Ed and Lee settle into the bedroom that had been his, back when he had been Oswald's Chief of Staff. They sleep for almost a full twenty-four hours before rising. He wakes before her.
"Psst," Oswald says at the door not long after Ed has taken a position sitting up alongside the edge of the bed, taking his time to fully awaken. He feels hungover. Ed just looks at him questioningly as he says, "I want to show you something."
"Okay," Ed says, adjusting his glasses and standing up. He falters before remembering that he now needs his staff to walk. He grabs it and follows Oswald out the door.
The two of them make a matching set as they shuffle down the hallway, one with a permanently damaged right leg, the other a left one.
"We need to upgrade you, Ed," Oswald says, pointing at his staff.
Ed just grunts.
"Besides, I need my stuffie back."
"You need it, huh?" Ed grins, even though he knows he shouldn't.
Oswald grins back.
They turn down a different corridor and once they get about halfway down it, Oswald announces, "Okay, here we are!"
Ed peeks his head into the room. It's obviously one Strange and his scientists had been using. Ed enters and steps up to some long, upright tubes that almost look like coffins. They are frosty to the touch. "These look like something Fries would have invented."
"He might have," Oswald says, nodding. "I'm fairly certain this is where Strange kept you before resurrecting you so that the decomposition of your body would be minimized."
"Huh."
Oswald takes in a deep breath, as if preparing to tell Ed something difficult.
"Spit it out, Oswald."
"I took the liberty of placing your baby into one of these in case . . ." He trails off, nervously wringing his hands.
"In case what, Oswald?" Ed says lowly.
"In case you want Strange to bring her back."
"What!?"
"Like he did for -"
"Oswald, have you found that miscreant?" Ed demands, cutting him off. "Where is he?"
"No, I'm sorry, Ed. Not yet. He and some of his staff escaped. But I've got my people looking for him. It won't be long -"
"And the last time he disappeared? Don't you recall how long it was before he was found again?"
Oswald blinks, remembering. Deflated he says, "Yes. It was a year . . . perhaps two."
Ed just breathes hotly through his nostrils.
"Don't you want to see her?" Oswald asks tentatively.
Ed lets out a slow breath before answering. "Okay. Yes, I do."
Oswald leads him over to a smaller silver tube, just like the other ones, propped up on a lab bench. He touches a latch on the side of it carefully and it hisses before opening, revealing baby Kristen.
Ed brings a fist to his mouth. She's still blue. And she's so still. He bites his knuckles. Eddie has returned to his conscious mind and cries in his stead.
"I'm sorry, Ed." Oswald puts a soothing hand on his back. "Truly, I am. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I've been at City Hall all this time and I honestly had no idea that Strange was doing anything else here than what I had tasked him with."
"I know," Ed says gruffly, accepting a brief hug from him. "But I don't think it's a good idea to bring her back, Oswald, even if there was a way to do it without Strange. She'll only suffer -"
His voice catches on that last word and Oswald looks at him with a question in his eyes.
Ed continues. "Oswald, Strange took her from Lee's womb and triggered horrific mutations within her to make her grow in certain ways."
"Yes, I noticed the extra appendages."
"It was more than that," Ed says and reaches out to touch his baby's now freezing cold torso right where . . . "Lee and I had already found a tumor."
And there it was.
"Right there?" Oswald asks, noticing his pause.
"Yes," Ed says gravely. "Likely one of many she'd have been plagued with, had she lived long enough."
"He's a monster," Oswald whispers.
Ed's now curious. "Why was he in your employ, Oswald? You said he was already working for you when you found us."
"You mean when I found you and Lee prone on that floor in The Narrows having committed harakiri 'Romeo and Juliet' style - bleeding your guts out all over the place?"
Ed frowns.
"So foolish," Oswald says softly, obviously lost in a painful memory. His voice shakes as he continues, "I thought I'd lost you."
Ed hadn't even thought about what impact stumbling upon their dead bodies could have had on Oswald. He should be kind, give him a moment, but, he feels the obsessive need to correct him on one minor point. "Romeo and Juliet committed suicide - harakiri - because they thought they had lost each other. Lee and I committed murder."
"Because you thought you had lost each other."
Ed stiffens. Oswald's insightfulness hits way too close to home. He abruptly changes the subject back to the matter at hand. "Why was Strange in your employ, Oswald?"
"Oh, because of Tabitha," Oswald waves dismissively.
"Revenge?" Ed asks, remembering the Galavan/Gilzean tank.
"Of course," Oswald replies.
"So, you let that monster mess with Tabitha's child, but it didn't even cross your mind that he would mess with mine?"
"Tabitha's child? What are you talking about?"
"Wait, what are you talking about? You said revenge -"
"I had Strange resurrect Butch - seeing as it turned out he hadn't actually been alive the entire time he was Solomon Grundy - and then I killed him in front of her. Just as they were reunited," Oswald says triumphantly. "Voila! Revenge."
"Oh." Ed's face takes on a look of concentration.
"Ed . . .?" Oswald asks. "What is it?"
"So you didn't know she was pregnant with Butch's child?"
"What?" Oswald laughs an abrupt laugh. "Pregnant? In the less than thirty seconds she had with Butch? All of them spent in front of me? Ha! I don't think so."
"Oh . . . " Ed looks even more confused for a second as he takes that all in and then it clears. "He must have . . ."
"Must have what, Ed? Spill."
"After Butch died, did Strange spend any time with Tabitha?"
"Not to my knowledge. I had my guards escort her out immediately after I shot her in the leg."
"Hmm. . . Then he must have somehow acquired a clean DNA sample from her at the very least, perhaps some from the spilled blood from her gunshot wound? Extracting an ovum from her would have been far a better choice, but if Strange hadn't gotten the opportunity to do that and only had her blood sample to work with, then where would he have gotten another ovum to use for a somatic cell nuclear transfer?" He feels a little sick as he realizes the answer to his own question. Lee.
"What are you talking about? English please, Ed."
"Oswald, I think I need to show you something." Ed kisses his fingertips and touches them to Kristen's frozen cheek as a goodbye and then solemnly closes her makeshift coffin before walking Oswald down the hallway and into the room that had contained Kristen's tank.
As he expected, the place was cleared out, the tanks drained. He walks over to touch hers.
"This is where they kept my baby, Kristen," Ed says.
"What? You're kidding."
"Not in the slightest," Ed says. "They kept her suspended in some kind of saline solution mixed with Lazarus water to facilitate the full development of her mutations."
"Huh."
"See this plaque?" Ed points to the plaque that reads 'Nygma/Thompkins' on the tank. "The younger scientists had a nickname for Kristen that irked Professor Strange."
"What was it?"
"Nygmakins," Ed says and chuckles.
"That is the stupidest name I have ever heard," Oswald replies.
"Stupider than Nygmobblepot?" Ed asks, and touches the tank besides Kristen's.
"N - n . . . no . . ." Oswald stammers in shock. " . . . No . . . Way."
"No, you're right, Oswald. Strange isn't that evil. But it's fun to tease you. You should see the look on your face right now." Ed laughs heartily at his friend's expense.
"Shut up."
"Okay, okay. So this tank is where Tabitha and Butch's baby had been kept. Colloquially known as 'Galazean.' I wonder if it's still alive. If Strange took it with him . . ."
Oswald shivers. "This is getting creepy now."
"Somehow, Strange was able to create a baby from Butch and Tabitha's genetic material. And I'm sure he was growing it up to be some kind of monster, just like Kristen."
"Probably," Oswald agrees. "And I do hope that that baby is still alive out there somewhere."
"Why?"
"Revenge, old friend. Sweet, sweet revenge." Oswald claps Ed on the back and they shuffle out of what remains of that hall of horrors together.