The fallout burned nuclear in his skin, into his neurons. He struggled to breathe, when it happened, these flashbacks of steel pushed into his flesh or electrical shocks sizzling up his spine. Of that dark voice, ever calm and patient and cold, spinning words in his head. Edward Nygma leaned against the alleyway like a man against a crutch, palms scraping against brick as his memories swam and flooded his brain, trying so hard not to fall out.
"Just -- I just need, ah, just a moment," he said to the blurred passing people that shoulder him on their way. Six months: he understood what he was, this hybrid man puzzled into pieces. He understood what had happened to him, he knew he must always question his paranoia.
And double-question his own questions, to be sure. But his tongue dried on the doublespeak.
Six months broken between agonizing hours and swirled weeks he couldn't remember. The blackouts, he wasn't sure if those were even true now.
Nothing seemed true.
The air was so crisp against his tongue. Like the first sip of water after days in the iron box.
Had that been true?
His power, that was the cruelest irony. His captors had taught him to doubt even his own objective power, the one thing he logically knew he could trust.
But could he trust it? When they said it was wrong, how it lied to him?
"I just need--"
3:12 PM
After combustion, there is a release. Dynamism to heat. Hot air rises proving less dense than colder air and more prone to pressure exerted upwards. After Eddie succumbed to his knees, to his own screams, to a voice that traumatized without ever speaking again -- after that, he would recalculate. He would crawl back up from the spilled alleyway trashcans and the ignored filth of the street, adjust his tie, and he'd think. He would hit his worn soles on the pavement and focus and brainstorm his fresh tactics for the Resistance. He knew so much, after all, so much about the Establishment. He could -- would help, his mind even swallowed by shadows was still sharper. Better.
Edward turned left, heading to the one rendezvous point still accessible to him: an underground bunker beneath a copyright law firm. He needed to see someone, right now.
"Immediately."
The days when he refused to drown. Water didn't always behave like air, and he needed to stay above. He needed it.
open:
The fallout burned nuclear in his skin, into his neurons. He struggled to breathe, when it happened, these flashbacks of steel pushed into his flesh or electrical shocks sizzling up his spine. Of that dark voice, ever calm and patient and cold, spinning words in his head. Edward Nygma leaned against the alleyway like a man against a crutch, palms scraping against brick as his memories swam and flooded his brain, trying so hard not to fall out.
"Just -- I just need, ah, just a moment," he said to the blurred passing people that shoulder him on their way. Six months: he understood what he was, this hybrid man puzzled into pieces. He understood what had happened to him, he knew he must always question his paranoia.
And double-question his own questions, to be sure. But his tongue dried on the doublespeak.
Six months broken between agonizing hours and swirled weeks he couldn't remember. The blackouts, he wasn't sure if those were even true now.
Nothing seemed true.
The air was so crisp against his tongue. Like the first sip of water after days in the iron box.
Had that been true?
His power, that was the cruelest irony. His captors had taught him to doubt even his own objective power, the one thing he logically knew he could trust.
But could he trust it? When they said it was wrong, how it lied to him?
"I just need--"
3:12 PM
After combustion, there is a release. Dynamism to heat. Hot air rises proving less dense than colder air and more prone to pressure exerted upwards. After Eddie succumbed to his knees, to his own screams, to a voice that traumatized without ever speaking again -- after that, he would recalculate. He would crawl back up from the spilled alleyway trashcans and the ignored filth of the street, adjust his tie, and he'd think. He would hit his worn soles on the pavement and focus and brainstorm his fresh tactics for the Resistance. He knew so much, after all, so much about the Establishment. He could -- would help, his mind even swallowed by shadows was still sharper. Better.
Edward turned left, heading to the one rendezvous point still accessible to him: an underground bunker beneath a copyright law firm. He needed to see someone, right now.
"Immediately."
The days when he refused to drown. Water didn't always behave like air, and he needed to stay above. He needed it.