Foreword: For those who don't know, this story is a sequel to our previous story "City of Sorrows," a Joker-centric fic also featuring the Riddler. If you have not read "City of Sorrows," we highly recommend visiting our stories and checking it out. A direct sequel to The Dark Knight, it was written mainly to further explore the Joker and the themes of Dark Knight. We have attempted to write "Guns and Roses" so that it can be enjoyed without having read "City of Sorrows," but we think you will enjoy it much more if you have the backstory.

"Guns and Roses" is expected to be a Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow-centric fic, also featuring an incarnation of Poison Ivy. Commissioner Gordon, Bruce Wayne, Harley Quinn, and Whisper are also expected to be key characters whom we hope to continue to develop to their fullest potential. The Joker will not be making an appearance in this story, although we have not ended his plotline completely.

Guns and Roses, Chapter 1

Police Commissioner Jim Gordon stood several meters away from the yellow police tape barrier, his back turned to the murder scene within. Inside the cordoned-off hotel room lay six bodies; the bodies of police officers, his men until their demise a few short hours ago. But that in itself was not why he was standing outside the scene with his eyes closed, fighting off nausea. The victims had not been killed in a standoff or in the process of busting a drug deal; they had been lured here to die.

And we sent them in.

A set of brisk footsteps approached him. "You okay, Commish?"

Gordon opened his eyes. "Fine, Rita. I'll be fine. As always."

The detective nodded, looking weary. "Good. Bard's here. He wants to talk." She gestured towards a sleek black car, and Gordon cursed inwardly. The District Attorney was here? What was he thinking?

I guess that's one job you have to be crazy to even take on in this city.

The Commissioner sighed, mopping his brow and trying to compose himself as he approached the car. The back door opened ahead of him and he slid in to find himself sitting across from the redheaded DA.

Bard didn't mince words. "I heard it's bad."

Gordon winced. Is it ever anything else? "Six cops," he agreed, taking a deep breath. "It was a setup. The cartel's actively targeting cops now, not just firing in self-defense. They want to scare us off, to keep us off of their turf."

The DA looked pensive for a long moment, staring out the car's window at the run-down buildings beyond. "Correct me if I'm wrong," he said slowly, at last, "but hasn't Shark Avenue always been neutral territory? When I was working the criminal circuit, we had the hardest time prosecuting Shark Avenue cases; all the gangs and cartels operated right on top of each other, so anything that happened here was almost impossible to trace back to any one group. No one seemed to want to claim it as territory, because they could all use it as a dumping ground for their particularly nasty revenge killings."

Gordon nodded. "You're right. This is new. Shark Alley's neutrality was part of an agreement between the crime bosses; we almost had their meeting place staked out before the Mob Murderer blew it sky high."

Bard paused. "So you think this is part of the aftermath?"

"The bombing took out virtually everything we knew about the underworld leadership. Almost all of the kingpins were there, along with half of their assistants. Frankly, we have no idea who has moved into power since then. Whoever the new bosses are, they're operating through proxies and keeping their identities very well-guarded chest."

"Understandable."

Gordon hesitated, debating whether to raise the next point. The evidence was so fresh, so tenuous...

"Detective Cophenhagen does have one theory."

Bard's eyebrows shot up. "Fire away."

Commissioner Gordon closed his eyes, attempting to shut out the memories of what he'd seen at the crime scene. "The victims--the police officers we sent in--were dressed like Scarecrows. Apparently after they were killed. The costumes resembles what Jonathan Crane was arrested in. Noose around the neck, burlap sack over the head--along with some other creative touches. Crane's still on the loose since the ferry incident; my detectives think he could be involved."

The DA stared. "Crane? I used to work with that guy--he hardly struck me as the assertive leadership type."

Gordon nodded quickly. "I agree. I think the motif is a copycat job, meant to be frighten and mislead. Anyone who worked with Crane during his Scarecrow phase could have replicated his outfit."

Bard sighed, leaning forward with a frown. "This is bad, isn't it?"

"I'll put it this way; we're taking all our undercover agents off the streets until further notice."

"What about responses to distress calls?"

Gordon winced. "We haven't figured out what to do about that yet. Pray, I guess."

Bard looked from side to side, fidgeting impatiently. "And the Batman?"

"Still hasn't been seen," Gordon supplied. "But I'm sure he has a good reason."

Bard looked far from satisfied with that answer.

Gordon was saved by a rapping on his window. The driver rolled it down to reveal the face of detective Copenhagen. "Commissioner," she said, "we need your signature on some things. And Forensics wants to talk about the fingerprinting."

"I'll let you go, Commissioner." Bard waved a hand in resignation. "But I expect to be updated. If we have a war zone brewing, I want to know about it before the tabloids do."

Gordon couldn't help but grin inwardly. As if such a thing is possible. But he shook his head seriously. "I'll do my best."

It was twilight deep within the city; that grayish time as day transitioned into night. On Shark Avenue, twilight brings anxiety for any law-abiding citizens still unfortunate enough to be trapped there; for Shark Avenue's outlaws and vigilantes, it brings an adrenaline rush.

Whisper Lieng couldn't decide which one she was, as she watched the shadows deepen outside her storefront. She was tending to her plants, performing the nightly ritual of closing her herbal medicine shop. The shop was quite unlicensed, of course, born from an abandoned space that she and Harley had fixed up themselves--but unlicensed vendors were the last of the cops' concerns around these parts. The many distractions also made it the perfect place to keep a couple of fugitives hidden.

It was a dangerous place to live, of course, but Whisper had more reason to be confident in this area than appearances would suggest. She masqueraded as an immigrant woman, helpless and harmless and not proficient in English; someone inconspicuous enough to be of little interest to either the police or the drug rings.

Of course, that was only by day. Upstairs, Harley was patching up tears in their costumes. With Harley as a red-and-black jester, Whisper covered head to toe in green fabric leaves, and an underlayer of kevlar to protect them both, the two were considerably more formidable than their daytime identities suggested. At first, thievery had been a necessity; having barely escaped from the Joker and the Riddler with their lives, they had no material goods to their names and no money anywhere accessible. Harley could not even use her own legal identity without risking prosecution or a mandatory "witness protection program" for her role in the Joker's escape and disappearance. So, getting dressed up to conceal their identities, they stole what they needed to make a fresh start.

Of course it was only a matter of time before their nighttime activities became more than subsistence filching. As the weeks passed after the Riddler's incarceration for coordinating the Mob Murders, the scum of Shark Alley and elsewhere began to resurface, figuring that the lethal vigilante wasn't coming back.

Whisper smiled slightly to herself at that thought.

Whisper knew that chapter of her life was over. Edward Nigma's doctrine of merciless justice for the greater good rang hollow in her ears. He had attempted to kill Harley, a true innocent, based on the same principle. But Shark Avenue was a bad part of Gotham, and it was impossible to walk outside at night without encountering some sort of crime being committed (admittedly often to other criminals). It started with her foiling of a mugging she and Harley encountered on the way back from a theft; soon, however, she and Harley had made an agreement. She was teaching Harley the martial arts, and they now prowled the streets on a regular basis, looking for drug deals, robberies, and violent crimes to interrupt.

It was probably an unhealthy habit, but hell, it was addictive. Besides, they each sort of owed a debt to society.

Peering out at the now-dark street, Whisper sighed and turned the sign on the shop door to "closed." Though the outlaw in her was still very much alive, she had grown very fond of this shop, this semi-normal life she had with Harley. She was fully aware that this was the first real normalcy she'd ever had. Though she'd been well taken-care of under Nigma, living with him had held none of the sense of warmth and contentment she experienced here. Looking back at his attitude towards her, she wondered if she had ever even had a real relationship with another person before Harley, much less a loving one.

And the shop--well she was proud of this little place. The plants from which she derived her herbal remedies were stolen, true, but it was she who mixed them into medicines and sold them. And she suspected, somehow, that her plants were far happier here than they'd been with their previous owners. Somehow, it was hard for Whisper to picture what she'd done as really stealing. How exactly could plants be property, any more than people could? They should be with whoever would take care of them best.

Drawing the blinds in preparation for the plants' evening watering, Whisper froze. There were footsteps outside, and voices. And they were coming her way.

She relaxed out of the defensive position she'd automatically taken and composed herself. The chances of anyone actually wanting to rob a struggling herb shop were slim. The chances that they'd find much money in the place, Whisper thought ruefully, were even slimmer. It wasn't worth protecting the place to blow her cover as a harmless immigrant woman, unless Harley or the plants were endangered. She adjusted her posture to be one of timid anxiety and began shuffling back and forth.

There came a pounding on the door, so forceful she was afraid it would break. Jittering with practiced nervousness, she scrambled to unlock it and open it a crack.

It didn't stay cracked open for long. As soon as the knob turned the door was flung open, and three muscular men muscled their way into the dimly lit shop. Now Whisper was becoming genuinely somewhat nervous, but mostly angry. These men were invading her shop, and they looked as though they might damage the wares!

Keep calm. Don't give yourself away. The last thing you need to do is give yourself away.

She prayed that Harley wouldn't hear the commotion downstairs and come running.

"May I--help, you gentlemen?" she squeaked with an exaggeratedly thick accent as she bustled to head them off before they reached the next room.

"You the owner? Is your husband here?" The speaker was a man whose shirt barely contained his muscles, apparently the leader of the group. He eyed her skeptically.

She backed up, feigning fear of him, her eyes wide. "No...husband." She gestured towards herself. "Only me." Then, the epitome of naiveté, she added shyly: "Store closed."

Something about that disarmed the thug. He actually laughed, his posture relaxing visibly. "Just you, little lady? Well listen here; we got an offer to make you."

Enjoying her act and the effect it was having, Whisper backed up further. She picked up a vase, not yet occupied by any plant, and held it threateningly.

That made the man laugh more. "No, no, not like that, little lady. The big man sent us." He looked at her expectantly, as though she should know what that meant. Whisper genuinely didn't know, but something thrilled within her as she shook her head in confusion. The big man? For weeks, Harley had been interrogating any drug dealer they caught, trying to find ringleader. They'd had no luck so far.

The thug shook his head and rolled his eyes. "We got an offer for you," he repeated, and pulled something out of his pocket. "You sell this. See?" He shook a baggy filled with sparkling, blue-tinged crystals before her eyes.

Whisper felt slightly sick. They wanted to use her shop as a drug front.

The only way out of this was to feign ignorance. "What this?" she frowned like a critical haggler and took the baggy from him, shaking it in front of her own face to examine its contents.

"It's Blue Diamonds, lady," the man explained. He pantomimed injecting himself in the arm. "You know, good stuff?"

Whisper managed to suppress the urge to laugh at that description. She pursed her lips and shook her head. "No good. Not medicine."

The man moved towards her. "Come on, little lady. Try it, you'll like it."

She backed away from him, standoffish, and decided to pre-empt him before he could force her to sample the stuff. She opened the bag and sniffed a little; the smell was sharp and slightly metallic. She faked a violent sneeze that sent half the powder flying, then dropped the other half on the ground, staggering backwards and gagging violently.

Her visitors didn't look too happy about that. She wondered how much the stuff in the bag was worth.

"Come on now!" the leader of the trio advanced towards her as the other two scrambled to try to collect the remnants off the floorboards. "You gonna sell this. You gonna sell it, or pay us not to make you."

Backed up against the window now, Whisper was running out of options. They clearly weren't going to leave in peace.

So, as the large man advanced towards her, Whisper snapped her leg up and delivered a swift kick to the side of his head. In the confusion that followed as his cohorts tried to figure out how a five-foot-five Asian woman had felled their boss, she managed to knock his head against a shelving unit and use his own momentum as he tried to lunge toward her to hurl him out the window. She winced at the crash as the glass broke.

That's not going to be easy to repair.

Another one of the thugs was coming at her now, though the third held back, apparently afraid. The second attacker wielded a potted plant apparently intending to smash her in the head with it, but she seized the arm that held it and twisted. The man now thrown off-balance, it didn't take much to swing him through the window after her partner.

The last gangster stood, almost comical in his panic, seeming equally terrified of facing her or of running away in front of his pals without even trying to. Staying in character Whisper scrunched her face into a stern glare and pointed towards the door as though lecturing a child. "You. Go. Leave."

He complied, scampering past her and proceeding to pick up his bloodied coworkers on the curbside. Whisper stayed where she was, hunched and glaring, until the two men disappeared from sight.

Then she leaned her head back and sighed. A cold draft was blowing in through the window, and she knew there was nothing she could do about that tonight. Filing a police report on an unlicensed shop when the two owners happened to be fugitives was out of the question; and she suspected the thugs would be back tomorrow, with friends. Probably lots of friends, after the treatment she'd given the three of them.

There was a skittering sound in the back room. Still in fight mode, Whisper whirled, adrenaline surging through her--then laughed aloud as Harley trotted out, clad from head to toe in her Harlequin costume and dragging a her sledgehammer.

Harley opened her mouth to speak, then took in the broken window and Whisper's combat stance as she stood in front of it. "I heard--what--are you alright?!" The third question won out, and Harley dropped the sledgehammer with a crash, rushing forward to embrace Whisper.

Only as she relaxed against Harley did Whisper realize she had actually been shaking. "Harley," she gasped, letting out a small laugh, "I'm an assassin, remember? I'm fine."

"But you're not in costume," Harley protested in concern, stepping back to examine Whisper for any cuts or bruises. It occurred to Whisper suddenly that, lacking the Kevlar protection of her suit, she may very well have been injured if those men had brought out arms on her. Her stomach dropped and she surged to embrace Harley again, giving her a quick kiss. "I'm glad you changed before coming down," she murmured. "You're no black belt yet."

Harley pulled back, grinning awkwardly. "I know. You are, though."

Both of them reassured by that, they turned to face the broken window.

"You know," Harley reflected, "I probably shouldn't be standing in front of this in my suit."

Whisper shook her head. "It doesn't matter. We've gotta get out of here."

Harley looked alarmed. "What?"

"I'll explain later. Start packing."

Feedback is appreciated! We haven't written in a while, so let us know how we're doing.