(A/N: The results for my Riddler fanfic poll was basically 50/50 😂 so this is based off of the last issue of Riddler Year One, #6, as I copied the intro to the comic, but I'll work up to the movie too 😊 enjoy!!)
Wordcount: 1.7K
A knock at the door. Silence.
You frown slightly, glancing at the clock. It's late, really late, for anyone to be calling for you. You're not expecting anyone, and you're used to the trouble that comes with living in the middle of Gotham City, giving you every reason not to answer the door and stay quiet until whoever it is gets bored and goes away.
Another knock, sounding a little desperate, five soft bangs on the door's study steel, echoing through your small stretch of hallway and to the main room, where you sit on the sofa, laptop on your lap, scrolling boredly. You stare at the door warily, as if you could somehow see through to whatever drophead was trying to get your attention, before hesitantly raising your voice in answer.
"Who is it?"
Silence again.
You roll your eyes and sigh after a beat of nothing, pushing your laptop off you and onto the sofa, quietly approaching the door and taking a sceptical look through the peephole. Nothing. No one. Just the hard bright light of the dirty stairway and landing of the floor in the apartment block you live in, which snaps off after no motion to keep it alive, and the door opposite you, shut and locked, no sound coming from anywhere except muffled music and arguing from somewhere downstairs, as per normal here.
You go to open the door, but then pause, cautious enough to wait it out for a while, five minutes, ten minutes, before letting yourself open it and look outside. You don't want to be the next poor person who gets robbed or jumped or whatever rank thing you could expect from living down in Gotham, but there's still no one to greet you when your door squeaks faintly as you pull it open, black bristles dragging across the floor from beneath it. You wince slightly as the harsh light blinks back on, revealing an empty landing, empty staircase, nothing but your breaths echoing in the space...
And an envelope at your feet.
Your frown deepens when you go to close the door again and notice it, lying there outside the door, a medium white envelope inked with a messy green symbol of some kind. A question mark, with dashes at its sides, top and bottom, scratching into the paper boldly, no name or address or postmark anywhere, nothing to indicate where it came from or who it's for. But it's at your door, and after a few seconds' inspection and another look down the landing and the stairs, you sigh and pick it up, your thumb sliding under the triangular fold as you close the door with your body whilst opening it.
There are two things sealed in this envelope.
A Polaroid picture... and a card.
You sit down with your eyes fixed on the envelope's contents, laptop ignored at your side, as you take out the card first. It's like some kind of vintage cartoon, a little beaming squirrel holding one nut in its paws, a few others at its feet, a heart around its body. Above it, bold calligraphic text says:
I'm NUTS about you!
Your face screws up in bewilderment and amusement, your eyes flitting over the cheesy sentiment and picture, before you open it up to see contrasting, messy handwriting, gone over a few times to make it readable enough. It almost looks childish.
The rich people want it, wise people know it, the poor people need it, and kind people show it. What am I?
You blink, confused at the sudden question. A riddle? You glance at the question symbol on the opened envelope, before returning your attention to the card.
"Rich people want it..." you mutter under your breath in thought, "kind people- what, love?"
You read the last bit of writing under the riddle, then read it again. And again.
I see you work with the rats, but you don't become one. I see you give the homeless something warm when the city is cold, cold, COLD. I see you trying to tell the police the bad things you know, but no one can hear us. You are an angel in a cesspool of a city... And I will make a heaven for you.
You let out a long, shaky breath, finally looking up from the card in a whirl of confusion, fear and curiosity. Your eyes instinctively glance to the windows, the curtains open a little to show the dreary, dark nightlife of Gotham below, dully glowing streetlamps, some lightbulbs dead or smashed, interrupting the neat lines guiding drivers. You almost expect to see a pair of eyes staring at you, watching you from somewhere.
Who the hell is this person? This was the way they showed their 'love'? A sixties-styled valentines card, with a riddle and a baffling message?
"Working with rats?" You question aloud.
If by rats, they meant the jerks and businessmen who came to the Iceberg Lounge to find clients and friends every other evening, then... well, they weren't wrong. You have to work there to earn enough to pay rent and everything else to make some kind of a life for yourself in Gotham. Not that you wanted to, but it was a last resort, and you steered clear of the infamous Penguin, and that horrible Falcone character, whenever you were there. But you can't help overhearing things to the grabby, drunken, smug people you waitress to there, but at this point, you'd learnt that half the GCPD weren't nearly as credible as they acted, a handful of them involved in the scandals they were brewing at the nightclub, and who else was there to tell without them telling the wrong guy and ending with you being silenced at gunpoint?
As for the homeless, believe it or not, they weren't all off their heads with drops. Some of them were just people trying to survive out on the streets of a broken-down town, young and older people cowering on street corners, some beaten by gangs, others jumpy and aware, ready to run at the smallest hint of danger. It was the ones who were simply too tired to do anything that made you stop in your tracks every now and then, as you walked home from work, before you gave in to your impulses, told them to give you a minute, and dashed into the nearest diner, grabbing something small to eat, or a hot drink to-go, the waiter bored and friendly enough to give you a smile and a nod as you went, the young man who often stayed there scribbling in a little book or typing up work-related things too shy to meet your eye, which was kind of cute, sandy-brown hair barely hiding the flush of his round cheeks, murky green eyes forced to focus on his book instead of looking up.
Was that enough to make you an angel? Really?
A few acts of kindness usually earned you a judgemental scoff, or suspicions of intentions, as no one's were really ever pure. But apparently, it's earned you an admirer, and from the looks of things, one who's more than a little unhinged.
You pick up the Polaroid last of all, and then your breath catches in shock as you stare at it, barely blinking.
It's a guy who's been making moves on you for a good few weeks now, more than double your age, packets of drops making his pockets rustle with thin plastic and his eyes unfocused. A frequent visitor to the Iceberg Lounge, who wouldn't leave you alone after you gave him his first drink of the first night, running drunkenly outside to offer you a lift when you put your arm out for a cab, trying to hold onto some part of the uncomfortably tight clothing you were expected to wear working in a place like the Iceberg Lounge.
He's slumped against a wall covered with some kind of fabric spray painted with the same question mark symbol on the envelope, though the green is blemished with crimson spatter, a rat running across his leg, blurred slightly in the shot. A laptop is in the background, where the ordeal is actually being filmed or streamed somewhere, names and comments too small in the picture to make out, though several unfocused red shapes that are most likely hearts streak up the laptop screen from its viewers. Your stomach twists and untwists into a knot, repulsed and shocked.
They killed some stupid guy... for you?
They killed a person, on a livestream... for you.
The Polaroid slips from your loosened grip, fluttering in the air for a split second before it lands beside your laptop. It makes you blink back into awareness, and you eye the card and Polaroid as if they might jump up at you.
Do you call the police? The GCPD won't ignore you, surely, if it's this level of harassment? If a person has died?
The thought of someone watching you, trying to understand you, almost worshipping you in some twisted way, brings so many thoughts and feelings up that it makes you dizzy, not knowing what to pin down as your reaction to it. Scared? Disgusted? Flattered? Curious?
What if they've been in your apartment? If they know where you live... and with Gotham's measly security, someone like this person could have found a way to break in, pick the lock or something. Is anything out of place? Hidden cameras anywhere?
Paranoia makes a shiver snake down your spine, and you sigh heavily, fingers threading through and out of your hair as you run your hands up your face and past your head.
First, check for cameras. Then, call the police. Right?
Right...
You pick up the Polaroid from beside your laptop, and your eyes flick up to the darkened screen, the small black circle of a camera at its top. Should you put some tape over it or something? Do a deep scan to check for viruses or any weird apps?
Suddenly, the screen flashes brighter, back to life, though you never touched the mousepad, and you flinch. Your eyes widen as the screen glitches and goes black, and you press down on several keys, trying to escape from whatever page it's gone on, power it off, restart.
The screen glitches for a few more moments, and then a green, pixelated question mark between some pointers slides across the screen.
Figured it out yet?
⭒❃.✮:▹ 𝓉𝒶𝑔𝓁𝒾𝓈𝓉 ◃:✮.❃⭒ (message me know if you want to be removed. ghost blogs/dead accs have been removed.)
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