[A/N] Hello, guys! Thanks for joining me in my first foray into the wonderful world of fanfic! This little plot bunny has been nibbling at my brain for a good six months, at least, and it was only my dear friend gothicdragon752's incessant pestering that convinced me to put it down in writing. I'm basically aiming for Ocean's Eleven meets Cannonball Run meets every buddy movie ever made. It is definitely aiming towards eventual Two-Face/Riddler slash, although I hope to keep up the drama and the funny enough to keep non-slashers interested, and I don't see the rating getting above T. There may also be slight implied femmeslash further in.
I am always open to constructive criticism, especially since I am an English lass writing about Americans and so I urge you to point out anything which doesn't make sense, any stupid typos or grammatical faux pas, or other nitpicky details. I can't promise that this will be updated regularly, or have any kind of coherent plot. I'm just having fun, guys.
Disclaimer: I own nowt but my plot bunnies and some of the jokes.
Serving Suggestion: Best served on the rocks, with a soundtrack of Billy Joel, Glenn Miller and The Doors.
Edward Nygma loved questions. Big questions, small questions, they were all fun. He particularly liked the kind of questions that kept one awake at night, although generally he preferred that they be keeping other people awake.
The question that was keeping him awake this particular night (or evening, as it was barely gone ten o'clock) was whether he could escape from his cell in the confines of Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane by repeatedly banging his head on the exterior wall, and if not, how far he could get before he died of massive cerebral haemorrhaging. This particular riddle had kept him amused for the last half an hour, but Nygma was running out of possible avenues of exploration and was coming to the conclusion that it wasn't worth trying. He was, once more, stuck in this rat-infested hellhole with the madmen and the lunatics and the scum of the fair city of Gotham. Oh, joy.
As if to confirm his assessment, there came the patter of tiny paws on the bare concrete floor and a faint squeak. Nygma sat up slowly from where he had been lying on the bed, removed one of his Asylum-approved shoes equally slowly and threw it solidly at the corner of the room. There was a wet smack and a truncated squeak.
Well, that was satisfying.
"Riddle me this, what's brown and furry and got a dent in it?" he muttered with relish, getting up to inspect the damage. As he approached, the unfortunate rat picked itself up, shook its head, gave an affronted squeak and disappeared into the hole from which it had emerged. "That's right, you'd better run, you little bastard." He retrieved his shoe, to discover a scrap of yellowed paper under it. He picked it up – gingerly, as it turned out to be rather soggy. There were tiny tooth-marks on the corners, and his surname was written across it in what looked suspiciously like red crayon. Interest piqued, he turned it over, but all he found were the words "Be ReDdY", written, like the front, in a wobbly hand rather like that of a young child just learning to form letters.
Clearly, Edward deduced smugly, it was written by an idiot.
Satisfied, thanks to this great feat of detecting, that the message was worthless, he tossed it aside and picked up the week's crossword instead, humming merrily.
"Dum dum dum, doo doo, you may be right, I may be crazy, but it may just be a lunatic you're looking for... um, something, doo doo doo..."
Where had he heard that today? Oh, yes, Harvey Dent had been singing it under his breath in the rec room. Funny, he'd never had Dent down as a Billy Joel kind of guy. Admittedly, Edward was a fan of the piano man, but nevertheless he'd stored that little bit of info away, under "P" for "Potential Blackmail Material". The song itself was amusingly appropriate...
Edward rather liked Dent. It was always a challenge, trying to keep on top of which of the man's two personalities was talking at any time, and if there was anything Edward liked more than a good riddle, it was a challenge. It helped that Dent was pretty much the one remaining inmate with an ounce of intelligence who was still speaking to him. He'd spent three months sharing a cell with Jonathan Crane not long ago, until the self-styled master of fear had applied to the head psychiatrist to be transferred to solitary, giving his reasons as "If I hear the word 'riddle' one more goddamned time, so help me I'll kill everyone on this island.". Edward had felt rather hurt; after all, it wasn't his fault that he thought of interesting conundrums in the middle of the night and felt compelled to share them with whoever was nearest, regardless of whether they were trying to sleep.
7 down, appropriately enough, was "Fear. (11)". Edward filled in "trepidation".
So Crane wasn't talking to him, and because Crane wasn't talking to him, neither was Jervis Tetch. Edward would be the first to admit that Tetch was every bit as mad as his pseudonym would suggest, but the man knew some good brainteasers, even if he did insist on delivering them in rhyme. Add to this the fact that the Joker had broken out the previous week, trailing Harley Quinn like a love-sick puppy, and that Harley had in turn dragged along Poison Ivy. That left, of the usual crowd of inmates, Victor Fries, who was rarely seen out of his refrigerated cell, Killer Croc, who was likewise never seen, largely because he was an armour-plated killing machine, Arnold Wesker, who, once you removed the terrifying puppet, was just a relatively harmless old man, and Dent.
Edward turned his attention to 17 across: "Bird of stone. (3)". He lifted his pen to write "roc", and was rudely interrupted by the PA system.
"Ten o'clock," it rasped. "Lights out." There was an almighty clunk and, as promised, the lights went out.
"Damn." Edward put the crossword down reluctantly and lay back, locking his hands behind his head. Oh well. He could think just as well in the dark. To prove it, he spent the next quarter of an hour thinking about what it would be like to see in the dark. Then he thought about goldfish, which could see in both the infrared and ultraviolet spectra, and why such a useful ability was possessed by such useless animals. It was around the time he was thinking about ultraviolet radiation that he heard a scrabbling in the corner again. The bloody rats had some nerve, coming back. He dealt with this new problem the same way he'd dealt with the earlier one – by throwing his shoe at it again.
The squeaking that came from the corner this time was louder and considerably more angry. And, Edward discovered as he got up to retrieve his footwear for the second time that evening, the piece of paper was much larger. Interesting.
There was a very small and dusty window high on the wall of the cell. By holding the paper at arm's length and at an angle, Edward could just about read it. This time, the writing started off neater, and using a real pen. It said: "We mean it. We leave tonight. TF.". Then the red crayon and erratic spelling returned with a vengeance. "P.s. MaIsy SeYS yOU tHreW a ShOo aT heR PleeS dOnt shE is A Very NiCe rAt and noT eveN sliYtlee diZzeeZd."
TF. Two-Face. Well, that changed matters. He was clearly planning on breaking out tonight, and he was obviously working with someone else, because Edward was pretty damn sure that the former DA could spell 'diseased'. He also seemed to want to bring Edward along too. That was thoughtful of him. Still, Edward thought, it was probably a lost cause. The security staff were all on edge after the Joker's escape. It'd take something pretty spectacular to-
But Edward never got to finish that thought, interrupted as he was by screams and shouting in the distance. This was fairly normal for Arkham, but the screams were then replaced by a rumbling like an avalanche – a rumbling that was steadily getting louder and louder.
Edward peered cautiously through the bars of his cell. The corridor was almost pitch dark, but there was definitely movement in the distance. Then something came pouring out of the darkness; a huge mass, like a tidal wave, roaring down the corridor until it broke with a deafening clap in front of Edward's cell.
Rats! Thousands of the blasted things, brown and shrieking and reeking of the sewers. Edward leaped up onto his bed as they flooded through the bars and piled up against the walls. Then the tide outside changed, and parted, and a light shone through the gap. Down the gap like a twisted Moses came a gaunt figure, lantern held in front of it like some sort of beacon and face covered by a grotesque gas mask. Behind this apparition, half in light and half in shadow, was...
"Two-Face!" Edward was now backed into the corner of his cell to avoid the rodents which had almost reached the level of the bed. "What the hell?!"
"Evening, Ed!" Harvey Dent grinned back. "Care to take a walk with us?"