eddie likes to (riddlethem) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-06-12 09:39:00 |
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Entry tags: | death, door: dc comics, riddler |
Who: Muerte and Eddie
Where: Eddie's favorite bunker!
When: After Eddie and Steph get back from vacation. Todayish
What: Muerte muerte.
Warnings: Muerte. Sadness.
Iris stared at the door, standing there in the dim, dreary hallway for long minutes, just looking at it. It had shifted just a bit, the way it always did when she drew closer with key in hand, but something felt different about it in that moment. It felt like foreboding and something sickly dangerous, and she hesitated. It had been a while since she’d come to the hotel, her own life being complicated enough to steal all of her attention, and Death hadn’t insisted. The bruises on Iris’ legs were finally fading, and she and Death both hoped that it meant that things were healing on the other side of the door as well. Iris had felt, under all the confusion of her last few days, even within the warm safety and security of Ian’s home, an underlying sense of being somehow off, somehow a little ill, with the sort of shiver that was blamed by old wives on someone walking over your grave, but she had figured it was simply her body’s reaction to the stress. But standing before the door, watching the threshold give a little confused, sickly green shimmer, she wondered if maybe it was due to something else.
There was only one way to truly find out, and she needed her own time away. At least a little, at least an hour or two where she didn’t have to worry about Ian and the past come back and her family. So with key in hand, she unlocked the door and went through.
The world gave an awful twist, so different than it usually was, and Death realized that everything hurt from the very start. More than just a soreness, more than the pressure of a headache - she hurt. Her presence was spread the way it always was, knowledge of lives throughout the universe, but it was too much. For the first time, even her own spread of awareness was too much for her to handle. Lightning struck simultaneously at places across the globe, even places where there wasn’t a cloud to be found in the sky, and with a gasp, she knew that she couldn’t hold herself like that. So even though the twist of matter and mass was near torture, she forced herself into a physical body, and tried to do it someplace safe. Safe, safe, the mantra in her mind as everything else turned to pain.
The fall to the concrete floor knocked the air from her lungs, accompanied by the sharp fire of pain that clouded everything else for the long minutes it took her to focus and breathe through it. It still felt like electric sizzles under her skin when she finally opened her eyes to see where she’d landed herself.
And she gasped out a choking little laugh.
The space was small, not even large enough to echo, and while the climate was controlled, it had the muffled thickness of a basement. Without moving her head, she could see shelves of electronic equipment, filled with things that most people would have no idea what to do with. Just at the corner of her vision were several work tables, computers, and she knew that behind her would be a mini fridge covered in photos and papers, and a fold-out bed. Her choked laugh escaped again, and she closed her eyes against her self-directed amusement. The man himself was on vacation in Hawaii, and though her goal had been safety, she’d brought herself to Eddie. Or at least to one of his many hidey hole workshops. It was good enough for her purposes, someplace quiet and safe for her to rest until she could gather the energy to slip back through the door.
The floor was concrete-slab cool, and while it felt good against her overheated skin, she knew that the fold-out was at least softer and would provide some cushion for a body already in pain. The next quarter-hour was something she never wanted to repeat, filled with the whimpers and cries and nausea of a body too far overtaxed. By the time she made it up onto the bed (thankfully left pulled out, with the sheets and pillows a mess), she was chilled and sweating, panting for air with lungs that didn’t seem like they could pull a full breath (like they were filled with something) and trying to ignore the threads of green that had traveled so far as to sneak down over the delicate bones of her wrists, toward her fingers. The buzz against her fingertips when she touched her own neck made her suspect that the green had traveled upward as well.
The corner of something poked into her thigh as she settled on the bed, and with a groan and a shift, she pulled the somewhat battered piece of cardstock from the pocket of her skirt. The slick picture of Santa Muerte regarded her from one side, Eddie’s handwriting on the other, and she had to close her eyes as heat spilled from them, tears that tinted the sheets below her face with a delicate, electric green. Once they started, anguished and scared, she couldn’t get them to stop, even though the sobs that began to accompany them stole what little breath she had and wracked her body with spasms of agony. She hoped, sending wishes out into an empty abyss even though she knew there was no one there to hear them, that Eddie didn’t have any sort of monitoring cameras set up in this particular workshop of his, and she suddenly also wished she hadn’t pulled herself to somewhere he would find. Like (and she suddenly realized how accurate he’d been) an animal hiding under someone’s porch.
Because she knew.
She knew as each breath felt like choking and drowning, that she wasn’t going to see another day. She would be lucky if she had a few more hours. And she couldn’t get to a door to get back across. She was terrified of what would happen to her - of what would happen to Iris - and yet there was nothing she could do.
It was her time.
The next hour, not even two, was filled with fear and pain, the feeling of slowly being suffocated by her own (frustratingly human) lungs. She sweated even as she shivered, cried even when she couldn’t breathe, and the outline of her body on the sheets became a halo of that same, saturated green.
And then, with an effort that stole the last of her energy, she laid the prayer card on the sheets where she knew Eddie would see it, hoped that she would somehow disappear so that he wouldn’t see her, held a desperate apology in her heart, closed her eyes, and shuddered out her last breath.
Eddie liked his tropical break from the rest of the world and even had a couple moments where he forgot he was from Gotham. Some newlyweds would make nice, they’d ask him where his hometown was and he’d stutter out a state or a zip code. Never Gotham. The name of his city was a curse, like if he said it or thought about it they’d be snapped back in the wreckage aftermath of Bane’s month long party. No. Eddie refused to be dragged back without his permission. He liked the sun after a couple days of getting used to it. He liked the way Stephanie lit up at the sight of warm, blue ocean. He even learned to like being disconnected. Taking whole moments to read signs about fauna or tribal history on the little day walks they went on. Day walks through jungle or across beaches. And, then a night at some outdoor bar with low chatter and crashing waves followed by an early morning of simply laying in bed with the windows open without the fear of smog or criminals or anything in kevlar climbing through.
He had joked with Stephanie that she’d meet a nice island boy that would make her want to stay and towards the end of their trip he almost wished it’d happen. Eddie could never live very long without his Gotham, but Stephanie. She was so young and capable of starting over if she really wanted to. For just a second while sipping a mai tai and doing his crosswords on the beach, he wished she’d stay behind and escape all the new ways Gotham would test and twist her. But, the feeling floated away with the tide almost as quickly as it washed ashore and Eddie knew if anyone was going to make it out of Gotham, it was going to be Stephanie. And, he’d be there. Protecting her from the sidelines. Telling her how proud he was of her. Keeping secrets she didn’t need to know.
Now he was back in Gotham and he could feel the heat, hot and smoggy on his skin. On the islands, it was sweet, playful, teasing to find cool water. Here it was heavy and demanding. It made his wrists sweat, his eyes tired, his hair curve in a different direction. Eddie knew he was happy to be home, which was true masochism wasn’t it? Knowing something hurt, knowing it was wrong and still loving every broken piece of it. Without so much as unpacking, Eddie tried to drag Matilda out into the summer night. Instantly, she whined, shook her head no and barked at his study. Looking back, Eddie saw the connection. He saw the green line between everything his dog was trying to tell him. But, he wasn’t looking for the pattern and instead went off to his favorite workshop. The one under the hat store that had closed down decades ago, but still had dusty bowlers and fedoras on the cracked window display. Below there in a carved out basement, he went to work and edge himself back into the real world of Gotham.
The second his elevator dinged open, his gut tightened until his senses turned sharp. Eddie was a creature of Gotham that learnt to smell all kinds of danger. A late night knock to the door. A gun to the back of his head. An unsigned note that knew, that knew. He tossed his keys in the air, tongue against the inside of his cheek as he poked his head out of the elevator and thought to reach for his revolver. His violet shades assured him there was nothing living in the bunker besides him and began to slowly give him surveillance of each corner.
By then he saw her. He saw the mess of black hair fanned out like an inkblot over crumpled sheets. He saw the glowing, itching green that had threaded through her arms, across her shoulders and up her neck in a gruesome, beautiful display of power. Eddie didn’t give himself time to think, he ripped off his glasses and crawled on the fold out bed next to her, hands on her back and shoulders as he tried to muster up the courage to see what he thought was already accepted. “Muerte?” He tried, but choked on the words. “You came here, why did you come here?” His fingertips dug into her cold skin and tasted a buzz of the Lazarus Pit coursing through his veins. That addictive, clarifying green that could bring everything down in glorious neon. It made it so the only thing he could spit out were questions. It made Eddie feel so small again. A tiny, poor boy running around his block asking every question he could dream up and finding that no one wanted to answer.
Slowly he pulled her over to lay on her back, his knees against her side and hands wrapped around her green fingertips. “Why did you let me say goodbye? Muerte?” Eddie pressed her cold palm to the side of his face, feeling the electric buzz of green gently fade from her body. He didn’t know he was actually crying until he saw the wet circles hit her skin and the messy bed sheets below. The gradual recognition of it made an entire sob crack through him. Then, his shoulders were shaking and his throat went so tight he could barely give a watery wheeze before he found himself irrationally weeping.
It was disgusting. For a man who willingly let any shade of his green bubble up to the surface without an ounce of shame, he hated that he could feel this. He hated that it felt just like when he was a child standing at his mother's grave. How the burn in his throat reminded him that he still carried his mother's things around with him without even thinking about it. The hat store, the ice cream shop, her favorite song up in Wonder Tower. It reminded him of how much he hated his father for grieving down a bottle after bottle until Eddie stopped feeling pain the same way everyone else did. And, oh wasn’t it funny how he got along so well with women, but never any men? Careful, Nigma, careful.
Eddie tried to tell himself to stop, turning away from Muerte to sit on the edge of the bed. He had already said goodbye. He already accepted that she was going to die. So, what did it matter if he found the body? It made sense that she’d want her last moments to be someplace only he could find. Someplace safe.
Rationalizing didn’t help. He thought it would, he remembered how well it did in most circumstances. But, here, sitting on the edge of his janky little fold out bed with a dead god laying next to him, he couldn’t let it fix anything. Eddie pressed the palms of his hands on his eyes as if he were trying to force the tears back into his skull. He didn’t know how long he sat there, but by the time his throat was raw and his whole body felt weak from grief, it felt like decades.
Eddie got to his feet, refusing to look back at her and did a lap around his workspace. Pulling his Riddler jacket off and loosening the tie so it hung around his neck. In those moments of pacing around and avoiding her, the mountain of lies Eddie told himself was impressive. He didn’t need Muerte around. She never actually cared for him past being a nice human pet to keep nipping at her heels. She had no real understanding of him. She was a danger to his happiness. Lies from one of the best liars in town and not one of them could stick.
Eventually, he returned to her bedside, eyes still red and watery. Mouth turned in a frown that seemed incapable of the sweet, adoring smirks he was known for giving. He saw the prayer card for the first time, held it up to the light and then palmed it so quickly it looked like it had vanished. He knelt next to bed with his chin propped up on the mattress like a child praying, looking over her face for a moment longer and sighed. “You made my favorite workshop your tomb. Do you know how inconvenient that is?” He asked, sniffing and even smiling a little. Eddie leaned forward to run his thumb over her cheek and a finger through a strand of her black hair before burying his face into the mattress and closing his eyes.
He wanted to sleep. He wanted to fall asleep and wake up to find the body gone like he had just suffered from a fevered dream. But, Eddie just knelt there long enough to get a couple more silent goodbyes in, reaching to rest his hand over hers and curling his fingers to touch her palm. No one was there to take her hand when she passed, but Eddie hoped this made up for it.