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The first few days after Edward had shot Oswald Cobblepot and watched him fall back into the cold water of the Gotham pier had been much more difficult to handle than he had expected them to be. At first, he felt nothing but energy, a rush of power and strength that coursed through him like nothing ever had before, and he felt convinced that he was capable of taking on anything. That feeling had quickly turned out to be nothing more than an adrenaline high, because that same night, the energy drained out of him completely and was instead replaced by an almost unreal feeling of dread and doubt. He had killed Oswald Cobblepot, Gotham City’s mayor, the former leader of Gotham’s criminal underground, and his best friend.
Oswald was the only person to have really ever seen Edward for who he actually was, and for who he could become. Despite the fact that he knew within himself that it was the only option, after the unbelievable betrayal from Oswald, to open the door to Edward truly finding himself, he still couldn’t get rid of the overwhelming feeling of regret that had overcome him. He had soon realized that it was the same feeling of hurt that he had felt after he had killed Kristen.
Edward didn’t sleep at all the first two nights, unable to avoid the image of Oswald’s horrified expression as he sank into the water every time he closed his eyes for too long.
The third day after Edward had shot Oswald, people had began to ask around, concerned about his whereabouts. It was only mildly surprising how quickly the disappearance of a city’s mayor became noticed, and of course the first place they would look was the mayor’s mansion, though the only person inside the large manor was the chief of staff. When Harvey Bullock, stand-in captain of the GCPD, called Edward at the early hours of the morning and a few no-name officers in blue showed up to ask some questions and take a statement from him, Ed managed to play the part of worried coworker and concerned friend very convincingly. His acting skills were nothing to ignore, but the bags under his eyes were genuine.
That night, after continued trouble sleeping and an inability to feel much else besides regret, Edward felt like he was going to lose control. In an act of pure impulse, he left his room and went straight up the large, ornate staircase to the master bathroom within the room of Oswald’s late father, where he searched through every cupboard and drawer, until he found a small, antique tin filled with white pills that he hoped would provide him some sort of relief from the troubles that were plaguing his mind. He had tapped out one capsule into the palm of his hand, and he barely took a moment to consider it before he raised it to his mouth and swallowed it.
That had been the first time he had seen him.
Edward leaned forwards with his hands on either side of the bathroom sink, his fingers curled securely around the edges of the cold porcelain. As he stared down the dipped curves of the sink’s walls and into the dark void of the drain, he waited in silence for something to happen or change. He knew that pills didn’t work immediately, of course, but he had nothing better to do than to stand right there, in Elijah Van Dahl’s bathroom, completely alone with his thoughts to consume him for a few moments longer.
After having stood there, motionless and silent, for more than a few minutes, Edward had a sudden sense that the drugs had kicked in. It could reasonably have just been placebo, but he had been staring down into the drain of the sink for so long that it seemed to pulse slightly, and though he knew it wasn’t, it seemed as though it were slowly widening, a threat that if he stayed and stared at it for even longer it would open up and swallow him whole. The thought of it was still obviously absurd to him, but there was a twinge of irrational fear that traveled up his spine and ultimately made him rationalize that he needed to prevent the impossible from happening.
The fingers of one hand uncurled from around the edge of the sink, stiff from how long they had been held in that continuous position for so long, and moved upwards to take hold of and twist the closest knob, releasing a steady stream of water from the elegant copper faucet and directly down into the drain. Now that the drain was obscured by the flow of water, Edward felt the anxiety in him lessen considerably, and he let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, before he swallowed, realizing that his mouth had gone dry. This was fine, he reassured himself—it was actually helpful. He would just go downstairs to get a glass of water from the kitchen and clear his mind. He actually felt alright, for once, in the last couple of days, and with that thought he turned the water back off and looked up into the mirror, a confident smile in the process of forming on his lips.
As soon as he focused on the reflections in the mirror, however, the ghosting of a smile instantaneously fell from his face and was overtaken completely by an expression of pure shock. According to the mirror, standing directly behind him this whole time was Oswald Cobblepot. With a shuddered gasp, Edward turned around as quickly as he could, stumbling back against the edge of the sink as his eyes landed on his dead best friend, who was grinning smugly right back at him.
“You—What are you doing here? How?” Edward’s voice shook with uncertainty as the words fell from his mouth in an almost yell, shock punctuating each syllable as he tried to access the situation. He could almost feel his heart beating in his chest as he breathed unevenly, and he swallowed again, the action stinging slightly because of how dry his throat was now. With wide eyes, behind the frames of his glasses, Edward scanned up and down Oswald’s figure, taking a second to fully take in his disheveled appearance.
Oswald was completely drenched in water, his hair was messy and his bangs plastered against his forehead in chunks, his skin glistened slightly in the dim light of the bathroom, and where he stood a pool of water had collected at his feet. Besides the water, he was adorned in various other accessories from the murky depths of the Gotham docks. Seaweed clung to his body, draping in clumps over his shoulders and around the cuffs of his slacks, the sickly green giving contrast to how dark his suit was. It seemed as though Oswald had just clawed himself directly from the water, but even through the sudden shock of it all, and the presumably drug related hazy feeling in his head, Edward was sure that it certainly wouldn’t have taken three days for him to do so.
“What’s wrong, Ed? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Oswald’s tone feigned obvious query, though at the end he laughed before he continued, almost mockingly, “Oh wait, I guess that’s appropriate, isn’t it?” As he spoke he leaned forwards slightly and threw his arms out in gesture, water droplets flying off of his finger tips, before his hands forcefully fell back down audibly against his thighs. His grin remained, such a familiar expression on a face that Edward thought he would never see in person again.
Edward tried to respond, but all he could do at that moment was stare in disbelief and try to stay calm, though that seemed to be an losing battle. He expected Oswald to do any number of heinous things to him as payback for completely abolishing his empire and dumping him into the docks, but as he clutched at the sink, which was currently the only thing responsible for keeping him steadily upright, seeing as his knees weren’t feeling very stable at the moment, Oswald simply stood in place, an expectant look on his face.
After a few moments of quiet hung between the two, with the only discernible sounds being either Edward’s laboured breathing or the barely audible dripping coming from Oswald, Edward managed to calm himself down enough to actually stand up straight again. He took a tentative step forwards, and then another slightly more generous step, until he was just in front of Oswald. His eyes flashed down briefly towards the floor in order to make sure his bare feet wouldn’t make contact with the accumulated water that continued to pool around Oswald’s shoes, though he quickly continued to keep his attention closely on the waterlogged kingpin.
“There’s no way that you could be here right now, like this. You can’t be real.” Edward’s voice was unintentionally quiet, a whisper that escaped his lips quickly. Hanging down by his sides, his fingers twitched as he tried to rationalize what was happening and what to do in reaction to it, while Oswald just let out a short laugh before he replied again.
“Can’t I be? Go ahead, Ed, check.” Oswald’s response was similarly quiet, though not quite as hushed as Edward’s, and it held a slight edge of hostility as he dared him to touch him and to confirm that he was really standing here, in the bathroom of his mansion, taunting his murderer and his once best friend. Edward hesitated to raise one of his hands up into the empty space that divided the two men, and he was visibly shaking with some combination of continued shock and doubt, before he finally reached out, aiming to touch the center of Oswald’s chest.
Instead of making some sort of connection and feeling the cold wetness of his drenched suit, Edward’s hand passed right through Oswald’s body and fell back down to its starting position at his side. He truly wasn’t there at all in any form besides what his eyes could discern.
As soon as it had happened, and after Edward had watched his own hand go right through what he had thought was his best friend back from the dead, a wave of intense adrenaline rushed through his body. His emotions all became much more present in his mind, all of them opposing and just slightly overwhelming. Of course Oswald wasn’t alive, Edward had seen all of the blood that had poured out of him after he had shot him, and he had watched as Oswald sank down into the murky waters of Gotham. He had been both witness to the ex-mayor’s demise and executioner, and from what he knew, there was very little chance of Oswald somehow coming back from that. Even in Gotham City, where people had been miraculously coming back to life for a few years, no one else knew where Oswald was or what had happened, besides Edward. Oswald was dead.
Standing this close, and now that he had calmed down considerably, Edward was able to get a far better look at this apparent apparition of Oswald, and it made it even clearer that he was not alive. Oswald’s damp skin was far paler than it had ever been, and it held a dullness that no living person could ever possess, and his lips had lost their once pink coloring, having been replaced entirely in a familiarly lifeless blue. Even more off putting, however, were his eyes, previously an icy blue, they now had a glassy sheen to them that was only really visible when looked at this closely. His complexion recalled all of the countless cadavers that Edward had examined while still working for the GCPD, one particular woman regrettably sticking in the forefront of his mind for a few seconds longer.
“So what are you, then? A ghost?” Edward was feeling a little bit more daring and definitely more at ease now that he was over the initial shock of seeing Oswald again outside of his nightmares, and it was portrayed by his steadier, slightly accusational tone of voice. He was thinking quickly as he spoke, considering the unlikely possibility of this apparition being an actual spirit, and then his thoughts seemed to immediately click into place. Edward turned on his heel to snatch the previously inconspicuous tin of pills from where he had set it down on one corner edge of the sink. As he quickly turned back to face Oswald, he held up the tin and shook it slightly, audibly jostling all of the capsules held within it. “It’s these, it has to be these. You’re not real, just a hallucination caused by the pills.”
“Bravo, Ed, you figured it out! Just like how you figure it all out, huh?” Oswald’s grin grew and he swiftly raised his hands in a flourish to clap his hands together a few times in a show of congratulations that was clearly facetious. Once he had finished clapping, the sound somehow echoing around the spacious bathroom despite the entirety of this Oswald being an evident creation of Edward’s mind, he continued to speak, his tone now the one accusatory as he thrust a hand forwards to point at the tin still clutched in Edward’s hand, “Or was this not exactly what you wanted when you killed me? All of the opportunity in the world is right in front of you now that I’m out of the way. You and Barbara Kean have complete access to all of Gotham’s underworld, but instead of going out there and making a name for yourself, you’re sitting alone in my mansion taking drugs.”
“I have to lay low for a little bit longer, if I were to just go out right after you disappeared and start acting recklessly, all of this would have meant nothing,” Edward replied quickly, his tone biting as he sneered at the hallucination of Oswald. He didn’t even address the last comment about the pills, both because he didn’t need to explain himself to this figment of his imagination and because he wasn’t yet sure how he could argue against it. He remained silent for another brief second as he thought, before he continued in a tone that expressed his growing annoyance with the hallucination, “You need to leave, I don’t want you here.”
Oswald’s initial reaction to Edward’s demands for him to leave was to stare at him, eyebrows raised just slightly upwards in an expression of amusement, before he leaned forwards and laughed. When the laughing died down once again and Oswald stood back straighter to meet Edward’s eye, he spoke up in a taunting tone and words edged in spite, “To the contrary, my dear friend, I wouldn’t even be here if you didn’t want me to be in the first place! You said it yourself, I’m just a hallucination. I’m in your head, and that means I know far more than you take me for, Edward Nygma. I know exactly why you took that pill, and I know all of your regrets!”
As Oswald spoke, Edward’s sneer grew into an even further unpleased grimace and he turned around in an attempt to walk away from the hallucination, though he only went as far as the sink. He momentarily glanced at the mirror again, only to be met with the smug visage of his dead best friend, still taunting him ruthlessly, and the more prominent reflection of his own distressed self. He leaned forwards with one hand propping himself up against the sink while he moved his other hand upwards to rake his fingers through his hair. This was outrageous. Edward’s breathing was picking up it’s pace again as he struggled with what to do. As soon as the hallucination of Oswald mentioned the regretful feelings that had been surfacing within Edward over the last few days, he growled and shouted angrily, “Just shut up!”
Despite the volume and hostility that made up Edward’s tone, Oswald ignored his order and continued talking as if he hadn’t said anything at all. “Ever since you shot me and threw me into the pier you’ve been regretting it. You were so sure of yourself when you did it, so confident, but where did that go? It hasn’t even been a week and you haven’t even been able to sleep without thinking about me—”
“I said shut up!” Edward yelled, suddenly interrupting Oswald’s continuous tauntings as he turned around and lunged forwards towards him, his hands shooting up towards his throat. Of course, his hands went right through Oswald, just as they had before. It was an instinctual action with no thought or pre-planning involved, which he immediately regretted as soon as he realized what he’d done. He was now standing only a mere couple of inches away from his hallucination of Oswald, each breath he took coming out unevenly.
Oswald had stopped talking once Edward had advanced on him, his face going blank in mild surprise with the sudden actions, but just as quickly as his face had fell, it lit back up as he processed what Edward had just tried to do. His eyes widened slightly and his lips spread into a wide grin, revealing his unclean teeth as he tried to speak without losing himself in laughter. “You just tried to choke me, Edward! Now that,” Oswald gestured to him with enthusiasm as he paused for a brief moment, “That is absolutely hilarious. I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised—You do seem to have a thing for that, don’t you? First Kringle, and we both know you would have done the same to Isabella.”
“I would never have hurt Isabella! I loved her, and she trusted me.” Edward quickly replied, tone defensively assertive as his hands clenched into tight fists where they hung down at his sides. He stepped away from the hallucination after he spoke, his jaw tight and his brows pulled together as he glared at Oswald and tried to recollect himself. He almost felt like he was going to be sick, his stomach just as uneasy as his mind, but he continued to ground himself with the fact that Oswald was nothing more than a trick of his mind. It hit him then that the only one keeping himself there was himself, and before his hallucination could say anything else to provoke him, he turned around and walked right through the door and out of the bathroom.
Edward didn’t stop walking once he was in the master bedroom, his bare feet quickly traversing over the cold hardwood flooring and towards the door that would lead him towards the stairs and back down to his room. He pushed open the already partially ajar door to the hall, only to be met by Oswald standing in his way. His expression was curious, and despite the idea that he knew all of Edward’s thoughts because he was a creation of his own mind, he inquired immediately, “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to my room and I’m going to go to sleep,” Edward came to a halt right in front of Oswald as he answered without hesitation, before he paused and questioned rhetorically, his tone holding an edge of hostility, “Why am I still even talking to you?” He didn’t wait for a response from Oswald before he stepped forwards again, passing right through the hallucination. One of Edward’s hands moved out to lay over the ornately carved wood of the railing, his palm gliding easily over it’s glossed surface as he hastily descended down the stairs.
After a few seconds, Edward reached the last few steps without hindrance and he headed right for the hallway that lead to his room. He turned the corner and wasn’t surprised to be met again by his hallucination of Oswald, a frown etched into his features and his sharp brows pulled together in an expression that read clearly as annoyance. It almost made Edward stop walking, the look and attitude behind it overwhelmingly familiar. Even though he had already figured out that Oswald wasn’t really here, he could hardly believe that his hallucination seemed so vivid and sincerely physical.
“You can’t just ignore me, Ed.” Oswald stated as he presumably followed him down the hallway, though Edward didn’t take a moment to turn around and check. Oswald’s tone had lost some of its bite and instead portrayed a sense of sincere clarity, and it caused Edward to reassure himself once again that he was conversing with a creation of his own stressed out mind, and that any questions Oswald proposed were already known to the both of them. Edward didn’t reply immediately, his jaw firmly set in place as he came to a stop before the door to his bedroom, and he hesitated for another brief moment before he reached his hand out to turn the antique doorknob and push the door open.
The door opened with ease and Edward’s hand fell back down to his side as it continued to slowly swing forwards on it’s own, the hinges creaking slightly until it ceased motion, just before it would have made contact with the wall within the bedroom. It was dark inside the room, Edward had the curtains drawn shut and there was very minimal light spilled past him from the lamps that were on in the hallway, but Oswald’s silhouette was still discernible from the surrounding darkness, seated on the bed in the middle of the room. Edward waited in the doorway, for nothing in particular to happen, before he was met with nothing and he entered the room, walking towards the side of the bed where he easily located the bedside lamp and he turned it on.
The intricately patterned stained glass tiles that made up the shade of the Tiffany lamp illuminated the bedroom in an array of soft, varied colors. It didn’t really do much to fully light up the entirety of the room, the corners and spaces around furniture remaining obscured by shadows, but it fully revealed Oswald where he was still sitting on the edge of the bed. His head was tilted back and to the side so he could easily keep his eyes on Edward, who continued to stand motionless beside the bedside table, his lips set in a fine line as he stared at the hallucination of his dead best friend for a few more seconds.
It still felt so surreal to Edward that he had managed so successfully go through with killing his best friend, who had also been the most prominent kingpin of the crime world of Gotham in years, without any present faults in his plan. The surreality of it all was pushed even further into view as he studied the waterlogged copy of Oswald that his stressed out mind had managed to create. Edward’s gaze focused specifically on the corner of the bed where the hallucination was comfortably perched, the area of the comforter beneath him appearing darker as though it had soaked up some of the water that seemed to be endlessly dripping off of Oswald. He wasn’t certain without actually touching the spot, but he assumed that there was no way the comforter was actually wet, though it looked almost alarmingly real.
“Are you just going to stand there all night, Ed?” The hallucination questioned rhetorically in a calm, though obviously taunting, tone that broke Edward’s attention away from his thoughts and back to the present. Oswald smirked as Edward’s eyes focused more clearly on his face again, the expression and almost teasing attitude behind it resonating heavily with Edward, memories of every time he had observed Oswald give that same expression when he was still alive immediately flooding to the forefront of his mind. If similar thoughts had crossed his mind any other day previous, Edward would have been plagued with doubt in his own actions but, strangely enough, the memories left him feeling relatively unaffected. There was still a twinge of regret pulling at the back of his mind, though overall he found that he felt considerably level-headed.
“No, I’m going to go to sleep. I’ve got important plans that I need to organize tomorrow.” Edward replied in a calm tone, his voice holding only an edge of sternness to it. He felt fairly certain that enough time had passed since he had killed Oswald that he could begin seriously fleshing out the plans that he had for Barbara to take control of the criminal underground, and for himself to make a name and identity in that criminal underground. Edward wanted to become a threat to Gotham that no one would ignore, and with his intellect and cunning, he was confident in his ability to do so. He just needed to come up with a catalyst to really start things off. Edward’s mind was already filled with ideas and small, but immensely important, details that he needed to work out as he finally moved away from the nightstand, walking forwards until he could sit down on the edge of the bed beside Oswald.
Another blanket of silence overtook the two of them, though this one felt noticeably more comfortable than any previous, seeing as Edward had calmed down and thought over his and the hallucination’s situation a little more thoroughly. Another contributing factor in the calmed atmosphere between them was that Oswald hadn’t been nearly as aggressive or accusing as he had been while upstairs in Elijah’s bathroom. When he wasn’t relentlessly trying to antagonize Edward, Oswald’s presence was almost grounding in a strange way. As Edward continued to reassure himself that the Oswald sitting right beside him, smirking smugly at him, was a creation of his own mind and that the actual Oswald was really dead by his own hand in the pier, it helped him to clear his mind of doubt and focus on what his plans were.
“I’m sure Barbara is getting bored waiting around without me,” Edward eventually broke the silence, choosing to voice his thoughts aloud in order to verbally organize them, to a minimal degree for now at least, “I definitely need to call her tomorrow and discuss things before she gets too antsy and does anything stupid.” A quick hum of contemplation closely followed Edward’s words as he continued to think through how he would ideally like things to go over the next couple of days, and preparations that he would have to make. He still needed to devise how exactly he needed to go about fully realizing himself, and then how to appropriately proclaim himself to all of Gotham City. The only thing stopping him was finding that elusive key to unlocking the potential inside of him.
“Oh, of course, Barbara. Are you really sure you want to associate yourself with that backstabbing, power hungry—” Oswald was quick to reply to Edward’s plans, sitting up straighter as he spoke, the heavy amount of annoyance steadily growing with each word that passed through his lips. Edward turned his head to the side to observe the hallucination ball up his fists and glare off towards nothing in particular, the emotions he was portraying seeming so realistic in that moment. Every time he looked directly at Oswald, whenever he actually took a moment to stare at the hallucination, Edward continued to be briefly caught off-guard by just how convincing it was.
“Shut up, Oswald,” Edward’s tone was stern as he interrupted Oswald, though it was nowhere near as hostile as he had become earlier, managing to keep it just forceful enough to assert himself, “I know what Barbara is capable of, and what she would try to do if she could, but she needs my help right now. Even if she did do anything to try and betray me, I’m sure you already know, I have a plethora of backup plans in mind.” He stared at Oswald for a moment longer, fully taking account of the glare, only mildly heated, that Oswald was giving to him for interrupting him. As he looked forwards again, face angled towards the wall and loosely studying the woodwork, from the corner of his eyes, he caught how Oswald rolled his eyes while he sighed.
“Always planning ahead, Edward.” Oswald stated in a sarcastic tone as he also tilted his head upwards by a few degrees so that he could look forwards at the wall, his sharp brows pulled close together and his lips just slightly pulled upwards into a smirk. The expression, along with how intensely he appeared to be following all of the intricately carved marks in the trim of the wall, portrayed recollection despite the hallucination’s lack of actual memories. When Oswald turned his head back to the side to look at him again, his slight grin quickly pulled into a much more amused smirk as he spoke up again, “So, I’m sure you’ve already figured it out, but if you really want me to shut up, all you have to do is not take anymore of those pills.”
Edward’s eyes fell from where he’d been blankly staring at the corner of a picture frame and down towards his lap as Oswald continued, and his hand slowly moved from where it had been lying limply at his side atop the comforter of the bed until he slipped it into the pocket of his pants. From it, he easily produced the tin of pills, having previously put them there without even thinking about it. It must have happened before he lost his composure while still upstairs, and he’d forgotten about their whereabouts until now that they had been brought up again. He had already considered that choosing to not take anymore of the pills was more than likely the only way to get his hallucination of Oswald to leave, and that had been the plan up in the master bathroom, but now he wasn’t sure. While they did cause hallucinations of his dead best friend, they had also aided him in easing his conflicting feelings about his actions concerning Oswald’s death, and he felt so much more level-headed than he had the last few days.
In addition to what Edward was considering benefits, the more he thought it over the more he came to the tentative conclusion that maybe the presence of his hallucination of Oswald wasn’t as terrible as he had thought. He was almost positive that Oswald was going to continue to get on his nerves, but he also felt as though he was keeping him focused on his goal and that it was almost helping his grief to have the apparition of his dead best friend around him. As he continued to firmly reassure himself that this Oswald was just a creation of his own mind, it helped him keep track of everything else that was reality and what was just him overthinking things too thoroughly. Edward realized, almost suddenly, that Oswald was probably only here because it was exactly what his stressed mind actually wanted to see.
Edward was pulled away from his thoughts after a few more seconds by Oswald clearing his throat, and as his eyes focused again, he realized that he had been staring in silence down at the antique tin of pills held in the fingers of one of his hands. His knuckles were pale as a result to how firmly his grip was and because of how long they’d been held in place as he lost himself in his own thoughts. Without saying anything to acknowledge Oswald for the moment, his other hand moved outwards to pull up the lid of the tin and once again expose the white caplets that resided within. He only hesitated for another second as his thumb and forefinger picked up one of the pills, and he quickly brought it to his lips.
The pill caplet entered his mouth and Edward swallowed it dry with relative ease, before he shut the lid of the tin again and he finally tilted his head to the side so that he could make eye contact with Oswald again. He quickly observed the considerably smug expression that was waiting for him there on his features, and Edward didn’t stop himself as he felt a slight smile rise to his own face.