My name is Telekata Caterina Prentiss-Maguire. I am now the leader of the Triquetra sworn to use my telepathic and telekinetic powers to protect the citizens of Gotham City from evil and those who represent it (when Bats takes the weekend off, that is.) But I wasn't always a pillar of the metahuman community. I'm still not. The Shadows and the Demons that come with my past have been attempting to tear me apart for years now, and through sheer willpower I have managed to maintain my sanity. Recently, though, those same demons have become more powerful, and the pieces of my mentality have been slowly drifting away. Insanity is a terrible thing, because so often by the time the sufferer realizes they've been had by their own mind, it's too late to retrieve it. But I knew. I've known since I was a child that someday my history would haunt me to the edge of madness, and on the edge, I would face a great choice. Do I stay, and risk the fall? Or do I leave, and force myself to forget the very events that moulded me into who I am?
And tonight I'm standing on the edge, both in my mind and in the literal sense. At the edge of Headquarters and at the edge of madness simultaneously. The Demons push me over; another pushes back with equal force. If either one of them gains strength, my fate is decided. If I knew what I wanted, it would all be so much easier. Half of me wants to fall and never have to fight the demons every moment of every day again. The other half tells me I'm stronger, that I can hold on...
My telepathy forces another flashback on me, like it has so often in the past week or so. I can feel the crimson screen filming over my eyes, watching my past through another's eyes, finally able to see and remember what I did, what I looked like.
Me... locked in my room, trying to finish my homework. But for me to be seeing this, someone had to be watching. My point of view switches to that of Tom's and I can watch my father watching me through the keyhole, feel my brother's joy each time he heard another of my choked sobs. Tom was watching the game on TV, and my father soon joined him, smiling broadly. He always seemed to get some twisted pleasure out of making me suffer. He blamed me for my mother's death, as it was the complications of my birth that had killed her during Tom's. My point of view become my own, in my own mind which continuously played back the events leading to the situation I was in.
It had started as a normal day. After school, I went to the library, staying there to avoid going home for as long as possible. When I did arrive home, my father and Tom had already eaten, so I made my own dinner, ate at the table in utter silence and then walked through towards my bedroom. I rarely ever paused in hallways, but that night the phone had been ringing off the hook. I hesitated before I lifted it, reasoning that my father was probably asleep and Tom had most likely gone out. But almost the second I answered, he stormed out of the nearby living room and snatched the receiver from my grasp. I didn't see the big deal; it was only one of those ever so perky salespeople who ring around a thousand houses each night.
But he did. He hung up almost right away, and almost right away he started on me. I tried to pick up my schoolbag and walk away, but he kicked my pack across the tiles of the hall, sliding it into the kitchen. I hardly ever bothered to defy him, knowing that the price was similar to that of using my powers, but on that night, the way he seemed so angry with me because of such a trivial thing, I did both. I stretched out a hand towards the kitchen, calling the satchel up and over my arm, holding it to my shoulder, before I levitated up the stairs, lighting on the top landing and holding his angry, fearful gaze with my own red eyes. However I was so shaken with a different kind of rage, I didn't sense Tom until it was too late. He loved this. It was his little game, to wait until I was in trouble and then prevent my powers. He jumped at me from behind, covering my eyes so my telekinesis lost all effect. My backpack slid to the ground with a dull thud and, as though the sound had done it, my father came storming up the stairs.
"I've told you before you stupid little shit! I don't want you using those freak powers in my house!" He delivered a hard, stinging slap across my face, turning my head away. Tears welled up in my eyes from the pain, and I could almost feel Tom's twisted elation as he felt them against his hands.
"Why? Do they remind you too much of my mother's?" I screamed back, expecting another slap, but crying out when instead a solid fist landed in my stomach.
"You freak! Ingrate! If I hadn't promised your mother I'd take care of you, you'd be on the streets! You're the reason she died, you fucking shit!" I opened my eyes beneath Tom's palms, forcing them away from my face and turning to my father, shaking with anger, shock and despair. But before I could do anything, he grabbed the back of my shirt, twisting me away from him and half-carrying, half-dragging me down the hallway. I managed to call my bag to my hand just before he literally threw me into my room and slammed the door shut.
I landed on the bare floorboards and tried not to move, wondering if, if I wished hard enough, I might just fade away. But I didn't fade. My fairy godmother didn't appear to make it all right. And I could still hear Tom and my Father laughing as they walked downstairs together. Laughing! After all his anger, all the names, they managed to laugh at me. I shook with anger, firing blasts at a pillow and watching it explode. But as my anger faded, hot tears started to slide from behind the dam of my eyes, opening the floodgates for all to follow, and leaving me a quivering mess against the open, singed cushion. I forced myself to stop, telling myself that tears didn't help anything. I looked around for something to take my mind away from all of this. My eyes found my backpack, the sheets sticking haphazardly into the air at its neck.
My homework. What I had started in the library. It was a particularly hard essay, and I was less than halfway through it. That would have to do. I straightened it out on my desk, gathered my thoughts and tried to calm my breathing a little more before I started. I focused on finishing the assignment; forget the rest of the world, just the assignment. Hand it in tomorrow... Finish it tonight, hand it in tomorrow. My two week assignment... hand it in tomorrow...
I must have been about ten then. I think it was the same year as I was introduced (ironically, by my father) to a woman named Selina Kyle. My mother's dying wish was that I should never be the kind of victim she had become. To this day, I'm not sure what that meant, but in my younger years I assumed it would mean being a fighter and training my powers. Selina promised to help me do that. To train me beyond anything I could ever have done myself, so naturally, I accepted her offer. She told me, that if I would run errands for her, she would make sure I never became a victim. But under Selina Kyle's tutelage, I became even more of a victim than I had at the hands of my father... Under Selina Kyle's tutelage, I would be placed in great danger, hunted by police, forced to abandon my only real friend and above all, victimised.
"My rules are these. Train all day, Work all night, Sleep only when your tasks are completed. And, more importantly, you do as I say, when I say so. I will tolerate no infringement." Those were her first words as my guardian, and those were the words I was to live the next three years of my life by. I was still only a child, still naïve. I still saw all this as a great adventure in my mother's name. Had I been older, I would have run at that very moment.
One year into my apprenticeship, I knew that this was all wrong. But all my exits were sealed. During that time I acquired a kind of... moral ambiguity, trying to balance the wrong I did under Selina with secret acts of good. Of course, when I was discovered for this, I was locked away in the lion's den. Literally. The cats had become part of my life, but I had never more than heard these larger, game animals. One night however, I was forced in among them. I knew just by looking at them that they could sense my absolute terror, no matter how hard I tried to blend into the
background. It was a truly horrific experience. Of course, the animals' loyalty to Selina prevented them from properly attacking me, but the scratches and bruises, on top of my fear, were enough to shock me into utter obedience. When she pulled me out the next morning and asked if I could be depended on now, I pleaded and begged for long minutes. I would never disobey her again. I would never do anything more than her will, just so long as I never went in there again. Never in eternity. Never.
But despite what I promised, it wasn't the last time. Perhaps the worst of my years with Selina was the last. In my thirteenth year, the missions she sent me on became closer to heart and a lot more difficult. Afterwards I would stand underneath one of the harsh spotlights in the basement of the lair while she interrogated me, watching for any sign of a lie and normally finding something. Unless I had achieved a flawless success, the four cruel claws of her right glove would tear through the skin of my face, leaving fine pink scars that had only faded when fresh wounds were opened. In fact, the trade to the next phase of my life was almost a relief. Not that the relief was to last...
Coming out of the flashbacks is probably the worst. There's an instant power struggle between the two forces, and any one of the memories could be the one that finally tips the balance. I could almost guess what the next one's going to be. And this is one that I hope will never come. Maybe I should just let go of the edge now, and prevent it. That's one night I never want to relive again. I don't think I'd come out on top if I went through that again. I remember now, being traded like a desired player between Catwoman and Slade, whose enslavement was probably more torturous than any so far. But I can feel it coming. The worst night of my life, or one of. Silver and crimson pressure at the edges of my brain, pressing in to hold me tightly and tear me to pieces in one fell swoop... Here I go again.
Hmm, interesting point of view. His. Looking down at me. Part of one of his schemes, tracking down innate metahumans whose powers were dormant, forcing them to undergo the necessary pains and mental suffering to unlock their potential, and then to come back for them years afterwards. One of the crazier schemes in my own humble opinion. But as he looks around I recognise the surroundings. London. Blue's home city. And to our left, the house I now recognize as that in which my best friend once lived. It wasn't until years later I discovered it was her, during another close brush with madness. I tried so hard to keep it from her...
However in the vision I am bound to watch. I can't change anything. All I can do is watch as it happens all over again. The point of view is mine again, and I follow submissively. Together, both Slade and I storm into the house. A young Belinda Moon is told to stay in the living room with her mother as her loving, caring father goes to investigate the disturbance. I think that was the only thing that caused me to even participate, rather than stand by and watch. The fact that her father loved her unconditionally, the way a father should, the way my father never had...
It was cold and quick. I doubt they even felt a thing. But, inside minutes, Blue Moon's parents lay dead, with the young girl sobbing over them pitifully. Emotions had been forced out of me at that point in my life. I saw her pains as a sign of weakness. But something in a glass-door cupboard beside the mantelpiece caught my eye from my days with Selina. Diamonds and platinum. Worth millions. Nigh on perfection. All this I could tell from first glance. I couldn't resist. Forgetting anything about subtlety I had ever learned as a cat burglar, I smashed through the glass and snatched the necklace from its pride-of- place stand. It slid easily into one of the pouches at my belt. I smile at Slade's look of mock consternation. "Sorry," I smirk. "I couldn't resist..."
I draw out of the vision painfully, gasping in self-disgust and crash to my knees on the concrete roof. I turn my head to the side, violently sick and rasping for breath. If I hadn't seen it through my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it was me. Suddenly, insanity is right in front of me like the feral scream ripping my throat to shreds. But even that doesn't seem to be coming from me. It is far away, on the other side of Gotham to my ears, faded and faded and almost dead. Pieces of nothing swirl around my vision. I don't want to fight it any more. Between tears, screaming and endlessly retching and hacking for breath, I don't even know if I could.
It's hard to believe that after so long, I'm finally giving in. Giving in to madness and to the demons that have tried to bring me there. The Demons that now look more like angels as they invite me into Delirium's realm, an incomprehensible plane of sheer bliss after years of suppressing the guilt and pains of the pasts. I can feel my body begin to vomit again, but to my mind it means nothing. I can see the different pieces of myself, all the different Telekas. All of them fading away into one swirling sphere of nothing, quickly fading away, sucked into itself like a black hole. And the beautiful fantasy of the madness and never having to fight again, never having to breathe... But of course, the physical body needs to breathe. The price of the insanity was the sickness it caused my shell, so much so that breathing was made impossible. And when the supply of air in the body's famished lungs ran out, I collapsed into unconsciousness... The insanity was lost. The sweet caress of madness had been pulled away leaving me cold and vulnerable. And I can never tell anyone about tonight. They would pity me, try to give counsel, try to help... But the easiest way to do that is to continue. Block the night from my memories and banish it from thought. And if it all happened again... I would do the same. Over and over again... and finally, this I knew for certain, it would drive me mad. And it would kill me. And noone... noone... would ever, ever... know....