Chapter Text
“Mr. Nygma?”
Lights. Blinding, streaking like flares. His chest shudders.
“Help! Someone help, hurry!”
Frantic rustling. Incessant beeping, faster and faster. His pounding heart begins to drown out the sound of it.
“Nurse, help me.”
He tries to swallow and his throat squeezes around something that makes him gag. He strains and struggles, panic crawling through every inch of him.
“Take it out, he’s choking!”
He’s dying, he’s dying.
“Sir, please, you need to stay out of the way.”
“He can’t breathe!”
“The tube was helping him breathe, he just doesn’t need it anymore.”
Ed heaves to life, lurching upward, gagging, his lungs screaming.
“Take it easy,” a voice says softly. Someone is rubbing his back. Saliva drips from his lower lip.
“Is he okay?” This voice is familiar, so familiar it makes Ed bristle, yet he can’t place it.
The person beside him—a nurse, judging by her floral scrubs—nods in response. “He needs a moment.”
Squinting under the glare of the bright lights, Ed reaches a trembling hand to his face, instinct telling him to adjust his glasses- but he isn’t wearing them.
“Here, your glasses are right here.”
He fumbles, fingers clumsy, and he pushes them up his nose, lop-sided and hanging off one ear. His vision is fragmented on the left side. “Th-”
The word grates against his throat, making him choke.
“It’s okay,” the nurse soothes, “You’ve had that tube down your throat for two weeks. It’ll take some time before you can speak properly again.”
Ed gestures to his cracked lens and tries to gouge out another word. Broken. Why? He raises his eyebrows at the nurse, swirls his finger around again and again.
“You’ll need to get those repaired” is all she offers in response. A paper cup is pressed into his hand. “Have some water, it’ll help.”
He shakily tips the cup into his mouth, and the moment cool water laps at his chapped lips and soothes over his dry tongue, he gulps the rest down desperately. The last drop drains and he holds the empty cup out to the nurse, his manners forgotten with his overwhelming thirst.
Once he’s given a refill and finishes it just as quickly, he dizzily complies with the nurse’s urging to lie back down, sinking into the soft pillow so she can examine him. His head swims, his sore eyes ache when she shines a light across them.
But most of all, he feels empty. Not sure why.
The nurse takes up a clipboard when she’s finished.
“How do you feel, Mr. Nygma?” A hazy figure sinks into the nearby chair.
Ed blinks the blurriness from his eyes, his gaze focuses, and it takes him nearly five whole seconds to process the man he’s seeing beside his bed. The nerve he has-
“I’m probably the last person you expected, huh?” Richard remarks humorlessly, pressing his mouth into a line.
Oswald. Ed needs Oswald-
The nurse’s pen stops scribbling on the clipboard. “Sir, you need to let him rest.”
“Can I at least stay with him?” Richard pleads, rising swiftly, “I think he could use a friend right now.”
Ed doesn’t have the energy to laugh at that implication.
The nurse sighs deeply. “Fine,” she taps her pen on her clipboard twice and turns for the door, “but no talking! His throat’s been through a wood chipper.”
Richard waits until she leaves before he takes his seat again. He should be getting Oswald. Whatever happened to Ed, Oswald would want to know. “Ed, do you… remember anything? Anything at all?” Deep circles are cut in purple under his eyes.
Ed’s head stings, like the skin has been split. He reaches up, brushes his fingers along a long, arching line marking his temple. Stitches. Something serious happened. But what? What is he forgetting?
“Oswald,” he croaks, head drifting as he struggles to sit upright. Richard’s hand against his shoulder presses him back down. “Where-”
“Ed. I need you to tell me. Do you remember anything?”
There is nothing else in Ed’s mind. Only that same beautiful face, those pale eyes. “Where?”
“You really don’t remember,” Richard replies, sagging.
“Where?”
“Ed, Oswald is…” he takes a long, shivering breath, “Oswald is gone.”
No. No. Ed won’t believe it. He can’t let himself believe it.
“He’s missing,” Richard continues, and it takes all of Ed’s strength just to listen, to focus on the sound of his voice and not let the despair pressing at his mind catch him in its cold grip. But then Richard adds: “And he’s presumed dead.”
He feels himself convulse, sharp and quick like he’d forgotten to breathe, and his cheeks are wet. No. Oswald wouldn’t leave him so soon. No. No. No. Even trembling uncontrollably, struggling to keep his ribs from breaking open, he shakes his head. He won’t look at Richard. This is just another one of his lies.
“Someone reported hearing a gunshot, but when we got to the manor… you were the only one inside. You’d been hit on the head,” he gestures to Ed’s stitches, “knocked out cold, until now.”
Ed presses his fingers into his eyelids, takes deep, even breaths to quell the chilling nausea making his stomach swim. “No bodies?” he whispers hoarsely.
“There was a lot of blood on the floor.”
Please, god, not Oswald’s…
“Some of it was Oswald’s,” Richard clarifies, his voice trembling at his name, “but most of it belonged to Kristen Kringle.”
“She’s-”
“Dead, I know. For over two years.”
Not possible, not Kristen’s. Strangely, he finds his thoughts drifting to Isabella, the perfect mirror of his first girlfriend. Why isn’t she here either? Perhaps it’s for the best- his trust in her runs as deep as a line in the sand.
“There was also a broken teacup on the floor- probably smashed during some kind of altercation. Forensics is testing it for fingerprints now, but they’ve already finished a toxicology report on the spilled contents.”
Ed isn’t sure he can take much more of this. Every word is like an ice pick to his heart, each more sharp and jagged than the last because he still can’t remember.
“There was enough poison in that tea to kill someone within minutes.”
He hears himself sob before he even feels the shuddering in his chest. No, no, no. He hasn’t lost the love of his life, not when he’s just found him. Oswald will come through that door any minute to fuss over him, just like Ed did that week they spent together. He’s just running late. Ed chokes that swelling feeling back down, sinks his teeth into his hand to stop himself from breaking.
“They don’t have enough evidence yet, Ed, but… the GCPD has you pegged as a suspect. Their working theory is that you poisoned Oswald and-” he fixes his gaze on the ceiling, clearly trying his hardest to blink back tears, “and you disposed of his body. You’re their only living clue, so it’s all they’ve got.”
“Not me,” Ed says, as emphatically as he can muster with his strained vocal cords.
“I know-”
“Kristen’s blood?” Ed raises his eyebrows.
“The GCPD has no idea. It certainly complicates things.”
“Not me,” he repeats, pleading, “I loved-” No. He coughs, his throat prickling. ‘Loves,’ not ‘loved.’ He loves Oswald.
“I know,” Richard murmurs, his teary eyes softening, “I loved him too. That’s why I need your help finding the ones responsible.”
If teaming up with Richard means carving up the people who did this to his Oswald and painting the streets red with their innards, Ed will not hesitate. He will not rest. Afterall, he told Oswald once that he would do anything for him- a promise sealed that night with a cup of tea and an overwhelmingly warm hug, and a promise kept with every longing glance, every gentle touch, every kiss.
“Who?” Ed demands, trembling but determined.
Richard pulls a creased photograph from his pocket and places it into Ed’s hands. The sight of that familiar blonde woman—the very same one who tormented Oswald up until the night he was shot—triggers such an intense visceral reaction in Ed he’s sure he’ll implode. Like he’s been set alight.
“Kathryn Monroe. I found records of her in Metropolis.”
He crushes the photograph in his white-knuckled grip, her face crumpling in his fist as though he’s strangling the life out of her. “She- she did this,” Ed grits out, hot tears burning his cheeks.
“Not alone, though. She’s with the-”
“Court of Owls. And Hugo Strange.”
“We need to take them down,” Richard says, a new kind of darkness shrouding his eyes, “For Oswald.”
Ed won’t just take them down, oh, no. That would be terribly merciful; they’d blink and be dead before they could truly understand why Ed was doing this. No, no. Even if it’s the last thing he does, with Oswald’s name on his lips and his hands blood-red, he will destroy them.
---------------------------------
Two blurry days later, the doctors decide Ed is well enough for discharge, so pressing a bottle of pills into his hand meant to curb the nausea from his minor concussion—a steady sickness he knows won’t be helped with medication—they send him home. Except… this isn’t home. When Richard rolls to a stop beside the grimy sidewalk on Grundy Street, Ed nearly refuses to get out of the car.
He squints at the noon sun shining through the haze of the dusty windshield as Richard steps out of the car and rounds to the back to unlock the trunk. Ed sighs. It’s no use. If he stays here, he’ll never escape that man. At least he’ll be in the privacy of his own apartment. With a huff and an eyeroll, he gathers his strength—and brittle patience—and hauls himself out of the stuffy little vehicle.
The trip to the elevator is like a walk on ice, fragile and in precious silence, except for Richard breathing beside Ed, an unwanted noise that sets his teeth on edge. He jabs the up button with his finger. And again. The indicator needle above the doors slowly bows from four to three to two… Come on, dammit. When the doors finally slide open with a familiar chime and he’s forced to isolate himself in the small elevator with this man, he can only pray they’ll spare the pleasantries and small talk. What a nightmare it would be if the elevator malfunctioned and Ed became trapped in here with him.
He tries to sneak a look at what Richard is carrying under his arm—some kind of poster board—but snaps his eyes away when his curiosity earns him a polite smile. Idiot.
A sharp stinging prickles his arm, almost like a mosquito bite. He grits his teeth and scratches the pain away.
“Put your glasses back on, Ed. You need them.”
“They fit weird now,” he grumbles, his voice finally strong enough to complain, “what did you have them do?” He shoves his glasses onto his face, gritting his teeth when they rest crooked on the bridge of his nose.
Richard rolls his eyes, something Ed’s never seen him do. “All I had them do was replace the broken lens,” he responds defensively, “If they made any other adjustments I don’t know about, take it up with them. I’m not your optometrist.”
You’re not my friend, either, Ed nearly bites back, when the chime of the elevator interrupts him. They step off on Ed’s floor together, and Richard still doesn’t leave him alone even when they reach the door and Ed slides it open with a rattling, metallic clank. Apparently Richard is planning on inviting himself in.
A shiver runs through Ed as a gust of cold air greets them- this is an apartment entirely unlived in since before those long happy months spent at the manor as Chief of Staff, and paying for heating had been unnecessary. He certainly never thought he’d find himself back here, under the blinking green lights of the nearby building and so close to the jarring sounds of the city. And his rooms are so much emptier than before, many of his furnishings having been moved to his bedroom or to the library at the manor. A missing table here, a few lost pillows there. The walls are almost completely bare, his college diploma and the painting of The Great Red Dragon among the displaced things leaving faded spots on the gray bricks.
The old floorboards creak and groan under Richard’s slow footfalls. He’s obviously snooping around the place.
Ed tosses his bottle of pills onto the sagging green couch. “I still don’t understand why I can’t just go back home.” Of course… this place was his home, once, but how can he close his eyes at night and not expect to wake up in his bed at the manor, with the chirp of birds outside in the garden and the murmur of Oswald’s voice coming from the next room?
“The manor is considered a crime scene, Ed. It’s been closed off.”
“And I’ll bet the GCPD is doing everything in their power to solve this case,” Ed mutters. He frowns at the rather large spider web stretched across the corner of the windowsill.
“Oh! I brought this,” Richard announces suddenly, taking that poster board out from under his arm and unfolding it, “It was in the manor.”
It’s the evidence board Ed and Oswald had put together. That bastard.
“You took this from the manor?” Ed snaps, ripping the board away from him and carefully studying it to be sure everything is still in place.
It takes a stunned moment of confused blinking for the implication to strike Richard, and when it does, Ed’s already crossing the apartment in swift strides. “You still don’t trust me?” Richard throws out his arms. “Are you serious?!”
Ed yanks the heavy door open. “Please leave,” he tips his head toward the hallway and flashes a scathing grin.
“I thought we were in this together,” Richard protests, even as he takes slow steps out of the apartment.
“I don’t have to like you to work with you. I’m doing this for Oswald, because he just so happens to be the most important person in the world to me. Please leave.”
With a frustrated huff, Richard spares Ed another migraine and does as he asks. “Fine. But don’t you dare keep me out of the loop,” he jabs a finger at Ed, “I was there for you in that hospital when no one else was.”
When Ed slams the door shut after him, the clang of metal echoes around the empty walls of the little apartment. He glances to the right, half-expecting to see an Oswald-shaped mound curled up under the blankets on the old bed. The pillows are neat, the sheets are pulled taut. Ed used to like things so clinical and orderly. It would drive him crazy when Oswald would kick the quilt half onto the floor or leave the pillow crooked. Strangely, the thought brings the smallest of smiles to his face.
Would it be foolish to wish Oswald was here?
Rubbing his arm, Ed flops down onto the bed, sending up a plume of dust. This won’t do. He hauls himself to his feet, rips the old quilt off the mattress and tosses it aside carelessly, then curls up again on the cold sheets. It’s uncomfortable, trying to sleep on a frigid bed while dressed in a coat and shoes, but the pressure against Ed’s skull and the soreness bruising behind his eyes leave him too exhausted to move a muscle. A tear drips from his nose, he wipes it away. No. No tears. Oswald will be back soon.
His eyelids slowly slip shut.
“Ed?”
He shoots upright, swaying slightly. Must be a bout of vertigo. He steadies himself against the wall beside him, careful not to disturb Oswald’s many portraits lining the hallway.
Oh. He’s home.
Down and down the deep, dark hall, the slices of moonlight on the floor the only light guiding Ed’s steps. Ed reaches the living room, his heart fluttering with anticipation. There he is, in the armchair with a cup of tea cradled in his hands, bathed in the night.
“Oswald,” Ed hears himself say, and he feels a smile stretch across his lips, “there you are.” Oswald is all the way across the room. Too far. Ed wants to pull him into his arms.
Oswald gazes at him sweetly and lifts his teacup. “Thank you, by the way,” he says, the sound of his voice echoing around Ed, ebbing and flowing like water in a deep cave. Pulling him in and under the waves.
Something red leaks from the corner of Oswald’s mouth. That’s not right.
“Oswald… you’re bleeding.”
For a moment he looks sad, his head tilted to the side as though he doesn’t understand. But then he tumbles forward from his chair, spitting blood, and Ed falls to his knees. His chest shakes and he sobs. He can’t even call out to Oswald.
“Edward.” Isabella, dressed in shadow. There are tears in her eyes and a vicious smile on her red lips.
Ed stares down the barrel of the gun in her hand. “Please, he’s dying,” he pleads, his voice straining against his aching throat. Try harder, dammit! Scream, yell, do anything! Oswald will die! His legs are too heavy, he can’t stand.
“This is about you!” she shrieks, her wide eyes ablaze and her gun hand shaking.
She hits the ground before Ed even hears the bullet.
And then he sees her, with her owl mask and her wicked gaze. “She had such potential,” Kathryn sighs, gesturing to the bloody mess that was Isabella only moments ago.
Ed is up to his knees in red. It laps at Kathryn’s white shoes as it ripples and crests.
“What did she mean by ‘sister’?” The question fills the room before Ed can even wonder why he’s asking.
“You were using her,” Oswald cuts in, and his voice is far stronger than it should be when every word drips with blood.
Ed’s lungs begin to scream, his chest aches, and he struggles against the growing tide. Oswald is taken under the red waves.
“It will all be over soon,” Kathryn whispers, a cold mercy glinting in her eyes and her gun trained on Ed. And then she pulls the trigger.
Ed opens his eyes to the flash of green lights and the sight of the sun slipping from the skyline.
---------------------------------
Twenty-eight years. It’s a long time, considering Ed’s only thirty now, but it seems even longer when he realizes he’s gone almost his entire life without Oswald. Childhood, high school, college, first job. All of that, and Ed didn’t give nearly enough thought to the sharp-looking man he saw on the front page of the paper until said man stumbled, bleeding, into Ed’s world.
And then Oswald became so ingrained in everything Ed did that to suddenly be without him… it’s a kind of wound that Ed cannot reckon with.
There is tape stretching across the door of the manor, a startling yellow X warning trespassers. Even if he was in sound mind, the words “CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS” would not deter Ed. He turns the key and unlocks the door just as he always does, then ducks under the tape and slips into his darkened home.
It’s almost surreal, seeing the rooms and furniture that have always been so familiar to him now draped in shadow, the strip of moonlight painted across the floor the only illumination. Like in his dream.
Swallowing roughly, he flips the switch with shaky fingers and the hallway is flooded in bright, yellow warmth. The thump of his heart slows. He scratches his arm.
The so-called “crime scene” has been cleared and cleaned, not a drop of blood nor a shattered teacup fragment in sight. As though the whole thing never happened. Not that Ed knows the difference. All he remembers is Oswald, in that chair by the fireplace, wearing a sweet smile on his face and-
And he was holding a teacup. It’s a blurry image, but it’s there. The same dread prickles under Ed’s skin. His memories end there.
Ed screws his eyes shut. How can he even know if that was real? He dreamed about that teacup in Oswald’s hands, about the blood dripping from his lips and everything horrible after it. A scientist like Ed should know the difference between dreams and reality. Head fuzzy, he steps backward, away from the ominous tension hanging in the living room.
Up the stairs. His legs carry him right to Oswald’s bedroom before he even realizes it. He holds his breath as the door swings open.
The lamps are off. The curtains are still open. The bed is unmade, as if waiting for someone to return. Waiting for Oswald to return.
Ed takes a hesitant step over the threshold, his whole body numb from the vibrant, unseen presence in the room. It’s like a punch in the chest, seeing pieces of Oswald scattered about. Countless hair spray bottles and colognes and makeup brushes strewn across his vanity. His cane, in need of a polish, rested against the armchair. A dish of cufflinks, his favorite emerald green pair sitting right at the top. A glass of water, unfinished, showing the faintest imprint of his lips on the rim. His silk pajamas and brocade robe draped over one corner of his bed.
And he’s gone. Just gone.
If Ed doesn’t breathe, he can’t feel the pain clawing at his insides. He walks mechanically to the bed and reaches out for Oswald’s robe, just to feel that rich silk and soft, threaded paisley between his fingers. He lifts it up, half-expecting it to be warm from Oswald’s body, and carefully brings it to his nose. That sweet spiciness of pomegranate laced within the fabric is faded but still distinguishable enough to hit that raw nerve he’s been trying desperately to ignore for the past three days. And now everything’s bursting through, and he can’t stop it. Ed remembers another time he’d been torn open like this before, gasping for air, crumpled against the side of his bed with Kristen in his arms. He sinks to the floor, face buried in the folds of the robe, desperately searching for every last hint of Oswald’s scent.
“Os,” he breathes, everything aching more than ever. He wants, he wants. The touch of Oswald’s skin, the warmth of him, anything and everything he’s lost because they took Oswald from him.
“You’re not gone, you’re not gone!” The words sear against his throat. With another choked sob, he curls up around the robe, the last thread tying him to Oswald. It is unbearable, this crushing feeling. If he could just stay like this forever, he might be able to pretend that Oswald is still here, all wrapped up in his robe and in his arms. He closes his eyes and breathes in deeply, focusing on the subtle sweetness he smells, and the rich, warm notes of something like red wine. A sophisticated blend of perfumes, perfect for someone as complex as Oswald.
Ed sniffles, the ache in his throat lingering despite the emptiness in his chest telling him he physically has no more tears to give.
He’ll take Oswald’s robe with him when he goes. If he goes. Maybe he’ll just stay a little while longer.
A pinch in his arm makes him flinch and grit his teeth- it’s that same stinging that makes him scratch furiously. Damn IV needle, probably infected. He groans and shoves his sleeve up. Sure enough, his arm is beet-red and raw from where he’d been itching all day. There. A tiny pinprick on his forearm marks where the IV needle had been inserted… a few inches below this new irritated rash. Sitting upright, he squints, the last of his tears blurring his vision, and he sees it: another barely-there puncture wound, one red and inflamed and certainly not from the IV.
This is something else. Something bad.
Whatever happened that day, Oswald wasn’t the only one poisoned. Whatever they gave Ed, whatever toxic and vile substance flows through his veins, it wasn’t just enough to put him into a coma for two weeks, it was enough to scrape his brain clean.
What the hell happened?
---------------------------------
The first thing he feels is the hot tear slipping from his eye, burning his chilled skin. The next thing he feels is the electric shock splitting his head open.
He jolts and strains against his tethers, tears now streaming down his cheeks as the electricity drives through him like spikes. Were it not for the live buzzing in his veins, he might be dead. It ends, not soon enough, and he sags and shivers. He has nothing to cover himself, not even a thin sheet, and nothing between his numb body and the cold metal beneath him. The light above him is near-blinding, and he squints his tired eyes, struggling to find his bearings.
When the doctor steps into his peripheral vision, all he sees are teeth: sharp and bared in a shark-like grin. “A little longer,” the man says, his voice calm and slow as it always was.
He can’t even beg for him to stop before another bolt of energy seizes his mind and body. It’s too much, he can’t take any more-
He goes limp again, his mind trying to catch up with his racing heart. Dr. Strange steps closer, the overhead bulb dousing him in bright light. He holds up a small photograph. “Now. Tell me who you see.”
That picture again. He blinks the blurriness from his eyes, although he doesn’t need to see it to know.
“Who is this man in the picture?”
He might answer more quickly if all of his energy hadn’t been zapped from his body. “He- he’s Edward… Edward Nygma. My…” he squeezes his eyes shut. What did he call him? “My Chief of Staff.”
“Very good, yes. Tell me, do you trust this man?”
There’s a peculiar pang in his heart, and a tear slides down his cheek. “Y- yes,” he whispers. His voice is so small in this cold room.
Strange’s face dissolves into something lined and rigid, something like pity. He sighs deeply. “One more for good measure.”
No no please no- The dial turns, the buzzing static fills his ears, he convulses. He stifles a sob against his mouthguard. It’ll only earn him yet another shock if the doctor hears him. The buzzing fades, and it’s over, finally over.
“Splendid,” Strange drawls, a glare flashing across his glasses as he turns his head to the monitor. It beeps steadily back at him. “Nurse, if you will.”
Something tears off his skin at his temples. Electrodes. What little he can see in the room outside of this intense circle of light spins and sways, pressing him down against the metal table. The clouds draw in further, pulling his mind deeper into their haze.
“Look at the photograph again. Who do you see?”
He lifts his heavy head.
“Do you know this man?”
He nods dizzily.
“Who is he?”
He tastes salt on his lips. “Ed- Edwar’ Nygma,” he slurs.
“Do you trust him?”
“I…”
“A little louder, please.”
“I can’t.”
An approving nod. “And why can’t you trust Edward Nygma?”
That pang in his heart cleaves him open. “Because he…” he chokes down a sob, “because he killed me.”
“But you can trust me, can’t you?”
“Y- yes.”
“Because I gave you your life, remember?”
He nods, slowly at first. That is true.
“Excellent. Excellent progress,” Strange chuckles, his lips curling into a pleased smile as he folds the photograph and tucks it back into his lab coat. “Nurse?”
A thick, wooly blanket is draped over him and tucked up to his chin, and he nearly cries. His skin prickles with warmth. He’s finally safe, there won’t be any more shocks. He can rest now.
Beside him, Strange gives a happy sigh.
“Welcome back, Oswald Cobblepot.”