"If time changes it's direction, which way will it go? Will things get better? Or worse."
Aisling hurries, rushing up the flights of stairs as fast as she can, and cursing the elevators for being occupied right when she needed one.
She wasn't the most athletic of characters, and she realised as she reached the 8th floor that she was a tad too impulsive, because she could have alerted the doctors currently in conference in the seminar room that there was a man bleeding out on the roof.
But now she had to deal with it, and hope her limited medical knowledge would be sufficient enough.
And so she pressed on, taking the steps two at a time and breathing heavily through her nose to reach the rooftop.
At the rooftop exit to the towering building she fumbled, trying to both catch her breaths and push open the heavy iron door. When she did manage too, she gasped as the cold night air hit her, chilling her bones and causing her to stumble back on bare feet.
She had abandoned her heels on the 4th floor where she had come from, and realised that the designer shoes would probably not be there for her when she returned, since the whole event going on downstairs would mean that the hotel building was probably full of petty thieves ready to loot the wealthy doctors.
Such a thing was hardly a concern to her at the moment, there was a more pressing matter at hand- a matter which included saving someones life.
She scoured the rooftop, holding down her fluttering dress as the wind picked up and tried to carry her with it.
Aisling wondered if there was a small perchance she had made a mistake and got the wrong building, but then she saw him; or rather a motionless silhouette slumped on the ground.
The stone cold floor numbed the soles of her feet and she dashed over to him, small stones and debris bit into her skin.
As she moved closer she came to a sudden stop, her face paling as she suddenly felt warmth under her feet.
A sticky liquid warmth that looked like a black inky puddle in the dimly lit night.
"Oh God."
Blood.
So much blood.
Was she too late?
She dropped to her knees, not caring that she was sullying the hem of her pretty floral dress, or that she was scuffing her knees as she pushed herself up to hover over him, checking and finding a weak pulse and shallow breaths.
"Hey, come to your senses hey!"
She shouted, shaking him, forcefully, but still with enough care so she wouldn't cause him any further damage to his wounds.
"Can you hear me?"
Silence.
Carefully, she peeled back his blazer, and saw that the white blouse he was wearing had almost completely changed colour to a dark sodden red, and there where several gaping holes in his torso.
Raking her hands through tousled hair she scratched her head.
"What do I do..."
She sat back on her knees, and fumbled on her person to find her phone, realising that it must have fell out her dress pocket when she was running up the stairs.
"His phone."
She murmured to herself, apologising to the unconscious man as she searched his body and found the handheld device in the pocket of his slacks.
The lock screen lit up, and she muttered another apology to the man as she grabbed his thumb and rolled it along the screen.
She tried again and again, but the phone still remained locked.
"Ah, why won't it work!"
She glanced at the man, who was still bleeding out and still unconscious.
The only thing she could do was go get help now, she just hoped he'd last long enough.
"Hey, hey!"
She tried rousing him from unconsciousness once more to no avail.
"Hang in there, she muttered, and descended two flights of stairs till she reached the kitchens of the penthouse restaurant.
At her bloodied and frantic state, the chefs froze, eyes wide as they regarded her with horror.
"You need to call an ambulance."
She breathed out, hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath.
"A person is dying on the roof, he needs urgent help!"
When they were slow to move, her eyes darted around the kitchen for something useful, and she grabbed a pair of kitchen scissors and a kitchen towel.
"Didn't you hear me? There's a man whose been stabbed on the roof, he's dying!"
Before she headed back upstairs she looked between the kitchen staff, one of them having already picked up the phone and dialled for emergency services.
"He's lost too much blood so he won't last long, tell them to hurry."
Then she spun on her feet, almost slipping in the process, and hurried back to the rooftop.
Aisling skidded as she rushed to the mans side, scuffing her knees and tearing the hem of her dress. She winced, and ignored the pain as she focused all her attention on the man bleeding out infront of her.
"Hey there, i'm back."
She told him, hoping he could hear.
Her hands fumbled near his throat, checking for a pulse and she found it more thready than before.
"Hold on just a little longer." She pleaded.
Unfolding the kitchen towel she snipped it in half with concentration.
"What are you doing?"
Her eyes flickered to the shadow behind her, one of the commis chefs who must have followed after her.
She'd been so caught up she hadn't heard him follow.
"Oh my god."
The Commis Chef staggered back after stepping around Aisling and catching sight of the injured man.
"Shine some light over here will you, I can't see anything."
"Umm.."
The young chef was hesitant, but did so anyways, as he was just as panicked as she was.
"Did you call the ambulance?"
"We did. Also there's a conference for surgeons downstairs, we went to get them too."
Aisling nodded, and pressed the cut up towels into the worst open wounds as a makeshift gauze.
"Miss, do you know what you are doing? Let's just wait for a doctor!"
"I am a doctor!"
She yelled back, perhaps a little more aggressively than intended, but it was an easy way to vent out her frustration.
"Well, sort of."
She mumbled to herself, as she scanned over the bleeding mans body.
"What do you mean sort of?"
She ignored the Commis chef, when she saw a subtle movement from the bleeding man as he stirred. His mouth parted for breath, and she realised from his gurgling gasps that something was very wrong.
He was choking.
"What's wrong with him?"
The Commis chef asked, upon seeing her terrified expression.
She scrambled for the scissors, slicing into the bloodsoaked shirt and feeling along the mans torso, tapped with her fingers lightly.
"Give me more light over here."
His chest was covered in dark bruising.
"Pulmonary contusion." She mumbled, racking through her brain to remember what she'd learnt in med school.
The mans lips parted for breath, but his breath sound's weren't present.
"Pneumothorax I think it's pneumothorax."
Nodding to herself she confirmed it.
"Then, then I need to puncture..but, there's nothing to do it with..."
Her blood stained fingertips raked through her hair feverishly, painting the auburn tinted strands with crimson.
I can't let him die.
She shook her head, helplessly scanning the ground and then turning towards the commis chef as a sudden thought hit her.
"Pen? Do yo have a pen?"
He blinked, unsure why she was asking, and fished through his pockets to produce a black ball point pen.
"Why?"
His eyes widened in horror when she snapped the cap, pulling the ink out of the plastic tube.
"No, no no, don't you think we should wait for the surgeons, or the ambulance, they'll be here soon."
She knew it was true, she could already hear the sirens getting louder as they came closer on the street below.
But she couldn't risk it.
If she did nothing he would die.
"I need to do this."
She held the pen tube above his chest with a shaking hand and hesitated.
"Ah, but if I make a mistake he'll die faster and i'll be blamed for it."
The Commis chef was right she shouldn't.
Afterall, she'd never actually completed her residency at the hospital so she wasn't an official doctor, and she'd never actually treated a pneumothorax.
But she couldn't let him die, not when there was something she could do.
"It should be easy enough right? I've seen people do it, and they just randomly do it on tv..."
"Wait!"
The Commis chef waved his hand out infront of the pen tube to stop her.
"Are you really a doctor?"
She glared at him and he gulped.
"I mean, if you're not confident, just leave it until somebody comes!"
"I told you i'm never confident because I panic and overthink too much!"
The wind was picking up, whipping her hair around her face, and aching her fingers.
She could only imagine how much more worse it was for the man dying beside her.
"I can't let him die." She said, closing her eyes and repeating the words like a mantra several more times before reopening her eyes.
Bracing herself she leaned over him and stabbed the pen tube into his chest with a squeak.
He jolted upwards, and she squealed louder in shock as the man gasped, taking large gulping breaths.
His eyes opened , and she let out the breaths she didn't know she had been holding.
Then his body slumped back down and his head lolled as his eyes rolled back into his head.
Aisling went cold with dread.
Had...had she killed him?
Trembling, she backed away from him as the sounds of footsteps approached, and a flock of surgeons surrounded her and the bleeding man.
"Is he dead?"
"I think he's dead."
She sat there numbly, staring at her blood coated fingertips.
She'd killed him.
Why had she thought she could save anyone? She never had been able to in the past, so why had she thought this time would be any different.
"We have a pulse."
She snapped out of her frozen spell, reanimating as the words rang through her head.
"He's alive?"
She asked the surgeon who had inspected the body, and the woman with greying hair nodded.
"You saved him, you did well."
Aisling knocked her knees together idly, staring into her hot cup of coffee as Harvey Bullock watched her from the opposite end of the table.
She had been sat there for over an hour, almost bordering on two, giving him the same statement over and over.
"How did you know someone had been stabbed on the roof of the Gotham Royal Hotel?"
She was silent for a moment, sipping her drink, whilst she debated on telling him something different.
"I saw it in a dream."
"Yeah you said that but if I give that statement to Captain Barnes you know he'll ship you to Arkham."
Harvey noticed how she tensed up and patted her arm.
"Look just give me something I can work with and you'll be out of here before your old man catches wind of ya."
She nodded, setting the mug down on the table.
She didn't want the GCPD's Captain catching her there anyway, and she was thankful he was otherwise occupied.
"Why where you at the hotel?"
He asked her, and this time she decided to answer with a more logical truth.
"I was working the bar at the restaurant."
She said, because it was true to an extent: she had took the job to get into the building so she could save the man.
"Don't you usually work at the sirens club?"
"I do, but I didn't tonight, I was covering a shift for a friend."
Harvey challenged her explanation with a look, he knew from the woman's brother that she wasn't the type to keep friends around, much preferring to be solitary.
She chewed on her lip and eventually he nodded, accepting her explanation as good enough and scribbling it down.
"What were you doing on the roof?"
"Saving the dying man."
He narrowed his eyes at her attempt at dry humour, and she sipped her coffee.
"You know what I meant kid, why'd you go up there, how'd you know there was some guy that had been stabbed up there?"
I saw it in a dream.
She wanted to say that because it was the truth, but it wasn't something the GCPD would buy.
Stupid really when reanimating dead corpses had been a thing not too long ago.
"It can get stuffy behind the bar sometimes, I went to get some fresh air and I saw him lying there."
"You didn't happen to see anyone else up there?"
"No."
"So you didn't see anyone suspicious, and didn't hear anything suspicious?"
"No."
Harvey huffed, obviously not 100% satisfied with her answers, but it was better than her telling him she'd had some kind of prophetic death dream.
"Why is nothing ever so simple in this place."
He grumbled, eyes straying as he noticed an approaching character.
A detective with the same slightly auburn hair , the same curve to his eyes and the same long sloping nose as Aisling.
Her brother.
"Jordan, why don't you take Little Miss fortune teller home and get her cleaned up, see if she can think of anything that might help us find out who attacked the guy she saved."
"Will do, come on sis, i'll drive you home."
The detective nodded, handing her a spare pair of shoes he kept at the station and then draping his jacket over Aisling's head with a childish grin.
She glared, jabbing him with her elbow as she rose from the chair and slipped her arms through it's sleeves.
"You know I thought you'd be looking a lot happier since you actually saved someone."
Her brother said as she fastened the laces of the sneakers that were way too big for her.
She paused as his words finally sunk in.
After being whisked away pretty quickly by the GCPD, she hadn't had the time to dwell over it.
A small smile tugged up the corner of her lips.
Every dream she had, always came true right down to the last detail.
No matter how much she had tried to intervene in the past, warning people to be careful and trying to remove obstacles that would get them killed; they always ended up dead exactly as planned.
But this time she'd actually managed to do it.
She want sure what had changed, but she wasn't going to complain. Gotham had seen far too much death - she'd seen far too much death.
Her small smile flourished into a grin as her brother patted her on the back.
"I saved him."
Aisling snaked her arm upwards, curling her wrists and intertwining her fingers until her joints clicked.
Rolling her shoulders she picked up a cloth and wiped down the countertop as she started to cleanup so she could leave.
Just after she had finished showering off all of the crusted blood, and had been about to crawl into bed; Barbara Kean had given her a call on her missing phone that the GCPD had thankfully managed to retrieve from the hotel.
It was a little bruised much like she was, with a few scrapes on the casing and a small fissure in the glass screen, but it still worked.
The woman had no doubt heard about the nights events from her associates and wanted the story first hand from the source.
She always did have an odd fascination with Aisling's ability, always so eager to hear Aisling's stories of death, making her wonder if her ability was the reason Barbara had hired her in the first place.
Despite the fact that the woman was a little scary, she had been a great help, offering Aisling a job when no one else would.
And so when her boss had asked her to come in and work the early morning hours she couldn't refuse.
She had given Barbara a run down of the events that had happened whilst she poured cocktails, most of which had been drunk by the blonde.
Barbabra had left her and the bar to mingle with guests and chat with Tabitha who made a brief appearance before dissappearing, returning only when the party came to a close and everyone else left.
After downing a pink frothy cocktail and demanding for another, Barbara surprised Aisling with a rather sober question.
"Why do you try to save the people you see in your dreams?"
Aisling pursed her lips, and blinked.
"You know, when people wake up from their dreams they completely forget them."
Barbara gulped down another pink drink and pointed with a perfectly manicured talon.
"Especially the bad ones."
Aisling shook her head.
Whereas that was true for most, she couldn't do it so easily. She often made notes after waking, writing down memos on sticky notes and in diaries, on odd corners of napkins and on her phone about key factors in the deaths of the people she saw in her sleep.
"How could I just forget? And how could I not help them if I had the chance."
After pouring Barbara a drink, she poured herself one and swallowed its contents.
"No one deserves to die."
Barbara gave here a curious look and challenged "No one?"
"If you saw a murderer or a monster in your dream, say someone like Victor Zsaz. Would you help them then? Would you help them live after they've killed so many."
"I- uhh..."
Ailsng stuttered as she tried to think. What would she do?
Would she feel more guilt over turning a blind eye and letting them die, or saving the life of someone like that so they could kill again.
Barbara cackled as she was startled into silence.
"Miss Kean?"
Aisling was thankful for the sudden distraction, as one of The Sirens' security details appeared.
"There's a Jervis Tetch here to see you."
The blonde woman spun around in her seat, abandoning Aisling and their previous conversation.
"Ah the new entertainment, bring him in."
Wordlessly Aisling went back to cleaning out glasses, as the security entered the club with an extremely well dressed man with a top hat and tweed suit. She glanced over once out of curiosity, and found herself unable to look away as she remained curious.
There was something captivating about the mans presence, which was well explained when after a brief discussion, Barbara introduced him to Aisling as the hypnotist.
"Jervis Tetch, come meet our lovely little bartender. Aisling, say hi to the hypnotist."
She didn't miss the malevolent little wink Barbara sent her way.
Flustered, Aisling's mouth parted, opening and closing like a fish as Barbara ushered the man over to the bar.
"It's a pleasure to meet you Aisling."
He tipped the brim of his hat, and smoothly caught the hand she was stretching out to grab a glass from the counter, bringing it to his lips.
"Like a dream."
Her face flushed at his actions and play on words.
"You're a hypnotist."
It was supposed to be a question but came out more as a statement.
The man smiled and nodded and she squirmed under his gaze, because he wouldn't turn his attention away from her.
"Are you any good-"
Aisling hid her face in her palms as she felt it burn.
Her words had come out horribly rude, how could she question someone's profession like that?
"Sorry I mean.."
What did she mean?
"That's quite alright my dear, i'll give you a demonstration if you'll be my volunteer."
He reached into his jacket procuring a fancy looking pocket watch.
Barbara, who had been helping herself to the bars liquor whilst Aisling and Jervis got acquainted, made her way over to Aisling with a drink in hand.
"Oh this should be interesting, there's a lot of fun stuff inside her pretty little head."
Barbara said, smirking as she tapped Aisling's forehead.
Her eyes widened in alarm.
She could hardly let the man inside her head when it was full of death, it was bound to scare him away.
Shaking her head she had to politely decline.
"I'm sorry, I don't think that's a good idea."
Barbara scowled, her mouth scrunching up as she made a dissatisfied noise.
"Oh boo."
Turning to Jervis, she returned a smile.
"Well, I guess before we have you put on a show I still need to check you're legit, standards to uphold and everything if you understand."
"Of course I understand what you mean, are you offering yourself for example Miss Kean?"
Finishing her drink swiftly, Barbara thrust the empty glass towards Aisling.
"Sure why not."
Aisling abruptly looked away as Jervis' eyes met hers, twinkling with curiosity.
She tried to distract herself by rearranging a shelf of alcohol, but ended up peeking over her shoulder to watch as the man hypnotised her boss.
"Listen to my watch dear, to it's ticking."
Tick. Tick. Tick.
"It synchronises with your heartbeat doesn't it."
Tick. Thump. Tick. Thump.
"Now, look into my eyes, not above them, not around them, but deep into their centre."
As Barbara focused, Aisling couldn't help but do the same. The hypnotists voice was lulling and all consuming as his words swam around in her head, fogging up her mind and making her eyelids heavy.
"Now Sleep."
A/n: So, how was that for a first chapter? How are you liking Aisling?
Not a lot of Tetch in this chapter, but i wanted to focus on introducing Aisling's character first and foremost. Don't worry, they'll be more mad hatter to come!