for savagestime: in the backseat
for the song drabble meme
My family tree's
losing all its leaves,
crashing towards the driver's seat,
the lightning bolt made enough heat
to melt the street beneath your feet.
Madness is in the blood.
It was the conclusion of a madman.
It was a conclusion that Jeremiah Arkham refused to accept for almost his entire life. He refused to accept anything of that man that carried his last name. Almost anything anyway. The name still meant something, no matter how sullied it might have become over years of scandal and disappointment and wasted potential. He also accepted something of an inheritance which fate and destiny wouldn't deny him, if he allowed himself to believe in things as trite as fate and destiny. The only fate and destiny were those created by the individual. But still, he was meant for great things, he was meant to care for the worst of society, he was meant to shape minds and reshape them over and over again until they resembled something close to functioning.
Apart from the superficial similarities, Jeremiah Arkham had refused to accept any part of his uncle's legacy. Madness was not in the blood. Madness was a choice. Madness was a constant opponent that demanded attention, that demanded Jeremiah present a total offense and defense simultaneously. Madness was something to be fought with and bargained with and manipulated and subjugated. Madness was not in the blood. Madness was not a part of a person. It was an infection at best that needed to be removed and quarantined against. It was not in the blood.
When he first entered this asylum that bore his name, he had to burn it all away. He had to purge it and relegate it to nothing more than ashes and distant memories. Madness could be fought. A legacy could be rewritten. A new philosophy and psychology and world could be created and it would be one of Jeremiah's own making. The only architect of his destiny and mind was Jeremiah. Blood and outside forces and costumed men had no say in any of this. It had all gone wrong though, so terribly wrong. He still refused to accept anything though. It was a minor battle lost in a major war. Madness and madmen and false ideas would not be allowed power they did not deserve.
So the years came and went, and battles were lost. So many battles, but the war continued. Madness was always a choice, always a weakness, always something that could be defeated if a person had enough willpower and strength and intelligence. Sanity was about perseverance and effort and wits. It had nothing to do with blood or families or a relative who died before Jeremiah could even remember.
It all seemed so logical and terrifying and right for so long. Until one day the most terrifying masked lunatic disappeared. That's when it all went wrong or perhaps that's when it all went right. Rationality seemed to disappear in the shadows that the masked man used to occupy. He wondered if shadows even existed any longer. How could shadows exist in the absence of light? How could light exist in the absence of hope and free-will?
Madness is in the blood.
There was so much blood now, too. So much blood and wreckage and debris and chaos lying in the rubble of a house of the mad. He had to wonder how much madness was scattered in that blood. How much madness was there staring back at him? How much had he been wrong? How much...but he couldn't allow those thoughts to continue. He could no longer stop them either. He made so many mistakes. He had lost the war before the first battle. How can someone win a war that doesn't exist? Surely that was the first sign of madness. Surely...surely he could make something better. Maybe seeking to cure his patients was the wrong approach. Sanctuary was what he needed to provide. He would rebuild, he would survive, he would make something new and better out of the ashes of the past.
Amadeus Arkham had a vision, a vision painted by madness and tragedy, but a vision nonetheless. A vision that survived long after he was locked away in a padded cell of his own making. It survived long after he was long dead and buried. It survived after his asylum was burned, it survived after it was moved and rebuilt and went through so many changes. It survived enough to come back to Jeremiah all these years later.
Perhaps it didn't matter how many times a man had been wrong. Perhaps the only thing that mattered was that one moment of clarity where the world was seen for what it truly was for the first time. Perhaps sanity was merely the acknowledgment that everyone is slightly mad, slightly off, slightly not quite right.
After all, madness is in the blood.