‘I still hadn’t the nerve to ask him about the coat. It has been missing since when I met him in that tunnel when Big O moved by itself to aid him. I understand why… whatever was happening to Roger was sending shocks through the power system in the area, shorting the communicator to only the smallest spider’s web line of a signal… he was in trouble, so the logical thing to do would be to follow the thread back to its course. Machines rely on logic… not emotion… or at least we are supposed to.’

    “If you are, indeed, going to return to work, Roger, what will you wear?”

    He seemed surprised at her question. “What do you mean?”

    “Your jacket is still missing. Your coat is fine, but your jacket is nowhere to be found.”

    “Oh,” he simply said.

    “You have other jackets, but…”

    “No other jacket will do,” he responded in kind, back to his gruff tone for the first time since his mind and body had flooded with relief at seeing her leaning out of Big O’s cockpit.

    “What can we do about it, Roger?” her voice only held the slightest hint of her pleasant relief. “You never go out in anything else.”

    “I do too!” he slammed his palm onto the table.

    “Roger…”

    He glowered. Norman had retired to the repair bay below ground, yet again, to continue the repairs on Big O, which were substantial. The butler had finally managed to peel the last of the useless charred armor from the hulking black robot, only to begin mending it slowly.

    While the thought of a battle without Big O dismayed Dorothy in the manner of Roger’s health being at risk, she thought no more about it. Roger, on the other hand, suddenly felt himself trapped in the web of responsibility he’d stepped into long before he even considered the city important to him. Suddenly the importance of the city had begun to slip away, and that of its citizens had grown. But gradually, and the beginning of that decline had carried a face now precious.

    And even that he did not understand. How could the unfeeling, granted recently she had been more compassionate and genuinely caring at times, android mean anything to him? She wasn’t a pleasant person to be around, her skin pale, hair monotonously kept day to day, and her body… it wasn’t even real! The playboy did not fall for the young lady that couldn’t…

    But, during times like this, when she stares at him coldly or ignored him, he just knows that it wouldn’t be like that with her.

    Shaking off his deeper thoughts, Roger stands and moves towards his closet. He had eaten breakfast in his robe, since he had deemed it too early to bother with that, which actually rested at the bottom of his list of rules, and the major one when Angel was near had long since changed from ‘charm her,’ to ‘harm her,’ and though he didn’t act upon that desire, he needn’t leap through hoops for his enemy.

    While stripping off the robe and then his tee shirt, he forgets that Dorothy was in the room. She catches herself staring at him and quickly turns her back, looking at the far wall. If she had possessed, at that moment, the capability to blush, she would have. Her own body was all she knew when it came to the human form, and Roger’s was significantly… different enough to make her just a little conscious of what humans would call the ‘modesty’ they normally maintained between them.

    It was not until he began tightening the belt around his waist that the realization dawned on him.

    “I’m sorry, Dorothy.”

    “I am used to it,” she said, voice barely above a whisper and yet still monotone.

    “No, not this, and you shouldn’t have to be. Perhaps I really am a louse.”

    With her back to him she could allow herself to smile, and so she did.

    Ten minutes later finds them climbing into the Griffon, dressed to impress. Dorothy had admitted to herself that she accepted his apology when she turned around at last and saw him. His outfit had caused her to pause. While the Negotiator obviously had either a love of or a fetish with black, he normally wore a crisp white shirt to offset the look of darkness he carried with him and gave him an air of professionalism.

    The black turtleneck under the dark brown jacket made him luck almost thug-like and unyielding. He still wore his gloves, but they only lent themselves to further aide his ensemble in the look of rigid personality. Dorothy, on the other hand, continued to look indifferent and merely sat across the car without saying a word.

    The Griffon left the garage quietly, its occupants as silent as stone, and headed towards the downtown area, and a certain tailor.

14: Scene 3; Tailored | 14: Scene 2; Demons and Angels | Long Path of Recovery