"'Till death do us part
But my hearts getting dark
On the edge of the cliff
This cars gonna start
Now I can't breathe
Do you wanna way out?
I don't wanna way out
You and I know the truth
Even though it hurts
I just wanna be a criminal with you"
- MsMr, Criminals
••• Flashback •••
Oswald looked over to Bird as she struggled to open the small plastic packet of teriyaki sauce but struggled to get a good enough grip on the corner while still wearing the full-length satin gloves.
What a sight she was, he thought to himself.
Sitting with her legs crossed under her in a dark red evening gown, shoes kicked off on the walkway in front of the park bench, dark brown curls with frizzed roots from giving in to the itching the hairspray caused on her scalp -eating cheap take out from a food truck.
He glanced up to see an older woman walk past them with a small dog on a short leash; he didn't miss the judgment in her eyes when she passed them.
The same expression he'd seen on so many faces whenever he was out in public with Bird, wondering what someone like her was doing with the likes of him.
It bothered him initially, mainly due to his fear that she'd be too bothered by it to stick around, but she never seemed the least bit embarrassed to be seen with him.
As more time passed, he even got a kick out of it, wondering what stories the passersby were creating about them. How they'd react to knowing she was just as sick and twisted on the inside as he was.
Looking back over to Bird, he started to offer his help in the battle against the packet of sauce, but before he could, she raised it to her mouth and bit down on the corner of the plastic, roughly tearing it open with such force it split further down the side than she'd intended and soaked into her gloves.
Laying the foil tray of fried rice on her lap, she jerked the gloves off and let them fall to the grass beside the bench.
He wondered why she hadn't taken them off in the first place -but then he caught the cuts spanning a good distance of her forearm.
Bird didn't seem to notice him staring at her as she picked the tray back up and started shoving the rice into her mouth by the fork full.
"You sure you don't want any?" She asked.
"Yes, I'm sure." Oswald nodded as he held out the styrofoam cup of soda he'd been holding for her.
She took the cup from him and got a drink.
Her eyes were bright as she looked around the park. The crowd was steadily thinning as the night got later.
She seemed to be in a pretty good mood since getting in the car with him from the school dance, even giggly at times - thanks to being not quite drunk but pretty tipsy from the alcohol she'd consumed on her way to the dance.
But he knew something must have gone wrong at the school event for her to have called him her getaway driver.
"Bird," He adjusted how he was sitting on the bench to get a better look at her, "What happened tonight?"
Her mood shifted; he could feel it in the air around them, seeing how she went from scooping up bites of the fried rice to angrily stabbing at the food with the fork prongs.
"My dad." Bird finally answered, "He wants so badly to control me that he just ruins everything good in my life."
Oswald started to push for further information, but Bird offered it up on her own.
"The only reason I was even invited to the dance was that he convinced one of the executives at the company to have his son ask me." She shook her head, "And who at Wayne Enterprises would say no to Thomas Wayne?"
"I'm sorry." Oswald frowned.
Deep down, she wanted the same things he did, the same thing most people wanted at their core -to be liked.
He knew all too well how the sting of humiliation could burn through the whole body like a lit wick doused in gasoline.
"I just..." Her voice trailed off, "I don't get why I'm not enough for him, you know?"
Before he got the chance to respond, Bird released a gasp of pain, and the remnants of the rice scattered across her dress as the foil tray tumbled to the ground.
She'd been absentmindedly stabbing at the rice so hard that she'd stuck the fork clear through the bottom of the container.
"Are you alright?" Oswald asked as he took her hand in his and inspected the injury.
She sighed, using her free hand to brush the spilled food from her dress, and mumbled something under her breath that he couldn't understand.
There was no broken skin, but he could clearly see the four discolored indents from the prongs in her palm.
He gently pressed his thumb to the marks and started to tell her he didn't see any blood, but his breath hitched in his throat.
His heart skipped a beat in his chest, and the longer his skin made contact with hers, the less he wanted to let go.
This had been happening more and more over the last few weeks.
His admiration for her was starting to shape-shift into something else he didn't fully understand.
At night, thoughts of her filled his head, turning him into the insomniac.
The idea of her dad wanting to keep them apart filled him with such rage that he'd entertained the idea of doing away with her parents more than once.
He'd been able to get a grasp on the fire and smother it down to embers before he'd gotten too far into formulating a plan, let alone set anything into action.
But still, the idea that anyone might come between them left him utterly blinded with madness.
He'd kill anyone and anything that tried to get between them; he knew it.
She was his best friend -the only true friend he'd ever had.
Which is what he tried to remind himself of.
Awareness of knowing the feelings he was getting toward her was wrong and inappropriate on several levels left his cheeks reddened with shame.
The more time they spent around each other, the more he thought of her as a possession to own. That she belonged to him.
Then seeing her tonight in that evening gown made his hands clammy and mouth dry.
She was absolutely stunning. The single most beautiful thing that he'd ever laid eyes on.
A picture or a painting of her frozen in time like that wouldn't do her justice.
He wished he could just keep her like that.
Ensure that she would forever and always be his and only his.
Cage her to keep her safe and locked away from the outside world; the city they lived in seemed to ruin everything, and he couldn't shake the dread that one day they might not be as they were at that moment.
Feeling a tug, he looked up to see Bird staring at him with raised brows.
She again tried to pull her hand back, but he wouldn't let go. He couldn't.
Oswald tried to steady his mind and heart and release her hand, but his limbs weren't following the commands from his brain.
"Oswald?" Bird finally asked.
"What happened?" He asked, his eyes now glued to the cuts across her arm that she'd previously shielded from view with the gloves.
She didn't answer.
"You did this?" He filled the silence.
"Yeah."
Her voice was barely over a whisper.
Next thing he knew, he was running his fingers across the lines on her skin, wondering how long she'd been injuring herself like that.
Some of the cuts were clearly older and mostly healed up.
The freshest few were closer to the inner elbow crease and much deeper than the ones further down her arm.
"Bird, why would you do this?" He finally looked back up at her.
She blinked and looked down to the open space between where they were sitting, her thick mascara-coated lashes hiding her eyes from his view.
She thought of a million reasons but didn't say them out loud.
At times she felt like she was absolutely coming undone at the seams, and if she didn't hurt something, she would explode -so she chose to hurt herself.
Sometimes she just needed the reminder that she was still walking among the living.
Seeing the blood trails rolling off her skin was proof; dead things don't bleed after all.
"Doesn't it hurt?" Oswald questioned.
"Sometimes." Bird nodded, then laid herself bare with the admission, "I like it better when it does."
Her eyes met his for a split second, and she pulled away from him. Quickly, she slid her shoes back on and rose to her feet so fast the entire ordeal made him dizzy.
He'd done it now, he thought, made her too uncomfortable, and she just wanted to get away from him.
"Ready to go then?" He tried to keep his tone level and stood up from the bench.
If only he'd been able to let go of her hand within a reasonable amount of time.
"Where to?" She asked.
His eyes widened with surprise, "You don't want to home?"
She met his confused expression with one of her own, "Of course not."
"Oh!" The defeated slouch his body had tucked into released, and his posture straightened, "I didn't intend on seeing you tonight. I don't have any plans in mind."
"Let's just go into the city and see where we end up then." She smiled brilliantly at her own idea; color flooded back into her eyes at the endless possibilities.
Without another word, she grabbed onto his hand and briskly started walking toward the park entrance.
Oswald's legs were sluggish at first; he nearly lost his balance trying to keep up with the pace she'd set.
He was still shocked that she willingly chose to spend time with him, to be so near to him. Whenever he was sure he'd said or done something that would chase her off, she shocked him by staying.
•••
Oswald pushed open the rooftop access door of the tall building across the street from Fish's club. He stopped abruptly at the sight he was met with as Bird walked along the raised ledge with a bottle of wine in one hand.
Her movements were nerveless and casual as if she were walking on a flat surface and a strong gust of wind wouldn't have seen her falling to her death.
The night hadn't gone the way he'd expected.
What had started out a lovely evening of just spending time together and enjoying a walk around the city had spiraled fast.
In his opinion, he'd taken it all in stride -at first, at least, with no complaint when Bird insisted they sneak into the movie theater to catch the last half of a poorly made horror movie that he had absolutely no interest in. But he'd sat through it for her.
From there, he'd had some trouble keeping up with her as she ducked in and out of a few different bars and clubs, drinking more and more with each stop along the way.
They'd finally ended up at Fish's club, where Bird had drawn a good amount of attention spinning around and dancing entirely out of sync with the live music for the night.
Oswald tried to convince her to sit down, to drink something other than more alcohol and but she wasn't having any of it.
Her mood flew from one end of the spectrum to the opposite at lightning speed.
Happy-go-lucky one minute and then choking back tears the next.
Oswald would follow her to the ends of the earth, but being around her when she was in these states was incredibly taxing on him.
During the argument they'd gotten before she fled the club, he'd thought several times of how he could just walk away and leave her there to drown in what she felt alone, but he just couldn't bring himself to.
Which only served to further anger him when she slipped out of the bar minutes later without him noticing. He'd decided to be a good friend and stick with her that night -but she'd found it acceptable to bail on him.
"Bird!" Oswald called out with air catching in his throat, "What are you doing? Get down from there!"
Bird spun in place to start walking back in the other direction along the edge with an incredibly balanced and fluid movement for someone who'd had as much to drink as she'd had.
Paying no attention to his protests, Bird raised the bottle of red wine to her lips and downed another gulp.
She continued to pace along the raised concrete ledge as she'd been doing for the last several minutes before her best friend found her there.
"Bird!" Oswald's voice took on a high-pitched, nasally tone that she didn't care for.
"You could fall to your death!" He said with a hiss as he walked towards her.
Bird tossed her head back with a loud laugh over the sounds of traffic and bustle from the streets below them.
"I really could!" She agreed
"Then get down!"
His hands flailed nearby, but he didn't touch her, afraid that he'd be the reason she tumbled over the side.
She paused her walking just long enough for another drink of wine.
Oswald recognized the label as Fish's favorite brand, a top-shelf product she always kept extra bottles of in her office.
Bird was the only employee of the bar who could get away with blatantly stealing things like she did.
The perks of being someone's favorite, he thought to himself; someone like Bird must be used to being everyone's favorite.
She was most certainly his.
"Do you love me?" Bird questioned.
Oswald's jaw hung slack with no response.
He didn't know what to say to her, wasn't sure what answer she wanted -or what sort of love she was even asking him about. Let alone if his answer mattered to her.
Bird's lips curved up in a broad smile, her teeth practically glowing in the moonlight as she awaited a response.
"You better answer me, Oswald Cobblepot," Bird yelled out with a near-manic laugh as she moved one leg to the side and held her balance with only one foot, "One wrong step, and you'll have to love me when I'm gone."
"If I say yes, will you return to your senses and step away from the edge?" Oswald nervously licked his lips, but they instantly parched again.
"I want the truth." Bird swayed some and had to return her other foot to the surface, "It's a simple yes or no."
Oswald paced on the safe side of the raised concrete ledge she was walking on; he stayed beside her, matching her pace step for step.
"I don't think I've ever loved anyone besides my mother." Oswald admitted to her, "I often wondered if that meant something was wrong with me."
"Hmm," Bird thought aloud, "Maybe there is, or maybe you just never met anyone worthy enough to love."
He watched as she came to another stop for a drink and got distracted by something on the street below.
"Perhaps." Oswald agreed.
Bird didn't hear him. Her attention had focused on a man standing on the sidewalk under her - utterly oblivious to her watching him from above.
She held the wine bottle out to the side above him, squinted her eyes, and wondered if she could line it up perfectly so it would fall right on his head.
The impact from that distance would surely kill him.
Wouldn't that be a great headline?
'Bird kills man with glass bottle dropped from the sky'
She took another drink and snorted a laugh at the thought of another possible direction the headline could take if she fell: 'Man killed by falling Bird'
"Do you love me?" Oswald asked her back.
Bird turned and looked down at him from where she stood with a frown, "Not fair. I asked you first."
Her lips pushed into a pout.
"What are you so afraid of?" Bird asked.
"If I saw the wrong thing, you'll never speak to me again." He answered, "That we'll go our serrate ways and never see each other again."
"There isn't anything you could say to me that would scare me off." Bird vowed, then asked, "And what makes you think I wouldn't try to kill you if you ever left me, Oswald?"
His head cocked to the side as he stared up at her; sometimes, he struggled to differentiate between her macabre sense of humor and when she was telling the truth.
"Oh, Bird." He shook his head as a wicked smile stretched his face, "What makes you think I wouldn't kill you if you tried to leave me?"
She laughed and held her arms out to the sides, her back to the busy street below.
The thought crossed his mind again that all it would take was a gust of wind to send her over. Only this time it also entered his mind that a slight shove would bring about the same outcome.
He stepped closer. It would be so simple.
One little push and down she'd go, taking flight for the briefest of moments before she'd hit the street below, body bloodied and busted.
Maybe she'd land on a car and cause quite the wreck or even inadvertently kill a pedestrian walking by.
Either way, it would be quite the mess when she landed.
Oswald closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to shake out the gory images his mind had conjured up.
He didn't know why it took the sight of her in such a sanguinary and damaged state for him to land on the answer to the question she'd asked several minutes ago. Still, it was at the very moment he imagined looking over the edge and seeing her dead below that he knew he did love her.
"Yes. I love you." Oswald said, "How could I not, Bird?"
She smiled.
He noted that she seemed thrilled with the admission but not surprised.
Just like with being everyones favorite, he imagined she was also used to love and admiration.
Must be nice, he thought.
Bird spun in place, wine bottle raised greedily back to her lips, and nearly lost her balance again.
Oswald's entire body tensed from the fright.
His face scrunched up as he noticed she seemed to no longer be trying to keep both feet on the building.
Her movements had grown careless. Reckless.
"Come on." Oswald rasped with a chill tickling its way down his spine, "Let's go back inside."
Every last trace of fun and lightheartedness had vanished from her brown eyes when she looked at him before her focus drifted back to the street below.
"What if you fall?" He took a slow step back towards her.
"Then I guess you really would love me when I'm gone." She referenced her earlier sentiment.
"That isn't funny, Bird."
He took another step.
Fear crept up deep inside him that if he reached out for her, she'd turn to sand falling between his fingers.
"I'm not laughing, Oswald." Bird pointed out.
She was too distracted, looking over the edge, to notice he was still steadily moving closer to her.
Swaying in the night air, she closed her eyes and started to raise the bottle back to her mouth, but before she could, Oswald seized the opportunity to pull her off the ledge and onto the safety of the roof.
The bottle slipped from her fingers and busted on the cement rooftop mere seconds before she landed on top of it with a surprised gasp and cry of pain.
Oswald stood over her, his eyes wide and mouth hanging open with a loss for words.
His first instinct was to apologize, but he fought against the urge. He had just saved her life.
Bird raised up on her palms and looked around, confused, like she couldn't understand how she'd ended up there.
Wincing, she raised her arm to inspect it. They both saw the large piece of glass stuck in the side of her arm.
"Bird!" Oswald gasped.
He could have handled getting her off the ledge better, but he'd been pushed past his limits of patience with her and was also afraid that if he waited any longer, she'd tumble in the opposite direction.
So he'd grabbed her arm with one hand, gotten a fistful of her dress in the other, and roughly jerked her back to the land of the living.
Feeling bad for that now, he started to lean down to check on her, but in a flash of wild rage, Bird jerked the jagged glass from her arm and wildly swiped it through the air at him.
He jumped back just in time and inspected the damage to his suit.
She stared at him between the strands of unruly hair that landed in her face during the fall before finally relenting and tossing the glass to the side.
Instead of an apology, he only got a one-shoulder shrug out of her.
With a huff, he spun on his feet and headed the back for the roof access door.
Bird sucked in a lungful of the night air and wiped her hands on her dress to remove any smaller glass chunks and dust before pushing her hair out of her face.
Leaning back against the concrete barrier, she closed her eyes and tried to control her frantic breathing.
If he hadn't grabbed her when he did, she would be dead, and she knew it.
She'd completely forgotten he was even there with her. She'd been too focused on the ground below, imagining how the descent would feel before crashing to the earth below.
The call of the void beckoned her; the impulse had grown by the second.
Bird stared at the access door, and almost as if she'd willed him back to her, it was just minutes later Oswald reappeared, a small first aid kit he'd grabbed from Fish's club in hand.
His steps slowed as he approached her, inspecting to ensure she wasn't wielding another weapon.
"I didn't intend for that to happen." He cleared his throat as he spoke, "But I believed you were going to fall."
"Or jump?" Bird voiced his quiet thoughts out loud.
He nodded.
"You're probably right." She admitted.
With a small, defeated sigh, she accepted the hand he offered and let him help her up to her feet.
The movement was so fast it sent her already impaired brain into a spin, and she nearly lost her footing; with her eyes pinned shut to stop the dizziness, she blindly grasped onto him to keep herself standing.
Oswald thought for a second that he had no idea how she'd not fallen over the edge in that state. Still, those thoughts were quickly pushed aside with the realization of how close she was standing to him.
Gripping onto him like a life raft in troubled waters.
"Are you alright?" He questioned, his tone lowered to a whisper.
"Define alright." She offered him a sad smile with her words, and for a moment, he thought she might break down in tears -but her eyes remained dry.
Bird's tongue pressed against the back of her teeth, holding her back from voicing the thoughts spinning around in her mind.
She felt like she owed him an apology for several things -from her actions to ruining his suit and nearly plummeting to her death right in front of him; say sorry for so many things, but she didn't.
She had never wanted to be the mess that someone else needed to clean up, yet here she stood, watching her best friend bandage up her wounded arm after she'd just been so terrible to him that night.
"Thank you." She found her voice, "For not leaving me."
Oswald snapped the plastic case of the first aid shut and laid it on the ledge she'd been playing balance beam on minutes before and, with a crooked smile, reminded her, "Earlier, you told me if I tried, you'd kill me."
Bird laughed, the sound airy from the breath of relief that accompanied her words.
No matter how dark the corridors of her mind grew, she still had her best friend.
The one person who she was consistently enough for -but somehow never became too much to endure.
As reckless as he could be, he'd become the one constant in her life. The only person she could always count on.
The rock that weathers all storms with her.
"Bird." He broke the silence and brought her out of her head, "Stop doing that."
Her brows lowered in confusion.
Taking her arm in his hands and running his thumbs over the still healing and the white-lined scars of the cuts she'd made on her arm, he reasoned in a simple tone, "The world hurts us enough. You don't need to do this to yourself."
She blinked, eyes stinging, and silently nodded, agreeing to stop injuring herself.
Clearing her throat, she pulled her arm from his grip, turned to face the cityscape along the night sky, and pulled in a deep, soul-centering breath as she looked down the street.
No longer struck with the urge to violently meet the pavement below.
If he hadn't been there, he hadn't pulled her back to safety...
She shook the thoughts from her head and looked over at where he'd stepped up beside her and was also taking in the sight of their city in front of him.
Linking her arm with his, she leaned against his side and whispered, "You mean the world to me. How could you not?"
••• End of Flashback •••
Ivy walked back into the sunroom that she'd been banished from nearly thirty minutes ago when she'd been unable to hold her tongue at how the doctor didn't seem to think her herbal remedies compared to modern medicine. Bird demanded she leave so that the doctor could do his job.
She'd watched from an upstairs window when the doctor left and had been trying to wait patiently for Bird to come get her, but she didn't.
Ivy slowed to a stop when she saw how small Bird looked sitting in the chair beside the bed, clutching a brown leather case in her hands, head bowed and lost in thought.
"Bird?" Ivy's voice trailed off.
"Hi, Ivy." Bird raised her head and looked over at the redhead.
"Hi," Ivy repeated back.
She wanted to ask what Bird had been so deep in thought about, but she didn't.
"The doctor said whatever you've done to prevent an infection worked well." She offered with a smile that didn't reach her eyes, "But, he's not sure when -or if Oswald will wake up."
"He's so boring like this," Ivy complained with sinking shoulders.
Her eyes returned to the leather case as she watched Bird open it and stare at the prefilled syringe inside.
"What's that?" Ivy stepped closer, "Will that wake him up faster?"
"No." Bird's voice was quiet, "The opposite."
"Keep him asleep?" Ivy started to ask, then her eyes widened, and she gasped, "It would kill him?"
"The doctor said he wouldn't feel a thing." Bird swallowed.
"I-I don't understand." Ivy stammered, her steps loud in a tantrum as she marched up to the side of the bed, "I thought I did a good job. I thought he was getting better!"
Bird wouldn't make eye contact with her, and Ivy's thoughts swelled like a tornado in her mind.
"He is getting better, isn't he?" It was said as more of a statement than a question this time, tinged with accusation.
"Why don't you go back upstairs."
Was Bird's only response.
"No!" Ivy stomped her foot on the floor, "I pulled him out of the river and brought him here to save him for you! And now... you just? You want to kill him! Why?"
"It's complicated-" Bird started to say, but Ivy cut her off, "Yeah, ya think?"
It wasn't long ago Bird was brought to a panic attack at the sight of him, mumbling that he was the other half of her soul.
Finally standing up, Bird faced her, "You don't get it, Ivy. All the years... all of the history that we share..." Her expression twisted, "Things are so different now, and we're not the same people that we were, and no matter how bad he hurt me-"
"No." Bird shook her head, "Ivy, if I let him live, I don't think he'll ever let me go."
Ivy's eyes flicked between Oswald and Bird.
"Or maybe," Bird took a harsh breath and, in a rare moment of radical honesty and openness, wondered out loud, "Maybe I'm scared that I won't be able to let him go."
"What?" Ivy yelled at her, "What are you even talking about?"
Wildly waving a hand towards the bed, she asked, "So, are we killing him or not?"
Bird blinked at her, appearing shocked like she didn't understand what was happening or how she'd gotten to this point.
"Oh my god." Bird breathed as she thrust the leather case towards Ivy and demanded, "Take this. Get it away from me."
"Oh my god!" Ivy echoed back at her with all the dramatics of a teenager being told she couldn't borrow the car.
Ivy roughly jerked it from Bird's hands and looked around for a place to set it down,
Rolling her eyes at Bird, Ivy said, "He might not wake up anyways."
"He'll wake up." Bird confidently said but didn't look pleased when she added, "We're tough to kill."
•••
Jim looked over his shoulder as he pulled the side door to the cabin shut behind him and stepped out into the night air.
He glanced around before putting the phone to his ear and greeting, "Hey."
"Hey!" Bird said a little too loudly as she paced the dust-covered floor of an upstairs bedroom in the house Ivy had taken over, "How's it going with your uncle?"
"I'm not sure." Jim's voice lowered, his breath fogging in the cold, "He's trying really hard to get me to trust him and then talking pretty cryptically about wanting to correct mistakes from his past."
"Still don't know what he's planning?" Bird questioned.
"No." Jim answered, "We're going hunting in the woods in the morning, though. Maybe I can get some straight answers out of him then."
"Make sure the gun he gives you is actually loaded."
"Yeah, no kidding." Jim agreed.
He zipped his coat up further to block the wind and asked, "What are you up to tonight?"
"I'm staying with Ivy," Bird answered.
Jim's brows furrowed, and he waited for her to further explain.
Bird stopped pacing and rubbed her forehead, trying to will the truth to leave her mouth, but her body was fighting it.
For the life of her, she didn't understand why she had such a hard time being honest with him.
"Oswald's alive."
She said it so fast that it took Jim a few seconds to comprehend what she said.
"Ivy pulled him out of the river, and she's been caring for him. He was shot." Bird continued, "He's not woken up yet. I called a doctor to check on him a few hours ago."
"Wow...that's... a lot." Jim breathed, "Are you okay?"
"You can't say anything to anyone about this, Jim." Bird didn't have to point out the danger he could be in if his enemies knew he was alive and utterly defenseless.
"Are you okay?" He repeated.
"I figure I'll stay the night with Ivy tonight in case he wakes up. Tomorrow I'll go home, and she's on her own after that." Bird rambled.
Her not answering his question was an answer of its own.
"If I start driving back to the city now, I can be there by-"
He started to say.
"Jim, no." Bird smiled through her protest, "I'm managing this. I'm handling it."
"Okay, but I don't like the idea of you being alone right now."
"I'm not alone. Ivy is here." Bird glanced towards the doorway and wondered if her friend was eavesdropping.
"Doesn't make me feel a ton better," Jim admitted with a chuckle.
From the corner of his eye, he saw a light turn on from the kitchen in the cabin and knew his uncle was probably looking for him.
With a heavy exhale, he apologized, "I should get back inside."
"Okay." Bird nodded, "Be careful."
"You too." He paused before adding, "Bird, thanks for telling me."
She smiled at his words and could feel the heaviness on her shoulders let up a little.
She was trying to do better, not keep secrets from him and be as honest with him as she expected him to be with her.
"I love you." She softly said.
"Love you too."
•••
A/N - Thank you for reading!
xx