Jim sometimes wondered what Oswald would do if he grabbed him and kissed him. Certainly it would shut him up for once.

It was a mere whim, he told himself, even if the thought of it stirred something within him, a desire hot and deep that didn't bear too close an examination.

But he was with Lee now, and he wasn't a cheater. And he definitely would not, could not cheat on his significant other with a smirking, evil-minded little crook like Oswald Cobblepot.

No matter how attractive he was.

Or how compelling it was the way Oswald let his exuberant emotions have free rein, lighting up his face with glee or smugness or rage or even sheer terror. Despite his appearance of being wild and unstable, Oswald wielded other people's impressions of him like a knife, with a surgeon's precision, nearly always to their sorrow.

Because his enemies constantly underestimated him and Jim couldn't help but be impressed, though he could never admit it to anyone, least of all Harvey, or Lee.

Something about the way Oswald let it all out, how he never hid what he was feeling, made Jim want to join with that vibrant energy, if he dared take one of the many openings Oswald made for him.

It would be so easy to give in.

And it wasn't as if part of the reason he'd latched onto Lee so quickly was to make sure he definitely would not be free and single the next time Oswald called on him, so as to shield himself from any possibility of entanglement.

Definitely not.

No matter that when he wasn't immediately aware of Jim's presence, which was rare as Oswald always homed in on Jim as soon as he set foot in a room, Oswald had a faraway look in his eye, giving the impression of secret depths, as if he witnessed a vision only he could see.

And it didn't matter if he did look on Jim with intensity, or even devotion if he tried to get poetic about it. Or if Oswald's expressive eyes, framed by those dark lashes, glittered as if he already knew Jim very well, and was more than willing to get to know him even better if only Jim would loosen the hell up once in a while.

Lee was a good person, exactly the sort of woman to whom he should be attracted. She was beautiful and intelligent, though she did sometimes exhibit a certain air of weary expectation as if she knew he would fail to uphold the lofty goals he set for himself, and was simply waiting for the other shoe to drop so she could get on with the chore of forgiving him.

It irked him, but it wouldn't do to bring it up in polite conversation. How would he go about explaining it? That he didn't like how she held him up to certain standards?

Oswald never looked at him that way. For all that Oswald was steeped in the criminal underworld up to his well-groomed eyebrows, Jim felt that he, at least, would understand how difficult it was to be an honest policemen in this cesspool of a city.

And why was he still comparing them, he really needed to stop doing that.

A lot of things had happened since he first met Oswald.

Theo Galavan happened, for instance.

The events of his life seemed to be divided right at that significant point, the point where Jim well and truly gave in to evil.

If he hadn't pulled the trigger, Oswald would have. Or else kept beating Galavan with that bat until he was dead, it all would have been the same.

Because Jim wouldn't have done anything to stop him. Once he'd committed to the deed there was nothing for it but to follow through. Tie the man up, throw him in the trunk, drive to the deserted beach, stand back while Oswald fetched the bat...

One act after another, in terrible, orderly succession. And Jim hadn't felt the least bit sorry about it at all. Because, deep down, he knew Oswald was right.

Theo Galavan controlled the system in a way Jim had never witnessed before. True, the rich and powerful were subject to their own kind of law and that always frustrated him, but never had he seen anyone play the game like Galavan, never seen anyone so thoroughly escape even the veneer of justice.

It made Jim furious. And even frightened.

Clearly, in this instance, justice needed a helping hand.

Oswald confessing to the murder was a technicality. He was proud of it, more than happy to take credit for Galavan's death, to claim revenge for his mother.

So it made no difference that Jim was, technically, the killer. Oswald deserved to be in Arkham, for the countless other crimes he'd committed if nothing else.

These were the things Jim kept telling himself in the dead of night.

Except that Oswald was protecting Jim.

He'd tried to visit Oswald again, after he and Harvey saw him in the common room playing a children's game, of all things, but was told by the staff that Oswald Cobblepot was only allowed visitors who were family members, as he was in a critical juncture of his treatment and shouldn't be disturbed for casual acquaintances.

He contacted Professor Strange repeatedly, and was given the runaround. Next he called the Board of Health to petition for the right to see him. After hours of frustrating phone calls, he was denied.

So he went over their heads to the state level, making the same demand and filing a complaint with the ombudsman, though he had no real evidence of abuse or neglect, other than Oswald's right to receive visitors was being violated. Later he found out that Professor Strange had already filed a restraining order against him, accusing him of harassment and interfering with medical procedure.

It got a lot messier after that.

Captain Barnes brought him into his office for a very uncomfortable talk, where Jim found it incredibly difficult to keep a lid on his guilt, and had to answer several probing questions about why he should be so concerned about the treatment of a notorious gangster who had gleefully confessed to murder.

Barnes clearly didn't buy Jim's defense that Cobblepot didn't have any family left to visit him, and ought to have someone around who gave a damn. "He doesn't have anyone else, Sir."

Barnes stared at him for several seconds. "I don't see you going out of your way to get friendly with any of the other perps you sent up the river."

Jim felt his insides writhe in an attempt to escape Barnes's gaze but he forced himself to meet his captain's eyes. "He doesn't have anybody, Sir," he repeated. It sounded feeble even to his own ears. "And it's on my own personal time."

There wasn't much Barnes could say against that, and he'd already lectured Jim on integrity and the importance of not compromising his reputation by associating with a convicted felon. He folded his hands on his desk. "Guess not. But now you've gotten yourself banned from Arkham. Can't go within a hundred feet of Professor Strange, his residence, or his place of work. Understand?"

Jim did some more quiet digging on his own, ever mindful to keep away from Barnes's scrutiny, doing things he never thought he'd do, like bribing Arkham staff into spying for him.

What he learned disturbed him.

Experiments on corpses and living persons alike. Extreme brainwashing. Torture.

It sounded like something out of a science fiction film.

Jim was losing weight at the thought of Oswald locked up in that place.

The man begged him for help, and Jim had turned away, telling himself it was for the best. It was the only way to stop his own slide into committing more evil deeds in the name of justice.

But if it was the right thing to do, why was he unable to sleep? Why was he losing weight? Food turned his stomach, though he made a show of pushing food around on his plate. Harvey sometimes asked if he was feeling all right, and of course he lied about upset stomach, must be a flu bug going around, that kind of thing, and Harvey would let it go.

Lee was harder to convince. She could tell he was thinking of something else. Someone other than her. The more he denied that anything was wrong, the more the atmosphere at her apartment took on a distinct coldness, and he began spending nights at his own place, which had about as much personality as a hotel room.

On the one night he finally got some sleep, the very day Lee broke up with him, he was plagued by nightmares, by twisted memories of a war he almost never even thought about while awake.

The whine of bullets. The tremors of explosions rattling through his bones as shells hit the ground. The numb terror turning his limbs to jelly.

He was struggling over sand bags, trying to get to cover, when he heard the whistle of an approaching shell, and in that split second he knew he wasn't going to make it, he was in an awkward place, the wrong position, so only if he was running already would he even have stood a chance...he was dead...

Faster than thought a body crashed into him, carrying him over.

Jim slammed into the ground with the man next to him, safely on the other side of the barrier while the shell exploded.

After the ground stopped shaking, Jim looked up.

Oswald Cobblepot, in a soldier's uniform but helmetless, smirked at him. He opened his mouth and spoke...

Jim jerked awake flat on his back, the muscles in his neck aching with tension, gasping for breath. Oswald's words had made no sense.

But other words thrummed through his mind, in Jim's own voice.

Never leave a man behind.

He was haunted from that day forward. The only better description might have been plagued. It rivalled the criminal act he and Oswald blatantly committed on the banks of the river.

He made a few more attempts to get the attention of the Department of Mental Health, though he knew it was a lost cause. They were understaffed and underfunded, with many other urgent cases needing their attention.

Jim already knew what he would do before he thanked them for their time and hung up on them. The meeting was already set.

He was light-headed and euphoric, quite possibly delusional from sleep deprivation, but he went to the nearest diner and wolfed down the blue plate special with a greater appetite than he'd had for weeks.

Fortified, he went to meet with Victor Zsasz.

Tracking the hit man down without Harvey finding out had been a trick and a half, since Jim shamelessly raided his partner's rolodex and leaned on Harvey's informants, paying them money he could ill-afford to keep them quiet.

Jim was still so new to Gotham that his own informant-network was pretty sparse, mainly consisting of...well, Oswald.

Jim managed it mainly because Harvey simply couldn't believe Jim would ever do anything so mind-boggingly stupid as to bust somebody out of Arkham.

Oswald curled up tight in the cot, shivering in the damp cell, clutching the thin grey government-issued blanket to his chin. A pattern of mold crawled up the wall in the corner by the window but he never complained about it anymore.

Complaining was bad.

His breath hitched in his throat. He was so bad. He didn't want to be bad anymore.

It would disappoint Professor Strange and Ms. Peabody, and absolutely the last thing in the world he wanted was to disappoint Professor Strange and Ms. Peabody.

The shaking gripped him and he hugged himself tighter.

Disappointing them, that was...that was the wrong thought. The wrong motivation. He shouldn't want to stop being bad because it would disappoint them, he was supposed to...to want...

His thoughts, already rather muddled these days, were getting even more tangled under the growing terror he couldn't seem to keep down. He couldn't remember what he was supposed to think, supposed to want, supposed to feel. A fissure of pain flared behind his eyeballs and began the inexorable spread through his skull.

Oh no. Not now. This wasn't supposed to happen now. The next treatment wasn't for two days, but it was as if the physical sensations caused by that horrible machine couldn't wait to get started.

"Help me," he whispered, then clamped a hand over his mouth.

It was long past lights out, he wasn't supposed to make a fuss. That, too, would disappoint them. Images of Professor Strange's patient, calculating smile and Ms. Peabody's cold eyes swam across the insides of his closed eyelids.

The growing ache in his bad leg began to compete for attention with the throbbing pain in his head. It hurt from his ankle all the way up to his hip. He hoped they got him the pain medication soon, just a simple over-the-counter ibuprofen, he felt that he'd asked for it very politely last time, and patiently spelled out the name on the label. Professor Strange and Ms. Peabody hadn't seemed very interested at the time, but Oswald was sure they'd heard him.

So any day now. He just had to be patient.

He withstood it as long as possible, until it grew into a stabbing pain, and at last he began to ease over onto his other side as quietly as possible.

A sudden thump, followed by a little groaning sigh, and a thud out in the corridor froze him in place, every muscle rigid with terror.

A memory from his past life, which felt as if it had occurred a million years ago, surfaced.

That series of particular noises sounded exactly like somebody getting whacked on the head, letting out a little groan, and hitting the floor.

No, no, no, that wasn't it, I must be mistaken, he thought, sweat breaking out under his hair. He must have misheard, must have imagined it.

No, none of it had happened, because he couldn't remember any of those bad things, really, all of those bad things he'd done and the bad sounds, it had nothing to do with him!

He lay frozen, terrified, heart pounding. Mercifully, the pain in his head subsided, as if it, too, were waiting.

Voices. Talking low, not quite whispering. A chuckle.

That...sounded familiar, too.

Before he could figure out if that was a good thing or a bad thing, footsteps approached. At least two people. The click of a woman's heels.

Ms. Peabody?

No. Oh God, please, no. She didn't usually work at night.

His heart sped up until he thought he would have a heart attack. She'd be so unhappy if she saw that he was awake instead of sleeping like a good boy should.

The solid chunk of the heavy lock opening on the door made him flinch back under the blanket. He squeezed his eyes shut and remained still.

Footsteps entered the cell, another whispered voice. Definitely not Ms. Peabody, thank all that was holy. One of the doctors? A nurse? He felt that he knew her, too, but not from Arkham.

A hand fell on his blanketed shoulder. "Hey. Penguin," said a voice.

He was startled enough to open his eyes and raise his head, making the blanket fall back.

Victor Zsasz grinned down at him. "Ready to blow this joint?"

Oswald screamed.

Victor clamped a hand over the Penguin's mouth. He looked over his shoulder at his compadres. "Think we got a problem, girls."

Lovey and Tiff glanced at each other. "No shit," Tiff grumbled, and went to watch at the door. "We got five minutes before the next guard does rounds."

"One guard. Just kill him," Lovey said with a shrug.

Tiff clicked her tongue. "He'll be missed. Too many."

"And whose fault is that?" Lovey put her hands on her hips and frowned at the Penguin, who was sobbing helplessly under Zsasz's hand. "He don't even recognize us."

Victor was momentarily at a loss. The Penguin, one of the meanest, most violent little sons of bitches he'd ever met, who should have leaped at the chance to escape, lame leg or not, was trying to pull the blanket back over his head.

"Boss, it's me," he said. "Victor Zsasz. Remember? You know Tiff? And Lovey?" He gestured at the girls.

The Penguin quieted and his wild eyes darted toward the girls before returning to Victor's face. Victor could feel the panicked breaths flaring in and out of the Penguin's nostrils slow down, and cautiously he took his hand away from his mouth. "Do you know us?"

The Penguin stared at him and drew a shuddering breath, then swallowed hard and gave him a timid nod, a mere jerking of his head, but the light of recognition seemed to have clicked on somewhere behind that jittery gaze.

Victor tried an encouraging smile. "Yeah. 'Course you do. Like, remember that time we broke into the commissioner's house and I chopped that security guard's head right..."

Cobblepot's face turned stark with horror and he drew a huge breath.

Zsasz clamped his hand over his mouth just in time.

Lovey made an exasperated noise in her throat. "He's a giant fucking mess. What'll we do, leave him?"

Zsasz shook his head, frowning. The Penguin was sobbing again, his eyes squeezed shut. Muffled words trembled out of his mouth, and it almost sounded like he was calling for help.

Zsasz wasn't normally moved by pity or any other emotion, but an uneasy feeling nudged at what was left of his conscience. What little he'd seen of Arkham, he didn't particularly care to see any more, and he didn't want to leave Cobblepot here.

If the Penguin could get his mind right, there'd be steady work for Zsasz and the girls again, no doubt about it.

Besides, there were their reputations to think of. They were professionals with a job to do.

"The job's the same. Get him out, deliver him to Gordon. We need a gag. I know somebody's got one." He snapped his fingers. "Come on, chop chop."