Gotham Oneshots- Requests Are Open!

The Truth

3x22, but Ed ends up confessing his love for Oswald and doesn't get frozen.

TW// Suicidal thoughts, mentioned Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, mentioned Childhood Abuse.

*Tissue Warning*

Ed wakes in the backseat of a squad car, his head splitting in two.

"He's awake! I was getting lonely..." Oswald says warmly, a sarcastic tone in his voice.

"Where are we?" Ed growls, his head feeling like it's about to explode.

"Oh, we ran into a police blockade. Had to hunker down a minute." Oswald says with an insincere smile.

"Where are you taking me?" Ed asks, staring at Oswald's reflection in the rearview mirror.

"I don't know. I'm sort of improvising here. Why, do you have someplace you need to be?" Oswald says warmly, amused.

"Does it matter?" Ed growls, another wave of pain radiating through his head. Oswald shrugs in response.

"I imagine you're planning on dragging this out." Ed says, fumbling for a moment before pulling one of his gloves off, with his hands cuffed behind his back, no less.

"There are so few moments of pure joy in one's life, I feel compelled to savor this one."

"You mean gloat?" Ed says, glaring at Oswald over his half rim glasses that were slowly sliding off his face.

"Yes, I do." Oswald says warmly, smiling at Ed.

"It was always one of your least attractive qualities, Oswald." Ed says quietly, digging in the space between the cushion and the back of the seat to try and find a bobby pin, a needle, anything he could use to pick the lock on the cuffs.

"It's killing you, isn't it?" Oswald says, his voice full of venom.

"What?" Ed grumbles.

"To know you're not as smart as you think you are. All of that planning to drive me crazy, strip me of everything I had, revealing yourself with a 'ta-da!' and shooting me by the river?" Oswald says, trying to get further under Ed's skin.

"That plan was perfect, and you know it." Ed says angrily, sitting up and putting his face close to the grate separating them. Oswald puts on Ed's bowler hat, another thing that will drive him mad.

"You failed. I am still alive and you're handcuffed in the backseat." Oswald says while, unbeknownst to him, Ed pulls out a pin from the cushion. "And now you will never be able to correct your mistake."

"I guess not." Ed says with a enigmatic smile, setting to work on picking the lock on the cuffs. Oswald starts the car, the engine roaring to life. He starts humming a familiar tune, the song Ed played once in his apartment when he and Oswald, um...danced, once. Ed tries to shake off the memory, not wanting some silly little lingering emotions towards Cobblepot to complicate things. He has to be completely emotionless and uninfluenced if he's going to kill this man again.

"Do you ever get tired of making the same mistake over and over again?" Ed says, referring not to Oswald's actions, but his own. Killing Oswald was both the greatest achievement and worst mistake of his entire existence.

"You think I'm making a mistake?" Oswald asks with a smirk.

"You could've killed me before. Instead of killing me when I had the chance, you've decided to feed your ego." Ed says, hiding his emotions almost perfectly. Oswald bursts out laughing, a sound Ed once adored.

"You wanna talk ego, 'Riddler'?" He says, beyond tickled.

"You will always fail, because you will always let your base emotions drive you: hate, anger, fear..." Ed hesitates before continuing his sentence, unsure of wether he can say the word without cracking "love."