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Burn it to the ground, or make it his.
Oswald's parents hadn’t really had the chance to impart any last wishes to him. His father somewhat did, with his plea to stay out of the darkness. Oswald doesn’t like to think about how completely he’d abandoned that request.
Fish’s wish, though— her command— had been more than doable. It had been stabilizing. Everything was crumbling around him, including his resolve, and she’d used her last words to pave a new foundation for him. Maybe she knew he needed it— what good is all that power without someone to share it with? Good for honoring the dead, that’s what. He’s never known, or hoped, that his parents would be proud. But he knows Fish would be.
Knew.
Now, locked up in this asylum and more thoroughly beaten than ever before, he knows it’s the opposite. He can almost hear her tsking, see the metronome-wag of her finger. Sometimes he actually does, when some official comes through and the warden wants to pretend they actually do anything here by grabbing the nearest inmate and shoving whatever pills are on hand down their throats. The last time it happened to Oswald, Jerome had seen and laughed so hard it turned into choked coughs.
It hadn’t happened again after that, though. Not because he wasn’t a prime target, but because they just… pass him over. He still doesn’t entirely know what he did while on the drugs, just that when he woke up a day later he had a dozen completely incomprehensible and tear-warped letters sitting on the small desk in his cell. But however he acted, clearly Jerome didn’t find it as amusing as his sober strifes. It’s the only explanation for his ‘free pass’ these days.
‘These days’ being… a completely indeterminate space of time. It could be two weeks since he was locked up or two months. Whenever he escapes and regains power, he needs to remember to get someone to shut this place down for an actual overhaul. Not for the sake of his fellow inmates, but because he keeps ending up stuck here and he might as well make things comfortable for the possibility of it happening again.
He’s thinking about what kind of amenities he could have added to the rec room when Jerome sits next to him. He stiffens, and Jerome’s permanent grin gets wider.
“Hiya Pengy."
He never thought he’d miss hearing Ivy call him that.
“Heard you got a visitor today.”
Oswald tries to use the tight-lipped, dead-eyed frown on Jerome that used to send people running back before he lost the ability to reign in his emotions. It just makes Jerome snicker, and Oswald hopes that’s the other man’s insanity and not because he’s losing his edge.
“Didn’t go too well, huh?” Jerome throws an arm over Oswald’s shoulders. “Lemme guess— somebody you screwed over, who screwed you back, and you just kept screwing each other without ever doing the fun kind.”
Oswald rolls his eyes. “Congratulations, you’ve boiled the life of a crimelord down to its bare essence.”
“Pretty boring.”
“Not when you’re living through it.”
“YEAH, but, looking back on it’s gotta be dull, huh? ‘Oh, he wanted money that I wanted so now we’re shooting at each other’, I mean, where’s the drama?” Jerome leans in, eyes bright and sharp. “Seriously, where is it? ‘Cause if you give me something good, I might not have to drag you out for therapy tonight.”
… It’s a trap of some kind. Obviously. And Oswald’s pain tolerance can handle another night of getting beaten senseless, especially now that he knows. Ed might hate him, but Riddler is asking for help, so that relationship is at least… neutral ground.
For now.
… But it also wouldn’t do to be killed before he can give Riddler a reply.
He looks at Jerome and smiles, lips pressed even thinner this time, probably rendered as pale as the rest of his face. The parts that aren’t split open, anyway. “I fell in love with him, and he got a girlfriend the night I planned to confess.”
Jerome perks up, shifting so that he’s facing Oswald entirely. They’re both on a ratty threadbare couch with no stuffing left. He leans in like they’re conspiring something together. “How’d ya kill her?”
“I had her brakes cut, and she was hit by a train.”
Jerome interest seems to die in an instant, but Oswald knows just how to bring it back.
“She looked exactly like his first girlfriend, who he killed by accident.”
The would-be clown’s eyes light up again, and he cackles, slapping his knee. “You’re kiddin’!”
Oswald’s forced smile grows a little. He hasn’t found it darkly amusing since before The Founder’s Dinner, and barely even then. But it is, isn’t it? Because really— what the hell?
“He told me that love is a weakness after he found me,” Oswald says. “Days after killing her! And then he goes and falls in love again!”
Jerome cackles again, throwing his head back. It doesn’t feel like he’s laughing at Oswald’s tragedy, though. It feels like they’re both laughing at Ed.
“And!” Oswald turns to face Jerome a little more, as much as he can with his leg. “He told me he was a butterfly who couldn’t go back to being a caterpillar! He wanted to embrace a life of crime and murder and couldn’t imagine going back—”
Jerome leans over, wiping at his eyes as he howls with laughter, “Lemme guess! Just to want it all back!”
“YES!” Oswald throws his arms up. “He was livid with me for ‘taking away his second chance at a normal life’! As if we hadn’t talked constantly about how pathetic such a life was to lead!”
“HA HAAA! HOO, BOY, PENGY!” Jerome slaps his hands on Oswald’s shoulders. “What a shitshow that is! So how’d he find out it was you, huh?”
It is… shockingly easy to pour the story out to Jerome. Maybe because Oswald is treating it like what Jerome wants it to be, one big joke at Oswald’s expense. It’s easy to avoid getting lost in the sheer devastation of it all when Jerome is laughing throughout, peppering in comments about how stupid the situation is and how unbelievable Ed’s hypocrisy was, and how that hypocrisy is hilarious.
They end up laughing together.
Surprisingly, Jerome keeps his word.
Oswald isn’t dragged out for another round of ‘curing’ him. Instead, when his cell door opens, Jerome walks in and flops onto Oswald’s cot while Oswald sits at his desk. It interrupts the staring contest Oswald’s had with his blank piece of paper, the potential key to his escape and Martin’s safety. If he just trusts the man who he and Jerome spent hours mocking together.
He’s having trouble coming up with a good reason to extend that trust now.
He turns, and Jerome grins at him. “You know why I stay in here, Pengy?”
Oswald thinks for a moment, because… it has been bothering him. “A steady supply of sadistic entertainment without Jim Gordon ruining everything?”
“Good guess.” Jerome puts his hands behind his head and looks up at the ceiling. “Pretty close, even. I’m in this funny farm to find the creme de la crazy. The real lunatics.”
Oswald can’t help but laugh. Jerome lazily rolls his head to the side, laughing with him.
Oswald catches his breath, hugging himself tightly as he does something incredibly stupid. “Thank you for your kind offer. But I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood my motivations.”
Jerome rolls over entirely, laying on his stomach and kicking his feet up behind him. “Oh yeah?”
“As interesting as your anarchic chaos makes things, I’m no anarchist.” Oswald smiles at him, baring his teeth. “I’m the King of Gotham. What use is a king with no kingdom?”
Jerome blows a raspberry at him. Oswald doesn’t flinch, but drops his smile to a scowl as he wipes flecks of spit off his face. He reopens his cheek cut with the action.
“Come on, Pengy. You’re more interesting than you think.” Jerome tilts his head, eyes glinting. “I wanna show you what’s buried under all those stuffy suits.”
Oswald laughs again. “I know myself very well, thank you.”
Jerome rolls off the bed, moving to get close enough to plant a little kiss on Oswald’s nose. It stuns the self-proclaimed king into silence as Jerome turns them both to look at the tiny barred ‘window’ near the top of the cell.
“Why do you wanna be king of this dump?”
Oswald bristles, shoulders hiking. “Gotham is my home.”
“See, I’ve never had one’a those. So what’s that mean?”
“I love Gotham. I want to see it flourish! Not be destroyed for a laugh!”
“Yeah, well.” Jerome smacks his lips. “I’m gonna do that anyway.”
Oswald almost punches him. He thinks he could get a few good hits in— as heavy as a fire poker can be, it still takes some strength to beat a man to death with one. He doubts Jerome has that. But there are guards outside still.
“What’s it got for ya anyway? A guy who can’t make up his mind, another guy who wants us all to shove a stick up our asses, a buncha dead people.” Jerome puts his arm over Oswald’s shoulders again.
Of course there’s more. There’s Martin. There’s, maybe, a chance to win at least half of Ed back. There’s…
There’s…
…
“It’s my city.”
Jerome grins. “Not anymore. But I don’t wanna own it, so that works out.”
“Then what do you want?”
Jerome leans in again, his cheek brushing against Oswald’s as he whispers into his ear. “To set everyone free.”
Oswald shudders at the feeling of Jerome’s warm breath. This cell is freezing. He leans in, some deeper comfort-seeking instinct overriding his rationality.
“When we’re done out there… that’ll be the asylum.”
Everyone who’s ever wronged him, stuck him in a place like this, cut up his mind for their own purposes… experiencing the same…
No, he can rebuild again. He can scrape his empire back from ruins and run the city like it’s meant to be run. Under his thumb.
… And he can lose it all again. Have everyone and everything he loves stripped away by people who think they know better. There are armies and empires set against him, infesting every part of his beloved city.
Maybe…
…
Jerome pulls away, grinning. Oswald feels a little dazed. He’s never considered something this… extreme. The asylum must be getting to him. The rot-filled air, the molding walls, the lack of sleep. It’s a pressure cooker— people come in with kleptomania and leave with disorders psychology doesn’t even have names for yet. He knows this. And he knows he isn’t like the rest of them. Not like Jerome.
But.
He can almost hear her again.
Bleeding out in his arms, just like his mother and father. A saving grace, a mentor and ally, the last remnant of the world he built himself for. The one that’s been steadily eroded away, the rulebooks thrown out and the honor spat on.
Fish tsks at him from beyond the grave.
Burn it down or make it yours.
Burn it down. Make it yours.
Burn it down and make it yours.
Jerome kisses him, planting it in the dead center of his forehead, a bullet blowing his brains out. “You’ll come around,” he says gleefully. “They always do.”
And god help him…
Oswald thinks he’s right.