The Universe's Mixer

Enigma lay in the large bed she and Bruce usually shared, pale and weak, almost drowning in the pillows and blankets. She had sent Marcus for her father almost as soon as she returned to the land of the conscious, desperate to see him.

She shifted, biting back a scream of pain as the sheets brushed over the thousands of cuts across her body, a tear sliding down her cheek. She beat her pillow into a new shape, before resting back against it, wishing Bruce would come back. She needed someone to hold onto, someone to wrap their arms around her and tell her it was going to be alright...she needed a fucking sip of water and the glass was too far away.

( Aftermath of a Joke )

Eddie arrived at Arkham, brooding and pissed off from what he had heard Enigma saying about how Jonathan and Joker had been plotting against his daughter, without him, and been up to causing mayhem, again without him, which weren’t things that made him too happy. Especially since those were things that Edward wanted, that were currently being taken from him, and he was going to react accordingly to that.

When Marcus pulled up to the curb at Arkham, Eddie got himself out of the vehicle using his crutches, hobbling up the pathway to the asylum, moving across the threshold of the door, and making his way to Jonathan’s office. By the time he reached the office door, he was black with rage and he didn’t even want to talk things through, he was at the point of being almost irrational, which was never good for anyone that wandered into his path.

He didn’t bother knocking, just let himself in, glaring at Jonathan with a look full of venom, obviously upset, “What the fuck did you think you were doing siccing Joker on Enigma?” Eddie growled, slamming the door shut behind himself with a crutch, before hobbling to the middle of the room, hoping to get a good answer, though with the situation as fragile as it was, he probably wasn’t going to get one.

( Setting Up a Punchline )

Rufio hadn't moved much from where he'd gone when Tink had left. He was still curled up in the corner, if he moved from there during his nightmares he quickly retreated back when he had the sense to.

He paused when the door opened, braced for the old man to come back in, but froze when instead he saw a very beaten looking Enigma, standing with her leg in a cast and the rest of her looking hurt. Rufio stood up and hurried over, then paused.

"Enigma?" he asked hesitantly. "Is it really you or another dream?" He was exhausted from not sleeping and thrashing about in his terrors.

Moonlight through the shades zebraed silver across the bed that held the opera manager hostage. It was late, and his thoughts broke on thready bouts of sleep. Never in his life had he slept so much. The drugs. The weakness. His doctor's strict orders. All of these things overturned years of conditioning for two to three hours of sleep a night. These days, he slept most of the day. And loathed it. There was so much to do, so much he had left behind in order to honor his promise to his dear doctor.

Already, he felt stronger than he had in months. The thready strangeness of his heart had steadied since the surgery. But the drugs scattered his mind to places he wouldn't have gone. During the darkest parts of the night, he found himself wandering the halls of his memory, hanging between sleep and wakefulness. Tonight, he walked the cramped and dusty passageways he'd built into the Shah's palace, viewing empty rooms with floors coated in blood. The hatred he felt for humanity bubbled closer to the surface, on nights like these. And with it, he felt more keenly the weight of his own murderous acts. Those long years in Persia... those rosy hours...

Through the coppery scent of travesty and horror, a sweet fragrance slid gently - a mist that would not be denied, would not go away, but instead quietly insisted on existence. He turned from those confined marble passageways and again found himself in his bedroom in the City... the moonlight throwing its stripes across the velvet coverlet... a presence close by, pressing close... and that fragrance, still drifting over him: violets in the springtime night.

"Mm," he murmured. A hand restlessly lifted toward the shape close by his bedside. "There you are."