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It’s a Saturday night, and as expected, Cherry’s is bustling. The third fight of the night is ongoing, and cheers echo off of the walls. Lee sits off to the side, cloaked in darkness, sloshing a glass of whiskey mindlessly in her right hand. She hasn’t had to patch up many misguided contestants tonight, which she’s grateful for. Sometimes being the Doc feels like repentance, and really, that’s what it is for her. She wants to help, she needs to, but that doesn’t make nights alone any less refreshing. She revels in the temporary anonymity, keeping to herself. She’s alone with her thoughts, nobody approaches her, and sometimes mooning over her past can feel cathartic instead of painful.
Oh, well, nobody approaches her except for one particularly irritating exception.
Ed settles into the seat next to her with a lopsided grin. “Well, Grundy’s going nuts tonight. A real doozy out there, Lee. But I think we can both agree the profits are worth the chaos.” He chuckles, mostly to himself, the sound less steady than usual. She glances down at the grasshopper trembling in his shaky, gloved hands.
Usually, Lee would ignore him. Or, at least, she’d object to this baldfaced exploitation of a literal swamp monster, but tonight she just says screw it.
She’s been saying that a lot lately. Bad habits are starting to follow Lee Thompkins everywhere.
“Well, I’m glad for you. Truly.” She tries to inject venom into her voice, but it comes out insincere. Seems they’re both mildly inebriated already.
“Thank you very much.” He readjusts his glasses. “Listen, I didn’t come over here for no reason. I know you’re...distracted. By what? Who knows!” He doesn’t give her the chance to respond, to tell him that he should know. He played a starring role in it. “Anyway, I’ve got an idea.”
She raises an eyebrow expectantly. Well, maybe she’d get some entertainment tonight.
“So, liiike,” he stretches out the word in some imitation of a valley girl drawl, “people in the Narrows—they fucking hate Penguin, right? Like, absolutely despise the guy.”
She wonders what’s up with the formality. She’d assume that Ed and Oswald were on a first-name—or, not corny mafia nickname—basis.
“Sure,” she humors him. “Go on.”
“And when you hate someone, like, really, really hate—you want to see them knocked down a peg, right? Like, humiliated. Make their faults into some performance. right? Like, you need a space to laugh at them, insult them, whatever. And uh, they can’t—they can’t do anything, um, or they’re not...present. It’s a display of their faults, their mistakes, right?”
There’s a tinge of uncertainty to his words, even though he had clearly been thinking about this for a while. It was an oddly specific description of such a common emotion. Lee frowns, but Ed seems really into whatever this is, so he doesn’t notice and keeps going.
“So, like, I’ve been getting better at announcing, before the fights, you know. Or at least Cherry said I was doing pretty well. I don’t know what you think, but, um,” he clearly wants to ask her opinion, but embarrassment colors his face and he keeps going, “but it’s an art form, you know? And art is about making a statement.” He pauses. “And when you live in The Narrows, the statement you’re making is that you fucking hate Oswald Cobblepot.”
Ah.
He smiles again, but it looks empty, like someone had copy-pasted it onto the rest of his face. The rest of his expression just looks..sad. He's looking right at Lee like she’ll get it, like she’s the only one who can see inside him and find the answers he wants so desperately, and honestly, maybe she does get it. But not in the way Ed wants her to. Or, the way he thinks he wants her to?
Lee looks back at Ed, and she sighs inwardly. She should hate him. She should grab him right here, slam his head against the counter, beat him bloody, et cetera. He wouldn’t fight back. There's something wrong—well, Lee wasn’t entirely convinced it was really brain damage, she had her suspicions and when she pondered it, his problems seemed closer to some contrived trauma response—the point is that Ed was far from the man she had threatened outside her old office, for better or worse. But she could destroy him, like he’d done with Jim. Right here, and nobody would give a shit. Solomon Grundy could get a new manager.
Hate is easier; it always is. It’s what she told herself, but Lee wasn’t sure “easy” fit into the world she had inserted herself into lately—the world where her closest friends were a has-been serial killer and the re-animated corpse of a Falcone era mobster. So she gave him a hesitant smile. “Yeah, I’d say they hate Penguin quite a bit. So, how’s this lead to your little idea?”
“I could...perform,” his smile widens, “I’ve got so many ideas, like, a mile a minute up here. Weird for me, right?” He taps his temple. It was the kind of self-deprecation that made Lee uneasy. “I could make a whole outfit. I’m pretty good at sewing...or, um, I used to be. I think I’m still fine, though.”
He suddenly turns and glances away self-consciously.
Oh, yeah, he’s wearing the suit. Lee suppresses a giggle, and for a second it snaps her out of her sour mood. It’s garish, really. She’d seen the news (she truly had hated thinking about Ed at that time, but the novelty of your eccentric—and, at the time, ostensibly good-hearted—former coworker going on a killing spree wasn’t lost on her) when Ed had his first stint as The Riddler after the disappearance of his dear mayor, and he had somehow thought of a green outfit that was more obnoxious than the original. It was covered in sequins, the shade of green closing in on neon. Lee has her suspicions that this whole suit, and the bowler hat that came with it, were Ed’s way of sculpting himself into the man he used to be. His hair is still a mess, though.
He gulps, looking down at this drink.
“So, you want to dress up as Penguin? To make fun of him?” This seems to pull him out of his reverie.
God, it was ridiculous.
“Yes!” he exclaims, like it’s a revelation. He makes two OK signs with his hands. The enthusiasm’s back. “Trust me, they’re gonna love it—like, oh my God—I could do a whole thing with Grundy. Oh, it’d be great. He’d know how it feels for a change. Humiliation, and the—”
Fuck.
She steels herself, putting her hands in her lap and setting her drink to the side. A sigh escapes her lips.
She shouldn’t worry about Edward Nygma. Really, what the hell was wrong with her?
It was a question she asked herself often. This is what she’s directing her energy towards? Is this what all her attempts at alliances lead to—always the helper, never helped?
“Heh. I could get a fake nose or something..”
Despite it all, when resentment had been eating at her for so long, it feels like a fresh wound, still oozing with Tetch-touched blood, to see it reflected so clearly in the man sitting next to her.
“Ed,” she starts steadily. “I understand why you want to...knock Penguin down, I do. I understand it well. And you don’t have to forgive him, he froze you in a block of ice for god’s sake, and I don’t know what the hell happened before then, but trust me. This fixation isn’t healthy.” Well, she got it out.
You’re talking to him like he’s one of your Arkham patients. The thought appears immediately but she pushes it down. No, she’s talking to him as a friend. Is that what they were? Does he deserve the title? Does she even care anymore?
He just stares at her, seemingly struck speechless for a moment. “What? Fixation? I’m not fixated on Oswald. That’s ridiculous, and you know it. You’re supposed to be the smart one out of the two of us, Lee.” He laughs, but it comes out painfully and obviously forced. “I’m just giving the people what they want. Entertainment!”
Awfully defensive. She stares right back, and he wavers under her gaze. His expression finally opens up, some dam breaking in the recesses of his ostensibly fractured mind.
“Look, Lee, I hate him. I really—I’m never going to forgive him. He—he ruined—fuck!” It’s the first real expression of rage that Lee has seen from Ed since he first showed up at Cherry’s, and she instinctively leans away from him. His volume steadily increases. “So, please, don’t imply this is because I’m obsessed with him. Oswald’s made it very clear I don’t mean anything to him, as an enemy or otherwise. So, I’m not fixated. I’m my own person. I exist outside of his orbit—I know I do. Because I have to. If I don’t, then what the hell am I even doing? And I thought this idea would be funny, I wanted to offer some comedic relief because you seemed—I don’t know. I really don’t. So don’t pretend there’s something there that there isn’t, because it can’t exist anymore. Okay? Thanks. Jesus Christ.”
Ed’s eyes widen, like he’s shocked by his own admission. He breathes in and out, his shoulders shaking.
The enthusiasm that had been flickering in and out of Ed all night seems to have fully vanished now. He just looks hopeless, and the contrast between the glum expression on his face and the bright sparkles of his suit has never been clearer.
Guilt shoots through Lee’s veins, but she ignores it for once in her life. We're getting somewhere, she thinks.
There’s a long silence between them, their personal bubble popped by the chaos surrounding them as another match ends with roars from the crowd.
After a moment, Ed looks up. “I’m sorry.” It comes out a whisper. He looks like there’s something else he wants to say, but he doesn’t.
“Ed.”
He gets up and turns away from her. “I’m gonna go talk to Grundy. The match is over...you know, he’s actually a pretty fun conversation partner when you get to know him.”
She grabs his wrist, met with an immediate flinch. She pulls back, but Ed pauses.
“Ed, look at me. I’m just saying, if you have unresolved feelings, you can deal with them in other ways.”
“Feelings,” he gives a dry laugh. “Yeah, I’ve got lots of feelings about Oswald. Trust me, he mocks me for them all the time.”
“Who? Penguin?”
He does look at her then. “No.” He doesn’t elaborate, and she doesn’t ask.
"You can talk to me. I promise.”
“Sure.”
Suddenly, Lee feels almost embarrassed. God, it was Ed. Here she was, tearing herself apart over his fraught relationship to some gangland kingpin who would probably nuke the Narrows out of existence if he had the chance. At the same time, it was Ed, and she had told him she could fix him. She can’t get caught in the lie now, not when she doesn’t know the truth of his condition yet. That was all for later.
And for the millionth time this month, she gave in. Screw it. “Well, if it really matters to you that much, I think our clientele would find any performance you come up with hilarious.”
Great advice, 100% free, unhealthy coping mechanisms guaranteed, right from the Doc!
Ed’s eyes widen, and the look on his face throws her back years. It was the same shell-shocked expression, eyebrows raised in astonishment, that he had worn whenever Lee had answered one of his riddles in the M.E’s office. The nostalgia is almost too much to bear, but she holds her gaze steady, and smiles at him.
He smiles back.
Well, it seems like Lee’s going to be spreading her bad habits to others now. She couldn't help it. She saw something in Ed’s hatred of Oswald, something so buried that maybe Ed didn’t even realize it was there, and part of her knew that forgiveness seemed near impossible in a city like this—but she’d given something close to it herself, right?