eddie likes to (riddlethem) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2014-01-19 08:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: dc comics, riddler, scarecrow |
Who: Eddie and Crane
When: Backdate to the day after Firefly bit the dust
Where: Gotham Harbor
What: The cheapest, most self serving funeral ever
Warnings: talkin about dead stuff
Eddie and Crane sat at the edge of the Gotham harbor, somewhere close to where his old carnival would have been with a perrffect view of New Arkham and twisted off the cap of the blocky bottle of Jack Daniels. He sighed, flicked the cap into the water and took a swing of the hard liquor with a little squirm. Between himself and Crane sat Firefly’s old helmet that was fashioned from metal to look like a giant insect head. It was actually pretty remarkable in design. Handmade eye protection, antennas with a true function and a surprisingly advanced gas mask as a mouthpiece. It was a shame, really and Eddie would have held onto it if it didn’t feel a little creepy to have a dead man’s helmet on his shelf. It would be even creepier, considering that inside of the helmet was a heap of Garf’s remains in freshly ashed form.
“To Garf! Further speeches to follow!” Eddie said and clinked the bottle against the helmet before passing the booze over to Crane. Then, he cut two cigars (nice, Cuban and illegal as all hell) handed one to Crane and then stuck one in his own mouth. He lit his own, sighed out a cloud of smoke and handed over the lighter. “Don’t tell my girlfriend.” Was pretty much the theme for today. Eddie was already in enough trouble for visiting Muerte and avoiding every message that buzzed through his phone. In fact, just as he said it, his comm beeeeeeepped a warning that Stephanie was going to hit an amber alert.
He sighed and tugged the damn thing out of his ear and tossed it into the water after the bottle cap. “I’ll make a new one.” Eddie muttered to both Crane and Firefly before wiggling his fingers to get another swing of the booze. “You ever smoked a cigar before, Johnny?” The green man asked, snorting smoke out his nose. “It’s real simple. Roll it in your fingers as you light it. Don’t take a big puff, just enough to get the thing lit. Then inhale a little, don’t let any go down your throat. Just roll it around in your mouth and then puff it out. Nice and smooth.”
The act of spending time doing nothing more than drinking and talking was wholly foreign to Jonathan Crane. It wasn't anything he had longed to do in high school, and nothing that he had experienced in college before his time there was interrupted. But he wasn't the sort to back down from a new experience, so when Eddie invited him out to drink and burn things in memory of someone he really had no recollection of, Jonathan did what any good friend would do, and he agreed. A sturdy paper bag of old books and papers sat beside him, notes he no longer needed, books he was no longer fond of, and while some might have considered it a travesty to destroy such things, Jonathan did not. It felt more pure to destroy them than to let them languish on a shelf without attention, or to mold and mildew in the trash once thrown away. Fire was purifying, in a way, and though Jonathan did not really hold any tendencies towards pyromania, he could appreciate the thoughts.
"I'm not one to tattle on you to your girlfriend," Crane said after a moment, taking the bottle that was passed to him, fingers wrapped around the boxy glass, his other hand soon occupied with the offered cigar. "Your secret, as it were, is safe with me." At least for as long as it was beneficial to him to hold onto such information. But now was not the time to tempt fate. He was out of New Arkham, he was free, and he had to bide his time with good behaviour and benevolent actions. There was a time and place for everything, after all.
He took a drink of whiskey, coughing as the fire slid down his throat, his face twisted into a grimace as he passed the bottle back. "No, no I have not," he coughed out, a fisted hand to his mouth, the fire pushing through him, burning him from the inside out, and wasn't that a little ironic with the thoughts of fire earlier. This fire, Crane surmised, was not the sort to purify, though. No, this one soiled, burned away brain cells and left behind husks of men who longed for the escape. That would not be him, but he doubted a drink or two would hurt for now. "Nor have I drank anything stronger than the wine my grandmother had in our home." But he took the cigar anyways, and after watching Eddie's motions to light the thing, he followed in suit.
It was different from the whiskey, warm smoke that filled his senses as he held it for a count of two and then released, a cough coming on the tail end as he looked out over the harbor. "Did you know him well?" Jonathan asked after a moment, the cigar smoldering in his hand.
Eddie puffed up his chest in a masculine sign of approval that Crane was trying new things most stuffy intellects would shy away from. Cigars were bad for you, so was the booze, but Eddie didn’t see the point in being a genius if he didn’t live a little. “I try not to drink often as the alcoholism runs in the faaamillly. As it does in most families in Gotham. Must be the water supply.” Eddie said with a wiggle of his eyebrows. Today, there wasn’t any judgement towards Crane and his way of dealing with problems as there had been before. In fact, Eddie had this strange air of peace surrounding him as if he had invited Crane to partake in a sacred ritual of burying a fellow bad guy.
The truth was, Eddie had never paid his respects to anyone. Because in his Gotham? Rogues rarely ever died. “In truth, I did not. I mostly know of his exploits and they were many and memorable. But, he’s one of us, Crane. And, he deserves a sending off because any of us would want the same. When you die, do you want to end up in a mass grave?” The riddled man asked, taking another swing of the booze. “Hell, in my Gotham if he killed a Robin that meant he was on the same level as the clown or Black Maaaask. I know those names don’t mean anything to you, but use your imagination.”
Eddie set the bottle down and grabbed one of the books made for kindling. Burning books was the work of the devil, but these looked old and not all that important so he didn’t feel bad. Besides, Garf probably wasn’t a big reader, anyway.
He opened the book and ran the lighter over the pages, making them crisp into angry black spiders that crumbled and curled away. Eddie smiled at the fire, not realizing it had jumped to the arm of his blazer. “I get why you were into this, Garf I really-” The riddled man’s dark eyes went wide as his elbow suddenly went up in flames. “Goddamn it!” Eddie laughed, threw the book into the water and then patted his blazer out with the purple tie he was wearing.
"Then at least I should be safe from the alcoholic tendencies," Crane answered, "given that I was not born here, nor have any family here. Though I admit to drinking the water." It was, unfortunately, about as close to a joke as the strawman was capable of, but at least he was trying, and that had to count for something.
He was looking at the cherry end of the cigar when Eddie answered, and the response caused him to glance up, his expression curious. It was tempting to argue the point that he was not one of them, but Crane wisely kept his mouth shut on that topic. "No, I would rather not end up in a mass grave," he answered instead, looking back over the harbor as Eddie continued on, about clowns and black masks. No, he didn't know what the names meant, but he had an active imagination and could guess they were titles of some sort of reverence, at least in this world.
The books were tended to, but not by Crane. He watched, instead, as Eddie lit one up, watching the pages curl and blacken as the flame began its hungry march across the old paper. And then promptly marched onto Eddie's arm. He reached out as though to assist with putting the flames upon his sleeve out, but the other man had it taken care of more quickly than he did, so instead he looked out at the smoldering book that floated in the water, a dark shadow among many. "Be more careful next time," Jonathan said, reaching into the bag between them for a handful of papers, notes with Jonathan's precise, tiny scrawl etched upon them. "I would rather not have your ashes joining that of Garf's this evening."
Eddie grinned at Crane when he told him to be more careful, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to slip into the roles they had played before whilst working together as rogues. Eddie had known a couple different Cranes and he got along famously with all of them. Even if there wasn’t much trust between them. Then again, how much trust could go between such eccentric rogues? “If I light on fire, you can throw me in the harbor. I think I can swim drunk.” Eddie looked down at the dirty Gotham water and made a face like a kid who didn’t want to eat his vegetables. “But, you know I’d rather not.”
He riiiiippppedd out a piece of paper from the next book, lit it on fire with the end of his cigar and then tossed the crumbling fire into the cold water. Gotham was freezing this time of year, but booze, cigars and lighting things on fire made him forget about that momentarily. “So, you don’t remember anything about Firefly? Did you even have rogues in your Gotham? Or was this during Batman’s strictly detective phase?”
"Let's try to avoid going into the drink," Crane said after a moment, a slight lightness to his tone the only real evidence of amusement at the moment, but it was more than he normally exhibited. The sound of paper ripping filled the air, and he watched as it fluttered down towards the water, sputtering out a moment later as it hit and extinguished itself in the dark water of the harbor.
The question drew his attention back towards Eddie, away from the dark water and the thoughts that had just started to light upon his consciousness. "No," he said a moment later, looking down to the cigar before he took another puff from it, this one more successful than the first as he released the mouthful of smoke. "I knew of Gotham, but I hadn't made it here in my world. I was in college down south, in Georgia. That was my entire world before I woke up here." He knew things from reading through the words his predecessor had penned to paper, but he hadn't experienced them yet.
Eddie could imagine a Gotham without rogues. “During that Christmas thing, I ended up as an eight year old and then again as a teenager. As a teenager, I was dropped into a more recent Gotham with the bats and the rogues and had to hear myself talk as The Riddler.” He pulled the cigar from his mouth and looked out towards Arkham. “I hated the man I became. Hated him for his insanity and the way he hurt people because I had no idea how a Bat-themed city operated. If I had to restart from that point, I doubt I would have ended up the way I did. Or perhaps veered into a worse direction.”
He stuck the cigar back in his mouth, rolling it between his fingers and puffing thoughtfully. “Anyway. Firefly. He had a couple different origin stories, as we all do. The common thread was that he was wronged, as we all are and decided to take it out on the city, which we’ve all done.” Eddie smiled thiny. “He wasn’t ever a very significant player in the gallery. In fact, we only really used him when we wanted a distraction or something really did need to be set on fire. But, if anyone was going to die from falling off a building, it’d be the crazy firebug with flammable everything.” Eddie patted the helmet fondly.
Crane didn't say anything for a long while, just listening, watching the water beneath them, the lights of the city reflecting off of its surface. "It's strange how something a little different can make us such different people. I wonder if the Riddler in that world would be pleased to see how you turned out." It was a thought, something to consider, and he was quiet as he did just that, reaching for the bottle of liquor to take another drink, grimacing.
"I'm sorry that he's gone," Crane eventually said, putting the bottle back down, gaze going down to the cigar in his hands, smoldering and hot. "I didn't know him, but that doesn't mean that I believe he deserves to die. No one deserves that. It's so final."
Eddie kept his eyes on Arkham, rolling that cigar in his mouth. His eyes narrowed, darkened and he thought about blowing the place up. Who would miss Arkham? Who would care if the crazy people went to another city? But, then he reminded himself that he would always be one of those people and he’d never escape the cold halls of Arkham Asylum for as long as he lived. “I don’t really care that he died, if I’m being honest.” Eddie said distantly and then looked to Crane with a riddled smile. “I care that it could happen to one of us if we’re not careful. I care about tradition since no one in this town seems to.”
He could feel the booze flowing through his veins, making him spit out terrible truths like it always did. To him, it was a relief, a release from the pressure his puzzle box mind usually put on him. Eddie sat up straighter, wrapped his fingers around the edge of the helmet and flung Firefly into the Gotham harbor without any of the promised pomp and circumstance. “See that right there, Crane? That’s a good example of how you don’t want to end up.”
The strawed man watched as the helmet flew down to the water of the harbor, landing with an audible splash before disappearing beneath the dark surface. There was something poignant about the moment, there and then gone so quickly. "I'm doing my best not to end up that way," he said after a moment, taking another puff from the cigar, the smoke easier to handle now that he knew what to expect, and maybe it was the liquor making it smoother as well. "To Firefly," he said a moment later, toasting the harbor with a lift of the bottle of whiskey. "And to not being forgotten."