Chapter 52: Memory

Everyone just stared at me. Their eyes not focusing on my leather jacket, or my T-shirt, or my combat boots. Or even my new black emo-styled haircut. They focused on me. The real me. Sort of...

It was an awkward silence that I had yet to become adapted too - even with prison being the most awkward of them in my recent history. The only thing I had become aware of moments later was a glass shattering and a pan of freshly baked cookies dropping to the floor with a clatter. Then M'gann's arms around me, sucking the air right out of my lungs.

"M'gann..." I croaked, attempting to tell her than I was a human being and I needed oxygen. She laughed and released me, her eyes sparkling and mouth turned up into a wide smile.

"Sorry! I'm just so glad you're back!" She said sweetly. I smiled and looked across the room. Wally - who had grown up in the two years I was gone - was smiling beside Artemis, his arm surprisingly not wrapped around her waist as I had imagined. I eyed Artemis and the solemn look on her face. The last thing I wanted to do was piss her off right as I came back, but we had a lot to talk about with her and M'gann ending up in the same club as Leonardo - the guy I stole the SD card back from.

"That's makes one of us." A deep voice said, and suddenly, for no understandable reason, my heart dropped at the sound and tone. Roy.

I turned around and stared at him. Two years, and he barely changed, even for now a twenty-year old. But instead of being in his costume, he was nearly dressed up in workout clothes, which confused me more than the expressions I got from the police when I confessed almost everything I had going for me. His blue eyes were like slits as he glared at me.

"Finally found some room in your heart to truly hate me?" I asked, realizing what was going on. Two years and Roy found out more than he bargained for. All about my past and my life. I shrugged. "Don't worry. you'll get used to it. Everyone eventually does."

My sudden coldness came out of nowhere, like a dungeon at the bottom of my heart. But awkwardly enough, it felt right - arguing with Roy again, having him hate me, me hating him.

"How the hell did you get out anyway. The Justice League sure as hell didn't help, so who was it. Your boyfriend, lover, maybe your father?" The words stung me. Father. Yeah, like my father would break me out of Belle Rev for my own sanity. It would've been more like he'd break me out and torture me until I died in his arms, like I was evidentially supposed to have done ten years ago.

"Hmm... let me think. Oh, yeah. It's none of your damn business to know how or why or what got me out of that hell you call a prison." Roy rose a brow.

"Please don't tell me that you believe your innocence, right?"

"Really? Me? Believing that I'm innocent? Ha, that's as stupid as your new costume."

"It's not a costume. It's merely clothing to wear when I'm not working."

"Whatever. You can believe whatever the hell you want."

"Ms. Lawson, please..." I looked around to see J'onn motioning toward a hallway politely. I took a deep breath and waved to M'gann and Artemis, completely ignoring everyone else who had gone back to their original activity and Roy.

I followed J'onn to a room, and followed orders as he motioned for me to sit down on something that looked as hard as rock - and looked like it. I sat down, and sure enough it was.

"The... procedure can take from five minutes, to five hours. For our own knowledge, we will be keeping everything we learn about your father in a computerized storage system. It's complicated..." Batman spoke as I opened my mouth. "This procedure will help us obtain knowledge we need to take down your father quicker, and well, for you, it will probably relieve what you seem to have been going through."

His voice spoke a lie that only I could tell. He didn't believe that I had been through the hell that I knew I had been in. We'd just have to wait and see.

Everything seemed to happen so fast after I agreed. I laid down and suddenly my world wasn't mine anymore. I was somewhere else. And it wasn't in the cave.

The room was dark, cold, and mostly quiet, with only the uttered sound of whimpering, and the soft pause of light breathing. But the sounds weren't coming from the same thing. They were coming from different ones.

Light gave into the room as the moon continued to rise. A battered and bloodied child lay in the corner, blood seeping from the back and hand clutching a wrist like a splint. The whimpering continued, and it seemed as if all the child's strength was on keeping quiet and keeping the parents from knowing how weak they really were.

Another sound came to light. A simple young cry from the opposite end, sending the young child to jump up in pain and run to the crib, quieting the baby laying in there.

The child's face was as bloody as her back, a trickle of blood fell from her eyebrow, one from her nose, and one from her lip. Her eyes were glazed over, and filled with soft tears that had yet to fall.

She swallowed fiercely as she looked at the door, her breathing labored as she attempted to keep quiet. She listened, and heard, and partly saw.

A man, bat in hand, swinging. Lamps crashing, doors busting, glass shattering. A woman, an angry voice, yelling. Helping, Seeing. Watching.

Another woman. Kind eyes, simple features. Loving, caring. Defending. A labored whimper, a cry, a scream. A blood-curling scream that filled the child's ears with horror one could not imagine. A silence. She was dead.

The young babysitter was dead.

The child's heart stopped beating and it was the first time she felt the horror of the house she lived in. People had spoken, whispered, watched. But no one could erase this horrifying moment. No one.

There was no barrier between Earth and hell anymore. It was all one.

And it intertwined in her house. She was living in hell.

I jolted upright from the rock, my eyes wide and my forehead wet with sweat. My eyes stung with salty tears, but I didn't dare let them drop. I shook, my hands barely containing my weight. I breathed, but my breathing was labored, just like that little girls.

I could feel J'onn and Batman staring at me, but I didn't care. How could I? I had just relived my first beating.

It was me. That little girl. That was me.