Warning: Very small description of suicide in the chapter. It's not really too graphic but I put dashes around it just in case someone wants to skip.
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They say a busy mind is a happy mind, and that particular maxim couldn't be any more true for Clover. It had been two weeks since she had fled from Myrtle's apartment, and Clover spent the bulk of her time throwing herself into anything that would keep her mind occupied.
She was extra polite a work, smiling excessively and even drawing little pictures in the coffee foam. The goal was to scrounge up enough tips to take her father somewhere nice (in reparation of her "outburst" as he called it), but the residents of Gotham had a habit being stingy on tips. For all Clover's hard work, the tip jar remained relatively barren. She chose to lament this outcome considerably more than she usually would. It wasn't a huge disappointment, but being sad over that was much less of a headache than being confused or worried about the looming thought of Edward Nygma.
Clover could gladly say she hadn't been thinking about him very much. In fact, there were days when the smartly dressed man barely even crossed her mind. But her dreams were a much, much different story. More often than not, her unconscious mind was plagued with thoughts of him in many different forms.
The bulk of her dreams weren't very memorable, and often completely meaningless. A glint of light and a flash of green were all she could remember seeing before jolting awake. Other dreams were less abstract, but still incomprehensible. The most peculiar of these had been her dream where she'd been back in highschool, frantically running in late to Mrs. Harbor's chemistry class, only to find Edward Nygma in a tweed jacket standing at the board instead with a look of disapproval on his face.
'Ms. Clein," He'd say. 'You're late to class once again! If you want to arrive punctually, you should probably run.'
This types of images never failed to make her laugh, albeit a bit nervously
Yet, despite how strange the circumstances of those dreams could be, Clover's least favorite ones were the memories. The things that had really happened, or almost did.
They always started the same. Clover was ducked behind a desk, struggling to hear over her own erratic breathing. Then she would hear Professor Smith yelling in the distance, a blood curdling sound, and thudding footsteps approaching her. The next part of the dream varied on each occasion. Sometimes, things would play out exactly the way they had that night. Clover would wake up feeling the intense heat of the explosion on her back, and a sweat stain would be pooling in her sheets. Other times, she didn't escape the building at all. She stayed there, cowering in fear, watching Nygma's retreating back. Occasionally, she would catch him glance back at her slightly, a look of pity crossing his face, before she was engulfed in flames. Both eventualities were traumatic to experience, and Clover desperately prayed that they'd soon fade so she could sleep well again.
Then one night, the uniformity of the dream's beginning changed. As Clover faded into sleep, she found herself not crouched behind the desk, but standing in the middle of the sterile lab. Clover turned around slowly, taking in the pristine space. Everything was orderly and in its proper place, but her professor was nowhere to be seen. As far as she observed, she was completely alone. As Clover had finally turned in a full circle, Professor Smith appeared. He was disheveled and tied up exactly how he'd been that night. The cable wound around his hands gave a creaking noise as he struggled in vain to free himself. His eyes were full of a terror that should have inspired fear in Clover, but all she felt was the sense that something was missing.
A warm hand suddenly clasped Clover's shoulder. She let out a surprised yelp, but didn't turn around, already knowing who it was. Of course this night wouldn't be complete without him. Things never could just be simple or easy, especially not on this night.
Clover refused to turn around and face the monster, so she instead stared resolutely ahead at Professor Smith. His glassy eyes stared blankly back, and it struck Clover that his struggling had ceased and he wasn't breathing anymore. His arms sat limply in his lap, his head lolled to the side and pale. An emotion she hadn't been able to manifest before trickled through her body, a few tears escaping her eyes easily. He was gone, and it was all her fault.
After a dreadfully long moment, the shadow behind her whispered, "Is this what you wanted?"
The words echoed in the lab as Clover processed them. Was he referencing the lifeless body of her teacher, or something else?
"No, of course not." She replied, clenching and flexing her fists slowly.
She hadn't wanted Professor Smith dead. For all his irritating quirks, the man had been a quite passionate teacher. Clover had never wanted to see him die.
He gave a dark chuckle, the hand on her shoulder clenching tighter. Clover thought that in another life, it would've hurt.
"Oh, but isn't it? You could have ran or called the police, but you stayed instead. You allowed him to burn."
"I was hiding!" Clover said quickly. "I was afraid you would catch me."
Still behind her, he stretched his hand across Clover's face to her opposite cheek, gently placing two fingers there and turning her head until he could lean over her shoulder and make eye contact.
"Afraid, or hopeful?"
With her outrage at his accusation, and the startling intensity of his eyes, Clover finally found the sense to fling herself out of his arms.
"I don't know what you mean, but you're wrong. I did everything I could to get away from you."
He scoffed, folding his hands behind his back as he paced around the lab. His heat lingered for a moment like a ghost, then vanished. He picked up a flask and played with it idly in his slender hands.
"We both know that's false. You did everything you could to get closer to me. You stayed because of curiosity. Your professor died because you wanted to see where I would go with things."
Clover bent over and steadied herself on the counter as her head began to pound frantically. Her head bowed in pain as she faced away from him. She was finding it harder and harder to muster up a cohesive sentence in her defense.
"No… that's wrong. You're wrong! I couldn't have stopped you if I wanted to." She trailed off as the pain almost became agonizing.
Once again, he chuckled as if he knew something she didn't and it was such a delicious secret. She was faintly aware of him moving behind her, but didn't register it until he was leaning in to whisper into her ear.
"But that's just the thing, you didn't want to stop me. You wanted the danger, the heat, the breathlessness." He paused for a moment to run a cold finger gently down the back of her neck, leaving goosebumps in its wake. "Can't get that from a shift at the coffee house." He finished snidely, removing his hand.
Clover clenched the counter even harder, the spot behind her nose burning from unshed tears.
"You're WRONG! I don't want that, or any of this." She vehemently denied, her voice beginning to waver. "I just want….I want…"
She felt both of his hands slowly come up to rest flat at the junction between her neck and collarbone. The slot between his thumb and pointer finger fit perfectly around the curve of her neck, and his fingers were almost long enough to completely interlace around the front. Unlike when he had touched her before, there were now freezing cold. Clover let out a low whimper as goosebumps erupted along the nape of her neck, and he shushed her in what should've been a soothing manner.
"Shhh shh, I know what you want. You want to experience that thrill again, something to get your heart pounding. Isn't that it?"
Clover nodded slowly, her pulse fluttering against his fingers. It felt like there was fire in her blood, simmering just below the surface. Her heart was a furnace, pumping flames in and out. Everything seemed warm and stifling at the same time.
"Well then, all you had to do was say so…"
The last thing Clover had felt in the dream was Nygma's hands tightening around her throat, igniting a flame in her larynx, then nothing. She had briefly woken up after the dream, but not in her usual state of panic. She hadn't been panting or sweating, just tired, chilly, and not lucid enough to fully comprehend what she had just dreamt of. She fell back to sleep shortly after, curling into a ball to conserve heat. It was the first night in weeks she slept soundly.
If Clover hadn't been so busy with her scheme to distract herself from all her problems, she would've been pretty alarmed over the dream's implications, but she had learned to chalk all her strange dreams up to the remnants of stress from that night. They were only wacky scenarios her mind had created due to residual feelings of excitement and stress, nothing more or less.
One improvement that could be gleaned from the events from that last few weeks was that Clover had finally taken a liking to the Narrows. Everyone knew that its inhabitants had a reputation of being fiercely loyal to their home, but Clover had always been too perturbed by the danger lurking there to actual enjoy her stay. But since her encounter with Penguin in the Iceberg Lounge, Clover had began to actually find things she liked about the Narrows. The store owners, though initially suspicious of everyone, were actually very friendly after she proved she wasn't a thief. She'd even become friends with the owner of her favorite sandwich shop, and boy did he have some interesting stories to tell.
Not only was she beginning to like the people residing there, but she also took a little thrill in the danger that could be found lurking in almost every corner. There were thugs on just about every street, but Clover had learned that most would back off if you showed a little grit. Even if they weren't intimidated by her, the image of a 5'2 woman with a ratty jacket baring her fists caught them off guard. She especially enjoyed the time several men had been cat calling her at a crosswalk, only to immediately clam up when she displayed the pistol strapped to the inside of her coat with a wink. Though Clover wasn't so keen on using weapons, the gratifying feeling of intimidation towards the people who used to intimidate her just felt too good.
She had even begun to take an interest in the grisly crime scenes that often speckled the Narrows. Once upon a time, she would've resolutely turned her head the other direction when confronted with a crime scene. It was only the police's business after all. Now, however, she always found herself curious about what exactly had gone down. She reasoned that looking at the dead bodies on the street really wasn't too different than looking at the cadavers from her med studies. Not exactly sound logic, but she figured it didn't hurt anyone too much if she looked. They were already dead, after all.
On this particular day, she was stopped by an intriguing yet disturbing scene on her way home from the bus station. Several police cars were pulled up to the curb, and a few officers stood in various places around a scene roped off with caution tape. Clover easily slid up to the tape, not hindered at all by anyone trying to stop her. Crime scenes were so common in the Narrows that not many people stopped to stare anymore, and most police officers were too lazy to force back the onlookers.
Clover gulped as she spotted what all the officers were gathered around. It was a man in his underwear, lying face down on the ground. The doors to a balcony up above were wide open, suggesting that was where he'd jumped from. Despite having seen things like this before, Clover could never sustain straight clinical interest when she saw the gut wrenching scene left behind by a suicide. The recognition that someone had taken their own life always twisted in her gut. She understood that Gotham was a dark place, hell the world was a dark place, but the reasoning behind a choice like that always eluded her. No matter how hard she tried to understand, she just couldn't. Even the death that haunted her own life was elusive to her, constantly haunting her thoughts and provoking unwanted emotions.
Clover quickly turned away from the scene, attributing the cold feeling in her gut to the gusting wind. Here she was trying to distract herself from her problems, but still bringing up old conflicts that had happened years ago. Shaking the thoughts out of her head, Clover continued on her way home.
Her apartment building, as she approached it, seemed less intimidating than when she'd first moved in. She hadn't really given its appearance much thought since she first moved in, but it seemed much more like home now. Initially she'd been revolted by it's ugly brick exterior and shabby paint job, but after warming up to the Narrows its overall unpleasantness blended in with just about every other building. Although, Clover would admit that she would never enjoy finding cockroaches, dead and alive, littered about the hallways.
As she came closer to the building, Clover spotted one of her neighbor's children sitting on the front steps. The little girl, who's name Clover couldn't quite remember, sat huddled on the steps with a tattered jacket wrapped around her. Seeing a child alone in the Narrows wasn't too uncommon considering how many parents worked multiple jobs, seeing such a young girl outside alone was cause for concern. Clover knew it was none of her business, but as the little girl let out a throaty cough into her hands, her conscience begged her to stop. Clover knelt down next to the little girl slowly, resting her hands on her knees.
"Are you alright?" Clover asked hesitantly.
The girl removed her hands from her face, and Clover could finally see her clearly. The girl looked, without any better term to describe it, like death. Her skin was frighteningly pale, and her eyes were sunken in. She was gaunt, far to skinny for a child, and there was a large bleeding gash on her cheek. It was heartbreaking to see such a young child looking like this. Clover slowly reached out a hand unthinkingly to touch her cut, but the little girl flinched away.
"What happened to you?" Clover asked slowly, trying not to let her voice betray how astonished she was. Who would let their child get to this point?
"I-I'm sick." She stuttered, wiping her nose with the edge of her tattered sleeve. "I got dizzy and fell. Mommy and daddy aren't home."
Clover's heart burned with sympathy. She wouldn't be able to live with herself if she didn't help this girl out.
Clover gave her a reassuring smile. "Why don't you come up to my apartment with me, I have a first aid kit and some snacks."
The little girl shook her head vehemently. "Mommy and daddy told me not to go with strangers."
Clover gave a quiet sigh, but nodded in understanding. "Alright then, I'll bring it down do you. Stay right here please."
The girl simply nodded, her wide eyed look never faltering. Clover quickly rushed up the stairs to her apartment, snatching her first aid kit from her bathroom cabinet. She scanned the pantry for snacks, but the only suitable thing she could find was a box of graham crackers. It would have to do.
She rushed back down to find the girl still sitting where she'd left her. Clover slowly sat next to her on the steps, and the girl gave her a wary look. But as soon as she spotted the graham crackers, the girl looked a little more eager to comply.
"I'm Clover, what's your name?" Clover asked as she began to rifle through her supplies.
The girl sniffed quietly, "I'm Bailey."
"Well that's a pretty name, Bailey." Clover said as she felt her forehead. Bailey was burning up.
After a moment, the girl said, "Clover is a weird name."
Clover gave a short chuckle. "Yeah, I guess it is kinda weird. It's just my nickname though, don't worry"
They lapsed into silence again as Clover examined the cut on the girl's cheek. She didn't have any meds for her headache, but she could at least try to bandage the cut. Unfortunately, it looked rather deep, blood still slowly seeping out.
"Bailey I hate to say this, but I think you need stitches. Can your parents get you to a doctor?"
Bailey nodded her head no. "No, mommy says doctors are too much money. We only go see Doctor Lee sometimes."
Clover shook her head. "Well I can give you stitches, but they will hurt."
Bailey nodded slowly, peeling up her sleeve to show a long, straight scar on her forearm. "I got stitches before, they hurt real bad."
Clover tried not to cringe at the scar. It looked surgical and precise, as if it had been inflicted by a trained hand and a scalpel. It was clear that an upbringing in the narrows contained more than just skinned knees and elbows. It broke her heart that most families' incomes were too low to leave this place and provide a better life for their kids. At least Clover could help out in some way.
"This is going to sting a little bit." Clover said as she began to disinfect the wound. Bailey flinched a little bit, but held her ground.
Clover then slowly brought out the needle and thread, trying her best to not look intimidating wielding them. Bailey shot her a glance, but didn't do anything to stop her. Clover should've been shocked by a child so young not screaming at the prospect of pain, but she knew life in the Narrows had a way of increasing everyone's tolerance to such things. Clover instructed her to take deep breaths as she slowly stitched the wound closed.
After it was over, Clover patted Bailey on the back and handed her the entire box of crackers.
Bailey's eyes widened. "A-all for me?" She stammered.
Clover nodded, her heart breaking just a little bit more. "They're all for you. Just remember to find me in a few weeks so I can remove the stitches. I'm apartment 219b."
Bailey smiled and nodded in understanding, then gave Clover a tight hug before scampering off somewhere.
"Be safe!" Clover called after her, trying to quell the grief pooling in her heart.
Though she could treat the girl's physical wounds, there was nothing she could do about the internal ones. It was clear the girl was very sick from her appearance and her symptoms like her temperature and cough. Her eyes had been slightly red around the edges, and Clover suspected it wasn't just from crying. Without treatment, who knows what she might suffer through.
Clover placed her head in her hands, rubbing her temples slowly. Her eyes were screwed shut, so she didn't notice the person walking towards her until they were upon her. Clover's eyes opened quickly as she heard the person in front of her clear their throat.
She slowly peered up to find a woman standing over her. The lady appeared tall from Clover's sitting position, and her hair was in a straight sleek style that rested at her shoulders. She was dressed in a dark outfit made up of black and maroon, which sort of made her look a little intimidating. It wasn't too uncommon to see people dressed that way in this part of town. Clover didn't see any reason to reach for her gun, but the thought was still there in the back of her mind.
"Can I help you?" Clover asked bluntly, not wanting to waste time with someone who could possibly just be looking for a handout.
"I saw what you did just now, helping that girl out." The woman said, her voice sounding far less harsh than Clover had expected.
"Yeah so?" Clover responded, tucking some of her hair behind her ear.
The woman smiled as she turned her head to watch the little girl retreating down the street. "You don't see too many people willing to lend a helping hand around these parts."
"What did you expect me to do? She was sick and bleeding. Anyone would've done the same." Clover huffed.
The woman gave a mirthless chuckle. "You must be new to the Narrows. Almost everyone turns a blind eye to the sick people in this community."
"Why is that?" Clover asked, fiddling with the latch on the first aid kit.
"Well there's lots of reasons. Most people in Gotham are more focused on their own gain. They're not worried about anyone else. But a lot of it is because most of the sick in the Narrows are suffering the residuals of the Tetch virus. Most people just assume they can't be helped."
Clover was lucky enough to say that she'd been out of town when the virus had been unleashed on the city, but that didn't stop it from affecting her life. She'd heard horror stories about how insane it made the infected go, and as scary as it was, it still interested her. A virus that could change someone's personality wasn't unheard of, but the changes it did make were completely unprecedented by any of its predecessors. Clover could imagine entertaining herself for weeks with a vial of infected blood and a microscope.
Still, the implications of its lasting effect on the population were saddening, and Clover didn't quite know how to respond other that muttering a dumb "oh".
The woman paused, then continued on. "But they can be helped. People like you can help them."
Clover shook her head. "I'm no hero, just a girl who knows how to apply stitches."
The woman nodded. "I saw how you applied them. You have wonderful precision. Did you teach yourself?"
"No, I studied pre-med in college. Picked up a few things before I dropped out." Clover replied, bitterness invading her voice.
"Well would you like to study again?"
Clover looked up at the woman and raised an eyebrow, not exactly sure what she was getting at.
"My name is Lee Thompkins, and I run a clinic for those afflicted by the Tetch virus. I think you could do amazing things if you came and helped me."
Clover snorted and said, "What exactly would I gain from helping you? I'm busy enough as it is."
"For starters, you'd be helping people. Don't act like that's not something you want, I can see it in you. You'd also be getting the chance to learn medical techniques again."
Clover desperately wanted to turn her down simply out of spite, but the offer did sound appealing. She missed studying the human body, as evidence by her most recent hobby of checking out grisly crime scenes. Maybe doing this would bring some of the excitement she'd been missing back. Lee smiled, recognizing Clover's contemplation as a sign of her resistance failing.
"Please, just come by once. I promise it will be worth it."
Clover exhaled, knowing that going off with some woman she'd just met was not the smartest decision in the world. But it was the most interesting one.
"When can I start?" She asked reluctantly.
Something glimmered in Lee's warm brown eyes. "How about right now?"
Clover stood up, shoving her hands in her pockets. "Alrighty then. Lead the way doc."
As they walked down the street, dusk almost upon them, Clover could only find a sort of amusing irony in the situation. Here she was once again with some woman she just met, going who knows where, and doing something that may or may not turn out to be illegal. And this time she wasn't even getting payed! Only in the Narrows she supposed. Funny how that worked out.
'Things could be worse.' Clover thought as she leisurely followed behind Lee.
'I could run into Nygma.' She chuckled under her breath, ignoring the look she received from Lee. What were the chances of that happening again?
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A/N:
I'm not really super happy with this chapter? Something about the dialogue seems sort of sketchy to me but I cant pinpoint it. Anyways, I'm going to try to pump out a few quick updates before summer ends and I'm busy again. Hope you enjoyed the chapter, please leave a review if you did! :)