Fanfiction user NakamaMegan, you have your private messages disabled! Please enable them so I can write back to you about your comments. :) Right here, I'll say that you're pretty much right on the money, about all of it—her common sense telling her to stay away vs her fixation on Jerome pulling her back to him. This chapter is an Isabel POV, so it should shed some more light on what's going on with her these days!
cw for this chapter: references to anti-Latino racism, mostly vague, one instance repeated in slightly more detail.
2.
Boy, I'm a true doomscroller—
Can't seem to shut it down until the worst is over
And it's never over…
(don't give up yet, don't give up yet, don't give up yet, don't give up yet!)
Whatever you do, either way we're gonna love you. – Metric | Doomscroller
Isabel was seeing red. She'd been holding it together for an hour now—if not strictly for love of her job, then because she absolutely couldn't afford a public freakout in the middle of the United City Causes Charity Luncheon that she'd helped plan and put together, one of the first big events she'd had a real hand in—but finally, finally, her colleague Linda Larsson had told her to take off, assured her that they'd shut down and clean up just fine without her. She hadn't argued, just took the opportunity to bail out.
They'd splurged for valet parking, and she'd borrowed Jane's car. As she waited at the curb, someone called out from behind her: "Miss Montalvo!"
She managed not to groan, but it was a near thing. Almost escaped clean, she thought, and turned reluctantly around.
She got the shock of her life when she saw who was approaching her: Bruce Wayne, impeccably dressed in a tailored suit, was striding up like he knew her. To the best of her knowledge, they hadn't ever exchanged a single word (the closest they'd come was being in roughly the same room that time Jerome had done something really stupid and caught a knife to the neck)—she'd been surprised enough that he'd shown up in person to a small potatoes wannabe gala like this one, and now was even more surprised that he somehow knew her name. How old is he now? she thought as she tried to scrub her irritation out of sight and paste on a polite smile. Sixteen, seventeen?
"Mr. Wayne," she said courteously as he stopped in front of her. "What can I do for you?"
He was frowning, his forehead furrowed in lines that made him look older than he should. "I just came to see if you were all right. You seemed upset."
At that, both the frustration and fake-nice expression fled—Isabel felt her face loosen into a look of stupid surprise. "I—huh?"
"When you were talking to Ted Billings," he clarified, the serious look on his face only intensifying. "I saw that he'd cornered you. I'm sorry, I would have come over then, but I couldn't get away."
"You saw that?" she asked, and blew out an exasperated little sigh. "Shit. I mean crap." Gone were the days when she could just say whatever she wanted in front of rich people without worrying about repercussions—one of the dark sides of her new career was that she had to play polite and upper-class with them in order to win over their much-needed financial support. "I thought I was holding it together."
"I don't think anyone else would have noticed," he confided in her. "I just know what Billings is like."
She snorted. "Tell me about it," she muttered under her breath, and then paused to take stock of the boy in front of her. She was no fan of the billionaire class (though she'd had to quiet down on that front in recent years), but in fairness to him, he'd been born into it rather than personally climbing over millions of people to scrape together his horde of wealth, and, if nothing else, he was taking the time to attend charity events at an age when nobody could reasonably expect him to—she couldn't imagine he'd been forced to come when literally no one had expected him. Moreover, he was chasing her out here to see if she was okay after a decidedly unpleasant interaction.
She felt herself soften, despite everything, and said, "Thanks for checking on me. I'll be fine—I am fine. He just said about what you might expect. Can't imagine why he came here in the first place."
"It makes him feel big," Bruce said, making unflinching eye contact with her, speaking with conviction that sounded like it was coming from an older person. "He likes to wave his checkbook around to see if he can get people to jump at his say-so, then he leaves without giving a dime. He's not a good person."
That startled a disbelieving little laugh out of her. From what little she knew of Billings, it was entirely true, but she hadn't been expecting to hear it laid out so plainly. Then again, she thought, staring back at Bruce and revising her limited opinion of him once again, when you're the richest person in the city, I guess you can say whatever you like. The thought prompted a little stab of bitterness in her, but it was much more subdued than it would have been if she was dealing with anyone else.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, hoping to deflect attention away from herself—he seemed to mean well, but she was getting uncomfortable with that intensity directed towards her, feeling a little tingle of misgiving, fear that he might see more of her than she wanted him to (and if he'd spotted her reaction to Billings, he already had). "Surely there are more exciting things you could be doing on a Saturday afternoon?"
"My family's money is tied up in ventures and charities all over the city," he said, again with that unsettling, weirdly mature frankness. "I figured I'm of the age to start overseeing it personally—as much of it as I can, anyway. Cut off cash flow that's just lining corrupt pockets; re-invest in programs that are actually helping the city."
Her eyebrows shot up. She was dying to pry for details—whose corrupt pockets? Which programs do you think are helpful? The American Nazi Party had a presence in the city, after all, he could just as easily think they were the ones who deserved funding as he could Isabel's organization—but she sensed that it was a little over the line for their limited acquaintance. Instead, she looked around and said, "Aren't you supposed to have bodyguards? Isn't it a little exposed for you out here on the street?"
Looking totally unconcerned, he said, "Alfred is around here somewhere."
Her eyebrows climbed higher as she searched in her memory. "Alfred is your… butler?"
"And guardian."
Right. Everyone in the city knew about the Wayne murders, and she briefly thought about offering condolences before dismissing the idea—she'd bet he was sick of having it dredged up in conversation over and over again, having to thank people for reminding him of what was likely the worst day in his short life so far, as if it was ever far from his memory. She placed this "Alfred" in her memory, bringing to mind a rough-faced, impeccably-dressed, cockney-accented man in his fifties or so. She supposed it was believable that he could protect his ward—she certainly didn't want to get on the wrong side of him—although she didn't spot him anywhere out here, where he could actually do some good. "Ah," she said. "Well…" She was saved from having to come up with polite conversation by the arrival of the valet with her car, and after turning to receive her key and hand the valet a tip, she turned back to Bruce with another brief, impersonal smile. "Thank you again. I'm all right."
He nodded, although he looked unconvinced. Thinking fuck it, I may not get another chance, and it's literally my job, she leaned in a bit and conspiratorially said, "And if you're looking for programs to donate to, we can always use whatever people are willing to give. Wars rage on everywhere; people are always coming to the city in need of food, housing… all things that cost money. Or if money's an issue, we've got a blood drive coming up, and we always need donors. But, you know, if you happen to be o-negative, watch out—I can tell you from experience they'll be beating your door down asking for your blood every three months on the dot."
He didn't quite smile, but his eyes crinkled a little, lightening up his intense expression for the first time. She'd gotten him with that bit about money being an issue. "I'm sure I can help out somehow." She wasn't certain if he was serious or not, and then he was offering her his hand. "You look lovely today, Miss Montalvo."
Any other kid, she'd feel certain he was either shooting a hopeless shot or being a smarmy little shit, but somehow, with Bruce Wayne, it scanned as nothing but a nice and entirely sincere compliment. She smiled at him and took his hand—callused at the bases of his fingers, weird, maybe not for a sixteen-year-old boy but certainly for a soft billionaire—and, as she shook it, she spotted a dark figure over his shoulder, his butler, finally here to keep an eye out.
"You do too, Mr. Wayne," she said with a friendly wink. "See you around."
Somewhat to her relief, he didn't insist on following her to open the car door for her, and soon enough, she was alone again, pulling away from the curb where he still stood. Finally by herself, she felt the little reprieve Bruce had offered fade away, replaced almost instantly by the towering rage she'd been working up for a while now.
As she drove a few blocks, getting away clean from the hotel where they'd been hosting the luncheon, she got a bad idea. Obviously, she hadn't felt free to share any details with Bruce Wayne—as much as he seemed like a nice boy, he had money and power and motivations that were a complete mystery to her, and she couldn't risk talking shit, couldn't risk it spiraling out of control and damaging her organization if he took it on himself to spread the story, or worse, to take a stance against her somehow. She did have someone, though, someone with no power—at least not in her spheres—and someone she could trust, if nothing else, to validate her anger, to encourage those nasty little vengeful parts of herself she had to keep hidden these days.
It had been several months since she'd visited Jerome. She'd thought about going back countless times, feeling a pull to Arkham that she didn't quite understand (and didn't quite want to understand), but the memory of their last visit had stayed the impulse. The way he'd looked at her at the dynamic conclusion to their last meeting, the way his pupils had been blown wide and black and the way she'd been sure he'd have eaten her alive if there hadn't been a guard in between them… well. She'd thought it best to stay away since then, since she obviously couldn't trust herself to behave, let alone him.
She felt a sinking feeling now, though, considering it, checking the clock. It was only 1 PM; visiting hours at Arkham were on Saturdays from twelve to four, and the asylum was only a bridge and a few miles away. She reached the red light that would mark her decision: turn right, back to the inner city and her apartment, where she could decompress in peace, or…
Left. To the outskirts. To the asylum. To him.
Her decision was made before the light turned green. Clenching her jaw grimly, she turned to the left.
The first time she'd visited, she'd been surprised to be led into a room with no restraints, just tables and chairs, like a minimum security prison. This time, she was surprised again when they took her into a chamber more like she was expecting the first time—a row of booths and little metal stools, plexiglass windows dividing her and the other visitors from the inmates. As she settled in, she thought for a while that it must be some punishment for the way hers and Jerome's last encounter had ended.
Her conclusion changed when, after about five minutes, Jerome shuffled into view on the other side of the glass. He had a truly impressive black eye, a cut by the eyebrow above it and a scrape running down his face beside it, and a jagged cut sprawled over the right side of his nose. His bottom lip was split, and one of the long, slitted scars on the edges of his mouth had a crust of blood scabbed over at its tip, not quite browned enough to be very old. He'd changed his hair since she'd last seen him: shaved down to the pale skin on the sides, long enough on top still to stand up tall in uniform spikes, and she wondered where he was sourcing the gel he needed to make the look work. Leave it to Jerome to look like he was living in a salon instead of a psych ward. He straddled the stool opposite her, but made no move to immediately pick up the phone, just folding his forearms on the little countertop in front of him, leaning in, and staring at her.
Gamely, she stared back, taking him in. It had taken her a bit to adjust—mostly to stop thinking about how genuinely fucking stupid it was that they'd reattached his mangled flesh lump of a face, and how genuinely fucking stupid it was that it had worked—but she'd told the truth when she said it suited him. With time, she'd decided that she actually liked it better than the beatific face he'd had when they'd met, a face she could barely picture anymore. All the ripples and texture and scarring made him look older, more dangerous, an old hat at violence—a better reflection of him, in the end.
After an intent minute, he finally reached for the phone, and she picked up hers as well, speaking first so that he couldn't immediately derail her: "I was going to ask why the whole plexiglass deal, but I changed my mind."
"Hey, you should see the other guy," he said, sounding relaxed and comfortable despite the heavy rasp in his voice she was still getting used to—she'd decided, after time, that the knife he'd taken to the throat had permanently altered his vocal cords, and that was entirely separate from the stiff-jawed way he talked now. As with his face, she thought she preferred his new way of talking these days, too. "You look nice."
She realized now that she should have at least stopped off to change before coming here. She'd been dressed up for the event, in a red sheath dress and heels, definitely not the punky, casual wear he was used to seeing her in. "It's not for you," she said, a little too quickly. He waggled his eyebrows at her, and she bit back a snort, not wanting to encourage him. She said, "I was at work."
"Is that why you're righteously pissed off?"
Damn. She wished it didn't send a little frisson of satisfaction through her, the way he could obviously see her agitation despite her best attempts to keep a lid on it. Tempering that feeling, however, was a perverse, contrary little thought—it's none of his business how I'm feeling—and so she said, "I'm not here to talk about work."
"Right," he said, staring at her with unblinking eyes, in their dark pits sunk in the mangled flesh of his face. "Okay. Well, that's a lie, but I've got nothing but time. What bullshit excuse for being here are you gonna give me instead?"
"What if I said I missed you?" she challenged him. Despite herself, she felt her body language opening up—legs uncrossing, arm loosening itself from its nervous barricade over her stomach. When she wasn't with him, it was easy to forget (or choose not to remember) the way she responded to him, the way talking to him fired her up, locked in her interest. Kind of annoying that it was him of all people that elicited that response, so she compensated by trying to conceal it from him. She wasn't sure he was buying it.
"Well, that's true," he said, "but you'd never tell me so." Damn. Again with the uncanny recognition of her thoughts. "Anyway, how long's it been this time? Two months?"
"Three."
He made a politely uninterested sound. "If you were gonna come by just because you missed me, you'd have been back after just a week."
He was right again. Things were getting dire. She briefly considered relating her encounter with Bruce Wayne to him, and axed the thought almost instantly. He had a weird thing with that kid, starting the night he died and only getting weirder and more intense the night he'd come back, and even if Bruce hadn't gone out of his way to show her a kindness, she still wouldn't be eager to sacrifice him to Jerome's keen, deadly interest. She turned instead to a topic that usually bought her some time, if only a few minutes: Jerome himself. "Do you want to tell me why you were fighting?"
This time, the sound he made was less polite and more dismissive. "I'm always fighting, Izzy. You know that."
"Who's lying now?" she asked, not bothering to hide her self-satisfaction. "You'll fight if you need to, but it's more fun for you to talk."
"Fifty-fifty," he said, but there was a glimmer in his eye that told her he was pleased at the assessment.
"Still. Seems like fighting—and obviously getting caught at it—would be counterproductive. They're clearly taking away your privileges."
At that, he paused, took a look over his shoulder, lifted his phone arm and peered under it—Isabel snorted at the simple buffoonery—before leaning in close again. "I told you I'm not gonna be in here forever."
He had said that, and the thing about it was that Isabel believed him. He'd defied expectations before; who was to say he wasn't just getting started? He didn't need the ego boost of knowing she was taking him seriously when he said that, though, so she was careful to sound sarcastic when she said, "And fighting contributes to that goal?"
He hitched a shoulder up in a coy little half-shrug, but her attention was drawn more specifically to his gloved index finger as he extended it deliberately to its full length, then curled it inwards again against to tap at the edge of the phone he held. Right. Not something he can really talk about here.
She ignored the temptation to blow up his spot then and there (unlikely it'd slow him down very much, and they were getting along so well) and instead, keeping the conversation rolling, idly asked, "They treating you okay?"
His brows rushed down, like the question confused him, or irritated him, or both. "No," he said after a beat, his tone making it clear that he thought it should be obvious. "It's Arkham."
The question had been half-sarcastic, but at his bluntness, she frowned as well. "Is it that bad? If it is… I work with lawyers sometimes, ACLU types. None of them are really big hitters, but they know the powerhouses—I can go after them, try to get them to bring the wrath of God down on this place—"
"Jesus, don't do that," he said in a hushed tone, glancing over his shoulder again to ensure that nobody was eavesdropping (the only guard that Isabel could see was all the way down the corridor, largely out of earshot: she doubted he could hear more than just a low murmur from them). "We don't want this place functional. You stay in your realm, with whatever it is you do—saving puppies. Giving out free balloons. Leave Arkham to me."
Isabel rolled her eyes—but if he was reacting like that, it couldn't be too bad. Before she could say anything else, Jerome perked up a little and asked, "Who was your first kiss?"
The question caught her off-guard. She stared mistrustfully at him, and he stared back, rocking slightly back and forth at the shoulders as he restlessly jiggled his knee at the same time, eyes alight with a mischief she didn't trust. "Well," he said, when her silence spoke for her, "if we're going to ignore the real reason you're here, we might as well make polite conversation."
"This is polite?"
He grinned. "You want to hear impolite?"
His wide smile had cracked open the little crust of scabbing at the high end of his scar. She looked at it for a second or two, watched as it turned bright red with fresh blood. "It was a girl named Kali," she said eventually. "We were thirteen. Her parents never found out, but I know they were suspicious—they didn't like me." She snorted. "Like, at all."
"You strike me as the kind of girl that'd be a blast to bring home to the parents," said Jerome, as if he was offended on her behalf, earning a rueful little smile from her.
"For you, knowing your definition of 'a blast?' Probably." She scoffed. "Not so much for other people. Anyway. They moved away pretty soon after that. I don't think it had anything to do with me, but you wonder." The blood on his cheek had stabilized, not dripping, barely an ooze. It would dry up again in minutes if he held his face still. Unlikely.
She didn't ask about his first kiss, because knowing him, he'd say something absolutely horrible, like that it had been that one time with her, and she wasn't going to give him that opening. Instead, she resigned herself to discussing the earlier events of the day, since he was right: it was the reason she'd come here to see him in the first place. There were plenty of people in her life who'd offer sympathy, outrage, impassioned rants taking her side—not so many who would understand that sometimes, she well and truly wanted to set fires and draw blood.
Not like him.
She sighed and said, "You're right."
"Well, duh," he said, then wrinkled his brow in an exaggerated depiction of confusion. "Uh. About what, exactly?"
"Work was kind of bad today."
He scoffed. "Color me surprised. You're wasted on public service, Izzy; I keep telling you that."
"The work is fine," she argued, shooting him a glare. "It's the douchebags I have to pal around with that make it unbearable."
His gaze sharpened with interest. He leaned an inch or two closer to the barrier glass. "Somebody giving you a hard time?"
"More like some waste of breath somehow has the capital to come to charity events he actively objects to, just to be snide and hassle the people working those events."
"Go on…"
"Like, take this dick of a politician I had to make nice with earlier today."
"Aw," he said, and clicked his tongue. "You don't have to make nice with anyone, Isabel—surely you know that? You coulda just knocked him down and curb-stomped him in front of all the innocent do-gooders." That got a little snort of a laugh out of her, and he grinned a little, his eyes glimmering in pleasure at her reaction.
After collecting herself, she said, "My organization works with refugees. We have people coming in the city every day, fleeing war and unrest in their home countries. In the short term, they need housing and food—in the long term, they need jobs, English lessons, childcare, all kinds of things."
"Yeah," he said, squinting, fluttering his gloved fingers dismissively, "I don't care about any of that. What did this guy say to you?"
"I'm getting to that," she said sharply, feeling a little glow of pleasure when he dramatically fell back as if in apology, motioned with his hands, go on, go on. "Anyway. This guy. Smalltime Republican shithead, and I have it on good authority that he just shows up to these charity events to troll, basically." She didn't mention that Bruce Wayne was that good authority. "I guess he spotted me, figured I was an ideal target. Before I knew it, he was in front of me, droning on about how these people are just invading our homeland, draining our resources—all kinds of evil shit. He really thought he was doing something, making a dig about Cubans crossing the Gulf in makeshift boats."
Jerome frowned. "I thought you were Puerto Rican."
Isabel glared at him. "And Cuban on my bio dad's side, along with a bunch of other stuff. Not that that's fucking relevant to this conversation, cause it's a shitty thing for him to have said regardless."
He laughed at her, showing her the palm of his glove like he was calling for peace. "I'm just trying to keep up, Izzy. Not my fault your family tree is a bush."
Despite herself, that stung. Family stuff was always touchy for her, even when there was no real reason for it—but one of the nice things about Jerome is that they had some of the same soft spots. She went on the offense. "That's rich, coming from you. Who's Jeremiah, anyway?"
She'd meant it as nothing more than a play to get the upper hand, and was startled when his expression changed dramatically. The levity drained from his face, the teasing and amusement vanished, as did the light in his eyes, and his mouth jerked down into a frown. Again, he looked around to check that there was no one else within earshot, though this time, there was nothing clownish about it. When he looked at her again, he wasn't quite glowering, but it was a near thing.
Voice low over the phone, he asked, "Where did you hear that name?"
Isabel batted away the perverse impulse to tease him. It'd serve him right, but she was the bigger man here. "I found his birth record when I went looking for yours," she said, her forehead creasing in consternation. "You didn't wonder how I knew your birthday? You told me you were born here; City Hall has all those records, if you know where to look." He just stared at her, frowning, the tip of his tongue rolling along behind his lower lip. She said, "I assumed he was dead."
"That's right," he said, straightening up like she'd drawn a weight off his shoulders. "Died in childhood. I always was the strong one."
Isabel's eyes drifted to his hand gripping the phone. His knuckles were white and bloodless. "No, he's not," she said. "He's still out there. Jerome, what the fuck is—he had the same birth date as you. Do you have a—" She caught herself. Her voice had been raised; she paused to check on her end, to see if anyone was listening in, but it was a slow day, apparently, and she was the only visitor present. Reassured, she went back to the phone, now nearly whispering. "Do you have a twin brother?"
"Shhhh," he cautioned, a low hiss over the phone line. He seemed calmer now, the startlement worn off, though he still looked alert and slightly on edge. "That's a secret, Isabel."
"No shit," she muttered. "Where is he?"
"I don't know."
"Identical?"
"I'm better-looking."
"So yes." She stared at him for a long few seconds, trying again to picture someone who looked like the old version of him, before his death, his flayed face, and all the scarring. It was surprisingly hard, at least with the updated version right in front of her.
"Listen," Jerome said, leaning further in, his nose nearly touching the glass. "I don't know where he is. I will find out. But if I'm gonna do that, I need you to stay quiet. If word gets out—well, think of what Jimmy Gordon would do if he found out there's another Valeska out there he hasn't been keeping tabs on."
"Dog with a bone, that one," Isabel said distractedly, still reeling from the revelation. Things were bad enough with—and for—Jerome. Another Valeska brother in the mix—a twin, no less—was really jarring the foundations of the way she thought about him. She had about a million new questions.
In effect, it didn't matter. Jerome had still done the things he'd done, he was still locked away with no freedom in sight; a mysterious twin wasn't going to change that. Still, it changed the story. Was the twin the golden child, or had someone like their mother even been capable of having a golden child? When had they been separated, and why? She assumed it was a bad situation—Jerome wasn't exactly radiating friendliness at the mention of his brother—but she thought it could be possible that the twin was also on the run and Jerome was keeping secrets for him. There was a lot to excavate, and this was exactly the wrong place to do it.
She'd been lost in silent thought for several seconds—it felt longer than it actually was, which was why she jumped a little when he spoke next. "Isabel."
She met his eye. He was staring at her, uncharacteristically serious. When he saw that he had her attention again, he drew his eyebrows up emphatically and said, "You can't tell anyone."
Again, that perverse impulse to tease him, and if this topic was any less obviously serious, she might have given in to it. As it was, she frowned right away, dismissive. "I'm not gonna tell anyone."
"I mean it."
"Don't insult me," she ordered, jabbing a finger at his face. "I said it, I meant it. You be cool, I'll be cool."
He studied her. He looked wary, like he didn't know whether or not she was telling the truth, but she saw the moment he realized he had no choice but to trust her: his expression cleared and smoothed out, and he leaned back, eyes cast briefly down and tone casual as he asked, "So, what's his name?"
"Who?"
"The small-time politician. You know, racist dipshit, pissed you off bad enough to drive you back into my loving arms?"
"I'm not in your arms," Isabel couldn't help but point out. "And likely won't be anytime soon, you keep fighting." He wouldn't be baited. He just waited until she yielded and said, "Ted Billings. And if my manners were any worse, I'd be spitting on the floor."
"Go ahead," he encouraged her. "This place deserves it."
"I'll pass. Trying to make the world better, not worse, remember?" He blew a short, loud fart sound in response to that, drawing a smile out of her that she could tell was more revealingly affectionate than she'd like.
He changed the subject quickly, moving on, she thought, before she could say something else that bored him. "Anyway, I think you should quit trying to stay away."
It took her a moment to catch up with his train of thought, and once she did, she couldn't hide her surprise. "Stay away… from you?"
"Yeahhhh," he purred, shifting in his seat and leaning forward onto his arm, about as close to the glass as he could get without actual contact. "Seems kind of pointless, don't you think?"
She stared at him, the space between her brows knit in a frowny little furrow, so taken-aback by suggestion that she couldn't even muster a gloat over the fact that he appeared to be asking for her to come back, come visit (in part because he seemed to be framing it as something she wanted). She knew she should pull it together, that there was no use in letting him know he touched a nerve, but… "What are you talking about?"
"This whole…" he spun a finger aimlessly in the air. "…going months without coming to visit thing. Who's it helping? You obviously enjoy seeing me—I'm starting to remember why I was so taken with you—"
"Gee, thanks."
"Don't mention it. What was I saying?"
"Genuinely sort of wondering that, myself."
"Shhhhhhhh," he said, frowning and pressing his index finger against the glass in the rough area of her mouth. She recoiled, because excuse him, but he appeared to triumph over the ADHD running rampant through his brain and regain his train of thought before she could say anything. "My point, Izzy, is I've been here, what, close to a year? And this is only the second time you've come. Why? You think you're, mm, punishing me?"
Isabel, sensing that he was veering dangerously close to something like sincerity and desperate to head it off, mustered some bravado. "So what if I am?"
He flicked a dismissive hand, like he was batting away a fly. "All flirting aside, I think you know damn well I keep busy. I'm not exactly lying around languishing, waiting for you to drop in." He leaned on his l's, pronouncing them almost lasciviously, but it almost seemed like an afterthought—he was staring intently at her, like if he looked hard enough he could pin her in place while he dug his fingers into her brain and found what he wanted inside. After a few seconds of this, a slow grin crept over his face, and he said, "You're doing this for you."
"Again I ask," she said, her voice flat with irritation, "so what if I am?"
He stared at her for a few seconds, like he was waiting for a punchline. When he realized that none was coming, he said, "Well… what gives? Visiting hours are every weekend. What, you think I'd turn you away?"
That startled a real laugh out of her, a mean-edged little thing. "You are so full of yourself." He looked brightly at her, as if she'd paid him a choice compliment, and she leaned closer to the glass. "You're right, Jerome, it's not about you."
He licked his lips and rested his chin on his hand and his eyes seemed to get even brighter as he nodded slightly, encouraging her to go on. I'm listening.
"This?" she said, pointing to his chest, then hers, then back to his again. "This is no good. This is meth."
Jerome blinked. "…our… relationship… gives you a ton of energy and makes you feel great?" he asked, his brow wrinkled in mock confusion.
"It's incredibly destructive and will ruin my life."
"But it's highly addictive," he pointed out.
Isabel cradled the phone between her ear and her shoulder so she could give him a gentle little round of golf applause. "Bravo! You got it."
"I kinda like that," he mused, staring at her. "I'm your drug of choice, huh? Hm. Yeah. And so you're trying to stay away because it's bad for you—" this accompanied by an over-emphasized eyeroll—"or something stupid like that."
"Something stupid exactly like that." He pretended to yawn, but Isabel was past the point of laughing now. She caught his eyes again and told him, seriously, "You are bad for me, Jerome. Like today? What do you think this was all about? I did want to curb-stomp that fucker. I came here to see you because you're the only person I know who'd not only encourage me to go through with it, but come up with the idea before it even crossed my mind."
His brow furrowed. "How is that a bad thing?"
"Trying to make the world a better place, remember?"
"And… killing some racist shitstain isn't doing exactly that?"
"That's exactly what I'm talking about. You make murder sound reasonable."
"Come on, Isabel," he barked, his voice taking on a raspy severity that had her checking to make sure the guard wasn't going to take issue. Jerome, however, was laser-focused on her now. He hadn't blinked in a while, she realized. "Be serious. Sometimes murder is the answer. You know it. I know it. The reason these guys get away with whatever slippery, rotten shit they're pulling is they operate juuuuust within the confines of the law. What they're doing is legal, sure. That doesn't mean they should be allowed to get away with it. You know this."
Isabel gripped the phone receiver tight enough that she felt the blood leaving her knuckles. She looked at Jerome and she swallowed hard, gathering up every ounce of composure she could find before trusting herself to speak. Finally, her voice coming out a lot smaller than she'd like for it to, she said, "I know."
Jerome's eyes, which had been narrowed in annoyance and disapproval, widened slightly in surprise. She took advantage of the beat of silence and went on before he could keep singing his song: "But your way of doing things is not my way of doing things. When I visit you I forget that, just for a little while, but even that's too much."
His eyebrows rushed back down, and scornfully, he snapped, "Oh, Isabel—don't be a chickenshit. That's not like you."
She shook her head. "This was a mistake. It's always a mistake."
He struck the glass with his hand, hard and sudden, making her jump.
"Valeska!" the guard called, a warning in his voice, but Jerome just left the gloved hand flat on the glass and stared at Isabel, looked at her like it was a threat. Through the phone, she heard his breathing, a shaky exhale through his nose, then a shaky inhale, like he was trying to get control of his temper, like he was trying not to say something perhaps ill-advised. Her instincts were shouting at her—drop the phone! Get the hell out!—but she just kept gripping the phone tight and kept staring right back at him, spellbound, unable to tear herself away until she heard what he had to say.
The guard was coming. Jerome, finally, his voice so low that it sounded like he was speaking directly into her ear, said, "Don't call it a mistake. We are not a mistake."
"All right, Valeska," the guard said, halfway down the aisle, and Isabel's eyes flicked away from Jerome's just for a second, just to see him pulling out his nightstick, then back again. She was sure she was starting to look panicked—Jerome was already pretty beat up; despite everything she still didn't want to see him take a beating, especially not for her sake—but Jerome was talking again:
"And you are going to come back here again. You're gonna come see me. I'll make sure of it."
Almost before he was finished speaking, he was dropping the phone, flipping it forward onto the counter and rising fast to his feet, raising his hands above his head just in time—the guard pulled up to an abrupt halt, wielding the nightstick like he barely needed an excuse to use it, but his furtive glance at Isabel told her he wasn't about to beat an inmate in front of her, at least not without justification. Jerome knew this, too, apparently—he lowered one hand briefly, pressing his gloved fingertips to his lips, then pressing those fingers to the glass, again, in the rough area of her mouth.
"All right, Valeska, you're done here," the guard said, grabbing Jerome by the edge of his unbuttoned striped shirt and jerking him roughly back away from the booth. Jerome maintained eye contact with Isabel until he physically couldn't anymore, until the guard was practically shoving him through the door that led back to the innards of the asylum.
The door slammed shut behind him, and after the echo faded, the silence felt suffocating. Even so, Isabel sat for almost a full minute in it, trying to calm the sudden sense of turmoil in her heart—and wondering what the fuck he'd meant by that final promise.
She had a bad feeling. She was pretty sure she had somehow royally, royally fucked up in coming here today.
The silver lining: after she'd collected herself and managed to depart from the asylum, her phone buzzed several times in rapid succession—usually bad news, and she started the car before taking a breath and checking her phone. It was a quadruple text from Linda, unusual in itself—Linda never multi-texted, preferring to write out all the information in a single multi-paragraphed message.
Linda Larsson (2:58 PM): Oh my God Isabel.
Linda Larsson (2:58 PM): We were tallying up the donations at the end of cleanup. The Wayne Foundation donated TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. Recurring MONTHLY!
Linda Larsson (2:58 PM): Eileen says she saw you talking to Bruce Wayne outside just before you left. What on earth did you say to him?
Linda Larsson (2:59 PM): Call me when you get a chance. This is over 100k more per year, Isabel. This is huge.
Isabel stared at her phone for a moment, feeling her heart performing some complicated acrobatics in her chest. The longer she looked, the more that dreadful feeling that Jerome had given her abated—not entirely gone, but tempered, dramatically, by the news that Bruce Wayne had come through. Sure, ten thousand monthly was chump change to a billionaire, but to her, to her organization? That amount of money was a big deal. That amount of money fixed several big problems right off the bat, and opened the doors to more much-needed work, especially given that it wasn't a one-off and they could depend on it coming in regularly.
She couldn't help but feel that she was being sent some sort of message, especially on the heels of Jerome's cynicism, his sinister take on the problem of Ted Billings and everyone like him. There were lots of Billingses out there, and Jerome was right that they got away with more than should be allowed… but Bruce had seen, and sympathized, and, moreover, offered support, material support. It was a good reminder that it wasn't just monster versus monster out there.
Even if, a little voice in the back of her head whispered as she tucked her phone safely away and reached to buckle her seatbelt, the monsters sometimes really do deserve a monster in return.
A/N - any guesses as to who Jerome was "fighting?"
next up: Jerome follows up. Isabel negotiates. Things get physical.
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