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Jeremiah was nothing like Jerome.
Even before they could speak, the boys couldn’t have been more different. Jeremiah would take the cheap, plastic blocks and pile them; Jerome would wait for the perfect moment to strike and knock them down. He would laugh; Jeremiah would not.
As young children, they found joy in very different things. Jeremiah took to puzzles, piecing the little chunks of wood together until the picture made sense and all of the gaps were filled. He would watch caterpillars metamorphosize and fantasize about the natural processes behind its growth-- for what was life other than a series of interconnected processes? Despite being young, he’d understood the circuit as well as he’d understood the cycle of night and day. Science and mathematics, even in such an infantile form, had gripped him by the hand with an unshakeable hold, remaining in his soul for the rest of his life.
Jerome, on the other hand, had always been much more animated in his interests. At the same time Jeremiah hunkered down to develop his mind, Jerome allowed his heart to explode. Theatrics and dramatics coursed through his veins and he lived for the show, shocking anyone who failed to recognize the vibrancy of the otherwise meek, quiet boy. He danced with the acrobats, painted with the clowns, and vocalized alongside the ringmaster until his throat went sore and his voice cracked from the ghost of his passion. On occasion, he would find a solitary alley cat and give it a spook, taking juvenile delight in how it jumped and scampered away.
For years, they would come back to one another and find interest in each other’s daily trysts (though, Jerome’s stories tended to have more life). For years, the circus was a home.
It took years for it to dawn on either of them just how different they were, but only one night for the world to come crashing down.
That night, Jerome returned to their bed with a smile on his face and a few fresh wounds to nurse. Holding a damp cloth to his elbow, he jumped onto his mattress and enjoyed its bounce.
“Jer, you’re not gonna believe it!” he exclaimed, twisting around to look at his brother; his nose was in a book, as usual. “They let me use the swings today! I lasted for a whole five minutes before I fell! It’s a new record!”
Across from him, Jeremiah barely even hummed in acknowledgement. Jerome pouted.
“Jer..?” he reached out, fingers barely touching Jeremiah’s shoulder before his twin recoiled violently. Jerome jumped, any traces of a smile vanishing at the startle in his eyes.
“I,.. I-I…” Jeremiah hesitated before letting his book slip shut without marking the page. Jeremiah always marked the page-- that should have been the first sign that something was very, very wrong.
“Jeremiah? Are you alright..?” he questioned, brow creasing in concern. Seconds ticked by like miniature eternities before Jeremiah sighed, a soft smile gracing his features.
“Sorry. I wasn’t really paying attention. It’s a really good book,” he confessed, shrugging his shoulders. Taking notice of Jerome’s wounds, he frowned, taking his twin’s arm to take a better look at it. “Are you okay? How did you get hurt?”
“On the trapeze,” Jerome restated, pulling his arm back. “It’s nothing. It was just an accident.”
“Oh…” Jeremiah muttered, letting his brother’s arm go easily from his grip. No matter Jerome’s reassurances, the tension in the air was far too palpable to ignore. It felt as if Jerome could read his mind (but he knew he couldn’t), that he knew what was coming (but there was no way he could). The nerves which sparked in him at the thought of Jerome intercepting these plans were born not from the guilt of a lie, but from the fear of being discovered.
Guilt was not shame, but the situation which would produce shame would lead to his demise. Even so young, he knew that much.
“We should go to sleep,” he suggested, falling back on the bed and curling up sideways, back to his brother. He couldn’t watch as he deflated, lest he expose some emotion that would give his schemes away. Beside him, he felt the mattress shift, Jerome’s foot bumping against his leg as he sprawled lazily out.
“I love you, Jeremiah,” Jerome muttered, brushing off this odd encounter as something the clowns had called “growing pains.” Someone had told him that it was normal for brothers to grow into different people, have different experiences… This was okay. This was his brother developing into someone else.
“I love you, too,” Jeremiah echoed, the dullness of the lie resting on his tongue as he prepared for the midnight exodus. How could he love a demon such as Jerome, brother or not, when he so vehemently thirsted for his blood? The bumps and bruises… The cat… The unnervingly happy smile… It was obviously feeding his macabre obsessions! He could feel Jerome’s murderous urges swelling with every passing moment. How was it possible that Jeremiah was the only one who saw the wolf under wool?
But no longer would his family be blind. No longer would he place himself in the line of fire. When their uncle came that night, Jeremiah dropped down from the bed with practiced ease, silently slipping out into the darkness: the darkness in which he would finally find his light.
Jerome awoke alone.
That in itself wasn’t necessarily odd, for Jeremiah wasn’t prone to sleeping in, so he initially didn’t think much of it. The unmarked book still rested on the edge of their shared bed, having been shoved dangerously close to the edge by wantonly kicking feet. Normally, Jeremiah would have retrieved the book and placed it on the safe shelf beside his head, but not this time. That, alongside the strange behavior the previous night, should have raised a thousand alarms in his head.
Not a single one sounded until his mother, the already volatile drunk she was, greeted him with a shove.
Jerome stumbled back, nearly crashing into the wall. Noon hadn’t even struck yet, but the pungent stench of beer radiated off of her, following him in the phantom of her aggression. Fear crawling under his skin, he looked up at her, gut twisting at her eyes aflame with ire. Immediately, his mind jumped to the past few days, desperately scouring for anything he could have done to upset her. Had she found out about his accident on the trapeze? No, that wouldn’t upset her-- Jerome getting hurt never upset her. Could it have something to do with Jeremiah and his odd behavior? Was she upset with him? Despite his fear, the boy gritted his teeth.
“M-Mother..? Is everything okay? Where’s Jeremia-”
*SMACK*
“ Don’t you dare say his name!” she hissed, fist clenching up in the follow-through of her strike.
Jerome covered his stinging cheek, already feeling the skin begin to heat-- one curse of being so pale was that he could never hide the handprints. Funnily enough, nobody really ever said anything… Eyes brimming with instinctual tears, he stared up at his mother, lips pursed into a deep frown. “I-I don’t--”
“ You’re the reason he’s gone!” she accused. Had she been an animal, she would have frothed at the mouth.
Jerome’s gut churned. Gone..? “What happened?”
“ You happened,” she spat, the alcohol-tainted spray landing across Jerome’s terrified face as she grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and yanked him forward. She was too close, too close, tooclose tooclose-- “You drove my favorite son away. Now I’m stuck with you.” With an exaggerated heave, she threw the boy back against the wall, ignoring how the frail trailer shook from the impact. “Get out of my sight.”
She turned and left, the slamming door of the trailer signifying her exit from the trailer. Dazed, Jerome stared at nothing, mouth agape and hand slowly making its way to hover over his heart. Every nerve in his body screamed with numbness, reality becoming the most surreal thing in existence. She’d never stricken him like that before… Yet, none of her actions were nearly as potent as her words: Favorite son… Stuck with you… All your fault…..
Jeremiah.
An electric surge of panicked adrenaline shot through him, sending him darting out the door. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, desperately searching for hours on end for his dearest brother. Each crack and crevice of mutual interest was turned inside out, and the placed that he’d never dared to venture until then made his acquaintance, but all for naught. Nobody he asked would help him, the entire circus turning a blind eye to the absence of the brightest Valeska. It took him much longer than he’d ever admit to realize what had happened, the final nail in the coffin being his brother’s own lab.
Laboratory was a generous term to use to describe the makeshift little setup Jeremiah had developed to house his kit-born experiments. Usually, his little corner of the world was in a state of organized chaos, completed activities stored away on shelves while the active experiments lay scattered about, the instructions tossed to the side in disgust. If he’d remembered correctly, the latest test involved a baking soda volcano to see how a mouse might solve a maze while under pressure (a demonstration that Jerome had admittedly been looking forward to). There should have been a worn, plastic volcano on the ground, or a mouse in a cage, or even it’s neglected labyrinth to signify that a genius had been at work.
There was nothing.
All of Jeremiah’s work had been meticulously picked up and stolen away, the shelves polished off with the care only their master could manage. Standing in the middle of this empty little lab, his world shriveled down into a pinpoint that weighed heavily in his gut. This… This wasn’t Jeremiah going missing.
This was Jeremiah leaving .
Leaving him behind.
A fresh wave of tears, spawned from utter betrayal, swarmed in his eyes. Jeremiah, his brother-- his twin and other half -- had left him without so much as a goodbye; without so much as an explanation! Fists clenched and body quaking with anguished fury, tears cascaded down his face as he trembled from silent sobs.
Jeremiah… Jeremiah….
“ Jerome. ”
Jerome jumped at the sound of a deep voice penetrating the painful silence behind him. Turning to face the source, he recognized the man on sight. Not bothering to wipe his eyes for a blind man, he swallowed down the shakiness in his voice and forced an invisible smile.
“Hello, Mr. Cicero,” he greeted, words feeling unnaturally thick in his throat. “What are you doing here?”
“I came here to see you, Jerome,” he mused. If Jerome didn’t know any better, he’d say that the old man sounded almost… concerned. The man hobbled forward, resting a knobby hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I assume you’ve figured out what has happened. I’m so sorry.”
The boy visibly wilted, unable to muster the independent strength to maintain the proper tension in his shoulders. He gulped, trying in vain to swallow down the aching lump in his throat that facing reality spawned in him. “I don’t understand..” he managed, words strained as his own bewildered grief tried to choke him. “Why would he leave me..? Why wouldn’t he say goodbye..?”
Mr. Cicero pressed his lips into a grim line. “It is not my place to tell you,” he confessed, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Just know that, sometimes, things happen that are outside of your control. The way in which you react to it is what defines you, not the events themselves. Remember that.”
And remember that he did. He remembered it as the other performers slowly became more aggressive, leaving purposeful bumps and bruises and expecting him to brush it off. He remembered it as his own mother began to disregard his very existence and replace it with a thousand fleeting lovers and still expected him to sleep. He remembered it when his own flesh and blood so subtly tried to wear him down to the bone and expected him to come out with a smile. He remembered it when he crawled into bed at night, accompanied by nothing but thin sheets and an unmarked book on the nightstand and expected himself to dream. He remembered it when his mother would lash out and leave a gorgeous bruise and nobody dared to comment on it and expected him not to know that they knew.
He remembered it when Mr. Cicero would pass him that occasional, ephemeral, sympathetic glance or offer him an ice pack and expected nothing in return.
For years, he managed himself in a world which would have been glad to see him dead, snapping back from every blow to meet it with a smile. It didn’t matter who swung-- his mother, his uncle, some narcissistic clown-- for he would always rise above them, never stooping to their level. Never reaching out. Never lashing out…
In Arkham, he couldn’t help but admire the hypocrisy of it all. Even those who never touched him saw his Hell-- made his Hell-- and did even less to end it. Yet, they had the audacity to mourn the tyrant they enabled? Funny, wasn’t it, how they could turn a blind eye to his agony, but the moment he struck back, he became the villain?
Jerome found it hilarious.
Life and death made little difference now when his own face reminded him of the twisted, scarred labyrinths of his brother’s making. Life was Hell. Death was Hell, but at the very least, it was a Hell of his own making-- one that he could alter at any time, should he so desire. He knew he would die again, but this time…
This time, he would drag his brother with him.
Jeremiah would never leave him again.
As old wounds throbbed at the end of Deadelaus’s envy, Jerome made his escape, the image of his brother’s terrified fact etched into his mind. What little sensory memory his face contained lit up in the phantom of a slap-- an artifact of the last time that accursed name had fallen from his lips.
Jeremiah… Jeremiah ….
All it takes is one bad day…
You were born bad….
Jerome gritted his teeth, fists clenched with tight authority as he commanded his freaks to their rendezvous point. He’d been wrong-- Jeremiah was wrong , yet so spectacularly right at the same time.
No, Jeremiah was nothing like Jerome.
Jeremiah was born bad.
Jerome became something worse.