Thanks to EmberlyneRiddle, MyChemicalNightmare, and kykyxstandler for their reviews. I promise there is some romance in this chapter (finally!). I just wanted to lay down the plot before I got into the details ;) I appreciate any suggestions as to what direction this story should go in or anything else you have to say. Thanks and enjoy!

I spent hours just sitting on the bed. My mind was racing at first. Thoughts about Vinny, Danny, and the Joker swirled in my head. I could only think for so long, though. Soon I began to get bored. I did everything humanly possible to avoid boredom. I made lists of pointless things in my head, I tried to pry open the bars on the window, I drummed out the beats for old show tunes on the door in hopes of annoying whoever the hell was out there- I did everything and anything! Soon I ran out of things to do and resigned to my bed where I stared counted the dots in the ceiling tiles. I was just getting into it when I heard the lock click on the door and saw it swing open. The Joker was standing there in the doorway. He wasn't quite as scary as the first time I saw him, but he still had the scars and the makeup and the hair and the suit that made me shiver in fear no matter what mood he was in.

He walked into the room and shut the door firmly behind him. I said my prayers as he walked towards me. He stood directly over the bed, smiled, and reached into his pocket to pull out… a needle and thread? He giggled maniac when he saw my surprised expression. "What were you expecting me to pull out of my pocket-ah?" he was still laughing at his own sick joke when I saw him reach into his pocket again, but this time he came up with a knife. It had a straight edge and a pointy tip that looked like it could kill a person without any problem. The relief I had felt mere seconds ago vanished with the sight of the blade.

He inched closer to me. This time I was sitting on the bed- I saw no way I could get away, no way I could even attempt to protect myself. I decided that I would spend my final minutes with dignity. I did not shrink away from him. I did not scream even though my throat was on fire, and I did not cry even though there were tears burning in my eyes. I didn't even make a sound when he came to the bed and straddled me, pinning my body under his weight. It was only when he began to lift up my shirt that fought back. I squirmed under his body and tried to free my arms or legs, but he had full control now.

I was surprised when he only lifted up my shirt a little to reveal my wound by my right hip. Then he put the knife to my skin, leaned in and whispered, "This might, ah, hurt a little…" One by one he placed the blade under a stitch in my cut and sliced the threads. He pulled each of the threads out of my skin and ran his fingers over the wound. I couldn't help but shiver when his cold gloves hit my skin. My movement seemed to bring him back to reality.

"Now here's just a little something to say, ah, that you belong to me now," he said. My eyes widened in fear ad he brought the blade back to my skin. This time he cut- deep. I screamed in pain as he carved me, and he sat there on top of me, laughing like a maniac. When he was done, he stood up to admire his handiwork. I looked down and saw what he had done. There was a lot of blood, but two dark lines could be seen. The first was the horizontal wound I had been given by the mugger in the alley. The Joker had split it open again so that the scar was just as new as before. Under this, he had craved a long line that curved up at the end. I couldn't tell what it was at first, but then I realized that he had carved the letter "J" into my skin.

"Do you like it? It's one of my best carvings yet, except for my face, of course! Ha!" he let out a quick laugh before looking at me for my response. "Go to hell," was all I could manage, but under the circumstances I felt it conveyed my feelings for him in the quickest way possible. A dark shadow fell over his face, and he stopped laughing. "Ya know, I don't think it really looks that good. I could really work on my, ah, handwriting couldn't I? Maybe, on your face?"

I swallowed hard and looked at him, weighing my options. I had a number of things I wanted to say to him, but I correctly deduced that most of them would get me killed. So for once I tried to please him. "No, it's great, I promise, you don't need to do it anymore!" I begged. He smiled and said, "Now that's better! Why can't we all just get along, Lacey?"

He stood up and started to pace around the room, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. My eyes followed him, but my brain was paying attention to more important things such as the amount of blood I was losing from the J he had cut into me. I tried to slow the bleeding by putting pressure on it, but it just hurt the wound even more. I let out a gasp of pain and the Joker turned to look at me. He seemed to have a quick internal battle with his conscience before he groaned and sat down on the bed, patting his knee. I was confused as to what to do- did he seriously want me to drag my bleeding body over to his side of the bed so I could sit on his fricken knee? He rolled his eyes at the quizzical look I gave him and reached over to pull my body onto his lap. Once he did that he reached into his seemingly limitless coat pocket and pulled out a bottle of antiseptic, a needle and thread, and some bandages. He got to work cleaning my wound and stitching me up. He worked slowly and surprisingly he was…gentle. I felt myself slowly drifting away, only kept awake by the pain of my wound. I realized that I hadn't slept in almost twenty four hours. That, combined with the fact that I hadn't had anything to eat or drink in who knows how long made me lose consciousness right then and there. I drifted in and out of dreams and reality. One minute I was home with Vinny, the next I was being rolled off of the Joker's legs and softly laid on the bed. I was hugging Vinny, and then I felt something cold being laid over me, probably a bedsheet. One minute I was dreaming I was kissing Vinny, and the next I felt someone's lips touch my own. I kept my eyes closed and didn't react. I desperately wished I was still dreaming, but I knew that someone had actually kissed me. And the only person who was in this room was the Joker. I stayed still even through this realization. He obviously thought I was asleep, because I had never seen this side of him. This kiss was real- I could feel it. And it was one of the best kisses I had ever received. My stomach dropped but my body shivered in delight at the same time. I wished that I could kiss him back, that I could open my eyes and hold him and kiss him back- what was I thinking? Why the hell was I fantasizing about kissing this psychopathic murderer? What was wrong with me? I knew the answer to all of these questions. There was something undeniably attractive about him, there was no denying that, but it was something deeper. I loved the way he had care for my wounds, even though he was the one who had inflicted him. The way that he could go from hot to cold in one second flat, the way that he kept me guessing. And as to what was wrong with me? I was mugged, stabbed, kidnapped, stitched up, almost killed, discovered that my boyfriend's best friend works for a murderer, unstitched, cut, and re-stitched, all without food or water in a 24 hour period. There were obviously a lot of things wrong with me right now, and quite frankly, getting kissed by a criminally insane clown didn't make my top five on the list.

I felt him pull away from the kiss and leave the room, locking the door behind him. I sat up immediately, my mind reeling. I had thought about all of the reasons why I let him kiss me- but I hadn't even begun to ask why he had done it in the first place.