[There was a time, once, when he was ready for anything, when he could still find a way. A time when he stepped boldly, unapologetically, into the future with a smile cutting across his face and a contingency plan in his back pocket, refusing to take no for an answer. With Ed at his side, in lockstep, nothing had seemed impossible, off-limits. Gotham’s ruined skyline glittered brighter than ever with their dreams of greatness. If they, at their cruelest, hadn't destroyed each other, then what chance did anyone else have?
That all feels like a fading dream, now. A childish dream, when he looks across the room and wonders how the entirety of one man’s life could fit in a single cardboard box. It has been days since Alfred hauled that box in from the GCPD evidence locker, a collection of Ed's personal effects from City Hall and the Gotham Library, the warehouse Ed had repurposed for work and sleep. Oswald still can’t bring himself to rip away the packing tape and confront what’s left of his best friend. To touch the things Edward Nygma touched, that he cared about while he was still alive.
Oswald is sitting on the bedside, in his shower robe, when the door clicks open. Still slowly turning Ed’s glasses in his hands like a Rubik's cube, restlessly searching for a message, for something he must have missed. From the corner of his eye he sees Alfred advancing, suit in hand. It's what inevitability looks like. And the dread crowding his heart grows teeth, clamping down.
His fingers go still.]
I, I never told him...
[Oswald stares at those blood-flecked lenses, seeing and unseeing. Tears webbing his lashes faster than he can blink them away.]
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That all feels like a fading dream, now. A childish dream, when he looks across the room and wonders how the entirety of one man’s life could fit in a single cardboard box. It has been days since Alfred hauled that box in from the GCPD evidence locker, a collection of Ed's personal effects from City Hall and the Gotham Library, the warehouse Ed had repurposed for work and sleep. Oswald still can’t bring himself to rip away the packing tape and confront what’s left of his best friend. To touch the things Edward Nygma touched, that he cared about while he was still alive.
Oswald is sitting on the bedside, in his shower robe, when the door clicks open. Still slowly turning Ed’s glasses in his hands like a Rubik's cube, restlessly searching for a message, for something he must have missed. From the corner of his eye he sees Alfred advancing, suit in hand. It's what inevitability looks like. And the dread crowding his heart grows teeth, clamping down.
His fingers go still.]
I, I never told him...
[Oswald stares at those blood-flecked lenses, seeing and unseeing. Tears webbing his lashes faster than he can blink them away.]