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Ed can’t hear anything. The sound of the explosion rings in his ears, tinny and continuous, as he gasps for breath against the billows of dust and smoke that emit from the projectile. Though there is a crushing pressure both inside and outside of his chest, he can heave through it, allowing oxygen to re-enter his lungs at a pace he can handle. His hands are gripped tightly around his gun, so furiously holding on as if it might kill him if he let it go, he could feel rather than see the whitening of his knuckles in his grasp.
Then, after one more pained gulp of air, the auditory fog begins to clear and is replaced by the most deafening, horrific scream he has ever heard. Ed blinks a few times to refocus his vision, wanting to readjust his glasses but holstered by whatever it is that is keeping him so pinned down. He shudders as the cry continues to wail on, settling in his stomach in the same way a block of iron disrupts the water. An immediate sinking.
Over the screams, he can hear the gunfire, and he looks immediately to his right, and then it hits him so much worse than the grenade did. His breathing is becoming more laboured, and not just from the aftermath of the explosive. His eyes flicker down, and the convulsing, dark form of his confidant, his partner, is covering him. He is protecting him, and he’s quivering against Ed as the sounds emanate across the firing line.
The force that’s landed on his chest, the source of the unbearable shrieks, is Oswald.
Ed tries to catch Gordon’s eye for assistance, but there’s no breaking his concentration now. Oswald doesn’t move outside of his rough heaves, his voice breaking from the hoarseness of screaming to Olympus from the ocean. Ed tentatively pulls a hand out from under him, away from the solid icy grip of his gun, trying to pry the man away from obscuring not only the weapon but his ability to dash them to safety if the situation calls for it.
But he’s distracted, quite painfully, from those thoughts as he sees the streaking blood on the sleeve of his jacket. The green is a terrible backdrop for the hot, dripping red that caresses most of his forearm. Despite his instincts, Ed swallows down the rising fear and bile in his throat, and ignores the streaks on his favourite attire in favour of helping Oswald. He rests his hand on the pathetic body against him, tries to guide him to sit up, or something. Anything but curling around Ed’s now useless form in the middle of a war.
After a few attempts of being gentle, Ed’s desire to see Oswald through to the other side of this wins over his desire to allow him comfort, and he hooks his fingers around his collar to hoist him up. Oswald screams again at the force, and his hands go straight to his face, covering it immediately as blood streamlines down it and through his fingers. Shaking, Ed readjusts his one handed grip on his weapon and moves it aside. He doesn’t focus on the pool of blood on his lap.
“Ed! Edward!” Oswald’s voice is dry and barely audible over everything, but the sob in it is so familiar to Ed that he aches to help. He nods, but Oswald can’t see through his palms, so he hopes he has the energy to talk. He opens his mouth, and is unsurprised to find that he can’t.
So, instead, he digs into his jacket to try and find anything to stub the flow, to put pressure on whatever wound was so gaping that it ejected the blood like it was a foreign body in Oswald’s internal systems. But all he finds is lint and his pocketknife. He gasps and curses himself at being this unprepared in the middle of a battle. He can’t even help the man who risked it all for him.
Oswald has evaded death countless times by just having a sly tongue, and Ed admires it. This, the sacrificing his life against the one thing he couldn’t worm his way out of, makes him just as sick as the sight of Oswald bleeding out before him. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to feel. Ed doesn’t like confusion, so he decides to store it away for later. All he does is swallow again and lean forward to grip Oswald’s shoulder. He’s looking devilishly close to collapsing again.
“It’s okay,” Ed says though his voice sounds so unlike his own that he questions if he simply just thought the words. But Oswald separates his fingers slightly, and he’s staring at Ed with the most sorrowful look he thinks he has ever seen his eyes hold. Even with just the one he sees, it is ultimately so pitiful that Ed needs to keep going with his efforts. “I promise, Oswald, I will get you out of this alive.”
“Don’t bother,” Oswald says before spitting out a fresh lick of blood that fell into his mouth. His fingers curl around where the injury seems to sit. Either it’s by his right eye, or worse - it takes up his eye. Ed can’t bring himself to check, and Oswald seems intent on hiding it, anyway. “It’s okay, you said it yourself! I’ll be okay.”
“Don’t resign yourself to death yet, Oswald,” Ed says as bullets ricochet around them. Gordon is yelling further down the line, something so incoherent to Ed now that it may as well be in another language entirely. He’s shaking, having now abandoned all pretence of wanting to lean himself back into the firefight, overwhelmed by the need to protect Oswald. He needs to, he needs him, however that may be. But it certainly means alive.
He can’t think of what to do to reach that outcome, his brain crowded with too many possibilities. He can see the bloody man before him, and all he can do is feel sorry for him, his shaking hands not helping and his mind so jet lagged in the moments following the explosion that nothing makes sense. There needs to be something protecting the wound better than Oswald’s hands can manage. Tissue, bandages, something similar… and he remembers Oswald’s very precise morning routine from their time in office together.
Then he leans forward to delve into Oswald’s pockets as he did his own, and the shaking in his friend’s body ceases at once. He digs around in the front pocket of his suit jacket until his slender fingers hook on to the square of fabric he needs. Pulling out a handkerchief with a sort of resigned yet fond sigh, he offers it out for Oswald to take. He holds it for half a beat before the heat in Ed’s stomach jolts into ice and he looks away to offer Oswald what he wants. He hisses on what Ed assumes is impact.
“I had completely forgotten about that,” Oswald says and Ed takes it as his cue to look up again. “Bless you and your mind.”
“I remember everything about you, Oswald.” He doesn’t know why he says it. Maybe he does, he thinks as he watches Oswald’s lips pull into a soft ‘o.’ Or maybe he doesn’t, because the sight of it makes his chest twist and yearn and hurt.
“That almost sounds nice, if not the reason you’ve tried to kill me so often,” Oswald says and Ed smiles despite the surroundings, despite the injuries and despite how utterly terrified he is finding himself. Then Oswald’s face curls into a wince of pain, and he gasps suddenly. Ed isn’t sure what to make of it, he hasn’t been shot, or stabbed. “Ed, I’m sorry.”
“For what? You saved my life, you shouldn’t be apologising for that! I should be!”
“Not for that! I don’t regret that for a second, and if I ever do, then I want you to try to kill me again!” Oswald blurts, but there’s too much going on between them and around them for him to backtrack. His face pales, and his body is shaking vigorously. “For everything else. You deserved better than me.”
“Oswald, you aren’t going to die,” Ed says and for the first time since they had even joined the defence against the army, he believes it. He is now willing to risk anything, everything, to protect this man. Oswald, now, is his first and most important priority. “I won’t let you. So stop that, you’ll have time to do that later. I am not going to let you die.”
Oswald laughs, and promptly passes out.
Ed mimics his screams from earlier, as his body falls on him once again, sure that if he couldn’t feel a heartbeat then he would single handedly tear apart every single soldier that shoots up at them. Someone is trying to pull Oswald away, but he’s clutching his body, despite hearing Bullock convincing him that Gordon ordered for a retreat. He doesn’t itch to move, because what if they’re too rough, and Oswald does die, and the last thing he said to him was a blatant lie?
But eventually, they’re marching down the stairs in a whirlwind of fever fury and white hot protectiveness. Ed can’t hear anything over the ringing that reemerges in his ears, overwhelming. Oswald’s hand is now limp, and the gaping wound where his eye should be is on full display, and Ed can’t bare anybody to look at him. He keeps reaching out to anybody who comes to promise they will help him, because Ed can’t let them succeed where he has failed. He can’t fail Oswald now, not ever, not again.
“Ed,” Gordon says, muffled, but there. “Come on. He’ll be fine, come on.”
“I can’t let him die!” Ed snaps, though he’s allowing himself to be taken away from Lee, who is promising against her better judgement to take care of him. He watches as she guides him along, trailing behind Barbara and the baby, and he wants to run to him. He wants to get him. Gordon continues to pull him along, and he lets out another agonising wail.
After a swift shake, and what he presumes is a pep talk from Gordon, he straightens up to a considerably reasonable degree. He allows his emotions some reprieve by locking them tightly in the back of his brain, and prepares for yet another fight. Along with whoever remains, he is out in the streets of Gotham. He is shaking with curled fingers, ready to mow down anybody who even looks as though they had thrown that grenade.
Not afraid of the consequences, he stands tall by Gordon’s side as the army begins to encroach upon them. There’s one of the patented Gordon speeches echoing behind the fuzz that takes up his senses, but Ed can’t stop thinking back to the man carried away from him. It’s a horrific thought, realising something so beautiful in the most awful of moments. There is the idea that there is someone out there willing to save him, Edward Nygma as he is, and suddenly, there is the idea that Oswald did it without any pre-planned schemes full of ulterior motives.
Oswald, he realises as Bane raises his hands in surrender, would do anything for him. And he promised that to him all those years ago, he can feel the words on the tip of his tongue. All the commotion around him almost causes his knees to give out, or perhaps it's something much more internal. Ed would do anything for Oswald. And now, he needed to fix him all the way up, to save him, not because he owes him this. Perhaps he does, too, but this is for him, more than anything. To look after him, to nurture him.
To love him, he lands on, not responding to the crushing body of the crowd. To love him. To hold him and protect him and save him, to love him. He can’t stop the smile on his face. How had it taken a war, a grenade, and a pool of blood for him to realise? He loves him. Ed lets out a choked cough, and he looks to Gordon, but he isn’t watching him. He looks to Bullock, who is watching Gordon. He is privy to this secret in blissful inner silence while the world around him rivets in joy. Ed’s eyes find the door to the GCPD, and sooner or later, the river of people flows through it.
Immediately after he is told he is allowed to do so, Ed runs to the M.E’s office. It’s a wonderfully sanitised zone, from the silence to the actual health and safety codes upheld. It gives him space to breathe, to think, and he takes it with such gratitude that he could fall asleep to the sounds of his own echoing thoughts. Instead, he settles into a chair by the bed, where Lee had wrapped the wound with bandage. Ed rests a hand on the edge of the bed, finally reunited, so finally happy to see this man now he knows how he feels.
Oswald doesn’t wake up for a while, and when he does, Ed almost gives into his exhaustion. Everything today has winded him, but Oswald’s ragged breathing returning to his ears cannot be ignored even if he ever desires to. And he knows, the moment his heart patters against his chest at the sight of him, that moment will never arrive.
“Hey,” Ed says, dully. Oswald smiles at him.
“Hello.”
Then, silence. Ed swallows thickly.
“I told you you’d be fine.”
“Did you come here just to gloat?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Ed says though he doesn’t miss the fondness in their tones now. This man almost died for him, he has to say so much more to him now. The hand he rests by Oswald slowly moves to rest on his arm. His unobscured eye flickers down to it before meeting Ed’s again. He smiles.
“What happened?” Oswald says, and Ed doesn’t appreciate the change in conversation, but allows it nonetheless. Oswald deserves to know.
“We won, Gordon’s kid survived, and uh… I had an epiphany.”
“You did?”
“I did indeed. Thank you, Oswald. I didn’t say that before.”
Oswald shrugs, and goes to sit up, but Ed stops him to lower him back down. It is strangely reminiscent of their time living in his apartment together, and he wonders if that then was when he fell in love, but hadn’t the gall to admit it. He wonders if that was when Oswald truly fell in love with him, and he remembers with a lovely flush across his chest that this man at least at some point harboured feelings for him.
Then it breaks in two, because hadn’t he tried to kill him so shortly after his confession? Oswald must have noticed something, for while he doesn’t make to move, he narrows his eye. He could read Ed better than even Ed can, which was once a terrifying prospect for him. He lost a murder attempt because of Oswald’s dedication to him, memorisation of him. Just like he said earlier. Ed sighs.
“I think it should be my turn to apologise,” Ed says.
“No. If I couldn’t, then you shouldn’t.”
“But-”
“I’m not listening, Ed, if you say ‘sorry’ then I shall drop my heartbeat to zero and have Lee to come and kick you out for murdering her patient.”
“You can do that? Drop your heartbeat on command?”
“It’s a trade secret.”
Ed, despite the horror at ever wanting to kill such a man, bares his teeth in the most unarmed grin he can muster. Oswald returns the look, though he looks uncertain, with an odd pull to his lips. They stay looking at each other, worn and beaten from the fight, lost in the idea of the other. The room starts to fold in on itself until all that remains is Ed, the bed, and Oswald laying so gracefully upon it despite the hell he is enduring. All for Ed. It doesn’t seem fair.
Why can Oswald do this without a second glance even after everything? Why is it him who always pulls through first, caring for Ed no matter what? How can Oswald love so plainly and so fantastically that not even death can hinder him, when death has been what Oswald fears the most for the longest time. He knows that. Everything he knows about him is stored away and held with a high degree in his mind, because he’s Oswald. He can’t live without him.
Ed squeezes his eyes shut as he says, “I thought I lost you.”
“You could never,” Oswald says, “you’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.”
“And you, me.” Ed is choked. Something is threatening to break and let his emotions pour out of him in full, physical force. He squeezes Oswald’s arm with the hand that caresses it. “Warn a guy before passing out next time, though.”
“I was reciting my last words, passing out should have been… a relief.”
“It wasn’t,” Ed says and leans his head back. He hears the slow, calculated movements by the rustle of the bedsheets, and there is now a cold hand wrapping around his own. Even through his gloves, he can feel every inch of Oswald’s palm. There is a heavy thirty second pause of testing the waters before Oswald’s grip tightens and they stay in position until Ed breaks the silence. “I really didn’t know what to do, before or after.”
“You helped me, Ed, even if you were acting on autopilot. You did fine.”
“No, I didn’t! I should have saved you!”
“Ed, I’m alive, it’s fine!”
“Not like that! I meant- ugh! Why is this so difficult?”
Oswald, to his credit, remains in silence. He is not known for his patience, yet when it is just him and Ed, there is so much of it that it could fill every room in the old manor. The thought allows him to breathe in the sanitised air.
“I took too long, I was too panicked.”
“You had just been attacked with a grenade, of course you weren’t going to be on full alert.”
“That’s not it. I saw you, nearly dying, and I realised… I couldn’t lose you, Oswald. I couldn’t go on if I had.”
Another pause, heavier and wrapped with boiling emotions. Ed looks down at Oswald again, finally, heart stuttering at their hands wrapped up in one another. He squeezes Oswald’s, relishing in the reciprocated gesture. They lock eyes, fully, and a shiver runs down Ed’s entire body, encircling his spine with determination and adoration. In this moment, perhaps Oswald can read the answer, but he still asks anyway.
“You mentioned an epiphany,” Oswald muses, voice quieter and stifling a yawn. Ed could pass out with him like this, hand in hand. “What was it?”
“The reason I couldn’t handle losing you… Oswald, I-” Ed chokes on the word, not knowing why, because saying it should be blissful and real and right. He can’t spit out the words, and Oswald’s eye flickers all over his face, almost desperate. Beautiful, despite that. So Ed breathes in. “I love you.”
“Oh, Edward…” Oswald says. He uses his spare hand to gesture him closer, and Ed pulls himself off of the seat to kneel down so that his head can rest by Oswald’s on the bed.
Hot breath intermingles as they look at each other, Oswald tilting so their noses meet in the middle. The touch surprises Ed, in the best way possible, filling his stomach with another pooling sensation of heat. Nothing like the fear and the dread of the battlefield, but warm and wanted. He waits for Oswald to fill the silence this time, aware that it is his time for patience, to let Oswald find his words. Then he does, and the warmth spreads to every last corner of Ed’s body.
“You know I will always love you, too.”
And then the closeness isn’t enough, and he presses his lips against Oswald’s. The angle is strange, but the kiss is not. It is full of lightning and unresolved emotions that have just untied themselves so intrinsically between the both of them in the last three hours. Ed’s lips are chapped beyond repair at this point, and even after all the time under, Oswald’s perfect pair are glossy and kind. Tender kisses tell stories that have gone unaired, of desires that were once buried and wishes that were lost long ago. One day, they will read them, but for now, they stay locked together. Together, as they always will be, despite anything that is foolish enough to even try to pull them apart.