Another oneshot I wrote when I was twelve, but this one is angsty. Enjoy if you can, review if you feel like it… this IS supposed to be RECREATION, for heaven's sakes… I'm not gonna try and guilt you into anything. But it would make me happy.
The Waiting Game
She hated that time.
Most rejoiced at the sight of the bat signal in the sky, thinking that somewhere, Batman was keeping Gotham safe. The only thing it meant to Grace was that Harvey might be out there somewhere.
"This is where I belong now. The realm of chance… Whether you live or die, whether you're good or bad… it's all arbitrary."
She still kept his picture, but it was now only a bitter reminder of the unblemished past; she could see no hope for the future. She pressed it into her chest, ignoring the hard corners, tears pouring down her face. The figure of the bat in the clouds blurred, and everything for a second seemed to have a shadowy double.
"Be safe, Harvey. It doesn't have to be like this…" she whispered.
* * * * *
The coin spiraled through the air to land again in his palm. Bad heads. Two-Face's frame shook with a sigh as he tucked the coin back in his pocket. He had been thinking of Grace, hoping against hope that there might be some chance to see her again, but the coin vetoed it.
The blasted bat signal again! Idly, Two-Face wondered who had escaped as he turned the coin over and over in his pocket, then his thoughts turned again to someone else again.
"Are you asleep, Grace?" he murmured, staring out the window as rain cascaded down the pane. "I hope that you are. Only happy dreams to you, my love."
* * * * *
"Harley, if you don't quit that I'm going to gas you the next time I get out! Some of us are trying to sleep!"
"Jus' a minute, Professor Crane!" Harley continued to bounce rapidly up and down on her bed, which she had dragged over to the window. "I thought I heard Mistah J go by, I wanna see if the bat beacon is up yet! But I can't - quite - see -"
There! On her highest bounce yet, a flicker of the golden circle on the overcast showed through the bars. Satisfied, Harley flopped down on her bed. "Good luck, puddin'!"
* * * * *
The Joker splashed through the puddles, laughing. He knew the Dork Knight would be after him soon - he had seen the spotlight in the sky - but he did not particularly care. He would have been captured eventually anyway, and he liked it to be with style. A pity he hadn't had time to rig up any little surprises for his nemesis; he still fondly remembered the cream pie in a box.
"Ha! Ha!"
All law-abiding citizens and some not of Gotham shivered and drew their curtains closer as the Joker's laugh echoed through the storm.
* * * * *
The bat signal again. Alice Pleasance let the corner of her curtain fall, not sure what to feel.
CRASH!
Another clap of thunder sent her to cower in the armchair. She had always hated thunder. As she wrapped her arms around herself, a memory rose unbidden to the surface of her mind.
It was one of the worst thunderstorms Gotham had seen in years, coming unexpectedly in the middle of the day. Alice clamped her hands over her ears and shut her eyes at another crash, wishing that she had not come into work today.
"Alice?" She had not noticed Jervis until he nervously touched her shoulder. "What's wrong?"
"I just hate thunder. It's so loud and -" A boom startled her, and she found herself leaning into Jervis, his arm around her shoulders. She flushed slightly, as did he, but neither moved much.
He had stayed with her until the storm died down, talking to take her mind off it. "How could I have been so blind?" she whispered, burying her face in her hands. "Why did things go so wrong…?"
* * * * *
"Still she haunts me, phantom-wise, Alice moving under skies, never seen by waking eyes…"
His dark blue eyes fixed blankly on the gray ceiling of his cell, Jervis Tetch recited the closing poem to himself slowly. He was only interrupted by a commotion from Harley and Jonathan down the hall, then a crash of thunder alerted him to the storm for the first time. He sat up, drawing his knees to his chest and resting his chin on his hands. Alice had hated thunder. There was the time he had found her almost cowering over her desk, frightened by a summer storm; he still trembled at the memory of her head on his chest and feeling her heartbeat against his own.
He frowned slightly at remembering Dr. Bartholomew's insistence that he didn't love Alice, he was merely obsessed with her because of coincidence of name and appearance. Didn't love Alice…!
"If I don't love her," he said softly, half to himself, half arguing with an imaginary accuser, "why can't I stop thinking about her? Why do I want to protect her? Why does the very mention of her name cause tremors through my soul…?" Jonathan had accused him of being melodramatic, but it was just the way he felt.
"You're probably awake somewhere, Alice," he said softly, reaching a hand forward in the air as if to touch a vision, then letting it fall. "I hope you aren't frightened… I don't want you to be unhappy, my Alice, my darling Alice…"
* * * * *
Jonathan Crane covered his ears with his thin pillow, but it did little to drown out the noise of the storm and the other noise he was trying to block out; wings.
Just my luck my cell is the only one with an outside overhang over the window. Every single bird within a mile, it seemed to him, crowded and clamored outside his window in a storm.
He bit his lip to hold back a cry as loud caws began to mix with the beat of wings. A crow or raven had found their way to the shelter and was chasing the others away with harsh calls. He had always hated black birds… and, as he was alone, he might as well admit he was deadly afraid of them. He would never tell the doctors, of course, or request to be moved to a different cell; the Master of Fear, afraid? He would be the laughingstock of Gotham.
He welcomed the next crash of thunder that drowned out the birds.
* * * * *
"Thanks, Jeanette!"
Another satisfied customer. Smiling, Jeanette Cameron watched the young woman bend her head into the storm and head down the street, loaded down with a waterproof parcel containing a white dress and her head full of advice for her wedding. Two people in love is a beautiful thing…
Flipping her sign from OPEN to CLOSED, Jeanette looked up through the glass and saw the bat signal bright on the underside of the wet clouds. She stood for another minute studying it, her face pensive, then bent to pet Scorn, one of her adopted cats, that had come rubbing against her legs.
"No," she observed to the cat, "couldn't be the Professor. I'd know. Pity… I'd like to see him again."
The flash of lightning reflected off Witch's thoughtful eyes.
* * * * *
The Riddler paced his cell. Back and forth. Back and forth.
HOW DID HE DO IT?
The doctors had resorted to medication to make him sleep since his last stint out of Arkham, but they had forgotten it that night. He barely restrained himself from screaming as he ran the details over in his mind again. There was no way! He couldn't live not knowing like this… he had always known everything he needed or wanted to since…
"Don't ask stupid questions, Ed." "I don't know." "Why don't you ask someone else?" "I can't tell you that." "If you need to ask, you can't know."
Nobody had ever told him anything when he was younger - he had always had to figure things out by himself. And he had gotten good at it, becoming obsessed with finding the answers to all questions that presented themselves to him.
His legs giving out, he collapsed on his cot, staring at the ceiling and not even noticing the storm.
* * * * *
Poison Ivy gritted her teeth in sympathetic pain as she heard a tree branch crack in the storm outside. To her, it was if she could hear screams of pain ringing from the tortured wood.
"Poor baby, poor child," she whispered. Her heart ached to soothe the plant, but she had been unable to find an opportunity to escape for more than a month. Clasping her hands over her ears to block out the noise of splintering wood, memories came thick and fast to play out their parts in her life behind her eyes.
William. He had seemed so perfect, to good to be true for a plain wallflower of seventeen with bushy red hair that she always hid behind and no fashion sense. Well, he had been. They had dated for two years… he had even hinted that he would marry her. She had given herself to him completely. Then, when she was going on twenty, the illness… nothing severe, but in the tests it had turned up.
"What?" She stared numbly at the doctor. "What do you mean?"
"You are infertile, Miss Isley. Unable to have children." The doctor looked at her sympathetically. "I am sorry."
It was barely two weeks after that she had found William with another girl. She had little memory of that, and for about a month afterwards; she knew, in a third-person sort of way, that she had thrown everything that she cared about in her apartment into a bag, all of her cash, and driven randomly for almost four hours. She had a sharp picture of her white-knuckled hands on the steering wheel, the road dark ahead of her, and hearing her own voice mindlessly repeating "I'm a failure, a failure…"
She had come close to driving off a cliff, but something caused her to cling to life, even though everything she had ever wanted or cared about in the world was gone. She ended up in a town somewhere south of Gotham, working at a tree nursery. That was where she discovered her affinity with plants, and they became the children she could never have.
As the next flash of thunder came, Pamela soothed her rose. "At least I've been able to take care of you, darling," she murmured. "I kept you from those horrible bulldozers, and that awful fire, and I didn't let the white coats take you away, to someone who couldn't care for you like me. Perhaps I'm not a total failure…"
* * * * *
Selina Kyle lay on her couch, staring at the TV screen and absentmindedly stroking Nefertiti, Isis' sister. The Joker had escaped from Arkham again, and the screen was showing the bat signal in the sky.
"Magnificent," whispered Selina, watching as the dark figure of Batman flew past the scope of the camera. He never failed to take her breath away.
Isis approached and pawed at her hand, then turned and ran to the closet that held - only she and her mistress knew - the Catwoman costume, to stop and look daringly at her with tail swishing.
"Sorry, darling," the woman murmured, standing and scooping her up. "Kitty has to stay in tonight." Her voice was laden with bitterness. "The Cave door's been shut up. Plenty of milk, and a warm fire, but I'll always miss the Wild Woods…"
Isis meowed sympathetically, the sound almost drowned out by the thunder.
* * * * *
Batman swore silently as he scanned the dark streets from his perch on a rooftop. He could not see the Joker yet, but the psychotic clown's laugh was echoing through the storm.
"Catch me if you can, Batsy!"
Swinging to the opposite building, Batman wondered for an instant what and who the Joker had been before he became the Joker. Most of the others still were at least partially like their former selves - everyone still called Jonathan Crane 'Professor', Harley liked to psychoanalyze her fellow inmates (with the exception of her puddin') and the Mad Hatter still answered to 'Jervis' (the Joker's reaction to 'Jack' or 'Mr. Napier' was "Who?")
Landing on the rooftop and blinking the rain out of his eyes, Batman spotted the Joker running down the street, jumping in the puddles like a five-year-old. Swiftly, he leapt from overhang to overhang until he reached the street and set off in pursuit.
The chase was long; the Joker was experienced, and used every trick, whether it was in the book or not, to evade him. When he finally ran him down, it was in a reasonably good part of town, and he happened to glance up at one of the windows as he handcuffed the Joker.
The blonde woman looking out let the curtain fall quickly, and Batman's heart caught in his throat. Selina?
The Joker moaned faintly as he came to, and Batman was reminded of duty. Someday I'll come back, Selina, he promised silently to the curtain, where the outline of a woman, waiting, was clear against the pale fabric. Just wait. Don't do anything foolish.
Selina leant against the window and watched him go, then turned and sank into her chair by the gas fire, her heart aching. I'll wait, she thought bitterly. Because that's all you can really do, isn't it?… play the waiting game.
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