Re: Main Street
The bat was in Arkham, Jason Todd was officially unhinged and she was dead? But, what did that have to do with him? If the last vision was a world without Stephanie Brown, then this one had to be one without him, right? In which case he assumed nothing in Gotham would have changed besides there being a little less green. So, how could the Batfamily be torn apart without the little question mark man? Once he caught up with her, Eddie leaned on the doorframe and crossed his arms.
“I don’t get it.” He said grimly. “The hotel must have accidentally showed us a world without Dick Grayson or something.” Riddler wanted things to go back to normal so they could goof off in the mansion for a couple hours. Hotel ominous visions be damned.
Steph shook her head violently and pointed at the screen. Just as Eddie entered, the program played video of Richard Grayson, known associate of Bruce Wayne, being brought in for questioning. She didn’t turn around to face him, too arrested by the scene playing on the screen in front of her. “He’s alive. It’s not that. Why would they show us that anyway?” She turned finally and searched his face with a tight mouth and wide, glassy eyes. “That makes no sense. They wouldn’t show us someone else. This is you.”
She stepped forward, away from the glow of the television screen and towards the pale man in the doorway. “This is all from that night with Crane’s poison. Remember that?” She paused for a moment. That was shortly after she had decided to hang up the cowl, shortly after she and Eddie had officially started their correspondence. It felt so long ago, but in reality, it had only been a few months since then. So much had changed, not just for her or the family, but for her relationship with Eddie as well. That night really forged the unbreakable bond of trust the two developed. He helped in ways that no one could have imagined.
“That has to be it.” She was close to him again, and he could see the shocked tears brimming in her eyes if he looked. Her hand reached out to rest on his chest. “That night. You were the one who kicked things into gear. We were all scrambling without your help. Without you, I would have--everything would have fallen apart. That’s it. I would have--there would have been a lot more damage if you hadn’t butted in.” She smiled at that through her worried tears, and then laughed a little. “You saved the day by leading us all there as quick as possible. Without you,” she continued, voice shaky, “we’d be dead. You saved me.”
His flippant frown from assuming the hotel had mixed things up vanished the second he caught a glimpse of how upset this was making her. Eddie couldn’t pretend he cared about the rest of the family, she couldn’t ask him to, but if saving them made her happy, then he’d do it for her. That was why he gave her full control that night, why he kept tabs on information and didn’t even pick a huge fight with Momma Babs once she caught them. “Saved the day. I’ve never heard that before.” He said with a smile, knowing that no one else in the Batfamily would ever see it that way. It didn’t matter how many bat kids or cats he saved, they’d always see him as a hinderance to their little brood.
Under his shirt, she could feel his heart beating hard against his chest. Steady and methodical in a way that was so different from his curling, sidestepping riddles. “But maybe I did it for the wrong reasons.” He tried said with a false graveness. “Maybe I just wanted Scarecrow to lose.” He widened his eyes a little with a smile, trying to make her laugh so that she stopped crying. “Why on earth would I help you save the Bat family?” That was a good riddle. But, maybe she didn’t know why. Sure, he didn’t exactly club a Robin to death, but he had emotionally scarred a couple other ones. Just for fun.