Hello, my loves! Hold your rotten fruit until you get to the bottom of this chapter, and then feel free to throw!

Disclaimer: As I'm sure is implied with every single YJ fanfiction author, I would never abandon such a perfect series. Never.


Anonymous didn't have issues with confronting her problems.

Really, she didn't. She was the kind of person to face anything that dared to come at her head-on with her fists clenched and a scowl on her face, so she was totally entitled to avoid this. Not that she was avoiding anything. Anonymous was just coming to the conclusion that this stupid rodeo was stupid and what the hell did she think she was doing, hanging with a bunch of wanna-be good guys?

Anonymous wasn't delusional. She knew she wasn't a good person.

Good people don't kill other people. At least, that's what she'd heard. Most of the guys she had killed deserved it. The world would totally thank her if she knew what she had casually removed from this planet of greedy, narrow-minded homo sapiens. Well, okay, maybe that wasn't entirely true, but they should. They would if they understood the entire story.

Not that Anonymous was volunteering to tell.

She didn't vent about her problems because she didn't have any problems. She was fine. Nothing could hurt her if she didn't let it, and nothing almost always meant people, and while there were six billion nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine other people on this planet, Anonymous was really good at not letting them hurt her. It wasn't avoidance if it kept her alive; it was evolution. And she was never going to be on the bottom of the food chain, not again, and if that meant that she had to remind those stupid teammates of hers that they weren't friends—and they weren't—then that was what she would do.

She didn't need them, anyway.


"I didn't picture you for the avoiding type."

In the time it took her to place the voice, Anonymous had a gun cocked and pointed at the stupid clown's face. She didn't pull the trigger, though, and she wasn't entirely certain why since she hated him—she did, and don't even think any different about it because he's just a stupid clown and she could kill him if she wanted to, she could—but she didn't let Jester in on her train of thought, just glared at him. His arms were crossed, and at any other time she would have scoffed at his need to were neon clothing at all times, but she was just wondering how anyone could look so intimidating in such ridiculous pants—she wondered how anyone in striped pants could ever look even remotely serious, but neon pink and orange?—and she realized that she was getting distracted again so she shifted her eyes to match his glare.

He smirked, a biting expression that would have taken her breath away if she didn't hate him so much.

"Do it."

Her trigger finger shook with the urge to take the dare—come on, Anonymous, shoot him—but she just scowled.

"Come on, I thought you were some big-shot, didn't feel anything, couldn't care less about killing someone you hated—" Anonymous didn't want to think about how horrible that word sounded, rolling off his lips like that—"Come on, shoot me. I won't move. Come on!"

He was shouting when he finally finished, arms spread out to completely bare his chest and give her a clear shot. "Do me the favor!"

Anonymous wasn't looking for a chance to lower her gun, she really wasn't, but she almost sighed in relief when he gave her the out. Giving him a glare that had made bigger and badder men than him quiver in their boots and a vicious smirk, she clicked on the safety, sticking it in her back pocket. Allowing her eyes a brief second to nonchalantly roam and take in their surroundings—typical alley in Gotham, dark and disgusting and empty when you needed it to be—before she looked at him, Anonymous caught the glint of triumph that appeared in his cobalt blue eyes for the briefest of seconds, and that made her want to pull the gun out and give him five rounds to the chest—onetwothreefourfive, just like that—but she refrained.

"I'm not into favors," she said, voice hard as she stuffed her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket—because who doesn't look like a boss in black leather?—and she flicked her eyes over him, trying to figure out why he was here—not that she cared.

He knew what she was doing, Anonymous could tell from the way his too-red lips betrayed a dark amusement, but Jester didn't call her out on it, which was… weird. In the past two weeks—okay, well maybe it had been a month since she'd met him, but she started ignoring them after two weeks—, both of them had taken every solitary opportunity to make the other squirm or explode or scowl, but here he was letting her off the hook. She crossed her arms. Asshole.

"What do you want?" Anonymous finally demanded, fingers twitching as she imagined teleporting him into the center of the sun. She wondered if normal people could get pissed off just by seeing an amused glint in an asshole's eye, or if she was just special.

He grinned at her, but it wasn't even remotely friendly. "You've been avoiding us. Psych wanted Muse to try and find you, but I convinced him that I was the better bet."

"Lucky me," she spat. "And I haven't been avoiding you."

"Oh," he feigned surprise. "Just haven't been getting the invites?" Jester snapped his fingers, seeming to remember something. "Oh, that's right, you teleport away every time one of us gets within twenty feet of you."

Anonymous was pretty certain that she couldn't be blamed for wanting to rip out his intestines through his nose and slowly strangle him with them. "Go to hell."

"I'd hate to take your reservation," he replied smoothly, not ruffled at all, and dammit, he was really starting to make her angry with this cool and calm act of his.

She couldn't think of a cutting comeback fast enough, so Anonymous settled for finishing this conversation. "And, for the record, I'm not on your little prep squad anymore. Decided the uniform clashed with my hair."

That should wipe the smirk of his stupid—

"I think you have a problem with confronting your problems," he said, looking way too smug as he leaned against the blood- and filth-stained brick beside him.

Oh, she could just kill him.

"I do not," Anonymous said waspishly, hands closing into tight fists as she glared at him.

"Yeah," Jester said sardonically, rolling his eyes. "Just like you hate everything."

"I do hate everything!"

Judging by the immediate smirk on his face, he definitely heard the way that her voice got high-pitched—not that it mattered, she wasn't lying, she was just flustered.

Taking a deep breath to calm down, Anonymous glared at him. "I don't have an avoidance issue, and I do hate everything."

"I think I know what your problem is," Jester said suddenly, standing up straight and woah, maybe Anonymous should have realized how close they'd gotten while arguing, but it was too late to step back now, so she just glared up at him.

"I don't have a problem, asshole."

He talked over her, not seeming to care that he was just a stupid idiot who had no idea what he was about to dive into. "I think that you think you're some horrible person—"

"I am not a horrible—"

"And that you've basically given up on yourself, which, fine, whatever, feel free—"

"Why the hell—"

"But the real problem is that you think that since you've done bad things, you can't do good things." Jester, for once, seemed totally serious, not mocking or idiotic or angry, just solemnly looking at her, and maybe it was supposed to mean something when she couldn't argue with him, but she just ignored the nagging feeling in her chest in favor or listening to his words so that she could think of a good argument. "And I get it, you're a selfish bitch, but to honestly think that you're so important, so damn special that you can't get better—" He was looking at her with a quiet intensity that was almost kind of scary. "—I have to call BS."

And maybe Anonymous's voice shook a little as she said, "You don't know anything about me."

And maybe her heart—no, not her literal one, that stupid place in her chest that sometimes hurt when she thought of her mother and loneliness and times like this—shook a little as he laughed breathily, not really amused. "I used to be you."

To anyone else, maybe that wouldn't have made sense, but in her mind it just, she doesn't know, clicked, and she got what he meant. He wasn't talking literally—because, wow, could you get any weirder than those implications?—no, he was saying that yeah, he'd killed people, and yeah, maybe some of them deserved, but yeah, he still felt bad about it, and maybe she did too, and maybe he was right, maybe that was why life felt like a constant parade of shit hitting the fan, and maybe she was crying but probably not because she didn't cry.

Coughing awkwardly and turning her face away, Anonymous not-so-subtly scrubbed her tear away while Jester watched, and it might not have surprised anyone else that he didn't mock her for it, but it surprised her. She looked at him warily, swallowing thickly and not missing the oddly sad look on his face.

"If you tell anyone about this—" She was trying to be gruff, but it came out all weak and feathery and—ew.

"What, and risk ruining my rep?" he scoffed, immediately turning back into the Jester she knew without a single hitch. "Whatever. Anyway, next meeting is tonight. You'll be there, yeah?"

She looks at him, really looks.

Maybe she should have realized this sooner, but Jester's life hasn't been a walk in the daisies. His dad is the Joker, and judging only by the scars she had seen on his hands and forearms and the few on his face and neck, he made Anonymous's rage issues look like an adjusted housewife. And she'd read in the newspapers, about how the Joker would force a little kid to kill people or torture them or watch, and it never occurred to her that it was the same kid, over and over and over again, or that it was the teen standing in front of her, but that made sense. It was Jester all along, and maybe she should have known that, but she didn't, and maybe she felt her heart soften a little because, yeah, Jester was a lot like her, but she sure as hell wasn't about to let him know she had given up just like that.

A roll of the eyes, scoffing breath. "Whatever."

His lips twitched in something that resembled amusement, and maybe it was progress that she didn't want to kill him.

Maybe.


A/N: And maybe it's plausible that I went into a fit of despair when I found out there wouldn't be a season 3, and maybe I refused to write anything YJ-related because it made me depressed. And maybe I got tons of reviews the week of my birthday, and maybe that made me cry and feel guilty and update. So. There. Have an explanation, and let's hope this week's finale isn't a letdown.

Okay. Let the rotten fruit fly!

(Also, my reviewers:asdfjakenaosdfnalwenraoswfnl asnfwhat? You actually like the way I write? What? Thanks so much for boosting my confidence! I love you all!)

Yours writerly,

WNF