I caught the snowflake with my tongue as my father has always taught me to do. He once said that if I closed my eyes and opened my mouth real wide, that the angels would place one right in my mouth. I had been so young, so innocent.

I had taken a great deal of things from my father. He often came to the dinner table with our family donning a bright purple robe that was fashioned to look like a suit. He would sit and casually look at me and pretend nothing was amiss, and we would both snicker until my mother would emerge from the kitchen with our dinner. She would look at him and say "Donald! Why are you wearing that stupid suit again?"

We would laugh just my father and me, my sister and mother always shook their heads and ate their dinner. But my dad and me, we got the joke. They were too serious to understand.

As I stood in the snow I wondered how things had ever changed from when I was younger. I was now seventeen.

His blood dripped onto the floor next to me, his mouth slit, ear to ear. Gunshots rang in my ears and the smell of fear lingered in the air. Screams could be heard from the kitchen. Elizabeth was dead beside me. Her eyes were dull and frozen in a lifeless stare, transfixed with me. I lay in between my father and sister. I heard my mother fall to the kitchen floor and the robbers took their loot and left. I lay, in a house of death. The only one alive. The only card left to be played.

"Ace?" Jess stepped behind me. My ears were still ringing from the gunshots left fired, years ago. The gunpowder filled my nostrils as they always did when my mind drifted back to the events of that day.

"I'm here." I said as I stuffed my hands back in my pockets and turned toward her. She looked at me and knew where my mind had gone. She was not there for that day. Only I had been. I had to dig out of my own grave.

"Do you want to go get something? Maybe a drink somewhere?" She looked at me inquisitively. I knew she had on her 'red dress' under her heavy coat, I nodded. I pulled the hood up on my jacket and let her lead me to the dark streets of Gotham. She pulled me into a familiar club. The lights were dimmed and playing loud, thumping music as she led me to one of her private tables behind a large curtain. She shrugged her coat off revealing a short schoolgirl outfit. She looked so small in the cheap lighting in the club.

"I have to go do my act. But I'll be back okay?" She eyed me as I took off my coat and laid it next to me on the booth. I nodded and flagged down a waitress. She kept looking at me while the waitress went to get me a drink.

She bent down over the table and lifted up my chin. "Hey, why so serious?" She smiled and I managed a small grin. She kissed my cheek and left to go do her show.

The waitress brought me a few shots while I watched Jess's show. Jess had lived a hard life, like me. She had been raped by her father while her mother laughed. After they had left, my dad and I had heard the screams and found her bleeding on the floor. My father took care of her while she cried in his arms. Once she had been reduced to only sniffles, he had tilted up her chin and asked her "Why so serious?" And then he giggled and she smiled for the first time.

She had come to live with us until my family died when we were twelve. Since then, we had been on our own. We had lived in random abandoned buildings in the beginning. My favorite was the old joke store. It reminded me of my father's corny jokes. We stayed there most nights together, except when she was working. She had a steady job here at the club. I couldn't get a job; I wasn't much of a dancer. Ha-ha. I had taken to just robbing a few stores. Usually I didn't get less then a few grand.

"Hey there Ace." Jason, Jess's boss, sat down next to me.

"Hey Jason." He was about twenty five or so, about 6'2. He kept her safe when I couldn't. I owed him for that.

"Jess is working a gig for me tonight." He looked at me. "I'll make sure she gets home to you." He looked at me, then back up to her on stage.

"Okay." Jason thought we were a couple. I liked him thinking that, so he knew that there was someone waiting for her to get home. However I have no idea what he thought of me, letting her sell herself the way she did.

"Tell her I went for a walk." I smiled and got up from the booth and walked out of the club. I walked a few miles in the damp snow while realizing I had left my jacket in the club.

I heard a knock on the door. I went to answer it but I was afraid. The day before I had seen a poor boy's parents get killed outside the opera house. A mugger tried to get the wife's jewelry and the husband tried to protect her. The mugger shot them both and ran. The mother was able to utter her sons' name, Bruce, before she collapsed onto her husband. I wanted to help the poor kid as he hovered over them and cried. He shook them and tried to wake them, but I knew it was no use.

My father came up to me and answered the door for me. I heard the gunshots, but it was already too late. My mind couldn't comprehend what had happened so I started thinking it had been a knock-knock joke. Knock-knock. Who's there? Boom. I guess he didn't get the joke.

I guess he didn't get the joke.