Chapter Two : Make Me Bad "I want something to do, need to feel the sickness in you."

Ava left the office of Jonathan Crane with his eyes still fixed in her mind. Promiscuous was one thing, but that didn't require feeling. Not real feeling. Not that Ava really felt much. If she had to write a list of things she cared deeply about, it would have three bullets. Naomi, animals, and books. She had always been under the impression that she wasn't incredibly complex, nor had she ever been a romantic. Though academically she had succeeded, she hadn't put any effort into that either. Until there was a career in sarcasm available, Ava Garcia had nothing to do. All A's in school lended themselves to her options, but she just wasn't interested in any that were offered.

The 'conditions' her father was convinced she had were not conditions to her, but results of boredom. The exhibitionism that was on her rap sheet was not some subconscious desire for attention or thrill seeking. It was a product of boredom and one too many shots of Jack Daniels. She blushed, recalling. Something she did like, though, was violence. She kept this quiet, because people who like violence are often shut away in cold places with white walls. She did not want to be locked away. White didn't suit her. She didn't ever mention her interest to anyone. Not even to her dear sister, who knew every other detail of her life. She kept quiet, innocently, like someone with an unusual hobby. She treated it like someone would treat a coin collection or bad origami, as a thing to do on the weekends that she wasn't particularly proud of but not particularly ashamed of.

She liked violence, but she wasn't violent. Not when it wasn't necessary. She found herself surprised by her enjoyment when she'd witnessed two men fighting very near to her in a bar she'd snuck in to when she was 16. She heard the satisfying crunch of one man's bones beneath the other's fist, and it had made her heartbeat pick up. The resulting streak of crimson that ran down his lips had enticed her more.

She hadn't given a damn what the fight was about, whether the violence was justified, or if the man was ok. All she had noticed was how exciting it was to see the fight, and how it inspired her to do the same. She made it a habit to watch MMA fights and boxing, and any street or bar fight she happened past. She waited patiently for her own chance to do damage to someone who deserved it. In a city like Gotham, the opportunity had presented itself many times and would do so many times more.

Ava had let another day drain itself slowly since noon when she'd left Dr. Crane's. Now, at this time, the sky was a heavy navy color at its center, and the horizon was watercolored with magenta and orange. The sun slowly vacated the sky, slipping beneath Gotham City's edge of iron and concrete, leaving the city and its occupants in a night splotched with neons and car headlights. Ava didn't mind, she loved the nighttime. The car horns and sirens were familiar enough not to be intimidating. She was sitting in the iron chair of and outdoor cafe, waiting for nothing in particular. It occurred to her that it was time to go home, and reluctantly, she rose. She left money on the table, much more than she'd actually needed to pay for the small sandwich she'd purchased. If there was anyone that Ava was kind to, it was service employees.

She sauntered out of the small cafe, tugging her jacket around her as she basked in the chill of the night. Having made the decision to walk the mile back to the house she called home, she tucked her hair behind one ear and briskly walked down the side of the street. A light drizzle flickered through the clouds and pattered against the street, against her skin. She glanced up briefly, considering a cab. She didn't mind the rain, though. She doubted at this point that she would mind much of anything when she was having such a nice day. She was holding a cigarette between her teeth and raising a hand to light it when a heavy impact shoved her to a brick wall. A heavy impact that felt like a person and smelled like a bar. Blinded by surprise, she felt a gun against her abdomen before she registered that it was in the hand of a heavyset man with a hood and bad balance.
The man in question growled a stutter at her.

"Give me your money!" He slurred. Even pressed against the side of a building with a Glock 30 aimed at her vital organs, she rolled her eyes. In a flash of movement she'd dug her left heel into the instep of the man's right foot and twisted the gun out of his right hand with hers. She smacked the hard metal of the handgun against his jaw, splattering blood from his lip across his cheek. She kicked him square in the chest with her left leg, the force sending the man tumbling backwards into the vacant street, echoing a crack as his skull hit the asphalt. She tsked apologetically and knelt down, one knee on his chest. Still holding the man's gun, she hit the release and let the magazine clatter to the street next to his head. She popped out the bullet from the chamber as well, listening to the tinkling sound of it as it fell beside her. She smiled sympathetically at the barely conscious man as she stuck his gun in the back of the waistband of her jeans.

"Don't threaten people on the street, my friend. There's a chance they're just dying to beat the shit out of someone like you." She murmured. She very lightly ran her fingers across the man's cheek before closing her fist and driving it against his skull with enough force to render him unconscious. Her knuckles throbbed. She smiled, standing and walking away without a glance backwards.

Jonathan Crane sat in a leather chair by the wide glass window of his apartment, reading. He was reading a heavy psychology text, one he'd read before. It had the worn quality of anything that had been paged through many times, but it had also been kept so well that not a page was torn, not a corner frayed. His long fingers moved to turn a page when he saw something out of his window. A drunken man stumbling out of a bar with a handgun clutched tightly and an expression that displayed his fear like a neon light. The guy glanced in all directions before seeing something that apparently interested him. Jonathan was only mildly curious, but he did continue to watch the man from his chair. Hood pulled up over his shaved head, his hands trembled as he shoved some girl into a wall. Jonathan watched intently with interest, but no intention to intervene.

He could see the man shouting, but couldn't read his lips through the raindrops on the window pane. Judging from his trembling and rushed demeanor, this was a robbery, an act of urgency. The female with the gun pressed to her stomach appeared not only unafraid, but complacent. Her hair was white blonde and fell almost to her elbows. Jonathan leaned forward a fraction of an inch as he recognized her to be Ava Garcia. His eyebrows arched in surprise as she incapacitated the drunken idiot in a second's time. She was bent over him and obstructing Jonathan's view of the scene, but he saw her unload the man's handgun and knock him unconscious. She stood gracefully, stepping over the unconscious man and moving on the way she'd been going.

He leaned back in his chair, brow furrowed in thought. The whole exchange was startling, and would have been curious no matter what. After all, how many teenage girls could take down a 170-something pound adult male that quickly and brush it off? Either Ava Garcia had a karate-master doppelganger, or she was more than she pretended to be. Jonathan could easily accept the second option. There was something in her eyes that was wise and secretive, something that couldn't be hidden from someone like Jonathan Crane. He mused over this slowly, wondering what to think about her.

'I like her.' Scarecrow piped up.

'Of course you do.' Crane snapped.

'What? How many barely-legal chicks do you know that do that?'

'None. I don't assosciate with children.'

'Would you call that a child?' Scarecrow snorted.

Jonathan paused.

'She looked like she was having fun.' Scarecrow said quietly.

'You'd be the expert on fun, I suppose.' Jonathan replied bitterly.

'I'm just sayin', Jonny, maybe our girl's got more goin' on than we thought she did.'

'I wouldn't be surprised.'

'We should get closer.' Scarecrow proposed.

'You just want to have sex with her.'

'True. But wouldn't you love to know what's goin' on in that chick's mind?'

'I do think she seems...intruiging.'

'And you know she's hot.'

'She's attractive.'

'It's settled.'

Shutting the door to her bedroom, Ava slid to her knees beside her bed. Neatly, she reached underneath and took out a cedar box, pulling it onto her lap. Pushing the lid off, she tugged the stranger's Glock out of the waistband of her jeans and dropped it in. It fell amongst several switchblades, a shard of a broken beer bottle, a torn wallet, and the magazine from another gun. She smiled fondly at her collection before closing the box and shoving it back under her bed. Standing and scratching the back of her head, she stretched, back arching. The face of the clock beside her bed told her that it was 11 p.m. and that she was too tired for her own good. She began pulling her clothes off, tossing them to the ground and letting herself fall back into the covers of her bed in only a pair of black panties.

She rolled over into her blankets and slapped a button on the panel beside her bed, dousing the room in darkness. The highlights of her body under the sheets were illuminated only by the neon of the alarm on the nightstand as she curled tighter against herself, drifting slowly, fading, until she was pulled under and was asleep.

In her subconcious mind, images were pulled from smoke and she shivered under her sheets at the chill of them. The blue of the doctor's eyes cracked thickly like arctic ice shifting under her feet as she lost her grip and stumbled down. His hands clamped against her biceps, her bare back scraping against the rough brick of a wall. Her head bent back involuntarily as she laughed, lips split wide in a grin at the pressure of his nails digging into her soft skin. Fading in and out, Ava felt at once fierce lips against hers and the raw chill of scratches down her back. Kissing back in a violent haste, she barely opened her eyes to see that she was being held in a vicelike grip by a man she couldn't see. She knew, though, who it was. It wasn't in her to care. She twisted her hands in his hair, passionate and hard, and as she felt something sharp,
she jolted up in her bed, sheets aside, panting.

A thought ran through her mind. Did I just dream about my shrink? Someone I've just met? Her face was burning. She fell back against her pillows, closing her eyes and pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead. She wasn't surprised. He was gorgeous and intelligent, and he gave her a slight feeling of unease.
It was enticing, Ava would be the first to acknowlege that. But how old was he? What would the mayor think? Her lips twisted up at the corners. Not like she gave a good goddamn. She could imagine the headlines now. The absolute scandal that would wrack pretentious Gotham socialites upon learning that the mayor's oldest daughter hooked up with the city's top psychologist. She laughed because it sounded so ridiculous that anyone could care about something so entirely irrelevant, but there was Gotham for you. The wealthy need to be entertained. Nuzzling her cheek into her pillow, Ava squeezed her eyes shut and slipped away into the darkness of real sleep.

She awoke in the damp grass, four feet from a busy highway. Blinking slowly, she sat up. Her spine popped as she stretched her sleepy muscles, squinting in the bright light of day. It wasn't the first time. She groaned at herself and stood, finding some comfort in the fact that she had dressed herself before venturing outside in her sleep state. There had been times when she'd forgotten to do that and woken up on the neighbor's porch swing in panties and an undershirt. Cracking her knuckles, she glanced right, then left, then right, and sprinted across the asphalt. Missing the last car by several seconds, she stumbled to a stop, giggling, hands on her knees. She stood straight and cracked her neck, glancing at the sun to guess at the time. She assumed it was about one in the afternoon.

"Fuck. What did I do this time?" She murmured, wandering alongside the highway towards her house. The next turn on the right off the highway lead into the woods and the mansion that was nestled there. Private and flashy all at the same time. Her hands skimmed the pockets of the jacket and jeans, finding in her back left pocket a shard of glass from what looked like a beer bottle and appeared to have dried blood on it. She raised an eyebrow and slipped it back into her pocket, making a face and trekking onward. Rocks crunched beneath her boots as she got closer to the Garcia house. She yawned and ran her fingers through her hair, patting down her pockets once more to realize she didn't have a key on her. Similarly, she realized that the mayor wouldn't be home,
and nor would her sister. She groaned softly to herself, thinking that it was just her luck.

She came up to the house, sighing as she wandered around the yard to the back of the house. Dragging a chair from the patio, she aligned it with one of the lower story windows and hoisted herself up, stiff muscles aching as she grasped the dirty top of the window frame. She strained for a moment before swinging a leg up onto the sloped roof above the window and rolling herself up on it.
Refusing to look down, she crawled on her knees to her window. Knowing it was unlocked, she slipped her fingers under the small crack and forced it open. She'd taken the screen out long ago, and she crawled inside.

Rolling onto her bed from the window, she fell flat, letting her arms fall beside her. She sighed heavily, chest rising slowly. She wished she knew what she did at night.