Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Oswald couldn’t say exactly how he ended up in the strange apartment; at least not in a way that makes any sense. His memories of the sequence of events that led him there are patchy at best. It hurts his head to think too much, or too deeply about it.

What he can remember is this: driving frantically away from Jim Gordon and his pathetic defence of Theo Galavan, gripping the gunshot wound in his shoulder; the large apartment advertisement that fluttered onto his windscreen and almost caused him to crash into the line of parked cars on the street; dragging himself up the stairs to the advertised apartment; shoving open the door with his uninjured shoulder; receiving instructions on how to clean and (very awkwardly) dress the wound—probably from a voice in his head. He was very woozy at that point, but at the time, it had felt as though there was someone with him, guiding him through the process. But who could have been there? The apartment had been advertised as a vacant sublet.

Oswald wakes up in the exact same position he had passed out in, sprawled across the checked coverlet. Everything in his body aches; his head is thumping, and his mouth tastes as though something has crawled into it, set up camp for a bit, and then died. Oswald can’t recall ever feeling this wretched. There is a gnawing hunger in his stomach but he doesn’t feel as though he has the energy to satiate it. However, the grim feeling of dried cold sweat is enough to force him to move, and he shuffles very slowly across the room to the bathroom. Oswald glances at the shower—he doesn’t think it’s physically possible for him to manage it given the amount of pain he is in, as well as his very low energy levels. His bandages will have to be replaced soon though.

A cursory splash of water over his face and torso will have to do. Once he feels suitably refreshed, he gingerly starts going through the bathroom cabinets for some pain medication, cringing as every movement aggravates his wound.

“You know, you really shouldn’t be out of bed Mister Penguin,” comes a deep voice behind him. It’s same voice from the night before.

Oswald whips around, crying out at the pains tearing through his shoulder at the motion. He leans on the sink, waiting for the pain and dizziness to pass. His can feel his heartbeat thudding nauseatingly at his temples.

Clearly, he is still delirious, hearing voices. More rest is what he needs. Perhaps it is his instinct talking to him—maybe that’s it—things had been so dire the evening before that his survival instinct had physically manifested to get him to do what was necessary.

Slowly, gingerly, he turns once more to the cabinet, rummaging through the impressive array of pills and medicines. The person who had previously lived there had either been a hypochondriac or had access to hefty amounts of medical supplies. Perhaps they were a doctor of some kind.

Settling for a bottle of aspirin, he closes the cabinet, but then jumps back in horror at the appearance of a man apparently standing right behind him, visible in the mirror.

“Those won’t have any effect on injuries as extensive as yours. What you need is—”

Oswald turns around, more slowly than before, and this time there is someone there. A man, who for some reason, looks familiar. That fact does not do anything to slow down his heart rate, or make him any less furious for being made to feel so terrified.

“Who are you? This apartment is supposed to be vacant!” Oswald grips the sink again, starting to feel faint.

“We met once before at the GCPD! I’m Edward. Nygma. I can’t tell you how honoured I am that you would come to me for help—”

“I only came here because I thought the place was empty!” Oswald replies, exasperated beyond measure.

“Just a silly misunderstanding!” Edward says brightly. “This is my apartment. I live here.”

“I don’t have time for this. I needed a safe house, not an over excited boy scout! I’m leaving!” Oswald knows he won’t get far in his current state, but even just making it to the car would be enough. He cannot not stay in the apartment with this cretin, lurking and creeping about soundlessly.

“Sir, I’m afraid you cannot leave. You could try to run but in your condition, you’d only make it three blocks. You’ll have to stay here until you’re fully recovered. And you are of course welcome to stay as long as you need.”

“Thank you, but I can manage just fine on my own.” And with that he attempts to confidently stride out of the apartment.

Edward follows him out into the living area, attempting to block his path, gesturing wildly. Oswald is about to yell at him to get out of his way when he notices the way Edward is standing. Or rather, where he is standing. He stares, completely aghast, as a chill creeps over his skin. His eyes are struggling to reconcile what they’re seeing with what they know to be true about the world.

Edward is standing in the bed, his legs cut off below the knees. In the bed. He had backed away in front of Oswald, and not been stopped by solid objects—and he’d walked through the solid metal of the bed frame. Oswald’s mouth falls open in terror as he looks down at where Edward’s legs merge with the bed.

“What is it?” Edward asks, manner polite and almost scientifically curious.

Oswald lifts his hand as much as he can—given his fright and the struggle of his brain to process what he is seeing— to gesture towards Edward’s legs. Edward looks down and gasps.

“Oh my,” he says.

Oswald collapses.

*

Oswald wakes up on the floor, face down, exactly where he had fallen. It takes him a moment to recollect how he had ended up there, and where there even is. This waking up feeling disoriented and confused and in strange positions is rapidly getting old.

Groggily, he slowly pushes himself upright, cringing at the shooting pains in his shoulder. He kneels and looks around himself, grunting as every muscle in his body protests the movement.

“Miss Kringle is the love of my life,” says a dreamy voice. It’s the boy scout again, perched on the edge of the bed. His posture is bolt upright, as if it had been drilled into him to sit straight as a child. Perhaps it had.

Oswald jumps; he could have sworn Edward was not there a moment ago. Oswald looks at him a moment longer. Whatever he is, he does not seem threatening.

With considerable effort, Oswald pulls himself to his feet and limps over to the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of water. In the same cupboard as the glasses Oswald sees a box of ridiculous blue and white striped straws. On a whim, he selects one and drops it into his glass, before heading over to the bed.

Once under the covers, he sighs as his muscles thank him for choosing comfort this time. He takes a sip of water and settles back into the pillows.

“She has beautiful red hair, and she smells like a meadow.” Edward continues. “And such a lovely smile. Not that she ever smiled at me.”

Oswald looks at Edward. Even though he is moving, none of the sheets so much as rustle. Is it possible that Oswald is hallucinating? Had he hit his head at some point between getting shot and ending up at the apartment? That doesn’t really make much sense. Why would he hallucinate a tenant who went on and on about a woman of all things? It seems more likely that he is a ghost, perhaps the man that lived here, unable to let go. It would be just Oswald’s luck that he has run into the one ghost who seems to know who he is and won’t leave him alone. He cannot imagine the man having any friends, even when he was alive. Oswald gets the impression he would do anything if it meant it would get someone to like him. Desperation is not a trait that Oswald likes in people.

“I knew it the moment I first saw her. She belongs with me.” Edward is still blathering on.

It’s nauseating.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a gun lying around here would you?” Oswald asks lazily.

“I...I don't know. Why?”

Oswald leans forward and puts as much venom into his voice as he can muster. “Because if you did I would ask you to fucking shoot me so I don’t have to listen to this drivel anymore!” He then slumps dramatically back against the pillows.

For one very satisfying moment, Edward looks shocked, and then hurt. But he seems to quickly shake himself out of it. “I think perhaps you need more rest.”

Oswald puts his drink on the bedside table and lays down properly, pulling the pillows down under his head and making himself comfortable. Before he allows himself to drift off, he casts one more glance towards where Edward had been sitting.

He is gone.

*

Oswald wakes up for the third time feeling marginally better. He sits upright and looks around the apartment for the apparent ghost, finally locating him standing by the window. He is illuminated by the green light of some neon advertisement outside. He has one arm wrapped around his middle, and the other raising a finger to his lips, clearly deep in thought.

As if sensing Oswald’s eyes on him, Edward turns and smiles warmly. It triggers something inside Oswald, because in a matter of seconds, his world comes crashing down.

His mother is dead.

It wasn’t that he forgot exactly, the grief has been ever present throughout this ordeal so far, blackening the edges of his vision. But before, he didn’t have the mental capacity to face it head on, with the physical and mental strain of his injury. Now the realisation that he won’t ever see her again is hitting him full force. She won’t pull him into her comforting embrace, won’t smile at him when he comes home, won’t ever tell him again how proud she is of her little Cobblepot. She was the only person in the world that he trusted, and the only person that truly loved and cared for him. Brutally murdered, right in front of him. He recalls how confused and concerned for him she looked, even as she was dying in his arms.

He breaks down in tears. Full body sobs shake him as he covers his face with one hand. He registers Edward’s approach in his peripheral vision, as he comes and sits beside him, closer than he had before. He just sits silently, his presence somehow comforting just for being there. At least in this moment he is not entirely alone.

He doesn’t see Edward attempt to lay his hand over Oswald’s. Edward is the only one who watches in dismay as his hand passes right through Oswald’s skin, as he tries to reassuringly squeeze his hand.

Oswald withdraws his hand from laying on the bed and holds it against his chest. He feels as though a chill has passed over him, seeping into his bones. The feeling manages to sober him somewhat from his emotional outpouring.

“What happened?” Edward asks gently.

“I lost my mother.” More tears fall, unbidden.

“I’m sorry.” Edward says.

“It’s my fault she’s dead. She wouldn’t have been in that situation if it wasn’t for me. I may as well have killed her.”

At that, Edward simply stares at him, his eyes narrowing, expression calculating. Oswald had expected him to contradict him as any sane person would, but instead Edward seems to be searching him for something.

At any rate, Oswald is glad Edward doesn’t insist it’s not his fault. In his current frame of mind, Oswald is looking for an excuse to rage at someone, but quite frankly, he doesn’t have the energy. There is a painful hunger in his stomach, his head is throbbing, and he suspects he is also badly dehydrated.

“Is there any food in this place?” Oswald asks, throwing back the covers and limping over to the kitchen. He pauses to lean on the counter for a few moments, his head dizzy from the effort.

“Of course!” Edward says, demeanour all cheer. But it abruptly drains from his face, when he realises he doesn’t actually know.

The man looks pitiful, as he sits there, the picture of confusion. He looks incredibly lost.

Oswald eventually finds some tins in one of the cupboards—it seems all the perishables have been thrown out. The simple motions involved in heating up some soup calm Oswald a little and he leans back on the counter as he stirs it, facing Edward. Oswald says, “what are you?”

Edward looks down at his lap, his fingers nervously curling around each other. When he looks up, Edward’s expression is full of only one thing: fear.

“I don’t know.”

“Ed, was it?” Oswald asks, knowing full well it is.

Edward nods, smiling a little at Oswald remembering his name.

“I don’t mean to be indelicate, but you don’t remember anything happening to you recently do you? Like say…dying?”

“No.” Edward replies vehemently. “I don’t know what’s happening but I am not dead.”

“How do you know that? Have you not noticed how you disappear while I’m asleep?”

“That might say more about you than it does about me.” Edward responds under his breath, but Oswald still catches it and raises his eyebrows. It seems he isn’t quite as pathetic as previously thought.

“Well what about the fact you can’t touch anything?”

“If I can’t touch anything, how am I sitting on this bed?” As he says it, he starts sinking into it. He jumps up, and his feet start sinking into the floor. He stares down in horror then starts to run, to try and keep his feet above ground.

Oswald watches him utterly bewildered as he hops and skips across the floor, before losing his balance and falling through a wall. The outer wall, the one with a long drop on the other side of it. He hears the man scream briefly, and then there’s nothing.

Oswald stands there in the sudden deafening silence for a few moments, trying to process what he has just witnessed. As the soup starts to boil, he shrugs and turns back to it, muttering to himself, “I guess he found the light.”

He pours the soup into a bowl, eventually finds a spoon from one of the drawers, and turns to go and sit at the rickety dining table. He stops abruptly when he sees Edward standing directly behind him. He starts so hard soup sloshes over his fingers, the liquid scalding him painfully.

“Fuck!” Oswald hisses, glaring up at Edward.

“There is no light,” Edward grits out angrily. “And I am not dead!”

It seems he can walk or sit on solid things when he’s not thinking about it. Oswald files that piece of information away; it might come in useful later when he wants to get rid of him.

Boldly, Oswald walks right through Edward to get to the kitchen table, refusing to show any discomfort at the resulting shiver. He sits down with an angry thump, and pauses the first spoonful halfway to his mouth, looking up at Edward under his brows.

“You’re dead, Ed. Get over it.” And with that he shoves the spoon into his mouth.

Edward stands there glowering, clenching his fists at his sides. He starts to pace back and forth, while Oswald eats his soup as calmly as possible. He’s putting so much effort into looking calm, it is actually keeping him from having a mental breakdown as a result of being haunted by this bespectacled bag of cats.

Edward finally comes to a stop in his irritated pacing. “Lord, what if I am dead?”

Oswald pushes his soup bowl away from himself and places an elbow on the table, leaning his chin on it as he gazes at the lanky man having, quite literally, an existential crisis.

He’s sitting in the kitchen with a ghost who’s having an existential crisis.

Oswald blinks several times and sighs deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I cannot imagine why anyone would want to kill you.” By some miracle, he manages to keep sarcasm out of his tone.

Edward shoots him a grateful look, utterly unaware of Oswald’s less savoury inner thoughts. He imagines being able to vacuum up the ghost like he had seen in a movie once—wonders what would actually happen if he attempted it. Oswald watches Edward slowly approach the table.

“Regardless,” Oswald continues, “it seems the most likely explanation of what is happening here. You’re dead, Edward.”

In all honesty, Oswald cannot imagine anyone wanting to murder Edward. But he seems intelligent, so perhaps he was murdered for information, or to keep him quiet. But then again, this is Gotham. Perhaps he just went out for groceries.

Edward sits down on the other chair, opposite him. “But, if I’m dead, why am I here?”

It’s a terrible cliché, but Oswald says it anyway. They’re both thinking it. “Unfinished business? Did you have anything you desperately wanted to do before you…passed?”

Edward scrunches up his face in thought. “I don’t remember. I remember my name, Miss Kringle, and that this is my apartment…but I don’t remember anything else.”

“You don’t have any memories of your life at all? Of your last moments? How you might have died?”

“No…the only knowledge I have of anything outside this apartment is of the time I spent with Miss Kringle, that I loved her, and wanted her to love me.”

Oswald just barely manages to stop himself from rolling his eyes. It’s like something from a romantic film, the fact that the only thing Edward remembers from his life is the woman he loves.

“But that can’t be my unfinished business. She can’t fall in love with a ghost. Can she? No. It wouldn’t be fair to her. I can’t just…stay like this.”

Oswald suddenly remembers Edward’s first appearance, the previous evening, and what he had said.

“She’s not the only thing you remembered,” Oswald says, unable to keep the wonder out of his voice. “You remembered me.”

Edward looks at him, his expression one of hopeful vulnerability. “I did?”

“Yes, yesterday evening you called me Mr. Penguin, and you said we met once before at the GCPD. I remember now—that’s where you work. You asked me a riddle, and you told me a fact about penguins.”

Edward’s face lights up, and he looks profoundly grateful for this new information about himself. “That does sound like me—I think.”

He looks so happy that for a moment, Oswald considers trying to help him find all the missing pieces that make him who he is. But then he remembers two things: the first being that Edward is dead, and the second being that he is going to leave Gotham for good. There is nothing left for him here.

In that moment, he feels another wave of tiredness wash over him. He’s about to push his seat back and get up, when Edward speaks again.

“It’s like when you wake up from a vivid dream, and all the details slip through your fingers, even as you try to hold onto them. It’s as though the knowledge is there, but it’s just beyond my grasp…I can’t summon memories, but sometimes I just know them…”

Oswald watches Edward tiredly, and it strikes him just how real and present Edward looks. He doesn’t resemble what one might imagine from a ghost. He’s not pale or gaunt and he looks perfectly healthy. He is perhaps a little on the skinny side, but nothing to worry about (it’s a bit late for that now anyway). He isn’t even a little transparent, either. He looks as though if Oswald reached out to touch him, his fingers would graze the soft grey fabric of his sweater.

Edward tilts his head slightly, his eyes curious under Oswald’s stare. “Do you think that perhaps fate brought you here? That maybe the reason I am here is because we were supposed to meet again?”

Oswald frowns at him. “To what end?” It’s a rhetorical question, and an effective end to that impossible line of thought. His mind definitely cannot deal with the mysteries of the universe right now.

He gets up then, and makes his way to the bathroom. When he returns to the living area, he finds Edward still sitting at the table, watching him as he hobbles back to the bed. Oswald gets back into the side he previously occupied, pulling the covers up to his neck.

Edward walks around to the other side of the bed, and eyes Oswald somewhat nervously, lips pursed. “May I?”

Oswald glances at him and nods, his eyelids already heavy. “What happens to you when I’m asleep? Where do you go?”

Edward lays down on the bed beside him, on his back, his hands together on his chest. He looks eerily like a statue laying atop a tomb.

Edward’s brow creases as he clearly struggles to answer. “I don’t know. I’m just…not here.” He looks more than a little afraid as Oswald gradually closes his eyes; Oswald’s rapid descent into sleep is causing Edward to fade away. But weak as he still is, Oswald is powerless to stop it. And he’s not sure why he wants to.

*

His dreams are melancholy. He dreams about the day he met Edward, and although he can see the man in the corner of his eye, he seems to vanish whenever he looks directly. Standing up by the captain’s office is Jim Gordon, looking down on him, with his mother standing beside him. His mother liked Jim. Probably because he is the man that Oswald should be. The hero that saves the city, not the man who hides in the shadows, prepared to achieve his goals by any means necessary. Jim whispers to her, and she looks at Oswald with distaste. Jim smirks.

Beside him, a voice is saying, “isn’t that neat?” But Oswald isn’t paying attention. He’s looking at his mother and feeling his heart break, because he knows instinctively that now she is aware who he really is, she won’t love him anymore. He starts finding it difficult to breathe, falling to his knees, gunshots ringing in his ears. One pierces his shoulder and he cries out in agony, the sound echoing in a ghastly way around the precinct. In his peripheral vision, he can see Edward kneeling beside him. Oswald turns to look at him, and this time he is there. But instead of the nervous man who wouldn’t leave him alone, he sees a hollow skeleton, rapidly dissolving into ash.

Because of course, Edward, the only person left in the world who would help him right now, is dead.

He screams.

And then he wakes up.

He’s covered in cold sweat again, one of the most disgusting feelings in the world to wake up to, and once again he feels weak and hungry. Today he is going to have to find more than soup and water as sustenance if he’s ever going to get strong enough again to leave the apartment, and the city.

There’s nothing here for him anymore.

“Morning,” says a croaky voice beside him.

Oswald glances to his left and sees Edward laying in the same position he had been in when Oswald was falling asleep. As before, he looks happy to see Oswald again. Probably just relieved to be brought into being again by Oswald’s being conscious.

Oswald closes his eyes and takes a fortifying breath. Now is as good a time as any. He’s unsettled by his dream, erratically so, and therefore utterly uncaring of Edward’s feelings. He sits up and clears his throat.

“While it is unfortunate, for you, that you’re dead—my deepest condolences, really—you should know that as soon as I am recovered, I am leaving Gotham forever. Which means, I won’t be helping you.”

Edward sits up, frowning. “But you won’t be fully recovered for weeks…”

Oswald feels his eyes go wide at the idea of spending an extended period of time with this man, before exasperatedly exclaiming, “I cannot spend weeks here talking to you! I will stay here a week at most. Then I am leaving.”

Edward looks hurt, but recovers quickly. “If you leave, I’ll just follow you. If my state of being is tied to your waking hours, then I can travel with you. I’d rather have the company, if I’m to go through a long afterlife without resolution...”

Oswald looks suitably horrified by this idea. Haunted by this incredibly irritating, lovelorn pest for the rest of his life. He notices Edward watching him closely, and realises that Edward has just played a very clever card. Who is Edward Nygma?

He sighs, knowing he has been defeated. “All right, I’ll help you find whatever it is you need to properly…pass on. And then you’ll let me leave and never bother me again, are we clear?”

“Crystal.”

And that’s how it begins.

*

Oswald is having a much needed shower, enjoying the way the pressure and high temperature relaxes his muscles, when he hears a voice on the other side of the curtain that he has come to associate with a severe spike in his blood pressure. He peers around the curtain to see Edward sitting calmly on the toilet, leg crossed, chin leaning on his knuckles. He smiles at Oswald when their eyes meet.

“I was thinking, we might want to start—”

“What the hell are you doing in here? GET OUT!”

Edward has the good grace to look startled by Oswald’s outburst, and he backs out of the bathroom hastily and clumsily, fading through the door.

Oswald leans his forehead on the wall tiles, trying to slow his breathing. It’s times like this he wishes he was an atheist.

*

They start by going through the drawers in Edward’s desk. Luckily he is the sort of person who meticulously keeps all his bills and financial documents in a folder, in date order. From the documents spread out between them on the sofa, they learn that he is a forensic scientist at the GCPD, and not a cop as Oswald had feared. However, this basic information about Edward doesn’t really help them much when it comes to what happened to him and why he might still be lingering after death. There is one obvious solution, and Oswald is loath to mention it because it will almost certainly result in his being discovered and incarcerated. But perhaps mentioning it may jog Edward’s memory or help them to a better idea.

“The simplest thing to do would be to call Jim Gordon. As your colleague at the GCPD, he will certainly know what happened to you. The only problem is that I am a wanted man, and I will speak to that miscreant again over my dead body.” Oswald pouts and shrugs before adding, deadpan, “or yours.”

Edward stares at him blankly, the joke going straight over his head. “You could just call someone else there who doesn’t know your voice…”

“Too risky, they record all their calls after all.”

Edward nods, chagrined that he hadn’t remembered that fact himself.

“So I’m going to have to leave the apartment. I’ll need to leave for food that’s not from a tin soon anyway. That’s something else I’ve been wondering—if you’re dead, why have all your belongings not been moved out of the apartment?”

Edward shrugs. “Perhaps they’re still trying to find a next of kin. Or perhaps they’re going to sell it all with the apartment.”

Oswald can relate to the listless way that Edward looks around at all his things; Oswald has just suffered through having everything that ever mattered to him taken away.

“I should probably get going then.” Oswald says, trying to summon the strength to get up. Even though he has eaten a little more, he still gets out of breath simply crossing the room. It’s going to take some time to get his full strength back.

“You can’t go today,” Edward says with certainty. “Give it at least one more day before you venture outside. There are stores on the street below.”

Before Oswald can ask how he knows that, since he seems never to leave the apartment, Edward says, “I saw when I fell through the wall.”

Oswald nods absently, his eyelids drooping. They’ve been going through Edward’s things for most of the day, and Oswald is tired again, even though it’s only early evening. “I’m going to lay down,” he mutters, before shuffling across the room to the bed. It’s difficult not to trip over Edward’s pyjama bottoms, as they are far too long for him.

He gets under the covers, fluffing up the pillows behind him, not an easy task given the way the bed is put together with metal pipes and no proper headboard. He doesn’t know how Edward ever slept here, it’s extremely uncomfortable, preferable only to the floor.

Once again, Edward perches beside him, one knee on the bed, one hanging over the side. The bed doesn’t dip or move at all.

“Mister Penguin—”

“I think we’re long past any formalities Ed,” Oswald says wearily. “Call me Oswald.”

Edward grins. It’s the sort of smile that would be utterly disarming if it had any confidence behind it. “What happened to your mother? You said it was your fault she died. What did you mean by that?”

A fresh wave of pain washes over Oswald, rendering him momentarily breathless. Seeing his mother’s face in his mind’s eye is agonizing. For a moment he wants to lash out at Edward for such a blunt reminder, but Oswald can’t even hit him. Edward is quite literally untouchable.

“She was killed, right in front of me,” he finds himself saying, as the tears start to flow. “She died in my arms.”

“So, she was murdered?”

“Yes she was murdered—what part of killed did you not understand?” Oswald seethes, wishing he had the strength and opportunity to hit someone.

“Well I only thought—once we find out what happened to me, I could help you get your revenge. I mean, no one else can see me, and I can walk through walls—I could be your spy!” Edward finishes excitedly.

As much as Oswald hates to admit it, it is a good idea. Edward could find out the man’s plans, and Oswald could wait for the right moment, when he is least guarded, to pick Galavan off and kill him.

“You would do that for me?”

“Of course, Mister Pen—Oswald. It would be an honour.”

“But then what?”

“Then I stop defying every scientific law there is by being here and cease to exist.”

It’s so clinical and cold, the way he says it. Oswald can imagine him in his role as a forensic scientist, being completely unaffected by the dead bodies he examines and the stories that put them there. His own story has become something for someone else to examine. Oswald wonders if he would be quite so detached about that thought.

“I can’t stay here like this, halfway between life and death. I need to go.” Edward looks around at the apartment, longing evident in his expression. His old life is so close, so close he could touch it, yet he can’t. It must be agonizing. Oswald thinks he would prefer to move on too.

“I wish I could have said goodbye,” Edward murmurs, so quietly Oswald almost doesn’t hear. He’s obviously talking about that Kringle woman, and while the last thing Oswald wants to hear about is this man’s unrequited love, he supposes Edward is going to help him avenge his mother’s death, so he probably owes it to him.

“To Miss Kringle?” Oswald says, knowing full well, but knowing it will only take a tiny push to get him talking about it.

Edward nods. “She worked with me, though I can’t remember what she did. I gave her gifts, tried to help her and talk to her. But she never seemed to understand me. And I figured I just had to make her see that we belong together. I mean, why wouldn’t we? She has an unusually high IQ—not as high as mine of course—and those men she usually dates aren’t worthy of her. They’re hardly better than Neanderthals. I am worthy.” He looks at Oswald sadly. “Was worthy. I would have spent my whole life trying to make her happy.”

Oswald feels vaguely nauseous again, but that may be the persistent gnawing hunger, an inevitable result from lack of proper nourishment.

He considers reassuring Edward with lies. The woman clearly wasn’t interested in him that way, and perhaps the kinder course of action would be to tell him that she just hadn’t realised her feelings yet. But then again, maybe the thing keeping Edward tethered to the world is the fact he hasn’t yet let her go. Oswald has spent a lot of time manipulating people with lies, and normally he wouldn’t think twice about taking the easier route, especially if it benefitted him in some way. Telling Edward it seems likely that Miss Kringle has never been attracted to him and likely never would have been if he hadn’t died is only going to cause Oswald grief—with Edward likely to mope over the woman even more than he already does.

It seems plain to Oswald that Edward had perpetuated an impossible ideal with regards to Miss Kringle, something even the woman herself could not hope to live up to. Once upon a time, Oswald might have even found it tragically funny.

Oswald is not the same man he was prior to losing his mother.

He won’t lie.

“Edward, in the spirit of our new friendship,” Oswald has to swallow his chuckle at the unintentional pun, “I’m going to be frank with you.”

Edward angles himself more towards Oswald and adjusts his glasses. “Oh… All right.”

“I don’t think she reciprocated your feelings, and nor was she likely to.” Oswald tries a sympathetic smile, but thinks it probably comes off as a grimace. “I think you need to make your peace with that.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“From what you’ve said, you pursued her for quite some time, and she never showed any interest…”

“It was only a matter of time—”

“She had plenty of time to respond favourably to your intentions, yet she did not. What were you expecting? That you’d wear her down eventually and live happily ever after? That’s not how the world works, Ed! Believe me, I know!”

Edward looks like he’s about to argue, but then he just deflates, his face crumpling.

“Look, Ed—”

But Ed holds up a hand to stop him. He looks broken. Oswald notices for the first time that his chest is going up and down rapidly, and can hear his laboured breaths. Surely if he is dead, that shouldn’t be possible?

Edward gets up then and walks towards the bathroom, through the door, and then there’s silence.

Silent sulking is better than Oswald had expected. He shuffles so he’s laying down and closes his eyes, grateful for the quiet.

What’s unexpected is that he is so unsettled by the whole thing that it takes him a while to fall asleep.

*

Dawn is just starting to break when Oswald wakes up the following morning. He squints at the window, not really feeling rested. There was too much going on in his mind to sleep peacefully. He remembers instantly the conversation from the night before and the way it had ended. Will Edward show himself again? Has Oswald upset him so greatly that he won’t come back?

Surely it’s just a tantrum. His existence is tied to Oswald and the apartment. Without Oswald, he can’t have resolution. Edward will have to reappear eventually.

Oswald gets out of bed and heads over to the bathroom. He listens at the door, but hears nothing. He turns the handle, the fear of Edward suddenly appearing and making him jump out of his skin a very real concern. He pushes open the door quickly to get it over with, doing the same with the shower curtain as he shoves it to one side…but Edward is nowhere to be seen.

Oswald decides to just get on with his plans for the morning. He dresses half in his own clothes, half in Edward’s, finishing his garishly mismatched look with a flat cap.

Avoiding looking in the mirror, his last twenty dollars in his pocket, he heads down to the street below. People are just leaving their homes to head to work, getting into cars bleary-eyed, paying him no mind.

Oswald is just wondering about calling Gabe and asking him to find out what happened, when he has a better idea. He has stumbled across an internet café—somewhere he can safely and anonymously search online newspaper archives to find out what happened to Ed.

He pays for half an hour and wastes no time going to the Gotham Gazette website; putting Edward’s name into the search box.

There is only one article, which makes things easier.

Hero of the GCPD Massacre

While the city is still reeling from the shock of the attack on its police headquarters, a touching story of bravery has emerged from the tragedy.

Though the death toll is still unknown, at least one life was saved, by one of the GCPD’s own, Mr. Edward Nygma, who worked in forensics.

Miss Kristen Kringle, archivist at the GCPD, told reporters on Friday that Mr. Nygma pushed her out of the way of gun fire, becoming seriously wounded in the process. It is understood he remains in hospital in a critical condition…

Oswald stares at the computer monitor in shock.

This is the only article, which means there have been no developments since. Surely, if the “hero” had died, there would have been another article about him, or at least an obituary.

Oswald inhales shakily.

Edward Nygma isn’t dead.