Mama Gotham

Promise Me A Place In Your House Of Memories

Click!

Jerome fought to keep his eyes open against the flash of the camera. He wanted this to be perfect.

The camera spit out the Polaroid and Alyssa plucked it from the printer, shaking it to clear it. "There!" she presented it with a flourish.

He studied the frozen image of the two of them. He found himself looking at his photographed self, the light in his eyes, the genuine smile threatening to split his face in half. Looking at him you'd never know that there were bruises hidden under his clothes, that the woman who was supposed to love him unconditionally was the one who had put them there.

Looking at this picture and just this picture, he could pretend that this was who he really was. He could pretend that smile and that light were always there, and so was Alyssa.

"Can I keep this?" he asked her.

"Sure J." she nodded. "But that means I need one for me. Smile!"

*******

Photo bomb!" Whitney Fordman jumped into the frame of the picture Jerome was taking.

"Hey!" the ginger shoved him off his shoulder. "Photo hog!"

"I am so getting you a video camera for your birthday." Whitney rolled his eyes. "Make it easier for you to document every moment of your life."

"I like the stills better." Jerome informed. "You can imagine that one moment is your whole life."

"Why the hell would you wanna stick to a moment? There's too much to enjoy!"

"Yeah, maybe...."

*******

Running had always provided Jerome with a sense of freedom. If he ran fast enough, he could fool himself into believing that he could get away from everything he was running from.

Whitney had a point though. He may not know what his friend had been running from before, but there wasn't really anything to run from now. Jerome would much rather stay here forever, never moving an inch.

It was an odd sort of feeling however; where he used to run as fast as he could to forget about what he was leaving behind, he was now running as fast as he could to make the woman who was cheering him on in the stands, jumping up and down and waving her arms like an idiot, proud. It was one of the many things in his life that had been surrounded by negative thoughts that Alyssa had managed to turn on its head.

And oddly enough, these positive thoughts made him faster than ever before.

*******

"J – Hold still!" Alyssa wrapped an arm around his shoulders to hold him in place. Lex laughed at them, leaning against the deck railing. "You too Alex, get in here!"

He looked surprised, but obeyed, curling himself into Alyssa's other side to fit into the frame. She had to fight to steady the camera, as she was laughing from Jerome poking her in the side, but the flash went off and the printer spit out a fresh Polaroid. Lex was the one to grab it and shake it as Alyssa was busy mock-scolding Jerome.

"The perfect family portrait." he said, making both of them still.

Family. This was his family. Not the circus, not Lyla, this.

Jerome looked around the lake house once owned by Lilian Luthor. He was no fool, he knew how much this place meant to Lex, and he knew what it meant for him to have brought them here.