watch me squirm baby, but you are just what I need
And I've never played a fair game
I've always had the upper hand
But what good is intellect and airplay
If I can't respect any man
Oh I want to play a fair game
Yeah I want to play a fair game
Don't leave me, stay here and frighten me
Don't leave me, come now enlighten me
Fair Game - Sia
Ed has always been a man of two minds. Ego and the id. Intelligence and instinct. The man and the Beast. He has grappled with the two every day of his life, beat down the one only to find it rearing its head once again with each new sunset.
Liminality has been his only existence, and so he never questions it.
As a child Ed loves the sciences. Going into the lab each day at school, the scents and smells always tug on his senses, light up his eyes like magnesium and oxygen because he has never experienced anything else like it. There is a freedom in the unrelenting pursuit of knowledge, in losing oneself within a whirlwind of facts and figures and words all twisting and dancing about him in riddles that are so, so beautiful. Ed makes a vow at the age of seven which he holds to for the rest of his life: he is determined to be the only person in the world to know everything.
Intelligence covers Ed like a blanket, a false floor which hides the Beast which twitches beneath. The Beast bides its time. Silent, watching. Waiting. It knows dear old Edward can't keep it locked away forever, no matter how much it is ignored.
Ed goes through life awkward and set-apart from his classmates. He tries to convince himself that it's a good thing, something which merits celebration not shame but it gets harder and harder with each insult, each casual brush off, each rejection. The words in his head which spin themselves into entrancing spirals of red and gold and bronze always seem to get tangled when he opens his mouth, sputtering out clipped, half-garbled attempt at a riddle. And his peers, they always laugh. Instead of letting himself be consumed by fear and frustration Ed throws himself into his work, into learning, into 'fulfilling his potential' even if no one else recognises it.
He's beaten up by other kids, bigger and stronger and faster than him, so often that the weekly encounter becomes as commonplace as receiving homework. However its normalcy never seems to diminish the quickly ensuing blaze of anger, those beautiful words are twisting into barbed spikes, daggers of hate and fury and I'll tear you apart, shred you to pieces limb by limb, take your entrails between my teeth and pull.
The rage is so strong it scares him. However, there are always more than him and he can't do anything, can't make good on those secret threats no matter how much he shakes with fury.
At the end of the day he's just Ed. Boring, spastic, retarded Edward Nygma; what could he ever do? He keeps his head down, eyes to his books and promises himself once he leaves this town he will be better and more brilliant than everyone else.
Finally, after what feels like centuries of waiting, Ed moves to Gotham. He finds a surprisingly affordable and spacious apartment. He joins the GCPD. For the first time, his life is working out, feels that his mind is finally valued. On his first day on the job he meets the most beautiful woman with the greenest eyes he's ever seen; his very favourite shade. Ed smiles to himself, going to bed that night. The perfect job, the perfect city, the perfect woman. His life is finally looking up.
But soon that optimism starts to drain, a niggling voice always in his ear, whispering you're no better off here than back home. You think you've made it but you're still nothing to these people. You will never be enough.
As Ed has been doing all of his life, he ignores that voice. He ignores the Beast rattling its prison bars within him, buried deep beneath layers of his consciousness which he has spent decades constructing. Life at the GCPD trundles on as normal and he thrives; and yet, he knows he wants something more. Something he cannot put it into words. It is a hunger which itches at his skin, under his skin and never goes away. It is deep and aching and angry and yet he cannot for the life of him work out what it is.
Then he hears of a man who is single-handedly infiltrating and transforming Gotham's criminal society. A man who is a master manipulator, murderer, schemer. A man with perhaps as brilliant an intelligence as Ed.
Oswald Cobblepot. The name tastes heavy on his tongue, consonants forcing the words to the front of his lips, demanding all of Ed's attention. He couldn't have ignored him if he'd tried.
If anyone ever asks he's casing Oswald - or rather, 'the Penguin' - for Detective Jim Gordon. It's not a complete lie. The information Ed gathers over the course of the ensuing weeks and months could be put to great use by the police department. After all, Ed has always had an eye for detail. However, his job isn't what makes Ed's heart pick up each time he hears that name, his name, spoken in conversation.
Oswald Cobblepot is fascinating. The kind of fascinating which lodges itself inside a corner of Ed's mind and sets up camp because this is not a passing obsession, a flame which burns out too hot and fast to mean much of anything. No. Oswald simmers, a back-burner in the hidden, unacknowledged cavities of his thoughts. Ed doesn't even know whether it is him who is fascinated by Oswald, or the Beast.
For the first time he wonders if the distinction even matters.
Ed sees him once. It is in a night-club, one of those vampire haunts - Maison de la Mort. Typically melodramatic. Edward Nygma would never normally be found dead in such a place of course (yes, pun intended) - all of the dancing and ridiculous costumes and surfaces which are so unsanitary. But it had been an open invitation to the entire GCPD after a successful raid… And Miss Kringle had been going. Ed had made the decision to attend far too quickly.
He realises that night, with painful clarity, how much of an outside he he is. When his colleagues all go to dance Ed stays seated, eyes drawn always to the swaying from of Miss Kringle, glittering in a sequinned dress, emerald-green and just a bit too tight. She shines on that dance floor like the sun; beautiful, radiant and completely untouchable.
But then that brute of a police officer is there, dancing with her, hands everywhere and Kristen is giggling, looking up with coquettish eyes, moving closer-
Ed wrenches his gaze away when the tightness in his chest becomes too much. Don't look at what you can't have. Stare into the sun too long and you will be blinded.
To save his sanity he instead scans the crowd, watches the vulgarities of modern life with a bored indifference and, after a few aimless minutes his gaze catches on something. A man; short, dark hair crested over his head. Almost birdlike-
Oh.
The Penguin.
Realisation comes to him in a bolt of adrenaline. For a second Kristen Kringle is forgotten, eclipsed and the rest of the blaring noise and swirling colours fall away - all that remains is the most underestimated and dangerous man in Gotham. Sitting, but twelve paces from Ed, stiffly watching the crowd with a ferocious intensity.
He looks ready to kill.
Ed's head whips down to his drink and the noises of the club come rushing back to him. Fear fuses with the thrill of danger in Ed's chest like a badly mixed drink. Should he alert the rest of the officers? Call Detective Gordon? If the Penguin was here then they could be in danger from some sort of attack. A quick glance to the officers confirms: none of the others have seen him, no one knows but him.
Ed fumbles in his jacket to retrieve his phone. For some reason his face is flushing- the room suddenly unbearably hot. He searches through his contacts, finds Detective Gordon, fingers tripping over themselves in his panic. Before he presses 'call' his gaze flickers uncertainly back up and his stomach drops.
In that singular second a stray blue light flashes across the Penguin's face and Ed watches, stunned, as all that rage is transformed, peeled away like the sheet covering of a corpse from the morgue. He looks so...small. Empty. Unsure. Like he wants to vanish, to disappear, to just stop being. The sharp blue LED turns his eyes into whirlpools that are screaming of a deep, unfathomable loss and loneliness that threatens to drown him.
Ed cannot breathe.
Because, in that moment, Oswald Cobblepot looks exactly like him.
The phone snaps closed. Ed stands and, as surreptitiously as possible, crosses the crowded room, approaching a tall, burly man in leather.
"What's the matter?" the bouncer snaps. Ed takes a deep breath.
"There's a man over there, sitting in the corner. Short, black hair, dark suit. He's been following my-" Ed swallows, "my girlfriend around. It's really starting to creep her out."
The guard raises an eyebrow. He looks over towards to Oswald and Ed knows the second he sees him by the small frown which creases his forehead. Oswald is quite the oddity after all.
Ed swallows again. "We're really not comfortable with remaining in this- this establishment if he's still here. I think he brought a knife."
The man grunts again but he wearily uncrosses his arms and begins to move away. As quickly as possible Ed retreats to the bathroom, heart pounding beneath his chest. There are some rather suspect groans coming from the furthest stall along but Ed can't bring himself to care.
With shaking hands Ed splashes water onto his face, letting out quick, short breaths as the cool water soothes his burning cheeks. He removes his glasses, gripping the stone counter as he feels his legs spasm. He didn't see you, it's okay, breathe, he didn't see you, he didn't see you. Ed looks up into the mirror and feels the floor fall out from under him.
A man stands before him, pupils wide and dark, red coating his cheeks. He looks nothing like the reflection which usually greets him, nothing like the Edward Nygma he sees each day. No: this new self looks exhilarated, empowered. Alive.
Finally, we see each other plain Edward.
Ed blinks and his reflection winks back at him. It is all he can do to keep standing, gaze fixated on this new, unknown vision. His face is his own but...those eyes. Ed finds himself leaning forward. Those eyes are so dark. So hungry. So ferocious. Barely human at all. Why, they are almost like a beast's...
Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Through the walls the muffled rhythmic beat from the club sounds like footfalls.
The spell is broken. Tearing his gaze from the mirror Ed hastily puts back on his glasses and smooths his ruffled hair, breaths heavy and ragged. He waits until the low groans from the stall have stopped, until he hears the sound of a zipper and fumbled curses. Only then does he leave. Three minutes pass after sitting down before he checks.
Oswald Cobblepot has gone.
With a shaking hand Ed lifts his drink to his lips. It tastes bitter on his tongue.
Good. That was good. It wouldn't have done if the police members had spotted Oswald's presence.
Ed knows that night changes something in himself. He cannot quite describe how but he cannot get the image of Oswald, sitting in the centre of a club centred around vampires, out of his head. It visits him in his dreams far more often than he cares to admit. There's no logic in it, no rational explanation but whatever flickering flame of interest had burned for Oswald before is now fanned into a roaring fire, unparalleled to anything he has ever experienced.
Because, the night Ed first sees Oswald in the flesh, first chooses Oswald's survival above his duty, first saves Oswald's life, two men are murdered.
About half an hour after the Penguin's departure a woman runs into the club, screaming bloody murder, and the inebriated officers rush out to investigate. The bodies are half naked, male, glistening top to toe in sweat and blood. Their faces are destroyed; flesh mangled and mutilated beyond recognition. Tattooed skin hangs limply from snapped bones. Blood seeps into the gutter like sewage. One officer throws up from the sight alone, another two from the smell.
Ed first ensures Miss Kringle stays inside, then he calls it in, gets to work, mind blindingly alert. Every cell in his body is screaming, skin burning up with hellfire because something instinctive in him just knows - this is Oswald Cobblepot's doing.
Therefore it is Ed's as well.
Eventually it is ruled as another case of these strange feral dog attacks, the ones which surface every few months at sporadic intervals and locations. Ed doesn't openly disagree - how can he? Those two men were dead because of Ed's decision, he is sure. There is no proof and so he is not scared of discovery. What does scare him is that he feels no guilt over his choice whatsoever.
That night sparks off a chain reaction in Ed; mind reeling through theories about Oswald. Mad, insane theories because Ed looks at the evidence and it doesn't add up. No one else seems to see it, or maybe no one wants to see it - the dullards are too wrapped up in their own world to see the truth of Gotham which is staring them in the face.
But even Ed has to wonder...Oswald Cobblepot. A vampire?
It sounds crazy. Insane. A legitimate ground on which to be sent to the old Arkham Asylum. And yet…
Something in Ed snags over the thought, like a thread over a door knob which is unraveling everything. It creeps back into his thoughts, incessant, unrelenting. While Ed has never been a superstitious man he is also not prepared to rule anything out, to ignore a possibility just because it doesn't fit in with the expected norm. Something instinctual just says that is the answer; the words taste right in his mouth, just like Oswald's name.
He cannot prove it, of course. Still, the moment the infamous Penguin walks through the GCPDs doors Ed is ready, grin plastered across his face because he gets to meet this mystery man at last. It is almost impossible not to mention that night at the club but he resists temptation, reveling instead in knowing something that the Penguin doesn't.
I saved your life. Everything you do from now on is a partnership between us, my seal stamped on every lie, every manipulation, every murder. You owe me, Oswald.
Immediately there is a power play between them, an exhilarating give-and-take which Ed has never experienced before. It is a brief moment of brilliant exuberance; yet things soon start to spiral down once more. Officer Doughtery is harassing Miss Kringle, and it cannot stand. Before long, thoughts of the mafia war ripping its way through Gotham and the constant fear for Miss Kringle's safety overshadow the Penguin and his mystery. Life moves on at a startling speed and it is all Ed can do to keep moving.
It is in this kind of frenzied whirlwind that Ed lowers his guard, relaxes his grip, so caught in the sheer pace of his new life. One day the Beast inside is restrained. Controlled. Waiting.
And then, the next, with no warning, it breaks free.
Ed kills Officer Doughtery. It is human, entirely human; a moment of mind-numbing panic and a knife positioned at just the wrong angle. One. Two. Those first stabs are innocent - the idiot practically walks into the blade.
An accident. That's what they all say, isn't it? Just an accident.
Ed feels the chains rattle, bars bend and snap inside his mind and suddenly Ed is gone, removed, replaced. Something else glares out from behind his eyes, his lips split wide and menacing into a smile which feels wrong, alien. The Beast thrusts and stabs and carves into flesh - free. Free.
The metro scrapes across railway lines and he can feel the electricity in the air, taste it on his tongue. Copper and energy and he is shaking, his skin vibrates-
"Oh no. Oh dear."
His mouth no longer feels like his own and he is standing in the middle of the road, a dead man at his feet and anyone could see. And he is terrified. More terrified than he has ever been in his life because he knows, he knows-
The Beast is free. And once you let the genie out of the bottle…
He laughs, but it isn't a laugh. It is manic and desperate and possessed because really he doesn't want to laugh.
He wants to howl.
The trains crack again, lightning and energy, and Ed is back, just as suddenly as he was removed. The Beast has receded back into its crevice and Ed is master once more. Why it let him back he has no idea but he cannot think clearly, cannot begin to puzzle out its reasons, process what the hell just happened, he doesn't understand-
There is only one thought, branded into his brain.
Hide the body.
Officer Doughtery is heavy but strangely Ed can lift him without much effort. He drives and drives until he is outside of the city, the forest calling to him. He throws open the car door, a good half hour from Gotham's suburban scrawl and the scents of the forest assault his senses like salt on a wound. It feels like a homecoming.
Ed stands beside the body, hands shaking and he wonders how on earth he got away with it. Everything feels wrong, warped. Like eating a half-cooked meal, some unidentifiable thing inside feels off-kilter. But staring down at the man who was hurting Miss Kringle, his Kristen...if nothing else Ed feels powerful. More powerful than he has in his entire life.
Hide the body. With the forest filling him up with every inhale, Ed feels the indefinable urge to rip the man apart with his teeth and nails. He hesitates for a moment, then heaves the axe.
Of course, after that everything goes to shit.
Ed will never forget looking into the mirror and seeing, for the first time, that same reflection from the club stare back at him, taunt him, mock him. No glasses, smug smile, glittering eyes. The Beast is finally out and it will not be ignored. Every word it speaks reverberates inside Ed's skull, shakes his very bones, sometimes more like growls than any human language.
Ed is left alone and defenceless, fighting a creature he knows he cannot win. Words and flesh against tooth and claw. How was he ever supposed to beat the creature he always wished he could become?
Eventually he is pushed too far, nerves so frayed by the constant doubts, insults, jibes. His patience snaps under a pressure which has been building since his childhood and so he does the impossible.
"Go on a date with me."
Ed turns on his heel, skin rippling under a surge of dark gratification. The Beast hums its approval and the ever gloating, ridiculing whispers fall silent. Finally.
Giving in to the Beast is like standing in the top of a very high building, feeling the overwhelming primal urge to jump, and following it. Ed finds himself in free fall, breathless in terror and exhilaration as the darkness in his mind seeps into the waking world. The Beast twists his vision; what used to be petty annoyances (like that officer who perpetually chews his nails, or Bullock's blatant dismissals) are now glaring offences, a swarm of rats beneath his skin. Sudden bursts of almost uncontrollable rage take Ed by surprise, not to mention a...spontaneity he hadn't before been capable of. It is disconcerting, finding new layers to his previously thought perfect mind.
Still, it does have its benefits; Miss Kringle is undeniably one of those. After all this time; dead, wasted time spent waiting she is his, truly his and no one else's. Ed loves it. He relishes every time they kiss, every time he holds her, every time he rubs his scent into hers. Claiming. Owning. Possessing. Her green eyes stare into his and he is reminded of the forest. Of homecoming.
For all that anticipation it doesn't last long.
Miss Kringle is dead.
The woman he has loved since he first came to Gotham, the woman he thought his soulmate, is dead. Ed's hands wrap around her throat, his grip too strong to be entirely human and it is his fault, his fault.
Ed kills Miss Kringle and there is pain, pain everywhere. An instinctual maelstrom of grief and rage and pain. It starts in his stomach, peels back his organs from the inside out, claws up his throat and escapes in a howl. The Beast roars with him. Everything burns, white hot, lacerating.
Ed blacks out, the world pulling away from him like a scorned lover and even then the pain doesn't stop. The darkness seethes, smothers him as he sleeps, drowns him. Over it all he hears the rumble of his own voice, as gentle as a judge passing sentence. Murderer.
When consciousness finally returns to Ed the world is wrong. Or rather, he is wrong for the world. He lies on the floor, body sheened with sweat and it is all he can do to simply continue breathing. His body feels like a jigsaw, taken apart and put back together in the wrong order. His joints no longer fit quite the way they used to and, as Ed gingerly begins to move, the bones crack into place like they've been broken. The Beast has cut him up like a surgeon and scars run crisscrossed along his bones, across his muscle, through his sinew.
It is terrifying. Not knowing who or what you are anymore. He spends the whole day in this suspended state, mind fixed in a numb state of denial. He stumbles blind, a half-formed monster, every ounce of willpower spent on remaining conscious. He chases after Miss Kringle's stolen body, still pitifully fighting against his own mind and the Beast jeers at him through it all.
The world is featherlight, cascading into dust and he is heavy, cumbersome. Weight and load and he can barely move, barely breathe, barely think. Nothing feels right, nothing works, he is wrong, he is so wrong and he hates it, hates himself, hates this city for unlocking what should never escape-
How. Did. It. Feel.
And then, everything is right.
Ed's vision focuses and he looks out at the world with fresh eyes. There is no more fighting, no more pain, no more barriers between 'him' and 'it'. There is instead...peace. Equilibrium. A strange quiet settles inside his normally screeching mind and he wonders: why had he been struggling against something which was there to make him better, more powerful, more him? Now, there is nothing more to hold him back, nothing to stop him from taking what he wants, nothing more to rob him of what is rightfully his.
Everything is finally as it should be.
The Beast laughs as he vivisectors and eviscerates Miss Kringle's body. She disappears, juices running down the GCPDs drain to mix with the other waste and refuse, as if she was never there.
And, just as Miss Kringle vanishes into nothing, so does Edward Nygma.
/
He is burying the pieces of Miss Kringle's body when he finds him. The dead autumn leaves crunch under his paws, scents of the forest intermingling with the stench of stale decay in a toxic, intoxicating odour. It wouldn't feel right to say goodbye to Miss Kringle wearing skin, not fur. After all, Ed has her to thank for setting him free.
A man happens upon him as he's digging. After the good few hours he's spent in the woods it shouldn't be surprising but Ed is all instinct and carnality. Fresh blood christens Kristen's body and, yes, it's awkward but he nudges the hiker into the hole as well. Two's a company, he supposes.
The moon's beams cut into his fur and he howls - free, finally free.
Then he hears something. Ears pricking up, Ed raises his snout into the air, muscles suddenly taut. Something else is calling to him. An answering howl, weak and pained, yet there. The chord it strikes is broken and mourning. A dirge. A song for death.
Ed howls again.
This partner of the night answers in kind.
Instantly, Ed is off, bodies and burying forgotten. The air bends around him, mud and earth turns to dust beneath his paws as his world becomes a blur of movement. Running. Hunting. Seeking. I'm coming. Wait for me.
The little travelling motor-van is ramshackle, an odd metallic anachronism of civilisation in this world of wood and earth. But there is something inside, Ed can taste it on each heaving intake. Cautiously, he pokes his head through the creaking door and finds the source of this unexpected harmony.
A man lies, crumpled in a corner. Shadows cling to his form so tightly that they would shroud his presence from any human eye, but not a wolf's. Tentatively Ed takes a step further, and no- this is not a man. How could it be? Life is as absent from this creature as it is from a pile of dirty rags. Death hangs about it, it's cheeks hollowed, eyes sunken and pinched closed as if every moment brings a greater agony than the one before it. It smells like a corpse.
It is not alive. And yet, somehow, it lives.
Ed makes a noise, questioning and this...creature blearily opens one eye. It squints so hard Ed doubts whether it can even see him.
"Help me." Its voice is trembling and cracked yet Ed feels a jolt of adrenaline go through him him because that voice is unmistakable.
Mr Penguin. So I am to save your life a second time.
Ed finds Oswald as a Beast, but he rescues him as a man.
He doesn't once doubt his course of action. All it takes are two words and it is as if some biological imperative is triggered inside him, just like stabbing Officer Doughtery, strangling Miss Kringle. Oswald asks so he obeys. It is that simple. Clothed now only in skin he carries the unconscious body in his arms; it would appear those words were the last of the Penguin's strength.
Back to the car. Quickly dress to recover that precious warmth (skin is so much less practical than fur). Hurriedly finish his ramshackle burying. Drive home. Miraculously transport Oswald Cobblepot to his apartment without being seen, all of Gotham's inhabitants seemingly asleep or drunk.
Now Oswald lies in his bed and Ed can barely breathe, barely move for excitement, terror, uncertainty. He has no clue what to do. Possibilities and probabilities whirl breathlessly through his mind. Oswald Cobblepot. The Penguin. At last an answer to his burning questions.
He walks to Oswald, this strange little man who looks on the edge of death, eyelids closed and fluttering. In a bed I lie, but it was not I who bought it. I use it every night but I never know I do.
"So Mr Penguin… What are you?"
Deep down Ed already knows the answer, already knows what the result of this test will be but he must do this. He must be sure.
Gently, Ed runs his fingers through the matted, black hair, feels the dirt and forest residue scratch against his fingertips. Then, slowly, he traces his hand down the neck to the pulse point: two fingers, pressure and wait.
After fifteen seconds he grins.
"Mr Penguin. It is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance."
Okay, you've been very patient in reading until now - sorry to leave on such a cliffhanger but more will be coming soon (I promise!) and plot is actually going to start happening. By the way 'Fair Game' by Sia, this chapter's song, is absolutely perfect for this relationship, particularly on Ed's side. Please go and check it out, go and listen to those lyrics. You'll be amazed I promise.
Thank you for reading, leave me a review to let me know what you thought :)
~Secret Agent Codename Bob