'The Best Damn Boss'
By Indiana
Characters: Wilson (OC), Edward Nygma
Setting: Pre-Arkham Knight, post 'The Riddler's Hot Chocolate Guy'
Synopsis: When Wilson gets promoted to supervisor, he sees a lot more of Riddler than he ever wanted to.
It was the first time Wilson had been on a job where they'd had to call him.
The site supervisor told them he'd said to wait until he got there, and even though it took him three hours none of them left. They had all just stood or sat around staring down the dark end of the tunnel. The one three men had disappeared into and not returned. The radio was on but it somehow did not do much against the quiet.
When he did finally show up he was dressed in a suit, and Wilson wondered if this was something he always did or if he had come here from somewhere else. He held his left hand out towards the supervisor without looking at him, and he immediately placed one of the flashlights into it. He continued into the darkness of the tunnel alone.
"Mr Nygma," the supervisor began, but Riddler's annoyed glance over his shoulder was enough to stop him from continuing. They could all just barely see where he stopped and crouched down. That must have been where the last man had died. After a minute or so he stood and cast the light up towards the ceiling. Then he walked back out, handing the flashlight off and removing a handkerchief from his back pocket. His nose was bleeding.
"Gentlemen," he said after a minute, sniffing a little and folding the cloth over so that the mess was contained, "we have a gas leak."
The supervisor frowned. "But sir, the detector says –"
"Not that kind," Riddler interrupted impatiently. "Cancel all shifts until further notice. I have something to take care of."
"Yes, sir," the supervisor said, but he had already left. He sighed.
"A little more information would be nice…"
Wilson silently packed up his things and went back home. He wished there hadn't been a leak. Now he had to stay home. His brother was okay now, and he was bringing his friends over now that the apartment looked nicer, and those were all good things. What wasn't was the way his brother's friends looked at him. Sometimes they talked about him as if he wasn't there and his brother seemed to be getting tired of correcting the things they said. Maybe he was starting to agree with them. He'd known it was going to happen one day, but he had been hoping it wouldn't be so soon.
When he opened the front door he could hear that he had some friends over and they were playing video games in the living room. His brother didn't have a console, but his friends always had the newest ones and they brought them over sometimes. "Where is he all day, anyway?" one of them was asking.
"At work," said his brother.
"Yeah? Where's that?"
"I dunno. He does construction. Could be anywhere."
"You don't know where," said one of his other friends, "because he can't tell you. Because he works for one of them."
"Sure he does," said his brother. "And I'm Robin. Sorry I didn't tell you before."
"It's not Joker, 'cause he's dead," said the first kid.
"Maybe he worked for Joker before he died."
"He never worked for any of them," his brother said, though he didn't sound like he meant it. When he noticed Wilson he sat up straight on the couch. "Hey, Wilson."
"I got sent home," Wilson said. "There was a gas leak."
"He works for Scarecrow," one of the kids whispered.
"No, stupid, Scarecrow's dead."
"I don't work for Scarecrow," Wilson said, but nobody was listening.
/
When Wilson got to Riddler's office with the hot chocolate the door was open, which made him hesitate. The door was always closed when he got there. If it was open that probably meant he was busy with somebody else and Wilson did not really want to know what other kind of people came to see Riddler in his office at night.
He stood far enough away from the doorway that anybody inside couldn't see him and chewed on his tongue. What would Riddler dislike more: his meeting being interrupted, or his hot chocolate being late? This job wasn't supposed to be this complicated. He was just supposed to make the drink and bring it and go back home. He was still working out what to do when the person who had opened the door came out and Wilson nearly dropped the hot chocolate altogether.
It was Scarecrow.
Wilson wanted to stop looking at him, but he couldn't. Not just because he looked more like something from someone's messed-up imagination than a real person, but because as soon as he had stepped out of Riddler's office Scarecrow's eyes had locked onto Wilson's as though they were connected to each other with an invisible pole. His presence seemed to have slowed the whole world down to give Scarecrow time to tell him something Wilson did not want him to know – he didn't know what, but something – and the air seemed to have chilled suddenly despite the warm drink he had clenched in both hands. It was all so much worse than being looked at by Riddler. At least you could tell there was an actual person doing the looking. Scarecrow's gaze was empty and cold.
Scarecrow did not pause a single step but it felt like he had stopped and stared at Wilson for about five minutes and this feeling only went away when he got far enough that he turned his head forward in a smooth motion. Wilson stared at his back until he was out of sight. His heart was beating very fast.
"He," Riddler said from the doorway, making Wilson jump enough he almost spilled the hot chocolate all over himself, "is a tremendous pain in my ass. I cannot believe no one has put him out of his misery yet."
Wilson couldn't do anything other than look at him. He was leaning on the doorway with one arm, the other in his pants pocket. He was wearing different clothes than he had been earlier. Riddler looked him up and down once without moving and then said, rolling his eyes and standing straight,
"Oh, you aren't afraid of him, are you?"
Wilson was not sure how to answer that, so he didn't. Riddler shook his head and turned around and gestured Wilson to follow him. It took him another minute to get his legs working again.
Riddler was already sitting behind his desk when he got near it. "I realise my question sounded rhetorical," he said after Wilson put the drink down, "but it was not. Did you truly find Scarecrow frightening?"
Wilson squeezed the fingers of one hand very hard inside of the other. "Yes, sir."
Riddler opened one of his desk drawers and removed a cigarette case. He took one out, lit it, and burned through so much of it in one inhalation it was actually kind of impressive. He blew the smoke out with his head turned away and then said, "You are, of course, familiar with the concept of Halloween."
"Yes, sir," said Wilson.
Riddler finished the cigarette and shoved the end into the green glass ashtray on his desk. "Come. I'll show you something." And he pushed his chair over to the drafting table. Wilson followed hesitantly.
Riddler removed the page he'd had on there, putting it on the desk behind him, and on the paper underneath he drew what was a actually pretty good sketch of Scarecrow with a green pencil. "Much in the spirit of Halloween," Riddler said, "this is how Scarecrow wants you to perceive him. A large, menacing figure who can toy with your emotions at his discretion. And this is exactly why you need not fear him, for the man beneath the Scarecrow –" and here he pencilled in the purple outline of a man within the green – "is nothing more than a decrepit old crone stubbornly clinging onto what's left of his life. He blows over in a brisk wind, and that's no exaggeration. Also, he's extremely ugly. Always has been."
Wilson stared at the space between the purple and the green lines. When it was put this way, Scarecrow really didn't look that threatening at all.
"All of this," Riddler continued, waving the end of the purple pencil around at the drawing vaguely, "is a costume. A distraction. He doesn't want you to notice how thin he is, so he wears several layers to appear larger. He doesn't want you to know about the fracture in his right arm, so he wears an unnecessarily sturdy gauntlet with needles sticking out of it. And he definitely doesn't want you to know that his knee was shattered, so he has this brace on his leg and plays it off as part of the whole Scarecrow schtick. What all of this means, Wilson," he said, looking directly into his eyes until Wilson couldn't stand it anymore, "is this: you need not fear a man who cannot scare you with his own face."
"His… his eyes," Wilson tried to explain. "They're – there's nothing behind them –"
Riddler leaned towards him, a mischievous sort of smile curling one side of his lips. "He's blind in one eye."
Wilson did not have anything to say to that.
Riddler sat back in his chair, folding his hands together in his lap. "All he has," Riddler said, "is his toxin. The same toxin, by the way, that was leaking into my tunnel and causing men to be frightened to death. Credit where it's due: that stuff works. The rest of it?" He looked at Wilson sideways from beneath one raised eyebrow. "He gets you to see what he wants you to see. You expect to fear him, so you do. But there's nothing to fear. It's all theatrics. He will fail, as always he does, and then he will die."
"You know a lot about him," Wilson found himself saying. Riddler nodded.
"I should. I'm the one who pulled him out of the bay after Batman left him for dead in the depths of the Asylum."
"You saved him?" Wilson whispered, the bottom seeming to drop out of his stomach. Riddler nodded.
"The victory over him seemed… unfair."
Wilson understood that even less than he understood why Riddler would save... anybody. He still didn't understand why he had helped his brother. He didn't know what to say or what to do, while being increasingly anxious that he had to do something.
"Working for me," Riddler said, "means you don't have to worry about people like him. So don't."
"I'll try, sir," said Wilson. Riddler nodded once and rolled himself back over to his desk.
"I suppose I can't expect more than that."
Wilson walked slowly over to the door, and when he'd reached it he looked behind him. Riddler had already moved onto his next task, which involved his computer. Wilson wasn't good with those. His brother was, though.
"Good night, Mr Nygma," said Wilson.
"Goodnight," said Riddler.
Wilson thought about what he'd said the whole way home, and when he got there he ripped off a piece of paper towel and tried to draw what Riddler had shown him. It wasn't very good, and he only had a regular grey pencil, but he remembered the general idea. He stared at it for a long time.
Riddler could see through anyone. Not just people like Wilson, but people like him. The kind nobody else could understand.
"What's that?" his brother asked, leaning over his shoulder.
"Scarecrow," said Wilson. "I saw him today."
His brother gripped his shoulder so hard he turned his head to look at him. "You saw Scarecrow?"
Wilson nodded.
"Were you scared?"
"Yeah," said Wilson.
"Where'd you see him?"
"The place my boss works."
"Your boss works for Scarecrow?"
"No," said Wilson. That was silly. "Scarecrow messed up one of the construction sites and my boss wanted to talk to him about it."
His brother stared at him. Then he whispered, "Do you work for Batman?"
Wilson shook his head.
His brother stood up. "Even if you did, he would've sworn you to secrecy," he said. "There's no way you could tell me."
He almost said, "I don't work for Batman," but decided it would be better if he just thought that. Riddler was better than Scarecrow, but he still wasn't good. So he just looked back down at the drawing again.
/
The next evening when Wilson arrived, Riddler was sitting across the bench seat next to the window. His arms were crossed and one leg was leaning up against the back. As Wilson was putting the drink down on the desk, the phone on it rang, and when he looked back over at Riddler in a panic he realised he was opening his eyes. He'd been asleep.
He wiped at his eyes, readjusted his glasses, and crossed the room to sit behind the desk. He picked the phone up, put it to his ear for a moment, and then put it down again. Then he looked up at the frozen Wilson and frowned.
"You're not working today," he said.
"Oh," said Wilson. He must have gotten mixed up from having his shifts cancelled. He went to take the hot chocolate back, but Riddler's eyes on his stopped him.
"I didn't say I didn't want it," Riddler said. Wilson swallowed and nodded and stepped back. Riddler picked up the cup and took a long drink. After a moment he said, "Would you like a promotion?"
Wilson's mouth opened but he couldn't make any sound come out.
"Aside from the tunnels you've been working on, I have a project which needs supervising," Riddler continued. Wilson shook his head.
"I'm not smart enough for that, sir."
"Firstly, that's not what I asked," said Riddler. "Secondly, I don't need you to be particularly intelligent. I simply need you to follow the instructions I provide. You have the ability to do that, so long as I write it down."
"I'm sure someone else would -"
Riddler leaned forward and somehow pinned Wilson's eyes to his own. "I am asking if you want it."
In that moment, there was nothing he could have asked that Wilson would have said no to. He nodded and Riddler sat back in his chair, nodding in satisfaction. "Excellent," he said. "I will send you the information tomorrow afternoon."
"Thank you, sir," said Wilson.
"You're welcome," said Riddler. "Goodnight."
"Good night," said Wilson, a little too eagerly, and when he looked up he expected Riddler to have some sort of rebuke for him but instead he just looked... mildly amused.
/
He started at nine the morning after their meeting, so he got up at seven-thirty. His brother shuffled into the kitchen at eight, rubbing his eyes.
"What're you doing?" he mumbled.
"I got promoted," said Wilson. "I have a new schedule."
"To supervisor?"
He nodded, and his brother smiled a little.
"Good job."
He arrived on the site at ten to nine, but Riddler did not show up until almost ten. Wilson wasn't bothered about it, but he was kind of concerned when he saw how tired Riddler looked. "Good morning, sir," he said, immediately wondering if he should have just kept quiet, but Riddler nodded at him and said, "Good morning."
He walked into the abandoned toy store in front of them without seeing if Wilson was following, which he did after a minute. Riddler led him to a ladder that disappeared into a dark basement and wordlessly started climbing down it. Wilson gave him thirty seconds and then followed.
The basement was a cavernous empty space containing just a desk with a computer in one corner. It was lit only with an arrangement of floodlights, most of which only came on once Riddler had gone further into the room. "This," Riddler said, sweeping one hand with the fingers outspread, "is to be one of my grandest undertakings yet: a factory which will build for me the finest robots I can design."
"What would you need so many robots for, Mr Nygma?" Wilson asked after Riddler left a pretty uncomfortable silence behind his words. He was also staring up at the wall as though he had forgotten Wilson was even there. He half-turned his head.
"To replace you with," he answered. Wilson opened his mouth and then closed it again.
"Robots are cheaper," Riddler went on, "more obedient, less prone to accidents or mistakes… in short, superior to human henchmen in every conceivable way. I really should have done this years ago, but no use dwelling on what-ifs."
"But… Mr Nygma," Wilson said, twisting his hands together, "would a robot make your hot chocolate just right?"
"Of course," Riddler answered without stopping to think. "How do you think chocolate is made in the first place? It's made by robots, Wilson, in great big factories just like the one I'm going to build."
"I don't want to be replaced by a robot," said Wilson. Riddler laughed.
"No need to fret, Wilson. If you were pending replacement, I would hardly have promoted you, now would I? No no no, I will not have enough Riddlerbots to replace my entire network for quite a while yet."
"Okay," said Wilson. Riddler looked back up at the wall again.
"I don't like boxes, Wilson." He removed his cigarette case and took one out and lit it. "You can do anything with them. It makes them uninteresting."
Looking around, Wilson could agree that this room was kind of box-shaped. "We could probably reshape it for you."
"No," said Riddler, tossing the end of the cigarette down and grinding it where it landed. He was wearing steel-toed shoes. "We're underneath another building. It's miracle enough this got excavated without bringing the whole thing down." He walked towards what looked like a pile of construction debris in the corner, leaning down and taking from it a cylindrical can which he started shaking. It took Wilson a moment to realise it was spray paint, though he did not use it for another minute or so. And that was when Wilson saw him do it. He started making one of those strange drawings that his properties and traps were increasingly decorated with. He did this for about twenty minutes on that one dirt wall, and then he put the hand with the can in it against his hip as the other rubbed the bottom of his face. It was as though Riddler had some private language where he told himself things through weird bright green pictures of angles and numbers and equations, dotted with doodles and sentences that seemed to be him responding to a conversation nobody was having. Wilson politely continued waiting for whatever it was he was there for.
"I nearly have it," Riddler said, and Wilson was glad he did not see him jump. "You may go home for today. When you return tomorrow I will have a list of the materials you'll need to acquire in order to get started."
"Yes, Mr Nygma," said Wilson.
/
Getting paid more was nice. Being supervisor meant he didn't have to do the dangerous jobs anymore, either, since he was… well, supervising. The part Wilson was starting not to like was that Riddler would show up at random and the way he acted sometimes was… weird.
More than once he came in and seemed very happy with the way things were going, and then his mood would shift suddenly and everything they'd done would be the total opposite of what he had asked for. He was not very nice to anybody when this happened, but especially not to Wilson because he was in charge. He was used to that kind of thing and it did not bother him too much. Some of the workers were getting scared, though. He was very carefully going down Riddler's list again to make sure everything was perfect when one of them walked up to him and whispered,
"What do we do if he snaps?"
Wilson looked in the direction of where Riddler's computer was. There were walls over there now so no one could see him, but Wilson was pretty sure he hadn't left yet. "Snaps?" repeated Wilson.
"You know what their kind does when stuff doesn't go their way." The guy's voice was even quieter than before. He looked down at the paper in his hand and thought. It took him a minute to understand what he was really talking about.
"He's not gonna kill anybody," Wilson said.
"I mean, that's one of the things he could do."
Wilson thought maybe Riddler's weirdness was rubbing off on this guy. "I don't think I ever heard of Riddler hurting someone he hired. A lot of the guys who do that kinda thing don't even bother paying you. He always does." He shrugged and tried to find his place on the list. "He's just weird, that's all. But you can quit if you want."
"No," the worker said. "This is the best gig I'm gonna get. He just used to be… calmer, y'know?"
Wilson nodded. He could agree with that.
Riddler's list was so detailed it had the exact things they were to do each day and about how long it would take for them to do them. They were allowed to finish a little early or a little late, but too much of either and he would tell them they were obviously doing something horribly wrong. The third time this happened Riddler got very angry with Wilson for being bad at his job, so Wilson made extra sure after that to pay close attention to where they were on the timetable. Especially because Riddler had been right all three times. They were done perfectly at five today, though, and Wilson had already checked everything several times but he did it one more time just in case. It was his job, after all, so he should have been more on top of it in the first place.
He was about to turn out the lights when he remembered Riddler was still there and he hesitated. He wouldn't want to be bothered, but he wouldn't want to be left in the dark either, probably. So Wilson went over to his corner and knocked.
"What," Riddler said. Wilson went inside the makeshift office to find that Riddler was lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling. There was nothing up there that Wilson could see. The floor around him was marked with one of those silhouettes that were drawn around dead bodies on crime scenes, only with neon green marker instead of white chalk.
"It's… five, Mr Nygma," said Wilson. "I was about to turn the lights off."
Riddler snapped his left arm up in front of his face, took exactly one second to look at his watch, and then stood up as though he had somewhere urgent to be. "So it is," he said. "I'll see you later." And he proceeded to walk out as though he had not just been blankly staring off into the black nothingness above them. Wilson followed him to the exit, hesitating the whole way, and then he said,
"Mr Nygma, some people are… concerned for you."
Riddler more jerked than turned his head to look around. "Which people?"
Wilson shrugged. "Just people."
"I don't pay you to gossip about me, Wilson," Riddler said, his voice dropping just enough to tell Wilson this had been a bad idea.
"I wasn't gossiping, Mr Nygma," Wilson said. "Some people just… like working for you and they hope you never do the stuff the others do."
"Like what?" Riddler asked incredulously. "What similarities between myself and my so-called ilk could you possibly have found?"
"You know, like… hurting people for not doing their job right."
Riddler snorted. "I don't do that because I'm not stupid. If I kill a man instead of firing him, he can hardly come crawling back determined to do a better job in order to prove himself worthy of my employment! Now I don't want to hear any more of this, Wilson. It's not productive."
"It won't happen again, Mr Nygma."
"That's what I like to hear," said Riddler, putting a surprisingly firm hand on Wilson's shoulder for a moment, and then he was gone.
/
Lying on the floor like that was the first weird thing Wilson saw him do, but he only got weirder.
If he was on-site Wilson was supposed to go and give him regular updates about how things were going, but a lot of the time he had to wait several minutes for Riddler to stop whatever it was he was already doing. More than once Wilson found him sitting on the floor with either a lot of papers or with the prototype robots he was working on, talking to himself under his breath. After a few weeks when he actually had one of the robots finished he started talking directly to it, and the stranger thing was it seemed to be talking back. Stranger still, he seemed to know what it was saying. Wilson did not like when the robot was on because it would look at him and not stop looking. Its eyes were just glowing green lights and they did not blink or move and it bothered him a lot. He didn't say anything about it, though. He just told Riddler what he needed to and left. One of these times the robot made a noise as he was leaving and when he glanced back at it Riddler was looking at him.
"I know," he said.
"Know what?" Wilson asked, unsure if he had missed something.
"I'm not talking to you," said Riddler, frowning. Wilson looked at the robot. It stared at him. He slowly continued his exit as the robot beeped again, and Riddler said, "That's why I gave him this job."
Wilson went home that night and asked his brother if understanding something that only talked by beeping was possible, and his brother looked at him like he had said something really crazy. "You know somebody who has robots?" his brother asked.
"My boss has some," said Wilson. His brother put down the pencil he was using to do his homework.
"I thought you had a construction job."
"I do."
"If your boss has robots, why aren't they doing the work?"
"I don't think they're construction robots," Wilson answered, and he went to take a shower before he had to do the next part of his job.
He was still Riddler's hot chocolate guy, which he was happy about because he genuinely liked doing it. The part he didn't like were the days when he went into Riddler's office and he was acting even weirder than he had earlier in the factory. Wilson, who had seen what it looked like a lot through his years in construction, was pretty sure Riddler was even on cocaine some nights. It bothered Wilson even more than it did when the people he worked right next to were doing it, especially the week when it seemed to happen three days in a row. He didn't like that. He really, really didn't like it.
When Wilson arrived on the site at eight-thirty the next morning, Riddler was already there. He was sitting on the bridge, one leg folded flat and the other bent with his right arm draped overtop. It was the first time Wilson had seen him in something other than a suit. He still had on a dress shirt, but he was also wearing carpenter's pants. It was a bit of a strange combination, though he probably didn't care about that. Wilson crouched down next to him. He looked a lot better than he had the past few days. He tried to look to make sure, but it was hard to do at this angle. He must have done a terrible job because Riddler turned his head and snapped, "Yes?"
"Just checking if you're…" What was he supposed to say? He couldn't accuse his boss of being on drugs. That would be really stupid, even for Wilson. "You've been… you've been different for a few days, that's all."
Riddler rolled his eyes and took out a cigarette. "Don't be one of those people, Wilson," he said, lighting it and putting it into his mouth.
"Which people, Mr Nygma?"
Riddler had already burned through half the cigarette. "The ones who can excuse murder, mayhem, and other miscellaneous misdeeds, but draw the line at drug use. Honestly, Wilson. It's the cocaine that bothers you and not the kidnapping, or the blackmail, or the profound invasion of privacy?"
"I've never seen you do those other things," said Wilson, and Riddler whipped the index finger of his free hand up between them.
"There you go! You're doing it. You're doing the precise thing I told you not to do." He pitched the end of the cigarette over the catwalk. "In the future I'd appreciate you keeping your disapproval to yourself. I don't care and all you're going to do is irritate me. And that is not something you want to be doing."
"I'm sorry, sir," mumbled Wilson.
"Do it again and you will be." He frowned at the skeleton of the factory below them. "You have more important things to be focusing on," he said. "Such as the fact that you have four months to complete this factory."
"We will, sir."
"If you continue sticking closely to the timetables I have provided, you will be finished exactly when I need you to be." He tapped the edge of the catwalk with the side of his thumb. "I have a great deal of other things to do and so I have not yet narrowed down the ideal robot configurations. The AI, however, is nearly finished."
"Oh," said Wilson politely, unsure if Riddler was still talking to him or not. Riddler shook his head.
"You have never done anything another person has not told you to do, have you, Wilson."
"It's better that I don't, Mr Nygma."
"Is it?" said Riddler, standing up suddenly. Wilson looked up at him but did not have the chance to ask what he meant because he had already walked too far away. He looked at his watch. It was ten to nine. Some of the workers were there, getting ready to begin. He sat and watched them until he had to go down.
Riddler's 'is it?' echoed in his mind all day. He couldn't make himself understand the question. His job was to do what Riddler asked exactly, wasn't it? But Riddler seemed a little dissatisfied with that. As though he had expected Wilson to have done something else by now. He didn't know what, but something.
Riddler was still there when it was time to close up, so Wilson went to let him know. He was sitting on the floor with his legs straight and his back against the wall. He had a pencil between his second and third fingers and was tapping the end of it very loudly against the floor as he stared at the wall opposite him. Wilson waited politely for him to finish, but he didn't. "Mr Nygma?" he said tentatively.
"I know," said Riddler. "Good night."
"Do you… want me to leave the lights on?"
Now Riddler did stop his tapping, but he was staring at Wilson instead which was much, much worse. "Wilson," he said finally, his voice fairly dripping with disappointment, "if you were me would you want to sit here in the dark?"
"I don't know," Wilson answered truthfully.
Riddler sighed and looked away. "Yes, leave them on," he said. Wilson nodded and turned around.
"Actually, no." He resumed the tapping. "Turn them off."
Wilson went as far as the doorway, where he hesitated. Then he looked over his shoulder and said, "That's why I asked, Mr Nygma."
"I'm merely willing to try new things to procure results, Wilson," Riddler said. "I don't make a habit of sitting around in the dark. Who would?"
Wilson decided it was better not to answer that.
The things Wilson saw Riddler do over the course of the next few weeks included hunching over a pile of half-finished trophies while several robots crowded him like attention-starved cats, staring up at a leaking pipe for a really long time while twirling the wrench he was probably supposed to fix it with around and around from one hand to the other, ranting to someone on the phone about a Riddlermobile he insisted was actually real, going nuts over some tiny little thing and berating them for being ignorant dolts and then turning around and telling them they were doing a fantastic job and he was very happy with them, talking to the robots as though they were his children and he was their very patient and caring father, and covering piles of paper with hundreds of drawings of question marks in all styles and shapes and sizes but always the same colour. He was… getting a little scary, honestly. Wilson had never met anyone whose behaviour made as little sense as Riddler's did. What was worse was he didn't seem to realise any of what he was doing was weird. If he caught anyone looking at him funny he would act as though they were being weird. And that was the frightening part. That this person he had always thought was a little eccentric was actually just as crazy as all the people he said he was better than. Wilson wasn't sure he wanted to know just what it was that kept him holding together. He definitely didn't want to know what happened if Riddler lost that thing.
Wilson took longer than he should have to make the drink that night because when he had come in he had heard Riddler yelling at someone on the phone. He was about five minutes late when he got to the office, where he found Riddler facedown on the desk with his wrists crossed over the back of his head. Wilson couldn't tell if he were asleep or not. He walked over as quietly as he could and put the drink down where it belonged, and that was when he noticed Riddler was not wearing gloves. His hands were dry and cracked and spotted with what looked to be open sores. It looked like the gloves were not just part of the costume after all. They were… something worse that he didn't want to know anything more about.
Once he had gotten to the doorway he chanced another look behind him to find that Riddler had already pressed the cup between both hands so hard that fact was clearly visible even from where he was standing. The way his mussed hair had fallen over his forehead kept Wilson from seeing whatever expression he was staring into the drink with.
Wilson no longer wanted to know what it meant to him.
/
Riddler did not come down to the factory that day, or the next day, or the next. No one Wilson knew saw him for weeks and he was not in his office during any of the nights Wilson went up there. He did appear on a Monday afternoon some time later, but not long enough for Wilson to come across him. "What did he say?" he asked the guy that had. He shrugged and squinted up into the conveyor. It was almost finished.
"Didn't say anything. Just looked around and left."
That wasn't like him.
Or maybe it was, Wilson was forced to think as he stood in the doorway of Riddler's office that evening. Maybe this was him, and he had just been very good at hiding it before now.
Riddler had pushed over his desk and his drafting table and his chair, and the floor was covered with all the papers and pencils that had been so neatly organised on top of them. His monitor had barely escaped being crushed by the desk. The lamp had been flung into the wall behind it and one of the drawers was lodged at an angle into the one in front, the contents half-spilled. Nearly every available surface was covered all over with the same indecipherable scribbles as his construction sites, and Riddler himself was standing with his forehead pressed against the window. He appeared to be staring blankly at the city spread out below him, but Wilson couldn't be sure. After a minute he slowly picked his was around Riddler's things to wait quietly until he was noticed. Riddler must have seen his reflection in the glass because he jerked his head up almost immediately after he stopped. When he turned around Wilson held out the hot chocolate because he didn't know what else to do.
Riddler's glasses had been shoved up into his hair, which looked as though it hadn't seen a comb in a few days. His jaw was dark with stubble and Wilson was shocked at how thin his face seemed to have become. And he looked tired, so very tired, as though he had not slept in all the time since Wilson had seen him last.
He had made a mistake by coming in when he had seen the state of the office. He should have turned around and gone home.
Riddler looked down at the cup and a look Wilson had never seen before on anyone crossed his face. It was like… like he felt lost but also knew exactly where he was at the same time and that it was not a good place at all, and while Wilson was trying to figure out what that meant Riddler took the cup in one sharp movement and whipped it against the wall. Wilson jumped as the mug shattered and if he had not been otherwise frozen to the floor he would have stumbled back to where the desk lay behind him. But Riddler did not touch him or say anything or even acknowledge him any further. He just pushed his hands into his pockets and left. Wilson stared after him.
The worker from that one evening had almost been right. Riddler wasn't snapping. He was collapsing. Some deep-down part of him was broken and it was breaking everything else from the inside out. Wilson looked at the mess he had left behind and thought and thought. Then he went over to the desk and tilted it back upright.
/
He was not supposed to work the next two days, but he did. He worked all day and all night, doing all of the specified tasks that he could do alone, and then he spent his scheduled shift getting his employees to finish what Riddler had said was most important. He did not go home until it was time to do the other part of his job. He hoped Riddler would be in today.
He was. He was smoking, and by the looks of it had been for a while. The ends that he had stabbed into the ashtray were still hot. He was reading a piece of paper he had tilted towards him with both hands. Wilson had wanted him to be here so he could say it personally, but now that the time had come he wasn't sure he could.
"What is it, Wilson," Riddler said, but without his usual impatience. He sounded almost as tired as he looked. Wilson put the hot chocolate down.
"Mr Nygma," he said, putting his shaking hands behind him, "I need to quit."
Riddler lowered the paper. "Quit," he repeated, as though to confirm he had been listening.
"Yes, sir."
He took a minute to finish the cigarette and put it out. "It's customary to provide a reason," he said finally. Wilson did not want to give it to him. But he'd asked.
"I liked working for you better when I didn't know you."
Riddler's gaze was even. "You still don't," he said, "but very well. I accept your resignation."
"I'm sorry," he said. "I made sure all the important stuff was done for the factory. The other supervisor will be able to –"
"Did your brother ever tell you what he wrote on that card?" Riddler interrupted. Wilson shook his head. Riddler removed it from one of the desk drawers and held it out to him with two fingers. He took it and opened it.
Thank you for taking care of my brother.
Wilson's throat closed entirely.
"When the river freezes over, sometimes I like to go skating," Riddler continued, holding his hand out for the card. "Your brother was there the third time I went last year. His friends wanted to get hot chocolate from one of the stands along the river, but he scoffed and said he couldn't drink that crap. That his brother could do it better and from scratch. The kids he was with laughed and said some choice things about you, but your brother was strangely insistent. After he had returned his skates to the rental booth, I went to talk to him."
Wilson couldn't move.
"I inquired about his claims and he was again quite insistent that you were as good as he claimed," Riddler went on, running his index finger around the rim of the cup. He looked up at Wilson. "He said it was the only thing left you remembered how to do. That you'd once done a lot of things, and very well too, but your father had beaten it all out of you."
He didn't know what to say about that.
"Make no mistake," Riddler said, "I don't pity you. It merely reminded me of someone."
"I don't want to be pitied, Mr Nygma," said Wilson, more firmly than he'd ever spoken to him before, and Riddler actually smiled.
"I know," he said. "Which is why I will offer you one last thing."
Wilson waited.
"On the thirty-first," Riddler told him, hands folded together on the desktop, "Gotham City will be at some point blanketed in fear toxin. Everyone will attempt to get off the island, but that won't be far enough. Scarecrow has a quantity sufficient to cover most, if not all, of the eastern seaboard. The only true safe places will be underground. Take your brother to the tunnel we vacated some months ago. Wait there for a few days. Keep the radio on and listen for the inevitable anti-toxin to crop up. There will be nothing to worry about after that."
Wilson couldn't speak.
"Now go home," Riddler said, "and don't forget."
/
Wilson sat on the couch in the living room and watched the silent flickering of the TV. When his brother came in and locked the front door he said, "You lied to him."
His brother slowly put his backpack down on the edge of the couch. "Lied to who?"
"I was never smart," said Wilson. "And Dad never beat me, either."
His brother sat down on the arm of the couch. "You were gonna end up working for one of them anyway. At least it was the one who treated you the least like shit. If you'd had to work for one of the others you'd be dead."
"You shouldn't have lied."
His brother threw up his arms. "I had to! If I'd told him, 'Hey, guy who thinks he's the smartest man alive, you wanna hire my dumb brother?' do you really think you'd have a job right now?"
Wilson looked at him and his face fell. He came around the couch and sat down next to Wilson. "Look, I didn't mean that," he said. Wilson got up.
"Dad never would've touched me," he said. "He'd be disappointed about what you said."
"He'd be disappointed that you work for a supervillain!" his brother shouted. "But what were we supposed to do? Just starve until I'm old enough to get a job?"
"I don't work for him anymore," Wilson said. His brother stared at him.
"What?"
"I quit."
"Wilson…" His brother sighed and looked over at the TV. "So what're we going to do now?"
"I don't know." He went over to the bedroom and sat down on the bed. "I'm going to tell him."
"You can't!" his brother shouted. "Who knows what he'll do if you tell him the truth!"
"I'm going to tell him," Wilson repeated, and his brother tried for a long time to convince him not to but he stopped listening.
/
He wanted to do it right away, but the thirty-first was only three days from then and surely Riddler had a lot to do in the meantime. So on the thirtieth he took his brother and some supplies down to the abandoned tunnel to wait. He remembered there was a better radio than one they had at home so he didn't bring it.
Everything was exactly as it had been before. Even the generator was still there, which meant they could use the space heater. Wilson set everything up while his brother wandered around the space, and when he looked up to see where he was he had to call for him to stop.
"What?" asked his brother.
"There's a gas leak over there," Wilson said. His brother stared down the dark part of the tunnel.
"Should we be here if there's a gas leak?"
"He said it's safe."
His brother rolled his eyes. "I guess if Riddler says something is safe, it's safe."
"Riddler follows OSHA," said Wilson. His brother frowned.
"He does not."
"Yeah he does." He tilted back the radio and thought about what station he should put it on. "The guys don't usually use the stuff if they don't have to but he always has it there."
His brother sat down next to him. "Does he use that stuff?"
Wilson put the radio down. "He doesn't pay me to gossip about him."
"You don't even work for him anymore."
"That doesn't mean I should."
His brother sighed. "Will you at least tell me if he ever had you make the hot chocolate? I've been dying to know." When Wilson didn't answer he lay down on his back and crossed his arms. "What in the world did he do to make you so loyal, Wilson?"
He just continued what he was doing with the radio.
"He must have been the best damn boss in the whole world."
"You shouldn't swear," said Wilson.
/
On the thirty-first all the local stations on the radio talked of the end of Gotham.
It started with news reports of Scarecrow's warning. Of the police ushering as many people as they could off the island to save them from his plot. "Why are we staying down here?" hissed his brother. "Why didn't we just leave?"
"He said Scarecrow had a lot of fear toxin," said Wilson. "He said we wouldn't be able to go far enough."
They kept listening as the city above them descended into chaos, and the longer they listened the worse it got. Scarecrow was working with someone called the Arkham Knight, who had brought an elite army with him to enforce his demands. All the other supervillains were out this night as well, including Riddler and his robots of course, and Wilson was honestly having a hard time keeping track of what was going on just from listening. That was, until everything went silent. Wilson and his brother looked at each other. His brother reached over and slowly turned the dial through the presets, but all of them played only silence.
Then the screaming started.
It was unlike anything Wilson had ever heard before. It was like everyone within range of the microphone was having their worst fears come to life all at the same time, and as they sat there it somehow got worse. People began shouting at each other over the sound of breaking glass and the wail of car alarms, and after the second sickening crack Wilson's brother leaned over and turned the radio off. He looked up at the rough dirt ceiling of the tunnel.
"How did you know you could trust him?"
"He's not a good person," Wilson said. "But he was good to me."
His brother crossed his legs and rubbed at the toes of his sneakers with his thumbs. Wilson got into his sleeping bag. He stared at the space heater and thought about Riddler standing with his forehead to the window with the destruction of his office spread across the floor behind him and hoped that he had taken his own advice.
/
They returned aboveground on the second of November, but even then they could tell that Gotham was never going to be the same. Batman was gone, replaced by someone worse. The streets were littered with the effects of the fear toxin and everyone was jittery and suspicious. Their apartment was okay, though. Wilson cleaned himself up and when he put his shoes on his brother asked where he was going.
"I have to tell him," Wilson said. His brother stared at him in disbelief.
"You're gonna do that now? Wilson, you saw how people are out there. Give things a few days to calm down!"
But Wilson just opened the door and left.
He knew Riddler was still being held at the GCPD from asking a couple of his former coworkers. The city was working on allotting some building for those kinds of people because it was a high priority to keep them off the street and out of the overcrowded police station, but they also had to deal with a whole lot of still-anxious citizens who did not want supervillains in their backyards. Wilson thought they could probably put them where Wayne Manor had been. It wasn't as though he would be coming back to use that place.
Once inside the station, the tired-looking officer asked him what he wanted.
"I'm here to see Riddler," he said.
"… you're here to see Riddler?" the man repeated incredulously. Wilson nodded.
"He's over there," the officer said, pointing vaguely behind him at the holding cells, "but uh… I don't think he's in the mood for visitors."
"That's okay," said Wilson.
Riddler was around the corner, scribbling steadily on the wall with what looked to be a chip of stone. Wilson couldn't read any of it. He couldn't tell if it was even supposed to be legible. He walked towards him, intending to tell him the truth at last, but Riddler seemed so involved in whatever he was writing Wilson hesitated in bothering him. But he wouldn't be able to stay here for very long, so after a minute or so he said tentatively, "Mr Nygma?"
When Riddler looked up at him he realised his brother had been right. He should have waited. He didn't know if Riddler had been caught up in the fear toxin or if something else about that night had gotten to him or if being in jail had snapped the one thread he had left holding him to reality, but his eyes were dead. There was nothing behind them. He'd gone empty inside, just like Scarecrow.
"What?" Riddler snapped, and it took Wilson a minute to realise he didn't recognise him. He stepped back.
"I'm sorry," he said, so quietly he barely heard himself.
"You should be," said Riddler. "Don't you know who I am?"
Wilson shook his head and Riddler rolled his eyes and went back to whatever he was scribbling on the wall. Wilson was suddenly afraid that it really didn't mean anything at all.
"What did he say?" his brother asked when he got home. Wilson shook his head.
"You don't need to feel bad for him!" his brother insisted. "You don't need to feel bad for anyone like him!"
"Shut up," said Wilson. His brother stared at him like he'd gone crazy.
"What?"
"I said shut up," repeated Wilson. "He's the only reason you're alive right now. He paid for all your hospital bills."
His brother's eyes went a little wider.
"I didn't ask him to and he didn't tell me he did it," said Wilson. "He just did. I know he's not a nice person. But the real dumb thing would be pretending what he did has nothing to do with why we're doing okay now." And he hung up his coat and went to his room and sat on his bed for a while.
That evening he went to Riddler's office with the hot chocolate even though he knew he wasn't coming and Wilson wasn't supposed to be there anyway, and after he'd set it on the desk he went over to the window and looked outside. The lines on the window were gone, but he could still sort of see them if he squinted and imagined really hard.
Riddler was a strange man. The way he spent his time and energy was definitely weird, and some of the things he'd done were absolutely horrible. But he'd been good to Wilson. He'd done things for him he hadn't needed to. And he hadn't gotten much more out of it than Wilson's loyalty, which he probably didn't even know he had, if he even cared about it. But Wilson couldn't be the only one he'd been good to. There had to be others. Other people he'd helped for no reason other than that he'd felt like it. Other people's hospital bills, or tuition, or rent, even. He didn't do it out of kindness, that Wilson was sure of. But it was as close to it as a man like that got. A supervillain had done more for Wilson and his brother than anyone else ever had. It was a strange thought, but it was solely because of Riddler that Wilson's life had gotten any better.
He would wait a few days and then go see him again. If he were the same, Wilson would give up.
/
He ended up having to wait three weeks. That was when they were finished moving all the people they used to put in the Asylum into what had once been a rundown retirement home. They'd brought some people in from outside the city to retrofit it with the kind of stuff needed to keep a supervillain from just walking out once they were brought in and they had been moved in there two days ago. He wasn't allowed to drop in on the first day so he made an appointment for the second instead.
"Over there," said the receptionist when he got there, pointing in the direction of one of the farthest tables in the rec room, and Wilson nodded and walked over to it. Riddler, bent over an upside-down crossword and chewing very hard on the lid of his pen, did not look up immediately.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"Are you feeling better, Mr Nygma?" asked Wilson, because he had rehearsed it.
"Yes," Riddler answered. "They kept injecting me with some infernal medication. My lawyer was able to force them to stop."
Wilson sat down and offered him the thermos he had brought. Riddler smiled the same genuine way he had when Wilson had come back from being dismissed all those months ago. "It might be cold," Wilson said. "They were asking me a lot of questions."
"It is guaranteed to be better than the swill they serve here," said Riddler, accepting it and unscrewing the lid. "As much as I appreciate this, there must be some other reason you've come."
"Yeah," said Wilson. "I have to tell you something."
"Proceed," Riddler said, taking a drink.
"My brother lied to you."
"Oh, that." He put the thermos down and went back to filling the crossword in upside-down. "I know."
"You… did?"
He nodded. "He's not the first one to attempt winning me over with my own backstory, but he was the youngest. I just wanted to know if you were in on it."
Wilson shook his head.
"I didn't think so," Riddler said. "I simply wanted to be sure."
"I liked working for you, Mr Nygma."
Riddler drummed the fingers of his free hand on the table, then tore off a corner of the crossword and wrote something on it. He folded it over once and slid it over to Wilson. "I'm obviously short on work at the moment," he said, "but she should have some for you. She won't pay as much as I did, but she does have a legitimate business which tends to look much better on ones' resume. Tell her I sent you. She owes me a favour."
Wilson took the paper and put it into his pocket. "Thank you, Mr Nygma."
"Thank you for your honesty," Riddler said, and when their eyes met it was the first time Wilson did not feel intimidated.
A few minutes later some staff appeared and started gathering the inmates to send them back to their cells, though Riddler didn't seem to notice. He just continued filling in the crossword while taking occasional drinks from the thermos. A man with a hook in place of one of his hands came over and put it rather roughly on top of Riddler's left shoulder.
"Time to go, Nygma."
"Careful, Cash," Riddler said calmly, writing in letters for the last blank squares. "You do recall what happened the last time you manhandled me, don't you?"
"Your lawyer's due for a loss," Cash said. "Let's go."
"Fine, fine." He stood up, and Wilson did as well because he didn't know what he was supposed to do. Riddler held his hand out towards Wilson, who took it confusedly. It looked a lot better than it had before and Riddler's fingers around his hand were firm and strong. "I'll see you later."
"Of course, Mr Nygma," Wilson said. Riddler was looking him in the eye again.
"Edward," he corrected, and let go.
"Enough dawdling, Edward," Cash snapped, and… Edward walked in front of him, letting the pen fall from his fingers. Cash took three steps forward and slipped. Edward's glance behind him was very quick, but the self-satisfied smirk on his face was clearly there. Cash looked up as Wilson as he got back to his feet.
"You like this guy?" he demanded, gesturing towards Edward with his hook. Wilson shrugged.
Cash shook his head and walked after the rest of the straggling inmates, and Wilson picked up the thermos and left the Asylum. He pulled the slip of paper out of his pocket and looked at it.
"He's a good boss," he said to himself, and he went home to call the number on the paper.