Chapter 1: The unfairness of being
"I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!" – Alice from Alice in Wonderland
It was unusually cold outside for September, even at 5:30 in the morning. A thick night's fog had barely even begun to roll back as morning's rays began to climb over the horizon. In a small townhouse in the suburbs of Gotham, a blonde woman sat in her pale blue robe, warming her hands around a mug of extra hot Earl Gray tea. If life had been more kind, she would have been preparing for her wedding today, but life had not been kind to Alice Pleasance.
She stared out over her little kitchen, bare of everything but the essentials. Though her father had insisted she was on her own as long as she stayed in the big city, her mother would sneak her care packages, and she was in desperate need of a mercy visit. Jobs were hard to hold down in Gotham when you were connected to a mad man, despite the fact that she had not heard a whisper from Jervis since he was first sent to Arkham.
Billy had gone the same way of everything else.
At first he was thrilled to have her back safe and sound and life had been a blessing. She kept her job at Wayne Enterprises for the next six months while she and Billy happily planned a cool autumn wedding. Her wealthy father, who had been so disapproving of his only daughter moving to Gotham, was jovial at the announcement of her engagement and had promised the couple a lovely home and a wedding befitting of his little princess. But somehow, in the blink of an eye, it all went horribly wrong.
With the Joker and the Penguin failing to excite the masses with their newest escapades, word of a new psycho in the city had caught like wildfire, and had stayed in the papers for over a year as Jervis began to prove to the public he was no flash in the pan. That was the point when the happy couple went from being minor celebrities to side show oddities.
Newspapers struggling to keep reader's interest, plagued their phones day and night, and some mornings Alice had even stumbled upon a reporter hiding in her bushes. Alice was no Veronica Vreeland, and had no way to use all this attention to her advantage. When Alice had finished clearing up the last of Jervis' files, her job security vanished. The wedding was postponed as she turned her attention to finding a new job. Things might have been ok, but the playful heckling that Billy had started receiving at work climaxed, and Billy suddenly found himself out of a job.
From that point on, after failed interviews and job leads on both ends, the wedding was pushed back yet another year until things settled down, but things never settled down. She could remember the way the man she loved changed before her eyes that following year, and became bitter and unhappy. They got into arguments constantly that ended in tears, because he blamed her for destroying his career and ultimately his life. The fact that her father had been supporting them both throughout all of this only added to the humiliation. Billy had halfheartedly agreed to postpone the wedding just one more year, but four months into it Alice was left with a note and a broken heart. She couldn't hate him for leaving. In her heart she knew that it would be much the same if the situations were reversed.
Her father had begged her to come home, but something within her refused to give up. Most people in her position blamed the Batman, but Alice knew and never let herself forget that Batman was the hero that day. Her merciful nature wouldn't even let her really blame Jervis Tetch for everything that had happened. During her time as his secretary, he had always treated her with respect. She had always felt sorry for his loneliness. After seeing the way Gotham turned on its own, it was no surprise to her that Jervis Tetch had eventually snapped.
Alice had made her mind up over coffee that morning, that her crazy life could not get any crazier, and following suit she would do something equally crazy to try and right it all in her mind…she would visit Jervis Tetch in Arkham.
The very statement was utter madness. Did she really want to see him? The answer was mostly no, but that small portion of yes that rattled around in her brain kept the scheme going. Alice couldn't even be sure what she would ask him or if she even had any real questions. She was torn between the memory of the kind hearted employer that had always let her take extra long lunch breaks, and the mad man who had accosted her in the middle of the night. Could they really be the same person? Did men really go that bad that quick?
The coffee cup made a very judgmental thud as she rested it on the table's surface with little grace. She stood up from the table with a childish sort of determination, trying to ignore the absurdity of what she was about to attempt. Arkham wouldn't let her in so easily, so Alice knew she had to enlist the help of the only man she had ever met that had any sort of power in this city. Today, she would try and visit the office of Bruce Wayne.