Chapter Text
The room feels cold when you step into it, making it harder for you to realize that you’re dreaming. The lights are icy blue and everything else is stone cold and gray. The room looks so comically stereotypical that for a moment you forget you’re inside an insane asylum. You can’t remember when or how you got here, can’t tell that the clock on the wall doesn’t tick and has no real numbers, but you know exactly who you’re here to see.
The heavy metal curtain lifts as you sit down, letting you hide your gasp at the peek of a white and orange striped shirt, by the time the curtain stops obscuring your face your expression is disregarded by your mind and replaced with the punch to the gut that is seeing Edward sitting in front of you, slightly warped by the material of the thick glass that separates you. He slowly lifts his tightly-bound hands towards you, touching the glass as he leans forward ever so slightly to stare up at you with his puppy-dog eyes and a pathetic twitch of his lips that you will once again mistake for regret.
“You’re here.” He says in a near-whisper, smiling that tight-lipped smile of his with wet eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
He’s locked up, Edward is locked up in fucking Arkham for quite literally destroying the city from the inside. How is this happening, how is any of this happening?
You wake up with a gasp, brought back to reality when you feel his back still pressed to yours in his sleep. Fuck this.
It’s late and you’re bathing in the overcast light of the diner, scrubbing empty tables and refilling cups of coffee when the news breaks out.
You stand completely still with your hand still holding the wet rag against the surface of the table, back turned to the television as you hear the somber tone of the news-anchor talking about the halloween murder of the mayor, the eerie warning written all over his face with red marker: no more lies.
Turning around like everyone else in the diner, you focus your eyes on the television screen while your coworker Denisse turns the volume up. The context of the statement is lost to you, ears ringing slightly and making you press both hands on the table behind you so as to not feel like you’re falling. Suddenly the sound comes back, your brain registering the words slightly late, like it can’t quite process everything correctly.
“-in an unsettling livestream, calling himself The Riddler. The suspect appears to be wearing a-”
You almost laugh, thinking about all those riddles he used to leave you, hidden strategically so each one would be a surprise. Thinking about the nervous way his voice had broken when he first tried to recite his favorite one to you but kept getting it mixed up, all those years ago. Thinking about the countless times you had playfully answered them wrong despite him knowing you had already figured them out. Thinking about him this morning, drinking a cup of coffee while silently staring out of the window before you left for work, no goodbyes from either of you.
“Just when I think Gotham can’t surprise me anymore.” Says your coworker Alex, tucking a worn out pen on the pocket of his red apron. “What a psycho.”
The image playing on the TV? It’s him in your apartment, in front of that stupid question mark tapestry he put up a couple of days ago, screaming about justice and the murder he just commited.
“Can’t say he didn’t deserve it though.” You say, surprised by the automatic defensiveness with which you laid out the sentence.
“That I agree with.” He smiles and raises his eyebrows playfully before stepping back into the kitchen, leaving you to push yourself off of the lean you had on the table before putting a smile back on and making your way to a booth on the back of the diner where an elderly man has raised his cup, wanting it filled again.
You can’t stop the wheels of your mind that keep turning and turning.
That night you get home before him, opening a bottle of the strongest (and cheapest) liquor you could find in the corner store on your way back from the diner before sitting down on the bed, seeing how the couch has been pushed to a wall where it’s now filled with endless boxes of files and devices you don’t want to touch. You alternate from staring at the wall and overthinking to updating the news section of the search bar where you have typed that dreaded nickname.
“ THE RIDDLER” LIVESTREAM GOES VIRAL, OFFICIALS CONCERNED BY SUPPORT OF THE MASSES.
Is it weird that under the slight wave of nausea and fear you feel a little bit of pride? Maybe. Probably. Most definitely. It’s impossible not to acknowledge just how much work and effort Edward put into this whole ordeal, not anyone could pull it off, and while you had always believed that he was capable of doing incredible things… this certainly wasn’t one of them. Your Ed was quiet, insecure, clumsy and sweet. Intlligent, volatile, certainly manipulative, but nothing like The Riddler, nothing like a murderer. At least that’s what you used to believe.
Edward steps into the apartment with normal clothes and a big duffel bag on his shoulder, slowly stopping at the doorframe of the bedroom where he drops the bag, looking at your face, then the almost empty glass in your hand, then the phone on the other. He flexes his hands, looking for an indication of what you’re thinking. You haven’t said a word to each other since the night he told you his plan, and it’s killing him.
“The Riddler, huh?” You say after a while, turning the phone towards him so he can see the headlines that you were looking at. “Pretty cool name, I guess. The press is certainly eating it up.”
He doesn’t move, but you’re unfazed as you stand up while swallowing what’s left of the $25 dollar whiskey. Next to him on the dresser stands the bottle, almost half empty by now. He observes as you put down the glass and pick up the bottle instead, unscrewing the top before coming to a halt. You look up at him through your eyelashes, offering the bottle after a beat.
He takes it and without much thought downs as much as he can manage, taking a moment to evade the wince that wants to overtake his features after the alcohol goes down his throat.
Silently, you raise a hand to stroke back the hair that barely covers the top of his ear where his glasses are placed, fingers coming back spotted with sticky red, the slightest amount of blood he missed when he put his glasses back on after taking off the cling wrap.
You both stare at your fingers for a moment before you go back to staring at each other’s eyes, dark in the dim light of the room. He raises a hand to place it on the nape of your neck and you notice it doesn’t shake, not even slightly. He doesn’t have to pull you in, you’re already moving forward so you can kiss him.
It’s all very fast, desperate on both ends. He slams the bottle on the dresser and follows as you step back without parting from his lips, he’s kicking off his shoes and you’re taking off his jacket and his glasses are falling off his nose but he quickly takes them and lets them fall on the pile of clothes that’s quickly forming at the foot of the bed. He pushes you into the mattress and your hands grasp onto his hair as he licks and mouths and kisses all the way down your body until he reaches the waist of your pants, undoing the belt that keeps them in place with agile, confident hands that feel slightly unfamiliar. He pushes your pants down and you’re so overcome with want, with feverish desire , that all you can do as he starts to bite the inside of your thigh is to throw your head back and smile oh so blissfully when he finally puts his mouth to good use.
Later, when he takes you on your back with his head pressed against your own, moaning and groaning and cursing every word he can remember, you reach the decision that as long as you live, nothing is going to take him away from you.
“Mine.” He whines, burying his head on your shoulder. “Mine, you’re all fucking mine.”
Ears ringing, you press both of your hands to the back of his head, making fists at his hair and pulling when the pressure that has been quickly building inside you reaches its zenith.
You smile, wide and delirious and delusional as he bites down hard on the spot where your neck meets your shoulder, hips stuttering before you both reach the end.
The first time Edward offered you riddles it was spring, weather on that awkward transition of the seasons where Gotham couldn’t decide if the rain and gloom were truly over. You were seated on a patch of grass under a tree, eating grapes and saltine crackers and drinking much-too-sugary lemonade that probably didn’t contain any actual lemons. He was about to graduate college and though you didn’t know it yet, you were a few months short of dropping out. Life was chaotic, exhausting and sometimes too painful, but the stubborn hopefulness of youth still shone bright within you. His had disappeared a long time ago, beaten out of him inside the cold walls of the orphanage, but the way that his heart was beating right then and there made him forget that life could be anything else but a rose-tinted kind of wonderful.
“Tell me another, I’ll get it right this time.”
He laughs, still in disbelief that you’re here sitting with him and laughing at his poor attempts of being charming. The first time he saw you at the campus library he’d nearly had a heart attack, breath taken away by the intensity of your stare, by the sudden and unexpected realization that you were there to bring color into his greyscale life. It was completely bizarre to him that somehow your paths had crossed enough times that you’d decided to start a conversation, and even more bizarre that despite his nervous ramblings you still seemed to like him enough to want to see him again, and again and again over the last few weeks. It all seemed too good to be true, so much so that sometimes he’d wake up after dreaming of you and panic thinking you were nothing more than a figment of his imagination, a cruel fiction his brain had created to stop feeling so alone. But then he’d look over at his night stand, where an overexposed polaroid picture of the both of you stood against his alarm clock, and he’d lay his head back on the pillow with a grateful smile while thinking about the way you had laughed at his expression in the picture, caught off-guard by the flash and whirring sound of the camera when he looked up from his textbook as you pressed the shutter button.
“What is created in an instant but can last a lifetime?” He asks after a few seconds of thinking.
You groan.
“See, I don’t like these types of riddles. The answer could be anything, it’s super vague.” He opens his mouth to speak, quickly being interrupted by you. “Don’t you dare tell me, I'll get it anyway… let’s see, oh god. It’s not a picture is it?”
He shakes his head: no .
“Think cheesier, it’s quite simple.”
“What is created in an- Ah! A memory! What is created in an instant but can last a lifetime, a memory!”
“Precisely.” He looked away in fear that his smile would get bigger, especially when you looked at him like that. He was going crazy wondering what your feelings towards him were, one moment he would be convinced that you liked him back (loved him back, that would be the most accurate way of putting it but he felt stupid admitting that to himself) and the other he would beat himself up for ever believing that you had any romantic intentions towards him, feeling guilty for not being content enough with having such an incredible friend, something he’d been yearning for for years.
“My turn to ask, your turn to answer.” You said cheerfully, popping a grape into your mouth and making his head feel dizzy with romantic and domestic fantasies. “Why is it so hard to find a smart, handsome, sweet guy?”
He frowns, chuckling as to not make it apparent that his heart had dropped.
“That’s not even a riddle, it’s just a question. Weren’t you just complaining that my riddles were too vague?”
You smiled mischievously, watching as he took a gulp of lemonade and admiring the way his thin wire glasses reflected the sun.
“Because I’m already with him.”
Spilling liquid on his shirt, he turned to look at you.
“What?”
“For someone who’s like, incredibly smart… you’re really oblivious.”
Edward blushed profusely as you moved on to another story, something about a rude poli-sci major who smoked too many cigarettes and always tried to debate with you at parties. He couldn’t concentrate on your words.
“You think I’m handsome?”
You stopped talking, looking at him with that smile that drove him crazy, insane with confusion and terrifying feelings.
You had him wrapped around your finger, and you hadn’t even kissed him yet.
Unbeknownst to him you quit your job the day after halloween, excitedly telling your coworkers that Edward had found a better position in California and you could finally start planning on moving away and starting a family. They were so ecstatic that you had the chance to leave Gotham that, despite their sadness at losing you, you were sent on your way with bright smiles, genuine hugs, and whispered wishes of good luck.
Edward had tried to have a talk with you after Halloween night, but you’d just kissed him and reassured him that you were ready for whatever he thought best, even if you didn’t like the idea of being parted. He was so busy that he didn’t really stop to think about it twice, happy that you were no longer ignoring each other.
While he was out continuing on with his grand plans and playing cat and mouse with a certain vigilante, you were taking care of things. You had never known how fast you could be, how hard you could work to make seemingly impossible things happen when desperation clawed at you and time flew past you, reminding you that everything could be ruined if anything went wrong.
Luckily, you have always been a hard worker.
He’s staring at himself in the mirror, washing his hands for the third time since he locked himself in there, anxious and paranoid that blood is somehow under his nails even though he always made sure to wear gloves. If everything goes according to plan, tonight will be his last as a free man. There’s no doubt in him that he did the right thing, that bringing real change to Gotham is more important than whatever else he’s feeling, but like a stone inside his boot, the thought of you is nearly enough to make him want to change courses and find a way to stick together through all of it.
Pushing up his glasses he scoops cold water onto his tired eyes, staring at his image in the mirror again. He no longer feels weak, no longer feels small. I can do this.
He pushes the door open and walks to the living room, staring at your backlit form as you stand in front of his desk.
“Is it time?” You ask, sensing him as he walks and stands next to you.
“Not quite, I don’t want to leave you tied up for too long if I can help it.”
You nod, finally facing him as he raises the back of his hand to run it down your cheek tenderly, though the context makes the little hairs on your arms raise.
You lean into him, tucking your head into his shoulder as he wraps his arms around you.
“I hate this.” You mutter, sighing as you feel his lips briefly pressing a kiss into your temple.
“I know, my love. I know.”
You pray that he can’t feel how fast your heart is beating, or that if he does he attributes it to general anxiety given the situation. After a while, you part with a gentle squeeze to his arm.
“Alright. I know you have to get back to work but please eat something before you do anything else.”
“Yeah. Yeah you’re right, I'm actually pretty hungry.”
You knew he would be, he hadn’t eaten anything since last night and it was way past noon already.
“I think there’s still some takeout from last night…”
He anxiously stares out of the windowpane, anxious for the sun to go down already and occasionally eyeing the sniper rifle that stands next to him, ready to be used when the time to bring the rat into the light comes.
“Here you go.” Setting the plates down on the table, you slide a coffee cup across to his side that is still half-littered with some files and manila envelopes with water stains on them. “Thought you could use the caffeine.”
“Ah, thank you.” He blinks off the exhaustion and turns to sit down on the table, bringing a piece of sauce-covered broccoli into his mouth and making sure he blows on the next piece after realizing it’s still much too hot.
You play with your noodles, moving the broccoli around while you watch him eat with growing anxiety. You consider eating at least a little food, but you know as soon as you try to swallow you’ll throw it all up.
“Not hungry?” He asks, finally sipping on his coffee.
“I mean, you know why I'm not.”
“No, I understand darling but we don’t know how long it will be until they can get you some food… probably until you’re down at the station.” He takes another long sip, slightly wincing at an apparently unexpected taste. “You should at least try.” Bitter coffee, though you know he likes it sweet.
“Yeah… you’re probably right.”
You’re a good performer, but not great enough that he can’t start to put the puzzle together. After all, that is his specialty.
Lucky for you, you’ve always managed to be the one exception. The distraction.
He stares at you for what seems like a long time. You notice the orange glow from the sun is starting to disappear, leaving the apartment to be filled only by the unnatural light of one of his desk lamps.
“Y/N…” He drops his fork a little more clumsily than he intended, surprised by how fast the world is spinning around him suddenly. “Wha- What is this?” You shake your head. “What is this?”
He stands up with such force that some of his food is knocked out of the plate and into the table. You can see sweat starting to make his hair stick to his forehead, eyes wide and confused and scared. By reaction, you stand up as well.
“No, no, no, tell me you didn’t do this… please. I- what’s happening?” Memories come rushing back to him, how he felt when he was going under before surgery, the feeling of pure helplessness and fear of what could happen to him when he lost all control.
He knows what's happening, but he doesn’t want to believe it's true. The one loose thread in his plan, the one loose thread that he always knew existed but couldn’t get himself to give up, to get rid of. It’s come back to bite him in the ass.
“I’m sorry Edward, I really am.”
He stumbles to reach you so fast that it throws you off balance, knocking into the wall behind you and causing the chair you were sitting in to fall off to the side with a thump.
“You can’t do this, please- you have no idea what will happen if I don’t take this shot.” He’s grabbing onto your shirt with his fists, pressing you deeper into the wall with his weight. “Listen to me Y/N, you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing here, please. There’s some methylphenidate hydrochloride in the bathroom cabinet, if you give me enough I may still wake up on time. GOD DAMN IT, PLEASE!”
He’s crying and you’re shaking your head no, doing what you should’ve done that first time you confronted him months ago.
“I’m sorry, Eddie. I’m doing this for you, I'm doing this for us.”
Slowly, he drags you to the floor as he succumbs to the sedatives you put in his coffee. His fists move, shaking until they’re able to grasp your shoulders. The strength with which he does so surprises you as you yelp out in pain when his thumb presses deep into your tired muscle.
“Fuck you.” He spits out, it’s the first time he’s ever cursed you. “You- you- you’re taking everything away from me, you’re gonna get us both in jail you- fuck. Why ?”
You hold him as he sobs out his final words of the evening, his head falls into your chest and the last movement he’s able to make is weakly slapping your hand away, hand which had come up to take his glasses off of him before they slid off his nose.
The apartment is quiet then, the only sound coming from the rats that will soon be freed from their cages. Your chest rises and falls with your quick breathing, brain a sea of emotions and anxieties: you’ve never felt this kind of adrenaline before.
Slowly, you place both of your hands on the sides of Edward’s head and carefully move it away from your chest so you can get a good look at it. His eyes are closed, mouth slightly opened and he had tear stains on his red cheeks, the soft breathing reminding you that he’s just sleeping.
You let out a scream you didn’t know you had in you and hold him close, his head unnaturally rolling to the side before you’re able to catch it and bring it to rest against your shoulder instead, as you cry with Edward’s unconscious body in your arms. You can feel his heartbeat, slow but steady, his warm breath on the side of your neck, his damp hair as you run a hand through it. It’s okay. It’s okay, I've got this.
You take a deep breath, just like all those times you did breathing exercises with Edward. In through the nose, out through the mouth, then repeat. Again and again.
By the time you collect yourself the sun has fully gone down, and you know you don’t have much time left. You remind yourself why you’re doing this, and push Edward off of you gently so you can carry on with the next task.
“So then you write down that number and move on to the one that’s next to it, making sure you’ve got the right order- don’t groan! It’s not that hard.”
“It’s not that it’s hard, it’s that it’s boring.” You say, biting down on the green apple you’ve been trying to consume for about half an hour, using your feet to sway to the sides in the campus library spinny-chair. “I don’t know why you decided to major in accounting of all things, with that brain of yours you could be… I don’t know, a rocket scientist.”
“I doubt that.” Despite his modest act, the tips of his ears go red at the compliment. He loves it when you compliment his intelligence. “Besides, accounting can be pretty fun, you know? It keeps the brain moving, there’s always a need to be concentrated and numbers are their own kind of language.”
You stare at him for a few seconds, narrowing your eyes. He sits still, eagerly awaiting your response despite not giving out the hold he has on his favorite mechanical pencil (the super expensive ones he ordered from japan in a packet of 20, because they were the smoothest and felt right on his hand).
“Do you really believe that?” You ask, smiling mischievously.
With a laugh, he breaks.
“No you’re right, it’s pretty boring sometimes.” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “But hey, that’s why I have you to keep me on my toes.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.” You lean over the table after you notice the unfriendly gazes some students are throwing at you for speaking too loud. “You said you have me to keep you on your toes, but that’s not really true is it? You don’t have me, not unless you ask.”
He’s bewildered, about to ask you if this is truly the place to have this conversation but too stunned at what you’re implying to actually say it.
“Wha- what do you mean?” He laughs nervously, also leaning over the table but more out of a desire to use the wooden surface as a shield than anything else.
You take another bite of the apple, as if you want him to dwell in the delicious tension a bit longer. (Because you do.) Then, after you’ve swallowed, you nonchalantly say the sentence that will change the direction of his life completely.
“I mean that I’m head over heels in love with your oblivious ass and I'm tired of pretending like we’re just friends.”
His mouth hangs open in shock for a second before he composes himself, fixing his position on the chair just to do something that will win him enough time to think of what to say.
“I- Y/N, I'm…”
Smiling sweetly, you rise and sling your backpack onto your shoulder before giving him the apple, which he takes with confusion as he stares up at you. His face is pale and covered in acne, hair the longest it’ll ever be, eyes as nervous as you remember them to be even today, glossy with the deliriously happy yet confusing realization that you love him back. It was obvious, it was always obvious, from the moment your eyes met you had both known that this was going to happen somehow, but his wishes had been crushed so many times before that he couldn’t fathom this happening, because if it did, if this truly was happening, then all of his other wishes, all the other things he had wanted and couldn’t get, they were worth it. If this worked out, then everything he had lost was worth losing. Just as long as he got you.
“Think about it Eddie, and I'll see you after class.”
Every fiber of his being was on fire as he watched you walk out, half-eaten apple on his hand and an expression so bewildered anyone could believe that he had just seen the son of god descend to earth right in front of him.
Overcome by feverish desire he brings the apple to his lips, biting at the spot where your teeth had left a mark, licking the fruit as the juice drips and follows the trail that his teeth carved. He swallows, smiling with pure unadulterated joy and dropping the apple into the table before clumsily rolling his chair back and sprinting after you, leaving his belongings spread on the table.
He doesn’t notice the stares as he runs by, table after table until he pushes open the glass doors and screams your name, causing you to look back.
From the other side of the small courtyard and about to go up the big concrete stairs, you watch in surprise as he runs up to you. You were happy with the way he had looked when you left, giddy at the thought of him overthinking the interaction for two hours until you got out of class, surprised that you could be so bold when it came to him, whereas it was hard to even talk to other people. Despite this, you decide that watching him run up to you in his beat up black canvas shoes, clearly out of breath and with fogged glasses that hide his shining, lovesick eyes, is even better.
“Oh hi Edward, didn’t expect to see you h-”
Your witty comment is cut short as he slams into you, giving you a twirl to break off the speed before he kisses you. Your hands immediately come to hold his cheeks, to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear as he kisses you again, and again, and again. It’s sloppy and filled with emotion, and it’s his first kiss. Your heart could just about explode into a bloody puddle in the middle of campus.
“I love you too.” He says, breathless as you two part. “Oh my god, is this really happening?”
“You’re silly.” You respond, giving him a peck on the lips. “And you’re the most wonderful person I've ever met.”
He doesn’t even think to tell you that only a couple of years ago he burnt down his old orphanage, or that only a couple of weeks before you met him he had stood dangerously close to the edge of the science building’s rooftop, hoping a stray gust of wind would knock him out of it. He doesn’t think about anything, doesn’t feel any guilt or anxiety or fear, it’s all just you. You and your jokes and your witty remarks and the way you say his name, you and your kindness and the way your eyes shine and your ability to make him feel heard and understood. He doesn’t need anything else, doesn’t need to worry about the dark thoughts consuming him again, because he’s sure you will keep them away.
“What is mine but only you can keep?” He asks, still holding you by the waist and drunk with having you so close.
“Oh god, Eddie. That’s the cheesiest one yet.” Laughing, you humor him by tapping the beating spot in his chest. “Your heart.”
He kisses you again, sealing the deal. For better or for worse.
It’s been years since you’ve driven, but the road isn’t busy and you’re focused on the task ahead. There’s a soft hum coming from the radio, a song you would find really beautiful if you could pay any attention to it. Your fingers grip the steering wheel like it’s a lifeline as you think about what you’ve done, what both of you have become. Maybe it wasn’t actually like you had thought all those years ago, not meant to be.
Maybe he had believed you were meant for him so much that he fought against what he was set to do, wrote you into his story even though you didn’t fit into it. Maybe you had believed he was meant for you so much that you forgot who you were in the process of trying to stay together. So much, that you left the city without saying anything about the bombs that will cause Gotham to drown, just so you can get him out of there unscratched.
If the bombs have gone off already you must be far enough to not hear them, but you still turn the volume up a little bit before turning for a moment so you can see Edward, still fast asleep in the backseat.
Breathing deep, you think of places you’ve always dreamt of going to. A small wooden cabin were you and Edward can spend Christmas in, a white picket fence house in the outskirts of a small town where a dog can run free in the yard, a cottage with a view obscured by trees with a cozy living room where you and him can build jigsaw puzzles.
You keep on driving.
Surely he should be groggy, come awake slowly over the course of several minutes of confusion and sedation, but he doesn’t. He jolts awake and sits up on an unfamiliar bed, immediately disappointed that this wasn’t all a dream. The room is quiet and light, bathed in orange warmth that makes his skin sticky in that way that only a summer nap can feel, even though it’s fall.
Carefully, he steps out of the soft grey comforter and swings his legs off the bed, locating his glasses that lay on the bedside table at his side. Putting them on, he realizes that a small crack on them has formed, funny that they didn’t break before.
He stands up, stretching and realizing that he’s still very much dizzy and his mouth feels like cotton. Despite his discomfort at drinking anything now, he downs the entire tall glass of water that waits for him right beside where his glasses were after checking for any pill remnants. After he’s done, he raises a hand to move the flowy curtains aside.
It’s a bright orange-and-pink-swirled morning, and all he can see is land and water. If he squints, really far away in the distance, he can see the unmistakable shape of the Gotham City skyline. He drops the curtain and steps away, eyes going back and forth to finally register the room he’s in.
It’s a well-sized bedroom, not that much bigger than the one at the apartment but definitely less cluttered, walls painted a creamy brown color that reminds him of the beach, even though he doesn’t really have any memories of a beach house that didn’t come from books or TV. There’s not much else to see, the pictures up on the walls are all unfamiliar and random, there’s no clothes spread over the loveseat in the corner, and the other bedside table is empty.
There’s nothing else to do, so he turns the knob and steps out, bare feet meeting an unfamiliar wooden floor. There’s a fire crackling in the fireplace, a white door to his left side, an intricate rug in the center of the room, on top of which sits a coffee table and you, cross-legged on the floor wearing pajama pants and one of his old college-days pullovers. You’re building a puzzle, and don’t stop to look at him.
He can make out a kitchen to the right, but he walks straight to the couch behind you and sits down. His hand twitches.
“Where are we?”
You continue looking for the spot of a particular piece.
“Far enough.”
“Falcone?”
“Killed as soon as he was put into a room. They claimed suicide.”
“Gotham Square?”
“A massacre. The Bat got there too late.”
“The Bat? He helped?”
“As much as he could. He’s been a real hero, helping people evacuate and all. The city is flooded.”
Edward would break down in disappointment if he wasn’t already consumed by it.
“And the apartment? All my things, my- my mask?”
That finally gets you to give up, leaving the piece to the side with a sigh as you lift yourself off of the floor and into the couch.
“I burnt it all down. And no, there’s no chances of anything surviving that fire. I read those guides you printed off, anything I was unsure about I brought with us.”
He nods, for a long time. He fidgets with his hands and picks at his cuticles so much that they start bleeding.
“Smart.” He finally says, empty. Tired. Then: “The piece goes over there.”
Your eyes follow his movements as he picks up the piece and puts it in place, finalizing one of the flower petals on the puzzle.
“They arrested most of your guys, a couple of them died at the inauguration. So far none of them have spoken but-”
“But none of them know who I am anyway. Yeah.”
You sit in silence again, staring at the mountain of puzzle pieces still waiting to be put together.
“I had never felt so capable.” He says. “When I was at Mitchell’s house, inside Colson’s car… that was something unlike anything I had ever experienced.”
“I know.”
“It was like I was finally someone, like… like not even god could ignore me at that moment. Nor could anyone. I think those were the only moments where I really felt the earth underneath my feet, the only moments where I could truly recognize myself and the world around me. The answer to the previously infinite enigma.”
You don’t say anything when he starts crying, only sit there staring at nothing as he lays down and places his head on your knees like he’s done countless of times when you watched old films together, admiring the over-eccentric performances of Hollywood legends captured in sensitive celluloid and falling asleep just like that, with your hand buried in his hair and his hand gripping your thigh.
He’s inconsolable, so you let him get it all out and swallow your own sadness. You’ve cried enough, and you have the rest of your life to feel sorry for yourself. Right now though, he needs you. Perhaps more than ever. So you'll take care of him. Just like you always have, just like you always will.
You start humming as you make swirls with his soft hair and caress the back of his neck. He doesn’t know what terrifies him most, what you did or how sickly right it feels to have someone love him so much that they knocked him out and left Gotham to drown so they could take him away into safety. It’s not enough to make him feel any better, the love feels like poison corroding his body from the inside.
Later, after all the lights are off and you’re curled up side by side in the bed, he promises to never part from your side. You smile weakly and nod, knowing he means it. It shouldn’t be a somber statement, but it very much is. He doesn’t have a choice, and neither do you. You lost all say in the matter that day you crossed stares at the campus library.
You say goodnight and share a kiss, and when you turn away you pretend like you didn’t notice the pools of tears that were still forming at the corners of his eyes.
The jigsaw puzzle in the living room will remain unfinished.
Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means
we’re inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.
— Scheherazade, Richard Siken
A few days later, a man in a black mask steps into a burnt apartment.