Gotham Imagines and One Shots

Even a psycho can be loved - Jerome x Reader

So, this is of course my first Jerome imagine. For some reason I have found it a little harder to come up with something for him. Found it harder to connect. But I thought I would try a soulmate thing. Hoping that I can bring something else into his personality. Make him more than just a crazy psycho. Now, there is a tiny mention of self-harm, but nothing hopefully that will disturb. I hope that you enjoy.

Jerome sat in his all too familiar cell in Arkham, blankly staring at the dirty white walls. He had only been there a matter of hours, but it already felt like years. After a bungled heist, he'd been caught and dragged back to Arkham kicking and screaming. Well, in Jerome's case, it had been laughing maniacally all the way. But now all he could do was hope that his followers would realise where he was, and break him out. Or he could manipulate someone into helping him get out.

While he had sat in his confines, he had found himself once again scratching at the mark on his left wrist. His soul mark had been burning and irritating him ever since he had stepped foot into this hell hole, and now the damn thing was red and inflamed. Slowly, he got up from his bed and soaked the mark in cold water, hoping to relieve some of the pain. But his efforts only seemed to make things worse. The heat generating from the mark, making it seem if it were burning his flesh from the inside out.

He had tried everything over the years to destroy the mark, not believing he could have a soulmate. The utterly remorseless killer remembering how he would cut at the flesh. But no matter what he did the mark would reappear.

The black and red rose that had been there from the day of his birth. He could remember as a child looking at the mark for reassurance. For some kind of happiness and love, as his mother would drink, and have sex in the room next to him. As she would abuse him and let others do the same. The young Jerome wondering who his soulmate was and what she was like. Whether he would know her as soon as he saw her? Whether it would be love at first sight? Whether she would accept him.

But as the years rolled on, and there was still no sign of her, he had grown to hate the mark, just like he hated everyone and everything else. He had taken to believing that the mark had been placed there to torment him, just like so many other things in his life. That his soulmate, just like the rest of the world, didn't care about his. Just as Cicero had said that day, as he had stood outside the trailer and cried.

"LIGHTS OUT!" Came the call, as his room was suddenly plunged into darkness with only a small shaft of light coming from a tiny, barred window high up in the wall enabling him to see. Jerome making his way back to his bed and throwing himself onto the uncomfortably thin mattress. Turning over to lay on his back, so that he could stare at the ceiling.

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He didn't know how long he had lain there staring at the same spot; it could have been minutes, but it was most probably hours. The silence was deafening, only interrupted sporadically by the cough from another inmate. The pain in his wrist had kept him awake, it burned like hell. Why did it have to do this now? Of all the places, of all the times, why here and why now?

Jerome got out of bed. His warm bare feet instantly cooled by the floor beneath them. He started to pace, trying to calm his mind and the ache in his wrist. His foot falls only stopping, as his ears picked up an unfamiliar sound. A sound that started off as a soft hum. Slowly building up until a beautiful voice that drifted through the empty corridors of the dreary asylum. And even though he didn't know the song, the words and the voice were so exquisite that he couldn't help but love it. Jerome finding himself falling against the wall, sliding down it until he hit the floor. The tear that was slowly rolling down his cheek, shocking him as the woman bore her soul through the words of the song.