Queen of Hearts

"The Joker has zero empathy." –Heath Ledger

"He doesn't care about himself at all." –Lindy Hemming

A/N: So here it is. And sorry it took so bloody long. "Butcher, Baker, Tailor" was meant as a simple, fable-like, symmetrical, self-contained entity in three parts. The sequel ballooned out of proportion—now it's like a graphic novel in prose, with multiple points of view (I try never to use more than one point of view in a single story, so I broke all of my own rules here). There's a cast of, well, if not thousands, more than I normally write, and I've never killed so many people on the page in my life. It's brutal, and a strange feeling having the power over your creations that they can murder each other in back alleys over trifles. You have the power to snuff out the lives of your characters. I don't show graphic violence in most of my work, so this is a real departure. I also ended up writing for many of the Bat-verse regulars, which I was leery about, but it was nonetheless an interesting exercise.

Sorry, Kendra, I know you wanted this to be Jokachel, and I did try, and it did start out that way. There are hints of that, but that would be telling. Some readers said Cécile was good enough for a standalone character, others did not agree. We'll see what happens as there are long stretches of this where the Joker isn't even around.

Thank you to Kendra Luehr and KatxValentine for their help and support. An extra-special thanks goes to Lunachick35 who read the entirety of this fic and beta-ed her butt off in helping me get it into tip-top shape. A round of applause for her, ladies and gentlemen. Fifty-six pages and 28,300 words later . . . We pick up immediately after "Butcher, Baker, Tailor" left off. Here—we—go.

I.

Marie-Cécile Blandine rubbed the back of her neck, bruised and sore. She was kneeling on the floor of Duplessis' bakery in the rue St. Denis, right where he had left her. The bell at the door dinged, and Duplessis himself stumbled onto the floor next to her. "Cécile, Cécile!" the overweight baker panted, crawling toward her. He looked up, sniffing the air like a rat, sweat pouring over his large upper lip. The bakery swirled with the smell of fresh bread, and the cold, stale air from outside. It had begun to snow. "Where is he?"

Cécile got unsteadily to her feet. She kept her eyes on the floor, on the stack of American dollars lying there amidst the trash and the dead autumn leaves. "I don't know, Duplessis," she murmured.

The French poured forth from the excitable baker. "La vache! What has he done? What has he done?" He moved as quickly as his bulk allowed toward the counter, where he stepped in the remains of a chocolate éclair.

Cécile rubbed her neck. "He didn't steal anything." It was as if she was realizing it at the same moment. He'd drawn a knife on her, he'd threatened to burn her face with a cigarette, he'd trashed the bakery, but the Joker was gone. For the last time.

"He made me call you," said Duplessis, picking up the white baker's hat at his feet. "First he drove the customers out, then he dragged me to the phone, then threw me out . . . there's no excuse! I'm surprised he didn't bomb it. I'm going to call the police right now. I don't care if he isn't Canadian, he's going to Canadian prison . . ."

"Just . . . shut up!" Cécile snapped. Her head was aching.

Duplessis stared at her. "What's wrong with you, hein? Don't you see what your friend did to my shop?"

Cécile lashed out at him. "He's not my friend!" She bent surreptitiously to pick up the American dollars in a handkerchief—the American dollars she'd shunned and swore to him she'd spit on. "I'm gonna go, okay?"

"What's that?" Duplessis asked, looking at the handkerchief.

"Nothing," said Cécile. "Call the police if you want . . ." She hadn't even the energy to finish her thought. She gave a half-hearted wave and left, Duplessis staring at her with distrust.

"Papa!" Cécile was trembling, the stolen money deep in the pocket of her skirt. "Papa! You won't believe . . ." What was she going to tell him? What was she going to tell the police if Duplessis made good with his threat? That her father had catered to an absolute cafard because he felt a sense of moral equanimity? Would they want to look through the books? What if he'd done more than robbed banks, terrorized people? What if he'd killed?

"Papa!" Cécile cried. She moved quickly through the workshop, to her father's bedroom. Where was he? He'd been taking a nap when she'd gotten the phone call. The bed was rumpled, unmade. She moved to the bathroom and knocked on the closed door. "Papa!" Snow hit the windows outside with a sickening slush. Somewhere an ambulance pinponpinponpinponned across traffic. "Papa, it's your daughter," said Cécile, her throat closing up in exhaustion. "I know you can't say anything, so just flush the toilet or something to let me know you're in there."

There was silence, and for a prickly moment Cécile considered the possibility that her father had gone somewhere. She had no idea where he had gone—had he been kidnapped, then? "Oh, who wants an old, mute tailor anyway?" She hammered on the door. He wasn't really that old. He was not even sixty. She shoved her narrow shoulder into the door. It gave way.

Bernard Blandine was leaned against the far corner of the bathroom, stiff as bombazine. Cécile repressed a cry. Was this a joke? Had someone replaced her father with a mannequin? She touched him. He was still warm. And very, very dead.