A/N: I must warn you to pay attention to the stream of Angie's consciousness; that is, when she is inside one of her aggressive memories, and when she's in the present, in Daniel's house on the Narrows. It flip-flops back and forth a bit, which is just the way she experiences it. I believe it's important to go mad with her, but do let me know if further explanation is needed. Trust yourselves, though, first. Your first instincts will probably be right.
Chapter 12
The Lines Blur
There was a moment between them, an expanse of silence; Angie was dumbstruck, at a complete loss for words. Daniel stood over her, staring down into her confusion with a terrible sneer.
"Don't look at me like that," he started. Angie immediately twitched, as his voice broke the air with that subtle violence only words could manage. Shaking his head, he went on. "Why…why are you here? Why did you have to come back, you-" he stopped, bit the words off before more bitterness could be spilled. Why bother, when he'd already displayed such a shocking lack of stability?
"I…we needed help," she said numbly, sounding such the little girl that she made herself sick. Coming back to herself, she forced a bolder approach. "What the hell is going on?" she demanded, pulling herself into a slightly less vulnerable position.
He laughed, once, an angry sound. "Like you don't know, you really don't understand." His gaze snapped to the bed, with a strange mixture of revulsion and heat. Turning her head, she realized his attention had come to rest on the folder. "What went on in that hospital? What, did they rewrite your brain? All those months spent taking your revenge, piece by piece, you just suddenly forgive me, just decide that all you've done to my life and my career doesn't matter, that the mistake I made doesn't matter…?"
He stopped in his tirade as Angie rose as swiftly as she could. At first, he jumped out of her reach; then, seeing her unsure posture, he lunged forward. This time Angie was not so surprised; she threw herself back, losing her balance as her knees hit the bed, toppling back. A perilous position for one in such a situation. Immediately, she tried again to rise, but Daniel took the opportunity to push her down, and to hold her there.
All his weight on her upper arms…Angie felt sick, horribly unmistakably ill. She struggled, used all the strength she had, but his was greater.
"Angie," he growled. Softening his tone but not his hold, he went on. "How could you forget? How could you think I'd forget-?"
"Forget what?" she whispered, eyes tearing against her will. The lines blurred, the visions doubled, and she thought that what she'd forgotten was becoming a terrible possibility.
"Look at you," he whispered back; it could have been pity. He lifted her by her arms, pushed her back so that she lay on the bed completely. Never did his hold on her falter, but she wouldn't have had a mind to resist him if it had.
"You know," he said. Inches away from her eyes, lips, skin, he said it again. "You know."
All this time spent daydreaming about you
It startled her the way her memories had startled her all night; a voice, her voice, years ago. An inner voice; the sound of Angel Adlam's thoughts.
In the present, she closed her eyes, and wished reality away. Daniel moved, pinning her at the elbows with his knees so he might sit up more comfortably. It seemed that he didn't quite know what to do with her. At the moment, she didn't quite know what to do, period.
All this time spent daydreaming about you
I never thought that when it happened I'd be wishing for it to stop
"Come back, Angie," a familiar voice called. From hours and years and worlds away, it drew her through madness and misery, but did not erase the memory. Not yet.
"Angie," Dr. Crane said, in the Arkham Asylum of a few years past. "Are you back?"
Three is the charm, Angie thought; one life in the present, with Daniel crushing the breath out of her while Jane hammers madly at some unknown door. One in the distant past, with her teenaged naivety being thrust the hell out of her by the handsome, funny, trustworthy friend. The last in the consciousness of recollection, smack in the middle, with her blue-eyed hero of a psychiatrist making efforts to erase what lay behind in order to smooth what lay ahead.
Was it a dream, a memory?
"I'm here," she said, with the uncertainty of youth.
"Alright," Crane said gently. "Start from the beginning."
She took a breath, and felt tears the size of oceans swell from her lungs to her eyes. She swallowed them with difficulty.
"It's going to stop, after?" she asked.
"Yes," Crane promised, leaning into the bright light of sunrise. "I will stop it all for you. I can help you, Angie. Now, tell me all you can."
"Okay," she breathed. "I'd been hanging out with him for months. We were almost like friends. We were friends; me and Dr. Cameron, Daniel. I know, I was like seventeen, but that – I…thought it was real. When that huge summer storm hit last year, we were stuck at his house until the rain let up. It was the middle of the night. I never thought – I never expected this, from him."
Writhing on that dingy bedspread, Angie gasped as pain seared her skull; it was all coming undone, all the ends fraying. She couldn't keep track of things; where was when, and which was where, and who was what. Her memories were mixing, she was becoming confused. If ever Crane had done good work, it had been to keep this chaos under control.
She cried out, and struggled against the pain in her head. Something, some weight top of her, stiffened. Dimly, in what she thought may be the present, Daniel saw her inability to function, and took his belt off. Turning her over, he used it to tie her hands behind her back; she could barely feel it. In this maelstrom, she could barely feel anything.
"I don't know what to do with you, Angie," some far-off voice said from the vicinity of her bound hands. Daniel, after the riot, in his house on the Narrows. Could it be real?
Gradually the pain faded, and the haze darkened.
I've come undone
Into the dark there came a light, and one world, a memory, surfaced above the others. Sunlight, cold metal, sterile bright rooms.
Welcome back, baby
Arkham, and Angie at age eighteen; two years ago. Crane sat close to her; they faced each other with no table between them.
"You understand," he said, "that if the treatment ever…comes undone, this will surface, and there is a risk of a brief psychotic break?"
Angie hadn't known psychotic breaks were available in brief, but she nodded. Crane returned it with a small smile.
"I believe it's worth the risk," he agreed. "I think, when you can't stop hurting yourself, and you can't stop following Mr. Cameron around screaming accusations, however valid, and when you can't go a night without waking in agony…perhaps the only thing left for you is to forget."
Angie nodded silently. She had tried to get past it, tried to live without it; but her mind played cruel tricks on her, bringing her back to Daniel's bedroom every night. Though in reality his very personal violence had occurred only once, in Angie's world it surfaced and ruined and devoured all, every hour of every day. It had led her to do crazy things; kidnap a boy from school, call Daniel at all hours of the night just to make sure he slept as poorly as she did. When that nightly interruption wasn't enough, she had gone back to the hospital to scream the truth at the doctor's colleagues. It had not gone well for him; when she had been committed to Arkham by her unsympathetic mother, she had lost track of his status, but he had kindly enlightened her during that lone accusatory visit. Although on that day he had told her of his 'transfer' from the Gotham City Cancer Center to the clinic on the Narrows, she'd had other things to concentrate on; his pet names for her, for instance. Slut, Lolita, tease… She had not realized that he considered himself as ruined as she knew she was; she could not know what he'd fantasized about, all the years she'd been inside.
"You won't remember this conversation, if all goes smoothly," Dr. Crane said. "We will need to replace the incident with something equally important in your mind; I'll take care of that. Lastly, I must insist that your memory of the procedure be buried as well." He stopped, took his glasses off to let his blue eyes shine out at her. "People in high places would not understand."
"Yes," she said, looking forward to the oblivion. "Thank you, Doctor."
