Chapter Text
There's a soft head of blonde hair nestled against his chest and Jonathan can't help but imagine how easy it would be to kill it.
He tried, on that quiet night in Georgia. He walked into that room and saw that thing cowering in his mother’s arms – fragile and quaking with fear; the sight of her father choking on his own blood reflected in her eyes – and he hated her more than anyone else he had ever hated. All he could think of when he saw that girl, that spoiled whelp who fell out of his mother’s womb, was how badly he wanted to take his gun and splatter her brains on the ceiling.
After he put his hands on his dear mother’s throat and squeezed until the life faded from her eyes – the only sound she made after sobbing and pleading for the life of the little monster that she had locked and hidden away in the closet being a rattled hiss – he had all the time in the world to catch up with his darling replacement. When the sobbing wretch had bolted for the door, he could’ve easily snuffed out her life when he hunted her through the fields like a wolf to a hare. His greatest chance, his final victory over the tangled web of lies that called itself his family, was when he fell upon the sight of that weeping little demon snared in wire, her hands and face shredded to ribbons, cracked nails helplessly scraping the soil. Indeed, every single opportunity to bring that creature’s miserable existence to an end had been practically handed to him on a silver platter.
And then he looked into her eyes and it felt like cold steel piercing his stomach.
Those damned little eyes, wild and staring into his own with the exact same shade of blue, filled his veins with ice and froze his feet to the ground. Those were his eyes once, wide-open and filled to the brim with wet tears, the eyes of a child who still dared to hope for the smallest chance of a salvation that would never come.
That first night, the only thing that stayed his hand was a memory from before: of cries in the dark and talons in his flesh, of an aged voice singing church hymns outside the door as he screamed. So instead, the same stained hand that could have so easily snapped her tiny neck pulled her away from the fence ever so gently, yet the thought still lingered in his mind the entire drive out of Georgia.
Hours soon turn to days. His younger sister still remains a nameless thing to him, something not quite a person. She’s a trapped animal, like a rat that knows it’s been cornered by the cat and can do nothing but wait to be eaten. She screams at night, unable to be consoled or controlled, her shrieks piercing through the silence like a knife in the dark. Still, the small waif refuses to leave his side during the day, her nails digging into his wrist, always following him like a shadow.
Perhaps he should have put her out of her misery when he had the chance. At the time, he felt it was an act of mercy, a small shred of sympathy to one as damaged as himself. Now, he wonders if this may have been a lapse of judgment, a mistake born from seeing through the eyes of the past.
This helpless creature, this weak little thing that clings to him in the dark, isn't like him. Jonathan knows all too well the feeling of terrified weakness, but this clinging dependence is something he can't quite comprehend. He never clung to anyone, not his mother and father, who were all too ready to leave him to rot inside that decaying manor, nor his great granny, who always looked at him as if he was nothing more than a burden, another hungry mouth to feed and nothing to offer other than a simple means to an end. As he spends the first few nights with the child clutching her arms around his own, idly watching the rise and fall of her chest become slow and steady, he often looks down to find his fingers lingering near her throat.
Briefly, he flirts with the thought of how she would take to the toxin, of what particular secrets he could uncover from such a scarred mind. To his discovery however, the brief thought seems to bring a discomforting pang to his chest. Mulling it over, he supposes the reasoning would be the utter waste. There's really nothing more he could pull from her mind, no greater horrors than the ones that already haunt her waking dreams. At best, he'd only uncover a memory he's already seen for himself and at worst, he'd risk shattering her already troubled mind permanently. At this point, it would simply be cruelty for cruelty's sake, and while he's no stranger to idle cruelty done for sheer curiosity, it would be a waste of both toxin and potential.
Still, perhaps this girl can prove to be of use to him yet, a small distraction from the ever-watching gaze of the man who seems to have finally discovered that quaint blood-soaked home in Georgia, if the headlines suddenly flashing on the muted television illuminating the room are any indication. Perhaps it would be wasteful to rid himself of her at this point, he thinks. While the idle thoughts of snapping her neck or filling her veins with utter nightmares have begun to lose their appeal, the thrill of denying the Bat of even the slightest victory that could be even remotely salvaged from Jonathan's bloodstained family reunion sends a practically gleeful chill down his spine. Yes, perhaps it would be a waste to get rid of the girl.
He finds himself leaning back on the threadbare coach as possibilities race through his mind, his spine letting out a dull twinge of pain as he does. The girl whimpers into his chest, her slumbering mind evidently already in that place between dreams and nightmares. Meanwhile, a message from the faint glow of the television set catches his attention yet again, shrewd blue eyes taking quick note of the headlines barely managing to pierce from the dancing black and white shimmer of static.
How interesting, he ponders in the darkness, she does have a real name after all.
Hello to you too, Clarice...