Angeline opened her eyes to dim sunlight shining in through the window. She had spent all night with him. They couldn't separate themselves. She'd never needed anybody as much as she needed him. It was the most blissful night she had ever experienced. She had fallen asleep, exhausted, in his arms.

She knew she was alone the very instant she opened her eyes. She didn't feel his arms around her anymore and she didn't feel his warmth next to her. She sighed, drawing the sheets up around herself, covering her body, and looked groggily around the room. Gone. He was gone. Of course. She glanced down at the side of the bed where he should have been and found a package. She carefully opened the box. Lying at the top was a note, scrawled in sloppy sporadic handwriting.

"Good Morning,

Sorry to fuck and run, Angel, but I had some things to do, people to see. You know the drill, right?

I found this for you. I liked the color and thought it would suit you. If you don't like it, well, you'll just have to go naked then won't you? Remember your dress met with an unfortunate accident last night.

Oh and- sorry about the bruises. And you might want to take a shower or something. You've got traces of me all over you, sweetness.

Don't wait up for me.

-jOkEr"

She folded the note back up and set it aside. She carefully lifted the orange tissue paper. Lying inside the box was a beautiful satin dress. Purple of course. On top of the dress was a single wilting red rose. She picked up the rose carefully, afraid of ruining it, and twirled it in her fingers. Its petals were drooping and it was fragile, but it was still a pretty rose all the same. She lifted it to her nose and inhaled its scent. She sighed happily, setting the rose back down. She stood up and was met with a horrible aching stiffness in her back and muscles. That must be what he meant by the bruises. She pulled the dress out of the box and pulled it over herself. It fit like a glove. The soft fabric hung down past her knees, and, of course, was low cut in the front with thin straps on her shoulders. She smiled at the dress and his attempt to be nice and sweet to her. The gesture wasn't romantic in the traditional sense, but it was really something from him and she was very touched.

She pulled the dress off of herself, cussing under her breath from the stiffness of her body, and laid it back down on the bed. She felt like she desperately needed a hot shower, but wondered if his shower even worked. She walked to the door she remembered him dragging her through yesterday. She half expected it to be locked, but when she turned the knob she was able to open the door. She walked inside the bathroom and reached up on her toes to turn the light on. She happened to turn her head towards the cracked mirror and caught sight of herself. She gasped. Her face was still bruised, had several swollen red cuts on it, and had his make-up smeared all over. She looked like she should be dead.

She glanced down at her body in the light. She found more make-up smudged on her and bruises all over. She felt hot tears stinging her eyes. She was a mess, a horrible fucking mess. She disgusted her own self to look at. She couldn't bear look at herself another second and quickly turned her face away from the mirror, swallowing a lump in her throat.

She knew exactly why she looked the way she did. This was the price she was paying to be with him. This was part of the price she would have to continue to pay if she stayed with him. She knew she would probably always look like this if she stayed. She knew he would always be dangerous to her and he'd never be able to stop hurting her like this. He couldn't control that part of himself. She knew he was always going to be exactly who he was now. Nothing would ever change him.

She always thought that women who were abused and looked a lot like she did deserved what they got for the most part. It was their fault for staying in a relationship like that. They could just leave and it would all stop. They didn't need to stay in a relationship like that. She always thought about how she would never in a million years be one of those people. She would never stand by and let herself be senselessly degraded and beat like that. Yet here she stood. She felt this was completely different. She wasn't one of those sorry little cowardly bitches. This was something she never expected to happen. She knew her choices and she knew she could run and leave this all behind if she wanted, but it was this or the life she had been "living" for the last year.

She started shaking, suddenly feeling so cold standing there. She wrapped her arms around herself and walked over to the tub and turned the faucet. To her surprise it actually worked. She turned it to hot and climbed inside, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. She let the hot water run all over her and closed her eyes, letting her mind wander.

Her thoughts drifted to Eric. She saw him clearly; his sweet smile, his eyes. She remembered, just for a moment, what it was like to be with him. Eric never once hurt her and she knew if he was still alive he never would have. He was too gentle and caring. He lived to make her happy and would have done anything for her. Then her thoughts threw the vivid, horrible image of Eric lying dead on the street. Like a movie, she saw herself holding the pipe in her hands and killing him herself. It wasn't like she hadn't replayed this image in her mind every single day since she had done it, but it caused her to start shaking more.

Her thoughts shifted again to herself. She saw the same image she had seen in the mirror every day for the last year. The way her face had changed, the way she had changed. She faked everything. She was good at it, but she saw the differences that nobody else around her seemed to notice. How she never smiled the same smile anymore. How she always looked like she just wasn't there. She had lived the last year just going through the dull motions of her life. She got up, went to work, came home, and then went to bed. Every night she would cry herself to sleep and wish for death. Every morning she would wake up and cry a little because she was still alive, because she had to endure another pointless fucking day. She was alive, but she hadn't lived for almost a year, till the day she met him. He hadn't even known her, but he had known her well enough to see through her disguise on the surface.

Then her thoughts drifted again and she saw him. She saw Joker standing in the vault smiling at her, ready to kill her. She saw him holding the knife in her mouth, throwing her head into the floor, squeezing her jaw, choking her, and threatening to slice her face with the broken glass. Then she saw that look she had seen in his eyes yesterday when they were together. She saw that almost sad and innocent side to him that came out so rarely and quickly that if you blinked you would probably miss it. She felt his kisses, and his touch. She still yearned to be with him, even though she knew most people in their right mind wouldn't. She wasn't crazy, but she wasn't perfect either.

She realized that she was a monster and she never deserved Eric in the first place. Nobody who could kill their only love in cold blood the way she had deserved a man like Eric. She thought of Joker, a monster too in his own way, but not entirely. He was only a monster on the surface. Deep down he was alone, just like her. She saw that look in his eyes, the scars on his body and his face, and she knew she didn't see him as a monster. No, not a monster at all. She saw something so much more. She saw something almost beautiful. She knew beyond all reasonable doubt that she could never run away from this, from him. He deserved a chance at his own version of happiness. She could give him that much for as long as he wanted it. She could endure the bruises and the pain. She could do that for him; for them. They could help each other. They needed each other. She would give him what little happiness she could and he would always be there to make her feel alive.

Her thoughts drifted yet again to the memory of her last short kiss with Eric. She lengthened the kiss in her mind, speaking to him like he was there with her. I'm sorry, Eric. I'm so sorry for what I did to you. You didn't deserve it. I didn't deserve you. I'll always love you, but I have to let you go now. I can't go on living the way I have been. It's a lie to live like that and I know what I'm doing seems crazy, but it's not. I can make him happy, Eric. I can be exactly what he needs me to be. I can't leave. I care about him too much already; I'm in too deep to ever leave on my own. Please trust me on this. I have to say good-bye to you. I can't keep dwelling on you, on us. Forgive me. I'm so sorry. Good-bye.

She felt him leave her mind, smiling at her when their kiss finished. After all of this time she had finally accepted what she had done and finally let Eric go. She felt an immense weight being lifted from her while at the same time a part of her died. She heard a gurgling, choking noise and she supposed she was crying. Her mind was so deep in thought she wasn't sure what was real and what was in her mind. Joker's face suddenly came back into her mind, as close and as vivid as ever. She looked at his face and she gladly accepted her fate. She accepted the constant danger she would always be in with him. She accepted her new life, her new purpose. She was reborn. She saw his face so close to hers, looking angry and…concerned? She felt his hands, grasped tightly on both sides of her face, shaking her, and she thought that she might have heard him calling to her before everything around her suddenly went black.


He walked up to the door and placed his ear against it. He couldn't hear anything. Perfect. She was probably still blissfully fast asleep. That made this a whole hell of a lot easier for him. He would go in and do what needed to be done. He took out his key and shoved it into the lock, turning it. He opened up the door and pulled a knife out of his coat pocket as he glided into the room and locked the door behind him.

He turned to the bed where he expected to see Angeline. He cocked his head to the side. All he saw was the opened box he had left her earlier, the rose, and the dress laying on the bed. There was a sheet piled on the floor in front of the bed.

"Hide and seek huh? Oh goody," he laughed, clutching his knife tighter in his hand. "I love a good game. Come out; come out, wherever you are!"

He had woken up that morning with her in his arms. He had been an idiot and let his guard down for her. He had let his emotions take over while he made love to her, or rather fucked her all night. He had been caught off guard and the feeling he had when he woke to her in his arms was such a sickeningly good feeling that both scared and disgusted him. Well, he just couldn't live like that. He wouldn't. He had let go of her, threw his clothes on and left as fast as he could. He needed to get the hell out and clear his head. He couldn't think in there with her. She clouded his mind.

He walked along the cold, dark streets of Gotham in the shadows. He was pissed. First, at himself for letting a woman make him feel that way, and then at her for knowingly doing that to him. Feelings like love and happiness weren't him. They just didn't fit. He didn't do love. Love was for naïve little shits who didn't know the first fucking thing about the real world. It was a made up bull shit emotion people used express something they didn't fully understand, to express an emotion that was so fake and so over-used. Love was as real as fucking Santa Claus. Happiness? Sure, he had his own version of the emotion. Happiness, to him, was the last terrified scream of someone before he slit their fucking throat. Happiness was the final cowardly look of fear he got from someone right before they took their final worthless breath. Happiness, to him, was chaos.

The words she had spoken to him while he held her kept ringing through his head like a broken record that he desperately wanted to smash against a wall to make it stop. "I'm yours, you know." He knew it was true the moment it came out of her perfect lips. He didn't doubt her. With his guard down, with her naked in his arms, he had just accepted it without thinking. She was his and there was no changing that. There was no going back.

Now, standing alone on the dark street without her, without looking into her eyes, he knew he couldn't just accept the truth. He couldn't have her. He couldn't feel for her. He couldn't want her. He had to put an end to it. This was all just supposed to be a fucking game. He had just intended to break her down and then kill her when she was at her lowest, when he could see some genuine fear in her sad blue eyes. He had never intended for it to come to this, for her to fall for him, for her to force these fucking feelings out of him. He didn't know how it had come to this. No. It had to stop. Today. The game was over. He would kill her and all of this would be nothing but a fucking memory.

He made up his mind then when he was far from her. With his mind made he would just have to follow through with it. Killing people was easy and killing her would be no different. He was just doing what needed to be done, after all. He was just finishing what he had started. He thought, perhaps, that it would be best if she was expecting him to come back to her happy. That way he might at least get the satisfaction of seeing some sort shock and betrayal in her eyes when he killed her. If he was going to do this then why not make it fun?

He had walked along the streets until he came upon a little boutique with a window display. He glanced inside and a sexy satin number jumped out him. The lovely color caught his eye and he decided he would take it for her. He had ruined her dress after all. He smashed the glass and walked in, his feet crunching down on top of the broken glass. He made his best guess on size and took a dress with him. He started back to his home and came across a window box with roses in it. Girls like flowers, right? Of course they do. He reached out and plucked a random rose from the box and picked up his pace. He made it home before the sun came up. He quickly penned a small note, found a box, and placed the dress and rose inside it. He set the box on the bed beside her and left. He didn't want to be there when she woke up. He needed to be far away. He'd come back in a few hours when all of this would be over.

He had waited a few hours after the sun had come up to go back for her. He had figured she'd be up and waiting eagerly for him, wearing her dress to thank him and expecting him to come back some sort of fucking reformed Don Juan Loverboy; yet here he stood and she was gone. Then he heard her. He heard her gurgled sobs from the bathroom. He turned swiftly on his heels and walked briskly for the door. He kicked the door open and she didn't even bother to turn her head to look at him.

"Surprise!" he yelled, his arms spread out in the air hoping to scare her.

She stood in the shower, steamy hot water pouring down over her skin. Even with the water he could see the tears streaming out of her eyes. She stood staring blankly ahead, her eyes glazed. Her sobs sounded like she was choking on air, desperately trying to breathe. His surprise expression changed to a puzzled one. He stared for a moment before he spoke again.

"Angel?" he questioned. "What the hell are you doing? What's wrong with you?"

He watched her wrap her arms tighter around herself, clutching at herself like she was going to fall to pieces. Her teeth were chattering even in the warmth of the water and her expression didn't change one bit. He couldn't be positively sure, but he thought she wasn't even blinking. Had she snapped and gone fucking crazy while he was gone?

He walked closer to her and raised his voice. "Angeline!"

Still nothing, not even a damn blink.

He walked right into her line of sight, thoroughly annoyed by her ignoring him. He let out a frustrated growl before he spoke. "Angeline! Look at me when I fucking talk to you! I'm right in front of you, you're not blind! Look at me!"

Still nothing. Her disgusting choking sobs grew worse with her shaking. He'd never seen anyone like this before and he had seen a lot of people at their absolute disgusting worst. This was a first.

He gripped his knife in his hand, raising it slightly in her direction. "I don't, uh, I don't know what kind of fucking game you're playing with me right now, but I don't like it. I thought we agreed you'd play by my rules, Angel. You're being rude. I'm trying to fucking kill you and you're not even looking at me. You're taking all the fun out of this, y'know? Plus, uh, I'd rather not go the Psycho route. Too cliché, y'know? Come on, Angeline! Fucking look at me! You're pissing me off!"

Then he saw her legs begin to shake and buckle at the knees as she started to sway. He absently let the knife slip from his fingers and drop to the floor. He raised both of his hands to her face, gripping both sides firmly, shaking her.

"Angel! Angel, look at me! What is going on? What's wrong with you, huh? Come on! Damnit! Look at me! Angeline, please!"

Then he watched, so confused and helpless, as her eyes rolled back into her head and the choking sobs stopped dead. She started to fall backwards, but he quickly wrapped his arms around her and caught her. He pulled her, dripping wet, from the shower. He was turning to set her down when he slipped in the water and fell back against a wall, pulling her down against him. He briefly cursed himself for not investing in a shower curtain or one of those fucking bath mats. He was right back where he had started. She lay collapsed in his arms again. He eyed his knife on the floor a few feet in front of him. All he would have to do was drop her and he could go get the knife and do what he had planned on doing, but he wasn't going to. No, he wasn't going to kill her today, after all. He sighed heavily and leaned his head back against the wall behind him, pulling her closer to him. He swallowed the lump, or maybe it was bile, in his throat. It was game over alright, but not the way he'd intended it. Not at all.

He stood and lifted her up in his arms, cradling her against him; her lolling head lay on his shoulder pressed against his neck. He carried her to the bed, grabbing the blanket off it and wrapping it tightly around her. He kicked off his shoes, lying down beside her. He grabbed hold of her, pulling her tightly to him, and held her in his arms. Fuck. She was right. She was right and there was no going back. He held on tight to her, watching her, protecting what was his.

-

A Note from the Author: Again I'm sorry this took me as long as it did to get up. I wasn't happy at first at how this chapter was shaping up, but then I got into it and got it the way I wanted it. I knew I wanted it to be different from the other chapters. I wanted to kind of separate them and show their individual thought processes ALONE. I mean I haven't shown them alone and given them that much POV by themselves till this point and I felt it was really needed especially to do what needed to be done in this chapter. If you're confused about Angeline collapsing...it was kind of just a sensory/emotional overload. Almost like her brain was taking in more than it could handle and it just...shut down. I guess kind of almost like post traumatic stress. That's why she collapsed.
I hope the chapter was worth the wait. I'm on vacation from work this week and will have a lot of time to get some writing done so hopefully you'll see another update real soon. Again a big thank you to all my readers. I see you're reading and I'm thrilled and humbled that you're all taking the time to read what I have put a lot of effort, emotion, and time into writing. Feel free to review at any time, I eat those things up. It's always nice to know peoples thoughts and it's great to have people cheering you on and expressing happiness over your writing. Let's face it, writers LIVE for feedback. We crave it. It's like crack to us. So keep on reading and hit that review button whenever you get the urge, guys! Love to hear from ya. Everyone take care and happy reading/writing! : )