eddie likes to (riddlethem) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-01-23 22:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman, door: dc comics, riddler |
Who: Selina and Eddie
Where: batcave > wonder city
When: A little while after this
What: Pitting the bird!
Warnings: weekend at bernie's.
The kitty cat didn't remember anything but the pain.
She didn't remember the decision to leave Stark Tower. She didn't recall the steps she took to get to the Batcave. She didn't remember contacting Eddie. She remembered nothing, and yet there she was, a pale thing in sweat-stained clothes, dark hair lank and clinging to cheeks that had gone gaunt with a week of illness. She had no idea how long her coma had lasted. She had no real understanding of ever having been in one. Her brain was wrong. It was frenetic. It was a hamster on a wheel that just kept going faster and faster, while forgetting all the turns that came before the current one in progress. She couldn't remember choices from one moment to the next, and all she felt was the overwhelming need to burn, to know she was alive.
She didn't remember the Lazarus Pit IV, the green fluid that fed into her veins. She didn't stop to wonder how that was different that drinking it or going for a swim. She could still taste blood on her chapped lips, that was her focus as she looked down at Dick's body.
Dick's body. Right. That was why she was there. And then the thought was gone a second later, even as the kitty cat tried to chase it and drag it back. There were other things, too, that she knew she should be clawing at. The tin man? The kitten? Bruce.
But they were all abstractions, and she couldn't pounce on them to get them to stay. At least Dick - dead, dead, Dickie - was real. She could look down and remember. And she stood there, in an old shirt from the tin man and track pants from the same place, shoulders bird feathers and nothing like the muscles beneath a cat's fur at all. She looked young, all green eyes manic in their dullness, and she looked up when she heard a sound, forgetting the body at her feet entirely for a moment.
Don’t touch anything.
Eddie’s eyes were wide as he climbed after the Cat into the belly of the cave. He knew it existed and in his world there were plenty of Riddler relics supposedly laying around, but this cave was different and it made the whole good behavior thing a lot easier. In fact, the cave was as blue, stark and barren as Gotham was when Riddler first showed up. And, though it had plenty of equipment and technology, it just wasn’t the Batcave of his wildest, riddled dreams. It also helped that Selina was acting like she was going through the motions of the first stages of turning into a Hollywood zombie. He was used to the sharp, knowing green eyes of the kitty cat, but here she was almost sluggish and alarmingly distant. It was intriguing, but Eddie also knew keeping an eye on her was an important part of pulling this dead body caper off.
“If I stole the question mark key on this computer, do you think they’d notice?” Eddie asked, watching her stand over Nightwing’s body and shrugged. His own technology could keep the alarms from sounding for a while before someone figured out they were there, so what harm would it do? Stephanie already knew he was going to steal the body and once Oracle figured out Nightwing was missing and a surveillance blackout, she’d know it was him. Eddie’s compulsion to shoot himself in the foot was too great to really stop himself from causing mischief, so this little harmless prank kept him from doing any real damage. With a quick flick of a tiny blade in his pocket, he snapped off the ? key without even pressing down on the keyboard and pocketed it as a souvenir. Satisfied with himself, he pulled himself away and moseyed over to the Cat.
“We got to get moving, grab the feet.” Riddler told her with the clarity of someone explaining the rules to one of his death traps or how to solve a simple equation. In a different life he would have made a good teacher, but Eddie was always destined for much greater things. Like stealing former Robin bodies. He looked to Selina for any sign of recognition. It was a good thing he sounded like Eddie, then, because he didn’t look anything like the question marked menace Selina had seen before. He was dressed in worn jeans, sneakers, and a large winter coat that made him look like just a regular middle aged man going for a winter walk.
Selina looked up when he asked his question, wondering if she'd known he was there all along. But she wasn't worried. In a strange way, that one thing made her feel more like herself than she had in nearly a year. She didn't care that he was standing in the middle of the Batcave. She didn't care that the Bat might cut her off without so much as a meow. She didn't worry that he was going to take anything he shouldn't take, because taking things is what she did. Because, oh, the kitty cat remembered that. Thieving came before the Pit, and before the plague, and before the Bat who didn't want to wrap her in his rubbery wings.
No, she just looked up at the man in not-green when he asked his question, and she shrugged her newly-narrow shoulders. "If that's all you want, go ahead," she said. Quirky, she thought. So many things to take, and he only wanted that. She wasn't sure if she was disappointed that he was thinking so small, or if she was impressed that he was leaving his mark. After all, she liked to dig her claws into things just to mark them as hers. It was the same thing as him and his little question mark on the keyboard, wasn't it?
But there was a dead body at her feet. Right.
She looked down again, and she wondered if the body had started out somewhere other than the floor. She wondered if the others were mourning, crying, gnashing their teeth. She wondered if Bruce thought it was worth it, this death in exchange for his Gotham. "Do you think he cares?" she asked, and she wasn't talking about Dickie. Dickie would be fine, wouldn't he? After all, that was why they were there; to make sure Dickie was fine. No, she meant the Bat. Did the Bat care. "He came to see me," she told Eddie, and if there was any doubt that something wasn't okay in the kitty cat's noggin just then, that candor should have cleared it up. "He came to see me. He touched my shoulder." She remembered, even with all the pain that came after; she remembered.
But there was work to do, and she leaned down and grabbed Dickie's feet. She guarded when she did it, as if she expected waves of pain to come with the movement, but nothing hurt. Huh. And then she lifted. He was heavy, but the kitty cat knew death was a heavy thing. She'd held Lola after she'd gotten her killed. Death was an old friend, the kind that always came back, no matter how hard she tried not to be home for the call.
Eddie decided he liked the mildly out of it kitty cat. She always had a way of driving to the point in a way that was far from his own tendencies, but here it felt almost like talking to a ghostly sphinx lost in her own little world. “He cares. In his own way.” Riddler said like someone who knew Batman for a very long time with almost exactly the same words that Stephanie would have used. It didn’t matter what side of the aisle someone from the real Gotham came from. If they were around long enough, they knew all there was to know about the emotions of big ears. “Of course he came to see you.” But, he didn’t say how he thought the Bat let her suffer too long or how really disappointed he was in this particular Dark Knight. “And, he asked me for the Lazarus Pit for you.” Yes, that was a much nicer thing to say, he decided.
Eddie wasn’t particularly strong, so he made an ooof sound when he picked up Nightwing’s body, looping his arms under the boy’s shoulders as they started to carry him out to the car. “This is going to be a long night, meow face.” He stated the obvious through his teeth, knowing this whole thing would be a lot easier if Grayson here was the teenager Riddler first met him as. Now that brought back memories. “I never liked this kid. Sometimes he gave me more trouble than Bats if you can believe it.”
She looked up again when Eddie mentioned Bruce asking about the Pit. "I told him he had to," she explained. Oh, no, no, this Bat wouldn't have saved her without her own insistence. "I made him swear. I made him promise. I refused to move if he didn't," she explained. She made a tsking sound in the back of her throat, something directed at the implication that Bruce had acted on his own. "He would have put me in quarantine and left me there to die, all while he saved his city," she said, and it sounded like it bothered her. Maybe she'd never sound like that again, but she did just then. "You didn't. Wouldn't." She was talking about Stephanie, of course, even though she had no idea that Eddie had given her a green bath of her own. Oh, she had her doubts about Eddie and the blonde bat, but she believed he would be too obsessed to ever let her just die. It was, she decided, a point in his favor.
She smiled a ghost of her normally lush lipped smile when he made that strained sound, all cracked bloodied lips and something that didn't reach her eyes. She didn't say she wasn't going to be around for a long night. Sure, she could carry Dickie's feet, but her attention kept straying, here, there, like a cat with something twitching just there, something to be pounced on. She almost asked if that was the IV that made her distracted, but distraction kept her from it a second later, and she blamed it on the coughing that still came and went from the newly administered cure. "We can steal the tumbler," she suggested. She didn't think either of them could carry Dickie all the way to Wonder City, for different reasons, obviously.
Eddie didn’t argue with her assertion about Batman leaving her to die, because that’s what he did with all the bat kids, wasn’t? All of them huddled in a little room, coughing until there wasn’t anything left to cough up. That was why Riddler did what he did. And, maybe it was a sign that he wasn’t even close to turning over a new leaf completely or his own insanity turned his feelings for Stephanie into something strange and unhealthy, but that was a pattern he couldn’t see. “No, I didn’t.” Eddie nodded about Stephanie, not bothering to look up to Selina for any sort of confirmation that he used the Pit on her. They both knew. “I didn’t even let her cough up blood.” It wasn’t that seeing her in pain would have ruined him (though it likely would have), he simply understood that he would have thrown her in the Pit if she died. And, she was going to die. Just like Nightwing. Just like Selina almost did. So, why make her suffer?
The mention of stealing the tumbler made Eddie nearly drop the poor dead boy right on his head. He scrambled to keep his grip and fought hard against a wiggling smirk. Eventually it got out and he lightly put Grayson back on the ground to slide up to the tumbler cartoonishly. “Oh yes.” Eddie rummaged through his jacket for his newly repaired violet glasses and tablet as he scanned the tumbler and popped the doors open. “Thank god for the digital age. Hotwiring used to be such a pain.” He lost himself in his work, eyes shielded by a mass of numbers and passwords that blinked across his glasses. Oracle and Batman were good when they wanted to be, but Riddler hadn’t used his tech against them enough for them to put in safeguards. And, even if they did, he liked to think he was still better.
A moment passed and then Riddler snapped his attention back up to Catwoman. “Okay, help me put him in.” He grabbed Nightwing’s shoulder again, this time a little less delicately and tried to find a place for him in the tumbler. “In my day, the bat trunk always had enough room for a body. At least one.” Riddler knew, because that’s usually where Batman stuffed him. One time he got to ride up front, but that was sort of a special ocassion. “I’m drrriiivviiiinng.” He practically sang, moving over to the drivers seat to breathe in a moment for himself. This was a serious night with serious consequences and maybe if Stephanie was here he’d try to act little less excited, but he couldn’t help himself. This was as close to driving the batmobile as he’d ever get.
He waited for her to get in, his purple glasses flashing to make the tumbler turn on with a roar. Eddie gave her a look that was all 1940’s bankrobber thrill and he quickly taught himself how the tumbler operated. He had stolen enough cars, operated enough liberated military crafts and loved machinery enough that he could figure it out a lot faster than a normal Arkham boy. After a minute he let his glasses clear of commands and peeled out of the cave without another warning.
Selina wasn't expecting an argument from Eddie. She wasn't expecting him to chirp up and sing the Bat's praises. And so she wasn't surprised when he verified what she'd said about Stephanie, about the fact that he wouldn't have done what the Bat had done. She did give him a mirthless little laugh when he said he hadn't even let the blonde cough up blood. Since when had almost dying and being doused in the Pit become romantic? The kitty cat obviously needed to work on her perception. But she was young, and it showed then, beneath the gauntness and the dull green eyes. "He's not like us, Eddie. We're selfish. You saved Stephanie for you. I would have saved the Bat for me. He tries to save everyone, and we all matter just the same." It was almost a hiss, almost.
But the hiss faded with the appearance of the violet shades. Shiny, and she was distracted for a moment by the almost overwhelming need to go take something. Take things back, control, health, her emotions. Take. And it took effort to focus on him again as he popped the doors open. Focus, kitty cat. Focus.
And she tried; she did. She helped him lift Dickie, though she almost turned around and left halfway through the trek to the tumbler. In the end, she helped him situate the body in the cramped space. "Our Bat had a different car," she said, because they didn't have the same Bat, but it was close. Years difference, and really nothing else. Her Bat was in his twenties, but she knew enough now to know that he was probably just Eddie's Bat, but younger, angrier, less in control of the kinds of emotions that let her seduce him all over Gotham's rooftops. He could have chased her down and kept her from dying through sheer force of will. But then he'd loved her, hadn't he?
She climbed in the car with slowly returning grace. She was nowhere near where she needed to be, where she would be, but she would get there. She had come too close to ending up like the ex-Robin in the back, right on the edge, and she could still taste the fall. "Don't get us killed," she quipped, looking out the window as he pulled out, the shadow of a smile gracing her lips. Because wouldn't that just be appropriate? If they died now, after it was all said and done? And it was a good thing she couldn't concentrate on what they were doing, on the horror of it, on repercussions. But she couldn't, and she just closed her green eyes as the tumbler rumbled and purred. She coughed once, twice, and she dragged her claws against the glass.
Eddie wasn’t simply a selfish man. He had the ability to fold his wants over and over again on top of each other until they blocked out any other motivation he could have. The riddled green man felt pain, fear, anger and most other emotions with the same fierceness as someone who didn’t go through shock therapy in Arkham, but he lacked the sort of graceful empathy that it took to be on the side of goodness. So, maybe he saved Stephanie for himself, but nothing she said could make him feel guilty about it. Just like he couldn’t in his wildest dreams ever feel guilty about stealing this wondrous machine. He’d give it back, after all and it wasn’t like he was planning on booby trapping the thing with explosives and driving it into some building. The Riddler thought he had more purpose than that.
Adrenaline electrified him, both from simply driving the tumbler but also from stealing it and Eddie looked like he could be lost in that feeling for a long time. If anyone asked the cat later why she thought The Riddler could have spent so many decades doing the same thing, well this was the best example of it. And, there was a good chance if being The Riddler always felt this good, he never would have changed. But, life as a villain tended to have plenty more failure than success.
At first his driving was a little reckless as if he were testing how far the tumbler could go, but then he snapped into a certain efficiency that matched a computer. That was his default comfort zone, despite his theatrics. “Selfishness doesn’t explain why you’re saving Dickie, here.” Riddler said finally, looking over to her long gaze out the window.
She didn't seem to notice his reckless driving. If Gotham slid by the window at a jerky and frenetic pace, well, that was only right, wasn't it? It matched her mood, the itch beneath her skin that she couldn't scratch while sitting here and sitting still. When he mentioned saving Dick, she looked over her shoulder at the body in the bag, and then she looked at him. He looked harmless behind the wheel, nothing like a villain at all. She'd thought that of him, of Oswald, of Crane when he didn't wear his burlap sack. Joe, Joe looked like a villain with Dollmaker's sewn-on face, but she suspected maybe Joe didn't even look like that here.
"Maybe I want to feel better about killing him," she said, but her gaze was already on the passing city again, and there was no indication if there was any truth lingering in the statement. She knew she hadn't killed Dick. She knew, too, that Dick dying would bring the entire nest crashing down into the low grass where any passing cat would pounce on it. And maybe that was Ra's back-up plan? Even if the city managed to save itself, tear the family down so badly that his next try didn't fail. She hated Gotham just then, and for once it wasn't the jewelry-drenched elite that her ire was focused on.
"How long does it last?" she asked, tugging at her sleeve and looking at the bruise-dots from the IV on her arm. She knew enough to know she wasn't herself. She knew, too, that maybe injecting the goop for days wasn't the same as drinking it, or the same as going for a dip. She knew she just wanted out of the tumbler, and she wanted to exhaust herself on something. Her own brand madness, maybe, but she didn't quite get that. "The effect of the Pit, how long does it last?" Maybe she was just asking for Dickie's sake. Maybe not.
“How dramatic.” Eddie said with approval at her explanation, eyebrows high like she had just performed a backflip for him in the safety of the tumbler. It was a rhetorical statement anyway. There was no use really delving into matters of the heart with a man who couldn’t fully appreciate it. Once, a long time ago, he cared deeply about the interchangable parts of the bat family, but it was only in the same way someone would want to how to construct a bomb. Now he could barely hide his disdain when Stephanie brought them up for one reason or another. But, he knew that if they did fall apart, she would, too. Which explained why he was here, driving the not-batmobile with a dead Robin in the backseat. That and he promised the cat a favor. Thieves usually benefited from staying in each other’s good graces. And, even if Stephanie didn’t believe it, the ancient man in green could get a little sentimental about old faces.
The streets of Old Gotham were all but abandoned, which was an odd sight to see for someone who grew up there. Usually anyone from gang bangers to drug dealers to prostitutes to hobos to colorful psychopaths crowded the pavement and even the roads when a good fight broke out. It was beyond eerie, stepping over into the depressing realization that a good chunk of this city already didn’t make it out alive. Eddie liked to boast about being the town hermit, but he had a certain affection for the cloying jumbled mess of his webbed corner. “Depends how much you rolled around in.” Eddie said about the Pit with a small shrug. “Stephanie has been angry for days now and she got a little over a flask full. When I took a bath a long time ago it felt like it lasted weeks...months even.” It was funny how his voice changed when he compared the two. With Stephanie, everyday was a battle back into her good graces, but when he cured himself all those years ago, it felt almost heavenly. A perfect insanity that stringed everything together in a beautiful formation.
“How’d you take it?” Eddie asked with real curiosity. He was certain there wasn’t a wrong way to be Pitted, but eating it was different from bathing in it. “What’s it making you feel?”
She gave him a look when he said she was dramatic, one that was almost right, almost like her old self. "You know I like drama, Eddie. It's why I wear black and drape myself in diamonds," she explained, but the teasing wasn't quite right, and it ended up sounding more like a girl playing at dress up than who she normally was. And, too, she didn't want to examine it too long. If she did, she might throw Dickie out of the tumbler. If she thought about how Bruce would react, how Dickie would react, how Jaybird would... No, no, better not to think about those things at all, and her claws dragged across the glass once more. She wished she was in the suit. She wished the sound brought the satisfying of metal on the bulletproof surface. But she didn't have the suit; she was just a girl right then, and she didn't like it at all.
She tried to imagine Stephanie being angry. She tried to imagine how he dealt with that. "What if she didn't forgive you?" she asked. Oh, the kitty cat might not be in the loop, but even she knew Stephanie hadn't asked for a bath in the green. "Would it be tolerable? Having her alive and not with you? Would it be better than letting her die?" she asked. It was an important question, if maybe too philosophical for her normal state of mind. But she'd just danced with death, and there was a corpse in the back, and there was no time like the present for philosophical questions.
Her gaze slid to her arm again, and she remembered the vial hooked up to the length of tubing in Stark Tower. "IV, probably a drip. A few days at least," she explained, because he would answer her with his own brand of honesty, and honesty was what she wanted just then. As for what it was making her feel, that was harder. "I itch. Under my skin, where I can't reach. I want to take things, and I want to be in control. I want to steal from under people's noses, and I don't want to stop until I'm so exhausted I can't stand anymore. I want to take the world down, diamond by diamond, until there's no one left with any power over anyone else. I want the thrill of taking what isn't mine." She laughed a little, completely inappropriate given the circumstances. "Not so different, is it? Just more."
Eddie considered a world with Stephanie in it, but not with her by his side. His tongue skated over his teeth roughly, eyes on the road as if he were focusing very intently on staying in the lines. “She wouldn’t. I knew she wouldn’t. However, if we’re speaking in hypotheticals...” He blinked, his processing working extra hard to compute an answer. “I suppose I’d wear myself out trying to get her back and when I saw no foreseeable solution, I guess I’d take all the little strings I have around this town and pull.” His mouth trembled into a thin line at that, eyes a little wild before taming themselves with careful allocation. Eddie’s voice lifted out of the darkness into something dorky, playful and still just a little unhinged. “See, Selina. I like dramatics, too.”
They rounded the corner towards a street that looked like it had been abandoned for a long time. Above them towered a couple crumbling buildings that were once glorious in their own eras, but now stood as dusted eyesores that were havens for criminals just like him. “Interesting.” He said about the IV, fingers tapping in thought on the steering wheel. “I’m not a chemist or a doctor like our crow and stemmed friends, but I’d bet that it’s going to be stuck with you for a while.” Riddler cocked an eyebrow, mouth turned up in a thoughtful and intrigued pout. “Maybe that’s not so bad, meow face. When was the last time you stole something really val-” He stopped himself, eyeing the body in the back and broke out in a nerdy little laughing fit.
He parked under the dark canopy of a broken billboard and wiped laughter tears off his cheeks under the violet glasses. “I really should have built a ramp down to the Lazarus Pit. Just drop him off and drive away like a dry cleaners.” Riddler said deadpan, glasses suddenly glowing as he turned the tumbler off, opened the doors and before wiping traces of his own programs, enacted predetermined security protocols incase a hobo tried to steal it. See? Riddler could be thoughtful. He got out of the tumbler, placing his hand on the side like he was silently saying goodbye. There was no way he’d drive it back to the cave, so this was it.
“Santa Muerte.” Riddler called out into the darkness, as if someone else was there with them. “We’re in the ballpark of thirty minutes. I’d door now if I were you.” He didn’t wait for a response, nodding his head as if he knew his possibly imaginary friend was listening in and moved to help Selina with the body.
She laughed at his unhinged explanation. "Oh, don't tell the Bat that. He won't like it," she said, but she understood. Oh, did she ever. Just then, she understood. If she could steal the Bat, put him somewhere and not let him go, she would. And turn, turn went the gears. But it must be nice to have that certainty he had, that belief that Stephanie wouldn't reject him. She wasn't sure she had that same faith in the blonde kitten's feelings for him, but then she didn't know Stephanie Brown. "She was erased in my world," she said randomly, looking back out the window. "Erased, gone, like she never existed." And that thought was obviously troubling, because she dropped it nearly as fast it came, and that didn't have anything to do with Stephanie at all.
She barely paid attention when he said it would be with her for awhile, this feeling that clawed at her insides, but when he asked about stealing something of value, she followed his gaze to the back. Oh, no, she didn't consider that stealing. Even the tumbler didn't count; stealing from the Bat was kitten's play. But maybe, maybe, and there went those gears again. "I think I have something bigger in mind." Bigger. Badder. Battier. And when she looked back at him, the harmless looking man behind the wheel, her eyes were clearer, as if settling on something had brought some relief, some balm to the itch. "You're a helpful little enigma sometimes," she purred. And she knew the feeling was wrong, but then she was wrong; she'd talked to Ra's, and she knew she had passed the point of no return days earlier. Her organs should have been mush, and yet here she was. Here she was.
She climbed out of the tumbler as soon as it stopped, and she didn't ask about his call in the darkness. It didn't matter to her. Oh, she knew Death was around. She didn't like the woman at all. No, she just reached for Dickie's legs through the thick fabric of the bag, and she tugged with little strength. But she was already better than she had been when this had begun, and she was glad of the rapid progression; she had things to do.
"Can we throw him in and leave him?" she asked, the first real signs of guilt seeping into her voice, so much more of the regular kitty cat in that one question alone. She screwed her eyes shut tight, drowning out Damian's reactions after he Pitted Jaybird. No, no, nothing about that.
Riddler liked being helpful. It was such a unexpected trait for someone so difficult most of the time, but anyone who worked with him towards a common goal knew the opposite to be true. Which made quitting the business almost altogether a very dangerous thing to do. Not that it scared Steph, of course. He reluctantly put that in the list of things he liked about her. But, even if he wasn’t super villain status anymore and instead in some untrustworthy middle ground, Riddler was still in the business of being helpful if he could get away with it.
“I have a slightly faster, less dangerous way to get down there.” Riddler said, grabbing the bird’s shoulders with another groan like he was assigned some tedious homework and walked them over to an abandoned (but strangely fortified) hat shop across the street. Propping Grayson up long enough to put in a passcode and run a facial recognition, he opened the obviously over secure door and lead them inside. This of course wasn’t the way he had mapped out for Batman, but Riddler was allowed to have some of his own secrets, wasn’t he? The hatshop lights buzzed awake and the now empty store was covered in bright green question marks, boxes of supplies and a couple computers. He knew there had to be smuggling into Wonder City, so he checked the area for a place that had a fixable elevator. “This hat shop actually doubled as a booze and drugs smuggle shop underground.” Riddler informed her, obviously enjoying the part of Gotham City tour guide.
Behind a couple locked doors and down the stairs was a refurbished elevator out of metal scraps he had found around the docks and industrial area. A testament to what the Riddler could do with some free time, even if the lift didn’t look particularly safe. But, maybe that was slightly on purpose. Once inside he punched in another code and the metal gate doors slowly closed them in before gently moving down towards Wonder City. Finally he responded to her question: “Yes. Well, of course we can leave him. In fact, we’re going to run.” Eddie looked over at her with a raised brow. “Not just because of the obvious shame you’re carrying around, but he’s going to be very crazy when he wakes up. And, violent. Maybe you can tango with that, but I think I’ll pass.”
She hadn't expected him to have an easier way, but the thought crossed her mind that she really shouldn't have been surprised. Eddie, she knew, didn't like to tax himself. It was one of the reasons she didn't understand what Stephanie saw in him. He was thin and scrawny. Not at all the type of man to shove someone against a wall or leave bruises behind after sex. She would have been bored to kitty death, but obviously Stephanie was into another kind of man. Some women liked intellectuals, she supposed - just not her. But another way in, that was good news. She felt better, stronger, yes, but she wasn't going to be on her feet very much longer before crashing somewhere in a ball of exhaustion as the cure finished warring its way through her Laz Pitted veins. And then, then there would be trouble.
She thought, for a moment, that she should go back to Stark Tower once this was done. That she should wait for Bruce, wait for it all to die down, wait to feel normal again. But she knew she wouldn't. She hadn't wanted to go to quarantine in the first place, and the lab had only been tolerable because she hadn't been conscious. No, the kitty cat wouldn't be hanging around here, but she wouldn't be going back to the tin man either, not unless some guilt came crashing down that hadn't managed yet.
But he was right about the shame. Shame that she had to shake off like matted fur. Maybe she would call the baby bird. Maybe not. Maybe this would burn that bridge, and it was already so rickety. No, she would keep this secret. She knew he would tell Stephanie, though. He was like one of those girlfriends that couldn't keep secrets from her man; she'd always hated those. But for now, the kitty cat could pretend, just like she was pretending to listen about the hat shop.
When the elevator moved, she looked down at the body between them. No, she wouldn't be hanging around either.
Eddie wasn’t good at shutting up or sitting still. It explained why he had his mark all over the city and how rapidly he seemed to consume information. He couldn’t idle and if he tried it usually required his old faithful baby bottle of scotch to slow the processes down. Riddler looked to Selina, caught her glance down to the dead Nightwing and decided to turn his attention to the numerous plates he had spinning around Old Gotham that blinked across his glasses. After all, there was no heaviness in his heart for the dead body between them and just like the Talon he lit on fire and beat to death, he didn’t feel anything for his old foe. Maybe if it was Batman, he told himself. His Batman.
The elevator ride was longer than a typical apartment building or high rise, partially because it needed to move slowly and Wonder City was nestled far under even the subway station. Finally it slowed to a stop, the metal doors screeching open and Riddler awoke from his digital trance with a funny little yawn and blink. He gave an unwilling gaze down to Grayson and then hoisted him up, carrying him out into a broken, deserted home that teetered over the familiar rushing water below. “You know, meow face.” Riddler said, face scrunched a little as he carried the dead weight. “The next time we hang out, I think it shouldn’t involve green goop. Might I make a couple suggestions?” That sweet, dorky condensing voice in spades as it echoed across the broken street.
“A break in. A car chase. A heist. I heard about one you pulled on a train in my Gotham and didn’t even invite me. Do you know how many railroad puns I have locked away? A caboose full.” He stopped talking long enough to catch his breath, eyes fluttering a little in exhaustion. “I’d even settle for some detective work. The poorman’s robbery.” Though, they both knew Eddie wouldn’t do anything that would piss off Stephanie because he was the kind of person to run and tell her everything. It was out of necessity, you see. To make sure he didn’t wobble over the fence back into his old habits.
They finally reached a large, metal, industrial door with a bright messy question mark on it. It was exactly the same spot the old door was and it was clear that when Eddie said he’d never come back to the Lazarus Pit, he wasn’t being entirely truthful. He really just couldn’t help himself when it came to grabbing up territory. “I replaced that door. It was too Temple of Doom for me.” Eddie punched in the password, registered that Batman had visited to grab samples for Selina (though everyone already knew that) and continued to drag Grayson up to the Pit.
She had wandered into her own thoughts during the silent elevator ride, being lulled by the gears and the sounds into planning out a path of destruction through Gotham, one where she hit every single jewelry store and art museum along the way. She had almost forgotten about the dead man at her feet as the elevator moved, and her green eyes registered something like surprise when she saw him there again. Reality flooded in, and she didn't want that. She concentrated, instead, on the man across from her. "I'm not sure you could keep up," she teased, and it took work to find those words, but she managed, and her lips curved upward at the corners the smallest bit. "But I'll keep you in mind, Eddie."
And, admittedly, she had no idea where she went after this. She had no idea what happened down the line. If Bruce and the others found out about this, then who knew if she'd ever even get the chance to meow at them again. She had no plans, none that would stick from one second to the next, but she understood that this had put her into Eddie's court, rather than standing outside of it bouncing the ball.
She looked at the door, when he admitted to replacing it, with no surprise whatsoever. She didn't trust him to do anything he said, really, and that included dealings with the door. She didn't trust him to betray her either, though, and that was new. She waited as he punched the buttons, and she helped him drag the body the remainder of the way, knowing the sound against the metal would stay with her long after the splash of throwing Dickie's body in the Pit subsided.
She stepped back, and she took a very deep breath, so deep that her lips cracked at the edges and blood pooled there. "Do it," she said, looking away.
Eddie recognized the momentary lost look on the kitty cat’s face. He had felt the same way before, his own insanity breaking into tiny little cogs and gears for him to sweep up in his arms and make sense of. There was no telling her how to fix it or survive in this different, jumbled Gotham because he was still figuring it out. And, he thought that his own method of clinging to Stephanie and trying to force his riddles into quiet little boxes wouldn’t work for the cat at all. Selina wouldn’t even want pity, if that was what momentarily rolling around in his head. So, he ignored it and trusted her to land on her own feet. She always did.
“I feel like I should pin a note to his chest.” Riddler said lowly in a thoughtful grumble, pulling the dead boy wonder towards the Pit and rolled him in, kicking the body a little to get it far out into the electrified green goo. He wiped the green off his shoe against the edge of the pool and then looked up like he just remembered what was going to happen next. “And, now if you’ll excuse me...” Eddie smirked at Selina, taking off in a sprint out of the room like this was his favorite part about Pitting someone. And, while Eddie wasn’t very strong or even remarkably fit, he could sure as hell run away from a bad situation fast.
Selina lingered only a second longer, just beyond the splash, just longer than Eddie's retreat, and then she too ran, without looking back.