For Martha // Jurassic Park

[dayswithoutincident]

Bruce really isn't as careful with the hotel's doors anymore as he should be.

This is something he is aware of, but which has invariably seemed to fall rather low on his list of concerns. When it comes to others he is careful to the point of paranoia; with himself the risk always seems negligible. He has yet to get as low as he'd been that night when he tried to kill himself, but even now he still has his moments when he is acutely aware of the fact that his being dead might not be an entirely bad thing.

So far, he's accidentally ended up on a pirate ship (sans pirates) and at Disneyland (unfortunately not sans children). Both times he's returned easily enough, but today when he found himself in a gloomy and vaguely familiar rotunda, the doors were less accommodating.

If he's going to be stuck somewhere, at least it's a place equipped to handle monsters.

Comments

[legendthatwas]

Martha's never had the fortune--or misfortune--of opening one of the doors she's heard about in hotel gossip, but this time, well. This time she'd got lost on her way down to the bar (yes, utterly mortifying that), and ended up in a side branch of residential rooms, and this one just happened to have a cheerful green exit sign above it. There is no door like it, when she turns around, just a rather 90s-modern style rotunda and some displays.

It all seems very unassuming save for the collapsed skeletons of dinosaurs until she spots the tattered banner, red and yellow on black: WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH.

It clicks and that's it; Martha is never assuming anything is the fire escape stairs ever again.

[dayswithoutincident]

The place is littered with debris: Bone particles, foliage, glass. Even the most vigilant walker would have a tough time making no noise amidst the flotsam. The crunch of a few halting footsteps draws him from the shadows and into the murky light filtering through the shattered skylight, squinting curiously through the motes of dust.

"You're from the hotel?" he asks, noting her clothing. He's no expert on fashion, but he remembers the Nineties better than he honestly wishes he did.

"I don't suppose the door back worked for you."

[legendthatwas]

The guy looks familiar, as though Martha's seen him in passing--though to be fair, she lives in London and did a load of travelling, so she's seen a lot of people in passing--but then he refers to 'the hotel' and things make a lot more sense. Besides, there's no one else here, and doesn't seem like there has been for weeks.

"Yeah," she says, then clears her throat, treads carefully over the chaos towards him. They don't know each other, but in situations like this, she's found, you work with whomever you're with and handle small talk later. Provided there is a later. "And there wasn't a door back for me at all. I'm really sorry it got you, but I'm a bit glad I didn't end up here alone, to be perfectly honest."

Because the place is creepy, would be creepy even if it didn't potentially have small herds of ravening dinosaurs with very sharp teeth.

[dayswithoutincident]

Bruce laughs at this, a low chuckle edged in self-deprecation, and fully emerges into the center of the room, his head slightly ducked. "Me, too," he says, a double-meaning to his agreement although he doesn't elaborate. It's nice to have the company, but mostly he's glad that this woman, whomever she is, has his protection if she needs it. It isn't often that he's glad for the Other Guy, but on occasion he does come in handy.

"I'm Bruce," he says, and slaps the dust from his hand against his thigh before offering his hand, a formal gesture whose irony in this place is not lost on him. "We should probably go over some safety precautions before we do anything else."

[legendthatwas]

"Right," says Martha, and shakes Bruce's hand. Her handshake these days is professional; very firm and brief, something she picked up that Year which continually surprises senior consultants of a certain age, gender, and race. (That is, she not only knows the bones in the hand, but how best to break them, and it's hard to shake being that definitive even in a friendly greeting, so she's given up trying.)

She purses her lips, looking up towards the atrium ceiling for a moment in thought. "Safety precautions, so. I'm trying to remember, it's been ages--are the velociraptors the ones who can't see you if you hold still?"

It's a real question, not in jest. For once Martha has no idea what she's in for, and it's not the dinosaurs.

[dayswithoutincident]

"No, that would be the T-Rex," says Bruce, already mentally calculating the probability of the dinosaurs here behaving in unexpected, Hollywood-penned ways as opposed to how they would normally be. If they are truly in the Jurassic Park universe, the logic would follow that these dinos play by different rules.

"Raptors are smaller, leaner. A little bigger than we are, one long claw on their hind feet. They're the ones who open doors."

His face goes pinched, and he offers Martha an apologetic look. "This will sound sexist, and I apologize, but if you see a raptor—Or anything, actually, I need for you to get behind me. And to try to not freak out." He rubs against the back of his neck. "I might change, but I promise I won't hurt you so long as you don't provoke him- Me."

[legendthatwas]

Martha is about to muse a little on how the dinosaurs worked in Jurassic Park in an attempt to remember if there ever was a weakness to the raptors or if they were just a flock of preternaturally smart little buggers (the kitchen scene, christ) when Bruce makes an additional couple of interesting remarks.

"Look, mate, even if I was a guy, I do a pretty fair job of looking after mysel--" This comes out automatically before Martha pauses mid-stride and lifts an eyebrow, side-eyeing him for a long time, because the structure of the comments parses through the initial outrage.

"Get behind you," she echoes, settling her gaze on Bruce, brow still arched. "And try not to freak out. And don't provoke 'him'. If I swear to you I won't panic, that I'm used to impossible things before breakfast, could you possibly elaborate on this?"

[dayswithoutincident]

"That's reassuring," Bruce says, his smile thoroughly contrite. "I promise you that I'm not assuming you're incapable of handling yourself. It's just that I'm kind of a...special situation." Circumstances have spared him from floundering through this awkward conversation much in the past, and the explanation definitely isn't getting any easier.

"I have no idea where or when you're from- Have you heard of the Hulk? Or maybe just the Avengers?" He couldn't get away from the people who knew him back home, but with the Nexus it was always hard to tell. Some people thought he was a comic book character, and some hadn't heard of him at all.

[legendthatwas]

Martha tilts her head forward, acknowledging this, but also clearly waiting for the clarification, her arms crossed and jaw set. Bruce isn't being patronising, which is good, because she would likely haul off and slap him if he was; that doesn't mean she's a happy camper though. Martha Jones prefers to have all of the facts to hand.

"London, Earth, early 21st century," she says by rote, then adds, with a little more thought behind it, "And yes, I've heard of the Hulk. There was that movie with that one guy, and maybe another one? Big stroppy green alterego of mild-mannered scient--oh. Oh."

Martha raises a finger, then tilts it vaguely in Bruce's direction, not quite pointing, as she looks for words. "So I'm guessing I really, really don't want to make you angry," she concludes; not quite Doctor-level wry, but she's not got the ages of practice yet.

[dayswithoutincident]

Mild-mannered, like he's Clark Kent. That's funny.

"Something like that," Bruce answers, his smile faint and thoroughly self-deprecating. The joke he gets; it's the sort of thing Tony flings at him on a daily basis. He just has the unfortunate task of living the reality, which isn't always so fun.

"To be honest, I'm kind of hoping we can avoid the whole... Other Guy situation, but that seems unlikely under the circumstances." He actually really likes this shirt. "Unless you just happen to be carrying a weapon capable of knocking out a 6 ton lizard under your jacket."

[legendthatwas]

With the expression on Bruce's face (like she hasn't seen that kind of look before, though usually a lot more hangdog), Martha decides not to mention the kitschy 70s cartoon version. Instead she clears her throat, shifting to a bit more serious a tone.

"Yeah, I'm guessing...dinosaurs might be a bit stressful to handle," she admits. "And unfortunately, I'm not. I'm pretty damn good with working with available resources, but the strategy I was first taught was 'run for your life', and the second one was 'shoot it with a really big gun'. Neither of those seem to apply here, so maybe we should try 'find a defensible position and hope we walk into a hotel door first', and then your, uh, 'Other Guy' thing only as needs must?"

[dayswithoutincident]

"Can't argue with that logic," Bruce replies, his mouth quirking into a half-smile. "Not that there's much logic on offer when it comes to the hotel, but we'll cross bridges as we come to them."

He swings a hand in an arc first toward one side of the room and then toward the other; there are hallways at either end, presumably each with their share of rooms and doorways to try. At this point, one is as good as the other.

"Lady's choice for where to begin," he says. "Although maybe let's avoid the kitchen if we can."

[legendthatwas]

"Or when it comes to dinosaurs straight out of the cinema," Martha notes with her own half-smile. "Pretty much." Stepping forward a little, she surveys the area that Bruce indicates, hands on her hips, brow drawing into a considering crease.

"We should probably stick to places that are easily defensible, and which, uh, have enough space for your Big Guy, should things come to that," she says, half speaking to Bruce and half thinking out loud. "Which would definitely negate the kitchen anyway, even if that scene hadn't scared me half to death when I was nine." She grins a little at Bruce, looking back at him over her shoulder. "We should try and get some other weapons, though a kitchen knife would be the simplest bet. Maybe there's something in the genetics labs?"

[dayswithoutincident]

"Can't hurt to look," Bruce agrees, and takes several steps back into the shadow beneath the staircase, squinting to read the dusty sign posted to the wall outside the dining room.

"The tour went by the lab, didn't it?" he asks with a glance back to Martha. "It's been awhile since I saw the movie, but I think I remember that part. The cartoon and egg hatching and all that."

[legendthatwas]

Martha's eyes narrow in further thought, something that could be the beginnings of a plan, even--one of those Doctor-like plans that aren't actually plans but making it up as she goes along, but it's a start. "It did. The ride thing--they moved sideways to the left from the theatre," she says, "though I don't know how long it'd take on foot."

She strides towards the sign and gestures with her head in the direction of the appropriate arrow. "So into the complex. I always thought it was really damn weird that they let people see the actual lab, scientists or not--that they didn't have any sort of PPE requirement. God knows what kind of contaminants there could be."