Time didn't seem to touch Rory. Days melted into weeks, weeks melted into months. Before she knew it, she was sitting up and starting to get back to normal. She knew that the healthier she got the closer she was to losing Lola and marrying Jerome.

Ever since he had visited her, her memories of their relationship had come flooding back. It was small things like waking up in his arms in the circus motor home or talking away the nights. It had worried Rory. Her recollections of Jerome before he went completely mental was reminding her of the boy he had been. It reminded her that he was capable of kindness, of love.

These thoughts scared her, she was slowly convincing herself that, that boy was still in there - buried deep under all of his insanity. Part of her wanted to find that boy she had loved, but she knew that there was no way she could ever get the old Jerome back. When she looked into his eyes, when she saw his mangled face, she knew that boy was lost, dead.

"You awake?" Lola asked as she sat up from her bed.

Rory hummed in response.

Lola got up from her bed and slowly plodded over to Rory. She gave her a weak smile and tucked her brown hair behind her ears.

"You ready to move?" She asked.

She looked tired. They both were. The stressful presence of Jerome and his unannounced visit had made the two girls paranoid.

"Ready as I'll ever be," Rory signed, before slowly sitting up.

Lola put an arm around Rory's waist and helped her to her feet.

"You think you're up for a shower?" Lola inquired as the two slowly moved towards the bathroom

"Are you saying that I smell?" Rory replied sarcastically.

"No... I'm just saying that you're a little ripe that's all," Lola responded with a smile. They got to the bathroom and Rory sat on the edge of the bathtub.

Lola started to run the taps, then went over to the sink and washed her face.

"How long do you think we've been here?" Rory asked as she watched the bath slowly fill up.

"I don't know for sure, but judging on your wound I'd say about six weeks."

"Six weeks," Rory echoed.

"That's about a month right?" she asked again.

"Yeah, it's a month, but six weeks sounds shorter you know," Lola said as she dried her face.

"Yeah, I get what you mean."

The two girls looked at each other for a moment. the thought of a month in captivity, stuck in that small room with no fresh air or sunlight frightened the two of them. Was that going to be the rest of their lives? Rory started to think about her future. She was going to be married to a complete mad man. Her mind flashed back to when she had been held hostage at Gallivan's penthouse, how Jerome had treated her then. She shivered at the thought.

"I think that should be enough water," Lola commented as she put her hand into the bath.

Rory turned and watched her.

"Do you mind if I join you this time?" she asked.

"Sure, you need this more than I do," Rory smiled before slowly standing.

"Shut up," Lola snapped back. Rory giggled at her response.

Lola helped Rory out of her hospital gown and then stripped too. She got in first, then helped Rory climb in.

"I've forgotten how relaxing taking a bath was," Lola muttered as she washed.

"Its the most normal thing about what's happening to us," Rory responded.

"Which is saying something seeing as I haven't shared a bath with someone since I was a baby," Lola smiled. Rory giggled at this.

"At least we get to be clean."

"Yes, how does that saying go, cleanliness is next to godliness?" Lola asked.

"I think so."

The two sat in silence for a while. Rory's thoughts about her future with Jerome came back to her. There would be no escape from him. Even now, Rory could hide from him, stay away, but when they were married, she knew that Jerome would be with her everywhere she went. She wouldn't even be able to sleep in peace. She will always have his madness looming over her.

"Rory," Lola whispered.

"Yeah?"

"Why does he want to marry you?" Lola asked in a small voice as she played with the water in front of her.

Rory mimicked her actions and sighed.

"It's... it's complicated, and I don't think you'll believe me if I told you," she responded, looking down at her hands.

"Please, I promise I won't judge, it's just so strange for a man like Jerome to want a marriage of all things, I mean why not just kill us?" Lola remarked.

Rory scoffed at Lola and looked at her.

"You really want to know?"

Lola nodded.

"You're gonna think I'm stupid,"

"No, go on," Lola encouraged.

"I'm cursed, Lola," Rory exclaimed.

"What? You've got to be joking!"

"I mean it, I'm cursed. I don't know what is wrong with me but ever since I hit puberty I became like a magnet for crazy people," Rory explained.

Lola looked at her with a frown.

"A magnet?"

"Yeah, that's the only way I can describe it, at first I thought it was just a joke or something, but random people would come up to me and ask me for redemption or tell me that I was going to save them. No matter where I went, somebody would approach me and say that I was their saviour." Rory explained.

"I don't understand? They thought you could-"

"Cure them, yes. Until I met Jerome that was the only kind of crazy I had encountered, you know."

"So Jerome is different?" Lola frowned.

"Yes. Before I met Jerome, every time I encountered someone who was, you know, loopy, they would react like I was this fairy godmother ready to save them from themselves. They would never touch me or anything only beg for forgiveness or redemption. But with Jerome... Jerome's a different kind of crazy."

"How so?" Lola asked.

"Are you sure you want me to get into this?" Rory responded, looking Lola dead in the eye.

"I want to know," Lola nodded.

"Okay... well, when I met Jerome, I was with an ex-boyfriend, Jake. I was visiting him in Metropolis City at the time and we were on a date at Haley's circus. Jerome's mother used to be a snake charmer there. Long story short, I got lost on my way to the toilets, bumped into Jerome and when I saw him... I saw this green aura surrounding him."

"An aura? You see auras?" Lola interrupted.

"Yeah, if a person has an aura around them, it means that they are completely mad. Not like schizophrenic or delusional, I mean psychotic, completely and utterly psychopathic. Of course, I didn't know this when I met Jerome. In fact, I thought that he was like me, that he could help me."

"I see, so the people that you had encountered before they didn't have these auras?" Lola inquired.

"Nah, they weren't completely insane. How this curse works is if I am around a person like Jerome, that whole crazy magnet, will feed into their madness, like, I will make them crazier, more unstable. Me and Jerome erm, we dated. I actually cheated on my ex-boyfriend with him because I thought that his aura meant that we were similar. But I was wrong. So unbelievably wrong," Rory explained.

"So let me get this straight, you are a magnet for the insane who can see psychopaths aura's?"

"Basically."

"And that's the reason Jerome is marrying you?"

"Yup, he is using the marriage licence to ensure that I am with him at all times to give him the high of being crazier," Rory explained.

"I don't know what to think about this," Lola said, looking at Rory blankly.

"You don't have to think about it," Rory responded.

"But it can't be real, you're not actually cursed, Jerome is just obsessed with you," Lola frowned.

"I wish it was that simple Lola, but unfortunately it's not. But hey, silver lining, you don't have the crazy aura, so you're completely normal," Rory smiled.

"Oh great, well isn't that swell," Lola snapped back.

Rory didn't respond and looked at her hands. Her fingertips had shrivelled up from being in the water for too long. She looked at Lola, who had a deep frown on her face as she tried to comprehend what she had just been told.

"I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true," Rory stated as she placed her hands on the side of the tub.

"No can we get out, before I turn into a raisin," she joked. Lola nodded, and the two girls slowly clambered out of the bath.