Chapter Four: Cobblepot Is Caught

He thought he'd finished running once he had become King of Gotham. Apparently, once a criminal, one's legs never truly stopped running.

Oswald stood over an open fire in a barrel in an alley, hovering near and around it were other unfortunate souls who'd had a bad rap in this world. He couldn't very well say that he was 'homeless'. Speaking politically correct, he had a mansion with a beautiful wife, and—from the looks of reading newspapers—she was still runnings things. On the surface, it appeared as though she was doing well. However, Oswald knew that Sylvia was likely hanging by her nails.

He couldn't go back though. He knew the moment he set foot in that mansion, that's when the police would arrest him. Oswald wouldn't care to be arrested, taking credit for what his wife had accomplished, putting Galavan's death under his belt, but Capt Barnes had it in for Sylvia. He'd find a way to sew her onto his sentence to Black Gate. 'Aiding and abetting, harboring'—even if the evidence pointed to Sylvia being completely innocent.

Well, not completely. After all, she'd held the gun to Galavan's head.

Oswald put his hand over the open fire. He was dressed from head to toe in the clothes he could find on the street. Better to look the part, right?

A man beside him softly spoke to himself. About the weather. About Gotham's history. And whether that sweet old lady would come to the park again to give out freshly baked cookies to the homeless. Supposedly, that was. Oswald had been on the streets for nearly a month and he'd yet to see this alleged woman handing out anything besides old bird seed.

Perhaps the self-chatting man was psychotic. Oswald didn't care to know. Instead, he kept walking, kept his head down, never minding the other people that gave him a wide berth. He wasn't the best smelling character—lord knew he had an odor about him by now. Maybe that would help him blend in with the lesser hygienic community.

Oswald chuckled to himself. That was a funny joke, he thought. No one laughed—then again, he'd made a point to remain optimally quiet as possible.

Sylvia would have laughed, he thought. Sylvia laughed at all his jokes.

"What's eating you."

Oswald startled, hearing someone actually talk to him. He was relieved to see that it was same old bum from the days before, the one that had talked about the woman and the fresh baked cookies. The same one that always talked to himself.

Oswald glanced him over, noticing that the man was dressed very much like him.

Worn, tattered pants. A too-big overcoat. Brownish black fingerless gloves—used to be light brown until the grime and soot of the fire and streets started seeping in. A red beanie on the man's head; Oswald's was of the same color. Perhaps all of these clothes had been once donated to charity—a bulk of clothes by one organization; a company who thought to shell out a few bucks at the Dollar Store before opting into a new irrigation system.

Who knew, anymore.

Oswald saw the man still staring at him.

"You're not much for words, are you, son?" The bum muttered; his voice was hard to understand, like a voice box that had been through the grinder one too many times, and it sometimes disappeared so Oswald might hear every other word or so.

Either way, he detected the sincerity in the old man's voice. Or what sounded like it.

"Just thinking of old times," Oswald said, appeasing the man with an answer.

The old man nodded, as though the same statement was his own.

"Sometimes," the man said, "I think of my family. Particularly….around this time when the….is pretty bad, like a storm...coming around. It's gonna rain….about a day or so, I hear. Rain...always flushes out the bad, and….bad always seems to come right….right back in. Know what I'm saying?"

"I suppose so," Oswald answered, nodding.

"Got family, son?"

Oswald nodded again.

"What are they like?" He asked.

"She's beautiful." Oswald answered.

"Wife?"

"Yes, sir."

"Sounds beautiful already," the old man said, giving him a toothy smile. The old man's teeth were already gone, with the exception of a single tooth on the front. Half a buck tooth, it looked like.

"She is."

"What's she do?"

"She sings."

"Arias?"

"Mostly," Oswald answered.

"Is she still alive?"

Oswald considered telling the old man the truth, but he couldn't trust someone he'd just met. Maybe not even the people who'd been working for him for more than a year.

"Not anymore." Oswald lied, looking at the ground with faux sadness. The sadness wasn't all pretend; he missed her greatly, after all.

"That's a shame." The old man said. "What's her name?"

"Diana."

"Beautiful name."

"Yes, it is." Oswald said, smiling. It wasn't Sylvia's first name. Her middle name was Diana. But there was an honesty there, and that's the most that Oswald could offer this friendly man. "What about you?"

"Me?"

"Any family?" Oswald asked curiously.

"Just a wife," he said.

"A wife?"

"Yeah."

"What's her name?"

"Diana." The old man answered, sending Oswald a tongue-in-cheek grin. "And she sings arias too. Mostly, when I'm boinking her."

Oswald suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. It looked like the old man was having a laugh. At this point, the sincerity was gone, and Oswald was no longer in the mood to appease. He took his walking stick that had been leaning against the barrel of fire, and started walking onward. His other cane, the black one with the penguin silver handle, was back at the mansion. With good and obvious reason, he'd left that one behind.

A moment later, Oswald bumped into someone. He started apologizing, then realizing it was an officer, he mentally slapped himself.

So frustrated with the old man that Oswald hadn't watched where he was going. He walked himself right into a police officer. One that looked way too happy when he saw who he was. Oswald didn't even bother to escape when the police officer grabbed his arm, and said, "Wowie—I can't believe my luck! Barnes is gonna give me a full week off when he sees what I've found!"

Oswald went without a fuss into the police car. Officer What's-His-Face contacted the GCPD station, and there was a lot of back-and-forth before they resigned to the fact that Oswald Cobblepot had been caught after evading the law for exactly thirty-two days. A good record, an admirable one, really.

Meeting them at the front of the station was Capt Nathaniel Barnes, and the Strike Force. Once Oswald was shuffled out of the police car, Capt Barnes gruffly took him by the elbow and said, "We caught you now, Cobblepot."

Oswald used his right to remain silent and said nothing back. What good was it anyway?

As he was pulled through the door, there was a lot of clapping and cheering that greeted him through the doors. The police—civilian clothes or not—were clapping, and all happy….Barnes looked annoyed. And he showed it.

"SILENCE!" Barnes bellowed. Everyone stopped applauding. "What are you, a bunch of cheerleaders! This is not a game! This is our job!"

As he moved through the room to put Oswald behind bars, he continued scolding: "And this…specimen…this is just one sad, pathetic skell. There are plenty like him. Plenty."

Oswald sent Barnes a salty look as he started walking away. People were still staring at him. Oswald sighed exasperatedly.

"That's right, stare all you want!" Oswald told them. "Big whoop! You got me. I'm cool."

An officer took off the handcuffs and then unceremoniously shoved him in the cell.

"It's all good!" Oswald said, glaring at him.

And the door was slammed shut. Despite his situation, Oswald wondered if Sylvia was doing better than him.

It wasn't much longer before Oswald was pulled into another room. The interrogation room, in particular. He sat in the chair on side of the metal table, glancing at his own reflection which looked back at him from the two-way mirror.

Ten or fifteen minutes passed before Capt Barnes entered the room, closing the door behind him.

"All right, Cobblepot," he sighed.

He pulled the empty chair to him, sitting on it backwards, opposite of Oswald. Barnes looked to be three times as big as the chair, and it would have been comical if Oswald hadn't been feeling less than up to par.

"Tell me what happened at Galavan's that night."

"Well…." Oswald drawled. "A lot of things happened."

"Why don't you start with the moment right after you knocked me out with that vase." Barnes said gruffly.

"I'm sorry about that. Such an exquisite vase."

Barnes said stiffly, "This is my amused look. Now, keep talking."

"I took Galavan to the river and I killed him. Slowly."

"You confess to murder?"

"Yes, I do. Proud of it." Oswald responded calmly. "I'm not a criminal, you know. I'm just….insane." A small smile reached his lips.

"Well, your far better half would say otherwise."

Oswald tilted his head to the side, curious. Then he realized that Barnes was talking about Sylvia.

Wasn't it great how she always made her way into the conversation, no matter how great or little her involvement was?

Oswald put his hands on the table, to show that not only was he not at all disarmed by Barnes' subtle way of mentioning his wife, but so he could touch the wedding band on his hand. Mindful of his thoughtful ministrations as he turned the band with his right hand, thinking of not just his next few words but also of her memory.

Sylvia wasn't dead. But it'd been a long time since he saw her. A month seemed like years to him.

"My better half?" Oswald said, playing naive.

"Your wife."

"Mmm."

"She's admitted that you and her are criminals. Not very law-abiding."

"She speaks poetically," Oswald offered. "She has a Shakespearean humor, if you haven't figured that one out."

"She was there?"

"Where?"

"With you, that night. You, Galavan, and Sylvia."

"She didn't come with me to the river." Oswald said simply. "She wanted to stay with her brother."

"What did James Gordon do?"

"What did he do when?"

Patiently—but sternly—the captain said, "What did he do after you knocked me out?"

"What does he say he did?"

"I'm asking you." Barnes said dangerously, looking like he might bust a gut.

"He stayed behind," said Oswald. "A couple of my associates and I were able to elude Detective Gordon; we brought Galavan to the river, and I beat him with a baseball bat. After that, I shot him in the head."

"Sylvia Cobblepot?"

"What about her?"

"She didn't come with you?"

"I said she didn't."

"Jim, himself, said she has an 'unflinching loyalty' towards you," said Barnes coolly. "Like Bonnie and Clyde. I've yet to see her ever choose James over you. She wouldn't stay behind."

Oswald smiled, saying, "That doesn't sound like a question, Captain."

"More or less a statement of the fact," Barnes returned coldly. "You're telling me that your wife—this woman that has an incredible reputation for okaying everything you do—didn't come with you to the river to see Galavan die. That doesn't sound like her."

"She chose to stay with Detective Gordon," Oswald reiterated.

"And you were fine with that?"

"She wanted to be with her brother. I wouldn't stop her from seeing him."

"And she didn't get involved."

"Get involved with….?"

"Killing Galavan."

"No. She wasn't involved." Oswald clarified, smiling in spite of Barnes' look of frustration.

"And you killed him. Alone."

"Yes, I did."

"Why do I have a hard time believing that?" Barnes breathed through flaring nostrils.

"I don't know, Captain. That sounds like a personal issue only you can figure out." Oswald answered smartly, clapping himself on the back to see Barnes become that much more irritable.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe you are insane." Barnes growled. He stood, adding, "Get used to a room this size, Cobblepot. That's where you'll be for the next ten years."

Oswald frowned, watching Barnes leave the room.

Jim sat in the Captain's office, feeling more nervous than comfortable. Most of the cops were happy that Penguin had been caught. Jim couldn't feel the same cheer.

What if Barnes broke Penguin? What if Penguin gave up that Sylvia had killed Galavan? Or even….what if Penguin divulged that Jim himself had been present when Sylvia had killed him. He'd already denied having been at the scene of a crime countless times!

Jim reassured himself of the facts. One: Penguin….no….Oswald Cobblepot loved his sister. Penguin and Oswald were the same person, but Oswald Cobblepot was whom Sylvia fell in love with. Not the King of Gotham. The Umbrella Boy. The same person—if Jim wasn't mistaken—would gladly die before placing Sylvia in a position where she would have to go to Black Gate.

Sylvia was tough. Tougher than Jim, himself. But he couldn't imagine what kind of person would come out of those gates if she was ever let out. She'd be meaner, tougher….a killer born through the decade of constant beatings and lashings.

Jim could barely see Sylvia as the killer she was in the present. He still had a vision of her enjoying being a Girl Scout, or trying out for the Dance team. All crimson pony tails, and sugary smiles. Jim shuddered at the thought of her becoming something worse than the Penguin's co-conspirator. There was more at stake.

Back to the facts, Jim.

One: Oswald Cobblepot loved his sister. Two: Jim knew that Barnes would try to trip Penguin up with talking about Sylvia. There was no way Barnes wouldn't ask Penguin if she was involved.

Seeing—if anything—whether Oswald would corroborate the story Jim had told.

The story in which Sylvia was innocent, someone who had no involvement in the death of Theo Galavan.

Despite it all, Jim was certain that Oswald wouldn't put Sylvia at risk. If anything, Oswald would put the blame on him. Say that it wasn't Oswald nor Sylvia who held the gun, but that it was Jim that pulled the trigger. That wouldn't bode well for him on either account. The only positive outcome of that was that Sylvia would still be innocent, her crime covered up and brushed under the rug.

Either way, even if it did come to that, Jim would take his beating.

The door opened.

Jim suddenly stood, seeing Barnes standing in the doorway. It looked like he had received some bad news. His gaze was disappointedly staring back at him. Waiting for a confession.

"You've got something to tell me?" Barnes questioned.

A sly way for Jim to 'fess up. But he stuck to his story in any case Oswald did hold up his part of the bargain.

"No, sir. Nothing." Jim answered.

Barnes said calmly, "Well….Penguin backed your story."

"You mean he told the truth."

"Yes. That's what I am choosing to believe. It's good to have you back, James."

Barnes held out his hand. Jim began to shake it. But then Barnes pulled him forward, making Jim more tense than anything.

"I'm choosing to trust you, Jim. I'm trusting that you've told me what I needed to know, trusting you. Don't make a fool out of me. Got it?" Barnes said, his voice was dangerously quiet.

Jim nodded: "Yes, sir."