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It all started with blood. Blood and pain. Her thighs were slick with it, as though her insides were being ripped apart, shredded, and wrung out. She scrambled, desperate to escape her skin and the stench, but she was cramping badly, unable to move far, or even stand upright. She seized the handrail for support, but her hands were slippery, stained dark red with panic and loss. She toppled down the stairs, landing hard, and the world lost all color.
There were sirens and flashes of light she knew to be red and blue but which appeared more gray than anything, red and blue and black and grey, then white, white, white, simple white, so pure once, so bright and soothing, now only a stab of pain, and a flock of voices that soon dulled to a buzz.
When she came to again, something might have been missing from inside of her, that vital part that had been herself, but she felt so fine, real dandy, never better. Her hands were still stained red, but brighter, more vibrant than anything she'd ever seen. It was beautiful and smelled like roses on her stark white skin.
Blood and pain. First her own, then somebody else's.
She grinned and the knife slipped in her grasp as she lifted it for a taste, a cool kiss of steel and copper. Red dripped from its point, like sealing wax in period movies on old, too high-contrasted TV sets.
This was her work, she knew it was, one body, two, three, a dozen, slumped in chairs, collapsed against the wall, bleeding out over the conference table. A roomful of carnage: a masterpiece. They were all sharing her mirth, her little dolls, all grinning and revealing parts of themselves they never would have, had this gathering gone on as they'd planned. She counts that as a success. The meeting had been so boring, after all.
Too bad the CEO had been absent again, too busy cruising yachts with bikini models as he was. She never heard Oliver Queen give an official statement about the incident either.
Women should never have been allowed on the board, one senior member had raged on the news. He was probably one of those thwarted individuals who were barred from rising to top management, because Queen Industries had a quota of women execs to fill. First they get themselves pregnant, then they go mad when they lose the child and slaughter us all. Clearly, top positions are too stressful for their mercurial natures.
Christina had howled with laughter, nearly falling off her squeaky leather chair. Finally a man with a sense of humor.
Christina is no longer laughing.
This is no longer funny.
It's horrifying. People had died because of her. She'd killed them with her own two hands. Because it had been fun to do so.
She's trembling as if caught in a snowstorm. These images feel like a bad dream, like somebody else's memories, yet they rob her sleep at night and her peace of mind during daylight hours. To think she ever could have been capable of such horror.
These days, she can't eat. She is nauseated by herself. The first time she awoke with some clarity of mind, with some sense of self, she spent the rest of the day hunched over a kidney dish, spitting up gastric acid at irregular intervals.
A young woman was curled up on a chair at her bedside, somewhat rumpled and careworn but no less pretty, who'd held her hair and stroked her back the entire time. Christina guessed she was the sort of person whose emotional state would never diminish her startling good looks, but rather give them a more mature quality.
"Do you remember me?" she'd asked, after a few preliminary questions that were meant to establish if Christina was in full control of her mind. Christina shook her head, although something about the woman tugged at her memory. She just wasn't sure which of them. "I was a doctor at Arkham. Arkham Asylum."
"I've never been there," Christina said, voice burnt raw from the acid.
"No, of course not."
She sounded disappointed. Her gaze wandered to the far side of the room as if searching for another topic of conversation there. Christina was exhausted and in no mood to be any more social than she had been thus far. Nurses and doctors entered to check on her, take blood and urine samples, and inquire after her general wellbeing. Apparently, she'd recovered from an as yet unknown disease that had severe neurological side-effects and would have to be monitored for a while. It was unclear for how long.
"What's going to happen to happen to me?" she asked Dr. Quinzel, the young woman at her bedside. She'd been chewing her bottom lip the entire time, and that sign of worry was beginning to make Christina nervous, too.
"They'll be back for a few more tests in the coming days and then you'll be out in no time." Her voice was light, like a hot air balloon, but her brows drew together, as though she was trying to suppress a grimace. Christina grew doubtful.
She examined her open palms resting on her knees. They were dry, pale, and bloodless. But not blameless. She curls her fingers inward, digging her nails into her flesh. "Am I going to be prosecuted?"
Dr. Quinzel jumped, then cocked her head. "Why would you think that?"
"You don't know?"
"Why don't you tell me?"
"I..." Christina hung her head. A green strand slipped into her face and her stomach seized again. All she could concentrate on was breathing through it, wide-eyed but determined to calm down. "Why is my hair still green?" Her voice was reed-thin and broke at the end. She couldn't remember having dyed her hair, and the thought of a permanent physical reminder of her... psychosis or whatever it had been, would be more than unwelcome.
"I can only guess," Dr. Quinzel said and leaned forward. Her hand was warm when it curled around Christina's. "Today must have been trying for you. You went through so much change due to your infection and all of a sudden you're faced with all these questions and tests and uncertainties about your future. Please don't worry about any of that now. It can wait until you're fully recovered. For now, focus on getting better. And if there's anything – literally anything – you want to talk about, I'll be here for you."
Christina found herself nodding and returning the pressure on her hand, even if she remained skeptical. "Don't you have other patients?" she deflected.
"My office hours are over for today." Dr. Quinzel smiled. "But I suppose you'll want some rest now." She got up and swayed a little. She caught herself on the arm of her chair and steadied herself with a sharp exhalation. Then her reassuring smile was back. She must be dizzy from a lack of nutrition. She'd spend so much time calming Christina with her presence and her words and not once had she gone for more than a granola bar. How ungrateful of Christina to question her selflessness. Though, in her experience, no act was ever entirely selfless. There was always some angle the other person worked.
She wouldn't find out until later, when she remembered where she the woman from. It was absurd, because it wasn't even her own memory.
She had been strapped to a gurney and spilling her guts to this cute, impressionable slip of a girl who must have been fresh out of school. Harley, she'd introduced herself later, a name Christina only sometimes forgot. Oh, it had been so easy to wrap this girl around her little finger. She had been so eager to please, and Christina had taken advantage of that on more than one occasion. To hear her scream so prettily whenever Christina had taken her apart, given her what she craved so badly, was well worth all the times she screwed up and enraged her.
Except, it had never been Christina in those memories, but this twisted creature whose blood had perverted her mind and made her commit unspeakable acts of violence.
She wonders when she'll be called to court.
She huddles in on herself, awake at night, perking up at every crick in the room. She's nearly drifting off when a head appears in the doorway and she jumps half out of her skin. It's the nurse on her nightly rounds. She's been expecting her, yet she can't shake the feeling that one night an assassin might creep into her room and hold her accountable for what she's done. She must have antagonized at least half a dozen powerful families who'd pay dear money for retribution.
"We'll get you exonerated," Dr. Quinzel – Harleen – says as cheerfully as she can manage after Christina has told her most of what she remembers having done herself.
She looks thinner these days, as though Christina's case is drawing on her substance. And maybe it is. She's been in love with Christina before she... died and came back? No, Christina must be remembering that wrong, they've never been in love. Christina has never even gone for women before. And yet... and yet she feels drawn to Harleen, wants to hear her cry out her name again, feel her jerk and shudder against her skin, remind her who it is she belongs to.
She looks desperate for that reminder and not in the good way. Sadness, however veiled, doesn't suit her little minx. She needs to taught to smile again.
The ferocity of those thoughts shocks her. Christina may be having a brief sexuality crisis on top of everything else.
"It's a classic case of temporary insanity. Or well, maybe not quite in the classic sense. But with the surveillance footage from Queen Industries, the jury will be able to see that you weren't yourself."
Christina isn't convinced. "What if it isn't enough? What if it is?" She presses her thumbs against her eye sockets and draws a shaky breath. "I can't take up my former life again, I can't even go back to Star City anymore. I don't know what to do."
"We'll figure something out." Harleen says softly, but her voice wavers.
The worst of it is not the uncertainty about what will happen to her, or even what she had done, but how she felt doing it. Just bringing back to mind how it was to carve smiles onto their faces gives her part of the euphoria she experienced when she blew someone up or mutilated them or shot them in the face. She took such delight in it, she—
She should be punished for feeling that way.
"At this point it would be easier to just accept whatever I'd be sentenced with and own up to what I did."
"Don't say that!" Harleen is adamant. "It wasn't you who killed those people. You can't be held accountable for something you weren't in control of at the time."
She believes in Christina's innocence, even if Christina doesn't. However, part of her, the part that remembers this other version of Harleen jumping into her arms when she stepped out of the quarantine chamber, that part sees the lie. She just wants to convince herself of her own innocence. If Christina can get away with murder, then she may also stand a chance.
"Would you testify to that?"
"Of course I would."
"Even risking your own exposure?"
Harleen stiffens. "What do you mean?" Her pretended innocence is so cute, Christina thinks she could actually fall for this girl.
"I remember everything, Harley." A dark kind of chuckle bubbles up in her chest. "What I did to those poor sods. What I said, what I thought, how I felt." Christina pauses for dramatic effect. "What you helped me achieve."
Harleen swallows and begins worrying her lip again.
"If they look up your name, they'll remember. You'd land in whatever replacement for Arkham they built, with me." She's reminiscing now, head resting on her hand, a dreamy smile on her face. "It would be just like old times."
Harleen bends forward, gripping the arms of her chair tightly. Her eyes are open, interested, slowly coming back to life. "You remember even that?"
"I do, Harley-pie."
Christina extends her hand towards Harley and it takes only a moment for the girl to bound out of her chair and into Christina's arms. The force of it knocks them both to the floor and rips Christina's IV out of her hand, but those are small discomforts now. Harley presses Christina's shoulders into the floor, fingers twisting into her hospital gown.
"Don't you ever disappear on me again," she hisses and her gaze is fierce, but there's a glimmer of despair at the bottom of it. "Death included."
Christina grabs her chin with her left and removes Harley's fake glasses with her right, tossing them into a corner with the flick of her wrist. Her eyes are dark and intense when she leans in to run her tongue over Harley's plush lips and fist the bun at her nape. Harley moans and opens her mouth, welcoming Christina and the sweet, sweet pain she brings.