Chapter Text
Edward finds the asylum isn’t too dissimilar to the orphanage.
It’s been a year since his original apprehension, spending his days adhering to the strict routines given to him to the point where he could memorise which guards came in on which rotation. Committed each crack of paint in his cell to memory. This place was haunted by wayward souls, filled with the wails and cries of people reduced to ghosts. Edward had been like that too, when he had first arrived. His whole world had crumbled in front of his eyes in less than an hour – hit his peak of finally achieving his goal, a cleansing of Gotham, to then the crushing realisation and rejection from Batman that he had ultimately failed. He had a front row view to watch through his cell window as the city reconstructed the sea wall that had been destroyed in his plan, how their lives all returned to normal again with no corrupt official living in fear of the Riddler being on the prowl anymore. Normality prevailed once again in Gotham City. One day you’re on top, then next, you’re a clown. He was back to being nothing again.
Edward had created the Riddler to be something more than. His fixation on saving the city had allowed him to momentarily escape from the plague of thoughts that had tortured him his whole life – why me? What did I do to deserve this? It gave him something to focus on, an answer to his questions, someone to blame. He had only survived in this cruel city by finding a way to focus his brain on something other than his pain. Trapped in here, there was no way to distract himself from his self-inflicted torment. With no puzzles to solve, no city to save from conspiracy, he felt like his brain was rotting from inside his skull. There was nothing to stimulate a brain in Arkham asylum. It was back to square one again, regressing back to the old, tormented Edward Nashton.
His hair is longer now, after his refusal of offers from the staff. His whole life he had only ever trusted himself to cut his hair, he would cut it when he finally got out of here – a reward. He’s unkempt and weary, driving himself mad with no one to talk to and just his own inner dialogue. Admittedly, he had been a loner long before this. His limit of social interactions in his day to day life had been painful small talk at work and then when he would come home to his rats and his following behind his computer screen. Edward missed his audience, the nervousness of his co-workers when strange Edward Nashton tried to talk to them, the beady eyes of his rats, and the eagerness of the online following he commanded. It was all gone now anyway and Edward found himself more heartbroken at the thought of what the GCPD had done with his rats rather than how his blind followers were faring at Blackgate prison. He had named the brown one with white spots Bruce, let him out of his cage to run around his desk whilst he worked – allowed himself to grow too fond of it.
He doesn’t understand when a member of staff comes by to tell him he has a session scheduled with a therapist tomorrow morning. The GCPD had been interviewing him for months about his crimes before eventually relenting, realising they were getting nowhere against Edward’s resolve and cryptic riddles. They had sent in a barrage of different cops to speak to him, but they were all the same – pigs. None of them were any better than what they supposedly stood against. Did they think a hospital assigned therapist would fare much better? It oddly delights him for a second, imagining toying with the brain of his new therapist. He had tried it on the guards before, but none of them had taken him seriously or paid him much mind anyway, this gave him a chance to do his routine from the top, a chance to perform, a new puzzle to solve.
Edward had had to see a therapist once at his time in the orphanage. He remembered his legs dangling off the ground, too small in his chair, the stare of the nun in the room with them, how he controlled his answers at such a young age so he didn’t get into any trouble. His last foster family placement had filed a report, claiming they were concerned about some of Edward’s behaviours as they were unusual for a boy of his age. He didn’t allow the therapist to help him, lied through most of the questions and got out of it scot free. Edward didn’t need their help, he only trusted himself. Days spent praying to a higher power who never listened to him had taught Edward to never believe those in positions of high authority. He had thought in a moment of weakness, during his short lived career as a delivery driver, about getting help now that he was finally out of the system and living alone, but decided against it – a strange superiority complex that any medication to regulate his moods he would be prescribed would compromise his thinking. He would have to be careful around this new therapist, playing around with them would be fun but he didn’t want to earn a trip to isolation. At least therapists couldn’t prescribe medication – hah.
The next day, he is escorted to a different section of the building, accompanied by two guards who lead him by his cuffs. They don’t appreciate the joking small talk he tries to make, opting to just ignore him. The room they set him up in is not unlike where he had been taken to for interrogations previously, the main difference is there is no divider set up in the middle of the table, meaning the two of you will instead just be in the same room sat at opposite ends of the table. There is also no double sided window, so it appears no one can watch in. The guards secure his cuffs to the table, so he isn’t going anywhere soon. He shakes the chain 8 times, rattling against the table, before he allows himself to relax into the chair.
You stroll into the interview room without a care in the world, offering him a courteous and polite smile as you slide into the chair opposite him. You’re younger than him, he notes, and your choice of a red shirt glows against the white of the walls. Attractive too, his brain supplies distantly. With his long hair he feels almost unkempt in front of you. You cross your legs daintily over each other as you fish through your bag for something, not even bothering to say a word to him yet. He frowns. His brain supplies the memory of girls who laughed at him in the lunchroom at school and his co-workers who organised plans in front of him, deciding with just a glance that you are probably just like them. You certainly have a look about you that would make you fit in amongst them, clearly a popular type at high school. You place a notebook and pen on the table in front of you.
“Well, Mr Nashton, it’s nice to meet you,” you begin, before telling him your name. “I’m one of the regular therapists working here at Arkham, but you’re my first high level patient I’ve been assigned to work with, which is exciting.”
Exciting? It was such an obvious play to his ego that he wants to roll his eyes at it. You pull out something once more from your bag, placing it alongside your belongings. Edward recognises the small, rectangular device as a digital recorder immediately.
“I hope it’s alright but I’ve had to bring my own recorder in with me,” you tell him. “The cameras in here don’t pick up audio, so I thought that this will do.”
He glances at the camera angled high in the right corner, wondering what exact view it got of the two of you. You look at him expectantly, like you’re expecting him to have an outburst and object to you recording him. The other orderlies and guards had probably told you that he was a talker. Edward wondered then what your preconceived idea of him was – did you think he was the monster the news painted him out to be or the annoyance the staff here took him for? Realising he has nothing to say, you move onwards and press the record button on your device.
“So, to start with, I was wondering if you had any questions for me? We’re going to be seeing each other once a week from now on, so if you have anything you’d like to know about me, feel free to ask.”
You stare expectantly at him again, folding your hands over your lap, waiting. He drags his eyes over to match yours but doesn’t say a word. Playing hard to get, he thinks giddily. Looking at you, he can see the minute crease of your eyebrows furrowing as your staring match continues. He hoped his silence was messing with your expectations for him and clearly it was. It should be your turn to squirm, he decides.
You quickly recover, “Well, if you have nothing you want to ask, that’s fine as well.”
You continue with banal dialogue that Edward doesn’t pay much attention too, only noting the awkwardness growing in the atmosphere every time you paused for his input and he opted to not reply. His brain was already running wild, thinking of what you must be like outside of the asylum. You were a regular therapist here, so educated. Your accent gave you away as purely a Gotham native, no words or twang giving away hints at anything different. He presumed you must’ve studied at Gotham State, four years on a psychology bachelors probably. Edward himself had studied there many years ago, a three year accounting degree. He can imagine what you must’ve been like at college, probably enrolled in some idiotic fraternity or sorority, going out partying and missing lectures. Maybe you slept your way to good grades, he thinks as he sweeps his gaze over your crossed legs and the purse of your lips. You hold such confidence in your gait at such a young age, you would’ve hated him. He remembers a time his roommate asked him to go to a party, not because he wanted him to go, but out of pity. You would’ve been like him, he decides prematurely, and that makes him want nothing to do with you.
“One of my coworkers has a running theory that you have dissociative identity disorder, but I don’t see that. See, I think that your ‘Riddler’ persona is just that. A persona. The mask allows you to act in a way unabashed and bold as opposed to your normal life. Like an alter ego, of sorts. An alter ego that was braver than you and able to ‘expose the corruption of Gotham’, like you say.” You continue on despite him, glaring him down from across the table now with your eyes full of venom.
Being under the gaze of someone, especially one as confident as you, he felt microscopic. He felt like a germ you were examining on a petri dish.
Edward didn’t like feeling small, he had felt small his entire life. The scars of his past clung to his body and even manifested in his dreams – dreams of being an ant, crushed under the foot of an elephant. Rats scurrying across the bedspread. Meeting the priests stare from across the room. Schoolmates tripping him in the playground. A baby cries, but he can’t do anything. It’s all too much, and he’s just small – too small – to deal with it all.
That’s why he needed the Riddler. He needed something, a mask, to hide behind. It allowed him to become something more than small Edward Nashton could ever be.
But, god, being small felt good sometimes. He could just turn it all off, stop the hundred miles an hour thoughts running through his head, and focus only on this. He was nothing to you, underneath you. Someone like you would’ve never paid attention to a guy like him in any other circumstance, and now you had to see him every week. Pretend that you liked him, that you wanted to listen. He imagines the two of you as a contrasting pair, like the movie stereotypes of a geek and someone from the popular crowd forced together. Together, you would have certainly turned heads back at college. Your focus was solely on him, lips pursed as you nodded along and scribbled down your notes. He suddenly felt stupidly bashful and shy when he would drag up his eyes to match your stare.
He didn’t understand why he liked it, why he got so turned on by the thought of being treated as less than. He spent many nights fucking into his fists at the fantasy of being overpowered by someone. He would imagine it about anyone – the waitress who had winked at him in the diner, his work colleague who told him to have a nice day, even Batman. His favourite porn video was a woman fucking the tongue of a guy who kneeled under her, hands bound by tape. He imagined it was him, watched it so often he could quote it – “all you’re good for is being used, I should keep you as my personal cumdump.” He even had the video downloaded on a USB, just in case. In case of what, he didn’t know. Had they thrown that out with everything else in his apartment? Edward had a lot of pent up energy to expel at the end of his days, it was nice to sit back and imagine someone else doing all the work for a change.
“You’ll have to forgive me, but we didn’t get given any copies of your previous medical records,” you say. “I was wondering, if in the past, you’ve ever been referred for an obsessive compulsive disorder test?”
“No, I’ve never done one,” Edward finally says, voice small and eyes shaking as he glowers at you from across the table. He had done one on himself back at his apartment, already knew that he met a lot of the criteria for it, which you must have picked up on too.
“I would like to recommend you for the test, if that’s alright with you.”
“I don’t appreciate you trying to psychoanalyse me,” he grinds out finally.
“Sorry, Edward,” you smile sickly sweet. “But that’s what I get paid to do.”
“You’re not nearly as smart as you think you are,” he sneers back, impulsively.
You pause as you consider him. The curl of his lip from his display of annoyance, how his long fingers reach to push his glasses up the curve of his nose. His heart is jumping in his throat at your stare.
“I’m sure if we weren’t in here, you’d probably search up my name and find out everything about me. That way you could lord it all over me, and you could feel that you’re better than me. But that isn’t what’s happening here, is it? There’s only one of us handcuffed to the table right now, isn’t there?” Your tone remains even and placating throughout. “Now, if you’d please, I’d like to get on with doing my job.”
Your degradation goes straight to his dick and he fights to keep his face trained in an annoyed expression as you watch him. He feels pinned under your gaze and wants to relent under your pressure – physically squirm in his chair. He’s glad the table is hiding the fact he’s starting to tent in his trousers, how embarrassing it would be if you saw. He wants you to see, but he won’t – too stubbornly committed to the idea of acting hard to get around you, at least for now. Edward turns his gaze to the wall behind you to distract himself, eyes glazing over as he thinks of anything else to get his boner down. Rats on the bed, in his hair, clawing and chewing at his hands. Matchsticks between his toes, the taste of the gravel of the school playground, his first kill.
For the second half of the session, he finds himself responding to your simple questions, although in very simple replies himself. You give him a small, warm smile every time he answers – he commits it to memory. Action causes reaction. He wanted you to be pleased with him he found, even if it was only a smile you offered him in thanks. He preened under praise, flourished. Always had and always would be a teacher’s pet.
He thought of you even as he was escorted back to his cell. You had given him a curt goodbye before leaving after the allotted hour and he stared hard at the swing of your hips as you left. There wasn’t much to occupy his time in Arkham anyway – he could read fan letters that were mailed to him, but he wasn’t allowed to respond, or he would have conversations with his new friend in the cell next door, but he never wanted to talk much. It left Edward with a lot of unpreoccupied spare time and with a mind like his, of course all he could do was think. He thought of the red shirt you had worn, how the silk material draped around the curve of your chest, unbuttoned low enough to catch sight of your collarbone. Recounting the extra sliver of rosy flesh he had peaked of your chest as you bent over into your back to retrieve your notes had him salivating. He felt like a scandalised Victorian, going wild over the sight of a piece of extra skin on show. It’s not like he had ever seen anything more than that anyway, a guy like him always had to make do. He imagined you then, filling in the role in his favourite video, him forced to his knees underneath you. Imagines you saying the lines – “Good boy, so good for me” – as his hands shake, unbuttoning your trousers.
Edward had been a compulsive masturbator in his youth, feeling compelled to expel himself at minimum twice a day. Tugging at himself under the covers, keeping himself quiet to not alert any others in the room with him. He had been so unabashed about it back then, but ever since being at Arkham, he struggled to masturbate to completion. Something would always be wrong – the guard walking past the door earlier than the schedule called for, his friend next door letting out a shrieking laugh at nothing. The worst part was the light streaming in from the small barred window in his cell. Even at night, the lights of the city poured into his room, illuminating it. Edward hated his body, he much preferred masturbating in the dark so he wouldn’t be confronted with his own mediocrity and scars of the past. Somehow, that doesn’t stop him tonight. He thinks of your placating smile, the jut of your collarbone peeking out from your shirt, how you hummed and placed your pen towards the corner of your mouth when you were deep in thought. Oral fixation? Edward cums into his hand shoved under his prison uniform, cries muffled as he clamps his other hand around his mouth. How troubling, he thought as he pulled away, wiping the residue along the front of his pants. He didn’t even know anything about you but your name and now he was doing this. Hopefully it didn’t become a habit.
The next session he has with you, you pull a small yellow book out of your bag and lay it on the table between you. The title is pointed towards him – 101 Advanced Sudoko puzzles.
“I cleared it with the staff,” you explain as you right yourself back in your chair. “They said you can’t have it in your cell, but you can have it in the Rec room and during yard time.”
Suddenly, Edward understood the meaning behind all of the bibles verse on angels. Heard the voice of many angels, in a loud voice they were saying, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wisdom and strength and praise!” So many years spent singing the praises of God and his gifts without believing a word of it, and now he had sent you unto him. An angel in a white cotton shirt today, a halo of flickering overhead lights. Perhaps good things did come to those who waited. He was getting ahead of himself, mind consumed with racing thoughts of you. Edward can’t fight the goofy smile that rises on his face. His hands move forward and linger over the yellow cover, hesitating almost like it would fade away if he made contact with it.
“Thank you,” he says, shyly.
Edward knew he had a problem with infatuation. It had been a problem since he was even a child – obsessive one sided crushes developed on strangers who didn’t even know him. When Bruce Wayne had stared at him from across the room as a young boy, Edward had become obsessed with him. He became consumed by it, delusions convincing him that they were sending him secret messages only meant for him. He had convinced himself that he and Batman were partners that were working together, through little evidence at all. His delusions were his brains response to his desire for human interaction, he could tell it wasn’t real but it just felt too good to not indulge in. It was his guilty pleasure he couldn’t stop turning back to.
“It’s no problem. I guessed you would need something other than the Rec room card set to occupy your time.” You click your pen open and poise it over your notes. “Today, I wanted to talk to you about your school experience, how would you feel about that?”
You had been thinking about him, he realised giddily. It makes his breath catch in his throat. You had gone out of your way to buy an entire book for him because you knew he needed something else to occupy his time – were you acknowledging his intellect? Playing towards his ego again. It was working.
“Edward. I said I would like to talk to you about your school years in today’s session. Are you okay with that?” You repeat yourself, clearly noticing that he was more preoccupied with the rambling in his head.
His eyes snap up from the book to you, “My school years. Yes, that’s fine.”
“Excellent,” you say, flipping open a folder you’ve brought in with you. “You attended St Helens from the age of 6 to 18. It’s Catholic, isn’t it? Are you practicing?”
“I was baptised and confirmed, but I don’t actively practice Catholicism, not anymore. Not since I left that place.”
“Hm. Why’s that?”
“It’s hard to believe in a religion that says it will save them, when it does nothing to save them from the actual hell they’re living in.” The words spill from his mouth. “Are you religious?”
You narrow your eyes at him, “We’re not here to talk about me, but no, my parents didn’t raise me in any faith.”
“I think I would’ve preferred to have been raised like that,” Edward says breathily. “Not having the fear of God instilled into me at such a young age.”
“Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?” you ask. “Since I’m not … familiar with your upbringing.”
“Growing up at the orphanage, the nuns taught us that God was watching every single move we took, constantly assessing our goodness. If we weren’t good enough, didn’t behave as expected, our salvation in heaven would not be assured. Really, it was just a way of keeping us all in line.” He recounts, hushing his voice slightly like he was telling you a secret. “I used to pray for the others around me to be hurt, when I wasn’t punished for that, that’s when I realised he wasn’t really listening at all.”
“Were you picked on for your faith at school?”
Edward laughs, “I was picked on for everything at school.”
“Right. I’m sure the faith stuff and being a foster child didn’t help much either, in that regard.”
“What were you like at school?” He asks, suddenly.
You blink at him, “Why does that matter?”
“Come on, can’t you just – indulge me. Were you in to sports, voted best dressed at homecoming? That sort of thing.”
“I suppose I just sat in the library a lot of the time, I liked to read during lunch.”
The detail of your life makes you so more endearing to him. He had pegged you wrong when you first walked in here, your confidence betraying the meek nature you carried as a child. He imagines you sat at a desk with a book in your hands, happily wasting the day away. Edward wonders briefly if perhaps the two of you would’ve been friends. He would come to you crying during break time and you would kiss away the pain from the scrapes on his knees. His angel. You would eventually grow up into the self-assured person before him, a transfiguration from cocoon to butterfly. He had gone through the same process, destroying the meek version of himself to don the mask.
“Were you bullied?” He presses.
“I mean, I was called names and things like that but-“
“No, I mean bullied. Did people push you down in the playground? Cut your hair when you weren’t looking, stole your clothes during gym class? Made your life a living hell the moment you stepped foot into the schoolyard?”
“I suppose then no, I wasn’t.” you relent. “Did you ever consider getting back at your bullies in this … ‘plan’ you created?”
Trying to get him back on topic so he would stop asking about you, he took the bait easily. “Those scumbags aren’t worth the breath to say their names, never mind dedicate time to killing them. I thought about it all the time when I was younger, what I would do to them. But there are things so much bigger than them and what they did to me. Things that are much more important.”
“But they hurt you directly, they tormented you and abused you as a child. The men you went after had never directly done anything to you.”
“You don’t understand. All the pain and torment I went through in my life was caused by the actions of those pigs whether it was direct or not. They ruined this city,” He spits. “We turn a blind eye to the corruption of the world and the weakest among us suffer the consequences.”
“Is that what you consider yourself as, ‘the weakest among us’?” You reply. “You had a good life going for you, Edward. Graduated with honours, a job working at a successful firm – you could’ve moved on from your past. Grown from it. But you allowed your obsession to consume you, convinced yourself that only you knew how to make things right.”
“I am the only one who understands,” Edwards voice raises, leaning across the table. “’The Lord will judge his people.’ But he didn’t! He allowed them to run this city into the ground. You see, I had to do it, to save the city from this corruption.”
“But who did you really save? The flood destroyed half the city, so many lives affected by that. Lives made worse by you.”
He giggles, “That’s the point. It was time for everyone else in this city to suffer, just like I had. Make it so they were just like everyone else. God brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly so that the world may start anew. It levelled the playing fields.”
“So you see yourself as a Christ figure in all of this.”
“That’s not – don’t put words in my mouth.” He grinds out. You were prodding him like a bear in a cage, trying to draw out the big bad Riddler from the news and he was falling for it. He liked to argue, Edward found it stimulating and you were proving to be a good debate partner, but he didn’t enjoy you twisting his words. “I did it for people like us.”
You laugh, a beautiful sound that would make his heart sing if he wasn’t so riled up at the moment. “Don’t loop me into this, what you did didn’t benefit me.”
“The people who tormented you at school – or throughout your life! – all benefited from the status quo of the city. Don’t argue that they didn’t. I did it so they would suffer just like we had. The underdogs. Surely you understand that?”
“I don’t.”
“You will.” He stresses, impulsively needing to have the last word, eyes boring into you over the slant of his nose. If you didn’t get it, then you were just like them.
Before either of you can continue fuelling his rant, the door buzzes and alerts you that it’s time to leave. Edward watches silently, slinking back into his chair as you gather your things and slip them back into your bag. His heart rate lowers sluggishly in his chest, foot beginning to tap a count of 8 into the floor without him realising. The yellow book remains on the table between you as promised and he stares at it until his eyes blur. A guard moves with you to escort you out but you hesitate at the door, looking back over your shoulder to the man still chained to the table.
“You know, after our first session, I didn’t think I was going to get anything interesting out of you. But you’ve proved me wrong, Edward.”
“See you soon, doctor.” He catches his lips between his teeth, trying to hide his smile.
You hum, “I’m looking forward to it.”