If there was a hell on Earth, Jim Gordon thought his life was it. Barbra and Sarah were hysterical, jumping at every shadow, convinced Joker was back. Jimmy had gotten worse, not letting Chloe out of his sight and screaming when she was. Their house wasn't safe anymore. Nothing was safe. So when Bruce showed up at his office offering to move his family, permanently, into a high security, fully decorated penthouse apartment free of charge he nearly jumped for joy. "If you guys want, I can have you moved in before sunset today."

"That would be wonderful Mr. Wayne. But there's something I want to ask you."

"Yes?"

"Are you doing this for my family, or for Chloe?"

"Aren't they the same?" Jim glared at Bruce. "Commissioner, in all honesty I feel responsible for this mess. If I hadn't invited Chloe to the party or to the club she wouldn't be Joker's newest target."

"Trust me, the way she is, it would have happened eventually. There's one other thing Bruce, Chloe said she and Joker talked at the club, but she won't say what about. Do you know?"

"He said they were alike. He wanted to know about her mother. I don't know much about Chloe, but I know enough about her to know when someone's pushing her buttons-"

"Chloe's had a very, very troubled past. But I can't tell you more, if she wants you to know she'll let you."

"Fair enough. Now when would you like to move into that apartment?"



The apartment was huge to say the least, definitely bigger than their old place. Bruce had even made to so that Chloe and Jimmy's room had a connecting door. Barbra was ecstatic over the high security and the safety of the neighborhood. Sarah was happy to have a full on pink princess room. Jimmy wouldn't stop telling Chloe over and over about all the cool comic book stuff in his room. Chloe laughed at the boy before tickling him on the floor of their new living room, Sarah soon joining in and the two children quickly overpowering the young woman. Jim smiled to see his family resembling normal once again. There was a flash behind him and he turned to see Barbra holding a camera. He laughed and went to go answer the knock at the door. "Bruce! You should have been here earlier, Sarah and Jimmy just tickled Chloe to death."

"Damn, wish I could have seen that. Me and Alfred brought dinner though." Jim ushered the two men in and they returned to the living room to find Chloe still being tickled by the children. Chloe noticed Bruce and blushed, pushing the kids off of her and standing up, straightening out her clothes before hugging Bruce. "Chloe, can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Yeah sure Bruce." She grabbed his hand and led him to Jim's new study, noticing jimmy's small form following them. She stopped outside the door and knelt so she was at Jimmy's eye level. "Jay, Bruce and I have to talk for a bit, I'll be right inside this room, do you think you can wait out here for us?"

Jimmy looked up at her with watery grey eyes but nodded, sitting down in front of the door way. Chloe smiled sadly at him before showing Bruce in a closing the door. "So what's up?"

"I wanted to see how you were doing."

"I'm fine. I'm pissed off beyond all belief and am damn close to showing that fucking clown what it's like to have a homicidal maniac chasing his all over Gotham."



"You let Batman deal with that."

"Like dealt with him before? Fuck Bruce, Batman can't and won't kill. You can't lock Joker up, he's proven that. He's always three steps ahead of us. Joker needs to die and Batman's not going to do it."

"Chloe you're just stressed right now-"

"Damn fucking right I'm stressed! Dad wants to send me Jimmy and Sarah out to California to live with our Aunt but Barbra won't split up the family. Jimmy won't let me out of his sight, I can barely take a piss by myself half the time. Sarah goes into screaming fits anytime she sees something that remotely resembles a clown. Barbra's ask me and Dad to teach her how to shoot and to get a gun for the house. My family is a step away from shambles and it's all thanks to him."

"And what about you?"

"Me! God what about me. This is all my fault. Sometimes…" Chloe leaned back against the door, looking down at the floor, not daring to meet Bruce's eyes. "Sometimes I just want to let him have me. Just give in so my family can have some peace. They wanted me here to help make things better but I've only made them worse. I'm destroying them."

"No you're not." Bruce said softly wrapping his arms around her. "He's destroying them."

"Because of me. If he'd never met me, he might have threatened, but never would have done this."



"But do you really think handing yourself over to him would help anything? It wouldn't stop his killings or even stop him from tormenting your family. He'd use you against them, break them even more."

"Don't you think I know that! I know it would change nothing, but I'll do anything to protect the people I love. Even if it mean condemning myself to hell."

"He got to you at the club, didn't he?" Bruce let her go and stepped back. "What was it, asking about your mother or saying you two were alike?"

"What does it matter?"

"Chloe I want to help you, but I can't if you leave me in the dark." So this is how it feels.

"Bruce if you want to stay in my life you're going to drop this now." Bruce looked into Chloe's cold hard stare and knew it was a lost cause.

"Alright fine. But I want you to know that I'm here for you if you need anything. And please call me before you do anything stupid."

"You mean like hand myself over to clown-boy?"

"Why do you call him that?"

"I know he doesn't like it."

Bruce laughed and the two left the study feeling surprisingly better than they had before. The instant the door was open Jimmy had attached himself to Chloe's side, glaring at Bruce which had only made the two adults laugh. They joined the others for dinner and between Jimmy and Sarah's petty argument and Alfred's embarrassing stories of Bruce's childhood, they felt like a 

real family together. "So now that you all know about every one of my indiscretions," Bruce said as they tucked away a dessert of strawberries and cream, "what about you Chloe? Any embarrassing stories about you?"

A look passed between Jim and Barbra but Chloe just smiled, a devious glint in her eye. "You remember about eight years ago when the science wing at Lower Gotham High burned down?"

"Are you saying you did that?"

"Well it was actually an accident. I wanted to just cause some fire damage to my teacher's classroom, but it got out of hand."

"And why did you want to damage his classroom?"

"'Cause he was a Nazi." Chloe said simply, shrugging it off.

"You are crazy Chloe."

"Yeah but that's why you love me."

Life for the Gordon family slowly began to turn back to normal after that. Jimmy still couldn't sleep through the night, but had at least stopped clinging to Chloe throughout the whole day and had returned back to school with Sarah. Their ride to school may have a police escort now, but it made everybody feel a little better. Jim and Chloe were back to spending their days at city hall and all too quickly the monotony being under constant surveillance started getting to Chloe. She was allowed to go to work, the store, and Bruce's penthouse for the occasional dinner, they didn't like going out anymore, that was it. Every other waking moment she had was spent at 

home with Barbra and the kids, cleaning, cooking, and breaking up fights. She loved them to death but she needed a break! Fuck, you'd think being stalked by a deranged, bomb loving, homicidal maniac would be more exciting. Chloe thought one night lying on her bed staring out her window at the lights of Gotham. It was somewhere between two and three in the morning and Jimmy had already woken up and gone back to sleep, so she had nothing to do. Absolutely nothing. She could sleep, but for some reason she felt wired. I don't remember having an energy drink recently, maybe this is Joker's latest plane. To torture me with insomnia. The idea of sneaking out for a walk was looking more than appealing right now. It wouldn't be too hard, the night security guard normally took a nap right about this time. Why do you even know that? What does it matter, that guy's sound asleep right now. I could slip right by him and-Chloe stopped, she gotten off her bed and started pulling on clothes, no. That's what he wants. He wants me to feel safe again. He wants me to be careless. Chloe slipped back into bed and stared out the window again, but this time she noticed something. Across the street from their building was one of the entrances to Gotham's version of Central Park, and standing by the gate that was never locked, half hidden in shadows was a figure with a face white as a skull. See, with him you can never let your guard down. Chloe debated on opening the window and throwing something at him but decided that sleeping sounded so much better.

The next day found Jim Gordon at his desk playing telephone tag with every police station in the city. He was trying to see if any of them had any inkling as to what Joker might be up to. If there were any strange robberies, or anything slightly unusual going on. The whole city was anxious, Joker had been too quiet lately; everybody was just waiting for the explosions to start. Like the chaos brought on by Joker had become normalcy for Gotham. Jim didn't like it, the mayor didn't like it. Hell even the mob didn't like it! So he was almost relieved when he received a text 

message on his cell from an anonymous caller that simply said: TURN ON YOUR TV. Jim immediately switched on the small television he'd put in the office knowing how much Joker loved his air time. It was another one of Joker's videos, not really a surprise, but what was strange was it was just him, no hostages or anything. Just Joker talking.

"Good morning Gotham, I know you've all missed our little games so I've got a new one for us. If Chloe Gordon," He held up a candid picture of Chloe, "isn't at 250 52nd Street by noon today I will blow up one of Gotham's many elementary schools. She must be alive and relatively unharmed. Oh and Chloe, if you show and decide to pull another one of your lovely escaping acts, I will blow up not one, but three schools. If any of the police try to stop her than any school, day care, orphanage, and playground could become a lovely crater."

The video cut off and Jim glanced at the clock, it was 11:45. He dashed out of his office and saw that Chloe was already gone. He ran out of the building and towards where he knew she parked her bike, calling for back up from his old unit. Chloe, however was already gone. Foregoing even putting on her helmet, she darted through traffic at deadly speeds, ran through stop signs and red lights and did everything she could to get halfway across town in less than fifteen minutes. In there was a back of her mind there was a little voice telling her how funny it's be if a school got blown up because she got killed on the ride over, but she squashed it down and pushed the bike harder. Her eyes were watering from the wind, her blue hair stung her face when it whipped her cheeks and she swore a bug just flew up her nose, but she just kept going and after what seemed like an eternity she was there. The building was that same as it was when Dent tried to kill her family here, destroyed, demolished, and slightly scented with gasoline. And yet somehow there were still walls and a second story. She'd never been there but had heard Jimmy screaming about it enough times to know where to go. Chloe headed up to the second level, not seeing Joker but 

knowing her was there. "This is where you killed Rachel." She spoke knowing he was listening. Her voice was calm, but sad. "This is where the dirty cops took her, like you planned, and told her that her friends were going to decide who lived or died. And then you lied to them, knowing Batman would go after Rachel, you switched the addresses so Rachel would burn and Dent would suffer."

Joker appeared from behind a pillar, a few of his henchmen with him. Chloe saw but kept on talking. "And then you sent a halve crazed, grief ridden, half burnt Dent, hell bent on revenge, out into the city to punish those responsible for Rachel's death. He should have killed you first but somehow you escaped his bullets. And so he brought my family here, so my dad could watch as Dent killed Jimmy. But he didn't. Batman killed Dent."

"Batman doesn't kill."

"I think it was inadvertently."

"Why are you telling me this? I don't need to be told things I already know."

"You said my anger towards you was irrational. But it's not. If you hadn't of killed Rachel, I would only hate you as much as every other citizen in Gotham. I wouldn't want to kill you."

"Is that what you came here to do? Kill me?" Joker started circling her. Chloe just stood there, staring straight ahead.

"No. I want to kill you, but I don't think I actually could. Maybe if I were younger, but now. Now I could never kill somebody."

"So you're turning yourself over to me. Just like that?"



"Just like that."

"And no running away. I'd so hate for those little kiddies to burn."

He was in front of her again, that smirk plastered on his face. She looked at him with tired eyes. "I came to Gotham to stop running, but all I've been doing since I got here is running from you. I'm so tired of running, it only causes problems." At that moment his smile almost seemed like sincere happiness. Like he was actually human. Then Chloe felt something hit the back of her head and plunged into darkness.

She knew he was there. She knew he was there and she didn't care one bit. She'd woken on a cold cement floor facing a wall. She could hear Joker breathing behind her but didn't feel like looking at him. Chloe knew he was getting impatient, she knew she was just making him mad, but none of it seemed important. He was tapping his foot on the ground, letting her know that he knew she was awake. He wanted her to scream, to cry, to beg, and to plead. And she wouldn't even look at him. She heard his footsteps come towards her and when he was right behind her…

"Come little children I'll take thee away,

Into a land of enchantment.

Come little children the time's come to play,

Here in my garden of magic."

Her voice was quiet and cracking slightly. Joker stood behind her, stunned. "What are you doing?"

"Come little children the time's drawing near,



Halloween night is waning."

"Stop it!" He kicked her in the side. She was supposed to be cowering! "Stop singing!"

"Come little children ride with me tonight,

Tonight's not a night for abstaining."

He grabbed her dragging her up and slamming her into the wall. Her head bounced with a sickening thud and he slapped her across the face. "I said stop!"

"Come little children now follow me home,

Not a one of you need worry."

It was a punch to the face this time, followed by two more to the gut. The air rushed out of her lungs and she was slammed back again. She gathered what breath she could and sang louder.

"Come little children the time's come to roam,

Come follow me now, please hurry."

"I said stop it you stupid bitch!" He just kept hitting her and hitting her. Chloe's voice waivered with the blows but never stopped.

"Come little children there's magic to see,

Here in my garden of mystery.

Come little children into my abode,"



His hands wrapped around her throat, cutting off her air and stopping her singing. She finally looked at him, looked into his eyes. She saw rage and confusion. Joker saw nothing in hers just blank pools of blue. It wasn't the Chloe he knew and wanted to torment. He shook her again. "See that wasn't so hard. When you listen to me, good things will happen. But when you don't, I have to hurt this pretty little face of yours."

Chloe gathered what little dying strength she had and spit blood in his face. Joker slapped her again and threw her to the floor with a growl. Chloe gasped for air and slowly sat herself up, spitting out more blood. Joker turned and started to leave. Just as he was about to close the door behind him she started up again.

"Tomorrow you all will be history." He whipped back around to see her smiling at him, the bruises already forming on her face and blood dribbling down her chin. He turned back around and slammed the door shut. He slammed it shut on her laughter.