Chapter Text
Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
-Richard Siken
It’s way past midnight and despite your best efforts to wait for him, you’re falling asleep.
You’re sick of the routine, of coming back home from work hoping tonight will be different, hoping tonight he will be waiting for you with a cheap glass of wine and your usual order of chinese take-out, all smiles and nervous giggles and adoring eyes, rambling about some new puzzle he bought for the both of you to assemble together.
He used to do it so often that it’s not hard to close your eyes and picture the scene, both of you sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, sneaking bites of orange chicken between each piece you managed to correctly place in its designated spot, classical music softly playing from the shitty radio in the kitchen. He would only get the most challenging of jigsaw puzzles, so despite his reputation, sometimes it would take you multiple nights to finish assembling your most recent masterpiece (if it weren’t for the soft hands that eventually made their way into his hair, his leg, under his shirt… then the puzzles wouldn’t stand a chance against him.)
Opening your eyes you come to the realization that maybe that’s why you’re here, cold and alone in the bedroom while he works in the living room that used to be your playground. Your movie night spot, your reading couch, your dance floor… Now it’s all covered with sketches and mad ramblings, half-built inventions and rat cages. You’re a distraction, so he kicked you out.
It had happened so slowly, so unexpectedly, that you hadn’t even noticed something terribly wrong was creeping into your lover’s mind until it was too late. Once you started to see through his little white lies and emotional manipulation, once you realized the orange bottles that once littered your bathroom cabinet hadn’t been touched for months, he was far too deep into his plan, far too deep into his despair and need for revenge, for renewal , to even consider turning back around.
So after the pathetic attempt to organize an intervention for Ed had turned into a full on mental breakdown for him, who you had unintentionally turned into a sobbing angry mess, you had nothing else to do but to lay down your arms and surrender to the new Ed. It’s not like either of you had the means to pay for a therapist who was even slightly more competent than the one he used to see, years ago after he had gotten out of the orphanage. You could barely even afford his meds as it was. (Before he stopped taking them and started using the money for other means, that is.)
Little by little things had started to escalate, despite his endless promises of not letting his new project (for lack of a better word, plan made it seem more sinister somehow) get in between his relationship with you or worsen his mental health issues any more than it had already done.
The latter he had only mindlessly agreed to after you mentioned it, too devastated at the mere notion of having you be upset with him, tears and snot running down his alarmingly reddened face, postured on his knees while grasping at your hoodie with shaking hands like a little boy whose mother just catched him stealing a few bucks off of her wallet. It was a pathetic sight, a blatant red flag staring at you right in the face, but lord knows you couldn’t stand to watch him cry, let alone sob. Lord knows you couldn’t deny him the right to take a little action against the system that had continuously fucked over you both and everyone you once cared about. After all, he did say it wasn’t even that big of a deal. Just a couple of leaked personal files of some random corrupt lawmaker, a couple of pictures of the elite entering or leaving the lounge accompanied by people way too young to be near the club. It had sounded scary at first, sure, but wasn’t it the noble thing to do? The right thing to do? He had convinced you oh so easily.
But Gotham was shameless in its cynicism, like everyone who lived here had collectively agreed to turn a blind eye against the horrors of the city, either out of fear of what could happen to them if they didn’t, or simply because everyone was used to the every-day hellhole that was Gotham City. Even after releasing a 58-page document with attached, tangible evidence registering the thousands of violent crimes that the GCPD had willingly ignored or covered up only that year, nothing had changed. Not one of the news channels had covered the leak, not one politician spoke out to condemn or defend the accusations, it had just been radio silence. All his research and hard work had only served the purpose of a couple of popular local twitter accounts posting things like “How come no one is talking about this?” only to go back to ranting about how the Gotham party scene was being ruined by drop addicts a few minutes later. Everyone knew the GCPD was corrupt, they didn’t need evidence to be convinced, they just didn’t care. The files had been deemed so unimportant that no one had even bothered to try to take them down.
He wept in your arms the morning after the release, trying to match his breathing to yours like you had practiced thousands of times before and failing miserably. He was in such a state that for a moment you feared he would never stop crying. Later on, however, he got up to cook dinner for the both of you while humming a made up, eerily calming tune. You thought that was the end of it, that maybe that night you’d convince him to take his meds again and everything would go back to normal.
Before you knew it he had started tinkering with little contraptions that you could only call death traps, sinister blueprints littering every surface in the living room. You’d come home from work and find him standing over a beat up desk someone had abandoned that he had dragged block after block and staircase after staircase to sit near the window of your shared apartment, humming that godforsaken tune and pinning newspaper clippings to the wall. The knot in your throat would sting so hard that your only rational choice was to swallow your words and approach him carefully to slide your arms around his waist and rest your head on his back. At first he stopped humming, turning slightly to peer over at you as much as he could, smiling fondly before greeting you only to then get back to his work.
“Hi there, my love.” He would say softly, eyes still shining with the same adoration as always. “Have a good shift?”
Eventually he stopped giving you a chance to answer, filling the silence with his humming. Then he wouldn’t even look at you, muttering that as much as he loved you, he really had to focus on his work.
And now here you are. Desperately clinging to the slightly distant sound of whatever the fuck he was doing with his newest toy, heart beating faster whenever his footsteps got closer only to be disappointed when they turned back to the living room after a few seconds. Tonight you were supposed to make progress in the book you had been reading together every night or so, before all of this. He had promised you, he had said tonight he would make some time in his schedule, lies, lies and more lies. You knew he wouldn’t, but still you waited for him every night, hoping you could stay awake long enough to at least fall asleep next to him.
It was such a weird kind of misery. One day your boyfriend -your partner of more than seven years- spent most of his free time thinking up ways to please you, to make you laugh, spent hours cooking his version of an elaborate dinner even though he couldn’t cook decently even if he tried, left you sticky notes with sweet riddles hidden on the inside of your pockets, your books, the inside of your shoes for crying out loud, only for the pleasure of knowing you’d find them throughout the day and have something to think about while breaking your back waiting tables, something to make you smile when you weren’t together. One day you were obsessed with each other, clung together, attached by the hip because neither of you had had anyone else before you met, but somehow you had found each other in this shipwreck of a city, almost like a miracle.
And then the next day he was pushing you away after deeming you too much of a distraction. Poor little you, once again swept aside, this time by the only person you had ever truly loved. There couldn’t possibly be a worse fate than this.
Almost like it’s scheduled, a loud, angry metallic sound wakes you up maybe three seconds into falling asleep.
“FUCK!”
You were up in an instant after hearing his pained scream, kicking the blanket off of you before you even heard something heavy hitting the floor. If you were asleep only seconds ago, it sure didn’t seem like it with how quickly you made your way into the living room.
He’s on his knees, curled into himself with the crown of his head on the ground like he’s saying a prayer. You know better, immediately focusing in on the way he’s holding his right hand, pressing it against his chest and rocking back and forth to try to compose himself.
He fails, letting out a broken, ugly whine as he tries to gasp for air. Next to him on the floor lies a machine of his own creation, something resembling a collar of sorts, with nails lining the inside of it. There’s blood on the floor, though not much. Thank god. Or whoever else is out there, if there’s anyone at all.
You immediately deduce what happened, kicking yourself for not thinking about the possibility of Edward hurting himself with one of his macabre inventions, thought it’s understandable that your worries mostly consisted of him getting hurt by the people he’s trying to rebel against, disappearing to never be seen again or whisked away to be locked up in Blackgate or, even worse, Arkham. You don’t want to think about which of the possibilities is preferable.
You’re by his side in an instant, one hand on his back while the other picks up his glasses from the floor because you know how helpless he feels without them. He fails to keep his groans in, filling the otherwise undisturbed living room (now that the rats have calmed down) with frantic breathing and ached wails that are oddly musical. He always did have a certain cadence when he spoke, and even stranger, when he cried.
“Here, here.” You mutter, voice composed and just loud enough to ground him. “There you go.” You push his glasses into their rightful place at the top of his nose, brushing hair off of his sweaty forehead.
“Y/N.” He manages to croak out while extending a hand to grasp one of yours, and it's in that moment that you realize where the blood that wasn’t pooling on the floor went.
His dark green hoodie is covered in it, making a large wet circle right above his heart, where he holds his injured hand.
“Oh god Eddie, what did you do?” You scooch closer to him, putting a hand on his shoulder so he’ll lean back enough to let you get a clear view. His hand is just… a gory mess. While the tears on his skin aren’t too visible, partly due to the blood that obscures them and partly because the nails on the collar weren’t too long or thick, it’s clearly broken. There’s a part of his palm that must have gotten caught on the nails when he retracted his hand, if the thin patch of skin that dangles off of his palm is any indication. You’re a Gotham native, born and raised, so while you’re most certainly no stranger to witnessing injury, the sight of your boyfriend holding his mangled hand against his chest makes you want to retch.
“The collar.” He says, slightly more composed (now that you’re here, thank whatever divine force I'm supposed to believe in that you’re here, he thinks) but still fighting the tears that gather at the corners of his eyes and slide down his cheeks despite his best attempts to hold them back. “I was testing it I- I- I- I- don’t k-kno.. know what went wrong. I must have triggered it somehow.” You brush his tears away, holding his face in your hands and nodding avidly so he knows -so he’s sure- that you believe him. It’s been a while since the stutter came back, so you know he’s slipping back to his childhood. He does that whenever he’s sick or injured.
“It’s okay Eddie, we’ll get you to the hospital and they’ll take care of it, okay? You’ll be fine.”
“No. No hospitals, they can’t- they’ll ask too many questions.”
You’re hoisting him up, swallowing the tight pain that spreads down your legs as a reminder of how many hours you spent on your feet earlier today.
“This is Gotham Ed, we’ll tell them some idiot in a mask bashed your hand with a baseball bat after you refused to give him your wallet or something, they don’t care.”
“I don’t want to go.” He whines. “Please, please don’t make me go.” There’s something almost boyish about him, staring at you with glassy eyes and pleading like he truly believes you’re leading him to his doom. It happens every once in a while, after a scene in a movie hits too close to home or a song from back in the day comes on the radio, triggering him right back into his childhood.
Usually you just gave him space and he’d come back to himself after a while, but that was back when he was still on medication.
“Edward, I need you to listen to me. If we don’t go and get this taken care of you’ll either pass out from losing blood, or it’ll get infected and you’ll lose your hand. You know this, so please, please snap out of it and come with me.”
Despite how… not-himself he’s acting lately, he’s not one to refute logic, especially when it’s his hand, his ability to work , that’s at stake.
Without a word he nods his head, blinking off the remaining tears. You pass him a kitchen towel so he can put it around his hand and grab onto his good arm after you both walk out the door.