For Someone Who's Dead (MessrsMoony and Nigma)
"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."
- Albert Einstein
The sound of silence inside the asylum was more defining than the loud explosions that usually accompanied a prisoners escape. It was far more horrific than the constant screams and groans of the asylums inhabitants, and far more chilling than the manic laughter of the Joker himself. No ... the silence meant something worse in the asylum. It carried whispers of death under the cracks of the doors, carried through the cracks in the walls and all anyone could do was wait.
The patients sat inside their cells, most confused or scared by what was happening. Not because they knew, but because they sensed. Their appointments stopped , then the meds. The doctors roamed the halls, none of which have changed their clothes in weeks, their hands void of their usual clipboards.
Jonathan sat sideways on his cot, leaning back against the wall, his feet propped up against the metal border of the silly excuse for a bed, his arms resting on his raised knees. He watched as one of the doctors walked slowly past his cell, not bothering to look into any of the cells to make sure the patients were still there.
Jonathan slowly moved off his bed, his short but lanky frame looking thinner in the past few days. Their food rations were starting to dwindle which could only mean one thing. The asylum was running out of food. Jonathan pressed his hands against the glass of the front of his cell and looked across at Edward Nigma.
"Hey! Eddie!" He said, knocking on his window as it would help to catch the man's attention. He knew Edward could hear him perfectly fine, just as he could any other time.
Edward Nigma lay on his bunk with his feet up against the wall. It wasn't the silence that bothered him, so much as the simple not knowing. Something was going on, something much bigger than Arkham, and he was trapped in here with no knowledge of the outside world.
He stared up at the vent on the other side of the cell. Too high to reach, of course. And his bunk was bolted into the floor. Or it had been, about a week ago. No one had noticed a few screws going loose (he smirked at the double meaning) from one inmate's bunk. All he needed now was a distraction. And, at the rate the tension was mounting, it wouldn't be long now. He frowned, and looked out across the hallway.
He sighed. "Yes, Jonathan?"
Jonathan rolled his eyes at Edwards clear annoyance of him. "Nevermind." Jonathan said going back to his cot and flopping back down again. He stared at the ceiling for what seemed like an eternity before he looked back over at Riddler. "Do you have any ideas on how to get out of here?" He asked suddenly.
Jonathan should have made his escape weeks ago but his 'visitor' who was to assist him in his escape - one of his henchmen - never showed up. Jonathan made a mental note to severely punish the man for allowing him to rot in this place. If there was one thing Jonathan prided himself with was his sanity, and in this place he felt his mind slipping the longer he was in here. After all, it wasn't Jonathan that was crazy, it was Scarecrow that was.
Nigma raised an eyebrow, a quiet smirk slowly spreading across his face. So, then. He wasn't the only one going stir crazy. He rolled off of his bunk, neatly straightened out his awful grey uniform, and strolled over to the glass, taking his own sweet time. He glanced up and down the hallway, but the precaution was little more than a residual habit now. No one was paying attention.
"I might have a few," he shrugged, then leaned against the glass. "Why ever do you ask?"
Jonathan looked at him as if he'd truly gone crazy. "If you haven't noticed ... our food rations are dwindling, meaning we're running out of food ... Meaning within a week or so, we're all going to be too weak to escape and within a few days after that, we'll be near if not dead from starvation." He said looking at him as if he were stupid. "I'm sure you've figured it out by now. Even if everyone else hasn't." He said. "I want out, and unfortunately my plan fell through ... If I'm going to die the last place I want it to be is here." He said leaning back against the wall again, has back making a loud thump against the cement wall.
"Now, I don't know what going on outside. But clearly it's not good. The doctors haven't left in weeks, nor changed shifts, nor clothes or ..." Jonathan cringed. "Bathed." He said, clearly not enjoying his own current scent any better than anyone else's. He could smell Killer Croc from all the way down the hall. Jonathan wasn't even going to bother thinking about the amount of stubble that had grown on his face in the past few weeks. If he was actually capable of growing much facial hair he was sure he'd have a beard by now. "But I know what's in here. And in here isn't looking all too good. Even in comparison to its usual standards."
The Riddler's smirk settled in comfortably.
It really was entertaining to watch Crane get all worked up about something. Unless, of course, it was when Edward was trying to sleep. Or plan an escape. Or his next heist.
But, at the moment, there really nothing else to occupy his mind. Nothing that didn't fill him with a creeping sense of anxiety, anyway.
The Scarecrow was right, of course, from a practical sense. There would be no point in staying around here, stagnating in the collective stench of unwashed, unfed Arkham.
"I suppose so. But the question is..." Edward tapped his uncharacteristically prickly chin, then suddenly fixed Crane with a more focused stare. "Why should I bring you with me?"
There would be a good answer, of course. The Scarecrow had been operating in Gotham's underworld long enough not to expect to get something for nothing. But it needed to be understood that Nigma knew it too.
Anything less would be a display of vulnerability, and the Riddler had no intention of setting himself up to get stabbed in the back.
"Whatever is out there ... it's keeping a staff of over 150 guards and 90 doctors afraid to set a single foot outside of this asylum. We've been on lock down for far too long. There is something out there, it's a matter of what. Now, while brawn is great for a physical fight, you can't tell me that intelligence doesn't win out. And they do always say two heads are better than one." He said staring at Nigma. "Besides ... If I don't contribute to either of our survival ... I'm sure you could always just try to trip me and slow whatever is out there down. That is, unless you'd prefer someone with more brawn, I'm sure Killer Croc would love to get out of here." He said jabbing his thumb in the direction of the idiotic hulk like being.
"Let's face it ... if whatever is out there is bad enough to scare over 150 guards ... there's no way you'll make it on your own. You may be one of the most intelligent people in here ... but you don't know everything. Put that intelligence to good use, you know you need me as much as I'll need you out there."
It was all Edward could do not to visibly wince at the mere mention of Killer Croc. That insufferable mound of blundering muscle was the last ally called for in a situation like this. Yet the idea that Edward Nigma, the Riddler, the most brilliant mind in Gotham needed another intellect to supplement his own was... irritating to say the least. As if he weren't more intelligent than any of those muscle-bound guards and incompetent doctors!
The Riddler passed it off with his most nonchalant of shrugs. "Stupid people in large numbers are easy to frighten, Crane. You know that better than anyone. Still..."
He has a point and you know it.
"I think we can arrange something. We're going to need a distraction. And if anyone else is planning their exit, I doubt they'll be as subtle about it as you or I would."
"I'm sure Croc or Bane would try barreling for the front door and get tranqued within seconds." Jonathan said with a slightly laugh. "I agree ... if we are to get out it would have to be quietly. I didn't exactly intend on walking out the front door. Jonathan looked up at the vent that was in his own room, the vent that was supposed to be ventilating fresh air into his cell. The only thing it did now was tease him as a route of escape, and a way for the stench of the building to get into his cell. Even if he managed to unbolt the bed from the floor, which he could easily do within minutes, he still wouldn't be tall enough to reach the vent, even if he jumped. Jonathan cursed for more than the millionth time in his lifetime his short height.
Then again ... Jonathan looked down at the sheet on his bed. No ... that would still require him getting up to the vent to unscrew it ... Damn and blast it all ... "What did you have in mind?" Jonathan asked, hating that he'd have to rely on Nigma to get him out. He knew Nigma had been subtly unscrewing his bed from the floor and the man had the height to reach the vent. If he did, he could come and unlock the door. It wouldn't be hard to swipe a key card from one of the guards without them noticing. Especially as of late.
Jonathan jumped and ran to the front window of his call as a loud scream echoed through the hall. It wasn't a cry of an inmate, it was a doctor. At first he thought it was an inmate escaping, but then two guards ran down the hall away from where the scream had come from, which turned into more screams.
Edward watched Crane's eyes move to the vents in each of their cells, and smiled. He was certainly thinking along the right lines; all he needed was a boost. There were certainly worse people to escape with.
He opened his mouth to explain his plan...
And then the screaming started.
The Riddler frowned, eyebrows knitting together as he craned his neck, trying to get a look at what was happening. No luck. It was too far down the hallway.
He shot a glare across the hallway. "Did you- Never mind."
Whatever it was, it would suffice as a distraction.
Nigma quickly dragged his bed under the vent, the telltale scraping of steel on concrete completely drowned out by the screaming down the hallway.
Honestly, if Crane had already had a distraction planned, he might have had the decency to say so...
He popped the cover off of the vent and, as an afterthought, ripped the sheet off of his bunk to take with him.
"I'll crawl over to your side!" he shouted to make himself heard. "And pull you up."
And with that, he hauled himself up into the air vent, and clambered over to the other side of the hallway, to where it opened up into Crane's cell.
Nigma popped out the second ventilation cover, and let the sheet dangle into the cell.
"Hurry!"
On second thought, he reflected, this might be a terrible idea. Jonathan looked like just the type to have failed the rope climb in high school gym class.
Jonathan watched Nigma as he popped out the vent and tossed down the sheet. He looked at him as if the man had gone crazy. Even if he wasn't half starved there was no way he'd be able to climb that. Jonathan looked back towards the window as the screaming got louder and his eyes widened in fear as something flew at the glass of his cell. Blood smeared the window as whatever it was on the outside stopped outside his window and stared at him. Jonathan stared at it a moment. It was Dr. Reynolds.
Jonathan walked slowly towards the window, staring at the doctor as he saw a few other doctors fly past, all of them covered in blood and running rather ... oddly. Jonathan looked at Dr. Reynolds as she stared back at him. Her eyes where blood shot and yellow, her teeth clacking together as she followed his movements. Jonathan took in her entire appearance, committing it to memory before he backed away from the window as more of them approached. One of them might not be able to break the glass, but who knew what a whole swarm of them could do. The hallway was quickly filling with them, screams of the other inmates echoed through the halls, the grunts and cries of whatever it was that was attacking the asylum becoming more and more, over powering the screams. Jonathan turned to the vent as he heard the shattering of the window behind him.
Rope be damned, he had to get into that vent, it was his only way out. He ran at the vent half expecting Riddler to be gone, but surprisingly the sheet was still sticking out of the vent. Jonathan ran at the wall quickly, adrenaline boosting him half way up the wall already before he grabbed onto the sheet and pulling himself up. He felt something grab onto his foot and cried out as he grabbed onto the lip of the vent and kicked what ever had grabbed him away. It took a few good well placed kicks before it let go.
Funny, he didn't recall the old orderly being that strong.
Crane's adrenaline-fueled leap into the vent surprised him, but not nearly as much as the apparent carnage that had engulfed the hallway. Or the hand still clinging to Jonathan's foot as he scrambled into the vent. Once the Scarecrow was safely inside, Edward slammed the vent cover back into place, and hurried off down the ventilation shaft, taking a sharp turn to the right, moving as quietly as he could.
Given the chaos out there, though, he doubted anyone would hear them.
((A/N - And here's chapter one of our Batman fic. Hope you all enjoy - more to come. And please R&R))