"Where are we going?"
Laine looked backed from the front passenger seat, " Arkham Asylum."
"Why? If it''s because of what that kid told my teacher I swea-," Dodge started quickly before Laine cut him off.
"We're visiting your sister, and I've taken care of what Mrs. Reynolds thinks happened."Laine said tensely, shooting a look towards Jack.
"Oh well then, wait, I have a sister?"
"Long story, while we're on the subject, you have two sisters and frankly... frankly... well you'll figure out the rest later." Laine said, this wasn't something she'd ever thought of telling Dodge, but she couldn't very well keep it from him now.
Dodge sighed, this was definitely not what he had expected when his parents had picked him up from school. He thought of when he had to do a family tree in the fifth grade, that was obviously incomplete now. And at least on of his sisters was in Arkham. He'd thought that his family was messed up before but now, talk about dysfunctional.
"Dodge, understand that she won't look... normal. She can't see you but she will be able to hear you so don't say any thing, hurtful please. She might not talk, and she's had violent tendencies before." Laine added choosing her words carefully.
"Violent? Murderous more like." Jack scoffed earning him another look from Laine.
"Who is she?" Dodge asked curiously, this sister was starting to seem quite interesting.
"Just wait until we get there alright?"
!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!
Erin had noticed that Ellda wasn't looking at her anymore, it didn't bother her, Ellda was never one for eye contact. Sometimes she had kept it knowing that others would think she wasn't paying attention if she didn't, or maybe it was just habit. Erin didn't care much she continued to babble to Ellda from where she was sitting next to her on the bed. For a while that was the only sound other than Lily clicking away at the keys of her computer and the occasional mutterings of the other inmates. Ellda stood up suddenly and Erin realized she hadn't been listening, at least not to what she had been saying. Ellda stood just inside the door to her cell even though it was open, she went no farther than she'd have been able to if the door had been closed. A minute later Erin heard what Ellda had been listening to. The click of hard bottomed platforms, the squeak of sneakers, the soft thudding sound of and old pair of leather shoes. Erin didn't know all of that she could just hear some body coming, It was Ellda who could tell all of that, when the people started talking she would know who the people were or at least what part of gotham they were from. People really were different all over, most people just couldn't tell. Erin couldn't hear the people speak but Ellda did and she obviously recognized them.
Ellda's face lit up and she walked a few steps out of the cell, slowly at first them she turned and walked faster down the hallway. Erin followed her but she couldn't understand why she looked so happy and yet she was walking away from the where the people would be. She got her answer quick enough when Ellda stopped in front of a cell, smiling ecstatically. The inmate looked up at her a somewhat dazed look in his eyes, and the same type of frizzy red hair Alice had.
"You're March, aren't you Circus?" He asked
"Mommy, came to visit, and Jack. He isn't very nice. Mommy married him when you got in trouble and had to come here. She brought Dodge, he's my little brother. Mom pretended he was Jacks, but he had red hair, like us and Alice. Jack has brown hair, and mom is blond and red." Ellda muttered mindlessly, "I yelled at you before, I'm sorry."
Erin was starting to worry, not that here would have been anything wrong with a normal sixteen year old apologizing to her father. Ellda was about as far from normal as you get though. She didn't apologize without meaning it sarcastically or killing you. Ellda didn't talk about her family to any one, it as the epitome of forbidden territory. Erin remembered how she had pressed the matter once, she still had the scar. Above all This just didn't feel right. The way she was talking, the vocabulary. She wasn't talking like a sixteen year old or even a fourteen year old, more like a five or ten year old. Ellda may have behaved that way at times but she spoke well for a girl who hadn't gone to school since she'd been ten. erin turned and walked back up the hallway past A group of three people, past Lily's desk and through a door into Dr. Arkham's office.
"Something is wrong with her." Erin blurted
"I think that would be obvious-"
"Not that, she's talking but how she's talking. Ellda is using words like 'Mommy', and she called her stepfather 'not very nice', and 'when you got in trouble'. She used to speak like... Well Like a crazy murdering fourteen year old. Now she's talking like a grade schooler."
"When did she start talking?"
"She heard people coming and she walked out of her cell and started talking to Jervis Tetch."
"I should have thought to ask her mother to come in myself.... either way, she's regressed. It happens sometimes after trauma. The mind will go to a place where it feels safe, maybe a memory or a story. It helps block out reality when reality becomes to much. Ellda went back to an age that she felt safe at. Her mother must have been very prevelent at the age she chose for her coming to be able to make her talk."
"Yeah, that's nice, how do we fix it?"
"We can't do anything, she just needs to realize that she's doesn't need to stay in this mindset. She has to feel safe, and then she'll snap back into her normal mindset and when she feels threatened she will react like you remember her doing. Unless she is subjected to the amount of trauma she has expeirenced. for the past two years."
"So can't do anything?"
"Technically I can't say that she's a danger to society so she could go home. Her mother will want to take her but She'll have bad memories of that house from her step father. The ware house she used to live in, That time was one of the better times of her life, even i f she was living in denial."
"You want me to take her back there? You ever seen the place? Being blind and all she couldn't keep very could care of it." Erin lowered her voice, "Do you have any idea what she ate? She had a refrigerater full of...... of people!"
"None the less she was secure and happy which is how she needs to feel."
Erin shook her head and turned on her heel to go out the door but stopped as Jeremiah added something.
"Ellda was happiest killing, I've seen hours of videos of it. It was almost like watching the relief a smoker has when they breath nicotine. She's addicted to the adrenaline of death, Probably ever since she saw her best freind die."
Erin looked at him curiously, "Are you telling me to encourage her to kill people?"
"You have to understand that my job is to do whatever I can to make the people in here as sane as possible. Ellda is currently less violent what most people would prefer her to stay, but this could as far from sane as she's ever been. The people outside of this biulding don't care whether these people are sane. I've seen children who have some of the most serious mental diseases, bullied and terrorized by other children to the piont where there is no chance of them being able to rehabilitate. Those children will stay here for the rest of thier lives because they've become extremely violent in order to defend themselves the only way they know how. I don't feel any attachment to any of the people outside of this biulding for that reason. I didn't tell you to do any thing except whatever it takes to make your freind better." Jeremiah answered bitterly.
Erin smiled halfheartedly as she walked out of the office, "You should be locked up here too you know. I'll take care of Ellda, and you need to do some backround on that receptionist. You wouldn't believe what I found when I was taking myself out of your system."
Erin walked back the way she had come checking her watch as she did so, she had only been talking with Dr. Arkham for ten minutes. She looked up towards Ellda and her family. Ellda was talking about something to the boy Erin had seen earlier in the hallway. The strawberry blonde woman was speaking quietly with Jervis Tetch. A brownhaired man was trying to look tough and watch everyone at the same time. Erin sighed, what she did for friendship.
"Ellda, Shrink says you don't have to stay here any more. You wanna go home?" Erin asked quietly enough not to sound commanding but just loud enough for the woman, Ellda's mother she guessed, to hear.
"There was this girl who couldn't go outside because- What? My house? Let's go, Let's go, Let's go!" Ellda said abruptly breaking off her conversation with the boy and running towards Erin.
The woman stood up immeadietly, "If March goes home it's going to be with me. And just who do you think you are?"
"Well, I think I'm Erin the girl who phone number is the only one your daughter knows, who broke her out of this place at least twice, and above all I'm her best friend. You can bring up her housing with Dr. Arkham, I already have his permission." Ellda ran over and grabbed Erins hand, Erin realized how childish the gesture was coming from a sixteen year old who was almost as tall as her.
"Well I'm her mother and-" Erin cut Laine off.
"And you let your husband beat her senseless until she was ten. Then you let him do the same to her sister and brother until her sister snapped and started hurting Ellda. I'm trying to undo all of your mistakes." Erin said calmly.
"Mommy , I want to go with Erin to my house." Ellda whispered.
Laine closed her mouth, shocked," March, I want you back, you've got a family a brother and me. Please..."
"But Mom, I'll come back someday. Just a little while please?" Ellda asked pouting.
Laine choked, her eyes were getting watery, "If you don't take good care of her I swear I'll...."
Erin didn't answere because Ellda yelped as some one grabbed her braid and pulled it back into his cell. Laine yelled, Dodge ran forward, and Erin pulled a pistol out of her handbag and shot the man in the leg. Ellda ran to the other side of the hallway where Pamela Isley did her best to calm her down through the bars.
"You idiot clown! Watch youself around Circus. We might not know exactly what you did to her but I have a good idea. You'd be in worse trouble for something like that at Black wall, people like you die over there. I might not care about her as much as some people do, but she's a kid and a goddamned messed up one. If you do anything to her I will personally ask her to shoot you somewhere a little more sensitive." Pamela rolled her eyes at the surprised looks from Erin and Laine, "She grows on you when she's so quiet."
"She just grows on you period." Erin muttered, before turning to Joker's not so quiet cursing, "Shut up, you got yourself in this mess. Your just unlucky that I like hollow point bullets. It shattered in your leg so that 'll take some time to fix up. Come on Clowney, Let's get you home. And um thanks Ivy."
Erin walked out of Arkham, Ellda right behind had a very bad sense of De ja vu as she got in her car and she and Ellda drove to the narrows. Erin got out of the car first and she looked up at the dilapidated old ware house. They walked inside, things were strewn every were and several gymnast bars rose up above the boxes of knives and clothes below.
Ellda smiled, "Home sweet home. "