Escaping Bardo

A Gotham Fanfiction

Extended Summary: Everett Turner just turned eighteen years old and, as such, has made a huge move - from the children's ward to the adult's wing of Arkham Asylum, that is. To be quite fair, she wouldn't know either way as she was found comatose, covered in blood, in the room her mother and sister were murdered in.

Blamed for their deaths, Ev has awoken to a life she never wanted, pleading her innocence at every turn. Worse, she's gained the unwarranted attention of Arkham's most charismatic and sadistic inmate - who is convinced that he can make her see the darkness inside of her, starting with embracing her gory past. Jerome/OC

Prologue

Do you know what it's like to feel utterly trapped in reality? To see a different world in your mind and choose to believe in its lies?

She climbed slowly up the carpeted stairs, each step landing with a light thud as she neared the door of the second story apartment. Humming to some unrecognizable tune she pulled out her long chain of keys, flipping through each in time with the music in her head. Towards the middle of the large grouping of copper and silver keys, she stopped and smiled as she held the lone key up to her vision.

Have you ever felt as if your dreamed reality seemed like a safer choice than your own life? I mean, who wouldn't rather take comfort in their thoughts than in this world?

She inserted the key into the doorknob's tiny slot, turning it. The door made the recognizable click as she took the key out and her hand went for the knob. She twisted the doorknob and pushed open the heavy wooden door, dropping her keys back into her messenger bag. Looking around she furrowed her brows, the neat and tidy living room was empty. No mother sitting at her desk, no little sister playing unspeakably loud video games. She closed the front door behind her as she walked down the hall, old floorboards under the carpeting creaking with her every step. "Mom?"

I thought I had made my choice. I thought I could reside in the safety of my own world, that if I believed hard enough...it could be real. (Why couldn't it be real?)

She neared another closed door that she recognized as her mother's room. She went again for the doorknob, twisting it and pushing open the door. "Mom, are you in-"

Her thoughts came to an abrupt stop as she stared at the spattered red sheets of the queen sized bed. The spatters led to soaked up pools of crimson and two figures, a small one strewn across the larger. They lied there, in a crumpled heap, eyes wide open, heads...facing the opened door.

She fell to her knees and the world around her went black.

I was only fifteen, barely an teenager. My mother and sister were- (If I don't say it, it's not real.)

I didn't cry or scream or even show the pain that was shredding through me; you can't do much of anything when you feel like the wind's been knocked out of you. I didn't even follow through with the vomiting sensation in my gut as the thick red soaked into the white comforter and their unblinking eyes stared holes through me. (No. No, it wasn't them.)

I dropped to my knees and then, well, there was nothing. No blood. No bodies. And from the empty room...I heard my mother calling for me. (It was only a nightmare.)

Of course, the bloody scene hadn't been a fake one. No, minds - or especially frail ones...when they can't take the images the eyes see, sometimes it alters things altogether. Mine only showed me what I wanted to see. (Take me back. Please, just- ...I want to go back...)

I was found - I'm even not sure when - in the very same room of my old home hugging my knees, my eyes blank. (I'm coming, mom. Be right there.)

I had created the ideal life for myself in my head. I had my mother and sister, my home. It was perfect, as if nothing had changed...I had made the perfect dream. So I lived there, in my pretend universe with my pretend family just like I had before that day. (Don't you fucking lie! It was real! It was...!)

I remembered living everything a normal family would be expected to do. Every Christmas and birthday, summer vacations...you know, "special moments". I never questioned when the memories blurred together or whenever I would hear a voice from nowhere at all. I never even batted an eyelash when my family looped events and responses. After all, I was too content. (I feel it slipping from me. Make it stop. It...it hurts.)

What a lovely dream.

Little did I realize that when I would wake up from it, I would be in the corner of a bare, dimly lit room staring at a deeply shocked older woman in scrubs who had run off, yelling something about a doctor. (Janey? Where are you? Why can't I hear you anymore?)

Yes, I had been committed; I just hadn't realized it for three years of my life.

Three years of dreaming. And now?

I was finally awake.

( Help me. )