Author's Note: Don't own, never will, just dreaming for now.
P.S. Adria is pronounced "ADD-ree-ah"
The sky was a dismal grey in Gotham City… Not that this was unusual for Gotham. But today was exceptional. The clouds hung like a pall over the skyscrapers, slowly creeping along in a march that hinted at things to come. Things were changing, there was fear in the air.
Packing away her sleek Canon camera, Adria Kane heaved a sigh. The day had been a solemn one for the whole city. Harvey Dent's memorial service had taken place under a threatening veil of thunderclouds, passing by overhead. And as a contributing photographer to The Gotham Sun, one of the smaller, regional rags, she was sent to cover every angle. Though the ceremony had been a hopeful one, speaking of the day when Dent's dreams would be realized, and Gotham would be a shining city once again, Adria's photographs captured nothing but fear and apprehension. The Joker might be locked away forever in Arkham Asylum, but the Batman, Gotham's other up-and-coming cop killer, was still out there somewhere.
Adria hailed a cab back to the Sun's offices. She thought about the full slate of stories she needed to compile when she got back. She needed to find the archival stock photographs to accompany an editorial about the Batman… some nut who insisted on his innocence… Not that Adria necessarily believed the Batman was a cop killer. As someone who had not only studied, but lived the news for nearly five years now, she knew that killing police officers just didn't fit his profile. But that judgement wasn't for her to say. Her job was to translate the news to a visual, not give her opinion on it. Then there was the special section on Gotham's Fashion Week… She would need to remember to charge her camera batteries, as she would be spending the next several days tent-hopping and checking out the newest couture fads. Yes, even for a paper as tiny as The Gotham Sun, there was always much to do.
Passing through the shadows of various immense high-rises, Adria began to doze. All the newspapers had been running full-tilt for ages, as every time someone blinked, something newsworthy was happening. Unfortunately, it was usually a murder, an arson, a bank robbery, but sometimes something good caught everyone by surprise. Adria had been on the scene the night the SWAT teams hauled the Joker off to Arkham. She hadn't got there in time for any winning shots, but she still felt the chill in the air as she watched the sirens wailing into the distance. Hopefully, with one major criminal behind bars, she could finally catch up on her mountains of work.
As her cab pulled up to the curb at the offices of The Gotham Sun, Adria fished through her purse for the fare. The cabbie tipped his hat grimly as she paid him, and she stepped onto the dismal grey sidewalk, strewn with the remnants of the morning's news. It had begun to drizzle. Days like today made her wonder inwardly why she had left sunny Texas in the first place. Adria's father was an oil baron in the southwest, but she had forsaken the life of posh dinner parties and political fundraisers to attend college in the east. She soon found herself accepting internships in and around Gotham City, and, against her better judgement, had fallen in love with the place. Thanks to her connections, she managed to secure a decent apartment on the better side of town, if "decent" meant larger than a closet, and "good side of town" meant less than one murder or mugging a week. But she refused to give in to the allure of Daddy's Money, and preferred to make her own way.
Adria's office, if you could call it that, was situated on the ninth floor. It consisted of a cramped cubicle with photographs taped, tacked, or strewn over every available surface. Her computer screen was bordered with "bat-sightings," her walls were plastered with political rallies and gala-parties, and her inbox was overflowing with memos reminding her to do the ten thousand things she still needed to do, before she could go home for the night. And there was a single pink Post-It note from her partner that said, in scrawling script "…And don't forget to put the cover sheet on your TPS reports!" Adria grinned. At least someone still had a sense of humor in this town.
"Well, well, well. Look who's back!" Adria looked up. Her partner, Stephen Nolan was standing in the entrance to her tiny workspace, leaning precariously against the rickety wall and grinning gleefully. "I thought I'd lost you down there."
"No, Stephen. But you always seem to forget that the best angle isn't always the one you're twisting with your words." Adria cracked a smile as well. Stephen adopted a look of mock surprise and hurt.
"Ouch. Pretty lady, dangerous attitude." He stood straight, brushing some imaginary dust from his neatly pressed pants. "Listen, I know you have a lot of work to do, but I'm gonna need those pictures as soon as possible, to take down to the editor."
"I'll have them in the morning." Adria sighed, gesturing to the sea of papers already on her desk. "I'll upload them and email them to you as soon as I'm done with my abstract for Fashion Week."
"Good deal." Stephen's smile had returned. "I'll see you tomorrow. Don't stay up too late." And with that he was gone. Adria turned to her work. At this rate, it was going to be a long night.
As the weak coppery sunlight sank lower and lower down the gleaming, glassy skyscrapers, Adria pressed on. She didn't pause to look up as her coworkers slowly filed out for the day, passing around her in a steady stream. She was used to working later than most. As one of only three photographers for the Sun, she was charged with photographing everything from wrecked cars to the Mayor's wedding, to the cat stuck up a tree in the city park. But the work was rewarding, even if it did prove disturbing on some days.
The natural light was rapidly bleeding out of the ninth floor windows, and Adria switched on her desk lamp. In the glow of her computer screen, she caught the briefest glimpse of someone passing by. That should be the last of them, she figured, unless she had miscounted. The janitors might come by tonight, keep her company. With a heaving sigh, the whole building began to fall silent, and the big printing presses downstairs ground to a halt for the night. At least Adria was nearly done with her work. Perhaps another hour of editing her shots for the day, tweaking the exposure, cutting out the blurry ones, photoshopping out the occasional sunbeam as it broke through the clouds, and shone on a pane of glass. Another set of footsteps passed by her cubicle. These ones seemed to pause momentarily, but the owner of them said nothing, and eventually passed by. Adria secretly hoped it was not her boss, stopping to admonish her for working so late into the evening, but when the footsteps passed on, she sighed with relief. Though she knew of the dangers posed by riding the Gotham subway late at night, Adria was more than willing to take that risk, if it meant finishing her work on time. After all, with the Joker, as well as half the city's crime-bosses behind bars, it would only be a petty, and potentially stupid thief that would try to attack someone on the subway today. And Adria was confident in her aim with a mace can. And perhaps in a misguided way, she still felt safer knowing the Batman was on the loose somewhere. After all, though everyone else was saying he killed those cops, Adria knew that he had also had a hand in both the Joker and the Mob's downfall. And she, therefore, refused to believe he could be that bad. At length, with a yawn and a stretch, Adria switched off her desk lamp and fished her purse and camera bag from under the large, U-shaped desk. As she swung her chair around to make sure she had missed nothing for tomorrow on the back side of her desk, she stopped suddenly. Lying there, in the dim light, obvious among the stacks of black and white photographs, memos, and clippings, was a single, red-backed playing card. Her hair began to stand on end, as she reached for it and flipped it over.
It was a Joker.