stephanie nashton does it all (forthem) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-08-28 05:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | !dc comics, *log, eddie nigma, stephanie brown |
log: eddie/steph - clocktower.
WHO The Nashtons.
WHAT Steph waking up and oh, Eddie's alive!
WHEN Nowish
WHERE Clocktower.
WARNING weepy bat? lol that is not new.
Eddie knew this was going to hurt. He winced every time he thought about waking her up.
Stephanie was out, sedated by Dick after being told Eddie might be dead and the continuing sedation meant that she woke up with bad panic attacks. The riddled man knew anxiety and he knew his wife, so none of that was surprising. No, they were fresh out of surprises, weren’t they? Stephanie told him about the baby that wasn’t going to happen, would probably never happen. Eddie told her how low she made him feel. How she failed him and none of that would get covered up, not even by Ra’s almost beheading him.
He knew this was going to hurt. He knew she was going to wake up and instead of hugging and kissing him and being grateful that he didn’t lose his head, she was going to wail on him. She was going to cry and hate that she ever had to be put through something like this. Eddie wanted something good. He wanted that blissful teary-eyed yes in the hospital waiting room. He wanted marriage to make him feel strong again. Like they were better as a duo than individuals.
So, the riddled man held onto those last few conversations where he asked her for everything. Where he told her that he loved her even though he didn’t have all the pieces. He stood at the window looking at the giant hands move and the city plunge into chaos below and he hoped that something good was going to happen.
Eddie heard her stir and he turned. He was dressed in Riddler green as a fuck you to Ra’s. He wanted everyone to know that he was alive. The mask and the bowler hat were missing, but the question marks were all there.
“Stephanie?” He asked and walked closer, shoes clicking on hard floor.
The darkness still enveloped her. Stephanie. She frowned in her sleep, face scrunching up and head shaking. The sedation didn’t stop dreams, especially as it began to wear off. And every single time? She dreamt about him. In his bright green and question marks on a rooftop, pointing with his cane. Smiling down at her as he hovered over her in their bed, sun spilling in from mysterious, unseen windows. Laughing in her ear as the rush of warm, Italian wind spread across her face. Whispering to her in the dark of a bunker about home-winning runs and street fairs on summer nights. And love. So much love.
Every dream would end the same: Eddie being dragged away into the darkness by unseen hands and Stephanie snatching at him to drag him back to her. Every single time, tears would stream down her face. Every single time, she would drag herself back from her slumber with a deep frown and a quiet gasp. Every single time, Barbara would stick her with a needle as she tumbled into a string of panic attacks and jumbled words and messy tears and thrashing limbs.
Laying on something fashioned to be like a hospital bed in a pair of sweatpants and a plain, black tanktop, she stirred, deep frown forming on her face and rogue tears streaming down her cheeks. Stephanie. The whispered name had her shaking her head, and when her eyes cracked open, puffy blood-shot blues, the Clocktower swam into her eyesight again slowly. Steph heard the slide, click of his shoes across the floor, but she assumed (at first) that it was Barbara. For a moment, she didn’t remember that her husband was dead. For a moment, she didn’t remember her brother delivering that news in a dirty alleyway and knocking her out with the prick of a needle. For a moment, she didn’t remember the cyclical waking up, panic attacks, and needle to her arm.
Then, with a gasp, it came back all at once. She sat up, ready to leave or fight off the needle this time or something, and then she spotted him. It couldn’t be him. She screamed and scrambled to one side of the bed, looking for a weapon or something to defend herself with. Her hands, she could use her hands. What had she told Ra’s? She was a war hero now. She didn’t fuck around. And this? Was clearly just another cruel joke in a string of fucked up things Ra’s was doing to her. Her husband was dead. Why did he send someone who looked just like him? Ra’s was a monster, and once she took care of whatever this thing was -- hallucination, ninja, someone in disguise -- she was going to kill that man with her bare hands.
Ugly gasps, and tears streaming down her face, she pushed herself into the guards on the bed and then tried to push herself off. But, she was still sluggish at best from all the sedatives in her system, and at best she could only tumble into another attack and try to crawl away.
Eddie couldn’t hide the frown of disappointment. He knew she was allowed to feel like this, that he probably would in the same goddamned situation, but this wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted her to prove him wrong, to believe somehow that he really was there dressed in his green and waiting for her. But, there was no turning his back on Stephanie or leaving. She was his wife. For years, she had been his everything. And, if all that stuff she told him while he was trying to piece things back together were true, she only wanted him back, too.
“Hey, it’s me. It’s me. The body was a fucking fake. They put me in a straightjacket in the bottom of a fucking hole and Grayson found me.” Eddie didn’t take another step forward. He put his hands up and let her crawl away. “Bruce is out now, too. We’re all okay.” He winced at that look she was giving him, something he didn’t think he’d ever have to see and slowly lowered his hands. Maybe he shouldn’t have been the one to wake her up? Maybe this was yet another thing Babs could do instead of him?
Stephanie’s eyes widened like she was seeing a phantom. His voice sounded just like her Eddie’s, too. The way he walked, the dip of his mouth as he frowned, the puppy dog browns that sharpened a little as he got upset. Even as her breathing turned labored, and her face turned red, she could see those similarities, and it broke her heart into pieces. Because it was true. Everyone who had spoken to her over the last week knew that all she wanted was her husband back. Desperately. She would give up the entire world to have him alive and back in her arms.
But it was too good to be true, wasn’t it? “You’re-- you’re dead, he said you were dead, he told me. They found-- they found, Dickie told me you were dead.” Gasps turned sharp, and she pressed herself against that guard, and her flat palm pressed into her chest. “I can’t-- I can’t. You can’t be real, you can’t be, you can’t.” She shook her head, but she looked at him for a long string of moments as everything registered. Like she was beginning to believe it again. “You can’t?” A question, and maybe she just wanted to let herself believe for a moment. And even if it wasn’t real, at least she’d have a second to pretend. A moment to believe her entire universe wasn’t crashing at her feet.
Eddie was a ball of anger, frustration and sass. Ra’s did that to him by scrambling his mind and then forcing it all back with another blow to the head and a straight jacket in a padded cell. Walls didn’t exist for him anymore. Things were clear. He didn’t want to keep trying to be something he wasn’t, he didn’t want to lie to Stephanie to make her think he was happy and he sure as hell didn’t want to fight for a spot he had for years with a redhead who was going to take it just by turning on her computer. His world was turned over. It didn’t equal zero anymore, now it was a mess of geometric sharp edges that told him nothing was going to happen the way he wanted. He could adapt or become the next Helena and Eddie was too damn old for that shit.
“Grayson wouldn’t have told you I was dead. He told you there was a body, that it wasn’t identified and it was dressed like me. Right?” Eddie was guessing, sure, but he was damned good at that game. “Ra’s didn’t kill me because I’m a good plaything. He knows that if he actually managed to waste Gotham and everyone I care about, I’d be reduced into a very useful, very amusing puppet. So he hurt you for giving him lip and tried to lock me away. That’s the fucking truth.”
Stephanie watched him speak, and she knew, she knew that it was her husband right then and there. She remembered what Dickie said about a body and what Ra’s wanted them to think. Who he wanted them to think the body was. Yeah, he was clearly toying with them, and maybe it was wrong that Stephanie Nashton was the only one to actually believe her husband was dead despite the assurances from Selina and Dick that night that he was okay. That he was fine. Maybe it was wrong, but there it was. Manifestations of her fears of losing him just because she fucking failed him.
She hesitated for only a moment longer before scrambling off the bed messily, tripping over mussed sheets and the guard on the other side of the bed, towards her riddled man. Her husband. The gasps mingled with sobs, with a steady stream of tears, and even if he didn’t want her to touch him, she threw her arms around his neck desperately and buried her face in the crook of his neck. She couldn’t believe he was there, under her fingertips as she clung to his shirt, as she dug into his back, and she shook against him. Barefeet between his two feet and tears practically soaking the collar of his shirt.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she apologized against his skin between desperate sobs, and oh god, he was there. His city slicker cologne, his questionmarked suit, his curly q of dark hair. Eddie was there in her arms, and everything unloaded in that moment. The hurt from his honesty, the desperate way she missed him, the heartbreak over the baby that was never there, of the children that would most likely never be there. Everything unraveled and crashed through the dam like a tidal wave, and she just sobbed.
Truthfully, if Stephanie kept babbling that she didn’t believe it was him or that he was dead, Eddie probably would have got on his knees and just started begging. Fuck, he didn’t care. He was mad at her and he was devastated about the baby they were never going to have, but every second he stood at her bedside watching her have a panic attack about him being dead broke his heart. So, when she jumped into his arms he held onto her tight, nuzzling his nose into her blonde hair and refusing to let her go.
“Don’t be sorry. Look I had to live. I’ve got all these goddamned coupons. If I died, they’d all go to waste.” Eddie kissed her cheek and pulled back to look at her. Stephanie was a mess. He remembered that selfie she took days ago where she looked worse, but at least there was a little hope left in her eyes. “You’re the one who brought me back. The second blow to the head made it right, but you’re the one who helped me pick up all the marbles.” Eddie might have been pissed and sure there was still plenty of shit for them to get through. But, at the end of the day? Eddie would have still been out of his head without her trying to bring him back.
She continued to gasp, even as she melted in his arms, eve as she leaned against his body like he was the only thing in the world keeping her grounded. It was true, after all. If Eddie had been gone? If he had really been that body dropped off at the police station? Well, everyone knew that Stephanie would probably have broken into a million pieces that no one would have a hope of putting together again. She was grateful in the days that she thought Eddie was actually dead that there was no pregnancy after all. If she had a constant reminder of her husband growing inside of her with him gone, she would have shattered.
Steph shook her head almost imperceptibly, and she took one of her hands to run it across his jaw like she was relearning how his stubble felt underneath her fingertips. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t think you were okay,” she croaked out. “I’m sorry for making you feel the way you did. I’m sorry about-- about you know. The baby.” She was still crying, and she shook her head again at herself, burying her face in his collarbone, arms going around him again like if she let him go for even a second he was going to disappear on her again. That ninjas would burst through the door and drag him away. Lingering there for a moment to appreciate the feel of him in her arms and the smell of him, she looked up at him again.
“I always want to be the one to help you put it back together. I never want to be the one to make you fall apart, and baby, I am so fucking sorry I ever made you feel that way. I’m so sorry.” Her voice cracked as she spoke, and her eyes spilled forced tears, and she tilted her chin up as a request for a kiss she desperately hoped he would oblige.
Eddie cocked his head back in surprise, eyebrow arched and mouth turned into an almost funny little wiggle of confusion. He had expected her to take the out he so clearly gave her, to joke about coupons and be flippant before they got down to the business of defeating Ra’s. But, for once she didn’t let him open that door with EXIT flashing above it. “Baby,” He chided slowly and kissed the side of her temple when she looked away from him. The apology was enough to mend things for now. It wasn’t going to fix anything, they knew that from how his apologies worked, but for the first time Eddie really believed that she was going to try. That she was going to make him feel like he was worth something again.
“Thank you.” Eddie said it solemnly, the way he did to heroes who decided to trust him. “We’re alive. The important thing is that we’re all alive.” He held the sides of her face gently with his hands and rubbed tears from her cheeks even if they kept coming. That tilt of her head made him smile softly and when he kissed her it felt like it had been a long, long time since their lips last touched. “Tell me you love me.” Eddie demanded against her lips, hands moving down to wrap around her waist and pull her close.
Stephanie trained a blue-eyed glassy gaze on his browns when he chastised her, and she knew that their problems weren’t solved. Eddie’s hurt was burrowed deeply underneath the surface, and that was her fault. She had failed him in more ways than one. And they weren’t going to have a family of their own in the future. She couldn’t even do that for him. It was enough to weigh her down with guilt for the rest of her life, honestly. She had fucked up royally, and enough times that another man might not have come back to her at the end of it all. But here he was at her bedside, and here he was holding her in his (his still attached) arms, and here he was still in love with her.
“I love you, Edward Nashton. I love you so fucking much,” she cracked out, taking another kiss and wrapping her arms tightly around his back. She stole a string of kisses before continuing. “My moon, my stars, my universe, my everything.” And wasn’t that even more true now that they had been through this? Now that it might just be them and their farm? “I don’t know if I could have gone on without you, baby. I couldn’t have. I know I couldn’t have. I love you too much, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she apologized again before pressing her lips against his once more. This time she lingered, eyes drifting shut before pushing to deepen it slowly like she was testing him and remembering how he tasted on her tongue. One hand slid up to tangle in his hair, and she tugged at a fistful gently before pulling her lips away from his and resting her forehead on his chin.
Eddie got into the habit of teasing Stephanie about other women just to get a rise out of her, but at the end of the day she was the only woman he saw. She was the only one he wanted and even though that feeling had been rusted over by hurt and distance, he was glad Stephanie was breaking through again. He wanted her to be his world. He wanted them to always put each other first and he didn’t want to exist without her. That’s what Gotham love was. A chain that bit and left marks on your wrists, but it never broke even at its weakest. For the first time in weeks, months, his dark eyes filled with love for her and that sharpness broke apart in pixelated fragments.
He kissed her between apologies, played with that blonde hair he loved so much and gripped the fabric of her tanktop when she looked at him. “You are my moon. I’m always going to howl for you, Stephanie. I love you. Even when I was crazy and I wanted to give up on you, I knew I loved you. I’m yours don’t you ever fucking forget that.” Eddie whispered, voice low and thick. When she pushed for a deeper kiss, he pushed back, hands roaming over her body as he gave a pleased, nerdy little grumble. He pressed his lips to her neck and held onto her. “We’re taking our neighborhood back. That’s the first fucking thing we do.”
His voice sure like a bat with the swagger of a rogue.
She felt placated immensely as he kissed her and gripped her and twisted his fingers into her clothes. Finally, after days and days, she felt herself coming down to earth and Eddie dragging her down into orbit like he was her gravitational pull. Without him? She would be floating into space with no desire to come back. Eddie was her everything, he had been for the better part of a decade at this point, and no one had a chance of replacing him in her life. Not one goddamn, well-meaning soul. She was so glad that he was here and in her arms, and the tears that were scared and mournful at first turned happy. She couldn’t help the soft smile that tugged the corner of her mouth when he pushed back, an appreciative sound of her own rumbling from the back of her throat.
“I’m never gonna forget it, baby, I promise. I’m yours, too.” No matter what happened or how much they hurt each other, that much was going to always true. They were each other’s. Nothing would ever change that. “I love you,” she murmured against his lips. Her blue eyes opened slowly, and for the first time in days, there was that trademark glimmer of hope in her eyes. “Let’s take our neighborhood back, and then bring that motherfucker down, baby. We’ve got this. With you by my side? We’ve got this.” And she believed that wholeheartedly. They had gotten through war together; they could get through Ra’s together, too. She kissed him again, more sure than she’d been in weeks of their love, and she knew they would get through this together.