Mama Gotham

Closin' Walls And Tickin' Clocks

A/N: I would like to acknowledge the fact that I will be leaving for college in a few weeks. Once classes get up and running, I probably won't get to write as much. I promise I'll do my best though.

*Trigger warning: cutting, mentions of suicide.*

If It was possible, things in Gotham got worse. Fish and Strange's other experiments had moved on from pharmacies to Strange's assistant Ethel Peabody, who had been found mummified. Something was up; Alyssa knew Fish, and she seemed to be getting desperate. The question was, what had made her this way?

Things weren't looking too good on other fronts either. The media circus had settled down for a long stay, and Valerie Vale was extremely stubborn in her desire to get a juicy article out of the mayor's office. It was becoming more and more clear that she was new to her industry; still chasing her first big break.

Alyssa never thought she'd say it, but she missed Vivian.

If that wasn't enough, she couldn't find Ivy. Granted, she had been getting a tad sloppy at keeping track of her kids, but no one seemed to know where the red head had gotten too. It wasn't like Ivy to just up and disappear; something was wrong.

Then there was the straw that broke the camel's back. Perhaps it was her frazzled state that allowed her to miss it for so long.

"What do you mean he's not here?!" Alyssa shouted at the poor man who'd been made the new warden of Arkham Asylum.

"H-He was unaccounted for after the incident, I-I assumed he'd escaped with the others."

"And you didn't think to tell me?!"

"M-Madame Mayor, we're facing enough bad press as it is –"

"Shut up!" she cut him off, turning her back to him and leaning both hands on his desk. She took a deep breath and tried to steady her heartbeat.

Okay. Okay! It wasn't that bad, he was still in his state, what could he do?

*******

*Twenty Years Ago*

Alyssa Connors would not know what kids were supposed to be like until age ten. Growing up her life was about two things: staying alive, and denying reality.

She was used to taking her sister to school every day, to lugging a bag of newspapers that weighed more than she did around town, to hiding money from her parents because that was all she knew. It didn't occur to her that things could be different. That was where denying reality came in. She was aware that there were better people out there than her parents; the Wayne's for example we're very well off. They didn't have to worry about keeping warm and having food on the table.

So on nights when it was quiet, though such nights rarely came to pass, she imagined a life like that. One where all her worries, all her troubles were nonexistent. It was a nice thought, but only a thought.

For as long as Alyssa could remember, it had always been her job to protect people from the big, bad world. There were lots of reasons why the world was bad, but a lot of them tended to be parents. Whether they were overbearing, abusive, neglectful, or just plain not there.

That was where the Tetch family came in. Their dad was one of Kurt Connors' drinking buddies. They didn't have a mother.

The younger child, Alice, was just like Jamie. Innocent, naive, unaware of the terror of the world around her. It made Alyssa want to protect her too.

Alice's older brother was a different story however. Jervis didn't talk all that much, in fact she could count the number of full conversations they'd had on one hand, and they'd known each other since age four. No, Jervis liked to keep to himself; he was often fiddling in a corner with whatever he had brought home. A watch, a radio; he loved nothing more than to take things apart and see how they worked. He was rather good at it too; he'd made his sister an animatronic rabbit that could hop around the table from all the odds and ends he'd come across.