AN: Thanks again, loyal readers! This is a slightly more interesting chapter (I hope): pretty short at a glance, but this is the definitive flashback sequence for my narratrice. I hope this explains her character a bit more—I know a few of you were having trouble figuring her out. Any other questions after this, just let me know. As for you kids lurking out there—you know who you are—don't be shy with that review button. Please, gimme some feedback! Feedback is love!
5: Then.
I had nightmares. Not every night, but many. They lessened in frequency in the days following my stay at the asylum, but they also became more vivid and gruesome. One in particular kept returning: I was in my old attic room, the hot, cramped hideaway of my first life, when my gifts had first presented themselves to me. My dream replayed the moment when the voices first crept up on me. It was slow at first. Just a whisper, a thought, a nebulous mirage that felt its way into my head unbidden. I shook it out. But it persisted. And then, there were more. They crawled over and into me like millions of invisible many-legged insects, invading my every sense until I was overwhelmed with strangeness. My flesh itched and creeped with the plethora of foreign entities overtaking me. I scratched at my arms, legs, and stomach until I drew blood. When that did not work, I clawed at my hair, pulling it out it clumps, hoping the pain would drive away the other sensations. It did not.
My family thought I was possessed by an evil spirit, and at the time, as I did not know what else to think, I believed them. A priest threw holy water on me and chanted at me in melodious tongues that I did not understand. The collected astonishment and horror of the small crowd as they watched the hopeless exorcism flowed through me like water, and sickened me. I sicked over the bed, and the priest, and then I began to cry. I was bound away like a madwoman to the nearest mental hospital – in those days, little more than a prison with doctors half as mad as their clientele – dismissed, and forgotten. I was utterly alone, and died of starvation and disease only weeks later.
The dream ended in different places, different nights. Sometimes it followed the entire span of my many lives. Sometimes it stopped after the day I'd first bloodied my sword; I had screamed for an hour, hoping to distract myself from the satisfaction I'd felt. Sometimes it stopped with my first episode in the attic room. But I always awoke with a jolt, as if I'd fallen from a great height, and my skin was filmed with a clammy sweat. I did not cry out in my sleep. I'd learned many years ago to silence my nighttime terrors. The Joker sat some distance away, staring at me. He never slept next to me. I wasn't sure he slept at all. I didn't say anything, but reached out for him, and he came to my side, and comforted me. Not with pretty words or distracting caresses. He only took my hand, pressed me to his chest, and waited. He understood somewhat the way my mind worked now. He went quiet around me. And that quiet seeped into me, calmed me, and made the terror fade into the background. It was not gone – we both knew that. But it shrank to a manageable size.
Funny, but I never had nightmares in the asylum. Perhaps because I slept so little. And I'd missed him terribly. I didn't realize how much until I could be near him again. My need for him disturbed me. I had long conditioned myself not to need anyone. It was both easier, and harder, to listen to my own thoughts around him. It was more chaotic. I had meant the words when I'd first said them to him, but I hadn't realized before how true they were.