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“We have to find out who he is and show him that this is our city!”
“Agreed.”
A vague black shape sails across the gap between buildings, and Ed flings out his arm, halting Oswald in his tracks. His heart leaps into double time; they’ve already been so rudely interrupted once this evening. He has no interest in repeating that encounter, not when they so narrowly escaped the first time. He isn’t about to get flung back in Arkham when Oswald just found him again.
“Tomorrow?” Oswald offers.
His tone holds no bravado, and Ed can sense that his friend is also reeling from the absurd turn their evening has taken.
“Tomorrow,” he agrees quickly.
Oswald turns on his heel and limps back the way they came. Ed hops after him, hovering close. His breath mists in front of him, and he shrugs his green overcoat a little tighter around his shoulders. It’s chilly and his formal attire does little to starve off the cold night air.
Oswald flings his hand up in a gesture of frustration. The umbrella he is using as a cane clicks along the sidewalk with each step, a comforting rhythm that sooths something in Ed’s big brain, a noise he hadn’t realized he had been missing. It’s been so long since he’s heard it. Oswald hadn’t had it with him during No Man’s Land, and before that… enemies seemed too soft a word for when they had been. Not all-encompassing enough. In the gaping the void the ice had left behind, Ed had allowed hatred and obsession to fester until it poisoned him. He had convinced himself that he hated Oswald, that he wanted to kill Oswald, that Oswald was the thing that landed in his lap like a bomb and blown his life to smithereens.
But none of that was true. He had come to realize that, grudgingly, during their separation from the mainland when he had woken from nightmares of his head being sawed open over and over while he screamed silently, paralyzed with terror, to find Oswald sitting up, watching him. Offering some quiet comfort. Never speaking of it in daylight, never acknowledging that show of pathetic weakness and occasional tears. Oswald simply offered a soothing hand on his shoulder, or carded it though Ed’s matted, greasy hair once or twice to coax him back to sleep.
During his tenure in Arkham, in a fog of medications he hadn’t wanted to take, it hadn’t felt so painful to admit that Oswald’s fingers touching his forehead had been his most solid tether to sanity in the aftermath of Haven. Here, walking beside Oswald now, it doesn’t feel like a weakness at all.
Oswald slows and leans on his cane. Ed takes a step closer and reaches out a hesitant hand, letting it hover in the space over his right shoulder. Surely after their rough treatment the pain of his injury is flaring up. Neither of them are particularly young men anymore, but Oswald outpaces him by half a decade, and it’s starting to show.
Rage flares in him at Jim Gordon for stealing that time away from them. Oswald should have been ruling like a king with Ed at his side, not sitting trapped behind bars, wasting that brilliant, dexterous mind doing nothing.
“I don’t know about you, Edward,” Oswald says suddenly, pulling Ed back down to earth. “But I could use a drink.”
Ed swallows around a sudden tightness in his chest. Oh. He hadn’t expected it to last, but he hadn’t expected it to end so quickly, either. He clenches his jaw around this scribble of pain, and stares at Oswald. It’s hard to look at him, not because he is ugly—Ed has always thought him aquiline and unusual and, yes, beautiful— but because the scarred, glassy eye sitting behind his monocle makes Ed’s stomach roil. He let that happen. It’s his fault that Oswald is crippled- more crippled- and self-hatred rises in him like water, threatening to drown him. No wonder Oswald wants nothing to do with him. He’s almost died more than once because of Ed, and declarations of rekindled friendship can only mean so much in the face of ten years apart to stew in that knowledge.
Before he can voice any of this, Oswald frowns at him, a peevish little V forming between his eyebrows. “It really does look different out here, now, doesn’t it?”
Ed doesn’t bother to cast his gaze around the dark street. He’s seen it once, he’s seen it twice, he’s seen it a thousand goddamn times; dark, grimy, and ultimately the same as every other dark, grimy side street and alley in this fucking city. He’s made his feelings about Gotham quite clear, thank you very much, and they haven’t changed in the decade he spent trapped in Arkham, alone.
His head throbs petulantly, a resounding reminder that he was beaten to unconsciousness mere hours ago, and then again nearly to it shortly after. In the aftermath of that adrenaline surge, his body is starting to tremble and ache, and he just wants to go lie down and maybe throw up. The dregs of his last dose of medication from Arkham are still chugging through his system, which isn’t helping. “I’m sure you can find some club or bar around here somewhere, Oswald. That is your specialty.” The words come out sounding more barbed than he intended, and he winces. His head throbs again.
Oswald rolls his eyes and marches forwards once again. Ed doesn’t follow. He would rather let this end here, quickly. No need for them to prolong the dissolution of their short-lived second partnership. Third. Seventh. It doesn’t matter- at this point, he’s lost count.
He is about to turn and slip away when Oswald calls over his shoulder, “Hurry up, Ed. It’s fucking cold out here.” He’s aiming for a building at the end of the row, low and black with noise spilling out the narrow widows. The very definition of a dive bar.
Confused hope needles at Ed’s insides and he cautiously scampers after Oswald, staying a few paces behind. It didn’t sound like an invitation, but it didn’t not sound like one either. He isn’t sure, and, as loathe as he is to admit to anything so sentimental, he fucking misses Oswald so much it’s a physical ache crouched behind his breastbone.
He follows through the door into a dim, sticky room. Oswald makes a beeline for the corner and settles into a bench seat. His glittery purple dinner jacket clashes garishly with their surroundings, and Ed pauses in the doorway to appreciate it. There he is, the mighty Penguin. So bright and interesting against the rest of this drab, dull world.
Oswald smacks his hand down on the table and offers Ed one of those tight lipped, wide-eyed smiles he’s so fond of, the one that makes Ed’s insides fizz and tingle. He approaches the table, still waiting for Oswald to change his mind, to tell him that he isn’t wanted, that he’s just some pathetic, jittery loser unworthy of his attention.
Instead, Oswald pats the bench beside him and looks up at Ed with a far more genuine smile. “It’s no Iceberg Lounge, but it will suffice.”
Ed grins cautiously and takes the safer seat across the small round table from Oswald. Is it his imagination, or does a flash of disappointment cross Oswald’s face? He can’t tell. He’s never been the best at reading those little layers of subtle emotion, and his recent tenure at Arkham as eroded that already pathetic skillset down to a withered little nub.
Ed casts a furtive gaze around the bar. It’s dark and dingy, with half a dozen other patrons scattered around the room paying them no attention. He’s still twitchy after their encounter with the man in the bat costume, and he dislikes having his back to the door like this. He’s too used to having to be on high alert at all times, waiting for the other crazies to jump him to be entirely comfortable, even though he knows he’s free. Free, because Oswald saved him, again, even if it was just by being someone’s scapegoat. Oswald wanted him to sit beside him at their table, right close, close enough that the sleeves of their jackets would have been brushing together with every movement.
No, this was the right choice. Safer.
The table is so very small, and despite sitting across it from his old friend turned enemy turned something, they are still very close together. Close enough for Ed to see new crow’s feet at the corners of Oswald’s eyes, the new creases on his forehead and around his mouth, a spiderweb of fine lines, a roadmap of memories etched into that powerful face.
He’s staring. He’s staring hard, and his heart climbs the inside of his throat like a rat up a drainpipe, choking off the thousands of things he wants to say to Oswald. It’s been so long, and he’s changed so much from where they left off. They both have.
A waitress in a loose black t-shirt that reads ‘Molly’s in faded orange letters materializes over them with a notebook clenched in her fist. It’s clear from the bored expression on her face that she has no idea who they are, but before Ed can work himself into a proper indignant frenzy over that, Oswald orders.
“Whiskey, neat. Top shelf, I don’t care what brand as long as it’s expensive.” He turns his attention back to Ed and quirks an eyebrow expectantly.
Ed’s tongue has somehow managed to tie itself in a knot, and his mind goes blank. A drink. Yes, he would like a drink. What does he like? It’s been so long since he’s had the freedom to genuinely indulge in something decadent like this that the choice looms heavy over his head. He blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. “Grasshopper.”
The waitress’ pen stutters, but she makes no comment. Neither does Oswald, but for some reason, Ed flushes all the way to the tips of his ears. Oswald has always been somewhat of a paradox, a puzzle that continues to evolve and shift pieces, which is what makes him so fun to try and solve, especially with things like this; he has a taste for fine liquors with a breath of knowledge that outpaces Ed’s own, and Ed just ordered the alcoholic equivalent of mint chocolate chip milkshake.
He has half a mind to jump to his feet and chase after their waitress to change his order, but before he can, Oswald removes his hat and drops into onto the seat beside him with a sigh, eyes boring into Ed’s in the dim light.
Ed freezes under the weight of his gaze, unsure of what to expect. Is Oswald angry with him? He has endless reasons to be, after everything that’s happened between them. Ed isn’t angry anymore, not about Isabella, or the lies that followed. He’s had time to think it over, and the litany of antipsychotics and mood stabilizers and tranquilizers floating through his bloodstream make it hard to feel such things with any real intensity.
His head throbs again, and he pinches the thumb of his glove, unable to maintain that loaded eye contact. Suddenly, he’s self-conscious. He’s older than last Oswald saw him and spending the last decade in a mental hospital has done him no favors. Ed is aware that he is underweight and boney in a way that doesn’t flatter his already narrow frame. The drugs and stress made it hard to keep a healthy weight, hollowing out his cheeks and the skin under his eyes. Even now, he feels the physical repercussions of the rough treatment he’s received tonight wearing on his weathered stamina.
“Ed?”
His eyes flick back up to meet Oswald’s, and to his surprise, he sees concern reflected back at him.
“Are you alright?”
Ed hitches a smile on his face that must look as lifeless as it feels. Like most of his emotions, especially recently, it’s wholly performative. Rarely has he had to be this way with Oswald, and he doesn’t know how to navigate this turn. “Right as rain.”
The waitress returns with their drinks, snapping the sudden tension like a skein of ice on a lake. The smell of cream and peppermint wafts in front of Ed’s nose and makes his stomach turn.
Oswald shakes his head, brows furrowing. “I know when you’re lying to me, Edward. I know you.” Ed expects the Penguin’s usual blustering anger, but it doesn’t come. There is nothing hard or cold about the way that voice curls around his ribcage, tugging at his insides.
He is reminded, suddenly, of their reunification during the separation from the mainland, when Oswald had promised him that he would never secretly be an enemy to Ed. It had been the first time either of them had spoken in months, since Ed had betrayed Oswald in the bank vault, and instead of rage, Oswald had… his voice had sounded soft and sad, the same way it does now. Almost like he was on the verge of tears, but that was absurd. Oswald is not, has never been, a man moved easily by soft emotions, by joy and pleasure and affection.
He doesn’t know how to respond, how to feel. What can he say to that? Ed is long out of practice in being gentle or vulnerable with other people. In fact, Oswald is the only one, really, who’s ever managed it. The only one still alive, at least. The only one who ever survived Ed trying to love them-
His throat clamps shut around the thought, and he picks up his drink, taking a careful sip. Across the table, Oswald does the same, still staring at him, still waiting for Ed to say something. Prison, unfortunately, seems to have finally imbued Oswald with some semblance of patience.
The silence balloons between them, filled only by the sound of some terrible pop song crooning through the bar’s shitty speakers in the background, until Ed can’t take it. He runs the tip of his finger around the base of the martini glass and says in as calm a voice as he can muster, “I don’t know what you want me to say, Oswald.” He hates the way the name catches in his throat like a fishbone, threatening to choke him.
Oswald visibly bristles, and Ed wilts in his chair, waiting for him to explode in rage, for the inevitable firecracker of anger to blow this up in his face, to show Ed that, yes he was right, that Oswald just wants to hurt him again after everything-
“Ed, I just want to make sure that you’re alright. I know Hugo Strange doesn’t run Arkham anymore, but it can’t have been easy. You look… it doesn’t look like it’s been easy.” Oswald takes another drink, and Ed watches his throat bob alluringly above the knot of his tie. “Like I said,” he continues. “I know you. You don’t like being told what to do, and those guards are, for lack of a better word, trigger happy idiots. Or baton happy, whatever you want to call it.”
Ed’s face twitches into its first genuine smile in months. Years, maybe, even as he thinks of being beaten within an inch of his life, of being pinned down and drugged and left to rot alone in padded room with nothing but the voices in his head for company.
But Oswald doesn’t know about any of that, because he never asked. Ed hasn’t heard a fucking word from him since he was dragged out of the GCPD holding cell and off to Blackgate, leaving Ed behind.
For the first time, ire rises in him at their imprisonment, not at Jim, but at Oswald, because he knows, deep down, that if they had been together, none of this ever would have happened to him. Ed would have been fine. Mostly. He wouldn’t have been left alone in a shadowy, drugged twilight with no one there to keep him whole. He wouldn’t be, even now, doubting what is real and what is simply his damaged psyche making shadow puppets against the inside of his skull. It makes him so sick with bone-shaking rage that he wants to scream.
He is shaking, trembling so hard that the table quakes, sending little ripples over the moss-green surface of his disgusting cocktail. “I would have been fine if you hadn’t left me alone in there.” The words claw their way out of his throat. “I stayed in this city for you, Oswald, and you left me to rot in Arkham like I meant nothing to you. After everything that happened, you still left me behind-” The remains of his sentence tangle into inarticulate, clench-jawed anguish. He drags his hand under his eyes and studies a stain on the floor to the right of their table. It’s shaped like Texas, almost perfectly. This place is truly vile.
He nearly jumps out of his skin when a hand comes to rest on his wrist, and he flinches back so violently that he nearly tumbles out of his chair. “Don’t fucking touch me!” He’s still half inside Arkham, where hands on him were always a precursor to something wildly unpleasant, drugs or a beating, or worse.
Oswald freezes, eyes wide, hand still hanging in place where Ed had been a moment before. He makes a little soothing sound, low in his throat and rises, moving into Ed’s space. His diminutive figure looms over Ed’s seated one. It should feel like a violation, but instead, Oswald lifts a hand and rests it against Ed’s jaw. The leather of his gloves is cold to the touch, and it grounds Ed, brings him back to his body, and reminds him that he’s here, that it’s all done with now. He’s free and they’re here together. The hammering pressure in chest slows, becomes less painful.
Oswald rubs his thumb across the hallow of Ed’s cheek, a little back and forth movement that sooths him. Ed doesn’t look at his face; he doesn’t think he can. Instead, he studies the little silver umbrella pin on Oswald’s vest. It’s new, not one he recognizes.
“Edward, do you really think so little of me, that I would abandon you in that hellhole? I sent you letters, and when I didn’t hear from you, I sent a lawyer, but they wouldn’t let her see you.”
This is news to Ed. In Arkham, they had never allowed him so much as a newspaper. He had gotten no mail, which honestly hadn’t struck him as odd; it wasn’t like he had any friends left, and his relationship with Oswald was so rocky that he hadn’t been sure where they stood. Still isn’t. As the silence had grown longer and longer, Ed had only grown more certain that Oswald no longer cared for him, that he had just been an infatuation or a means to an end.
Hearing differently plucks a mollifying melody in his bones. Oswald had tried to write to him. Oswald had tried to send a lawyer to help him. Oswald could still touch him without sending him into sensory overloaded panic.
“I would lay awake at night, thinking about you,” Oswald murmurs. “Thinking about all the awful things they could be doing to you. Worrying that you would come out the other side a shadow of the brilliant man I once knew.” His hand spasms around Eds jaw, and the pressure lights something pleasant low in Ed’s belly. “A life sentence is such a long time. Unlimited opportunities to hurt you. Knowing that you were in danger and that I couldn’t help worried me more than I… more than I cared to admit. That you were in there alone, out of my reach.”
Ed doesn’t want to talk about this. He isn’t ready to unbury the bones of past hurts so that they can have this conversation the way they need to. He’s too raw, too tired. Instead, he tilts his head out of reach and picks up his martini. His hand wobbles around the stem of the glass, bad enough for it to spill over the rim. Droplets patter on the leather of his glove like rain. He can feel a breakdown stewing, anger and fear and exhaustion all crawling between his organs like insects, aiding in the decomposition of his fragile sense of self. The medications are trickling out of his system, too. He missed his evening dose, and the doctors in Arkham had him on the heavy stuff. The crash looms, and it isn’t going to be pretty when it hits.
He doesn’t want Oswald to see him like this. He doesn’t want Oswald to think of him as weak again. For years, all he wanted was Oswald’s respect. For Oswald to like him and think him clever and dangerous. And then, after everything, Ed just wanted to make Oswald hurt as badly as Ed hurt. He wanted to make Oswald feel as bad as he did, when the only thing he had ever liked about himself was violently torn away by a man who claimed to love him.
That isn’t how it’s supposed to be. People who love you aren’t supposed to kill the parts of you they adore. His parents had done the same and treated him like a monster when he didn’t fall at their feet thanking them for it.
Oswald had mocked Ed as he knelt before him, brainless, limbs jelly, submissive and broken. Then he loosed Ed back into the world instead of keeping him close, for all the good that had done either of them. But then, as the city crumbled to chaos around them, he had saved Ed’s life after Lee stabbed. He had offered Ed a way out, he had kept him safe while they worked on an escape plan, and apologized for not loving him the right way, in not so many words.
He had jumped on a grenade, to save him.
And now they’re here.
Ed doesn’t know what to think.
Oswald grabs his face again, and tilts Ed’s chin up, forcing him to make eye contact. His mismatched eyes gleam in the dim light, dark and shiny, like volcanic glass. Ed can feel himself beginning to drown in them, and his insides writhe against the casing of his skin. He feels too small and too large all at once, like he is dissolving into the air around them.
He balances on a precipice, a knifes edge of choice; hang on or surrender? For years, since he was first freed from Arkham, or maybe even before, all he’s known is hanging on with white knuckled terror, refusing to let go and tumble into the tide of genuine emotion. It’s too much, this feeling, like staring at the midday sun with naked eyes. How can anyone survive this? The way it wants to lick across his bones like a forest fire, searing away all of the weakest parts of him, terrifies and thrills him in equal measure.
He can smell the scotch on Oswald’s breath. “Did you really miss me?” It comes out a whisper, breathless and almost inaudible.
That doesn’t matter. Oswald hears him. Oswald always hears him when it counts. His thumb makes another little circle over Ed’s cheekbone, then slides down his jaw and falls away. “Every waking moment. You are a part of me, Edward, despite our history. There is no future for me that you aren’t in. As a friend, or an enemy, or…”
Something else, Ed fills in silently. Something more. He wants to chase the comforting pressure of Oswald’s hand, but he is frozen into inaction, terrified of surrendering control to his baser emotions. Terrified of misstepping and killing whatever this is in its infancy, because he isn’t used to swimming uncharted waters like this and he doesn’t know what to do.
His tongue sits large and dry in his mouth, and he swallows, then again when that doesn’t help. He wishes he had a glass of water instead of his shitty cocktail, to chase the dryness out. It makes it hard to think, and he needs to- to plan- to consider his options before he ruins everything.
“Ed?”
His head snaps up. Oswald has taken a seat across from him once more, only now, he’s joined by the specter of Kristen Kringle, seated primly with her legs crossed, head tilted. Ed flinches at the sight of her and rub his eyes under his glasses. She isn’t here, she’s not. He’s not crazy, he’s just tired and can’t get a straight answer from himself. Like always, a snide little voice murmurs from the base of his skull, and he twitches, trying to shake it off. He can’t have this right now, not when- not when everything is supposed to be good, not when he’s out, away from the doctors and their touching and the other inmates and their screaming, not when the cloud of medication that have been drowning his senses is finally beginning to unhook its claws from his grey matter.
He swallows around the sandy lump in his throat as his head throbs. Each movement sends the room quivering on its axis. This feeling is terribly unpleasant, worse than when he nearly overdosed on amphetamines after killing Oswald.
Nearly killing, he amends quickly, to no one but the snide voice in his ear and the cold curl of Kristen’s ghostly smile as she spider-walks her index and middle finger up the sleeve of Oswald’s jacket. He didn’t kill Oswald, despite- despite giving it his best effort, he could never manage that penultimate blow, the final shot that would have ended their little dance.
He never thought he would be so grateful for his own incompetence.
A hot flutter of nausea slides up the back of his throat, threatening to choke him. He can’t dwell on that, because it doesn’t matter anymore. If it did, Oswald wouldn’t be sitting here across from him in this dingy bar in a city that has grown around them like a garden of concrete weeds.
And Oswald is here. He isn’t an ephemeral trick of the light, or a spiteful memory draped in crimson light coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. He is real and solid and breathing the only thing that matters in this cold, empty world.
Ed hasn’t cried properly in years, but heat blooms against the back of his eyelids, ready to tip over at any second. His emotions, so muted by medication and the suffering he’s endured, rise to the surface, breaking through his barriers and smashing apart his self-control like a flimsy wooden rowboat in a typhoon. Suddenly he’s terrified that this isn’t real. That he’s bound in a padded room in Arkham, drugged out of his skull and talking to himself. That this time, he really is too far gone. He’s had psychotic breaks before. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that none of this is real. How can he tell, when his own mind is the very enemy and does nothing but lie and trick him?
“Edward, you’re scaring me.”
He always does, doesn’t he? Scares the people he cares about. He flexes his fingers, curls them tight against the constraint of the leather gloves, and across the table the hallucination of Kristen flickers and vanishes, her hands fluttering up to her neck with a reproachful frown. Scare them and hurt them. That’s what Lee had said wasn’t it?
That’s just what you do.
“I just-“ the words lodge in his throat. His head still spins, and he wishes Oswald was still over here, touching him, just to keep him present. But that’s a little too soft bellied and bleeding, especially for him, especially considering their history, so instead he leans over and vomits onto the sticky floor.
Not much comes up. Just stomach acid, tinted green and brushed with menthol from the cocktail. It’s been a day or two since he’s been able to keep down the disgusting slop they consider food in Arkham for more than a few minutes.
With nothing better to do, he laughs as he heaves again, a string of drool hanging from his lips to the puddle of sick between his feet. Maybe it will leave a stain. Something interesting. Florida maybe, or Louisiana, to go with the Texas nearby. He can’t tell the shape; his vision has gone static around the edges, and colors have lost their intensity. Whatever cocktail of medications they had him doesn’t want to go in peace, razoring through his bloodstream with one last hurrah before death, perhaps. It certainly feels that way.
He doesn’t realize that Oswald is trying to talk to him until they’re outside, the cold air washing over him, clearing his head. Everything is fuzzy, and he doesn’t know where they are going or what they plan to do, but he does know that if Oswald leaves him, he’ll die right here on the street. He will, he knows it. His heart gallops behind his ribcage at the thought, at the image of some lucky hobo prying his glittery silver dress shoes from his corpse while praising his luck.
“I’m not leaving you, Ed.”
Oswald’s eyebrows pull together in a knot under his top hat. It’s an expression of displeasure that Ed is unfamiliar with. He likes to think that he, more than most, knows the Penguin’s shades of wrath quite well, but there is a gleam in his eyes, a tension in his muscles that doesn’t speak to rage. It’s… softer. It reminds him of the green light in his studio apartment, of lullabies and reminiscence.
Oswald calls a car, and Ed spends most of the ride cresting waves of nausea with his cheek pressed against the cold glass of the window, watching the golden blur of streetlights slide past on the other side.
Oswald leaves him be, and he can’t decide if he’s grateful or not. Ed hates the feeling of hands on him, but Oswald makes that awful cloudy disassociation go away when nothing else can, and, as loathe as he is to admit it, he needs that anchor, or the fragile string tethering him to himself might just snap, and he’ll float away into the sky like a wayward balloon.
“Oswald?” His name fogs against the glass.
“Yes?”
“You’re here?”
“Where else would I be?”
“I don’t know.” Ed can’t stop shaking, little tremors racing through his extremities, like he’s freezing. He almost wants the drugs, just to make this feeling stop. Oswald could get them for him. He might, if Ed asks. Oswald cares about him, doesn’t he? He wouldn’t want Ed to suffer like this.
“Shh. It will be okay, Ed.”
He hadn’t realized he said any of that out loud. He doesn’t know how much. It’s all a little jumbled. Withdrawal cartwheels around his neurotransmitters, throwing them off balance.
A hand comes to rest on the base of his neck. “I can get them, if it’s what you need. I did keep a tight leash on my empire from behind bars, you know.”
I know, he wants to say, but the words get lost somewhere between his brain and his mouth.
The car pulls to a stop in front of an innocuous apartment building in the Diamond District. Ed squints out the window. Before he can give voice to one the shapeless questions hovering over his shoulder, the door opens from the outside, and the driver hauls him out of the car with firm hands.
“Be gentle!” Oswald’s voice winds upwards towards a shriek.
The next thing Ed knows, he’s being carried somewhere, bridal style. He blinks, and they’re inside, trailing behind the telltale unevenness of Oswald’s gait. He blinks again, time slipping through his fingers like water, and then someone sets him down on a cold and hard surface.
Voices float past overhead, and he manages to roll over onto his back to see that he is laying the middle of a pristine bathroom, all white marble with espresso accents. Oswald stands in the doorway, speaking quietly to someone in the hall. He is backlit from outside the room, and it throws his profile into relief. Ed has always loved his nose, the sharpness of it, how it wrinkles up when he’s irritated, how regal it looks against the planes of his face.
He blinks and rubs his eyes under his glasses. “Why am I on the ground?” he slurs.
Oswald moves over to him, staring down with an expression that Ed can’t decipher. “I want you near the toilet if you throw up again.”
Ed hums in agreement and claws himself upright so he slouches against the wall. Better than laying on the floor like some helpless infant, at the very least. His head throbs, and he isn’t quite able to hold back a moan as his stomach tries to turn itself inside out.
Much to his surprise, Oswald lowers himself to the ground with a grunt, using his hands to aide his bad leg. Ed watches him through bleary eyes, unsure of what to say. Unsure of why Oswald is here, on the floor with him. Surely, he has better things to do than watch Ed suffer?
Oswald’s foresight turns out to be correct. Ed manages to spew most of his next round of vomiting into the toilet, and after, leans his head on the seat, worn out, breathing ragged, body aching like he’s come down with the flu.
Oswald rubs a comforting circle between his shoulder blades before carefully sliding the glasses off Ed’s face and tucking them into the breast pocket of his sparkly purple evening jacket. “Do you know what they were giving you?”
Speech feels a little beyond him at the moment, so he mutely shakes his head, and closes his eyes as the room spins like a tilt a whirl.
“Maybe it’s for the best. Just get it out of your system.” His hand makes another slow rotation between Ed’s shoulder blades, and the warmth seeps into his icy skin, even through all the layers he has on. Oswald mutters something about toxic sludge, and Ed fades again.
Time passes in unsteady dollops, looping by in waves that feel both too slow and too fast at the same time. Everything hurts, his head, his organs, his connective tissue. He really has no idea what the doctors at Arkham were dosing him with, but considering the detox he’s currently suffering, it can’t possibly have been a legal concoction.
At some point, he pries his eyes open to see Kristen Kringle seated against the far wall of the bathroom, her legs crossed at the ankle. She watches, silent and impassive, as Ed makes a nest of towels to curl up in. He can’t stop shaking, and he wishes Oswald hadn’t taken his overcoat, even though it had vomit on the collar.
Oswald doesn’t leave his side in those early twilight hours. The bathroom remains dim, lit from the sodium yellow ambience of city lights diffusing through the arching picture window, but it’s still enough to see the terse, unhappy expression twisting his features into a frown. It’s an expression Ed recognizes, though he can’t say from where, exactly, not in his current addled state.
You will know that I am your enemy.
The words float upwards through his cloudy mind, and for some reason they make relief rise in him, soothing the gnashing fear that he’s in some kind of danger. An answer to a question he had been seeking for a long, long time without realizing.
The next time he opens his eyes, Kristen has been replaced by himself. By Riddler, dressed to the nines in a glittery green suit, looking uncharacteristically somber. “Priceless to two,” he whispers in a voice that hisses like the wind. “I can’t be stolen, only given.” Ed blinks, and the hallucination shifts to Oswald’s side, rubbing his cheek against his shoulder like a pleased house-cat, eyes closed, mouth falling open with a whispery sigh of joy.
Oswald hums something under his breath. It’s not a song Ed knows, which surprises him. He knows a lot of things, him and his borderline eidetic memory. Music tends to stick in his gray matter like cement, adhering itself to the walls of his memory, but then, Oswald has always managed to surprise him. It’s one of the things Ed loves most about him.
Love.
There’s that word again. It snags in his chest like a thorn on a wayward sleeve.
Love.
He loves Oswald. He loves him so much it hurts. Worse than getting shot, worse than getting stabbed, because at least that was temporary, be it a healed injury or one that would lead to his demise. At least that pain would burn out like a candle starved of oxygen. But this. He never wants this pain to end, even as it scours through him like a fever.
A great swell of emotion rises in him, carving a chasm through his chest, followed by a wracking sob. He loves Oswald, loves him so much it’s an actual physical ache that feels like it’s cracking his chest in two. He loves Oswald and he would rather die than be without him again.
“Ed? Ed, what’s wrong?”
Ed is bawling too hard to answer. Instead, he rolls over from where his back has been pressed into the soft heat of Oswald’s thigh, and fumbles for his forearm in the blurry darkness. He clings to him like a lifeline, as tightly as he can. “Please don’t leave me,” he finally manages to stutter out between hiccupping sobs. “Please don’t leave me, Oswald, please, I need you.” He’s petrified that he isn’t holding tight enough, that Oswald will snap his brittle fingers like twigs and walk out of his life, abandoning Ed for good.
His free hand comes to rest on Ed’s wrist. “I’m not leaving you, Ed.”
Ed buries his face in the crook of Oswald’s hip and belly, trying to suppress the bone-crushing wave of emotions rising in his throat, threatening to drown him. He had told Oswald, so many years ago, bathed in the green neon from of Ed’s apartment window, that love was a weakness, and it feels like that now, but not the way he had meant it. Not so much weakness as an illness ripping him open, leaving exposed nerves frayed and too sensitive without a lining of apathy there to protect them.
“You’re mine,” Oswald continues, voice softening around the edges. “Mine, always. I’m not leaving you.”
He’s too delirious with anguish for the words to have any impact, and darkness rises over his vision once again.
Ed wakes again, slowly, with the viscosity of mud sliding off glass. He is no longer on the floor of the bathroom, and his stomach heaves weakly as he prays for the blissful cold of the shiny white tiles. Instead, he aches and shivers in something warm and soft, warmer and softer than he’s felt in years. A bed, a lovely wide bed with too many pillows to be entirely practical.
He finally cracks his eyes open, squinting against the gray dawn spilling in from the window. He tries to sit up, but his bones grind against each other like crushed glass. His joints feel like they’ve been filled with sand, and each aborted movement sends little shockwaves of pain radiating down his spine.
He is alone.
Panic rises in him, overwhelming his physical distress with white noise. He lets out a wordless cry, little more than a dry rasp, and then Oswald is there, standing over him with an expression of fear, begging to know what’s wrong, where does it hurt, is he okay?
Ed sinks back in the bed, shaking, his head spinning from the exertion. He doesn’t have the wherewithal to answer, but Oswald seems to understand. He toes off his shoes and peels away a few layers of finery, setting them neatly over the back of a nearby chair, and climbs into bed beside Ed.
He cradles Ed’s trembling, sweaty body against his own, and strokes Ed’s hair with gentle fingers. Oswald has such beautiful hands. Capable of so much vicious, imaginative violence. Capable of ending so many things, via knife or gun or severed brakeline.
Capable of starting something too. Wrapped around the mother-of-pearl handle of a vintage folding knife, pressed to the delicate skin over Ed’s carotid artery. The very first moment he ever felt truly seen by anyone. The first moment Oswald had really seen him, and the beginning of something strange and wonderful.
Ed drifts back off with Oswald still carding his fingers through his hair.
He wakes again sometime in the early morning. Bars of sunlight drape the foot of the bed in gold, and the worst, it seems, has finally passed. He still feels weak and a little nauseated, but objects have lost their wavering watercolor edges and he can string two thoughts together once more.
He wriggles over onto his side. Oswald has fallen asleep still seated against the mountain of pillows, mouth open, breathing slow and even. His hand has slid down so it rests on the side of Ed’s neck, and he wonders absently if Oswald can feel the way his pulse jumps as he stares up at him.
Perhaps he does, or perhaps it’s a built-in sense of knowing when he’s being watched that wakes him, but Oswald snaps to alertness, eyes flickering open and taking stock of the room quickly before settling on Ed. His face falls still and guarded, but there is a hint of something in his eyes. Of a much younger man that Ed once knew, with so many lofty aspirations.
Ed gazes up at him, unable to look away. He’s missed watching Oswald in the time they’ve been apart. His face has become clouded by time and frosted over by distance, the exact nature of his features and minute muscle movements losing their clarity with each passing day, and all Ed wants to do is stay right here and refamiliarize himself. Oswald is so delightfully expressive, especially when he’s angry or annoyed, which is often.
Oswald clears his throat. “I put your glasses on the bedside table.” He looks away, smoothing down his rumpled shirt with his free arm. The other one is still trapped under Ed’s neck.
Oswald’s sudden awkwardness puts Ed on edge. Is this… has he misread this once again? Suddenly, he realizes where they are.
In bed.
Together.
The connotations of that are… hard to ignore, given their past.
Easier, given the circumstances in which they’ve found themselves here.
Ed rolls over and fishes for his glasses, and the words slides back into focus. Before he can think of a way to extricate himself, Oswald says, “You seem like you’re feeling better.” His voice is carefully devoid of emotion.
Ed fiddles with the arm of the glasses for something to do and watches a mote of dust as it spins lazily through the air, deliberately not looking at Oswald. “Most of the drugs should be out of my system by now. I’m sure I’ll be in tip top shape in a few days.”
The silence is deafening.
Despite the aches and bruises, he starts to wriggle upright, wanting to be on even ground for whatever is about to happen, because something is. That much is clear. They’ve reached a final fork in this garden of branching paths, of lies and pain and obfuscation of feeling that has tangled the two of them together for so long.
“You named your dog after me,” Ed blurts out of nowhere. He doesn’t know why those are the words that escape his lips, with so many questions and half-formed thoughts fighting for his attention. He hasn’t thought of the dog for years, and never as anything more than a mere extension of Oswald, but it feels important now, all of the sudden.
Oswald blinks rapidly, mismatched eyes growing wide, then narrowing into little slits. “He- this- is this really what you want to talk about?”
“You never told me why.”
“Oh, that’s all? The great Riddler can never let a question go answered, is that it?” It doesn’t sound like a question, the way he says it. More like a judgment. Like he’s annoyed that, even after all this time, Ed still can’t figure out the answer.
But how could he know why Oswald would name that slovenly creature after him? All the beast did was follow Oswald like a shadow when he was awake, or nap right where Ed needed to work as he constructed their submarine. And all Oswald did was kiss and coddle the thing, saying such sweet things, Edward this, and Edward that-
Ed’s hands drop into his lap.
Oh.
One reason makes sense, one he honestly hadn’t dared to consider, because after everything, the murders and betrayals and grenades exploding into shrapnel fire, just being friends again seemed so very momentous. Anything more is just-
He swallows around the lump in his throat, staring down at his boney fingers as they twist into a knot in his lap, a memory rising to the surface of his mind. Of the last day of their standoff with the army, when Oswald handed him the dog’s leash and limped away to go and fight for the city. Leaving Ed behind. Why would he leave, if- if he still cared? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense that Oswald would name his beloved dog after him, then go out of his way to protect him from the army and save his life in the Narrows, and then just leave.
Oswald’s hand falls onto the blanket next to Ed’s covered thigh. He had stayed on top of the blankets all night, and it feels startlingly formal and impermanent. Ed bites his lip. He wants Oswald to hold him again. Under the blankets, wreathed together so tightly they could never be unbraided, two matched puzzle pieces slotting together to form one picture.
Isn’t that what the great poets say of love? Two souls, one body? Nothing else sounds quite right for what they are to each other, and besides, nothing else could possibly feel like this. Hurt like this. Blind him with euphoria the way he wants this to.
What else can it possibly be?
Ed doesn’t want to think about all the times that Oswald has clawed his way inside his barriers and nested behind his ribcage, a second beating heart that Ed can’t cut away, no matter how hard he wants to try. Now it just feels… lonely, without him.
He doesn’t want to be lonely anymore.
“I can hear you thinking.”
As much as he wants to correct the silly notion that brains make any sort of sound audible to the human ear, this is more important. “I think I do know the answer,” he hedges cautiously.
He runs his thumbnail along one of the grooves in his fingerprint, unable to look at Oswald. He isn’t going to be the one to say it first. He’s not. It’s not fair. Oswald has had time to sit with this and get used to the idea. Ed has just arrived and he’s still a little tangled up.
“Well, feel free to share.” There is none of Oswald’s usual bluster. Just the words, quiet and genuine. Like he really wants to know.
Ed still can’t look at him. His heart hammers somewhere in the region of his larynx, racing like it has something to prove. This conversation is too big, and he can’t wrangle the words he needs out of the air around them. Instead, he sits frozen, scratching at his fingertips, trying to breath. To think, even as he is completely immobilized by terror.
Oswald sighs, and starts to move, shuffling towards the edge of the bed.
Panic rears up in him, blinding and sour. “Where are you going?”
With Oswald’s back to him, seated like he’s about to stand and walk out of Ed’s life, his face is out of view and Ed can’t tell what he’s thinking. Can’t tell if he’s trying to think of a way to let the sad, crazy man in his apartment down easy, or-
“You are the smartest person I have ever met, but you can be so-” Oswald pauses, and sucks is a long, shuddering breath. Without meaning to, Ed has wriggled out from under the mountain of blankets and inched closer to him. They’re close, tethered together by inches of space that feel like chasm.
Without warning, Oswald twists back around to face him, and lets out a little yelp of surprise when the motion brings their faces only a hairs breadth apart.
Ed doesn’t pull back. It would be the polite thing to do, since he is the one technically invading Oswald’s space, but he doesn’t want to be apart from him. Even this little distance separating them now feels too far. He wants to close it, to smash it to nothing like a broken vase, just glass and dust. Ready to be melted down into something new. Something better.
So he does.
He leans forwards and closes the distance between them, ignoring the worries that this isn’t real, that things have changed too much, that too much bad blood festers between them for this inferno burning in his chest to ever survive.
He closes the distance and presses his mouth to Oswald’s. He’s so starved for affection of any kind that the feeling of Oswald’s mouth against his, hot and soft, is alien and enticing in a way that leaves him even hungrier for it with each passing second.
After a moment that passes like a flash and an eon, he realizes that Oswald isn’t moving. That he isn’t kissing back.
Ed freezes, pulling back and letting his eyes fall closed. He doesn’t want to see whatever expression is currently twisting Oswald’s features, derision or pity or whatever else it may be. It would smash his stupid weak little heart into a thousand pieces, and he doesn’t want to do what he did last time. So unable to process the profound nature of his pain and anger and yes, grief, at killing Oswald that he had murdered half a dozen people in cold blood. He simply doesn’t have the energy to go through that again.
Oswald’s hand comes to rest on the side of his face, making him jump. His thumb does that thing again, stroking a little arc over the jut of his cheekbone, and it feels like a brand on his skin, lighting up every nerve ending like the fourth of July.
“If you didn’t mean that,” Oswald murmurs, voice wavering. “I am going to be very angry with you.”
Ed takes a chance and opens his eyes. Oswald hasn’t moved away from him, and this close he can see the smattering of golden freckles that dot his nose and cheeks, barely visible against the pallor of his skin. “Why-“ he loses track of whatever question he meant to ask, too enamored with the magnanimous nature of Oswald’s presence. It towers over him in a way that a five-foot six man in his forties with a physical disability should not be able to do. Especially not seated beside him with a tender hand laid on Ed’s face, eyes brimming over with something so soft it’s almost hard to look at, like trying to stare directly at an eclipse. “Why wouldn’t I mean it?” he finally manages to stutter out in a hoarse whisper.
Something hardens behind those saltwater green eyes. “You’ve played with my emotions before, Edward. How can I believe you aren’t lying to me now?”
Sick heat wells up in Ed’s throat, sticky and drowning. He can’t meet Oswald’s gaze, so instead he directs his words to the man’s mouth, still only inches away. Close enough for their exhalations to mingle in one alcohol tinted cloud. “I didn’t understand before. What you meant to me. What I mean to you. I don’t regret it, and I don’t think you do either, because if we hadn’t been the men we used to be, we wouldn’t be sitting here now. Together. And I’m glad that we are. I-” he swallows, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. He has so much he needs to say, and he needs to get it right. Oswald deserves to hear it, and he deserves to hear it correctly and truthfully. “I wasn’t lying to you. At the beginning. I really would have done anything you asked of me, Oswald, and then you betrayed me. But that doesn’t matter now, because I’m not that person anymore, and neither are you.”
He finally manages to meet Oswald’s eyes again. The damaged one, pupil blown wide. The scars around it have faded to a lightning bolt of silver, but Ed still remembers with haunting, perfect clarity the jagged crimson lines carved in the delicate flesh from the shrapnel. No. Oswald is no longer the person who would selfishly destroy something so he could have Ed all to himself. He’s proven that over and over now, and Ed knows with a sudden bone-deep certainty, that yes, Oswald still loves him, and always will.
The realization shakes him more than he thought possible, and thrills him too, because, really, there never has been anyone else. Just pale imitations and replacements that could never match up to the real thing.
“That’s true.” Oswald’s hand slides around to the back of his neck, fingers clamping around his cervical vertebrae, trapping him in place.
Heat curls through Ed’s body with the knowledge of just how much he wants to be here, caught in the gravity of Oswald’s being. That there is nothing else like this feeling. Not befuddling an enemy with a riddle, not outsmarting the GCPD, not even killing someone who really deserves it.
That he wants, needs, craves Oswald to kiss him and mean it. To kiss him back and spit an apology for every wound he’s ever opened between them into his mouth so it can be inside Oswald forever.
The desire must be clear in his eyes, because Oswald sighs, and a tiny, triumphant smile blooms at the corner of his mouth. “I want to hear you say it, Ed.”
“Say what?”
The hand on his neck tightens, and a curious sprig of arousal courses through him, leading him to let out a very involuntary squeak of noise that’s nothing close to a word. He shifts on the bed, too manic to stay perfectly still, even under the tremendous weight of Oswald’s gaze.
Oswald quirks an eyebrow, smile growing. “Don’t play dumb with me. You don’t wear it well. Tell me what you want. I want you to say it. No word games, no riddles. The truth.”
The truth. He can do that. Emotional vulnerability grates against him like broken glass, but he loves Oswald so much that what’s one more small cut against the million already tearing his heart bare? When he speaks, his voice is surprisingly quiet and steady, and he sounds like the young man he was when they first collided, not so far from here in miles but light years away in time. “I love you, Oswald, and I want you to kiss me.”
Oswald smiles. “Was that so hard?”
Ed mutely shakes his head, waiting. He’s not in charge, here, now, ever, and it’s comforting, letting go of control like this. Surrendering to someone he trusts and admires and loves so deeply.
Oswald’s hand slides around and guides his chin up, bringing their mouths closer together. When he speaks, the warmth of his breath ghosts over Ed’s lips. “I love you too, Edward. But you knew that already.”
And finally, finally, he kisses Ed, pulling him in with the sort of carnal ferocity so distinct of the Penguin, devouring him until Ed is sure they’re both going to drown inside each other. He would be alright with that, after everything. It’s the only way he can imagine himself dying now.
Oswald is the one who breaks the kiss, pulling back but keeping his hands on Ed, like he knows how much the contact keeps him tethered. He always knows. Ed never has to explain what’s going on inside the jagged, fragile edges of his psyche, because for better or for worse, Oswald knows him better than he knows himself.
“I love you, Oswald,” he says again, just to taste that sweet nothing in the air, and oh how sweet it is. The only thing sweeter is the smile and tiny rose petal blush that creeps up past Oswald’s collar.
Ed tries for another kiss, wanting to kiss and touch can hold and a million other things, but Oswald holds him back with a firm hand. “You need rest.”
He wants to protest, but he’s still drained from the last eighteen hours. It’s hard to argue when he feels like he just rolled out of a morgue. And probably looks the part.
“Okay.”
Oswald kisses him on the forehead and guides him back onto the bed, taking his sweet time to tuck the blankets back around Ed’s narrow body. The morning sun drapes the room in a golden haze, and Ed can already feel himself slipping away again, lulled by the knowledge that everything is going to be okay.
He has enough presence of mind to mumble, “Stay with me.”
He feels Oswald slide his glasses off his nose, and as he drifts, one word follows him down.
“Always.”