13. The Trial
During the next couple of weeks, he spent a lot more time than he had originally planned on Barbara's Bat-team.
He mostly dealt with either Barbara or Cassandra. It could have been that she guessed his preference, or it could have been that his dislike of Drake was mutual. She once put him on babysitting duty for Grayson out in Blüdhaven, and though he anticipated a healthy measure of animosity, given how close he and the Bat had been, there really… wasn't any. In fact, talking to Grayson brought him back to the days when he himself had been more of a mild nuisance than anything else. Leaving those maps around Arkham Island just to ensure the Bat paid attention to him. How quaint! How nauseating!
Health-wise, he was doing what could be described as 'better'. He'd made it to day five with the medication and it seemed that was as far as he was ever going to get. He hadn't even tried to take it in three days, which meant that tomorrow he did have to. Going on a schedule and sticking to it did ensure he was eating, though, so it wasn't all bad news. His biggest problem at the moment was that he had to shave today. It was easy enough to do most mirror-proximate tasks without his glasses on, but not that.
His trial was tomorrow morning. It couldn't wait any longer. So once he'd exercised and showered and the fog on the bathroom mirror had gone, he got out his razor and put it on the counter next to the sink.
It was his fourteenth birthday and his dad had left him something on the kitchen table. He sat down and looked at it. Did he really want to know what was inside of that little green bag? His dad had not given him a gift in a while. He kind of just wanted to take it up to his room and leave it unopened forever, but he also had to know what was in it. So he pulled down one side of the bag with one finger and peered inside.
It was a razor.
He reached in and took it out. It was a really nice electric one, too, way nicer than anything he could buy with what was left over from his paper route. It might even have been better than the one his dad had. Wow. He went to open it, but stopped.
He couldn't. Not yet. He had to save it for later. He couldn't use it up right now. He was going to have to shave for the rest of his life. He was going to need this way more when he was older. And besides. His dad didn't give him presents anymore. He needed to hold onto this one for as long as possible.
But when his dad asked him four weeks later why he was still using the cheap razors he bought himself, all of that seemed so… childish. He couldn't say that. His dad was asking so nicely, but he still felt so defensive, as though his dad already knew his dumb baby reason for not using the new razor and was just trying to make him say it. So he looked away from him and said it was because he didn't want it.
"Tu n'en veux pas?" his dad repeated. Edward stared into the bathroom sink. He'd already cleaned it twice, but he felt as though he'd done it wrong both times.
"Non."
His dad just stood there and said nothing. He was disappointed again. Edward knew it. He didn't have to look. He could feel it.
"D'accord," his dad said, finally. It wasn't a relief when he walked away.
He was staring into the sink in the current day. He understood now. Far, far too intimately.
His father had known he was a bad parent.
For how long? Perhaps Edward's whole life. He had known and he had been disappointed. In himself. Just as Edward would have been had he given Ada a gift she had in turn rejected. Disappointed for not paying enough attention. Disappointed for not being able to deduce what she wanted. Disappointed for disappointing her.
And I gave up and he didn't.
Not until –
"It's not the time for that." He wasn't going to be able to push it away forever, but until after the trial had been dealt with should be long enough. After that, he would have all the time in the world to sort through whatever was simmering in the depths of his memory.
He looked up into the mirror. He had never seen his father at forty-six, but there was no doubt in his mind that he had looked exactly like this. Well. Not exactly, given his father was both heavyset and a great deal hairier than Edward was. But close enough that anyone who wasn't familiar with the both of them would mistake one for the other. He eyed his own razor sidelong. It wasn't anything special. He'd bought it with the thought in mind that Jonathan was going to borrow it and subsequently mangle it as he always did. He'd had the beginnings of a beard when Edward had last seen him, so it seemed he had decided if there wasn't one lying around for him to use, he wasn't going to bother.
Speaking of, it was time to get rid of his. He took a breath and got started.
/
It was past two in the morning, but he was still sitting in his desk chair with his hands stuffed into the front pocket of Jonathan's sweater and staring at the wall. Getting involved in whatever Barbara was doing tonight hadn't seemed like a smart idea, so he had tried watching TV. It proved to be incredibly undistracting, so he had gone to YouTube and put on a compilation of last year's best new jazz albums. He hadn't listened to music in a long time and doing so again was nice. It didn't really do anything to ease his thoughts. They had increased in intensity once he had sent off those emails and the worst thing was, there wasn't a damn thing he could do about them. He could imagine scenarios for the rest of his natural life and they wouldn't change a thing. He couldn't change a thing. What happened tomorrow was entirely up to Sabrina. And he hated it.
The situation his mind was generating right now was just like all the others. Sabrina made some rookie mistake and he heroically jumped in to rescue them both from the desperate clutches of the prosecution. It was a nice image. A nice fantasy. Except for the fact that all the other times he'd done it in real life, all he had done was make Sabrina's job much, much harder. One of her conditions for taking his case this time had been that he not say a single word, and he had thus far been unable just to imagine doing such a thing.
You talk and she walks out. You will be deported, locked away in whatever prison the government deems necessary, and you will never see Ada again. And she won't ever even know why.
Sabrina was doing this for Ada. And she'd never even met her.
He pushed the chair back and got up. He had to meet Sabrina at her office for nine. She'd insisted on them arriving together in her car. She probably thought that would minimise the potential for shenanigans on his part, and he unfortunately had to admit she was right to have her suspicions. In any event, he needed to go lie down and hope sleep came to him soon.
/
He slept a little. Not enough, but perhaps that was better. It would make him slower and less likely to decide, erroneously, that he did not need Sabrina and could take care of this himself. He was sitting in her waiting room by eight forty-five. He felt a little nauseous. He should have eaten, but there hadn't been time. Putting his makeup on had taken much too long.
He was staring at the photographs he was holding in one hand. He'd stopped seeing them some minutes ago, but he knew he had the one with the CN Tower on top. His father had taken him there once. After they had gone up the elevator, he had told Edward he could go wherever he wanted as long as he didn't leave, and when he had gotten bored of that he had found his father standing in front of one of the windows, staring out across the harbour towards the small airport on the island. Edward had hoisted himself onto the sill of sorts that he probably should not have been sitting on, but his father did not say anything and so he had sat up there watching the boats gliding through the bright blue water until his father had asked if he was ready to go.
"Well? Are you?" Sabrina asked, and he looked up. Her lipstick was red today instead of purple, probably in the interest of professionalism, but it still complemented her dark complexion very nicely.
"Yes," he said, and as he stood he handed her the photographs. Her eyebrows drew together just a little as she looked at them. She actually eyed him for a moment before returning her focus to the pictures again.
"Are these real?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered. She put her briefcase on the chair next to the one he'd been occupying and opened it, slotting the photographs into someplace that made sense only to her. Then she closed it and stood up straight.
"All right," she said. "Let's go."
Sabrina's office was about twenty minutes from the courthouse and they made the trip in silence. Normally Edward would have filled the silence with his personal suggestions on how his case could be handled, and while he was having plenty of those thoughts, he forced himself to focus on all the times his interjections had failed. All the times he had failed. Sabrina did not need him and, indeed, would have probably performed better without him there. She was his lawyer and her job was to speak for him.
I can speak for myself.
No. No, you can't.
"What the hell is this?" Sabrina said, and he brought himself back into focus and looked out of the windshield in the general direction of where her hand had gestured.
"The press," he said. How had she not figured it out? Were the assorted cameras and microphones not enough of a clue?
"I see that," she said, stopping the car in the closest available parking lot. "No one is supposed to know about your trial for exactly this reason. What's the prosecution trying to pull with this?"
"They're not trying to pull anything," Edward said, moving his fingers underneath his glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose. These cheap glasses made his nose itch. "I emailed them last night."
If he had had a thermometer, he would have been able to prove the temperature in the car had dropped noticeably. "You did what?" Sabrina demanded. He folded the glasses into one of his suit pockets and looked at her.
"I needed them to be here."
"Why on earth did you – " She shook her head and gripped the top of the steering wheel. "You are not planning on talking to them."
"Of course not." She had made that perfectly clear. "That's your job."
The look on her face suddenly made him extremely apprehensive. She seemed very unhappy with this development. Should he have told her about – no. No, he couldn't have. She wouldn't have allowed it. And he would have been unable to explain the full details of why it was important he have so much attention drawn to this anyway. "What?" he protested. "It isn't the first time the press has been present at one of my trials. You've dealt with them plenty of times before."
"Yes, when I knew they were going to be there," Sabrina argued. "You know? When I have time to anticipate their questions? When I have time to prepare my non-answers? You can't just spring this on me! How do you not know how this works by now?" She shook her head and unclipped her seatbelt. "Who am I kidding. You know, you just don't care."
"You're overreacting," Edward told her, reaching for his own seatbelt. "This is all going according to plan."
"Plan?" Sabrina repeated incredulously. "I am not part of your plans. I am not one of your pawns!"
"That wasn't my intention!" Edward protested, but anything further he'd had to say was silenced when she threw up her hands in exasperation and said,
"No, because I wasn't part of your intentions! It literally did not cross your mind what the consequences for me are! Do you have any idea the kinds of threats I get on a regular basis for representing you? If I manage to make this miracle you are asking of me happen, I am probably going to have to leave town because if I don't someone is likely to burn down my house with me in it!"
"If you'd mentioned that to me I could have handled it!" Really, she couldn't blame him for –
"I didn't want you to handle it!" She slammed her palms against the top of the steering wheel. "I wanted you to move on with your life like a criminal who actually deserves the kind of counsel I've been giving you would do!"
She had never referred to him as a criminal before.
Wait. If she was referring to him as a criminal, then… that meant she was no longer on his side. She wasn't doing this for his sake. He was just a client to her. A contract.
She no longer liked him.
"You really have no idea the amount of bullshit I used to put up with from you every day, do you."
Multiply that by every single person he'd ever known and every single day of his life.
"I was hoping that, I don't know, you'd started to think about how the people in your life don't just exist to further whatever crazy goals you've come up with this time."
The sudden, overwhelming enormity of what he had done had him frozen in his seat. If Sabrina no longer liked him, she no longer cared about him. If she no longer cared about him, it no longer mattered to her whether or not he won this trial. And if he did not win this trial…
"You say one unnecessary word to anyone," Sabrina was telling him, her voice seeming physically sharp in his ears, "and I am dropping your entitled ass right then and there. And good fucking luck finding a lawyer anywhere on this entire continent who can and will pull off the kinds of miracles I have for you."
"Understood," got trapped somewhere in the base of his tongue, so all he did was nod so that she would know he had heard. She shook her head and muttered something unintelligible as she reached into the backseat for her briefcase, and when she pushed open her door he did the same.
The swarm of journalists was being held behind queue rope but only from about the waist down; everything else possible was being extended over the line in an attempt to get the best angle. Despite the fact that he had made the leak, he did not want them near him. In his opinion, the media was a swarm of ignorant cherry-pickers, searching with darting eyes for the one piece of information that would confirm their biases or generate the most controversy. In his early years, he'd taken pride in being the subject of so much interest and analysis, but it had faded when he had realised their intent was more in the realm of spinning him as a depraved maniac than anything else he could possibly have been. Because of course that was all they thought he was or would ever be.
Sabrina's determined march from the parking lot to the entrance of the courthouse was just shy of military, and though she was a full foot shorter than him he rather felt as though she were towering over not only everyone they passed, but him as well. The journalist nearest to the sidewalk called out, "Ma'am! Ma'am, do you care to make a statement?"
"Yeah," said Sabrina, fingers tight around the handle of her briefcase. "No comment."
"The Riddler has no comment?" asked someone a little further down the line, to which Sabrina replied,
"I have no comment."
He kept his eyes focused as much on the ground as possible without physically tilting his head. Everyone in this line wanted his attention and whatever he did, he could not give it to them. He could not answer, could not acknowledge a single question. He needed, more than anything right now, to prove to Sabrina that he was going to listen to her. If he gave her an excuse to abandon him, she would take it.
And you would deserve it.
Commissioner Gordon was leaning against the back wall of the courtroom as they entered, signature tan trench coat untied and his hands in his pants pockets. Edward glanced at him as he walked by, but could feel the other's eyes on him long after he was in his designated seat. Did he know who Barbara was? Were they playing some sort of long game where they gave Edward enough rope to hang himself with? No, that couldn't be it; if it were, Barbara would have given him the evidence sequestered in the Batcave. He was likely here to see for himself what Edward's plan was. Well, let him watch. Barring a deus ex machina – or Sabrina changing her mind within the next ten minutes or so – it was too late now.
In his mind's eye sat a snapshot of the rows of chairs behind him. Some corner of his brain kept counting them. It kept counting them and counting them and he had to fight the need to turn around and ensure there were as many chairs as he thought there were. His memory was perfect. There was no need to physically check.
Wait. That was a symptom of OCD, wasn't it. He simply hadn't realised it before because he had never engaged in ridiculous activities such as returning home over and over to check if the oven was off, or the door was locked, or the curtains were closed. He'd never had to. He had always just checked his perfect memory instead.
He pressed one hand to his forehead and moved it up and along his skull until it reached the back of his neck, where he allowed it to slide over his shoulder and back onto the table. He felt as though some depth of his brain which had previously been unknown to him had cracked open and things he did not want to know kept slithering out one by one. And at the absolute worst of times! This was the sort of information that needed to put itself aside for later, when he had time to sort it through and categorise it, but everything just kept coming to him as some kind of twisted surprise! He clenched his hands together, hard, and looked at them.
There was no word to describe them other than 'disgusting'.
He couldn't wear gloves right now, as that was a signature thing the Riddler did. So he was forced to sit here with his naked hands exposed to the world in a way they hadn't been in an incredibly long time. The scarring was horrific. His palms were cracked and dry. And now that he didn't have the constant presence of the gloves as a distraction, they almost felt as though he had seared them. When he noticed Sabrina was looking at him, he removed them to his lap.
"How long have you had that rash for?" she asked. He would have felt relief that she didn't know it was self-inflicted by stupidity if he wasn't so embarrassed that she knew at all.
"A while," he answered.
"There are creams for that," she told him, opening her briefcase. He stared at her. Was she angry with him or not? Was she simply being professional? Was it professional for a lawyer to give her client health advice? "What? There are."
"I know," he said. "I don't like them."
"You like that better?"
Calisse.
"It's complicated."
"What about you isn't?" Sabrina asked, but she must have meant it rhetorically as she then told him to be quiet because the prosecution was arriving. She watched them take their seats and then leaned in close to murmur, "Does their witness have any information I need to know about?"
Witness? What – oh. The desk jockey he had stabbed that night at the GCPD. "No," he answered. "You'll be able to take care of what he has to say."
She nodded and returned to her original position.
Once all the usual legal preamble had been taken care of, the judge looked at Sabrina. "I believe the defense would like to submit a motion to dismiss?"
Sabrina nodded and got up from the table, moving toward the lectern. He noticed that she had taken the two photographs out of the briefcase and left them, facedown, on the table. "Your Honour," Sabrina began, "I've extensively reviewed what the prosecution has submitted for this case, and I for one am curious as to why it hasn't been thrown out already. There has been no evidence submitted proving that my client is, in fact, the man he is accused of being."
The judge stared at her. The entire courtroom was probably staring at her, but Edward did not dare look anywhere except directly in front of him. If this went wrong, it would be on him. And he would have proven Sabrina's doubts right instead of her faith.
"Miss Bernard," the judge said finally, "are you saying your client is not Edward Nygma?"
"My client has submitted extensive documentation to me supporting his identity," Sabrina said. "I would have to ask that, as the bearers of the burden of proof, the prosecution provide… well, anything."
"Objection, Your Honour," cut in the lawyer representing the city. "My witness will be happy to provide the evidence Miss Bernard claims we don't have."
"Can we shelve this until the witness testifies?" the judge asked.
"Certainly," Sabrina answered, and sat down. She turned to Edward as the witness made their way to the stand. "You are deaf until he stops talking."
He nodded.
"Can you tell us what happened that night?" the prosecutor was saying.
"I was uh… I was on night duty. I had a lot of stuff on the computer to do and he came in with this… well, he had a robot."
"Can you describe the robot?"
He had to close his eyes while the witness fumbled through a description. That was my son.
"He um… got mad at me for what I said to him and told me to leave. He said he was going to hurt me. So I tried to dial out for help and he told the robot to watch the hallway. Then he like…" He mimed an action that was more reminiscent of a baseball bat being swung than anything else. "He used his Riddler cane to push everything off the desk."
"What next?"
"Well, the phone was on the floor. So I went for it but he hit me in the hand with the cane and then he used the… the narrow end to bust the phone. Then I tried to…"
"Do you need a minute?" the opposing lawyer asked, clearly for the benefit of the judge. The witness shook his head.
"My legs were stuck in the chair, so I uh… well, I asked him to stop."
You begged me, was on the tip of Edward's tongue.
"He told me I'd made the wrong choice and stepped on my shoulder – "
"Which shoulder," the lawyer interrupted. The witness patted his right one twice.
"This one. With his right foot."
"Thank you. Go on."
"Then he turned the cane upside down and unscrewed the end of it. There was a knife inside and he stabbed me right here." He placed his palm on his chest. "Then he detached the knife and kind of… pushed me under the desk with his foot."
"Do you remember anything else?" the prosecutor asked.
"Uh… not much." He took a swallow from his water bottle. "I was trying to concentrate on breathing without moving the knife. He was on the computer for a few minutes and then he left with the robot."
"And you're sure this was the man you saw?" The lawyer gestured towards Edward, as though there were some other accused in approximately the same place.
"Yes," the witness answered, nodding.
"No further questions."
"Miss Bernard?"
Sabrina picked up the photographs. "Your Honour, given the fact that my client was not given the opportunity to provide material exonerating him prior to this trial, I would like to enter some new exhibits into evidence."
"All right," said the judge.
"Unfortunately, I only have the physical originals," Sabrina continued, "but I am more than happy to show them to the prosecution after the witness has seen them."
"Objection, Your Honour," said the lawyer, standing up.
"If I may," said Sabrina, "we can all agree that this is a very sensitive case and, after last time, I have reason to believe the city may be… motivated… to behave unscrupulously if given the opportunity."
"Your Honour –"
"You may proceed, Miss Bernard," the judge said.
"May I approach?" the prosecutor sputtered.
"Denied. Miss Bernard?"
Sabrina walked up to the witness stand and put the photographs into the witness's waiting hand. "I would like to ask you to look at those for me," Sabrina said once she had returned to the lectern.
"Sure," said the witness.
"Do you recognise the man in the photographs?"
"Yes," he answered.
"Can you identify him for me?"
"It's him," the witness said, pointing at Edward. "These are pictures of him."
"Thank you," said Sabrina, collecting the photographs and bringing them to the prosecution's table. She held them up for the city's lawyer to eyeball. "Your Honour, I would like to submit these be moved into evidence."
"Any objections?"
"If Miss Bernard believes these photos of her client on vacation are at all helpful to her case, by all means, let's move them into evidence," said the lawyer. Sabrina smiled.
"Your Honour," she said once again in front of the microphone, "I have no further questions. I would like to ask, again, that this case be dismissed."
"On what grounds?" the judge asked.
"On the grounds that the witness and the prosecution both just misidentified my client."
"May I see those?" the judge asked, and Sabrina approached the bench. She scrutinised them for a long time.
"Those are photos of my client's father," Sabrina said after a minute or so. "Not the Riddler. Not my client. The witness has just proven he cannot, without a shadow of a doubt, identify the accused. As that is the only evidence the prosecution has produced, this case should be dismissed."
"Objection, Your Honour," the city's lawyer said loudly, standing up so fast his chair nearly fell over. "I will be calling her client as my next witness. Under oath he –"
"My client cannot be put on the stand," Sabrina interrupted. "You have not proven he is the accused, therefore you have no grounds to call him as a witness."
"Your Honour," the other lawyer said, striding up to the bench, "we are talking about a man who killed four police officers with blows to the head from a distinctive weapon which was abandoned at the scene. You cannot let her worm her way through yet another loophole –"
… what police officers?
He kept his face as blank as he could. There had definitely not been four police officers. There had just been the one man at the desk. They had dispatched him and then had gone off to find Jonathan, and once they had brought him out to the truck someone had shot at him and…
… and…
Nothing. There was nothing there.
Electricity seemed to be jolting through his chest. He had the sudden need to unbutton his sleeves and push them up to check if the scar still marked his arm. He closed his eyes and tried to focus harder.
A cop had shot at him. The bullet had ricocheted off the truck and taken a strip from Edward's arm. He'd told Alan he was fine, he had talked to the cop, Alan had walked away, and then…
… he was lying on the floor in the Orphanage and everything hurt and Ada was bringing him flowers. And Alan was gone, but… how had he known that?
Someone said his name. The right way. He blinked and looked for who had said it. He felt all the eyes in the room on him, but the only person in his proximity was Sabrina so it must have been her. But he couldn't talk. He couldn't say anything or she was going to drop the case. He didn't even know what she wanted his attention for. She was standing on the other side of the table and staring at him as though she expected an answer, but he couldn't answer because there was a giant blank space in his memory where the last moments of his son's life had been and absolutely nothing else in the whole world could possibly matter more than that. "Édouard?" Sabrina said, the hint of a confused frown crossing her face, and whatever part of him was still functioning answered,
"Je sais pas. Je ne me souviens pas."
She blinked. "Je comprends," she said after a moment. Then she went back to the bench. He needed her to come back. She understood? In French?
What was happening today? This trial was supposed to lessen his problems, not increase them! Instead, he now had an additional symptom of OCD, a blank space in his memory, and the fact that his lawyer spoke French to deal with! All in the last hour!
I want to give up.
No. No giving up. Even if it were feasible, he'd come too far. Also, Sabrina would be furious.
He looked up at her. She was arguing some point to the judge, but… very calmly. When she moved her hands, it was very deliberate. It actually appeared more effective than the kind of gesticulating that he himself did; the attorney next to her kept attempting to get a word in, but the judge was wholly focused on Sabrina.
She was right. He really didn't deserve her. At all.
"I didn't manage to convince her to drop it," Sabrina said, sitting down next to him again and returning the photographs to the briefcase. "I'm sorry. Unfortunately –"
"You have nothing to apologise for," Edward interrupted, which surprised both of them. She looked at him as though she thought he might have been replaced with someone else while she was gone.
"The longer this thing drags out, the more time they have to find something," Sabrina said after a minute. "It would have been better if I could have ended it now."
"There's nothing to find." He couldn't wait to put his gloves back on so as to distract him from this endless itching. "And you'll have more billable hours."
"I do really enjoy taking your money," said Sabrina. "But I'd also really enjoy it if you never hired me again."
Before Edward could reply, the city's attorney returned to his seat and the judge indicated her desire to be heard. "Given the impasse of this case and the severity of the crimes allegedly committed by the accused, whom we cannot confirm the presence of," she said, "I am going to have to take unprecedented and unusual action. The plaintiff's period of discovery has been extended until a later date, and the defendant is required to submit to a DNA order. The results of the order will only be admissible as evidence if the plaintiff submits their own matching evidence. If the plaintiff cannot do this, the case will be dismissed in favour of the defendant."
There was an uproar from the back of the room, where a handful of cops populated the benches that were mostly overrun with paparazzi, and Sabrina snapped shut her briefcase. "Time to go before this gets bad," she said, and he nodded in agreement and stood up with her. Their path out was left clear by the courtroom security, but it looked to him as though any one of them would let whoever wanted a piece of him to get one for the right price. Once outside, their exit beyond the queue rope was closed off by a gaggle of so-called journalists, which he expected to be an issue, but Sabrina's pace alone seemed to intimidate them into moving out of her way. It was not easy to simply ignore the myriad of audio and video recording devices being shoved into his face. He wanted to remind them whom, exactly, they were bothering. But he couldn't. He was no longer the Riddler. Now he was an average Joe who had no recourse when they were being hounded. For all any of them knew, he didn't even speak English.
Closing the door of Sabrina's BMW felt like putting a shield up between himself and everyone else, and really, it was sort of true. She stared over the steering wheel at the people clamouring for information from the others exiting the court and then turned the key in the ignition only once.
You're only supposed to do it once, he reminded himself.
"You didn't tell me about the four police officers," Sabrina said, putting the car into gear and pulling out of the parking lot. His breath caught upon hearing the number and he quickly looked out of the window so that she couldn't see his face in the rearview mirror.
"I meant it when I said I didn't remember."
"That's good," she said, and their being at a red light gave him the time to stare at her incredulously.
"It's good?" he snapped. "My not remembering what happened to my son is good?"
"Of course not." Her tone indicated he had missed something obvious, which she went on to prove: "It's good for your case. The only card they have is your own testimony, which they can't trick you into giving. The only hitch would be if they were able to find the cane, which you must have destroyed by now."
"It was stolen from the GCPD before I could retrieve it," he was forced to admit, and she sighed and rubbed at one eye.
"You don't know where it is."
"It doesn't matter. There are no fingerprints on it."
Sabrina shook her head. "If whoever has it turns it in, you'd better hope not."
He wore gloves! He always wore gloves, he wanted to snap at her! But he couldn't do that, so he took a long breath through his nose, folded his arms across his chest, and looked out of his window. They drove in silence for a few minutes.
"I realise you probably didn't because it was part of your big reveal," Sabrina said, stopping at a red light about ten minutes away from her office, "but I would have appreciated it if you'd told me you were French a long time ago."
He glanced at her, a frown drawing his brows together. "That would have been relevant to you why?"
She looked at him until the light went green. "Didn't you do a background check on me?"
"No." What a stupid conversation. What a waste of time he needed to be using to fill in the gap in his memory. "It would have been pointless. I'd already hired you."
"Well, if you had," she said, seeming not to notice the shortness of his tone, "you would have known I was from Baton Rouge."
That did explain the accent he hadn't recognised. "And?"
She shrugged. "You've probably noticed there aren't a lot of francophones out here. By now I've probably lost a lot of it and it would have been nice. That's all."
It was with considerable effort that he managed to avoid staring at her incredulously. Lose his French? How on earth would that even be possible?
No, not his. Hers. She didn't have perfect recall. She could forget an entire language, even if it was the one she had grown up with. He suddenly felt… he wasn't sure. Almost like he wanted to do something about it personally.
Well. It probably would still be nice. And he did owe her rather a lot.
"I was born in Toronto, but my father is Québécois," he said in French. "He insisted on French at home."
… because he had been afraid they would lose it if he didn't.
Sabrina's French was halting and uncertain, her accent an annoying mix of her native one and what appeared to be mimicry of what she'd heard on TV, and he had to speak a lot slower and supply her with whatever word she appeared to be searching for. He did have to admit, though, that it was nice. Diedre was herself French, but Nina had never bothered to learn and so they'd always spoken English in front of her. And despite her difficulty, Sabrina seemed happy to have the opportunity.
Aside from all of that, hearing his name said right was… wonderful.
As they pulled up to Sabrina's office, it was obvious even in the dimness that it had been vandalised. Two of the windows were broken and several choice messages had been spray painted across the façade. He could just barely see the resignation crossing her face via the rearview mirror.
"Would you like me to take care of it?" Edward asked after a moment. There was no pause between his words and the shake of her head.
"I knew what I was getting into when I started all of this," she said, "and I've never stopped knowing it in all the years since."
They parted ways, him towards his vehicle and she her office. Once he was settled in the driver's seat he retrieved his cigarette case from the centre console and opened it. There were seven. He tried to close the lid on six but couldn't, so he broke that one into three and dropped it out of the rolled-down window. Then he lit the other one and inhaled the smoke and held it as long as he could. That turned out to be a bad idea, because he started coughing and had to hold his arm out the window so he would not unintentionally burn himself.
Without that or Sabrina's awful French to serve as a distraction, his mind went back to trying to brute force the missing memory back into his consciousness. It didn't work. Or perhaps it simply hadn't worked yet. He had no idea how one wrangled a memory out of hiding. The one about his mother was the only one he had previously been unable to retrieve simply by thinking about the date, and even though he could recollect it perfectly now, the recollection itself was imperfect. He couldn't bring up any additional information he hadn't had the first time. So it was possible that, much like Sabrina's missing French, he had just… forgotten what had happened to Alan. Forever.
He finished the cigarette and tossed the end out the window and shook his head as he started the engine. No. No, he simply would not accept that. It was in his head, somewhere, and he just needed to draw it out. Somehow. He probably just needed more time. It would come to him. It had to.
Back at the apartment, he sat down in front of his computer, pitched his tie onto the desk, and picked up his phone from where he had left it next to his keyboard. The screen, when he woke it, was populated with so many notifications it would take him hours to respond to them all. His thumb scrolled them automatically and some part of his brain summarised them for him. Several voicemails left by Nina. A flurry of French texts from Diedre. Dozens of emails from informants, asking if they were about to lose their jobs. He tossed the phone back onto the desk and leaned the back of his head against his chair. None of that was important. Nothing was important other than the gaping black hole somewhere inside his head.
He pulled off his dress shirt and looked down at the trail the bullet had left across his arm. He traced the raised line with his fingertips.
It was the only real proof he had of that night.
He went over it again and again and again. The sequence played out, identical, exactly as he had come to expect over his decades of perfect recall. And then a pause. A jump into the future. Alan was there and then he wasn't. Somewhere in the middle he had been shot four times in the head and…
A pit opened up in his stomach. He wrapped his fingers around his arm and held them there.
He didn't even know where Alan was.
Selina was there at the toy store with Ada and he had no idea why. Had he called her? Why would she have come if he had? What had he told her? Had he told her anything?
He could not remember the act of thinking requiring so much effort before. His mind kept spinning through the same memory as though if he recalled it enough times, it would somehow bring back what he was missing. And it had to, didn't it? He was not going to simply forget what had happened to his son, was he?
Am I that selfish?
His phone started vibrating against his desk. It was only set to do that for certain persons, none of whom he particularly wanted to talk to right now. Nina and/or Diedre would only yell at him for not keeping them in the loop again, and Selina –
He sat up straight. He snatched his phone off the desk and fumbled it in his haste. He shoved the chair out of his way with the backs of his legs and crouched down, frowning into the darkness beneath his desk for the damn thing. He probably should have turned the lights on when he had come in here. Or opened the kitchen curtains this morning. The phone hadn't gone far, though, and he was able to reach it from where he already was. He turned it over to find it was Selina, and he flicked his thumb across the screen to answer her. "Eddie," she said as soon as the call connected. "I just saw the news. What are –"
"What happened?" he demanded. "What happened the night you brought Alan back?"
"What… happened?" she asked, sounding confused. Given how abruptly he'd changed the subject, that made sense.
"What did I tell you happened?" His free hand was gripping the edge of the desk, but he barely felt it at all. "I told you something, didn't I?"
"No," she said, that one word draining everything out of him so thoroughly he had to sit back down. "You weren't really saying much of anything."
He hadn't told her.
"Eddie?"
Nobody knew what had happened to Alan. It was as though he had vanished from existence that night at the GCPD. How was Edward to know if he was even dead? The only thing he could remember was those four gunshots, but that could have meant anything. Maybe they hadn't hit Alan in the head. That lawyer had said there were four dead police officers; he had also said they had blunt force trauma to the skull, but he could have been lying. Or it could have been both, they could have been shot and bludgeoned –
"Eddie." Her voice was stronger now. More insistent.
"Yeah."
"Are you okay?"
At least someone had finally asked him a question he had the answer to.
"No," he said, and hung up.
/
Author's note
This is a comic book trial, so if it's not accurate that's my explanation as to why lol.