By Indiana
Characters: Edward Nygma {Lego version}, Batman
Synopsis: Ever since he'd heard of their existence, Eddie had wanted to be a master builder.
He'd known his whole life what he wanted to be.
Ever since he had been very small, Eddie had known he wanted to be nothing less than a Master Builder. Master Builders were the greatest, most skilled people in the world, who were allowed freedom to do the most extraordinary things. Everyone else had a role to play which was dictated by somebody they would probably never meet, where they did what they were told and were supposed to be happy about it. Not Eddie. No, he wanted to be his own boss, and do what he wanted, and build what he wanted, and he would.
Maybe.
There was an aptitude test for people who wanted to become Master Builders, and Eddie had ridden the bus all by himself to the centre to take it, and he passed it, too. He'd known he would. Not just because he was smart, or because he could see things other people couldn't. But because he had cheated.
He had had to pass that test. He was a little young to be taking it, that was true, but he could only wait so long! School was so boring, not to mention pointless when you already knew what you wanted to do when you were older. So while everyone else was waiting to take their turn, he had slipped off into the demonstration room to take a look at what blocks were being used for the test, so he could get a head start in what he wanted to do with them.
And when he'd gotten in there and built exactly what he'd been planning to, the panel certainly was impressed! They had murmured amongst themselves and they seemed to be excited, and so was he. Finally. He was going to be able to achieve his dream and become something in the world.
When he got home that night it was very late, and the lights were on, which meant his father was already inside. He decided maybe his bedroom window was a better access point than the front door and went around the back of the house, just able to climb up into his room using the windowsill from the first floor. He pushed the window closed and climbed into bed. He hoped he would be called about going off to become a Master Builder soon.
That was when his bedroom light flipped on and his stomach dropped, and when he looked over to the doorway there was his father, standing there with his arms crossed. "Where have you been, Eddie?" he asked, stone-faced.
"I was at school," Eddie said, hiding as much of himself under the blanket as possible. "I was doing a project. For school."
"Really," his father snorted. "And what kind of project was that?"
"A… building project. I had to build something. For school." He hoped he sounded convincing.
"You know something Eddie?" his father asked, but before he could say anything he continued with, "I think you're lying. And you know what happens when you lie, don't you, Eddie?"
Eddie wanted to pull the blanket over his head, and he would, as soon as his father left. "Yes."
"Good." His father flicked the lightswitch back down. "I can't wait to see your project."
If Eddie's project had been successful, he would never have to see his father again.
The next few days, everything went on as usual: Eddie would get up and get himself to school, where he would try very hard to pay attention but just could not because he was so bored, and after he would go home and be as quiet in his room as he could, especially if his father was already home. He usually wasn't – he often was at work until late evening – but that didn't change the way Eddie opened the front door.
He was starting to get nervous. He knew he was good enough to be a Master Builder, he knew he was… but shouldn't they have called him by now? Were they going to call his school, maybe? Was he going to get called to the principal's office and be told there? He was usually only called there for not doing his worksheets, but maybe tomorrow…
And there Eddie was in his room staring at the worksheet he'd been given that day. It was boring. Very boring. So boring he couldn't even pick up his pencil to do it with. So boring reading it was making him bored. So bored that he was sitting with his head on his desk and his eyes pointed at the floor. It wasn't very comfortable, but he was too bored to care.
"Eddie," came his father's voice from the doorway, and all of a sudden Eddie was glad of his boredom, because his father couldn't see his face when he was like this. He wondered how long he could get away with it.
"Yeah?" he said as loud as he could do so quietly.
"I got a phone call this afternoon," his father told him. "From the people who supervise the Master Builder test."
Eddie's breath stopped for a moment.
"They said you passed the test, but so quickly that they were suspicious. And when they looked into it, do you know what they found out?"
"No," Eddie told the floor. His father's footsteps were heavy and they stopped right beside the corner Eddie was sitting in. Eddie felt cold.
"They found out you cheated."
"No I didn't."
"I think you did."
"I didn't!"
His dad was pushing his chair into the wall with his hands gripping Eddie's shoulders, in the place where similar past pressure had faded some of the colour of the wall. He wished his father would let him cover it up, or repaint it, or something. He didn't like looking at it.
"You're lying," his father said, and his voice was low and his eyes were narrow and Eddie already knew no matter what he said, it didn't matter. It never did.
"I'm not."
"You're not smart enough to pass any test, let alone this test. That test is not for you."
Eddie was very busy trying to stay calm.
"It's not for cheaters."
"I didn't cheat!"
By the time his father left and Eddie was sitting in his closet with just one sliver of moonlight to keep him company, he almost believed it himself.
Unfortunately, things didn't get much better for Eddie there on in.
School didn't get any more interesting and his father didn't become any kinder; in fact, the both of them became much, much worse. The day where Eddie was supposed to take his place in society was looming ever closer, and he still did not know what to do. He still knew he was meant to be a Master Builder! Nothing else was good enough! He was doing his best to stall the day he had to abandon his dream forever, but he was running out of time. If he did not figure something out soon, someone would decide for him, and with his school records it was clear he was destined for the doldrums for the rest of his life. Not only was that not good enough, it was not fair. Obviously the work did not befit him if he were not doing it. Eddie had learned much more from the books he'd read under the shelves in the school library than he ever had in any of his dozens of classrooms. It was the fault of the education system that he wasn't doing better in school, obviously! Instead of helping him to achieve more than anyone else ever could, they were content to pretend he was stupid until they could bundle him off to some quiet corner of society where no one would ever know or care he existed. It wasn't right and it wasn't fair.
Thinking about it made him angry, so whenever he started to he did his best to change the mental subject to something else. Anger was unhelpful and altogether meaningless. People who got angry were troublemakers, and he didn't need any more eyes on his behaviour. He had a future to plan. Somehow.
The how escaped him for a long, long time, until the day he was walking home from school and caught the sight of a newspaper in a box next to one of the sidewalks. On the front page was a man with a…. bat mask and another dressed like a clown. Well, Eddie knew all the facets of society one could be a part of and that was not one that existed.
Which meant… he could make up his own job. But he would have to be an outcast from society to do it.
That thought was both good and bad.
It meant he could be whatever he wanted to be… but he would have to become a criminal to do it.
Was the punishment worth being himself?
It was six years later, Eddie had broken out of Arkham for the seventeenth time, and he had built hundreds of things he had designed himself. Arkham wasn't so bad, mostly because it was so easy to get out of it, and maybe he was a criminal but it was better than what he would have been otherwise: a bricklayer, the most basic and boring job in all the world. Being a criminal was also a lot more fun than almost anything else he could have been. But apart from all of this, Eddie was still bitter about the test he had not been allowed to pass when he was young. He was obviously good enough to be a Master Builder! Why, just yesterday he had built a dragster unlike any that had ever existed before! A dragster! That one glimpse of it roaring down the street, pursued by the Batmobile, that the children were going to see on the news would inspire them all! Obviously the rules were stupid when they disallowed a genius such as him from achieving his true calling!
Unfortunately, his genius had failed to alert him to the fact that dragsters required parachutes to stop with any urgency at all, and when he collided with the Batmobile he found himself sitting in the centre of a pile of coloured blocks clutching a quite useless steering wheel. Batman jumped out of his own car, lamentably intact, and stalked towards Edward, flinging his cape dramatically.
"We meet again, Riddler," the vigilante pronounced. "I have now captured you fifteen – "
"Seventeen," Eddie interrupted. "This is the seventeenth time."
Batman threw up his hands. "Fine. Seventeen times. Remind me why you haven't retired from a life of crime yet? It's obviously not working for you."
Eddie tossed the steering wheel over his shoulder and slid his other hand behind him. Somewhere in the wreckage should be his cane… "Every setback is one step closer to defeating you, of course! I'll come up with the perfect plan one day, you'll see!" Aha! There it was. He jumped to his feet, brandishing the weapon in front of him. "And you haven't quite captured me yet! I –"
Before he had really gotten a grip on it, Batman snatched up his cane and broke it over one leg. Eddie looked at the pieces despondently. All right. Fine. Maybe the jig was up.
Batman threw the pieces down into the pieces of the dragster, shaking his head. "You could have been anything you wanted," he said, stepping forward and brandishing his bat-shaped handcuffs in Eddie's general direction. "But you decided to be a criminal. And you're not even a good criminal. I never even have to solve your riddles to unravel your plans." Batman pulled Eddie's arms behind his back, securing the handcuffs. "I'd tell you to quit while you're ahead, but you never got ahead in the first place. So just quit. Move on with your life."
"You think I can just quit and do whatever I want?" Eddie pulled his hands out of the cuffs and turned around. "What, are you some kind of super-rich guy who never had to go to school?"
"Let's not discuss that right now," Batman said quickly.
"There's only one job I'm 'allowed'," Eddie said, waving his hands in a quoting fashion, "to have, and I'm not doing it! It's not my fault school made me look stupid, or that they denied I passed that test! I refuse to be anything less than I'm worthy of being just because of a letter on a piece of paper!"
"What test?" Batman asked. Eddie dropped his arms in exasperation.
"The test! Only the most important test in the whole world! The Master Builder test!"
"Wait a minute," Batman said, holding up one hand. "You became a criminal because you failed a test?"
"I did not fail the test," Eddie said heatedly, folding his arms. "I simply gave myself an advantage some people did not approve of. I could have passed it anyway!"
"So if you were a Master Builder, you would give up your life of crime?"
"Aren't you listening?" Eddie snapped, throwing up his arms. "I can't be anything because of all the tests I didn't pass!"
"I have a very, very close friend you may have heard of. Bruce Wayne. He – "
"I hate that guy!" Eddie interrupted. "He gets to do whatever he wants just because he has more money than anyone else in town! And from doing what? He just sits around in a bathrobe all day and whines to his butler."
Batman cleared his throat, frowning. "Yes. Well. I can get Mr Wayne to pull some strings on your behalf and overturn the results of that test."
"Really?" He'd never dreamed such a thing were possible, but he supposed anything was when you had enough money to swim in it and never, ever reach the bottom.
"If you complete your rehabilitation at Arkham," Batman said sternly. "Mr Wayne will want to be reassured that he is giving this opportunity to someone who will use it right."
Eddie weighed his options. He really had no desire to sit through the hours of therapy and evaluations required to get him discharged from the Asylum forever, but on the other hand… he would have what he'd always wanted. He'd get to be a Master Builder! There was no need to be a criminal anymore, for he'd be able to build whatever he wanted whenever he wanted.
"All right," Eddie said, and he held out a hand for Batman to shake. "I'll do it. But if your friend doesn't come through, I'll be meeting you again very soon."
"He will come through," Batman said, somewhat hotly, though he gripped Eddie's hand and shook it firmly. "I personally guarantee it."
Eddie did not know of a situation in which a man that rich could be forced to do anything, even by a vigilante, but he'd take Batman's word for it – for now.
He allowed himself to be driven back and checked into the Asylum, where he was returned to his cell and forced to give up his beautiful suit. He was allowed to keep his hat, though, and he put it on as he looked out of the barred window.
He still wasn't confident that Batman's assertion was true. That Bruce Wayne really could overturn his test result from all those years ago and allow him to be what he was truly meant to. But he found himself thinking about it. About being a Master Builder. Maybe he'd even build Batman something as a thank you.
Maybe.
Author's note:
Oho, she's finally done kids, now that the hype is over!