eddie likes to (riddlethem) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2014-01-03 09:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | death, door: dc comics, riddler |
Who: Eddie and Muerte
When: Morning after Dami dies
Where: Gotham -> Muerte's place
What: Talking about death and death activities.
Warnings: hugs cause I never get to use this fucking icon otherwise! also terrible deaths and sad stuff
Eddie wasn’t so great at sleeping. His mind tick-tocked even when he didn’t want it to.
He awoke in Stephanie’s bed, groping at the violet shades he had rebuilt for the billionth time and then clicked them on before his eyes could even fully open. A flurry of messages scrawled past his face and he found it alarming most of them were about the death of a certain firebug mercenary. Eddie didn’t even know old Garf was in town and dead so soon seemed odd. The green man laid there for a moment, looked over at the sleeping Stephanie and quickly made the same choice he had for the past two months. Deal with it on his own. His blonde bat was so happy he was out of Arkham, after all. Any sign that he was in trouble or even looking for it would have upset her. No, no. Better to play the lap dog for a couple more weeks, just until trouble found him and geee he’d have no other choice.
Eddie always got up earlier than Stephanie, so slipping out wasn’t a problem. He put on a dark suit, a long winter coat, a purple tie and the bat pin that Bruce had given him and set out. Gotham was perfect at this time in the morning. Eddie liked to pretend it was a small town with only a couple dozen residents that consisted of joggers, crack heads, taxi cab drivers and hard working blue collar men. He took a deep breath of that frozen, dirty air and made his way over to the apartment complex where Garfield lit his last flame. There wasn’t any police tape up because no cop gave a damn if some crazy bug arson died, but there was still a buzz among the neighbors.
He had eyes (Eddie always had eyes) courtesy of a single mom named Nancy who lived across the way with her daughter. Eddie paid for her medical bills and Nancy gave him all the information he needed. After all, who would suspect a single mom listening in on a conversation? It was a little too early for the small family to be awake, but Eddie knocked on the apartment door anyway and smiled brightly at Nancy and little Jessica as they invited him in for cereal. It didn’t take long for Jessica a strong willed seven year old, to tell him that she caught sight of a Robin and even got a couple pictures of him on her digital camera.
It was then that Nancy pulled him aside and insisted on the smell of something bad burning on the rooftop across the street. A smell that was so sharp and strange that she was sure she had never experienced before. That spelt bad news to Eddie. Once breakfast was over and chitchat about the New Year and resolutions (Eddie couldn’t think of one and Jessica had ten), he went across the street to check Garf’s fall, the nearby alley and of course the roof. There was no denying the strange residue and the even stranger death of the Gotham rogue, which got Eddie’s mind firing from all cylinders.
He’d investigate more and maybe find out what happened before Bruce told the Bat family, but before that he had a toy to give the cat. It was the tiniest of tiny buttons that could be hidden anywhere and needed only a firm push to tell him where the cat was. An emergency button for when traveling with a safety buddy just wasn’t in the cards. He promised to leave it with Muerte and even though his old friend was strictly off limits via Stephanie, Eddie wasn’t sure if she’d even be there. And, if she was, that wouldn’t be his fault, would it?
Hours after leaving Stephanie’s apartment, Eddie found himself in front of the ever-so spooky funeral home of Muerte. Or Em to the common folk. Instead of doing the nice thing and knocking, Eddie went right for a nearby window on the side of the home, propped it open in under two seconds (take that, eight year old Selina) and climbed through with an oof. He landed in a dark room, leaning back on his hands as he looked around and gave a typically cheery,
“Hola?”
In the time before she'd taken Damian, Muerte had been busy taking care of things after so long of an absence from Gotham. The first was small, wiggly, and filthy, and she sighed at Selina’s note. There was no way that Iris would be able to keep a dog, even at her new facility, so there would have to be regular visits to at least make sure he was fed. She supposed that she could try to find a different home for him, but Selina had put him into her care, and she would not deny him that. His name, he told her when she let herself ask and listen as she bathed him to his normal, clean white, was Nicodemus. She couldn’t help smiling at the irony of a “Nicodemus” living in a funeral home with her.
The second thing she had to deal with was the funeral home itself. While she had offered the place as a refuge for Selina, had she need for it, she hadn’t entirely expected it to be used for Gotham’s street girls. But with her not there to push back, she supposed it was obvious that it would be used how others saw fit. But that first day back, she had relocated all the girls, to another house acquired farther up the street. She was back, and going to be using the home for what it was intended, and even Gotham's variety of street girl preferred a corpse-free house when she could get it. It didn't take much prompting to get the girls to move.
It left her, thankfully, a silent place to retreat to after ushering Damian to his death. The first death for her in too long, and it had hit her especially hard. She wanted to pretend it hadn't, that she was the same as she had always been and able to do her job without a hiccup, but later the next day found her sitting alone, Nicodemus in her lap because he knew that things weren't right. She hadn't talked to him about it yet, but once she tucked her feet up under the long skirt of the dress she wore, he curled up on her lap and nosed at her cold fingers until she curled them absently through his fur.
The morning was still early enough (and the home still holding some of the vacant gloom it had held in her absence) that most of the rooms still held angular corners of shadows, around the walls and within the confines of comfortably deep furniture. She had thought about going upstairs, where she kept a room locked just for herself, but she'd only made it as far as one of the sitting rooms. Coincidentally, the one where she had spoken to Selina those months ago now.
Her awareness was still spread farther than it should have been, were she forcing herself to be human, and while it didn't quite extend out into the city, she knew every corner and crack of her house, could feel the touch of Eddie opening the side window, felt the shiver of displacement with the new presence in the room. The room she was sitting in, in fact, though the shadows hid her well enough. She watched without even turning her head as he tumbled in, the called greeting falling dully in rooms that simply absorbed the sound. The silence hung for a long moment with no reply until she broke it. Quietly, still no movement other than what it took to speak.
"You could have knocked."
Eddie was crawling to his feet again, assuming the house was empty (or pretending to be) when Muerte’s voice sounded. He grinned, an automatic reaction to missing his friend and then wobbled to his feet. Eddie turned to see her sitting very malicious looking in the dark with a bundle of fur and tilted his head slowly to the side. “What’s wrong?” Eddie regretting asking the second it popped out of his mouth and his hands went up in a defense as if he had accidentally said an unholy word. A few seconds went by slowly, tick tocking like his heart and then he casually put his hands down, shrugged and then made a noise as if to say no he didn’t regret asking.
Because something was wrong. He didn’t need to be a god to smell fire in the wind and he didn’t need to be a genius (even though he was) to know something was wrong with her. His fingers subconsciously connected at the tips, made a rolling motion as if he were trying to figure something out and then he reached into his pocket. “I had to leave something here for Selina. She’s back. I don’t know if you noticed that she was gone.” Eddie started casing the room. Eyeing the old fashioned way the walls were put together and pressed his fingers on ancient frames. He flashed the little piece of metal at Muerte, circling the room. “Cute furball, by the way.”
The silence hung for another moment, the time ticking strangely slow for her, in a way it hadn’t in so long. She watched Eddie move around the space, listened to him talk, something blessedly familiar that she wished was more comforting than it actually was in that moment, aware as she was that he’d left Stephanie sleeping in their apartment and what the visit could mean for him once it came to light. Because she held no lies to herself that it would, at some point. If for no other reason than he couldn’t keep a secret from Stephanie. She didn’t answer his question, not at first.
“You can leave it on the table,” she finally replied, gaze still steady on him. “I’m sure she’ll be in to pick it up, whether I’m here or not.” The ‘furball’ in question shifted in her lap with a breath of ‘woof’, quiet as he rested his chin on the back of Muerte’s wrist as her hands laid in her own lap, looking at Eddie as well. The next reply, though her gaze never moved from the man, was for the dog. “That’s Eddie.” And then, as she realized that it could be mistaken that she’d named the dog Eddie, she finished the introduction. “Nicodemus. Selina’s Christmas gift to me.”
Eddie, like any good performer, knew a shift in opinion from the audience. He felt like a traveling magician who used to call this his favorite town, then stopped arriving for ages and when he returned it was full of empty stares and unimpressed silence. He gave her a look that said all of that and then he placed the metal button on the table. This was the right time to leave. But, Eddie chased trouble like a dog chases his own tail. “Nicooo deemmmmusss.” Eddie sounded out and then walked over to her, taking a set on the floor next to her chair as if he were gearing up for a story time. “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.” Eddie recited simply, straight to the dog and then hugged his knees together.
“A rogue died last night and no one cared. A Robin was there as well as a stain on the top of a roof.” Eddie rested his chin on his knees and looked away from both Death and her dog. “Something isn’t right. Garf going out like that isn’t right.” His puzzle was always being changed, twisted and replaced with new pieces. “I can’t believe Garf went out like that.” Eddie repeated as if he were trying to make sense of those simple words. He looked back up at her, dark eyes full of question.
And, then a complete change of subject.
“Mad at me?”
Nicodemus stood on Muerte’s thigh, all tea-cup height of him, and looked at Eddie at the recitation of scripture. And then he picked his way carefully over wrist and knee and skirt until he stood on the very edge of the cushion. Only then did she move, lifting him down to place him on the floor next to Eddie. After only a second, Eddie had a lapful of tiny dog who turned twice before settling down, much like he had been in Muerte’s lap. She sat back again, watching the two of them, listening still to the story of questions whose answers she already knew, knowing more from her own side of things. Her own eyes, usually so light, were dark with more than the shadows in the room.
“Then took they his body, and wound it in linen with spices, as was their manner. Laid they his body in the garden's empty sepulchre, for it was nigh at hand.” Her answer to his question was indirect, still twisting around in her mind, and she knew that the time would come shortly when things would need to be said. To family and friends. But she took another moment, stole it for herself, to try to balance a scale in her mind that seemed so tipped.
“No.”
Eddie was a natural with dogs. Not so much with cats, who clawed and crawled all over him like they owned him, but with dogs there was some kinship only first found when Matilda was left at his door. His hands opened up for the tiny Nicodemus and he stretched his legs out so that the ball of fur could make himself comfortable. Eddie was careful with the dog, petting it as gently as he could for a thing that size and then smiled. “They put so much work into preserving the body. Don’t you think that’s a bit funny?” Eddie asked the dog quietly. “Though, I guess with all of his talk, keeping him looking alive was just a way to show their faith.” Faith and hope went hand-in-hand for Eddie. He wasn’t a born again or found himself on his knees praying for forgiveness. But, he always got a little lost in old stories that lit a small light inside of him that he couldn’t ever really explain.
Plus, he liked the feeling of being in church. Hanging out here in the dark with Muerte and the pup made him think of the times his church went dark and quiet as if he could feel something watching him and knowing more than he ever could. Eddie looked back up at Muerte, frowned a little at her. “It’s okay if you are. Selina was mad at me. Bruce. Stephanie’s going to be mad at me for a number of reasons I can’t even count off without getting a little light headed.” He smiled anyway, as if he wasn’t himself if he wasn’t stirring something up. “I’m supposed to be a good boy, Nicodemus. But, I can tell you’re from the streets. You know how hard it is.” Eddie lightly covered the dogs ears and looked up to Muerte with a whisper, “Hide your pillows. I can tell just by looking at him that he likes shredding the soft stuff.”
Eddie was bonding with her dog. Her new dog. Who was, according to Selina’s note, supposed to be what she focused on instead of the man currently sitting on her floor. Of course he was bonding with the dog - what else did she expect? She knew how much Matilda loved him, knew the way he treated the small things from the streets with so much care. She sometimes wondered if it was because he’d longed for that sort of care from someone, but she didn’t ask him. She doubted that she ever would. But she could speculate. She didn’t respond to his question. Or to the list of people who were mad at him. But she wasn’t. Maybe she couldn’t quite figure out what she was, but she wasn’t mad. Even if she had been at one point, there would be no way she could hang onto it in the moment. Especially not when the list of names only drew up the very people who would be hit hardest by the previous night.
The conspiratorial whisper should have made her smile and laugh. She wanted to. She wanted to let go of what was in her mind and allow him to step in to pull something good to the surface. She wanted to ask him how he was, tell him how she was doing, let go of burdens and take on the knowledge of someone else’s for just a moment. But mostly, she wanted to smile again. Pillows. She could talk about pillows, and opened her mouth to do just that.
“I took Damian last night.”
Honestly, Eddie was a little surprised he couldn’t at least crack a smile out of her, but that couldn’t compare to the wallop she had been keeping to herself. He rolled back a little, eyes going wide and unbelieving as he gave a long, “Hoooooolllleeeeeyyy shit.” Of course it all made sense and each one of those pieces snapped together like clockwork in his head. Eddie realized he just swore in front of Nicodemus and held his ears again, whispering a strained, “Holy shit!” to Muerte before he went back to reeling. This was the worst timing for a baby bird to bite the dust. Eddie needed Bats to make good life choices about the Watchtower, he needed Selina to not get distracted by lady feelings and he needed Stephanie to not hit rock bottom while he was still leaving her in the dark about most things that he was doing.
He looked to the little dog in his lap. Okay, so maybe his main concerns were a little selfish, but Eddie wasn’t exactly boy scouts with any of the Robins. Furthermore, he didn’t even like most of the damned family to begin with. His fingers instinctively went to that bat pin in his suit. That goddamned pin. It meant more to him than he wanted to admit and if the bats were hurting, he wanted to do anything he could to make it better. Damn that fucking bat pin!
A good full minute passed and Eddie was breathing heavy like he just did a lap around the block. “Jesus Christ on a stick with a side of tartar sauce!” He gently put the little dog down and then got to his feet, pacing in the belly of the room. “Are you alright? What happened? Did he take Garf down with him?” Eddie ran his fingers through his hair, making noises like he was connecting dots all the way through last night into next goddamned week.
If everything hadn’t have been so strained and (admittedly) awful, she probably would have laughed at Eddie covering the dog’s ears to keep its innocence intact in the face of swearing. She hadn’t intended to let that spill, not like a bomb into what had been relatively still waters, but it had spilled out of her without her approval or permission, and once out it couldn’t be taken back. Her hand moved up, pressing fingers to her mouth to keep anything else unwanted from escaping, and her eyes faded from their dark depths back to the light that they usually were. They were wide with his last questions, and her already pale skin went a sort of sickly grey as she allowed herself to think about it.
About how Garf had died, and not with her own escort from this world. She’d watched it happen, felt the impact, and had left whatever other ‘overseer’ take care of him. After he’d died. After Bruce…
She shook her head to answer, still not trusting her own words. Hand pressed to her mouth, pale where she wasn’t shadowed, she answered all those questions with that single shake of her head.
Eddie took his winter coat off in a flurry of fabric, tossing it on the table next to the tiny button for Selina and he continued his pacing through the old room. He liked the sound of his fancy shoes on old floorboards. It reminded him of a very long time ago. A long time ago when a bird’s death would be met with some kind of celebration. Eventually, he realized Muerte wasn’t responding and turned his attention back to the almost god of death. Walking over to her and kneeling at the chair she was in. His hand resting on hers and he straightened a look at her that was so clear it seemed impossible for a riddled man like himself to pull off.
But, she had seen it before. Anyone who had been around Eddie when he decided that he’d make something right or figure out how to fix what was wrong had seen that look. “You shouldn’t have to do both. Do you know how crazy that is? Taking one of the goddamned batkids without your full on god powers set to eleven?” He chided her, shaking her fingers with the palm of his hand. “I don’t know who you need to talk to about this, but you need to tell them it’s one or the other. No reaping souls if you feel sick thinking about dead bodies. I’ve never seen you this color!” Eddie was half freaking out, half getting angry the way he got angry at the cosmos and no one in particular.
Her fingers were icy under Eddie’s hand, having given so much warmth and comfort to Damian that she hadn’t kept much for herself. The difference was that she knew she would recover eventually, and he’d needed it in that moment. If she wasn’t going to be able to change his end, she’d had to make it as peaceful (after all of the flames) as she could. And for so many, peace meant warmth and safety in their passing. It was right to do, even if it left her chilled after. She didn’t shiver with the cold, but it clung to her skin stubbornly, even with Eddie’s palm pressed there. She turned her own hand over and clutched his fingers almost desperately, holding that clear gaze with her own.
And then more words spilled out from behind the fingers of her other hand.
“He put on righteousness like a breastplate, And a helmet of salvation on His head; And He put on garments of vengeance for clothing And wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle…” No. She stumbled to a stop. That was the answer to a different question, though she was certain that any Bible historian would slip into histrionics to hear her use it to communicate in this situation. She shook her head again and swallowed hard, pulling a breath through her nose to try to steady herself into an actual explanation, her fingers falling away from her mouth as she leaned forward, unbearably intent as she spoke. “I had to. It was going to happen anyway, and I wasn’t going to leave him to whatever else it is out there doing my job. It was going to happen, and so it had to be done right, and I made the choice to do it once I knew what was coming. I would do it again right this second if I had to, just like I’d do it for any one of you.”
Eddie carefully placed his other hand over her fingers and molded his hands against hers as if he thought his buzzing warm would overcome that lingering cold. He whispered the end of with zeal as a mantle along with her and thought for a moment that it truly did remind him of someone. A puzzle to be locked away, pushed aside for a second in favor the conversation he was trying to have with her. “You can’t do that again without figuring out how to balance it. Alright? I’m allowed to be upset. If you push yourself too far I don’t want to know what happens!” She could feel the momentary frustration radiating from his palms. Muerte playing with fire reminded him too much of what happened with the toxin and it was one of those raw nerves that hurt as bad as being wrong or feeling stupid.
But, he shouldn’t have been worried about her. He knew that. He knew for the rest of Gotham what he was supposed to show and for that he gave a sigh with a roll of his eyes.
“I’m sorry. I need to be upset about Damian. I need to work on that.” He leveled himself back down emotionally, somewhere safe and calm like Arkham had taught him. Eddie didn’t let go of her hand, though. His dark eyes searched her face and he offered a sheepish smile. “The fact that you helped him is going to win you a lot of points with the Bats. My only concern is that one of them might try to Pit him. Grayson’s doing just fine now, so why not the little bird? Especially if he has al Ghul blood.”
His joining whisper came as no surprise. She knew that he knew scripture backwards and forwards, and though she could tell when he put it aside for greater, more immediate issues, she knew that he would get there eventually. He would know that she wasn’t speaking about the foretold coming of a Messiah, and that she didn’t mean to draw a parallel between actual religion and Gotham’s Batfamily. He would get there, and then he would know.
If asked, she would in the moment be forced to admit surprise at the frustration and intensity of worry from him. About her. It was one thing to give lip service to still being friends in some way. To say ‘maybe someday’. To see it was another thing entirely, if it was true. She went quiet, but her gaze no less intense on him, as if she was trying to see where that worry was born - from their battered friendship or from some greater concern of handling the bomb that a damaged Endless presented to the world. But his hands were still curled around hers, and she hoped that meant friendship.
Her fingers tightened around his, and for the first time since he crawled in her window, she almost smiled. Wry and almost bitter, the thought of the rest of Damian’s family. “It will win me nothing. Because I allowed him to die. I was the one that took him from this world, and even if they don’t realize that at first, they will eventually. And I will be the one to prevent them from putting him into the Pit.” She didn’t even blink as she looked at him. “I promised him, Eddie. I asked him. Gave him a choice, though it made me sick to do it, and when he answered no, I promised him.” She shook her head. “He was more Wayne than al Ghul. He was his father’s son. He wanted no part of his grandfather’s legacy.”
Eddie knew all too well that wonder if people cared about him or what would happen if he went off the deep end. For a time, it was all he really thought about in Arkham. After all, the condition he was in when he entered therapy was veering on deranged and staring into the abyss made him want to scream. But, it wasn’t about the safety of others when it came to Muerte. Even when her godly powers got in the way, even when the made him mad as hell, all Eddie wanted was to make sure she was okay. He gave her a look that said so. A bright, sad grin with another squeeze of her hands and a deep breath.
“You did good.” Eddie told her of Damian, though he didn’t know how much weight that carried coming from someone like him. “What about Garfield?” He knew he was getting a bit repetitive, but the fate of Firefly was just as important to him as one of the Robins, if not more. Eddie didn’t know the first thing about being a bird, but he knew everything about being a rogue.
She was maybe (still) not the best at reading people. There were things she still missed, and being paired with Iris didn’t exactly help in that regard, leaving her very little practical example to learn from. But out of everyone, as much as she still didn’t know, she knew Eddie best. The look he gave her was enough to send a quick wash of relief through her, to know that though things were still bruised and broken, they weren’t completely unmendable. Unlikely, perhaps, that there would be much of a chance for them to speak, ever. But it helped to know that there would be at least one person in the city that didn’t hate her out of hand for what had happened to the youngest Bat. She returned his bright smile with a small one of her own and raised their hands to press the back of his to her chilled cheek before letting them fall again.
She was about to shake her head, to roll her eyes, to say something in response to the strange support he offered, but then he asked that question again. She stopped, looked at him, moved not even enough to breathe for a supernaturally long moment. Nothing moved. And then she blinked, slowly, and her voice came soft enough to be whispered, but the words made their way over-clearly to him.
“He and Robin were fighting on the roof. Then the flamethrower came into play and I took Damian. And Garfield fell. His jetpack was damaged. No one saved him.” She stopped again, looked at him more intently, and without even seeming to move, suddenly tapped one icy fingertip against the very middle of his forehead. One-two-three. “With zeal as a mantle,” she whispered.
Eddie’s vision went cross-eyed when she tapped her finger on his forehead and then shot back at her. “He fell to his death. No one falls to their death in Gotham.” He was sharper suddenly and his own concern surprised him. Firefly was just some goon that was good for a couple laughs and usually pretty reliable when it came to burning the hell out of things. But, Eddie was starting to feel loss for him the way he would if any rogue bit the dust in his town. Eddie was the sentimental king of the underground.
And, in a second he got it. Garf didn’t screw up, someone just didn’t grapple his ass to safety. The Bat? The green man nodded and then stood up straight with a sigh and walked over to the window he crawled through. He looked at the tiny piece of Gotham outside and crossed his arms. “He was probably just off his meds, Muerte.” A soft voice. So much more mature than any of the goofiness he showed before. Decades and decades older.
For a moment, Death thought that she was going to have to actually shake Eddie to jostle his brain enough to get him to understand. But she saw the second that it finally started to click together in his mind, and nodded. She watched him stand and watched his back as he walked away toward the window. There was a passing moment of silence in the room, only the sound of Eddie’s breathing and the tiny movements of Nicodemus to cut the stillness.
“He was,” she confirmed from right behind his shoulder, almost too close, no sign of her having moved across the room at all. Her feet were bare on the floor, and the dress fell almost to her ankles, sleeveless, exposing feet that were traced over with silvery scars and bare arms unnaturally smooth with no sign of a mark on them. Nicodemus sneezed from his place several feet off the ground, suddenly held by her again. “It was a night filled with things that shouldn’t have happened.” Her own voice was tired, quiet, matching his age with her own. “If this wasn’t Gotham, none of it would have happened. But now two people are dead and a boy’s father mourns with a heart so guilty and broken that I wonder if it’s mendable at all.”
Eddie crossed his arms and leaned on the windowsill, wanting very much to blame it all on Batman because that’s what rogues did. See, the Dark Knight was always so keen on acting like he was on top of his ivory tower of morality and to see him slip was supposed to be an ahah! moment. All that trust, all that importance he put in that simple bat pin hanging from his suit could be easily washed away and Eddie could go right back to being the kind of guy who didn’t trust anyone and no one trusted him in return.
But, the kid thing got to him. Eddie may not have known what it was like to lose a kid. He did know what it was like to be a son without a father who gave a damn about him, though. And, that got to him. He sighed and turned to look at Muerte, then reached his hand out so he could pet Nicodemus. “I gotta go do something nice for Garf.” He told her with a shrug like he didn’t care if she had a problem with it or not. “He screwed up, but he didn’t deserve to go out like that. No matter who he killed.”
Spoken like a true street dog of Gotham.
Standing there, so close and with a moment of calm, Muerte finally noticed the pin. Nicodemus tucked in the crook of one pointy elbow, she reached out with her other hand and touched one finger to the metal. Contact lingering, she looked up at him. Silent and studying. She didn’t say a word about it, didn’t share whatever thoughts were slipping through her mind, but dropped her hand away and nodded.
“I have to go see Bruce. If nothing else, I need to get Damian’s body.” It was stated matter-of-factly, as if there was nothing strange about claiming a boy’s body from his grieving father. “He’s not going to make it easy.” Still stretched throughout the city and only partially anchored, she could see what was happening in the Batcave and knew what her next task was. But she knew too, that Eddie’s thoughts weren’t with bats and birds in the moment. Her next words were flat, tired. “It’s not about deserving, Eddie. Everyone dies how they die.” She knew it was a cold-hearted statement, and she turned away to walk back to the chair and set Nicodemus on the cushion. “But let me know if you want anything for him. I have things to do, but I would be there in some way if you want. If you need.”
Eddie looked down at her fingertips against the metal of his pin and he nodded slightly as if they were having an unspoken, sidebar conversation about what it meant to him. He thought about how much he changed in a year, how much she changed and thought it was strange that Gotham’s difficult way of life didn’t change along with them. He smiled at her when she told him about Bruce. “That’s brave of you.” His shoulders moved with a barely there laugh. They both knew trying to even speak to Bruce at a time like this was like trying to tackle a puzzle box that could never be solved. “You tell him- if it comes up, you tell him I have his back.” Eddie pointed a look at Muerte that said it was important to him. Eddie wasn’t going to be there for the bat pow-wow and sending Bruce a message wasn’t always the best way to convey something similar to friendship. If she said something, Bruce had to know it was from the heart.
Then, he did laugh when she said something that sounded like it was dusted off and presented from Muerte’s old shelf of mortality sayings. The kind of laugh that was surprisingly bright, messy and without any hint of malice his more taunting laughs came with. “I know. And, don’t worry. I’m going to talk to a guy who knows a guy who can get Garf’s stuff sorted out. If he has family, which I doubt he does, I’ll take care of them, too.” Eddie smoothed his hand over his suit and walked over to grab his jacket. Sliding back into the role of Gotham’s best information broker.
When she turned to look at him, he held his arms out, hands motioning her in for a hug. “Come on. Bring it in.”
“It’s not bravery. It’s necessity,” she replied. “I made a promise, and the longer his body is out there, the more chance there is of someone taking it to Pit him.” She shook her head. She didn’t often make promises to those she took, so this was one that she intended to keep. But as for delivering a message. “I don’t know that he’ll be up for much talking.” Not when she could hear the screaming echoing across the city. It wasn’t the sound of a man that wanted to discuss much of anything. “But if it comes up…” It was an important message, and she knew it. From the look in his eyes to the pin he wore, she knew that Eddie was a complicated man, with loyalties in every level of Gotham City. And she knew that this was an important one.
She only nodded at the discussion of what he would do about Garf, knowing that he would take care of it all as he saw fit for one of Gotham’s rogues. Though she had spent time in her “new” profession, organizing and overseeing the passing celebrations of Gotham’s citizens, this was a time and occasion that she would gladly leave in his hands.
The invitation for a hug was unexpected, Muerte having expected him to slip out again once he put his coat back on. The offer hung for a moment as it dawned on her that he was serious, and then she was taking a small step forward, just one, that brought her halfway across the room and directly in front of him. It was a flicker of reality as she moved to that half-step away that she then closed with the slide of bare foot along the wood floor. Her hands lifted as she moved, fingers curling delicately in the lapels of his suitcoat as she stepped close and rested her forehead against his shoulder with a sigh. For just a moment, she relaxed, let her thoughts go still, and dropped some of the act of holding everything together. In that moment, she seemed somehow more delicate, thin beneath the fabric of the dress, stretched in a way that was difficult to pinpoint. Another moment, and she forced her hands away from his lapels, slipped her arms around him between his suitcoat and outer jacket, and held on tightly for another stuttering moment. Then, just as quickly as she’d crossed the room, she was stepping back again, one step, then two, and looking at him as if she hadn’t just clung to him through the hug.
Eddie had a frown and puppy dog eyes waiting for her if she wasn’t going to agree to a hug (something they both needed, honestly). He didn’t want to be cheap like that, but Eddie didn’t mind playing a little unfairly. Luckily, he didn’t have to bring the big guns out and smiled gently as she held onto his suitcoat in a way that was so familiar. Eddie bowed his head down and wrapped his arms around her thin frame. Hold on her slowly tightening as he felt her relax. Eddie’s heart beat steadied out that typical erratic thumpathumpthump to something strong and consistent. He sighed and the tension from his shoulders and his chest evaporated.
“I’m really proud of you.” He said into her octopus hair so quietly even Nicodemus had to strain to hear him. Eddie believed in doing good over being good and it was clear to him that Muerte was trying to keep a balance. To help people before Iris was taken away and he wanted her to keep doing that. Gotham didn’t need anymore crime fighters. It needed people who could make sure regular citizens could have even a moment of kindness.
He smiled when she let go and then fixed his jacket, buttoning it and looking towards the window. “I’ll see you when I see you.” A troublemaker’s anthem that even someone his age could recite. A salute towards her furball dog and then he made for the window to go do something right by old Garf.
She found that her throat went tight at those so-quiet words, and she only tightened her arms around him for a moment as her response, unable to say anything. She was proud of him too, the way he’d pulled through Arkham and seemed (at least for the moment) to be doing alright. It wasn’t the right time to ask, even though she wanted to, not with everything else that was going on. But she hoped that he actually was, and that it wasn’t just an act he put on because she was having a rough day. She hoped, too, that this meeting, this awful day, wouldn’t derail things for him at all. And she hoped, as always, that when she inevitably found out, Stephanie wouldn’t be too angry at him.
She managed a small smile as she watched him fix his jacket, and when he headed for the window, she shook her head. The breath she let out was almost a laugh. “You can use the door, you know.” And then, in a moment of full disclosure. “The house will open for you. If you need it to. Even if I’m not here.” There was more than the surface meaning to those words. Yes, the door would open, because the house was, in some way, part of her, and it knew him enough to welcome him. “Just don’t trash the place.” And then, instead of staying to watch him leave, she forced herself across the city, where a broken man sat clinging to the lifeless body of his son.