It's there, fallen open on the floor, and immediately her first thought is to lean down and take the journal in her hands, rushed and wishing for no blemishes to the pages; precise, she would shut and return it to the next best thing besides the unconscious body curled tightly, unmoving back facing her— a small table, decorated by a presently inactive lonely lamp, but that she knew to flicker now and then, something within it loose from a loud crash she does not make mention of.
Her steps make no sound, though her body can't help but protest the sudden drop of temperature around her with a shiver, the door behind her slightly ajar and bringing forth heat her boss's room lacks— there's something akin to unease surging from deep within her chest but her lips remain pursed, body rigid with hard-earned discipline as she moves closer, not daring a single touch.
Instead, she trusts her naked eye to wander over Jeremiah, without pause to his overall state: her attention not retained by the buttons ripped off his collar or the advancing discoloration of his skin eating at him, that he's been obsessively checking its progress and dulling his nails on the edge of his teeth. She's not surprised to find a bottle loosely cradled to his speckled chest, the veins on his forearms and fist so strikingly visible she can almost make out the poison running through, mostly what Ecco does feel is gratitude, for the smallest, hiccuped rise and fall of a hit-and-miss exhale — it's difficult to ignore the urge to be certain, but her arms stay close to her body, lesson well learned from a last time.
She's petrified in place, the cruel hand wrapped around her wrist shaking with concerning weakness, and yet Ecco's heart's hammering against her ribcage, a cry stuck at her throat because those wide, penetrating pools of ghastly blue hold no recognition or warmth for her, indenting her flesh with half moon marks as he wildly searches for something, bending the bone under his mercy, narrowing his unforgiving glare when she’s not what he wanted—
Assured he's just sleeping, her shoulders drop a centimeter.
It's back to the object at her feet then, that her focus falls to; with its thin spine, the busied leather cover parts under the weight of cheap, plastic gemstones and stickers and what looks like chicken scratch overflows from the interior, underlined footnotes spiraling in different colors by the borders, giving rest to the excessive doodling from earlier pages; a section much closer to the blanks. A part of her, reliant and a proud survivor, a voice she credits to the mother she never knew, resents its rotten messages and whispers of burning it before she’s coming back from contemplating the flame flickering from her lighter, her smoke caught in the dryness of her mouth— the devil hidden in the shadows of her boss’s labyrinth whined about missing a drag often, in his putrid little cell. Fitting.
The other Ecco wastes minutes reading, starving her lungs and alert to so much a twitch from the bed, to the lines of a man she hadn't heard much of — each snippet adds a missing stroke to his picture, or rather reunites the broken shards of a forgotten chapel’s stained glass window; he makes a vaguely compelling if pathetic sight in the eye of her mind, she can't still fathom what in him was so extraordinaire to the rest of Gotham, hardly worthy of Jeremiah’s obsessive consideration.
Jerome Valeska writes his memories as tales for crying out loud, except they carry no moral or ending, one beginning where the other ends and often they mingle as he peppers in commentary — every bit the autobiography of a lunatic, and the paper's stained and/or sticky, occasionally glued to one another; some of it’s incomprehensible, not only for the calligraphy itself but for drags of ink that hadn't dried.
"I can feel you, oh, you're so close. I know I feel you all the time. Twins know these things, yeah, and Zach couldn't have gone too far with that junkyard rescue shit of a car— like I said, snookums: won't ever stop, no, not 'til I reach you and when! I! DO!
OH, YOU, Miah, you. will. tell. THE TRUTH why why did you LEAVE me there TO MY FUGLY FACE AND ALLLLL OF GOTHAM, HAHAHA I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE TOUCH YOU PUT A GUN BETWEEN YOUR SHINY EYES, BABY BROTHER XOXO"
Blotched, few rounds sprinkled across water down the text, some long since wrinkled the pages while others aren’t yet done warping the letters, fresh droplets that run rampant through the slashes of Jerome's pen.
When the journal finally finds its way safely back to the table, Ecco tells herself her Other must've been too immersed in the deceased Valeska's dramatic writing— empathizing with the agony of an imagined sob she doesn't turn to, on her way out.
2087
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