12. The Surveillance

At ten he got up, made himself tea, and put the pill on the table in front of him. He might be crazy. That was looking increasingly possible. His immediate inclination was, of course, to deny it. How could a mind such as his be broken? But he'd already established that was the case. He had OCD. OCD that, if he allowed it, would control his life. To take control over it, and therefore whatever else was currently causing his life to grind to a halt, he had to admit to it.

Besides. It wasn't even his fault! He hadn't given himself these problems. They were the result of his genetics and the environment he had been raised in! He had no control over either of those things! It wasn't really fair that he was stuck at the intersection of sub-par DNA and suboptimal parenting.

No no no, he was much too old to wallow in that kind of thinking. The more time he spent in denial, the less time he had to enjoy his recovery. He nodded and took a drink. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all. But it also wasn't fair to put himself under the insane pressure he had all these years, somehow expecting himself to be able to, by sheer force of will, correct the very electrical impulses of his brain. Why, that would be akin to asking himself to simply turn off his unparalleled intellect! He saw everything clearly now. He needed to provide himself the tools to succeed and for years he had instead been discarding them. Beginning with the schedule that had once kept everything so manageable and ending with…

… the friends he had convinced himself he didn't need.

He folded his hands around his cup. Now that he was taking a moment to think it over, a life devoid of any friends at all seemed… bleak. He didn't need them. Of course not. He would do just fine without –

No. He wouldn't. He wasn't doing just fine now and he hadn't been for years. Probably… ever. Even as a teenager, the OCD had always been an uphill battle and it would have been so much easier if he had simply told someone. It would be easier right now! Getting help didn't mean he had failed, it only meant…

Nothing. It didn't mean anything. 'Help' was just one of the tools he had always denied himself the use of. No more, no less. Perhaps because it would mean reciprocation on his part, but he could examine that later. At this juncture he needed to focus on getting himself to use said tool. Even thinking about doing such a thing rankled him, but he was going to have to get used to it. He could not do it by himself. That had become very clear.

… he'd never even told his father about the OCD. He'd just… expected him to notice. But what on Earth could he even have done about it? Edward had simply gone to Google with the question, but his father –

Good lord. Was he sympathising with his father? This really was confirmation that he was crazy.

He was nine and waiting for his dad to come and say goodnight. He wasn't always home in time to do that, but Edward was allowed to stay up and wait if he was coming back near Edward's bedtime. He knew it was near then, but not what time it actually was. His dad had taken his clock away last week. He had said it was because when he came home very late Edward was still awake. When he had tried to explain it was because he had to look at the clock at the right time or he couldn't go to sleep, his father had looked at him for a very long time and then unplugged it. That meant Edward wasn't able to get himself up for school because he had no alarm to set and he didn't like that. He wanted to do it himself! But it meant that his dad had to get him up, and to do that his dad would sit on the edge of his bed and put a hand on his shoulder and say his name very softly in his ear, and he liked that so much he almost didn't want his clock back.

His dad came in a few minutes later, looking very tired and not very happy, but he always looked like that. He moved over so his dad would fit on the side of his bed, and when he had he handed Edward a little box that was tall and thin. "Ton nouvelle horloge," he said, and Edward looked up at him in surprise. He was getting a new clock? He took the lid off to find a watch laid out inside, but the weird thing was that there were no numbers on it. Just two hands. The excitement he'd felt drained out of him. What was he supposed to do with this? Especially when it was dark?

"Cette montre est spéciale," his father said. "Elle brille dans le noir."

It glowed in the dark?! That was way better than his old clock.

"Pour ta chambre," his father told him. "Pas pour l'école."

He really wanted to take it to school, but he already knew if he brought something there and it didn't come back home, his dad would not replace it. "D'accord!" he said, putting the watch aside so he could throw his arms as far as he could around his dad's waist. His dad didn't hug him back, but he usually didn't. He usually did what he was doing right now, which was put his arm behind Edward's shoulders and squeeze them a couple of times. It was disappointing when he got up only a few seconds later, but he was supposed to be sleeping. "Merci, papa!" he said, putting the box on his bedside table and picking up the watch again. "Bonne nuit!"

"Je t'en prie," his dad said, turning off the light. "Bonne nuit."

And all there was once his eyes had adjusted were the two glowing green hands hovering there in front of him in the dark.

So much had been unearthed in that single memory he was unsure of how he was going to process it. He had always thought the Rubik's cube had spurred his love of the colour green, but had it been the watch instead? The watch, which he had kept underneath his pillow every day thereafter. He'd forgotten to take it when he'd left home. He'd put it out of his mind when he had resolved to stop thinking about anything that pertained to his former life. Put it so far out of his mind, in fact, that it seemed he had erroneously decided he had started showing symptoms of OCD at fourteen. He remembered it now. He couldn't go to sleep if the clock did not show an odd number. If it was even he had to keep checking until it wasn't. But if it was right he had to check again in a few minutes to be sure, and it had gone on for hours and hours until his father had come home and looked in on him. And then he had solved the problem by giving Edward a watch with no face.

What else had he simply decided not to remember?

That wasn't my fault.

No, it hadn't been. But it did mean that the way he had been assessing his life was now in question. His mind had revealed to him that his father had not been a brainless, drooling thug after all. He had actually been rather intelligent and some things had simply… drowned the rest of it out. The unnerving thing was, he had no idea what 'the rest of it' even entailed. The abuse he remembered quite well and always had, but… the normality, even the kindnesses in between? Where had all of that gone?

Well, remembering would have gotten in the way of your narrative, wouldn't it?

All right. That was enough introspection. He got up and put his cup in the sink, upside down. He had to go out and since he had no idea how much time that was going to take, he had better start now. Especially since he had yet to take that stupid pill.

His destination, once everything else had been taken care of, was a nearby office supply store. He needed to acquire himself a few of the biggest whiteboards they had. It was basically the same idea as writing on the walls, but since that hadn't even really accomplished anything he would try a different line of action.

Getting through the store was… moderately difficult. The entrance was not too bad because he was able to simply fix his eyes on the row of laptops on display and focus intently on them. To the opposite side of this, however, was where the aisles began with a large selection of cases and screen protectors for various electronic devices, and those proved a lot harder. There were a lot of them. Too many of them, in his opinion. And he felt the nearly magnetic draw to look and count all of them, because if he didn't something was going to happen that he wouldn't much like. He didn't know what, but something. Telling himself that was stupid did not prove effective, so what he instead had to opt for was taking his glasses off. Everything within forty centimetres became blurry and impossible to count. The aisles were a little wider than forty centimetres, but he made it work. As far as imperfect solutions were, it really wasn't too bad. He couldn't dawdle, though. Intentionally making his vision difficult to use was making both his eyes and his head hurt.

Back at the apartment he began the laborious task of interpreting what he'd written on the walls into something that would make sense on the whiteboards. The way those notes worked was sometimes very… particular. Their meaning could be tied to their location on the wall, or their proximity to another note, or they might have something to do with the time an adjacent jotting had been written, and really, this was such a chaotic and nonsensical system he was baffled as to why he'd ever adopted it. A lot of this could only have made sense to… well, a crazy person. And not even them, apparently.

The schedule would have to wait until he had sorted all of that out, but he had a general idea of what he needed to be doing and when anyway. He really could have used a numberless watch with glow-in-the-dark hands right about now. Did his father still have it? Did his father still have any of his things? Had he kept it all in case Edward came back for it, or had he declared Edward as good as dead and thrown it all away? He would never have described his father as a sentimental man, but it was becoming increasingly evident there was a great deal about him that Edward had put out of his mind. Perhaps he had kept it. Perhaps he'd left Edward's room untouched until the day he himself had left that house. Or perhaps he had burned it all in the backyard and invited all his friends over to watch.

It didn't matter. That had all been a long time ago and he was perfectly capable of acquiring himself a similar watch, if he so decided. Right now he needed to at least write these notes from the desk someplace else so that he could clean it, and that was largely what he focused on for the rest of the day.

He had decided that there was a possibility he would overhear something of use from Barbara, so he mentally noted for his future schedule that he would go to bed by two am. She was mostly active between eleven and four, but four was much too late. He noticed immediately that she sounded overworked. Frustrated, even. It really was a shame she'd shackled herself to lesser men. She could probably have accomplished a great deal more if she hadn't committed herself to babysitting them all night.

You have some time. Why don't you give her a hand?

"Help her?"

It'll take you about thirty seconds. And you'll have one on her for later.

Those were some pretty compelling reasons. All right, he'd disable these cameras for her and then return to getting this distracting graffiti off his desk.

"Great, they're off," said Drake. "Thanks. Catch you in a bit."

"They're – Tim. I didn't –"

He smiled to himself. That had been worth it.

In fact, it was so amusing he kept doing it for the remainder of that week. Lights went out, doors opened, alarms were set off or disabled and she even received a couple of convenient emails. He'd been cleaning up one last bit of wall before turning in for the night when she said, "Edward."

He was a little disappointed she'd figured it out. It wouldn't be nearly as fun if she knew about it. He turned on his microphone and said, "May I help you?"

"You already have. A lot. Thank you."

A sharp and witty reply was on his lips when he realised she had called him Edward. Not Riddler, not Nygma. Edward. This indicated a shift in her perception of him. One for the better, perhaps. He really did need to work on fostering more positive relationships with others and, while what he wanted to say would absolutely be terribly amusing for him, she would just find it exasperating. A sign that changing her mind about him, even a little, had been foolish. So instead he would just say…

"You're welcome."

"While I have you," she said, "I wanted to apologise."

He put down his sponge and pondered the faded marks on the wall. Her kind never apologised to people like him. She really must have found him helpful.

"About your son," she clarified, and everything seemed to drain out of him suddenly, leaving him with just an empty space that was also inexplicably heavy. He moved to sit on the edge of the desk.

"In my defense, you did lead me to believe he was a per – a human boy. I should maybe have guessed he was the robot. Either way, that's not something a parent should ever see and I'm sorry it happened to you."

He folded his hands together because he didn't know what to do with them. "Thank you," he said quietly. At least, he thought that was what he was expected to say. It was nice of her, it truly was, but this was really not something –

"What was his name?"

"Alan." Breathing had gotten a little harder. He'd managed not to smoke all day but now he needed to. Urgently. "Why do you ask?"

"Do people not usually ask you about your kids?"

He shrugged. "I don't tell people about them."

"Because they're robots?"

"Something like that."

"What's your daughter's name?"

"Ada." He almost felt as though he shouldn't be saying it. As though he had forfeited the privilege of being her father.

"How is she?"

"She's…"

"She's what?" Barbara prompted after he failed to follow that up with absolutely anything. He took as deep a breath as he thought he could without having to cough. He did not quite avoid triggering the pulling sensation in the back of his throat and had to make a deliberate attempt to force it back.

"It's very personal. I'm sure you don't want to hear about it."

"If I didn't, I wouldn't be asking."

He contemplated the floor between his feet. His first instinct was, of course, to tell her to mind her own business. And that instinct was stupid. He needed to take advantage of her interest in him. Not simply in the interest of his interpersonal relations, but because if he did not develop the ability to tell people things that mattered, he wasn't going to have anybody to talk to very soon. He didn't even have to tell her in person like he would have to with the others. He never had to see her or even speak to her again if he so chose. He needed to take this as the opportunity it was.

Still. It was hard. "She's upset with me," was all he managed to say. He correctly predicted her next question of, "For what?", but breaking it up even that little bit was helpful.

"I lied to her about what happened to her brother."

"Okay. What did you do next?"

"I left."

"You left?"

"She said she didn't want to love me anymore and walked away!" he protested, nearly falling off the desk with the force he used throwing up his hands. "What was I supposed to do?"

Barbara sighed. "First of all, never give anybody else parenting advice. Ever. Second of all, kids say that kind of stuff all the time. You don't take it seriously. You give them some time and then talk to them about what they're really upset about."

"I already know what she's upset about." This was going nowhere.

"No, you don't," said Barbara. His grip was tight against the edge of the desk.

"And I suppose you do?"

"Yeah. She's upset you betrayed her trust. You know how hard that is for a kid? To have that first real realisation that their parent can hurt them? It's scary."

He couldn't remember having such a revelation. As though it had happened before he could remember it.

"Unless you're as big of a jerk to her as you are to everyone else, she didn't mean what she said. You walking away probably made it worse. And she's gonna figure out that the reason you're leaving her wherever she is is because her existence is inconvenient to you right now."

His teeth were grinding hard against the side of his tongue and it took a concerted effort to stop them. "She's better off where she is anyway."

"She doesn't think that. You scared her. She wants you to fix it."

"You know a lot about her for someone who hasn't even met her." Being snippy didn't do anything to alleviate the crushing suspicion that she was right.

"I know what it's like to be the daughter of someone who's trying his best," Barbara said. "You're not. Or maybe this is your best, in which case you need to start trying harder, and fast."

Some deep ache had spawned in his chest.

"No, I don't know her," Barbara continued. "But I do know kids want to feel safe and secure with their parents. You took that away. You need to give it back."

He didn't know how.

"Where is she?"

"With the remnants of my Riddlerbots," he answered.

"They're not all your kids, I hope."

"No. Ada and Alan are… special." The urge to end the conversation by being confrontational was very strong. He twisted behind him to pick up the sponge to take to the kitchen. A dark rectangle dampened the desk where it had been.

"I am trying to help you out here," Barbara said, "but I don't have a lot to go off of. For a guy who has so many people working for him, information about you is surprisingly scarce."

Having reached the kitchen sink, he waved his left hand in front of the sensor and held the sponge beneath the activated faucet. "Why would you be trying to help me?"

"You're going to all this trouble to return to your original life, whatever that was. If you're done being a criminal, I'm all for it. Especially if your intention is to focus on being a dad."

He squeezed the sponge and watched as the water forced itself through the cracks between his fingers. The purple latex gloves were uncomfortable, but they were better than the traditional rubber ones. They'd done the job of keeping his hands clean.

"I hate to say it, but she probably is better off where she is," Barbara was saying. "You haven't been doing a great job of taking care of yourself lately."

He had graduated to crushing the sponge. If he did that, he wouldn't say what he wanted to say. He wasn't the Riddler anymore. He could no longer simply berate those who said things he didn't like and demand they do better next time. Particularly when they were telling him something he already knew.

I don't have to be happy that she knows.

Everybody knows! They've seen you!

"She's safe," he said. His grip on the sponge did not manage to remove the tension from his voice. "That's what matters, isn't it?"

"Look," Barbara said. "If you're serious about retiring, we don't have to be on opposite sides. I'm not gathering intel to get your kid taken away from you. If I even knew how to do that when the kid is a robot."

"As though I would allow that!" he snapped. She sighed as though she were explaining a basic concept for the nth time to someone who simply could not grasp it and he had to force himself to put down the sponge and concentrate on taking a breath.

"That's exactly what I mean. You don't need to be so hostile. If I had it out for you, why would I have dropped the charges?"

"You dropped them because you wanted to know what I was up to." He gestured the water off and set the sponge on the side of the sink.

"Good guess, but no," said Barbara. "We all knew you were going to do one of two things when Batman was out of the picture: disappear or refuse to believe it. Your behaviour is actually pretty consistent. Other than the kids. I wasn't expecting that."

He pulled one of the kitchen chairs away from the table and sat down. He slowly peeled off the right glove. He didn't want to look at the hand it had been obscuring, so he focused on laying the glove out absolutely flat and straight. This was pointless, given it was inside out and he wasn't going to be using it again. Barbara didn't know he was doing it so she likely thought he had lapsed into sullen silence. He wasn't sullen. He knew what he had to say next and he didn't want to. But he needed to refresh his ability to have mundane conversations and she was about the only one who wanted to talk to him.

"They were an accident," he said to the glove. There were too many wrinkles for it to lie as flat as he wanted it to.

"An… how do you make kids by accident?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't have described it as an accident, would I?" He stripped off the other glove and tossed it atop the first. "I have no idea how they work. I told Alan not to call me dad, but he wouldn't listen! He insisted! I didn't ask him to do it and I didn't want him to do it, but he wanted a dad! I wanted an intelligent drone! Believe you me, I didn't intend for any of it to happen. I wanted to give them up, but who would have taken them? Who would have believed what they are? You said my best isn't good enough. Perhaps it isn't, but it's all I have. You said it already. I haven't even been taking care of myself. She doesn't need to see this. She doesn't need to want to fix me like he did. That's why he's dead."

"Are you trying to fix me now? Is that it?"

There's only… there's only so much of you I can fix, Dad.

No. No, those had been two different conversations. He couldn't remember Alan wrong to make himself feel better. He couldn't do that.

No, Dad. I don't think being a good person would fix you.

That was what he had said.

But I think it would make you happier.

"I'll be honest," Barbara said. "There's a lot to unpack there. But if that's just the tip of the iceberg, I'm surprised you've managed not to have a complete breakdown."

There's something really wrong with you and I don't know what it is, and you don't… seem interested in finding out or fixing it.

I'm trying to fix it.

"Trying to fix what?" Barbara asked. Tabarnac.

"My son…" He should hang up. He should just hang up. "… it's a long story."

"I'd like to hear it," she said. She even sounded sincere. He pushed the crumpled glove aside and rolled up the fifth finger of the other one. It stayed like that when he let go of it.

"I stopped him from killing a man," he said. "I hadn't taught him what life meant, or what death meant, or what having control over whether another person lived or died meant. He asked why it was so important for me to keep him a good person when I didn't care to be so myself. He told me… that he thought I wanted him to be the person I couldn't." He rolled up the other three fingers. "He wanted me to try being that person once I had finished all of this and started over."

"He's the first person to really matter to you in a long time." Her voice was still gentle, as though she thought the sound of it would harm him. In his mind's eye Alan was calmly, carefully choking the life out of the man below him as Edward struggled to take in enough air to tell him to stop. Alan was discarding the man as though he were a toy he had become disinterested in. Alan was telling him he was willing to kill a man if Edward asked him to.

"I'm not going to tell anyone about any of this," Barbara said, returning his focus to the present. "It stays between you and me. You have my word."

There weren't a lot of people he would be at all reassured hearing that from, but… for all his faults, Commissioner Gordon was a man of his word. And she did take after him a distressing amount. "I would appreciate that."

"Do you know how to play Go?"

It was such an abrupt change of topic he needed a few moments to remember what that was. "It's been a while, but yes."

"And if you wanted to keep giving me a hand, I'd be happy to keep pretending I don't know it's you."

"We'll see." He most likely would. It had built some trust with her, which had led to…

It had been so long since he had really talked to someone or been listened to by them. And it felt important that someone else knew what kind of person Alan had been. Why, he had no idea. It simply mattered that he was not the only one.

It wasn't quite two, but there wasn't really anything he could accomplish in the time he had left so he got ready for bed a little early. When he had arranged himself in bed, the watch with no face again came to mind. And with that, the distinct recollection of himself thinking about how his father always looked tired. Pushing himself to provide for a son he hadn't wanted and didn't understand.

How had he felt about being called dad? Had he simply accepted it, as Edward had? Had he resigned himself to the title? Had he dreaded the day it would be given to him? He'd had so much more time to anticipate it. Maybe he had even come to want it.

I never wanted Ada to call me anything else.

/

He had once dreaded the nightmares about Alan. The ones where his subconscious insisted on showing to him the failures that could have been or could come to pass. They had always cut far deeper and haunted him for far longer than the ones about Batman and even his father. They still did, of course. But now he wanted them to. Alan was the only person he could keep from villainizing. There was no one else like him, of course. There was no one else even close. But he needed the reminder that he could do it. Could recognise and acknowledge and understand the damage he inflicted on others. And so when the opening of his eyes that morning was met with a blurry view of the beige wall next to his bed, he was as relieved as he was horrified.

He only managed thirty minutes or so on the bike before he was unable to breathe. His thoughts were stalled by the need to draw breath in between bouts of uncontrollable coughing, but once they had resumed he had to wonder if he had done this to himself on purpose. That was what had happened that night, after all. His smoking habit had debilitated him in the face of danger and seen him barely able to tell Alan to stop. And in the dream, of course, he hadn't been.

He went outside when his breathing failed to even and sat in one of the patio chairs. His underwear were immediately soaked through by a rainfall he hadn't noticed, but it was too late now so he elected not to move. He folded his hands onto the equally puddled tabletop and stared into the street. The rain had dispersed most of the remaining snow, leaving only the piles protected by shadow or packed hill-high at some designated portion of a parking lot. It was the kind of day that made one feel as though it were safe to move the winter gear to the back of the closet and break out the t-shirts and sandals even though it was obviously too early in the year for any of that. He had some chores for his impending trial to take care of and he might as well do them while the weather was nice. His chest hurt and he was exhausted, but at least he wouldn't have to wear a coat.

After he'd completed his other morning tasks, he sat down at his computer in search of his destinations. He had designated employees for everything, including suit fittings and haircuts, but this time they needed to be low profile. Done by people who were unlikely to recognise him. People who didn't watch the news and kept their noses out of the supervillain business. This population was higher than anyone outside of Gotham might have believed, but the plain fact was that being exposed to so many outlandish events day in and day out tended to desensitise. Others simply elected to expose themselves to as little of it as possible and keep their heads down until the day they could leave presented itself. The process of tracking down two appropriate individuals took more time than it should have. He really needed to take the sertraline enough times in a row that the accursed insomnia would ease.

When he stood up to get ready to leave he noticed something just behind his primary monitor and picked it up. Or them, rather, for he had re-found the photographs of his father he had put on the desk and forgotten about. He still didn't know what about them had caught his eye. His father's physical similarity to himself was unnerving him, so he put them facedown on the desk.

Wait. That was it, wasn't it.

He turned them over and looked again. Yes. Yes, these would prove very useful. He was unsure how, exactly, they would come into play, but that was what Sabrina was for. Honestly, he was relieved he'd finally figured it out. He had managed to do so little these past few months he had feared his formidable problem-solving abilities had dulled. They hadn't. He merely had to give himself a little more time to bring them to bear, that was all.

The fitting was uneventful, unless having to constantly mitigate one's stress qualified as an event. It had not escaped his notice how much weight he had lost, but hearing the tailor's mumbled measurements made it… concrete. Being described in numbers set it in stone.

That's stupid.

It was stupid. He still pretended not to pay attention long enough that the tailor had to ask him three times for the date he needed the suit in order to make them less important.

His appointment with the hairdresser went much better. It would have gone perfectly, in fact, had the hairdresser not turned Edward's hair over in his fingers and said,

"I've never seen this colour naturally before. Are you sure you want to cover it? If it were me, I wouldn't."

There were a lot of things he wanted to say to that. He also wanted to get up, sweep the table in front of him free of its implements, and storm back home to ruin this man's life for daring to have an opinion on what Edward wanted to do with his own damn hair. But that was the sort of thing the Riddler would do, so instead he took a long breath through his nose and released it as subtly as he could.

"Sometimes a change is nice," he said, which was true. Not about his hair; he was well aware he was fast approaching the age it would never return in this colour again. But the results the change would bring would be.

The hairdresser shrugged and left to mix the requested black dye, no doubt under the impression Edward was undergoing a midlife crisis – which he sort of was – and he tightened his hand around the glasses he held beneath the cape around his neck. They were the strongest reading glasses he could find off the rack at Walmart and, while they didn't clarify his vision quite enough, they would do for his future public appearances.

When all was said and done, the hairdresser asked, "What do you think?" and Edward glanced into the mirror after sliding on the glasses even though he had meant to avoid doing so. What he thought was that he looked like his father, if his father had been eighteen years younger and had lost even more weight than Edward had, but nobody needed to hear that. So he just responded,

"It's fine,"

and tipped him one hundred percent for his inability to muster up the courtesy he should have displayed.

Back at the apartment, his next task was to comb through his social media presence and ensure he had never made mention of his life prior to his emigration. This proved to dampen his mood even further, because whomever had been running them was inarguably crazy. The posts barely even looked as though they had come from a real person. The monologuing he had written read like comic book schlock. When he came across the most recent conversation he'd had with himself, regarding the finer points of two different brands of a particular breakfast cereal, he had to put his face down on the desk to give him a minute to recover. And also keep him from responding. His brain was lining up a heated but tastefully worded miniature essay about why the previous poster was wrong, and about the only thing he could do to distract himself while remaining on task was to move onto the YouTube videos. Which were actually worse. He'd had to turn the comments off after one too many explicit descriptions of sexual acts people wanted to perform on him – or liked to imagine performing on him – so at least he didn't have to endure those as well. The videos were bad enough. He would have asked if he really did gesticulate like this or if he really sounded like that, but there was no possible way they could have been made by anybody else. Come to think of it, he was fairly certain several of these later videos had been filmed after some liberal doses of cocaine. Perhaps he shouldn't even bother looking through any of this. Deleting it was probably a better idea.

No. No, that would be suspicious. Then people might start asking questions, and then the videos would be reposted anyway, and now instead of a few curious looky-loos and whatever contingent of horny stalkers he had remaining watching them, everyone would be going through them with a magnifying glass and a fine-toothed comb.

"Edward," said Barbara, and he manoeuvred his mouse pointer to the bottom of the primary monitor to reveal the time. A little after ten. Why not. It might be easier to go through these posts if he didn't have to do it with his full attention. He turned on his microphone and said,

"Yes?"

"How was your day?"

How was his – "What?"

"You… need me to explain that?"

"I don't understand why you're asking."

"You really have forgotten how to make a normal conversation." She sounded… amused. He gave off the impression of being that incompetent? "You don't have to go into detail."

"It was…" He couldn't go into detail, even if he had wanted to. Nobody could know anything relating to the trial. "It was fine."

"I hope there's no more snow after this. You know there's some places the city just doesn't bother plowing?"

"I usually take care of it myself," he said absently. Playing the videos at one of the offered higher increments and just listening for keywords was more bearable than watching them in realtime.

"What do you mean?"

He hit pause to think about what he had just told her. By mistake. Oh well. She already knew far more personal things. "Some of my informants need snow removal services."

"And you provide them?"

"How else would they be able to leave their homes in search of information?" He shook his head. Really.

"You know," Barbara said, "I heard part of why you have so many informants is because you're a good boss."

"I'm a fantastic boss," Edward told her. "The waitlist for an interview is years long."

"That's gonna be a lot of people out of a job when you go into retirement."

He hadn't even thought about that. He turned off the microphone and made a note on one of the whiteboards.

"If you're here, you must not be busy," Barbara went on. "And since we're getting along so well, I thought you could do something for me."

"I'm not in the habit of doing people favours."

… was what the Riddler would have said. Regular people did do favours. Especially when they needed to be on the good side of the person asking. He sighed and switched on the mic. "What is it."

"Nothing much," Barbara answered. "I just need you to keep an eye on someone for me. I have some bigger stuff to look after and she likes company."

'She' meant it wasn't Drake, at least. "How much of your supervision would I be agreeing to?"

"None," said Barbara. "As I said. She likes company."

"All right." Why not. It would be an easy way to further move into Barbara's good graces, a place he sorely needed to be secure in. He even let her patch him into the relevant audiovisual equipment instead of simply doing so himself.

'She' turned out to be Cassandra Cain, though he was told not to call her that. The symbol of the Bat was important to her, Barbara had said. No doubt Cassandra would report back if he toed out of line, so Batgirl it was.

He was not incognisant of the fact that she didn't say much, but that did not prepare him for how unnerving he found her silence to be. It almost seemed as though she were listening for malfeasance from him instead of whatever was going on around her. So he started talking. She was crouched on a rooftop overlooking a street corner which had once been the parking spot of a food truck operated by an informant who had left the city years ago. The tacos he had sold were truly awful, or so Edward had heard, but he had been the kind of person others just naturally wanted to help. Now, the interesting thing about the contractor he had known was –

Cassandra shushed him and pointed into the street. He took a moment to push down his indignation at being interrupted and squinted into the patch lit by the nearest dirty streetlamp.

"It's a cat," he said, disappointed.

Cassandra nodded gravely. Fine. Fine. If this was what it took…

"Check if it has identification," he said. "If not, I know someone."

He assumed Cassandra had the ability to check for a microchip, and so when she shook her head he sent an email with its location to Selina via a dead-drop address. "One cat rescued," he said. "A wonderful use of our time."

Her nod was firm. And confusing. She considered homing a cat worth the hours she'd spent that night roaming the rooftops? Was this normal behaviour, or was this something 'good' people did?

She simply believes life is more valuable than you do.

"It's a cat," he protested. "There are thousands of –"

Cassandra's head tilted towards the closest camera clued him into the fact he still had the mic on. "Well, there are," he argued. She shook her head and shushed him.

It matters to her. That's what you need to be taking away from this.

Caring about things that other people cared about. Right. "You like cats," he said after a minute. Cassandra nodded and removed herself back to the roof.

He'd once known the names of all of Selina's cats. Which personalities they'd had. Which ones were grazers and which ones would eat until they died, if they were able. Had she known it hadn't been because he cared, but because he had been trying to impress her? Probably. He'd never allowed her to bring any of them over. But she had so many! How on earth was he supposed to genuinely care about that many cats?

You're making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be. On purpose.

It was possible he was getting a bit defensive.

The night wore on in much the same vein. She – they? – interrupted the attempted smashing of a storefront window and about ten minutes later a man materialised from a dark side street to trail behind a woman who had missed the bus and had opted instead to continue down the sidewalk with brisk strides. Cassandra dropped down behind him and removed him from the equation before Edward had even been able to make an attempt to locate her. At least her violence was efficient. "Give me a fingerprint," he told her. "He'd be long gone before the GCPD arrived, but there's no doubt there's something he can be picked up for back at whatever hole he calls home."

She did so, and when he'd located the information he sent it off to the GCPD. There. He'd done a good deed. She would have something positive about him to report to Barbara later. A net win all around.

All in all, it wasn't so bad. He didn't get anything of his own done, but he had the entirety of tomorrow to do that. If Cassandra had the ability to antagonise him, she chose not to use it, instead merely shushing him when she decided he was too much. He found he wasn't as annoyed by it as he would have thought. Perhaps he'd even do it again. If he were asked, of course. He wasn't about to volunteer to do Barbara's babysitting for her.

After he had signed off, he went outside and up to the railing to light a cigarette, but as soon as he had thumbed the lighter something very dark and unexpected appeared next to him and he yelled out in surprise. He at least managed not to stumble backward, though his lighter and cigarette had become victims of gravity. The contours of Cassandra's blank mask were impossible to make out, but the streetlight nearby traced out enough of her that he could see she was holding one hand out towards him to shake. Unless this was a trick and she was actually going to injure him in whatever way she had been taught when she was a girl.

Don't be paranoid.

Easier said than done.

The handshake was nice, actually. She didn't have the deathgrip he usually got with a man, but there was definitely a hint of deeper strength. He had no idea what she meant to convey by this and there didn't seem to be much point in asking, so he just looked into the void of her face and said, "It was a pleasure working with you."

She might have nodded and she definitely waved, and then she disappeared into the night from whence she had come. He picked up the lighter and kicked the unlit cigarette through the railing.

Well. She seemed to like him. His path was clear: he needed to gather a bevy of very patient, near-mute women to talk to.

Or you could talk to the women you already know who are perfectly happy to interact with you when your head isn't fully inserted up your ass.

"There's too much history with them. I can't handle that right now." He pulled open the door and went back inside. "After the trial is dealt with. I need to focus on not alienating Sabrina."

That's actually a good idea.

"Thank you."

/

In the morning, after he'd taken care of all the routine things, he picked up his phone and went outside to have a cigarette. He'd been smoking so much less and he knew if he pushed just a little harder he would be able to quit once and for all, but there was just so much else to do that getting rid of that looming need to smoke was easier than trying to work around it. Without a cigarette this deluge of messages he'd gotten since last he'd checked would definitely have seemed more overwhelming.

The message at the very bottom made him need a second one even though he'd barely finished the first:

Selina sent a photo.

It was the cat.

She thought he'd told her because it had made him think of her, didn't she. She didn't know he'd only done it to make himself look good for Barbara. She didn't know he really couldn't care less about –

Oh, come on. She's not stupid. She knows you had some ulterior motive.

Probably.

He looked down at the photo. Then he scrolled down his contact list until he reached Barbara's number. Send this to Cassandra, he wrote, then attached the picture and sent it. He put the phone facedown on the table and slowly moved his thumb up and down the lighter three times.

That was nice of you. For once, his internal dialogue sounded gentle and encouraging.

He got down off of the table. "It was, wasn't it."

Let's not get an ego over this. You do still have all those social media posts to go through, after all.

He groaned and walked back into the apartment. He had the feeling he was going to have no ego at all by the end of the day.

Author's note

As always, the French isn't really important and is mostly there for my French readers (if any of them remain lol). I am also happy to accept corrections.