Chapter Text
Chapter 1: The Setup
Edward did at times catch himself looking at another guy in class, but he'd quickly correct it and turn away. Fortunately no one ever did catch him out on it. There were already a myriad of reasons people could find to humiliate him, he was not about to add this to the list. He pushed any of those thoughts away, and the feeling did pass, till he forgot it ever existed, like he'd buried them in a layer of sand in his mind. Fortunately girls were also very nice too. They also didn't seem to like him much though, like well everyone. He kept to himself mainly. After a very educational time of trying to talk to other kids, thinking 'just be yourself,' and then finding that he was just too weird, and then being at the end of a series of jokes that he never thought were that funny, but everyone else did apparently. His fists would tighten into a ball and he'd think maybe he ought to really show them not to mess with him anymore. He didn't fight back though. He thought about it many times, but no, he always just stood there and did nothing. Why was that? Was he trying to be a good person, or was he just plain afraid? And could he have changed anything if he had? Would they finally respect him?
When he got home, life often was even worse. His dad sometimes was nice and supportive but then other times would say something biting and he just never knew what dad he was gonna come home to. But he loved when his dad was nice, told him he had done a good job on an assignment, or just gave a gentle supportive pat.
In reality he really lived for these times, but it seemed like this version of his dad sometimes just was barely there and only the mean version of his dad remained. He tried everything he could to get his nice loving dad to stay with him just a little longer, and no matter how mean his dad got he thought his nice loving dad was in there somewhere and he just needed to be good for him.
But one day, one awful day that I won't state here, that changed. He just felt cold inside and out, breath ragged and heart pounding, as he sit against his dresser hugging himself, till this feeling passed. And you know, you can't count on others, he thought. His eyes sharp and angry. But the next day at school the anger he felt then dropped away and he was back to being just Edward, trying to get through the day.
He also wrote riddles and jokes for himself. He told people, but no one seemed to get it. Which surprised him, he didn't think it was all that hard. But either way, he just loved how he could make a riddle that was beyond what anyone could get and he could say anything, and it didn't matter, others just didn't get it, so he couldn't get in trouble. Late at night he would spend hours reading books on anything related and then working on more word problems, math tricks etc. And it brang comfort to an otherwise dreary time. And in a sense he created a moat around himself with these riddles, where people couldn't get in and hurt him anymore. That was probably the best of all.
*
And then he started to forget all that, he got a job at the GCPD. What an amazing place to work. Then he met Kristen Kringle. Looking back up him through her glasses kindly. And for the first time, that feeling started to melt away. Here was someone different he thought.
When he first saw Kris with her sweet gentle smile looking up at him, and her glasses that would slip to the side sometimes, and the way she stood and really everything about her. it felt like, here was someone who made him feel different. It melted through the layers of defenses like that. He'd long moved out from his father's thumb and good riddance. The kids from school went on to get much less interesting jobs. And his life had changed finally. He could tell. With her maybe he could get away from that feeling of utter insignificance and matter in some way to someone. So everyday when he went to work, he made an effort to talk to her, and thought things would definitely be different. She was special and she would understand him and not judge him like the others did.
But his dream of her and the reality didn't seem to match.
The harder he tried to impress her, the deeper he seemed to fail. And eventually not only did she laugh at him but others that surrounded her too. It filled him with rage, but he controlled it. He could almost hear his father's and the kids at schools various cruel taunts.
But he didn't mean to do what he did to her. He never thought that he could do that! He had loved her! And yet there she was, cold and her skin bluing, in his apartment, in his arms. He hugged her delicate frame and cried more and louder and so raw than he had in years. Finally realizing she was never coming back to him. His special Kristen was gone. He took her glasses as a souvineer.
She told him to stay away from her and he knew she'd never look his way again. After months and months of working on himself so that she would accept him. And she would never have anything to do with him again. Before he knew it, his hands circling around her throat.
Such a hopeless and cruel joke. But then the other him spoke to him, in the laugh he does. You know this is just who we are. He said. And this is who you* are.
And it went deep into him. That message. He knew it must be true. He felt so sad and crushed. Because of who or what he was, he'd never get to hold her again. And that love was impossible for someone such as him. He should have known. At night for many nights he'd still dream of her, and they'd end horribly.
He felt stuck for a long time, but finally after a little at a time of his other him showing him who he really was, he realized he could feel better by figuring out who this other him was that he could be instead of moping forever on what never would be.
So he planned an absolutely diabolical scheme that had Jim chasing him around the city, and he loved it. It was incredibly fun. And he was actually made for this. Finally his true intelligence couldn't be brushed aside by idiots. And after this little event, he started to devise his new life as a villainous killer.
On the start of this new adventure, when.. who did he happen to find in forest, injured and nearly dead. But the Penguin! A legend and the ruler of the underworld.
He would nurse him back to health and the Penguin would be so grateful to him that he would then would tell him all he needed to know to start his new identity.
But as usual, it didn't go quite as planned. The Penguin was so low it turned out, from his mother's death, that he wasn't even happy at all that Ed had saved him. And he just wanted to be left to die. Maybe it's cause he had felt the same not too long ago. But what started out as a work project shifted. He ended up spending more and more time and effort than he had imagined trying to help the Penguin, or no, to help Oswald feel better. Soon music would fill the room they had been cohabitating in for a while now. And they both seemed to change in this time.
He cared for Oswald like a sick little bird and Oswald for the first time in a long time smiled.
And seeing Oswald there, his warm eyes beaming at him, he wanted to touch him all of a sudden. Just softly. But Edward shook off that feeling and focused again on the goals. As he did, at some point he realized it was just really nice to have a friend to talk to in there, that he even forgot for 1 second what he was doing in the first place. But only for 1 second.
Oswald also felt something then. A friend, a new feeling for him. Someone who was caring and sweet, like the one whom he lost and from the sorrows he found something to be happy about. Even when he didn't think he'd ever be happy again.
The feeling was something he felt but yet didn't know what it meant at the time either, and so also decided not to think too heavily on that.