eddie likes to (riddlethem) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-01-17 23:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: dc comics, riddler, stephanie brown |
Who: Riddler and Batgirl
Where: On top of a building the same night as this
When: Recently!
What: Riddler cures Stephanie...kind of.
Warnings: Detail about the plague mostly.
When The Riddler told Stephanie that he hadn’t slept in eight days it was a slight exaggeration. He managed cat naps here and there between business meetings, on chairs in living rooms of the infected or even sometimes down in his bunker. The bunker was a funny thing now, a pointless waste of perfectly good sanitation meant to keep his frail little body safe when it could withstand this plague. Which wasn’t a big surprise, honestly. The most notorious criminals in Gotham had high survival rates. They could be dipped in acid, drown, beat into a coma, crushed, burned, shot in the head, exploded or pretty much anything else this city could throw at them. They always stumbled out of the ashes, eyes red with hellfire as they begged for more. It was the only way they could keep playing games larger than life. The only way they could keep up with their own insanity. Now, Eddie’s own survival usually came in the form of hiding and salvaging like a dystopian child, but this time he got lucky. Something about his immune system mixed with that little taste of the Pit left him incapable of catching the black plague Ra’s had unleashed. And oh god had he tried. From stealing sick kisses from Stephanie to allowing his underworld contacts to sneeze and cough right on his new suit, nothing seemed to get him sick. He’d live through this. Even when the city crumbled and died under his feet. The Riddler would survive this, too.
And, honestly? It horrified him. This was the benefit of being alone. It didn’t matter what Gotham did, as long as he had an internet connection and a riddle, he could keep doing what he always had. But, without Stephanie? How could he pick up the puzzle pieces? How could he fit himself into the shape of man she wanted him to be without the incentive of her being there? He remembered how close she was to calling him crazy and part of him wanted to remind her that he was never not-crazy. He could fool doctors, cops, lawyers and mobsters, but the itch of super genius was always there. Once she was gone, it’d likely take him over again in a surge of numbers and equations. The way he was solving this problem was proof, wasn’t? He wasn’t a bat cruising the night sky giving starry-eyed hope to the masses. No, he was in tunnels making deals with his fellow cockroaches to save the slums. Now, Old Gotham wasn’t just his toy box anymore. He was stitched into the seams.
Dressed in a green suit with a question marked tie in purple, gloves and a bowler hat, he leaned heavily on his cane as he looked over his tablet and checked emails on his violet glasses. Maybe his heart changed, but Eddie still fit the suit of Gotham villainy. People respected a symbol, especially in this superstitious city and he found his powers of persuasion were a lot stronger if people knew he escaped Arkham with just a couple brushes of his fingers. When Stephanie appeared he looked up at her, eyes hidden by the purple glare of his glasses before he offered her a smile that wasn’t very Riddler at all. Even if everything else clearly was.
“Have I ever told you my favorite coyote story?” He asked, tone sharp and lost in riddles. “A long time ago there weren’t any stars and all the animals got really fed-up with bumping into each other. So they asked the Great Spirit for some light after the sun went down. She told them to gather all the shiny stones and pebbles they could find and place them in the sky to make pictures.” He put the tablet away, waving his cane from side to side slightly like a metronome. “But, they didn’t invite the coyote to make sky pictures with them, which was a mistake because he was the most curious and devious out of all the animals. So, when they were busy thinking to put a star here,” Riddler’s cane pointed to a blank, dark spot in the sky since stars couldn’t be seen with all the dim lights of Gotham. “Or maybe there. The coyote snuck up and accidentally spilt all the stars across the sky in a random spread and in the process couldn’t put his own image up there somewhere.” He exhaled sadly, as if he had some kind of personal connection with the story and looked at her. His tone changed to something serious.
“How are you feeling? Do you need painkillers?”
Stephanie had fought. Oh, for days she had fought Bruce and Dick’s stern warnings, and she fought Eddie’s poorly veiled concern, and she fought against the decay of her own body. She pushed and pushed, like she was always wont to do in the cowl, even when her bones screamed in protest. She knew that she caught ‘the plague’ early on after not taking careful enough precautions when evacuating burn victims to a hospital exposed to the virus, but she hadn’t expected for it to slam her body like a mack truck. The cough and sneezing created a little difficulty when on patrol, but it was nothing compared to raging fever burning her cheeks red or the chills shivering through her whole body. But, she kept going even then, filling in where the GCPD could not or funnelling supplies to the most desperately needed areas of the city. Doing anything she could to help for as long as she could, and Steph missed all of it more than she cared to admit. Or would admit.
Her body ached worse and worse with every waking moment, and most of the day, she could barely stand on her own two feet, swaying to and fro as she stood, and using chimneys to keep her upright during breaks. It pained every inch of her being to keep moving, to keep swinging through the Gotham skyline, but she did, in that infuriatingly stubborn way that got her in so much trouble before. At least she wore a mask to contain the spread of her diseased breathing, but she found herself taking more breaks between swings and breathing harder than she ever had with wheezes in between coughing fits. When her lungs ached so hard she couldn’t breath, she knew it was going to be bad, but she ignored it. Ignored the throbbing in her joints and the pain shooting through her body. Ignored the swelling pocks on her arms and legs.
She knew the brink was close, that she wouldn’t be able to continue for much longer, and maybe some of the junk she coughed up looked a little too dark to be simply the flu. Stephanie held onto that tiny glimmer of hope though because Selina’s preview of what was to come? That frightened the ever living daylights out of the blond bat. Lots and lots of blood, unbearable pain, and she suspected that was just the tip of the iceberg. But she had to put on a brave face for Eddie, who she felt was so close to snapping. The constant riddles, the rambling, the paranoia. It was as if the man she saw on Christmas Eve reared his ugly head through Eddie’s most vulnerable points. Sneaking around the corner with a wide, villainous smirk across his face. Steph didn’t like it one bit. If he teetered off the edge, could she bring him back again?
So, it was why she agreed to meet him. If he would get some sleep, everything would be okay. At least for a little bit. If she was going to die (and, stomach lurching at the thought, it looked like it was possible), she didn’t want her last moments of him to be crazed and lost in riddles and numbers, nor did she want him to be stuck like that forever after. Brave. That was what she needed to be. So, when she landed on the roof with a slight stumble after a drop off a higher building, she did her best to keep herself standing straight, her breathing regulated, and her eyes without that crippling worry and fear for them both bleeding through her. His story caught her off guard, but wasn’t that what the Riddler was known for? Grandstand speeches and parables. She smiled tiredly, stepping over to him slowly so as not to betray the pain radiating from her bones, and she shrugged a little. “Better than the others, apparently.” She was glad, also, for not being dragged to quarantine; she didn’t know if she could face seeing the people she loved in so much pain. “That’s some story, Eddie,” she said simply, stopping a couple of feet short of where he stood.
He sized her up unapologetically, eyes sweeping over her frame and the pain she was trying to hide in her voice and posture, mouth curled in a barely amused smirk. She had a right to be concerned. He was running himself into the ground and when there wasn’t any Eddie left, the only thing he had to offer were riddles. “The first time I met Ivy we were on a rooftop. I told her the one thing we had in common besides the color green was that we’d both never change.” He snapped his glasses off and closed the space between him and Stephanie with a couple long steps. What was hiding behind the violet glass was fear. Uncut, shaking fear of what this plague had done to her. But, he was so exhausted from playing The Riddler that he didn’t even know he was giving up his own secrets.
“Shows you how much I know. Take the mask off.” He requested, taking off his bowler hat and tossing it towards the edge of the building. The gloves came off too and he loosened his tie until it barely hung inside of his collar. It was clear that for the first time in days, the question mark had finally come off. The codes and the puzzles and the deals he made to find a cure couldn’t reach this high and he wanted more than anything to get back to how they were before this whole thing started. But, she had to be Batgirl and he had to be everyone’s favorite little green hacker.
From an outsider’s point of view, Batgirl and the Riddler rendezvousing on a roof in the middle of Gotham might seem strange and out of place; it might even be strange for those in the know. Stephanie just thought it was all a little funny, and maybe under other circumstances, she would have playfully seduced him. But, she wasn’t well, and neither was he, and all they needed to realize what the other saw. “And then you made out,” she teased, not jealous at all of the long-stemmed flower known as Poison Ivy. That was before she and Eddie even spoke cordially, let alone were anything like this. If Ivy pawed at him now, that would be a different story. But, he could never looked concerned for Ivy the way he did right now, right?
“Don’t look like that,” she said softly, unable to look at him directly when he wore his fear so clearly. It had her hesitate, fingers stalled as she hooked them to take off the mask over her face. “Please, don’t.” She flashed him a small smile, a poor attempt to be reassuring, and then she pulled the mask and cowl off, letting it fall to the ground near his bowler hat. Even in the dark, her skin was visibly pale, so pale against the black of the suit, with cheeks burned red by fever and deep, dark purple under her eyes. Her face looked damp from a cold sweat, some blond strands stuck by sweat to her forehead that she tried to blow away. Breathing was still laborious, a wheeze in every gulp of air she took and a crackled ghost of a cough in her lungs. Otherwise, she looked incredibly drained, heavy-lidded eyes drooping in a fight to rest, and like she was ready to keel over right then and there. Her joints ached viciously, and a rogue sharp pain shot through her like a bullet now and then, and if she could numb it all away, she would. “Still think I’m pretty now?” she asked, half-joking, half-worried that this was all too much for him. That her literally dying right before his eyes would scare him enough to bolt. She didn’t mention the blisters underneath the kevlar, though no doubt he’d find those eventually.
“Well actually- nevermind.” Riddler didn’t really want to talk about Ivy. She had, obviously, been the furthest thing from his mind since the Halloween party even if most of the rogue’s gallery thought she had her vines wrapped around him. That was better than them knowing he was crazy about a blonde bat. A blonde bat that he was itching to see. Even if they talked constantly on the comms, it wasn’t the same as her being right in front of him. And, once that mask came off he felt a weird surge of concern and bliss of having been apart from someone in pain for too long. “I just missed you.” He said sheepishly, lightly ringing a strand of blonde hair around his finger. That wasn’t all of it, but Eddie felt like his feet were finally touching the ground. Out there as Riddler, he was barely aware that he needed to eat or sleep. Here, even on some comic book roof wearing their team colors, he felt a moment of normalcy that made what they had so special to him.
He stepped closer and left light kisses on the edges of her lips, on her chin, neck and ears like he couldn’t see the death written all over her face. “I think you look better. The goth girl thing really gets to me.” Eddie shined her a small smile, carefully running his hands up her arms, fingers lightly trying to test between the kevlar for the blood bubbles that he knew were coming next. After spending hours watching volunteers come into be tested on and poked at, he knew exactly how bad this disease could get. He had spent some of the day scaring people back into their homes with very graphic descriptions of what could happen to them. Anyone who spent time in a Gotham IRC channel had access to gruesome pictures of blood and blisters and everything in between. It didn’t turn his stomach, but the thought of it happening to Stephanie set his nerves on fire.
“I missed you, too,” she said without a second thought. It had only been a few days, but to Stephanie, it felt like a lifetime since she had last seen Eddie. So much had happened since their last meeting, from her deteriorating health to Dick falling ill and everything else in between. Nothing would make her happier in that moment than curling into an actual bed with him and burying her nose in the crook of his neck. A comfort far better than any drug she could think of, but that wasn’t possible. No, she had pocks all over her body, and she was trying to push her body to the brink, and he was trying to drum a cure from his various seedy connections. They couldn’t simply burrow away anymore, even if that was all they both wanted in the entire world.
Her eyes fluttered shut as he pressed kisses to her face, her neck, and a soft smile crawled up her lips. As if she wasn’t knocking on Death’s door at the moment. After he skated his fingers up her arms, she slipped them around his neck. “You’re such a damn liar,” she said, voice so very raw, but trying to be warm and flirty but failing quite miserably. She felt like warmed over shit, like she could just sleep for twenty years and still feel exhausted when she woke up. “And, I wouldn’t want to be near me if I was you. You’re a brave, brave, brave man.” Or, at least, she hoped he would be throughout all of this. Even as she fell further and further down the rabbit hole towards imminent death, she wanted him to stay around in her selfish desperation. She couldn’t be alone, and she couldn’t see the family. No, she wanted Eddie, and she was quite content standing there with him. But, of course, another hacking fit of coughs snuck up, and she ducked her head away from him, arms falling as she braced her hands on her knees. Her lungs felt like they were on fire, and her throat itched and burned like an open wound.
For just a moment, it felt like everything was going to be okay. That this was just some silly little cold that she managed to catch in time with the deadly plague. “I don’t know if brave is the right word for it.” He said, momentarily wrapping his arms around her and pressing his forehead against hers. When he first found out she was sick, he didn’t go out and try to catch it too because he was brave. It was easily the most cowardly thing he could have done. If they were both dying, he wouldn’t have to carry on without her. He wouldn’t have to make decisions that could ruin this for the rest of his long, long life. His eyes closed and he held onto that moment as long as he could before she launched into a coughing fit and he stumbled away from her. She needed painkillers, she needed a place to rest, she needed to get out of that damned costume, but she rarely did what needed to be done for her. She was leaving it up to him.
“I need to know how bad it is.” Spoken like a true seeker of knowledge. Not that whatever he found would change her mind about patrolling until she was spitting up blood. “I won’t tell you to stop being out here, I simply need to know.” There was an intensity behind his eyes that could be mistakened for his obsession with finding out what was behind every locked door. He ran his hand over her back, waiting for the coughing fit to be over. “It’s been a couple days, you should be developing buboes.” His voice teetered as he tried to keep his resolve. He wasn’t going to lose her, not tonight, not for a long time. But, he needed to weigh his options.
Steph was never very good at thinking about herself or the consequences of her actions on her own body. She rarely looked before she leaped, and she certainly wasn't considering the wear and tear this disease ripped through her body. No, Eddie would need to look out for her, though she had no clue what he was cooking in that riddle-fueled mind of his and she had no hope of figuring it out. Especially when doubled over on a roof and hacking out a lung. She gasped for air, fingers digging into her thighs as a wave of dizziness rocked through her, and she found herself leaning her head into his stomach for some sort of support. "I can't--," she started, but coughed again. The taste of copper tickled her tongue, and she reached up to wipe her mouth before slowly standing straight again.
She stared at him for a moment, unblinking and challenging him to take it all back. To pretend that she was okay. Maybe it would make it true. Finally, she ran her clean hand over her face. "Coughing," she stated obviously, "sneezing, body pains. Normal flu symptoms, right? Buboes?" She hadn't taken a health class in years, okay. "Pretty sure I'm running a fever. I've been hot and cold all day and night. No...blood yet. Not really."
His expression cracked as she kept coughing like she’d never stop. She could feel him shaking a little under his green suit, unable to properly face her slow descent into death or something like that. No, that wasn’t part of this game. Death promised him. But, what if there was a cost attached to survival? Something she might not even forgive him for? He picked up his cane after a moment, finger lightly tapping under the curve to an unseen button. “Little blood bubbles all over your body that burst and blister.” He said in deadpan. “That’s the first sign it’s going to get worse a lot quicker.” Riddler paused and then mumbled, “Oh, hey. I rhymed that.”
Eddie was nearly an expert on this damned plague now whether he liked it or not. Chemistry, biology and medicine weren't his favorite fields of expertise, but when his blonde bat was suffering right along with his city, well he didn’t really have a choice. “If I think you’re lying, I’m going to tear your suit off. And, while I sort of want to do that once this plague is cured, it’s not going to be fun this time.” He warned her, that serious glint in his eye so she knew he wasn’t joking. The Riddler barely swung his cane in slight motions at his side almost like a cat twitching its tail when it’s thinking about jumping onto a shelf.
She almost vomited right then and there when he described what buboes were, and that look gave her away completely, didn't it? This sickness had her disgusted with her own self; her own body was betraying her. Decaying, ugly, and jetting with fiery pain. And those bubbles. She knew exactly what he was talking about because she saw it on her arms and legs and everywhere else before she put the suit on that morning. "Blood bubbles," she repeated, her mouth turned down and bile crawling up her throat. The blond bat licked her lips, tasting the remnants of blood from her last round of hacking on her tongue. She scoffed, but smiled briefly. "The start of a promising rap career."
Steph inspected his face for a moment, that seriousness and crazed exhaustion, and she knew she couldn't lie to him. "That's not much of a threat, honey," she replied dryly mostly because it wasn't. "I'd love nothing more than for you to rip this off and have your way with me on a dirty roof. Risky." As she spoke, she loosened her cape, letting it drop onto the roof, too. With a frown, she tugged off her gloves and let them drop just as unceremoniously as the cape and mask. She couldn't look him in the eyes as she rolled up the sleeve, opting instead to stare at their feet. Her heavy boots and his wing-tipped shoes. Her skin was scattered with just what Eddie described -- tiny red blood blisters littered her pale skin ready to burst.
His reaction wasn’t out of disgust or fear. It wasn’t even shock. His eyebrows didn’t move, but something behind his eyes clicked. This was exactly what he expected and what he needed to see in order to do what had to be done. Realizing that this could be the last time he’d ever get to touch her, he stepped forward and delicately traced his finger around the smooth spirals of skin between her blisters. He gave her a sweet look without the smile that usually accompanied it and leaned into kiss her mouth with a brief gentleness. “I’m tired.” He murmured turning from her so she couldn’t see the fire broiling in his eyes.
“Can I tell you a bedtime story instead of the other way around? Talking makes me sleepy.” He stumbled over to where his hat was, picking it up and twirling it on his finger once, twice. “When they first invented that blue bank dye that gets all over the money if you steal it, it scared off a lot of my bank robbing buddies pretty easily. Money was never really all that important to me, though. It’s so easy for someone like me to get.” Riddler walked back over to her, head tilted as he watched her expression. “So instead, I left a riddle on the bank manager’s car.” He lifted a finger in the air. “How do you convert Canadian dollars to American?” Riddler smirked something devious. “You paint them green. And in a poof all his money was dye bombed in bright, bright green paint.”
Riddler’s smile slipped. He didn’t seem attached to the riddle or even the hint he just gave her, but his obsessions never really could fizzle out completely. He closed his eyes with a sigh and said with simplicity. “I love you, Stephanie.” He didn’t wait for a response, shoving the bowler hat down on her head and pushing a button on his cane. With a POOF the hat disintegrated in a green mess of Lazarus Pit all over her face, hair and shoulders.
He so often had her glued to the spot with his rambling tales and consuming expressions. The way he bore his eyes into her soul, the sweet smile only for her, how he always knew exactly what to say to her. And, on that rooftop in the too-blue Gotham that finally started to feel like a home, she felt arrested to the spot when he wound his little story of riddles and robbery. She followed him with her eyes, trailed his movements from the edge of the roof back to her without so much as a step. No, Stephanie stayed rooted to her spot, still refusing to look down at herself and the arms marred with angry red bubbles, and instead looked up at the sky as his story reached his conclusion. How many more nights would she have left? Would she be able to see the stars before she went? Maybe before she tumbled into a mess of pain and vomiting and whatever else, she could convince Eddie to help her find them.
It was all so quick -- his profession of love, his swift shove of the hat onto her head. She looked down from her stargazing so dumbfounded by the I love you, Stephanie, so shocked that he chose now to say it now that the hat didn't even fully register in her mind. She just kept replaying his words, how they carried in the whipping wind and settled on her person, swirled around every inch of her and made her feel warm. Her mouth fell open just a little, and she almost repeated the sentiment. She did love him, and if she was dying, might as well tell him now, right?
The sudden feeling of slim dripping down her face, over her hair, and down her neck killed that right in its tracks. Stumbling back from him in absolute shock, she shook her head and shoulders like a wild animal trying to rid itself of a pesky pest, but it continued to drip down, down, down. Green. That green. The putrid and bright color that haunted her nightmares every night. The Lazarus Pit. She shuddered violently. Her breathing was hard, rattling, angry, and she scraped at the goo, covering her hands with that unnatural green liquid until she shook it off. But she couldn't get it off fast enough, as there was so much more goo than a simple tip-of-the-finger taste. Some slipped into her mouth, while the rest began to pool on her shoulders. In a consuming panic, she ended up rubbing some of it further in before wiping it off.
She lost Stephanie in that moment, swirled in the pure hatred of such a betrayal, and she blacked out into a rage. There was a horrified screech, like the sound of a bat dying in the afternoon sun, and the pupils of her eyes dilated, lively and loving blue giving away to black and brewing anger and fear. Green clung to her long eyelashes and she forgot, for a moment, about getting the goop off.
The second she was drown in Lazarus Pit, Riddler was sprinting towards the edge of the building. He had calculated this escape, a careful, monkeying climb down a series of catwalks and drainpipes. An escape that wasn’t different from any he had made before. A scurrying, cowardly run that mirrored the escape of hundreds of banks robbed, museums pillaged, parties crashed, buildings blown up, and asylums torn open like a paper bag. He felt the rush of adrenaline hit him as she screamed, his feet hitting shaky metal of the catwalk and he hooked his cane around a drainpipe and slid the rest of the way down.
“I’ll watch the sunrise and think of you.” He shouted to her from the pavement hand over his pocket where her ring was, eyes up at the roof he couldn’t see. The blonde bat that was burning in a toxic green he knew a little too well. This was a betrayal, a move that no one in her family would do before she started suffering. But, Eddie wasn’t a bat. He was barely a man. That much was clear from the smirk that trembled on his lips. The riddle of the plague wasn’t solved yet, but he just earned himself enough time in the world to find her a real cure that didn’t come in the form of an unnatural chemical bath. He did love her. But, that didn’t mean he was going to respect her wish to die some noble, bloody death.
In seconds he was running down the empty street, a streak of bright green in this bleak, blue city. The Riddler whistled sharp into the night like the time he asked her to come find him behind a tree and a car flashed its headlights on and swerved across the street to drive next to him. With a graceful hop, he jumped into the car, slammed the door shut and sped off towards the best night of sleep he’d have since this sickness started.