Edward hates prison. He hates prison more than he's ever hated Arkham Asylum and he thinks there's one simple reason for it all. It reminds him of being a child again.
In the Asylum it was badly organised, freezing nine months of the year and baking the other three, full of screaming throughout the entire night and there was always the chance that another guard might go the way of Bolton. But it was also the closest thing he'd ever had to a home. He knew how to play it in Arkham, you just kept your head down most days, if you were lucky you got your usual Doctors who you knew how to handle and they knew how to handle you and all in all you got through your time and planned your next escape. It was easy, it was known, and it was comfortable.
Belle Reve was hell in comparison.
There were so many more people here then at Arkham, hundreds more and they all seemed to hate him on sight. The first few weeks had been the worst and it's only now that he's been here a while that he understands the reasons this place makes his stomach churn in unease. It reminds him of his younger years. This place is a mix of school and his father's home combined.
He's bullied, he knows it's prison but he'll call it out for what it is, bullying through and through. The other inmates enjoy pushing him around, using their superior size and weight to jostle him, keep him in place since they couldn't hope to beat him mentally. He does his best to stay out of their way, sometimes being skinny has its advantages it seems, but every so often they catch him and feel the need for another round of 'rough up Riddler'. He'll be honest, it would probably be easier to lie low if he didn't have this natural urge to make himself known to everyone, to announce his presence and let everybody in the vicinity bask in his glory. Sometimes his narcissism comes back to bite him in the ass.
Right now was one of those days.
He'd been in the lunch hall, picking at the shit they served and trying to find something edible in the mess spattered on the tray. The plastic utensil takes better than most of the food and he's practically chewed off one of the tines in frustration. At the next table over sits one of the louder groups, all of them burly men, some with tattoos, other with scars that glint in the light and shows off their prison credentials. Edward knows to stay silent, he knows that, he's a genius, he knows not to draw attention to himself but he can't help it.
The men start talking about one of their group, how he's the proud father of a newborn baby girl, with jet black hair and a smile just like her mothers. He knows he shouldn't but he glances over his shoulder to them and observes the man in question. He's blond, fair skinned with pale eyes, called something ridiculously masculine like Troy or Tucker, and Edward has walked past his cell before. He's seen pictures of his wife and he knows that she is just as fair and blonde as he. Smirking to himself he turns his gaze back to his tray of mush and listens to the conversation continue.
They go on and on about the baby, about how precious she is, how sweet and darling. How she was born with a lot of hair for a baby, so much it could almost be put into little bunches already. When Todd or whatever starts mentioning how he's going to comb it for her when he's older, Eddie can't help but snort out a laugh to himself, hunching over his food as he moves it around the tray.
"Somethin' funny Riddler?"
Hunching down further he shakes his head, not wanting any trouble, especially not when there were so many other prisoners in the same room, each of them spoiling for some action to join in on or make worse.
"No, no come on. There's got to be something funny about what we're saying for you to be sniggering like that. Tell us, what's the joke?" The group comes over to his table, each of them leaning over him, blocking him off from any way of escape as Trey talks to him, an arm flung over Eddie's shoulders and tugging him nearer as if they were friends. "We all like a laugh."
He stays silent, shaking his head and trying to act as if it was no big deal. Travis' fingers clench down on his shoulder, gripping him tightly and he can feel bones grind as he gasps in pain. "Nothing! Nothing really…"
"Sounded like you had something to say about my little girl. Something funny about my daughter?"
"She's not your daughter." It just bursts out of his throat without permission, hanging in the air dangerously and then his damned brain goes into overdrive, desperate to justify his deduction to others. "Or at least it's very highly unlikely that she is your daughter. Simply looking at the genetics of yourself and your wife, there is about the same chance of the two of you having a black haired child as there is of you getting struck by lightening. It's not impossible but really the chances of it happening are less than slim to none, unless there was a gene mutation somewhere along the way. Besides, you're in prison and though I know your basic schooling of mathematics leaves something to be desired, as far as I'm aware your last conjugal visit was almost a year ago ago. How long do you think she was pregnant for?"
There's a pause, and looking up Edward can almost see the cogs in Trevor's mind grind together as his looks begins to fill with more a more hate with each passing second. Sinking low in his seat he wonders if he could possibly manage to roll out of harms way beneath the table and find an escape route there. The shock collar digs into his neck as he hunches down but he knows that's going to be the last of his problems when Tom figures out what he's said. "You calling my daughter a mutation?"
He blinks at that; escape forgoing his mind as he's dumbstruck by the sheer idiocy of other people. "Seriously? That's what you got from that?"
"Piece of shit!"
All hell breaks loose after that cry and Eddie finds himself at the bottom of a scrum, punches and kicks battering him all over his body as he tries his hardest to curl into a ball. He keeps his eyes tightly shut, automatically reverting to the child like notion that if he can't see it, it's not happening. It's one he knows well, a technique he'd mastered as a child and had hoped he'd never have to use again. Now here he was, a fully-grown adult on the floor of a prison cafeteria trying to protect himself from being beaten to death by men that would give his father a run for his money. What a success story he was.
He can't help but yell as his ribs are hit over and over, a few lucky strikes catch his face and he knows his eye will be black and he can taste blood in his mouth. It hurts immensely, each flinch makes him wince but he can't help himself. Then the inevitable happens and he's rigidly shaking as the shock collars kick in to zap them all. They said they came on automatically to stop fights, they didn't. The guards had the controls and would leave them for a moment to see if it could be sorted out between the inmates. It never was.
When the collar stops choking him, burning his throat to the point where he can't breathe, he slumps against the cold tiles. The shadows around him lift and he knows that the other inmates have been dragged off, or simply dispersed into the crowd without punishment. There's never any punishment here, the collars are deemed good enough to replace it, and the only thing deemed worthy of the hole was outright murder.
Uncurling lightly he can't help but cough as he's nudged by a guard's boot, groaning as he unfurls and slowly gets to his feet. It hurts, god it aches and burns through his side, his face feels swollen already and God he just wishes he didn't have to move. "Up and out Nigma. And no more of your shit for the rest of the day." The guard warns and he moves as told, eyes on the floor and so used to this that it almost hurts as much as the bruises.
All his life this is all it's always been, get up from the floor and walk away. Shut up boy, keep quiet boy, take it like a man boy. His father was just one huge mass of contradictions and hypocritical words, making his younger years full of confusion and misery as he tried so desperately to please him. Keeping his head down, Eddie makes his way back to his cell, ignoring the jeers of abuse from the other prisoners and trying to just focus on getting somewhere relatively safe.
His cell is a single, no cell mate for the annoying Riddler, every one he'd ever had hadn't lasted long, constantly wanting to either beat him into silence or screaming to get away from his constant chattering. He'd never had that problem in Arkham. Right now though he's grateful for the reprieve from the company of others, wanting to lick his wounds and recuperate by himself, without the possibility of interruptions.
Reaching the second tier of cells he sighs when he sees the state of his own one. The prisons door all opened on a system, meaning that throughout the day their cell was left open for anyone to enter as they wished. Usually others had a respected for each other's space, leaving everyone to their own cells, but clearly someone had had a bad day and decided to take it out on his possessions. His bed was upturned, the thin mattress on the floor with his sheets surrounding it, his books were shredded, pages on the floor and scattered about as were his little trinkets that they let him keep. Everything was a tip and on any other day he would clean it up, get everything back in place where it belonged and lined up just right.
But that was the think. It didn't belong. None of it did, he didn't belong himself because he was meant to be in Arkham. Not this hellhole. Not this disgusting echo of school and his father's house combined. It makes him sick, it makes him want to scream, shout and cry until they listened to him, ignored his pleas of sanity and shipped him back to where he felt safe.
Instead he shuffles into the tiny cell, stepping over broken toys, careful not to slip on shreds of crossword puzzles as he makes his way to the corner where the head of the bed usually is. Tugging the thin mattress down beneath him he slumps onto it, tugging the bed frame to lie on its side, blocking him into the corner like a barrier from the rest of the world. Fortunately the pillow wasn't torn and he can tug it closer into his lap as he tugs the sheets above his head, laying it over himself and the frame of the bed, creating a one sided tent for himself to hide under.
He knows it's pathetic, that he's in prison and should be showing that he had some backbone instead of hiding away like a child. But right now he didn't care. He was tired; hurting all over and just didn't want to deal with the rest of the world right now. It was just too much.
So instead he does what he knows works, does what he did all those years ago in a small blue painted bedroom on the outskirts of New York when he needed to hide away from only one man. He hides away, wrapping his arms around the pillow as he does when he sleeps and burying his face in it. It hurts, makes his sore swollen eye ache and he can feel where the blood from his lip stains the fabric, giving it a red tang. It just doesn't matter at the moment; he just needs this right now.
There are no tears, he may be weak but he's not stupid, you don't cry in prison unless the doors are locked and you can do it silently without anyone's knowledge. Right now he doesn't know who's around, it's not safe enough to break down. So he simply sits, hidden, quiet and alone in a prison full of hundreds of people. The loneliness feels the most painful despite all his injuries at the moment.
He hates this place so much.
It's in that moment of being hidden under the sheets, he feels like he's five years old again; wondering why nobody wanted to play quizzes with him in the play ground, why his mother had gone to heaven, why she'd left him with a dad who could remember the all the player names of his favourite football team but not to feed his own son. Why did he have to spend his life so alone? It eats up at him, burns at him from the inside like acid and makes him want to scream in frustration at the unfairness of it all.
He doesn't deserve this. He is better than this. He's better than them!
The pillow scrunches up in his grip and muffles the sound of annoyance, the death threats to everyone, the anger, the sadness and the silence afterwards. There's nothing else for it, this was the last straw. He was going to escape. He was going to break out of the inescapable prison and laugh in all their faces. Prove them all wrong and be more of a successful villain than anyone else who was locked up in here. He could do it. He could do anything if he set his genius mind to it.
And he would do it all by himself.