#...finally

[gennabi]

hiii 💗💗 for the favorites ask!!

🍿, 🎨 & 🎶 <33

hiiyaaaaa 💖💞💞

🍿 - movie?

whisper of the heart!! rise of the guardians!! any marvel movies tbh

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sleeping & dancing 🕺💃

🎶 - song?

0X1=LOVESONG by tomorrow x together

thanks for the ask!! ><♡

[pcrushinnerd]

The Cat, Chapter 22

Warnings: Some angst. Generally dark topics.

A/N: I guess I’m on a roll. Masterpost of previous chapters here.

....

This was just...odd.

You sat on the couch, poring over the file. Looking through it again.

You read all of Penny’s medical records. Drug abuse. Delusional psychosis. Narcissistic personality disorder. Sounded about right.

You even read through all the lists of her medications, her lab work, her exams, physical and psychological. She was a perfectly healthy woman, besides her mental illnesses.

Why had Arthur been taking care of her? You recall him saying she had a stroke a few years ago, but you knew he’d been looking after her for longer than that.

You turned to another section in the file. The one with the adoption papers. Certified. Telling you Arthur had been some unknown, anonymous child. Abandoned at the Gotham Orphanage.

It appears they had tried to take Arthur away from her at one point. Around the time she was admitted against her will.

You turned to the next section. The section with multiple newspaper clippings about a negligent mother and her abusive boyfriend, and the little boy who was regularly beaten, tied by rope to a radiator, allowed to starve. Worse. You’d read about that in Penny’s psychological exams, too. There were photos of the two of them, maybe taken by police, where they wore cuts, bruises. Some of them bad.

You couldn’t stop crying for several minutes. Your heart hurt for both of them.

You were starting to understand. Really understand.

But there was so much more that didn’t make sense. Why on earth would a medical file have all these newspaper clippings, photos—would it have anything to do with Arthur at all, really?

The whole thing felt too...convenient. Like it was filled with exactly everything needed to convince anyone looking at it that exactly one state of events was the truth.

The files you pored over at work would have newspaper clippings, photos, declarations, certificates, proof. But they were collections of evidence, trying to make a case, one way or the other, about someone’s negligence or guilt.

Maybe the more horrible parts of it were assembled there to try and shock Penny into realizing the truth at one point. To make a case against her. It certainly seemed like enough reason to take custody of Arthur away from her.

So why wasn’t he taken away? You saw enough random records--report cards, bills, other miscellaneous health records--over the last few days, and was told enough by Arthur himself, to know he had always been with her. Penny Fleck. The unstable, unmarried woman they never would have given a child to in the first place.

What the fuck had really happened?

.....

You could hear the laughing, occasionally, during the night. You wondered at one point if you were imagining it. If the laughing wasn’t coming from inside your head. After your parents passed, for months you could swear you could hear your mother calling for you in the mornings from downstairs.

You shut your eyes quickly. You hadn’t lost Arthur yet--you hoped. You just didn’t feel safe being along in the same room as your boyfriend, was all.

Maybe if you gave him a day or two. His finding that file was doubtless like a sledgehammer to his fragile mental state.

But would he be any better? Were those sort of revelations something one could just sleep off?

You pushed the thought away. Pushed all of it away. Things would be fine. Everything would be fine....

.....

Once again, you stopped at Arthur’s door upon arriving home from work. You hadn’t called around your usual time to let him know when you’d be home. You hadn’t wanted to know at that time, but curiosity and anxiety were eating away at you by the time the sagging elevator of your old building had brought you up to your floor.

You knocked. No answer.

Same thing when you knocked again, a little harder.

It didn’t sound or feel like anyone alive was inside.

Your hand came up, wrapped around the door handle. You tried it, but it was locked. You thought briefly of forcing it. Maybe slipping a bobby pin from your put-up hair and sticking it into the lock.... But you chased those thoughts away.

You let another night pass without trying to reach out to him.

You sat watching MTV on the couch that Saturday. Your phone rang.

“Hi there dear, how are you?” Nancy said.

“Meh,” was all you gave in response.

“That good, huh? How...is Arthur doing?”

You paused. “We’re...sort of taking a break, I guess.” God, that felt trite, but you didn’t know how else to describe the current situation.

“Uh huh. So, have you seen him in the past day or so? He isn’t there now, is he?”

Your friend’s questions were odd, unnerving. “...No.... Why do you ask?”

“You don’t know, do you? He hasn’t told you?”

“Told me what?”

“Penny Fleck died yesterday.”

Your hand went up to cover your mouth. A beat. “Oh my God,” you whispered into the phone’s receiver.

“Mmm hmm. Around 2 PM. A candy striper came in to check in on her and found her not breathing.”

“Why...why are you telling me this, Nance?”

“Well, we haven’t been able to contact her next of kin. Arthur, obviously. Left messages, but.... It is a little strange, because about an hour before Penny was found he was seen coming in to visit her.”

You absorbed all that. Mulled over it. “Wait, do you think he saw her die?” you wondered aloud.

There was an unsettling silence on Nancy’s end.

“Nance?“

“I’m just.... Last I checked on her yesterday, Penny was improving. Got her appetite back. Was even talking a bit.”

“What are you trying to say Nancy?”

Nancy sighed heavily into the phone. “I don’t know. I guess just trying to figure out where her son is. If you see him--”

“I don’t know,” you mumbled.

“I guess it’s not too pressing. Penny had all her arrangements made before she died, apparently. They’ve already released her body to the funeral home.”

You considered that.

“Do you happen to know what funeral home the hospital released her body to?”

“I…can’t just release that information to anybody, even if I had it. Only family.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m the girlfriend, then, isn’t it?” you pointed out, referring back to the time you went to Gotham General to retrieve Arthur after he had been attacked and that title was prematurely bestowed upon you.

Nancy sighed again. “I knew I was gonna pay for that one day. Fine. I’ll see what I can do. But here’s a novel idea, how about actually talking to your boyfriend and find out from the horse’s mouth what’s going on, hmm?.”

“I wish it were that easy,” you breathed. “Just let me know when you can.”

Within an hour Nancy called you back. Palmer & Son’s Funeral Home on Landry Street had Penny. You jotted it down on the notepad with its curling sheets that was tacked onto the wall near your phone.

“Thanks Nance. I owe you one.”

“Just...be careful, huh?“ Nancy didn’t elaborate and you didn’t ask.

You got out your phone book, found the number for the funeral home.

“Um, hi, yes,” you said after a glum, monotone voice greeted you automatically after picking up your call. “I’ve heard that a family friend just died, and I was calling to see when her funeral services would be?”

“Name of the deceased?” the voice inquired.

“Penelope Fleck?”

You heard the wheels of a chair squeak, some rustling papers. “Oh yes, here it is. Her son came earlier today to see about the arrangements. No funeral. Graveside services and burial are scheduled for tomorrow at 11 o’clock AM.”

Tomorrow? Damn that was quick. “What cemetery?”

“Gotham Cemetery. Section D2.”

“Wh--what’s D2?” you asked, feeling a bit stupid.

“Pauper’s field, Ma’am.”

.....

You’d hoped there would be a funeral. Not for Penny’s sake. You felt it would possibly be a good catharsis for Arthur. A chance to say good bye and really process what was happening. For you, it would be a chance to talk to him in a public place, where you’d feel a bit...safer. In theory.

As it was, by the time you’d arrived at Gotham Cemetery and finally spotted Arthur among the sea of headstones in their pauper’s field, a Catholic priest and someone else in black where giving their final condolences before leaving Arthur alone at his mother’s grave site.

You watched him carefully for some moments, standing at a distance at which you didn’t think he’d see you. He was dressed in his full rust-red suit. Probably the only nice outfit he owned.

He just stared down at the grave for a long time. Eventually you thought you could see him talking to himself, or maybe Penny. Then the Laugh appeared. But something was different. He wasn’t holding it back. Not really.

Even from your distance, you thought you could see a smile form and stay on his lips, as he slowly looked up. Right in your direction.

You moved further back behind the tree you were standing next to. Peeking out just enough to keep an eye on him.

You suddenly felt silly. Nancy’s words from yesterday came to mind. “Just talk to your boyfriend and find out from the horse’s mouth what’s going on.”

But you couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. A gut feeling that you needed to stay away.

Yet you couldn’t tell with 100% certainty whether that was a genuine gut feeling, or your anxiety working in overdrive. Your thoughts, inclinations, bounced back and forth, like a ball in a tennis match.

You were close to stepping out from behind your tree and approaching Arthur when you spotted a Crown Vic with police lights on top pull up near him. It was those two detectives from the other day, the two men who questioned whether you knew Arthur.

You receded further back into the shadowy shade of the cemetery’s trees. You looked down at yourself, dressed in a nice black blouse, skirt, heels, and overcoat. Hair up. Would they buy that you and Arthur had become friends, much less lovers, in the two weeks or so since you’d talked to them?

They talked with Arthur for a few minutes, but you were too far away to hear any of what was being said. Why were they here at all?

Arthur seemed to brush them off before heading in the opposite direction--more or less in your direction. You shoved your hands into the pockets of your overcoat as you turned and hurriedly walked away. 

[parlouzeriisms]

@two-fluffy-tails says hello!

“ Hey, 

                  this may seem random but...do you have any tips about...self-defense? ”

[donny-donut]

i’m sorry for not posting tumblr just sucks lol i haven’t been able to upload any images

[luminescent-cc]

New retextures 👀

[talesofstitching]

working on some new stuff 👀

[petshopfox]