A Soul of Shattered Glass
Oswald Cobblepot has a secret.
If he were pressed, he would admit he has several secrets, such as the ones he keeps from his mother, about the times he's been accosted in the streets and robbed, or how his old fashioned clothing and short, skinny frame makes him a target. Or the way he hides his high IQ behind meek uncertainty to avoid even more trouble. He's a genius, but he's careful about letting people know how smart he really is. How much he really sees. But there's one secret that's more important than any other to him, one secret he guards more fiercely than most.
Sometimes, he blacks out. The world fades away, and when it comes back, things have happened that he has no memory of. Usually violent things. Sometimes, when he wakes in the morning, he has bruises he doesn't remember getting, or a split lip or bloodied knuckles.
He doesn't always expect it, but he knows what's happened when it does.
He knows that the Demon has come calling.
***ASSG***
The first time it happens is when he's fourteen, cornered in an alley by a gang of half-a-dozen upperclassmen. Thugs really, two of whom he knows are already making a place for themselves in the criminal underworld as petty, small-time crooks. He only meant to take a short cut, because he's running late getting home, but it seems that was a mistake. Before he knows it, he's cornered, his bag ripped away, spilled open and pawed through, and he's being shoved back and forth in a rough circle, sneered at and spit on.
He's used to it. With his small frame and his high voice that never has broken to anything deeper (he keeps hoping), and his shy disposition, he's used to being a punching bag. He's learned not to fight too hard, not to protest too much, beyond some token whining or the infrequent cry he can't avoid when a particularly hard blow lands. Crying will only excite the beasts, and fighting will only invite more violence. He's not eager to repeat the four weeks he spent recovering from the fractured wrist he got the second time he fought back.
No, he's prepared to ride it out, then pick himself up and gather his things, whatever is left of them, when the bullies have been sated and had their fun. Then he'll go home, clean up, repair his bag and his clothes, redo his homework and replace his notebooks. He'll tell his mother a comforting lie about an accident so she doesn't worry, and then he'll spend part of the night fantasizing about what he'll do when he has enough power to make an impact. After all, he doesn't intend to be helpless forever.
The thoughts of vengeance are all he has to support him as he's shoved from one to the other, punched and kicked and shaken in their violent version of fun.
He's not paying too much attention, not until one young thug grabs him and makes the suggestion that, since he looks and acts like such a spineless little girl (he thinks that's a bit stupid, since he's met girls these idiots wouldn't dare tangle with) that perhaps they ought to treat him like one, in every sense.
He doesn't understand what they mean at first. Not even when the others laugh, harsh ugly laughs and agree, not even when they haul him up and toss him face down, pinning him over a rusty barrel that digs into his ribs. He doesn't understand and he thinks, later, that he simply didn't believe they would do this. Not even to him, target that he is.
More fool him. This is Gotham. There are no mercies, no protections that you don't make for yourself. He should have known that any depravity was possible, even though none of them are out of their teenage years.
Then he hears their laughing jokes about whether they should pull his pants off, cut them with a knife, or just rip them off. He hears the crude jokes about taking turns, and whether they'll keep him face down, or maybe go a second round and make him watch. Then he realizes fully what's about to happen, what they plan to do.
That's when he starts to struggle in earnest. Of course, he's pinned face-down, and he's outnumbered, and he's in a bad position, to say nothing of being unarmed. He probably wouldn't stand much chance if he'd realized sooner, but his struggles only get him shoved harder against the barrel, then hit roughly over the head, stunning him and making his vision gray out.
He feels hands on his belt, the horror of the violation he's about to endure, and then his vision goes black. And somewhere, as his awareness fades, he feels rage. They have no right to do this to him. No right. No right AT ALL.
That's all he knows for a while. But when he regains awareness, he's puzzled. He's no longer over a barrel. In fact, he's leaned against a wall. His pants are still intact. He doesn't feel the ache in his back and groin and buttocks that he thinks he ought to feel, if what he expected has occurred.
Moreover, there's blood on his shirt, blood on the front of his trousers. His jacket is ripped, and his mouth is bloody (he didn't remember that happening before) and, most mysterious, there's a knife, a four inch folding knife, clenched in one hand and streaked with blood.
He wonders how that happened. Then he staggers up, wincing at the ache in his ribs and his arms (he's got cuts that he doesn't remember acquiring there too) and looks around.
His bag is nearby. The alley looks, however, as if a miniature war erupted within it. Blood splatters over the walls, the barrel he thinks he was pinned over at last recollection is overturned and dented, almost crumpled. Two of the thugs that accosted him are slumped in awkward positions. One is moaning slightly. The other is still, but there's an ugly purple-black bruise forming on one side of his face. A second look reveals that the moaning one is bleeding from his leg.
He's not a nice person. He's certainly vindictive enough to walk over and kick the young tough in the face. But it surprises him, the look of raw terror he sees in the other boys eyes before he knocks him unconscious.
Clearly, he's been rescued, but he has no idea how, or how he ended up with a knife in his hand. Still, he doesn't intend to stay and ponder the mystery. He wipes any possible prints off the knife (who knows, with his luck this will be the one crime the police investigate this month), drops it, then shoulders his bag and leaves.
He gets home, tells his mother he was hurrying home and tripped into a rubbish bin full of sharp objects. He endures her worried lecture over his clumsiness, then heads into the bathroom to clean up.
He can't help thinking, as he washes away the blood and looks at himself in the mirror, that it looks like he's been in a fight. Like he fought back.
But he didn't. He never does. The mirror gives him no answers, so he turns away and goes to his room to do his schoolwork before he sleeps, and gives the matter no more thought.
***ASSG***
The second time it happens is three weeks later.
It's been an interesting three weeks. People have been looking at him sideways in the halls at school. People who normally ignore him are avoiding him, and people who normally harass him have been watching him with wary eyes. There are rumors that he's a vicious, violent sociopath, which he finds laughable.
If he were that, why would they have only started to fear him now?
Nevertheless, he isn't surprised when he gets cornered just off the school lot by another gang. He's seen the signs. Whatever happened, the thugs and gangs and bullies intend to make him pay for it. He's to be an example.
He's resigned to the beating, but that only lasts until the second punch hits, making his ribs creak, and he realizes...this won't be a matter of bloody lips and bruises or black eyes. He watches one of the leaders draw a switchblade, six inches long and ugly and glittering sharp, and he knows.
They mean to cripple him. Scar him. Break him. They'll leave him a vegetable, a cripple, a broken husk if they have any say about it. And that's only if they don't decide to do worse, and leave him dead.
For a moment, he's terrified, and he thinks he might piss himself, he's so frightened. But then it happens again. Under the fear bubbles up rage. Fury.
They have no right to do this. No right to scar him, to try and break him. He didn't ask to be assaulted. He didn't ask for this.
They have no right to destroy his life, whether it's by maiming him or killing him.
They have No Right.
The blackness bubbles up, mixed with red rage this time, and the world goes away.
When he comes to, he's collapsed against a nearby building. There's blood in his eyes, and he hurts. Really hurts. The recently healed cuts from his last little incident have been replaced by new ones. His shirt is such a mess he thinks there's no point in repairing it, and the blood will probably never come out. His hair is sticky and spiked up, and a tentative hand reveals that most of what's gelling it in place is blood and sweat. If he weren't so tired and sore, he'd shudder.
But those things are unimportant. What's important is the red-drenched knife in his hand, almost glued there with blood, and the bodies that litter the area.
The last time he saw the knife, it was in the leader's hands.
There are six people who aren't moving, and as he looks closer (not too close, it looks messy) he thinks that at least one of them might actually be dead. He almost hopes not, but then he remembers vicious eyes and the smug grins of human jackals waiting to tear him apart, and he amends that.
He doesn't think he really cares if they're dead. Only that he can't be traced to it.
He staggers up, retrieves his possessions and leaves. And this time, he takes the knife with him.
He washes up in a rain barrel he finds (water collection for the homeless, and they're all over the city) and uses his handkerchief to staunch the blood from the cut above his eye. He finds a payphone and calls to tell his mother he'll be late, making up an excuse.
Fortunately for him, it's a work night, and she'll need to leave soon. He only has to wait until she's gone to sneak in and clean up. He already knows there's no way to hide the bloody gash above his eye, but he's got a story about banging into a ladder ready for when she sees. The rest of his injuries will be hidden by his shirt.
He goes home, hides the knife in his closet, tends his wounds, and thinks.
He's almost surprised at his own callousness. Before this, he was resigned to enduring. He hadn't realized that he could look at a field of carnage and not care. Even if the victims were his own assailants.
He wonders what his mother would think of that. But he doesn't know, and he doesn't want to explain it to her, so he resolves not to ask.
That leaves the matter of the strange blackness, and waking up with a knife in his hands and blood on him. The first time, he was prepared to write it off, but as the old saying goes 'once bitten, twice shy'. He pulls out some clean paper and begins to make notes, ideas for researching this phenomenon. He's a little worried about the way the world goes black right before each episode.
Besides, he's not a fool. Just because both incidents occurred when he was being assaulted, that doesn't mean they'll never happen otherwise. He needs to know what's going on.
***ASSG***
He spends the next two weeks researching. After a bit of study, a trip to the city library and a lot of late night reading, he has some tentative theories. Blackouts under stress could be a Berserk state, triggered by his near-violation. If that's the case, then he's not concerned. It will only ever happen when he's in danger, and then...well, his attackers deserve the consequences. Especially now, when he's heard enough rumors around the school to know people are well aware of the potential danger he represents.
On the other hand, there are darker possibilities. Psychotic breaks, schizophrenic reactions, even an alternate personality buried deep within his psyche. He'd like to think he'd be aware of these things, but then an old quote comes back to him. Do madmen ever truly know they are mad?
He doesn't know.
Then one morning he wakes up, sore and stiff, with a bloody lip he doesn't remember getting and bruised knuckles. There's an unfamiliar knife on his dresser, flecked with blood, and the shirt he wore yesterday is stained with more crimson spots. Spots that weren't there when he removed it the night before.
Not a Berserk state then. He doubts he was attacked in his bedroom, and anyway, he certainly didn't get into a fight there.
Which leaves the darker possibilities after all.
That afternoon, he buys a newspaper and a small pocket notebook. He reads about a gang fight that put half-a-dozen toughs in the hospital and no leads, an incident that occurred not far from his home. Before bed, he writes a message in the notebook, linking the pen through the spiral when he's done.
I know you're there. I don't know who you are, but I know you're there. You're the one who beat up the gang members who attacked me. Who are you? What do you want?
He falls asleep with the notebook in his hand, so it's the first thing he'll see when he wakes. Or when someone else does. He's half hoping he won't get an answer, but he's half hoping he will. After all, an answer would prove a theory, and possibly provide him with a way to regain some control.
It takes four days, but eventually, he wakes up to find an answer scrawled on the following page. The handwriting is similar to his, but not identical. Slanted at a slightly different angle, a little messier, and written in a hard, heavy hand.
You KNOW I'm here? You think you know ANYTHING about me?! Do you really? You don't even have the guts to thank me. I SAVED you! Without me, you'd be some gangsters little whore, or worse. You know NOTHING. What do I want? Nothing a little pissant like you can provide.
The words are harsh, angry, and he thinks he can almost hear the sneer radiating from them. But at least he has his confirmation.
It's eerie, somewhat terrifying. There's someone else in his head. Someone he doesn't know. Someone strong, someone angry. Someone dangerous.
If what he read on the theory of dominant and non-dominant personalities is correct, the other him is stronger than he is. And that...that's what's truly terrifying. He doesn't want to be erased. Doesn't want to vanish. And what would happen to his mother, if this other him encountered her?
His first thought is to find a way to make sure this darker version of him, this violent madman hidden in his mind, can never emerge again. Drugs, Sedatives, meditation controls...even stimulants to make sure he never sleeps, since it's been proven now that his other self can emerge in any period of unconsciousness, as well as any situation of extreme danger.
Then he remembers the thugs who attacked him. The horror of nearly being gang-raped. Of nearly being murdered or cut up or having his bones broken.
He changes his mind. As uncomfortable as it is, he needs this other him. To survive, to achieve the things he wants to achieve. It might be his goal to become a power in Gotham when he grows up, but he's not delusional. Brains alone won't win him a place. He needs the strength, the ruthlessness, to back it up. And as skinny little Oswald Cobblepot, the person he was before and still is, he doesn't have it. Nor is there any good way for him to learn it, not without getting himself killed in the process. He doesn't have enough allies, enough connections.
This other him doesn't have connections either, but he has the viciousness and strength to stand up for them. The ruthlessness that Oswald could never really develop, not when he's worried about upsetting his mother.
So...what's needed is not a suppression of his other self, but a means of ensuring that his other self needs him enough for them to reach some sort of partnership. Coexistence.
That night, he writes another note. It's strange, writing to someone who is, in some aspects, himself, but he imagines that if things transpire the way he wants he'll get used to it.
You're right. You did save me. Thank you. And I don't know much, but...I know you're a demon. But I don't mind that. I think we can be useful to each other.
The next morning, there's a reply.
Demon. I like that. It's better than Oswald. But tell me, what is it you think you can offer me? I'm the one that saved you.
The next several nights result in an exchange of letters, as a slow agreement is formed. By the time the notebook is full, they've reached an accord, and it's one he thinks he can live with.
The Demon (he's taken to calling him that because his other self likes it, and it's a way to differentiate between them) is the power, the violence that will earn them respect. Oswald is the courtesy, the manners and politeness that will provide a cover for the Demon, and earn them respectability.
He knows enough to know the difference between the two, and because he knows it, so does the Demon.
Oswald will be the front, the face that shows to the world, the inoffensive and mild-mannered man who looks like he's harmless. A perfect cover for the killing machine that the Demon is. He will be the planner, and the one who allays suspicions.
The Demon will be the enforcer, the fighter. Brutal and direct, violent and sarcastic. The psychopath. The shadowy nightmare that wears Oswald's face, but couldn't be more different.
When they look at Oswald, they'll see the monster in the shadows, but they'll never be able to prove it's him.
For the Demon, co-existence is bought by waiting. Waiting for Oswald to summon him. It takes work, but eventually he convinces his darker half that mindless sprees, like the one that made him aware of the Demon's existence, are too dangerous to indulge in. At least, too dangerous to indulge in often.
Oswald's part of the bargain is more complicated.
He learns to fight with knives, the basics anyway. He'll never be as adept as the Demon, doesn't really want to be, but it gives him an excuse to carry a blade in his pocket. Something there for the Demon to use, though he doubts his darker half minds ripping knives out of their owner's hands.
He sets up several contingencies for dealing with his mother. Part of their bargain is that she will never meet the Demon, but that means it's up to Oswald to make sure she never suspects his existence. That's more complicated than it looks, given the circumstances.
He learns how to trigger the Demon, and how to suppress him. Violence will, naturally, bring his other half forward. But sometimes, Oswald knows, that might be a liability. It's usually worth it, but he doesn't want the Demon to get them shot, because he went on a killing spree at a bad time. For example, if he got arrested for something (everyone eventually gets arrested for something in Gotham). But with work, he agrees on a set of code phrases that will, with proper training, trigger the Demon automatically.
Innocuous phrases. 'It's a hell of a Tuesday', referring to the first assault where the Demon made his appearance. 'Damn, it's Friday', referring to the day he became aware of his other half.
They also agree on the circumstances that will awaken the Demon automatically, circumstances like the ones that previously triggered his existence. Violence. If Oswald is knocked unconscious at a bad time, or in a dangerous situation.
And, because there has to be a balance, they agree. Friday and Saturday nights are the Demon's time. A time for him to be free, if he wants to roam the streets. Not every weekend, perhaps, but when the urge to fight, to hunt, runs hot.
His mother always did want him to socialize. He doubts that this is what she meant, but, well...it's Gotham. And he is making connections, of a sort.
And that's their final agreement. That they'll continue to leave each other notes in the pocket notebooks that Oswald will provide. Notes of contacts, notes of interesting events. Notes that will help them move forward in their goals.
By the time they've concluded negotiations, Oswald is comfortable with the dark invader in his head, the Demon who shares his skin. Comfortable, and confident.
***ASSG***
Living with the Demon as a youth is complicated, but easy enough.
Living with the Demon as an adult, as he takes his first steps into the criminal underworld of Gotham...well, that's a lot more difficult.
Working the strings of the complicated nets of plans and contacts, betrayals and counters, that make up Gotham's underworld is a touchy business. Too little strength, and he'll be crushed. Dead if he's lucky. Dogsbody and thug's play-toy if he's not.
Too much strength, and he'll be killed as a threat.
The mob captain he makes contact with, a club owner named Fish, likes servile men who are willing to fawn over her. Her men like violence. Oswald makes himself useful, and waits until a carefully timed demonstration allows him to release the Demon.
It's fortunate that entry into the mob world requires an initiation. Proof that one has the nerves for the business. It's a perfect time to let the Demon out to play, even if he forgoes knives for a blunt object. No sense in giving away everything. With his other half coming out, passing his initiation, getting a reputation for a bit of a psychotic, sadistic streak, is easy enough.
The problem arises when he makes a mistake. When Fish catches him passing information to the Major Crimes Unit. Being a snitch isn't tolerated, even though it might be expected for a person in his apparently weak position. And getting caught...well, that genuinely was a mistake.
But as Fish bears down, striking out, the Demon roars up, and it's all he can do to force his other half back. Especially when his ankle is shattered. He almost loses control then. But there are gunmen at the doors, and he's outnumbered, and even the Demon couldn't cover the distance before being cut down. Especially on his newly ruined leg.
It's hard, but he manages, and it's Oswald who survives and convinces both Fish and the police not to kill him while he's vulnerable. Eventually, the Demon concedes the success of his strategy. In fact, for the first time, the message he receives in the notebook is not entirely scathing.
I suppose you do have your uses after all. Oswald.
It's the first time his other half has called him by name, rather than an insulting nickname.
***ASSG***
Neither of them like the nickname they acquire after that. Penguin. It sounds almost...insulting. But then again, no one would insult Fish, not to her face at least. And penguins eat fish.
Maybe it's not so bad. Or, really, it is, but it's something he can take and make his own. Or, more accurately, something he can make belong to the Demon. Because the Penguin is a rising name. A survivor. A survivor with a rumored dark streak.
The perfect cover for a Demon. And, oddly enough, his other half agrees with him.
He's far more careful as he reinserts himself into the criminal world. It isn't easy the second time, and he has to go to Maroni, rather than Falcone, but he manages. And Maroni is, in many ways, easier to deal with than Fish. Fish is violent and suspicious and twisty and paranoid. Maroni sees him as a man with ambition and manners, but doesn't see anything beneath the surface. He can work with that.
And work with it he does. He's not foolish enough to deal with MCU again. Instead, he trades information between mob bosses, playing factions both internal and external against each other. It surprises him to discover that he finds this game more satisfying. The thrill of the intellectual challenge, proving his worth, excites him.
The edge of danger, the constant risk of being found out, of being killed or assaulted...well, that excites the Demon. As does the sharp taste of triumph when they discover information about Fish. Fish, trying to engineer the downfall of her boss, Don Falcone. What fun it is, finding ways to use that to his advantage.
And that's just the first move, his opening play in the twisted world of Gotham's criminal empires. He imagines the rest will be much more exciting.
***ASSG***
Oswald has a secret. He knows the answer to his question now.
Yes, sometimes madmen do know they are mad. He does.
And sometimes…the Demon comes calling.
Author's Note: Started watching Gotham. It's been sporadic, but somewhere in there, this popped up and insisted on being written. Wouldn't take no for an answer. I debated about expanding it to cover more of the series, but then decided it works better as a one-shot. It's more fun to watch and go 'which one is that?'.