Chapter 15
Mary's POV…
I remember smoke and Charlie's hand on my shoulder as a man whose face I didn't take the time to recognize stumbled passed me. There was something blue in his hand, but my mind felt dead as my husband and his men watched the device while I watched Oswald as he lay where he had fell on the floor. As much as I wanted to go to him, I didn't, and when the room around me exploded, I barely registered as Charlie threw me over his shoulder to leave the restaurant. My face was hard pressed into the cloth of his coat, into the center of his back as he carried me out of there, and everything else seemed to be forgotten. I didn't understand what was happening or why, but I knew I wanted to live through it as I breathed in smoke and the fibers of Charlies coat beginning to cough. I was still coughing when Charlie finally set me back down. I was doubled over coughing as the smoke flooded outside into the bitter Gotham air until finally, I straightened just in time to see my husband leave with his men. One of them was Gabe with Oswald thrown unconscious over his shoulder. My eyes centered on Oswald through the smoke. I was always aware that I couldn't go to him as I might have in another time, but I still looked at him. I was looking for signs of life. Looking for the subtle rise and fall of his chest to tell me he was breathing. For he lay unmoving, so still, and so fragile in the drifting smoke that filled everything around us. It scared me how weak he appeared in this light as he lay completely unmoving until with a featherlight movement, he breathed, always shallow, but it soothed something within me when I saw him breathing. Gabe had laid him on the ground. He looked crumpled and vulnerable in the light, but I felt an overwhelming relief flood me as I saw him laying there breathing in his unconscious state. In the seconds after the attack, I kept waiting for Oswald to wake up, but he remained where he was on the ground until authorities came and thought to move him.
"He doesn't even look at me. If Oswald were awake, if we were together as we should be, he would" I thought it with malice as I watched Oswald be lifted onto a gurney, my husband in the distance talking to his men, but never did his eyes turn to see where I might be or whether I was unharmed, he never showed any interest in my wellbeing whatsoever. Not once did he ask if I was okay.
"This is why I could never love him" I thought it and it instantly surprised me as I found myself sitting by my husband with Oswald just behind us still passed out on a gurney.
"This is why I don't think I could ever love anyone, but Oswald" I thought my eyes almost tender as I chanced a glance over my shoulder at him wanting him to suddenly wake up to find me looking at him, but he never did, at least not then.
"I love you, Oswald" I thought it my heart heavy as I remembered our last moment where it had been just us two, where we had been as separate as we had ever been even in the time, we'd actually been apart, and it was as I was regretting that separation that Oswald lurched awake with a look in his eyes that made me afraid for him as soon as I saw it.
I set my eyes fully on him as did everyone else when he lurched awake with this look in his eyes that told me his mind was still shocked. I saw as he tried to speak, but I didn't want him too. There was something not right about this moment, about his state of mind now as he sat there trying to voice something that I knew wasn't good. In that moment, I wanted to tell him to be quiet, to lay down again, and shut up. I didn't even as I sensed that this moment was meant to kill him, but only watched on as he stumbled out fiery words of treachery that he didn't even realize he was saying.
"Excuse me, hello…I must be going…very urgent business with…Falcone" said Oswald, my heart wanted to burst from my chest in that moment. He had just killed himself as surely as if he had pointed a gun at his own head. I was waiting for my husband to give the order, I thought it would come that very moment the police around us be damned, but he didn't. When I turned to look at him again, he was still looking at Oswald with a black look of something unkind leering in the pits of his eyes, and I felt the pounding in my heart increase. I didn't know what was going to happen and that scared me more then if I had. He fell back onto the gurney and the look on Maroni's face scared me the longer it rested there.
"Dear God, Oswald, what have you done?" I thought it with my eyes fixed on the ground right in front of me in that moment scared that Oswald would be going on a trip to that cabin instead of the hospital, scared that he would be murdered by my husband until I found myself looking at Maroni as we were escorted to a police car to be protected from this assassin that wanted him dead and in that moment I hoped he would succeed in making me a widow; that thought never left me as we arrived back at the GCPD.
"Please kill him. Please rid me of him but save my Oswald. If there is a God, he will do this for me" I prayed silently to myself as we sat in the police station, all of them thinking I was praying for my husband when all I wanted was this man, Jack Buccinski, to kill him, and send him straight to hell.
I prayed for the life of the man I loved to be spared. For Oswald to make his way out of this somehow as he had done all his life. Oswald was cunning and smart and brilliant in his way, I wanted him to use all of that now to save himself because in my mind despite any harsh words we had shared, he couldn't die. He was my love and I loved him more then any woman could ever expect to love someone, and he could not die. Not today, not ever. I prayed for him to be spared as everyone around me ignored my very presence choosing to ignore me as I prayed for one man to live and another who they believed my prayers for, to die. The thought held itself inside my heart as we went to the GCPD and as they sat there laughing at Maroni's jokes as Oswald laid passed out again on a desk.
"We've had so little time together" I thought it at the end of my prayers as my eyes centered on the scene before me now feeling as Charlie stood next to me both of us waiting in that ever-growing anticipation for Oswald to wake up. Oswald woke up more peacefully this time and silence fell as he looked at all of us. I saw him spare me a glance, but then his eyes fell on Maroni.
"Hey there" exclaimed Maroni, I knew that tone in his voice, and it chilled me. I had heard it in my early days, before I was his wife or even his girl. He was toying with him, looking to see what he was dealing with, and at the sound my fear for him rose. Oswald was a little bird sitting in a predator's trap, but somehow, I knew he knew that as I watched him wanting him to get himself out of this. I didn't know how he would do that, but I prayed that he would as this type of unlawful trial of wills played out before me. And yet, I couldn't stop thinking about the other side of the coin. About the chance that he wouldn't be okay. That he wouldn't survive this, and those events played out in my mind too. I saw images of Oswald being shot without a word and buried on the land that cabin stood on. I wondered if this would be the last time, I saw him as I watched him, my hands clasped in my lap as I waited to see what his next move would be. As I did though, I was always aware of my stake in this. That I was somewhere between heaven and hell, a future with the man I loved, and that man being buried in a shallow grave. I didn't realize the effect it was having on me. I didn't realize I was shaking until Charlie laid his hands on my shoulder. It calmed me and made my heart jump into my throat at the same time. I looked on with my heart pounding and my eyes glazed with some deep hidden emotion. I sat there as calm as could be, but when you looked into my eyes only then was it clear that I wasn't. The tears I wanted to cry for him never left the shell of my eyes, but I felt the emotion of them as I waited to see what either of these men would do. I got scared the longer it all lasted as all the different scenarios ran through my mind.
"Hi Boss…Oh my gosh, my poor mother. I must go" said Oswald, in that moment I wished I could tell him somehow about what had slipped from the recesses of his damaged mind in that ambulance, but I couldn't. Oswald was beginning with a lie that Maroni knew was a lie and yet I had hope for him still as he began that lie looking so believable as he did it. I wanted to believe he'd find a way to save himself and I let myself believe that as he continued in his lie before my eyes.
"My mother though, she could be taken at any moment, but…she could wait" said Oswald his confusion showing, but a moment when Maroni halted him and immediately, I saw as Oswald lowered himself until he was humble at the feet of Don Maroni. I felt the first waves of relief then as something in my husband's face seemed to change. I saw as Oswald demeaned himself to please this man and I saw as it worked. He saved himself that way and I had never wanted to go to his side more then in that moment. Because I had never been more impressed with him. Until that point, I had never seen him play this game up close as he was now, and I saw that he was good at it as he weaved his way back into the fold of Maroni's inner circle so easily. My relief quickly lifted to be replaced with a pride that overwhelmed my every sense in that moment. I knew we were not out of the water, but something in me stopped shaking.
"When you woke up before, you said you had urgent business with Falcone" growled Maroni there was still that single hint of menace in his words as he posed them to Oswald. Oswald stood there the look of outrage he let cross his features even believable to me as I sat there. He acted wounded at the accusation, at the very idea that he would cross Maroni. It was almost alarming, the way he stood there looking as if he had double crossed God himself, and it was so believable part of me wondered if someday I would be able to see if he ever tried to deceive me this way.
And yet I still didn't know how he would find his way out of this. This outrage wouldn't be enough, he needed something else, but I didn't know what that would be until it happened. I don't think Oswald really even knew what he would do to save himself until he did it. In the end, he played Maroni for the fool he was, and I found myself sitting there suddenly able to find the comedy in the words he said as he said them. I found that pride swelling higher in my chest as I watched him play Maroni, playing this act upon him, and watching the look on his face closely, I watched as he fell for it. It was then that I realized I had been wrong. Oswald was not the little bird in this situation, he never had been, but he and Maroni were merely two predators summing each other up. Maroni though, he underestimated the predator in front of him, and that I knew would be his downfall.
"I have no business with Don Falcone, I swear, on my mother's life. May God strike her dead with horrible torments if I am lying" declared Oswald, my eyes sparkled for the first time that day as he said that. He said it in his dramatic way, waves of gravitas flooding over the room, and yet I couldn't ignore the vile that rose in my throat as well. Because I knew he was lying, I was well aware of it, but I also knew his mother would not be struck down or experience horrible torments. Oswald loved her, he loved me too, but we could never love each other. So even as I wanted her to be struck as he said, I had to regret the thought because it would wound him if it should ever come to pass. Because that would have solved so many problems. If Maroni were killed then his mother, Oswald and I could be together with no complications, but somehow, I knew that would hurt him.
I didn't want that as I watched the scene playout before me.
"He's brilliant" I thought it as soon as it was over, as soon as Maroni had set him free and he was walking away, and in that moment his eyes met mine fleetingly the look he gave me making me question what he saw in my eyes.
"Half my prayers have been answered, maybe God will grant me the solitude of widowhood as well" I thought it and then seconds later as if to tease those prayers electricity filled the room and that became my last thought before everything went black all around me.
"I will be king, and you will stand by my side as my queen, always" I heard Oswald's voice in my head in those black moments, a future not yet to be forming as a dream before my eyes. I saw a grave that read Salvatore Maroni, a hallucination in that moment, but I wanted that to be the outcome to our reign as that morphed until I was alone. Alone for a moment before I felt a body pressed into mine and when I turned, I saw Oswald. He smiled at me and called me his queen and when he kissed my hands that was when I saw a ring there that was not the ring I wore now. The ring I wore now marked my union to Salvatore Maroni, but the one in this allusion was different. It was more beautiful not because it was bigger or prettier or anything that most women would conclude to be beautiful, but because it represented the change our fate had taken. It marked me as Oswald's now and that brought me more joy than I had fully expected as he kissed me in my dreams. There was no more hiding, no more dusty rooms and secrets, but everything was just as it was supposed to be. In that moment, in the midst of that allusion I would have gladly stayed in the black with those hallucinations, but sadly, life didn't work that way.
We were together, we were happy, and as I dreamed, I realized how I wanted that. I wanted that future for us so much that when my eyes finally opened and the blackness had dissolved, I started to cry, and I couldn't stop even as I let Charlie help me to my feet. My eyes immediately went to look around the room, searching for Oswald, but there were only police mixed with the men my husband paid to be loyal. After a moment, my eyes landed on Maroni, sitting in a chair laughing with other people all around as if nothing had happened, and I knew now it was time to remember my place again. I was supposed to be by his side until either Oswald or I found my way to escape and I fell back into the role easier than I cared to admit. As I came to his side to hug him, he hugged me back, and then I looked at him.
"What happened?" I gasped turning to follow his gaze as they led Jack Buccinski passed in chains a mournful ache sounding through my body as I eyed him silently cursing him for failing me.
"Everything's alright now. My old friend tried and failed to kill me. The little guy ran off as soon as he woke up to see about his mother. There's nothing else to worry over" whispered Maroni his voice was filled with bravado his eyes shining with a cocky swagger that made the vile rise into my throat again. I stood by him then as he bragged as if he had taken this foe down himself instead of falling to the ground like all the rest of us. And yet I stood by his side smiling at this even as he sickened me.
I had always hated him and now was no different.
"Thank god, I don't know what I'd do if I lost you" I said the words with an evil nauseous feeling in my stomach. Everything went back to the way they were supposed to after that. Just like any other day, Salvatore sent me home with a single kiss upon my cheek, but even before I was parted from him my mind was racing with worry for Oswald. I wondered if his words that had slipped out about Falcone would come back to haunt him. If I should go to him that night to end whatever this was that had separated us. I didn't though, maybe because the day had overwhelmed me beyond my own limitations. It would be days before I saw him again.
Oswald's POV…
After that night at the GCPD, nothing was quite the same, for I was no longer the little bird feeding tidbits of information to Don's who thought my life belonged to them, but after that night that was when I began to come into my own in Gotham city. For as Fish Mooney's star fell from the bleak Gotham skies, mine rose, and I was all the closer to the destiny I had promised my love as I held her in our little apartment we had secreted away. I was all the closer to saving her and making her mine. Fish Mooney was an essential part of that. What she said that day when she beat me so brutally with that chair was true. She had found me when I was just a green kid with no prospects and made me her umbrella boy. She had fostered what she saw in me, however criminal it may have been, and she had helped make me. Yet that didn't lesson the sweet taste of victory when she fell from her place of glory and in her place, I stepped up. It was almost sad, but I did enjoy the look on her face. When her club became mine though, when I saw the look on my mother's face, I felt like I was rising to the place I wanted to be. There was only one thing missing.
"Mary should be here" I thought it with a pang of regret in my heart as I watched my mother dance atop the stage with her voice filling the room to the tune of my achievement, but as she did that I was still there, standing alone, when I should have Mary on my arm.
"I want her here with me. None of this really matters if I am standing here alone and she is still there trapped in her cage" I thought it with an angry sneer that made my mother's singing sound shrill to my ears as she sang on and I stood in the background brooding when I should have been joyous. In another universe or time, she might have been in her proper place beside me. Mary and I would be standing in the center of the room sharing a dance. I could even feel her kiss and yet that was not how this moment was playing out. Mary was not here, but I was. I had taken my proper place, well almost, but I still had yet to save the woman that mattered most to me. None of this really mattered until she stood next to me. We should have been dancing as my mother stood there atop the stage. The thought made me send my mother home.
"I am a king without his queen" I whispered pouring the wine in a glass, but after my first drink I didn't see the need for it anymore choosing to drink straight from the bottle. I was standing there with my arms stretched out across the bar when a voice sounded next to me.
"It's nice to see things finally going your way" whispered Mary, her man Charlie stood behind her as she stood at the end of the bar. She looked tired and as she looked behind her, I realized the awkward silence I had let stand between us. It had been standing there between us since our argument that morning.
It had been there since I had fought with her and insulted her. Since I had looked at her with eyes accusing her of being something that she was not, and that silence had prevailed even in that bathroom when I had tried to make my true feelings known to her. It had all led to this moment, when we stood firmly apart from one another, and I didn't want that silence to stand between us anymore. It had made us these people, made her feel out of place, and as our eyes met, I didn't know what to say. In my mind, I formed a billion different sentences, each something I knew I had to say to her, but I couldn't make them leave my lips. There were so many apologies and declarations of love I wanted to vow to her that I loved her and would treat her always as my queen, but somehow, I knew she deserved more then that. The only words I could say were the most obvious of them all.
"How did you know to come here? Not even your husband knows yet…I haven't informed him?" I exclaimed the words seeming to make her jump. In that moment, she seemed as unsure of her words as I was. Her eyes seemed to look at her shoes, to admire the way they contrasted with the club's carpet, but when she wrapped her arms around herself, I saw her shiver.
"Charlie keeps his ears open for me…especially since you and I met again. He told me there was a shootout…I couldn't stay away…I mean, I know it's not my place, but I couldn't wait to see if you were alive or dead or if something had happened to you. After everything that's happened, after the GCPD, and that attack on the restaurant, I couldn't wait to know…but I've found out what I needed to know…I won't bother you anymore. I should go" whispered Mary, she was rambling her voice small and close to tears. She looked so vulnerable, so shaken, and I felt something in me lurch forward. Because I had made her this way. I had created this silence between the two of us, but in that moment, I decided I wasn't going to let it stand anymore. There was no way I could live without her and I knew I would if I didn't fix things between us now. As she moved to leave, I couldn't let her.
"No stay, Mary, celebrate with me…if for only a moment" I called to her, my legs moving of their own accord. Suddenly, I was right there in front of her, and boldly I took her hands.
"I can't celebrate without my queen by my side" I whispered making her smile. I led her forward as Charlie lingered behind her and I continued to be bold. This moment more then any of the ones we'd shared before was truly ours. In this place, I could love her, be with her, kiss her even, and no one was around to stop me. I didn't have to hide my feelings for her now and I didn't as I took her in my arms and held her. I felt as she started to cry, and a sigh left her. She was as tired of this fight keeping us apart as I was.
"Please, I want to be as we were before. You are my greatest love, and I don't want us to be on different sides anymore. I want us to stand as one again. I love you, Mary, I want you, and I don't want to fight another day. I just want us to be one and the same again" I exclaimed holding her closer as she started to sob into my chest. Her arms went around my neck using them to pull me closer and I can't remember ever holding her tighter than I did in that moment. We had found our way to the center of the dance floor by then and it was then that I pulled to look at her. Her face was covered in tears, but I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket to wipe them away. That was when she smiled at me for the first time in months and the urge rose in me to kiss her in that moment.
Her hands knotted together just at the back of my neck as my arms held her. We looked at each other and after a moment, she smiled.
"I don't want to fight anymore either. I've been missing you this entire time, but I couldn't show you that and I didn't dare say it. I was afraid that he would see something in the way I looked at you and see the truth of the fact that I am so deeply in love with you, Oswald. I want to be yours again and to never leave your side ever again" exclaimed Mary her hands on my shoulders now as more tears streaked across her face. I dried those tears as soon as they came. She wasn't finished though, for she nearly doubled over in her tears as she gasped for whatever else she had to say. All the time, I was holding onto her with her body leaning heavily into mine, and I couldn't help thinking that this was the way it should have been. That we were meant to lean upon each other this way for the rest of our lives. I could see she saw that too as she continued to speak.
"I am madly in love with you Oswald Cobblepot and I always will be. I know I was unkind last time we spoke, but my head and my heart and every part of me can no longer stand the effort it takes to be that man's wife. I want to be your wife, your queen, and yours alone. I want that, I would give anything for that, but I'm still his. It feels like that will never change" exclaimed Mary when she started to sob into my chest, I let her. I wrapped my arms solely around her and I closed my eyes as what she said shook something in me. It made me take her face in my hands with my handkerchief always drying her tears as they came and there was no more to be said. She didn't need to explain herself, she never did, nor would she ever. I think she saw that as she kissed my hands as they still held her face. There was no need for that.
"You and I will stand side by side sooner now. Our time is here, my love, all we have to do is take it, and I do intend to take you from him very soon" I whispered making her smile as she looked solely into my eyes her hands coming to grip my wrists as they held her. I didn't have anymore words to tell her that, so I set my words aside to kiss her on the lips, and just as I hoped she would, she kissed me right back.
"Oswald" gasped Mary as we kissed her body solid against my own as her hands gripped tufts of my hair using it to draw me all the closer. When we drew apart, I took her in the sound of our lips parting loud to my ears, but that wasn't what caught my eye in that moment. It was the flushed, kissed look of her that I had missed in the months that had passed. We looked solely into one another's eyes, our foreheads touching in our sacred way, and it was as if that moment of fighting silence had never existed between us. We were us again. Two people unwilling to live apart again with love blooming in our hearts.
"You're still my Mary if I'm still your Oswald" I whispered drawing her memory back to that night when we had been reunited after years apart.
"I will always be yours, Oswald" said Mary slowly my hands fell away from her face in that moment as I drew her as close as I could get her. Her hand came to touch my cheek as our foreheads remained touching always and I never stopped looking at her. I would never stop looking at her this way as we stood always inches from kissing. In that moment, we both knew we were whole again, and neither of us ever wanted it any other way ever again. When I could stand it no more, I kissed her with the kiss of a man coming home, and she returned that kiss with her own natural vigor. We both knew what I was doing in that moment. That I was finally truly claiming her for myself and in her way, she too was claiming me. We belonged solely to each other and that would be the case as long as we lived. We would never lose sight of one another again, I promised myself that as I kissed her, and that I knew would be one promise that I would keep for the rest of my life. I sealed that promise with that kiss. This time more desperately until parting again I held her closer.
"This will not pass between us again. I will never again let something like this break us apart, Mary. I love you; I will always love you, and make sure you always know that. Very soon, you will not be that man's wife, but mine. I promise you; I am going to take you back from him, and then you will never shed tears for the remaining days of your life. I will make you the happiest woman in this city" I whispered her eyes seeming to sparkle in the low light of the room. Her hand was still on my cheek as I spoke, her whole body pressed to mine with tenderness, and for a moment, it felt like our future had already begun. In my mind, it had as we stood there.
"I love you, my Oswald" said Mary her head connecting with mine as we stood there in our solidarity. This entire time we had stood in a world unto ourselves, but when I glanced up to see Charlie still standing there guarding her, I was drawn back to the world we lived in. One where I was still Maroni's little bird and she was my damsel on the cusp of it all waiting to be rescued. When I first noticed Charlie standing there again, I couldn't help staring at him until even Mary noticed. She looked from me to him and with her touch never leaving me, she sent him away.
"Charlie, leave us alone" whispered Mary, she said it so simply with that note of authority in her voice that made something in me rise. Yet that was all it took to make him leave without quarrel her eyes still always on me with love in them. When we were truly alone that was when I looked at her and I was aware then just how long it had been since we had been alone together. I saw the urges I held within rise to form as smoke in her eyes and pulling her close, I let her feel that same urge as she made it arise in me.
"Shall we celebrate your great victory, my Oswald?" whispered Mary only then did her hand leave my cheek to travel down the length of my neck until her hands were at my chest fingering the lapels of my suit that smoky predators gaze in her eyes. A million scenarios ran through my mind in that moment. Ideas of throwing her to the floor to make love to her or even daring to try to lift her over my shoulder to carry her to the nearest table. All were arousing, but none so much so as her as she just stood there waiting to see how I would dare to accept her offer. In the end there was only one way that truly appealed to me. I started it by merely taking her hands and bringing them to my lips, I kissed them from her fingertips to the point where her pulse beat rapidly. I continued over her wrist to her pulse point continuing up her arm until I was kissing the hollow of her throat. I was at her jaw then nipping at the curve of it until stopping I found myself looking with a purpose into her eyes. She was waiting for me to kiss her, I knew by the way her breathing came in a shallow burst of air in then out again, and yet I hesitated for that first single moment. Not just because she captivated me so, but because my need for her was so great that it almost overwhelmed me in that moment. That was until I was kissing her.
I took her hand after that and leading her away, I led her to Fish's table. Once again, there were hundreds of scenarios running through my mind, but in the end, I settled on the simplest one. I could have lifted her quickly to sit on that table and quickly we could have slaked our thirst for one another. I could have sat with her in my lap and enjoyed her that way too, but that wasn't our choice that night. As I sat in the booth where Fish once had, I had intended to pull her into my lap, but she was one step ahead of me. Mary didn't wait for me to tell her what to do, but before I was fully in my seat, she had straddled me, her hands always pressed into my chest, and suddenly there was no other option as her body pressed flush against mine.
"You and I are of one mind, my love" I whispered as her clothed sex settled over mine as each of her legs straddled one side of me and as my hands held the small of her back, I could picture how I would make love to her in that moment.
"We are going to celebrate tonight as we will in the future. Starting now, you don't need to think of yourself as anything, but mine. You are not his wife, but my girl. Our future is cemented, Mary, and soon I can promise you we will be celebrating the day when I free you completely from that man and call you mine" I said firmly as her face was inches from mine, a short distance that she quickly closed, and she kissed me deeply with all her love all around me.
"I've missed you" I gasped as our lips parted, a smile playing at her lips in the aftermath as she looked right at me, her breath catching in her throat, and then suddenly her deft fingers had opened the buttons of my coat then my vest removing them without ever asking my consent.
"I've always been your girl, Oswald, you'll never need to doubt that" whispered Mary making me smile as she held me in her arms. I reveled in that as I nuzzled closer to her. I kissed her neck and as I left my mark, I didn't care who saw. She would be mine. Soon, she would be mine, her time as his wife would be over, and I would call her mine. Nothing else would matter until that was true.