There is a wonderful freedom in being alone. You can do as you like with no fear of judgement and no need to accommodate anyone else's wants or desires. You can do what you want to do, when you want to do it, however you want to do it, and no-one will get in your way. If you want to go to Taco Bell at three in the morning, fine! If you want to rock out to your favorite song in your underwear, go crazy! If you want to throw yourself headlong into a painstakingly careful campaign to bring your city of choice to ruins as you preside over its destruction…well, you can, but traditionally that sort of plan doesn't end well. In fact, sometimes it's nice to have someone around to remind you that maybe what you're doing is a terrible idea that will only lead to horrific injuries (yours) and death (also yours).

The Riddler was alone and he was determined to be cheerful about it. He'd seen Jackie off at the bus station, smiling and waving. His favorite coffee in hand, he'd returned to the pink apartment, all set to have a relaxing morning of peace and quiet with the newspaper crossword.

But it was too quiet. He wasn't used to total silence. There was always some noise around him. On a good day, they were good noises – the little sounds made by henchgirls going about their day, the metallic squeaks and clangs of a deathtrap coming together, the wail of a police siren behind him as he made off with something hideously expensive. On a bad day, there were different noises – the noise of his own bones breaking, the ear-shattering squeal of an IV alarm, the screams and general gibbering of the permanent inmates of Arkham. The muffled silence of the apartment pressed on his ears, making him twitch as imagined sounds skated across his eardrums. It was almost as if he could hear Jackie in the other room…

He turned his attention to the crossword, shaking his head sharply to get the image of Jackie out of his mind. Stadium walkways? Ramps, of course. Follow with a camera? Pan, naturally. Cast wearer's problem? Oh, that was easy. Jackie had gone on and on about how itchy it was –

No. Focus! Hardhearted. Stony. Tallinn native? Estonian. Perfect. Queue before a Q? Q. Query. Jackie.

What?!

He glared at the page. This was ridiculous. He couldn't even do a crossword without thinking of her!

Well, there were other ways to fill his time. There was still that half-built puzzle trap in his lair across town. He could work on that until Jackie came to her senses and came back. And if she was expecting to find him here, well, she could just do a little searching until she found him. That would teach her to leave him like he'd specifically ordered her to do!


Jackie, in the backseat of a taxi, took the world in as it whizzed by. Vermont in April wouldn't win any beauty awards. Dead-looking brown trees stood above equally dead-looking brown bushes and grass that was sullenly avoiding any efforts to spring back to life. Mud puddles lurked beside sidewalks, filled with debris from the chilly wind as it swept past. None of that mattered, though. It was home, where she'd grown up. There were no supervillains or superheroes here, just supermarkets and the local SuperSandwich.

The scenery grew more and more familiar. There was her neighborhood – her street – her old house, snuggled securely between its neighbors, fresh blue paint accented with shining white shutters. Home. The taxi driver helped her unload her single suitcase, which was astonishingly light given that it contained all of her worldly possessions, and disappeared back into his car.

So this was it. Home. The last time she'd seen her parents, they'd eaten Thanksgiving dinner in the Riddler's showplace lair, which was packed wall-to-wall with question-marked knickknacks and subtle deathtraps. And, for some reason that she couldn't drag out of them, they'd been okay with it. They'd even gone so far as to approve of it! Her mom, knowing that Eddie was the Riddler, had yanked him out of bed and made him waffles. How on earth did that make any kind of sense? How was she supposed to go home and act like everything was normal after that?

Jackie might have lingered on the sidewalk in a fit of indecision, but the weather made the decision for her. A cold wind ruffled her hair and chilled the back of her neck as she hurried to the front door and rang the bell. After a moment, it swung open, revealing Violet drying her hands with a light beige hand towel. "Jackie? Jackie!" she yelped, dropping the towel and flinging slightly damp arms around her daughter.

"Hi, Mom," Jackie wheezed.

"Rick, Jackie's here!" Violet called. "Sweetie, how have you been? We haven't heard from you in ages. Is Eddie with you?" She pulled back, examining the outdoors in case Eddie had gotten lost in the driveway.

"No, Mom. It's…complicated."

"Oh." Was that disappointment on her mom's face? Was she that eager to have a famous – well, infamous – supercriminal in her house? Something in her own face must have signaled her mom to drop the topic. "Well, come on in, sweetheart, before Noodles gets out." She held the door wide. Jackie edged past her, maneuvering the suitcase into the front hall while keeping an eye on the ground for the cat, who was just as eager to get out of the house as any rogue escaping Arkham. "Let me help you with that bag. RICK!" she bellowed again.

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" The door to the basement stairs swung open. Rick climbed out, brushing sawdust from his shirt. "Hi, honey!" He caught Jackie in a rib-cracking hug.

"Hi Dad," Jackie wheezed.

"It's great to see you again! We thought you forgot you had parents," he said, winking at her before he let her go.

"Well, Arkham's got plenty of cells, but no cell phones," Jackie said, instantly regretting her terrible pun as her mother's eyes went wide.

"Arkham? Asylum?" Violet confirmed in a please-tell-me-you-aren't-serious tone.

"We knew Edward had been caught, but the newspapers didn't mention you," Rick explained. "We hoped you got away."

"No." Jackie grinned as the perfect distraction wandered in on his four furry feet. "Noodles! How've you been, jerkface?" She swooped down and scooped up the dark gray cat, cuddling him on his back like a pointy-eared baby. He lay still, tolerantly putting up with his overaffectionate owner until the moment that he could thrash his way to freedom.

"Are you staying long?" Violet asked, eyeing the suitcase.

"I, uh…don't know." Jackie turned her attention back to the cat, missing the significant look that Rick and Violet exchanged over her head.

"Oh. Well, I'll go fix up your room – I was cleaning out my closet, and there are some things on your bed. Let me go tidy up." Violet scurried off. The noise of frantic cleaning rustled down the hallway, accompanied by the thumping of boxes and the clack of clothes hangers.

"So, Edward didn't come with you?"

"No, Dad," Jackie said to the cat's stomach.

"Did you have a fight?" In the corner of her eye, she could see his fists beginning to tighten.

"No, Dad. Well, kind of. It's not…it's…it's a really long story, okay?" she said. "I wanted to come out here, and he thought it was a good idea. It's okay." It wasn't, but her father didn't need to know that.

His hands softened as he tucked them in his pockets. "Okay, sweetheart. As long as you're okay."

"I'm fine, Dad," Jackie said, immediately swearing as Noodles caught her on the arm with his back claws and springboarded to the ground. "Stupid cat. It's fine," she said, examining her arm. "My arm's just not back to normal yet from being broken."

"Who broke your arm?" Rick's hands began to bunch closed again.

"It doesn't matter. Not Eddie," she continued hastily. "Dad, I promise I'll tell you all about it later, okay? I just really need to sit down for a while."

"Okay, sweetie."

Jackie hurried up to her old room. A few hours' peace, that's what she needed. A few hours where she wouldn't have to worry about supervillains or shattering life choices or anything but laying still and maybe taking a nap. Of course, it was slightly difficult to take a nap when your bed was covered pillow to footboard with boxes and your mother was buzzing around the room like a bee without a hive.

Violet peered at her, eyes barely visible from behind her armload of stuff. "Mind giving me a hand?" she asked, swaying left to balance the stack of boxes in her grip before they tumbled to the ground.

"Sure." As Violet wove away, trying to catch the top of the pile with her chin, Jackie began to scoop boxes from the bed into her own arms. A shoebox of old pictures…a tiny plastic crate of her college desk accessories…a masking-taped box full of something, papers probably…

Jackie took a careful step forward, jerking back as she realized that the floor was far too squishy. "Noodles!" she squeaked, trying to simultaneously keep her balance, keep hold of the boxes, and keep from crushing the cat. Her mother yelped as Jackie ricocheted off of her. Boxes flew onto the ground in an avalanche of memories, scattering their contents in a last-second obstacle course as Noodles the cat sought refuge under the bed. From her seat on the rug, Jackie ruefully rubbed her newly-healed arm, aching from its contact with the floor. Violet gave her a sheepish smile, knees and elbows poking out around the rim of a destroyed cardboard box like a swimmer testing the world's worst makeshift inner tube.

"You okay?"

"We're fine, Dad," Jackie called. She began to scoop things back into their boxes. Did she even need to keep her college stuff anymore? Well, maybe the Bluebird of Happiness paperweight that her old roommate had given her…oh, and the stack of magnets and other tchotchkes emblazoned with the college name…she'd go through it later. She stuffed it back into the crate and stuck it back up on the bed.

The masking-taped box had completely exploded. Jackie, on her knees, reached to gather the pile of papers together. Old receipts, a few of her drawings from elementary school…a piece of fabric? She held the end in one hand, letting the yellowy-brown satin strip unroll until it hit the floor. It had been painstakingly spangled with blue-edged golden polka dots that twirled attractively around the eye holes.

Eye holes?

It was a mask.

"Jackie, I – oh, give me that!" Violet swooped down on the mask, hastily folding it back up and hiding it behind her back. "Is Noodles okay?"

"Noodles is fine. What's going on?"

"Nothing," Violet said, not meeting her eyes.

"Mom." Jackie gave her mother her best imitation-Batman glare. "Why is there a mask in your stuff?"

"It's an old Halloween costume?" her mom suggested hopefully.

"Why wasn't it in the box in the garage with all the rest of them, then?"

"It's…oh, dear." Violet sighed and lowered herself to the floor next to the flattened masking-taped box. "It's not what you're thinking. It really isn't," she said defensively as Jackie raised an eyebrow. "I never wore it. It was such a long time ago. A group of us were looking to do some community service for a project for Girl Scouts. Someone came up with the idea of writing letters to people who would never get out of prison. Most of the girls picked regular people – murderers, thieves. A few of us chose supervillains." She chuckled, slightly embarrassed. "I have to admit that I chose mine because I didn't think he'd write me back. But he did. It turned out that he was in the prison's medical wing with two broken legs when my letter arrived. He wrote me back the next day, and I had to keep going. But then the project was over, and I couldn't just stop. Paul was so lonely, and I was…well, I hadn't met your father yet, and…" Violet cleared her throat. "Well, one thing led to another, and eventually he broke out of prison and showed up at my door, in full costume, in the middle of the day." Her eyes misted over. "He was actually quite handsome under the mask. He stood there on the porch, holding out his tentacle…"

"Tentacle?"

"Oh, yes. Didn't I mention? He was the Octagonist. Back then, villains hardly got any notice at all unless they went overboard with their themes, so he had a fully-functional octopus suit. I never did find out how he made the other four tentacles move. Anyway, he stood there, tentacle held out to me, and said, 'Come with me. I can't live without you.'" She sighed, toying with the mask in her lap. "I told him no. I told him that I was only sixteen, that I couldn't possibly leave home before I'd even graduated high school. He gave me the mask and said he'd be back for me in two years." Violet smoothed a wrinkle from the mask. "He stopped writing me shortly after that. I thought that he'd just gone into hiding, but…he'd been killed."

Jackie stared at her mother, open-mouthed. "Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I didn't want you to know!"

"Why?"

"Well, it's not exactly something you tell your daughter while she's growing up. And then you moved to Gotham, and supervillains do love to hold grudges. I didn't dare tell you in case word got out about who you were, or who I was. I wasn't sure if anyone even remembered Paul, but if they did, they might have used you as a way to get to me for some sort of secondhand revenge against Paul. Stranger things have happened," she said defensively, "and I just wanted to keep you safe."

"Too bad it didn't work," Jackie muttered, frisbeeing a stray folder into a box. "Does Dad know?"

"I told him the night before we were married. I thought he should know, in case he wanted to stop the wedding. But he said no, it didn't matter, we could get through whatever happened because he loved me." Violet carefully straightened a skewed sequin next to the left eyehole of her mask. "Do you love Eddie?"

Jackie recoiled. "What?"

"You showed up without him, and you look like you've been crying. You said it's complicated, which could mean just about anything. But if he left you, I think you'd come out and say it. So. Do you love him?" her mother said, in that patient, I-can-repeat-this-all-day-until-you-answer tone.

"I…well, yes, I mean, sort of. It's…I love Eddie," Jackie said, flopping back against the side of the bed. "But I don't know if I love the Riddler."

Her mother nodded. "Do you think he'd ever give up being the Riddler to just be plain Eddie?"

Jackie shook her head. "No." Rivers might run backward and eagles might start opening bank accounts, but Edward Nygma would never give up the thrill of being Batman's intellectual nemesis.

"Good."

Jackie's head jerked upright in shock. "Good?"

"Good. You don't expect that you can change him. A lot of relationships are ruined because someone thinks that they can change someone else."

Jackie rubbed her eyes. "Mom, we had all that time at Thanksgiving when you could have told me all of this. Why didn't you want me to know about Paul?"

"Honestly? Because you'd ask me for my advice, and I don't have any for you." Violet began rolling up the mask into a neat cylinder. "Do I want my daughter to spend her time in and out of Arkham Asylum, on the run from Batman? Of course I don't. But your Eddie's a nice man, when he's not being the Riddler. I saw how you two looked at each other. I want you to be happy, sweetie. I could wish that things were different, but wishing never helped anything." She tugged a final wrinkle out of the mask and tucked it into the top of a different box. "You'll fix it or you won't. Whichever you choose, I'll be here for you."

Jackie scooted over and gave Violet a hug. "Thanks, Mom."


Eddie paced back and forth in his lair, pausing every so often to level a glare at his uncooperative half-built deathtrap. This would have been so much easier with someone to fetch him his tools and hold things in place while he soldered them together. He supposed that he could have called up a spare henchman-for-hire, but dealing with them directly was so tedious. What he needed was his henchgirl! It had been a whole week - when was Jackie going to come back to Gotham, anyway?

He scowled at the pile of metal. To hell with it. He was in no mood to deal with any of it tonight. He'd go to the Iceberg and drink off some of this irritation. He was half-shrugged into his coat before he realized that showing up alone to the Iceberg would invite all sorts of uncomfortable questions – where was Jackie? When would she be back? And nothing was as maddening as a question that he couldn't answer, particularly these questions.

Well, fine. He wouldn't go out. He'd just stay here and have a relaxing drink or twelve by himself, because sitting home alone with a freshly-emptied bottle of scotch was a perfect shining sign that everything was going just great for you. He stripped off his coat and flung it across the back of a chair. Then, with the typical anger-management skills of the above-average supervillain, he turned his attention to the heap of misbehaving metal parked on the floor.

Whong-ong-ong-ong-ong!

And now he'd hurt his foot. He threw a handy wrench at the deathtrap, taking a masochistic kind of delight at watching it rip his half-hearted wiring right out of the solder, and flounced onto the couch like an aggrieved Southern belle. At least the scotch was within arm's reach, although a clean glass wasn't. Well, no one would care if he just drank it straight out of the bottle. And maybe a bit more. And one more for good measure.

Everywhere he looked, he saw something that made him more annoyed. There was no food in the fridge, a tower of dishes in the sink, a pile of laundry – well, piles of laundry – all over the living room, and he was a supervillain, dammit, he was meant for better things than petty matters like cleaning and cooking and keeping himself alive in ways that didn't involve puzzle-traps and bullets!

Puzzle traps. Yeah. Maybe he should pull a heist by himself. Right now!

No, that wasn't it. Even if he was in any condition to put together a half-decent riddle, how likely was it that Batman would take the time to solve it when he was so busy with everyone else – like if the Joker sent out a threat you better believe Bat-brain would drop everything and run, but everything else seemed to be higher priority than Eddie unless he wrote a full-length novel in the sky or hand-delivered a personal threat to Commissioner Gordon – and how often could you really threaten the same guy, anyway? Boring.

Eddie stared at the continually lowering level of scotch in his bottle, simmering with resentment. It wasn't any fun to be brilliant when there was no one around to be brilliant at – not that Jackie was a fawning sycophant like so many of the others had been, but she was smart too and he knew, he just knew that they could put together something really amazing, something incredible, something that would make all of Gotham re…re… re something. Respect him! Yeah, that was it. If she'd just come back…well, maybe he'd just have to make her come back. No. Yeah. Maybe.

This scotch was great. Drinking it was a great idea. Maybe a little more. Yeah. Great.

Zzzzzzzzzzz….

(to be continued)

Author's Note: Life is busy, and recently it was busy in a very specific multiple-foster-kids-with-bedbugs kind of way, coinciding perfectly with a holy-shit-I-got-the-lead-role-in-a-musical way and a what-is-this-sleep-you-speak-of way. And then I wrote a play and hosted more foster kids and bought a new house and had a baby and adopted a kid and when I say that the past few years have been crazy, we're talking all-out Arkham levels of crazy, complete with screams and errant bodily fluids. But everything is settled now, or at least as settled as it ever gets around here, and I will finish all of my half-finished stuff or die trying.

Eddie's crossword is the New York Times crossword from October 14, 2004. The Octagonist doesn't exist anywhere outside of my head.