GOTHAM'S STRANGEST

carrd; custom blog theme coming soon.

follows back from fornora, my victor fries (mr. freeze) rp blog. also at arkhamlegacy.

Oops! All truth!

Shouldn't have done? Avoided? Regret? Zsasz thinks about his body of scars. He remembers each one's progenitor, men and woman and children... Old and young, hearty and infirm, at the top of the world or the bottom of it.

"If I thought I shouldn't have done one, then I'd think the same for all," he says eventually. "Everyone has the same ability to live as they have the ability to die, you know. If I were to regret one, I'd be in violation of that fact."

Oops! All truth!

Crane looks one way, then the other. He taps out a staccato rhythm on his upper leg.

Oops! All truth!

Oops! All truth!

"What do I think of you?" Buy time, buy time...

If this is magic, Ed's going to find whatever wizard cast this doozy of a spell and dangle him over a spike pit or something. He bites down on his lip. It doesn't help.

"Weeeeee-ll, I think that you. Are a surprisingly competent opponent in this game that my team plays versus yours. I actually do respect you, you know, and your brooding mentor too. If I didn't, I wouldn't do all of this. Probably wouldn't even be in Gotham. Keep it up, I guess."

Zsasz goes with the kick, toppling over. He hits the ground hard and springs back up, knife in his left hand, and narrowly misses Red Robin.

"You're so close to understanding," he says, dodging backwards. There's a fresh tally dripping down from his collarbone. "It's aggravating to see."

Lunge. "Open."

Tackle. "Your."

A  MEMORY  THAT  IS  COLORED          .    .    .

Jeremiah fiddles with the picture frame. It's Art Deco in its stylings: an original from the era. Gold gilt, an angel-maiden reaching high at something beyond as her wings make the top of the frame. He wipes at a fingerprint (his own?) with the edge of his sleeve. Someone's at the door.

"Come in."

It's Dr. Jacosta Joy, the new psychologist. Jeremiah sets the picture down quickly, considers turning it face-down. But that's a clear sign of guilt, and he is not guilty. Not in this, at least.

"Is there something I can do for you?" he asks.

"You can explain the schedules you have clinical staff on," Dr. Joy replies, stepping into the room. Her arm is crooked around a stack of files - patient folders, judging from the embossed ARKHAM STATE HOSPITAL logo at the top one's corner. "Fifty-five hours a week on average, Dr. Arkham."

A  MEMORY  THAT  IS  COLORED          .    .    .

Astrid knocks on the door, peeking through the frosted glass and the text - 'DR. JEREMIAH ARKHAM'. She can see the silhouette of her uncle, lit by a desk lamp. He doesn't get up from his desk.

She knocks again. "Uncle Jeremiah?"

"Oh- come on in, Astrid."

She opens the door and leans in, her other hand feeling at the familiar chipped paint of the frame. Jeremiah is at his computer, glasses pushed up on the bridge of his nose. He's frowning. He frowns a lot.

"The sun's setting," she starts, and bites at her lip. Jeremiah's probably doing something pretty important. Maybe she shouldn't have interrupted. "Um... I was going to go watch it. And you could too. If you're not busy."

Jeremiah blinks once, twice, behind the reflected-light of his glasses lenses. He looks up, and Astrid has the curious feeling that it's the first time he's genuinely looked at anything all day. A wan smile crosses his face.

"That sounds nice, Astrid."

Astrid's spent a lot of her afternoons exploring the hospital, darting in and out of rooms to avoid nurses and orderlies. There's all sorts of strangeness in the building - Jeremiah had showed her a chart of its history, once, the various expansions and renovations over the years that turned what had once been her great-great-uncle's home into a place people came for healing. But there's things that aren't on those floorplans, either.

She takes the two of them up a rickety staircase in one of the permanently-under-renovation (when there's funding again, Jeremiah had told her, and smiled in a way she found quite sad) sections into a room that was maybe used for storage once. The windows have heavy drapes over them and Astrid sniffles at the dust. She looks up, though, and spots the familiar trapdoor on the ceiling. It had taken her some creative furniture-stacking to reach the pullcord, and when she clamors up on the old chair propped up by old bricks she misses Jeremiah's worried expression.

The ladder swings down with a heavy clunk. Astrid grins and climbs up it, pausing at the crawlspace above to see if her uncle follows.

"It's not scary!" she promises. "You just have to sort of crawl a little bit and then there's another door to one of those balconies out front."

Jeremiah pushes his glasses up, shrugs off his white coat onto the chair, and follows. True to Astrid's word, they emerge out on the balcony a short time later. It's stable under their feet.

To the west is the sunset. The haze of the city makes it burn orange like flame, so brilliantly that Jeremiah shields his eyes. They can see for quite a distance here. Gotham lies across its land with its twinkling lights, something modern and foreign to the weathered-brick world of Arkham.

A  MEMORY  THAT  IS  COLORED          .    .    .

The campus is festooned in red and black for the arriving freshmen, banners and ribbons flapping limply in the September wind. Jon hasn't been this far upstate before, nor in such a large city. He'd applied sight-unseen to the University of Georgia and been accepted on similar terms. His statement of purpose had done him well.

He has more purpose than most, looking at the meandering pace of the students around him. He's head and shoulders above most, including some of the men, and he curls his spine down at the occasional gawking look. It isn't fear that does it. It's a desire for anonymity. Arlen had been barely a community at all, the name existing mostly in residents' minds, and Brooklet had been larger... but everyone had known him as Jon, Keeny's boy. Here, he's just a passing face - notable only from his appearance.

Jon's fairly certain there's more people out on the campus walkways and in the adjoining buildings than in Arlen and Brooklet put together. He wonders idly about getting lost in them, or lost in Athens. Unknown in a crowd beyond split-second stares.

No, he decides, taking a turn towards the dormitory hall he's been assigned. He rolls his shoulders back with one sharp motion. I'll be known.

This city doesn't know his name. It will, one day, for all the right reasons.

an assortment of dialogue prompts

"It isn't a distraction," Astrid rebuts. "It's..."

Well, what is it then?

What exactly is asking an avenging angel about his hobbies or interests, essentially, if not a distraction? She tightens the leather straps of her left greave instead of continuing. The truce the two of them have is a tentative one. She shouldn't be pushing at it by trying to dig for information.

And yet...

"I have hobbies," she continues somewhat lamely. Used to is unspoken. "They're... nice. That's all."

Astrid dons her helmet. With her sword in hand, she feels more herself - or feels more someone else, someone better. Someone who doesn't ask pointless questions, at the least.