[Her fury crashes up against his, neither of them wanting to give in, to apologize. She’s the first to turn away. Brushing past him, fast, sharp strides down the aisle. The hard click-clack of her heels. Watching her go, another person leaving his life for what might be the last time, some part of him understands that like all moments of bitter, hard-won triumph, this victory comes at a cost, too.
---
At one-forty seven in the afternoon, Edward Nygma is lowered into a wet hole in the earth.
The rain has picked up again, pattering against the umbrellas of the few who quietly decided to join Oswald and Alfred. The few who just as quietly trade glances and nods and drift apart after a time, going their separate ways. A heaviness in their hearts would follow them to their cars and into their homes, their bedrooms. Some of them would even lie awake at night gazing at their sleeping partners, the easy heaving of their sides, and wonder about a future not yet written. But when they’d wake up in the morning to taxes and mortgages, to the desperate struggle to get ahead, they’d forget all about the ephemerality of life. About the two men they had left standing on the hill, nothing to go home to.
---
The wipers squeal back and forth, slicing through the downpour, through the silence between them. Cars pass, streaking lights across the slick, shimmering pavement ahead. Oswald leans his head against the window. They catch another string of green lights. But for a reason he can’t explain, the return trip feels twice as long.
At the mansion, he lasts just long enough to shuck off his suit before he drops into bed, blacking out.
---
He wakes in darkness to a slow-dawning realization that he has brought the faint smell of incense home with him. It clings to his pillow, his sheets. To his rumpled shirt. Groaning, he rolls over sluggishly, rubbing at his face. The funeral seems like it happened years ago, a distant memory from another life. But his eye still feels so puffy and raw, his mouth all dried up.
He gives himself a moment for his vision to adjust and for the outlines of objects to emerge. He takes longer to sit up, to carefully gather his crutches leaned up between the wall and the bedpost, and work up the will to stand. It never gets easier. Jaw clenched, he hobbles out his room and into another, flicking the switch with an elbow. Light floods the bathroom. Harsh and cold and white, like back in Arkham. He ducks his head against it, watching his feet as he makes his way forward a step at a time.
Click, click.
He’s nearly at the sink when his legs buckle.
It happens so fast: his head clipping the edge of the counter, his body flopping and crutches clattering, the impact driving a gasp from his lungs. Pain roars through him. He blinks against the ringing in his ears, lost. Blood crawls through his hair. The world – this place that was never home, that never would be home – has snapped into focus around him, so clear and painfully sharp around the edges. He looks around and up at the walls, hit with a sudden, balls-sucking-up-into-abdomen sort of terror.
Ed is never coming back.
No more riddles, no more games. No more bickering, throwing words at each other like dinner plates over the things that never really mattered as much as they had thought.
His lungs jerk, wheezing, as the enormity of that realization bears down on him with its full and terrible weight, pressing his shuddering body into the floor. He throws up until he can’t anymore. And he begins to cry, with the same violence as he does everything else.]
no subject
---
At one-forty seven in the afternoon, Edward Nygma is lowered into a wet hole in the earth.
The rain has picked up again, pattering against the umbrellas of the few who quietly decided to join Oswald and Alfred. The few who just as quietly trade glances and nods and drift apart after a time, going their separate ways. A heaviness in their hearts would follow them to their cars and into their homes, their bedrooms. Some of them would even lie awake at night gazing at their sleeping partners, the easy heaving of their sides, and wonder about a future not yet written. But when they’d wake up in the morning to taxes and mortgages, to the desperate struggle to get ahead, they’d forget all about the ephemerality of life. About the two men they had left standing on the hill, nothing to go home to.
---
The wipers squeal back and forth, slicing through the downpour, through the silence between them. Cars pass, streaking lights across the slick, shimmering pavement ahead. Oswald leans his head against the window. They catch another string of green lights. But for a reason he can’t explain, the return trip feels twice as long.
At the mansion, he lasts just long enough to shuck off his suit before he drops into bed, blacking out.
---
He wakes in darkness to a slow-dawning realization that he has brought the faint smell of incense home with him. It clings to his pillow, his sheets. To his rumpled shirt. Groaning, he rolls over sluggishly, rubbing at his face. The funeral seems like it happened years ago, a distant memory from another life. But his eye still feels so puffy and raw, his mouth all dried up.
He gives himself a moment for his vision to adjust and for the outlines of objects to emerge. He takes longer to sit up, to carefully gather his crutches leaned up between the wall and the bedpost, and work up the will to stand. It never gets easier. Jaw clenched, he hobbles out his room and into another, flicking the switch with an elbow. Light floods the bathroom. Harsh and cold and white, like back in Arkham. He ducks his head against it, watching his feet as he makes his way forward a step at a time.
Click, click.
He’s nearly at the sink when his legs buckle.
It happens so fast: his head clipping the edge of the counter, his body flopping and crutches clattering, the impact driving a gasp from his lungs. Pain roars through him. He blinks against the ringing in his ears, lost. Blood crawls through his hair. The world – this place that was never home, that never would be home – has snapped into focus around him, so clear and painfully sharp around the edges. He looks around and up at the walls, hit with a sudden, balls-sucking-up-into-abdomen sort of terror.
Ed is never coming back.
No more riddles, no more games. No more bickering, throwing words at each other like dinner plates over the things that never really mattered as much as they had thought.
His lungs jerk, wheezing, as the enormity of that realization bears down on him with its full and terrible weight, pressing his shuddering body into the floor. He throws up until he can’t anymore. And he begins to cry, with the same violence as he does everything else.]