No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
For some reason, those words are the first thing to go through Oswald's mind when they get news that the mainland isn't sending aid. Gotham stands alone, abandoned, a law unto itself. An island, entire of itself.
Better off unencumbered.
Oswald sits on a throne in the Town Hall as the rising sun scatters red light against vaulted arches and marble statues. A palace fit for a king, a land to rule and a city to conquer - all he has ever wanted.
And yet, his thoughts keep spiralling back to his once murderer, twice traitor. Edward Nygma. The Riddler.
I promise - I'm going to fix you, Ed.
In the days following the destruction of the bridges, Oswald sleeps in spurts, never managing more than two hours at a time. He works through the night, establishes his influence, secures supporters and supplies, one eye never leaving the phone. Anxiety is a writhing, suffocating thing in his chest, pressure building behind his eardrums until he can barely think.
On the third day, Hugo Strange finally calls.
"You're in luck, Mr Cobblepot. You got him to me just in time."
Ed will live. So will Lee.
For the first time in this new Gotham, Oswald sleeps through the night, relief dragging him under like a guilty man acquitted.
He does not contact Strange further, does not enquire as to Ed's whereabouts, does not send someone to keep tabs on his movements. He resists the temptation each day, shrugs off those greedy fingers which cling to him, ignores the whispering thoughts that say he should see him, speak to him, confess at long last…
You're here because, what? I didn't love you back?
He stops himself each time and limps onwards.
As the weeks stretch into months he doesn't hear from Ed or the Riddler, as if the man never had existed. Oswald concludes that he has made the right choice, not initiating contact. For all he knows, Ed and Lee have retired together to a cosy apartment somewhere in the Diamond District and are content waiting out this lawless vision of Gotham.
Oswald isn't about to impose. Not when seeing the two of them happy and content and insufferably in love would kill him quicker than a bullet ever could.
Ice cream and whiskey is distressingly lacking in this new Gotham, but Oswald allows himself one night alone to indulge in the age-old ceremony of grieving a relationship he never truly had in the first place. Pitiful.
Still, the alcohol and the frozen chocolate are pleasantly numbing and even facilitate one of the most ground-breaking decisions he has ever made.
Oswald Cobblepot is going to get a dog.
His mother had always wanted one. As a child her family had owned a beautiful, dopey cocker-spaniel but after moving to America she'd never had the money to afford one. Having a dog himself almost makes up for the fact that he cannot visit her grave.
The first night Oswald brings him home, the panting, gormless creature sits on his lap in front of the fire and slobbers all over his face and suit. Oswald finds himself smiling for the first time in weeks.
As for its name… Well. Oswald has spent the last few years of his life speaking his thoughts aloud to Edward, whether as his chief of staff or Iceberg Lounge centrepiece. Even after he'd escaped the habit had become so entrenched Oswald still found himself musing over strategy, speaking Ed's name into empty rooms as if he could conjure him out of thin air.
Old habits die hard and no other name falls as easily from his lips so Edward it is.
It is fitting that Oswald falls a little bit in love with this second Edward. He makes sure to give him plenty of kisses, a comfortable bed to sleep in and the highest quality meat he can find. After all, any Edward deserves the best.
Oswald only realises how embarrassing the dog's name might appear until he is yelling it in front of half the GCPD.
However, other events at Haven quickly overshadow any momentary humiliation.
Oswald's dreams are filled with fire and smoke as countless bodies blacken behind his eyelids. Haven burns like a bonfire and days later his skin still carries the heat of the inferno. What's worse, voices from his nightmares begin to echo in his waking mind, twisting and turning through the long shadows.
Everyone hated you. No one ever respected you. They only saw you for what you really are - a tiny freak who used to own an umbrella. Nothing more...
One evening in the library, trying hopelessly to distract himself from it all, Oswald comes across that phrase again: 'no man is an island'. The poem's message is admirable yet a tad too optimistic to ever have any bearing on the reality of Gotham. However, his gaze snags over the final lines.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
This time, it is these lines which reverberate in Oswald's skull when he finds out the identity of the butcherer of Haven.
Oh, Ed, what have you done…
His body goes into a cold sweat, heart punching against his rib-cage as, for the first time in five years, Oswald can't see a way out.
He cannot understand it. Why would Ed, his Edward massacre hundreds of civilians? He knows Ed has an unsettling history with his darker self, even being forced to act without his consent but this…
Haven wasn't the work of compulsion or fixation; it wasn't the crime of a man desperate for attention and infamy. This was cold, carefully calculated and beyond cruel.
Ed would never be safe if this information got out. Not from the authorities, not from the GCPD, not from the gangs - even the most barbaric of Gotham's underbelly despises what happened at Haven. Oswald himself had clamoured for his death but a few days ago, not knowing who had done it. But now…
Now he feels sick.
Oswald loves him. Even now, even knowing what he has done, even if Ed has truly lost his mind and become a monster beyond recognition or redemption - Oswald still loves him.
The fact that Edward doesn't love him back is inconsequential really. Oswald is still bound to him, just as irrevocably as he always was.
You cannot have one without the other.
So, the path forward is simple. Oswald sends out his eyes and ears into Gotham's dangerous streets, desperate to find the man before he does something even more stupid. He'll find a way off this forsaken island for both of them, protect Ed with his dying breath if that is what it takes - he just has to find the damn man first.
In a stunning turn of events, and for perhaps the first time in their chequered relationship, Ed finds him first.
You named your dog after me?
Their long-awaited reunion is punctuated by a gun pointed at Oswald's chest, rage in Ed's eyes and a frankly hideous haircut. For all the terror of the last few weeks this abrupt meeting leaves Oswald feeling winded, caught off guard.
Ed speaks and it is like trying to decipher an unknown language, Oswald utterly clueless as to its meaning.
Something about murderous puppets?
Ed looks an absolute mess, red, sagging skin under his eyes, jaw beginning to show stubble, hair unwashed and sticking out at odd ends, as if Ed has quite literally been tearing his hair out. His voice is deep, hoarse and Oswald wonders whether Ed has talked to another person all these months.
Despite everything, Oswald still feels his heart swell for joy at the sight of him.
"For weeks I've been waking up in strange places, not knowing how I got there or what I did." Ed is more manic than he's ever seen him, concentration lapsing in and out so much that he takes the gun off of Oswald for a few brief seconds. It's a small slip, but still utterly out of character for the usually composed Riddler.
Oswald's adrenaline begins to kick in as joy turns to dread.
"Driving myself mad, thinking I had gone mad. And now I know that was all your doing."
The hatred in Ed's eyes is like a bullet in his gut all over again and Oswald feels his jaw loosen with shock. Words which normally come so easily dance just beyond his reach and he struggles to breathe.
"Of all the things you have put me through. This," he pauses and Oswald half thinks Ed is about to cry, "this is most cruel."
A thousand thoughts, reactions flicker through Oswald's muscle memory. Outrage, that Ed could ever think he would do something so evil, bitterness and spite like ichor in his mouth - you think this is cruel, Edward? I didn't desecrate the remains of your precious Miss Kringle - fear, that Ed has a gun aimed at his heart once again, panic, that he might actually use it, horror, that despite it all, despite Oswald doing everything in his power to prevent this they are back here, enemies, once again.
Can't we just pretend that nothing happened? Go back to the way things were? You are the best friend I've ever had. I don't want to lose you…
Taking in a slow breath, Oswald forces his jaw to unclench and his muscles to relax, willing a calm that he is nowhere close to feeling. "Ed, I don't know what you're talking about. I did not make you do anything-"
"What is 'I'll fix you'? What did that mean?"
Oswald feels himself flush cold, vision of Ed's body unnaturally still flashing behind his eyes and he desperately swallows down the suffocating panic of finding Edward half-dead on the floor-
Before he can even try to respond he finds himself being wrenched forwards, Ed's shaking hand clutching him close enough that he feels spit hit him across the face. "You didn't fix me. You broke me."
"W-wait!" Oswald brings his hands up, attempting to create some space when every nerve ending in his body is screaming. "I said that the night the bridges blew-"
Something in Ed's eyes shutters and he shoves him away with a snarl, gun arm snapping straight between them.
"You think I wouldn't remember?"
The last shred of control slips beyond Oswald's grasp as the fear turns to anger. "No, Ed, I saved your life, that's it."
Bitter resentment is a seething, living thing in his belly. Coiled and squirming and furious at the damn futility of it all. I can't even save your life without you hating me, can I?
"What are you talking about?"
Oswald growls out a breath of pure frustration. "You had been stabbed, I paid Hugo Strange to save your life-" The connection is made, and Oswald could kick himself for being so utterly stupid. Relief erupts, hot and messy in his chest. Ed is innocent. "I bet he did something to you while he was patching you up."
Ed blinks in quick succession and shakily pushes his glasses back up his nose.
"You paid Hugo Strange to save me?" His voice slopes up at the end, quivering with disbelief and suspicion and Oswald wants to cry because even after everything Ed still doesn't see, still doesn't realise.
You paid Hugo Strange to save me?
You gave up your revenge to save me?
Why are you being so kind?
"Why?"
He knows the answer. It is obvious. Blindingly obvious to anyone who has ever spoken to Oswald, seen him and Ed in a room together.
I did it because I love you.
Oswald had given that answer once before and been repaid with a slap to the face and a bullet in his gut. Not again.
Never again.
"What was I supposed to do, let you die?"
Oswald can almost believe the disaffected words are true, even as something buried deep and sharp in his stomach twists.
"After Butch you were my only friend."
Ed's fury is sudden, his raised voice echoing in the arched room. "You shot Butch."
"Which is why I needed you." Oswald snaps back, matches rage for rage, a thousand other words ready on his tongue, a stream of poison and pain and desperation begging to be released because I needed you, Ed, the bombs had gone off, the bridges were down, Gotham was cut off, I was half victorious, half sick with guilt and lonely, so damn lonely like I am always lonely, more lonely than I've been since you left and I needed you, needed my best friend, needed to know if you were still there or if you'd run away with Lee and left me and how could you leave me when I needed you, like I always need you, like I always want-
Oswald cannot stop the snarl of frustration curling out and, in what is perhaps the most staggering display of stupidity he has ever performed, he turns his back on Ed, hobbling to the far desk. He could be shot in the back at any moment but, quite frankly, he doesn't give a damn when the alternative is letting those insipid words spill out without his permission.
He wants to stab something, to cleave and cut and carve until someone else's heart lies bleeding and broken on the floor for once, until this cripplingly awful, aching, ever-present love just stops.
Oswald takes one long, steadying breath. Then another.
Slowly, he turns to find the gun isn't even trained on him. He squares his shoulders. Good. Let this be, for once, on his terms.
"Edward Nygma, if I wanted you to suffer I would never do it in some backhanded way." For the first time since Ed has arrived, Oswald steps forward, towards him.
Immediately the gun rises, fear flashing in Ed's eyes like a cornered animal. Oswald doesn't stop.
"If you and I are ever at odds again then you will know without a doubt that I-" Oswald feels the gun slam against his chest, the metal cold against his shirt which suddenly feels paper thin, "am your enemy."
He watches Ed's expression tighten, eyes as dark as oil on asphalt.
"I promise you that. As a friend." He barely catches the sob, his chest burning against the gun's barrel.
They stand there, waiting, with Oswald's heart in his throat, held out on a platter, quivering against metal. Ed's gaze burns into him and he thinks, not for the first time, that he wouldn't want to die anywhere else.
I loved her, Oswald. And you killed her…
Ed rips the gun away with a growl and somehow Oswald is still alive.
The seconds beat out, all the awful tension of the last few minutes slowly draining away with each shuddering breath they draw. Oswald's legs feel ready to buckle but he refuses to reach for the support of the desk. Not when Ed could so quickly change his mind.
"What a mess." Ed's previously rough voice is softer now, smaller. For the first time Oswald hears the fear which had underscored all of his earlier rage and accusations. "I might have killed you, Oswald."
That's never stopped you before.
Ed's eyes drag up to meet his and there is something there, some hideous, ragged emotion which Oswald could never name, burning in those inky depths.
Oswald's breath catches in his throat.
"And if that day comes," Ed says, voice stronger as he steps so comfortably into Oswald's space, "I swear to you that I will stare you in the eye as I stab you in the heart."
A pretty pair of vows. Oswald cannot stop the small smile from blossoming on his lips, ducking his head in an acquiescing nod. If I didn't know better, I'd accuse you of being a sentimentalist…
In the silence which stretches between them, breathing finally returning to normal, Oswald looks up at this mess of a man and feels something hard in his chest soften, warmth expanding outwards as he is overwhelmed by the sudden, desperate desire to reach out, close the nebulous distance and-
Oh no. Not again. He is so tired of this, so exhausted by the treacherous lurch of his stomach, the painful tightness in his lungs every time their paths cross. He wishes his mother had told him how much love burned.
Ed had been foolish to ever think Oswald could break him. How could he? Ed has never let him anywhere close enough to do serious damage.
Broken is a word entirely reserved for the Penguin.
"Look on the bright-side." Oswald wrestles down that awful urge for what must be the thousandth time and forces himself forward. "If Hugo Strange did do something to you then it means you are not responsible for Haven."
Ed looks at him, that unreadable expression flickering behind his irises before it blinks away, as if it was never there.
"Where is he?"
For once, Gotham is merciful in providing ample distraction from the staggering emotion of the last few minutes. As Oswald screams for his men, he thinks he hears a distant bell tolling, somewhere in the city.
Later that day, as he is spitting blood onto the GCPD interrogation floor, he feels, for the first time in weeks, utterly sure of himself. Defending a mass-murderer, lying outright to Jim Gordon, ensuring Ed's innocence is made known – not once does he doubt his course of action.
You know, they say you can judge a man by his friends.
Even amidst the uncertainty of it all, he feels a wry amusement curls in the base of his sternum.
After the bridges went down, Oswald had half-resigned himself to never seeing Edward Nygma again.
It would seem fate has different plans.