I woke up in a room darker than the Underworld could ever be. I couldn’t see anything and only felt a cold breeze around my body. I realised they had taken all my weapons and my t-shirt.
As I wondered why I heard a laugh. And it was the scariest laugh I had ever heard.
“So, here you are, demon!” The crazy voice cackled again.
“What do you want from me!?” I snapped at him.
“Respect your elders, child!” A bright white hand smacked me in the face.
A man stepped into the light. Green hair and white skin immediately entered my mind. Upon further inspection I saw red lips, and a purple suit.
Hahahahaahhaaahhaaaah!
“Who are you?”
The man spoke, “You spend two weeks here and you don’t even know!? How stupid!”
The business-clown hit me in the face. And again, and again. And I somehow managed to not even blink.
The man’s smile disappeared. “Perhaps I can learn you some manners you brat!” He grabbed a syringe and inserted a green liquid into my body.
The liquid burned under my skin, and a gasp came out of my mouth alongside tears that were like flames on my skin. “Fresh from the River Phlegethon,” the man said with his signature smirk back on his face, “I figured you wanted something that reminded you of home!”
Suddenly laughs escaped my mouth as I felt a second sting, “You know why they haven’t figured out my Joker Venom? Because it’s from the Acheron! Haha!”
“Haha! Fathe– Haha! Shal-haha! End you! Hahahaaah!”
As the Joker slapped me, it didn’t feel like it. Instead, it was my mother.
(Sentences in Italics are Italian)
“Nicoló! Son of Hadrian! Get that filth out your mind or I will slap it out of you!”
I remember why she said it. I remember how I admitted to liking a boy on school, which caused him to beat me up alongside his friends. “You disgusting faggot! You’d be better off dead!” Instead of helping me, the teacher called my mother to inform her of the situation and to change me.
I remember how she hit me over and over again.
I knew it was the Joker, I knew it wasn’t my mother. I knew she was long dead. But for some reason my subconscious wouldn’t allow it. For some reason it felt like it was her.
As she stabbed me and called me millions of words I forgot the meaning of in the time I was in America, I just lied there, feeling like the little kid I was when I entered the Camp. Being beaten and stabbed and injected with even more drugs.
Even after the laughing ended, the voices continued to echo through my mind.
“Nico!” I heard a voice say. It was Damian. He had an unreadable expression on his face. “You piece of shit! We thought we finally lost you!”
I felt myself losing consciousness. But it never left. Instead I was left in an half-awake half-pained state.
The stabbing stopped and I felt a warmth envelope me. I felt a cloth being rolled around me and being cradled in someone’s arms.
“Nico? Are you alright?”Â
It didn’t make sense, my visual input had disappeared. I felt pain all over my body. Mere minutes ago I was still being hurt, but now, I wasn’t.
“I promise you everything will be alright,” he said. And my mother reappeared. “Are you seriously falling for a man, you fag! I thought I had done enough for stopping you from it!”
The tears returned, and I felt an emptiness eating me from the inside. My mother continued screaming, but Damian’s voice slightly calmed it down. “Name five things you can see,” he said gently.
I looked around me, “You. The lights from the buildings were above. The stars shining in the night sky. The park. Wayne Tower.”
“Name four things you can touch.”
I felt my hands moving around me, touching the soft cloth of the cape Damian had enveloped me in. “Your cape. My cold skin. Your chest. Your hood.”
“Name three things you can hear.”
“The wind blowing around my ears. The grappling hook reattaching itself. Your voice.”
“Two things you can smell.”
“Gotham’s factories,” I softly said, “Your perfect vanilla perfume.”
Damian blushed but continued, “One thing you can taste.”
“Puke,” I answered truthfully, letting him know to return to the ground. I crawled out his cape Burrito and threw up into the bushes of the park.
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