(A/N: Finals are next week so I sort of stinted on studying to type this up. In all, I put in about 12 hours into writing this chapter over a span of three days.

Chapter 7: Monsieur Pierre Lepretre

*Early Morning, October 25*

My hair and makeup were fixed and the ruined stockings had long since been tucked away in my bag. Jonathan had a bit of a harder time tidying up though, since he didn't know how to conceal his hickey at first. Surprisingly, he found a plaid scarf inside his briefcase and used it to cover the bruise.

Now that he and I had no evidence remaining of our prior engagements, we leant against one another and listened to some of the soothing French songs I had programmed on my MP3 player.

We were eventually rescued from the elevator, but by the time the Batman ripped open the doors we'd long since succumbed to drowsiness. My coworker and I had fallen asleep after only the first hour in the elevator. The last thing I remember seeing before my eyelids drooped shut was Jonathan's hand enveloping my own, his slightly calloused thumb running over the crests and troughs of the metacarpals that rested just beneath the skin on the back of my hand.

I imagine it must have been quite a scene for Batman. The entire asylum was in a state of panic, some people were probably killed, and in he strides, coming to the rescue only to find us behind those doors. A couple huddled close together to retain heat and sharing a pair of earbuds, our heads slumped over one another's Obviously this scene did not depict a pair of cowering coworkers scared out of their wits. Thankfully, he still chose to wake us up.

When Batman shook me awake, the first thing I noticed was the open elevator door beyond the vigilante. With a quick 'merci beaucoup', I dashed out to stare upon the crime scene. Sure enough there was a corpse resting against the far wall, a smear of blood leading up to the body showing he had been dragged away from his place of passing. After a quick prayer I checked his pulse anyway, just to be sure of his demise. I pressed my index and middle finger against his neck and as expected it was cold and stiff, rigor mortis had already started setting in. "Where did you put those requiring medical attention?" I asked the Bat while reaching into my bag for a bottle of chloroprocaine.

"They're in the library; the Medical Facility was where the Riddler was last spotted before escaping, so the patients there are barricaded in with some of the staff. He didn't seem to attack the areas containing patients as much as he did those holding employees. Some of the security guards from intensive care are worse for wear, as are the psychologists. I patched them up the best I could, but bandages aren't going to keep them stable for long, especially with most of the medicinal doctors boarded up in their facility." He looked at a gadget on his gauntlet and read off the list of injuries. "There are broken limbs, one punctured lung, a crushed hand,severe lacerations, a few knocked out teeth, and some sprained ankles." The Bat closed his device and looked back up at me. "Do we need to stop by the Medical Facility to pick up anything? The stock room should still be accessible."

"I have what I need for some of the more stable patients in my bag, but for others I do need some tools. Is there any way you could drop me off at the library and then pick up a list of items from the Medical Facility?" I had already begun jotting down the necessary tools and some extra ones just as a precaution.

"I can do that." Batman took the now finished list and extended his arm. "It would be faster if I carried you to the library."

"Yes, just give me a second." I turned to see Jonathan groggily getting up and stretching his neck. I had known for a while that he was not someone to interrupt while sleeping, especially since he barely got any rest. I ran up and kissed his cheek. "I have to go, I'll be in the library taking care of some of the injured if you want to join me. Or you could just go back to your house if you want. I'll take a cab home."

Before Jonathan could say anything, the Dark Knight remarked, "Deal with carpooling later Dr. Milenkovic, we need to go. Now!" The man yanked my arm to draw me closer to him. Once he did, he put one arm under my knees and the other around my middle. Lifting me up like I weighed nothing, he carried me bridal style and began running down the hall.

I can lie and say that I was behaving appropriately for the situation: keeping quiet, giving necessary directions, asking about the patients. However, I was terrified. Imagine being held firmly to a Kevlar suit, not a soft material, and jolted up and down with each long stride.

Power was down in Intensive Treatment, so I understand Batman taking a unique exit route through the window, onto a nearby hill, and then sliding down the grassy slope to the grounds, but stairs were always an option. Throughout the trip to Arkham East, he also decided to take a few shortcuts, shortcuts of course being thirty foot drops cushioned only by his cape acting as a makeshift parachute near the end of our decent. I stopped screaming after the first few minutes, but still latched onto Batman for dear life until the end of our journey.

The first thing I did once I reached the library was instruct the few medical assistants there to organize the patients and staff by severity of injury. The nurses were concerned that I didn't wish to treat the staff first, but my resolve wore them down. Only a few patients had been harmed by the Riddler and based on what they muttered under their breath about the rogue while I treated them, he was not a pal of theirs. Staff injuries were more severe and numerous. Batman, as I was told by one of the staff members, had already connected them all to the Riddler. Evidently they had gotten on his bad side during his incarceration and he deemed it fit to seek revenge upon them. The most severely injured of them was his old psychologist. Her hand had been crushed, left lung punctured, and more than a few of her ribs were broken.

After treatment, I identified the probable cause. A heavy paperweight could explain the hand, as she was found in her office, and the ribs were most likely from repeated strikes to the thoracic cage by means of the Riddler's trademark cane. Her primary hobby, I later found out, was drawing. The Riddler had hated how she saw fit to doodle during their sessions so long ago. 'Unprofessional' he called it, 'and sloppy work at best'.

XXXXX

Once all the major cases were taken care of by Dr. Reimer and myself, I asked him to tend to the minor injuries while I checked on some of the bedded patients over in the Medical Facility. The walk over there was more than a little scary, however I was accompanied by a security guard who helped me keep calm during the fifteen minute walk. Sometime during the seven hours spent working in the library, the medical staff had decided the threat was over and began disassembling their barricade, allowing me to enter the ward without facing any difficulties.

The only place not to lose power was the Critical Ward in the Medical Facility. Gas powered generators there turn on automatically after power outages to ensure the machines that patients there depended on kept running for the duration of the blackout.

It was six in the morning now. The nap in the elevator helped give me enough energy to keep working. While I took care of patients in need of medical attention in the library, Dr. Crane was helping do a headcount of the remaining patients. He performed the count in solitary first before bringing the inmates back out to their cells. The man was in charge of counting more than two floors of patients. Periodically I would hear from him on my walkie, asking if a specific patient was in the Medical Facility or being treated in the library. Although it sounded easy, Dr. Crane had to not only check if there was someone present in the cell, but also inspect said inhabitant to see if they were harmed or had been swapped out with another patient. Thankfully, these occurrences were rare. Dr. Crane deduced that Riddler had swapped some deadly patients with more tolerable ones so that when retrieving what should be low threat patients, guards wouldn't realize what hit them. It was brilliant in a way, chaos carrying on without the rogue even being present. Like a kick in the belly after beating an opponent down, just another thing to remind us of his intellect during his absence besides the thirty seven wounded and eighteen dead.

I traipsed through the Critical Ward of the Medical Facility after conferring with my shaken coworkers. Patients in this ward were divided by level of threat to those around them and how critical a condition they were in when hospitalized. We had saved looking in on these critical patients for last since they were well tied down and in no threat of dying because the generators supported them throughout the attack. Plus, those in the Medical Facility were recovering from injuries rather than enduring them, so few really needed attention besides the regular sponge baths and daily medications thanks to the machines.

I checked the low threat patients first; everyone there seemed fine if not shocked. When I called out the names of the patients from the clipboard on the door, they all responded in turn and confirmed that they were all right. The only one who hadn't replied so far was Mademoiselle Trejo, the young woman in a coma. The final room in the ward was occupied by a single patient, the Joker. Our number one patient was supposed to be medicated to keep him relaxed while his body healed and aid him in maintaining a cool temper while around the defenseless patients. Several thick leather bands secured his arms to his sides and his legs together to prevent him from running off. He was, however, not linked to the bed. This was purely for convenience of course, so that every time we changed his sheets we didn't have to unbind him from the cot. He could roll off the bed though, and theoretically he could stand up, head-butt, bite, body slam. He could do quite a bit without use of his limbs, which I why I had him medicated with a muscle relaxant that prevented him from wiggling around too much. I took in a deep breath before opening the door slowly.

The Joker had escaped from his bed, but it was no mystery where he had gone. A mere ten feet away from the bed lay the Joker, resting on his side with a broken nose and a small pool of blood beside him. I giggled a bit, gaining his attention. He rolled around and scrunched himself up so he was on his belly, looking up at me from his place on the floor. "I was wondering where you'd gone to Doc. I have to admit, I'm a little upset you didn't visit little old me first." I nodded and walked over to the machines he was supposed to be hooked up to. The muscle relaxant probably wasn't administered on time because of the incident, allowing him to regain some of his faculties and dislodge the other tubes that contained various additional medications. With eight hours to get the drugs out of his system, it being six in the morning now and his dosage prescribed for ten at night, most of his capabilities should be restored to him by now. I turned back to my patient and smiled, best to keep calm in this sort of situation.

"Let me guess." I surveyed the situation. "You fell out of bed, landed on your nose, rolled around a bit, stood up for a while," I referenced the smear of blood on the wall in the corner. "Fell down due to the residual muscle relaxants in your system and then tried to kick open the steel air vent." I concluded after looking at the small dents in the sturdy metal. "Then gave up." My eyes fixated on those dings, steel didn't budge easily. Perhaps I was in a worse situation than I figured.

"I hardly gave up Doc; in fact." The Joker attempted to stand once more by scrunching up his body and succeeded. "I feel the tides are starting to turn in my favor."

As the Joker 'dauntingly' hopped toward me, I reached into my bag and pulled out a syringe filled with sedative. This did not deter him though; as he neared me I flicked the metal needle to remove air bubbles and pushed a bit of the sedative out of the disposable syringe. He was three feet away from me now. I took a deep breath before making a broad sidestep. While he turned and lunged at me, I dodged and shoved the Joker with enough force to make him lose his balance and land on his face once more. Placing my knee on his back I held his head down with my hand, being sure to keep my wrist a safe distance from his snapping jaws. I jabbed the sedative in his neck and pressed the plunger down. Soon afterward, he ceased biting the air and his body relaxed.

"Mmmm," The Joker hummed lightly in a half dazed state. "You're pretty fun Doc, we should play again sometime." He snickered knowingly as he angled his head to look at me, "I appreciate the panty shot you provided too." My patient proceeded to lose consciousness.

I looked down and saw that while my right knee was on the Joker's back, the left was on the floor at a ninety degree angle of the other. Throw in the added height of the knee that rested on the Prince of Crime's back and my skirt was drawn up quite a bit. To add insult to injury I had taken off my nylons in the elevator, so he got a clear view of my pink and purple striped panties when he craned his neck. I slammed my legs shut and stood up to pull down my skirt. Even though he'd passed out, I was beyond embarrassed and gave him a light kick to the side. "Jerk," I mumbled.

After calming down, I rolled over the Joker to examine his nose. It was indeed broken and bleeding once again due to his latest tumble. I pulled out some gauze from my bag and apologized to the comatose man before yanking the hyaline cartilage back into place. The Joker jerked in his sleep, but didn't wake up. Holding the cartilage in place, I took care of the blood with the gauze in my hand. Once the bleeding halted I called for an assistant on my walkie to bring some cast cloth and warm water.

I molded a cast to the Joker's nose and secured it to his face with medical tape, the extra-adhesive type of course, should he roll off again. Together, the medical assistant and I lifted the Joker onto his bed and reattached him to the machines before giving him his dose of muscle relaxant.

Everyone in the library had been taken care of and were now being transported to the Medical Facility so that they could rest in some of the many beds scattered throughout the wards. Jonathan had finished his headcount and joined me as I double checked some of the other doctor's work while the injured trickled in. He mumbled 'control freak' in my ear as I finished with my last inspection. I turned to deliver a rebuttal, but when I looked up at him my head rushed and I nearly fell backward. Jonathan grabbed me and inadvertently pulled me into his arms when he prevented me from falling. The adrenaline in my system was dropping and I found myself suddenly exhausted.

Using the excuse that he was planning on driving me home, Jonathan instead brought me to his house and tucked me into his own bed before leaving to sleep on the couch. Later, he would tell me that I fell asleep in the car ride at around seven in the morning, after eight hours of nonstop work on top of my typical ten hour work day. Not, of course, including the one hour lunch break I had.

XXXXX

When I woke up a few hours later, I was more than surprised to find myself in Jonathan's bedroom, but after realizing that I was still very much clothed and alone in his bed, I pushed aside those concerns in favor of more rest. Nuzzling into Jonathan's pillows, I smiled at the familiar scent and tugged the covers higher up. I couldn't understand how he had difficulty sleeping with such a lush bed. I once again fell asleep, this time under my own volition.

Jonathan played the role of the perfect boyfriend throughout my stay. He helped sit me up and fed me breakfast at around noon when he had just woken up. Half-awake, Jonathan accident burnt the pancakes, but the deed itself was beyond touching considering he was in the same dismal state as me. And this disorderly state of his was proven beyond a doubt when he fell asleep on my shoulder after just barely finishing his own home-made breakfast. Moving the dishes to the bedside table, I shifted closer to Jonathan and put his head down on a pillow before joining him in slumber.

We were much more alert when we awoke the next time. The clock informed me it was eight at night, but rather than acknowledge the late hour, I focused on the arm around my waist. Sometime during my slumber I must have turned around and Jonathan proceeded to spoon me. I turned to look at him, he was above the covers and I underneath. Concerned about his warmth, I pulled the blankets down and over him. Sure enough, he was relatively cold compared to myself. Getting out of the bed, I washed and put away the dishes from earlier. When I returned, Jonathan was wide awake.

"I thought you had left, but I heard the sink running." He commented and drew back the covers to invite me in again.

I bit my lip, "Jonathan, I can't do it, even if it is platonic. I- I don't want to lead you on anymore." I sat down beside him, above the comforter. It was as good a time as any, he was too tired to go storming off and it was his house, where would he go if he did?

"What do you mean?" Jonathan sat up and fixed the nose pads on his glasses, which had evidently shifted in his sleep. "I told you I was perfectly willing to wait before having sexual relations with you. I have been making advances, and I apologize for that but I've been trying to warm you up to the idea so you don't have to make an uneducated guess on when to begin such a relationship with me. I didn't intend on appearing nefarious."

"That's just it Jonathan, I'm not waiting for the moment it feels right, I'm waiting for a specific time. That being my, um, my wedding night." I cringed, awaiting the yelling, the pushing, anything. My eyes were shut tight, not wanting to see the hurt in my beloved Jonathan's face.

"I am not going to harm you Mireille." He spoke calmly, clinically. "I am, however, a bit upset. You told me a while back you were just waiting for the opportune moment, and I respect that. I also respect your right to keep your maidenhood intact for as long as you wish. Yet I know you are struggling with this yourself. You've been more than willing to participate in amorous activities with me, so I doubt it has something to do with the church or you would avoid even that. So would you care to tell me the reasoning behind your decision of abstinence?"

"You're right, the choice was not my own." I confessed. "It was the request of my beloved fiancé, Monsieur Pierre Lepretre. I've told you about him before, but only that he was a boyfriend of mine before medical school. That is true, but there is so much more to it than that. I must tell you about Pierre, I won't skimp on the details though. This man is very important to me and deserves more than a passing comment in a conversation."

"Alright Mireille." Jonathan folded his hands on his lap, open to hearing my story. "Tell me about Mr. Lepretre."

XXXXX Mireille's Story XXXXX

When I was a little girl, I spent my summers in France with my mother. She's an artist who works on commission, so she can travel as she pleases. Back then, she took me along with her sometimes. But without fail, every summer my mother travels to France, her home before my father married her and brought her to America. At around the age of five, my mother took me to a park to play while she worked out a sketch. Naturally, I began running around and quickly lost sight of her. In my tearful search for my maman, I walked right into the leg of a man. I looked up to apologize only to find a face of white and a horizontally striped shirt. It was a mime.

The man knelt down and smiled at me, patted my head, and began to talk to me. You must understand he never said a word, he didn't need to. His face, his actions, they were an open book. He asked me where my mother was, I told him I was lost, he asked if he could assist in my search, I said yes. We found my mother a few minutes later on the opposite side of a bush wall. She embraced me and thanked the man profusely, he simply nodded his head and walked away.

"Maman," I asked, "Who is that guy?"

"That, my bella fille is a mime," She explained in French. "It's a performer who doesn't utter a word but tells stories, expresses emotions, and even speaks through actions."

"Can we see him again?" I asked.

"Oui, tomorrow. Perhaps we can make some macrons to thank him." I nodded vigorously and the next day we returned with the cookies.

The mime thanked me and informed us that he had a son around my age who had come with him to the park today. And out of the bushes came a little boy no older than seven with jet black hair and bright green eyes. He was wearing what I can safely assume to be one of his father's old striped shirts and a pair of black pants. His face was caked with greasepaint and sloppily detailed. The boy sauntered over, attempting to look like he was struggling to walk against a fierce wind.

While I thought his performance was funny due to the unprofessionalism, his father was infuriated. The mime began to scold his son and instructed him to wash his face and remove the shirt. The boy did so before returning. His face newly cleaned and over shirt removed, he stood before me in street clothes and introduced himself as Pierre Lepretre and his father as Travis Lepretre. "He can't tell you himself you see, he has taken an oath of silence, I myself haven't heard him even mumble a word in my entire life." Pierre explained this to me while my mother and Monsieur Lepretre 'talked'.

The park became my favorite place to go during the summer, even when Monsieur Lepretre wasn't there, Pierre likely was. It was funny, I enjoyed watching his father perform and he loved watching my mother draw. He wanted to be an artist you see; he confessed he was awful at all other subjects in school. And I, I couldn't draw a stick figure. He taught me what he knew about miming when I asked and I helped him with his math. In this way, we bonded and became close friends. I wasn't well liked at school. Kindergarteners had trouble grasping the concept of different languages, so when I arrived at school with a French accent I was deemed daft and was ostracized by my peers despite my numerous explanations.

Pierre and I became pen pals around third grade, pinky swearing to send letters at least every month. I would send him stamps alongside my letters to assist in the overseas postage and he would send me drawings in payment. I kept each and every one of them, and over the years I saw his artistic talent blossom. Oh Jonathan, he would have surely become magnificent with the proper training.

At around the age of fifteen, I returned to France per his request. I could only stay a few weeks though; I was attending summer classes to help speed up my education. But those weeks were all we needed. I hadn't been to Pairs in a while, too focused on my studies. In that span of around three years, Pierre had grown into a young man of seventeen. He became less clumsy, more mature, handsome, and above all else, he was the same boy I had been friends with for more than two thirds of my life. After a week spent together, I was in love, and he later confessed that he was as well. It was young love yes, but it was most definitely real.

The day I was scheduled to return to America, he took me with him to the park we met and gave me my first kiss. Once I was home I began writing to him fervently once more. We talked about everything, from my classes to his paintings and even held deeper conversations about beliefs, politics, and ultimately our feelings. In that year alone we sent over sixty letters to one another, sometimes sending back to back messages without yet receiving a response from the first.

After Pierre finished school, he sent me a letter saying that he wanted to go with me to America. He planned on using part of his school money to pay the fare and once here he would attend an art school and begin his career. Pierre told me he didn't want to be apart from me anymore. So, right after I graduated high school, about two weeks after I received the letter, I flew over to see him and converse with his father about living arrangements. My family had a spare room for guests that Pierre could live in; I planned on offering it to help him make his decision on whether or not to let his son utilize the money to aid in relocating to the United States. But by the time my plane had landed, something awful happened. Monsieur Travis Lepretre had passed away in his sleep, doctors later diagnosed it as a stroke.

Adding together the medical diagnosis, corner fees, funeral arrangements, burial, and flowers, Pierre lost almost all of the money his father gave him for school. The will his father left dictated that Pierre was his sole inheritor, but upon looking at what was left behind for him, Pierre realized that the school money his father gave him was his entire life's savings. You see, Monsieur Lepretre lived in a nice neighborhood to allow Pierre to attend the best schools, spent his hard earned money on new clothing for his son, fresh food, and giving him all the finest opportunities he could provide for his only child. He wanted Pierre to grow up in a nurturing environment, even though he had only one parent.

Monsieur Lepretre had only just finished paying off the apartment they lived in and was beginning to save up more money to pay for his son's tuition when he died.

Pierre was quiet for a few days; he didn't know how to take the news. I offered him housing in America along with the fee for the plane ride. Pierre denied the opportunity.

"I want to be like my father Mireille." He said. "I want to be a self-sufficient man who provides for others, a selfless man who brings joy to the world through his trade. My father, he never told me how hard he worked for the shirts I ruined nor how much our apartment cost. But I will practice his trade for now, until I have raised enough money to travel overseas and provide for those I love. I want to honor his memory in this manner. Mireille, I am going to take a vow of silence for a few years, to experience my father's work firsthand before utilizing my own trade to spread happiness. I will still write you of course, but before I seal these lips, I must tell you that I love you. And one day I will prove myself worthy of becoming your husband." He kissed me then, and I never heard him speak another word. Even though I pestered him about what he just said, he simply smiled and winked.

Gaining the money to travel overseas didn't take terribly long since the apartment was paid off, but he chose to remain in Paris for a reason he refused to tell me. We still wrote to one another nearly every day, but when I came over during Christmas break to visit him he wouldn't say a word. Like his father, he was a great mime, speaking fluently through actions. Our love for one another only grew, even to the point we discussed marriage openly in front of my parents. Imagine that, a girl of seventeen and a boy of nineteen discussing living arrangements, family pets, children, gardens, and cooking schedules. He even insisted on having a separate room for his paintings or a shed in back to prevent our fictional children from inhaling the harmful fumes.

The next time I saw Pierre was during the Summer I got accepted to medical school, he greeted me not with a hug, but with a ring. For the past year and a half, Pierre had been raising money to buy me an engagement ring. He knelt down and presented to me a dainty seafoam tourmaline ring in hopes of me accepting him as my future husband. Of course I did.

Oh we were so happy that day Jonathan, we intended on painting the town red and how better to start, then at a hotel. I tugged Pierre toward an elegant place, a few hundred dollars for a night, something I was more than willing to front. I had just turned eighteen and was more than willing to give myself to my fiancé now that I was of a proper age. But he stopped me when he realized our destination.

'No' he told me. 'You are not like those other girls who give themselves away on a whim are you? We can wait, and we will. Because we are going to spend the rest of our lives together, that is more than enough time to satisfy our lust for one another. Promise me Mireille, promise that no matter what you will wait until your wedding night before losing your virginity.' He extended his pinky, and I locked mine around it, like we did so long ago. Shaking the smallest digits of our hands, the pact was sealed.

Little did we know that a robbery had just been committed a few blocks away, the felons had dressed as mimes when they held up the bank in attempts to hide their identity. So imagine what a police officer thought when he rounded the corner and saw me and Pierre from behind. He had one arm around my side, holding me close to him as we walked. Later in court, the officer would testify that he thought Pierre was a burglar and had a gun pointed at me so as to use me as his hostage.

He fired without thought.

Three shots just to the right of the heart.

Pierre fainted in forty five seconds.

He never regained consciousness.

In fifteen minutes when the ambulance arrived he was declared dead.

I could do nothing. All those years in school, all that talk of becoming a brilliant doctor one day, and all I could do was hold onto him, look him in the eyes as the life left them, and tell him how much I loved him, how I couldn't live without him.

The rookie cop got off scotch free on his charge of manslaughter. I was given a few thousand dollars by said flatfoot to help pay for the funeral. The officer attended the burial, presented flowers, apologized once more for his accident, and never returned to visit the grave of his victim. I myself mourned only a few days in Paris before departing, unable to bear the mishmash of good and bad memories anymore.

My deceased husband-to-be's gravestone reads:

Here Lies Monsieur Pierre Lepretre

Beloved Fiancé and Son

6 August 1979- 27 June 2000

Pierre left everything he owned to me, I still pay for the facilities of his apartment in Paris but it remains untouched, trapped in time. I never visited it before I left. I- I couldn't look upon my dead fiancé's home, see how he left it when he went to meet me at the airport that morning to propose, his more than likely unmade bed, the piles of letters he claims to have kept on the coffee table so he could leaf through them while he pondered what to write. And that piece of art resting upon his easel he said he was going to give me as a wedding present.

So you see Jonathan, how can I not honor the request of my oldest friend, my departed fiancé, and my soulmate. It's the least I can do after all he did for me.

XXXXX End Story XXXXX

I openly wept in Jonathan's arms; he must have wrapped me in them sometime around the middle of the story. "God I miss him Jonathan," my eyes streamed with tears. "Why must the world be so cruel as to take a man like Pierre, someone so young and innocent?"

"We live in an unkind world Mireille." Jonathan whispered in my hair before kissing the crown of my head. "Everyone must learn this eventually, some earlier than others."

(A/N: Whadidya guys think? The story of Pierre has been one tumbling about my head at night for ages, I am incredibly proud of how it turned out. But what do you guys think?