Batman: We Get Along
Indiana
Characters: Riddler, Scarecrow [Scriddler]
Synopsis: Edward Nygma wasn't sure of his new roommate at first. He comes to wonder what he ever did without him.
Part the First
The first few months were not remotely amicable.
Jonathan Crane was a cold man from the second Edward saw him. It was worse than when Victor was allowed into genpop; this man sent the chill down your spine. His thin body almost made you feel cold just looking at it, his face was set and hard, and even his eyes were of the palest blue and cold, with an odd and unsettling luminosity to them. One of those older men who had looked at the world and decided they hated it. And he hated Edward too, Edward could feel it; Jonathan Crane hated Edward, the Asylum, the city, and probably the whole damn world itself.
He was hostile, in an implicit sort of way. He would spend hours in near-motionless silence, eyes fixed on a book from behind large circular glasses, and when asked to do anything would evaluate the asker with a penetrating stare before moving. He spoke and listened to no one, borderline refused to take part in the group therapy sessions, and the few hours a night he slept Edward was unsure of whether he was asleep or whether he'd actually died. Sometimes Edward thought he must have; it wasn't until the third week that Edward actually saw him eat.
For his part, Edward did not like the roommate situation in general. Edward was not necessarily a loner by any means, but he found most people trite and boring. He often got into fights with his roommate, both physical and verbal, and it was because of this that Edward was on the top of the… well, he was at the top of the transfer rotation list. What this meant was that anyone who was not getting along was transferred by rotation to a new cell every two weeks, in the hopes that the staff could find the one inmate in the building the ones who needed transferring could get along with. Edward had not really agreed with his place on top of the list – Joker belonged there, but he was almost always in solitary – and he did not agree at all with the notes as to why he was there, such as, Ability to antagonise inanimate objects, picks fights with people twice his size because… ?, constant talking gives other roommates migraines, 'The riddles, Dr Leland, the riddles!', hides roommates' bedsheets in a place we have yet to discover, and knows when to quit but refuses to do so because he is, according to Dr Prud'Homme, 'A certified asshole'. Edward mostly disagreed with the last part. Medically certifying someone an asshole was impossible, even if he were one, which he wasn't. And how was it his fault no one could find the bedsheets? He had left clues!
Now, as far as roommates went, Crane was not the worst he'd ever had, but he was certainly the most boring. He never so much as looked at Edward, which was aggravating. Fine, they didn't have to have a daily chat, but could he not return Edward's greetings? Wave now and again? And why, God, why did he read so slowly? It was like trying to watch a snail cross the street! Even when half of the page was a diagram it took him five minutes minimum to look at the diagram. It was one of the many things about the Asylum that drove him up the wall, but since he had to put up with it every day it was certainly the most irritating.
Sometimes the irritation got the best of Edward. Sometimes he couldn't stand not having pencil and paper or something to build or at least fiddle with, and it was at those times he had to start counting. He called it counting, but it was really more like calculating. But he had to wait until night came because to do the counting, he needed chalk.
The Asylum held courses for the interns and the trainees and the security guards, both training courses and those for CPR and first aid and the like, so there was a smattering of classrooms near the section of the Asylum where the regular people were treated. The Asylum at night was not generally too looked after, so when it took Edward's fancy he would leave and take care of things if he were so inclined. One of the main things he had to do was check the emails from his informants, and the news in Gotham City in general. His reading speed was extremely high and he had perfect recall, so he never needed to linger on the computers long, though sometimes if he was feeling particularly leisurely he would sit and play a game of Go over the Internet with whomever happened to be online at the time. He much preferred playing against South Koreans.
Another thing the classrooms held was chalk. When Edward was out of the Asylum he preferred to use paint, because it helped a little more than chalk, but he had to take what he could get. And that was what he could get.
The Asylum unfortunately did not order in green chalk, only white and occasionally blue, which was another reason the chalk was not as helpful as the paint. Purple also worked in a pinch, but the only doctor who brought in purple chalk brought it right back out again, leaving Edward to stare at the leftover purple marks on her blackboard in frustration.
Edward had caught up on his news last night and had some chalk in one of his stashes, so he didn't need to venture out too far that night. Once he'd acquired the chalk and locked the cell door again – he had long since disabled the electronic alarm and programmed the system to believe it was still operational – he stood up on the bedrail and pressed the chalk to the wall as high as he could reach. Within his properties he had ladders and scissorlifts for construction he also used for this, but here he had to make do with a bed that was bolted to the floor. It was a little discouraging but nothing could be done.
The irritation began to ease as soon as he started the count with a perfect new piece of chalk, moving to the right as far as he could reach and then starting a new line beneath the first where he couldn't. There was a soothing rhythm to it that he lost himself in a little bit by the time he got to the fifth line. That was, until he heard someone say, "What is that?"
Edward was so startled that he lost his balance on the bedrail and fell onto the mattress, which was not a very good one but which still pitched him onto the floor. With a curling lip he retrieved his glasses and saw that the chalk had snapped in half. "What's wrong with you?" he snapped at Crane, picking himself up off the floor. Crane was sitting cross-legged again, glasses glinting. Even the man's voice was cold, quiet and yet demanding, somehow, that you pay attention to it no matter what the volume.
"I'm not the one writing numbers on the wall in the middle of the night."
"I can hardly do it in the middle of the day, can I?" He'd been caught at night before, but since it was one of the more harmless activities he could have been engaging in, all that usually happened was that his chalk was confiscated and the numbers left there until he was out for some daytime activity and the cleaners could do their jobs.
"It looks familiar," Crane said. "I can't quite place it."
Edward was in no mood to talk to Crane now, of all times, when he finally had a chance to do something he needed to do in this damn nuthouse, so he merely picked up the half of the chalk containing the end he'd been using and continued his counting. By the time he ran out of space on that wall, the chalk was barely big enough to be pressed between his fingertips.
"Is it finished?"
Edward rolled his eyes. "No, it's not finished," he answered in disgust. "It doesn't have an end."
Crane's head followed the line of numbers as slowly as though it were on a page in front of him. "I wasn't a math major, I'm afraid. This only holds some passing recognition for me."
Edward put the chalk on the floor and sat on the side of the bed. He was still wary of the man, but at least he recognised there was significance in what Edward had put on the wall. Most of his other roommates had just laughed and called him crazy. "It's pi. Up to the three hundred sixty-seventh digit."
The movement of Crane's head to meet Edward's face was the fastest out of him Edward had seen yet. "Fascinating," he said, and he actually sounded like he thought it was. "You memorised it all the way up to there."
"No," Edward corrected. "I know pi to the six thousandth digit. But it would be very difficult to write all of that down."
"Why do it? Why memorise all of those numbers? Surely you can't use them for anything."
"Because I can."
"Hm. Perhaps you aren't as stupid as I thought you were."
Edward could not believe he'd heard such a thing. "Excuse me?"
"You're a certified genius, I know," Crane told him coolly. "But believe you me, there are many stupid geniuses in the world."
"So you decided to talk just to insult me. Wonderful. Why don't you do us both a favour and go right back to pretending you're invisible." He brought his legs up and lay down on the bed, crossing his arms.
"No, I spoke to you to find out what that number was. The world doesn't revolve around you, you know. Consider it. Additionally, I never said you were a stupid genius; I in fact told you that I was re-evaluating my opinion. Perhaps you believe yourself to be such a thing."
"Are you kidding me?" Edward demanded, glaring over at him. He was still sitting there, infuriatingly calm. "Why the hell would I think that?"
"It's anyone's guess. Except for yours, I suppose. You would know. Perhaps. There are many things about people that they don't know."
That was true. He wasn't going to admit that, though.
"Why are you here, Edward?" The question, though intrusive, was asked in an almost soothing way. As though Crane were doing him a favour by asking. "Surely a man like you has great things to accomplish."
"The great things I'm accomplishing are apparently illegal, immoral, and unreasonably cruel." Said the people who didn't appreciate the beauty of a well-made puzzle room, or the complex dignity of a clever cipher, or the intricacies of a perfectly-worded riddle.
"Ah," Crane said. "But you think they're beautiful, don't you."
"They are," Edward told him, despite himself. "But you know how people are. Won't understand something unless it's nauseatingly easy."
"Oh yes," agreed Crane.
Edward turned onto his side now. "What is it for you?"
He could feel Crane's scrutiny. After a further pause he answered, "Fear."
"Fear," Edward repeated.
"You wouldn't understand," Crane said. "Most people don't."
"I'm not most people," Edward snapped back, "and there's nothing I don't understand."
"You're entirely too easy," Crane said after a long silence. "You have the most outrageous ego I've ever seen."
"I don't!"
"Trust me. You do."
And he refused to say another word after that.
Until the following night, where Edward's fingers were itching to use the rest of the chalk before it was discovered. He didn't like it when that happened but it was one of those things he couldn't help.
Crane watched as he wrote out a different sequence of numbers, on the wall facing the door of the cell, waiting only until he had begun the second line on Crane's side of the room before asking, "And this?"
Edward considered mirroring Crane's usual response of silence because, quite frankly, he didn't feel in the mood to be polite, but Crane was the only person in the entire Asylum who had ever asked about it and not just written it off as one of those silly things the Riddler did, so he answered, "Prime numbers."
"You memorise prime numbers?"
"I don't have to memorise them," Edward said, brow creasing. "They're not that hard to figure out."
"Is it only numbers you can do?"
"I could do other things if I wanted," Edward told him, trying to imagine where he was going with this. "I just prefer numbers." On top of that, they looked less suspicious than diagrams.
"Do you know what a Punnett square is?"
"Yes," Edward sighed, "I did pass grade ten science, thank you."
"And chemical equations?"
"...yes." His reluctance wasn't due to the fact he thought they were difficult; of course they weren't. But they were untidy. A mess of numbers and letters and notation. When he'd had his science exams a long time ago, he had always done the chemistry sections first.
"May I?" Crane asked, and he held his hand out. It was hardly more than bone wrapped in a tenuous layer of skin, like the rest of him. Edward hesitated.
"I'm not going to gouge your eye out with it. I'm going to show you something."
Edward had actually had someone try to do that, not that Crane looked like he had the strength to. He looked like he was held together on the inside with string. He just didn't want to lose possession of his chalk. But he crossed to his side of the room and put it into Crane's hand anyway, and he proceeded to write out quite an untidy equation indeed. But it was all evenly written out, and legible. This man had extensive experience with blackboards or whiteboards.
"That," Crane said, "is the equation for fear."
Edward inspected it for a minute. Chemistry was one of the things he had a bit more than a working knowledge of, but it had never bound his interest enough to study it deeply. "It looks difficult to balance," he said finally, "and quick to degrade. If you wanted to dispense this… fear immediately it would be fine, but... I doubt it would last very long." He chewed the inside of his tongue a little. "Chemistry isn't something I'm overly well versed with, so make what you will of that."
"No, you're exactly right!" Crane said, and he sounded excited for some reason Edward wasn't sure of. "That's what happened. It wasn't as potent the next day. You do understand. Fascinating."
"I told you I would," Edward said, somewhat indignantly. Crane waved his hand dismissively.
"Plenty of people say they understand things they don't understand. The next one I was working on I believed would have fared better, but I didn't get the chance to finish." He wrote another equation the wall, and rather than watch him do that Edward studied his hand. He was holding his wrist so that his hand was entirely separate from the wall. A trait of someone who was trying to get as little chalk dust on himself as possible.
"What do you think?" Crane asked, looking at him.
"You were a chemistry teacher," Edward said instead. Crane looked taken aback.
"Not quite. You're half correct. My minor was in chemistry."
"And your major?" Edward pressed. Crane considered him for a minute.
"You like games, don't you? I'll let you guess. You'll probably think of it soon enough."
"Sounds like I'm not the only one who likes games," Edward grumbled, and Crane actually smiled.
"I like mind games. Now what do you think of this? I know chemistry isn't your strong suit. But you were able to read the other one and critique it. You obviously have the ability to work these things out."
Edward reluctantly read it over. Crane wanted his opinion on an unfinished chemical equation? All right. Edward would bite. It was odd, but he'd been asked for weirder things.
"I think you need a bonding agent. These two," he indicated with two fingers on the same hand, "aren't going to play nice."
Crane nodded. "Precisely what I was thinking."
Edward folded his arms. "Then why did you ask me?"
"I was gauging your intelligence and was not disappointed. May I keep this?" He held up the chalk.
Edward was tired and had no intention of using it further. "You'll have to steal your own next time. And you have to wipe that off when you're done. You get put in solitary for stuff like that."
"Chemistry?"
"Scheming," Edward said, lying down on his bed and raising finger quotes.
"Ah," Crane said. "Thank you for telling me."
"You're not the worst roommate I've ever had," Edward related grudgingly.
"But you're the worst everyone else has had."
"That's a matter of opinion."
"No, that's what they told me when they put me here."
Edward scowled and didn't dignify it with anything else.
"I think they were wrong, though. Good night."
And Edward fell asleep to the sound of the chalk scratching on the wall.
When Edward woke up his head was on the floor, looking in Crane's general direction, which was normal. Edward had been described by many people as an active sleeper and was likely to end up in a place far from where he'd fallen asleep to start with. But the wall next to Crane was covered in chemistry equations, and that was definitely not normal. He cursed under his breath and pressed his glasses into his face as he scrambled across the room. He climbed onto Crane's bed, trying to avoid the man's legs - he slept sitting up against the headrail with one of his knees bent, and even then they were unconscionably long - and rubbed at the wall with his arm. Jonathan woke up, startled.
"What in the world are you doing?" His voice was even more quiet than usual, strained with sleep.
"I told you, you can't leave this here!" Edward hissed. "Do you want to go to solitary?"
"It can't be that bad."
"It's you, the dark, and a straightjacket. Trust me, it's pretty bad." Crane must have written the equations while on his knees and he'd still reached up pretty high.
"Why do you care if I go to solitary or not?"
"Next one on my rotation is Lynns. I'm not sharing with Lynns again!"
"Lynns?"
"Firefly. Yes, he will try to set you on fire."
"So you've shared with everyone."
"Just about." Edward's arm was getting sore so he switched to the other one. He was a little annoyed that Crane wasn't even moving to help.
"Joker?"
He paused. "No one shares with him. He's kept in Extreme Isolation, upstairs. When he's here. He left three months ago."
"Do you fear him?"
Edward finished the rest with the heel of his left hand. "Anyone who's smart does. And anyone who's smart doesn't trust him, either."
That was when Madison of the morning rounds called, "Jonathan, is he bothering you?"
Edward realised he could potentially look like he was attempting to wrestle Crane into submission, standing over him like he was, and he hoped that Crane would not sell him out so quickly. He really was not eager to be set on fire again.
"No," Jonathan said, to Edward's unabashed surprise. "He's been no trouble at all."
"Right," Madison said, rolling her eyes, but she went on her way.
"Why did you say that?" Edward demanded when she was out of earshot. Crane remained infuriatingly calm.
"Because you aren't. Besides. You want off the rotation list, don't you?"
"... yes."
"Then you should have no issue with what I said. You get to stay here and I don't have to be put in with some hopeless idiot. Perfect symbiosis. Now get off of my bed, please."
"You're welcome," Edward snarled, climbing over the rail at the foot of the bed. Crane's voice was even when he said,
"I didn't thank you."
It took Edward a few more days, but he thought he had figured out exactly what Crane had been before he had been sent to the Asylum. It took some careful observation, and a little bit of gossip with the guards he was friendly with, but the pieces seemed right. Crane was allowing himself to fade into the background so that he could get the measure of everyone in the building, and thus to know who to ally himself with. He never spoke to anyone, never participated in anything, and spent as much time as possible reading. Except that he wasn't actually reading, outside of his shared cell; Edward had caught him glancing upward a time or two when he was supposedly engrossed in his book. He was listening. Silently, carefully listening.
Of course, the easy way to have figured Crane out would have been to just ask which books he was so laboriously poring over, but Edward couldn't have that. He did inquire about it, but only after he was certain he already knew. Unobtrusive observation, the obvious intelligence, the endless studying… the man was a researcher. Taking his sparse conversations with Edward into account, his area of study was psychology. And he had confirmed his position as a teacher. Crane had once been a professor of psychology at one of the universities.
Edward was allowed his deck of cards that week and so was using the cards to build a house with; there weren't enough to really make anything worthy of him, but he wasn't in the mood for Solitaire. Besides that, he had a need to build something, even if it was just a shoddy house made of laminated paper. He could feel Crane's eyes on him, but he ignored them.
For a minute. He apparently had Crane's attention and he was going to do something with it. "Why do you read so slowly?" he asked, without looking up.
Crane took long enough to answer that Edward glanced over to see why… and that was when he realised he'd taken the bait. He frowned and looked back at the cards.
"I like to take the time to absorb the information," Crane answered. "If I don't understand it, if I don't connect the new thoughts to old ones, I will not remember what I read and that makes the reading largely a waste of time. And on top of that, it's hardly a race."
"In the time it takes you to read one book I could have read several."
"Congratulations. I'm sure your parents are proud."
That was a punch in the gut he didn't need. "No need to be facetious."
"My goodness," Crane declared, "I've not heard anyone use that word in a sentence in my entire life. Tell me, is it something you use casually or were you just trying to show me up again?"
"Why don't you tell me, Professor Crane?" Edward said in answer, looking him right in those odd eyes, and Crane smiled and put the book aside.
"Who told you? That young woman you were chatting up on Wednesday morning? How they don't see through you I've yet to know."
"No," Edward said, insulted. "I figured it out myself. I was asking her for black licorice. I've run out."
"That sounds rather innocent, for a supercriminal such as yourself."
Edward leaned back against the bedframe. "Are you leading into something, or are you just making fun of me?"
"Both," said Crane. "The barter system around here is not something I've been able to observe offhand, and black licorice is ghastly."
"Black licorice is a delicious and guilt-free snack!" Edward protested. "And of course you've seen people bartering. Things are passed hand over hand all the time."
"Not like that," Crane said dismissively. "The way you do it. But without the flirting. You have a network."
"Sometimes I do it the other way," Edward told him. "I'm just extremely skilled at sleight of hand. But you're not going to be able to do it my way."
"And why is that?"
The corner of Edward's mouth curled upward. "They're not going to work for you over me."
"And what makes you think that," Crane said evenly, though Edward got the impression that he had pushed Crane a little by saying that. Crane didn't like the thought that he couldn't do what Edward was doing, which was… interesting, to say the least.
"You can't give them a reason good enough. No one is going to leave comfortable employment with an outstanding boss to work for a man they don't know and has no history whatsoever."
Crane shook his head and picked the book up again. "Your self-aggrandising is tiresome. A shame, because otherwise you're a quite remarkable young man."
Edward was shocked silent for a moment. Then his brain recovered and he understood what Crane was trying to do.
"You're not going to be able to manipulate me like that. I'm not stupid. I know better."
Crane looked up somewhat serenely. "I wasn't trying to manipulate you. No need to be paranoid."
Edward snorted. "In here? Of course there is."
"You surely know that I've been biding my time. Evaluating who to throw my hand in with, so to speak."
"Obviously. Though that might come back to bite you." Edward scratched the end of his nose. "You're waiting a very long time to find allies. That makes people suspicious, and you're getting a reputation as a guy who only looks out for himself."
"I didn't really want my ally of choice to be broadly known anyway."
Edward heaved a breath and began gathering the cards. He was bored of this too, and tired.
"You should probably let them know soon before they write you off as someone not to bother with. You weren't supposed to be on this floor anyway. They ran out of room with the garden-variety loons again. You got lucky. You could've been put with someone who would have killed you without a second thought." He put the cards underneath the bed and pulled himself onto it, pulling his glasses off his face.
"I was indeed fortunate," Crane said, the sudden volume of his voice making Edward jump, and he was right there on Edward's bed! He had been absolutely silent! "But not for that reason. You see, Edward, the ally I wish to throw in with is you."
Edward stared.
"That's a very bad idea," he said finally.
"I hardly think so." He spread his hands. "Think it over. I don't have much to offer as yet, but I will. You don't have the same… clout as other people might have, but you have resources, both physical and not so. Most of all, you've a brain in that head of yours, though you scarce seem to use it to its potential. I've been warned time and time again about you, and associating with you, but I've concluded you and I would mutually benefit each other quite well."
"So long's we don't start having meetings in genpop, no one will know unless somebody tells them," Edward said, propping his head up on one arm. Crane had both insulted and complimented him at the same time, and he didn't know if he should be flattered or wary. "And I'm not going to say anything."
Crane smiled.
"Nor will I," he said. He extended one of his spindly hands for Edward to shake. It shook slightly and Edward wondered what had caused such a thing. Crane did not seem like the type to be nervous. Edward took it and had to hold off a shudder. His hand was incredibly cold. "I sincerely hope you will be removed from the rotation list, Edward. You and I have much to accomplish."
"I was taken off it a month ago," Edward said. "Not because I was well-behaved, but because, and I quote from Dr Prud'Homme, 'Crane is the only one in here who can put up with Nygma's shit.'"
"I learned to ignore people a long time ago," Crane said, "but you don't happen to be one of them. And if you're suspicious, which you probably are given I am more chatty now that I have been these past four months, there's no need. The observation period is over and I've made my decision. Be aware that I am no good with riddles. I only know two, and whether I remember the answers on any given day is up in the air."
"That's fine," Edward said, putting the other hand behind his head as well. "I've yet to find someone who has any interest in riddles." Which was their loss, really, but he still wished someone would appreciate them for once.
Crane crossed the room again and sat on his bed, in the corner where he slept, but taking his book with him. He opened it and returned to reading.
"Why do you sleep like that? Both the sitting up and the leaving your glasses on."
Crane considered him a moment. "I'm sure you've noticed I have insomnia."
"Of course." There was no way a man who looked that tired all the time didn't.
"I find I sleep better when I don't try. So I just read and wait."
"Don't you get tired of reading?"
Crane seemed to have been rendered speechless, which was a first. "Get tired of reading?" he repeated finally.
Edward shrugged. "Wouldn't you rather… do something with what you read, instead of just moving onto another subject all the time?"
"Oh, I do," Crane answered, "but sometimes you have to wait. So I learn, and I wait, and the opportunity arises when it sees fit."
That made sense. It wasn't something Edward saw himself doing, but Crane seemed to take things a great deal slower, with a lot of deliberation. He seemed determined to ensure he didn't make a mistake, in any way, for any reason. And in all the months he'd been in the Asylum, Edward didn't think he'd made one. Any ribbing had worn off within the first week, he hadn't been assaulted in the shower or the hallway despite his obvious frailty, and the general opinion of him seemed to be that you could not trust him but you didn't want to be in a room alone with him, either.
Maybe Edward had been the lucky one when they had been unable to keep Crane downstairs.
