eddie likes to (riddlethem) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-09-29 00:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | !dc comics, !miss peregrine's, !tales, *narrative, eddie nigma |
eddie goes exploring
Who: Eddie narrative
When: now!
Where: Gotham -> Miss Peregrine -> Tales
What: Eddie loses a friend, gains a power
Warning: none!
The Nashtons were miserable newlyweds. War veterans home after their last battle and nothing to gain from it except an empty home. There were moments of happiness, sure. Sometimes she’d wake up and smile like she used to about a good breakfast or a rare ray of sunshine. Sometimes Eddie would come home after a full day of helping the city with this or that and he could feel the world he was building around his feet. Most of the time, though, they were sad. Stephanie cried in his arms late at night as they lay sleepless in bed. Eddie snapped and pushed like a caged animal. They were miserable.
Eddie went to shrinks and therapists and marriage counselors and life coaches until he was put on so many drugs that colors were more of a fuzzed grey. He thought about running away to captain his own pirate ship, to start his own bootlegging company, to flying his own spaceship, to anywhere and anything where the colors were bright, his mind could be alive and nothing felt lost. People told him to be patient, to be strong, to be a good man. And, so he was despite himself. Eddie never thought of himself as a good man. He imagined himself as a roguish smile under the boardwalk. A neon green that dared to ruin a brooding night sky. But, maybe that man had died this year. Maybe all that was left was patient, strong, good.
If you asked him how it got this far, he’d point to the moment Owlman didn’t kill him and Stephanie. They were supposed to die on Earth-3, weren’t they? And, then a new Stephanie Brown and Edward Nygma would sprout from the hotel walls as something completely different, something new. He envied that Edward in a way. He could lie/cheat/steal instead of patient/strong/good and never feel like he owed anyone anything. When he weighed how heavy he felt now versus that moment after being ripped apart at that Halloween party, it felt about the same. He had set out on a bold, bold adventure to absolutely fucking no where.
The plan was to go find an escape. Another door that would be fun and loud and silly. Dinosaurs seemed perfect. But, Stephanie said no to dinos, she’d say no to everything and actually running away would only make her worse. The term ball and chain was so real, it was almost literal.
He stopped taking the pills because they made him feel underwater. He stopped going to therapy because he didn’t have anything left to say. One morning while Stephanie was sleeping, he whispered he was going to space and she’d never, ever find him again. The thrill of simply saying it made him feel weightless and he found that he could carry on the rest of the day as a nice, domestic doggy with dreams of starflights in his head. The next morning he promised he was running away to the circus and then happily sipped his coffee and did his morning crosswords with a new spring in his step.
But, talking about running turned out to not be enough. Soon he came home five minutes later every day, he took day trips to the suburbs outside of Gotham, he drank himself silly in Mass Effect bars. Each day he was further away until one afternoon when he stumbled out into the hotel. He headed for Mass Effect, but it had been pushed to the side by another door with a brass handle that reminded him of his childhood. Well, what the hell and Eddie stepped inside.
Machina, who was on his wrist, suddenly broke in half. Eddie screamed in high-pitched horror, watching the circuits fizzle into metallic nothing and then realized his tattoos were gone and his arms were as thin as spaghetti again. His once shined shoes were now dirt brown and he was wearing corduroy trousers that were a little too big for him. Eddie reached up to feel his old newsie cap and he screamed again for good measure.
In front of him was a big house surrounded in lush, hide-and-seek green. He quickly tried to pick up the pieces of Machina, but she was gone. His last link to his mother was gone and now what did he have left to pull him together? Eddie, overwhelmed by his sudden young age, loss of his favorite companion and well everything, clutched the metal pieces in his hand and started to sob pathetically. A boy with a cockney accent walked up to him and started to ramble about the law of transference, about things that were alive that used to be dead and what was he doing playing with those pieces of scrap metal?
Eddie was at a complete loss for words, eyes blurry with tears and knees stained with green. The boy, Enoch, brought him inside and up to see Miss Peregrine who calmly explained rules and hours and purpose of this old house. Eddie felt like crying again, so he let them give him tea and biscuits and tucked him into bed. One night being treated like a whiny, peculiar child was really the only way to help heal what had happened to Machina, his nearly-failed marriage and just about everything else that had gone so wrong.
Since they put him to bed at around four and Gotham kids don’t know how to sleep, Eddie awoke around midnight as a distant grandfather clock chimed. He was dressed in funny little striped PJs and when he made his way down to the parlor, he could heard the voices of three very proper, very dead women. They were all transparent, circling above with their ghostly tea table, tea cups and even a hyperactive, tiny ghost dog.
“This tea doesn’t taste like anything!” A blubbering woman in a Victorian dress with every button bursting off her rolls of fat lamented.
“And it hasn’t for sixteen MILLION years!” A taller, skinny, witch looking women replied, trying very hard not to get her hook nose in the tea.
“But, didn’t it taste lovely back then?” A beautiful but very tiny woman rolled and fluttered her ghostly eyes with a dreamy voice.
“Excuse me, ladies.” Eddie said in his tiny, Mid-Atlantic accent.
“Oh! Aren’t you a sweet candy dish!” The fat one clapped.
“Candy dish...” The hooked nose sighed.
“You can see us? Well, no one’s been able to see us in-” The pretty one tapped her chin with her finger. “You must be one of the gifted.”
“Gifted in more ways than one.” Eddie stepped closer and his eyes went a little bright as he reached up to let the dog run through his fingers.
“You don’t belong here, do you?” The fat one set her teacup down, spilling a bit on the floor for the dog to lap up.
“No. I’m- this isn’t even my real age. Come to think of it, these aren’t even my real PJs.”
“Well the door out is right over there!” The hooked nose one pointed to a tiny closet door.
“But, do you really want to rush right home? I rushed home and look where it got me!” The pretty one gestured to her ghostly self.
“Oh, I don’t think this looks anything like home.”
“Are we visiting again?”
“He must have brought us, that little handsome scamp. More tea?”
And the three women kept babbling like that as Eddie went for the door and crawled out. Back into the hallway with PJs a little snug, Eddie was back to normal. Well. As close to normal as a man who saw ghosts could be. He looked down the hall and saw that familiar shape of his door, DC, Gotham, home. A long moment passed as he weighed his options and then darted for another door. One that opened up to a world of fairies, castles and a forest with a peculiar set of trees.