Insanity // J.Valeska

Part Twenty-Two: The One After the Laugh

Stephanie Harlem was struck with a bout of deja vu.

Here she was, curled in a ball back stage; Barbara Kean before her and comforting her, trying to sway her to her feet. Yet the girl was simply numb.

She had no energy for anything anymore: she didn't care that she hadn't seen her aunt in months; had no energy for asking her where she'd been all that time; didn't care to find her uncle; had no energy to even think about where the Galavan's were; she had no energy for anything.

Barbara was yelling now. It was a high-pitched, girlish shriek as she attempted to corral her distraught niece to her feet. Moments passed and Barbara huffed in irritation; she looked around wildly, whipping her head back and forth to search for any cops who would surely be pouring in momentarily. Barbara pressed a chaste kiss to her niece's hair, and tucked it behind her ear in a motherly fashion; she clenched her eyes shut before she turned on her heel, darting from the premises as Tabitha had told her to.

Stephanie Harlem seemed to float between time and space; all her memories with him, the yelling from that same morning, standing up to him mere minutes ago, him thrusting into her body last night, all vanished in the blink of an eye.

It was obliterated into nothingness the moment the knife entered Jerome's neck. The moment he ceased being alive; the moment he ceased existing.

That was simply the cold hard truth, she realized. Jerome Valeska no longer existed. But yet, she did. Even though by all standards she should've been dead by now. It made no sense, how she was alive, yet Jerome was no longer breathing; when his last breaths had been spent inhaling mouthfuls of blood.

Stephanie Harlem rose up to her knees and promptly threw up all over the floor before she relapsed into her stoic silence once more, her eyes unblinking and her hands unfeeling.

"Alright, honey, it's all right. You're safe now," a female police officer cooed softly, wrapping a blanket around the young girl's shoulders. "Your Uncle will be with you in one moment; I know you must've missed him, poor thing." She clucked, watching as the blonde girl sat still, so perfectly still.

The woman had just started to walk away when she thought she heard the girl whisper something. She turned back to the orphaned girl and crouched down beside her once more, "what was that, hun?"

"Indescribable," she whispered again, over and over to herself.

The word repeated itself on loop in her head, over and over like clockwork as memories flashed before her eyes. Flashing at the speed of light, so quickly she couldn't even recall some of them, and then in an instant, they were gone, ceasing to exist all over again.

Sometime later - it could've been seconds or hours, she didn't know the difference anymore - Stephanie turned her head to the side. And there it was.

She had no idea why it was there, but at that moment in time she really didn't care.

The baseball bat lay propped against the wall, the word 'Harlequin' a stark contrast against the light wood of the bat.

Stephanie crawled towards it, her blanket falling from her shoulders as she finally reached the bat, encasing it within her grasp. She ran her fingers over the smoothness of the handle, tracing the words with a delicate finger as she mouthed the word over and over again. "Harlequin, harlequin, harlequin."

She closed her eyes as she continued to rub it, enjoying the smooth texture beneath her numb fingertips. Whenever her lids were shut however, all she could see was Jerome's face as his bodybag was zipped up; the eerie Cheshire Cat-like grin that forever marred his handsome lips. He looked positively wicked, she had thought, he looked like the world's biggest joker.

And he was. To her at least. He had been her joker, and she, his harlequin. His jester girlfriend that loved him, truly and deeply.

She had been his harlequin, and he was and always would be, her joker.

*edited*