Now before anyone gets their pitchforks and torches out let me apologize for my disappearance. I had to stop writing for a good while due to some garbage circumstances and garbage people in my life. I also have lost all of my stories and writings. I'm pretty heartbroken over losing it all, butttt it's never too late to start again, right?
This can be read as a stand alone one-shot even if you're not familiar with my past works. If you have read my past stories then here is a sad band aid to slap on your hearts in the meantime.
There's no place like home. Especially when that home was Arkham Asylum. It was only temporary, of course. It was always just a temporary set back to one of Gotham's rogues gallery. Nobody could stay here for long; sane or not. Arkham had a special way of sucking the life and color out of everyone who stepped into it's fluorescent lit halls. Grey everywhere. Grey jumpsuits, grey walls, even the food was grey.
Edward was never a fan of grey, There was of course a few exceptions. For instance he looked dashing in a grey tailored suit. In a sea of grey there were only a few colors that broke up the monochrome world of Arkham. Eddie's red hair, Jervis' bright blue eyes, and The Joker's garish array of colors for instance. Anyone in Arkham was eager to escape and see the colors of the world once more. Eddie recalled a different time, a time when color was always a part of his life.
It's been four years. Four years in and out of Arkham. Four years of riddles, Batman encounters, and four years of trying to forget. The Riddler wasn't one to forget things easily, unfortunately. He'd be fine for a while, so long as his mind was occupied, but at night there wasn't much Eddie could do aside from lie on his hard bed and think.
Sleep was almost impossible. There was always a light on for security reasons as well as hourly guard rounds. The grey suited guards peeking in and perhaps taunting one of the inmates should they still be awake. Not to mention all the lovely sounds of the various asylum inmates. Screaming, crying, and of course The Joker's shrill laughter echoing around the dull halls.
Currently all Eddie could do was stare up at his ceiling and replay life events. A first meeting, brief "intimate" moments, a short lived kiss even. He'd looked for her once he's escaped the asylum four years ago, but found nothing. It was as though she had ceased to exist and lived only in his memory. He'd searched her old apartment, her old job, and even interrogated Oswald Cobblepot, owner of the Iceberg Lounge. Ozzy, being a refined gentlemen, had spared Eddie's fingers from being broken by his black and white suited henchmen when Eddie grabbed their boss by his tuxedo lapels in a blind rage.
In the early months he'd attempt to ask Harley if she'd seen or heard anything, but the answers were always the same. Wasn't Harley supposed to be a friend of sorts? On particularly bad days he'd accuse the blonde of withholding information from him. She remained unfazed by his outbursts, being used to being on the receiving end of someone's anger. Still, her answers always remained the same about the girl's whereabouts.
As the years passed Eddie became less frantic. Sure, in the early years he'd wanted nothing more than to find the girl and drag her back to Gotham, demanding that their games of cat and mouse resume. That's all it was, right? A game? Maybe this was still a game. Eddie mouth twitched upwards into a smirk. A game of hide and seek on a larger scale. His eyes closed calculating his next move. Soon he'd back out of Arkham and he'd find all the color he'd been missing.
That's all I got for now. I'm super rusty at writing, so you'll have to forgive the (probably numerous) mistake that I've made. It feels so good to write again. I didn't realize how much I'd missed it.