Selina had noticed him at the corner of her eye, while taking a sip from her beer and doing her best to ignore the looks and whispers from drunk idiots. She had a decent reputation at this bar as a woman you should never approach, yet sometimes people forgot that and thanks to liquid courage would stumble their way towards her while being encouraged by their friends. Then they would backoff once they realised she wasn't interested or she broke a hand whenever they tried to touch her, after which she usually had to leave earlier than she would like.
He was sitting alone at a booth while wearing a bright green blazer which basically advertised who he was since green and purple were two colours no one in Gotham wore anymore, which she supposed was the plan since if he didn't he would have been seen as an easy target. His clothes seemed a little too big for him, probably due to not eating enough, and he was desperately in need of getting his hair cut, and he was staring intently at his table in a way that made Selina worry that he could snap at any moment. If he didn't make it clear he was the Riddler and was smart enough to design insane death traps that rely on obscure trivia knowledge to survive, then some of these idiots would do something to earn his hatred.
She narrowed her eyes, wondering why he was here. Selina hadn't seen Nygma since...Wow, it had been a long time. Almost two years if she was to guess. They hadn't even been working together, not like the old days when they would work with Cobblepot and the Joker as Gotham's only villains, and instead they had crossed paths while she helped Pamela and Harley break out of Arkham. He had been taking advantage of the chaos to escape, or at least that's what she thinks he had been doing. They had locked eyes for only a moment, before he vanished into the crowd and Selina helped her friends escape, and she had quickly dismissed any thoughts about him after that.
Keeping her drink in her hand, she left the barstool she was sitting on and made her way towards his booth, almost on instinct and with little thought behind it. She supposed that if this was some trap, she would prefer to face it head on than having to look over her shoulder the rest of the night. He didn't look up until she casually dropped onto the seat opposite him, and he looked up quickly at the sudden movement while tensing for an attack. He looked at her with confusion in his eyes for far longer than he should have, before recognition washed over him though he visibly remained wary of her.
"Miss Kyle." Edward said, his voice sounding deeper than she remembered. "It's been awhile."
"I suppose it has." she agreed. "If you would be kind enough to forgive me, I'm not really in the mood to dance around the subject and listen to your riddles. So, why are you here?"
He frowned for a moment before pointing a finger at his beer bottle. "To have a drink."
"And you just happened to have it here?"
"Well, it's not that far from my office, so occasionally I come here. Better than staying in all the time."
Now it was Selina's turn to frown in confusion. "Your office? Since when do you have an office?"
He was starting to get annoyed by this, she could tell by the way he visibly forced himself to remain polite. "For about ten months now, since private detectives usually need an office. It doubles as my home, but my clients don't need to know that."
"Oh. That's for real? I thought you were pulling some kind of scam." she replied with suspicion, and judging from the flash of anger she guessed that was the wrong thing to say.
"Yes, well in any case I would like to drink in private. So if you wouldn't mind?" Edward said as a waved his hand at her to leave.
She almost did exactly that, not because he told her to because not even Bruce could tell her what to do, but because she would also like to drink on her own. She had satisfied her curiosity and wasn't getting the sense that Edward was lying to her, so there was no reason for either of them to keep talking. But just as the thought of leaving crossed her mind, she paused and took a good look at him. At how unkept his appearance was, how unmotivated he seemed and how their conversation lacked that same dynamic they used to have. He didn't speak to her like the Riddler, a showboating asshole with an ego so big her spent thousands of dollars setting up riddles all across Gotham just to mess with the Dark Knight. He spoke to her almost as if he was a normal person, and that was so weird she decided to remain sitting.
"So, what's going on with you Eddie?"
"What?" he asked, clearly puzzled that she was still here.
"Did the Bat figure out all of your riddles? Or has Joker been giving you trouble? Have you and Oswald had a spat?" she questioned, and was rewarded by how he stiffened at the last one. "Oh, I'm sure the two of you will work things out. You fight, you kiss and make up, and then you end up fighting again."
He glared at her for a moment and for a second he recalled the last time he had looked her like that, just moments before stabbing her with his cane and leaving her to almost be killed by Grundy, but instead of doing anything like that he simply sighed in a mixture of annoyance and defeat. "We won't work things out. He told me that because of my new job and principles, he can't afford to be associated with me. His thugs have strict orders to make sure I don't even walk near the Iceberg Lounge."
Selina blinked in surprise before speaking. "Seriously? But if you're going around being a private detective, surely the two of you could come up with some kind of scheme and use that to your advantage"
"It isn't a scam!" he shouted suddenly, earning surprised and terrified looks from the others in the bar. "I'm really a private detective, I'm really solving crimes and I'm not...I'm not him anymore."
"Him? Who's him?" she asked once he seemed to calm down, at the back of her mind wondering if this had been a mistake and if she could still leave the situation.
"The Riddler. I'm not that guy anymore, I'm some crazy super criminal anymore." he explained, still clearly agitated but seemingly calming down. "Ever since I woke up from that coma, I haven't felt any urge to leave stupid riddles and clues. I'm trying to rebuild my life in some way, but you and everyone else in this stupid city doesn't believe me."
They were both silent for a moment, him looking away and taking deep breaths to apparently try and calm himself while she thought about what he had just said. To be perfectly honest, when she had first heard that Edward had woken up from his coma and had become a private detective after the doctors at Arkham started claiming that he was cured, she had been certain that it was all some big scheme. Perhaps to trick Bruce or the GCPD, or simply a way to hide in plain sight until he's ready to make his grand return with some ridiculous plot that Bruce would have to stop. But sitting across from him now and listening to the anger in his voice, she almost found it believable now. She couldn't fully believe it, the one thing nobody should do is completely trust the word of a supervillain, but part of her did believe him.
"And what about you miss Kyle? Why are you here, drinking alone? I would have thought you would be with Quinn or Isley, or with your boytoy." he suddenly said, and she was so surprised she couldn't hide her reaction to what he last said. She saw the judgmental and angry look on his face be replaced by one of curiosity and desire for revenge when he noticed her reaction. "Oh, so there is trouble in paradise. Seeing as I've been pretty honest with you, I think I deserve the same from you."
She almost leaped across at him and tore out his eyes, but somehow she held back. And she didn't know whether it was from loneliness and a desire to tell someone what had happened, or because deep down she did feel a little guilty about what had happened, but after a moment she answered. "Things have ended between us. For good this time."
"Forgive me if I don't believe that. Me and Oswald might have never had the most stable relationship, but you and the Bat switch between on and off so much you could be the stars of some television series."
Unfortunately she had to nod in agreement before continuing. "He was very clear this time, in his usual cryptic and brooding way. He had to focus all his efforts to save Gotham and he can't afford to be distracted from that mission."
"Have I somehow travelled back in time, because I swear I've heard you say this before."
"It was different this time. How he acted and the way he spoke, it was so different from all those other times. There was no little flirtations or any sign of reluctance. He didn't care that I had given up everything for our relationship, said some crap about how it would never work and then just left me on the stupid rooftop where we first met." she explained, getting angrier and angrier as she recalled the details of what happened three days ago.
"And what did you give up exactly?" he asked, almost mockingly and Selina immediately regretted telling him anything. This is what being around Bruce did to her, it made her soft enough to forget that Nygma wasn't her friend and that he enjoyed laughing at people for showing any weakness since it made him feel superior to others. But just as she was about to get up to leave, likely after punching the bastard to make herself feel better, he frowned as something occurred to him. "Why aren't you with Quinn and Isley?"
Selina looked at him surprise and some confusion, and he quickly explained. "What I mean is, usually in these kinds of situations the three of you would go out for some kind of girl's night out and complain about the Bat. I remember the three of you usually doing that at the Iceberg Lounge a few times, and they would last a week or so. So why are you here, at this bar, when you could be anywhere else?"
Selina knew she should just leave the situation, but he had asked the right question to bring up all her feelings to the surface. Again, it's all Bruce's fault because back in the old days she could have pushed them back down without any problem. "They're not talking to me. Well, from what I hear they've broken up again so they're not really talking to each other. But they're especially not talking to me."
Nygma looked at her expectantly for answers, and with a sigh and quick sip from her glass she continued. "I tried to go straight. I got lucky and managed to get a pardon from the mayor, his wife got me some blackmail material, and I tried to be something other than a thief. I mean, for the last few years I ended up helping him more than I was betraying him, and everyone knew it. He got me to start caring about stupid things like what's right and wrong, and now I end up giving whatever I steal to any homeless kids I meet. So I thought it was time for me to really commit to one thing or the other instead of sitting on the fence."
"And he still turned you down? Hasn't he been trying to get you to switch sides since the first day you met? Hell, I heard he even let you get away that first time."
"No, he didn't do that. He wasn't like that yet." she replied bitterly, thinking back to that first day. She hadn't even had a proper costume yet and he was still running around with those pointy ears and purple gloves, and in retrospect they had both been so young and naive. He had been so self-righteous, not yet burdened by the knowledge that he couldn't just punch all the corruption and evil in Gotham until it submitted, and she had been so coy and playful, not realising how greatly this man would change her life. Thinking about that time made her smile slightly as she remembered that bright green costume with question marks Edward wore back then, and how he used to be so funny in a strange way before he grew resentful and bitter over his many losses.
"So what does this have to do with the others?" Edward asked as he took a sip from his own drink.
"Well, Pamela and Harley always gave me a break, most of the time at least, when it came to Batman. But when I chose him and made it clear that I meant it, they decided that they didn't have any reason to trust me. In fact, as far as I can tell nobody in this city trusts me, and think I'm still working with Batman." she explained, doing her best to hide the hurt that she felt from being rejected by the only two people she could really call her friends. "So to answer you're question, that's why I'm here. I sacrificed everything to be with a man who rejected me, and now I'm some kind of outcast to both him and his band of misfits and everyone I ever knew."
They fell into a sort of silence, where Selina felt that both of them wanted to say something but neither one knew exactly what they should say. She felt ashamed of herself for opening up so much, but she had been dealing with this on her own and she guessed that she needed to vent to someone. And Edward did fall into that weird area where she didn't fully trust him like with Pamela and Harley, but she also didn't hate him like with the Joker or Crane, so he was probably the best person she could vent to.
"Well," he finally said after they had sat in silence for what felt like forever, but couldn't have been more than about two minutes, "as a fellow outcast I guess I could buy you another round."
She frowned before glaring at him suspiciously, wondering if her earlier instincts had been right all along, before he held his hands up to reassure her. "No tricks. Like you, I'm not trusted by anyone and nobody wants anything to do with me. So it's just nice to know I'm not the only one being treated like that."
She didn't answer at first, Bruce's voice annoyingly appearing in her head to advise her to consider all the possible reasons Nygma could be doing this, to figure out what his angle might be. But then she remembered how he had rejected her, how her friends had rejected her, and how having one drink with the one person in Gotham who might actually understand her situation proved to be pretty tempting.
"Why not? Let's go then." she said as she stood up, before laughing at Edward's confused expression. "Oh, if you think I'm going to let you buy me drinks without me watching you, then you're definitely still crazy."
Please tell me if you see any spelling mistakes or sentences that don't make sense. So this story was originally meant to act as an origin for Selina's and Edward's relationship in the Kingdom Come comic, as I figured that the Riddler's time as a private detective was the only time in the comics where they would have realistically had enough in common to become a couple. But while writing it eventually evolved into something unrelated to the comic.