"OUTCASTS" - a Gotham High School AU

Day 2

At the Nygma's house
When Ed woke up, he immediately grabbed his glasses from the nightstand and prepared getting up, despite the stinging pain in his head. Once he was wearing his glasses, he looked around the room confusedly; why was he laying in his bed again? With clean sheets? And the floor appeared to be clean as well. Why? He glanced over at the clock on his nightstand: 10:38. What? Why didn't his mom wake him up? He was supposed to be in school hours ago! He got up, ignoring the numbing dizziness and the stinging pain in his head, and stumbled across the room, towards the door. Again he held onto the doorknob, struggling for his conscience, when the door suddenly opened and nearly threw him across the room.
"Oh, Edward, honey, you really shouldn't get up by yourself!" His mom caught him and walked him back to his bed. "You should be thankful that I found you before your father got up. He would've been very angry about the mess you've made." She continued while tucking him back into his bed, in the gentle and loving way that only a parent can do. Still confused, but too exhausted to fight it, Ed let himself sink into the soft sheets. His mother rambled on, ignoring the obvious exhaustion that listening caused her son. "I kind of even had to lie to him! I told him you had left for school already, when he got up for work. He is such a busy man, you know? He shouldn't be bothered with worrying about you." Ed snorted bitterly in response. His mother stroked his cheek lovingly and gave him an empathetic look. "I know how confusing all of this has to be, my poor honey. But you have got to understand that your father is very concerned for your wellbeing.", she nodded in support of her own words: "you know, he only does this because he loves you very much, my dear. Very very much." She gave her son a weak smile, tears sparkling in her eyes. Although she addressed him directly, Ed felt like she was most importantly trying to convince herself of what she said. He shook his head in disbelief: why was she like this? Why were grownups always trying to lie to themselves, even is it meant harm for them or the people they love? Why couldn't she just admit that her husband was a disgusting and violent man, who didn't give a damn about his family? Ed felt tears welling up in his eyes and he felt for his mother's hand. He found it and grabbed it tight, squeezing it a little, while whispering, trying hard not to let his voice break: "Mom, it is you who needs to understand. Dad doesn't love you or me or anyone. He is going to continue doing this until one day there's no one to stop him. Mom- please-" She got up, shaking her head heavily: "you don't know your father like I do, Edward. He told me! Last night he promised me he was going to change. And then we can live as a family again, like when you were a child, do you remember that, Ed?" Oh yes... just too well he remembered the time he was a kid. When his father still did his best to hide his abusive behavior. Ed took a deep breath and looked away from his mother and up to the ceiling, as if the cold, white surface could give solutions to his problems.
"Leave me alone, would you, mother? I'm tired." He said emotionlessly. When he heard the door falling shut behind his mother, he curled up in his bed, sobbing and screaming into his pillow, so his mother wouldn't hear him.
Why were people like this? Why couldn't they be logical? Everything they did was like a riddle, but not the good kind that you could solve by thinking and working logically but the kind that was just completely random and unexpected.
And if not? What if people were just as logical as everything else in life? What if you could learn to read them the same way that you can read encrypted messages once you figure out a way of decoding them? If that was possible, If human beings could be solved, like riddles, then Ed had to find out how. He had to learn a way. If mankind was an Enigma, then he had to be its Alan Turing.
But even the great Alan Turing, by the way a huge role model of Ed's, never would have solved Enigma by himself. Neither would Ed be capable of that. He needed a friend, somebody who was just like him, an outcast of society. He needed somebody who struggled just as much as he did. Ed chuckled to himself, suddenly it was obvious why yesterday had changed so much: Ed needed Oswald.

Ed spent the day in bed, pretending to sleep most of the time to avoid having to interact with his mother. He really needed to talk to Oswald. He was the only person who could understand him. That's why they got along so well without barely knowing each other: they were connected on a deeper level, somehow Oswald had become very important for Ed in such a short amount of time. Some time in the afternoon, he heard his mother knocking on his door. "Ed honey, there is somebody on the phone for you. Some girl named Kristin? Who is she?" Confusedly Ed got up. The rest he had gotten today had made the dizziness fade away a bit and he could stand up without fearing to lose his conscience. He opened the door and walked past his mom, who looked at him with that annoying smile, that grown ups pull off when they think they know something about you. Ed rolled his eyes and grabbed the phone. "Hello?" He said calmly.
"Ed!", it really was Kristin speaking: "how are you?"
'Here we go with the faked empathy again', Ed thought to himself. He knew she only asked to massage her ego, to validate herself as the nice girl she tried so hard to see in herself.
"What do you want?", he asked back.
"Right...", Kristin replied: "um, don't think I'm going to apologize for anything I said yesterday, because that's not going to happen."
"Fine.", Ed said and he was surprised by how little he actually cared.
"I just wanted to call you about that new 'friend' you've made recently." She pronounced the word 'friend' so sharply that Ed nearly felt her spitting through the phone. "What's his name again, Oswald Cobble-something?",
"What about him?" Ed asked harshly.
"Don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't want you to get in trouble, I just don't want you to get in somebody else's trouble, alright?"
What the hell was she talking about? "What do you mean?"
Kristin cleared her throat: "well, I think you deserve to know what you're getting yourself into here. I mean, it's sad that you have such little knowledge of people, but all I'm saying here is: there's a reason some people constantly sit by themselves."
Ed snorted: "are you calling just to insult me, or is this actually leading somewhere?"
"I just thought you might wanna know why he transferred in the middle of the school year."
Ed listened up, but he didn't want her to know that he actually cared about anything she said, so he replied: "And you know the reason because ...?", Kristin chuckled on the other side: "Lee told me and she knows it from her mom who, by the way, is the school counselor.", "you don't say", Ed replied. As if she didn't know he spent hours in Miss Tompkins' office every week. "So?" Ed added, after a moment of silence.
"Well" Kristin continued: "Apparently Oswald got kicked out of his old school a few months ago because he attacked somebody with a knife."
"What?"
"Shocking, isn't it? The other boy barely survived."
Ed shook his head in disbelief. He was sure she was lying. "Ed?" Kristin asked from the other side. But he wasn't listening anymore. Numbly, he hung up and headed back to his room. Again he stormed past his mother. He threw the door shut and threw himself back onto the bed. "She sounded nice. Is she your girlfriend?", Ed ignored his mother's question and hid under the covers.
Could it be true? Could Oswald just be one of the violent monsters he tried to escape from daily? Did he only befriend him to have somebody to hurt? He thought back to yesterday, to Oswald's weird joke about black clothing and what he said about Tom... oh crap, was he going to kill Tom? He had to call Kristin and - Suddenly, Ed laughed out loud. 'Dude, listen to yourself.' He thought: 'you're basically making your first and only friend into a murderer here.' This was just what Kristin wanted to achieve with that call: make him doubt their friendship over a stupid rumor. As if Miss Tompkins even talked to her daughter about other students. She'd lose her job if somebody found out. She'd never risk that. Unless.. what if she wanted to protect her from - STOP! Oswald was a very nice boy with a kind of dark sense of humor. Ed was the same! He joked about inappropriate topics as well! He sat by himself all the time as well! If Oswald seemed like a murderer, so did Ed. It was nothing but a stupid rumor. Also, Oswald was so gentle, with everything. Ed remembered him patting his shoulder yesterday. It had been so calming. His voice as well. Just thinking about Oswald had prevented him from having a panic attack yesterday. And now he thought of him as a murderer? Ed laughed about his own stupidity.
The rest of the day went by pretty uneventful and Ed made sure to be in bed before his father came home, to avoid any further beatings. When he closed his eyes, it was the first time in his entire life that he couldn't wait to go to school tomorrow. He couldn't wait to see Oswald. Tomorrow they could both laugh at Kristin's pathetic attempt at keeping them apart. Thinking of that, he fell asleep with a soft smile on his lips.