"Why so serious?"
Jack lifted his head from his hands and turned his gaze upon his wife. She took his hands in her and moved closer.
"Tell me", she urged.
Janey, his beautiful wife. He remembered when they first met. Their first kiss. She looked as beautiful, and as youthful now as she did five years ago. Her soft white features and pale blonde locks a stark contrast to his gnarled face and dirty brown hair.
He could not let her see him weeping, of course. She would lose hope. What little hope there was to be found in this place, where the roof leaked and the water collected in buckets on the floor. Where the landlady waited for any opportunity to throw them out onto the street. Where they could barely afford rent or food. Let alone enough to feed a child.
"I-", he choked momentarily on his words, "I lost my job at the plant."
There was silence that seemed to last forever in the moments that followed. Jack could not bear to see her face right now. He looked out the window, instead. Behind the black grime around the window sill and the streaks of rain that slithered down the glass like serpents, lay Gotham city. The city poured out across the land without restraint, as though the earth itself have heaved up and poured it out of the underworld. The vast skyscrapers and arches stretched into a smog choked sky and the wires between buildings formed a complex web across the urban canopy. Perhaps there are no bad people, just bad places.
Finally she spoke, though all she could muster up was an insonorous monotone beneath the rain outside.
"Oh."
"Oh?", he snapped back, turning back to her, "All you can say is "Oh"?"
He stood up, pacing back and forth across their tiny kitchen.
"I'm out there working everyday and we can barely afford this crummy place as it is!", his anger could not hide his shaking voice, "And I try and I try and I try so hard to make a good life for us, then this."
He slumped, defeated back into his chair. Once more he dared not see Janeys face. The dissapointment undoubtedly filling her eyes.
"I'm so sorry," he muttered, "You must hate me. You must hate that you ever fell for such a loser. You must hate that I can't make a decent living for you."
He looked at her stomach, six months swollen under her dress.
"Or for the baby."
She took his hands again. Despite the damp and the cold her touch was warm.
"I don't hate you. I love you. So don't ever say that.", she whispered.
He looked into her eyes. She wasn't lying.
"Times are hard, but we'll get through them," she went on, ever the optimist, "I can start working too. You'll get a new job."
He nodded, giving her hand a small squeeze.
"I'll figure something out. I promise."
Huddled in his trenchcoat, dripping wet, the lanky man in the hat kept looking up from his seat t the back of the bar, glancing this way and that for who he was expecting. When they finally arrived he looked more distressed than relieved.
"Over here", he stammered.
The two men, both skinny and in cheap suits smiled as they took a seat.
"How about this rain, huh?", the first man said in his thick Jersey drawl, slicking back his wet hair, "I hear it's gonna last a couple of a days, at this rate."
The second man was less interested in making casual conversation.
"This is the guy?", he asked the first, skeptical.
"Yeah Lou, this is my man. Jack Napier. He's the one we need."
"I used to work at the plant", Jack spoke up, trying hard not to show his nervousness, "I know the way inside and out. Everything you want, I know where to get it."
He licked his lips.
"I'm your man."
Both men looked impressed. Lou outstretched a hand, and the two shook.
"I'm Lou", he stated, as though he needed to confirm what his partner just said, "nice to be doing business with you."
The man from Jersey spoke up again, smiling broadly.
"We won't be taking much from the plant. But we've got clients with certain desires, if you understand me."
Jack understood. He saw them in the alleys and on the pavement. The lost of Gotham. Screaming their madness at the sky, begging for loose change. Loose change for their next fix. He grimaced at the thought of what he was doing.
As though reading his mind Lou passed a hand on his shoulder and grinned.
"You got a wife, right chief?"
"Yeah", the other one continued, "and a kid on the way?"
Jack nodded.
"Sometimes pal, you gotta do bad things to be a good person."
Jack nodded again. He hated to lie to his wife. But if this one job meant a better life, switching neighbourhoods, seeing her smile with their child - it was worth it.
"That's the spirit," drawled the first man, "That's the kid, that's the boy. Listen, we gotta fly. For you co-operation you here's two hundred now-"
He folded the two notes into a small neat square and slipped it into Jacks coat pocket.
"-and the thousand after we done the deed."
At this both men smirked, as though sharing a private joke. Still grinning they stood up and crossed the room to the door, stepping out into the rain.
Before leaving, Lou turned back and flashed a pearly white smile at Jack.
"Hey buddy, let's chin up, okay? Let's put a smile on that face."
He walked out the door, laughing.
Jack ordered another drink, and put his head in his hands.
The night of the job was cold, and the rain had yet to cease. In fact it had all but reached its crescendo tonight, with a thunderstorm that whipped at the mens faces as Jack opened the lock and led the way into the chemical plant.
Inside was a maze of metal arches and pipelines. The waste poured into the Gotham reservoir below. It wasn't the smell that made Jack sick though. As the other men thanked him, cheered him and headed up to where the more prolific substances were held, Jacks phone rang. He thought he'd turned it off, but answered quietly, as not to arouse suspicions.
"Jack Napier?"
"Wh-Who is this?" he stammered.
"This is the police. You're speaking to Officer Callahan."
His blood turned cold and his stomach seemed to turn itself inside out. None of the others had noticed him taking the call, but he turned his back to them anyway and spoke in what was practically a whisper.
"Uh, hello. What do you want?"
There was a brief moment of silence on the other end of the line.
"Officer?"
"I don't know how to break this, Jack."
Why was the mans voice sad?
"Are you in the middle of something Jack?" he asked, "maybe it's best we picked you up."
There came the shattering of glass from one of the upper levels of the plant. They had found what they came for.
"I'm, uh, really quite occupied at the moment officer."
The voice on the other end sighed.
"Your wife is dead, Jack."
He lost his breath in an instant, and began digesting what the man had said.
"What?", he gasped. Some of the men turned and glared at him for speaking so loudly. He didn't care.
"She was involved in a simple household accident. A freak event, really."
There was another drawn out moment of silence. One of the man nearby shouted at him, but it sounded as though it were coming from miles away.
"We understand that your child was lost in the accident, also-"
The phone slipped from his limp white fingers and clattered across the metal floor. Jack merely stood, wide eyed and wordless. Lou was approaching him, holding something behind his back.
"Who was that, pal?"
"My wife is dead." he uttered, as though to himself.
"That's a damn shame Jack.", Lou went on, "and a damned waste of life too."
"Don't you understand? She's gone. Janey's gone. I don't need the money anymore."
Lou chuckled.
"That's convenient Jack, because I was never planning on givin' it to ya."
Jack looked up, too late. There was a sudden blast, and a flash of light. Thunder ripped through his face and burned his blood. He felt himself hit the floor with a crash. He screamed in agony. Beneath his fingers he felt the burning wound stretch and tear across his cheek, opening up the side of his mouth with crazed pain and unceasing blood.
From up above came Lou's voice, indistinct and far away.
"Jesus. He's still going."
There was a short, metallic click. The gun barrel felt cold as Lou pressed it into his skull. Jack looked up, pitiful and still clutching his face. He grabbed Lou by the arm and forced him to push the gun closer, closer into his temple.
"Do it", he choked, spitting out blood, "Do it already."
Lou grimaced and wiped blood off his shirt. He'd killed before. None of them had gone on this long though. It was making him sick. All this blood.
"Jesus."
He dropped the gun, and pulled Jacks hand off.
"I can't do it. Christ. Just leave him, he won't last much longer. It'll look like he killed himself. God knows he would've anyway"
There was a murmur of agreement amongst the crowd. Some began to turn away. Jack watched as Lou gave one last, sickened look, and turned away. With blood spilling from his lips, his strength returned, madly, like some serpent. At first he could merely writhe, but with great difficulty and burning pain, he got to his feet, gun in hand.
"Hey, Lou."
Lou turned, but had no time to react. Jack shot twice, the kick of the gun sending blasts of pain up his arms. His aim was good. Each bullet found its target, and buried itself deep within Lou's skull.
"Let's put a smile on that face!"
Lou slumped over, his face a maw of broken flesh and bloody wounds, not quite dead till he hit the ground. The others were quick to react, pulling out their weapons. All Jack could do was laugh.
He laughed in desperation, in defeat and the blood mixed with the tears as he fired madly.
In the rain of bullets, none noticed the shadow descend. When it fell it was unseen. In the darkness it took out each men, disabling each weapon. It was over in an instant. In no time Jack Napier was standing, laughing, face to face with the Batman.
"Drop the gun," he hissed from the darkness, but to Napier these words had come far too late. He clambered onto the rail above the reservoir, still pointing the gun at cloaked man before him.
He fell.
The man in the mask yelled out, and outstretched an arm to grab him. The blades on his arms tore through Jacks face and blood poured from the wounds. The blood, slippery on the masked mans gloved fingers.
"I can't hold on, you have to climb up!" he shouted.
Jack desperately reached out for the rail, but as a flash of lightening blinded them both, he felt the fingers slip. Air rushed past his face.A cry from up above. Thunder somewhere on the horizon. A sudden crash. Cold water, stinging.
Then nothing.
When the man with the broken face awoke the storm had died down. A gray, misty morning had fallen over Gotham. All around was silence, but for the soft sound of the moving river, and perhaps the drizzle on the ground.
He tried pulling himself up, but the pain of doing so was too much. Down he fell again, his face collapsing into a puddle. The reflection beneath him was blurry, but distinct.
Memories of last night cam flooding back. The man in the mask. The betrayal. His wife.
Janey.
Now he pulled himself up. Now he stared into his own reflection in this dirty pool below him, and staring back was a man with a smile from ear to ear, red and wet across his face.
"Heh."
The smiling man laughed, at first a short chuckle, that grew and grew until it was a twisted cry from the darkest pit of his soul. The madness seeped through and he splashed the reflection away, screaming like a dying dog in laughter.
"Why so serious?"