- (sonrisa) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-05-06 12:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: dc comics, harley quinn, riddler |
Who: Eddie N & Harley Q
What: Eatin’ doughnuts, solvin’ puzzles, and, hey, solvin' crimes
Where: Old Gotham, Pixie’s Doughnuts
When: Recently, but before the Crane anti-fear plot
Warnings/Rating: Light violence and adorableness up the wazoo.
The best doughnut shop in Old Gotham was a place owned by some dropout college students rounding their thirties who deliberately made the most ridiculous and over the top breakfast pastries they could manage. Doughnuts that were slathered in broken Oreos and frosting, doughnuts that were dipped in a box of Fruit Loops, doughnuts that were covered with freeze dried strawberries and pocky sticks. Over the top, eccentric, weird and a little sweet. Just like Eddie. And, like Los Tacos, Pixie’s Donuts was a frequent hangout for the Riddler who had personally made sure they had made it through the plague and weren’t hassled by mobster landlords or shady businessmen. The green man was practically a patron saint of delicious food at that point. And, while the rest of the Gotham wasn’t used to seeing the green suit at galas and Wayne Fundraisers, Old Gotham didn’t even bat an eye at the question marks and bowler hats anymore. This delighted Riddler to no end. It made him feel home. So, he stood in front of the large glass case in his dark green suit and bowler hat, ordering an assortment of the weirdest doughnuts they had (along with his favorite a chocolate mint recipe that swirled in green) while making friendly chit-chat with the owners. It was clear he had missed Gotham and was soaking up his homecoming the best he could with all the bells and whistles. Seeing Harley was part of that. Once he was sure it was a Harley he knew, especially the one he last saw before landing in this door, Eddie wasn’t about to let that friendship go. After all, he always had a soft spot for the Sirens. With a crooked, proud smile he wobbled back to their booth with a tray of doughnuts and coffee, setting them down carefully before sliding into his seat. “So, what kind of jigsaw puzzle did you bring?” Eddie’s eyes lit up with youthfulness as puzzles were a sort of life-long love and obsession for him. And, while he had boxes of them at home, he insisted that Harley bring it because sometimes even the green man liked to be surprised. She’d never been to Pixie’s before, but it was more her speed than the quiet coffee house had been. Here there was sugar and people who smiled. She liked it already. She fit in here. She herself had on a soft pink miniskirt that only just hit mid-thigh and a white tanktop with a Chocobo on it, her long blond hair over her shoulder in a loose braid. Her shoes were pink sneakers and her socks came to her knees, two barbershop poles of purple and white. And since it was cooler inside, the girl had also pulled on her chick-yellow cardigan. She almost looked like some of the treats, all sweetness and frosting and sprinkles, that sat all delicious in the glass display. From the booth Eddie’d picked out, in a corner near the window, with the springtime sun shining in and people strolling by outside, arm in arm or listening to music, in the light clothes they’d only just rescued from storage, Harley had sat humming, happy and smiling, to herself as she waited, very patiently, might I add, for her friend to return. The heavy puzzle box painted a scene of the Gotham skyline at night, a panorama of black, red, and yellow, with an obnoxious bursting bubble in the upper-left corner boasting ‘1001 pieces!’ The corners of the cardboard were sharp and its finish glossy - it was new, fresh out of the shrink wrap. Harley lugged the thing out of her oversized Hello Kitty handbag and was quietly inspecting the cover image when Eddie returned to the table, laden with doughnuts that looked more like cross-section slices of various planets than anything edible. “Thanks, Eddie -- Oh, this kind!” She turned the box so it was right-side-up for him and distracted herself momentarily with her coffee. Approximately three tons of sugar were added, each torn packet discarded by her elbow, white sugar crystals littering the table’s surface. Harley grinned at Eddie. She was glad he was back too. “Can ya even imagine how hard it’ll be to do the sky? It’s all black!” Eddie took a bite of a s’mores themed doughnut, eyes going wide as he realized oooh the marshmallow is insssiide and tried to finish his bite without already making a mess of everything. He looked up to Harley with some thoughtful chomp, chomp, chomps, nudging his coffee towards her with two fingers up to indicate how many packets of sugar he wanted. Finally gulping his first bite down he rubbed a napkin over his fingers and face to look at the puzzle box curiously. “Excellent choice, Harleen. The sky will be as difficult as navigating the bat cave at night, but I believe in our combined puzzle solving powers.” He grinned at the way her voice squeaked when she got excited and set his doughnut aside long enough to open the box and start sifting through the pieces. “I’m going to start with the...” He held up a piece and turned it around a couple times. “Bottom left corner. Do you want to start with Wayne Tower and we’ll work towards each other? We can save the dastardly sky for last.” He dug through the box until he found a half W that was plastered on the top of Wayne’s building and handed it to her. A couple more thoughtful, smaller bites on his doughnut and he got to work finding pieces that looked like they could be in his corner. “Tell me how you’ve been since I left for Bludhaven.” Eddie asked, eyes flicking up to look at her before back to studying the puzzle pieces. He was getting better at this friendship thing, with pointers from Muerte of course. Friends liked to be asked how their life was. How they were feeling. What they had been doing with their free time. And, Eddie liked to chit chat. He liked stories and he listened as good as he talked. Harley obediently emptied two brown packets of sugar-in-the-raw into Eddie’s coffee. The wooden stirrer ticked against the cardboard as she finished humming her song. The girl pushed the cup back across the table and lifted her own to her lips to sip at the syrupy coffee within, careful of the unfurling fingers of steam that reached up toward her face. The heat brought a slight blush to her skin and she smiled over the rim of the cup. With two fingers, painted nails sinking deep in the soft dough, she pried a brownish doughnut from its brethren. It was scaled with shredded coconut and cinnamon. Coffee set aside, Harley bit into the thing with gusto. She chewed as Eddie opened the box and made noises of agreement as he suggested their starting places. It was a good plan, she thought. The half-W was pressed into her outstretched palm and, after brushing the crumbs from her lips with the back of her other hand (she never claimed to be dainty), Harley lifted the carefully shaped cardboard and squinted at it, and its edges, as if by doing so, she’d know just what was missing. “Oh -” Harley began digging through the other 998 pieces. “Nothin’, really. It was real quiet ‘round here. Kinda boring.” She made a face at Eddie to convey her displeasure with the whole last couple of weeks. It really had been dull. - But then Harley’s face lit up as something occurred to her. “Didya get me a souvenir?” She smiled sweetly. A long time ago it occurred to Riddler that Harley was one of the last people he’d leave in a puzzle death trap. Not because he was playing favorites, but because if she got out (which she very well might) he’d never hear the end of it. The way she looked over the puzzle piece reminded him that she saw things too. Patterns, though mostly in people, and some part of her subconscious would push the right button, pull the right lever and she’d break free without even realizing she did it. God, how frustrating would that have been? It was a good thing he gave up those riddle houses all together. If they were designed to boost his ego, it never actually worked. Slowly, a smug, sly smile crossed his lips and he took his bowler hat off. “Did I get you a souvenir!” Eddie exclaimed as if he didn’t know either, rummaging through his suit jacket until he pulled out a box wrapped in today’s funny pages. “Bludhaven is a hell hole, but I can find quirky in any town I visit.” The man in green told her proudly, puffing up his chest a little as if he were sure that she’d like her gift. Inside the box were a pair of red, heart shaped glasses with a little bow on one side. He had remembered Harley wearing something similar back home years and years ago and he thought to get her the pair in case she lost the old ones she had. Old Eddie. Sentimental as all hell. The chest-puffing was entirely earned. Eddie was right. Once the colorful, ink-scudded pages were torn away with enthusiasm and the box opened, Harley squeaked with excitement. Sunglasses! Heart-shaped sunglasses! With a bow! Cute. She smiled widely, her doughnut and drink forgotten, and slid the shades up the bridge of her nose. Harley posed with her hands up in a ‘voila! How do I look?’ gesture. But she only held it for a second. Breaking, she stood in the booth, just a bit, so as to be able to lean over the puzzle pieces, treats and coffee, to place a small, grateful kiss on Eddie’s cheek. “Aw, ya always know just what a girl wants.” Obviously pleased, the girl grinned cheekily over the curved top of the sunglasses. Two blond eyebrows raised and her smile turned mischievous. “Except for your sweetie.” She laughed then, fingers splayed over her mouth as she sat back in the sticky booth, just in case Eddie thought to make a grab for her. Harley removed the cute sunglasses and set them next to her doughnut. She picked some coconut off the table and popped it in her mouth. “Just kiddin’, Eddie.” She giggled. “How is your girl, anyway?” If Eddie’s grin could get any prouder, it did. Wide, silly and oh-so-smart. It turned into a soft smile when she reached over to kiss his cheek and he sat back in the booth, taking a smug sip of his coffee. Until the comment about Stephanie, which practically made him spit take all over their puzzle pieces and doughnuts. He struggled to swallow and looked at her with a grimace laced with just a little bit of humor. Oh he knew she was kidding, but comments like that hit a little too close to home. “I’m not accustomed to having a girlfriend. Give me a break.” His eyelids stayed heavy and grumpy, but he eventually let it go and reached for his black and green donut. “She’s recovering. The whole business with her father didn’t end with a hug and rainbows, as you can imagine. But, the important thing is that she didn’t get hurt and Artie will be locked in Blackgate for god knows how long.” Eddie shrugged, hand in the air as he tried to seem nonchalant about the whole thing. And, then he paused long enough to put some pieces together and push them off to the side. “There’s some things I can’t make better. That’s why I was glad to hear you two were going to have a playdate soon. She’ll love you.” Which was close to what he told Stephanie, but he was certain the two would get along just fine. Harley was hard to not like when it came down to it. Harley bit her bottom lip guiltily as Eddie’s smile transformed - darkened - into the frown of a grump and she lowered her eyes to the table. She hadn’t meant to be insulting, but she’d hit a nerve, she could see (hello, he almost spit out his coffee). Maybe he and his sweetie hadn’t yet made up from the missed birthday present fiasco, even though Harley had supplied Eddie with a perfectly good alternative. She sighed and took a sip of her still-too-hot coffee, only then looking up as her friend gestured in the air between them. “You tell her I’m sorry to hear that. But at least her daddy’s locked up, like you said, so now he’ll be leavin’ you two lovebirds alone.” She nodded with a jump of blond braid. The girl blinked at the spread of as-of-yet lonely puzzle pieces. She kind of felt bad for them. They just wanted to make up a whole. Harley clucked her tongue and began trying to find the other half of her W. She glanced up with a smile. “She told ya, huh? Did she say what we were doin’?” Eddie smirked up at her and that guilty look. He was a moody sort of man when he wanted to be, when he wanted to pull the pity out of people, but that didn’t seem to surface very often anymore. And, if it did it felt like an act. The green man was happy, even if he couldn’t do everything right. Happy and deliriously stupid in love. “Things are hard. They’re always going to be difficult in this city. But, she always makes it worth it. Even when I make her mad. I know it’s because she loves me too much to not care what I say like most women.” He said to the puzzle pieces, thoughtfully chewing away on a doughnut before shifting through the box for her other half of the W. “I don’t know what you’re going to do. And, honestly? I don’t give a damn as long as you two have a good time.” He pulled the puzzle box close to him with his fingers, rummaging through the pieces so quickly now it didn’t even seem like he was processing them. “With Gotham being as eerie as it has been you two better get something good before things get bad.” Eddie sounded like an old timer who could read the signs of a sure fire earthquake or a storm. “Ah-HAH.” He suddenly exclaimed, pulling out a puzzle piece. “Oh no, wait. That’s an M. Dang it. I’ll get back to my own corner.” He tossed the half M back in and went back to piecing together the pile he had set aside before. The coconut was flaking off and Harley was attempting to catch it before it made it to the table. The resulting jerking motion meant more shredded coconut fell. It was a truly vicious circle. Finally, she gave up and just finished the delicious thing with the remaining coconut and cinnamon, dusted her fingers together, and peeked up at Eddie as he talked about Stephanie. She heard the unusual earnestness curbing his words and the gentleness in his eyes that he really did mean what he was saying - that he loved this girl and she loved him and, gee, if that wasn’t just the sweetest thing. By the time Eddie began searching for the other half of the W, Harley was sighing happily for him and drinking her coffee. Her feet dangled in their sneakers and she kicked them thoughtlessly as she pondered the nature of love. If anyone in Gotham deserved to be happy, it was Eddie. He could be a know-it-all and a brat, but he was one of very few people who were genuinely nice - at least to Harley, and that was all she knew - and she really did like his bowler hat. The girl was knocked from her reverie by the exclamation of triumph, only to be disappointed. She shrugged and sat back against the plastic of the booth, cool as it was through her cardigan. “‘Eerie’?” Now that she thought about it, it had been uncharacteristically quiet. Harley frowned as she chose her next doughnutty victim. The one she fished loose was as colorful as she was, sprinkled with that looked like fruity cereal. Harley smiled at it, set it carefully on a napkin, and stamped two pieces of Gotham together with a balled up fist, because she found them next to each other and realized they fit. “Ya don’t think this is the - what’s that sayin’ again? - the calm before the - the - storm, do ya? Yikes.” She didn’t like the sound of that. “We’ve seen plenty of storms before, Harley it should be fine.” Eddie assured her, though there wasn’t much weight behind it. One thing that remained consistent in this Gotham was that the rogues tended to rule whenever there was some kind of disaster. Reformed or not. And, maybe he knew a little more than he could let on, but a man like Riddler needed to have his secrets. He returned to focusing on the puzzle, occasionally slipping pieces over to her that looked like Wayne Tower and doing his very best not to organize every piece he came across into little sections. This was a collaborative effort, after all. He was allowed to relax and take his time the way he did with crosswords. A doughnut later and half of his coffee down, Eddie had managed to work his way across the bottom of the puzzle and then up towards Wayne Tower. Anyone could see him relax, like this was some kind of unintentional therapy. While telling riddles brought him a little closer to the edge, solving puzzles and mysteries let his mind work without hurting anyone. But, calm wasn’t exactly something that stayed very long in a place like Gotham. Without warning, the glass window above the booth behind them shattered and there was a thump of a body hitting the floor like a sandbag. Eddie had been in such a nice, warm place of calm that the sound made him jump and accidentally scatter puzzle pieces all over the table and booth. He snapped his head back to see a man in a suit face down on the donut display, blood trickling from his forehead and down the glass. People were stampeding to get out of the shop as quickly as they could, but Eddie just carefully put his violet glasses on. In the background people were yelling CONGRESSMAN? CONGRESSMAN! and suddenly it became very clear that this was another political hit in less than a month. “Harley, we’re both ex crazies in a room with a dead politician.” He said, all logical and business as he slid out of the booth. “What we should do is run. But, I want to play detective. You in?” Eddie turned to look at Harley and maybe there was a tiny smile on his face. For all the good he was trying to do, he couldn’t help but get excited about a good mystery. The storm hit. One minute she was putting the finishing touches on Wayne Tower as Eddie’s own black pieces spread toward hers like a disease, and then glass was spraying her back and everyone was screaming. Harley wasn’t so unused to chaos as to join in the fray of pandemonium and panic, but she hadn’t exactly been expecting a -- congressman to have his brains blown out while she was eating a doughnut and working on a jigsaw puzzle. Her eyes were wide and out of instinct, she turned her shoulders in, drawing herself just a little smaller as Eddie slid from the booth. She looked over at him with a pout and grabbed the gifted sunglasses and her bag with one hand. What she wanted to do was finish the puzzle, but that wasn’t going to happen. After scooping the rest of the doughnuts into the top of Hello Kitty’s head, she unfolded herself from the booth, put on her own sunglasses (because they made one helluva good-looking team that way), and smiled like the ex-crazie she most certainly was. “‘Course, Eddie.” Was the girl worried about the fact that a man had just died not ten feet away? ...Not really. She was just as curious as Eddie was as to why, and let that consume her attention, rather than jitter about and fret about how fragile life was. Harley had spent years throwing herself in danger’s way for fun. This was nothin’. She crossed the warzone of a room - glass shards crunching under rubber soles, doughnuts discarded, blood oozing onto the display case - and drew up to the dead man. With her tongue poking between her lips, she bent over him and examined the bullet’s exit hole. A straight shot. Right through. Like he didn’t have a brain to stop the thing. “Ouch.” Eddie was unconcerned with tampering with a crime scene since he was sure that he’d find something valuable long before the actual police even arrived. “Which Congressman?” He asked, looking up to Harley before he stepped behind the counter (a cool and confident hand on the waitress’s shoulder to make sure she was okay) and looked up at the man’s dead face to see if he recognized him. “Drayton? Oh. Well, this isn’t a likely candidate for a professional hit.” Eddie said, head practically on display with the rest of the doughnuts before he stood up straight and walked back to the front of the store. “He was average. Remarkably average. Middle class. Likable, but not charismatic. Good, but not above making deals.” Eddie’s glasses glowed brighter as he tried to calculate the trajectory. “Harley? Can you find me the bullet? I bet it went clean through.” He pointed right where the Congressman’s head was before he got shot, right where the bullet hole would be and traced a line up through the window. The shattered glass made the angle almost impossible to guess and the only other solution was to go through all the rooms in the next building. Hmph. That was the kind of job meant for police officers with nothing better to do. The bullet would have to give him enough answers. Harley blinked hard at the wound, trying to understand the reasons behind it, stopping to glance at Eddie as he came up from the other side of the counter. She twisted her hair around her finger as her friend’s little head settled low among the doughnuts and dropped her eyes back to the dead congressman. She nudged his body with the toe of her Chucks, just to have something to do as Eddie then removed himself and crossed to the front of the shop. “Poor fella. Didn’t even get his dougnut,” sighed Harley as she leaned on the cracked glass of the counter with one elbow. She really did pity him. Imagine your last moments being those just before eating something sweet. Whatta letdown. She propped her chin on her fist and turned big, blue eyes to Eddie as he began listing the reasons the man really seemed like an odd choice for an assassination. “Sure, Eddie. But ya know, he sounds boring. Maybe that’s why someone had it out for him.” The girl picked her way through some rubble as she began her search for the elusive bullet. She pushed broken doughnuts aside from inside the shattered case. “Hey, maybe it was his wife. That’s why ya don’t bore a woman, ya know. She’ll take you out.” “Boring is the best reason to kill someone. I read that somewhere.” Eddie confirmed with a nod and walked back over to the counter, asking the shaking waitress for a sticky notepad as he clicked a green pen that he mysteriously pulled out of his blazer. “Maybe he was having a love affair with the doughnuts and she just could not take being jealous of an old fashioned maple.” He smiled when the waitress handed him the notepad, eyes darting down to see that her whole body was shaking and he reached out to grab her shoulder for a minute. “It’s fine. You’re safe. Whoever killed this guy got his target and moved on. No one is going to snipe a girl running a doughnut shop.” Eddie lowered his glasses enough that he could make eye contact with the girl. “Everyone loves doughnuts.” Then he wrote witness on a sticky note in green ink and stuck it on her shirt before moving over to the body and writing down the congressman’s name, political party and possible motives to kill him. “I’m going to leave some notes for the cops and then I say we scram, Harley. We can pick up the investigation later when I have more information.” He glanced up to his blonde friend as he slapped the note on the shoulder of the congressman and then wandered over to the back of the shop again to help look for the bullet. There wasn’t much they could get out of it since any sniper skilled enough to pull off that shot without hurting anyone else was likely smart enough to file down ID numbers, but a Riddler could dream couldn’t he? Eddie wrote Inside a burning house, what’s the best thing to make? on the sticky note and slapped it on Harley’s arm before moving farther back towards the wall, running his fingers along the plaster to look for a hole or a lodged bullet. Harley continued to parse through the mess of sprinkles and glaze with sticky fingers. In fact, she was busy sucking sugar off of the second knuckle of her index finger when Eddie passed by, zooming in near enough with his ever-quickened step to stick her with a note from his little pad of paper. (The sugar could have contained evidence. Who knew. Regardless, it tasted good and that was what she was operating on.) The still-wet green ink trailed under her fingers as she tore it off to peer at the scrawled message, the letters sharp, slight, and slanted, much like Eddie himself: ‘Inside a burning house, what’s the best thing to make?’ The girl in the skirt and braid considered the riddle, since that’s obviously what it was, with only a single flick of her eyes to her little green friend’s form as he searched for the missing bullet. She shrugged and kept digging. Her Hello Kitty purse sat in the broken glass. She stuffed the note into it and sifted through more doughnut debris, until -- finally, she felt something hard and cooling, stuck in the metal of the case’s sliding door on the waitress’ side. “I think I found your bullet, Riddler,” she exclaimed proudly. “But it’s kinda stuck.” Harley backed up a bit to lower her chin in an attempt to see through everything to the backdoor of the case. Eddie turned to look at her, glasses seeming to glow bright with praise like she found the golden egg. “Excellent work.” He scooted in closer to look at it, tilting his head back and forth so that his violet glasses could get the basic reading of what kind of bullet it was. “Now we can make a rough estimate as to where the bullet was fired and begone.” In moments, Eddie was already back over by the politician, hoisting the dead man up with a geeky grunt until he was up on his feet. Pointing his finger at the bulletwound, Eddie gracefully swept the deadman down on the donut display like the two men were dancing and then stepped back as his glasses flashed and calculated. A moment passed and then Eddie raised a single finger. “Eureka! The bullet was fired from across the street on the second floor.” He wrote the location down on his sticky notepad and slapped it down victoriously on the counter. “And, so ends my duty as a responsible Gotham citizen. Now, let’s get out of here Harley.” “Haste.” She said it with the selfsame, self-satisfied smile from before, when she’d found two puzzle pieces that belonged to each other. Harley was pleased with herself. Inside a burning house, what’s the best thing to make? Haste. Of course. Blond hair trailing behind her like a streamer of sunbeams, the girl flashed out the backdoor after Eddie, after the tangoing and the deductions, after the man put everything together like so many more pieces of a larger, scarier puzzle, like it was easy. She didn’t think it was easy, but if Eddie wasn’t worried, she wasn’t worried. All they needed to do was skedaddle. Hello Kitty was tucked safe under her arm as Harley skipped down the alley pressed between Gotham’s old brick buildings, away from the doughnut shop, away from the Gotham skyline made small, away from the deadman and the shaking waitresses. She laughed. “This is why I like hanging out with you, Eddie. Somethin’ excitin’ always happens. It’s like it follows you around. And at least Gotham’s down one more boring man, right?” It was flippant and youthful, but it was as true as anything. Harley smiled at her friend and continued running, knowing they wouldn’t be caught. |