Who: Eddie and Steph (part 2) Where: Gotham When: last sunday What: Eddie's godkid gets baptized and it leads to both cute and sads. Warning: swearing
Eddie didn’t mind a mystery, in fact he sort of enjoyed the thrill of it. He just didn’t want to hurt her while he was still stuck trying to figure all of this out. And, in a way it did make him feel alone even though he wasn’t, even though he didn’t have to be. Part of him wanted to tell her, to say something even if it’d come out in a riddled mess. He still had the ring, he never left the safehouse back on Earth-3 without it and yet now that they were back he didn’t know if he’d ever be ready to show it to her again.
He held his hands out to her, linking their fingers before sliding palms together and pulling her up on her feet. “Fresh air?” He asked and pointed towards one of the windowed doors of the party room to a small courtyard with freshly blooming flowers, mosaic tile and a fountain. Once on her feet, Eddie slung his arm over her shoulder, moving his hand down her back, across her waist and let it rest at her hip. “She was telling me before that she can’t decide who’s name to say first in a couple months when she learns how to talk.” Eddie said as if he was detailing a business meeting. “I told her the safest bet is to make a hybrid word. Confuse them. Modad or Faother. Then, we got into a big discussion about the importance of word structure and it went downhill from there.”
Eddie smiled, almost like he was trying to encourage Stephanie to do the same. “Alright fine. That’s not what we were talking about. This might come as a surprise to you, but babies are actually the best secret keepers in Gotham.” He opened the courtyard doors and stepped aside so Stephanie could walk through first and then closed the door behind them. The party could be heard through the small courtyard, but it was mostly quiet save for the sound of running fountains and the occasional bird. He leaned back on the doors, hands over the handles behind his back and he looked at her for a moment.
“I told her I was scared. Admit that to anyone else in Gotham that isn’t a baby and you get laughed at.”
“Always a smart move,” Stephanie teased quietly, hand sliding underneath his blazer to wrap around his waist as well. Onlookers looked amused, and maybe even a little jealous at the two lovebirds clearly still in the honeymoon phase, even if they didn’t understand all of the baggage that hung off of the lovely, edgy couple. Steph wondered if somewhere in the room Marie looked triumphant as the couple retreated to the quiet courtyard to talk. “I think I went the easier route and crushed them both with baba. I really, really wish I could say that meant bat, but I think it was bottle.” Her fingers twisted idly in the fabric of his shirt, always hungry for more affection even when something heavy was brewing in her mind. It was a by-product of all the time and dependence on Earth-3, but that was one thing she would never change.
She offered him a flimsy smile as she walked into the courtyard. “And here I thought dogs were. Matilda’s going to be so upset you said that.” Click, click went her boots against the mosaic tiles, and she took a deep breath of fresh air as if it had the answers to all their problems. She closed her eyes briefly, and then turned around in her place to look at him. Her smile grew a little stronger there, a lot more reassuring, tilt of her head making her look curious and affectionate instead of angry or upset. Sure, there was a dagger in her heart at the moment, but why should she be the one that punished him? She was the reason they were in this predicament at the moment. If she had just kept her goddamn mouth shut.
“Scared of what, baby?” She reached forward to rub his upper arms through his blazer as if she was warming him up to give her an answer.
Eddie felt the urge to just give in, to give all of this a shot now when they could see how good it could be for them. But, it wasn’t right. Even though he had finally convinced himself that this Gotham wasn’t a dream and maybe they were actually back for good, he could shake that fear of rejection. That fear that even if he went through so much trouble for her again, it wouldn’t work or she’d turn him down with a whole new list of reasons. Wasn’t easier to just be together without any of the extra pressures?
He whined when she got close and rubbed his arms, giving her a look like he didn’t understand why she wasn’t mad at him. Why she wasn’t yelling now that they were alone. He went too far, didn’t he? He took something she said and turned it real. His mouth turned into a funny little smile and he shrugged. “I don’t know why I’m scared.” His answer tumbled out and he couldn’t stop staring at her and seeing a future they both wanted. “You know what I can’t stop thinking? Maybe you aren’t a natural with babies like I am, but you’d be a good mom.” Eddie tilted his head, dark eyes set on her blues and he smiled as he remembered Isabella babbling happily on her lap. He wanted her to have that.
His hands snagged hers as they rubbed his arms and he guided them under his unbuttoned blazer to hold onto him. Eddie hadn’t answered why he was scared and it was obvious he couldn’t untangle it. There was just this fear in his stomach that fueled his want for everything they just had before he screwed it up. So, when he told her that she’d be a good mom, it was his way of telling her that she deserved it. That if he couldn’t catch up in time, that she should find someone that could.
Honestly, Stephanie didn’t understand why she hadn’t blown up at him either. Maybe it was the serenity of this normalcy surrounding them, or perhaps it was the guilt of breaking his heart all those years ago stifling the anger she did feel underneath. She was angry, no doubt about that, but in a strange mix of frustration at him and loathing towards herself. Her eyes flickered briefly with that bubbling exasperation, but it mingled with a sense of defeat that even if he did want all of that deep down, he would logic his way out of it. He had hurt her, but she couldn’t compare it to the heartbreak she’d caused him in her mind. And so, with a rumbling whine, she betrayed her momentary pain before sliding one arm around his waist, fingers of the other taking hold of his tie. She’d fallen back into the habit with ease, tugging him whichever way she pleased when he wore one and using it to emphasize.
She swallowed hard, blues trained on puppy dog browns, and she tugged once at his tie, eyes briefly filling with a wetness she staved with a bite of her lip. “You would be the perfect dad,” she said, and there was no agenda in those words. Just pure, unadulterated fact. “The best dad.” Another tug to bring the point home, and her other hand twisted in the fabric of his shirt. After a second, after a deep breath to steady, she slid the palm of her hand down his chest slowly before wrapping it around his middle, too. Pulling him closer to her, she cleared her throat and looked down at their shoes, tips of toes to other tips.
“I’m scared, too,” she admitted, confession nearly lost in the rush of the fountain. So, she repeated it. She was scared too, Eddie, don’t you see that? She reckoned that he just thought she recklessly moved from one side of the spectrum of commitment to the other, and maybe she did. But, that didn’t sully how badly she wanted all of the things she denied him before on Earth-3.
Selina had told Eddie to hold onto the hope that things were going to be okay. Years ago, before Earth-3, hope was such an easy thing. A beacon instead of a small light he had to hide, sometimes from even himself. He said he’d have to steal some from Stephanie, but how much did she have left, too? “It’s okay to be scared.” Eddie whispered and held her close, resting his chin on top of her head and closing his eyes. For five years they never allowed themselves to be afraid, not for long, so maybe now that the world was so much calmer it’d be okay to give into all that built up fear. It was better than ignoring it or washing it over like the Crane toxin had all those years ago.
“How am I supposed to know when the equation is right?” He asked, almost to himself. A wistful, distant sort of thing. Nothing was safe here and even if they built what they wanted it could get taken down by a plague or a toxin. When he looked at it, this Gotham wasn’t all that different from Earth-3. The only difference was that it had normal days like this to cover up the long, violent nights drenched in blood and death and madness. She was right, he could logic his way out of anything, especially after failing so spectacularly the first time. When he built her that ring, Eddie didn’t care about risks or how long it would take to work towards a life they wanted. Now, it was all he could think about. The math, the numbers the equations to build a perfect kind of world for her like she wanted.
Her grip tightened when he rested his chin on top of hers, fingers digging into his back like he was grounding her there and otherwise she might be swallowed by the mosaic tiles below them. She shook her head underneath the weight of his head atop hers, a dissenting noise and another twitch of her fingers telling him that she shouldn’t be afraid. She wasn’t allowed to be afraid when this was all her fault. Right? But, god she was afraid. Not necessarily of the idea of a white picket fence, but of other things this Gotham implicated. While Eddie might have managed to define his grip on reality here, Stephanie still struggled to believe all of this was real. There were nights she woke up in a cold sweat to the sounds of bombs above head, gripping for her gun until she realized that they were just in their quiet apartment, in their soft bed, with their pets eyeing her curiously from their various perches in the room.
Clearly, she was in no state to even begin to think about having something like what Frank and Marie did, but when was anyone in Gotham? It didn’t cheapen how she felt for Eddie, or how much she wanted him completely and wholly. Funnily enough, she didn’t even think about how their arguments had flipped 180 degrees. How she sounded like him with a desperation that wanted to work through all of this no matter what, and he tried to push through in favor of something clean and unmuddled in their precarious states.
“Maybe it isn’t ever gonna be,” she conceded to the ground. “Maybe it isn’t ever supposed to be?” She twisted her head back to look at him, that little trail of hope flickering in her blue eyes despite herself. “Maybe we’re supposed to just balance it out ourselves anyway?” Or, maybe the Riddler and Spoiler were just never meant to have this life from the get-go. The life of warm nights together without nightmares, of sticky hands and slobbering kisses, of macaroni art and playing pretend in pillow forts. Of matching rings on their fingers and wedding anniversaries and being called Mr. and Mrs. Nashton. Of being able to call him her fiance, her husband, the father of her children. Vigilantes and war heroes, if they could be called heroes of that war, weren’t supposed to get that.
Stephanie didn’t have the answers either and Eddie shook his head, now more than aware that they were stuck in the same boat. “We never over thought being together. We just let us happen because it felt right.” He sighed and ran his fingers through her hair. “Maybe the fact that we’ve been over thinking the next step since I first brought it up means-” He shrugged and sighed with a sad smile. There wasn’t going to be a perfect world and Eddie wished that he could have seen that before he ever left Earth-3. A safe place to raise a kid meant finding a different city a different world where clowns didn’t knock on people’s doors and shoot them in the belly.
“Frank and Marie got married because they were in love. And, Frankie Jr was born because he was a happy little accident. We don’t have happy accidents and I know marriage means more than just going for it.” Eddie said it like he had read something out of a manual. He knew what Frank and Marie had was natural and he knew that Steph and him would never be able to replicate it like that. Eddie still didn’t know what Stephanie thought marriage was about. Trying to figure it out would have driven him insane during the war and now on a new playing field, he couldn’t even begin to guess at the rules.
“So, we can be the aunt and uncle who get the kids when they’re good and spoil them rotten. You can still think it’s hot when I know how to make them stop crying or remember how to make a bottle of formula. We can cheat.” Eddie smiled at her and tried not to look disappointed. It was slowly becoming clear that solution wasn’t going to work. That it was only a matter of time before he just asked her again and if she didn’t say yes with everything she had, then it really was going to be over.
Stephanie furrowed her eyebrows, a little bit of that ire finally reaching to her tongue and flicking in the corner of her eyes, dark blue blooming in the corner of sky brightness. She looked up at the sky then, blinking away the burning in the corners of her eyes and the shout building up in her chest. “I know you aren’t saying we don’t love each other enough for this,” she said to the sky above, to the sun and birds and budding trees. “You aren’t, right?” She looked down at him again, eyebrow up and blue eyes glassy with intermingling anger and heartache. Her fingers dug in hard into his back, willing him to challenge her on the point.
“So, maybe it didn’t feel right before. Maybe all of this feels right now.” If he wanted to go on feelings, well, wasn’t she the expert on that? Stephanie Brown was the queen of going on emotion rather than logic, and the one time she didn’t? Well, here they were, weren’t they. Stuck, stagnant, and wondering whether it was worth the risk to go through all of that again. Steph stared right into his eyes, and she relinquished the gripping press to his back to brush against the gray streak of hair spilling from his temple all the way around. “We aren’t Frank and Marie, baby, and that’s a good thing. We’re our own people. And maybe that means we get to figure out how to do all this our way.” She wibbled a smile. “It isn’t like we didn’t have bumps in the road before all of that. We had plenty. Our relationship is based on us figuring out how to overcome those.”
Her soothing strokes through his hair stilled, and she stepped back, not out of his arms but just enough for him to feel the absence of her. “I don’t want to cheat,” she told him, deadpanned. “I don’t want to fucking cheat, Eddie. We’re better than that. We deserve more than that. I know you know we do. I know you want it, too. So stop.” The stop earned the slightest crack of her voice, and she looked away again to hide the burn in her eyes of tears waiting to fall.
“I’m saying there’s something missing and I can’t figure out what it is.” Eddie’s voice turned harsh, glad that he managed to dig up the anger that she was bubble wrapping with guilt and a desire to make up for hurting him years ago. What probably looked like two lovers leaving the party to have a gentle talk about hope and the future was turning into an ugly spat. Something they hadn’t had since she broke his heart, something that he hoped he could have avoided here in this old Gotham. He didn’t lean into her touch and when she stepped back, he didn’t try to reach for her again. A sure sign that they were digging into old scars.
“Do you know what I want? I want that.” He pointed out to the party, his voice getting a little louder than it should have and that anger, that hurt bubbling back up even though he had tried so hard to keep it down. “I want you to be my wife. I want to have snot-nosed, crazy little kids running around the farm. I want all of it and I’m not scared because I think I’ll lose them or you. I’m not even scared of Gotham trying to ruin it for us. I’m scared because nothing I do is going to be good enough. What happens if we get married today and then tomorrow the Syndicate boom tubes here and takes everything we love? What happens when we have kids and one of them has a fucked up riddled mind like I do? Are you going to leave? Are you going to tell me you can’t do it anymore?”
Now Eddie was yelling loud enough that the people inside the party could hear. He turned, looking through the glass window and saw Marie give him a horrified, apologetic stare. No one understood what they had been through. All anyone saw was the happy, tattooed couple who would have made the best parents in the whole world. What could they possibly have to fight about? “I got news for you, Stephanie Brown. Life with me is never going to be easy. Life in Gotham is never going to be ideal. If we have kids? They’re not going to be perfect, not even close. I still want it with you. I want it so bad it hurts to look at you. But, you told me no and I sure as hell won’t crawl back down on one knee just so you can reject me again.”
He was pissed and there was no salvaging their fight and going back out to the party without everyone asking if they were okay. So, he left. He pushed off the doors he was leaning on and walked past her, exiting from the other side so he could leave the restaurant without having to look at any of the people who had just seen him promise to keep little Isabella safe through thick and thin.
Stephanie watched Eddie implode with wide eyes and a mouth that started to go slack the longer he went on. Stepping back further, click, click against the tile, she didn't have the chance to get a word in edgewise, and so her anger bubbled and boiled as he ranted. A glance or two were afforded towards the party behind them, where the patrons once so charmed by the adorable couple so in love with each other that it was inevitable for them to follow in Marie and Frank's footsteps any day now. The truth, of course, was uglier than anything they imagined. Only Eddie and Stephanie understood what they went through, that was their curse, and after years and years of pushing the problem the problem in favor of fighting for a cause that wasn’t inherently theirs, it finally boiled over.
She sawed her jaw back and forth while he continued to rant on and on about what he wanted as if she hadn’t told him explicitly weeks ago that she wanted the same thing. Well, maybe not explicitly, but telling him that he could have whatever he wanted here, wasn’t that the same thing? Her blues pricked with tears, but she continued to stare at him angrily as he went off. She wondered if he would blame her for ruining his goddaughter’s christening, and all of a sudden, she was so sick of the guilt she’d harbored for years. It wasn’t gone, not by a long shot, but in that moment, with him yelling in her face about leaving him when things got tough, Stephanie Brown couldn’t pluck up the energy to feel anything beyond hurt and rage. Forgetting that he could sometimes go so low, pinpoint her problem, and twist in the biggest knife to rip open old wounds.
Before she could respond to any of that, however, Eddie was off, and she was standing facing a party of gaping onlookers. Steph shook her head, unable to look at any of them as she wiped away angry tears, and immediately went after him, unthinking of what she might have left behind or the gossip that would explode in their wake. She wondered if they would blame her too, as they rightly should, and she quickened her pace to get away from the scene of the crime.
“Hey,” she called out to his retreating form. When he didn’t turn, she called out again, and when he still didn’t turn, she hollered, “HEY! NASHTON!” Passersby on this quiet(ish) street in Gotham didn’t even bother to stop and watch. They had seen so much worse than a lover’s quarrel. Stephanie’s pace quickened again, click, click, click against the pavement, and when she reached him, she grabbed his elbow and practically yanked him back to face her. In the interim of the few seconds between him leaving her and her catching up, she was furious. Cheeks pinkened, blue eyes alight with vexation and tears waiting to fall. She let go of his elbow the second he turned around. “FUCK YOU!” She shoved him, not hard but not that playful sort of shove they were used to. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.” She didn’t shove him again, but she hit his chest with open palms, frustration and pain bleeding through her words.
“Don’t you dare accuse me of ever wanting to leave you, you son of a bitch. After all this time, after everything we’ve been through, do you fucking think that for even a millisecond I would ever consider that? Don’t you think I know that this isn’t all a walk in the goddamn proverbial park?” She spat the ire-filled words at him, fingers digging into his chest before dropping completely. If this was her breaking point, she was going to make sure she got heard. Even with angry tears streaming down her face and Frank and Marie’s horrified faces stuck in her mind. “It isn’t a walk in the park to be with me either. I’m fucked in the head!” She waved at her head to emphasize the point. “I keep waiting to wake up from this dream and still be back on Earth-3 with bombs going off above us. I jolt awake to grab my fucking gun because I think we’re under attack. I’m hallucinating that fucking war. But I would never, ever, ever leave. You’re my entire world, and you’re the only one that can keep me on the ground, that can keep this real.”
She was shaking a little now, scared of admitting that she still didn’t feel connected to all of this, but she stared up at him defiantly. “So, fuck you, Edward Nashton, for ever implying that I would leave you if our kids had problems or if we got thrown into another goddamn mess. You’re my partner. You’re the love of my life. I don’t want a life without you in it!” Her voice was starting to strain against the shouting, but she persisted. “And I realize now that there’s always going to be a mess, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting all of that either!” She waved behind her at the restaurant they’d just left. “I want you to be my husband, and I still want to have your kids, and I want to be happy! I was young and stupid and blindly hopeful back then, and I had an idea of what my life was supposed to be like. Picture perfect safety without any worries of what would happen to us or our babies. But guess what? It doesn’t work that way. I realize that now that we’re here, and we’re still not one hundred percent okay. I was wrong.” It sounded like a hard pill to swallow, and that guilt blinked back into her face momentarily before fading away back into anger. “But I know that we could find some good in all of this. We could. We could.”
The hairs on the back of Eddie’s neck stood up and a little voice in the back of his head reminded him all too late in a soft tone that exploding on Stephanie and storming out of his goddaughter’s baptism party was a baaad idea. Now, he had plenty of bad ideas in his time. Anything from challenging Poison Ivy to a physical fight all the way to getting needless plastic surgery (which was mysteriously retconned for being so stupid). This though? This was at the top of the list of stupid, idiotic things he was capable of. The truth was, Eddie couldn’t stop himself. Once he saw something he wanted he couldn’t stop seeing it and the baptism just brought everything he wanted front and center.
He didn’t want to walk away from Stephanie to cool down and mutually agree that his little melt down didn’t happen. He wanted her to chase after him, to stop him in the middle of the street and tell him exactly how wrong he was. And, just when he thought it wasn’t going to happen, he heard her yell his name. Eddie kept walking to see if she really meant it and lo and behold (even in heels) Stephanie managed to catch him.
Eddie spun around, eyes going wide with surprise at the first slew of FUCKYOU’s and the shove made him stumble away from her. Yes, he was hoping for her to yell how much she wanted him, but the pain he had caused along the way made him wish he was a lot more delicate and passive aggressive about things. “Okay, okay- wait what?” Eddie tried and then gave her another round of befuddled looks at her confession up at the middle of the night. Something he noticed and hadn’t figured out yet. “Why didn’t you tell me? Stephanie-” Words faded again as she launched into a confession, almost a vow, that was nearly identical to the one he shouted at her back in the restaurant.
And, maybe that’s what he needed.
He put his hands up, daring to look right at that ball of anger she was summoning in her eyes and cautiously took a step forward. “I’m sorry, baby.” Because he was. As angry and hurt as Stephanie made him, he knew taking the argument that low and dragging it through dirt wasn’t something they were supposed to do anymore. Something they were supposed to be better than. “I know you won’t leave.” His hands lowered and stretched out for her. “I just- I don’t want to give you another box of broken and flawed things to love. If you really want a better life and healthy kids, I don’t know if I’m the right guy for that. I don’t know if Gotham is even the right place for that, either.”
That was the last wall he put up and it was paper thin.
Stephanie was not-so-secretly pleased when Eddie stumbled back, exercising the frustration building in her bones and sizzling in her blood. He had twisted the knife and dug it deep, ripping open the old wounds healed from her fuck-up years before, and that nearly broke her down. The idea of leaving him always rumbled some sort of emotion, but after breaking his heart, she couldn’t even bare to think about it without filling up with rage. Eddie knew that, he had to have, and she knew he dove for the sorest spot in her mind to get this reaction. So, fuck him, he was going to get it.
She heard the slight dissonance, the gentle prod to edge back into the conversation and talk about her first confession. She didn’t want to talk about how displaced she felt back in this Gotham, about how she couldn’t make heads or tails some days, or about how some days the only thing that felt real was his hand holding hers and his lips catching her mouth. He looked so happy finally and began settling in, and she didn’t want to ruin that for him. She would get there eventually, right? It would just take some time. And she would swear it wasn’t that bad if he asked. But, she pushed past the subject and hoped he would forget it for the time being.
She rocked on her heels, looking up at him, and when he stepped forward, she rocked back on her heels like she was considering moving away. “If you know it, why would you say it?” Steph croaked out, finally swiping at angry tears, and she didn’t step into his arms. She was pissed too, still aching at the low blow he decided to brandish just because he was mad and hurt and he could. She crossed her arms over her chest, protective and a physical wall to combat his mental and emotional ones. “Nothing’s perfect. Nothing is ever going to be perfect. I get that now. I wanted to believe in something that just can’t exist. You’re not perfect, I’m in no fucking way perfect, this whole world isn’t perfect.”
Her fingers dug into her arms. “I don’t care if it’s broken and flawed. Aren’t I broken and flawed?” She shook her head. “I just want you and what we can have. I want an imperfect marriage that we have to keep working at and kids with a little bit of you and a little of me. I want a life like they have, but I want it to be our own. We aren’t going to be exactly like Frank and Marie because we aren’t Frank and Marie. We’re Steph and Eddie. We just fought for five years for our lives, and we’ve been fighting for a long time before that for the things we love. And I love you, and I love the idea of having imperfect perfection with you, baby.”
“I need to say it so you can tell me I’m wrong.” Eddie’s mouth turned into a sad, funny little frown when she didn’t reach back for him. He rolled his lips together and rocked back on one heel before taking another step forward. “I never have to say it again. I never want to.” His feet were only a few inches away from hers and he reached to touch one of her elbows, trying to pull her into him because he was aching without her. Eddie knew in the back of his head everything she told him, he loved her so much and knew her so well that it shouldn’t have been a question. But, rejection did funny things to a man and they got so twisty and turned around inside his riddled head.
“A long time ago, I told you I wanted to build a life with you. And, I still do.” He looked away and sighed, geeky voice still there after all these years. “I know there’s a lot we need to work out first, but I think we can do it. I think if we both want it, we can make that kind of life real.” Eddie hadn’t shown her any hope in a long time. Most of it was hidden back in their apartment with the ring she thought was buried under the ocean on Earth-3. But, here was a piece of it. A brightness in his dark eyes that just didn’t exist during the war.
His other hand reached for her arm and he tugged again. “I love you, baby.” A smile, soft and sweet to replace the frown. “Help me sort through all this stuff? Be patient with me and I promise I won’t be cruel like that again. I swear it.” He told her like a rough and tumble Gotham kid promising not to steal her bottle cap collection if she would just help him rebuild one of his toys.
She resisted that first tug at her elbow without a sound, arm firm and flexed around her and not budging in that insolently stubborn way she used to be when she was younger. She tried so very hard to resist his words, too, but he could see by the way that the fire in her eyes slowly distinguished that he was succeeding in quelling the beast. Stephanie was still mad, and hours later, she would probably still feel the distinct sting of his accusation as she turned it over in her mind.
“I want it,” she implored. “We fought for years to get a chance at this, and now that we have it, we can’t just let it go.” That removed the fact that she had rejected him in the first place, but of course those thoughts still lingered in her mind. she would live with the guilt of breaking Eddie’s heart until there was some end to it all. “I want to build a life with you, Eddie. Not just the kind we wanted back then, but something that’s ours. That fits who we are now.”
With a whine, she relented, unraveling her arms and wrapping them around his waist. “I love you too, baby.” Blues looked into his browns, and he could clearly see the love and want and need for him and a life they both wanted and deserved in her eyes, pushing past the anger. “I’ll help you if you help me, okay? If you’re patient with me, too. I never want to hurt you again, baby, and I want to make this work. I want to give that the chance it deserves. Okay?” Her fingers twisted into his shirt. “I want a real chance at all of that. And I’m sorry I didn’t realize that I didn’t need that stupid, perfect, dreamlike life to get it until now.”
Eddie could handle her staying mad at him. He didn’t believe in making emotions a competition (though maybe their relationship started out on that note) and if she was pissed then it was his job to make it better. It was hate he couldn’t handle, a twisting resentment that hung in the back of her mind and held her back from loving him. That would have been unbearable and he was glad he didn’t see it in her blue eyes. And, he knew her. He knew the anger and the hurt would stick around in her gut for a while. He knew there wasn’t a magic fix to making her feel better. But, that wasn’t going to stop him from making her waffles in the morning, buying her flowers and doing what he could to prove he still loved her as much as he said he did.
“Hey,” He pulled her close into a hug as she apologized and then pulled back to look at her. “You weren’t wrong then. We couldn’t raise a family or have what we wanted there.” Eddie held her head with both of his hands, tilting her face up to look at him. “I just got it in my head that you wanted something I’m not. That we’re not.” There was something unspoken under that confession about how he had to tell himself something that crazy to get through being rejected. That the riddled man conjured up a whole slew of lies just to get through the day. “Tell me you’ll give me another shot.”
Stephanie relaxed in his hold, digging her face into his chest when he hugged her, and letting the last bit of her walls crumble underneath his touch. It was easier to give into the love and adoration she felt for her riddled man than resist it. She was still used to being able to only snatch seconds away for their love, or wondering if one of them wasn’t going to make it home that night. She couldn’t bear to deny her affection, to keep away from touching him, to pretend that she didn’t love him with her entire being. Those were games of a younger girl trying to navigate a heady relationship; now, she knew where they stood.
It was good to reaffirm things though, and to make sure they were on the same page, and for the first time in years they were both completely on the same page about everything important. “I never want anyone else but you, Eddie, you know that. Just like I know we both can’t even imagine wanting something that we aren’t.” Her heart ached again for the pain she caused him, and she reached up to cup his cheek with her hand briefly before it fell to rest on his chest. “You get another shot.” She wrapped her fingers around his tie delicately and barely even pulled against it. “I’ll give you as many shots as you want, baby.”
Eddie couldn’t help but smile when she said that she didn’t want anyone else. It was something he knew and now after all these years, something he believed that he deserved and yet it still managed to make his heart beat a little faster. It was funny to think that he couldn’t imagine having anyone else by his side. A man who could think up a thousand different possibilities and outcomes could only see her. “We’ll make it our own.” He nodded gently and kissed the side of her face with affection that had been lost in their argument.
His eyes traveled down to watch her play with his tie and he smirked. He looked up and saw Wonder Tower, his church and imagined their apartment behind all the streets and buildings. Eddie knew it would take some time for them to really make this home again. The good news? That small sliver of hope he had left grew more than it had in five whole years. Eddie looked back at her and shrugged with that green man confidence. “All I need is one more mulligan.”
She leaned into the kiss on her cheek with the smallest smile as the anger started to dissipate to be dealt with later. Later, when she was laying in bed and trying not to have another nightmare, she would suss through the anger and hurt and try to forget how the accusation of leaving left a bad taste on her tongue. There she was in her arms despite herself, and despite the fighting, and she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else in any world. What did Eddie used to say? He’d rather die together than alone. He’d rather have her at his side, and nothing was closer to the truth for her than that, too.
She pulled a little harder on the tie, idly playing with the buttons of his white shirt as he looked up to see Gotham. It was an antagonistic, vicious city where only the best could survive, but they had both survived three (more if you count all the Riddlers bouncing around in Eddie’s head) and came out as better people for it. They would carve their place into this city, and they would find the happiness they deserved. She smirked. “One more mulligan, Nashton. You got it.” She smiled up at him, catching his chin between her thumb and index finger and pulled him towards her. “Seal it with a kiss?” she asked innocently, blue eyes finally finished with tears even with the redness remaining.