Chapter Text
The first thing he was aware of was a sharp pain piercing through his skull. His eyes squinted and he grimaced with a grunt, making an attempt to clutch at his head in pain. He heard a faraway clink of metal, and his hands refused to cooperate, drawing his attention to their position behind his back.
Taking in a sharp inhale, he pried his eyes open, immediately closing them again when a blinding white light entered his vision. He groaned, trying to find his bearings. There was some plush surface behind him and below him, and leaning into it, he found it to be somewhat familiar—the semi-sticky texture very much reminiscent of the back of the police car he'd found himself in after he'd been arrested in the snow all that time ago.
"He's awake," came a teasing voice, cloying in its smug pride. "I was getting lonely."
"Huh?"
Ed attempted to open his eyes once more, tucking his chin down to his chest to avoid the light, but it was still too bright to bear. As time passed, he became more aware that the reason he could not clutch at his head in pain was because of a pair of handcuffs affixed around his wrists. Sharp, acidic nausea rose in his throat with every jostle of the car. He barely managed to make out that the light was mainly coming from the car window on his left, and turned his head away from it, eyes still shut tight.
With just the simple movement of his head, he suddenly felt very destabilised, as though the car had taken a sudden drift to one side and his organs had not yet acclimated to the change. He swallowed back another groan, not wanting to give satisfaction to whomever the teasing voice belonged to. The spinning inside his head did not seem to match the stability of the light filtering through his eyelids, resulting in a mismatched, patchwork-like sensation spreading across his brain.
"Well," came the voice again, still with that jeering quality about it. "Have anything to say for yourself?"
Although he would normally have no hesitation about snapping some caustic response, he found that none came to mind—and that even if he were capable of producing some snappy remark, it would behove him to keep his mouth shut for fear of letting loose the bitter, thick bile pooling on his tongue and at the back of his throat.
"Ed, I’m talking to you," repeated the voice, insistent.
Edward groaned once more, against his will. As he tried to right himself, it felt as though his body was listing to one side, though the solidity of the plush car seat remained where it was at his back.
Just as he started to feel as though he was regaining some semblance of stability, the vehicle suddenly jolted and the shriek of high-pitched sirens flooded the air. Without a seatbelt in place, Ed's body lurched forwards, and he panted hard, thick strands of bile dripping from his mouth and clinging to his chin—impossible to wipe in his current predicament.
"You don't really think I'm falling for this act, do you?" came the voice.
It could have been due to the thundering in his eardrums, but it sounded almost as though the voice wavered towards the end, a moment of hesitation penetrating its sly demeanour. It was only then that Edward realised that the voice belonged to Oswald, and, slowly but surely, the puzzle pieces began to slot themselves into place. With a twinge of irritation, he pushed out a heaving breath and attempted to tell Oswald to shut up, but all that came out was a faint shushing noise that devolved into a heavy swallow as another wave of nausea threatened to spill from his guts.
The car, having come to a standstill to avoid the rush of police cars ahead, slowly moved into a crawl, inching forward with none of the speed and confidence it had had before. It was almost merciful, though the gentle movement still wreaked havoc on his stomach.
"Don't even think about trying to get out of this," Oswald warned over his shoulder.
Ed realised belatedly that this may have been the first time he'd ever seen the man behind a wheel. Once more he wished to make a pithy remark, but his mind failed to supply one, leaving him to grimace wordlessly. Slowly, he tried to straighten his back, but his stomach didn't allow it, resulting in an awkward, half-hunched position, his forehead finally coming to press against the partition before him. At least this way he could hide the ghastly sight of saliva clinging to his chin, and the no-doubt pallid shade to his face.
In a last-ditch effort to keep himself clean, Ed folded at an angle, craning his neck as the nausea came to a crescendo. Eventually the empty gagging gave way to a pitiful amount of vomit. Between his schemes and his nervous excitement, food had admittedly been the last thing on his mind these past few weeks.
The contents of his stomach, meagre as they were, splattered the car floor.
“What—”
It sounded as though Oswald was glancing over his shoulder again, though Ed imagined it impossible for him to see the mess he’d made in the backseat.
The car rolled to a stop, bumping upwards like it was suddenly propped up on the pavement. Edward strained for the sound of more police cars, but none came.
There was a slam as Oswald left the vehicle, coming round to Ed’s door and wrenching it open with a jarring clank. He stood there filling the doorway for long enough that Ed’s curiosity overcame his pain and he squinted open one eye. Oswald was backlit by what seemed to Edward to be white-hot sunlight, the stark outline leaving him silhouetted in Edward’s blurring vision. From what little was visible, Ed could make out the shape of Ed’s hat—originally Oswald’s—and the unmistakable cock of a gun.
"I know this is just a trick, Ed."
He sounded as though he wished it to be a trick—no doubt bemoaning the loss of his opportunity to gloat and rant to a sharp-minded, sharp-tongued, sour-faced Ed. Instead, all he got was the sour face, which was half-turned from him now. Ed’s chugging mind was torn—the desire to bury his head into the dark fabric of the car seat to block out the icy burn of light, the disgust at Oswald seeing him so out of sorts, and the instinct-driven urge to keep Oswald in his sights at all times, knowing that taking revenge would be all too easy for the man with Ed as compromised as he was.
Oswald moved towards him in his periphery, and Ed panicked, kicking out a leg to keep him away. He missed by a long shot. Oswald scoffed.
"Be that way," he snapped.
His steps shuffled, like he was about to return to the front of the car, but he stopped, still casting his shadow into the back seat. He neared, slower this time. Ed tried to keep from moving again when he sensed Oswald's arm come up behind him, still reeling with nausea from the fast movement he'd attempted.
Oswald's hand startled him, fingers brushing along the back of his head and causing him to shudder at the sensation of bare skin against the short hairs there. There was a strangeness about the way they dragged against his scalp, and when he glanced up, as Oswald's hand retracted, he saw red, stark against Oswald's skin.
The brightness of the sunlight behind Oswald's figure was too intense to endure, and Edward closed his eyes again. His head hurt too much to bemoan the embarrassment of allowing himself to be so vulnerable in front of Oswald. If he was going to die, he hoped it came soon—at this point, it would be a mercy, with how muddled and painful his mind had become.
He doubled down again, his nose pressed into his knees as though he could force the newest wave of vomit back down his throat as it rapidly built against his will. He swallowed and tried not to pant too hard, wishing he could find the energy to bark an insult or twelve Oswald's way for making him wait so long for the suffering to end. Ed sensed some motion around him, something pressing against his waist and side—but no more pain came, just a strange clicking noise from beside him, and then the sensation left.
The shadow disappeared and the car door closed, gentler than Ed expected. Oswald returned to his place in the driver's seat, the car rocking with the motion, and closed that door, too. He sat in silence, facing forward, his features obscured by the angle and the chain-link separator and the swimming churn of Ed's waning vision. Ed wondered, perhaps, if this was a hallucination—if he'd entered some stagnant fugue in the moments before his death, and if death would come unbidden, with his body and mind detached—but then the car started with a roar, Oswald turning the key with more force than necessary.
He turned the wheel, the car turning with it, bumping down from the pavement and onto the road. Ed watched in confusion as Oswald pointed the car back where they had come from and floored it. The force rocked him back against the car seat, his head thumping into what felt like a smear of blood on the cushion behind him. He felt some tightness, something constricting, and glanced down—across his waist, a seatbelt had been secured, its buckle neatly clicked into place.