Edward Nigma | The Riddler (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
questionauthority) wrote2011-07-03 11:56 pm
questionauthority) wrote2011-07-03 11:56 pm
Riddle 030: Half-Life (50% Droning)
[A - ACTION: The Kitchen of 726 Anderson Lane.
Eddie's in the middle of preparing a nice, hearty breakfast for his family. Question: How best to spend this Fourth of July? Take his beautiful wife and kids out for a picnic in John Doe Park? Maybe see if Jonathan and his family want to come along? Honestly? It's days like this that it feels pretty damn good to be Edward Nashton.
Wait. That... isn't right. It's Nigma. Edward Nigma. He'd taken that name to get as far away from that miserable childhood as possible. ...hadn't he? No, all Eddie can think about now is a childhood here in Mayfield. His old man teaching him how to ride a bike. Playing catch with him in the backyard while Mrs. Nashton made her world-famous lemonade. The day he'd come racing home to tell his father he'd won a contest at school. And his father had been proud of him...
No. Stop it, Edward. You'd cheated that day, remember? Your father was never proud of you. That's why you strove to prove yourself better than everyone else, because you are better than everyone else. You're a genius. Cleverer than Crane. More intelligent than Lex Luthor. You've got bigger brains than Batman.
...and it's here that Edward Nashton---Nigma, dammit---comes to a haunting conclusion. There never was a Batman here in Mayfield, was there? There was never a reason for one. There was never a reason for the Riddler, either. All of a sudden, Eddie's feeling much less enthused about today.]
[B - PHONE: Shortly after breakfast.]
"Bury deep,
Pile on stones,
Yet I will
Dig up the bones."
Memories. Something... something isn't right. I'm starting to remember things that didn't happen. Things that should never have happened.
[Or should they have? What's wrong with the life Edward's leading here in Mayfield? For once in his pathetic life, he has the chance to be happy. Yet again, the Riddler is beginning to question himself.]
None of this is real. ...is it?
[C - ACTION: That afternoon, various places around town.
The Riddler needs to clear his head. Perhaps some of that fresh Mayfield air will do him some good. Those who bump into him may hear him reciting a little riddle to himself. Something to keep him anchored in all of this confusion.]
"Up a hill,
Down a hill,
Over them I may roam,
But after all my walking,
There's no place like my own."
[This neighborhood, these streets, this perfect little slice of American suburbia. This place is a far cry from Gotham. This place isn't truly home.
...right?]
Eddie's in the middle of preparing a nice, hearty breakfast for his family. Question: How best to spend this Fourth of July? Take his beautiful wife and kids out for a picnic in John Doe Park? Maybe see if Jonathan and his family want to come along? Honestly? It's days like this that it feels pretty damn good to be Edward Nashton.
Wait. That... isn't right. It's Nigma. Edward Nigma. He'd taken that name to get as far away from that miserable childhood as possible. ...hadn't he? No, all Eddie can think about now is a childhood here in Mayfield. His old man teaching him how to ride a bike. Playing catch with him in the backyard while Mrs. Nashton made her world-famous lemonade. The day he'd come racing home to tell his father he'd won a contest at school. And his father had been proud of him...
No. Stop it, Edward. You'd cheated that day, remember? Your father was never proud of you. That's why you strove to prove yourself better than everyone else, because you are better than everyone else. You're a genius. Cleverer than Crane. More intelligent than Lex Luthor. You've got bigger brains than Batman.
...and it's here that Edward Nashton---Nigma, dammit---comes to a haunting conclusion. There never was a Batman here in Mayfield, was there? There was never a reason for one. There was never a reason for the Riddler, either. All of a sudden, Eddie's feeling much less enthused about today.]
[B - PHONE: Shortly after breakfast.]
"Bury deep,
Pile on stones,
Yet I will
Dig up the bones."
Memories. Something... something isn't right. I'm starting to remember things that didn't happen. Things that should never have happened.
[Or should they have? What's wrong with the life Edward's leading here in Mayfield? For once in his pathetic life, he has the chance to be happy. Yet again, the Riddler is beginning to question himself.]
None of this is real. ...is it?
[C - ACTION: That afternoon, various places around town.
The Riddler needs to clear his head. Perhaps some of that fresh Mayfield air will do him some good. Those who bump into him may hear him reciting a little riddle to himself. Something to keep him anchored in all of this confusion.]
"Up a hill,
Down a hill,
Over them I may roam,
But after all my walking,
There's no place like my own."
[This neighborhood, these streets, this perfect little slice of American suburbia. This place is a far cry from Gotham. This place isn't truly home.
...right?]
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I've...got these notebooks I remember writing in. And I remember that whatever I was writing was important. But I don't know what it was and it's in a language I can't read--but it feels like I should be able to read it, I just can't remember how.
Whichever one's right, I'm almost sure it's in there.
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Notebooks. [Hadn't he jotted things down as well in a Case Log? ] Hold that thought.
[He drops the phone on the table and returns a moment later with his notebook, flipping through each page in rapid succession.]
"The Box Top Incident..." "The Weeping Angel Incident..." "Smith vs. Smirnoff..." [The way he speaks each word, it sounds as though he's growing all the more confused.]
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['just before I arrived here'? No, he'd lived in this town all his life. That was a fact, and yet it was also a fact that he hadn't. Which was of course impossible, they'd just gone over that.]
-I don't know, but I think I remember hearing about it.
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...yeah. We found everything we'd lost, I was back to full strength...and then it was just gone in a second.
Ah, what am I saying? Listen to me, I sound like I'm going crazy. Nothing like that ever happened--
[He cut himself off abruptly. No, he remembered--that was the same time he'd promised something to someone important. It had to have happened, otherwise he wouldn't have had that lingering sense of concern about her in the back of his mind.]
-Sorry about that. I can't seem to keep anything straight today; that crazy shit with the dairy, I know it must've happened.