I fell inlove with a murderer and a psychopath. And yet that did not make me love him any less. I am madly in love with The Joker. Yes, The Joker. The terrorizer of Gotham City, arch nemesis to Batman. And I had started out so good.
We met on only my third mission with The Justice League. People say that the only reason I got in was because I was dating Superman but honestly I'm pretty kick ass. My name is Melissa Grimes, but I'm known better as Dragonfly, newest member of The Justice League. The day I met the love of my life started out as any normal day on The Watchtower. J'onn was watching the monitors, Clark and Batman were bickering about something or other, Hawkgirl and John were flirting and Wally and I were having an eating contest.
"You're going down!" He shouted through mouthfuls of sausage pizza.
"In your dreams!" I responded laughing. Wally and I had grown up together and I was still the only one who could match his enormous appetite.
"Could you two grow up?" Batman stopped his arguing with Clark to yell at me and Wally.
"Calm down Batsy we're just having fun!" Wally said after swallowing the last of his pizza.
"Well maybe you should stop having fun and make yourselves useful." Batman growled. Then with a swish of his cape, he stormed off. I walked over to Clark and hooked my arm in his.
"What crawled up his butt and died?" I muttered. The awkward silence that followed made it clear that he did not find it as funny as I did. Every time I made a joke at his expense, Clark wouldn't laugh. It was weird.
"He's having a rough day." He said seriously. When he wasn't looking, I rolled my eyes.
"Bad news from Gotham City." J'onn said floating down from the monitor station just in time to save me from my awkward situation. Saved by a crisis.
"What's going on?" Clark said immediately switching to Superman mode.
"The Joker and Harley Quinn have escaped from Arkham Asylum."
"Isn't he Batman's pain in the ass?" Hawkgirl asked angrily.
"Anything that's his problem is our problem." Clark growled. Hawkgirl backed off, raising her hands in an "I surrender" motion. As hard as it is to see to outsiders, anyone who knew Clark knew that he cared for the Dark Knight. He was very protective of him. It was one of the things I liked about him. He loved his team.
"Speaking of Batman," John questioned moving closer to Hawkgirl, "where did he go?"
"He stormed off after yelling at me and Mel." Wally said not moving from the table with the pizza. He was still finishing some of it off.
"Well someone better go find him because we're not handling the clown and his psycho girlfriend without him." Hawkgirl demanded to nods of approval from the others, me included.
"I'm right here." The Dark Knight in question said appearing out of the shadows, "Glad to know I'm needed." You could practically hear his smirk.
"Well now we've got everyone here, let's go!" Clark shouted as he opened the hatch out of the tower. John quickly put a green bubble around Wally and Batman. I laughed to myself as I imagined those two stuck together for the entire flight. The rest of us flew on to Gotham City.
We landed in the middle of town, right next to the obnoxiously large Wayne Enterprises building.
"God look at that thing!" Hawkgirl scoffed, "I bet Bruce Wayne is such a pretentious asshole. He probably doesn't even care about this city."
I could see Clark bite his tongue. It looked like he knew something we didn't. I also could've sworn he stole a glance at Batman, but I don't think it meant anything. He was always glancing over at Batman.
"I can sense that The Joker and Harley Quinn are at Arkham Asylum." J'onn said interrupting the slightly awkward moment.
"Arkham?" Batman questioned, tearing his eyes away from Clark, "but they just escaped from there!"
"Perhaps the police have caught them without our assistance?" J'onn asked, clearly oblivious to the shitty state of Gotham's police force. The entire team burst into laughter.
"We should get over there to see what's going on." Superman said calming us down. We all agreed and made our way to the historic Arkham Asylum, home to the greatest supervillains of all time. Until they inevitably escaped.
When we got there, The Joker was making no effort to hide his presence. He was standing outside of the asylum letting all of the prisoners out.
"Stop right there Joker." Batman shouted. Every prisoner looked up to see Batman hovering in the Bat-Plane. The rest of us were hiding at the bottom of the hill the asylum was built on.
"Ooh Batsy!" The Joker said waving joyfully, "Lovely to see you! I was wondering when you were going to show up. I have missed you so."
I was intrigued by his appearance. He was wearing a neat looking purple suit which was tastefully offset by messy green hair. Then he ran his chalk white hands through that hair, pushing it back. As much as I hated to think it, he looked kind of…sexy. I was so distracted by his appearance that I didn't notice the spandex-clad girl clinging on to his arm. She was holding on so tight I was worried his arm might fall off. With the way he glared at her from the corner of his eye I could tell he was not amused by it.
"Mel come on!" Wally whispered. Everyone else had already charged toward the onslaught of maniacs and I had been transfixed by The Joker. There was no way finding this psychopath attractive was healthy. I followed Wally up the hill. Well I followed a red and yellow streak up the hill.
"Try not to hurt any of them!" Superman shouted over the cacophony. Always the Boy Scout.
"Just try to get them back inside safely!" Batman agreed. I was going to help do just that when a pair of rough, calloused hands covered my mouth with a rag, blindfolded me, and dragged me away.
