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Edward Nygma was a self proclaimed genius, and to an extent he wasn’t wrong. Sure his emotional intelligence was in the negatives but that wasn’t necessary his fault, everyone else decided to follow unspoken and unknown rules that seemingly everyone but him understood and they all collectively agreed to not tell him. So he was stuck trying to solve the riddle that was socializing, expect Edward enjoyed riddles, he did not enjoy socializing.
But there was one person who didn’t follow these rules, well they did but they didn’t operate by them. If the world’s social rules and Edward’s social rules were languages, Oswald would be considered bilingual. Oh Oswald, he was so beautiful it almost hurt Edward to have to deal with the fact that others got to see his bird like lover. In fact he often pitied other people, I mean how could anyone else hope to compare with such a perfect being? Ugh, how he even used to consider the prospect of not loving the man was asinine!
Edward could write sonnets and poems that would leave Shakespeare speechless if the topic of conversation was Oswald. So when his oh so perfect husband got sent to Arkham by that absolutely idiotic mouth breather that was Batman, he didn’t think twice about volunteering to take care of his pet birds. Usually Victor would take care of them but the assassin was off in Jamaica somehow! And the only other person other than Edward that Oswald would trust enough to watch his beloved pets were Martin, who was decidedly horrible when it came to remembering when to feed the birds, and James Gordon, and Edward would be damned before he let himself be outdone by that neanderthal.
Plus I mean, how hard could it possibly be to take care of a couple of birds? He was a genius, who had even outsmarted himself sometimes, if anyone was fit for the task it was him!
It definitely was not him. For starters all of the birds seemed to have their own individual schedules for when they ate, slept, shit, whatever! And none of these schedules aligned with Edwards. You ever wake up to a bunch of winged rodents squawking in your face? Edward has! Admittedly letting all the birds out of the aviary to free roam the manor wasn’t the best idea but he was desperate. So then he had to spend hours chasing every bird around the house and getting them back into their cages
And those were just the normal, regular birds, you see there was one extra special bird that Oswald adored, he named it after his deceased mother Gertrud and even gave the thing its own private room. Now Edward didn’t have a good relationship with his mother growing up, in fact he still didn’t, but he could to an extent understand Oswald wanting to give the bird that reminded him of his mother special treatment… but this was ridiculous. I mean he knew Oswald and his mother were close and all but holy shit does the bird named after her really need special hand made pellets? Really? And to top it off the bird seemed to be out to get him, he had never met Oswald’s mother but he doubted the woman was THIS overprotective. If he decided to take a nap, suddenly the bird was hungry, if he messed up ironing Oswald’s suit, the bird would start biting him. If he left his food alone for more than 5 minutes the bird would steal it. Hell the bird even made of a nest of Oswald’s clothes! WHAT BIRD DOES THAT?? It would also randomly start pecking at him, for seemingly no reason other than to annoy him. The bird shit on one of his favorite hats. This was personal. He was convinced, this bird knew what it was doing and was doing it on purpose for god knows what reason
By the time Oswald broke out of the asylum Edward had talked himself into telling his husband to throw that evil creature to the wolves. But all complaints magically vanished seeing how happy and relieved Oswald was that his ‘babies’ were alright. Then that bitch was bird gave Edward a stink eye and suddenly he was back to being angry