Novella awoke to a pounding headache and a severe need for her dog. She sat up halfway in her bed and looked around the room. It didn't take long for her to guess where she was if the white walls and green recliner weren't enough of a tell, then the loud machines that were now beeping like crazy was a dead give away. She was in the damn hospital . . . again. It didn't take long for her thoughts to drift to two entirely over-protective men she knew -Vic and Jim.
The sigh she let out was nothing short of exasperation and the nurse that walked in while she was letting it out could tell.
"I'm guessing you just realized that you're gonna have to deal with a worried father and boyfriend." The short red-head let out a laugh as she began to check Novie's vitals.
"Well it won't be the first time," Novella said. She had completely disregarded the way the nurse called Jim her father, it happened a lot and was an honest mistake. "Lay it on me miss, whats amiss?"
Novella's lame joke got a small chuckle from the nurse, but pulled a loud laugh from the doorway. She jerked her had quickly to the side, earning a burning sensation up her neck which she ignored, and laid her eyes on her hit-man.
"You're funny when you're all doped up on drugs," he said and then took a sip from the coffee cup in his hand. She had a strong feeling that it wasn't actually coffee.
"Yeah well enjoy it buck-o because I'll be boring ole' me before long." She felt her speech start to drag a little bit a wondered if it had been like that sense she woke up and she just hadn't noticed it due to the whole ordeal of being in a hospital.
"You aren't that boring," Victor said as he walked toward her. As soon as he got close enough she could smell the strong aroma of the whiskey that was in his coffee cup. "Your baking makes up for it anyways."
He leaned down to kiss her but she turned her head quickly and put up her hand.
"You aren't kissing me with whiskey breath."
"C'mon muffin, it isn't even that bad." He shot a pleading look at his girlfriend and then at the nurse who was checking a few of the machines.
"I'm sorry Mr. Zsasz, but I can smell it over here." The nurse shook her red bob out a little as she laughed.
Novella realized, as everyone was cutting up, that she had no idea why she was in the hospital. All she remembered was getting ready for the fundraiser at the orphanage, and then blanks. It was like someone had stolen the information right out of her head. She knew something had been there, but she just didn't know what.
"Hey Vic?" She grabbed his cool hand in hers and pulled his attention to focus on her. Despite the obvious alcohol intake that she knew had gone on, he seemed completely unaffected.
"Yes muffin?" She grimaced at the nickname, but ignored it - for now.
"Why am I here?" Her question caused all the playfulness to disappear from his face, but he didn't answer her. Instead he shewed the nurse out and told her he had to go grab Jim before he could explain everything.
So she waited in that room for twenty minutes by herself. She counted the tiles on the ceiling and then pulled at various threads on her blanket. If she hadn't been a little drugged up then she probably would've gone out of her mind, but she just got mildly bored.
•*•*•*•
Victor was internally loosing his mind, more than he had when he first decided to become an assassin. He knew exactly what had happened three nights ago at the orphanage. Between Jim Gordon and Penguin, he'd gotten the gist of it, but just to be sure he snuck into Arkham to interrogate the Pyg. All in all he'd gotten everything he needed out of all sources available to him on short notice.
He wasn't exactly pleased with his findings.
His displeasure stemmed mainly from the fact that the woman he loved, really the only person he loved, was the daughter of Jim Gordon. Not only was she now a target because of himself, but now she was a target because of her father. Everyone in Gotham that hadn't wanted her dead just for being with him would surely want her dead now. It wouldn't surprise him if someday someone wanted him to kill her just to get at Gordon.
He might actually pity the poor fool that tried to get him to harm his Novella, but there wouldn't be anything left to pity.
Lost in his thoughts, he almost didn't notice that he'd made it to the formal waiting room where Jim had been waiting for his daughter to wake up. As soon as the man saw Victor he jumped up and made to go to Novella's room, but Victor stepped in front of him, preventing him from going any farther.
"I don't think so," Victor said in his drawling voice."We need to get the story straight."
Jim gave him a confused look and Victor let out a sigh before explaining that Novella didn't remember anything from her night at the orphanage due to the minor head trauma that the Pyg had inflicted upon her.
"So do we tell her or not?" Victor asked. He didn't want to lie to Novella, but it wasn't his place to spill those beans, no matter how much he thought Novie deserved to know everything about herself.
"I've kept this secret for twenty-one years," Jim said as if Victor would know what that meant, but he didn't.
"I didn't ask how long you've been lying to your daughter-niece. I asked you if you want to tell her the truth." Victor's voice had risen as he spoke and they'd now ensnared the entire waiting room with their drama.
"She just has forgiven me for being an absentee uncle lately, but I don't think even she could forgive me for this." He ran his hands down his face and looked to be on the verge of a breakdown. Victor on the other hand was fuming.
"Then you don't know your daughter," he spat the word at Jim," at all. If Novella can get past everything I do then I think she can forgive you for wanting to give her a better life."
"I just - she was so small and I was only sixteen." Jim looked at Victor with eyes like Novie's and it took Victor a second to pull his mind from the girl that was sitting in a hospital bed a few halls away.
"I'm not the one that needs to hear your excuses."
Victor turned on the detective to go to Novella. He'd already been gone longer than he'd wanted to be and he still needed to find a piece of gum so she would actually let him near her.
•*•*•*•
Novella looked up from the blanket she was picking at when the door opened, and with the rush of air came a rush of tension. She'd been expecting Victor, but not Jim. The two men walked in and sat on either side of her bed, each taking one of her hands in theirs.
"I see you got the whiskey breath fixed," she said in an attempt to lighten the mood, but the tension was still there. "Okay you two, whats going on? I've been sitting here for," she looked at the clock, "twenty-one minutes all alone."
"That's not the only thing that's been sitting for twenty-one-" Victor was cut-off by Jim elbowing him in the stomach. "Dude, not cool!"
Novella's light brown eyebrows furrowed and confusion flooded her blue eyes. "Uncle Jim whats going on?"
Jim took a deep breath of air before asking, "How much do you remember from the Orphanage Fundraiser?"
Novella's eyebrows remained furrowed as she thought. After a few minutes she shook her head. "Not much if I'm honest. It's really just flashes. I think there were meat pies and homeless people," her eyebrows furrowed a little more, "and a . . . pig?"
The two men sighed before explaining everything that had happened the previous night with Victor filling in the gaps that Jim wasn't sure about. It was all going fine, Novella only gasping here and there because of the pain killers she was on, at least until they got to the part about her parentage.
"Penguin told me after he got back to his club everything that happened," Victor started for Gordon.
"And Novie, a secret came out that's been kept for twenty-one years." Jim looked at his daughter, begging her to finish what he couldn't. The words were stuck in his throat and each breath rubbed them like sand paper. "Novie, I need you to think really hard about what secret could've come up after twenty-one years." Jim put emphasis on the time so that maybe her mind, that had always been out of this world, would connect the dots.
Slowly, thanks to the medicine, Novella connected those dots. The dots that had always been there and had always had light lines connecting them, became clear. Deep down she'd always known, always hoped, that her childhood dream would come true. That her Uncle Jim, who'd always gotten her, was her father. The man that had always sneaked her an extra piece of cake after dinner or gotten her the toy that her mother said wasn't proper enough, was her father.
Then reality hit, as it always did; he'd lied to her. For twenty-one years her father had lied to her. He had stuck her in a hell hole with her actual aunt and uncle, for no reason. That anger overclouded the joy that she had been feeling seconds ago.
"You filthy liar." Novella's words were as icy as her glare when she locked onto the older version of her own eyes. Tears were gathering in the corners of her eyes, but that was the only hint of despair on her face. Everything else was pure anger.
Victor had only seen this side of Novella one other time - when her "mother" had called after the two of them went public with their relationship. She'd been defending him, but it was still something that Victor hadn't exactly liked. The ice that had laced her voice chilled him to the bone that night, just as it was doing now.
"You told me that you cut my mother out of your life the day she married my father, but that was just a lie." Novella's face was flushed red and wet with tears as she turned to look at Victor. "How long have you known?"
Victor went from light concern to alarm in mere seconds. He opened his mouth to start his explanation, but was cut off by Jim.
"I told him when he got to the orphanage, after Penguin called him." Novella raises both of her eyebrows high into her forehead, causing Victor to grin. She might be angry as sin at the moment, but she was hot when she was angry.
"You told my boyfriend before you told me?" That dangerously calm voice was making itself known. She was about to let Jim have it again, and Victor didn't know if he was next on her hit list.
"It was for your-"
"If protection is the next word out of your mouth then I will go on a murderous rampage, the likes of which would make Jerome Valeska look like a childhood tantrum. Besides, the only protection Victor needs to worry about is a —" Victor sent her a look to stop her next words, so she only smiled instead of finishing the sentence.
Nobody talked for a few moments. Jim mostly due to the fact that he was now in possession of the knowledge of his daughter's personal life. Victor took this opportunity to explain himself.
He leaned down so he could smell the citrus shampoo that Novella used along with the fruity smell of her hairspray. His eyes involuntarily closed as he inhaled her smell. It was the smell that now coated half his closet and all of his heart.
He opened his eyes and took in the contours of Novella's face. His eyes wondered the length of her hair and then met her crystal blue eyes again. Those eyes, those eyes were something that always drove him a little more mad than people already thought he was.
"When Penguin called about the orphanage I ran there as fast as I could, but when I got there they were carrying out a body on a stretcher. Nove, I thought it was you." Their eyes locked and it was almost as if he was physically fighting the emotions he was feeling. "But then you came out. You were unconscious and your hair was caked with blood, but you weren't in a body bag. It was only after Jim and I got to the hospital that he told me everything."
"You promise you didn't know before then?" Novella looked at Victor in that way of hers. The anger had almost vanished from her eyes completely; she never was able to stay mad that long at Victor. She was begging him to say yes, and it made him smile at the simple fact that he could.
"I promise," he said, then added without much thought, "I mean the file Falcone had on you even says your parents are well your parents."
Novella let out a laugh at the way Victor said 'your parents', in that monotone voice that still somehow held disgust. She loved the way he despised them as much as she did. The fact she never had to fight him on the front of her parents like she had to do with so many other people before him.
After she finished laughing though, she registered the other words that had fell out of his mouth.
"Falcone has a file on me?" Victor nodded his head, waiting for the rest of the blow to fall. "And you went through the damned thing?"
"Not recently," he said in a matter - of - fact tone. "It was really just a means to an end you know."
"No ,I don't know Victor. When was the last time you went through it?"
Victor looked down at his hands and with a small grimace he said, "the day I met you."
"Why?" Novie asked, a little more relaxed due to the fact that it had been years since he last had a peak.
"You remember option A from when I asked you on our first date?" He asked her, not planning on lying about everything that had gone on prior to that encounter.
"Yeah . . . the option I wouldn't like." She glared at him through heavy eyelids, the way the lids were beginning to droop made Victor suspect that the medicine she'd been on was starting to make her tired again.
"Lets just say I did something that probably classifies for stalking." He gave her a wary smile to which she just let out a huff of air that ruffled the strands of hair on her forehead.
"I don't want to know do I?" She asked him, earning a shake of his head as a response. "Okay, well I'm exhausted and mildly irritated, so I'm going back to sleep."
She sat up in the bed to fluff her pillow and pull the blankets up over her body. The white sheets came up to just under her chin and her hair pooled around her face in a framing manner. To Victor she looked as much like an angel then as she did when she was all dressed up.
"Uncle-father Jim, you need to take your leave so I don't strangle you. I'll call you when I'm ready to talk." Jim nodded at her and got up from his spot on the bed, giving her hand a light squeeze before leaving. "And my love, come here."
She stretched out her arms and motioned for him to come lay with her. He happily obliged, laying just so that he wouldn't hurt her. Once he was situated, she grabbed onto him tightly and buried her face in his chest.
"If you wanted a hug you could've just asked, Novie."
"Shut it and keep being warm. This hospital doesn't give their sick and injured enough blankets to be keeping it this cold," she said before snuggling further into him and promptly falling asleep.
•*•*•*•
A/N : So I want to make a character list for this book, but I have no idea who to cast for Novella. Any suggestions?