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Fish’s hand returns to his shoulder as she guides him from the room. The two armed men follow behind them. Oswald strains his ears, listening for any telltale sounds of pursuit, but it seems Fish’s gambit has paid off splendidly: not even Edward “call me the Riddler” Nygma dares to chase after her.
What happened to the Gordian knot, Ed? What happened to “penguins eat fish”?
The door shuts behind them, and she leads him through the house and to the entranceway. He peers down at the stairs leading up from pavement level with a grimace. She bundles him along, and he’s forced to grip her arm to balance on the steps down; she won’t let him stray far enough to reach for the banister.
“Little Oswald,” Fish coos as they reach the pavement, country air cold and biting. “How far you've fallen.”
Oswald grimaces as he stumbles briefly on the sidewalk and steadies himself underneath her hand. “I assure you, it was not my intention.”
Fish slows her pace a little, shortening her steps to accommodate Oswald’s lurching gait. He’s pretty sure she’s guiding him to the driveway, where he will surely be whisked away by a car. Luckily, it is seeming less and less likely that she is dragging him to his demise. “None of us intend to fall from grace, do we?” she comments, voice milder than he's expect at the implication. “Now who was that…green man?” she asks, too intent to be mere curiosity.
Oswald shuts his eyes, grimly, and swallows fiercely at the lump in his throat, fighting off the hatred and the love alike. He feels dizzy for a moment, unbelieving - all this has happened since he last saw Fish, the love and the betrayal and the hate. “He was no one,” Oswald says finally, voice shaking.
“Now, now, little penguin,” she says, voice quiet and gentle like a viper in wait. “Tell Fish.”
He shakes his head a little, staring bleakly out into the dark night. “He was … my employee,” he says haltingly. “I did something unwise, and he took it out on me.”
“Hmm,” says Fish, her grip tightening on Oswald’s shoulder. He can feel her fingernails through the fabric of his suit, sharp and beast-like. “I don’t think that’s the whole story.”
“I wanted him,” Oswald says softly, words nearly stolen away by the night wind.
“Foolish boy,” Fish says, in the same voice as when he’d forgotten to polish her shoes or bring her her drink. “I thought I taught you better than that.”
Oswald inhales, sharply. “He wasn’t weak like that girl, or any of your men. I thought it would-”
“Oswald,” she says seriously, halting beside him and tugging his shoulder until he meets her eyes. “That was the point. They were weak and disposable. They knew none of my secrets. Now you,” she continues, bringing her hand to caress his cheek once again. He doesn’t flinch this time, guessing rightly that she means him no immediate harm. “-you were my great mistake, my little umbrella boy. I let you know too much.”
He lets his breath out in a shaky sigh. “I suppose - I suppose I should have known better. But I had hoped-” he breaks off into a gasp, disgusted with himself. Spilling his feelings to Fish, of all people?
“Oh, poor boy,” she clucks, fingernails stroking his cheek. “It hurts the first time you’re betrayed by someone you care for. But sharpen your teeth, little one; that strange skinny man isn’t worth your broken heart.”
“I know,” Oswald says breathily, giving in to Fish’s strangely comforting presence, “and I will kill him. But I - I still--”
She brings her finger to his lips. “Banish that word from your tongue. It will bring nothing but pain.”
Oswald shuts his eyes and sucks in a breath. She waits for him to blink back his tears.
“Now come,” she says. A limousine has pulled up into the driveway before them, and as Oswald watches, the back door swings open to reveal--
“You?” he demands, dumbstruck.
“So you are alive,” Firefly says, face vaguely pleased.
Freeze merely watches him, eyes unreadable.
“Where have you been?” Oswald demands, half-angry and half-relieved.
“They’ve been with me,” Fish says. “And I assure you, you’ll want to join us. Get inside, little penguin-” she says, pushing him gently into the limousine, “-we have someone I think you’ll like to see again.”
~
“Woman always knew how to make an entrance.”
Ed stares at the shut door, struck dumb with astonishment and something almost like fear. He’s balanced on the balls of his feet, frozen in the half-step he’d instinctively taken after Oswald. He lowers himself back down, slowly, allowing the hand holding the gun to fall down by his side.
Fish is alive? Didn’t Oswald kill her, back before he’d even become mayor, back when Ed was still locked away in Arkham?
And yet … Oswald said “why are you here?” not “how are you still alive?”. Oswald did not doubt for a moment that she was real, like Ed had when he first saw Oswald. Oswald knew? Oswald had let her live? And he hadn’t told Ed?
All those times they’d talked at Arkham. The reassurance he’d given Oswald. The origami penguin - he’d spent days perfecting the design with scraps of paper they’d given him in the activity room - had that meant nothing to Oswald?
How many more secrets - how many more lies - had Oswald truly never respected him at all?
And this woman…Fish Mooney.
Oswald looked to her with respect. He flinched when she lifted her hand; when Ed grabbed him, he’d only bared his teeth and mocked him. Oswald allowed her to take him, without a fight. Allowed her to steal him away from Ed, when by all rights Ed deserves his acknowledgement, his respect, his glaze-eyed adoration--
He hates her, he realizes suddenly, wildly. He hates her. How she swept in here, how she had dismissed Ed without a thought, that sharp condescending turn of phrase. That phrase had sent him spiraling back and back, weeks, months, years, to Oswald’s rude lackeys, to his coworkers at the GCPD, to his fellow students, jeering, laughing at him, ridiculing him…
And she had reached up and touched Oswald’s face, called him her little penguin. But she’s wrong. She’s wrong. He doesn’t belong to her. Edward knows him the best. Knows him better than anyone. And Oswald loved (had loved) him, and him alone. He’d never cared for Fish. He’d only used her!
But when her hand went to his face, he flinched, staring at her with wide, startled eyes, ignoring Ed whose gun had still been directed toward him. And her hand had caressed him, strangely and sickly sensual, which was wrong, so wrong.
“Get a hold of yourself!” Barbara snaps beside him, eyes wide and angry. “Stop freaking out and figure out what she wants with him!”
“He’s mine!” someone snarls, and he thinks it might be the Riddler. “She can’t take him. He’s mine. Mine to kill!”
“Edward! Stop it!”
“My name! Is! The Riddler!”
He has several guns in his face and it’s only then that he realizes he’s gripping Barbara’s neck with two gloved hands. Her teeth are bared, expression crazed, and her gun is jammed up against the underside of his chin.
“I will pull this fucking trigger if you don’t let go right now!” she snarls, voice sounding mildly choked, and he does, confused, hands aching with the strain of attempted asphyxiation. Butch and Tabitha don’t remove their guns, still holding them inches away from Ed’s face. That girl - Ivy - looks terrified, some yards away, arms wrapped around her stomach and eyes wide.
“Get a hold of yourself, Riddler,” Barbara says, voice raspy like his had been the night Butch had choked him out, when Oswald had - stop it. And she looks at him with cold light eyes, anger fizzling in their depths. “Killing me won’t get you the Penguin back.”
“I know,” he says, voice deep and otherworldly. He lifts a hand to his brow, gloves catching in the tacky sweat gathered there. “That was… unintentional.”
“He’s fucking crazy,” Tabitha spits. “We should have put him down long ago.”
“He’s crazy and he’s going to get the Penguin back,” Barbara bites out, “and then kill him. Right?” she asks him, head tilted to the side challengingly.
“Yes,” Edward hisses, imagining the moment. “And he will acknowledge my new name before he breathes his last.”
Butch shakes his head, laughingly. “And how do you expect to get him back from Fish? You have no idea what she’s like. She doesn’t even care who you are.”
“She will learn to regret that,” Edward says, his familiar smug smile coming back to his lips. He strides across the room, toward the door Fish and Oswald had exited from.
His eyes catch the girl’s - Ivy’s - as he sweeps past. She doesn’t look terrified anymore; she looks knowing, and a little sad, and a little pitying. He bares his teeth at her as he passes, and when he’s one or two steps past, he hears a quiet voice as if carried by the wind: “You miss him, don’t you?”
But when he turns back to look, she’s watching the bickering three, ignoring him.
A shudder passes down his back and he turns on his heel, walking swiftly from the room. Not running. Because nothing’s chasing him.