Ordinary

Disclaimer: I don't own Batman or the Joker, or the Dark Knight, which, by the way, this is based off of. Oh, but I do own Celeste Williams—that's at least something!

Ok, for those that have seen The Dark Knight, this is the first scene in it, even though I think I changed things. I tried to remember everything, but I doubt I did, so…Here you go!

Celeste Williams had always considered herself to be an average girl. She lived an average life here in Gotham City, in her little one room apartment in an area of the city where all the average people with average lives lived. She was an average nurse; she was not astounding, but she was not the worst one at the hospital either. She was a simple nurse who helped her patients—fed them, dressed them, bathed them, and simply watched over them. An average job with an average income for her average life.

She had a dog, who had the average name of Brandy, a sweet, lovable yellow Labrador retriever who was all that a dog should be, an average kind of dog that almost everyone in the world had.

Celeste had no special personality quirks, nor any kind of physical flaws or beauties that made her stand out in a crowd, become desired by men. She was average looking, with long blonde hair she always kept tied back, a small button nose and sparkling blue eyes. She was pretty enough, yes, but by all standards she was average. She did not go through great lengths for beauty as most of the girls she knew did, and she preferred to wear little makeup, her nails dull and uneven, and her clothes baggy and far from revealing.

In every aspect, Celeste Williams was a normal woman, living a normal life, in a not so normal city.

Gotham City, with the countless villains and heroes that ran about, was not by any means an average city, not so long as the Batman was around. Bank robberies and murders were all too common in Gotham city, even with the heroes of the city, like Batman, around. It was a dangerous place to live, but Celeste could not imagine living anywhere else. The danger was one of the many things that she liked to think made her life not so average, even though the chance of her being a victim was very low, considering how plain she was. Why would anyone target her? Even if she were around for a bank robbery, she certainly would not be singled out; there were plenty of others so much more interesting than her, plain little Celeste. She was safe, she thought, in her ordinariness, and she would not be targeted. So when the day came that she was there, in the bank, during a robbery, she did not panic.

As the men wearing clowns masks barged through the doors, hands gripping guns tightly and aiming all around at the people, she knew what to do, and before they could even order it she dropped to the ground with her hands on her head, the others around her shortly following suit. She stared down at the floor in front of her as she heard the robbers threaten those around her, yell at the tellers and pull them over the desks. There were three of them, and one, she noticed, didn't talk at all. That piqued her curiosity, and that curiosity, she later determined, would set her on the path of destruction and flipped her ordinary life upside down.

When she looked up and over at him, she saw that he was just standing there tranquilly, aiming his gun languidly at the people near him, once in a while firing. She should have been disturbed by the act of violence, but she was not, oddly enough. Celeste was not a violent person, but being a nurse had its consequences, and she now barely flinched at the thought of death, the sight of blood. Death was just how the world worked, that was all. Although she knew death took a toll on people, sometimes even her. No one could just kill a man and not feel some remorse…right?

So as she watched this man shoot down people he did not even know randomly, she could not help but feel a twinge of fascination, as twisted as it was. Would it have made a difference and he had known about the people he was so randomly killing, known about their lives, known their names?

No, she had a feeling that to this man, although she could not see his face, it didn't matter. They were all the same to him, all ordinary, just like her, all pathetic in their normal lives. So when he turned to look at her, the gun raised and pointed at a place between her eyes, she did not attempt to prove that she was anything but ordinary, appearing, she was sure, to him like the others he had just killed, a girl in baggy clothes staring at him with blue eyes. But then, he did something she did not see coming, in all of her ordinary 26 years of life: he lowered the gun. She watched as he stared at her through that frozen mask, his head cocking slightly in an inquisitively manner as he regarded her. She stared back, even though she could not see his face. His hair reached to his shoulders, and in the light she could only tell that it was dirty blonde and messy, falling in small little waves. He wore a slightly faded purple suit, uncommon for a robbery, and underneath of it she could see an emerald vest, covering what she could tell was a lean and muscular figure. She felt a slight thrill go through her body for the man, and was startled by it. This man was a murderer, a criminal, and she felt attracted to him? She couldn't even see his face? But still, the way he could feel his eyes on her, searching, prodding through her average mind…

And then there was the sound of glass shattering, in their moment was ruined. Celeste looked over to see a man holding a shotgun bravely as he glared down the assailants, who dove to hide behind a nearby desk. Celeste could no longer see that masked man from her position, and was happy for it. The man with the shotgun fired at them more, asking them if they knew who they were robbing in whatnot. Celeste found she really couldn't pay attention. Her eyes were glued to the desk the masked man hid behind, waiting for him to emerge from behind it.

The man managed to shoot one of the robbers in the arm—not the one that had captured her interest—before he ran out of bullets, and a second later the purple suited assailant popped up over the desk to finish the man off. Celeste didn't even notice the old man stumble over near her before falling, bleeding, a foot away from her; she was too busy watching the men in clown masks pile up the bags of money they had stolen.

She was startled to see one of the clowns point his gun at the purple suited clown's head, and her breath caught as she awaited the inevitable shot. But then, right before her shocked blue eyes, a bus—a bright yellow school bus, burst through the wall behind him, running the man down and stopping with it's hatch an inch away from the purple suited clown and the bags of money. The back hatch to the bus opened and out jumped another clown, who quickly helped load the bags into the bus. Everything had gone according to plan, she could tell, and she remained unnoticed as usual until the man lying dying near her spoke up again, calling out to the thugs.

Celeste felt her body tense up when the purple suited clown paused in grabbing the bags, and turned back, the light playing across his blonde hair to reveal to her streaks of green blended into it as he slowly made his way--stalking--towards the man and, also, much to her terror, her. He stopped right next to the man, crouching down over him until he was towering over him, a looming presence that demanded attention. The man's eyes widened in fear, as he realized he had just called for his death to come.

She heard through her heart pounding in her ears the injured man ask what the clown believed in, and when he answered….It was the first time she would hear her voice, and she would—could—never forget it.

"I believe… that what ever doesn't kill you… only makes you…" His voice was dark, rough, utterly dripping with evil as he leaned in closer, his hand reaching up to the clown mask and, with a flourish, he ripped it off, revealing his face to her. She barely held in her gasp of horror, of shock, of astonishment. His face was covered in makeup, but not just any makeup: clown makeup. The white paint that covered every feature on his face was cracked and smeared, and his eyes…His eyes were black pits burning with hell fire, accentuated by the black circles painted around them. But it was his mouth, more than his hellish eyes, that shocked Celeste the most. His lips were painted blood red that extended beyond the normal point, reaching almost up to his ears in a large sinister grin in a path, she noticed in horror, that was followed based on scars, scars that extended form the corner of his mouth all the way up to his ears, puffy, ragged lines in his face that were both horrifying and intriguing to her at the same kind. This man, and his demented smile screamed abnormality, screamed the very opposite of everything she was. This man, this monster…

The man he was talking too whimpered as he leaned in, sinisterly close, to finish his sentence, drawing the pistol from his pocket. "Stranger." And with that, the old man who had so bravely tried to fight off the clowns, stop the robbery, got a bullet through his head. Celeste closed her eyes; she could no longer help it, when she saw the blood leaking from his head, saw some brain matter on the floor amongst the blood beneath his lifeless body. When she got the guts to open her eyes again the man with the clown face, the scars, was now standing, staring down at her with those dark hollow eyes. She felt herself shudder, her heart race and flutter frantically, but she did not looked away. That amused him, as his external smile widened as a real smile crossed his painted lips. He put the gun back in his pocket, still studying her, but even without the weapon she still felt fear inside of her, animalistic fear that was as strong as ever.

Her eyes followed his every move as he leaned down over her, some of his green tinted blonde hair falling across his forehead and getting stuck on the white makeup. He licked at the side of his lips with his tongue, touched those awful scars, and Celeste was reminded of a serpent examining it's prey, the poor little field mouse—her.

She shivered as his dark voice whispered to her, his tone holding the semblances of distorted glee meant to inspire fear. "Don't worry beautiful, you'll see me again." And then, as she stared one last time into his dark eyes, he began to cackle, the sound rattling off of the walls of the room, high pitched and distorted sounding, just like the man that it was coming from. His piercing laugh filled her skull, vibrating off the walls of her psyche and making them crumble, crash and crush her. Her ears stung from it, her mind burned from it. As darkness began to claim her vision, darkness as dark as his eyes, which were still watching her, she tried to find some sense of ordinary, some type of normalcy in the situation. There was no demented clown, there was no robbery…

But all the ordinary in her life was gone, lost in that one instant to her curiosity, and she fell into the darkness knowing that she could never get it back.

What do you think? Review please!