It's a Graves thing (soundofwings) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-05-22 11:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | death, riddler |
Who: Eddie and Death
What: Something is not right with Muerte
Where: Wonder City
When: Around now?
Warnings/Rating: Death is not well. Nameless goon becoming suddenly deceased. Descriptions of unwellness and some shouting.
Wonder City was just as Eddie left it. Rusted, falling apart and still blinking with those green lights he didn’t have the heart to take down. Sure, the riddler traps left a year ago were dismantled and thrown about in heaps of scrap metal, but the big, green question marks were left blinking. They were a reminder that Riddler was a large, moving part of the city’s mechanisms and there wasn’t an inch of the city he didn’t want his little green hands on. It wasn’t so much greed or a territory grab as it would have been in the old days. Eddie simply wanted to be embedded in Gotham the way someone who had lived there for decades and decades might. To know every inch of it even as the city kept changing and mutating into something new.
Braving the underground tunnels was a danger now that Bane was in charge, but Eddie was in need of supplies hidden in the depths of the forgotten city. Normally he’d take Frank or Stephanie along, but with one of them out on a forced family vacation and the other refusing to be on speaking terms with him, Eddie was alone. A large part of him wanted to believe that wasn’t a handicap as he had done plenty on his own long before he relied on anyone in this Gotham, but a person couldn’t go back into solitary life so easily. He was distracted, a little lonely and worried things weren’t ever going to be as nice as they were when Stephanie still wanted him around.
Wearing one of his Riddler outfits made of more durable stuff than the usual fine suits he liked to strut around in, Eddie hurried through the shadows of his tunnel system with his tablet out. Above him, the crumbling houses of Wonder City creaked a welcoming to him and he strolled down the main, broken cobblestone street as if he were the mayor of this lost town. He was never old enough to live there during its short, but likely gloriously corrupt prime, but now the bones and broken down sentry bots were all his. Edward Nigma, alone in his decaying, life sized dollhouse without another soul to play with.
Before loneliness could sweep over him in an uncomfortable wave, he ducked into one of the abandoned stores and starting sifting around for the button to get into his secret lock box of supplies, weapons and tech. A noise sounded behind him and before he could decide if it was just a rat or a footstep, an arm reached through the darkness and slammed him against the nearby wall. Caught in a chokehold by a man at least twice his size and eyes blurred with the insanity of being stuck down here, Eddie started kicking and screaming like a little kid being bullied on the playground.
“You the fuck leaving question marks everywhere?” The brute asked, voice muddled as if he hadn’t spoken to a living soul in weeks. “You are. Riddler.”
“Let me go and I’ll get you out of acccck-” Eddie tried, but the brute tightened his grip around his neck, angry and insane eyes bulging as he tried to squeeze the life out of the green man.
“Too late. My sewer city now.”
Eddie kicked some more, but he could feel the edges of his vision go fuzzy. This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be how it all ended. And, if he died while Muerte was trying to ignore him and Stephanie wasn’t looking for him, no one would find his body for weeks. Months! Would anyone really give a damn if The Riddler went missing for good? All these question marks, all these little pieces of identity scattered around the city. And, for what? Eddie had been scared before, but now there was only pure, white hot terror coursing through him that nothing he had done in the past year meant anything to anyone. He tried to steady himself for the inevitable, eyes closing as he focused on that veil of blonde hair he liked to bury his face in and the tiny girlish noises he used to be able to pull out like flowers from a magician’s sleeve.
And, then the brute dropped. One second he was squeezing the life out of Riddler and the next he was just a very large lump on the floor. Eddie collapsed next to him, pounding the dusty floorboards as he tried to get his breath back. Eyes streaming with tears and body shaking with the kind of fear that was born inside him the very first time his father slapped him across the face as hard as he could. All of that was bubbling up now and Eddie wished, he wished that eighty years of being alive in a stitched together mess was enough to erase a measly, miserable childhood.
“You bastard. You bastard.” Eddie whispered, grabbing the brute and shaking him to see if he was still alive. “What are you doing down here? You half-brained, meat headed baboo-” He started, but broke out into a loud, hoarse coughing fit. His body warning him to stop talking. To slow down. But, Eddie was never very good at any of that. He turned the brute over to see if there was any blood or trauma, but it looked as though one minute he was alive and the next he just wasn’t.
A long moment passed. Quiet only intercut with a couple more shaking coughs before Eddie figured it out. “Muerte!” He called up, his voice just as cracked and broken as the underground city.
The reply was instantaneous, but it came as his tablet sounding a quiet alert that there was a locked message waiting for him through the hotel’s journals. When it was opened, the journal simply read You rang? in her spidery, light handwriting. It was hard to read, as if the ink she used had faded years ago, and it had an unsteady jitter to it that it never had before.
Eddie’s eyes went wide and almost angry once he pulled the tablet out and read the message. His mouth scrunching up into the side of his face as he tapped the tablet with the back of his hand as if he were presenting evidence to an invisible court. “Not this time, not-” He stuttered and then broke out into another cough. “Fine! Fine. If that’s how you want to do it, then let’s just pretend nothing happened.” He made a defiant and childish hmph, pulling the tie off his neck in a sudden movement to rub the sides of his sore neck. “I mean unless there’s some kind of consequence for doing something like that. Do I have to take a life vow? I’ve seen those in animes, they aren’t great.” Eddie’s voice grew stronger and louder as he popped open the safe he was digging for and grabbed a pack full of stuff.
“Can you tell this moron I was willing to help him out? Even though he’s clearly always been a threat to society and wasn’t going to cure cancer any time soon.” Eddie looked down at the mass of flesh below him and knelt down. His voice lowered and darkened. He grabbed the brute by his shirt and whispered sweetly sinister. “You crazy bastard. I hope I see you in hell. I hope you’re waiting for me down there.” Eddie gently slapped the deadman’s face and then made his way out of the store.
I wasn’t going to let-- Her words started to appear in the middle of Eddie’s rant, but when he didn’t stop, when he mildly abused the lifeless body on the floor, she stopped, listened, and waited. All she could do was wait. She’d tried to do her job at the same time as appearing, but it was proving to be too difficult at the moment. Every time she attempted it, there was a pull and stretch, sharp and painful in a way that things had never been before. So she stayed incorporeal for the moment and replied the only way she could.
When Eddie finally finished his rant, leaving the store, Death continued the thoughts she’d begun. He’s gone. And he wouldn’t have stopped. Not until you were gone. You don’t owe anyone anything.
Eddie began stalking around downtown Wonder City like a bird with a broken wing flying in circles. He had been close to death plenty of times before, had stared it right in the eyes and while he didn’t laugh at it like Joker, it didn’t shake him the way it did now. The kind of man who leaves riddles knowing full well it might get him caught, chased death. The kind of man he was now did not. So, who was he now if he wasn’t the Riddler? The kitty cat’s words rang in the back of his head at dizzyingly fast speeds. They took away your riddles and now what are you? A man who didn’t want to die, apparently. A man who had a couple good reasons not to.
He made a whole lap around Wonder City without another word to her. This wasn’t nervous energy. This was a puzzle he couldn’t figure out. “Muerte?” Eddie asked, stopping at a stone stairway that winded up to a set of homes above the city street. He didn’t need to ask why she did it. Eddie knew. He also knew she probably wasn’t looking for a thank you, either. But, getting so close to death made him feel suddenly alone. Like he was going to reach the surface later and find everything gone. That was one thing that never changed about The Riddler. He was too sentimental, too invested in the world around him, but for the first time he didn’t see himself in the center of all of it. And, it scared him a little.
She’d watched his progress, making certain that there would be no one else to intersect his path, but the rest of the place was almost close to vacant, and no one else required her attention. When he stopped, when his voice cut through the silence, she replied. Not in the way she once would have, but she replied nonetheless. His tablet sounded another alert, strangely cheerful in the dim and gloom of Wonder City. Edward? It still seemed too familiar to call him Eddie, and she found she couldn’t do it. Not when so much had happened that she was still feeling the effects of. Not when the rift was still jagged and too-wide between him and Stephanie. And yet she couldn’t (or wouldn’t) call him Riddler, because she still felt he was so much more than that. So Edward it was.
It took the ping of his tablet for Eddie to find his footing. All the different notions that sped through his brain and tried to tangle there for good were cleared away slowly, picked through by a more logical and reasonable side of him that knew his own panic attacks and emotional outbreaks to tell what was true and what was simply the aftermath of almost dying. He was still The Riddler. He still was so selfish that he was afraid his body would never be discovered. And, he still tried to find peace in thinking about Stephanie before he died. Those three truths stuck and solidified him enough that he could properly calm down.
Finally, he looked to his tablet and raised his eyebrow at the Edward. “You know I hate it when people call me that.” He murmured, turning the tablet off so she couldn’t keep talking to him that way and made his way up the stairs so he could look out over Wonder City. “It used to be the other way around.” Eddie made a fist and lightly pounded it against the brass railing he was leaning on. “Thank you, though. I don’t give a damn if you don’t want my gratitude.” Eddie grabbed the railing with both hands and leeeeaaanned back on his heels to see how far he could stretch without falling backwards. “I thought I was alone. Sure of it.”
She watched the lean, knew how far the fall was if he should slip, if the creaky architecture would give way, and had anyone been able to see her, they would’ve seen her frown. The air behind Eddie’s back solidified, just a little, the consistency of soft gelatin, just enough to give the pressure of a warning before it faded again. With the tablet turned off, she gave a frustrated sigh that echoed only slightly in a stray breeze that cut through the underground area. And then, finally, her voice. Just as airy as the sigh, but with the frustrated exasperation that was so often a part of dealing with him. With the refusal to let her write, with his ongoing pushing of dangerous things, with him thinking he was in anyway alone. “Eddie...” She didn’t tell him not to be stupid, she knew how poorly he might take that, but it was laced through the two syllables of his name on the wind.
And, maybe he was acting a little childish. Willing to shake Wonder City until it crumbled for attention like a kid who would bounce on an old wooden chair until it creaked and one of the legs gave in. Really, that was the only way he could get attention anymore and it worked just as well as it did over sixty years ago when he capered his first caper. He could imagine himself as an old man, a real old man scurrying around department stores building forts and asking clerks riddles just for a little attention. This was a little different though. It wasn’t about how many people knew who he was (everyone in Gotham did), it was about not letting the few people who actually gave a damn go. That was a game he didn’t think he was going to win.
Eddie smiled when he felt a little pressure on his back, looking up and then behind him as if he expected to see her there and then frowning when he didn’t. “Are you afraid of me? At least when the kitty calls me Edward it’s more about herself. I haven’t changed. I haven’t changed.” That part wasn’t true and they both knew it, but it felt nice to say it out loud. He shook the railing again until he could hear one of the bolts snap and fall to the ground below and then he turned to march inside of the old Wonder City flat, one that already had a couple bright green riddles written on the walls.
It was the disappointment on his face that started to weaken her resolve to stay as spread thin as she could, doing her job even as she talked to him. It was a struggle in a way it shouldn’t have been, and her worry didn’t make it any easier. Especially not when he shook the bannister. She could see the fall he would take, following after the bolt to the ground below. So she spoke more, trying to pull what it would take to make herself more than just a whisper in the air. When she replied, it was from the shadows in his flat, a heat-shimmer to the darkness that was incongruous with the mild temperature. “I’m not afraid of you.” It may have been more than a whisper, but her voice echoed as if from the bottom of a well, hollow and haunted. “For you, maybe. Your sense of self-preservation is as lacking as ever.” There was a smile hidden somewhere in the shadows, twisted around her words.
He smirked, this time to himself with his chin pressed against his chest and eyes closed for a second before he nodded in agreement. “My wheels are spinning.” He informed her as if he was giving a very precise and simple answer instead of a goofy and vague one. “I’ve got a lot of responsibilities up there now. Ones I asked for, don’t misunderstand. But, I’d almost rather bite it before seeing the end of all this when things calm down and everyone realizes what I really am instead of what I’m trying to be.” Eddie took ahold of a broken vanity mirror on the top of a dresser, spinning the oval once as it made a soft clicking sound and stopped at a certain angle. “Look, I even have a security protocol built down here that could have saved my life without you having to do it for me.” Eddie pushed the mirror back and forth in very specific angles until the streets below lit up with green sensor lasers. “See? But, I didn’t even bother.”
Eddie spun the mirror again and the lasers shut off. “I’m afraid for you, too, you know.” He told her, climbing out the window onto an unsteady catwalk and reaching until he could find footing on the fire escape on the next building. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re weaker. It worries me. But, I’m not allowed to be worried.”
"What you're trying to be is who you are. In this moment, it's you." She never quite understood when people claimed they were something that went against their current actions. Or, she understood it, she just didn't agree with it. Her views were wider, taking in the broad spectrum of a person, from good to bad (and sometimes awful), and all those things together made a person. You couldn't be anything you were not. That seemed a bit philosophical for a dark flat in Wonder City, though.
"I know about your system," she sighed, a circle of breeze blowing through the room even though there was no immediately obvious source for a draft. "But you weren't using it. And you were fading. I told you I don't want to be taking your hand any time soon, right? Because you seem to forget this." Her words sharpened as she spoke, coming from the shadows on a knife blade. "Because you should be more afraid for yourself than for me." It was a haughty tone, and she bore it well, with the confidence of something that had been around since the very beginning of everything. But even so, well hidden underneath, were a few flattened vowels of fear. Nearly undetectable, though she knew they were there, when she chose to admit it to herself.
“Noo, no.” He wagged a finger at a burst of wind and made a clucking noise with his tongue like she got an answer wrong on a test. “Something I’ve learnt about people is that they say they care about what you do more than what you say, but if what you do is saying, then saying is practically doing. So, once you start doing instead of saying, they don’t notice. They say you aren’t doing anything at all.” This new flat didn’t have any bright green question marks that were obvious. A couple etched into the walls so he could remember what the room was for without giving too much away. “I’m trying to be good. But, I say bad things when I mean well and the good things I do are done in a villainous kind of way.” Eddie pressed his hands against the wall until he found a little opening that was meant for an ironing board, but when he pulled it out it was a makeshift work table. “I’m contrary. I’m always going to be contrary.”
He turned, taking a moment to appreciate the wind she was conjuring up. It reminded him of Arkham which was so drafty that a ghostly breeze could crawl through cracks in the walls filled with seawater and ancient secrets. He didn’t flinch at her sharpness and instead smiled a little. Like he saw something in it that wasn’t meant to be found. “I think you should let me be worried about you.” He replied, aloof to her tone and just as arrogant. Like a man who knew plenty about pretty much everything. “And, I think you should tell me what’s wrong. I’m curious. Blame it on that.” Eddie opened up the pack of supplies he was carrying, pulled a chair over and started tinkering with the different pieces of electronics he had in there.
The silence hung around him for a moment, a long one, as if she’d left without saying a word, but there was the same sort of heat shimmer in the new room that betrayed her presence. And she was still there, finally responding. “People here get so caught up in the black and white. And so few things are really that cut and dry. Especially people.” There was the briefest flicker of pressure against his chest, over his heart, gone as soon as it was felt and leaving doubt to its presence in its wake. “Call it contrary if you want, but you’re more than just the one or the other. Good or bad.”
His smile unnerved her, and not in the way that a rogue’s smile would normally set someone on edge. It wasn’t frightening; it was knowing. “And I think you should find other things to worry about.” And yet. It was tempting to spill her own cares out, to unburden herself the way so many people could. But she wasn’t human, didn’t need that sort of purging reassurance. And she doubted that laying it at his feet would do anything to relieve the sort of stretched-thin, constant sharp arch she’d been dealing with for a while now. When she replied, it was from directly behind him, as if she was looking over his shoulder to watch him working with his electronics, only a whisper: “I know I prodded your curiosity before. When things were ...strained. But that doesn’t mean you need to keep clinging to it now.”
Eddie didn’t ramble any longer about the shade of grey he’d always be. The small push against his chest warmed the tips of his ears and gave him that brief flicker of understanding that he was rattling for all this time. It was soothing even if she didn’t really intend it to be. Instead, he just listened, tuning himself to the way the room changed when she spoke and tried to pinpoint just how it changed. He liked the presence of it. Something all his scribbled riddles and blinking lights couldn’t properly do on their own.
His hands turned over a small device as he unscrewed the bottom to reveal a tumbling mass of wires, computer chips and cables. Eddie paused long enough to get acquainted with a device he built himself and then went to work making sure everything was as it was supposed to be with a tiny, almost needle-thin tools. “Things are still strained, Muerte.” He said simply, swiping his finger in front of his violet glasses a couple times before focusing back on the device. “And, I know you well enough that you’ll pretend something isn’t wrong until it breaks.”
She smiled at the way his ears went warm, a little pinker than they should be. It was one of the things she liked about him, that he could still react that way about something. It was a kiss that had torn everything apart the first time, but this was different, and she leaned in to press lips to one warm ear. It was barely more than a brush and a tingle, and even after it was gone there was still that sense of her hovering right over his shoulder, leaning close.
She pulled back at his next words, though. Way back. Across the room and barely a presence in the vacant space between them. Because it was true. Things were still strained, and no amount of pretending or fondness was going to change that. The room felt barren for that moment, but she was still there, the words a whisper breeze again from how she’d pulled away from the bit of manifestation she’d been attempting. “And what if something’s already broken? What good is the knowing going to do you then?” It was sad and angry in equal measure, a sharp pair of questions lanced at him.
His smile turned lopsided like someone gave him a compliment he was embarrassed about when she kissed his ear. He knew it was a small sign of why he couldn’t stay mad at her and that Stephanie was right about him being just a little too forgiving. Maybe the root of her toxined kiss was somewhere here in their simple affection for each other or maybe she was reflecting back a part of him that deeply cared about her. There were endless reasoning and explanations and honestly Eddie didn’t want to dig too far into it. He only wanted his friend back. He wanted that warmth she gave him despite being Lady Death.
So, if she asked, that’s why he was worried. That’s why he pushed her when she insisted he didn’t have to shove. Eddie turned, draping his arm around the back of the chair and looked at the empty room as if he could see her. “I’m broken, Muerte. I’ve been broken since I was eight. And, maybe just being here through this door made you broken from the start.” He tapped one of the repair tools against the workbench in thought and then took his glasses off as if it’d let him see her easier. “We can try to repair it. We can do the best we can. If you just talk to me.”
There was no reply. None at all. Not for at least an entire passing minute of silence. But then her voice was there again, soft. Sad. “There’s a reason why I don’t make friends, you know. Other than my job description. Why all of my siblings need to do their best to keep away from mortals. Because it always ends, and the ending is always bad. Not for us. But for them.” She let that sink in for a moment before she sighed, a soft wing-sound of feathers that would have been accompanied by a frown, were she there in front of him. “You’ve seen it already. I’m fond, and it’s having repercussions. So when I say that you don’t have to worry about it, what I mean is that you shouldn’t get all wrapped up in something that is my own fault for taking a careless misstep when I was high on the lack of fear of an entire dying city.”
He rested his chin on the side of his arm, watching the empty space when she didn’t respond right away. Big brown eyes looking up and and around like a dog waiting for its owner to come out of a shop. Impatient, but obedient. Eddie stayed like that while she spoke, nodding along at certain points to show he understood in his small villain way and then eventually turned back around to his electronics. “After I watched out for you in Vegas. After you saved my life and broke some of your own rules. Do you really think it’s going to be easy to just drop all of it?” Eddie asked, putting his glasses back on and scooting forward to get back to work.
“If that’s what you really wanted, you’d stop Stephanie’s heart again to give us a scare.” Eddie turned the device around, pulling a wire out to inspect. “Because I know then it wouldn’t have anything to do with the toxin. It’d just be you trying to get at me. That doesn’t get forgiven so easily, or at all.” He set one tool down and reached for another. “But, you aren’t going to do that. You want to preach to me about keeping my distance, but you can’t pull the trigger.”
Her voice grew closer again, as if she was stalking across the room toward him in a huff. "No. I don't think it's that easy." The air wavered close to him, almost looking like her for a passing second. Transparent, but her. But then it was gone again, and her voice held a pained edge. And anger. “And I don’t want to stop Stephanie’s heart. I didn’t want her dead then, and I don’t want her dead now, but if I did, she would be. Any of you would be. Even Crane would be, if that’s what I wanted, but I don’t. And now that I’m not ...feeling that way, I don’t even want people hurt. So you can take your little opinion about what trigger I am or am not pulling, and you can--” Her voice had been growing louder as she ranted, something desperate and intense in her words until they were nearly a shout, as if she was standing next to him and simply yelling. But it cut off with a surprised gasp, pain laced through it, and everything went suddenly silent.
And expectant.
Like still air before a lightning strike.
And then with a whomph of air, lightning struck. Not physical lightning, nothing that would set the room aflame with its electricity, but there was a crack of sound, matter being suddenly and violently twisted and displaced, and in the silence following the crack, the sound of a very physical body hitting the floor in the middle of the room. It was a pile of black hair and fabric, the too-pale skin of a single arm visible in the midst of it all. And then, so softly, a broken, shaky word. “...fuck.”
While she ranted, he kept mumbling along. Feeding the fire with things like “No, if you really wanted me gone you’d make me” and “You’re not making a convincing case as to why I should stop caring about you” at such a low volume that it was practically lost in her own shouted words. And, he was just about to start yelling back when the electric crack sounded behind him, effectively scaring the daylights out of the poor riddled man. With a mmeeggawd! he barrelled over the table and crouched behind it like a little kid playing hide and go seek. Eyes wide with surprise at the spectral appearance of Death in front of him. And, it struck Eddie immediately that sometimes she really could look like Santa Muerte. That he could have dragged in one of the mariachi boys from Los Tacos, pointed at her and they’d whisper Lady of the Shadows without hesitation.
From behind the table, he raised his pointer finger up in the air, eyebrows up as far as they could go. “See, I told you that your hair makes you look like an octopus.” He chimed weakly with a flimsy smile. “Here.” Eddie ducked under the table and crawled over to her, reaching out for her white, ghastly hand to help her be more than just a pile of black on the floor.
She was still. So very still. Still through his shriek and still through his weak follow-up comments. It wasn’t until he was halfway across the room toward her that she finally pulled a deep, shuddery breath, as if she hadn’t done so in years and couldn’t quite remember how, and let it out through her teeth with a high keening whine. As if that single breath opened the flood gates, the low murmur started, unintelligible at first, but slow evolving into unsteady curses in any language she could pull to the surface, even some low liquid sound that couldn’t possibly have originally been human. It continued for several seconds until she was forced to stop and take another breath, gasping and accompanied by another whine. And though she wouldn’t admit it, the hint of a whimper around the edges.
Her fingers trembled under his when he touched her hand, and it took her several tries to get her uncooperative hand to curl around his. A pulse throbbed in her wrists, uneven at first but settling into a steady beat after a moment. Most of her hair was in her face, but her eyes were visible, ringed by purple bruises. She looked more like the dead than Death, someone several days in the grave.
“This is not-” Eddie had seen a horror movie like this once. A corpse reanimated into something alllivve, but only just barely. Then, for the rest of the movie it shambled around, losing brain function until it started attacking friendly bystanders. Muerte had been human before, so that wasn’t going to happen here. Right? He felt the first bursts of a pulse against his fingertips, eyes still wide and questioning whether or not he managed to actually break her instead of make things better. Typical, Nigma.
“Crap.” He said finally, gulping back any kind of nervousness and reached for her other hand. “Oh crap, I broke you. I’m sorry. Oh, goddamn.” Frantic to piece her back together as if the lord of the universe was about to show up and smite him for breaking one of the more essential concepts, Eddie grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Go back to the ghostly thing. Come on.”
She only stared at him through the start of his nervous panic, her own eyes wide as she tried to catch the breath she wasn’t used to catching. She tried to curl the fingers of her other hand around his when he reached for it, but he was moving too quickly and they closed on air. Then she was being shaken, and that was a new world of not-good that she couldn’t handle. It pulled a weak cry from her throat, followed by breathlessly desperate words. “Stop. Eddie- no... please...” The pain flared in her body with every jolting movement from his hands, and she reached farther to find his shirt, curled fingers into it, and attempted to hold on as unnoticed tears spilled over her face. “...stop.”
It took a moment for Eddie to switch gears between frantically shaking Muerte and wrapping his arms around her protectively. His body still buzzed with energy, that little riddled heart pumping faster than normal and he radiated heat against her clammy, barely alive skin. If Death seemed inexperienced at being alive, Eddie looked like an expert in comparison. He dug his heels into the floorboards, legs crooked into two arched angles around her as if his tiny body could protect her from the big, scary world she had dropped herself into.
“I’m sorry. Sorry. I’m so sorry.” He offered, voice lyrical and soft like a poem or maybe a prayer.
Death gave a relieved little sigh when the shaking stopped, a hiccuping sound escaping as she curled into the protective shell of his body. She knew that she should pull away, stand (or at least sit) on her own. But the warmth and steadiness was a balm, even though that frantic sort of energy still vibrated through Eddie. It was very him, and soothing somehow when everything else was so, so wrong. She clung, fingers finally obeying her to curl into the fabric of his jacket. And she held on. Until she could find her voice again.
"Don't. Don't apologize. It's okay..." The sound of her words was thready and shaky, a shade of what she usually was.
Eddie was far from skilled at calming anyone down when he himself was prone to fits of panic attacks, over exaggerated reactions and nervous chatter. He was trying, though. Arms, still around her, he was curious enough to pull back just a tiny bit to see what kind of condition she was in before resuming his role as a very small human comfort blanket. “I broke you.” He said sad and guilty like a child standing with a smashed toy in his hands.
She clung to him when he pulled back, thinking that he was going to get up and leave her there, but sighed again in relief when he stayed. He actually pulled a laugh from her, something small that was swallowed up by the hollow between his shoulder and his chest, where she had pressed her face. “...such a big head. I broke myself.” Her words came on breathless air, as if she was still trying to find enough oxygen to speak. “Gimme... a second. Get off of you soon.” As soon as she could get her fingers to let go, at least. Whenever that was going to happen. Hopefully soon. She wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be able to come and go as she pleased, not be exhausted by a simple manifestation.
While her body still shook slightly, she tried to pull away, her hands laying flat on his chest and pushing - not to move him away, but to push herself up. They barely held her, but she pulled for the energy she knew she was supposed to have, and refused to stop. One leg extended from under the skirt she was wearing, looking like she had on dark stockings embroidered with green thread lightning bolts. Her breath came in tiny pants, and she paused, closing her eyes.
Eddie had never particularly wished to be a large or imposing kind of man. It didn’t match who he was and he understood the charm that went along with a slight man in a sharp suit. But, here in Wonder City with his friend shaking against him like she had been pulled out of a frozen lake, Eddie wished he was a lot stronger than he actually was. He wished he could pick her up and carry her out of there to someplace she could rest. This rathole turned workshop was no place to recover. On second thought, Eddie wasn’t completely sure where was a good place for Death to recover from her rip through reality. “At least I’m not hard headed.” He chimed softly, noting her struggle to regain control as if she had something to prove. Eddie tugged her shoulders back down. A silent gesture to get her to rest a little before trying to stand up.
His gaze snapped down to the green branches up her legs and without asking for permission he reached out to touch a little of it on her ankle. As expected, the green buzzed at his fingertips, teased him as the Pit tended to do. Nothing gave him clarity like that green goop. Nothing made him feel like he was in control like it. Men like him and Ra’s and half of the rogue’s gallery could get addicted to the stuff after one taste. After one green covered victory. “I know for a fact this was my fault.” He looked up to her, eyes wide with a twinge of disappointment through the worry.
The laugh was pulled from her, almost without her consent, and she shook her head from side to side before it made the world spin and she stopped. “You have the hardest... head. Don’t lie.” She kept fighting to push up, away, but the weight of his hands on her shoulders pulled her back down. Her breath shivered and skipped with the movement, but it only took a moment for her to settle back against him.
His reach, though, his touch to her ankle, made her jerk back and away with a gasped “no!” She didn’t want him touching it, didn’t know what sort of effect it would have on him. She twisted herself with a pained sound, grabbing for his wrist and holding it as tight as she could. Which wasn’t very tight at all. And she pulled, trying to break the contact, trying to tuck her leg back under her long, full skirt. She wasn’t as successful as she had hoped, only managing to keep her fingers around his wrist, but not to keep his hand away from her leg. She only froze there, frowning at him. “It was not your fault.”
His fingers snapped away at her reaction like he knew he was touching something that he wasn’t supposed to. He watched her weak grasp on his wrist, calculated the thousand different ways he could escape her frail hold and stayed there as if she caught him. “I know when you said that someone is going to get hurt when people and concepts make nice you meant me, but I think it’s hurting you, too.” Eddie said with absolute clarity, internally blaming it on the brief touch with the Lazarus Pit threaded through her legs.
He shook his head, dark hair flopping down messily. This wasn’t the time for introspection. Eddie didn’t know if Muerte had simply turned human or she was being slowly, steadily drained of power until she was just a mess of black on the floor. Even if this was his fault, he’d make it better. “Do you feel like you did in Vegas? We should get you to one of my safehouses until you recover.” He looked around the old, wasting away city. “Maybe stay here with security on high alert.”
Fingers still wrapped around his wrist, Death sighed and folded herself around to rest her head on the peak of his shoulder. It was a strange twist, and one she likely should have avoided due to the way it made her spine ache, but after a moment the pain blended with everything else and she simply rested there. “Being your friend isn’t what’s hurting me right now.” She managed to get through the statement without needing to pause for breath, but her voice was still soft and thready. She reached up for the section of his hair that had flopped down, taking it between shaky fingers and slowly, carefully, pulling - so that he had to move with the pull, closer to her so that she could glare at him. “Not. Your. Fault.” She let his hair go then, smoothing trembling fingers over his scalp where she’d pulled.
“I feel... no, it’s not like Vegas.” Vegas was just being human. It was being small and cut off from everything else. What she was feeling in the moment was worse than that. It was that, plus a thousand other things. It was being human and being beaten, having an electrified cancer crawling up her legs, being smaller than small and vulnerable. And yet, she played her part as best she could. “I don’t need a safehouse. Just... give me a few minutes, and I’ll go back to the way I was.” It was a reassurance she wasn’t quite certain she believed herself.
“No, but it’s the first piece to the puz- ow.” Eddie gave an exasperated sigh when she pulled at his hair and barely shrugged his shoulders as if to say he’d give up trying to argue. Maybe he’d bring it up later. Right now, keeping her from melting or turning into a full on corpse was the priority. Eddie made a humming noise as she tried to play off the bad shape she was in and gave an almost stern, “You’re being ridiculous.” Because she was. Eddie understood pride like any man with a too large ego would, but Muerte really took the cake sometimes. Still, he gave her a couple minutes as she requested. Moral and physical support never being his strong suits, but he was trying nevertheless.
“Come on. Let’s try and walk again.” Eddie said after a little while, slowly getting to his feet and reaching his arms down to help her up, too. “You aren’t snapping back to ghost form. Assuming the next to worst, you’re- wait no assuming second to next to worst, you’re just having a concept flu thanks to our buddy Lazzy.” He was unsurprisingly gentle and if she tugged at his arms in pain, he tried to make up for it in support or move slower to accommodate. He thought briefly how this wasn’t winning him any points with Stephanie or really anyone who knew what Muerte had done under the toxin. Eddie couldn’t even claim this was because of some finely tuned moral code. It really must have boiled down to this mysterious thing called friendship and wanting desperately to help someone that was important to him.
She took the passing moments of rest with a grateful small smile, but she realized that things weren’t getting any better as the time ticked past. There were still twinges of pain, spasms of her lungs that forced her to take unsteady breaths. She maybe had to agree with Eddie that she was being ridiculous, but she couldn’t let it go. She felt like she had to keep fighting, even if all she wanted to do in that moment was to lean against him and rest. But she nodded at the thought of walking, somehow needing to prove that she could do it - that she could gather ravaged legs underneath herself and stand. She reached up to loop her arms around the back of Eddie’s neck and lifted herself as much as she could while trying to find her feet. She wasn’t as heavy as she might have been, a sort of strange lightness to her even in her solidity, but she was still heavy enough and broken enough to need the help.
“Don’t even know what a concept flu would be,” she managed to gasp out, close to his ear because of the way she was clinging to him, her limbs trembling in exhaustion and reaction. The words trailed off with a broken sound, and her voice faded back into a whisper of cursing. “Fuck. Fuck.” Tears slipped out of clenched-tight eyes again as she finally put full weight on her feet. “Eddie, fuck.” The pain chased away any other thoughts she might have otherwise had - thoughts about Stephanie and needing to find some sort of friendship with Eddie that wouldn’t threaten what he had with the girl. All she could do was cling to him and trust him to not kick her when she was down.
Eddie smiled at first, about to say something ridiculous about what a concept flu would entail. Her sudden cursing and trembling chased that away, though and he looked down at her worried with the gears spinning on how to fix this. “Okay, okay.” He whispered, gently helping her back down to the floor, lightly pressing his hand against her cheek with a look that told her he’d take care of it. Standing back up, he put his hands on his hips, mouth screwed up in a thought. “We’re camping out here until you can go ghosty again. I’m not making you walk again that made me feel awful.” He said with a firm nod, snapping his violet glasses out of his jacket and lifted two fingers to tell her to wait before jetting off out the broken down apartment before she could argue with him.
In minutes, the green security lasers he had showed her before turned on along with assorted lights and blinking question marks around the city. The sound of doors opening and closing shut with a metal finality could be heard in the distance and eventually he came back with arms full of sleeping mats, blankets and another backpack full of supplies. All of it looked like he had taken it out of his own apartment and it was apparent that Riddler was the kind of person who tried to keep fresh supplies of everything near his favorite hideouts for any kind of crisis. He beamed at her, proud of his ingenuity and started laying out mats and blankets for them to sit on. “The first time I camped out in Wonder City was right after I orchestrated mayhem with Crane and the clown. Stephanie broke my jaw and most of my men were scattered, so I just stayed down here and worked on things.” His voice was fond as it usually was when he talked about himself, but distant. As if he were talking about someone else. “She saved all the hostages I snagged up. I still felt like I won, though. If they don’t throw you in Arkham, that’s a win.”
Death had never been in a situation where physical contact worked for her the way it did for others. She was so rarely simply physical, so it never quite had the same effect. But with the rest of her body (so physical now - too physical with nothing else behind it) rebelling against her and clearly letting her know how stupid she’d been, the simple solidity of Eddie somehow helped. She leaned into the careful touch, even as her mind told her not to. She’d sort it all out later; this definitely fell under ‘extenuating circumstances’. Cheeks still damp, she peered up at him and tried to find a smile, to respond with reassurance. “Didn’t make me feel great, either,” she forced out, broken by a soft shudder of exhaustion.
All she could do when he left the room was wait. She admittedly tried to pull her feet back again, to attempt to stand on her own, but it only left her shaking again, so she finally gave up. Her toes peeked out from under her skirt, and she tried not to look at them, the way they were more green than not. Legs pulled up as best she could, she curled in on herself and rested her forehead on her knees, trying to keep her breath slow and even. She logically knew ways to try to ease through pain, but she’d never had to attempt them herself. She breathed as she listened to the distant sounds of Eddie moving around, the way parts of the building almost shook with the security systems snapping into place.
She only looked up once Eddie was back in the room, watching him with a quiet expression as he created what she could only think of as some sort of blanket nest. She wanted to laugh, but more than that, she wanted to crawl into it and not move. Maybe for forever. Or at least until she got kicked back through the door again. Iris had been doing fairly well dealing with the repercussions on her side of the door, and for the first time, Death thought that maybe she could just stay on that side until things seemed better. She wasn’t able to do her job in her current state anyway. She listened to the story of chaos as she watched the nest forming, and after he trailed off, she found her voice. “Was that here?” Here, through the hotel and with his sweetheart doing the jaw-breaking.
Eddie placed a couple mats around her, gently draping a quilted blanket across her shoulders before making comfortable piles and mountains for her to lay on if she wanted. It looked like a collapsed blanket fort and there was something about the way he fitted everything together that would suggest he had done this sort of thing before. Then, he opened the backpack he brought with him which had some bottled water, an assortment of snacks and an instant ice pack. Once he was satisfied with how comfy the whole thing looked, he got up to grab the little electronic he was working on. “Yes, it was before you showed up.” He said, gathering the absolutely necessary tools and then flopped down on a blanket pile. Arms outstretched to tinker with the gadget as he lay on his belly and occasionally looked up at her. “We were at each other’s throats from the get go. She was never very good at riddles. Always tenacious, though. I liked that. Still do.” He made a little boop noise to punctuate that thought, smiling to himself as he thought about how funny it was that they got from there to here. Eddie wasn’t the same man. All his riddles were sorted out and he understood so clearly what he wanted instead of just doing what compelled him.
“Though, honestly I don’t know when you showed up. Might have been before me. During? I remember a handful conversations and I knew you were around.” He glanced up at her, curiosity overtaking his attention on the gizmo he was working on and he waggled the tiny tool in his hand. “Tell me about Gotham, this door, before we were friends. Who did you talk to? Did you get into trouble?”
She started moving (slowly) as soon as Eddie seemed to have finished the blankets, crawling as best she could, wincing as she did. The quilted blanket stayed draped over her as she moved, the most undignified position she’d ever been in. She didn’t care though, because the blankets were warm and soft, and when she finally got there, she laid herself down on her side with a sigh, curling in on herself, but facing Eddie so that she could watch as he talked and worked on his electronics. After a while, she closed her eyes, breathing out slowly. It looked like she had fallen asleep, but she was still very much awake, listening. And smiling a little at the way he talked about Stephanie.
“I think it was after,” she said, eyes still closed. “You were here when I got here. Different than you are now, but you were here. ...It was before the party. ...one of them.” Her eyebrows drew together in a frown, and she finally opened one eye to peer at him. “The one where my old girl gnawed on someone.” There was more information there than she would usually give, but it all slipped out in her tired voice. It at least wasn’t quite as strained as it had been when she was attempting to move and stand. “I didn’t talk to much of anyone back then. Bruce once. Selina and Damian, who both hate me now. Mostly I just did my job...”
“Gnnaaawed.” He repeated after her in a rolling rumble, liking the sound of the word as well as the spooky images it conjured in his mind. “That party was what jumbled me up.” Eddie told her even though he figured she already knew. “I think I was already on the road to being jumbled, but it moved the process along quicker. It jumbled Stephanie up, too.” His shoes hit the hardwood floor one after the other softly, kicking as if it sped up his thought process like a little kid stretched out on the floor with his legos. He was listening to her closely, though and even made a noise in the back of his throat when she admitted to not talking to many people back then. It bothered him that other people didn’t enjoy her company the way he did, though there wasn’t much he could do to help. Death wasn’t exactly an inviting concept, after all.
“Kitty cat always hisses when I talk about you, but I think that’s just how kitty cats are.” He looked up to her and then pushed his violet glasses down from atop his head so he could analyze a wire inside of the gadget. “And, the Dark Knight is a natural enemy of death, so no surprise there. Still, it’s too bad. I’m glad we got talking.” Eddie tilted his head to the side, forehead wrinkling as he focused a little harder on the device, tongue sticking out from his lips in deep concentration.
Her eyes closing again, Death smiled. “Gnawed. She was a lion. ...Ess.” She actually yawned, turning her face into the blankets instead of lifting a hand to cover her mouth. “Took it better than you and your tick-tock man.” That was said quietly, no judgement or tease. She almost felt, now that she was warm and as comfortable as she was likely to get while the Pit still crept along her body, that she might be able to fall asleep. She never usually did such things, not needing sleep in her usual form. But human bodies (which she was certain now was part of what was wrong with her) could be so delicate and easily run-down. The intensity and soft sounds of his working lulled her.
A soft sigh escaped from her throat, laced through with the same exhaustion, making her sound like a stubborn, sleepy child that refused to give in to sleep. “Cats like me. She doesn’t. ...it’s the woman in her that hates, not the cat.” Another sigh and a so-slight shift of her body as she tried to get more comfortable. “Bruce doesn’t hate. He doesn’t like, but he doesn’t hate me. Lu-- his alter asks me about things sometimes. No one ever likes my answers.” She opened one eye, still ringed in purple bruises, and looked at him. “Not even you. But more than they do.”
It might have seemed strange for two people to be lounging about Wonder City like they were safely inside a nice, normal suburban home. Eddie working on his electronics and Muerte gradually dozing off even though she made small struggles to stay awake in defiance. But, this was normal for Gotham. Normal for someone who lived in a city of bright personalities, impossible odds and layers of buildings on top of buildings like dead skin. Here they were safe and here he really did feel at home with all the other ancient stuff. He warmed at the sound of her voice soften. There was still weakness there, something he was still a little concerned about, but he didn’t feel any bubbling panic like before. It soothed the riddled man who buzzed with energy.
“I typically don’t like anyone’s answers, Muerte.” He said with gentle humor, eyebrows waggling from behind his glasses. “Especially from those who know much too much.” Eddie glanced up to her and thought about telling her to just fall asleep already, but as a man who surrounded himself with stubborn women, he knew better. Instead he just smiled at her, dark eyes momentarily shining behind those violet glasses before he went back to work.
She smiled at the waggling eyebrows and shook her head just slightly. “...dork,” she murmured fondly, and then closed her eyes again. It was a long passing moment before she reached out her hand from the blanket she was under, and tapped still-unsteady fingers against his arm. Once, twice, before they simply rested there, a light weight through his sleeve. “Promise you won’t do anything to me if I fall asleep,” she whispered, but she was already well on her way.