Disclaimer: Sadly, I don't own anything related to Batman or the universe(s) he is in. They belong to other, far richer people than me.
AN: Trauma and drama all around in this chapter, hopefully making for some interesting reading. Please let me know what you think by reviewing. Thanks!
Chapter 7: A Parent's Worst Nightmare:
Something was terribly wrong at home. Amara had never shown up at the penthouse, and after spending an hour of calling both the Manor and Amara's cell phone, with no reply, Bruce decided to head home to see what had happened.
Racing up the steps, Bruce threw open the doors of the Manor and tried to figure out where he needed to go. His whole world was in chaos, and he desperately needed to find his family. The Joker had escaped, but for some reason, he and Amara had not been told about it because the fools who ran the city were more worried about their public image than the people's safety. Worse, his wife and daughter were alone in a large mansion, and he had to find them, fast. They had to be taken somewhere safe, before…
The sound of someone weeping made his blood run cold. Listening carefully, Bruce traced the echoing sound; it was coming from upstairs. Without hesitation, he ran up the carpeted marble steps, following it to the family wing. When he got there, he froze.
Crumpled on the floor was the worst sight in the world to him: Amara, her face in her hands as she wept, was on her knees before the open door to Ellie's bedroom. Falling to his own knees beside his wife, Bruce wrapped his arms around her shoulders.
"What happened?" he whispered, his voice sounding loud and harsh to him.
Amara lifted her head, eyes red and flowing with tears. Her face was so severely pale that Bruce feared she was half dead. "I left her alone for a minute…just a minute, to call you, and when I came back, Ellie was…"
Bruce pulled her close just as the tears began to flow once more. As his wife soaked his coat with her heartache, Alfred stole up behind him and put a hand on his employer's shoulder.
"Master Wayne?" he whispered. "You might want to take a look at this."
Turning his head, Bruce looked, and wished he hadn't. On the carpet were hundreds of scattered playing cards, all of them jokers. The sight was simple, but horrifying, as it was a clear indication of what had happened. The Joker had Ellie, the one thing that both Bruce and Amara cherished above all things.
"We'll get her back," he growled, pulling his wife into a tighter hold. "I'll make sure of it."
The mansion seemed darker than it had ever been before. The only time Bruce could remember it feeling so vast and eerie was after the deaths of his parents. Like so many years before, someone precious had been taken from him. The only difference was, back then, there had been nothing he could do about it. Now, things were different.
Seated in the kitchen, the trio sipped drinks according to their moods. Bruce had a cup of tea, as did Alfred, but Amara was nursing a bit of scotch in order to help calm her nerves. It was working, to an extent, but she still looked as though she were trying hard not to scream her anger and frustration.
Taking another sip from her glass, Amara swallowed harshly and tried to set the glass down without breaking it. "So what do we do now?"
"Well," Alfred began as he poured another cup of tea, "the question we should be asking ourselves is: do we want the police involved in all of this?"
Bruce shook his head. "Eventually, we'll have to. Someone from the police department is going to be coming around eventually, just to check how we're coping with The Joker's escape, and we won't be able to cover up the fact that Ellie isn't here."
Alfred nodded. "They might even make you move to a protected location, though I wouldn't trust any sort of protective detail they assigned."
"Hmm, nor I," Amara muttered. "But we'll have to involve them, sooner or later."
"Might I make a suggestion?" Alfred gently put in. "I think that we should wait. The Joker might make his demands known to us within the next day or two, so we should use that precious time to make a plan of some sort."
From the calm way Amara agreed with him, Bruce could tell that his wife was on her way to being drunk. If she'd been in her right state of mind, he had no doubt that she would be screaming her impatience and demand that they do something, now.
As it was, she was willing to play by his rules and wait for The Joker's demands.
Bruce had led Amara up to their bedroom for some rest just as twilight set in. She was fairly intoxicated, and he'd made sure to give her plenty of water to prevent a hangover. At least she would be getting a full night's sleep; after what had happened, she deserved it.
With his wife safely tucked beneath the sheets of their bed, Bruce made his way to the den and switched on the television, making sure to keep the volume down so that no sound made its way upstairs. The news was on, and with it was the sign he, his wife and their butler were waiting for.
From what the news anchor said, it was a video that had been delivered to the station, and that, after viewing the footage, they had to play it. The contents of the tape churned Bruce's stomach.
There, perched in a large leather chair, was Ellie. Her eyes were bound, her mouth gagged, and her hands were tied to the chair's armrests. From her posture, it was clear that she was terrified, but she didn't appear to be weeping or struggling to cry out.
A makeup-caked face appeared in front of the camera, grinning madly into the lens. Licking his red painted lips, he began to speak.
"As you can see, little Ellie is safe and sound, Mr. Wayne," The Joker said, panning to the child as though to emphasize his message. "If you want her to stay that way, we can do a little trade!"
Bruce's heart dropped to the floor. No trade would be a good one, and Bruce could only imagine what the Clown Prince could want from him.
Shining mad eyes glittered from black depths created by dark paint and eye shadow. "How about…your delectable wife…for your brat? How does that sound to you, Bruce-y?"
The minute those words came through the screen, Bruce was on the verge of throwing the coffee table at it. What the Joker asked of him was impossible. Trade his wife for his daughter? The love of his life for his child? How could any man make that sort of trade?
"I can't do it," he whispered.
But then, what else could he do? And what about Amara? He'd have to talk to her about this, and he could easily guess what she would have to say –no doubt she'd run out the door without thinking, ready to throw herself into The Joker's claws in order to save Ellie. He couldn't let her do that.
"With this tape's delivery to the station, we can only guess what the Wayne family will do concerning this situation," the reporter on television was saying. "Be assured that our hopes and prayers are with them during this terrible time. We will keep you all posted on this event as it unfolds."
"Master Wayne?" said a voice from the doorway. The door to the den swung further open, revealing a rather frustrated Alfred, who was shaking his head. "I saw the news in the kitchen. The police, Commissioner Gordon, and a dozen television stations have flooded the phone lines. I'm glad you don't keep a phone in the master bedroom, sir, otherwise your wife would be awake, and then there'd be hell to pay."
Bruce swept a hand over his hair and face. "What am I going to do, Alfred?" he asked. "I know what Amara would do, but I can't let her trade her life for Ellie's. Our daughter can't live without her mother."
His oldest friend and confidant came up beside him. "I know that you don't want Ellie to have the same sort of life that you did, sir," whispered Alfred. "But she won't be able to have any sort of future if she's dead. You and Amara have to think about this carefully, and quickly. The police are no doubt on their way here, as are the reporters."
Damn it, he was right, and Bruce knew it. He and his wife had a lot to do, and not enough time to do it.
The little girl was staring at him with those big brown eyes of hers, so much the mirror-image of her mother's it was uncanny. He liked it.
"So, sweet pea, what does your precious mommy do for fun with you?" he asked, flicking his knife open and closed. "Does she play, ah, games with you?"
No, it wasn't meant in a dirty way; he never thought about kids like that. That was for lowlife scum, the people he liked to torture and get rid of once he was done. The Joker was genuinely interested in what mother and daughter did while dear old Daddy was out of the house.
Seated in a large leather chair, Ellie gave him a somber look as she answered him. "We play games. I like Candyland."
He flipped open the knife and pressed the tip into the top of his gloved left forefinger, slowly turning it over and over, watching the light of the room reflect off of it. "What else?" he demanded.
The child began to swing her legs back and forth. "Mommy likes to read to me. She reads lots of stories to me when we aren't playing."
"And?" he asked, fluttering a hand at her impatiently.
"Daddy brings me dolls, and then Mommy and I play with them together," she answered, swinging her legs to a rhythm only she heard.
Launching himself at her, The Joker barely managed to keep the knife from the girl's face; he didn't need her wetting herself all over the chair. Instead, he shoved a finger into her face, keeping it just in front of her terrified eyes.
"No more talking about your daddy, got it?" he snarled. "I don't like hearing about your father. I hate fathers."
Nodding, Ellie's eyes swelled with tears. Pulling himself back, The Joker settled into a nearby chair, happy that he'd gotten the reaction that he had. "Now, what else do you and Mommy do?"
His little interrogation lasted a few more minutes, until dinner was brought in. One of his goons had learned to cook from a cousin, so he was in charge of making his boss happy in the food department. So far, he'd only been punched twice: both were for serving cold food. Granted, one of the dishes was supposed to be cold, but The Joker hated anything served cold. The next time that happened, the man would be floating in the Gotham City river.
He watched as Ellie's eyes lit up at the prospect of getting something to eat. There was a stack of small pastries on one of the plate, too; apparently his cook suspected that the way to get kids to talk was to bribe them with sweets. The Joker had other ways to make the girl more talkative, but if she ended up crying, he just might have to kill her. He hated it when people cried around him; it was pathetic and disgusting.
With a wave of his hand, a few goons stepped forward. His men weren't exactly the gentle type, but one or two of them had kids of their own, so they were the ones pushed into the task of 'caregiver' for Ellie. These men were the ones who served her dinner, cut up her meat and vegetables, and poured her a glass of water, all under their boss's intense gaze.
Keeping a careful eye on her, The Joker studied each and every move the child made.
Just as he suspected, she had class, even for a five-year-old. Ellie had good table manners, eating her way slowly and daintily through her meal, almost as though she were a bird. She even wiped her mouth in a lady-like manner, something she probably observed and copied from her mother. Amara must have been very proud to have a child so perfectly trained at eating.
Suddenly, an idea hit him. If Ellie could be trained to eat with such an advanced level of etiquette, what else could she be trained to do? He'd heard that children were quite impressionable at a young age, and could be taught practically anything, if they were instructed correctly.
He tried to imagine all the possibilities. 'Why, I could have my own mad little family!' he thought, grinning broadly.
And why not? With Amara by his side and him twisting her little girl into a little princess of terror, it would be his perfect version of a family! Not to mention, with dear Bruce gone, Amara would need a new man and Ellie would need a father.
'And who's a better candidate than me?'
Laughter exploded from his mouth, shocking everyone around him, including Ellie. The little girl dropped her fork onto the plate and leaped back in her chair, pulling herself away from him.
The Joker immediately stopped laughing. "Ah, ah," he chided her. "No need to be alarmed, sweet pea. Finish your dinner, and we'll see if these nice fellas can find you something to play with, huh?"
One of the men took the hint and split, obviously heading for the closest toy store. If he wasn't back in half an hour, he was dead.
Sitting back in his chair, the Clown Prince watched his future little princess finish her meal. The two of them stared at each other across the small space between them until her food was gone and his hired help returned with a sack of stolen toys.
After that, she was too preoccupied to notice him studying her.
She really didn't like the strange man who'd taken her away from her mommy and daddy. He'd made her almost cry with those sharp knives he had, and he wore strange white makeup all over his face. His red painted lips scared her. Mommy put red stuff on her lips, too, but they made hers look pretty. She wanted pretty lips like Mommy's.
And Ellie knew who the bad man was. She'd heard her teachers talking about him one day, when they thought no one could hear them.
"That's Mrs. Wayne's little girl," one of them had whispered. "You know, the one who got kidnapped twice by The Joker."
"Wow," another had softly replied. "She has to be made of strong stuff to have survived that!"
"And it didn't hurt that Batman went to her rescue," the first teacher put in. "Still, Mrs. Wayne had to have been incredibly brave to get through all of that trauma. I'm not sure if I could have made it out with my sanity, not if I was being held by a makeup-wearing maniac. The white powder and red paint all over his face would have scared the heck out of me!"
That was how she knew about The Joker. The other kids didn't know, but she did. And she knew that Mommy had been very brave when she was taken.
Ellie looked at the white seal that the bad man had gotten for her. 'If Mommy can be brave, so can I.' Besides, she wanted to make Mommy and Daddy proud by being brave.
Humming a little song, she picked up another toy and began to play.
"So, let me get this straight," Amara slowly said to her husband and their butler. "Ellie's been kidnapped by The Joker and is willing to trade her for me."
"Exactly," Alfred replied before Bruce could. "And the police and media are on their way here. We need a course of action, as it were, if we're going to handle this huge avalanche of pressure and scrutiny under the public eye."
Amara snorted in disbelief, and winced. In spite of Bruce's best efforts, she did have a terrible hangover. The fact that she'd been woken from a sound sleep didn't help, either. "I doubt that the members of the press are going to be merciful because our daughter has been kidnapped and that we need them out of our faces," she said, her voice full of anger.
"In the meantime, we need a plan," Bruce said.
She looked at him in surprise. "What plan? I turn myself over to The Joker and Ellie goes free. It seems simple enough from my point of view."
As he made to protest, she put a hand on his mouth. "As long as Ellie's safe, that's all that matters."
"I believe that might be the start of a good plan," Alfred put in. "But before we discuss this further, I would like to say that I hope you're both ready to face this thing head-on. The police have arrived."
AN: Another short chapter, but again, I don't want to drag things out too much. I hope that everyone enjoyed it and will review. Thanks a bunch!