୨ৎ 𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠

You don’t remember much about your childhood. One of the only things you could remember was the morning you found your mother lying on the couch, unresponsive. Being young, you thought she was sleeping, but when she didn’t wake up after shaking her arm, you got scared—her body was cold to the touch, and her flesh looked drained of all color. Black streaks of mascara ran down her cheeks, and her lips were chapped and foamy at the corners.

The other things you could remember were the orphanage they sent you to after they took you away from your childhood home. The stark white walls and sterile atmosphere—mold stains on the ceilings, squeaks of mice in the night through the walls, and creaky stairs that felt as if they would give out beneath you. You kept to yourself during your time there.

Another thing you remembered was when Carmine and Isabella Falcone came to see you. The lady who ran the orphanage said they were thinking about adopting you and that you should be excited, but you weren’t. You wanted to go home, you wanted your mother, you didn’t want a new family.

Nonetheless, they did adopt you. That was about 13 years ago now. You got used to your life under the Falcone name. Your new parents weren’t so bad in your eyes, and neither were your new siblings. When Isabella died, the woman you came to know as your mother hung herself in her bedroom. Alberto and Sofia deemed you a curse; that’s why their mother died because of you. You didn’t take it well. You started to shut out the outside world, like when you were in the orphanage. Visions of both Isabella and your mother haunted your dreams. Happy memories of them became nightmares in your brain, repressing them as you got older, but never fully letting go of them.

Carmine tried to help you with in-house therapy appointments with the best psychiatrists in all of Gotham. It was hard at first, your elusive behavior and quiet demeanor proving a challenge to them, but over time, you were able to come to terms with both of their deaths and that their deaths weren’t on your hands.

Most days, you sit in the sunroom of the Falcone Family mansion, all by yourself, trying to dig up memories in your head that you dug deep, and today was no different. You sat on wicker chairs, watching little birds eat from birdfeeders and bushy squirrels chasing each other up trees.