no lack of enthusiasm around the room. A projector hooked up to a laptop casts an off-center, warped rectangle of WELCOME TO, THE BEST TEAM. NEW HIRES!! onto a wall. The many paper plates have a festive print, although they all seem to be Christmas themed. The table cloth looks as if it came from both 4th of July and potentially a war, given the scuffs and tears. The shot-glass sized paper cups are inadequate to hold a satisfying amount of sparkling cider, but at least they don’t leak. There are many more plastic knives than forks, which could prompt some hires to give in to their animal instincts and just use their hands, or perhaps start a barter economy for the better utensils.

“I’m so jealous,” a corporate employee keeps saying as she ushers hires into the room. “We haven’t had a good party in this office since Kelly’s baby shower, and that little girl practically has teeth now!”

(An eagle-eyed hire may suspect that the box of donuts next to the sheet cake might have come from said baby shower, on account of the fact that the few stale hunks of donut remaining have Pepto-Bismol pink strawberry icing and that there’s still the paper envelope for a gift card with ITS A GIRL written on it.)

Most of corporate slips out after the hires get set up - this is clearly an event for the hires to do some “team building” and work on “rapport” in addition to filling their bellies with cake that tastes remarkably like sand. There’s a karaoke machine in the corner, but hires are instructed not to touch it because, as an employee points out, last year’s Christmas party demonstrated that karaoke is the worst thing in the entire world for morale (“in any world! even before this one got eaten away by the bombs!”).

There’s an additional big glass jar filled with scraps of paper, which the hires are informed are filled with prompts for ice breakers and activities in case the party needs a pick-me-up. Any hire who investigates will find that most of the ice breaker activities start with three benign questions (“what’s your name?” “where are you from?” “what’s your favorite animal?”) and somehow, always a fourth question that feels a little invasive (“what are your feelings on unions?” “under what circumstances would you kill an innocent person?” “do you use the same passwords for all your accounts?”).

“Please enjoy yourselves and all the desserts Jorgmund has generously supplied you with,” one of the employees says on her way out, “and don’t worry about making a mess, janitorial gets paid too much to sit around as is.”

*All music that can be summarized as ’grocerycore’.

Comments

[stickypete]

Oh, it's sharing time.

There's a lot to unpack there. The 'war machine' thing is breezed over but there's a hard glint in Peter's eyes after Cayde says it because that sounds...ugly. Very ugly. A waste of good science as far as Peter is concerned, because something as miraculous as downloading someone's brain to a robot should be treated as a miracle. An extension of life after a traumatic accident or metastatic cancer, bodies for explorers of alien planets, etc etc.

But war machines, people getting downloaded into them - was it willing?

Peter thinks about how this is a very vulnerable place for Cayde to be in. And he thinks about how being so far from the past makes it more vulnerable, makes it seem like this repair is more of An Ordeal, a massive undertaking.

So he works harder at being reassuring because he doesn't want him to feel vulnerable, he doesn't want him to see it as an ordeal, he doesn't want him to hesitate for a second if he ever needs the tiniest thing fixed because he deserves to go out against whatever dangers they're going to face at full capacity - especially since it sounds like he lost his magical video game life "continue game" button robot buddy. He isn't sure if he lost her for good or not, but it's definitely a disadvantage.

He finds the right thing to say.

He scoots a chair over with his foot, high enough Peter can stay in Cayde's eye line even as he's laying down, so they can just talk. And plops into it.

"You know, my name isn't actually Ben? My name's Peter. And Reilly's not really my last name. Do you wanna know why I go by a fake name in this place?"

He huffs out a little breath.

"It's because there are people in my world who do really bad things. And a lot of them use technology so far past what the rest of the world has that nobody else can stop them. It takes someone who's superhuman and as smart as them - or smarter than them - to take them down."

He goes on, "And I am smarter than a lot of them. Most of them. I created an industrial strength adhesive, stronger than steel, with a chemistry set in my room. When I was sixteen."

He shakes his head. "I'm not trying to toot my own horn. I just mean that I'm so used to fighting, or co-opting, or defusing advanced technology that I have to wear a mask when I fight or the very powerful people using it could go after my ex-wife. I am, in fact, so paranoid about it that I'm going by a fake name here so if one of my enemies shows up and sees me use my powers, they'll only have a generic face and a false identity if they ever go back home."

He throws up his hands.

"And the bombs, oy vey. Do you know how many weird, superscience antimatter weapons, or nuclear fusion bombs, or dimensional vortex dvices I've defused? I sure don't. I've lost count."

His expression softens. "What I'm trying to say is you're in good hands. And it would be nice, for once, to work with really cool tech in a way that does more than just prevent hurt or defuse an explosion. I work with whatever makes you tick? I help a guy that apparently guards a post-apocalyptic version of humanity." He pokes his arm. "Which means if this turns out not to be a one time thing, that's okay. I don't want you to think this is some intense burden far beyond my feeble, analog, caveman brain that would be hard to duplicate. If it happens again, it happens again. It's a challenge, but not that hard, and it's definitely not something you'll ever owe me for."

He makes a "cut it out" gesture with both hands.

"So no deals. Try to keep yourself in good shape for your own sake, but don't ever worry about it on my account. You need to come to someone for something as simple as a few dings from a robot fender bender, I'm here."

[cachedout]

"Do you wanna know why I go by a fake name in this place?"

"Sure," Cayde replies. And he listens. The part of Cayde that knows a thing or three about being a ruthless bastard recognizes what he's being given here: collateral. This doesn't quite even the vulnerability scales, but it does make the part of Cayde's survival instinct that likes knowing where to stab feel a bit better about all this.

But, so does the rest of it. For whatever it's worth in the grand scheme of things, Cayde just likes this guy. He's got moxie. He was willing to swan in with those corporate goons to help out a mostly-stranger. There are far worse ways Cayde could feel right now about having somebody he just met this morning trying to fix his screwed up knee.

"Alright, Peter," he says. He uses that offered name. "If you think your little dinosaur hands have enough fingers to be up to the task, I'll take that leap of faith with you."

He's still planning to avoid this as much as possible. It's a mixture of hating debts and wounded pride more than a lack of faith, but Peter here strikes him as the kind of frustratingly do-good guy that wouldn't like that answer. Better to just keep it on the sly. Accept what's offered, be gracious, settle the debt, slide away and not incur anymore. Foolproof.

"You need me to do anything?" he asks as these thoughts slide casually into place.

[stickypete]

("It's a leap of faith. That's all it is, Miles. A leap of faith.")

The corner of Peter's mouth quirks in a smile at this guy unknowingly speaking the same language.

"Well first of all, try to relax the leg. It's instinct to clench muscles up around an injury when you're in pain, but I need to be able to start loosening this muscle fiber enough to see what's going on in there and figure out what passes for your peripheral nerves. I'll need to disable those for everything else I need to do."

He arranges the edge of the sheet to only show off the bare minimum he needs to see, keeping Cayde all cozy and carefully tucked in as much as he can with only his leg sticking.

"Secondly, no tough guy stuff. If something hurts, I need to know. If it hurts really bad, I really need to know. We can't afford to break anything worse than its broken, in case you've got something irreplaceable in there."

He gets out some small pliers. He wants to get those metal fragments out first so any movement as he starts working won't be, you know, agony.

"I'm going to get started. I'm going to get this shrapnel out first so I have a clear view and so it hurts less when I manipulate your leg. I've noticed you breathe. Deep breaths, okay?"

[cachedout]

Cayde takes one in and blows it back out, doing his best to comply, telling his nerves to stow it with the pain signals. He's a machine.

"Alright," he says. "And for the record, it does hurt. Just, this entire time. Been hurting. I'll take this as permission to yell if you tweak something."

He watches, though, neck craned and head tilted to see what Peter's doing.

"A Guardian on a table for somebody to fix. Never thought I'd see the day, and would've thought they'd be human if I did. Usually when we go out for good, it's fast."

[stickypete]

"Permission to screech like a pterodactyl granted. It'll just make me less homesick and remind me of the era I was born in, with my tiny dinosaur hands."

As for the rest...

Peter gives him a warm smile.

"Well, maybe the difference is just that you've got someone to put Humpty Dumpty back together again."

-

It takes time to fix humpty Dumpty. Hours and hours. Peter is no Tony Stark or Hank Pym (who don't exist in his universe). He's engineered plenty of things, used to work on prosthetics, but exos are incredibly advanced. It takes an hour alone to pick all the shrapnel out of his knee, another hour to find and grasp how Cayde's nerves work, and figure out how to temporarily deactivate nerve clusters.

But as he goes, he gets faster at picking it up, learning more as he goes through observation and trial and error. Fortunately the trial and error doesn't hurt that much, because he's incredibly gentle.

And at some point, when it's easiest to bend a piece of metal the way he wants with his bare hands rather than using tools, it becomes obvious exactly how gentle. It's suddenly clear that he could snap these components like twigs if he wanted, but instead he gently teases things in and out of place, rebuilds servos with tiny tools, moves Cayde's leg around with the tiniest little gentle movements.

A few times, he tells Cayde to relax and try to rest while he makes an important piece and goes out to the larger machine shop outside the room. With the door closed, the screeching and moving machinery of the 3D printer and shop machinery is muffled enough to sleep through it if Cayde tries.

When he does this, Peter promises he won't stop watching the door from outside while he's working, and every time Peter comes back, he makes enough noise that Cayde knows it's him and not some stranger.

Bit by bit, he works it out, even though he's not a roboticist. He fixes things. A piece here, a piece there, a whole shiny metal replacement knee joint, some muscle cord he figured out how to make because of how closely it mimics real muscle.

And he doesn't stop at the knee, because there's too much else to do. That painful-looking smashed jaw, the face plates that won't slide the right way when he makes facial expressions, the crookedness of his beautiful, majestics horn.

It's always "Let me just fix one more thing, I've got nowhere better to be." He keeps cajoling him back every time he's about to call it even and dart away because there is still too much that's broken, too much that will be a liability, too much that won't let him be human.

So he talks him into letting him fix all the structural things at least. He works off broken face plates and cracked plastic. That can maybe be fixed another day. But what he can fix today is the structure. The metal of his and base plastic structure of his jaw, the flickering blue light - and flickery vision - of one of his optics, what passes for his eyebrows so he can express himself.

He also washes his face. It's under the pretense of needing it to be less grimy to be easier to fix some of his face plates. Gotta get that grit out, right?

Bit by bit, the structure and moving parts are put right, even if Peter won't make him pretty again today. The busted nerve clusters are so advanced he can't replace every little bit that's broken but he still salvages most of them. The numbness is minimal. The knee is like new. Cayde's face is his face again, albeit gouged and scraped up, without the nice cover plating and paint job. But even washing it made it look a little nicer.

The last thing is the jaw. Peter had to take it off to fix it because he had to just straight up replace the main metal piece. It took three tries at making new metal jaw pieces for him to nail it so he could have the same jawline. Then he had to snap in all the plastic bits. it's finally done.

"This'll probably be easier to put back if you sit up on the edge of the table so I can look at you straight on. It's harder reconnecting nerve clusters than it is deactivating them," Peter says, back turned as he finished up at the word table. Peter gets the jaws connectors ready to re-attach and turns around. "It's incredible how sophisticated they are. No wonder you can feel people touching the surface of your skin even on the metal parts."

[cachedout]

It's awkward. There's no way around it, being shown great personal care by a stranger is awkward at the best of times. It's even worse when you're someone who takes not requiring this kind of care as a major part of personal identity. Cayde is rugged, resourceful, hard-wearing, and above all independent. The best way he can manage his discomfort is to talk, when he can. When left alone it's hard to relax and he fiddles with the comm, or just thinks, wishing he could pace or that he had a pen and paper. Being able to talk to Peter is better.

He asks about what's being done, even if he can't always get the technical parts. He knows some things about how he works, which he shares because when Cayde picks a course of action, he commits. But, increasingly, as Peter finds the groove in processes and it just becomes time consuming instead of requiring deep thought and quiet, he just talks. He meanders from topic to topic, because even telling one story tends to require a couple layers of explanation for somebody so far back in time. This isn't as bad off as he's been, he just had Sundance before. You should've seen him the time one of his arms came off during the run to chase — Gary? No, Dominus Ghaul, out of the City. Dominus Ghaul? He was the chief Cabal bastard. Dammit, gotta talk about the Cabal, too. Big alien empire, no good for nobody, laid siege to the City and tried to steal the Light of the Traveler. The Traveler...

As Cayde keeps the air filled and takes questions, he sketches out a picture of the world he's from. The Last City on Earth, under the unexplained protection of the inscrutably silent Traveler. The Guardians of the city, the Hunters, the Titans, the Warlocks. The Vanguard. ("I'm not really cut out for the job. That's not a secret, everybody knew that when I got it. I'm loud, and they all got ears.")

As much as being cooped up in the Tower frustrated him, he finds himself getting a little wistful. Cayde knows that it's more likely than not he'll never see it again. Even if the nebulous promise of going back where he came from is kept, Saint-14 has confirmed what Cayde already knew in his heart: he died in the Prison of Elders, ambushed by vengeful Fallen and Uldren Sov.

Being homesick is one thing when you're just away from home. It's another thing when you know you may never return, and realize how little you appreciated what you had while you had it. Being pulled away from this line of thought by needing to move so Peter can reach something, to answer a different question, or to confirm that something's working is a welcome distraction whenever it comes. He's sat up, lain down, and been on one side or the other all through this process. Each time something has been "finished" he's been eager to escape, but each time he's been gently convinced that they might as well get as much done as possible here. He sighs, settles back in, and they carry on.

It's awkward, sure. He doesn't like feeling like he's going to owe something for this (and no amount of Peter's assurance has been able to make headway on centuries of instinct on that point.) It's weird being touched and examined and repaired, especially having Peter working around his eyes and facial plates. But it's also... not terrible.

It's maybe the first thing since waking up here that hasn't been terrible.

"Alright, move over," he says as he rights himself once more, swinging now significantly more functional legs over the side. (With some cajoling, he'd been forced to admit what was wrong with the opposite ankle too.) Cayde's disconnected jaw hangs motionless, but his vocal synth has never really needed it for him to speak and the orange throat lamp lights up like it always has.

"I should probably be worried about timeline problems from letting you get a sneak peek at all this stuff humanity figured out before everything went to hell, but mostly I'm just glad I don't have to put up with scraping when I move anymore."

[stickypete]

Peter had kept talking the whole time because a) robot space future = a million questions, b) Cayde seemed to need it, c) he'd needed it because talk about awkwardly being all up in someone's grill, d) joking around with someone made the work go by faster.

He'd talked a little about his world, shared the odd stupid story here and there about villains dressed like giant, stupid-lookimg animals, talked about the weird and wild and funny stuff that came of being a superhero. He'd talked about the collider and the other spiders and the cartoon talking pig. He'd kept it light, though, hadn't mentioned the darker things, steered well clear of talking about villains like ol' Normie. He also had avoided talking about the divorce, but "my ex-wife" had come up a few times in the telling of other stories, the words always said with fondness instead of any bitterness.

Peter presses the button to raise the exam table so Cayde's face is just a little under eye level.

"Eh, we might not even be from the same universe. Also, this isn't far off from the most advanced tech in my universe. The most advanced stuff like your power supply I probably wouldn't be able to figure out easily, and considering that's where the internal shock collar probably is, it'd be dangerous to mess with."

He'd stayed away from anything that looked like it either housed power or memory because of that nasty little problem hanging over their heads. It was probably rigged to blow up if touched.

Peter bends over slightly and makes quick work of attaching the jaw. Fortunately, the sockets hadn't been damaged, just the jaw itself. While reconnecting the "nerves" and turning them back on, he briefly sticks the tip of his tongue out of his mouth in concentration.

"There we go. Okay, now open and close your mouth so I can see if it needs any adjustments. Making a Pop-Eye 'Ah ghhghghghgh' laugh is entirely optional."

[cachedout]

"Much appreciated," Cayde says. "Never been a fan of being blown up." He holds still and lets Peter work, then leans back, working the joint, running an experimental hand along it to see if it feels like it should.

"I'll let the no-doubt critical cultural reference slide by unremarked," he says finally, as if it's true.

Cayde's attention returns to Peter after he's satisfied that it's sitting right. "...Anything else?" he asks, a little apprehension creeping in, but at least this repetition has started to feel more like a joke than anything.

It's been a very, very long surprise shop day.

[stickypete]

"I think we're almost good. Are the nerves linked up okay? Can you feel it when I do this?"

Peter puts the tool he was using down on the work tray and taking both hands, he runs an index finger along each side of his jaw.

It's not a particularly tender gesture, but it's at least a gentle one. It's very much a "does it hurt when I bend it like this?" medical touch. Clinical, but...gentle.

[cachedout]

Cayde is very still, which has been his default response to touch this whole time. There has been no unnecessary contact and Peter's made it as non-weird for him as possible but it's still something he's extremely unaccustomed to.

"...Yeah," he confirms. He gives his jaw another waggle, just to be sure. "Feels right. Jury's not totally in until I've hit a mirror, but I'm absolving you of responsibility for my vanity. We'd be here all night."

Delivering self-owns aside, Cayde seems glad. This is the most at ease Peter's seen him, because he's finally not faking it.

"If there's nothing else..." He tilts his head significantly. "I'd like to get a little more pants and a little less Roman."

[stickypete]

"There's a mirror right here."

Peter walks over to the worktable and lifts up a little magnifying work mirror off a stand, then walks back over and hands it to Cayde.

"It's not ideal but I least got the basic structure back together and you should be able to move those face plates for expressions again. I can maybe work on replacing all the plastic cover plates some other time. Maybe scrounge up some paint first or see if I can get some dye for the 3D printer." He adds, "Besides, right now I'm better looking. I gotta hamstring any competition for the rig's next top model somehow."

Cayde's face...looks like his face again. Sure, it's missing the plastic plates that went over the metal but the metal is intact and cleaned up a little, the moving face plates that he uses for expression can move again, they just don't have the nice blue and white over top. But it's still his face, mostly the way it was, minus the pretty.

"Okay, now pants. I'm going to turn around and start cleaning up. Tell me when you're decent."

He goes over to the work table and starts cleaning up, sorting tiny little components to put them back in the bins. He doesn't want to lose any because who knows how hard it is for them to get this stuff post-apocalypse and Cayde might need new repairs in the future.

[cachedout]

Cayde examines his reflection, tipping his head this way and that to compare. It's more than he expected a stranger could do for him on short supply and shorter notice. It already makes a huge difference that looking at things doesn't cause parts of his face to bind up.

"Alright, good enough," he says when he sets the mirror aside, but he can't quite manage to be breezy about it. Having this much back now? It means something. He's honestly touched. His face is his face again.

He makes a shooing motion as Peter goes, and then he suits back up. His legs feel so much better, he bends them and stretches them a little to make sure the joints are smooth.

"You can turn back around without being blinded," he says, tone jaunty and sarcastic, but when he does:

"...Thanks, Peter."

That's sincere. That's more sincere than Cayde ever likes to be, but it's what's called for here.

[stickypete]

He'd mostly cleaned up as he went, to keep the workspace free, so all that's left is putting these last little pieces away. When he turns back around, he's hit in the face with sincerity.

An all he can do is reflect it right back.

"You're welcome."

It feels...like it used to feel. Early days. Not just saving people, but helping old ladies move furniture. Helping a harried mother carry her groceries so she could carry her kid. Legit, actual kittens in trees that needed to go back to their tiny owners.

There used to be more caring. And there used to be connection. To his city and its people. Before he got so far into his own head and started drowning in his problems - and mistakes.

"Now let's get out of here. I'm starting and it's gotta be close to time for breakfast."

[cachedout]

Cayde's glad to let the moment pass. He's had far more vulnerability than he's comfortable with today.

Tonight.

This morning?

"Dammit, you're not kidding about that."

He has a pretty good time sense that confirms. "...You didn't have to do all this," he continues immediately.

[stickypete]

"Yes I did."

Peter stretches his neck as he walks, raising his arm up to stretch his back. He'd spent a long time bent over Cayde or the workspace. It used to be he could spend all night bent over electronics and feel fine, but even though his back had healed after he'd broken it a few years ago, it had never quite been the same.

"Although there is one way you can pay me back," he says, opening the door to from the robotics room into the machine shop outside. The light through the reinforced hanger windows does confirm it's indeed early morning.

[cachedout]

Cayde tags along with him. Might as well. It's not like there's any point in trying to get any sleep, and while his face may be in much better repair, it's still not gonna be able to open the door to get him into breakfast on his own.

"What's that?" he asks, all casual despite his suddenly sharp interest. It's a relief to think he might have a concrete means of returning Peter's favor.

[stickypete]

He says it with complete, dead seriousness:

"I want your pudding."

Big ask, right?

"Places like this, with food just shy of 'hospital cafeteria,' the only thing they don't mess up is pudding or jello or some other little side dessert. I don't want it every time, but if you ever don't want yours, I get first dibs."

Very serious, very important request.

[cachedout]

Cayde eyes Peter for a moment, as if this is a major concession he's being asked to make and it needs real mulling over.

It's a joke, it's not enough to be the out Cayde's looking for from his feelings of debt, but there's exactly one answer Cayde can give here.

He holds out one hand for a solemn shake.

"Deal."

[stickypete]

Peter gives his hand a firm shake.

"I'm gonna hold you to that," he says with what's become a slightly rare smile. "And I'm gonna extra hold you to that if it's a brownie..."