I'm Bored

"I'm bored," were the two most dangerous words one could hear from the Riddler. A bored Riddler was more dangerous than an insulted, an angry, or even a desperate Riddler.

A bored Riddler was something whispered about and dreaded even by his closest compatriots. A bored Riddler was petty, unfiltered, and for once didn't care one wit about winning — he just cared about the spectacle and how audacious he could get away with being.

A bored Riddler dismantled every appliance in the kitchen to build mechanical ducks. Then afterwards, to stop his roommates from throttling him, he came up with a foolproof heist plan that absolutely required said ducks. (So there, Jonathan, you can't possibly be that mad about the coffee maker now, can you? Oh yes he very much could be, Edward)

A bored Riddler once converted two thirds of Gotham's ATMs to spray glitter glue at people. He would've gotten to all of them, but he got too bored to finish. Batman and his flock spent weeks cleaning their costumes, the city was in chaos, and no-one noticed the series of small heists that Riddler orchestrated at the same time until months later.

Normal Riddler was a chess master, always planning twenty steps ahead, and therefore he was somewhat predictable. A bored Riddler didn't need a plan nor a point. A bored Riddler wasn't something you could predict. A bored Riddler wasn't something you could guard against or prevent. He simply was.

All of this was to say that one ex-Professor Jonathan Crane, the Master of Fear himself, would have no shame in admitting that his blood froze when he overheard those very words drift from Edward's table in the Arkham cafeteria. He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth, calculating the fastest way to get himself confined to his cell and safely away from the terror that had somehow become one of his closest friends. He actually slumped in relief when he realized that it had not been Edward that said that blasted phrase, but rather Twoface.

Oh, thank Gotham, Jonathan thought, breathing out a slow huff of air. Who cared about a bored Dent? The man could just argue with himself if he was really that deprived of stimulus. Jonathan doubted it, though — Edward had abandoned him and Jervis a while ago to sit with the duality-obsessed brute, and heavens knew the Prince of Puzzles could talk enough for an entire crowd of people, let alone a simpleton like Dent. Confused or even frustrated made far more sense than bored.

How in the world he'd managed to grab Edward's attention in the first place, much less hold it long-term, Jonathan would never know.

Safe in the knowledge that a Code: Green was not imminent, the Scarecrow tuned back into Jervis's ramblings about — what else? — Wonderland, nodding along absently as the Mad Hatter talked.

Meanwhile, over at his own table, Edward was openly gaping in horror at his conjoined compatriots.

"What do you mean, bored?"

"I mean, I'm bored," Harv repeated roughly, without the elaboration Edward was seeking. Despite Harvey's claims that he never shut up, Harv was a man of few words with most everyone outside their head.

"How can you possibly be bored?" Edward demanded to know, a tinge of definitely not hurt under his offended tone. "After all, I've been so thoughtfully entertaining you with stories of my greatest victories — including the ones not just anyone gets to hear about, I'll have you know–"

"We ain't bored of ya, Eddie," Harv cut in, rolling his eyes. Ignoring Edward's spluttering over the interruption, Harvey softly added, "You know we love hearing you talk, Edward."

"That– I was not worried about any such thing," Edward insisted, even as he visibly relaxed. "Of course you aren't bored of me, for that simply isn't possible. I'm fascinating."

Harv snorted, but Harvey was the one that spoke next. "There's just not a lot of variety here, I guess. I'm alright with it, but you know how Harv gets about colors. Yeah, cause I actually have a fucking sense of style."

"I'm sure Doc Leland would let you add a bit of color to your wardrobe if you asked," Edward pointed out. It wasn't unheard of for the better-behaved inmates to be allowed sweaters and such, and the Dents were surprisingly cooperative most the time. Even Harv wasn't that interested in starting pointless brawls provided he got stimulation elsewhere — hence their attachment to the ever-talking, ever-changing, ever-stimulating Edward Nygma, he supposed.

"It ain't just that," Harv muttered, expression pinched. Twoface's face started twitching in that way that meant the two were arguing. Edward surmised from prior experience that Harv probably wanted Harvey to deal with the talking, and Harvey was most likely pushing Harv to deal with his own shit. It was quite amusing, if Edward was being entirely honest, though he knew better than to tell them that.

Harv sighed in a loud way that meant he had lost the argument, and his displeasure at that fact was going to be made known. "Like Harvey said, there ain't any variety. We do the same things, we see the same shit, we even have the same fucking conversations most of the fucking time. No offense, Eddie, but talking only keeps my attention so long. I'm just... bored."

Edward nodded as comprehension dawned. He understood what his beloved brute of a friend meant — on the outside, their lives were ever changing chaos within a set routine of plots and capers and battles with the Bat. Inside Arkham, however, very little ever changed. It was indeed enough to drive one to tears with boredom.

Not for Edward, though, of course. Arkham most probably wouldn't still be standing, had that been the case. No, he had all sorts of tricks and games to keep his mind sharp in the asylum, along with various plots running on the inside and outside to hold his interest until he inevitably decided to escape again.

But still, he could see how it could begin to wear on someone else. Especially someone with a flair for ever-shifting patterns, colors, explosions, and general chaos like Harv.

A few years ago, Edward wouldn't have really cared, honestly. He would've rolled his eyes. Shrugged. Made some witty, perhaps biting remark and demanded the Dents shifted their focus back to his speech. Insisted they just weren't paying enough attention or weren't comprehending his words properly if one of them felt bored while being regaled by the brilliant Riddler's tales of triumph.

But then Edward had caught feelings and started to actually care about other people beyond his Aunts, and so now he didn't do any of that. Instead, he stared down at his plastic platter of so-called food with a thoughtful expression, the gears of his marvelous brain turning at high speed.

Bored was not an okay state of being, not to Edward. Boredom made his skin crawl, his mind scream, his blood feel wrong in his veins. He hated it, he hated it so much, even if it did tend to lead to some of his more hilarious and creative ideas.

Bored was not an okay state of being, worse than any sort of physical pain, and it most certainly was not a state for one of his friends to be stuck in. He simply wouldn't stand for it.

With that thought in mind, and preemptively lamenting the loss of privileges sure to follow, Edward stood up and looked Twoface straight in the eyes. "You really want a bit of variety, Harv?"

"What? Eddie–"

"There's only two right answers — yes or no. And I'm only asking Harv, so no Coin, Twosie."

Harv only hesitated for a second before replying, "Yes."

"Well, in that case..." Edward grinned, grabbing his small bowl of macaroni and holding it up at an angle in one swift motion. With an exaggerated gesture, he threw it straight at the Joker himself, yelling at the top of his lungs, "FOOD FIGHT!"

He'd picked his target perfectly (of course). It had been a week and a half since Joker had last done anything particularly Joker-ish, and the clown leapt on the golden opportunity Edward had handed him like a dog after a ball. In mere minutes, the cafeteria was a mess of screaming inmates, multicolored food stains, and panicking staff.

Edward — currently hiding behind an upturned table and very pointedly ignoring how dirty he currently was (he could have a panic attack about the mash potatoes dripping down from his hair later, when Jon was there to help him breathe through it; now was the time for some fun) — cackled in glee at what his actions had caused.

"Edward, what did you just do?" Harvey shouted over the noisy din of chaos that the room had become, hiding behind the table with him. Twoface's misshappen mouth was pulled wide in a breathless grin, as if neither side could quite believe what had just happened. "Are ya nuts?!"

"Maybe!" Edward freely admitted — therapy really could do wonders for one's habits of denial, he briefly mused — with another laugh. He turned to look at the Dents, glad to see that the joy on their face wasn't warring with anything else. Both sides were appreciative of his efforts, then. Good. With a wink, he added, "But you've got to admit, at least I'm not boring."

"Ya can say that again," Harv crowed. Without a single flip of the Coin, Twoface rushed out to join the mayhem before Leland could show up to get things back under control. Edward stayed crouched behind the table, content with carefully peeking out to enjoy the show the others were putting on rather than turn any more food into projectiles himself.

Condiment King in particular was relishing this little incident, it seemed. Edward quickly ducked to dodge a paper cup of ketchup thrown in his direction. In his haste, he accidentally stuck his hand into a puddle of mustard. He shook his extremity with disgust, looking around for an unsullied napkin that might've survived the wreckage with which to wipe his fingers. 

Fun as it may have been, this was definitely one of Edward's messier plans...

A bored Riddler was a dangerous creature. Jonathan had known this since the early days of his friendship with the ridiculous self-proclaimed smartest man alive, when Edward had messed with his Fear Toxin mixture behind his back after being cooped up in their hideout too long... and then did it again, despite how terribly the first time went, due to another particularly bad case of cabin fever.

From the day of the food fight onward, however, Jonathan knew that he had been slightly wrong in that assessment — a bored Riddler was a dangerous creature, true, but a Riddler who was trying to cure someone else's boredom was another monster entirely.

After the third time that Twoface had declared boredom aloud within Edward's earshot, Jonathan began wondering if he could make an anti-boredom toxin. It couldn't be that much harder to create than his anti-fear toxin had been, could it?

Jonathan sighed. He really needed to start making friends that weren't habitually locked up in an asylum for the criminally insane.

Or he just needed to go back to only having crows as friends. That sounded like a good plan. He'd start working on that — right after Jervis was done telling him about the symbolism of the Red King for the eight thousandth time. Quite obviously that required his fullest attention, after all, for reasons that he'd... figure out later.