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Oswald huffs, pushing the little foam square against his bruised cheek harder than he should. It’s counter-productive, sure to make the bruise he’s trying to cover up much worse in the future, but it’s his only outlet for the still-simmering rage of the night prior.
Ed’s hand catches his, and he yanks his wrist out of Ed’s grip hard enough to pull Ed himself forward a bit. A nice advantage of the weight gain– more solidity to his every action.
“You’re making it worse,” Ed scolds. “And hogging the bottle.”
“It’s not even your shade,” Oswald says, making eye contact through the mirror. “Yours is still in the bag.”
“You had Olga get me my own?”
Oswald gives him an unamused look, and Ed’s face splits into a grin. An (albeit smaller) grin makes its way onto Oswald’s own face, of course. His bad mood isn’t fully chased away, lingering still just past the fence around his present mind, but it’s never far anyway so Oswald lets the warm flood of relief overcome him.
Yes, they’re both bruised, especially around the ribs and egos. Yes, they’re both already wanted again for their respective, yet almost startlingly identical actions of kidnapping a city official, attempting murder, and escaping police custody. And yes, they spent the entirety of the day trying and failing to get even one lead on the sudden new gimmick-drenched player in the streets— or, rooftops.
But they’re together while dealing with all of that, so the situation is remarkably better than some other much more hopeless situations they’ve been in throughout the past.
“Either ten years made the kid slow on the uptake,” Ed says, now dabbing his own foundation on, “Or little Brucie actually remembers that there’s a, give-and-take, to be honored in this city.”
“He’s always been one of the smarter unexpected nuisances in our stories,” Oswald agrees, setting his makeup and debating if he wants to go back to using mascara or not. No Man’s Land had killed the habit, and Blackgate had buried it before he could even consider resuscitation, so he no longer feels naked without it and, frankly, it doesn’t match the new look he’s going for. An elevated, matured style, calling back to simpler times of professional standards and actually clandestine illegal activity, when the biggest Freaks to worry about were no stranger than himself. A deviation from the style of his scrabbling youth to build a new image in the eyes of Gotham, one of legitimacy and refinement and true personal growth.
In other words, a perfect smokescreen.
“He might have Gordon over.”
“I doubt it. He wasn’t seen at even one event Jim was. You said yourself he completely avoided the Wayne Gala! And now, a personal invitation to Wayne Manor addressed to you, and me.” Oswald puts the mascara away for another day. He’ll need to test out how it feels against his monocle anyway, and if it’ll leave any streaks or bits on the glass. “I see two possibilities for why. One, his little decade-long vacation opened his eyes to why the way we operate in Gotham is superior to Jim’s.”
“Unlikely, since he’s been fighting corruption since he was twelve.”
“Two, he sees the value we have in informing him what’s happened in Gotham since he left. Given our unique perspectives as titans of the criminal underworld.”
“... Who were locked up for almost his entire trip.”
“Well, I kept myself well-informed, Ed.”
“So did I, as much as I could. It’s even worse than the last time you were there, by the way.”
“That… cannot possibly be true.”
“I am relied on by the powerful and unreliable to the seeking. I can get you anything you want and craft your ideal reality, but you may find yourself knowing less than before I was set to the job. What am I?”
Oswald pauses in fastening his cufflinks. “... Torture. … As I said.” He sniffs, going back to applying his accessories. “Not much different after all.”
“They broke my glasses.”
“For ten years?”
“Yes.”
Oswald scoffs. “And yet, Gordon still considers us wrong when we get ourselves out of that place! I’ll never forget his outright denial of my torture the first time I was sent there!”
“On his behalf, too.”
“Exactly!” Oswald growls under his breath. “He is lucky that he had me so… convinced of his usefulness before Blackgate!”
“Real puppy crush,” Ed says flatly, making Oswald roll his eyes as he dusts off his hat. Ed dusts off his own, looking over and into Oswald’s eyes. “You’re sure you’re entirely over that?”
“Oh, believe me, Ed.” Oswald grins sharply, an expression that feels incomplete without a blood spatter across his face to match it. “I won’t be convinced of any false friendships with moralistic do-gooders ever again.”
The door to Wayne Manor is opened by the familiar, if wrinklier, face of Alfred Pennyworth. “Gentlemen,” he says, stepping aside to let them both in. He holds out his hand. “Mr. Cobblepot, if you wouldn’t mind lending me your… umbrella, for a quick check.”
“You know me too well,” Oswald says with a tight smile, meaning the words. Alfred is unbothered by the threat, accepting the umbrella-cane as Oswald hands it over. There’s a knife in the hilt, of course.
“I don’t have any without one,” Oswald says, still smiling as he watches Alfred slot it back into place. “Can’t be too careful.”
“Don’t we bloody know it,” Alfred mutters, holding his hand out to Ed next. “Right, out with any guns from you.”
Ed flips his jacket sides up, doing a spin to show his lack of weapons. “Tonight’s about either trust or improvising,” he says, flashing a much less tight but no less warning smile at the butler.
“So it is.” Alfred starts walking and they follow, reaching— the study, with a table big enough for three, maybe four, set out in the middle.
“I take it this is less of a social dinner and more of an interrogation,” Ed says, pushing his glasses up and genuinely relaxing a little. “Thank god.”
“Yes, well, Master Bruce had some concerns when he learnt of your ah, incarcerations.” If he notices the way they both tense, he doesn’t betray it. “He’ll be along in a moment. Have a seat, I’ll go begin plating dinner.”
They both take seats, sitting as close as possible– for a strategic advantage, if the need for one arises. Their knees lightly knocking into each other is just a consequence of that. A comforting one, though.
Bruce comes in, and they both can’t help the way their jaws drop and eyes go wide.
He’d been technically an adult when they last saw him, but still, in truth, a child. Now he’s actually a grown man, and not at all what they expected. He’d always been a wiry boy, an advantage during the time of No Man’s Land that made anyone he fought underestimate him, and an advantage before that in how inconspicuous it made his nosey little junior-detective self come across as.
He’s now visibly not someone to mess with, taller than Ed and broad in a way that even his clearly intentionally obscuring clothing can’t fully hide. The calculating sharpness in his eyes is refined as ever, despite the smile that crinkles his face around them. There’s something that sparks in the back of both of their minds as he comes closer, sits down and nods at them, but neither of them can quite grasp what.
“It’s good to see you both again,” Bruce says, the crackle of teenhood long since smoothed out of his voice, leaving only a strong and steady flow, unbroken and confident. It’s a much more pleasant sound than the gravelly, scraping voice they’d been ‘treated’ to the night prior.
Oswald gathers himself out of his shock. Of all the signs of age he’s seen on familiar faces since his release from Blackgate, this has him the most aware of how truly long a time it was. He reaches over to shake Bruce’s hand. “Likewise! But I admit, it was a surprise to hear from you. We’re not exactly your, closest friends, from before your trip.”
“I’m still not convinced this isn’t a trap,” Ed says, eyes scanning the room. “And if it is, let me say, I respect the intricacy.”
“No trick,” Bruce assures, sweeping his palms over the table as if wiping the very idea away. “Just some concern for two seemingly underappreciated veterans of the Reunification War.”
Oswald and Ed share a glance, an unspoken ‘Finally!’
“Underappriciated doesn’t begin to cover it,” Oswald huffs as Alfred brings in the first course, a miso-chicken soup. Bruce motions for Alred to sit too, but Alfred declines with a silent tip of his head and disappears back to the kitchens. Bruce watches after him, eyes softening into… disappointment. Hurt. Well, the boy– man, did vanish for a full decade. Oswald has a moment of realization that the easy way he and Ed had slipped back into a familiar, even improved routine after their own separation is definitely an unusual outcome.
After the beat of silence, whatever purpose Bruce has behind this meeting seems to return to him as he focuses on his guests again.
“Alfred told me you were both arrested not even a year after I left.” Bruce blows on his soup before eating it, carefully, the way a child would. It’s hard to tell if he does it knowingly to be disarming, or just out of habit. Oswald doesn’t like not being able to tell. “And sent to separate facilities.”
Ed’s spoon clinks into the bowl so hard he almost chips the china. “You could just read the old papers about it.”
“I want to hear it from you. You both gave up quite a bit to join the fight against Nyssa, and I remember you being there for his swearing in as commissioner. What happened?”
“It might be more informative to ask what didn’t,” Oswald says, wishing the tofu and chicken being shredded in his teeth was Gordon’s flesh. “Let’s see, Ed, what was all we got as reward for giving up, millions of dollars, a brand-new start in a better city, and, what else? Oh, ha, right! My dog!”
Bruce’s brows pinch with concern.
Ed flicks a square of tofu from his spoon into the fireplace. “What is useless in addition, devastating in division, and invaluable only when at the end of a line of others it doesn’t match?”
“That’s right!” Oswald barks out a bitter laugh. “Zero! Nothing! A pardon, which was treated like a gift and not an obvious given for what we did!”
Bruce blows on another spoonful of soup, watching them both and waiting for more before taking his bite and swallowing. “Wouldn’t a pardon plus the notoriety make for a lucrative future?”
They both snort, Oswald nodding and staring into his soup as Ed sets his jaw and looks past Bruce, right at the way.
“Perhaps,” Oswald breathes, an admission that seems to force its way out of him with all the conviction of a rotting body at the bottom of the harbor being moved whichever way the tide decides. “But I think you’ll find it understandable that we felt a bit… betrayed.”
“Which you’d think we would’ve been used to, when dealing with Jim Gordon.” Ed chews the name with more ferocity than he does the food. “Not exactly the best at sticking to his word.”
“A bit rich coming from you two,” Bruce says with a slight smile and teasing lilt. Maybe it should be infuriating, but Oswald has a distinct memory of this man being a terrified child huddled in the arms of Alfred and Jim as Oswald had Theo Galavan sent to his final, permanent demise. They’d shared a common enemy then. And again, when Jerome tried to gas the city. And again when they tried to stop the bridges from being blown, and again when Nyssa wanted to destroy Gotham itself—
Try as he might, he can’t bring himself to take it insultingly. And he does, try. But it’s proving very difficult to dislike Bruce Wayne.
“At least we make ourselves clear in who and what we are,” Oswald replies, raising the wine that had come out with the soup. Ed raises his glass to the small improvised toast, and after a moment Bruce does too. They all take a drink. It’s a good vintage— maybe he’s showing off his wealth, or maybe Bruce just genuinely wanted them to have good wine. Oswald is starting to realize that the openly angst-ridden or terrified child in his memories has changed in more than just physicality, and one of those changes is that he’s much, much more difficult to read.
“So you kept up with old habits,” Bruce clarifies, setting his glass back down as Alfed brings in the next dish, orange-barbeque pork belly burnt ends. They melt in Oswald’s mouth and make it difficult to use food chewing as an outlet for tension.
“We took what we deserved,” Ed says, spearing one of the cubes of meat and pressing it against the plate until the rendered-down fat split apart.
Bruce just nods. “And got caught.”
The silence in the room is as thick as the sweet-tangy glaze on their dishes.
“... But why send you to Arkham?” Bruce asks, looking over at Ed before swivelling his gaze back to Oswald. “And you to Blackgate?”
“I had the better lawyer,” Oswald says, regret tinged in his voice as he, completely unintentionally, bumps his knee against Ed’s again. “They prevented us from communicating or coordinating in any way—”
“The most effective they’ve ever been at such a thing,” Ed growls.
“— so unfortunately I had no idea they were sending him to that hellhouse until he was already there.”
“And… why stay locked up? Don’t tell me you couldn’t escape, that’s not possible with you two.” Bruce eats his own food so casually, eyes always on them, such palpable curiosity to his tone. It makes Oswald feel on edge and totally safe at the same time, somehow.
Oswald looks down at his meal again, fighting a scowl, while Ed scoffs humorlessly.
“Our resources were, more than a bit spent, after Reunification,” Oswald says, grinding his jaw slightly as he pauses. “... And our circles of trust even lesser.”
“And Gordon put a heavy focus on ‘security’,” Ed adds, making air-quotations around the last word. “At first just to prove to the government that the gangs really were under control. I assume at some point it became more about making his own job easier.”
Bruce nods again, taking in the information with a neutral expression. Everyone at the table knows he doesn’t find the concept itself to be a bad thing. “What were the conditions like? I saw the news. I imagine if things were good, you both wouldn’t have gone right back to your old tricks.”
“I made things comfortable for myself over time.” Lots of time. Fear, did so very little to serve Oswald in the post-Reunification Gotham. Everyone was simply… over it. So he’d pivoted, respectability becoming his weapon of choice, and though it was much harder earned—
Well. He’s doing very well for someone fresh out of prison, so the results speak for themselves. … Minus the whole Bat encounter. An outlier, one that’ll be swiftly dealt with.
Bruce looks at Ed, who’s mashed his pork belly cubes into a paste and is scraping patterns and mazes into it with his fork. “I take it Arkham wasn’t as forgiving.”
“Has it ever been?”
“... I actually don’t know.” Bruce sits up straighter. “When… everything started, when my parents first… they’d wanted to truly overhaul Arkham. Make it a genuine place of healing. I’d wanted it too, and then Mayor James— I can’t believe he’s in office again—”
“Uhg, none of us can.” Oswald shakes his head. “The mess he left behind after I took office from him was astounding.”
“Everything disorganized,” Ed mutters, eyes distant as he remembers it. “Conflicting bribes and their results everywhere.”
“I’ll need to look into handling that,” Bruce mumbles, nodding to himself. He shakes his head and focuses on Ed again. “The point is, during the course of… everything, I lost sight of that vision for the mentally unwell of Gotham. … Not that I’m calling you unwell.”
Ed presses his lips together in what can’t really be called a smile. “Aren’t you?”
“I don’t mean any offense. … How bad is it there? Truly? Selina and I went inside when Hugo was running it, but I’d always hoped that with him gone…”
“Let me sum it up like this.” Ed lets Alfred take the plate away, not even glancing at the main course— simple steaks and asparagus with cheesy mashed potatoes— as it’s set before him. “Reading a guard’s newspaper through the bars was considered punishable, but my hobby of stabbing the thought-to-be-braindead Jerimiah was implicitly allowed.”
Bruce flinches, just slightly, at Jerimiah’s name. He covers it up with a bite of potatoes and a swig of wine.
“What about hygiene? Or enrichment? Therapy methods?”
“Speak me and I cannot be myself, apply me to something and you apply me to nothing, what am I?”
Oswald is still trying to figure it out himself when, after a pause briefer than most take for one of Ed’s riddles, Bruce says “Nonexistant.”
Ed, a surprised and impressed glint to his eye, smiles slightly and nods.
“All nonexistent,” Bruce mutters. “Does Gordon know?”
Oswald laughs, or maybe scoffs, or maybe sobs slightly– some kind of noise made mostly of breath comes out of him, damned if he knows which one. “Jim hasn’t heeded a word of warning about the conditions there since long before it was pumping out monsters.”
Bruce frowns, deeply. “So it’s being allowed.”
“Encouraged, even!” Oswald throws his arms up, making more sounds that could be laughter, could be crying. “If memory serves!”
“It does.” Ed cuts his steak into tiny, perfectly symmetrical pieces.
“... That’s unacceptable.” The grim look on Bruce’s face, the tone in his voice– this is more familiar to Oswald now, more like the strange and offputting teen he’s fought alongside against impossible odds. Bruce looks out into the hall. “Alfred!”
“Yes, Master Bruce?”
“Let’s arrange a meeting with Commissioner Gordon and Mayor James this week. And, a visit to Arkham Asylum. I want to see the conditions for myself so that I know where to start applying pressure first.”
“Right on it, Master Bruce.” Alfred, visibly excited by the coming events, leaves the room again.
“So that’s why you extended the invitation.” Ed finally takes a bite of steak, shoulders slumping a bit as his posture loosens. “You don’t want criminal underworld knowledge, you want criminal incarceration knowledge.”
Bruce nods. “I left Gotham alone during an uncertain time. I trusted the people I left behind to rebuild it better, even if it couldn’t be perfect, but when I got back… it’s too much of the same. The crime rates, the danger… the people.” He sets his utensils down, making a slight show of it, of showing he’s unarmed. “I took you both as examples. Proof. That I’m still needed in a capacity beyond the city’s resident friendly billionaire.”
Oswald’s bad eye twitches, and he has to push his monocle back into place. “You want to fix us.”
“I want to help you.” Bruce keeps his hands held aloft even as Oswald’s hand twists around his steak knife and Ed’s fork hovers without food on it.
“Help us be normal?” Ed sets his teeth against each other, still not quite smiling. “Tried it, hated it. Happy as I am.”
“I don’t believe either of you will ever be an average citizen,” Bruce says calmly. “Neither will Selina, Ivy, I’m even still skeptical about Barbara. But I believe you don’t have to be dominated by bitter anger. I believe there has to be a way we can all find a balance that won’t hurt others or ourselves.”
Oswald’s knuckles are white around his knife as he puffs air out of his nose in amusement and pity. “That’s a beautiful sentiment.”
“I was going to say ‘stupid’ and ‘uninformed’,” Ed says flatly.
“That too.” Oswald pushes Ed’s shoulder a bit in agreement. “I would argue it’s more likely you end up like us, than, us end up like you.”
“I never claimed to be clean, myself.” Bruce meets Oswald’s burning gaze unflinchingly. “It’s part of why I know no-one is beyond saving. One of these days, somehow, I’ll find a way to get you two to at least keep your collateral damage to a minimum.”
“It is so good for ambitious young men to have clear goals,” Oswald says with a lean-in and a tight smile, reaching over to stop Ed from springing to his feet and lunging. “I remember being your age and coming up with similarly impossible achievements for myself.”
“And you achieved them.” Bruce smirks. “So impossible isn’t the right word, is it?”
“I suppose not!” Oswald nods. “But it took quite a lot of effort— and blood— to get there.”
“Which I’m willing to put in.”
“Why?” Ed points his fork accusingly. “Why would you even care to try in the first place?”
Bruce’s smirk falls away. “Because I want Gotham to be a better place for everyone. I’d be a hypocrite if I excluded the severely damaged from that, even if that damage results in violent actions. There has to be a way to balance things. I’m going to find it. No matter what.”
…
He’s that same kid.
A boy whose parents died in front of him, almost in his arms, changing him forever. Who had any and every chance of hope or happiness stripped away, time and time and time again. Who could never get a break from the misfortunes, the violence, the plots against him.
Bruce should respond to the world with bitterness. He should respond with exactly what he’s given. He should respond with a gun in his hand and bloodshed enough to cover up what came from the people he loved and lost.
Someday he will. If Oswald knows anything, if his experience in this city means anything, it’s that someday Bruce will join the rest of them in acceptance. Gotham never changes. Gotham never gets better. Gotham cannot be saved from itself.
Oswald sinks into his chair more, his hand moving to Ed’s arm, gently bringing him down into the plush velvet too. “It’ll be interesting to watch you try.”
Ed blinks, slightly confused by Oswald’s backing down, but nods. “One of the only truly unsolvable puzzles in the world. Especially with methods as soft as—” he stabs a piece of steak and lifts it up. “Dinner parties.”
“I have a variety of methods I’m willing to employ based on the circumstances I may find myself in,” Bruce says evenly, twirling his steak knife with a practiced hand. “I’m hopeful. Not unaware of what’s out there. Or what’s in front of me.”
“Well then.” Oswald raises his wine again. “To interesting times to come.”
Ed raises his. “To risky games to be played.”
Bruce presses his glass against both of theirs. “To saving Gotham and it’s people, whatever it takes, in any way it needs.”
They clink their glasses together, and eat the rest of the meal in a comfortably aware silence.
Ed looks over at Oswald as they’ve driven back to the Van Dahl Manor. “You know, he’s already breaking his little code of ethics.”
“I noticed.” Oswald taps his fingers along his tophat in his lap. “You mean about him not turning us in, right?”
“Right.” Ed smirks, glasses glinting the light of a few-and-far-between streetlamps. “And, the bruises on his knuckles. He got into a fight with someone recently.”
Oswald laughs, patting Ed’s knee. “Good catch. Still, he could end up like Jim. Ideology at odds with his actual actions.”
“Most likely. A shame though— he’s a lot smarter than Gordon is. More fun in general.”
“Agreed. That was the first time in a very long time that I felt genuinely engaged in a battle of wits. I almost wish he was our most important adversary right now instead of that… bat-brawn meathead.”