Almost ten minutes went by before either of us dared to speak.
"Why did you want me to be in the same room as you?" I asked, my voice light but yet still too loud compared to the eery quiet of the interview room.
The walls were thick and so any ambience - the yelling of offenders in holding cells, the distant sound of footsteps, the voices of police officers socialising after coming in for their morning shift - was hardly present. The also created a slight echo, which I wasn't sure if others from other of the room could hear. One thing that was for certain was that the large mirror directly opposite us was a one way mirror, and I had no doubt that there was either a camera or actual cops on the other side of it watching us.
There was a clink of chains as she moved to look at me. "Why wouldn't I?" she asked calmly.
I chewed my lip. "Well you're the boss of a big gang, I don't know why you'd be bothered with saving me or wanting to stay in the same room as someone you just met..." I murmured, trailing off at the end. "You're more than double the person I thought you'd be."
She raised an eyebrow. "True, I'm not sure what's really come over me the past week, maybe it's a genuine identity crisis. I don't think I have anything to hold onto anymore." she detailed, looking over my features.
I could agree that she had become a completely different person to the woman that had kidnapped me mere weeks ago. I was sure that the death of both of her parents had something to do with it, as well as the stress of taking on Cobblepot, and then I just happened to walk along. Maybe it wasn't me she had wanted to kiss and roll about with, it could have been any man or woman that was there when she needed a high.
I grew silent, and she continued. "Before I didn't have the time to think about others, I'm an adrenaline junkie, I chase danger and crime was a hobby. But... I don't know. I really like you, Fox."
I sighed. "So what happens when you get the next bit of danger? You'll just drop me like I was a passing thought."
She fell silent again and glanced down at the wood floor of the room. "I... I don't know if I can guarantee I won't. But that's because I've never really dated since I was a teenager, and then I just messed about because my dad wouldn't let me keep anyone. He sure didn't approve of me dating girls either."
My lips opened into a small pout. "So you do like women? This isn't just a little experiments or thrill like a girl in college?" I felt my heart pounding in my chest and I looked over at her with pleading eyes. Sure I may have looked pathetic, but maybe I could put that down to unsorted trauma than manifested in me being co dependant. Maybe that was too deep.
Dahlia chuckled to herself. "No, I'm not fooling around, Fox. But I don't think I should be telling you how much I like you when there's strangers watching."
I blushed and glanced over at the one way mirror which potentially could have people listening in. "Oh right yeah. Sorry." I let out a slight nervous laugh and she gave me a half smirk.
As I had noticed before, the walls were insulated to be rather soundproof. However it wasn't thick enough to completely silence the bangs that erupted from outside our room; the floor shook in time with it, adding the rattling of chains to that symphony.
I looked over to Dahlia, her face read seriousness and she had completely changed her body language. Whatever I worried was happening, was what she knew was happening.
Gunshots followed the loud bang, getting closer and closer, before there was a clang at the metal door. Silence fell, before there was a dim beeping, and instinctively Dahlia pushed her body up against me, hugging me tight and turning her back to the door. I made a noise of confusion albeit this was soon made insignificant when the door burst off of its hinges with a blast. It hit the concrete with a grating noise, the front having a melted dent in the front.
Dahlia pulled away from the tight embrace she had used to protect me from the explosion, and the two of us turned to look in the entrance. As the smoke cleared two figures stepped into view: most likely male, wearing all black clothes with the Penguin insignia, and masks to hide their identities.
My face dropped. Even in a police compound we still couldn't get away from Penguin and his gang, some smart idea the Batfamily had thought up leaving us here. The GCPD was bound to be filled with men paid off by Cobblepot so it was bound to go side ways some way or another. I just didn't except it to screw up within the hour that we'd been dumped here.
I guess word spread fast in crime.
Without a word the two figures approached us and I drew back, whilst Dahlia stood her ground. One guarded the door as the other used bolt cutters to cut the chain on our handcuffs that was keeping us to our spots on the metal table.
"Don't try anything." the man by the door warned with a grip on his assault rifle as he noticed Dahlia getting shifty once her hands were free.
The goon who freed us walked us along by pointing his own gun at out backs, whilst the one guarding grabbed Dahlia's arm to keep her from moving astray. As we left the room we could see just how much of a wreck the GCPD was in - the walls were riddled with bulletholes, and the room was empty of live officers for as far as I could see, instead covered with corpses or almost dead cops. Despite my unease with police, I still felt a pang as I stepped over a body as we neared the door.
The man holding Dahlia's arm released her in order to fling open the door, and the two of us were ushered out into the Gotham streets. She found my hand and held it discretely as the goons grabbed us by our hair, and propelled us into the back of a SUV waiting outside. One man climbed into the back with us, before bringing his weapon down on my head. I barely hit the seat before seeing black.
~
"Wakey wakey, little Fox." a clear voice spoke to me, and I groaned as I tried to open my eyes. The male voice wasn't that of Oswald Cobblepot as I'd expected, no, this one was fully American albeit still made my skin crawl.
My eyes felt as if they were glued shut, and I fought with myself to open them, not that it was much use. Every part of my body was the same as if I was submerged in jelly, and my lungs heaved as they tried to breathe. Even my brain felt suspended, and so I couldn't identify the stranger that was talking to me, neither could I get a good look at him.
Once my eyes opened a speck I could see white. I doubted that this was heaven, people like me didn't go to heaven. How did I get here?
"Oh dear, Foxy babyyy," the voice played, teasing me and drawing out some syllables as if I was the zebra and he was the lion waiting for the right moment to strike. "I hope I haven't concussed you, sometimes I'm too strong for my own good, ha!"
Something about him was so familiar and yet I couldn't placed it, nor could I place anything that was going on. There was a thick fog in front of my eyes once I opened them that barely budged when I watered them with my eyelids. I pulled forth the volition to speak although the only noise I received was a gurgle as though my throat was filled with liquid. It tasted like copper and I didn't have the strength to attempt to swallow it or remove it.
He seemed to have heard me, because he let out a lighthearted laugh and walked around me from wherever in this fog he had been standing. In a moment his feet were there in front of me: black leather shoes with white spats, not a scratch or drop of dirt present on them. I could see them clearly unlike the rest of this hell. Maybe that's where I was - hell.
This was the devil, that squatted down to inspect me closer as I lay face down on the vicious floor. He seized my hair with a gloved hand, and angled my neck painfully upward to look at him. Of course... the devil. The white faced devil with his slicked back green hair and purple coat, grinning down at my beaten face with pearly crooked teeth.
Once my blue eyes fell upon his purple ones I couldn't help but laugh, almost choking on the liquid that was slipping down my oesophagus with the way he had me tilted. The red hot stinging was so apparent in that side of my face.
He raised an eyebrow as this. "You think this is funny?" he asked lightly, his smile large.
I couldn't bring myself the power to nod whilst he still had a hold on me. "Ugh hugg." I replied messily, nevertheless. I felt that I was missing a tooth near the back.
"Uh huh?" he repeated, the grin growing to abnormal proportions for that of the average human. My eyes were then removed from his face when my own was smashed into the floor, which now felt solid and very painful.
Using my hair as a grip we repeated this over and over again until my nose broke, and the struggle of trying to breathe became even worse. My limbs didn't feel bound but rather they were numb, and so I couldn't pull my arms up around me to try to get him away. I couldn't decipher whether this was a memory, or whether he was here with me in this nothingness. It all felt far too real and I couldn't dissociate into something better as I usually did with his beatings.
I wondered what I'd done wrong, I couldn't remember anything. I had laughed but he had hit me over the head before that, and I couldn't remember why.
"Whagh?" I mustered, once he had stopped slammed my head into the ether.
He stood up and bent over me with straight legs, casting a shadow over me and towering like a predator. At my fumbled words he began to laugh an egregious cackle. In response I began to cry, the sound and the grip on my hair becoming painful, and far too true.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and slowly his laughter changed, the grip becoming absent, however this didn't leave my head to slam on the floor again.
This time when I opened my eyes I was sat upright, and there was a hat on my head attached by a string. The room wasn't white and blurred, instead it was filled with colours and toys, and I felt warmth as I saw Bunny - my favourite childhood toy, a big eyed fluffy pink animal, that actually resembled a dog more closely than a bunny rabbit.
There were posters on the walls that I couldn't read, and pictures of a man in a black bat suit that I felt I didn't recognise. Sharp objects rested again one of the walls across from me, but I wasn't threatened by them as I had a feeling they were just put there.
Everything loomed over me and all I could do was look around. I was sat on the floor and beside me was a much younger John playing with his toys; he also wore a hat on a string on his head, and it looked to be a party hat.
The woman that now knelt down on the floor also wore one atop her long blonde hair, and gave me a bright grin. I felt more of a glow as I had when I'd seen Bunny, and I held out my arms to her. She was wearing a red and black striped sweater, and my hands reached out to feel the texture of it as she pulled me onto her lap with ease. Her hand came around me to hold me close, whilst the other adjusted my hat that was lopsided on my head.
"Happy birthday, Foxy." she congratulated softly in an East Coast accent, pushing my green hair away from my face.
John made a whine most likely from the attention I was getting, and crawled over to hang onto her side. She gave a kind laugh, and put her now free hand around him.
"Of course, Johnny it's your birthday too." she continued, and John gave a toothy smile as the sound of her saying his name.
John tried to climb closer to our mother, thus accidentally standing on me. All I felt was rage and so my natural reaction was to hit him with a badly formed fist, causing him to land on his butt back on the floor.
"Fox!" my mother exclaimed, holding me back from going any further with John. "Don't hit ya brother!"
There was footsteps and a long figure sat down in the chair beside the woman. "That's my little slugger! Go on Foxy!" he jeered, his grin as large as mine when I saw him. I couldn't tell you specifically why I was happy, possibly because he was like my very own birthday clown.
"J!" the woman hissed now, shooting him a look.
He raised an eyebrow and chuckled. "What? Children these days have got to learn the world is full of violence, they may as well start at three." he replied, stretching a hand out to stroke her hair. This then turned to a fist that seized a bunch of her light hair. "Right, Harley?"
Before I could comprehend it, I was back in the white fog, and his grasp was back on my hair. Yet again, he used this as leverage to smack my face back on the floor, that was now wet with my tears.
"Right, Foxy?"