꧁ Ghosts from the past ꧂

Oswald had the house thoroughly cleaned up after the incident with Grace.
Now he was struggling with the dining room decor, helped by Butch and an old acquaintance of his, Barbara Kean.

"Here?" He asked, resting Grace's embalmed head on the mahogany table at the back of the room.

"A little too central, maybe?" Barbara answered. "You don't want one piece to overpower the room. Try over there." She then added, pointing to a slightly smaller crystal table, near the window.

Oswald followed the woman's advice. "You're absolutely right." He said, observing satisfied his new ornament. "See, I told you she'd be useful. Isn't that better?" He then asked Butch.

"Interior design ain't my thing." He replied, an expression of ill-concealed disgust was painted on his face.

"What do you think, Brooke?" He then said, continuing to stare at Grace's dull eyes, without the need to turn to the door from where Brooke, leaning against the jamb with her arms crossed, watched the scene.
With time and practice, Oswald had learned to perceive her presence even when she was hidden in the shadow, in silence, invisible to anyone else.

"I like it." She simply answered.

Barbara and Butch suddenly turned to the point of origin of the voice, noticing the girl.

"Well, hello there." The blonde smiled at her, approaching and holding out her hand. "Barbara Kean, lovely to meet you."

"Brooke Johnson, the pleasure is mine." She replied, smiling back.

"News on the hour on WTCG." The newscaster on the radio caught their attention. "Police sources say that the reports of an impending raid on Arkham Insane Asylum and its controversial chief, Professor Hugo Strange, are inaccurate. Despite the disclaimers, flurries of police activity around the troubled facility have fueled..."

"Hugo Strange." Oswald spoke above the reporter's voice. "How interesting."

"He doesn't like him much, does he?" Barbara whispered to Brooke.

"Would you like someone who messed with your mind?" She asked her sarcastically.

The blonde looked up to the ceiling as a grimace of doubt appeared on her face. "No, I don't suppose I would." She replied. "Although he wasn't too bad with me. He set me free." She added.

Brooke gave her a thoughtful look as her mind reasoned on the infinite possible techniques and methods that Strange may have used in the twists and turns of Indian Hill. A shiver made her bones tremble at that thought.

·  ♛  ·

Oswald, Butch and Brooke had been sitting quietly in the dining room for a good half an hour, patiently waiting for Barbara's call. The woman had gone to the GCPD in order to gather information about the situation in Arkham.

The high-pitched ringing of the telephone brought them all back to reality. The Penguin immediately jumped to his feet and picked up the handset, listening carefully to everything the woman had to say to him. Eventually he chuckled, "Thank you, Barbara. You've pleased me." He said, before putting the phone down. "Saddle up, Butch. We've got an old friend to catch." He then added, turning to the man.

Butch stood up, not enthusiastic but ready to follow Oswald wherever they had to go.
Brooke immediately imitated him, though she froze on the spot the moment she heard her brother's grim voice.

"You stay here. We'll be back soon." He told her, hoping that she wouldn't argue.

"Oswald..." She started, partly offended and partly worried by those words.

"No. This is not up for discussion. Stay here, where you're safe." He cut her off. "Trust me, please. We'll be fine." He then added, seeing the look between the angry and the concerned painted on her face.

Brooke nodded without saying anything else; she watched them leave in hurry before retiring to her room.
The woman forcefully closed the door behind her, while a frustrated sigh left her lips. Once again, she knew absolutely nothing about what was going on, where they were going, or how dangerous it would have been. Nothing. She was tired of being kept in the dark, of being cut off. Everyone kept treating her like a fragile crystal figurine, but she was far from fragile, several times her life had made sure of that. "I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape." She thought, recalling a quote from Dickens that she had always recognized herself in. And there were never more exact words for her, for her life had never been easy. She grew up without a mother, taking care of a wounded father, whom she was then forced to watch die before her eyes, and since then chained to an odious family, whose favorite amusement was to see her humiliated and destroyed by pain. But she wasn't a captive anymore, and she would have never been one again. She was the captain of her life, it was time for her to take the helm. And no wind would have ever dared be against her, for what wind, no matter how strong, could have ever overcome a hurricane?

·  ♛  ·

Intercepting police communications wasn't that difficult. All available units were to head to Penford Highway, more precisely under the South Burnside Expressway, where a bus hosting Arkham fugitives had been spotted.
Oswald was more than certain that Hugo Strange was on that bus and, when he ordered Butch and his team to open fire on it, he was already anticipating another sweet and long-awaited revenge. Lately it seemed that revenge for past wrongs had become a hobby for him.

Arkham's bus crashed into a police car, under heavy fire from Penguin's men's machine guns. An eerily silence followed, broken only by the puffs of the vehicle engine.

Oswald approached it with a grin on his lips. "Professor Strange." He called in an high-pitched voice. "Professor Strange. Come out. We need to talk. You did a very bad thing to me. And now, you're going to pay!" He claimed. However, his enthusiasm was soon extinguished by an unexpected breath on his neck. The Penguin turn around and, in a moment, an expression of pure terror was painted on his face. "Impossible," He murmured, as the ghost of Fish Mooney stared into his eyes. She had come back to haunt him, he was certain of it, she would have never given him peace.

The woman, definitely alive and well, shook her index finger before his eyes, accompanying it with her characteristic "Tsk, Tsk". "Nothing is impossible." She then told him, caressing his cheek.

That contact released a burning heat that spread rapidly throughout his body. Within seconds, everything around Oswald became dark, and he fell into a deep sleep.

Then the woman turned around, finding herself in front of an old friend.
Butch could not believe his eyes and, taken by fear, decided that it was better to cut and run: he had no intention of getting his head upset again. Fish had been important to him, but he left her behind, and the past had to stay in the past.

· ♛ ·

Brooke didn't know exactly how long she had been asleep, when she was woken up by yells coming from downstairs.

"It's not possible!" It was the first thing she could understand. She instantly recognized her brother's ringing voice and, in a moment, her tiredness vanished. The woman rushed down the stairs, eager to know what had happened.

"A curse. That's what it is. This town is cursed." He kept blathering when Brooke reached the dining room.

"Don't you think you're exaggerating a little?" Butch asked him, sitting down.
Despite the shock, the man had still come back for Oswald, had revived him and brought him home, which was a lot more than Penguin ever expected.

"Exaggerating? How can you tell me I'm exaggerating when no one in this town ever stays dead?" He asked him back, but did not expect an answer, which did not come.

"What's going on?" Brooke's calm voice caught their attention.

Oswald sighed, slightly reassured by her presence. "We just had a meeting with a ghost." He told her. "A ghost, can you believe it?" He chuckled.

"Not really," She replied with a doubtful look.

Her brother let out another sight, as he went to sit down. "Did I ever tell you about Fish Mooney?" He asked her.

"Just once." She answered, approaching him. "You told me that you worked for her, and then betrayed her in your quest for power."

"I killed her." He confessed. "I pushed her off a building. And now she's back."

"How?" The woman simply said, shifting her gaze from him to Butch.

"Strange, I presume." her brother told her. "God knows what he did to her."

Brooke gave him another doubtful look, inviting him to continue.

"She has some kind of powers now. I don't know what she can actually do, but when she touched me, my skin started burning and I lost my senses." He explained. "And on top of it, she has an army of monsters at her command. Human experiments that Strange kept locked up in Indian Hill." He then added grimly.

None of the three said anything else and, soon after, they decided it was time to go to bed, even though they all knew they would have never been able to get any sleep that night.

Brooke thought back to her brother's words. Maybe he was right, maybe Gotham was really cursed, because in which other city did zombies and monsters roam free in the streets?