Work Text:
I
“Oswald.”
The word is torn from his throat, ragged. He can’t think, he can’t feel, he can’t--
The man turns, just slightly, and air rushes into Edward’s lungs as his hungry eyes trace the familiar profile.
“You’re alive.”
Edward is frozen in stasis, entirely out of his own body, as Oswald approaches. He doesn’t know if his heart is racing; he can’t feel his body underneath him. He never thought -- he had never imagined -- that he was alive. He feels dreamlike in shock, and wonders, madly, if this is some kind of trick by the Court -- some kind of weaponized hallucinogen, and this is just the manifestation of his exhaustive, beleaguered mind.
But it had taken trial and error and a very specific cocktail of drugs to bring his version of Oswald to him, and all of those ended up in the harbor. He is certain, anyway, that his invented Oswald would never show up like this, wearing a jumpsuit and seemingly unaware of Edward’s presence. His dreamed up Oswald had only ever existed to help him, to act as a crutch, and this one is not that.
At his most dismissive and cruel, the invented Oswald never would have looked at him like this.
II
Oswald stares at him through the metal bars, eyes empty and reflective like shallow pools. In them, Edward sees the rushing of the harbor, the water closing over him, swallowing him whole.
But he is alive.
Edward couldn’t kill Oswald; of course he couldn’t, he self-flagellates. Oswald was--is--the only one. The only one who understood--understands--him, the one he could never manage to outsmart, the one he could never manage to kill. The only one worthy of his respect. Edward watches as Oswald’s lip twitches, unsure if the smile will be forgiving (a beatific, angelic sort of forgiveness) or his shark-grin, the one he presents to his victims before the kill.
But the smile dies a cradle-death, Oswald’s lips flattening into an unreadable line.
III
Oswald lunges.
Without projecting the movement, eyes unreadable and the rest of his body unmoving; and Edward has to leap back to avoid the hand -- it’s -- terrifying, alien, almost as if this isn’t Oswald at all, but some kind of soulless doppelganger intent on his destruction.
This can’t be Oswald.
Not his Oswald.
Oswald loved him.
Oswald is still reaching, mindless, hand tensed and claw-like. Edward stares at him, speechless, heart thundering in his chest. Oswald is The Penguin, his eyes burning incandescent and expression desperate with bloodlust. Edward has never seen rage and pain like this; or, not at him. Oswald is looking at him like -- like Theo Galavan, and with a sudden agonizing jolt, Edward imagines someone else in his place, nursing Oswald back to health, helping him to hunt Edward down to destroy him.
With a sour taste in his mouth, with the wealth of his experiences, Edward bitterly envies Oswald’s new companion -- whoever brought him back from the brink of death yet again -- and wishes, distastefully, that he could again be so naive, that he could surrender his desires and be eclipsed by Oswald’s ambition, a mere extension of the penguin’s iron grip over Gotham.
There is a kind of relief in being superseded by Oswald, a kind of living death, and while it lasted, it had sheltered Edward and kept him secure in the knowledge that for the first time in his life, he belonged.
IV
Slowly, calculatedly, like the movements of a stalking wildcat, Oswald pulls his hand back, gripping the metal bar in a bony grasp. His knuckles stand out stark against the plane of his hand, wickedly angular. Edward feels a soft sort of -- disapproval in his gut, an incongruous desire to sit down with Oswald at his old kitchen table, feed him Chinese takeout and watch the growing appreciation and affection in Oswald’s gaze.
In that swooping heartbeat, he remembers--everything--remembers the love and the hate and the tears; Oswald’s devotion and Oswald’s betrayal; he remembers eyes, soft and warm, as familiar as his own.
But it’s a stranger staring back at him, a stranger with eyes like flame and rage and heartbreak.
Edward wonders, now, how he had been so blind. Of course, Oswald had loved him; it had been in his eyes, in his smile, in the tentative whisper of his hand against Edward’s knee. It had been in the way he defended Edward, protected him, supported him. It was even in the way he had visited him in Arkham, in the strange thoughtfulness of his gifts and the frequency of his visits.
Of course he sees it now that it’s gone. Edward tastes bile in his mouth, and swallows.
Only now does he wonder what he killed that evening on the docks.
He didn’t succeed in murdering Oswald, but something died that night; something that he fears will never be resurrected.
V
Time holds no meaning in the dark room underneath the Court’s warehouse. It doesn’t matter to Edward. His eyes will not cease their hungry feast, staring their fill of Oswald. The hallucination had always seemed off, wrong, inexact, if he looked too closely.
This is--
This is everything. Everything that burns in his heart. Everything he desires. It’s Oswald, and now that they are once again face to face, Edward’s beginning to fear his thirst for the other man will never be sated.
He startles as Oswald finally shifts, eyes simmering, the heat of his wrath supplanted by their circumstances. Edward waits, heart rattling fearfully.
Oswald inhales, and opens his mouth to speak:
FIN