Jerome x Lee

You've Gotta Be Joking Me

Somewhere, in a dimlit apartment outside of Gotham...

Lee was washing dishes with her long hair tied in a haphazard ponytail when breaking news appeared on the television to her right. A reporter spoke these words. "Gotham heiress and infamous crime boss Barbara Kean found dead at the docks."
At the mention of Barbara Kean, Lee's head perked up.
Dead.
She's dead.
"We should've done it when we had the chance. Maybe next time," she heard a voice say.
Lee's eyes shot open in bloodshot fear, and she turned around to see where the eerily familiar voice came from.

It was herself. Black-clad, nails polished blood-red, and  eye-shadowed as she was when she had the virus. Sitting comfortably in her plush chair.
"Go away!" Lee said viciously, her left hand pulling out a draw where she kept her anti-hallucination meds.
"Hey, all I'm saying is when she inevitably comes back to life, as people do in Gotham, we-”
"I said GO AWAY! Jim got rid of you. You almost made me kill him!"
Dark Lee's black lips curled lasciviously in a smirk, "If that were really true, you wouldn't be reaching for your meds, now, would you?"

Lee's hand stilled from its' action.

She started as Dark Lee threw her head back, erupting in laughter more amused than when Lee went to the circus. "Paying Dr. Thompkins! The patient is going loony toons! She injects herself, and blames her actions on the virus!" Dark Lee's face went cold again. "Just like you blamed Mario's death on Jim. You're disgusting."
"Shut UP!"
"You'll probably get complaints from the adjacent apartments. You're technically the only one making noise," Dark Lee casually inferred.
"Just please go away!"
"You can't run away from yourself, Lee," Dark Lee stood up from the chair and walked towards her. "You can disassociate from the past as much as you want, but it's ALWAYS been you."

Dark Lee began strutting around Lee like a predator, whispering. "You saw Jim had problems from the moment you may him, but you juuust couldn't help yourself," Dark Lee bit her lower lip at the memory.
Lee flashed back to her first kiss with Jim. A passionate, animalistic, spur-of-the-moment embrace in Jim's locker back at Arkham Asylum.
Dark Lee continued, "And then you JUMPED at the chance to work at the infamous GCPD. Get in on the danger."
Lee flashbacks again, this time to when she said "What can I say? You had me at homicide."
"You even saw how craaazy his ex was. Red flag, much? But you not only stayed with him, you enjoyed knocking her senseless. You're practically just like her."
Lee flashbacks to when Barbara first tried to kill her, and how she kept banging the blond's head into the floorboard. The power she felt.
"STOP IT!" Lee yelled, "I can change!"
"Hardly, Lee," she answered flatly. "No amount of trauma or life-changing experience can make a leopard change their spots." Dark Lee then whispered ever so quietly in her ear: "You learned that the hard way."

Lee stood there, looking like she just had been slapped.

The miscarriage.

"Don't," Lee begged.
Dark Lee began to sing sweetly.
"Hush little JJ, don't say a word,
Mummy's gonna buy you a mockingbird."
Lee's eyes began to well up, and her voice became more desperate, "Please, don't!"
Dark Lee kept singing, more joyfully and mocking.
"And if that mockingbird don't sing,
Mummy's gonna buy you a diamond ring."
"SHUT UP!!!" Lee screamed.
Dark Lee instantly got in her face and shouted, "Poor little Jim Jr. You lost him! And then what do you do?" her dark self spat out, "You find ANOTHER man with dangerous connections! Say you love him to get over Jimbo," she sneered, "and return back to Gotham to work with Jim again!"
Lee put her hand on a desk to steady herself from crumbling under the weight of her own guilt, but Dark Lee continued.
"YOU brought Mario into the danger zone. 'Hey! Wanna meet my ex?' And now he's dead because of you. Not Jim, you."
Lee flashes back to Mad Hatter's words.
"But poor little idiot Lee, you know what this means, right? You were the virus all along. You just used Alice's blood as a scapegoat to do what you always wanted to do."
"What do you want from me?!"
"To stop covering up your evil with 'kind doctor' intentions! Isn't it better to be yourself and own it? Stop fighting it?"
"You are just one half of me!"
"Right," Dark Lee scoffed, "because 50% good is a passing grade."
"A glass half-empty is still refillable."
"Bravo, Ms. Fortune Cookie!"  Dark Lee walked behind her.

"Only question is...whose blood's gonna fill it this time?"

Lee screamed and threw a vase in Dark Lee's direction, but the hallucination had already disappeared. Lee crumbled to the ground and sobbed.
-----------End of Chapter 1!---------