I don't own Who Framed Roger Rabbit? This was one of my favourite movies growing up, so please let me know what you think.
The End of a Beautiful Partnership.
Eddie Valiant stood up with the rest of the crowd, Dolores was standing next to him offering support as were the rest of the Valiant brother's human friends.
There were old friends from the Police Academy there, a few of their friends from the force they'd made over the years. There were a few relatives, but their ma and pa had died long ago, but there were enough of their family to pay their respects. But they were all human. There were no toons. Eddie had made sure of that. After what had happened in Toon Town, the last thing Eddie had wished for was to see a toon, any toon. Some would probably say he was making a mistake by blaming all toons for the murder of Teddy, but Eddy didn't give a damn. Teddy was dead, and Eddie was praying to wake up and find that the last couple of weeks following that dreadful night in Toon Town after the bank had been robbed in that godawful chaotic dump, which was a far cry from the number of laughs he'd had there with Teddy and Dolores over the years was nothing more than a terrible dream.
But it was not a dream.
This was real life. And Eddie hated it. He hated how numb he felt, he hated how he had turned to the bottle in order to bury his grief, but he couldn't help it. Eddie was having to keep his composure set and stony as the vicar reached the end of his sermon, otherwise he would break down and cry his eyes out. When the attendant held out the bag of soil, he reached a shaking hand into the bag and pulled out a handful of loose earth and threw it into the grave.
That was it, Teddy was dead.
It was just unthinkable. Teddy was dead. His brother, his best friend next to Dolores and he was dead, killed by a toon, of all things. The whole thing was just so senseless.
Eddie and Teddy had been investigating a robbery at the First National Bank of Toon Town. They'd assumed the cash would just be used for laughs or something, but they hadn't gotten too far before they went after the robber, only the toon had gotten the drop on them. Literally. The toon had dropped a piano on them from 15 storeys up. Eddie had survived, it cost him a broken arm but he was alive. But Teddy wasn't so lucky. The piano had crushed Teddy's head.
Eddie had been trying to find out who the toon was, but so far he hadn't had much in the way of luck and if he were frank, he didn't want to go anywhere near the Toon Town tunnel and find out. The Toon police were incompetent and after a few days of trying to recover, spurned by his rage and grief, Eddie had felt his tolerance for toons just wither and die when they found precisely zilch.
Sure, the Toon police were horrified by what had happened, but he wished they approached something like the murder of a human with something approaching professionalism. It was ironic but Eddie felt that he had grown out of that damn clown that had frustrated and irritated his superiors both in the Academy and at the LAPD precinct he and Teddy had been stationed at. He had looked in more than once at the Toon Police's laughable - literally - laughable investigation and he had wished he had taken police work more seriously than he had in the past.
It was no laughing matter, and being in the presence of toons, even ones whom he had liked for a very long time was enough to irritate and frustrate him.
He didn't feel like laughing.
He didn't want to laugh.
More than that, Eddie did not want to be near toons. Nowadays, very little was enough to make Eddie laugh. He had noticed the looks sent his way by Dolores. She was worried about him. He didn't push her away. He needed someone like her to help him, but at the same time, his private detective business had taken a downturn. He didn't care anymore about toons. If they had problems with each other then they could solve things for themselves. Half of them were brighter than a light bulb but crazier than half the inmates of every asylum in the country combined.
But one of the biggest kickers of the whole thing was Eddie hadn't found out who'd done it. All he remembered, numb and head spinning from the pain while he was disorientated with his equilibrium shaken, was the memory of the toon standing above laughing in that damn, high pitched squeaky voice with those burning red eyes.
"Eddie?" Dolores's voice broke him out of his thoughts and he turned and smiled at the woman.
"I'm sorry, Dolores. Were you saying something?" Eddie asked quietly, holding back the wince at the pain in his arm.
Dolores's eyes were soulful with their sorrow. "Actually, I wondered if there was anywhere you wanted to go instead of just the bar?"
Eddie looked down. A part of him just wanted to get drowned, but on the other side he knew drinking to himself was not going to help and there was only so much Dolores could take. He didn't want to push her over the deep end by getting drunk or doing something immensely stupid. He wanted her around. He needed her damn it.
"Sure," he said, but he just broke down and cried in her arms.
"Oh god!" He heard her gasp, but she didn't let go of him as he sobbed his heart out, his soul crying for his dead brother who'd died for no reason for a toon whom they didn't even know.