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When Lucius had first learned that Edward Nygma had been illegitimately released from Arkham Asylum, the news had been followed by a flash of panic and sudden fear for his life. He had wondered if Nygma planned to track him down after their game show beneath the asylum. The idea wasn't entirely without merit—especially considering the fact that Jim and Lucius had left Nygma behind in his cell with the bomb in the basement, although Lucius hadn't had much of a say in the matter.
Thankfully, Nygma had been dutiful in his role as the Mayor's Chief of Staff. The position had apparently prevented Nygma from displaying his less-than-sane behaviour quite as enthusiastically as he had in Arkham. In Indian Hill, Edward's voice had worked up into a lather as he playfully sang his questions into the microphone.
Now, with Harvey balanced at the uppermost point of a stairwell and Nygma rabidly spitting riddles from behind his gun, it seemed that the voice he'd heard at Arkham had returned at full force.
As a feverish Edward Nygma teetered at the top of the stairs, Lucius attempted to catch Harvey's eye, but Harvey's focus was diverted towards the ceiling. He didn't seem to have much faith in Lucius, too busy trying not to look down at the stairs spiralling downwards below. A surely fatal fall awaited him. Groaning, Harvey kicked his feet in an awkward balancing act.
Edward's face was still filled with disbelieving rage at Lucius's answer to his second riddle—"A snowflake." A perfectly adequate answer, flawed only in the sense that it was not the one Edward was looking for.
Despite the man's insistence that this was all a game, his eyes held a manic intensity that suggested the stakes were much higher than he let on. The man was clearly troubled. Working under Doctor Strange and enduring his most likely unlawful treatments had evidently done him no favours.
“I don’t think you grasp how this works,” Edward spat, flicking his pocket knife open. “You have to give my answers.”
Lucius's stomach dropped as Edward disappeared to cut the second-last rope. Just one more chance. Lucius swallowed thickly. Edward was muttering to himself, too low for Lucius to make out, but his voice grew in pace and pitch as he reappeared, gaining momentum and speed as he descended the stairs towards him. Edward pointed the gun directly at Lucius's face.
“It’s just you. You aren’t a good enough enemy!”
As close as he was, Lucius could see Edward's blown-wide pupils and painfully stretched mouth. His brow gleamed with sweat, and the gun shuddered wildly in his shaking hand. No matter how much control Edward attempted to gain, it seemed that his mind never allowed it, and now his body was following suit.
In fact, as Edward stood there, his entire body was shuddering, and a hint of red had begun to drip from his left nostril, rolling far enough to reach his upper lip.
“No. No,” Edward muttered to himself, taking a stumbling step back and digging his fingers into his eyes. “Three riddles—those are the rules, Ed.”
He blocked reality out with his hands. The muzzle of the gun was pointed toward the ceiling, his nosebleed smeared across his gloves, bright red on black leather. If he was quick, Lucius could close the distance and topple the man, wrenching the gun from his grasp—but with how erratic Edward had grown and the trembling in Lucius’s legs from the adrenaline rush, he didn’t trust himself to make the move.
It was dawning on Lucius what had happened, how everything fit into place with the timing of the Mayor's disappearance, and that although Edward's mania was far from new, these physical symptoms suggested something far beyond the man's usual illnesses and idiosyncrasies. With a grunt, Edward wiped the blood from his face with his gloves, having finally realised that it was there. He stood there, staring at the smear on the leather, the way it flecked onto the cool metal of the gun and the neat white of his shirt.
The pause drew out much longer than Lucius expected. He wondered if that third riddle was ever going to come, or if this was going to be the final moment of his life—if Edward would lift the gun and end things short, rules be damned. Despite the situation, he couldn't help but feel bad for him. Lucius watched this sad man who clearly needed help and wished that, at the very least, he could buy Harvey and those cadets a little time.
"Ed?" Lucius asked when the man failed to continue his "game."
Nygma was unresponsive. His face was sheet-white and clammy. The gun dropped from his fingers with a clatter. Lucius flinched, and Harvey's head whipped from side to side, trying to understand what was happening.
"Grab the gun, Lucius—quick!" Harvey yelled. His voice echoed against the tall ceiling.
Lucius watched as Ed stumbled, one step after another until his back hit the tiled wall. His eyes rolled into his head.
Recognising that Edward was losing consciousness, Lucius rushed forward, seizing the gun from Ed's limp grasp. Guns were admittedly not his forté, nor did he like to hold them. He settled for an awkward hold, pinching the thing between his forefinger and thumb.
He looked down. Edward was pallid, eyes closed. His breath was audible and strained, his chest rising and falling too quickly down where he was propped limply against the wall, shrivelled between the corner and the floor.
"What are you waiting for? Untie me," Harvey shouted.
Shaken out of his stupor, Lucius searched Ed’s unconscious body for his pocket knife. In the process, he took the time to sneak a quick check of the man's pulse. It was thready and erratic, with a few beats too many all in one go, and then silence, and then a sudden return. At the sound of Harvey's creaking chair, Lucius stood and hurried up the stairs, heaving Harvey down to safety.
"I never doubted you, buddy," Harvey said, breathlessly, slapping him on the shoulder, though he was shaking too much for the gesture to hold its usual casual camaraderie. "Shit. My 'cuffs." Harvey patted himself down. "Quick—use the rope while he's out. I'll call it in."
"He needs an ambulance," Lucius said. "I'm not quite sure what his ailment is, but there's definitely something wrong with him."
"Oh, there's something wrong with him, all right. That psycho—"
"Just call an ambulance, that's all I ask. I did just save your life."
"Fine, fine," Harvey groaned.
Once he'd made the call, Harvey went down the stairs on quaking legs, rope in hand. As he roughly secured Edward's hands behind his back, Lucius watched uncomfortably, his hand anchored on the railing as the adrenaline left his body. He felt flighty and strange and somehow renewed. A part of him wished he had gotten to hear that third riddle.
Harsh white lights hung over Edward's head. He squinted, trying to turn away, and felt something plastic and burdensome on his face. There was an impossibly loud wailing noise, rising and falling. His hand struggled to reach his face. Something was caught around his wrist, keeping his hand suspended in the air by his hip. He strained to look downwards. He was still in his green suit, one sleeve smeared with a thin trail of blood, but both his wrists were affixed by handcuffs to a gurney on either side, and an oxygen mask had been secured over his face. He shook his head in an attempt to dislodge it.
"You're going to have to keep that on," Lucius said.
Jerking, he looked up to see Lucius Fox sitting by his side in the ambulance.
"They don’t normally let just anyone ride with patients, but Harvey flashed his badge," Lucius explained, freakishly calm.
"What happened?" Edward asked.
"It seems that you overdosed on an un-prescribed medication. A hallucinogen, I’m told."
"Oh." Edward grimaced. His head thudded down onto the gurney. "Arkham?"
Lucius nodded, solemn, and Edward balled his fists, tugging harshly at the handcuffs again, just once—more for the feel of it, than an actual attempt to escape. He shouldn’t have taken so many. He knew that—but Oswald had been fading, and he'd needed to talk to him again—just to hear his voice one more time. It always seemed a better idea to take more when he’d already popped a few.
"Why are you here?" Edward asked.
"You never asked me that third Riddle," Lucius replied.
"Oh."
Edward furrowed his brow. A paramedic leaned forward to ready an IV, and their conversation paused.
At the next opportunity, Lucius prompted, almost playfully, "Well, aren’t you going to ask me?"
Edward laughed disbelievingly.
"You really want to hear it?"
"If you don't mind," Lucius said.
Ed grinned. Finally, someone who wanted to play his game.