capeandcowllogs | A story high above the low, recorded by few, disputed by later.

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A story high above the low, recorded by few, disputed by later.

WHO: EDWARD NYGMA and POSSIBLY YOU.
WHERE: NOHoPE.
WHEN: August 8th - August 14th.
WARNINGS: Sweep you all up on a corner and pay for my bread.
SUMMARY: You know that I cannot believe my own truth.
FORMAT: To show what a truth, it's got nothing to lose.

They had taken away his pens. After the fourteenth riddle he had marked over the once-pristine walls, they had informed him that he was acting destructively and could not do with this privilege any longer. Eddie hadn't humored this exceptionally well. If you hadn't intended for me to express myself, he had argued, you wouldn't have encouraged such easily attained access. Whose idea was it to give me the tools anyway? His words were stonewalled, met with incomprehension or disdain. And shortly soon, punishment. Edward Nygma found himself alone, without release, staring at his blackly inked words driven over his walls. A room riddled.

He kept thinking of Norman. How that man was meandering through his life, undisturbed, when he had so abruptly ruined Eddie's own. How unfair it was, how cruel. How much he direly wanted to snip out Norman's vocal chords with a charming pair of symbolically rusty scissors and --

Oh. But that was rather frowned upon, wasn't it?

"Hardly a resonating concern anymore, is it?" Eddie muttered to himself. He had been in the habit of drifting in and out of speech in his solitude. Robbed of an audience and introduced to all kinds of new anti-psychotics (how the market had changed, since his Arkham days), he found himself prone to halfway-audible discussions with his own ears. It was grand company thus far, he wouldn't argue that. His eyes focused on the wall to his left, idly reading his own desperate scrawls.

PARTIAL OBLIGATION
FOLLOWING 01000111
ENDING WITH THE PENULTIMATE IN BEGINNING

Work that had yet been erased by his self-appointed caretakers. He rather liked that one particular riddle, it was rather pivotal. The act itself was soothing, something delving deeper into his past habits. A sort of solace granted in the dark, quiet places of his mind. An old friend. A resolve, an endurance. Truth screaming behind art. Truth. Obsession. Compulsion. This was better, he reasoned, this is how it should be. And that thought was perhaps the thing that Eddie hated the most, the one idea that he couldn't suffer; knowing how Norman Osborn made this realization first.

We may as well talk on equal terms, was what Norman had said to him as they both wore their respective costumes, both soaked in darkness. Equal terms. It was a phrase that stung, as surely Norman knew. When Eddie orchestrated his rival's convoluted downfall, he had done so with the superiority of his moral action. Eddie was right, and if he had to sacrifice a few dozen innocent lives to prove how right he was, so be it. If he had to pay with minimal blood in order to rescue thousands -- maybe even millions -- then it was a price well paid. His method was unconventional, yes, but effective. He was an agent of the greater good, a visionary of the Bigger Picture. He was the hero who had humbled a monster. Equal terms dismantled the idea, mocked it. Weaponized it.

SLAIN WITHOUT THE LEAD
VILE IN CONJUNCTION
WHAT IS THE HERO?

Locked within the painfully pale rooms of the Norman Osborn Hospital of Psychological Evaluation, Edward Nygma then decided that he was done playing games.

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"You don't want to be my roommate, Katurian?" Eddie slid in close, serpentine and fluid, scrapping his fingernails lightly against his company's face before moving past him. It was a blink of a movement. Brief.

Eddie was on his feet, stretching. He took a few steps, consumed by thought, before turning to Katurian with a finger raised.

"If you need it still, it's back at the house. Should be in my study, unless Felicia moved it. She's always moving my things."

Katurian shrunk in his seat. Even after Edward was standing, he could still feel the touch of his fingernail. Lingering. Humming.

"The problem is that they already know I have it off." He forced himself to look at Edward, to keep his voice clear and even. "They sent someone to find me after you weren't there, and they know."

It had practically been an interrogation. Katurian's bruises were still fresh then, and the stitches stood unexplained in his medical records. The replacement had yelled at him, had demanded to know where Edward was keeping his anklet records, and Katurian had extended his empty ankle and said look, look, he wouldn't have any!

He leaned forward on the bed. "We're both in very serious trouble."

Edited 2011-08-16 02:48 (UTC)

"Really." Eddie whipped around, his eyebrows raised. "I'm in very serious trouble?" He raised his hands dramatically, spreading them apart and looking around his white walled room in mock shock. "Why didn't anyone inform me? I'm in very serious trouble!"

He didn't wait for a response from his audience.

"You shouldn't have a worry, if you play your cards right," Eddie spoke with a degree more gravity, even while still wearing his highly amused smirk. "Your life was threatened by some psychotic lady with time traveling powers. You thought she could track you -- or that the anklet posed threat to your location. Make something up, I don't care. You've been excused for the whole 'oooh someone is leaving body parts at my place let me do something needlessly reckless' show before, haven't you?"

"To be fair," he said, raising his eyebrows, "that was what put me in the anklet in the first place."

But he paused. Fugue. Fugue was a good excuse. Katurian hated the idea of blaming an omniscient being for his own ills for fear of angering them even further (it was carryover from Desire, no question), but she was in part to blame, wasn't she? He had been afraid of Vulcanus nabbing his location. When he had it taken off, he wasn't planning on going to Greenland. It was entirely innocent.

"Would you be willing to--" He struggled for the words. "--not lie, but could you maybe bend the truth, just bend it, so that it sounds like we have the same story. Could you do that for me?"

"Actually," he said. "I argued for that. The council was far more sympathetic to your faceless plight, but I convinced them you were an unpredictable risk prone to over-reaction at the slightest provocation. Of course, my credibility has since been... Compromised. So I doubt my previous argument would hold mention." He walked around, picking up one of Eridan's novels and paging idly. "To be fair."

He paused, looking surprised at himself. As if momentarily regretting the words. Eddie had been rather liberal with his intentions here, a new and likely entirely brief tendency born from over-medication, trauma and unprecedented boredom. Beneath all that, of course, was a realization that he had lost so much, so quickly, that pretense held very little importance nowadays.

It was a dark thought.

"Collaboration is hardly stressful, if you understand the nuances. You have to speak with them first, you see. So they'll be expecting me to follow your lead, your tale will be in their minds already. I can suggest, and they will assume my story."

Katurian was determined not to lose his temper.

He raised himself up from the bed, extending his arms, feeling that tension, and then let himself down again, the mattress squeaking underneath. He had been afraid, at times, that Edward was deliberately keeping him chained. Holding him back. Drawing him close. Nothing tonight settled that fear.

"Why did you tell them that? Edward."

His voice was flat. He was trying for diplomatic.

"Because you were an irritating little twat, that's why. Katurian." Lurking on the opposite end of the diplomatic spectrum was Edward, callous and open with his words. He didn't seem unnerved by his own bizarre behavior, and perhaps he wasn't cognizant of the contrast to his more typical demeanor.

"But you're not now, are you? Behold! Something worked adequately," he said with a grin. His teasing was almost affectionate, a tone far more telling in this moment than his crippling words were.

He flinched, rubbing a hand against his bandaged forehead. A part of him wanted to believe that Edward didn't mean it, that he was frustrated and ill and unaware of what he was saying, but he knew that wasn't the case. He kept his eyes averted.

"Maybe I should blame Fugue for my injuries, too."

It was some day, when he'd rather talk about Fugue.

"Why not? What's she going to do, contest your allegations?" He chuckled at the idea, before hesitating and growing solemn very, very quickly. "Well. She might, actually, via any Vulcanus agents within that system. I can only assume the bureaucracy is flooded, why else would I have been ousted without due process?"

The idea ignited a bubbling fury in his abdomen. Another way he was cheated, another thing Norman foresaw. His elation dimmed, his mood soured. He encircled his own bed watching Katurian hold claim over the territory, thrust so easily into this bubble of mercurial thought. Eddie's tongue ran over his teeth, unconsciously predatory.

"She scared you fairly deeply, didn't she? This Fugue vixen."

Edited 2011-08-17 03:53 (UTC)

"Not like Desire," he said. It was an admission he could provide even now, even while he was off-balance and Edward was pacing around the bed. Edward was well aware of what Desire did to him. If he had ever cracked, if he had ever fractured, it was under that being's watch, and everything else was the shrapnel left behind from it. There wasn't any point in hiding it.

"It's more that I'm worried about the things she can do. With my powers." He looked up at the ceiling. The paint was terribly familiar. "I'm worried that she can change history without any of us knowing it. I'm worried because she's targeting me, and that might place people I care about in danger."

He chanced a glance at Edward.

"She's a very dangerous person."

Edited 2011-08-17 05:37 (UTC)

Edward paused. He took a deep breath, his eyes closed. It was an entire minute before he turned around, completely. No following mention of Desire ever left his lips.

"Katurian," he said. "Let's examine this, shall we?" He glanced around the room, as if spotting for conspirators. "We," he emphasized once more, the word burning into their space between. "Are essentially invincible, together. You can fluctuate time, I can determine those fluctuations -- if the right statement is phrased correctly. Fugue isn't armed with truth, like we are. She's dislocated, mentally. She's mad."

He threw his hands up, to illustrate his point. The shadows cast by his hands drowned out his riddles.

"And we are not. We have the edge on her."

The finality of his decision weighed nothing upon his smile. It was an ease he could afford, the kind that came free with such monumental confidence. Eddie had decided, thus it was done. In fact, he might have let the conversation die if not for one particular notion.

His eyes narrowed into slits.

"-- What do you mean, people you care about? What do you mean, following that with a warning to me?"

Edited 2011-08-17 15:24 (UTC)

Katurian stared up at those hands, eclipsing words and blood and those white, white walls. He was not blind to the irony.

Edward's outburst, though, took him by surprise as much as the others. For a few moments, he just stared, trying to figure out what he had said wrong. After all, Edward had been calling them partners mere seconds before. If he was going to survive whatever tenuous alliance they had formed, he needed to shave his vocabulary. There was no question.

"I-- I don't think your life is in any immediate danger." It was the only way he could think of answering. "At least not because of me."

Edited 2011-08-18 02:09 (UTC)

"People. You. Care about?" The intensity hovered from his mouth. Implicit incredulity and suspicion. Another sharp turn, another dismissal. Eddie reached out, sliding his hand along the wall.

"Of course I'm not in immediate danger -- what could be done to me, now?" Eddie's hostility simmered into self-pity, an indulgent display of harsh truth and regretful acceptance. "The psychologically atypical are easily disenfranchised. Being here is not the issue, it wasn't his point -- it's what I'll lose. Politically. Socially. That's what will hurt, the moment I step outside this damned facility, that's the torment. And waiting, anticipating it -- "

Eddie looked back, mournful.

" -- Is unbearable. This wasn't supposed to happen to me. Arkham was supposed to be the last asylum."

Katurian didn't have much more to lose, politically or socially, when he was admitted to the hospital. But he prided himself in finding patterns. Drawing parallels. His life was a fiction for him to mold and narrate (perhaps this was why he could never stop listening to Edward), although he leaned dark and seldom had much control over the actual physical circumstances. But in crafting this grand narrative, one thing was quite clear, a fact he had somehow failed to grasp until now.

They were both losing hope.

Not in general. Not completely. But Katurian recognized that in the same way that he had tried to do the right thing and failed, Edward had tried to do the right thing and failed. All of their good choices gave way to personal pain and suffering. They were both slipping. Into action. Into something.

He cleared his throat. He dug his fist into the bed - a nervous flinch.

"But we're both invincible."

It was almost a whisper.

"Invincible," he intoned. His own fist curled against the wall, smacking it, his body tense in its angles. "And always on the outskirts of society. Even pretending to integrate correctly is a wayward delusion, even trying for the sake of attempt."

It wasn't a huge sacrifice, he told himself. It was better this way, more honest. And wasn't he ever an honest man? It was better this way

"What do you think is more valuable, to the artist? The form or the message?" One had to be compromised, eventually, he reasoned. Within society. But outside of that, just beyond, there was the original liberty. That's what he had tried so hard to repress, wasn't it?

"The message," he said, without fail. He remembered Edward pacing in another room with white walls, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, only then his movements were smooth and perfectly paced. There were no hard angles. It had reminded him of a performance, the way he moved. Art. In that room, Edward had told Katurian how it wasn't fair, society defining art, how they should decide, and Katurian had wanted to drown himself in those words forever. They wrapped him in cynicism and optimism all at once. They were perfect.

Except Edward was violent. Edward was mad. Katurian knew he shouldn't be encouraging him, and yet he wanted it to be the message-- for his own reasons. Katurian had left his mark in stories, but that was not the only way he would leave his mark. Not the only form. (Even if it was the most important.) He had suffered too much for that.

He stood from the bed and took a cautious step towards Edward. He felt weaker on the bed, sitting while Edward paced and punched walls. He was not afraid of Edward hitting him.

"The only duty of being a storyteller," he echoed, words from long ago, "is to tell a story."

Edited 2011-08-19 03:03 (UTC)

"Yes." His fingers formed into claws, tearing downwards from a riddled word. "The message. The form is the beauty, the message the intelligence. Isn't it obvious, which one is immortal?"

Eddie kept his back to Katurian still, his shoulders hunched and sharp. He lowered his head, as if trying to drown out his environment. The white. The emptiness. The dull hum of a light above.

"Storytelling. Even the slimmest narrative can speak volumes. Sometimes you have to obscure the truth in order to expose it, sometimes you have to destroy to create. Just as sometimes, you have to create to destroy."

Eddie turns, finally, facing Katurian. He registers at Katurian as closer, even minutely, but barely reacts. He isn't in a room anymore, he's on the streets walking between shadows. He's scouring a skyscraper, he's hurling bullets for the sake of an idea. A point. A message.

"Well. I'm prepared to create again."

He feared those words. The way Edward said them. There had been a disconnect between words and meaning when he and Michal spoke sometimes, a disconnect that had led to their ruin. Katurian, standing in that prison cell, pounding his fist into his palm. This is just like storytelling, he had said. He had assumed they were set up. Michal, completely cognizant of the reason why they were arrested had said I know.

But he would keep Edward in check. He wouldn't let things go too far, this time. The fear was more of a reason to continue than run. He took a deep breath.

"I told you I was tired of being pushed around."

It was an agreement.

A spared glance. A moment of shared want and frustration, a communion between two individuals who knew suffering. Eddie crossed his arms, a look of consideration expressed in his mouth and eyes, a twitch of some hypothetical thought. Of something he hadn't thought of in years. He soon waved his hand at it, an attempt at driving it away.

But thoughts always returned to Eddie. He couldn't escape them.

"What are you suggesting?" Eddie hissed. His quiet intensity almost mirrored composure. "That we have united sentiments? That this proves some -- some bond of intent between us?"

That thought stole around his synapses.

"Something like that," he said, dropping his own voice. He wanted a connection, too. Desperately, he wanted a connection. His close friends were fine, but for whatever reason, he could never be honest with them, he could never show his teeth or his darker thoughts or the reason for his sleepless nights. It was why he was drawn to Edward that first time. It was why he was drawn to him now. Despite the insults. Despite the fear.

(Edward had told him, how they had truth on their side.)

"Back home," he said, somehow still thinking of it as a home, "I took things into my own hands. I took things into my own hands because I-- well, because the police were crazy, for one, but anyway, I took things into my own hands because I trusted that was what would get things done. That was what would make things better."

Eddie felt his palms itch. The blood was clotting, caking. The wounds were making way to seal up again, a messy, dirty the process. But it was necessity. The worst ways were always necessity.

"Well," he said. Quietly. "That's the point of creation, isn't it? Making your vision manifest. And you have to take things into your own hands for that to happen, you must." He walked around, assuming a place just a few steps from Katurian's own body. A leveled stare dominated his countenance.

"I learned the same lesson as you had."

Eddie extended a raw, pulsating, blotting hand.

He didn't hesitate. He took his hand.

Later on, he'd wonder why he didn't turn up his nose at the blood or, at the very least, take a more cautious, ginger hold. But Edward had already bled on him - his wrists and cheeks were stained with it. It was drying brown against him. What was one more blotch of it? What was one small instance of suffering stacked up on everything else?

Katurian was growing rather used to blood.

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A story high above the low, recorded by few, disputed by later.

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