Chapter Text
Edward lifted his coffee mug to rest against his lips; he was part way through his morning ritual of coffee, breakfast, and the newspaper. It was a moment of peace that always set the day off on the right foot. If it happened to be disturbed in some way, it put a dampener on the whole day. After breakfast he worked through the whole paper from front to back as he drank his coffee, finishing on a pleasing note with the crossword: it had become a kind of meditation.
He had only just begun to read and was at the third page, where the slightly less sensational stories went when they weren’t grabby enough for the front page. This particular story detailed the recent downfall of a conglomerate that had had its CEO and COO arrested for fraud and embezzlement and the board of directors demolished; it looked certain that the whole company would be gutted and sold off.
Edward set down his mug with a shaking hand, a chuckle seizing hold of his body. Grabbing the kitchen scissors, he cut out the article and pressed it onto the refrigerator, aided by a magnet in the shape of a big green dollar sign. He walked slowly over to his floor to ceiling windows, stretching his arms over his head, and gazed out over the city he had conquered in no small way over the years.
When he first arrived in this city nearly twenty years previous, eighteen years old with little more than the clothes on his back and a few meagre possessions, he knew no one and had no friends to call upon. All his money in the world purchased a bus ticket to bring him here, his body propelled from his birthplace by the force of his will to succeed. When things got desperate - sooner rather than later, alas - the Gotham City Youth Shelter took him in without a word of recrimination or judgement, and set him back on his way rejuvenated and with several leads to gainful employment. Though Edward had to sacrifice a hefty slice of juvenile pride to break down and ask for help, he never forgot the kindness he received from people who didn’t even know his name.
It would be optimistic to say the experience changed his character for the better, though it would not be realistic: people lack the ability to meaningfully change at their core. Still, the act was not for nothing. The ultimate result of the experience was that the shelter gained an ally who would eventually become more powerful than they could have perceived at the time. And when said ally learned of a conglomerate’s bid to bully the shelter into bankruptcy for the sole purpose of redeveloping the land it occupied, well… perhaps said ally was theoretically able to step lightly among their lines of confidential company code and expose a few trifling things that were naïvely believed to be kept hidden.
In the mind of the strategist there exists nothing about the past considered worthy of regret, and an integral part of this nature is never forgetting a debt as it constitutes a loose end. Smiling, Edward walked back to the kitchen island to his coffee and his newspaper; he could be interrupted now by the most irritating person he knew and his good mood would remain intact. With that happy certainty in mind, he skipped right to the crossword and clicked open his pen.
“This,” he said, sipping from his coffee, “this is what makes it all worth it.”
Edward was not a kind man, not without having to force it. Neither was he charitable, and his generosity was severely limited. But what he did have, what he prided himself on, was a long memory. In the course of his life there had been but a few truly compassionate gestures thrown his way, and he would repay them all.